I think you have to be consistent with the application of this mindset. If it's not ok for consumers to shop around for countries with the most convenient laws, then it should not be ok for companies to do the same thing. That means no more situating factories in countries where working hours and conditions would breach your own laws.
If it were any other country, the UN would probably be holding an emergency meeting to discuss possible actions, including sanctions. There's not much point doing that though, since the US could just veto any resolutions. It's a bit hypocritical to be opposing the spread of Nuclear weapons, while at the same time announcing your intentions to weaponize space.
Most of the attention focuses on popular stuff like Word Processors and Paint Programs. Most programmers are not employed doing that sort of thing though. They are writing boring bespoke stock control or trading systems that will probably never attract any open source attention.
An Iraqi Kurd I used to work with trained me in the finer details of Arabic.
Us Kut = Shut Up (Pronounce both U's like oo in book)
Kalib bin Kalib = Dog, son of a Dog
Kul Hara = Eat Shit (again, pronouce the u like oo in book. Also use some phlegm when saying hara)
Kul Noona = Eat my bogies (or Boogers if your American) (Slightly Childish but fun)
Drexler really pioneered the whole idea of nanotechnology yet he has been sidelined and the term has has now be hijacked by people who want to funnel money into their own companies.
Use Model Aircraft Gas Turbines
on
Rocket Men
·
· Score: 1
Given that small TurboJet engines are commonly available for model aircraft these days, is it now feasible to build a TuboJet pack rather than a dangerous hydrogen peroxide rocket pack?
The average weight of a man is about 190 pounds.
BMV jets (http://www.bvmjets.com/) supply a turbojet that can provide 50lbs of Thrust.
With 2 banks of 3 JetCat P-200's strapped to your back you would have 300lb of Thrust to play with. That should be enough to cover the weight of the man, the engines and a reasonable amount of fuel.
Or is there some flaw to this idea? Do these model jet engines only generate 50lbs of thrust when they are travelling at some speed through the air?
That's why it's very important to demonize the Iraqi resistance. Although 90% of the attacks (according to a recent DIA report) are directed at US Forces, most of the coverage is devoted to attacks on civilians. The resistance is largely ignored compared to the reporting on secterian violence.
Most Iraqis want US forces to withdraw and 61% also approve of attacks on US forces. Interestingly Shia, Sunni and Kurdish groups all hate Osama bin laden.
[i]..on battery charge will run for 15 to 20 years..[/i]
They've only just corrected it to hours rather than years. Also, they have confused power with energy content. They say it offers 10 times the power of a battery, when what they actually mean is that it offers 10 times the energy content. I expect more from a science article.
It never ceases to amaze me the lengths governments will go to in order to protect the profits of companies threatened by cheaper foreign imports. They even go so far as violating WTO rules and getting into trouble over it. Yet, when workers complain that they cannot compete with cheaper foreign labour, they are told that it is an unfortunate reality and that they have to adapt. The reason for this disparity is that the workforce does not fund the political parties, but big business does. Political parties serve their paymasters, not the public.
I only recently discovered how annoyed my parents were with DVDs, compared to their old Video Recorder. They are very frustrated that they can't whizz through all the crap at the beginning.
I've noticed that on some DVD's you can just skip to the root menu, but others make you watch every single company logo and FBI warning. Do we really care that the DVD can't be watched on Oil Rigs? Given the minuscule number of people living on Oil Rigs, is it at all fair to take up our time with that crap?
I agree. You can never have enough processors. I do 3D rendering and that is massively parallelizable. Also once the power is there, new things will emerge that use it in a constructive way. For example, when computers became powerful enough, suddenly people were using them for video editing, and that really does require the power.
I am sick and tired of all the different kinds of power adapters. I must have about 20 different power adapters e.g. Mobile phone, Digital Camera, Camcorder, Portable Video player, MP3 player etc etc and none of them are interchangeable. I have to stick labels on them to remind me which is which.
Why can't we just have one universal power adapter. You plug it into your device and the device communicates its voltage and power requirements back to the power adapter. The Adapter them supplies to correct voltage etc. Surely with modern electronics and cheap embedded processors, this sort of thing is pretty easy to do.
Nice idea. Although the main problem is the politicians that send soldiers to pointless wars in the first place. Once the research is complete, I would suggest we just chop off the heads of the current government. The heads that regrow may make better decisions.
It was a really bad article. It was clearly a dodgy claim and you would think they would have an expert in the area totally vet the article, but alas no.
There are some other worrying things in the article. For example, the author says...
What of the impact of such a device? On my journey home I have plenty of time to speculate. No need for wheels, no friction.
Yet it is precisely the friction between the wheels and road which make a car go forward. Friction with the car wheels is not bad, you need it. Friction with the air is bad, but not the wheels.
If I had do the EM Drive story, a story which sounds highly suspect, I would have looked at some critiques of similar schemes. Within a few minutes of searching I found similar "Reaction-less Drive" schemes which all turned out to be Oscillation drives. It's the same phenomena as when you move across the room in a swivel chair (without touching the floor) by shifting your body-weight around. When you do that you are exploiting the non-linear nature of friction between surfaces. A similar thing can happen with these reaction-less drives interacting with air, water or other surfaces. So it's quite possible that a prototype drive would appear to work. So I would have asked for some kind of proof that this was not an oscillation drive.
Another issue is that it's not clear that this Em Drive prototype has been tested in a vacuum. In one of the other articles on it, it says that the thrust only reaches the maximum after a few seconds. Now that sounds much more like a mechanical oscillation effect (building up to maximum amplitude) than a photon/microwave effect.
Some of what I have said here is re-posted from a discussion I had on the Elmurst Solutions Science forums. (http://www.elmhurstsolutions.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2/ YaBB.pl?num=1157719780/0)
I am reminded of the Telegraph Muslim survey (Saturday, July 23, 2005). They conducted a survey of Muslim opinion in Britain, but cherry picked all the negative answers and plasted them on the front page in big letters.
For example, one question was:
Which of these views comes closest to your own?
1. Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, if necessary by violence. 1%
2. Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, but only by non-violent means. 31%
3. Western society may not be perfect, but Muslims should live with it and not seek to bring it to and end. 56%
4. Don't know. 11%
The results of this appeared on the front page as "32% of British Muslims think Western society is decadent and immoral and should be brought to and end."
Not only did this misrepresent the majority view of their own survey, but they have omitted the "by non-violent means part", which is a critical detail. The rest of the survey went the same way.
What about all the people that were into this stuff that will suddenly be denied it? What will they do?
How many men, who would otherwise become rapists, are instead satisfied with fake depictions of rape on the net? If I were a woman, I'm not sure I would feel at all safer at this announcement. It is still debatable whether there is a link between violent porn and people doing it for real, but what about the link between enforced abstinence and people doing it for real? e.g. Catholic Priests for example.
And how do you define the boundaries? Is the film Maitresse starring Gérard Depardieu now considered illegal because of its depictions of sexual violence? I own that film. Maybe I am suddenly a danger to society.
As terrible as the murder that inspired all this was, an angry grieving relative should not be allowed to dictate the laws of a country. Many of these campaigns to "make us safer" actually seem to do more harm. For example, there are also plans here to ban imitation firearms (real ones were banned years ago in case you're not a Brit). Now ask yourself a question, would you rather be mugged by a man with a fake gun or by a man with a big 8 inch knife? Maybe its just me but I would prefer criminals to carry fake guns rather than real knives.
When it comes to video, I think It can be done. You just need to generate money by people looking at the video. This can most obviously be done with adverts. However, adverts are annoying so how about this. Each film has an extra track of information that describes saleable objects. So if you were watching a cop show and liked the Mafia Boss's shirt, you could click on it and it would take you to a website that sells them.
The thing is, they won awards for their special effects at the time. It's doubtfull that the redone sfx would win awards so it would be a bit of a shame to remove the original award-winning effects.
Surely an advantage of Raytracing would be that you could have exact shapes. e.g. Instead of approximating a cylinder by an octagonal prism, you could just have a real cylinder. What's more, the pure shapes like cylinders, sphere etc, would take up less memory than their approximations.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you have to be consistent with the application of this mindset. If it's not ok for consumers to shop around for countries with the most convenient laws, then it should not be ok for companies to do the same thing. That means no more situating factories in countries where working hours and conditions would breach your own laws.
If it were any other country, the UN would probably be holding an emergency meeting to discuss possible actions, including sanctions. There's not much point doing that though, since the US could just veto any resolutions. It's a bit hypocritical to be opposing the spread of Nuclear weapons, while at the same time announcing your intentions to weaponize space.
Most of the attention focuses on popular stuff like Word Processors and Paint Programs. Most programmers are not employed doing that sort of thing though. They are writing boring bespoke stock control or trading systems that will probably never attract any open source attention.
An Iraqi Kurd I used to work with trained me in the finer details of Arabic.
Us Kut = Shut Up (Pronounce both U's like oo in book) Kalib bin Kalib = Dog, son of a Dog Kul Hara = Eat Shit (again, pronouce the u like oo in book. Also use some phlegm when saying hara) Kul Noona = Eat my bogies (or Boogers if your American) (Slightly Childish but fun)
Drexler really pioneered the whole idea of nanotechnology yet he has been sidelined and the term has has now be hijacked by people who want to funnel money into their own companies.
Given that small TurboJet engines are commonly available for model aircraft these days, is it now feasible to build a TuboJet pack rather than a dangerous hydrogen peroxide rocket pack?
The average weight of a man is about 190 pounds.
BMV jets (http://www.bvmjets.com/) supply a turbojet that can provide 50lbs of Thrust.
Turbine Thrust (lbs) Diameter Weight (lbs) Price JetCat P-200 50 5.12 5 $4,995.00
With 2 banks of 3 JetCat P-200's strapped to your back you would have 300lb of Thrust to play with. That should be enough to cover the weight of the man, the engines and a reasonable amount of fuel.
Or is there some flaw to this idea? Do these model jet engines only generate 50lbs of thrust when they are travelling at some speed through the air?
That's why it's very important to demonize the Iraqi resistance. Although 90% of the attacks (according to a recent DIA report) are directed at US Forces, most of the coverage is devoted to attacks on civilians. The resistance is largely ignored compared to the reporting on secterian violence.
I raq_Sep06_quaire.pdf
Most Iraqis want US forces to withdraw and 61% also approve of attacks on US forces. Interestingly Shia, Sunni and Kurdish groups all hate Osama bin laden.
Full report here: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/
The BBC article initially said...
[i]..on battery charge will run for 15 to 20 years..[/i]
They've only just corrected it to hours rather than years. Also, they have confused power with energy content. They say it offers 10 times the power of a battery, when what they actually mean is that it offers 10 times the energy content. I expect more from a science article.
I've said this before but....
It never ceases to amaze me the lengths governments will go to in order to protect the profits of companies threatened by cheaper foreign imports. They even go so far as violating WTO rules and getting into trouble over it. Yet, when workers complain that they cannot compete with cheaper foreign labour, they are told that it is an unfortunate reality and that they have to adapt. The reason for this disparity is that the workforce does not fund the political parties, but big business does. Political parties serve their paymasters, not the public.
There is a video version of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIkHLO93lCA
I only recently discovered how annoyed my parents were with DVDs, compared to their old Video Recorder. They are very frustrated that they can't whizz through all the crap at the beginning.
I've noticed that on some DVD's you can just skip to the root menu, but others make you watch every single company logo and FBI warning. Do we really care that the DVD can't be watched on Oil Rigs? Given the minuscule number of people living on Oil Rigs, is it at all fair to take up our time with that crap?
Do you have a model of Perovskite on your desk too? :)
I agree. You can never have enough processors. I do 3D rendering and that is massively parallelizable. Also once the power is there, new things will emerge that use it in a constructive way. For example, when computers became powerful enough, suddenly people were using them for video editing, and that really does require the power.
I am sick and tired of all the different kinds of power adapters. I must have about 20 different power adapters e.g. Mobile phone, Digital Camera, Camcorder, Portable Video player, MP3 player etc etc and none of them are interchangeable. I have to stick labels on them to remind me which is which.
Why can't we just have one universal power adapter. You plug it into your device and the device communicates its voltage and power requirements back to the power adapter. The Adapter them supplies to correct voltage etc. Surely with modern electronics and cheap embedded processors, this sort of thing is pretty easy to do.
Nice idea. Although the main problem is the politicians that send soldiers to pointless wars in the first place. Once the research is complete, I would suggest we just chop off the heads of the current government. The heads that regrow may make better decisions.
It was a really bad article. It was clearly a dodgy claim and you would think they would have an expert in the area totally vet the article, but alas no.
/ YaBB.pl?num=1157719780/0)
There are some other worrying things in the article. For example, the author says...
What of the impact of such a device? On my journey home I have plenty of time to speculate. No need for wheels, no friction.
Yet it is precisely the friction between the wheels and road which make a car go forward. Friction with the car wheels is not bad, you need it. Friction with the air is bad, but not the wheels.
If I had do the EM Drive story, a story which sounds highly suspect, I would have looked at some critiques of similar schemes. Within a few minutes of searching I found similar "Reaction-less Drive" schemes which all turned out to be Oscillation drives. It's the same phenomena as when you move across the room in a swivel chair (without touching the floor) by shifting your body-weight around. When you do that you are exploiting the non-linear nature of friction between surfaces. A similar thing can happen with these reaction-less drives interacting with air, water or other surfaces. So it's quite possible that a prototype drive would appear to work. So I would have asked for some kind of proof that this was not an oscillation drive.
Another issue is that it's not clear that this Em Drive prototype has been tested in a vacuum. In one of the other articles on it, it says that the thrust only reaches the maximum after a few seconds. Now that sounds much more like a mechanical oscillation effect (building up to maximum amplitude) than a photon/microwave effect.
Some of what I have said here is re-posted from a discussion I had on the Elmurst Solutions Science forums. (http://www.elmhurstsolutions.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2
It would make a change from the current policy of testing them out on foreigners.
Hmmm. What is the source of these figures?
I am reminded of the Telegraph Muslim survey (Saturday, July 23, 2005). They conducted a survey of Muslim opinion in Britain, but cherry picked all the negative answers and plasted them on the front page in big letters.
For example, one question was:
Which of these views comes closest to your own?
1. Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, if necessary by violence. 1%
2. Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, but only by non-violent means. 31%
3. Western society may not be perfect, but Muslims should live with it and not seek to bring it to and end. 56%
4. Don't know. 11%
The results of this appeared on the front page as "32% of British Muslims think Western society is decadent and immoral and should be brought to and end."
Not only did this misrepresent the majority view of their own survey, but they have omitted the "by non-violent means part", which is a critical detail. The rest of the survey went the same way.
Sweet!
Alle deine codecs sind gehören uns!
I am quite proud that my country, Britain, managed to successfully crash a probe into Mars.
What about all the people that were into this stuff that will suddenly be denied it? What will they do?
How many men, who would otherwise become rapists, are instead satisfied with fake depictions of rape on the net? If I were a woman, I'm not sure I would feel at all safer at this announcement. It is still debatable whether there is a link between violent porn and people doing it for real, but what about the link between enforced abstinence and people doing it for real? e.g. Catholic Priests for example.
And how do you define the boundaries? Is the film Maitresse starring Gérard Depardieu now considered illegal because of its depictions of sexual violence? I own that film. Maybe I am suddenly a danger to society.
As terrible as the murder that inspired all this was, an angry grieving relative should not be allowed to dictate the laws of a country. Many of these campaigns to "make us safer" actually seem to do more harm. For example, there are also plans here to ban imitation firearms (real ones were banned years ago in case you're not a Brit). Now ask yourself a question, would you rather be mugged by a man with a fake gun or by a man with a big 8 inch knife? Maybe its just me but I would prefer criminals to carry fake guns rather than real knives.
When it comes to video, I think It can be done. You just need to generate money by people looking at the video. This can most obviously be done with adverts. However, adverts are annoying so how about this. Each film has an extra track of information that describes saleable objects. So if you were watching a cop show and liked the Mafia Boss's shirt, you could click on it and it would take you to a website that sells them.
The thing is, they won awards for their special effects at the time. It's doubtfull that the redone sfx would win awards so it would be a bit of a shame to remove the original award-winning effects.
Surely an advantage of Raytracing would be that you could have exact shapes. e.g. Instead of approximating a cylinder by an octagonal prism, you could just have a real cylinder. What's more, the pure shapes like cylinders, sphere etc, would take up less memory than their approximations.