Shrinking wasn't the first thing that came to my mind either. There should be some horrendously large ridges pushed up, some obvious fault escarpments and such.
I was thinking expansion, like the mid-atlantic rift, but I'd go for gravitational deformation as an equally probable cause.
I'm sure the scientists making the claim have some reason to suspect shrinkage, but solid body shrinkage is not they postulate on any other moons, so why raise that suggestion here?
Speed cameras are already installed in many systems.
Unless you plan on doing something new here, like catching "Reckless drivers" as your title implies as opposed to simple speeders there is nothing to discuss here.
There are companies that specialize in this. But that does not mean that any city is going to sanction a vigil-anti approach using private cameras of questionable certification maintained by non-certified private enterprises, producing tickets that will not survive the first court challenge.
(Cities issue contracts to companies to install cameras of questionable reliability, manned and operated by people of questionable certification, with debatable motives).
I sincerely doubt an open source approach would get very far here. Better to use the legal means at your disposal.
Take up a collection to buy cams fro the city or launch a ballot proposition to have the city hire it done.
Find a way to divert the funds from the police or the courts into parks or libraries, and make sure the contractor is paid on a fixed fee basis, and does not have any incentive to rig the system to generate more tickets.
Kong (KHTML) was ripped off by Apple, and they began the work on webkit as a closed source project. After some serious (legal) prodding, Apple finally did the right thing and returned their changes to the community. Everybody is all friendly again, but some have long memories.
Now webkit has taken on a life if its own, and is the heart of many fast browsers, and is a plug in replacement for Kong's own engine.
I wish Google Chrome was also part of the test. It seems faster than any of the others.
Before jumping on this, read the small print. They take out a piece of brain tissue, and implant it into the machinery, not the other way around. I'm not sure about you guys, but that kind of interface doesn't seem too useful to me, although it could be useful for diagnosis.
I rather suspect if it were the other way around, (implants for arbitrary interfaces) there would be a bit of a hue and cry. Especially when human subjects are discussed.
Its the safe way to do the research without attracting the attention of political or religious groups.
Its pretty patently clear that implantation is the ultimate goal, and this opens a whole can of worms best left unopened while the research is young.
But I'm not all that sure a single neuron is a reasonable long term target for such a device. After all that neuron could die just when you need it most, (or after a few stiff drinks).
Also, I'm not sure a human can fire a single given neuron in the brain with any precision when (and only when) desired.
I would expect that further research could allow clusters of these sensors to monitor small regions of the brain and detect when that region was fired in a specific way, (as opposed to some random triggering while dreaming or having sex or some other horribly inappropriate time).
Then you could have the QWERTY keyboard in your head (or the flaps, ailerons, engines, and missiles).
I'm sure the keyboard and mouse have a few years left before people start drilling holes in their head for sensors.
However there are a lot of people, blind, spinal damaged, who would be pushing to be first in line for trials.
This is not totally unlike Slashdot, where a single mod of troll is enough to make a post disappear from the screens of people who's filters do not show all posts.
People with mod point tend to ignore troll posts, and they tend to stay trolled.
The meta-moderation system seems totally broken, and never seems to affect the actual story itself.
Don't bother going to Digg if you're a human beign with an IQ > 1.
Well said.
Using Digg is sort of like "winning an argument on the internet", simply hitting that dig button makes you feel all smart and cool, but nobody notices.
Nobody I know uses Digg to see what is important to read or which stories to follow. It it totally ineffective in either promoting or burying stories, since Digg is mostly used by people too lazy to supply any effective argument (or rant) of their own.
Its almost, but not quite, thoroughly unlike Slashdot.
Google has a lot more stuff than either of those guys.
Those companies typically contract to host high demand stuff for short periods of time, such as new software roleouts or special feeds of major events.
Google on the other hand has far more stuff than will fit in any number of containers vans. Even hosting a single Gmail hub for that Verizon's local customers would exceed what you could fit in dozens of these portable data centers, and that wouldn't even address other google services such as search, ad serving, youtube, etc. They are way too big for portable datacenters.
Perhaps something to do with Android phones makes more sense. But even that is huge now, and getting bigger all the time.
I mean, NP has an N in front of the P. That's obviously not the same as P. Also, P != HP.
If you knew really advanced mathematics you'd know that NP means N times P. So NP does equal P when N=1. But not the rest of the time. Oh and it does when P=0. How much was that prize again?
And if you didn't know any advanced mathematics You could read the wiki page about this problem:
Well the suit alleges that the these shortages were not real but rather part of the "story".
However, how are they going to prove that any of this took place when these companies are all foreign corporations, and the persons involved were almost surely overseas. (They would have to be extra dumb ti include their US branch personnel in such meetings).
I don't think NY has the clout to demand documents from Taiwan or Korea.
And every goddamed one of them is scanned by google, foisted by Barnes and Noble and Amazon and everybody else as a separate book.
I once counted twenty different versions of the same popular (copyright lapsed) classic, all scanned by Google, many from the exact same edition found in various libraries. Some horrible, some quite readable.
I'm not sure anything is served by having both the 1902 and the 1903 versions of any popular fiction available in ebook form. Any serious researcher would search out the physical books and not rely on a scan anyway.
While most silicon solar cells have been rendered inert by the time the temperature reaches 100 degrees Celsius, the PETE device doesn't hit peak efficiency until it is well over 200 C.
Because PETE performs best at temperatures well in excess of what a rooftop solar panel would reach, the devices will work best in solar concentrators such as parabolic dishes, which can get as hot as 800 C.
So still not practical for home roof top deployment. Most people will not want 800C )or anything close) on their roof tops even if it was light and portable.
Solar concentration requires big expensive equipment - Mirrors or Lenses.
If they could find a way to push this technology into the 100-150 degree range (thereby eliminating the need for concentration) and STILL maintain the 50% energy extraction the potential benefits are huge.
The only HINT of a subsidy it mentions was a royalty tax break to the oil companies for developing new fields.
If these royalty payments to governments were actually required, WE would be paying more for oil, and Government would be squandering more funds. You didn't expect to see any of those royalties show up in YOUR pocket did you? You didn't expect a tax break offset by royalties did you?
Clue: All costs, and profits, and taxes and royalties paid by corporations are passed to the consumer. ALL of them.
So just how can holding price down by NOT taxing be considered a subsidy?
Econ 101 my friend. Shouldn't have skipped it in college.
Electric cars would make economic sense in a truly free market. Unfortunately, the market is quite distorted.
The market is what it is.
You can't sit there and suggest we totally change our entire economy so that some new technology which isn't cost effective would suddenly become so.
Subsidies in the market, to the extent they exist, are invisible to the consumer. In the absence of some monumental tax reduction, how would you propose to level the playing field and make the new EV's make economic sense?
You can not stop doing A in order to do B without killing the economy. You can not wish into existence over night fast recharge stations, new battery technology, etc. by removing any supposed subsidy to oil companies, and transferring that subsidy to EV companies.
If you did, other than the 10 year total disruption of the economy, what would you have gained besides substituting one subsidized industry for another?
Before you rail against subsidies of the oil industry, bear in mind:
Subsidies are society's way of funding development of what is important to the people as a whole in a way that society desires.
Governments takes money from citizens to give to industry in big enough chunks to assure that governments have leverage beyond what Joe Sixpack could ever achieve on his own.
Subsidies are not a zero sum game. Retuning the subsidy to the pocket of the tax payer does not provide any leverage, and does not make an uneconomic venture into EVs suddenly economic.
The vast majority of oil company "subsidies" is spent on roads. The benefit of which accrues to the people, not the oil companies.
That economies of scale is a red herring argument. Right now electric cars are expensive because the basic technology is expensive.
The technology is only expensive because it is not yet done on a mass scale. None of the materials involved are prohibitively scarce. None of the manufacturing processes are grueling or unusual.
Bringing more buyer allows more efficient methods, factories, and basic econometrics of scale to be applied.
That being said, giving tax-break subsidies to buyers is absolute the wrong way to go. Just as all college tuition rises to absorb the available scholarships, EV prices will remain high as long as there are funds or tax breaks available.
However, waiting for more research has never proven to be a cost effective method either. How long would we have waited for a Droid-X or an iPhone if someone wasn't willing to buy a those old Analog Motorola half clam shell phones?.
You have to field something that is less than perfect in order to obtain revenue, attract customers, develop support infrastructure, and build manufacturing capacity.
Nothing in the real world is developed beyond prototypes in the lab before it is marketed. Government funded research is best used as seed money. We are well past that stage now.
Progress is slow because everyone is sitting on their patents.
Slashdot Mirror
Shrinking wasn't the first thing that came to my mind either. There should be some horrendously large ridges pushed up, some obvious fault escarpments and such.
I was thinking expansion, like the mid-atlantic rift, but I'd go for gravitational deformation as an equally probable cause.
I'm sure the scientists making the claim have some reason to suspect shrinkage, but solid body shrinkage is not they postulate on any other moons, so why raise that suggestion here?
Speed cameras are already installed in many systems.
Unless you plan on doing something new here, like catching "Reckless drivers" as your title implies as opposed to simple speeders there is nothing to discuss here.
There are companies that specialize in this. But that does not mean that any city is going to sanction a vigil-anti approach using private cameras of questionable certification maintained by non-certified private enterprises, producing tickets that will not survive the first court challenge.
(Cities issue contracts to companies to install cameras of questionable reliability, manned and operated by people of questionable certification, with debatable motives).
I sincerely doubt an open source approach would get very far here. Better to use the legal means at your disposal.
Take up a collection to buy cams fro the city or launch a ballot proposition to have the city hire it done.
Find a way to divert the funds from the police or the courts into parks or libraries, and make sure the contractor is paid on a fixed fee basis, and does not have any incentive to rig the system to generate more tickets.
The speed changes in webkit are being backported to KHTML.
As to why, its always good to have choices and an alternate source in case someone pulls a Larry Ellison on you.
Yes its come full circle.
Kong (KHTML) was ripped off by Apple, and they began the work on webkit as a closed source project. After some serious (legal) prodding, Apple finally did the right thing and returned their changes to the community. Everybody is all friendly again, but some have long memories.
Now webkit has taken on a life if its own, and is the heart of many fast browsers, and is a plug in replacement for Kong's own engine.
I wish Google Chrome was also part of the test. It seems faster than any of the others.
Before jumping on this, read the small print.
They take out a piece of brain tissue, and implant it into the machinery, not the other way around. I'm not sure about you guys, but that kind of interface doesn't seem too useful to me, although it could be useful for diagnosis.
I rather suspect if it were the other way around, (implants for arbitrary interfaces) there would be a bit of a hue and cry. Especially when human subjects are discussed.
Its the safe way to do the research without attracting the attention of political or religious groups.
Its pretty patently clear that implantation is the ultimate goal, and this opens a whole can of worms best left unopened while the research is young.
But I'm not all that sure a single neuron is a reasonable long term target for such a device. After all that neuron could die just when you need it most, (or after a few stiff drinks).
Also, I'm not sure a human can fire a single given neuron in the brain with any precision when (and only when) desired.
I would expect that further research could allow clusters of these sensors to monitor small regions of the brain and detect when that region was fired in a specific way, (as opposed to some random triggering while dreaming or having sex or some other horribly inappropriate time).
Then you could have the QWERTY keyboard in your head (or the flaps, ailerons, engines, and missiles).
I'm sure the keyboard and mouse have a few years left before people start drilling holes in their head for sensors.
However there are a lot of people, blind, spinal damaged, who would be pushing to be first in line for trials.
Resistance is Futile.
Prepare to be assimilated.
This is not totally unlike Slashdot, where a single mod of troll is enough to make a post disappear from the screens of people who's filters do not show all posts.
People with mod point tend to ignore troll posts, and they tend to stay trolled.
The meta-moderation system seems totally broken, and never seems to affect the actual story itself.
no-one else ever saw the articles
Don't forget the articles were originally somewhere on a real site, where people read them
Exactly.
This is so like a 4th grade school yard fight over which Major League Baseball team is the best.
A bunch of snot nosed brats substituting bluff and bluster for the facts on the scoreboard.
Who goes to Digg when looking for something to read?
An even simpler fix:
Don't bother going to Digg if you're a human beign with an IQ > 1.
Well said.
Using Digg is sort of like "winning an argument on the internet", simply hitting that dig button makes you feel all smart and cool, but nobody notices.
Nobody I know uses Digg to see what is important to read or which stories to follow. It it totally ineffective in either promoting or burying stories, since Digg is mostly used by people too lazy to supply any effective argument (or rant) of their own.
Its almost, but not quite, thoroughly unlike Slashdot.
Google has a lot more stuff than either of those guys.
Those companies typically contract to host high demand stuff for short periods of time, such as new software roleouts or special feeds of major events.
Google on the other hand has far more stuff than will fit in any number of containers vans. Even hosting a single Gmail hub for that Verizon's local customers would exceed what you could fit in dozens of these portable data centers, and that wouldn't even address other google services such as search, ad serving, youtube, etc. They are way too big for portable datacenters.
Perhaps something to do with Android phones makes more sense.
But even that is huge now, and getting bigger all the time.
I mean, NP has an N in front of the P. That's obviously not the same as P. Also, P != HP.
If you knew really advanced mathematics you'd know that NP means N times P. So NP does equal P when N=1. But not the rest of the time. Oh and it does when P=0. How much was that prize again?
And if you didn't know any advanced mathematics You could read the wiki page about this problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem
However, it seems you could read that page, and still have not a single useable clue.
Mod parent Swoosh!
Well the suit alleges that the these shortages were not real but rather part of the "story".
However, how are they going to prove that any of this took place when these companies are all foreign corporations, and the persons involved were almost surely overseas. (They would have to be extra dumb ti include their US branch personnel in such meetings).
I don't think NY has the clout to demand documents from Taiwan or Korea.
Viewing, especially from on-base IPs, provides Wikileaks with server log information about IP addresses, handing them more information to expose.
And every goddamed one of them is scanned by google, foisted by Barnes and Noble and Amazon and everybody else as a separate book.
I once counted twenty different versions of the same popular (copyright lapsed) classic, all scanned by Google, many from the exact same edition found in various libraries. Some horrible, some quite readable.
I'm not sure anything is served by having both the 1902 and the 1903 versions of any popular fiction available in ebook form. Any serious researcher would search out the physical books and not rely on a scan anyway.
Perspex melting point 160C. So you need massive cooling airgap between lens and collector.
FAIL.
Roof top glass enclosures (solar hot water) nearly achieve this all by themselves in some sunny locations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_collector
Its contained in the collector. Its so hot you generally have to mix with cold water for household use.
While most silicon solar cells have been rendered inert by the time the temperature reaches 100 degrees Celsius, the PETE device doesn't hit peak efficiency until it is well over 200 C.
Because PETE performs best at temperatures well in excess of what a rooftop solar panel would reach, the devices will work best in solar concentrators such as parabolic dishes, which can get as hot as 800 C.
So still not practical for home roof top deployment. Most people will not want 800C )or anything close) on their roof tops even if it was light and portable.
Solar concentration requires big expensive equipment - Mirrors or Lenses.
If they could find a way to push this technology into the 100-150 degree range (thereby eliminating the need for concentration) and STILL maintain the 50% energy extraction the potential benefits are huge.
Yes, because we ALL KNOW that middle east wars are ALWAYS about oil.
Not.
Wait...
Did you EVEN READ the article you posted?
The only HINT of a subsidy it mentions was a royalty tax break to the oil companies for developing new fields.
If these royalty payments to governments were actually required, WE would be paying more for oil, and Government would be squandering more funds. You didn't expect to see any of those royalties show up in YOUR pocket did you? You didn't expect a tax break offset by royalties did you?
Clue: All costs, and profits, and taxes and royalties paid by corporations are passed to the consumer. ALL of them.
So just how can holding price down by NOT taxing be considered a subsidy?
Econ 101 my friend. Shouldn't have skipped it in college.
Exactly so.
And Oil company profits in the EU are every bit as lucrative as they are in the US.
A high tax burden is not a sign of an absence of subsidy.
Electric cars would make economic sense in a truly free market. Unfortunately, the market is quite distorted.
The market is what it is.
You can't sit there and suggest we totally change our entire economy so that some new technology which isn't cost effective would suddenly become so.
Subsidies in the market, to the extent they exist, are invisible to the consumer. In the absence of some monumental tax reduction, how would you propose to level the playing field and make the new EV's make economic sense?
You can not stop doing A in order to do B without killing the economy. You can not wish into existence over night fast recharge stations, new battery technology, etc. by removing any supposed subsidy to oil companies, and transferring that subsidy to EV companies.
If you did, other than the 10 year total disruption of the economy, what would you have gained besides substituting one subsidized industry for another?
Before you rail against subsidies of the oil industry, bear in mind:
Subsidies are society's way of funding development of what is important to the people as a whole in a way that society desires.
Governments takes money from citizens to give to industry in big enough chunks to assure that governments have leverage beyond what Joe Sixpack could ever achieve on his own.
Subsidies are not a zero sum game. Retuning the subsidy to the pocket of the tax payer does not provide any leverage, and does not make an uneconomic venture into EVs suddenly economic.
The vast majority of oil company "subsidies" is spent on roads. The benefit of which accrues to the people, not the oil companies.
That economies of scale is a red herring argument. Right now electric cars are expensive because the basic technology is expensive.
The technology is only expensive because it is not yet done on a mass scale. None of the materials involved are prohibitively scarce. None of the manufacturing processes are grueling or unusual.
Bringing more buyer allows more efficient methods, factories, and basic econometrics of scale to be applied.
That being said, giving tax-break subsidies to buyers is absolute the wrong way to go. Just as all college tuition rises to absorb the available scholarships, EV prices will remain high as long as there are funds or tax breaks available.
However, waiting for more research has never proven to be a cost effective method either. How long would we have waited for a Droid-X or an iPhone if someone wasn't willing to buy a those old Analog Motorola half clam shell phones?.
You have to field something that is less than perfect in order to obtain revenue, attract customers, develop support infrastructure, and build manufacturing capacity.
Nothing in the real world is developed beyond prototypes in the lab before it is marketed. Government funded research is best used as seed money. We are well past that stage now.
Progress is slow because everyone is sitting on their patents.
People, its a movie for god sake!!
Science was the furthest thing from the author's mind when writing this. Just have a beer and watch it, don't over analyse it.
Hint: Just because you can find some vapid article posted somewhere on the web doesn't mean they all deserve space on slashdot.