The U.S. makes every effort to ensure that Iraq receives full market price for its oil. And it is in the U.S.' interest to do so: the U.S. has been contributing billions toward recovering from Saddam's neglect of the infrastructure, but as Iraq's oil revenues increase it will be better able to foot the bill itself.
If it were somehow possible to import vast quantities of these hydrocarbons from Titan to Earth, burning them would reduce the concentration of O2 in the atmosphere. To prevent that, you would need to import oxidizer as well as fuel.
The Chinese ASAT test was criticized for bringing us closer to a Kessler Syndrome. If this proposed shootdown could somehow be designed to not move us in that direction, fine. But right now I don't see how that's possible.
To summarize the interview with the Lockheed manager: he basically said "We haven't tested any of their prototypes, but we totally take their word for it when they say their product has 10x the energy density of lead-acid batteries. Oh, and at a fraction of the cost, too!"
the whole plan is so grandiose and expensive that it would be impossible to get through Congress
TFA says it would require $420 billion in subsidies over 40 years. That's small compared to the Medicare prescription drug plan, which will cost $724 billion over the next seven years.
Yes, don't stop at just varying the brightness. The brake lights should also begin to blink when you reach moderate braking intensity, and blink more and more rapidly as the braking intensity increases.
The brightness should also be calibrated by an ambient light sensor. Take the case were the car is decelerating gently, and you therefore want other drivers to perceive that the brake lights are glowing dimly. At night (or in a tunnel), you don't need to apply much voltage to the lamps to accomplish this, but during the day, you'd need to apply significantly more voltage to achieve the same "glowing dimly" perception. The ambient light sensor would take care of that.
With sophisitcated LED displays, you could change the shape and color of the display: smooth, rounded, and cheerful yellow for gentle deceleration, transitioning to angular, "angry," and fiery red for rapid deceleration.
There are all kinds of ways to better convey information to other drivers!
Part of the problem is that brake lights themselves only have "on" and "off" modes. They could be designed to convey so much more information than that, by utilizing the entire spectrum ranging from:
Brake lights glowing dimly: indicates the car is decelerating slightly. (And not necessarily due to active braking by the driver. Perhaps the driver has merely begun to coast, or does not have the accelerator sufficiently depressed while driving up a steep hill. It would be a good idea to communicate these scenarios to other drivers too.)
Very bright accompanied by a rapidly flashing strobe: indicates the car is braking maximally; antilock braking system is fully engaged. (At times like this, the car should do everything possible to get the attention of other drivers.)
I just talked to a guy who spent a year at the South Pole. All their energy (heat, electricity) at the Amundsen-Scott Station comes from diesel fuel that's flown in at tremendous expense. The summer population is typically over 200 souls.
The buildings there are very well insulated, at least.
the Mac indy developer scene is smaller than Windows, but the software is almost always of much higher quality and polish [because it's easier to develop for Windows]
This is contradictory. If devloping for the platform is easier, the developer should in theory have more time left at his or her disposal to polish the GUI and stomp bugs.
By this reasoning, the quality of Mac software would rise even higher if Apple intentionally placed some more difficulties in the path of its developers.
I'm sure that'll change in February of 2008. Then lots of people will probably be interested in learning Objective-C.
The old regime almost bankrupted Apple by switching to a Microsoft-like software licensing model
No, the experiment with Mac clones was not at all Microsoft-like. Microsoft makes money every time Dell ships a PC with Windows installed, and Apple lost money every time Power Computing shipped a clone with Mac OS 8 installed.
The reason is pretty simple. Apple should have priced OS licenses such that it wouldn't matter to its bottom line whether the hardware had been made by Apple or a cloner. The price of an OS license was initially set too low, perhaps out of optimism about the extent to which Apple's hardware sales would be cannibalized. When sales turned out to be cannibalized quite a bit, instead of adjusting to the circumstances, Apple simply killed the cloning program:(
"This device could make discoveries that are Earth-shattering."
Then please, leave it on the ground!
Nuclear is far cheaper than coal in HUMAN LIVES
on
Google Goes Green
·
· Score: 1
The loss of a handful of coal miners in Utah is nothing -- NOTHING -- compared to what the media doesn't tell you.
In 2004, the worldwide death toll among coal miners was a whopping 21,500!! (Most of the accidents happened in China.) That's as many deaths, every single year, as seven World Trade Centers stacked atop each other.
Contrast the coal industry with the nuclear power industry; in its entire history, there's been only one incident with fatalities. (Chernobyl, a reactor that was orders of magnitude less safe than modern designs, killed 31 people. Divide that by the 50-year existence of the nuke power industry, and you get an annual death toll of 0.62 persons.)
If all coal-fired power plants were converted to nuclear, we'd immediately surpass the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Environmentalists spend a lot more time criticizing nuclear power than coal; the facts show they are barking up the wrong tree. Even when they criticize coal, they do so for the wrong reasons - like acid rain, which pales in comparison to the massive death toll among miners.
The system needs to be secure against two compromised people. As an example of two compromised people getting together in the same room and pulling off something crazy, I have two words: Harris and Klebold.
TFA goes on to say that the recent reinterpretation of the source of soft x-rays is another example of astronomers "causing damage to the heavens." It actually implies that the x-ray astronomers caused the universe to lose one fifth of its mass.
We need to reign in these rogue astronomers, stat!! LOL
Due to the sky-high price of fuel cells, the good ol' internal combustion engine might turn out to be the most practical way to use hydrogen fuel, for the forseeable future.
If you have to install additional software to get MP3 support, the music-playing experience is, almost by definition, not as pleasant as it is under OS X.
If a person uses a stolen Social Security number to get a job, I would like to see all FICA contributions made by the employee and employer to remain credited to the identity theft victim, even after the fraud is discovered.
That the victim will someday receive larger Social Security checks would be some consolation.
[Yes, this measure would have a negative impact on the illegal immigrant population, because few other groups have any reason to use stolen Social Security numbers when applying for a job.]
Slashdot Mirror
Did you know that Barack Obama is a big fan of Che Guevara? See http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28915&only
The U.S. makes every effort to ensure that Iraq receives full market price for its oil. And it is in the U.S.' interest to do so: the U.S. has been contributing billions toward recovering from Saddam's neglect of the infrastructure, but as Iraq's oil revenues increase it will be better able to foot the bill itself.
If it were somehow possible to import vast quantities of these hydrocarbons from Titan to Earth, burning them would reduce the concentration of O2 in the atmosphere. To prevent that, you would need to import oxidizer as well as fuel.
The Chinese ASAT test was criticized for bringing us closer to a Kessler Syndrome. If this proposed shootdown could somehow be designed to not move us in that direction, fine. But right now I don't see how that's possible.
"I, for one, welcome our new cable-cutting overlords!" - Vivevtvivas
there is always the chance of good luck, say a close supernova
If it's too close, it's very bad luck!
the Ariadne won the X-Prize
What are you talking about? The Ansari X Prize was won by Scaled Composites with SpaceShipOne. Nothing called "Ariadne" even competed for the prize.
To summarize the interview with the Lockheed manager: he basically said "We haven't tested any of their prototypes, but we totally take their word for it when they say their product has 10x the energy density of lead-acid batteries. Oh, and at a fraction of the cost, too!"
I sure hope he doesn't end up eating his words.
the whole plan is so grandiose and expensive that it would be impossible to get through Congress
TFA says it would require $420 billion in subsidies over 40 years. That's small compared to the Medicare prescription drug plan, which will cost $724 billion over the next seven years.
Yes, don't stop at just varying the brightness. The brake lights should also begin to blink when you reach moderate braking intensity, and blink more and more rapidly as the braking intensity increases.
The brightness should also be calibrated by an ambient light sensor. Take the case were the car is decelerating gently, and you therefore want other drivers to perceive that the brake lights are glowing dimly. At night (or in a tunnel), you don't need to apply much voltage to the lamps to accomplish this, but during the day, you'd need to apply significantly more voltage to achieve the same "glowing dimly" perception. The ambient light sensor would take care of that.
With sophisitcated LED displays, you could change the shape and color of the display: smooth, rounded, and cheerful yellow for gentle deceleration, transitioning to angular, "angry," and fiery red for rapid deceleration.
There are all kinds of ways to better convey information to other drivers!
Part of the problem is that brake lights themselves only have "on" and "off" modes. They could be designed to convey so much more information than that, by utilizing the entire spectrum ranging from:
Brake lights glowing dimly: indicates the car is decelerating slightly. (And not necessarily due to active braking by the driver. Perhaps the driver has merely begun to coast, or does not have the accelerator sufficiently depressed while driving up a steep hill. It would be a good idea to communicate these scenarios to other drivers too.)
Very bright accompanied by a rapidly flashing strobe: indicates the car is braking maximally; antilock braking system is fully engaged. (At times like this, the car should do everything possible to get the attention of other drivers.)
The essay on "Traffic Waves" should be required reading for everyone who applies for a driver's license. Here's the link again: http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
I just talked to a guy who spent a year at the South Pole. All their energy (heat, electricity) at the Amundsen-Scott Station comes from diesel fuel that's flown in at tremendous expense. The summer population is typically over 200 souls.
The buildings there are very well insulated, at least.
the Mac indy developer scene is smaller than Windows, but the software is almost always of much higher quality and polish [because it's easier to develop for Windows]
This is contradictory. If devloping for the platform is easier, the developer should in theory have more time left at his or her disposal to polish the GUI and stomp bugs.
By this reasoning, the quality of Mac software would rise even higher if Apple intentionally placed some more difficulties in the path of its developers.
I'm sure that'll change in February of 2008. Then lots of people will probably be interested in learning Objective-C.
What's coming in Feb?
The old regime almost bankrupted Apple by switching to a Microsoft-like software licensing model
:(
No, the experiment with Mac clones was not at all Microsoft-like. Microsoft makes money every time Dell ships a PC with Windows installed, and Apple lost money every time Power Computing shipped a clone with Mac OS 8 installed.
The reason is pretty simple. Apple should have priced OS licenses such that it wouldn't matter to its bottom line whether the hardware had been made by Apple or a cloner. The price of an OS license was initially set too low, perhaps out of optimism about the extent to which Apple's hardware sales would be cannibalized. When sales turned out to be cannibalized quite a bit, instead of adjusting to the circumstances, Apple simply killed the cloning program
"This device could make discoveries that are Earth-shattering."
Then please, leave it on the ground!
The loss of a handful of coal miners in Utah is nothing -- NOTHING -- compared to what the media doesn't tell you.
In 2004, the worldwide death toll among coal miners was a whopping 21,500!! (Most of the accidents happened in China.) That's as many deaths, every single year, as seven World Trade Centers stacked atop each other.
Contrast the coal industry with the nuclear power industry; in its entire history, there's been only one incident with fatalities. (Chernobyl, a reactor that was orders of magnitude less safe than modern designs, killed 31 people. Divide that by the 50-year existence of the nuke power industry, and you get an annual death toll of 0.62 persons.)
If all coal-fired power plants were converted to nuclear, we'd immediately surpass the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Environmentalists spend a lot more time criticizing nuclear power than coal; the facts show they are barking up the wrong tree. Even when they criticize coal, they do so for the wrong reasons - like acid rain, which pales in comparison to the massive death toll among miners.
The system needs to be secure against two compromised people. As an example of two compromised people getting together in the same room and pulling off something crazy, I have two words: Harris and Klebold.
TFA goes on to say that the recent reinterpretation of the source of soft x-rays is another example of astronomers "causing damage to the heavens." It actually implies that the x-ray astronomers caused the universe to lose one fifth of its mass.
We need to reign in these rogue astronomers, stat!! LOL
This Slashdot post of his gives you a pretty good idea of his lifestyle:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144751&cid=12122943
...the "1812 Overture" is encoded in the highway, with deep, strategically-placed potholes providing the sound of cannon fire.
Any spacecraft that resembles a Star Destroyer can't be all bad.
TFA is light on details. You might be interested to know that this is a hydrogen-burning internal combustion engine, not a hydrogen fuel cell.
BMW has also been developing hydrogen ("Wasserstoff") burning internal combustion engines: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/09/12/bmw-officially-announces-the-bmw-hydrogen-7
Due to the sky-high price of fuel cells, the good ol' internal combustion engine might turn out to be the most practical way to use hydrogen fuel, for the forseeable future.
If you have to install additional software to get MP3 support, the music-playing experience is, almost by definition, not as pleasant as it is under OS X.
If a person uses a stolen Social Security number to get a job, I would like to see all FICA contributions made by the employee and employer to remain credited to the identity theft victim, even after the fraud is discovered.
That the victim will someday receive larger Social Security checks would be some consolation.
[Yes, this measure would have a negative impact on the illegal immigrant population, because few other groups have any reason to use stolen Social Security numbers when applying for a job.]