See My calculation is based on a worst case scenario where only half of my panels would collect energy at any given time. It's more likely my power would range from 20KW daily to 32KW daily. Even at 14.4KW it would be 20Ahr on a 120V service, if directly connected.
Also, it's unlikely solar panels would be hooked up directly to the distribution circuit. It's more likely they'd be charging a battery system, which feeds current to the house.
I never said anything about cost in my post, and you ignored a number of things, like the cost of the battery system, and the rebates, refunds and tax incentives for using renewable energy, and other credits which reduce the payback time.
Lastly my system as I said is a 100A service. My electric cost is about $80 average a month.
I still stand by my original statement, that the answer isn't to put solar panels on everyone's home, but to extract the different types of energy on a commercial scale where it makes sense and is most cost effective. We could eliminate all our coal plants today (well in the time it would take us to build a new infrastructure) that would pay for itself in 5-10 years and put us on the road to nearly free energy (as in free beer, not perpetual motion).
Yeah, but if you used 250 gallons of water a month your water bill would be $1000. You see most things that are unlimited cost more the more you use. With cable internet it has been one price fits all. You know the cable companies have to pay by usage for those nice big wide open pipes. I really don't see what the complaint is I mean 250GB a month What have you got a 50 TB hard drive? That's an insane number. How many people are going to use more than 3TB of bandwidth a year? Other than./?
Your confidence in vaporware is disturbing and will be your downfall. Currently SLOW 32 GB SDHCs are selling at > $200. In two years (2010) we ***might*** see 128 GB SDHCs at ~ $300 capable of 8 GB/s throughput.
Last I looked 7200 RPM SATA drives easily perform above 20 GB/s real world usage.
The fastest SSDs are around 15 GB/s real world. This isn't a huge difference, but the cheap SDHCs are about 4GB/s.
Cheap hard drives are still way faster than cheap SDHCs.
Cheap: 300 GB SATA ~ $70 16 GB SDHC ~ $50
Still, the claim that SSDs aren't ready for prime time is the same as saying Linux isn't ready for the desktop. Both are fallacies. Sure, SDHCs don't maker sense everywhere as a a solution.
I have no real need for a 300 GB drive. I could squeak by on as little as 32 GB. But that'd be a real stretch. I'd be able to be comfortable with 3 16 GB SSDs and at about $150 for that would be a reasonable trade for me for the other benefits, even if it means a 6 GB/s throughput.
Make that 24 panels or 150x24x4 = 14.4 KW daily. Although they make 200W panels the same size giving me 19.2KW which would be enough to power any house with a 150A service or less. If you had a 150A service you couldn't use this much energy in a day without blowing a fuse somewhere. I have a 100A service and would have to push some of this energy back to the utility or have a storage plan.
Example 1: Lead Acid Battery self discharge rate LT 3.4% month or LT 0.11% day
Example 2: Lithium Thionyl Chloride (shelf life GT 10 years). Self discharge rate LT 1% year or LT 0.003% day
Shall I go on? Or are you saying a power loss over 5 days of LT 0.015% to LT 0.55% is too much?
Secondly that US map is a crock. I live in one of those white areas, and let me tell you there's plenty of freaking wind almost every day here. You have to go down to a higher resolution that what they show. Still Wind won't work everywhere. But that's what power lines are for. Take the energy from where it is in the US and transport it to where you need it. There's plenty of commercial sources of power to be had in the US.
Next myth a 700 ft floor space should give you more than a 770 square feet of roof, unless you live in a carpet store with a flat roof. My 800 sq ft house would allow me to put 10 150W panels on my roof and mount them in a way to maximize exposure, sure it may look funny. That comes out to 1500 watts x 4 hours (roof is E-W oriented) or 6KW a day of power (or three microwave meals, two loads of laundry, 4 hours of TV, 4 hours of lights,, 24 hours of Fridge and freezer and 24 hr of PC, with 2KW left over for AC). I hear that Ave US use is about 25KW a day, but we're real wasteful. So my roof couldn't power 25KW a day.
The problem isn't too many people, the problem is corporate greed.
Not to mention a single solar plant in the Nevada desert could be built with enough capacity to replace every coal burning power plant in America. Although, I'll admit, I don't think I want to have that as an only solution. Single points of failure are never a good thing. Sure it would cost us billions of dollars to build it, but once built, it's effectively free energy. Of course panels would need replacing from time to time. Also, it'd put a lot of people out of work.
America got the puritans, other wacko Christians, criminals, deadbeats, and anyone they just didn't want. You guys down under are the lucky ones, you just got the criminals. We got the wretched refuse.
Actually I think it's what they call "conspiracy to commit [crime X]". It's illegal to launder money, it's also illegal to conspire to launder money. So whether they actually laundered any money isn't the point. They conspired to do it. So the Nigerian ambassador is right. All those suckers are criminals as well as victims. But I don't want to see them in prison. I pay enough in taxes now, I don't need to be giving these people 3 square a day and a roof over their heads. A box in an alley is good en ough for them.
Yeah, I totally agree all the court records of everyone everywhere should be emailed to everyone on the internet on a daily basis. That way all those spammers, botnetters, phishers, and bored reporters will have lots of data with which to entertain themselves. While we're at it. I think every home should have government installed cameras installed in every room (two in each bathroom and at least four in every bedroom) with sound, and they should all be available 24/7. While we're at it lets put internet cameras everywhere. Who needs privacy anyway? Oh yeah and let's install keyboard sniffers too!
Except on a case by case basis when absolutely necessary.
I'm not an engineer, although I studied it. I'm a physicist by training.
You'll not see anything in the 3nm scale on a desktop. It would burn itself up from the heat given off by the electrical energy. The absolute minimum if you find a solution to the heating is 1.5nm. They still have a ways to go. This limit is because you have to have a certain size well to extract electrons from to produce current
If you go the route of using carbon nanotubes you're still going to hit a 1-2nm limit. So 1.5nm is the end of the road, but I have doubts we'll ever see anything smaller than 5nm.
I wouldn't want a chip at this density. I'm not sure you could build a stable chip circuit at 5nm. It would be very susceptible to cosmic radiation, and you'd need to add a lot of redundancy in to ensure no data loss. So you wind up making it bigger again to deal with the inevitable data corruption. We're already in the danger zone for data corruption due to such things as sunspot activity. I think a lot of scientists and researchers are in denial.
So the limit is officially 1.5nm, but I'm betting we'll never go below 10. There comes a point where extracting that last 5% has to be traded off for other realities. I'll be surprised if we have 10 years till we hit the wall.
Many of the conversions I've seen haven't been really cost effective.
However, my EV Motorcylce conversion is currently expected to cost $1000 in parts, plus the cost of batteries which may add $4-6000 more. Yielding a $7000 conversion, due to the high cost of patented batteries that really have no business being patented. Thie useful lifetime of this NEW vehicle, becahuse the only thing used in it will be the frame, is probably 20 years. Although the batteries will have to be replaced probably twice. This motorcylce is on a par to be in the same price range as a Ninja and it will blow the doors off one. Although, that would seriously limit the usable mileage it'll get. I expect to break even in little more than 2 years, because the motorcycle will replace a gas hog ($60/wk ~ $3000/yr).
Conversions are expensive. No question. But remember a well used EV will have an lifetime limited most likely only by the body. Very few things to break and replace (brakes, batteries, AC, electronics, doors and other hardware). The biggest problem with conversions is that you are converting a sub-optimal chassis and most conversions leave the transmission (big mistake).
How big were these 1500 vials, jars, cans, bottles and boxes. It could be he had a number of chemicals in boxes he had yet to unpack. It could be that 1000 of those vials contained less than an ounce of chemical. To me a vial is usually a minute quantity of something, bigger than an ampule and msaller than a jar or bottle.
The second question you need to ask is was this scattered all over the floor, or was it neatly arranged on the floor underneath shelfs (aka furniture). What kind of furniture are we talking about? Tables perhaps? Shelving? Sofa? Chair?
This is a retired chemist. I think it is safe to assume he knows how to handle chemicals. After all, this is a chemist who has managed to survive for decades without blowing himself or Massachussets up. Maybe we should give him a bit more credit than the article. Maybe we should take the articles interviewees with a grain of salt (or heck a whole vial of salt).
However you roll this, it does not bode well for chemistry sets. Fortunately for me, a local science store is well aware of this and builds custom chemistry sets for those in the know. Along with the totally lame commercail ones we see in today's market.
The government put down by our founding fathers is a democratic republic. That said, I don't think they ever envisioned granting the government a get out of jail free card for them doing things that would be illegal for citizens to do. They specifically wanted citizens to get redress from government abuses.
However this case is really a non-issue. Since Blueport got the rights to the code from an employee of the USAF who wrote the program to do his job. Even though he did it at home on his own time. He wrote it for his work and if he was working for any corporation he would not have the right to the copyright anyway. Ergo, the USAF really is the rightful owner of the copyright anyway.
Interesting decision that the US Gov't is excluded from the DMCA, but they still can be sued for copyright infringement. It's just in this case they didn't infringe. I wonder if Blueport is going to try to get the money back from that USAF Sergeant?
I'd say TFA's author needs a chemistry 099 class. He speaks of Lithium's outer electrons.
Hunh? When did Lithium with a weight of 3 get multiple electrons in it's outer shell?
Hmm, let's see.: 2 electrons in the inner shell plus 1 electron in the outer shell = 3 electrons total.
Hmm must be some new math, I still get 1 electron in the outer shell.
Of course we're dealing with Lithium. Very reactive salt/metal. Strange element that doesn't really fit in the family it is in. I'd be willing to bet it'd much harder to get carbon, aluminum and lead to act the same way. Just because you get a behavior out of one element doesn't mean you can draw a general conclusion about every element. Very sloppy research or very sloppy reporting. I'd tend to go with the latter.
Well maybe you should spend more time learning Optics and less time picking on informative posts.
What the parent poster was saying is that the "brilliant" scientists, took a mirror and turned it into a mirrored fresnel lens (i.e. a flat lens). So the laser isn't exactly without a lens, they just incorporated the lens into the mirror.
Also, I've built lasers and the lenses used in lasers aren't what I'd call bulky. After all you can buy focused lasers that fit on key rings. I've built one using a bullet shell casing. I'm sorry, but this "amazing" advance isn't all that.
It's a bit novel and I give them credit for thinking creatively, but a collimated beam such as this is likely to have some odd harmonics at distance, and likley to have null spots or rings or lines. Not something I'd recommend for a high power system doing holography.
First off, a sort of correction, our current space station has artificial gravity in one of the modules, so we already know how to do artificial gravity and have for a long time.
Second, I don't think we need to wait to colonize, although I like your idea of round about suggesting assembling our inter-planetary craft in orbit. It makes sense to build a large comfortable ship that can have the advantage of having an orbiting platform around the destined planet.
I haven't read TFA, but I think colonizing Venus is just plain nuts. One, any craft you build will have to be acid proof or have a very limited life. Good luck with that! Secondly, Venus is blood-boiling hot day and night, ok so 50Km up maybe it's not as bad. Not a great place to live but it would make a great prison, well... except for Riddick. Can't kill that SOB.
Next, we already know how to stand and walk, we've put people on another world (okay so the Moon is just a pile of valuable rock - but it still counts).
I say it's time we colonized Mars. Here's my reasoning. 1)The time to travel there can be as short as three months, if you time it right. This is the same timeframe it took to colonize America (as little as two months to sail to New England). So we know we can do this in ships that were really crowded (109 people on a 110' ship - see Mayflower).
2) Mars has an atmosphere that could be used to extract breathable "air" by using plants (lots and lots of plants, especially trees).
3) Not as even close to the extreme temperatures as Venus or the Moon at the surface , but something we'd have to deal with.
4) Not as toxic an atmosphere as Venus.
5) we could actually mine Mars and build things on the surface. Hence we could build cities and then expand cities and build mega-metropolitan cities and slowly encompass the planet, all the while terraforming the surface. Terraforming Venus would require venting atmosphere. Terraforming Mars would require thickening the atmosphere, with guess what? The polluting chemicals from manufacturing and mining. I think any colony should have an ultimate goal to make it self-supporting. I can't see that on the Moon or Venus.
Venus' only advantage is closer to Earth gravity at the surface, and closer than Mars.
But let me know when you have a substance you can float in an acid bath for years on end with no ability to have any more manufacturing capabilities than what you can carry with you.
Mars is the logical choice, or possibly the Moon first. A lunar base makes a lot of sense, in addition to being a fantastic launch site, but nit so much for a colony.
There was a recent case that upheld the doctrine of first sale.
If : 1) there is a way to get the Leopard OSX OS without hardware, and 2) Psystar bought valid licenses (as opposed to installing the same one over and over), and 3) Psystar isn't the End User,
then I see no wiggle room for Apple - and they lose.
While I appreciate Apple's concern for maintaining a certain quality level, they lost that opprotunity some time ago by being such frigging jerks about letting others build MAC clones (you know like a franchise operation or something).
I hope Psystar, is on the up and up with what they did and they mash Apple up.
furthermore, to get back on topic. I think it is a very bad idea to let the government in to this debacle. Commit any unforgivable sin that the PTB dislike and your punishment is to be banned forever from the internet. At least with private corps you have a chance to fight. It may not be much of a chance, but also, probably you only have to worry about pissing off the cablecos and the RIAA and gang.
If the feds get into it, well who knows what could happen. Government interference. Just say no.
Wow, I can't believe I'm actually on the Republican side of this. I have to go wash my hands with soap now!
Kansas City Metropolitan Area (ranked 29th Us Metro) ~ 1,985,429
Treasure Valley ID ~587,689 (ranked 86th)
I say approximately, because these are probably 2006 figures and people die and are born every minute.
So yes in the top 100, but you're also talking about 1/3 of the entire state's population and rather small in comparison to Houston or Dallas-Ft. Worth. You could triple your state's population and still not equal the population of either one of those metros.
Not exactly a fair comparison. Not to mention the natural layout of the two places, that allow you to use hydro cheaply as opposed to the options the residents in the state of Texas can. Although, I'll bet if Texas wanted to they could build a nice large field array of solar power and power the whole state from a single plant rather cheaply. They've got plenty of places with nice sunny desert like conditions.
I'm no medical expert, but I have one question that I think needs a solid answer before you can say people can live a thousand years.
The problem I see is that in order to live to a thousand years you need to stop brain cells from dieing. There is no mechanism to replace brain and spinal cord cells. There simply is no transport mechanism to remove dead brain cells or spinal cord cells.
So, in order to live a "youthful" 1000 years either: your skull would need to grow to accommodate new brain cells (which would be another hurdle to overcome), you would need to come up with a technological way of removing dead brain cells, or you would need to prevent them from dieing altogether.
So what research is being done to tackle this issue?
Not that I buy into any of your "white tower" arguments on availability of the cures or equitable distribution. I suspect it will be used primarily by the rich and powerful, with some benefit also to the middle classes and likely to be denied the poor and in totalitarian societies. This is equivalent to the power corrupts argument. Here's my prediction. the Longevity cure will be given to those with proven value to society ( The rich, the powerful, the scientists [including medicine], the military and the police). It is the perfect ingredient for a 1984 world. This is one possibility you didn't really cover in your arguments.
This woman knew the fragile nature of this adolescent child. Adolescent girls are very susceptible to this kind of attack. She was a neighbor and the outcome should have been predictable to this mother of a teenage girl. they were supposed to be friends. This woman killed this girl, flat out. She knew what she was doing. She may not have meant to push her over the edge, but she definitely was trying to hurt the girl. If you intentionally hurt someone and they die as a result that's usually called manslaughter.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right I was wrong here, but so are you.
See My calculation is based on a worst case scenario where only half of my panels would collect energy at any given time. It's more likely my power would range from 20KW daily to 32KW daily. Even at 14.4KW it would be 20Ahr on a 120V service, if directly connected.
Also, it's unlikely solar panels would be hooked up directly to the distribution circuit. It's more likely they'd be charging a battery system, which feeds current to the house.
I never said anything about cost in my post, and you ignored a number of things, like the cost of the battery system, and the rebates, refunds and tax incentives for using renewable energy, and other credits which reduce the payback time.
Lastly my system as I said is a 100A service. My electric cost is about $80 average a month.
I still stand by my original statement, that the answer isn't to put solar panels on everyone's home, but to extract the different types of energy on a commercial scale where it makes sense and is most cost effective. We could eliminate all our coal plants today (well in the time it would take us to build a new infrastructure) that would pay for itself in 5-10 years and put us on the road to nearly free energy (as in free beer, not perpetual motion).
Yeah, but if you used 250 gallons of water a month your water bill would be $1000. You see most things that are unlimited cost more the more you use. With cable internet it has been one price fits all. You know the cable companies have to pay by usage for those nice big wide open pipes. I really don't see what the complaint is I mean 250GB a month What have you got a 50 TB hard drive? That's an insane number. How many people are going to use more than 3TB of bandwidth a year? Other than ./?
Y'all need to grow up, this is a good thing.
Or is it a fantasy?
Your confidence in vaporware is disturbing and will be your downfall. Currently SLOW 32 GB SDHCs are selling at > $200. In two years (2010) we ***might*** see 128 GB SDHCs at ~ $300 capable of 8 GB/s throughput.
Last I looked 7200 RPM SATA drives easily perform above 20 GB/s real world usage.
The fastest SSDs are around 15 GB/s real world.
This isn't a huge difference, but the cheap SDHCs are about 4GB/s.
Cheap hard drives are still way faster than cheap SDHCs.
Cheap:
300 GB SATA ~ $70
16 GB SDHC ~ $50
Still, the claim that SSDs aren't ready for prime time is the same as saying Linux isn't ready for the desktop. Both are fallacies. Sure, SDHCs don't maker sense everywhere as a a solution.
I have no real need for a 300 GB drive.
I could squeak by on as little as 32 GB. But that'd be a real stretch. I'd be able to be comfortable with 3 16 GB SSDs and at about $150 for that would be a reasonable trade for me for the other benefits, even if it means a 6 GB/s throughput.
Make that 24 panels or 150x24x4 = 14.4 KW daily. Although they make 200W panels the same size giving me 19.2KW which would be enough to power any house with a 150A service or less. If you had a 150A service you couldn't use this much energy in a day without blowing a fuse somewhere. I have a 100A service and would have to push some of this energy back to the utility or have a storage plan.
1800? How about 1859.
Example 1:
Lead Acid Battery
self discharge rate LT 3.4% month
or LT 0.11% day
Example 2: Lithium Thionyl Chloride (shelf life GT 10 years).
Self discharge rate LT 1% year
or LT 0.003% day
Shall I go on? Or are you saying a power loss over 5 days of LT 0.015% to LT 0.55% is too much?
Secondly that US map is a crock. I live in one of those white areas, and let me tell you there's plenty of freaking wind almost every day here. You have to go down to a higher resolution that what they show. Still Wind won't work everywhere. But that's what power lines are for. Take the energy from where it is in the US and transport it to where you need it. There's plenty of commercial sources of power to be had in the US.
Next myth a 700 ft floor space should give you more than a 770 square feet of roof, unless you live in a carpet store with a flat roof. My 800 sq ft house would allow me to put 10 150W panels on my roof and mount them in a way to maximize exposure, sure it may look funny. That comes out to 1500 watts x 4 hours (roof is E-W oriented) or 6KW a day of power (or three microwave meals, two loads of laundry, 4 hours of TV, 4 hours of lights,, 24 hours of Fridge and freezer and 24 hr of PC, with 2KW left over for AC). I hear that Ave US use is about 25KW a day, but we're real wasteful. So my roof couldn't power 25KW a day.
The problem isn't too many people, the problem is corporate greed.
Not to mention a single solar plant in the Nevada desert could be built with enough capacity to replace every coal burning power plant in America. Although, I'll admit, I don't think I want to have that as an only solution. Single points of failure are never a good thing. Sure it would cost us billions of dollars to build it, but once built, it's effectively free energy. Of course panels would need replacing from time to time. Also, it'd put a lot of people out of work.
Umm, better clarify that. I'm not talking Jewish here. I meant Albert Einstein. ;)
Um, not quite right.
America got the puritans, other wacko Christians, criminals, deadbeats, and anyone they just didn't want. You guys down under are the lucky ones, you just got the criminals. We got the wretched refuse.
Hell we even got the Nazi rejects.
Actually I think it's what they call "conspiracy to commit [crime X]". It's illegal to launder money, it's also illegal to conspire to launder money. So whether they actually laundered any money isn't the point. They conspired to do it. So the Nigerian ambassador is right. All those suckers are criminals as well as victims. But I don't want to see them in prison. I pay enough in taxes now, I don't need to be giving these people 3 square a day and a roof over their heads. A box in an alley is good en ough for them.
Yeah, I totally agree all the court records of everyone everywhere should be emailed to everyone on the internet on a daily basis. That way all those spammers, botnetters, phishers, and bored reporters will have lots of data with which to entertain themselves. While we're at it. I think every home should have government installed cameras installed in every room (two in each bathroom and at least four in every bedroom) with sound, and they should all be available 24/7. While we're at it lets put internet cameras everywhere. Who needs privacy anyway? Oh yeah and let's install keyboard sniffers too!
Except on a case by case basis when absolutely necessary.
Stick around and you'll get to see this dupe duped another three or four more times in the upcoming weeks and months.
And again welcome to the /. club.
That's / = slash and . = dot.
Hop on over to the FAQ list. There's a link to it next to the left-handed magnifying glass on the main page.
Damn, there goes my karma.
I'm not an engineer, although I studied it. I'm a physicist by training.
You'll not see anything in the 3nm scale on a desktop. It would burn itself up from the heat given off by the electrical energy. The absolute minimum if you find a solution to the heating is 1.5nm. They still have a ways to go. This limit is because you have to have a certain size well to extract electrons from to produce current
If you go the route of using carbon nanotubes you're still going to hit a 1-2nm limit.
So 1.5nm is the end of the road, but I have doubts we'll ever see anything smaller than 5nm.
I wouldn't want a chip at this density. I'm not sure you could build a stable chip circuit at 5nm. It would be very susceptible to cosmic radiation, and you'd need to add a lot of redundancy in to ensure no data loss. So you wind up making it bigger again to deal with the inevitable data corruption. We're already in the danger zone for data corruption due to such things as sunspot activity. I think a lot of scientists and researchers are in denial.
So the limit is officially 1.5nm, but I'm betting we'll never go below 10. There comes a point where extracting that last 5% has to be traded off for other realities. I'll be surprised if we have 10 years till we hit the wall.
Many of the conversions I've seen haven't been really cost effective.
However, my EV Motorcylce conversion is currently expected to cost $1000 in parts, plus the cost of batteries which may add $4-6000 more. Yielding a $7000 conversion, due to the high cost of patented batteries that really have no business being patented. Thie useful lifetime of this NEW vehicle, becahuse the only thing used in it will be the frame, is probably 20 years. Although the batteries will have to be replaced probably twice. This motorcylce is on a par to be in the same price range as a Ninja and it will blow the doors off one. Although, that would seriously limit the usable mileage it'll get. I expect to break even in little more than 2 years, because the motorcycle will replace a gas hog ($60/wk ~ $3000/yr).
Conversions are expensive. No question. But remember a well used EV will have an lifetime limited most likely only by the body. Very few things to break and replace (brakes, batteries, AC, electronics, doors and other hardware). The biggest problem with conversions is that you are converting a sub-optimal chassis and most conversions leave the transmission (big mistake).
How big were these 1500 vials, jars, cans, bottles and boxes.
It could be he had a number of chemicals in boxes he had yet to unpack.
It could be that 1000 of those vials contained less than an ounce of chemical. To me a vial is usually a minute quantity of something, bigger than an ampule and msaller than a jar or bottle.
The second question you need to ask is was this scattered all over the floor, or was it neatly arranged on the floor underneath shelfs (aka furniture). What kind of furniture are we talking about? Tables perhaps? Shelving? Sofa? Chair?
This is a retired chemist. I think it is safe to assume he knows how to handle chemicals. After all, this is a chemist who has managed to survive for decades without blowing himself or Massachussets up. Maybe we should give him a bit more credit than the article. Maybe we should take the articles interviewees with a grain of salt (or heck a whole vial of salt).
However you roll this, it does not bode well for chemistry sets. Fortunately for me, a local science store is well aware of this and builds custom chemistry sets for those in the know. Along with the totally lame commercail ones we see in today's market.
The government put down by our founding fathers is a democratic republic. That said, I don't think they ever envisioned granting the government a get out of jail free card for them doing things that would be illegal for citizens to do. They specifically wanted citizens to get redress from government abuses.
However this case is really a non-issue. Since Blueport got the rights to the code from an employee of the USAF who wrote the program to do his job. Even though he did it at home on his own time. He wrote it for his work and if he was working for any corporation he would not have the right to the copyright anyway. Ergo, the USAF really is the rightful owner of the copyright anyway.
Interesting decision that the US Gov't is excluded from the DMCA, but they still can be sued for copyright infringement. It's just in this case they didn't infringe. I wonder if Blueport is going to try to get the money back from that USAF Sergeant?
I'd say TFA's author needs a chemistry 099 class. He speaks of Lithium's outer electrons.
Hunh? When did Lithium with a weight of 3 get multiple electrons in it's outer shell?
Hmm, let's see.: 2 electrons in the inner shell plus 1 electron in the outer shell = 3 electrons total.
Hmm must be some new math, I still get 1 electron in the outer shell.
Of course we're dealing with Lithium. Very reactive salt/metal. Strange element that doesn't really fit in the family it is in. I'd be willing to bet it'd much harder to get carbon, aluminum and lead to act the same way. Just because you get a behavior out of one element doesn't mean you can draw a general conclusion about every element. Very sloppy research or very sloppy reporting. I'd tend to go with the latter.
Well maybe you should spend more time learning Optics and less time picking on informative posts.
What the parent poster was saying is that the "brilliant" scientists, took a mirror and turned it into a mirrored fresnel lens (i.e. a flat lens). So the laser isn't exactly without a lens, they just incorporated the lens into the mirror.
Also, I've built lasers and the lenses used in lasers aren't what I'd call bulky. After all you can buy focused lasers that fit on key rings. I've built one using a bullet shell casing. I'm sorry, but this "amazing" advance isn't all that.
It's a bit novel and I give them credit for thinking creatively, but a collimated beam such as this is likely to have some odd harmonics at distance, and likley to have null spots or rings or lines. Not something I'd recommend for a high power system doing holography.
First off, a sort of correction, our current space station has artificial gravity in one of the modules, so we already know how to do artificial gravity and have for a long time.
Second, I don't think we need to wait to colonize, although I like your idea of round about suggesting assembling our inter-planetary craft in orbit. It makes sense to build a large comfortable ship that can have the advantage of having an orbiting platform around the destined planet.
I haven't read TFA, but I think colonizing Venus is just plain nuts. One, any craft you build will have to be acid proof or have a very limited life. Good luck with that! Secondly, Venus is blood-boiling hot day and night, ok so 50Km up maybe it's not as bad. Not a great place to live but it would make a great prison, well ... except for Riddick. Can't kill that SOB.
Next, we already know how to stand and walk, we've put people on another world (okay so the Moon is just a pile of valuable rock - but it still counts).
I say it's time we colonized Mars.
Here's my reasoning.
1)The time to travel there can be as short as three months, if you time it right. This is the same timeframe it took to colonize America (as little as two months to sail to New England). So we know we can do this in ships that were really crowded (109 people on a 110' ship - see Mayflower).
2) Mars has an atmosphere that could be used to extract breathable "air" by using plants (lots and lots of plants, especially trees).
3) Not as even close to the extreme temperatures as Venus or the Moon at the surface , but something we'd have to deal with.
4) Not as toxic an atmosphere as Venus.
5) we could actually mine Mars and build things on the surface. Hence we could build cities and then expand cities and build mega-metropolitan cities and slowly encompass the planet, all the while terraforming the surface. Terraforming Venus would require venting atmosphere. Terraforming Mars would require thickening the atmosphere, with guess what? The polluting chemicals from manufacturing and mining. I think any colony should have an ultimate goal to make it self-supporting. I can't see that on the Moon or Venus.
Venus' only advantage is closer to Earth gravity at the surface, and closer than Mars.
But let me know when you have a substance you can float in an acid bath for years on end with no ability to have any more manufacturing capabilities than what you can carry with you.
Mars is the logical choice, or possibly the Moon first. A lunar base makes a lot of sense, in addition to being a fantastic launch site, but nit so much for a colony.
There was a recent case that upheld the doctrine of first sale.
If :
1) there is a way to get the Leopard OSX OS without hardware, and
2) Psystar bought valid licenses (as opposed to installing the same one over and over), and
3) Psystar isn't the End User,
then I see no wiggle room for Apple - and they lose.
While I appreciate Apple's concern for maintaining a certain quality level, they lost that opprotunity some time ago by being such frigging jerks about letting others build MAC clones (you know like a franchise operation or something).
I hope Psystar, is on the up and up with what they did and they mash Apple up.
furthermore, to get back on topic. I think it is a very bad idea to let the government in to this debacle. Commit any unforgivable sin that the PTB dislike and your punishment is to be banned forever from the internet. At least with private corps you have a chance to fight. It may not be much of a chance, but also, probably you only have to worry about pissing off the cablecos and the RIAA and gang.
If the feds get into it, well who knows what could happen. Government interference. Just say no.
Wow, I can't believe I'm actually on the Republican side of this. I have to go wash my hands with soap now!
Idaho population ~ 1,466,465
Kansas City Metropolitan Area (ranked 29th Us Metro)
~ 1,985,429
Treasure Valley ID ~587,689 (ranked 86th)
I say approximately, because these are probably 2006 figures and people die and are born every minute.
So yes in the top 100, but you're also talking about 1/3 of the entire state's population and rather small in comparison to Houston or Dallas-Ft. Worth. You could triple your state's population and still not equal the population of either one of those metros.
Not exactly a fair comparison. Not to mention the natural layout of the two places, that allow you to use hydro cheaply as opposed to the options the residents in the state of Texas can. Although, I'll bet if Texas wanted to they could build a nice large field array of solar power and power the whole state from a single plant rather cheaply.
They've got plenty of places with nice sunny desert like conditions.
I'm no medical expert, but I have one question that I think needs a solid answer before you can say people can live a thousand years.
The problem I see is that in order to live to a thousand years you need to stop brain cells from dieing. There is no mechanism to replace brain and spinal cord cells. There simply is no transport mechanism to remove dead brain cells or spinal cord cells.
So, in order to live a "youthful" 1000 years either: your skull would need to grow to accommodate new brain cells (which would be another hurdle to overcome), you would need to come up with a technological way of removing dead brain cells, or you would need to prevent them from dieing altogether.
So what research is being done to tackle this issue?
Not that I buy into any of your "white tower" arguments on availability of the cures or equitable distribution. I suspect it will be used primarily by the rich and powerful, with some benefit also to the middle classes and likely to be denied the poor and in totalitarian societies. This is equivalent to the power corrupts argument. Here's my prediction. the Longevity cure will be given to those with proven value to society ( The rich, the powerful, the scientists [including medicine], the military and the police). It is the perfect ingredient for a 1984 world. This is one possibility you didn't really cover in your arguments.
This woman knew the fragile nature of this adolescent child. Adolescent girls are very susceptible to this kind of attack. She was a neighbor and the outcome should have been predictable to this mother of a teenage girl. they were supposed to be friends. This woman killed this girl, flat out. She knew what she was doing. She may not have meant to push her over the edge, but she definitely was trying to hurt the girl. If you intentionally hurt someone and they die as a result that's usually called manslaughter.