... from H2O, air-derived CO2 and electricity is already at 40% efficiency (which, considering a 15% efficiency of the solar panels, would translate into about 6% sunlight->methane efficiency), they still have a lot of work to do on the process.
However, I believe that (electricity and/or heat)+H2O+CO2->some hydrocarbon is going to be the next big thing in the chemical industry. The company or individual that comes up with a practical, inexpensive solution will basically have a license to print money.
All naturally aspirated engines still (technically) suck, even if they use injection. Injectors inject only fuel, air is still sucked into the cylinders.
Unless the engine is super- or turbocharged, then the air is pushed into the cylinders while the sucking is left to the charger.
So then running software is not a concrete implementation of anything?
The whole system of hardware plus running software could be viewed as a concrete implementation. "Running software" without the associated is just a series of zeros and ones that would only make sense to a particular hardware. "Software" as in source code is even less concrete; it's just a set of instructions for a compiler.
Software is complex with lots of moving parts.
Complexity is not a condition for patentability. You can have horrendously complex, but unpatentable systems.
No, software is still just a set of process steps. However, if you implement the algorithm in some kind of hardware (ASIC, whatever) in an especially clever way, then you might have something that's patentable.
And that is another sure sign of a messed-up patent systems. Patents are about disclosure of technical inventions. For other types of intellectual property, there are other ways of protecting it.
There are many times where my adrenaline level is far above what is needed for the situation.
And you already have the self-control of an adult. It's worse for kids, who would like to play with others, but can't because of their tendency to throw incredible tantrums (a very common autistic stress response) over seemingly little things.
Our son (diagnosed as autistic) started asking why he doesn't get invited to playdates or birthday parties, unlike his sister. I almost cried. He's starting to realize there's something "wrong" with him, that he'd like to interact with others, but can't.
Most efficient scenario is the AC running all day to provide cooling to a given temperature whatever that may be.
Unfortunately, that requires a building with a high thermal inertia (e.g. lots of concrete, bricks, rocks, or some kind of thermal buffer), since heat input to the building varies with the time of the day. In a building with high thermal inertia, the AC can be sized to deal with the average heat input. In a building with low thermal inertia, the AC must be sized to deal with the maximum heat input, otherwise the building will get too hot during that time.
Number one consumer of electric power: Air conditioning unit. THOUSANDS OF WATTS
But not running continuosly.
Number two consumer of electric power: Refrigerator. HUNDREDS OF WATTS
But not running continuously, either.
Cable boxes don't come in number two and they don't consume 35 watts.
Actually, lousy designs will happily guzzle 35W of power while "off", and year-round, that's slightly over 300 kWh. That's a bit more than my refrigerator uses.
How do I know?
Your sample size is one. That doesn't give you any kind of statistical significance.
1) The ground plain is not actually at ground voltage. It never is: making it bigger will not solve all your problems, capacitive coupling to ground is *localized* and can spread signals via paths you'd never see in a circuit diagram.
Looking over the analog guys' shoulders at work, I've seen a nifty little piece of software that takes the geometry of your ground plane and its connections, and tells you where exactly you'll need to put your Cs to minimize ground plane effects.
This is neat since it shows you that just placing Cs next to your components connections doesn't work the way you thought it would.
60 cycle creeps in *EVERYWHERE*.
You mean 60 Hz line frequency? Well, wait until you design devices for an international market. You'll have environments completely free of 60 Hz line stuff there, unfortunately, that usually means you'll have to deal with 50 Hz. Have fun testing your device for behavior with 60 Hz line frequency in a 50 Hz line frequency country. Oh.. and be sure to keep those harmonics in mind.
Oh, and debugging these devices is its own kind of hell, since connecting your microcontrollers emulator breaks any kind of isolation and makes the device behave differently. Ugh.
Capacitors leak DC.
More generalized, it should be: There are no resistors, capacitors or coils. Anything that claims to be one of the three is actually an RLC circuit, and you will see them behaving as one at the worst possible moment. Yes, your resistor has capacity and inductance; yes, your capacitor leaks DC, etc.
Yea yea, FUD the shit out of open science. Only proprietary expensive instruments are valid.
With all your rage, you missed the point.
And the point is not that self-built instruments are incapable of being validated, but that you'll have to include the effort for validating them (and documenting the validation) yourself. This costs a lot of time, and, unless your time doesn't cost anything, money.
The ones which remain and have not yet been disproven by evidence become theories.
Newton's theory of gravity has been disproven and it's still a theory. Some theories are more equal than others, especially if they're good enough for many cases and much simpler than a more correct alternative.
certain fission reactor designs (fission fragment) can get a craft to 0.1 C.
Can they power a large spacecraft (possibly _huge_, such as an asteroid-turned-spacecraft) for, let's say, one thousand years?
Fusion gets an even higher energy density of the fuel, and the fuel is abundant in the universe (provided that at least D-D-fusion can be achieved) and requires fairly little processing.
Slashdot Mirror
Because carbon monoxide can be used as fuel and substrate for further synthesis processes.
However, I believe that (electricity and/or heat)+H2O+CO2->some hydrocarbon is going to be the next big thing in the chemical industry. The company or individual that comes up with a practical, inexpensive solution will basically have a license to print money.
It's a scandal that there are countries the NSA isn't allowed to spy on. What if the terrorists are hiding there?
The US government knows. They just pretend not to as long as you're unimportant.
Unless the engine is super- or turbocharged, then the air is pushed into the cylinders while the sucking is left to the charger.
The magic step that eludes you is that hydrogen isn't easy to transport or store, while ammonia is.
The whole system of hardware plus running software could be viewed as a concrete implementation. "Running software" without the associated is just a series of zeros and ones that would only make sense to a particular hardware. "Software" as in source code is even less concrete; it's just a set of instructions for a compiler.
Software is complex with lots of moving parts.
Complexity is not a condition for patentability. You can have horrendously complex, but unpatentable systems.
No, software is still just a set of process steps. However, if you implement the algorithm in some kind of hardware (ASIC, whatever) in an especially clever way, then you might have something that's patentable.
And that is another sure sign of a messed-up patent systems. Patents are about disclosure of technical inventions. For other types of intellectual property, there are other ways of protecting it.
Because, at the root, patents protect concrete implementations, not a sequence of process steps.
Part of the art of making a patent is figuring out how to word the claims so that copying the process becomes impossible or pointless.
And you already have the self-control of an adult. It's worse for kids, who would like to play with others, but can't because of their tendency to throw incredible tantrums (a very common autistic stress response) over seemingly little things.
Our son (diagnosed as autistic) started asking why he doesn't get invited to playdates or birthday parties, unlike his sister. I almost cried. He's starting to realize there's something "wrong" with him, that he'd like to interact with others, but can't.
Another one of these drugs is NAC (n-acetylcystein) which is sold as an OTC expectorant in some countries (not in the US for some reason):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Unfortunately, that requires a building with a high thermal inertia (e.g. lots of concrete, bricks, rocks, or some kind of thermal buffer), since heat input to the building varies with the time of the day. In a building with high thermal inertia, the AC can be sized to deal with the average heat input. In a building with low thermal inertia, the AC must be sized to deal with the maximum heat input, otherwise the building will get too hot during that time.
If it doesn't involve lasers, flamethrowers or nuclear reactors, it's not a good was to toast a cheese sandwich.
But not running continuosly.
Number two consumer of electric power: Refrigerator. HUNDREDS OF WATTS
But not running continuously, either.
Cable boxes don't come in number two and they don't consume 35 watts.
Actually, lousy designs will happily guzzle 35W of power while "off", and year-round, that's slightly over 300 kWh. That's a bit more than my refrigerator uses.
How do I know?
Your sample size is one. That doesn't give you any kind of statistical significance.
If it consumes more than one Watt, it's nowhere near "deep sleep".
The coffee isn't subject to open container laws.
Coffee is scientific payload. You don't want your experiments to fail because the involved researchers were under-caffeinated.
Looking over the analog guys' shoulders at work, I've seen a nifty little piece of software that takes the geometry of your ground plane and its connections, and tells you where exactly you'll need to put your Cs to minimize ground plane effects.
This is neat since it shows you that just placing Cs next to your components connections doesn't work the way you thought it would.
60 cycle creeps in *EVERYWHERE*.
You mean 60 Hz line frequency? Well, wait until you design devices for an international market. You'll have environments completely free of 60 Hz line stuff there, unfortunately, that usually means you'll have to deal with 50 Hz. Have fun testing your device for behavior with 60 Hz line frequency in a 50 Hz line frequency country. Oh .. and be sure to keep those harmonics in mind.
Oh, and debugging these devices is its own kind of hell, since connecting your microcontrollers emulator breaks any kind of isolation and makes the device behave differently. Ugh.
Capacitors leak DC.
More generalized, it should be: There are no resistors, capacitors or coils. Anything that claims to be one of the three is actually an RLC circuit, and you will see them behaving as one at the worst possible moment. Yes, your resistor has capacity and inductance; yes, your capacitor leaks DC, etc.
With all your rage, you missed the point.
And the point is not that self-built instruments are incapable of being validated, but that you'll have to include the effort for validating them (and documenting the validation) yourself. This costs a lot of time, and, unless your time doesn't cost anything, money.
... just someone stupid/evil/careless enough to build it and turn it loose. Project Pluto, anyone?
Newton's theory of gravity has been disproven and it's still a theory. Some theories are more equal than others, especially if they're good enough for many cases and much simpler than a more correct alternative.
Ugh.
Can they power a large spacecraft (possibly _huge_, such as an asteroid-turned-spacecraft) for, let's say, one thousand years?
Fusion gets an even higher energy density of the fuel, and the fuel is abundant in the universe (provided that at least D-D-fusion can be achieved) and requires fairly little processing.
First, we need fusion power, though. There's no getting to even Alpha Centauri without it.