Doubleplusungood. We are at war with Eurasia, so we must have always been at war with Eurasia. As long as I dont have to go back to room 101 and face.. them..
Have been running OpenOffice 1.1 under Windows a little while - only just scratching the surface. Looks like a great prog, but a bit slow to start up. But heck, so is Word..
Also doesnt seem to load old.WRI (windows write) files, a bit of an odd ommision, considering how much else it does..
PDF export is extremely useful, worth it for that feature alone.
If all goes well I think I will be trashing Word soon..
Oh sure, I dont think the X-Prize will yeild an immediate competitor
to the Shuttle, or the best rockets come to that. For instance,
the Atlas
551, as commissioned for the Pluto New Horizons mission in
2006, can lift 20.6 metric tonnes to LEO for a mere(!) $110 million. But
even that is too expensive - what the Xprize could eventually
deliver is the technology for what the Shuttle should
have been - a genuine cheap reusable craft for LEO. When the
Shuttle was first concieved, they were going to have 100 missions
a year.. It just never really worked out.
I think the benefit of the possible conversion of electricity from alternatives to Hydrogen needs to be underlined here. Eventually we may see Hydrogen being stored and shipped in much the same way we ship oil and gas now - for cars/transport in place of petrol. At any time, a nation might have months of hydrogen "in the pipeline", or in storage - in much the same way with oil now. So what happens when the alternatives dry up for a spell (the sun dont shine, or the wind dont blow) or there is some cutout/failure? Simple - turn on hydrogen powered generators & burn some gas!
Which is complete nonsense. Remember Nuclear had *huge* government subsidy for development, much more than Wind ever got. And well, ok, if you loose that, and a whole lot of other stuff fine, except when you get to the time to decommision the plant - and what the heck do you do with Plutonium waste for the next few thousand years? The UK has now hit huge costs for decomissioning plants, which is why they have cancelled certain Nuclear projects like reprocessing. By comparison, Wind energy has quietly got better, even without the level of subsidy enjoyed by Nuclear, to the point where its a practical option. Sure if you are prepared to forget the clean up costs, fine. Same applies for fossil fuels too..
I dont know exactly how the proposed idea would work, I guess there is a pretty big distance between the launch site and the spectators. There have been spectators at shuttle and other launches..
The X-Prize has proven that you dont need to spend huge amounts of money to get really promising technology on the road. Ok, it doesnt deliver the payload/height yet, but compare the $10 million against the $600 million per shuttle launch - and to be honest, I prepared to guess in the long term we will see more out of the X-Prize than the next Shuttle mission.. NASA are great at somethings, but genuine cheap space transport needs to come from a competitive commercial environment.
A lot of people died in the pioneer days of aviation - and yet its largely thanks to those pioneers that we have (relatively) safe and cheap air transport for the masses today..
But its not only distribution thats the problem, but regulation too - the ability of the network to absorb drop-outs at any particular node. Renewables, which by thier very nature are more variable, will actually force suppliers to design a more robust system. You will also have a lot of distributed capacity too with renewables.
Not only distribution, but regulation - ie ways of storing extra "flywheel" type capacity so that if a main line goes down, extra local capacity can be switched in quickly. Because renewables have some degree of variability, we need a more robust distribution/regulation mechanism anyway..
Completely untrue, certainly Wind-power beats Nuclear hands down in terms of cost - particularly when you factor in future clean-up/pollution costs too..
One interesting proposed idea was to turn these launches from spaceports into paid-entry "events" - with different competitors competing for the best performance etc. When you think about how much money is made in other racing events, this may not be such a bad way to make this technology pay..
It strikes me that national power systems often have dangerous
reliance on a small number of big power-providers - large
coal/gas/oil/nuclear stations, with electricity
imported/transported down a few very large critical power lines.
Alternative energy may provide a solution, because by its nature
it needs a higher level of redundancy and a more intelligent and
distributed power supply model. And its good for the planet too..
Wind energy has really started
to prove its use here in the UK, and is set to take off in the USA too. In the UK we should
have 20% of national power from the Wind by 2020, and we have the
offshore sites to get 100% eventually if we wanted. Add to that
Solar, Tidal, etc.. Because of the very nature of these resources
local/national distribution must be better, and include
mechanisms to regulate in the case of a drop in power..
Oh, and what do you do when you have excess production? Turn
the electricity into Hydrogen for your cars!
It depends whether you to get ther fast, or cheap. In the case of Apollo they *had* to use big rockets, and pay the cost, because the humans on board had limited supplies of air, etc. This is a science mission thats going to take years anyway - it doesnt matter too much that it takes a year to get there. Its only going to cost 110 million euro - peanuts in planetary exploration terms. Slow acceleration may mean a longer path, but big fuel savings. Also for longer missions, Ion drives will actually overtake chemical rockets, just because they can economically burn the engines for months/years - with chemical rockets its usually one or two or a few big burns, then thats it.
Slashdot Mirror
Doubleplusungood. We are at war with Eurasia, so we must have always been at war with Eurasia. As long as I dont have to go back to room 101 and face.. them..
Underneath the spreading Chestnut tree...
Better return that copy of 1984 I took out the other day. Now wheres that bottle of Victory Gin I had?
..yes, lets not allow people to recycle ink cartridges. Crazy..
I think, provided Hollywood dont mess it up.
A chance to get some decent actors in - I was never that impressed with some of the cast used in the BBC TV series..
The animations used for the guide itself were pretty neat though.
Offtopic? Do /. moderators have any sense of humour??
Hooray!
...
Theres a pub on the hill..
Hooray!
But its only got one bar..
Booo!
A mile long..
Hooray!
Theres only one barmaid..
Booo!
For every man..
Hooray!
They dont serve beer in pints..
Booo!
They serve it in buckets!
Hooray!
So we can cover a desert in Australia with these and dump all our nukes? Im gonna find a tree to hug now.. :-)
Why have you remolded your e-jacket into the shape of Darth Vaders Helmet?
Its ok, I've modded it..
But surely didnt ET get there first?
"First Post". Its a competition around these parts for some..
You didnt put my jacket in the wash.. er.. did you?
Blimey for a moment I thought Theo Kojak was back, singing "If.."
Who luvs ya baby..
Have been running OpenOffice 1.1 under Windows a little while - only just scratching the surface. Looks like a great prog, but a bit slow to start up. But heck, so is Word..
.WRI (windows write) files, a bit of an odd ommision, considering how much else it does..
Also doesnt seem to load old
PDF export is extremely useful, worth it for that feature alone.
If all goes well I think I will be trashing Word soon..
Oh sure, I dont think the X-Prize will yeild an immediate competitor to the Shuttle, or the best rockets come to that. For instance, the Atlas 551, as commissioned for the Pluto New Horizons mission in 2006, can lift 20.6 metric tonnes to LEO for a mere(!) $110 million. But even that is too expensive - what the Xprize could eventually deliver is the technology for what the Shuttle should have been - a genuine cheap reusable craft for LEO. When the Shuttle was first concieved, they were going to have 100 missions a year.. It just never really worked out.
I think the benefit of the possible conversion of electricity from alternatives to Hydrogen needs to be underlined here. Eventually we may see Hydrogen being stored and shipped in much the same way we ship oil and gas now - for cars/transport in place of petrol. At any time, a nation might have months of hydrogen "in the pipeline", or in storage - in much the same way with oil now. So what happens when the alternatives dry up for a spell (the sun dont shine, or the wind dont blow) or there is some cutout/failure? Simple - turn on hydrogen powered generators & burn some gas!
Which is complete nonsense. Remember Nuclear had *huge* government subsidy for development, much more than Wind ever got. And well, ok, if you loose that, and a whole lot of other stuff fine, except when you get to the time to decommision the plant - and what the heck do you do with Plutonium waste for the next few thousand years? The UK has now hit huge costs for decomissioning plants, which is why they have cancelled certain Nuclear projects like reprocessing. By comparison, Wind energy has quietly got better, even without the level of subsidy enjoyed by Nuclear, to the point where its a practical option. Sure if you are prepared to forget the clean up costs, fine. Same applies for fossil fuels too..
I dont know exactly how the proposed idea would work, I guess there is a pretty big distance between the launch site and the spectators. There have been spectators at shuttle and other launches..
The X-Prize has proven that you dont need to spend huge amounts of money to get really promising technology on the road. Ok, it doesnt deliver the payload/height yet, but compare the $10 million against the $600 million per shuttle launch - and to be honest, I prepared to guess in the long term we will see more out of the X-Prize than the next Shuttle mission.. NASA are great at somethings, but genuine cheap space transport needs to come from a competitive commercial environment.
A lot of people died in the pioneer days of aviation - and yet its largely thanks to those pioneers that we have (relatively) safe and cheap air transport for the masses today..
But its not only distribution thats the problem, but regulation too - the ability of the network to absorb drop-outs at any particular node. Renewables, which by thier very nature are more variable, will actually force suppliers to design a more robust system. You will also have a lot of distributed capacity too with renewables.
Not only distribution, but regulation - ie ways of storing extra "flywheel" type capacity so that if a main line goes down, extra local capacity can be switched in quickly. Because renewables have some degree of variability, we need a more robust distribution/regulation mechanism anyway..
Completely untrue, certainly Wind-power beats Nuclear hands down in terms of cost - particularly when you factor in future clean-up/pollution costs too..
One interesting proposed idea was to turn these launches from spaceports into paid-entry "events" - with different competitors competing for the best performance etc. When you think about how much money is made in other racing events, this may not be such a bad way to make this technology pay..
It strikes me that national power systems often have dangerous reliance on a small number of big power-providers - large coal/gas/oil/nuclear stations, with electricity imported/transported down a few very large critical power lines. Alternative energy may provide a solution, because by its nature it needs a higher level of redundancy and a more intelligent and distributed power supply model. And its good for the planet too.. Wind energy has really started to prove its use here in the UK, and is set to take off in the USA too. In the UK we should have 20% of national power from the Wind by 2020, and we have the offshore sites to get 100% eventually if we wanted. Add to that Solar, Tidal, etc.. Because of the very nature of these resources local/national distribution must be better, and include mechanisms to regulate in the case of a drop in power..
Oh, and what do you do when you have excess production? Turn the electricity into Hydrogen for your cars!
It depends whether you to get ther fast, or cheap. In the case of Apollo they *had* to use big rockets, and pay the cost, because the humans on board had limited supplies of air, etc. This is a science mission thats going to take years anyway - it doesnt matter too much that it takes a year to get there. Its only going to cost 110 million euro - peanuts in planetary exploration terms. Slow acceleration may mean a longer path, but big fuel savings. Also for longer missions, Ion drives will actually overtake chemical rockets, just because they can economically burn the engines for months/years - with chemical rockets its usually one or two or a few big burns, then thats it.