Some government sites have these onerous password requirements e.g no fewer than 15 characters, no consecutive characters even if they are a different case, at least one numeric and at least one punctuation. It's not surprising that coming up with something you can remember that fulfills these requirements is a bitch. Oh, and you have to change it periodically. IMHO, this naturally leads to writing the damn thing down somewhere.
I'd really like someone to do an accurate analysis of how many public sector workers a given economy can support. Greece currently has something like 700,000 public sector workers for a country with about 11 million people and that country is in deep yogurt. Public sector workers don't create product that can be exported much less sold to their own people so they are a net drain on an economy. Greece's unemployment rate is over 16% so they're looking at about 22% of their people not producing anything that improves their economy. Here the stats look like we have the same percentage of public sector workers and a slightly lower unemployment rate (not counting those who aren't on the unemployment roles). Not a great picture.
What these tax proponents don't understand is that people will not let themselves be buttf*cked if they can pass it on to someone else. "Yeah, yeah, let's screw the big banks and corporations!!! *insert really lame chanting*" Oh, I guess you didn't count on lower interest rates to depositors and new fees for everything. Guess you didn't count on higher product prices. Guess you didn't count on corporations laying people off to pay their new higher tax bills. Vindictive taxation never ends up impacting the original target.
As crass as it sounds, the unintended consequence of this will be a massive population explosion in tropical third-world countries who will all need resources. A nice pandemic will go a long way to reducing humans' impact on the planet.
I wonder why they didn't mount one motor/rotor underneath one on top of the arm to minimize the footprint of the thing. DraganFlyer is doing that now. Then, why couldn't you use even bigger motors and bigger props or are these the biggest brushless motors available? Or is it a question of rotor/armature mass that would slow down the response rate of speed changes.
Add a ballistic parachute and this thing would be seriously cool.
If these Monte Carlo simulation predictions are so accurate that people around the world are willing to spend billions if not trillions of dollars (of someone else's money) as a result, why wouldn't these researchers use Monte Carlo simulations to predict...Monte Carlo and make a fortune in the casino and forever live a life of luxury?
If this technology works, why bother with a 1 megawatt plant? Why wouldn't you build the equivalent of Bloom boxes and sell them to homeowners? Get rid of the grid entirely.
This is pretty cool but I'm waiting for version two when they extend it to work on video background plates. Shouldn't be that difficult because tracking is a well studied problem.
Does that mean that you need empty space surrounding the battery equal to three times the volume of the discharged battery? If that's the case, you get 8 times the charge capacity but it occupies 3 times the space so is it equivalent to slightly more than doubling existing batteries? Have I missed something?
I remember going to the bankruptcy auctions of several dot-com companies and thinking: Damn, there are a sh*load of Aeron chairs here...and a powered paraglider no doubt the CEO was using. I'd love to be able to say to my investors and customers "Gee, we bought all this cool stuff but we don't have the money to pay for it so we're going to have to double our prices and force our customers to pay for it and we're going to issue more stock and force investors to buy it. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket."
Old & busted: Spending bill aka tax hike. New hotness: Deficit reduction bill aka tax hike.
And then there's this so-called jobs bill which btw, hasn't even been introduced on the House floor. This is the mother of all adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM). Offer a teaser rate for 16 months and then skyrocket the rate. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket.
IMHO, there should be a Manhattan Project/X-prize scale battery development project. All of this green energy generation is intermittent. It's useless without a way to store excess energy. Same goes for the forthcoming smart-meter based energy billing. Without a way to harvest energy in the middle of the night when it's cheaper, the cost of energy to the consumer is just going to go up. I want a box the size of a refrigerator that can power my entire home including heating and cooling for at least 24 hours and that wouldn't cost more than a few thousand dollars. Replacement time needs to be long enough after to more than pay for itself which is what's wrong with hybrid vehicles. Once people see what it costs to replace the pack in their car they say screw it I'll just run on gas.
Let's see now *rubs hands together and wearing an SEG*...
I could jam on the brakes for no reason and start a traffic wave 10 miles behind me. I could send out messages to vehicles in front of me saying "Highway ahead blocked. Seek alternate route." and then enjoy a clear highway. I could be more subtle about it and broadcast messages saying "Left lane closed ahead" and watch as the sheeple move over while I blow right past them.
"You see this? It's worthless. Ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it and bury it in the sand for a thousand years and it becomes priceless! Like the Ark. Men will kill for it. Men like you and me."
Man, I would love to have a copy of that phone audio. The floor is open for guesses as to how the conversation went:
"Um, hey Carol, this is the Board speaking. You suck. Security will be escorting you from the building." -or- In my best Jean Baptiste Emanuel Zorg voice "I am...very...disappointed. And if it's one thing I don't like...it's to be...disappointed." *BLAM*
For every study that says global warming is real there is funding behind it and researchers who need more funding to keep doing what they're doing. The same can be said for studies disproving global warming theories. At this point Occam's Razor could be applied. Is it more likely that humans are affecting the climate or is it more likely that Nature with far more power than humans have yet achieved is the cause?
So let's say we're in drought-stricken West Texas and you zap the clouds and make it rain. But that rain would have originally fallen on central or east Texas. To whom does the rain water belong?
This is not a technical issue at all. It's a political one. IT departments are notoriously territorial and control freaks. In addition, in the corporate world, the higher up in the food chain you are, the more concerned you are with head count. The more people you have working for you, the more power and resources (money) you have to work with (and can demand). iPads and smartphones are a decentralizing force. IT people don't like that. They want you to be beholden to them. That's the only reason they are opposed to this sort of technology.
From my own experience working at a Fortune 500 company and being in charge of 100 Macs. The computer to IT person ratio was roughly 4 to 1 (one IT person was needed to manage four PCs). I, on the other hand, was able to manage 100 Macs. That never sat well with the head of the IT department so he and his cronies tried everything to throw roadblocks in my way.
This whole concept of walking or biking to work assumes that you live within a couple of miles of your workplace, that you have acceptable weather, and that you don't have to transport anything big or heavy. If you live in a big city, maybe this is practical. For the rest of the world, it's totally unrealistic. The same applies to trains and buses.
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Some government sites have these onerous password requirements e.g no fewer than 15 characters, no consecutive characters even if they are a different case, at least one numeric and at least one punctuation. It's not surprising that coming up with something you can remember that fulfills these requirements is a bitch. Oh, and you have to change it periodically. IMHO, this naturally leads to writing the damn thing down somewhere.
I'd really like someone to do an accurate analysis of how many public sector workers a given economy can support. Greece currently has something like 700,000 public sector workers for a country with about 11 million people and that country is in deep yogurt. Public sector workers don't create product that can be exported much less sold to their own people so they are a net drain on an economy. Greece's unemployment rate is over 16% so they're looking at about 22% of their people not producing anything that improves their economy. Here the stats look like we have the same percentage of public sector workers and a slightly lower unemployment rate (not counting those who aren't on the unemployment roles). Not a great picture.
What these tax proponents don't understand is that people will not let themselves be buttf*cked if they can pass it on to someone else. "Yeah, yeah, let's screw the big banks and corporations!!! *insert really lame chanting*" Oh, I guess you didn't count on lower interest rates to depositors and new fees for everything. Guess you didn't count on higher product prices. Guess you didn't count on corporations laying people off to pay their new higher tax bills. Vindictive taxation never ends up impacting the original target.
As crass as it sounds, the unintended consequence of this will be a massive population explosion in tropical third-world countries who will all need resources. A nice pandemic will go a long way to reducing humans' impact on the planet.
That's the conclusion, folks. Therefore, Julieanne Hough must dump Ryan Seacrest and date me. Julianne, call me.
I wonder why they didn't mount one motor/rotor underneath one on top of the arm to minimize the footprint of the thing. DraganFlyer is doing that now.
Then, why couldn't you use even bigger motors and bigger props or are these the biggest brushless motors available? Or is it a question of rotor/armature mass that would slow down the response rate of speed changes.
Add a ballistic parachute and this thing would be seriously cool.
If these Monte Carlo simulation predictions are so accurate that people around the world are willing to spend billions if not trillions of dollars (of someone else's money) as a result, why wouldn't these researchers use Monte Carlo simulations to predict...Monte Carlo and make a fortune in the casino and forever live a life of luxury?
Isn't that just for fission reactors?
If this technology works, why bother with a 1 megawatt plant? Why wouldn't you build the equivalent of Bloom boxes and sell them to homeowners? Get rid of the grid entirely.
This is pretty cool but I'm waiting for version two when they extend it to work on video background plates. Shouldn't be that difficult because tracking is a well studied problem.
Ah, okay, thanks for the edumacation. Now if we could make smaller high-torque motors...
Does that mean that you need empty space surrounding the battery equal to three times the volume of the discharged battery? If that's the case, you get 8 times the charge capacity but it occupies 3 times the space so is it equivalent to slightly more than doubling existing batteries? Have I missed something?
Pew pew pew... take that, drone-boy.
Makes you wonder if you could hit the ISS with an S3 Krypton.
I remember going to the bankruptcy auctions of several dot-com companies and thinking: Damn, there are a sh*load of Aeron chairs here...and a powered paraglider no doubt the CEO was using. I'd love to be able to say to my investors and customers "Gee, we bought all this cool stuff but we don't have the money to pay for it so we're going to have to double our prices and force our customers to pay for it and we're going to issue more stock and force investors to buy it. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket."
Old & busted: Spending bill aka tax hike.
New hotness: Deficit reduction bill aka tax hike.
And then there's this so-called jobs bill which btw, hasn't even been introduced on the House floor. This is the mother of all adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM). Offer a teaser rate for 16 months and then skyrocket the rate. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket.
WICKED COOL!!!
IMHO, there should be a Manhattan Project/X-prize scale battery development project. All of this green energy generation is intermittent. It's useless without a way to store excess energy. Same goes for the forthcoming smart-meter based energy billing. Without a way to harvest energy in the middle of the night when it's cheaper, the cost of energy to the consumer is just going to go up. I want a box the size of a refrigerator that can power my entire home including heating and cooling for at least 24 hours and that wouldn't cost more than a few thousand dollars. Replacement time needs to be long enough after to more than pay for itself which is what's wrong with hybrid vehicles. Once people see what it costs to replace the pack in their car they say screw it I'll just run on gas.
Let's see now *rubs hands together and wearing an SEG*...
I could jam on the brakes for no reason and start a traffic wave 10 miles behind me.
I could send out messages to vehicles in front of me saying "Highway ahead blocked. Seek alternate route." and then enjoy a clear highway.
I could be more subtle about it and broadcast messages saying "Left lane closed ahead" and watch as the sheeple move over while I blow right past them.
"You see this? It's worthless. Ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it and bury it in the sand for a thousand years and it becomes priceless! Like the Ark. Men will kill for it. Men like you and me."
Man, I would love to have a copy of that phone audio. The floor is open for guesses as to how the conversation went:
"Um, hey Carol, this is the Board speaking. You suck. Security will be escorting you from the building."
-or-
In my best Jean Baptiste Emanuel Zorg voice "I am...very...disappointed. And if it's one thing I don't like...it's to be...disappointed." *BLAM*
For every study that says global warming is real there is funding behind it and researchers who need more funding to keep doing what they're doing. The same can be said for studies disproving global warming theories. At this point Occam's Razor could be applied. Is it more likely that humans are affecting the climate or is it more likely that Nature with far more power than humans have yet achieved is the cause?
So let's say we're in drought-stricken West Texas and you zap the clouds and make it rain. But that rain would have originally fallen on central or east Texas. To whom does the rain water belong?
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
This is not a technical issue at all. It's a political one. IT departments are notoriously territorial and control freaks. In addition, in the corporate world, the higher up in the food chain you are, the more concerned you are with head count. The more people you have working for you, the more power and resources (money) you have to work with (and can demand). iPads and smartphones are a decentralizing force. IT people don't like that. They want you to be beholden to them. That's the only reason they are opposed to this sort of technology.
From my own experience working at a Fortune 500 company and being in charge of 100 Macs. The computer to IT person ratio was roughly 4 to 1 (one IT person was needed to manage four PCs). I, on the other hand, was able to manage 100 Macs. That never sat well with the head of the IT department so he and his cronies tried everything to throw roadblocks in my way.
This whole concept of walking or biking to work assumes that you live within a couple of miles of your workplace, that you have acceptable weather, and that you don't have to transport anything big or heavy. If you live in a big city, maybe this is practical. For the rest of the world, it's totally unrealistic. The same applies to trains and buses.
I say eff the cloud and everything about it. To me, it represents nothing more than a way to extract fees from you every month.