Wow. I think that you have all missed the point here. The Big Bang is not a theory invented to satisfy some psychological condition of needing a finite universe, in fact, the big bang does not even describe a finite universe. It does not try to predict an end to the universe or predict the existence of parallel or re-occurring universes. Even the prediction of a beginning that the big bang brings may be infinite as Stephen Hawking predicts as time and matter squeeze into an infinitely small point. That is a whole other topic, although related in some ways. There were/are many theories that describe an infinite universe in both time and size before the big bang theory became the prominent theory. So, why is it the prominent theory? Because the universe is expanding. From that simple observation (derived from the red shift of stars), one can simply reverse time (in your mind) and see everything collapse back to where it came from. If you go far enough back, you will see that everything will inevitably come from the same place. The one question I have about the Big Bang is, if everything in the universe was in one place at one time, wouldn't the universe have been contained within a black hole? Did the Schwarzschild radius grow with the universe? Is there a distance fro the center of the universe where light bends sufficiently to start returning to the center? Is that why the universe appears to be uniformly distributed around us? If the universe is oscillating, then would we see the beginning of other previous universes if we look for the light that has oscillated back and forth?
Tell me again why we need a GHz processor with multi threaded capiblilities, several I/O ports and memory types, floating point coprocessors, a system bus, and a full HAL just to do voteCount[candidateA]++?
Evidenced by the last dozen or so posts I just read, public education of science is obviously in BIG trouble. First of all, the pressure is on the inside pressing outward. Remember, the plane interior is held at or near the ground atmospheric pressure. The plane is flying in high altitude, low pressure, thus there is more pressure inside of the airplane than outside. So, the airplane would explode if anything. Secondly, as the pressure is inside, not outside, it is very easy to hold the pressure. Think of a can of Coke. It holds gas and liquid at high pressure (more than 5psi I can assure you) without exploding, but is very easy to crush when empty. The airplane works exactly the same. So, you are worried about a door that opens outward (as many of them do). Well, these doors are usually made so that the hinge is toward the front of the plane. This means that the door opens against the wind. While traveling at 450 mph forget the pressure, the wind will stop the door from moving. Additionally, if you simply depressurized the airplane first (by shooting a hole in the body I suppose) then open the door, virtually nothing would happen. The whole "scare" of opening a door on an airplane in flight would be that it would depressurize almost instantly thus causing a whole lot of "wind" inside of the aricraft, perhaps sucking out a passenger or two and would cause some problems with the aircrafts aerodynamics. If the aircraft had been depressurized through a smaller hole (small hole = slow depressurization) then opening the door would not cause the explosive decompression. In addion, pilots are trained to handle these kinds of problems with solutions such as slowing down and flying lower.
Wow... All I can say is wow. Do you really know where the term "missing link" comes from or what it means. Also, I suggest you read the publishings of people like Stepen Hawking and Richard Fienman as well as some of the newer papers on QED, SuperString theory and M theory. These developing theories can each in part explain the matter of the universe. And before you go into "just a developing theory" let me remind you that the idea of a non-earth centered universe was "just a theory" for a very long time.
And by accounts of miracles, what exactly do you mean by "supported historcally, archeologically". All accounts of "miracles" that I know of that have allowed for full observation of the evidence has been disproven over and over again. I think it's really funny how christians call the bible "proof". I think Hubbard wrote a book that he called proof too. So did the 7DA's. So why is your proof any better than theirs? Why do you dismiss their proof so easily? When you answer that, you may understand why I dismiss your "proof" with the same arogance. The nice thing about scientific proof is that it can be independently verified.
I have two classifications of faith.
1) Faith that has evidence to back it up, or at the very least no evidence to the contrary
2) Faith that comes from someone telling you to have faith regardless of the evidence
Item 1 does not mean that the faith is correct, but it does mean that the faith can be altered to match real observation. Class 2 is usually static and cannot be changed regardless of how many ways it is debunked and cannot be shaken with any amount of proof (see the Creationism).
On that note, I do believe that there is a 3, Things we will never understand, but that we understand full well (with evidence and proofs and such) why we don't understand it (see Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal, and photon interference).
Not at all. Assuming that the fundamentals of the universe are static, you only have to understand the basic laws that govern everything. Such is the pursuit of the Grand Unified Theory (GUT). I realize that this requires having 'faith' that the basic laws are static; however this is 'faith' with strong evidence and without any evidence to the contrary. By all means, provide evidence (any at all) that the basic laws of the universe are not static. No one person will ever "understand" everything in the universe. For example no one understands or cares why you read my post instead of skipping it. But someone who understands the basic laws of the universe would be able to induce any one part of the universe with enough time and observation. Anyone with infinite time could use their understanding of these laws to retrace the history of the universe and all of the alternative outcomes that could have happened. On a very real scale, with an understanding of these laws the collective knowledge of the human race would then be able to understand all parts of the universe that we have come into contact with and also be able to induce the rest to some level of accuracy. That level of accuracy goes up as our collective experience and knowledge grows. The only evidence I have to back up my claim is that you are alive today (thanks to our growing understanding of medicine, agriculture) and that we are communicating easily over a great distance (thanks to our growing understanding of electrons, photons, em fields, etc).
I'll bet that did not come through the translation engine as well as you may have expected. Try writing in english instead of relying on bablefish. Or is that how you normaly communicate?
Way to put it Ben. AMightyWind really comes off as AMightyBlowHard or AMightyBagOfWind. I guess in the end, the individual conversations between people like us will have no real effect. It is nice however to know that if AMightyBagOfWind is under 50 years old, he/she will have to deal with the problems of global climate change eventually. At the same time, I hate to think that I will also have to deal with the results of all those that are putting their hands over their eyes, ears (and I wish mouth) being wrong as well.
And you are a fool if you take into account whether or not it is our fault before trying to fix it. So, under your logic, it is ok if the earth heats up to an average of 150f... so long as it is not the fault of humans. Your sir are an idiot.
Right! And just the opposite as well. Many names that start as a publicly positive term can be turned into an insult. Just think Liberal:
1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
3. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
4. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.
(websters)
And now it somehow means "damn pot smoking hippie".
I dont care about you either. Try and think outside your simple boring "I don't do anything that everybody else doesn't do life". I really care about myself. I also care about other decent people that do "abnormal" but perfectly legal things. For example; in the last month, while researching stuff for a current (harmless) project, doing my day job, and doing some political reading, I have visited sites containing information about: The Koran (wanted to read it for myself), Turbine engines, GPS systems, video and data transmission over RF, Automated navigation systems, US and other countries electrical generation and distribution, Millitary tech manuals for various bits of old equipment and aircraft, Ideal Gas laws (heat and expansion, often usefull info for bombs), energy densities of batteries, fuels, hydrogen, etc., Bush, Rove, Right wing philosophy, Left wing philosophy, North Korea, Iran, 9/11 consperacy theories, slashdot, and a whole bunch of other "abnormal" stuff.
Now I am certainly no terrorist (just a hobbiest), but do I watch what I say on the phone these days? Of course I do. I already have enough flagged searches out there to probably qualify me for my very own NSA agent. If I have to watch what I say on the phone, or even if I feel like I should watch what I say on the phone even though I talking about perfectly legal things, I would call that a BAD thing. And what exactly do I do if some ass at the NSA decides that Ive searched for or purchased the wrong legal things and I silently get swept off to Guitanimo? Without a trial and some oversight, how do I prove that I did nothing wrong? Who is there to look over the shoulder of the NSA and verify that I am or am not a threat?
Well put. The point should not be whether or not global warming is our fault, but what we need to do to keep out planet inhabitable and comfortable. Perhaps one way to put it is, if your house is on fire, would you let it burn if you did not start the fire? Of course not. You would do what is necessary to save your home, then you would try to figure out why the fire started and what you need to do to prevent it from burining again. So, given that the Earth is naturaly prone to radical climate changes that could wipe out most of society (and has gone through those changes many times), what do we need to do to prevent the climate from changing in such a way that will cost lives. If we know that the sun is burning hotter today than in the recent past and we are in line for a "warming period", what do we need to do to reduce the global temperature and keep things on the up and up? Or, if we know that we are adding enough CO2 to insulate the planet and cause a "warming period", what do we need to do to reduce ro reverse the effects of that insulation? We are living in an old home. We need to add a thermostat and use it carefully.
So, one bad season on ABC and we have a revolution? Excellent, call your favorite actor/actres or producer and plead for them to "phone it in" just for a couple of months.
"As for "rotten economy": I have to call FUD on that one. The stock market is near an all time high, and unemployment is near an all time low."
I have been debating this with myself and others for a couple of weeks now. Im not saying that you are wrong, but here are some things to consider.
In my area house pices have doubled in the last 5 years. (I just bought a 1200 sq ft fixer upper home for 1/2 million and got "a good deal" by standards of the local market) Gold, Silver, Gas, the price of a stamp, and most other commodities have also doubled in the last 5-10 years. The stock market has finally reached the same point that it was at 5-7 years ago.
So, if the price of most everything has doubled but the value of your portfolio is the same as it was 6 years ago, then you can take your expensive all time high stock and sell it to buy a sock or perhaps a spoon-full of gas.
On your second point: If people are unemployed for a long period of time, they eventually tend not to report it (by law in many cases). There were at least 60000 layoffs in the auto industry this year alone. Additionally there were thousands of people put out of work by the major hurricanes of the year and a few thousand more people layed of in the airline industry. I have not heard of any major hiring trends this year. So, how can the job numbers be getting better? It just does not seem to add up.
As a Cox customer I really wish they would go ahead with this. Their DVR is one of the worst I've ever used or even heard about. It is buggy as all hell and as user friendly as a gorilla that needs a nap. Let me give an example. If you begin recording a show, then half way through the recording you try to play the recording, you will be forced to rewind to the beginning of the show. There is no way to "start from beginning" or "skip to start". When the live show ends, the playback also abruptly ends and the user is forced to start over and fast forward to where they were so rudely interrupted. LAME! This is only one of a large list of annoying "features".
Last year I moved from a home that was serviced by Time Warner. I happily used their limited but relatively bug free DVR for a couple of years. When I moved, I was forced to switch to Cox. Their DVR used the exact same hardware but the software was and continues to be a complete mess. I sent a bug report to the Cox DVR "development team" a year and a half ago. I was promised that I would be put on their beta test list and that they would be upgrading the software "very soon". That was the last I heard despite several e-mails and phone calls.
You said it yourself. First, you assign some variable to the address of the function, then if the variable != 0, you use the variable to call the function. This is sometimes used to trigger events. An object "foo" (I'm more of a C++ guy so were in oo land now, but I suppose that this can be used in C) may subscribe to an event from another object "bar" by setting bar.OnSomethingHappened function pointer. When SomethingHappend in bar, bar would call the function pointed to by OnSomethingHappened if it has been set (does not equal 0).
The production did not meet the demand. Case in point, I went to buy a 360 this weekend (a full 4 months after release) and could not find ANY in a city of 2 million people, 4 Circut Cities, 2 Best Buys (that I know of) 2 Frys, several dozen GameStops and more WalMarts than one can count. It took me 4 days to find one and even then it was from someone that got one as a gift for X-mas and did would rather have the money. I could not even find one online for a decent price (all were backordered). If that is not a sign of a failed production/distribution plan, I don't know what is.
Actually, the experiment that you are refering to used the earths magnetic fields to generate a charge. Anytime that you move a metal through a magnetic field, you cause an electric charge. I am not positive about his, but since the cable is rotating around the earth at the same rate that the earth spins, (and thus the same rate that the magnetic field spins?) there would be no charge built up on the cable... at least not due to the earths magnetic field. When the space shuttle dropped a line and orbited the earth it was going quite fast. As a result the wire worked like the windings in an alternator and generated electricity. The trouble is that you never get something for nothing. In other words, the space shuttle would slow down as it generated electricity as energy was transfered from kenetic energy (the motion of the shuttle) to electric energy (the charge on the cable). If this was done on a space elevator, the result would be disasterous, as any enrgy taken out of the cable would cause the space end of the cable to slow down until it fell out of orbit.
We are describing the same process. I too spent much time thinking about this when I first read about the idea. The best analogy that I could come up with is a self powered yo-yo. Imagine a yoyo with a small generator built in. When the yo-yo is dropped, the string turns the generator and the yo-yo saves the electricity into a capacitor or something. When the yo-yo reaches the bottom, the generator turns into a motor (by reversing the current) and the yoyo comes back up. The trouble is that it takes slightly more energy to go back up than is generated when going down. Eventually the yo-yo will hit the bottom and not have any energy to go back up. A gravity powered aircraft, such as what we are talking about would work exactly the same only with up and down reversed. Whether it is air or a string holding the craft up is of little difference. The turbines are guaranteed to generate slightly less energy than is required to compress the gas into the cylinder and the blimp would be stuck at 20 miles up. The only way to get to the ground at that point would be to let the gas out, at which time the blimp would be stuck on the ground. If you add more turbines, they add drag and slow the entire craft down thus reducing the amount of energy each turbine generates.
If the aircraft is using it's kenetic energy (it's forward motion) to generate electric energy then using that electric energy to create potential energy (by raising the aircraft into the air, then making it heavier than air), then converting the potential energy back into kenetic energy (forward motion), then the system IS closed and is a perpetual machine. In the real world, the turbines would never be able to generate enough energy to change the altitude of the aircraft as much as it did in the previous cycle. Eventually the aircraft would end up high in the atmosphere without enough energy to compress the gas to go back down or end up on the ground with no gas left (having let the gas out) to get it go back up. An energy source must be applied to make up for the loss (in heat) due to the imperfect effeciency of any one of the steps of converting potential enrergy to kenetic energy to electric energy and back to potential energy.
Nor should a voting system require a multi-function operating system like windows nt. Really, do we need something with more power than nasa had 10 years ago just for the ++ op of voting? See the solution that India came up with. Cheap, simple, verifiable and easy to copy. Honestly, how many Mhz do you need to count a vote and how many MB do you need to store a tally?
Here is an example. However, this inventor is attempting to use the vehicles forward motion to turn turbines that power the compressor. This of course would break the laws of thermodynamics and would be a perpetual machine. Switching out the turbines for solar panels and conventional fuels would work though.
That is exactly what I am describing. Here is a link to another company that has had the same idea. They are using the actual airbag as a wing though which I find to be a nice touch.
Actually, it seems that they are using lift to generate a forward vector. This is not a new idea, however it has not been used with great sucess yet. The idea is that a blimp can move forward the same way that a glider can move forward. Only with a blimp, the forward motion can be generated by both lift and gravity. When the blimp is lighter than air, it trades lift for forward motion. When the blimp is heavier than air, it trades altitude for forward motion.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you mean 0.196850394-booted. Assed is an imperical unit.
Wow. I think that you have all missed the point here. The Big Bang is not a theory invented to satisfy some psychological condition of needing a finite universe, in fact, the big bang does not even describe a finite universe. It does not try to predict an end to the universe or predict the existence of parallel or re-occurring universes. Even the prediction of a beginning that the big bang brings may be infinite as Stephen Hawking predicts as time and matter squeeze into an infinitely small point. That is a whole other topic, although related in some ways. There were/are many theories that describe an infinite universe in both time and size before the big bang theory became the prominent theory. So, why is it the prominent theory? Because the universe is expanding. From that simple observation (derived from the red shift of stars), one can simply reverse time (in your mind) and see everything collapse back to where it came from. If you go far enough back, you will see that everything will inevitably come from the same place. The one question I have about the Big Bang is, if everything in the universe was in one place at one time, wouldn't the universe have been contained within a black hole? Did the Schwarzschild radius grow with the universe? Is there a distance fro the center of the universe where light bends sufficiently to start returning to the center? Is that why the universe appears to be uniformly distributed around us? If the universe is oscillating, then would we see the beginning of other previous universes if we look for the light that has oscillated back and forth?
Pardon my spelling.
Tell me again why we need a GHz processor with multi threaded capiblilities, several I/O ports and memory types, floating point coprocessors, a system bus, and a full HAL just to do voteCount[candidateA]++?
Evidenced by the last dozen or so posts I just read, public education of science is obviously in BIG trouble.
First of all, the pressure is on the inside pressing outward. Remember, the plane interior is held at or near the ground atmospheric pressure. The plane is flying in high altitude, low pressure, thus there is more pressure inside of the airplane than outside. So, the airplane would explode if anything. Secondly, as the pressure is inside, not outside, it is very easy to hold the pressure. Think of a can of Coke. It holds gas and liquid at high pressure (more than 5psi I can assure you) without exploding, but is very easy to crush when empty. The airplane works exactly the same. So, you are worried about a door that opens outward (as many of them do). Well, these doors are usually made so that the hinge is toward the front of the plane. This means that the door opens against the wind. While traveling at 450 mph forget the pressure, the wind will stop the door from moving.
Additionally, if you simply depressurized the airplane first (by shooting a hole in the body I suppose) then open the door, virtually nothing would happen. The whole "scare" of opening a door on an airplane in flight would be that it would depressurize almost instantly thus causing a whole lot of "wind" inside of the aricraft, perhaps sucking out a passenger or two and would cause some problems with the aircrafts aerodynamics. If the aircraft had been depressurized through a smaller hole (small hole = slow depressurization) then opening the door would not cause the explosive decompression. In addion, pilots are trained to handle these kinds of problems with solutions such as slowing down and flying lower.
Wow... All I can say is wow. Do you really know where the term "missing link" comes from or what it means. Also, I suggest you read the publishings of people like Stepen Hawking and Richard Fienman as well as some of the newer papers on QED, SuperString theory and M theory. These developing theories can each in part explain the matter of the universe. And before you go into "just a developing theory" let me remind you that the idea of a non-earth centered universe was "just a theory" for a very long time. And by accounts of miracles, what exactly do you mean by "supported historcally, archeologically". All accounts of "miracles" that I know of that have allowed for full observation of the evidence has been disproven over and over again. I think it's really funny how christians call the bible "proof". I think Hubbard wrote a book that he called proof too. So did the 7DA's. So why is your proof any better than theirs? Why do you dismiss their proof so easily? When you answer that, you may understand why I dismiss your "proof" with the same arogance. The nice thing about scientific proof is that it can be independently verified.
I have two classifications of faith. 1) Faith that has evidence to back it up, or at the very least no evidence to the contrary 2) Faith that comes from someone telling you to have faith regardless of the evidence Item 1 does not mean that the faith is correct, but it does mean that the faith can be altered to match real observation. Class 2 is usually static and cannot be changed regardless of how many ways it is debunked and cannot be shaken with any amount of proof (see the Creationism). On that note, I do believe that there is a 3, Things we will never understand, but that we understand full well (with evidence and proofs and such) why we don't understand it (see Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal, and photon interference).
Not at all. Assuming that the fundamentals of the universe are static, you only have to understand the basic laws that govern everything. Such is the pursuit of the Grand Unified Theory (GUT). I realize that this requires having 'faith' that the basic laws are static; however this is 'faith' with strong evidence and without any evidence to the contrary. By all means, provide evidence (any at all) that the basic laws of the universe are not static. No one person will ever "understand" everything in the universe. For example no one understands or cares why you read my post instead of skipping it. But someone who understands the basic laws of the universe would be able to induce any one part of the universe with enough time and observation. Anyone with infinite time could use their understanding of these laws to retrace the history of the universe and all of the alternative outcomes that could have happened. On a very real scale, with an understanding of these laws the collective knowledge of the human race would then be able to understand all parts of the universe that we have come into contact with and also be able to induce the rest to some level of accuracy. That level of accuracy goes up as our collective experience and knowledge grows. The only evidence I have to back up my claim is that you are alive today (thanks to our growing understanding of medicine, agriculture) and that we are communicating easily over a great distance (thanks to our growing understanding of electrons, photons, em fields, etc).
I'll bet that did not come through the translation engine as well as you may have expected. Try writing in english instead of relying on bablefish. Or is that how you normaly communicate?
Way to put it Ben. AMightyWind really comes off as AMightyBlowHard or AMightyBagOfWind. I guess in the end, the individual conversations between people like us will have no real effect. It is nice however to know that if AMightyBagOfWind is under 50 years old, he/she will have to deal with the problems of global climate change eventually. At the same time, I hate to think that I will also have to deal with the results of all those that are putting their hands over their eyes, ears (and I wish mouth) being wrong as well.
And you are a fool if you take into account whether or not it is our fault before trying to fix it. So, under your logic, it is ok if the earth heats up to an average of 150f... so long as it is not the fault of humans.
Your sir are an idiot.
1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
3. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
4. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.
(websters)
And now it somehow means "damn pot smoking hippie".
I dont care about you either. Try and think outside your simple boring "I don't do anything that everybody else doesn't do life". I really care about myself. I also care about other decent people that do "abnormal" but perfectly legal things.
For example; in the last month, while researching stuff for a current (harmless) project, doing my day job, and doing some political reading, I have visited sites containing information about:
The Koran (wanted to read it for myself),
Turbine engines,
GPS systems,
video and data transmission over RF,
Automated navigation systems,
US and other countries electrical generation and distribution,
Millitary tech manuals for various bits of old equipment and aircraft,
Ideal Gas laws (heat and expansion, often usefull info for bombs),
energy densities of batteries, fuels, hydrogen, etc.,
Bush,
Rove,
Right wing philosophy,
Left wing philosophy,
North Korea,
Iran,
9/11 consperacy theories,
slashdot,
and a whole bunch of other "abnormal" stuff.
Now I am certainly no terrorist (just a hobbiest), but do I watch what I say on the phone these days? Of course I do. I already have enough flagged searches out there to probably qualify me for my very own NSA agent. If I have to watch what I say on the phone, or even if I feel like I should watch what I say on the phone even though I talking about perfectly legal things, I would call that a BAD thing.
And what exactly do I do if some ass at the NSA decides that Ive searched for or purchased the wrong legal things and I silently get swept off to Guitanimo? Without a trial and some oversight, how do I prove that I did nothing wrong? Who is there to look over the shoulder of the NSA and verify that I am or am not a threat?
Well put. The point should not be whether or not global warming is our fault, but what we need to do to keep out planet inhabitable and comfortable. Perhaps one way to put it is, if your house is on fire, would you let it burn if you did not start the fire? Of course not. You would do what is necessary to save your home, then you would try to figure out why the fire started and what you need to do to prevent it from burining again.
So, given that the Earth is naturaly prone to radical climate changes that could wipe out most of society (and has gone through those changes many times), what do we need to do to prevent the climate from changing in such a way that will cost lives. If we know that the sun is burning hotter today than in the recent past and we are in line for a "warming period", what do we need to do to reduce the global temperature and keep things on the up and up? Or, if we know that we are adding enough CO2 to insulate the planet and cause a "warming period", what do we need to do to reduce ro reverse the effects of that insulation? We are living in an old home. We need to add a thermostat and use it carefully.
So, one bad season on ABC and we have a revolution? Excellent, call your favorite actor/actres or producer and plead for them to "phone it in" just for a couple of months.
"As for "rotten economy": I have to call FUD on that one. The stock market is near an all time high, and unemployment is near an all time low."
I have been debating this with myself and others for a couple of weeks now. Im not saying that you are wrong, but here are some things to consider.
In my area house pices have doubled in the last 5 years. (I just bought a 1200 sq ft fixer upper home for 1/2 million and got "a good deal" by standards of the local market)
Gold, Silver, Gas, the price of a stamp, and most other commodities have also doubled in the last 5-10 years.
The stock market has finally reached the same point that it was at 5-7 years ago.
So, if the price of most everything has doubled but the value of your portfolio is the same as it was 6 years ago, then you can take your expensive all time high stock and sell it to buy a sock or perhaps a spoon-full of gas.
On your second point:
If people are unemployed for a long period of time, they eventually tend not to report it (by law in many cases).
There were at least 60000 layoffs in the auto industry this year alone. Additionally there were thousands of people put out of work by the major hurricanes of the year and a few thousand more people layed of in the airline industry. I have not heard of any major hiring trends this year. So, how can the job numbers be getting better? It just does not seem to add up.
As a Cox customer I really wish they would go ahead with this. Their DVR is one of the worst I've ever used or even heard about. It is buggy as all hell and as user friendly as a gorilla that needs a nap.
Let me give an example. If you begin recording a show, then half way through the recording you try to play the recording, you will be forced to rewind to the beginning of the show. There is no way to "start from beginning" or "skip to start". When the live show ends, the playback also abruptly ends and the user is forced to start over and fast forward to where they were so rudely interrupted. LAME! This is only one of a large list of annoying "features".
Last year I moved from a home that was serviced by Time Warner. I happily used their limited but relatively bug free DVR for a couple of years. When I moved, I was forced to switch to Cox. Their DVR used the exact same hardware but the software was and continues to be a complete mess. I sent a bug report to the Cox DVR "development team" a year and a half ago. I was promised that I would be put on their beta test list and that they would be upgrading the software "very soon". That was the last I heard despite several e-mails and phone calls.
You said it yourself. First, you assign some variable to the address of the function, then if the variable != 0, you use the variable to call the function. This is sometimes used to trigger events. An object "foo" (I'm more of a C++ guy so were in oo land now, but I suppose that this can be used in C) may subscribe to an event from another object "bar" by setting bar.OnSomethingHappened function pointer. When SomethingHappend in bar, bar would call the function pointed to by OnSomethingHappened if it has been set (does not equal 0).
The production did not meet the demand. Case in point, I went to buy a 360 this weekend (a full 4 months after release) and could not find ANY in a city of 2 million people, 4 Circut Cities, 2 Best Buys (that I know of) 2 Frys, several dozen GameStops and more WalMarts than one can count. It took me 4 days to find one and even then it was from someone that got one as a gift for X-mas and did would rather have the money. I could not even find one online for a decent price (all were backordered). If that is not a sign of a failed production/distribution plan, I don't know what is.
Actually, the experiment that you are refering to used the earths magnetic fields to generate a charge. Anytime that you move a metal through a magnetic field, you cause an electric charge. I am not positive about his, but since the cable is rotating around the earth at the same rate that the earth spins, (and thus the same rate that the magnetic field spins?) there would be no charge built up on the cable... at least not due to the earths magnetic field. When the space shuttle dropped a line and orbited the earth it was going quite fast. As a result the wire worked like the windings in an alternator and generated electricity. The trouble is that you never get something for nothing. In other words, the space shuttle would slow down as it generated electricity as energy was transfered from kenetic energy (the motion of the shuttle) to electric energy (the charge on the cable). If this was done on a space elevator, the result would be disasterous, as any enrgy taken out of the cable would cause the space end of the cable to slow down until it fell out of orbit.
We are describing the same process. I too spent much time thinking about this when I first read about the idea. The best analogy that I could come up with is a self powered yo-yo. Imagine a yoyo with a small generator built in. When the yo-yo is dropped, the string turns the generator and the yo-yo saves the electricity into a capacitor or something. When the yo-yo reaches the bottom, the generator turns into a motor (by reversing the current) and the yoyo comes back up. The trouble is that it takes slightly more energy to go back up than is generated when going down. Eventually the yo-yo will hit the bottom and not have any energy to go back up. A gravity powered aircraft, such as what we are talking about would work exactly the same only with up and down reversed. Whether it is air or a string holding the craft up is of little difference. The turbines are guaranteed to generate slightly less energy than is required to compress the gas into the cylinder and the blimp would be stuck at 20 miles up. The only way to get to the ground at that point would be to let the gas out, at which time the blimp would be stuck on the ground. If you add more turbines, they add drag and slow the entire craft down thus reducing the amount of energy each turbine generates.
If the aircraft is using it's kenetic energy (it's forward motion) to generate electric energy then using that electric energy to create potential energy (by raising the aircraft into the air, then making it heavier than air), then converting the potential energy back into kenetic energy (forward motion), then the system IS closed and is a perpetual machine. In the real world, the turbines would never be able to generate enough energy to change the altitude of the aircraft as much as it did in the previous cycle. Eventually the aircraft would end up high in the atmosphere without enough energy to compress the gas to go back down or end up on the ground with no gas left (having let the gas out) to get it go back up. An energy source must be applied to make up for the loss (in heat) due to the imperfect effeciency of any one of the steps of converting potential enrergy to kenetic energy to electric energy and back to potential energy.
Nor should a voting system require a multi-function operating system like windows nt. Really, do we need something with more power than nasa had 10 years ago just for the ++ op of voting? See the solution that India came up with. Cheap, simple, verifiable and easy to copy. Honestly, how many Mhz do you need to count a vote and how many MB do you need to store a tally?
Here is an example. However, this inventor is attempting to use the vehicles forward motion to turn turbines that power the compressor. This of course would break the laws of thermodynamics and would be a perpetual machine. Switching out the turbines for solar panels and conventional fuels would work though.
That is exactly what I am describing. Here is a link to another company that has had the same idea. They are using the actual airbag as a wing though which I find to be a nice touch.
Actually, it seems that they are using lift to generate a forward vector. This is not a new idea, however it has not been used with great sucess yet. The idea is that a blimp can move forward the same way that a glider can move forward. Only with a blimp, the forward motion can be generated by both lift and gravity. When the blimp is lighter than air, it trades lift for forward motion. When the blimp is heavier than air, it trades altitude for forward motion.