While electric cars just seem to move the 'pollution' and greenhouse gases from the automobile to the power plant, you over look the matter of scale. A single well maintained large power plant can be more efficient than thousands of smaller internal combustion engines in various stages of poor adjustment. It's easier to control pollution at a single point then at thousands of points.
The video wasn't too clear on just HOW the car runs on hydrogen, but it looks like there is a fuel cell that converts the H2 into electrical power to run the RC cars' electric motors. I suppose they could have converted a 4 cycle gasoline RC engine to run on H2 (normal RC engines using glow plugs run on Alcohol on a semi diesel principle).
Well if you are into things that go boom fill a hard glass container (a beer or soda bottle with a screw top is good) with sugar and then add battery acid. You might not even have to put the screw top on as the resulting reaction produces gas and black sugar ash which will clog the bottle and let the pressure build up until it reaches the bursting point of the the bottle. Not a safe idea as this will throw acid and bits of glass over a sizable area. The acid/sugar reaction is a popular science experiment producing long black snakes, but this is usually done in a large container with no obstructions. The beer bottle 'bomb' was discovered when a dumb friend of mine used the wrong container by mistake. Dumb ass had to clean up his bedroom after the thing exploded.
The problem is that most of the stable orbits for a planet in a binary system result in very hot temperatures for part of it's orbit and freezing for the rest of the orbit. 1: planet orbits one of the two suns and is between two suns for part of orbit. 2: planet orbits both suns in a highly elliptical orbit taking it in and out of the 'goldilocks' zone where liquid water can exisit. 3: planet orbits both suns in a figure 8 orbit with similar results to #2
If BOTH suns are small and close together the planet could orbit both at a 'just right' distance to allow liquid water, but might be too close to the suns and be rotation locked with days and nights 1/2 a year long (like our moon).
1: PRICE. When the price of a new release on BD is the same as for DVD I'll byte. 2: Compatibility: When I can put a BD drive in my Linux box and play a BD disk I'll byte. 3: Players: There is a good assortment of BD players out there now and if OPPO digital comes out with a lower cost universal machine that will play everything my OPPO DVD machine does + BD I'll byte. My OPPO DVD machine up converts very well to HD, no complaints watching on my 50" LCD TV. 4: Public Library: Right now I can borrow new releases from my Public library on DVD. I might have to wait a few months if I don't put it on hold just before the release since the library system only gets just so many copies. The library doesn't (yet) get any BD disks (because of reason #1) so I can only borrow DVD's.
I would have thought that if DVD machines were no longer being made and you could only buy a BD player (which plays DVD disks just fine) and the prices on BD disks fell to DVD levels eventually the production of new DVD titles would end and the public would be gently nudged to BD. While BD may not offer a great increase in PQ over DVD (after upconversion it ends up being a 720 vs 1080 issue, not much difference), for some movies the difference is worth it.
I've had both good and bad luck with BOTH Seagate and WD. I am currently using a Seagate Momentus in thinkpad and it works fine (except for the fact that the thinkpad bios checks for an IBM watermark and won't directly boot anything BUT a drive with IBM firmware, there is a work around for this that involves two keystrokes during powerup but that's another story). I had a WD go bad on me (it failed gradually enough to give me time to save my data) and I had a Seagate 3.5" model fail due to a firmware bug. Seagate did repair this on their nickel.
There are many subjects of study that can help a child's mind develop. Chess would help develop problem solving and creative thinking. Learning to play a musical instrument (especially Piano), and listening to classical music seems to have a profound effect as well. Physical education is important as well (just look at how many kids in the US are over weight!). I hope the Armenians see beyond the glitter of the 'prizes' and are serious of the student's development and setup a well rounded school program. I wish we would do this in the US.
The reactors at Fukushima Daiichi that failed were designed in the 1970's. Newer designs using current technology are designed with a more 'fail safe' type of cooling and probably would NOT have suffered the cooling failure under the same conditions. Nuclear power plants designed TODAY are much safer than the ones put in service before Three Mile Island. The problem is that the older plants that are subject to the failure modes we have seen are NOT going to be replaced until they either DO fail, or are past their extended life spans. The industrial nations will probably use Fukushima Daiichi as a reason to rally against nuclear power and ignore all the progress made over the years since TMI to improve the safety and reliability of this important power source. We need to be better informed.
The laws of physics shows that high speed travel demands a large energy budget. Atmospheric drag and the law of gravity can't be overcome. So forget civilian supersonic air travel, we can't afford it. While it's science fiction now, mag-lev trains traveling though a partial vacuum tunnel could give us supersonic travel between major cities.
I don't WANT to own every book, CD, or DVD in the world, but I'd sure like to be able to access them all (well maybe not ALL, but I'll pick and choose LATER). I would consider the cloud to be a library (perhaps a library for hire, at least for some of the titles). I do own my favorite books, CD's and DVD's and you can try to pry them from my cold dead hands (and NOT till then!), and I also borrow books, CD's and DVD's from the public library. I can see extending this to some provider in the cloud as well. But I'll still want physical copies of some things......
It should be possible to get to Mars and back, however it won't be cheap. It would probably take the equivalent of as many Saturn V rockets as were ever launched to put enough material into Mars obit for ONE mission. This would include leaving in orbit the return rocket, and sending to the surface a return to obit craft (empty and landed by remote control or by computer). Then sending down the crew on a landing only craft and yet other landing craft with supplies. The crew wouldn't be able to take much back in samples, just dust perhaps. What would be sent back would be digitized data and photos.
Mars is the only planet in our solar system that we COULD visit. There are also the asteroids and here at least the gravity well is shallow enough that a return trip is on par with the visit to the moon. The author of the article is correct in the degree of difficulty of a Mars trip compared to going to the moon. I can't imagine it being worth while to send astronauts to explore Mars because we have done very well using robots. But impossible? No, just very expensive, risky, and not worth the price considering what other exploration could be done with the money.
I didn't realize that Apple was still selling Apple I's after they introduced the Apple II. I thought they has sold out the entire first (and ONLY) run of Apple 1 boards before the II was introduced. What the story didn't mention was the fact that Apple ALSO sold the Apple II as just a bare board sans case, just like the Apple I. They didn't offer this option very long, but I do remember it being available. Perhaps they thought that Apple I owners who had built the I into a custom case would want to upgrade? I think the two boards were about the same size, but the II had to be mounted with the short dimension front to back (if you wanted the expansion slots in back).
Stan Veit operated a NYC computer shop (in the back of a toy store) and carried the Apple I. I remember seeing it AND the Apple II when they first came out. I worked at a rival computer store, but we didn't carry Apple or Altair. The place I worked at had SWTP, Processor Technology, and Imsai computers.
Which is EXACTLY what I did when an ebay seller screwed me. I sic'ed AMEX on PAYPAL and EBAY. I got my money back. I don't know what ebay did, and I don't care.
In his TV show Cosmos, Carl Sagan showed how Japanese fishermen would throw crabs that had bumps on their shells that looked a bit like Samori back into the sea. He that because of this many more of those crabs would survive to reproduce (since they were not eaten by the Japanese) and they passed the genes onto their offspring that produced the bumps on their shells. Eventually the crabs shells started looking more and more like the face of a Samori as the fishermen would throw back the crabs that looked the most like a Samori face. This selective breeding did not take very long either. Evolution follows the same process as selective breeding, the only difference is that the former takes place over a longer period of time and is not directed by man. Consider the dog. Over thousands of years we have created hundreds of new breeds of dogs in a process not unlike evolution. The dog is also proof of evolution.
There are two quotes about the universe that come to mind:
1: "The universe is not only stranger than we think, it is stranger than we CAN think".
2: "There is a theory that if mankind ever completely figures out how the universe works it will be instantly replaced by something even stranger. There is a second theory that this has already happened".
The networks now offer some of their programming via streaming. If you want to see anything 'first run' you still have to watch it live over the air or on cable (and suffer though all the commercials). The streaming versions usually go on line a few days to a week after the live broadcast and have limited commercials (so an hour show can be viewed in about 50 minutes).
The best interface would probably be a GUI on top of a CLI interface. There are programs that implement this. EagleCad for example has a command line box in the GUI where you can type in any command. The GUI itself only injects commands into the CLI when you click on the various widgets. The user can drive the program from either input, and sometimes the CLI box gets the job done where the GUI grabs the wrong object.
"There are more 18th century Stradivarius violins in existence that pre-war TVs " I think THAT is telling. Were there ANY television broadcasts in the US in 1936? I think there were some experimental stations in NYC, and maybe in LA but other than that.....
It isn't how the bomb is constructed that is the hard part. 'Little boy' was very simple, but very crude. Most of the Uranium in the bomb was wasted because critical mass was not maintained long enough to consume most of the material. The yield of Little boy was only 9-10 kilotons, compared to 12-15 kilotons for 'Fat Man'. The hard part was the processing of the nuclear material to get enough of the high grade stuff concentrated enough to reach critical mass. That's the part you can't do in your garage. If you can steal enough material that will assemble to reach critical mass the rest is easy. During the war we were able to process enough Uranium for but a single bomb, and enough Plutonium for perhaps four. There was a third core available to drop on a third city in Japan if necessary and a forth was a few months away. (The first core was the Trinity test bomb, the second over Nagasaki).
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While electric cars just seem to move the 'pollution' and greenhouse gases from the automobile to the power plant, you over look the matter of scale. A single well maintained large power plant can be more efficient than thousands of smaller internal combustion engines in various stages of poor adjustment. It's easier to control pollution at a single point then at thousands of points.
The video wasn't too clear on just HOW the car runs on hydrogen, but it looks like there is a fuel cell that converts the H2 into electrical power to run the RC cars' electric motors. I suppose they could have converted a 4 cycle gasoline RC engine to run on H2 (normal RC engines using glow plugs run on Alcohol on a semi diesel principle).
Well if you are into things that go boom fill a hard glass container (a beer or soda bottle with a screw top is good) with sugar and then add battery acid. You might not even have to put the screw top on as the resulting reaction produces gas and black sugar ash which will clog the bottle and let the pressure build up until it reaches the bursting point of the the bottle. Not a safe idea as this will throw acid and bits of glass over a sizable area. The acid/sugar reaction is a popular science experiment producing long black snakes, but this is usually done in a large container with no obstructions. The beer bottle 'bomb' was discovered when a dumb friend of mine used the wrong container by mistake. Dumb ass had to clean up his bedroom after the thing exploded.
The problem is that most of the stable orbits for a planet in a binary system result in very hot temperatures for part of it's orbit and freezing for the rest of the orbit.
1: planet orbits one of the two suns and is between two suns for part of orbit.
2: planet orbits both suns in a highly elliptical orbit taking it in and out of the 'goldilocks' zone where liquid water can exisit.
3: planet orbits both suns in a figure 8 orbit with similar results to #2
If BOTH suns are small and close together the planet could orbit both at a 'just right' distance to allow liquid water, but might be too close to the suns and be rotation locked with days and nights 1/2 a year long (like our moon).
1: PRICE. When the price of a new release on BD is the same as for DVD I'll byte.
2: Compatibility: When I can put a BD drive in my Linux box and play a BD disk I'll byte.
3: Players: There is a good assortment of BD players out there now and if OPPO digital comes out with a lower cost universal machine that will play everything my OPPO DVD machine does + BD I'll byte. My OPPO DVD machine up converts very well to HD, no complaints watching on my 50" LCD TV.
4: Public Library: Right now I can borrow new releases from my Public library on DVD. I might have to wait a few months if I don't put it on hold just before the release since the library system only gets just so many copies. The library doesn't (yet) get any BD disks (because of reason #1) so I can only borrow DVD's.
I would have thought that if DVD machines were no longer being made and you could only buy a BD player (which plays DVD disks just fine) and the prices on BD disks fell to DVD levels eventually the production of new DVD titles would end and the public would be gently nudged to BD. While BD may not offer a great increase in PQ over DVD (after upconversion it ends up being a 720 vs 1080 issue, not much difference), for some movies the difference is worth it.
I've had both good and bad luck with BOTH Seagate and WD. I am currently using a Seagate Momentus in thinkpad and it works fine (except for the fact that the thinkpad bios checks for an IBM watermark and won't directly boot anything BUT a drive with IBM firmware, there is a work around for this that involves two keystrokes during powerup but that's another story). I had a WD go bad on me (it failed gradually enough to give me time to save my data) and I had a Seagate 3.5" model fail due to a firmware bug. Seagate did repair this on their nickel.
There are many subjects of study that can help a child's mind develop. Chess would help develop problem solving and creative thinking. Learning to play a musical instrument (especially Piano), and listening to classical music seems to have a profound effect as well. Physical education is important as well (just look at how many kids in the US are over weight!). I hope the Armenians see beyond the glitter of the 'prizes' and are serious of the student's development and setup a well rounded school program. I wish we would do this in the US.
The reactors at Fukushima Daiichi that failed were designed in the 1970's. Newer designs using current technology are designed with a more 'fail safe' type of cooling and probably would NOT have suffered the cooling failure under the same conditions. Nuclear power plants designed TODAY are much safer than the ones put in service before Three Mile Island. The problem is that the older plants that are subject to the failure modes we have seen are NOT going to be replaced until they either DO fail, or are past their extended life spans. The industrial nations will probably use Fukushima Daiichi as a reason to rally against nuclear power and ignore all the progress made over the years since TMI to improve the safety and reliability of this important power source. We need to be better informed.
The laws of physics shows that high speed travel demands a large energy budget. Atmospheric drag and the law of gravity can't be overcome. So forget civilian supersonic air travel, we can't afford it. While it's science fiction now, mag-lev trains traveling though a partial vacuum tunnel could give us supersonic travel between major cities.
The Myth Busters did this. I forget how many times they folded a piece of paper, but they used a steam roller for the final fold.
I don't WANT to own every book, CD, or DVD in the world, but I'd sure like to be able to access them all (well maybe not ALL, but I'll pick and choose LATER). I would consider the cloud to be a library (perhaps a library for hire, at least for some of the titles). I do own my favorite books, CD's and DVD's and you can try to pry them from my cold dead hands (and NOT till then!), and I also borrow books, CD's and DVD's from the public library. I can see extending this to some provider in the cloud as well. But I'll still want physical copies of some things......
It should be possible to get to Mars and back, however it won't be cheap. It would probably take the equivalent of as many Saturn V rockets as were ever launched to put enough material into Mars obit for ONE mission. This would include leaving in orbit the return rocket, and sending to the surface a return to obit craft (empty and landed by remote control or by computer). Then sending down the crew on a landing only craft and yet other landing craft with supplies. The crew wouldn't be able to take much back in samples, just dust perhaps. What would be sent back would be digitized data and photos.
Mars is the only planet in our solar system that we COULD visit. There are also the asteroids and here at least the gravity well is shallow enough that a return trip is on par with the visit to the moon. The author of the article is correct in the degree of difficulty of a Mars trip compared to going to the moon. I can't imagine it being worth while to send astronauts to explore Mars because we have done very well using robots. But impossible? No, just very expensive, risky, and not worth the price considering what other exploration could be done with the money.
I didn't realize that Apple was still selling Apple I's after they introduced the Apple II. I thought they has sold out the entire first (and ONLY) run of Apple 1 boards before the II was introduced. What the story didn't mention was the fact that Apple ALSO sold the Apple II as just a bare board sans case, just like the Apple I. They didn't offer this option very long, but I do remember it being available. Perhaps they thought that Apple I owners who had built the I into a custom case would want to upgrade? I think the two boards were about the same size, but the II had to be mounted with the short dimension front to back (if you wanted the expansion slots in back).
Stan Veit operated a NYC computer shop (in the back of a toy store) and carried the Apple I. I remember seeing it AND the Apple II when they first came out. I worked at a rival computer store, but we didn't carry Apple or Altair. The place I worked at had SWTP, Processor Technology, and Imsai computers.
Which is EXACTLY what I did when an ebay seller screwed me. I sic'ed AMEX on PAYPAL and EBAY. I got my money back.
I don't know what ebay did, and I don't care.
In his TV show Cosmos, Carl Sagan showed how Japanese fishermen would throw crabs that had bumps on their shells that looked a bit like Samori back into the sea. He that because of this many more of those crabs would survive to reproduce (since they were not eaten by the Japanese) and they passed the genes onto their offspring that produced the bumps on their shells. Eventually the crabs shells started looking more and more like the face of a Samori as the fishermen would throw back the crabs that looked the most like a Samori face. This selective breeding did not take very long either.
Evolution follows the same process as selective breeding, the only difference is that the former takes place over a longer period of time and is not directed by man. Consider the dog. Over thousands of years we have created hundreds of new breeds of dogs in a process not unlike evolution. The dog is also proof of evolution.
Click on the underlined "20th anniversary of the first release of the Linux kernel " and you go nowhere.
There are two quotes about the universe that come to mind:
1: "The universe is not only stranger than we think, it is stranger than we CAN think".
2: "There is a theory that if mankind ever completely figures out how the universe works it will be instantly replaced by something even stranger. There is a second theory that this has already happened".
The networks now offer some of their programming via streaming. If you want to see anything 'first run' you still have to watch it live over the air or on cable (and suffer though all the commercials). The streaming versions usually go on line a few days to a week after the live broadcast and have limited commercials (so an hour show can be viewed in about 50 minutes).
The best interface would probably be a GUI on top of a CLI interface. There are programs that implement this. EagleCad for example has a command line box in the GUI where you can type in any command. The GUI itself only injects commands into the CLI when you click on the various widgets. The user can drive the program from either input, and sometimes the CLI box gets the job done where the GUI grabs the wrong object.
How about the Tesla roadster vs Stanley Steamer?
"There are more 18th century Stradivarius violins in existence that pre-war TVs "
I think THAT is telling. Were there ANY television broadcasts in the US in 1936? I think there were some experimental stations in NYC, and maybe in LA but other than that.....
This actually could be a real product, it IS technically possible. But who would want to pay extra to sit though a 3D movie to watch it in 2D?
It isn't how the bomb is constructed that is the hard part. 'Little boy' was very simple, but very crude. Most of the Uranium in the bomb was wasted because critical mass was not maintained long enough to consume most of the material. The yield of Little boy was only 9-10 kilotons, compared to 12-15 kilotons for 'Fat Man'. The hard part was the processing of the nuclear material to get enough of the high grade stuff concentrated enough to reach critical mass. That's the part you can't do in your garage. If you can steal enough material that will assemble to reach critical mass the rest is easy. During the war we were able to process enough Uranium for but a single bomb, and enough Plutonium for perhaps four. There was a third core available to drop on a third city in Japan if necessary and a forth was a few months away. (The first core was the Trinity test bomb, the second over Nagasaki).
Osmau Tezuka would be rolling over in his grave if he heard this.....
While you used Einstein as the 'icon' for this article, Tesla would have been more on target here.