Nuclear reactors don't have to be all that heavy. The Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft had plutonium power cells. You pretty much can scale nuclear power to whatever size and power you need. (We don't usually use small power plants simply because it's more cost effective to power devices other ways.)
Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) have been going into space for quite a few years now. Basically you wrap fins around a slug of Plutonium 238 and suck the heat. They run as the hot end of little single-piston or acoustic stirling generators (cold end being a radiator into deep space) in some applications. You end up with a long-term, compact electricity source.
With this sort of long-term electricity source you can potentially run a VASMIR engine for a very, very long time. I think some interesting examples of how far continuous thrust could take you were worked out in "A Step Further Out" (Pournelle) a few years ago. Interesting reading.
Check out the progress of various countries' Smart Grid initiatives. Some are fairly well advanced, and they include alternative forms of energy - renewables such as wind, and MicroCHP designs (Volkswagen-Lichtblich, Whispergen in New Zealand) etc. with incentives to allow individuals to sell the surplus back to the grid. Not all grids are capable of this, thus the upgrades going around. Distributed sources, and the V-L version at least expected to remove the need for a couple of fission generators per year. There are a number of decent studies appearing, from energy firms and independent government reports. Good reading.
You answer all your phone calls? I'm impressed. Long ago I learned the serenity that comes from learning to ignore the telephone ringing when answering it would be inconvenient.
Advertising gets weirder and weirder. I don't understand how this is supposed to get someone to buy a car. The only thing I could think of is she didn't had a car so maybe she's supposed to buy a Toyota so she can get the hell away? I think it's lost on me.
Hang on, what makes you think those threats were just advertising? They really are desperate to move those cars.
And let's add redneck pick-up truck drivers to the list as well. Anyone who plasters a decal of Calvin pissing on their favorite thing to hate should be charged with urinating in public. Seriously.
That would be the fault of Sales. Marketing would be to put the decals on the wheels and get every dog to do your job for you.
...In a society like that, are people like us really going to be enlisting for the space navy, to spend a career wiping...(FTFY)
Implicit in your question is that the people of the future would have the same goals. Maybe so, maybe no.
I remember one story where an old-world interloper was roundly confused about the change in the terms "rich" and "poor". "That job pays very well" described one highly challenging job. The confusion - the story conflict - was in the fact that the colonial culture was post-money (production of everything material was robotized and replicated, sort of like the Trek universe) whereas the intruder went rather crazy with a material focus, and couldn't understand why people were calling him "poor" when he had so much stuff.
Huge paradigm shift, and invisible to the character was that the coin had changed to "respect".
So in that context at least, how are you going to attract the chicks when everybody as that sound system, that car, that kitchen? Being arbiters of the next generation, they're going to go for the money - in this case, something more than things, blings and flings.
So I could easily see someone enlisting in the space navy and scrubbing the metaphloors for reasons we can't fathom now.
Isn't that just FANTASY rather than science-based fiction? Heck by your reckoning Harry Potter and Buffy are science fiction (human beings in different situations). I think pretty much everything we view or read is Fantasy, and very little of it qualifies as science-based stories. Star Wars for example - clearly a fantasy - magic and all.
Perhaps, it's difficult to argue about the line between the two genera. But one thing they do have in common is that by some means they break out of the mundane, real world of limitations and allow people to imagine themselves as larger than life, to make grand assumptions (the willing suspension of disbelief) that means you can step past current understandings and jump into a world where imagination is the only limit. One is more facts-and-logic focused perhaps, one more an exposition of Clarke's Law, or Zelazney's: Gods acting like humans, or humans acting like gods.
Sure, it's only make-believe. But children are adept at it, and they are the greatest learning engines we know.
Perhaps if more of us knew how to blithely ignore reality and could play like children do, we'd have more people acting a lot brighter and engaged in solving the problems of today that will extend well into the future. More Zephraim Cochranes, if you will.
Ok, now back to hard reality... should a Huntard continue leatherworking as a skill, or are the epic shoulders a bad investment in time? Is there a good chain helm available via that skill? Is it ever permissible to bring a tenacity pet into an instance*? What's the best DPS build? Where can I get a bow as good as the Trueshot...
The old Trek shows were rather nice because they used real SF writers - Harlan Ellison, Alan Dean Foster, David Gerrold and others. When you put ideas and plot together in a futuristic setting, you have good SF. In later years they thought they could substitute their own authors and stock plot lines and nobody would notice. It kind of worked, they ended up with fewer people in the audience to notice...
200 years ago (if sci-fi writers existed then - did they?)
Orlando Furioso appeared in 1516 and involved space travel - specifically, a trip to the moon. Bit more of a fantasy story than pure SF as Horace Gold would have described it, but it's not totally out of character.
Oh, and you're quite right about one thing. The latest info Wikipedia has on Ford engine spark plug gaps is on the Ford FE engine. Can someone with later plug gap data please update the Wiki?
While it's not a useless device, it's hardly a godsend to the native tribes of equatorial New Guinea.
Not entirely true. The native tribes of equatorial New Guinea are often employed as heavy equipment operators in mining operations, and use some fairly sophisticated equipment in their trade. A good portable encyclopedia is useful in that context. They may dress differently and have their own social customs at home, but a substantial portion of them are quite literate and sophisticated and in the modern job market. Your prejudices are showing, I suggest you update them.
The word you're looking for is either "Machiavellian" or "Draconian".
Or, considering how they're trying to make the world of today's sound technology fit exactly into the format of a round thing with a hole in it, "Procrustean".
Essentially they seem to be upset with him discussing this case on his blog
I don't think that was necessarily their primary source of upset.
It's worth reading some of Ray's discussions on RIAA strategy - you'll pick up just how the RIAA was bundling up dozens of John Doe discovery sessions in a fishing expedition, then throwing them at the court in a lump and engineering things such that individual defendants didn't have time to respond in court. Kind of like a class action suit in reverse, I think. Anyway you can't do that, and should't be allowed to get away with that. They're upset because Ray effectively put a marlinspike in their wheels by dismantling RIAA's attempts to judge a large group people as a group, and I think they were rather stung by his article in one of the well-read journals of the legal profession.
And when you have rule of law, you can't judge people as groups - you can only pin infractions or grievances on individuals. "Group Justice" went out of favour as a legal principle in WWII.
With ubiquitous cellular broadband practically everywhere (that matters) and phones with good web browsers in them, this is a solution looking for a problem.
That's terribly rude of you, and arrogant. There are places where this is the solution to a problem, the problem being "distance". When your "ubiquitous" means at least planetary in scope, your point will hold true.
I don't associate the gambling industry with organized crime, but I consider it predatory. Still, gotta legalize it or it'll just be run by criminals again.
Or continue to be run by the same criminals, but with their operation legalised. Gambling is pretty tightly government controlled here in Australia, and they do work hard to keep the mob and mob-related people out. The occasional flutter on Melbourne Cup Day however is seen as patriotism by most, not gambling. But the Casinos are neither owned nor operated by the Government, and you know who the investors are going to align with. It's not for nothing the favorite media euphemism for a certain job category is "colourful racing personality".
If you stay out of the finance end of gambling you might get to keep your kneecaps, no matter who runs it. Just remember, Las Vegas wasn't built by winning gamblers - Las Vegas was built on the backs of losers.
I don't mind buying the occasional lottery ticket (not often) because I consider it a fun thing to underwrite the sudden wealth of some poor sod somewhere in the country. Luck tax, if you like. But ponies, pokies, roulette & all that? You're just paying someone else's neon bill. Do the math.
Not sure, mate. We get a few odd confused impressions about what it is from down here in Melbourne, best way to describe it is "two cities divided by a common language" [citation somewhere, can't be buggered to chase it up]. But there are a few clues - $30 for lunch (can you do that in NY nowdays?) vs. the guilty $6 sandwich here makes me think an underemployed lawyer in New York may be making more absolute than your average corporate exec down here. It's about proportion, I guess, but... I've also heard people from New York say "everything west of the East River is camping out". That's not really arrogant, is it? Probably not indicative.
You go ahead and dream of your electric sheep though, I don't mind. Just don't electrocute yourself by standing in a wet paddock. XD
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yes but if we use all the comets, where will we get the ice without bugs in it to cool the oceans to combat global warming?
I think we Oort to have enough.
Nuclear reactors don't have to be all that heavy. The Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft had plutonium power cells. You pretty much can scale nuclear power to whatever size and power you need. (We don't usually use small power plants simply because it's more cost effective to power devices other ways.)
Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) have been going into space for quite a few years now. Basically you wrap fins around a slug of Plutonium 238 and suck the heat. They run as the hot end of little single-piston or acoustic stirling generators (cold end being a radiator into deep space) in some applications. You end up with a long-term, compact electricity source.
With this sort of long-term electricity source you can potentially run a VASMIR engine for a very, very long time. I think some interesting examples of how far continuous thrust could take you were worked out in "A Step Further Out" (Pournelle) a few years ago. Interesting reading.
Check out the progress of various countries' Smart Grid initiatives. Some are fairly well advanced, and they include alternative forms of energy - renewables such as wind, and MicroCHP designs (Volkswagen-Lichtblich, Whispergen in New Zealand) etc. with incentives to allow individuals to sell the surplus back to the grid. Not all grids are capable of this, thus the upgrades going around. Distributed sources, and the V-L version at least expected to remove the need for a couple of fission generators per year. There are a number of decent studies appearing, from energy firms and independent government reports. Good reading.
Thank the Pasta for that, Mr. Godwin.
You answer all your phone calls? I'm impressed. Long ago I learned the serenity that comes from learning to ignore the telephone ringing when answering it would be inconvenient.
Advertising gets weirder and weirder. I don't understand how this is supposed to get someone to buy a car. The only thing I could think of is she didn't had a car so maybe she's supposed to buy a Toyota so she can get the hell away? I think it's lost on me.
Hang on, what makes you think those threats were just advertising? They really are desperate to move those cars.
And let's add redneck pick-up truck drivers to the list as well. Anyone who plasters a decal of Calvin pissing on their favorite thing to hate should be charged with urinating in public. Seriously.
That would be the fault of Sales. Marketing would be to put the decals on the wheels and get every dog to do your job for you.
I have to read whistle codes spoken into a telephone you insensitive clod!
only a total of 5m live in finland . So something is wrong with that calculation.
Given the size and population of Vatican City, there are approximately two Popes per square kilometre.
No, it's true! For example, it's impossible for this post to refer to itself in such a way that it completes its
... looks like Wal-Mart did not follow some basic security practices...
Oh, that's so funny it hurts. I think my ears are bleeding.
This wouldn't be a case of "you get what you pay for" now would it?
...In a society like that, are people like us really going to be enlisting for the space navy, to spend a career wiping...(FTFY)
Implicit in your question is that the people of the future would have the same goals. Maybe so, maybe no.
I remember one story where an old-world interloper was roundly confused about the change in the terms "rich" and "poor". "That job pays very well" described one highly challenging job. The confusion - the story conflict - was in the fact that the colonial culture was post-money (production of everything material was robotized and replicated, sort of like the Trek universe) whereas the intruder went rather crazy with a material focus, and couldn't understand why people were calling him "poor" when he had so much stuff.
Huge paradigm shift, and invisible to the character was that the coin had changed to "respect".
So in that context at least, how are you going to attract the chicks when everybody as that sound system, that car, that kitchen? Being arbiters of the next generation, they're going to go for the money - in this case, something more than things, blings and flings.
So I could easily see someone enlisting in the space navy and scrubbing the metaphloors for reasons we can't fathom now.
Isn't that just FANTASY rather than science-based fiction? Heck by your reckoning Harry Potter and Buffy are science fiction (human beings in different situations). I think pretty much everything we view or read is Fantasy, and very little of it qualifies as science-based stories. Star Wars for example - clearly a fantasy - magic and all.
Perhaps, it's difficult to argue about the line between the two genera. But one thing they do have in common is that by some means they break out of the mundane, real world of limitations and allow people to imagine themselves as larger than life, to make grand assumptions (the willing suspension of disbelief) that means you can step past current understandings and jump into a world where imagination is the only limit. One is more facts-and-logic focused perhaps, one more an exposition of Clarke's Law, or Zelazney's: Gods acting like humans, or humans acting like gods.
Sure, it's only make-believe. But children are adept at it, and they are the greatest learning engines we know.
Perhaps if more of us knew how to blithely ignore reality and could play like children do, we'd have more people acting a lot brighter and engaged in solving the problems of today that will extend well into the future. More Zephraim Cochranes, if you will.
Ok, now back to hard reality ... should a Huntard continue leatherworking as a skill, or are the epic shoulders a bad investment in time? Is there a good chain helm available via that skill? Is it ever permissible to bring a tenacity pet into an instance*? What's the best DPS build? Where can I get a bow as good as the Trueshot...
*No.
The old Trek shows were rather nice because they used real SF writers - Harlan Ellison, Alan Dean Foster, David Gerrold and others. When you put ideas and plot together in a futuristic setting, you have good SF. In later years they thought they could substitute their own authors and stock plot lines and nobody would notice. It kind of worked, they ended up with fewer people in the audience to notice...
200 years ago (if sci-fi writers existed then - did they?)
Orlando Furioso appeared in 1516 and involved space travel - specifically, a trip to the moon. Bit more of a fantasy story than pure SF as Horace Gold would have described it, but it's not totally out of character.
Oh, and you're quite right about one thing. The latest info Wikipedia has on Ford engine spark plug gaps is on the Ford FE engine. Can someone with later plug gap data please update the Wiki?
While it's not a useless device, it's hardly a godsend to the native tribes of equatorial New Guinea.
Not entirely true. The native tribes of equatorial New Guinea are often employed as heavy equipment operators in mining operations, and use some fairly sophisticated equipment in their trade. A good portable encyclopedia is useful in that context. They may dress differently and have their own social customs at home, but a substantial portion of them are quite literate and sophisticated and in the modern job market. Your prejudices are showing, I suggest you update them.
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." - Yogi Berra (iirc)
Laugh till cry.
The word you're looking for is either "Machiavellian" or "Draconian".
Or, considering how they're trying to make the world of today's sound technology fit exactly into the format of a round thing with a hole in it, "Procrustean".
Just chop off the bits that don't fit...
Essentially they seem to be upset with him discussing this case on his blog
I don't think that was necessarily their primary source of upset.
It's worth reading some of Ray's discussions on RIAA strategy - you'll pick up just how the RIAA was bundling up dozens of John Doe discovery sessions in a fishing expedition, then throwing them at the court in a lump and engineering things such that individual defendants didn't have time to respond in court. Kind of like a class action suit in reverse, I think. Anyway you can't do that, and should't be allowed to get away with that. They're upset because Ray effectively put a marlinspike in their wheels by dismantling RIAA's attempts to judge a large group people as a group, and I think they were rather stung by his article in one of the well-read journals of the legal profession.
And when you have rule of law, you can't judge people as groups - you can only pin infractions or grievances on individuals. "Group Justice" went out of favour as a legal principle in WWII.
The comment about him being "less than forthcoming" also makes me wonder
Heh... Translation: They haven't found anything in his background they could use for blackmail.
With ubiquitous cellular broadband practically everywhere (that matters) and phones with good web browsers in them, this is a solution looking for a problem.
That's terribly rude of you, and arrogant. There are places where this is the solution to a problem, the problem being "distance". When your "ubiquitous" means at least planetary in scope, your point will hold true.
I don't associate the gambling industry with organized crime, but I consider it predatory. Still, gotta legalize it or it'll just be run by criminals again.
Or continue to be run by the same criminals, but with their operation legalised. Gambling is pretty tightly government controlled here in Australia, and they do work hard to keep the mob and mob-related people out. The occasional flutter on Melbourne Cup Day however is seen as patriotism by most, not gambling. But the Casinos are neither owned nor operated by the Government, and you know who the investors are going to align with. It's not for nothing the favorite media euphemism for a certain job category is "colourful racing personality".
If you stay out of the finance end of gambling you might get to keep your kneecaps, no matter who runs it. Just remember, Las Vegas wasn't built by winning gamblers - Las Vegas was built on the backs of losers.
I don't mind buying the occasional lottery ticket (not often) because I consider it a fun thing to underwrite the sudden wealth of some poor sod somewhere in the country. Luck tax, if you like. But ponies, pokies, roulette & all that? You're just paying someone else's neon bill. Do the math.
What part of "New York" confuses you?
Not sure, mate. We get a few odd confused impressions about what it is from down here in Melbourne, best way to describe it is "two cities divided by a common language" [citation somewhere, can't be buggered to chase it up]. But there are a few clues - $30 for lunch (can you do that in NY nowdays?) vs. the guilty $6 sandwich here makes me think an underemployed lawyer in New York may be making more absolute than your average corporate exec down here. It's about proportion, I guess, but ... I've also heard people from New York say "everything west of the East River is camping out". That's not really arrogant, is it? Probably not indicative.
You go ahead and dream of your electric sheep though, I don't mind. Just don't electrocute yourself by standing in a wet paddock. XD