More/Better than I had hoped for... I love when that happens
I meant to talk about Arthur but deleted that section while I was re-thinking a bit. Arthor/Merlin is certainly the clearest literary relative. Yes he had Beowulf, and numerous other mythological sources from which to draw on and he did. What I was reffering to is he didn't have a well trodden modern forum to tell his stiched together tale in. With the exception of Arthur most of those sources were and are very removed from common forms of modern story telling. Generally not very appealing to the masses in their raw form and often suffering from the limitations of translations.
Fantasy just didn't exist then as it does now. Simple Fact. It lived as mythos certainly, most commonly studied in acadamia as the remains of ancient cultures and fairy tales. One more along the lines of dusty historical study ( but certainly not always ) and the other simple moralistic bed time tales for tots. And today a new fantasy story or even epic is nothing odd and as you say has its section in most all book stores..and its the currently well worn paths and well explored possibilities which are the fertile ground from which Rowling springs. I did not think saying Tolkien was the father of the mordern genre of fantasy would be contraversial. You will find few if any authors in the genre that don't point to him as the trailblazer. Heinlien, Asmiov and of course the earlier tales of Verne have a similar place in the foundation of sci-fi as we know it today.
As for the Hobbits. In your list I take exception to one thing. Needy. They are not Needy. I take it you mean in terms of needing protection. But thats just the point. They don't need protection. In the end it is their so called protectors that need protection from themselves. However, if you are primarily choosing that interpretation based on the movies I yield the field. Jackson certainly played that angle up.
As for why I'm so obstinate about it... think of the Shire. Are the Hobbits children ? Who cares for them, who sows their crops, bakes their bread, run their towns ? Who provides them with their life of happiness and ease ? Who provides for their safety ? I think the answers are obvious, at least in the book, and very at odds with the idea that they are 'needy children'.
This and the stature of Frodo/Sam/Merry/Pippin is something that has a chance to sink in when reading the story as a great deal of time is spent in the shire both at the beginning and end. You have the feeling of community and of Frodo's place in it along with his friends. But even so the movie does touch on it.. in the Tavern and parties are they drinking milk or Ale ?? do they speak to their elders as surrogates or with respectful equality. Small things yes but telling if one takes the time to think on it.
Innocents they are, but children they are not, and to me that is a very very very important distinction.
If you take that view from a long ago reading and from the movies Its easy to take them as children, casting Elija Wood certainly didn't help. In fact if we were only considering the movies we would have no debate on the point at all as I would agree. Jackson generally portrayed them as chlidren and its about my only real disagreement with how he chose to bring the tale to the screen.
Nothing like a good fun book debate, prepare to defend yourself further:-)
Well my case in point is I think your comparison is failry accurate vis a vie the character matchups... especially Dumbledore/Gandalf. I disagree about the child figure of the hobbits though thats a side issue. But the thing is Potter archtypes do match up to LOTR archtypes... but where do the LOTR archtypes come from ? Tolkien created his world from next to nothing. From scraps. He is largely credited with creating the fantasy genre. Thus Rowling is ploting a path through well known terrirtory where Tolkien was Lewis and Clark.
Two bones I will pick is regarding the 'singing' and the hobbits as children. The singing and verse sections if you take the time to read them are not extraneous in the least. I am not much for poertry, or reading lyrics but those elements in Tolkien are far from frivolous, or excessive. They are a very key element in the story. I do however understand them being seen as non-essential trimming as once I did as well. They are easy to bypass in search of the 'story'. But doing so causes you to miss out. Its like the difference between visiting the sights in Paris for a day and staying long enough to get off the tourist merry go round to actually see the city. To feel its pulse as it were, to perhaps become a resident, if only for a little while and truly see it as opposed to passing through. All of that seeming 'supurflous' trimming is Tolkien allowing a chance to stay a while in Middle earth, allowing you to explore the knooks and crannies. As such everytime I have re-read the ring trilogy I have come away with something new. Some new favorit element of the tale I missed before when my eyes were drawn only to that which pushed the band of the fellowship forward.
I have never gotten that from re-reading the Potter books. I didn't miss anything the first time. But the story is just as enjoyable, just as delightfully addictive. That is no small feat.
Regarding the Hobbits as 'child like'.... I just never have understood that view. Frodo is 50+ and Sam not far behind. but regarding them as Children is perhaps the mistake of the enemy in the Trilogy. They are innocents, and the child like physical stature certainly exagerates that impression. But they are not children. Incidently the playing up of 'child like' by Jackson was one of my few nits with his masterful work on the screen. They are small certainly, but to me their smallness is more like the smallness of the residents of a Polynessian villiage living in bliss in the Southpacific during WWII. They are so far re-moved from the troubles in the world and at first blush have nothing to gain and everything to loose by venturing forth as well as nothing to offer in return for their loss. But in the end it is for that reason that they are the ones who contribute the most to the cause of good.
View them as Childlike as you wish. Interpretations are on the whole pretty personal.... I just have always thought it a view that limits LOTR. Pottter IS a Child, and that makes a very large difference in my book. He is directly tied to Voldemort, unlike The Hobbits and Sauron. He has power, and he is the boy that lived. The Hobbits are ignored and have only their innocence and heart. Potter has vengence in his heart, the Hobbits just want the buisness over with so they can return to their quiet forgetten corner of the world.
Whats the life span ? IE would this be similar to an imunization ? Perhaps something that remained in your system and attacked any deffective cells that later developed? Or would this essentially leave once there were no deffective cells left to continue the cycle ?
What risks are there of it mutating and attacking healthy cells on its own ? how about mistakes in.... ummm.. hell manufacturing I guess. Could an honest production mistake create a harmfull variant... like a bad batch of coke syrup ?
I'm all for it. However, I do find it somewhat amusing after the uproar arround the glowing fish to hear people now talk in a positive way about the possibility of a self replicating benificial disease that could itslef become as ubiquitous as the Common cold if indeed it prooves to be communicable.
At anyrate this is something they had damned well better be sure off ALL raminfications before letting it loose. Genetics allows us to take our evolution into our own hands, place it at the beck and call of our concious will. Ultimately I think it has far more important benifit/disaster duality in our future than the power to split ( or fuse if we manage ) atoms.
In a way I can see your point. Abstractly I might even be able to agree with you. However in the end while they certainly are pinicales of literary and perhaps cienematic achievement, I do not see them as peers. However, Rowling still has some writing to do and until its all said and done its just speculation.
But Potter, fabulous as the story is, is not LOTR. Certainly more ascessible. Certainly more friendly. It just dosn't swing the same weight in my mind yet. Argue about numbers of pages all you like but I don't see it. If the number of words, or pages were a true mark of depth and meangin what would that say about the Decleration of Independence ? The Gettysburg Address ? Or if you whish to stay in the literary world what about any of the works of Shakespere ? You can fit all of his works in a single binding and yet would you say that has much bearing on its significance and place in history ?
Ultimately I class Potter against The Chronicles of Narnia, ironic considering those tales heavy Christian slant and the 'witch craft' non-sense that surrounds Potter. In the end great works do not re-place one another. They are what they are. Great works that many apprieciate for different reasons. Some will fade from popularity, some will remain but now that they are written they will forever have a place as long as we care to keep them about.
Again you ranked the plane at its max possible efficiency and the car for 1 person or worst possible.
granted at max capacity you get 4.7gpsh for 106 smpg at 500mph. Sounds damn good. And for a plane it is damn good. But in the end its the 500mph thats the key not the 'efficiency'. If seating capacity is 500 then thats 2350gpsh if there is just one person sitting there meaning less than a mile per gallon... though I grant the plane would get somewhat better mileage if there were only one person in it... but not a whole lot better.
By your same figuring one person riding in a taurus consumes 2gpsh for 31smpg at 62 mph.
2 get 1gpsh for 62smpg at 62mph 3 get.666 gpsh for 93smpg at 62 mph 4 get.5 gpsh for 124 smpg at 62mph
as you can see your taurus at max capacity getting highway cruise gas mileage tops the efficiency of your max capacity plane operating at max efficiency by a fair margian. And you could stuff 5 people in though not comfortably over long distances. The plane will rarely be all the way at max though I grant you it will in general be above 80%. Planes do generally fly close to capacity, but it only takes a few underbooked flights at odd hours to throw the fleets efficiency numbers well off this theoretical max by a significant amount.
But the car can only travel less than 1/5th the speed of the plane and that brings us back to that 500 mph, sitting with 500 people for 2 hours to go 1000 miles is more pleasent than 4 people in a sedan for ~16 hours. Thus the plane certianly is more TIME efficient but that is not the same as fuel efficiency.
Your probably off on the trains.. the incredibly low rolling resistence of the rails in addition to efficiency of scale combine to give it substantial efficiency over cars. All in all rail travel is probably the most efficient form of powered motion.
the only other thing I can think of that you left out you noted in cars.. IE if your traveling with one person your rating is one thing and if you travel with more your rating is another. (something many people forget in their SUV rantings)
That 747 is not always operating at capacity and it dosn't take to many seats unfilled before that max efficiency per seat starts looking pretty bad. In general planes only start reaching car levels of efficiencies in the BIG movers where the efficiency of scale begins to swing the balance in their favor.
In general planes are seriously power hungry compared to cars for one simple reason.. it takes more energy to lift off than to roll. Helicopters make planes look like scroodge mcduck even in the best of cases becasue instead of climbing a hill they are doing chinups.
Anyway my point is Planes salivate over reaching similar efficiencies levels as a car.... IE evaluate a car based on max capacity rather than single capacity the same way the 747 is. Cars are far more eficient per amount of energy expended in general, they just are not used to full potential nearly as often as a plane, which is the only reason it looks like they are in similar company at all.... and the reason a plane can compete, barely, with cars and even then it has prooven to be skewed towards flights of significant distances where the greater speed of flying has the advantage over cars/trains or when flying over seas where the only other option is even slower than driving would be.
Eh I'm not sure you couldn't fit it all in the dash of a delorean...
more silly thoughts:
if the delorean can hold preasure in a vacum environment and travel in space then you just have to travel back far enough that your in space/orbit etc... then you just need something pinpoint your location... IE constelations ( equipment used on Apollo or gps, whatever.
one of the quirks I came up with when thinking along these lines a while back was story using this as a 'cheap' access to space, ie you couldn't really travel far back in time but you coule travel far enough back that you were in orbit to the earth moving. Case you couldn't tell I'm not much for thinking up story lines.
fancy computing trying to land somewhere on the earth is pretty much pointless due to the relaitvely short time periods it would be viable for. I forget what the earths speed around the sun is but its (1/365/24)th of the circumference of the earths orbit per hour around the sun which is pretty damn big... ie (pie au^2). I imagine much more than an hour lands you in space by a fair margian for sure... hell if that long.
I've always thought that was an obvious answer to that question. But few seem to get it. I guess most people just don't think of the earth as moving.
Boggle this, If time travel is possible and it didn't alter your co-ordinates in space/time.. IE you travel back but to the place where you where then waiting where you are the earth will come back at exactly the time you left it ( hmm thats assuming you didn't keep your current vector either which likely would not be the case, actually come to think of it with out the earths gravitational field you would be subjected to a centripidal slingshot away from earths vector ). However If you travel towards the earth you will reach it at some time between the time you traveled from and the time you traveld too. Depending on just how fast the earth is moving you could have an upper limit on how far in the future time travel is cracked that they could reasonably travel here to visit ( if you hold to the limit of Light speed and that time travel dosn't break it either ). IE you can travel to anywhen instantaneously but still not to anywhere instantaneously.
hmmm lets see... say the earth is traveling at 5% the speed of light and the fastest the potential visitor could travel in space is 10% the speed of light then your relative velocity traveling to earth should be 15% the speed of light. If time travel where invented in 20 years then the earth would be 1 light year away from its present location. The visitor could arrive no earlier than what.. 7 or so years from now ?
when traveling to the past you can always reach eath before you left it by slowing down relative to the earth.. IE it will catch up to you eventually. However this poses an intersting proposition regarding traveling forward in time. IE you travel forward but keep the location of the past and now have to catch up to the earth.. its concievable you could never reach the future before you would have gotten there anyway if ther isn't a technology for traveling faster than whatever the earths ultimate vector is.
and you do not seem to understand the context of the examples discussed in the article. Go get a copy of the CAIB report and go take a gander at the offending slide. Its ludicrous that the information of such importance is in such a 'presentation'to begin with. It was ludicrous when it was used and monumentally ludicrous in hindsight.
Pitching a new soda and explaining the culmination of several engineers work anylizing debris impacts are two very very very very differnt cases. They are however both presntations. One calls for catchy quick information and the other calls for nitty gritty in depth information that simply is impossible to convey with such a limited tool as M$ Power Point.
Granted I agree the problem isn't so much the program as the decision to use it so inapporprately by many people that would be better served choosing other means of presentation more geared to passing on more detailed information.
RFID bauble triggers a query to the credit company, clerk has a display that shows your picture retrived from the CC companies database, or even better a quick cam is used to capture a picture as well for the transaction. Not for facial recognition to be used... unless its feasible time wise and cheap enough... but for a sales record and tacking down false offenders. Toss in a fingerprint ID scan and you have a tough nut to crack and a serious trail of evidence if you are a fraud.. IE fingerprint and picture.
so
Wave the card/key chain faub or whatever put your finger on the fingerprint widget and look at the camera, clerk compares you to the image on the screen and you go about your buisness. Fingerprint and image for the transaction are stored localy and remotely by the credit company. Reciept for the transaction is stored on the faub/card.
should not take more than a couple seconds once your used to it... deffiantly faster than the wait for reciept. sign return copy etc....
Now I'm not a huge fan of big brother stuff like this... not sure if I would really be for this one or not. But it could make face to face POS transactions fairly secure.
One question I have is if this becomes standard how does it affect online/phone transactions ? I suppose you still have a number but can that be improved upon ?
Just because you have an electronic system dosn't mean you have to open it up to more than official polling places. In fact to avoid the problem of selling votes it would be almost impossible to allow voting to be done from home/office etc.... By suggesting more places I was not saying being able to vote from your home computer etc... I meant having more polling locations. You make places to poll as ubiquitous as ATM's. Put them all in open public places and let the population police them. IE they are booths with privacy but to small to allow somone in the booth with you and having them in very public places lowers to possibility of someone controlling access. Having lots and lots of them makes it damn near impossible. For example a row of booths at all the Malls, Libraries, Schools, College Campuses, City halls, Other Government buildings, Stadiums. Observing some goombas trying to control them is like seeing someone knock over a 7 eleven and you dial 911.
Video security in the booth and random election security to observe polling areas to ensure no one tries to control a polling location. No polling locations 'at work' Unless work has such a public area as the commons of a mall. Hell you could make the ID system not allow people to vote from specific areas, like their place of work.
Granted the assumption here is an identification system that can tell you are you. Obviously that takes more than a PIN number. Facial recognition software might be a real option. Should be far more easy to implement in a 'booth' with an optimum scan and specific record comparison as opposed to the random crowd searching systems atempted. do that with some other biometric info, perhaps even a PIN, and you have a difficult nut to crack as far as making the system think your someone your not. Yes it CAN be done, it could always be done. But can it realisticlly be done on a large enough scale to present a problem.
I don't see electronic systems removing corruption. I could not agree more that people are the problem. Unfortunately you can't remove people from the equation. However with an electronic system you can remove people from parts of the equation that you CAN'T ( or I should say I have yet to hear a possibility for doing so ) with a physical paper ballot system, in particular the counting process.
You like so many others choose to focus on how it can't be done rather than seek a way to reap the benifits of the technology.
The, other responder already covered the population issue... but both of you seem to have failed to recall that the moon was populated in the story not because of what was there but because of what could be removed from earth IE Criminals. Which is also the geneisis of the whole mind your manners thing which Manny explains quite well if you ask me. Its actually a pretty plausible premis if the moon were used as a penal colony. The more experience we get in ziggy the more we realize long term living in low g probably would be a one way ticket... Thus unless they were sterilized a penal colony would eventually build into a permanent population of native lunar residence that would find a way to scratch a living out of the rock if it could be.
If you really recall they tossed rocks at population centers and that it was populated for economic reasons and that violence had no place I suggest you try reading it again.
lol... TSBTS was my intro to RAH as well... I probably wasn't old enough to be reading it, think I was 12 or something. Seems to me the way people view his later works depends on what they started with first. People who first read some of the later books tend to like them far more than people that start with his early works.
I find it odd that the tech community seems so against e-voting. Perhaps its just the methods suggested.. IE closed code etc... But it surprises me that many seem to think its impossible to do right.... or even that it could be better than the current system. For those that suggest perhaps thats a good reason to doubt the ability of an electoric voting system I point out that those 'most' knowlegeable once also decried the posibility that the world was round, that the sun revolved around the earth and any number of other things that later prooved not to be the case. Just because computer geeks are having a ludite reaction to an encroaching technology does not mean that the reaction is a valid one.
given a working valid system...
Results are instant.
ballots cannot be incomplete or improperly filled out.
Certification can be more in depth.. cross checking with other databases to make sure dead people to vote for instance.
absentee voting can be made possible without mail in votes, and they can vote when everyone else does at electronic voting stations. Though I grant for that to work you need a national standard voting system that is always available ( permanent voting stations as opposed to temp ). Colleges, embasies, military bases and similar places would have permanent voting facilities to allow for people away from home to vote when needed.
All of those are problems that can be addressed and all but eliminated by an electonic voting system that are almost impossible to irradicate from a physcial paper voting system.
There is the possibility for fraud obviously... but so is there in the current system. In fact its rampant in the current system, especially in the mess of systems used across the nation due to no standard voting system in the US.
I think most people seem to focus on the possibility of remote fraud, and the possibility of a far more easily manipulated system. HOWEVER remote manipulation also means remote verification. People tend to evaluate the certification process based on the older system without thinking of the new implications for verification possible. This whole argument reminds me of the begining of E-commerce and the fear of credit fraud so bad no body would buy online.... yet how many people shop on amazon and e-bay now ?
In short the problem is solveable/manageable, and the potential gains in instant returns and far smaller inherent margian of error matched with the ability to make voting far more available far outweigh the potential problems in my opinion.
and a 5km asteroid striking out of the blue is just an inevitable cataclysmic event.
The difference between changes made by us and changes arrived at without conscious intervention ( depending on your religion ) is that of choice. We can choose to alter the environment and thats different from the random possibility of collisions, be they gama rays affecting DNA material or a big ass rock hitting the earth.
On the whole I think the argument can be made that we are capable of making intelligent decisions. I have never found much merit in the oh we don't understand everything so we shouldn't do anything argument. Genetic engineering isn't going away and runnig away from it just becasue it MIGHT be dangerous, MIGHT be misused/abused is silly. It is a powerful tool, and like many powerful tools it has great capacity to wreak havoc and to perform miracles. Not to mention we have been engaged in various forms of genetic manipulation for as long as domestication of plants and animals has been practiced and so far nothing horrendous ( meaning end of the world type stuff ) has happend. We have stubbed our toes. Changed environments, and we adapt as we always do.
This planet has survived several highly destructive events. It will survive us. The question is will we survive ourselves ? A key element of our ability to surive is our ability to change the environment to suit our needs. Genetic manipulation is simply another means of controling our environment. Along the way we will make mistakes. Along the way we will have successes. Hoepfully we won't do something so monumentally stupid that it wipes us out. Then again if we should do so, what is more natural than nature selecting against stupidity ?
Notice I said arguable. Is he a major plot arc ? I would tend to say no. However he is an unforgetable character and many people recall him fondly. He is a part of the magic tapestry Tolkien weaved and as such there will be a never ending argument regarding his removal from the story. Personally I feel the same about the abscence of Bombadill as I do about leaving out the scouring but its far more forgiveable as avoiding the part of the story between the Shire and Bree gets you to Aragorn and the Council of Elrond that much quicker in an already long movie without sacrificing the soul of the story but mearly one of its luxuries... a rich memorable character and a couple of early adventures amoung many.
In the end I find it a shame that both periods of Hobbit only adventures will be cut or at the least severely limited. The Lord of the Rings niether starts off quickly or ends quickly, both cardinal sins in the movie biz. Removing Bombadill didn't sacrifice much, merely perfection;-) ( though granted it would have been a bladder busting perfection ). Leaving out the scouring will alter the story in a more fundamental manner than the removal of Bombadill. No doubt Jackson will find a way to capture the spirit of J.R.R's conclusion. At the least I am sure he will not take the easy "happiness and light" route.
Noticed Golem isntead of Gollum after I hit submit. At anyrate she also does not say it won't come to pass if he succeeds... minor nitpick I grant. Anyway I seem to recall in all the extras some talk about the filming of the destruction of Hobbiton and it seemed there was more to be had from it than the couple of seconds Frodo sees in the mirror.
All in all I can understand cutting the scouring. I don't like it and never will seeing as the first two were so succesfull in avoiding the cut of any major plot lines ( with the arguable exception of Bombadill ) but I understand the pacing issues that would be involved in the long wrap up and in some ways unsatisfying return to a spoiled Hobbiton... But in the end leaving it out seems to me like running the marathon only to quit with the finish line in sight because it is so dreadfully difficult and your almost there anyway. To the millions enjoying the epic tale being unfolded for the first time the lack of the scouring will likely be a victimless crime as ignorance is bliss. Many will or would undoubtebly thank Jackson for its absence as it is likely to make the ending more 'liked' and certainly more decisive. However, to the other Millions already familiar with the tale it will make the whole adventure seem unfinished, a broken masterpiece, a magnificent Marathon run that came up one mile short and that is a pity. book
I havn't given up hope. Jackson has already far and away surpassed my expectations and if the release cut it unsatisfactory its entirly possible the EE will make up for it so there will be no telling for certain until its relase. As the old saying goes, "in a year many things can happen, the king could die, I could die, or the Ass could learn to speak". The first two give me reasonable hope that "the ass will speak". If not then it has still be an enjoyable ride anyway and I will always be gratefull someone at least tried to do it right when there were so many possible ways to do it wrong.
How do they not have the scouring ? They showed scenes of it in Galadrial's mirror. Oh hell it will be a happier ending wrapping up after the fight at Minus Tirith and the destruction of the ring and Golem.. but I would at least hold out some hope for that in the EE.. after all they went from over 4 hours to 3 1/4... there are more than 7 minutes of kicking out Saruman to extend the movie with... a lot more.
The problem is once someone does it.. if it dosn't change then no one else has to.. IE one obseesed light freak and 5000 script kiddies free loading off that work....
As for the catching the redlight you don't monitor random intersections.. you monitor the choke points into the hospitals where a light comes into play.. doubt you have to wait 48 hours.
Hmm if its IR and its a coded signal I would imagine either the device makes a repetitive signal or it has a derivation from its normal pulse... so all you would have to do is monitor an intersection in the IR and take note of emergency vehicles and identify the sequence of IR pulses and you will have the 'code'. As long as its IR and its just based on recieving the proper pulses and those proper pulses are blasted about something like this will be possible.... granted that kind of monitoring is non-trivial and it would take some dedication to finding a signal in use when you could monitor it properly. Just makes it like all hacks, its possible if you really want to do it.
A more secure approach would probably be along the idea of a transponder system linked to GPS with only authorised vehicles emitting a code will be allowed to change the light.... IE the light only has a dummy sensor and a network connection.. when it detects a signal it sends a query and a remote system to deermins if a valid gps ID is in the vicinity.. this way the GPS vehicle ID is not being transmitted 'in the clear' over IR. And you have to spoof two systems and have your vehicle entered in a database capable of tracking your location... right. Of course it would likely have a backup mode of just accepting signals if the querry timed out or something.... but a random combined denial attack and signal generation seems a bit of a stretch .
I am not sure failure is the right word. Most of those programs faced unrealistic expectations and were canned at the first sign of adversity.... or worse at the first chance someone had to cut the money to funnel it to another nasa project or some other work project in their district. Not that NASA carries no blame but the funding simply isn't solid enough to persue true ground breaking lines of research right now.
The X-33 SSTO might have stood a chance if they could have ever cracked the fuel tank problems ( to heavy if it was storng enough or to weak if it was light enough ). I hate that the aero spikes seem to have been dropped with that program... everything I saw showed some promise in the area of a highly efficient rocket nozzel that was far cheaper than the current bell system. However I have to say the low performance margin of biprops does not make SSTO look very viable unless we can find a higher energy prop.
What the AC was trying to point out is that orbital velocity is some 17,500 mph... I don't think any of the X-plane contestents have any plans on breaking more than mach 2 or about 1,500 mph. Thus with 'some modification' is something of an understatement.
In some ways I agree with you but the X-prize contestents are mostly rehashes... Rutan's is nothing new, just looks cool as hell. Its basically a rehash of the X-plane model used so effectively in the 50's and 60's. Armadillo is a straight up rocket albeit attempting to implement using a monoprop which is not an unexplored line.
I think assured cheap access ( relative to shuttle ) to space lies in the old prooven capsule design. But the true lessening of access lies in materials and propulsion advances.
hmmmmmmmm.......... must have been thinking lower 48... my bad. Not sure if Alaska would be in danger, it looks to be quite a bit bigger 655k sqm vrs 268k or so for Texas... everthings bigger in texas but it must be HUGE in Alaska.
200% is nice but again thats only generating capacity and dosn't reflect the net recoup if you store the excess.. at least as far as hydrogen goes. I am not under the impression that hydro pumping as a means of storing later generating capacity is any more efficient. Thus if you produce twice as much energy as you need your only going to store somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% in terms of net energy recvovery thus you have to produce 200% of your demand level at a 5:1 ratio to your storage demand otherwise your storage can't keep up in the long haul. Mayhap 5:1 is sufficient for channel wind generation systems I don't know... I know its problematic for solar due to possible extended periods with less than nominal sunlight.
IF you can do it and IF you can supply at.03kw/hr fantabulous. However that link I went to led me to believe the finacial investment required to actually build the remaining systems to reach the 20% goal was prooving to be problematic due to past governmental inconsistency regarding alternative energy policy. Between the lines I was reading potential investors were questioning the ability of the proposal to produce power at.03 and provide any return on their investment and that if.03 was not met government may limit the cost that could be charged for the power which might make the investment a looser if it were not allowed to charge enough to recoup generation costs in a reasonable time thus backing them into the unenviable position of bankrolling a political charge to the 20% alternative energy goal.
RE: the storage and transportation of petrol
Your right it took decades to transport and process it safely but you CAN transport it rather unsafely if need be. The sophistication of the system is providing the safety whereas with hydrogen you have all of those problems and then you have a measure of difficulty added because its an element that is not a liquid at normal tempratures. hydrogen is very difficult to "bottle up". Storing petrol does not incur boil off losses in significant amounts over relatively short periods of time.. IE months. Hydrogen does and this again causes more problems with stored energy. Odds are if we truly shift to hydrogen as our primary source of stored energy its going to be because we have no choice or because we make a breakthrough in on demand hydrogen production and or storage methods. probably the best bet is some form of intermediary method of containing it other than just physically bottling it up... IE finding something you can join it to with a bond that can easily be broken later when needed ( store under pressure with hydrides etc... ). oddly enough the best method of storing it would be to figure out how to create some form of petrol when starting with hydrogen and adding carbon.. then just using reforming and fuel cells or sticking with ICE... if we generate the petrol then we don't add new sources of Carbon to the eco system.
By the way nice to have a nice back and forth that isn't a flame war.
Slashdot Mirror
More/Better than I had hoped for... I love when that happens
I meant to talk about Arthur but deleted that section while I was re-thinking a bit. Arthor/Merlin is certainly the clearest literary relative. Yes he had Beowulf, and numerous other mythological sources from which to draw on and he did. What I was reffering to is he didn't have a well trodden modern forum to tell his stiched together tale in. With the exception of Arthur most of those sources were and are very removed from common forms of modern story telling. Generally not very appealing to the masses in their raw form and often suffering from the limitations of translations.
Fantasy just didn't exist then as it does now. Simple Fact. It lived as mythos certainly, most commonly studied in acadamia as the remains of ancient cultures and fairy tales. One more along the lines of dusty historical study ( but certainly not always ) and the other simple moralistic bed time tales for tots. And today a new fantasy story or even epic is nothing odd and as you say has its section in most all book stores..and its the currently well worn paths and well explored possibilities which are the fertile ground from which Rowling springs. I did not think saying Tolkien was the father of the mordern genre of fantasy would be contraversial. You will find few if any authors in the genre that don't point to him as the trailblazer. Heinlien, Asmiov and of course the earlier tales of Verne have a similar place in the foundation of sci-fi as we know it today.
As for the Hobbits. In your list I take exception to one thing. Needy. They are not Needy. I take it you mean in terms of needing protection. But thats just the point. They don't need protection. In the end it is their so called protectors that need protection from themselves. However, if you are primarily choosing that interpretation based on the movies I yield the field. Jackson certainly played that angle up.
As for why I'm so obstinate about it... think of the Shire. Are the Hobbits children ? Who cares for them, who sows their crops, bakes their bread, run their towns ? Who provides them with their life of happiness and ease ? Who provides for their safety ? I think the answers are obvious, at least in the book, and very at odds with the idea that they are 'needy children'.
This and the stature of Frodo/Sam/Merry/Pippin is something that has a chance to sink in when reading the story as a great deal of time is spent in the shire both at the beginning and end. You have the feeling of community and of Frodo's place in it along with his friends. But even so the movie does touch on it.. in the Tavern and parties are they drinking milk or Ale ?? do they speak to their elders as surrogates or with respectful equality. Small things yes but telling if one takes the time to think on it.
Innocents they are, but children they are not, and to me that is a very very very important distinction.
If you take that view from a long ago reading and from the movies Its easy to take them as children, casting Elija Wood certainly didn't help. In fact if we were only considering the movies we would have no debate on the point at all as I would agree. Jackson generally portrayed them as chlidren and its about my only real disagreement with how he chose to bring the tale to the screen.
Nothing like a good fun book debate, prepare to defend yourself further :-)
Well my case in point is I think your comparison is failry accurate vis a vie the character matchups... especially Dumbledore/Gandalf. I disagree about the child figure of the hobbits though thats a side issue. But the thing is Potter archtypes do match up to LOTR archtypes... but where do the LOTR archtypes come from ? Tolkien created his world from next to nothing. From scraps. He is largely credited with creating the fantasy genre. Thus Rowling is ploting a path through well known terrirtory where Tolkien was Lewis and Clark.
Two bones I will pick is regarding the 'singing' and the hobbits as children. The singing and verse sections if you take the time to read them are not extraneous in the least. I am not much for poertry, or reading lyrics but those elements in Tolkien are far from frivolous, or excessive. They are a very key element in the story. I do however understand them being seen as non-essential trimming as once I did as well. They are easy to bypass in search of the 'story'. But doing so causes you to miss out. Its like the difference between visiting the sights in Paris for a day and staying long enough to get off the tourist merry go round to actually see the city. To feel its pulse as it were, to perhaps become a resident, if only for a little while and truly see it as opposed to passing through. All of that seeming 'supurflous' trimming is Tolkien allowing a chance to stay a while in Middle earth, allowing you to explore the knooks and crannies. As such everytime I have re-read the ring trilogy I have come away with something new. Some new favorit element of the tale I missed before when my eyes were drawn only to that which pushed the band of the fellowship forward.
I have never gotten that from re-reading the Potter books. I didn't miss anything the first time. But the story is just as enjoyable, just as delightfully addictive. That is no small feat.
Regarding the Hobbits as 'child like'.... I just never have understood that view. Frodo is 50+ and Sam not far behind. but regarding them as Children is perhaps the mistake of the enemy in the Trilogy. They are innocents, and the child like physical stature certainly exagerates that impression. But they are not children. Incidently the playing up of 'child like' by Jackson was one of my few nits with his masterful work on the screen. They are small certainly, but to me their smallness is more like the smallness of the residents of a Polynessian villiage living in bliss in the Southpacific during WWII. They are so far re-moved from the troubles in the world and at first blush have nothing to gain and everything to loose by venturing forth as well as nothing to offer in return for their loss. But in the end it is for that reason that they are the ones who contribute the most to the cause of good.
View them as Childlike as you wish. Interpretations are on the whole pretty personal.... I just have always thought it a view that limits LOTR. Pottter IS a Child, and that makes a very large difference in my book. He is directly tied to Voldemort, unlike The Hobbits and Sauron. He has power, and he is the boy that lived. The Hobbits are ignored and have only their innocence and heart. Potter has vengence in his heart, the Hobbits just want the buisness over with so they can return to their quiet forgetten corner of the world.
Whats the life span ? IE would this be similar to an imunization ? Perhaps something that remained in your system and attacked any deffective cells that later developed? Or would this essentially leave once there were no deffective cells left to continue the cycle ?
What risks are there of it mutating and attacking healthy cells on its own ? how about mistakes in.... ummm.. hell manufacturing I guess. Could an honest production mistake create a harmfull variant... like a bad batch of coke syrup ?
I'm all for it. However, I do find it somewhat amusing after the uproar arround the glowing fish to hear people now talk in a positive way about the possibility of a self replicating benificial disease that could itslef become as ubiquitous as the Common cold if indeed it prooves to be communicable.
At anyrate this is something they had damned well better be sure off ALL raminfications before letting it loose. Genetics allows us to take our evolution into our own hands, place it at the beck and call of our concious will. Ultimately I think it has far more important benifit/disaster duality in our future than the power to split ( or fuse if we manage ) atoms.
In a way I can see your point. Abstractly I might even be able to agree with you. However in the end while they certainly are pinicales of literary and perhaps cienematic achievement, I do not see them as peers. However, Rowling still has some writing to do and until its all said and done its just speculation.
But Potter, fabulous as the story is, is not LOTR. Certainly more ascessible. Certainly more friendly. It just dosn't swing the same weight in my mind yet. Argue about numbers of pages all you like but I don't see it. If the number of words, or pages were a true mark of depth and meangin what would that say about the Decleration of Independence ? The Gettysburg Address ? Or if you whish to stay in the literary world what about any of the works of Shakespere ? You can fit all of his works in a single binding and yet would you say that has much bearing on its significance and place in history ?
Ultimately I class Potter against The Chronicles of Narnia, ironic considering those tales heavy Christian slant and the 'witch craft' non-sense that surrounds Potter. In the end great works do not re-place one another. They are what they are. Great works that many apprieciate for different reasons. Some will fade from popularity, some will remain but now that they are written they will forever have a place as long as we care to keep them about.
Again you ranked the plane at its max possible efficiency and the car for 1 person or worst possible.
.666 gpsh for 93smpg at 62 mph .5 gpsh for 124 smpg at 62mph
granted at max capacity you get 4.7gpsh for 106 smpg at 500mph. Sounds damn good. And for a plane it is damn good. But in the end its the 500mph thats the key not the 'efficiency'. If seating capacity is 500 then thats 2350gpsh if there is just one person sitting there meaning less than a mile per gallon... though I grant the plane would get somewhat better mileage if there were only one person in it... but not a whole lot better.
By your same figuring one person riding in a taurus consumes 2gpsh for 31smpg at 62 mph.
2 get 1gpsh for 62smpg at 62mph
3 get
4 get
as you can see your taurus at max capacity getting highway cruise gas mileage tops the efficiency of your max capacity plane operating at max efficiency by a fair margian. And you could stuff 5 people in though not comfortably over long distances. The plane will rarely be all the way at max though I grant you it will in general be above 80%. Planes do generally fly close to capacity, but it only takes a few underbooked flights at odd hours to throw the fleets efficiency numbers well off this theoretical max by a significant amount.
But the car can only travel less than 1/5th the speed of the plane and that brings us back to that 500 mph, sitting with 500 people for 2 hours to go 1000 miles is more pleasent than 4 people in a sedan for ~16 hours. Thus the plane certianly is more TIME efficient but that is not the same as fuel efficiency.
Your probably off on the trains.. the incredibly low rolling resistence of the rails in addition to efficiency of scale combine to give it substantial efficiency over cars. All in all rail travel is probably the most efficient form of powered motion.
the only other thing I can think of that you left out you noted in cars.. IE if your traveling with one person your rating is one thing and if you travel with more your rating is another. (something many people forget in their SUV rantings)
That 747 is not always operating at capacity and it dosn't take to many seats unfilled before that max efficiency per seat starts looking pretty bad. In general planes only start reaching car levels of efficiencies in the BIG movers where the efficiency of scale begins to swing the balance in their favor.
In general planes are seriously power hungry compared to cars for one simple reason.. it takes more energy to lift off than to roll. Helicopters make planes look like scroodge mcduck even in the best of cases becasue instead of climbing a hill they are doing chinups.
Anyway my point is Planes salivate over reaching similar efficiencies levels as a car.... IE evaluate a car based on max capacity rather than single capacity the same way the 747 is. Cars are far more eficient per amount of energy expended in general, they just are not used to full potential nearly as often as a plane, which is the only reason it looks like they are in similar company at all.... and the reason a plane can compete, barely, with cars and even then it has prooven to be skewed towards flights of significant distances where the greater speed of flying has the advantage over cars/trains or when flying over seas where the only other option is even slower than driving would be.
Eh I'm not sure you couldn't fit it all in the dash of a delorean...
more silly thoughts:
if the delorean can hold preasure in a vacum environment and travel in space then you just have to travel back far enough that your in space/orbit etc... then you just need something pinpoint your location... IE constelations ( equipment used on Apollo or gps, whatever.
one of the quirks I came up with when thinking along these lines a while back was story using this as a 'cheap' access to space, ie you couldn't really travel far back in time but you coule travel far enough back that you were in orbit to the earth moving. Case you couldn't tell I'm not much for thinking up story lines.
fancy computing trying to land somewhere on the earth is pretty much pointless due to the relaitvely short time periods it would be viable for. I forget what the earths speed around the sun is but its (1/365/24)th of the circumference of the earths orbit per hour around the sun which is pretty damn big... ie (pie au^2). I imagine much more than an hour lands you in space by a fair margian for sure... hell if that long.
I've always thought that was an obvious answer to that question. But few seem to get it. I guess most people just don't think of the earth as moving.
Boggle this, If time travel is possible and it didn't alter your co-ordinates in space/time.. IE you travel back but to the place where you where then waiting where you are the earth will come back at exactly the time you left it ( hmm thats assuming you didn't keep your current vector either which likely would not be the case, actually come to think of it with out the earths gravitational field you would be subjected to a centripidal slingshot away from earths vector ). However If you travel towards the earth you will reach it at some time between the time you traveled from and the time you traveld too. Depending on just how fast the earth is moving you could have an upper limit on how far in the future time travel is cracked that they could reasonably travel here to visit ( if you hold to the limit of Light speed and that time travel dosn't break it either ). IE you can travel to anywhen instantaneously but still not to anywhere instantaneously.
hmmm lets see... say the earth is traveling at 5% the speed of light and the fastest the potential visitor could travel in space is 10% the speed of light then your relative velocity traveling to earth should be 15% the speed of light. If time travel where invented in 20 years then the earth would be 1 light year away from its present location. The visitor could arrive no earlier than what.. 7 or so years from now ?
when traveling to the past you can always reach eath before you left it by slowing down relative to the earth.. IE it will catch up to you eventually. However this poses an intersting proposition regarding traveling forward in time. IE you travel forward but keep the location of the past and now have to catch up to the earth.. its concievable you could never reach the future before you would have gotten there anyway if ther isn't a technology for traveling faster than whatever the earths ultimate vector is.
eh silly thoughts.
and you do not seem to understand the context of the examples discussed in the article. Go get a copy of the CAIB report and go take a gander at the offending slide. Its ludicrous that the information of such importance is in such a 'presentation'to begin with. It was ludicrous when it was used and monumentally ludicrous in hindsight.
Pitching a new soda and explaining the culmination of several engineers work anylizing debris impacts are two very very very very differnt cases. They are however both presntations. One calls for catchy quick information and the other calls for nitty gritty in depth information that simply is impossible to convey with such a limited tool as M$ Power Point.
Granted I agree the problem isn't so much the program as the decision to use it so inapporprately by many people that would be better served choosing other means of presentation more geared to passing on more detailed information.
RFID bauble triggers a query to the credit company, clerk has a display that shows your picture retrived from the CC companies database, or even better a quick cam is used to capture a picture as well for the transaction. Not for facial recognition to be used... unless its feasible time wise and cheap enough... but for a sales record and tacking down false offenders. Toss in a fingerprint ID scan and you have a tough nut to crack and a serious trail of evidence if you are a fraud.. IE fingerprint and picture.
so
Wave the card/key chain faub or whatever put your finger on the fingerprint widget and look at the camera, clerk compares you to the image on the screen and you go about your buisness. Fingerprint and image for the transaction are stored localy and remotely by the credit company. Reciept for the transaction is stored on the faub/card.
should not take more than a couple seconds once your used to it... deffiantly faster than the wait for reciept. sign return copy etc....
Now I'm not a huge fan of big brother stuff like this... not sure if I would really be for this one or not. But it could make face to face POS transactions fairly secure.
One question I have is if this becomes standard how does it affect online/phone transactions ? I suppose you still have a number but can that be improved upon ?
Just because you have an electronic system dosn't mean you have to open it up to more than official polling places. In fact to avoid the problem of selling votes it would be almost impossible to allow voting to be done from home/office etc.... By suggesting more places I was not saying being able to vote from your home computer etc... I meant having more polling locations. You make places to poll as ubiquitous as ATM's. Put them all in open public places and let the population police them. IE they are booths with privacy but to small to allow somone in the booth with you and having them in very public places lowers to possibility of someone controlling access. Having lots and lots of them makes it damn near impossible. For example a row of booths at all the Malls, Libraries, Schools, College Campuses, City halls, Other Government buildings, Stadiums. Observing some goombas trying to control them is like seeing someone knock over a 7 eleven and you dial 911.
Video security in the booth and random election security to observe polling areas to ensure no one tries to control a polling location. No polling locations 'at work' Unless work has such a public area as the commons of a mall. Hell you could make the ID system not allow people to vote from specific areas, like their place of work.
Granted the assumption here is an identification system that can tell you are you. Obviously that takes more than a PIN number. Facial recognition software might be a real option. Should be far more easy to implement in a 'booth' with an optimum scan and specific record comparison as opposed to the random crowd searching systems atempted. do that with some other biometric info, perhaps even a PIN, and you have a difficult nut to crack as far as making the system think your someone your not. Yes it CAN be done, it could always be done. But can it realisticlly be done on a large enough scale to present a problem.
I don't see electronic systems removing corruption. I could not agree more that people are the problem. Unfortunately you can't remove people from the equation. However with an electronic system you can remove people from parts of the equation that you CAN'T ( or I should say I have yet to hear a possibility for doing so ) with a physical paper ballot system, in particular the counting process.
You like so many others choose to focus on how it can't be done rather than seek a way to reap the benifits of the technology.
The, other responder already covered the population issue... but both of you seem to have failed to recall that the moon was populated in the story not because of what was there but because of what could be removed from earth IE Criminals. Which is also the geneisis of the whole mind your manners thing which Manny explains quite well if you ask me. Its actually a pretty plausible premis if the moon were used as a penal colony. The more experience we get in ziggy the more we realize long term living in low g probably would be a one way ticket... Thus unless they were sterilized a penal colony would eventually build into a permanent population of native lunar residence that would find a way to scratch a living out of the rock if it could be.
If you really recall they tossed rocks at population centers and that it was populated for economic reasons and that violence had no place I suggest you try reading it again.
lol... TSBTS was my intro to RAH as well... I probably wasn't old enough to be reading it, think I was 12 or something. Seems to me the way people view his later works depends on what they started with first. People who first read some of the later books tend to like them far more than people that start with his early works.
Number of the beast is an odd one.
I find it odd that the tech community seems so against e-voting. Perhaps its just the methods suggested.. IE closed code etc... But it surprises me that many seem to think its impossible to do right.... or even that it could be better than the current system. For those that suggest perhaps thats a good reason to doubt the ability of an electoric voting system I point out that those 'most' knowlegeable once also decried the posibility that the world was round, that the sun revolved around the earth and any number of other things that later prooved not to be the case. Just because computer geeks are having a ludite reaction to an encroaching technology does not mean that the reaction is a valid one.
given a working valid system...
Results are instant.
ballots cannot be incomplete or improperly filled out.
Certification can be more in depth.. cross checking with other databases to make sure dead people to vote for instance.
absentee voting can be made possible without mail in votes, and they can vote when everyone else does at electronic voting stations. Though I grant for that to work you need a national standard voting system that is always available ( permanent voting stations as opposed to temp ). Colleges, embasies, military bases and similar places would have permanent voting facilities to allow for people away from home to vote when needed.
All of those are problems that can be addressed and all but eliminated by an electonic voting system that are almost impossible to irradicate from a physcial paper voting system.
There is the possibility for fraud obviously... but so is there in the current system. In fact its rampant in the current system, especially in the mess of systems used across the nation due to no standard voting system in the US.
I think most people seem to focus on the possibility of remote fraud, and the possibility of a far more easily manipulated system. HOWEVER remote manipulation also means remote verification. People tend to evaluate the certification process based on the older system without thinking of the new implications for verification possible. This whole argument reminds me of the begining of E-commerce and the fear of credit fraud so bad no body would buy online.... yet how many people shop on amazon and e-bay now ?
In short the problem is solveable/manageable, and the potential gains in instant returns and far smaller inherent margian of error matched with the ability to make voting far more available far outweigh the potential problems in my opinion.
and a 5km asteroid striking out of the blue is just an inevitable cataclysmic event.
The difference between changes made by us and changes arrived at without conscious intervention ( depending on your religion ) is that of choice. We can choose to alter the environment and thats different from the random possibility of collisions, be they gama rays affecting DNA material or a big ass rock hitting the earth.
On the whole I think the argument can be made that we are capable of making intelligent decisions. I have never found much merit in the oh we don't understand everything so we shouldn't do anything argument. Genetic engineering isn't going away and runnig away from it just becasue it MIGHT be dangerous, MIGHT be misused/abused is silly. It is a powerful tool, and like many powerful tools it has great capacity to wreak havoc and to perform miracles. Not to mention we have been engaged in various forms of genetic manipulation for as long as domestication of plants and animals has been practiced and so far nothing horrendous ( meaning end of the world type stuff ) has happend. We have stubbed our toes. Changed environments, and we adapt as we always do.
This planet has survived several highly destructive events. It will survive us. The question is will we survive ourselves ? A key element of our ability to surive is our ability to change the environment to suit our needs. Genetic manipulation is simply another means of controling our environment. Along the way we will make mistakes. Along the way we will have successes. Hoepfully we won't do something so monumentally stupid that it wipes us out. Then again if we should do so, what is more natural than nature selecting against stupidity ?
Notice I said arguable. Is he a major plot arc ? I would tend to say no. However he is an unforgetable character and many people recall him fondly. He is a part of the magic tapestry Tolkien weaved and as such there will be a never ending argument regarding his removal from the story. Personally I feel the same about the abscence of Bombadill as I do about leaving out the scouring but its far more forgiveable as avoiding the part of the story between the Shire and Bree gets you to Aragorn and the Council of Elrond that much quicker in an already long movie without sacrificing the soul of the story but mearly one of its luxuries... a rich memorable character and a couple of early adventures amoung many.
;-) ( though granted it would have been a bladder busting perfection ). Leaving out the scouring will alter the story in a more fundamental manner than the removal of Bombadill. No doubt Jackson will find a way to capture the spirit of J.R.R's conclusion. At the least I am sure he will not take the easy "happiness and light" route.
In the end I find it a shame that both periods of Hobbit only adventures will be cut or at the least severely limited. The Lord of the Rings niether starts off quickly or ends quickly, both cardinal sins in the movie biz. Removing Bombadill didn't sacrifice much, merely perfection
Noticed Golem isntead of Gollum after I hit submit. At anyrate she also does not say it won't come to pass if he succeeds... minor nitpick I grant. Anyway I seem to recall in all the extras some talk about the filming of the destruction of Hobbiton and it seemed there was more to be had from it than the couple of seconds Frodo sees in the mirror.
All in all I can understand cutting the scouring. I don't like it and never will seeing as the first two were so succesfull in avoiding the cut of any major plot lines ( with the arguable exception of Bombadill ) but I understand the pacing issues that would be involved in the long wrap up and in some ways unsatisfying return to a spoiled Hobbiton... But in the end leaving it out seems to me like running the marathon only to quit with the finish line in sight because it is so dreadfully difficult and your almost there anyway. To the millions enjoying the epic tale being unfolded for the first time the lack of the scouring will likely be a victimless crime as ignorance is bliss. Many will or would undoubtebly thank Jackson for its absence as it is likely to make the ending more 'liked' and certainly more decisive. However, to the other Millions already familiar with the tale it will make the whole adventure seem unfinished, a broken masterpiece, a magnificent Marathon run that came up one mile short and that is a pity. book
I havn't given up hope. Jackson has already far and away surpassed my expectations and if the release cut it unsatisfactory its entirly possible the EE will make up for it so there will be no telling for certain until its relase. As the old saying goes, "in a year many things can happen, the king could die, I could die, or the Ass could learn to speak". The first two give me reasonable hope that "the ass will speak". If not then it has still be an enjoyable ride anyway and I will always be gratefull someone at least tried to do it right when there were so many possible ways to do it wrong.
How do they not have the scouring ? They showed scenes of it in Galadrial's mirror. Oh hell it will be a happier ending wrapping up after the fight at Minus Tirith and the destruction of the ring and Golem.. but I would at least hold out some hope for that in the EE.. after all they went from over 4 hours to 3 1/4... there are more than 7 minutes of kicking out Saruman to extend the movie with... a lot more.
The problem is once someone does it.. if it dosn't change then no one else has to.. IE one obseesed light freak and 5000 script kiddies free loading off that work....
As for the catching the redlight you don't monitor random intersections.. you monitor the choke points into the hospitals where a light comes into play.. doubt you have to wait 48 hours.
Hmm if its IR and its a coded signal I would imagine either the device makes a repetitive signal or it has a derivation from its normal pulse... so all you would have to do is monitor an intersection in the IR and take note of emergency vehicles and identify the sequence of IR pulses and you will have the 'code'. As long as its IR and its just based on recieving the proper pulses and those proper pulses are blasted about something like this will be possible.... granted that kind of monitoring is non-trivial and it would take some dedication to finding a signal in use when you could monitor it properly. Just makes it like all hacks, its possible if you really want to do it.
A more secure approach would probably be along the idea of a transponder system linked to GPS with only authorised vehicles emitting a code will be allowed to change the light.... IE the light only has a dummy sensor and a network connection.. when it detects a signal it sends a query and a remote system to deermins if a valid gps ID is in the vicinity.. this way the GPS vehicle ID is not being transmitted 'in the clear' over IR. And you have to spoof two systems and have your vehicle entered in a database capable of tracking your location... right. Of course it would likely have a backup mode of just accepting signals if the querry timed out or something.... but a random combined denial attack and signal generation seems a bit of a stretch .
I am not sure failure is the right word. Most of those programs faced unrealistic expectations and were canned at the first sign of adversity.... or worse at the first chance someone had to cut the money to funnel it to another nasa project or some other work project in their district. Not that NASA carries no blame but the funding simply isn't solid enough to persue true ground breaking lines of research right now.
The X-33 SSTO might have stood a chance if they could have ever cracked the fuel tank problems ( to heavy if it was storng enough or to weak if it was light enough ). I hate that the aero spikes seem to have been dropped with that program... everything I saw showed some promise in the area of a highly efficient rocket nozzel that was far cheaper than the current bell system. However I have to say the low performance margin of biprops does not make SSTO look very viable unless we can find a higher energy prop.
What the AC was trying to point out is that orbital velocity is some 17,500 mph... I don't think any of the X-plane contestents have any plans on breaking more than mach 2 or about 1,500 mph. Thus with 'some modification' is something of an understatement.
In some ways I agree with you but the X-prize contestents are mostly rehashes... Rutan's is nothing new, just looks cool as hell. Its basically a rehash of the X-plane model used so effectively in the 50's and 60's. Armadillo is a straight up rocket albeit attempting to implement using a monoprop which is not an unexplored line.
I think assured cheap access ( relative to shuttle ) to space lies in the old prooven capsule design. But the true lessening of access lies in materials and propulsion advances.
got any details/link on that one ?
hmmmmmmmm.......... must have been thinking lower 48... my bad. Not sure if Alaska would be in danger, it looks to be quite a bit bigger 655k sqm vrs 268k or so for Texas... everthings bigger in texas but it must be HUGE in Alaska.
200% is nice but again thats only generating capacity and dosn't reflect the net recoup if you store the excess.. at least as far as hydrogen goes. I am not under the impression that hydro pumping as a means of storing later generating capacity is any more efficient. Thus if you produce twice as much energy as you need your only going to store somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% in terms of net energy recvovery thus you have to produce 200% of your demand level at a 5:1 ratio to your storage demand otherwise your storage can't keep up in the long haul. Mayhap 5:1 is sufficient for channel wind generation systems I don't know... I know its problematic for solar due to possible extended periods with less than nominal sunlight.
.03kw/hr fantabulous. However that link I went to led me to believe the finacial investment required to actually build the remaining systems to reach the 20% goal was prooving to be problematic due to past governmental inconsistency regarding alternative energy policy. Between the lines I was reading potential investors were questioning the ability of the proposal to produce power at .03 and provide any return on their investment and that if .03 was not met government may limit the cost that could be charged for the power which might make the investment a looser if it were not allowed to charge enough to recoup generation costs in a reasonable time thus backing them into the unenviable position of bankrolling a political charge to the 20% alternative energy goal.
IF you can do it and IF you can supply at
RE: the storage and transportation of petrol
Your right it took decades to transport and process it safely but you CAN transport it rather unsafely if need be. The sophistication of the system is providing the safety whereas with hydrogen you have all of those problems and then you have a measure of difficulty added because its an element that is not a liquid at normal tempratures. hydrogen is very difficult to "bottle up". Storing petrol does not incur boil off losses in significant amounts over relatively short periods of time.. IE months. Hydrogen does and this again causes more problems with stored energy. Odds are if we truly shift to hydrogen as our primary source of stored energy its going to be because we have no choice or because we make a breakthrough in on demand hydrogen production and or storage methods. probably the best bet is some form of intermediary method of containing it other than just physically bottling it up... IE finding something you can join it to with a bond that can easily be broken later when needed ( store under pressure with hydrides etc... ). oddly enough the best method of storing it would be to figure out how to create some form of petrol when starting with hydrogen and adding carbon.. then just using reforming and fuel cells or sticking with ICE... if we generate the petrol then we don't add new sources of Carbon to the eco system.
By the way nice to have a nice back and forth that isn't a flame war.