No, which is why I'd go for the stop-and-swap model. With standardization and large scale adoption, you should be able to get to a point where you drive in, engage the mechanism, and drive out again with a new battery, in around the same timeframe it takes to pump a tankfull now.
I don't think it is quite that simple. Hydrogen moves the pollution from many mobile sources, cars, to a very small number of non-mobile sources, power generation stations.
You know what also does that? Electric cars. And without the extra, extremely inefficient electrolysis step. Electric: Dinosaurs -> Electricity -> Vroom Fuel Cell: Dinosaurs -> Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Vroom Not to mention that either you need to solve for long-term storage and transportation of hydrogen (if you produce it centrally) or produce it in-situ, and lose out on a good chunk of the efficiencies of centralisation you hope to gain.
Fuel cells (and the "hydrogen economy" in general) are bunk
It's probably because it's wasted real estate having a required "forward" button. The back button can be used at any time, as any time you arrived at a new screen, you came their from somewhere. A "forward" button, however, would be disabled for the vast majority of the time. The only time it would be enabled is just after you've pressed the back button, and before you've made any other selection.
I'll keep my phone without the mandatory dead-spot thank you.
Without a profit incentive, why should I spend years in my lab building a better solar panel, or heart valve, or internal combustion engine?
Why would you now? Your innovation was probably pre-empted by someone who just described the general process anyway, and never spent any time or money actually getting it working in practice. The USPTO hasn't required working prototypes for quite a while now. That's why you can find patents on perpetual motion machines that managed to circumlocute their way past the USPTO watchdogs.
+1 to this. Smith might be interesting in a literary history sense, as contributing to the early growth of Space Opera, but as an enjoyable contemporary read for an adult, even one who enjoys adolescent fiction, he falls far short.
Agree. The Belgariad is good, but fairly straight-forward heroic fantasy. The Elenium is a little more inventive. Once you've read those though, you can ignore the rest of Eddings' work - it's just the same stuff recycled. Hell, the Mallorean even makes his recycling a plot point.
The Phoenix Legacy by M. K. Wren is also awesome. I left a comment with a more detailed summary below. I haven't read A Gift Upon the Shore, but it sounds like it's a tale from Legacy's backstory.
Sword of the Lamb, House of the Wolf, Shadow of the Swan
Somewhat in the vein of Asimov's Foundation, but with a much tighter focus, and personal protagonists. It's basic premise is a feudal star-spanning empire, emerged from a second Dark Age on Earth, that is now facing the inevitable transition to a more progressive form of government. It follows a group of people who attempt to manipulate society sociologically, in order to ensure that that transition doesn't rip society apart as it occurs.
True innovation is rare and exceptional, and no company can truly rely on being "innovative" except in their marketing catalogues.
Yes, Google's search and email were iterative improvements on previous designs - but so are smartphones, microprocessors, display technologies, storage mediums, and pretty much any other tech initiative. Please list one thing that MS Research has produced that wasn't an iterative improvement on existing technology - and no, kinnect and surface don't count. Both motion capture (kinnect) and touch-screen (surface) are pre-existing technologies that were just done "a little better" than their predecessors.
Actually, science has demonstrated that some alternative medicines, for some treatments, are significantly more effective than placebo. To wit, chiropractcy and acupuncture both proved effective, under scientific scrutiny, for headaches and upper back pain.
The reason they're alternative is because science doesn't understand the reason they work - as the explanations given by the practitioners are usually bunk (as is the wide list of ailments they claim to be able to correct). But there are nuggets of useful medicine buried in the dross.
I read about this on another newspaper site, and they cited the reason as specifically being child deaths - as children, particularly if they're not standing, are often too short to see in the rear-view mirror or over your shoulder.
If someone comes up with a shiny new widget then people will dump facebook just like they dumped myspace.
What they'll actually need is a shiny new widget that isn't able to be trivially bought by/reimplemented on Facebook - which is a much smaller subset. MySpace always sucked - it was a big, clunky mess, and its servers were down half the time. Facebook's already been through at least one major code refactor, has a fairly stable API for its apps, and in general, is much easier to program for and (probably) extend than MySpace ever was.
G+ has a better interface, but Facebook has had friend lists, and the ability to set posting privacy defaults to a particular list, for a long time. You've been able to do what you describe on Facebook for longer than G+ has existed.
Slashdot Mirror
No, which is why I'd go for the stop-and-swap model. With standardization and large scale adoption, you should be able to get to a point where you drive in, engage the mechanism, and drive out again with a new battery, in around the same timeframe it takes to pump a tankfull now.
I don't think it is quite that simple. Hydrogen moves the pollution from many mobile sources, cars, to a very small number of non-mobile sources, power generation stations.
You know what also does that? Electric cars. And without the extra, extremely inefficient electrolysis step.
Electric: Dinosaurs -> Electricity -> Vroom
Fuel Cell: Dinosaurs -> Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Vroom
Not to mention that either you need to solve for long-term storage and transportation of hydrogen (if you produce it centrally) or produce it in-situ, and lose out on a good chunk of the efficiencies of centralisation you hope to gain.
Fuel cells (and the "hydrogen economy" in general) are bunk
I assert that you have your head up your ass. Please disprove.
It's probably because it's wasted real estate having a required "forward" button. The back button can be used at any time, as any time you arrived at a new screen, you came their from somewhere. A "forward" button, however, would be disabled for the vast majority of the time. The only time it would be enabled is just after you've pressed the back button, and before you've made any other selection.
I'll keep my phone without the mandatory dead-spot thank you.
Without a profit incentive, why should I spend years in my lab building a better solar panel, or heart valve, or internal combustion engine?
Why would you now? Your innovation was probably pre-empted by someone who just described the general process anyway, and never spent any time or money actually getting it working in practice. The USPTO hasn't required working prototypes for quite a while now. That's why you can find patents on perpetual motion machines that managed to circumlocute their way past the USPTO watchdogs.
Baen Free Library I believe has this as a free download
+1 to this. Smith might be interesting in a literary history sense, as contributing to the early growth of Space Opera, but as an enjoyable contemporary read for an adult, even one who enjoys adolescent fiction, he falls far short.
Second the Coldfire trilogy. Gerald Tarrant really deserves to be an iconic fantasy character.
Agree. The Belgariad is good, but fairly straight-forward heroic fantasy. The Elenium is a little more inventive. Once you've read those though, you can ignore the rest of Eddings' work - it's just the same stuff recycled. Hell, the Mallorean even makes his recycling a plot point.
The Phoenix Legacy by M. K. Wren is also awesome. I left a comment with a more detailed summary below. I haven't read A Gift Upon the Shore, but it sounds like it's a tale from Legacy's backstory.
I also quite like Donaldson's Mordant's Need - despite the fact that I never really got into Thomas Covenant.
Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke are hardly "forgotten", surely.
Sword of the Lamb, House of the Wolf, Shadow of the Swan
Somewhat in the vein of Asimov's Foundation, but with a much tighter focus, and personal protagonists. It's basic premise is a feudal star-spanning empire, emerged from a second Dark Age on Earth, that is now facing the inevitable transition to a more progressive form of government. It follows a group of people who attempt to manipulate society sociologically, in order to ensure that that transition doesn't rip society apart as it occurs.
I was just getting info from wikipedia, which cites these sources:
http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003281.html
http://www.dieutridau.com/thongtin/detai/acupuncture-does-it.pdf
True innovation is rare and exceptional, and no company can truly rely on being "innovative" except in their marketing catalogues.
Yes, Google's search and email were iterative improvements on previous designs - but so are smartphones, microprocessors, display technologies, storage mediums, and pretty much any other tech initiative. Please list one thing that MS Research has produced that wasn't an iterative improvement on existing technology - and no, kinnect and surface don't count. Both motion capture (kinnect) and touch-screen (surface) are pre-existing technologies that were just done "a little better" than their predecessors.
Actually, science has demonstrated that some alternative medicines, for some treatments, are significantly more effective than placebo. To wit, chiropractcy and acupuncture both proved effective, under scientific scrutiny, for headaches and upper back pain.
The reason they're alternative is because science doesn't understand the reason they work - as the explanations given by the practitioners are usually bunk (as is the wide list of ailments they claim to be able to correct). But there are nuggets of useful medicine buried in the dross.
Uh-huh. Because the existence of carbohydrates negates the possibility of the existence of cheap, healthy food products.
No; version numbers have nothing to do with how "advanced" something is.
So, basically, people are stupid, and Firefox was getting bad press due to said stupidity.
in the cases where there were illegal actions, investigations are ongoing
Well, yeah, but they didn't seize all their assets and shutdown their business before beginning the investigation did they?
congress managed to change the laws for next time
Yes, that's part of a problem. The difference between law and morality is becoming more and more obvious to more and more people.
I completely agree that the current copyright and patent system is broken and unrealistic
that doesn't mean I think people should be able to become multi-millionares by helping people distribute other people's work.
That *is* the current copyright system.
And an upstream server, same as your desktop does
I read about this on another newspaper site, and they cited the reason as specifically being child deaths - as children, particularly if they're not standing, are often too short to see in the rear-view mirror or over your shoulder.
I agree in principle, but that really should be "Muslim", not Arab. Those terms are not interchangeable.
If someone comes up with a shiny new widget then people will dump facebook just like they dumped myspace.
What they'll actually need is a shiny new widget that isn't able to be trivially bought by/reimplemented on Facebook - which is a much smaller subset. MySpace always sucked - it was a big, clunky mess, and its servers were down half the time. Facebook's already been through at least one major code refactor, has a fairly stable API for its apps, and in general, is much easier to program for and (probably) extend than MySpace ever was.
G+ has a better interface, but Facebook has had friend lists, and the ability to set posting privacy defaults to a particular list, for a long time. You've been able to do what you describe on Facebook for longer than G+ has existed.