The "round trip" efficiency isn't as important other factors. In the case of fuel, we're usually interested energy density. Volume and weight are critical.
It's much easier to ship electrons to a destination connected by wires. It's generally very difficult to ship electrons to places where wires would be inconvenient (tractors, cars, planes). You can "ship" electrons in a battery, but they're not very dense. Chemical fuel is much denser and easier to transport.
Even if we had the best electric infrastructure, with superfast trains and trolleys on powered tracks, superconductive highways to transfer power generated at remote locations (e.g. solar from the desert, wind from the mountains)... there will still be a vast amount of "unwired" energy needed.
There's another consideration, though. If we can build these "leaves" for some cost, plus the additional cost of a leaf "plant" (no pun intended), with extraction methods, and that cost is less than the value of the hydrogen (or electricity, if you want to turn the hydrogen into that), then you have potentially viable business plan.
At my school, we have Computer Science and Computer Information Systems. One is in the College of Math and Sciences, the other is in the School of Business. With the CompSci degree, you basically end up with a math minor built in. I think CIS only requires College Algebra. One of focused on business application, the other is focused on the academic study of computer science.
It's really different markets. If you wanna do system programming, write drivers, software that does non-trivial computations, write libraries, etc., you need Computer Science. If you only need to implement a front-end for it all, basically using what's in libraries and implementing business logic, then you can get away with CIS, and know enough about "business" to make it fit in. Sure, there might be ugly hacks sometimes...
It's like Engineer vs Technician. Car Analogy: You hire a mechanic to fix your car, and it does it efficiently, and he knows that business. Sure, the engineers that designed it probably could do it, but it's not going to be a pretty picture.
The Eee Slider look amazing. I am keen on the idea of a tablet, but I am not really impressed by the iPad.
Now for the day when they have normal cell antennas in them, and can be used for calling either through a speakerphone or with a paired bluetooth headset. Goodbye cellphone!
I watched the NOVA episode talking about it. I honestly teared up at the end. I know how all those people must have felt in the summer of 69', clinging to the radio and TV broadcasts about Apollo 11. I don't think most people realize how significant this is, though.
I'd eagerly go vote for someone who was willing to cut spending on defense, and I know a lot of people who agree with that sentiment. We spend way too much on it.
Unfortunately, the cuts would probably trickle down to hurt the lowliest people involved, probably "the troops", though it really needn't. I'm sure there's a lot of fat that could be cut out of the defense budget.
Do you think it's an economic issue? That is, it's still cheaper to use up fossil fuels and the like than to invest in nuclear? Or is it, as lots of others point it, a lot of NIMBY-ism and stifling regulations? Or maybe the lobbies and economy power of the existing power industries are blocking the advancement of this kind of technology?
The patient's insurance company would refuse to pay. If they're paying out of pocket, how are they going to afford to cover all the overhead of the ship, tanks, equipment, etc.? If the research is privately funded, those people have to make their money back, too, even if they're looking to just break even and not profit. So what you'd end up with is breakthrough medical technology that's only available to the exceptionally affluent.
I'm not sure that's any better, ideologically, than patents. At least with the patents, you can calculate how much money you're raking in hand over fist, and use your existing capital and investments to produce treatments. Oh, and get insurance to pay for it. That opens the doors to, at least, the middle class, and the higher parts of the working class, even if it DOES maintain the status quo.
Theoretically, as a capitalist everyman, you could buy stock in the pharma that's creating the treatment and profit along with them. Though if you can barely afford your cost of living, that's really not an option.
I mean, IP is really just a form of class warfare. The rich pay pennies for genius, own the creations of that genius, and extort the masses for the fruits of their own labors back.
I did the wet shave thing for years, but went back to gels about a year ago. I was such an advocate of it when I did it, and I loved it... but since I've stopped, I don't miss it at all. Maybe it was just the inertia keeping me on wet shaving, based off my enthusiasm that it was going to be so great at the start.
Maybe I'll find my brush and give it another whirl and be amazed, and wonder how I lived without it.
It's probably not that you aren't smart, just that it's a complicated subject requiring a lot of otherwise pointless knowledge that can be rather grueling and tedious to learn.
Think about a second language. A lot of rather dumb people can speak two languages. Yet even a genius just understand another tongue without spending a good bit of time learning it first.
I agree with most of your post, but for the record, I get new nvidia drivers from windows update with windows 7. I have an aging 8800 GT card. They don't come through windows update with every single release, but they do periodically. I'm not sure what criteria is used to determine when. The same is true for most of my other hardware, too. I don't often check for updated drivers, or even know one is available, until windows update tells me.
It's always bugged me a little that every app and it's momma wants to have a background app that checks for updates, but the video drivers don't. I actually WANT to update those. I guess it's a "security" argument, though. New video drivers are usually about performance; I think security issues are really rare.
If what you're saying is true, though, then do finance for a while, get a nice pile of cash, then do something you love -- like engineering -- on your own terms.
Okay, I'm not going to advocate terrorism, or violence -- but on some level, I think the government will be more apt to work "for the people" if they're afraid of getting shot. Hell, that's kind of the values America was founded on. Revolution. I dunno, I think it's best summed up like this:
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Clarie Wolfe
Maybe the hour is just later than many suppose for people on the extreme short end of the stick.
It's a chicken-and-egg scenario, as the "powers that be" are created by tenure.
The problem with the way it is now is that you can be a completely kook, but hide it until you get tenure, then spend the rest of your career fucking over freshmen with your nonsense. What can be done at that point? Not much, it's almost impossible to take any significant action against a professor at that point.
I think it's the exact opposite: all my professors know what they're talking about in great detail, but fail at sometimes even basic pedagogy. Then again, academia is really about two things: research and the proliferation of academia; not teaching, even though you don't usually get into that until the graduate level.
The professors I liked the most and respect the most were the ones who were excellent teachers, not the ones who were masters in their field.
Humans were foragers for most of their existence, for the simple reason that they didn't need tools for anything complicated, and were nomadic, so a lot of tools didn't make much sense. Only when populations settled down and started growing their own food did we really become creatures that made lots of stuff. The reasons humans settled down probably don't affect dolphins, so they've been able to maintain a "foraging" lifestyle, even if they're just as intelligent as humans.
The ability to process symbols is also something we consider intelligence, because it's pretty critical to our ability to communicate. That's something done "automatically" for us in the brain when we learn language. The brain also auto-pilots us on things like reading music or playing video games. We can learn to process things on "auto pilot" that we could never individually think through step-by-step. Dolphin brains may or may not have these abilities, which would make them seem less intelligent.
They may have these abilities, albeit in an underdeveloped way because they haven't been naturally selected. The dolphins that are the best as being dolphins are the ones natural selection will pick. Eventually, it might be those that are best at interacting with humans, and so they might learn language and such. But we'll probably be able to make them intelligent with engineering long before evolution does it.
I'd like to see if there's a culture bias to this. Get someone from a very non-westernized culture and ask what they see. They're regularly not fooled by these kinds of "illusions":
Which line is longer:
>----------
Their eyes just aren't trained to see geometry the same way as westerners who are faced with tons of man-made things everyday.
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A battery isn't fuel, so it's apples an oranges.
The "round trip" efficiency isn't as important other factors. In the case of fuel, we're usually interested energy density. Volume and weight are critical.
It's much easier to ship electrons to a destination connected by wires. It's generally very difficult to ship electrons to places where wires would be inconvenient (tractors, cars, planes). You can "ship" electrons in a battery, but they're not very dense. Chemical fuel is much denser and easier to transport.
Even if we had the best electric infrastructure, with superfast trains and trolleys on powered tracks, superconductive highways to transfer power generated at remote locations (e.g. solar from the desert, wind from the mountains)... there will still be a vast amount of "unwired" energy needed.
There's another consideration, though. If we can build these "leaves" for some cost, plus the additional cost of a leaf "plant" (no pun intended), with extraction methods, and that cost is less than the value of the hydrogen (or electricity, if you want to turn the hydrogen into that), then you have potentially viable business plan.
At my school, we have Computer Science and Computer Information Systems. One is in the College of Math and Sciences, the other is in the School of Business. With the CompSci degree, you basically end up with a math minor built in. I think CIS only requires College Algebra. One of focused on business application, the other is focused on the academic study of computer science.
It's really different markets. If you wanna do system programming, write drivers, software that does non-trivial computations, write libraries, etc., you need Computer Science. If you only need to implement a front-end for it all, basically using what's in libraries and implementing business logic, then you can get away with CIS, and know enough about "business" to make it fit in. Sure, there might be ugly hacks sometimes...
It's like Engineer vs Technician. Car Analogy: You hire a mechanic to fix your car, and it does it efficiently, and he knows that business. Sure, the engineers that designed it probably could do it, but it's not going to be a pretty picture.
Exactly. A mouse is actually extremely versatile -- she can use the mouse to click buttons to operate anything.
The Eee Slider look amazing. I am keen on the idea of a tablet, but I am not really impressed by the iPad.
Now for the day when they have normal cell antennas in them, and can be used for calling either through a speakerphone or with a paired bluetooth headset. Goodbye cellphone!
I agree with you. If you want to get to work earlier; then go in early. You should make everyone go in early who doesn't want to.
I watched the NOVA episode talking about it. I honestly teared up at the end. I know how all those people must have felt in the summer of 69', clinging to the radio and TV broadcasts about Apollo 11. I don't think most people realize how significant this is, though.
I'd eagerly go vote for someone who was willing to cut spending on defense, and I know a lot of people who agree with that sentiment. We spend way too much on it.
Unfortunately, the cuts would probably trickle down to hurt the lowliest people involved, probably "the troops", though it really needn't. I'm sure there's a lot of fat that could be cut out of the defense budget.
It's great, but the free version only lets you save one entry, which was the gripe.
Do you think it's an economic issue? That is, it's still cheaper to use up fossil fuels and the like than to invest in nuclear? Or is it, as lots of others point it, a lot of NIMBY-ism and stifling regulations? Or maybe the lobbies and economy power of the existing power industries are blocking the advancement of this kind of technology?
I think a Zeppelin would be cool.
The patient's insurance company would refuse to pay. If they're paying out of pocket, how are they going to afford to cover all the overhead of the ship, tanks, equipment, etc.? If the research is privately funded, those people have to make their money back, too, even if they're looking to just break even and not profit. So what you'd end up with is breakthrough medical technology that's only available to the exceptionally affluent.
I'm not sure that's any better, ideologically, than patents. At least with the patents, you can calculate how much money you're raking in hand over fist, and use your existing capital and investments to produce treatments. Oh, and get insurance to pay for it. That opens the doors to, at least, the middle class, and the higher parts of the working class, even if it DOES maintain the status quo.
Theoretically, as a capitalist everyman, you could buy stock in the pharma that's creating the treatment and profit along with them. Though if you can barely afford your cost of living, that's really not an option.
I mean, IP is really just a form of class warfare. The rich pay pennies for genius, own the creations of that genius, and extort the masses for the fruits of their own labors back.
That's only true if there's a monopoly in the browser market. There isn't anymore, and we largely have Mozilla to thank for that.
I did the wet shave thing for years, but went back to gels about a year ago. I was such an advocate of it when I did it, and I loved it... but since I've stopped, I don't miss it at all. Maybe it was just the inertia keeping me on wet shaving, based off my enthusiasm that it was going to be so great at the start.
Maybe I'll find my brush and give it another whirl and be amazed, and wonder how I lived without it.
It's probably not that you aren't smart, just that it's a complicated subject requiring a lot of otherwise pointless knowledge that can be rather grueling and tedious to learn.
Think about a second language. A lot of rather dumb people can speak two languages. Yet even a genius just understand another tongue without spending a good bit of time learning it first.
I agree with most of your post, but for the record, I get new nvidia drivers from windows update with windows 7. I have an aging 8800 GT card. They don't come through windows update with every single release, but they do periodically. I'm not sure what criteria is used to determine when. The same is true for most of my other hardware, too. I don't often check for updated drivers, or even know one is available, until windows update tells me.
It's always bugged me a little that every app and it's momma wants to have a background app that checks for updates, but the video drivers don't. I actually WANT to update those. I guess it's a "security" argument, though. New video drivers are usually about performance; I think security issues are really rare.
How can I get the homeless folks that beg me for money out there? It sounds like a pretty good operation.
Instead, we have a plutocracy run amok that will not stop until they end with their heads severed by a guillotine.
Careful now, you're going to incite revolutionaries to start shooting congressmen.
If what you're saying is true, though, then do finance for a while, get a nice pile of cash, then do something you love -- like engineering -- on your own terms.
Hahah, wow, brings back memories. :D
Okay, I'm not going to advocate terrorism, or violence -- but on some level, I think the government will be more apt to work "for the people" if they're afraid of getting shot. Hell, that's kind of the values America was founded on. Revolution. I dunno, I think it's best summed up like this:
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Clarie Wolfe
Maybe the hour is just later than many suppose for people on the extreme short end of the stick.
It's a chicken-and-egg scenario, as the "powers that be" are created by tenure.
The problem with the way it is now is that you can be a completely kook, but hide it until you get tenure, then spend the rest of your career fucking over freshmen with your nonsense. What can be done at that point? Not much, it's almost impossible to take any significant action against a professor at that point.
I think it's the exact opposite: all my professors know what they're talking about in great detail, but fail at sometimes even basic pedagogy. Then again, academia is really about two things: research and the proliferation of academia; not teaching, even though you don't usually get into that until the graduate level.
The professors I liked the most and respect the most were the ones who were excellent teachers, not the ones who were masters in their field.
Humans were foragers for most of their existence, for the simple reason that they didn't need tools for anything complicated, and were nomadic, so a lot of tools didn't make much sense. Only when populations settled down and started growing their own food did we really become creatures that made lots of stuff. The reasons humans settled down probably don't affect dolphins, so they've been able to maintain a "foraging" lifestyle, even if they're just as intelligent as humans.
The ability to process symbols is also something we consider intelligence, because it's pretty critical to our ability to communicate. That's something done "automatically" for us in the brain when we learn language. The brain also auto-pilots us on things like reading music or playing video games. We can learn to process things on "auto pilot" that we could never individually think through step-by-step. Dolphin brains may or may not have these abilities, which would make them seem less intelligent.
They may have these abilities, albeit in an underdeveloped way because they haven't been naturally selected. The dolphins that are the best as being dolphins are the ones natural selection will pick. Eventually, it might be those that are best at interacting with humans, and so they might learn language and such. But we'll probably be able to make them intelligent with engineering long before evolution does it.
I'd like to see if there's a culture bias to this. Get someone from a very non-westernized culture and ask what they see. They're regularly not fooled by these kinds of "illusions":
Which line is longer:
>----------
Their eyes just aren't trained to see geometry the same way as westerners who are faced with tons of man-made things everyday.