Unless the water gun has an extremely high muzzle velocity, she would need to lead the target bugs by a non-trivial angle. The flightpath prediction algorithms required for reliable hits would probably be prohibitively complex since they would have to take species, sex and several environmental factors into account (and math is HARD).
Great analogies to cluster computing design issues. Really expensive perfect bullets, or lots of cheap bullets... I'd try the lots of cheap bullets approach since water is cheap. I'd hook up the garden hose thru one of those lawn sprinkler solenoid valves, attach hose to RC car servos, and work the software for two things:
1) Image detection before and after water spray. If you can't tell if you've hit anything, then what you do doesn't matter. That in itself would be an interesting science fair project. Average number of bug flying by per hour vs time of day vs temperature. Average direction of bug flight per temperature (maybe there is an evolutionary advantage to move north when they're warm)
2) Optimized servo controlled blast pattern. I'm guessing bugs have no evolutionary reason to dodge left and right in the rain, but probably have some minimal motivation to either go ascend or descend. They don't always descend or the fish in the lake would be fat and all the bugs by the lakeshore would be dead, and they aren't, therefore they don't always descend. But they don't always ascend or jetliners would be unable to fly due to bug encrustation. So, servo controlled spray in a precisely up/down pattern. Or would a spiral pattern at the target be most effective, since bugs usually spend most of their time going straight... Or do they?
When I bought mine many years ago, I distinctly remember it was around $90 including shipping... that's inflation for you.
I like the backlight, its durable, good battery life. Subjectively the screen comfortably holds about 75% of the text on a typical paperback.
Not exactly the nicest ebook around, but I like it. Have to use weird software to translate standard.txt into its weird little proprietary format, and install weird USB drives. Not a simple modern "plug in and it looks like a drive". And the screen resolution and contrast looks like a laptop from the early 90s... which is obviously perfectly usable, since I used a laptop back then, but not as good as modern gear. I'm actually kind of surprised they are still manufactured.
Back when you used to be able to buy stand alone palm pilot PDAs, as opposed to "cheap phones" with car payment sized monthly contracts, there was usually a model around the $100 price point, add some free reader software, and you're there... However, reading off a screen smaller than a post card was quite annoying.
Perhaps, but never coding in your free time, not ever, and saying that you've never enjoyed writing code to explore or learn something: that shows a distinct lack of balance.
... distinct lack of creativity and/or distinct lack of drive to explore
Dude thinks he's not boring, because he puts down what non-boring people like to do, and all put downs make you cooler, right? But, the real world doesn't work that way.
The computer sitting on my desk right now has... build-out was about $1,600.
In 1995, I picked up a system... for $2,000.
I have a half million dollar system on my desk right now...
No, you have a $1600 system on your desk (well, $1600 replacement cost, not resale cost)... doing the same stuff, more or less, as your 13 year old system that cost $2000.
and I didn't have to sell my old system for $450,000 to get it.
You'll have to pay to have the 13 year old one hauled away, and the new one probably would optimistically get maybe $800 used. Probably not $450,000 unless it turns into the next collectible genuine appleII...
Your example makes my point perfectly... spend $3600 on a computer hobby, and when you cash out to do something somewhat different, you may get, at best, a quarter on each dollar spent. I would hazard a guess that much more typical, for a longer term, harder core hobbyist, would be fractions of a penny on the dollar. That's just how it is in the computer hobby, at least since I got involved in 1981...
But, buy a nice used Collins R-390 shortwave radio receiver for $800, use the heck out of it for a decade, sell for maybe $800 and buy something else. Your choice, buy used fully depreciated and you get to use it for free, or buy new and lose maybe 20% when you sell a decade later. Same game in microscopes, telescopes, pro/semi-pro film cameras, metalworking machines like lathe or mill...
Once computer technology stops evolving or stagnates, it'll be just like buying an old Bridgeport lathe for $500, using it for 20 years, and selling it on for maybe $500, plus or minus inflation.
That said, need the process be commercialized? From what I can gather, having followed this a bit, is that they are looking for ways to mass-produce fuel from algae. Is 'microbrewing' not possible, or is it just not profitable for energy companies?
About 90% of questions from non-engineers on slashdot seem to revolve around scalability.
The problem with doing this small scale, is that everything "chemical plant-like" is less efficient when its small, or for stuff like catalysts there is a workaround to make big stuff more efficient. "Stuff" is going to get pumped, and big pumps are more efficient than small pumps. Real estate scales as "square" and process tanks scale as "cube" so you always get more "stuff per square foot" from a big tank. The growth tank probably will be a different temperature than the environment, again big tanks win.
Then there are the non-scalable costs. The light bulbs in the plant ceiling draw the same power no matter the working volume. A set of tests to measure the quality of the product might cost $20 per batch, no big deal if you brew a million gallons at a time, not so good if you only brew one gallon at a time.
The only way to win on the small scale is to ignore pollution and regulation. I can, and have, simply dumped yeast from wine brewing on my compost pile. That doesn't scale so well for a billion gallon process plant. Of course, if a plant is big enough, it could be worthwhile to purify and sell "brewers yeast" to farmers and supplement companies, the big guys win yet again... And a really profitable plant can simply purchase the government and government regulation that it wants.
Really, I'm thinking 60k is "payable" if you're really into the stuff.
I have some knowledge of the microscopy hobby. Also ham radio. Both are similar in that ultra high cost options are available, and similar in that prices don't drop, at least not like prices in the computer/electronics hobby.
It is considered "normal" to buy a $1000 radio or microscope, use it for a few years, sell for about $800, upgrade to the $2000 model, use it a few years, sell for maybe $1800, buy the $3000 model... repeat for a few decades, next thing you know, "old" people of rather average income are operating $10000 of radio gear, $20000 telescopes, cameras, microscopes, etc.
This is very difficult for computer people to wrap their heads around, since last years video card is merely a paperweight today, etc. And vice versa, good luck convincing a ham radio guy that his five old PC will not sell for even 50% of its new price.
If computer prices were this stable, I'm sure I would easily have a $60K computer system by now.
It's made by a shit eating cretin who locks up all rights, even the right to give it to your friends. Why the fuck would you encourage such a malevolent asshole is beyond reason.
Like the article says, "will crash way too often to blame it all on Microsoft".
can you tell me more about the potential applications of this "test machine" idea? i've been asking for a test machine for 7 months and my predecessor for the 8 months before me, but since we've had no failures, who can find the money?
apt-cache search xen
Its free.
Also, lets be realistic here, my test box is a 500 MHz AMD-K6 wiht 384 megs ram from roughly the mid 90s... probably 99.99% of testing only requires verification that it works, not that it works at "full speed".
I really don't get why Debian would do this though because of the fact that it will take away from its primary user base (Linux users) to help fill a possible niche of users (KFreeBSD users) that are small in number.
That type of question makes sense when asked about Microsoft, but doesn't even make sense when discussing Debian. "Why would Debian do this" is like a zen koan, until you're enlightened it makes no sense, or when it makes sense it means you're enlightened.
Debian developers do what they want to do, within the legal framework and societal tolerance. If the guys doing the port, feel like doing the port, they do the port, and we get a "testing" quality port, and if its good enough, TPtB declare it a release-quality architecture and we eventually get a "stable" quality release. There is no "Debian" borg style hive mind, or if one does exist, instead of "the three laws of robotics" or "the ferengi laws of acquisition", the hive mind has the social contract and the DFSG. There is no top down militaristic business command structure. Very few people in Debian with positions of power have the "wikipedia" attitude of "I'm not personally interested in your work, so I shall gleefully destroy it while laughing, ha ha ha".
In summary, they felt like doing it, they did it, some folks in positions of power acknowledge it. Its the same deal for all Debian packages, this port is not getting "special" treatment.
I wonder if getting more critical release bugs won't slow down Debian releases even more.
Unlikely, since the Debian method of handling RC bugs is to remove the package from the release if its got RC bugs. And that process seems brutally fast...
Is this a stepping stone to Debian moving from Linux to BSD permanently? I'm trying to figure out if the FreeBSD licenses are more compatible with the Debian philosphy, or less.
Essentially boils down to, is GPL or BSD closer to the DFSG and the Debian Social Contract. BSD allows closing the source off, thus it permits (but certainly does not require) behavior that is pretty much the opposite of social contract #1, #2, and #4, and DFSG #1, #2, #3. The BSD license does not by any means require a third party to participate in anti-social behavior.
GPL is kind of like a nerf gun, you can't really hurt the community with it as long as you follow GPL rules, but BSD is more like a real gun, in that its possible to derive software using it to screw over the community, or, perhaps not, its your choice.
Sure, although there are some minor engineering challenges.
That is, can it be considered as free energy
Not "free energy" because you're converting mass into energy.
as opposed to entropy?
On an entire system wide basis, entropy times temperature equals energy, so "as opposed to" is a weird phrase to use. Lots of energy emitted, at a low enough temperature, means the entropy must be high.
$5.000 or $25.000 isn't that much - to you and me sure, it's alot of money, but compared to the...
... lawyer fees at $250/hr to make sure they don't accidentally do something stupid to get countersued, plus independent forensic accounting consultants at $zillion/hr to make sure the evidence isn't contaminated (assuming its not already hopelessly contaminated)... Pretty soon you end up spending $100 to save $1.
It's not like that at all. You know that saying about the poker table, where if you don't know which player at the table is the fool, then the fool is yourself? Well that is the game they were/are playing with him. When someone else finally steals the goods, the guy who WILL get the blame is the clueless outside techie, and he's not supposed to know about that in advance, in fact people are kind of annoyed if it sounds like he's wising up to the situation, because he's probably going to work on a alibi now, like documenting the situation at slashdot, so now who will they blame?
I'd just like to mention that Dow Chemical are the ones who owned Union Carbide.
No, not "the ones who owned" at all, the very wikipedia article you link to explains how Dow did not buy UC until 15 years AFTER the UC disaster. Dow had absolutely nothing to do with the disaster. At all.
Y'know, the ones who killed around 25,000 people in a chemical plant accident in Bhopal, India.
... 25 years ago, and oddly enough the wikipedia article claims 18,000. Also from a political viewpoint people never kill people, its always the inanimate object. Much like guns are the problem that must be controlled, not the people shooting them, don't hate the techs and execs, hate the isocyanate molecule.
I wouldn't buy a pinhead from them.
No problem, they exclusively sell to other manufacturers. Its been quite a long time, at least in the US, since the average citizen could walk up to a chemical facility and purchase a barrel of P2P or methylamine...
Because it was 25 years ago, everyone at the company whom was involved, is long since either retired, dead, or has a new job. Feel free to shop there with no guilty conscious today.
Or anybody with missing digits? A basic mouse can pretty much be used with one finger (not counting the thumb for grip)
In that situation, trackballs work even better.
Trackballs are faster than mice because of muscle memory... I have to switch from keyboard to pointing device about a thousand times a day, and the trackball is always in the same place. Also easier on my fingers, no weird ergonomic twisting like a mouse. Also faster because I don't have to continually readjust from rolling the mouse off the pad.
Pad devices are almost as good, except they are very low resolution compared to a trackball and still have the "run off the edge" problem of a mouse.
I don't know about that... I'm talking about a tug-ship that would slowly spiral out, powered by a nice efficient vasmir, at least when its got direct sunlight. I think from your description you're wanting to haul a heavy tether up there one time using the vasmir? Personally I'd suggest trying one adventurous technology at a time, trying too many at once ruined the X-33...
If you, on the other hand, had a tiny thruster operating 100% of the time that kept the ISS in its perfect orbit, wouldn't that mean a BETTER microgravity environment, not a worse one?
In theory, yes, but in practice, good luck.
Then you need 100% reliability or 100% redundancy. I would guess they'll require the engines to be shut off during spacewalks, maybe while the shuttle is docked (who knows what effect fumes could have on the tiles, etc). Conveniently you'll need multiple separate engine systems for reliability, so after the spacewalk you just light off both primary AND backup. True 100% operation and true 100% microgravity is unlikely.
Not to mention whatever outgassing and optical effects the thrusters might have. If you only burn a chemical thruster 1% of the time every month or two, you can schedule optical and materials testing in the weeks up to a burn without interference.
Finally you would need 100% power all the time, meaning pretty much nuclear is the only option. Either that or drain the batteries in the dark and charge them in the light, with a cycle every 1.5 hours. Icky. From an electrical standpoint, better off running the thruster only in the sunlight only on excess capacity after the batteries are topped off. I'm guessing that would be about a 10% duty cycle, about ten minutes every hour and a half, although it obviously depends on solar power available and to some extent on thrust required.
No--because of NASA cuts, lawmakers have just ruled that physicists must add an additional ISS equation to quantum mechanics, governing the behavior of the ISS in orbit around Earth, so that quantization will inhibit orbital decay. They picked an equation where the only resonant energies were the only interesting orbits. Since the energies are quantized, we can't just nudge the ISS a little bit at a time, now that it has its own wavefunction, duh!
Rather than modifying formulae to add terms, wouldn't it be a heck of a lot simpler just to modify some minor coefficients that are part of the existing nuclear fusion equations to force the sun into a quiet state thus resulting in less atmospheric heating, thus less drag on the station? Of course the sunspots would go away... isn't that interesting?
The only problem with it being slow is that we live in a 'I want it NOW!!' culture.
Yeah, that and the van allen radiation belts. Not so bad if you scoot thru them quick, not so good if you slowly meander thru them. Kind of like taking the interstate thru the inner city at midnight, vs transiting the area on foot.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless the water gun has an extremely high muzzle velocity, she would need to lead the target bugs by a non-trivial angle. The flightpath prediction algorithms required for reliable hits would probably be prohibitively complex since they would have to take species, sex and several environmental factors into account (and math is HARD).
Great analogies to cluster computing design issues. Really expensive perfect bullets, or lots of cheap bullets... I'd try the lots of cheap bullets approach since water is cheap. I'd hook up the garden hose thru one of those lawn sprinkler solenoid valves, attach hose to RC car servos, and work the software for two things:
1) Image detection before and after water spray. If you can't tell if you've hit anything, then what you do doesn't matter. That in itself would be an interesting science fair project. Average number of bug flying by per hour vs time of day vs temperature. Average direction of bug flight per temperature (maybe there is an evolutionary advantage to move north when they're warm)
2) Optimized servo controlled blast pattern. I'm guessing bugs have no evolutionary reason to dodge left and right in the rain, but probably have some minimal motivation to either go ascend or descend. They don't always descend or the fish in the lake would be fat and all the bugs by the lakeshore would be dead, and they aren't, therefore they don't always descend. But they don't always ascend or jetliners would be unable to fly due to bug encrustation. So, servo controlled spray in a precisely up/down pattern. Or would a spiral pattern at the target be most effective, since bugs usually spend most of their time going straight... Or do they?
Give me a $99 ebook reader, not a solar powered one. I'll buy batteries for the bloody thing.
http://www.ebookwise.com/ebookwise/ebookwise1150.htm
$109.95
When I bought mine many years ago, I distinctly remember it was around $90 including shipping... that's inflation for you.
I like the backlight, its durable, good battery life. Subjectively the screen comfortably holds about 75% of the text on a typical paperback.
Not exactly the nicest ebook around, but I like it. Have to use weird software to translate standard .txt into its weird little proprietary format, and install weird USB drives. Not a simple modern "plug in and it looks like a drive". And the screen resolution and contrast looks like a laptop from the early 90s... which is obviously perfectly usable, since I used a laptop back then, but not as good as modern gear. I'm actually kind of surprised they are still manufactured.
Back when you used to be able to buy stand alone palm pilot PDAs, as opposed to "cheap phones" with car payment sized monthly contracts, there was usually a model around the $100 price point, add some free reader software, and you're there... However, reading off a screen smaller than a post card was quite annoying.
You could try getting a ... girlfriend (or boyfriend) ...
... You say you have both? Ok, now ...
.jpg or it didn't happen
...or you wouldn't go to a barber who doesn't cut his own... oh, wait. Let's stick with the gardener analogy.
And then there's the male obstetrician ...
Perhaps, but never coding in your free time, not ever, and saying that you've never enjoyed writing code to explore or learn something: that shows a distinct lack of balance.
... distinct lack of creativity and/or distinct lack of drive to explore
Dude thinks he's not boring, because he puts down what non-boring people like to do, and all put downs make you cooler, right? But, the real world doesn't work that way.
The computer sitting on my desk right now has ... build-out was about $1,600.
In 1995, I picked up a system ... for $2,000.
I have a half million dollar system on my desk right now...
No, you have a $1600 system on your desk (well, $1600 replacement cost, not resale cost)... doing the same stuff, more or less, as your 13 year old system that cost $2000.
and I didn't have to sell my old system for $450,000 to get it.
You'll have to pay to have the 13 year old one hauled away, and the new one probably would optimistically get maybe $800 used. Probably not $450,000 unless it turns into the next collectible genuine appleII ...
Your example makes my point perfectly... spend $3600 on a computer hobby, and when you cash out to do something somewhat different, you may get, at best, a quarter on each dollar spent. I would hazard a guess that much more typical, for a longer term, harder core hobbyist, would be fractions of a penny on the dollar. That's just how it is in the computer hobby, at least since I got involved in 1981...
But, buy a nice used Collins R-390 shortwave radio receiver for $800, use the heck out of it for a decade, sell for maybe $800 and buy something else. Your choice, buy used fully depreciated and you get to use it for free, or buy new and lose maybe 20% when you sell a decade later. Same game in microscopes, telescopes, pro/semi-pro film cameras, metalworking machines like lathe or mill...
Once computer technology stops evolving or stagnates, it'll be just like buying an old Bridgeport lathe for $500, using it for 20 years, and selling it on for maybe $500, plus or minus inflation.
That said, need the process be commercialized? From what I can gather, having followed this a bit, is that they are looking for ways to mass-produce fuel from algae. Is 'microbrewing' not possible, or is it just not profitable for energy companies?
About 90% of questions from non-engineers on slashdot seem to revolve around scalability.
The problem with doing this small scale, is that everything "chemical plant-like" is less efficient when its small, or for stuff like catalysts there is a workaround to make big stuff more efficient. "Stuff" is going to get pumped, and big pumps are more efficient than small pumps. Real estate scales as "square" and process tanks scale as "cube" so you always get more "stuff per square foot" from a big tank. The growth tank probably will be a different temperature than the environment, again big tanks win.
Then there are the non-scalable costs. The light bulbs in the plant ceiling draw the same power no matter the working volume. A set of tests to measure the quality of the product might cost $20 per batch, no big deal if you brew a million gallons at a time, not so good if you only brew one gallon at a time.
The only way to win on the small scale is to ignore pollution and regulation. I can, and have, simply dumped yeast from wine brewing on my compost pile. That doesn't scale so well for a billion gallon process plant. Of course, if a plant is big enough, it could be worthwhile to purify and sell "brewers yeast" to farmers and supplement companies, the big guys win yet again... And a really profitable plant can simply purchase the government and government regulation that it wants.
Really, I'm thinking 60k is "payable" if you're really into the stuff.
I have some knowledge of the microscopy hobby. Also ham radio. Both are similar in that ultra high cost options are available, and similar in that prices don't drop, at least not like prices in the computer/electronics hobby.
It is considered "normal" to buy a $1000 radio or microscope, use it for a few years, sell for about $800, upgrade to the $2000 model, use it a few years, sell for maybe $1800, buy the $3000 model ... repeat for a few decades, next thing you know, "old" people of rather average income are operating $10000 of radio gear, $20000 telescopes, cameras, microscopes, etc.
This is very difficult for computer people to wrap their heads around, since last years video card is merely a paperweight today, etc. And vice versa, good luck convincing a ham radio guy that his five old PC will not sell for even 50% of its new price.
If computer prices were this stable, I'm sure I would easily have a $60K computer system by now.
It's made by a shit eating cretin who locks up all rights, even the right to give it to your friends. Why the fuck would you encourage such a malevolent asshole is beyond reason.
Like the article says, "will crash way too often to blame it all on Microsoft".
can you tell me more about the potential applications of this "test machine" idea? i've been asking for a test machine for 7 months and my predecessor for the 8 months before me, but since we've had no failures, who can find the money?
apt-cache search xen
Its free.
Also, lets be realistic here, my test box is a 500 MHz AMD-K6 wiht 384 megs ram from roughly the mid 90s... probably 99.99% of testing only requires verification that it works, not that it works at "full speed".
First entry in /usr/share/doc/mysql-common/changelog.Debian.gz is dated 12 apr 1997
No dependency hell in Debian...
I really don't get why Debian would do this though because of the fact that it will take away from its primary user base (Linux users) to help fill a possible niche of users (KFreeBSD users) that are small in number.
That type of question makes sense when asked about Microsoft, but doesn't even make sense when discussing Debian. "Why would Debian do this" is like a zen koan, until you're enlightened it makes no sense, or when it makes sense it means you're enlightened.
Debian developers do what they want to do, within the legal framework and societal tolerance. If the guys doing the port, feel like doing the port, they do the port, and we get a "testing" quality port, and if its good enough, TPtB declare it a release-quality architecture and we eventually get a "stable" quality release. There is no "Debian" borg style hive mind, or if one does exist, instead of "the three laws of robotics" or "the ferengi laws of acquisition", the hive mind has the social contract and the DFSG. There is no top down militaristic business command structure. Very few people in Debian with positions of power have the "wikipedia" attitude of "I'm not personally interested in your work, so I shall gleefully destroy it while laughing, ha ha ha".
In summary, they felt like doing it, they did it, some folks in positions of power acknowledge it. Its the same deal for all Debian packages, this port is not getting "special" treatment.
And this happens now on BOTH sides of the fence, so mixing this improves the situation how? I see it making it worse if anything.
Software that compiles and installs on BOTH BSD and Linux, has not been all that unusual since, perhaps, 1991-1992.
I wonder if getting more critical release bugs won't slow down Debian releases even more.
Unlikely, since the Debian method of handling RC bugs is to remove the package from the release if its got RC bugs. And that process seems brutally fast...
Is this a stepping stone to Debian moving from Linux to BSD permanently? I'm trying to figure out if the FreeBSD licenses are more compatible with the Debian philosphy, or less.
Essentially boils down to, is GPL or BSD closer to the DFSG and the Debian Social Contract. BSD allows closing the source off, thus it permits (but certainly does not require) behavior that is pretty much the opposite of social contract #1, #2, and #4, and DFSG #1, #2, #3. The BSD license does not by any means require a third party to participate in anti-social behavior.
GPL is kind of like a nerf gun, you can't really hurt the community with it as long as you follow GPL rules, but BSD is more like a real gun, in that its possible to derive software using it to screw over the community, or, perhaps not, its your choice.
Restore from your last good backup.
Let me guess the warden's response:
"Backup? Whats that?"
Three very separate questions
Could this Hawking Radiation be harnessed?
Sure, although there are some minor engineering challenges.
That is, can it be considered as free energy
Not "free energy" because you're converting mass into energy.
as opposed to entropy?
On an entire system wide basis, entropy times temperature equals energy, so "as opposed to" is a weird phrase to use. Lots of energy emitted, at a low enough temperature, means the entropy must be high.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
$5.000 or $25.000 isn't that much - to you and me sure, it's alot of money, but compared to the ...
... lawyer fees at $250/hr to make sure they don't accidentally do something stupid to get countersued, plus independent forensic accounting consultants at $zillion/hr to make sure the evidence isn't contaminated (assuming its not already hopelessly contaminated)... Pretty soon you end up spending $100 to save $1.
So what are you waiting for to blow the whistle ?
It's not like that at all. You know that saying about the poker table, where if you don't know which player at the table is the fool, then the fool is yourself? Well that is the game they were/are playing with him. When someone else finally steals the goods, the guy who WILL get the blame is the clueless outside techie, and he's not supposed to know about that in advance, in fact people are kind of annoyed if it sounds like he's wising up to the situation, because he's probably going to work on a alibi now, like documenting the situation at slashdot, so now who will they blame?
I'd just like to mention that Dow Chemical are the ones who owned Union Carbide.
No, not "the ones who owned" at all, the very wikipedia article you link to explains how Dow did not buy UC until 15 years AFTER the UC disaster. Dow had absolutely nothing to do with the disaster. At all.
Y'know, the ones who killed around 25,000 people in a chemical plant accident in Bhopal, India.
... 25 years ago, and oddly enough the wikipedia article claims 18,000. Also from a political viewpoint people never kill people, its always the inanimate object. Much like guns are the problem that must be controlled, not the people shooting them, don't hate the techs and execs, hate the isocyanate molecule.
I wouldn't buy a pinhead from them.
No problem, they exclusively sell to other manufacturers. Its been quite a long time, at least in the US, since the average citizen could walk up to a chemical facility and purchase a barrel of P2P or methylamine...
Because it was 25 years ago, everyone at the company whom was involved, is long since either retired, dead, or has a new job. Feel free to shop there with no guilty conscious today.
Or anybody with missing digits? A basic mouse can pretty much be used with one finger (not counting the thumb for grip)
In that situation, trackballs work even better.
Trackballs are faster than mice because of muscle memory... I have to switch from keyboard to pointing device about a thousand times a day, and the trackball is always in the same place. Also easier on my fingers, no weird ergonomic twisting like a mouse. Also faster because I don't have to continually readjust from rolling the mouse off the pad.
Pad devices are almost as good, except they are very low resolution compared to a trackball and still have the "run off the edge" problem of a mouse.
Since the 'engine' only has to go up once
I don't know about that... I'm talking about a tug-ship that would slowly spiral out, powered by a nice efficient vasmir, at least when its got direct sunlight. I think from your description you're wanting to haul a heavy tether up there one time using the vasmir? Personally I'd suggest trying one adventurous technology at a time, trying too many at once ruined the X-33...
If you, on the other hand, had a tiny thruster operating 100% of the time that kept the ISS in its perfect orbit, wouldn't that mean a BETTER microgravity environment, not a worse one?
In theory, yes, but in practice, good luck.
Then you need 100% reliability or 100% redundancy. I would guess they'll require the engines to be shut off during spacewalks, maybe while the shuttle is docked (who knows what effect fumes could have on the tiles, etc). Conveniently you'll need multiple separate engine systems for reliability, so after the spacewalk you just light off both primary AND backup. True 100% operation and true 100% microgravity is unlikely.
Not to mention whatever outgassing and optical effects the thrusters might have. If you only burn a chemical thruster 1% of the time every month or two, you can schedule optical and materials testing in the weeks up to a burn without interference.
Finally you would need 100% power all the time, meaning pretty much nuclear is the only option. Either that or drain the batteries in the dark and charge them in the light, with a cycle every 1.5 hours. Icky. From an electrical standpoint, better off running the thruster only in the sunlight only on excess capacity after the batteries are topped off. I'm guessing that would be about a 10% duty cycle, about ten minutes every hour and a half, although it obviously depends on solar power available and to some extent on thrust required.
No--because of NASA cuts, lawmakers have just ruled that physicists must add an additional ISS equation to quantum mechanics, governing the behavior of the ISS in orbit around Earth, so that quantization will inhibit orbital decay. They picked an equation where the only resonant energies were the only interesting orbits. Since the energies are quantized, we can't just nudge the ISS a little bit at a time, now that it has its own wavefunction, duh!
Rather than modifying formulae to add terms, wouldn't it be a heck of a lot simpler just to modify some minor coefficients that are part of the existing nuclear fusion equations to force the sun into a quiet state thus resulting in less atmospheric heating, thus less drag on the station? Of course the sunspots would go away... isn't that interesting?
The only problem with it being slow is that we live in a 'I want it NOW!!' culture.
Yeah, that and the van allen radiation belts. Not so bad if you scoot thru them quick, not so good if you slowly meander thru them. Kind of like taking the interstate thru the inner city at midnight, vs transiting the area on foot.