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Domain: softcom.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to softcom.net.
Comments · 12
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Re:They shouldn't abandon it
windmills
Plus windmills drive the molemen away.
So anyone that's anti-windmill is obviously in thrall to the molemen. -
Re:I wonder if he's really a moron...It's because the latter is a known quantity by the holder of the ID, the former is an unknown. If a clerk at a cash register asks to see your photo ID, it's normally not a problem. If a shifty looking individual in a trenchcoat, porkpie hat, and eye mask (kinda like this guy) asks for same, you're likely to balk.
The difference is that without RFID, you control the access to your info. With RFID, Boris the Burglar, not you, decides if he gets your specs.
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Re:New record?
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oil independence - closer than you thinkThe numbers for replacing foriegn oil are:
- $169 billion to build the algae farms
- $33B/year operating costs
You can look at them for yourself at the University of New Hampshire site here This is largely based on research successfully completed at DOE in the mid 1990s and shelved because cheap oil looked like forever back then.
Other than that, remember $250/ton shipping to LEO? Follow the links from the slashdot article, to JP Aerospace and to evaluations by experts. From what I saw at the JP Aerospace site, the only reason why it's going to take 7 years for them to get to orbit is lack of funding. They're getting DOD experimental contracts for high-altitude transportation, but even with this, they're bootstrapping. The NASA space power satellite system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. $250/ton is a lot cheaper than $400/kg.
The only thing keeping these technologies from becoming a viable alternative in the very near term is bad habit on the part of what passes for our business and governmental leadership. They're obsessed with the idea that the only way to get oil is the traditional methods. Even if the cost estimates for biomass oil and the SPS are off by a factor of 10, they look awfully good next to the projected $16T (yes, that's $16,000 billion) dollar cost of "business as usual"... based on an unproven and unlikely assumption that "enough" oil is there to be found. (see below)
Hint: The Bush Administration defunded the Space Power Satellite project.
Concrete steps to get this running? For the oil side, how about government loans, tax credits, and temporary price supports in case the oil cartel gets desperate enough to try to put the new energy replacements out of business by dropping their oil prices to cost of production? A promise to the rest of the world that the algae oil biomass production technology will be freely exported as soon as it is ready to go? These are the first things that occur to me.
For the space side, direct government funding, and or payload guarantees (e.g. the government will guarantee payment for X-million pounds per year of payload to any vendor(s) who can prove the ability to get it to LEO for, say, under $10/pound?) would be a good start. Or start contracting for lots and lots of solar cells and designate JP Aerospace as the prime contractor to get them to orbit.
The alternative: The International Energy Agency wants $16 TRILLION DOLLARS to be spent on new oil exploration and development and facilities to "prevent" energy crisis. This makes the happy assumption that there's enough oil to solve the problem. A few minutes spent googling on "peak oil" will convince you that there isn't.
The $16T does NOT include the military costs of dealing with the Middle East.
Personally, I'd rather see $16T spent on something useful.
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It's not just you. . .is it just me, or have there been a lot of reports lately of 'large explosions' and 'bangs in the sky', and 'loud flashes of light in the distance', and pretty much they've all been meteorites?
There have been an increasing number of strikes over the past couple of years. Some, like this one, a half dozen instances back, are pretty darned significant. (Though, those ones suffer from a near total media black-out policy, while the smaller ones tend to get the typical, "Funny news, one in a billion, what WILL the insurance companies do, har har har! Go back to sleep, citizen" treatment). Those in power, however, are more or less aware and are preparing in their own ways. One theory suggests that the real reason behind the current world-wide military lock-down is not the 'Terrorism' bugaboo, but rather is to secure the population (and planet resources) for when things get really hairy. Look up Alternative '3' to get an idea. (Rather a cartoony distillation of the concept, but close enough to the real deal to be a relatively good primer on How Things Are.)
There appears to be a definite time-scale thingy going on here. Watch and listen. Almost everything of any significance going on in the world today is directly related to the sky falling tomorrow, so to speak. And most of it is reactionary, religion-based stupidity. We wouldn't have troops in Iraq, and Israel wouldn't be on a genocidal free-for-all if it wasn't for the 'Good' book. Ah, religion! Crack of the Masses.
Favorite news-bite of the week:Madsen, a Washington-based writer and columnist, who often writes for Counterpunch, says that people close to the pope claim that amid these concerns, the pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations."
Though, don't fret. The big rocks aren't due to start whacking us for a little while yet. We'll probably get all the Harry Potter books out before. And thank goodness for that! (sic)
-FL -
Re:hrm
Actually, I believe I read that Intel cleared it with BMW, believe it or not.
Quoted here:
Future incarnations of Intel's entry-level Celeron microprocessor will be dubbed the 300 series. The more powerful and pricey top-of-the-line Pentium chips will be designated the 700 series. Intel executives acknowledged their debt to the German automaker. Don MacDonald, vice president of Intel's sales and marketing group, acknowledged the new names' nod to BMW. "Yes, we talked to them first," he said.
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Actually, the sky IS falling.Denial can be sweet, but I find it better to simply not get in a fluster about the reality of a situation and instead just deal with it.
The fact of the matter is that there are Big Freekin' Rocks falling out of the sky, and there are going to be more of them, and bigger ones, as the next few years progress. Cyclical catastrophe is part of life on Earth.
But don't sweat it. You live many lives, so the fact that this one might end in a big ball of fire shouldn't worry you too much. Enjoy the show.
-FL -
Gotta keep your eye on the ball, son!Problem is, Upper Management knows there's a problem, but since they don't like it when people panic and stop attending their local salt-mines, they make a point of keeping events like this at a very low profile.
I imagine it will be more difficult to do this as things continue to heat up.
-FL -
Re:And get kicked out of the WTO
if we ever had the balls to undertake a sea change in copyright law here, who's going to stop us?
The European Union, or a hypothetical Euro-Japanese Union.
Most of the copyrighted works we like here are domestic, but we export them to every corner of the world.
If the United States gets kicked out of the WTO, will it still be able to import necessities of life other than entertainment products? Look at what happened to Turkey when it ignored one or more provisions of TRIPS.
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Re:Bad laptop antenna's + repeater
cvarc.org
how to build a full wave directional wire antenna (my favorite kind... I used to build a lot of them when I was 15-18 Very good for ham, cb, FM, and TV (built one for a friend to pick up the super bowl for his party))
softcom.net
Javascript calculator for the lengths of the wire
other than that, you just hook a couple antennas together and all is well. There aren't any links to the copper ring antenna or the double quad design that I'm aware of. I kinda made those from my head and bits of other designs and techniques(horizontal stacking free.fr is has pictures of double quads (stacked quads) for UHF, 2.4Ghz is only 6 inches in its longest direction.). If you want detailed instructions just email me and I'll forward you what I've sent to the other guy who asked. If there are more than 5 who care, I'll actually take pictures and put it on a web-page.
If you build quads and need a refelctor (the big metal piece behind them in the pictures) use a cd that is about 1" behind it. You can use that in conjunction with a satelite dish, and it's much better than the coffee can satelite feed that I've seen around
And if you are just crazy, you can build an antenna array like this with stacking : bigskyspaces.com
every time you double the number of antenna's you use, you get 3db more gain. 2=3db 4=6db 8=9db etc. also keep in mind that the antenna's in the wireless devices are about -9 db, so just about anything you do will make them better. I bet wrapping wire around it would improve it. It isn't even concievable that linksys even tried to make an antenna for the PCMCIA cards and the USB adapters. They are so terrible, that a spoon would probably have worked better. The WAP's on the other hand are good dipole antenna's. This makes the radiation pattern circle the antenna. If you aren't on the same level as the WAP, you'ld be better off pointing one antenna to the side. Of course I modified mine to be a quad, and my USB (only externally) so that I could get 75-85% signal strength through two floors (up to my bedroom).
It's definatly an addictive hobby. -
Re:Blockaded? Easy!
I use to be of the same opinion.
The ISP where I worked was desperately
trying to get away from going through
the phone company. Even after the break
up of ATT so many years ago, the phone
companies still have virtual monopolies
in the zone they have control in. This
is because they still control the
infrastructure.
We found the fastest way to circumvent
the infrastructure was to go wireless.
However, in China there would still be
the need to have physical towers that
the government could pinpoint.
Take it the next step and have a wireless
satellite system. I still think they
could target the customer base. You have
to collect your fees in some manner and
I am sure it would be easier for the
government to track the financial transactions
then to go after wireless satellites.
Anyways, the situation now is definately
a tragedy and food for thought. -
Cybertronix
Need adaptability? (sounds like it) Cybertronix R&D - Az