If your business saves money by using information technology it most likely *prevents* pollution.
IT improves efficiency. Efficiency is generally improved by not wasting things. Things that take energy and other resources to manufacture, ship, etc. And what of the business trips that have been saved by better messaging and communication services?
And anyway, data centers require electric power. We have mature technology to produce base load electric power cleanly (nuclear) and we are well on the way to develop other technologies to an equivalent level of maturity (solar thermal, geothermal, etc). For some reason we choose not to this technology and continue building dirty coal plants instead.
Anyone creating an adwords campaign would be required to click a checkbox "This keyword is a trademark of another company". The ads would then have a small label saying they are from a competitor. No one would be able to claim that customers are being deceived in any way.
While optical observatories have excellent angular resolution, they can't measure distances very well. Radar measurements fill in this gap quite nicely.
> Also, the Japanese had a Sodium coolant leak a while ago, it wasn't particularly pretty. So perhaps high pressure steam isn't a bad thing, you can always condense it if it leaks, right?
Metallic sodium is pretty nasty stuff. But there are plans for reactors cooled with molten lead or molten salts which are chemically inert. There is also a type of reactor in which the nuclear fuel itself is dissolved in the molten salt - no solid fuel elements. Having the fuel in liquid form has several interesting advantages. For example, a rise in temperature causes the liquid to lower its density and nuclear reactivitity. This automatically adjusts the power level without requiring control rods.
Canada's CANDU reactor design uses lots of high pressure pipes instead of one big pressure vessel. The difficulty of making a monolithic vessel is one of the reasons for this.
Another alternative is to avoid using a primary loop coolant with such a high vapor pressure as water. If molten metal or molten salt os ised instead it is not necessary to have a high pressure vessel made in one piece. A containment vessel welded from multiple pieces would be more than sufficient when the reactor core is at 1 atmosphere.
But for conventional pressurized water reactors this steel plant in Japan doea appear to be a bottleneck.
Comparing the probability to car accidents does not really give you a feeling of what it means. It may be better to say something like "N people would need to completely stop using cellular phones to prevent a single death".
Creative epiphanies are real enough. True, they are neither a sufficient nor a required condition for successfully bringing an innovative idea to happen in the real world. But they are hardly "Balderdash".
In theory, it shouldn't matter whether an idea has developed gradually or came in a "thunderclap". In either case there's a long road afterwards. But the memory of that special moment can fuel the determination to keep on the road through the inevitable hardships - and to inspire others.
> This of course is huge. The safety of not needing heat shielding alone is such a groundbreaking and novel development that NASA itself took notice.
Feathered reentry has nothing to do with not needing a significant heat shield. The reason SS2 does not need a heat shield is because it only reaches a speed of a couple of machs, nowhere near orbital speed.
Feathered reentry is about not having to reenter the atmosphere at a very precise angle and tumbling out of control if you don't get it exactly right. It happened to one of the X15s which flew a suborbital profile similar to that of SS2.
> If you disagree with this statement, go ahead -- explain why you feel that a vehicle with this low delta-V, horrible ISP, and proportionally high mass that faces bare minimal reentry heating -- advances the state of the art.
Other than contributions like feathered reentry I agree that it does very little to advance the state of the art.
But that is precisely the point. The state of the art does not need much advancing. Everything we really need know in order to get into space has been known for a couple of decades and has advanced very little even with much bigger budgets thrown at it by governments around the world. What we need to advance is the state of practice and Scaled/Virgin is doing exactly that.
Just one small example: an aircraft capable of carrying with proper ground clearance and safely dropping this size of load did not exist until now. It can be useful for many other applications like this one. Does this advance the state of the art? Of course not. We've known such an aircraft can be built for well over half a century. But having this kind of aircraft actually available shaves many millions and a lot of risk from the budget of projects that need it. We all know these projects are facing lots of risks and are always underbudgeted so every little bit of help they can get really counts.
So it has been funded by joyriders. Anything wrong with that? Would you rather fund such development with your tax dollars?
I don't see any problem. This is a different standard targeting different applications with a diffrent usage model.
Instead of complex pairing rituals required for longer range wireless communication at 3cm it's pretty clear which device you are communicating with so this has a completely different user experience. I also suspect that it's much cheaper and serves applications at a different price point. The close-range standard should work very nicely with the various wireless power schemes using magnetic induction that have about the same range.
So "war" is only a problem if you get stuck on which one of them gets to be called the wireless USB. In other words, it's only an issue for technologists. From an end user's point of view they have little in common.
It's a better heat engine. It is equally applicable to gas, coal, nuclear or any other heat source. If these other sources currently have an aconomic advantages over solar (e.g. working at night) they can benefit from this invention at least as much as solar. They will continue to have an advantage over solar, possibly even a bigger one than they have today. Something that can change this situation has to be applicable only to solar (like the nanosolar film) and not benefit the competition as well.
I'm all for renewable energy, but self-deception or wishful thinking will not get us there.
The predictions are about mass adoption. There is no question that this is possible (and has been possible for well over 30 years). The question is whether anyone really wants it. So far, the answer given by the market is a resounding 'no'. The steadfast predictors, undeterred by such trivialities have boldly kept it on their lists for decades. You've gotta admire that.
You probably know that big IT projects often fail. But for some reason patient record projects tend to fail more than other projects. Administrative systems for setting appointments work. Automation for lab tests works. But projects for actual patient records keep failing.
I have a friend in the healthcare IT business who claims that they are actively sabotaged. Many more are derailed before they ever get started. Doctors prefer paper records that cannot be efficiently mined for malpractice lawsuits. Paper records that can be conveniently lost.
Makani power are planning to generate electricity using high altitude kites - at a cost competitive with coal power.
There's very little information about them for now but they did get a $10M investment from Google. Here is what Cringely dug up about them from old Usenet posts of one of the team members.
The problem with such deadly ideas is false alarms and liability issues. So how about temporarily depriving the burglars of their sense of sight instead?
Several manufacturers offer fog security systems that fill the room with artificial fog. It's similar to theatrical fog generators but denser and produced much more rapidly. Some add strong strobe lights to make it more effective. They may also include menthol smell so nobody should mistake it for fire smoke and a recorded message with instruction to "stay in your place and wait for the police" so the burglars won't sue you if they run in the fog, fall and break their leg.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not such a bad idea, actually.
Have them vet any mcgyverisms in the movie and give them some cameo roles.
The "Similar pages" link already shows you the competitors and has done so for about 10 years now. Why hasn't anyone sued google for that?
If your business saves money by using information technology it most likely *prevents* pollution.
IT improves efficiency. Efficiency is generally improved by not wasting things. Things that take energy and other resources to manufacture, ship, etc. And what of the business trips that have been saved by better messaging and communication services?
And anyway, data centers require electric power. We have mature technology to produce base load electric power cleanly (nuclear) and we are well on the way to develop other technologies to an equivalent level of maturity (solar thermal, geothermal, etc). For some reason we choose not to this technology and continue building dirty coal plants instead.
Anyone creating an adwords campaign would be required to click a checkbox "This keyword is a trademark of another company". The ads would then have a small label saying they are from a competitor. No one would be able to claim that customers are being deceived in any way.
It seems to be outside the predicted location of the Island of Stability.
Here (122 protons, 170 neutrons)
While optical observatories have excellent angular resolution, they can't measure distances very well. Radar measurements fill in this gap quite nicely.
> This is very cool work. Of course, it's rocket science, not rocket engineering, so it's unlikely to impact new designs for several years yet.
Especially considering the fact that major new liquid-fueled rocket engines are designed at a rate of about one per decade...
What are the chances that someone working on this project played M.U.L.E. in the 80s?
Enjoy the music of the game here. Ah, nostalgia...
> Also, the Japanese had a Sodium coolant leak a while ago, it wasn't particularly pretty. So perhaps high pressure steam isn't a bad thing, you can always condense it if it leaks, right?
Metallic sodium is pretty nasty stuff. But there are plans for reactors cooled with molten lead or molten salts which are chemically inert. There is also a type of reactor in which the nuclear fuel itself is dissolved in the molten salt - no solid fuel elements. Having the fuel in liquid form has several interesting advantages. For example, a rise in temperature causes the liquid to lower its density and nuclear reactivitity. This automatically adjusts the power level without requiring control rods.
Canada's CANDU reactor design uses lots of high pressure pipes instead of one big pressure vessel. The difficulty of making a monolithic vessel is one of the reasons for this.
Another alternative is to avoid using a primary loop coolant with such a high vapor pressure as water. If molten metal or molten salt os ised instead it is not necessary to have a high pressure vessel made in one piece. A containment vessel welded from multiple pieces would be more than sufficient when the reactor core is at 1 atmosphere.
But for conventional pressurized water reactors this steel plant in Japan doea appear to be a bottleneck.
Patents are easier to read online with Google Patents. It also lets you download a PDF.
here
Comparing the probability to car accidents does not really give you a feeling of what it means. It may be better to say something like "N people would need to completely stop using cellular phones to prevent a single death".
Anyone has an idea what N might be?
The target of the chinese test was an old chinese weather satellite orbiting at 865km.
USA 193 is orbiting at an altitude of 260km. The lifetime of the debris will be very short.
This type of closed-cycle system is a method to store and transmit energy.
So what's missing?
An energy source. Where is all the energy going to come from?
Creative epiphanies are real enough. True, they are neither a sufficient nor a required condition for successfully bringing an
innovative idea to happen in the real world. But they are hardly "Balderdash".
In theory, it shouldn't matter whether an idea has developed gradually or came in a "thunderclap". In either case there's a long road afterwards. But the memory of that special moment can fuel the determination to keep on the road through the inevitable hardships - and to inspire others.
> This of course is huge. The safety of not needing heat shielding alone is such a groundbreaking and novel development that NASA itself took notice.
Feathered reentry has nothing to do with not needing a significant heat shield. The reason SS2 does not need a heat shield is because it only reaches a speed of a couple of machs, nowhere near orbital speed.
Feathered reentry is about not having to reenter the atmosphere at a very precise angle and tumbling out of control if you don't get it exactly right. It happened to one of the X15s which flew a suborbital profile similar to that of SS2.
> If you disagree with this statement, go ahead -- explain why you feel that a vehicle with this low delta-V, horrible ISP, and proportionally high mass that faces bare minimal reentry heating -- advances the state of the art.
Other than contributions like feathered reentry I agree that it does very little to advance the state of the art.
But that is precisely the point. The state of the art does not need much advancing. Everything we really need know in order to get into space has been known for a couple of decades and has advanced very little even with much bigger budgets thrown at it by governments around the world. What we need to advance is the state of practice and Scaled/Virgin is doing exactly that.
Just one small example: an aircraft capable of carrying with proper ground clearance and safely dropping this size of load did not exist until now. It can be useful for many other applications like this one. Does this advance the state of the art? Of course not. We've known such an aircraft can be built for well over half a century. But having this kind of aircraft actually available shaves many millions and a lot of risk from the budget of projects that need it. We all know these projects are facing lots of risks and are always underbudgeted so every little bit of help they can get really counts.
So it has been funded by joyriders. Anything wrong with that? Would you rather fund such development with your tax dollars?
I don't see any problem. This is a different standard targeting different applications with a diffrent usage model.
Instead of complex pairing rituals required for longer range wireless communication at 3cm it's pretty clear which device you are communicating with so this has a completely different user experience. I also suspect that it's much cheaper and serves applications at a different price point. The close-range standard should work very nicely with the various wireless power schemes using magnetic induction that have about the same range.
So "war" is only a problem if you get stuck on which one of them gets to be called the wireless USB. In other words, it's only an issue for technologists. From an end user's point of view they have little in common.
It's a better heat engine. It is equally applicable to gas, coal, nuclear or any other heat source. If these other sources currently have an aconomic advantages over solar (e.g. working at night) they can benefit from this invention at least as much as solar. They will continue to have an advantage over solar, possibly even a bigger one than they have today. Something that can change this situation has to be applicable only to solar (like the nanosolar film) and not benefit the competition as well.
I'm all for renewable energy, but self-deception or wishful thinking will not get us there.
I don't think these evil bastards have access to all failed lookups at the gtld servers.
Use whois only when you know the domain already exists.
The predictions are about mass adoption. There is no question that this is possible (and has been possible for well over 30 years). The question is whether anyone really wants it. So far, the answer given by the market is a resounding 'no'. The steadfast predictors, undeterred by such trivialities have boldly kept it on their lists for decades. You've gotta admire that.
You probably know that big IT projects often fail. But for some reason patient record projects tend to fail more than other projects. Administrative systems for setting appointments work. Automation for lab tests works. But projects for actual patient records keep failing.
I have a friend in the healthcare IT business who claims that they are actively sabotaged. Many more are derailed before they ever get started. Doctors prefer paper records that cannot be efficiently mined for malpractice lawsuits. Paper records that can be conveniently lost.
Smart homes with remotely controlled appliances have featured in predictions for about 20 years now. Always about 5 years out.
I predict they will remain in the prediction lists for the next 20 years.
Makani power are planning to generate electricity using high altitude kites - at a cost competitive with coal power.
There's very little information about them for now but they did get a $10M investment from Google. Here is what Cringely dug up about them from old Usenet posts of one of the team members.
The problem with such deadly ideas is false alarms and liability issues. So how about temporarily depriving the burglars of their sense of sight instead?
Several manufacturers offer fog security systems that fill the room with artificial fog. It's similar to theatrical fog generators but denser and produced much more rapidly. Some add strong strobe lights to make it more effective. They may also include menthol smell so nobody should mistake it for fire smoke and a recorded message with instruction to "stay in your place and wait for the police" so the burglars won't sue you if they run in the fog, fall and break their leg.