To split any kind of water into H2 and O2 actually takes more energy than their recombination (burning H2 to produce H2O) provides. This is the principle of conservation of energy.
This doesn't necessarily make producing hydrogen fuel from water an impractical idea. Batteries, after all, are pretty inefficient, but their usefulness comes from their portability. An example of how this could work: it would be unfeasible to put a nuclear reactor in a tank, or to make electrically powered tanks with lead-acid batteries, but if you've got a ground-based nuclear power station where you can produce the hydrogen fuel, and can then put that fuel in the tanks to be used in a combustion engine, the overall savings in cost vs. drilling, refining, and shipping fossil fuels might justify the drop in efficiency. This is why the early rockets were fueled with liquid hydrogen: sure, they might not make use of every milliwatt coming out of the power plant, but just try moving a rocket with an onboard coal-burning generator.
Gee Harold, you don't need to spend big bucks on a fancy digital music workstation like that. Here, let me make you one... I'll just duct-tape my Fujitsu Stylistic to this old Casio...
<rms>No, no, you're missing the point. It's about free speech, not free beer. Why can't you stupid GNU/Linux people ever understand that? Half the time you don't even put the GNU before Linux. Just you wait, in only ten years HURD will be an almost-usable kernel and you'll see. YOU'LL SEE!!</rms>
So they're backing free software, something laughed at by most corporate bodies up until this time, to beat Bill. Capitalists using communists to fight fascists. Neat!
Free software is communist? Who do you think you are, Laura DiDio?
I trust Oracle about as much as I trust Microsoft.
I trust them even less. Larry Ellison is so desperate to take over Bill Gates' position as Richest Software Mogul he's willing to go to great lengths to out-sleaze him. Plus he was pretty quick to jump on the National ID Card bandwagon a few years back.
Wow, I think that's a record even for slashdot. Three posts in a row that can't get the its--it's distinction down.
<strongbad>Okay, I'm only going to say this once: "If you want it to be possessive, it's just I-T-S, but if you want it to be a contraction it's I-T-apostrophe-S."</strongbad>
First of all, let me say that the daemons in the logo look more to me like the Noid from the Domino's Pizza commercials of the mid-1980s.
Second, these cartoon daemons bear even less resemblance to the Biblical devil than the modern-day Santa Claus image does to St. Nicholas of Myra. Nowhere in the Bible is Satan described as a red, scaly gentleman with horns and a bifurcated tail who carries a hayfork. That image is a product of the Middle Ages. The BSD version is a cariacature at that. There's simply nothing here that should offend anyone's religious sensibilities.
You didn't have to take a pot shot at Neon Genesis Evangelion. I don't think you have the intellectual capacity to understand that anime.
Wow, someone getting self-righteous over his ability to understand a fucking CARTOON for KIDS. Tell me, does your gargantuan brain ever make its way out of Mom's basement?
There are a lot of good things about modernistic thinking, but there are a few that aren't so good, too, like a blind faith in Science with a capital S to tell us absolutely everything about everything.
Thank you for pointing this out. As a graduate student in philosophy with an interest in continental philosophy (including postmodernism), I've had to deal with numerous attacks of the sort used in this article, claiming that postmodern thought is just intellectual posturing with no real content. These criticisms are particularly vehement coming from people in more technically oriented fields, who are often upset because continental philosophy doesn't follow the same Scientific Method they've been spoon-fed since middle school. They then go on to criticize the movement for not adhering to the standards of a world-view which it is trying to move beyond. It's a bit like someone saying Einsteinian physics is nonsense because it can't be reduced to Newton's laws.
Just to maintain my/. credibility I should point out that I have been using Linux since 1993, can code in C and Python, and made A's in physics as an undergrad (calculus-based physics, mind you, not that wimpy Physics for Humanities Majors crap.) Not everybody who reads Baudrillard or Lyotard is technically inept. I just know better than to accept the technological world-view as the be-all and end-all of human knowledge.
People, read dada21's posts and realize you're dealing with a True Believer. He's only going to provide countless conspiracy theories showing that every major war, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, the Dark Ages, and Adam Sandler were all caused by the ever-present scapegoat of Mercantilism. The solution is So Simple: everyone should just switch to Anarchocapitalism. Of course, if anyone points out any flaws or failings of capitalism, he will just claim that that's not really capitalism, but Mercantilism.
Just ignore him and realize that there's little point in debating him, since a) he will never be swayed by arguments, only by growing out of this little phase, and b) his "anarchocapitalist" utopia will never come about, so there's no need to fight it.
Re:Better examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
I agree that the term is inaccurate and should only be applied to inhabitants of the Caucasus region, which is why I was pointing out that the term was inapropriately used in the original post.
No, you called the original poster a "moron" and "stupid" for not including Arabs among Caucasians.
Re:Better examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Arabs and (most) Jews ARE "Caucasians", you moron, as well as Persians, Indians, and Afghans. Perhaps you meant white Europeans? If so, that kind of disproves your point if you are white, since you are so stupid.
Are they really? I'm not sure how you can substantiate the claim that Arabs, Indians, et al. originated from the Caucasus Mountain region. There is evidence that many European Jews are descended from the Khazar tribes of the Caucasus, but the original Israelites/Hebrews were a Semitic people, as are the Arabs.
I'm not sure how you're using the term "Caucasian," but it properly refers only to the inhabitants of the Caucasus region. Its usage to designate a broader racial classification stems from the (thoroughly discredited) racial theories of eighteenth-century German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, though this usage has persisted in the vernacular, particularly in America. Perhaps you who are so smart would like to share with us poor unlearned souls exactly what the necessary and sufficient conditions of being Caucasian are, according to your definition?
I'm afraid what you're talking about has nothing to do with the actual speed of light. Light, whenever it exists, always travels at c. You yourself said that the light is "absorbed and re-emitted." What this means is that the light travels, at c, until it hits a molecule. At this point the photon ceases to exist. It has been converted into a higher energy state in the molecule. Then, when the energy state returns to normal, another photon is emitted which travels at c. The only time in this process you have actual light (as opposed to stored states in atoms) it is moving at c.
To understand why this is not a "slowing down" of light, think of a simple semaphore telegraph. You have a series of watchtowers several miles apart. Messages are passed from one end of the telegraph to the other via Morse code: a person in the first tower relays the message with a flashing light to the next tower, that person retransmits the message to the next tower, etc. Now if this telegraph system stretched across Asia, it would take hours, if not days, for a message to travel from one end to the other. This does not mean, however, that light has slowed down to a snail's pace, even though the light is what has been used to transmit the message. The slowdown comes from the time it takes the code operators to transcribe the message and then re-transmit it -- using different beams of light.
Now, there's not a reputable physicist alive who isn't aware of the fact that light gets absorbed and re-emitted, and doesn't take that into account when considering the Michelson-Morely experiment and others like it. If you want to declare Einstein dead, resurrect the ether theory, and build an antigravity machine in your garage out of old VCR parts, you're going to have to do better than that.
Of course not! The GPL is unconstitutional, un-American communist propaganda which is not legally binding in any civilized country. Besides, we own all the TiVos. It's our intellectual property. They should be paying us. </darl>
A family friend works for the Government in detecting stenographic communications said that any wide spread use of stenography could really hamper the government.
John Ashcroft: Miss, take my dictation. Secretary: MUAHAHAHAHA! (shuts down government)
Steve Jobs, 1984: "A floppy's good enough. Nobody really needs a hard drive."
Steve Jobs, 1998: "A hard drive's good enough. Nobody really needs a floppy drive."
(paraphrased)
Slashdot Mirror
To split any kind of water into H2 and O2 actually takes more energy than their recombination (burning H2 to produce H2O) provides. This is the principle of conservation of energy.
This doesn't necessarily make producing hydrogen fuel from water an impractical idea. Batteries, after all, are pretty inefficient, but their usefulness comes from their portability. An example of how this could work: it would be unfeasible to put a nuclear reactor in a tank, or to make electrically powered tanks with lead-acid batteries, but if you've got a ground-based nuclear power station where you can produce the hydrogen fuel, and can then put that fuel in the tanks to be used in a combustion engine, the overall savings in cost vs. drilling, refining, and shipping fossil fuels might justify the drop in efficiency. This is why the early rockets were fueled with liquid hydrogen: sure, they might not make use of every milliwatt coming out of the power plant, but just try moving a rocket with an onboard coal-burning generator.
I'm just waiting for Pink Floyd to do a Shoutcast of their concerts from a high-altitude inflatable pig.
I'm totally linux-centric (unlike most slashdotters)
I'm rich and white, unlike most Congressmen...
Gee Harold, you don't need to spend big bucks on a fancy digital music workstation like that. Here, let me make you one... I'll just duct-tape my Fujitsu Stylistic to this old Casio...
And maybe Bill will drown in all that free beer!
<rms>No, no, you're missing the point. It's about free speech, not free beer. Why can't you stupid GNU/Linux people ever understand that? Half the time you don't even put the GNU before Linux. Just you wait, in only ten years HURD will be an almost-usable kernel and you'll see. YOU'LL SEE!!</rms>
So they're backing free software, something laughed at by most corporate bodies up until this time, to beat Bill. Capitalists using communists to fight fascists. Neat!
Free software is communist? Who do you think you are, Laura DiDio?
I trust Oracle about as much as I trust Microsoft.
I trust them even less. Larry Ellison is so desperate to take over Bill Gates' position as Richest Software Mogul he's willing to go to great lengths to out-sleaze him. Plus he was pretty quick to jump on the National ID Card bandwagon a few years back.
Wow, I think that's a record even for slashdot. Three posts in a row that can't get the its--it's distinction down.
<strongbad>Okay, I'm only going to say this once: "If you want it to be possessive, it's just I-T-S, but if you want it to be a contraction it's I-T-apostrophe-S."</strongbad>
First of all, let me say that the daemons in the logo look more to me like the Noid from the Domino's Pizza commercials of the mid-1980s.
Second, these cartoon daemons bear even less resemblance to the Biblical devil than the modern-day Santa Claus image does to St. Nicholas of Myra. Nowhere in the Bible is Satan described as a red, scaly gentleman with horns and a bifurcated tail who carries a hayfork. That image is a product of the Middle Ages. The BSD version is a cariacature at that. There's simply nothing here that should offend anyone's religious sensibilities.
Hey, is that really a piece of fairy cake? Man, if I told you how much I needed this, I wouldn't have time to eat it.
The statement can be fixed with a bit of punctuation:
Lindon, Utah-based SCO claims that "parts of Linux were directly copied from Unix, which SCO owns."
That would only be proper if the above were an exact quote, which I doubt.
You didn't have to take a pot shot at Neon Genesis Evangelion. I don't think you have the intellectual capacity to understand that anime.
Wow, someone getting self-righteous over his ability to understand a fucking CARTOON for KIDS. Tell me, does your gargantuan brain ever make its way out of Mom's basement?
" Lindon, Utah-based SCO claims that parts of Linux were directly copied from Unix, which SCO owns."
SCO doesn't own UNIX. They own a tiny branch of the UNIX tree. As I recall, they don't even own the trademark on the name.
For example, I used to run DR-DOS under DOSEMU. But it was owned by Caldera, which is now SCO. Can I run it with a clean conscience?
There are a lot of good things about modernistic thinking, but there are a few that aren't so good, too, like a blind faith in Science with a capital S to tell us absolutely everything about everything.
/. credibility I should point out that I have been using Linux since 1993, can code in C and Python, and made A's in physics as an undergrad (calculus-based physics, mind you, not that wimpy Physics for Humanities Majors crap.) Not everybody who reads Baudrillard or Lyotard is technically inept. I just know better than to accept the technological world-view as the be-all and end-all of human knowledge.
Thank you for pointing this out. As a graduate student in philosophy with an interest in continental philosophy (including postmodernism), I've had to deal with numerous attacks of the sort used in this article, claiming that postmodern thought is just intellectual posturing with no real content. These criticisms are particularly vehement coming from people in more technically oriented fields, who are often upset because continental philosophy doesn't follow the same Scientific Method they've been spoon-fed since middle school. They then go on to criticize the movement for not adhering to the standards of a world-view which it is trying to move beyond. It's a bit like someone saying Einsteinian physics is nonsense because it can't be reduced to Newton's laws.
Just to maintain my
People, read dada21's posts and realize you're dealing with a True Believer. He's only going to provide countless conspiracy theories showing that every major war, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, the Dark Ages, and Adam Sandler were all caused by the ever-present scapegoat of Mercantilism. The solution is So Simple: everyone should just switch to Anarchocapitalism. Of course, if anyone points out any flaws or failings of capitalism, he will just claim that that's not really capitalism, but Mercantilism.
Just ignore him and realize that there's little point in debating him, since a) he will never be swayed by arguments, only by growing out of this little phase, and b) his "anarchocapitalist" utopia will never come about, so there's no need to fight it.
oh, go play with your pigeons.
I agree that the term is inaccurate and should only be applied to inhabitants of the Caucasus region, which is why I was pointing out that the term was inapropriately used in the original post.
No, you called the original poster a "moron" and "stupid" for not including Arabs among Caucasians.
Arabs and (most) Jews ARE "Caucasians", you moron, as well as Persians, Indians, and Afghans. Perhaps you meant white Europeans? If so, that kind of disproves your point if you are white, since you are so stupid.
Are they really? I'm not sure how you can substantiate the claim that Arabs, Indians, et al. originated from the Caucasus Mountain region. There is evidence that many European Jews are descended from the Khazar tribes of the Caucasus, but the original Israelites/Hebrews were a Semitic people, as are the Arabs.
I'm not sure how you're using the term "Caucasian," but it properly refers only to the inhabitants of the Caucasus region. Its usage to designate a broader racial classification stems from the (thoroughly discredited) racial theories of eighteenth-century German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, though this usage has persisted in the vernacular, particularly in America. Perhaps you who are so smart would like to share with us poor unlearned souls exactly what the necessary and sufficient conditions of being Caucasian are, according to your definition?
I'm afraid what you're talking about has nothing to do with the actual speed of light. Light, whenever it exists, always travels at c. You yourself said that the light is "absorbed and re-emitted." What this means is that the light travels, at c, until it hits a molecule. At this point the photon ceases to exist. It has been converted into a higher energy state in the molecule. Then, when the energy state returns to normal, another photon is emitted which travels at c. The only time in this process you have actual light (as opposed to stored states in atoms) it is moving at c.
To understand why this is not a "slowing down" of light, think of a simple semaphore telegraph. You have a series of watchtowers several miles apart. Messages are passed from one end of the telegraph to the other via Morse code: a person in the first tower relays the message with a flashing light to the next tower, that person retransmits the message to the next tower, etc. Now if this telegraph system stretched across Asia, it would take hours, if not days, for a message to travel from one end to the other. This does not mean, however, that light has slowed down to a snail's pace, even though the light is what has been used to transmit the message. The slowdown comes from the time it takes the code operators to transcribe the message and then re-transmit it -- using different beams of light.
Now, there's not a reputable physicist alive who isn't aware of the fact that light gets absorbed and re-emitted, and doesn't take that into account when considering the Michelson-Morely experiment and others like it. If you want to declare Einstein dead, resurrect the ether theory, and build an antigravity machine in your garage out of old VCR parts, you're going to have to do better than that.
Of course not! The GPL is unconstitutional, un-American communist propaganda which is not legally binding in any civilized country. Besides, we own all the TiVos. It's our intellectual property. They should be paying us.
</darl>
A family friend works for the Government in detecting stenographic communications said that any wide spread use of stenography could really hamper the government.
John Ashcroft: Miss, take my dictation.
Secretary: MUAHAHAHAHA! (shuts down government)
perhaps you meant steganography?
Besides, if I remember the legend correctly, the disks were supposed to be moved at the rate of one per year. (They're heavy, ok?)
I thought "information pollution" was what he did to us when he published that dreadful 3001 book.
Steve Jobs, 1984: "A floppy's good enough. Nobody really needs a hard drive."
Steve Jobs, 1998: "A hard drive's good enough. Nobody really needs a floppy drive."
(paraphrased)