I would love to see fast, affordable public transportation that goes exactly where you want to go. I think driverless electric cars have the potential to be an amazing solution, if we're willing to change one thing: Split the car in half! Portable docking stations could be installed in your garage, your parking place at work, and long term destinations like hotels.
The powertrain of your car then becomes a commodity, that can be used by anyone via a micro-payments system when you're not using it. (It would advertise itself locally when appropriate, such as while you're at work, or at home. Of course this is OPTIONAL.)
Your passenger compartment is truly yours and stays with you when you're at work, at home, or any long term destination. This part is lower cost, but includes smaller batteries for the entertainment and passenger comfort systems.
Passenger compartments would be affordable so people of all incomes could buy them, and be empowered to move freely about their community once wide adoption occurred.
Combine this system with something like Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept for the long distance travel, and now you're only using your electric cars for the short hops where they really excel. Reserve a power-train with your cel-phone when you arrive at your destination city, and your taken straight away to your hotel.
Does this idea have any merit that you or your company may consider in the future?
You're right of course. We all know qwerty. For anything else to catch on, you have to find a way to convince a million people to switch.
So, here's my touch-type QWERTY keyboard for android. (Try it with both thumbs.):
SlydeBoard: http://whawk640.robotdrone.com/Android/index.php
A simpler keyboard with a similar concept is SlydeBoard for Android.
It uses just 9 buttons. It's designed for touch typing with both thumbs. I can type the world-record texting phrase in about 0:58 and I'm still getting faster.
None of that wussy auto-completion stuff though.
I think SlydeBoard (http://whawk640.robotdrone.com/Android/index.php) has less of a learning curve than this!
Still, it looks interesting, I'll try it!
Natural Lighting: Tubular Skylights
Attached breakroom with a big screen with relaxing natural landscapes and playing soft music.
Refrigerator stocked with (healthy?) snacks and beverages.
These things will help improve the mood of your staff, and lower stress. They are cheap, easy ways to improve performance.
If nothing else Impy... it sounds like a really interesting DARPA grant project. You make a good point... the atoms coming off would act as a weak ionic thruster.
You might be right TripMaster Monkey, we could probably salvage some of it... My question is, don't we have the technology now for the entity that's tracking this stuff, whether it be NASA or NORAD, can't they just point a big laser at it and give it a boost in orbital altitude and velocity?
I suppose in near Earth orbit, there's still a lot of the earth's gravity to overcome, but the idea seems feasible to me with some of the headlines I've been reading about improved and miniaturized lazers. Granted you'd have to defocus these strong military beams a bit to avoid vaporizing the junk.
"How is this a misconception? Innovation DOES arise in times of need -- that's what drives innovation: a need. In every case this has happened."
Yes, they will eventually work. My point is just to start innovation now. The first attempt will be imperfect, it takes time to solve problems via technology. The trick is to realize the problem early enough to get through those.0 releases of the technology before we really need it. Can the short-sighted self-interested governments of the world realize the problems in time to let innovation save us from this or any other major shortage?
The answer is not clear to me.
Innovation will continue and I think that's a good thing. It will take some people looking ahead and seeing the problems before they are widely known.
All of this discussion is a good thing and a positive sign that perhaps some smart people will start solving the problems before the politicians start looking for the solutions.
One common misconception is that technological innovations will come along and solve our problems as resources begin to run out. While it may be true that nuclear, solar, wind and wave energy may be able to offset reduction in oil output and carbon nanotubes (which happen to be excellent conductors) may replace copper wire, in general, any first generation technology causes more problems then it solves.
A great example is insecticides. There's no denying that they've increased food output in many nations, but many of the first insecticides that were used were highly toxic and are still being cleaned up today.
In short, if we hope that technology is going to solve our problems, we better start fixing them early, because it will take a couple of tries to get it right.
I want a portable pebble bed nuclear reactor in my back yard to power my house and charge the electric company $500.00 a month to use my excess electricity.
I don't know why there's been so much debate about whether or not popups and/or spyware is illegal. Here is a simple analogy:
Putting a pop-up on my screen to sell me a product to get rid of popups is like putting a rock through the window of my house with a note advertising your window company.
Would anyone argue that the second situation is legal or that these two situations are dramatically different?
The only argument that they are different is whether or not they are destroying your property with pop-ups. Adding this sort of program damages my computer by decreasing it's availability, wasting my time and money trying to get rid of the offensive program and/or preventing some needed operation on the machine.
The analogy is very clear to me. Now, we just have to identify the companies that are responsible and slap a big financial judgement on them. Making them pay is the only way to stop it. It may also be necessary to throw the worst offenders in jail as an example.
I suppose the only reason we're tolerating this sort of thing is the big business backing the anti-spyware/popup/spam market. If we aggressively attacked the spammers, then there would be less of a demand for their services... fine, give them a portion of the judgement against the spammers.
There's another issue most of you are failing to consider. Not only do hurricanes spread heat, they dissipate an enormous amount of it.
* The large cloud system reflects large amounts of sunlight back into space. * The evaporation occurring in the path of the hurricane causes significant cooling. * After the hurricane, evaporation is again increased after the heavy rains, again causing significant cooling.
After more study, I believe we'll realize that this local cooling is a factor (in addition to low general probability) in preventing a hurricane from striking the same place twice in a row. Conditions will be more favorable elsewhere because a hurricane has already sapped much of the heat from an area when it passes.
Slashdot Mirror
I would love to see fast, affordable public transportation that goes exactly where you want to go. I think driverless electric cars have the potential to be an amazing solution, if we're willing to change one thing: Split the car in half! Portable docking stations could be installed in your garage, your parking place at work, and long term destinations like hotels.
The powertrain of your car then becomes a commodity, that can be used by anyone via a micro-payments system when you're not using it. (It would advertise itself locally when appropriate, such as while you're at work, or at home. Of course this is OPTIONAL.)
Your passenger compartment is truly yours and stays with you when you're at work, at home, or any long term destination. This part is lower cost, but includes smaller batteries for the entertainment and passenger comfort systems.
Passenger compartments would be affordable so people of all incomes could buy them, and be empowered to move freely about their community once wide adoption occurred.
Combine this system with something like Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept for the long distance travel, and now you're only using your electric cars for the short hops where they really excel. Reserve a power-train with your cel-phone when you arrive at your destination city, and your taken straight away to your hotel.
Does this idea have any merit that you or your company may consider in the future?
You're right of course. We all know qwerty. For anything else to catch on, you have to find a way to convince a million people to switch. So, here's my touch-type QWERTY keyboard for android. (Try it with both thumbs.): SlydeBoard: http://whawk640.robotdrone.com/Android/index.php
Heheh, I want to try this, but the learning curve looks harder than my keyboard though. SlydeBoard is my Android keyboard. http://whawk640.robotdrone.com/Android/index.php
A simpler keyboard with a similar concept is SlydeBoard for Android. It uses just 9 buttons. It's designed for touch typing with both thumbs. I can type the world-record texting phrase in about 0:58 and I'm still getting faster. None of that wussy auto-completion stuff though.
Try SlydeBoard while you're at it. Touch type all keys. Use both thumbs on your cel-phone like you use both hands on a real keyboard.
I think SlydeBoard (http://whawk640.robotdrone.com/Android/index.php) has less of a learning curve than this! Still, it looks interesting, I'll try it!
Natural Lighting: Tubular Skylights
Attached breakroom with a big screen with relaxing natural landscapes and playing soft music.
Refrigerator stocked with (healthy?) snacks and beverages.
These things will help improve the mood of your staff, and lower stress. They are cheap, easy ways to improve performance.
Yes, Tetris, but ESPECIALLY Tetris attack (or LINUX/Windows Clone Crack Attack) and....
here come the flames....
EVERQUEST. Yes, I still love Everquest after all these years... It's gotten so much better and the world is HUGE.
----
I'm not a 'twitch' addict.
If nothing else Impy... it sounds like a really interesting DARPA grant project. You make a good point... the atoms coming off would act as a weak ionic thruster.
You might be right TripMaster Monkey, we could probably salvage some of it... My question is, don't we have the technology now for the entity that's tracking this stuff, whether it be NASA or NORAD, can't they just point a big laser at it and give it a boost in orbital altitude and velocity?
2 4/2013240
I suppose in near Earth orbit, there's still a lot of the earth's gravity to overcome, but the idea seems feasible to me with some of the headlines I've been reading about improved and miniaturized lazers. Granted you'd have to defocus these strong military beams a bit to avoid vaporizing the junk.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/
10% of all silly ideas get implemented... 90 % of those are crap, but the other 10% change the world.
Yes, they will eventually work. My point is just to start innovation now. The first attempt will be imperfect, it takes time to solve problems via technology. The trick is to realize the problem early enough to get through those
The answer is not clear to me.
Innovation will continue and I think that's a good thing. It will take some people looking ahead and seeing the problems before they are widely known.
All of this discussion is a good thing and a positive sign that perhaps some smart people will start solving the problems before the politicians start looking for the solutions.
One common misconception is that technological innovations will come along and solve our problems as resources begin to run out. While it may be true that nuclear, solar, wind and wave energy may be able to offset reduction in oil output and carbon nanotubes (which happen to be excellent conductors) may replace copper wire, in general, any first generation technology causes more problems then it solves.
A great example is insecticides. There's no denying that they've increased food output in many nations, but many of the first insecticides that were used were highly toxic and are still being cleaned up today.
In short, if we hope that technology is going to solve our problems, we better start fixing them early, because it will take a couple of tries to get it right.
I want a portable pebble bed nuclear reactor in my back yard to power my house and charge the electric company $500.00 a month to use my excess electricity.
I don't know why there's been so much debate about whether or not popups and/or spyware is illegal. Here is a simple analogy:
Putting a pop-up on my screen to sell me a product to get rid of popups is like putting a rock through the window of my house with a note advertising your window company.
Would anyone argue that the second situation is legal or that these two situations are dramatically different?
The only argument that they are different is whether or not they are destroying your property with pop-ups. Adding this sort of program damages my computer by decreasing it's availability, wasting my time and money trying to get rid of the offensive program and/or preventing some needed operation on the machine.
The analogy is very clear to me. Now, we just have to identify the companies that are responsible and slap a big financial judgement on them. Making them pay is the only way to stop it. It may also be necessary to throw the worst offenders in jail as an example.
I suppose the only reason we're tolerating this sort of thing is the big business backing the anti-spyware/popup/spam market. If we aggressively attacked the spammers, then there would be less of a demand for their services... fine, give them a portion of the judgement against the spammers.
Just my HO.
There's another issue most of you are failing to consider. Not only do hurricanes spread heat, they dissipate an enormous amount of it.
* The large cloud system reflects large amounts of sunlight back into space.
* The evaporation occurring in the path of the hurricane causes significant cooling.
* After the hurricane, evaporation is again increased after the heavy rains, again causing significant cooling.
After more study, I believe we'll realize that this local cooling is a factor (in addition to low general probability) in preventing a hurricane from striking the same place twice in a row. Conditions will be more favorable elsewhere because a hurricane has already sapped much of the heat from an area when it passes.
Dan
think, then act. doh, got it backwards again.