boy, sending me to the wrong page is such a scary and horrible thing to do. Luckily my browser came equipped with the special "back button" anti-malware plugin.
I already told several people that I don't want to see it. I'm so pleased with Brin's version of episode III. He says:
I could scribble a 3-paragraph outline that would save Lucas. It would explain every awful inconsistency/paradox in his universe. It would make the #!#*& coincidences all work out... including the totally predictable lunacy of having Obi-Wan grab baby Luke and hide him from his darkside father... on Darth Vader's home planet, in his old home town! This is the core scenario that we know will happen in "Episode Three" and it is the most towering of three dozen real plot horrors. But the amazing thing is that I see a simple way for Lucas to climb out of this hell.
In fact, a scenario is possible, if Vader and Obi-Wan conspire together against BOTH Emperor and Yoda. Go on, follow all the movies with this possibility in mind.
Why else would Obi-Wan 'hide' Vader's son in Vader's home town? Their final 'deathfight' distracts the guards to let Luke/Han/Leia get away. How else do you explain that Vader grabs/interrogates Leia, yet never detects her force? Watch carefully... Vader's 'chase' of Luke in the first film clears all the other Imperial fighters off his son's back and halts the antiaircraft guns, giving the kid a clear shot! And guess who's the only Imperial survivor?
I like that version so much better than anything Lucas could come up with.
This is an aweful idea. Not only do you take away the financial incentives to drive a hybrid (which are already very minor) you also create a serious potential for an even worse loss of privacy. If the information is available, someone will want to make a database of it.
we just read about choicepoint's data on consumers (i.e. names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports) being stolen. Now imagine if that same vulnerable database contained a record of everywhere you went. (Yes, I know people are already data mining cell phone records to get that, but I don't think we should make their lives any easier.)
Companies don't really care if they fix things. It is foolish to think that they will do anything but seek profit. The only genetic engineering they will conduct will be to create organisms they can continue to get money from. Consider the case of monsanto, the makers of the popular roundup herbicide/weedkiller. Monsanto funded genetic engineering of crops, but they didn't create crops that were resistant to pests and disease. Instead, they created crops that are resistant to their Roundup weedkiller. The idea is that now farmers who want to control pests can use more Roundup on their crops than they could before, without the crops being harmed as used to happen.
Do you want more info? If so, just google for "Starlink", the marketing name for Monstanto's chemical resistant crops.
They could have created a crop that would have reduced the amount of poisons we dump into the environment. Instead, they created one that allows us to use more poisons. Why? Well, you don't expect a chemical company to help us reduce the need for chemicals, do you?
Perhaps you could call THHG "The Agnostics Bible."
In his interview with American Atheist magazine, Adams said that he usually told people he was "a radical atheist" to make sure they understood that he was convinced that there are no gods. His "Is there an Artificial God" talk at Digital Biota 2 is a great read.
It looks like they use solar panel to make electricity, then use the electricity to make hydrogen by electrolysis. There are positives to this method (water is simple to store and transport), but it takes a LOT of electricity to do electrolysis. Far more, infact, than could be produced by reasonable sized solar panels. As the article says:
Although the truck performs as planned, it's more of a demonstration project than a practical vehicle. The four solar panels and hydrogen-generating system create only enough fuel per day to travel a few miles.
This is not a viable solution for a practical road vehicle. It is a nice demonstration project, but it won't be useful unless there is a MAJOR breakthrough in solar panel efficiency.
Back in the day I was addicted to HNN[*], and actually submitted stuff a fair bit. [You even used it occasionally.:)] If I had known that you were relaunching I would have been reading it.
In practical terms it's impossible to build a nuclear bomb that yields less than about 5 kilotons.
We've had smaller nukes than that since the late 1950's. Our AIM-26A and AIR-2A air to air missiles typically had 1.5 nuclear warheads. Some of these had the even smaller 0.25 KT warheads.
The lesson of X11 is that you can be the most popular piece of software on every distribution, and it still doesn't give you the power to play dictator with your licence. If you put unneccessary restrictions in your licence, someone will fork your code and the community will embrace them, not you. You would think that people would have figured that out after the ssh/openssh split. Now we have another example in windowing systems....
I haven't read it yet, but I'm rather skeptical. It seems like $4000 dollars and a few weeks in the classroom teaches you how to run sploits you download from packetstorm. It doesn't make you suddenly become skeptical of everything a vendor tells you, or make it become a habit to run a sniffer with watchtemp when you install software on your test lan. It doesn't make you enjoy reading bugtraq.
There's a heck of a lot more to "hacking" than what they can teach you....think "lifestyle"
Probably nothing major. I expect that it was just burning a little hotter than normal, and that it ate up enough of the exhaust nozzle to destroy the fiber optics. (That automatically shuts the engine down.) This was discussed a few months back in AW&ST, but I can't find the link. This will have to do:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/RLV/2003/ RLVNews2003-08.html
Scaled itself makes the case-throat-nozzle structure, which consists of an "inner layer of silica phenolic insulator and an outer graphite epoxy structural case." Burn-throughs of the insulator occurred in five firings but did not reach the sensor layer of fiber-optic cable between the insulator and case. They want to do a test in which they fire the engine until a burn-through reaches the sensor layer and it triggers a shutdown.
Somebody writes a piece in support of nuclear power. Some blogger fisks it [...]
The reason it's of interest (news for nerds, even) is that Sterling is not merely some blogger
Sterling is an alpha geek[+] if there ever was one, and he has been writing (preaching?) about catastrophic climate change for the last decade.[*] That makes his opinion on climate change interesting.
Now, I'm not sure I buy his opinion on nukes, just like I don't buy Brin's opinions on privacy. These guys are sharp, though, and their ideas are worth paying attention to.
-- + - He was part of the austin scene, hung with Godwin, documented the LoD/BoodAxe debacle and formation of the EFF, and is an established figure of the Well. He also happens to write some sci-fi.;-)
* - yes, that was published nine years ago, but I'd be surprised if it took less than a year to write and publish it.
They are right. Not only has the post office used electric vehicles in the past, one of those Grumman-Olson electric postal vans has been been converted into a dragster. The discovery channel did a show ("SuckAmps") about the build.
The 100 mile range was on the older lead-acid pack. The newer tzero uses Li-Ion batteries (yes, that is much more expensive.) The new battery pack gives them more range; they drove from LA to Las Vegas on a single charge, and still had an estimated 40 miles of range left. They also say:
The return trip was equally uneventful. We drove faster, 65-75 mph, since we had so much reserve range on the outbound leg, but we hit bad traffic coming out of Barstow and that shot our trip average speed. Back in San Dimas with about 10 % of charge left we could still pull 350 A on a hard accel.
None of that changes your points, though. The tzero is a light little two seater designed to be a fun sports car. It is not a subaru station wagon.;-)
I read an article in Discover or Scientifc American (can't remember which!) recently detailing the shift to alternative fuels. Not only is it a challenge to develop applicable technologies that are economical for end users, an even greater challenge will be to develop the infrastructure necessary to support these vehicles. We take for granted that one can stop at a gas station and fill up. If one we're driving a propane-powered vehicle, one would require an appropriate filling station.
It was probably this article on pages 68-73 of the May 2004 issue of scientific american. It is actually an article on hydrogen cars and their infrastructure problems. Nice article, with better comparisons than most, but the hydrogen-specific complaints are already well known.
The propane infrastructure is a whole different topic. Propane can currently be purchased lots of places, and Propane cars are already common. There are even a few propane dragsters (10:34 sec 1/4 mile @ 127.10mph)
This is an excellent point that was covered by Scientific American recently. I am not sure about the statistics though.
The article compared traditional vehicles with electric vehicles (adding in what was necessary to recharge them). The findings were pretty awakening.
Yup. Pages 68-73 of the May 2004 issue. The excerpt/teaser for the article is on their website here. It is actually an article on hydrogen cars, but electricity is mentioned. It doesn't discuss battery-electric cars, but does discuss hydrogen fuel cells powered by hydrogen from electrolysis. One illustration in the article compares the component and total efficiencies for 11 different possible drivetrain/fuel combos. This chart shows gasoline internal comustion engine efficiency as[*]:
If hydrogen comes from grid electricity[**], This same chart shows hydrogen fuel cell efficiency as:
Fuel Chain Efficiency = 22%
Vehicle Efficiency = 38%
Total Efficiency = 8.4%%
It also has a chart for emmissions. That chart says that total emmissions (fuel chain + vehical) greenouse gas emmissions for a gasoline ICE are around 380 grams/mile[+]. It says total emmissions of greenhouse gasses for a grid electric -> hydrogen fuel cell car are 430 grams/mile.
The electrolysis process should not produce greenhouse gasses, so those figures should be a reasonable reflection of electric power generation for electric vehicles, too.
Of course, electric powerplants operate below peak capacity most of the time. Electric vehical advocates point to the negligible amount of energy required by the addition of a couple hundred battery chargers to the grid of a major city.
-- * - this chart has efficiency on the Y axis, with 100% at the top, and 0% at the bottom. The only marks on the Y axis are for 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%. That makes exact numbers difficult to obtain; i.e. these are best guesses based on the a bar graph without nicely marked units. There is no question that the graph shows gasoline ICEs as being more efficient than grid electric->hydrogen fuel cells
** - This assumes the hydrogen source is electricity from a local grid. Most local grids in the USA are powered by fossil fuel.
+ - don't blame me. I'm not the moron who chose to mix metric and english units of measurment.
Yes, it could be saved. Fire lucas, hire David Brin. His misguided/evil Yoda plot line is brilliant. He's correct when he says, "Almost the entire list of awful coincidences and silly paradoxes can be eliminated...It could even go down in history as something profoundly moral and clever."
I already told several people that I will not be seeing Ep III because Brin's conclusion to the series is so much better than anything Lucas could come up with.
somebody mod parent up
on
Video T-shirts
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
as soon as I get me one of these video t-shirts, I'm gonna walk around playing Blipverts and giving people headaches, epileptic seizures (and maybe even a few explosions?)
any max headroom reference deserves an automatic +1 for coolness. It is sad how few nerds remember....
Slashdot Mirror
You are new here, aren't you?
Just be happy that they weren't advocating porn that includes grits anymore.....
boy, sending me to the wrong page is such a scary and horrible thing to do. Luckily my browser came equipped with the special "back button" anti-malware plugin.
the seventh doesnt count if he is the only one using it
we just read about choicepoint's data on consumers (i.e. names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports) being stolen. Now imagine if that same vulnerable database contained a record of everywhere you went. (Yes, I know people are already data mining cell phone records to get that, but I don't think we should make their lives any easier.)
Do you want more info? If so, just google for "Starlink", the marketing name for Monstanto's chemical resistant crops.
They could have created a crop that would have reduced the amount of poisons we dump into the environment. Instead, they created one that allows us to use more poisons. Why? Well, you don't expect a chemical company to help us reduce the need for chemicals, do you?
Perhaps you could call THHG "The Agnostics Bible."
In his interview with American Atheist magazine, Adams said that he usually told people he was "a radical atheist" to make sure they understood that he was convinced that there are no gods. His "Is there an Artificial God" talk at Digital Biota 2 is a great read.
The fed-version of their website is priceless. I especially like the music and the picture of hands reaching through the bars of a jail cell.
This is not a viable solution for a practical road vehicle. It is a nice demonstration project, but it won't be useful unless there is a MAJOR breakthrough in solar panel efficiency.
I'm really looking forward to hearing Andy Knoll's comments about the origin of life.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/knoll.html
Back in the day I was addicted to HNN[*], and actually submitted stuff a fair bit. [You even used it occasionally. :)] If I had known that you were relaunching I would have been reading it.
We've had smaller nukes than that since the late 1950's. Our AIM-26A and AIR-2A air to air missiles typically had 1.5 nuclear warheads. Some of these had the even smaller 0.25 KT warheads.
More Info:
http://www.milnet.com/aamtab.htm
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/arm/arm16.htm
http://www.hill.af.mil/museum/photos/coldwar/genie .htm
Theo isn't the most polite, but he certainly gets things done in an organized safe and secure manner
The lesson of X11 is that you can be the most popular piece of software on every distribution, and it still doesn't give you the power to play dictator with your licence. If you put unneccessary restrictions in your licence, someone will fork your code and the community will embrace them, not you. You would think that people would have figured that out after the ssh/openssh split. Now we have another example in windowing systems....
I haven't read it yet, but I'm rather skeptical. It seems like $4000 dollars and a few weeks in the classroom teaches you how to run sploits you download from packetstorm. It doesn't make you suddenly become skeptical of everything a vendor tells you, or make it become a habit to run a sniffer with watchtemp when you install software on your test lan. It doesn't make you enjoy reading bugtraq.
There's a heck of a lot more to "hacking" than what they can teach you....think "lifestyle"
Now we just need to make sure the public remembers who bankrolled this affair.....
Sterling is an alpha geek[+] if there ever was one, and he has been writing (preaching?) about catastrophic climate change for the last decade.[*] That makes his opinion on climate change interesting.
Now, I'm not sure I buy his opinion on nukes, just like I don't buy Brin's opinions on privacy. These guys are sharp, though, and their ideas are worth paying attention to.
--
+ - He was part of the austin scene, hung with Godwin, documented the LoD/BoodAxe debacle and formation of the EFF, and is an established figure of the Well. He also happens to write some sci-fi.
* - yes, that was published nine years ago, but I'd be surprised if it took less than a year to write and publish it.
They are right. Not only has the post office used electric vehicles in the past, one of those Grumman-Olson electric postal vans has been been converted into a dragster. The discovery channel did a show ("SuckAmps") about the build.
(yes, that is much more expensive.) The new battery pack gives them more range; they drove from LA to Las Vegas on a single charge, and still had an estimated 40 miles of range left. They also say:
None of that changes your points, though. The tzero is a light little two seater designed to be a fun sports car. It is not a subaru station wagon.
It was probably this article on pages 68-73 of the May 2004 issue of scientific american. It is actually an article on hydrogen cars and their infrastructure problems. Nice article, with better comparisons than most, but the hydrogen-specific complaints are already well known.
The propane infrastructure is a whole different topic. Propane can currently be purchased lots of places, and Propane cars are already common. There are even a few propane dragsters (10:34 sec 1/4 mile @ 127.10mph)
Yup. Pages 68-73 of the May 2004 issue. The excerpt/teaser for the article is on their website here. It is actually an article on hydrogen cars, but electricity is mentioned. It doesn't discuss battery-electric cars, but does discuss hydrogen fuel cells powered by hydrogen from electrolysis. One illustration in the article compares the component and total efficiencies for 11 different possible drivetrain/fuel combos. This chart shows gasoline internal comustion engine efficiency as[*]:
Fuel Chain Efficiency = 80%
Vehicle Efficiency = 18%
Total Efficiency = 14.4%
If hydrogen comes from grid electricity[**], This same chart shows hydrogen fuel cell efficiency as:
Fuel Chain Efficiency = 22%
Vehicle Efficiency = 38%
Total Efficiency = 8.4%%
It also has a chart for emmissions. That chart says that total emmissions (fuel chain + vehical) greenouse gas emmissions for a gasoline ICE are around 380 grams/mile[+]. It says total emmissions of greenhouse gasses for a grid electric -> hydrogen fuel cell car are 430 grams/mile.
The electrolysis process should not produce greenhouse gasses, so those figures should be a reasonable reflection of electric power generation for electric vehicles, too.
Of course, electric powerplants operate below peak capacity most of the time. Electric vehical advocates point to the negligible amount of energy required by the addition of a couple hundred battery chargers to the grid of a major city.
--
* - this chart has efficiency on the Y axis, with 100% at the top, and 0% at the bottom. The only marks on the Y axis are for 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%. That makes exact numbers difficult to obtain; i.e. these are best guesses based on the a bar graph without nicely marked units. There is no question that the graph shows gasoline ICEs as being more efficient than grid electric->hydrogen fuel cells
** - This assumes the hydrogen source is electricity from a local grid. Most local grids in the USA are powered by fossil fuel.
+ - don't blame me. I'm not the moron who chose to mix metric and english units of measurment.
Yes, it could be saved. Fire lucas, hire David Brin. His misguided/evil Yoda plot line is brilliant. He's correct when he says, "Almost the entire list of awful coincidences and silly paradoxes can be eliminated...It could even go down in history as something profoundly moral and clever."
I already told several people that I will not be seeing Ep III because Brin's conclusion to the series is so much better than anything Lucas could come up with.
any max headroom reference deserves an automatic +1 for coolness. It is sad how few nerds remember....