Have you ever tried to move metal? It takes so much force that it literally glows red hot. How are metal atoms going to self assemble?
No, the fact is, self assembling finished products are pure fantasy, and there's a good chance they always will be. It might work for carbon molecules, or similar, but there's just no way to make a macro-sized precision steel bore with any kind of molecular techniques, not even theoretically (That I know of). Nanotech-niques are always going to have to be combined with traditional techniques. Nanotech is not the best technology for everything.
I'd bet most of these nanotech pundits have never even stepped inside a manufacturing facility, so how can you believe them when they tell you they can do it all?
Cars To Be Assembled Atom By Atom ...In fact, all parts in a car can be improved by using nanotechnology, according to the article...
This is utter BS and should be recognized as the hype that it is. Certainly, nanotech of the materials kind is, and will continue to be important and useful technology. But, how are those little atoms going to machine a precision piston bore in a sleeved cast iron block? Better still, how the heck are those atoms supposed to press that sleeve into the block? Anyone? Anyone?
The fact is, no one alive today is going to see a finished car emerge, self-assembled, from a chemical vat. Anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed, or just being a blowhard.
Now, will "nanotech" be able to make harder steels and more durable paints? Sure. Are we becoming buzzword weenies when we call it "nanotech"? Maybe. If you want to stretch the definition of "nanotech" to anything that's small (as opposed to molecular machines that can hunt down viruses in your body, lets say), then nanotech has been around at least since the iron age.
Metallurgists have been trying to figure out ways to make hard and strong steels since humans discovered iron. Everything from the construction of bridges to the selection of carbide grades involves knowledge of the microscopic details of materials. Granted, most of that stuff isn't quite on the nano-scale, but for most of the nanotech hype I've encountered, the differences haven't been all that great. It's more of a spectrum from small to smaller, rather than "this is nanotech, and this is not".
So far, there's a few interesting applications of nanotech that are completely unique to nanotech, but assembling cars is still the realm of the macro world.
I've found Opera to be quite impressive. Take a look at this screenshot. Opera's UI is fully customizable. The default UI is much less intimidating for the average joe. This screenshot shows how hard one can make Opera work. I should also mention that FireFox's UI can't be streamlined like Opera's can, so, I have a preference for Opera.
Actually, most poorly designed websites that still look good IE, will look good in Opera too. FireFox isn't quite as good at that as Opera. The point is rather moot though, since IE is truly dangerous, and any other browser on the market is vastly superior - be it FireFox, Netscape, Opera, or whatever. No one on my network is allowed to use IE, except on MS sites that will only work with IE.
The GPL's popularity is what causes this chasm between commercial vendors and Open Source. In a way, the GPL's belligerent and iron-fisted stance on Open Source has encouraged closed source by drawing an uncrossable line between that which is GPL and that which is not. The OpenBSD project's goals appear to be a rare negative reaction to the GPL. They aim to keep their project open source, but without any of the GPL's heavy-handedness.
If people started converting their Commercial/GPL projects to a license like this one then they could release their products as open source after they've already earned a return from the market, thereby greatly diminishing the unfair advantages a competitor would get by simply repackaging and tweaking someone else's brand-new, cutting-edge code.
The Zesiger License is a license that addresses this. It allows an open source project to be commercialized for 2 years before being required to release the source openly. This provides a healthy lead over competitors that simply want to tweak and repackage someone else's commercial products, without doing any R&D, or other risky investment of their own.
During that two years, a business could package their source for their clients under another license, such as the GPL, which will prevent the code from being used by competitors while allowing legitimate customers to hack the code.
There need not be such a huge gap between commerce and open source. I'm not sure why no one seems to think about this much. It's not necessarily an all or nothing kind of thing.
Before I get flamed, this license can't be used on GPL source, so don't panic and think that someone's going to be commercializing your GPL software. The Zesiger License is only compatible with either fresh, new projects, or BSD-style projects.
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Have you ever tried to move metal? It takes so much force that it literally glows red hot. How are metal atoms going to self assemble?
No, the fact is, self assembling finished products are pure fantasy, and there's a good chance they always will be. It might work for carbon molecules, or similar, but there's just no way to make a macro-sized precision steel bore with any kind of molecular techniques, not even theoretically (That I know of). Nanotech-niques are always going to have to be combined with traditional techniques. Nanotech is not the best technology for everything.
I'd bet most of these nanotech pundits have never even stepped inside a manufacturing facility, so how can you believe them when they tell you they can do it all?
This is utter BS and should be recognized as the hype that it is. Certainly, nanotech of the materials kind is, and will continue to be important and useful technology. But, how are those little atoms going to machine a precision piston bore in a sleeved cast iron block? Better still, how the heck are those atoms supposed to press that sleeve into the block? Anyone? Anyone?
The fact is, no one alive today is going to see a finished car emerge, self-assembled, from a chemical vat. Anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed, or just being a blowhard.
Now, will "nanotech" be able to make harder steels and more durable paints? Sure. Are we becoming buzzword weenies when we call it "nanotech"? Maybe. If you want to stretch the definition of "nanotech" to anything that's small (as opposed to molecular machines that can hunt down viruses in your body, lets say), then nanotech has been around at least since the iron age.
Metallurgists have been trying to figure out ways to make hard and strong steels since humans discovered iron. Everything from the construction of bridges to the selection of carbide grades involves knowledge of the microscopic details of materials. Granted, most of that stuff isn't quite on the nano-scale, but for most of the nanotech hype I've encountered, the differences haven't been all that great. It's more of a spectrum from small to smaller, rather than "this is nanotech, and this is not".
So far, there's a few interesting applications of nanotech that are completely unique to nanotech, but assembling cars is still the realm of the macro world.
The QuickTime videos that JPL has on the stardust site are horrible. 66Mb for barely 5 seconds of video? Ridiculous.
I've found Opera to be quite impressive. Take a look at this screenshot. Opera's UI is fully customizable. The default UI is much less intimidating for the average joe. This screenshot shows how hard one can make Opera work. I should also mention that FireFox's UI can't be streamlined like Opera's can, so, I have a preference for Opera.
Actually, most poorly designed websites that still look good IE, will look good in Opera too. FireFox isn't quite as good at that as Opera. The point is rather moot though, since IE is truly dangerous, and any other browser on the market is vastly superior - be it FireFox, Netscape, Opera, or whatever. No one on my network is allowed to use IE, except on MS sites that will only work with IE.
The GPL's popularity is what causes this chasm between commercial vendors and Open Source. In a way, the GPL's belligerent and iron-fisted stance on Open Source has encouraged closed source by drawing an uncrossable line between that which is GPL and that which is not. The OpenBSD project's goals appear to be a rare negative reaction to the GPL. They aim to keep their project open source, but without any of the GPL's heavy-handedness.
If people started converting their Commercial/GPL projects to a license like this one then they could release their products as open source after they've already earned a return from the market, thereby greatly diminishing the unfair advantages a competitor would get by simply repackaging and tweaking someone else's brand-new, cutting-edge code.
The Zesiger License is a license that addresses this. It allows an open source project to be commercialized for 2 years before being required to release the source openly. This provides a healthy lead over competitors that simply want to tweak and repackage someone else's commercial products, without doing any R&D, or other risky investment of their own.
During that two years, a business could package their source for their clients under another license, such as the GPL, which will prevent the code from being used by competitors while allowing legitimate customers to hack the code.
There need not be such a huge gap between commerce and open source. I'm not sure why no one seems to think about this much. It's not necessarily an all or nothing kind of thing.
Before I get flamed, this license can't be used on GPL source, so don't panic and think that someone's going to be commercializing your GPL software. The Zesiger License is only compatible with either fresh, new projects, or BSD-style projects.