Yup. Imagine having to turn a crank or flip a switch to turn the beam antenna on top of your car in order to get the right station in!
Oppps. Just turned a corner... Wait a second... Let me re-aim this antenna.
YUCK!
I see several problems with this whole idea...
1) If commercial radio did not have a specific frequency, how would you find it? If your favorite music could be anywhere betweed DC and daylight, it would be a hard job to find it!
2) Wideband receivers cost money, and do not have the same performance of dedicated receivers. Also, they are much more subject to such problems as receiver overload, intermodulation, reduced sensitivity, etc.
3) Beam antennas must be rotated in order to work. If you go to some type of phased-array technology... imagine paying $10,000 for a new car stereo.
4) Spread-spectrum is not a long-term answer. Every spread-spectrum device adds a little to the noise floor. If you have enough, then your receiver gets swamped.
His ideas might work in some type of sci-fi fantasy world where we have robots doing all of our labor for us, and running fusion reactor so that power is free.
In real life, such a utopian vision of the future is at least 20 years off.
Money is a man-made concept that we've invented for ourselves. It does not "exist" unlike the plastic soda bottle that will take hundreds of years to decay. I would rather pay 10x the cost to ensure proper disposal than to get a cheap one-use item that will outlast us all.
Not quite true. Money represents "value" or "worth." What you say is true if the value of something is in human labor. However, fossil fuels also have "value," as well as trees and other natural resources.
Suppose that a recycling plant takes {some huge amount of money} to build. That is not just green pieces of paper (or whatever color money is over there), but bricks made from earth, which probably used a bulldozer to get at. The bulldozer burns fossil fuels! Also, to build the bulldozer (heavy steel content) required mining, which uses fossil fuels. And the raw materials and the finished product for the bulldozer has to be moved all around, which uses more fossil fuels.
I could also go on about the eqipment in the recycling plant, and the trucks used to haul this stuff around, the trees cut down so that the beurocrats in the plant can have papers to push, etc. You get the point.. that almost every dollar impacts the environment.
Note that I am NOT saying that we should not recycle. Just that we DO have to take these things into account in order to have an accurate picture of what is happening.
The scientific reason is that the metre is based on a scientific measurement.
The original basis for the meter was the size of the earth. The metric system is convenient for scientific use, but this is just because everything is based on powers of 10. When they metric system was first being conceived, they could have had the meter be twice as long. Such a measuring system would still be as valid. Obviously, if the length of a meter were changed, the actual numerical values for the fundamental constants would change (avagadro's number, planc lenth, etc.) would all be different, but still just as useful.
The metric system only offers two advantages over the english system:
1) There is only one basic unit per measurement type. This one unit can be modified with standard prefixes (contrast this with ounce/pint/quart/gallon and inch/foot/mile).
2) There are only a few basic units defined, and other units derive from that (a milliliter is one cubic centimeter, and so on.).
There is nothing inherently better about the length of a meter compared to the length of a foot. It is all arbitrary. In fact, if I were to design the metric system over again, I would set the speed of light at 100,000 meters/sec. This would yield a much larger meter, though. But then again, this assumes that a second is already defined. Does anybody remember when Swatch tried to invent a new time system? It went over like a lead balloon, but nobody said that their system was inherently wrong!
I apologize to all for being off topic, but I did not start this.
I would call it defending their lack of brains!
You, sir, are an obvious troll!
I am a previous member of Mensa (but I am too smart to keep giving them my money). I sometimes use Linux at home on a PC that I built myself. I currently work as an electrical engineer in military avionics. And I believe in God and Jesus.
The very fact that you are so sure of your beliefs (or lack thereof) that you are entitled to attack other people who feel differently means you are guilty of the same type of narrow-mindedness that you probably feel Christians to (stereotypicaly) hold.
If you wish to discuss facts and/or opinions, I welcome it. However, please do not resort to insulting people who have done nothing to you.
I read this thread because I am interested in Linux, and Linus. Please leave discussions like this out of it. As far as I know, no church organizations have yet to sue IBM over Linux.
Frankly, I'd say most of the singing ones were worse...except Sherry Bobbins.
AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH. Sherry Bobbins is my absolute favorite -- and they left it off.....
That episode is classic from beginning to end. I can't forget Willie singing "Maniac" with one of those one-man-band contraptions -- and then the water splashes on him. And Sherry and Barney sining "Margaritaville!" And who can forget Grandpa saying "I've never felt so alive! {snore}." And at the end when Homer says that he is sure that they will see Sherry again, and she is sucked into a jet engine. I almost wet myself right there!
Sherry Bobbins is the BEST! Will you marry me, Sherry Bobbins? (don't tell my wife)
Ummmm -- has anybody considered the posibilities?
on
Visiting the Big Bang
·
· Score: 1
I hate to sound like a wierdo, but...
According to the most current theories (AFAIK), the universe begain expanding at around the speed of light. Then, for unknown reasons, it began it's "inflationary" period, where space expanded faster than the speed of light. After a while, back to normal inflation.
The "inflationary" model was sort of a hack to make the theory agree with the observations. No actual reason for what starts it has been proposed AFAIK.
Who is to say that we might not accidentally create a sort of "mini-inflation" at one of these accelerators, thereby destroying the Earth, the Solar System, or even more. Nobody knows what triggered inflation. What if we do it accidentaly?
I know that this idea sounds absurd. It probably even IS absurd. But... do we really know? Remember - the Relativity was considered by most to be absurd when it first appeared.
Before all of the replies saying that digital is for geeks and film will forever rule, please be sure that you have used current and professional quality digital gear, including 35mm gear made by Canon or Nikon with standard lens mounts, digital medium or digital large format backs (depending on the type of vs. film comparison you plan to make).
I disagree. You can put together quite a nice film-based SLR system for around $500-800 or so (camera and lenses -- tripods/bags/filters extra). To get similar quality from a digital SLR would add at least $1000 (probably more) to the price tag. $1000 will buy a lot of film and processing. I am sticking with film for now.
I don't want to star a flame war, but look at resale prices for digital vs. film. Even 20-year-old film cameras can still command a respectable resale value. A 3-year-old digicam is almost considered worthless these days.
I actually saw a Sigma camera in person that featured this sensor -- in February 2002 at the Photo Marketers Association convention in Orlando. This is neat stuff, but let's get current here!
Choosing cots. products, standard protocols etc. when its possible is a great way to reduce the cost and timeframe of a project like this.
Ummmm. This sounds like a disaster in the making.
Space equipment is exposed to a constant barrage of radiation. In RAM cells, the data is basicly stored as a charge on a capacitor. All it takes is one gamma ray to hit the wrong spot, knock a few electrons loose, and a "0" changes to a "1". If this happens in program memory, you may have a jump to a random location.
There are radiation-hardened FPGAs and such, but I am not sure is those count as "COTS"
Aren't Luky Skywalker's binocs supposed to be oil lens models in the original Star Wars: A New Hope (episode 3).
IIRC, this was mentioned in the old novelization.
Everybody should freely share everything and love one another, like they do on Star Trek. The Federation has no need for money, even the warlike Klingon empire has advanced past the need for capitalism. Only the short, swarthy, large-nosed, devolved Ferengi use money.
Oh yeah????? Every citizen of the federation does NOT have their own starship. If I was a citizen, I would want my own Enterprise. But since everybody does not have one, there must be a reason. I suspect that it is cost...
Slashdot Mirror
Oppps. Just turned a corner... Wait a second... Let me re-aim this antenna.
YUCK!
I see several problems with this whole idea...
1) If commercial radio did not have a specific frequency, how would you find it? If your favorite music could be anywhere betweed DC and daylight, it would be a hard job to find it!
2) Wideband receivers cost money, and do not have the same performance of dedicated receivers. Also, they are much more subject to such problems as receiver overload, intermodulation, reduced sensitivity, etc.
3) Beam antennas must be rotated in order to work. If you go to some type of phased-array technology ... imagine paying $10,000 for a new car stereo.
4) Spread-spectrum is not a long-term answer. Every spread-spectrum device adds a little to the noise floor. If you have enough, then your receiver gets swamped.
His ideas might work in some type of sci-fi fantasy world where we have robots doing all of our labor for us, and running fusion reactor so that power is free.
In real life, such a utopian vision of the future is at least 20 years off.
Not quite true. Money represents "value" or "worth." What you say is true if the value of something is in human labor. However, fossil fuels also have "value," as well as trees and other natural resources. Suppose that a recycling plant takes {some huge amount of money} to build. That is not just green pieces of paper (or whatever color money is over there), but bricks made from earth, which probably used a bulldozer to get at. The bulldozer burns fossil fuels! Also, to build the bulldozer (heavy steel content) required mining, which uses fossil fuels. And the raw materials and the finished product for the bulldozer has to be moved all around, which uses more fossil fuels.
I could also go on about the eqipment in the recycling plant, and the trucks used to haul this stuff around, the trees cut down so that the beurocrats in the plant can have papers to push, etc. You get the point .. that almost every dollar impacts the environment.
Note that I am NOT saying that we should not recycle. Just that we DO have to take these things into account in order to have an accurate picture of what is happening.
The original basis for the meter was the size of the earth. The metric system is convenient for scientific use, but this is just because everything is based on powers of 10. When they metric system was first being conceived, they could have had the meter be twice as long. Such a measuring system would still be as valid. Obviously, if the length of a meter were changed, the actual numerical values for the fundamental constants would change (avagadro's number, planc lenth, etc.) would all be different, but still just as useful.
The metric system only offers two advantages over the english system:
1) There is only one basic unit per measurement type. This one unit can be modified with standard prefixes (contrast this with ounce/pint/quart/gallon and inch/foot/mile).
2) There are only a few basic units defined, and other units derive from that (a milliliter is one cubic centimeter, and so on.).
There is nothing inherently better about the length of a meter compared to the length of a foot. It is all arbitrary. In fact, if I were to design the metric system over again, I would set the speed of light at 100,000 meters/sec. This would yield a much larger meter, though. But then again, this assumes that a second is already defined. Does anybody remember when Swatch tried to invent a new time system? It went over like a lead balloon, but nobody said that their system was inherently wrong!
You, sir, are an obvious troll!
I am a previous member of Mensa (but I am too smart to keep giving them my money). I sometimes use Linux at home on a PC that I built myself. I currently work as an electrical engineer in military avionics. And I believe in God and Jesus.
The very fact that you are so sure of your beliefs (or lack thereof) that you are entitled to attack other people who feel differently means you are guilty of the same type of narrow-mindedness that you probably feel Christians to (stereotypicaly) hold.
If you wish to discuss facts and/or opinions, I welcome it. However, please do not resort to insulting people who have done nothing to you.
I read this thread because I am interested in Linux, and Linus. Please leave discussions like this out of it. As far as I know, no church organizations have yet to sue IBM over Linux.
That episode is classic from beginning to end. I can't forget Willie singing "Maniac" with one of those one-man-band contraptions -- and then the water splashes on him. And Sherry and Barney sining "Margaritaville!" And who can forget Grandpa saying "I've never felt so alive! {snore}." And at the end when Homer says that he is sure that they will see Sherry again, and she is sucked into a jet engine. I almost wet myself right there!
Sherry Bobbins is the BEST! Will you marry me, Sherry Bobbins? (don't tell my wife)
According to the most current theories (AFAIK), the universe begain expanding at around the speed of light. Then, for unknown reasons, it began it's "inflationary" period, where space expanded faster than the speed of light. After a while, back to normal inflation.
The "inflationary" model was sort of a hack to make the theory agree with the observations. No actual reason for what starts it has been proposed AFAIK.
Who is to say that we might not accidentally create a sort of "mini-inflation" at one of these accelerators, thereby destroying the Earth, the Solar System, or even more. Nobody knows what triggered inflation. What if we do it accidentaly?
I know that this idea sounds absurd. It probably even IS absurd. But ... do we really know? Remember - the Relativity was considered by most to be absurd when it first appeared.
I don't want to star a flame war, but look at resale prices for digital vs. film. Even 20-year-old film cameras can still command a respectable resale value. A 3-year-old digicam is almost considered worthless these days.
I actually saw a Sigma camera in person that featured this sensor -- in February 2002 at the Photo Marketers Association convention in Orlando. This is neat stuff, but let's get current here!
Ummmm. This sounds like a disaster in the making.
Space equipment is exposed to a constant barrage of radiation. In RAM cells, the data is basicly stored as a charge on a capacitor. All it takes is one gamma ray to hit the wrong spot, knock a few electrons loose, and a "0" changes to a "1". If this happens in program memory, you may have a jump to a random location.
There are radiation-hardened FPGAs and such, but I am not sure is those count as "COTS"
Aren't Luky Skywalker's binocs supposed to be oil lens models in the original Star Wars: A New Hope (episode 3). IIRC, this was mentioned in the old novelization.
Oh yeah????? Every citizen of the federation does NOT have their own starship. If I was a citizen, I would want my own Enterprise. But since everybody does not have one, there must be a reason. I suspect that it is cost...