Under our current rule of law^H^H^H government by random action, when people commit illegal actions and get burned, then the government uses a new law to make their loss good on the backs of the rest.
In this case, you get the guy to try to "be clever". Then when he gets sued, he goes running to uncle Sam? "Sam! Sam! It's not fair! I was cheating, and I cheated in stupid ways, but EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOIN' IT, and I lost everything, and you've got to make that system proprietary so I can steal it like everyone else..."
And in case you don't believe that Congress would feel they have to do sumpin, and pass a law to do exactly that, look at
Bailout #1 (forced sale of Lehman bros to preferred company #1) Bailout #2 (Official bailout) Bailout #3...45 (Paulson acting in extension of what the official bailout allowed) Bailout #46 (forcing banks to take cash loans at 5%, 'it was a take it or take it offer, quote') Bailout #47 (focing banks to pay out money from cash loans to directors as dividends and bonuses)... Bush says that that is good for the economy. Bailout #48 (Automakers loans).
Each and every one of these bailouts was enacted by the Executive or Legislative branches "because we have to do something", nominally in good faith that they would be used appropriately, in good faith that they would magically save the economy despite every evidence that they wouldn't; many of them were illegal; resulted in complete and utter shock when nothing happened as promised, and put the burden of the bailout of the illegal, greedy, and stupid, on those who had not been illegal, greedy, and stupid.
In other words, those who seek power at all costs are now undone by the threat of realizing that they are not in control, and they are desperately wiggling every joystick they can find, in order to try to "get back in control."
In line with that, your advice is quite possibly going to hand all OSS over to Micro$oft in bailout #4797, the Computer Software Bailout.
Or for those who don't understand that, try: Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia...
Or for those who don't understand that, try: WTO, GATT,...
Or for those who don't understand that, try: Limbaugh, Imus, Brittany, Ben Lo...
Okay, I give. Can Americans appreciate the concept of Freedom? Can they understand the concept of free beer? Can they understand the concept of distinction?
Okay, I can't direct you to personal evidence -- I don't know your life, and it would have to be your own personal evidence for you to reasonably be able to evaluate it. On the other hand, there probably are some deeply serious Christians around you, and they may have personal evidence that is still close enough for you to evaluate.
Now, that aside... let's try some public evidence.
For starters, let us consider public evidence of prophecy. One that I think is reasonably ancient, yet points to modern times, is Rev. 8:10-11. Compare that to the meaning of Chernobyl/Wormwood:
I might note that for a culture that had no concept of nuclear reactors, as "star cast to earth" is a pretty good description of a nuclear explosion.
Now, this is not complete and total "wow, now let me believe everything that the Bible ever said." But it is one piece of evidence.
Or, let's try an historical piece of evidence of the basic accuracy of some of the wilder claims of the Bible. If you look in the story of Noah, and compare it to the Epic of Gilgamesh's story of Noah, it appears that there was an asteroid strike. Now, interestingly, in the area of the Persian Gulf, there is about 8' of river clay that all dates to the same year. That year matches the asteroid strike SE of Madagascar, that formed the cheveron shaped hills on the SW beaches of Madagascar (600' high, with asteroid metals bonded to sea life shells, all dating to about 3500 BC, if I remember correctly). This also dates to the era that -- worldwide -- people started building large structures that would be immune from tidal waves.
Now, that doesn't say that the earth was covered in water, but it implies that the earth that was known to the Babylonians *was*, and that the total event was to some extent worldwide cataclysmic.
More importantly than that to the basic truth of the Bible, is that one man was warned ahead of time, with enough time to build a box (ark archive, a storage unit) and caulk it up with tar and animal fur, and stock it. So there was someone who warned him.
It sounds like both you, and the poster somewhere above who had a problem with religous marketing departments, have made up your mind about the possibility of evidence, a priori.
So therefore, there is no need to consider any evidence at all.
That sounds quite similar to the "science" that Asimov introduced in his Foundation series, in which scientists of the dying Empire has concluded "the scientific method involves looking at historical records, and deciding for yourself what is true."
Asimov's subtle point was that that ain't science. Might I point out that neither is your scientific method.
The scientific method is observation, followed by experimentation, followed by theory to explain the experimentation and make as-yet unobserved predictions, followed by the repeatable experiment to test the theory. It has a partial basis in philosophy, but does not expand as wide as philosophy, and therefore will not be able to conclude certain truths, though they are truths.
So science is very useful within its limited range. Of course, for most human purposes in our very limited current society, science is useful. But philosphy is less useful over a much wider range.
Oh, and by the way, scientifical is not a word. It's intellectualizationabilizing-speak. Such usage is a way of pointing out that your opinions are much smarter than they are. Or, if you will, that you have no humility.
So... let me suggest, if you want to approach truth, try a little of that humility. Realize that you don't have all the answers, that you aren't the be-all end-all of anything, and that others -- including religions -- do sometimes have answers that are righter than yours.
Then, as part of that humility, set yourself not to deny truth when it confronts you. In other words, don't discount evidence just because it doesn't fit your preferred world view. Then be willing to learn.
Finally, let me say that I have found Christianity to be right on, including having experiences in things that scientifical people would say don't happen -- even when it happened in front of them. But I have also found that certain experiences of sin blind one to truth. That is, innocence is more humble, and more open to truth, than experience. Those who eat the apple think their eyes are opened. But that very day, their eyes become closed.
The human brain seems to be very good at making shortcuts to speed up processing.
So when I'm around my wife, my human brain assumes that the person I see is my wife (shoot, it even assumes the warmth next to me in bed is my wife, and that the person I'm talking to is my wife), and interprets it that way for me.
So in bereavement, suddenly you're deprived of the actual stimulus. But that doesn't mean that the brain is going to let those circuits sit idle. No... the moment any unknown stimulus comes in, it's going to try to match it to the "wife" circuit. And if the "wife" circuit triggers better than anything else, then that's what I'm going to see.
In other words, we don't see things as they are; we see them as we interpret them.
So I suspect that this is just a case of the bereaved person mistaking a cat streaking around the house for their spouse. Or a bird in the air, etc.
Which doesn't mean that I don't believe in the human soul, and heaven and hell. But I don't think this is it. There's a better, simpler explaination at hand, and one that matches my occasional experience even nowadays, when I'm not bereaved.
"Laura, is that you out there?"... oh no, sorry. It's just my son's friend.
I might suggest that if having software available later is really important, then he should go home at the end of each day, and write the algorithms he wrote during the day, in a completely new fashion. Make it completely different code.
If you use a bubble sort here, use a quick sort there. That kind of thing. Indeed, when he has free time later, he can perfect his own software with what is faster, better.
Then, if he needs to use anything later at a different job, he'll have it at his fingertips.
I think part of the problem is that he's doing research that is being declared not public research, but private research. Universities are big business, and they steal a lot. Indeed, their officials steal a lot, and sometimes land in jail for it (try the athletic director of VPI&SU, for example, back in '90, if I remember the year correctly).
If it were public research, then he could continue to use his work after he left. Further, since he is most familiar with it, he would be in the best position to use it.
So he has a valid complaint here.
He might do well to insist that it be public research.
NEVER TAKE LEGAL ADVICE FROM SLASHDOT. GET YOUR LEGAL ADVICE FROM WIKIPEDIA. NEVER TAKE LEGAL ADVICE FROM SLASHDOT. GET YOUR LEGAL ADVICE FROM WIKIPEDIA.
BTW, I am not a lawyer, and this is Slashdot advice.
BUT I believe is strict application to logic when it comes to our legal system.
I might note that the problem of US cities not working well with efficient transportation is tied to suburbanism, which is tied to crime, which in turn is tied to corruption. As far as I can tell, corruption is indigenous to the human species, displaying itself most often in those who are in political power in almost every institution (public, private, not for profit). That said, it shows up less in some places (say, Churches) and more in others (say, public schools).
I pick those two, because interestingly, the child abuse problems are far worse in the public schools than in (for example) the Roman Catholic Church. But you can't sue the schools due to certain laws (refer back to 2nd sentence of post). So the schools shuffle the abusers around...
But when I was back in Lithuania, the cities basically were set up not to require private transportation beyond foot or bike. A typical city was 20-30k people, and had apartment buildings, sometimes with commercial units on the ground floor. The apartment buildings themselves were in blocks, about 100' off the main roads, which were lined with other commercial entities. Typically speaking, it was no more than a 5 minute walk to *whereever* you wanted to go. For those few things that had to be carried out at a particular location, it was no more than a 30 minute walk.
Walk.
Bicycles are faster, and were an option.
Now, you might ask "if corruption is universal, what's the difference between the former Soviet cities and the American ones"? Basically, it is that the Soviets were singleminded about their "planned" state. Us Americans still have all of our wicked plans, but we try to hide it in Capitalist Speak. Consider it a case of "Animal Farm" in reverse, if you will.
That doesn't mean that I prefer the Soviet "solutions". I don't. What I would prefer is to abandon corruption and crime. Then we could live together in more efficient cities. I do prefer the Lithuanian setup to the US setup. But I don't consider worse, more immediate evil corruption to be better than hidden, sneaky evil corruption.
Got your reply... it's okay. I'm glad to have learned something from you about the aerophysics.
What that means to me, is that with a good design, you could have a 60 mph pressure speed while traveling just 25 mph. That, in turn, means that you could have a single-occupant airplane that takes off at 25 mph, with wings shorter and stubbier than a automobile lane. Say, a canard design with 2' front wings, 4' back wings, 9' span, and a pilot that sits similar to a recliner cycle. Of course, the problem with this is pilots taking off or landing on the roads might hit (say) a power line. That would not be a good thing.
From your moniker, element-o, are you involved with aerospace numerical calculations? Or just something in engineering in general?
After looking at the CCW site and thinking about it, you have me convinced that putting the props behind and above the wing is far superior to putting them in front and below it.
This is because at low airspeed, your prop wash speed does become significant.
However, my configuration of props being below and in front does stand up equally well at any reasonable airspeed, because the prop wash velocity is less important.
However, that was a case of not considering the low-airspeed case, not a case of not knowing my aerodynamics. Or, if you will, it was a case of ignoring the aerophysics (in Custer's language), not the aerodynamics. For my explanation of why I put it there, look at this reply to another respondant: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1036433&cid=25837275
The idea of putting the props in front and above (or below and behind) the wing, though, would be bad at any reasonable airspeed.
Well, I did a MCGA knockoff on Tetris back when the MCGA was fairly new (and nobody else seemed to konw how to program it). But when I tried to distribute it via shareware on bulletin boards, it earned me zero dollars.
I am not convinced that open-sourcing or shareware are a way to make money off the game.
I'm honestly not sure how a person can make money off a game. I'm only sure that my way didn't work.
Well, as I remember, if you model an airplane propeller as a disk, then the air pressure slowly decreases from P-zero as you approach the disk from the front, then jumps up, and then again slowly decreases back to P-zero as you leave the disk behind.
The air velocity along the propellar axis, on the other hand, steadily increases as you approach the disk, is approximately of zero slope as you cross the plane of the disk, and then decreases again.
So what I am doing is taking advantage of the sudden jump in air pressure by putting the propeller below the wing.
I could actually stick another propeller behind the airplane, above the wing, and double my effect, though.
Of course, the drag of having more propellers is not insignificant, as another poster noted. That means we'll have to take it nice and slow. But our goal for this design is a silent plane. More and smaller propellers would probably make it more silent.
I'd put many smaller, distributed brushless electric-motors all along the wing, especially towards the wingtips.
In order to help increase lift based on pressure (active pressure differences), I'd place the propeller centers below the wing, rather than above the wing.
To counteract some of the loss of lift from wingtip vortex pressure losses, I'd make the propellers spin with the bottoms moving towards the fusilage.
In order to reduce explosion risk, I'd use Lithium-ion phosphate batteries.
I'd probably also have to have a very long aspect ratio for the wing, so the plane wouldn't be flying all that fast.
But it could be done, and be economical (in terms of cost per flight hour, cost per mile) too. It wouldn't be economical for someone who wanted to go from here to there fast.
So if you were an automobile executive who wanted to declare that your company was about to go bankrupt unless you got a few spare billion (and then declare that bankruptcy is not an option if you don't get it), you'd have to use a lear jet instead, preferably retrofitted with a zillion pulse jets. But they make a tad more noise, and use a tad more fuel.
Different economic situations require different answers, I guess.
Re:Examples are not nerdy
on
American Nerd
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I think that the term "nerd" came hand-in-hand with the term "nerd bag", the pocket protector that physicists and engineers used to carry their pens in their pockets.
Point being, that LOTR has nothing to do with being a nerd.
Nor do I think that the nerds found a place in society. Rather, the sociably fashionable people have moved into some areas that once were worthy of the term "nerd" back when engineering skills were actually necessary for those fields. But (for example, with computers) you don't have to be an engineer to use a computer any more. You don't have to encode your Fortran programs on punch cards. In fact, you don't have to program any more.
Let's face it, there's nothing that requires engineering skills, about MySpace.
Then, too, there's the dollar aspect. When my father was a physics post-grad and teacher from 1974-84, he was making anywhere from $12k per year up to $25k per year. In other words, he was making less than a factory worker. I don't think such people attract much attention at parties. They aren't "wall street" material. But nowadays, a person can say they're a web designer (basically with a degree in graphic design, which is, by my memory, art... not tech), and lay claim to the title nerd.
Well, nowadays, maybe so.
But a nerd ain't what a nerd used to be. And it isn't that nerds became upwardly mobile. It's that people who weren't nerds appropriated the title. So be it.
Oh, those textbooks are already digitized, believe me. They are typically in Word at least (due to requests by professors and teachers), and then in addition are in something like Quark, Pagemaker, or the
The problem is that the publishers aren't going to want them digiti
Of course, one could always digitize stuff over a hundred years old, for things like language arts and elementary school math.
But it is far more efficient to learn from a book, with a pencil and a piece of paper. As far as I can tell, computer usage shortens the attention span, making learning diffic
... can come with a full keyboard. Just set the thing on the table, and a laser diode outlines your keyboard for you on the table, and you type.
Yeah, you'll get fatigue from too much typing like this, but it'll be tons faster than point and click.
The word "any" in any heat pollution means that he was saying that if there is any heat difference flow at all.
So you are saying what I am saying, but not what he was saying. You can get some energy out of some heat difference, but the cost/benefit ratio rises (see what I said about stacking windmills).
He was saying that you could eliminate all the heat pollution, which you cannot do.
If there's any "heat pollution" produced by the plant it simply means they need another turbine
Actually, you just violated the second law of thermo.
The heat engine produces heat by heat flowing thru the heat engine and out the other end. There will always be heat pollution. If you stop the heat flow (or for windmills, the mass flow... they do the same thing) at the back end, the pressures build up, but the convertable energy goes to zero. For this reason, windmills, solar cells, and heat engines have real limits on efficiency.
For windmills, you might as easily say "stick another windmill behind the first". And that would give you energy from the 2nd windmill. But it would decrease the energy given by the front windmill, and eventually (if you stack them up enough) the sum of the decreases will be less than the increase of adding another.
Aside from that, you are confused about the difference between the thermal (random, non-directed) energy of heat pollution, and the directed energy that rushes through a turbine.
As I remember, farm raised catfish and free-range chickens get a 1:1 corn-protein to meat-protein ratio, mainly because they also eat bugs (or in China, the catfish/shrimp eat chicken poop.)
For cows, I think the number was either 8:1 or 20:1.
So yes, the poster who suggested that this is why everyone can't be a vegetarian is wrong. But I don't put it down to math. I put it down to his spouting off without having any actual facts.
Just as an aside, I might mention that this plant will likely poison the ground around it with such things as cadmium (NiCad, NimH batteries), mercury (coin batteries, thermometers... hospitals burn these up all the time), lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals.
The real shame is that a lot of these heavy metals actually should be classified, like gold, as precious metals. Right now when we are in deflation (with a specter of possibly hyperinflation once the credit bubble has burst), those metals are one of the few things that will maintain value.
I'd think that a few chemists who sat down and found a way to properly reclaim the lithium and other metals, could make a killing by collecting and sorting the waste, and then disposing of the non-toxic waste in standard ways, while mining the waste for all it's worth. The earlier you sort it, the higher your profits will be. Sorting a NimH from a NiCad will save a lot of extra effort and energy on the back end.
Then, as you identify more wastes (and the typical condition that it arrives in), then you can figure out a way to profit from that, too.
We use the mega blocks and duplo blocks, both. There both okay for pretending.
However, I've found that both I and my kids cannot easily take legos apart. In addition, the form factor of legos makes it easy to make their intended toy (if you want to spend the time), but comparatively hard to make other things.
I remember the days of American Bricks, though, when we'd make marble machines, spaceships (tiny, med, large, and super), ships, and whatnot. Yeah, it didn't have all the specialized parts that lego has. But that's what imagination is for. I remember playing the Children's Space Revolution (in 1972, with a theme song that was remarkably similar to that which came out for Star Wars), and other stories that we made up as we went.
I never saw that with legos -- not with my brothers, not with my oldest son. We gave it up. The kids do pretend with Mega Bloks. As a parent, I'd much prefer something that falls apart every so often, to something that you can't get apart without tremendous effort.
That was a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. Yeah, I coulda done better. But you *can* do better. Do the calculations where you live, and see what kind of an answer you get.
I'm not into envy. I'm not into legislating fairness. I'm into encouraging those with power over other peoples' lives to deal justly with their neighbors.
That means not supporting (actively arguing against) greed and such.
Slashdot Mirror
Under our current rule of law^H^H^H government by random action, when people commit illegal actions and get burned, then the government uses a new law to make their loss good on the backs of the rest.
In this case, you get the guy to try to "be clever". Then when he gets sued, he goes running to uncle Sam? "Sam! Sam! It's not fair! I was cheating, and I cheated in stupid ways, but EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOIN' IT, and I lost everything, and you've got to make that system proprietary so I can steal it like everyone else..."
And in case you don't believe that Congress would feel they have to do sumpin, and pass a law to do exactly that,
look at
Bailout #1 (forced sale of Lehman bros to preferred company #1)
Bailout #2 (Official bailout)
Bailout #3...45 (Paulson acting in extension of what the official bailout allowed)
Bailout #46 (forcing banks to take cash loans at 5%, 'it was a take it or take it offer, quote')
Bailout #47 (focing banks to pay out money from cash loans to directors as dividends and bonuses)... Bush says that that is good for the economy.
Bailout #48 (Automakers loans).
Each and every one of these bailouts was enacted by the Executive or Legislative branches "because we have to do something", nominally in good faith that they would be used appropriately, in good faith that they would magically save the economy despite every evidence that they wouldn't; many of them were illegal; resulted in complete and utter shock when nothing happened as promised, and put the burden of the bailout of the illegal, greedy, and stupid, on those who had not been illegal, greedy, and stupid.
In other words, those who seek power at all costs are now undone by the threat of realizing that they are not in control, and they are desperately wiggling every joystick they can find, in order to try to "get back in control."
In line with that, your advice is quite possibly going to hand all OSS over to Micro$oft in bailout #4797, the Computer Software Bailout.
Bush, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Reagan...
Or for those who don't understand that, try:
Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia...
Or for those who don't understand that, try:
WTO, GATT,...
Or for those who don't understand that, try:
Limbaugh, Imus, Brittany, Ben Lo...
Okay, I give. Can Americans appreciate the concept of Freedom? Can they understand the concept of free beer? Can they understand the concept of distinction?
Okay, I can't direct you to personal evidence -- I don't know your life, and it would have to be your own personal evidence for you to reasonably be able to evaluate it. On the other hand, there probably are some deeply serious Christians around you, and they may have personal evidence that is still close enough for you to evaluate.
Now, that aside... let's try some public evidence.
For starters, let us consider public evidence of prophecy. One that I think is reasonably ancient, yet points to modern times, is Rev. 8:10-11. Compare that to the meaning of Chernobyl/Wormwood:
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Chernobyl.htm
I might note that for a culture that had no concept of nuclear reactors, as "star cast to earth" is a pretty good description of a nuclear explosion.
Now, this is not complete and total "wow, now let me believe everything that the Bible ever said." But it is one piece of evidence.
Or, let's try an historical piece of evidence of the basic accuracy of some of the wilder claims of the Bible. If you look in the story of Noah, and compare it to the Epic of Gilgamesh's story of Noah, it appears that there was an asteroid strike. Now, interestingly, in the area of the Persian Gulf, there is about 8' of river clay that all dates to the same year. That year matches the asteroid strike SE of Madagascar, that formed the cheveron shaped hills on the SW beaches of Madagascar (600' high, with asteroid metals bonded to sea life shells, all dating to about 3500 BC, if I remember correctly). This also dates to the era that -- worldwide -- people started building large structures that would be immune from tidal waves.
Now, that doesn't say that the earth was covered in water, but it implies that the earth that was known to the Babylonians *was*, and that the total event was to some extent worldwide cataclysmic.
More importantly than that to the basic truth of the Bible, is that one man was warned ahead of time, with enough time to build a box (ark archive, a storage unit) and caulk it up with tar and animal fur, and stock it. So there was someone who warned him.
Aaah... what do they teach in schools these days?
It sounds like both you, and the poster somewhere above who had a problem with religous marketing departments, have made up your mind about the possibility of evidence, a priori.
So therefore, there is no need to consider any evidence at all.
That sounds quite similar to the "science" that Asimov introduced in his Foundation series, in which scientists of the dying Empire has concluded "the scientific method involves looking at historical records, and deciding for yourself what is true."
Asimov's subtle point was that that ain't science. Might I point out that neither is your scientific method.
The scientific method is observation, followed by experimentation, followed by theory to explain the experimentation and make as-yet unobserved predictions, followed by the repeatable experiment to test the theory. It has a partial basis in philosophy, but does not expand as wide as philosophy, and therefore will not be able to conclude certain truths, though they are truths.
So science is very useful within its limited range. Of course, for most human purposes in our very limited current society, science is useful. But philosphy is less useful over a much wider range.
Oh, and by the way, scientifical is not a word. It's intellectualizationabilizing-speak. Such usage is a way of pointing out that your opinions are much smarter than they are. Or, if you will, that you have no humility.
So... let me suggest, if you want to approach truth, try a little of that humility. Realize that you don't have all the answers, that you aren't the be-all end-all of anything, and that others -- including religions -- do sometimes have answers that are righter than yours.
Then, as part of that humility, set yourself not to deny truth when it confronts you. In other words, don't discount evidence just because it doesn't fit your preferred world view. Then be willing to learn.
Finally, let me say that I have found Christianity to be right on, including having experiences in things that scientifical people would say don't happen -- even when it happened in front of them. But I have also found that certain experiences of sin blind one to truth. That is, innocence is more humble, and more open to truth, than experience. Those who eat the apple think their eyes are opened. But that very day, their eyes become closed.
The human brain seems to be very good at making shortcuts to speed up processing.
So when I'm around my wife, my human brain assumes that the person I see is my wife (shoot, it even assumes the warmth next to me in bed is my wife, and that the person I'm talking to is my wife), and interprets it that way for me.
So in bereavement, suddenly you're deprived of the actual stimulus. But that doesn't mean that the brain is going to let those circuits sit idle. No... the moment any unknown stimulus comes in, it's going to try to match it to the "wife" circuit. And if the "wife" circuit triggers better than anything else, then that's what I'm going to see.
In other words, we don't see things as they are; we see them as we interpret them.
So I suspect that this is just a case of the bereaved person mistaking a cat streaking around the house for their spouse. Or a bird in the air, etc.
Which doesn't mean that I don't believe in the human soul, and heaven and hell. But I don't think this is it. There's a better, simpler explaination at hand, and one that matches my occasional experience even nowadays, when I'm not bereaved.
"Laura, is that you out there?" ... oh no, sorry. It's just my son's friend.
I might suggest that if having software available later is really important, then he should go home at the end of each day, and write the algorithms he wrote during the day, in a completely new fashion. Make it completely different code.
If you use a bubble sort here, use a quick sort there. That kind of thing. Indeed, when he has free time later, he can perfect his own software with what is faster, better.
Then, if he needs to use anything later at a different job, he'll have it at his fingertips.
You said from experience, slashdot is the perfect place to get misinformation on legal matters.
Please detail your experience. What information did you come to slashdot for, and what advice did you get, and how did it burn you?
I think part of the problem is that he's doing research that is being declared not public research, but private research. Universities are big business, and they steal a lot. Indeed, their officials steal a lot, and sometimes land in jail for it (try the athletic director of VPI&SU, for example, back in '90, if I remember the year correctly).
If it were public research, then he could continue to use his work after he left. Further, since he is most familiar with it, he would be in the best position to use it.
So he has a valid complaint here.
He might do well to insist that it be public research.
3- Publicize your stupidity, and Request Bailout from US Federal Government.
Thought I'd fill in part 3 for you. It shouldn't be that difficult any more.
Repeat After Me:
NEVER TAKE LEGAL ADVICE FROM SLASHDOT. GET YOUR LEGAL ADVICE FROM WIKIPEDIA.
NEVER TAKE LEGAL ADVICE FROM SLASHDOT. GET YOUR LEGAL ADVICE FROM WIKIPEDIA.
BTW, I am not a lawyer, and this is Slashdot advice.
BUT I believe is strict application to logic when it comes to our legal system.
NEVER TAKE LEGAL ADVICE F...
[rant]
I might note that the problem of US cities not working well with efficient transportation is tied to suburbanism, which is tied to crime, which in turn is tied to corruption. As far as I can tell, corruption is indigenous to the human species, displaying itself most often in those who are in political power in almost every institution (public, private, not for profit). That said, it shows up less in some places (say, Churches) and more in others (say, public schools).
I pick those two, because interestingly, the child abuse problems are far worse in the public schools than in (for example) the Roman Catholic Church. But you can't sue the schools due to certain laws (refer back to 2nd sentence of post). So the schools shuffle the abusers around...
But when I was back in Lithuania, the cities basically were set up not to require private transportation beyond foot or bike. A typical city was 20-30k people, and had apartment buildings, sometimes with commercial units on the ground floor. The apartment buildings themselves were in blocks, about 100' off the main roads, which were lined with other commercial entities. Typically speaking, it was no more than a 5 minute walk to *whereever* you wanted to go. For those few things that had to be carried out at a particular location, it was no more than a 30 minute walk.
Walk.
Bicycles are faster, and were an option.
Now, you might ask "if corruption is universal, what's the difference between the former Soviet cities and the American ones"? Basically, it is that the Soviets were singleminded about their "planned" state. Us Americans still have all of our wicked plans, but we try to hide it in Capitalist Speak. Consider it a case of "Animal Farm" in reverse, if you will.
That doesn't mean that I prefer the Soviet "solutions". I don't. What I would prefer is to abandon corruption and crime. Then we could live together in more efficient cities. I do prefer the Lithuanian setup to the US setup. But I don't consider worse, more immediate evil corruption to be better than hidden, sneaky evil corruption.
That's all.
[/rant]
Got your reply... it's okay. I'm glad to have learned something from you about the aerophysics.
What that means to me, is that with a good design, you could have a 60 mph pressure speed while traveling just 25 mph. That, in turn, means that you could have a single-occupant airplane that takes off at 25 mph, with wings shorter and stubbier than a automobile lane. Say, a canard design with 2' front wings, 4' back wings, 9' span, and a pilot that sits similar to a recliner cycle. Of course, the problem with this is pilots taking off or landing on the roads might hit (say) a power line. That would not be a good thing.
From your moniker, element-o, are you involved with aerospace numerical calculations? Or just something in engineering in general?
After looking at the CCW site and thinking about it, you have me convinced that putting the props behind and above the wing is far superior to putting them in front and below it.
This is because at low airspeed, your prop wash speed does become significant.
However, my configuration of props being below and in front does stand up equally well at any reasonable airspeed, because the prop wash velocity is less important.
However, that was a case of not considering the low-airspeed case, not a case of not knowing my aerodynamics. Or, if you will, it was a case of ignoring the aerophysics (in Custer's language), not the aerodynamics. For my explanation of why I put it there, look at this reply to another respondant: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1036433&cid=25837275
The idea of putting the props in front and above (or below and behind) the wing, though, would be bad at any reasonable airspeed.
Well, I did a MCGA knockoff on Tetris back when the MCGA was fairly new (and nobody else seemed to konw how to program it). But when I tried to distribute it via shareware on bulletin boards, it earned me zero dollars. I am not convinced that open-sourcing or shareware are a way to make money off the game. I'm honestly not sure how a person can make money off a game. I'm only sure that my way didn't work.
I'd agree with you on the high-speed passenger rail. Of course, I already did agree with you.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1004197&cid=25470191
http://science.slashdot.org/~MickLinux/journal/67543
Well, as I remember, if you model an airplane propeller as a disk, then the air pressure slowly decreases from P-zero as you approach the disk from the front, then jumps up, and then again slowly decreases back to P-zero as you leave the disk behind.
The air velocity along the propellar axis, on the other hand, steadily increases as you approach the disk, is approximately of zero slope as you cross the plane of the disk, and then decreases again.
So what I am doing is taking advantage of the sudden jump in air pressure by putting the propeller below the wing.
I could actually stick another propeller behind the airplane, above the wing, and double my effect, though.
Of course, the drag of having more propellers is not insignificant, as another poster noted. That means we'll have to take it nice and slow. But our goal for this design is a silent plane. More and smaller propellers would probably make it more silent.
I'd put many smaller, distributed brushless electric-motors all along the wing, especially towards the wingtips.
In order to help increase lift based on pressure (active pressure differences), I'd place the propeller centers below the wing, rather than above the wing.
To counteract some of the loss of lift from wingtip vortex pressure losses, I'd make the propellers spin with the bottoms moving towards the fusilage.
In order to reduce explosion risk, I'd use Lithium-ion phosphate batteries.
I'd probably also have to have a very long aspect ratio for the wing, so the plane wouldn't be flying all that fast.
But it could be done, and be economical (in terms of cost per flight hour, cost per mile) too. It wouldn't be economical for someone who wanted to go from here to there fast.
So if you were an automobile executive who wanted to declare that your company was about to go bankrupt unless you got a few spare billion (and then declare that bankruptcy is not an option if you don't get it), you'd have to use a lear jet instead, preferably retrofitted with a zillion pulse jets. But they make a tad more noise, and use a tad more fuel.
Different economic situations require different answers, I guess.
Actually, I think that the term "nerd" came hand-in-hand with the term "nerd bag", the pocket protector that physicists and engineers used to carry their pens in their pockets.
Point being, that LOTR has nothing to do with being a nerd.
Nor do I think that the nerds found a place in society. Rather, the sociably fashionable people have moved into some areas that once were worthy of the term "nerd" back when engineering skills were actually necessary for those fields. But (for example, with computers) you don't have to be an engineer to use a computer any more. You don't have to encode your Fortran programs on punch cards. In fact, you don't have to program any more.
Let's face it, there's nothing that requires engineering skills, about MySpace.
Then, too, there's the dollar aspect. When my father was a physics post-grad and teacher from 1974-84, he was making anywhere from $12k per year up to $25k per year. In other words, he was making less than a factory worker. I don't think such people attract much attention at parties. They aren't "wall street" material. But nowadays, a person can say they're a web designer (basically with a degree in graphic design, which is, by my memory, art... not tech), and lay claim to the title nerd.
Well, nowadays, maybe so.
But a nerd ain't what a nerd used to be. And it isn't that nerds became upwardly mobile. It's that people who weren't nerds appropriated the title. So be it.
Oh, those textbooks are already digitized, believe me. They are typically in Word at least (due to requests by professors and teachers), and then in addition are in something like Quark, Pagemaker, or the
The problem is that the publishers aren't going to want them digiti
Of course, one could always digitize stuff over a hundred years old, for things like language arts and elementary school math.
But it is far more efficient to learn from a book, with a pencil and a piece of paper. As far as I can tell, computer usage shortens the attention span, making learning diffic
oh, and another thing...
... can come with a full keyboard. Just set the thing on the table, and a laser diode outlines your keyboard for you on the table, and you type. Yeah, you'll get fatigue from too much typing like this, but it'll be tons faster than point and click.
The word "any" in any heat pollution means that he was saying that if there is any heat difference flow at all.
So you are saying what I am saying, but not what he was saying. You can get some energy out of some heat difference, but the cost/benefit ratio rises (see what I said about stacking windmills).
He was saying that you could eliminate all the heat pollution, which you cannot do.
If there's any "heat pollution" produced by the plant it simply means they need another turbine
Actually, you just violated the second law of thermo.
The heat engine produces heat by heat flowing thru the heat engine and out the other end. There will always be heat pollution. If you stop the heat flow (or for windmills, the mass flow... they do the same thing) at the back end, the pressures build up, but the convertable energy goes to zero. For this reason, windmills, solar cells, and heat engines have real limits on efficiency.
For windmills, you might as easily say "stick another windmill behind the first". And that would give you energy from the 2nd windmill. But it would decrease the energy given by the front windmill, and eventually (if you stack them up enough) the sum of the decreases will be less than the increase of adding another.
Aside from that, you are confused about the difference between the thermal (random, non-directed) energy of heat pollution, and the directed energy that rushes through a turbine.
As I remember, farm raised catfish and free-range chickens get a 1:1 corn-protein to meat-protein ratio, mainly because they also eat bugs (or in China, the catfish/shrimp eat chicken poop.)
For cows, I think the number was either 8:1 or 20:1.
So yes, the poster who suggested that this is why everyone can't be a vegetarian is wrong. But I don't put it down to math. I put it down to his spouting off without having any actual facts.
Just as an aside, I might mention that this plant will likely poison the ground around it with such things as cadmium (NiCad, NimH batteries), mercury (coin batteries, thermometers... hospitals burn these up all the time), lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals.
The real shame is that a lot of these heavy metals actually should be classified, like gold, as precious metals. Right now when we are in deflation (with a specter of possibly hyperinflation once the credit bubble has burst), those metals are one of the few things that will maintain value.
I'd think that a few chemists who sat down and found a way to properly reclaim the lithium and other metals, could make a killing by collecting and sorting the waste, and then disposing of the non-toxic waste in standard ways, while mining the waste for all it's worth. The earlier you sort it, the higher your profits will be. Sorting a NimH from a NiCad will save a lot of extra effort and energy on the back end.
Then, as you identify more wastes (and the typical condition that it arrives in), then you can figure out a way to profit from that, too.
We use the mega blocks and duplo blocks, both. There both okay for pretending.
However, I've found that both I and my kids cannot easily take legos apart. In addition, the form factor of legos makes it easy to make their intended toy (if you want to spend the time), but comparatively hard to make other things.
I remember the days of American Bricks, though, when we'd make marble machines, spaceships (tiny, med, large, and super), ships, and whatnot. Yeah, it didn't have all the specialized parts that lego has. But that's what imagination is for. I remember playing the Children's Space Revolution (in 1972, with a theme song that was remarkably similar to that which came out for Star Wars), and other stories that we made up as we went.
I never saw that with legos -- not with my brothers, not with my oldest son. We gave it up. The kids do pretend with Mega Bloks. As a parent, I'd much prefer something that falls apart every so often, to something that you can't get apart without tremendous effort.
That was a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. Yeah, I coulda done better. But you *can* do better. Do the calculations where you live, and see what kind of an answer you get.
I'm not into envy. I'm not into legislating fairness. I'm into encouraging those with power over other peoples' lives to deal justly with their neighbors.
That means not supporting (actively arguing against) greed and such.