The X-prize has been won. SpaceShipOne achieved its most spectacular flight yet, climbing to an altitude of 377591 feet (71 1/2 miles) to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize back in Oct 2005. This is a MUCH bigger and much tougher contest, however knowing NASA they'll drag this thing out 2-3-5 years and then all these companies will either be gone or have commercialized the systems on thier own and won't need the NASA $$$. Or NASA could split the prize money 2 or 3 ways and none of the winners would get adequate funding. NASA should give the money to a private foundation (like maybe Ansara???) who then makes the awards.
I worked on the upgrades for the HST (i.e. SM4 - Service Mission Four). They were cancelled in favor of spending more $$$ on STS (Shuttle) and mostly ISS( Station). The pressure was on to finish ISS which really meant the money was going to the Russians who promptly wasted 90% of it.
IIRC NASA actually budgeted all three but only two got funds. Then when funding was restored for SM4 a few years later, we had all the problems with STS which all of a sudden meant going to Hubble was "unsafe". We knew the HST was slowly dying and that we only had 2 out of 4 gyros (not same problem as this article) that were good and one more that was "flaky". If we lost one of the good gyros we could rework the software to account for the flakiness of the 3rd gyro, but lose two and HST shuts down as you no longer have attitude control to point the instruments. The bad thing was all of these gyros came from the same batch from the same company. An earlier service mission had replaced two bad ones that failed earlier but the new ones themselves are now failing. Last caclulations I recall the HST might make it to sometime in 2009 or early 2010 before it fails, but that was under "nominal" conditions.
It was NOT GWB's fault, the decisons were made by Congress not wanting to fund NASA to the level where they could do all three, HST, STS, and ISS. Remember ALL spending Bills MUST orginate in the House of Representatives, then be approved by both houses of Congress and the President. It also doesn't help that NASA's budget gets lumped into bills that fund other things like HUD and Veterans so it often gets short shafted as we can't spend LESS money on Social project or Veteran's benefits so we can so space.
Horse Crap...do your research. Santorio Santorio was the first inventor to put a numerical scale on the instrument. Galileo invented a rudimentary water thermometer in 1593 which, for the first time, allowed temperature variations to be measured. In 1714, Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer but didn't create the degree scale until 1724! And I'm pretty darn sure that thermometers were not common enough or cheap enough for many scientists to have them until well into the 1700's. And the Kelvin scale which is more precise wasn't invented until the 1840's! Formal stuidies of weather didn't being in the USA until around the 1800, and modern "meterology" really began to emerge as a true area of science in about 1917.
So at a MAXIMUM best case scenario we could have recorded temps for the last 300 yrs, NOT 400 years. The conclusions about temps many years ago are taken from Antaritc ice cores, based on the rate of ice accumulation in the region. That method is pretty good but it's not rock solid FACT, it's still hypothesis.
Give me a fucking break, you have ZERO proof on any of this, because like you said it's all Classified. Have you EVER worked on a highly classified project? I have, and the extra security is a nightmare in time and money. The reason a lot of it IS classified is that it is experimental, which means it may NOT work!!
As far as LockMart and Bechtel, those guys are not dummies they give generously to BOTH parties. You DO know that cby law there is a cap on Coporate contributions, and the money comes from the EMPLOYEE PACs not the company bank account. I know, I'm been there and had money subtracted (voluntary) to support my Employee PAC.
Hey dummy, when your party is in power you get to run the WHOLE GOVERNMENT!!! The Democrats did it for 30 yrs and I don't see you bitching about that. Oversight is still there, or have you forgotten the Scotter Libby case?? No that he did anything wrong but there is an way to investigate, which is oversight.
Don't let a few things like FACTS get in the way of a good Bush Bashing. When you are smart enough and have been around a few adminstrations then you'll learn how things really work versus how your liberal PoliSci professors want you to think.
Unless you removed 1000's of lines of code, or fixed many errors the density didn't change. It's errors per 1000's of lines of code. So removing a few dozen or even a hundred or more won't change the math. Overtime the new code is smaller and has less errors which should reduce the value of the metric.
SLOC/day isn't a horrible metric if you tightly specify it to be lines of completed, tested and controlled code per day. While it's not a really good metric either no one has really come up with a better figure to measure "productivity". However, the estimated KSLOC should NEVER be used to estimate the project duration or number of resources needed. Bugs/KSLOC (i.e. error density) is a decent metric for code quality, so knowing the number of lines of code does have some usefulness. Last time I looked about 30-40 solid lines of code per day (using my definition of COMPLETE code) was about average, some good programmers could hit 50. That number is way below MS number, so they must be counting pure lines written even if they later got removed/changed to fix a bug.
You obviously don't understand ZFS at all and certainly you can't instrument the Linux kernal with ZERO overhead like DTrace can with Solaris and applications on Solaris. You going to tell me Linux implements containers? The only other things that come close are VMWare and Xen. Linux is a good OS but it's not got everything. Sometimes I think Solaris might have too much.
ALL of those things you mentioned Linux needed, Solaris already has. If Sun shares those technologies then it's NOT stealing, if they don't want them out there they will keep them out of OpenSolaris (however I've not heard they will do that). No, the reason Linux was opensourced was COLLABORATION (aka the power of the community), more eyes, more minds, better ideas, equals better code. FREEDOM has nothing to do with it. Orginally Linux was only shared with and improved by a few dozens of trusted developers that Linus accepted into the "team".
Very good points. I for one don't want minimally tested extensions to Solaris (or any other O/S) to be on any system that controls my money! I wonder why no one mentions that IBM isn't doing ANYTHING to make AIX open source, nor is HP doing anything with HP-UX. And hell will freeze before MS does anything open-source with Windoze.
That's stupid. How much shares are sold has NOTHING to do DIRECTLY with the PROFIT of Vonage. The shares are sold to generate operating capital, not for profit. The Market Capitilization of Vonage (# shares outstanding * current price per share) may or may not be important. Sometimes loan convenants are based on debt/equity ratios and the more equity (shares sold) the better D/E ratio and ususally that means a lower the interest rate on the debt (bonds & Short-Term financing). That has an effect on Interest Expense which has an effect on Profit.If they sell shares at 12 or 17 only matters as to whether they can undertake projects using funds from the IPO or if they have to borrow it or use Cash Flow from Operations. If investors see the stock crater to $12 from $17 and think $12 is a good price they'll buy it and the stock goes back up. Until the stock price goes back up Vonage can just sit on the shares they didn't sell at IPO. IF the price goes back to $17 (or maybe more) then they sell them on the open market instead of to the IPO subscribers. If the price jumps then the investors backing out lost money and Vonage gets more capital to work with. However selling at $12 is better than waiting and selling at less if the company doesn't perform.
The Stealth bomber reflects the signals in all sorts of directions so there is a Mimimum radar return, some of those signals would be reflected to continue on to a reciever on the other end as in your example. However the return (on either end) would be weak sort of like a large bird or a SMALL plane. Sorting out whether that was a bird, small plane, a decoy, jamming, or a real B2 before a HARM missle from the B2 or a UAV blows you to bits is the problem. During the Gulf War the Iraqis were afraid to turn on the radar to try to track anything else they get hammered by a HARM. Shooting semi-blindly into the sky with a missle that has it's own tracking has a good a chance as anything else.
The damn things ARE invisible, and when they arent (i.e. bomb bay doors are open) its not for very long. Plus they don't even have to get close to the target these days, a JDAM can hit something 40 miles away when dropped from a B2 at altitude.
If the B2 absorbed the radar signal then you would get a "hole" in the sky that could be tracked, of course how the B2 would dump the absorbed radar energy without having a big IR signature is an interesting challenge, maybe some sort of super-cooled liquid as a heat sink.
First of all there is a LOT of interest in the platform, and it is being used quite a bit already, but that still only scratches the surface of what COULD be done. BTW, it won't run Blackjack as applications requiring user-interaction are not supported. Of course it could run a Monte-Carlo simulation of say 1M Blackjack games and tell you what your winnings would be:)
Cost? At $1/CPU Hour? How many CPU/hrs do you need? The big drawback is that there are not that many applications out there that are "grid aware" and can utilize all the CPUs. Simulations/modeling are great things to do on a grid but if the application/algorithm won't scale to 100's of CPUs then your problem takes longer to solve. Time is money, the sooner you know the answers the quicker you can get them into production and start making your money back. The applications also must be secure, not rely on 3rd party libraries, etc. The rules are published on Sun's web site page that describes the Grid Service.
You said "MOM reports to our monitoring team any Dell alerts (including ALL hardware problems, and predictive failure notices),
* The Dell Remote Access Cards allow us console access to the servers when they aren't otherwise accessible remotely, including the entire POST process.
Enterprise customers demanding AMD processors (or otherwise dodging the cost of Intel Dell servers) don't get these features"
Thats 100% WRONG. You obviously are a Dell FanBoy as you are blind to the fact that Sun has 4 socket/8 core AMD boxes with those features and HP does as well. If you want to go further, Solaris 10 supports Predictive Self Healing which is the REAL thing much better than MOM. Sun (and HP ) servers have much greated MTBF than Dell equipment. Customers buy Dell because it is CHEAP, when a Xeon server dies they yank it from the rack and install a new one. A new server costs less than the labor to diagnose and fix the broken box.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
It shows the working heat of a methanol fuel cell is 90-120 degrees C. That's HOT..it's going to take some good insulation to not burn someone. Which adds the the cost of the device and may push it too high for most consumers. Also
efficiency is low, due to the high permeation of methanol through the membrane, and the dynamic behaviour is sluggish.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-methanol_fuel_ cell
Which shows some of the limitations..what to do with the water produced? State of the art is 100 mW for 10hrs on 1ml 99.5% Methanol. A cell phone can take from 250 mW to 3W of power to transmit, thats continuous power too. So it's 2.5X state of the art methanol fuel cell needed to power cell phones. The fuel cell is 22 x 56 x 4.5 millimeters.
Nice straw-man and changing the subject. You didn't address any of my issues. Yes I know Engineering can overcome a lot of obstacles, but we have been developing Fuel Cells designs have been around since the 1960's and still don't have it right. Lead-acid batteries have been around since the 1800's maybe earlier and it took until the second half of the 1900s to make them really usable and cheap enough for the average Joe. LI batteries have drawbacks as do NiCads but they are proven and we know what NOT to do (fire, overcharging, etc). A fuel cell doesnt have the energy density of current technology and they are just as environmentally messy in thier own way. By the way, Methanol is most commonly made from fossil fuels (i.e. Oil) so thats not a great thing either as thats another thing that will rise in price with oil. Last week your replacement cost $10 this week its $11. I'll give it a few years of R&D but then if there is not a really big breakthru they'll give up on it.
Now you can get brain cancer and methanol poisoning at the same time!:)
Seriously, how do you recharge these things, with a can of pressurized methanol? Talk about a fire hazard! Or maybe the fuel cell is disposable and you just slap in a new one? That's not environmentally friendly. Maybe you send them back to the factory and they can refill them? Will there be a grey market in refills such as with Ink Jet/Laser Toner Cartridges? Will those refills be safe? Can you carry them on an airplane since flammable items like this are not allowed today? What do they do with the excess heat from the fuel cell operation? There are a LOT of questions to be answered both from the technology side and the business logistics side before you are going to see these in production for consumers. Meanwhile traditional battery technology is not standing still, we get more power density than ever now For the military which does not have to follow the same precautions it could be a good thing for field use, but I don't see them being comsumer devices ever.
First of all the NSA is NOT going to use something as simple as a hash to protect information. The NSA has the best encryption algorithms most likely in the world. They wouldn't encrypt each number with the same key either, they would probably use a public-private key pair of at least 128 bits. That key pair is stored very securely somewhere and everything is compartmentalized, the right hand really does NOT know what the left is doing. Secondly, no where does it say the personal information travels thru the system with the number. In fact they wouldn't even need to have it, they could just do a reverse lookup on the decyrpted numbers that are suspicious. It's probably even more complex and convoluted than this, after all it is the NSA which used to be called 'The Puzzle Palace".
If they intended to use chicken/turkey offal they should have partnered with Tyson, which is the biggest poultry produder in the USA. The process works on any kind of remains, so beef or pig plants could be sources of raw material as well. I've been following this idea for several years and I too am bummed it hasn't grown. The light crude could be feedstock for just about anything, it would make great biodiesel of could even by used to make gasoline.
Civics classes are required in High Schools in my state. The public get engaged is a good idea though. But when they get 90% of thier info via the mass media thats not the right kind of "engaged". I strongly dislike PR, it defeats democracy. It's socialism in sheeps clothing. If someone gets 40% of the vote they DIDN'T WIN. Simple as that. They should try harder next time. Sure they are a strong minority and that system has existed in the USA for a long time. ALL elections are local in my opinion, even national ones, as people will vote for the candidate that fits their needs best, and screw what the rest of the country thinks about thier needs!
Americans can travel to Canada, Mexico and the Carribean on our short vacations and many do. The reason we don't travel the rest of the world is two-fold. One is time, and the other is there are so many wonders to see in the USA and so many things to do why go to Europe? We have the World's Best National Parks, great skiing in several places, excellent beaches on two oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, at least three Mountain ranges, cheap (relatively) gas prices, Hollywood, NYC, Boston, etc. as places to go. Many nations in Europe dont have this and they have to visit other countries. Howeever to them that is about as big a deal as someone in the USA visiting another state, and just about as close, and probably less hassles if you take the trains!
We have proportional representation. It's called the House of Representatives which are elected from States based on the populations of each state. If you mean proportional to age, sex, race, interests, that's not going to happen. Why not? Well it would be very hard to allocate the seats fairly (think Gerrymandering but worse) and second there are very strong lobbying organizations for each of these groups now (such as AARP for the retirees) and they don't want to give up broad power over many representatives for only one member.
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The X-prize has been won. SpaceShipOne achieved its most spectacular flight yet, climbing to an altitude of 377591 feet (71 1/2 miles) to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize back in Oct 2005. This is a MUCH bigger and much tougher contest, however knowing NASA they'll drag this thing out 2-3-5 years and then all these companies will either be gone or have commercialized the systems on thier own and won't need the NASA $$$. Or NASA could split the prize money 2 or 3 ways and none of the winners would get adequate funding. NASA should give the money to a private foundation (like maybe Ansara???) who then makes the awards.
I worked on the upgrades for the HST (i.e. SM4 - Service Mission Four). They were cancelled in favor of spending more $$$ on STS (Shuttle) and mostly ISS( Station). The pressure was on to finish ISS which really meant the money was going to the Russians who promptly wasted 90% of it.
IIRC NASA actually budgeted all three but only two got funds. Then when funding was restored for SM4 a few years later, we had all the problems with STS which all of a sudden meant going to Hubble was "unsafe". We knew the HST was slowly dying and that we only had 2 out of 4 gyros (not same problem as this article) that were good and one more that was "flaky". If we lost one of the good gyros we could rework the software to account for the flakiness of the 3rd gyro, but lose two and HST shuts down as you no longer have attitude control to point the instruments. The bad thing was all of these gyros came from the same batch from the same company. An earlier service mission had replaced two bad ones that failed earlier but the new ones themselves are now failing. Last caclulations I recall the HST might make it to sometime in 2009 or early 2010 before it fails, but that was under "nominal" conditions.
It was NOT GWB's fault, the decisons were made by Congress not wanting to fund NASA to the level where they could do all three, HST, STS, and ISS. Remember ALL spending Bills MUST orginate in the House of Representatives, then be approved by both houses of Congress and the President. It also doesn't help that NASA's budget gets lumped into bills that fund other things like HUD and Veterans so it often gets short shafted as we can't spend LESS money on Social project or Veteran's benefits so we can so space.
Horse Crap...do your research. Santorio Santorio was the first inventor to put a numerical scale on the instrument. Galileo invented a rudimentary water thermometer in 1593 which, for the first time, allowed temperature variations to be measured. In 1714, Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer but didn't create the degree scale until 1724! And I'm pretty darn sure that thermometers were not common enough or cheap enough for many scientists to have them until well into the 1700's. And the Kelvin scale which is more precise wasn't invented until the 1840's! Formal stuidies of weather didn't being in the USA until around the 1800, and modern "meterology" really began to emerge as a true area of science in about 1917.
So at a MAXIMUM best case scenario we could have recorded temps for the last 300 yrs, NOT 400 years. The conclusions about temps many years ago are taken from Antaritc ice cores, based on the rate of ice accumulation in the region. That method is pretty good but it's not rock solid FACT, it's still hypothesis.
Mod Parent down, it's WRONG!!
Give me a fucking break, you have ZERO proof on any of this, because like you said it's all Classified. Have you EVER worked on a highly classified project? I have, and the extra security is a nightmare in time and money. The reason a lot of it IS classified is that it is experimental, which means it may NOT work!! As far as LockMart and Bechtel, those guys are not dummies they give generously to BOTH parties. You DO know that cby law there is a cap on Coporate contributions, and the money comes from the EMPLOYEE PACs not the company bank account. I know, I'm been there and had money subtracted (voluntary) to support my Employee PAC. Hey dummy, when your party is in power you get to run the WHOLE GOVERNMENT!!! The Democrats did it for 30 yrs and I don't see you bitching about that. Oversight is still there, or have you forgotten the Scotter Libby case?? No that he did anything wrong but there is an way to investigate, which is oversight. Don't let a few things like FACTS get in the way of a good Bush Bashing. When you are smart enough and have been around a few adminstrations then you'll learn how things really work versus how your liberal PoliSci professors want you to think.
Unless you removed 1000's of lines of code, or fixed many errors the density didn't change. It's errors per 1000's of lines of code. So removing a few dozen or even a hundred or more won't change the math. Overtime the new code is smaller and has less errors which should reduce the value of the metric.
SLOC/day isn't a horrible metric if you tightly specify it to be lines of completed, tested and controlled code per day. While it's not a really good metric either no one has really come up with a better figure to measure "productivity". However, the estimated KSLOC should NEVER be used to estimate the project duration or number of resources needed. Bugs/KSLOC (i.e. error density) is a decent metric for code quality, so knowing the number of lines of code does have some usefulness. Last time I looked about 30-40 solid lines of code per day (using my definition of COMPLETE code) was about average, some good programmers could hit 50. That number is way below MS number, so they must be counting pure lines written even if they later got removed/changed to fix a bug.
You obviously don't understand ZFS at all and certainly you can't instrument the Linux kernal with ZERO overhead like DTrace can with Solaris and applications on Solaris. You going to tell me Linux implements containers? The only other things that come close are VMWare and Xen. Linux is a good OS but it's not got everything. Sometimes I think Solaris might have too much.
ALL of those things you mentioned Linux needed, Solaris already has. If Sun shares those technologies then it's NOT stealing, if they don't want them out there they will keep them out of OpenSolaris (however I've not heard they will do that). No, the reason Linux was opensourced was COLLABORATION (aka the power of the community), more eyes, more minds, better ideas, equals better code. FREEDOM has nothing to do with it. Orginally Linux was only shared with and improved by a few dozens of trusted developers that Linus accepted into the "team".
Very good points. I for one don't want minimally tested extensions to Solaris (or any other O/S) to be on any system that controls my money! I wonder why no one mentions that IBM isn't doing ANYTHING to make AIX open source, nor is HP doing anything with HP-UX. And hell will freeze before MS does anything open-source with Windoze.
Lets see..things Solaris could add to Linux:
1. Containers
2. Zones
3. Awesome fast TCP/IP Stack
4. Dtrace
5. ZFS
Those five alone would be the bump Linux needed to morph into a really solid Enterprise class O/S that is open source.
The parent post says " The more shares Vonage sells for $17, the more money it makes,...". to 90% of the people "money it makes" means profit.
That's stupid. How much shares are sold has NOTHING to do DIRECTLY with the PROFIT of Vonage. The shares are sold to generate operating capital, not for profit. The Market Capitilization of Vonage (# shares outstanding * current price per share) may or may not be important. Sometimes loan convenants are based on debt/equity ratios and the more equity (shares sold) the better D/E ratio and ususally that means a lower the interest rate on the debt (bonds & Short-Term financing). That has an effect on Interest Expense which has an effect on Profit.If they sell shares at 12 or 17 only matters as to whether they can undertake projects using funds from the IPO or if they have to borrow it or use Cash Flow from Operations. If investors see the stock crater to $12 from $17 and think $12 is a good price they'll buy it and the stock goes back up. Until the stock price goes back up Vonage can just sit on the shares they didn't sell at IPO. IF the price goes back to $17 (or maybe more) then they sell them on the open market instead of to the IPO subscribers. If the price jumps then the investors backing out lost money and Vonage gets more capital to work with. However selling at $12 is better than waiting and selling at less if the company doesn't perform.
The Stealth bomber reflects the signals in all sorts of directions so there is a Mimimum radar return, some of those signals would be reflected to continue on to a reciever on the other end as in your example. However the return (on either end) would be weak sort of like a large bird or a SMALL plane. Sorting out whether that was a bird, small plane, a decoy, jamming, or a real B2 before a HARM missle from the B2 or a UAV blows you to bits is the problem. During the Gulf War the Iraqis were afraid to turn on the radar to try to track anything else they get hammered by a HARM. Shooting semi-blindly into the sky with a missle that has it's own tracking has a good a chance as anything else. The damn things ARE invisible, and when they arent (i.e. bomb bay doors are open) its not for very long. Plus they don't even have to get close to the target these days, a JDAM can hit something 40 miles away when dropped from a B2 at altitude. If the B2 absorbed the radar signal then you would get a "hole" in the sky that could be tracked, of course how the B2 would dump the absorbed radar energy without having a big IR signature is an interesting challenge, maybe some sort of super-cooled liquid as a heat sink.
First of all there is a LOT of interest in the platform, and it is being used quite a bit already, but that still only scratches the surface of what COULD be done. BTW, it won't run Blackjack as applications requiring user-interaction are not supported. Of course it could run a Monte-Carlo simulation of say 1M Blackjack games and tell you what your winnings would be :)
Cost? At $1/CPU Hour? How many CPU/hrs do you need? The big drawback is that there are not that many applications out there that are "grid aware" and can utilize all the CPUs. Simulations/modeling are great things to do on a grid but if the application/algorithm won't scale to 100's of CPUs then your problem takes longer to solve. Time is money, the sooner you know the answers the quicker you can get them into production and start making your money back. The applications also must be secure, not rely on 3rd party libraries, etc. The rules are published on Sun's web site page that describes the Grid Service.
You said "MOM reports to our monitoring team any Dell alerts (including ALL hardware problems, and predictive failure notices), * The Dell Remote Access Cards allow us console access to the servers when they aren't otherwise accessible remotely, including the entire POST process. Enterprise customers demanding AMD processors (or otherwise dodging the cost of Intel Dell servers) don't get these features" Thats 100% WRONG. You obviously are a Dell FanBoy as you are blind to the fact that Sun has 4 socket/8 core AMD boxes with those features and HP does as well. If you want to go further, Solaris 10 supports Predictive Self Healing which is the REAL thing much better than MOM. Sun (and HP ) servers have much greated MTBF than Dell equipment. Customers buy Dell because it is CHEAP, when a Xeon server dies they yank it from the rack and install a new one. A new server costs less than the labor to diagnose and fix the broken box.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell It shows the working heat of a methanol fuel cell is 90-120 degrees C. That's HOT..it's going to take some good insulation to not burn someone. Which adds the the cost of the device and may push it too high for most consumers. Also efficiency is low, due to the high permeation of methanol through the membrane, and the dynamic behaviour is sluggish. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-methanol_fuel_ cell
Which shows some of the limitations..what to do with the water produced? State of the art is 100 mW for 10hrs on 1ml 99.5% Methanol. A cell phone can take from 250 mW to 3W of power to transmit, thats continuous power too. So it's 2.5X state of the art methanol fuel cell needed to power cell phones. The fuel cell is 22 x 56 x 4.5 millimeters.
Nice straw-man and changing the subject. You didn't address any of my issues. Yes I know Engineering can overcome a lot of obstacles, but we have been developing Fuel Cells designs have been around since the 1960's and still don't have it right. Lead-acid batteries have been around since the 1800's maybe earlier and it took until the second half of the 1900s to make them really usable and cheap enough for the average Joe. LI batteries have drawbacks as do NiCads but they are proven and we know what NOT to do (fire, overcharging, etc). A fuel cell doesnt have the energy density of current technology and they are just as environmentally messy in thier own way. By the way, Methanol is most commonly made from fossil fuels (i.e. Oil) so thats not a great thing either as thats another thing that will rise in price with oil. Last week your replacement cost $10 this week its $11. I'll give it a few years of R&D but then if there is not a really big breakthru they'll give up on it.
Now you can get brain cancer and methanol poisoning at the same time! :)
Seriously, how do you recharge these things, with a can of pressurized methanol? Talk about a fire hazard! Or maybe the fuel cell is disposable and you just slap in a new one? That's not environmentally friendly. Maybe you send them back to the factory and they can refill them? Will there be a grey market in refills such as with Ink Jet/Laser Toner Cartridges? Will those refills be safe? Can you carry them on an airplane since flammable items like this are not allowed today? What do they do with the excess heat from the fuel cell operation? There are a LOT of questions to be answered both from the technology side and the business logistics side before you are going to see these in production for consumers. Meanwhile traditional battery technology is not standing still, we get more power density than ever now For the military which does not have to follow the same precautions it could be a good thing for field use, but I don't see them being comsumer devices ever.
First of all the NSA is NOT going to use something as simple as a hash to protect information. The NSA has the best encryption algorithms most likely in the world. They wouldn't encrypt each number with the same key either, they would probably use a public-private key pair of at least 128 bits. That key pair is stored very securely somewhere and everything is compartmentalized, the right hand really does NOT know what the left is doing. Secondly, no where does it say the personal information travels thru the system with the number. In fact they wouldn't even need to have it, they could just do a reverse lookup on the decyrpted numbers that are suspicious. It's probably even more complex and convoluted than this, after all it is the NSA which used to be called 'The Puzzle Palace".
If they intended to use chicken/turkey offal they should have partnered with Tyson, which is the biggest poultry produder in the USA. The process works on any kind of remains, so beef or pig plants could be sources of raw material as well. I've been following this idea for several years and I too am bummed it hasn't grown. The light crude could be feedstock for just about anything, it would make great biodiesel of could even by used to make gasoline.
Civics classes are required in High Schools in my state. The public get engaged is a good idea though. But when they get 90% of thier info via the mass media thats not the right kind of "engaged". I strongly dislike PR, it defeats democracy. It's socialism in sheeps clothing. If someone gets 40% of the vote they DIDN'T WIN. Simple as that. They should try harder next time. Sure they are a strong minority and that system has existed in the USA for a long time. ALL elections are local in my opinion, even national ones, as people will vote for the candidate that fits their needs best, and screw what the rest of the country thinks about thier needs!
Americans can travel to Canada, Mexico and the Carribean on our short vacations and many do. The reason we don't travel the rest of the world is two-fold. One is time, and the other is there are so many wonders to see in the USA and so many things to do why go to Europe? We have the World's Best National Parks, great skiing in several places, excellent beaches on two oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, at least three Mountain ranges, cheap (relatively) gas prices, Hollywood, NYC, Boston, etc. as places to go. Many nations in Europe dont have this and they have to visit other countries. Howeever to them that is about as big a deal as someone in the USA visiting another state, and just about as close, and probably less hassles if you take the trains!
We have proportional representation. It's called the House of Representatives which are elected from States based on the populations of each state. If you mean proportional to age, sex, race, interests, that's not going to happen. Why not? Well it would be very hard to allocate the seats fairly (think Gerrymandering but worse) and second there are very strong lobbying organizations for each of these groups now (such as AARP for the retirees) and they don't want to give up broad power over many representatives for only one member.
We call them "TollTags" here. They work great up to about 120MPH then they are useless ;)