I couldn't finish this book. It was horribly written. The story line was patchy and had a feeling of being cobbled together by someone that doesn't know how to edit.
Completing the circuit is the easy part. Just like an extension cord, you have a positive and negative wire. Circuit complete.
Also, once a single space elevator is created, surely multiple will follow. Dedicated space tethers for bringing electricity down to earth (that don't need to support climbing robots) is one way of doing it.
The article links to an article on wikipedia that suggests using microwaves to transfer the energy from space to earth. Also using a space elevator to get the solar panels into space.
However, once there is a space elevator, there is no need for using dangerous microwaves, when you already have a direct wire going from earth to space. Just send the electricity down the wire like any terrestrial power line.
This is because we are not exploring. We are just dinking around. The government needs to open up space to entrepeneurs. When private industry takes it upon themselves to tackle an asteroid and mine it for all of the free-to-be-had minerals, then we will see excitement. The earth economy will boom like nothing we have ever seen when industries explode with all of the jobs created by companies trying to be the first to get to Near Earth Object X and making it a new country, where all operations based there would be tax-free. Astronaut/pilot schools will flourish. A new resurgence of science studies, etc. Government needs to get out of the way and provide incentives for industy to get the ball rolling.
If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act.
That may be well and good for static HTML sites (but who makes those anymore?), where the website 'administrator' manually types in the links, but what about dynamic content?
So let's pretend that they allow search engines to provide those links. Who would then be 'guilty'? Anyone who accidentally uses the search engine to generate those search results? Or any site that uses the google or yahoo search apis to do searching on their site? Again, is it the person typing in a search, the site that embeds the search engine api, or the search engine company?
Or maybe this law wasn't really thought through well enough. Maybe it really is only the person posting the copyrighted work.
All of these products except the lame segway(who's buying these things?) are produced over-seas anyway. And who wants to buy american cars? It is mostly Japanese, South Korean and German cars that are considered the best bang for the buck.
I hope that 'the' moon mission is not a one-time thing. There should be a base there, where we mine metals, fuel, oxygen, water and anything else that takes a lot of effort to get off of earth.
Automated mining equipment, automated processing plants that separate one mineral from another and triage it into other automated machines, such as smelters.
We need moon-based telescopes, solar collectors, huge inflatable terrariums where it is possible for scientists, engineers and technicians to reside while researching and performing maintenance on the automated equipment.
Why pay more to compromise your privacy? Please give me a stripped-down phone that does nothing but allow me to send/receive phone calls and allow me to install java programs that will let me do the same thing and expandable RAM. MP3 players and whatnot can be created using java with very little effort.
Who wants Yet Another Disc Format?
Actually, this would fine and great for server backup solutions, but not really for consumer-level stuff like music and videos.
"The tremendous heat of the 1000 A-bomb sized fireball melted large chunks of desert sand into perfect glass. The memory of such an apocalyptic event may have made sand-glass gems a desirable symbol, meant to emphasize the pharaoh's heavenly powers."
Strange that anyone could have survived to have a memory of such an event.
As there is no magic utility to tell you what to upgrade, it seems this is a business opportunity.
Someone needs to develop this software! Ideally make it cross-platform, so you reach the widest audience and impress the adventurous Linux-ites, BSDers and OSXers.
cross-platform C that does not depend on libraries. Just read/write to disk, read/write to memory, do some openGL, aggregate the data and print out suggestions that the user can follow to increase their numbers.
All assuming, of course, that The Powers That Be even want to advance as opposed to just maintaining the bottom line. Business as usual.
Free energy for all means oil executives need to find a different way of making money.
If they really meant for NWN to run on platforms other than MS, they would have used OpenGL, SDL, and maybe a little OpenAL for sound(for 3D sound, that is).
There's not much reason to use DirectX anymore, when there are free/crossplatform libraries available.
It's very simple to use SDL for all of your input and networking, and delegate your Hardware Accelerated 3D to OpenGL, and your 3D sound to openAL.
Besides, shouldn't all of these things have been abstracted enough that these modules could just be plugged in under the covers? A little bit of extra time in the design phase goes a very long ways in making your program more flexible and preventing problems.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't need google apps to get the free gmail backend. I use it for my domain's mail and I get a boatload of mail storage.
I couldn't finish this book. It was horribly written. The story line was patchy and had a feeling of being cobbled together by someone that doesn't know how to edit.
Also, once a single space elevator is created, surely multiple will follow. Dedicated space tethers for bringing electricity down to earth (that don't need to support climbing robots) is one way of doing it.
However, once there is a space elevator, there is no need for using dangerous microwaves, when you already have a direct wire going from earth to space. Just send the electricity down the wire like any terrestrial power line.
...for big brother to spy on you and for criminals to more easily steal your identity.
That is no doubt what the company is betting on.
This is because we are not exploring. We are just dinking around. The government needs to open up space to entrepeneurs. When private industry takes it upon themselves to tackle an asteroid and mine it for all of the free-to-be-had minerals, then we will see excitement. The earth economy will boom like nothing we have ever seen when industries explode with all of the jobs created by companies trying to be the first to get to Near Earth Object X and making it a new country, where all operations based there would be tax-free. Astronaut/pilot schools will flourish. A new resurgence of science studies, etc. Government needs to get out of the way and provide incentives for industy to get the ball rolling.
That will be interesting when the first rotation tears out the telephone and cable tv wiring. :)
That may be well and good for static HTML sites (but who makes those anymore?), where the website 'administrator' manually types in the links, but what about dynamic content?
So let's pretend that they allow search engines to provide those links. Who would then be 'guilty'? Anyone who accidentally uses the search engine to generate those search results? Or any site that uses the google or yahoo search apis to do searching on their site? Again, is it the person typing in a search, the site that embeds the search engine api, or the search engine company?
Or maybe this law wasn't really thought through well enough. Maybe it really is only the person posting the copyrighted work.
All of these products except the lame segway(who's buying these things?) are produced over-seas anyway. And who wants to buy american cars? It is mostly Japanese, South Korean and German cars that are considered the best bang for the buck.
Automated mining equipment, automated processing plants that separate one mineral from another and triage it into other automated machines, such as smelters.
We need moon-based telescopes, solar collectors, huge inflatable terrariums where it is possible for scientists, engineers and technicians to reside while researching and performing maintenance on the automated equipment.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._ClarkeSir Arthur C. Clarke's collected stories his excellent vision of how a moon base should run and why we need to do it.
...the first graffiti visible from space?
Why pay more to compromise your privacy? Please give me a stripped-down phone that does nothing but allow me to send/receive phone calls and allow me to install java programs that will let me do the same thing and expandable RAM. MP3 players and whatnot can be created using java with very little effort.
Obviously we need laws making it illegal to communicate on the internet.
...Everything has a ripple effect.
Who wants Yet Another Disc Format? Actually, this would fine and great for server backup solutions, but not really for consumer-level stuff like music and videos.
Let's making diamonds!
This opens the gates for a more D&D movies Dark Elf Trilogy or IceWind Dale movie. Or Magic The Gathering movies would be cool, too.
Latitude is flat-itude. Longitude is the other.
Is the water level lowering or is the Antarctict techtonic plate rising? Or is the earth growing fatter (around the equator, that is) and shorter?
As there is no magic utility to tell you what to upgrade, it seems this is a business opportunity. Someone needs to develop this software! Ideally make it cross-platform, so you reach the widest audience and impress the adventurous Linux-ites, BSDers and OSXers. cross-platform C that does not depend on libraries. Just read/write to disk, read/write to memory, do some openGL, aggregate the data and print out suggestions that the user can follow to increase their numbers.
All assuming, of course, that The Powers That Be even want to advance as opposed to just maintaining the bottom line. Business as usual. Free energy for all means oil executives need to find a different way of making money.
This had to all be a ploy on BioWare's part.
If they really meant for NWN to run on platforms other than MS, they would have used OpenGL, SDL, and maybe a little OpenAL for sound(for 3D sound, that is).
There's not much reason to use DirectX anymore, when there are free/crossplatform libraries available.
It's very simple to use SDL for all of your input and networking, and delegate your Hardware Accelerated 3D to OpenGL, and your 3D sound to openAL.
Besides, shouldn't all of these things have been abstracted enough that these modules could just be plugged in under the covers? A little bit of extra time in the design phase goes a very long ways in making your program more flexible and preventing problems.