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Well, I can't point you to a vehicle a tenth as efficient, but this car due out later this year comes in two models -- the Aptera Typ-1h, which gets 130mpg plus has a 40 mile all-electric range, and the Typ-1e all-electric with a 120 mile range. Since power plants have a higher thermodynamic efficiency from burning fuel than gas engines, while battery, charger, and transmission losses are very small, you're looking at almost 200mpg equivalent for the Typ-1e and for the first 40 miles of the Typ-1h's range. So, you're looking at roughly a 20th as efficient, give or take in either direction. The price is a bit steep for a two seater ($30k for the Typ-1h and $27k for the Typ-1e), but when you're nearly or completely eliminating a couple thousand dollars in money spent on gasoline per year for a hundred dollars spent on electricity, and cutting maintenance (the electric drivetrain only has the following moving parts: three wheels, one drive belt, one sealed brushless electric motor; not even a transmission), you can hit payback pretty quickly, and certainly pay off the difference over a normal car in several years. Not to mention, it's all sorts of crazy neat features like in-seatbelt airbags (like small planes use -- they don't explode toward you, but upwards to be between you and the dash, shielding your whole body), StreetDeck (a nifty nav/entertainment system), camera situational awareness displays, and so on.

They're currently moving into their production facility, and plan to offer test drives and factory tours in 30 to 60 days.

Your first paragraph extols "PD" (the public domain?) over the GPL (and does so unfairly, IMHO).

In order for that part of your comment to be meaningful, you need to say why you think my characterization was unfair. I have reasons for what I said (and I've laid them out, but I'm prepared to be more specific as required.)

In your second paragraph, you sound more like a copyright holder embittered by piracy on one hand and by the GPL on the other than like a big contributor to the PD.

As far as my feelings about the GPL go, I'm both a PD and a commercial author embittered by the GPL. In both cases, the GPL has done things ranging from what I'd call merely "cramping my style" to forcing me to write huge chunks of code, work that, were it not for the GPL, I could have avoided in favor of something more rationally characterizable as productive. Work that had already been done by others, was available in public to others, but not to me, because I had the temerity to presume that some of my work product was actually an appropriate thing to request payment for, or even simply wish to distribute without incurring additional obligations. It sneaks around and annoys me from surprising directions. For instance, midnight commander won't compile on my Apple; One might ask, why is that? It turns out that in the final analysis, it's specifically because of the GPL. Apple can't ship what they need to so that MC will compile and run. Instead, I have to get a huge pile of crap (the "Fink" project) and cobble up a mostly-working copy from that.

Pirates, frankly, don't make me bitter. Quite the opposite. They've been very good to me. It's just free exposure for the commercial software; it isn't like they were going to buy it anyway. And they can't "steal" PD software, now can they? I can count the number of times a non-purchasing person came looking for support for our commercial software and didn't buy it when told we only support purchasers on one hand in 23 years of selling commercial software. On the other hand, I could not possibly count the number of sales made to people who ran into non-purchasing folks using my stuff.

As for being a "big" contributor to PD, the whole point is you don't know what I've contributed because there's no requirement to keep my name associated, nor is there any particular motivation on my part to put it there in the first place. I don't do it for fame and recognition, I don't concern myself with such things. I do it to help out, that's all. In terms of lines of code, I'm a consistent, long-term contributor. Also of PD hardware designs and things like PD analog AFSK mode designs. You can find my name in the ARRL handbook, numerous programs of various types, and even some of the Orion blue books if you try hard enough. Heck, I even try to always give out the critical details when I take a photo so others can learn and emulate if they so desire, instead of playing "I know something you don't know, nyah-nyah." In terms of do you know me... no, probably not. Do I care? No, probably not. :-)

Your web site doesn't mention the PD at all (please post a link if I'm wrong about that).

Black Belt Systems is a commercial operation of mine; it has nothing in particular to do with producing PD software. I, as an individual on the other hand, do. For the sake of an example, here is a PD database app I wrote in Python (with docs, and sample databases, and database processing examples); I've been writing software since my first Altair computer; my first PD software was published in the 1977 issue of Kilobaud; there have been many more such since then.

However, since you were digging around on the BBS site, did you manage to come across the terms of re-distribution for WinIm

it scares the shit out of me just to think if Microsoft made airplanes.

Granted, Microsoft is far from alone when it comes to relying on the Visa Crutch. But it was Bill Gates whose pleas were singled out by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff as he rationalized the need for 'emergency' action.

Granted, Microsoft is far from alone when it comes to relying on the Visa Crutch. But it was Bill Gates whose pleas were singled out by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff as he rationalized the need for 'emergency' action.

without having actually seen some of the videos being posted. I'm coming into this conversation a day late so my comment will most likely languish unnoticed, but I feel compelled to speak up so here goes.

I'm a pro Flickr user and I'm quite excited about the addition of video. The Flickr community, like any community, has a lot of bad with the good, but there's a greater amount of beautiful work available on the site. The interestingness algorithm is what makes Flickr stand out from the other sites, IMO. Youtube is a cornucopia of good and bad, but overall a dung heap of video, and the commenters are worse. Flickr video will be limited to 90 seconds and promoted by the enigmatic interestingness algorithm and the results will be of a higher caliber. The community, whose comments are mostly upbeat and helpful, will reward quality submissions and let poor submissions languish unnoticed (much like my comment will be ;). Yes, there will undoubtedly be home movies of kids with bunnies rolling about on the lawn while the cameraman snuffles into the mic, but there will be more videos like this or creative memes like Fridgets - the "long photos" Flickr is hoping to promote.

without having actually seen some of the videos being posted. I'm coming into this conversation a day late so my comment will most likely languish unnoticed, but I feel compelled to speak up so here goes.

I'm a pro Flickr user and I'm quite excited about the addition of video. The Flickr community, like any community, has a lot of bad with the good, but there's a greater amount of beautiful work available on the site. The interestingness algorithm is what makes Flickr stand out from the other sites, IMO. Youtube is a cornucopia of good and bad, but overall a dung heap of video, and the commenters are worse. Flickr video will be limited to 90 seconds and promoted by the enigmatic interestingness algorithm and the results will be of a higher caliber. The community, whose comments are mostly upbeat and helpful, will reward quality submissions and let poor submissions languish unnoticed (much like my comment will be ;). Yes, there will undoubtedly be home movies of kids with bunnies rolling about on the lawn while the cameraman snuffles into the mic, but there will be more videos like this or creative memes like Fridgets - the "long photos" Flickr is hoping to promote.

Respectfully, I don't agree with the argument you are making here. First of all, these days the camera and the "camcorder" are often the very same tool. How is it that pressing one button on it makes one strive to create something beautiful, while pressing a different button to record video causes one to stop wanting to make art and instead desire to go yell at the house cat? Since when has it not been the major consumer use of still photography to record antics and personally meaningful things, not necessarily art? There is plenty of art and banal crap on both Flickr and Youtube. I am also a little confused by the argument that video is more technically difficult, therefore people do mindlessly artless things with it. The idea that some media just don't make for "good" (or is it "real") art is very old and has been debunked over and over again. Photography was initially discounted by artists as a medium of record, like a scientific process of measurement. All you had to do was press the release, and all of the subtlety of the image was just created by the process. Anyone could do it. There was no skill or hand of the artist in the creation of it; therefore, it was not art. You sound like you love photography so I don't think I need to argue to you why that really isn't true at all. http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=2&ct=5&w=all&q=bill's+party&m=text http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22video+art%22&search_type=

No reason to think it won't keep up.

No reason to think it won't keep up.

No reason to think it won't keep up.

No reason to think it won't keep up.

No reason to think it won't keep up.

No reason to think it won't keep up.

No reason to think it won't keep up.

No reason to think it won't keep up.

Just today I ran into this video on Flickr. If all the videos on Flickr were this well done I would not have any reason to complain.

After reading through the FAQ, here's the GP's answer:

Go to "Advanced Search", then set "Search by media type" to "Only videos"

After reading through the FAQ, here's the GP's answer:

Go to "Advanced Search", then set "Search by media type" to "Only videos"

???

Where do you get those specs? I couldn't find anything in the FAQ....

(hate replying to self, but...)

Here you go:

Flickr Videos in use

Only Flickr premium users will be able to upload videos to the service, which limits video upload on Flickr to the service's most active users.

[G]ood luck trying to search videos only on Flickr. It's not easy or convenient.

But I think the deal with using another person's name and likeness for profit falls more under the trademark rules. There's no explicit right that protects your likeness from being used for publicity, but there is a lot of case law surrounding it, and I believe there are some states (no doubt California is one) that protect the "publicity" rights of individuals.

It's strictly related to profit, though. If I post a picture of my car on the Internet "Check out my new car", and you're sitting on your ass in front of it, that's pretty much incidental and you probably have no recourse. But ... If I set up a gay brothel in Las Vegas and advertise with a picture of you holding my penis that says "Hey - corsec67 *Really Likes* my hefty pleasure stick!", then you can for infringement.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Makes sense, though. My point that they should have specified "Copyright" instead of the nebulous "IP" still stands.

But I think this would be slightly different. The assumption with a photo in a profile like that is that the person is the one IN the photograph, not necessarily the maker of the picture. I can take my own picture using a self-timer or a remote control, but I don't think that is a requirement with most sites, just that the person featured in the profile has a license to use the picture.

Personally, I think garbage collection is only good for covering up bad design, but let's do that another time

Very briefly, I think garbage collection is one of those things which can be faster on average. But yes, it is doable without a VM, and there are libraries to do so.

Also, for security reasons, I prefer the executable part of an application to be in a non-writable segment.

I think it's possible to lock down a VM much tighter than simply locking the executable part of an application.

I always assumed I just didn't get how to do this simply :o)

Well, the trick is, every method can have a "block" -- exactly one. It is possible to map this to an argument (a Proc object), which is slower, but it lets you pass it to other methods, store it in a data structure, and so on.

It is also possible to simply pass Proc objects around anyway. This is the more Javascript-like approach:

def twofuncs(first, second); first.call; second.call; end
twofuncs lambda{puts 'first callback'}, lambda{puts 'second callback'}
# sorry, lameness filter wants me to have more characters per line.

Although the more syntactically elegant thing to do here is probably to create an object:

class TwoFuncs; def setFirst(&block); @first = block; end
def setSecond(&block); @second = block; end
def callBoth; @first.call; @second.call; end; end

obj = TwoFuncs.new; obj.setFirst { puts 'first callback' }
obj.setSecond { puts 'second callback' }; obj.callBoth

The problem I have with it is that blocks, while they can be treated as Proc objects, are really subtly different -- most visibly syntactically, but also in implementation. For instance,

def callTheBlock; yield; end

is more efficient than

def callTheProc(&block); block.call; end

Even though both of them are called exactly the same way.

I would imagine it would also make your code hard to read or understand.

No more than any other DSL-ish trick. That is: Being effectively a dialect means that you can't just go pick up some random blogger's JavaScript tutorial and expect to understand what I'm doing -- but it also means that once you get it (especially if I have decent variables and function names), it's probably easier to read.

Especially if it's good at expressing intent. I like that concept, thanks!

And I'm the second-most unit test fanatic in our office :o)

Something for your coworkers...

(As an aside, perl's is really a type system in the variable names, which is something else again).

Well, except it's limited to the primitives, as is Ruby's. And Perl's is much less useful, as after awhile, just about everything's going to be a scalar reference to something.

Yes, but some, like C++, seems to be trivially convertible to a simpler syntax.

Looks like you're right... except, of course, it would now generate exactly the same kind of errors that a similar method in Ruby would. The only difference is, as you say, yours catches them at compiletime -- which means a lot more must be known at compiletime.

Eval could be encapsulated so that type errors in that case would be found at runtime. (Nearly) every eval is a failure of the language anyway.

I would consider eval to essentially be a shortcut for certain kinds of reflection.

Of course, this is all about duck typing. (If you mean the quacks and walks like a duck.) C++ has had duck typi

Sure, but don't think that overselling is a bad thing. No ISP on earth doesnt oversell it's data connection.

Here is an ISP I do some work for.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2207/2387674726_e4d4654e34_o.png

It is a 20 meg unmetered pipe, but he has numerous 10 meg burst piped customers (then throttled down to 2 meg). As you can see he has only exceeded 10 megabits a few times at peak hours.

You have to watch a graph like this (using cacti,snmp scanner w/rrdtool etc) and see if you're banging off the limiter. If you are you need a bigger pipe, if not, keep it as is.

Getting a 100 meg pipe if you have ten 10 meg customers would be insane, you would be paying for 85-90 percent more bandwidth than you needed.

The problem comes when the overselling goes too far. You see a graph that is constantly at the top only coming off of it in spikes and you know you're in trouble. Some companies just don't care I guess.

And thanks to IBM, responding to a crisis of 9/11 or Katrina magnitude strikes may constitute patent infringement. Big Blue has a patent pending for Optimizing the Selection, Verification, and Deployment of Expert Resources in a Time of Chaos, which covers responding to 'episodes of profound chaos during hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves, solar flares, flooding, terrorism, war, and pandemics to name a few.' It's apparently this easy.

>Firefox and IE only just now pass Acid 2 in their *development releases*.

Ah, maybe you actually investigate and learn something about this before making ridiculous assertions of fact. Firefox passed Acid2 in a "development release" (dbaron's reflow branch builds absolutely were available as "development releases") precisely two years ago and trunk builds were passing in early December of 2006.

I don't know about your definition of "just now" or your definition of "development releases" but it seems to me that you're way off on at least one of those.

- A

"We're looking for real physics -- a bigger bang resulting in collateral damage."

That's what missiles are for. That's what special forces are for. I'm not sure how much "collateral damage" can be caused by hackers.

Then again, maybe General Elder has been reading the World Weekly News.

Wow, Mosaic! I remember running up the NCSA http daemon on my un*x workstation, we didn't have 'desktops' in those days, and starting to create my output in HTML/gif vs. emailing a Lotus Freelance presentation. Heady times. Especially after tables were invented.

I found an ancient backup of my slackware 1.X floppies and a mosaic executable a few years back and gave VMWare a go. Slack couldn't grok the hardware vmware presented (this was Workstation ~2.X) but I did get a screenshot of Mosaic!

Flickr - Mosiac

Whee, heady times, when the interweb was young and AOL had not trashed it. I even put a .exe of Mosaic out on my ftp for our managers.

The site is obviously pretty Slashdotted at this point, so I was not able to download some of the Mosaic versions he links to.

Since I already have a copy of NCSA Mosaic copyrighted 1-27-1994, I decided to fire that up and load the page.

A screenshot of mosaic.mcom.com that I was finally able to load. It had issues with some of the .gif files on the page. I am not sure if that is de to the client or if the transfer timed out from the load.

This is Mosaic v1.0.3 under System 7.6.1, running in BasiliskII.

Strange timing. Just last night I started playing around with some gopher servers, so I fired up Basilisk and downloaded TurboGopher. I got my first access to Usenet feeds in about 1992, and was able to get more online in the fall of 1993. Gopher, FTP, and email were huge. I remember downloading Mosaic sometime in early spring of 1994 and playing around with it.

Ahh, the memories...

"That's why we're building bridges, climbing mountains, exploring uncharted territories. You think we want to do these things? Nobody wants to build a bridge. It's really, really hard! Designing rockets flying off into space. I guarantee you, every astronaut when he comes back from space, goes up to a girl and goes:" So, did you see me up there?"

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1323/1433529629_4c1f775559.jpg

WOOHA!! What do we have here?! I thought slashdot was all about fat geeks in their parents' basements, not cute bisexual hotties!

Check this out, it's surreal:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/816210320/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2338405479/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2163696797/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2211238100/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2234264582/
http://izabael.com/big_screens/izabael_library_strip.jpg

Very nice, keep it up!

WOOHA!! What do we have here?! I thought slashdot was all about fat geeks in their parents' basements, not cute bisexual hotties!

Check this out, it's surreal:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/816210320/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2338405479/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2163696797/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2211238100/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2234264582/
http://izabael.com/big_screens/izabael_library_strip.jpg

Very nice, keep it up!

WOOHA!! What do we have here?! I thought slashdot was all about fat geeks in their parents' basements, not cute bisexual hotties!

Check this out, it's surreal:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/816210320/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2338405479/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2163696797/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2211238100/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2234264582/
http://izabael.com/big_screens/izabael_library_strip.jpg

Very nice, keep it up!

WOOHA!! What do we have here?! I thought slashdot was all about fat geeks in their parents' basements, not cute bisexual hotties!

Check this out, it's surreal:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/816210320/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2338405479/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2163696797/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2211238100/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2234264582/
http://izabael.com/big_screens/izabael_library_strip.jpg

Very nice, keep it up!

WOOHA!! What do we have here?! I thought slashdot was all about fat geeks in their parents' basements, not cute bisexual hotties!

Check this out, it's surreal:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/816210320/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2338405479/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2163696797/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2211238100/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/izabael/2234264582/
http://izabael.com/big_screens/izabael_library_strip.jpg

Very nice, keep it up!

I have a hard time placing this in the enterprise for large business, but I can see how it would be valuable for medium and small business. S3 would let them serve large media files to lots of customers and pay per usage instead of buying a fat pipe, while also having a substantial amount of burst capacity should they have an event where lots of people seek out their goods.

From a personal level, I'm using it for two purposes. For one, I use Jungle Disk with S3, and have some specific utilities and files which I want synchronized access to from multiple locations. I update a file at a client site, and it's updated at home too. All this comes with the convenience and speed of editing as if it was a local file.

The second purpose is also through Jungle Disk. I'm a photography enthusiast, and I have a couple of dozen of gig worth of photos that I would be crushed to lose since there's nothing in the world which could replace them. Jungle disk has a backup feature, and I use it to back up my photos (and some other data) to Amazon's services. I'm incredibly nervous about the loss of this information. I keep it on my desktop, and rsync it nightly to my server in the closet. I also rsync it nightly to a NAS RAID 5 storage device, which itself backs up to an external USB hard drive. So I have 4 copies of this data in my house at all times. But none of that would protect it from a fire or sufficient power surge, and that's why I use S3 as my last line of defense. For a couple of bucks a month, I get another level of peace of mind.

Maybe switching from Nerf to Lasertag? A real-life Halo zombie map? Just make sure they're not high-powered...

Sorry, can't do that. As you enter the town it the town sign claims it is a "Nuclear Free Zone." No joke, I used to live in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol is common joke in most of Sonoma County.

Ah, yet another class of ads to locate, rate, and filter. Now Adblock and CustomizeGoogle need to be updated.

We probably should look into rating the advertisers with AdRater. Outright ad blocking seems overkill for this class of ad, but rating doesn't interfere with user searches.

The revolt against excessive advertising is growing. Sao Paulo, Brazil eliminated outdoor advertising last year. All of it.

I apologize kcurtis. There were quite a few people who were way off base on this point and I accidentally grouped you in with them. Specifically, I read "...then only the President has the ability to direct spending" as meaning "...then only the President has the ability to control spending" (or something along those lines). I thought that you meant the President spends however much he wants on whatever he wants. So once more: apologies. Hopefully you can at least see how someone might make the mistake.

Back to an on-topic discussion...

1) Do you really think that congressmen need to be able to accept contributions from lobbyists for the citizens to get their voices heard

2) I seem to remember that the system wasn't necessarily "designed" with earmarks in mind. Who knows what the founders of the nation had in mind, but you would think that if the they had earmarks in mind the first earmark would have been used before the early 1800s and they would have come into popular use before the 1970s. I agree that Earmarks can be used for good, but I do believe that pork shouldn't be a primary goal of our Legislative branch. Rather than being judged on how a legislator represents his or her constituents, Congressman are being judged on how much money they can direct to their district. Having no direct say on how money is spent is a potentially bad thing, but having too much say is arguably worse. Do you think it is a good thing that Earmarks have ballooned (in number and amount) in the past decade (I couldn't find a chart that went back to the 70s, but in the 70s and prior the number per year was in the tens IIRC). Don't you think that this is an alarming trend that should be controlled somehow?

3)

4) You believe that you, Bill Gates, and random single mother of 2 have appropriate and proportional control over elections?

I drive a 2008 Honda (Fit), and it has a whole bunch of blue lights. Then again I have them dimmed pretty notably so I'm not blinded at night. The brightest setting is VERY BRIGHT, so much that I've never had it set to even close to the maximum, even during the day.

I drive a 2008 Honda (Fit), and it has a whole bunch of blue lights. Then again I have them dimmed pretty notably so I'm not blinded at night. The brightest setting is VERY BRIGHT, so much that I've never had it set to even close to the maximum, even during the day.

The work they've been doing on lightfields is pretty innovative. I first heard about this when Robert Scoble interviewed Marc Levoy and got some cool demos into the video. I've done some lightfield experiments with my trusty Nikon D40, it's interesting to see what new ideas you can come up with for using a camera once you get into it.

The work they've been doing on lightfields is pretty innovative. I first heard about this when Robert Scoble interviewed Marc Levoy and got some cool demos into the video. I've done some lightfield experiments with my trusty Nikon D40, it's interesting to see what new ideas you can come up with for using a camera once you get into it.