It's impossible to make a language foolproof because fools are so ingenious at being foolish. Making a language more foolproof only encourages bigger fools to use it (or be hired to use it).
Makes some sense, I suppose, but what solution is there? Make all languages potentially non-secure so that companies are scared into hiring the best programmers they can afford? Unlikely, and this wouldn't improve the overall situation.
More interesting to me is the Vote by Income chart. Check out how Bush support ramps up with income and Kerry support ramps down. If America were a poorer nation, Kerry would be elected for sure.
Don't do this. Catalytic propane space heaters are meant to be used in open, well-ventilated areas, like outdoors. Used in enclosed spaces, a dangerous level of CO2 can build, which can be potentially lethal. This is especially dangerous in an outage situation, where you're likely to huddle in a smaller, well insulated room and close the doors.
Your best bet for an emergency heat source is a fireplace. Wood is good, but propane is simpler to operate, easier to install, and lower maintenace. It's safer than a space heater because it vents exhaust gases outside and the tank (usually larger than 20lb) is stored outside your home. Some models have a fan to use convective heating, making them more efficient. This fan is usually small and lower power, suitable for a reasonably sized UPS.
It may cost a little more, but you also gain the aesthetic benefits of having a fireplace to use anytime, whereas the space heater is often an ugly looking contraption.
Slashdot readers today mourn the death of their longest standing member, Anonymous Coward. Loved ones say he was driven to suicide by repeated +1 Informative moderation. Cause of death was self-inflicted registration. His fortune of karma, mostly gained from posting the full text of articles from slashdotted servers, is held up in court as no legal will was on record.
...without Ultramon . It's a great Windows utility that allows scripted secondary monitor switching and disabling, extended taskbar and lots of other functionality that you would expect with dual-monitors.
Please note that I am not affiliated in any way with Ultramon, other than as a pleased user.
China has usually been cultured but not powerful. Chinese history is a long sequence of conquests by powerful outsiders (Manchurians, Mongols, Europeans.)
It is interesting to note that none of the conquests stuck for more than a generation because of their powerful culture. China changes her invaders more than her invaders change her.
Weightwise, I would say the electric option will be lighter, because you no longer need the electrolysis plant, the internal combustion engine, the hydrogen storage tank or the water storage tank.
Efficiency is crucial in a solar system because you're starting with very little energy to work with. The electric motor's greater effiency, plus the ability to harvest braking energy with regenerative braking, means you get more miles per hour of sunlight, even if the admittedly-heavy battery outweighs the more complex hydrogen setup.
Look at the solar racers that engineering faculties race down in Australia, not one uses a hydrogen energy storage system because the engineers have done the math, and it just isn't useful to throw so much of you hard earned energy out the window with a combustion process.
Google is clearly aiming to be the information center for the connected/wired world
How long until we all complain about Google's monopoly of the Internet?
I like Google, but it's now a publicly held company, meaning it's responsibilities are now to the shareholders. I fear that Google will be taken over by suits who want to use all of Google's information and influence for insidious purposes. It may be only a matter of time before the corporate culture changes from "Do no evil" to "Do what's profitable and hide it if it's evil."
Rubbish. Sure the hydrogen may be an efficient way to store the power, but how are you going to extract it? With a ~25% efficient internal combustion engine? You simply don't have that much energy to waste. Store it in a battery and use ~90% efficient electric motors to drive the wheels. Hell, I bet it will even weigh less than the electrolyser, IC engine, hydrogen tank and water tank that it replaces. Less pollution, too, because you won't be creating NOx from the high compression engine.
The only way for hydrogen propulsion to work is to generate it somewhere else, where you can get some economy of scale and have as much panel area as you want. This vehicle is an interesting science experiment in the "I wonder if I can..." spirit, but it will never be practical for daily use.
>...make them non-transferable; a company that's gone bankrupt anyway doesn't need protection, and with acquisitions it's easy to keep the old comapny alive to retain the patent right.
This seems like a bad idea to me. If a lone inventor invents something useful, the only way he can profit from it is to produce it and sell it, an endeavor that the inventor may not be well suited to. His/her talents are more likely to lie in the creative process than the managerial and production oriented fields, the inventor is better off selling or licensing his/her patent to a company with production infrastructure already in place.
Besides, this policy is easily circumvented by companies, but not individuals. A company can just create a new sub-company to hold the patent and sell that company to the highest bidder. An individual can't create a sub-individual, thou I guess they could create a holding company to own the patent.
It just seems that such a rule would favor the big guy and punish the little guy, one thing that patent laws should do the opposite of.
I would agree that many fields are difficult for amateurs to enter, but I don't think any are impossible.
Take your example, a cyclotron. Cyclotrons are built by men who are paid. If those same men build a cyclotron for no pay, they're amateurs. Sure, you need tools and resources, but that is merely a matter of financial resources. You buy or have made the parts that you cannot. The guy building a radio at home doesn't build the resistors, wire, etc, he buys/steals/receives a donation of them.
Amateurs can do or build anything if they have sufficient resources. Some things just cost more.
>...you buy components and assemble them yourself - this is beyond many users who do want to run Linux.
Honestly, how many people fall into this category? Most Linux users I know can assemble PCs in their sleep.
Personally, I can assemble a PC with the best of them, but so far Linux is beyond me. I have to use it at school for some of my CS courses, and I find it hopelessly obtuse, even with KDE to hide the console. I feel like an idiot using it, like everyone gets it but me. The help system, where it exists, doesn't live up to it's name either. I tried to change my homepage in Mozilla today and couldn't find a setting for it. I open Help, switch to Search and type Homepage. No hits. No hits? For Homepage in a browser?
Before you brand me as an MS fanboy, let me tell you that I love the OSS ethos and ideals. I use Firefox and love it. I really WANT to switch, but can't afford the investment in time that the Linux learning curve requires. I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I am the kind of person that Linux should be wooing: Someone raised on Windows but tired of MS' monopolistic practices and uber-expensive upgrades. But until Linux can work, out of the box (so to speak), without requiring hours of Googling to get all my hardware working, or editing config files, or command-line tomfoolery, or useless or absent help, I can't see changing.
...everyone knows that you don't click on "I Accept" for Windows' EULA.
You press the magic "I reserve none of my rights" key, known to you Linux types as "F8".
Re:Infrastructure and the driver experience
on
NYT On Flying Cars
·
· Score: 1
I agree that for a 70 mile commute, a flying car makes no sense. But parent misses the point: With a flying car your commute can be longer. You could live 250 miles from work and commute with reasonable efficiency. No chance of doing this in a car.
The problem is that there would be a massive sprawl, similar to what happened in the 50's when just about every family had a car. Those who could afford it moved to the suburbs, those who couldn't stayed in neighborhoods that were rapidly turning into ghettos. Same thing would happen when flying cars went mainstream, everyone who can afford to moves to a ranch in the boonies while everyone that can't afford it gets stuck in a ghetto of abandoned strip malls and tract housing.
Really, picking on cars for emissions is by now a dead horse. The exhaust from a modern, emissions-controlled car is so clean that it is difficult to kill yourself by leaving the car running with the garage closed. There are bigger fish to fry, like tractor trailers, that emit far dirtier emissions than any modern car.
It's not even like hydrogen-burning cars are entirely clean. Sure, you can drink the water from the exhaust, but any compression engine will produce oxides of nitrogen unless they also carry a tank of pure oxygen (which would clean up a gasoline engine in much the same manner). Fuel cells are much cleaner, but I don't think they're developed enough yet for the mainstream.
The use of hydrogen makes cars more dangerous, too. To put it simply, a compressed fuel is a dangerous fuel. Any accident that breaches the H2 tank turns the vehicle into a fuel-air explosive. I don't think the public will stand for too many fireballs on the highway. Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, cars almost never explode and rarely catch fire in accidents.
Worse still, a mass changeover to hydrogen as our vehicle fuel would cause huge economic upheaval. Hydrogen consumes huge amounts of power to produce, and it adds no energy to our system; it merely acts as a relatively convenient energy storage vessel. Petroleum, on the other hand, consumes very little energy to reach its refined state and contributes a large portion of our total energy use. If it were mandated today that hydrogen must replace gasoline for vehicles, energy prices across the board would probably triple.
Hydrogen makes nice PR, but it will never power vehicles until oil has become so expensive due to scarcity that we've already migrated to other, renewable energy sources.
To anyone who managed to get the program before the site was slashdotted, could you take a look at North Korea along the Chinese border? Is the crater from the "mushroom cloud" explosion visible?
> But if you want all the shiny brand new stuff, a streamlined install > with an excellent hardware detection, and are not afraid of a few > weird things happening now and then, then give it a try!
Wow, finally a Linux distro that can compete with Windows.
...as to what exactly an oxygen generator is. From what does it generate oxygen? I thought spacecraft just carried pressurised (or liquefied) oxygen and just regulated it into the internal atmosphere. Is this one of those gag devices like a lumber stretcher or a left-handed monkey wrench? Do astronauts haze the new guy by saying "Hey, go check the oxygen generator. Then see if you can find my black hole."
...is always underestimate your costs and run over budget later. That $1 million will turn into $1 billion before anything comes of this. Hell, it'll take over a million to get the development organization up and running.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I get what you're saying here.
It's impossible to make a language foolproof because fools are so ingenious at being foolish. Making a language more foolproof only encourages bigger fools to use it (or be hired to use it).
Makes some sense, I suppose, but what solution is there? Make all languages potentially non-secure so that companies are scared into hiring the best programmers they can afford? Unlikely, and this wouldn't improve the overall situation.
More interesting to me is the Vote by Income chart. Check out how Bush support ramps up with income and Kerry support ramps down. If America were a poorer nation, Kerry would be elected for sure.
...am holding out for tomacco.
I hear they're going to market it towards kids, though.
I have it from two reputable sources, one at 742 Evergreen Terrace and one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:
It's pronounced Nuke-you-ler.
Sheesh!
get a propane space heater and a 20lb tank
Don't do this. Catalytic propane space heaters are meant to be used in open, well-ventilated areas, like outdoors. Used in enclosed spaces, a dangerous level of CO2 can build, which can be potentially lethal. This is especially dangerous in an outage situation, where you're likely to huddle in a smaller, well insulated room and close the doors.
Your best bet for an emergency heat source is a fireplace. Wood is good, but propane is simpler to operate, easier to install, and lower maintenace. It's safer than a space heater because it vents exhaust gases outside and the tank (usually larger than 20lb) is stored outside your home. Some models have a fan to use convective heating, making them more efficient. This fan is usually small and lower power, suitable for a reasonably sized UPS.
It may cost a little more, but you also gain the aesthetic benefits of having a fireplace to use anytime, whereas the space heater is often an ugly looking contraption.
Slashdot readers today mourn the death of their longest standing member, Anonymous Coward. Loved ones say he was driven to suicide by repeated +1 Informative moderation. Cause of death was self-inflicted registration. His fortune of karma, mostly gained from posting the full text of articles from slashdotted servers, is held up in court as no legal will was on record.
Please note that I am not affiliated in any way with Ultramon, other than as a pleased user.
China has usually been cultured but not powerful. Chinese history is a long sequence of conquests by powerful outsiders (Manchurians, Mongols, Europeans.)
It is interesting to note that none of the conquests stuck for more than a generation because of their powerful culture. China changes her invaders more than her invaders change her.
I'll echo the above comments, brilliant.
You had me hook, line and sinker picturing some flaky granola-type in my head.
Weightwise, I would say the electric option will be lighter, because you no longer need the electrolysis plant, the internal combustion engine, the hydrogen storage tank or the water storage tank.
Efficiency is crucial in a solar system because you're starting with very little energy to work with. The electric motor's greater effiency, plus the ability to harvest braking energy with regenerative braking, means you get more miles per hour of sunlight, even if the admittedly-heavy battery outweighs the more complex hydrogen setup.
Look at the solar racers that engineering faculties race down in Australia, not one uses a hydrogen energy storage system because the engineers have done the math, and it just isn't useful to throw so much of you hard earned energy out the window with a combustion process.
Step 0.5: Get second computer.
Google is clearly aiming to be the information center for the connected/wired world
How long until we all complain about Google's monopoly of the Internet?
I like Google, but it's now a publicly held company, meaning it's responsibilities are now to the shareholders. I fear that Google will be taken over by suits who want to use all of Google's information and influence for insidious purposes. It may be only a matter of time before the corporate culture changes from "Do no evil" to "Do what's profitable and hide it if it's evil."
Rubbish. Sure the hydrogen may be an efficient way to store the power, but how are you going to extract it? With a ~25% efficient internal combustion engine? You simply don't have that much energy to waste. Store it in a battery and use ~90% efficient electric motors to drive the wheels. Hell, I bet it will even weigh less than the electrolyser, IC engine, hydrogen tank and water tank that it replaces. Less pollution, too, because you won't be creating NOx from the high compression engine.
The only way for hydrogen propulsion to work is to generate it somewhere else, where you can get some economy of scale and have as much panel area as you want. This vehicle is an interesting science experiment in the "I wonder if I can..." spirit, but it will never be practical for daily use.
> ...make them non-transferable; a company that's gone bankrupt anyway doesn't need protection, and with acquisitions it's easy to keep the old comapny alive to retain the patent right.
This seems like a bad idea to me. If a lone inventor invents something useful, the only way he can profit from it is to produce it and sell it, an endeavor that the inventor may not be well suited to. His/her talents are more likely to lie in the creative process than the managerial and production oriented fields, the inventor is better off selling or licensing his/her patent to a company with production infrastructure already in place.
Besides, this policy is easily circumvented by companies, but not individuals. A company can just create a new sub-company to hold the patent and sell that company to the highest bidder. An individual can't create a sub-individual, thou I guess they could create a holding company to own the patent.
It just seems that such a rule would favor the big guy and punish the little guy, one thing that patent laws should do the opposite of.
I would agree that many fields are difficult for amateurs to enter, but I don't think any are impossible.
Take your example, a cyclotron. Cyclotrons are built by men who are paid. If those same men build a cyclotron for no pay, they're amateurs. Sure, you need tools and resources, but that is merely a matter of financial resources. You buy or have made the parts that you cannot. The guy building a radio at home doesn't build the resistors, wire, etc, he buys/steals/receives a donation of them.
Amateurs can do or build anything if they have sufficient resources. Some things just cost more.
>...you buy components and assemble them yourself - this is beyond many users who do want to run Linux.
Honestly, how many people fall into this category? Most Linux users I know can assemble PCs in their sleep.
Personally, I can assemble a PC with the best of them, but so far Linux is beyond me. I have to use it at school for some of my CS courses, and I find it hopelessly obtuse, even with KDE to hide the console. I feel like an idiot using it, like everyone gets it but me. The help system, where it exists, doesn't live up to it's name either. I tried to change my homepage in Mozilla today and couldn't find a setting for it. I open Help, switch to Search and type Homepage. No hits. No hits? For Homepage in a browser?
Before you brand me as an MS fanboy, let me tell you that I love the OSS ethos and ideals. I use Firefox and love it. I really WANT to switch, but can't afford the investment in time that the Linux learning curve requires. I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I am the kind of person that Linux should be wooing: Someone raised on Windows but tired of MS' monopolistic practices and uber-expensive upgrades. But until Linux can work, out of the box (so to speak), without requiring hours of Googling to get all my hardware working, or editing config files, or command-line tomfoolery, or useless or absent help, I can't see changing.
...everyone knows that you don't click on "I Accept" for Windows' EULA.
You press the magic "I reserve none of my rights" key, known to you Linux types as "F8".
I agree that for a 70 mile commute, a flying car makes no sense. But parent misses the point: With a flying car your commute can be longer. You could live 250 miles from work and commute with reasonable efficiency. No chance of doing this in a car.
The problem is that there would be a massive sprawl, similar to what happened in the 50's when just about every family had a car. Those who could afford it moved to the suburbs, those who couldn't stayed in neighborhoods that were rapidly turning into ghettos. Same thing would happen when flying cars went mainstream, everyone who can afford to moves to a ranch in the boonies while everyone that can't afford it gets stuck in a ghetto of abandoned strip malls and tract housing.
Really, picking on cars for emissions is by now a dead horse. The exhaust from a modern, emissions-controlled car is so clean that it is difficult to kill yourself by leaving the car running with the garage closed. There are bigger fish to fry, like tractor trailers, that emit far dirtier emissions than any modern car.
It's not even like hydrogen-burning cars are entirely clean. Sure, you can drink the water from the exhaust, but any compression engine will produce oxides of nitrogen unless they also carry a tank of pure oxygen (which would clean up a gasoline engine in much the same manner). Fuel cells are much cleaner, but I don't think they're developed enough yet for the mainstream.
The use of hydrogen makes cars more dangerous, too. To put it simply, a compressed fuel is a dangerous fuel. Any accident that breaches the H2 tank turns the vehicle into a fuel-air explosive. I don't think the public will stand for too many fireballs on the highway. Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, cars almost never explode and rarely catch fire in accidents.
Worse still, a mass changeover to hydrogen as our vehicle fuel would cause huge economic upheaval. Hydrogen consumes huge amounts of power to produce, and it adds no energy to our system; it merely acts as a relatively convenient energy storage vessel. Petroleum, on the other hand, consumes very little energy to reach its refined state and contributes a large portion of our total energy use. If it were mandated today that hydrogen must replace gasoline for vehicles, energy prices across the board would probably triple.
Hydrogen makes nice PR, but it will never power vehicles until oil has become so expensive due to scarcity that we've already migrated to other, renewable energy sources.
To anyone who managed to get the program before the site was slashdotted, could you take a look at North Korea along the Chinese border? Is the crater from the "mushroom cloud" explosion visible?
> But if you want all the shiny brand new stuff, a streamlined install
> with an excellent hardware detection, and are not afraid of a few
> weird things happening now and then, then give it a try!
Wow, finally a Linux distro that can compete with Windows.
...as to what exactly an oxygen generator is. From what does it generate oxygen? I thought spacecraft just carried pressurised (or liquefied) oxygen and just regulated it into the internal atmosphere. Is this one of those gag devices like a lumber stretcher or a left-handed monkey wrench? Do astronauts haze the new guy by saying "Hey, go check the oxygen generator. Then see if you can find my black hole."
Just don't make them play beach volleyball..
*shudder*
No way can I afford $3000, but can I take 9 of my buddies and each pay $300? Here's the itinerary guys:
Lunar-G flights: Moonwalk competition.
Mars-G flights: Martian wrestling. (Imagine the bodyslams!)
Zero-G flights: Zero-G dodgeball, baby!
I'm giggling already.
...is always underestimate your costs and run over budget later. That $1 million will turn into $1 billion before anything comes of this. Hell, it'll take over a million to get the development organization up and running.