A very good point. A better example would be steel, which can br drawn into wires and woven into extreamely flexible and durable cables. Manufacturing hundred-thousand-mile long cables of the stuff for a space elevator may not be viable based on the describtion of the manufacturing process, though... but definately a step in the right direction!
The article lacks a lot of "crucial detail" about the material itself. Understandable, since it *is* written for the general public. Hopefully we'll see some hard engineering data for the material listed sooner or later.
As for uses... cost never means much to the military. If testing shows it a suitable replacement for mor expensive, heavier materials (for example, aircraft skin), then we'll see an industry grow to satisfy the military demand for it, and eventualy spill over into the civilian market.
Quote: Cars go quite fast enough, and while traffic is really bad the fact remains that after a small collision nobody falls to their deaths.
I don't know about you, but there have been many times where I've gone someplace by car spending over two hours on the road, knowing that a two-man ultralight or autogyro could have gotten me there in about 30 minutes. An ultralight aircraft (basically a glider with a lawnmower engine on it) with a 350 pound capacity will hold me, my equipment, and a small foldable bicycle to take me the rest of the way from wherever I land. (All you need is a hundred feet or so of open grass or roadway, too. Public parks and parking lots make a suitable landing strip).
After landing, the craft folds up and can be "driven" over land using the propeller, making it easy to stash it in a regular parking spot or garage.
Granted, it's not something I'd use on my regular commute, but something like that could come in handy, and I'm not the only person who could find a use for it.
So the issue of use is not a problem, it's safety. Most people can't even drive as it is. But ultralights are actually safer than cars because of mass and speed issues. Low altitude power-deployed parachutes allow for safe landings even in a major collision. If you lose power, you glide back down (quickly, but controllably). All you need is proper training and licensing programs to (hopefully) keep the really incapable people out of the skys.
As for mass-transit air, that's actually pretty popular, if a little expensive and awkward due to scheduling. But if you're going from New York City to D.C. in a hurry, you either take a shuttle turboprop out of LaGuardia.
Besides, once private aircraft become even remotely popular, the roads will probably clear up a bit. Things balance out. Don't write it off so quickly. =Smidge=
Quote: Human produced CO2 isn't the only variable effected the climate.
Which is exactly my point. Something had to cause the warming, and arguably Human CO2 production was nowhere near what it is today... therefore, maybe there is some other mechanism at work.
Quote: Besides, there is considerable scientific evidence that the medieval warming period was a series of local events, not a global event.
"Local" and "Global" get a little blurred when the event in question covers an entire continent, don't ya think? Regardless, the climatic change still had to be caused by *something*, and from the previous argument, it wasn't human CO2 production.
Also interesting is how glacieral core samples from half a world away show the same evidence to warming. Maybe it WAS a global change. As someone else said, there's really no way to know for sure... but the evidence seems pretty clear.
The crux of my argument is that this is all a global cycle that is simply misunderstood, and that it's foolish to simply assume that we're responsible for it, the reason being any action taken against a problem that is not understood may (and generally will) make matters worse.
If you honestly believe that humans can so casually alter the global climate (which may be the case), then you should be outright scared at what humanity can do when we *try* to change it. I think we should at least know what the hell we're doing first! =Smidge=
You haven't debunked anything. You said he was wrong, called him names, and made a statement wihtout providing any references or supporting arguments.
'Debunking' usually involves proving, to some degree, that the data and premises the theory is based on are incomplete or inadequate, the logic combining the data and premises is flawed, or that there are other (possibly more likely) conclusions that can be drawn from the same data.
You haven't done any of that!
In leu of this, I see nothing wrong with the theory. Earth warms, icecaps melt, ocean salts get diluted, transport of heat stops, earth cools, ice forms, ocean salts become concentrated, transportation of heat resumes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If you're going to cling to the current "global warming" theory, that CO2 production and other man-made gasses are causing the earth to trap more heat, then I'd like to know how the whole Medieval Warm Period came about... I don't think it was because of all those Knights and Kings driving their Cadillac SUVs.
That article also discusses history of global climate in general. It's a good read, especially since it indicates that maybe mankind hasn't managed to make THAT big a dent in the environment... yet...
Didn't the original DivX players have a similar system? Buy a disc for a few $, and only be able to watch it so many times?
What happened to those players?
The only real snag here is the practically zero cost to the companies for duplicating and distributing the media if it stays purely internet based. And if broadband isn't becoming popular fast enough, then there isn't as much profit to be made in the short run.
I work for an engineering office that handles a lot of construction work in my school district. You learn a lot in this business.
In the great rush to get schools "into the 21st century", every school (8 elementary, 2 middle and 1 high school) has *at least* one computer lab, and an average of 4 computers *per room* in all but the High school (only 1 station per room there). From Kindergarten to 9th grade, these kids are never more than 20 feet from a CRT.
Each and every computer is running Win98 with a full install of MS Office Pro (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access, Publisher, etc). Even the kindergarten computers. Why? To 5 year olds really need to make databases and spreadsheets? (Not that doubt they could, of course...)
The school district pays Microsoft approximately $11,000 per year for software licenses. That's cheap, because they get a huge discount for having everythig installed on *every* computer.
So of course, StarOffice was mentioned as a cheaper alternative. While the software cost would be much lower for licenses, apparently it would cost the district *more* to have had StarOffice installed instead of Microsoft's suite.
I couldn't get that number, but I did learn that the district spent $60,000 re-training the teachers and staff when they upgradeed their systems from *Win95*.
If it cost 60 grand to train these morons to use 98 instead of 95, I can't begin to imagine the cost of converting MSOffice to StarOffice.
Yeah, Microsoft's not a monopoly... they're drug dealers. I'm also glad I don't plan to have any kids.
The only way around this problem would be to not use Windows from the start. At least in a totally new environment it should be easier to train the staff; less confusing if for no other reason. More power to Sun Microsystems, I say.
Another user commented: "The people who should buy from Sun are (and i quote) markets such as corporate call centers, government and schools. These are the sort of folks who don't have a clue how to run their PC's. More importantly, they don't want to have a clue how to run them either."
You couldn't be more right. =Smidge=
Re:Why is the American economy not doing better?
on
Politicizing Science
·
· Score: 1
It's not like you just flip a switch and the Dow-Jones jumps 1500 points. It takes years for economic legislation to have any effect. Factories need to be built and retooled, workers need to be hired, materials need to be collected and processed, manufacturing needs to ramp-up, etc... it' s the same with any business, it takes time to get moving.
Unfortunately, Clinton mortgaged the economy for eight years and it fell apart a year after he left. Most people blame Bush Jr. for it.
I also don't think that the whole war thing is an economic move. It's a logical extension of the whole "anti-terrorism" sentament... as scary as that is. =Smidge=
I had a physics teacher like that. Every week we had a 'packet' due as homework. The packet included the usual homework problems and lab reports, and a 'home-lab'
The home lab was a real-life application of whatever topic we were on that week. Some of them were pretty dangerous, too:) For example:
-Calculate the mass of an object by tying it to a string and swinging it around your head.
-Estimate the friction between a car's tires and the road by having an older sibling/parent stop the car as quickly as possible (without skidding!)
-Estimate the total power developed by your body by running up a flight of stairs as quickly as possible.
-Explore the nature of levers by holding the snow shovel in different spots while shoveling (obviously, we had class over the winter session)
Each homelab would have to be completed just like a regular lab report would, stating goals of the experiemnt, control conditions, variables being tested, and results. The only difference was that there was n step-by-step instructions on what to do... you were just asked to do it and left to figure it out based on what you supposedly learned in class.
The interactivity really helps kids to remember that stuff. Now I do it for a living! =Smidge=
Well, that's one unique way to get past filters. Good for them!
The government is trying very hard to keep the people ignorant so they can maintain control. Sooner or later, of course, they'll become smart enough to realise their government is screwing them over. The the sh*t hits the fan......I somehow don't think that would be an all-around good thing in the short run. China has a history of being extraordinarily brutal towards protestors and rebels. But it certaintly would be a major step for democracy and freedom all-around. =Smidge=
Someone (one of the few people who made an *intelligent* reply, anyway) Mentioned memory density. Out of curiosity I decided to figure out exactly how much data per square inch you could fit using this tecnique...
Silicon has a van der Waals (minimum, non-bonding) radius of 210pm, or 2.1e-10 meters (8.27e-9 inches). That means the closest you could possibly pack them is 4.2e-10 meters on-center (1.65e-8 inches). That means you can pack about 60,400,000 silicon atoms in single file, or a whopping 3,600,000,000,000,000 atoms per square inch!
That boils down to about 415.7 terabytes!
Comparatively, current holographic memory systems can (last I checked) reliably store up to 25.6 megabytes per square inch, but of course it has the added feature of using the full volume of the media, and extreamely fast read/write times.
=Smidge=
Rockets don't have any moving parts, so there is nothing to generate noise. The rumbling of the rockets is caused by the rapid expansion of the propellent, and is propagated as sound waves. What little energy is trasferred to the engine's nozzle would be absorbed by the engine's mounting.
No air, no noise. At best you might hear the hissing of the fuel leaving the tanks, but that's easily dampened.
Come to think of it, I don't think there is a single theory on the moon hoax that *hasn't* been debunked by a 9th grader...
=Smidge=
The average solar insulation on earth's surface is about 100 watts per square foot (Obviously it may be more or less depending on weather and geological location). That means you need about 7.5 square feet of collection area for every horsepower, assuming photo-voltaic cells that are 100% efficient. In your dreams! Current PV technology is about 15-18% real efficiency.
Even with 'perfect' cells, A 3.5hp lawnmover would need a collector with an active surface the size of a 8'x4' sheet of plywood. Imagine what you would need for even a modest 75hp metro-sized two seater! I don't even think they even make road-worthy cars that small, even gas powered.
Electric vehicles may yet have their day in the sun, but they certaintly won't be powered by it. =Smidge=
The "evolved" devices, as you mentioned, are extremely fragile and very dependent on exact operating conditions. Then again, so is organic life. Changing a human's body temperature by as little as 5%, for example, is quite often fatal, as is the introduction of even very small quantities of certain substances. One broken blood vessel in the right (or wrong?) spot and you're dead. It's so easy to eliminate life, you probably kill billions of organisms every day and not even know think ONCE about it. Which reminds me, did you remember to wash your hands?:p
The difference between organic life and these devices is clearly their complexity. One uses the ebb and flow of electromagnetic waves, the other uses the interaction of atoms and molecules. One is evolved under very controlled conditions to meet certain criteria, the other is just sorta let loose with no real limits, goal or purpose (depending on your personal philosophy, of course). Organisms are really just a conglomeration specific solutions for millions of separate problems, and each species is a unique set of solutions.
Note that complexity does not automatically imply intelligence. Evolving a robust device is a lot different from evolving a "smart" one. But I digress...
As it was stated, evolution fills niches and takes advantage of loopholes wherever it can find them. Of course it'll lose when you change the rules of the game! Fortunately for life, there will always be loopholes... too bad the laboratory isn't as forgiving in that respect. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
A very good point. A better example would be steel, which can br drawn into wires and woven into extreamely flexible and durable cables. Manufacturing hundred-thousand-mile long cables of the stuff for a space elevator may not be viable based on the describtion of the manufacturing process, though... but definately a step in the right direction!
The article lacks a lot of "crucial detail" about the material itself. Understandable, since it *is* written for the general public. Hopefully we'll see some hard engineering data for the material listed sooner or later.
As for uses... cost never means much to the military. If testing shows it a suitable replacement for mor expensive, heavier materials (for example, aircraft skin), then we'll see an industry grow to satisfy the military demand for it, and eventualy spill over into the civilian market.
=Smidge=
Quote: Cars go quite fast enough, and while traffic is really bad the fact remains that after a small collision nobody falls to their deaths.
I don't know about you, but there have been many times where I've gone someplace by car spending over two hours on the road, knowing that a two-man ultralight or autogyro could have gotten me there in about 30 minutes. An ultralight aircraft (basically a glider with a lawnmower engine on it) with a 350 pound capacity will hold me, my equipment, and a small foldable bicycle to take me the rest of the way from wherever I land. (All you need is a hundred feet or so of open grass or roadway, too. Public parks and parking lots make a suitable landing strip).
After landing, the craft folds up and can be "driven" over land using the propeller, making it easy to stash it in a regular parking spot or garage.
Granted, it's not something I'd use on my regular commute, but something like that could come in handy, and I'm not the only person who could find a use for it.
So the issue of use is not a problem, it's safety. Most people can't even drive as it is. But ultralights are actually safer than cars because of mass and speed issues. Low altitude power-deployed parachutes allow for safe landings even in a major collision. If you lose power, you glide back down (quickly, but controllably). All you need is proper training and licensing programs to (hopefully) keep the really incapable people out of the skys.
As for mass-transit air, that's actually pretty popular, if a little expensive and awkward due to scheduling. But if you're going from New York City to D.C. in a hurry, you either take a shuttle turboprop out of LaGuardia.
Besides, once private aircraft become even remotely popular, the roads will probably clear up a bit. Things balance out. Don't write it off so quickly.
=Smidge=
Nah, Probably Everquest or Ultima Online. They have a history of destroying lives!
=Smidge=
How about this rather unique solution? No tired arms here!
=Smidge=
Quote: Human produced CO2 isn't the only variable effected the climate.
Which is exactly my point. Something had to cause the warming, and arguably Human CO2 production was nowhere near what it is today... therefore, maybe there is some other mechanism at work.
Quote: Besides, there is considerable scientific evidence that the medieval warming period was a series of local events, not a global event.
"Local" and "Global" get a little blurred when the event in question covers an entire continent, don't ya think? Regardless, the climatic change still had to be caused by *something*, and from the previous argument, it wasn't human CO2 production.
Also interesting is how glacieral core samples from half a world away show the same evidence to warming. Maybe it WAS a global change. As someone else said, there's really no way to know for sure... but the evidence seems pretty clear.
The crux of my argument is that this is all a global cycle that is simply misunderstood, and that it's foolish to simply assume that we're responsible for it, the reason being any action taken against a problem that is not understood may (and generally will) make matters worse.
If you honestly believe that humans can so casually alter the global climate (which may be the case), then you should be outright scared at what humanity can do when we *try* to change it. I think we should at least know what the hell we're doing first!
=Smidge=
You haven't debunked anything. You said he was wrong, called him names, and made a statement wihtout providing any references or supporting arguments.
'Debunking' usually involves proving, to some degree, that the data and premises the theory is based on are incomplete or inadequate, the logic combining the data and premises is flawed, or that there are other (possibly more likely) conclusions that can be drawn from the same data.
You haven't done any of that!
In leu of this, I see nothing wrong with the theory. Earth warms, icecaps melt, ocean salts get diluted, transport of heat stops, earth cools, ice forms, ocean salts become concentrated, transportation of heat resumes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If you're going to cling to the current "global warming" theory, that CO2 production and other man-made gasses are causing the earth to trap more heat, then I'd like to know how the whole Medieval Warm Period came about... I don't think it was because of all those Knights and Kings driving their Cadillac SUVs.
That article also discusses history of global climate in general. It's a good read, especially since it indicates that maybe mankind hasn't managed to make THAT big a dent in the environment... yet...
=Smidge=
Didn't the original DivX players have a similar system? Buy a disc for a few $, and only be able to watch it so many times?
What happened to those players?
The only real snag here is the practically zero cost to the companies for duplicating and distributing the media if it stays purely internet based. And if broadband isn't becoming popular fast enough, then there isn't as much profit to be made in the short run.
=Smidge=
I work for an engineering office that handles a lot of construction work in my school district. You learn a lot in this business.
In the great rush to get schools "into the 21st century", every school (8 elementary, 2 middle and 1 high school) has *at least* one computer lab, and an average of 4 computers *per room* in all but the High school (only 1 station per room there). From Kindergarten to 9th grade, these kids are never more than 20 feet from a CRT.
Each and every computer is running Win98 with a full install of MS Office Pro (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access, Publisher, etc). Even the kindergarten computers. Why? To 5 year olds really need to make databases and spreadsheets? (Not that doubt they could, of course...)
The school district pays Microsoft approximately $11,000 per year for software licenses. That's cheap, because they get a huge discount for having everythig installed on *every* computer.
So of course, StarOffice was mentioned as a cheaper alternative. While the software cost would be much lower for licenses, apparently it would cost the district *more* to have had StarOffice installed instead of Microsoft's suite.
I couldn't get that number, but I did learn that the district spent $60,000 re-training the teachers and staff when they upgradeed their systems from *Win95*.
If it cost 60 grand to train these morons to use 98 instead of 95, I can't begin to imagine the cost of converting MSOffice to StarOffice.
Yeah, Microsoft's not a monopoly... they're drug dealers. I'm also glad I don't plan to have any kids.
The only way around this problem would be to not use Windows from the start. At least in a totally new environment it should be easier to train the staff; less confusing if for no other reason. More power to Sun Microsystems, I say.
Another user commented: "The people who should buy from Sun are (and i quote) markets such as corporate call centers, government and schools. These are the sort of folks who don't have a clue how to run their PC's. More importantly, they don't want to have a clue how to run them either."
You couldn't be more right.
=Smidge=
It's not like you just flip a switch and the Dow-Jones jumps 1500 points. It takes years for economic legislation to have any effect. Factories need to be built and retooled, workers need to be hired, materials need to be collected and processed, manufacturing needs to ramp-up, etc... it' s the same with any business, it takes time to get moving.
Unfortunately, Clinton mortgaged the economy for eight years and it fell apart a year after he left. Most people blame Bush Jr. for it.
I also don't think that the whole war thing is an economic move. It's a logical extension of the whole "anti-terrorism" sentament... as scary as that is.
=Smidge=
I had a physics teacher like that. Every week we had a 'packet' due as homework. The packet included the usual homework problems and lab reports, and a 'home-lab'
:) For example:
The home lab was a real-life application of whatever topic we were on that week. Some of them were pretty dangerous, too
-Calculate the mass of an object by tying it to a string and swinging it around your head.
-Estimate the friction between a car's tires and the road by having an older sibling/parent stop the car as quickly as possible (without skidding!)
-Estimate the total power developed by your body by running up a flight of stairs as quickly as possible.
-Explore the nature of levers by holding the snow shovel in different spots while shoveling (obviously, we had class over the winter session)
Each homelab would have to be completed just like a regular lab report would, stating goals of the experiemnt, control conditions, variables being tested, and results. The only difference was that there was n step-by-step instructions on what to do... you were just asked to do it and left to figure it out based on what you supposedly learned in class.
The interactivity really helps kids to remember that stuff. Now I do it for a living!
=Smidge=
Well, that's one unique way to get past filters. Good for them!
...I somehow don't think that would be an all-around good thing in the short run. China has a history of being extraordinarily brutal towards protestors and rebels. But it certaintly would be a major step for democracy and freedom all-around.
The government is trying very hard to keep the people ignorant so they can maintain control. Sooner or later, of course, they'll become smart enough to realise their government is screwing them over. The the sh*t hits the fan...
=Smidge=
Someone (one of the few people who made an *intelligent* reply, anyway) Mentioned memory density. Out of curiosity I decided to figure out exactly how much data per square inch you could fit using this tecnique... Silicon has a van der Waals (minimum, non-bonding) radius of 210pm, or 2.1e-10 meters (8.27e-9 inches). That means the closest you could possibly pack them is 4.2e-10 meters on-center (1.65e-8 inches). That means you can pack about 60,400,000 silicon atoms in single file, or a whopping 3,600,000,000,000,000 atoms per square inch! That boils down to about 415.7 terabytes! Comparatively, current holographic memory systems can (last I checked) reliably store up to 25.6 megabytes per square inch, but of course it has the added feature of using the full volume of the media, and extreamely fast read/write times. =Smidge=
Rockets don't have any moving parts, so there is nothing to generate noise. The rumbling of the rockets is caused by the rapid expansion of the propellent, and is propagated as sound waves. What little energy is trasferred to the engine's nozzle would be absorbed by the engine's mounting. No air, no noise. At best you might hear the hissing of the fuel leaving the tanks, but that's easily dampened. Come to think of it, I don't think there is a single theory on the moon hoax that *hasn't* been debunked by a 9th grader... =Smidge=
The average solar insulation on earth's surface is about 100 watts per square foot (Obviously it may be more or less depending on weather and geological location). That means you need about 7.5 square feet of collection area for every horsepower, assuming photo-voltaic cells that are 100% efficient. In your dreams! Current PV technology is about 15-18% real efficiency.
Even with 'perfect' cells, A 3.5hp lawnmover would need a collector with an active surface the size of a 8'x4' sheet of plywood. Imagine what you would need for even a modest 75hp metro-sized two seater!
I don't even think they even make road-worthy cars that small, even gas powered.
Electric vehicles may yet have their day in the sun, but they certaintly won't be powered by it.
=Smidge=
The "evolved" devices, as you mentioned, are extremely fragile and very dependent on exact operating conditions. Then again, so is organic life. Changing a human's body temperature by as little as 5%, for example, is quite often fatal, as is the introduction of even very small quantities of certain substances. One broken blood vessel in the right (or wrong?) spot and you're dead. It's so easy to eliminate life, you probably kill billions of organisms every day and not even know think ONCE about it. Which reminds me, did you remember to wash your hands? :p
The difference between organic life and these devices is clearly their complexity. One uses the ebb and flow of electromagnetic waves, the other uses the interaction of atoms and molecules. One is evolved under very controlled conditions to meet certain criteria, the other is just sorta let loose with no real limits, goal or purpose (depending on your personal philosophy, of course). Organisms are really just a conglomeration specific solutions for millions of separate problems, and each species is a unique set of solutions.
Note that complexity does not automatically imply intelligence. Evolving a robust device is a lot different from evolving a "smart" one. But I digress...
As it was stated, evolution fills niches and takes advantage of loopholes wherever it can find them. Of course it'll lose when you change the rules of the game! Fortunately for life, there will always be loopholes... too bad the laboratory isn't as forgiving in that respect.
=Smidge=