I recently bought my house. Included in the closing papers was the land survey, which shows my property line, configuration of the outside of the house, fences, driveways, walkways, and even what the ground surface is (cement, grass, gravel).
What really threw me was when I went to get the insurance. All they asked me for was the address. They pulled up the floorplan for the house. It wasn't exactly the blueprints, but it did have an accurate description of the size and layout of every room in the house. They also knew how many feet it was to the nearest fire hydrant, crime and fire statistics for both the immediate neighborhood, and the general area.
I know there's lots of information available out there, but I didn't know any insurance agent had it immediately available.
I don't know how widespread this information is, but I suspect it's available in most of the major population centers around the US.
Photographs of most houses that were listed are already available through the MLS services. I don't know what their retention policy is though.
One answer. Stanley Meyer. He made some good press, and got good exposure, and even a patent for something that didn't quite work.
I'm kinda fond of his ideas, and I believe I can make something work resembling it, but far from basing it on anything him or his fans have done.
I've put some good time into playing with ideas. I've tried different frequencies and pulses, to the extent of having my computer run through an awful lot of combinations, so I could observe. I've also played with voltages from 1v to 30,000v, and even AC and DC. I even attempted to recreate the CF experements, but with my setup now, I haven't made the pretty glow.
I know some other companies are doing real products that have some level of success. I say some, because if someone was building something that REALLY worked effectively, I would think it would have a huge market by now. (leave the men in black stories out)
When I have some more time to play with it, I know I'll have something that will do... well... something. Will it revolutionize the world? Probably not. But hey, I may get my work run on/. when it at least does something.
My current problem is that the unit leaks badly. The folks who fabricated the unit for me were given very specific instructions that it needed to be air tight. I assumed (oops) that they had done that part correctly. I finally got around to putting air pressure to it from my air compressor, and heard it blowing out all the seals. IF it ever works, I guess they won't be fabricating the housing for me.:) It does look very cool though. It makes for a lovely conversation piece.
I guess if I had a few connections, I could show it to the right folks, and get "investors" to throw money at it. I could probably live very comfortably on that money for several years, before I had to admit it doesn't really do anything.
Re:Interested....
on
Water From Wind
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Observed at: Dunedin Aerodrome Aws, New Zealand Elevation: 3 ft / 1 m Temperature: 78 F / 26 C Humidity: 28% Dew Point: 51 F / 10 C Wind: 17 mph / 28 km/h / from the North Wind Gust: - Pressure: 29.65 in / 1004 hPa (Falling)
[Partly Cloudy] 68 F / 20 C Partly Cloudy Humidity: 56% Dew Point: 52 F / 11 C Wind: 29 mph / 46 km/h / 12.9 m/s from the North Wind Gust: 44 mph / 70 km/h / 19.5 m/s Pressure: 30.01 in / 1016 hPa
I'm not much of a weather guy, but I've been watching statistics on weatherunderground.com for where I am lately. The dew point yesterday was 11F.
Right now, it's 48.3F, 36% relative humidity, and the dew point is 23F. I hope his device is dropping the pressure dramatically. I just used an online Gay-Lussac's law calculator, and it said the pressure would need to be dropped to 14.286 to reach dew point. That's assuming weatherunderground was accurate to.000 .
Does anyone happen to know what the pressure would be like on the low pressure side of a good airfoil?:)
I had designed something for a similar effect, and we had looked into your second and third issues. With my design, a windmill and solar panels would be running a generator, which would run a refrigerator style cooling system. That would cool the inside surface of a large vertical cylinder, where condensation would collect.
What we managed to find out was this..
On item 2, it would have negligible effects on the ambient humidity. If you were storing all the collected water in a sealed environment (so it wouldn't evaporate), you still would never pull enough water out of the air to make a difference, even if you had acres of these units. The article gives the right idea, to use the collected water to irrigate fields and the like, which would immediately reintroduce the water back into the environment, where it would be allowed to evaporate normally.
On item 3, yes, it would still rain. It may rain more, as you're throwing the normal balance off a little bit, because you're moving the water around a little, and (hopefully) the increased plant growth will help to raise the normal humidity a little bit.
Both of those statements are theoretical.
When I get some time, an old refrigerator, and am bored, I plan on making one.
I'm not sure about the guy's idea though. It sounds like vaporware (pun intended)
From the article:
"The secret of Max's design is how his windmills, whirring away in the merest hint of a wind, cool the air as it passes by. Like many a great idea, it couldn't be simpler - or more obvious. But nobody thought of it before."
When you stand in front of a fan, you feel cooler, because the air is moving, and the moisture on your skin evaporates, even if you feel dry. The air isn't any cooler on one side than the other. You may be moving cooler air into the area, but you're not magically transferring heat to nowhere.
An air conditioner moves heat. If you have a central air conditioner, in the summer, stand outside by the condenser side of your air conditioner (the big thing with a fan on it). You'll feel lots of heat blowing off it. That's heat moved from the inside, in the freon. Ahh, I knew those HVAC classes I took would come in handy someday.:)
All he's doing is spinning fans, probably on a very low friction hub, probably with a relatively large surface area. I've been completely unable to find any pictures of his device.
The article says they're looking for high dollar investors. If (IF) he has a prototype, it shouldn't be very hard to show some large companies under a very strict NDA, and someone will pay out the nose for it. Looking for investors with money, without showing them a product, or showing them a product under HIS conditions sounds like he has something to hide. I'd want to be able to take it apart, put it back together, and KNOW that there's nothing fishy about it.
I could make a very cool box with spinning fans on it, and water pouring out the tap. Of course, it would have a 10 gallon tank inside, and the fans would simply be there for effect.
Well, since Slashdot is a news site, it should follow at least some good writing practices. One of the things the author is suppose to do, is make the subject abundantly clear to the reader. Even HP should have been clarified. It could have been phrased as "Hardware manufacturer HP" or "Computer vendor HP".
But as we know, the editorial review process here doesn't exactly follow journalistic guidelines.
--- original artical --- The forum thread goes back to last August and is still live. The latest post from an HP rep indicates that new firmware for the nx9420 should be available later this week in which the ability to switch on VT is enabled. It's not clear whether other HP products, in which VT was also disabled, will also get new firmware.
--- modified artical ---
An issue was uncovered in a Hewlett Packard (HP) message forum in August 2006, where several HP laptop owners found a key feature of their new Intel Core Duo chipset powered laptops, the Virtualization (VMX) or Virtuatualization Threading (VT), was disabled. This option, when enabled, allow for programs such as VMWare to take advantage of the new capabilities of the multi-core processors. This feature was noticable to Linux users, and will likely effect Microsoft Vista when it comes to market in the first quarter 2007.
Go stand immediately behind a city bus. Well, while it's not in traffic.
Mine is a GMC RTS. It's over 6' from the ground to the bottom of the air handler area (which we're using for the generator). Two guys lifted from the ground, and I pulled it into the compartment. I had to do it one-handed, so I could hold onto the bracing in that compartment, so I didn't come tumbling out.:)... and the cement I've been buying comes in 60 pound bags, that I've been carrying from the truck, around to the back of my house. 2 at a time. I did 3, but the flex of the bag made my fingers hurt by the time I got all the way around.:)
I can still feel the pain of moving my generators around. I have a 5Kw and a 5.5Kw. One is emergency for the house, and the other is for a bus/rv conversion.
It took 3 of us to lift one of them into the back of the bus (city bus, in the area that usually has a black panel over it on the back). If I recall correctly, it was about 150 pounds.
I don't know if their notation was wrong or not, but either they're running a.5Kw generator, or a 50Kw generator. I'd suspect the later. The more output, the heavier the generator part is going to be. The motor side is fairly light in comparison.
You've made a great argument for people riding motorcycles. The majority of cars on the road only have one person in them, and they're just commuting. Why do you need to drag a 4 seat 3000+ pound car around at 25mpg, when you can use a 1 (or 2) seat 600 pound motorcycle at 50mpg?
NORAD sees an object come down from that rocket, towards the United States.
NORAD aparently didn't advise the whitehouse that there was a launch, or that a potential first strike had just been launched.
It's not unreasonable to believe that it could have been a first strike. How many countries don't exactly like the US right now? How many have the budget to buy an old russian ICBM where it sits? Oh ya, quite a few. If they were to do such a thing, obviously Russia wouldn't be doing it, so we wouldn't (hopefully) return fire on Russia, but whoever the enemy is did just get a first strike in.
I'm glad we didn't nuke the planet over this. I have to wonder how many people were scrambling for their bunkers, while us civilians didn't hear anything about it until it made the news...
I would, but I don't write viruses.:) I don't code much for Windows, unless I really have to.
There's enough malware floating around as it is. It'll bugger up their computers enough that they'll ask me the how's and why's, and they get to watch me fix it.
Don't worry, that's coming soon. It just takes time for them to establish all the new rules.
They are already set up for it. One "terrorist" event, or even an "epidemic" gives the government authority to shut down all travel. All they'd have to say is "A passenger on an aircraft which passed through [insert hub city] was infected with [insert infectious disease]". The military in conjunction with law enforcement then stop you in your tracks.
You have to wonder what "terrorist" event is going to stop the upcoming election. The republican administration risks losing their majority, and there have already been hints that a democratic majority may begin a criminal investigation against his administration. Of course, with the proper "encouragement" (read bribes and promises), that won't happen.
> I always vote for the scumbag that offends me the least
That's sad.. Unfortunately, that's the only way to vote. Pick the lesser of the presented evils. It's no longer voting for the best man. It's voting for the least bad.
I was talking to someone about the Libertarian party a few days ago.
I mentioned a Sliders episode with the "Constitutional party". It was an interesting concept. I still believe that the constitution was written as the main set of rules that we are to run this country by. Manipulation of it is wrong.
I reviewed the constitution with a kid a while back. As we went down the list, I told him how each amendment had been thrown out the window. I gave up after a while, because I couldn't honestly say it was still the rules we play by.
Don't forget, emancipation of the slaves wasn't for the good of humanity. It was an economic step against the southern states. The northern states had "modern" industry. The southern states were primarily agricultural, who "needed" slavery to operate. But all the rich kids had them, including 10 of the first 16 presidents.
I'll agree that it was a good beginning for equal rights for all humans, but honestly it still isn't true. Not all humans are equal in most people's eyes. The current administration has us believing that those who live South of the United States are lesser humans who don't have the right to come here. We're still taught to hate people based on their ethnic background.
Despite my previous posting, don't give up that attitude.
America is suppose to be a huge set of checks and balances. The final one is the people. The government can make any decisions it wants to, but the people have the ultimate veto power.
When the day comes that the stormtroopers may be kicking in doors and taking civilians off to a vacation resort in Southeastern Cuba, or any of the shiny new detention facilities on military bases around America, don't stay home. Organize with other civilians, so you'll at least have a fighting chance.
I just wrote a story on this on freeinternetpress.com .
By controlling who can or can't leave the country, the government ensures their income base (taxes), as well as controlling what trained individuals can leave. If too many individuals with the proper knowledge go to another country who may or may not have bad intentions towards the United States, it could be devastating.
Think of, 100 nuclear weapons researchers end up in [insert axis of evil country] because the pay was right.
100 military officers with access to intelligence on US operations go to [insert axis of evil country].
What if every payphone sanitizer were to leave?:)
There are infrastructure concerns. What if a significiant number of doctors leave the US, because other countries are giving the better offer. "Come to our country, effectively doubling your pay, with access to all the equipment you'd ever need, and no risk of malpractice lawsuits. Treat the sick because they're sick, not because they can pay."
Or what if a good percentage of the good telco/internet technicians left the country. Oops, our communications backbone has failed, and there's no one to fix it.
You get the idea.
I don't think they're thinking that hard on it. The government just wants the control over the people, much like Soviet Russia and East Germany. Those borders opened, and the world didn't stop turning. I don't really know why they feel they need to set up all these old failed rules, even though we've seen they failed miserably.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently bought my house. Included in the closing papers was the land survey, which shows my property line, configuration of the outside of the house, fences, driveways, walkways, and even what the ground surface is (cement, grass, gravel).
What really threw me was when I went to get the insurance. All they asked me for was the address. They pulled up the floorplan for the house. It wasn't exactly the blueprints, but it did have an accurate description of the size and layout of every room in the house. They also knew how many feet it was to the nearest fire hydrant, crime and fire statistics for both the immediate neighborhood, and the general area.
I know there's lots of information available out there, but I didn't know any insurance agent had it immediately available.
I don't know how widespread this information is, but I suspect it's available in most of the major population centers around the US.
Photographs of most houses that were listed are already available through the MLS services. I don't know what their retention policy is though.
That sounds like a lot of force. And it's being generated by itself, with almost no wind. Hmmmm.
:)
But hey, who am I to say a crazy idea won't work. Not all that long ago, a guy had a bright idea to make a rock round, and then we had the wheel.
I saw a guy selling one for boats on Craigslist.
One answer. Stanley Meyer. He made some good press, and got good exposure, and even a patent for something that didn't quite work.
... well ... something. Will it revolutionize the world? Probably not. But hey, I may get my work run on /. when it at least does something.
:) It does look very cool though. It makes for a lovely conversation piece.
I'm kinda fond of his ideas, and I believe I can make something work resembling it, but far from basing it on anything him or his fans have done.
I've put some good time into playing with ideas. I've tried different frequencies and pulses, to the extent of having my computer run through an awful lot of combinations, so I could observe. I've also played with voltages from 1v to 30,000v, and even AC and DC. I even attempted to recreate the CF experements, but with my setup now, I haven't made the pretty glow.
I know some other companies are doing real products that have some level of success. I say some, because if someone was building something that REALLY worked effectively, I would think it would have a huge market by now. (leave the men in black stories out)
When I have some more time to play with it, I know I'll have something that will do
My current problem is that the unit leaks badly. The folks who fabricated the unit for me were given very specific instructions that it needed to be air tight. I assumed (oops) that they had done that part correctly. I finally got around to putting air pressure to it from my air compressor, and heard it blowing out all the seals. IF it ever works, I guess they won't be fabricating the housing for me.
I guess if I had a few connections, I could show it to the right folks, and get "investors" to throw money at it. I could probably live very comfortably on that money for several years, before I had to admit it doesn't really do anything.
Ask, and you shall receive.
t her/getForecast?query=New+Zealand
t her/getForecast?query=Wellington%2C+New+Zealand
The lowest humidity is:
http://www.weatherunderground.com/cgi-bin/findwea
Observed at: Dunedin Aerodrome Aws, New Zealand
Elevation: 3 ft / 1 m
Temperature: 78 F / 26 C
Humidity: 28%
Dew Point: 51 F / 10 C
Wind: 17 mph / 28 km/h / from the North
Wind Gust: -
Pressure: 29.65 in / 1004 hPa (Falling)
And for good measure, their capital is:
http://www.weatherunderground.com/cgi-bin/findwea
[Partly Cloudy]
68 F / 20 C Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 56%
Dew Point: 52 F / 11 C
Wind: 29 mph / 46 km/h / 12.9 m/s from the North
Wind Gust: 44 mph / 70 km/h / 19.5 m/s
Pressure: 30.01 in / 1016 hPa
I'm not much of a weather guy, but I've been watching statistics on weatherunderground.com for where I am lately. The dew point yesterday was 11F.
.000 .
:)
Right now, it's 48.3F, 36% relative humidity, and the dew point is 23F. I hope his device is dropping the pressure dramatically. I just used an online Gay-Lussac's law calculator, and it said the pressure would need to be dropped to 14.286 to reach dew point. That's assuming weatherunderground was accurate to
Does anyone happen to know what the pressure would be like on the low pressure side of a good airfoil?
I had designed something for a similar effect, and we had looked into your second and third issues. With my design, a windmill and solar panels would be running a generator, which would run a refrigerator style cooling system. That would cool the inside surface of a large vertical cylinder, where condensation would collect.
:)
What we managed to find out was this..
On item 2, it would have negligible effects on the ambient humidity. If you were storing all the collected water in a sealed environment (so it wouldn't evaporate), you still would never pull enough water out of the air to make a difference, even if you had acres of these units. The article gives the right idea, to use the collected water to irrigate fields and the like, which would immediately reintroduce the water back into the environment, where it would be allowed to evaporate normally.
On item 3, yes, it would still rain. It may rain more, as you're throwing the normal balance off a little bit, because you're moving the water around a little, and (hopefully) the increased plant growth will help to raise the normal humidity a little bit.
Both of those statements are theoretical.
When I get some time, an old refrigerator, and am bored, I plan on making one.
I'm not sure about the guy's idea though. It sounds like vaporware (pun intended)
From the article:
" The secret of Max's design is how his windmills, whirring away in the merest hint of a wind, cool the air as it passes by. Like many a great idea, it couldn't be simpler - or more obvious. But nobody thought of it before. "
When you stand in front of a fan, you feel cooler, because the air is moving, and the moisture on your skin evaporates, even if you feel dry. The air isn't any cooler on one side than the other. You may be moving cooler air into the area, but you're not magically transferring heat to nowhere.
An air conditioner moves heat. If you have a central air conditioner, in the summer, stand outside by the condenser side of your air conditioner (the big thing with a fan on it). You'll feel lots of heat blowing off it. That's heat moved from the inside, in the freon. Ahh, I knew those HVAC classes I took would come in handy someday.
All he's doing is spinning fans, probably on a very low friction hub, probably with a relatively large surface area. I've been completely unable to find any pictures of his device.
The article says they're looking for high dollar investors. If (IF) he has a prototype, it shouldn't be very hard to show some large companies under a very strict NDA, and someone will pay out the nose for it. Looking for investors with money, without showing them a product, or showing them a product under HIS conditions sounds like he has something to hide. I'd want to be able to take it apart, put it back together, and KNOW that there's nothing fishy about it.
I could make a very cool box with spinning fans on it, and water pouring out the tap. Of course, it would have a 10 gallon tank inside, and the fans would simply be there for effect.
Well, since Slashdot is a news site, it should follow at least some good writing practices. One of the things the author is suppose to do, is make the subject abundantly clear to the reader. Even HP should have been clarified. It could have been phrased as "Hardware manufacturer HP" or "Computer vendor HP".
But as we know, the editorial review process here doesn't exactly follow journalistic guidelines.
--- original artical ---
The forum thread goes back to last August and is still live. The latest post from an HP rep indicates that new firmware for the nx9420 should be available later this week in which the ability to switch on VT is enabled. It's not clear whether other HP products, in which VT was also disabled, will also get new firmware.
--- modified artical ---
An issue was uncovered in a Hewlett Packard (HP) message forum in August 2006, where several HP laptop owners found a key feature of their new Intel Core Duo chipset powered laptops, the Virtualization (VMX) or Virtuatualization Threading (VT), was disabled. This option, when enabled, allow for programs such as VMWare to take advantage of the new capabilities of the multi-core processors. This feature was noticable to Linux users, and will likely effect Microsoft Vista when it comes to market in the first quarter 2007.
Hehe.
Go stand immediately behind a city bus. Well, while it's not in traffic.
Mine is a GMC RTS. It's over 6' from the ground to the bottom of the air handler area (which we're using for the generator). Two guys lifted from the ground, and I pulled it into the compartment. I had to do it one-handed, so I could hold onto the bracing in that compartment, so I didn't come tumbling out.
So, what's wrong with eating raw meat? I always order my steak bloody, preferably still moving.
I can still feel the pain of moving my generators around. I have a 5Kw and a 5.5Kw. One is emergency for the house, and the other is for a bus/rv conversion.
It took 3 of us to lift one of them into the back of the bus (city bus, in the area that usually has a black panel over it on the back). If I recall correctly, it was about 150 pounds.
I don't know if their notation was wrong or not, but either they're running a
You've made a great argument for people riding motorcycles. The majority of cars on the road only have one person in them, and they're just commuting. Why do you need to drag a 4 seat 3000+ pound car around at 25mpg, when you can use a 1 (or 2) seat 600 pound motorcycle at 50mpg?
If a chunk of missile lands on my roof, and says UUCP, I'd think it was a first strike.
I didn't see the little details about NORAD already knowing.
Think about it in the context of an aircraft.
When an aircraft lands, it makes a nice controlled contact with the ground.
If it "hits" the ground, well.....
If the russian rocket landed in Wyoming, that would be something completely different.
So....
NORAD sees a rocket go up from Russia.
NORAD sees an object come down from that rocket, towards the United States.
NORAD aparently didn't advise the whitehouse that there was a launch, or that a potential first strike had just been launched.
It's not unreasonable to believe that it could have been a first strike. How many countries don't exactly like the US right now? How many have the budget to buy an old russian ICBM where it sits? Oh ya, quite a few. If they were to do such a thing, obviously Russia wouldn't be doing it, so we wouldn't (hopefully) return fire on Russia, but whoever the enemy is did just get a first strike in.
I'm glad we didn't nuke the planet over this. I have to wonder how many people were scrambling for their bunkers, while us civilians didn't hear anything about it until it made the news...
Americans don't like knowing the ugly truth of what their government does in their names.
Wasn't this done in a 'Highlander' movie, as well as 'The Matrix', both with great results?
I would, but I don't write viruses.
There's enough malware floating around as it is. It'll bugger up their computers enough that they'll ask me the how's and why's, and they get to watch me fix it.
Don't worry, that's coming soon. It just takes time for them to establish all the new rules.
They are already set up for it. One "terrorist" event, or even an "epidemic" gives the government authority to shut down all travel. All they'd have to say is "A passenger on an aircraft which passed through [insert hub city] was infected with [insert infectious disease]". The military in conjunction with law enforcement then stop you in your tracks.
You have to wonder what "terrorist" event is going to stop the upcoming election. The republican administration risks losing their majority, and there have already been hints that a democratic majority may begin a criminal investigation against his administration. Of course, with the proper "encouragement" (read bribes and promises), that won't happen.
In soviet america ....
oh...
> I always vote for the scumbag that offends me the least
That's sad.. Unfortunately, that's the only way to vote. Pick the lesser of the presented evils. It's no longer voting for the best man. It's voting for the least bad.
I was talking to someone about the Libertarian party a few days ago.
I mentioned a Sliders episode with the "Constitutional party". It was an interesting concept. I still believe that the constitution was written as the main set of rules that we are to run this country by. Manipulation of it is wrong.
I reviewed the constitution with a kid a while back. As we went down the list, I told him how each amendment had been thrown out the window. I gave up after a while, because I couldn't honestly say it was still the rules we play by.
Don't forget, emancipation of the slaves wasn't for the good of humanity. It was an economic step against the southern states. The northern states had "modern" industry. The southern states were primarily agricultural, who "needed" slavery to operate. But all the rich kids had them, including 10 of the first 16 presidents.
http://www.nas.com/~lopresti/ps.htm
I'll agree that it was a good beginning for equal rights for all humans, but honestly it still isn't true. Not all humans are equal in most people's eyes. The current administration has us believing that those who live South of the United States are lesser humans who don't have the right to come here. We're still taught to hate people based on their ethnic background.
Despite my previous posting, don't give up that attitude.
America is suppose to be a huge set of checks and balances. The final one is the people. The government can make any decisions it wants to, but the people have the ultimate veto power.
When the day comes that the stormtroopers may be kicking in doors and taking civilians off to a vacation resort in Southeastern Cuba, or any of the shiny new detention facilities on military bases around America, don't stay home. Organize with other civilians, so you'll at least have a fighting chance.
I just wrote a story on this on freeinternetpress.com .
By controlling who can or can't leave the country, the government ensures their income base (taxes), as well as controlling what trained individuals can leave. If too many individuals with the proper knowledge go to another country who may or may not have bad intentions towards the United States, it could be devastating.
Think of, 100 nuclear weapons researchers end up in [insert axis of evil country] because the pay was right.
100 military officers with access to intelligence on US operations go to [insert axis of evil country].
What if every payphone sanitizer were to leave?
There are infrastructure concerns. What if a significiant number of doctors leave the US, because other countries are giving the better offer. "Come to our country, effectively doubling your pay, with access to all the equipment you'd ever need, and no risk of malpractice lawsuits. Treat the sick because they're sick, not because they can pay."
Or what if a good percentage of the good telco/internet technicians left the country. Oops, our communications backbone has failed, and there's no one to fix it.
You get the idea.
I don't think they're thinking that hard on it. The government just wants the control over the people, much like Soviet Russia and East Germany. Those borders opened, and the world didn't stop turning. I don't really know why they feel they need to set up all these old failed rules, even though we've seen they failed miserably.