I've become convinced that (1) there is such a thing as global warming, and while (2) I'm not convinced it's entirely due to carbon dioxide emissions, (3) we probably ought to do something about it.
Thing is, as far as I can tell, the solutions proposed by Gore and other environmentalists are nothing short of looney. Their so-called solutions would largely shut down the economy of the United States for very little benefit, as emissions by third world countries increase drastically. Losing the economic powerhouses the United States and other industrialized countries have become is worse than futile, because it's these powerhouses that are likely to be the only true fix for our predicament.
Instead of trying to shut down emissions we ought to be figuring out ways of actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Promoting plant growth is one good idea, but there are others and there's no reason we can't split our efforts. In the meantime we should also try to climb out of the "mankind is a disaster" intellectual pit and find the other mechanisms by which our climate is changing, and actively oppose them - whether it's "natural" or not.
Bunny huggers tend to believe that the Earth should remain undespoiled and that we are killing nature. The fact is, the climate changes naturally, we see ice ages, and species die out all the time. Humanity is reaching the point where we can not only change the climate accidentally, but also on purpose; and if we fail to regulate the Earth's climate we risk our own existence.
Unfortunately, I suspect that when it comes to actually getting HIRED, having a "game programming degree" may wind up weighing you down. My personal opinion is to go for that CS degree and take the needed extra mathematics courses on the side.
Something tells me they're going to be selling more Wii units than PS3s this holiday season. Who will profit most? Nintendo also, almost certainly. I'm afraid no one's going to declare a winner by January.
I just spent all my L$ on a new house, and a giant pitcher blew through my wall in a cloud of dust, yelling "OH YEAH!!!" It didn't find any kids so it just left.
Plenty of cultures around the world use human waste as fertilizer. I suppose the Polish didn't handle or sterilize it properly, or didn't take contaminants into account. NASA knows all about recycling feces, trust me.
I'd thought the final design involved multiple cables spaced a few miles apart and periodically interconnected for redundancy's sake. Given that, I'm sure you could use one or more cables for descending loads.
Actually, feces would probably be a huge commodity in space; it'd be invaluable as fertilizer for the farms.
And no, I'm not joking; if farms are at all feasible, you'd want them, not just to supplement the diet of the population in space, but also to regenerate oxygen from carbon dioxide.
While it's under construction, yes; but once it had sufficient ballast mass, you don't think it wouldn't be utilized if the opportunity were there, do you?
Blasting something up with lasers is less expensive than using mechanical coupling. Though I agree, putting solar panels on the cars to power them is sort of silly. I'd run parallel rails up the beanstalk and let the cars tap the electricity.
There's something else you've overlooked: A car coming DOWN can use regenerative braking and feed power INTO the rails. If we're going to be mining for metals in space, we might wind up generating more electricity from the cars coming down than we'd spend in bringing cars UP. Net profit, even before selling the metals.
One of the most popular (and massive) items that will need to be shipped to orbit will be water; and water makes a good shield against radiation. Just make your passenger cars with a living unit inside a larger freight unit, and fill the gap in between with water. If you used filtered fresh water you could even have windows on both walls and be able to look through.
Discard the "contactless" RFID option and use the old-style smartcards with the metal contacts. They're easier to design and can have more computing horsepower, since you don't have to power them passively, and they don't have problems with remote detection or electronic pickpocketing.
Considering that Intel is selling CPUs up to and over 3 GHz, meaning systems 50% faster than the ones I saw (not counting video improvements which should be even greater), yes, damnit, they're slow!!
I actually went looking for a new system a few weeks ago; my current desktop machine dates back to 2001 and is in dire need of replacement. The result? The only machines I found on the shelves were SLOW. Office Depot, Sam's, the best I could find was a dual core clocked a bit above 2 MHz, with 2 gig of PC4200 RAM that was shared with the video system. CompUSA and Best Buy had some machines with separate video adapters but with the same RAM and CPUs that weren't much better. I'm either going to have to order or build one.
I don't think you could do this by adding more receptors to the retina; there are only so many nerves running to the vision center. Further, the vision center depends on inputs being related to each other, so you couldn't "squeeze" new ones in. I think you'd need to replace the entire vision center.
On the other hand, you could design the receptors so they could also take an external signal, letting a computer feed a zoomed image, or a false-color image including IR/UV or other spectra, to the retina and from there to the brain.
That could actually be really bad. I've seen problems occur w/ that sort of transaction: The government assesses a levy in AU$ on your L$ income - but by the time you're ready to pay the levy, something happens to the exchange rate and you're toast.
This happened to some people when Enron fell apart: They took a stock option deal, and incurred a tax on the difference between the option price and the value at the time of acceptance; but by the time the stock actually vested, it was worthless. They were still stuck with the levy, and it bankrupted them.
Somehow I suspect the Australian tax authorities won't accept payment in Linden dollars. (I suppose it depends how much their MPs are into Second Life...)
Slashdot Mirror
I've become convinced that (1) there is such a thing as global warming, and while (2) I'm not convinced it's entirely due to carbon dioxide emissions, (3) we probably ought to do something about it.
Thing is, as far as I can tell, the solutions proposed by Gore and other environmentalists are nothing short of looney. Their so-called solutions would largely shut down the economy of the United States for very little benefit, as emissions by third world countries increase drastically. Losing the economic powerhouses the United States and other industrialized countries have become is worse than futile, because it's these powerhouses that are likely to be the only true fix for our predicament.
Instead of trying to shut down emissions we ought to be figuring out ways of actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Promoting plant growth is one good idea, but there are others and there's no reason we can't split our efforts. In the meantime we should also try to climb out of the "mankind is a disaster" intellectual pit and find the other mechanisms by which our climate is changing, and actively oppose them - whether it's "natural" or not.
Bunny huggers tend to believe that the Earth should remain undespoiled and that we are killing nature. The fact is, the climate changes naturally, we see ice ages, and species die out all the time. Humanity is reaching the point where we can not only change the climate accidentally, but also on purpose; and if we fail to regulate the Earth's climate we risk our own existence.
They had to come out with this just after I got my 60" HDTV. It's so EXPENSIVE staying current!
j/k
Unfortunately, I suspect that when it comes to actually getting HIRED, having a "game programming degree" may wind up weighing you down. My personal opinion is to go for that CS degree and take the needed extra mathematics courses on the side.
Yup. You definitely don't want to use loud math in a game. It's very distracting.
He's going to have bottlenecks trying to gate 40 ports to each other anyway, even if they're on PCI or PCI Express.
...Can we throw in some cacodemons and a grenade launcher to spice up the rehab sessions?
Something tells me they're going to be selling more Wii units than PS3s this holiday season. Who will profit most? Nintendo also, almost certainly. I'm afraid no one's going to declare a winner by January.
Didn't someone already do this?
Technology that's currently being developed threatens to do this IN REAL LIFE. If you think IP conflicts are getting crazy now, just wait. :-)
I just spent all my L$ on a new house, and a giant pitcher blew through my wall in a cloud of dust, yelling "OH YEAH!!!" It didn't find any kids so it just left.
Plenty of cultures around the world use human waste as fertilizer. I suppose the Polish didn't handle or sterilize it properly, or didn't take contaminants into account. NASA knows all about recycling feces, trust me.
I'd thought the final design involved multiple cables spaced a few miles apart and periodically interconnected for redundancy's sake. Given that, I'm sure you could use one or more cables for descending loads.
Actually, feces would probably be a huge commodity in space; it'd be invaluable as fertilizer for the farms.
And no, I'm not joking; if farms are at all feasible, you'd want them, not just to supplement the diet of the population in space, but also to regenerate oxygen from carbon dioxide.
While it's under construction, yes; but once it had sufficient ballast mass, you don't think it wouldn't be utilized if the opportunity were there, do you?
Blasting something up with lasers is less expensive than using mechanical coupling. Though I agree, putting solar panels on the cars to power them is sort of silly. I'd run parallel rails up the beanstalk and let the cars tap the electricity.
There's something else you've overlooked: A car coming DOWN can use regenerative braking and feed power INTO the rails. If we're going to be mining for metals in space, we might wind up generating more electricity from the cars coming down than we'd spend in bringing cars UP. Net profit, even before selling the metals.
Good point. Metals that have been solar-refined from asteroids, perhaps?
;-)
'Course that'll tend to block the windows.
Unless we start making transparent aluminum in space.
One of the most popular (and massive) items that will need to be shipped to orbit will be water; and water makes a good shield against radiation. Just make your passenger cars with a living unit inside a larger freight unit, and fill the gap in between with water. If you used filtered fresh water you could even have windows on both walls and be able to look through.
Buh!
Discard the "contactless" RFID option and use the old-style smartcards with the metal contacts. They're easier to design and can have more computing horsepower, since you don't have to power them passively, and they don't have problems with remote detection or electronic pickpocketing.
SQL servers, with access only via SSL tunnel. That means the access will be both convenient and secure.
Considering that Intel is selling CPUs up to and over 3 GHz, meaning systems 50% faster than the ones I saw (not counting video improvements which should be even greater), yes, damnit, they're slow!!
I actually went looking for a new system a few weeks ago; my current desktop machine dates back to 2001 and is in dire need of replacement. The result? The only machines I found on the shelves were SLOW. Office Depot, Sam's, the best I could find was a dual core clocked a bit above 2 MHz, with 2 gig of PC4200 RAM that was shared with the video system. CompUSA and Best Buy had some machines with separate video adapters but with the same RAM and CPUs that weren't much better. I'm either going to have to order or build one.
I don't think you could do this by adding more receptors to the retina; there are only so many nerves running to the vision center. Further, the vision center depends on inputs being related to each other, so you couldn't "squeeze" new ones in. I think you'd need to replace the entire vision center.
On the other hand, you could design the receptors so they could also take an external signal, letting a computer feed a zoomed image, or a false-color image including IR/UV or other spectra, to the retina and from there to the brain.
That could actually be really bad. I've seen problems occur w/ that sort of transaction: The government assesses a levy in AU$ on your L$ income - but by the time you're ready to pay the levy, something happens to the exchange rate and you're toast.
This happened to some people when Enron fell apart: They took a stock option deal, and incurred a tax on the difference between the option price and the value at the time of acceptance; but by the time the stock actually vested, it was worthless. They were still stuck with the levy, and it bankrupted them.
Somehow I suspect the Australian tax authorities won't accept payment in Linden dollars. (I suppose it depends how much their MPs are into Second Life...)