I knew someone would say this. So the melting ice argument doesn't hold so we now go for thermal expansion? OK.
To keep things simple. You need to heat water from 0 to 35 degrees Celsius in order to get an expansion of 1% in volume. Water at a balmy temperature of 35 degrees Celcius needs to be heated to 70 degrees to get another 1% expansion ( http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-thermal-pr operties-d_162.html )
So that is a lot of temperature increase. Let's go for a stupid 10 degree global water temperature rise that would represent a water expansion of 0.3%. The average global water depth on earth is 3720 Meters. Let's assume for simplicity sake that all shores in the world are vertical. So water has nowhere to go but up. That would represent an 11 meter rise of sea level. Roughly every degree of water temperature rise causes the sea level to go up 1 meter but...
It takes a hell of a lot of energy and time to cause a global water temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius. This temperature rise should not only occur in the top layers of the water but also at the ocean floors which is in places 16 KM deep. It would take thousands of years of solid solar radiation in order to accumulate enough heat to achieve such a temperature rise.
So, you'd say "Think about the children" yeah and theirs, and theirs and so on. But...
If we observe sea level rises today. What do you think would have caused it? Definitely not melting ice. Absolutely not the minuscule global temperature rises which would take tens of thousands of years to affect all of the water in all oceans. The global thermodynamic machine is a huge slow moving mechanism. It survived millions of years. It had massive meteor impacts and other huge devastating events.
Here is some math again.
A square meter of earth surface retains 5057953.92 joules per year of energy. Approx 43% of the solar energy. A lot is reflected back into space and some energy is used for the water circulation system (Convection).
Anyway, back to our average water depth of 3720 meters. Over an area of 1 square meter that is 3720000 litres of water. Roughly 1 litre is 1 KG. It takes 2108 joules to raise the temperature of 1 litre of water by 1 degree Celsius. So the annual energy provided by the sun of 5057953.92 on a square meter can at best cause a temperature rise of 0.00064 degrees or 0.6 degrees Celsius per 1000 years. It will take 1500 years for the oceans to receive enough energy to cause a thermal expansion of 1 meter in a worst case scenario.
The truth is, this planet is inherently stable. The massive ocean is a huge carbon sponge soaking up more carbon as it gets warmer. Releasing it as it gets colder. It is a stable control system. The tiny ants called humans are totally insignificant to the shear scale of this mechanism and your 10% emission reduction on your hybrid has absolutely no effect whatsoever either way. (And nor does my neighbours 1970's V8 engine)
So and in all your wisdom you feel you are in a position to decide who should believe what?
And if you can't be bothered to refute snake oil then why the hell are you posting in this thread?
Why don't you try to find a shitty little piece of land that lies even lower? Let's say 10cm above sea level. Now we have panic because it will happen in the next 10 years!
People are incredibly stupid and arrogant to think the world will behave according their short term views. Sea levels have been going up and down slightly for millions of years due to all sorts of causes.
For god sake. My country of origin "The Netherlands" IS partly under sea level. Luckily is it filled with people who can think for them selves and who are pragmatic about it. Put up with floods, move away or build a dyke. I hope they don't read slash dot because your well informed warning will cause major panic to break out.
In addition to all this. Try your hand at some basic maths and see if you can calculate how much ice you need to melt to raise the world sea levels by 1 meter. You'd be amazed. Actually, you probably only know how to watch TV so here it is:
Let's work with the following facts and assumptions
The earth radius on the equator is 6378KM Assume the earth to be round 70% of the planet is water 30% is land Assume that the volume of melted ice is the same as that of water Area of the Antarctic is 14.4 million square kilometres
Ok, let's take the assumed sea level radius of 6378 KM and calculate the earth total volume.
Sphere volume : 4/3 r
This gives us a volume of 1.0868e+12 cubic KM
Now let's assume the ocean levels rise by 1 meter. If ice melting were to cause a raise in sea level we will assume we are talking about melting ice above sea level.
The difference in volume represents the volume of ice required. So if we would increase the earth radius by 1 meter we can calculate that the new volume will be 1.0873e+12 cubic KM
1.0873e+1 minus 1.0868e+12 gives us a difference of 500000000 cubic KM or 500 Million Cubic KM. But only the sea level will rise not the the land so since only 70% is sea we only need 350 million Cubic KM of ice to melt for the sea to rise by 1 meter. (I am ignoring the fact that sea percentage has now increased which would require even more ice)
Now lets visualise how much ice we are talking about here. The largest ice mass by far is the Antarctic with a land/ice area of roughly 14.4 Million square KM. If we were to spread our ice over this entire area you get a layer that is 24 KM thick.
Mount Erebus is the highest mountain on the Antarctic and is only 3.794 Km high and most of that is NOT ice.
So how much rise can we expect due to ice melting. Well, the average altitude of the antarctic is said to be 2 KM. If we incorrectly assume that all of that is ice and if all of this ice would melt we would get a sea level rise of a lousy 10 cm if we are lucky. Hardly enough to turn my house into beach front property.
THERE IS NOT ENOUGH ICE ON 10 EARTH PLANETS TO LET THE SEALAVEL RISE BY 1 METER DUE TO ICE MELTING
So can we finally stop the rising sea level argument. Right here?
This is stupid. The german company is called g-mail with a hyphen. So they should use the domain g-mail.de not gmail.de
When did this guy actually register the domain name? Also 4 years ago?
If I were Google I would simply shut down Google.de and the German GMail and give the whole country the big old middle finger. I bet it would only take months for local public pressure to force g-mail to get out of the way of the real Google GMail.
"Giving credibility to stories like this lowers the signal-to-noise ratio."
Agreed. But who decides what is signal and what is noise? Majority? This machine is most likely a stunt or scam. But so is the "Global warming" myth but that doesn't stop articles about it.
Wading through the noise is not pleasant but you get to choose what is noise and what is signal. It is this wading and deciding that truly makes you informed. Not right but informed. The alternative is that a few censors get to rule what is noise or signal. Decisions based on the views of an uninformed majority (The earth is flat) or the views of a few with an agenda. Either way, without noise you never know what the signal is.
Why would you want to remove a story you perceive as untrue? It sounds just as ridiculous as religious folks wanting to remove posts that God doesn't exist. The statement is made and now you either ignore it or deal with it. Don't call for this statement to be denied to others after you received it.
But not surprised. In the last few years Microsoft has increasingly taken a "My way" or the "High way" approach to software development. Like many others I work as a full-time software developer for many years now and these day's building a working solution is the easy part. The hard part is to make sure it runs at a customers site. The very thing Operating systems are supposed to enable.
The hack and slash security patches Microsoft brings out these days often unexpectedly denies features in the API on which solutions are based thus rendering large chunks of our code useless and a workaround must be found.
Security is important in a connected world and indeed not recognised enough my many programmers but the hap hazard ducks and dives in Windows makes it hard to tackle this issue in a structured way. Often I find myself hacking my way around "Security patches" in order to restore functionality in our software.
Add to that this crazy program (I refuse to call it an operating system) called Vista which is is so secure you hardly can run anything on it. I imagine the next version of Windows is 100% secure as it will only run "Notepad" and "Calculator"
So, bottom line. If the Operating System no longer allows us to use the hardware to drive our programs then the OS get's in the way. For me the problem is that I have a huge skill base in Windows and my programming tools that I don't like to give up. But for some of my projects I seriously consider to try my hand at Linux so I can provide a turnkey solution (Include the OS with the software).
MS Windows has become like a government. It is supposed to serve but instead it now insists to rule the IT world.
If advertisers (The suckers who pay Google good money for their word adds) switch on their brain then they will soon realise that their advertising budget needs to be reviewed urgently. At this rate most impressions of Google powered add words only get lost in nowhere land or only serve to create create irritation. I don't even see them anymore. Click - Squatter site - oops - back button - done. I could not possibly tell you if there were adds on that page or what they were.
Once advertisers realise they are being ripped off then this anomaly will automatically stop. After all, the money gained by these domainers comes straight out of the pockets of advertisers. Advertisers should demand from Google to keep their adds impressions well away from domainer sites where they don't do any good anyway. Something that would be very easy for Google to do.
So, I see this as a temporary problem, keep an eye out for the first wholesale domain name lists coming on the market soon.
In contrast to all the negative comments I like to say that it is a great idea. Sound has an immediate and very powerful impact of the viewer. Just try to watch and action movie without sounds and the film will look very dumb. Sound is a far more than just added sound. It can really place you in the area you are viewing.
Imagine looking at mount Everest and hear the wind howling around it's peaks. Or looking at Manhattan New York and hear the hustle and bustle of the city noise grow stronger and more defined as you zoom in. Hear the ocean waves crashing on shore, cranes and trucks at the port, bird and wind sounds over the forests and I can think of thousands other things you can do with sound.
It is a natural step for Google earth and I am actually surprised nobody though of it earlier.
But eh, I am still waiting to see the whole world in proper 10 meter elevation data. It's there so please use it Google.
Dumb ass, why are you living is such a ridiculous large home? Live smaller and you save so much more. Living in a 5000 square foot house with compact florescent bulbs is like driving a hybrid SUV or drinking diet coke. They are all stupid and only done by people who want to buy a conscience that they are doing their part.
I think it is a sign of the times. Technology has developed at a neck breaking pace and now reached a level of maturity while of course a large user base now has grown up with Windows 95 and up. Like everyone else I feel that XP does a pretty good job. Doesn't crash, I know how to work it and doesn't leave me wishing for more.
I think Vista is a scary OS. I hear about DRM limitations but also so called "security" features that will break a lot of applications and generally make life for a software developer hell.
Just Like Microsoft Office, Windows is finished and pretty much complete. In fact I have an old PC for my son that runs nothing else but a Firefox browser and a flash plugin. He can do everything on that that he needs to do so we basically don't care for Vista, glass interfaces (bah you could cut yourself) and so on.
In the gaming arena the same trend is developing, suddenly people go out and buy a Nintendo WII instead of the much more advanced PS3 or XBox360. Why? Because the cheaper box does the job just fine. It is time Microsoft goes out and finds a new market to open up and they are miles behind Google.
Soon I be buying a new PC for one of my projects but I will not accept Vista on it.
I have been hoping, paying...no not praying.....hoping that Google would pickup money management and even accounting, why not tax forms and the like. I have switched over to Google completely. I abandened my spam infested Outlook, no longer use my legal copy of Word and excell and no matter where I go, I always have my entire office with me (If there is Internet that is)
Lol, Don't keep the contact details of your ISP in your GMail address list because you can't call em when there is a connection problem. It really illustrates the point.
I do exactly the same and got it down to a routine. Rent a DVD, Pop it in the DVD player 1, pop in the 30 cent single sided DVD in the DVD writer, run the batch file and walk away. 2 hours later the newly ripped DVD rolls out of the drive minus all the crap which means I can watch my 1 night hire block buster the next day if friends visit unexpectedly.
DVD's are cheap as chips, but I am now looking at building one of those PVR solutions so I don't need those DVD's either.
The music and Movie industry is treating their customers like shit and I get a lot of pleasure out of circumventing their idiot money making schemes. I have even forbidden my 11 year old son to buy CD's and instead come to me if he wants a song. I pick it up with what ever the current download method is. The draconian ways in which the media industry is treating your customers is also rubbing off on their artists. I consider any young band that signs up with a large label as bad and stupid as the record company they go with.
Funny enough I have never spend more money on music than this year. All the old bands start feeling the squeeze in their multi million mansions and start touring again. Look, that I can respect. We have gone out and seen a lot of the touring bands this year and enjoyed them a lot. Once home got straight into torrent and downloaded some more of their music. That is the way it works. (poor old record company that never did anything anyway is now left out in the cold)
Never, ever, ever buy third party libraries without source. Without source you no longer own the solution you create. I have seen it happen many times before and these days I put a lot of pressure of the library vendor with the hard rule, "No source no Sale". Many of these third party library providers have gone out of business or shifted focus to other products. Without source I would be in trouble.
Never, ever, ever buy any software at all that licenses against a specific set of hardware.
Lately I more often contemplating switching OS to get away from the worst black box of all... "Windows" With Vista and the brain dead security rules introduced it becomes impossible to write software.
With so many powerful web based applications I find that even old W2000 boxes function just as well and the new PC's. All you need is Firefox and a decent Flash player and you can do pretty much anything. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have made sure people that the majority of people leave the gaming for the consoles (Yes I know real hardcore gamers prefer a PC but that is a minority)
So, to be honest, I can not thing of a single application that screams for Vista. Sometimes software is feature complete. Microsoft achieved that with office years ago. (I think office 97 was their feature complete release anything released after that is just cream and crap).
So, I think Windows is also feature complete. Buggy? Yes. Insecure? Yeah it can use improvement. Did it get improvement? YES every week! So there is nothing wrong with XP and unless some killer application that I really want requires me to upgrade I would quite happily keep using XP for the next 10 years. I know it's quirks, I know how to do stuff and that is further than I got with previous versions.
So, yeah Microsoft does have a problem. Now it is up to us to make sure they don't make it our problem which we can do by insisting on buying XP on our new PC's.
Cool project. It reminds me of another hobbyist that beat Epson (http://www.epson.co.jp/e/newsroom/news_2003_11_18 _2.htm ) to the smallest helicopter http://pixelito.reference.be/
Not more than two years ago we had announcements every week about new breakthrough technology. It seemed then as if the LCD and Plasma were history. Then suddenly it got all quiet. Marketing of LCD and Plasma screens ramped up, peaked and now even end up in the bargain bin.
It makes sense that manufacturers want to recover cost before they go out and kill their own market but I am convinced that cheap technologies to do wall sized screens at 1080p resolutions and more have been lying on the shelf for quite a while now.
Just like in this article they say that a 17" screen was available in 2002. So hum ho they printed a 20.5" screen. Whoopee, screen size is not the issue like it is with LCD. With OLED screens but stability of the screens organic matter is an issue over time. So this tells me that they can print screens much larger but they are still holding on the brake. Watch my words, at regular intervals those screens get bigger.
If you want to buy a large display today, especially a 1080p one then I suggest you be brave, take the ridicule of your neighbour about your small one a little longer and buy in a year or two. LCD will be dirt cheap while great OLED screens with movie screen contrast ratios will be available too.
Screens with a high dynamic range can produce pitch black blacks and very bright whites. The effect of these screens needs to be seen to be believed but with LCD screens we have not even started to scratch the surface of what is possible with display technology.
Sorry, I reply again because I want to be heard. Of course a flying powerstation with generators on board and a power cable running down at 10 km length is impossible. Way too heavy but there is no reason why the enegry can not be transferred mechanically via the very tether that holds the power station in place.
Birth control well said. We first need to shoot every economist who still says that no growth is bad and then every idiot who calls me a Luddite. Reducing the population of worlds worst pest will do wonders to our world problems. (No I won't leave first but I do only have one child.)
Secondly taking energy out of the antmosphere is a great thing. The global warming (I there is such a thing because New Zealand has been cooling 0.9 degrees centigrade over the last decade)puts energy into the atmosphere and windmills take it out again. Hey it's energy recycling!
I'd be surprised if pilots are allowed to fly aircraft themselves in a decade from now. So avoiding a few lousy powerstations won't be a problem.
Icing? No problem. The cables are made of aluminium and as such not a great conductor. To keep the weight down these cables need to be thin hence they probably are going to be hot or at least warm anyway.
Weight? Yeah to total killer of this concept. There is no hope in hell they can build cables light enough to transfer energy to the ground while keeping the kite tethered. However, I can think of a variation of this idea. They could use the tether as a method to transmit rotational energy to the ground. A ground based pulley system and a 20 km long loop of fancy nanotube super light cable running as a chain between the airborne windmill and the ground. The generator remains firmly on the ground. This reduces the weight of the airborne system a lot while the power station can now stay aloft at very low wind speeds. Ow, bugger it. I made a picture. Here have a look,
I don't even think such a power station would need to be in the jetstream to function thanks to it's much lower weight. Of course if the cable breaks then you are uh... well actually no. The return cable can be just slightly longer. Breakage of the cable can be detected by a sudden reduction of tension on the drums and the return cable can immediately be locked in place while electronics adjust the rotors to reduce the tension to a minimum.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew someone would say this. So the melting ice argument doesn't hold so we now go for thermal expansion? OK. To keep things simple. You need to heat water from 0 to 35 degrees Celsius in order to get an expansion of 1% in volume. Water at a balmy temperature of 35 degrees Celcius needs to be heated to 70 degrees to get another 1% expansion ( http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-thermal-pr operties-d_162.html )
So that is a lot of temperature increase. Let's go for a stupid 10 degree global water temperature rise that would represent a water expansion of 0.3%. The average global water depth on earth is 3720 Meters. Let's assume for simplicity sake that all shores in the world are vertical. So water has nowhere to go but up. That would represent an 11 meter rise of sea level. Roughly every degree of water temperature rise causes the sea level to go up 1 meter but...
It takes a hell of a lot of energy and time to cause a global water temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius. This temperature rise should not only occur in the top layers of the water but also at the ocean floors which is in places 16 KM deep. It would take thousands of years of solid solar radiation in order to accumulate enough heat to achieve such a temperature rise.
So, you'd say "Think about the children" yeah and theirs, and theirs and so on. But...
If we observe sea level rises today. What do you think would have caused it? Definitely not melting ice. Absolutely not the minuscule global temperature rises which would take tens of thousands of years to affect all of the water in all oceans. The global thermodynamic machine is a huge slow moving mechanism. It survived millions of years. It had massive meteor impacts and other huge devastating events.
Here is some math again.
A square meter of earth surface retains 5057953.92 joules per year of energy. Approx 43% of the solar energy. A lot is reflected back into space and some energy is used for the water circulation system (Convection).
Anyway, back to our average water depth of 3720 meters. Over an area of 1 square meter that is 3720000 litres of water. Roughly 1 litre is 1 KG. It takes 2108 joules to raise the temperature of 1 litre of water by 1 degree Celsius. So the annual energy provided by the sun of 5057953.92 on a square meter can at best cause a temperature rise of 0.00064 degrees or 0.6 degrees Celsius per 1000 years. It will take 1500 years for the oceans to receive enough energy to cause a thermal expansion of 1 meter in a worst case scenario.
The truth is, this planet is inherently stable. The massive ocean is a huge carbon sponge soaking up more carbon as it gets warmer. Releasing it as it gets colder. It is a stable control system. The tiny ants called humans are totally insignificant to the shear scale of this mechanism and your 10% emission reduction on your hybrid has absolutely no effect whatsoever either way. (And nor does my neighbours 1970's V8 engine)
So and in all your wisdom you feel you are in a position to decide who should believe what? And if you can't be bothered to refute snake oil then why the hell are you posting in this thread?
Why don't you try to find a shitty little piece of land that lies even lower? Let's say 10cm above sea level. Now we have panic because it will happen in the next 10 years!
People are incredibly stupid and arrogant to think the world will behave according their short term views. Sea levels have been going up and down slightly for millions of years due to all sorts of causes.
For god sake. My country of origin "The Netherlands" IS partly under sea level. Luckily is it filled with people who can think for them selves and who are pragmatic about it. Put up with floods, move away or build a dyke. I hope they don't read slash dot because your well informed warning will cause major panic to break out.
In addition to all this. Try your hand at some basic maths and see if you can calculate how much ice you need to melt to raise the world sea levels by 1 meter. You'd be amazed. Actually, you probably only know how to watch TV so here it is:
Let's work with the following facts and assumptions
The earth radius on the equator is 6378KM
Assume the earth to be round
70% of the planet is water 30% is land
Assume that the volume of melted ice is the same as that of water
Area of the Antarctic is 14.4 million square kilometres
Ok, let's take the assumed sea level radius of 6378 KM
and calculate the earth total volume.
Sphere volume : 4/3 r
This gives us a volume of 1.0868e+12 cubic KM
Now let's assume the ocean levels rise by 1 meter. If ice melting were to cause a raise in sea level we will assume we are talking about melting ice above sea level.
The difference in volume represents the volume of ice required. So if we would increase the earth radius by 1 meter we can calculate that the new volume will be 1.0873e+12 cubic KM
1.0873e+1 minus 1.0868e+12 gives us a difference of 500000000 cubic KM or 500 Million Cubic KM. But only the sea level will rise not the the land so since only 70% is sea we only need
350 million Cubic KM of ice to melt for the sea to rise by 1 meter. (I am ignoring the fact that sea percentage has now increased which would require even more ice)
Now lets visualise how much ice we are talking about here. The largest ice mass by far is the Antarctic with a land/ice area of roughly 14.4 Million square KM. If we were to spread
our ice over this entire area you get a layer that is 24 KM thick.
Mount Erebus is the highest mountain on the Antarctic and is only 3.794 Km high and most of that is NOT ice.
So how much rise can we expect due to ice melting. Well, the average altitude of the antarctic is said to be 2 KM. If we incorrectly assume that all of that is ice and if all of this ice would melt we would get a sea level rise of a lousy 10 cm if we are lucky. Hardly enough
to turn my house into beach front property.
THERE IS NOT ENOUGH ICE ON 10 EARTH PLANETS TO LET THE SEALAVEL RISE BY 1 METER DUE TO ICE MELTING
So can we finally stop the rising sea level argument. Right here?
This is stupid. The german company is called g-mail with a hyphen. So they should use the domain g-mail.de not gmail.de
When did this guy actually register the domain name? Also 4 years ago?
If I were Google I would simply shut down Google.de and the German GMail and give the whole country the big old middle finger. I bet it would only take months for local public pressure to force g-mail to get out of the way of the real Google GMail.
"Giving credibility to stories like this lowers the signal-to-noise ratio."
Agreed. But who decides what is signal and what is noise? Majority? This machine is most likely a stunt or scam. But so is the "Global warming" myth but that doesn't stop articles about it.
Wading through the noise is not pleasant but you get to choose what is noise and what is signal. It is this wading and deciding that truly makes you informed. Not right but informed. The alternative is that a few censors get to rule what is noise or signal. Decisions based on the views of an uninformed majority (The earth is flat) or the views of a few with an agenda. Either way, without noise you never know what the signal is.
Why would you want to remove a story you perceive as untrue? It sounds just as ridiculous as religious folks wanting to remove posts that God doesn't exist. The statement is made and now you either ignore it or deal with it. Don't call for this statement to be denied to others after you received it.
Their story appears consistent when you check their web-site over time. See the web archive http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.steorn.net
"Whirling Twirling Propeller sTrike"
But not surprised. In the last few years Microsoft has increasingly taken a "My way" or the "High way" approach to software development. Like many others I work as a full-time software developer for many years now and these day's building a working solution is the easy part. The hard part is to make sure it runs at a customers site. The very thing Operating systems are supposed to enable.
The hack and slash security patches Microsoft brings out these days often unexpectedly denies features in the API on which solutions are based thus rendering large chunks of our code useless and a workaround must be found.
Security is important in a connected world and indeed not recognised enough my many programmers but the hap hazard ducks and dives in Windows makes it hard to tackle this issue in a structured way. Often I find myself hacking my way around "Security patches" in order to restore functionality in our software.
Add to that this crazy program (I refuse to call it an operating system) called Vista which is is so secure you hardly can run anything on it. I imagine the next version of Windows is 100% secure as it will only run "Notepad" and "Calculator"
So, bottom line. If the Operating System no longer allows us to use the hardware to drive our programs then the OS get's in the way. For me the problem is that I have a huge skill base in Windows and my programming tools that I don't like to give up. But for some of my projects I seriously consider to try my hand at Linux so I can provide a turnkey solution (Include the OS with the software).
MS Windows has become like a government. It is supposed to serve but instead it now insists to rule the IT world.
If advertisers (The suckers who pay Google good money for their word adds) switch on their brain then they will soon realise that their advertising budget needs to be reviewed urgently. At this rate most impressions of Google powered add words only get lost in nowhere land or only serve to create create irritation. I don't even see them anymore. Click - Squatter site - oops - back button - done. I could not possibly tell you if there were adds on that page or what they were.
Once advertisers realise they are being ripped off then this anomaly will automatically stop. After all, the money gained by these domainers comes straight out of the pockets of advertisers. Advertisers should demand from Google to keep their adds impressions well away from domainer sites where they don't do any good anyway. Something that would be very easy for Google to do.
So, I see this as a temporary problem, keep an eye out for the first wholesale domain name lists coming on the market soon.
Ha ha ha ha, best post I have read in a long time. Very funny. Cheers.
I can just hear this as a rap beat
In contrast to all the negative comments I like to say that it is a great idea. Sound has an immediate and very powerful impact of the viewer. Just try to watch and action movie without sounds and the film will look very dumb. Sound is a far more than just added sound. It can really place you in the area you are viewing.
Imagine looking at mount Everest and hear the wind howling around it's peaks. Or looking at Manhattan New York and hear the hustle and bustle of the city noise grow stronger and more defined as you zoom in. Hear the ocean waves crashing on shore, cranes and trucks at the port, bird and wind sounds over the forests and I can think of thousands other things you can do with sound.
It is a natural step for Google earth and I am actually surprised nobody though of it earlier.
But eh, I am still waiting to see the whole world in proper 10 meter elevation data. It's there so please use it Google.
Great Idea!
Novell, mmmm I am sure I have heard of that name before. Novell, wasn't that an old gift store franchise? No...ummmm
I give up, it must be insignificant.
Dumb ass, why are you living is such a ridiculous large home? Live smaller and you save so much more. Living in a 5000 square foot house with compact florescent bulbs is like driving a hybrid SUV or drinking diet coke. They are all stupid and only done by people who want to buy a conscience that they are doing their part.
I think it is a sign of the times. Technology has developed at a neck breaking pace and now reached a level of maturity while of course a large user base now has grown up with Windows 95 and up. Like everyone else I feel that XP does a pretty good job. Doesn't crash, I know how to work it and doesn't leave me wishing for more.
I think Vista is a scary OS. I hear about DRM limitations but also so called "security" features that will break a lot of applications and generally make life for a software developer hell.
Just Like Microsoft Office, Windows is finished and pretty much complete. In fact I have an old PC for my son that runs nothing else but a Firefox browser and a flash plugin. He can do everything on that that he needs to do so we basically don't care for Vista, glass interfaces (bah you could cut yourself) and so on.
In the gaming arena the same trend is developing, suddenly people go out and buy a Nintendo WII instead of the much more advanced PS3 or XBox360. Why? Because the cheaper box does the job just fine. It is time Microsoft goes out and finds a new market to open up and they are miles behind Google.
Soon I be buying a new PC for one of my projects but I will not accept Vista on it.
"Ok, boys you know what to do. Explore the weaknesses look around and give a thumbs up. Come election time we go for gold"
Oh yeah, hear hear. Good one.
I have been hoping, paying...no not praying.....hoping that Google would pickup money management and even accounting, why not tax forms and the like. I have switched over to Google completely. I abandened my spam infested Outlook, no longer use my legal copy of Word and excell and no matter where I go, I always have my entire office with me (If there is Internet that is)
Lol, Don't keep the contact details of your ISP in your GMail address list because you can't call em when there is a connection problem. It really illustrates the point.
Check their web-site...
w ww.tonicsystems.com/
http://www.tonicsystems.com/ won't give you much but the web archive does:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060820002948/http://
PDF seems one of the things they do.
Good on you mate,
I do exactly the same and got it down to a routine. Rent a DVD, Pop it in the DVD player 1, pop in the 30 cent single sided DVD in the DVD writer, run the batch file and walk away. 2 hours later the newly ripped DVD rolls out of the drive minus all the crap which means I can watch my 1 night hire block buster the next day if friends visit unexpectedly.
DVD's are cheap as chips, but I am now looking at building one of those PVR solutions so I don't need those DVD's either.
The music and Movie industry is treating their customers like shit and I get a lot of pleasure out of circumventing their idiot money making schemes. I have even forbidden my 11 year old son to buy CD's and instead come to me if he wants a song. I pick it up with what ever the current download method is. The draconian ways in which the media industry is treating your customers is also rubbing off on their artists. I consider any young band that signs up with a large label as bad and stupid as the record company they go with.
Funny enough I have never spend more money on music than this year. All the old bands start feeling the squeeze in their multi million mansions and start touring again. Look, that I can respect. We have gone out and seen a lot of the touring bands this year and enjoyed them a lot. Once home got straight into torrent and downloaded some more of their music. That is the way it works. (poor old record company that never did anything anyway is now left out in the cold)
So the lesson is:
Never, ever, ever buy third party libraries without source. Without source you no longer own the solution you create. I have seen it happen many times before and these days I put a lot of pressure of the library vendor with the hard rule, "No source no Sale". Many of these third party library providers have gone out of business or shifted focus to other products. Without source I would be in trouble.
Never, ever, ever buy any software at all that licenses against a specific set of hardware.
Lately I more often contemplating switching OS to get away from the worst black box of all... "Windows" With Vista and the brain dead security rules introduced it becomes impossible to write software.
With so many powerful web based applications I find that even old W2000 boxes function just as well and the new PC's. All you need is Firefox and a decent Flash player and you can do pretty much anything. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have made sure people that the majority of people leave the gaming for the consoles (Yes I know real hardcore gamers prefer a PC but that is a minority)
So, to be honest, I can not thing of a single application that screams for Vista. Sometimes software is feature complete. Microsoft achieved that with office years ago. (I think office 97 was their feature complete release anything released after that is just cream and crap).
So, I think Windows is also feature complete. Buggy? Yes. Insecure? Yeah it can use improvement. Did it get improvement? YES every week! So there is nothing wrong with XP and unless some killer application that I really want requires me to upgrade I would quite happily keep using XP for the next 10 years. I know it's quirks, I know how to do stuff and that is further than I got with previous versions.
So, yeah Microsoft does have a problem. Now it is up to us to make sure they don't make it our problem which we can do by insisting on buying XP on our new PC's.
Cool project. It reminds me of another hobbyist that beat Epson (http://www.epson.co.jp/e/newsroom/news_2003_11_18 _2.htm ) to the smallest helicopter http://pixelito.reference.be/
Not more than two years ago we had announcements every week about new breakthrough technology. It seemed then as if the LCD and Plasma were history. Then suddenly it got all quiet. Marketing of LCD and Plasma screens ramped up, peaked and now even end up in the bargain bin.
It makes sense that manufacturers want to recover cost before they go out and kill their own market but I am convinced that cheap technologies to do wall sized screens at 1080p resolutions and more have been lying on the shelf for quite a while now.
Just like in this article they say that a 17" screen was available in 2002. So hum ho they printed a 20.5" screen. Whoopee, screen size is not the issue like it is with LCD. With OLED screens but stability of the screens organic matter is an issue over time. So this tells me that they can print screens much larger but they are still holding on the brake. Watch my words, at regular intervals those screens get bigger.
If you want to buy a large display today, especially a 1080p one then I suggest you be brave, take the ridicule of your neighbour about your small one a little longer and buy in a year or two. LCD will be dirt cheap while great OLED screens with movie screen contrast ratios will be available too.
Screens with a high dynamic range can produce pitch black blacks and very bright whites. The effect of these screens needs to be seen to be believed but with LCD screens we have not even started to scratch the surface of what is possible with display technology.
Sorry, I reply again because I want to be heard. Of course a flying powerstation with generators on board and a power cable running down at 10 km length is impossible. Way too heavy but there is no reason why the enegry can not be transferred mechanically via the very tether that holds the power station in place.
I have made a little diagram and description here: http://vandinther.googlepages.com/home
What do you think, can it be done?
Birth control well said. We first need to shoot every economist who still says that no growth is bad and then every idiot who calls me a Luddite. Reducing the population of worlds worst pest will do wonders to our world problems. (No I won't leave first but I do only have one child.)
Secondly taking energy out of the antmosphere is a great thing. The global warming (I there is such a thing because New Zealand has been cooling 0.9 degrees centigrade over the last decade)puts energy into the atmosphere and windmills take it out again. Hey it's energy recycling!
I'd be surprised if pilots are allowed to fly aircraft themselves in a decade from now. So avoiding a few lousy powerstations won't be a problem.
Icing? No problem. The cables are made of aluminium and as such not a great conductor. To keep the weight down these cables need to be thin hence they probably are going to be hot or at least warm anyway.
Weight? Yeah to total killer of this concept. There is no hope in hell they can build cables light enough to transfer energy to the ground while keeping the kite tethered. However, I can think of a variation of this idea. They could use the tether as a method to transmit rotational energy to the ground. A ground based pulley system and a 20 km long loop of fancy nanotube super light cable running as a chain between the airborne windmill and the ground. The generator remains firmly on the ground. This reduces the weight of the airborne system a lot while the power station can now stay aloft at very low wind speeds. Ow, bugger it. I made a picture. Here have a look,
http://vandinther.googlepages.com/home
I don't even think such a power station would need to be in the jetstream to function thanks to it's much lower weight. Of course if the cable breaks then you are uh... well actually no. The return cable can be just slightly longer. Breakage of the cable can be detected by a sudden reduction of tension on the drums and the return cable can immediately be locked in place while electronics adjust the rotors to reduce the tension to a minimum.