Fusion is one of those technologies that is always '50 years away', even 50 years ago, maybe even 50 years from now. So, looking at what's actually happened recently:
What do we actually know now that we didn't know 10-15 years ago that gives support to the notion that we're making progress? Or, what are the 'big' things we know now?
Similarly, what are the things we still don't know that we could reasonably expect to find answers for in the next 10-15 years?
I'm assuming it's not that we've figured it all out and it's just a matter of engineering a working prototype.
clarification in case your statement gets anyone's undies in a bunch: Driving a car on public roads is a privilege not a right.
publicly funded roads, publicly determined requirements to use them. you driving puts others at risk, you need to be able to cover the financial part of that risk to use the roads.
sure I'm gonna burn some karma here, but I'm always entertained by the fact that when articles mention science and engineering, the majority of the comments are about computers, software and IT. That is but a small subset of engineering (well, if you consider IT part of it at all). The majority of engineering deals in some way with the physical world. And they've generally fared much better in the economic downturn (I've seen numbers ranging from a third to a half of the general unemployment rate), mainly because of the 'shortage'. or, at least, lack of excess.
Watt per hour and watt-hour is not the same thing. watt-hour is energy. watt per hour is... change in power? You buy capacity, or power. I.e., a 500MW coal plant. if it runs for an hour, it produces 500MW-hours of energy. 40 pennies per watt means it will produce 1 watt of electricity under peak conditions for every $0.40 you invest into capacity. How much energy you'll actually put out over a day is another question altogether.
a couple reports last year said something about $5/Watt installed would be the tipping point. So, $0.40/Watt looks damn good, but I'm sure that's just an optimisting unpackaged cell cost.
what B&M offers: browsing. the browsing experience of an organized library type environment beats anything presentable on Amazon. Google books is trying, but its just all too serial.
that would require an actual list of infringed patents. neither this nor the article linked by TFA does this. does anyone have that list? otherwise, these reports are useless.
definitely agree. If a tool you use actually has something like a user manual or a help file, read through it and submit comments/improvements/suggestions (probably should check with project leader first so he doesn't just think you're being a grammar jerk. there may also be a way he prefers you submit doc. changes.) If there's a tutorial set, work through them and note any discrepancies. Tutorials often fall behind software revisions. Last, write some of your own tutorials and offer to make them part of the documentation or wiki, or host then on your own site.
well said. One point of interest to some: When you publish through almost all journals these days, they recognize that the version you submit is yours. The version that is peer reviewed is yours. The version that you give to them for typesetting is theirs once they do said editing, typsetting, printing.
The problem is that with the time and effort it takes to get to the ready to print stage, only a small percentage of papers get 'published' in the pre-typeset form. almost all the info is there as it will be printed. I think some journals may claim some restriction, especially on 'public databases', but the ones I'e read are fairly straightforward about this (they may request you put a note in the document to the effect of 'this is a preprint of an article published in Journal XYZ on DD/MM/YYYY. Arxiv.org has gotten rather popular, but only for a small set of technical categories. DOE agencies have a lot of their papers posted on their websites. DOD less so, but DTIC.mil has a bunch. Both are spidered by google scholar.
same here, but then I switched back sometime around FF10. Much happier with it than back in the 3.x days. I now go back and forth without much concern.
agree on the flight sims. I have 3 decents joysticks / flightsticks that have been collecting dust for ~10 years because PCs don't have gameports and I can't bear to toss them. Of course, I don't have time to play with them anymore even if they did work, but it's the principle of the thing.
In a quick scan of the patentlyapple article I didn't see a link to the application or an application number given. did it say when the app was filed? was it more than a year after the youtube demo? was there other, earlier published prior art, for the youtube product or someone else?
That is the info that would be relevant to the USPTO.
I read them, and I "paid" by giving some books to my friends in return.
I'm missing the part where you made a copy of them. Hence violating copyright and artificially increasing supply thereby diluting demand. Hence violating legal copyright. Lending is just fine. They sold one book to be read, and it is read one person at a time. It is not reproduced and read by multiple people at the same time in different locations. Copyright is about artificially maintaining scarcity. you did nothing to decrease scarcity.
I'm not donating a photocopy of my book to the library. I'm giving the actual legally purchased book to them. At that point they can lend it as they please, or sell it to make money to buy in-demand books.
the original ebook was (likely) paid for. however, it was copied to the library. Maybe the original owner deleted the copy, maybe not. no way to know or prove. And short of mailing them the harddrive or flashdrive with the ebook, no way to transfer without doing it via copying. That's just how digital computers work. sure, you may set up a lending site that imposes some strange way of verifying deletion, but that's just a lame attempt at deflection. it's still 'copy then delete' which unfortunately started with un-permitted 'copy'.
if they made you a bandwidth promise, you might have a case. they promised you unlimited usage. doesn't matter to them if your bandwidth is only 1page/month.
the marginal cost isn't zero. the additional bandwidth cost is zero. however, there is some processing and relaying going on in the background to get your message where it needs to go. some up front hardware changes to handle it, some initial software costs, then about the same cost as an email per text.
Slashdot Mirror
Fusion is one of those technologies that is always '50 years away', even 50 years ago, maybe even 50 years from now. So, looking at what's actually happened recently:
What do we actually know now that we didn't know 10-15 years ago that gives support to the notion that we're making progress? Or, what are the 'big' things we know now?
Similarly, what are the things we still don't know that we could reasonably expect to find answers for in the next 10-15 years?
I'm assuming it's not that we've figured it all out and it's just a matter of engineering a working prototype.
there's usually a follow up post in a few days or a week or so with Answers to a number of questions. It's not a live chat.
http://xkcd.com/978/
clarification in case your statement gets anyone's undies in a bunch: Driving a car on public roads is a privilege not a right.
publicly funded roads, publicly determined requirements to use them. you driving puts others at risk, you need to be able to cover the financial part of that risk to use the roads.
sure I'm gonna burn some karma here, but I'm always entertained by the fact that when articles mention science and engineering, the majority of the comments are about computers, software and IT. That is but a small subset of engineering (well, if you consider IT part of it at all). The majority of engineering deals in some way with the physical world. And they've generally fared much better in the economic downturn (I've seen numbers ranging from a third to a half of the general unemployment rate), mainly because of the 'shortage'. or, at least, lack of excess.
yeah, but this is about science and engineering. not IT.
Watt per hour and watt-hour is not the same thing. watt-hour is energy. watt per hour is... change in power? You buy capacity, or power. I.e., a 500MW coal plant. if it runs for an hour, it produces 500MW-hours of energy. 40 pennies per watt means it will produce 1 watt of electricity under peak conditions for every $0.40 you invest into capacity. How much energy you'll actually put out over a day is another question altogether.
a couple reports last year said something about $5/Watt installed would be the tipping point. So, $0.40/Watt looks damn good, but I'm sure that's just an optimisting unpackaged cell cost.
how much of that price drop is accounted for by Chinese government subsidy and market flooding?
what B&M offers: browsing. the browsing experience of an organized library type environment beats anything presentable on Amazon. Google books is trying, but its just all too serial.
that would require an actual list of infringed patents. neither this nor the article linked by TFA does this. does anyone have that list? otherwise, these reports are useless.
hmmm... doesn't "created by aliens when they were done building the pyramids' fit into the ID-NASA venn diagram?
definitely agree. If a tool you use actually has something like a user manual or a help file, read through it and submit comments/improvements/suggestions (probably should check with project leader first so he doesn't just think you're being a grammar jerk. there may also be a way he prefers you submit doc. changes.) If there's a tutorial set, work through them and note any discrepancies. Tutorials often fall behind software revisions. Last, write some of your own tutorials and offer to make them part of the documentation or wiki, or host then on your own site.
that would be one mean gramma' jamma'.
well said. One point of interest to some: When you publish through almost all journals these days, they recognize that the version you submit is yours. The version that is peer reviewed is yours. The version that you give to them for typesetting is theirs once they do said editing, typsetting, printing.
The problem is that with the time and effort it takes to get to the ready to print stage, only a small percentage of papers get 'published' in the pre-typeset form. almost all the info is there as it will be printed. I think some journals may claim some restriction, especially on 'public databases', but the ones I'e read are fairly straightforward about this (they may request you put a note in the document to the effect of 'this is a preprint of an article published in Journal XYZ on DD/MM/YYYY. Arxiv.org has gotten rather popular, but only for a small set of technical categories. DOE agencies have a lot of their papers posted on their websites. DOD less so, but DTIC.mil has a bunch. Both are spidered by google scholar.
Done. But /.ers are lazy:
Sign the petition(s) to the Congress
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/sparc
and to the white house
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/strengthen-public-access-publicly-funded-research-and-support-federal-research-public-access-act/jF4mxRc4
same here, but then I switched back sometime around FF10. Much happier with it than back in the 3.x days. I now go back and forth without much concern.
but won't output HD. Sure, DVD's aren't HD either, but that will be a dealbreaker for some people.
agree on the flight sims. I have 3 decents joysticks / flightsticks that have been collecting dust for ~10 years because PCs don't have gameports and I can't bear to toss them. Of course, I don't have time to play with them anymore even if they did work, but it's the principle of the thing.
In a quick scan of the patentlyapple article I didn't see a link to the application or an application number given. did it say when the app was filed? was it more than a year after the youtube demo? was there other, earlier published prior art, for the youtube product or someone else?
That is the info that would be relevant to the USPTO.
What are the penalties of not paying a fine?
According to TFA, they make you repeat the year, regardless of academic performance.
if only there was some kind of electronic publication standard format that everyone could use. Or some kind of conversion software to get books into this format.
sure, some companies will try to fracture the market, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
I read them, and I "paid" by giving some books to my friends in return.
I'm missing the part where you made a copy of them. Hence violating copyright and artificially increasing supply thereby diluting demand. Hence violating legal copyright. Lending is just fine. They sold one book to be read, and it is read one person at a time. It is not reproduced and read by multiple people at the same time in different locations. Copyright is about artificially maintaining scarcity. you did nothing to decrease scarcity.
So, your comparison is off.
I'm not donating a photocopy of my book to the library. I'm giving the actual legally purchased book to them. At that point they can lend it as they please, or sell it to make money to buy in-demand books.
the original ebook was (likely) paid for. however, it was copied to the library. Maybe the original owner deleted the copy, maybe not. no way to know or prove. And short of mailing them the harddrive or flashdrive with the ebook, no way to transfer without doing it via copying. That's just how digital computers work. sure, you may set up a lending site that imposes some strange way of verifying deletion, but that's just a lame attempt at deflection. it's still 'copy then delete' which unfortunately started with un-permitted 'copy'.
if they made you a bandwidth promise, you might have a case. they promised you unlimited usage. doesn't matter to them if your bandwidth is only 1page/month.
the marginal cost isn't zero. the additional bandwidth cost is zero. however, there is some processing and relaying going on in the background to get your message where it needs to go. some up front hardware changes to handle it, some initial software costs, then about the same cost as an email per text.