Then why doesn't the government subsidise call centers? You know, in case we go to war with India and folks back home still need help downloading the internet...
Keep in mind not long ago a meteor hit Norway with the force of the Hiroshma bomb.
Russia was hit about 100 years ago, the gulf of mexico millions of years ago, and their are many bollide impact sites still visible all over the earth .
As for ways to protect a moonbase, the best way would be to make a mine, and have the base deep underground with multipe exit tunnels and redundant compartmentalization like newer US navy ships .
Thus why the USS cole in yemen had a huge hole in its side but didnt sink, after the bombing by terrorists several years ago.
A underground moonbase also would not experience the temperature extremes of the surface, and would reduce radiation to near zero .
Only money will make them change their mind, as this person killing himself in their parking lot over it did little but make them laugh.
So as I and other members of my immediate and extended family have done, ask them all close their bank of america accounts. Then tell them to pass the word on to all the ppl they know.
Yeah, Zero G can be a boon and a bane, it has positive and negative aspects.
I think building a spacedock at La Grange point L1 is the best idea, and a
moonbase to get most of the materials for the spacedock, and intrastellar craft.
Also satellites built and launched from the spacedock/moonbase would
have a lower cost to put in high earth geosynch orbit.
I would consider putting most of the moonbase far underground as it would
give it some defense against meteor/asteroid impact and most radiation.
o2 could be acquired from lunar soil as part of the helium-3 mining process,
saving hauling it to orbit.
Storing the fuel would be best done in multiple cylinders/containers so if you
have failure it does not compromise your entire fuel supply, ie. redundancy.
Meteorite impacts on a fuel cylinder would be very bad, and some kind
or defense protection against this would be needed .
A deflection system or decceleration system, like armor or layered airbags or
combination of both. Layered airbags to slow it some, armor to deal with
remaining inertia.
Multiple fueling stations intead of one to avoid the single point of failure scenario.
Like 8 arms on a spider coming out from the central hub of the spacedock.
Integrate with the spacedock on the outer reaches of something similar to piers
like ships dock with on earth. Long tunnels connecting to the main spacedock,
and if there is an accident at worst the tunnel and fuel pod is lost vs. the
entire station. Multiple airlocks in tunnel protect the spacedock from most explosions.
The fuel pods could be attached on the end of the tunnel offset from where it would
connect to the door of the docking crafts.
Ships could be brought inside the spacedock as well, but it would be preferred they
leave their explosive fuel outside the spacedock in the independent fuel pods.
Getting water up into space could be done by magnetic coil launcher mass drivers
tossing canisters of it into low orbit, and then have some kind of craft ferry it
from low orbit to the la grange points near the moon wear the spacedock would have
a long term stable orbit .
Water could be split into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis or other methods
such as the extreme heat method recently discovered.
A passive parabolic reflector on the moon or in space could achieve extreme heat
at its focal point, and high temperature on the moon reaches over 120 celsius.
With a focused reflector temperatures much higher than achieved at the solar
collector in france could be achieved.
With power near 12 million watts per cu cm inside the earth's atmosphere,
it would be impressive what could be achieved outside it.
The moon would most likely be the easier place to build the series of reflecting
mirrors and the tracking control system could be mostly underground to shield
it from surface impacts.
With virtually unlimited solar power to process lunar soil and water sent
their via mass drivers from earth, it would be a safe underground compartmentalized
and redundant facility if built that way.
It's equally amazing the mental gymnastics some will go through to avoid facing the fact
Deception and Agendas are aplenty, and we will not know whether or not you are right for some time, but...consider Iran's step to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty.
If you want to send a message that you are totally above board you would NOT subvert inspections by nearly 100% EU inspection teams, Iraq did this as well.
Playing shell games, delaying inspectors from the EU, and declaring numerous massive presidential palaces off limits. Having huge stockpiles of "pesticides" that fit dual use in ammo dumps and bunkers with aerial camouflage .
I'm sorry, I don't see the "bad" in this situation.
Here, let me help you see it .
When the corporations are making the ppl of the US pay more than their overseas counterparts for service that is substandard by comparison , and then decide to hike it even more just for the sake of unending profit they sound more like Ferengi than Humans .
This capitalism run amok in a Enronesque fashion does nothing but make the rich, filthy rich .
I grow weary of this Tax on taxes, and fees on fees, and service charges on service charges all legislated by marionette politicians who have their collective strings pulled by lobbyists pandering in soft money, parties, gifts, and things offered behind closed doors .
What the internet needs to become is a utility, non-profit run by a private entity with government oversite .
Many credit unions and private insurance companies like USAA have adopted this model with massive success .
Free market economy of electricity in california showed the corporations colors, and the Enron trial put it on stage for the world to see .
Absolute Greed is not the solution to making the Internet a better place .
In fact an open, free(not as in beer), and equal for all internet is more in line with an open source or communal ideal .
Google already pays for its bandwidth, why does it need to pay additional fees because some cable modem user went to google's site to look for something to buy .
The cable modem user already paid for the service, and google already paid for their big fiber pipe to run all their servers .
This is just another Absolute Greed money grab, by corporations that have an unlimited appetite for sleaze born legislated cash .
They want to stop the Wifi/VoIP phone calls because they know their long distance gravy train is about to come to an end .
They want a piece of every monetary transaction on the internet if it is a 3rd party business or indvidual off their network doing business with someone on their network .
I liken it to the phone company wanting to charge me a percentage of my profits if ppl called me, locally, to come mow their yards .
I wish it were so, but "some" sites are MS only, and it is more of MS doing their monopolistic BS they have been pulling for years .
It is due to ASP pages not recognizing Firefox and refusing to work with them, some ppl have made work arounds, but a lot of the older sites and less open source aware ones have no clue .
Why would presence of spyware indicate a defect in the code?
The WELL known ActiveX exploits in IE have been there for a LONG time .
MS refuses to fix them .
Thus how it might be indicative of a defect...
And pusposely so...
For many people, using a non-Microsoft browser such as Firefox is now a must for secure Web surfing--but most still keep a copy of Internet Explorer around just in case.
Re:Some monetary reasons to return to the moon
on
Back to the Moon
·
· Score: 1
Yes, your right, helium-3 is not viable as a power source right "now" .
It most likely will be in 50 years or less according to the Phd's on the project .
Building the infrastructure to make a moon mining operation happen will take that long or longer just due to "Bureaucracy" .
It would take several years just to get it all thru the house and senate .
This is not a "right now" project, it is a project for our children .
The world's population is going to go up, and more countries are going to industrialize and become somewhat like the EU and US .
That is going to require a LOT of energy, and fossil fuel production is not growing at the same rate .
So we need to consider options, and this is one of many .
Others are:
Algae grown bio-diesel, Solar chimneys, large wind farms, undersea current turbines, geo thermal, Next Generation photvoltaics, thermal depolyerazation of waste, and several other approaches to fusion .
The bay of fundy alone with the largest tidal shifts in the world could power all of eastern north america if it could be done in a sustainable manner without using a dam type mechanism .
Some monetary reasons to return to the moon
on
Back to the Moon
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Helium-3 is a good reason to return to the moon .
It is theorized that there are over 1 million cubic tons, with oil over $50 a barrel, and helium-3 then being worth about 8 billion USD a ton, the total worth equalling 8,000 trillion USD .
It could smash the US deficit with 7,991 trillion USD to spare .
I don't need to tell anyone that the US is the largest user of electricity on the planet at present, and slated for massive growth .
The current immmigration bill sets aside for 100 - 200 million new citizens .
Kulcinski adds that, if it sold for $4 billion a metric ton, helium-3 would still be a good energy value: "That's the equivalent of paying $28 a barrel for oil."
It will be a cold day in hell before we see oil at $28 a barrel again.....
So adjust the math accordingly...
It becomes more viable with every passing day .
If we can make solar mining robots for the moon to process the soil, and then use a mass driver to fling a projectile canister into lunar orbit for pick up. Then a lunar orbit robotic satellite mass driver to fire it into earth geo-sync orbit .
Then have either a new space station, shuttle, or satellite prep it for re-entry into the ocean for pick up much like the apollo capsules .
The robotic equipment could be tested here on earth prior to deployment on the moon .
It might be possible to make robots that could build it all via remote control, but most likely we would initially need ppl to go to the moon to build the mass driver and support facilities .
Building some or all of the support facilities underground would protect it to some degree versus leaving it exposed on the surface .
At some future point 3HE+3HE fusion will be achieved and it will have zero nuetron emissions and thus be truly clean as per the following link .
Some countries in the middle east intend to no longer take the USD as the standard currency for oil . The intend to switch away from fiat currency, aka monopoly money for lack of a better analogy to gold .
If they switch to gold it will seriously impact the US .
The USD is not backed by anything of physical value .
Some members of OPEC have come to realize this, an plan to take advantage of the vulnerability .
It reminds me of my time in the military in Italy buying a beer for $10,000 Lira .
Heaven help you if machines start fixing themselves
If the machines start looking for broke things to fix, and they happen to take a look at some of the things humans have done to each other in the past . They may chose to fix the human race .
If we ever get bio-genetic nanites that re-route neurons and brain memory, The machines could end up programming us...
I 100% do not do overclocking , because I believe the few extra dollars saved is not worth risk of instability or slowly heat stressing the chip and reducing its total life expectancy .
After all I still have some 266 Mhz machines in use for mundane reasons .
I also now only buy Intel chips after many bad experinces with AMD, though I blame them more on mobo/chipset issues, rather than the CPU's .
And by using only Intel now I tend to pay a little more, but I make money with my machines, and like to see many consecutive hours of stability .
As for Cache, yes I like to have it, and the Celerons are missing it AND other things .
I could buy a "gimp" processor, but I like to have full performance available for all the things I do, some at the same time .
I'd rather spend 2 - 3 hours of my work and get the better cpu .
The Algae is the best producer per this chart excerpted from that site :
* Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (40 to 50 m/km)
* Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 140 m/km)
* Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130 m/km)
* Jatropha: 175 US gal/acre (160 m/km)
* Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (610 m/km) [2]
* Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre (10,000 to 20,000 m/km)
It also burns cleaner than conventional diesel and bio-diesel is added to petrol diesel to meet emissions requirements . It is also better for the engine as well .
Some environmental groups take issue with the amount of fertilizer and other factors it would take to grow enough Algae to produce enough oil to replace petrol diesel .
Fortunately some ppl have a solution to that .
In Southern California the Salton Sea has no outlet and is become super saturated with phosphates and salt , more saline than the ocean in fact .
Tract ponds with Solar powered slow crawling harvesters could skim the Algae, Extracting the algae which used the phosphates to grow and traps a large portion of the salt in it thus lower salt levels in the water and fertilizer levels .
The tract ponds could be covered by clear recycled plastic to avoid massive evaporation due to spreading out the water over such a large surface area .
It would be expensive to implement, but current we use over 140 billon gallons of petrol based fuel , and at $3 a gallon approx. that is over 420 billion a year , 4.2 trillion in a decade .
I think we could do it for a great deal less than that .
The synergy of saving the salton Sea and providing a tremendous amount of oil to end our dependence on foreign oil for all time is taking lemons and making lemonade in my mind .
Not to mention the eventual hydrogen production once more hydrogen cars , and filling stations are available and affordable .
All the variables are not worked out fully, nothing worth doing is easy, but it beats the situation we face now and the worse one in the future .
I could not agree more, a semi-decent video card is going to run at least $100 .
A good sized hard drive that is not some seagate/quantum/maxtor piece of crap is going to be about the same . High End Seagates are ok, but their IDE stuff is crap .
Any processor over 2.6 with a 800 mhz FSB is going to run you $200 and up .
If you want some cheap no name power supply that may spike and blow the whole damn motherboard, then go right ahead and buy one, a good power supply with a good warranty is going to set you back at least $50 and if you want a really good one more like $70+ .
DVD dual layer recorders are cheap, only $40 or less , but it adds in too .
You can use onboard sound with craptacular drivers, or you can shell out $50 for a decent sound blaster audigy card that does require the CPU to do that majority of the work for it .
Some motherboards come with good onboard NIC's like the Intel ones, but some come with crap ones like RealTek and other no name crap chipsets .
I like Dell's as a model to work on due to screwless cases, and the service #, but some of their budget machines I would not own due to the use of cheap drives, and cheap power supplies .
If I had to pick one of the major OEM's dell would be it, but for most serious ppl I tell them to get one made by someone that has been doing it for many years and get good parts .
The phone support for the home market has been farmed out to overseas, and the wait time is a bit long and more often than not they tell u to stick in the restore disk and blow away all ur data . Especially with malware and viruses now hiding themselves in the system restore and windows pre-fetch .
Slashdot Mirror
And why dont we just print more money to solve poverty?
Well we print money for dumber reasons, and the US is on a fiat currency:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_currency
You must have missed the fact that china is the fastest growing mercantile power
in the world, and recently built the biggest dam on earth.
You also must not realize that the largest building on earth is being built
there as a giant warehouse for Wal-mart.
This is their rail system:
http://www.nordling.nu/schaefer/chinamap.gif
Their phone area code listing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_Code_(China)
Keep in mind they plan to go to the moon, and mine it.
School can be done at home, or in communal meeting areas.
Dual use facilities could be used, they will look for something
more efficient. Telecommute alone has great potential.
Here in the US the school system has for "some" students become more of a day care
than a place where chidren learn.
The US spends more per student per capita than any other country, but
we are no longer even in the top five world wide.
Adapt or die.
Ex-MislTech
Then why doesn't the government subsidise call centers? You know, in case we go to war with India and folks back home still need help downloading the internet...
....
/ 194201.aspx
I think this sums it up
http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/archive/2004/07/24
Ex-MislTech
Keep in mind not long ago a meteor hit Norway with the force of
the Hiroshma bomb.
Russia was hit about 100 years ago, the gulf of mexico millions of
years ago, and their are many bollide impact sites still visible
all over the earth .
As for ways to protect a moonbase, the best way would be to make
a mine, and have the base deep underground with multipe exit tunnels
and redundant compartmentalization like newer US navy ships .
Thus why the USS cole in yemen had a huge hole in its side but didnt sink,
after the bombing by terrorists several years ago.
A underground moonbase also would not experience the temperature extremes
of the surface, and would reduce radiation to near zero .
Ex-MislTech
seize to be part of american industry,
Cease...
Vote with your wallet, if money is all they understand, ask everyone you
9 03
know to close their accounts BofA and move them elsewhere.
If enough ppl do it, it will have an impact.
This is not the first time this has happened with Bank of America.
http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_052103.htm
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=risen090
This has been going on with them for years.
Only money will make them change their mind, as this person killing
himself in their parking lot over it did little but make them laugh.
So as I and other members of my immediate and extended family have done,
ask them all close their bank of america accounts. Then tell them
to pass the word on to all the ppl they know.
Ex-MislTech
Yeah, Zero G can be a boon and a bane, it has positive and negative aspects.
h -temperature_electrolysis_.28HTC.29
8 57033.Ph.r.html
I think building a spacedock at La Grange point L1 is the best idea, and a moonbase to get most of the materials for the spacedock, and intrastellar craft.
Also satellites built and launched from the spacedock/moonbase would have a lower cost to put in high earth geosynch orbit.
Although Stratallites are probably and even cheaper and easier to maintain scenario vs. satellites. http://www.21stcenturyairships.com/AirshipFAQ
I would consider putting most of the moonbase far underground as it would give it some defense against meteor/asteroid impact and most radiation.
o2 could be acquired from lunar soil as part of the helium-3 mining process, saving hauling it to orbit.
Storing the fuel would be best done in multiple cylinders/containers so if you have failure it does not compromise your entire fuel supply, ie. redundancy.
Meteorite impacts on a fuel cylinder would be very bad, and some kind or defense protection against this would be needed .
A deflection system or decceleration system, like armor or layered airbags or combination of both. Layered airbags to slow it some, armor to deal with remaining inertia.
Multiple fueling stations intead of one to avoid the single point of failure scenario.
Like 8 arms on a spider coming out from the central hub of the spacedock.
Integrate with the spacedock on the outer reaches of something similar to piers like ships dock with on earth. Long tunnels connecting to the main spacedock, and if there is an accident at worst the tunnel and fuel pod is lost vs. the entire station. Multiple airlocks in tunnel protect the spacedock from most explosions.
The fuel pods could be attached on the end of the tunnel offset from where it would connect to the door of the docking crafts.
Ships could be brought inside the spacedock as well, but it would be preferred they leave their explosive fuel outside the spacedock in the independent fuel pods.
Getting water up into space could be done by magnetic coil launcher mass drivers tossing canisters of it into low orbit, and then have some kind of craft ferry it from low orbit to the la grange points near the moon wear the spacedock would have a long term stable orbit .
Water could be split into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis or other methods such as the extreme heat method recently discovered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy#Hig
A passive parabolic reflector on the moon or in space could achieve extreme heat at its focal point, and high temperature on the moon reaches over 120 celsius.
With a focused reflector temperatures much higher than achieved at the solar collector in france could be achieved.
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2004-07/1090
With power near 12 million watts per cu cm inside the earth's atmosphere, it would be impressive what could be achieved outside it.
The moon would most likely be the easier place to build the series of reflecting mirrors and the tracking control system could be mostly underground to shield it from surface impacts.
With virtually unlimited solar power to process lunar soil and water sent their via mass drivers from earth, it would be a safe underground compartmentalized and redundant facility if built that way.
Ex-MislTech
It's equally amazing the mental gymnastics some will go through to avoid facing the fact
9 40.stm
a sp?ID=13168
e ws/2002/09/08/wirq208.xml
...
Deception and Agendas are aplenty, and we will not know whether or not you are right
for some time, but...consider Iran's step to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4981
If you want to send a message that you are totally above board you would NOT subvert
inspections by nearly 100% EU inspection teams, Iraq did this as well.
Playing shell games, delaying inspectors from the EU, and declaring numerous massive
presidential palaces off limits. Having huge stockpiles of "pesticides" that fit
dual use in ammo dumps and bunkers with aerial camouflage .
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.
Former Iraqi officers speaking of the chemical weapons, and their coverup over
intercepted phone calls in Iraq prior to the 2nd gulf war .
http://www.slate.com/id/2078196/
17 UN resolutions that were ignored time an time again .
The shell game, deceptions, and intimidation used against the inspectors and
lack of "Full Inspections".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page277.asp
If Iraq and Saddam were innocent , why then the elaborate deceptions,
intimidation, hauling top soil away...
To me
It's equally amazing the mental gymnastics some will go through to avoid facing the fact
Ex-MislTech
OMGz ....spaces before periods ...."Think of the Children !" (Tm)
I'm sorry, I don't see the "bad" in this situation.
Here, let me help you see it .
When the corporations are making the ppl of the US pay more than
their overseas counterparts for service that is substandard by
comparison , and then decide to hike it even more just for the sake
of unending profit they sound more like Ferengi than Humans .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi
This capitalism run amok in a Enronesque fashion does nothing but
make the rich, filthy rich .
I grow weary of this Tax on taxes, and fees on fees, and service
charges on service charges all legislated by marionette politicians
who have their collective strings pulled by lobbyists pandering
in soft money, parties, gifts, and things offered behind closed doors .
What the internet needs to become is a utility, non-profit run by
a private entity with government oversite .
Many credit unions and private insurance companies like USAA have
adopted this model with massive success .
Free market economy of electricity in california showed the corporations colors,
and the Enron trial put it on stage for the world to see .
Absolute Greed is not the solution to making the Internet a better place .
In fact an open, free(not as in beer), and equal for all internet is more in line with
an open source or communal ideal .
Google already pays for its bandwidth, why does it need to pay additional fees
because some cable modem user went to google's site to look for something to buy .
The cable modem user already paid for the service, and google already paid
for their big fiber pipe to run all their servers .
This is just another Absolute Greed money grab, by corporations that have an unlimited
appetite for sleaze born legislated cash .
They want to stop the Wifi/VoIP phone calls because they know their long distance
gravy train is about to come to an end .
They want a piece of every monetary transaction on the internet if it is a 3rd party
business or indvidual off their network doing business with someone on their network .
I liken it to the phone company wanting to charge me a percentage of my profits
if ppl called me, locally, to come mow their yards .
Ex-MislTech
Well technically some o them can be knobs of a sort
I wish it were so, but "some" sites are MS only, and it is more of MS
doing their monopolistic BS they have been pulling for years .
It is due to ASP pages not recognizing Firefox and refusing to
work with them, some ppl have made work arounds, but a lot of
the older sites and less open source aware ones have no clue .
http://www.asptoday.com/Content.aspx?id=2339
If MS wants to make it a pain, they will, and have in the past
java/j++ comes to mind .
Ex-MislTech
Why would presence of spyware indicate a defect in the code?
...
...
i n/2100-1032_3-5388755.html
The WELL known ActiveX exploits in IE have been there for a LONG time .
MS refuses to fix them .
Thus how it might be indicative of a defect
And pusposely so
For many people, using a non-Microsoft browser such as Firefox is now a must for secure Web surfing--but most still keep a copy of Internet Explorer around just in case.
http://news.com.com/Planning+to+dump+IE+Think+aga
Ex-MislTech
Yes, your right, helium-3 is not viable as a power source right "now" .
It most likely will be in 50 years or less according to the Phd's on the project .
Building the infrastructure to make a moon mining operation happen will
take that long or longer just due to "Bureaucracy" .
It would take several years just to get it all thru the house and senate .
This is not a "right now" project, it is a project for our children .
The world's population is going to go up, and more countries are going
to industrialize and become somewhat like the EU and US .
That is going to require a LOT of energy, and fossil fuel production is not
growing at the same rate .
So we need to consider options, and this is one of many .
Others are:
Algae grown bio-diesel, Solar chimneys, large wind farms, undersea current turbines,
geo thermal, Next Generation photvoltaics, thermal depolyerazation of waste,
and several other approaches to fusion .
The bay of fundy alone with the largest tidal shifts in the world could power all
of eastern north america if it could be done in a sustainable manner without using
a dam type mechanism .
Ex-MislTech
Over the past many years, over 170+ "known" bolide impacts have occured .
n d/3960955.stm
_ extinction_on_Earth
Some others unknown have been hidden due to plate tectonics .
http://www.thinklemon.com/pages/ge/
On average 30 to 40 Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) - asteroids or comets moving close to Earth -
are found "each" month.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_irela
So maybe we have just been very lucky, part of it is jupiter picking up a lot of them,
as well as the sun .
Keep in mind Tunguska happened less than a 100 years ago :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
There are more on the way, and they easily could be bigger .
The NEAR project wasn't started out of fear mongering, Shoemaker-levy-9 was a wake up call .
I agree of all the places in this solar system, Earth is probably our best bet
with a hardened survival shelter deep underground .
All this is not even considering extinction by a large GRB source .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst#Mass
Ex-MislTech
Helium-3 is a good reason to return to the moon .
6 30.html
.....
...
r ia_and_candidates_for_terrestrial_reactions
...
It is theorized that there are over 1 million cubic tons,
with oil over $50 a barrel, and helium-3 then being worth
about 8 billion USD a ton, the total worth equalling 8,000 trillion USD .
It could smash the US deficit with 7,991 trillion USD to spare .
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Also keep in mind most of the "other" moons have this as well .
Here are some photos of the reactor at the University of Wisconsin :
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/GeneralOpPics.htm
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/GeneralOpPicsII.htm
25 tons could power the US electrical needs for a year :
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000
I don't need to tell anyone that the US is the largest user of electricity on
the planet at present, and slated for massive growth .
The current immmigration bill sets aside for 100 - 200 million new citizens .
Kulcinski adds that, if it sold for $4 billion a metric ton, helium-3 would still be a
good energy value: "That's the equivalent of paying $28 a barrel for oil."
It will be a cold day in hell before we see oil at $28 a barrel again
So adjust the math accordingly
It becomes more viable with every passing day .
If we can make solar mining robots for the moon to process the soil, and
then use a mass driver to fling a projectile canister into lunar orbit for pick up.
Then a lunar orbit robotic satellite mass driver to fire it into earth geo-sync orbit .
Then have either a new space station, shuttle, or satellite prep it for re-entry
into the ocean for pick up much like the apollo capsules .
The robotic equipment could be tested here on earth prior to deployment on the moon .
It might be possible to make robots that could build it all via remote control, but
most likely we would initially need ppl to go to the moon to build the mass driver
and support facilities .
Building some or all of the support facilities underground would protect it to some
degree versus leaving it exposed on the surface .
At some future point 3HE+3HE fusion will be achieved and it will have zero nuetron emissions
and thus be truly clean as per the following link .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Crite
Hope for the future
Ex-MislTech
Some countries in the middle east intend to no longer take the USD
as the standard currency for oil . The intend to switch away from
fiat currency, aka monopoly money for lack of a better analogy to gold .
If they switch to gold it will seriously impact the US .
The USD is not backed by anything of physical value .
Some members of OPEC have come to realize this, an plan to
take advantage of the vulnerability .
It reminds me of my time in the military in Italy buying a beer for $10,000 Lira .
Ex-MislTech
Heaven help you if machines start fixing themselves
...
If the machines start looking for broke things to fix, and they happen
to take a look at some of the things humans have done to each other in
the past . They may chose to fix the human race .
If we ever get bio-genetic nanites that re-route neurons and brain memory,
The machines could end up programming us
Makes some sci-fi a little less surreal .
Excerpt:
Helium is the second most abundant element in the known Universe .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium
I 100% do not do overclocking , because I believe the few extra
dollars saved is not worth risk of instability or slowly heat stressing
the chip and reducing its total life expectancy .
After all I still have some 266 Mhz machines in use for mundane reasons .
I also now only buy Intel chips after many bad experinces with AMD,
though I blame them more on mobo/chipset issues, rather than the CPU's .
And by using only Intel now I tend to pay a little more, but I make money
with my machines, and like to see many consecutive hours of stability .
As for Cache, yes I like to have it, and the Celerons are missing it AND other things .
I could buy a "gimp" processor, but I like to have full performance available
for all the things I do, some at the same time .
I'd rather spend 2 - 3 hours of my work and get the better cpu .
Ex-MislTech
Yes, that's exactly what the world needs - Hybrid Jetliners!
I agree ! Add solar to this below and it would be really nice .
http://www.fuellessflight.com/
Ex-MislTech
Yes and as canada is the largest importer of oil to the US,
I don't have a problem with them .
Between domestic oil, and canadian oil, and alternatives
I think we could more than meet demand .
Ex-MislTech
I think we need to look for alternatives to Middle East oil in the short term,
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and alternatives to polluting fuels in the long term .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel
The Algae is the best producer per this chart excerpted from that site :
* Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (40 to 50 m/km)
* Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 140 m/km)
* Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130 m/km)
* Jatropha: 175 US gal/acre (160 m/km)
* Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (610 m/km) [2]
* Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre (10,000 to 20,000 m/km)
It also burns cleaner than conventional diesel and bio-diesel is added to petrol
diesel to meet emissions requirements . It is also better for the engine as well .
Some environmental groups take issue with the amount of fertilizer and other factors
it would take to grow enough Algae to produce enough oil to replace petrol diesel .
Fortunately some ppl have a solution to that .
In Southern California the Salton Sea has no outlet and is become super saturated
with phosphates and salt , more saline than the ocean in fact .
Tract ponds with Solar powered slow crawling harvesters could skim the Algae,
Extracting the algae which used the phosphates to grow and traps a large portion
of the salt in it thus lower salt levels in the water and fertilizer levels .
The tract ponds could be covered by clear recycled plastic to avoid massive
evaporation due to spreading out the water over such a large surface area .
It would be expensive to implement, but current we use over 140 billon gallons
of petrol based fuel , and at $3 a gallon approx. that is over 420 billion a year ,
4.2 trillion in a decade .
I think we could do it for a great deal less than that .
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
The above article covers the math behind what I have said .
Taking the above method and then using it with a very fuel efficient vehicle
and offer a REALISTIC tax break on the super fuel efficient car .
This prototype diesel car could reduce the amount of fuel used by commuters .
http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/gw/vw1litr
It is made from VERY expensive alloys and composites, a much more affordable
version would still achieve well over 100 mpg vs. near 300 mpg .
In the Long term the Algae production could be converted over to this :
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54456
Algae making hydrogen
The synergy of saving the salton Sea and providing a tremendous amount of oil
to end our dependence on foreign oil for all time is taking lemons and making
lemonade in my mind .
Not to mention the eventual hydrogen production once more hydrogen cars ,
and filling stations are available and affordable .
All the variables are not worked out fully, nothing worth doing is easy, but it beats
the situation we face now and the worse one in the future .
Hope for the Future...
Ex_MislTech
if you only buy pieces of shit
I could not agree more, a semi-decent video card is going to run at least $100 .
A good sized hard drive that is not some seagate/quantum/maxtor piece of crap is
going to be about the same . High End Seagates are ok, but their IDE stuff is crap .
Any processor over 2.6 with a 800 mhz FSB is going to run you $200 and up .
If you want some cheap no name power supply that may spike and blow the whole damn
motherboard, then go right ahead and buy one, a good power supply with a good warranty
is going to set you back at least $50 and if you want a really good one more like $70+ .
DVD dual layer recorders are cheap, only $40 or less , but it adds in too .
You can use onboard sound with craptacular drivers, or you can shell out $50 for a decent
sound blaster audigy card that does require the CPU to do that majority of the work for it .
Some motherboards come with good onboard NIC's like the Intel ones, but some come with
crap ones like RealTek and other no name crap chipsets .
I like Dell's as a model to work on due to screwless cases, and the service #, but some of
their budget machines I would not own due to the use of cheap drives, and cheap power supplies .
If I had to pick one of the major OEM's dell would be it, but for most serious ppl I tell them
to get one made by someone that has been doing it for many years and get good parts .
The phone support for the home market has been farmed out to overseas, and the wait time is
a bit long and more often than not they tell u to stick in the restore disk and blow away
all ur data . Especially with malware and viruses now hiding themselves in the system restore
and windows pre-fetch .
Ex-MislTech
Was it this Big Owl ????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation_of_Care
Ex-MislTech
Yeah Hydropower is hard to beat .
8 3/CycoGrandCouleeDamTurbine.jpg
The dam on the columbia is a monster : Grand Coulee Dam :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulee_dam
Largest hydroelectricity generator in the United States, third largest in the world.
http://www.emediawire.com/prfiles/2005/02/22/2115
Those are ppl walking on ONE of the turbines .
Pretty awesome when u consider the scale .
Ex-MislTech