Then again, he always was a odd man.

I owned a Sony Magic Link (still have it) as well as many of the few accessories and software packages for it. It was a pretty cool device for it's time, but there was a good reason that it failed. Magic Cap was unbearably slow and, for all it's icons-up-the-ass cutesiness and so-called simplicity, it was a pain in the ass to use. It also made the assumption that all users are complete morons who shouldn't have any control over how their files are stored.

Often times, you'd be sitting waiting for minutes while Magic Crap performs garbage collection, eating up valuable battery time, not to mention the fact that getting to some particular tool or app often required jumping to different scenes, then maneuvering left/right to find a particular building or door.

I was looking forward to an update that would fix many of the significant problems with the OS, but it never came. They originally had planned to include an app building tool, but that never came either. Instead, they tried to market Magic Crap for Windows (Why???).

Now Hertzfeld and Co. want to do the same thing for Linux [ http://www.eazel.com/ ]. From what I've seen of it, it looks like they may actually have some good ideas about how to make Linux accessible to general users. Personally, I think KDE 2.0 is just fine.

STratoHAKster

The rest, I miss.

John
"So, are we gonna choose a technology, or are we going to use Visual Basic?" Rupert, summing up a meeting.

-- He's dead, Jim.

I just wish Wordstar had died BEFORE I thought to try that.

John

P.S. Col. Klink (ret.) DIED the 7th of December...
"So, are we gonna choose a technology, or are we going to use Visual Basic?" Rupert, summing up a meeting.

The president of our company held on to his little DOS copy of Wordstar until just last year. He would actually type out his official correspondence in that and send them to a 9-pin dot matrix printer (which he also refused to give up).

The way I got him to give it up was by convincing him that it wasn't Y2K compatible and could conceivably wreck his machine.

He bought it. =)

I was wrong. This changes everything. --Maynard James Keenan

A good idea is never out of date. And WordStar, like UNIX, sunlight, and sex, was full of goodness.

I am the very model of a modern major general...

I liked Wordstar, and I liked Turbo Pascal version 3, which had a "Wordstart-like" editor (plus a compiler and linker, all in 39 kbytes). In that list, I would put magnetic bubble memory in the airships' place as a technology that deserved to survive. If magnetic bubbles had evolved at the same pace as magnetic disks did in the last 20 years, we would have far more interesting storage devices today.

The airship was a technology that was ahead of its time. Its downfall had a lot to do with the materials the German government had to work with: Hydrogen instead of Helium, flammable Aluminum rather than modern graphite composite materials, doped canvas instead of modern skinning materials, etc. etc. etc.

If one took advantage of modern materials, computer controls and modern engines, the airship could become a very usable means of transport. And with photovoltaics covering the ship's skin and electric/fuel hybrid engines, you would have an ecologically sound means of transport too. Sure, it's not going to break the sound barrier, but what about airships for pleasure cruising? I could see hybrid powered airships and ecotourism going hand in hand. Cruises between the Bay Area and the Baja Peninsula? Sounds good to me! Sign me up!

Admittedly, lighter-than-air craft have to be replaced a lot because empty, moored craft are less than stable in very adverse weather. I think Goodyear lost a blimp recently in a storm. But using modern composite materials you'd probably be able to salvage enough of the important stuff to rebuild, if not survive a storm, on the ground.

I hear that Zeppelin, AG is back in business, with plans very similar to what I'm talking about. Maybe not solar/hybrid-powered airships, but airships built with modern materials and efficient, computer-controlled gas engines.

---- Hey Grrl Geeks! Your very own geek news site has arrived!
http://www.msgeek.org/

The Germans were pretty stupid to insist on Hydrogen rather than Helium, I agree.

But airships crashed, no mather who built them. One of them, made in Italy, crashed on its way to the North Pole. The USA built two aircraft carrier airships, which carried about ten very small and lightweight fighter planes each. One of them crashed off the Califorinia coast, its debris were found in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean a few years ago, National Geographic reported that. Its twin crashed over land, during a storm.

Remember, airships must be "lighter than air". Even assuming stronger materials are available today, certainly "heavier than air" machines built with the same materials will always be more robust.

... but the fact that the airship was coated in what was essentially thermite did the trick.

I saw a program on it recently. Some ex-NASA guy did some research into the Hindenburg crash. He reckoned that the pictures of the explosion didn't look much like a hydrogen fire; hydrogen burns with a fairly dim blue flame and the pictures of the Hindenburg are a good deal more dramatic than that. He came up with an alternative theory.

He claims the canvas skin of the Hindenburg was coated with aluminium powder to reflect sunlight and stop the tanks heating up. There was also iron oxide present (I can't remember why). The Hindenburg landed in the middle of a storm so it must have been carrying a pretty big charge. When it dropped its mooring ropes, only part of the structure was earthed and an arc was struck between the earthed and unearthed parts of the ship. The thermite ignited. Instant firework.

The programme claimed the Zeppelin company knew about this all along and told no-one for dark insurance reasons of their own; this was probably the ObConspiracyTheory most modern science programmes feel obliged to include to keep Joe Sixpack tuned in.

It was on TV so it must be true!

As long as you are messing around with small prototypes you are stuck with crummy lift.

But once the breakthrough is made and they start building BIG ones then the lift REALLY starts to get impressive.

They might never be great for shipping bricks

But for moving massy, yet light things around quickly they might well prove to be big winners
'There is a Light that never goes out.'

Do you mean "bulky, but light"?

This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander

Remember, inertia is a function of mass not weight. The ship could have a very high mass but still be lighter than air due to it's low density.

On the other hand, your statment seems to be more of a question of what the proper definition of weight is. i.e. should weight be the total gravatational pull on an object or the total force after other issues are considered. I don't know, but weight is usually used in a practical sense so using an ideal value like the weight in a vacuum (sp?) doesn't seem right to me.

Personally, though, all I want to see is a dirigible moored to the Empire State Building.

This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander

"voluminous yet light" it is
'There is a Light that never goes out.'

"We are number one. All others are two or less." - The Sphinx

The wonder of precise language no?
'There is a Light that never goes out.'

"We are number one. All others are two or less." - The Sphinx

But for moving massy, yet light things around quickly they might well prove to be big winners

Well apparently the people at CargoLifter think differently. As was said in the original text they're planning on moving objects (bulky or not) of up to 160 tonnes weight, not exactly 'light'. They finished the hangar south of Berlin (quite a sight, 360m long, and over 100m high) recently and will soon start production...

I am the very model of a modern major general...

• The tape timing was less than VHS, you could fit 6 hours on a VHS tape, 2 hours on a BEta.
  
• PORN Yes, Sony did not license it for porn, needless to say, the porn video revolution was on VHS (cf. Boogie Nights).
  

I thought it died because Sony was a little too stringent with sharing the technology. They knew they had a winner and didn't want to share it with anyone. They tried to monopolize the market and when the viable VHS solution came about they took it in the rear with the grace of Martha Stewart.

Interesting. This begs the question, how do you know about Martha Stewart's reactions to anal sex?

Anyway, yes. Sony is responsible for killing Beta. Beta is superior in basically every way to VHS, with better audio and video quality, both. Super VHS is better than Beta in most ways (Except tape size) but then again, I have a Sony Super Beta Hi-Fi deck.

Incidentally, "Betamaxing" is a term. Wired has it somewhat wrong, though. They explain betamaxing this way:

Betamaxed

When a technology is overtaken by an inferior but better-marketed technology. "Apple was betamaxed out of the market by Microsoft."

I have my own feelings about the saying which seem to coincide better than Wired's with how I've heard the term (verb?) "Betamax" used. In reality, only the person who owns a product can betamax it, because to betamax a technology is to license it out so restrictively that other players don't want to use it. Everyone knew that Beta was better than VHS from a technical standpoint, but an all-encompassing "better" would have to include ("The industry standard").

As an aside, Sony looked to be working hard to Betamax Minidisc, but Sony has so much power these days (partly because of the influence of the Playstation market on their budget) that they were able to hang on and keep pushing Minidisc. These days there are four or five companies making minidisc player/recorders, the discs are down to about a buck a piece, and they're really a quite reasonable solution.

Hey, whatever works for you, but I don't want to have to wait an hour for a CD to be made, especially if I want to make multiple CDs. In addition, although CDs scratch easily, they are cheap. And if I have to make a new one, well, it's fast.

However, burning data (especially data like CDDA) at speeds above 2 or 4 speed can fail spectacularly for no apparent reason. Discs burned at high speeds are frequently unreadable by anything other than a CD burner. If you want to be very sure that everyone can play what you burn, you must stick with double speed or less. Mind you, double speed is nearly twice as fast as burning a whole CD, but there are other advantages to Minidisc, not the least of which is that a minidisc player is on average about half of the volume of a CD player. Another is that you can treat it like a tape deck, and record to it from an analog source. This is also not exceptionally fascinating, but it does work all right.

However, what we need these days are some old fashioned caddy CD players. Just keep all your CDs in caddies and you've got all the protection you need.

I haven't ever seen a consumer-level CD player which used caddies, but there are a number of pro-level decks still on the market which use them. You can also still get caddy-loading CDROM and CD-R drives, most notably from plextor. However, caddies are not cheap. You're probably better off just treating your CDs well and being careful with them.

this is simply untrue. I've burned many cds at 8x with absolutely no problems with any non-cdrs reading them. several of my friends have 8x burners as well, and none have had problems

in fact, just yesterday I burnt a music cd at 8x; oooh, in fact, I OVERburned it! and it played perfectly in my 25-disk cd changer hooked to my amp, and the Pioneer deck in my car

Congratulations. However, many people do not experience the same luck as yourself. Also, when using "budget" media (like GQ or Hi-Val) one may have poor experiences. I don't buy the super-crappy media, nor do I buy red or green media; Silver/Silver, Gold/Gold, or Silver/Blue only. Even with TDK media, however, "certified" for use at 12X, I sometimes have poor results burning over 2X. I can sometimes push 4X. Also, the shelf life of CDs burned at a higher rate seems to vary dramatically.

At home, I have a philips Omniwriter 2600, which is a nice slow SCSI drive, 6x2x2. This appears to be more or less the same drive used in philips' home CD recording units. It has never made a coaster on me (though the software occasionally will explode, and I've managed to bluescreen in the middle of a burn a couple times.) At work, we have a number of HP 4030i or something, which are IDE. Burning anything over 4X will fail regularly; Sometimes trying to use more than 2X explodes as well. I generally stick with 2X.

You may also be interested in a few products that make use of the MD for storing data, such as camcorders or cameras. Here's a nice page to look at (with pictures ;) and also here.

Please don't bash a product because it is proprietary, but judge it on it's merits.

But for some applications, the closed/open bit is a question of merit. It's not a big deal for everything of course, but when it comes to storage, I'm a no-hostages kind of guy.

Even though minidiscs are a good product in many ways, one of the strikes against them happens to be an important one, to some people.

Please don't bash a product because it is proprietary, but judge it on it's merits.

-Anonymous Coward should be done away with, enforce standing by your words-

My problem with AC is you see the various trolls and fools who get on and post stupid crap..i'm sure that would happen anyways if you werent anonymous, but i think it would be alot less common. I rather like kuro5hin's way, where you have to login to post. It may not give everyone their say, but in reality, you have to show yourself if you stand in the middle of the street giving a speech too.

-Anonymous Coward should be done away with, enforce standing by your words-

-Anonymous Coward should be done away with, enforce standing by your words-

So, you're right. thats a downside, but is it that hard to accept cookies? they're really not that bad..you can always use a proxy which lets you choose which cookies to filter also.

-Anonymous Coward should be done away with, enforce standing by your words-

Betamax is obsolete, but Betacam is still around.

It's still a damned shame that Beta died as a home format. It is just soooo much nicer than VHS despite many years of incremental tweaking to VHS. Still -- it's only television, and it will all go digital sooner or later, and then crappy VHS will be history. Beta tapes are the classic example of superior technology losing out to superior marketing, though, no?

TFBW, wearing a karma cap. Copyright waived.

Yes that's about right. True, analog betcam isn't exactly considered current technology anymore, but there are plenty of them still around; I certainly wouldn't think of it as obsolete... they were current up until just a few years ago, whereas Betamax died out in the early 80's...

The first tapes for both were 30 minutes and cost $20. Rapidly 1 hr, 2 hr and 4 hr machines and tapes came out and the two formats were neck and neck. Us copiers for private use were all putting off our next buy when VHS introduced the SLP for six hours until we saw what Beta would do with its 4.5 hour machines.

And sure enough the next Beta release was still 4.5 hours. The cost of blank tapes had gotten down to about $15. Therefore VHS won.

One extra movie per tape when bragging began at having at least 300 movies was real money.

It was not until after the 6 hr machines became the standard that price competition began dropping prices below $1000. One hundred extra movies was $500 savings in tape. Two hundred paid for the recorder.

Guess what. Beta broke down more, was harder to fix, and had NO visible difference in picture quality. I repeat, I am speaking from personal experience - this is what is called a "Primary Source" by historians.

So is this: In my experience, Beta has better image quality, recovers from fast-forward and rewind much more quickly than VHS, and has better sound quality. I have a Beta Deck made by Sony (obviously) which has never been repaired and which works as well as it ever did, which is in fact quite well. Unfortunately, it's now missing the little door that goes over some of the controls, and I don't have the remote. Other than that it's a top-notch deck.

It was the unanimous opinion of every technician in the shop (all three of us fixers, and all the people who actually used both for production) that VHS was dramatically more reliable and, in a word, BETTER. Smaller, longer playing tapes don't mean shit if the player eats them while you're recording a live performance.

That's true. Then again, its not like I've never had a VHS deck eat a tape.

So sad to see those cherished legends exposed to the harsh light of reality.

Thankfully, anecdotal evidence is seldom believed, even by the /. masses.

Michael "Brazil" Borgwardt --- Member of #WASHU# and Her would-be guinea-pig.

There's no way a reel mower makes even close to the same amount of noise a gas one does. One of the reasons I use the reel is that I can talk on the phone, or to my kids, while I mow. Makes a big difference.

The safety thing with the kids is a big deal for me, too. (Mom's a doctor, and has seen her share of lawn mower injuries.)

I've used a reel mower too, when I lived at home. Now, I just use a normal scissor. I guess my lawn is even smaller than yours.

Seriously though, it is the aggregation of consumer activity such as yours, and not that of "industry", which will make the greatest difference in reducing greenhouse emissions and global climate change. So, take pride in your little yard, your non-SUV transportation, and the killer triceps you'll develop pushing your little reel mower around.

--
Stand on your own head for a change. TMBG

"Fool! There is nothing Perl cannot do! NOTHING!" -Bastich

And yes, BETA should have definitely been on the list.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
-John Lennon

But a number of the inventions (just about all, in fact) mentioned in the article were not completely eliminated, just largely displaced by alternatives. I think that's the general way of things, in fact. Old technology is rarely eliminated at a stroke. Instead, it's bumped into a niche market where it's particular advantages are significat enough to keep it alive. Over the very long haul that niche may dry up completely, but it rarely happens overnight.

A karma whore unchecks "Willing to Moderate" to avoid losing points in metamod

I suspect that there were always two streems of things called beta, the consumer version (now dead) and the pro version (still in wide use).

Yes, SF has some of these older cars running along Market Street and the Embarcadero. I see them every few minutes from my window here. But that's not quite the same as going all over the city.

And the poster who pointed out that all this is US-centric...well of course it is. To most Americans, the idea that there's a world outside of our own country is one that is easily forgotten, if ever learned.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
-John Lennon

Noe Valley friends? I'm proud to say I don't know a goddamned person from that place. You think I'm some newcomer dotcommie? Hah.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
-John Lennon

Yes, the correct answer is all three. National City Lines was a holding company formed mainly by General Motors, Firestone Tires, and Standard Oil. Here's the story from my hometown of Philadelphia's point of view.

----
Rights management?! I'll manage my own rights, thanks.

Let's try this again: a short debunking of the myth and a scholarly article in Transportation Quarterly.

They preview fine -- let's see what happens.

"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.

Best sig I've seen in a long time. Had me rolling on the floor.

There used to be trains on the SF Bay Bridge, moving more people than cars and buses do now! Ooops, got rid of those...

sulli

If you could show that GM managed to strangle a competitors trams, OK, you might have something... but you might not: you might just have normal competition in that case too.

Slater's claim that streetcars are obsolete and declined in the rest of the world also flies in the face of fact. Most European cities have excellent systems of streetcars, lightrail, trains, and subways.

It still does, to me. I grew up in apartments, not during any wars or depressions. I hated it - playing in streets, or on rooftops, surrounded by dirty grey concrete and black asphalt, like some kind of Dickensian or Doctorowian urchins. We later moved into the suburbs, and by comparison that little 1/8th acre seemed like heaven on earth.

Well, I grew up in city where the tramway was never given up. And your point about the density of population is good : for example, in europe the problem is totally different.

Go look into a history of rebirth of the tramway in france (babelfish required). To summarize up : the tramway and related transport died in the 50th because the personnal cars and other related transport where more politically correct, and because the public network was old (pre WW-II).

That's because most politicans have looked at transit companies as being the same as any other kind of business. This sort of thing is happening to Amtrak right now. Congress wants Amtrak to lose their subsidies and become "self sufficient" by 2004. Like they are going to be able to do that without cutting back service even further.

Imagine if some senator said the same thing about the interstate highway system, or tried to remove the programs that keep gasoline so cheap. Every road funded only by it's own tolls and gas at the world average of $4.50 per gallon would certainly make transit look like a bargain!

Oh no! Paying taxes into transit is an evil, anti-free-market socialist subsidy. Propping up cheap gas and paving evermore countryside, why that's good for EVERYONE!

Don't get me started on "Interstate" 99 (The Bud Shuster Porkway).

And that guy back there, who turns that thing around... God Bless him!  - George H.W. Bush

I visited SF about a year ago, and at least the two days I was there, the busses were more accessible that the trollies.

The upshot: we could genuinely discuss a conspiracy only if GM pursued its course of action and dismantled the nation's systems in spite of the fact that streetcars offered more benefits than buses. Ridership peaked in the late 1920s, and had been falling off consistently for over a decade by the time the systems were dismantled in the 1940s and 1950s.

Optimal individual choices do not add up to optimal long-term societal choices. Taking cars or buses is, of course, more convenient compared to streetcars when there are few buses and cars around, even if they become unattractive choices once lots of people have adopted them. The only way to counter such market failures is through long-term government planning. That is exactly what failed in this case.

The issue is not whether, as Slater states, "the buses that replaced the streetcars were [emphasis added] economically superior", the question is whether they represented sound long-term public policy. And the answer is that they clearly did not. Realistically, both GM and the government have to take the blame for the lousy public transit infrastructure in the US today, for impossibly long commute times, traffic fatalities, and other inefficiencies. The outcome was entirely predictable, and the whole process was motivated by short-term greed.

This is why 98% of U.S. commuters favor public transportation for others.

In any case, really, I prefer riding in a comfortable train for an hour to driving a car for an hour. Most Americans would probably feel the same way if they ever had the experience. Instead, they get a rundown, dirty, and messy public transit system, and it is no surprise that they don't want more of it.

Street cars were perfect in that environment. The lines ran from the residential to the working part of town on straight streets. As the city grew the streets were simply extended along with the trolley rails.

But suburbs were designed to get away from the city. They were much less densely populated. They required people to have cars just to get groceries so there were even fewer potential passengers.

Edmonton Alberta Canada... stills has a fairly large fleet of trolley buses. Only their range is limited to the older areas and the higher density downtown core. It's unfortunate that they're quite dated and cost a lot to maintain (if I remember correctly).

Besides environmentally friendly, they're also great for reducing noise pollution. They run nice and quite.

Too quiet... during my last trip to Edmonton, I damn near got run over by an electric bus that snuck up on me.

Steetcars didn't die all over the world!

Nearly every European city too small or cheap to have a subway system has an extensive "tram" or streetcar system. Zurich has possibly the most efficient system. Amsterdam the most extensive. Milan the cutest. Strasbourg the most slick/modern.

Most of these cities also suppliment the streetcars with a modern trolly-bus fleet. Some cities like Luasanne and Montreux have a trolly bus only transport system.

As well as being quick and reliable most of these systems compete effectivlely against cars because there is simply no b*****d place to park in older cities.

Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.

Buy this book.

It's about as closely related to the classic Amiga OS (or hardware) as a PC with Linux and UAE.

Imagine where that platform would be today

Nerd and proud. Hating Microsoft since 1987.

The heart monitor was on an Atari800.

Ooops. You are correct of course. Either way, both systems are by now considered obsolete, even though they are still perfectly functional, and in the case of the Amiga, actually better (architecturally speaking) than the PC, especially the graphics subsystems.

Its easier to program them "to the metal" as well.

Nerd and proud. Hating Microsoft since 1987.

FFVII's airship survives until the end when basically debris from a comet destroys the thing, but even then, it has some emergency over-ride like thing that allows it to keep functioning.

FFVIII's airship was a spaceship, but FFVIII sucked anyway :)

Actually, FFI's airship wasn't really an Airship-Airship, it used helicopter blades and a magical floater stone which caused it to float - but damn, was it fast! Fastest FF airship to date, I think...

And all of FFVI's airship's survive to the end too... hey, one of them could even make it to the moon! Although that was really a spaceship, the Giant Whale, I guess.

Want a .MOD of the original airship music? (You can also get it in .NSF format.) I could e-mail it...

Actually, I don't remember exactly how the FFVII airship was damaged, it was from either the comet's weirdo energy thing (those red beam things), Holy, something errupting from the crater (that'd be Holy, actually), or the Lifestream. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Lifestream - I think it was actually Holy errupting up from the crater.

I dunno - the FFVII ending didn't make a whole lot of sense...

I've got a save with Aeris and all her limit breaks - here Ultimate one is pretty cool - it causes the Peerless status on all allys. It's similar to Invincible Moon in FFVIII but more reliable and with a longer effect... Too bad she's not around for any of the tougher enemies...

Actually, I got all Master Materias without using any work-arounds - there are enemies you can steal/mug elixirs from. And yeah, you spend a lot of time bashing those magic pots to do it. But once you master Knights of Round, it's all been worth it :)

Besides, with once you have three Mimes and three (Support)Counters, things become very easy - put Counter-Mime on everyone, have someone cast W-Summon Knights of the Round twice, and then you have an endless loop of Knights of the Round. Makes Emerald WEAPON rather easy - although Ruby is still a challenge.

Don't many studios still use some varient of the 'ribbon microphone'?

Yep, and the article even says "ribbon microphones remain popular today ... still manufactured by Royer Labs"

And as for saying that the automatic watch is a "passed technology"; well, I guess it shows the writer hasn't been successful enough to own a decent watch.

I guess that according to the logic of this article, supercomputers are a "passed technology" because everyone uses client/server.

Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra

Electric mowers are nice, if your lawn's not too big to handle the cords. You need to learn what directions to go to not run over your power cord, and you can't use it when it's too dark, but they work pretty well and they're much quieter than gas-powered, though the quietness and ecological advantages of avoiding the internal combustion engine are balanced out by the Nuclear Power Plant on the other end of the electrical grid :-) Electric mowers are also much easier to keep working. Occasionally their motors do fry themselves and need rebuilding, but it's not like gasoline ICEs that need constant tinkering.

Thanks! Bill Stewart

Funny that, as AmigaBASIC was written by Microsoft.

ITYM "AREXX". HTH. HAND.

Cheers, Robert.

Don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure the Indianapolis Star still uses the tubes, and I know the Indianapolis Police Dept. still does, at least at their public desk.

Price-Costco (The fusion of Price Club and Costco) still uses them, as well; It's fairly impressive-looking there because it's a warehouse and the tubes go well up toward the ceiling. There's a tube running to each checkstand, too, so it looks extra-nifty.

The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

• Lower initial cost


• Nearly no maintence cost


• Cleaner


• Less noise


• Less storage space required


• Get some exercise!

Every been to a golf course?

Reel mowers are most certainly not dead. Nearly every golf course in existance uses them exclusively for cutting fairways and rough (they pull them behind tractors). Most good golf courses use a species of grass called bent grass for the closer-cut fairways. It is almost impossible for rotary blade mowers to get as close and consistent as a reel mower.

I was taught how to use one just last year. (I already knew, but hey...)

Get your pilot's license. You'll have to buy a device called an E6-B computer to figure time/speed/distance/fuel burn, wind correction angles and ground speed, etc. You guessed it: it's a circular slide rule. Fast, cheap, durable, effective and never runs out of batteries.

Side note: I ban calculators in my Physical Chemistry tests. I'm thinking about giving extra credit to anyone who can do the problems with a slide rule.

Eric

Reminds me of one of my maths exams. I turned up late and I had forgotten my calculator. On the front of the exam paper it said "log tables available on request" so I asked for one and proceeded to complete the whole of the exam using them. It was only afterwards that I found out that you could ask for a calculator too. Doh.

Rich
Sig: Hey, how come the sigs suddenly shrank?

Slide rules are better & faster than calculators for many things, but they take training to use. They're laid out in such a fashion that the common sequence of actions just rattles off--calculators do not have this advantage. Calculators are exact to significantly more places, though.

I can remember using Wordstar when I was in high school. It was lame......

And I KNOW someone who has one of those Edison wax things. Not the recorder kind, but the playback. It's on some sorta metal. Sounds real nice........
--
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.

These days, everyone's deploying "FlashMemory;" I would think it a very nice thing if there were something in the way of a solid state technology that would provide something much cheaper than RAM, and less sensitive to vibration than disk.

What would be real nice would be to have something that would provide the 512MB of storage you want for a portable computer, cheaper than flash, and without the mechanical requirements of hard drives...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Gaddis' Law: In any sufficiently extraordinary situation, one's propensity for getting screwed is inversely proportio

Gaddis' Law: In any sufficiently extraordinary situation, one's propensity for getting screwed is inversely proportio

poof - reboot worries are gone :)

Yes that's actually my domain name, and it's just undergone a redesign. Try it. No, it's not porn. Promise.

clay in a sword? no.

damascus type blades are made by either alternating layers of high and low carbon steel, or layers of steel and some other metal, which are then hammered and folded repeatedly. (this isn't taking into account wire damascus, which is made by hammering wire rope).

japanese blades are typiclly folded more than damascus, to create more layers.

the clay used when making a japanese blade coats it during heat treating as insulation to create a differential temper. the edge is hard and will stay sharp. the back of the blade is softer and will flex to keep the blade from breaking.

Show me one, just one instance in which devices manufactured with modern techniques aren't as good as devices manufactured with traditional techniques.

• The B-2 stealth bomber, which can't fly in the rain.
• Car engines. While regular maintenance is down, and operational tolerances for conditions like cold are up, tolerances for internal operation are way down. Which is a big part of why people can't fix their own cars anymore.
• Phones. While the solid-state electronics are more reliable, the general reliability seems to be down (by my own subjective perception) -- probably just cheap manufacturing.
• Compaqs. They used to last forever, now they are the crappiest computers on the market. Okay... "Compaq" probably isn't an item, but I still hate them.
• Tools (like pliers and such). With cheap manufacturing, tools in the last 50 years are more disposable than they used to be. There seem to be more tools left from before WWII than after, which shouldn't be so.

B-2's can't fly in the rain? Why not?

What you seem to be crying about is that there exists a market for lower quality objects.

The B-2 stealth bomber, which can't fly in the rain.

The B-2 does things that no previous aircraft did before it; It is arguably a new class of vehicle.

Car engines. While regular maintenance is down, and operational tolerances for conditions like cold are up, tolerances for internal operation are way down. Which is a big part of why people can't fix their own cars anymore.

Actually, people usually can't fix their own cars any more because of all the smog and engine control shit stacked all over it. Many things are still done just the same way they've been done forever, though; You still have to torque or untorque the bolts holding the head of your engine to the block in the proper order (or a facsimile thereof) and in stages to avoid warping the head. This was less critical "back in the day" because once upon a time, the tolerances were looser. However, because of our better manufacturing techniques and higher materials quality, we are now able to make a much more efficient gasoline engine (Nearly 10% efficient in good cases! heh) which runs cool, has high compression, burns the vast majority of the fuel, and has a more limited amount of toxic emissions.

Phones. While the solid-state electronics are more reliable, the general reliability seems to be down (by my own subjective perception) -- probably just cheap manufacturing.

Except for the batteries therein, my cordless phones have generally outlasted most of my other electronic posessions. Phones also tend to do much more than they used to back in the dark ages. True, they're frequently built much less sturdily than the old school AT&T phones, but you CAN get phones based on that old and venerable bakelite design sold by AT&T itself.

Compaqs. They used to last forever, now they are the crappiest computers on the market. Okay... "Compaq" probably isn't an item, but I still hate them.

You must be buying shitty compaqs. True, most other manufacturers' systems are (or seem) more reliable. Even the 6400R systems that I've been using lately have had problems; Two out of ten of the systems have had serious hardware issues which required a field rep's attention. Then again, those systems are FAST. Also, compaqs have ALWAYS sucked; The nonstandard BIOS has been a thorn in my side as long as I've been working with them.

Tools (like pliers and such). With cheap manufacturing, tools in the last 50 years are more disposable than they used to be. There seem to be more tools left from before WWII than after, which shouldn't be so.

Craftsman, Mac, or Snap-On tools are generally of very excellent quality, as are some other companies' equipment (like eXcelite.)

If you want to talk about the decline of quality in something in modern America (and the world) consider toys and fast food. Then again, both of these things are demand-driven; People want cheaper and more plentiful supplies of both, and are willing to buy crap as long as they can get a lot of it and it's shiny. Health considerations drove fast food joints to use canola oil in their fryers, taking away much of the crispiness of our beloved french fries and onion rings. Our fear of fat (misplaced; Avoid carbohydrates unless you're going to burn them instead!) has driven McDonald's to develop a dairyless milkshake. Cup of AGAR, anyone?

Tools (like pliers and such). With cheap manufacturing, tools in the last 50 years are more disposable than they used to be. There seem to be more tools left from before WWII than after, which shouldn't be so.

BUZZ, try again. Tools are of higher quality today then they were 50 years ago. Do not compare the junk of today (Which won't last long before being thrown out) with the quality stuff of yesterday. Rest assured they made junk before WWII just as much as they do today. The junk didn't last and so you don't see it. The quality stuff did last and you can see it today.

Compare a modern Snap-On or Chraftsman wrench with one from 75 years ago and you will be ahrd pressed to find any difference. This is one however: the old tool has sustained some wear which could be measured. (The new tool will do the same them over 75 years)

Likewise for the rest. Modern manufactureing has brought down the price of junk significantly, but the cost of quality hasn't been impacted much. Thus the old Crafdtsmen table saws were expensive but affordable quality compared to junk, but todays chraftsmen table saws are affordable junk while todays much higher quality table saws are expensive but affordable.

There is a saying in third world countries that product most of this junk: Only amercians can afford to buyn junk. Thus the person in those countries who needs a tool is more likely to buy the quality tool (Often made in the US, but not always) or do without.

I agree with the spirit of everything you write, but the contrarian in me must point out that my house, built in 1929, has nice solid soundproof plaster and lath walls that stand up nicely to high-speed collisions with my three-year-old's tricycle (now that's operational tolerance!); modern house manufacturing techniques (i.e., gypsum board) don't come close. Similarly, older houses tend to be much more resistant to vibration than newer ones---try setting up a turntable on an upper floor!

You can argue legitimately that moving to pre-fab mass-produced materials for home construction made it possible for millions of people to afford houses who otherwise could not have, but the quality of the old plaster-and-lath technology is incomparably better.

The real unitron has Slashdot ID 5733, but doesn't rate an impostor.

50 years ago $10 was real money. Unfortunately, if you build a toaster that'll last for 50 years you have to wait 50 years for that customer to buy another one.

The real unitron has Slashdot ID 5733, but doesn't rate an impostor.

A bit like a Soviet general who was once comparing his country's fighter planes to those of the US - "American planes", he said, "are like fine ladies' watches: drop watch; watch breaks. Soviet planes are like Mickey Mouse clocks: drop clock, clock stops; pick up clock and shake it, clock goes"

There's always a trade-off between performance (Ferrari) and efficiency (Toyota).

Quake III under Linux will never have the performance of Quake III under Windows 98.

Without page-flipping on both platforms, the performance of Quake III on Linux already exceeds Quake III on Windows 98 for several cards.

Page-flipping is being added soon. Given that without page-flipping the Mach64 is (just for an example) 10% faster on Linux than Windows, with page-flipping it will totally obliterate Windows.

The public benchmarks for the tdfx driver are showing Linux exceeding Windows in every single viewperf benchmark. On some benchmarks the ratio of Linux to Windows is better than 2:1.

I think you misunderestimate the potential of good design. The DRI allows data to be streamed faster than the hardware can cope. Windows 98 is surviving by myth (the myth that Direct3D is in some way faster than OpenGL) and myth alone.

Actually, the latencies that matter in this situation are caused by the scheduler, can be drastically reduced with a patch now and eventually reduced in the main kernel flow. This yields latencies significantly better than Windows or Mac, taking things down to roughly BeOS levels. The view just propounded above is quite common, but fallacious, I fear.

See this link for more detailed information: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/11/17/l ow_latency.html?page=1

Savant

* Horse carriages - well I'm not a big expert here, but I would bet that you can't get as nice ones today as you could 100 years ago.

I'm not an expert either, but I'd be willing to bet that you are wrong. There are currently many people who have taken up horsemanship as a hobby. These are rich folks, who instead of spending weekends in their yacht spend weekends on the horse, many own the horse, and take care of it themselves. (100 years ago a rich person wouldn't think about touching manure if there was a way around it, most of these folks take care of it themselves). They have money, they have an expensive hobby, and they are willing to spend whatever it takes to get the best.

When the carriage was the dominate means of transport I'm willing to bet that most folks had a long lasting carraige. Today carriages are still long lasting, but the people who buy them are rich. 100 years ago cheep was the norm beccause poor people were buying carriages. Today rich people buy them and expensive quality carriages are the norm.

Money is what it comes down to. Mechanical watches are expensive today because the only people who buy them are rich (since the quartz watch is cheaper to make in quanity. Thus the cheap watches of yesterday are not made, and so the only ones made (not many) are the works of art. IF the person buying a mechanical watch cares about accuracy, an accurate watch could be made today, since they mostly care looks, the looks are what is made. (Very few people need to know time to withing more then a minute, and 5 mintues off is okay in most cases, those who need better pay for modern clocks with better accuracty then a watch)

Modern lens can be high quality, just ask any astronomer, who pays for it. When I buy a cammera I care about cost, and in most cases the lens on a disposable cammera is plenty good. A quality camera was more expensive in the '70s then it is today. Of course in the '70s you got SLR, and now you get who knows what autofocus with large zooms. Turns out that the cheaper lens takes better pictures for all but experts since few people knew how to focus a cammera properly. In this case need for quality is key.

So if you want qualtiy you can get it, you just pay for it. We can do everything the Romans could, but we have colors they didn't as well so it goes both ways.

That's a great idea, but it should be more like the 100 best. There are just too many great techs out there that should be on a list like that.

Airships would actually be cool to have today. They could fit in roughly the same market as luxury cruise ships. Can you imagine having a giant steel-framed helium airship with a gondola contianing state rooms, fine dining, and so on? There could even be an observation deck on the lowest floor with a glass bottom! Who wouldn't pay for a trip like that?

Abject terror sounds more like a coach option to me.

Why does everyone keep insisting that BetaMax was such a great technology? Just because it delivers better quality pictures doesn't mean it was better suited for the home user. One of the reasons that VHS succeeded over BetaMax was that you could be sure of recording a whole football game on a VHS tape, but you couldn't fit the whole thing on a BetaMax (depending on game length, of course).

Say you had to commute 40 km to work every day, so you go shopping for a car. There's an electric one with lots of cool gadgets, it's better for the environment, and you're even sure that you could tap into your neighbour's electric panel to fuel up on his electricity! Wow! Except that its average range is, perhaps 75 km, so you would consistently have to walk the last 5km home, start unreeling your 5 km long extension cord, go back to the car, plug it in... or move your house 5 km closer to your work.

Sometimes certain features outweigh all the others, and that was probably partly the case in BetaMax.

The airship should not have died, as an article in Discover, November 2000 edition, says.

There is utility in using large, slow moving aircraft for doing stuff like moving heavy machinery, taking tourists on joy rides and even acting as a single mobile phone tower for an entire city.

The last bit was particularly interesting for me. Just imagine - a big blimp parked 10 miles overhead can replace hundreds of ugly mobile phone towers on the ground for a large city. hmm...



== life in a vacuum sucks ==

Agent Smith: "Never send a human to do a machine's job."

Agent Smith: "Never send a human to do a machine's job."

This article saved my life! I am now moving back to my original idea of a canvas-winged plane controlled by punch cards, and the power is generated by hamsters running in little wheels.

I'd hate to accidentally use outdated technology for such an endeavor.

Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.

I am the very model of a modern major general...

Now, the technical reason. You can't fit as much information in at lower frequencies. Ham radio operators are restricted to, if I'm not mistaken, 1200 bps on these bands. I would *hate* to use a new digital device at 1.2Kb...

If you have noticed, digital devices have been moving steadily upwards in frequency.
"Downloaded" from user "lintux" on Slashdot... -- Hi, I'm a signature virus. plz set me as your signature and help me s

I would absolutely love to be able to take a cross country trip gliding above the ground at a relatively leisurely pace while being able to actually enjoy the traveling aspect of the trip. Something very difficult to do given the state of the highways and commercial aviation.

Of course they would probably try to cram in a hundred rows of 10 inch seats with 4 inches of leg room too...

The costs of maintenance and inconvenience must be factored in when considering this mode of transportation.

----Friends don't let friends go to U.B.C.

With the demise of the electric trolley came the use of the automobile and migration to the suburbs. When an individual is able to drive through a neighborhood without thought of the outside environment, he or she becomes removed from the situation.

It is this apathy that caused our cities to decline. If one was forced to walk or ride at a slow rate through what is your neighborhood, you take more care to notice your surroundings. People would still be involved in their neighbor's lives, thus building communities.

What we have today, however, is people living in isolated pods in suburbia, with no regard for each other. When homes are spaced 100 feet apart, and the only way to the local store is by driving, when would you ever have time to interact with your fellow man?

Although this really is spilt milk, so to speak, many of these problems came from the rapid conversion from electric trolleys to individual automobiles.

If you want to live in a high-density environment and rely on public transportation, more power to you. But your preferences are not necessarily right for everyone, and I oppose attempts to impose such decisions by force.

Good point, and I agree. Public roads should be funded with tolls or other user fees. People who use choose mass transit shouldn't be forced to subsidize drivers, and vice versa. What I was responding to was the attitude that the automobile is solely an implement of destruction, people's living and travel preferences are irrelevant, and we must all be forced to conform to a utopian vision of "community".

Good point, and I agree. Public roads should be funded with tolls or other user fees. People who use choose mass transit shouldn't be forced to subsidize drivers, and vice versa.

My friend, you have the buggy before the horse...the trolley, especially in the interurban form, created the suburbs at the turn of the centuary. Look at a trolley map of any eastern state (my town in CT has one in town hall) and observe the maze of lines. Those lines originally existed to connect small towns to big cities, but in the process allowed some workers to live in those small towns and work in the big cities.

As has been pointed out, the bus had a big advantage of not requiring a separate infrastructure. The car, having the same advantage, would ACCELORATE the creation of suburbia by requiring just a strip of asphalt to connect suburbians to the city as opposed to a new station or even new tracks.
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythian

Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

money being spent on creating larger monitors should be redirected to productive tasks such as maintaining the nationwide Pneumatic Tube Network.

Sarcasm, I know. But still, it'd be cool if you won something on eBay, and the seller could just shove it into The Tube. I'm thinking of those big ones they had on the Daffy Duck in space cartoons. Of course, you'd have to worry about kids climbing into it and stuff...

A whole new meaning to IP Flooding... ;-P (Get it?> "I pee"? Sorry...

Also, I've heard stories about people just carrying them outdoors and inadvertently setting things on fire. I don't know that this idea will catch on!
"Downloaded" from user "lintux" on Slashdot... -- Hi, I'm a signature virus. plz set me as your signature and help me s

what does rm -rf do again?

I have to admit to riding them a lot less frequently since I bought my bicycle. :(

Any idea when they're bringing the Ws back? They were supposed to be back in service in October. I think they're hoping that everyone will forget about them.
--
Mike's definition of white trash: somebody who drives a car voluntarily.

A lot of these ideas didn't seem to have really died, so much as to have never taken off. Many remain stuck in the same niche market of their inception. One that is a strong counterexample to to this is the slide rule. It certainly achieved great popularity in its time, but is now almost unrecognizable to most people nowadays. However, in introductory physics lab, at Brandeis, constructing one and performing calculations with it was part of our final exam. It was a very valuable experience. I don't think students in school ever really learn about logarithms like they did back before HP started popping out calculators.

Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

Personally, I think it would be cool to have pneumatic delivery tubes everywhere.

I thought of that idea, too, when I was working at a daycare. It would be cool to have a bank-like drive-thru where you could stick your kid in one of the suction tubes and she would just whirl right into the classroom. The only problem with this approach was that kids ended up arriving head-down, but that shouldn't have been too much of a problem.

I could've had _the_ ultimate daycare from the kids' point of view. Sigh... Then I learned UNIX and don't work for the daycare no mo'.

"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03

-Anonymous Coward should be done away with, enforce standing by your words-

I'd like a model similar to the way my phone company (US^H^HQwest) does last call return -- 75 cents per call isn't BAD when you really need it, but after a specified number of uses per month, they stop charging for it.

"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03

Divx movies were not competition for DVD's. If that were the case, why were Divx machines DVD-compatible?

I still have a bunch of movies to watch before the June, 2001 deadline. Sniff, sniff..I miss my Divx!

The Edison Cylinder, for example, was fragile and quickly wore out as it was made of wax. Phonograph albums were easier to store and held more program, but still had the wear problem. I can't tell you how bad a record sounds after spending most of its life getting played on a Sears Silvertone console. Ick. Compact disks sacrificed some of the program duration, and exchange we get a higher fidelity, and in my opinion more durable, recording medium. It's a natural progression in technology.

Don't get me started on the Amiga; suffice it to say I've owned four of them.

I own a reel lawnmower that I bought two years ago at Lowes (it's an American Lawnmower Company model). I don't think that these "died" off due to any flaw in their design; mine does a really good job. They're not even that hard to push. Rotary mowers, however, allow the user to go longer periods between mowings. I know that in the springtime I can't skip a week-- sometimes it needs mowing twice a week. With a gasoline powered rotary mower the engine has enough power to slog through the overgrowth. Reel mowers get bogged down for the same reason that you can't cut a phonebook with scissors: not enough power to close the blades. The ever-increasingly powerful engines allows people to avoid mowing for even longer times resulting in removing more plant than is healthy.

Also, contrary to the article, reel mowers actually cut closer than rotary mowers; mine won't go higher than 2-7/8" high. Reel mowers are also less traumatic on the grass since the mowers cleanly cut the leaves instead of tearing them as with a machete.

Finally, reel type mowers are safer since you can't cut your feet off. Stick a hand or foot under a rotary mower and it gets whacked off. Stick a finger in your reel mower and it's off for a bandage, or at most a stitch or two. Of course, that means that sticks and other yard debris are serious impediments. (Not that you should run over things with rotary mowers-- they make great catapults!)

Jeff

This space for rent!

It also makes a neat paper shredder...

I grew up with a push mower and bought one when I bought my first house. They kick ass, especially if you're into midnight mowing because they're so quiet. They can be found in any decent hardware store -- hardly a dead technology.

In contrast, the days of the gas mower are numbered - to be replaced by cleaner, quieter electric mowers. Me, I'll take free, healthy human-power over expensive, polluting gasoline any day.

Never fails to shock people when I tell them I use a reel mower. "Ohmigod! But those are so hard to push around!" is pretty much the universal response.

I think most folks have some memory of a rusty contraption in their parents' garage, and assume this is just the way these things work. Far from it in reality...a properly-maintained reel mower can be pushed along with finger pressure, and in general is easier to maneuver than most gas monstrosities (and easier to feed, and not as scary, etc.). But this is starting to sound like a religious rant. I just wish more people would realize that not every problem needs to be solved by throwing some big gas engine at it.

My family had a Craftsman reel mower until 1995. It was much more reliable than the gas mover, much easier to start, quieter, and easier to maneuver on hills. Yes, it constantly jammed (lots of trees = lots of sticks to run over), but it didn't pollute. And it didn't scare the cats.

I grew up as electronic calculators became standard. I learned the slide rule for the heck of it. There are a couple of good reasons for using a slide rule. There is one reason, however, that would justify crushing every electronic number cruncher out there:

order of magnitude

The modern generation of calculator kiddies make this mistake a lot. Cute in the schools, potentially fatal in the real world (engineering, architecture, and chemistry, to name three areas where shifting decimals have caused fatal accidents).

Almost every technology has a downside - in this case, a loss of understanding of where the answer should be.

On a marginally related tangent, how many people out there can take the Nth root of a number? Mandatory in my father's day, my class only learned square roots, and they don't teach it at all now (speaking of US/Canadian schools). There have been a couple of times when knowing how has been very useful ... and people raised on electronic calculators would never have even dreamt of applying it, because they simply were never taught.

Trollies
I more disagree than agree here... High voltage wires, even when suspended, become a hazard with falling branches etc., and have to reach far into the suburbs for most implimentations. (Nearby Dayton, Ohio still uses 'em!)

Amiga
Right On Target there... Even as a small niche, the Amiga was the prototyper's dream. A decade ahead of the competition, you could plug in a $100US-or-less add-on to digitize video, do Max Headroom-esque video effects, process live wacked out audio effects in real time...
If it weren't for the proprietary hardware, it would have Ruled The Earth. It's most saving grace was the openness of its programming.

Slide Rules? Sure, good for visualization of functional relationships. Reel Mowers? No thanks, I've use a few. AutoWatch? An engineer's moral imperative! Airships? Works for Bladerunner!

...but then again, here in Cincinnati we're still using LED watches. "If the world were going to end, I'd go to Cincinnati... everything there happens 10 years later!" - Samuel Clemens

Oh, please! If it weren't for the proprietary hardware there wouldn't be any Amiga at all. While the software was pretty innovative too, it was the hardware that made it a real killer.

Help! Help! I'm trapped in a Microsoft job and I can't get out!

The Amiga had the first personal computer operating system to offer pre-emptive multitasking, allowing running programs to utilize the processor as efficiently as possible.

On topic, the self-winding watches are definitely still around, and not as rare as the author makes them out to be. My father has a Seiko Kinetic, for example.

--
There's a sucker born again every minute.

I'm currently wearing a Mambo Automatic watch , that I bought this time last year new..

It is a 'self winding' watch and I never have problems with it.

Ever notice how they were never called 'analogue' watches until 'digital' watches became the norm for sheeples?

-Anonymous Coward should be done away with, enforce standing by your words-

-Anonymous Coward should be done away with, enforce standing by your words-

Help! Help! I'm trapped in a Microsoft job and I can't get out!

I am the very model of a modern major general...

----Friends don't let friends go to U.B.C.

...bus systems had the clear advantage of running on existing roads—and they paid no market penalty for the greater noise and pollution they generated.

Fortunately larger cities are starting to realize that there is a penalty of greater noise and pollution. The city of Montréal recently decided to reintroduce streetcars up and down some of its commercial avenues that have become overcrowded due to excessive automobile and bus traffic.

Hopefuly other cities will start to do the same real soon.

Now there's a strange parallel. The space shuttle uses solid rocket motors (the Hindenburg was coated in solid rocket fuel) and hydrogen main engines (the Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen).

Earthman

Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...

I think we should stick with horses: they are pretty harmless and they eat grass that's available everywhere.

Seriously, logistically, oil-based fuels are just about the worst you can imagine. Yes, it costs money to retool, but probably less than the medical costs related to burning gasoline alone. And the retooling creates job and economic opportunities anyway.

One of the promises of hydrogen is that it can be produced in large quantities in regions that are otherwise unproductive. All you need is sun or another source of energy and water (even salt water will do). Methanol, on the other hand, needs to be produced from coal (resulting in a net release of greenhouse gasses), or various forms of agriculture (taking up arable land).

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." -- George W. Bush, Reuters, May 5, 2000

Yup. You can look at the Space Shuttle's next launch for confirmation. The main engines (on the orbiter itself) burn H2 +O2, and it is almost invisible.

I do believe that hydrogen always burns with a pale blue flame. What you're referring to are the burning of hydrocarbons. That's a different kettle of fish. Hydrogen contains no carbon (duh). It either burns or it doesn't. It does not burn with "much non-consumed fuel".



== life in a vacuum sucks ==

Liquid hydrogen is rocket fuel, when used with liquid oxygen. You can't do squat with hydrogen only.

You can't burn anything without oxygen, anyway. That's a known quantity. This is not a shock. I can, however, assure you that gaseous hydrogen will burn quite nicely when you have oxygen around to combine with it.

You can't burn anything without oxygen, anyway. That's a known quantity. This is not a shock. I can, however, assure you that gaseous hydrogen will burn quite nicely when you have oxygen around to combine with it.

Technically, fluorine can support combustion, too. IIRC, this works:

H2 + F2 -> 2HF

H2 + F2 -> 2HF

You might want to be carefull with this one. The energy to start this reaction can be provided by a flashlight beam. You can mix the hydrogen and florine in a ballon IN THE DARK and then set it off by shining a flashlight on it. BANG!

http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/images/pao/STS53/100653 90.jpg
My $2 X 10^ -2

Seth

Please don't play leapfrog with the unicorns.

Another draw-back to hydrogen powered cars is, in fact, water. Consider this: If you've got 100,000 cars burning hydrogen in your local city, you're putting an awful lot of water vapor into the air, enough that you could affect the climate... You could produce some really nasty thunderstorms if you pass a cold front through some nice humid air (just like what happens in the spring and fall in central Texas).

Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!

Each alternative has a consequence, and it's important to realize what they are. I'm all for a switch to hydrogen, but it's important to note that such a switch does have it's own potential problems.

Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!

If you want to dismiss my points, feel free to, but you're going to have to do a better job than merely telling me I'm on crack.

Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!

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