I didn't see it in the article, but I read in Robert Zubrin's book about going to Mars, that another benefit of his low-cost space travel agenda would be to mine H3 from the moon, where it exists in copious supply. Somehow (i'm no chemist) this H3 could be broken down into H2 and used for fuel-cell cars and those city buses in Chicago. Anyone have comments on this?
Dude, I read that book, and will admit that Zubrin is very thorough in his argument, omitting none of the necessary discussion for his low-cost, privately-funded, quickly timed, and ultra-safe method . . . but I put the case to my roomate, an Aerospace Engineering major (undergrad senior at the time), and he said Zubrin would have to compromise at least one angle of his strategy. In particular, my roomate was highly skeptical about protecting the astronauts from radiation for such a long mission. He believes they'd come back with the equivalent of extreme sunburn, probably already cancerous. Zubrin refutes this simply by saying the existing numbers concerning radiation are "overstated" and that the issue is not that big a deal, using an Earth-based example about the number of hours a guy spends on a Miami beach, or something. Of course the real answer is this: to protect your humans, you'd need a good 8-9 inches of lead (Pb) surrounding the craft, and this would make the module too heavy for a) initial lift-off (according to Zubrin's budget), which would result in b) reduced payload, i.e. not enough water/food/air to make the trip, and c) 8 inches of lead might not be enough to protect the humans anyway.
I don't claim to know the correct answer, I just want to caution about getting caught up in Zubrin's enthusiasm. He's honest, but you have to think for yourself; he doesn't pretend that there's any real economic benefit from space exploration (except for the mining of H3 from the moon to use in some other high-Earth technology): he merely says it's a majestic enterprise that mankind shouldn't be content to leave unexplored.
But a cross-reference with at least one other scientist's book is certainly of most prodigious import.
some forget that those Columbine kids were also on drugs, like cocaine -- not just buzzed up. Is that not a significant part of the problem? the media obsesses with Kurt Cobain buckling under whatever pressure you can pull out of the hat, but the drugs are always overlooked because the reporters either want to keep using drugs themselves, or don't want to convey anti-substance material in their articles in fear that they won't get published.
It appears in almost every case. Cocaine, alchohol -- any substance -- gives you the "synthetic courage" (thanks S.King) to do what you normally never would. Look at the bank robbers who only do their heists when they're cooked up. Suicides, rapes, talking to the girl at the party, so often pushed from pondering to action by the substance. People with no guts when sober; monsters under their chemical surge.
Where's the fine line between "predisposition to psychosis" and "cranked like a Model-T" ???
By slowing down the generators, you convert the mechanical energy of their decelerating rotational inertial mass into electrical power. Quite similar to regenerative braking in electric cars. Now, once steady-state 50Hz is obtained (having dropped from 60Hz) I don't know how you could continue to get an energy boost; I'd have to look that one up.
Anything that could make the bezel (display face) of radios and instrument panels slimmer and less space-demanding might save cost and even allow for more informative (or at least decorative) dashboard components. You could make your car's interior look like the Enterprise if you wanted.
The article mentioned liquid-mixing to get results. So did your color-changing scheme. We all must consider the energy required to move these dense liquids and mix them. Do you set up the protiens (i.e. program the DNA computer) for one calculation at a time, by hand, in your kitchen? Of course not. So to inject these chemicals and fluids at any automated level would require the very electrical systems (and electronic logic to power them) these scientists are postulating to eliminate. The speed benefit is undeniable, but likewise is the notion that you cannot eliminate the current electrical/electronic technology to make it useful.
My college textbook for Intro Digital Design had the moves of game 6 (vs. Deep Blue) illustrated on every chapter heading.
In game 6, Kasparov lost his QUEEN after only a few turns, and immediately forfeitted. That would certainly make me cry. Granted, it was sneaky of Deep Blue, but I, a novice, maintain that I would never have let it happen;)
I agree; if they implement this, the money should go to expanding the subway or putting a new useful road somewhere. What I don't like is the way it doesn't affect the rich in the least. Granted, they will spend the most money downtown, but the poor don't live in expensive suburbs; they mingle and transverse the bustling (congested) hub.
My parents wouldn't buy me a Nintendo until I was 13, so I grew up sucking at every game; except one: LIFE FORCE!!!
Every weekend, my friend (who was a game master) and I would get a pizza, bag of chips, some candy, and pop, sit down in bean bags and play Life Force from beginning to end. Not a dead-easy game; you had to pay attention; but oh what fun, and how multi-player reliant, and how re-playable. Anybody hear me on this? Perhaps not. It was overshadowed by the likes of Contra and such; but the game was a treasure for the nerdy kid who could never get his hands on a controller.
if they were to route the signals on high-voltage lines, you'd be correct, but didn't it say they wanted to feed a fiber right into the local municipal grid? That would at least eliminate the threat of kite-flying bozos beneath the steel towers on McPete's Farm from ruining your connection. Since they have to bypass the high-inductance transformers anyway (which impede sinusoidally-varying voltage signals) the fiber again looks like the best option. And to top it off, can these devices on the line that re-construct and re-send the signal really be cost-effective, or more economically practical than just going all-fiber? Fibers need signal re-generators (optical amplifiers) as well; which costs more? Granted, when the power's out, your computer won't get on the internet regardless (except you laptop folks) so it seems the fiber would be even furthermore advantageous.
I actually have read the book "It" (age 17) and it scared me green, as well. But I maintain that the movie is great because they did the best they could with expensive air-time and a viewer's 3-hour attention span. Since each character is important, you can't have big-name actors for some and duds for others; thus, Tommy Wallace chose big actors for each character and gave them all a chance to contribute to the flick. In addition, a movie based any more closely to the book would have been just awful to watch, if not impossible to film: Pennywise killing infants, pre-teen sex in the sewer, the bloody and gory rock-fight . . . it would have been too much, even for the big screen. I say they did a fantastic job with a monumentally scary novel.
Stephen King's "IT" was just on the other day. What a great flick! What we must hope, however, is that they don't take "Dune" the movie to the level that "Oliver" the musical took Dickens's classic. I've just finished reading the latter, and plan to purchase and begin reading the former this evening. Oliver Twist is a fantastic book, yet the musical makes it look completely stupid. Case in point: the most famous scene of the musical (the close-up shot of the fat wide-eyed Beadle bellowing "MORE?!?!?!?!" into Oliver's face) never happens in the book. In the book, the Beadle just gets deathly silent (still wide-eyed) and whispers in shocked astonishment: "What did you say?"
I'm excited to read Dune. I know I'm lagging behind most of you, in that I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited to gain friends in the/. community (not).
As an employee of an automotive supplier in Detroit, I'm interested in this issue, and your opinion that the noise is not related to the exterior body panels. It has long been an engineering problem for the interior plastic-molded panels to come loose after appreciable (or not so) mileage vibration. Where I work, we even have a whole department of "Squeak and Rattle" engineers. My car has already developed this problem at 39,000 miles, and I'd be suprised if the '96 Saturn you mentioned wasn't currently suffering in a similar manner.
It seems to me the exterior plastic would loosen and vibrate sooner than the interior moldings. My company's proposed solution for the interior is to attempt eliminating as many seams as possible, making the panels very large and continuous. Obviously, with doors, windows, and puppies on the outsides of cars, a continuously connected body would be impossible. I'm curious to hear what the high-mileage Saturn owners have to say (on this issue only, please).
looks like your reply bombed, dude. You were funny the first time. Congrats on getting posted, replied to, and joked with by Mitnik, but the word "zillions" detracts a lot from any post. Fame rarely works on our own terms.
I just want to say thanks to/. for the most interesting article I've ever (legally) read on a computer. You have rejuvinated my interest in this case, and I, too, look forward to reading an authentic book on the case. For/. to land Mitnik is huge; make him a member of the staff!
The scene opens in a criminally filthy college apartment not far from campus. Six guys sit watching a CSCI major walk through FF-Ten with the strategy guide open in his lap. One of the geeks present has a girlfriend; she enters, pausing a moment to watch the screen, before silently moving on, out of the room, without a word: without even a change in her countenance.
Her boo decides to speak up.
"Where you goin?"
"I don't know why you guys are so interested in these games."
"You should try watching one. It's really interesting. It's like reading a book."
"Yeah, with your FINGERS!"
(clip-clop clip-clop, the lady leaves; few notice. The game goes on and on.)
but no story to get there, either
on
Infinite Games?
·
· Score: 1
I agree, that nothing beats the (good) book in terms of imaginative power and more importantly the human feelings illicited by words and text that actors -- life and computer game -- cannot emulate.
But the idea of going Gollum on your fellow hero counterpart and running your blade through his chest whilst he takes a spot of tea is enticing! What a game that would be, and it here begins to resemble war-simulation games, in that you the Captain may decide to scuttle your best warship, for no reason, may decide to let a base fall to fortify another, etc, and the game-enemy responds most logically (i.e. it will not attack a base you have unexpectedly forfeited; it will move on in its next move per your destruction).
The challenge, I suppose, is the very concept of a "character". You can win World War II without the CV Hornet, but Roland, heir to King James, is the ONLY one who can smite the Black Dragon, when magic relics, bloodlines, Shakespearean plots are involved. That's the difference, I suppose; war simulations have no characters, and if they do, those men are disposable, per the nature of war.
Even the simple act of instant character-replacement (substituting a generic essential-guy to the protagonist you just skewered) would be a refreshing way to play. Don't like the hairstyle of essential-character Sid? Shoot him in the face and In Walks essential-replacement Goldar! It would be fun, even if not extremely deep.
Does this not seem like cheating to anyone else? So they observed "action at a distance," and "spooky entanglement", and have observed the transmission of qubits from one light wave to another, but they did it all with a connecting fiber-optic cable! This makes it far less fascinating for me. It's not how Star Trek did things, and it's not the "spooky" phenomena I studied in college.
We learned the "jelly bean" analogy, that says if you had two quantum jellybeans, both simultaneously red and green, and gave one to your friend, and put one in your pocket and boarded a plane for some far-away destination, that upon landing at your new destination, if you put your hand in your pocket and pulled out your quantum jelly-bean, and observed that it was red, your friends's jellybean back at home would unquestionably and could only unequivocally be green. That's how we learned about entanglement. The existance of a connecting fiber in this case just seems too much like electromagnetic transmission, which quantum entanglement is not.
you should see yesterday's post, about how dirty it is to make DRAM chips. But look, once you condone laws to govern that, you are condoning the government to control a business aspect that isn't trust-related. I'll keep my opinions on government's business involvement to myself, but are you sure you want to shout about environmentalism when there's that other side of the coin to consider?
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't see it in the article, but I read in Robert Zubrin's book about going to Mars, that another benefit of his low-cost space travel agenda would be to mine H3 from the moon, where it exists in copious supply. Somehow (i'm no chemist) this H3 could be broken down into H2 and used for fuel-cell cars and those city buses in Chicago. Anyone have comments on this?
I read the article . . . how do I sign up? ("Available this summer" means what exactly???)
Dude, I read that book, and will admit that Zubrin is very thorough in his argument, omitting none of the necessary discussion for his low-cost, privately-funded, quickly timed, and ultra-safe method . . . but I put the case to my roomate, an Aerospace Engineering major (undergrad senior at the time), and he said Zubrin would have to compromise at least one angle of his strategy. In particular, my roomate was highly skeptical about protecting the astronauts from radiation for such a long mission. He believes they'd come back with the equivalent of extreme sunburn, probably already cancerous. Zubrin refutes this simply by saying the existing numbers concerning radiation are "overstated" and that the issue is not that big a deal, using an Earth-based example about the number of hours a guy spends on a Miami beach, or something. Of course the real answer is this: to protect your humans, you'd need a good 8-9 inches of lead (Pb) surrounding the craft, and this would make the module too heavy for a) initial lift-off (according to Zubrin's budget), which would result in b) reduced payload, i.e. not enough water/food/air to make the trip, and c) 8 inches of lead might not be enough to protect the humans anyway.
I don't claim to know the correct answer, I just want to caution about getting caught up in Zubrin's enthusiasm. He's honest, but you have to think for yourself; he doesn't pretend that there's any real economic benefit from space exploration (except for the mining of H3 from the moon to use in some other high-Earth technology): he merely says it's a majestic enterprise that mankind shouldn't be content to leave unexplored.
But a cross-reference with at least one other scientist's book is certainly of most prodigious import.
some forget that those Columbine kids were also on drugs, like cocaine -- not just buzzed up. Is that not a significant part of the problem? the media obsesses with Kurt Cobain buckling under whatever pressure you can pull out of the hat, but the drugs are always overlooked because the reporters either want to keep using drugs themselves, or don't want to convey anti-substance material in their articles in fear that they won't get published.
It appears in almost every case. Cocaine, alchohol -- any substance -- gives you the "synthetic courage" (thanks S.King) to do what you normally never would. Look at the bank robbers who only do their heists when they're cooked up. Suicides, rapes, talking to the girl at the party, so often pushed from pondering to action by the substance. People with no guts when sober; monsters under their chemical surge.
Where's the fine line between "predisposition to psychosis" and "cranked like a Model-T" ???
By slowing down the generators, you convert the mechanical energy of their decelerating rotational inertial mass into electrical power. Quite similar to regenerative braking in electric cars. Now, once steady-state 50Hz is obtained (having dropped from 60Hz) I don't know how you could continue to get an energy boost; I'd have to look that one up.
Anything that could make the bezel (display face) of radios and instrument panels slimmer and less space-demanding might save cost and even allow for more informative (or at least decorative) dashboard components. You could make your car's interior look like the Enterprise if you wanted.
the U.S. needs more phat car mods.
The article mentioned liquid-mixing to get results. So did your color-changing scheme. We all must consider the energy required to move these dense liquids and mix them. Do you set up the protiens (i.e. program the DNA computer) for one calculation at a time, by hand, in your kitchen? Of course not. So to inject these chemicals and fluids at any automated level would require the very electrical systems (and electronic logic to power them) these scientists are postulating to eliminate. The speed benefit is undeniable, but likewise is the notion that you cannot eliminate the current electrical/electronic technology to make it useful.
My college textbook for Intro Digital Design had the moves of game 6 (vs. Deep Blue) illustrated on every chapter heading. ;)
In game 6, Kasparov lost his QUEEN after only a few turns, and immediately forfeitted. That would certainly make me cry. Granted, it was sneaky of Deep Blue, but I, a novice, maintain that I would never have let it happen
I agree; if they implement this, the money should go to expanding the subway or putting a new useful road somewhere. What I don't like is the way it doesn't affect the rich in the least. Granted, they will spend the most money downtown, but the poor don't live in expensive suburbs; they mingle and transverse the bustling (congested) hub.
Microsoft might actually lose when going up against Satan! Did you see the CCIA's address?
666 11th St. NW
Washington, DC 20001
A lot of people would give Homer Simpson an award. This is the same thing. Gollum's voice made the movie and defined how the CGI was drawn.
My parents wouldn't buy me a Nintendo until I was 13, so I grew up sucking at every game; except one: LIFE FORCE!!!
Every weekend, my friend (who was a game master) and I would get a pizza, bag of chips, some candy, and pop, sit down in bean bags and play Life Force from beginning to end. Not a dead-easy game; you had to pay attention; but oh what fun, and how multi-player reliant, and how re-playable. Anybody hear me on this? Perhaps not. It was overshadowed by the likes of Contra and such; but the game was a treasure for the nerdy kid who could never get his hands on a controller.
if they were to route the signals on high-voltage lines, you'd be correct, but didn't it say they wanted to feed a fiber right into the local municipal grid? That would at least eliminate the threat of kite-flying bozos beneath the steel towers on McPete's Farm from ruining your connection. Since they have to bypass the high-inductance transformers anyway (which impede sinusoidally-varying voltage signals) the fiber again looks like the best option. And to top it off, can these devices on the line that re-construct and re-send the signal really be cost-effective, or more economically practical than just going all-fiber? Fibers need signal re-generators (optical amplifiers) as well; which costs more? Granted, when the power's out, your computer won't get on the internet regardless (except you laptop folks) so it seems the fiber would be even furthermore advantageous.
well, usually it is, but this just happened to me last night:
." *click*
Ring Ring! (about seven times)
MEAN_LADY: "Hello?!"
ME: "Yeah, uh, how late are you open?"
MEAN_LADY: "Who are you calling?!"
ME: "Is this 7xx-4xx-5xxx?"
MEAN_LADY: "--YES!"
ME: "But this isn't Fantastic Sam's?"
MEAN_LADY: "--NO, oh gosh no they changed their number about two years ago."
ME: "Oh, I'm sorry."
MEAN_LADY: "Bieeee . .
Thanks, Google. #1 link was 2 YEARS out-of-date.
I actually have read the book "It" (age 17) and it scared me green, as well. But I maintain that the movie is great because they did the best they could with expensive air-time and a viewer's 3-hour attention span. Since each character is important, you can't have big-name actors for some and duds for others; thus, Tommy Wallace chose big actors for each character and gave them all a chance to contribute to the flick. In addition, a movie based any more closely to the book would have been just awful to watch, if not impossible to film: Pennywise killing infants, pre-teen sex in the sewer, the bloody and gory rock-fight . . . it would have been too much, even for the big screen. I say they did a fantastic job with a monumentally scary novel.
Stephen King's "IT" was just on the other day. What a great flick! What we must hope, however, is that they don't take "Dune" the movie to the level that "Oliver" the musical took Dickens's classic. I've just finished reading the latter, and plan to purchase and begin reading the former this evening. Oliver Twist is a fantastic book, yet the musical makes it look completely stupid. Case in point: the most famous scene of the musical (the close-up shot of the fat wide-eyed Beadle bellowing "MORE?!?!?!?!" into Oliver's face) never happens in the book. In the book, the Beadle just gets deathly silent (still wide-eyed) and whispers in shocked astonishment: "What did you say?" /. community (not).
I'm excited to read Dune. I know I'm lagging behind most of you, in that I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited to gain friends in the
As an employee of an automotive supplier in Detroit, I'm interested in this issue, and your opinion that the noise is not related to the exterior body panels. It has long been an engineering problem for the interior plastic-molded panels to come loose after appreciable (or not so) mileage vibration. Where I work, we even have a whole department of "Squeak and Rattle" engineers. My car has already developed this problem at 39,000 miles, and I'd be suprised if the '96 Saturn you mentioned wasn't currently suffering in a similar manner.
It seems to me the exterior plastic would loosen and vibrate sooner than the interior moldings. My company's proposed solution for the interior is to attempt eliminating as many seams as possible, making the panels very large and continuous. Obviously, with doors, windows, and puppies on the outsides of cars, a continuously connected body would be impossible. I'm curious to hear what the high-mileage Saturn owners have to say (on this issue only, please).
looks like your reply bombed, dude. You were funny the first time. Congrats on getting posted, replied to, and joked with by Mitnik, but the word "zillions" detracts a lot from any post. Fame rarely works on our own terms.
I just want to say thanks to /. for the most interesting article I've ever (legally) read on a computer. You have rejuvinated my interest in this case, and I, too, look forward to reading an authentic book on the case. For /. to land Mitnik is huge; make him a member of the staff!
For example, you could fire CowboyNeal.
The scene opens in a criminally filthy college apartment not far from campus. Six guys sit watching a CSCI major walk through FF-Ten with the strategy guide open in his lap. One of the geeks present has a girlfriend; she enters, pausing a moment to watch the screen, before silently moving on, out of the room, without a word: without even a change in her countenance.
Her boo decides to speak up.
"Where you goin?"
"I don't know why you guys are so interested in these games."
"You should try watching one. It's really interesting. It's like reading a book."
"Yeah, with your FINGERS!"
(clip-clop clip-clop, the lady leaves; few notice. The game goes on and on.)
yeah Tetris, basketball, and kind of like Chess.
Right down to the nitty-gritty. Battle.
Once upon a time, the armies met. Let's roll!
I agree, that nothing beats the (good) book in terms of imaginative power and more importantly the human feelings illicited by words and text that actors -- life and computer game -- cannot emulate.
But the idea of going Gollum on your fellow hero counterpart and running your blade through his chest whilst he takes a spot of tea is enticing! What a game that would be, and it here begins to resemble war-simulation games, in that you the Captain may decide to scuttle your best warship, for no reason, may decide to let a base fall to fortify another, etc, and the game-enemy responds most logically (i.e. it will not attack a base you have unexpectedly forfeited; it will move on in its next move per your destruction).
The challenge, I suppose, is the very concept of a "character". You can win World War II without the CV Hornet, but Roland, heir to King James, is the ONLY one who can smite the Black Dragon, when magic relics, bloodlines, Shakespearean plots are involved. That's the difference, I suppose; war simulations have no characters, and if they do, those men are disposable, per the nature of war.
Even the simple act of instant character-replacement (substituting a generic essential-guy to the protagonist you just skewered) would be a refreshing way to play. Don't like the hairstyle of essential-character Sid? Shoot him in the face and In Walks essential-replacement Goldar! It would be fun, even if not extremely deep.
Does this not seem like cheating to anyone else? So they observed "action at a distance," and "spooky entanglement", and have observed the transmission of qubits from one light wave to another, but they did it all with a connecting fiber-optic cable! This makes it far less fascinating for me. It's not how Star Trek did things, and it's not the "spooky" phenomena I studied in college.
We learned the "jelly bean" analogy, that says if you had two quantum jellybeans, both simultaneously red and green, and gave one to your friend, and put one in your pocket and boarded a plane for some far-away destination, that upon landing at your new destination, if you put your hand in your pocket and pulled out your quantum jelly-bean, and observed that it was red, your friends's jellybean back at home would unquestionably and could only unequivocally be green. That's how we learned about entanglement. The existance of a connecting fiber in this case just seems too much like electromagnetic transmission, which quantum entanglement is not.
I agree wholeheartedly. It's about moving on, changing things as we need them instead of trying to pre-emptively guess a future benefit.
you should see yesterday's post, about how dirty it is to make DRAM chips. But look, once you condone laws to govern that, you are condoning the government to control a business aspect that isn't trust-related. I'll keep my opinions on government's business involvement to myself, but are you sure you want to shout about environmentalism when there's that other side of the coin to consider?