Ah, but the USA _does_ need a military. With the country's absence of decent unemployment benefits, the military is like a huge welfare project for all those kids who leave highschool woefully uneducated to get a bit of training and a few bucks so they have a chance in the real world.
It seems to me that everybody assume H2 can only be used in a fuel-cell powered electric vehicle. H2 will also run a conventional internal combustion engine. Thus, it will feel like a "real" gasoline engine, and you can REV it to impress those slutty chicks on the street. It has very few toxic emmissions (maybe a few NOx)
Also there is no big, expensive, toxic catalyst like in a fuel cell that has to be replaced at regular intervals.
Plus the BMW 745h can also run on regular petrol, meaning that it can be phased in gradually. An engine designed to run on H2 only is more efficient however...
They've had this system in most cities in Australia for over ten years. Considering that the US is the biggest nation of car owners in the world, the traffic management sucks. I've only been as far East as PA, but if CA and CO are anything to go by, the USA has a long way to go in terms of efficient traffic management. I mean, WTF is the deal with a four-way stop sign? EVERYBODY has to come to a complete stop, then it is some kind of staring match where every driver glares at everyone else, then everybody inches forward a bit, everobody stops, etc. I'm sure there is a simple rule, but every cop I've asked has a different idea, so it's no wonder the drivers are confused. I find that roundabouts (like in Britain, but you go the other way 'round the circle - this accounts for the driving on the other side of the road) solve this problem: in general, drivers do not have to come to a complete stop. Of course, this would also involve teaching drivers to use their #$*@ turn signals.
This is not intended to start a flame war, but does anybody else have similar/different experiances/comments/suggestions from around the world for how to improve intersection safety & efficiency?
If you're just getting started, one way to get a free anvil is to just "find" a bit of railway track. It's heavy and solid, often with a bit of a curve on top for hammering things on. It also has big bolt holes so you can attach it to your bench.
Instead of butchering a bit of track from your local interstate line, I would suggest talking to a scrap-metal merchant. If you tell them you only need about a foot of track they may even cut a piece off for free, or have some other big lump of metal lying around that you can have.
Then again, with the neglect of railways (railroads in US?) these days you could probably cut a piece off a local track and not cause a train wreck for months...
I think blu-ray is more akin to betamax than miniDisc, as blu-ray _is_ a far superior format to HD-DVD. The difference between blu-ray and betamax is that blu-ray is managed by a consortium of companies, so hopefully sony's stupid refusal to licence the technology will not be such a problem to the format as it was for betamax. If the tech is embraced by a few cheap Taiwanese manufacturers, then the market penetration will take care of itself and the studios will have to start making blu-ray versions of their releases.
BTW, MiniDisc is really popular among snowboarders worldwide who like the small form factor, battery life and the shock-resistance. Personally, I think MiniDisc is a wank. What could have made the format more accepted was the same approach used for CDs: Use the format for audio first, then for data. This again makes for greater penetration and more flexibility for the media. These 100mb discs could then have filled two niches, instead of having two dead technologies: Minidisc and Zip discs.
(my apologies in advance to anybody still using these media. I'm sure they are just perfect for whatever you're doing.)
BMW make a dual-fuel 750iL which runs on either hydrogen or petrol. Apparently you can go and buy one in Germany but the only Hydrogen station is in Munich(?) (http://www.bmwworld.com/models/745h.htm or google for more details.)
Before anybody gets stressed about the potential for explosion, the H2 is stored as a liquid at atmospheric pressure in a container that is very, very well insulated to keep it cool. Something like the equivalent of 12 feet of styrofoam IIRC.
IMHO this is the way of the future. It's a real internal combustion engine so you can REV it. Yeah! Also it is compatible with regular gasoline for the short term, its only emissions are water (and a bit of NOx I guess) and there are no stupid, expensive, toxic fuelcell catalysts to replace.
I'd have to agree with you. I've worked as a driver in the Colorado Rockies for the last three winters. We drive rear-wheel-drive Ford vans, Front-whell-drive Cadillacs, and 4WD Suburbans.
The ford vans are the most predictable to drive - you feel the back end go out but the long wheelbase gives you a fighting chance to recover from the skid and drive on more cautiously. The Cadillacs have some pretty heavy-handed traction control so you'd actually have to be pretty talented to make it go sideways (believe me, I've tried;-)
The Suburbans on the other hand have a locked centre differential so as soon as you try to _steer_ them you induce a skid. Add the high centre of gravity into the mix and you can get in trouble really quickly. Of course, anybody who knows anything about cars only engages the 4WD when they are actually _stuck_ and just use it to get moving again.
Trouble is, people tend to come to Colorado for a week of skiing, and the asshat at the car-rental place convinces them to rent an SUV because 4WD is essential in the mountains and will make them immortal. Of course the first thing these folks do is press the big "4WD" button on the dash!
In my three years I've seen a buttload of vehicles upside down in the ditch. On well-maintained Interstates and remote secondary roads. At least half of them would have been SUVs. If you eliminate the number of 17 year-olds who I swear are _deliberately_ going out of control in the snow, that proportion is even higher.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with GM or Ford.
I like the way you can leave winamp set to "shuffle" but still enqueue songs. When your selections are finished playing, it goes back to randomly playing your playlist. This is especially neat for parties, when you can cue the right song for the moment, then go and enjoy the moment without having to go and hit the shuffle button again before winamp plays the rest of the album your selected tune comes from...
Yes, I can think of several things which would be worse. Syphilis, for example. Or phosphoric acid on one's testicles. So far I've been lucky to avoid both afflictions, but I'm using phoshporic acid to treat some rust (http://ash.anu.edu.au/kombi/) at the moment, so it's just a matter of time on the latter.
I can't think why that wouldn't work, but you'd need a bigger water pump than usual to fight convection, right? Otherwise you'd have the heatsink boiling a localised pool of hot water because the heat wasn't being transferred to the heat-exchanger, which if I understand you correctly, is now below the cpu. If you can find a pump that can do that, (shouldn't be too hard, just get a bigger one;-) and do it quietly, you're laughing.
You answer your own question. You imply that thousands of years is a long time for a climate change. In geological time this is pretty damn quick. The fact that we are seeing a change over the "50-100 years" we've been lookning at global temps and CO2 levels is an even bigger concern. Are you actually seriously questioning this, or are you trolling? Perhaps your mis-informed, head-in-the sand attitude was actually an attempt at humour, if so I'm sorry.
Unless the professional reviews are sponsored by the camera manufacturer or an affiliate. Or they gave the reviewer a free camera in exchange for a favourable review. Or the manufacturer poisoned some web forums with fake comments saying "my (whatever brand) camera is awesome! You all should buy one!"
Anybody remember a crap TV show called "The Lone Gunmen?" They had episode which aired on Australian TV (it wasn't an Australian show though, it was American like everything else on Aussie TV) in late August 2001, where some terrorists were paid by a political agency to crash a plane into the World Trade Center in order that Congress would be scared into passing some bill. I think that was the basic plot, anyway it seemed like amazing timing. I wonder if the show's writers later got dragged into vans and taken to a basement somewhere for a session with the rubber hoses and genital-electrodes?
Is that true? Why are nerds everywhere not calling for mass migration to this utopian open hardware?
I'm not joking, this sounds cool. I don't want to start a cisc vs risc war, but if this is for real, why don't people push for this cool, efficient, open hardware? Otherwise I'll just have to buy a PPC Amiga.
Sorry to reply to myself, but to help the Northern-Hemisphere centric readership, Adelaide, South Australia gets their water from the Murray river. The end of the Murray river, which has been raped for thousands of miles of its length for irrigation and hydropower (not to mention the ever-increasing salinity of any runoff). What used to be the most bitchin' river in Australia now actually has NEGATIVE flow at times, that much has been taken out of it. The poor buggers in Adelaide have to drink that salty crap daily. The big Hydro/irrigation project of the '50s may not have been the bright idea it seemed.
I didn't think anybody here is debating that climate change has fluctuated wildly over the history of the Earth, and with no human influence. But in these examples we are talking about _geological_ timescales - that many thousand of years. With human-induced global warming we are talking about significant climate change within the living memory of the population. I am talking about 50 years here. This _is_ a big change, it _is_ unprecendented, and it _is_ cause for concern.
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Well I am a spelling nazi, and it's spelled grammAr, pal.
Ah, but the USA _does_ need a military. With the country's absence of decent unemployment benefits, the military is like a huge welfare project for all those kids who leave highschool woefully uneducated to get a bit of training and a few bucks so they have a chance in the real world.
Hooray!
It seems to me that everybody assume H2 can only be used in a fuel-cell powered electric vehicle. H2 will also run a conventional internal combustion engine. Thus, it will feel like a "real" gasoline engine, and you can REV it to impress those slutty chicks on the street. It has very few toxic emmissions (maybe a few NOx)
Also there is no big, expensive, toxic catalyst like in a fuel cell that has to be replaced at regular intervals.
Plus the BMW 745h can also run on regular petrol, meaning that it can be phased in gradually. An engine designed to run on H2 only is more efficient however...
They've had this system in most cities in Australia for over ten years. Considering that the US is the biggest nation of car owners in the world, the traffic management sucks. I've only been as far East as PA, but if CA and CO are anything to go by, the USA has a long way to go in terms of efficient traffic management. I mean, WTF is the deal with a four-way stop sign? EVERYBODY has to come to a complete stop, then it is some kind of staring match where every driver glares at everyone else, then everybody inches forward a bit, everobody stops, etc. I'm sure there is a simple rule, but every cop I've asked has a different idea, so it's no wonder the drivers are confused. I find that roundabouts (like in Britain, but you go the other way 'round the circle - this accounts for the driving on the other side of the road) solve this problem: in general, drivers do not have to come to a complete stop. Of course, this would also involve teaching drivers to use their #$*@ turn signals.
This is not intended to start a flame war, but does anybody else have similar/different experiances/comments/suggestions from around the world for how to improve intersection safety & efficiency?
If you're just getting started, one way to get a free anvil is to just "find" a bit of railway track. It's heavy and solid, often with a bit of a curve on top for hammering things on. It also has big bolt holes so you can attach it to your bench.
Instead of butchering a bit of track from your local interstate line, I would suggest talking to a scrap-metal merchant. If you tell them you only need about a foot of track they may even cut a piece off for free, or have some other big lump of metal lying around that you can have.
Then again, with the neglect of railways (railroads in US?) these days you could probably cut a piece off a local track and not cause a train wreck for months...
I think blu-ray is more akin to betamax than miniDisc, as blu-ray _is_ a far superior format to HD-DVD. The difference between blu-ray and betamax is that blu-ray is managed by a consortium of companies, so hopefully sony's stupid refusal to licence the technology will not be such a problem to the format as it was for betamax. If the tech is embraced by a few cheap Taiwanese manufacturers, then the market penetration will take care of itself and the studios will have to start making blu-ray versions of their releases.
BTW, MiniDisc is really popular among snowboarders worldwide who like the small form factor, battery life and the shock-resistance. Personally, I think MiniDisc is a wank. What could have made the format more accepted was the same approach used for CDs: Use the format for audio first, then for data. This again makes for greater penetration and more flexibility for the media. These 100mb discs could then have filled two niches, instead of having two dead technologies: Minidisc and Zip discs.
(my apologies in advance to anybody still using these media. I'm sure they are just perfect for whatever you're doing.)
BMW make a dual-fuel 750iL which runs on either hydrogen or petrol. Apparently you can go and buy one in Germany but the only Hydrogen station is in Munich(?) (http://www.bmwworld.com/models/745h.htm or google for more details.)
Before anybody gets stressed about the potential for explosion, the H2 is stored as a liquid at atmospheric pressure in a container that is very, very well insulated to keep it cool. Something like the equivalent of 12 feet of styrofoam IIRC.
IMHO this is the way of the future. It's a real internal combustion engine so you can REV it. Yeah! Also it is compatible with regular gasoline for the short term, its only emissions are water (and a bit of NOx I guess) and there are no stupid, expensive, toxic fuelcell catalysts to replace.
I'd have to agree with you. I've worked as a driver in the Colorado Rockies for the last three winters. We drive rear-wheel-drive Ford vans, Front-whell-drive Cadillacs, and 4WD Suburbans.
;-)
The ford vans are the most predictable to drive - you feel the back end go out but the long wheelbase gives you a fighting chance to recover from the skid and drive on more cautiously. The Cadillacs have some pretty heavy-handed traction control so you'd actually have to be pretty talented to make it go sideways (believe me, I've tried
The Suburbans on the other hand have a locked centre differential so as soon as you try to _steer_ them you induce a skid. Add the high centre of gravity into the mix and you can get in trouble really quickly. Of course, anybody who knows anything about cars only engages the 4WD when they are actually _stuck_ and just use it to get moving again.
Trouble is, people tend to come to Colorado for a week of skiing, and the asshat at the car-rental place convinces them to rent an SUV because 4WD is essential in the mountains and will make them immortal. Of course the first thing these folks do is press the big "4WD" button on the dash!
In my three years I've seen a buttload of vehicles upside down in the ditch. On well-maintained Interstates and remote secondary roads. At least half of them would have been SUVs. If you eliminate the number of 17 year-olds who I swear are _deliberately_ going out of control in the snow, that proportion is even higher.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with GM or Ford.
I like the way you can leave winamp set to "shuffle" but still enqueue songs. When your selections are finished playing, it goes back to randomly playing your playlist. This is especially neat for parties, when you can cue the right song for the moment, then go and enjoy the moment without having to go and hit the shuffle button again before winamp plays the rest of the album your selected tune comes from...
Yes, I can think of several things which would be worse. Syphilis, for example. Or phosphoric acid on one's testicles. So far I've been lucky to avoid both afflictions, but I'm using phoshporic acid to treat some rust (http://ash.anu.edu.au/kombi/) at the moment, so it's just a matter of time on the latter.
I can't think why that wouldn't work, but you'd need a bigger water pump than usual to fight convection, right? Otherwise you'd have the heatsink boiling a localised pool of hot water because the heat wasn't being transferred to the heat-exchanger, which if I understand you correctly, is now below the cpu. If you can find a pump that can do that, (shouldn't be too hard, just get a bigger one;-) and do it quietly, you're laughing.
You answer your own question. You imply that thousands of years is a long time for a climate change. In geological time this is pretty damn quick. The fact that we are seeing a change over the "50-100 years" we've been lookning at global temps and CO2 levels is an even bigger concern. Are you actually seriously questioning this, or are you trolling? Perhaps your mis-informed, head-in-the sand attitude was actually an attempt at humour, if so I'm sorry.
Unless the professional reviews are sponsored by the camera manufacturer or an affiliate. Or they gave the reviewer a free camera in exchange for a favourable review. Or the manufacturer poisoned some web forums with fake comments saying "my (whatever brand) camera is awesome! You all should buy one!"
Anybody remember a crap TV show called "The Lone Gunmen?" They had episode which aired on Australian TV (it wasn't an Australian show though, it was American like everything else on Aussie TV) in late August 2001, where some terrorists were paid by a political agency to crash a plane into the World Trade Center in order that Congress would be scared into passing some bill. I think that was the basic plot, anyway it seemed like amazing timing. I wonder if the show's writers later got dragged into vans and taken to a basement somewhere for a session with the rubber hoses and genital-electrodes?
Is that true? Why are nerds everywhere not calling for mass migration to this utopian open hardware?
I'm not joking, this sounds cool. I don't want to start a cisc vs risc war, but if this is for real, why don't people push for this cool, efficient, open hardware? Otherwise I'll just have to buy a PPC Amiga.
Sorry to reply to myself, but to help the Northern-Hemisphere centric readership, Adelaide, South Australia gets their water from the Murray river. The end of the Murray river, which has been raped for thousands of miles of its length for irrigation and hydropower (not to mention the ever-increasing salinity of any runoff). What used to be the most bitchin' river in Australia now actually has NEGATIVE flow at times, that much has been taken out of it. The poor buggers in Adelaide have to drink that salty crap daily. The big Hydro/irrigation project of the '50s may not have been the bright idea it seemed.
Yeah, in Adelaide, any old shit you add to the water will only improve it!
Ooops, did that look like my .sig? I don't have one. That comment was a custom job, you insensitive clod!
But my point stands.
And how much do you want to bet that this StratCom company he heads is going to get all kinds of fat contracts out of the project?
The corruption in the self proclaimed Greatest Democracy In The World scares the shit out of me.
Obviously you haven't used MS word in a while. It too is a big resource-hungry lump. However it's neither solid, nor free.
I didn't think anybody here is debating that climate change has fluctuated wildly over the history of the Earth, and with no human influence. But in these examples we are talking about _geological_ timescales - that many thousand of years. With human-induced global warming we are talking about significant climate change within the living memory of the population. I am talking about 50 years here. This _is_ a big change, it _is_ unprecendented, and it _is_ cause for concern.
How dare you use your sig to brag about such a nifty toy, without at least linking to a few photos. I won't believe you until you do, so there.
I can provide large quantities of DNA. If I wait a few days I could probably even build up enough pressure to shoot it to the moon.
Alternatively, we could just send my bedsheets up there.
Bugger, how could I have f#cked that up? Oh the irony.
I mean, yeah, that's it, I was trying to be ironic and I *meant* to mis-spell it...
Peace.
So whatever happened to that little joined-together "oe" letter, like in 'encyclopoedia' and 'amoeba'?
I thought it was actually a mOEbius strip?
Sorry to nitpick, but if you are gonna correct others' spelling, you should look it up first...