According to wikipedia, a wristwtch runs at about 1 microwatt. Given the estimates some people have made above, it seems as if he might able to capture and use in the range of 100 microwatts to a few milliwatts. Enough to power many watches, or a small efficient LED.
Actually, being non-ionizing doesn't mean that it doesn't impart enough energy to have harmful effects. There are other harmful effects beyond having chemical bonds ruptured by EM fields. If the size of your body is near to or larger than a wavelength, your body will absorb some of the incident radiation. It heats your body. This is why microwave ovens have door interlocks. This is why people have DIED, cooked alive while working on microwave communication antennas.
My understanding is that cellphone systems aren't high power; you're likely to be safe. If you're really concerned, buy (about $300), rent, or borrow a field strength meter and find out.
Since you are worried about the radiation that would be absorbed by your body, and concerned that incomplete coverage of your apartment with conductive foil would encourage standing waves, the obvious solution is to cover your walls with a material that has the same absorption characteristics as your body. Yes! Cover your walls with slabs of beef!
TIVO has to get their money somehow. They've never been much of a financial success, so somewhere they must be bleeding money in an inexcusable manner. In the end, this must be incompetence at the top. I see this more of a problem of failing to run the company properly than greed.
For DirecTivo, it is technically possible (I don't know if they do it) to tell if you've paid by transmitting all the CableCard numbers that are paid-up (encrypted and compressed, of course). Each unit knows its own identity, and if it isn't on the list, it can decide to stop working. This could be done once every half hour for less bandwidth than an audio channel.
The first is a baroque-styled piece: pretty, simple, very repetitive with only minor variations as it proceeds, and no development.
The second is fairly modern sounding: it develops from simple to more complex and impressive, but throughout the variations are obviously random rather than providing a sense of growth.
The stuff has value; it's good that it's been done; but there's a long way to go. When full, complex symphonies of the quality and complexity created by a Tchaikovsky or Chopin are created, then computer music will have succeeded.
The area of programmatic music is a particular problem. How do you create in the listener the experience of the composer when the composer is a computer?
The left-brain/right-brain stuff is crap because it diverts attention from the more important and basic concepts of creative and logical. It obfuscates reality, and that is why it should be discarded from use by the general public.
Uranium is only the heaviest natural "stable" element on earth when condsidered on an atom-by-atom basis. Several elements have a higher specific gravity: Osmium, Iridium, Tungsten, Gold, Platinum, Rhenium.
If he hadn't provided a quote or citation, you would have charged him with fabricating claims based on nothing. Obviously, your mind is made up and you don't wish to be confused with the facts.
Multiple fiber lines are quite light. One falling won't take out others, and doesn't even represent a safety problem. Unlike power lines, most phone lines are insulated, and fiber lines need not even carry electricity.
Sorry, there just isn't enough physical space or EM spectrum. The government either needs to handle data pipes the way they do roads, as a government utility, or they need to build the conduits for the pipes and charge data providers the cost.
At higher frequencies, it's quite easy to make electromagnetic transmission directional. It's conceptually easy to use lots of microwave links to push data around. However, it seems that fiber is generally a better choice. Not enough physical space? A single fiber can transmit well over 1e11 b/s and be packed at 1e4 fibers per square inch. So a 1 sq. in. bundle could carry 1e15 b/s, or about 50 million HDTV channels. Or 25 thousand simultaneous Linux distribution downloads per second. A total capacity of 12 Libraries of Congress per second. Yeah, right, not enough space.
There's no good reason to involve government in making and maintaining data pipes, because of the problems inherent in governments: corruption, lack of incentives to do the job right, inherent inefficiency, the use of force against those who oppose what the government wants to do (don't want that tower on your property? Tough, we'll just take your property, tear it up so that it's an eyesore, you'll have to sue us to get the legally mandated recompense for the taking, and only pay you for what it's worth now that it's an eyesore.), censorship, forced payment even by those who don't use the service....
Sure, "All studies point to a maximum sustainable population being passed in the early 80s" if all you read are studies written and published by people who want to control others. There's no rational reason to believe that we can't support many times the number of people now alive, if you just stop falling into the trap that we've got to continue using today's technology. The fact that the earth is now EASILY supporting about 6 billion people and population is increasing, strongly suggests that it is possible to continue supporting >6e9 for as long as the sun is fairly stable.
It is well established that above a certain level of wealth, most civilizations do not produce enough babies to replace the people who die.
The "rare earth" argument is completely bogus. Nowhere near the whole surface of the earth has been searched for rare earths, not to mention the great volume of earth far below the surface. Furthermore, there are always other materials that can be used (even if the results aren't as good), and new technologies that will come along to make what is now thought of as essential, irrelevant. Think about the history of technology, particularly about past "needs" that are now obsolete.
What is scarce that is essential for a cell phone? Silicon? Dopants like boron, phosphorus, aluminum and arsenic? Copper for conductors? Carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen for plastics? Crappy batteries can be made with zinc, carbon, ammonium chloride, and magnesium dioxide; better batteries require more expensive materials but we're still nowhere near exhaustion. Barium titanate is used for some ceramic capacitors, but there are quite a few acceptable ceramic dielectrics and of course there are plastics and mica that are acceptable substitutes in various circuit positions. And so forth and so on, down to the last detail.
Panic mongers and doomsayers are not the source of human advancement.
A better solution is to increase the number of cars so that everyone can have a high MPG car for moving their rump around, and a bigger vehicle for the less common times when they have to carry packages or other persons.
People aren't starving because there isn't enough food, they're starving because they can't afford to buy food.
False alternative. Generally, people starve because of tyrants starving them, either deliberately or because allowing the poor to get food is less important to the tyrant than whatever his goals are. Very few people are so incompetent that they couldn't get enough food to survive in the absence of a vile government.
Food is very cheap in comparison to the value of a person's labor. The number of capitalists that could feed, clothe, and house people well for the price of their labor in the absence of government interference is vast.
I have no moral or ethical obligation to feed a stranger who is unwilling to give anything in exchange. I do have a moral obligation to prevent someone from stealing from me, a moral obligation to oppose a government that steals from me in the name of the poor, and a moral obligation to refute someone like you who attempts to persuade me that my life is the property of someone else.
I used the Multics system in 1971, and permissions were in place and used. Not long after the system was first brought up, a friend of mine who was a developer but not totally aware of what everything did, found some files he had full access to that he didn't recognize. So he erased them and the system crashed. The next day, did the same thing. Turns out that he had erased the OS. The next time the system was brought up, the permissions were corrected to prevent general user write access to the OS.
Governors and almost all other politicians in California are dedicated to stealing everything and blaming everyone. Both Democrats like Gray Davis and Republicans like Schwarzenegger have terribly increased the budget. (Take note: Arnold's attempts to cut back have been minimal and ineffectual.) Reagan was a long time ago, and his governorship temporarily reversed the trend that continues to this day. Blaming him is just plain ignorant.
There is a concerted effort underway right now to call a constitutional convention to reform the state constitution.
That ought to be fun. If you think things are bad in California now, wait until that circus starts, and unions and government employees and unemployed and non-citizens start putting pressure on the writers of a new constitution. You will have a kleptocracy never before seen in North America.
Note particularly the first word in "A well regulated Militia" is "a", not "the". Also note the concept "regulated". Since the word is "a" instead of "the", there can be more than one Militia in a given area, which argues against the (modern) assumption that militia is part of government. The use of the word "regulated" is further demonstration that Militia is considered separate from government, because nobody would consider it necessary to specify that part of government be regulated. So at the very least, people have the right to own guns in the context of a non-governmental group.
Being required to wait until the nation is threatened to join a Militia is just silly. The amendment says that Militia is necessary to the security of a free State. The state will not long be free if armed Militias aren't there before the state declares that it's being threatened.
Presenting scads of crackpot ideas in science is a waste. Doing it in history has been standard practice for more than 50 years; students are supposed to learn which historian held which viewpoint, and this is generally considered at least as important as what actually happened. It's not a good thing.
The difficulty is that much of good science is well established and can be identified and taught, but accurate and honestly explained history is rare. History is tightly coupled to politics. Since academics are predominantly leftist, a leftist interpretation of history is taught. The American founders are smeared. Movements to water the currency (Bryan), steal, and expand (Wilson) a bellicose (T. Roosevelt) government are praised. The Texans appear to be attempting to correct these excesses.
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According to wikipedia, a wristwtch runs at about 1 microwatt. Given the estimates some people have made above, it seems as if he might able to capture and use in the range of 100 microwatts to a few milliwatts. Enough to power many watches, or a small efficient LED.
Actually, being non-ionizing doesn't mean that it doesn't impart enough energy to have harmful effects. There are other harmful effects beyond having chemical bonds ruptured by EM fields. If the size of your body is near to or larger than a wavelength, your body will absorb some of the incident radiation. It heats your body. This is why microwave ovens have door interlocks. This is why people have DIED, cooked alive while working on microwave communication antennas.
My understanding is that cellphone systems aren't high power; you're likely to be safe. If you're really concerned, buy (about $300), rent, or borrow a field strength meter and find out.
Since you are worried about the radiation that would be absorbed by your body, and concerned that incomplete coverage of your apartment with conductive foil would encourage standing waves, the obvious solution is to cover your walls with a material that has the same absorption characteristics as your body. Yes! Cover your walls with slabs of beef!
TIVO has to get their money somehow. They've never been much of a financial success, so somewhere they must be bleeding money in an inexcusable manner. In the end, this must be incompetence at the top. I see this more of a problem of failing to run the company properly than greed.
For DirecTivo, it is technically possible (I don't know if they do it) to tell if you've paid by transmitting all the CableCard numbers that are paid-up (encrypted and compressed, of course). Each unit knows its own identity, and if it isn't on the list, it can decide to stop working. This could be done once every half hour for less bandwidth than an audio channel.
The first is a baroque-styled piece: pretty, simple, very repetitive with only minor variations as it proceeds, and no development.
The second is fairly modern sounding: it develops from simple to more complex and impressive, but throughout the variations are obviously random rather than providing a sense of growth.
The stuff has value; it's good that it's been done; but there's a long way to go. When full, complex symphonies of the quality and complexity created by a Tchaikovsky or Chopin are created, then computer music will have succeeded.
The area of programmatic music is a particular problem. How do you create in the listener the experience of the composer when the composer is a computer?
When software can imitate Copland or Bernstein it's time to throw that software in the trash where it belongs, along with the originals.
The left-brain/right-brain stuff is crap because it diverts attention from the more important and basic concepts of creative and logical. It obfuscates reality, and that is why it should be discarded from use by the general public.
Uranium is only the heaviest natural "stable" element on earth when condsidered on an atom-by-atom basis. Several elements have a higher specific gravity: Osmium, Iridium, Tungsten, Gold, Platinum, Rhenium.
If he hadn't provided a quote or citation, you would have charged him with fabricating claims based on nothing. Obviously, your mind is made up and you don't wish to be confused with the facts.
A moderate increase in diffuse radiation actually decreases cancer rates.
That the FCC exists and sets standards does not imply that the FCC or any part of the government should exist or set standards.
Hooray, you win today's defective analogy prize.
Multiple fiber lines are quite light. One falling won't take out others, and doesn't even represent a safety problem. Unlike power lines, most phone lines are insulated, and fiber lines need not even carry electricity.
At higher frequencies, it's quite easy to make electromagnetic transmission directional. It's conceptually easy to use lots of microwave links to push data around. However, it seems that fiber is generally a better choice. Not enough physical space? A single fiber can transmit well over 1e11 b/s and be packed at 1e4 fibers per square inch. So a 1 sq. in. bundle could carry 1e15 b/s, or about 50 million HDTV channels. Or 25 thousand simultaneous Linux distribution downloads per second. A total capacity of 12 Libraries of Congress per second. Yeah, right, not enough space.
There's no good reason to involve government in making and maintaining data pipes, because of the problems inherent in governments: corruption, lack of incentives to do the job right, inherent inefficiency, the use of force against those who oppose what the government wants to do (don't want that tower on your property? Tough, we'll just take your property, tear it up so that it's an eyesore, you'll have to sue us to get the legally mandated recompense for the taking, and only pay you for what it's worth now that it's an eyesore.), censorship, forced payment even by those who don't use the service....
Sure, "All studies point to a maximum sustainable population being passed in the early 80s" if all you read are studies written and published by people who want to control others. There's no rational reason to believe that we can't support many times the number of people now alive, if you just stop falling into the trap that we've got to continue using today's technology. The fact that the earth is now EASILY supporting about 6 billion people and population is increasing, strongly suggests that it is possible to continue supporting >6e9 for as long as the sun is fairly stable.
It is well established that above a certain level of wealth, most civilizations do not produce enough babies to replace the people who die.
The "rare earth" argument is completely bogus. Nowhere near the whole surface of the earth has been searched for rare earths, not to mention the great volume of earth far below the surface. Furthermore, there are always other materials that can be used (even if the results aren't as good), and new technologies that will come along to make what is now thought of as essential, irrelevant. Think about the history of technology, particularly about past "needs" that are now obsolete.
What is scarce that is essential for a cell phone? Silicon? Dopants like boron, phosphorus, aluminum and arsenic? Copper for conductors? Carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen for plastics? Crappy batteries can be made with zinc, carbon, ammonium chloride, and magnesium dioxide; better batteries require more expensive materials but we're still nowhere near exhaustion. Barium titanate is used for some ceramic capacitors, but there are quite a few acceptable ceramic dielectrics and of course there are plastics and mica that are acceptable substitutes in various circuit positions. And so forth and so on, down to the last detail.
Panic mongers and doomsayers are not the source of human advancement.
A better solution is to increase the number of cars so that everyone can have a high MPG car for moving their rump around, and a bigger vehicle for the less common times when they have to carry packages or other persons.
False alternative. Generally, people starve because of tyrants starving them, either deliberately or because allowing the poor to get food is less important to the tyrant than whatever his goals are. Very few people are so incompetent that they couldn't get enough food to survive in the absence of a vile government.
Food is very cheap in comparison to the value of a person's labor. The number of capitalists that could feed, clothe, and house people well for the price of their labor in the absence of government interference is vast.
I have no moral or ethical obligation to feed a stranger who is unwilling to give anything in exchange. I do have a moral obligation to prevent someone from stealing from me, a moral obligation to oppose a government that steals from me in the name of the poor, and a moral obligation to refute someone like you who attempts to persuade me that my life is the property of someone else.
I used the Multics system in 1971, and permissions were in place and used. Not long after the system was first brought up, a friend of mine who was a developer but not totally aware of what everything did, found some files he had full access to that he didn't recognize. So he erased them and the system crashed. The next day, did the same thing. Turns out that he had erased the OS. The next time the system was brought up, the permissions were corrected to prevent general user write access to the OS.
Let me introduce you to Mr. Procrustes.
There's a company in Dublin, New Hampshire that's been doing this for over 100 years.
Figure it out for yourself.
Try again. One of his campaign promises was that schools would have first dibs on the state government's money.
Governors and almost all other politicians in California are dedicated to stealing everything and blaming everyone. Both Democrats like Gray Davis and Republicans like Schwarzenegger have terribly increased the budget. (Take note: Arnold's attempts to cut back have been minimal and ineffectual.) Reagan was a long time ago, and his governorship temporarily reversed the trend that continues to this day. Blaming him is just plain ignorant.
That ought to be fun. If you think things are bad in California now, wait until that circus starts, and unions and government employees and unemployed and non-citizens start putting pressure on the writers of a new constitution. You will have a kleptocracy never before seen in North America.
Note particularly the first word in "A well regulated Militia" is "a", not "the". Also note the concept "regulated". Since the word is "a" instead of "the", there can be more than one Militia in a given area, which argues against the (modern) assumption that militia is part of government. The use of the word "regulated" is further demonstration that Militia is considered separate from government, because nobody would consider it necessary to specify that part of government be regulated. So at the very least, people have the right to own guns in the context of a non-governmental group.
Being required to wait until the nation is threatened to join a Militia is just silly. The amendment says that Militia is necessary to the security of a free State. The state will not long be free if armed Militias aren't there before the state declares that it's being threatened.
feel? FEEL?!
The fact that you could write "feel" instead of "be" speaks volumes about ignorance, modern screwed-up beliefs, and divorce from reality.
Presenting scads of crackpot ideas in science is a waste. Doing it in history has been standard practice for more than 50 years; students are supposed to learn which historian held which viewpoint, and this is generally considered at least as important as what actually happened. It's not a good thing.
The difficulty is that much of good science is well established and can be identified and taught, but accurate and honestly explained history is rare. History is tightly coupled to politics. Since academics are predominantly leftist, a leftist interpretation of history is taught. The American founders are smeared. Movements to water the currency (Bryan), steal, and expand (Wilson) a bellicose (T. Roosevelt) government are praised. The Texans appear to be attempting to correct these excesses.