Solar recharging.... with solar panels you carry with you while flying.... I think one guy has managed to barely circumnavigate the globe in a vehicle that did this, with tremendous planning and ground logistical support and repairs en-route on a vehicle purpose built from the ground up. In other words: an AC power outlet is something you don't have to carry with you (zero weight), and it delivers power as fast as you can possibly use it - even the DC conversion and battery protection circuits can live in the perch.
The obviousness clause has been moot since around patent #4,000,000.
Autonomously recharging quadcopters was the first obvious improvement to make to quadcopters, ever. 10 minute flight times, who wouldn't think about recharging that without human intervention? Now, when you're flying through a city and you've got about 350B in market cap backing you, of course you're going to lease whatever space you think looks attractive - you've got the clout to get past any and all zoning boards, city councils, federal agencies, etc.
Modern practice of medicine absolutely does make doctors into data entry clerks. Big data is telling them what works, what doesn't, improving diagnosis and treatment, the volume of data and pace of discovery are such that no human being could possibly keep up with it in the traditional med school + residency + practice & annual CE fashion. If your doctor isn't "jacked into the cloud," you're not getting the best out of modern medicine.
This is ABSOLUTELY not to say that the best medical care comes from doctors who attempt to practice cloud connected medicine, effectiveness of practitioners varies tremendously, and the best traditional doctors are far far better than the worst "big data" based doctors - but, if you think you might need a procedure performed, it's probably best to consult with an MD who is "up on the cloud" in your area of need, and simultaneously guaranteed NOT to profit from you going ahead with the decision to have an expensive procedure performed.
The beach may be "free" but access is another question. It's improving in Florida, but there were many beaches in the 1980s that had no public access for miles, even tens of miles, from the land side - no place to park, no place to legally walk-on if somebody stopped and dropped you by the side of the road.
$1.7M for a 30 year lease on a beach is still cheap. If 10,000 people use it per year, that works out to 1.5 cents per person's access - I'd pay $0.015 per year in additional taxes to open up an additional public beach within 10 miles of my home. Still a good deal if it costs another $0.985 per year for the infrastructure required for public access, maintenance, police, etc. People pay $3/day to park at beaches around here.
All I know is that by 2008 it was untouchable below $2500/ac, though those were the crazy days in real-estate all over...
All in all, I didn't cherish the thought of travel to western Nebraska to manage the deals, so I let the idea slide - that and the reality of "spinning fees," insurance, bank financing terms for turbines, rowdy locals that don't want change, etc. pushed me away from the wind farm idea. Still, if I had been foolish enough to sink $80K into that land, it would have turned for over $500K in just a few years.
2005ish, Western Nebraska - non irrigated croplands, missile silos and stuff... I was looking for a wind farm play, didn't see the ethanol coming. 160 acres for $40K was not unheard of, before the ethanol thing.
Spacecraft never "go dark," uncontrollable, unrecoverable. Re-entry from geo-stationary orbit would take too long (and GEOS is expensive to get to), so they'll likely be flying it LEO, with potential to re-enter basically anywhere if it loses command/control.
I'm not sure which would be worse: fissile material scattered across hundreds of miles, or a mostly-intact warhead falling in a random (70% likely water) location.
Ultimately, the space plane is cheaper to operate than a nuclear sub, but it lacks the stealth location capability, and if it doesn't have people on-board that makes it an easier diplomatic target for pre-emptive strike - everyone will know exactly where it is and any orbital maneuvering to make direct passes over targets can be interpreted even more clearly than the movement of naval fleets. Next up: killer satellites making precautionary strikes against weaponized satellites and spreading so much orbital debris as to make LEO commercially useless.
If there aren't explicit treaties against these things, there will be the moment a country actually starts deployment of one.
The day they can do wild-caught blue-fin tuna, I'll try. The main thing I hate about sushi is the parasite roulette aspect. Lab grown sushi does have some potential in that area.
You realize this means that you trust the lab more than you trust the butcher? Butchers have millenia of experience developing and understanding their craft - lab scientists growing edible foods, a couple of decades at best.
The argument goes that you can use less toxic pesticide, or something like that... I think what they really mean is that the toxic pesticides you use with GMOs cost less than what you'd have to use with non-GMOs.
Monsanto et. al. are entrenched, nothing short of bloody revolution is going to get rid of them, and they'll probably be the first to rise from the ashes after a major event. Consistent grass-roots political pressure? We've barely managed to get rid of the draft, slavery, and disenfranchisement of 51% the population that way - the people don't have the attention span to notice what Monsanto et. al. are up to.
I think they're decades away from "tastes good." Sure, you can get used to it, like SPAM, but when it's presented side by side with the real thing, it will be obvious which is which, and it will take decades of forcing this down childrens' throats before grown people actually prefer it.
Different markets, different strategies. I'm guessing that $1 cheeseburger didn't even start with 4oz of meat... and a $1 parfait is mostly paying for the refrigeration, the stuff they squeeze out of that machine is mostly made from seaweed.
10% Ethanol in the gasoline also kicked up land values in some parts of the country from $250 per acre to >$2500 for the same acre just a couple of years later.
Editorial license, if the notion of robotic probes being inadequate to explore the universe is discredited, we have yet to accomplish anything concrete in the restart of manned exploration - Orion is on a slow track to early cancellation.
Slashdot Mirror
Solar recharging.... with solar panels you carry with you while flying.... I think one guy has managed to barely circumnavigate the globe in a vehicle that did this, with tremendous planning and ground logistical support and repairs en-route on a vehicle purpose built from the ground up. In other words: an AC power outlet is something you don't have to carry with you (zero weight), and it delivers power as fast as you can possibly use it - even the DC conversion and battery protection circuits can live in the perch.
The obviousness clause has been moot since around patent #4,000,000.
Autonomously recharging quadcopters was the first obvious improvement to make to quadcopters, ever. 10 minute flight times, who wouldn't think about recharging that without human intervention? Now, when you're flying through a city and you've got about 350B in market cap backing you, of course you're going to lease whatever space you think looks attractive - you've got the clout to get past any and all zoning boards, city councils, federal agencies, etc.
Modern practice of medicine absolutely does make doctors into data entry clerks. Big data is telling them what works, what doesn't, improving diagnosis and treatment, the volume of data and pace of discovery are such that no human being could possibly keep up with it in the traditional med school + residency + practice & annual CE fashion. If your doctor isn't "jacked into the cloud," you're not getting the best out of modern medicine.
This is ABSOLUTELY not to say that the best medical care comes from doctors who attempt to practice cloud connected medicine, effectiveness of practitioners varies tremendously, and the best traditional doctors are far far better than the worst "big data" based doctors - but, if you think you might need a procedure performed, it's probably best to consult with an MD who is "up on the cloud" in your area of need, and simultaneously guaranteed NOT to profit from you going ahead with the decision to have an expensive procedure performed.
The beach may be "free" but access is another question. It's improving in Florida, but there were many beaches in the 1980s that had no public access for miles, even tens of miles, from the land side - no place to park, no place to legally walk-on if somebody stopped and dropped you by the side of the road.
Long term vs short term thinking.
$1.7M for a 30 year lease on a beach is still cheap. If 10,000 people use it per year, that works out to 1.5 cents per person's access - I'd pay $0.015 per year in additional taxes to open up an additional public beach within 10 miles of my home. Still a good deal if it costs another $0.985 per year for the infrastructure required for public access, maintenance, police, etc. People pay $3/day to park at beaches around here.
Obligatory: http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
All I know is that by 2008 it was untouchable below $2500/ac, though those were the crazy days in real-estate all over...
All in all, I didn't cherish the thought of travel to western Nebraska to manage the deals, so I let the idea slide - that and the reality of "spinning fees," insurance, bank financing terms for turbines, rowdy locals that don't want change, etc. pushed me away from the wind farm idea. Still, if I had been foolish enough to sink $80K into that land, it would have turned for over $500K in just a few years.
2005ish, Western Nebraska - non irrigated croplands, missile silos and stuff... I was looking for a wind farm play, didn't see the ethanol coming. 160 acres for $40K was not unheard of, before the ethanol thing.
I lichen to keep my fungi balanced with my prokaryotes, either one by themselves tends to get out of hand.
Spacecraft never "go dark," uncontrollable, unrecoverable. Re-entry from geo-stationary orbit would take too long (and GEOS is expensive to get to), so they'll likely be flying it LEO, with potential to re-enter basically anywhere if it loses command/control.
I'm not sure which would be worse: fissile material scattered across hundreds of miles, or a mostly-intact warhead falling in a random (70% likely water) location.
Ultimately, the space plane is cheaper to operate than a nuclear sub, but it lacks the stealth location capability, and if it doesn't have people on-board that makes it an easier diplomatic target for pre-emptive strike - everyone will know exactly where it is and any orbital maneuvering to make direct passes over targets can be interpreted even more clearly than the movement of naval fleets. Next up: killer satellites making precautionary strikes against weaponized satellites and spreading so much orbital debris as to make LEO commercially useless.
If there aren't explicit treaties against these things, there will be the moment a country actually starts deployment of one.
Seems like a logical extension of nuclear subs, except that orbital space planes can be fully automated. WCGW?
The day they can do wild-caught blue-fin tuna, I'll try. The main thing I hate about sushi is the parasite roulette aspect. Lab grown sushi does have some potential in that area.
With a user name like fuzzyfuzzyfungus, I would think you would be more of a fan of the hygiene hypothesis.
You realize this means that you trust the lab more than you trust the butcher? Butchers have millenia of experience developing and understanding their craft - lab scientists growing edible foods, a couple of decades at best.
The argument goes that you can use less toxic pesticide, or something like that... I think what they really mean is that the toxic pesticides you use with GMOs cost less than what you'd have to use with non-GMOs.
Monsanto et. al. are entrenched, nothing short of bloody revolution is going to get rid of them, and they'll probably be the first to rise from the ashes after a major event. Consistent grass-roots political pressure? We've barely managed to get rid of the draft, slavery, and disenfranchisement of 51% the population that way - the people don't have the attention span to notice what Monsanto et. al. are up to.
I think they're decades away from "tastes good." Sure, you can get used to it, like SPAM, but when it's presented side by side with the real thing, it will be obvious which is which, and it will take decades of forcing this down childrens' throats before grown people actually prefer it.
Different markets, different strategies. I'm guessing that $1 cheeseburger didn't even start with 4oz of meat... and a $1 parfait is mostly paying for the refrigeration, the stuff they squeeze out of that machine is mostly made from seaweed.
10% Ethanol in the gasoline also kicked up land values in some parts of the country from $250 per acre to >$2500 for the same acre just a couple of years later.
They're farm-raising blue-fin tuna, not particularly efficient in terms of calories per dollar, but promises to be profitable nonetheless.
and tofu.
Editorial license, if the notion of robotic probes being inadequate to explore the universe is discredited, we have yet to accomplish anything concrete in the restart of manned exploration - Orion is on a slow track to early cancellation.
The Pi compute stick has been around for years, this is just upgrading its internals.
...has millions of people doing projects with it and documenting how they did it.
To me, this is the actual value - and the limited number of models helps this process tremendously.
Not really just as useful if they've cut off its I/O ports.
Do they have a reference design for interfacing this to ethernet and other standard ports?
You don't sell it to make money, you sell it to piss them off.