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Author Topic: The Future has arrived  (Read 15756 times)

GarandMarine

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #100 on: 01 May 2013, 15:28 »

Well, funny you should mention that J, apparently a friend of mine in the Bay area has just filed for patents on RFID tagged sex toys.
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Zingoleb

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #101 on: 02 May 2013, 02:40 »

i was talking about vibrating cock implants earlier

and the guy i've been talking to has told me he has plans to do the first one this summer

and tonight i just realised that with this information i can very, very accurately pinpoint the day the future will have arrived in my life.
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Pilchard123

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #102 on: 02 May 2013, 02:46 »

Could you even get a patent for that? I mean, I know you can't really tell us the details, but would you not need a bit more than


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                NOW KISS!


to get a patent?
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nekowafer

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #103 on: 02 May 2013, 05:12 »

Unicorn: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee so awesome
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Redball

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #104 on: 02 May 2013, 18:31 »

i was talking about vibrating cock implants earlier

and the guy i've been talking to has told me he has plans to do the first one this summer

and tonight i just realised that with this information i can very, very accurately pinpoint the day the future will have arrived in my life.
It might be closer to the end of my future. But I might not mind.
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mtmerrick

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #107 on: 21 May 2013, 09:42 »

more like a small step into the future: Tesla

It looks very interesting.  Does anyone have an electric car?  Anyone have any opinions on the whole electric thing?

Somehow I feel there will be a lot of overly manly chest pounding on how electric cars are wimpy...or south park smug....
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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #108 on: 21 May 2013, 10:32 »

Electric cars open up options. We can substitute different forms of electricity generation once the fleet is electrified.

The performance is already there. Floorboard a Tesla roadster and you will know this viscerally.

We'll need gasoline backup for a long time.
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Pilchard123

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #109 on: 21 May 2013, 11:14 »

I like the idea of electric cars, but do question the overall benefit to the environment when you take into account manufacturing and disposal. I have no data either way, unfortunately. There's also the whole thing about producing the electric energy in the first place, though I imagine large power stations are more efficient than small engines.
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Loki

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #110 on: 21 May 2013, 13:46 »

Electric cars are silent, sneaky motherfuckers.

You don't realize how much you rely on your sense of hearing to judge traffic until you are shocked by that car that seemingly came out from nowhere, because you failed to hear it.

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Masterpiece

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #111 on: 21 May 2013, 13:53 »

I like the idea of electric cars, but do question the overall benefit to the environment when you take into account manufacturing and disposal. I have no data either way, unfortunately. There's also the whole thing about producing the electric energy in the first place, though I imagine large power stations are more efficient than small engines.

It's not just manufacturing and disposal that's important here. If a sustainable future is our goal, improvements have to be made in EVERY aspect of the energy chain. That means we need more efficient and environmentally sound generators, transportation that does NOT actually loses 20% of energy to the air, a much more advanced distribution system and appliances that use practically no energy in standby and all the energy it needs and nothing more when in use.

Electronic cars are interesting because they could act as a theoretical energy storage when they are in park. Nowadays electricity plants have to continue working in the night, but their output is not used, because it costs more to turn off the plants at night and turn them back on during the day. That is literally 8 hours of energy production that is left unused. If cars would be used to store that energy during the night (as most cars are not used during the day), that would make energy plants a whole lot more efficient.

Pilchard123

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #112 on: 21 May 2013, 14:03 »

Oh, indeed. They were just the first two things that came to mind. Some surplus energy is used to store water behind dams, though I don't know how much that accounts for.

I once got into a bit of an argument with my Environmental Studies (not a airy-fairy as it sounds as it happens; I took it as a filler subject and ended up loving it) about energy storage and what types of energy could be stored. I said kinetic (e.g. flywheels), thermal (molten salt) and electrical (capacitors) could be stored, but the exam said they couldn't. >:(
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Zebediah

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #113 on: 21 May 2013, 14:24 »

Things that disturb me when they pop up in a Facebook ad: "Minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery". The mental image of Pintsize in a surgical mask makes me doubt how "minimally invasive" it's actually going to be.

But still, it wasn't that long ago that robot-assisted surgery was pure science fiction. Isaac Asimov wrote an interesting story about it called "The Segregationist".
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LTK

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #114 on: 21 May 2013, 14:40 »

I once got into a bit of an argument with my Environmental Studies (not a airy-fairy as it sounds as it happens; I took it as a filler subject and ended up loving it) about energy storage and what types of energy could be stored. I said kinetic (e.g. flywheels), thermal (molten salt) and electrical (capacitors) could be stored, but the exam said they couldn't. >:(
Maybe they were asking the wrong question: Can they be stored indefinitely? Friction and heat dissipation aren't really things that gravitational or chemical energy storage have to worry about. Are there any drawbacks that the storage types you mentioned can overcome that compensates for their gradual energy loss?
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Quote from: snalin
I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

Loki

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #115 on: 21 May 2013, 14:42 »

Wtf is gravitational energy storage?
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Masterpiece

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #116 on: 21 May 2013, 14:47 »

Pumping water to a higher area, therefore giving it a higher potential energy.

Loki

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #117 on: 21 May 2013, 14:49 »

Oh. Okay. That makes sense. Thanks.
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LTK

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #118 on: 21 May 2013, 15:30 »

I was going to tell you to put a cup on a high shelf, thereby storing gravitational energy in the cup, but then the forum had a seizure.  :x
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Quote from: snalin
I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

Masterpiece

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #119 on: 21 May 2013, 15:31 »

working fine here

mtmerrick

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #120 on: 21 May 2013, 17:24 »

Things that disturb me when they pop up in a Facebook ad: "Minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery". The mental image of Pintsize in a surgical mask makes me doubt how "minimally invasive" it's actually going to be.

But still, it wasn't that long ago that robot-assisted surgery was pure science fiction. Isaac Asimov wrote an interesting story about it called "The Segregationist".
I'd take robotic surgery or robotic assisted surgery over pure human surgery any day. So much faster,  easier,  and safer.
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LTK

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #121 on: 21 May 2013, 17:27 »

Yeah, about that... do you ever think about who programmed the robot?
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Quote from: snalin
I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

mtmerrick

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #122 on: 21 May 2013, 17:36 »

So? Is the best tool for the job.

Also, that won't be an issue for much longer. Google displayed self-creating code at I/O. It's damn impressive.
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pwhodges

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #123 on: 21 May 2013, 23:43 »

I was going to tell you to put a cup on a high shelf, thereby storing gravitational energy in the cup, but then the forum had a seizure.  :x

Yeah, I've no idea what the seizure was; I don't recall any previous one like it. 

As for storing electricity as potential energy, there's nothing futuristic about that; I remember studying the design of a plant that was doing that in the mountains of Wales in the 1960s (in particular the blade profiles for reversible pump/turbine usage).
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Redball

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #124 on: 22 May 2013, 08:35 »

Upstate Michigan has one about 40 years old operated by the state's two largest utilities, located near the Lake Michigan shore with a peak output of 1,872 megawatts.
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pwhodges

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #125 on: 22 May 2013, 11:14 »

the forum had a seizure.  :x

Yeah, I've no idea what the seizure was; I don't recall any previous one like it.

Starting last night, the CloudFlare caching service has performance problems in their London site, affecting UK users; the symptoms are slow and erratic loading of pages, and sometimes complete timeouts.  There has been some improvement this evening, but the problem is not yet resolved.  No one outside the UK should be affected by this, so it's odd that LTK noticed it because their Amsterdam site has been fully operational throughout.
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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."  (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

Carl-E

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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #126 on: 22 May 2013, 18:27 »

Could've just been their ISP...
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Re: The Future has arrived
« Reply #127 on: 22 May 2013, 19:26 »

Meantime, I'll just keep feeding the giant Hamster down in Engineering
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