I noted this about my mother in law when we were visiting her home while taking care of our first infant child.
In the early morning, when we were exhausted and not ready to get up in the morning after taking care of the kid all night, we were "lazy".
In the late evening, when *she* was exhausted but when the baby was still awake and needed to be taken care of perhaps for several more hours, she was "tired".
A month ago I was convinced the only way to halt the addition of CO2 into the atmosphere was to eventually stop harvesting it from the ground. However people quite rightly make the argument that we just don't have enough energy to do this. I think I have a better solution.
CBC News had a great article on Capturing Carbon. The idea is to capture CO2 from coal and gas plants and pipe it across country to locations where we can pump it into the ground.
It seems to me that if there are locations for carbon sinks, piping the CO2 to these locations is doing things backward.
Why not instead build a massive coal fired power plant directly over one of these carbon sinks. Generate electricity and pump the CO2 waste gas directly into the ground.
Then *don't* send power anywhere, but next door to the hydrogen generation plant. Convert water (from a stream or lake) into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then pump the *hydrogen* to the cities in a spider's network of pipelines across the country. Transmitting power over power lines is notoriously inefficient, but we should be able to devise a system for near-lossless transmission of hydrogen gas.
Once the hydrogen is in the cities, local power plants can produce energy right in the city core, pollution free. Plus we'd be able to power our automobiles without oil.
By burning all of our coal, oil, and gas into these zero-carbon hydrogen generation plants, we'd still be able to extract fossil fuels and use their energy, but not put any of the CO2 into the atmosphere. Plus if we used only a few *enormous* power plants, we could use the very best CO2 reclamation technology and have the very highest carbon capture efficiency possible.
In the mid-term, hydrogen would run only to power plants, and to "gas" stations for vehicles. In the long term, we'd be able to pipe hydrogen into our homes and build a device that doubled both as power generator and hot water heater.
This I think would be a great solution to Australia's coal dilemma. Stop exporting coal. Start exporting hydrogen.
This idea might be pie in the sky. Could any Slashdotters be willing to take a stab at the mathematics of efficiency? I'm curious what the difference would be from converting from one power source to another and transmission differences over power lines.
"I guess Canadian Telcos are as fond of screwing their customers as the US's"
We are talking about *Telus* here, the company so evil that locked out its workers for almost a year when they asked for a simple pay raise. Everyone hates them up here. They're one of the main reasons I switched to Vonage.
Joining in on the crowd here. My wife and I have a smaller sized sedan, a '96 Saturn SL1, that works just fine for two kids and groceries. (I don't think I'll go Saturn next time though)
It's very rare that we need more than this. A month ago I bought three chairs from IKEA, and there was no way they'd fit in the car (note to self, next time try opening boxes). But home delivery was $39. Easily cheaper than a vehicle twice as expensive.
Are they trying to drum up some support for their project ? Or just coincidence ?
The coincidence here likely has to do with the fact we lost contact with MGS just a few weeks ago, and it's unlikely we'll make contact again. This is likely the MGS team's final report, letting them go out on a bang.
I hope the MO and MRO teams can pick up where the MGS team left off.
The difference here is the definition of "recent". There is evidence of tens of thousands of gullys that have evidence of flowing water, for the *geological* definition of recent. In the sense that "It is obvious what happened here, this is what it looks like after water flows across the surface". "Recent" to a geologist means "within the last million years".
In this instance, we actually have photographic evidence, with one picture in 2001 and another in 2005 showing an actual change over the course of years, not millenia.
Water is flowing on the surface of Mars *now*. Granted, it is a rare event on a human timescale, with only two instances detected across on third of the planet's surface over a period of 5-6 years. But from a geologists perspective, we've moved from the realm of "recent" activity to "active" activity.
JPL has an awesome site up right now explaining the MGS team findings:
Here in Canada things are starting to open up. I know my cable provider is going to be offering a "Nitro" service of 25Mbps in a week. We already have 10Mbps "Extreme" service, and the rest of us (cheap) chumps have to live with 5Mbps.
I believe Telus and other phone companies are bringing out products with speeds similar to 25Mbpsvery soon. I'm just not willing to pay $100/mo to get them.:)
I've been thinking about this a bit. I'm worried that when I get mythTV running on the same box, bad things will happen if mplayers get killed willy nilly....
Feel free to mock my code, but post a better solution if you do. I *don't* like the pkill mplayer solution, but I'm still not sure to easily get a PID out of a process. It would also be cool if I could save as the original source file type, instead of converting a 32kbps Windows Media stream into a 128kbps wav and then into a 128kbps mp3. It has however, worked very well for me, and lets me timeshift my favourite CBC Radio one shows.
Jamie's said on previous episodes that one thing Adam does very well is work very fast on large builds. The bridge building/army boots collapse episode is a good example of this.
If it's a large amount of work, and a relatively simple build (an uncomplex design that doesn't involve going back to the drawing board) Adam's the one to do it.
I'm still stunned at the level of personal attachment people feel over planetary names. Pluto probably is as popular as it is because of the Disney character. People are upset that 2003 UB313 was named "Eris" because they had affection for the name "Xena".
All of this is incredibly silly.
I propose that we take an existing planet, say Jupiter, and start calling it the planet "Vagina". A popular affectionate name we can all call it, petition the IAU and write protest songs about.
It will be the Flying Spaghetti Monster of IAU proposals.
I find it ironic that threats against various servers, P2P technologies always seem to be about years behind the curve. Does anyone actually *use* eDonkey anymore? I figured we all moved over to eMule. In 2004!
The claim has always been "No matter what they take down, FTP and the web will always be there. In effect, you might be able to say the same about bittorrent. Shutting down sites that gather up torrent files won't make the trackers go away.
Speaking of the bottom line, one thing that can be pitched at the university is reduced space requirements for lecture halls. Why spend millions to develop 500 seat lecture halls when 200 seats might be sufficient? Or maybe, why have lecture halls at all, especially if you can have interaction online as the lecture is being taped or video recorded?
We've *seriously* looked at this issue at the university I work for. Those lecture halls are very very expensive, and there are better cost savings solutions than doubling student tuition.
IIRC, Jupiter has only about 1% of the mass needed to achieve fusion, so it's a long, long way from being a star. I, on the other hand easily have ten times the mass required to be a super model.
Brown Dwarf deuterium fusion can start at 15 Jupiter masses... So more like 7%.
Slashdot Mirror
Beat me to it, and I have no mod points today!
Mod DM of the Rings up! HORSEF***ERS!
I noted this about my mother in law when we were visiting her home while taking care of our first infant child.
In the early morning, when we were exhausted and not ready to get up in the morning after taking care of the kid all night, we were "lazy".
In the late evening, when *she* was exhausted but when the baby was still awake and needed to be taken care of perhaps for several more hours, she was "tired".
Large scale CO2 seqestration is imaginary technology. You might as well ask for warp-drive, free vacuum energy and a unicorn pony.
Or going to the moon. Or a weapon with the power of the sun.
Fair enough. Maybe this is pie in the sky tech, and the CBC article is overhyping it.
Maybe something less glamorous then? Pressurized coal plant emissions stored in pressurized containers.
Or large 100% CO2 atmosphere greenhouses?
The alternative is to stop pulling the fossil fuels out of the ground in the first place.
A month ago I was convinced the only way to halt the addition of CO2 into the atmosphere was to eventually stop harvesting it from the ground. However people quite rightly make the argument that we just don't have enough energy to do this. I think I have a better solution.
CBC News had a great article on Capturing Carbon. The idea is to capture CO2 from coal and gas plants and pipe it across country to locations where we can pump it into the ground.
It seems to me that if there are locations for carbon sinks, piping the CO2 to these locations is doing things backward.
Why not instead build a massive coal fired power plant directly over one of these carbon sinks. Generate electricity and pump the CO2 waste gas directly into the ground.
Then *don't* send power anywhere, but next door to the hydrogen generation plant. Convert water (from a stream or lake) into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then pump the *hydrogen* to the cities in a spider's network of pipelines across the country. Transmitting power over power lines is notoriously inefficient, but we should be able to devise a system for near-lossless transmission of hydrogen gas.
Once the hydrogen is in the cities, local power plants can produce energy right in the city core, pollution free. Plus we'd be able to power our automobiles without oil.
By burning all of our coal, oil, and gas into these zero-carbon hydrogen generation plants, we'd still be able to extract fossil fuels and use their energy, but not put any of the CO2 into the atmosphere. Plus if we used only a few *enormous* power plants, we could use the very best CO2 reclamation technology and have the very highest carbon capture efficiency possible.
In the mid-term, hydrogen would run only to power plants, and to "gas" stations for vehicles. In the long term, we'd be able to pipe hydrogen into our homes and build a device that doubled both as power generator and hot water heater.
This I think would be a great solution to Australia's coal dilemma. Stop exporting coal. Start exporting hydrogen.
This idea might be pie in the sky. Could any Slashdotters be willing to take a stab at the mathematics of efficiency? I'm curious what the difference would be from converting from one power source to another and transmission differences over power lines.
"I guess Canadian Telcos are as fond of screwing their customers as the US's"
We are talking about *Telus* here, the company so evil that locked out its workers for almost a year when they asked for a simple pay raise. Everyone hates them up here. They're one of the main reasons I switched to Vonage.
Joining in on the crowd here. My wife and I have a smaller sized sedan, a '96 Saturn SL1, that works just fine for two kids and groceries. (I don't think I'll go Saturn next time though)
It's very rare that we need more than this. A month ago I bought three chairs from IKEA, and there was no way they'd fit in the car (note to self, next time try opening boxes). But home delivery was $39. Easily cheaper than a vehicle twice as expensive.
That's nothing. I'm considering a holiday spot on the arctic circle.
Figuring out where the shoreline would be would be tricky... probably best to buy land in swaths up to 8-10m in altitude.
The mosquitoes would be an absolute bitch though.
Are they trying to drum up some support for their project ? Or just coincidence ?
The coincidence here likely has to do with the fact we lost contact with MGS just a few weeks ago, and it's unlikely we'll make contact again. This is likely the MGS team's final report, letting them go out on a bang.
I hope the MO and MRO teams can pick up where the MGS team left off.
The difference here is the definition of "recent". There is evidence of tens of thousands of gullys that have evidence of flowing water, for the *geological* definition of recent. In the sense that "It is obvious what happened here, this is what it looks like after water flows across the surface". "Recent" to a geologist means "within the last million years".
6 -145
In this instance, we actually have photographic evidence, with one picture in 2001 and another in 2005 showing an actual change over the course of years, not millenia.
Water is flowing on the surface of Mars *now*. Granted, it is a rare event on a human timescale, with only two instances detected across on third of the planet's surface over a period of 5-6 years. But from a geologists perspective, we've moved from the realm of "recent" activity to "active" activity.
JPL has an awesome site up right now explaining the MGS team findings:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=200
First off your knowledge of ancient egyption is obviously flawed.
Quit being a Grammar Centurion.
Here in Canada things are starting to open up. I know my cable provider is going to be offering a "Nitro" service of 25Mbps in a week. We already have 10Mbps "Extreme" service, and the rest of us (cheap) chumps have to live with 5Mbps.
:)
I believe Telus and other phone companies are bringing out products with speeds similar to 25Mbpsvery soon. I'm just not willing to pay $100/mo to get them.
I've been thinking about this a bit. I'm worried that when I get mythTV running on the same box, bad things will happen if mplayers get killed willy nilly....
/dev/nu /dev/null &";
/dev/null 2> /dev/null`;
/usr/local/bin/lame -S -b $bitrate $wavfilename $mp3filename`;
Try this instead...
----
#!/usr/bin/perl
$_ = `date "+%Y-%m-%d"`;
s/\n//;
$date = $_;
$filename = $ARGV[0].".".$date;
$sleep = $ARGV[1];
$wavfilename = $filename.".wav";
$mp3filename = $filename.".mp3";
$ps1 = `pgrep mplayer`;
@psA = split(/\n/, $ps1);
$command = "/usr/local/bin/mplayer -vo null -ao pcm:file=$wavfilename -slave -quiet ***INSERT MMS HERE*** >
ll 2>
system("$command");
$ps2 = `pgrep mplayer`;
@psB = split(/\n/, $ps2);
for (@psA) {$existing_mplayer{$_} = 1};
sleep $sleep ;
###`pkill mplayer`;
foreach $ps (@psB) {
unless ($is_ps{$ps}) {
`kill $ps >
}
}
$bitrate = $ARGV[2];
`nice
`rm $wavfilename`;
What if you have more than one mplayer running?
Joined up with crontab... Works rather well for the CBC for me...
/dev/null 2> /dev/null &";
/usr/local/bin/lame -S $wavfilename $mp3filename`;
---
#!/usr/bin/perl
$_ = `date "+%Y-%m-%d"`;
s/\n//;
$date = $_;
$filename = $ARGV[0].".".$date;
$sleep = $ARGV[1];
$wavfilename = $filename.".wav";
$mp3filename = $filename.".mp3";
$command = "/usr/local/bin/mplayer -vo null -ao pcm:file=$wavfilename -slave -quiet ****INSERT YOUR MMS:// URL HERE**** >
system("$command");
sleep $sleep ;
`pkill mplayer`;
`nice
`rm $wavfilename`;
---
Feel free to mock my code, but post a better solution if you do. I *don't* like the pkill mplayer solution, but I'm still not sure to easily get a PID out of a process. It would also be cool if I could save as the original source file type, instead of converting a 32kbps Windows Media stream into a 128kbps wav and then into a 128kbps mp3. It has however, worked very well for me, and lets me timeshift my favourite CBC Radio one shows.
The last failure I had turned out to be the cable. I decided to give it a try after getting inconsistent errors on a full HD test.
Be sure to try replacing the cable before deciding the drive is toast, even after testing. Those SATA cables are finicky.
sucks.mobi/does/
Jamie's said on previous episodes that one thing Adam does very well is work very fast on large builds. The bridge building/army boots collapse episode is a good example of this.
If it's a large amount of work, and a relatively simple build (an uncomplex design that doesn't involve going back to the drawing board) Adam's the one to do it.
I'm still stunned at the level of personal attachment people feel over planetary names. Pluto probably is as popular as it is because of the Disney character. People are upset that 2003 UB313 was named "Eris" because they had affection for the name "Xena".
All of this is incredibly silly.
I propose that we take an existing planet, say Jupiter, and start calling it the planet "Vagina". A popular affectionate name we can all call it, petition the IAU and write protest songs about.
It will be the Flying Spaghetti Monster of IAU proposals.
I find it ironic that threats against various servers, P2P technologies always seem to be about years behind the curve. Does anyone actually *use* eDonkey anymore? I figured we all moved over to eMule. In 2004!
The claim has always been "No matter what they take down, FTP and the web will always be there. In effect, you might be able to say the same about bittorrent. Shutting down sites that gather up torrent files won't make the trackers go away.
Someone watched the Battlefield 2142 trailer a few too many times.
Speaking of the bottom line, one thing that can be pitched at the university is reduced space requirements for lecture halls. Why spend millions to develop 500 seat lecture halls when 200 seats might be sufficient? Or maybe, why have lecture halls at all, especially if you can have interaction online as the lecture is being taped or video recorded?
We've *seriously* looked at this issue at the university I work for. Those lecture halls are very very expensive, and there are better cost savings solutions than doubling student tuition.
There are those instances where a comment deserves a Score of 6.
Damn, I'm going to have to use this somewhere...
I hate to be a dick *cough*, but have you considered getting your tubes tied?
:)
It's much much more intrusive than the equivelant for us males (lucky us), but if it's critical for your health...
No, I take this all back. This is intensely stupid. That level of intrusiveness is through the roof.
Try another doctor. Or another health care system (Move to Canada! It's great up here.
IIRC, Jupiter has only about 1% of the mass needed to achieve fusion, so it's a long, long way from being a star. I, on the other hand easily have ten times the mass required to be a super model.
:)
Brown Dwarf deuterium fusion can start at 15 Jupiter masses... So more like 7%.
Brown Dwarf
There's confusion over the grey area between a "star" and a "planet" too...
I'm hoping that with the oncoming war between BluRay and HD-DVD, that prices for DVD-R9 blank media will fall through the floor.
I know we're talking about movies and not blank media, but it's quite possible that much cheaper DVD-R9 may hold back either format from the PC.
I can hope, at least.