I don't really see how storing energy in a high density is inheritantly dangerous. It all depends on how you store it and then there isn't really any practical limit.
This is (lately) misinformation. It's basically true of any conventional LiIon battery type. But unlike the LiIon chemistry in common use today in laptop batteries, the newer lithium phosphate (LiFePO4) LiIon chemistry is inherently non-flammable and non-explosive. It's also considerably less energy dense than standard LiIon chemistries and more expensive to manufacture, thus big business' near-total lack of interest in rushing to develop it for consumer devices over the past several years. But it is now used in a few high current drain applications where conventional LiIon would be a poor choice, e.g. in some DeWalt power tools. When the cost comes down enough, you'll see lots more of these batteries, notably in electric vehicles, where they effectively eliminate laptop-type LiIon's barely-restrained violent urge to turn vehicles into smoldering heaps of rubble.
Ummm.. if it's considerably less energy dense wouldn't that explain why it's considerably less dangerous and uninteresting to manufacturers? Just imagine the technology sales pitch:
sales guy- "It's 1/3 the power density, 6 times the cost, and cuts your probability of exploding by 90%." buyer- "So from 0.1% to 0.01%?"
The reality is that such a "dirty bomb" would be just as deadly is it was lead or uranium. That is to say not deadly. Terrorists might want to make one but they aren't the sharpest tool in the shed usually. Fine powdered enriched uranium is as dangerous on it's own as any heavy metal.
yeahs I don't doubt it's a serious breech of military stewardship. I'd personally love to see the current pres impeached and this might be one of a hundred things to start with. Just to be clear I am neither demo or repub I am Canadian. You guys tried to impeach one guy for lying about a blowjob and were in the process of impeaching someone who did some dodgy surveillances, letting someone run your economy, military, emergency service, reputation, and foreign policy into the ground aught to be worth death?
This could've been a good post, if it weren't for the trolling. I'm astounded you were modded insightful, actually. This is not the place to rant about your perceived problems with a videogame console. Grow up.
Grow up? I have a vendetta against crappy mini-game collections. You have an emotional attachment to a electronics product. I think we're both just about the same emotional level. I own a Wii, it's not a knock on the system but at the current crop of games. If they release more Zelda clones and less Wario ware clones I'd be a much happier gamer.
How could you possibly believe that is right? Just look at the PS2...it has tons of crappy games...but it also has tons of great games. Let the people choose what they want to play...and the one with the most choices is going to do well. Bad games didn't ruin the Gamecube, that's for sure. Nintendo is much less strict now and many games coming out for the Wii are being rated extremely low. While not good for consumers, it is better for Nintendo to give more people a chance. Though the initial sales has more to do with the Wii's price than game line up at this point. And the fact that it is in so many homes will make developers want to make more games for it.
That is relative. The bar has raised but compare any random crap game today to any game in the atari era and objectives it is better. It's not just technology but in fact our expectations have risen. It's still the 20% gems to 80% garbage ratio but todays garbage would have been yesterdays gem if released with the same hardware 15 years ago.
Games are more responsive, more engaging, less repetitive, and prettier. Often with a much better story as well.
Wouldn't video games be the obvious cure to TV induced ADD? Most video games require hours of dedication and concentration to finish. I suppose those with ADD will be more attracted to ADD games (almost anything on the wii right now). So in the interest of public health we should promote the playing videos games that aren't shitty mini game collections.
...And thus begins mankind's shooting itself in it's foot. With less land being used to grow FOOD, you will see more and more situations like the skyrocketing tortilla prices in Mexico and general famines around the world. I don't care to go into details right now, but the "global economy" is destroying our food supply.
I'm not sure if someone else pointed this out but we're currently producing the most food we have ever produced in all recorded history. What you are noticing is probably the local reduction in carrying capacity of marginal lands. The areas that where just barely supporting the historic population. Marginal areas like a large swath of Africa, parts of the middle east and so on. What happened in these areas is the population there subsisted close to the carrying capacity of that land. Westerners came, brought a whole bunch of food and medicine from other areas for various reasons (buying loyalty, humanitarian efforts, hubris etc..) and this raised the population above what the local carrying capacity is. As well the westerners brought farming techniques that suited the rich European farmlands they came from. The greater population and the mismatched farming techniques diminished the actual carrying capacity and when something like civil war or de-colonization occurred the population was left with a pop greater then the carrying capacity. Thus famine and war and other nastiness.
The global food supply in general has actually grown despite this. We have more food then is necessary to feed the entire world population but due problems of logistics it cannot be re-distributed properly. Incidents like the Mexican tortilla price were effects of manipulated economies not of limited supply. In fact we have the capacity to produce much much more, but we choose not to (see Canada and how much of it's arable land is used for agriculture). The Global economy is not destroying out food supply. Avarice and Misguided compassion has destroyed some people local food supply.
Re:Like the famous "Gore won Florida"?
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 1
Why not extend the slant, which wasn't present in the article, to go both ways? I can't tell you how many people I know who believe Gore won Florida and base it on the idea that major media sources verified it. You can go show them the opposite and they don't care.
What it comes down to is this, people are more inclined to believe stories which correspond to what they already believe to be true, even if the evidence against such a belief is overwhelming. It is all about change and accepting mistakes. There are too many people resistant to change and resistant to admitting mistakes.
Thats not slanting the other way. You do realize repub/demo is not some universal dichotomy. It's usually truth vs fiction and both the demos/repubs indulge in a lot of fiction. Meaning either side is other "way". The story is about how comforting and intuitive fictions override truth.
Science has to make the assumption that god either does not exist or does nothing. Functionally both are the same. Thus most people with a education in science will take the first assumption.
Why was this modded "insightful" rather than "distasteful?" It's rather small-minded from a someone whom I would assume to profess a strong affinity to science. Science can disprove; it cannot prove. And the existence of God cannot be disproven.
Science cannot prove a passive, un-measurable god. But also must make the assumption that no outside unsee-able force is acting. Thus science assumes that if there is a god he does nothing. From an objective point of view, a god that does nothing or no god is just about the same.
For American society to look down upon Islam by claiming that religion promotes violence and war, I find it ironic that we name our weapons using such Christian rhetorical names "Hell Fire" and "The Finger of God."
Critics of Islam aren't all White anglo saxon protestants. I am an asian athiest who finds Islam has a lot of problems.
I am extremely angry they took down the F*ck Islam thread. It's a win for censorship, and from all accounts it was a critique of Islam more then a needless hate thread. Islam need some very aggressive critiquing. It has many modern flaws systemic within it and has it's head buried far far far into the sand. Mod me down but it greatly angers me that no one can critique Islam. That people die for doing nothing more then pointing out it's flaws. At some point we need to push back. Poor beleaguered Muslims in US, probably. But Almost any country that is Muslim majority is a oppressive to it's religious and ethnic minorities. From indonesia to UAE. Muslims aren't bad people but they are set up systemically to be used by what ever power broker can incite religious fervor. And most of the Muslim power broker are bad people.
Look, if Californians want to state-subsidize cleaner automobiles, that's fine.
But how does letting other people buy the same kind of car in other states hurt their investment? The people of California would/still/ get to buy cleaner cars. And in fact, if other people could buy them, too, maybe the price would go down and California would not have to subsidize them so heavily.
Now I could see California saying they will only pay a subsidy for cars sold IN California, which would mean they would cost more in other states that don't subsidize. But I don't see why they would care.
I'm thinking the automakers don't wish to incur the logistics overhead in carrying an additional model that is more expensive in areas that don't mandate them. It's just more paper work for a product that is presumed to be less marketable. After all most green modification hurt you weight/power ratio and add cost.
Except that historically (and statistically), ALL systems of government which operate in this fashion will ultimately collapse. There's no reason at all to believe that we are any different.
You mean all public services that aren't engineered? I can't imagine any engineer designing the DOJ or the DOD? what exactly do you mean?
The way that this odd name came about is that in the 1980's (If I remember correctly) California created a regulation that a certain percentage of all vehicles sold in the state would have no smog-forming emissions).
Around the same time they defined double plus good?
You're also confusing publishing and printing. There are two functions the publisher performs:
1) Vet the work to make sure it's appropriate quality. 2) Print it out.
There are completely separate functions. In my (extremely obvious) suggestion, scientists still vet the submission. Anything work involving printing lots of copies, once you know what the article should be, can be outsourced to a discount press.
(Seriously, this is basic stuff. I wonder how a lot of you put your shoes on in the morning. But at least I know how patent examiners get rooked into thinking some inventions are non-obvious when they're not.)
The printing is a trivial part of the costs. The most expensive part is the editing, reviewing. Your suggestions does little to alleviate anything. I work for a non profit publisher that does not print in house. If a journal does this too they may save a bit but the bulk of the cost is in content management/review/editing/filtering. The printing itself may be far more expensive if not done in volumes which some journals do them. Also a scientist would be clueless about types of paper, layout, proofs etc.. so the scientists would have to hire people who do that. That is what most journals do, they do the print related stuff that scientists need nto bother with.
That's a great theory, but then you get every scientist posting his research to his blog. In scientific circles, the idea of "peer-reviewed" research is very important
Then why can not say a groups of universities get together and develop their own international web journal of all sciences(TM). Im thikning something like slashdot(only much more rigorous on access and content submission). You could have "moderators" who would be like experts in the field the paper is written for. Interested observers who have expertise in a related field etc. You could even have a system where people could be sponsored by other to be experts(Im thinking amateur astronomers who make many contributions to astronomy but may not have a related degree).
Wasnt this kinda thing the reason for the invention of HTML in the first place?
Thats basically what a journal is. A association of scientists who get together to publish work they figure meets their criteria. of course sifting through a thousand entries to publish the valid ones requires time and no one wants to do work for free. Thus Journals charge to subscribe to them because someone has to pay the people to review the articles.
No you don't. You can still hire any number of bargain custom printing companies to make the paper copies of the journal issues, and then charge people who want that sent to them, the cost of production. You're confusing publishing and printing.
The main purpose of journals is to have a group of scientists review the work before publication. A discount press is unlikely to have a mailing list of qualified scientists to send it to.
Ground-based GPS has been around as long as triangulation has, it just wasn't a product that consumers wanted when it was available. It wasn't BECAUSE of government research that we have GPS, it was because the market demanded it as the discoveries were made.
I find it ridiculous that people think that just because government-research paid for SOME discoveries that those same discoveries wouldn't exist in a market economy. Not only would they exist, but we'd have even more research produced as people are challenged to be the first to market with a product.
Think about all the precursor technologies that are involved in GPS. Think about how much of it would be obvious to industry to fund. Transitors, space travel, plastics, computers etc.. all have government funded beginnings with industry nowhere close to funding similar projects because they were scientifically interesting but financially uninteresting research. Industry won't touch such stuff.
I know some "scientists" who have government grants for "research" that I likely pay a part of through my taxes. One of my best friends from High School is a PhD in an earth science, and he's always jumping from grant to grant to grant, and his research is mostly useless from a market perspective.
How about instead of "freeing up" research based on money that is stolen, we just stop the steal-and-pay mentality of government research grants, and let the market economy support what it needs and deny what it doesn't need?
If some poor researcher loses funding, and industry realizes they had something good to say or study, they'll get the money quick enough, plus they can decide who to offer it to and at what price. It is no different than the guy who washes cars: if government paid him to do it, he'd be charging $100 an hour and would forget to use water.
There is so much research that is not financially interesting in the near term that such "market driven" funding would result in the wholesale collapse of basic research. Your basically asking that all non-near term profitable research stop because industry does almost nothing and funds only things they expect to be profitable in the near term (10 years). Things such as the entire field of astronomy, most of biology, the majority of physics, the majority of almost all science is not profitable in the near term.
Contrary to what you think most scientists and grants do not pay $100/h to do menial tasks. They pay a Post grad student peanuts to do skilled work or a PHD to supervise work for just about what a guy with 8 years of schooling should be paid. I think your idea of government bloat is a bit skewed with the realities of academia.
The 5000 possibly but the 200 are controlled by some very scary but competent men. Even those 5000 is not under the exclusive control of the executive branch. Those entrenched military folk have some competence even if the executive branch chooses to hobble them.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really see how storing energy in a high density is inheritantly dangerous. It all depends on how you store it and then there isn't really any practical limit.
There is this thing called thermo dynamics.....
This is (lately) misinformation. It's basically true of any conventional LiIon battery type. But unlike the LiIon chemistry in common use today in laptop batteries, the newer lithium phosphate (LiFePO4) LiIon chemistry is inherently non-flammable and non-explosive. It's also considerably less energy dense than standard LiIon chemistries and more expensive to manufacture, thus big business' near-total lack of interest in rushing to develop it for consumer devices over the past several years. But it is now used in a few high current drain applications where conventional LiIon would be a poor choice, e.g. in some DeWalt power tools. When the cost comes down enough, you'll see lots more of these batteries, notably in electric vehicles, where they effectively eliminate laptop-type LiIon's barely-restrained violent urge to turn vehicles into smoldering heaps of rubble.
Ummm.. if it's considerably less energy dense wouldn't that explain why it's considerably less dangerous and uninteresting to manufacturers? Just imagine the technology sales pitch:
sales guy- "It's 1/3 the power density, 6 times the cost, and cuts your probability of exploding by 90%."
buyer- "So from 0.1% to 0.01%?"
The reality is that such a "dirty bomb" would be just as deadly is it was lead or uranium. That is to say not deadly. Terrorists might want to make one but they aren't the sharpest tool in the shed usually. Fine powdered enriched uranium is as dangerous on it's own as any heavy metal.
yeahs I don't doubt it's a serious breech of military stewardship. I'd personally love to see the current pres impeached and this might be one of a hundred things to start with. Just to be clear I am neither demo or repub I am Canadian. You guys tried to impeach one guy for lying about a blowjob and were in the process of impeaching someone who did some dodgy surveillances, letting someone run your economy, military, emergency service, reputation, and foreign policy into the ground aught to be worth death?
Dropping a unarmed nuke isn't that likely to set it off. It's got safeguard for that.
This could've been a good post, if it weren't for the trolling. I'm astounded you were modded insightful, actually. This is not the place to rant about your perceived problems with a videogame console. Grow up.
Grow up? I have a vendetta against crappy mini-game collections. You have an emotional attachment to a electronics product. I think we're both just about the same emotional level. I own a Wii, it's not a knock on the system but at the current crop of games. If they release more Zelda clones and less Wario ware clones I'd be a much happier gamer.
How could you possibly believe that is right? Just look at the PS2...it has tons of crappy games...but it also has tons of great games. Let the people choose what they want to play...and the one with the most choices is going to do well. Bad games didn't ruin the Gamecube, that's for sure. Nintendo is much less strict now and many games coming out for the Wii are being rated extremely low. While not good for consumers, it is better for Nintendo to give more people a chance. Though the initial sales has more to do with the Wii's price than game line up at this point. And the fact that it is in so many homes will make developers want to make more games for it.
That is relative. The bar has raised but compare any random crap game today to any game in the atari era and objectives it is better. It's not just technology but in fact our expectations have risen. It's still the 20% gems to 80% garbage ratio but todays garbage would have been yesterdays gem if released with the same hardware 15 years ago.
Games are more responsive, more engaging, less repetitive, and prettier. Often with a much better story as well.
Do you perchance work at the University of Alberta? I am aware they had a trial program similar to what you describe.
Wouldn't video games be the obvious cure to TV induced ADD? Most video games require hours of dedication and concentration to finish. I suppose those with ADD will be more attracted to ADD games (almost anything on the wii right now). So in the interest of public health we should promote the playing videos games that aren't shitty mini game collections.
Save a mind, ban wario ware.
...And thus begins mankind's shooting itself in it's foot. With less land being used to grow FOOD, you will see more and more situations like the skyrocketing tortilla prices in Mexico and general famines around the world. I don't care to go into details right now, but the "global economy" is destroying our food supply.
I'm not sure if someone else pointed this out but we're currently producing the most food we have ever produced in all recorded history. What you are noticing is probably the local reduction in carrying capacity of marginal lands. The areas that where just barely supporting the historic population. Marginal areas like a large swath of Africa, parts of the middle east and so on. What happened in these areas is the population there subsisted close to the carrying capacity of that land. Westerners came, brought a whole bunch of food and medicine from other areas for various reasons (buying loyalty, humanitarian efforts, hubris etc..) and this raised the population above what the local carrying capacity is. As well the westerners brought farming techniques that suited the rich European farmlands they came from. The greater population and the mismatched farming techniques diminished the actual carrying capacity and when something like civil war or de-colonization occurred the population was left with a pop greater then the carrying capacity. Thus famine and war and other nastiness.
The global food supply in general has actually grown despite this. We have more food then is necessary to feed the entire world population but due problems of logistics it cannot be re-distributed properly. Incidents like the Mexican tortilla price were effects of manipulated economies not of limited supply. In fact we have the capacity to produce much much more, but we choose not to (see Canada and how much of it's arable land is used for agriculture). The Global economy is not destroying out food supply. Avarice and Misguided compassion has destroyed some people local food supply.
Why not extend the slant, which wasn't present in the article, to go both ways? I can't tell you how many people I know who believe Gore won Florida and base it on the idea that major media sources verified it. You can go show them the opposite and they don't care.
What it comes down to is this, people are more inclined to believe stories which correspond to what they already believe to be true, even if the evidence against such a belief is overwhelming. It is all about change and accepting mistakes. There are too many people resistant to change and resistant to admitting mistakes.
Thats not slanting the other way. You do realize repub/demo is not some universal dichotomy. It's usually truth vs fiction and both the demos/repubs indulge in a lot of fiction. Meaning either side is other "way". The story is about how comforting and intuitive fictions override truth.
Science has to make the assumption that god either does not exist or does nothing. Functionally both are the same. Thus most people with a education in science will take the first assumption.
Why was this modded "insightful" rather than "distasteful?" It's rather small-minded from a someone whom I would assume to profess a strong affinity to science. Science can disprove; it cannot prove. And the existence of God cannot be disproven.
Science cannot prove a passive, un-measurable god. But also must make the assumption that no outside unsee-able force is acting. Thus science assumes that if there is a god he does nothing. From an objective point of view, a god that does nothing or no god is just about the same.
For American society to look down upon Islam by claiming that religion promotes violence and war, I find it ironic that we name our weapons using such Christian rhetorical names "Hell Fire" and "The Finger of God."
Critics of Islam aren't all White anglo saxon protestants. I am an asian athiest who finds Islam has a lot of problems.
I am extremely angry they took down the F*ck Islam thread. It's a win for censorship, and from all accounts it was a critique of Islam more then a needless hate thread. Islam need some very aggressive critiquing. It has many modern flaws systemic within it and has it's head buried far far far into the sand. Mod me down but it greatly angers me that no one can critique Islam. That people die for doing nothing more then pointing out it's flaws. At some point we need to push back. Poor beleaguered Muslims in US, probably. But Almost any country that is Muslim majority is a oppressive to it's religious and ethnic minorities. From indonesia to UAE. Muslims aren't bad people but they are set up systemically to be used by what ever power broker can incite religious fervor. And most of the Muslim power broker are bad people.
Look, if Californians want to state-subsidize cleaner automobiles, that's fine.
/still/ get to buy cleaner cars. And in fact, if other people could buy them, too, maybe the price would go down and California would not have to subsidize them so heavily.
But how does letting other people buy the same kind of car in other states hurt their investment? The people of California would
Now I could see California saying they will only pay a subsidy for cars sold IN California, which would mean they would cost more in other states that don't subsidize. But I don't see why they would care.
I'm thinking the automakers don't wish to incur the logistics overhead in carrying an additional model that is more expensive in areas that don't mandate them. It's just more paper work for a product that is presumed to be less marketable. After all most green modification hurt you weight/power ratio and add cost.
Except that historically (and statistically), ALL systems of government which operate in this fashion will ultimately collapse. There's no reason at all to believe that we are any different.
You mean all public services that aren't engineered? I can't imagine any engineer designing the DOJ or the DOD? what exactly do you mean?
The way that this odd name came about is that in the 1980's (If I remember correctly) California created a regulation that a certain percentage of all vehicles sold in the state would have no smog-forming emissions).
Around the same time they defined double plus good?
You're also confusing publishing and printing. There are two functions the publisher performs:
1) Vet the work to make sure it's appropriate quality.
2) Print it out.
There are completely separate functions. In my (extremely obvious) suggestion, scientists still vet the submission. Anything work involving printing lots of copies, once you know what the article should be, can be outsourced to a discount press.
(Seriously, this is basic stuff. I wonder how a lot of you put your shoes on in the morning. But at least I know how patent examiners get rooked into thinking some inventions are non-obvious when they're not.)
The printing is a trivial part of the costs. The most expensive part is the editing, reviewing. Your suggestions does little to alleviate anything. I work for a non profit publisher that does not print in house. If a journal does this too they may save a bit but the bulk of the cost is in content management/review/editing/filtering. The printing itself may be far more expensive if not done in volumes which some journals do them. Also a scientist would be clueless about types of paper, layout, proofs etc.. so the scientists would have to hire people who do that. That is what most journals do, they do the print related stuff that scientists need nto bother with.
That's a great theory, but then you get every scientist posting his research to his blog. In scientific circles, the idea of "peer-reviewed" research is very important
Then why can not say a groups of universities get together and develop their own international web journal of all sciences(TM). Im thikning something like slashdot(only much more rigorous on access and content submission). You could have "moderators" who would be like experts in the field the paper is written for. Interested observers who have expertise in a related field etc. You could even have a system where people could be sponsored by other to be experts(Im thinking amateur astronomers who make many contributions to astronomy but may not have a related degree).
Wasnt this kinda thing the reason for the invention of HTML in the first place?
Thats basically what a journal is. A association of scientists who get together to publish work they figure meets their criteria. of course sifting through a thousand entries to publish the valid ones requires time and no one wants to do work for free. Thus Journals charge to subscribe to them because someone has to pay the people to review the articles.
No you don't. You can still hire any number of bargain custom printing companies to make the paper copies of the journal issues, and then charge people who want that sent to them, the cost of production. You're confusing publishing and printing.
The main purpose of journals is to have a group of scientists review the work before publication. A discount press is unlikely to have a mailing list of qualified scientists to send it to.
And you know this how?
Ground-based GPS has been around as long as triangulation has, it just wasn't a product that consumers wanted when it was available. It wasn't BECAUSE of government research that we have GPS, it was because the market demanded it as the discoveries were made.
I find it ridiculous that people think that just because government-research paid for SOME discoveries that those same discoveries wouldn't exist in a market economy. Not only would they exist, but we'd have even more research produced as people are challenged to be the first to market with a product.
Think about all the precursor technologies that are involved in GPS. Think about how much of it would be obvious to industry to fund. Transitors, space travel, plastics, computers etc.. all have government funded beginnings with industry nowhere close to funding similar projects because they were scientifically interesting but financially uninteresting research. Industry won't touch such stuff.
I know some "scientists" who have government grants for "research" that I likely pay a part of through my taxes. One of my best friends from High School is a PhD in an earth science, and he's always jumping from grant to grant to grant, and his research is mostly useless from a market perspective.
How about instead of "freeing up" research based on money that is stolen, we just stop the steal-and-pay mentality of government research grants, and let the market economy support what it needs and deny what it doesn't need?
If some poor researcher loses funding, and industry realizes they had something good to say or study, they'll get the money quick enough, plus they can decide who to offer it to and at what price. It is no different than the guy who washes cars: if government paid him to do it, he'd be charging $100 an hour and would forget to use water.
There is so much research that is not financially interesting in the near term that such "market driven" funding would result in the wholesale collapse of basic research. Your basically asking that all non-near term profitable research stop because industry does almost nothing and funds only things they expect to be profitable in the near term (10 years). Things such as the entire field of astronomy, most of biology, the majority of physics, the majority of almost all science is not profitable in the near term.
Contrary to what you think most scientists and grants do not pay $100/h to do menial tasks. They pay a Post grad student peanuts to do skilled work or a PHD to supervise work for just about what a guy with 8 years of schooling should be paid. I think your idea of government bloat is a bit skewed with the realities of academia.
The 5000 possibly but the 200 are controlled by some very scary but competent men. Even those 5000 is not under the exclusive control of the executive branch. Those entrenched military folk have some competence even if the executive branch chooses to hobble them.
That's almost exactly what I meant. 5200 nukes is 5200 too many, especially in the hands of these jokers.
What exactly gave you the impression they were jokers?