Couldn't have said it better myself. We artificially genetically modify not only plants, but animals too - and we've been doing it for as long as animals have been domesticated, same as food, and many species characteristics that we take for granted are the result.
More GM food, cheaper food, less people starving, less PESTICIDES, which should scare the shit out of you (ever work on a farm? You'd be shocked to see some of the precautions you need to take.. "DANGER: NERVE TOXIN" etc.. Genetically modified foods have major advantages over spraying "natural" crops with chemicals that you can't even pronounce. Betcha didn't know that people for decades used lead to turn oranges a nice color.. ahhh, the ignorant masses.
There's a reason that the people that discovered the DNA molecule got the Nobel prize. (name escapes me at the moment, and I'm too lazy to look). But before you all speak completely out of your asses, do you know how special DNA is? Do you know why DNA is shaped the WAY it is? It is an entirely valid and reasonable hypothesis that ALL life capable of self-reproduction makes use of DNA because of some very interesting properties that come about because of it's structure - and that those properties are the result of the component elements, and one could assume that there's nothing special about those elements.
PLEASE could you look at the science before saying stupid things like "microbe - I think it would be very unlikely that a true ET would just happen to be DNA - though it's possible". You sound like a moron to anyone with half a clue.
While I am not a genetist (can I even spell it?), my dad IS a Ph.D genetist, and we've had this discussion before, and it's EXTREMELY likely that DNA is the only mechanism in organic chemistry - the chemistry of life - that could sustain any advanced lifeforms, ET bacteria included. Viruses are a special case, becuase you could argue they're not really "alive", per se. Chemistry doesn't change anywhere in the universe, as it's all based on the same physical principles that apply to non-nuclear reactions.
Sorry, haven't had my coffee yet, and this stuff is important.
While you may be correct if you said this about paper, I am certain that you are dead wrong about aluminum. The energy cost of reducing aluminum to metal is enormous, and the scrap price of aluminum (free market!) proves conclusively that it's cheaper to reclaim than to refine.
You forget that you need to collect the can - factor in the transportation, storage, and processing, and in many cases, it's cheaper to make a new can. That's why you have to pay a deposit - there isn't enough of an economic incentive to recover the can (unless you're in some situtations, like a statium, or large urban center. I speak from a Canadian perspective, we have REALLY low population density, so transportation costs are often higher than the value of what you're recycling!).
I won't get into paper. Want to recycle paper? Burn it and sprinkle the ashes around a tree that you just planted.
My point, of course, is that it's not the can, bottle, paper, whatever. It's the total energy consumption in the process.
I bring this point up at least once a month here, so I'll have to get some numbers next time I'm visiting the university. I'm pretty sure I'm right on the alumnium can in my situtation, but I'm not sure about averages.
The second poster was close when he said that thermodynamics was the problem, but wrong about the bit on entropy (although close). While recycling initiatives are "Feel good", they do not take into account that in order to do anything, you need energy in some form or another, and there are finite amounts in economically viable forms. (although, "finite" is arbitrary, homo sapiens will have long been gone before earth loses all it's resources. When resources get scarce, we'll just start killing each other). How many days do you think it'd be before marines would be dumping sand outta their boots if the oil got cut off?
You can recycle all you want, but you still need energy to do it. Expending energy transfers heat. Useful heat becomes low quality heat (waste) that heats up the planet. This is the problem (long-term).
There's HORDES of metal here on earth. More than we know what to do with. It's cheaper to mine more aluminum and it's BETTER for the environment as mining more aluminum uses LESS energy than the process of recycling the can, which, of course, is the problem - the energy consumption.
The only advantage of mining space is so that you can build things in space, not return stuff to earth. There's more here than we know what to do with. By building things in space we can develop a commercial interest and economy in space, and by doing that, we'll have someplace to live when, not if, when, earth becomes inhospitable to man.
Read some history. We're never going to be feel good happy animals. We kill each other over resources, same as any other mammal. The over used quote "it is in our nature to destroy ourselves" is dead, bang on. The sooner we accept that and work with it, the sooner we can stop living in denial and plan for things.
Don't believe me? Fine.. but we have much bigger problems to worry about than the availablility of raw materials like metals (check current futures prices for an idea, they're cheap, and plentiful).
Come on people, what's all the bitching and moaning about? I'm reminded of the mozila threads where people bitch about it sucking. Guess what? Linux 1.0.13 sucked pretty big balls too. You could have argued then "Why use that crappy OS when I can get Solaris X86 or Sco?". Bagging on people for trying something new with their time and equipment is not cool, guys.
So what if YOU don't like it. So what if YOU have a hard time navigating 3D space. It's not like YOU spent any money on the project, or anyone is making YOU try it out. Are you worried people will stop developing new versions of command line stuff for you? Or are you worried you might have to change? Or worse still, someone might make a tool that takes the magic out of shell scripts and prompts? If that's your preference, go ahead! Hell, nobody's arguing those are inferior. They're probably using vim, er, emacs, er.. to create the thing.. right?
Maybe I'm being a little too harsh, but don't bag on people just because you might not find what they're doing immediately useful (a la Mozilla). Right now, the 3D interface isn't the best. But in 5 years if we've all got 400DPI screens and super-high res / refresh cards, that might change - and from what I've read on the site, that's what they're looking forward to. If anyone actually READ what they're trying to do, it isn't just a file manager, it's changing the interface completely from the system adminstration to program execution level. Is it useful on todays technology? You can argue that. What about if some brilliant upstart came up with a $2k 1m^3 holographic display because of this? Then would it be useful?
People fear change.. but don't bag on these guys for doing something IMHO extremely cool and ambitious.
Don't worry about it. I use a notebook all the time in my car, and I'm in New Brunswick, Canada - bitchin cold in winter. The main thing is that the CPU and drive kick up enough heat to keep themselves in operating range. Just watch for condensation when you move it between temperature extremes. The LCD gets slow though when it gets really cold.. Although, I'm assuming that one of the advantages of this device is that you take it with you, preventing a lengthy cold spell.
The really big thing is that hopefully this will put some downward pressure on the stratospheric empeg prices, because those look really sweet, they're just stupid expensive right now (on par with a notebook pc just for mp3s in the car, sans nice interface). Nevermind getting one to work with your existing head unit is a bitch, as they don't play CDs.
Personally, ymmv, but I just use my notebook to fill up my rio, and then use the rio most of the time for short trips - I live in front of a computer, so putting new stuff on the rio is easy, and I have automated scripts to fill it with talk radio & news in the morning before I wake up. If I'm booking for a long trip, I can just connect a notebook directly. The rio has the advantage of not risking damage under, uh, "spirited" driving conditions:). Nor do I have to worry about leaving it in the dash and attracting attention from the criminal element.
I don't want the government recording my DNA. That's just a bad scene waiting to happen. Even if it's only a hash code generated from my DNA, it's just not cool. Canada leads the way here, although I think the USA is now running DNA databases of criminals.
A far better idea for preventing identity theft is through the use of a smart card system and strong encryption (2048+ bits). You could generate a public/private key pair, of which only the individual knows the key - and the key is assigned at birth or issue date, with no information about the password recorded at the goverment site (maybe a backup of the smart card in a secure location). That way, you can present the public key for people like credit reporting agencies, who can issue you financial information encrypted with it - without that smart card + password, you're SOL if you want to steal someone's identity.
Another problem with using DNA is that more criminals are going to get wise to law enforcement becoming STUPIDLY dependant on DNA for investigations. Obviously the criminal element isn't too bright - what if you went and got some hair - ever get your hair cut at a barbers? Or blood - ever donate? Or any other combination of fluids / skin whatever - we're talking MINUTE quantities - and use it to plant false "evidence" for someone. Much akin to hiding an ounce of pot in someone's car who's going over the border and "calling ahead", that person is fscked.
Oh well. I'm a cynic, DNA databases are the future, maybe I should start writing DNA law enforcement software, eh.:)
I have a real old P233 Sony 505 that I love.. it's doing to be due for replacement in a couple months, and I was really thinking about one of the new vaio's when they have the crusoe chip (battery life in linux stinks). But oh no! These things look aweful!
My current notebook is the only piece of computer gadgetry I've had WOMEN come up to me and say how cool it was. Let alone everyone else. I just hope that they don't make this horrible mistake with the C1 series that I'm interested in.. *cringe*
Oh, come ON people. It's EXTEREMELY unlikely there's life on mars right now. If we find it, we'll find it long before or maybe even BECAUSE of these efforts making exploration of mars _possible_. You're smoking moon rocks if you think that a couple robot probes that can MAYBE test a few dozen or hundred individual samples will be able to make ANY conclusive decision. You'd need a research base there and a LOT of money and effort to determine if life is there, but the MUCH more interesting question in my mind is WAS there ever life there, WAS it ever intelligent, and DID it fertilize a once inhospitable earth?
Rant mode on; Donning flame retardant jacket:
That said; Jesus H. Christ, what do you think terraforming mars is about? Worrying about stepping on some freaking bacteria? You kill bazillions of life forms when you step in the shower, or sneeze on a wall. Terraforming mars is about making it hosipitable for the Human Race to move someplace else and make another home; To help guarantee we won't be extincted in case something happens to earth - Have people forgotten - especially you americans - that your own citizens, under the employ of the US Department of Defense, EVERY DAY, practice the procedures that are in place for the exinction of ALL life on this planet? And that their counterparts in Russia and China do the SAME THING? And you can tell me with a straight face you're worried about fucking up a dead planet, because you MIGHT step on something? Oh my _GOD_.
Are you going to cry when we set up a moon base, too? We're ruining a static environment! There might be moon creater fuzzy creatures!
If we're going to survive, we need to realize a concequence of their being 6 BILLION people on this planet is that people are EXTRAORDINARILY good at F*CKING SHIT UP. Unless you're going to exterminate a LOT of people REAL fast, we're INEVITABLY going to COMPLETELY ruin earth if we haven't already and their isn't JACK that ANYONE can do about it. Are you going to give up driving? Electricity? Are you not going to have any children? Are you going to stop eating anything but gruel until you die? HELL no. Neither is ANYONE else, and the 5.5 billion people on the planet that DON'T live a privilged existance like us in the west are SURE AS HELL going to go throught THEIR industrial revolutions. Then comes THEIR contribution to global warming. Not so fun when you're the one that's going to be sucking in CO2 from China, eh?
It's time we wake up and realize what human civilization means; We need to wake up and accept that there's little we can do about environmental impacts; We can slow the damage, but it's not going to be stopped anytime soon; And that YES, MAYBE, it's a damn good idea to start looking for a new place to live and expand to, and that YES, OF COURSE, we're going to COMPLETELY ruin whereever we move, and that's a natural course of human development, unless of course you're a hypocrite who doesn't think that the 90% of the earth's population has the same right to drive a SUV or Sports Car that YOU and I do.
Give me a break. I want my offspring and their offspring to a) have freedom of choice and b) have some quality of life. That means we're going to need to start looking for more resources. And I didn't even TALK about the extreme likelyhood that man himself will obliterate earth - remember, you practice it every day, and the United States of America and Russia both have enough nuclear weapons to exterminate ALL life on earth. My own country, Canada, is a leading researcher into Biological and Chemical weapons research, as is the USA - and these things are the nastiest inventions that you will ever hear about. Go read what a dose of a modern nerve gas agent will do to a child. Hitler invented that technology with Vx gas. We perfected it.
Damn, that felt good. I needed to vent after watching the puppets dance on that debate. They never talked about any of that; Or the billions and billions they spend on the War on Drugs. Why not build universities instead of prisions, shmucks. Do you know what percentage of the prision population has a college degree? Hint: Your initial hunch is right.
I can't believe that the US congress is buying the bill of goods the tech industry is feeding them. H1-B visas are a liscence to import economic slaves - specifically for their natural talent - sounds a little like prostitution, no?
Six years is a _long_ time in the technical fields. These people can't advance very far in their careers, because after the six years are up, adios, nice seein' ya, don't let the door hit you on the ass, etc.
Since this is what, the third? time the limits were increased, it would be apparant to ME that this isn't such a temporary demand, and your American universities are failing to get enough trained, compentent people working. (This of course probably isn't the case, as I'm sure many of you will be posting). Since the demand is no longer temporary, you have a serious problem. Would it not make more sense then given this scenario to offer qualified Engineers / CS grads whatever a green card, and allow them to become permanant citizens? Then you'll solve this "temporary" problem for good. Uh oh! You might find those temporary workers demanding more.. and you can't flush 'em down the toilet any more and blame the big bad INS. Damn.
There's another interesting arguement here too. If the demand is temporary, does that mean that all these companies are projecting a massive downturn in their own industries? (After all, they're only needing more people for 6 years). Perhaps they should adjust their stock prospectii and inform their investors of dire roads ahead - we're not going to need 200,000 workers in 6 years!
These arguements are, of course, bunk. We know why they want more H1-B's - they're cheap labour who probably don't understand their rights, regardless of quality, because companies don't want to pay for native talent. Call a spade a spade, fellows.
For the record: I'm Canadian, and can get a much more perferable visa, a TN-1 - which is a true temporary visa - if I was interested in temporary work, which I'm not. One year sounds a lot more temporary than 6 - enough time to get comfortable, start a family, and get the shaft.
You want to come to North America and you're skilled? You can get permanant residency in Canada a lot easier, and some would argue it's a lot nicer place to live.
to clean up the planet we are on now, has anyone ever thought that it might not be possible?
This just plain isn't going to happen in a "Free" society (economic freedom, anyhow). Not unless you and everyone you know are willing to give up gas-guzzlin pollutin SUVs (the days of a fuel cell SUV are a long, long, long way off), willing to give up consuming massive amounts of food, willing to give up massive water and power consumption, and in short, give up much of the luxuries that western society is based on! And let's not forget that India and China are working as fast as they can to go through THEIR industrial revolutions and get to where we are as soon as possible. Short of imposing draconian restrictions on freedom (ain't gunna happen), space research is the only alternative to the human race being extincted. NO, we're not going to launch 6 billion people into orbit, but you don't need that for a self sustaining colony, either.
Now, "our planet is dying." Yes, our planet is getting hotter. (Hell, it was 92 degrees here yesterday, and we're in October. Huh?) Is this man, or is this the natural cycle of events? Is this Mother Nature wreaking her revenge on those who would try to control her?
No, you CANNOT conclusively say our planet is doing anything that it hasn't in the past. Earth has ALWAYS been changing; It has violent tectonic cycles that we don't experience over our civilization's timeframes, would you blame a catastrophic quake in california on "Earth getting even", no, of course not, that's stupid. Earth was a LOT hotter a dozens of millenia ago; It will be hotter or maybe even colder in the future. WE HAVE NO ATMOSPHERIC MODEL, so we can't tell. By the time it matters, we'll be dead, and our kids will be, and likely, THEIR kids will be. If we're not doing something more productive by then, well, I'll be dust anyhow. Until then I'll work to improve technology in any way I can, and maybe it'll make a difference.
You can come up with ideas and examples all day long, but the basic fact is that man doesn't live long enough to have a clear view of what's happening to the Earth, and why. The ozone hole is even in doubt according to some scientists. Who is who, and who decides the planet is dying?
Ahh, the voice of reason. This is _so_ true. Man will have exterminated HIMSELF long before our environment does it to us; We can last a long time, even if we can't go outside. Dig a hole and use nuclear power. Mankind is a great innovator and extremely adaptive when need be. Of course, this isn't practical for 6 billion people, but your fellow man in Africa doesn't drive a suburban, either.
If the planet's death doesn't get us, the mere fact of overpopulation will.
Fud, fud, fud. Once a society becomes industrialized, the cost of children increases and the necessity of having them to insure someone will care for you goes away, since you can save money. Then, birth rates _collapse_, which is what's happening in North America and Western Europe. Their is no reason to assume that higher living standards in China and India won't do the same - although, there will be a LOT of pollution from those efforts. Do you know how many hundreds of millions of tons of coal China burns every year? Your car doesn't make a lick of difference in comparison. They have no choice.
We will never colonize another planet, however, because the populace at large doesn't care about space. It's viewed as a "neato" thing until the bill comes in. Nobody wants to pay taxes to fund NASA, and private corporations have too many regulations on them. (Probably for good measure; I don't know.)
This is sad, but true. The only thing that will make us colonize space is a major disaster costing millions of lives on Earth. Something along the lines of a asteroid strike (best), limited nuclear war or biological warfare agents run amok (worst, by far), etc. I wrote a really good rant about this on/. some time ago. You're right, we're all jaded about space, because none of us will ever get there. Which is a shame, becuase if more people got to see how small earth is from 100,000 feet, and how BIG the black background is, maybe we wouldn't be killing each other over things like Religion and stupid political egos and work together.
Even with the problem with hydrogen's explosiveness
Most people forget you drive around in a moltov cocktail every day; Your gas tank is just as likely to get smashed, and could possibly be even MORE dangerous because gasoline will pour and stick around on the pavement for some time, and this is nasty if it's on you and it's burning. Hydrogen, on the other hand, will dissapate quite quickly if there's a tank rupture, and the tank itself will not explode (due to hydrogen exploding). I've tried to make propane cylinders explode in the past, and it's not as easy as you might think. If you shoot one, it will most likely just rupture and vent, even in the presence of fire (in my experience!). This danger is WAY overplayed in the media, especially concidering that car gas tanks are low-tech compared to the fuel cells used in race cars. (Fancy gas tanks, not real fuel cells:).
where would the hydrogen to power our cars come from?
There's lots of hydrogen available in hyrdocarbons. Reformers take a hydrocarbon source (be it gasoline, or much similer methanol) and turn it into hydrogen + co2 for use in the cell. There's LOTS of ways to make hydrocarbons, and lots more to process them. Cost is another matter, but it won't be much more than I'm going to be paying for gas in a couple years. One good source is methanol, which can be produced from cracking oil, or distilling.
One last issue is the water vapor output. While we currently worry about CO2 as a greenhouse gas, H2O can be just as bad.
Can be, but it ain't. Water vapour falls out of the sky quite nicely at cold temperatures - and will just appear in the form of snow or rain, and I can guarantee you the amount of water vapour produced by all the cars in California will pale in comparison to a good, hard rainfall. This is a non-issue. Water is EVERYWHERE on the planet. Relative to the natural evaporation off the oceans, you're not even statistically relevant. The waste products from producing the hydrogen will be more problematic (of which CO2 is the most likely canadate, since you can't just electrolyze water - it needs to be water free of impurities, for example, if you try it with Sea water, you'll get chlorine gas. Not nice.
Just some thoughts. Fuel cell technology is the future imho. If you want a sports car though, you'll be running gasoline or alcohol for as long as I can see, however. Good news is alcohol doesn't cost much more per liter than gasoline up here in Canada! Hehehe.
Just some thoughts.
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While I'm not a mechanical engineer, my girlfriend is, and some of the things you can do with modern CnC equipment and injection molding gear is incredible. The costs of this equipment are coming down dramatically, especially if you just want to manufacture small items.
While the machine can't build other machines - yet - the capability to design things and assemble them later is most definately here, although the price is currently prohibitive. We're planning to get a small CnC machine when she graduates in hopes of recovering some of the cost for the equipment by doing custom work locally for people. CAD is amazing stuff if you're artistically gifted - I'm not - but I can write code to make the machine dance, heh heh.
Don't rule this technology out. It'll never be cheaper than good 'ol mass production techniques, but it can't be beat for custom items and prototyping. The university builds complex robots with simple parts made from equipment like this all the time.
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. People assume that because we have nuclear weapons on ICBMs that we can automatically launch them into space. This isn't the case. In fact, IIRC (I'm in no way an expert, as I'm a citizen of a country with absoulutely no nukes, Canada:), there isn't even a launch vehicle that could even be made READY to launch at an asteroid to make a pathetic attempt at destroying one in time. I believe during the US senate's inquiry into the feasibility of this, a senator thought they could just fire a nuke - and he was told he was flat out wrong.
See, all that ballistic missile technology didn't go into space - that was banned by treaty - it went into missiles that just skim out of the atmosphere. Concidering the difficulty that we have in hitting missiles on earth, under controlled conditions, I can't see how it would be possible to use a jerry-rigged missile launcher to do so at any point in the near future.
Americans, don't kid yourselves - you haven't launched anything of any size to beyond geostationary orbit since the 60's, and the scientists on those projects had great difficulty in making it work.
My own take on this is just to hope that (when) we get hit, it's something that causes massive destruction - takes out a country, for example - and wakes people the hell up, if we don't of course think it was "punishment" from "insert-pissed-off-diety here". Then we could work together to use nuclear technology to defend our earth, and/or consider another self-sustaining presence somewhere.
This is, of course, also assuming that nuclear weapons will even _work_ in space. I don't think there has been a successful test, and nobody knows for sure the technolgies that are involved in making one go boom. (Except, of course, the nuclear powers of the world) You don't really think all those computers the US Department of Energy buys - HUGE computers - to model the physics of nuclear exploisions - would be neccessary if it was as simple as everyone seems to think in the general populace.
Yes, but it's the store that raises the price and not the government. You have no choice but to obey government laws - even while fighting against them - or you go to jail. You can always buy online.
Stores also are allowed to claim all or most lost product against their taxes, I belive, did you know that? I'm also pretty sure that software companies can do the same (invented piracy figures).
to duplicate copyrighted works? If we've paid a royalty by buying media in Canada or computer equiptment in Germany?
I'm Canadian and I get to deal with that stupid CDR tax all the time. If you're a Canadian citizen, please write your MP and explain to them that there is something fundamentally wrong about paying a tax who's justification is that you are committing an extremely serious crime (in the eyes of the law). Does purchacing CDRs effectively mean you're signing the bottom of the ticket? IANAL. It seems messed up to me though.
How would you feel if the _government_ decided that there should be a shoplifting tax to compensate all the store owners that _might_ have lost money when something was stolen? Using the fscking RIAA mentality, this should happen to reimburse them from people swiping CDs out of stores. I'm sorry, but that all sounds a little commie red pinko for me. And I'm Canadian!
I won't even get started on the fact that most artists are unsigned and will not ever see a bloddy penny of the collected tax, "for their benebit". Just like the fuel taxes I think about when I go over the Toll Highways, which are part of the formerly free TCH. Oh well.
To horribly misquote; It comes from the barrel of a gun. Even a gang member in LA can tell you that.
The nation states are not going away. This is why those nation states (and all such derviatives since the beginning of recorded history) have armed, military forces who are designed to efficiently and effectively kill, mame and destroy anything and anyone who poses a serious risk to their soveriegn power to rule. As the dominant states today (USA, USSR/Russia, China..) have absoule power (specifically, advanced nuclear weapons & guidance systems, and really, really horrible biological weapons that make nukes look like candy) they will be around forever.
Get real. Don't believe me? Don't pay your taxes for a few years and you'll find out first hand.
I've given this a fair bit of thought, because one of the few hopes I have for our race is that we win the great game of civilization:), and get off the planet to establish a permanant, self-sustaining presence in space. Never before has a species that's evolved on this planet been able to leave the world that it was created from - and guarantee that it will not be easily extincted. It's too bad that alone isn't a noble enough cause.
People DO care about space, however, contrary to what you say - or at least, once upon a time, they did. The problem is that they were never given a reason to think that it in any way affects them - you don't even need people in space to sucessfully launch satellites. I once worked for a very smart man who was a astrophysicist on the apollo program (Even had a extremely cool certificate signed by all or most of the apollo astronauts). He left because he realized he would never see space himself - the will wasn't there. So, this generation of people becamed disallusioned with the greatest achivement of mankind - that flag on the moon. Those people were the parents of the 20-somethings here, and they didn't push their kids to chase something unobtainable.
Something else I wonder about is how many people that live in the cities have ever really been far enough away to truely apprecate the stars - when there's no light, on a clear night in winter, there's almost more white than black in the sky when you look up - it's amazing. (I live in Canada, YMMV).
On top of all that, it's pretty good for western peoples on earth right now, and they're the only ones that have the means and wealth to undertake a major space push - and they don't wanna. I'd love to have a box on my income tax where I could donate money to NASA tax free. Never happen. (hell, it's even foreign, the Canadian Space Agency is a national political joke located in buttf-ck nowhere Quebec. Great way to attract the best and brightest! ).
So, the way I see it, something has to happen to the current political climate on earth, and none of it is very pleasant (I, personally, will never see space first hand, nor will 99.9999% of the populace, and it's discouraging - where's our real-time feed of earth in HDTV that Clinton promised many years ago? Eh? Scared of people seeing the aliens?:)
So, let's talk about what might change attitudes:
Discovery of life in our solar system.
This is a biggie. However, it's hard to concretely prove life is somewhere without sending someone there first hand to test on the spot. So, we've got a catch 22 here, assuming that Europa has, or mars had, life on it.
Earth getting to be a nasty place to live in a hurry
A couple things could happen here. The most likely is that a medium-sized asteroid hits earth and kills millions of people, but doesn't distrupt civilization - this would wake people up in a hurry. Of course, it would suck to be unfortunate enough to be a martyr. Just hope it hits land, and it's not too big (this definately will happen eventually, but nobody knows when). A side effect of this is that it might trigger a small war accidentally, but NORAD and I assume the Warsaw Pact nations still track asteroid entries into the atmosphere for this very reason!
Another possibility is a small / medium sized nuclear war that ends up seriously shortening lifespans (40 years in developed nations due to cancer). The need to leave would be pressing, then.
Huge leaps in technology that enable easy lift capacity and/or near FTL speeds, or some warp technology
There are calculations that prove warping space is possible - there's been a few postings to/. in the past few years - the energies required are not practical. This, or a breakthrough along the lines of a unified theory that related electromagnetism and gravity and allowed us to develop gravity-based technologies (That's why a unified theory is such a big deal in physics, but nobody will say that, since they would sound crazy). These are unlikely because any technology that allowed this would COMPLETELY destabilize the economic structures of the west (we run on oil, and on capitalism - unlimited free energy ends capitalism), and as such, would be repressed under severe penalties and/or disinformation. Who knows what mysteries the hydrogen bomb researchers might have found? We'll never know. That of course is the other problem - unlimited energy or a unified theory might make weapons of mass destruction much easier to obtain. There was a good outer limits on this one, and might explain why we haven't detected an advanced civilization yet - they all go boom.
Contact with intelligent aliens
This, of course, would change things overnight, and unify humanity. I'm a skeptic of most UFO sightings, but there is a LOT of evidence out there, and the one that stands out in my mind is the footage and radar information that the Beligan Air Force shot - it's completely fucking unexplainable, even the Beligan government says so. It's a great watch, it's on TLC every now and again. This would also change the political power structures as humans would see their might be other things they should be worried about, and would funnel resources into thinking about how we can advance technology quickly.
Arrgh, I can't believe I wrote all that. Just some rants..
I think he knows what X is, guys, I sure do, but I have absolutely no idea why X11R6.5.1 is important to *me*. It would have been nice if the article reported on what the software changed, why it was deemed to be worthy of an announce on SlashDot instead of just freshment, why I should care enough to download it, that kinda thing.
There's another reason that the (traditional)media is dying on the internet, and that's because of the cheap global communications between people that know each other (or at least have some sake in each other's wellbeing). This enables you to spend more time on things that matter more for you - for instance, some relatives getting married, or what your brother is doing in college, etc - rather than watch the latest l33tness about the president getting caught with his interns (especially when you don't even HAVE a president, and have to watch that junk!).
Another point is that if something really interests me, you don't need washed and polished versions from the news outlets. You can go online and get the wire text almost immediately, or you can go one better and read or in some cases even talk to people that are actually there as stuff is going down.
The traditional 6 o'clock news worked to inform a populace about what's going on in a world they had little or no means of communication with - up until recently, even phone calls (for the uninitiated;) to europe were extremely/stupid expensive. That's all been changed by the internet. Now that everyone is more or less connected (or everyone that cares to be connected enough such that they'd impact news ratings) the need for traditional media has decined, and given what I see when I watch the american news here anyhow, (Heh, fox rochester), it won't be missed.
All you people who think you can talk 100WPM...
on
The Computer of 2010
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You're absolutely correct. Except you forgot something. Try adding punctuation, capitals, curly braces, quotes, formatting - telling the cursor where to go - and you'll find your speed goes through the floor and aggrivation goes through the roof. I had a Newton for awhile and this was the main problem - the handwriting recognition was actually really good - the problem was putting the text in the right place on the screen, and that time outweighed any benefit the handwriting bought you.
Don't believe me? Try programming with ViaVoice. Or doing more than simple dictation, like adding bold or *Removing* bold to a sentence. You'll go insane.
I don't know why everyone thinks we want to talk to computers. I want to talk to my computer about as bleeping much as I want to talk to my television. I can't talk 100WPM but I can get close to that on a keyboard - and I don't know why you'd want to change that. Even thought recognition would be a pain in the ass. I can type almost without thinking about it - which might explain some of my posts, ha ha, but surely you must know what I mean; Thoughts flow easily to keyboards that might not to voice. Maybe that's conditioning, but writing down thoughts is something that goes back for all of recorded history and I think it's more than just me.
Computers of the future will be optical. They'll run at 100's of Ghz. They'll have stupid huge hard drives. Hell, they might even think. But you won't be talking to them - because it's plain not efficient compared to other input techniques, like computers. Do you know how sore your vocal chords would be after dictating all day?
First off; Ambient systems are not likely to work because this is low-quality heat. Getting one to work would be a nobel prize winner. Check out a intro thermo book for some depressing facts about the wonderful world of heat transfer: Simply put:
(stolen from someplace I forget)
1. You can't win.
2. You can't tie.
3. You can only lose.
Yes, using alcohol or nitrogen to power a car moves the pollution up the line, DUH. The objective is to expend energy (see above rules) to make something that puts energy in a portable form (be it a battery, nitrogen, alcohol, whatever). Of course it's going to cost more to make that energy than you'll get out; That's why it costs money! The objective is mearly to put it in a portable form.
We don't know how lucky we are to have petroleum; The cost of powering cars with alcohol or nitrogen would be a LOT more if we didn't have vast reserves of petroleum. I'm just hoping we make the switch to alcohol because lots of people forget that petroleum has another much, much more important use as a primary source of hydrocarbons for making PLASTIC. We use plastic everywhere, and there are other sources, but they all cost a lot more.
At any rate, cars in the future are going to cost a lot more to run, and they'll cost more the longer we run on petrolum products, it just happens that right now, gas is the only way to go fast cheap.
At first glance I was against this.. but then I got to thinking; People that aren't 18 or 19 in this country can't drink Alcohol, (legally). Minors can't rent or buy hardcore porn, or porn of any sort from what I can tell.. Not that it's hard to get by any means. So what's different about slapping a Restricted sticker on a video game? Adults can still buy it, hell, they can buy it for their kids if they want. The lack of standards is kinda worrysome - what constitutes excessive violence - but it's not like the game was banned. (Unless I'm mis-informed over here on the East Coast.)
Those of you who think Canada is socialist / commie should look at your drug and drug testing laws before calling the kettle black. Canada's laws make a great deal more sense IMHO. The post about Canadians valuing the rights of society above was bang on. We believe in Common Sense (tm) up here. There are cops that are assholes here like anywhere else, but for the most part, they're reasonable, as are the judges. Reasonable people that expect to be treated reasonably, I think is a good summary. Tim Horton's for all!
Here's to high taxes and 5 hour hospital waits! *sarcasm*
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Couldn't have said it better myself. We artificially genetically modify not only plants, but animals too - and we've been doing it for as long as animals have been domesticated, same as food, and many species characteristics that we take for granted are the result.
More GM food, cheaper food, less people starving, less PESTICIDES, which should scare the shit out of you (ever work on a farm? You'd be shocked to see some of the precautions you need to take.. "DANGER: NERVE TOXIN" etc.. Genetically modified foods have major advantages over spraying "natural" crops with chemicals that you can't even pronounce. Betcha didn't know that people for decades used lead to turn oranges a nice color.. ahhh, the ignorant masses.
There's a reason that the people that discovered the DNA molecule got the Nobel prize. (name escapes me at the moment, and I'm too lazy to look). But before you all speak completely out of your asses, do you know how special DNA is? Do you know why DNA is shaped the WAY it is? It is an entirely valid and reasonable hypothesis that ALL life capable of self-reproduction makes use of DNA because of some very interesting properties that come about because of it's structure - and that those properties are the result of the component elements, and one could assume that there's nothing special about those elements.
PLEASE could you look at the science before saying stupid things like "microbe - I think it would be very unlikely that a true ET would just happen to be DNA - though it's possible". You sound like a moron to anyone with half a clue.
While I am not a genetist (can I even spell it?), my dad IS a Ph.D genetist, and we've had this discussion before, and it's EXTREMELY likely that DNA is the only mechanism in organic chemistry - the chemistry of life - that could sustain any advanced lifeforms, ET bacteria included. Viruses are a special case, becuase you could argue they're not really "alive", per se. Chemistry doesn't change anywhere in the universe, as it's all based on the same physical principles that apply to non-nuclear reactions.
Sorry, haven't had my coffee yet, and this stuff is important.
While you may be correct if you said this about paper, I am certain that you are dead wrong about aluminum. The energy cost of reducing aluminum to metal is enormous, and the scrap price of aluminum (free market!) proves conclusively that it's cheaper to reclaim than to refine.
You forget that you need to collect the can - factor in the transportation, storage, and processing, and in many cases, it's cheaper to make a new can. That's why you have to pay a deposit - there isn't enough of an economic incentive to recover the can (unless you're in some situtations, like a statium, or large urban center. I speak from a Canadian perspective, we have REALLY low population density, so transportation costs are often higher than the value of what you're recycling!).
I won't get into paper. Want to recycle paper? Burn it and sprinkle the ashes around a tree that you just planted.
My point, of course, is that it's not the can, bottle, paper, whatever. It's the total energy consumption in the process.
I bring this point up at least once a month here, so I'll have to get some numbers next time I'm visiting the university. I'm pretty sure I'm right on the alumnium can in my situtation, but I'm not sure about averages.
The second poster was close when he said that thermodynamics was the problem, but wrong about the bit on entropy (although close). While recycling initiatives are "Feel good", they do not take into account that in order to do anything, you need energy in some form or another, and there are finite amounts in economically viable forms. (although, "finite" is arbitrary, homo sapiens will have long been gone before earth loses all it's resources. When resources get scarce, we'll just start killing each other). How many days do you think it'd be before marines would be dumping sand outta their boots if the oil got cut off?
You can recycle all you want, but you still need energy to do it. Expending energy transfers heat. Useful heat becomes low quality heat (waste) that heats up the planet. This is the problem (long-term).
There's HORDES of metal here on earth. More than we know what to do with. It's cheaper to mine more aluminum and it's BETTER for the environment as mining more aluminum uses LESS energy than the process of recycling the can, which, of course, is the problem - the energy consumption.
The only advantage of mining space is so that you can build things in space, not return stuff to earth. There's more here than we know what to do with. By building things in space we can develop a commercial interest and economy in space, and by doing that, we'll have someplace to live when, not if, when, earth becomes inhospitable to man.
Read some history. We're never going to be feel good happy animals. We kill each other over resources, same as any other mammal. The over used quote "it is in our nature to destroy ourselves" is dead, bang on. The sooner we accept that and work with it, the sooner we can stop living in denial and plan for things.
Don't believe me? Fine.. but we have much bigger problems to worry about than the availablility of raw materials like metals (check current futures prices for an idea, they're cheap, and plentiful).
Come on people, what's all the bitching and moaning about? I'm reminded of the mozila threads where people bitch about it sucking. Guess what? Linux 1.0.13 sucked pretty big balls too. You could have argued then "Why use that crappy OS when I can get Solaris X86 or Sco?". Bagging on people for trying something new with their time and equipment is not cool, guys.
So what if YOU don't like it. So what if YOU have a hard time navigating 3D space. It's not like YOU spent any money on the project, or anyone is making YOU try it out. Are you worried people will stop developing new versions of command line stuff for you? Or are you worried you might have to change? Or worse still, someone might make a tool that takes the magic out of shell scripts and prompts? If that's your preference, go ahead! Hell, nobody's arguing those are inferior. They're probably using vim, er, emacs, er.. to create the thing.. right?
Maybe I'm being a little too harsh, but don't bag on people just because you might not find what they're doing immediately useful (a la Mozilla). Right now, the 3D interface isn't the best. But in 5 years if we've all got 400DPI screens and super-high res / refresh cards, that might change - and from what I've read on the site, that's what they're looking forward to. If anyone actually READ what they're trying to do, it isn't just a file manager, it's changing the interface completely from the system adminstration to program execution level. Is it useful on todays technology? You can argue that. What about if some brilliant upstart came up with a $2k 1m^3 holographic display because of this? Then would it be useful?
People fear change.. but don't bag on these guys for doing something IMHO extremely cool and ambitious.
Don't worry about it. I use a notebook all the time in my car, and I'm in New Brunswick, Canada - bitchin cold in winter. The main thing is that the CPU and drive kick up enough heat to keep themselves in operating range. Just watch for condensation when you move it between temperature extremes. The LCD gets slow though when it gets really cold.. Although, I'm assuming that one of the advantages of this device is that you take it with you, preventing a lengthy cold spell.
The really big thing is that hopefully this will put some downward pressure on the stratospheric empeg prices, because those look really sweet, they're just stupid expensive right now (on par with a notebook pc just for mp3s in the car, sans nice interface). Nevermind getting one to work with your existing head unit is a bitch, as they don't play CDs.
Personally, ymmv, but I just use my notebook to fill up my rio, and then use the rio most of the time for short trips - I live in front of a computer, so putting new stuff on the rio is easy, and I have automated scripts to fill it with talk radio & news in the morning before I wake up. If I'm booking for a long trip, I can just connect a notebook directly. The rio has the advantage of not risking damage under, uh, "spirited" driving conditions :). Nor do I have to worry about leaving it in the dash and attracting attention from the criminal element.
Kudos
I don't want the government recording my DNA. That's just a bad scene waiting to happen. Even if it's only a hash code generated from my DNA, it's just not cool. Canada leads the way here, although I think the USA is now running DNA databases of criminals.
A far better idea for preventing identity theft is through the use of a smart card system and strong encryption (2048+ bits). You could generate a public/private key pair, of which only the individual knows the key - and the key is assigned at birth or issue date, with no information about the password recorded at the goverment site (maybe a backup of the smart card in a secure location). That way, you can present the public key for people like credit reporting agencies, who can issue you financial information encrypted with it - without that smart card + password, you're SOL if you want to steal someone's identity.
Another problem with using DNA is that more criminals are going to get wise to law enforcement becoming STUPIDLY dependant on DNA for investigations. Obviously the criminal element isn't too bright - what if you went and got some hair - ever get your hair cut at a barbers? Or blood - ever donate? Or any other combination of fluids / skin whatever - we're talking MINUTE quantities - and use it to plant false "evidence" for someone. Much akin to hiding an ounce of pot in someone's car who's going over the border and "calling ahead", that person is fscked.
Oh well. I'm a cynic, DNA databases are the future, maybe I should start writing DNA law enforcement software, eh. :)
One word: YUCK
I have a real old P233 Sony 505 that I love.. it's doing to be due for replacement in a couple months, and I was really thinking about one of the new vaio's when they have the crusoe chip (battery life in linux stinks). But oh no! These things look aweful!
My current notebook is the only piece of computer gadgetry I've had WOMEN come up to me and say how cool it was. Let alone everyone else. I just hope that they don't make this horrible mistake with the C1 series that I'm interested in.. *cringe*
Sony! No! Say it ain't so.. WHITE keys? Yuck.
Oh, come ON people. It's EXTEREMELY unlikely there's life on mars right now. If we find it, we'll find it long before or maybe even BECAUSE of these efforts making exploration of mars _possible_. You're smoking moon rocks if you think that a couple robot probes that can MAYBE test a few dozen or hundred individual samples will be able to make ANY conclusive decision. You'd need a research base there and a LOT of money and effort to determine if life is there, but the MUCH more interesting question in my mind is WAS there ever life there, WAS it ever intelligent, and DID it fertilize a once inhospitable earth?
Rant mode on; Donning flame retardant jacket:
That said; Jesus H. Christ, what do you think terraforming mars is about? Worrying about stepping on some freaking bacteria? You kill bazillions of life forms when you step in the shower, or sneeze on a wall. Terraforming mars is about making it hosipitable for the Human Race to move someplace else and make another home; To help guarantee we won't be extincted in case something happens to earth - Have people forgotten - especially you americans - that your own citizens, under the employ of the US Department of Defense, EVERY DAY, practice the procedures that are in place for the exinction of ALL life on this planet? And that their counterparts in Russia and China do the SAME THING? And you can tell me with a straight face you're worried about fucking up a dead planet, because you MIGHT step on something? Oh my _GOD_.
Are you going to cry when we set up a moon base, too? We're ruining a static environment! There might be moon creater fuzzy creatures!
If we're going to survive, we need to realize a concequence of their being 6 BILLION people on this planet is that people are EXTRAORDINARILY good at F*CKING SHIT UP. Unless you're going to exterminate a LOT of people REAL fast, we're INEVITABLY going to COMPLETELY ruin earth if we haven't already and their isn't JACK that ANYONE can do about it. Are you going to give up driving? Electricity? Are you not going to have any children? Are you going to stop eating anything but gruel until you die? HELL no. Neither is ANYONE else, and the 5.5 billion people on the planet that DON'T live a privilged existance like us in the west are SURE AS HELL going to go throught THEIR industrial revolutions. Then comes THEIR contribution to global warming. Not so fun when you're the one that's going to be sucking in CO2 from China, eh?
It's time we wake up and realize what human civilization means; We need to wake up and accept that there's little we can do about environmental impacts; We can slow the damage, but it's not going to be stopped anytime soon; And that YES, MAYBE, it's a damn good idea to start looking for a new place to live and expand to, and that YES, OF COURSE, we're going to COMPLETELY ruin whereever we move, and that's a natural course of human development, unless of course you're a hypocrite who doesn't think that the 90% of the earth's population has the same right to drive a SUV or Sports Car that YOU and I do.
Give me a break. I want my offspring and their offspring to a) have freedom of choice and b) have some quality of life. That means we're going to need to start looking for more resources. And I didn't even TALK about the extreme likelyhood that man himself will obliterate earth - remember, you practice it every day, and the United States of America and Russia both have enough nuclear weapons to exterminate ALL life on earth. My own country, Canada, is a leading researcher into Biological and Chemical weapons research, as is the USA - and these things are the nastiest inventions that you will ever hear about. Go read what a dose of a modern nerve gas agent will do to a child. Hitler invented that technology with Vx gas. We perfected it.
Damn, that felt good. I needed to vent after watching the puppets dance on that debate. They never talked about any of that; Or the billions and billions they spend on the War on Drugs. Why not build universities instead of prisions, shmucks. Do you know what percentage of the prision population has a college degree? Hint: Your initial hunch is right.
Kudos!
I can't believe that the US congress is buying the bill of goods the tech industry is feeding them. H1-B visas are a liscence to import economic slaves - specifically for their natural talent - sounds a little like prostitution, no?
Six years is a _long_ time in the technical fields. These people can't advance very far in their careers, because after the six years are up, adios, nice seein' ya, don't let the door hit you on the ass, etc.
Since this is what, the third? time the limits were increased, it would be apparant to ME that this isn't such a temporary demand, and your American universities are failing to get enough trained, compentent people working. (This of course probably isn't the case, as I'm sure many of you will be posting). Since the demand is no longer temporary, you have a serious problem. Would it not make more sense then given this scenario to offer qualified Engineers / CS grads whatever a green card, and allow them to become permanant citizens? Then you'll solve this "temporary" problem for good. Uh oh! You might find those temporary workers demanding more.. and you can't flush 'em down the toilet any more and blame the big bad INS. Damn.
There's another interesting arguement here too. If the demand is temporary, does that mean that all these companies are projecting a massive downturn in their own industries? (After all, they're only needing more people for 6 years). Perhaps they should adjust their stock prospectii and inform their investors of dire roads ahead - we're not going to need 200,000 workers in 6 years!
These arguements are, of course, bunk. We know why they want more H1-B's - they're cheap labour who probably don't understand their rights, regardless of quality, because companies don't want to pay for native talent. Call a spade a spade, fellows.
For the record: I'm Canadian, and can get a much more perferable visa, a TN-1 - which is a true temporary visa - if I was interested in temporary work, which I'm not. One year sounds a lot more temporary than 6 - enough time to get comfortable, start a family, and get the shaft.
You want to come to North America and you're skilled? You can get permanant residency in Canada a lot easier, and some would argue it's a lot nicer place to live.
kudos!
to clean up the planet we are on now, has anyone ever thought that it might not be possible?
This just plain isn't going to happen in a "Free" society (economic freedom, anyhow). Not unless you and everyone you know are willing to give up gas-guzzlin pollutin SUVs (the days of a fuel cell SUV are a long, long, long way off), willing to give up consuming massive amounts of food, willing to give up massive water and power consumption, and in short, give up much of the luxuries that western society is based on! And let's not forget that India and China are working as fast as they can to go through THEIR industrial revolutions and get to where we are as soon as possible. Short of imposing draconian restrictions on freedom (ain't gunna happen), space research is the only alternative to the human race being extincted. NO, we're not going to launch 6 billion people into orbit, but you don't need that for a self sustaining colony, either.
Now, "our planet is dying." Yes, our planet is getting hotter. (Hell, it was 92 degrees here yesterday, and we're in October. Huh?) Is this man, or is this the natural cycle of events? Is this Mother Nature wreaking her revenge on those who would try to control her?
No, you CANNOT conclusively say our planet is doing anything that it hasn't in the past. Earth has ALWAYS been changing; It has violent tectonic cycles that we don't experience over our civilization's timeframes, would you blame a catastrophic quake in california on "Earth getting even", no, of course not, that's stupid. Earth was a LOT hotter a dozens of millenia ago; It will be hotter or maybe even colder in the future. WE HAVE NO ATMOSPHERIC MODEL, so we can't tell. By the time it matters, we'll be dead, and our kids will be, and likely, THEIR kids will be. If we're not doing something more productive by then, well, I'll be dust anyhow. Until then I'll work to improve technology in any way I can, and maybe it'll make a difference.
You can come up with ideas and examples all day long, but the basic fact is that man doesn't live long enough to have a clear view of what's happening to the Earth, and why. The ozone hole is even in doubt according to some scientists. Who is who, and who decides the planet is dying?
Ahh, the voice of reason. This is _so_ true. Man will have exterminated HIMSELF long before our environment does it to us; We can last a long time, even if we can't go outside. Dig a hole and use nuclear power. Mankind is a great innovator and extremely adaptive when need be. Of course, this isn't practical for 6 billion people, but your fellow man in Africa doesn't drive a suburban, either.
If the planet's death doesn't get us, the mere fact of overpopulation will.
Fud, fud, fud. Once a society becomes industrialized, the cost of children increases and the necessity of having them to insure someone will care for you goes away, since you can save money. Then, birth rates _collapse_, which is what's happening in North America and Western Europe. Their is no reason to assume that higher living standards in China and India won't do the same - although, there will be a LOT of pollution from those efforts. Do you know how many hundreds of millions of tons of coal China burns every year? Your car doesn't make a lick of difference in comparison. They have no choice.
We will never colonize another planet, however, because the populace at large doesn't care about space. It's viewed as a "neato" thing until the bill comes in. Nobody wants to pay taxes to fund NASA, and private corporations have too many regulations on them. (Probably for good measure; I don't know.)
This is sad, but true. The only thing that will make us colonize space is a major disaster costing millions of lives on Earth. Something along the lines of a asteroid strike (best), limited nuclear war or biological warfare agents run amok (worst, by far), etc. I wrote a really good rant about this on /. some time ago. You're right, we're all jaded about space, because none of us will ever get there. Which is a shame, becuase if more people got to see how small earth is from 100,000 feet, and how BIG the black background is, maybe we wouldn't be killing each other over things like Religion and stupid political egos and work together.
But, I'm bitter. YMMV.
Even with the problem with hydrogen's explosiveness
Most people forget you drive around in a moltov cocktail every day; Your gas tank is just as likely to get smashed, and could possibly be even MORE dangerous because gasoline will pour and stick around on the pavement for some time, and this is nasty if it's on you and it's burning. Hydrogen, on the other hand, will dissapate quite quickly if there's a tank rupture, and the tank itself will not explode (due to hydrogen exploding). I've tried to make propane cylinders explode in the past, and it's not as easy as you might think. If you shoot one, it will most likely just rupture and vent, even in the presence of fire (in my experience!). This danger is WAY overplayed in the media, especially concidering that car gas tanks are low-tech compared to the fuel cells used in race cars. (Fancy gas tanks, not real fuel cells :).
where would the hydrogen to power our cars come from?
There's lots of hydrogen available in hyrdocarbons. Reformers take a hydrocarbon source (be it gasoline, or much similer methanol) and turn it into hydrogen + co2 for use in the cell. There's LOTS of ways to make hydrocarbons, and lots more to process them. Cost is another matter, but it won't be much more than I'm going to be paying for gas in a couple years. One good source is methanol, which can be produced from cracking oil, or distilling.
One last issue is the water vapor output. While we currently worry about CO2 as a greenhouse gas, H2O can be just as bad.
Can be, but it ain't. Water vapour falls out of the sky quite nicely at cold temperatures - and will just appear in the form of snow or rain, and I can guarantee you the amount of water vapour produced by all the cars in California will pale in comparison to a good, hard rainfall. This is a non-issue. Water is EVERYWHERE on the planet. Relative to the natural evaporation off the oceans, you're not even statistically relevant. The waste products from producing the hydrogen will be more problematic (of which CO2 is the most likely canadate, since you can't just electrolyze water - it needs to be water free of impurities, for example, if you try it with Sea water, you'll get chlorine gas. Not nice.
Just some thoughts. Fuel cell technology is the future imho. If you want a sports car though, you'll be running gasoline or alcohol for as long as I can see, however. Good news is alcohol doesn't cost much more per liter than gasoline up here in Canada! Hehehe.
Just some thoughts.
While I'm not a mechanical engineer, my girlfriend is, and some of the things you can do with modern CnC equipment and injection molding gear is incredible. The costs of this equipment are coming down dramatically, especially if you just want to manufacture small items.
While the machine can't build other machines - yet - the capability to design things and assemble them later is most definately here, although the price is currently prohibitive. We're planning to get a small CnC machine when she graduates in hopes of recovering some of the cost for the equipment by doing custom work locally for people. CAD is amazing stuff if you're artistically gifted - I'm not - but I can write code to make the machine dance, heh heh.
Don't rule this technology out. It'll never be cheaper than good 'ol mass production techniques, but it can't be beat for custom items and prototyping. The university builds complex robots with simple parts made from equipment like this all the time.
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. People assume that because we have nuclear weapons on ICBMs that we can automatically launch them into space. This isn't the case. In fact, IIRC (I'm in no way an expert, as I'm a citizen of a country with absoulutely no nukes, Canada :), there isn't even a launch vehicle that could even be made READY to launch at an asteroid to make a pathetic attempt at destroying one in time. I believe during the US senate's inquiry into the feasibility of this, a senator thought they could just fire a nuke - and he was told he was flat out wrong.
See, all that ballistic missile technology didn't go into space - that was banned by treaty - it went into missiles that just skim out of the atmosphere. Concidering the difficulty that we have in hitting missiles on earth, under controlled conditions, I can't see how it would be possible to use a jerry-rigged missile launcher to do so at any point in the near future. Americans, don't kid yourselves - you haven't launched anything of any size to beyond geostationary orbit since the 60's, and the scientists on those projects had great difficulty in making it work.
My own take on this is just to hope that (when) we get hit, it's something that causes massive destruction - takes out a country, for example - and wakes people the hell up, if we don't of course think it was "punishment" from "insert-pissed-off-diety here". Then we could work together to use nuclear technology to defend our earth, and/or consider another self-sustaining presence somewhere.
This is, of course, also assuming that nuclear weapons will even _work_ in space. I don't think there has been a successful test, and nobody knows for sure the technolgies that are involved in making one go boom. (Except, of course, the nuclear powers of the world) You don't really think all those computers the US Department of Energy buys - HUGE computers - to model the physics of nuclear exploisions - would be neccessary if it was as simple as everyone seems to think in the general populace.
Yes, but it's the store that raises the price and not the government. You have no choice but to obey government laws - even while fighting against them - or you go to jail. You can always buy online.
Stores also are allowed to claim all or most lost product against their taxes, I belive, did you know that? I'm also pretty sure that software companies can do the same (invented piracy figures).
to duplicate copyrighted works? If we've paid a royalty by buying media in Canada or computer equiptment in Germany?
I'm Canadian and I get to deal with that stupid CDR tax all the time. If you're a Canadian citizen, please write your MP and explain to them that there is something fundamentally wrong about paying a tax who's justification is that you are committing an extremely serious crime (in the eyes of the law). Does purchacing CDRs effectively mean you're signing the bottom of the ticket? IANAL. It seems messed up to me though.
How would you feel if the _government_ decided that there should be a shoplifting tax to compensate all the store owners that _might_ have lost money when something was stolen? Using the fscking RIAA mentality, this should happen to reimburse them from people swiping CDs out of stores. I'm sorry, but that all sounds a little commie red pinko for me. And I'm Canadian!
I won't even get started on the fact that most artists are unsigned and will not ever see a bloddy penny of the collected tax, "for their benebit". Just like the fuel taxes I think about when I go over the Toll Highways, which are part of the formerly free TCH. Oh well.
Let your MP know how you'll be voting.
To horribly misquote; It comes from the barrel of a gun. Even a gang member in LA can tell you that.
The nation states are not going away. This is why those nation states (and all such derviatives since the beginning of recorded history) have armed, military forces who are designed to efficiently and effectively kill, mame and destroy anything and anyone who poses a serious risk to their soveriegn power to rule. As the dominant states today (USA, USSR/Russia, China..) have absoule power (specifically, advanced nuclear weapons & guidance systems, and really, really horrible biological weapons that make nukes look like candy) they will be around forever.
Get real. Don't believe me? Don't pay your taxes for a few years and you'll find out first hand.
I've given this a fair bit of thought, because one of the few hopes I have for our race is that we win the great game of civilization :), and get off the planet to establish a permanant, self-sustaining presence in space. Never before has a species that's evolved on this planet been able to leave the world that it was created from - and guarantee that it will not be easily extincted. It's too bad that alone isn't a noble enough cause.
People DO care about space, however, contrary to what you say - or at least, once upon a time, they did. The problem is that they were never given a reason to think that it in any way affects them - you don't even need people in space to sucessfully launch satellites. I once worked for a very smart man who was a astrophysicist on the apollo program (Even had a extremely cool certificate signed by all or most of the apollo astronauts). He left because he realized he would never see space himself - the will wasn't there. So, this generation of people becamed disallusioned with the greatest achivement of mankind - that flag on the moon. Those people were the parents of the 20-somethings here, and they didn't push their kids to chase something unobtainable.
Something else I wonder about is how many people that live in the cities have ever really been far enough away to truely apprecate the stars - when there's no light, on a clear night in winter, there's almost more white than black in the sky when you look up - it's amazing. (I live in Canada, YMMV).
On top of all that, it's pretty good for western peoples on earth right now, and they're the only ones that have the means and wealth to undertake a major space push - and they don't wanna. I'd love to have a box on my income tax where I could donate money to NASA tax free. Never happen. (hell, it's even foreign, the Canadian Space Agency is a national political joke located in buttf-ck nowhere Quebec. Great way to attract the best and brightest! ).
So, the way I see it, something has to happen to the current political climate on earth, and none of it is very pleasant (I, personally, will never see space first hand, nor will 99.9999% of the populace, and it's discouraging - where's our real-time feed of earth in HDTV that Clinton promised many years ago? Eh? Scared of people seeing the aliens? :)
So, let's talk about what might change attitudes:
Discovery of life in our solar system.
This is a biggie. However, it's hard to concretely prove life is somewhere without sending someone there first hand to test on the spot. So, we've got a catch 22 here, assuming that Europa has, or mars had, life on it.
Earth getting to be a nasty place to live in a hurry
A couple things could happen here. The most likely is that a medium-sized asteroid hits earth and kills millions of people, but doesn't distrupt civilization - this would wake people up in a hurry. Of course, it would suck to be unfortunate enough to be a martyr. Just hope it hits land, and it's not too big (this definately will happen eventually, but nobody knows when). A side effect of this is that it might trigger a small war accidentally, but NORAD and I assume the Warsaw Pact nations still track asteroid entries into the atmosphere for this very reason!
Another possibility is a small / medium sized nuclear war that ends up seriously shortening lifespans (40 years in developed nations due to cancer). The need to leave would be pressing, then.
Huge leaps in technology that enable easy lift capacity and/or near FTL speeds, or some warp technology
There are calculations that prove warping space is possible - there's been a few postings to /. in the past few years - the energies required are not practical. This, or a breakthrough along the lines of a unified theory that related electromagnetism and gravity and allowed us to develop gravity-based technologies (That's why a unified theory is such a big deal in physics, but nobody will say that, since they would sound crazy). These are unlikely because any technology that allowed this would COMPLETELY destabilize the economic structures of the west (we run on oil, and on capitalism - unlimited free energy ends capitalism), and as such, would be repressed under severe penalties and/or disinformation. Who knows what mysteries the hydrogen bomb researchers might have found? We'll never know. That of course is the other problem - unlimited energy or a unified theory might make weapons of mass destruction much easier to obtain. There was a good outer limits on this one, and might explain why we haven't detected an advanced civilization yet - they all go boom.
Contact with intelligent aliens
This, of course, would change things overnight, and unify humanity. I'm a skeptic of most UFO sightings, but there is a LOT of evidence out there, and the one that stands out in my mind is the footage and radar information that the Beligan Air Force shot - it's completely fucking unexplainable, even the Beligan government says so. It's a great watch, it's on TLC every now and again. This would also change the political power structures as humans would see their might be other things they should be worried about, and would funnel resources into thinking about how we can advance technology quickly.
Arrgh, I can't believe I wrote all that. Just some rants..
I think he knows what X is, guys, I sure do, but I have absolutely no idea why X11R6.5.1 is important to *me*. It would have been nice if the article reported on what the software changed, why it was deemed to be worthy of an announce on SlashDot instead of just freshment, why I should care enough to download it, that kinda thing.
There's another reason that the (traditional)media is dying on the internet, and that's because of the cheap global communications between people that know each other (or at least have some sake in each other's wellbeing). This enables you to spend more time on things that matter more for you - for instance, some relatives getting married, or what your brother is doing in college, etc - rather than watch the latest l33tness about the president getting caught with his interns (especially when you don't even HAVE a president, and have to watch that junk!).
Another point is that if something really interests me, you don't need washed and polished versions from the news outlets. You can go online and get the wire text almost immediately, or you can go one better and read or in some cases even talk to people that are actually there as stuff is going down.
The traditional 6 o'clock news worked to inform a populace about what's going on in a world they had little or no means of communication with - up until recently, even phone calls (for the uninitiated ;) to europe were extremely/stupid expensive. That's all been changed by the internet. Now that everyone is more or less connected (or everyone that cares to be connected enough such that they'd impact news ratings) the need for traditional media has decined, and given what I see when I watch the american news here anyhow, (Heh, fox rochester), it won't be missed.
You're absolutely correct. Except you forgot something. Try adding punctuation, capitals, curly braces, quotes, formatting - telling the cursor where to go - and you'll find your speed goes through the floor and aggrivation goes through the roof. I had a Newton for awhile and this was the main problem - the handwriting recognition was actually really good - the problem was putting the text in the right place on the screen, and that time outweighed any benefit the handwriting bought you.
Don't believe me? Try programming with ViaVoice. Or doing more than simple dictation, like adding bold or *Removing* bold to a sentence. You'll go insane.
The Internet Declaration of Independence.
I don't know why everyone thinks we want to talk to computers. I want to talk to my computer about as bleeping much as I want to talk to my television. I can't talk 100WPM but I can get close to that on a keyboard - and I don't know why you'd want to change that. Even thought recognition would be a pain in the ass. I can type almost without thinking about it - which might explain some of my posts, ha ha, but surely you must know what I mean; Thoughts flow easily to keyboards that might not to voice. Maybe that's conditioning, but writing down thoughts is something that goes back for all of recorded history and I think it's more than just me.
Computers of the future will be optical. They'll run at 100's of Ghz. They'll have stupid huge hard drives. Hell, they might even think. But you won't be talking to them - because it's plain not efficient compared to other input techniques, like computers. Do you know how sore your vocal chords would be after dictating all day?
Arrggh. That's my rant for the day.
First off; Ambient systems are not likely to work because this is low-quality heat. Getting one to work would be a nobel prize winner. Check out a intro thermo book for some depressing facts about the wonderful world of heat transfer: Simply put: (stolen from someplace I forget)
Yes, using alcohol or nitrogen to power a car moves the pollution up the line, DUH. The objective is to expend energy (see above rules) to make something that puts energy in a portable form (be it a battery, nitrogen, alcohol, whatever). Of course it's going to cost more to make that energy than you'll get out; That's why it costs money! The objective is mearly to put it in a portable form.
We don't know how lucky we are to have petroleum; The cost of powering cars with alcohol or nitrogen would be a LOT more if we didn't have vast reserves of petroleum. I'm just hoping we make the switch to alcohol because lots of people forget that petroleum has another much, much more important use as a primary source of hydrocarbons for making PLASTIC. We use plastic everywhere, and there are other sources, but they all cost a lot more.
At any rate, cars in the future are going to cost a lot more to run, and they'll cost more the longer we run on petrolum products, it just happens that right now, gas is the only way to go fast cheap.
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian
At first glance I was against this.. but then I got to thinking; People that aren't 18 or 19 in this country can't drink Alcohol, (legally). Minors can't rent or buy hardcore porn, or porn of any sort from what I can tell.. Not that it's hard to get by any means. So what's different about slapping a Restricted sticker on a video game? Adults can still buy it, hell, they can buy it for their kids if they want. The lack of standards is kinda worrysome - what constitutes excessive violence - but it's not like the game was banned. (Unless I'm mis-informed over here on the East Coast.)
Those of you who think Canada is socialist / commie should look at your drug and drug testing laws before calling the kettle black. Canada's laws make a great deal more sense IMHO. The post about Canadians valuing the rights of society above was bang on. We believe in Common Sense (tm) up here. There are cops that are assholes here like anywhere else, but for the most part, they're reasonable, as are the judges. Reasonable people that expect to be treated reasonably, I think is a good summary. Tim Horton's for all!
Here's to high taxes and 5 hour hospital waits! *sarcasm*