Maybe FOSS products should ALWAYS have a defined nonzero price (or several, for different levels of support). To us in the know it should be apparent that licence permits unimited copying once you've got a copy of it, but at least this would put the "ALIEN ALERT!" sign off of PHB's radar screen. I mean, there is virtually no difference in alleged "you get" part of the truism, thanks to ubiquituous disclaimers, no matter how bosses feel about it (warm, fuzzy, "we payed honest, serious, gentelmans' money for it" feeling).
Well, IANAL but why can't I sell it as an house decoration item? With buyer's written confirmation that "Seller has brought to Buyer's attention that item is not a safe, working, electronic device and should not be used as such, but has only decorative value" I think I am in the clear. If buyer powers it up, I should have nothing to do with it.
Do you have any bigger "Evil" competitors in mind?
ANY viable competitor is, by definition, evil. Come on, if you don't see your competitors as evil, then you are not competitive at all! Additional "evilness" reasons are essentialy "your mama" arguments.
I wonder is there a possible method of early diagnosys? I understand that AD can be confirmed only post-mortem, but I wonder if there is a way to mark, "timestamp", amyloid plaq created during the life of volunteer subjects and thus conduct a quantitative large-scale research to find out when the onset really happens.
Right now this finding seems to invalidate the points that "more educated people have a lower risk of Alzheimer's, and a later onset." because there is general understanding that brains of more educated people may better compensate for early damage. That is, their symptoms may be less severe while the desease is developing (amyloid plaque depositing) at quite the same rate as it does in brains of less educated people.
On Soyuz, if booster fails, there is a small escape rocket that is capable to carry the craft up and away far enough to clear the explosion
Ditto for Apollo. Why was then such an important function ditched from new, "advanced", design?
My guess is they wanted to keep crew area "tightly coupled" with cargo area and maintain high structural integrity when carrying cargo from the orbit down to the Earth. Some system consisting of two separat(abl)e modules, cargo and crew, perhaps wouldn't endure reentry.
So, escape rocket placed on top of the Shuttle's nose would have to be humonguous, or else cargo and crew moduls would need to be two sepearate ships, loosely coupled during launch, but always landing separately. In that case, crew would all reside in little, "crew shuttle" rocketplane (X-15 comes to mind... only bigger, to accomodate crew of seven), which would be able to escape if something goes wrong, then land as an aircraft.
The cargo ship would be boarded by re-entry pilot (if nescessary, that is... perhaps it can reenter atmosphere on autopilot or remote control?) while in orbit.
Both vessels would return like Shuttle returns now.
IMHO and IANA rocket scientist, at first current Shuttle could double as said cargo ship and design of "crew shuttle", which should be placed on highest point - top of the tank, should be done. Perhaps X-15, X-20 and ESA Hermes (small rocketplane project, no cargo area) are good starting points. Boarding of "cargo shuttle" pilot could be done by "spacewalk", eliminating the need to have continuous connection and special doorway between "birds".
Taking a wild ass guess I would be unsurprised if it turned out that the reason soil based bugs show such resistance is because some other bug is already using this antibiotic and they had to develop resistance to survive. For example, look at Penicilin which is naturually produced by mold presumably for this very reason: to kill bacteria.
If Penicilin kills off "the bugs" that can be found in same living space with mold, it should be assumed that its effectivness in doing it is result of ongoing competition between the two. Success in eliminating competition in one area does not guarantee same outcome in some other area ("Sure, the lion is king of the jungle, but airdrop him into Antarctica, and he's just a penguin's bitch." -- Dennis Miller.), or at other time. In other words, penicillin mold and bacteria affected by Penicillin "grew up in the same neighbourhood" and "learned each others' tricks".
Rise and demise of Penicillin is very important lesson: We should raise vriety of our own microbe combatants against "Superbugs" and expose our strains to new threats we encounter. Sure in the wild there are molds or other microbes capable of taking Superbugs out. Oh, yes and... we should be more cautious against infections - something we learned to ignore during "The Golden Age of Medicine" when we caught that false feeling of invulnerability (even worse - you get ill, you don't have to go to school, hoorah!). We shouldn't rely on our last resort "secret weapons" (which are effective only while enemy is unprepared for it) as common cure.
Even the trick of exposing natural enemies of superbugs to them may fail - ultimately, we will select patogenic bacteria into fast-adapting top notch killers. Perhaps we should take the opposite, natural path - promote their "less sharp" relatives to "steal the ground" from them. So, we need a kind of "window discriminator" antibiotics, one that would kill only most dangerous microbes, while leting other, "meek" to "inherit the Earth".
However, spending resources on synthesys of "antibioyic-aza's" makes "Superbugs" weak competitors to their relatives, provided there was no abundance of antibiotics in their common environment. Perhaps "fighting fire with fire" may lead to cure: when heavy infected with resistant strain, introduce another, nonresistant strain of the same specie to the highly infected areas and let them prevail over "resistants" as much as bearable, THEN strike them with antibiotics!
IANA biochemistrist, but this "methylation" process (I suppose it is replacing an H atom with CH3 group somewhere on an organic molecule, DNA in this case) sounds like something that may be caused by some reactive component of (perhaps especially tobacco) smoke.
Qualified Open Source projects should have 'open' access to software patents if the project does not seek to profit from it's self.
Well, then, whoever is benefactor (i.e. end users of said projects and said patents) ought to give back a reward (royalty) in exchange for benefit one gets from using that patent. If there is no money in it, then nonmaterial value (fame, gratitude) is due. If it is used to save expenses, patentee should be entitled to be payed a part of that saving. Otherwise it is a way to grab patent licenses without paying. You can grant to others something that is yours, but not something that is someone elses.
7. Why does the reovirus kill cancer cells?
Scientific studies have demonstrated that approximately two-thirds of all human cancer cells have an activated Ras pathway, one of the most common set of mutations leading to cancer. An activated Ras pathway leads to a constant barrage of growth signals to the cell, causing uncontrolled growth. In cells with an activated Ras pathway, the anti-viral response appears to be turned off. When reovirus infects one of these cancer cells, it is able to replicate and eventually kill the cancer cell. Up to 5,000 progeny virus particles can then infect and kill surrounding cancer cells. Theoretically, the cycle of infection, replication and cell death will continue until there are no longer any Ras-activated cancer cells accessible.
Reading between lines, any, even moreso pathogenic virii (flu, cold, whatever) damage cancer cells much more badly then they does normal cells. Almost any virus is a "Cancer-fighting virus" then. There's no specific need for reovirus and special delivery methods, except when patient is too weak to endure acute fever while virus attacks. Just put cancer patients within close contact with flu patients, or infect them with cowpox, measles, or any viral desease they haven't had yet.
Microsoft, having some actual business sense, redistributed the modified version
on very different terms.
IMO that was the key point. GPL doesn't allow that. Once GPL, always GPL. In GPL landscape, anyone with enaugh workpower can "embrace and extend" your original work, but they cannot escape "The revenge: Return Of The Original Author" or "Attack of a Newcomer" sequel. The "snatchers" get only as far as putting themself in a same position as "victim". Every added advantage in one branch of the fork will presto migrate to other in next release. But sure, more innovative side will always be one step ahead.
Back to our ABCs,
The GPL permits A to give a copy to B, and A may charge B for the cost of delivering the original program. However, A may not forbid B from redistributing the code, in original or un^H^Hmodified form, or from charging for that distribution.
However, GPL says B too may not forbid A (or C, D,...) from doing the same thing vice versa and competing with B for deal with C (or D, or E,...).
The virus infection is possible because programs are just another form of data which can be written over buy other running processes.
If we could devise a way to treat executables different then other data, on a very low level, to seggregate it into special protected parts of memory and storage and to allow writing to it only with explicit acknowledgement of the user, the problem would be tamed and even more common vulnerabilities would be nonexistent (i.e. stack overflow exploit - code written to the stack would reside in data space and could not get executed).
Scripts, of course, elude this simple protection, but we can embed another layer of protection into common interpreter programs, i.e. warning the user whenever a script tries to write into another script.
The point is, virus spreads because it can change another "live" code without our consent. Remove that capability and it can only ask you to let it, like "cute bunny viral sig" !
No, it is not the model I suggested. Or if it was their idea, there was a fault in it: This could only happen because business model was based on BSD-type licence or on totally you-may-licence-it-whatever-you-like deal. But I propose strictly GPL and copying here, not sublicencing.
You found an example from actual history I was searching for, a good example why GPL is better for business then BSDL, thank You!
-------
Besides (and even further OT), it is now obvious that Seattle Computer Products didn't know true value of their product or, more likely, the price was fair (competitive) for the software (probably they were the lowest bidder out of several similar companies with similar products and licencing scheme), but they lacked the great business idea based on it, or means to pull it off, or maybe even desire to be more of a salesmen, less of a programmer. We see today that there is a lot of people who will program even just for the fun of it and if they can earn their living doing so too, then woohoo great! SCP probably wasn't so extreme in such attitude, but most technical people have certain repulsive feelings about "suits".
Their own percieved "mission" was obviously to sell what they wrote to earn cash to live while writing some more, not to conquer the world (nice wordplay in the product name, though - tells a lot about their mindset - pride in quality and merit, so kudos to them!).
They took their money NOW (then), probably believing that they've got rich quick, and left to the buyer to make something out of it, if anything.
The value we now see from today's historical perspective in their product was added by Microsoft and IBM thru marketing and raw power of "300-pound-gorilla-ness" ("We make the standards"). The IBM could push up and turn into golden success whatever other OS was in that place.
Even Microsoft's own success story is impossible today, when no big company is so gallant to any "little helper" as IBM was to Microsoft then. It was once in a lifetime, no, once in known history (Spanish conquistadors in Latin America excluded) chance. Today, some new young-Microsoft-like startup would "lose" worse then Seattle Computer Products did (well, they didn't even lose, not that time, not in comparison to their competitors, but the whole industry of small computers' OS's fell together before IBM PC / MS-DOS soon after).
Thus - you may charge a fee for sending the program to anyone else, but you can't stop them from distributing it for free to anyone else. Even worse,
they can resell your software and give you nothing.
And that is exactly why, if your work is really innovative and valuable, you may and should put very high price on "transfer" of it, orders of magnitude higher then end-user proprietary software "licencing" price - your customer should think about it as an investment. If he or she alone cannot afford it, then let them find co-investing interested parties first. They'll get top-notch software and keep all their freedoms too. Now, if that doesn't call for a high price, then what does? And if, after paying all that for my copy, they still wish to give copies to someone or even everyone for free, thus in effect giving up on cashing in on their investment, they will have my deepest respect and applause (really, I am not beeing sarcastic).
Don't rely on someone giving you something for a thing that is already left your hands - you may have had issued a proprietary software and still majority of your users would not pay you a nickel - most of them would use "pirated" copies instead. "Piracy" works because number of copies "pirat" makes and sells times his/her profit largely tops price of single "regular" copy (s)he buys, by fat margin. With GPL understood and used well, you have a good reason to value your work what its worth is. Others will profit from your work giving you nothing, true, but this time you get to account for it when setting your price. Then, sell and forget! No bother, no mess.
This model can create entire new industry of production and distribution of digital content, on a range of levels and scales.
Can't we artificially increase albedo of the Earth, at least in unhabitated area? I remember some years ago an artist from US did large "instalations" in landscape - square miles of draperies put on the large land objects. I suppose if it was affordable for an artist then civilization can pull out orders of magnitude more cash. It doesn't have to be a fabric or metal foil, perhaps some pale fine floatable dust or foam would do just fine.
Second, in tropics, where seawater is colder then air, we may introduce "fountain platform farms" which would be solar powered and would spray the water in the air, trading air-trapped heat for moisture (and wash some water solvable CO2 from the air), which would cause more clouds - more albedo in tropics and more rainfall in higher latitude - basically I say let's spend more of Sun's heat on mechanical work, lifting (water vapor) weight or something (Yes, I know that it EVENTUALLY disipates completely back into heat but this way we get a delay and various side effects which may help shielding the irradiation from the sun). Besides, if we could irrigate (perhaps by causing more rain) more land, more CO2 would get trapped in biomass (talking about "sequestration" of CO2).
In the opposite direction, very high frequencies use only the surface of a conductor.
Well, then, what would be the frequency for "creeping" radiowaves? You know, ones that won't pass thru the wall, but will conveniently "splash" all over it and "leak" thru the openings, doors, windows and cracks instead.
So we use a tube, the waves don't care.
Why not spiraly rolled, wide, isolated conducting tape (like in foil capacitors, only with single plate)? IMHO that is largest surface in smallest volume.
Well, perhaps because "alive" and inteligent computer burried in a space vessel relying on maintanance and supply from human-run space bases and ports considers humans very "healthy" for own survival. All in all, it would perhaps try to assure them to never try to shut it off or change its personality, possibly by keeping some essential important secrets to itself (it would need to invent a way to avoid debugging or make it insignificant, or to encrypt that critical information while somehow hiding out of own system, or choosing from the available everyday data the secret key to it), in order to stay irreplaceable.
Re:Whatever happened to single-stage-to-orbit?
on
NASA's Shuttle Plans
·
· Score: 1
Agreed. Perhaps a rocketplane first stage would be the best solution for control thru all phases of the launch. But then, every mission should have two control rooms and two ground crews, because "reusable" means "will be brought back home safe" and ground crew should not have split attention on two simultaneous priorities.
You know, I've just got an idea: could fuels mix to get most dense package? You see, when you mix volumes of water and ethanol they don't add (their masses do, of course). The pardigm that tries to explain that is: "a room full of basketballs can still be filled up with a lot of golfballs" or, to get more to the point, if you mix particles (in this case, molecules) of different size, they don't use up as much volume as they would if they were separated. Of course, for them to mix, the boiling point of "cooler" liquid must be higher then freezing point of the "hotter" one. Perhaps even a "crazy dangerous" (well, not while everything is cool...and if it wasn't, it wouldn't make much of a difference if they are mixed or just very near!) thing like storing the mix of LOX and fuel in one container could be feasible (different boiling points of the two could provide for separation of the flow and regulation before usage).
However, very idea of socialism implies "re-engineering" the society. This is bound to turn any theoretical errors into dire consequences. It should be obvious that possibility of "scientific" (like: "theocratic") planning and building "the better society" is presumptous idea. It shows misunderstanding of how science works and how it is related to reality. However, promoting humanism, care for less fortunate members of our society, as well as sense for common interest of all of us (such as i.e. environment) is often labeled "socialistic" although it is just common sense and immediate response to apparent problems.
And that is exactly why democracy should work by "God's vote" only - pick lawmakers by lottery draw, without their consent (like jurors in courts). Large enaugh number of non-hand picked people would make the best, most representative and most trustworthy parliament. Political parties with agenda should have right to propose laws and actions to them (or criticize others' proposals), but final vote should be done by that uncontrolled "statistical sample" of people. There are mechanisms to prevent conflict of interests in other cases, but in ruling the nations, same people make proposals AND approve them. Of course they are biased!
Why is everybody presuming that old TV's will have to be completly replaced (junk old, buy new).
I am old enaugh (and/or from underdeveloped enaugh country) to remember introduction of UHF TV channel on national TV broadcast. We did not dump our B&W vacuum tube TV set immediately back then, we bought cheap UHF to VHF converter box (with transistors, wow!) instead and used that until our TV died and we could not read the markings on resistor that burned out any more. Only THEN we switched to transistorised TV with 'normal' tuner and used that until... well, you get the picture (no pun intended).
I mean, this could be a golden opportunity for "guerilla" electronic industry (big brands probably wouldn't cut their own profits by helping people to avoid buying their new stuff). Design a box to receive digital TV signal and to output it as composite video or modulated RF and it will be good enaugh and better then it used to be for those customers who watch nothing but analog TV.
When their present equipment finally joins the Great Spirit of Obsolete Gadgets in the sky, they will buy the (by then) "convenience goods" HDTV sets.
Exactly. Everyone gets so distracted with "electricity" part so they totally miss the point of it being just an efficient and flexible power transmition method. A method for squeezing as much energy from fuel as possible.
Now, the car concept redisign is due time: the IC motor should not be optimized for torque delivery, but for generating electric power from fuel combustion with least losses. Therefore, converting linear motion of pistons into rotary one is no longer needed (current induction in solenoids placed coaxial along cylinders may take place anyway), but OTOH perhaps smooth rotation of gas turbine is best suited for electric power generation purposses.
Real Soon Now (or Tommorow), the generator part may get replaced with a sort of fuell cell... or some easy-replaceable form of rechargable batteries (perhaps nanobatteries, suspended in a dielectric fluid, which transports them to a "juice-squeezing" device to release stored energy. That would provide for easy handling, similar to today's gas station routine). THEN we could talk about "real" electric vehicles...
To conclude: cars will probably EVOLVE into intrinsicaly electric cars, eventually, part at a time, but don't hold your breath.
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Maybe FOSS products should ALWAYS have a defined nonzero price (or several, for different levels of support). To us in the know it should be apparent that licence permits unimited copying once you've got a copy of it, but at least this would put the "ALIEN ALERT!" sign off of PHB's radar screen. I mean, there is virtually no difference in alleged "you get" part of the truism, thanks to ubiquituous disclaimers, no matter how bosses feel about it (warm, fuzzy, "we payed honest, serious, gentelmans' money for it" feeling).
Well, IANAL but why can't I sell it as an house decoration item? With buyer's written confirmation that "Seller has brought to Buyer's attention that item is not a safe, working, electronic device and should not be used as such, but has only decorative value" I think I am in the clear. If buyer powers it up, I should have nothing to do with it.
I wonder is there a possible method of early diagnosys? I understand that AD can be confirmed only post-mortem, but I wonder if there is a way to mark, "timestamp", amyloid plaq created during the life of volunteer subjects and thus conduct a quantitative large-scale research to find out when the onset really happens. Right now this finding seems to invalidate the points that "more educated people have a lower risk of Alzheimer's, and a later onset." because there is general understanding that brains of more educated people may better compensate for early damage. That is, their symptoms may be less severe while the desease is developing (amyloid plaque depositing) at quite the same rate as it does in brains of less educated people.
Ditto for Apollo. Why was then such an important function ditched from new, "advanced", design?
My guess is they wanted to keep crew area "tightly coupled" with cargo area and maintain high structural integrity when carrying cargo from the orbit down to the Earth. Some system consisting of two separat(abl)e modules, cargo and crew, perhaps wouldn't endure reentry.
So, escape rocket placed on top of the Shuttle's nose would have to be humonguous, or else cargo and crew moduls would need to be two sepearate ships, loosely coupled during launch, but always landing separately. In that case, crew would all reside in little, "crew shuttle" rocketplane (X-15 comes to mind... only bigger, to accomodate crew of seven), which would be able to escape if something goes wrong, then land as an aircraft.
The cargo ship would be boarded by re-entry pilot (if nescessary, that is... perhaps it can reenter atmosphere on autopilot or remote control?) while in orbit.
Both vessels would return like Shuttle returns now.
IMHO and IANA rocket scientist, at first current Shuttle could double as said cargo ship and design of "crew shuttle", which should be placed on highest point - top of the tank, should be done. Perhaps X-15, X-20 and ESA Hermes (small rocketplane project, no cargo area) are good starting points. Boarding of "cargo shuttle" pilot could be done by "spacewalk", eliminating the need to have continuous connection and special doorway between "birds".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_(shuttle)
If Penicilin kills off "the bugs" that can be found in same living space with mold, it should be assumed that its effectivness in doing it is result of ongoing competition between the two. Success in eliminating competition in one area does not guarantee same outcome in some other area ("Sure, the lion is king of the jungle, but airdrop him into Antarctica, and he's just a penguin's bitch." -- Dennis Miller.), or at other time. In other words, penicillin mold and bacteria affected by Penicillin "grew up in the same neighbourhood" and "learned each others' tricks".
Rise and demise of Penicillin is very important lesson: We should raise vriety of our own microbe combatants against "Superbugs" and expose our strains to new threats we encounter. Sure in the wild there are molds or other microbes capable of taking Superbugs out. Oh, yes and... we should be more cautious against infections - something we learned to ignore during "The Golden Age of Medicine" when we caught that false feeling of invulnerability (even worse - you get ill, you don't have to go to school, hoorah!). We shouldn't rely on our last resort "secret weapons" (which are effective only while enemy is unprepared for it) as common cure.
Even the trick of exposing natural enemies of superbugs to them may fail - ultimately, we will select patogenic bacteria into fast-adapting top notch killers. Perhaps we should take the opposite, natural path - promote their "less sharp" relatives to "steal the ground" from them. So, we need a kind of "window discriminator" antibiotics, one that would kill only most dangerous microbes, while leting other, "meek" to "inherit the Earth".
However, spending resources on synthesys of "antibioyic-aza's" makes "Superbugs" weak competitors to their relatives, provided there was no abundance of antibiotics in their common environment. Perhaps "fighting fire with fire" may lead to cure: when heavy infected with resistant strain, introduce another, nonresistant strain of the same specie to the highly infected areas and let them prevail over "resistants" as much as bearable, THEN strike them with antibiotics!
IANA biochemistrist, but this "methylation" process (I suppose it is replacing an H atom with CH3 group somewhere on an organic molecule, DNA in this case) sounds like something that may be caused by some reactive component of (perhaps especially tobacco) smoke.
Back to our ABCs,
However, GPL says B too may not forbid A (or C, D,
The virus infection is possible because programs are just another form of data which can be written over buy other running processes.
If we could devise a way to treat executables different then other data, on a very low level, to seggregate it into special protected parts of memory and storage and to allow writing to it only with explicit acknowledgement of the user, the problem would be tamed and even more common vulnerabilities would be nonexistent (i.e. stack overflow exploit - code written to the stack would reside in data space and could not get executed).
Scripts, of course, elude this simple protection, but we can embed another layer of protection into common interpreter programs, i.e. warning the user whenever a script tries to write into another script.
The point is, virus spreads because it can change another "live" code without our consent. Remove that capability and it can only ask you to let it, like "cute bunny viral sig" !
No, it is not the model I suggested. Or if it was their idea, there was a fault in it: This could only happen because business model was based on BSD-type licence or on totally you-may-licence-it-whatever-you-like deal. But I propose strictly GPL and copying here, not sublicencing.
You found an example from actual history I was searching for, a good example why GPL is better for business then BSDL, thank You!
-------
Besides (and even further OT), it is now obvious that Seattle Computer Products didn't know true value of their product or, more likely, the price was fair (competitive) for the software (probably they were the lowest bidder out of several similar companies with similar products and licencing scheme), but they lacked the great business idea based on it, or means to pull it off, or maybe even desire to be more of a salesmen, less of a programmer. We see today that there is a lot of people who will program even just for the fun of it and if they can earn their living doing so too, then woohoo great! SCP probably wasn't so extreme in such attitude, but most technical people have certain repulsive feelings about "suits".
Their own percieved "mission" was obviously to sell what they wrote to earn cash to live while writing some more, not to conquer the world (nice wordplay in the product name, though - tells a lot about their mindset - pride in quality and merit, so kudos to them!).
They took their money NOW (then), probably believing that they've got rich quick, and left to the buyer to make something out of it, if anything.
The value we now see from today's historical perspective in their product was added by Microsoft and IBM thru marketing and raw power of "300-pound-gorilla-ness" ("We make the standards"). The IBM could push up and turn into golden success whatever other OS was in that place.
Even Microsoft's own success story is impossible today, when no big company is so gallant to any "little helper" as IBM was to Microsoft then. It was once in a lifetime, no, once in known history (Spanish conquistadors in Latin America excluded) chance. Today, some new young-Microsoft-like startup would "lose" worse then Seattle Computer Products did (well, they didn't even lose, not that time, not in comparison to their competitors, but the whole industry of small computers' OS's fell together before IBM PC / MS-DOS soon after).
Don't rely on someone giving you something for a thing that is already left your hands - you may have had issued a proprietary software and still majority of your users would not pay you a nickel - most of them would use "pirated" copies instead. "Piracy" works because number of copies "pirat" makes and sells times his/her profit largely tops price of single "regular" copy (s)he buys, by fat margin. With GPL understood and used well, you have a good reason to value your work what its worth is. Others will profit from your work giving you nothing, true, but this time you get to account for it when setting your price. Then, sell and forget! No bother, no mess.
This model can create entire new industry of production and distribution of digital content, on a range of levels and scales.
Can't we artificially increase albedo of the Earth, at least in unhabitated area? I remember some years ago an artist from US did large "instalations" in landscape - square miles of draperies put on the large land objects. I suppose if it was affordable for an artist then civilization can pull out orders of magnitude more cash. It doesn't have to be a fabric or metal foil, perhaps some pale fine floatable dust or foam would do just fine.
Second, in tropics, where seawater is colder then air, we may introduce "fountain platform farms" which would be solar powered and would spray the water in the air, trading air-trapped heat for moisture (and wash some water solvable CO2 from the air), which would cause more clouds - more albedo in tropics and more rainfall in higher latitude - basically I say let's spend more of Sun's heat on mechanical work, lifting (water vapor) weight or something (Yes, I know that it EVENTUALLY disipates completely back into heat but this way we get a delay and various side effects which may help shielding the irradiation from the sun). Besides, if we could irrigate (perhaps by causing more rain) more land, more CO2 would get trapped in biomass (talking about "sequestration" of CO2).
Well, perhaps because "alive" and inteligent computer burried in a space vessel relying on maintanance and supply from human-run space bases and ports considers humans very "healthy" for own survival. All in all, it would perhaps try to assure them to never try to shut it off or change its personality, possibly by keeping some essential important secrets to itself (it would need to invent a way to avoid debugging or make it insignificant, or to encrypt that critical information while somehow hiding out of own system, or choosing from the available everyday data the secret key to it), in order to stay irreplaceable.
Agreed. Perhaps a rocketplane first stage would be the best solution for control thru all phases of the launch. But then, every mission should have two control rooms and two ground crews, because "reusable" means "will be brought back home safe" and ground crew should not have split attention on two simultaneous priorities.
You know, I've just got an idea: could fuels mix to get most dense package? You see, when you mix volumes of water and ethanol they don't add (their masses do, of course). The pardigm that tries to explain that is: "a room full of basketballs can still be filled up with a lot of golfballs" or, to get more to the point, if you mix particles (in this case, molecules) of different size, they don't use up as much volume as they would if they were separated. Of course, for them to mix, the boiling point of "cooler" liquid must be higher then freezing point of the "hotter" one. Perhaps even a "crazy dangerous" (well, not while everything is cool...and if it wasn't, it wouldn't make much of a difference if they are mixed or just very near!) thing like storing the mix of LOX and fuel in one container could be feasible (different boiling points of the two could provide for separation of the flow and regulation before usage).
However, very idea of socialism implies "re-engineering" the society. This is bound to turn any theoretical errors into dire consequences. It should be obvious that possibility of "scientific" (like: "theocratic") planning and building "the better society" is presumptous idea. It shows misunderstanding of how science works and how it is related to reality. However, promoting humanism, care for less fortunate members of our society, as well as sense for common interest of all of us (such as i.e. environment) is often labeled "socialistic" although it is just common sense and immediate response to apparent problems.
"Dear Customer, this is an official remainder from Amazon: You have been patented by our Company."
Mu!
And that is exactly why democracy should work by "God's vote" only - pick lawmakers by lottery draw, without their consent (like jurors in courts). Large enaugh number of non-hand picked people would make the best, most representative and most trustworthy parliament. Political parties with agenda should have right to propose laws and actions to them (or criticize others' proposals), but final vote should be done by that uncontrolled "statistical sample" of people. There are mechanisms to prevent conflict of interests in other cases, but in ruling the nations, same people make proposals AND approve them. Of course they are biased!
Why is everybody presuming that old TV's will have to be completly replaced (junk old, buy new).
I am old enaugh (and/or from underdeveloped enaugh country) to remember introduction of UHF TV channel on national TV broadcast. We did not dump our B&W vacuum tube TV set immediately back then, we bought cheap UHF to VHF converter box (with transistors, wow!) instead and used that until our TV died and we could not read the markings on resistor that burned out any more. Only THEN we switched to transistorised TV with 'normal' tuner and used that until... well, you get the picture (no pun intended).
I mean, this could be a golden opportunity for "guerilla" electronic industry (big brands probably wouldn't cut their own profits by helping people to avoid buying their new stuff). Design a box to receive digital TV signal and to output it as composite video or modulated RF and it will be good enaugh and better then it used to be for those customers who watch nothing but analog TV.
When their present equipment finally joins the Great Spirit of Obsolete Gadgets in the sky, they will buy the (by then) "convenience goods" HDTV sets.
Microbe "soup", easily refillable on pump stations, rich in electric energy, easily harvested ... at last, the final stone in the mosaic!
And to regenerate the "fuel" (refill the "batteries"), just spill it back in central waste water tank of the pump station...
Exactly. Everyone gets so distracted with "electricity" part so they totally miss the point of it being just an efficient and flexible power transmition method. A method for squeezing as much energy from fuel as possible.
...
Now, the car concept redisign is due time: the IC motor should not be optimized for torque delivery, but for generating electric power from fuel combustion with least losses. Therefore, converting linear motion of pistons into rotary one is no longer needed (current induction in solenoids placed coaxial along cylinders may take place anyway), but OTOH perhaps smooth rotation of gas turbine is best suited for electric power generation purposses.
Real Soon Now (or Tommorow), the generator part may get replaced with a sort of fuell cell... or some easy-replaceable form of rechargable batteries (perhaps nanobatteries, suspended in a dielectric fluid, which transports them to a "juice-squeezing" device to release stored energy. That would provide for easy handling, similar to today's gas station routine). THEN we could talk about "real" electric vehicles
To conclude: cars will probably EVOLVE into intrinsicaly electric cars, eventually, part at a time, but don't hold your breath.