OKay, Mr Smart guy, I just lost my wallet, which had all my idenity. My name is john doe, my Id is (number), I'd like to replace my id. Thank you, now I have a idenity card for Mr John Doe, hello bank, here is my identiy card and my id, I'd like a loan...
Did I mention that there are criminals who specialize in fake IDs, and can provide me a picture id with any information on it I want, all I need to do is provide the information I want.
Even if the state keeps a photo that can be looked up, so long as you look close nobody will notice. Having an official photo might make things easier since the criminals can access the photo (either the system will be useless because nobody can compare the official photo to the person in question, or nearly everyone has access to it), and use that to select someone who they look similear to while selling information for someone else to others criminals who looks different.
There is no perfect way to id someone who you have known personally known since birth. (Although it is unlikely someone would spend say 10 years establishing a false identy, much less not get caught in that time, it isn't impossibal)
Porn might be popular, but it won't work without major other changes to our culture. I know many who are opposed to porn (often, but not always on religious grounds), and who will refuse to traffic in it. They would prefer to be left out of transactions than to have to hold some form of porn. Add in all the people who privatly have porn, but refuse to admit it, and it won't work.
Porn is easy to copy, and with modern technology it is often difficult to tell which is the copy (in the case of digital origionals, impossiable). So we get the Sally and Joe video which nobdoy has be one person, but as soon as it is used as barter, both people have it, and both will then use it, decreasing the value by half.
Money works because there is a limit to how much there is total. That limit can (should? I'm not an expert) expand, so long as the change is minor. Gold works because there is only so much in the ground, and it is work to get at it. It happens to be deseriable to many people, so people won't object to getting it. Because of conterfitting laws (that are enforced) currency without a backing works, though with less than 100 years of testing I don't want to say it works well in all situations.
Most people get a job through contacts. I can't recall the exact numbers, but something like 3/4ths.
Unfortunatly that doesn't help if you don't know the right people. All the programers I know personally are out of work, so they won't help me get a job until they get one themselves. (or the rare case where they know they won't get it so they recomend me cause I might - that isn't like knowing someone at the company though)
Sure, if I go through unreasonabl effort I have a chance of keeping my email address spam free. I need to find someone willing to accept my private domain, as DNS records are public. It can be their domain, but they have to allow me to set up as many email addresses as I want, and not tell anyone what they are. Then I need to be careful who gets that address.
Problem is I can't be careful who gets my email address. I'm looking for a job, and MOST potential employeers email me first when they are interested. If I don't respond they are likely to move on, in this ecconomy they can afford to accept someone else. (Note, see the other/. story about ID theft from job listings for the other side of this)
For that matter I want my email public and some strangers to email me. I don't know who they are, but there might be someone with information I need, or who needs information I have, and email is the best way to communicate. If I need the information I can't expect them to go through extra effort to reach me, if email bounces they won't try again. If they need my information they will try harder, but if my email address isn't public then they will have to give up.
Move to a different area. I live in Minnesota, and we have half our normal amount of snow. And since MN is north, and normally gets a lot of snow, we are not only better equiped to handle that much snow that many of those who got it, we also enjoy it. Many of my friends are complaining about lack of snow because they can't play in it. Since we normally have snow, expensive snow toys (snowmobiles) are worth the cost if you enjoy it.
You are probably right, but but are you positive? These guns use compressed air, and when you relase compressed air at room tempature it cools down. This is exactly the same principal that air conditioners use, though air conditioners involve a phase shift for more efficency. So it is possiable that you get can get snow from this machine on a hot summer day, if you adjust it right.
Of course since this is less efficant than a phase change cooling, you won't get much snow, you could end up with some.
You are listening to the wrong country stations. Mind you I don't know if there is a country music station in your area, but odds are there are not, even though your radio likely picks up about 3 stations that call themselves country and play a country song once in a while.
Hint: Alan Jackson is the only mainstream "country" singer that knows what country is and does a country song once in a while. He is a radical by country standards (but many of the best classic country singers are too, nothing wrong with that), the rest of the names you hear are just pop stars who are looking for a different tone to their pop, and country currently gives them that.
I've found an am radio country station in my area, and I love them. I can't listen to what passes for country on any of the FM stations. Thats just me though, I can't stand pop either.
Obviously you have never driven a car with a digital dash. Sure it sounds good, the speed limit is 55, and the numbers say 54, but in practice you have to think to realise that 54 is just less than the speed limit so you could speed up a little. (we all know you never speed, so needing to slow down isn't a problem) With a analog display you learn where the mark that indicates the legal speed for 55 is, and you can tell at a glance how far under/over the limit you are without thinking. The mind just understands it better.
As a final nail in digital's coffin, if implys more accuracy than you have. Sure the display say 55, but because of tire wear and misadjustment you are doing somewhere between 50 and 60, just based on the speedometers I've checked myself (against a GPS). With analog you learn that the pointer is a little high or low, and automaticly compensate for it, with digital it turns out you don't do that as easially.
Yes I do think that US citicians could win against the army if they wanted to. However this would require the military to attempt an obvious takeover. If the Army marches on my town, and I agree with the army that people in my town are out of hand, then I won't do a thing to stop them. If the army marches on the people of the US without cause I won't do a thing.
Now multiply my by a majority of the population realizing more or less at once that the military is attempted to subvert good goverment. It is generally belived that there are more Guns in working order in the US than people, and most gun owners have a little amo for each gun. (Though not all guns are useful against people, lets assume all gun owners ahve one gun that can kill people)
It works like this: I see the army come (as does all my neighbors) Those of us who are are good shots sit in upper windows taking pot shots at officers. (Most sportsmen practice enough that they can shoot a person with reasonable accuracy, and since we assume anyone near the officer is a bad guy, missing is not a problem) We don't always shoot either, if we know big officer is coming by, than we get in possition, if a good opertunity doesn't present itself, we publicly say we support the military and are not the ones against it.
Now I will agree that many will be killed if it comes down to this, but my point required a bad takeover, and considering what I know about other countries where the military has taken over I'd rather they kill me than live under their rule - if I can take out of few of them for my fellow many before they kill me so much the better. Sheer numbers solves the rest of the problem.
Re:am I the only one (Score:5)
by Blondie-Wan (559212) on 10:09 PM February 25th, 2003 (#5384357)
( http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/ )
If that were a concern, the constant stream of radio, TV and other telecommunications signals we've been pumping into space for most of the 20th century would be a far bigger problem. There's effectively a big sphere of signals expanding around Earth in all directions at the speed of light, and anyone in space who chanced to stumble across any of our physical probes like Pioneer 10 would most likely have already detected us long, long before. Earth really calls a lot of attention to itself with its broadcasts, and our signals just get stronger and more blanketing as time goes by. Not only that, but even if we stopped all broadcasts tomorrow, there'd still be all our old signals moving out through space, and anyone out there with the wherewithal to detect them would be have several of our earth decades of opportunity in which to do so.
Moreover, many think it's profoundly unlikely any alien races would be interested in conquering us. Even assuming others out there are hostile, the effort and expenditure of resources to get from there to here would probably mean the payoff for attacking us wouldn't be worth the trip.
It's also been argued that any extraterrestrial civilizations capable of detecting us will almost certainly be much older and more advanced (the thinking being that on the cosmic timescale, we're just starting off, and any civilization even a little younger than ours wouldn't have the tech to detect us, and the odds are high against another civ reaching this stage of development against the exact same time we do, so if they can hear us they've probably been around a while),
I disagree with this. The universe is a large place. I mean an incomprehensiabley large plave. There are places out there that have plenty of time to go from biological soup to intelligent socity more advanced than we are today, and then die out, starting tommorow, before the signals we have broadcast their direction arrive! Think of it, radio wave travel fast, and evolution is slow, yet the turtle of evolution has time to start from scratch, create something better than us, and kill them off, before our rabbit radio waves can get to them, even though the rabbit got a head start and won't take a nap.
Of course when you get that far out, odds are even a signal aimed directly at them will be too faint to detect.
Re:What difference does it make?
on
More on Columbia
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· Score: 1
Nasa did in fact state that Atlantis could have been launched in about a week. It would have been a real rush job, skipping many of the normal tests, but it could have been done. Their confidence that they would not loose Atlantis would be lower than normal, but if they could have known that Columbia wouldn't survive re-entry after it was up, it would have been attempted (and likely most of the nation would have watched it on TV with held breath...)
Note that Atlantis was the only shuttle that could have been readied in a week, the others could not have been. Also note that it isn't always the case that another shuttle can be launched while one is up, but this time it could have happened that way.
You mistake my claim. I said that 1 gallon of ethanol has about 2/3rds the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline. This has nothing to do with how much energy it takes to produce it.
Fossil fules are make of both Hydrogyn and Carbon, both of which give energy. As to which has more, I'm not sure I can comment.
It does not require a slow machine to find performance bottlenecks, it requires a fast machine! Anyone who wants to improve the preformance of code needs a profiler to find those places, but profilers slow down your code themselves, so you need a faster machine to get the same speed. In theory you can find the slow spots on a slow machine, but you are wasting a lot of time, a fast machine can find the slow areas in the code faster.
That isn't to say you never run on a slow machine, but if you determin it isn't fast enough on a slow machine you need the fast machine to find those slow areas.
If you try to improve performance without a profiler you waste your time optimising parts of code that are plenty fast, while often ignoring the part of code that is the problem.
One man I know optimised every line in his program that was too slow, and got a 1% speed improvement. After that he used a profiler and discovered his program was spending 60% of its time doing arctangents, which is done in the library and was optimised by smarter people than him. Excpet they assumed you would build a bridge with their function so they used newton's mythod to get about 15 decimal places of accuracy. His program didn't need that much acuracy, in fact the first thing it did after getting the arctangent was chop off everything after the decimal place. By implimenting his own arctanget he was about to get his program to spend 2% of the time doing arctangent, and the program ran twice as fast. However without a profiler he could never have discovered the problem.
ethanol hase more energy stored in it (hydorgen) than fosil fuels. Ethanol does not have more energy than fossil fuels. It has about 2/3rds the energy as gasoline. (However we can burn is more efficently in modern engines, so you can get almost the same gas milage on ethanol as gas despite having less energy to work with)
Hydorgen is not considered a fossil fuel in most circles, though I'm sure it does have less energy stored.
Re:What difference does it make?
on
More on Columbia
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· Score: 2, Interesting
No, if they had known there would be a problem they could have done something. Atlantis could have launched in a week. They would have to eliminate a lot of normal testing, but better to play the odds that nothing serious would turn up, when you know something serious will happen if you don't. Once the humans are off the shuttle we don't worry about if it survives re-entry or not. Let it come down over the pacific, like Mir did. (easier said than done, but I think doable)
Of course that doesn't mean it would be easy. Atlantis could only carry 2 crew, which would make some tasks more difficult. And a rescue has never been attempted so they would have to figgure out a lot of things on the fly. (Could atlantis' arm be used? - if the arm can even be installed in time) Still it would have been attempted if they really thought it was nessicary.
I know we have an over production situation with food today. However you didn't answer the question: will we actually grow enough in practice to replace gasoline?
Sure yard waste can be collected, but will it work out? Or will it be like curbside recyceling which in many communites ends up useing more power than just mining and refineing more ore? (Depends greatly on the material recycled of course)
Before you go too far down the ethonal path (which I like BTW), is it sustainable? That is if every car on the road today burned ethanol, and we had enough plants to make that much, could the farms provide enough production to keep the plants running. (assuming we don't allow poor people to starve)
There is only so much farm land on the earth, and plants are generally considered 1-2% efficent at turning sunlight into energy. (Solar cells can reach 40% in labs, and that was 15 years ago, though realisticely 10% is easy to obtain)
First Carbs have been out of favor for 15 years now. (The last auto with a carb was in the mid 80s) Second, even then US regulations required all cars to operate with a 10% ethanol mixture. Not 100% alcohol, but start. Further, many gas pumps supply that mixture, and in most cases you do not even know you are getting it.
I will grant that your points (other than sugar depostis) were true for old cars, but you looking at the 70s or before, not many cars that old are on the road, and those that are, are collectors cars who can afford expensive gas for the car. (That is the car should be driven so little due to its value as a collectors item that even $10/gallon for gas is affordable, no matter how poor you are)
Carbs are easier to modify for ethanol/alcohol than fuel injection, just change your jets, while fuel injection requires you find someone who can give you a good prom. (in theory easy, in practice nobody does it) Of course if you want to get your performance and power back after that mod you should increase your compression ration, which is a major rebuild, but that is a semi-optional step and destroys your ability to easially go back to regular gas.
In MN there are many cars on the road that run on E-85, which is 85% ethanol. All those cars will run just fine on regular gas, but with E-85 about 20 cents/gallon chepaer than gas, and avaiable in nearly every MN town I don't see why you would. To be fair ethanol is subsidiesd in MN, something that will likely end soon due to budget problems, but there now are enough E-85 cars on the road that they should be able to make money continuing production unsubsidies..
No, this is the equivelent of making antique radios with modern parts. That is take a tube design, but instead of a tube you use a transister designed to substitute for a tube. Or make a modern super regererative receiver with transisters. It is still an antique and of interest only to collectors because modern radios are not regenerative.
Sure it is of limited usefulness, but it is a cool hobby. If nothing else is keeps a few people who might otherwise get into a shootout in the local bar or some such outragious and unlikely thing.
I agree. In fact I wanted to say that, but I have yet to here of any thought reading thechnology that holds any promiss of working. Brain Waves sound good in science fiction, but in practice they appear hard to control consistently. (I have not tried them though, so I'm not sure)
Let me know when I can install a thought sensor on my computer, I'm interested. I won't install it though until I'm sure if won't transmit my thoughts to others.
IBM is a lot older than you think. The company was started sometime in the late 1800s, and they built things like punch cards and typewriters. (Good typewriters too, as my finger recall, but appearently difficult to repair)
while I understand your idea, I think you are missing some important ideas. Some people find they really suck at one thing, but are just fine at everything else. Why hold a normal (or even gifted!) student of math back just because he cannot read the text. A little text-to-speach, and the student can learn while the teacher goes on to other students.
Of course if a teacher or dtudent uses this as a crutch to get by iwthout teaching/learning reading, then there is a problem. However if this allows a student to not be bored while the teacher teaches someone less gifted elsewhere, then that seems like a good idea.
I personally suck at spelling (Where I used the word "idea" above I ment setiment, but that isn't even close to correct and I'm not sure if you can figgure out what word I ment. I'm sure you can find other mispellings). I do just fine with math though. There is no reason my teachers should have held me back in math when my spelling is bad. OTOH they should have spent more time on my spelling, even though will never be good.
I don't think eye trackers are such a good idea. I often find that I'm looking in one window, while typing in another. (I can touch type, I presume those who can't are looking at the keyboard, which will cause the eye tracker to track to the bottom for each key stroke) With my window manager's ability to have the window with focus under more useful windows I enjoy the ability to read in my help window exactly what the paramaters to some function is while I'm typing it into my program.
Why did you declaird your mouse left handed to the computer? All it does is reverse the positions of the buttons, which sounds like a good idea, but having used my mouse with both hands, reveresed and not, I find that I prefer it when my mouse isn't reveresed.
Mind you there exists such a thing as a left handed mouse, designed to fit in the left hand, which if you can find, sounds like a good idea. I however have never found one. I know they make it, but most places don't sell it (and those that do are questionable as to if I trust them with my money...)
All that might not have been enough to toppel Alta-Vista, except that byond paid for top stops, theid index became baddly out of date (several months), just after several groups discovered how to obtain the top spots without paying for them, with keyword spamming and the like. I gave up on Alta-Vista when I realised that for my last 10 searches not one had found a useful link. I then went to this new google thing that everyone was talking about and discovered that the top link is almost always what I want.
My point is when there is no need to switch people won't switch. Habbit (and the link on my homepage) brought me to alta-vista. That changed only because alta-vista failed. Google is good, but if alta-vista had addressed my concerns (which I didn't express, or fully know - they should have seen it themselves) I wouldn't be a google user today.
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OKay, Mr Smart guy, I just lost my wallet, which had all my idenity. My name is john doe, my Id is (number), I'd like to replace my id. Thank you, now I have a idenity card for Mr John Doe, hello bank, here is my identiy card and my id, I'd like a loan...
Did I mention that there are criminals who specialize in fake IDs, and can provide me a picture id with any information on it I want, all I need to do is provide the information I want.
Even if the state keeps a photo that can be looked up, so long as you look close nobody will notice. Having an official photo might make things easier since the criminals can access the photo (either the system will be useless because nobody can compare the official photo to the person in question, or nearly everyone has access to it), and use that to select someone who they look similear to while selling information for someone else to others criminals who looks different.
There is no perfect way to id someone who you have known personally known since birth. (Although it is unlikely someone would spend say 10 years establishing a false identy, much less not get caught in that time, it isn't impossibal)
Porn might be popular, but it won't work without major other changes to our culture. I know many who are opposed to porn (often, but not always on religious grounds), and who will refuse to traffic in it. They would prefer to be left out of transactions than to have to hold some form of porn. Add in all the people who privatly have porn, but refuse to admit it, and it won't work.
Porn is easy to copy, and with modern technology it is often difficult to tell which is the copy (in the case of digital origionals, impossiable). So we get the Sally and Joe video which nobdoy has be one person, but as soon as it is used as barter, both people have it, and both will then use it, decreasing the value by half.
Money works because there is a limit to how much there is total. That limit can (should? I'm not an expert) expand, so long as the change is minor. Gold works because there is only so much in the ground, and it is work to get at it. It happens to be deseriable to many people, so people won't object to getting it. Because of conterfitting laws (that are enforced) currency without a backing works, though with less than 100 years of testing I don't want to say it works well in all situations.
Most people get a job through contacts. I can't recall the exact numbers, but something like 3/4ths.
Unfortunatly that doesn't help if you don't know the right people. All the programers I know personally are out of work, so they won't help me get a job until they get one themselves. (or the rare case where they know they won't get it so they recomend me cause I might - that isn't like knowing someone at the company though)
Sure, if I go through unreasonabl effort I have a chance of keeping my email address spam free. I need to find someone willing to accept my private domain, as DNS records are public. It can be their domain, but they have to allow me to set up as many email addresses as I want, and not tell anyone what they are. Then I need to be careful who gets that address.
Problem is I can't be careful who gets my email address. I'm looking for a job, and MOST potential employeers email me first when they are interested. If I don't respond they are likely to move on, in this ecconomy they can afford to accept someone else. (Note, see the other /. story about ID theft from job listings for the other side of this)
For that matter I want my email public and some strangers to email me. I don't know who they are, but there might be someone with information I need, or who needs information I have, and email is the best way to communicate. If I need the information I can't expect them to go through extra effort to reach me, if email bounces they won't try again. If they need my information they will try harder, but if my email address isn't public then they will have to give up.
Move to a different area. I live in Minnesota, and we have half our normal amount of snow. And since MN is north, and normally gets a lot of snow, we are not only better equiped to handle that much snow that many of those who got it, we also enjoy it. Many of my friends are complaining about lack of snow because they can't play in it. Since we normally have snow, expensive snow toys (snowmobiles) are worth the cost if you enjoy it.
You are probably right, but but are you positive? These guns use compressed air, and when you relase compressed air at room tempature it cools down. This is exactly the same principal that air conditioners use, though air conditioners involve a phase shift for more efficency. So it is possiable that you get can get snow from this machine on a hot summer day, if you adjust it right.
Of course since this is less efficant than a phase change cooling, you won't get much snow, you could end up with some.
You are listening to the wrong country stations. Mind you I don't know if there is a country music station in your area, but odds are there are not, even though your radio likely picks up about 3 stations that call themselves country and play a country song once in a while.
Hint: Alan Jackson is the only mainstream "country" singer that knows what country is and does a country song once in a while. He is a radical by country standards (but many of the best classic country singers are too, nothing wrong with that), the rest of the names you hear are just pop stars who are looking for a different tone to their pop, and country currently gives them that.
I've found an am radio country station in my area, and I love them. I can't listen to what passes for country on any of the FM stations. Thats just me though, I can't stand pop either.
Obviously you have never driven a car with a digital dash. Sure it sounds good, the speed limit is 55, and the numbers say 54, but in practice you have to think to realise that 54 is just less than the speed limit so you could speed up a little. (we all know you never speed, so needing to slow down isn't a problem) With a analog display you learn where the mark that indicates the legal speed for 55 is, and you can tell at a glance how far under/over the limit you are without thinking. The mind just understands it better.
As a final nail in digital's coffin, if implys more accuracy than you have. Sure the display say 55, but because of tire wear and misadjustment you are doing somewhere between 50 and 60, just based on the speedometers I've checked myself (against a GPS). With analog you learn that the pointer is a little high or low, and automaticly compensate for it, with digital it turns out you don't do that as easially.
Yes I do think that US citicians could win against the army if they wanted to. However this would require the military to attempt an obvious takeover. If the Army marches on my town, and I agree with the army that people in my town are out of hand, then I won't do a thing to stop them. If the army marches on the people of the US without cause I won't do a thing.
Now multiply my by a majority of the population realizing more or less at once that the military is attempted to subvert good goverment. It is generally belived that there are more Guns in working order in the US than people, and most gun owners have a little amo for each gun. (Though not all guns are useful against people, lets assume all gun owners ahve one gun that can kill people)
It works like this: I see the army come (as does all my neighbors) Those of us who are are good shots sit in upper windows taking pot shots at officers. (Most sportsmen practice enough that they can shoot a person with reasonable accuracy, and since we assume anyone near the officer is a bad guy, missing is not a problem) We don't always shoot either, if we know big officer is coming by, than we get in possition, if a good opertunity doesn't present itself, we publicly say we support the military and are not the ones against it.
Now I will agree that many will be killed if it comes down to this, but my point required a bad takeover, and considering what I know about other countries where the military has taken over I'd rather they kill me than live under their rule - if I can take out of few of them for my fellow many before they kill me so much the better. Sheer numbers solves the rest of the problem.
Re:am I the only one (Score:5) by Blondie-Wan (559212) on 10:09 PM February 25th, 2003 (#5384357) ( http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/ ) If that were a concern, the constant stream of radio, TV and other telecommunications signals we've been pumping into space for most of the 20th century would be a far bigger problem. There's effectively a big sphere of signals expanding around Earth in all directions at the speed of light, and anyone in space who chanced to stumble across any of our physical probes like Pioneer 10 would most likely have already detected us long, long before. Earth really calls a lot of attention to itself with its broadcasts, and our signals just get stronger and more blanketing as time goes by. Not only that, but even if we stopped all broadcasts tomorrow, there'd still be all our old signals moving out through space, and anyone out there with the wherewithal to detect them would be have several of our earth decades of opportunity in which to do so. Moreover, many think it's profoundly unlikely any alien races would be interested in conquering us. Even assuming others out there are hostile, the effort and expenditure of resources to get from there to here would probably mean the payoff for attacking us wouldn't be worth the trip. It's also been argued that any extraterrestrial civilizations capable of detecting us will almost certainly be much older and more advanced (the thinking being that on the cosmic timescale, we're just starting off, and any civilization even a little younger than ours wouldn't have the tech to detect us, and the odds are high against another civ reaching this stage of development against the exact same time we do, so if they can hear us they've probably been around a while),
I disagree with this. The universe is a large place. I mean an incomprehensiabley large plave. There are places out there that have plenty of time to go from biological soup to intelligent socity more advanced than we are today, and then die out, starting tommorow, before the signals we have broadcast their direction arrive! Think of it, radio wave travel fast, and evolution is slow, yet the turtle of evolution has time to start from scratch, create something better than us, and kill them off, before our rabbit radio waves can get to them, even though the rabbit got a head start and won't take a nap.
Of course when you get that far out, odds are even a signal aimed directly at them will be too faint to detect.
Nasa did in fact state that Atlantis could have been launched in about a week. It would have been a real rush job, skipping many of the normal tests, but it could have been done. Their confidence that they would not loose Atlantis would be lower than normal, but if they could have known that Columbia wouldn't survive re-entry after it was up, it would have been attempted (and likely most of the nation would have watched it on TV with held breath...)
Note that Atlantis was the only shuttle that could have been readied in a week, the others could not have been. Also note that it isn't always the case that another shuttle can be launched while one is up, but this time it could have happened that way.
You mistake my claim. I said that 1 gallon of ethanol has about 2/3rds the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline. This has nothing to do with how much energy it takes to produce it.
Fossil fules are make of both Hydrogyn and Carbon, both of which give energy. As to which has more, I'm not sure I can comment.
It does not require a slow machine to find performance bottlenecks, it requires a fast machine! Anyone who wants to improve the preformance of code needs a profiler to find those places, but profilers slow down your code themselves, so you need a faster machine to get the same speed. In theory you can find the slow spots on a slow machine, but you are wasting a lot of time, a fast machine can find the slow areas in the code faster.
That isn't to say you never run on a slow machine, but if you determin it isn't fast enough on a slow machine you need the fast machine to find those slow areas.
If you try to improve performance without a profiler you waste your time optimising parts of code that are plenty fast, while often ignoring the part of code that is the problem.
One man I know optimised every line in his program that was too slow, and got a 1% speed improvement. After that he used a profiler and discovered his program was spending 60% of its time doing arctangents, which is done in the library and was optimised by smarter people than him. Excpet they assumed you would build a bridge with their function so they used newton's mythod to get about 15 decimal places of accuracy. His program didn't need that much acuracy, in fact the first thing it did after getting the arctangent was chop off everything after the decimal place. By implimenting his own arctanget he was about to get his program to spend 2% of the time doing arctangent, and the program ran twice as fast. However without a profiler he could never have discovered the problem.
ethanol hase more energy stored in it (hydorgen) than fosil fuels. Ethanol does not have more energy than fossil fuels. It has about 2/3rds the energy as gasoline. (However we can burn is more efficently in modern engines, so you can get almost the same gas milage on ethanol as gas despite having less energy to work with)
Hydorgen is not considered a fossil fuel in most circles, though I'm sure it does have less energy stored.
No, if they had known there would be a problem they could have done something. Atlantis could have launched in a week. They would have to eliminate a lot of normal testing, but better to play the odds that nothing serious would turn up, when you know something serious will happen if you don't. Once the humans are off the shuttle we don't worry about if it survives re-entry or not. Let it come down over the pacific, like Mir did. (easier said than done, but I think doable)
Of course that doesn't mean it would be easy. Atlantis could only carry 2 crew, which would make some tasks more difficult. And a rescue has never been attempted so they would have to figgure out a lot of things on the fly. (Could atlantis' arm be used? - if the arm can even be installed in time) Still it would have been attempted if they really thought it was nessicary.
I know we have an over production situation with food today. However you didn't answer the question: will we actually grow enough in practice to replace gasoline?
Sure yard waste can be collected, but will it work out? Or will it be like curbside recyceling which in many communites ends up useing more power than just mining and refineing more ore? (Depends greatly on the material recycled of course)
Before you go too far down the ethonal path (which I like BTW), is it sustainable? That is if every car on the road today burned ethanol, and we had enough plants to make that much, could the farms provide enough production to keep the plants running. (assuming we don't allow poor people to starve)
There is only so much farm land on the earth, and plants are generally considered 1-2% efficent at turning sunlight into energy. (Solar cells can reach 40% in labs, and that was 15 years ago, though realisticely 10% is easy to obtain)
First Carbs have been out of favor for 15 years now. (The last auto with a carb was in the mid 80s) Second, even then US regulations required all cars to operate with a 10% ethanol mixture. Not 100% alcohol, but start. Further, many gas pumps supply that mixture, and in most cases you do not even know you are getting it.
I will grant that your points (other than sugar depostis) were true for old cars, but you looking at the 70s or before, not many cars that old are on the road, and those that are, are collectors cars who can afford expensive gas for the car. (That is the car should be driven so little due to its value as a collectors item that even $10/gallon for gas is affordable, no matter how poor you are)
Carbs are easier to modify for ethanol/alcohol than fuel injection, just change your jets, while fuel injection requires you find someone who can give you a good prom. (in theory easy, in practice nobody does it) Of course if you want to get your performance and power back after that mod you should increase your compression ration, which is a major rebuild, but that is a semi-optional step and destroys your ability to easially go back to regular gas.
In MN there are many cars on the road that run on E-85, which is 85% ethanol. All those cars will run just fine on regular gas, but with E-85 about 20 cents/gallon chepaer than gas, and avaiable in nearly every MN town I don't see why you would. To be fair ethanol is subsidiesd in MN, something that will likely end soon due to budget problems, but there now are enough E-85 cars on the road that they should be able to make money continuing production unsubsidies..
No, this is the equivelent of making antique radios with modern parts. That is take a tube design, but instead of a tube you use a transister designed to substitute for a tube. Or make a modern super regererative receiver with transisters. It is still an antique and of interest only to collectors because modern radios are not regenerative.
Sure it is of limited usefulness, but it is a cool hobby. If nothing else is keeps a few people who might otherwise get into a shootout in the local bar or some such outragious and unlikely thing.
I agree. In fact I wanted to say that, but I have yet to here of any thought reading thechnology that holds any promiss of working. Brain Waves sound good in science fiction, but in practice they appear hard to control consistently. (I have not tried them though, so I'm not sure)
Let me know when I can install a thought sensor on my computer, I'm interested. I won't install it though until I'm sure if won't transmit my thoughts to others.
IBM is a lot older than you think. The company was started sometime in the late 1800s, and they built things like punch cards and typewriters. (Good typewriters too, as my finger recall, but appearently difficult to repair)
while I understand your idea, I think you are missing some important ideas. Some people find they really suck at one thing, but are just fine at everything else. Why hold a normal (or even gifted!) student of math back just because he cannot read the text. A little text-to-speach, and the student can learn while the teacher goes on to other students.
Of course if a teacher or dtudent uses this as a crutch to get by iwthout teaching/learning reading, then there is a problem. However if this allows a student to not be bored while the teacher teaches someone less gifted elsewhere, then that seems like a good idea.
I personally suck at spelling (Where I used the word "idea" above I ment setiment, but that isn't even close to correct and I'm not sure if you can figgure out what word I ment. I'm sure you can find other mispellings). I do just fine with math though. There is no reason my teachers should have held me back in math when my spelling is bad. OTOH they should have spent more time on my spelling, even though will never be good.
I don't think eye trackers are such a good idea. I often find that I'm looking in one window, while typing in another. (I can touch type, I presume those who can't are looking at the keyboard, which will cause the eye tracker to track to the bottom for each key stroke) With my window manager's ability to have the window with focus under more useful windows I enjoy the ability to read in my help window exactly what the paramaters to some function is while I'm typing it into my program.
Why did you declaird your mouse left handed to the computer? All it does is reverse the positions of the buttons, which sounds like a good idea, but having used my mouse with both hands, reveresed and not, I find that I prefer it when my mouse isn't reveresed.
Mind you there exists such a thing as a left handed mouse, designed to fit in the left hand, which if you can find, sounds like a good idea. I however have never found one. I know they make it, but most places don't sell it (and those that do are questionable as to if I trust them with my money...)
All that might not have been enough to toppel Alta-Vista, except that byond paid for top stops, theid index became baddly out of date (several months), just after several groups discovered how to obtain the top spots without paying for them, with keyword spamming and the like. I gave up on Alta-Vista when I realised that for my last 10 searches not one had found a useful link. I then went to this new google thing that everyone was talking about and discovered that the top link is almost always what I want.
My point is when there is no need to switch people won't switch. Habbit (and the link on my homepage) brought me to alta-vista. That changed only because alta-vista failed. Google is good, but if alta-vista had addressed my concerns (which I didn't express, or fully know - they should have seen it themselves) I wouldn't be a google user today.