As an intro, I am not a political expert nor do I claim to have a firm grasp on all things politics.
1) How about making sure the leaders and other political figures of the party aren't ignorant egomaniacs with an agenda and a pocket full of bribe money. That is my first request.
2) Be open about who is donating money to your party.
3) When speaking they should sound intelligent but not condescending, they should be confident. Be sure they are briefed on the subject beforehand by qualified experts that can be accounted for. I don't want to hear "experts say that bla bla bla...." What experts? Who are they? What are their credentials?
4) Have a science and technology panel that serves as a resource for educating politicians on science and technical matters. After all, science and technology make a nation strong and competitive.
5) How do we remain competitive now and in the future with China both in terms of manufacturing and technology? China isn't going to play second fiddle to the US for ever. One day they are going to develop their own competitive technology from scratch which isn't a cheap knockoff. They have tons of manpower and are sharpening their skills. We have to be sure we stay one or more steps ahead of them technologically. They also have no problem stealing IP from us. That is another problem which needs to be addressed.
6) National security should not trump the rights of its citizens. Three letter agencies and local police forces need to be restrained in their ever invasive surveillance practices and policies. Warrants should be mandatory for all wiretapping whether its a phone or internet connection. Why should the CIA get to build massive secret data centers in the middle of the desert and install fiber taps into major backbones? What are they collecting and why? How is it helping us? Think of it like this: after all the slow erosion of privacy and rights with increased surveillance, two guys still managed to set bombs off at the boston marathon. We need to rethink how we approach national security.
7) And another important part of your platform is foreign policy. This I cannot take the time to explain but let's re-evaluate our position of rolling into countries balls out because of some purported terrorist threat. I understand its a tough position to be in, someone attacked us and people demand justice or revenge. You can't be timid and look like a pussy but you shouldn't start a war by spreading lies. In short, lets stop looking like a dick to the rest of the world.
I wrote this in haste and its simply a brain dump. I just want a political party that sounds rational, is open and honest and confident in their actions.
I take the news in small doses. To be honest the only coverage of the boston marathon bombings I have read came from Slashdot and the few links that were posted. When the Sandy Hook shootings happened I also only skimmed a few slashdot articles and links.
I firmly believe the 24 hour news coverage and other non stop forms of reporting of major incidents are more harmful to the public than the incidents themselves. What I mean by harmful is the stress it induces in everyday people who are what I like to call victims. Victims of sensationalist, overblown media coverage which seeks to ingrain the morbid and macabre into our lives. My life has enough stress, why do I need more?
It might sound odd but I don't give two shits about the news. I glance a few headlines on google news every now and then and read Slashdot daily. Its enough to keep abreast of the news without being pummeled by it.
They should have been smart and made sure there were no homes, schools or other facilities near such a dangerous plant. Even if the plant was there first, why the hell would homes be built next to what amounts to an explosives plant? Its not like this didn't happen before, just google "pepcon disaster". That plant explosion blew out windows 12 miles away in Las Vegas. History repeats itself.
Seriously. If this clown thinks that switching on multiple charging stations at once can cripple a grid he needs a course in basic electric system installation. This guy is just hyping up a non existent problem and turning it into "OMG terrorist hackers will cripple our country!" FUD. Its silly attention seeking.
Example: If you had 10 chargers in a parking lot, each charger would have its own internal circuit breaker and the entire branch circuit that powers them all also must have a circuit breaker. Lets say the branch circuit can only support a maximum of 5 chargers at full power or a mix of low/high charge levels for all 10. If some "hacker" turned them all on at once guess what happens? The branch circuit breaker trips, problem solved. Even if there were 100 chargers, a breaker will trip and again problem solved.
I don't understand the mindset either. To me Email is much more secure than snail mail. With email someone needs my password to gain access to my mail. With snail mail, all someone needs to do is open my mail box and walk away with my mail. You can make it a bit more secure by using a mail slot or lock box but a majority of people have the classic unsecure mailbox that is out in the open.
I was thinking of this very scenario not too long ago. Many ARM (and other archs) embedded microcontrollers support external memory busses which can have a mix of SRAM, SDRAM and Flash. The flash can hold a binary image and/or a flash file system. I imagine the combo DIMMs would provide you with a similar setup, allowing a flash file system along with standard DDR RAM on the same memory controller.
I must admit that I can't wait to see performance numbers for read speeds. Using it as a frequently written cache is a stupid idea as you will wind up wearing down the flash BUT if its used to cache frequently read files then you really have something. What would be interesting is if you could use execute in place to run software directly from the flash. There could be a mechanism where the flash disk is mapped into the file system. The OS or the user can decide which files can be loaded from disk to flash cache and a link or pointer now points to the flash instead of the disk making it transparent. Loading a program could be done in a few seconds. The OS could even map system files to the flash so booting could take seconds and energy saving suspends or shutdowns can resume in a second or so.
I imagine it would be a great boost for gaming, probably the biggest (and most likely target) market for these DIMMs. Games would benefit greatly from the break neck load speeds brought about by having the game already in memory. Gigabytes of game files can be loaded into flash and you can jump right into the game. Game save states could be loaded into flash and instantly recalled. Half life brought us the continuous game experience where there are brief load points between sections instead of load screens. Now that can be turned into continuous game play as all game data is already in a portion of main memory.
I think they might not benefit much else, maybe video editing but I think you would need over 100GB of flash storage for it to be useful. Using flash might not be the best idea but its the cheapest highest capacity non volatile memory we have at the moment. CellularRAM (PSRAM) and MRAM are other contenders but capacity and availability are an issue. MRAM is still in development and PSRAM is available but currently its suck at 16MB capacities.
And lastly, people assuming your encryption keys could be pilfered, the flash will not be used as RAM. It can't because Flash can't be written to on a per address basis like RAM (BUT MRAM and PSRAM can). But if you suspend by writing memory contents verbatim to flash, then you have a problem. My guess would be it might be possible to partition the memory so sensitive RAM contents would be discarded. Its up to the OS makers to implement these mechanisms. I imagine Linux and the BSD's would be most concerned about these potential security pitfalls and ensure this does not happen. I would like to think both Microsoft and Apple would be smart enough to also avoid such a glaring security hole. Maybe we can have a memtest like utility either in ROM or disk that zeros out the FLASH as a boot option.
Lasers are regulated but there are compliance agencies that can help you with paperwork. You could also do the paperwork yourself. From there its usually just a certification and you slap a warning sticker on your product.
Anaal Nathrakh. Formally a two man band that now records and plays live with members of Napalm Death, both are from Birmingham. I am sure a few of their songs could easily destroy a sculpture, as well as anyone and anything in the vicinity.
Instead of that goofy shit how about he go for a walk, maybe a bike ride (if he could afford one) or any other simple outdoor activity that wont land him in a gulag.
Manufactured December 1986 and still kicking. Bought a neat USB cable that has a model M plug on the end. Though I still can't figure out why my ears ring and have constant headaches after use.
I have a friend who is 4th generation Chinese here in the US. One day we were hanging out and he was driving his Chevy when an old high school friend of his pulled up in a pimped out Japanese rice burner. His friend asked him what he was doing driving an American piece of shit when he shot back asking why he was a traitor driving a car built by "the mother fuckers who raped our country". Turned out his father will never buy a Japanese car and his mothers mother cursed the Japanese and told him to never forget. Today he drives a Mercedes and his parents own VW's.
I would be curious as to where the drone aircraft was operating from. I lived in Ozone Park for most of my life and Howard beach as well as the northern half of broad channel are in the flight path of JFK and within 3 miles. Since there was a lot of damage done by hurricane sandy in those areas, I could imagine a private company or researcher operating such an craft for surveying purposes. But at 1700+ feet? I looked up Runway 31R and I think it serves aircraft landing from the east. That puts the airplane approach over the Woodmere or Cedarhurst areas.
I somehow think it may be related to surveying the areas affected by Sandy (by an untrained operator) or just someone fooling around with a new toy they built/bought.
Hold on now, the city bus and asparagus (or food) both need fuel to get to their destination. The difference is the bus directly utilizes the fuel to move people around while the asparagus needs fuel for the farm equipment (till, plant,harvest) and for its transport to market via refrigerated truck (also electric needed to keep it fresh at the market via refrigeration). How much fuel is used to harvest each kilogram of asparagus to fuel the cyclist vs. fuel needed to move a bus the same distance? The fuel for both the bus and farm equipment/trucking is diesel and has the same carbon foot print. If they could calculate how much fuel was needed to harvest a kg of asparagus and how far that kg could "fuel" the cyclist, then you have a better comparison. Plus a bus does not move one person but possibly hundreds during its route.
For fun I just looked up some numbers. Asparagus contains 27 calories per 134 grams (http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-asparagus-i11011). Cycling calories burnt varies greatly but I found some numbers here(http://www.nutristrategy.com/fitness/cycling.htm) and then average both the light and moderate numbers and got 530 calories burnt per hour of riding (sounds a bit low). 1 hour of riding would consume about 2.6kg of asparagus at an average speed of 19.3 km/hr. If your place of work was 20 km away you would burn the full 530 calories and thus consume 2.6kg of asparagus. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to find any numbers directly pertaining to the fuel consumption of both harvesting, delivery and maintaining freshness. How much fuel does a bus consume? About 3.5 mpg for an average city bus and around 4.5 for a hybrid bus (MTA NY statistics: http://alttransport.com/2011/05/hybrid-buses-save-money-and-fuel-while-improving-the-transit-experience/. So we are looking at around 10 liters of fuel to move the hybrid bus the same distance. But the bus moves upward of 40+ people depending on the route. how do we factor in the number of people who rode the bus and for how far? Its gets convoluted and I have to get back to work.
by the time you factor in the fuel to grow, harvest and transport the food you might approach the fuel consumption of a bus moving a number of people. But then again, the people are eating daily to live. Its a tough comparison.
This is insightful? You are comparing apples to oranges. The organizations you mention are not competing with MS, they they build their products to run on Windows. They are not building an alternative to Windows. Microsoft benefits from those companies when they release a software product that runs on their OS platform.
MS is an OS vendor (with a few products thrown in for good measure, Office etc.), Linux is an OS and therefor is a competitor to Windows. Redhat is a Linux vendor and therefor an MS competitor. How did this fact escape both you and the moderators?
"that happens to contain a decent number of sane people who happen to have been raised inside of that culture"
One thing that many people don't understand is that Islam is more than a religion, its a culture that dictates how one should live, worship and govern its people. Islam knows no borders and Muslims have a very strong sense of belonging to the point where an Afgan and Iranian would see each other as brothers and not men from different countries.
At work we have two Pakistani kids, brothers. I was talking to one of them about a company that was started by two guys from Iraq and his face instantly lit up, smiled and said "Oh wow, my people started that business?" At first I was confused and asked him "Wait, I thought you are Pakistani" to which he replied "Yea, but they are Muslims like me". That really showed me how close the Muslim people are connected by their belief. Its to the point where a Pakistani is proud of the achievements of two men from Iraq, a completely different country. When was the last time anyone here spoke of an achievement of a Christian from another country with pride based solely on the fact they they were Christian like them?
Christians do not have that kind of bond with each other and therefor don't understand why the Muslims go crazy when someone disses Mohammed or makes a YouTube video calling Islam a religion of terrorists. You are insulting an entire culture, spiritual belief and government of all Muslims, everywhere. Christians have gotten to the point where they don't really give a shit, though there are sects that are still very close with each other (Mormons etc.). So when someone makes a Jesus joke or calls the church a scam, they don't take up arms and call for death.
From what I gather most of/. hates on Bitcoin for little reason other than jealousy. I bet they heard a story where some kid made tens of thousands of dollars by being an early adopter and look for any reason they can to dis it. They didn't care to look into it or didn't know about it or when it first came out and now they are mad they didn't become an early adopter and made money. So they feel left out and therefor have to lash out because its not them driving a new car or whatever.
I know a kid who was mining since the first month btc came out back in 2009. This was when you could leave your PC on overnight and make money mining, before the need for GPU/FPGA mining rigs. He he made around $50,000 and is working on a system to allow shops and stores to easily accept btc payments using an android phone. I sure wish I knew about btc back then myself.
The giant shovels are powered directly by electricity. They have a high voltage umbilical cable which is around 13.8kV that runs from a substation. If it were to house its own diesel generators, they would be too big to be practical. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Muskie. Bucket wheel excavators also are directly plugged into the power grid. So if they ran on clean coal, the mining operation would be very clean.
I also said the trains were diesel-electric, but they could run off synthetic/bio diesel created on site by power stations.
I'll bite...
"How does the lack of pollution from the process compare against that generated from the acquisition of the coal?" In many places, coal is mined using giant shovels that are electrically powered. Underground mines also tend to use electric shovels and other machinery, though not all. From the mine pit or shafts, its either directly loaded into train cars or haul trucks to trains cars. So its pretty much the same.
"Is it possible/practical to convert an existing coal power plant?" Impossible? No. Impracticle, yes. It all comes down to cost. I once toured the Poletti Power plant in Long Island City, New York City. The entire plant was mostly boiler, a big multistory boiler. We first walked past the generator (875MW) which was tiny compared to the boiler. So you are looking at removing a major portion of the plant to fit it with the new boiler. My bet is it's more costly to upgrade than to demolish an existing plant and start from scratch.
"Is there an appreciable energy/pollution cost to produce the fine powder coal used in the process?" They already use coal dust in boilers. They use coal mills to pulverize it and blow it into the boiler where its burned like a jet of gas/air. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulverized_coal-fired_boiler
"How much energy is consumed or how much pollution is produced in transporting the coal to the reactor?" Again, the same method used today, train. If trains were electrified (difficult, given the geography they need to cover) then they would be much cleaner. But today's locomotives are pretty damn efficient. We went from needing 5000-6000HP to 4000-4500HP. And it goes without saying, trains are pretty clean when you take into account the amount of weight moved vs. fuel burned. They mentioned burning syngas which is used as feed gas for the Fischer-Tropsch process which converts feed gas into liquid fuels like diesel and gasoline using a nickel/iron catalyst and heat. H2, CO and CO2 are the components of syngas and it looks like they could make plenty on-site which could be used to generate clean diesel for the trains delivering the coal.
"Is the process itself efficient in regards to the energy output when compared against the total energy costs? I would assume if they get the same efficiency as coal plant then they are already ahead of the game. The infrastructure is already there, we just need to build the plants. Hopefully this is a real development that could be put into commercial use.
To take power stations a step further: they generate plenty of waste heat that can be used for Fischer-Tropsch process reactors to produce fuels. If the plants were located in rural or low density areas, how difficult would it be to pump some of that flue gas CO2 into large algae farms to produce bio fuels? There are plenty of things we could do to boost power plant efficiency. And if you are wondering why power plants produce waste heat, the steam can not condense inside the turbine otherwise water could destroy the blades. The steam is super heated, often to over 1000 degrees F by passing it through tubes inside the boiler. So the steam is well over 212F/100C when it exits the turbine into condensers. Though, there are super-critical steam generators that don't boil water. Rather the water is put under such high pressure that it does not boil and its allowed to expand directly into steam just before entering the turbine housing.
270 is fantastic. Previous EV's had poor range, less than 100 miles or just a bit over which is a bit impractical for the odd trip here and there. My 1994 Civic gets about ~250 miles to a ten gallon tank of gas (It was rated 26 combined MPG). With my normal weekly commute to/from work and running various errands I fill up once every 2-3 weeks. With an electric car I can simply charge at home and always have a "full tank".
Recently I have been contemplating buying a new car and I have been eyeing the VW Diesel Jetta SportWagen. 42MPG with a manual transmission and about 600 miles to a tank of diesel (I do a lot of highway driving so those numbers jive). BUT if the electrics can match the range of my little civic and cost around 30k (Diesel Jetta with sun roof is around 27k) then I would be more inclined to sacrifice the range for the electric.
Lets be honest here and say that a coal/gas/oil burning plant can be much more efficient than a gasoline engine. By the time the engines power reaches the wheels, something like 80% of the gasoline's energy is wasted, mostly in the form of heat, the rest from drive line losses (also heat from friction.)
A coal/oil power station can reach 33% efficiency while a combined cycle plant can reach 50-60%. And if they use district heating like Con Edison does in NYC, then you go even higher because the waste heat is sold to heat buildings (among other things). BUT I am not sure about transmission losses and the efficiency of the charging stations (probably around 90-95%, just a guess). But overall I am sure an electric car charged by a well tuned power plant will be more efficient than a gasoline car.
Also, there are many rebate and assistance plans for adding solar power to your home. My friend just signed a contract last month for a 10kW system to be installed on his house. Within the next 10 years or so I am sure you will see many more solar powered homes.
No air defense missile is that fast. 10,000 MPH is mach 13, faster than any aircraft not including spacecraft such as rockets and the space shuttle (they need escape velocities of over 25,000 MPH/40,000 kph). The fastest SAM's (Surface to Air Missiles) are the Russian S-300 with a speed of nearly mach 6 while the US built MIM-104 Patriot has a speed of around mach 5. They are plenty fast to shoot down most any aircraft made today.
Another thing to think about is this: The speed of the meteor was so fast that by the time any radar would have picked it up, it would have already hit the earth before a radar operator could even summon his commander to have a look. There is no way they could have scrambled SAM's for launch, the entry and impact happened in seconds.
My guess is he never reported the condition when he applied for his license.
In New York City, on your drivers License application, you are required to list any disabilities and medical conditions you have. I suffered an eye injury that left me legally blind in one eye long after I received my license (a cataract, I can see out of it but its really blurry). I never reported it when I had to change my license address. Legally I am required to report it but the injury does not impair my driving so I leave it out.
"Does this mean that anyone with that sequence in their genome has violated the patent?"
Yep. It's a conspiracy to allow Myriad Genetics to sue every breast cancer patient for infringing on their IP. Cancer patients will most likely settle out of court and have to pay Myriad a license fee in order for them to continue to have cancer. Otherwise they will have to have it removed.
Maybe this will evolve into a new form of cancer treatment, simply sue the cancer out of them!
Slashdot Mirror
As an intro, I am not a political expert nor do I claim to have a firm grasp on all things politics.
1) How about making sure the leaders and other political figures of the party aren't ignorant egomaniacs with an agenda and a pocket full of bribe money. That is my first request.
2) Be open about who is donating money to your party.
3) When speaking they should sound intelligent but not condescending, they should be confident. Be sure they are briefed on the subject beforehand by qualified experts that can be accounted for. I don't want to hear "experts say that bla bla bla...." What experts? Who are they? What are their credentials?
4) Have a science and technology panel that serves as a resource for educating politicians on science and technical matters. After all, science and technology make a nation strong and competitive.
5) How do we remain competitive now and in the future with China both in terms of manufacturing and technology? China isn't going to play second fiddle to the US for ever. One day they are going to develop their own competitive technology from scratch which isn't a cheap knockoff. They have tons of manpower and are sharpening their skills. We have to be sure we stay one or more steps ahead of them technologically. They also have no problem stealing IP from us. That is another problem which needs to be addressed.
6) National security should not trump the rights of its citizens. Three letter agencies and local police forces need to be restrained in their ever invasive surveillance practices and policies. Warrants should be mandatory for all wiretapping whether its a phone or internet connection. Why should the CIA get to build massive secret data centers in the middle of the desert and install fiber taps into major backbones? What are they collecting and why? How is it helping us? Think of it like this: after all the slow erosion of privacy and rights with increased surveillance, two guys still managed to set bombs off at the boston marathon. We need to rethink how we approach national security.
7) And another important part of your platform is foreign policy. This I cannot take the time to explain but let's re-evaluate our position of rolling into countries balls out because of some purported terrorist threat. I understand its a tough position to be in, someone attacked us and people demand justice or revenge. You can't be timid and look like a pussy but you shouldn't start a war by spreading lies. In short, lets stop looking like a dick to the rest of the world.
I wrote this in haste and its simply a brain dump. I just want a political party that sounds rational, is open and honest and confident in their actions.
I take the news in small doses. To be honest the only coverage of the boston marathon bombings I have read came from Slashdot and the few links that were posted. When the Sandy Hook shootings happened I also only skimmed a few slashdot articles and links.
I firmly believe the 24 hour news coverage and other non stop forms of reporting of major incidents are more harmful to the public than the incidents themselves. What I mean by harmful is the stress it induces in everyday people who are what I like to call victims. Victims of sensationalist, overblown media coverage which seeks to ingrain the morbid and macabre into our lives. My life has enough stress, why do I need more?
It might sound odd but I don't give two shits about the news. I glance a few headlines on google news every now and then and read Slashdot daily. Its enough to keep abreast of the news without being pummeled by it.
They should have been smart and made sure there were no homes, schools or other facilities near such a dangerous plant. Even if the plant was there first, why the hell would homes be built next to what amounts to an explosives plant? Its not like this didn't happen before, just google "pepcon disaster". That plant explosion blew out windows 12 miles away in Las Vegas. History repeats itself.
Seriously. If this clown thinks that switching on multiple charging stations at once can cripple a grid he needs a course in basic electric system installation. This guy is just hyping up a non existent problem and turning it into "OMG terrorist hackers will cripple our country!" FUD. Its silly attention seeking.
Example:
If you had 10 chargers in a parking lot, each charger would have its own internal circuit breaker and the entire branch circuit that powers them all also must have a circuit breaker. Lets say the branch circuit can only support a maximum of 5 chargers at full power or a mix of low/high charge levels for all 10. If some "hacker" turned them all on at once guess what happens? The branch circuit breaker trips, problem solved. Even if there were 100 chargers, a breaker will trip and again problem solved.
I don't understand the mindset either. To me Email is much more secure than snail mail. With email someone needs my password to gain access to my mail. With snail mail, all someone needs to do is open my mail box and walk away with my mail. You can make it a bit more secure by using a mail slot or lock box but a majority of people have the classic unsecure mailbox that is out in the open.
I was thinking of this very scenario not too long ago. Many ARM (and other archs) embedded microcontrollers support external memory busses which can have a mix of SRAM, SDRAM and Flash. The flash can hold a binary image and/or a flash file system. I imagine the combo DIMMs would provide you with a similar setup, allowing a flash file system along with standard DDR RAM on the same memory controller.
I must admit that I can't wait to see performance numbers for read speeds. Using it as a frequently written cache is a stupid idea as you will wind up wearing down the flash BUT if its used to cache frequently read files then you really have something. What would be interesting is if you could use execute in place to run software directly from the flash. There could be a mechanism where the flash disk is mapped into the file system. The OS or the user can decide which files can be loaded from disk to flash cache and a link or pointer now points to the flash instead of the disk making it transparent. Loading a program could be done in a few seconds. The OS could even map system files to the flash so booting could take seconds and energy saving suspends or shutdowns can resume in a second or so.
I imagine it would be a great boost for gaming, probably the biggest (and most likely target) market for these DIMMs. Games would benefit greatly from the break neck load speeds brought about by having the game already in memory. Gigabytes of game files can be loaded into flash and you can jump right into the game. Game save states could be loaded into flash and instantly recalled. Half life brought us the continuous game experience where there are brief load points between sections instead of load screens. Now that can be turned into continuous game play as all game data is already in a portion of main memory.
I think they might not benefit much else, maybe video editing but I think you would need over 100GB of flash storage for it to be useful. Using flash might not be the best idea but its the cheapest highest capacity non volatile memory we have at the moment. CellularRAM (PSRAM) and MRAM are other contenders but capacity and availability are an issue. MRAM is still in development and PSRAM is available but currently its suck at 16MB capacities.
And lastly, people assuming your encryption keys could be pilfered, the flash will not be used as RAM. It can't because Flash can't be written to on a per address basis like RAM (BUT MRAM and PSRAM can). But if you suspend by writing memory contents verbatim to flash, then you have a problem. My guess would be it might be possible to partition the memory so sensitive RAM contents would be discarded. Its up to the OS makers to implement these mechanisms. I imagine Linux and the BSD's would be most concerned about these potential security pitfalls and ensure this does not happen. I would like to think both Microsoft and Apple would be smart enough to also avoid such a glaring security hole. Maybe we can have a memtest like utility either in ROM or disk that zeros out the FLASH as a boot option.
Lasers are regulated but there are compliance agencies that can help you with paperwork. You could also do the paperwork yourself. From there its usually just a certification and you slap a warning sticker on your product.
Anaal Nathrakh. Formally a two man band that now records and plays live with members of Napalm Death, both are from Birmingham. I am sure a few of their songs could easily destroy a sculpture, as well as anyone and anything in the vicinity.
(latin)sic == so
Instead of that goofy shit how about he go for a walk, maybe a bike ride (if he could afford one) or any other simple outdoor activity that wont land him in a gulag.
Manufactured December 1986 and still kicking. Bought a neat USB cable that has a model M plug on the end. Though I still can't figure out why my ears ring and have constant headaches after use.
I have a friend who is 4th generation Chinese here in the US. One day we were hanging out and he was driving his Chevy when an old high school friend of his pulled up in a pimped out Japanese rice burner. His friend asked him what he was doing driving an American piece of shit when he shot back asking why he was a traitor driving a car built by "the mother fuckers who raped our country". Turned out his father will never buy a Japanese car and his mothers mother cursed the Japanese and told him to never forget. Today he drives a Mercedes and his parents own VW's.
I would be curious as to where the drone aircraft was operating from. I lived in Ozone Park for most of my life and Howard beach as well as the northern half of broad channel are in the flight path of JFK and within 3 miles. Since there was a lot of damage done by hurricane sandy in those areas, I could imagine a private company or researcher operating such an craft for surveying purposes. But at 1700+ feet? I looked up Runway 31R and I think it serves aircraft landing from the east. That puts the airplane approach over the Woodmere or Cedarhurst areas.
I somehow think it may be related to surveying the areas affected by Sandy (by an untrained operator) or just someone fooling around with a new toy they built/bought.
Hold on now, the city bus and asparagus (or food) both need fuel to get to their destination. The difference is the bus directly utilizes the fuel to move people around while the asparagus needs fuel for the farm equipment (till, plant,harvest) and for its transport to market via refrigerated truck (also electric needed to keep it fresh at the market via refrigeration). How much fuel is used to harvest each kilogram of asparagus to fuel the cyclist vs. fuel needed to move a bus the same distance? The fuel for both the bus and farm equipment/trucking is diesel and has the same carbon foot print. If they could calculate how much fuel was needed to harvest a kg of asparagus and how far that kg could "fuel" the cyclist, then you have a better comparison. Plus a bus does not move one person but possibly hundreds during its route.
For fun I just looked up some numbers. Asparagus contains 27 calories per 134 grams (http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-asparagus-i11011). Cycling calories burnt varies greatly but I found some numbers here(http://www.nutristrategy.com/fitness/cycling.htm) and then average both the light and moderate numbers and got 530 calories burnt per hour of riding (sounds a bit low). 1 hour of riding would consume about 2.6kg of asparagus at an average speed of 19.3 km/hr. If your place of work was 20 km away you would burn the full 530 calories and thus consume 2.6kg of asparagus. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to find any numbers directly pertaining to the fuel consumption of both harvesting, delivery and maintaining freshness. How much fuel does a bus consume? About 3.5 mpg for an average city bus and around 4.5 for a hybrid bus (MTA NY statistics: http://alttransport.com/2011/05/hybrid-buses-save-money-and-fuel-while-improving-the-transit-experience/. So we are looking at around 10 liters of fuel to move the hybrid bus the same distance. But the bus moves upward of 40+ people depending on the route. how do we factor in the number of people who rode the bus and for how far? Its gets convoluted and I have to get back to work.
by the time you factor in the fuel to grow, harvest and transport the food you might approach the fuel consumption of a bus moving a number of people. But then again, the people are eating daily to live. Its a tough comparison.
This is insightful? You are comparing apples to oranges. The organizations you mention are not competing with MS, they they build their products to run on Windows. They are not building an alternative to Windows. Microsoft benefits from those companies when they release a software product that runs on their OS platform.
MS is an OS vendor (with a few products thrown in for good measure, Office etc.), Linux is an OS and therefor is a competitor to Windows. Redhat is a Linux vendor and therefor an MS competitor. How did this fact escape both you and the moderators?
"that happens to contain a decent number of sane people who happen to have been raised inside of that culture"
One thing that many people don't understand is that Islam is more than a religion, its a culture that dictates how one should live, worship and govern its people. Islam knows no borders and Muslims have a very strong sense of belonging to the point where an Afgan and Iranian would see each other as brothers and not men from different countries.
At work we have two Pakistani kids, brothers. I was talking to one of them about a company that was started by two guys from Iraq and his face instantly lit up, smiled and said "Oh wow, my people started that business?" At first I was confused and asked him "Wait, I thought you are Pakistani" to which he replied "Yea, but they are Muslims like me". That really showed me how close the Muslim people are connected by their belief. Its to the point where a Pakistani is proud of the achievements of two men from Iraq, a completely different country. When was the last time anyone here spoke of an achievement of a Christian from another country with pride based solely on the fact they they were Christian like them?
Christians do not have that kind of bond with each other and therefor don't understand why the Muslims go crazy when someone disses Mohammed or makes a YouTube video calling Islam a religion of terrorists. You are insulting an entire culture, spiritual belief and government of all Muslims, everywhere. Christians have gotten to the point where they don't really give a shit, though there are sects that are still very close with each other (Mormons etc.). So when someone makes a Jesus joke or calls the church a scam, they don't take up arms and call for death.
Why was this marked troll?
From what I gather most of /. hates on Bitcoin for little reason other than jealousy. I bet they heard a story where some kid made tens of thousands of dollars by being an early adopter and look for any reason they can to dis it. They didn't care to look into it or didn't know about it or when it first came out and now they are mad they didn't become an early adopter and made money. So they feel left out and therefor have to lash out because its not them driving a new car or whatever.
I know a kid who was mining since the first month btc came out back in 2009. This was when you could leave your PC on overnight and make money mining, before the need for GPU/FPGA mining rigs. He he made around $50,000 and is working on a system to allow shops and stores to easily accept btc payments using an android phone. I sure wish I knew about btc back then myself.
The giant shovels are powered directly by electricity. They have a high voltage umbilical cable which is around 13.8kV that runs from a substation. If it were to house its own diesel generators, they would be too big to be practical. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Muskie. Bucket wheel excavators also are directly plugged into the power grid. So if they ran on clean coal, the mining operation would be very clean.
I also said the trains were diesel-electric, but they could run off synthetic/bio diesel created on site by power stations.
I was just going to post that. Damn it.
I'll bite...
"How does the lack of pollution from the process compare against that generated from the acquisition of the coal?"
In many places, coal is mined using giant shovels that are electrically powered. Underground mines also tend to use electric shovels and other machinery, though not all. From the mine pit or shafts, its either directly loaded into train cars or haul trucks to trains cars. So its pretty much the same.
"Is it possible/practical to convert an existing coal power plant?"
Impossible? No. Impracticle, yes. It all comes down to cost. I once toured the Poletti Power plant in Long Island City, New York City. The entire plant was mostly boiler, a big multistory boiler. We first walked past the generator (875MW) which was tiny compared to the boiler. So you are looking at removing a major portion of the plant to fit it with the new boiler. My bet is it's more costly to upgrade than to demolish an existing plant and start from scratch.
"Is there an appreciable energy/pollution cost to produce the fine powder coal used in the process?"
They already use coal dust in boilers. They use coal mills to pulverize it and blow it into the boiler where its burned like a jet of gas/air. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulverized_coal-fired_boiler
"How much energy is consumed or how much pollution is produced in transporting the coal to the reactor?"
Again, the same method used today, train. If trains were electrified (difficult, given the geography they need to cover) then they would be much cleaner. But today's locomotives are pretty damn efficient. We went from needing 5000-6000HP to 4000-4500HP. And it goes without saying, trains are pretty clean when you take into account the amount of weight moved vs. fuel burned. They mentioned burning syngas which is used as feed gas for the Fischer-Tropsch process which converts feed gas into liquid fuels like diesel and gasoline using a nickel/iron catalyst and heat. H2, CO and CO2 are the components of syngas and it looks like they could make plenty on-site which could be used to generate clean diesel for the trains delivering the coal.
"Is the process itself efficient in regards to the energy output when compared against the total energy costs?
I would assume if they get the same efficiency as coal plant then they are already ahead of the game. The infrastructure is already there, we just need to build the plants. Hopefully this is a real development that could be put into commercial use.
To take power stations a step further: they generate plenty of waste heat that can be used for Fischer-Tropsch process reactors to produce fuels. If the plants were located in rural or low density areas, how difficult would it be to pump some of that flue gas CO2 into large algae farms to produce bio fuels? There are plenty of things we could do to boost power plant efficiency. And if you are wondering why power plants produce waste heat, the steam can not condense inside the turbine otherwise water could destroy the blades. The steam is super heated, often to over 1000 degrees F by passing it through tubes inside the boiler. So the steam is well over 212F/100C when it exits the turbine into condensers. Though, there are super-critical steam generators that don't boil water. Rather the water is put under such high pressure that it does not boil and its allowed to expand directly into steam just before entering the turbine housing.
270 is fantastic. Previous EV's had poor range, less than 100 miles or just a bit over which is a bit impractical for the odd trip here and there. My 1994 Civic gets about ~250 miles to a ten gallon tank of gas (It was rated 26 combined MPG). With my normal weekly commute to/from work and running various errands I fill up once every 2-3 weeks. With an electric car I can simply charge at home and always have a "full tank".
Recently I have been contemplating buying a new car and I have been eyeing the VW Diesel Jetta SportWagen. 42MPG with a manual transmission and about 600 miles to a tank of diesel (I do a lot of highway driving so those numbers jive). BUT if the electrics can match the range of my little civic and cost around 30k (Diesel Jetta with sun roof is around 27k) then I would be more inclined to sacrifice the range for the electric.
Lets be honest here and say that a coal/gas/oil burning plant can be much more efficient than a gasoline engine. By the time the engines power reaches the wheels, something like 80% of the gasoline's energy is wasted, mostly in the form of heat, the rest from drive line losses (also heat from friction.)
A coal/oil power station can reach 33% efficiency while a combined cycle plant can reach 50-60%. And if they use district heating like Con Edison does in NYC, then you go even higher because the waste heat is sold to heat buildings (among other things). BUT I am not sure about transmission losses and the efficiency of the charging stations (probably around 90-95%, just a guess). But overall I am sure an electric car charged by a well tuned power plant will be more efficient than a gasoline car.
Also, there are many rebate and assistance plans for adding solar power to your home. My friend just signed a contract last month for a 10kW system to be installed on his house. Within the next 10 years or so I am sure you will see many more solar powered homes.
No air defense missile is that fast. 10,000 MPH is mach 13, faster than any aircraft not including spacecraft such as rockets and the space shuttle (they need escape velocities of over 25,000 MPH/40,000 kph). The fastest SAM's (Surface to Air Missiles) are the Russian S-300 with a speed of nearly mach 6 while the US built MIM-104 Patriot has a speed of around mach 5. They are plenty fast to shoot down most any aircraft made today.
Another thing to think about is this: The speed of the meteor was so fast that by the time any radar would have picked it up, it would have already hit the earth before a radar operator could even summon his commander to have a look. There is no way they could have scrambled SAM's for launch, the entry and impact happened in seconds.
My guess is he never reported the condition when he applied for his license.
In New York City, on your drivers License application, you are required to list any disabilities and medical conditions you have. I suffered an eye injury that left me legally blind in one eye long after I received my license (a cataract, I can see out of it but its really blurry). I never reported it when I had to change my license address. Legally I am required to report it but the injury does not impair my driving so I leave it out.
"Does this mean that anyone with that sequence in their genome has violated the patent?"
Yep. It's a conspiracy to allow Myriad Genetics to sue every breast cancer patient for infringing on their IP. Cancer patients will most likely settle out of court and have to pay Myriad a license fee in order for them to continue to have cancer. Otherwise they will have to have it removed.
Maybe this will evolve into a new form of cancer treatment, simply sue the cancer out of them!