My ISP says I can't use my broadband connection to host a server. When running P2P programs like kazaa lite or whatever I knew that I was in violation, but I'm surprised a company like AOL is willing to be in a position of encouraging home users to violate ISPs terms of service, being an ISP themselves.
Here's what I noticed when looking at the site after your comment. After seeing ROI like 4 times already I knew it was a bad sign. But this blew me away:
"We've tripled our spend on search-based advertising, and as a result, increased our ROI by 188 percent." Jeff Saville Marketing Manager
From http://www.google.com/analytics/case_study_deckers .html/. No, an increase on ROI is NOT achieved by tripling the money spent. Spending the money smarter, sure - but that's completely unrelated to amount of increased spending.
The next few lines there also demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what 'return on investment' means. If you increase spending on ads by 300%, and get less than a 300% increase in sales, you've decreased your return on investment.
Next paragraph: "While the company's monthly spending on search-based advertising has increased by several thousand dollars, sales have increased by over 160 percent, and impressions are up by more than 360,000 per month. Deckers has also experienced a monthly increase in clicks of more than 2,000 and a boost in conversions of 3.5 percent. "Overall, return on investment increased by nearly 190 percent per month," says Saville."
Uh hello meaningless numbers. Increased spending on ads - several thousand dollars (gee, very specific.... thought Google Analytics was supposed to tell you exactly what you're spending and what you're getting for it). So let's say they increased spending on ads by $3,000. Now, they get an increase of sales of 160%. Hmm. What did their sales used to be? No numbers? OK, so based on these two numbers, their ROI is somewhere between -10,000% and 200%. GREAT case study. You sooooo convinced me. I also fail to see how an increase of conversions of 3.5% could bring a greater ROI than 3.5%. Increasing ad spending will probably increase sales, for a while at least. That's an increase in sales, not an increase in the return you get on ad money.
One of the other case studies was actually well written, but this was just ridiculous.
The abstract: "A space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state is provided comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a power source, a support structure, upper and lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and a flux modulation controller. A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion. The space vehicle, surrounded by the spacetime anomaly, may move at a speed approaching the light-speed characteristic for the modified locale."
Wow what a great invention. Too bad we don't have any of the items he wants to build it out of. Flux modulation controller? Quantized vortices of lattice ions? Gravitomagnetic? WTF?
The actual text of the patent just gets better and better. Some of my favorites:
"In the late 1940s, H. B. G. Casimir proved that the vacuum is neither particle nor field-free. It is a source of zero-point-fluctuation (ZPF) of fields such as the vacuum gravitomagnetic field. ZPF fields lead to real, measurable physical consequences such as the Casimir force. The quantized hand-made electromagnetic processes, such as those occurring in superconductors, affect the similarly quantized ZPFs. The most likely reason is the electron-positron creation and annihilation, in part corresponding to the "polarization effect" sited by Evgeny Podkletnov in explaining the gravitomagnetic effect reportedly observed by him in 1992. ("Weak Gravitational Shielding Properties of Composite Bulk YBa2Cu33O(7-x) Superconductor Below 70 K Under E.M. Field", Evgeny Podkletnov, LANL database number cond-mat/9701074, v. 3, 10 pages, 16 Sep. 1997). "
"String theory unifies gravity with all other known forces. "
Our patent system didn't used to work the way it does today. You had to submit a scale model of the thing you were patenting. Today you can patent a business model, part of the human genome, all kinds of ridiculous stuff. The legislature is doing a horrible job of defining what's patentable I agree, but you must also agree that the non-obvious consideration when evaluating a patent application seems to have just disappeared in many cases.
"My point is that people who work in IP and patents pretty unanimously see problems with the patent system as applied to computer and software technology, but those problems are almost always completely different than the ranting from groups like Slashdot."
So what sort of problems do they see? And are you sure that they just don't see the same problems as the slashdot crowd because they don't know as much about computers? Something computer-related may seem non-obvious and new to a given patent examiner, while IT professionals would immediately recognize it as neither.
This is still my favorite patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5443036.html/ - a method of exercising a cat with a laser pointer. C'mon - the patent examiner for that must be retarded. Gimme that one at least.
The whole point of this software is to secretly install it on someone else's computer - it's a keylogger and screen grabber. The person whose computer this gets installed on never agreed to any eula. So if an anti-spyware company found an infected box, neither they nor the person whose computer it is are in violation of the eula. Nor the jerk who installed it, since I doubt they expected to get caught.
From the forums you see people are using this to try to spy on spouses they think are unfaithful, etc. Give it up people, if you're installing spyware to monitor your spouse for infidelity your relationship is already over.
They'll stop because they're interested in the economics of the game. If costs of virtual real estate get so high they're a deterrent to people playing the game, they'll add more to keep it balanced. If prices fall, maybe they'll raise the water level worldwide to shrink available land.
My school, UVA, had an honor code. It punished you for cheating. That was it. That's what an honor code should do, ask you to act with honor at school, not police you about non-academic matters.
This is all so overblown. When I went to UVA's architecture school every other week the faculty and students had a keg out on the patio and chatted about classes, architecture, whatever, provided by the school. I don't know why anyone would go to a college that still tries to treat you like a child.
There was a crossing of two different fly species, the blueberry maggot and the snowberry maggot. They're highly specialized insects that live on one and only one variety of plant. Normally such an offspring would have been doomed - unable to outcompete the blueberry fly on blueberries or the snowberry fly on snowberries. But the environment has changed - this hybrid found itself well adapted to living on honeysuckle, a plant that was only introduced to this continent relatively recently by humans. So rather than die out, it has found a new ecological niche and can thrive as its own distinct species.
This wasn't a random mutation. Many forms of life throw off a certain percentage of offspring that are poorly adapted to current conditions. But when conditions change around them, their different genes can become dominant - i.e. the classic example of white moths that became dark in industrial Britain. Evolution is more complex than simple random mutation, though random mutation does play a role. Old strategies seem to remain dormant and periodically arise to 'test the waters' and see if they're useful again. But this is just a better understanding of evolution, not any kind of refutation of it.
Can you stage a political protest at your local pub? No? Then it's not public.
The laws you give as examples don't show that it's considered public. A warehouse facility that moves cargo crates also has to comply with laws about working conditions, inspections, etc - but it's not public in any way.
I think choice is the best policy. If a pub thinks it'll do better business by being non-smoking, let it be non-smoking. Then you can choose whether to go there or up the street to the smoking pub. That allows two groups of people to enjoy themselves as they wish with no government force involved at all.
I did read it, you ******* *****, you clearly didn't understand that post. What he was saying, is the the EULA didn't advertise that there was a ROOTKIT that was installed. The eula only lists 'a small piece of proprietary software' - not something that alters windows internal workings. That is not even close to an adequate labelling. Neither does the eula list that the software connects to sony over the internet. Neither one of those things is listed in the eula, so you can't check either one of those out and decide if you want to accept it.
The problem in the GP's post is that he says "Sony didn't advertise in any way shape or form that THIS" - without providing a clear antecedant for what 'this' meant. I think I read it correctly and you read it incorrectly. But hey, why am I arguing with someone whose first response is to shout 'fucking moron'.
One of the comments on the sysinternals story was from someone with a 64-bit system. He said the next time he rebooted, after installing this program his cd and dvd drives were not visible in Windows. He did admit that it was very effective copy protection, but wasn't very pleased that his gaming system had no usable optical drives.
NOT GOOD FOR 64bit USERS, October 9, 2005 Reviewer: tvideo (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews Since, I don't care about stealing any music, the "Copy Protected" warning didn't bother me in the least. I am a Hardcore gamer I have a high end 64bit PC running Windows XP Pro. The CD claims it is compatible with Windows XP, it does NOT specify which versions so I assumed I was OK.
I installed this CD and I was forced to accept some agreement and then it installed some lousy music player. Everything seemed fine until next time I rebooted my PC both my DVD and CD drives had literally disappeared! That's right this so-called copy protection destroyed access to my drives!!! The copy protection REALLY works great they just disable all your CD/DVD drives so you can't use them with ANY discs anymore - UNBELIEVABLE!!!
It doesn't spy on what websites you go to, or your email.
I believe you're thinking of the Warden from Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The topics were only linked b/c some people who got sony rootkitted used their rootkit to hide their game cheat programs, by renaming them $sys$SomeGameCheat.exe or whatever.
Why don't you people bother to read the article? It's a very interesting article and goes into a lot of detail both on what the technical side is, as well as frustration with Sony's poor support. From TFA:
There's more to the story than rootkits, however, and that's where I think Sony is missing the point. As I've pointed out in press interviews related to the post, the EULA does not disclose the software's use of cloaking or the fact that it comes with no uninstall facility. An end user is not only installing software when they agree to the EULA, they are losing control of part of the computer, which has both reliability and security implications. There's no way to ensure that you have up-to-date security patches for software you don't know you have and there's no way to remove, update or even identify hidden software that's crashing your computer.
The EULA also makes no reference to any "phone home" behavior, and Sony executives are claiming that the software never contacts Sony and that no information is communicated that could track user behavior. However, a user asserted in a comment on the previous post that they monitored the Sony CD Player network interactions and that it establishes a connection with Sony's site and sends the site an ID associated with the CD.
See? Not advertised in the EULA. So how are you supposed to know about it? It's one thing when it's hidden at the bottom of the EULA in small type - it's something else when it is ommitted from the EULA altogether. The comments in the article also detail problems several people had with the software - like a gamer with a 64-bit system who had his CD/DVD drive 'disappear' after installing this software - a piece of software with NO uninstall utility. All you get from Sony is a patch that removes the hiding of $sys$ files - they so far have refused to provide an uninstall utility for the software itself.
If there's a law that all voip must be wire tappable, how are you going to use a program that isn't wire tappable legally? Why would it matter if it was open source?
And, have you ever, ever, actually read through the source code of a program you were using to verify that it was secure enough for you? Are you up on every recent encryption technique? An open source program could be verified by an advanced programmer with a lot of domain knowledge of encryption. Not by 'the user'. That's a total fallacy.
What's your point? The GP said he could create an encrypted P2P voice chat. The responder said yes, that exists, it's skype. At what point did it become relevant that Skype is closed source?
Interesting. I've never heard of such a thing. But wouldn't you need to replace a substantial part of the engine itself?
"Because hydrogen has a much lower energy density and burns much faster and hotter than gasoline, compression ratios can be increased, and more air is mixed with the fuel to keep combustion temperatures and exhaust emissions down. Most hydrogen engines run lean (air-to-fuel ratio of 30:1 or more)," - that's very non-standard for internal combustion engines isn't it? About twice normal? What effects would that have, i.e. would you have to rework all the sensors etc that control air intake and exhaust? It seems like you'd need an engine custom built for this, and you'd still need all the advances in storage/compression that fuel cells need as well.
I found a couple articles saying that the Wankel engine or a quasi-turbine engine is better performing for a hydrogen internal combustion engine than a piston design.
You're thinking of the Pantheon then, which is only 2032 years old.
From wikipedia on the concrete dome: "The composition of the Roman concrete used in the dome remains a mystery. An unreinforced dome in these proportions made of modern concrete would hardly stand the load of its own weight, since concrete has very low tensile strength, yet the Pantheon has stood for centuries. It is known from Roman sources that their concrete is made up of a pasty hydrate lime; pozzolanic ash from a nearby volcano; and fist-sized pieces of rock. In this, it is very similar to modern concrete. The high tensile strength appears to come from the way the concrete was applied in very small amounts and then was tamped down to remove excess water at all stages. This appears to have prevented the air bubbles that normally form in concrete as the material dries, thus increasing its strength enormously."
Maintenance is the key. That's why I think the idea of building a clock that will last without a maintainer is highly dubious. Mechanical computers will have problems with dust, sand, etc.
Internal combustion engines expect a certain amount of energy to be released when the fuel is combusted to turn the pistons. If the next gas doesn't burn about the same as natural gas, your engine won't run correctly.
CNG engines are still internal combustion engines. H2 has nowhere near the energy density to be able to run an internal combustion engine, which is where fuel cells come in.
You could convert a CNG vehicle to biodiesel or ethanol or back to gasoline, but never to hydrogen or electricity.
Well, right now in the US we have 300 million cars that only run on gasoline.
Let's say we take your idea and everyone replaces their car or retrofits it to use natural gas.
Great. Now, in ten years we'll have 300 million cars that only run on natural gas, and we'll be running out of natural gas. And have to retrofit our cars for something new.
The point is to power cars with something that can be generated from ANY initial power source: wind, solar, nuclear, coal, natural gas, etc. Hydrogen and electricity are the two things that fit the bill.
The benefit being you have a neutral source for powering your car, and as different methods of creating that source become cheaper, you don't care and don't have to rip apart your car to use it. You don't care whether the hydrogen or electricity came from oil, gas, coal, nuclear, solar, wind, whatever - it goes in your car and you drive.
If oil spikes in price, producers will be switching their hydrogen or electricity production to other forms. You the consumer won't be hit with a huge price jump.
Of course it won't. The hydrogen is a power storage medium only. The idea being you generate large quantities at a central location (i.e. like our refineries today) and ship it out to local filling stations. The eventual goal would be to have the central stations powered with solar/wind or whatever, so that you harvest power just from the sun or weather. At which point it doesn't matter if you lose x% of the energy making it conveniently storable since the supply is inexhaustible.
Similarly, the process that created oil - whether you believe it to be an abiotic process as i do, or the decay of old biological material - also took more energy than you get out of the oil. All fuels are only power storage media, they cannot produce more power than went into making them. If you collided matter and antimatter that particular reaction would be close to 100% release of energy, but you have to take into account the energy it took to create or capture the antimatter in the first place.
The Parthenon was built in 447 BC. That's less than 2500 years ago. Old, but not on the time scale of this project. Also it's made of stone, which seems to me a more durable material than any metal alloy I can think of.
There's only one material I can think of that will still be around in 10,000 years, and thus suitable to build this out of: disposable baby diapers.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, easy.
It tracks you.
My ISP says I can't use my broadband connection to host a server. When running P2P programs like kazaa lite or whatever I knew that I was in violation, but I'm surprised a company like AOL is willing to be in a position of encouraging home users to violate ISPs terms of service, being an ISP themselves.
Here's what I noticed when looking at the site after your comment. After seeing ROI like 4 times already I knew it was a bad sign. But this blew me away:
s .html/. No, an increase on ROI is NOT achieved by tripling the money spent. Spending the money smarter, sure - but that's completely unrelated to amount of increased spending.
"We've tripled our spend on search-based advertising, and as a result, increased our ROI by 188 percent."
Jeff Saville
Marketing Manager
From http://www.google.com/analytics/case_study_decker
The next few lines there also demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what 'return on investment' means. If you increase spending on ads by 300%, and get less than a 300% increase in sales, you've decreased your return on investment.
Next paragraph:
"While the company's monthly spending on search-based advertising has increased by several thousand dollars, sales have increased by over 160 percent, and impressions are up by more than 360,000 per month. Deckers has also experienced a monthly increase in clicks of more than 2,000 and a boost in conversions of 3.5 percent. "Overall, return on investment increased by nearly 190 percent per month," says Saville."
Uh hello meaningless numbers. Increased spending on ads - several thousand dollars (gee, very specific.... thought Google Analytics was supposed to tell you exactly what you're spending and what you're getting for it). So let's say they increased spending on ads by $3,000. Now, they get an increase of sales of 160%. Hmm. What did their sales used to be? No numbers? OK, so based on these two numbers, their ROI is somewhere between -10,000% and 200%. GREAT case study. You sooooo convinced me. I also fail to see how an increase of conversions of 3.5% could bring a greater ROI than 3.5%. Increasing ad spending will probably increase sales, for a while at least. That's an increase in sales, not an increase in the return you get on ad money.
One of the other case studies was actually well written, but this was just ridiculous.
Except for the fact that this is currently only for non-commercial use, and limited to 1 mil views a month.
But yes, when they roll out their commercial version, they will take a lot of business from web side story and others,
The patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=/netah tml/srchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r=1&l= 50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=6960975.WKU.&OS=PN/6960975&RS=PN/ 6960975/
The abstract:
"A space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state is provided comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a power source, a support structure, upper and lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and a flux modulation controller. A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion. The space vehicle, surrounded by the spacetime anomaly, may move at a speed approaching the light-speed characteristic for the modified locale."
Wow what a great invention. Too bad we don't have any of the items he wants to build it out of. Flux modulation controller? Quantized vortices of lattice ions? Gravitomagnetic? WTF?
The actual text of the patent just gets better and better. Some of my favorites:
"In the late 1940s, H. B. G. Casimir proved that the vacuum is neither particle nor field-free. It is a source of zero-point-fluctuation (ZPF) of fields such as the vacuum gravitomagnetic field. ZPF fields lead to real, measurable physical consequences such as the Casimir force. The quantized hand-made electromagnetic processes, such as those occurring in superconductors, affect the similarly quantized ZPFs. The most likely reason is the electron-positron creation and annihilation, in part corresponding to the "polarization effect" sited by Evgeny Podkletnov in explaining the gravitomagnetic effect reportedly observed by him in 1992. ("Weak Gravitational Shielding Properties of Composite Bulk YBa2Cu33O(7-x) Superconductor Below 70 K Under E.M. Field", Evgeny Podkletnov, LANL database number cond-mat/9701074, v. 3, 10 pages, 16 Sep. 1997). "
"String theory unifies gravity with all other known forces. "
Our patent system didn't used to work the way it does today. You had to submit a scale model of the thing you were patenting. Today you can patent a business model, part of the human genome, all kinds of ridiculous stuff. The legislature is doing a horrible job of defining what's patentable I agree, but you must also agree that the non-obvious consideration when evaluating a patent application seems to have just disappeared in many cases.
"My point is that people who work in IP and patents pretty unanimously see problems with the patent system as applied to computer and software technology, but those problems are almost always completely different than the ranting from groups like Slashdot."
So what sort of problems do they see? And are you sure that they just don't see the same problems as the slashdot crowd because they don't know as much about computers? Something computer-related may seem non-obvious and new to a given patent examiner, while IT professionals would immediately recognize it as neither.
This is still my favorite patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5443036.html/ - a method of exercising a cat with a laser pointer. C'mon - the patent examiner for that must be retarded. Gimme that one at least.
The whole point of this software is to secretly install it on someone else's computer - it's a keylogger and screen grabber. The person whose computer this gets installed on never agreed to any eula. So if an anti-spyware company found an infected box, neither they nor the person whose computer it is are in violation of the eula. Nor the jerk who installed it, since I doubt they expected to get caught.
From the forums you see people are using this to try to spy on spouses they think are unfaithful, etc. Give it up people, if you're installing spyware to monitor your spouse for infidelity your relationship is already over.
They'll stop because they're interested in the economics of the game. If costs of virtual real estate get so high they're a deterrent to people playing the game, they'll add more to keep it balanced. If prices fall, maybe they'll raise the water level worldwide to shrink available land.
How do they find out about the DUIs?
My school, UVA, had an honor code. It punished you for cheating. That was it. That's what an honor code should do, ask you to act with honor at school, not police you about non-academic matters.
This is all so overblown. When I went to UVA's architecture school every other week the faculty and students had a keg out on the patio and chatted about classes, architecture, whatever, provided by the school. I don't know why anyone would go to a college that still tries to treat you like a child.
What do you consider speciation? Consider this as an example:
7 27_050727_evolution.html/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0
There was a crossing of two different fly species, the blueberry maggot and the snowberry maggot. They're highly specialized insects that live on one and only one variety of plant. Normally such an offspring would have been doomed - unable to outcompete the blueberry fly on blueberries or the snowberry fly on snowberries. But the environment has changed - this hybrid found itself well adapted to living on honeysuckle, a plant that was only introduced to this continent relatively recently by humans. So rather than die out, it has found a new ecological niche and can thrive as its own distinct species.
This wasn't a random mutation. Many forms of life throw off a certain percentage of offspring that are poorly adapted to current conditions. But when conditions change around them, their different genes can become dominant - i.e. the classic example of white moths that became dark in industrial Britain. Evolution is more complex than simple random mutation, though random mutation does play a role. Old strategies seem to remain dormant and periodically arise to 'test the waters' and see if they're useful again. But this is just a better understanding of evolution, not any kind of refutation of it.
Can you stage a political protest at your local pub? No? Then it's not public.
The laws you give as examples don't show that it's considered public. A warehouse facility that moves cargo crates also has to comply with laws about working conditions, inspections, etc - but it's not public in any way.
I think choice is the best policy. If a pub thinks it'll do better business by being non-smoking, let it be non-smoking. Then you can choose whether to go there or up the street to the smoking pub. That allows two groups of people to enjoy themselves as they wish with no government force involved at all.
I did read it, you ******* *****, you clearly didn't understand that post. What he was saying, is the the EULA didn't advertise that there was a ROOTKIT that was installed. The eula only lists 'a small piece of proprietary software' - not something that alters windows internal workings. That is not even close to an adequate labelling. Neither does the eula list that the software connects to sony over the internet. Neither one of those things is listed in the eula, so you can't check either one of those out and decide if you want to accept it.
The problem in the GP's post is that he says "Sony didn't advertise in any way shape or form that THIS" - without providing a clear antecedant for what 'this' meant. I think I read it correctly and you read it incorrectly. But hey, why am I arguing with someone whose first response is to shout 'fucking moron'.
It doesn't spy on what websites you go to, or your email.
I believe you're thinking of the Warden from Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The topics were only linked b/c some people who got sony rootkitted used their rootkit to hide their game cheat programs, by renaming them $sys$SomeGameCheat.exe or whatever.
See? Not advertised in the EULA. So how are you supposed to know about it? It's one thing when it's hidden at the bottom of the EULA in small type - it's something else when it is ommitted from the EULA altogether. The comments in the article also detail problems several people had with the software - like a gamer with a 64-bit system who had his CD/DVD drive 'disappear' after installing this software - a piece of software with NO uninstall utility. All you get from Sony is a patch that removes the hiding of $sys$ files - they so far have refused to provide an uninstall utility for the software itself.
If there's a law that all voip must be wire tappable, how are you going to use a program that isn't wire tappable legally? Why would it matter if it was open source?
And, have you ever, ever, actually read through the source code of a program you were using to verify that it was secure enough for you? Are you up on every recent encryption technique? An open source program could be verified by an advanced programmer with a lot of domain knowledge of encryption. Not by 'the user'. That's a total fallacy.
What's your point? The GP said he could create an encrypted P2P voice chat. The responder said yes, that exists, it's skype. At what point did it become relevant that Skype is closed source?
Interesting. I've never heard of such a thing. But wouldn't you need to replace a substantial part of the engine itself?
"Because hydrogen has a much lower energy density and burns much faster and hotter than gasoline, compression ratios can be increased, and more air is mixed with the fuel to keep combustion temperatures and exhaust emissions down. Most hydrogen engines run lean (air-to-fuel ratio of 30:1 or more)," - that's very non-standard for internal combustion engines isn't it? About twice normal? What effects would that have, i.e. would you have to rework all the sensors etc that control air intake and exhaust? It seems like you'd need an engine custom built for this, and you'd still need all the advances in storage/compression that fuel cells need as well.
I found a couple articles saying that the Wankel engine or a quasi-turbine engine is better performing for a hydrogen internal combustion engine than a piston design.
http://www.monito.com/wankel/hydrogen.html/
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm/
You're thinking of the Pantheon then, which is only 2032 years old.
From wikipedia on the concrete dome:
"The composition of the Roman concrete used in the dome remains a mystery. An unreinforced dome in these proportions made of modern concrete would hardly stand the load of its own weight, since concrete has very low tensile strength, yet the Pantheon has stood for centuries. It is known from Roman sources that their concrete is made up of a pasty hydrate lime; pozzolanic ash from a nearby volcano; and fist-sized pieces of rock. In this, it is very similar to modern concrete. The high tensile strength appears to come from the way the concrete was applied in very small amounts and then was tamped down to remove excess water at all stages. This appears to have prevented the air bubbles that normally form in concrete as the material dries, thus increasing its strength enormously."
Maintenance is the key. That's why I think the idea of building a clock that will last without a maintainer is highly dubious. Mechanical computers will have problems with dust, sand, etc.
Nope.
Internal combustion engines expect a certain amount of energy to be released when the fuel is combusted to turn the pistons. If the next gas doesn't burn about the same as natural gas, your engine won't run correctly.
CNG engines are still internal combustion engines. H2 has nowhere near the energy density to be able to run an internal combustion engine, which is where fuel cells come in.
You could convert a CNG vehicle to biodiesel or ethanol or back to gasoline, but never to hydrogen or electricity.
Well, right now in the US we have 300 million cars that only run on gasoline.
Let's say we take your idea and everyone replaces their car or retrofits it to use natural gas.
Great. Now, in ten years we'll have 300 million cars that only run on natural gas, and we'll be running out of natural gas. And have to retrofit our cars for something new.
The point is to power cars with something that can be generated from ANY initial power source: wind, solar, nuclear, coal, natural gas, etc. Hydrogen and electricity are the two things that fit the bill.
The benefit being you have a neutral source for powering your car, and as different methods of creating that source become cheaper, you don't care and don't have to rip apart your car to use it. You don't care whether the hydrogen or electricity came from oil, gas, coal, nuclear, solar, wind, whatever - it goes in your car and you drive.
If oil spikes in price, producers will be switching their hydrogen or electricity production to other forms. You the consumer won't be hit with a huge price jump.
Of course it won't. The hydrogen is a power storage medium only. The idea being you generate large quantities at a central location (i.e. like our refineries today) and ship it out to local filling stations. The eventual goal would be to have the central stations powered with solar/wind or whatever, so that you harvest power just from the sun or weather. At which point it doesn't matter if you lose x% of the energy making it conveniently storable since the supply is inexhaustible.
Similarly, the process that created oil - whether you believe it to be an abiotic process as i do, or the decay of old biological material - also took more energy than you get out of the oil. All fuels are only power storage media, they cannot produce more power than went into making them. If you collided matter and antimatter that particular reaction would be close to 100% release of energy, but you have to take into account the energy it took to create or capture the antimatter in the first place.
What process creates CO2 emission?
The Parthenon was built in 447 BC. That's less than 2500 years ago. Old, but not on the time scale of this project. Also it's made of stone, which seems to me a more durable material than any metal alloy I can think of.
There's only one material I can think of that will still be around in 10,000 years, and thus suitable to build this out of: disposable baby diapers.