I think the increasing magnetic field can be explained by the presumably necessary prescence of a magnetic field to keep the fusion "sun" suspended and contained. As more power was generated by the reaction, it was being feed back into the magnetic containment generators to help control the growing reaction.
Now, as to why all that metal scrap managed to keep flying in without hitting any of the pylons generating that containment bubble (or any of the bystanders either, for that matter), or how such a magnetic force was able to pull cars from blocks away before it effected the metal structure of the warehouse mere yards away, or how such an intense field did not interact with the magnetic fields of the earth and impart a fantastic momentum to the whole experiment, I know not...
Are you sure that that particular portion of code isn't some how related to the quicktime frameworks? Quicktime, of course, is concerned whether or not it is running on a pIII, p4, or athlon.
What I want to know is how they are going to recharge the 'Windows' iPods?
One can only assume that Apple is going to have to give you two Firewire cables, the 4 to 6 pin for the computer, and the 6 to 6 for the ac adaptor. Which also means that you will only be able to recharge in the wall, not with the computer. Not that the iPod charges that much in the 10-20 minutes it takes to fill it up:)
Perhaps there is, but I can't imagine limiting ourselves to looking for multicellular, carbon-based, or RNA-based life, or for that matter any form of life patterned upon that on Earth. It seems to me astronomically more likely that highly organized or self-conscious matter found elsewhere would not be recognizable to us as what we would call "life".
How is it then, that when we look around out there we see a couple of hundred billion stars (that's in our galaxy alone) shining away, all cheerfully following a predictable life path of stellar evolution? Thanks to the fundamental physical constraints of the universe, once collected in massive quantities, Hydrogen happens to make an ideal nuclear fuel. Its not completely impossible for a star to be 'burning' something other than Hydrogen (Red giants Fuse every element up to Iron in their old rage), but no star is likely to some into existence in such a state.
The point I'm having difficulty making is that -due to the physical properties of the universe- carbon based, multicellular, and even RNA equipped lifeforms are bound to be more likely than anything else, as these are the most efficient and simple paths to life.
I would hazard to guess that some of the higher order items like intelligence and communication and societal interaction would be far more likely to be completely unrecognizable and 'alien'. Chances are that their are many more potential paths to those states than there are to the state of life itself.
Which I suppose would imply that life is capable of a further order of 'creation' than physics alone is, even though physical law itself is the same foundation which allows for life to be exist. It all makes one's head spin. But in a good way:)
B) Any multicellular lifeform (including reptiles, dinosaurs, trees, mammals, etc etc) could POTENTIALLY evolve intelligence, but intelligence is a VERY steep/complicated peak of the genetic 'design space' that represents phenotypic possibility. From some areas of the design space (including those that are currently occupied by many species) it may be nigh impossible to make the jump to the base of such a peak and begin the climb. In other words, if you don't have things like endothermy (warm-bloodedness), binocular vision, quick reproduction cycle, relatively large mass, manipulating limbs, etc, etc, then your chances of developing sapience are that much more astronomical. The evidence lies all around us. With the exception of manipulators (and that is a big chicken & egg issue in and of itself), most mammals (for example) are fundamentally similar to us. But so far, humans seem to be the only really smart species of mammal. Having all the necessary environmental conditions and the genetic potential requirements all aligned perfectly for intelligence to even have a chance, is quite unlikely.
C) Think about this: perhaps we have already started up the wrong slope, and the limits of our brand of intelligence are far less than some other unaccessible (from our current location) area of design space. All those abundant aliens might just consider us mere animals too stupid to trifle with.
Throw in a few passive sensors (cover the significant portions of the electromagnetic spectrum) and some analysis software and you have got yourself a tricorder, 4 centuries early!
It is only a matter of time. The work on the software for speech and visual pattern recognition is being developed for so many other applications, the only requirement that the handheld device would need to add such features is more computing power. Of course, that is dependent on the overall electric power efficiency of the handheld.
Or one that combines such a self-winding pendulum drive with some solar cells and some of those nifty materials that convert thermal energy to electricity?
Maybe even some antennae that can absorb all the abundant radio/microwave radiation that cell towers, wi-Fi, bluetooth, high-power transmission lines, the sun, etc. etc. are constantly pumping out? Tesla's wireless power dreams finally realized!
I think that vastly increased use of such passive reclamation systems is about the only way that tomorrows electronic devices can manage to simultaneously get smaller AND significantly more powerful.
I thought that atmospheric pressure and gravitational strength were not directly proportional to one another. After all, Venus has only 90 percent of Earth gravity, but 90 times our atmospheric density. I don't believe we can rule out developing an atmosphere on Mars, especially if we have a lot of water (in vapor form, an excellent "greenhouse" gas) to work with
Re:what will be improved by finished product...
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
I meant Taipei, not Taipie, sorry:)
what will be improved by finished product...
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Lets take a look at the the two real complaints -cost and weight- for a moment. Both will obviously come down drastically over the years.
Three things- electronics, gyroscopes, and the batteries make the Segway expensive. The electronics will be a tenth the price within a month of even a single Segway sisterboard making it to Taipie, no matter how poorly the Segway's sales might do. Barring any hereforeto unforeseen aviation boom, I imagine that the gyroscopes will probably only drop in price in proportion with the volume of Segways produced. The batteries should far slightly better (but not as good as the electronics), steadily, albeit slowly, dropping in price over time, a trend that will also take place whether or not Segway is successful.
As I see it, only one thing really adds significant weight to Segway, and that is the batteries. They mention both NiCd and NiMH batteries can be used. IANABE (battery expert?), but I would bet that they are using those older battery technologies because of their power-to-weight ratios, or perhaps even their power-to-volume ratios. Many other power solutions are available, each with drawbacks. Batteries where probably chosen for efficiency, simplicity, and safety concerns. Better battery tech, or fuel cells, or Stirling engines, or even gasoline engines (probably requiring some lightweight, high-velocity flywheels for energy storage) could potentially help reduce the current weight of the Segway. Heck, if these things do become popular in cities, run them right off of overhead wires, like bumper cars! Or maybe even through substreet power lines via inductance. No need for much of a battery at all then.
Yes. Remember, folks: it is very uncool to like anything.
Do you feel passion about anything? Do you ever laugh and have a good time with friends? Then you're not alive.
Only nihilists are cool and living correctly, and despite that (or because of that) their lives are wasted on them. But I guess that's the whole point.
lol, nice nihilist definition. wish i had a mod point for ya.
7. Who invented the automatic watch?
The modern rotor system was developed and patented by Rolex and introduced into the Oyster line as the Oyster Perpetual in 1931. Emile Borer, Rolex's technical chief at the time, is credited with inventing the modern rotor system.
The person who first developed a rotor, however, was Abraham-Louis Perrelet (1729-1826), one of Switzerland's greatest watchmakers. Perrelet is considered the father of the automatic watch. He introduced the concept in 1770 and was way ahead of his time since the invention was better suited to wristwatches. Perrelet lived in the pocket watch era and, because the watches did not move much in pockets, the rotor system did not perform so well. The rotor did not move around enough to wind the mainspring sufficiently.
Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823) improved self-winding watches; he called them "perpetuelles" (the likely source of Rolex's term). Other watchmaking greats of the 19th century advanced the concept. But it wasn't until wristwatches became popular after World War I and Rolex perfected its system that automatics came into their own.
The neat part is that because pocket watches were so popular at the time, the self-winders didn't have much of a chance to show off their advantages.
While these cool ideas are unfortunately under-researched (according to the article), it is pretty obvious that the energy efficiency of the items you wish to power is a more important research goal than how you power them, as greater efficiency will always have a benefit, while improved energy reclamation techniques may be limited in usefulness.
IMHO, it is better to have efficient core business operations than a business/revenue model whose excessive burn rate losses are "balanced" by millions pop-up X10 video cam ads. The former model has greater inherent stability and therefore flexibility. While the latter is just plain annoying.
I suppose they would be some sort of limit to running speed (presumably slightly less than the speed of light in a vacuum), but there would still be plenty left to tackle afterwards, even if you managed to get someone tweaked to run that fast. Assuming the example of a foot race, genengineered athletes would need to be "perfect" in a variety of racing conditions, not just the ideal ones.
Some probably not so perfect analogies might be found in mechanical engineering. There is a scientifically precise amount of energy that combusting gasoline can provide, but there is no perfect engine. The tensile strength of steel and concrete are known, but there is no perfect bridge. etc. etc.
What about when they get two point sources? Is the resulting image totally blurred/mucked up?
As the current increases, the magnetic field grows and the plasma implodes, typically resulting in one or two dense plasma points less than a thousandth of an inch across with temperatures as high as 10 million degrees centigrade. The unstable plasma points emit bursts of x-rays that last less than a billionth of a second and then explode.
Doesn't that make a double exposure on the x-ray film? Would not the two illuminating point sources make a stereo image? Then you would be talking about a very tiny and detailed three dimensional x-ray images of flies. I assume they would need to develop a digital filter that could amplify the stereo separation of the image, as the two point sources of x-rays are quite close to each other...
Slashdot Mirror
Its for comments like this that I believe Slashdot's "Score:5, Funny" should be capable of being cranked all the way up to 11...
about that super-magnetic thing...
I think the increasing magnetic field can be explained by the presumably necessary prescence of a magnetic field to keep the fusion "sun" suspended and contained. As more power was generated by the reaction, it was being feed back into the magnetic containment generators to help control the growing reaction.
Now, as to why all that metal scrap managed to keep flying in without hitting any of the pylons generating that containment bubble (or any of the bystanders either, for that matter), or how such a magnetic force was able to pull cars from blocks away before it effected the metal structure of the warehouse mere yards away, or how such an intense field did not interact with the magnetic fields of the earth and impart a fantastic momentum to the whole experiment, I know not...
As far as I know, LCDs are not any more eco friendly than lead glass CRTs, due to the use of mercury in their backlights...
Are you sure that that particular portion of code isn't some how related to the quicktime frameworks? Quicktime, of course, is concerned whether or not it is running on a pIII, p4, or athlon.
good post.
interesting article, thank you
What I want to know is how they are going to recharge the 'Windows' iPods?
:)
One can only assume that Apple is going to have to give you two Firewire cables, the 4 to 6 pin for the computer, and the 6 to 6 for the ac adaptor. Which also means that you will only be able to recharge in the wall, not with the computer. Not that the iPod charges that much in the 10-20 minutes it takes to fill it up
How is it then, that when we look around out there we see a couple of hundred billion stars (that's in our galaxy alone) shining away, all cheerfully following a predictable life path of stellar evolution? Thanks to the fundamental physical constraints of the universe, once collected in massive quantities, Hydrogen happens to make an ideal nuclear fuel. Its not completely impossible for a star to be 'burning' something other than Hydrogen (Red giants Fuse every element up to Iron in their old rage), but no star is likely to some into existence in such a state.
The point I'm having difficulty making is that -due to the physical properties of the universe- carbon based, multicellular, and even RNA equipped lifeforms are bound to be more likely than anything else, as these are the most efficient and simple paths to life.
I would hazard to guess that some of the higher order items like intelligence and communication and societal interaction would be far more likely to be completely unrecognizable and 'alien'. Chances are that their are many more potential paths to those states than there are to the state of life itself.
Which I suppose would imply that life is capable of a further order of 'creation' than physics alone is, even though physical law itself is the same foundation which allows for life to be exist. It all makes one's head spin. But in a good way
A) Dinosaurs were not reptiles.
B) Any multicellular lifeform (including reptiles, dinosaurs, trees, mammals, etc etc) could POTENTIALLY evolve intelligence, but intelligence is a VERY steep/complicated peak of the genetic 'design space' that represents phenotypic possibility. From some areas of the design space (including those that are currently occupied by many species) it may be nigh impossible to make the jump to the base of such a peak and begin the climb. In other words, if you don't have things like endothermy (warm-bloodedness), binocular vision, quick reproduction cycle, relatively large mass, manipulating limbs, etc, etc, then your chances of developing sapience are that much more astronomical. The evidence lies all around us. With the exception of manipulators (and that is a big chicken & egg issue in and of itself), most mammals (for example) are fundamentally similar to us. But so far, humans seem to be the only really smart species of mammal. Having all the necessary environmental conditions and the genetic potential requirements all aligned perfectly for intelligence to even have a chance, is quite unlikely.
C) Think about this: perhaps we have already started up the wrong slope, and the limits of our brand of intelligence are far less than some other unaccessible (from our current location) area of design space. All those abundant aliens might just consider us mere animals too stupid to trifle with.
I would just like to throw one more compliment onto the pile...
excellent point, and well said
Throw in a few passive sensors (cover the significant portions of the electromagnetic spectrum) and some analysis software and you have got yourself a tricorder, 4 centuries early!
It is only a matter of time. The work on the software for speech and visual pattern recognition is being developed for so many other applications, the only requirement that the handheld device would need to add such features is more computing power. Of course, that is dependent on the overall electric power efficiency of the handheld.
Or one that combines such a self-winding pendulum drive with some solar cells and some of those nifty materials that convert thermal energy to electricity?
Maybe even some antennae that can absorb all the abundant radio/microwave radiation that cell towers, wi-Fi, bluetooth, high-power transmission lines, the sun, etc. etc. are constantly pumping out? Tesla's wireless power dreams finally realized!
I think that vastly increased use of such passive reclamation systems is about the only way that tomorrows electronic devices can manage to simultaneously get smaller AND significantly more powerful.
I thought that atmospheric pressure and gravitational strength were not directly proportional to one another. After all, Venus has only 90 percent of Earth gravity, but 90 times our atmospheric density. I don't believe we can rule out developing an atmosphere on Mars, especially if we have a lot of water (in vapor form, an excellent "greenhouse" gas) to work with
lol again. the perfect answer.
lol. thanx.
rotfl
thank you
I meant Taipei, not Taipie, sorry :)
Lets take a look at the the two real complaints -cost and weight- for a moment. Both will obviously come down drastically over the years.
Three things- electronics, gyroscopes, and the batteries make the Segway expensive. The electronics will be a tenth the price within a month of even a single Segway sisterboard making it to Taipie, no matter how poorly the Segway's sales might do. Barring any hereforeto unforeseen aviation boom, I imagine that the gyroscopes will probably only drop in price in proportion with the volume of Segways produced. The batteries should far slightly better (but not as good as the electronics), steadily, albeit slowly, dropping in price over time, a trend that will also take place whether or not Segway is successful.
As I see it, only one thing really adds significant weight to Segway, and that is the batteries. They mention both NiCd and NiMH batteries can be used. IANABE (battery expert?), but I would bet that they are using those older battery technologies because of their power-to-weight ratios, or perhaps even their power-to-volume ratios. Many other power solutions are available, each with drawbacks. Batteries where probably chosen for efficiency, simplicity, and safety concerns. Better battery tech, or fuel cells, or Stirling engines, or even gasoline engines (probably requiring some lightweight, high-velocity flywheels for energy storage) could potentially help reduce the current weight of the Segway. Heck, if these things do become popular in cities, run them right off of overhead wires, like bumper cars! Or maybe even through substreet power lines via inductance. No need for much of a battery at all then.
lol, nice nihilist definition. wish i had a mod point for ya.
quite true. A perfect example of a reclamation based model that has limitations.
The following quote comes from http://www.europastar.com/ESWatch/watchtech/autom
The neat part is that because pocket watches were so popular at the time, the self-winders didn't have much of a chance to show off their advantages.
While these cool ideas are unfortunately under-researched (according to the article), it is pretty obvious that the energy efficiency of the items you wish to power is a more important research goal than how you power them, as greater efficiency will always have a benefit, while improved energy reclamation techniques may be limited in usefulness.
IMHO, it is better to have efficient core business operations than a business/revenue model whose excessive burn rate losses are "balanced" by millions pop-up X10 video cam ads. The former model has greater inherent stability and therefore flexibility. While the latter is just plain annoying.
I suppose they would be some sort of limit to running speed (presumably slightly less than the speed of light in a vacuum), but there would still be plenty left to tackle afterwards, even if you managed to get someone tweaked to run that fast. Assuming the example of a foot race, genengineered athletes would need to be "perfect" in a variety of racing conditions, not just the ideal ones.
Some probably not so perfect analogies might be found in mechanical engineering. There is a scientifically precise amount of energy that combusting gasoline can provide, but there is no perfect engine. The tensile strength of steel and concrete are known, but there is no perfect bridge. etc. etc.
What about when they get two point sources? Is the resulting image totally blurred/mucked up?
Doesn't that make a double exposure on the x-ray film? Would not the two illuminating point sources make a stereo image? Then you would be talking about a very tiny and detailed three dimensional x-ray images of flies. I assume they would need to develop a digital filter that could amplify the stereo separation of the image, as the two point sources of x-rays are quite close to each other...