That's right, there was no existing market. A market, by definition, has products in it. No market existed for light bulbs before they were invented. And at that point, "less likely to burn your house down" was something that had to be demonstrated.
It's not uncommon that I encounter articles such as this one where I know very little about the subject being discussed, but I do know a bit about some of his examples, and they are sometimes faulty.
Take his criteria for a successful disruptive technology. I can't help but observe that the light bulb, a successful innovation if ever there was one, satisfies neither. The answer to 1 is negative because neither the poor nor the wealthy were capable of lighting their homes with electricity at the time. Likewise the answer to 2 because there was no existing market. Yet this technology was undeniably disruptive; just ask the manufacturers of candles, oil lamps and gaslights.
Later on in discussing (as far as I could tell) allocation of resources, he says, "Processes, however--the central element in our second question--are typically inflexible. Their purpose is not to adapt quickly but to get the same job done reliably, again and again." He must be completely unfamiliar with the Software CMM (and now the CMMI for other disciplines) where to attain the highest rating and organization's processes must be flexible. Continuous improvement of processes is one of the more important lessons from the quality movement Prof. Christensen discusses in the opening of his article, so I'm a little surprised he chooses to ignore it here.
This leads me to suspect that some of his other examples are flawed too, but I don't know enough about all of them to detect it. I don't trust his conclusions, in any event.
Yes there is, and it's this: that the primary purpose of a college education is to prepare you for a career. While it's generally the first step on the way to a rewarding career, the assumption is absolutely and totally FALSE.
The only exception is if you already have a career mapped out for yourself as an engineer of some kind. That's a very demanding discipline, and it genuinely requires the full course of a college education to amass the basic skills you need just to begin work. But if you're going for jobs as a sysadmin -- which is technical, but not really in the same league as engineering -- you should make every effort to see yourself educated.
An education is primarily about YOU, and your growth and development. It's about broadening yourself, exposing yourself to thoughts and perspectives you've never encountered before. It's about deciding what's important in your life, about learning how to learn, about building character, about fulfilling your potential as a human being in the culture in which you live. Secondarily you might find out a few things that will be useful in your future employment. But you'll find opportunities with a college degree regardless of what you major in or what you learn. And who knows what effect all this will have on what you think you want to do with your life. Don't skip it!
If someone had told me this when I was your age, I'd be a lot happier today.
I don't remember the numbers exactly, but using air rather than pure oxygen requires that you compress the air for the fuel cell to operate optimally. The energy expended in compression is what's gained in terms of efficiency.
If PEM fuel cells are ever to be used alongside conventional fuels, a pure oxygen supply helps another way: CO can damage them. Where there is a significant amount of CO in the air, they just won't work as long or as efficiently as they might. Paradoxically, this would be in the most heavily polluted places that would benefit most by early adoption of this technology.
Won't all this vapor make the climate much wetter causing it to rain more and so on?
Actually, I believe you get liquid water, not water vapor. It's pure and potable, although you'd probably want to add some minerals for taste. It may not be practical for vehicles to dump their exhaust into the public water supply, so you could either dribble it out behind as you go, or tank it to be dumped when you refuel. Or perhaps some clever engineer can come up with some other use for it.
Plus since from what I've been told the vapor comes from the hydrogen mixing with oxygen in the air. Won't this also lower the oxygen content of the air?
At a guess, not more than the internal combustion engine already does. All combustion draws oxygen out of the air. But if you look at the whole process from end to end, you see that oxygen is necessarily produced from the seawater along with the hydrogen. Assuming that oxygen eventually makes its way back into the atmosphere, either through being released on the spot or used in some application where it wasn't a reactant, there's no net loss.
But that leads to a good question: electrolysis produces hydrogen and oxygen in exactly the proportions needed for a fuel cell. Why don't they bottle the oxygen as well, and use that to feed the fuel cells' cathode? It would result in a significant boost in efficiency.
1: Seawater is made out of Hydrogen and Oxygen (with lots of energy in the bonds)
No, the energy of a water molecule is lower than that of hydrogen and oxygen in pure form. You have to add energy to the system to break water down. It's an endothermic reaction. If there were lots of energy "in" the bonds within water, water would burn.
2: Solar panels at the sea locations provide the energy, albeit slowly, to electrolyze the water to the gaseous components. H 2 and O2.
Yes, they're electrolyzing hydrogen out of the seawater. No, they're not generating the electricity from solar panels. They're using a plant that generates electricity from the motion of the waves.
3: The H2 is stored until used in Hydrogen Fuel cells. Combining of Hydrogen gas, Oxygen gas and heat give lots of heat. This turns turbines.
No, not even partial credit for this one. The hydrogen is stored in tanks of some kind: "bottled" is the term they used. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells generate electricity directly from a reaction with the hydrogen (which is fed to the cell from the tank) and the oxygen in the air. You get electricity and heat, along with pure water for exhaust. There's not necessarily a turbine involved at all, although for maximum efficiency in a stationary installation you could conceivably capture the heat and use it to drive a turbine so as to increase your electrical output. But that's not really necessary; a fuel cell makes electricity all by itself.
No need to comment on your blather about solar cells; there aren't any involved. Nobody stores hydrogen in metal form as this requires temperatures near 0K. You could store it in liquid form cryonically, but it's more often stored as compressed gas at high pressure.
That's not true. I worked in a computer shop at the time, and programmed on a number of CP/M machines, including the Osborne. (And also Altos and Superbrain, but not, as it happens, the Kaypro.) They were called microcomputers, but they were also called PCs. I became distinctly irritated when the press started calling the IBM machines (and their clones) PCs in contrast to machines like the Apple.
I'm tired of this. I remember very clearly what we used to call the damned things. If you didn't, I really don't give a flying fuck at this point.
We're about 40 miles from the epicenter here. It was kind of long, which was the only worrying thing about it. When it doesn't stop right away, you worry that it's going to get worse before it stops.
But really, amplitude-wise it was no great shakes.
"PC" is an alternate term for a general-purpose microcomputer. I know because I'm old and I was there. If you don't believe me, then believe someone else.
You kids... Back in the old days, PC was generic for "Personal Computer". The Apple ][ was always called a PC, as were most CP/M machines. It took IBM's marketing machine to attach the term exclusively to their machines -- and later, those compatable with them.
There's really no reason to reserve the term exclusively for one particular architecture.
However this would look like Thor is dancing with the hammer, and that would look gay.
We're talking about a guy around 6'6" or so, muscled as all-get-out, with long blond hair, tights, a sleeveless tunic-thingy, knee-high flared golden boots, and a helmet with wings on it. As far as looking gay goes, I think it's far too late for him.
My guess is that his strength in throwing the hammer is provided by some patented technique that Thor had to license from the inventor
It's been many years, but I seem to recall that Thor often twirled the hammer around before taking off. Doing this could conceivably store more energy in the hammer, after the nature of a flywheel, than he could impart with a simple jump.
As far as this whole relative-mass thing depedning on worthiness, lighten up, it's just a comic
Actually, the problem as stated is almost solvable, lacking only a potential function. You'd probably have to ask Odin about it.
You don't even need a VAX hardware simluator. VMS runs just fine on Alphas, and there are plenty of those available used. If you insist on a VAX it's not even all that hard to find an old VAXStation; Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale has a stack of them.
He was probably my favorite as a kid, and is one of the more interesting in terms of physics.
Thor can "fly" ballistically by throwing his hammer and then catching the leather thong on the end a small fraction of a second later. Class discussion: would this really work? Why or why not? If it did work and Thor routinely accellerates several hundred miles per hour in a fraction of a second, we may acribe the fact that his arm is not ripped from its socket to his godly constitution, but how does his helmet stay on his head? (We've seen it knocked off in fights, so we know it has no natural cranially adhesive properties.)
How much energy must his hammer expend in order to generate a lightning flash? What are the potential sources for this energy?
When Thor (or anyone else who is "worthy") holds his hammer, its weight appears to be negligible. For anyone else, the weight is infinite. (We know the mass remains constant. It does not become infinite because of the lack of the normal space-bending effects associated with an infinite mass, and it does not fall to zero because Thor can impart a great deal of momentum with it.) Use Schroedinger's equation to determine a probablity function describing the hammer's weight when nobody is holding it.
I could go on, but I don't want to be more geeky than absolutely necessary.
They're cheap in terms of production and electricity cost.
Then why the hell are they so expensive? Check out the prices on available white LED replacements for incandescent bulbs, here for example although there are other vendors. The light equivalent of a 40W bulb will run you almost $200! I'm not even certain that's worth it even if it does last 100,000 hours.
But it may yet make a comeback. VMS' main disadvantange has been that it ran strictly on proprietary DEC architecture, and it was hugely popular just as long as DEC hardware was hugely popular. Now that it's being ported to Itanium, I think it has a chance to recapture a significant portion of the market share it used to 0wn.
Relative to Unix, it has no significant technical drawbacks that I know of. As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
From the second Prime Palaver rant: Those of you who are conservatives will have to boycott Mercedes Lackey.
I'm a conservative, but I don't boycott Mercedes Lackey because of her politics. I boycott her because of her contrived plots, shallow characters, stilted dialogue, and a preachy tone that annoys me whether it comes from her or Robert Heinlein. How this woman became a popular writer when she produces such crap is something I don't understand.
Strictly speaking, Pluto is a Kuiper Belt object, and does not appear to be too dissimilar to other Kuiper Belt objects in terms of composition. So WW31 is only news if you insist that Pluto is a planet and not what it otherwise appears to be.
When I was just starting out, I'd slip into the Zone almost without effort. Now, after nearly 20 years as a professional, it's becoming more and more difficult. I can still turn out some fairly spectacular code when I'm on, but getting there now involves so much caffeine that my stomach reacts badly. I only do it for emergencies these days.
It doesn't help that Whoop-Ass, which is the only energy drink I've found that really works for me without tasting like, well, ass at the same time is apparently no longer sold in California. (Neither is any other Jones Soda product AFAIK.) I think I'm going to have to import my own supply.
Distractions certainly don't help./. is among the worst.:/
That cow is slaughtered by age 14 months. It used to be 5 years, but changes in feed cause the animals to mature much more quickly. Sorta like how humans are hitting puberty much earlier now.
This is way OT, so I'm removing my karma whore bonus point.
It's not "sorta like", there's a good chance it's exactly the same cause. Some researchers are of the opinion that humans are reaching puberty so much sooner now because of residual hormones in the meat and milk we consume, which are given to the animals to cause them to grow faster and larger. That's a real good reason to stick with organic or labelled hormone-free beef and milk.
Slashdot Mirror
That's right, there was no existing market. A market, by definition, has products in it. No market existed for light bulbs before they were invented. And at that point, "less likely to burn your house down" was something that had to be demonstrated.
Take his criteria for a successful disruptive technology. I can't help but observe that the light bulb, a successful innovation if ever there was one, satisfies neither. The answer to 1 is negative because neither the poor nor the wealthy were capable of lighting their homes with electricity at the time. Likewise the answer to 2 because there was no existing market. Yet this technology was undeniably disruptive; just ask the manufacturers of candles, oil lamps and gaslights.
Later on in discussing (as far as I could tell) allocation of resources, he says, "Processes, however--the central element in our second question--are typically inflexible. Their purpose is not to adapt quickly but to get the same job done reliably, again and again." He must be completely unfamiliar with the Software CMM (and now the CMMI for other disciplines) where to attain the highest rating and organization's processes must be flexible. Continuous improvement of processes is one of the more important lessons from the quality movement Prof. Christensen discusses in the opening of his article, so I'm a little surprised he chooses to ignore it here.
This leads me to suspect that some of his other examples are flawed too, but I don't know enough about all of them to detect it. I don't trust his conclusions, in any event.
The only exception is if you already have a career mapped out for yourself as an engineer of some kind. That's a very demanding discipline, and it genuinely requires the full course of a college education to amass the basic skills you need just to begin work. But if you're going for jobs as a sysadmin -- which is technical, but not really in the same league as engineering -- you should make every effort to see yourself educated.
An education is primarily about YOU, and your growth and development. It's about broadening yourself, exposing yourself to thoughts and perspectives you've never encountered before. It's about deciding what's important in your life, about learning how to learn, about building character, about fulfilling your potential as a human being in the culture in which you live. Secondarily you might find out a few things that will be useful in your future employment. But you'll find opportunities with a college degree regardless of what you major in or what you learn. And who knows what effect all this will have on what you think you want to do with your life. Don't skip it!
If someone had told me this when I was your age, I'd be a lot happier today.
Considering Aaliyah died in a plane crash last year, it's unlikely she's going to appear in a movie that was shooting at the time.
If PEM fuel cells are ever to be used alongside conventional fuels, a pure oxygen supply helps another way: CO can damage them. Where there is a significant amount of CO in the air, they just won't work as long or as efficiently as they might. Paradoxically, this would be in the most heavily polluted places that would benefit most by early adoption of this technology.
Actually, I believe you get liquid water, not water vapor. It's pure and potable, although you'd probably want to add some minerals for taste. It may not be practical for vehicles to dump their exhaust into the public water supply, so you could either dribble it out behind as you go, or tank it to be dumped when you refuel. Or perhaps some clever engineer can come up with some other use for it.
Plus since from what I've been told the vapor comes from the hydrogen mixing with oxygen in the air. Won't this also lower the oxygen content of the air?
At a guess, not more than the internal combustion engine already does. All combustion draws oxygen out of the air. But if you look at the whole process from end to end, you see that oxygen is necessarily produced from the seawater along with the hydrogen. Assuming that oxygen eventually makes its way back into the atmosphere, either through being released on the spot or used in some application where it wasn't a reactant, there's no net loss.
But that leads to a good question: electrolysis produces hydrogen and oxygen in exactly the proportions needed for a fuel cell. Why don't they bottle the oxygen as well, and use that to feed the fuel cells' cathode? It would result in a significant boost in efficiency.
Yes, let's. You certainly don't.
1: Seawater is made out of Hydrogen and Oxygen (with lots of energy in the bonds)
No, the energy of a water molecule is lower than that of hydrogen and oxygen in pure form. You have to add energy to the system to break water down. It's an endothermic reaction. If there were lots of energy "in" the bonds within water, water would burn.
2: Solar panels at the sea locations provide the energy, albeit slowly, to electrolyze the water to the gaseous components. H 2 and O2.
Yes, they're electrolyzing hydrogen out of the seawater. No, they're not generating the electricity from solar panels. They're using a plant that generates electricity from the motion of the waves.
3: The H2 is stored until used in Hydrogen Fuel cells. Combining of Hydrogen gas, Oxygen gas and heat give lots of heat. This turns turbines.
No, not even partial credit for this one. The hydrogen is stored in tanks of some kind: "bottled" is the term they used. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells generate electricity directly from a reaction with the hydrogen (which is fed to the cell from the tank) and the oxygen in the air. You get electricity and heat, along with pure water for exhaust. There's not necessarily a turbine involved at all, although for maximum efficiency in a stationary installation you could conceivably capture the heat and use it to drive a turbine so as to increase your electrical output. But that's not really necessary; a fuel cell makes electricity all by itself.
No need to comment on your blather about solar cells; there aren't any involved. Nobody stores hydrogen in metal form as this requires temperatures near 0K. You could store it in liquid form cryonically, but it's more often stored as compressed gas at high pressure.
I'm tired of this. I remember very clearly what we used to call the damned things. If you didn't, I really don't give a flying fuck at this point.
But really, amplitude-wise it was no great shakes.
"PC" is an alternate term for a general-purpose microcomputer. I know because I'm old and I was there. If you don't believe me, then believe someone else.
There's really no reason to reserve the term exclusively for one particular architecture.
Clearly it's something that Lucas owes the fan community after that travesty of an episode 1. Which one is portrayed in the book?
We're talking about a guy around 6'6" or so, muscled as all-get-out, with long blond hair, tights, a sleeveless tunic-thingy, knee-high flared golden boots, and a helmet with wings on it. As far as looking gay goes, I think it's far too late for him.
It's been many years, but I seem to recall that Thor often twirled the hammer around before taking off. Doing this could conceivably store more energy in the hammer, after the nature of a flywheel, than he could impart with a simple jump.
As far as this whole relative-mass thing depedning on worthiness, lighten up, it's just a comic
Actually, the problem as stated is almost solvable, lacking only a potential function. You'd probably have to ask Odin about it.
Why do you want an x86 version when Alphas are so cheap? And the hobbyist VMS license is free, or close to it.
You don't even need a VAX hardware simluator. VMS runs just fine on Alphas, and there are plenty of those available used. If you insist on a VAX it's not even all that hard to find an old VAXStation; Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale has a stack of them.
That's not physics. That's engineering. And a damn fine job it was, too!
Thor can "fly" ballistically by throwing his hammer and then catching the leather thong on the end a small fraction of a second later. Class discussion: would this really work? Why or why not? If it did work and Thor routinely accellerates several hundred miles per hour in a fraction of a second, we may acribe the fact that his arm is not ripped from its socket to his godly constitution, but how does his helmet stay on his head? (We've seen it knocked off in fights, so we know it has no natural cranially adhesive properties.)
How much energy must his hammer expend in order to generate a lightning flash? What are the potential sources for this energy?
When Thor (or anyone else who is "worthy") holds his hammer, its weight appears to be negligible. For anyone else, the weight is infinite. (We know the mass remains constant. It does not become infinite because of the lack of the normal space-bending effects associated with an infinite mass, and it does not fall to zero because Thor can impart a great deal of momentum with it.) Use Schroedinger's equation to determine a probablity function describing the hammer's weight when nobody is holding it.
I could go on, but I don't want to be more geeky than absolutely necessary.
And here I am correcting him. Who's the geek now?
Then why the hell are they so expensive? Check out the prices on available white LED replacements for incandescent bulbs, here for example although there are other vendors. The light equivalent of a 40W bulb will run you almost $200! I'm not even certain that's worth it even if it does last 100,000 hours.
But it may yet make a comeback. VMS' main disadvantange has been that it ran strictly on proprietary DEC architecture, and it was hugely popular just as long as DEC hardware was hugely popular. Now that it's being ported to Itanium, I think it has a chance to recapture a significant portion of the market share it used to 0wn.
Relative to Unix, it has no significant technical drawbacks that I know of. As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
I'm a conservative, but I don't boycott Mercedes Lackey because of her politics. I boycott her because of her contrived plots, shallow characters, stilted dialogue, and a preachy tone that annoys me whether it comes from her or Robert Heinlein. How this woman became a popular writer when she produces such crap is something I don't understand.
Strictly speaking, Pluto is a Kuiper Belt object, and does not appear to be too dissimilar to other Kuiper Belt objects in terms of composition. So WW31 is only news if you insist that Pluto is a planet and not what it otherwise appears to be.
It doesn't help that Whoop-Ass, which is the only energy drink I've found that really works for me without tasting like, well, ass at the same time is apparently no longer sold in California. (Neither is any other Jones Soda product AFAIK.) I think I'm going to have to import my own supply.
Distractions certainly don't help. /. is among the worst. :/
This is way OT, so I'm removing my karma whore bonus point.
It's not "sorta like", there's a good chance it's exactly the same cause. Some researchers are of the opinion that humans are reaching puberty so much sooner now because of residual hormones in the meat and milk we consume, which are given to the animals to cause them to grow faster and larger. That's a real good reason to stick with organic or labelled hormone-free beef and milk.