> I can install any damn software I want to using a.cab file that I can download on the internet....because, as you put it, it is...
> easily hackable and upgradeable
How is this any different than the iPhone? Hacking it takes seconds, at which point you can install anything you can download from the internet. I speak from experience. I had to unlock one for a friend, and now he's installed all sorts of stuff onto it. He's entirely non-technical.
> The HTC hardware, on the other hand, kicks total ass IMO
Having spent some time on the G1, I disagree. Nothing about it inspired me, especially the sliding action and keyboard. Fit the hand well, admittedly. Battery life was ass.
> If the iPhone were properly designed it shouldn't be possible to brick via just a software installation
I'd say the exact opposite is true. Who wants a platform that is so locked down you can't screw it up hacking it? Boooorring! It's precisely because you can brick it that Pwnage tool can exist, and I'd say the platform would be FAR less interesting if that were the case.
Wow, such an anti-technology skew. So out of place on/.
Don't get me wrong, the whole approval thing seems like something out of the dark ages to me. But seriously, the machine shouldn't be hackable? Yikes!
> There's no such thing as non-mathematical software
Which is great and all, but has absolutely nothing to do with the patent process.
Patentability has nothing to do with the implementation, and everything to do with the intent. If the intent of the program is to control a loom in a new way, that's (theoretically) patentable because the purpose of the program is not to solve a mathematical problem, but a real-world one. If the intent of my program is to run Newton's Method, it's not patentable, because the intent of the program is to solve a mathematical algorithm. It is the _intent_that_is_encoded_, not the form of the encoding, that is the only concern in terms of _theoretical_ patentability - there's other rules that govern whether or not you'll actually GET a patent.
The basic issue that the new caselaw concerns is the concept of "transformation" in a patent. The original intent of the system was to grant protect to novel devices, either improvements on existing concepts (disk brakes vs. drum), or to totally new devices. But then what is a "device"? Is a deck of cards a device? A new book? The law defined it as something that tranforms something. A machine for freeze-drying coffee to produce Nescafe transforms hot coffee into a powder, which can be re-constituted into something similar to the original. Something is actually "being done", and it's THAT that the patent covers, not the machine itself. You can invent a better freeze drying machine, and get a patent on it, but you'll still have to license the actual concept of freeze-drying coffee.
This is good, and worked for a long time. Then the CS wags came along. In the 1970s there were a couple of cases where it was argued that a program is literally a collection of instructions that transform one number into another. Thus every program is transformative, and patentable. Once that got into caselaw, then someone pointed out that that _purpose_ of the program is to run an algorithm, so why does it have to be in a program? Why not any process that does any processing? And thus we got into the mess we have today.
The new caselaw basically noted that something got lost in the 1970s rulings - that the transformation has to _produce_something_patentable_. So consider these cases:
1) I make a machine called the wingnut that produces gazzezas
- patentable, gazzezas are a new product 2) I make a machine called the gizifa that produces gazzezas
- patentable, but I'll need to license gazzezas, or wait for it's patent to run out. Additionally, someone else is free to make a different machine that makes gazzezas. 3) I make a machine that runs Newton's Method
- treated like (2), because - critically - the product is not patentable
In essence, all patents had to flow from (1). Basically, there had to be a product somewhere. Prior to Bilski, caselaw stated that programs are transforming inputs into outputs, so there is a "product". Oddly, (2) didn't really exist, because they noted that a program can run across a wide variety of machines, so the idea of a "specific machine" (or implementation) was difficult because patents on (1) were automatically so broad.
The judge in the Bilski case noted that while it is true that all algorithms are transformative, the patent in question failed to actually make a "product" that was patentable, like case (3). Risk hedging is not a product you can patent, so then the only patent you might be able to get would be like (2). So this business practice moved from (1) to (3) - or similar to (2). He then noted that the patent application itself stated that it could be run using any number of different methods, it couldn't be a (2), by definition. So the patent was invalid.
Bilski was about a business practice, which generally don't produce anything. So now it appears some enormous subset of these are invalid. But what about software?
DealerTrack shows that the same principal applies. The patent in question did not produce a patentable
> Redundancy in engineering is NOT proceeding on two similar projects at the same time.
This isn't engineering, this is aerospace. In this case they almost always build two designs and select one. For instance, the F-35 was selected from the X-32 and X-35.
In every other case I can think of, at least two designs are presented and one goes to metal. For Apollo, Nova and Saturn were both serious contenders, and the final decision was based on factory capacity, not technical issues. In the case of the Shuttle, North American and McD designs both went right up to the final decision, and Grumman was kicked out only in the late stages.
This all-eggs-in-one-basket approach is actually highly unusual for the aerospace industry, at least in terms of government funded projects. Consider that they funded both Delta and Atlas, precisely to ward off ending up with nothing if the one they selected came in too heavy - precisely what's happening with Constellation.
> NASA is *always* looking at *all* the options and the DIRECT people are just, simply, wrong;
Uhhh, ok.
> but because the mission requires a Saturn class or bigger vehicle
A vehicle that already exists in the majority, and the part that doesn't is much smaller than even Ares I . THAT'S the difference between DIRECT and Ares. Complaining about "their shit" and failing to mention this point is either bad politics or the height of stupidity.
The purpose of the new legislation is to clearly define what information is and is not covered by the need for a warrant. Done right, this is a Good Thing.
As the Minister pointed out, the police already have access to lots of information about you without the need for a warrant. This includes things like your phone number and address. Because this information is considered to be publicly available, the police can do reverse phone number lookups without a warrant. This does not allow them to tape your conversations, however.
The proposed law is identical in nature, allowing the police to find your name from the IP address. AND NOTHING ELSE. They cannot read your mail, they cannot look at your search patterns, they cannot sniff your traffic. Those require a warrant.
The situation seems perfectly analogous to the phone system, with the exception that we don't normally make big lists of IP addresses.
You don't own your phone number, the phone company does. They are free to sell it to anyone they want - including the people you don't want them to, like telemarketers. So if Bell owns your phone number and is free to do what they want with it, how is it that someone connecting using Bell Internet expects them not to do the same with the IP they gave you? They own it too.
And that's what the courts have decided, that the IP address you happen to be using is a routing code internal to the company that provides access, you have no control over it, and they can change it or give it away at any time. That being the case, they see no difference between IP's and telephone numbers, and applied the same expectation of privacy to both.
> Whether stealth was considered of secondary importance, or whether all the components were designed for stealth, is irrelevant.
Except that it's called a "Stealth Fighter", not a "jet bomber with some stealthy features". The implication is clear, and you're take seems widely off the mark.
> Northorp Grumman says their tests proved the stealth value of the aircraft
And NG didn't put engines in the thing. So it's basically worthless.
This article is utterly bogus. Not that National Geographic has ever been known for quality writing on highly technical topics.
The Ho 229 was built as it was specifically to meet the "1000-1000-1000" bomber contract. This called for an aircraft that could fly 1000 km at 1000 km/h while carrying a 1000 kg warload. And it had to be built of wood, because all of the aluminum, and metalworkers, were accounted for in current projects.
The only way to possibly meet the speed requirement was through jet engines. However, jet engines of the era were extremely inefficient, especially German ones where poor alloys limited exhaust temperatures in the turbine. So in order to get the range while keeping the speed, you needed to cut drag to an absolute minimum.
And that's why the 229 looks like it does. It lacks the profusion of surfaces that conventional designs had, and minimized wetted surface due to the almost non-existent fuselage. This thing is all wing, which means you're losing all the parasitic drag.
ANYTHING else, including these "stealth" features, were utterly secondary.
Moreover I have a very serious problem with the claims that this plane is stealthy. Compressor disks in the engines are an extremely effective radar mirror. This is why the F-117 has "blinds" over the inlets, or why the F-22 has a S-shaped intake system. As you can see in the pictures, in the 229 the compressor face is directly exposed to the front.
Sure, the CH radars were longwave and wouldn't have been good against this aircraft, but that would be true of any small jet of the era. They were extremely good against targets a few meters in size, like a propeller, but anything smaller would be difficult to see.
Claiming this plane was developed _as a stealth plane_ is like claiming the DC-3 was a swept-wing design. Accidental features do not indicate design intent.
DCMA is a four-letter word, and that does seem to effect a lot of people's thinking. There are definitely some very good provisions in the package. Others, not so good.
I think everyone agrees that the takedown system is a winner, for everyone involved. ISP's have been a bit easy to scare into believing the takedowns and not bothering to check if they're for real, but it seems that they're calming down now. I would be perfectly happy to see a similar provision in Canadian law.
On the other hand, there's the reverse-engineering issue. This is clearly a very bad idea, and from what I can see, unenforceable. Had this section been left out, I think everyone would consider DCMA as generally positive, but instead it generates massive hate. Sad really.
Every time there's an accident everyone starts blaming the autopilots and complaining that pilots "don't really fly any more". In the end, every one of these, EVERY ONE, turns out to have nothing to do with the autopilots.
None of these articles, including the one this/. points to, ever bother to mention the fact that pilots overriding their controls are the cause of many accidents. Remember AA587 in New York? 265 dead because of overuse of the rudder.
> Both Symbian and Android can do what iPhone does and even more.
And vice versa. The intersection is not the universal set.
> And developers can leverage the WHOLE underlying technology.
You don't know the same developers I do then.
> So the iPhone Store story is only a stupid buzz.
And 37 million installed base. It's the platform, stupid.
> I'm afraid of what will happen if Apple somehow prevails and becomes the Microsoft of the mobile OS market.
Why? Their stranglehold on the music player market seems like it's improved the entire market. Do you remember the suckage that people used to sell before the iPod got rolling?!
> 'all think usability is ornamentation when in reality it's the most important part of any device
Yeah, I'm still waiting for The Great Linux Desktop Takeover. After all, the only people that could possibly prefer anything over Linux are sheeple, right? And who cares about them?
I think you've touched on the real problem... the rate of change is so fast now that no one even notices. In Future Shock Toffler talked about how there are people that just can't deal with the rate of change of the 1960s, and they suffer from a form of disconnection similar to Culture Shock - but with no way to escape from it except drop out of society.
But those people have dropped out of society; they're in their 80s and 90s. Devices that my father looks at in bewilderment and refuses to even think about are instantly picked up by my daughter who never gives it a second though.
Progress is so rapid and all-encompassing that we just don't even think about it any more. People talk about the missing future of flying cars, telling us about it in articles they wrote on a computer and uploaded to the internet. *sigh*
Look, I didn't read this book, but if the capsule is even remotely accurate, I'm glad I didn't. The capsule claims that Corn tries to equate the cities of 100 years ago with today's and suggest that cars didn't _really_ change anything for the better, just changed which pile of crap we had.
I have lots of photographs of Toronto from the turn of the last century. For instance, the photos of people getting rid of their garbage by dropping it off at the dump - the end of a pier on Lake Ontario. Cities, in spite of being much smaller than they are and thus having to deal with a much smaller problem, were smelly, dirty, disease ridden dumps.
If anyone thinks the city of today, even with all of their very real problems, is anything even _remotely_ like the city of 100 years ago, they're idiots.
You get this all the time in anti-progress screeds, the "well we traded one problem for another", and then they just leave that hanging, like one problem is exactly the same as another. As Azimov noted, however, this ignores any change in quality. For instance, people used to think the world was flat like a pizza, then they thought it was a perfect sphere. They were wrong too, but, and this is the critical point, a sphere is "more right" than a pizza. THAT is how science works, approaching the asymptote.
And that's what technology is doing to. Yeah, cars running on gas suck, but only because we have three times the population and everyone's got one. If the world population was still only 1 billion and 99.9% of them could not afford one, then cars would be see as the miraculous inventions they said they were going to be. It took 50 years before anyone realized they might even have downsides, and another 50 before we've started getting seriously about fixing them. That's because of how amazingly great they are, not the other way around! And just for the record, I don't own a car, I bike to work or ride the subway.
I find it more than a little ironic that before this item became news all the Pre supporters were saying iTunes was craptastic and claiming the lack of syncing on the Pre as a feature. Everything's in "the cloud", so who needs desktop tethering?
Ahhh, but now that it syncs with iTunes, suddenly Palm is super-genius for supporting and iTunes support is [i]obviously[/i] a major selling point.
Whatever. When Apple blocks it and it doesn't sync, I'm sure syncing will suddenly not be important again.
> The fission plant per WEEK built and the acreage of solar, wind and bio per DAY built would be astronomical
To produce ALL the power used in the US now, including all electricity, heating and transportation energy use, requires a patch of solar panels in the southwest desert about 170,000 km^2 assuming 8% efficiency (which is low). That's about the same as the paved area of the USA (160,000 km^2), and about 1/3rd of the desert area.
Assuming the average road lasts 20 years before it needs re-paving (which seems very low to this Torontonian), 5% of the existing road surface has to be replaced every year. Solar panels also have a 20 year life span, or at least they'll be producing 85% power at that point. So the total effort needed to build and maintain ALL of the power in the USA using existing solar technology is the same amount of effort it that we are already using to maintain the road system.
They absolutely do NOT. Turbines are probably the most reliable devices ever invented, in terms of energy handling to maintenance required.
There are jet engines that run for 10,000 hours before needing *routine* maintenance, but generate the power equivalent to hundreds of car engines. 10,000 hours is the equivalent of 600,000 miles at cruising. The total maintenance load of hundreds of engines over 600,000 miles is enormous.
No, but they were designed FROM reactors that did so (the RBMK being the cannonical example). If we did not have an arms race that required the large-scale production of Pu, then we would have had any number of different paths to take. As others have pointed out, the thorium path has numerous advantages.
Basically if we set out from the start to make civilian nuclear energy, we wouldn't have started with U.
Slashdot Mirror
> What Apple is doing is eroding the good will they had from the technical consumers.
Well maybe. I think the erosion of developer goodwill is both more dramatic and more worrying.
Maury
> HTC phones have a much lower failure rates then Apple's.
Citation needed.
Maury
> I can install any damn software I want to using a .cab file that I can download on the internet. ...because, as you put it, it is...
> easily hackable and upgradeable
How is this any different than the iPhone? Hacking it takes seconds, at which point you can install anything you can download from the internet. I speak from experience. I had to unlock one for a friend, and now he's installed all sorts of stuff onto it. He's entirely non-technical.
> The HTC hardware, on the other hand, kicks total ass IMO
Having spent some time on the G1, I disagree. Nothing about it inspired me, especially the sliding action and keyboard. Fit the hand well, admittedly. Battery life was ass.
Maury
> No matter how badly the OS gets broken, I can always use that backup bootloader to re-flash and start over.
So in other words, its perfectly possible to brick it with software. You just have a handy backup available to un-brick it when you do. Right?
Just like the iPhone. What's this you were saying about "proper design"?
Maury
> So if you can explain what's wrong with the code
It's reject-able, duh.
What, you think the proletariat gets to know why? Shut up! Eat your turnip soup!
Maury
> If the iPhone were properly designed it shouldn't be possible to brick via just a software installation
I'd say the exact opposite is true. Who wants a platform that is so locked down you can't screw it up hacking it? Boooorring! It's precisely because you can brick it that Pwnage tool can exist, and I'd say the platform would be FAR less interesting if that were the case.
Wow, such an anti-technology skew. So out of place on /.
Don't get me wrong, the whole approval thing seems like something out of the dark ages to me. But seriously, the machine shouldn't be hackable? Yikes!
Maury
> There's no such thing as non-mathematical software
Which is great and all, but has absolutely nothing to do with the patent process.
Patentability has nothing to do with the implementation, and everything to do with the intent. If the intent of the program is to control a loom in a new way, that's (theoretically) patentable because the purpose of the program is not to solve a mathematical problem, but a real-world one. If the intent of my program is to run Newton's Method, it's not patentable, because the intent of the program is to solve a mathematical algorithm. It is the _intent_that_is_encoded_, not the form of the encoding, that is the only concern in terms of _theoretical_ patentability - there's other rules that govern whether or not you'll actually GET a patent.
The basic issue that the new caselaw concerns is the concept of "transformation" in a patent. The original intent of the system was to grant protect to novel devices, either improvements on existing concepts (disk brakes vs. drum), or to totally new devices. But then what is a "device"? Is a deck of cards a device? A new book? The law defined it as something that tranforms something. A machine for freeze-drying coffee to produce Nescafe transforms hot coffee into a powder, which can be re-constituted into something similar to the original. Something is actually "being done", and it's THAT that the patent covers, not the machine itself. You can invent a better freeze drying machine, and get a patent on it, but you'll still have to license the actual concept of freeze-drying coffee.
This is good, and worked for a long time. Then the CS wags came along. In the 1970s there were a couple of cases where it was argued that a program is literally a collection of instructions that transform one number into another. Thus every program is transformative, and patentable. Once that got into caselaw, then someone pointed out that that _purpose_ of the program is to run an algorithm, so why does it have to be in a program? Why not any process that does any processing? And thus we got into the mess we have today.
The new caselaw basically noted that something got lost in the 1970s rulings - that the transformation has to _produce_something_patentable_. So consider these cases:
1) I make a machine called the wingnut that produces gazzezas
- patentable, gazzezas are a new product
2) I make a machine called the gizifa that produces gazzezas
- patentable, but I'll need to license gazzezas, or wait for it's patent to run out. Additionally, someone else is free to make a different machine that makes gazzezas.
3) I make a machine that runs Newton's Method
- treated like (2), because - critically - the product is not patentable
In essence, all patents had to flow from (1). Basically, there had to be a product somewhere. Prior to Bilski, caselaw stated that programs are transforming inputs into outputs, so there is a "product". Oddly, (2) didn't really exist, because they noted that a program can run across a wide variety of machines, so the idea of a "specific machine" (or implementation) was difficult because patents on (1) were automatically so broad.
The judge in the Bilski case noted that while it is true that all algorithms are transformative, the patent in question failed to actually make a "product" that was patentable, like case (3). Risk hedging is not a product you can patent, so then the only patent you might be able to get would be like (2). So this business practice moved from (1) to (3) - or similar to (2). He then noted that the patent application itself stated that it could be run using any number of different methods, it couldn't be a (2), by definition. So the patent was invalid.
Bilski was about a business practice, which generally don't produce anything. So now it appears some enormous subset of these are invalid. But what about software?
DealerTrack shows that the same principal applies. The patent in question did not produce a patentable
> Redundancy in engineering is NOT proceeding on two similar projects at the same time.
This isn't engineering, this is aerospace. In this case they almost always build two designs and select one. For instance, the F-35 was selected from the X-32 and X-35.
In every other case I can think of, at least two designs are presented and one goes to metal. For Apollo, Nova and Saturn were both serious contenders, and the final decision was based on factory capacity, not technical issues. In the case of the Shuttle, North American and McD designs both went right up to the final decision, and Grumman was kicked out only in the late stages.
This all-eggs-in-one-basket approach is actually highly unusual for the aerospace industry, at least in terms of government funded projects. Consider that they funded both Delta and Atlas, precisely to ward off ending up with nothing if the one they selected came in too heavy - precisely what's happening with Constellation.
Maury
> NASA is *always* looking at *all* the options and the DIRECT people are just, simply, wrong;
Uhhh, ok.
> but because the mission requires a Saturn class or bigger vehicle
A vehicle that already exists in the majority, and the part that doesn't is much smaller than even Ares I . THAT'S the difference between DIRECT and Ares. Complaining about "their shit" and failing to mention this point is either bad politics or the height of stupidity.
Maury
The purpose of the new legislation is to clearly define what information is and is not covered by the need for a warrant. Done right, this is a Good Thing.
As the Minister pointed out, the police already have access to lots of information about you without the need for a warrant. This includes things like your phone number and address. Because this information is considered to be publicly available, the police can do reverse phone number lookups without a warrant. This does not allow them to tape your conversations, however.
The proposed law is identical in nature, allowing the police to find your name from the IP address. AND NOTHING ELSE. They cannot read your mail, they cannot look at your search patterns, they cannot sniff your traffic. Those require a warrant.
The situation seems perfectly analogous to the phone system, with the exception that we don't normally make big lists of IP addresses.
You don't own your phone number, the phone company does. They are free to sell it to anyone they want - including the people you don't want them to, like telemarketers. So if Bell owns your phone number and is free to do what they want with it, how is it that someone connecting using Bell Internet expects them not to do the same with the IP they gave you? They own it too.
And that's what the courts have decided, that the IP address you happen to be using is a routing code internal to the company that provides access, you have no control over it, and they can change it or give it away at any time. That being the case, they see no difference between IP's and telephone numbers, and applied the same expectation of privacy to both.
Maury
I hope no one accuses me of blogrolling or something, but:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/space-power/
> Whether stealth was considered of secondary importance, or whether all the components were designed for stealth, is irrelevant.
Except that it's called a "Stealth Fighter", not a "jet bomber with some stealthy features". The implication is clear, and you're take seems widely off the mark.
> Northorp Grumman says their tests proved the stealth value of the aircraft
And NG didn't put engines in the thing. So it's basically worthless.
Maury
This article is utterly bogus. Not that National Geographic has ever been known for quality writing on highly technical topics.
The Ho 229 was built as it was specifically to meet the "1000-1000-1000" bomber contract. This called for an aircraft that could fly 1000 km at 1000 km/h while carrying a 1000 kg warload. And it had to be built of wood, because all of the aluminum, and metalworkers, were accounted for in current projects.
The only way to possibly meet the speed requirement was through jet engines. However, jet engines of the era were extremely inefficient, especially German ones where poor alloys limited exhaust temperatures in the turbine. So in order to get the range while keeping the speed, you needed to cut drag to an absolute minimum.
And that's why the 229 looks like it does. It lacks the profusion of surfaces that conventional designs had, and minimized wetted surface due to the almost non-existent fuselage. This thing is all wing, which means you're losing all the parasitic drag.
ANYTHING else, including these "stealth" features, were utterly secondary.
Moreover I have a very serious problem with the claims that this plane is stealthy. Compressor disks in the engines are an extremely effective radar mirror. This is why the F-117 has "blinds" over the inlets, or why the F-22 has a S-shaped intake system. As you can see in the pictures, in the 229 the compressor face is directly exposed to the front.
Sure, the CH radars were longwave and wouldn't have been good against this aircraft, but that would be true of any small jet of the era. They were extremely good against targets a few meters in size, like a propeller, but anything smaller would be difficult to see.
Claiming this plane was developed _as a stealth plane_ is like claiming the DC-3 was a swept-wing design. Accidental features do not indicate design intent.
Maury
DCMA is a four-letter word, and that does seem to effect a lot of people's thinking. There are definitely some very good provisions in the package. Others, not so good.
I think everyone agrees that the takedown system is a winner, for everyone involved. ISP's have been a bit easy to scare into believing the takedowns and not bothering to check if they're for real, but it seems that they're calming down now. I would be perfectly happy to see a similar provision in Canadian law.
On the other hand, there's the reverse-engineering issue. This is clearly a very bad idea, and from what I can see, unenforceable. Had this section been left out, I think everyone would consider DCMA as generally positive, but instead it generates massive hate. Sad really.
Maury
Run, DMC, run!
Every time there's an accident everyone starts blaming the autopilots and complaining that pilots "don't really fly any more". In the end, every one of these, EVERY ONE, turns out to have nothing to do with the autopilots.
None of these articles, including the one this /. points to, ever bother to mention the fact that pilots overriding their controls are the cause of many accidents. Remember AA587 in New York? 265 dead because of overuse of the rudder.
Maury
> Both Symbian and Android can do what iPhone does and even more.
And vice versa. The intersection is not the universal set.
> And developers can leverage the WHOLE underlying technology.
You don't know the same developers I do then.
> So the iPhone Store story is only a stupid buzz.
And 37 million installed base. It's the platform, stupid.
> I'm afraid of what will happen if Apple somehow prevails and becomes the Microsoft of the mobile OS market.
Why? Their stranglehold on the music player market seems like it's improved the entire market. Do you remember the suckage that people used to sell before the iPod got rolling?!
Maury
> The problem being, the average person doesn't enjoy using them and half those features are so poorly implemented they are just painful to use.
My Motorola phone had a browser. I tried to use it once.
Once.
Maury
> 'all think usability is ornamentation when in reality it's the most important part of any device
Yeah, I'm still waiting for The Great Linux Desktop Takeover. After all, the only people that could possibly prefer anything over Linux are sheeple, right? And who cares about them?
Maury
I think you've touched on the real problem... the rate of change is so fast now that no one even notices. In Future Shock Toffler talked about how there are people that just can't deal with the rate of change of the 1960s, and they suffer from a form of disconnection similar to Culture Shock - but with no way to escape from it except drop out of society.
But those people have dropped out of society; they're in their 80s and 90s. Devices that my father looks at in bewilderment and refuses to even think about are instantly picked up by my daughter who never gives it a second though.
Progress is so rapid and all-encompassing that we just don't even think about it any more. People talk about the missing future of flying cars, telling us about it in articles they wrote on a computer and uploaded to the internet. *sigh*
Look, I didn't read this book, but if the capsule is even remotely accurate, I'm glad I didn't. The capsule claims that Corn tries to equate the cities of 100 years ago with today's and suggest that cars didn't _really_ change anything for the better, just changed which pile of crap we had.
I have lots of photographs of Toronto from the turn of the last century. For instance, the photos of people getting rid of their garbage by dropping it off at the dump - the end of a pier on Lake Ontario. Cities, in spite of being much smaller than they are and thus having to deal with a much smaller problem, were smelly, dirty, disease ridden dumps.
If anyone thinks the city of today, even with all of their very real problems, is anything even _remotely_ like the city of 100 years ago, they're idiots.
You get this all the time in anti-progress screeds, the "well we traded one problem for another", and then they just leave that hanging, like one problem is exactly the same as another. As Azimov noted, however, this ignores any change in quality. For instance, people used to think the world was flat like a pizza, then they thought it was a perfect sphere. They were wrong too, but, and this is the critical point, a sphere is "more right" than a pizza. THAT is how science works, approaching the asymptote.
And that's what technology is doing to. Yeah, cars running on gas suck, but only because we have three times the population and everyone's got one. If the world population was still only 1 billion and 99.9% of them could not afford one, then cars would be see as the miraculous inventions they said they were going to be. It took 50 years before anyone realized they might even have downsides, and another 50 before we've started getting seriously about fixing them. That's because of how amazingly great they are, not the other way around! And just for the record, I don't own a car, I bike to work or ride the subway.
Maury
I find it more than a little ironic that before this item became news all the Pre supporters were saying iTunes was craptastic and claiming the lack of syncing on the Pre as a feature. Everything's in "the cloud", so who needs desktop tethering?
Ahhh, but now that it syncs with iTunes, suddenly Palm is super-genius for supporting and iTunes support is [i]obviously[/i] a major selling point.
Whatever. When Apple blocks it and it doesn't sync, I'm sure syncing will suddenly not be important again.
> The fission plant per WEEK built and the acreage of solar, wind and bio per DAY built would be astronomical
To produce ALL the power used in the US now, including all electricity, heating and transportation energy use, requires a patch of solar panels in the southwest desert about 170,000 km^2 assuming 8% efficiency (which is low). That's about the same as the paved area of the USA (160,000 km^2), and about 1/3rd of the desert area.
Assuming the average road lasts 20 years before it needs re-paving (which seems very low to this Torontonian), 5% of the existing road surface has to be replaced every year. Solar panels also have a 20 year life span, or at least they'll be producing 85% power at that point. So the total effort needed to build and maintain ALL of the power in the USA using existing solar technology is the same amount of effort it that we are already using to maintain the road system.
It's big, but not "astronomical".
Maury
> a turbine requires a lot of manteinance.
They absolutely do NOT. Turbines are probably the most reliable devices ever invented, in terms of energy handling to maintenance required.
There are jet engines that run for 10,000 hours before needing *routine* maintenance, but generate the power equivalent to hundreds of car engines. 10,000 hours is the equivalent of 600,000 miles at cruising. The total maintenance load of hundreds of engines over 600,000 miles is enormous.
Maury
> PWRs weren't designed to produce Pu
No, but they were designed FROM reactors that did so (the RBMK being the cannonical example). If we did not have an arms race that required the large-scale production of Pu, then we would have had any number of different paths to take. As others have pointed out, the thorium path has numerous advantages.
Basically if we set out from the start to make civilian nuclear energy, we wouldn't have started with U.
Maury