Haha. You miss the point. That wasn't inaction, that was the death throes. Against IE4, it would have taken money they didn't have, on a product that they had to give away (because M$ price dumping). Try to get investors to spend on a product you'll give away, against a competitor they know can't be stopped.
This time around, it would just be incompetence. Do you think any amount of talent/skill/business savvy could have saved netscape, though, once the borg set their sites on it?
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Hmm. As a practiced cynic, I usually just snicker at the amateurs. You Sir, are a professional. I applaud you.
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Wow. I refused to use the word nazi, and I get trolled by them anyway. Or do you klansmen dislike being lumped in with them?
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Yes, he should blame himself. Just like *censored religious denomination* should blame themselves for the *censored historical event*, instead of the *censored german political party*. Just like the blacks should blame themselves for slavery. Or perhaps even like rape victims, they do dress like sluts, you know.
This isn't a flame. Netscape did many stupid things, like many big companies do stupid things. All of which are fair game, in my book. But, it is commonly accepted that they fell victim to M$, and that M$ cheated. A court of law ruled as such. It is always the criminal's fault, not the victim's. That said... potential crime victims do need to be careful.
*** I self censored this... didn't feel like being the first person to compare M$ to *censored german political party*.
"BSD is Dying" Troll! Where have you been?!?!? We've all missed you. Some people like the hot grits troll better, but your lame trolls were always my favorite. I had thought you had given up, passed the mantle on to other up and coming trolls, but amazingly, you just keep going and going, like the energizer bunny. Do you know, that for the effort you expended, just posting this tired piece of flamebait, you could have done any other number of positive/constructive things?
Assuming that it required roughly 14 calories to cut'n'paste this from/home/Troll/bsd_is_dying.txt, you could have performed other activities such as, growing 3 new neurons (bringing the total up to 7 or 8), breathing for another 10 seconds (thanks for not wasting it on this, many of the slashdot community applaud every opportunity you take to refuse doing things that would postpone your death), or even 'thought'. Yes, that's right. You could have done something many of us take for granted, but is insufferably difficult for yourself, force those mental gears to move. Mind you, we all believe in you, and that someday, you will actually partake in this mental activity, our hope and faith is as strong as ever, even if a few of us are rather impatient.
Keep at it, "BSD is Dying" troll, without you, there'd be no slashdot.
I hardly consider a 8 or 10 pin male header "yet another interface". Especially when it would still be easy for people like us to make the internal ribbon cable. A second rj45 works, but that's just one more in what could be a long line of them. For me, this is gonna be in the computer room, so it's a straight cable to the switch, but for other's the thing is in the living room. That's 1 internal rj45, 1 external, 1 living room wall, 1 more on the far side, and finally one on the switch. I count 6. It's probably a small or even non-existent difference between 5 and 6, but one less is still good, and it would have cost him nothing design-wise. All we really need, is a decent way to mod the back panel... short of pressing a new one. I hesitate to butcher stuff with my dremel, you know.
It's your own fault anyway. Tivo's should be rackmounted, where you don't have to worry about such things. Personally, I'm getting at least 3 DirecTivo's and turbonets, and rackmounting them. Don't have to have big hard drives either, just enough to do 10 hours or so. When it's full, archive them to my fibre channel raid, and switch over to #2 or #3 for the 15 minutes it will take to empty the hard drive. Then it's ready again. As far as watching, I've already got plenty of rg6 out to the living room, I'll just move the signal to the TV with that, and have IR repeaters for the remote control. If I need to record more shows concurrently, add another to the rack. If I need more storage, add more FC drives to the raid. Never worry about blessing drives and all that nonsense. Now if we could just manage to get pitou source hosted somewhere again, without the sharks mauling it...
Oh, and Jafa, if you ever read this, I like your design skills, but why the rj45 on the card itself? A 10 pin male header, so that you could move the jack off the board via ribbon cable would have been ideal. Snaking cat5 into the chassis is just tacky.
When AT&T had a telephone monopoly, people still had the options of...
1) Moving to another country where AT&T wasn't a monopoly. 2) Buying all the land in between their own, and those people they wanted to call, for the purpose of building their own comm system. 3) Writing letters. 4) Doing without. It's not like telephones are a necessity.
So, I guess the courts were wrong back then, they obviously weren't a monopoly after all.
Besides, Linux wasn't an option when Microsoft committed their crimes. Microsoft had, and still continues to have, better than 85% of the marketshare, and is guilty of using it to try to kill both Apple and Linux, and for that matter, everything else which is even remotely a substitute. They're guilty of attempting to turn the internet into a big, sad AOL clone (.NET, IIS extensions that are incompatible with competing products, abuse of html standards) and for no other reason than this would give them more of an iron grip over how you use the net and your computer.
They are guilty, even legally guilty. They are a monopoly not only in the practical sense, but also as defined by law. The executives at M$ don't play fair, and worse, when they force their products onto everyone, those products aren't even half as good as the now dead competitor. So you tell me, how could you ever possibly defend them?
More sickening than advocating a system where some will always be condemned to second and third rate status? If something is worth a certain amount, then it is worth that amount. That bigshots play money games, that force others to change that amount arbitrarily, and always 3-18 months ahead of what they'll pay their workers...
I don't easily dismiss idealism. I haven't sold out. In most respects, I'm even moderately humble... I don't expect to be able to do anything about this. Just another cog in the wheel. I believe, arrogance is one of the few things I might be innocent of, and I don't really like being accused of it.
Besides, how is it that those always using human nature as a defense of these things, are the same ones who don't do a very good job of transcending their own? I know you might be defensive about your own "work", but the truth is, in a nation the size of the USA, with its infrastructure and potential workforce, none of us would have to work very much to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. You people just make things way too complicated.
I'm afraid that if I take an economics course, I'll become just like you. No offense.
Your inflation measurements seem awfully convoluted to me. They're probably that way because the people who invent them are out of a job, if things remain simple. But let me simplify it anyway. Inflation is the condition where 2 or more powerful entities in control of different parts of the economy, try to race each other in seeing who can screw the worker the quickest.
My numbers were arbitrary, I have no idea how many loaves of bread can be made in an hour. I would think that while inaccurate, they aren't off by too many orders of magnitude. In some large food processing plant, the dough is likely mixed in a big vat, kneaded by machinery, and cut up into loaves automatically. A few people probably can run the whole thing, producing thousands upon thousands in a 40 hour work week. And to be fair, figure in a few farmers, and what not, all the middlemen. Economists do all kinds of crazy math that makes no sense, don't tell me they couldn't figure up the real value of something if they wanted to (they don't of course).
People aren't inherently lazy, in the true sense of the word. People inherently tend to avoid things that they believe (for good reasons oor bad) to not having any point. Find me a person who wouldn't be willing to do a decent amount of work, if the economic model were actually fair.. there will be a few (rich people, politicians... etc). They are the exception, and are somewhat easily dealt with. Quite a few will fall into retirement age, which means they wouldn't work anyway. Others, you just provide the bare minimum for them to survive, until they start working. Remember, they earn a fixed amount per hour, so the more they do, the more they get in life.
The other aspects of laziness are taught. They could just as simply not be taught.
The pleasantness of jobs, hmm. There will be a few that are tough, I'm sure. I don't think garbage man vs truck driver is one of them, or at least that it needs to be though.
Middle managers have no justification for existence. I'm not saying that my economic model would have worked in the 60's, it wouldn't have been possible then. Now though? I think we are on the verge of having technology that can manage this much better than humans (if it isn't already possible).
Pro athletes? This is certainly your weakest position. The others, you are at least partially right, one way or another, but this is kinda sick. I don't even know how to answer. I am unemployed right now, cog in a vast economic wheel right now, that I've never had any control over, and never will. This man makes millions, and what is his contribution to society? He aesthetizes 20 million overweight slobs for 2 hours at a time several times per week, so they don't realize what a shitty world they've helped to create?
Besides, even if sports would die, I don't think music would. One out of two ain't bad.
Fusion, providing that it is doable, would be much more than just an oil/coal replacement. Many things that aren't practical simply because they cost too much, become simple, if electricity becomes as cheap as I believe it would have to. Desalination is possible, it's just not cheap... takes too much power. However, if ocean water is your fuel, and the energy yield is as good as or better than fission...
Space travel would get a big boost. There are things that aren't easy or possible to acquire on earth. Prescious elements, including metals and the like... even some non-obvious stuff (helium 5 on the surface of the moon).
Pollution takes a hit. The effort spent cleaning things up can be spent elsewhere.
Energy independence would affect middle eastern terrorism somehow (though I can't claim it would be a good effect, it might be... who the hell can tell anymore?).
And another idea of mine, that would be difficult to explain here. It's impossible right now, sucks up too much juice. Imagine though, that you could route products around a physical network, like you did packets on the internet. We're talking mailing a letter from california to new york, in under 3 hours flat. Scaled up to cargo that could only fit in a train car right now.
At least we somewhat agree on fusion, I guess.
PS I think the initial fusion reactors will be on the scale of a fission plant, but that they could become as small as double a fridge or so. Imagine having your own. No smaller than that though.
Then what we really need, is Tau meson catalized fusion, no?
Seriously though, I don't see what is wrong with bringing a tiny amount of matter to absolute zero. I don't mean 20 pounds of gold or anything, maybe just a few atoms worth of whatever. The way I understand Heisenberg type fluctuations, sure, in any given volume of space, there will be lots of these little particles popping in and out of existence. But not at every single location in that volume, and if the volume is small enough... you might be able to go several minutes without anything materializing inside it and adding energy to your sample. Besides, if the sample is this cold anyway, it takes up alot less space than it otherwise would, no?
Besides, I'm kinda bored with fusion. We really need AM/M reactors. Doesn't it ever bother you, that Star Trek never bothers to explain how or where they store kilograms (or more) of anti-matter? Hell, or how they even produce it. Sure, if you want to spend a few megawatts of electricity, you can make an anti-H or two, which might give back 1/10,000th as much energy. We really need an antimatter-matter reaction that actually breeds more antimatter, right? Hmm, I wonder if I can get on the cover of newsweek for claiming to have discovered antimatter breeding reactions by subjecting a baking soda/lime juice solution to vigorous shaking under christmas tree lights. Then I could defend the inability to reproduce the results by accusing them of using the wrong color lights ("NO, they HAVE to be the blue twinkly ones!").
Whatcha think?
Oh, another serious question. I didn't realize you really could replace the basic subatomic parts with exotic substitutes. Why in the hell couldn't you replace the protons in iron with positrons (same charge), and have steel that is 20 times lighter than aluminum? You'd need something really weird going on, to prevent it from decaying, but what exactly are the limits to this sort of thing?
Those are some interesting concepts. Wish I had went to school for physics.
Is there any way to bring a tangible piece of matter to absolute zero, and if so, what happens?
Also, just what other processes are capable of fusion, besides astrophysical phenomena (I imagine more than just stars can achieve fusion on a limited scale, seems like some random H atoms might fuse as they spiral into a black hole, for example) and your garden variety thermonuke? Is it possible for a couple of H's, just every once in awhile, to slap together somewhere, and fuse spontaneously? I'm not talking every day, mind you, but once or twice every few million years? Have the tokamaks actually succeeded in fusing some, just not enough to make alot of energy? Some of this stuff is hard to read.
Ok. I asked for all this, but for the kelvin rip. It may be the one thing in the whole paragraph that I understand, btw. I feel insulted. As I know it, it's a measurement of heat (energy in general?), and 0 kelvin is absolute zero, is it not?
Real prices are held fixed. So even if gold was 1000 times harder to produce in 1350, than wood, for instance, and yet now it's only 857 times more difficult, the prices shall remain fixed? That's a dumb way to do things.
Wanna know how to do it right? An hour of a man's life is worth $10. If he makes a loaf of bread, and it takes an hour, that loaf costs $10. (It won't, these things are highly automated, he might be able to make 4000 such loaves for instance). People get paid for how long they do work. People that just want to exist, might get along with only a few hours per week. Politicians, since they don't work at all, will soon starve, and no one will have to put up with their shit. Real work is, creating real goods, repairing and/or maintaining them, and delivering them where they need to be delivered. Middle managers, paid entertainers, pro athletes, bankers, politicians... all gone. Now isn't that simple? When it becomes easier to make a loaf of bread, the benefit is immediately available to you (or nearly so). Now for your 10 million reasons why this is overly simplistic, undoable, and just plain insane. I'm listening.
I argue that it's unrealistic to believe that controlled fusion is either outright impossible, or unlucrative. It *might* take thousands of years... but this is only the smallest chance, the odds are with us. And I'm sure, that if that is the case, we will stumble across plenty of methods that have nearly zero net gain (this is to be expected). Don't the tokamaks and Zpinch chambers all qualify as such? And probably plenty of other ways that only some physics graduate student is aware of. We're not talking magic here, but engineering (and if it's not quite at the engineering level, it's only a few years away).
It's not comparable to anything else I'm familiar with. Want to ruin the power industry? Sure, I can see that happening. Want to ruin multiple internatioal industries, in one fell swoop? Won't ever happen. Maybe fusion will happen, but it will be at their pace, so that they can control it and rape us all over again. They won't assasinate scientists, mind you, they don't have to. Much easier to just starve them before they can discover it. You don't think energy lobbyists have things to say to politicians about fusion research?
If a flourescent light bulb is so damn hot, why can't it be used for fusion? Pumping hydrogen gas into something 50K temp might sound bad, but it's only chemically explosive when in the presence of O2 right? Not that you could gain any useful energy from it, but I'd have one of the bitchenest light bulbs on the block, even better than that hippy dude's black light.
Hmm. Time is the ultimate limited resource? In a way yes. Tell that to all the people that have been layed off in the USA, and I suppose everywhere else on earth. How much time did it take to recover a pound of iron in 1350? How much today? Then why are prices going up, instead of coming down? My theory is a flawed economic model.
Do you argue that fusion wouldn't be worth it, if successful? If so, then there is no way to make you see my point. If you can agree to that though, then why shouldn't we? The amount is exaggerated, but certainly 10-40 billion per year would be no big deal. It is possible, just look at the sun... or a thermonuke (from a suitable safe distance, of course *grin*). It's just a matter of time, that will be quintupled, because of vested interests (how will power companies maintain power, if electricity is so damn cheap) and because we are neglecting it to the point of stupidity. The "crisis" in California last year... nothing like that would ever happen again. Pollution would be lowered dramatically, if not eradicated. (Sure electric cars are expensive, but if elec. is cheap, and you never have to pay for gas again...) I honestly can't even begin to imagine the changes that would be possible. But many of those changes, would be business empires collapsing... and every one of them, will tell you that this is a bad thing. But only because they have their hands in our wallets, and want to keep them there.
But the truly sad part, is that the resources aren't limited. This is no longer the middle ages, where there is only so much easy to get at fuel, only so much iron that is easy to mine.
Natural resources, with the possible exception of power, are more than plenty. And I caan't even really exclude power, that resource limitation is 100% artificial. Fusion would solve so many problems (with the exception of the problem that rich men have, that is, trying to keep their wealth without doing anything to earn it) it's not even funny. And how much do we spend on it per year? Our country should throw everything it has into harnessing it. A $300 billion a year crash course, if that's what it takes. Even if it takes 5 years at that rate, it would still be an investment (and it wouldn't take that long or that much).
Naturally limited resources are a thing out of history. Artificially limited resources are a part of our nature.
Yes, I'm sure that Microsoft will shrivel up and die, just as soon as business regulations are rescinded. And even if corporate charters are dissolved (haha), who do you think ownership would revert to? M$ would be a big partnership of maybe 10-20 individuals.
Same for every other corporation.
I hate democrats, I hate republicans. But you libertarian weenies astound me. How can I hate you guys, when you are always there with a punchline, and you nail it so deadpan serious?
The free market does not work. It's simply a little less dysfunctional than other systems.
Well, ignoring the fact that we can only hope we'll forget how Word works in 2010... I totally agree. I've had some tricky times moving stuff from one computer to the next, but I've only got my own hobbyist resources... for $1500 a forensic data recovery specialist can work true miracles. Hell, he'd hardly be justified to say these things even if the only known copy was partially melted. I can't imagine that any 1986 file format would be much harder to reverse engineer than the things people do currently.
And besides, you're starting to see the effect I was talking about at home... you'll just pump it up the ethernet to your new G6 when it comes time, no discs at all. That, and a reasonable raid5, and nothing short of literal catastrophe could kill his 2.5mil UKP data.
He can complain about this stuff, when he doesn't have a copy of AmigaOS 2.1 install media, a borked a2k, and floppy images on his pc. Now, that is a tough thing to recover from...;-)
PS Is jobs gonna continue with the roman numeral version thing? (OS MMCXIXIV) Not that it's bad, at least it's better than the damn yearly version scheme.
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He could have just been playing Devil's Advocate, you know. It did generate alot of worthwhile discussion.
Yes. But it's bad form to start them that way.
Haha. You miss the point. That wasn't inaction, that was the death throes. Against IE4, it would have taken money they didn't have, on a product that they had to give away (because M$ price dumping). Try to get investors to spend on a product you'll give away, against a competitor they know can't be stopped.
This time around, it would just be incompetence. Do you think any amount of talent/skill/business savvy could have saved netscape, though, once the borg set their sites on it?
Hmm. As a practiced cynic, I usually just snicker at the amateurs. You Sir, are a professional. I applaud you.
Wow. I refused to use the word nazi, and I get trolled by them anyway. Or do you klansmen dislike being lumped in with them?
Yes, he should blame himself. Just like *censored religious denomination* should blame themselves for the *censored historical event*, instead of the *censored german political party*. Just like the blacks should blame themselves for slavery. Or perhaps even like rape victims, they do dress like sluts, you know.
This isn't a flame. Netscape did many stupid things, like many big companies do stupid things. All of which are fair game, in my book. But, it is commonly accepted that they fell victim to M$, and that M$ cheated. A court of law ruled as such. It is always the criminal's fault, not the victim's. That said... potential crime victims do need to be careful.
*** I self censored this... didn't feel like being the first person to compare M$ to *censored german political party*.
Oh... it's not The Empire Strikes Back? Damn.
"BSD is Dying" Troll! Where have you been?!?!? We've all missed you. Some people like the hot grits troll better, but your lame trolls were always my favorite. I had thought you had given up, passed the mantle on to other up and coming trolls, but amazingly, you just keep going and going, like the energizer bunny. Do you know, that for the effort you expended, just posting this tired piece of flamebait, you could have done any other number of positive/constructive things?
/home/Troll/bsd_is_dying.txt, you could have performed other activities such as, growing 3 new neurons (bringing the total up to 7 or 8), breathing for another 10 seconds (thanks for not wasting it on this, many of the slashdot community applaud every opportunity you take to refuse doing things that would postpone your death), or even 'thought'. Yes, that's right. You could have done something many of us take for granted, but is insufferably difficult for yourself, force those mental gears to move. Mind you, we all believe in you, and that someday, you will actually partake in this mental activity, our hope and faith is as strong as ever, even if a few of us are rather impatient.
Assuming that it required roughly 14 calories to cut'n'paste this from
Keep at it, "BSD is Dying" troll, without you, there'd be no slashdot.
I hardly consider a 8 or 10 pin male header "yet another interface". Especially when it would still be easy for people like us to make the internal ribbon cable. A second rj45 works, but that's just one more in what could be a long line of them. For me, this is gonna be in the computer room, so it's a straight cable to the switch, but for other's the thing is in the living room. That's 1 internal rj45, 1 external, 1 living room wall, 1 more on the far side, and finally one on the switch. I count 6. It's probably a small or even non-existent difference between 5 and 6, but one less is still good, and it would have cost him nothing design-wise. All we really need, is a decent way to mod the back panel... short of pressing a new one. I hesitate to butcher stuff with my dremel, you know.
It's your own fault anyway. Tivo's should be rackmounted, where you don't have to worry about such things. Personally, I'm getting at least 3 DirecTivo's and turbonets, and rackmounting them. Don't have to have big hard drives either, just enough to do 10 hours or so. When it's full, archive them to my fibre channel raid, and switch over to #2 or #3 for the 15 minutes it will take to empty the hard drive. Then it's ready again. As far as watching, I've already got plenty of rg6 out to the living room, I'll just move the signal to the TV with that, and have IR repeaters for the remote control. If I need to record more shows concurrently, add another to the rack. If I need more storage, add more FC drives to the raid. Never worry about blessing drives and all that nonsense. Now if we could just manage to get pitou source hosted somewhere again, without the sharks mauling it...
Oh, and Jafa, if you ever read this, I like your design skills, but why the rj45 on the card itself? A 10 pin male header, so that you could move the jack off the board via ribbon cable would have been ideal. Snaking cat5 into the chassis is just tacky.
Well, if you consider all the money flowing from Redmond to DC, it might be said that Microsoft is attempting to buy such status, unofficial or not.
Besides, I was only attempting to illustrate how a monopoly can be non-absolute.
When AT&T had a telephone monopoly, people still had the options of...
1) Moving to another country where AT&T wasn't a monopoly.
2) Buying all the land in between their own, and those people they wanted to call, for the purpose of building their own comm system.
3) Writing letters.
4) Doing without. It's not like telephones are a necessity.
So, I guess the courts were wrong back then, they obviously weren't a monopoly after all.
Besides, Linux wasn't an option when Microsoft committed their crimes. Microsoft had, and still continues to have, better than 85% of the marketshare, and is guilty of using it to try to kill both Apple and Linux, and for that matter, everything else which is even remotely a substitute. They're guilty of attempting to turn the internet into a big, sad AOL clone (.NET, IIS extensions that are incompatible with competing products, abuse of html standards) and for no other reason than this would give them more of an iron grip over how you use the net and your computer.
They are guilty, even legally guilty. They are a monopoly not only in the practical sense, but also as defined by law. The executives at M$ don't play fair, and worse, when they force their products onto everyone, those products aren't even half as good as the now dead competitor. So you tell me, how could you ever possibly defend them?
More sickening than advocating a system where some will always be condemned to second and third rate status? If something is worth a certain amount, then it is worth that amount. That bigshots play money games, that force others to change that amount arbitrarily, and always 3-18 months ahead of what they'll pay their workers...
I don't easily dismiss idealism. I haven't sold out. In most respects, I'm even moderately humble... I don't expect to be able to do anything about this. Just another cog in the wheel. I believe, arrogance is one of the few things I might be innocent of, and I don't really like being accused of it.
Besides, how is it that those always using human nature as a defense of these things, are the same ones who don't do a very good job of transcending their own? I know you might be defensive about your own "work", but the truth is, in a nation the size of the USA, with its infrastructure and potential workforce, none of us would have to work very much to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. You people just make things way too complicated.
I'm afraid that if I take an economics course, I'll become just like you. No offense.
Your inflation measurements seem awfully convoluted to me. They're probably that way because the people who invent them are out of a job, if things remain simple. But let me simplify it anyway. Inflation is the condition where 2 or more powerful entities in control of different parts of the economy, try to race each other in seeing who can screw the worker the quickest.
My numbers were arbitrary, I have no idea how many loaves of bread can be made in an hour. I would think that while inaccurate, they aren't off by too many orders of magnitude. In some large food processing plant, the dough is likely mixed in a big vat, kneaded by machinery, and cut up into loaves automatically. A few people probably can run the whole thing, producing thousands upon thousands in a 40 hour work week. And to be fair, figure in a few farmers, and what not, all the middlemen. Economists do all kinds of crazy math that makes no sense, don't tell me they couldn't figure up the real value of something if they wanted to (they don't of course).
People aren't inherently lazy, in the true sense of the word. People inherently tend to avoid things that they believe (for good reasons oor bad) to not having any point. Find me a person who wouldn't be willing to do a decent amount of work, if the economic model were actually fair.. there will be a few (rich people, politicians... etc). They are the exception, and are somewhat easily dealt with. Quite a few will fall into retirement age, which means they wouldn't work anyway. Others, you just provide the bare minimum for them to survive, until they start working. Remember, they earn a fixed amount per hour, so the more they do, the more they get in life.
The other aspects of laziness are taught. They could just as simply not be taught.
The pleasantness of jobs, hmm. There will be a few that are tough, I'm sure. I don't think garbage man vs truck driver is one of them, or at least that it needs to be though.
Middle managers have no justification for existence. I'm not saying that my economic model would have worked in the 60's, it wouldn't have been possible then. Now though? I think we are on the verge of having technology that can manage this much better than humans (if it isn't already possible).
Pro athletes? This is certainly your weakest position. The others, you are at least partially right, one way or another, but this is kinda sick. I don't even know how to answer. I am unemployed right now, cog in a vast economic wheel right now, that I've never had any control over, and never will. This man makes millions, and what is his contribution to society? He aesthetizes 20 million overweight slobs for 2 hours at a time several times per week, so they don't realize what a shitty world they've helped to create?
Besides, even if sports would die, I don't think music would. One out of two ain't bad.
Fusion, providing that it is doable, would be much more than just an oil/coal replacement. Many things that aren't practical simply because they cost too much, become simple, if electricity becomes as cheap as I believe it would have to. Desalination is possible, it's just not cheap... takes too much power. However, if ocean water is your fuel, and the energy yield is as good as or better than fission...
Space travel would get a big boost. There are things that aren't easy or possible to acquire on earth. Prescious elements, including metals and the like... even some non-obvious stuff (helium 5 on the surface of the moon).
Pollution takes a hit. The effort spent cleaning things up can be spent elsewhere.
Energy independence would affect middle eastern terrorism somehow (though I can't claim it would be a good effect, it might be... who the hell can tell anymore?).
And another idea of mine, that would be difficult to explain here. It's impossible right now, sucks up too much juice. Imagine though, that you could route products around a physical network, like you did packets on the internet. We're talking mailing a letter from california to new york, in under 3 hours flat. Scaled up to cargo that could only fit in a train car right now.
At least we somewhat agree on fusion, I guess.
PS I think the initial fusion reactors will be on the scale of a fission plant, but that they could become as small as double a fridge or so. Imagine having your own. No smaller than that though.
Then what we really need, is Tau meson catalized fusion, no?
Seriously though, I don't see what is wrong with bringing a tiny amount of matter to absolute zero. I don't mean 20 pounds of gold or anything, maybe just a few atoms worth of whatever. The way I understand Heisenberg type fluctuations, sure, in any given volume of space, there will be lots of these little particles popping in and out of existence. But not at every single location in that volume, and if the volume is small enough... you might be able to go several minutes without anything materializing inside it and adding energy to your sample. Besides, if the sample is this cold anyway, it takes up alot less space than it otherwise would, no?
Besides, I'm kinda bored with fusion. We really need AM/M reactors. Doesn't it ever bother you, that Star Trek never bothers to explain how or where they store kilograms (or more) of anti-matter? Hell, or how they even produce it. Sure, if you want to spend a few megawatts of electricity, you can make an anti-H or two, which might give back 1/10,000th as much energy. We really need an antimatter-matter reaction that actually breeds more antimatter, right? Hmm, I wonder if I can get on the cover of newsweek for claiming to have discovered antimatter breeding reactions by subjecting a baking soda/lime juice solution to vigorous shaking under christmas tree lights. Then I could defend the inability to reproduce the results by accusing them of using the wrong color lights ("NO, they HAVE to be the blue twinkly ones!").
Whatcha think?
Oh, another serious question. I didn't realize you really could replace the basic subatomic parts with exotic substitutes. Why in the hell couldn't you replace the protons in iron with positrons (same charge), and have steel that is 20 times lighter than aluminum? You'd need something really weird going on, to prevent it from decaying, but what exactly are the limits to this sort of thing?
Those are some interesting concepts. Wish I had went to school for physics.
Is there any way to bring a tangible piece of matter to absolute zero, and if so, what happens?
Also, just what other processes are capable of fusion, besides astrophysical phenomena (I imagine more than just stars can achieve fusion on a limited scale, seems like some random H atoms might fuse as they spiral into a black hole, for example) and your garden variety thermonuke? Is it possible for a couple of H's, just every once in awhile, to slap together somewhere, and fuse spontaneously? I'm not talking every day, mind you, but once or twice every few million years? Have the tokamaks actually succeeded in fusing some, just not enough to make alot of energy? Some of this stuff is hard to read.
Ok. I asked for all this, but for the kelvin rip. It may be the one thing in the whole paragraph that I understand, btw. I feel insulted. As I know it, it's a measurement of heat (energy in general?), and 0 kelvin is absolute zero, is it not?
Real prices are held fixed. So even if gold was 1000 times harder to produce in 1350, than wood, for instance, and yet now it's only 857 times more difficult, the prices shall remain fixed? That's a dumb way to do things.
Wanna know how to do it right? An hour of a man's life is worth $10. If he makes a loaf of bread, and it takes an hour, that loaf costs $10. (It won't, these things are highly automated, he might be able to make 4000 such loaves for instance). People get paid for how long they do work. People that just want to exist, might get along with only a few hours per week. Politicians, since they don't work at all, will soon starve, and no one will have to put up with their shit. Real work is, creating real goods, repairing and/or maintaining them, and delivering them where they need to be delivered. Middle managers, paid entertainers, pro athletes, bankers, politicians... all gone. Now isn't that simple? When it becomes easier to make a loaf of bread, the benefit is immediately available to you (or nearly so). Now for your 10 million reasons why this is overly simplistic, undoable, and just plain insane. I'm listening.
I argue that it's unrealistic to believe that controlled fusion is either outright impossible, or unlucrative. It *might* take thousands of years... but this is only the smallest chance, the odds are with us. And I'm sure, that if that is the case, we will stumble across plenty of methods that have nearly zero net gain (this is to be expected). Don't the tokamaks and Zpinch chambers all qualify as such? And probably plenty of other ways that only some physics graduate student is aware of. We're not talking magic here, but engineering (and if it's not quite at the engineering level, it's only a few years away).
It's not comparable to anything else I'm familiar with. Want to ruin the power industry? Sure, I can see that happening. Want to ruin multiple internatioal industries, in one fell swoop? Won't ever happen. Maybe fusion will happen, but it will be at their pace, so that they can control it and rape us all over again. They won't assasinate scientists, mind you, they don't have to. Much easier to just starve them before they can discover it. You don't think energy lobbyists have things to say to politicians about fusion research?
If a flourescent light bulb is so damn hot, why can't it be used for fusion? Pumping hydrogen gas into something 50K temp might sound bad, but it's only chemically explosive when in the presence of O2 right? Not that you could gain any useful energy from it, but I'd have one of the bitchenest light bulbs on the block, even better than that hippy dude's black light.
You must drink Dr. Pepper. It certainly tastes like it has radioactive acetone in it to me.
*barf*
Hmm. Time is the ultimate limited resource? In a way yes. Tell that to all the people that have been layed off in the USA, and I suppose everywhere else on earth. How much time did it take to recover a pound of iron in 1350? How much today? Then why are prices going up, instead of coming down? My theory is a flawed economic model.
Do you argue that fusion wouldn't be worth it, if successful? If so, then there is no way to make you see my point. If you can agree to that though, then why shouldn't we? The amount is exaggerated, but certainly 10-40 billion per year would be no big deal. It is possible, just look at the sun... or a thermonuke (from a suitable safe distance, of course *grin*). It's just a matter of time, that will be quintupled, because of vested interests (how will power companies maintain power, if electricity is so damn cheap) and because we are neglecting it to the point of stupidity. The "crisis" in California last year... nothing like that would ever happen again. Pollution would be lowered dramatically, if not eradicated. (Sure electric cars are expensive, but if elec. is cheap, and you never have to pay for gas again...) I honestly can't even begin to imagine the changes that would be possible. But many of those changes, would be business empires collapsing... and every one of them, will tell you that this is a bad thing. But only because they have their hands in our wallets, and want to keep them there.
But the truly sad part, is that the resources aren't limited. This is no longer the middle ages, where there is only so much easy to get at fuel, only so much iron that is easy to mine.
Natural resources, with the possible exception of power, are more than plenty. And I caan't even really exclude power, that resource limitation is 100% artificial. Fusion would solve so many problems (with the exception of the problem that rich men have, that is, trying to keep their wealth without doing anything to earn it) it's not even funny. And how much do we spend on it per year? Our country should throw everything it has into harnessing it. A $300 billion a year crash course, if that's what it takes. Even if it takes 5 years at that rate, it would still be an investment (and it wouldn't take that long or that much).
Naturally limited resources are a thing out of history. Artificially limited resources are a part of our nature.
Yes, I'm sure that Microsoft will shrivel up and die, just as soon as business regulations are rescinded. And even if corporate charters are dissolved (haha), who do you think ownership would revert to? M$ would be a big partnership of maybe 10-20 individuals.
Same for every other corporation.
I hate democrats, I hate republicans. But you libertarian weenies astound me. How can I hate you guys, when you are always there with a punchline, and you nail it so deadpan serious?
The free market does not work. It's simply a little less dysfunctional than other systems.
Well, ignoring the fact that we can only hope we'll forget how Word works in 2010... I totally agree. I've had some tricky times moving stuff from one computer to the next, but I've only got my own hobbyist resources... for $1500 a forensic data recovery specialist can work true miracles. Hell, he'd hardly be justified to say these things even if the only known copy was partially melted. I can't imagine that any 1986 file format would be much harder to reverse engineer than the things people do currently.
;-)
And besides, you're starting to see the effect I was talking about at home... you'll just pump it up the ethernet to your new G6 when it comes time, no discs at all. That, and a reasonable raid5, and nothing short of literal catastrophe could kill his 2.5mil UKP data.
He can complain about this stuff, when he doesn't have a copy of AmigaOS 2.1 install media, a borked a2k, and floppy images on his pc. Now, that is a tough thing to recover from...
PS Is jobs gonna continue with the roman numeral version thing? (OS MMCXIXIV) Not that it's bad, at least it's better than the damn yearly version scheme.