Well, that's great! Combine that with recent article on high-temp geothermal facilities http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/2 7/1149253 (we need up to 500 degrees Celsius for TDP, and from this TFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4846574. stm it seems there as well may be so) and we are getting to broken down and recreated natural oil-generating process, using "free" energy from begining to the end and ridding off the garbage in the process.
This gives me hope we are saved from energy (and waste...and perhaps even CO2 emission - we will be reusing it on large scale) crisis in the medium-to-long run (one hundred years timeframe, top), provided the opportunity is well spotted and quickly exploited. And we might not even be needing to handle large quantities of (cryogenic, leaky, quickly leaving atmosphere if released - leading to planetary water loss) liquid hydrogen.
Now, somewhere (i.e. on Iceland, obviously) geothermal energy is certainly cheaper then elsewhere, but in the end it comes down to the limits of the drilling technology, which, like any other technology, will meet breakthroughs over time and we know for certain that anywhere on Earth, deep enaugh beneath our feet, there is abundance of magma, therefore it is energy source accessible (at least in theory) to any nation, unlike any other we used so far. Admitted, some places solar-thermal energy is much cheaper (some focusing needed, though) and reliable enaugh (desert climate) but these places usually tend to have lack of raw material to process.
Are we to see "yuck tankers" and pipelines transporting organic waste from first world to huge solar processors located in previous mineral oil exporters for conversion in the future, thereby closing the circle, creating "solar energy conveyer belt"?
Or, it may pay well to turn deserts into irrigated (using desalinized sea water, of course) farms to produce, among other things, raw biomass for TDP input?
Massive acquiring of methanol or ethanol thru fermentation of biomass is not uncommon at all, of course, but it is not quite what I ment, or what would suite our energy needs.
Therefore I'll rephrase in hope of clarification: "cut long C-chains from fatty acid groups or from long, predominantely linear polymers chains such as celulose, some proteins, or other polymer fibers into big enaugh chunks, in size matching or comparable to that of carbohydrates usually used as internal combustion engine fuel".
biodiesel is more viable as it can use any long chain hydrocarbon to make a fuel
You ment lipids (oils and grease), of course, but it just occured to me that celulose has (very) long C-chains. If we could make a chemical or nano "chopper" that would cut them in pieces of certain capped length, we could turn dried plant residues, paper garbage (the paper that already had been recycled for too many times to be still useful) or even wood sawdust into fuel in a snap! Perhaps even any sinthetic polymer fibers could be used.
OTOH, such an substance would be unpreceded bio-killer in environment, literally "cutting all strings" that hold each living being together.
In every battle, overwhelming effect (strength and/or boldness and/or speed and/or surprise) wins.
Right now, pro I"P" side has overwhwlming power of money and media (they for most part ARE media) on its side, while pro freedom side doesn't have even a wide recognition among the masses (which would be significant, but utterly insufficient).
To crush the I"P" law, someone (actually, a lot of them) with great but unsatisfactory power has to profit big P without "" from that change, otherwise we can whine all day long about injustice and lack of freedom. Whenever you feel like revolution, remember that it always has its price: the rise of some new kind of tyrants (with hope that one day after transition period they'll firmly hold each others' throats, giving us little ones a breathing space). Anti-monarchistic revolutions of 18th century were pulled by masses, but those masses were organised by people with personal agendas, people whose striving for power was blocked near the top by artificial barriers of the system of their time. Likewise, communist revolutions benefited the communists themself in the first place. Every gratitude payed to masses for their spilled blood in form of new freedoms and equalities are quietly and stepwise taken away as time passes.
Nevertheless, my friend, probably not in your lifetime, IP laws will first get worse to the point where there will be a social layer of somewhat wealthy, but held-down upstarts who will be opressed by perpetuated "IP gentry" (aided by "lawyer clergy") and naturally, they will be willing to do something, to wake and move the masses. That will be the time when time is right. I can bet it won't pass without spilling blood, as none neither gives up nor gains privilleges without it. Our time will be regarded as time of sowing, of philosophers who first criticized injustice of I"P". Well, what awaits beyond... is hard to predict and if history teaches us anything, perhaps disappointing. New elite will probably establish new taboos and many of those who create I"P" will feel injustice of beeing ripped off daily (the seed of next after next revolution?). The face of business will change - not that many litigations any more, but much harsher security, secrecy and novel ways to ensure them. The face of entertainment will change - live shows only, with much higher admitance price for famous ones, but also many more entertainers and unique programms then today - after the age of prevalence of peasants, age of prevalence of factory workers, age of prevalence of office workers, perhaps we are approaching age of prevalence of entertainers?
or by taking your chances with handwriting recognition that's either ploddingly slow or wildly inaccurate.
I'd say that the problem is our gap between what we want and what we can at the moment, in terms of storage space and/or CPU computational power. Perhaps soon we will have enaugh fast palmtop machines that will do realtime recognition of handwriting and speech (dictate).
Today, when storage is less of the problem then CPU power is, why should we have handwriting recognition in the first place?
Commands, if not equipped with keyboard shortcuts(oh, wait, we don't have a keyboard), are easier to issue by ticking checkboxes or traveling the menues.
As for the text itself, handwriten notes *should* (not always true even for myself) be recognizable by writer's own brain (and hopefuly by brains of other people who are forced to read them). The handwritng to text, if needed, can be done offline, later, and email (the example where considerable amount of text must be put in and sent out ASAP) can:
a) wait till peevee CPU on handheld computer is done with recognition of the whole message, b) be typed on on-screen keyboard if it's short, c) be sent as gif (or png) picture... perhaps awkward today, but with growing base of users, people will tend to be understandable and even like it - a touch of humanity, straightforward inclusion of drawings, symbols and signatures... d) there is also an, quite comfortable, opportunity of recording and compressing low-quality (mono, low sample rate/low bit resolution) audio (speech) message and sending it as small file - "dictagram"
We as humanity have been on a trip thru technology. The simplified text code (teletype) was nescecity for first, weak machines to understand us, and even before that simplified and uniformed letters were nescecity to enable printing and speed up multiplication of books (information storage and disseminaton). Now the pendulum is swinging back, we are gaining our hand-freedom again and yet, we are complaining, because we are now got used to "type letters" and lost our hand motorics that has been (or is it "had been", already?) used for generations and centuries.
I am not trying to insult consumers by calling them lazy, but it seems that there is a space for useful gadgets and services that none is willing to offer because they are afraid that market will perceive it as an degradation, or wasting (of ever-cheaper storage space, or ever-expanding bandwidth).
Instead, hard to crack non-problems are poorely "solved" just to keep information content artificially low - none gets to analyze my handwriting or my voice, so privacy of my personality is preserved in my communications, which may be good, if I happen to have tinfoil hat wearer attitude... or bad, if I happen to (or if I think that) have good personality which people tend to like.
This last observation predicts females would love said gadgedts, while males (geeks especially) probably wouldn't. Also, it shows that, not alike with cell phones, male geek consumers are still perceived THE target market when new handheld computers are designed.
It makes migrating to and from a service Very difficult, expensive, and timeconsuming - if you can do it at all.
...Which is a "window of opportunity" for some of those providers (at least two or more, probably little ones at present) to include "portability" as an asset and win the startups' portion of market in blitzsecond. Especially if large end-customers (khm*military*khm) demand it, for reasons of stability and survivability of provider thruout projected product or service lifecycle. (Hi)Story of Internet, repeated.
I mean, at first there was no open standards at all in IT (or even just in "T" for that matter). But, once there are established open standards, people quickly realize their added value and start demanding them as an obligatory part of any sane offer. Customer lock-in is sooo... wrong (for customer) and benefitial to provider that it should be basis to start investigation of alleged corruption or at least negligence on any decision-maker who willfuly allow own company to get hooked.
If it is so, should we presume that ice bonds with greater force to conductive and strong dielectric (and/or negative electric charged) materials' surfaces then to neutral/weak dielectric ones? Liquid water beeing both conductive (when carrying ions of other substances) and strong dielectric must be quite attracted to ice crystals - so presence of icy surface in a room should decrease humidity abruptly. I guess that was quite obvious, ha?. OTOH, there is something that isn't so obvious and should be yet determined: does ice (and snow) clear metals' dust and vapor from the air more eficiently then, say, fog and rain? Snow/frost scrubber filters, anyone?
Also, does that mean that water freezes faster between plates of the charged capacitor (clear water without impurities, of course, otherwise capacitor would be shorted) orienting molecules even more orderly and putting up resistance to their rotation? Then we could freeze thin films of water almost instantly, or make ice stronger, if needed (for temporary constructions) by arming it with conductive (and negative charged?) wires.
They might be able to provider internet access, but not a kind suitable for VOIP, latency is way too high.
I've been thinking about that... latency is quite relative. In semiduplex voice connections, such as ham or CB radio or any other where you and other party share the same channel, you have PTT button that clearly puts boundary around each voice message. This kind of communication never appears much more discomfortable (compared to two-way telephone) to participants, because they are mentally prepared to shape their conversation into messages accordingly. OTOH, I have noticed that in telephone converasations, parties are forced to talk alternatively (except for short mhm-s or yes-s, which sole purpose is that of which "ACK" or "RR" have in data transfer), even without having to push PTT (Push-To-Talk) button, because it is very hard to talk and listen (and understand) simultaneously.
Therefore (=COMMERCIAL IDEA ALERT=), service providers maybe shouldn't always jump hoops and procrustinate existing technology to accomodate unreasonable customers' demands and habits. There clearly IS a space for VoIP "voice-grams" or "voice-IM" service, that could go even over satelite IP, it just must be marketed diferently then "IP telephony" and perhaps needs "two-way radio" mics, with PTT button (or common mics but with Vox function in software) and indication that message ended ("channel clear", "other party switched to 'receive' ", etc... or just ubiquituous 'Roger'/'Over' protocol). Even better, this chunks of conversation can be compressed as whole before sending, which eases handling (no need to maintain high sampling/IP packets rate to ensure quality).
Imagine cellular service based on this idea. It should have much better thruput then existing one. Why, the biggest step is have/have not difference. Either I can call, for instance, towing service when my car is broken on highway, or I can not. Other differences are less important. Cell phones success was essentially in that they gave us exactly that increased security and instant two-way in-touch capability. Asking that it closely resemble landline telephone service is, IMHO, asking too much and too wasteful. Same goes for IP voice comms. Most people can talk faster then type and some can listen faster then read.
Besides, natural gas ( Methan, CH4 )doesn't have to come from fossil deposits - it can be obtained in biodigestors, as byproduct of processing organic vaste (IANA Enviromental Engineer, but perhaps even in process of cleaning city "brown water" before returning it back to rivers), making it completely renewable source.
..."Lost passengers from recent plane crash in swamp still searched for. Rescue teams blame 'unreliable flying microrobots that often suddenly fail and lose contact with base station' "...
(*snip to "environmental issues" *)...."More and more frogs and other small insectvore animals in swamp found dead from unexplained internal bleeding"...
t is on the motherboard now, but it will be in the processor. Read the TCPA FAQ if you haven't already for the details. Suffice it to say that the technology is quite evil.
True. But, if they don't forbid writing programms and sharing text files with other users, you can create virtual machine *in it* and I don't think treacherous computer will be inteligent enaugh to analyze what your programs do. You'll still have to take a performance hit, though.
But it is just a quickfix and unreliable solution, still having us on mercy of evil tyrants. Hacking will have to move to hardware. To further the rationale of the GNU project, if you cannot be free without free OS to run your free programs, even moreso, in days which are knocking to our doors, when your hardware is your jailer and denunciator, not your tool, to pursue our freedom and happyness (even at price of taking another performance hit) we will have to create new, free hardware-design computers based on FPGAs or whatever electronics which is still not locked by some enslaver. It will be steep slope to climb, but I expect it will revolutionalise the realm of hardware like what FOSS did for software. Surely none can expect all this people and all the movements for digital freedoms will not just "disband and go home" when treacherous computing reign begin.
Big SW and "content" lost a significant piece of cake recently, now HW moguls are due to get their part of punishment for siding with "evil side". But, if darkness ever fall on everything and they find a way to squeeze even programmable chips' manufacturers' o o into -][- and force them to sell only to "trusted end-product" manufacturers, I think I'll become a luddit or at least make sure I don't feed them, even if it means abstaining from using technology. They can have it their way eventually, but without me (or my money).
Then there is gapping hole in protection of rights. In fact, then rights are not rights that protect someone, but list of can't do-s for just one specific player - the government. Those restrictions were ment to "level the field" because it is assumed that state always has an uneven, overwhelming power upon any individual. But, the world is full of inequalities and bullying "the small guy", so nailing down only the one on the very top of list of potential purpotrators does very little to help.
What is worse (and a bit new, regarding the times when the system was designed), today certain individuals or private groups can indeed "take out" the state itself, by corrupting or otherwise subduing elected officials and officers, or by playing restrictions of state power against the state. That applies essentially to organised crime syndicates but not only to them. What is the difference between the mob families alliance and various "Industry Associations"? Given enaugh lobbying power, wiseguys could also dictate laws in their own benefit, laws that would make their actions smoother legal and even assisted by law enforcment. All that is needed is to put all the blame on the victim.
For instance, fictional(?) GIAA ("Gambling Industry Association of America") could push the law making any attempt of the casino customers (players) to level the odds a felony. That would be equivalent to DMCA - something that is significant only to someones' special interests, with that interest beeing morraly objectional no less (against the "fairness"), now is a law that bonds everyone.
Or, PIAA("Prostitution...") could push the law against unauthorised use of certain kinds of clothes, lingeries or "toys", hair colours, phrases or doing *certain things* in *certain way*, "because it hurts their profits, as customers are using their services less and less, because customers' partners are illegally providing the same for, in some cases, even no payment at all!(Where is this world heading!)" - something that affects and criminalises certain (very) private aspects of individuals' lives.
WELL, HOW IS IT ESSENTIALLY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT OTHER -IAAS DO? (please look further then just "they don't do anything illegal")
Well, I ment that just as a quick fix, a means to use ready-made legacy tools. It is just a taught experiment to display the principle. When it comes specifically to soldering, modern technology using lightweight components, "rework", already depend on adhesion more then they do on gravity. You print the solder paste on the board, position and glue components over, then bake all that in the oven. As the solder paste melts, it spreads to neighbouring copper and tin surfaces and bonds them as it cools down (we can overcome the lack of convection using fans). It works even upside down (i.e. when assembling modules with components placed on both sides of the board), in spite gravity, here, on the bottom of gravity well, so odds are good it will work fine in low G too.
I can hear bats' high pitched chirps outdoors... but I can't claim with my face straight that it is ultrasound, though. Bats used to fly thru my windows into the room often, circle the room avoiding obstacles (and us) just fine, but I never heard or otherwise "felt" their sonar, even on such small distance.
Claiming that one can not only directly feel weak fast changing EM fields (light and IR heat excluded!) but no less then also feel the difference in their spectral distribution is just too much of a quackery!
OTOH, he may be honest but barking at wrong tree. When electric power is down, it is not surprising to feel a relief.
Now, there, I am probably not the only one who can say that prolonged exposure to various electric equipment produced, barely audible, sounds (especially high pitch, although hum too) make me feel some of the alleged symptoms. Right now, I hear quite loudly my and/or my coworkers CRT monitor(s) (high voltage transformer ferrite core - magnetostrictive material) and it gives me very unpleasent feeling in my neck. Similar goes for cooling fans hum. And, last but not least, most (cheap) capacitors' dielectrics are piezoelectric materials, so it may happen that some of the HF noise that came from mains "beats" with circuit-generated noise and result is sometimes in audible range.
In last century (give or take a half of century) the noise signature has changed greatly. We have not adapted to that. It seems that authorities (lawmakers) are not aware of magnitude of stress that is imposed on us by noise which is not high in loudness, but just constant and unpleasent/annoying.
Better understanding of the noise phenomenon, better design of electric (electronic) equipment and better health standards should make things bareable. Before anyone invests grands into mains filtering, they should consider good antiphones (both earplugs and earshells), better acoustic insulation for equipment suspected of producing noise and as much time spending outdoors, as far from "funny" sounds as possible.
Gas prices are also about three times higher than in America, so as you'd imagine the cost of living is quite high
You could definitely use electric cars - plenty of cheap electric energy, short routes... there is perhaps just the problem of low temp decreased battery capacity. But hey, with all the thermal energy, warmed garages are not a problem. Plus, you've got plenty of aluminum to build light, nonrusting carosseries with...
Regionalised Internet would be just a phase in rebuilding it again as peer-to-peer connected confederation of national networks. I guess it would become a lot like international telephone network - the location of servers would be explicit, prefixed or suffixed with country ID, not "virtual" like today. Each country would be forced, in a way, to complete national network graph and interconnect all local ISPs.
The borders would arise, customs boots (firewalls/gateways) will be placed and perhaps the customs taxes imposed on traffic of intangible goods.
It will be shocking return to reality - unlike The Internet, The World is not one, not yet and perhaps even will not ever be. Now The World wants to reshape The Internet to its own image (and the other way around, too, but The Internet does not have real, direct power). Nevertheless, those countries who keep their Internet connected, open and unrestricted, will have huge advantage in development and economy over those who strangle it in order to squeeze money out of it, or to prevent social changes.
Whenever there is worth going from point A to point B and from point B to point A, the jurisdictions of A, B or both will want their cut in it, probably under excuse of "assuring national security and souvereignity, protecting the innocent,... etc.". Restricting access and traffic is one of the oldest known means to do so.
That would be complicated and heavy for a passenger plane, but no worries, I was just making fun of the proposition for long, very slow deceleration which is generally a bad idea for passenger transport, not specifically in air travel. In fact, airplanes usually decelerate by circling (a bit like ski-jumpers after the touchdown) or by increasing attack angle of the wing (nose up), so that vector of your inertia goes into the seat and deceleration is usualy done in several, separated by pauses, relatively abrupt phases (so that balance sensor in inner ear does not get confused).
The gravity, if needed, could be substituted with centrifugal force, at least on a small scale (i.e. imagine rotating automatic soldering bench, where you remotely control soldering iron and grips or tweezers, with visual feedback coming from "above" - a radial-mounted camera closer to the center then the bench is). If gravity is needed for just a short period of time, then a simple pendulum will do (partial rotation), or perhaps an in-line accelerating/decelerating setup.
OK, points taken, especially "blind typing" and LaTeX, although there is (yet another) learning curve involved in both of that skills. OTOH, external information storage is hardly a main point of taking notes. Usualy, you (should) have good books or lectures for information (knowledge) content. IMHO, the point of taking notes is in feedback from memory back into "creation" (hands) - and that on its own includes inner feedback loop eye-memory. That may be lacking from fast input method which do not display "end product" at once (LaTeX is plain text encoding of formulas, isn't it? Not a WYSIWYG ) or where visual feedback is completely absent (if you type looking neither to keyboard nor screen). Then, the graphs - switching between modes (text/graphics), embelishing the notes and "formating the pages" all goes straightforward using paper and pen (but I admit that could be a habit-caused bias).
Something closest to best notetaker's application is not some kind of advanced text editor but ubiqituous simple bitmap drawing accessory app found in every desktop OS - it enables typing text into the picture, too, and using the pen device you can even handwrite. Today, our document-creating paradigm is mostly fixed symbol set text-oriented because:
a) most of the most documents in fact IS text
b) resulting files are generally smaller if each page is not a bunch of points (text - at least 5x8 bitmap in seven bit symbol) and
c) searching and indexing is more straightforward and doesn't include hard tasks such as recognizing symbols from pictures.
Historically it was far, far less expensive in resources to embed pictures into text instead of vice versa. Today, it is not so unreasonable.
Now, from bitmap editor to ultimate document editor there are some, hopefuly not to large, steps. If only (yeepie! the specs!!):
- text could hang in picture as embedded object that can be reedited and formated again after initial input (usualy not possible in simple graphic editors) and if - LaTeX could be recognized and displayed as formulas on the fly (you may have typos, you know), and if - all that would be backed by combined stylus & keyboard input, I guess that would combine the best of both pen&paper and computer notetaking. And, if it's not asking to much, - text and graphics blocks (or any random position on the page you choose) should be capable of beeing anchoring points for audio and/or video recordings. Then you could be very relaxed in the class because you could always complete your notes - text blocks, drawings, formulas, etc. later, from attached recordings (and use text input for i.e. your comments or questions that occured to you while listening to the lecture - well, perhaps - there should be a "post-it note" tool to add student's comments to any text or graphical part or block of the document).
I agree, taking notes does boost learning and although you could type notes into the text-editor, pen(s and pencils) are far less constraining and faster "input and storage devices", they free the mind from "using the software" (they free your hands and mind follows), give you opportunity of instantenious (as fast as your thoughts fly) switching between fonts and alphabets, size, bolding, underlining, writing in cursive, inserting special characters and icons, adding pictures (drawings) without waiting for drawing program to open... and everything is saved instanteniously! Computers may someday (and should, as soon as possible, wink, wink!) enable us with same options as paper does. But that time has not come yet.
Well, if there was some substantial use for obtained C (or CO), the process would be self-sustainable and we could legislatively force (like we did for CFCs) worldwide use of "green"-made carbon-based chemical compounds in industry and transportation. There would be economical incentive for this facilities to be built, because they would produce something usable and merchantable. Whoever builds them, would make profit from them. Perhaps even greatest CO2 emitters would find trapping and selling (or exchanging for discount on fuel they buy from them) their byproduct CO2 to this factories profitable. On the second thought, the thermoelectric powerstations fueled by solar-made biofuel farms/factories would make a closed system (not depending on local atmospheric concentration of CO2) and open-end biofuel factories would probably supply only the transportation.
And then, to net extract CO2 from the cycle, we need to buy (alas, from taxes) as much of the caught carbon as we can afford and stockpile it, put it in the ground where oil used to be, or char it without air to get the solid substance that we can burry or sink down to the ocean bottom. That part wouldn't be suported by economics, but at least first half of the job (catching it back from the air) very well would.
Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, planting trees is not a solution per se. The carbon cycle may slow down a little, but eventually, all the carbon in leafs and trunks will end up as CO2 in atmosphere again.
Dynamically, some of it is retained (new trees hopefuly grow, as old die and rot) in forests, but forest fires can dramatically change that.
Besides, some experimental research had shown that plants have upper limit on CO2 atmospheric concentration they can handle. After that limit is breached, photosinthesys stops...
The only direction is to think of a way to speed up sinking of CO2 to the bottom of the ocean rifts and back under the Earth's crust.
Out of the hat, it could go as follows:
- pressurise and liquidify air (first step in obtaining industrial nitrogen, too). - do fractional evaporation of liquid air and extract the CO2 fraction. - pump the taken out CO2 to the ocean bed.
or else:
- use fast growing algae to tie carbon into biomass. If nescessary, engineer the strain that can handle high concentration of CO2, then feed it with CO2- enriched (use gas centrifuges - CO2 is one of the heaviest components of air) air in controlled environment (hydroponics) - harvest algae and carbonize them by anaerob baking in (i.e. solar) ovens. - compress and burry or sink thus obtained charcoal.
but first: stop pumping natural carbon reserves into atmosphere (burning fossil fuels)! We don't need to stop using fire, but we must stop adding ancient carbon into short (atmosphere-biosphere) carbon cycle.
With all the recent advances in genetics, why can't we have an highly efficient single-cell photosynthetic lipid (oil) factory little friend? Put them in the glass tank, conduct light to the bottom of it using mirrors, let the little buggers swim down so that they don't get stuck in the oil layer forming on top of the tank, pump the CO2-enriched air thru the water (or do it separately, not to stirr the water) so that they have what to eat... and just let the oil pour from the top. Voila - diesel fuel at your disposal!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's great! Combine that with recent article on high-temp geothermal facilities http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/2 7/1149253 (we need up to 500 degrees Celsius for TDP, and from this TFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4846574. stm it seems there as well may be so) and we are getting to broken down and recreated natural oil-generating process, using "free" energy from begining to the end and ridding off the garbage in the process.
This gives me hope we are saved from energy (and waste...and perhaps even CO2 emission - we will be reusing it on large scale) crisis in the medium-to-long run (one hundred years timeframe, top), provided the opportunity is well spotted and quickly exploited. And we might not even be needing to handle large quantities of (cryogenic, leaky, quickly leaving atmosphere if released - leading to planetary water loss) liquid hydrogen.
Now, somewhere (i.e. on Iceland, obviously) geothermal energy is certainly cheaper then elsewhere, but in the end it comes down to the limits of the drilling technology, which, like any other technology, will meet breakthroughs over time and we know for certain that anywhere on Earth, deep enaugh beneath our feet, there is abundance of magma, therefore it is energy source accessible (at least in theory) to any nation, unlike any other we used so far. Admitted, some places solar-thermal energy is much cheaper (some focusing needed, though) and reliable enaugh (desert climate) but these places usually tend to have lack of raw material to process.
Are we to see "yuck tankers" and pipelines transporting organic waste from first world to huge solar processors located in previous mineral oil exporters for conversion in the future, thereby closing the circle, creating "solar energy conveyer belt"?
Or, it may pay well to turn deserts into irrigated (using desalinized sea water, of course) farms to produce, among other things, raw biomass for TDP input?
Mod parent informative!
Massive acquiring of methanol or ethanol thru fermentation of biomass is not uncommon at all, of course, but it is not quite what I ment, or what would suite our energy needs.
Therefore I'll rephrase in hope of clarification: "cut long C-chains from fatty acid groups or from long, predominantely linear polymers chains such as celulose, some proteins, or other polymer fibers into big enaugh chunks, in size matching or comparable to that of carbohydrates usually used as internal combustion engine fuel".
You ment lipids (oils and grease), of course, but it just occured to me that celulose has (very) long C-chains. If we could make a chemical or nano "chopper" that would cut them in pieces of certain capped length, we could turn dried plant residues, paper garbage (the paper that already had been recycled for too many times to be still useful) or even wood sawdust into fuel in a snap! Perhaps even any sinthetic polymer fibers could be used.
OTOH, such an substance would be unpreceded bio-killer in environment, literally "cutting all strings" that hold each living being together.
In every battle, overwhelming effect (strength and/or boldness and/or speed and/or surprise) wins.
Right now, pro I"P" side has overwhwlming power of money and media (they for most part ARE media) on its side, while pro freedom side doesn't have even a wide recognition among the masses (which would be significant, but utterly insufficient).
To crush the I"P" law, someone (actually, a lot of them) with great but unsatisfactory power has to profit big P without "" from that change, otherwise we can whine all day long about injustice and lack of freedom. Whenever you feel like revolution, remember that it always has its price: the rise of some new kind of tyrants (with hope that one day after transition period they'll firmly hold each others' throats, giving us little ones a breathing space). Anti-monarchistic revolutions of 18th century were pulled by masses, but those masses were organised by people with personal agendas, people whose striving for power was blocked near the top by artificial barriers of the system of their time. Likewise, communist revolutions benefited the communists themself in the first place. Every gratitude payed to masses for their spilled blood in form of new freedoms and equalities are quietly and stepwise taken away as time passes.
Nevertheless, my friend, probably not in your lifetime, IP laws will first get worse to the point where there will be a social layer of somewhat wealthy, but held-down upstarts who will be opressed by perpetuated "IP gentry" (aided by "lawyer clergy") and naturally, they will be willing to do something, to wake and move the masses. That will be the time when time is right. I can bet it won't pass without spilling blood, as none neither gives up nor gains privilleges without it. Our time will be regarded as time of sowing, of philosophers who first criticized injustice of I"P". Well, what awaits beyond... is hard to predict and if history teaches us anything, perhaps disappointing. New elite will probably establish new taboos and many of those who create I"P" will feel injustice of beeing ripped off daily (the seed of next after next revolution?). The face of business will change - not that many litigations any more, but much harsher security, secrecy and novel ways to ensure them. The face of entertainment will change - live shows only, with much higher admitance price for famous ones, but also many more entertainers and unique programms then today - after the age of prevalence of peasants, age of prevalence of factory workers, age of prevalence of office workers, perhaps we are approaching age of prevalence of entertainers?
I'd say that the problem is our gap between what we want and what we can at the moment, in terms of storage space and/or CPU computational power. Perhaps soon we will have enaugh fast palmtop machines that will do realtime recognition of handwriting and speech (dictate).
Today, when storage is less of the problem then CPU power is, why should we have handwriting recognition in the first place?
Commands, if not equipped with keyboard shortcuts(oh, wait, we don't have a keyboard), are easier to issue by ticking checkboxes or traveling the menues.
As for the text itself, handwriten notes *should* (not always true even for myself) be recognizable by writer's own brain (and hopefuly by brains of other people who are forced to read them). The handwritng to text, if needed, can be done offline, later, and email (the example where considerable amount of text must be put in and sent out ASAP) can:
a) wait till peevee CPU on handheld computer is done with recognition of the whole message,
b) be typed on on-screen keyboard if it's short,
c) be sent as gif (or png) picture... perhaps awkward today, but with growing base of users, people will tend to be understandable and even like it - a touch of humanity, straightforward inclusion of drawings, symbols and signatures...
d) there is also an, quite comfortable, opportunity of recording and compressing low-quality (mono, low sample rate/low bit resolution) audio (speech) message and sending it as small file - "dictagram"
We as humanity have been on a trip thru technology. The simplified text code (teletype) was nescecity for first, weak machines to understand us, and even before that simplified and uniformed letters were nescecity to enable printing and speed up multiplication of books (information storage and disseminaton). Now the pendulum is swinging back, we are gaining our hand-freedom again and yet, we are complaining, because we are now got used to "type letters" and lost our hand motorics that has been (or is it "had been", already?) used for generations and centuries.
I am not trying to insult consumers by calling them lazy, but it seems that there is a space for useful gadgets and services that none is willing to offer because they are afraid that market will perceive it as an degradation, or wasting (of ever-cheaper storage space, or ever-expanding bandwidth).
Instead, hard to crack non-problems are poorely "solved" just to keep information content artificially low - none gets to analyze my handwriting or my voice, so privacy of my personality is preserved in my communications, which may be good, if I happen to have tinfoil hat wearer attitude
This last observation predicts females would love said gadgedts, while males (geeks especially) probably wouldn't. Also, it shows that, not alike with cell phones, male geek consumers are still perceived THE target market when new handheld computers are designed.
I mean, at first there was no open standards at all in IT (or even just in "T" for that matter). But, once there are established open standards, people quickly realize their added value and start demanding them as an obligatory part of any sane offer. Customer lock-in is sooo
If it is so, should we presume that ice bonds with greater force to conductive and strong dielectric (and/or negative electric charged) materials' surfaces then to neutral/weak dielectric ones? Liquid water beeing both conductive (when carrying ions of other substances) and strong dielectric must be quite attracted to ice crystals - so presence of icy surface in a room should decrease humidity abruptly. I guess that was quite obvious, ha?. OTOH, there is something that isn't so obvious and should be yet determined: does ice (and snow) clear metals' dust and vapor from the air more eficiently then, say, fog and rain? Snow/frost scrubber filters, anyone?
Also, does that mean that water freezes faster between plates of the charged capacitor (clear water without impurities, of course, otherwise capacitor would be shorted) orienting molecules even more orderly and putting up resistance to their rotation? Then we could freeze thin films of water almost instantly, or make ice stronger, if needed (for temporary constructions) by arming it with conductive (and negative charged?) wires.
I've been thinking about that... latency is quite relative. In semiduplex voice connections, such as ham or CB radio or any other where you and other party share the same channel, you have PTT button that clearly puts boundary around each voice message. This kind of communication never appears much more discomfortable (compared to two-way telephone) to participants, because they are mentally prepared to shape their conversation into messages accordingly. OTOH, I have noticed that in telephone converasations, parties are forced to talk alternatively (except for short mhm-s or yes-s, which sole purpose is that of which "ACK" or "RR" have in data transfer), even without having to push PTT (Push-To-Talk) button, because it is very hard to talk and listen (and understand) simultaneously.
Therefore (=COMMERCIAL IDEA ALERT=), service providers maybe shouldn't always jump hoops and procrustinate existing technology to accomodate unreasonable customers' demands and habits. There clearly IS a space for VoIP "voice-grams" or "voice-IM" service, that could go even over satelite IP, it just must be marketed diferently then "IP telephony" and perhaps needs "two-way radio" mics, with PTT button (or common mics but with Vox function in software) and indication that message ended ("channel clear", "other party switched to 'receive' ", etc... or just ubiquituous 'Roger'/'Over' protocol). Even better, this chunks of conversation can be compressed as whole before sending, which eases handling (no need to maintain high sampling/IP packets rate to ensure quality).
Imagine cellular service based on this idea. It should have much better thruput then existing one. Why, the biggest step is have/have not difference. Either I can call, for instance, towing service when my car is broken on highway, or I can not. Other differences are less important. Cell phones success was essentially in that they gave us exactly that increased security and instant two-way in-touch capability. Asking that it closely resemble landline telephone service is, IMHO, asking too much and too wasteful. Same goes for IP voice comms. Most people can talk faster then type and some can listen faster then read.
Besides, natural gas ( Methan, CH4 )doesn't have to come from fossil deposits - it can be obtained in biodigestors, as byproduct of processing organic vaste (IANA Enviromental Engineer, but perhaps even in process of cleaning city "brown water" before returning it back to rivers), making it completely renewable source.
..."Lost passengers from recent plane crash in swamp still searched for. Rescue teams blame 'unreliable flying microrobots that often suddenly fail and lose contact with base station' "...
...."More and more frogs and other small insectvore animals in swamp found dead from unexplained internal bleeding"...
(*snip to "environmental issues" *)
True. But, if they don't forbid writing programms and sharing text files with other users, you can create virtual machine *in it* and I don't think treacherous computer will be inteligent enaugh to analyze what your programs do. You'll still have to take a performance hit, though.
But it is just a quickfix and unreliable solution, still having us on mercy of evil tyrants. Hacking will have to move to hardware. To further the rationale of the GNU project, if you cannot be free without free OS to run your free programs, even moreso, in days which are knocking to our doors, when your hardware is your jailer and denunciator, not your tool, to pursue our freedom and happyness (even at price of taking another performance hit) we will have to create new, free hardware-design computers based on FPGAs or whatever electronics which is still not locked by some enslaver. It will be steep slope to climb, but I expect it will revolutionalise the realm of hardware like what FOSS did for software. Surely none can expect all this people and all the movements for digital freedoms will not just "disband and go home" when treacherous computing reign begin.
Big SW and "content" lost a significant piece of cake recently, now HW moguls are due to get their part of punishment for siding with "evil side". But, if darkness ever fall on everything and they find a way to squeeze even programmable chips' manufacturers' o o into -][- and force them to sell only to "trusted end-product" manufacturers, I think I'll become a luddit or at least make sure I don't feed them, even if it means abstaining from using technology. They can have it their way eventually, but without me (or my money).
Then there is gapping hole in protection of rights. In fact, then rights are not rights that protect someone, but list of can't do-s for just one specific player - the government. Those restrictions were ment to "level the field" because it is assumed that state always has an uneven, overwhelming power upon any individual. But, the world is full of inequalities and bullying "the small guy", so nailing down only the one on the very top of list of potential purpotrators does very little to help.
...") could push the law against unauthorised use of certain kinds of clothes, lingeries or "toys", hair colours, phrases or doing *certain things* in *certain way*, "because it hurts their profits, as customers are using their services less and less, because customers' partners are illegally providing the same for, in some cases, even no payment at all!(Where is this world heading!)" - something that affects and criminalises certain (very) private aspects of individuals' lives.
What is worse (and a bit new, regarding the times when the system was designed), today certain individuals or private groups can indeed "take out" the state itself, by corrupting or otherwise subduing elected officials and officers, or by playing restrictions of state power against the state. That applies essentially to organised crime syndicates but not only to them. What is the difference between the mob families alliance and various "Industry Associations"? Given enaugh lobbying power, wiseguys could also dictate laws in their own benefit, laws that would make their actions smoother legal and even assisted by law enforcment. All that is needed is to put all the blame on the victim.
For instance, fictional(?) GIAA ("Gambling Industry Association of America") could push the law making any attempt of the casino customers (players) to level the odds a felony. That would be equivalent to DMCA - something that is significant only to someones' special interests, with that interest beeing morraly objectional no less (against the "fairness"), now is a law that bonds everyone.
Or, PIAA("Prostitution
WELL, HOW IS IT ESSENTIALLY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT OTHER -IAAS DO? (please look further then just "they don't do anything illegal")
Well, I ment that just as a quick fix, a means to use ready-made legacy tools. It is just a taught experiment to display the principle. When it comes specifically to soldering, modern technology using lightweight components, "rework", already depend on adhesion more then they do on gravity. You print the solder paste on the board, position and glue components over, then bake all that in the oven. As the solder paste melts, it spreads to neighbouring copper and tin surfaces and bonds them as it cools down (we can overcome the lack of convection using fans). It works even upside down (i.e. when assembling modules with components placed on both sides of the board), in spite gravity, here, on the bottom of gravity well, so odds are good it will work fine in low G too.
I can hear bats' high pitched chirps outdoors... but I can't claim with my face straight that it is ultrasound, though. Bats used to fly thru my windows into the room often, circle the room avoiding obstacles (and us) just fine, but I never heard or otherwise "felt" their sonar, even on such small distance.
Claiming that one can not only directly feel weak fast changing EM fields (light and IR heat excluded!) but no less then also feel the difference in their spectral distribution is just too much of a quackery!
OTOH, he may be honest but barking at wrong tree. When electric power is down, it is not surprising to feel a relief.
Now, there, I am probably not the only one who can say that prolonged exposure to various electric equipment produced, barely audible, sounds (especially high pitch, although hum too) make me feel some of the alleged symptoms. Right now, I hear quite loudly my and/or my coworkers CRT monitor(s) (high voltage transformer ferrite core - magnetostrictive material) and it gives me very unpleasent feeling in my neck. Similar goes for cooling fans hum. And, last but not least, most (cheap) capacitors' dielectrics are piezoelectric materials, so it may happen that some of the HF noise that came from mains "beats" with circuit-generated noise and result is sometimes in audible range.
In last century (give or take a half of century) the noise signature has changed greatly. We have not adapted to that. It seems that authorities (lawmakers) are not aware of magnitude of stress that is imposed on us by noise which is not high in loudness, but just constant and unpleasent/annoying.
Better understanding of the noise phenomenon, better design of electric (electronic) equipment and better health standards should make things bareable. Before anyone invests grands into mains filtering, they should consider good antiphones (both earplugs and earshells), better acoustic insulation for equipment suspected of producing noise and as much time spending outdoors, as far from "funny" sounds as possible.
Regionalised Internet would be just a phase in rebuilding it again as peer-to-peer connected confederation of national networks. I guess it would become a lot like international telephone network - the location of servers would be explicit, prefixed or suffixed with country ID, not "virtual" like today. Each country would be forced, in a way, to complete national network graph and interconnect all local ISPs. The borders would arise, customs boots (firewalls/gateways) will be placed and perhaps the customs taxes imposed on traffic of intangible goods. It will be shocking return to reality - unlike The Internet, The World is not one, not yet and perhaps even will not ever be. Now The World wants to reshape The Internet to its own image (and the other way around, too, but The Internet does not have real, direct power). Nevertheless, those countries who keep their Internet connected, open and unrestricted, will have huge advantage in development and economy over those who strangle it in order to squeeze money out of it, or to prevent social changes. Whenever there is worth going from point A to point B and from point B to point A, the jurisdictions of A, B or both will want their cut in it, probably under excuse of "assuring national security and souvereignity, protecting the innocent, ... etc.". Restricting access and traffic is one of the oldest known means to do so.
That would be complicated and heavy for a passenger plane, but no worries, I was just making fun of the proposition for long, very slow deceleration which is generally a bad idea for passenger transport, not specifically in air travel. In fact, airplanes usually decelerate by circling (a bit like ski-jumpers after the touchdown) or by increasing attack angle of the wing (nose up), so that vector of your inertia goes into the seat and deceleration is usualy done in several, separated by pauses, relatively abrupt phases (so that balance sensor in inner ear does not get confused).
The gravity, if needed, could be substituted with centrifugal force, at least on a small scale (i.e. imagine rotating automatic soldering bench, where you remotely control soldering iron and grips or tweezers, with visual feedback coming from "above" - a radial-mounted camera closer to the center then the bench is). If gravity is needed for just a short period of time, then a simple pendulum will do (partial rotation), or perhaps an in-line accelerating/decelerating setup.
15 minutes of acceleration is fine, but 15 minutes(!) of deceleration will make most people puke!
OK, points taken, especially "blind typing" and LaTeX, although there is (yet another) learning curve involved in both of that skills. OTOH, external information storage is hardly a main point of taking notes. Usualy, you (should) have good books or lectures for information (knowledge) content. IMHO, the point of taking notes is in feedback from memory back into "creation" (hands) - and that on its own includes inner feedback loop eye-memory. That may be lacking from fast input method which do not display "end product" at once (LaTeX is plain text encoding of formulas, isn't it? Not a WYSIWYG ) or where visual feedback is completely absent (if you type looking neither to keyboard nor screen). Then, the graphs - switching between modes (text/graphics), embelishing the notes and "formating the pages" all goes straightforward using paper and pen (but I admit that could be a habit-caused bias).
Something closest to best notetaker's application is not some kind of advanced text editor but ubiqituous simple bitmap drawing accessory app found in every desktop OS - it enables typing text into the picture, too, and using the pen device you can even handwrite. Today, our document-creating paradigm is mostly fixed symbol set text-oriented because:
a) most of the most documents in fact IS text
b) resulting files are generally smaller if each page is not a bunch of points (text - at least 5x8 bitmap in seven bit symbol) and
c) searching and indexing is more straightforward and doesn't include hard tasks such as recognizing symbols from pictures.
Historically it was far, far less expensive in resources to embed pictures into text instead of vice versa. Today, it is not so unreasonable.
Now, from bitmap editor to ultimate document editor there are some, hopefuly not to large, steps. If only (yeepie! the specs!!):
- text could hang in picture as embedded object that can be reedited and formated again after initial input (usualy not possible in simple graphic editors) and if
- LaTeX could be recognized and displayed as formulas on the fly (you may have typos, you know), and if
- all that would be backed by combined stylus & keyboard input, I guess that would combine the best of both pen&paper and computer notetaking. And, if it's not asking to much,
- text and graphics blocks (or any random position on the page you choose) should be capable of beeing anchoring points for audio and/or video recordings. Then you could be very relaxed in the class because you could always complete your notes - text blocks, drawings, formulas, etc. later, from attached recordings (and use text input for i.e. your comments or questions that occured to you while listening to the lecture - well, perhaps
- there should be a "post-it note" tool to add student's comments to any text or graphical part or block of the document).
I agree, taking notes does boost learning and although you could type notes into the text-editor, pen(s and pencils) are far less constraining and faster "input and storage devices", they free the mind from "using the software" (they free your hands and mind follows), give you opportunity of instantenious (as fast as your thoughts fly) switching between fonts and alphabets, size, bolding, underlining, writing in cursive, inserting special characters and icons, adding pictures (drawings) without waiting for drawing program to open... and everything is saved instanteniously! Computers may someday (and should, as soon as possible, wink, wink!) enable us with same options as paper does. But that time has not come yet.
Oh, I forgot...diesel AND jet fuel, too.
Why am I proposing burning it again?
Well, if there was some substantial use for obtained C (or CO), the process would be self-sustainable and we could legislatively force (like we did for CFCs) worldwide use of "green"-made carbon-based chemical compounds in industry and transportation. There would be economical incentive for this facilities to be built, because they would produce something usable and merchantable. Whoever builds them, would make profit from them. Perhaps even greatest CO2 emitters would find trapping and selling (or exchanging for discount on fuel they buy from them) their byproduct CO2 to this factories profitable. On the second thought, the thermoelectric powerstations fueled by solar-made biofuel farms/factories would make a closed system (not depending on local atmospheric concentration of CO2) and open-end biofuel factories would probably supply only the transportation.
And then, to net extract CO2 from the cycle, we need to buy (alas, from taxes) as much of the caught carbon as we can afford and stockpile it, put it in the ground where oil used to be, or char it without air to get the solid substance that we can burry or sink down to the ocean bottom. That part wouldn't be suported by economics, but at least first half of the job (catching it back from the air) very well would.
Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, planting trees is not a solution per se. The carbon cycle may slow down a little, but eventually, all the carbon in leafs and trunks will end up as CO2 in atmosphere again.
Dynamically, some of it is retained (new trees hopefuly grow, as old die and rot) in forests, but forest fires can dramatically change that.
Besides, some experimental research had shown that plants have upper limit on CO2 atmospheric concentration they can handle. After that limit is breached, photosinthesys stops...
The only direction is to think of a way to speed up sinking of CO2 to the bottom of the ocean rifts and back under the Earth's crust.
Out of the hat, it could go as follows:
- pressurise and liquidify air (first step in obtaining industrial nitrogen, too).
- do fractional evaporation of liquid air and extract the CO2 fraction.
- pump the taken out CO2 to the ocean bed.
or else:
- use fast growing algae to tie carbon into biomass. If nescessary, engineer the strain that can handle high concentration of CO2, then feed it with CO2- enriched (use gas centrifuges - CO2 is one of the heaviest components of air) air in controlled environment (hydroponics)
- harvest algae and carbonize them by anaerob baking in (i.e. solar) ovens.
- compress and burry or sink thus obtained charcoal.
but first: stop pumping natural carbon reserves into atmosphere (burning fossil fuels)! We don't need to stop using fire, but we must stop adding ancient carbon into short (atmosphere-biosphere) carbon cycle.
With all the recent advances in genetics, why can't we have an highly efficient single-cell photosynthetic lipid (oil) factory little friend? Put them in the glass tank, conduct light to the bottom of it using mirrors, let the little buggers swim down so that they don't get stuck in the oil layer forming on top of the tank, pump the CO2-enriched air thru the water (or do it separately, not to stirr the water) so that they have what to eat... and just let the oil pour from the top. Voila - diesel fuel at your disposal!