While it is cheap to build and makes a good demonstration, that device is ridiculously inefficient. Far more practical is to have solar panels (or solar thermal hooked up to a steam turbine) and use the electricity to power reverse osmosis filters. As a plus, such a system can work on other sources of energy if the sun isn't shining that day.
For archival purposes, the more expensive disc with slightly higher capacity can still be a better idea, because it will be easier and hopefully quicker to manage. I would keep using DVD-Rs (at about $.30 to $.40/disc) even if CD-Rs were free, since I like fitting 20-30 TV episodes instead of 4 on a disc.
Which divx are you talking about. If you're talking about the one that's pretty much identical to xvid, it's doing fairly well. Doesn't have a huge market share outside of shared files/discs, but it's a growing one. It's easier to find combination xvid/divx/mpeg1/mpeg2(DVD) players now than it was a few years ago and some of them are dirt cheap.
It might not be a legal requirement, but the parental, social, and school pressure to be confirmed is very great. Big bribes in the form of confirmation presents certainly don't help in having someone make an honest judgment.
When I was confirmed, I didn't do any major questioning. I just went along with it because I didn't feel like fighting it and according to my 'religion' (atheism), faking belief in god(s) is okay when it makes most people happier.
At least your school even got up to that part. My catholic school didn't get past the first unit/chapter, which was about stars, galaxies, and the likes. We learned neither creationism nor evolution in science class, though we did get a brief 'education' in creationism in religion class.
Apparently you've never tried to crack a video DVD's encryption. That can be done in a trivially short amount of time with, even on a lowly PC. The encryption on.zip files is also pretty lousy, though it will take more than a few seconds to crack on a PC.
If I'm not mistaken, the highest overall efficiency would be achieved if you could scale the exhaust speed to the speed of the rocket (which cannot be taken to its extreme since the launch mass would then be infinite, even if the energy needed would be quite finite). In other words, when the rocket has done a cumulative delta-V of 2 km/s, it should be exhausting gas at 2 km/s. I'm basing my little theory on the conservation of energy and that if all your exhaust has zero kinetic energy with respect to your reference frame of interest (generally the planet's center), then all of the kinetic energy must have gone into the rocket.
This strategy economizes on energy early in the launch, when the penalty for lugging mass to that velocity is small, and economizes the mass that must be lugged far into the launch by economizing mass later in the launch.
This is somewhat done in practice by burning heavy fuels such as kerosene in the lower stage and hydrogen in the upper stage.
How about a rail gun placed on the side of a tall mountain? Not only do you get a ten mile (16 km) or more track to accelerate on, but you also cut through the thickest part of the atmosphere too.
The rail gun's acceleration (somewhere around 200 g's or 2 km/s^2) and the passage through the atmosphere might be too much for delicate loads (such as humans and entire spacecraft), but it should be fine for sending bulk materials (such as a 10 ton hunk of iron or a heavy-duty steel container filled with water) into solar orbit (or high earth orbit if a receiver is there to catch it). After all, similar sized iron and rock meteors make it through the atmosphere to hit the ground, even if they do lose a good chunk of their mass.
On a different note, could the Earth's magnetic field be used to accelerate a suborbital mass to reach orbital speed and direction within a few minutes, thus reducing the speed needed to be attained by rockets or mass drivers substantially? It should be relatively easy to lob a projectile a few hundred miles up with no horizontal velocity, perhaps with conventional explosives.
We (the USA) are extracting oil extremely quickly. Production is about 10% of world production despite only having 3% of world reserves and even less of world resources. Areas like ANWR are the exception and the general situation is very conducive to oil extraction with low royalties and taxes.
No other part of the world have been as thoroughly scoured and drilled for oil as the USA.
Rocket engines are far under 90% efficient because a large chunk of the energy goes into the kinetic energy of the stream of hot water vapor (in an H2 + O2 rocket) flowing out the bottom.
I believe it's working the other way around - that isolated areas (near the edges) are melting very fast and vast amounts of inland areas are accumulating small amounts of ice; however, the warmer it gets, the more area will melt and the less will be accumulating. Somewhat warmer temperature might mean more snowfall, but sufficiently warmer temperature means rainfall and surface melting.
My experience is that hand washing is faster. Most dishes take under 15 seconds to clean, and often under 5 seconds. The process is pass under the water and rub quickly with my hand. If I can still feel residue or see bits of food (not that often), then it gets a better pass with the sponge and I use hot water (usually I use cold because the hot takes too long to come).
As you can imagine, sterilization isn't too big a concern of mine. My theory is that a plate without food materials on it will be pretty safe. No need for it to be perfectly sterile.
Lastly, my grandparents have a habit of leaving the dishwasher half full until the next meal. A bunch of moist and dirty dishes held at about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and 100% relative humidity makes a great bacteria incubator, and within a few hours the machine smells awful (they can't smell it, but I sure can). I now associate dishwashers with the smell of rotting food.
I've got to say that's impressive. Our power bill is about $60/month (about 10 kW*h/day at our electric rates), but that's for a 600 sq. ft. apartment, and that's with a gas range, steam (gas powered) heat, and no air conditioning. It's slightly below the regional (NYC) average printed on the bill, but not by much.
Even if they do wind up in the dump, they prevented more mercury from being emitted via coal power plant emissions than is contained in the bulb, and the coal power plant will spew that mercury all over the countryside to boot.
My plan is to store them in my house until I can find a proper way to dispose of them, but none have died yet.
Recessed fixtures in and of themselves are not terribly efficient, as are upwards-pointing fixtures. If the recessed fixture has a vent hole to the attic, it can also increase your heating/cooling bills substantially by allowing outside air in.
The most efficient fixture for illuminating a whole room is an unshaded bulb (usually 1 is enough) on the middle of the ceiling with the walls and ceiling painted white. My room (about 200 sq. ft.) is lit by a single 60 watt equivalent CF bulb, and it's plenty bright enough.
Then again I guess I'm not terribly interested in lighting. If I can see and things look normal enough that I don't notice, I'm happy.
Dimmed incandescents are extremely power inefficient, even worse than a full power incandescent.
From Wikipedia: Light output is approximately proportional to V ^ 3.4 Power consumption is approximately proportional to V ^ 1.6
A large reduction in light output will only result in a small reduction in power drawn.
It is far, far better to get a low wattage LED/CF bulb that you run at full power, and it is a little better (but still pretty inefficient) to use a low wattage incandescent bulb at its full rated power.
It most certainly is a fire hazard. The power dissipated in the wall is (voltage_from_power_company - voltage_at_outlet) * current. If a 10kW kiln draws 80 amps, and the voltage is 108 vs. 120 when there is no load, then there is (80 amps * 12 volts) or 960 watts going into the wall. That's almost the heat output of a space heater.
Electric ranges are more dangerous than gas. Gas explosions are very, very rare - certainly a lot rarer than electrical fires or burnt hands (both of which are more common with electrical ranges).
I hate Microsoft because they're an obstacle to progress, to freedom, and to happiness.
Microsoft's anticompetitive actions (very numerous and well documented) and their support and use of proprietary, non-interchangeable, and non-standardized software and patents means progress is slowed down. Imagine how fast computer software would progress if 95% of the world used Linux and contributions to open source software increased in proportion.
Microsoft is the biggest and most direct enemy of free software, and as such is against freedom. They're also a monopoly which, like most lightly regulated for-profit monopolies, is used to expand into other markets to get new monopolies.
By making computing such a pain (to MS and non-MS users alike - the latter still suffer interoperability troubles and slower progress because resources are diverted to MS OSs), Microsoft reduces happiness for the world as a whole.
I was assuming that the house had no wiring - in other words, you need to build an electrical system from scratch. That is going to take a lot of time, and plenty of engineering effort too. Even in a building like the one I live in, which does have an electrical system (even if it dates to before WWII), bringing the wiring up to modern standards would require a complete rewiring if you want to get any more than 20 amps on a circuit and a major wiring job if you want any more than 3 circuits (it's set up as 3 circuits of 20 amps each, powering a total of about 5 outlets and a few ceiling mounted fixtures). You'll also have to update the system to use a third prong and a grounding wire, since all the outlets are of the two prong variety.
Now if I could get my electrical system replaced with a fully modern one - 3 prongs, 3+ outlets in every room, not having air conditioners throw circuit breakers - for $2,500 (it's about 600 sq. ft., so I figure the cost would be about 1/4 as much) - I'd do it in a heartbeat.
PS: There is no attic or space in the ceiling. Wires must be run through the wall or on the outside of the wall in the living space (which is how the phone line and cable TV line were retrofitted in). I hang hangers sometimes on the phone line, so I guess it isn't all bad;)
I wonder how much you can sell the installation and wiring portion of your setup for? Perhaps you can get a fair penny for the actual panels, but the panels are less than 50% of the cost of a complete setup.
Yeah, I wonder where copyright and patents would be if people voted directly on it AND the mass media wasn't there to 'reinterpret' their votes for them (by bombarding them with pro-copyright advertising and spin before the vote).
This would be very reasonable if the law was just and fair in the first place.
The problem is that copyright is very unfair, and this guy looks a lot more like the colonists in the Boston Tea Party then Ken Lay or even someone cheating on a punchcard.
Punishment can work if it's done regularly, is done in small doses, and is seen as fair (only for guilty people and in line with the severity of the offense).
In moderation and with an attentive parent or teacher to dole it out, it works quite well on kids.
The problem with the police/prison system is that this is not the case. People are rarely caught, punishment is often draconian, and there are plenty of cases where it's unfair.
When a movie is bad, word of mouth and 'free samples' will totally ruin the movie's profitability. In such cases P2P will have a substantial effect on the movie's gross, as word of mouth will spread more quickly.
If a movie is good, P2P might very well increase the box office take as more people find out about it. Even if the downloader doesn't watch it in a theater, (s)he will probably tell others how good the movie is and they'll pay for it.
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While it is cheap to build and makes a good demonstration, that device is ridiculously inefficient. Far more practical is to have solar panels (or solar thermal hooked up to a steam turbine) and use the electricity to power reverse osmosis filters. As a plus, such a system can work on other sources of energy if the sun isn't shining that day.
For archival purposes, the more expensive disc with slightly higher capacity can still be a better idea, because it will be easier and hopefully quicker to manage. I would keep using DVD-Rs (at about $.30 to $.40/disc) even if CD-Rs were free, since I like fitting 20-30 TV episodes instead of 4 on a disc.
Which divx are you talking about. If you're talking about the one that's pretty much identical to xvid, it's doing fairly well. Doesn't have a huge market share outside of shared files/discs, but it's a growing one. It's easier to find combination xvid/divx/mpeg1/mpeg2(DVD) players now than it was a few years ago and some of them are dirt cheap.
It might not be a legal requirement, but the parental, social, and school pressure to be confirmed is very great. Big bribes in the form of confirmation presents certainly don't help in having someone make an honest judgment.
When I was confirmed, I didn't do any major questioning. I just went along with it because I didn't feel like fighting it and according to my 'religion' (atheism), faking belief in god(s) is okay when it makes most people happier.
At least your school even got up to that part. My catholic school didn't get past the first unit/chapter, which was about stars, galaxies, and the likes. We learned neither creationism nor evolution in science class, though we did get a brief 'education' in creationism in religion class.
Apparently you've never tried to crack a video DVD's encryption. That can be done in a trivially short amount of time with, even on a lowly PC. The encryption on .zip files is also pretty lousy, though it will take more than a few seconds to crack on a PC.
If I'm not mistaken, the highest overall efficiency would be achieved if you could scale the exhaust speed to the speed of the rocket (which cannot be taken to its extreme since the launch mass would then be infinite, even if the energy needed would be quite finite). In other words, when the rocket has done a cumulative delta-V of 2 km/s, it should be exhausting gas at 2 km/s. I'm basing my little theory on the conservation of energy and that if all your exhaust has zero kinetic energy with respect to your reference frame of interest (generally the planet's center), then all of the kinetic energy must have gone into the rocket.
This strategy economizes on energy early in the launch, when the penalty for lugging mass to that velocity is small, and economizes the mass that must be lugged far into the launch by economizing mass later in the launch.
This is somewhat done in practice by burning heavy fuels such as kerosene in the lower stage and hydrogen in the upper stage.
How about a rail gun placed on the side of a tall mountain? Not only do you get a ten mile (16 km) or more track to accelerate on, but you also cut through the thickest part of the atmosphere too.
The rail gun's acceleration (somewhere around 200 g's or 2 km/s^2) and the passage through the atmosphere might be too much for delicate loads (such as humans and entire spacecraft), but it should be fine for sending bulk materials (such as a 10 ton hunk of iron or a heavy-duty steel container filled with water) into solar orbit (or high earth orbit if a receiver is there to catch it). After all, similar sized iron and rock meteors make it through the atmosphere to hit the ground, even if they do lose a good chunk of their mass.
On a different note, could the Earth's magnetic field be used to accelerate a suborbital mass to reach orbital speed and direction within a few minutes, thus reducing the speed needed to be attained by rockets or mass drivers substantially? It should be relatively easy to lob a projectile a few hundred miles up with no horizontal velocity, perhaps with conventional explosives.
We (the USA) are extracting oil extremely quickly. Production is about 10% of world production despite only having 3% of world reserves and even less of world resources. Areas like ANWR are the exception and the general situation is very conducive to oil extraction with low royalties and taxes.
No other part of the world have been as thoroughly scoured and drilled for oil as the USA.
Rocket engines are far under 90% efficient because a large chunk of the energy goes into the kinetic energy of the stream of hot water vapor (in an H2 + O2 rocket) flowing out the bottom.
I believe it's working the other way around - that isolated areas (near the edges) are melting very fast and vast amounts of inland areas are accumulating small amounts of ice; however, the warmer it gets, the more area will melt and the less will be accumulating. Somewhat warmer temperature might mean more snowfall, but sufficiently warmer temperature means rainfall and surface melting.
My experience is that hand washing is faster. Most dishes take under 15 seconds to clean, and often under 5 seconds. The process is pass under the water and rub quickly with my hand. If I can still feel residue or see bits of food (not that often), then it gets a better pass with the sponge and I use hot water (usually I use cold because the hot takes too long to come).
As you can imagine, sterilization isn't too big a concern of mine. My theory is that a plate without food materials on it will be pretty safe. No need for it to be perfectly sterile.
Lastly, my grandparents have a habit of leaving the dishwasher half full until the next meal. A bunch of moist and dirty dishes held at about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and 100% relative humidity makes a great bacteria incubator, and within a few hours the machine smells awful (they can't smell it, but I sure can). I now associate dishwashers with the smell of rotting food.
I've got to say that's impressive. Our power bill is about $60/month (about 10 kW*h/day at our electric rates), but that's for a 600 sq. ft. apartment, and that's with a gas range, steam (gas powered) heat, and no air conditioning. It's slightly below the regional (NYC) average printed on the bill, but not by much.
Even if they do wind up in the dump, they prevented more mercury from being emitted via coal power plant emissions than is contained in the bulb, and the coal power plant will spew that mercury all over the countryside to boot.
My plan is to store them in my house until I can find a proper way to dispose of them, but none have died yet.
Recessed fixtures in and of themselves are not terribly efficient, as are upwards-pointing fixtures. If the recessed fixture has a vent hole to the attic, it can also increase your heating/cooling bills substantially by allowing outside air in.
The most efficient fixture for illuminating a whole room is an unshaded bulb (usually 1 is enough) on the middle of the ceiling with the walls and ceiling painted white. My room (about 200 sq. ft.) is lit by a single 60 watt equivalent CF bulb, and it's plenty bright enough.
Then again I guess I'm not terribly interested in lighting. If I can see and things look normal enough that I don't notice, I'm happy.
Dimmed incandescents are extremely power inefficient, even worse than a full power incandescent.
From Wikipedia:
Light output is approximately proportional to V ^ 3.4
Power consumption is approximately proportional to V ^ 1.6
A large reduction in light output will only result in a small reduction in power drawn.
It is far, far better to get a low wattage LED/CF bulb that you run at full power, and it is a little better (but still pretty inefficient) to use a low wattage incandescent bulb at its full rated power.
It most certainly is a fire hazard. The power dissipated in the wall is (voltage_from_power_company - voltage_at_outlet) * current. If a 10kW kiln draws 80 amps, and the voltage is 108 vs. 120 when there is no load, then there is (80 amps * 12 volts) or 960 watts going into the wall. That's almost the heat output of a space heater.
Electric ranges are more dangerous than gas. Gas explosions are very, very rare - certainly a lot rarer than electrical fires or burnt hands (both of which are more common with electrical ranges).
I hate Microsoft because they're an obstacle to progress, to freedom, and to happiness.
Microsoft's anticompetitive actions (very numerous and well documented) and their support and use of proprietary, non-interchangeable, and non-standardized software and patents means progress is slowed down. Imagine how fast computer software would progress if 95% of the world used Linux and contributions to open source software increased in proportion.
Microsoft is the biggest and most direct enemy of free software, and as such is against freedom. They're also a monopoly which, like most lightly regulated for-profit monopolies, is used to expand into other markets to get new monopolies.
By making computing such a pain (to MS and non-MS users alike - the latter still suffer interoperability troubles and slower progress because resources are diverted to MS OSs), Microsoft reduces happiness for the world as a whole.
I was assuming that the house had no wiring - in other words, you need to build an electrical system from scratch. That is going to take a lot of time, and plenty of engineering effort too. Even in a building like the one I live in, which does have an electrical system (even if it dates to before WWII), bringing the wiring up to modern standards would require a complete rewiring if you want to get any more than 20 amps on a circuit and a major wiring job if you want any more than 3 circuits (it's set up as 3 circuits of 20 amps each, powering a total of about 5 outlets and a few ceiling mounted fixtures). You'll also have to update the system to use a third prong and a grounding wire, since all the outlets are of the two prong variety.
;)
Now if I could get my electrical system replaced with a fully modern one - 3 prongs, 3+ outlets in every room, not having air conditioners throw circuit breakers - for $2,500 (it's about 600 sq. ft., so I figure the cost would be about 1/4 as much) - I'd do it in a heartbeat.
PS: There is no attic or space in the ceiling. Wires must be run through the wall or on the outside of the wall in the living space (which is how the phone line and cable TV line were retrofitted in). I hang hangers sometimes on the phone line, so I guess it isn't all bad
I wonder how much you can sell the installation and wiring portion of your setup for? Perhaps you can get a fair penny for the actual panels, but the panels are less than 50% of the cost of a complete setup.
Yeah, I wonder where copyright and patents would be if people voted directly on it AND the mass media wasn't there to 'reinterpret' their votes for them (by bombarding them with pro-copyright advertising and spin before the vote).
This would be very reasonable if the law was just and fair in the first place.
The problem is that copyright is very unfair, and this guy looks a lot more like the colonists in the Boston Tea Party then Ken Lay or even someone cheating on a punchcard.
Punishment can work if it's done regularly, is done in small doses, and is seen as fair (only for guilty people and in line with the severity of the offense).
In moderation and with an attentive parent or teacher to dole it out, it works quite well on kids.
The problem with the police/prison system is that this is not the case. People are rarely caught, punishment is often draconian, and there are plenty of cases where it's unfair.
Perhaps there is more than meets the eye.
When a movie is bad, word of mouth and 'free samples' will totally ruin the movie's profitability. In such cases P2P will have a substantial effect on the movie's gross, as word of mouth will spread more quickly.
If a movie is good, P2P might very well increase the box office take as more people find out about it. Even if the downloader doesn't watch it in a theater, (s)he will probably tell others how good the movie is and they'll pay for it.