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Why not let us have service that actually uses our current hardware somewhere close to it's potential?

You know, if you want faster net access you can move to Northeast Utah where they have A Broadband Utopia.

Blue lasers used in Ps3 are 405nm but they don't cost so much as the one above. According to financial times, the price dropped to Y3,000 (25USD) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b0638092-8fc1-11db-9ba3-00 00779e2340.html They used to cost from $120 to $180 according to this ieee report http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar07/4988/2 "the GaN lasers in these units now account for 20 to 30 percent of the product's retail price of about $600" So there you go, a price fall of $90 to $150 in the cost of the blue laser diode.

There are codes of ethics and conduct in the profession. IEEE's code and ACM's code are out there. They do not specifically address software piracy but both condemn harming property. In this forum, it is often mentioned that this activity is not exactly theft but illicit copying. Nonetheless, I would throw software piracy into the realm of property harm in the context of the code of ethics.

It sounds like this activity is already rampant. It is less clear if it can be pinned on you or not. Are those involved aware the licensing agreements are being violated? Are they aware of the fines for such things? Are they aware of the implications of getting caught (an IT professional could end a career, a business could go under)?

There are people who do not care. Some people would consider this the same situation as exceeding the speed limit by 5 miles per hour. Some feel that the prices are unreasonably high for the product and choose this as a mild practice of civil disobedience.

I do not want to sugar coat your situation, though. The IEEE regularly reports that a whistleblower is screwed. Despite all the laws and rules put into place to protect such a person, the career could end. The company may stop providing advancement and raises. The company may provide very negative references. The company may even engage in unlawful termination activity. All of this, however, is difficult to prove in court. The result would be large legal bills and no income. Read more about it:
The whistle-blower's dilemma
Kumagai, J.
Spectrum, IEEE
Volume 41, Issue 4, April 2004 Page(s): 53 - 55

Your most pragmatic approach may be to get a new job and report them to something like BSA later. That may sound like a case of sour grapes, but there are no perfect solutions.

Good luck with your choice: it is a matter of selecting imperfect solutions in an imperfect world.

PS: Your work computer belongs to the company. They may already be monitoring you. As a member of IT, you may be more aware of the monitoring than others. Keep it in mind, however, because secrecy and anonymity tend to be important in these matters.

Here's one article: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4891

The Breeder reactor article on Wiki is also informative.

it always seems to me that their conclusions are specious. I can't think of any specific episodes right now but they over simplify the data, build elaborate setups that are prone to error, and use inadequate controls.

Shouldn't that be FAA?
And when are these asshats going to learn that cell phones do not interfere with flight controls? You'd figure at least one of them had to watch that MythBusters episode.

1977, Rome:
G. Forsen, M. Nelson, and R. Staron, "Personal Attributes Authentication Techniques," Rome Air Development Center Report RADC-TR-77-1033, Air Force Base Griffis (New York, 1977).

1980, Rand:
R. Gaines, W. Lisowski, S. Press, and N. Shapiro, "Authentication by Keystroke Timing: Some Preliminary Results," Technical Report Rand report R-256-NSF, Rand Corporation (1980).

1990, Gupta:
R. Joyce and G. Gupta, "Identity Authentication Based on Keystroke Latencies," Communications of the ACM 33:2 (1990), 168-176.

1995, IBM:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/i el3/3531/10615/00491588.pdf?tp=&arnumber=491588&is number=10615

1999, ATT:
http://avirubin.com/fgcs.pdf

2005, MIMOS:
http://digital.ni.com/worldwide/singapore.nsf/web/ all/ACCD272C9FEF487D8625703D005562A0

It was irresponsible for the Independent to run the title as " Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?"

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) of bees could have a major national and worldwide impact this year on crop yields.

But is said right in the article: "No one knows why it is happening."

It also says:

"Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause."

Right now that is just speculation. Decades ago a study conducted in Denver suggested taht inner city children were more prone to cancer in areas of the city where there were higher densities of electrical transformers.

The next thing people knew, there were articles everywhere that high voltage power lines could cause cancer in children. (even though the original study had nothing to do with power lines). People became afraid to live near high voltage lines and property values dropped.

Eventually the original study was proven to be faulty. Decades of anguish by many thousands of people were caused by the faulty extrapolation of conclusions from the original faulty study (see link).

Stephen Nodvin

It was irresponsible for the Independent to run the title as " Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?"

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) of bees could have a major national and worldwide impact this year on crop yields.

But is said right in the article: "No one knows why it is happening."

It also says:

"Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause."

Right now that is just speculation. Decades ago a study conducted in Denver suggested taht inner city children were more prone to cancer in areas of the city where there were higher densities of electrical transformers.

The next thing people knew, there were articles everywhere that high voltage power lines could cause cancer in children. (even though the original study had nothing to do with power lines). People became afraid to live near high voltage lines and property values dropped.

Eventually the original study was proven to be faulty. Decades of anguish by many thousands of people were caused by the faulty extrapolation of conclusions from the original faulty study (see link).

Stephen Nodvin

Heh, he's the guy behind the Netburst ultra-deep pipelines. If you read the paper, it proposes 60-70 stages.

there is also an argument that the mechanism encoded into the software is itself a virtual device that is patentable.

No more so than mathematical equations "encode" a virtual device. Software is mathematics, and allowing mathematical formulas to be patented violates centuries of prcedent as well as good sense.

TFA says:

Also: If real testing were done, and the nature of the problem fully understood, it would become obvious that airplanes could be designed or retrofitted with shielding and communications systems that would enable safe calling through all phases of flight. But that would cost money.

Real testing has been done. Unintended emissions from the phone have been identified as the culprit, not a deficiency in the navigation equipment. The aircraft's receivers are doing exactly what they are supposed to, responding to signals of certain frequencies arriving at the antenna. Once the phone pollutes the spectrum with spurious signals, nothing can protect the receiver. The shielding and filtering must be applied at the problem, which is the phone. Since the competitive consumer phone market demands the lowest possible cost, once a phone meets the minimum legal requirements they won't add another dime of product cost for further interference control.

Intereference does not occur every time, but when it does occur there has been a demonstrable cause and effect relationship. Start with this NASA case study(long pdf warning).

In July 2003, it was reported to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that a cellular phone when turned on simultaneously interfered with three different aircraft GPS receivers, causing complete signal loss. The three GPS receivers were using three separate antennas, and were installed on a small aircraft. The phone was on, however, calls were not made during the incidents and subsequent tests. [emphasis added]

In an email message to the FAA, the company who owned the airplane reported the subsequent tests taken to prove a clear and convincing direct relationship between the phone being in ON-mode, and interference with the three onboard GPS systems. The company verified several times, in multiple flights over different days, that the interference problem could be recreated reliably in the air by having the phone turned on. The interference disappeared when the phone was turned off or covered behind a metal object, and re-appeared when turned on or brought into the open again. In addition, the company conducted tests at two different places to ensure that it was not dependent on location, and were able to reproduce the interference effects at both. The interference occurred when the plane was in the air, but not on the ground. Tests using other phones did not create interference problems on the same aircraft and systems.

Then consider this article from Spectrum. On page 3:

Our data and the NASA studies suggest to us that there is a clear and present danger: cellphones can render GPS instrument useless for landings. Clearly, the cause of the problem is that the FCC issues RF emission standards for consumer electronics, conferring only minimally with the FAA and with no formal consideration of the implications of those standards for the aircraft environment. For its part, the FAA relies on the airlines to initiate safety plans and, like other government agencies, defers to the FCC on questions of electromagnetic radiation.

And from page 4:

All in all, we found 125 entries in the ASRS [Aviation Safety Reporting System] database that reported PED interference. Of these, 77 were considered highly correlated, based on the description of observed PED use and interference occurrence.[emphasis added] The reports included cases of critical aircraft systems such as navigation and throttle settings being affected. Based on the random sample entries from 1995 to 2001, we estimate that the average number of reported interference events might be as high as 23 per year.

It's no conspiracy, and no urban lege

IEEE Spectrum had an article about this last year ( http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069 ); the authors actually sampled in-flight RF data and reviewed some related publications. They also discussed the current reporting methods for HED interference and discussed some of the reports. Bottom line for those that don't want to read the whole article: some cell phones and other devices emit innocuous signals that pose no significant danger, while _other_ cell phones and devices pose significant risks of interfering with avionic electronics, depending on the frequencies they use. This inconsistency alone is a problem. "Sure, you can use your AT&T phone, ma'am. I'm sorry sir, you have to turn your Sprint phone off or we're all going to die". The FCC and FAA do not work with each other (as a rule of thumb), so both the technical and regulatory issues can conflict with one another.

It's a good article for the layperson, I'd encourage reading it.

From the IEEE's Spectrum magazine last year, they actually measured RF signals on flights and reported on the results. No smoking gun where an accident was caused by a cell phone, but still interesting nonetheless (and no ads!). http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069

Power an electric car with a nuclear battery.

You do realize mercedes and BMW are already testing that tech. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3043

new Mercedes have a short range radar built into the cruise control. So if you come up behind a car moving slower than yourself it taps the brakes to slow you down to the speed of a car in front of you. it's not perfect if the vechicle is moving to slow or not moving you will sill hit it, but it does work say comingup on someone doing 50 while your doing 70.

In the 1970's Mercedes where one of the first companies shipping air bags standard. now they are shipping smarter cruise controls.

Those sci-fi ideas are slowly becoming reality.

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4891

I've worked with people with very focused high-level programming skills and found that while they could write mostly decent code, their code was also most likely to fail in production since they were completely mentally removed from concepts like disk-seek times or bandwidth constraints.

I'm not a great programmer, but I've always had a good "sense" (for lack of a better word) about technical things. I worked a bit at a company doing mid to high level (V)FoxPro programming. They put me on the least desired machine and I set to work. Within minutes I realized the machine was not running right, CPU at 100% or close to it most of the time. Turns out it was virus-infected (despite NAV, of course). I found the name of the EXE, renamed it in autoexec.bat before it loaded, then deleted same. Problem solved and the oldest 'clunker' became a quite acceptable computer.

I think this story illustrates the two broad classes of programmers. (1) those able to get a task done, no matter how nerdy or obscure (but who are pathologically incapable of documenting their work, or teaching others) [e.g. my co-worker who had used that computer for months or years without noticing the virus] and (2) those who are good at interface, optimization, and documentation but lack the penetrating power to solve the more difficult problems [e.g. myself -- I had to leave that job because I couldn't 'crack' the OO stuff].

Speaking to this thread's main question: both classes of programmer would need to understand some assembly, but for different reasons. Group 1ers would likely end up using it (or having to debug/change it) from time to time -- and it would be no big deal to them to learn it, use it, whatever. Group 2ers would likely want to know _when_ to use it, and probably get someone else to do that coding.

In the geek cred hungry world of /., not many would want to admit to being a Group 2er but I have no problem with it. For example, Group 2ers would also know when a Group 1er's code sucked, from a performance standpoint. Coders with a trailblazer mindset are rarely good optimizers.

BTW, in considering where Woz, Ciarcia, Kahn and Hertzfeld fit into this, I think they are Group 1ers who simply took an interest in Group 2 stuff. If you can learn both mindsets, you are one powerful programming dude, IMO. [Pity that 2ers like myself can't easily (ever?) become 1ers.] Most 1ers just want to get the job done and move on, yet so much can be learned after you think you have finished your program. [MS deserves props for realizing this and assigning a second unit to work on optimizing the code already working -- Win95 crap became slightly less crappy Win98 through this process (pdf)]

Yes, you could see in the video that they used a 3rd party driver. However, was it really CLEAR that the exploit only existed for the 3rd party driver? Maynor and Ellch certainly did NOT dwell on this -- they in fact spent more time saying they enjoyed doing this because Mac users were "smug."

It's no surprise they failed to give Apple exploit code or specifics. What bugs Apple did find, were through their own code audit.

The "exploit" demo was clearly faked. They speak of and show a third party wireless card with a USB interface, yet looking up the vendor from the MAC address shown on the Apple laptop screen shows an Apple card. The "facts" don't add up. They lied. They may have actually found a bug that could cause a crash, but it is pretty obvious the reason they couldn't produce the exploit code they claimed to have written was they didn't actually have any.
It is easy to check out the MAC addresses used by network hardware.
http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml

Certainly OS X has and has had some bugs that could potentially be problems.
Apple seems to be doing it's best to deal with any found, and appears to have taken security seriously for a long time.

Nothing like a rehash of an old story brought up by an anon contributor linking to a blog.
I figured Vista shipping would bring out some shills, perhaps this is the case here.

---
MS may have a problem with patents in Vista (distant view) + Zune (brown)
Prior Art: Colonoscopy

Right here:

http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/std_public/ description/se/829-1998_desc.html

(For those who didn't know, yes they really exist.)

from here: http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml
it seems like valid OUIs reliably goes up to 00-1B(28)-D5(213). thanks for the script though.

http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/pr_80222.h tml

Karlheinz Brandenburg did much of his work on MP3 as a postdoc working under JJ Johnston at Bell Labs. JJ Johnston had done pioneering work on the psychoacoustic aspects of audio encoding, including a codec called PAC (Perceptual Audio Codec). Do a patent search for audio patents under the name "James D. Johnston".

JJ Johnston later went on to help develop AAC. These days, JJ Johnston works at Microsoft, developing audio technology.

In 2006 the IEEE awarded the James L. Flanagan Speech & Audio Processing Award to JJ Johnston.

http://home.comcast.net/~retired_old_jj/

http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/about/awards/bios /2006FlanaganSpeechAudioProcessingAward.html

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/ex-bell-labs -researcher-played-role/story.aspx?guid=%7B6D73DA9 E-AA07-4A2B-9D2B-25C7815974A3%7D&dist=MostReadHome

I'll do even better and stick to the topic by pointing you towards two projects that provide municipal FTTH. Both projects prompted the telcos, to call the state legislature and attempt to legislate these projects out of existence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IProvo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTOPIA

Ah, Wiki has an entry on UTOPIA. I read about it in the IEEE's Spectrum magazine, A Broadband Utopia

Meaning you could spend years and get a network setup, then the next administration rolls in and says hey we are changing contractors because my cousin knows all about computers, please hand over the keys.

As you say, contracts can stop this. IEEE's magazine Spectrum had an article about a group of communities in northeast Utah who were creating a "A Broadband Utopia" to be owned by them. It's speed will be capable of 50 Mbps, it can even be 100Mps. Though the infrastructure is owned by local governments, it is open, meaning anyone who wants to and has the capabilities can offer services using the infrastructure. These services be any combination of internet access, phone service, tv, or other services that come up.

And even there, there is a workaround that can be employed with the use of a 3rd party that doesn't block incoming connections (though I haven't heard of any P2P protocols currently use this method in the wild).

Skype (which, coincidentally, was written by the same people who wrote Kazaa) uses some of those workarounds to punch through NAT firewalls. I do not know if Kazaa uses them, but the authors of Kazaa could have certainly done so.

The point of all this being, you can share files, without accepting inbound connections. You can download files from others without accepting inbound connections. And you can participated in the P2P network (communications, searches, etc) and all of the above, without your P2P program knowing your public IP address.

But P2P works better if it has access to your public IP address, and you can accept inbound connections. Hence some P2P applications will complain if they detect that they are NATed and ask for your public IP. Some will auto-detect you public IP. Others will not only autodetect your public IP, but if you have a UPNP-capable router, will automatically detect or otherwise set up appropriate holes in you NAT firewall (later versions of Azeurus do this, I believe) to forward inbound connections. And, as aforementioned, Skype uses NAT-busting techniques to bypass setting up proper forwarding rules altogether. Skype's ability to get past firewalls is actually somewhat frightening...

Although the original design of the internet was based on the assumption of a static one-to-one mapping of computers to IP addresses, this is not the case today. DHCP means that the mappings are not static, and NAT means that the mapping isn't one-to-one (indeed, a sufficiently sophisticated NAT setup could be many-to-many, although such would be unusual). Even MAC addresses aren't really unique--it is quite common to set up interface failover by spoofing the MAC address of the failed NIC. Identifying a computer uniquely is a very tricky process--the common means of doing so rely on these broken assumptions. The uncommon means (specifically, searching for evidence of clock drift in timing parameters) are, well, not commonly used, and have higher false positives (due to sensitivities to temperature and the low precision of clock drift measurements). And none of this can be used to show that a particular person was doing anything at any point in time.

From my limited experience with expert testimony, many expert witnesses, although experts in their field, are not experts at being witnesses. It's a way for a university professor to pick up more money on the side with easy consulting work, especially if hired by a petitioner under the expectation of a weak defense by the respondent. In such a case, speed and cheapness are prized above thoroughness and accuracy, and actually being deposed by a lawyer who has been prepped on the sorts of questions to ask would be quite the surprise. Dr. Jacobson appears to have been caught with his pants down, giving a slap-dash report which is clearly biased in favor of the side which hired him. Although he isn't a member of any regulatory body, I would be surprised if he wasn't a member of the ACM or the IEEE Computer Society, and in violation of their respective codes of ethics (specifically, ACM 1.2, 1.3, and 2.5, and IEEE 2, 3, 7, and 9).

Me too, but most with regard to all of the barely used nuclear fuel rods languishing at reactors all over the country. There's a ton of energy left in them, and by burning up the actinides you're left with waste that's 'hot' for a faction of the time.

IEEE's magazine "Spectrum" has a good article on this, dealing with France's Nuclear Wasteland . The article also points out the problems with reprocessing.

Then I would say that the optimal solution is incandescent bulbs and nuclear power. So let's get the move on! Mandate nukes, not some stop-gap measure that requires a whole new level of the old recycling boondoogle.

Isn't nuclear power a stop gap measure? And one that creates and leaves more problems than they solve? In the US the Bush admin wants to use Yucca Mountain as permanent storage, well for 10,000, when the halflife of some of the waste is millions of years. On top of that Yucca is a seismically active region, having had earthquakes in the area, and has a volcano not too far away.

Someone can then say the waste can be reprocessed, as the French do. IEEE's magazine IEEE Spectrum has an article in the Febuary 2007 issue, Nuclear Wasteland by Peter Fairley asking "The French are recycling nuclear waste. Should other countries follow suit?" He brings up problems reprocessing creates including reprocessing concentrates high level waste that's hotter and harder to handle than waste that isn't reprocessed.

Then I would say that the optimal solution is incandescent bulbs and nuclear power. So let's get the move on! Mandate nukes, not some stop-gap measure that requires a whole new level of the old recycling boondoogle.

Isn't nuclear power a stop gap measure? And one that creates and leaves more problems than they solve? In the US the Bush admin wants to use Yucca Mountain as permanent storage, well for 10,000, when the halflife of some of the waste is millions of years. On top of that Yucca is a seismically active region, having had earthquakes in the area, and has a volcano not too far away.

Someone can then say the waste can be reprocessed, as the French do. IEEE's magazine IEEE Spectrum has an article in the Febuary 2007 issue, Nuclear Wasteland by Peter Fairley asking "The French are recycling nuclear waste. Should other countries follow suit?" He brings up problems reprocessing creates including reprocessing concentrates high level waste that's hotter and harder to handle than waste that isn't reprocessed.

I = Interface. The X is more uncertain. Some people regard this as a tribute to Unix, but I don't think it is in the standard. POSIX is expanded to "Portable Operating System Interface" on the IEEE page, while it is expanded to "Portable Operating System Interface for uniX" on its Wikipedia page.

"So if everybody's watching TV at 8pm, and they're all watching different channels, the telco office needs somewhere between 150 gigabits to 1.5 terabits per second."

That's why people are waiting for the goddamn fiber we have been paying for all these years. It gets pretty sad when government is more efficient than business. Only way people will get fiber in their lifetime is through municipal projects such as UTOPIA. Don't see me complaining about my triple play.

Doh. I ended up being to terse and misspelled the word "lose".
The grain loses it's original magnetic moment. It's direction becomes reversed causing data corruption.

Here's the paper.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/wrapper.jsp?arnu mber=809134

IEEE recently published a series of papers on this subject:

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON DEVICE AND MATERIALS RELIABILITY, VOL. 5, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2005

Paper overview (PDF)

IEEE was predicting just that about two years ago.

So finally the tile processor architecture makes it to the industry. People in the comp arch group at MIT envisioned and prototyped something pretty similar to this years ago as the RAW processor.
http://www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/raw/
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=624515
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?isnumb er=13382&arnumber=612254

This versatile model could one day be used for automobile driver's assistance, visual search engines, biomedical imaging analysis, or robots with realistic vision

• There already exist working automated driving software. The december 2006 issue of IEEE Computers magazing was on them last month. Read about the car that drove a thousand miles on Italy's road thanks to Linux, no less.
• Visual search engine exist, at the research level. The whole field is called "Content Based Retrieval", and the main issue is not so much to search, but to formulate the question.
• Biomedical image analysis has been going strong for decades and is used every day in your local hospital. Ask your doctor !
• Robotic vision is pretty much as old as computers themselves. There are even fun robot competitions like robocup.

The current issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine has a piece giving an overview of current E-Ink-based mobile displays, particularly how they relate to newspaper distribution. They don't mention this new product specifically, but hold out the notion of flexible E-Ink displays as near-future possibilities.

The current issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine has a piece giving an overview of current E-Ink-based mobile displays, particularly how they relate to newspaper distribution. They don't mention this new product specifically, but hold out the notion of flexible E-Ink displays as near-future possibilities.

I'm also an IEEE member and get the same magazine. The link to the full article is at http://spectrum.ieee.org/feb07/4893. The first page only lists the names and a brief description with links to each person's individual article.

1. An expert programmer (working with human factors experts) can prototype the new system in a cross-platform scripting language (doesn't matter which one), then can identify the objects
2. a software team can refactor the system once again in an object-oriented language (doesn't matter which one).
3. Finally, a period of benchmarking can identify the bottlenecks which can be refactored one last time, plus the hardware and Operating System decisions can be made based on the available hardware at the end of the software development cycle.

An approach like this would probably have been helpful in FBI's failed $100 million debacle the Virtual Case File system

RapidMind has been designed to do what you speak of.
You can write on multicore processors using C and specialised libraries that were designed for multicores.
Its a pretty neat and should make multi-core development easier.

Theres some videos on their website of some pretty interesting things they done using Cell.
http://www.rapidmind.net/samples.php/
(note: these programs were done in as little as 3 weeks)
Some on Spectrum at IEEE http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/4837/1

According to some artices i read (hell knows what the links were again), it will be available for PS3, actually running under YDL.
Not sure if it is true, but it will be added to the devkits, it was meant to be added before release, but they decided to spend more time on it (possibly to their disadvantage with some developers being "left on their own"...pfft lazy if you ask me, not true programmers in my eyes! A true programmer would strive to get code working on anything!)

And it's amazing all this happened while the internet was unregulated. Imagne what would of happened if it had been regulated.

Pretty easy... just look at cable TV.

Amazing how all the cable people required monopolies to run cable but no one needed a monopoly to run high speed internet.

Actually companies did need, er used a, monopoly to offer broadband. Except for Wifi, WiMAX, ie all landline providers do have monopolies by which they are able to offer broadband. This is true whether the ISP is cable or telco. The only way these companies would be willing to spend all the money to build the infrastructer was if they were granted exclusive rights. They have however outlived their purpose. To tell the truth, though I am a Libertarian, I believe local infrastructure should be locally owned. Either government, coop, or some local organization. The IEEE's Spectrum has a good article on how some communites in northeastern Utah are creating "A Broadband Utopia". I'd like to see more things like this. Falcon

The answer is simple.

Proprietary closed source software cannot be validated. You cannot trust that it will always work properly, because the source is not available for validation.

http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/comp/guidance/938.html

http://standards.ieee.org/catalog/olis/se.html

http://hissa.nist.gov/HHRFdata/Artifacts/ITLdoc/23 4/val-proc.html#233_SEC

http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/cfrassemble.cgi? title=200621

Software pricing has nothing to do with it. The validation process in regulated environments will cost many times more than the actual value of the software itself. The cost of the actual software is trivial.

Closed source software has no future in regulated, mission-critical applications.

Belief and faith are irrelevant.

I'm pretty sure that Dr. Pace VanDevender, Vice President Emeritus of Sandia National Laboratories, with a Ph.D. in physics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, counts as a scientist. He also has proposed singularities as the source of ball lightning, although he's not exactly confident (source requires subscription):

VanDevender himself knows it's on the wild side. "This is a long string of what-ifs," he admits, "it's very loosey-goosey." He reckons the odds of mini black holes existing are 1 in 10, the odds of catching one, maybe 1 in 1000, if he's optimistic. And that's what he wants to do: catch a black hole. "After stewing on it for years, I decided I did not want to die without knowing whether it was or was not real," he says.

What about this: I copy a HD-DVD to my harddrive. Then I find the decryption key for it. I decrypt it and convert it to another format. Couldn't I then distribute it without them knowing what player was used?

That's exactly the scenario that has been characterized as the fundamental weakness of AACS, the encryption mechanism of both HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Congratulations for finding this out in less time than the engineers who designed it.

I think that you misread me. That's the renewable energy subsidy if we gave wind power the same 'subsidies' that are 'given' to nuclear power. This system was set up by the Price-Anderson act

Thanks for the link. I didn't know the industry paid for insurance. I went ahead and both saved it to my hdd and bookmarked it.

Many people have battery banks to store the energy their solar, wind, or hybrid systems generate.

Don't get me wrong, but while people do it, it's not globally economic to do so. Most people who do these systems do so to avoid the expense of running line power to them. Meanwhile they do things like run special refridgerators and use hydrocarbon method of accomplishing tasks such as heating their home, water, and cooking. For example, solar power will make sense much more quickly in Sunny california with high electricity costs than ND with it's cheap electricity.

First, North Dakota isn't good for solar as you say but the state is a great site for Wind Gennies. As is SD and Minneasota. MN, where I live now, generates several megawatts of power by Wind Gennies. While it may be mostly those living off the grid in the US who's doing it, it's not the only place solar panels and batteries are used. The same think is done in the third world. In Africa one or more NGOs are going into small villages where they setup solar panels and battery backups to power lights, radios, refrigs, small tvs, and such. The lights allow children to read and do homework for school while it's dark. The refrigs allow medicine to be stored, and the radios and tvs keep the people informed about the world. They are also used for educational purposes. The IEEE's Spectrum had an article about how some people started a business in South Asia building solar energy systems they then sold in remote locations and other places without electricity. The business created jobs manufacturing them, it also allowed those who bought a system to improve education as well as earn more money. One example was of a person who ran a repair shop, he was able to use lights so he could work when it was dark thus he increased his income. In another Spectrum article they described how a group of EEs went into a remote village; in Cambodia, Thailand, or Veit Nam, I don't recall which, and setup a transceiver with a tower for the antenna so they could have radio communications with the outside world. Using a "home built" PC and a bike converted into a generator, the group was able to offer the village internet access as well as voice radio. If they wanted to power the system all they had to do was pedal the bike. If they had setup a solar panel the bike could of been for backup.

Fact is you only have a few years to make back the investment because the batteries degrade, eventually needing replacement.

Sure, the batteries eventually need to be replaced, however batteries today last longer than the deep cycle batteries of yesteryear, and they're cheaper. Batteries can now have 10 year warranties with 20 year life expectancies. Here's one with 7 year replacement(pdf), and 3 year prorated warranty for a total of 10 years. As for solar panels, they can be rated 20 years or more. The same with the chargers.

Ok this site has batteries inteneded for renewable resources for sale. The L-16HC seems to be the best deal, for the amp-hours. It's a 6 volt battery that has 420 amp-hours of capacity. That's 2520 watt/hours. Divided by it's cost of $288, that's $114 per kw/hour of capacity, and it's only rated for 3-6 years of 20% daily discharge.

I think that you misread me. That's the renewable energy subsidy if we gave wind power the same 'subsidies' that are 'given' to nuclear power. This system was set up by the Price-Anderson act

Thanks for the link. I didn't know the industry paid for insurance. I went ahead and both saved it to my hdd and bookmarked it.

Many people have battery banks to store the energy their solar, wind, or hybrid systems generate.

Don't get me wrong, but while people do it, it's not globally economic to do so. Most people who do these systems do so to avoid the expense of running line power to them. Meanwhile they do things like run special refridgerators and use hydrocarbon method of accomplishing tasks such as heating their home, water, and cooking. For example, solar power will make sense much more quickly in Sunny california with high electricity costs than ND with it's cheap electricity.

First, North Dakota isn't good for solar as you say but the state is a great site for Wind Gennies. As is SD and Minneasota. MN, where I live now, generates several megawatts of power by Wind Gennies. While it may be mostly those living off the grid in the US who's doing it, it's not the only place solar panels and batteries are used. The same think is done in the third world. In Africa one or more NGOs are going into small villages where they setup solar panels and battery backups to power lights, radios, refrigs, small tvs, and such. The lights allow children to read and do homework for school while it's dark. The refrigs allow medicine to be stored, and the radios and tvs keep the people informed about the world. They are also used for educational purposes. The IEEE's Spectrum had an article about how some people started a business in South Asia building solar energy systems they then sold in remote locations and other places without electricity. The business created jobs manufacturing them, it also allowed those who bought a system to improve education as well as earn more money. One example was of a person who ran a repair shop, he was able to use lights so he could work when it was dark thus he increased his income. In another Spectrum article they described how a group of EEs went into a remote village; in Cambodia, Thailand, or Veit Nam, I don't recall which, and setup a transceiver with a tower for the antenna so they could have radio communications with the outside world. Using a "home built" PC and a bike converted into a generator, the group was able to offer the village internet access as well as voice radio. If they wanted to power the system all they had to do was pedal the bike. If they had setup a solar panel the bike could of been for backup.

Fact is you only have a few years to make back the investment because the batteries degrade, eventually needing replacement.

Sure, the batteries eventually need to be replaced, however batteries today last longer than the deep cycle batteries of yesteryear, and they're cheaper. Batteries can now have 10 year warranties with 20 year life expectancies. Here's one with 7 year replacement(pdf), and 3 year prorated warranty for a total of 10 years. As for solar panels, they can be rated 20 years or more. The same with the chargers.

Ok this site has batteries inteneded for renewable resources for sale. The L-16HC seems to be the best deal, for the amp-hours. It's a 6 volt battery that has 420 amp-hours of capacity. That's 2520 watt/hours. Divided by it's cost of $288, that's $114 per kw/hour of capacity, and it's only rated for 3-6 years of 20% daily discharge.

Scientists have done studies about these issues. One paper can be found here. Digging holes in the bottom of the ocean is relatively easy under current technology. The record-setting Chevron well, called Jack 2, which is 175 miles off the Louisiana coast, is more than five miles deep, including more than a mile of ocean depth.

The recipe for the electrolyte in capacitors is kept as a big secret similar to the secret ingredients in the sauce at a restaurant.

Chinese industrial spies stole a fake formula from a Japanese company, and started making capacitors, and the rest is history.

A combination of a smaller solid cap with good HF performance together with a cheap and large electrolyte further away, but with better LF performance will beat the solution in the article.

I use the power supply from a 25 old HP HDD as a lab supply. It has huge electrolytes that still deliver great performance.

You will probably get more performance improvement by adding neon lights to your case.

Article in ieee.org members only
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6/26410/01176509.p df?arnumber=1176509

http://www.burtonsys.com/bad_BP6/story1.html