Even if you had 100% conversion efficiency and no clouds, there's just not enough energy in the sunlight hitting a plane to lift it up and fly it with anything but a trivial payload, unless of course, you had a few 10s of thousand square feet for energy input. No problem with takeoff there, surely.
BUT, what you could do is mount solar panels on a large flattened hydrogen blimp and you're more or less on your way. You can even replenish the hydrogen from water if needs be. Slow, but functional.
VB6, Winforms, dying Silverlight, J#... Nothing quite says, "I don't give a shit about my developer base or their customers" like dropping a platform and not even making a token attempt to provide an upgrade path that doesn't include the word, "rewrite" even when doing so would be technically trivial.
Any wonder that nobody is much interested in committing to a platform that will change the next time some genius at Microsoft decides to change the world again? Used to be that you'd at least get a decade out of a platform. Those were the days.
Hey Microsoft, ARE YOU LISTENING? Oh, wait. The start button that thousands of developers on the forums wanted to retain is gone too. I guess that means, "No."
the goals of companies are are self preservation and self-enrichment. On occasion, this may be coincidentally good for consumers, but just as often it produces disasters like Dell technical support, a medical system that rewards tests instead of patient outcome, Windows 95, 98, and ME, corporate centralization of services, voicemail hell, interlocking directorates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate) that dictate media output and economic behavior as effectively as any communist party, and Justin Beiber.
Thus capitalism fails all the time. The fails just don't make the nightly news.
Sorry, but yes, physical brain characteristics, including size, surface area, interconnections, and surplus or deficit of glia do frequently impact behavior. The brain, while packing quite a bit of redundancy, isn't some magic cloudy place where the spirit homonculus lives. So yes, this *looks* like phrenology, until you read a book on neurophysiology.
And I have no problem with Italy controlling Italy's part of the internet. Or China for that matter. I simply have no interest in the internet as a whole being dictated to by the governments of Tunisia, Brussels or Uzbekistan. You want local control? Feel free. You want global control for something you didn't invent or implement? Piss off! Go roll your own, and quit bothering everyone else.
In the meantime, the internet (formerly a DARPA project, and funded by the USA's taxpayers) can stay under USA's control, thank you very much. If the UN feels the need to steal something they didn't create, try Argentinian beef. Isn't that a world resource, after all?
Brick and mortar classrooms are becoming increasingly archaic. Tenure too, most likely. Online learning. Online chat and questions. Face to face video. There's just not that much gained by physical presence when learning something like history or math.
The only "brick and mortar" that makes sense are physical science labs and testing centers. As for the latter, an ongoing schedule of competency tests, taken by subject, would allow students to scale their own education according to schedule and need rather than pursuing the arbitrary goal of a "degree."
The best way to stop OUTsourcing is to bring highly skilled labor *here*. After someone from India starts a business here, raises a family here, and goes to town meetings to discuss replacing the town sewer system, and votes for a president, where do you think his loyalty lies? India? Make it easy for skilled labor to get H1-Bs and citizenship. Concentrate the world's brains *here* instead of sending them back home.
The question should be, "Can an individual choose to take a performance enhancer for their own reasons, even if it's not officially sanctioned by government bureaucrats, lawmakers and voters with a vague sense that something might not be egalitarian...somehow?"
As for ethics, it depends on your starting set of unprovable precepts. Have at it. Garbage in, garbage out. Just don't expect me to take it seriously.
While the theological propositions of most religions are laughable, the empirical neurophysiological techniques for the induction of mystical states can be quite useful as a means of inducing subjective feelings of happiness, satisfaction and stress relief. If "mystical" state induction techniques (e.g. breathing, sustained attention) were generalized, codified and distributed widely, do you think that these would work against religious organizations and their more deplorable behaviors? Religious history suggests this, as almost every religious organization eventually suppresses the actual practice of inducing mystical states.
Neither the Surface nor Windows 8 appear to be catching fire. They need market share, not some Marketeer's dimwitted idea of "perceived value." This price point guarantees failure.
To avoid mockery, don't engage in behavior that invites mockery. Hint, rioting over pictures tends to invite mockery. Using humans as bomb delivery systems tends to invite this too. I tend to restrict my mockery to Wahabists, Talibanis and their ilk. The majority of Muslims are decent and respectable people.
for the most part, are about as effective as showing the kids pictures of fluffy pink bunnies? Just maybe. Sorry, but after you get a psychology degree, you're likely to get *really* unromantic about human behaviour. It's not magic, or unpredictable. You can fix certain things with chemicals, or other direct neurophysiological interventions commonly called "punishment" or "reward," but virtually all other merely cognitive or verbal efforts fail miserably.
If the military really had its act together, they would be developing a heterogeneous environment of different forms of AI, using genetic algorithms for on-site design and modeling, swarm intelligence in automated battlefield weapons, an array of watson-like expert systems, and most importantly, integrating all of that into portable, secure, phone platforms that can be immediately and wirelessly become the "brains" of any larger device like a tank, a drone, or even a ship.
Humanlike neural net based AI, of course, would be best, but IBM is pretty far ahead on that one. In a decade, we should have commercial units for limited applications.
Robust field maker-bots for on-site construction of metallic and non-metallic parts.
After that, thorium, safe uranium-based nuclear, portable nuclear power, cheap high efficiency solar, batteries and battery/capacitors that don't suck, hydrogen fuel cells that don't suck. I exclude biofuels because they're just inefficient solar collectors and will never scale worth a damn.
As for the article, why is this twerp going to work in a car at all? Why is he even getting out of bed? After he gets his bagel and coffee, he can do all his work at home.
Supply the 20 inch bluetooth monitor with a stand. Integrate speakers into monitor. Make the bluetooth keyboard in several sizes, including full size. One 12 volt cord for monitor; one for the CPU. All connections are bluetooth or USB for external disk I/O. Batteries for the rest. Is it still a desktop computer?
the court will have proven itself so divorced from reality that it no longer serves any useful purpose and should be dissolved. Believe me, I was thinking that after that little "money is speech" nonsense.
Since a prius or Jetta already do this, more or less, I'd have to agree. And I'm sure the plans for a 1981 VW Rabbit are still laying around somewhere.
Impossible? Heck no. The 64-trillion dollar question is whether we'll find an energy efficient, cost effective competitor to petroleum fuels AND switch our delivery infrastructure in a timeframe that matters. Given enough time, I don't doubt that we could do it, but we're in a race, you see. The energy return cliff on petroleum fuels catches up with us before 30 years are up. Natural gas can substitute and if you believe the government figures of 2000 trillion cubic feet of NT, we have about 40 years of fuel from it (assuming we use it directly without converting to oil first). If the figures are largely happy fantasy, then less. So, the most optimistic timeframe for this is 30 years for petroleum replacement and 70-80 for all hydrocarbon replacement if you throw coal into the mix. During that time, we'll be shifting infrastructure along the way. Not cheap. Not easy. It is, however, easier than assuming a technological breakthrough. Remember, all hydrogen production systems are incredibly inefficient. Biosystems are just inefficient solar collectors. Catalysts ditto. Even nuclear, the only thing that looks viable at this point to maintain large scale industrial civilization past 2100, would work if the world could add about 50 new plants a year for the next 50 years, and that's just running in place. It's not enough to expand an economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you had 100% conversion efficiency and no clouds, there's just not enough energy in the sunlight hitting a plane to lift it up and fly it with anything but a trivial payload, unless of course, you had a few 10s of thousand square feet for energy input. No problem with takeoff there, surely.
BUT, what you could do is mount solar panels on a large flattened hydrogen blimp and you're more or less on your way. You can even replenish the hydrogen from water if needs be. Slow, but functional.
VB6, Winforms, dying Silverlight, J# ... Nothing quite says, "I don't give a shit about my developer base or their customers" like dropping a platform and not even making a token attempt to provide an upgrade path that doesn't include the word, "rewrite" even when doing so would be technically trivial.
Any wonder that nobody is much interested in committing to a platform that will change the next time some genius at Microsoft decides to change the world again? Used to be that you'd at least get a decade out of a platform. Those were the days.
Hey Microsoft, ARE YOU LISTENING? Oh, wait. The start button that thousands of developers on the forums wanted to retain is gone too. I guess that means, "No."
Hi Mr. Linux!
the goals of companies are are self preservation and self-enrichment. On occasion, this may be coincidentally good for consumers, but just as often it produces disasters like Dell technical support, a medical system that rewards tests instead of patient outcome, Windows 95, 98, and ME, corporate centralization of services, voicemail hell, interlocking directorates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate) that dictate media output and economic behavior as effectively as any communist party, and Justin Beiber.
Thus capitalism fails all the time. The fails just don't make the nightly news.
Sorry, but yes, physical brain characteristics, including size, surface area, interconnections, and surplus or deficit of glia do frequently impact behavior. The brain, while packing quite a bit of redundancy, isn't some magic cloudy place where the spirit homonculus lives. So yes, this *looks* like phrenology, until you read a book on neurophysiology.
And I have no problem with Italy controlling Italy's part of the internet. Or China for that matter. I simply have no interest in the internet as a whole being dictated to by the governments of Tunisia, Brussels or Uzbekistan. You want local control? Feel free. You want global control for something you didn't invent or implement? Piss off! Go roll your own, and quit bothering everyone else.
In the meantime, the internet (formerly a DARPA project, and funded by the USA's taxpayers) can stay under USA's control, thank you very much. If the UN feels the need to steal something they didn't create, try Argentinian beef. Isn't that a world resource, after all?
Brick and mortar classrooms are becoming increasingly archaic. Tenure too, most likely. Online learning. Online chat and questions. Face to face video. There's just not that much gained by physical presence when learning something like history or math.
The only "brick and mortar" that makes sense are physical science labs and testing centers. As for the latter, an ongoing schedule of competency tests, taken by subject, would allow students to scale their own education according to schedule and need rather than pursuing the arbitrary goal of a "degree."
The best way to stop OUTsourcing is to bring highly skilled labor *here*. After someone from India starts a business here, raises a family here, and goes to town meetings to discuss replacing the town sewer system, and votes for a president, where do you think his loyalty lies? India? Make it easy for skilled labor to get H1-Bs and citizenship. Concentrate the world's brains *here* instead of sending them back home.
The question should be, "Can an individual choose to take a performance enhancer for their own reasons, even if it's not officially sanctioned by government bureaucrats, lawmakers and voters with a vague sense that something might not be egalitarian...somehow?"
As for ethics, it depends on your starting set of unprovable precepts. Have at it. Garbage in, garbage out. Just don't expect me to take it seriously.
While the theological propositions of most religions are laughable, the empirical neurophysiological techniques for the induction of mystical states can be quite useful as a means of inducing subjective feelings of happiness, satisfaction and stress relief. If "mystical" state induction techniques (e.g. breathing, sustained attention) were generalized, codified and distributed widely, do you think that these would work against religious organizations and their more deplorable behaviors? Religious history suggests this, as almost every religious organization eventually suppresses the actual practice of inducing mystical states.
Neither the Surface nor Windows 8 appear to be catching fire. They need market share, not some Marketeer's dimwitted idea of "perceived value." This price point guarantees failure.
Cheaper. Simpler. Effective training for their new roles in our brave new world. Might as well tag 'em too.
Apparently the world's wealthy have had enough of the free speech experiment.
To avoid mockery, don't engage in behavior that invites mockery. Hint, rioting over pictures tends to invite mockery. Using humans as bomb delivery systems tends to invite this too. I tend to restrict my mockery to Wahabists, Talibanis and their ilk. The majority of Muslims are decent and respectable people.
for the most part, are about as effective as showing the kids pictures of fluffy pink bunnies? Just maybe. Sorry, but after you get a psychology degree, you're likely to get *really* unromantic about human behaviour. It's not magic, or unpredictable. You can fix certain things with chemicals, or other direct neurophysiological interventions commonly called "punishment" or "reward," but virtually all other merely cognitive or verbal efforts fail miserably.
Dead alligator bits. Old turtles. Vulture feces (It was bad going in!). Pig feces would be an improvement.
If the military really had its act together, they would be developing a heterogeneous environment of different forms of AI, using genetic algorithms for on-site design and modeling, swarm intelligence in automated battlefield weapons, an array of watson-like expert systems, and most importantly, integrating all of that into portable, secure, phone platforms that can be immediately and wirelessly become the "brains" of any larger device like a tank, a drone, or even a ship.
Humanlike neural net based AI, of course, would be best, but IBM is pretty far ahead on that one. In a decade, we should have commercial units for limited applications.
Robust field maker-bots for on-site construction of metallic and non-metallic parts.
After that, thorium, safe uranium-based nuclear, portable nuclear power, cheap high efficiency solar, batteries and battery/capacitors that don't suck, hydrogen fuel cells that don't suck. I exclude biofuels because they're just inefficient solar collectors and will never scale worth a damn.
Well, at least someone's being realistic.
As for the article, why is this twerp going to work in a car at all? Why is he even getting out of bed? After he gets his bagel and coffee, he can do all his work at home.
They can go suck eggs. Or create their own alternate internet.
Supply the 20 inch bluetooth monitor with a stand. Integrate speakers into monitor. Make the bluetooth keyboard in several sizes, including full size. One 12 volt cord for monitor; one for the CPU. All connections are bluetooth or USB for external disk I/O. Batteries for the rest. Is it still a desktop computer?
Oh, c'mon. You thought it too.
It's small, covered in metallic make-up and talks incessantly about itself. Much like several of my ex-girlfriends.
the court will have proven itself so divorced from reality that it no longer serves any useful purpose and should be dissolved. Believe me, I was thinking that after that little "money is speech" nonsense.
Since a prius or Jetta already do this, more or less, I'd have to agree. And I'm sure the plans for a 1981 VW Rabbit are still laying around somewhere.
Impossible? Heck no. The 64-trillion dollar question is whether we'll find an energy efficient, cost effective competitor to petroleum fuels AND switch our delivery infrastructure in a timeframe that matters. Given enough time, I don't doubt that we could do it, but we're in a race, you see. The energy return cliff on petroleum fuels catches up with us before 30 years are up. Natural gas can substitute and if you believe the government figures of 2000 trillion cubic feet of NT, we have about 40 years of fuel from it (assuming we use it directly without converting to oil first). If the figures are largely happy fantasy, then less. So, the most optimistic timeframe for this is 30 years for petroleum replacement and 70-80 for all hydrocarbon replacement if you throw coal into the mix. During that time, we'll be shifting infrastructure along the way. Not cheap. Not easy. It is, however, easier than assuming a technological breakthrough. Remember, all hydrogen production systems are incredibly inefficient. Biosystems are just inefficient solar collectors. Catalysts ditto. Even nuclear, the only thing that looks viable at this point to maintain large scale industrial civilization past 2100, would work if the world could add about 50 new plants a year for the next 50 years, and that's just running in place. It's not enough to expand an economy.
Here's some numbers to chew on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil