A more useless contribution to the eventual heat death of the universe than this AC post there never was. If/. banned AC, the energy savings resulting from prevented AC posts would certainly make fusion obsolete. And who knows, maybe it would even delay the universe's heat death by a considerable margin.
That's the same type of bs the US administration has used and is using to promote and play down development of new types of "mini-nukes" which are not physically possible and only serve to disguise their attempt of legalising a program of improving old-fashioned, Cold War style strategical warheads. Every nuclear weapon, i.e. in which fission or fusion occurs, needs to reach a certain critical mass and density of the nuclear material before anything goes off at all. While I'm not a weapons engineer by any means, "concentric shells of beryllium and weapons-grade plutonium -- just a gram or two of each" as TFA describes are nowhere near enough to trigger an uncontrolled chain reaction, a.k.a. nuclear explosion.
The asteroid counterweight solution has the obvious advantage that the ribbon length is pretty much halved, because its center of gravity will be almost at its end (the asteroid); also, the asteroid obviously doesn't have to be launched into space in the first place.
On the other hand (and I'm not speaking as a scientist here), I can't easily imagine the difficulties involved in a) finding the right asteroid of the right size and consistency in a suitable orbit and b) changing its orbit and navigating it prefectly into the desired new geo-stationary orbit.
In my humble opinion, if you already know how to build a 36.000 km ribbon in outer space and attach a captured asteroid to its dangling end, then you might just as well go all the way and make it double as long, problem solved.
All objects larger than (if memory serves) 10-15 cm in diameter are being tracked and catalogued by earth-based radar facilities as of today. So, if such a behemoth really were to pop into existence and to fall on a trajectory that crosses the hpothetical Elevator, counter-measures could be initiated. That's not to mitigate the challenge of Space Junk, but it's a risk that can be planned for and designed against, and it's nowhere as serious as your calculation implies.
For large projects to be realized, they either have to be of decisive strategic/military value during war (Manhattan project), or they have to completely capture the hearts of the citizens that are supposed to pay for it all (Apollo Project, "before this decade is out..."). Clearly, for the Space Elevator, the latter is the case. I, for one, have not heard of Launch Loop before, and the dry PDFs and text files that are Google's #1 on the term didn't really invite me to care about it. The Space Elevator, on the other hand, has been part of the popular culture for decades, and has recently surged astronomically (no pun intended) in terms of mainstream recognition.
Just as it would have been more affordable and scientifically more valuable to gradually conquer space and ultimately the moon (i.e. with manned space stations and a launch from space etc.), it was the extreme appeal of the "moon shot", the giant leap that won the favor over the more economical approach.
We know the ribbon material (carbon nanotubes), we know the climber technology (trivial), we know how to dig a deep hole and pour concrete into it as a fundament. And that's about all there is to the Space Elevator.
Of course, a lot of smart people (plus politicians/lawyers) will have to consider where to build it and how to protect it from various dangers, i.e. sabotage, accident, weather, etc., how to achieve step 3 (profit!), and how to use it as the biggest sling there ever was. But the actual, biggest challenge will be to build it at all, which includes manufacturing the ribbon fibre in sufficient length and strength, and as far as I understand it, this is mainly an tinkering/engineering problem. The technolog is there, now it "only" has to be improved to a degree that we can start talking business.
They are certainly not "playing around", saying so means discrediting them already. I don't deny they probably had good fun when they succeeded, but they don't do it for the fun of it. Also note that the actual hard part of the space elevator is the ribbon, obviously, and what the Liftport group is currently testing and was testing in 2004 is the climber technology, not the ribbon. In comparison to the ribbon, realising the climber will be trivial, but it has to be tested and worked out nonetheless. And it's something that can be tested and experimented on NOW, as opposed to when we can construct mile-long ribbons made of carbon nanotubes.
Also, if the Liftport Group wants to undertake something as huge as the Space Elevator, their case had better be as solid as to be able to scratch diamond with it, or they will fail miserably.
A nice anecdote about Clarke and Fountains of Paradies:
after being asked by a reporter about when he thinks the Space Elevator will actually be built, he replied: "20 years after everybody stopped laughing about it".
To me, it looks like people HAVE stopped laughing.
marking the first-ever test of this technology in the development of the space elevator concept.
It may be the first test of the technology that actually requires a federal permit because of the altitude, but here are pictures and a video of an earlier test in November 2004.
[image here with headline: "German inventor can make gasoline out of cats"]
and okay, in the last paragraph, at the very end of their report, BILD has forgotten a letter 'e' in the surname of quoted animal welfare activist "Annelise Krauß". But even Anneliese Krauß doesn't really mind. However, BILD didn't quote her name just for fun, but together with the following statement:
"'This is just as evil as cruel animal experiments', fulminates Annelise Krauß of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals in Dresden."
And that is total "rubbish", says Krauß when asked about it, because she never fulminated nor even actually made the statemant quoted by BILD. Quite the contrary: "This would be idiotic," says Krauß, "because when it's about dead animals, then it's a non-issue for animal welfare!" In short, the animal welfare activist states about Christian Koch's invention (who, according to BILD, turns cats into gasoline):
"As far as we are concerned, there is no problem at all."
And that, by the way, was exactly what she says she told BILD. (But, so Krauß continues, when "Mr. Helfricht", one of the authors of the BILD article, calls her, then she knew from experience that BILD will print things she never said or meant that way. Things have been running this way in Dresden for over ten years, says Krauß. - And that was just the discussion of the first paragraph of the BILD article.
Let's have a look at the rest, the actual information that "Dr. Christian Koch (55) aus Kleinhartmannsdorf (Saxony)", as BILD states, "can turn cats into gasoline": Even a look at the BILD article reveals that the "gasoline" headline in itself is nonsense, because the article only talks about "Bio-Diesel" or "Diesel". In fact, Koch seems to have found an unusual and effective alternative to producing fuel: the catalytic pressureless oilification (KDV) [ed: not sure about the correct term], about which several other federal and private TV stations and newspapers reported, beginning in 2003 until recently. And all of these other reports have one thing in common: they do justice to the topic they are reporting about, even when reporting critically.
BILD, however, calls Koch's invention a "special reactor" and prints sentences like the following:
"The cat power can in theory be calculated exactly: A fully grown 13 pound cat could be turned into 2.5 liters of fuel, four kitties would be enough for 100 kilometers, a full tank would require 20 dead cats."
And if you just ask the "man who can put the (house) tiger in the tank" (BILD), Christian Koch replies: "the BILD report has nothing to do with the truth and furthermore, it's infinitely stupid". Koch continues:
"How could you move a vehicle with boiled organic material? Water would immediately stall any engine. Here, the lowest instincts of stupid people are appealed to, just to libel a valuable invention. (...) To imply me handling animal cadavers is criminal. That is not the least the aim of the development and can thus only be regarded as defamation."
Furthermore, the website of of Koch's company now states:
[image: "The reports of German media about Dr. Christian Koch turning cat cadavers into Diesel are completely wrong and lack any reference towards reality whatsoever. Legal action has been taken against those statements]
Thanks to Jan S. for the suggestion.
Addition, 12:15:
Today, BILD has again picked up the "cat power" theme:
[headline: "May we really turn cats into gasoline?"]
But even if the article - more cautiosly than yesterday - states, that Christian Koch "could theoretically" produce Bio-Diesel "from cats", even if not Koch, but a competitor, is allowed to adjust yesterday's artificial scandalisation by BILD, even if the animal welfare activists' relaxed position is repeated more correctly and less
Suppose the high prices were not only caused by stock speculators, but mostly by a factual shortage of fossil fuels, peak oil. It would be the best chance to (globally!) switch to alternative fuels and modernizing our way of thinking about energy and its consumption. Everybody is - or should be - aware that oil reserves are neither infinite nor inexhaustible.
If we want to sustain our living standards, we have to look at oil as a starting budget, a one-time loan (pollution being the interest) from pre-historic times, to help us developing a sustainable way of living. Some higher being knows that has been taking us pretty long already.
Before submitting a story to slashdot linking to a site on your personal server, refit the server with water cooling and use New Orleans as your reservoir.
Why do you care so much? I don't understand the appeal of an seemingly endless stream of dupe-related "me too" comments. Are you personally involved in this site? Yes, I do understand that it can be annoying to see the same story over and over again. Yes I do understand that it makes one worry about the editor's attitude and interest towards their site and what we are missing because of their sometimes sub-optimal editing. But why do you still post a comment under the dupe? Just consider the dupe a troll posting and do the only right thing: ignore it. Why do you read the same article again, and why do you still read slashdot? Is it because, overall,/. is a site that's worth more than its fee? Also, there indeed are people that don't refresh/. every 5 minutes to get the latest, freshest story, so if it is a "hot" story, why not make sure even less-frequent visitors get to see it? Last but not least don't forget that in most stories, the comments are what really make a story shine, be it the Funny or the Insightful ones. IMHO, an example. Don't be dupe nazis.
The reason so many AI algorithms have found limited application in fielded physical systems (such as weapon systems) is because the competing approach--dozens of smart engineers, working long hours, tweaking human-readable algorithm code and Monte Carlo simulating the tweaked designs over and over for years--is so effective.
But how long will it stay that way? Advances in nanotechnology are going on today and might ultimately lead to macroscopic devices with atomic-precision specifications. Even by abstracting the design nightmare of placing mole quantities of atoms in the right place by creating far larger building blocks (cubes of some 100 nm edge length), the nanoblock design and their arrangement will still result in huge search spaces that have to be searched for their optimum somehow.
Given that our anglosaxon world has had a far better history of economic prosperity and democracy than most of your non-anglosaxon world over the past century or two, perhaps your non-anglosaxon world could learn something from our "paranoid" instincts.
Great Britain and a democratic history? Tell me again, what were kings for? Also I find it debatable whether or not a two-party-system as in the US is highly democratic, especially if these two parties only differ in details. That's a minor point, however, because this trend is visible in most, if not all, western media/corporate democracies. The US is just taking the lead.
As for economic history: Never mind that a good part of this economic prosperity, for the whole anglo-saxon world, was built on vast amounts of all kinds of natural resources, taken by force or bought for the price of proverbial glass pearls, and, for the US only, almost 250 years of slavery, with all its economic and political implications
Also never mind that, from what we can see from outside the US, identity theft is rampant in the US. OTOH, maybe that's what you were referring to with "economic prosperity"? It does look like a thriving industry, that's for sure. Maybe identity theft, then, is also just a corollary of The American Dream: Identity theft, n.: the freedom to be whoever you want to be.
If the perp only went for, say, 50 Cents, he would probably extort a lot more money with a lot less attention. 200 bucks? If the threat was technically sound, everybody would either call the police, or have their OS re-installed, or clamor for a direct technical solution from the Anti-vir companies. If the ransom was only 50 Cents, then a lot more people would just pay up and hope for no more hassle.
Of course, that totally doesn't solve the money-tracking problem for the extortionist, so I believe this plan is less than futile.
xterm: The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
Cthon98: hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
Cthon98: ********* see!
AzureDiamond: hunter2
AzureDiamond: doesnt look like stars to me
Cthon98: AzureDiamond: *******
Cthon98: thats what I see
AzureDiamond: oh, really?
Cthon98: Absolutely
AzureDiamond: you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
AzureDiamond: haha, does that look funny to you?
Cthon98: lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
AzureDiamond: thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
Cthon98: yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
AzureDiamond: awesome!
AzureDiamond: wait, how do you know my pw?
Cthon98: er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******'s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
AzureDiamond: oh, ok.
Slashdot Mirror
A more useless contribution to the eventual heat death of the universe than this AC post there never was. If /. banned AC, the energy savings resulting from prevented AC posts would certainly make fusion obsolete. And who knows, maybe it would even delay the universe's heat death by a considerable margin.
30 years, bah! From now on, fusion is 20 years away, and always will be. Talk about progress!
That's the same type of bs the US administration has used and is using to promote and play down development of new types of "mini-nukes" which are not physically possible and only serve to disguise their attempt of legalising a program of improving old-fashioned, Cold War style strategical warheads. Every nuclear weapon, i.e. in which fission or fusion occurs, needs to reach a certain critical mass and density of the nuclear material before anything goes off at all. While I'm not a weapons engineer by any means, "concentric shells of beryllium and weapons-grade plutonium -- just a gram or two of each" as TFA describes are nowhere near enough to trigger an uncontrolled chain reaction, a.k.a. nuclear explosion.
You know, the quotes and sayings on the bottom of every /. page
As of 11:27 PM CET:
Hate the sin and love the sinner. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Take it to heart.
The asteroid counterweight solution has the obvious advantage that the ribbon length is pretty much halved, because its center of gravity will be almost at its end (the asteroid); also, the asteroid obviously doesn't have to be launched into space in the first place.
On the other hand (and I'm not speaking as a scientist here), I can't easily imagine the difficulties involved in a) finding the right asteroid of the right size and consistency in a suitable orbit and b) changing its orbit and navigating it prefectly into the desired new geo-stationary orbit.
In my humble opinion, if you already know how to build a 36.000 km ribbon in outer space and attach a captured asteroid to its dangling end, then you might just as well go all the way and make it double as long, problem solved.
All objects larger than (if memory serves) 10-15 cm in diameter are being tracked and catalogued by earth-based radar facilities as of today. So, if such a behemoth really were to pop into existence and to fall on a trajectory that crosses the hpothetical Elevator, counter-measures could be initiated. That's not to mitigate the challenge of Space Junk, but it's a risk that can be planned for and designed against, and it's nowhere as serious as your calculation implies.
Launch Loop presentation and Space Elevator presentation .
For large projects to be realized, they either have to be of decisive strategic/military value during war (Manhattan project), or they have to completely capture the hearts of the citizens that are supposed to pay for it all (Apollo Project, "before this decade is out..."). Clearly, for the Space Elevator, the latter is the case. I, for one, have not heard of Launch Loop before, and the dry PDFs and text files that are Google's #1 on the term didn't really invite me to care about it. The Space Elevator, on the other hand, has been part of the popular culture for decades, and has recently surged astronomically (no pun intended) in terms of mainstream recognition.
Just as it would have been more affordable and scientifically more valuable to gradually conquer space and ultimately the moon (i.e. with manned space stations and a launch from space etc.), it was the extreme appeal of the "moon shot", the giant leap that won the favor over the more economical approach.
We know the ribbon material (carbon nanotubes), we know the climber technology (trivial), we know how to dig a deep hole and pour concrete into it as a fundament. And that's about all there is to the Space Elevator.
Of course, a lot of smart people (plus politicians/lawyers) will have to consider where to build it and how to protect it from various dangers, i.e. sabotage, accident, weather, etc., how to achieve step 3 (profit!), and how to use it as the biggest sling there ever was. But the actual, biggest challenge will be to build it at all, which includes manufacturing the ribbon fibre in sufficient length and strength, and as far as I understand it, this is mainly an tinkering/engineering problem. The technolog is there, now it "only" has to be improved to a degree that we can start talking business.
They are certainly not "playing around", saying so means discrediting them already. I don't deny they probably had good fun when they succeeded, but they don't do it for the fun of it. Also note that the actual hard part of the space elevator is the ribbon, obviously, and what the Liftport group is currently testing and was testing in 2004 is the climber technology, not the ribbon. In comparison to the ribbon, realising the climber will be trivial, but it has to be tested and worked out nonetheless. And it's something that can be tested and experimented on NOW, as opposed to when we can construct mile-long ribbons made of carbon nanotubes.
Also, if the Liftport Group wants to undertake something as huge as the Space Elevator, their case had better be as solid as to be able to scratch diamond with it, or they will fail miserably.
A nice anecdote about Clarke and Fountains of Paradies:
after being asked by a reporter about when he thinks the Space Elevator will actually be built, he replied: "20 years after everybody stopped laughing about it".
To me, it looks like people HAVE stopped laughing.
FTA:
marking the first-ever test of this technology in the development of the space elevator concept.
It may be the first test of the technology that actually requires a federal permit because of the altitude, but here are pictures and a video of an earlier test in November 2004.
Soylent DHMO is water!!
look here for the translation.
Of cats and stupid people
Yesterday, "Bild" reported:
[image here with headline: "German inventor can make gasoline out of cats"]
and okay, in the last paragraph, at the very end of their report, BILD has forgotten a letter 'e' in the surname of quoted animal welfare activist "Annelise Krauß". But even Anneliese Krauß doesn't really mind. However, BILD didn't quote her name just for fun, but together with the following statement:
"'This is just as evil as cruel animal experiments', fulminates Annelise Krauß of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals in Dresden."
And that is total "rubbish", says Krauß when asked about it, because she never fulminated nor even actually made the statemant quoted by BILD. Quite the contrary: "This would be idiotic," says Krauß, "because when it's about dead animals, then it's a non-issue for animal welfare!" In short, the animal welfare activist states about Christian Koch's invention (who, according to BILD, turns cats into gasoline):
"As far as we are concerned, there is no problem at all."
And that, by the way, was exactly what she says she told BILD. (But, so Krauß continues, when "Mr. Helfricht", one of the authors of the BILD article, calls her, then she knew from experience that BILD will print things she never said or meant that way. Things have been running this way in Dresden for over ten years, says Krauß. - And that was just the discussion of the first paragraph of the BILD article.
Let's have a look at the rest, the actual information that "Dr. Christian Koch (55) aus Kleinhartmannsdorf (Saxony)", as BILD states, "can turn cats into gasoline": Even a look at the BILD article reveals that the "gasoline" headline in itself is nonsense, because the article only talks about "Bio-Diesel" or "Diesel". In fact, Koch seems to have found an unusual and effective alternative to producing fuel: the catalytic pressureless oilification (KDV) [ed: not sure about the correct term], about which several other federal and private TV stations and newspapers reported, beginning in 2003 until recently. And all of these other reports have one thing in common: they do justice to the topic they are reporting about, even when reporting critically.
BILD, however, calls Koch's invention a "special reactor" and prints sentences like the following:
"The cat power can in theory be calculated exactly: A fully grown 13 pound cat could be turned into 2.5 liters of fuel, four kitties would be enough for 100 kilometers, a full tank would require 20 dead cats."
And if you just ask the "man who can put the (house) tiger in the tank" (BILD), Christian Koch replies: "the BILD report has nothing to do with the truth and furthermore, it's infinitely stupid". Koch continues:
"How could you move a vehicle with boiled organic material? Water would immediately stall any engine. Here, the lowest instincts of stupid people are appealed to, just to libel a valuable invention. (...) To imply me handling animal cadavers is criminal. That is not the least the aim of the development and can thus only be regarded as defamation."
Furthermore, the website of of Koch's company now states:
[image: "The reports of German media about Dr. Christian Koch turning cat cadavers into Diesel are completely wrong and lack any reference towards reality whatsoever. Legal action has been taken against those statements]
Thanks to Jan S. for the suggestion.
Addition, 12:15: Today, BILD has again picked up the "cat power" theme:
[headline: "May we really turn cats into gasoline?"]
But even if the article - more cautiosly than yesterday - states, that Christian Koch "could theoretically" produce Bio-Diesel "from cats", even if not Koch, but a competitor, is allowed to adjust yesterday's artificial scandalisation by BILD, even if the animal welfare activists' relaxed position is repeated more correctly and less
Suppose the high prices were not only caused by stock speculators, but mostly by a factual shortage of fossil fuels, peak oil. It would be the best chance to (globally!) switch to alternative fuels and modernizing our way of thinking about energy and its consumption. Everybody is - or should be - aware that oil reserves are neither infinite nor inexhaustible.
If we want to sustain our living standards, we have to look at oil as a starting budget, a one-time loan (pollution being the interest) from pre-historic times, to help us developing a sustainable way of living. Some higher being knows that has been taking us pretty long already.
Before submitting a story to slashdot linking to a site on your personal server, refit the server with water cooling and use New Orleans as your reservoir.
You meant to say geiger-counter-remembers. Giger was the artist behind the Alien design
Why do you care so much? I don't understand the appeal of an seemingly endless stream of dupe-related "me too" comments. Are you personally involved in this site? /. is a site that's worth more than its fee? Also, there indeed are people that don't refresh /. every 5 minutes to get the latest, freshest story, so if it is a "hot" story, why not make sure even less-frequent visitors get to see it?
Yes, I do understand that it can be annoying to see the same story over and over again. Yes I do understand that it makes one worry about the editor's attitude and interest towards their site and what we are missing because of their sometimes sub-optimal editing. But why do you still post a comment under the dupe? Just consider the dupe a troll posting and do the only right thing: ignore it. Why do you read the same article again, and why do you still read slashdot?
Is it because, overall,
Last but not least don't forget that in most stories, the comments are what really make a story shine, be it the Funny or the Insightful ones. IMHO, an example. Don't be dupe nazis.
But I never did it because my neighbors are older
So after Security through obscurity and Security through openness: Security through youthfulness?
The reason so many AI algorithms have found limited application in fielded physical systems (such as weapon systems) is because the competing approach--dozens of smart engineers, working long hours, tweaking human-readable algorithm code and Monte Carlo simulating the tweaked designs over and over for years--is so effective.
But how long will it stay that way? Advances in nanotechnology are going on today and might ultimately lead to macroscopic devices with atomic-precision specifications. Even by abstracting the design nightmare of placing mole quantities of atoms in the right place by creating far larger building blocks (cubes of some 100 nm edge length), the nanoblock design and their arrangement will still result in huge search spaces that have to be searched for their optimum somehow.
Better download it now before their server learns to resist the slashdotting
403 Forbidden. Nice try, maggot
Given that our anglosaxon world has had a far better history of economic prosperity and democracy than most of your non-anglosaxon world over the past century or two, perhaps your non-anglosaxon world could learn something from our "paranoid" instincts.
Great Britain and a democratic history? Tell me again, what were kings for? Also I find it debatable whether or not a two-party-system as in the US is highly democratic, especially if these two parties only differ in details. That's a minor point, however, because this trend is visible in most, if not all, western media/corporate democracies. The US is just taking the lead.
As for economic history: Never mind that a good part of this economic prosperity, for the whole anglo-saxon world, was built on vast amounts of all kinds of natural resources, taken by force or bought for the price of proverbial glass pearls, and, for the US only, almost 250 years of slavery, with all its economic and political implications
Also never mind that, from what we can see from outside the US, identity theft is rampant in the US. OTOH, maybe that's what you were referring to with "economic prosperity"? It does look like a thriving industry, that's for sure. Maybe identity theft, then, is also just a corollary of The American Dream:
Identity theft, n.: the freedom to be whoever you want to be.
[/flame]
If the perp only went for, say, 50 Cents, he would probably extort a lot more money with a lot less attention. 200 bucks? If the threat was technically sound, everybody would either call the police, or have their OS re-installed, or clamor for a direct technical solution from the Anti-vir companies. If the ransom was only 50 Cents, then a lot more people would just pay up and hope for no more hassle.
Of course, that totally doesn't solve the money-tracking problem for the extortionist, so I believe this plan is less than futile.
The kid's not American, but the product is:
4753
xterm: The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
244321
Cthon98: hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
Cthon98: ********* see!
AzureDiamond: hunter2
AzureDiamond: doesnt look like stars to me
Cthon98: AzureDiamond: *******
Cthon98: thats what I see
AzureDiamond: oh, really?
Cthon98: Absolutely
AzureDiamond: you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
AzureDiamond: haha, does that look funny to you?
Cthon98: lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
AzureDiamond: thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
Cthon98: yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
AzureDiamond: awesome!
AzureDiamond: wait, how do you know my pw?
Cthon98: er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******'s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
AzureDiamond: oh, ok.