"Unsuccessfully"? The article that you link to says their price is already only slightly higher than traditional energy production. That sounds extremely good for such an early stage in new technology.
Bugs are to be expected in the beginning. Saying that they are unsuccessful just because they have bugs is like saying that a programmer is unsuccessful because he's debugging his program.
Of course there could be other problems not mentioned in the article. But from the information in the article I'd say their technology seems very promising.
They are indeed vital and crucial for our climate system! But the weight and volume of moving water is absolutely huge. Even fantastically large turbine farms would be puny in relationship to these country-sized masses of moving water. We could tap quite fantastic amounts of energy without having any measurable effect at all on the currents.
That would require some really tremendous turbine farms! Those currents are enormous, bigger than countries. And water is heavy, which means the momentum is huge, which in turn means you can't easily slow the currents down.
A wind farm has far, far more effect on the wind, and to have an important effect on the wind you'd need a fantastically large wind farm.
I'm quite convinced that we can tap huge quantities of energy from deep water currents without having any measurable effect at all on the currents.
We should tap these ocean currents for energy. We should have machines somewhat similar to wind turbines, anchored to the sea floor, floating in the middle of the flow.
These flows are far more steady and reliable than the wind. And no pollution. A great source of energy.
The whole structure vibrates, because there are several motors whirring all the time. That motion is quite sufficient to set things drifting very slowly.
Even if the motors were perfectly vibrationless (which is quite impossible) there is a continuous air draft from air conditioning. Loose stuff tends to drift very slowly with the air toward the air conditioning's intake. Loose a pen, a paper clip, a small tool, and chances are in a few hours you'll find it at the air intake.
Still you're right in that movies often get this wrong (like everything else). Some movies do show things taking off as if they had legs and jumped, which looks just as embarrassingly ridiculous as movie computers, and many, many other movie things.
Um, what? Are you saying that firehose feedback is only "theoretically" visible to the submitter and the editors? Are you saying that in practice this so-called "feedback" isn't visible to anyone???
People like feedback Indeed feedback is important! So does stuff that we write in the Firehose feedback thing get shown only to the submitter, or only to the editors, or both?
And when we write feedback, should we write sentences or tags? Can we write "Your submission would be much better with a link or two", or should that be "yoursubmissionwouldbemuchbetterwithalinkortwo"?
I suggest you put the answers to these two questions in the FAQ, because feedback is indeed very valuable, and without knowing the answers we can't really know what kind of feedback is useful.
(By the way, speaking of tags, in my opinion spaces should be allowed in tags, because tags are used by people, and should use people English. Programming-language distortions are necessary for source-code parsers, but hardly in tags. Neither is case sensitivity. Also, leading "not" is far more intuitive than leading "!". But I digress, sorry.)
So please, the next time you assume that people have failed to plan or that you have a better way for them to manage their lives, think again. You have a very poor grasp upon what constitutes reasonable behavior. Your post was ignorant, shortsighted, and just plain cruel. Um, maybe you should lighten up a little. People will comment on whatever information is available. My comment doesn't express a conviction that there's such stupidity involved. Rather it expresses my perplexity at the described situation, by painting a picture of the first impression that this description gives. "Look, this is what your description makes it look like." Not intended as any real judgment, not intended as anything other than explaining a first impression by painting this scene.
Judging by your description, the prescriptions system seems to be seriously messed up, in really dangerous ways. The stupidity is in this system then, not with the patient. And an extremely huge and dangerous stupidity it seems to be.
Of course again I don't assume that I have enough information to really judge that situation either. Again I only judge by what information is available. That's how we judge things all the time. Our impressions, our reactions to those impressions, and people's responses to these reactions, like the response you gave me. And so we learn.
And now once again I have a reaction. I can't help it, this reaction is related to the current terrorism terror and its dire consequences, because that is almost an obsession of mine. My reaction here is, sheesh, your country is so hysterical about terrorism that essential liberties are given up for some temporary safety and protection against the disappearingly small risk to the individual citizen of terrorist activity. And yet people whose life or health are in immediate danger if they don't get their drugs are put at very real and serious risk in this way, just for red tape? What a horrible case of messed-up priorities!
Maybe I should hasten to say that my Europe is in no way perfect either. Europe fails dismally too, but often in different ways. I'm just as shocked at some things that happen here. I'm not into America-vs-Europe fencing. I'm deeply concerned about terrorism hysteria and its very unhealthy consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. But I'm digressing.
In any case when it comes to medications it seems to work better here. I depend on meds, and am quite annoyed that I only get two weeks' margin when the prescription runs out. And that's even though going without these meds for a few days would in no way threaten my life or long-term health. It would only be a thoroughly nasty experience.
People should be allowed to go about their legitimate business without regard to time, place, coat, pants, slanty eyes, skin color, reported need for pharmaceuticals or food. It isn't your place - or the cops - to judge why she needed her meds suddenly; there are all kinds of situations that can come up, I definitely agree with you on everything you say here, in every detail.
And again, I didn't really intend to express a judgment, I just expressed my astonishment, by painting it in a sort of scene that apparently turned out to be offensive. Sorry about that, no offense intended.
What, her life depends on the medicine, and she cuts it that close, getting her stock filled very late the same night she runs out? Why cut it so close? Is this some strange kind of suicide attempt?
I can well understand why the cop didn't think your story seemed likely. Few people are that stupid when their life is at stake.
and that damn Flash is about the worst there is now. The Firefox plugin Flashblock is quite wonderful. Flash items are replaced with a clickable surface. You get the option to click on the very few Flash items that you do want to view.
To me, that is the sign of real professional web developers. More like a professional organization. If it were up to us developers, pages would be much better than they are.
Ain't it great when the mod proves the point!? The mods that you got were justly deserved. You were acting like a crybaby, whining and complaining, accusing a poster of being a crybaby, just because he has issues with the stuff he bought. Now you're being a crybaby again, this time whining about the mods you got. Try to avoid being such a crybaby.
Of course I, posting like this, explaining to you how it works, will deserve an Offtopic mod, or maybe even a Flamebait. Too bad. But unlike you, I'll take it like a man.
It seems to be more and more common to see games in PC and console games I'd be rather disappointed if I bought a PC or console game and didn't find a game in it.
What's needed is the average american needs to be _very_ involved in his/her government and actually attend to boring issues like fiscal discipline, broad foreign policy targets and a host of other domestic policies. [...] No. Media mostly distracts and rarely informs. Sell your 50" plasma and disconnect your cable. It's liberating. Without the media, how do you spread the information? You can't have every American crowding into the White House and into Congress to watch them and find out what they do. You can't have the information reliably spread by rumor. I certainly agree with you that TV isn't the right medium, TV can't give depth and analysis like, for instance, newspapers can, but you do need media like newspapers and others to spread the information.
One important problem is that Americans tend to believe that the separation of powers into executive, legislative and judicial is enough for guarding the guardians. It isn't. It's not enough to have institutions guarding each other. You need to have the people guarding the powerful. Democracy means power of the people. Democracy means eternal vigilance of the people. (Apparently we agree on this point.) And for the people to guard, the people needs to be informed. And for the people to be informed, the people needs to responsibly choose newspapers etc. that truly guard and inform.
Carefully choosing good media is a citizen's duty. Something far too many Americans seem to ignore, on the assumption that the separation of powers is all you need.
You've and the numbskulls that modded you insightful have been outsourcing this job to private interests and look where it's gotten you. Media does not necessarily have to mean private interests. I do think the work can be done by private interests, if only the readers choose them carefully and responsibly, demanding real reporting. But certainly lots of other arrangements are possible.
Numbskull.
How about getting involved in your own government first before laying on the platitudes? There's lots going on even in your town. Getting involved in town politics is excellent, but doesn't solve the problems on the federal level.
What the US needs isn't a new administration, it's a new system.
The presidency is too powerful, too tempting, too corrupting. The Republican/Democrats more or less alternating in power makes it almost a one-party system where the one party has two wings. The US media are inciting and creating artificial conflict rather than debate. The media don't guard the guardians the way they should. The US war industry is keeping the nation perpetually at war.
Lots of countries have less corrupting systems.
The US needs to somehow divert its war industry to do something else, the citizens need to buy and subscribe to media that become forums for true debate and that truly guard the guardians, the elections system needs to allow five to seven different parties in position of strength vying for the people's trust and keeping an eye on each other, and there should be far less power at the very top so that it becomes less corrupting.
Hehe, my comment was just intended as a joke. Not the kind of joke to make you laugh out loud, just the kind to make you smile in recognition. Just playing with the meme that says you can't have insightful discussions on Slashdot. Of course you can, I've had plenty of insightful discussions here, but for some reason I like playing with the memes.
and repetitious 'humour', Umm, er, hmm, oops! Sorry!
I also found it interesting that there seemed to be a very knee-jerk, un-thought-through - dare I say "religious" - element to people's reactions to the idea. I think the religious impression comes from lots of people here having read breathtaking science fiction and wishing dearly, dearly that it be possible. Wishful thinking is a very strong motivator and warper of minds! Just look at politics!
However in my view there is a remote possibility that distant worlds can become populated with our species, if, given time, people decide that they find settling and living in space habitats attractive, even far from the sun, in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, and if the problems of health, energy, economics, engineering and so on can be solved.
They'd have to mine local rocks out there for material and nuclear energy, and would have to be able to build and repair everything using such local resources. Yes, I'm talking heavy industry, among other things. Many other things.
I did say remote possibility. Those are some very big ifs.
For instance, I'm not at all convinced that people will want to live their whole life far away from the sun, in a dark void, inside habitats that would probably feel cramped and limiting.
But given a huge enough number of generations, who knows. If for some reason people feel that settling in habitats in interstellar space is attractive, and find ways to do it, each generation settling a little further away, then in a huge number of generations our species might reach other solar systems.
That and the girls, of course - wait! I think I hear them hammering on the front door right now. Gotta dash!! Wow, I've never submitted a story, I had no idea that that would be the result! Um, excuse me, can't talk right now, gotta get busy...
Can you explain more of this please? I don't know how to make it any simpler. If compositing encryption functions makes things harder to break, we'd expect two applications of ROT13 to be stronger than one application of ROT13. I think your first explanation was quite clear to anyone who knows what ROT13 means, so my guess is that Travoltus needs to read this.
They really show Google ads on these pointless pages? If I did that my adsense account would be terminated. On the contrary, Google encourages domain squatting.
Slashdot Mirror
"Unsuccessfully"? The article that you link to says their price is already only slightly higher than traditional energy production. That sounds extremely good for such an early stage in new technology.
Bugs are to be expected in the beginning. Saying that they are unsuccessful just because they have bugs is like saying that a programmer is unsuccessful because he's debugging his program.
Of course there could be other problems not mentioned in the article. But from the information in the article I'd say their technology seems very promising.
They are indeed vital and crucial for our climate system! But the weight and volume of moving water is absolutely huge. Even fantastically large turbine farms would be puny in relationship to these country-sized masses of moving water. We could tap quite fantastic amounts of energy without having any measurable effect at all on the currents.
That would require some really tremendous turbine farms! Those currents are enormous, bigger than countries. And water is heavy, which means the momentum is huge, which in turn means you can't easily slow the currents down.
A wind farm has far, far more effect on the wind, and to have an important effect on the wind you'd need a fantastically large wind farm.
I'm quite convinced that we can tap huge quantities of energy from deep water currents without having any measurable effect at all on the currents.
We should tap these ocean currents for energy. We should have machines somewhat similar to wind turbines, anchored to the sea floor, floating in the middle of the flow.
These flows are far more steady and reliable than the wind. And no pollution. A great source of energy.
They do drift away.
The whole structure vibrates, because there are several motors whirring all the time. That motion is quite sufficient to set things drifting very slowly.
Even if the motors were perfectly vibrationless (which is quite impossible) there is a continuous air draft from air conditioning. Loose stuff tends to drift very slowly with the air toward the air conditioning's intake. Loose a pen, a paper clip, a small tool, and chances are in a few hours you'll find it at the air intake.
Still you're right in that movies often get this wrong (like everything else). Some movies do show things taking off as if they had legs and jumped, which looks just as embarrassingly ridiculous as movie computers, and many, many other movie things.
Um, what? Are you saying that firehose feedback is only "theoretically" visible to the submitter and the editors? Are you saying that in practice this so-called "feedback" isn't visible to anyone???
And when we write feedback, should we write sentences or tags? Can we write "Your submission would be much better with a link or two", or should that be "yoursubmissionwouldbemuchbetterwithalinkortwo"?
I suggest you put the answers to these two questions in the FAQ, because feedback is indeed very valuable, and without knowing the answers we can't really know what kind of feedback is useful.
(By the way, speaking of tags, in my opinion spaces should be allowed in tags, because tags are used by people, and should use people English. Programming-language distortions are necessary for source-code parsers, but hardly in tags. Neither is case sensitivity. Also, leading "not" is far more intuitive than leading "!". But I digress, sorry.)
Judging by your description, the prescriptions system seems to be seriously messed up, in really dangerous ways. The stupidity is in this system then, not with the patient. And an extremely huge and dangerous stupidity it seems to be.
Of course again I don't assume that I have enough information to really judge that situation either. Again I only judge by what information is available. That's how we judge things all the time. Our impressions, our reactions to those impressions, and people's responses to these reactions, like the response you gave me. And so we learn.
And now once again I have a reaction. I can't help it, this reaction is related to the current terrorism terror and its dire consequences, because that is almost an obsession of mine. My reaction here is, sheesh, your country is so hysterical about terrorism that essential liberties are given up for some temporary safety and protection against the disappearingly small risk to the individual citizen of terrorist activity. And yet people whose life or health are in immediate danger if they don't get their drugs are put at very real and serious risk in this way, just for red tape? What a horrible case of messed-up priorities!
Maybe I should hasten to say that my Europe is in no way perfect either. Europe fails dismally too, but often in different ways. I'm just as shocked at some things that happen here. I'm not into America-vs-Europe fencing. I'm deeply concerned about terrorism hysteria and its very unhealthy consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. But I'm digressing.
In any case when it comes to medications it seems to work better here. I depend on meds, and am quite annoyed that I only get two weeks' margin when the prescription runs out. And that's even though going without these meds for a few days would in no way threaten my life or long-term health. It would only be a thoroughly nasty experience. People should be allowed to go about their legitimate business without regard to time, place, coat, pants, slanty eyes, skin color, reported need for pharmaceuticals or food. It isn't your place - or the cops - to judge why she needed her meds suddenly; there are all kinds of situations that can come up, I definitely agree with you on everything you say here, in every detail.
And again, I didn't really intend to express a judgment, I just expressed my astonishment, by painting it in a sort of scene that apparently turned out to be offensive. Sorry about that, no offense intended.
What, her life depends on the medicine, and she cuts it that close, getting her stock filled very late the same night she runs out? Why cut it so close? Is this some strange kind of suicide attempt?
I can well understand why the cop didn't think your story seemed likely. Few people are that stupid when their life is at stake.
Indeed we're being duped into repeating the same discussion.
So tell them to stop. They should stop if you tell them.
Of course I, posting like this, explaining to you how it works, will deserve an Offtopic mod, or maybe even a Flamebait. Too bad. But unlike you, I'll take it like a man.
Too late. Damn, you had to go and give them ideas.
[...]
No. Media mostly distracts and rarely informs. Sell your 50" plasma and disconnect your cable. It's liberating. Without the media, how do you spread the information? You can't have every American crowding into the White House and into Congress to watch them and find out what they do. You can't have the information reliably spread by rumor. I certainly agree with you that TV isn't the right medium, TV can't give depth and analysis like, for instance, newspapers can, but you do need media like newspapers and others to spread the information.
One important problem is that Americans tend to believe that the separation of powers into executive, legislative and judicial is enough for guarding the guardians. It isn't. It's not enough to have institutions guarding each other. You need to have the people guarding the powerful. Democracy means power of the people. Democracy means eternal vigilance of the people. (Apparently we agree on this point.) And for the people to guard, the people needs to be informed. And for the people to be informed, the people needs to responsibly choose newspapers etc. that truly guard and inform.
Carefully choosing good media is a citizen's duty. Something far too many Americans seem to ignore, on the assumption that the separation of powers is all you need. You've and the numbskulls that modded you insightful have been outsourcing this job to private interests and look where it's gotten you. Media does not necessarily have to mean private interests. I do think the work can be done by private interests, if only the readers choose them carefully and responsibly, demanding real reporting. But certainly lots of other arrangements are possible.
Numbskull. How about getting involved in your own government first before laying on the platitudes? There's lots going on even in your town. Getting involved in town politics is excellent, but doesn't solve the problems on the federal level.
What the US needs isn't a new administration, it's a new system.
The presidency is too powerful, too tempting, too corrupting. The Republican/Democrats more or less alternating in power makes it almost a one-party system where the one party has two wings. The US media are inciting and creating artificial conflict rather than debate. The media don't guard the guardians the way they should. The US war industry is keeping the nation perpetually at war.
Lots of countries have less corrupting systems.
The US needs to somehow divert its war industry to do something else, the citizens need to buy and subscribe to media that become forums for true debate and that truly guard the guardians, the elections system needs to allow five to seven different parties in position of strength vying for the people's trust and keeping an eye on each other, and there should be far less power at the very top so that it becomes less corrupting.
However in my view there is a remote possibility that distant worlds can become populated with our species, if, given time, people decide that they find settling and living in space habitats attractive, even far from the sun, in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, and if the problems of health, energy, economics, engineering and so on can be solved.
They'd have to mine local rocks out there for material and nuclear energy, and would have to be able to build and repair everything using such local resources. Yes, I'm talking heavy industry, among other things. Many other things.
I did say remote possibility. Those are some very big ifs.
For instance, I'm not at all convinced that people will want to live their whole life far away from the sun, in a dark void, inside habitats that would probably feel cramped and limiting.
But given a huge enough number of generations, who knows. If for some reason people feel that settling in habitats in interstellar space is attractive, and find ways to do it, each generation settling a little further away, then in a huge number of generations our species might reach other solar systems. That and the girls, of course - wait! I think I hear them hammering on the front door right now. Gotta dash!! Wow, I've never submitted a story, I had no idea that that would be the result! Um, excuse me, can't talk right now, gotta get busy...
Your link is broken, I get a 404.
Curiously enough, it's not against the rules of Google's domain squatting program.
So now this kind of domain squatting has become respectable? Yeah right.
(doesnt it?) On the contrary. Only losers do fp. Practically every slashdotter on the planet thinks "what a loser" each time we see those lame fps.
If I did that my adsense account would be terminated. On the contrary, Google encourages domain squatting.