Nope, you're wrong. Your statement is based on an assumption that "cyberspace" is somehow its own entity, completely distinct from anything that might be mentioned in the Constitution. But it's no such thing, any more the airwaves used to broadcast television and radio signals, which the FTC has had the ability to regulate for nearly as long as such signals have existed.
This is masking a more serious design problem. A game designed for use with the Wiimote should have a setting that allows the game to be played either left- or right-handed, so as to not exclude anyone. Presumably the player's actions match up to the avatar's (in this case, Link's). Therefore, it should be possible to make Link either left- or right-handed, within the game.
The fact that this isn't possible is troubling for the prospect of lefties being able to play this game the same way righties can.
I see what you mean about voltage-versus-current. (And yeah, I probably dropped an order of magnitude somewhere.)
I don't dispute that the Earth has sufficient kinetic energy in its orbit for us to draw some off of it. What I dispute is that there's a feasible way to do so from the planet's surface. Deciding to draw 1 kW from the Earth's orbit is one thing - doing so is another. Exploiting the kinetic energy of the Earth requires a useful frame of reference against which the Earth is moving in its orbit.
Possible, but the oscillations would have to be vast to produce a noticeable effect. I did some further math and found that if the Earth's field were flipping every second, you'd still need 1,772 km of wire wound into 500,000 loops in order to power a 3V flashlight. That requires that the poles be moving half the circumference of the earth each second - 20,000 km/s, or about 6% the speed of light.
I suppose it's possible, but in that realm of "possibility" that I consider reserved for the sudden, quantum unmaking of Earth.
The magnetic flux of the Earth's magnetic field over a square meter of area perpendicular to the field lines is between 0.3 and 0.6 gauss-meters^2. Let's be extremely generous and say we can harness a complete reversal of the local magnetic field for power, over the course of a year. (This is absurd, of course, but will give us some idea of the numbers we're working with.)
So the change in magnetic flux is 0.6 to 1.2 gauss-meters^2 per year, or 7.6e-13 Tm^2 per second. A Tesla (T) is a Weber (Wb) per meter squared, so this is equal to 7.6e-13 Wb/s. A Weber is a Volt-second. So, a complete reversal of the Earth's magnetic field over the course of a year would generate 7.6e-13 volts across a loop of wire enclosing a square meter.
To put that in perspective, you'd need nearly 4 trillion loops of wire to power an average (3V) flashlight.
Suffice it to say, the motion of the Earth's magnetic field cannot create any appreciable amount of current, even in an otherwise completely efficient system.
Telecommuting isn't the problem. Ineffective security policies are.
It's possible to set up secure connections between a telecommuter's computer and a secure server. Encrypted tunnels for VPN or something like that. Encrypt data on the laptop hard drive - if you even permit sensitive data to be stored there at all.
But until government and corporations are seriously committed to taking the measures necessary to keep private data secure, incidents like this will keep happening, whether it's due to a stolen telecommuting laptop or a server that gets broken into.
Also: To what degree is there sufficent consumer choice to permit the market to work it out at all? In my area there are two high-speed internet providers. If both of them decide to slow down access to my favorite sites, I'm screwed.
Further, people tend to gravely misinterpret the ability of "market forces" to resolve a given situation to the satisfaction of all involved. If the supply of food suddenly dwindles, market forces will eventually bring the price of food up to the point where the number of people that can afford it is about the same as the number of people the food can feed. But this newfound economic balance says nothing whatsoever about what happens to the newly starving populace that can't afford the food.
Free-market economics and capitalism are not a panacea for the problems of corporations abusing their customers. They merely ensure that the various inputs and outputs to the system are balanced.
Well, John Aravosis using one of those cellphone-record-stealing companies to buy Gen. Wesley Clark's cell records got the House of Representatives into action... but then the Republican leadership killed the bill after it passed the House, because it turns out that the government itself was buying those records to spy on its citizens.
So, sure, Congress will do something, if our privacy-invading, corporation-over-citizen administration doesn't prevent them from doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, you're wrong. Your statement is based on an assumption that "cyberspace" is somehow its own entity, completely distinct from anything that might be mentioned in the Constitution. But it's no such thing, any more the airwaves used to broadcast television and radio signals, which the FTC has had the ability to regulate for nearly as long as such signals have existed.
This is masking a more serious design problem. A game designed for use with the Wiimote should have a setting that allows the game to be played either left- or right-handed, so as to not exclude anyone. Presumably the player's actions match up to the avatar's (in this case, Link's). Therefore, it should be possible to make Link either left- or right-handed, within the game.
The fact that this isn't possible is troubling for the prospect of lefties being able to play this game the same way righties can.
I see what you mean about voltage-versus-current. (And yeah, I probably dropped an order of magnitude somewhere.)
I don't dispute that the Earth has sufficient kinetic energy in its orbit for us to draw some off of it. What I dispute is that there's a feasible way to do so from the planet's surface. Deciding to draw 1 kW from the Earth's orbit is one thing - doing so is another. Exploiting the kinetic energy of the Earth requires a useful frame of reference against which the Earth is moving in its orbit.
Possible, but the oscillations would have to be vast to produce a noticeable effect. I did some further math and found that if the Earth's field were flipping every second, you'd still need 1,772 km of wire wound into 500,000 loops in order to power a 3V flashlight. That requires that the poles be moving half the circumference of the earth each second - 20,000 km/s, or about 6% the speed of light.
I suppose it's possible, but in that realm of "possibility" that I consider reserved for the sudden, quantum unmaking of Earth.
Hm. Time for some math.
The magnetic flux of the Earth's magnetic field over a square meter of area perpendicular to the field lines is between 0.3 and 0.6 gauss-meters^2. Let's be extremely generous and say we can harness a complete reversal of the local magnetic field for power, over the course of a year. (This is absurd, of course, but will give us some idea of the numbers we're working with.)
So the change in magnetic flux is 0.6 to 1.2 gauss-meters^2 per year, or 7.6e-13 Tm^2 per second. A Tesla (T) is a Weber (Wb) per meter squared, so this is equal to 7.6e-13 Wb/s. A Weber is a Volt-second. So, a complete reversal of the Earth's magnetic field over the course of a year would generate 7.6e-13 volts across a loop of wire enclosing a square meter.
To put that in perspective, you'd need nearly 4 trillion loops of wire to power an average (3V) flashlight.
Suffice it to say, the motion of the Earth's magnetic field cannot create any appreciable amount of current, even in an otherwise completely efficient system.
That's utter crap. Trying to bully the library into giving up records without a subpoena or warrant is a blatant disregard for due process.
And I don't know the answer to that question. It sure as hell isn't the federal government, though!
One of my friends has a "Radical Militant Librarian" icon on LJ. I think she knows what's coming.
Telecommuting isn't the problem. Ineffective security policies are.
It's possible to set up secure connections between a telecommuter's computer and a secure server. Encrypted tunnels for VPN or something like that. Encrypt data on the laptop hard drive - if you even permit sensitive data to be stored there at all.
But until government and corporations are seriously committed to taking the measures necessary to keep private data secure, incidents like this will keep happening, whether it's due to a stolen telecommuting laptop or a server that gets broken into.
Also: To what degree is there sufficent consumer choice to permit the market to work it out at all? In my area there are two high-speed internet providers. If both of them decide to slow down access to my favorite sites, I'm screwed.
Further, people tend to gravely misinterpret the ability of "market forces" to resolve a given situation to the satisfaction of all involved. If the supply of food suddenly dwindles, market forces will eventually bring the price of food up to the point where the number of people that can afford it is about the same as the number of people the food can feed. But this newfound economic balance says nothing whatsoever about what happens to the newly starving populace that can't afford the food.
Free-market economics and capitalism are not a panacea for the problems of corporations abusing their customers. They merely ensure that the various inputs and outputs to the system are balanced.
Well, John Aravosis using one of those cellphone-record-stealing companies to buy Gen. Wesley Clark's cell records got the House of Representatives into action... but then the Republican leadership killed the bill after it passed the House, because it turns out that the government itself was buying those records to spy on its citizens. So, sure, Congress will do something, if our privacy-invading, corporation-over-citizen administration doesn't prevent them from doing so.