Not all NVGs use infrared, and even for those that do the background heat under a hot midday sun might result in too small a signal to noise ratio. It would have to burn very hot, like gasoline, to have a strong IR signature. Also. I wonder if typical IR goggles would be overwhelmed by a bright midday scene. I seem to recall that military FLIR can be used in daylight...
"Hydrogen boondoggle"? You fool! You Luddite! You latte-drinking bisexual socialist! Hydrogen is the energy source of the future and always will be! In the future there will be a Hydrogen Economy! We'll use it for everything! Radios! Laptops! Cell phones! Everything will have a hydrogen fuel cell, not just cars! We'll mine the asteroids! Get our asses to Mars! Get off this rock! We'll... We'll...
Failures occur. Defects occur. Accidents occur. In engineering there is no such thing as perfection. Risk can only be mitigated, never eliminated entirely.
America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash drawer for years.
Instead of dealing with a pollution problem by attenuating or removing it at its source, a new source of pollution is added, an additional detoxification load on local residents' livers and kidneys. Why do we have so much cancer, asthma, and many other pollution-related diseases? Can it be that it is an utterly stupid idea to add more contaminants to our environment rather than zealously trying to reduce them? How scalable is this? Will we add more airborne chemicals to the home, the workplace, our cars, and everywhere else there is an unpleasant odor? Do people think these things are innocuous just because nobody falls down dead right away?
My understanding is that the "thunking layer" is already there (see the next post: "poorly informed").
There is no implication that the internet will be suddenly unusable. As one of the previous posts mentioned, hardware and software developers who have to deal with TCP/IP and the like better be getting up to speed now for products they expect to be selling a year from now. IPv6 is already being deployed for voluntary use on a relatively wide scale. It is a parallel network that coexists with IPv4. The explicit buy-in and leveraging by users and their software is what will take another year and a half or so.
Word on the street is that some major cable/internet providers and content delivery networks (CDNs), and I do mean major, are quickly moving to get limited availability online to major customers within the next 12 months or so, and general availability by early- to mid-2012.
Now that we're on the subject, could you please cite credible reports showing that wikileaks did in fact result in "putting specific innocent people at greater risk?" I'm not nearly as interested in spin and rhetoric from politicians and the commercial news media.
he also needs to be held accountable if things go wrong
That is an empty, meaningless phrase. What do "held accountable" and "things go wrong" mean? What applicable law covers it? Is the Pentagon "held accountable" when "things go wrong" and Afghan citizens die like chickens? Or when friendly fire kills US and NATO troops?
If you don't want things to "go wrong," pressure your elected representatives to withdraw our forces from the profoundly corrupt interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't shit on the very people who are trying to expose the scammers and the war criminals.
but not much talk in the corporate media or from our governments about the war crimes committed & subsequently covered up by the USA & UK
Actually, you hear plenty about it. It is spun into stories like "bringing democracy to Afghanistan," "fighting the terrorists who wish to hurt us" (and its utterly moronic sibling "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here"), "defending America," "helping Afghans resist the Taliban," and the rest of the claptrap promoted in the commercial media.
We had no reason to go into Iraq, now we're apparently saddled with decades of military occupation. We went into Afghanistan, ended Taliban rule, but allowed Al Qaeda top brass to escape into Pakistan. We are still fighting the Taliban, who represent no threat to us. If they once again become a threat, we remove them again. Why, however, did we not approach Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates about official and unofficial support of the Taliban and a variety of other extremists? What about Pakistan, funded officially and by means of private donations by SA and the Emirates to support the Taliban and other extremists? How do they end up being our allies in all this? Al Qaeda is still operational in Pakistan, apparently.
The War on Terror is a scam, backwards and forwards. It cannot withstand even cursory quetioning of its purposes or the means used to achieve them.
I agree, more or less. The key notion is "every now and then." Unfortunately, in US supermarkets you are instantly immersed in a blanket of not just sugar water, but a vast array of equally unhealthy junk. It is easy for people to (perhaps unconsciously) infer that most or all of that stuff is perfectly acceptable. Add to it that we often perceive that we have no time to cook with real food, or it's too hard or whatever, so we pop some frozen junk in a plastic tray into the microwave. Note that we haven't even asked what gets transferred from the plastic to the food under those conditions.
... we need a few billion more to 1) actually make it go somewhere, 2) shield astronauts from radiation during the trip, and 3) make it have enough food, water, air, power, etc. for the crew to survive.
I understand your point, but my answer is easier to remember. Occasional use is undoubtedly no problem, but I would further assert that once a week or so is an upper limit. I suspect you are under 40 years old. After that each one counts a lot more.
So it's not enough that billions of people have been conned into believing that drinking sugar water with artificial colors and flavors, at upwards of 140 calories per serving, is a perfectly legitimate practice. Now the public will happily rely on some moronic piece of code running on a vending machine's microcontroller to tell them what preposterous diabetes-inducing heart-disease-promoting obesity-cultivating beverage is best for a given moment. It's a safe bet that it will simply select an entry at random from the list of beverages currently in stock.
In case you were wondering, yes, I assert that the drinking of sugary soft drinks is not a legitimate practice that anyone should condone in their won lives or in those of their friends and loved ones. When is it OK to drink them? Easy to remember answer: Never. They are worthless inducers of disease that generally don't even quench your thirst particularly well. Do I favor making them illegal or otherwise prohibiting them? No. I favor freedom and liberty, but with those comes great personal responsibility. I do favor ending every single agricultural or industrial subsidy or tax break that directly or indirectly makes it easier or more profitable to produce and sell them. If you are stupid enough to drink them, you most certainly should be paying full price.
What? What are you talking about? Who do you think you are? You think you can just come in here and whine about irrelevant issues? It's people like you who repress all the creative people out there! If it weren't for people like you, we would have free fuel! Free food! Robots would do all the work! Music and movies and games could be downloaded for free by anyone! We would be mining the asteroids and colonizing Mars! We would have nuclear reactors on every street corner! You sourpuss! You party pooper! You goddamn atheistic latte-sipping bisexual socialist!
Good luck. Slashdotters will mod you down if you have the temerity to point out obvious snake oil.
Re:Not many organic- or biochemists on slashdot, e
on
Gasoline From Thin Air
·
· Score: 1
Yes, and that only covers the 50,000 foot view.
What solvent? What energy source for the reaction? What is the reaction rate? What concentrations of reactants and catalysts would be required for enough fuel output to be useful? How do you remove, purify, and dry (remove moisture from the resulting hydrocarbon fuel) the product? What kind of automated device will do this? Does anything like it even exist today? How much would it cost to purchase, operate, maintain, and dispose of? How big would it have to be? Does it need exotic materials (the summary mentions an enzyme with one or more vanadium atoms)?
It is utterly and irremediably ludicrous.
Not many organic- or biochemists on slashdot, eh?
on
Gasoline From Thin Air
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
You're missing the point. You are taking for granted an assumption that NASA is sincerely trying to play some useful role in promoting space exploration in the service of desirable national goals and purposes. That is a false assumption. NASA has one mission and one mission only: to channel public funds towards defense and aerospace industries.
Everything they do, without exception, is in service of that purpose. If there are intelligent and sincere people within NASA who somehow manage to heroically divert some of that money towards scientific or engineering research and space exploration by unmanned missions, it is a tribute to their personal and individual professional integrity and moral and ethical standards. The institution itself, however, is a profoundly corrupt gravy train.
This is why they insist on emphasizing manned space exploration at every turn. It substantially maximizes the amount of money that "needs" to be channelled to the military/congressional/industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about just over 50 years ago..
Slashdot Mirror
Not all NVGs use infrared, and even for those that do the background heat under a hot midday sun might result in too small a signal to noise ratio. It would have to burn very hot, like gasoline, to have a strong IR signature. Also. I wonder if typical IR goggles would be overwhelmed by a bright midday scene. I seem to recall that military FLIR can be used in daylight...
"Hydrogen boondoggle"? You fool! You Luddite! You latte-drinking bisexual socialist! Hydrogen is the energy source of the future and always will be! In the future there will be a Hydrogen Economy! We'll use it for everything! Radios! Laptops! Cell phones! Everything will have a hydrogen fuel cell, not just cars! We'll mine the asteroids! Get our asses to Mars! Get off this rock! We'll... We'll...
etc etc
Night vision goggles in broad daylight?
Failures occur. Defects occur. Accidents occur. In engineering there is no such thing as perfection. Risk can only be mitigated, never eliminated entirely.
Oh, I don't know. Run over and watch it blow up and burn?
America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash drawer for years.
A truly disturbing metaphor.
Instead of dealing with a pollution problem by attenuating or removing it at its source, a new source of pollution is added, an additional detoxification load on local residents' livers and kidneys. Why do we have so much cancer, asthma, and many other pollution-related diseases? Can it be that it is an utterly stupid idea to add more contaminants to our environment rather than zealously trying to reduce them? How scalable is this? Will we add more airborne chemicals to the home, the workplace, our cars, and everywhere else there is an unpleasant odor? Do people think these things are innocuous just because nobody falls down dead right away?
No ISPs that service my area support IPv6.
Have you inquired recently?
My understanding is that the "thunking layer" is already there (see the next post: "poorly informed").
There is no implication that the internet will be suddenly unusable. As one of the previous posts mentioned, hardware and software developers who have to deal with TCP/IP and the like better be getting up to speed now for products they expect to be selling a year from now. IPv6 is already being deployed for voluntary use on a relatively wide scale. It is a parallel network that coexists with IPv4. The explicit buy-in and leveraging by users and their software is what will take another year and a half or so.
Word on the street is that some major cable/internet providers and content delivery networks (CDNs), and I do mean major, are quickly moving to get limited availability online to major customers within the next 12 months or so, and general availability by early- to mid-2012.
Procrastinate at your peril.
Now that we're on the subject, could you please cite credible reports showing that wikileaks did in fact result in "putting specific innocent people at greater risk?" I'm not nearly as interested in spin and rhetoric from politicians and the commercial news media.
he also needs to be held accountable if things go wrong
That is an empty, meaningless phrase. What do "held accountable" and "things go wrong" mean? What applicable law covers it? Is the Pentagon "held accountable" when "things go wrong" and Afghan citizens die like chickens? Or when friendly fire kills US and NATO troops?
If you don't want things to "go wrong," pressure your elected representatives to withdraw our forces from the profoundly corrupt interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't shit on the very people who are trying to expose the scammers and the war criminals.
but not much talk in the corporate media or from our governments about the war crimes committed & subsequently covered up by the USA & UK
Actually, you hear plenty about it. It is spun into stories like "bringing democracy to Afghanistan," "fighting the terrorists who wish to hurt us" (and its utterly moronic sibling "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here"), "defending America," "helping Afghans resist the Taliban," and the rest of the claptrap promoted in the commercial media.
We had no reason to go into Iraq, now we're apparently saddled with decades of military occupation. We went into Afghanistan, ended Taliban rule, but allowed Al Qaeda top brass to escape into Pakistan. We are still fighting the Taliban, who represent no threat to us. If they once again become a threat, we remove them again. Why, however, did we not approach Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates about official and unofficial support of the Taliban and a variety of other extremists? What about Pakistan, funded officially and by means of private donations by SA and the Emirates to support the Taliban and other extremists? How do they end up being our allies in all this? Al Qaeda is still operational in Pakistan, apparently.
The War on Terror is a scam, backwards and forwards. It cannot withstand even cursory quetioning of its purposes or the means used to achieve them.
I agree, more or less. The key notion is "every now and then." Unfortunately, in US supermarkets you are instantly immersed in a blanket of not just sugar water, but a vast array of equally unhealthy junk. It is easy for people to (perhaps unconsciously) infer that most or all of that stuff is perfectly acceptable. Add to it that we often perceive that we have no time to cook with real food, or it's too hard or whatever, so we pop some frozen junk in a plastic tray into the microwave. Note that we haven't even asked what gets transferred from the plastic to the food under those conditions.
Hear, hear. I'm always filled with wonder at the number of people who are so quick to defend drinking that crap.
... we need a few billion more to 1) actually make it go somewhere, 2) shield astronauts from radiation during the trip, and 3) make it have enough food, water, air, power, etc. for the crew to survive.
Sorry, my bad. I'll send a bill.
I understand your point, but my answer is easier to remember. Occasional use is undoubtedly no problem, but I would further assert that once a week or so is an upper limit. I suspect you are under 40 years old. After that each one counts a lot more.
So it's not enough that billions of people have been conned into believing that drinking sugar water with artificial colors and flavors, at upwards of 140 calories per serving, is a perfectly legitimate practice. Now the public will happily rely on some moronic piece of code running on a vending machine's microcontroller to tell them what preposterous diabetes-inducing heart-disease-promoting obesity-cultivating beverage is best for a given moment. It's a safe bet that it will simply select an entry at random from the list of beverages currently in stock.
In case you were wondering, yes, I assert that the drinking of sugary soft drinks is not a legitimate practice that anyone should condone in their won lives or in those of their friends and loved ones. When is it OK to drink them? Easy to remember answer: Never. They are worthless inducers of disease that generally don't even quench your thirst particularly well. Do I favor making them illegal or otherwise prohibiting them? No. I favor freedom and liberty, but with those comes great personal responsibility. I do favor ending every single agricultural or industrial subsidy or tax break that directly or indirectly makes it easier or more profitable to produce and sell them. If you are stupid enough to drink them, you most certainly should be paying full price.
Welcome, Comrades!
Welcome to our Glorious Union of Soviet Corporatist Republics!
Or should it be "Glorious Banana Republic?"
What? What are you talking about? Who do you think you are? You think you can just come in here and whine about irrelevant issues? It's people like you who repress all the creative people out there! If it weren't for people like you, we would have free fuel! Free food! Robots would do all the work! Music and movies and games could be downloaded for free by anyone! We would be mining the asteroids and colonizing Mars! We would have nuclear reactors on every street corner! You sourpuss! You party pooper! You goddamn atheistic latte-sipping bisexual socialist!
etc etc
Good luck. Slashdotters will mod you down if you have the temerity to point out obvious snake oil.
Yes, and that only covers the 50,000 foot view.
What solvent? What energy source for the reaction? What is the reaction rate? What concentrations of reactants and catalysts would be required for enough fuel output to be useful? How do you remove, purify, and dry (remove moisture from the resulting hydrocarbon fuel) the product? What kind of automated device will do this? Does anything like it even exist today? How much would it cost to purchase, operate, maintain, and dispose of? How big would it have to be? Does it need exotic materials (the summary mentions an enzyme with one or more vanadium atoms)?
It is utterly and irremediably ludicrous.
The summary is far, far beyond ludicrous.
You're missing the point. You are taking for granted an assumption that NASA is sincerely trying to play some useful role in promoting space exploration in the service of desirable national goals and purposes. That is a false assumption. NASA has one mission and one mission only: to channel public funds towards defense and aerospace industries.
Everything they do, without exception, is in service of that purpose. If there are intelligent and sincere people within NASA who somehow manage to heroically divert some of that money towards scientific or engineering research and space exploration by unmanned missions, it is a tribute to their personal and individual professional integrity and moral and ethical standards. The institution itself, however, is a profoundly corrupt gravy train.
This is why they insist on emphasizing manned space exploration at every turn. It substantially maximizes the amount of money that "needs" to be channelled to the military/congressional/industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about just over 50 years ago..
Try Musistica.com