The point of the claim, although overstated by the executive, is that the hydrogen could be generated from electricity in a plant in a garage, or even from electricity delivered to a plant in the car when it is parked rather than requiring a trip to the hydrogen station down the block.
A plant in a garage has the same issue as a filling station, that is getting the fuel into a fuel tank in the car. There are also likely to be all sorts of issues with respect to manufacturing fuel in a residential building.
Assuming there is any point in doing the conversion. Spark ignition engines can run on methanol perfectly well. Even high performance racing car engines...
Of course, raising plants for fuel and then converting that biomass to a usable fuel (whether alcohol or simple hydrocarbons) is the uneconomical part.
Actually it's the part which requires some though. e.g. running garbage trucks on waste cooking oil, extracting methane from landfill sites, using weeds, etc, etc.
I think the most practical and efficient way to store hydrogen in a usable form is to bond it with short chains of atoms. Carbon seems to be the best choice as a "carrier" since you can attach two or three hydrogen atoms to each carbon atom in the chain, and the resulting compounds are liquid or gaseous at normal temperatures.
You can even get up to 4 hydrogen atoms with one carbon atom. If you stick an oxygen atom in between one of the hydrogen and carbon atoms you can convert a gas to a liquid.
I've no idea why this technology isn't already in widespread use; it's a simple matter of organic chemistry.:)
It's also possible to make these compounds without using a drop of oil, with some though even use waste as a source material and even wind up with something which will fuel the cars we have now....
As someone pointed out in the comments on the last hydrogen story, the problem isn't so much making the stuff as it is storing it. Hydrogen cars are a pain because it's incredibly difficult to store hydrogen in such a way that it doesn't leak out.
Whereas the fuels we generally use are liquid at regular temperatures. Even methane, propane and butane are easier to handle than hydrogen.
They mention in TFA that this process is so efficient that cars could do the electrolysis on the go with a tank of distilled water, but unless it's efficient enough to be self sustaining that won't work.
In order to perform the electrolysis you need a source of (electrical) power. In order for this to work "on the go" this source of power needs to self contained, if you have a battery or internal combustion engine powered generator then it makes more sense to connect this directly to one or more electric motors which drive the wheels...
But at any rate, the one thing that I keep wondering about is how this in-car conversion of water to hydrogen will work--as yet, it keeps looking like this is just going to be another electric car implementation or something.
There is also the issue of how to store the hydrogen. If it needs compressing the overall efficency of the system is likely to go down quite a bit...
One wonders, whether the German government would be better off actively trying to rebrand the symbol to it's original use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika rather than trying to ban it.
Especially given that there are plenty of Swastikas which look nothing like that used by the Nazis.
It is really difficult to use symbols of racism and totalitarianism when you can associate with their original, non 'pure', non violent intent.
Even the Nazi flag is associated with a the losing side of a war 60 odd years ago. It's interesting to see how things are different with the US Confederate flag, which could also be associated with racism.
The reality is, all the privacy invasive spying has nothing to do with the government controlling and monitoring the people, but has everything to do with a single political party, a group of corrupt antidemocratic criminals, monitoring and controlling the people, so that the self appointed 'deciders' of everything that is ungodly and unjust can bloat their pockets and egos. Any political party that gets heavily involved in this crap, they themselves need to be monitored, controlled and cleansed of their impurities, long before they can do it to the rest of us.
The problem is that there generally isn't a "you go first" attitude to the advocates of mass snooping, identity card with vast databases attached, etc. Even in cases where they arn't being completly hypocritical in what they are advocating...
Only to paranoid idiots. It's pretty easy to discredit any particular assertion made in Loose Change, and the "conspiracy" they're talking about is based on an idea that's so unnecessarily complex that no halfway intelligent person (and I don't think the Loose Change crazies accuse Rumsfeld and Cheney of being stupid) would attempt it.
That would be one theory, which like the Al-Quada one, isn't especially credible. There must be at least 50 theories about 9/11 (most of which involve conspiracy, since to hijack 4 aircraft without conspiracy would be a rather incredible idea).
Germany had a mad dictator at one time stomping on personal freedoms,
Something which happened in fairly recent history (i.e. people from that time are still alive) and was followed by the country being occupied by various foreign armies.
and the country learned from that about how democracy and freedom should work.
The same applies to quite a few other countries, notably in Central and South America.
The country has pledged never to let that crap happen again.
Not without a fight at least.
America will pick that lesson up in, oh, about eleven months or so if we're lucky.
Or US airlines might start pilot training for pigs sooner...
Unfortunately, due to a failure to perform a metric/imperial conversion, the mission failed when the probe performed a perfect soft landing on the moon's surface.
Be even more embarrasing it it missed completly. Most ammusing though if it orbited the moon once and crashed back onto the launch pad...
We used to get those hired protesters here in Atlanta too, though they represent the "carpenter's union". They would hire up to 50 people to scream and shout until the corporation either ignores them long enough or pays them off to go to the next building.
Maybe someone could start an actual "rent-a-mob" agency:)
What if you speak out against those who pay you? "I'm here because Comcast paid me to be here, however I support net neutrality."
Best to make sure that you get your money first. Though the implication here is that these people were paid to "reserve a seat", rather than as a Comcast proxy. Maybe the venue should have adopted the same kind of policy as many ammusment parks. Where this is considered to be "queue jumping", likely to get both people evicted.
Here in New Zealand, the government provided funds for Watchdog to develop a filtering system suitable for schools. Part of the deal was that any other ISP had access to the system and could supply their own customers with internet access filtered by the system.
Thing is that if the resulting filtering system is actually suitable for schools it will not be suitable for anyone else.
Exactly if Discordia took the source, modified it and do not provide access to it as has been implied then they are far game for a copyright infringement lawsuit. If the original authors don't want to do it then maybe give the copyright to the EFF who WILL go after them.
In the case of an open source program the copyright holders could easily comprise several thousand "people". It would only take one to go after an infringer.
You would think an offical post of "Let's not stoop to their level and DoS attack" would be enough. I see no reason to remove the posts.
Apparently the posts were removed, because they violated the forum's terms and conditions, before the letter was received (possibly even before it was sent).
This really makes me smile, I'm not in the US, but I follow the news on these kinds of cases (mostly on Slashdot), if only this would get more mainstream coverage.
Possibly because what you are thinking of as "mainstream media" often have strong connections with the plaintiffs in these kind of cases. Thus they are far more likely to cover a "win" than a judge dismissing a case...
Not to mention that they should keep ALL manner of global routing out of countries that censor the internet...
Thing is that there dosn't appear to be a candiate country to do this. You'd need one without any culture of censorship and a strong enough military (including globally targeted nuclear missiles) not to be pushed around by the countries interested in censorship.
1a. Megacorp owns copyright to "Absolute Music 2343"
1b. Sleezecorp makes pirate copies of "Absolute Music 2343" and sells for 15$
1c. Consumer buys "Absolute Music 2343" from Sleezecorp
2a. Megacorp owns copyright to "Absolute Music 2343"
2b. Consumer downloads a pirate copy of "Absolute Music 2343"
Megacorp comes out to the same, no sale in either case. In scenario one, Sleezecorp made commercial gain of 15$ and is thus morally corrupt. Now, in scenario two somehow everything is fine and nobody has reason to complain?
In senario one it is possible to make a reasonable argument that the customer would have bought from "Megacorp" at the same price they paid "Sleezecorp". In senario two you don't know what price the customer may have been prepared to pay, if any.
If the procedure is so utterly commonplace that it is not even written down as a procedure, then it fails by way of obviousness, not prior art.
Which has the problem from the patent examiner's POV that the "obvious" is often poorly documented. Hence it is essential to suitably skilled patent examiners.
The idea of rewarding (bribing) customers for bad service of all kinds likely goes back to the first occupation. Bad word of mouth advertising and lost business hurts.
It's probably been going on as long as businesses supplying some kind of service, be it a current "fast food" resturant or "flint knapping while u wait".
Adding "with an egg timer" to the process does not make it less obvious.
It just adds an objective measure of the quality of service.
If you trust the Bush administration not to abuse their power when they wiretap people's phones without a warrant, will you feel the same way about the Obama administration doing it?
It probably won't matter who is US President, unless you get someone who is not a career politican.
This law is to cover up the fact the bush crime family put blanket tapping uin place BEFORE the 9/11 attacks.
If this were the case it would have relevence far beyond the US. Effectivly this would be proof that such "blanket tapping" has little to no law enforcement value.
Thats right, thgis had nothing to do with "terrorism" when it was set up.
Or it may have a lot to do with 9/11, remember that the US Goverment continue to be suspects.
It is pretty clear that right now all conversations going through the phone systems are recorded. Some are erased after an hour, some are erased after a year.
Without proper oversight how do you know that there arn't ones should be being kept but are being erased quickly? As well as those being kept which shouldn't be...
I'm not even sure this is a bad thing --- it might have been pretty useful to have a copy of all phone calls made in the USA for the 3 days prior to 9/11.
Actually you'd probably want to include all phone calls made into the USA for the same period. But without additional information all you'd have would be a pile of data. Also the 3 days is arbitrary, without additional evidence there's no way to know if there were phone calls between any of the conspirators which made any reference to the plot.
It's not that hard to presume that they know they are missing information. Assume they recorded a conversation that was important, and part of that conversation was let's talk every Thursday. Or they said we're putting everything in place, we'll contact you shortly with the time. Although those examples raise the question of why don't you just get a warrant...
Possibly because whatever information "they" have was gathered illegally. Or simply that there is nothing to show that the recordings could not simply have been made by actors reading from a script.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of the claim, although overstated by the executive, is that the hydrogen could be generated from electricity in a plant in a garage, or even from electricity delivered to a plant in the car when it is parked rather than requiring a trip to the hydrogen station down the block.
A plant in a garage has the same issue as a filling station, that is getting the fuel into a fuel tank in the car. There are also likely to be all sorts of issues with respect to manufacturing fuel in a residential building.
Using catalysts, which is this company's specialty, it is possible to convert methano into gasoline. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_to_gasoline
Assuming there is any point in doing the conversion. Spark ignition engines can run on methanol perfectly well. Even high performance racing car engines...
Of course, raising plants for fuel and then converting that biomass to a usable fuel (whether alcohol or simple hydrocarbons) is the uneconomical part.
Actually it's the part which requires some though. e.g. running garbage trucks on waste cooking oil, extracting methane from landfill sites, using weeds, etc, etc.
I think the most practical and efficient way to store hydrogen in a usable form is to bond it with short chains of atoms. Carbon seems to be the best choice as a "carrier" since you can attach two or three hydrogen atoms to each carbon atom in the chain, and the resulting compounds are liquid or gaseous at normal temperatures.
:)
You can even get up to 4 hydrogen atoms with one carbon atom. If you stick an oxygen atom in between one of the hydrogen and carbon atoms you can convert a gas to a liquid.
I've no idea why this technology isn't already in widespread use; it's a simple matter of organic chemistry.
It's also possible to make these compounds without using a drop of oil, with some though even use waste as a source material and even wind up with something which will fuel the cars we have now....
As someone pointed out in the comments on the last hydrogen story, the problem isn't so much making the stuff as it is storing it. Hydrogen cars are a pain because it's incredibly difficult to store hydrogen in such a way that it doesn't leak out.
Whereas the fuels we generally use are liquid at regular temperatures. Even methane, propane and butane are easier to handle than hydrogen.
They mention in TFA that this process is so efficient that cars could do the electrolysis on the go with a tank of distilled water, but unless it's efficient enough to be self sustaining that won't work.
In order to perform the electrolysis you need a source of (electrical) power. In order for this to work "on the go" this source of power needs to self contained, if you have a battery or internal combustion engine powered generator then it makes more sense to connect this directly to one or more electric motors which drive the wheels...
But at any rate, the one thing that I keep wondering about is how this in-car conversion of water to hydrogen will work--as yet, it keeps looking like this is just going to be another electric car implementation or something.
There is also the issue of how to store the hydrogen. If it needs compressing the overall efficency of the system is likely to go down quite a bit...
One wonders, whether the German government would be better off actively trying to rebrand the symbol to it's original use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika rather than trying to ban it.
Especially given that there are plenty of Swastikas which look nothing like that used by the Nazis.
It is really difficult to use symbols of racism and totalitarianism when you can associate with their original, non 'pure', non violent intent.
Even the Nazi flag is associated with a the losing side of a war 60 odd years ago. It's interesting to see how things are different with the US Confederate flag, which could also be associated with racism.
The reality is, all the privacy invasive spying has nothing to do with the government controlling and monitoring the people, but has everything to do with a single political party, a group of corrupt antidemocratic criminals, monitoring and controlling the people, so that the self appointed 'deciders' of everything that is ungodly and unjust can bloat their pockets and egos.
Any political party that gets heavily involved in this crap, they themselves need to be monitored, controlled and cleansed of their impurities, long before they can do it to the rest of us.
The problem is that there generally isn't a "you go first" attitude to the advocates of mass snooping, identity card with vast databases attached, etc. Even in cases where they arn't being completly hypocritical in what they are advocating...
Only to paranoid idiots. It's pretty easy to discredit any particular assertion made in Loose Change, and the "conspiracy" they're talking about is based on an idea that's so unnecessarily complex that no halfway intelligent person (and I don't think the Loose Change crazies accuse Rumsfeld and Cheney of being stupid) would attempt it.
That would be one theory, which like the Al-Quada one, isn't especially credible. There must be at least 50 theories about 9/11 (most of which involve conspiracy, since to hijack 4 aircraft without conspiracy would be a rather incredible idea).
Germany had a mad dictator at one time stomping on personal freedoms,
Something which happened in fairly recent history (i.e. people from that time are still alive) and was followed by the country being occupied by various foreign armies.
and the country learned from that about how democracy and freedom should work.
The same applies to quite a few other countries, notably in Central and South America.
The country has pledged never to let that crap happen again.
Not without a fight at least.
America will pick that lesson up in, oh, about eleven months or so if we're lucky.
Or US airlines might start pilot training for pigs sooner...
Unfortunately, due to a failure to perform a metric/imperial conversion, the mission failed when the probe performed a perfect soft landing on the moon's surface.
Be even more embarrasing it it missed completly. Most ammusing though if it orbited the moon once and crashed back onto the launch pad...
We used to get those hired protesters here in Atlanta too, though they represent the "carpenter's union". They would hire up to 50 people to scream and shout until the corporation either ignores them long enough or pays them off to go to the next building.
:)
Maybe someone could start an actual "rent-a-mob" agency
What if you speak out against those who pay you? "I'm here because Comcast paid me to be here, however I support net neutrality."
Best to make sure that you get your money first. Though the implication here is that these people were paid to "reserve a seat", rather than as a Comcast proxy.
Maybe the venue should have adopted the same kind of policy as many ammusment parks. Where this is considered to be "queue jumping", likely to get both people evicted.
Here in New Zealand, the government provided funds for Watchdog to develop a filtering system suitable for schools. Part of the deal was that any other ISP had access to the system and could supply their own customers with internet access filtered by the system.
Thing is that if the resulting filtering system is actually suitable for schools it will not be suitable for anyone else.
Exactly if Discordia took the source, modified it and do not provide access to it as has been implied then they are far game for a copyright infringement lawsuit. If the original authors don't want to do it then maybe give the copyright to the EFF who WILL go after them.
In the case of an open source program the copyright holders could easily comprise several thousand "people". It would only take one to go after an infringer.
You would think an offical post of "Let's not stoop to their level and DoS attack" would be enough. I see no reason to remove the posts.
Apparently the posts were removed, because they violated the forum's terms and conditions, before the letter was received (possibly even before it was sent).
This really makes me smile, I'm not in the US, but I follow the news on these kinds of cases (mostly on Slashdot), if only this would get more mainstream coverage.
Possibly because what you are thinking of as "mainstream media" often have strong connections with the plaintiffs in these kind of cases. Thus they are far more likely to cover a "win" than a judge dismissing a case...
Not to mention that they should keep ALL manner of global routing out of countries that censor the internet...
Thing is that there dosn't appear to be a candiate country to do this. You'd need one without any culture of censorship and a strong enough military (including globally targeted nuclear missiles) not to be pushed around by the countries interested in censorship.
1a. Megacorp owns copyright to "Absolute Music 2343"
1b. Sleezecorp makes pirate copies of "Absolute Music 2343" and sells for 15$
1c. Consumer buys "Absolute Music 2343" from Sleezecorp
2a. Megacorp owns copyright to "Absolute Music 2343"
2b. Consumer downloads a pirate copy of "Absolute Music 2343"
Megacorp comes out to the same, no sale in either case. In scenario one, Sleezecorp made commercial gain of 15$ and is thus morally corrupt. Now, in scenario two somehow everything is fine and nobody has reason to complain?
In senario one it is possible to make a reasonable argument that the customer would have bought from "Megacorp" at the same price they paid "Sleezecorp".
In senario two you don't know what price the customer may have been prepared to pay, if any.
If it's already being done commonly and easily adding the words 'on a computer' should not earn you a patent.
Especially where the something has most likely been common practice since prehistoric times.
Just because you took the egg timer and computerized it doesn't mean you should get a patent.
Nor should you if you did something similar with a Clepshydra, marked candle, etc.
If the procedure is so utterly commonplace that it is not even written down as a procedure, then it fails by way of obviousness, not prior art.
Which has the problem from the patent examiner's POV that the "obvious" is often poorly documented. Hence it is essential to suitably skilled patent examiners.
The idea of rewarding (bribing) customers for bad service of all kinds likely goes back to the first occupation. Bad word of mouth advertising and lost business hurts.
It's probably been going on as long as businesses supplying some kind of service, be it a current "fast food" resturant or "flint knapping while u wait".
Adding "with an egg timer" to the process does not make it less obvious.
It just adds an objective measure of the quality of service.
If you trust the Bush administration not to abuse their power when they wiretap people's phones without a warrant, will you feel the same way about the Obama administration doing it?
It probably won't matter who is US President, unless you get someone who is not a career politican.
This law is to cover up the fact the bush crime family put blanket tapping uin place BEFORE the 9/11 attacks.
If this were the case it would have relevence far beyond the US. Effectivly this would be proof that such "blanket tapping" has little to no law enforcement value.
Thats right, thgis had nothing to do with "terrorism" when it was set up.
Or it may have a lot to do with 9/11, remember that the US Goverment continue to be suspects.
It is pretty clear that right now all conversations going through the phone systems are recorded. Some are erased after an hour, some are erased after a year.
Without proper oversight how do you know that there arn't ones should be being kept but are being erased quickly? As well as those being kept which shouldn't be...
I'm not even sure this is a bad thing --- it might have been pretty useful to have a copy of all phone calls made in the USA for the 3 days prior to 9/11.
Actually you'd probably want to include all phone calls made into the USA for the same period. But without additional information all you'd have would be a pile of data. Also the 3 days is arbitrary, without additional evidence there's no way to know if there were phone calls between any of the conspirators which made any reference to the plot.
It's not that hard to presume that they know they are missing information. Assume they recorded a conversation that was important, and part of that conversation was let's talk every Thursday. Or they said we're putting everything in place, we'll contact you shortly with the time. Although those examples raise the question of why don't you just get a warrant...
Possibly because whatever information "they" have was gathered illegally. Or simply that there is nothing to show that the recordings could not simply have been made by actors reading from a script.
They can just not bother showing up, receive a default judgment, and not pay. How are you going to collect on your judgment?
The likes of Microsoft cannot simply disappear, nor can they put all their assets beyond the reach of baliffs.