Slashdot Mirror

I think it means light falling on the screen could power the computer. If you use a laptop outside on a sunny day. Still, a lame 'suggestion', since it's just a wish and not particularly exciting. You can suggest new things to be invented at the halfbakery, but you're supposed to keep away from magic items.

For things a little less realistic, there's also Half Bakery.

http://www.halfbakery.com

The correct way to solve this is to de-classify corporations as individuals, and create a new category for "corporate speech". This may very well require a consitutional ammendment. There are clear distinctions between the things an individual says and the things a corporation says and the law needs to reflect that.

"Corporate speech" laws could easily cover telemarketing as well. The same issue is closely tied to issues of campaign finance as well. Corporations simply should not have equal rights with citizens because they do not have equal responsibilities or abilities.

The solution to telemarketing is to remove first ammendment protection for corporations.

• References:
• Nike's corporate speech: overwhelming the voice of citizens
• Nike settlement leaves corporate speech unresolved
• ACLU & Nike vs. Reason
• A proposal for a consitutional ammendment

-- Bob

I'll freely share my uptime, but it's not something I'm too proud about. I don't need to fake how lazy I am. I am, in fact, too lazy to fake being lazy. I really need to slap a new kernel in that machine, but I haven't gotten around to it.

I wanted to make it's first uptime-birthday the day I compiled the newest stable kernel and rebooted. Obviously, that didn't happen.

At least I keep it apt-get-upgraded.

...like a steel sponge.

(source: the hilarious "Use Bizarre Metaphors" idea at the Halfbakery)

This is really, really stange that they would test this, because it is commonly known that most currency contains traces of cocaine. It is thought that it is usually distributed through a few contaminated bill in contact will other bills in an ATM machine.

Here are some links: a page discussing the flexible submarine idea with some more links, and a site from some people who actually built such a thing, with pictures.

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Pringle-Can_20Wi-fi _20Emergency_20Networks

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Pringle-Can_20Wi-fi _20Emergency_20Networks

As an owner of pet rats, one thing I've noticed is their sometimes disturbing similarities to humans in habit.

At one point, my two female rats were constantly squeeking and making noise at night. No problem, nocturnal animals, they're just more active in the dark. However, I also noticed that oftimes when I turned on the lights, that the rodents were "cleaning each other" in a position often labelled as a number just shy of seventy.
Now, at first I dismissed this, thinking that I was imagining things. However, after talking to several rat owners and a few petshops, I have garnered that this can indeed be more than simply a hygienic practice.

Afterwards, I'd throw things at the cage when they made too much noise to shut them up. At least until one morning after I found they'd dragged in the shirt I'd thrown and perforated it for nesting material. I liked that shirt too.

Now, I've got two new rats. They don't often exhibit the same behavior as the old ones, but sometimes they will. I'm considering breeding one of them (baby rodents being quite cute 'n all), and I wonder if this will change their behavior towards each other after the babies have grown (and one rat has had an encounter of the opposite sex as opposed to the same). And of course, if I got enough rats perhaps I could make some of this

Whenever you see someone who wears half of a goatee, it's a dead giveaway you're dealing with of these chimera twins.

What I think would be a good solution would be a shredder with a built-in printer -- it will print random text over the sheet before shredding it, to make the text unreadable even if reassembled. If anyone hasn't patented it, it's too late now - I hereby declare the idea public domain and knowledge.

Better yet, submit it to the Halfbakery

I liked this idea, from one of the sites mentioned in the original story submission:

"Register your premium-rate number. Get a minimum wage job as a night-time office cleaner. Call your premium rate number from about 500 phones at the large office you're cleaning, leaving the handsets off all night. Repeat, every night (The office workers will come in in the morning and think "Hmm - the cleaner's left my phone off the hook", and put it back).
The large company this happened to didn't prosecute the cleaner to save their embarassment."

Sounds urban legendish.

The communities with the most valuable comments are those which enable moderation by peers. Slashdot readers are obviously very familiar with how this can work, and how discussions are enriched by the rating system. Good comments which help the discussion are more visible, driven by the collective reviews of many people. It's actually fairly rare that wrong information is allowed to exist in a slashdot comment thread at a high rating, as people are always keen to spot the trolls or crackpots. There are a couple of trolls in this thread already, and the system has worked perfectly to mod them down and recognise the comments that have exposed them as such.

The Halfbakery is pretty cool although the amount of dupes and repeated ideas would do the slashdot editors proud :) The community even has abbreviations such as 'WTCTTISITMWIBNIIWR - "Wasn't that cool, that thing I saw in the movie? Wouldn't it be neat if it were real?"' to quickly reject dumb comments before people waste time discussing them. The positive/negative ratings are nice but often find quirky or funny ideas rather than truly useful ones, which can be a little sad.

Even common BB software like vbulletin has the ability to rate threads, giving them cachet which makes more people likely to view them and comment. A sufficiently high threshold of votes before a rating is active weeds out the really dumb votes. You can get some truly outstanding informative threads on some forums - or 'just' funny stuff.

The main problems with all these communities are:

1) People leave the subject of the discussion. Not always a bad thing if the new direction is interesting or an improvement, but it can be frustrating. Whether an early comment is influential in dragging everything off course, or just the transparent interference of current events, politics and 'debate theory', oftentimes the threads seem like the answers to an essay written by someone who hasn't read the question.

2) Cliques. Quite prevalent at the halfbakery and practically every discussion board around. A lot of people with the same views and time on their hands can destroy any discussion they don't agree with, or use their moderating influence to hide ideas. The solution is to have a large readership from a wide spectrum of viewpoints and social/educational variety. Otherwise you get a lot of...

3) Prejudice. Wider than cliques, the readership of a whole site might hate some ideas. Perhaps their society or morals abhor the idea, or they feel some duty to an opposing point of view. Either way, they blindly attack/defend without true impartiality.

4) Fast movement. Pretty bad on Slashdot, if you're a day or a few hours late, you've often missed the discussion, especially if it's not very popular! Happens on all boards, things drop out of the front page spotlights and sink gradually down. Some forums allow these threads to be brought to the top again, others just let them go. One plus is that fast turnover aids quality of discussion. People have a short time to reply so they try to make it good and heartfelt. For a global discussion medium this problem is made worse when half the world is asleep when the comments are being written.

Slashdot is pretty close to a leader in the community moderation arena - will NASA be interested or instead rely on the media, a few well-to-do figureheads on a panel and a couple of paltry outsourced focus groups?

Sounds a bit like this guy here, HalfBakery.com AI Personality Mirror Maybe he ought to claim prior art.

Robot car poster printer

Prior art describing this from Nov 14, 2002.

Online Chat Translation

I hope it is earlier than Microsoft's filing date, that it applies, or maybe that the patent office decides it is "obvious".

Great! A camera to locate the viewer, a camera to take the scene, a embedded processor to compute resultant viewing angles, and the mirror/tv can display it... as discussed here.

fine ideas culled from there include:

1. prescription windshields
2. the usb coffee mug
3. encrypted sign language
4. and my favourite, time sensitive 3d shading!

fine ideas culled from there include:

1. prescription windshields
2. the usb coffee mug
3. encrypted sign language
4. and my favourite, time sensitive 3d shading!

I agree. This is an idea which would get you fishbones on Halfbakery.com

Tape cassettes are maybe 90 minutes max, that's 45 minutes per side. Not much time compared to a radio show, especially a music show that might run 2 to 3 hours.

I have YET to find a music-quality recorder with a built-in radio timer. Nothing compared to what TV viewers have had for years with a timed VCR. I actually know folks who record radio shows on their VCR, on the sound track (tune their cable box to the FM music station, set the timer, etc.)

About a year ago, I really tried to find a "hi fi" tape/tuner combo with a programmable timer. The best I could come up with was an idea on Half-bakery dot com and some sort of souped-up cassette recorder for talk radio junkies.

I don't know about any of that, but there is the concept of brown noise, a tone which supposedly causes anyone who hears it to immediately defecate. Saw it on South Park once.

I think you meant to post this on the halfbakery

Anyone want to start a company around it? (Only half serious).

Anyone want to start a company around it? (Only half serious).

This sounds an awful lot like the HalfBakery (which isn't nearly as pretentious-sounding as the "DaVinci Institute").

Egads! I remember turning the crank on the ditto machine to make the magical blue copies in school.

We had our ditto machine in a not so well ventilated room, and you could almost get a contact high.

I had a hard time reading your link to the hazard.com site due to my impaired vision and persistant headaches.

Smelly Purple Faxes

This would be a good idea to submit to the halfbakery. Definitely a cool site.

PLEASE NOTE: LivePhish.com is optimized for Internet Explorer 5 or later. You will not be able to register or purchase or download shows with the web browser you are currently using. Please come back and visit us with Internet Explorer.

I'm using Mozilla 1.3a, a very standards-compliant browser. Phish should hire smarter webheads; form-based registration and downloading are quite "baked" technologies and should not require a specific browser.

It may be that my memory is playing tricks on me but I do remember that he was recording onto video tape, not audio reel-to-reel. He was intercepting the signal at some point before the channels are broken out (I assume that would be the tuner stage).

I see there is an unresolved (but generally unfavorable) debate on this idea here.

I'm not sure where 1.2 GHz comes into this as (at least in the US) television is in the 54 to 806 MHz range.

As to how simply relating a vague memory can be "BS", I am completely puzzled.

Wow. Apple now watch Bond movies for patent inspiration. Western civilization really is in decline.

For those of you who haven't seen the new Bond movie, Bond's Aston Martin uses a technology the military have been messing about with for a while: Active camoflage. The idea being that you record the image on one side of a vehical and display it on the other making it appear [from a distance at least] largely transparent - or invisible.

I'd love to see the prior art submission "It was in a Bond movie." Would it (will anything) be enough for the US patent office to realise it's become a joke?

Some of the newer CD drives have two (or more?) 'heads', so they can read simultaneously, effectively doubling the access speed without increasing the speed of spinning. I was wondering: Can't the same be done for hard drives?

Apparently I'm not even the first one to suggest this -- for example, see here.

I doubt it's any different today - other than resolution being better (being able to more accurately pinpoint a phone's location).

Here are a few links to similar articles:

Wired

ePinions - cites 164 foot pinpointing US govt mandated

Another recorded use of triangulation

Interesting article about triangulation

Unfortunately, this is old news that has been "hidden" right in plain view of the general public.

-Rob

Ejection seat in a helicopter? Is that supposed to be a joke?

There is actually at least one helicopter equipped with an ejection seat. It's Kamov Ka-50 (NATO name "Hokum") also called as the "Black Shark" or the "Werewolf". It has a typical Zvezda ejection seat but it has got a rocket booster which pulls the seat and the pilot out of the cockpit. Before that is possible, the blades of Ka-50's co-axial rotor are jettisoned with little explosive charges. That's why their flying tactics do not include close formation flying.

PS. This post has been blatantly copied from this site

Funny, the site seems to be slashdotted:

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/TiVo_20Car_20Radio

Sure they seem like crazy ideas NOW, but 5 or 10 years down the line this could be ripe for suing the pants off someone for patent infringement.

---
Be thee not lost amongst precepts of order

What the heck are Breakfast Pants?

I did a search on Google and came up with a Concept post involving pants with built in toasters. Is this what your breakfast pants are based on?

Here is a link to a page with a reference to a book on just that topic, as well as a reference to the "country" made on an abondoned oil platform.

Almost every time political boundaries need to be altered (for representatives), these people don't move the border around a few houses, they rewrite the entire map to best suit their own agenda. Legislative Redistricting causes this problem (known as Gerrymandering) in elections again and again and again ALL OVER THE USA.

You are right about no rational people wanting it. There are many rational people who have offered ways to restructure boundaries that offer the biggest human benefit and lowest government cost. These ideal solutions segment the groups by physical boundaries and population density. But government is not a rational entity.

There are countless smart was to divide it up. Clusters of people should rationally be served by the same set of government. People between clusters should be separated by distance to the clusters and other boundaries (hills, rivers, roads). In dense population areas, map the location of a current road, or a side of the road, as the boundary -- not the line between where two rivers meet and where another river enters a lake bed.

And of course after two counties or states go to court fighting it out -- costing millions of taxpayer dollers -- They will put out big press releases saying either "We saved tax money by moving these buildings outside of our county!" or "We increased tax revenue without increasing taxes!", overlooking the fact that they wasted millions in the process.

frob.

Evian Natural OVERCLOCKING Water

Just imagine the niche market. Especially considering how close Silicon Valley is to Haight & Ashbury in San Francisco. This is it. This is finally a way to get those damn hippies happy.

Evian Natural OVERCLOCKING Water

By the makers of Nuts and Gum and BeerNuts Gum

Coming soon:

Evian VITAMIN ENHANCED OVERCLOCKING water
Let your processor go the extra mile with this slick, new overclocking sports water.

...at the halfbakery.

Plagerism

(um, yeah, I tried to find a cool link for 'tripping over each other' in Google with the word 'trampled'... but you don't even want to know what I found...)

Creating a circuit to monitor one is easy.

Creating a circuit and software to allow it to "interact" with a computer is easy.

The design, contrary to a previous post can and will provide VERY stable power - far better than most "household" UPS's sold - because you are always running off the inverter - if you buy good quality true sine-wave inverters. StatPower is a good source of them and you can buy them cheaply from JC Whitney - AND - JCW offers a 60 day unconditional money back guarantee on everything they sell - you wont find better customer service. Each and every order shipped by them comes with prepaid return labels pre-authorized for merchandise returns. No annoying calls for an RMA number and such. Simply drop the item back in the box, slap the supplied label on it and call UPS for a pickup. (in 15 years, I havent returned more than 2 things... YMMV... instant credits on them).

Adding a fan(s) and enclosure for cooling and "safety" (not dropping something across the battery leads) is easy. Using a thermistor to regulate when the fan comes on is child's play.

Wire sizes as already noted are extremely important. Whenever working with DC, keep in mind the wires need to be large (ie: low gauge). Generally, in case of overcurrent situations, I use 2-4 gauge less than "required"). You cannot use AC current wiring specs to determine wire gauge on DC wiring - unless you want a puddle of copper and insulation and possibly a neat little fire. Because AC does just what the name implies - alternate - heat buildup for the same amount of current is a lot less. Also keep in mind, for longer DC runs, you need lower gauges than for shorter ones of the same load. (there are a dozen sites on line that will help with this info - look up DC house wiring to find some).

Installing a breaker type automotive fuse block of the appropriate size will facilitate avoiding a number of problems. Again, make sure breaker(s) and wires are properly rated for the load you wish to pull.

Buying an inverter that only generates the load being drawn will help increase efficiency. There are some that use only milliamps in "idle" mode (no load, but online).

Exide is the place for batteries... besides the fact that they make more brands of batteries than most of you could imagine (as a comparison, 40 "brands" of soap on the shelf at the supermarket, 5 major soap companies...), they also specialize in industrial deep cycle batteries and seem to have the size factor at a very acceptable level for the current they store and "create". For instance, the one we have been looking at for a similar (house level) application is an Exide 840ah 24v 6 hour rated battery... (you do the math... it'd power your computer for a very very long time...) they are designed for the in-building forklifts you can find at various Home-Depot's and such. Thus, charge, full/near-full discharge during heavy use, and repeat daily abuse and they handle them well. Exide makes smaller versions as well. All the way down to the RayOVac (and bigger brand name) batteries. Keep in mind many such battery solutions will require a 24V charger and 24V inverter - or 2 inverters in series. They are ideal for big UPS' that use 4 12V batteries.

If you are serious about this, battery quality does count big time. The correct lead acid battery type will last YEARS of continuous charge, discharge cycles. We used a bunch Panasonic made for an entertainment venue a number of years back and got 8 (on the first to die) to 12 years out of them doing 2 charge/discharge cycles a day every day. I wouldnt recommend them any more (Panasonic) as they far exceeded the rated life and charging cycle - which Panasonic rectified when they revamped the battery series. 2 years on the same model number battery of the new design.

These same plans can also be used with solar, wind and water power generation systems to charge, maintain or top off batteries with a little planning - as well as with backup generators. Thus, you can use a cheap backup generator in your house or business to create the DC charging current to then provide beautifully stable AC current via the battery(ies) and inverter(s).

For larger applications (VERY large), consider one of the "household" inverters... they are chainable to create 240V (which is really 2 120V lines in cyclic opposition), and usually contain charging units in them that you can provide power to via your incoming utility line, generator, solar, wind, etc. For 4400 Watts expect to pay about $2500 for the inverter, but expect the power to exceed the quality of your utility company 130% of the time and keep your batteries "professionally" charged. I am talking about this as a solution because it is ideal for companies with big server rooms wanting to use a similar method as described on the web page but for higher loads to maintain a lot of servers. It would be very simple to use an Exide 840ah and a Trace inverter (the makers of many other brands of inverters too like StatPower and PortaPower) to power a server room for hours or days.

ASE Americas makes 315Watt and down solar panels in roof mount sizes with high efficiency ratings and certification for many areas and setups. They come in a wide range of voltages per wattage output (meaning you can mix and match inverter/battery/solar cell options to create an ideal system). Solar would be more likely for people out in nowhere areas who needed long backup times or wanted to operate entirely off-grid.

Price shop like crazy for your inverter, batteries and more... I've seen the 4000W Trace inverters as high as $5800 and as low as $2490. Same model, different places. Same probably applies to the lower watt models like the StatPower (which have models to 3000W). Both StatPower and Trace home inverters feature very high surge ratings and stable "true-sine" power output on their higher end models. For StatPower, JCWhitney usually cannot be beat on price [except on auctions (eBay maybe?) and closeouts] and cannot be beat on customer satisfaction.

Some links for reference:
- Inverter
- 12V House
- Exide
- ASE Americas - Rob www.Hyperforce.com

It's already been done:


http://www.halfbakery.com

If you want a daily dose of half-baked inventions, check out The Half-Bakery. It's an excellent site for the inventive/whimsical mind.

http://www.halfbakery.com/

Do you want your environment Ergonically Adaptable to suit your computing needs?

These split keyboards solve one problem ... but do they eliminate C.V.S. (Computer Vision Syndrome). Check out our website... http://www.nite-surfer.com

Soon we hope to have these out in many varieties of keyboards.... like Standard 104, Wave/Split Ergonomic model, Laptops, PDA's , and wireless RF keyboards.

However , I am interested to try this keyboard... for experience sake if nothing else. There are some other cool keyboards and sites on how to MOD your own....

Anyway check out these pages

Half Baked --- Illuminated Laptops
Back lit Keyboards

Hardforum Site:

Topic: Lighted Keyboard Suppliers Topic:

Topic: Keyboard Mod - Part 2

Topic: laptop keyboard mod

Topic: Keyboard mod...guide to follow on VH

Topic: Where can I find??

Topic: Mod #1 - Keyboard

Illuminated Laptops ????
Panasonic Toughbook - Brochure
Says it is Backlit keyboard but not very apparent

Another Backlit Laptop No pic listed

Tracer Keyboard & Computer --- Tracer Keyboard

A Flexible Keyboard -- Flex Keyboard

A Vertical Keyboard --- Vertical Keyboard


David Byrd
CEO - 21st Century Tech., Inc.
URL: http://www.nite-surfer.com