Uh duh, the Aztecs already did this, the world is ending in 2012.
The world better end I'll have my last credit card maxed out in November and I don't know how I'm going to buy Christmas presents! Come on Mesoamericans! I'm unemployed with no retirement or health insurance so I'm counting on you guys. Given how they have been handling things I think Congress has the same end of the world economic plan.
But using Bhut Jolokia hot peppers as the fuel I have my doubts. Even with over a million Scoville rating I don't believe that they'll achieve low Earth orbit let alone Mars. Their program title "Asses of fire" does have a heroic ring to it. I do hope that even if the mission fails a new hybrid hot pepper will provide the thrust needed to reach Mars so India may land on Mars and be the first curry powered nation to break the Earthly bonds and land another planet!
Cheap $70-80 million if they stick to the budget. Now I want to know why it costs 20-50 times more in our developed western nations.
Ah, because ours tend to actually make it to Mars. I can launch a Mars mission for a $1.98 it doesn't mean it'll actually reach Mars. The US spend billions reaching the Moon but other than one accident on the launch pad and one time we failed to land we made it there. It's one thing to say you are going to Mars but failing to achieve a lesser goal I have my doubts.
I'm always shocked at the venom aimed at solar and wind power on Slashdot. I can't think something much geekier or high tech than solar cells. I constantly see posts about how wildly impractical they are and how they create more CO2 than coal power with no facts to back any of it up. The fact is, and yes I have run the numbers, without government subsidies the payback is no more than 5 to 7 years and depending on location and power needs it can be less. With subsidies depending on the area it's usually 3 to 5 years for payback. Considering bank interest is at best a couple of percent it's a staggering return on your investment considering they'll likely power your house for 30 years, 25 to 35 depending on how much excess capacity you initially install. They will continue to produce usable power for another 15 to 25 years. I've never seen evidence suggesting that enough solar cells to power your house releases more CO2 to make than 30 years of coal based electricity. If there's actual data I'd love to see it! As to wind power contributing as much as coal fire I can firmly call bullshit on that one since I can assemble a windmill out of scrap parts and an alternator out of a junk car. The technology isn't that different than a portion of what runs your car so there's simply no way a wind mill large enough to power a home takes more CO2 to produce than a car. Also once it's set up it contributes no CO2. Localized solar cells require no infrastructure saving a massive amount of resources needed to support power line and substations. Also substations use large amounts of PCBs, a very bad thing to have laying around. The argument always descends into a "nuclear good" "solar bad". Ignoring all the problems we've had with nuclear and I'm not talking about just Russia and Japan, we have our own places like Hanford. Even under the most ideal situation with flawless performance nuclear needs a massive distribution network. Also as much of the east coast found out this summer when it goes down vast areas are screwed. Guess what happens when your neighbors solar cells stop working? You still have AC like the rest of the neighborhood with solar cells. No one is suggesting we dump all other forms of energy and focus on solar although I've heard people try to claim we should drop everything in favor of nuclear. The flaw in that plan being without a massive infrastructure of breeders and reprocessing plants that don't exist we run out of fuel for the reactors in something like 40 years if we switched over entirely. Let's drop the my teams better than your team approach to solving the energy crisis and use what works best in each situation. Lets give them credit for what they are doing switching to a sustainable solution that works for them. I noticed multiple well modded posts saying what they did doesn't count. Personally I think it counts for a lot. They are leading by example and the least we can do is not whine about it!
Might want to check your facts. Solar and wind are very popular in third world countries for a major reason, they can be localized so they don't need infrastructure. It'd cost more to run power lines to rural communities than the solar cells cost. They are on tiny islands, self reliance are grass huts everything else has to be brought in so it's a ridiculous point. The difference is when solar cells get brought in they produce power for 25 to 30+ years. Diesel is an ongoing problem. Also this BS argument I constantly see without facts to back it up that some how solar cells release so much CO2 in their manufacture that they can't possibly offset the CO2 over their lives. Making a car releases massive amounts of CO2 as does a concrete building. I seriously doubt a bank of solar cells would contribute more than making a car and all the fuel it'll burn throughout it's life or say all the coal it takes to power your house for 25 to 30 years. I doubt they did it because it was expensive and impractical. I assume they weighed the options and it made sense. FYI Pacific islands aren't like Seattle Washington. The don't tend to have cloud cover for days at a time.
Sadly Tokelau will be the first nation to go under the waves when the waters rise. I've met a few Tokelauans and they are uniformly terrific people. Their culture will pretty much vanish when migrate to New Zealand.and their kids become Kiwis (New Zelanders - the fruit is named after the people who are named after the bird).
Not all bad. Just imagine being able to go fishing in your living room!
I dropped Cable over the AMC fight and haven't looked back. Frustrated that I'll have to wait to see Game of Thrones and Walking Dead but maybe this latest debacle will force the content providers to sell streaming services like HBO Go. The joke is Netflix streaming doesn't carry much current content but they have a ton of older stuff and they are adding faster than I can consume so at this rate I'll never run out. I mostly let it run while I work for white noise anyway. It's got the added benefit of no annoying commercials. It's why I stopped watching CNN, their ratio of news to commercials is 50/50. Completely obscene.
Just don't let any Iguanas near the reactor. We all know what happened with Japan! Worst of all there might be a bad US remake of the movie staring Matthew Broderick. Just safer all round to keep lizards away from any radiation.
The EULA can require that you give up your first born to be eaten by rabid weasels. It doesn't mean it's legal or that you have to actually do it. They've reduced EULA's to the level of a joke. The only reason they matter is most can't aford the lawyers to fight them!
Since the ads require Javascript to be visible, yes. If you don't believe me just disable Javascript on Facebook and watch as all the ads disappear until you reenable it.
The issue was always a low output but if you can make them dirt cheap who cares if they are 5%? If you can cheaply replace the shingles on your house with cheap solar cells I'd call it a win even if you have to cover the whole roof instead of one part. Cheap and practical will always win over efficient and expensive. Even when over the long term you are better off with the more efficient cells people will actually buy the cheaper ones. It's what keeps Ikea and stores like it in business. Pressboard furniture falls apart after a couple of years but it's less than half the price of decent furniture. A good piece may last 50 years and out live 10 cheapie pieces so the cheap furniture costs 5X as much in the long run but people still go for cheap. If people could cover their roofs for $2,500 to $5,000 instead of $15,000 to $35,000 most roofs would have solar cells even if they last half as long.
This is just more of this Reality TV society we live in. Unless you are spending all your free time being popular something is wrong with you. Here's a reality check, Facebook was started by a couple of unpopular nerds. How's that for irony!
For some it will be good. For some bad. The diversity of life has historically increased with warming. Coastal cities won't like a sea level rise though.
Record storms and a country wide drought seems pretty bad for all. You may say ha ha we had a mild winter where I am but that doesn't stop you from paying a fortune for food when crops fail.
They've been living on borrowed time. It's likely that the next gen game boxes will drop physical media either way so they are just plain out of luck. The user agreements don't allow for a transfer of rights on a download so unless the courts weigh in, don't hold your breath, they are out of luck.
We get too fixated on the latest and greatest, The point is the physics don't change so the technology needs updating not a from scratch approach. Look at trains. The biggest change from the 1800s is the shift to diesel from coal. Otherwise the technology is largely unchanged only the safety equipment gets upgraded regularly. Funny how we are still trying to get back to where we were in the late 60s with rocket engines. The SR-71 is another good example. They were used into the late 90s and it was 50s technology. A ram jet is fairly simple and other than refining it you aren't going to dramatically change the design. Officially the SR-71 still holds speed records.
People wonder why Ebola never breaks out. The thing that makes it scary is the very thing that causes the burnout. Ebola hits fast and hard. You get sick in a matter of hours, a couple of days, instead of weeks. It also kills fast leaving a narrow window for transmission. It also isn't airborne making it harder than most think to transmit. Avoid touching fluids and you are probably safe. It's why Reston Marburg was so scary because it was airborne. Add in a longer incubation and period when it's communicable and you have a seriously scary disease. FYI Reston Marburg isn't fatal to humans, another lucky break. The point is we came that close so the odds of Ebola one day mutating and breaking out are extremely high. It's why it's so closely monitored. Ebola has the same potential as the Black Plague.
Declare the assets breaking the law and seize them. Since assets have no rights they can keep them indefinitely. Highly unConsitutional but it hasn't stopped them yet.
I already need high speed internet so that's not really an additional expense since it wasn't through a cable company, none in my area. I did the math and I figured I could get somewhere between 50 and 75 movies and 20 and 25 TV series seasons on DVD or download for what my cable was costing. This is far more than I actually watch. Throw in Netflix Streaming which sucks for selection as in not much current but a ton of old and obscure which I like and I really have no need for satellite or cable. The Dish/AMC fight was the end for me. I already buy Walking Dead on Blu-Ray and they cut AMC anyway so I see no need to have Dish. Direct is almost as bad. I may be a season behind but most of the stuff I watch I'll own and I tend to watch stuff multiple times. Most of the stuff on Netflix is HD where as cable is all highly compressed HD which looks like crap. Alot of it is blown up cropped as well. If they offer Ala Carte streaming I'll consider buying AMC and a few of the movie channels, things like HBO for Game of Thrones and Newsroom. At this stage I have zero interest in ever having cable again.
The Concorde was designed in the late 1950s. We have made rather substantial improvements in technology in the past half century that would allow an aircraft designed today to achieve substantially better fuel efficiency, not to mention the additional efficiencies we can gain via higher altitudes. The stigma of its failure will probably prevent anybody from trying again any time soon, but just because an aircraft designed in the 1950s wasn't cost effective doesn't mean an aircraft designed in the 2010s couldn't be.
Besides the cost of the dolphin blood fuel has come way down.
Committees from both the Darwin Awards and Guinness will be on hand for the final jump. The Guinness people are hoping for multiple awards at the jump. Highest jump, longest free fall, highest velocity in free fall, longest scream in free fall, highest speed a human ever impacted the ground and greatest distance human remains were spread after impact.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh duh, the Aztecs already did this, the world is ending in 2012.
The world better end I'll have my last credit card maxed out in November and I don't know how I'm going to buy Christmas presents! Come on Mesoamericans! I'm unemployed with no retirement or health insurance so I'm counting on you guys. Given how they have been handling things I think Congress has the same end of the world economic plan.
But using Bhut Jolokia hot peppers as the fuel I have my doubts. Even with over a million Scoville rating I don't believe that they'll achieve low Earth orbit let alone Mars. Their program title "Asses of fire" does have a heroic ring to it. I do hope that even if the mission fails a new hybrid hot pepper will provide the thrust needed to reach Mars so India may land on Mars and be the first curry powered nation to break the Earthly bonds and land another planet!
Cheap $70-80 million if they stick to the budget. Now I want to know why it costs 20-50 times more in our developed western nations.
Ah, because ours tend to actually make it to Mars. I can launch a Mars mission for a $1.98 it doesn't mean it'll actually reach Mars. The US spend billions reaching the Moon but other than one accident on the launch pad and one time we failed to land we made it there. It's one thing to say you are going to Mars but failing to achieve a lesser goal I have my doubts.
I'm always shocked at the venom aimed at solar and wind power on Slashdot. I can't think something much geekier or high tech than solar cells. I constantly see posts about how wildly impractical they are and how they create more CO2 than coal power with no facts to back any of it up. The fact is, and yes I have run the numbers, without government subsidies the payback is no more than 5 to 7 years and depending on location and power needs it can be less. With subsidies depending on the area it's usually 3 to 5 years for payback. Considering bank interest is at best a couple of percent it's a staggering return on your investment considering they'll likely power your house for 30 years, 25 to 35 depending on how much excess capacity you initially install. They will continue to produce usable power for another 15 to 25 years. I've never seen evidence suggesting that enough solar cells to power your house releases more CO2 to make than 30 years of coal based electricity. If there's actual data I'd love to see it! As to wind power contributing as much as coal fire I can firmly call bullshit on that one since I can assemble a windmill out of scrap parts and an alternator out of a junk car. The technology isn't that different than a portion of what runs your car so there's simply no way a wind mill large enough to power a home takes more CO2 to produce than a car. Also once it's set up it contributes no CO2. Localized solar cells require no infrastructure saving a massive amount of resources needed to support power line and substations. Also substations use large amounts of PCBs, a very bad thing to have laying around. The argument always descends into a "nuclear good" "solar bad". Ignoring all the problems we've had with nuclear and I'm not talking about just Russia and Japan, we have our own places like Hanford. Even under the most ideal situation with flawless performance nuclear needs a massive distribution network. Also as much of the east coast found out this summer when it goes down vast areas are screwed. Guess what happens when your neighbors solar cells stop working? You still have AC like the rest of the neighborhood with solar cells. No one is suggesting we dump all other forms of energy and focus on solar although I've heard people try to claim we should drop everything in favor of nuclear. The flaw in that plan being without a massive infrastructure of breeders and reprocessing plants that don't exist we run out of fuel for the reactors in something like 40 years if we switched over entirely. Let's drop the my teams better than your team approach to solving the energy crisis and use what works best in each situation. Lets give them credit for what they are doing switching to a sustainable solution that works for them. I noticed multiple well modded posts saying what they did doesn't count. Personally I think it counts for a lot. They are leading by example and the least we can do is not whine about it!
Might want to check your facts. Solar and wind are very popular in third world countries for a major reason, they can be localized so they don't need infrastructure. It'd cost more to run power lines to rural communities than the solar cells cost. They are on tiny islands, self reliance are grass huts everything else has to be brought in so it's a ridiculous point. The difference is when solar cells get brought in they produce power for 25 to 30+ years. Diesel is an ongoing problem. Also this BS argument I constantly see without facts to back it up that some how solar cells release so much CO2 in their manufacture that they can't possibly offset the CO2 over their lives. Making a car releases massive amounts of CO2 as does a concrete building. I seriously doubt a bank of solar cells would contribute more than making a car and all the fuel it'll burn throughout it's life or say all the coal it takes to power your house for 25 to 30 years. I doubt they did it because it was expensive and impractical. I assume they weighed the options and it made sense. FYI Pacific islands aren't like Seattle Washington. The don't tend to have cloud cover for days at a time.
Sadly Tokelau will be the first nation to go under the waves when the waters rise. I've met a few Tokelauans and they are uniformly terrific people. Their culture will pretty much vanish when migrate to New Zealand.and their kids become Kiwis (New Zelanders - the fruit is named after the people who are named after the bird).
Not all bad. Just imagine being able to go fishing in your living room!
I dropped Cable over the AMC fight and haven't looked back. Frustrated that I'll have to wait to see Game of Thrones and Walking Dead but maybe this latest debacle will force the content providers to sell streaming services like HBO Go. The joke is Netflix streaming doesn't carry much current content but they have a ton of older stuff and they are adding faster than I can consume so at this rate I'll never run out. I mostly let it run while I work for white noise anyway. It's got the added benefit of no annoying commercials. It's why I stopped watching CNN, their ratio of news to commercials is 50/50. Completely obscene.
Just don't let any Iguanas near the reactor. We all know what happened with Japan! Worst of all there might be a bad US remake of the movie staring Matthew Broderick. Just safer all round to keep lizards away from any radiation.
This is a dude
http://feministing.com/files/2012/07/Lana.jpg
This is not a dude.
http://www.jessica-alba-site.net/images/56.jpg
Any questions?
The EULA can require that you give up your first born to be eaten by rabid weasels. It doesn't mean it's legal or that you have to actually do it. They've reduced EULA's to the level of a joke. The only reason they matter is most can't aford the lawyers to fight them!
Since the ads require Javascript to be visible, yes. If you don't believe me just disable Javascript on Facebook and watch as all the ads disappear until you reenable it.
They could be legally blind?
Upon hearing of the third movie Bessie the script milking cow fainted.
Like crap?
The issue was always a low output but if you can make them dirt cheap who cares if they are 5%? If you can cheaply replace the shingles on your house with cheap solar cells I'd call it a win even if you have to cover the whole roof instead of one part. Cheap and practical will always win over efficient and expensive. Even when over the long term you are better off with the more efficient cells people will actually buy the cheaper ones. It's what keeps Ikea and stores like it in business. Pressboard furniture falls apart after a couple of years but it's less than half the price of decent furniture. A good piece may last 50 years and out live 10 cheapie pieces so the cheap furniture costs 5X as much in the long run but people still go for cheap. If people could cover their roofs for $2,500 to $5,000 instead of $15,000 to $35,000 most roofs would have solar cells even if they last half as long.
This is just more of this Reality TV society we live in. Unless you are spending all your free time being popular something is wrong with you. Here's a reality check, Facebook was started by a couple of unpopular nerds. How's that for irony!
...is global warming good or bad.
For some it will be good. For some bad. The diversity of life has historically increased with warming. Coastal cities won't like a sea level rise though.
Record storms and a country wide drought seems pretty bad for all. You may say ha ha we had a mild winter where I am but that doesn't stop you from paying a fortune for food when crops fail.
They've been living on borrowed time. It's likely that the next gen game boxes will drop physical media either way so they are just plain out of luck. The user agreements don't allow for a transfer of rights on a download so unless the courts weigh in, don't hold your breath, they are out of luck.
We get too fixated on the latest and greatest, The point is the physics don't change so the technology needs updating not a from scratch approach. Look at trains. The biggest change from the 1800s is the shift to diesel from coal. Otherwise the technology is largely unchanged only the safety equipment gets upgraded regularly. Funny how we are still trying to get back to where we were in the late 60s with rocket engines. The SR-71 is another good example. They were used into the late 90s and it was 50s technology. A ram jet is fairly simple and other than refining it you aren't going to dramatically change the design. Officially the SR-71 still holds speed records.
Strap a skimpy bikini on the rover and they would have had ratings gold!
...the Olympics (and all sports) existed for the sole purpose of preempting my favorite TV shows.
Wait a minute, there's good shows on broadcast TV. What channel????? I've got butkus since Dish dropped AMC/I dropped Dish.
People wonder why Ebola never breaks out. The thing that makes it scary is the very thing that causes the burnout. Ebola hits fast and hard. You get sick in a matter of hours, a couple of days, instead of weeks. It also kills fast leaving a narrow window for transmission. It also isn't airborne making it harder than most think to transmit. Avoid touching fluids and you are probably safe. It's why Reston Marburg was so scary because it was airborne. Add in a longer incubation and period when it's communicable and you have a seriously scary disease. FYI Reston Marburg isn't fatal to humans, another lucky break. The point is we came that close so the odds of Ebola one day mutating and breaking out are extremely high. It's why it's so closely monitored. Ebola has the same potential as the Black Plague.
Declare the assets breaking the law and seize them. Since assets have no rights they can keep them indefinitely. Highly unConsitutional but it hasn't stopped them yet.
I already need high speed internet so that's not really an additional expense since it wasn't through a cable company, none in my area. I did the math and I figured I could get somewhere between 50 and 75 movies and 20 and 25 TV series seasons on DVD or download for what my cable was costing. This is far more than I actually watch. Throw in Netflix Streaming which sucks for selection as in not much current but a ton of old and obscure which I like and I really have no need for satellite or cable. The Dish/AMC fight was the end for me. I already buy Walking Dead on Blu-Ray and they cut AMC anyway so I see no need to have Dish. Direct is almost as bad. I may be a season behind but most of the stuff I watch I'll own and I tend to watch stuff multiple times. Most of the stuff on Netflix is HD where as cable is all highly compressed HD which looks like crap. Alot of it is blown up cropped as well. If they offer Ala Carte streaming I'll consider buying AMC and a few of the movie channels, things like HBO for Game of Thrones and Newsroom. At this stage I have zero interest in ever having cable again.
The Concorde was designed in the late 1950s. We have made rather substantial improvements in technology in the past half century that would allow an aircraft designed today to achieve substantially better fuel efficiency, not to mention the additional efficiencies we can gain via higher altitudes. The stigma of its failure will probably prevent anybody from trying again any time soon, but just because an aircraft designed in the 1950s wasn't cost effective doesn't mean an aircraft designed in the 2010s couldn't be.
Besides the cost of the dolphin blood fuel has come way down.
Committees from both the Darwin Awards and Guinness will be on hand for the final jump. The Guinness people are hoping for multiple awards at the jump. Highest jump, longest free fall, highest velocity in free fall, longest scream in free fall, highest speed a human ever impacted the ground and greatest distance human remains were spread after impact.