I think it boils down to intent. If you have a web camera outside your house that does a sweep of your sideyard/neighbor's house every hour and updates it to a website and your camera happens to catch her with the windows open and the blinds up totally dripping wet, then I guess you're just lucky. If you have a camera pointed AT the window and you're hoping to get a sneak peek, then you're a voyeur and you'll probably be caught and charged.
I like the idea of the numbers being traps though. makes me laugh.
Turbines are less noisy than piston engines, and the noise they make is constant and invariable, whereas a piston engine's noise varies quite a bit depending on how hard the engine is working. Also, mufflers? And if the noise is constant and predictable, noise-cancellation technology?
Turbine power is only more reasonable today than it was in the 60's because of advances in materials science as well as fuel science. The notion that you can get diesel fuel from plants is something that you would have been laughed out of the board room for proposing in the 1960's. But today, you can not only do it, but it's worth doing to reduce dependence on foreign oil. If amateurs are building 85 horsepower gas turbine engines to put on model remote control aircraft, I don't see why there's nobody attaching one to an automobile. I mean, hell, you could use a secondary turbojet air intake driven by the action of the primary driveshaft, but use the secondary air intake solely to mix with and therefore cool the exhaust from the main engine.
Also, re: hybrid conversions... I read a great series on doing an EV conversion of a Mazda 626. Full EV, not a hybrid but an actual remove-the-engine-and-replace-with-a-DC-motor conversion. You can read about it here: http://jerryrig.com/convert/proto.html -- the whole tale of construction is some forty pages long but worth the read if you're even considering something like this in passing.
Even better than turbines though are magnetic motors (zero emissions, lifespan >400 years); but there's still great controversy over whether or not such a device is even possible. It's still on the drawing board right now, and the only people with a working device haven't yet started selling them (Perendev Power). A Mr. Kohei Minato of Japan has an interesting magnetic motor as well, although his requires timed electromagnets in order to ensure operation. A true magnetic motor would not require anything other than the magnets properly oriented to spin the wheel. This is a bleeding edge idea though, and it is to be met by much criticism from the scientific community even as a simple idea. If a magnetic motor were ever created, the absolute notion that magnets cannot "do work" would be challenged, prompting a possible divergence of thought in modern physics.
I think diesel-powered gas turbine engines would be the best. You can use the existing fuel distribution infrastructure for diesel fuel; unlike hydrogen or electric cars you wouldn't need to heavily modify the fuel distribution infrastructure in order to get wide acceptance. People would probably be more comfortable with an engine that makes noise and burns a fuel than they would be with a super-experimental magnetic motor that would be virtually silent. Also, with advances in ceramics and amorphous metal alloys, I believe that manufacturing a turbine (mass-producing) can be done cheaply.
I don't know exactly how sound waves propagate, but you have to consider speaker proximity to the user's ear. If they're on the phone when this happens (as is the case here) then it's conceivable that they could get a blast at a volume which would cause instantaneous damage.
It looks like the allowed duration is halved every 5 decibels. The linked articles don't specify the loudness of the tone emitted by the phone, but I think it's safe to extrapolate: 120 dB = 1/8 hour, 125 dB = 1/16, 130dB = 1/32, 135 = 1/64, 140 = 1/128, 145 = 1/256, 150 = 1/512, 155 = 1/1024, 160 = 1/2048, 165 = 1/4096, 170 = 1/8192. So you'd have to get at least 165 dB for about one second, 170 dB for about a half-second, or 175 dB for about a quarter second, in order to be permanently damage, if my guess is correct.
I think that Internal Combustion needs to be cast aside in favor of gas turbine engines like those used in helicopters. The power to weight ratio available with a gas turbine is generally much better than that of an internal combustion engine. Mass produced parts made of ceramics and possibly plated with amorphous metals could withstand the high heat and a lengthy undercarriage exhaust system could dissipate the heat to currently accepted levels.
The problem with this idea is that a gas turbine runs at a certain optimal RPM defined by its shape and general design. So you'd need an infinitely variable transmission in order to maintain the gas turbine at its optimal RPM. You'd also need a strong enough turbine to climb a 40% grade with 2000 pounds of car, 800 pounds of passengers and 400 pounds of cargo. The important thing to remember is that it's the rotational action of the shaft which is tapped for kinetic motion and not the forced-air exhaust.
I posted about this in another comment, but: TransRevolution has a prototype IVT in a Dodge Ram, and it supposedly demonstrates an infinite number of positive and negative (reverse) gear ratios including neutral, using a gear mechanism and not a belt mechanism as is used by most CVTs (Continuously Variable Transmission) on the market right now. So it would seem ideal to be paired with a gas turbine engine. The trick will be getting enough air to the combustion chamber at the proper pressure, without sucking small children into the blender-like engines of their mom's minivan.
Continuous-burn engines burn much more cleanly than the intermittent-burn of internal combustion engines. Here's a demonstration of the dirtyness of intermittent burns: Strike a match, watch it. It smokes initially when you strike it and for a moment while it gets up to temperature. Let it burn. No smoke, right? It just burns, nicely and cleanly. Well, blow it out. Smokes again, right? That middle stage where everything is burning nicely and cleanly never happens in an internal combustion engine, which makes the exhaust byproducts very dirty. To clean this dirtyness (as it were), all modern vehicles use a catalytic converter. Catalytic converters are usually just plates of platinum which react with many of the dirty particles left over from the incomplete combustion of the fuel in an internal combustion engine. The "dirt" sticks to these platinum plates, and doesn't get emitted into the air. A continuous burn engine won't encourage us to waste precious metals because the exhaust will be clean and pure.
Compression ratios inside of gas turbine engines allow them to be fed by fuels such as kerosene and even paraffin, not to mention diesel fuel which is even thinner than either of those. So how about a diesel-powered gas turbine engine (electric starter/drive assist for extra horsepower) running on soy or hemp biodiesel or straight vegetable oil?
The key challenges in gas turbine engines are the heat, the rotational speeds involved, and the fuel/oil delivery system.
At over 100K RPM and stainless steel parts will start to expand, but this is overcome by using ceramics and/or amorphous metals to make your parts. Amorphous metal and ceramic parts also stand up to repeated heat cycling and a wide range of heat conditions. Fuel and oil delivery near the combustion chamber will have to be high-temperature tubing of some kind, but preferrably with clear (or translucent) tubing at a safe distance so you can monitor fluid supply.
Say, I don't suppose you know how to write a grant proposal?
They're not trying to steal from him. It's just that certain operating funds are generated by taxes on fuel. If you make your own fuel and you don't pay the tax (even if the tax is all you pay, 20-40 cents a gallon is NOT a bad price for fuel!) then you're not paying into the collective coffer for, say, new bridges, new roads, less potholes, possibly more sidewalks, guardrails, etc. It's PERFECTLY reasonable for the government to try and recoup some money from him--he's using the system, he should pay for it like the rest of us.
If you use all of your fuel at home and not on the roads, then you wouldn't have to pay as many taxes. There may be some sort of emission tax on "industrial equipment" (any generator over 5KW would probably fall into this category) which you might still be asked to pay.
It's one of those laws (like those regarding adultery) that get kind of ignored, unless a really big fuss is made over the "wrongdoer." This fella you speak of got his name in the papers and that was his mistake. He could've gotten away with it had he not been recognized. Boo-hoo. Pay your forty cents a gallon and have an out of pocket cost 1/4 what everyone else is dreaming of paying, and be happy about it.
There's a company called TransRevolution which has produced an Infinitely Variable Transmission (IVT) using gears and not a belt system as is used by most CVTs (Continuously Variable Transmissions) on the market right now. They currently have a prototype functioning in a Dodge Ram and they're working on a second design presently.
I like how you ended that. You're right. It's been said that if 6% of the US landmass were growing hemp, our foreign energy needs would be zero. 6% of the US landmass is quite a bit of territory, but the stuff will literally grow in any part of the country. Having localized energy production capability in each state (or even county?) would be nice.
Hemp played a big role during WW2 when our hemp supplies from the Phillipines were cut off by the Japanese. Even though the Marijuana Tax Act of the late 1930's had made it effectively illegal to grow any form of Cannabis (long story there) during WW2 farmers were able to get permits to farm hemp to produce rope and canvas (similarity: canvas/cannabis) for boat riggings and tents needed by the military.
I'd like to see a calculation of how many acres of hemp it takes to power a humvee for a year. I bet that's a statistic the US government could swallow.
The disc is just the simplest hardware method for moving a physical object closer to another object. In this case the two objects are a piece of disc which contains a desired piece of data and the piece of equipment responsible for reading the data from the disk. It's actually a spinning disc and a motorized reader which moves in and out on the disk, but the point is that it's technologically simplistic and easy to manufacture.
If we could do something cheaper, I'd give it 5 years. I say cheaper because people are reluctant to replace what they've got unless you can give them more value than they have right now. So it has to be cheaper in order to be widely accepted. But I'd give it 5 years.
But you couldn't do it in the USA. You'd have to do it elsewhere first. Japan likes new gadgets, start there.
Who picked this color scheme? It might look good on a CRT but the light shades of tan and puke-like colors similar to tan are indistinguishable on an LCd and the entire thing looks disgusting. It makes me want to puke.
It's all about expectation and intent. If you accidentally don't put a password on a guest account which has full ftp access to your entire mp3 and movie collection, then *whoops!* but if you give out usernames and passwords to people to come and download from your server, then you're breaking the law. If I understand the general idea of it correctly, anyhow.
Re:No one can answer that question
on
Portable Storage?
·
· Score: 1
Hey bro, you're afflicted by a disease. It's a primarily American disease, but it's a dire affliction none the less. This disease is known as bitching. You make a futile assumption (another typically American flaw) in your remark: that there is a right answer.
Vague questions demand a variety of answers, and I sincerely doubt that the asker of the question was looking for everyone to unanimously decide upon a single product. You can help to solve the problem, or you can criticize it for not fitting into your ideal picture of the world. Only one of those options is helpful, however.
To keep this on topic; for portable storage I use CD-Rs for their: cheapness, easyness to acquire, speed with which they can be written, cheapness, cheapness, and did I mention cheapness?
Amorphous metals could solve both the weight and strength problems of the door. Also heat, if anybody happens to bring welding equipment on-board.
Communication with the flight crew? Of course I'd allow that!
You need to remember bro, the populous is aware of what hijackers are doing with planes now. People aren't going to sit around and wait to die. Some of them might, but there will be those that will be willing to take a box cutter to the chest to forcibly tear out some punk extremist's trachea. The flight crew would hear maybe one, two people die before all of the terrorists were very much dismembered. Even if they have guns and it takes three people rush each gunman, the people aren't going to sit by idly and die. Not anymore. You don't need a robot flight crew, you just need to give people credit. ("fool me once...")
Windows, vents, wired communication systems, tin cans and a string, there would be ways to communicate though the proposed wall. I would entrust the pilots with heavyish equipment to use in the event of a crash-landing or the like. The cockpit should definitely be a point of control as well as a point of isolation. There could be a system like at a bank for securely passing hot cups of coffee to the pilots and whatnot.
You're right, it'd take years to design new planes and certify them. This is 2004. We're coming up on September. It's been three years. The planes I propose could have been in the air by now.
I don't really see why nobody has thought of this yet.
In-ear noise-cancelling microphones. The greatest problem with voice recognition is background noise. If the only thing transmitted to the computer were the vibrations of your skull, then only your voice would be transmitted, greatly improving the ability for voice recognition in day-to-day computer use.
Also, brainwaves? If we can train ourselves to move dots onscreen (google it) with our brains, and play simple games (again, google it) with our brains, then surely we could train our brains to interface with a system proximally. You'd be trained to move a dot in your mind up, down, left, right, center, or none. And this simple configuration could be used to turn your lights on and off, your alarm clock on and off, channel surf, etc. If every device in your house was wirelessly communicating proximity data relating your position to various networked devices, the device nearest you would respond to your brain-commands.
Seriously, either of these ideas is technologically viable. Why aren't they being done? People are willing to wear hearing aids to enhance the way they hear, why not wear a microphone to enhance how other [machines/people] hear you?
The cockpit of a plane should be inaccessible via the cabin. An airplane should carry two pilots and two co-pilots, and they would board the aircraft from a different hatch than everyone else; a hatch which only opens into the cockpit. Hijacking problem averted.
Then we can return to our regularly scheduled NOT BEING SO FUCKING AFRAID OF EVERYTHING.
Everything which can be controlled locally should be controllable centrally/remotely, so they should all have IP addresses.
Everything:
Car breaks down on a road trip, it'll be a week before you're home again. Stop wasting energy: "Thermostat, decrease temperature 15 degrees"
Ensure that your kids ate dinner as instructed while you work late: "Microwave, when were you last used?"
The refrigerator should monitor everything that goes in/out (RFID or whatever) and can alert you when you're out. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to check the fridge from work so you know to pick up some orange juice on the way home?
Everything.
BUT! (there's always a but!)
I'm not saying they should all have *PUBLIC* IP addresses. One device should, one fairly secure only-answers-to-the-right-port-knock-sequence device, which interfaces with all the other devices. There should be a way for the devices of your home to communicate with you (and you with them) in order to improve the day to day quality of life, but that communication needs to be secure. In order to facilitate this security, a firewalled "doorman" device would authenticate you before allowing you to see how many eggs are in the fridge.
"Seriously, though, without an extra lens how could it be anything but 'digital zoom' (i.e. 'magnification')?"
Magnification is just the divergence of light so that it covers a larger surface area. Technology may at some point in the near future provide a way to bend/diverge light without lenses.
Antarctica needs power. What better place to build an international facility than in international territory? It's either Antarctica or one of the major oceans...
There are ways of changing a device's MAC address, aren't there?
If the MAC address is the kind of information that you can glean from captured packets, then you might want to consider also cycling the MAC addresses of your devices on a regular basis as well. I mean, for the utmost in security. It depends, I suppose, on how much somebody wants to get inside your network and whether or not you know about it...
Slashdot Mirror
They weren't. The two subjects were explicitly mentioned in two distinct sentences, between which is a convenient period.
you should have maybe bolded and underlined that last part:
Do not offer information as to the AccuFeed's shortcomings to the jurisdiction, even where obvious.
I think it boils down to intent. If you have a web camera outside your house that does a sweep of your sideyard/neighbor's house every hour and updates it to a website and your camera happens to catch her with the windows open and the blinds up totally dripping wet, then I guess you're just lucky. If you have a camera pointed AT the window and you're hoping to get a sneak peek, then you're a voyeur and you'll probably be caught and charged.
I like the idea of the numbers being traps though. makes me laugh.
Turbines are less noisy than piston engines, and the noise they make is constant and invariable, whereas a piston engine's noise varies quite a bit depending on how hard the engine is working. Also, mufflers? And if the noise is constant and predictable, noise-cancellation technology?
Turbine power is only more reasonable today than it was in the 60's because of advances in materials science as well as fuel science. The notion that you can get diesel fuel from plants is something that you would have been laughed out of the board room for proposing in the 1960's. But today, you can not only do it, but it's worth doing to reduce dependence on foreign oil. If amateurs are building 85 horsepower gas turbine engines to put on model remote control aircraft, I don't see why there's nobody attaching one to an automobile. I mean, hell, you could use a secondary turbojet air intake driven by the action of the primary driveshaft, but use the secondary air intake solely to mix with and therefore cool the exhaust from the main engine.
Also, re: hybrid conversions... I read a great series on doing an EV conversion of a Mazda 626. Full EV, not a hybrid but an actual remove-the-engine-and-replace-with-a-DC-motor conversion. You can read about it here: http://jerryrig.com/convert/proto.html -- the whole tale of construction is some forty pages long but worth the read if you're even considering something like this in passing.
Even better than turbines though are magnetic motors (zero emissions, lifespan >400 years); but there's still great controversy over whether or not such a device is even possible. It's still on the drawing board right now, and the only people with a working device haven't yet started selling them (Perendev Power). A Mr. Kohei Minato of Japan has an interesting magnetic motor as well, although his requires timed electromagnets in order to ensure operation. A true magnetic motor would not require anything other than the magnets properly oriented to spin the wheel. This is a bleeding edge idea though, and it is to be met by much criticism from the scientific community even as a simple idea. If a magnetic motor were ever created, the absolute notion that magnets cannot "do work" would be challenged, prompting a possible divergence of thought in modern physics.
I think diesel-powered gas turbine engines would be the best. You can use the existing fuel distribution infrastructure for diesel fuel; unlike hydrogen or electric cars you wouldn't need to heavily modify the fuel distribution infrastructure in order to get wide acceptance. People would probably be more comfortable with an engine that makes noise and burns a fuel than they would be with a super-experimental magnetic motor that would be virtually silent. Also, with advances in ceramics and amorphous metal alloys, I believe that manufacturing a turbine (mass-producing) can be done cheaply.
I say again: grantwriting, anyone know how?
I don't know exactly how sound waves propagate, but you have to consider speaker proximity to the user's ear. If they're on the phone when this happens (as is the case here) then it's conceivable that they could get a blast at a volume which would cause instantaneous damage.
It looks like the allowed duration is halved every 5 decibels. The linked articles don't specify the loudness of the tone emitted by the phone, but I think it's safe to extrapolate: 120 dB = 1/8 hour, 125 dB = 1/16, 130dB = 1/32, 135 = 1/64, 140 = 1/128, 145 = 1/256, 150 = 1/512, 155 = 1/1024, 160 = 1/2048, 165 = 1/4096, 170 = 1/8192. So you'd have to get at least 165 dB for about one second, 170 dB for about a half-second, or 175 dB for about a quarter second, in order to be permanently damage, if my guess is correct.
Can a cellphone speaker do that? Maybe.
I think that Internal Combustion needs to be cast aside in favor of gas turbine engines like those used in helicopters. The power to weight ratio available with a gas turbine is generally much better than that of an internal combustion engine. Mass produced parts made of ceramics and possibly plated with amorphous metals could withstand the high heat and a lengthy undercarriage exhaust system could dissipate the heat to currently accepted levels.
The problem with this idea is that a gas turbine runs at a certain optimal RPM defined by its shape and general design. So you'd need an infinitely variable transmission in order to maintain the gas turbine at its optimal RPM. You'd also need a strong enough turbine to climb a 40% grade with 2000 pounds of car, 800 pounds of passengers and 400 pounds of cargo. The important thing to remember is that it's the rotational action of the shaft which is tapped for kinetic motion and not the forced-air exhaust.
I posted about this in another comment, but: TransRevolution has a prototype IVT in a Dodge Ram, and it supposedly demonstrates an infinite number of positive and negative (reverse) gear ratios including neutral, using a gear mechanism and not a belt mechanism as is used by most CVTs (Continuously Variable Transmission) on the market right now. So it would seem ideal to be paired with a gas turbine engine. The trick will be getting enough air to the combustion chamber at the proper pressure, without sucking small children into the blender-like engines of their mom's minivan.
Continuous-burn engines burn much more cleanly than the intermittent-burn of internal combustion engines. Here's a demonstration of the dirtyness of intermittent burns: Strike a match, watch it. It smokes initially when you strike it and for a moment while it gets up to temperature. Let it burn. No smoke, right? It just burns, nicely and cleanly. Well, blow it out. Smokes again, right? That middle stage where everything is burning nicely and cleanly never happens in an internal combustion engine, which makes the exhaust byproducts very dirty. To clean this dirtyness (as it were), all modern vehicles use a catalytic converter. Catalytic converters are usually just plates of platinum which react with many of the dirty particles left over from the incomplete combustion of the fuel in an internal combustion engine. The "dirt" sticks to these platinum plates, and doesn't get emitted into the air. A continuous burn engine won't encourage us to waste precious metals because the exhaust will be clean and pure.
Compression ratios inside of gas turbine engines allow them to be fed by fuels such as kerosene and even paraffin, not to mention diesel fuel which is even thinner than either of those. So how about a diesel-powered gas turbine engine (electric starter/drive assist for extra horsepower) running on soy or hemp biodiesel or straight vegetable oil?
The key challenges in gas turbine engines are the heat, the rotational speeds involved, and the fuel/oil delivery system.
At over 100K RPM and stainless steel parts will start to expand, but this is overcome by using ceramics and/or amorphous metals to make your parts. Amorphous metal and ceramic parts also stand up to repeated heat cycling and a wide range of heat conditions. Fuel and oil delivery near the combustion chamber will have to be high-temperature tubing of some kind, but preferrably with clear (or translucent) tubing at a safe distance so you can monitor fluid supply.
Say, I don't suppose you know how to write a grant proposal?
They're not trying to steal from him. It's just that certain operating funds are generated by taxes on fuel. If you make your own fuel and you don't pay the tax (even if the tax is all you pay, 20-40 cents a gallon is NOT a bad price for fuel!) then you're not paying into the collective coffer for, say, new bridges, new roads, less potholes, possibly more sidewalks, guardrails, etc. It's PERFECTLY reasonable for the government to try and recoup some money from him--he's using the system, he should pay for it like the rest of us.
If you use all of your fuel at home and not on the roads, then you wouldn't have to pay as many taxes. There may be some sort of emission tax on "industrial equipment" (any generator over 5KW would probably fall into this category) which you might still be asked to pay.
It's one of those laws (like those regarding adultery) that get kind of ignored, unless a really big fuss is made over the "wrongdoer." This fella you speak of got his name in the papers and that was his mistake. He could've gotten away with it had he not been recognized. Boo-hoo. Pay your forty cents a gallon and have an out of pocket cost 1/4 what everyone else is dreaming of paying, and be happy about it.
If he makes a fuss, he's just a goddamned whiner.
There's a company called TransRevolution which has produced an Infinitely Variable Transmission (IVT) using gears and not a belt system as is used by most CVTs (Continuously Variable Transmissions) on the market right now. They currently have a prototype functioning in a Dodge Ram and they're working on a second design presently.
I like how you ended that. You're right. It's been said that if 6% of the US landmass were growing hemp, our foreign energy needs would be zero. 6% of the US landmass is quite a bit of territory, but the stuff will literally grow in any part of the country. Having localized energy production capability in each state (or even county?) would be nice.
Hemp played a big role during WW2 when our hemp supplies from the Phillipines were cut off by the Japanese. Even though the Marijuana Tax Act of the late 1930's had made it effectively illegal to grow any form of Cannabis (long story there) during WW2 farmers were able to get permits to farm hemp to produce rope and canvas (similarity: canvas/cannabis) for boat riggings and tents needed by the military.
I'd like to see a calculation of how many acres of hemp it takes to power a humvee for a year. I bet that's a statistic the US government could swallow.
The disc is just the simplest hardware method for moving a physical object closer to another object. In this case the two objects are a piece of disc which contains a desired piece of data and the piece of equipment responsible for reading the data from the disk. It's actually a spinning disc and a motorized reader which moves in and out on the disk, but the point is that it's technologically simplistic and easy to manufacture.
If we could do something cheaper, I'd give it 5 years. I say cheaper because people are reluctant to replace what they've got unless you can give them more value than they have right now. So it has to be cheaper in order to be widely accepted. But I'd give it 5 years.
But you couldn't do it in the USA. You'd have to do it elsewhere first. Japan likes new gadgets, start there.
Who picked this color scheme? It might look good on a CRT but the light shades of tan and puke-like colors similar to tan are indistinguishable on an LCd and the entire thing looks disgusting. It makes me want to puke.
It's all about expectation and intent. If you accidentally don't put a password on a guest account which has full ftp access to your entire mp3 and movie collection, then *whoops!* but if you give out usernames and passwords to people to come and download from your server, then you're breaking the law. If I understand the general idea of it correctly, anyhow.
Hey bro, you're afflicted by a disease. It's a primarily American disease, but it's a dire affliction none the less. This disease is known as bitching. You make a futile assumption (another typically American flaw) in your remark: that there is a right answer.
Vague questions demand a variety of answers, and I sincerely doubt that the asker of the question was looking for everyone to unanimously decide upon a single product. You can help to solve the problem, or you can criticize it for not fitting into your ideal picture of the world. Only one of those options is helpful, however.
To keep this on topic; for portable storage I use CD-Rs for their: cheapness, easyness to acquire, speed with which they can be written, cheapness, cheapness, and did I mention cheapness?
If it's bulkier and more expensive what incentive do people have for purchasing a drink stored in such a can?
Two words: Iraq, Halliburton.
Amorphous metals could solve both the weight and strength problems of the door. Also heat, if anybody happens to bring welding equipment on-board.
Communication with the flight crew? Of course I'd allow that!
You need to remember bro, the populous is aware of what hijackers are doing with planes now. People aren't going to sit around and wait to die. Some of them might, but there will be those that will be willing to take a box cutter to the chest to forcibly tear out some punk extremist's trachea. The flight crew would hear maybe one, two people die before all of the terrorists were very much dismembered. Even if they have guns and it takes three people rush each gunman, the people aren't going to sit by idly and die. Not anymore. You don't need a robot flight crew, you just need to give people credit. ("fool me once...")
Windows, vents, wired communication systems, tin cans and a string, there would be ways to communicate though the proposed wall. I would entrust the pilots with heavyish equipment to use in the event of a crash-landing or the like. The cockpit should definitely be a point of control as well as a point of isolation. There could be a system like at a bank for securely passing hot cups of coffee to the pilots and whatnot.
You're right, it'd take years to design new planes and certify them. This is 2004. We're coming up on September. It's been three years. The planes I propose could have been in the air by now.
I've got a solution for that, too: Cameras.
next problem, please?
I don't really see why nobody has thought of this yet.
In-ear noise-cancelling microphones. The greatest problem with voice recognition is background noise. If the only thing transmitted to the computer were the vibrations of your skull, then only your voice would be transmitted, greatly improving the ability for voice recognition in day-to-day computer use.
Also, brainwaves? If we can train ourselves to move dots onscreen (google it) with our brains, and play simple games (again, google it) with our brains, then surely we could train our brains to interface with a system proximally. You'd be trained to move a dot in your mind up, down, left, right, center, or none. And this simple configuration could be used to turn your lights on and off, your alarm clock on and off, channel surf, etc. If every device in your house was wirelessly communicating proximity data relating your position to various networked devices, the device nearest you would respond to your brain-commands.
Seriously, either of these ideas is technologically viable. Why aren't they being done? People are willing to wear hearing aids to enhance the way they hear, why not wear a microphone to enhance how other [machines/people] hear you?
The cockpit of a plane should be inaccessible via the cabin. An airplane should carry two pilots and two co-pilots, and they would board the aircraft from a different hatch than everyone else; a hatch which only opens into the cockpit. Hijacking problem averted.
Then we can return to our regularly scheduled NOT BEING SO FUCKING AFRAID OF EVERYTHING.
Just out of curiosity, where do you live and who insures you that you pay only $30 a month? I would kill for a rate like that. (literally, kill)
Everything which can be controlled locally should be controllable centrally/remotely, so they should all have IP addresses.
Everything:
Car breaks down on a road trip, it'll be a week before you're home again. Stop wasting energy: "Thermostat, decrease temperature 15 degrees"
Ensure that your kids ate dinner as instructed while you work late: "Microwave, when were you last used?"
The refrigerator should monitor everything that goes in/out (RFID or whatever) and can alert you when you're out. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to check the fridge from work so you know to pick up some orange juice on the way home?
Everything.
BUT! (there's always a but!)
I'm not saying they should all have *PUBLIC* IP addresses. One device should, one fairly secure only-answers-to-the-right-port-knock-sequence device, which interfaces with all the other devices. There should be a way for the devices of your home to communicate with you (and you with them) in order to improve the day to day quality of life, but that communication needs to be secure. In order to facilitate this security, a firewalled "doorman" device would authenticate you before allowing you to see how many eggs are in the fridge.
"Seriously, though, without an extra lens how could it be anything but 'digital zoom' (i.e. 'magnification')?"
Magnification is just the divergence of light so that it covers a larger surface area. Technology may at some point in the near future provide a way to bend/diverge light without lenses.
Antarctica needs power. What better place to build an international facility than in international territory? It's either Antarctica or one of the major oceans...
so....
;)
slashdot got an exclusive?
There are ways of changing a device's MAC address, aren't there?
If the MAC address is the kind of information that you can glean from captured packets, then you might want to consider also cycling the MAC addresses of your devices on a regular basis as well. I mean, for the utmost in security. It depends, I suppose, on how much somebody wants to get inside your network and whether or not you know about it...