Your reasoning is slightly flawed. Visible light is 400nm-700nm which works out to be 7.5*10^14 Hz and 4.3*10^14 Hz- much larger than 100GHz. I have no trouble seeing the light from my lightbulb across the room.
To make a projector operator watch the average slashdot reader have sex is indeed a task they deserve to be paid for. If you disagree, you probably haven't met the average slashdot reader- count your blessings.
What you're proposing (charging a battery and then discharging it) is no better, in fact in many ways it is worse. I can't find a good site to explain in depth how a recharagable battery works, but, remembering from my intro chemistry class it's an oxidation reaction at your anode and the corresponding reduction reaction at your cathode, and it's reversed to recharge- hydrogen brings the advantage of portability (it's easier to transport hydrogen than it is to transport nickle metal hydride) and, from what I've seen, increased practical efficency.
The moon exerts a gravitational pull on the Earth. The Earth (waves included) exerts a gravitational pull on the Moon. Because the mass of the Earth is not changing, nothing should be changed.
The inverse is *always* true when we're talking about forces in physics; equal and opposite reactions.
Re:But the question that will NEVER be answered...
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Comic Book Physics
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Haha! Talking to you from the next day, my head is fine, and my headache from yesterday was *not* relativity related.
But I would be lying to you if I said the first time I learned about relativity I didn't get a brainache;)
Re:But the question that will NEVER be answered...
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Comic Book Physics
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· Score: 2
how does TIME remain absolute?
Einstein long ago said that time doesn't remain absolute. Time dilation. T = t/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). Physics and whatnot. That's why you can't go faster than the speed of light- you can accelerate forever and always travel below the speed of light. To me, that statement in and of itself is beautiful.
As for the effects of time dilation at real relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light), there are plenty of books, webpages, etc. that talk about it. But a word of advice- if you want to be able to understand it, you need to get the idea of simultaneous actions out of your head. The problem with what you said lies in one word- "while."
I have a headache and further discussing relativity will only make it worse;) If you want to talk about it later and/or privately, that will perhaps be best.
Re:You cannot deny GCC is the heart of free softwa
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The Stallman Factor
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· Score: 2
I will not deny that modern free BSD (and many others) operating systems rely on GCC for serious work. GCC is by far the most featureful free compiler available, but if it wasn't around when people were building a BSD operating system sans a Unix license, a replacement (they are out there: lcc, bcc) would have been written/improved to the point where it would have been succesful. GCC is evolutionary, it's not revolutionary.
I will agree that GCC is a very valuable thing for all of us to have and share, but if RMS wasn't around to write it someone else would have. As for his ideals, well, that's an entirely different story (some of you may know I don't approve of RMS's politics. They aren't needed and they aren't fun).
Nuclear power plan aren't used to create nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons require weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, and neither is seen in large enough quantity to make a weapon in a typical power plant.
I'm a huge fan of nuclear power. But you're still getting more power out than was put in (put in, in this case, when the uranium or plutonium atoms were formed, probably in a supernova).
Nuclear power is drastically cleaner than coal, oil, and when done properly causes less enviornmental damage than hydroelectric. And thanks to the nature of radiation, the most dangerous waste becomes inert the fastest. The biggest downsides to nuclear power are the security concerns (fresh waste needs to be guarded, reactor-grade fuel requires less work to be made into weapons-grade, etc) but it's certainly nothing that we can't work out.
Also, current fuel cells are roughly five times more efficient at getting electrcity from hydrogen than burning it in a generator. The only advantage to getting power by combustion of hydrogen is that it's a really easy thing to do. The practical applications of burning hydrogen, however, if any, are very limited. Pardon the cliche, but fuel cells are the wave of the future.
As for how to store the hydrogen, storing it as a gas is difficult because of the pressures required to get dense hydrogen. We might see new and more efficient techniques for synthesizing hydrocarbons (like gasoline;)) pop up. With nuclear power, it should be a pretty good combination. Other people support using natural gas (Methane, CH4) and steam reforming it. We will see where the future takes us with this (heck, it may take is to non-hydrogen fuel cells)!
Please, do not spread misinformation about the safety of hydrogen. First of all, you argue that hydrogen is dangerous because all it takes to make hydrogen explode is air and heat.
This is true. All you need for a hydrogen+oxygen fire is hydrogen, oxygen, and enough activation energy for the reaction (typically provided in the form of a spark or heat from the preceeding reactions). But, before we go any further, let's talk about gasoline. Right now in you car I'm betting you have at the very least 10 gallons of it, and if you just filled up you could have more. Hydrogen as stored for electrical generation would not have oxygen- if you turned on the valve and held your lighter to it you'd essentially be making a bunson burner (or if it's leaking fast enough, a flame thrower). Now, what about gasoline?
Because of gasoline's low flash point (-40 degrees C. or F, your pick), you find yourself with a bunch of flammable vapors in a short period of time. And gasoline burns more slowly than hydrogen, and this is bad in terms of safety. Hydrogen burns up really quickly and is gone, gasoline pesters. Gasoline fires are much more dangerous than hydrogen fires. And we're not even addressing all of the toxic fumes that go along with combustion of gasoline.
In the Hindenburg disaster, all of the hydrogen was gone with a pop. The ensuing fire, flames, and mayhem were the result of the paint- the zepplin was painted with a compound that was intended to reduce drag. Unfortunately, this paint was essentially jet fuel. The Hindenburg disaster serves as more of an argument against petroleum based fuels than against hydrogen.
Of all the problems with hydrogen, safety is not one of them. It's safer for people directly, and it's safer for us and the enviornment in the long run.
As for your question about efficiency, obviously 20% efficiency means you harness 20% of the total energy that is in the fuel source. Getting 20% more out than what you put in would be a violation of the first law of thermodynamics.
I think you've pretty much answered your own question. Nothing is free. All forms of power generation require an input of more energy than we will ever get out of it. The big question is- who has to do this work?
What I'm trying to say/ask is, what is an example of an "alternative fuel source" that fits your definition?
Of course science is a mystery to the majority of U.S. citizens. Based on other polls, Politics is a mystery, economics is a mystery, global affairs is a mystery, and who the vice president is is a mystery to the majority of U.S. citizens.
Good job stating the obvious. A more interesting question would be - what do the majority of U.S. citizens know?
For the sake of being correct, this is nowhere near how photovoltaic cells work. It is based on the photoelectric effect, which states that when an electron of an atom is bombarded with a photon of a certain energy (equal to the atom's work function) the electron becomes free. In solar cells, this same thing happens with two dissimilar semiconducting materials to easily create a usable voltage.
What's happening here is the energy absorbed by the nanotubes cannot dissipate fast enough and cause an explosion. In a photoelectric/photovoltaic system all heat is definitely wasted. So your answer is no, because carbon is not particularly useful in a photovoltaic cell and carbon nanotubes certainly wouldn't be, because their internal resistance is *way* too high.
It doesn't make any sense in context, either.
20 states have specifically passed laws to allow the Segway on sidewalks.
This really, really, *really* should read "20 states have passed laws to specifically allow the Segway on sidewalks." They didn't specifically pass the law, they specifically allowed the Segway. This is a mistake. Not as egregious as others, but it's still very noticable.
As soon as you gave the money to the government, I don't see how it still is "your" money by any stretch of the imagination. It's the government's money, and how they spend it is well documented (although there are occasionally discrepencies such as thousand dollar hammers and whatnot). All dollars are created equal.
As soon as you spend it (be it on a product or a government), it's not yours. That simple. And the AC hit it right on the money- would you want to pay for what you're proposing? Didn't think so.
I believe that people *love* to hear about the next killer virus/worm that's out there. It's a sort of sick fascination with how easily one person can write something that spreads to thousands of computers that we rely on for so many important things. As someone who has had to disinfect dozens of computers and hundreds of floppies in previous employment, viruses are a headache, but they're also fascinating. It can be a rush to run f-prot and see what you'll find.
Of course, things are different now. In the DOS heydey (including Windows pre-95), most viruses we re textbook viruses. Today, more of them should be defined as trojans and worms. There's no worm that you can see and say "well isn't that cute" as they all are quite damaging in terms of bandwith utilization. But there were/are many true viruses that are not damaging... or not damaging if caught in time. We all like fire, but nobody likes getting burned.
Now, back to the subject. Michaelangelo. Back when it was news some ten (egads!) years ago, McAffe was warning everyone of the impending doom. That year there were many people who lost data, but nowhere near as large as some people had believed. To be fair to the AV experts at the time, most of them gave a range from the small to the abnormally large- but guess which figure reporters used to sell papers?
So, life went on, and nobody was afraid about Michaelangelo anymore. Well, this poor sap was hit by it the *second* time it delivered it's payload (March 6th 1993). I lost of a lot of data that day, and boy was I surprised. Ironically, the data I miss the most is a copy of the virus itself. We all love fire, but we don't love getting burned.
Studying the interesting viruses was, and is, a really educational and enjoyable thing to do. I do not encourage people to distribute viruses. It's a dick thing to do. But there are plenty out there, and they'll forever live in databases like VSUM and whatnot. The game of virus authors versus AV authors is largely over; but it's still neat to see how different viruses copied themselves, and even more interesting the cryptic lines of text that can so often be found in infected executables.
Eddie lives...somewhere in time!
This program was written in the city of Sofia (C) 1988-89 Dark Avenger.
Call me a hopeless virus romantic (not the VD kind), but I still think that's cool.
And holy crap, I just realized that the slashdot blackout already started. I apologize, didn't realize this before I typed this all up.
What version of XFree86 have you been running?
I'm using 4.1.0 and it was as painful as any to configure. Whenever they say they've made changes to the installation program, I try it out. Time and time again I resort to my old XF86Config file that was generated and then tweaked (and retweaked) both by hand and with xvidtune. I've never found XFree86 configuration to be that bad, but it's sure not great either.
I have found that AccelX, on the other hand, is truly easy to install. It's much like installing Windows 3.11.
You do realize that the whole moral of that episode was that doing war by computer was a *BAD* thing, right? If you believe that's where we're headed, you should be kicking and screaming.
The UT server, if implemented a la A Taste of Armageddon (losers sent off to death chamber) would be just as bad.
As humans we're really good at inventing/discovering stuff, ignoring it, inventing it again (and possibly yet again) and then eventually catching on. Why? Greed perhaps.
Examples: All of the Edison examples that you just presented.
Marconi-Tesla
Columbus-Native Americans
On that note, Columbus led a crew a couple thousand miles west. Chris thought that'd be enough to hit Asia. The Greeks had startlingly accurate figures for the circumference of the globe some 1600 years prior.
We're all plagirists. Deal with it. The innovator is the guy who can *convince* everyone else that he was first.
Ehh, maybe you should reread what I said. I did not say that dark yellow is good. Going into your kidneys is a solution of water, minerals, salts, and waste products such as urea. If you have been drinking quite a lot of water, your kidneys will not be able to recover as much as the water as it could. The result is more water ends up in your urine, making it clear. If you are dehyrdated, your kidneys will work overtime and you will have dark yellow urine. This is not good.
What I said in my original post is that some yellow is a sign that your kidneys are indeed working to recover water, but not because it has to. (Translation: If your urine is light yellow, relax, you're in good shape.) I stand by that statement.
Slashdot Mirror
Your reasoning is slightly flawed. Visible light is 400nm-700nm which works out to be 7.5*10^14 Hz and 4.3*10^14 Hz- much larger than 100GHz. I have no trouble seeing the light from my lightbulb across the room.
First of all, how does "free as in freedom" apply here? Secondly, If you have to pay for freedom you aren't really free, are you?
To make a projector operator watch the average slashdot reader have sex is indeed a task they deserve to be paid for. If you disagree, you probably haven't met the average slashdot reader- count your blessings.
What you're proposing (charging a battery and then discharging it) is no better, in fact in many ways it is worse. I can't find a good site to explain in depth how a recharagable battery works, but, remembering from my intro chemistry class it's an oxidation reaction at your anode and the corresponding reduction reaction at your cathode, and it's reversed to recharge- hydrogen brings the advantage of portability (it's easier to transport hydrogen than it is to transport nickle metal hydride) and, from what I've seen, increased practical efficency.
The inverse is *always* true when we're talking about forces in physics; equal and opposite reactions.
But I would be lying to you if I said the first time I learned about relativity I didn't get a brainache ;)
Einstein long ago said that time doesn't remain absolute. Time dilation. T = t/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). Physics and whatnot. That's why you can't go faster than the speed of light- you can accelerate forever and always travel below the speed of light. To me, that statement in and of itself is beautiful.
As for the effects of time dilation at real relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light), there are plenty of books, webpages, etc. that talk about it. But a word of advice- if you want to be able to understand it, you need to get the idea of simultaneous actions out of your head. The problem with what you said lies in one word- "while."
I have a headache and further discussing relativity will only make it worse ;) If you want to talk about it later and/or privately, that will perhaps be best.
I will agree that GCC is a very valuable thing for all of us to have and share, but if RMS wasn't around to write it someone else would have. As for his ideals, well, that's an entirely different story (some of you may know I don't approve of RMS's politics. They aren't needed and they aren't fun).
Nuclear power plan aren't used to create nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons require weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, and neither is seen in large enough quantity to make a weapon in a typical power plant.
Maybe 5-6 gallons would have been a better figure. Mea culpa. Regardless of how many gallons it is, I don't want to see it ignite. :)
Actually, I take that back, it'd be cool to see it ignite- I just don't want to be near it ;)
Nuclear power is drastically cleaner than coal, oil, and when done properly causes less enviornmental damage than hydroelectric. And thanks to the nature of radiation, the most dangerous waste becomes inert the fastest. The biggest downsides to nuclear power are the security concerns (fresh waste needs to be guarded, reactor-grade fuel requires less work to be made into weapons-grade, etc) but it's certainly nothing that we can't work out.
As for how to store the hydrogen, storing it as a gas is difficult because of the pressures required to get dense hydrogen. We might see new and more efficient techniques for synthesizing hydrocarbons (like gasoline ;)) pop up. With nuclear power, it should be a pretty good combination. Other people support using natural gas (Methane, CH4) and steam reforming it. We will see where the future takes us with this (heck, it may take is to non-hydrogen fuel cells)!
This is true. All you need for a hydrogen+oxygen fire is hydrogen, oxygen, and enough activation energy for the reaction (typically provided in the form of a spark or heat from the preceeding reactions). But, before we go any further, let's talk about gasoline. Right now in you car I'm betting you have at the very least 10 gallons of it, and if you just filled up you could have more. Hydrogen as stored for electrical generation would not have oxygen- if you turned on the valve and held your lighter to it you'd essentially be making a bunson burner (or if it's leaking fast enough, a flame thrower). Now, what about gasoline?
Because of gasoline's low flash point (-40 degrees C. or F, your pick), you find yourself with a bunch of flammable vapors in a short period of time. And gasoline burns more slowly than hydrogen, and this is bad in terms of safety. Hydrogen burns up really quickly and is gone, gasoline pesters. Gasoline fires are much more dangerous than hydrogen fires. And we're not even addressing all of the toxic fumes that go along with combustion of gasoline.
In the Hindenburg disaster, all of the hydrogen was gone with a pop. The ensuing fire, flames, and mayhem were the result of the paint- the zepplin was painted with a compound that was intended to reduce drag. Unfortunately, this paint was essentially jet fuel. The Hindenburg disaster serves as more of an argument against petroleum based fuels than against hydrogen.
Of all the problems with hydrogen, safety is not one of them. It's safer for people directly, and it's safer for us and the enviornment in the long run.
As for your question about efficiency, obviously 20% efficiency means you harness 20% of the total energy that is in the fuel source. Getting 20% more out than what you put in would be a violation of the first law of thermodynamics.
What I'm trying to say/ask is, what is an example of an "alternative fuel source" that fits your definition?
It was my understanding that the liquid crystal filtered the white light from the backlight to produce the desired color.
Good job stating the obvious. A more interesting question would be - what do the majority of U.S. citizens know?
What's happening here is the energy absorbed by the nanotubes cannot dissipate fast enough and cause an explosion. In a photoelectric/photovoltaic system all heat is definitely wasted. So your answer is no, because carbon is not particularly useful in a photovoltaic cell and carbon nanotubes certainly wouldn't be, because their internal resistance is *way* too high.
20 states have specifically passed laws to allow the Segway on sidewalks.
This really, really, *really* should read "20 states have passed laws to specifically allow the Segway on sidewalks." They didn't specifically pass the law, they specifically allowed the Segway. This is a mistake. Not as egregious as others, but it's still very noticable.
I would hope they specifically passed the law. I wouldn't want laws to be passed any other way!
As soon as you spend it (be it on a product or a government), it's not yours. That simple. And the AC hit it right on the money- would you want to pay for what you're proposing? Didn't think so.
Of course, things are different now. In the DOS heydey (including Windows pre-95), most viruses we re textbook viruses. Today, more of them should be defined as trojans and worms. There's no worm that you can see and say "well isn't that cute" as they all are quite damaging in terms of bandwith utilization. But there were/are many true viruses that are not damaging... or not damaging if caught in time. We all like fire, but nobody likes getting burned.
Now, back to the subject. Michaelangelo. Back when it was news some ten (egads!) years ago, McAffe was warning everyone of the impending doom. That year there were many people who lost data, but nowhere near as large as some people had believed. To be fair to the AV experts at the time, most of them gave a range from the small to the abnormally large- but guess which figure reporters used to sell papers?
So, life went on, and nobody was afraid about Michaelangelo anymore. Well, this poor sap was hit by it the *second* time it delivered it's payload (March 6th 1993). I lost of a lot of data that day, and boy was I surprised. Ironically, the data I miss the most is a copy of the virus itself. We all love fire, but we don't love getting burned.
Studying the interesting viruses was, and is, a really educational and enjoyable thing to do. I do not encourage people to distribute viruses. It's a dick thing to do. But there are plenty out there, and they'll forever live in databases like VSUM and whatnot. The game of virus authors versus AV authors is largely over; but it's still neat to see how different viruses copied themselves, and even more interesting the cryptic lines of text that can so often be found in infected executables.
Call me a hopeless virus romantic (not the VD kind), but I still think that's cool.
And holy crap, I just realized that the slashdot blackout already started. I apologize, didn't realize this before I typed this all up.
I have found that AccelX, on the other hand, is truly easy to install. It's much like installing Windows 3.11.
The UT server, if implemented a la A Taste of Armageddon (losers sent off to death chamber) would be just as bad.
Examples:
All of the Edison examples that you just presented.
Marconi-Tesla
Columbus-Native Americans
On that note, Columbus led a crew a couple thousand miles west. Chris thought that'd be enough to hit Asia. The Greeks had startlingly accurate figures for the circumference of the globe some 1600 years prior.
We're all plagirists. Deal with it. The innovator is the guy who can *convince* everyone else that he was first.
What I said in my original post is that some yellow is a sign that your kidneys are indeed working to recover water, but not because it has to. (Translation: If your urine is light yellow, relax, you're in good shape.) I stand by that statement.