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User: icebike

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Comments · 9,473

  1. Re:Hmmm on Spaceman-Turned-Politician Can Call Himself 'Astronaut' On Ballot · · Score: 1

    I'm glad this guy won this case. I'm not a democrat, but I have high respect for astronauts, whether current or former, and I support his right to use that as his occupation if he wishes.

    How could it possibly NOT have won?

    After all, Judges are called Judges long after they retire, Senators are called senator for life. All without even bothering with the word "former". Seems like only the Military seem to have the decency to add "Ret." after their name and rank upon retirement.

  2. Re:Sustainable? Not really. on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    Once again, GO READ TFA.
    Take your silly argument directly to rhe source, and argue with them.

    No such claims of perpetual motion were made.

    You simply have a reading comprehension problem.

  3. Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    And you know this HOW?

    They haven't released any such information, so stop pulling numbers from your ass?

  4. Re:Mistake #0 on Toronto Police Use Facebook Picture in Online Lineup · · Score: 1

    Mistake -1 was joining Facebook.
    Seriously, when are you lonely sad people going to learn!

  5. Re:previous comment about formic acid on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    Anonymous Cowards do not have previous statements.

  6. Re:Sustainable? Not really. on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 2

    Nopee. Zinc is recovered. you need to do another chemical process to make zinc oxide. gee, i wonder how green that process is, which gives us green hydrogen?

    Go read TFA, or go directly to the University of Delaware's page from which the TFA was sourced:

    http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2012/apr/solar-reactor-040312.html

    It CLEARLY states:

    One interesting feature of the reactor is that, in theory, the zinc oxide byproduct created during the reaction will be re-usable, making the project self-sustaining.

    Zink oxide in, heated to drive off its oxygen, exposed to water where it scavenges oxygen, which frees hydrogen, and you get zink oxide back. Probably nearly pure.

  7. Re:Sustainable? Not really. on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 2

    Zink Oxide is recovered. Its not consumed.

  8. Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    Its clean because you don't have a coal fired plant making all that electricity electrolyze the water.

    Hang Solar onto anything automatically gets press attention these days.

    The real test is if this actually less energy demanding than simple electrolysis. The article seems vague on this point.

  9. Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 5, Informative

    You start with zink oxide. Apparently (not a chemist here) you de-ogygenate it via heat making zink vapor (releasing O2, which is vented) and that zink vapor grabs oxygen from the water, leaving you with your H2 product, and a clean supply of Zink Oxide again.

    The byproduct is Oxygen.

  10. Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, scaled really small, it just works slower to fill your H2 tanks.
    Photo-voltaic panels ---> Electricity--> heat small continuous flow reactor chamber (maybe no bigger than your thumb). Maybe the whole package sits beside your house in a package the size of an air conditioning compressor, while the panels are on the roof. We got a boat load of roofs in this country.

  11. Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    So help me out here, photolyzed zink oxide is pure zink vapor, and the oxygen goes someplace, (out the stack?) and then the zink gloms onto oxygen from the water. So, wouldn't that tend to yield fairly pure zink oxide after it cools?

  12. Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    What happened to all those storage schemes that involved Metal hydrides and all sorts of other esoteric stuff. Did any of that end up being useful?
    I saw one demonstration where they shot a cylinder with a rifle and all it did was hiss quietly.

  13. Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen on Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Clean in this context probably refers to not requiring fossil fuels.

    Apparently the Zink Oxide is recoverable as well:

    As well as a lack of emissions, the other good news is that the zinc oxide can apparently be reused, meaning the solar reactor is theoretically self sustaining as it only relies on materials and energy that are renewable.

    although it isn't spelled out how that is performed, or if any processing is required, and if so, at what cost.

    To heck with scaling this up. Lets scale it down so I can have one in my back yard, or at every corner gas station. A small reactors working any time there is sunlight and water scaled just large enough to keep your car topped off makes a lot more sense than trucking hydrogen around. Especially if the zink oxide recovery can be built in.

    Then maybe hydrogen cars can become a realistic option rather than the proof of concept models and conversion kits for fleet vehicles.

  14. Re:Competition to help sift all communications? on Competition To Identify Sexual Predators In Chat Logs · · Score: 1

    It doesn't have to know the correct interpretation.

    It just has to flag suspicious activity for the local constabulary to review to find local troublemakers.

    (Besides, I think you underestimate the ability of software to discern the meaning of sentences).
     

  15. The anonymity they deserve...? on Tensions Between Archivists and 'Occupy' Protesters Over Preserving the Movement · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Maybe the protesters were right.

  16. Re:Competition to help sift all communications? on Competition To Identify Sexual Predators In Chat Logs · · Score: 1

    You make a good point, that public research could be used for good, built into software that runs locally on your 13 year old daughters computer or phone which pops up a warning telling her, in language she can understand, that the other party is a) probably much older, b) persistently steering the conversation toward sex, c) are you sure you want to post that? d) OMFG I'm telling mom....

    (You'd probably have to leave off point d) or she would find ways around the software.)

    How successful this would be is anyone's guess. If it didn't run on a cheap phone it would probably never be used by the age group most in need of it.

  17. Re:Ummm - NO! on Competition To Identify Sexual Predators In Chat Logs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And of course, its always more palatable to couch surveillance projects in "Somebody Please think of the Children" language.

  18. Re:Ummm on Competition To Identify Sexual Predators In Chat Logs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do try to differentiate between a computer science exercise and a government policy.

    Do try to be a little less naive.

    Just scroll down a few stories here on Slashdot and find a UK proposal to scan ALL internet communications in real time.

  19. Competition to help sift all communications? on Competition To Identify Sexual Predators In Chat Logs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While cloaked in "won't somebody please think of the children" language, it appears to me that this project is really all about developing technology to rapidly scan a mountain of text conversations to identify any instances of behavior for which you have a few documented prototypes.

    Swap in political activist, opposition party, occupy movement, flash mob, or hackers, and the project doesn't seem so appealing. The goal sounds like they would like to find an engine to which you could feed in a few examples and have a few thousand computers watching all conversations on the net.

    Why would Universities participate in that? Are these people that naive? Why not spend the money on education materials, or web sites explaining the sexual predators techniques so at risk populations can be smarter, rather than helping governments build Skynet?

  20. Re:People should be free, but only on your terms? on Mitch Altman Parts Ways With Maker Fair Over DARPA Grant · · Score: 1

    Further, to throw his public hissy-fit over the internet, which was the first invented and funded by DARPA seems rather ironic. Why didn't he take out an ad in the New York Times.

    An amazing number of DARPA projects end up as a wash for the military, but have wide applicability to civilian use, from TOR, to Driverless cars.

  21. Re:Hmm on Navy Planning To Build Laser Cannon In Four Years · · Score: 1

    Not seen that mentioned, at least not any time soon.

  22. Re:Regulation on Mobile Operators: Creating Artificial Demand For Capacity? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're right. Competition must not be hindered by regulators.

    It must be encouraged by giving the regulators teeth to fight stagnation and collusion.

    Exactly.

    Sitting on bandwidth licenses without using them is simply sequestering public airwaves for private use, by paying a license, but then failing to develop the resource entrusted to you. The FCC should perform a survey of idle licenses, and demand they be developed and marketed.

    Hording or Failing to deploy should be (and probably is) a violation of the bandwidth license. (As precedent, Alaska canceled several North Slope Oil/Gas leases when the oil companies failed to develop the fields.) After all, a public resource was entrusted to these carriers to use for all of our benefit. Sitting on them while raising prices is not an acceptable outcome.

  23. Re:Doesn't the iPhone and AT&T prove this wron on Mobile Operators: Creating Artificial Demand For Capacity? · · Score: 4, Informative

    After all, AT&T's shoddy network encouraged huge numbers to switch to other carriers the moment Apple allowed them to. In business having a poor product might allow you to gain in the short term but is a huge detriment in the long term.

    That can't possibly prove anything wrong, because it itself is wrong.

    The secret has been out for over a year that AT&T did not lose any significant number of users to other iPhone carriers when exclusivity ended. They actually GAINED customers, and they GAINED more iPhone 4S customers than did Verizon or any of the other iPhone carriers.

    So your premise is totally wrong.

    The huge detriment you speak of, on the other hand is accruing to the carriers that gain the iPhone, but not for the reason you expect. Selling the iPhone is huge drain on a carriers bottom line.

    According to CNN-Money: all carriers that carry the iPhone lose money on it over what they were making previously. If AT&T has a network problem it has been caused directly by the iPhone and iPhone users. From lame Infinion chipsets that brought the towers to their knees early, to the data sucking ways of the typical iphone user.

    Between 2009 and 2010, Verizon averaged EBITDA service margin of 46.4% per quarter. In the first quarter that the iPhone went on sale, that fell to 43.7%. Last quarter, when Verizon sold a record 4.2 million iPhones, its margin plunged to 42.2%.

    This is not to say I have any argument with the subject of this story, namely the suspicion that carriers are hording bandwidth and creating artificial shortage.

  24. Re:Hmm on Navy Planning To Build Laser Cannon In Four Years · · Score: 1

    Wide area?
    Surely you jest?

  25. Re:Hmm on Navy Planning To Build Laser Cannon In Four Years · · Score: 1

    Ah, yes they WlLL take out a fast missile coming at a carrier. That why they are on every carrier.

    I gave you the link, the least you could do is read them.