As gentlemen, we can disagree about details of his philosophy or politics, and still have respect for the man. I think no one here would dispute that we have lost a first class mind and highly capable writer. Let us then celebrate his work, let us raise a mouse (or a glass if you prefer) in his honor, for one of our own has fallen and he shall be with us no more. 8-(
Fuel Cells are just not cost effective at this time. According to NREL, they will be, around 2025. Until then, they are a joke.
In regard to portable fuels cells, specifically cars, there is a problem that there are only 36 places in all of the continental US where you can tank up -
Which makes it hard to sell a hydrogen car, because there is no demand and there is no demand because there are no stations, which both feed into slowing development of better cells, because there's no market.
One way to punch out of this mess is for California to start making hydrogen, and give small hydrogen fueling pumps to any gas station that will take one, and now it becomes possible to sell cars, leading to a possible way forwards.
I myself looked into buying the Honda Civic GX, a from-the-factory natural gas vehicle. The problem was that I could never go farther than half a tank from my house (where I would put in my own pump) because there was no place to reliably buy fuel.
I realize that the technology is still limited, but CA. is spending money to give away power, why not do something useful at home with it? According to the comments above, there would be some use for a few combined desalination/electrolysis plants which would be able to make Hydrogen, Oxygen, potable water, and delicious algae rich salt as needed.
You're going to get all kinds of sea life growing on all those moving parts, turbine blades and such. Be nasty, expensive work trying to clean it all off. Maybe they can engineer around that??
>The blast of sterilizing radiation at that distance, combined with being tidally locked
>and probably wracked with catastrophic earthquakes at that distance would make
>life on these planets an unlikely impossibility. ____
For the X-ray blasts you need a tendril or a root or something that goes deep enough down into the dirt/water to survive and regrow. UV tolerance is easy if you can accept the loss of your photosynthesizing bits and regrow them from the opaque parts. Most living things are really not troubled by earthquakes (Trappist quakes?) We have trouble with them because we build things that are rigid. The main effect from being tidally locked is that you don't need to move your leaves around to follow the sun, you just grow and aim them once and leave them. You might even get concentric rings of plants with different brightness requirements growing all the way along the sunny edge.
I don't know if life would be easy, but let's not give up yet.
grungeman:
If their properties is surrounded by Zuckerberg's property, why not offer them a swap?
Offer them part of the outer part of his property for theirs, same size, same quality...
Problem is that these are(?) may be(?) old family graveyards. Kind of cold to ask them to dig up granny and haul her away because she's become a nuisance...
We don't need FTL to travel between the stars. We only need FTL to make it easy to write entertaining S.F.
For actual travel you just wind up your ship to.9 C and hibernate. Expensive, and seems slow from the outside, but violates no known laws of physics.
Occams' razor is politely suggesting that at some point the ID card belonging to Mr. Mbah Gotho Sr. was passed along to Mr Mbah Gotho Jr. That appears to be what happened with all those ancient rural Soviets. Some of those back country/outside all their life people age fast. If they took Dads card after he passed, they could skip the draft. Voila, country towns with a lot of 104 year old men.
“For most of us, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to bed down a new weapon set and make it employable and bring this capability for the defense of our nation,” Anderson said. “Everyone from the youngest airmen on up through our wing commanders is totally invested in this program. We are all excited and very motivated for what we’ve accomplished over the last year and what we’re going to accomplish in the future.”
So in about 200 years, the people alive then will have something to worry about.
There is a bit more to it than just losing ice off the surface. As the sheet loses mass it will shift and readjust its position. Fissures form at places where the ice is under tension. Melt water falls down into these fissures and starts what amount to underground streams. If these streams cross through areas of lower density ice - say old mostly collapsed tunnels - they will naturally flow along all the interconnected tunnels and rooms, this being an easier path than melting through solid ice. If we're lucky they might fill all the tunnels and freeze solid, thus preserving everything very nicely. Unfortunately this guy I know named Murphy says that the tunnels will probably first fill and then start draining through other openings out into streams or the sea. Any one who lives there and eats fish, or likes being able to drink from streams, would probably start to have a problem at this point.
I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI and NSA start requiring retailers to log cash purchases on their systems.
If it's an electronic register then it is capable of tracking inventory in real time, and keeping records on each sale and how it was funded. If it is a chain store then it probably connects to the mothership either continuously or at the end of each day. It won't however know *who* payed cash that day until facial recognition gets a little better. All the stores are loaded with cameras already, but the software isn't ready yet.
So you can lug around 40 pounds of short range ammo, and if you want to do a distance shot you're screwed, or you can lug around normal ammo and take any shot you like? Hmm, which would I choose... ?
"Hundreds of people a day go through it even though its a private area, no amount of signs or barriers stop anyone, the city/cops won't do shit about it."
You can fix that. Put up a fixed physical barrier at one end of the street (jersey barriers have a certain authority) and a "no outlet" sign at the other. Only people with business will drive there.
In practice this would seem to mean that you are fine so long as the Commerce Department approves of whatever it is you are doing. Tick off the wrong people and the same activity becomes a felony.
You would start off with the current "Iron Dome" air defense system, just the software. You would have dozens, hundreds of small fixed installations circling whatever areas you want defended. Drones have a very small radar profile, but you are looking at them from a block or two away, not miles away. They would look for drones using low power radar. You can add in heat, acoustic, and radio sensors if you want. When they see one they fire water cannons at it. Water cannons rarely kill people and the FCC won't give you any trouble about them. They also send an alert to the guy in the camera room who can fire up the HERF guns and Tesla coils if the 'bots get a drone they can't handle.
If they see little Timmy waving a metallic pinwheel and blast it out of his hand (and maybe him too) the men in black come out, confiscate the remains of pinwheel in the name of national security, give him a towel, and go back to wherever it is they lurk. Startling, but no real harm done. This system might also be hard on pigeons, but that could be considered a benefit.
It's not perfect, the system would have trouble picking very low flying objects out from background clutter, but it's a start.
Rather than pointlessly inflating the number of felonies in this country, I suggest that you instead obtain a Google Voice number and start giving that out instead of your real number.
It won't work. They are war dialing all of North America.
The one answer to all of this is to require all solicitation calls to use a specific prefix both on PCs and on phone lines. That way any sales call in itself would be a felony if that special prefix is not displayed clearly.
Phone scams are already illegal. Don't know where they stand on the misdemeanor to felony spectrum. It's just that no one who can reach out and touch them cares.
Doesn't explain why the US Attorney General, the FTC, or others who presumably are citizen advocates weren't all over this wire fraud, and possible RICO problem. - It shouldn't take litigation by Microsoft to end the problem, as it's a criminal act.
These people are calling essentially every number in the US and Canada. So are several others. The "credit card interest reduction" people even leave messages. Sadly, phone scams only get prosecuted if they annoy someone important.
Slashdot Mirror
There are already at least four different electric car plugs, so now they want to come out with number five? Spare me...
As gentlemen, we can disagree about details of his philosophy or politics, and still have respect for the man. I think no one here would dispute that we have lost a first class mind and highly capable writer. Let us then celebrate his work, let us raise a mouse (or a glass if you prefer) in his honor, for one of our own has fallen and he shall be with us no more. 8-(
Fuel Cells are just not cost effective at this time. According to NREL, they will be, around 2025. Until then, they are a joke.
In regard to portable fuels cells, specifically cars, there is a problem that there are only 36 places in all of the continental US where you can tank up -
(https://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html)
Which makes it hard to sell a hydrogen car, because there is no demand and there is no demand because there are no stations, which both feed into slowing development of better cells, because there's no market.
One way to punch out of this mess is for California to start making hydrogen, and give small hydrogen fueling pumps to any gas station that will take one, and now it becomes possible to sell cars, leading to a possible way forwards.
I myself looked into buying the Honda Civic GX, a from-the-factory natural gas vehicle. The problem was that I could never go farther than half a tank from my house (where I would put in my own pump) because there was no place to reliably buy fuel.
I realize that the technology is still limited, but CA. is spending money to give away power, why not do something useful at home with it? According to the comments above, there would be some use for a few combined desalination/electrolysis plants which would be able to make Hydrogen, Oxygen, potable water, and delicious algae rich salt as needed.
So why not take that excess electricity and make hydrogen out of it?
You're going to get all kinds of sea life growing on all those moving parts, turbine blades and such. Be nasty, expensive work trying to clean it all off. Maybe they can engineer around that??
kqc7011:
"I would be more interested in this if it worked the other way, warming my house. "
No problem. Just flip it around backwards!
>The blast of sterilizing radiation at that distance, combined with being tidally locked >and probably wracked with catastrophic earthquakes at that distance would make >life on these planets an unlikely impossibility. ____ For the X-ray blasts you need a tendril or a root or something that goes deep enough down into the dirt/water to survive and regrow. UV tolerance is easy if you can accept the loss of your photosynthesizing bits and regrow them from the opaque parts. Most living things are really not troubled by earthquakes (Trappist quakes?) We have trouble with them because we build things that are rigid. The main effect from being tidally locked is that you don't need to move your leaves around to follow the sun, you just grow and aim them once and leave them. You might even get concentric rings of plants with different brightness requirements growing all the way along the sunny edge. I don't know if life would be easy, but let's not give up yet.
grungeman: If their properties is surrounded by Zuckerberg's property, why not offer them a swap? Offer them part of the outer part of his property for theirs, same size, same quality... Problem is that these are(?) may be(?) old family graveyards. Kind of cold to ask them to dig up granny and haul her away because she's become a nuisance...
So how much is owed to Facebook (or whoever) each time someone misuses this to take down something they don't like? How about €500,000 per incident?
We don't need FTL to travel between the stars. We only need FTL to make it easy to write entertaining S.F. For actual travel you just wind up your ship to .9 C and hibernate. Expensive, and seems slow from the outside, but violates no known laws of physics.
Occams' razor is politely suggesting that at some point the ID card belonging to Mr. Mbah Gotho Sr. was passed along to Mr Mbah Gotho Jr. That appears to be what happened with all those ancient rural Soviets. Some of those back country/outside all their life people age fast. If they took Dads card after he passed, they could skip the draft. Voila, country towns with a lot of 104 year old men.
“For most of us, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to bed down a new weapon set and make it employable and bring this capability for the defense of our nation,” Anderson said. “Everyone from the youngest airmen on up through our wing commanders is totally invested in this program. We are all excited and very motivated for what we’ve accomplished over the last year and what we’re going to accomplish in the future.”
Nope, no hype or spin here.
So in about 200 years, the people alive then will have something to worry about.
There is a bit more to it than just losing ice off the surface. As the sheet loses mass it will shift and readjust its position. Fissures form at places where the ice is under tension. Melt water falls down into these fissures and starts what amount to underground streams. If these streams cross through areas of lower density ice - say old mostly collapsed tunnels - they will naturally flow along all the interconnected tunnels and rooms, this being an easier path than melting through solid ice. If we're lucky they might fill all the tunnels and freeze solid, thus preserving everything very nicely. Unfortunately this guy I know named Murphy says that the tunnels will probably first fill and then start draining through other openings out into streams or the sea. Any one who lives there and eats fish, or likes being able to drink from streams, would probably start to have a problem at this point.
I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI and NSA start requiring retailers to log cash purchases on their systems.
If it's an electronic register then it is capable of tracking inventory in real time, and keeping records on each sale and how it was funded. If it is a chain store then it probably connects to the mothership either continuously or at the end of each day. It won't however know *who* payed cash that day until facial recognition gets a little better. All the stores are loaded with cameras already, but the software isn't ready yet.
Some avoid better than others...
So you can lug around 40 pounds of short range ammo, and if you want to do a distance shot you're screwed, or you can lug around normal ammo and take any shot you like? Hmm, which would I choose... ?
Easter island has a nice 17,000 foot mountain, but the commute to get there would be hell. Someplace up in the Andes might be a reasonable compromise.
I suspect a well placed tree trunk could take out a train.
"Hundreds of people a day go through it even though its a private area, no amount of signs or barriers stop anyone, the city/cops won't do shit about it."
You can fix that. Put up a fixed physical barrier at one end of the street (jersey barriers have a certain authority) and a "no outlet" sign at the other. Only people with business will drive there.
In practice this would seem to mean that you are fine so long as the Commerce Department approves of whatever it is you are doing. Tick off the wrong people and the same activity becomes a felony.
If they see little Timmy waving a metallic pinwheel and blast it out of his hand (and maybe him too) the men in black come out, confiscate the remains of pinwheel in the name of national security, give him a towel, and go back to wherever it is they lurk. Startling, but no real harm done. This system might also be hard on pigeons, but that could be considered a benefit.
It's not perfect, the system would have trouble picking very low flying objects out from background clutter, but it's a start.
Rather than pointlessly inflating the number of felonies in this country, I suggest that you instead obtain a Google Voice number and start giving that out instead of your real number.
It won't work. They are war dialing all of North America.
The one answer to all of this is to require all solicitation calls to use a specific prefix both on PCs and on phone lines. That way any sales call in itself would be a felony if that special prefix is not displayed clearly.
Phone scams are already illegal. Don't know where they stand on the misdemeanor to felony spectrum. It's just that no one who can reach out and touch them cares.
Doesn't explain why the US Attorney General, the FTC, or others who presumably are citizen advocates weren't all over this wire fraud, and possible RICO problem. - It shouldn't take litigation by Microsoft to end the problem, as it's a criminal act.
These people are calling essentially every number in the US and Canada. So are several others. The "credit card interest reduction" people even leave messages. Sadly, phone scams only get prosecuted if they annoy someone important.
fulldecent (598482):
What if DPR offered a $10 million bounty for someone at the NSA to leak proof of illegal collection / parallel construction
They would end up in a cell just down the hall from Mr. Snowden.