I agree Nissan and Renault are both fighting a losing battle to hold back the tide of change. After market batteries for cellphones are often better than the genuine product, and the same will very quickly be true for electric car batteries. Small independant shops will pop up with clever young people happy to sell you a new battery pack and pehaps a firmware hack.
This leaves dealerships in a bad spot. The are currently enshrined in law in the USA, and watching many or most go the way of the dodo will be traumatic for lobbiests.
As for stealerships, I agree. The Mazda dealership I worked at had almost all the work done by under-trained apprentices with insufficient supervision. I once watched a new car with steering alinment issues come back four times because the tyre-fitter was crap and the stealership got paid again every time. Much of the profits of the shop came from getting nearly an hour of unpaid overtime from every apprentice every day. For a dozen apprentices, this adds up fast.
The sooner I can order my car on line and have it arrive in the post, the happier I will be. Electric cars are wonderfully low maintainence, with a converted Prius being my favourite. I have seen the future, and it runs on batteries.
Recently I looked at buying a Nissan Leaf, which is a pretty sweet ride for an electric car. I discovered a few things.
1) The Leaf just about never needs service. Change the battery pack every two or four years, and that is it. Regular inspections of tyres and suspension components as usual, but these are very relable and can be done by any mechanic.
2) Nissan has some nagware shit that makes you take your leaf back to Nissan to be reassured. For this the dealership must buy an expensive piece of specalized kit from Nissan and will then charge you, the car owner, for the workship equivilent of clicking the "Okay" button.
Reading between the lines: Dealerships don't actually make any money by selling cars (the Mazda dealership I worked at for six months sure didn't). Just about all their profitability comes from warentee work (charged back to the manufacturer, thus getting a bigger slice of the sales profits), or regular scheduled services (which are mostly oil changes done by apprentices). Electric cars have far fewer parts which are far more reliable. Switching to electric cars will neatly drive a stake through the heart of the business model of auto dealerships. I assume this Renault bullshit is for exactly the same reasons as the Nissian Leaf bullshit.
Why would tracking be slow? Parallax being what it is? As long as the mirror is tracking targets within the same quadrant of the sky, it should be able to switch fast enough.
As for modulation, I think you are making unstated assumptions about reflectivity and switching speeds. How are you imagining the focus to be shifted and reflectivity varied? Mylar held by variable stays, held taught by photion pressure, for example? Easy, point a big dish at a little dish for a two reflector system, and your traverse speeds (governed by mass) and modulation speed (also, to some extent governed by mass, depending on the method) are dramatically reduced, as now you only must move the smaller reflector.
I know very well about solar concentration with mirrors. A reflector array in the L1 would have the potential to extend the day cycle of a solar collection site.
It all depends on the size of the reflector, or better, array of reflectors.
It is probably more effective (given rotation times etc of a very large sail) to aim the array at an orbit and impart sunlight to objects as they approach in that vector. It may well be practical to rapidly turn on and off the reflectivity of the sail with shutters or LCD cells or the like, avoiding striking unintended targets.
The ability to de-orbit any satellites equipped with a solar sail alone might make this worthwhile. Also, point it at a terrestrial solar farm for double the energy production!
Outside the reams of the achievable right now, to be sure, but what are we without our dreams?
I wonder at the effectiveness of putting a very large focusable solar reflector in a high orbit, perhaps at LaGrange point 1. Such a solar sail could be used to give thrust to satellites equipped with a sail, or even large bits of space junk. Obviously it wouldn't give much Delta V to junk, but it might give some, and it would be essentially free. Junk in high orbits takes hundreds or thousands of years to de-orbit, and any means of reducing the velocity of said junk would drastically reduce that time. Additionally, with a variable focus the mirror might be pointed at solar cells of existing satellites, which could improve the thrust gained from Ion Drives, assuming enough reaction mass remains to take advantage of the extra watts.
The Labour party is capitulating with the Christian Fundamentalist Family First party to ensure their support in the Senate, where they hold the balance of power. Just like the Liberal (conservitive) party did with the Useless and Unused Porn Filter they commissioned.
This time it is a 110 million boondoggle rather than a 30 million dollar boondoggle. It is about as relevant.
The sale of the national telco Telstra cost John Howard's Liberal (conservative) party a few million dollars worth of Anti-Abortion literature, harsher porn laws and the outlawing of internet gambling. The support of the minor right wing cooks will be bought with lip-service and tax dollars, and (hopefully) nothing much will change.
Both these techniques are cheaper and will repay investment a much faster than the traditional silicon wafer PV cell. While they may not match the very impressive 31.25% efficency of a Solar Thermal system, they will undoubtedly get better in the future.
The change from a centralized power generation system to a decentralized power generation system is undoubtedly going to break lots of business models. The Powers-That-Be have a lot of interest in keeping the status quo exactly the way it is. They are (quite rightly) nervous about Joe Sixpack discovering that he can put a wind turbine and two solar thermal reflectors on the roof of their house and suddenly make the power company a lot less profitable. Peak-Rate Power is the most profitable kind, and every watt reduced is money from their bottom line.
As this technology gets cheaper and more affordable, the reasons not to have power generation distributed and closer to the point of use vanish. The oil company loses demand (exponentially reducing the price of their product) and the power company's infrastructure monopoly suddenly becomes a whole lot less valuable.
This upcoming technology shift is going to be similar in scale to the replacement of million-dollar record pressing plants with $80 CD-R drives, and we all know how long that is taking to shake out.
My step-brother is a professional musician and pianist. He was playing in a piano lounge for a Casino and making decent money. Each night after his shift, he'd go to the blackjack tables and play, counting cards.
After a few consistent wins, up a hundred dollars a night nothing big, he was called into an office where they demanded to know how he was cheating. Who was he colluding with? When he said he was all by himself and just counting cards, the management told him that "It isn't possible with a seven deck shoe" They proceeded to fire him and black list him. The blacklist is shared amongst all casinos in Australia. Now with the use of their Facial Recognition systems on casino security cameras, this is very effective.
So to make the point, Casinos don't need much of a reason to kick you out and make sure you never come back. They are in the business of vacuuming all of the money from the pockets of suckers. If they notice that you are consistently winning then you'll be asked to leave.
Passive night-vision should be licenced as per firearms, IMHO. While this development is cool, I can only see military applicaitons for it.
There is very little that can be done with passive night-vision systems that can not be acheived with an active system, other than conceal your presence. The reason that soldiers don't walk around with infrared flood-lights is because they don't want to give away their position. Hunters (or photographers or whatever) don't have to worry about deer having an IR spotter scope.
People who decide that they have a legitimate reason for needing a passive system can apply for a licence. Like hand guns, the purpose of the design is to make it easier to kill people. (Hand gun owners, swallow your ire and think about how a.22 target pistol differs from a snub-nosed.38)
Wow! I'm gobsmacked at your sheer, unabashed ignorance of "The way things work".
To the first: what do you think the ratio of new drug research is to profits? For a major drug company? Conversely, what do you think the ratio of marketing vs profits? Got a clue? No? Feel free to go do a little googling. It is an open secret that drug companies spend almost nothing (compared) on research into new drugs. Even then the research directed is in very, very specific (eg profitable) areas. Hint! It makes a lot more money to market a drug for "Erectile Disfunction" than to actually make a simple, cheap cure for just about any disease you care to name.
To address your second point: The profits made from a drug are a reflection of the profitability of that drug. Nothing more or less. Concrete examples of how _value_ and _profit_ are distinct concepts to follow.
To the third: Once patents run out, drug companies market new, patented drugs. Older, generic drugs are not marketed. Part of the reason this happens is that drug companies advertise directly to doctors (who write the perceptions) and part of the reason is that drug stores make more money selling drugs that cost more. There are a bunch of simple ways to fix most of this in legislation. That, however, is another can of worms.
Examples of point two and the relationship with point three:
Ritalin: Heard of it? Great! How about Dexamphetamine? Not so much? Little known fact! Dexampetamine is a more effective treatment for ADD and ADHD than Ritalin. However it is perscribed less than a fifth as much. Why? Because the patents on Dexamphetamine ran out years ago. It can be made by any drug company and is a commodity item. Profits are very, very low. Ritalin is very profitable because it is a treatment. A patient will need to continue to take Rtalin for years. Possibly forever. Profitability: High! Value: Fuck All! Ritalin does a worse job than a drug that costs less than a third of the price.
Treatment of stomach ulcers: A method of curing stomach ulcers has been around for more than ten years. Thats right, A complete cure! The Australian who discovered the cure was under attack from many major drug companies, who attempted to discredit him and his research. Why? Because anti-acid treatments of stomach ucers are a) Patented and b) something that needs to be taken _forever_. The cure relys on a simple, generic anti-biotic and some mineral treatments. Not patentable, therefore no profits.
If you give a shit about any of these issues, you might be interested in the process of testing and approval that goes on in the USA compared to other countries (Like the UK or Canada) and what the differences mean. You might also be interested in the "Evergreening" of medical patents and the blatant kickbacks that medical companies give Doctors and Pharmacists.
A textbook of good quality written at an excellent standard, appropriate for the curriculum of the students, costs a significant percentage of $100. For example my Anatomy and Physiology text book cost me AU$130, my Chemistry textbook cost $80, and I still needed two others for this year at university.
High school textbooks are cheaper, but more are required.
By using the OLPC for a direct substitute for textbooks, (open source textbooks, change the world!) then they pay for themselves in the first two years. Over four years of school, they pay for themselves about twice.
This does not take into consideration all the additional things that can be done with a laptop that can not be done with a textbook.
So assuming the market is children who already go to school, then this project is set to have some truly revolutionary effects on the way learning is done and the cost/benefit of that schooling.
Text Abbreviation has the implication: "My slight convenience (laziness) is much more important than your ability to understand me." It is inherently self centered and fundamentally lazy. Typing an extra twelve or fifteen letters over a whole text message isn't much of an inconvenience.
We have enough trouble with people misunderstanding perfectly well formed and coherent text communications as it is.
Regardless of the mathmatical wizardry involved, there is no way to do this without someone being paid to surf for and collect kiddie-porn. Yeah, they may delete it afterwards. So?
If I'm not mistaken, this breaks a whole lot of laws. Feel free to try and justify how this serves the greater good by throwing out the law book this one time. For the Children.
Good sir, have you recently checked on the price of textbooks? A university level text cost between AU$60 and AU$120. Highschool texts probibly don't cost any less than $40 each. Per subject.
If you do not see the value of having a computer (and the access to cheap media that goes with it) for less than the cost of a single years texts, then you perhaps ought to step back from the issue.
The Open Source Licences (Creative Commons is a great example http://creativecommons.org/license/?jurisdiction=a u ) work very well for teaching texts. In five years, a whole curriculum of international standard could be available for the use of developing countries. For free.
So, you are perfectly right, computers are not in fact strictly necessary.
An Asynchronus AC motor has exactly one moving part. That would be (ta da!) the bearing.
Too complicated to work well under the conditions, eh?
An Australian adventurer wanted to drive an electrical vehicle to the south pole, not that long ago. The Solar Car motors were one of the only two considered, because of the large body of field test data and telemitry that exists for the motor design.
Admittedly, you have the complications of the electronic controller, but this would be solved in exactly the same way as other electronic issues presented to the design team.
Of the LI batteries in the Rovers, _most_ of them are non rechargeable. I understand the eggs and baskets arguments, but I point out that NASA has gone from being a technology Visionary circa 1965 to one of the most technologically conservative organisations circa 2000.
Or are you going to tell me we should have sent Mr Armstrong to make that one small step with "Proven Technology"?
NASA is cutting budgets and doesn't have the money for testing. Fair enough. But innovation is cheap.
A friend of mine is part owner of a cutting edge motor design company. He had a hand in the design of the Fuji Xerox Desert Rose, an award winning Solar Car. He said that looking inspections of the designs they used for the rovers showed them laughable in many regards. Little though was given to efficiency. None of the design team expected the solar systems to work well or last long. The Rovers both carry a massive weight of non-rechargeable batteries (alkaline cells, or something) and very little of rechargeable cells. Unable to even discard the spent battery cells. The rovers have been carrying the spent cells ever since they ran flat, doing horrible things to the power to weight ratio and other such bad stuff.
Also, an efficient asynchronous electric motor design would have been about 30% the weight (or 70% more power, pick one) and running at greater than 90% efficiency. And I'm not talking untested prototypes, either. Motors of this design and build have been run in Solar Car races for the best part of a decade.
While NASA is very proud to have exceeded expectations with the Rovers, I think this is mostly because their expectations of solar powered vehicles were so abominably low. Perhaps they will take things more seriously from now on.
Sir, you have a fabulous grasp of the obvious. One which far exceeds many people in charge of a multi-million dollar budget.
Contractors and their employers have diametrically opposed goals. The successful use of a contractor for a critical system requires
- Careful planning to anticipate future needs and changing conditions. - Very skillfully written contracts. - A process of oversight and review by skilled people who know WTF they are doing.
The employer is doing most of the planning, a lot of the management, duplicating skills and roles with oversight and paying extra for things they missed the first time. This means, in the real world, that critical systems are almost always better developed in house. Contractors are very useful for specific, limited projects and modules of other systems . Outsourcing is much less effective for large infrastructure where ongoing maintainence and adaption will be required.
However, since the whole point of the Defense Network is to shovel Joe Six-pack's social security into the pockets of campaign contributions as fast as possible, I'd say "Mission Accomplished".
CFD339 Wrote: There's just so much energy available in what is the most available substance in the universe that the better we get at working with it the better off we are.
Just to be abundantly clear, Hydrogen is _not_ a fuel. It does not provide any net energy. There are no "hydrogen mines", like there are for coal or uranium.
To make hydrogen, you take water and apply electricity. A hydrogen fuel cell does this in reverse, reverting to water (and a little heat) and electricity. Hydrogen is energy _storage_, much like a battery.
Time to check your assumptions, buddy.
FinalMidnight
There has been some suggestions that effective toad traps can cut the Cane Toad population by up to seventy percent. The expense would be quite prohibitive though, Kakadu is a rather large place.
My personal favorite solution is to have the CSIRO breed a toxin resistant olive python or brown snake, and set them lose into the wild. A toxin resistant native preditor would go a long way to restoring some kind of balance. Besides, I think that four meter long Olive Pythons are cute as hell. Example: http://www.mcmartinville.com/reptiles/trips/austra lia/olive.htm
Brown Snakes, on the other hand, are not quite so cuddly, but have been here for a long time. I'd rather have a bazillion brown snakes (who run away, er, slither away given the chance) than unlimited quantities of toxic toads.
Anthrax: Analysis showed that the source of weaponised anthrax spores was a lab in the USA. Almost certainly a DOD biological weapons facility.
DC shooter: A Citizen of the USA.
Both of these "Terrorist Attacks" were individuals acting without organizations. No finance, no supply, no coordination. Blanket surveillance is singularly ineffective against catching these kind of criminals.
All the surveillance monitoring in the world would never have caught the Unibomber. Only good old fashioned police investigation leg work.
As far as I can tell, citizens of the USA have most to fear from other citizens.
AND
New LEA powers have had no measurable effect on achieving their stated aims.
It is however, a slippery slope. As soon as some things are unknowable (and thus should not be investigated) then the only thing left to be decided is _how_many_ things are unknowable.
Religion gives simple answers. The natural enemy of religion is thinking. If you think too hard or too long, then you will probably decide that your own personal relationship with the creator is as valid as that of the guy on the soap box telling you what to think.
Example:
Religious Authority: God wants us to tithe to the Church! Religious Believer: Ok! Here is my tithe! Religious Thinker: He does? Where does it say that? What does the Church do with the money? Would it not be better to do good works instead, to really help the people who need most?
Etc.
The foundation of any good and faithful church is people who will take the word of the Religious Authoritys' interpretation of matters spiritual. It has been documented the correlation of lack of education and religious vigor. Note that religious organizations are strongest in third world countries.
While it is possible to have educated, thinking, tolerant religious organizations, the reality is that these organizations eventually put themselves out of a job.
Science (which is based more or less on philosophical inquiry) and religion (which is based on faith in the unprovable and obedience to authority) have an unresolvable conflict of interests. Organized religions will _always_ be against Science and scientific enquiry. Those that are not, will die out in probably about two or three generations.
It is very hard to have unwavering faith in your Church when you have studied the history of the Christianity (and it's book, the bible) since the second century. You quickly work out that the bible did not arrive on a fax from God. Then, you are forced to make a whole bunch of decisions about interpretation. Suddenly the beautiful simple answers that Christian religion give no longer are simple.
The Fuji Xerox Desert rose used cells that were surplus to another university requrements. They got the cells for a cheap price when the better funded team upgraded the cells of their solar car's array. They were not the higest efficency cells on the market, when obtained, and they were not new either.
Yes, you are qite correct about each of the cells being individually glued into place. I know because I've helped replace them.
Sir, respectfully, you are talking through your hat.
This specific solar car race has inspired the development of a 98% efficiency electrical drive system. The skills to build electrical drives of this type at any size, for any application were gained by building one-of-a-kind prototype solar cars. This motor is now a standard COTS product that is used by just about all solar car teams. In the future production lines will be producing tens of thousands of motors based on this very design. That will very much make the world a better place.
Unfortunately, all the real development has already been done. Now, using standard parts, bought off the shelf, a car can be built that travels at the posted speed limits and still charge the battery.
The method for building a successful solar car has been reduced to a formula: Use THESE solar cells, THAT motor/controller package and have a body shaped like THIS, for slippery aerodynamics. Even so, many teams manage to produce poor efforts. For example: Aerodynamic crosswind loading is responsible for many accidents.
The Fuji Xerox Desert Rose, which is now more than six years old, could (if it were running) compete favorably with the field of todays cars. This is a car that was built six years ago for less than $40K using second hand, hand-me-down solar cells from another university team. The Current teams are running cells that generate about three times the power.
The Solar Car race is now merely a quaint anachronism. The rules body actively moves to stifle any true innovation, much like Formula 1 racing etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree Nissan and Renault are both fighting a losing battle to hold back the tide of change. After market batteries for cellphones are often better than the genuine product, and the same will very quickly be true for electric car batteries. Small independant shops will pop up with clever young people happy to sell you a new battery pack and pehaps a firmware hack.
This leaves dealerships in a bad spot. The are currently enshrined in law in the USA, and watching many or most go the way of the dodo will be traumatic for lobbiests.
As for stealerships, I agree. The Mazda dealership I worked at had almost all the work done by under-trained apprentices with insufficient supervision. I once watched a new car with steering alinment issues come back four times because the tyre-fitter was crap and the stealership got paid again every time. Much of the profits of the shop came from getting nearly an hour of unpaid overtime from every apprentice every day. For a dozen apprentices, this adds up fast.
The sooner I can order my car on line and have it arrive in the post, the happier I will be. Electric cars are wonderfully low maintainence, with a converted Prius being my favourite. I have seen the future, and it runs on batteries.
Recently I looked at buying a Nissan Leaf, which is a pretty sweet ride for an electric car. I discovered a few things.
1) The Leaf just about never needs service. Change the battery pack every two or four years, and that is it. Regular inspections of tyres and suspension components as usual, but these are very relable and can be done by any mechanic.
2) Nissan has some nagware shit that makes you take your leaf back to Nissan to be reassured. For this the dealership must buy an expensive piece of specalized kit from Nissan and will then charge you, the car owner, for the workship equivilent of clicking the "Okay" button.
Reading between the lines: Dealerships don't actually make any money by selling cars (the Mazda dealership I worked at for six months sure didn't). Just about all their profitability comes from warentee work (charged back to the manufacturer, thus getting a bigger slice of the sales profits), or regular scheduled services (which are mostly oil changes done by apprentices). Electric cars have far fewer parts which are far more reliable. Switching to electric cars will neatly drive a stake through the heart of the business model of auto dealerships. I assume this Renault bullshit is for exactly the same reasons as the Nissian Leaf bullshit.
You might enjoy this radio program broadcast on Australian Radio National in 2009 when the GFC was more topical.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2526727.htm
The program examines the change in cluture from management as an apprenticeship to the advent of the MBA.
Why would tracking be slow? Parallax being what it is? As long as the mirror is tracking targets within the same quadrant of the sky, it should be able to switch fast enough.
As for modulation, I think you are making unstated assumptions about reflectivity and switching speeds. How are you imagining the focus to be shifted and reflectivity varied? Mylar held by variable stays, held taught by photion pressure, for example? Easy, point a big dish at a little dish for a two reflector system, and your traverse speeds (governed by mass) and modulation speed (also, to some extent governed by mass, depending on the method) are dramatically reduced, as now you only must move the smaller reflector.
I know very well about solar concentration with mirrors. A reflector array in the L1 would have the potential to extend the day cycle of a solar collection site.
http://www.sbp.de/en/html/solar/dish-stirling.html
It all depends on the size of the reflector, or better, array of reflectors.
It is probably more effective (given rotation times etc of a very large sail) to aim the array at an orbit and impart sunlight to objects as they approach in that vector. It may well be practical to rapidly turn on and off the reflectivity of the sail with shutters or LCD cells or the like, avoiding striking unintended targets.
The ability to de-orbit any satellites equipped with a solar sail alone might make this worthwhile. Also, point it at a terrestrial solar farm for double the energy production!
Outside the reams of the achievable right now, to be sure, but what are we without our dreams?
I wonder at the effectiveness of putting a very large focusable solar reflector in a high orbit, perhaps at LaGrange point 1. Such a solar sail could be used to give thrust to satellites equipped with a sail, or even large bits of space junk. Obviously it wouldn't give much Delta V to junk, but it might give some, and it would be essentially free. Junk in high orbits takes hundreds or thousands of years to de-orbit, and any means of reducing the velocity of said junk would drastically reduce that time. Additionally, with a variable focus the mirror might be pointed at solar cells of existing satellites, which could improve the thrust gained from Ion Drives, assuming enough reaction mass remains to take advantage of the extra watts.
Idle musings. Feel free to shoot me down.
Which suits me, as I'm monocular! I don't even have to take off my dashing eye patch!
The Labour party is capitulating with the Christian Fundamentalist Family First party to ensure their support in the Senate, where they hold the balance of power. Just like the Liberal (conservitive) party did with the Useless and Unused Porn Filter they commissioned.
This time it is a 110 million boondoggle rather than a 30 million dollar boondoggle. It is about as relevant.
The sale of the national telco Telstra cost John Howard's Liberal (conservative) party a few million dollars worth of Anti-Abortion literature, harsher porn laws and the outlawing of internet gambling. The support of the minor right wing cooks will be bought with lip-service and tax dollars, and (hopefully) nothing much will change.
There are also alternate technologies for Photo Voltaic Cells which require a lot less energy to make. These include (but are not limited to):
Both these techniques are cheaper and will repay investment a much faster than the traditional silicon wafer PV cell. While they may not match the very impressive 31.25% efficency of a Solar Thermal system, they will undoubtedly get better in the future.
The change from a centralized power generation system to a decentralized power generation system is undoubtedly going to break lots of business models. The Powers-That-Be have a lot of interest in keeping the status quo exactly the way it is. They are (quite rightly) nervous about Joe Sixpack discovering that he can put a wind turbine and two solar thermal reflectors on the roof of their house and suddenly make the power company a lot less profitable. Peak-Rate Power is the most profitable kind, and every watt reduced is money from their bottom line.
As this technology gets cheaper and more affordable, the reasons not to have power generation distributed and closer to the point of use vanish. The oil company loses demand (exponentially reducing the price of their product) and the power company's infrastructure monopoly suddenly becomes a whole lot less valuable.
This upcoming technology shift is going to be similar in scale to the replacement of million-dollar record pressing plants with $80 CD-R drives, and we all know how long that is taking to shake out.
My step-brother is a professional musician and pianist. He was playing in a piano lounge for a Casino and making decent money. Each night after his shift, he'd go to the blackjack tables and play, counting cards.
After a few consistent wins, up a hundred dollars a night nothing big, he was called into an office where they demanded to know how he was cheating. Who was he colluding with? When he said he was all by himself and just counting cards, the management told him that "It isn't possible with a seven deck shoe" They proceeded to fire him and black list him. The blacklist is shared amongst all casinos in Australia. Now with the use of their Facial Recognition systems on casino security cameras, this is very effective.
So to make the point, Casinos don't need much of a reason to kick you out and make sure you never come back. They are in the business of vacuuming all of the money from the pockets of suckers. If they notice that you are consistently winning then you'll be asked to leave.
FM.
Passive night-vision should be licenced as per firearms, IMHO. While this development is cool, I can only see military applicaitons for it.
.22 target pistol differs from a snub-nosed .38)
There is very little that can be done with passive night-vision systems that can not be acheived with an active system, other than conceal your presence. The reason that soldiers don't walk around with infrared flood-lights is because they don't want to give away their position. Hunters (or photographers or whatever) don't have to worry about deer having an IR spotter scope.
People who decide that they have a legitimate reason for needing a passive system can apply for a licence. Like hand guns, the purpose of the design is to make it easier to kill people. (Hand gun owners, swallow your ire and think about how a
Wow! I'm gobsmacked at your sheer, unabashed ignorance of "The way things work".
To the first: what do you think the ratio of new drug research is to profits? For a major drug company? Conversely, what do you think the ratio of marketing vs profits? Got a clue? No? Feel free to go do a little googling. It is an open secret that drug companies spend almost nothing (compared) on research into new drugs. Even then the research directed is in very, very specific (eg profitable) areas. Hint! It makes a lot more money to market a drug for "Erectile Disfunction" than to actually make a simple, cheap cure for just about any disease you care to name.
To address your second point: The profits made from a drug are a reflection of the profitability of that drug. Nothing more or less. Concrete examples of how _value_ and _profit_ are distinct concepts to follow.
To the third: Once patents run out, drug companies market new, patented drugs. Older, generic drugs are not marketed. Part of the reason this happens is that drug companies advertise directly to doctors (who write the perceptions) and part of the reason is that drug stores make more money selling drugs that cost more. There are a bunch of simple ways to fix most of this in legislation. That, however, is another can of worms.
Examples of point two and the relationship with point three:
Ritalin: Heard of it? Great! How about Dexamphetamine? Not so much? Little known fact! Dexampetamine is a more effective treatment for ADD and ADHD than Ritalin. However it is perscribed less than a fifth as much. Why? Because the patents on Dexamphetamine ran out years ago. It can be made by any drug company and is a commodity item. Profits are very, very low. Ritalin is very profitable because it is a treatment. A patient will need to continue to take Rtalin for years. Possibly forever. Profitability: High! Value: Fuck All! Ritalin does a worse job than a drug that costs less than a third of the price.
Treatment of stomach ulcers: A method of curing stomach ulcers has been around for more than ten years. Thats right, A complete cure! The Australian who discovered the cure was under attack from many major drug companies, who attempted to discredit him and his research. Why? Because anti-acid treatments of stomach ucers are a) Patented and b) something that needs to be taken _forever_. The cure relys on a simple, generic anti-biotic and some mineral treatments. Not patentable, therefore no profits.
If you give a shit about any of these issues, you might be interested in the process of testing and approval that goes on in the USA compared to other countries (Like the UK or Canada) and what the differences mean. You might also be interested in the "Evergreening" of medical patents and the blatant kickbacks that medical companies give Doctors and Pharmacists.
And YES, I am a fucking Pharmacist.
A textbook of good quality written at an excellent standard, appropriate for the curriculum of the students, costs a significant percentage of $100. For example my Anatomy and Physiology text book cost me AU$130, my Chemistry textbook cost $80, and I still needed two others for this year at university.
High school textbooks are cheaper, but more are required.
By using the OLPC for a direct substitute for textbooks, (open source textbooks, change the world!) then they pay for themselves in the first two years. Over four years of school, they pay for themselves about twice.
This does not take into consideration all the additional things that can be done with a laptop that can not be done with a textbook.
So assuming the market is children who already go to school, then this project is set to have some truly revolutionary effects on the way learning is done and the cost/benefit of that schooling.
How is that a failure? It isn't. This is FUD.
Text Abbreviation has the implication: "My slight convenience (laziness) is much more important than your ability to understand me." It is inherently self centered and fundamentally lazy. Typing an extra twelve or fifteen letters over a whole text message isn't much of an inconvenience.
We have enough trouble with people misunderstanding perfectly well formed and coherent text communications as it is.
FinalMidnight.
Regardless of the mathmatical wizardry involved, there is no way to do this without someone being paid to surf for and collect kiddie-porn. Yeah, they may delete it afterwards. So?
If I'm not mistaken, this breaks a whole lot of laws. Feel free to try and justify how this serves the greater good by throwing out the law book this one time. For the Children.
FinalMidnight
Good sir, have you recently checked on the price of textbooks? A university level text cost between AU$60 and AU$120. Highschool texts probibly don't cost any less than $40 each. Per subject.
a u ) work very well for teaching texts. In five years, a whole curriculum of international standard could be available for the use of developing countries. For free.
If you do not see the value of having a computer (and the access to cheap media that goes with it) for less than the cost of a single years texts, then you perhaps ought to step back from the issue.
The Open Source Licences (Creative Commons is a great example http://creativecommons.org/license/?jurisdiction=
So, you are perfectly right, computers are not in fact strictly necessary.
You are also an obtuse asshat.
Midnight9
An Asynchronus AC motor has exactly one moving part. That would be (ta da!) the bearing.
Too complicated to work well under the conditions, eh?
An Australian adventurer wanted to drive an electrical vehicle to the south pole, not that long ago. The Solar Car motors were one of the only two considered, because of the large body of field test data and telemitry that exists for the motor design.
Admittedly, you have the complications of the electronic controller, but this would be solved in exactly the same way as other electronic issues presented to the design team.
Of the LI batteries in the Rovers, _most_ of them are non rechargeable. I understand the eggs and baskets arguments, but I point out that NASA has gone from being a technology Visionary circa 1965 to one of the most technologically conservative organisations circa 2000.
Or are you going to tell me we should have sent Mr Armstrong to make that one small step with "Proven Technology"?
NASA is cutting budgets and doesn't have the money for testing. Fair enough. But innovation is cheap.
A friend of mine is part owner of a cutting edge motor design company. He had a hand in the design of the Fuji Xerox Desert Rose, an award winning Solar Car. He said that looking inspections of the designs they used for the rovers showed them laughable in many regards. Little though was given to efficiency. None of the design team expected the solar systems to work well or last long. The Rovers both carry a massive weight of non-rechargeable batteries (alkaline cells, or something) and very little of rechargeable cells. Unable to even discard the spent battery cells. The rovers have been carrying the spent cells ever since they ran flat, doing horrible things to the power to weight ratio and other such bad stuff.
Also, an efficient asynchronous electric motor design would have been about 30% the weight (or 70% more power, pick one) and running at greater than 90% efficiency. And I'm not talking untested prototypes, either. Motors of this design and build have been run in Solar Car races for the best part of a decade.
While NASA is very proud to have exceeded expectations with the Rovers, I think this is mostly because their expectations of solar powered vehicles were so abominably low. Perhaps they will take things more seriously from now on.
Sir, you have a fabulous grasp of the obvious. One which far exceeds many people in charge of a multi-million dollar budget.
Contractors and their employers have diametrically opposed goals. The successful use of a contractor for a critical system requires
- Careful planning to anticipate future needs and changing conditions.
- Very skillfully written contracts.
- A process of oversight and review by skilled people who know WTF they are doing.
The employer is doing most of the planning, a lot of the management, duplicating skills and roles with oversight and paying extra for things they missed the first time. This means, in the real world, that critical systems are almost always better developed in house. Contractors are very useful for specific, limited projects and modules of other systems . Outsourcing is much less effective for large infrastructure where ongoing maintainence and adaption will be required.
However, since the whole point of the Defense Network is to shovel Joe Six-pack's social security into the pockets of campaign contributions as fast as possible, I'd say "Mission Accomplished".
CFD339 Wrote: There's just so much energy available in what is the most available substance in the universe that the better we get at working with it the better off we are. Just to be abundantly clear, Hydrogen is _not_ a fuel. It does not provide any net energy. There are no "hydrogen mines", like there are for coal or uranium. To make hydrogen, you take water and apply electricity. A hydrogen fuel cell does this in reverse, reverting to water (and a little heat) and electricity. Hydrogen is energy _storage_, much like a battery. Time to check your assumptions, buddy. FinalMidnight
There has been some suggestions that effective toad traps can cut the Cane Toad population by up to seventy percent. The expense would be quite prohibitive though, Kakadu is a rather large place.
a lia/olive.htm
My personal favorite solution is to have the CSIRO breed a toxin resistant olive python or brown snake, and set them lose into the wild. A toxin resistant native preditor would go a long way to restoring some kind of balance. Besides, I think that four meter long Olive Pythons are cute as hell. Example: http://www.mcmartinville.com/reptiles/trips/austr
Brown Snakes, on the other hand, are not quite so cuddly, but have been here for a long time. I'd rather have a bazillion brown snakes (who run away, er, slither away given the chance) than unlimited quantities of toxic toads.
Anyone want to buy a toad skin jacket?
Midnight9
Anthrax: Analysis showed that the source of weaponised anthrax spores was a lab in the USA. Almost certainly a DOD biological weapons facility.
DC shooter: A Citizen of the USA.
Both of these "Terrorist Attacks" were individuals acting without organizations. No finance, no supply, no coordination. Blanket surveillance is singularly ineffective against catching these kind of criminals.
All the surveillance monitoring in the world would never have caught the Unibomber. Only good old fashioned police investigation leg work.
As far as I can tell, citizens of the USA have most to fear from other citizens.
AND
New LEA powers have had no measurable effect on achieving their stated aims.
It is however, a slippery slope. As soon as some things are unknowable (and thus should not be investigated) then the only thing left to be decided is _how_many_ things are unknowable.
Religion gives simple answers. The natural enemy of religion is thinking. If you think too hard or too long, then you will probably decide that your own personal relationship with the creator is as valid as that of the guy on the soap box telling you what to think.
Example:
Religious Authority: God wants us to tithe to the Church!
Religious Believer: Ok! Here is my tithe!
Religious Thinker: He does? Where does it say that? What does the Church do with the money? Would it not be better to do good works instead, to really help the people who need most?
Etc.
The foundation of any good and faithful church is people who will take the word of the Religious Authoritys' interpretation of matters spiritual. It has been documented the correlation of lack of education and religious vigor. Note that religious organizations are strongest in third world countries.
While it is possible to have educated, thinking, tolerant religious organizations, the reality is that these organizations eventually put themselves out of a job.
Science (which is based more or less on philosophical inquiry) and religion (which is based on faith in the unprovable and obedience to authority) have an unresolvable conflict of interests. Organized religions will _always_ be against Science and scientific enquiry. Those that are not, will die out in probably about two or three generations.
It is very hard to have unwavering faith in your Church when you have studied the history of the Christianity (and it's book, the bible) since the second century. You quickly work out that the bible did not arrive on a fax from God. Then, you are forced to make a whole bunch of decisions about interpretation. Suddenly the beautiful simple answers that Christian religion give no longer are simple.
FinalMidnight
The Fuji Xerox Desert rose used cells that were surplus to another university requrements. They got the cells for a cheap price when the better funded team upgraded the cells of their solar car's array. They were not the higest efficency cells on the market, when obtained, and they were not new either.
Yes, you are qite correct about each of the cells being individually glued into place. I know because I've helped replace them.
FM
Sir, respectfully, you are talking through your hat. This specific solar car race has inspired the development of a 98% efficiency electrical drive system. The skills to build electrical drives of this type at any size, for any application were gained by building one-of-a-kind prototype solar cars. This motor is now a standard COTS product that is used by just about all solar car teams. In the future production lines will be producing tens of thousands of motors based on this very design. That will very much make the world a better place. Unfortunately, all the real development has already been done. Now, using standard parts, bought off the shelf, a car can be built that travels at the posted speed limits and still charge the battery. The method for building a successful solar car has been reduced to a formula: Use THESE solar cells, THAT motor/controller package and have a body shaped like THIS, for slippery aerodynamics. Even so, many teams manage to produce poor efforts. For example: Aerodynamic crosswind loading is responsible for many accidents. The Fuji Xerox Desert Rose, which is now more than six years old, could (if it were running) compete favorably with the field of todays cars. This is a car that was built six years ago for less than $40K using second hand, hand-me-down solar cells from another university team. The Current teams are running cells that generate about three times the power. The Solar Car race is now merely a quaint anachronism. The rules body actively moves to stifle any true innovation, much like Formula 1 racing etc.