Not to knock the project, which sounds super cool, but doesn't the cost of a mindstorms set + a handheld vacuum easily approach $150-200? Maybe if you can get a smaller mindstorms set, or if you already have one, it would make sense.
You can head to a Sharper Image store if there's one nearby you and ask for a demo. I went with my cousin when he got one for my uncle. It works well for maintenance cleaning.
Have you seen one? I've used the original. As far as I know they have no 'auto charging' capability. You pick it up when it dies and then plug it into the charger. It's very far from worthless though.
You just clean one or two rooms a day, and you don't have to watch it while it's doing it. It's very convenient, even without the auto recharge feature you are talking about. Features like intellegent autocharging and networking probably won't be in consumer vacuums for a little while. (Especially since a viable Roomba competitor hasn't popped up.)
Your post didn't specifically say anything about popular music being bad, and it was a weak association I drew between arena and popular (even though it's hard to play an arena without being popular, and really popular bands don't _usually_ play small venues). I think my post was directed more at some of the other siblings in this whole thread and the millions of RIAA related posts, so sorry if my little rant was misdirected.
As for the matter hand, people like what they like. 'Musicianship' is in the ear of the listener. If some guy lipsyncs to a tape and people like it, then they like it. They might like a pure voice too. I don't believe they are mutually exclusive or that you have to 'explain' why you like something or why it's good. I think it's difficult to make such a broad statment about _other_ people's tastes.
I get really tired of the 'everything popular is crap' line used on/. in just about every music related post.
Just because something is popular doesn't mean it not good music. Just because someone is popular doesn't mean that they necessarily will have a bad stage show or use vocal enhancements. Those types of assumptions are close minded in typical/. fashion. Judging a musician based on popularity is stupid whether you are a Clear Channel junkie or an indie elitest.
Just listen to the music. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. If you can't handle the artists political affiliation or record label, that's fine too. But don't bash something just because other people like it. It's almost as if people need to feel special by listening to music that isn't popular.
Soil is a poor conductor of heat. So even if you went down 10 feet into the ground, you'd warm that up, but it wouldn't pull much heat in (unless you had a huge surface area (expensive) or large temperature gradient (the problem in the first place).
I think you are missing part of the electric power generation equation... If you were on the the surface of the sun (which is pretty hot) it doesn't necessarily mean you can create tons of electricity. You need a temperature difference and a 'heat engine' to turn the the temperature difference into useful work.
The Sterling engine that the sibling mentions is an example of one that uses even small temperature differences to create reciprocating motion (which can be turned into rotary motion for electricity generation)
Also you can't 'extract heat' from the air and make it cooler without expending energy and dumping the waste heat somewhere else. See Second Law of Thermodynamics...
I don't think heat pollution could be a real problem considering all the heat produced by man in a day pales in comparison to what the Sun shines on the earth. (Several orders of magnitude) I don't have the numbers to back my statement up, but I'm pretty sure heat generation is a local consideration, not a global environmental problem.
This is silly. You can't keep people from knowing about them. You're being selfish and elitest. =) How did you find them in the first place? And what makes you so special?
On the matter of high loads, people who make sites should tackle that problem. If *they know* will attract a lot of attention, they should either prepare for that or find some way to reduce traffic to what they can handle (ala filesoup).
Besides there are link sites out there, and people will stumble upon them eventually. Such as...
On the legal transaction side, bittorrent will remain alive and well for a long time, I think.
As for the illegal transaction side, as long as the demand remains (and it's enormous), people will create sites for torrents. It'll take more then DDoS attacks and cease and desist letters to stop pirates. One one good site goes down, another will spring up.
Huh? If we can't stay on the Moon or Mars with all of their resources, how on earth do we expect to be able to stay in the empty near-vacuum of LEO?
You mean resources with non-existent technology to harvest? And by moon-resources you mean partially oxidized soil? LEO is a step away from the surface of the earth, so resources are not much an of issue, as compared to a Mars or Moon mission, where you are days or years away from a replacement part or extra batch of consumables. No rescues no refills. That's what makes Mars and the Moon that much more dangerous.
I'm not at all saying we need to park ourselves in LEO, but I'm saying we don't even have the support from the public in general for that. Look at wht happened to station. It's nice to see/.ers screaming for Mars 'or something more interesting' instead of station, but that's a very small group of people, compared to the general public. And if we don't have the support for station in public, we're going to have a much rougher time coming up with the funding/support to go the moon or mars. I think you misinterpreted my comment.
We've seen the call for robots to do all the lifting before, and it's true the shuttle is a vehicle not meant for lifting (there are better options). But it's not like there hasn't been any useful human work done in the shuttle's lifetime. Humans have done useful research and performed useful tasks (Hubble maintenence anyone?) during the lifetime of the shuttle. Granted they they probably aren't doing things as ground breaking as they have been before, I think there is still a place for humans in LEO. If we can't even stay up there how are we going to stay on the Moon or Mars? (I can see the counter arguments coming...)
Space travel is really beyond us.
That's just silly. It's not beyond us. It is hard to do. But you should certainly not stop doing something just because it's hard. I don't think civilization would have progressed very far with that attitude.
It's time for some light and heat to be shed on this agency.
Umm, what do you think has been happening since the end of January? Things are already changing. After the report comes out, I'd bet there's going to be some shuffling at NASA, along with stronger support for the programs they are involved in. (as opposed to the 'start a project only to have congress break its knees as it nears completion')
While some people would probably like to see NASA disbanded, that's clearly not the solution. (going slightly OT here) I think the real problem is that people in general don't really care about space travel anymore, as much as they didn't care what happened outside the US borders 5 years ago. It takes a catastrophe to pull the public's attention, and in that case it's only negative attention. I don't know how they are going to achieve remarkable goals with so little support.
When I bought my Zen, it was $250 after rebate. This was in November. The 20 GB iPod was at cheapest $450. That made the decision for me right there, as I'm a poor college grad student. There's no doubt the iPod is a better device, but when you look at the price difference, it becomes a much tougher decision.
All that said, I'm suprised modding the Zen has shown up as a/. article. It's a really simple procedure, although I imagine it might be scary to people who haven't opened a computer before. Still the ability to have 60 GB of mp3s in your pocket is pretty cool.
I'm sure the *New York Times* runs for cover everytime/. links one of it's stories. I heard they just upgraded from 128k DSL to 384k cable, so maybe they can handle it this time. If they can't you have them covered, don't you?
What struck me the most from reading about it is that enough heavy elements (Fe, Si, etc) were around at the time to form the planet. That was one of the main reasons it was thought that planets couldn't have formed that early - you only had light gases around. So apparently it doesn't take a few billions years of fusion to get enough solid material for a planet. I wonder what other changes this will bring about in terms of the search-for-life campaign. The window just got a little bigger.
Not to be an intel-fanboy or something, but isn't this the purpose of the Pentium-M line? Lower power comsumption and less heat through slower processors and smarter power management?
Umm, where does the word machine fit into your photon defintion. A machine does something. This definition is the one that I'm thinking when I hear perpetual motion machine - "an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy one to another in a predetermined manner"
A photon (or any matter) just moving through space falls short of the traditional machine definition.
1. The foam was going that fast. The *real* scientists/engineers have both the aerodynamic calculations and estimations from the video that show this. 2. They couldn't have fixed it on orbit (no tools, materials), they couldn't have 'flown to the station, (wrong orbit, no mating adapter)' they couldn't have sent a soyuz (no mating adapter), and they likely could not have gotten a shuttle up in time (literally no time). Do some reading. 3. They didn't know how serious the problem was. The population of know-it-all monday morning quarterbacks on/. forgets this. 4. If NASA freaked out everytime there was a problem of that magnitude, as they understood AT THE TIME, nothing would ever get done. I'm not saying they should take risks, or even that they could have gotten to the point where they were sloppy. The bottom line is that space travel is risky, and those people who work on it take it seriously and to the best they can do. It irks me when people who know so little say 'they should have done this or that.' That *is* the reason there is the accident review board. They have the expertise. Let them do their job, and stop thinking you know more than you do.
Ok, I'm sorry to seem old or non-progressive, but you CANNOT create a perpetual motion machine. The first and second laws of thermodynamic are more solid than *anything* else we know in science. If the laws of thermodynamics are wrong, then science as we know it as flawed. It's the keystone to chemistry, physics, and everything above.
"[A law] is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its range of applicability. Therefore, the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made on me. It is the only physical theory of universal content, which I am convinced, that within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts will never be overthrown." - Einstein
(from parent's link) "As evidence for this, Professor Buckle says keen computer game players pound on keyboards and joysticks for hours on end, but seem to suffer few injuries as a result. Only when someone else is cracking the whip do workers start to be at risk."
A reason isn't right just because it seems like it fits. Some numbers on gamers with RSIs and workers with RSIs and the relative hours that they spend at the keyboard would say something. I suspect that a lot of gamers don't actually spend 35-40 hours a week in front of a computer like some workers do. Or is there a possibility that some people work and game?? I suppose it might to hard for a BBC article to get into the details of the matter, but leaving the reader with the idea that working in front of a keyboard is worse than gaming in front of a keybaord without some evidence is no good. A professor making an unqualified statement, is still making an _unqualified statement._
No the paranoia is a *little* more justified than you say it is...
Can you scan a barcode when the item is inside a box, bag, or even your wallet? Can a barcode be squeezed into less than 1 mm^2 area that you can't see? If you had a barcode on something you owned, wouldn't it be pretty hard for it to be scanned without you knowing?
The paranoia lies in the fact that you don't have control over being scanned, and you might not even know that you are being scanned. If you *read* the article, it brings up some very good points. If cash is tagged with RFID tags, then banks or stores could scan you and see how much money you have before you walk in. Or worse yet, a criminal could scan people as they walked by and find people carrying a lot of money. Or arguably even worse than that, the anonymity of cash purchasing could disappear. Every bill you spend could be tracked.
I know I sound overly paranoid, but those things are all actual possibilities.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to knock the project, which sounds super cool, but doesn't the cost of a mindstorms set + a handheld vacuum easily approach $150-200? Maybe if you can get a smaller mindstorms set, or if you already have one, it would make sense.
You can head to a Sharper Image store if there's one nearby you and ask for a demo. I went with my cousin when he got one for my uncle. It works well for maintenance cleaning.
Have you seen one? I've used the original. As far as I know they have no 'auto charging' capability. You pick it up when it dies and then plug it into the charger. It's very far from worthless though.
You just clean one or two rooms a day, and you don't have to watch it while it's doing it. It's very convenient, even without the auto recharge feature you are talking about. Features like intellegent autocharging and networking probably won't be in consumer vacuums for a little while. (Especially since a viable Roomba competitor hasn't popped up.)
Your post didn't specifically say anything about popular music being bad, and it was a weak association I drew between arena and popular (even though it's hard to play an arena without being popular, and really popular bands don't _usually_ play small venues). I think my post was directed more at some of the other siblings in this whole thread and the millions of RIAA related posts, so sorry if my little rant was misdirected.
As for the matter hand, people like what they like. 'Musicianship' is in the ear of the listener. If some guy lipsyncs to a tape and people like it, then they like it. They might like a pure voice too. I don't believe they are mutually exclusive or that you have to 'explain' why you like something or why it's good. I think it's difficult to make such a broad statment about _other_ people's tastes.
I get really tired of the 'everything popular is crap' line used on /. in just about every music related post.
/. fashion. Judging a musician based on popularity is stupid whether you are a Clear Channel junkie or an indie elitest.
Just because something is popular doesn't mean it not good music. Just because someone is popular doesn't mean that they necessarily will have a bad stage show or use vocal enhancements. Those types of assumptions are close minded in typical
Just listen to the music. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. If you can't handle the artists political affiliation or record label, that's fine too. But don't bash something just because other people like it. It's almost as if people need to feel special by listening to music that isn't popular.
[rant off]
Soil is a poor conductor of heat. So even if you went down 10 feet into the ground, you'd warm that up, but it wouldn't pull much heat in (unless you had a huge surface area (expensive) or large temperature gradient (the problem in the first place).
I think you are missing part of the electric power generation equation... If you were on the the surface of the sun (which is pretty hot) it doesn't necessarily mean you can create tons of electricity. You need a temperature difference and a 'heat engine' to turn the the temperature difference into useful work.
The Sterling engine that the sibling mentions is an example of one that uses even small temperature differences to create reciprocating motion (which can be turned into rotary motion for electricity generation)
Also you can't 'extract heat' from the air and make it cooler without expending energy and dumping the waste heat somewhere else. See Second Law of Thermodynamics...
I don't think heat pollution could be a real problem considering all the heat produced by man in a day pales in comparison to what the Sun shines on the earth. (Several orders of magnitude) I don't have the numbers to back my statement up, but I'm pretty sure heat generation is a local consideration, not a global environmental problem.
Remember when 'innocent until proven guilty' meant something?
I'm sure you'll change your tone if the government decides to 'own' you.
Do all the people suggesting the electron to glucose idea not realize there's already something that does this...
PLANTS!
This is silly. You can't keep people from knowing about them. You're being selfish and elitest. =) How did you find them in the first place? And what makes you so special?
On the matter of high loads, people who make sites should tackle that problem. If *they know* will attract a lot of attention, they should either prepare for that or find some way to reduce traffic to what they can handle (ala filesoup).
Besides there are link sites out there, and people will stumble upon them eventually. Such as...
http://www.btsites.tk/
http://www.torrentlinks.com/
On the legal transaction side, bittorrent will remain alive and well for a long time, I think.
As for the illegal transaction side, as long as the demand remains (and it's enormous), people will create sites for torrents. It'll take more then DDoS attacks and cease and desist letters to stop pirates. One one good site goes down, another will spring up.
Huh? If we can't stay on the Moon or Mars with all of their resources, how on earth do we expect to be able to stay in the empty near-vacuum of LEO?
/.ers screaming for Mars 'or something more interesting' instead of station, but that's a very small group of people, compared to the general public. And if we don't have the support for station in public, we're going to have a much rougher time coming up with the funding/support to go the moon or mars. I think you misinterpreted my comment.
You mean resources with non-existent technology to harvest? And by moon-resources you mean partially oxidized soil? LEO is a step away from the surface of the earth, so resources are not much an of issue, as compared to a Mars or Moon mission, where you are days or years away from a replacement part or extra batch of consumables. No rescues no refills. That's what makes Mars and the Moon that much more dangerous.
I'm not at all saying we need to park ourselves in LEO, but I'm saying we don't even have the support from the public in general for that. Look at wht happened to station. It's nice to see
We've seen the call for robots to do all the lifting before, and it's true the shuttle is a vehicle not meant for lifting (there are better options). But it's not like there hasn't been any useful human work done in the shuttle's lifetime. Humans have done useful research and performed useful tasks (Hubble maintenence anyone?) during the lifetime of the shuttle. Granted they they probably aren't doing things as ground breaking as they have been before, I think there is still a place for humans in LEO. If we can't even stay up there how are we going to stay on the Moon or Mars? (I can see the counter arguments coming...)
Space travel is really beyond us.
That's just silly. It's not beyond us. It is hard to do. But you should certainly not stop doing something just because it's hard. I don't think civilization would have progressed very far with that attitude.
It's time for some light and heat to be shed on this agency.
Umm, what do you think has been happening since the end of January? Things are already changing. After the report comes out, I'd bet there's going to be some shuffling at NASA, along with stronger support for the programs they are involved in. (as opposed to the 'start a project only to have congress break its knees as it nears completion')
While some people would probably like to see NASA disbanded, that's clearly not the solution. (going slightly OT here) I think the real problem is that people in general don't really care about space travel anymore, as much as they didn't care what happened outside the US borders 5 years ago. It takes a catastrophe to pull the public's attention, and in that case it's only negative attention. I don't know how they are going to achieve remarkable goals with so little support.
I was waiting for an iPod post, hehe.
/. article. It's a really simple procedure, although I imagine it might be scary to people who haven't opened a computer before. Still the ability to have 60 GB of mp3s in your pocket is pretty cool.
When I bought my Zen, it was $250 after rebate. This was in November. The 20 GB iPod was at cheapest $450. That made the decision for me right there, as I'm a poor college grad student. There's no doubt the iPod is a better device, but when you look at the price difference, it becomes a much tougher decision.
All that said, I'm suprised modding the Zen has shown up as a
I'm sure the *New York Times* runs for cover everytime /. links one of it's stories. I heard they just upgraded from 128k DSL to 384k cable, so maybe they can handle it this time. If they can't you have them covered, don't you?
What struck me the most from reading about it is that enough heavy elements (Fe, Si, etc) were around at the time to form the planet. That was one of the main reasons it was thought that planets couldn't have formed that early - you only had light gases around. So apparently it doesn't take a few billions years of fusion to get enough solid material for a planet. I wonder what other changes this will bring about in terms of the search-for-life campaign. The window just got a little bigger.
Not to be an intel-fanboy or something, but isn't this the purpose of the Pentium-M line? Lower power comsumption and less heat through slower processors and smarter power management?
Umm, where does the word machine fit into your photon defintion. A machine does something. This definition is the one that I'm thinking when I hear perpetual motion machine - "an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy one to another in a predetermined manner"
A photon (or any matter) just moving through space falls short of the traditional machine definition.
1. The foam was going that fast. The *real* scientists/engineers have both the aerodynamic calculations and estimations from the video that show this. /. forgets this.
2. They couldn't have fixed it on orbit (no tools, materials), they couldn't have 'flown to the station, (wrong orbit, no mating adapter)' they couldn't have sent a soyuz (no mating adapter), and they likely could not have gotten a shuttle up in time (literally no time). Do some reading.
3. They didn't know how serious the problem was. The population of know-it-all monday morning quarterbacks on
4. If NASA freaked out everytime there was a problem of that magnitude, as they understood AT THE TIME, nothing would ever get done. I'm not saying they should take risks, or even that they could have gotten to the point where they were sloppy. The bottom line is that space travel is risky, and those people who work on it take it seriously and to the best they can do. It irks me when people who know so little say 'they should have done this or that.' That *is* the reason there is the accident review board. They have the expertise. Let them do their job, and stop thinking you know more than you do.
Ok, I'm sorry to seem old or non-progressive, but you CANNOT create a perpetual motion machine. The first and second laws of thermodynamic are more solid than *anything* else we know in science. If the laws of thermodynamics are wrong, then science as we know it as flawed. It's the keystone to chemistry, physics, and everything above.
"[A law] is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its range of applicability. Therefore, the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made on me. It is the only physical theory of universal content, which I am convinced, that within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts will never be overthrown." - Einstein
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=spam
"unsolicited usually commercial E-mail sent to a large number of addresses"
Isn't this going to get thrown out pretty fast, since it's a commonly used word, not related to the original product? (unlike Band-aid and Kleenex)
(from parent's link)
"As evidence for this, Professor Buckle says keen computer game players pound on keyboards and joysticks for hours on end, but seem to suffer few injuries as a result. Only when someone else is cracking the whip do workers start to be at risk."
A reason isn't right just because it seems like it fits. Some numbers on gamers with RSIs and workers with RSIs and the relative hours that they spend at the keyboard would say something. I suspect that a lot of gamers don't actually spend 35-40 hours a week in front of a computer like some workers do. Or is there a possibility that some people work and game?? I suppose it might to hard for a BBC article to get into the details of the matter, but leaving the reader with the idea that working in front of a keyboard is worse than gaming in front of a keybaord without some evidence is no good. A professor making an unqualified statement, is still making an _unqualified statement._
No the paranoia is a *little* more justified than you say it is...
Can you scan a barcode when the item is inside a box, bag, or even your wallet?
Can a barcode be squeezed into less than 1 mm^2 area that you can't see?
If you had a barcode on something you owned, wouldn't it be pretty hard for it to be scanned without you knowing?
The paranoia lies in the fact that you don't have control over being scanned, and you might not even know that you are being scanned. If you *read* the article, it brings up some very good points. If cash is tagged with RFID tags, then banks or stores could scan you and see how much money you have before you walk in. Or worse yet, a criminal could scan people as they walked by and find people carrying a lot of money. Or arguably even worse than that, the anonymity of cash purchasing could disappear. Every bill you spend could be tracked.
I know I sound overly paranoid, but those things are all actual possibilities.