We don't need anything near 1% of the energy we receive from the sun to cover the energy needs of the world. Besides, the environmental impact due to the redistribution of energy is negligable, painting your house white instead of, say, brown would have a much larger impact.
I've read the wikipedia article, but I must admit that I've never heard of metastable metallic hydrogen before. It seems unlikely that it could exist, and if it does, it would probably not be stable enough. Anyway, you could be confusing this with metal hydrides, a very interesting field of research. Certain metals are capable of "trapping" hydrogen inside the crystal lattice. This packs the the hydrogen atoms even tighter than in liquid hydrogen. The problem right now is extracting the hydrogen from the metal in an efficient and safe way. If I recall correctly, getting hydrogen inside the metal is easy, just put it in a hydrogen-filled box at standard temperature and pressure and the metal will absorb most of the hydrogen all by itself!
Thers's a hidden premise in the original posting (which wasn't mine, by the way, how about YOUR reading comprehension? Sorry, couldn't resist...) that super volcanoes erupt very rarely. Thus, for virtually any given year, human production of CO2 dwarfs the volcaones'. Now, IF one of the really big ones erupt, it may contribute more CO2 than the human production for a short period of time, but in such an event some increased global warming would be the least of out worries. Averaged over a fairly long time frame, humans produce more anyway.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you here. I'm just pointing out a critical flaw in your reasoning. You say the assertion that volcanoes put out more CO2 than mankind is false, then you say that mankind puts out more CO2 than all volcanoes except the super-large ones.
Do you see any erupting super volcanoes? Perhaps not?
For that matter, unless we're using it in space, I hope they don't get cold fusion.
To quote Don Lancaster (www.tinaja.com), if anyone finds a free energy source and manufactures it without also providing a free energy sink, they'll be the worst criminal in human history. Oh, and our planet will glow like a star too.
I think the proper solution to our energy problems needs to be wind and wave. Those take care of the energy source/sink problem. Sorry, just my two cents.
Our sink is already space. The heat will just radiate out of the atmosphere like it does from nuclear power plants today. Local temperatures will rise slightly, but that's not any worse than the redistribution of heat that e.g. a hydro-electric power plant generates. Don't worry, the earth will not glow like a star.
In the 1400s any reasonably educated man knew the earth was round. That includes the others monarchs Columbus contacted. Columbus was ridiculed because an earth with a circumference of 40000 km and Asia stretching a maximum of 10000 km to the east would mean certain death from starvation and lack of drinking water somewhere in a very big ocean. Fortunately for Columbus, he hit the Americas before running out of food.
Not so strange, and not necessarily negative. We use expressions like the "Iraq War" and the "Vietnam War", but we don't usually talk about the "Swiss Peace" or the "Norwegian Peace". Peace is considered the natural state, thus we do not need to name it that often, it's presumed.
..., and I hear World Wildlife Fund doesn't even use that name that much anymore.
Yes and no. In the US and Canada they're known as World Wildlife Fund, but in the rest of the world they've used the name "World Wide Fund for Nature" since 1986. The abbreviation and short name is WWF everywhere anyway and it's a registered trademark. It's still makes (some) sense as an abbreviation for "World Wide Fund for nature".
Look here for source. www.wwf.org is also in use, but is a fairly empty portal.
I think we have a much saner view of "IP" on our side of the pond (Norway). The Norwegian term for IP is "immaterielle rettighter" which could be translated to "immaterial rights" in English.
These rights are definently not considered property, they given by the state because it is thought beneficial to the society. It's not something you own. There are restrictions on what can be done with these rights that couldn't exist for property. For instance, it's legal to sell the publishing rights of a "work", but you can't sell the "ideal rights" which includes the right to be identified as the creator.
This argument has a serious flaw. Most subjects are not a collection of mere facts. Solving a problem requires the ability to take portions of known results and put them together in the right way. If you have to look up every single fact and formula, you will never have the overview that is necessary to find the answer.
We could take languages as an example: Is it possible to claim to know a foreign language just because you know of several good and reliable dictionaries and grammars on the Internet? Or look at physics and mathematics, there are lots of books which contains loads of formulas, but they are useless unless you understand what they really say. Details, like the sixth, seveneth decimal of pi can be looked up (I do that myself), but if you have to go to the Internet to estimate the circumference of a wheel knowing the radius, you will be highly inefficient. Besides, you need to know that you should actually look for pi.
I know from personal experience (and loads of other sources) that Dagbladet is the least reliable of the national newspapers. (Søndag, søndag is more or less a porn magazine.) It has no problems printing more or less whatever, and if it makes a mistake, you can just forget having a correction printed.
I suppose the "worst competitor" is VG, since they are the largest newspaper in Norway and are in the exact same market segment. VG is a lot better, they are actually willing to correct their mistakes.
One thing I can admit though, when I wrote "of the worst sort", I was comparing to Norwegian standards. I know there are papers in UK and USA that make even Dagbladet look like the truth of God. Dagbladet and VG is still less reliable sources than papers like Stavanger Aftenblad and Aftenposten.
This aritcle is from a source that is far more reliable than Dagbladet, which is a tabloid newspaper of the worst sort. It's in Norwegian and says much the same as the Dagbladet article, but adds some paragraphs at the end (in bold) that are quite interesting. Translation follows:
[Digi.no is interviewing Håkon Wium Lie from Opera]
Digi.no reverses the question and asks whether Opera and Microsoft have had any contact on the coding of MSN. This ordinary question should give Lie no reason to be silent, but he refuses to answer.
He only says cryptically: "Microsoft has fixed a lot, but there are still some versions of Opera that won't work".
When digi.no asks "Can we expect that this is solved in the near future?", Lie says that he "unfortunately cannot comment on this."
The basic science of missiles is understood - the science of the X-Prize is on developing a re-usable vehicle that can make multiple trips within a couple of weeks. I'm not an expert, but I'd be surprised if X-Prize technology ends up getting used in ICBM's.
The reuse of ICBM's could enable us to wage global nuclear war in a more environmental friendly and economical way. Oh, wait...
There's a big difference here. While only the virus writers are looking through the leaked Windows source, OSS is under heavy scrutiny from many parties. Most people who find a potential exploit in OSS will report it to someone who can write a patch, or they will do it themselves. Just look at MS' attempts to stop the distribution of the source, how many able programmers with good intentions will take the risk to read it?
Of course there are flaws in OSS too, but there's a much greater chance the good guys will find them first.
The world's first OO-language was Simula, written by the Norwegians Kristen Nygaard and Ole Johan Dahl. Stroustrup acknowledges the influence of Simula in his book, but I don't think the language was well known outside the University of Oslo, where it was used in the first programming courses until 1999 when it was replaced by Java.
So the two people really missing are Nygaard an Dahl.
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We don't need anything near 1% of the energy we receive from the sun to cover the energy needs of the world. Besides, the environmental impact due to the redistribution of energy is negligable, painting your house white instead of, say, brown would have a much larger impact.
I've read the wikipedia article, but I must admit that I've never heard of metastable metallic hydrogen before. It seems unlikely that it could exist, and if it does, it would probably not be stable enough. Anyway, you could be confusing this with metal hydrides, a very interesting field of research. Certain metals are capable of "trapping" hydrogen inside the crystal lattice. This packs the the hydrogen atoms even tighter than in liquid hydrogen. The problem right now is extracting the hydrogen from the metal in an efficient and safe way. If I recall correctly, getting hydrogen inside the metal is easy, just put it in a hydrogen-filled box at standard temperature and pressure and the metal will absorb most of the hydrogen all by itself!
Thers's a hidden premise in the original posting (which wasn't mine, by the way, how about YOUR reading comprehension? Sorry, couldn't resist...) that super volcanoes erupt very rarely. Thus, for virtually any given year, human production of CO2 dwarfs the volcaones'. Now, IF one of the really big ones erupt, it may contribute more CO2 than the human production for a short period of time, but in such an event some increased global warming would be the least of out worries. Averaged over a fairly long time frame, humans produce more anyway.
Do you see any erupting super volcanoes? Perhaps not?
Fortunately for us, they erupt very rarely. Wikipedia is your friend.
In the 1400s any reasonably educated man knew the earth was round. That includes the others monarchs Columbus contacted. Columbus was ridiculed because an earth with a circumference of 40000 km and Asia stretching a maximum of 10000 km to the east would mean certain death from starvation and lack of drinking water somewhere in a very big ocean. Fortunately for Columbus, he hit the Americas before running out of food.
Not so strange, and not necessarily negative. We use expressions like the "Iraq War" and the "Vietnam War", but we don't usually talk about the "Swiss Peace" or the "Norwegian Peace". Peace is considered the natural state, thus we do not need to name it that often, it's presumed.
Try Enemy Territory while you wait, certainly better than Tux Racer.
Yes and no. In the US and Canada they're known as World Wildlife Fund, but in the rest of the world they've used the name "World Wide Fund for Nature" since 1986. The abbreviation and short name is WWF everywhere anyway and it's a registered trademark. It's still makes (some) sense as an abbreviation for "World Wide Fund for nature".
Look here for source. www.wwf.org is also in use, but is a fairly empty portal.
These rights are definently not considered property, they given by the state because it is thought beneficial to the society. It's not something you own. There are restrictions on what can be done with these rights that couldn't exist for property. For instance, it's legal to sell the publishing rights of a "work", but you can't sell the "ideal rights" which includes the right to be identified as the creator.
I think this is rather common in Europe.
We could take languages as an example: Is it possible to claim to know a foreign language just because you know of several good and reliable dictionaries and grammars on the Internet? Or look at physics and mathematics, there are lots of books which contains loads of formulas, but they are useless unless you understand what they really say. Details, like the sixth, seveneth decimal of pi can be looked up (I do that myself), but if you have to go to the Internet to estimate the circumference of a wheel knowing the radius, you will be highly inefficient. Besides, you need to know that you should actually look for pi.
I suppose the "worst competitor" is VG, since they are the largest newspaper in Norway and are in the exact same market segment. VG is a lot better, they are actually willing to correct their mistakes.
One thing I can admit though, when I wrote "of the worst sort", I was comparing to Norwegian standards. I know there are papers in UK and USA that make even Dagbladet look like the truth of God. Dagbladet and VG is still less reliable sources than papers like Stavanger Aftenblad and Aftenposten.
[Digi.no is interviewing Håkon Wium Lie from Opera]
Digi.no reverses the question and asks whether Opera and Microsoft have had any contact on the coding of MSN. This ordinary question should give Lie no reason to be silent, but he refuses to answer.
He only says cryptically: "Microsoft has fixed a lot, but there are still some versions of Opera that won't work".
When digi.no asks "Can we expect that this is solved in the near future?", Lie says that he "unfortunately cannot comment on this."
The reuse of ICBM's could enable us to wage global nuclear war in a more environmental friendly and economical way. Oh, wait...
Of course there are flaws in OSS too, but there's a much greater chance the good guys will find them first.
The world's first OO-language was Simula, written by the Norwegians Kristen Nygaard and Ole Johan Dahl. Stroustrup acknowledges the influence of Simula in his book, but I don't think the language was well known outside the University of Oslo, where it was used in the first programming courses until 1999 when it was replaced by Java.
So the two people really missing are Nygaard an Dahl.
Yes, and in the spirit of I-know-better-than-you WinXP just picks one of the matches when there are several possibilities.
Way better than old DOS, but still not perfect. Amazing that MS needed 20 years to discover that idea and then implement it badly.