Last I heard, hydrogen generation by electrolysis was well over 50% efficient.
The problem with hydrogen isn't making it. That's easy. The problem is storing it, which involved dealing with energy losses through compression and diffusion. Or with getting a carbon source and attaching the hydrogen to carbon, which leads to a convenient storage form.
Wake me again when they can efficienty make, say, methane from electrolytically generated hydrogen and CO2 extracted from the air. Then we're talking.
What would also help would be if people who had actual intelligence didn't try so hard to get out of jury duty.
If you have a job or a business then _not_ trying hard to get out of jury duty (which would make you lose that job or ruin your business if the case drags out a bit) shows lack of intelligence.
Instead, we rely on "these 12 guys who have been struggling to stay awake during the proceedings think it's true, therefore he is guilty."
Even worse, they're the same 12 guys who were not smart enough to evade jury duty.
Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Then again, orbital bombardment probably won't penetrate a mile of water. Better to strap the nuke to a robotic submarine.
A single picture proves nothing. That's why red light camera systems that are not designed and set up by a bunch of morons _always_ take two picture with about 0.5s to 1s delay between them.
Knowledge of 6+ OSes and at least 15 programming languages, developer experience in everything from industrial controls to web apps, etc. Hire the applicant who looks like he's fresh out of college. There's your bad programmer.
How do you do that? Snap a picture of what your sonar screen is showing?
If you create an image of something using sound waves, the correct term would be "sonographed". "Photographed" implies that you used light to create the image.
A business that wouldn't bat an eye at a $10,00 loss? You must be on drugs.
No, you just have no idea of how a casino works. Paying out $10k to some lucky guy isn't a loss to the casino - it's advertising and will attract lots and lots of gullible folks who won't be winning $10k.
Or do you honestly believe that people would play in a casino that has never made such a "loss", i.e. one where no one has ever won big? If so, then you're on drugs, not the GP.
Exposing blood to air gives your pretty decent oxygen saturation.
Only if you create a _huge_ surface area. Exposing a drop of blood to air doesn't saturate it at all. There's a reason why the inside of your lungs have a surface area about the size of a tennis court.
Perhaps more practical, I wonder how difficult it would be to produce a variant of the classic "gelatin finger with correct fingerprint" that reads as having oxygen sat and a pulse?
Much, much easier than trying the same with a detached finger. That's why there's no reason for chopping off any appendages. Unless you're a really, really dumb criminal.
No detached fingers necessary. Many scanners can be fooled by "reactivating" the most recent fingerprint with the moisture in the exhaled air.
And _really_ professional fingerprint scanners don't check temperature, they check blood oxygen saturation and pulse. That makes cutting of any appendages pretty much a non-issue - it's easier to fool the thing with a dummy finger (or the actual finger that's still attached to the unconscious or otherwise compliant owner) than trying to simulate blood oxygen saturation and pulse with a detached finger.
In my 12 year career my math comes down to some percent calculations for some basic stats.
And if you don't know enough mathematics to know about the peculiarities of integer, fixed-point and floating-point arithmetics, your program will screw up some of those calculations in the most horrible way, and be somewhat less-than-accurate in others.
True, but that's assuming it would then be $500 of programmer time and not say, $50 000 (ten developers earning $60k per year spending an extra month developing the software because they focused on optimizing it), at that point a $0.01 saving per unit would require 5 000 000 units to sell in order for the investment in time to pay off.
$0.01 in hardware is basically nothing. A few resistors or capacitors, maybe. Now, if you can use a smaller processor and save even just $0.50 per unit, then even spending $50000 on those savings can pay off pretty quickly if you're selling upwards of a hundred thousand units per year.
How about the legions of programmers who write the code for your computer peripherals, cellphones, toys, appliances, medical devices, cars, etc?
Fact is: Stuff containing a "computer" of some sort (even if it's just a 4-bit microcontroller) is manufactured in the millions or even billions. The software for all this stuff doesn't write itself. Saving even a minimal amount on hardware cost by using better software pays off quickly if you're manufacturing a couple of hundred thousand units a year.
It seems as if very few FOSS coders know how to write even the relatively simple signal-processing code that's needed for playing some files while doing any necessary sample-rate conversion or mixing, and while maintaining sync with the record-in.
How deep would I have to dive into the intricacies of audio hardware if I wanted to have a look at it?
This was of course just an example but it's true for a lot of stuff, back then you had to spend a lot more time optimizing your code as well, these days premature optimization is generally considered a bad thing (since in most cases it ends up being a waste of $500 worth of programmer time to squeeze out a performance gain that $50 in hardware would've have gotten you.
If you're planning to sell a million units containing both hardware and software, then "wasting" $500 of programmer time to save even $0.01 in hardware per unit is a really sweet deal.
The problem with hydrogen isn't making it. That's easy. The problem is storing it, which involved dealing with energy losses through compression and diffusion. Or with getting a carbon source and attaching the hydrogen to carbon, which leads to a convenient storage form.
Wake me again when they can efficienty make, say, methane from electrolytically generated hydrogen and CO2 extracted from the air. Then we're talking.
... you have to be one of the one-in-a-million people who supposedly happen to be tetrachromates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy *SCNR*
Actually, the latter should have a better deterrence rate.
If you have a job or a business then _not_ trying hard to get out of jury duty (which would make you lose that job or ruin your business if the case drags out a bit) shows lack of intelligence.
Instead, we rely on "these 12 guys who have been struggling to stay awake during the proceedings think it's true, therefore he is guilty." Even worse, they're the same 12 guys who were not smart enough to evade jury duty.
Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Then again, orbital bombardment probably won't penetrate a mile of water. Better to strap the nuke to a robotic submarine.
Geez, this isn't rocket science.
Knowledge of 6+ OSes and at least 15 programming languages, developer experience in everything from industrial controls to web apps, etc. Hire the applicant who looks like he's fresh out of college. There's your bad programmer.
Don't tell me you were really expecting to see the mutant, invisible zombies on simple photos.
... playing one of the Stalker series of games is more fun. Even if the scenery isn't 100% accurate.
If you create an image of something using sound waves, the correct term would be "sonographed". "Photographed" implies that you used light to create the image.
Sonic triangulation is only simple if you're trying it on a flat field, i.e. no echoes, absorption, reflections, etc.
Using sonic triangulation in a city isn't simple - unless you're placing a bajilion sensors all over the place (which is expensive in its own right).
I bet you can screw up adding fifty floating point numbers in any of those languages. Heck, even Excel can't do it right.
And seriously knowing the difference between int and float and bigint, etc has nothing to do with math. That is something you learn in CS classes.
It has everything to do with math. That's why they teach it in CS classes.
How many engineers does it take to fix a Toyota?
Just one ... provided he can catch up with the car.
A business that wouldn't bat an eye at a $10,00 loss? You must be on drugs.
No, you just have no idea of how a casino works. Paying out $10k to some lucky guy isn't a loss to the casino - it's advertising and will attract lots and lots of gullible folks who won't be winning $10k.
Or do you honestly believe that people would play in a casino that has never made such a "loss", i.e. one where no one has ever won big? If so, then you're on drugs, not the GP.
Exposing blood to air gives your pretty decent oxygen saturation.
Only if you create a _huge_ surface area. Exposing a drop of blood to air doesn't saturate it at all. There's a reason why the inside of your lungs have a surface area about the size of a tennis court.
Perhaps more practical, I wonder how difficult it would be to produce a variant of the classic "gelatin finger with correct fingerprint" that reads as having oxygen sat and a pulse?
Much, much easier than trying the same with a detached finger. That's why there's no reason for chopping off any appendages. Unless you're a really, really dumb criminal.
No detached fingers necessary. Many scanners can be fooled by "reactivating" the most recent fingerprint with the moisture in the exhaled air.
And _really_ professional fingerprint scanners don't check temperature, they check blood oxygen saturation and pulse. That makes cutting of any appendages pretty much a non-issue - it's easier to fool the thing with a dummy finger (or the actual finger that's still attached to the unconscious or otherwise compliant owner) than trying to simulate blood oxygen saturation and pulse with a detached finger.
Programming is a science that requires no physical tools besides a computer.
Programming is not a science, it's a trade.
And if you don't know enough mathematics to know about the peculiarities of integer, fixed-point and floating-point arithmetics, your program will screw up some of those calculations in the most horrible way, and be somewhat less-than-accurate in others.
What about the other 0E?
When you work with simple business applications you don't need to do complex calculations :)
You still need to know how to do the not-so-complex calculations correctly. Especially in business applications.
$0.01 in hardware is basically nothing. A few resistors or capacitors, maybe. Now, if you can use a smaller processor and save even just $0.50 per unit, then even spending $50000 on those savings can pay off pretty quickly if you're selling upwards of a hundred thousand units per year.
Hands up everybody who's been in that situation.
How about the legions of programmers who write the code for your computer peripherals, cellphones, toys, appliances, medical devices, cars, etc?
Fact is: Stuff containing a "computer" of some sort (even if it's just a 4-bit microcontroller) is manufactured in the millions or even billions. The software for all this stuff doesn't write itself. Saving even a minimal amount on hardware cost by using better software pays off quickly if you're manufacturing a couple of hundred thousand units a year.
It seems as if very few FOSS coders know how to write even the relatively simple signal-processing code that's needed for playing some files while doing any necessary sample-rate conversion or mixing, and while maintaining sync with the record-in.
How deep would I have to dive into the intricacies of audio hardware if I wanted to have a look at it?
This was of course just an example but it's true for a lot of stuff, back then you had to spend a lot more time optimizing your code as well, these days premature optimization is generally considered a bad thing (since in most cases it ends up being a waste of $500 worth of programmer time to squeeze out a performance gain that $50 in hardware would've have gotten you.
If you're planning to sell a million units containing both hardware and software, then "wasting" $500 of programmer time to save even $0.01 in hardware per unit is a really sweet deal.