It wasn't long ago that I heard a radio spot about the patriot act (funded by the ACLU?). It basically went on to ask would you like to live in a country that allows police to (invade your home, invade your privacy, search and seize, no warrants, etc).
Then it states: "No, you wouldn't want to live in a country like that..."
"But you do."
The first time I heard it, before it mentioned the PA, I thought they were going to say "support country-x" or "support our troops".
When the guy said "But you do.", I couldn't believe it. I then went digging up info on the PA and just about fell over with the provisions in that legislative TP.
The PA needs to be destroyed. And so far I have voted against everyone who passed it. I will vote against the president who endorsed it.
Now I watch congressional proceedings carefully. Not enough people do though. It's sad. But I believe things will get better as the majority of people come on-line. Just have to wait and see.
~X~ "No amount of security in the world is worth a single freedom lost."
Re:Earth simulator (supercompuer)
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Not quite. The computer has massive computational power to be sure, but to accurately model the complexities of the earth would take alot (and I do mean ALOT) more power.
They can make a better approximation. If it were used for weather, it could possibly give us a relatively accurate forecast for a couple of weeks (as opposed to a handful of days).:)
The problem with simulating earth is that there are too many variables, and too much data.:)
Why dunk your box in it, or hermetically seal your box? What's wrong with simply altering heat sink construction to form a passive liquid radiator?
Have each spike be hollow, with connecting tubes between the spikes and a regualr cooling fan. The cpu heats the liquid immediately over it. This would force the liquid up the nearest spikes. The heat would radiate off the spikes and be disperesed by the fan. As the liquid cools, it begins to sink. The rising action from the middle spikes would force the cooled liquid down the "edge" spikes. Thermal convection.:)
The more divisions between the spikes, the better (greater surface area for dissipation). The ideal would be a 3-D cubicle mesh with a fan.
But you wouldn't need Sapphire to do this. Any decent heat transfer liquid would work (as long as it doesn't expand tremendously when heated).
How much would you say it costs for all that? A million? Five million?
According to the accounts of several (you can look them up online) musicians, these companies are DISTRIBUTORS. They don't like to spend any money they don't have to, and often charge the musician(s) with a fair share of the costs.
Now let's compare this to a movie. For a movie you have:
1. Advertising -- Movies spend a hell of a lot more on advertising.
2. Food -- Movies spend a hell of a lot more on food for their crews.
3. Room and Board -- Do I even need to say anything here? Ask the movie boys how much it costs for room and board for Lord Of The Rings.
4. Payola -- Non-existent (at least to my knowledge). Some money saved here.
5. Photographers -- See advertising.
6.Music Video -- See advertising.
7. Producers, Engineers, blah -- No comparison. Movies beat music in this category hands down.
8. Travel expenses -- Again, no contest.
Movies are far more expensive to create than music. And yet, I can still go to a movie for $10 bucks or buy the dvd for $20. And I get even more than the movie on dvd.
Compare this to a $50 nose-bleed stadium seat and a $20 cd.
So why is it that a cd costs as much as a dvd, again?
So let me get this straight. Does this mean if your under the age of 18 and you get caught masturbating, you can be charged with performing a sex act on a child?
I guess that means just about everyone between the ages of 12 and 18 needs to be registered as a sex offender.
Do these people actually think that a nation full of sexually repressed people are GOING TO MAKE THINGS BETTER?????!!!!!??????
Welcome the land of the free and home of the brave. Please pick up your shackles, and cower down in the nearest corner of your own convenience.
~X~ "Who here thinks Canada is starting to look good?"
They couldn't find weapons of mass destruction, so now ther going after the porn of mass-turbation?
Get them out of office. Get them out of the fucking office. Get them out. Get them the fuck out.
Another four years of this, and all of our liberties will be eradicated.
Future News: Our great moral leader Emperor Ashcroft arrived at the site of the morally wrong heathen statue, so called the "Statue of Liberty" to bid good riddance to symbol of lust and villany.
In other news, the evil and twisted terrorist group known as the ACLU was finally destroyed in a joint miltary action. More to follow...
Anyone feel like doing a google blast and see if we can get the phrase "Ashcroft is Obscene!" to be the number one hit for any search on Ashcroft?
Well, theoretically speaking, it could put us on the path to developing hyper-efficient engine technologies.
Manipulating space-time would in fact be a real "warp drive". Especially if we could figure out a way to do it without expending energy from a mass the size of earth.:)
Example: Create local "temporary" black holes to "pinch" space. Traveling 1 meter = 1 light year.
With our current understanding of physics, this would take an enormous amount of energy (and you wouldn't survive the trip anyway). But who knows?
Of course, we could find out that one of the most highly regarded minds in modern physics was full of it.
It's not the destination, it's how you get there.
One ticket for the intergalactic worm-hole...and could you make it a triple loop-the-loop?
A hacker will use the most COMMON (read available)way to break into a system. That common gateway right now happens to be windows.
Before you go off saying how secure your favorite OS is, keep this in mind. No other OS has undergone as much of a beating as Windows. Until linux or whatever has been used and abused by 90% of computer users, it's not really a fair comparison.
I'm not advocating M$. I'm simply stating a fact. You can bet when (and I do mean when) open source goes mainstream, it will have its fair share of issues. Maybe none quite so, how shall I say, obnoxious, but problems all the same.
A car salesman can show me a beatiful car and say that it'll solve all my problems, but I still take it out for a test drive first.
"Then maybe instead of whining and complaining about it, Americans need to be proactive about making employment more competitive. There's no good reason why a company should keep jobs in the US if they can get the same quality of work somewhere else for half the price or less."
Did you read this before you posted it? This is the crux of the problem. It's not that people in foriegn countries are doing a better job, it's that they're doing the same job at significantly less costs.
Why? Because the cost of living is significantly lower in their countries.
So, how the hell does someone in America compete against someone else who's just as competent, but cost 1/2 (or 1/3, or 1/6) less? Do you under bid them?
So if someone in Ugabaga will work for $20000 a year as a high level programmer (because they can live like a king on that salary), does that mean I need to lower my salary expectations to be around $15000 as a high level programmer just to get a job? In the US, you can make more working at McDonalds as a burger flipper.
The problem really isn't moving our jobs over seas. The problem isn't that workers are better in other countries.
The problem is the inequality in cost of living. The playing field is not level to begin with.
So how does this situation get remedied? Do you tell the American programmer that his/her salary will be $20000 and their family has to go on welfare? Do you institute some sort of global equal work = equal pay policy?
From a business standpoint, it's all roses. They get quality product at a fraction of the cost. Why wouldn't they want to do that.
From the employee perspective, it's a battle they can't possibly win.
But let's take your argument at face value. We need to be more competitive. In order to do that, we need to do the jobs better. Typically this means more training/education. That costs money. In fact, it would cost more to "re-educate" an employee than it would to just hire a "more-skilled" worker in country X.
And not only that, it would still cost the company less to find person of the same skill in country X. And even if they couldn't, they could still educate them for far less than it costs in the US.
So how do the whiny American workers compete?
How do any developed nations compete against a work force willing to work for a fraction of the cost and still put out the same quality of work?
They can't. It costs too much to live in the "developed" countries.
At some point, theoretically, the cost of living will all balance out and salaries will eventually be the same no matter where you go. But this could take many...many, many years.
~X~ "You can't kick someone when they're down if you don't have legs."
"Don't forget while you're there to only pay in plain cash. If you use a credit card or a check, then they'll know you were there either."
And now you know why terrorist are often found with big bags o' cash.
Seriously though, does anyone remeber one of the first bin Laden tapes where he says something to the effect that he will take away America's freedoms with terror?
How many couldn't believe that would happen?
Who's the bigger terrorist, the group doing the terrorizing or the group spreading terror about the terrorizing?
How much privacy and how many more freedoms are we willing to sacrifice for our "security"?
It just never ceases to amaze me. All the electronics and monitoring in the world will never stop a dedicated person from sneaking in and causing havoc.
Or perhaps, they are taking the same attitude as the music industry. They want to make it just hard enough to stop MOST people from commiting these atrocities.
*Sheesh*
~X~ "May you live in interesting times. May you have the courage to survive. And may you have the strength to triumph."
I know, I know. Don't feed the troll.
You may think.NET is a failure, but there are a lot of companies who do not think so.
And if it was such a failure, why are the programmers in the open source computing community devoting the time and effort to make a linux version (mono, etc.).
And the same applies to java. "Download my free 175 KB java app" that requires a hefty download from sun. And that's just for one language.
However, I will agree that.NET is a really lame name.
~X
In your example of the hydro-electric dam, you happen to gloss over one fine point: "Water gets energy...". In the dam's case, this would be the sun. They however, have no such source.
I'm not arguing the effects of bouancy. I'm arguing about the way they are getting compressed air "perpetually" to power their ship.
If you listened to their video, the craft starts with an amount of compressed air. This gets used to power/propel the ship. Then what's left of the compressed air is used to compress more air when it reaches altitude and the ship starts to fall, turning turbines that in turn compress more air until the tanks are replenished.
In other words, they are claiming that their ship can somehow get more compressed air than they are expending. Essentially, a pendulum without air resistance.
Now with advanced materials, they could get the amount of loss to a minimum. But it would never be eliminated.
I was merely stating that unless they have another power source, their craft would run out of energy (and probably pretty quickly too,considering that even the best designed craft in the world has a fair amount of drag).
It's simple really. Make an low range EMP pulse device. Disconnected antenna or not, unless those tags are surrounded by a faraday cage an EMP will fry them.
Popular Mechanics had article a while back about how to make a high yield EMP bomb for $400. That article should be pretty interesting for any tin-foil hatters out there who want to burn out all RFID tags within city limits.:P
Thought it was a little disturbing myself.:)
~X Random Quote:"Are you kidding? They really are out to get me?"
My goodness, that video is so verbally twisted virtually anyone not having a clue would buy into it.
Of course that is the intent. Their perpetual motion is a complete farce. If you listen to the explanation (I know, it's ludicrous) they're basically saying you can get more air going down then you can going up.
Some other fallacies is the "lighter than air" effect. If you've ever seen a blimp, then you realize the size this craft would have to be in order to carry even the lightest loads. Helium is only "lighter than air" when it's density is lower. This is the whole "which weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers" argument.
Along those lines, you'd also need to take into account the expansion effect. Let's use weather balloons as an example. The higher they go, the bigger they get. Air pressure drops as you go up, therefore the greater air pressure in the balloon expands it outward. If it didn't, then the balloon would reach an equilibrium and go no higher. This craft would need to also take this into consideration. This could be quite a technical hurdle, gliding an aircraft that is constantly changing dimensions.
Regardless, the craft would at least need to carry some onboard power source.
I take this "article" with a big salt lick.
~X Random Quote:"If it's too good to be true, then somebody is getting rich and it isn't you."
Jesus Saves*!
*Except if your homosexual, jewish, yiddish, black, asian,...
~X
Random Quote: "He's the president. If he doesn't know what's good for you, who does?"
I'm sure a lot of people have read Alan Greenspan's comments about how outsourcing will be good in the long run. Maybe I'm a little thick here, but this doesn't seem logical. Here are the facts as I see them:
1. Companies outsource to increase profitability. 2. Companies choose to layoff a majority of the workers, as re-education costs time and money. 3. The market becomes saturated with unemployed skilled workers, as most companies have outsourced their positions. 4. The unemployed skilled workers can not re-educate themselves, as they have little money to do so (most will try to keep their families fed instead). 5. As more and more jobs are outsourced, unemployment rises. 6. Consumer buying plummets as a result of less people earning money. 7. The US economy grinds to a halt.
This seems pretty obvious. The only way I see massive outsourcing being a benefit in the long term is if the cost of living in these countries rises faster than our economy slows down. Eventually a balance would be achieved, but at cost?
Companies, at least nowadays, really could care less about the workers. It's all about the cash flow. And they will take whatever steps to keep their pockets overflowing with green.
The American worker can not compete with someone who does the same job at a fraction of the cost. Even if the lower cost worker makes an occasional mistake, it is still worth it to the big company.
We need a level playing field. And a lot better referees.
~X Random Quote: "It's easy to find an opening when your opponent is all asshole."
It's pressure+heat+acid that's the problem.
The probes that landed we're destroyed within hours.
You can make a probe resistant to high pressure, but that takes strength of material. This usually means weight.
You can make a probe resistant to heat, but it'll be damn hard to keep it cool for any length of time when the ambient temperature is 500 deg C.
You can make a probe resistant to acid, but the metals used for structural integrity dissolve metals.
Yes, we sent a sub to the deepest depths on earth, but that's nothing compared to trying to have a lander last more than a few hours on Venus.
Maybe when we perfect high strength ceramic composites we can do it. Oh, and the nuclear power plant on board to power the cooling system.
~X
Random Quote: "It's hard to shovel shit when already in over your head."
If someone doesn't know alot about computers, I suppose its possible someone could "wreck" your computer.
But if someone knows the basics (do not run anything that doesn't come from a verified reputable source), then the person(s) can't even touch your computer.
I agree with the general consensus on this board. A large percentage of virus writers just aren't that good. For a while, I studied viruses and there really isn't that much to them. Nor were any particularly well written.
The best viruses are "social". The emails stating some "big virus threat" has emerged and you need to do the following steps (format, fdisk, etc.). Takes minutes to write.
Like everything else, it is ingnorance that is the main problem.
~X Random Quote: "What are ye, stupid!?!?!?! Now I own you boy!
And I have had many more security breaches on Windows (4) than on Linux (0) or FreeBSD (0). And most of my services are on Linux.
This is more of an inevitability than a statement.
Think about it. Do you try to attack an OS that runs on relatively few machines, or do you go after the OS that runs 95% of the market?
Once linux reaches mainstream status, I can guarantee that more exploits will be found, and more systems will be hacked. Anyone who believes otherwise should not be an admin.
It is a simple fact of software. When more people hammer on it, the more bugs will be found.
The winning difference with linux and other OSOS (open source operating systems) is you can fix it, or someone else will fix it without the waiting for a monthly/yearly/never patch.:)
~X
Random Quote: "It functions as coded."
With all this ip protectionism and with the advent of bio-silicon interfaces, I'm just waiting for the time when we get DRM installed in our brains at birth and have to pay royalties everytime we think about a song or algorithm.
On the other hand, with everyone and their sister getting patents, copyrights, etc. I suppose there is no reason to worry about this ever happening. The human population will litigate itself back to the stoneage.
It will all end when one collective claims they have a patent on the life process, and to enforce their rights they plow an asteroid into the planet to defend their ip.
~X
Worthless Quote Of The Moment: "Look on the bright side. You'll die quicker."
Slashdot Mirror
It wasn't long ago that I heard a radio spot about the patriot act (funded by the ACLU?). It basically went on to ask would you like to live in a country that allows police to (invade your home, invade your privacy, search and seize, no warrants, etc).
Then it states: "No, you wouldn't want to live in a country like that..."
"But you do."
The first time I heard it, before it mentioned the PA, I thought they were going to say "support country-x" or "support our troops".
When the guy said "But you do.", I couldn't believe it. I then went digging up info on the PA and just about fell over with the provisions in that legislative TP.
The PA needs to be destroyed. And so far I have voted against everyone who passed it. I will vote against the president who endorsed it.
Now I watch congressional proceedings carefully. Not enough people do though. It's sad. But I believe things will get better as the majority of people come on-line. Just have to wait and see.
~X~
"No amount of security in the world is worth a single freedom lost."
Not quite. The computer has massive computational power to be sure, but to accurately model the complexities of the earth would take alot (and I do mean ALOT) more power.
:)
:)
They can make a better approximation. If it were used for weather, it could possibly give us a relatively accurate forecast for a couple of weeks (as opposed to a handful of days).
The problem with simulating earth is that there are too many variables, and too much data.
~X~
Why dunk your box in it, or hermetically seal your box? What's wrong with simply altering heat sink construction to form a passive liquid radiator?
:)
Have each spike be hollow, with connecting tubes between the spikes and a regualr cooling fan. The cpu heats the liquid immediately over it. This would force the liquid up the nearest spikes. The heat would radiate off the spikes and be disperesed by the fan. As the liquid cools, it begins to sink. The rising action from the middle spikes would force the cooled liquid down the "edge" spikes. Thermal convection.
The more divisions between the spikes, the better (greater surface area for dissipation). The ideal would be a 3-D cubicle mesh with a fan.
But you wouldn't need Sapphire to do this. Any decent heat transfer liquid would work (as long as it doesn't expand tremendously when heated).
~X~
How much would you say it costs for all that?
A million? Five million?
According to the accounts of several (you can look them up online) musicians, these companies are DISTRIBUTORS. They don't like to spend any money they don't have to, and often charge the musician(s) with a fair share of the costs.
Now let's compare this to a movie. For a movie you have:
1. Advertising -- Movies spend a hell of a lot more on advertising.
2. Food -- Movies spend a hell of a lot more on food for their crews.
3. Room and Board -- Do I even need to say anything here? Ask the movie boys how much it costs for room and board for Lord Of The Rings.
4. Payola -- Non-existent (at least to my knowledge). Some money saved here.
5. Photographers -- See advertising.
6.Music Video -- See advertising.
7. Producers, Engineers, blah -- No comparison. Movies beat music in this category hands down.
8. Travel expenses -- Again, no contest.
Movies are far more expensive to create than music. And yet, I can still go to a movie for $10 bucks or buy the dvd for $20. And I get even more than the movie on dvd.
Compare this to a $50 nose-bleed stadium seat and a $20 cd.
So why is it that a cd costs as much as a dvd, again?
~X~
"In a Utopia, only the ignorant are happy."
In Capitalist America, the companies own YOU! ~X~
Is it just me, or would anyone else here pay good money to see this? :)
~X~
So let me get this straight. Does this mean if your under the age of 18 and you get caught masturbating, you can be charged with performing a sex act on a child?
I guess that means just about everyone between the ages of 12 and 18 needs to be registered as a sex offender.
Do these people actually think that a nation full of sexually repressed people are GOING TO MAKE THINGS BETTER?????!!!!!??????
Welcome the land of the free and home of the brave. Please pick up your shackles, and cower down in the nearest corner of your own convenience.
~X~
"Who here thinks Canada is starting to look good?"
They couldn't find weapons of mass destruction, so now ther going after the porn of mass-turbation?
Get them out of office. Get them out of the fucking office. Get them out. Get them the fuck out.
Another four years of this, and all of our liberties will be eradicated.
Future News: Our great moral leader Emperor Ashcroft arrived at the site of the morally wrong heathen statue, so called the "Statue of Liberty" to bid good riddance to symbol of lust and villany.
In other news, the evil and twisted terrorist group known as the ACLU was finally destroyed in a joint miltary action. More to follow...
Anyone feel like doing a google blast and see if we can get the phrase "Ashcroft is Obscene!" to be the number one hit for any search on Ashcroft?
~X~
Well, theoretically speaking, it could put us on the path to developing hyper-efficient engine technologies.
:)
Manipulating space-time would in fact be a real "warp drive". Especially if we could figure out a way to do it without expending energy from a mass the size of earth.
Example: Create local "temporary" black holes to "pinch" space. Traveling 1 meter = 1 light year.
With our current understanding of physics, this would take an enormous amount of energy (and you wouldn't survive the trip anyway). But who knows?
Of course, we could find out that one of the most highly regarded minds in modern physics was full of it.
It's not the destination, it's how you get there.
One ticket for the intergalactic worm-hole...and could you make it a triple loop-the-loop?
~X~
You're argument is invalid as well.
A hacker will use the most COMMON (read available)way to break into a system. That common gateway right now happens to be windows.
Before you go off saying how secure your favorite OS is, keep this in mind. No other OS has undergone as much of a beating as Windows. Until linux or whatever has been used and abused by 90% of computer users, it's not really a fair comparison.
I'm not advocating M$. I'm simply stating a fact. You can bet when (and I do mean when) open source goes mainstream, it will have its fair share of issues. Maybe none quite so, how shall I say, obnoxious, but problems all the same.
A car salesman can show me a beatiful car and say that it'll solve all my problems, but I still take it out for a test drive first.
~X~
"Then maybe instead of whining and complaining about it, Americans need to be proactive about making employment more competitive. There's no good reason why a company should keep jobs in the US if they can get the same quality of work somewhere else for half the price or less."
Did you read this before you posted it? This is the crux of the problem. It's not that people in foriegn countries are doing a better job, it's that they're doing the same job at significantly less costs.
Why? Because the cost of living is significantly lower in their countries.
So, how the hell does someone in America compete against someone else who's just as competent, but cost 1/2 (or 1/3, or 1/6) less? Do you under bid them?
So if someone in Ugabaga will work for $20000 a year as a high level programmer (because they can live like a king on that salary), does that mean I need to lower my salary expectations to be around $15000 as a high level programmer just to get a job? In the US, you can make more working at McDonalds as a burger flipper.
The problem really isn't moving our jobs over seas. The problem isn't that workers are better in other countries.
The problem is the inequality in cost of living. The playing field is not level to begin with.
So how does this situation get remedied? Do you tell the American programmer that his/her salary will be $20000 and their family has to go on welfare? Do you institute some sort of global equal work = equal pay policy?
From a business standpoint, it's all roses. They get quality product at a fraction of the cost. Why wouldn't they want to do that.
From the employee perspective, it's a battle they can't possibly win.
But let's take your argument at face value. We need to be more competitive. In order to do that, we need to do the jobs better. Typically this means more training/education. That costs money. In fact, it would cost more to "re-educate" an employee than it would to just hire a "more-skilled" worker in country X.
And not only that, it would still cost the company less to find person of the same skill in country X. And even if they couldn't, they could still educate them for far less than it costs in the US.
So how do the whiny American workers compete?
How do any developed nations compete against a work force willing to work for a fraction of the cost and still put out the same quality of work?
They can't. It costs too much to live in the "developed" countries.
At some point, theoretically, the cost of living will all balance out and salaries will eventually be the same no matter where you go. But this could take many...many, many years.
~X~ "You can't kick someone when they're down if you don't have legs."
"Don't forget while you're there to only pay in plain cash. If you use a credit card or a check, then they'll know you were there either."
And now you know why terrorist are often found with big bags o' cash.
Seriously though, does anyone remeber one of the first bin Laden tapes where he says something to the effect that he will take away America's freedoms with terror?
How many couldn't believe that would happen?
Who's the bigger terrorist, the group doing the terrorizing or the group spreading terror about the terrorizing?
How much privacy and how many more freedoms are we willing to sacrifice for our "security"?
It just never ceases to amaze me. All the electronics and monitoring in the world will never stop a dedicated person from sneaking in and causing havoc.
Or perhaps, they are taking the same attitude as the music industry. They want to make it just hard enough to stop MOST people from commiting these atrocities.
*Sheesh*
~X~
"May you live in interesting times. May you have the courage to survive. And may you have the strength to triumph."
I know, I know. Don't feed the troll. You may think .NET is a failure, but there are a lot of companies who do not think so.
And if it was such a failure, why are the programmers in the open source computing community devoting the time and effort to make a linux version (mono, etc.).
And the same applies to java. "Download my free 175 KB java app" that requires a hefty download from sun. And that's just for one language.
However, I will agree that .NET is a really lame name.
~X
In your example of the hydro-electric dam, you happen to gloss over one fine point: "Water gets energy...". In the dam's case, this would be the sun. They however, have no such source.
I'm not arguing the effects of bouancy. I'm arguing about the way they are getting compressed air "perpetually" to power their ship.
If you listened to their video, the craft starts with an amount of compressed air. This gets used to power/propel the ship. Then what's left of the compressed air is used to compress more air when it reaches altitude and the ship starts to fall, turning turbines that in turn compress more air until the tanks are replenished.
In other words, they are claiming that their ship can somehow get more compressed air than they are expending. Essentially, a pendulum without air resistance.
Now with advanced materials, they could get the amount of loss to a minimum. But it would never be eliminated.
I was merely stating that unless they have another power source, their craft would run out of energy (and probably pretty quickly too,considering that even the best designed craft in the world has a fair amount of drag).
Sorry if my post was a little unclear.
Say hi to Daryl for me. And since he used to be so much fun on this board, drop a quarter in his cup as you walk on by. :)
~X
Random Quote:"If you bend over in prison you're only asking for trouble."
It's simple really. Make an low range EMP pulse device. Disconnected antenna or not, unless those tags are surrounded by a faraday cage an EMP will fry them.
:P
:)
Popular Mechanics had article a while back about how to make a high yield EMP bomb for $400. That article should be pretty interesting for any tin-foil hatters out there who want to burn out all RFID tags within city limits.
Thought it was a little disturbing myself.
~X
Random Quote:"Are you kidding? They really are out to get me?"
My goodness, that video is so verbally twisted virtually anyone not having a clue would buy into it.
Of course that is the intent. Their perpetual motion is a complete farce. If you listen to the explanation (I know, it's ludicrous) they're basically saying you can get more air going down then you can going up.
Some other fallacies is the "lighter than air" effect. If you've ever seen a blimp, then you realize the size this craft would have to be in order to carry even the lightest loads. Helium is only "lighter than air" when it's density is lower. This is the whole "which weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers" argument.
Along those lines, you'd also need to take into account the expansion effect. Let's use weather balloons as an example. The higher they go, the bigger they get. Air pressure drops as you go up, therefore the greater air pressure in the balloon expands it outward. If it didn't, then the balloon would reach an equilibrium and go no higher. This craft would need to also take this into consideration. This could be quite a technical hurdle, gliding an aircraft that is constantly changing dimensions.
Regardless, the craft would at least need to carry some onboard power source.
I take this "article" with a big salt lick.
~X
Random Quote:"If it's too good to be true, then somebody is getting rich and it isn't you."
Jesus Saves*! *Except if your homosexual, jewish, yiddish, black, asian,... ~X Random Quote: "He's the president. If he doesn't know what's good for you, who does?"
I'm sure a lot of people have read Alan Greenspan's comments about how outsourcing will be good in the long run. Maybe I'm a little thick here, but this doesn't seem logical. Here are the facts as I see them:
1. Companies outsource to increase profitability.
2. Companies choose to layoff a majority of the workers, as re-education costs time and money.
3. The market becomes saturated with unemployed skilled workers, as most companies have outsourced their positions.
4. The unemployed skilled workers can not re-educate themselves, as they have little money to do so (most will try to keep their families fed instead).
5. As more and more jobs are outsourced, unemployment rises.
6. Consumer buying plummets as a result of less people earning money.
7. The US economy grinds to a halt.
This seems pretty obvious. The only way I see massive outsourcing being a benefit in the long term is if the cost of living in these countries rises faster than our economy slows down. Eventually a balance would be achieved, but at cost?
Companies, at least nowadays, really could care less about the workers. It's all about the cash flow. And they will take whatever steps to keep their pockets overflowing with green.
The American worker can not compete with someone who does the same job at a fraction of the cost. Even if the lower cost worker makes an occasional mistake, it is still worth it to the big company.
We need a level playing field. And a lot better referees.
~X
Random Quote: "It's easy to find an opening when your opponent is all asshole."
It's pressure+heat+acid that's the problem. The probes that landed we're destroyed within hours. You can make a probe resistant to high pressure, but that takes strength of material. This usually means weight. You can make a probe resistant to heat, but it'll be damn hard to keep it cool for any length of time when the ambient temperature is 500 deg C. You can make a probe resistant to acid, but the metals used for structural integrity dissolve metals. Yes, we sent a sub to the deepest depths on earth, but that's nothing compared to trying to have a lander last more than a few hours on Venus. Maybe when we perfect high strength ceramic composites we can do it. Oh, and the nuclear power plant on board to power the cooling system. ~X Random Quote: "It's hard to shovel shit when already in over your head."
I would think that the penultimate of irony would be if the judge uses linux. :)
~X
If someone doesn't know alot about computers, I suppose its possible someone could "wreck" your computer.
But if someone knows the basics (do not run anything that doesn't come from a verified reputable source), then the person(s) can't even touch your computer.
I agree with the general consensus on this board. A large percentage of virus writers just aren't that good. For a while, I studied viruses and there really isn't that much to them. Nor were any particularly well written.
The best viruses are "social". The emails stating some "big virus threat" has emerged and you need to do the following steps (format, fdisk, etc.). Takes minutes to write.
Like everything else, it is ingnorance that is the main problem.
~X
Random Quote: "What are ye, stupid!?!?!?! Now I own you boy!
And I have had many more security breaches on Windows (4) than on Linux (0) or FreeBSD (0). And most of my services are on Linux. This is more of an inevitability than a statement. Think about it. Do you try to attack an OS that runs on relatively few machines, or do you go after the OS that runs 95% of the market? Once linux reaches mainstream status, I can guarantee that more exploits will be found, and more systems will be hacked. Anyone who believes otherwise should not be an admin. It is a simple fact of software. When more people hammer on it, the more bugs will be found. The winning difference with linux and other OSOS (open source operating systems) is you can fix it, or someone else will fix it without the waiting for a monthly/yearly/never patch. :)
~X
Random Quote: "It functions as coded."
With all this ip protectionism and with the advent of bio-silicon interfaces, I'm just waiting for the time when we get DRM installed in our brains at birth and have to pay royalties everytime we think about a song or algorithm. On the other hand, with everyone and their sister getting patents, copyrights, etc. I suppose there is no reason to worry about this ever happening. The human population will litigate itself back to the stoneage. It will all end when one collective claims they have a patent on the life process, and to enforce their rights they plow an asteroid into the planet to defend their ip. ~X Worthless Quote Of The Moment: "Look on the bright side. You'll die quicker."
Unless you make a mirror trap out of 100% reflective mirrors, then you're not going to trap light. :)
~X~