Maybe (but aluminum can do that). An inexpensive material with a few orders of maginitude higher conductivity than copper or aluminum would have enormous economic impact, far beyond electronics.
> We just need to deal with the minor issue of designing a domestic power supply that can > deliver the 50-100KWh needed to charge such a vehicle within 5 minutes.
You use hyperconductive (not superconductive) graphene cables. There are many applications other than the trendy ones for extremely high-conductivity materials.
For many applications (motors, antennas, transmission lines...) the very, very low room-temperature resistance of graphene is sufficient to make it very, very interesting even though it is not a superconductor. In fact, not being a superconductor can be a plus.
> It can also be seen as a proof of the failure of the normal free market model to give an > optimal allocation of resources in the case of near-zero marginal costs.
Wrong. The purpose and effect of copyright is to prevent to operation of the free market. This is not a judgement of the value of copyright: it is just a fact. The economics if "intellectual property" monopolies have little to do with markets.
While it is barely possible that NSA could and would , at great expense, recover some useful overwritten data from, say, captured North Korean drives, the notion that anyone here has any secrets that important to anyone other than themselves is laughable.
Overwrite the drive once before you sell it on Ebay to get rid of your bank account numbers and you're good to go. Your secrets are worth maybe $5.00 to organized crime and the government doesn't give a damn at all.
No. It's just one question: What is the data worth to your opponent? No matter how much it's worth to you no one is going to recover it if there is nothing in it for them.
> if you can recover from 1 overwrite, while still being able to get the new data, the > capacity has just doubled.
Not if it takes hundreds of hours to do and recovers only 3/4 of the data on average. There is a lot of room between "not secure" and "reliable data storage".
It is very unlikely that any of us need worry that our overwritten files will be recovered, though. None of us have secrets that important.
Besides, the bot that controls your Windows box has already uploaded all your passwords.
> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense compared to the completely irrational "use all the > copies you want, but if you make changes you have to share them back" model.
If you use the changes only internally you have no obligation to share them.
> The entire point of a patent is to allow a person or company to profit from their > invention without other people ripping it off without doing their own research.
Not in the US. According to the Constitution the purpose of patehts is to promote progress in science and the useful arts:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
The courts have interpreted this as meaning that the point is to benefit society, not to protect an intrinsic right of an inventor to control his invention.
Salaries, obviously. Sounds like a couple of guys are going to study the problem full-time. How many women would you assign to the task of gestating that baby?
> A few short years ago we managed to live without the DHS...
I have no love for the DHS, but it was created by smushing a bunch of existing agencies together. They do little that wasn't being done before. In their absence this work would probably be being funded by one of the agencies that was destroyed to create them.
Slashdot Mirror
It obviously was executing on the machine from which it got onto the stick.
> Why don't we figure out how inhabit to Venus and Mars first...
Go right ahead. No one is stopping you.
> ...and then look for things farther away?
Because that is what some people want to do? You needn't look if it bothers you.
> At 3000 light years, it's a bit too far to think of starting a settlement there.
I wasn't aware that anyone was doing so.
> Can it replace copper for wires?
Maybe (but aluminum can do that). An inexpensive material with a few orders of maginitude higher conductivity than copper or aluminum would have enormous economic impact, far beyond electronics.
> Actually, making capacitors that small would depend just as much on a "superinsulator"
> as it would on the graphene. Do we have one of those?
Yes. The bilayer in supercapacitors.
> We just need to deal with the minor issue of designing a domestic power supply that can
> deliver the 50-100KWh needed to charge such a vehicle within 5 minutes.
You use hyperconductive (not superconductive) graphene cables. There are many applications other than the trendy ones for extremely high-conductivity materials.
For many applications (motors, antennas, transmission lines...) the very, very low room-temperature resistance of graphene is sufficient to make it very, very interesting even though it is not a superconductor. In fact, not being a superconductor can be a plus.
> Graphene is not a room temperature superconductor... it's just the best room temperature
> conductor we've found.
But is such a good room-temperature conductor that it will make a big difference once commercialized. Motors, transmission lines, antennas...
> However, some of us are actually computing professionals, working in sensitive areas.
And this makes your personal financial data stored on your machine at home worth millions? Right.
> It can also be seen as a proof of the failure of the normal free market model to give an
> optimal allocation of resources in the case of near-zero marginal costs.
Wrong. The purpose and effect of copyright is to prevent to operation of the free market. This is not a judgement of the value of copyright: it is just a fact. The economics if "intellectual property" monopolies have little to do with markets.
While it is barely possible that NSA could and would , at great expense, recover some useful overwritten data from, say, captured North Korean drives, the notion that anyone here has any secrets that important to anyone other than themselves is laughable.
Overwrite the drive once before you sell it on Ebay to get rid of your bank account numbers and you're good to go. Your secrets are worth maybe $5.00 to organized crime and the government doesn't give a damn at all.
No. It's just one question: What is the data worth to your opponent? No matter how much it's worth to you no one is going to recover it if there is nothing in it for them.
> which is surely worth the time and effort involved in something like this.
Hardly. I think that you'll find that the machines required rent for more than $500/hour.
> if you can recover from 1 overwrite, while still being able to get the new data, the
> capacity has just doubled.
Not if it takes hundreds of hours to do and recovers only 3/4 of the data on average. There is a lot of room between "not secure" and "reliable data storage".
It is very unlikely that any of us need worry that our overwritten files will be recovered, though. None of us have secrets that important.
Besides, the bot that controls your Windows box has already uploaded all your passwords.
> ...cost is not an issue...
Keep saying that. Say it real loud, over and over.
> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense compared to the completely irrational "use all the
> copies you want, but if you make changes you have to share them back" model.
If you use the changes only internally you have no obligation to share them.
...that everything on a retailer's site is advertsing? Is it that hard to find sites that rate stuff but don't sell it?
The picture is as it has always been and is leading nowhere new.
A peasant shooting a guy in a military uniform for trespassing in the Soviet Union. Right.
> Let me see if I got this strait...
You don't. You don't have it straight, either.
Including you. If you want them to pay more change the law. Arranging one's affairs so as to minimize tax liability is neither wrong nor illegal.
> That the universe is a figment of someone's (or some THING's) imagination, to me, seems
> the simplest theory...
And that THING is a figment of the imagination of another THING? Infinite regression?
> The entire point of a patent is to allow a person or company to profit from their
> invention without other people ripping it off without doing their own research.
Not in the US. According to the Constitution the purpose of patehts is to promote progress in science and the useful arts:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
The courts have interpreted this as meaning that the point is to benefit society, not to protect an intrinsic right of an inventor to control his invention.
> Can anyone speak to the costs involved?
Salaries, obviously. Sounds like a couple of guys are going to study the problem full-time. How many women would you assign to the task of gestating that baby?
> A few short years ago we managed to live without the DHS...
I have no love for the DHS, but it was created by smushing a bunch of existing agencies together. They do little that wasn't being done before. In their absence this work would probably be being funded by one of the agencies that was destroyed to create them.
> Under!? Over!
Not if you have cats.