Mod parent up! I've got mod points but I've already posted!

This is a damn good idea. But probably one should think of using a plane for longer trips and just let the semi truck do the work!

But how about this idea:

A park it and leave it system. In a system like this you walk down the street until you see a vehicle you like. You stick in your park it and leave it card and it processes a rental Contract for you and away you go. When you get to where you want to go you pull over and park it and pull out the card and the car is there for the next guy!

With a properly designed system one could use a browser to find and reserve a car!

This is not really any different than walking into any car rental firm. Its just that the cars get spread around a bit. Of course some rules will need to apply but a server with GPS information can do most of that sort of administration!

With a decently priced system I would probably be one of the first to lose my car. Now this might not work well for commuters but I do happen to live in a city with a pretty good Light Rail Transit line. The trains run every 10 minutes and cost $2.50. I can't drive my car downtown every day and pay parking at a rate of $5.00*20 days = 100 bux/month.

Mind you a couple years ago I had an infection and had to see the community nurses who were 3 stops away. My car was in the shop getting fixed. I found I could walk the 2-3 miles within about 10 minutes of the time required to take the train. The station where I live is 4 blocks away. The station where I was going was 3 blocks away. So I walked! Why pay them $5.00 bux when I can get some good excersise.

The issue is that we need to really boost convenience and I think we can do it! BTW that route I walked down? It was the number #10 bus route. I rarely saw a bus! To me it makes little sense to be hauling around tons of metal and meanwhile suggesting this might save fuel! In this city I do happen to see the buses driving around empty for hours per day!

Ya I've seen this too. It was just North of North Battleford Saskatchewan and there was this car pulling a trailer and behind this was a nice boat. The problem is the car was in the ditch. Their road train started to fish tail. They were going down a hill. The trailer swung around and wiped out both back fenders of the car before it tore the hitch off. Then it headed into the ditched and did a couple summersaults. Since the boat was hooked to the trailer it also did a summersault as it broke the tie downs and left the trailer.

I would say the mess was something like 250-500 feet. The driver and his wife were sitting in the ditch with their heads in their hands. There was stuff like pillows and bedding and dishes scattered all over the place!

Too bad I didn't have my camera! BTW I was also towing my brand new boat but I knew better than to try to run a road train. I think to do this successfully you actually have to have brakes on the trailers.

I mean, it'd basically be a packet-switched network, but with cars instead of pieces of data. It's a relatively benign IT problem.

What a great idea! Why not simply have Mr Speedy Pants organized into a packet that gets lost in transmission? The one that gets resent after the NAK can look alike but its still a new packet but perhaps without the hidden corruption!

One thing I do worry about is energy availability. When I saw Oil above $145 per barrel I thought Oh No! But for the short term I think we need to head at break neck speeds into synthetics. I'd love to see a lift system like alluded to in the article but I do figure its a long long ways off and at this point little more than a daydream.

So in the mean time I figure we've got to figure out what our real problems are and come up with practical solutions. One problem I see as being a major problem is liquid fuels. But nuclear is a key to solving this problem and we do have reactor designs sitting on the shelf such as the IFR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor) and molten Salt Reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor) and using this we do already have enough uranium mined to provide all the power we need for 6,000 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Integral_Fast_Reactor see fuel efficiency! Quote: "Quite literally only about 0.2% of the starting uranium ends up being burned and of course most of this is the U235 fraction". The point is that newer reactor designs can get 300x to 1000x the mileage from the uranium we mine. And they will burn all the actinides.

The short and curlies is there is no reason for us to be in an energy crisis and ruin our economies. Maybe 100 years from now we'll have a cheap earth to orbit lift system and then we won't need nuclear. In the mean time I don't think a tether will work but it could maybe get us close enough to use another system which we also have not figured out.

Building the tether is the issue. I don't know if I believe it can be done. However some things about what they did do make sense.

One can use a dual system as was done in the Space Ship One project: http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/

The issue is this. There is a lot of atmosphere near sea level. However one can use a jet in order to get above 2/3 of the atmosphere. One can use a balloon to get much higher than this:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Manhigh

In Manhigh they were almost 20 miles up.

The thing is that if we can get high enough then I see little reason why we can't use space based lasers in order to beam power to a ship. The issue is that one has to get enough kinetic energy into the ship in order for it to go into orbit. In space it still has to be a rocket. But along the way it can be a hybrid.

The high cost of attaining orbit is not the high elevation. Its the kinetic energy and the fact that if we want to use rocket fuel then we need to start out with so damn much of it near ground in order to have a small amount left over when we get to orbit.

Most of that fuel is an oxidizer! The atmosphere is full of an oxidizer.

So as I see it - once we gain enough altitude using oxygen from the atmosphere - or a balloon - or a tether from a balloon - or some other system... then if we can get a space based laser system going to supply energy then we should be able to use what little atmosphere is up there as a reaction mass and one should be able to use that to gain orbit.

It would be a pretty expensive system mind you. However it might be worth it. If we can get a cheap enough lift system then maybe we could carry raw materials into space to be processed into say fuel! That has HUGE potential to create an industry worthy of the investments. Mind you we've been able to use nuclear for over 50 years! There are a number of options here.

1) we can use nuclear to split water and then use the hydrogen to combine with carbon to make synthetic fuels.

2) we can just use methane as a source of hydrogen.

3) if we can develop a good enough battery system then we won't need liquid fuels. But if we want use electricity to power our cars then we need to generate it from something. I rather think this comes back to nuclear. But I know many people are optimistic that solar and wind and other emerging technologies can do it.

If we don't want to use nuclear and the other technologies don't pan out then I suppose a workable lift system might do the job.

This still leaves us with the problem that even if we can get into orbit where there are vast amounts of cheap energy... how would be transport it back to earth?

So here is an example from Elementary Numerical analysis, S.D, Conte and Carl de BOOR circa 1965, 1972 ISBN (library of congress card number?) 73-174612:

Calculate the roots of the following equation:

x^2 + 111.11x + 1.2121 = 0

use base-10 5 digit floats for this.

one can use x = (-b (+/-) SQRT( b^2 - 4ac)) / 2a in order to do this.

One will get:

  b^2 = 12,345
  b^2-4ac = 12,340
  SQRT(b^2-4ac) = 111.09
  x = (-b + SQRT(b^2-4ac))/2a = -0.010000

The correct answer is -0.010910

Note that we have gone from 5 digits to 2 digits of accuracy. This is on page 12.

One can use this formulation: x = -2c / (b + SQRT(b2-4ac)) which will give the answer to 5 digits precision.

Here is another example:

f(x) = 1-cos(x) for very small x. Lets use 6 digit arithmetic and compute near x=1.0e-6 The error can be as large as 0.5e-7

yet f(x) = 1-cos(x) = (1-cos(x)^2)/(1+cos(x)^2) = sin(x)^2/(1+cos(x)^2) which can be evaluated quite accurately.

Again = GIGO!

Crap like this was alive and well when I was in uni and its still alive and well.

Witness: Limits to Growth written by Meadows et al: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

Consider that book was written in 1972. I was programming computers in 1972. I actually did a course in numerical analysis in 1972 and just re-read the first 10 pages or so. I happen to have read a masters thesis that came out of the Colorado School of Mines where the author stated Meadows' Runge Kutta Numerical Integrations did not converge.

Yet that book is still often quoted. Its been flawed from the get go. So consider something else! How fast were the machines that Meadows used? How big? What would be the MOST SOPHISTICATED model he could use at the time. How could _anyone_ take seriously predictions made by a primitive model run on such a machine?

Witness: The current discussion about Global Warming and Climate Change. The change in CO2 over the last 100 years is about 100 ppm if you can believe the data. This is 100/1,000,000 = 0.0001. Now the thing is this. A 32 bit float holds about 6.9 digits of precision. Lets call it 7 digits. If one were to add a whole number of some kind to the fractional change of the CO2 as measured relative to the total gases in the atmosphere then one has 7-4 = 3 digits or less to work with.

Of course one can use a double precision float. That isn't my point. One has to be an EXPERT in order to avoid huge problems with propagating rounding errors.

Its not just about pretending computers use base 10 when they don't, its about knowing the actual properties of a number of type float and what the consequences are when we use it.

In the case of that rocket I suspect the rounding error can be solved by normalizing everything so the time line is not in seconds but is actually in clock ticks... as accurately as they can be determined of course.

But in my career I have seen so few programmers who can do this that I've never even needed to look at a finger or a toe for something to count on. Nada - never met one.

I'll give another example. More than one project team that I worked with had no idea how floats even work! To sit there and try to use floats for their Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable and then say they can't understand why nothing will balance? Arrghh! IMHO its downright incompetence. They needed to use comp which COBOL supported which is base 10 or normalize all their money into pennies and handle the decimal when the data was read in and printed.

Why do we keep getting this error on this story when trying to reply toe the abstract. its been there for hours.

Error 503 Service Unavailable

Service Unavailable
Guru Meditation:

XID: 1125948833
Varnish

This has NOTHING to do with P2P. They might not even be able to show P2P software had anything to do with it. The issue is that ANYONE who is stupid enough to hook a machine dealing with confidential information to the net is a bleeding fool and this includes all my lawyers' secretaries who had their word processing machines on the net - the lawyer who sent me his complete client list, a certain accountant who dropped off at a pawn shop (for $25 bux) all her clients income tax returns along with her DLT7000 (70 GB folks & the tape was in the $3500++ drive!). She used it to backup what ultimately would fit on a couple CD's! She _could_ have simply copied each years tax return to a floppy disk for the specific client! The list also includes a company that had their accounting staff re-input months of work because they picked up a virus in their key machines.

Computers are so cheap that it makes no sense what so ever to take chances like this.

Drwho - contact me. I might know how to organize funding. My email addy is published!

It's easy to be cheap and simple and to breezily handwave when all you have to do is type on your keyboard. It's not easy out in the real world with real money.

Otherwise, why aren't you out there doing it? Why isn't anyone?

I've done part of it. I can grow money on trees, Why am I not doing it? I need a farm. I'll use my own real money too!

I can grow food on trees too. And this is not by composting them. I haven't tackled the algae issues. But one day I might take it on.

Your thesis is not correct.

Clostridium acetobutylicum was grown in tank cultures for decades in order to produce acetone and butyl alcohol. The industry was eventually put out of business by the oil industry and it was because the world was awash in petroleum As petroleum becomes scarce the industry will eventually come back unless some other process is even cheaper.

When you hear of ethanol for motor fuel then remember this: The industry needs to brew a keg of beer at a retail price $2.50. This is easy to see! Beer is 5% ethanol. Its says so right on the can. A keg is 57 liters. 5% of 60 = 3 liters. 3 liters of ethanol is about the same energy as 2.5 liters of gasoline. If gas costs $1.00 per liter then that keg needs to be brewed and the ethanol concentrated to at least 95% and marketed at a price of $2.50 and that $2.50 must return a profit.

So when we hear how ethanol is going to save our bacon then we need to realize that 100% of the USA corn crop will supply liquid fuel for about 2 weeks. If we have the the technology to produce the ethanol at a price competitive with what we currently pay for gasoline then we should expect the price of beer to drop to about 1% of what it costs now!

Damn good point. I went to read TFA and left immediately!

The increased cosmic ray flux will undoubtably cause global cooling. The high energy rays and penetrate deep into the atmosphere where they create nucleation points which increase cloud over. The inreased cloud cover reflects more energy into space and the planet will cool.

This is likely the mechanizm behind the little ice age which occurred during the Maunder minimum between 1645 and 1715.

At this point solar cycle #24 is more than 2 years late. Solar cycle #25 was predicted to be very weak but #24 was predicted to be more or less normal. The predictions for #24 are proving to be in error.

A cooling trend can go on for decades.

Somewhere around here I have a letter of apology from the past president of Telus!

They started to shut off my phone service. You see - I had to build a time division reflectometer and shoot the line that I wanted my DSL service on. This is pretty easy to do. We went to Radio shack and bought about $20 worth of stuff and a 1.5 volt battery and hooked up a dual channel oscilloscope. About 15 minutes later we knew where the line taps were. So I called in Telus and asked them to remove the line taps and told them where they were.

What happened next? I was told it was going to cost me $1400!

I had no choice. I agreed to this.

So a tech came around. I have this on film! I set up a camera and I filmed him! He spent 1 hour. He had to unscrew 14 nuts and open a canister and snip a wire. So I figure Telus wanted to charge me $100 per nut!

After he did this the DSL fired up and ran perfectly!

A month later I got a call from one of Telus's supervisors. He asked me how it is that my DSL works! So I provided free consulting and told him if they snip such and such wires and get themselves a TDR then they can get their DSL services working!

Meanwhile I was in touch with their offices about that $1400 bill for 1 hour of work.

It was about 9 months later that I was in Brisbane. In that 9 month period of time even though Telus told me they would review the bill... they never did. I got a call from Calgary. The phones were being shut off! Telus had already disconnected one line in fact!

I called Telus from Brisbane and managed to get one of the executive assistants. I advised her she could save her company a lot of money. She had a choice. She could listen to me now and get my telephone line reconnected and get the bill reviewed and if she failed to do this then my next phone call was going to be to my lawyers in Calgary and we will get a court order and Telus will pay for it! Guess what - it worked. They reconnected the line. Meanwhile they did reduce the bill so I had to pay them something like $400 for them to fix the line so DSL would work!

Imagine! They want to offer a service they want to charge for and the customer has to show them how to do it and pay something like $400 for an hour's work on top of it! Insane!

That is just part of it.

A few years later I was billed more than $3000 in overcharges. They wouldn't answer their phones. I went through investor relations. IR does answer phones! I found their legal department. I wrote lawyer like nasty letters. I offered to sue them and pointed out that if I file - then we get discovery and in discovery they have to cough up the accounting and justify their billing. Maybe he might want to do this outside of a court action because if he doesn't then he will have to do it as part of a court action.

I got some results. They refunded about $3000.

On this matter I never ever received a correct billing statement from that company!

These days? I will not deal with that company.

It was a nightmare!