Who cares what some has-been video game designer thinks about open source software? He's hardly an authority on anything related to software development at all. Why is anyone listening to him?
It's almost as dumb as listening to actors talk about politics.
I can't believe this kind of schlock is getting any attention at all. This is so stupid and impractical that I don't even know where to start.
Here is what they are proposing:
1. Capture the exhaust 2. Pull the hydrogen (?) out of the exhaust 3. Run the car from the hydrogen 4. Dispose of the carbon somewhere. 5. Eventually re-use that carbon somehow to make new fuel.
These people are morons. How much hydrogen is there in emissions? I doubt enough to run a car.
I swear, the public press is so desperate for free "green" energy they're willing to pay attention to any sort of nutty idea that comes along, no matter how ridiculous it is. And from GA Tech, no less. They really should know better.
Are you being sarcastic? NXT is a dismal failure in business, and has lost millions over the years, and is nowhere close to profitable. Sounds like they burned money even faster than the government.
Read the website more carefully. They make an off-the-shelf product that combines intertial measurement with ultrasonic sensors to correct for drift. It's the exact same technique. Intersense may or may not make a "suit" but you can bet people who've bought the intersense products sure have.
This very product has been on the market for years, by Intersense, which also uses accelerometers augmented with ultrasound to prevent drift. It looks like MIT just copied them.
These are almost certainly remote controlled; the algorithms are much easier to design/implement externally, before miniaturizing everything. It would seem like a big waste of time to do all that integration so early in the research. That is, unless these control systems problems are much easier than I suspect they are (or there are severe limitations outside of the demos).
I really don't see why anyone would want one, except maybe as a toy. It's pretty easy to show why.
The average home has a 150A electrical capacity from the grid. 150A at 120V is 18kW. 18kW is 24hp.
Assuming you have a 100% perfectly efficient electric car and charging system (ha!), and use 100% of your house's energy capacity a one hour charge will let you drive your 24hp moped for one hour. Or, you can drive your tiny 100hp car for about 15 minutes. An eight-hour charge gives you 2 hours drive time on a 100hp car. For a more powerful car (200hp), you'll get one hour on an overnight charge.
That just sucks. I can fill up a car with gas in two minutes, and drive hundreds of miles.
Remember, this is the absolute theoretical maximum, and using 100% of your house's available power. In practice, the numbers are much, much worse. No amount of engineering will ever overcome this.
There are plenty of other problems (battery disposal, electricity generation, reliability, etc.) but the pure energy equation is a killer - there's really no way around it, unless you want to be relegated to puttering around in a golf cart all the time.
I think that's my number. Could have been lower if I had cared to register earlier. Anyhow, yeah, I've been reading on and off for a while. It's changed surprisingly little over the years.
It's just rarely done. Most journalists would prefer to write fluffy hype-pieces, exaggerate claims (or allow exaggerated claims to be published), and otherwise print a lot of BS. Regular, honest science pieces just don't sell as well.
People quickly forget (or delude themselves). Kasparov wasn't defeated by a machine, but by a team of experts using a machine. There's a huge difference.
Still, who cares? Chess is a solvable game, and brute force will eventually win. Not impressive at all, and there's nothing to do with intelligence.
This is a great idea, though unfortunately this would be illegal in many states, including Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Not only would the tape be inadmissible, but you might end up in jail for surreptitious recording. It's happened...
What do you know about me or my contributions to any field? In this case, it happens to be irrelevant - it's easy enough to judge the merit of the idea based on the idea itself. In this case, Fermi was totally wrong, and for simple reasons. Are you so naive to think that a physicist's opinions on ALL matters are correct, just because of his contributions in a non-related field?
Why would an advanced race want to colonize earth? What does earth have to offer such a race?
Nothing. That's why they aren't here. They don't care. Nor should they. It's pretty simple, really.
And don't misquote me. I didn't say he was "dumb", I said his paradox was. Just because he was a good physicist, doesn't mean he's right about everything. Only a real idiot would think he was.
Just because Fermi developed some good physics doesn't excuse him from making a stupid statement about a barely-related field. Aliens with any technical achievement have much better things to do with their time than bother with the likes of us. Sure, if they needed the colonization space and Earth were convenient, they'd be here. But they won't go out of their way to talk to us. We've got little to offer them.
But your comments are sophomoric and are becoming flamebait. I also have better things to do with my time.
I truly feel sorry for you, for having such a depressing view of the world. No, not everything is possible, but a heck of a lot more is than you give credit for.
Nonsense. There is zero evidence presented that anything proposed is "impossible", only that it is "difficult and expensive using current/immediately foreseeable technology". Well, duh. There is absolutely no rational reason to dismiss these possibilities as forever implausible, undesirable, or infeasible.
Fermi's paradox is dumb. We as a species have just barely come out of the muck. If there are advanced civilizations out there, why would they possibly waste their time with a primitive species like us?
This article is incredibly short-sighted and unreasonably pessimistic. He's using current technology, economics, and incentive to make specific conclusions about something that will most likely happen in the next few hundred years. Just consider how much science and technology has changed in the last 100 years - can you possibly imagine what will be possible 100 years from now, much less draw conclusions about feasibility?
I think that technology's march is not only inevitable, but accelerating. To outright dismiss these possibilities is completely unreasonable and irrational.
You are absolutely correct. Google is catching hell for their behavior in China, and rightly so. This, combined with their missed earning reports and subsequent stock crash, tells them they have to "do something".
It's a start, but it's still not that much of an improvement.
It's not the scientists, drug companies, or lack of collaboration that's the problem - it's the FDA. They are far too restrictive about what is approved, and approval takes much longer than it should. An expedient and more reasonable policy of approving drugs (if approval should be necessary at all) would save a LOT of lives.
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Who cares what some has-been video game designer thinks about open source software? He's hardly an authority on anything related to software development at all. Why is anyone listening to him?
It's almost as dumb as listening to actors talk about politics.
This is a much better challenge than the X-prize, which didn't even include orbit. It was amusing to watch, but really not a huge deal imo.
I fear, however, that $30m isn't nearly enough to cover the budget for a lunar mission, even if someone does end up winning the prize.
I can't believe this kind of schlock is getting any attention at all. This is so stupid and impractical that I don't even know where to start.
Here is what they are proposing:
1. Capture the exhaust
2. Pull the hydrogen (?) out of the exhaust
3. Run the car from the hydrogen
4. Dispose of the carbon somewhere.
5. Eventually re-use that carbon somehow to make new fuel.
These people are morons. How much hydrogen is there in emissions? I doubt enough to run a car.
I swear, the public press is so desperate for free "green" energy they're willing to pay attention to any sort of nutty idea that comes along, no matter how ridiculous it is. And from GA Tech, no less. They really should know better.
You are exactly right; most on this forum really don't understand this at all. Good job clearly explaining it.
Are you being sarcastic? NXT is a dismal failure in business, and has lost millions over the years, and is nowhere close to profitable. Sounds like they burned money even faster than the government.
Read the website more carefully. They make an off-the-shelf product that combines intertial measurement with ultrasonic sensors to correct for drift. It's the exact same technique. Intersense may or may not make a "suit" but you can bet people who've bought the intersense products sure have.
This very product has been on the market for years, by Intersense, which also uses accelerometers augmented with ultrasound to prevent drift. It looks like MIT just copied them.
This isn't really new.
http://www.isense.com/products.aspx?id=43&
These are almost certainly remote controlled; the algorithms are much easier to design/implement externally, before miniaturizing everything. It would seem like a big waste of time to do all that integration so early in the research. That is, unless these control systems problems are much easier than I suspect they are (or there are severe limitations outside of the demos).
I really don't see why anyone would want one, except maybe as a toy. It's pretty easy to show why.
The average home has a 150A electrical capacity from the grid. 150A at 120V is 18kW. 18kW is 24hp.
Assuming you have a 100% perfectly efficient electric car and charging system (ha!), and use 100% of your house's energy capacity a one hour charge will let you drive your 24hp moped for one hour. Or, you can drive your tiny 100hp car for about 15 minutes. An eight-hour charge gives you 2 hours drive time on a 100hp car. For a more powerful car (200hp), you'll get one hour on an overnight charge.
That just sucks. I can fill up a car with gas in two minutes, and drive hundreds of miles.
Remember, this is the absolute theoretical maximum, and using 100% of your house's available power. In practice, the numbers are much, much worse. No amount of engineering will ever overcome this.
There are plenty of other problems (battery disposal, electricity generation, reliability, etc.) but the pure energy equation is a killer - there's really no way around it, unless you want to be relegated to puttering around in a golf cart all the time.
5 seconds, tops, for XP to return from standby on my generic laptop. What's the big deal?
I think that's my number. Could have been lower if I had cared to register earlier. Anyhow, yeah, I've been reading on and off for a while. It's changed surprisingly little over the years.
Hell, for just $2k I'd buy the stuff, take a peek, and return it. :)
It's just rarely done. Most journalists would prefer to write fluffy hype-pieces, exaggerate claims (or allow exaggerated claims to be published), and otherwise print a lot of BS. Regular, honest science pieces just don't sell as well.
People quickly forget (or delude themselves). Kasparov wasn't defeated by a machine, but by a team of experts using a machine. There's a huge difference.
Still, who cares? Chess is a solvable game, and brute force will eventually win. Not impressive at all, and there's nothing to do with intelligence.
This is a great idea, though unfortunately this would be illegal in many states, including Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Not only would the tape be inadmissible, but you might end up in jail for surreptitious recording. It's happened...
I wish I could rate you higher. Thanks for saying it...
What do you know about me or my contributions to any field? In this case, it happens to be irrelevant - it's easy enough to judge the merit of the idea based on the idea itself. In this case, Fermi was totally wrong, and for simple reasons. Are you so naive to think that a physicist's opinions on ALL matters are correct, just because of his contributions in a non-related field?
Why would an advanced race want to colonize earth? What does earth have to offer such a race?
Nothing. That's why they aren't here. They don't care. Nor should they. It's pretty simple, really.
And don't misquote me. I didn't say he was "dumb", I said his paradox was. Just because he was a good physicist, doesn't mean he's right about everything. Only a real idiot would think he was.
Just because Fermi developed some good physics doesn't excuse him from making a stupid statement about a barely-related field. Aliens with any technical achievement have much better things to do with their time than bother with the likes of us. Sure, if they needed the colonization space and Earth were convenient, they'd be here. But they won't go out of their way to talk to us. We've got little to offer them.
But your comments are sophomoric and are becoming flamebait. I also have better things to do with my time.
I truly feel sorry for you, for having such a depressing view of the world. No, not everything is possible, but a heck of a lot more is than you give credit for.
Nonsense. There is zero evidence presented that anything proposed is "impossible", only that it is "difficult and expensive using current/immediately foreseeable technology". Well, duh. There is absolutely no rational reason to dismiss these possibilities as forever implausible, undesirable, or infeasible.
Fermi's paradox is dumb. We as a species have just barely come out of the muck. If there are advanced civilizations out there, why would they possibly waste their time with a primitive species like us?
This article is incredibly short-sighted and unreasonably pessimistic. He's using current technology, economics, and incentive to make specific conclusions about something that will most likely happen in the next few hundred years. Just consider how much science and technology has changed in the last 100 years - can you possibly imagine what will be possible 100 years from now, much less draw conclusions about feasibility?
I think that technology's march is not only inevitable, but accelerating. To outright dismiss these possibilities is completely unreasonable and irrational.
You are absolutely correct. Google is catching hell for their behavior in China, and rightly so. This, combined with their missed earning reports and subsequent stock crash, tells them they have to "do something".
It's a start, but it's still not that much of an improvement.
You're right, but the google fanboys don't like to consider this.
It's not the scientists, drug companies, or lack of collaboration that's the problem - it's the FDA. They are far too restrictive about what is approved, and approval takes much longer than it should. An expedient and more reasonable policy of approving drugs (if approval should be necessary at all) would save a LOT of lives.