On Afghanistan's Thomas Edison

13.7BillionYears writes "The Institute for War and Peace Reporting details on the exploits of Ghulam Sediq Wardak, a 62 year old semi-literate Afghan with 341 clever inventions to his credit. His first was a radio powered by the low voltage produced by the human body. His most recent is a 1980 Volkswagen rigged to run on solar power. A handful of others are mentioned. Like many a Slashdotter, his parents were once very worried and he eschews patents. 'The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money,' he says. 'I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world.'"

Comments

Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[SYFer]

This man deserves some kind of geek homage. His picture (which I could not readily google up but would love to see) belongs on a Slashdot category icon. To "wardak" should be the expression to replace "jerry rig." If Futurama were still on, there would need to be a character named "Sediq." If we can invoke Kent Brockman here, we can honor this noble man.

I for one welcome our new clever, semi-literate Afghan overlord.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, it's "jury rig," not "jerry rig." The phrase comes from the nautical term "jury mast," which is a temporary mast erected in place of a damaged one.

-Mike

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Anonymous Coward]

OED has it as coming from "Jury Rigged", Naut. Having temporary makeshift rigging"

But jerry-rigged came from that too, to describe makeshirt German things in the world wars.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Wetterschneider]

After poking around a bit, it seems that "jerry-rig" is a variation of "jury-rig" with the subtle difference that the former is slapdash and haphazard while the latter is temporary. The former looks like a better fit in regards to the article.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[SYFer]

OMFG! Do you think I may have pissed them off?

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[AndroidCat]

More likely "jerry-rigged" is a cross from jerry-built, which isn't a german reference either but for the infamously bad ship-builders Jerry Bros of Liverpool.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[x-caiver]

Actually those are two separate things.
You're right about the 'jury rig' stuff, not disagreeing with that BTW.

Some dictionaries will say that 'jerry rig' means the same as 'jury rig' (that is what dictionary.com would tell you, for example). But you can find explanations of the differences. Basically think: Jury rig = temporary, quick-fix solution, possibly a novel implementation & Jerry rig = not necessarily temporary, junk solution.

See the Wordorigins.org J-word page, as well as this WordCourt page or this Phrase Finder post

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Suppafly]

Correct, the phrases are jerry-built and jury-rigged.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/jerry.htm l

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Surak_Prime]

Actually, it's from the French navy - "Rig du Jour", or rigged for the day. It implies a temporary repair on the rigging.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[pdp0x14]

That's lovely, Cliff, but there's no word "rig" in French.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Anonymous Coward]

In the South and in some other places, they call it Nigger-rigged. It's a reflection of the old idea that black people never have more tools than a hammer and a screwdriver, much less the technical knowledge to cobble together a good long term solution. Hence, if your car stalls on the highway, your best hope is to nigger-rig it and pray that it gets you home.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Anonymous Coward]

For the 21st Century, we use 'Cino-Engineered'

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[DunbarTheInept]

Nautical lingo often contains vocabulary from a mix of many languages, because for a long time it was the one vocation where people of mixed languages got thrown together in one job, and the one vocation where someone might actually travel to more than a few different countries in a lifetime, and be exposed to a variety of languages.

So using the french "du jour" with the english "rig" is perfectly plausable. Nautical lingo is almost its own seperate language anyway (When have you ever heard "rig" used in english to mean "collection of nets and ropes that hold a structure in place", in some context OTHER than sailing?)

I don't know if the poster is right or not about the origin of the word, but the fact that it contains a mix of french and english, by itself, is not the problem you make it out to be.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Anonymous Coward]

No homage until there is proof of what he has supposedly done!
The story is touching, but where is the proof that any of it is true? He might be a great tinkerer, but no way is he going to fit enough solar panels on ANY conventional car chassis to go anywhere without a storage medium such as batteries.
The credulity of Slashdotters amazes me. Let's see hard proof this old dune coon is what they say he is.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Anonymous Coward]

"(When have you ever heard "rig" used in english to mean "collection of nets and ropes that hold a structure in place", in some context OTHER than sailing?)"

Lighting rig?

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Silverlock]

I Am Not A Linguist, but I once heard (and it makes sense to me) that "jerry-rig" was coined in WWII as a disparagement of German engineering. Gerry-rig, perhaps? Weren't the Germans called Gerries like the Japanese were called Japs?

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, the trucker and circus workers I know speak of rigging their loads/tents. They speak of the ropes/nets/tarps they use as "rig".

Isn't one of the jobs on a movie set known as a rigger?

That's with about five seconds of brainsweat - I'm sure there are others.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[srleffler]

Actually, you misread your own references. You were thinking of 'jerry-built', which is distinct from 'jury rig', having both different origins and slightly different meaning. 'Jerry rig' however, means the same as 'jury rig', being just a corruption of it (probably inspired by the confusion with 'jerry-built'.) The grandparent post is correct that 'jury rig' is in some sense more correct than 'jerry rig'.

Re:Geek, thy name is "Sediq"

[x-caiver]

I didn't misread, I just didn't add the part that says "jerry rig" is not very proper. You'll find references that claim it is a substitute for 'jury rig', but you'll find just as many references saying that it is used as a substitute by people that don't know what they're saying. It is like "patently obvious", "I could care less", and "irregardless" - just because people say it, doesn't make it correct. :)

Interesting!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, why can't this attitude be shared by more people? Really?

Re:Interesting!

[celeritas_2]

This is the same attitude of open source. It really should be adopted by more people, artists, musicians, inventors and innovators. A creative-without-pay attitude would be a big part in making a happier more equal society.

Re:Interesting!

[merdark]

Equal how? How do you suppose those 'creative-without-pay' types get food and shelter? Are you proposing we have xx% of people just be creative and poor while the remaining percent of people just take take take? Or are you proposing that *everyone* be a creative type?

I can see problems with both options.

Re:Interesting!

[DigiShaman]

Sometimes they can't if the idea is patented. The inventor may say yes, but the corporation he sold his rights to would (for the most part) say no. At least that's the way it is in the modern world. So if you can invent, chances are you already devoted your personal resources to the company you work for...save for a few personal projects they wouldn't know about.

Re:Interesting!

[ajs318]

How do you suppose those 'creative-without-pay' types get food and shelter?

Possibly, as a direct consequence of the generosity of other "creative without pay" types. Yes, it's possible to survive without much money, if you know what you are doing. You still need some money for whatever you can't DIY, but it's surprising how little -- and how easy it is to earn. When there is more than one of you, then it gets even easier. And where there are people leaving behind loads of good stuff you can use, it's next to a joke.

Are you proposing we have xx% of people just be creative and poor while the remaining percent of people just take take take? Or are you proposing that *everyone* be a creative type?

Everyone should be creative: if everyone gives whatever they can, there will be enough for everyone to take what they need. {It should be noted that there are two problems with this arrangement: people who give less than they can, and people who take more than they need.}

Re:Interesting!

[celeritas_2]

getting 0 money from creative work from everyone is ridiculus i agree, but so is Disney extending copywrites and continuing to profit from works done decades before. There needs to be more balance between giving things away and making billions off of them.

'Semi-literate' Slashdotter?

[Mordant]

Say it isn't so!

Re:'Semi-literate' Slashdotter?

[Timesprout]

It isn't. This guy is way too smart to even look at /.

Re:'Semi-literate' Slashdotter?

[aristotle-dude]

What difference would it make? Most ./ers don't even bother reading the article most of the time anyway.

Proof to Microsoft of prior art!

[u-235-sentinel]

His first was a radio powered by the low voltage produced by the human body.

I would say this is prior art. Guess their patent is history :D

Re:Proof to Microsoft of prior art!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Microsoft's patent has nothing to do with powering anything by the voltage produced by the human body.

Re:Proof to Microsoft of prior art!

[Short Circuit]

IIRC, the Microsoft patent is more involved in using the human body for data transmission. It didn't have anything to do with power transmission or generation.

Re:Proof to Microsoft of prior art!

[williwilli]

Anyone have a design for this?

Re:Proof to Microsoft of prior art!

[builderbob_nz]

Sorry to blow your comment there, but the power transmission was exactly what set their idea apart from those of pure data transmission.

Link to the thread

Re:Proof to Microsoft of prior art!

[SillySlashdotName]

I CAN NOT believe no one is making the obvious MATRIX jokes/comments here...

well

[abscondment]

"The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money," he says. "I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world."

If he wanted to that more completely, he could have gone about patenting his inventions and through that legal ownership making them freely available for all to use. Maybe it would be nice if someone used the system against itself once in a while, eh?

Re:well

[Neil Blender]

If he wanted to that more completely, he could have gone about patenting his inventions and through that legal ownership making them freely available for all to use.

No kidding. It's almost always the 'assignee' who causes all the trouble, not the 'inventor'. Problem is, it's pretty damn expensive to get a patent, at least in the US.

Re:well

[Short Circuit]

Maybe it would be nice if someone used the system against itself once in a while, eh?

Do you perchance mean "Use a system against its abusers." instead?

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe "Use the system against it's normal use" would be better--the way it's set up, many things we'd call abuse are considered legally sound. since the majority of times a patent is issued the inventor is seeking money, one could say that using patents to prevent moneymaking is turning the system on itself.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

If he wanted to that more completely, he could have gone about patenting his inventions and through that legal ownership making them freely available for all to use.

Merely publishing achieves the same thing for much less cost. The purpose of patents is to restrict implementations. Turning copyright upside-down works for the GPL as it needs to place restrictions on copying. Turning copyright upside-down works for BSD as they use it to disclaim liability. What purpose does turning a patent upside-down achieve? It's certainly not "prior art" as all you need is to be published to count as prior art.

Re:well

[Stallmanite]

If he wanted to that more completely, he could have gone about patenting his inventions and through that legal ownership making them freely available for all to use.

That is unnecessary. From what i have read, just publishing your idea has the same effect.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

published idea = documented prior art

Re:well

[Pharmboy]

No kidding. It's almost always the 'assignee' who causes all the trouble, not the 'inventor'. Problem is, it's pretty damn expensive to get a patent, at least in the US.

This is probably a good thing that it is expensive. If patents were as cheap as domain names (Patents as Cheap As $7.99 When You Register 25 or More!), we would have applications flooding the patent office, thus more patents on every stupid thing in the world. It would render the internet useless in a matter of a couple years. We would have patents applied for everything, pressing certain keyboard combinations, methods of posting to a site, and other garbage that would create so much noise, that by sheer odds you would see some of these get approved.

Some people (or corporations) would be submitting hundreds of similar patents, in the hopes that just a few will get approved, so they can start sending letters for royalties. If you think the IP/patent situation is bad now, just think about spam is cheaper than bulk mail, and you get the picture.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you by chance a female Troll? I don't think I've ever seen one here on /. And you're part of CLIT to top it off.

Re:well

[laejoh]

If he'd do that the US would label him as a terrorist and invade his country!

Oh wait...

Re:well

[Kenneth]

Finally somebody pointing this out. One of the primary purposes of the patent system is (or at least was) to assure that ideas are not lost. Benjamin Franklin also did not like patents. One of his inventions, the glass armonica disappeared completely, and although it has been re-reverse engineered, it is difficult to know how close to Franklin's original designs the new ones come.

Even if you want to give your invention to the world, you should patent it. You can then release the patent for the general public (there is a term for this, but I forget what it is). Simply saying "I'm not going to patent it because I am a better person than all those other fools" is not only quite arrogant, but forgets entirely about half of the entire purpose of the patent system, namely to document useful and interesting inventions for use in the future.

Slashdot REALLY hates patents because of the issues with software patents. I would argue that many software patents are indeed stupid, others do have value. For example, patents involving lossy compression where what is lost is determined by thousands of hours of human perceptual study costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. This research most likely wouldn't happen if there wasn't some hope of return on investment. On the other hand, Amazon's one click shopping patent is plain stupid. What's in-between is a grey area, LZW compression for instance it is non-obvious, but not that hard.

However in the real world (software is wierd, it moves too fast) seventeen years just isn't that long (maybe when you're seventeen it seems like it, but trust me after about 25 time just starts to fly by).

Whatever you feel about peopel who try to make money on what they do, patents are a good way to make sure you indeed help mankind, not just now but later. If for whatever reason your invention should disappear, someone can find it and make it again. If you don't, people will have to guess from inadequate plans.

Re:well

[theslashdude]

From another point of few, that is one of the biggest problems with the patent system. Large corporations can afford to have patent lawyers on staff, so their cost per individial patent is much smaller and they can flood the patent office with applications hoping that some stick. A small company or individual, on the other hand, has to think long and hard whether their invention is worth the $10K-$20K it will cost to patent it. Not to mention that if the invention is really good, you will probably go bankrupt trying to defend it in court from the big guys before you make a dime on it.

Re:well

[Sepper]

Yeah but won't releasing the invention to the world be considered prior art? Even in a different country?

Any lawyers could comment on this?

Re:well

[SillySlashdotName]

1) According to the article, "many" of his inventions are new to him or his area, BUT NOT to other areas.

He is widely admired among the academic community, although some point out that many of his inventions are not original ...

"I have seen some of his inventions, like this car," said Edrish, a lecturer in the electronics department of Kabul University. "They are new for Afghans, but these things have already been invented elsewhere in the world."

2) According to the article, he made more than the average citizen of Afghanistan CURRENTLY makes in TEN YEARS from his radio 'invention' when he was 17 (at 62 now, that makes it 45 years ago - circa 1959).

He made more than a thousand of the radios which were sold at less than two US dollars a piece.

According to several sources, the CURRENT average income in Afghanistan is between $180 and $200 PER YEAR.

According to the article, he is CURRENTLY living rent free and receiving $200 PER MONTH (average ANNUAL income for Afghanistan) while working on his current project - and his FAMILY is being supported by his four grown sons.

I agree that he is not making MASSIVE amounts of money - either by US standards or even by Afghanistan standards, but he sure doesn't seem to be hurting, either.

According to the US Census Bureau,the median (NOT average - two different numbers) income in the US was $42,228 as of the last census. If we assume the median is exactly the same as the average (they are not, not necessarily even close, but it gives us a number to throw around, and Google isn't giving an average US income for any year, or the median income for Afghanistan ...) then, by also assuming he has already been working on his current project for an entire year (not stated - or even hinted at in the article) - he would have received a total of 22 years worth of income (at the average rate) from just those two 'inventions', or close to $900,000 if working in the US at the same ratio.

His purpose in inventing may not have been the money, but he has certainly done well for himself money-wise from his inventions.

I don't know what the patent laws are in Afghanistan, but it might very well be that he CAN'T patent his ideas - either Afghanistan must abide by other countries patent laws and he is barred by prior art, or possibly he can not afford the legal fees/bribes necessary, or other reasons particular to the area or political situation.

1980 Volkswagen?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

My father's foot was largely undamaged when one of these went over his foot. Nonetheless these aren't the lightest cars in the world. There's no way you could drive this at anywhere near 25mph on solar panels alone. I have some doubts about this feel good story.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Short Circuit]

I'm picturing the solar-powered van from an old favorite of my childhood. Of course, Szalinski probably didn't think to charge up batteries for cloudy days.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[orulz]

Notice that the article says 25kph, not mph. 25kph =~ 15.5mph. Sounds more reasonable like that, doesn't it?

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Buran]

Without knowing what kind of engine is being used, its specs, and other details, it's hard to say. The Beetle is a very modifiable car and it's not that heavy -- it was designed, after all, for a small 34hp engine to be able to push it to cruising speeds on the Autobahns and yet be easily maintained by the ordinary people who would buy them.

The Beetle changed little from its mid-1930s beginnings as the KdF-Wagen to the final version that rolled off the Puebla assembly line in 2003.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[DaveJay]

25mph?

The article says 25kph.

That's a bit more than half of 25mph.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[amacedo]

It depends.

Volkswagen is a brand, not a model. In 1980 there we're at least the Polo, Golf, Passat and Beegle models (and their respecive subsets). The first Golf VWs were very lightweight, my family owned one in the 80s.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Chris Pimlott]

My own foot was undamaged when my brother drove a 1991 Subaru Legacy over it, and that's over 2500 pounds. I don't think the foot test means that much.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, emm...

The Beegle wasn't very popular because the ride was so "ruff".

(sorry. sorry! sorry...)

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[BosstonesOwn]

You fail to consider the strength of the sun in those countries. I think those countries have a bit stronger sun then alot of places in this world.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds more reasonable like that, doesn't it?

Nope. Sunlight, even direct cloudless sunlight in Panama, has only so much power per square unit of solar collector. It IS possible to use a large surface of highly-efficient photovoltaics and light, wind-cheating bodies to make a reasonably well-performing, impractical, uncomfortable car. It is not possible to do the same using a VW, unless the solar power is collected and stored over several day's time.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

What do you mean 'those countries'? There's nothing weird about the sunlight in Afghanistan and it's nowhere near powerful enough to drive any 1980 VW model anywhere near 25mph. Look at existing solar powered vehicle designs. They are radically different from regular cars because they have to be extra light, wherever they run in the world.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Sounds no more reasonable. There's a power mismatch by an order of magnitude here (and I don't mean a binary order of magnitude).

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[nacturation]

What do you mean 'those countries'? There's nothing weird about the sunlight in Afghanistan...

I don't know about Afghanistan, but you get more energy per square meter from the sun on the equator than you do in, say, Portland Oregon which is at about 45 degrees North. In Kenya, you would get sqrt(2) or around 1.4 times more energy than you would in Portland. That 40% difference could easily be enough to get a car up to 25 km/h, which is 40% less than 25 mph.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[dukeisgod]

I once had a 1980 Ford fullsize pickup run my foot over with no damage. The foot test is useless.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[224036583-1]

downhill

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sunlight (total energy available) at sea-level is about 1100Watts/m^2. He's in Afghanistan, so it's higher up. Maybe he can get 1500Watts/m^2 on a good day. That's pretty good. With say 5o% efficent solar panels, that's about a horsepower, consistantly straight from solar. It only takes about 11-15HP to push a Bug down the highway at 60MPH. I bet it could do 15MPH on just one horsepower.

With some modest solar panels a fairly heavy car such as a VW could easily be run in a start-stop (charge-discharge cycles) sort of way quite easily, and with a large enough bank of batteries, you might even go a fair distance, and have some good accelerating power.

Sure, it's not going to set a speed record for crossing the US, but it might very well work in Afghanistan for short jaunts.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[NonSequor]

I parked an SUV on a guy's foot one time. He had boots on, but they weren't steel toe or anything. He told me I was parked on his foot but I didn't believe him at first because he wasn't screaming in pain. Surprisingly, nothing was broken.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Afrosheen]

Well, that answers the question 'Are SUV drivers as stupid as they appear in traffic'. Answer? Unequivocally, yes. ;)

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Volmarias]

Octal?

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[DunbarTheInept]

Indeed. An automobile tire is designed to spread the weight out over an area. (I think I've heard of this concept before called "pressure...") And that means that if you want to know how much a car will hurt when it runs over your foot, don't look at the weight of the car. Look at the pressure of the tire. A bicyclist running over your foot hurts more than a car does, because the bike tire is higher pressure. Sure the bike weighs a lot less, but that weight will be concentrated onto a very small area of your foot.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Ancient_Hacker]

Your doubts are quite valid.

Sunlight is 1100 watts per square meter only perpendicular to the Sun. And solar cells are only about 10% efficient. If we assume he's not savvy enough to work up a dual-axis sun-seeking servomechanism, that gives us about 50 watts to work with. That's under a tenth of a horsepower. ONE horsepower can raise 550 pounds one foot per second, so this solar powered car, with frictionless tires, could raise its say 2200 pounds about 0.6 inches per second. If we assume we'd like to climb a 1% slope, the VW then could manage, let's see,.... about 4 inches per second. Waay under 1MPH. Even less if you don't have frictionless tires.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Anonymous Coward]

added to that (I'm guessing) the desert is pretty sunny.

I don't know what the weather in afganistan is like, but just cause you can't do it in washington state doesn't mean you can't do it in afganistan.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[SillySlashdotName]

I can't gainsay your numbers, but want to know WHY you "get more energy per square meter from the sun on the equator than you do in, say, Portland Oregon..."

If it is because of the angle of incidence due to the curvature of the earth, then I call bullshit. How hard can it be to angle the solar panel so that it is perpendicular to the sun?

If it is because of the additional atmosphere it must travel through, or the additional distance it travels from the sun, then what does the sqrt(2) come from? I would have thought the amount of radiation would fall off as the distance from the sun increased, but the distance would not be much more than 4000 miles difference from the sun, and after the 93,000,000 miles already traveled, the .0043% difference would not have had that much impact.

Not disputing your numbers, just wanting to know what they mean - I think I can learn something here.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[nacturation]

Yes, the sqrt(2) comes from the angle alone. At 0 degrees (equator) a car's roof is perpendicular to the sunlight. At 45 degrees North/South the roof is naturally on a 45 degree angle, ignoring seasonal variations. Yes, it's true that you can have solar panels which automatically adjust to follow the sun but for a car's roof, any consumer model would not likely have this feature -- too likely it will get damaged, stolen, break down, etc.

There's also, as you mentioned, more atmosphere the sun needs to go through. I hadn't thought of that, but I don't know offhand how to calculate that anyways -- probably the same sqrt(2) multiplied by an atmospheric absorption factor, so if the atmosphere eats up 20% of the energy at the equator, it would eat up about 38% at 45 degrees North. However it factors in, that too would affect the amount of available energy.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[SillySlashdotName]

Thanks.

As far as the adjusting of the angle, that would have to be done anyway - the sun is not stationary in the sky. For even slightly reasonable usage, the sun would have to be tracked from the East to the West as the day progressed - otherwise the panel would only be useful for several hours each day.

In addition, if I set the angle by hand before I started out tot he store, then I would have to reset it when I came back - even assuming I did not have to make any turns on the way to the store.

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[nacturation]

In addition, if I set the angle by hand before I started out tot he store, then I would have to reset it when I came back - even assuming I did not have to make any turns on the way to the store.

Right. Even more reason why solar tracking likely won't be a feature of most consumer-level solar cars, or so I predict. But maybe something simple can be rigged up via a series of small rotating Fresnel lenses. The gradations of the lens aren't circular as with most Fresnel lenses but would be in a straight line. The lens can be at a fixed angle for most of North America and still get pretty good accuracy. Then just rotate the lens along the horizontal plane to point towards the sun. That way, the sunlight hits the lens and gets refracted downwards so that it's approximately perpendicular to the plane of the solar cell.

Hm... time to ring up the patent office I think. :)

Re:1980 Volkswagen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there's a God

Signs of a true scientist...

[GillBates0]

But fame and riches have never been what motivated him.

"The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money," he says. "I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world."

Sadly a rapidly diminishing breed nowadays, what with overwhelming patenting and copyright laws and abuse. Hats of to this guy.

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[Natestradamus]

Profit and service need not be mutually exclusive. It is good to render service to your fellow man. It is all the better to turn a nice profit doing it!

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in America.

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[miope]

Yes, definitively, we need more people like him.

I think that this guy has not only excelent skills, he has excellent "simple" ideas. This kind of "simple" ideas which nobody thaughts about. That's the essence of an inventor

I liked this part:

When he heard that unsanitary conditions promote the spread of bacteria and disease, he decided to invent an automatic hand washing system to promote cleanliness. When someone steps on a contact located beneath a basin, it activates a stream of water from the tap and opens a drawer containing soap and a towel. When the person steps off the contact, the water stops and the drawer closes.

Could anybody tell me *why* we don't have "don't touch anything" bathrooms?. I know, there are optical sensors for the tap and a few more things, but I've never seen a public bathroom (i.e. restaurant, job, etc.) designed to be used without touching things. It's not so dificult, so... why not?

Or I'm being excesively maniac? ;-)

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[dJCL]

I saw an interesting variation on this while viewing the Canada Day ceremonies in Charlottetown this year... Near the huge line of portable toilets(with similary long lines of people... it was an interesting 2 dimensional array...) there were a group of 4 sided wash stations that pumped water when you stepped on a small foot pump in the base and dispensing soapy water. The paper towel holder and disposal bin were also built in... I'd not seen those before, but they sound similar in idea.

(Of course, I just wandered over to a local resteraunt and used the washrooms with no lineup, and therefore the classical taps to dispense water...)

Anyway, just thought you should know!

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[citog]

In Afghanistan they probably are close enough to mutually exclusive. People just don't have the money regardless of how useful said invention is. Maybe he could garner profit from services to the occupation forces, but it's likely their bureacratic nature would shun him. How many administrators would take on this semi-literate chap?

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[rikkards]

Probably the second most dirty thing on the inside of a public bathroom after the knobs for the sink is the door handle to the exit of the bathroom.

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

rikkards wrote: Probably the second most dirty thing on the inside of a public bathroom after the knobs for the sink is the door handle to the exit of the bathroom.

This is most certainly true. And yet they insist on making bathroom doors that open in! I want to be able to push the door open with my elbow, darn it!

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[Idarubicin]

The trick is to use the paper towel to open the door before you throw it out. Of course, if the bathroom only has hot air hand dryers, you're out of luck.

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[zrobotics]

actually the door handle is probably dirtier than the sink because a lot of people dont wash thieir hands

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[modecx]

Not only that, but you would think that it would make more sense to do it that way from a fire-safety aspect. I know that if I were designing such a place (room with no other exit), that I'd make the door swing out. Senseless.

Say there's a fire. You can't just run out the door. You've got to open it, then hold it for the next guy (optional step, but for the sake of making my point...), and then go through. Clearly not nearly as efficient.

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[John Courtland]

Some of the more upscale restaurants I've been to have always running water, and I've definitely seen the foot-pedal sink before. Perhaps they're just too expensive and/or inaccessible for wheelchair bound people?

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[atarian]

I've "patronised" public toilets in Germany that have little IR beam/sensor things in them near the top. They detect when you move away from them and automatically flush.

The same place had washbasins with taps that switched on when you held your hands underneath them. The hot air hand driers worked in the same way.

Automatic doors would have made it al perfect but they seemed to have neglected that.

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could anybody tell me *why* we don't have "don't touch anything" bathrooms?. I know, there are optical sensors for the tap and a few more things, but I've never seen a public bathroom (i.e. restaurant, job, etc.) designed to be used without touching things. It's not so dificult, so... why not?

Most of the washrooms at the airports and malls I pass through are like this (Well the newer airports). I expect they don't put them in bars because drunks might find them too fascinating...

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could anybody tell me *why* we don't have "don't touch anything" bathrooms?

We do. They're utterly pointless. The cloth you use to wash your dishes has hundreds of times as many bacteria (including fecal bacteria) living in it as a tap or door knob does.

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[Jens_UK]

I've never seen a public bathroom (i.e. restaurant, job, etc.) designed to be used without touching things. It's not so dificult, so... why not?

A mallbetween my home and work features touchless sinks, touchless soap, and touchless paper towel dispensing. About the only thing left is that the door is manual.

Re:Signs of a true scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rest stops along I-94 in North Dakota have all these including maze entrance with no doors. The only doors on are the camode stalls for privacy.

How generous

[WildBeast]

Now we know why Afghanistan is poor :)

Re:How generous

[Limburgher]

I'm sure the decades of economic isolation, Soviet occupation, Taliban rule, and then having the living fuck bombed out of them by the U.S. had NOTHING to do with it. :)

Re:How generous

[Afrosheen]

Yeah, all that's true, but you forgot to mention the huge cash crop of Opium that Afghans turn a mighty profit from. With the US bombings, there are alot of opium fields disappearing, and injured people have a hard time tending crops.

Re:How generous

[builderbob_nz]

the huge cash crop of Opium

Sure but what are the chances that this money actually goes back to the Afgan people?

Re:How generous

[plugger]

Opium production is higher now than when the Taliban controlled much of the country. I doubt the Northern Alliance are concerned about stopping the trade, more likely they are making money from it.

BBC Report June 2004

BBC Report February 2002

Re:How generous

[Afrosheen]

Extremely high. With a record export of $2.5bn expected this year, some farmers are rich beyond their wildest dreams. I read an article last night about an Afghan man and his brother making well over $5600 per month growing Opium. While they felt guilt over it since Islam prohibits growing or using drugs, they asked Allah for forgiveness since they have no other choice. They both support around 35 people, and I'm sure they aren't complaining. When a crop of wheat on that same land only nets you about $121 per month, and you have 35 babies sucking at your teats, the choice is clear. It's a purely economic choice and the consequences aren't considered (people in my country aren't hooked on this shit, why should I care).

A post above mine has some nice BBC links, but googling 'afghanistan opium' will land around 125,000 hits. Some of those articles may lead you to links between the CIA and bin Laden, drug lords, etc. Pretty fascinating stuff.

He's a Wardak, alright.

[Short Circuit]

Or just call any IP-benevolent inventor a "Wardak" ...

Re:He's a Wardak, alright.

[bluethundr]

Or just call any IP-benevolent inventor a "Wardak" ...

I suppose that would depend on whose idea of intellectual property rights you are talking about. I think I know where the lions share of dotters stand.

A little disturbing that a google on the term will put WIPO right there at the top so you can't miss it!

Interesting, I couldn't get to the WIPO page by clicking that link. Maybe a piering issue on my end or perhaps they've been DDoSed. Not that I would eeeeeevvver suggest that doing so would be a fantabulous idea!

Re:He's a Wardak, alright.

[nacturation]

I think I know where the lions share of dotters stand.

By the way (hey, the other guy got +5), the lion's share doesn't mean the majority. The lion's share is 100%... everything. It's from one of Aesop's Fables:

The Lion's Share

The Lion went once a-hunting along with the Fox, the Jackal,
and the Wolf. They hunted and they hunted till at last they
surprised a Stag, and soon took its life. Then came the question
how the spoil should be divided. "Quarter me this Stag," roared
the Lion; so the other animals skinned it and cut it into four
parts. Then the Lion took his stand in front of the carcass and
pronounced judgment: The first quarter is for me in my capacity
as King of Beasts; the second is mine as arbiter; another share
comes to me for my part in the chase; and as for the fourth
quarter, well, as for that, I should like to see which of you
will dare to lay a paw upon it."

"Humph," grumbled the Fox as he walked away with his tail
between his legs; but he spoke in a low growl.

"You may share the labours of the great, but you will not
share the spoil."

Re:He's a Wardak, alright.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The lion's share is 100%... everything."

Almost. Your admonishment is correctly directed, but the absoluteness of your definition isn't so. It's 100% or nearly 100%.

You can verify this with most dictionaries.

btw, just because there is a direct historical or literary connection does not mean the meaning of a phrase has not itself evolved. In this case, it hasn't changed much, if at all.

Fable -> 100%
Modern day understanding, definition -> 100% or near 100%

(I suppose one could also argue practically, even lion's don't eat everything. They usually eat until they are full, that's it. Esp. during times of high wildebeast birth rates, plenty of incomplete consumed carcasses remain for hyenas and the like.)

Re:He's a Wardak, alright.

[dave420]

In that particular case the fable's title is funny, not accurate. According to the dictionary, the lion's share is the majority, not the total.

Re:He's a Wardak, alright.

[nacturation]

In that particular case the fable's title is funny, not accurate. According to the dictionary, the lion's share is the majority, not the total.

I should have written my response as the "original" version of the lion's share. Yes, it has changed over time to mean something different. Those who initially referred to the lion's share probably knew Aesop's fables and what it really meant. It was undoubtedly overheard by others who didn't know the source and they just inferred that it meant about everything. Then they started using it and people two degrees of Kevin Bacon away learned it as the majority.

No doubt we'll see "could of" in the dictionary soon. Of course, it's "could have" but people who don't read much and only hear it in conversation hear the "could've" and it sounds like "could of". So they start using "could of" and boom... now it's the new English, "for all intensive purposes". :)

Re:He's a Wardak, alright.

[Dick Faze]

It was undoubtedly overheard by others who didn't know the source and they just inferred that it meant about everything. Then they started using it and people two degrees of Kevin Bacon away learned it as the majority.

Yes, two wrongs don't make a right. Ten wrongs don't make a right. But somewhere beyond 10,000,000 wrongs, you finally do make a right. What was once a definition becomes subject to opinion and whim, soon freedom is oppression and love is hate as well....

Goal of the successful

[nuggz]

Notice how his goal isn't to make money.

The inventions are just things that happens along the way.

Re:Goal of the successful

[strobexii]

Notice how his goal isn't to make money.

Notice how his salary is $2,400/year.

Re:Goal of the successful

[TheVidiot]

Notice how in Afghanistan, that makes him one rich dude!

Re:Goal of the successful

[mibus]

Right...

1. Invent something
2. ???
3. Don't Profit.

Got it! :-)

Re:Goal of the successful

[strobexii]

Notice how in Afghanistan, that makes him one rich dude! According to the most recent report, the average Afghani's earns $2,400 per year. That makes him one middle-class Afghani dude.

To whomever who modded my post as flamebait (and those who modded the original poster up), you baffle my mind. While we can admire this man for his ideals and ingenuity, we can't really use him as a model of financial success, even by Afghani standards.

Re:Goal of the successful

[SillySlashdotName]

Please provide a source for your numbers.

According to what I can find, the average Afghani earns between $180 and $200 per year, not the number you state. Your post may not be flamebait (don't remember seeing it) but the number you use in this post is wrong (over ten times high) from what I can find.

If he is getting $200 per month, then he is getting an annual income of 12 times the average, PLUS living rent free, PLUS being supported by his four sons.

NOT middle class.

Not only that, but he is probably used to it, as he brought in about 10 years of income from his first invention - he made 'over a thousand' radios and sold them for 'under two dollars' or close to $2000 45 years ago.

That long ago the average income was less (see the links) but not much less (again, see the links - especially the one where the Afghani government states that the Afghani people in twenty years could have gone from $200 to $500 per year if not for the wars and fighting) so I would guess he qualifies as a non-middle class dude, dude.

link

link

link

link

link

Clearly not like Edison

[hotspotbloc]

'The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money,' he says. 'I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world.'"

Edison was notorious for jealously guarding his patents and squeezing them for every dollar he could. This man is a much better human being.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[xOleanderx]

But edisons invention were very groundbreaking... Edison's Inventions

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[hotspotbloc]

But edisons invention were very groundbreaking

I completely agree. He can up with a wide range of inventions that made a very big difference in the world. He also was a shameless self promoter who did things like invent the "electric chair" solely to prove how "dangerous" his competitor's rival electrical standard (Nikola Tesla's AC) was compared to his DC.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[GrpA]

Edison invented very little. His real skill was in taking the credit for other's work. Most of "Edison's Inventions" came from his employees, not the man himself.

Again, clearly not like this guy.

Edison represents everything that many real inventors resent about patents and the patent system.

GrpA

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[davejenkins]

Edison was notorious for jealously guarding his patents and squeezing them for every dollar he could. This man is a much better human being.

Hrmmmm... So, you're saying that profit and capital gain from invention is evil? I see. Can you give me half your salary please? (no reason-- but you seem to hate money and I like money)

Edison certainly was a sonofabitch on guarding his inventions, and certainly was not above hucksterism and stunts to promote his stuff, but remember-- Edison's companies went on to form the backbone of the American economy in the 20th Century. That economic might has ended up bettering the lives of billions of people, and saving millions.

I love Open Source software, but not out of some RMS-style people's democratic republic-- but out of the superior model it provides for development of code, and money.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[FleaPlus]

Exactly. He sounds a lot more like Nikola Tesla to me.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Planesdragon]

So, you're saying that profit and capital gain from invention is evil?

Yes. They are, however, contained evil that's benefical to society.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

Edison is better compared to Bill Gates. Both are/were in charge of a lot employees and made their reputation by skimming kudos from their employee's discoveries.

One could also contend that both worship(ed) the almighty dollar rather than some higher goal.

Sure they deserve credit, but as administrators, not engineers or scientists.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[anethema]

It's true. Edison was a great business man, not so great an inventor.

What he was most famous for (the lightbulb) was invented long before him. He simply combined the old invention of the lightbulb, with someone elses long lasting filament, and bang, edison 'invented the lightbulb'.

Most of his inventions came out of his menlo park complex, where he had MANY employees who were told to invent any wacky thing they desired. But everything coming out of menlo park was credited to edison.

The mentioned nikola tesla was the exact type of inventor people idolize, its amazing that he doesnt recieve more recognition. He invented the AC generator, different types of transformers, the resonating (tesla) coil, the radio, and many other things.

Quite a few inventions of tesla's are somehow credited to other people in popular educational literature. For example, the radio. Ask most people who invented the radio they will say marconi. Yet tesla had patented everything marconi wanted to patent years before. There was a huge lawsuit going right to the supreme court and they ruled marconis patents invalid, since tesla's were prior art. Yet even wiht this supreme court decision, most encyclopedias will list marconi as radio's inventor.

Eiiither way, the main point beeing is edison wasnt all that great of an inventor, more a very shrewd business man. Unless you are in business, and wish to learn more about how a ruthless business man should behave, edison isnt really someone you should be idolizing.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Snad]

Eiiither way, the main point beeing is edison wasnt all that great of an inventor, more a very shrewd business man. Unless you are in business, and wish to learn more about how a ruthless business man should behave, edison isnt really someone you should be idolizing.

So what you're saying is that Edison was his generation's Bill Gates?

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[drafalski]

Westinghouse, not Tesla. (link)

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that Edison was his generation's Bill Gates?

Absolutely.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... Very like Bill.
Bill has done very little himself, yet due to his mastery at biz, gets all the credit. Some cartoon even made out that Bill (and him alone) was responcable for the Internet.

That pissed me off.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Mr. Slippery]

So, you're saying that profit and capital gain from invention is evil?

When the gain goes to people who aren't the people doing the inventing (as in the case of Edison, and most modern corporations), yes. When government intervention in the marketplace (in the form of patents) interferes with innovation and is used as a tool of legal intimidation, yes.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

profit and capital gain from invention is evil?

No, profit and capital gain from someone else's invention, without giving them credit is evil.

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Tesla = Linus Torvalds with AC being Linux?

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Tesla got an SI unit named after himself...

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[anethema]

Yes, I would say parallels could definatly be drawn.

Bill gates is a very ruthless business man, like edison. Bill gates himself is worse than edison because he dindt actually create anything. He purchased DOS, used other's ideas for windows, and leveraged his advantage to become a monopoly.

I dont know if edison would have done the same, but he did create the foundation of a very large company (General Electric).

But, at least edison did work on some stuff, and you can say the stuff that came out of menlo park WAS usefull and bettered mankind, even if essentially none of it is in use today. The things invented at menlo park were a gateway to bigger and better things.

It just irks me sometimes that edison gets so much recognition, and tesla gets so little. Go to the smithsonian and try to find references to tesla, good luck.

Find the area about electricity, it will show the niagra falls power plant, and the caption reads something like 'and here is the first powerplant, which was startd in the magic of menlo park' or something along those lines.. This all but credits edison for it, when he had nothing to do with it whatsoever. He tryed to push an inferior standard. He would have succeeded had tesla not had some more schrewd backers, and perhaps if his idea wasnt totally unworkable. He could even have kept tesla in menlo park, and claimed credit for his idea as he did so many others, it was very close.

Tesla had a lot of crazy ideas at the end of his lifetime, and while they just sound nuts, his former genious would lead me to lend an ear, or help him out if it were in my power.

Either way, getting off topic here, but I would say edison is definatly not a person to be idolized, but he is probably a bit better than bill gates ;)

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[hotspotbloc]

My comment was how it is noble to create something and immediately share the benefits with others. What you misinterpreted it as a negative comment ("Edison is bad") when it was a positive comment ("This guy is doing a noble thing").

Hrmmmm... So, you're saying that profit and capital gain from invention is evil? I see. Can you give me half your salary please?

Is your post part flamebait? Anyways, profit is not bad, profit is good. When profit is earned and not "awarded" because of government interference, like grants or subsidies, profit can show efficiency and ingenuity. Profit can show how healthy a company is. When a company creates profit and fairly shares that profit with the people that help made it, then everyone benefits. One just needs to look at Henry Ford as an example. While making a ton of money for himself he also paid his employees quite well and reduced their work week to five days. When he shared that wealth with his employees, they in turn purchased more goods and services, creating even more jobs. With more time off the travel and tourism industry exploded, creating even more wealth for more people. Henry Ford created the middle class in America. So no, profit is not bad. Truly earned profit is a good thing.

I have a problem with people that take more than their fair share, like Edison. Look at Walmart, a company that makes billions of dollars of profit while paying their full time employees so little many require welfare to survive. And who pays for that welfare? Taxpayers. The taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart's employee wages while the owners enjoy an unearned, outragious profit and IMO that's wrong. Make companies pay their employees a fair wage so taxpayers don't have to pick up the pieces. Companies should live and die without the support of the goverment. There are many, many companies out there today that treat their employess with respect, pay them well and they in turn create wealth for the owner(s). Look at companies where the average employee time with the company is measured in decades and I'll show you capitalism that benefits eveyone.

Capitalism is good. Profit is good. Greed is bad. Isn't it?

I love Open Source software, but not out of some RMS-style people's democratic republic-- but out of the superior model it provides for development of code, and money.

As for OSS I completely agree. Go with what does the job. OSS is not a religion, it's a tool. A tool that makes sense many times over closed source products so long as it's useful. I really have no idea why you even mentioned it since my post was only about Edison. Are you frustrated about something and feel the need to lash out at anyone you see?

Re:Clearly not like Edison

[npsimons]

So what you're saying is that Edison was his generation's Bill Gates?

The sad thing is, in 50-100 years people will be saying that Bill Gates was our generation's Edison, and they will be right for the wrong reasons.

Thomas Edison?

[Kjuib]

After Thomas Edison's First patent of the voting machine that no one wanted, he claimed, "I will never invent anything worthless again!"
The body radio - Microsoft got that patent and who wants a solar powered volkswagon?
I vote for poor comparison - oh wait.. this wasn't a poll.

Potential Prior Art Here?

[Niet3sche]

Hmmm ... it seems to me that use of the human body as a power grid is immediately extensible to the use of it as any other type of grid upon which electron flow is contingent *cough* MS PAN Patent *cough*.

I happen to share his views that some things should be done For The Good of Mankind and should be Free, but with this aside (or maybe because of this), were I in his shoes, I'd strive for a few things:

1) Contact EFF for legal funding of Me v. Microsoft.

2) If/When MS's patent is overturned, then turn the patent over to Public Domain.

3) Don't profit! Just know that I righted a wrong and successfully defended Prior Art to boot!

Re:Potential Prior Art Here?

[Niet3sche]

By the way: PAN I used to stand for Personal Area Network. I'm not exactly certain what it is called, but deemed this logical and reasonable.

Re:Potential Prior Art Here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Because the invention of the power grid immediately led to its use in data transmission...

Oh, wait. I suppose gathering electricity from something, and transmitting data through the same thing, are indeed two entirely separate things...

Re:Potential Prior Art Here?

[stubear]

Microsoft's patent covers more than powering devices via the human body. They plan on using the human body for data transmission as well.

Re:Potential Prior Art Here?

[ScrewMaster]

Actually, I believe the first Matrix film serves as conceptual prior art on human power grids.

just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

just think what he could have done with a formal education

Re:just think...

[senzafine]

Yea...he wouldn't have had any time to entertain his curiosities. He would probably be some regular engineer that noone outside of his town ever heard of.

Honestly though...I don't think formal education would have done him any good. He seems to be doing just fine for himself...not sure what more some schooling would have done.

Re:just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, working like a horse for Raytheon or Lockheed-Martin and making smart bombs and surveillance equpment, brainwashed by the western world that people need to be a part of the corporate society to be happy.

Re:just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes not having a formal education allows you to come up with unconventional ideas.

Re:just think...

[merdark]

He seems to be doing just fine for himself...not sure what more some schooling would have done.

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.." ~William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Re:just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

he would have become "another brick in teh wall"

Re:just think...

[Insipid Trunculance]

just think what he could have done with a formal education

Maybe a formal education would have just put him in a strait jacket,unable to think innovatively.

Re:just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, if he'd had regular schooling, there's no telling the amount of sitting around on his arse he could accomplish.

Re:just think...

[Captain DaFt]

Your comment reminds me of an old story (REALLY OT);

A penniless immagrant arrived in San Francisco. He immediately started looking for a job, and a sailor directed him to a place he heard was hiring. It turned out to be a whorehouse looking for a bookkeeper.

The first thing they asked him was, "can you read and write?" He had to answer "No." Feeling sorry for the man, the Madam gave him a dime and sent him on his way. He came across a fruit stand, and being hungry, bought a bunch of bananas for 10 cents.

As he wandered the streets eating a banana, a man came up to him and offered him 25 cents for the bananas he had left.

The immigrant returned to the fruitstand, bought two more bunches and sold them for 25 cents apiece. By the end of the week, he was selling fruit from a basket he carried, by the end of the month, he owned a push cart he sold fruit from. At the end of six months, he rented a small shop, hired a butcher, and started his own grocery store.

Fast forward 30 years. The man is now retiring, and sells his small chain of grocery stores to a major chain for millions. Signing the papers for the sell, One of his lawyers reads the contract to him, then he makes his mark on the paper and his lawyer has to sign to prove that the mark is his legal signature.

"My God!", exclaims one of the buying company's lawyers,"You built a multi-million dollar business and you can't read or write? Just think where you'd be today if you had an education!"

"Oh," he replied, "I know exactly where I'd be. I'd be a bookkeeper in a whorehouse!"

i wonder

[hyperstation]

any relation to Junis?

Re:i wonder

[maggern]

How about GIVING him a formal education? :-) If he's real smart, 5-6 years will do it!

He's only 62 years old, remember. Let's try keeping him alive for at least 20 more years and give him good funding. :-)

Amazing

[Ratfactor]

While there's nothing groundbreaking about the 'inventions' themselves, the fact that he has persisted with his tinkering in the midst of an Arab culture speaks of incredible curiosity, freethinking, and persistence.

I applaud this man. A kindred spirit in an alien world.

Re:Amazing

[Platinum Dragon]

While there's nothing groundbreaking about the 'inventions' themselves, the fact that he has persisted with his tinkering in the midst of an Arab culture speaks of incredible curiosity, freethinking, and persistence.

Errrrr... since when is Afghanistan "Arab"?

Re:Amazing

[cranos]

Seeing as the previous respondant got modded down for some reason i shall pose the same question? Since when is Afghanistan Arab?

Afghanistan is closer to Pakistan in tribal links , culture and ancestory(sp?).

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he is in an 'alien world' you are suprised he has curiosity? Historically, for a time, the Arab world was at the forefront of science and medicine. Today you may be surprised that, because you happen to share a species with them, they are not so dissimilar.

Did I miss the announcement when 1 billion people suddenly became morons?

Re:Amazing

[Ratfactor]

I notice you've been marked down as a 'troll'. That's clearly unfair because you're right! The two main languages of Afghanistan are Pushtu and Dari.

I don't have a leg to stand on in geographic terms, either. I conceed.

Re:Amazing

[GoofyBoy]

>the fact that he has persisted with his tinkering in the midst of an Arab culture speaks of incredible curiosity, freethinking, and persistence.

And you think that the American legal and social system encourages tinkering? Ever read the DMCA (just to name on instance)?

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? How about -1, Racist? You might as well just say "hey, who knew ragheads could think up stuff on their own?"

There are some very well-educated people in the middle-east, and it was the centre of the world, technologically speaking, for a long time. Don't write them off as medieval morons just because they are unfamiliar to you.

Re:Amazing

[Ratfactor]

Did I miss the announcement when 1 billion people suddenly became morons?

Oh hell. I knew somebody was going to say something like that. I was implying nothing of the sort.

I'm not going to be a part of any pro- or anti- middle-eastern thinking debate.

Can we perhaps agree, though, that while the Arabs (yes, I have been corrected that Afghanistan is not, in fact, an 'Arab country') kept science alive while The West was in the dark ages, new and innovative thinking has more or less been stiffled there for hundreds of years.

Re:Amazing

[Lochin Rabbar]

The problem that Islamic countries in general have is not that they have stopped being inventive, but that strict prohibition of usury makes it difficult to create the kind of economy that we know in the west. Much of todays technological innovation requires big bucks to bring it to market, and it's hard to start up a technological firm without borrowing money.

Re:Amazing

[hyeh]

You are correct. Afghanistan is not an Arab country. Also, the parent of this post seems to think Arab culture stifles creativity. That, to me, seems like racist sentiment.

Re:Amazing

[ScrewMaster]

I don't think that's what the parent meant ... no need to toss up the bigot card just yet. Right now Afghanistan is a war-torn and war-weary nation, and for this man to have accomplished what he did in that setting is impressive, no matter what his education. And by his own admission he is not particularly well-educated. Of course, neither was Edison.

Re:Amazing

[Citizen of Earth]

That, to me, seems like racist sentiment.

Just out of curiosity, is "racist" the opposite of "truthful" to you, or can something be both simultaneously?

Re:Amazing

[dfenstrate]

the parent of this post seems to think Arab culture stifles creativity. That, to me, seems like racist sentiment.

Culture is a set of learned behavior and ideals. It's not racist, it's a behavior, unless you think that Arabs (and their sympathetic formerly taliban ruled neighbors) cannot behave in a way other than what is considered 'arab culture.'

And then that would make you the racist, because you'd be saying genetic heritage determines behavior more than anything else.

The parent post is correct. The diseased arab culture that is the source of our enemies does stifle creativity.

Why do you think that folks like you can only point to 500 year old contributions to math when someone implies that Arab Culture is a failure? Practitioners of western civilization- an identifiable set of attitudes and behaviors- have created the modern world.

Asian cultures certainly contribute greatly to the modern world, but their cultures have a lot more going for them than Arab cultures, and over the past 100 years, Asian countries have shown a great eagerness to adapt the practices of people who were better than them in many areas. That's why japan, with no natural resources to speak of, is an economic powerhouse, and became so only in the past century.

Many muslim/arab countries wallowing in poverty and despotism have a lot to learn. They simply refuse to do so.

Re:Amazing

[Resound]

There is a degree of technophobia in a number of the more traditionally Muslim coutries. Khomeni, for one, used to go off on regular anti-tech rants. I think there's the idea that since revisionist (with regards to Islam) is bad, that has a tendency to carry over into "new is bad" generally, at least amongst those who don't care to think too carefully about this sort of thing; which is a distressingly large percentage of the population. Note that I'm not talking exclusively about Muslim culture here either. Have a look at what "concerned parent groups" have to say about computer games, that interweb thingy and wild strange rock and roll (that Marilyn Manson character is clearly a radical satanist or something). Profoundly and violently fundamentalist movements such as the Taliban would have looked on his tech tinkering with no small amount of suspicion. Again, kudos to him.

Re:Amazing

[guet]

The diseased arab culture that is the source of our enemies does stifle creativity.

For the last time it's not an Arab country. Muslim does not mean Arab. Muslims and Arabs are not *necessarily* your enemy despite what Bush would have you think.

As to your abridged history of the world, no I'm afraid 'Western Civilisation' (you mean Greece and Rome?) did not create the modern world; the number system we use came from India, and Christianity came from the Middle East, just to bring up two examples.

If you want to find the source of your enemies, look to your own ignorant arrogance.

Re:Amazing

[Sinterklaas]

That's not exactly true. In the west, we also found out that loaning money has its downsides, which is why we invented stocks. Now, there is nothing preventing a muslim from starting a company and only giving out stocks (and someone could even start a risk sharing company which has stocks in many companies and provides a fairly safe way to invest).

Honestly, I think that the problem is much greater with regard to mortgages.

Re:Amazing

[dfenstrate]

As to your abridged history of the world, no I'm afraid 'Western Civilisation' (you mean Greece and Rome?) did not create the modern world; the number system we use came from India, and Christianity came from the Middle East, just to bring up two examples.

Modern is the key word here, buddy. And since you, and everyone else taking your line in similar threads under this article can name no recent contributions to modern society from Arab/middle east/western asian/theocratic muslim ruled cultures & countries, I will assume my 'abridged history of the world' stands.

Should you want to even make me reconsider it, you'll drop the 'arrogant' name calling (something I personally won't deny, but besides the point of this argument) and come up with something useful the aforementioned countries has added to the world body of knowledge within the last 10, even 100 years.

Come on, I'm waiting. Don't let your kumbyya hate america first view of the world get in the way of coming up with some facts. Anything, really. The standards are pretty low in these insignificant internet arguments.

Re:Amazing

[hey!]

The parent post is correct. The diseased arab culture that is the source of our enemies does stifle creativity.

Don't take me wrong, but could it be possible that you might not actually know enough about "arab culture" to make the this kind of sweeping pronouncement? The reason I say this is the way you use the term "arab culture" to talk about a distinctly non-arab country. The Pashtuns, for example, are no more Arab than Spaniards are Scandanavian.

Why do you think that folks like you can only point to 500 year old contributions to math when someone implies that Arab Culture is a failure?

Well, making sweeping pronouncements about vaguely defined "arab culture" invites this response, does it not? Having no detailed knowledge of the particulars of the history of a part of the world does lend itself to seeing a kind of grand sweep of history. Knoweldge of the particulars allows you to see the uniqueness of each country's situation. There's value to having both perspectives, because you aren't trapped by historical or cultural determinism.

Asian cultures certainly contribute greatly to the modern world, ...

Isn't it possible that culture has other functions than to contribute to people outside of them?

Re:Amazing

[kahei]

Eh, there's a huge market for securities and mortgage plans that do exactly what Christian-style contracts do, but without technically paying any interest... it's a solved problem (in sufficiently advanced milieus).

The real problem is political.

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a degree of technophobia in a number of the more traditionally Muslim coutries. Khomeni, for one, used to go off on regular anti-tech rants.

Really? Not so anti-tech that he stopped his followers from recording and mass-duplicating his "rants" onto cassettes and smuggling them into pre-revolution Iran for the people to listen to. If he were alive and ranting now, he'd have websites and a satellite channel.. Remember, even the maddest old religious bigot loves modern technology when it helps spread the word

Re:Amazing

[wfberg]

While there's nothing groundbreaking about the 'inventions' themselves, the fact that he has persisted with his tinkering in the midst of an Arab culture speaks of incredible curiosity, freethinking, and persistence.

WTF? Exactly how does "an Arab culture" impede invention? There's a lack of research spending in most of the Arab world, granted, and there's a lot of illiteracy (keeping the people stupid makes ruling over them a lot easier) but nowhere in the Quran does it say "thou shalt not tinker", I'm sure.

Just because the Taleban were notoriously down on music doesn't mean even they were anti-technology. Anti dependence on the West for technology, perhaps. Anti-satellite television, most assuredly. But an anti-technology mindset isn't something you can claim for some of the earliest adopters of heat seeking handheld surface-to-air missiles.

And even all of that has precious little to do with the Taleban being Arabs, than with them just being a bunch of nut jobs.

In fact, the fact that most of the people in the Arab world are pretty poor, probably means they're a lot more inventive on a day-to-day basis than you or I, just because they need to be. They can hardly run down to Best Buy to replace broken stuff or to buy high-end alarm systems and the like. Expect the same to go on everywhere where the economy is pretty crappy for the average Joe.

Now, getting engaged in politics in certain countries in the Arab world (for example, US big buddies Saudi Arabia, the country that brought you Bin Laden before he got US funds to become mujahedin in Afghanistan *cough*) is most definately discouraged.

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

and i read some(amarthya sen noble prize winner economics) where that islamic banking is the best form of banking(as there is no exploitation

Re:Amazing

[kbahey]

The problem that Islamic countries in general have is not that they have stopped being inventive

Up to here, I basically agree.

but that strict prohibition of usury makes it difficult to create the kind of economy that we know in the west. Much of todays technological innovation requires big bucks to bring it to market, and it's hard to start up a technological firm without borrowing money.

Here you (perhaps unintentionally) oversimplify.

The prohibition on usury (normally charging interest, or more than the capital) does not mean that borrowing is prohibited, nor that borrowing is the only avenue for financing.

Islamic economics is based on things different from Western economy as we know it today.

• Risk Sharing
  

  Both parties in a partnership contract share the risk. This is in contrast with Western economy where the risk is avoided by being transferred to the other party. This is seen as unfair.

• Equity based
  

  Partners share the assets and equity. Western society has a large portion of it based on debts. Also, there are derivatives which are basically speculative and more akin to gambling than finance and investment.

So, think about venture capital where the lender co-owns your invention, rather than just borrowing money from a bank who bases their income on debts of others.

Re:Amazing

[Lochin Rabbar]

Here you (perhaps unintentionally) oversimplify.

Guilty as charged, I'm hardly an expert on these issues, but I did feel that the tone of this thread required it be pointed out that there are reasons why Islamic countries have fallen behind technologically. Distaste for usury is something that most people can relate to, and so provides an example of a positive aspect of Islamic culture that has negative consequences. The gradual decline in the prohibition of usury was also one of the catalysts of Western capitalism which allowed for a shift in the technological lead from Islam to Christendom. Unfortunately Slashdot debates come and go in hours, so it is generally not possible to produce polished responses if you wish to get a point across to a lot of readers.

So, think about venture capital where the lender co-owns your invention, rather than just borrowing money from a bank who bases their income on debts of others.

Western inventors will often seek similar means of finance. However, before doing so they will likely incur significant debt in order to produce and refine a prototype to the stage where it is marketable to a venture capitalist. They will also take out patents in several countries otherwise when they do make such approaches they will just be giving their invention away. For most people the only way to raise the capital needed for this is to take on significant debt, perhaps through a re-mortgage. At any rate it is difficult to raise cash for secret projects without having to pay interest.

Re:Amazing

[mr100percent]

I disagree, large panels of economists have been convened, and their conclusion was that an Islamic state could function in an interest-free economy. I had a close friend in college who was a Muslim and an economics major, and it seemed plausible. Iran has a system like that, as I hear. I lost a good link to a published study on the topic.

To make the world a better place

[eamacnaghten]

An unsung hero. His motive to make the world a better place.

To be fair to westerners, many Open/Free Source Developers are coding for the same motives. I hope that brilliant Afghan will not have to face up to these idiotic IP patent attacks that is happening over here.

Re:To make the world a better place

[Frogbert]

I wouldn't hold out too much hope, have a guess who wrote Afghanistans new IP laws once they invaded.

Tidbit of the day

[TigerTime]

Edison made 1,093 patents in his lifetime. That averages out to 1 patent every 4 weeks of his life.

That definitely doesn't sound like this guy.

Re:Tidbit of the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but you forget: this is /., so all patents are evil.

Therefore, Edison is the most evil man that has ever existed and "this guy" is a genius and a saint.

Re:Tidbit of the day

[lavaface]

Remember that Edison ran a laboratory with many scientists who all contributed work towards his patents. If you think about it, Edison was a precursor to modern technology corporations. That is he provided labs for brilliant people to work and in return, he maintained ownership of all the patents. Edison had incredible ingenuity, but he was also quite capable of taking others' ideas and making them his own.

Re:Tidbit of the day

[ScrewMaster]

Yep, just ask Tesla. Or Westinghouse. They could tell you all about Edison's business practices. The man may have been brilliant but his ethics were definitely questionable.

Edison? Patents? What?

[Asprin]

I might be hallucinating, but wasn't Edison (who invented AC generators, the phonograph and the motion picture camera/projector system) a patent hawk who did everything he could to extract money for every little invention he had a hand in creating? In fact, IIRC, that's why the motion picture industry set up shop in the (then) isolated desolation of Hollywood, California -- they wouldn't have to pay his exorbitant licensing fees out there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like comparing this guy to Edison is like comparing Linus to Bill Gates.... in a comparative sort of way.

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[DaveJay]

FYI: Nikolai Tesla invented AC generators, not Edison. Edison pushed DC, and publicly electrocuted stray dogs using AC as a demonstration of AC's "inherent dangers" (keeping in mind that DC of the same voltage would have been just as deadly.)

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[athet]

Try Tesla. Edison was stuck on the DC plan, which doesn't transmit over distance very well. And yes, Edison was a patent madman, any way you look at it. Not a bad comparo however, since Edison was really more of an 'embrace and extend' guy (he took credit for the entire output of his shop) and our middle eastern inventor seems more about practical good service to humanity. (but wait until someone starts waving money at him for an invention!)

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[lnxwolf-mobile]

Yes, the motion picture industry did establish itself in Hollywood to avoid the wrath of Edison.

However, Edison did *not* invent A/C generators: that was the work of Nikola Tesla, backed by the considerable assests of James Westinghouse. In fact, Edison despised A/C so much, he invented the electric chair.

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[classicvw]

Edison wanted DC generators. Telsa invented AC generators. Edison's power grid wasn't good for more than a few blocks at the most.

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[Asprin]

Duh. Correctinated. I meant DC, not AC. *smack!*

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen so many Thomas Edison haters in one location. Why don't you shoot the guy for trying to make a profit off of what he did? I don't see the rest of you making sure your employer rips you off on your salary. Quite the contrary, I bet you bitch and moan if you don't get every last penny you think you deserve. Profit is what makes the world go round and nobody here is somehow more noble than Edison.

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[shadow_slicer]

Not really. I leave that sort of moaning for business majors. Call me naive, but I only really worry about finances if I'm running short. It's more important to me that I can live the sort of life I want (ie. one where I *don't* spend all my time worried about money) than to be constantly on the look out for people trying to rip me off.

Don't pretend we all worship money like you.
Maybe some of us realize that money(/profit) is not what makes the world go round (it's rotational inertia = I * alpha^2).

Does that make us better, or more noble? No, not really, we just have different ambitions than owning the next <Brand Name Item> or driving <Sporty Car>.

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's why the motion picture industry set up shop in the (then) isolated desolation of Hollywood, California -- they wouldn't have to pay his exorbitant licensing fees out there.

Plus they could haul-ass across to border to Mexico to avoid the police, should the agents of Edison get wind of any patent violation. Kind of like Kazaa, now that I think of it.

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like
> comparing this guy to Edison is like comparing
> Linus to Bill Gates...

Oh yes, Satanic Bill, and Angelic Linus. I guess
Linus doesn't receive *any* compensation for
his endevours. Just some poor impoverished waife
hacking at his keyboard all day. Give me a break!
Linus makes money out the wazoo, and he should,
just don't paint him to be something he isn't.

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[Asprin]

My original comment doesn't have anything to do with good vs. evil or money, so any such relationships you inferred in that regard are your own.

All I said was that since the guy in the article doesn't want patents to obstruct the proliferation of his inventions, the comparing him to Edison (who did) is not completely valid, and that Linus and Bill are similarly positioned.

There's no good or evil anywhere in there. Sheesh!

Re:Edison? Patents? What?

[cr0sh]

Actually, Tesla didn't invent AC generators, but instead improved upon what was currently available. AC was known about by Edison and a lot of other inventors, what was difficult was the use of it, which is where Tesla came in - he invented improved (much improved, via his 3 phase system) AC motors, along with the rest of the power distribution system (transformers and such) - that allowed AC out of the lab and "scientific curiousity", to be able to do actual work for industry...

inventions

[Coneasfast]

many of his inventions seem to be cheaper versions of what we know to exist.

So I thought of a heater, which would turn off automatically when the water was boiled and when the water gets cold, it would turn on again. And then I made it

basically an alternative to a thermostat, but effective and cheaper.

His system involved surrounding a house with concealed wires that were attached to a battery, an audio cassette player and a camera. When the intruder stepped on the wire, it triggered the cassette player, which played a tape shouting, "There's a thief!". It also activated the camera, which would take a picture of the burglar.

again, simplified version of the modern alarm system.

i find his original ideas more interesting, the crying-baby-activated rocking cradle (does this already exist?), solar-powered well-lift, etc.

Re:inventions

[Trackster]

i find his original ideas more interesting, the crying-baby-activated rocking cradle (does this already exist?), solar-powered well-lift, etc.

All of his ideas are "original," assuming he never saw the things you call "modern" before he came up with them.

He faced the same problems that inspired the "modern" versions of the things he invented so it's not so surprising that he came up with similar solutions.

OS developers

[nuggz]

I think Free Software is just a means to higher quality, more flexible, and no lock in software.

Thomas Edison? Sounds more like Ben Franklin

[Entropy2016]

From what I was taught, Franklin would invent something, then publish the design in his newspaper.
I'm not sure if Edison did that.

If Franklin did obtain patents, he obviously did so to ensure that nobody else would patent it first and keep the specs secret.

But which VeeDub?

[Buran]

I'm not sure what type of VW he's got, but given that he's in Afghanistan I wouldn't be surprised if it's not an air-cooled Type 1 (Beetle). But it could be a Type 2 (Transporter), too. Could even be a Golf -- it's the best-selling model they've got. We Americans are the only market that shuns it in favor of the Bora (Jetta) -- though I love my lil' white Golf IV!

I found a few more electric VWs with a little bit of looking:

Diesel-Electric (1.3L TDI) New Beetle

Electric 1969 Kharmann Ghia (the Ghia is a Beetle derivative)

Electric Rabbit (US Mk1 Golf)

And that's just for starters. VW AG itself considered a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain option for the Concept 1, which later became the New Beetle, but so far only the diesel portion has survived (the TDI is an option in the Golf, Beetle, Jetta, and now the Passat and the Touareg in the US, and in the rest of the model line elsewhere in the world.)

I'd love to see VW build a Golf-based CR-V competitor with a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain and the race-bred DSG transmission.

But yeah, this guy gets geek points from me. :)

Re:But which VeeDub?

[daviddennis]

His vehicle appears to be exclusively solar powered, however, which none of the alternatives you found are. If it works, it looks like he could have something patentable.

I'm a little suspicious about whether it actually works well enough to be usable. 25kph (maybe 13mph?) isn't very fast, but it is an interesting start indeed.

D

Re:But which VeeDub?

[Buran]

No, they're not -- they're still quite interesting, though! I wasn't looking for solar-powered cars (though GM's Sunraycer is possibly the best-known of those) but other electric VWs.

Re:But which VeeDub?

[istewart]

It could also be one of the early-mid 80s sedans. I've seen wrecked Dashers, Quantums, and Foxes in the background of news coverage from the Middle East, although they were selling the Bug in Europe all the way through the 80s. The 1.3L TDI you mention isn't on the market in the US, with the 1.9 four-cylinder widely available and the V10 TDI being sold in the Touareg and Phaeton. Also, while the Golf sells fairly well, I believe that the original Type I is still the best-selling single automobile design ever. :)

Re:But which VeeDub?

[Buran]

I'm pretty sure that 1.3L is from a car sold elsewhere. The 2.0L naturally-aspirated engine is the low-end model for the A4 line in the US, but elsewhere (Australia for example), the low end is a 1.6-liter engine. But I can see why a smaller engine like that is acceptable for a hybrid: the electric engine and conventional engine work together to provide the tourque needed when one can't do the work alone. The engine in the Prius, after all, is relatively anemic when on its own, but it's not on its own, is it?

Hmm, forgot to mention the Vanagon, although the Vanagon falls under the Transporter category of those I mentioned earlier.

Of course, if anyone can find a pic of this thing, the speculation will be over. ;)

Re:get him first

[AgentOJ]

Yes, because we all know that the solar-powered 1980 Volkswagen is the newest fad in terrorist tech. Watch out, at 25km per hour they will make great escape vehicles for terrorists fleeing to the border...

Oh, and don't forget, with the human-powered radios, nobody will be able to crack teh encryption! /sad attempt at sarcasm

Solar Powered Speed

[nuggz]

They have made electric cars that go very fast.

Much of the time the solar cells should be recharging batteries. Driving should use both the sun and the batteries to get better performance.

Re:Solar Powered Speed

[Afrosheen]

Regardless, the article said he doesn't want the car using batteries to power the wheels, only the solar panels. That makes it a little more challenging.

Solar powered VW?

[phillymjs]

His most recent is a 1980 Volkswagen rigged to run on solar power.

Wouldn't this make him Afghanistan's Ed Begley, Jr.?

~Philly

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever hear of a jet pump ? The water table here is 140 FEET below ground. I guess that transparent liquid that flows out of my facets does not exist.

Re:tall tales

[willpall]

You can if you suck up a few meters of water, then, while allowing the pump to continue working, lift the hose/pipe/straw out of the water and let air follow it up. I do believe that your pump would have to work quickly to keep the water from "collapsing" while the air underneath displaces it.

Despite my admitted nitpick, I also smell exaggeration.

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

One atmosphere of pressure is about 10 meters of water. You can't pump water any higher than that. I smell exaggeration.

Ever heard of an Archimedes Screw?

Re:tall tales

[Gorobei]

One atmosphere of pressure is about 10 meters of water. You can't pump water any higher than that. I smell exaggeration.

Um, you can't suck water higher than 10 meters. How to you think water gets to the toilets on the top floor of a skyscraper?

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

One atmosphere of pressure is about 10 meters of water. You can't pump water any higher than that. I smell exaggeration.

You put the pump at the bottom of the well, not the top.

Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[weston]

Edison was a patent fiend. Mind you, he probably deserved the patents. That didn't mean he was above some unethical behavior, such as trying to convince people that DC was perfectly harmless (it's not) while Tesla's AC was much more dangerous (and my understanding is that AC is indeed dangerous, but more likely to burn you than stop your heart). Read the Edison's FUD section in Wikipedia's War of the Currents for an overview.

Edison was a great man, but I don't know that he had the spirit of our Afghani friend.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[penguinland]

Mind you, he [Edison] probably deserved the patents.

From your own link:
Edison's patents "were actually made by his numerous employees - Edison was frequently criticized for not sharing the credits." He claims credit for some great works, and whoever invented them was a great person (or, more likely, people). However, Edison himself was a jackass. He employed people to invent things for him, and then he stole their IP.

Feel free to mod me "off-topic," but this needed to be said.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[niktesla]

If I had mod points, I'd mod you up!

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[Ranma21]

Yes - everything I have read about Edison tends to support this. Sahme he is remembered by the average person above Tesla.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, today's 110V/60Hz is far more likely to screw up your heart than DC--it's the frequency that matters, more than anything. It does exactly the opposite of a de-fibulator, that is use frequenices out of normal pulse range to confuse the heart, whereas de-fibulators use specially timed pulses to get the heart going again.

It gets even worse when you up the voltage. 480Volts is a killer.

DC is more likely to simply burn.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[paz5]

A defibrillator is a device to help re-sync the muscles in a persons heart. I do not think it is used to start them again, but mearly to reset the timing (though that effectivly restarts the pumping of the heart). See this page for a little bit more info.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[CGP314]

The best part of that article is Nikola Tesla's thoughts on Thomas Edison

If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[Anonymous Coward]

only in the US.

it's long been common knowledge in the rest of the world that Edison was a showman, and no scientist or thinker.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[transient]

DC induces muscular tetanus. It makes the affected muscles tense and freeze that way until you stop being shocked. This can be problematic when you're holding onto a piece of wire, because your hands will clamp onto it with all their strength. The same thing happens to your heart: it tenses and stays that way, stopping entirely.

AC also induces muscular tetanus, but there are brief moments at the zero-crossing where your muscles relax. This provides an opportunity for you to let go of the wire. However, AC has a greater tendency than DC to cause fibrillation, and a "frozen" heart has a better chance of recovery than a fibrillating one.

(IANAEE)

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[el_gregorio]

yeah, he even stole the credit for Homer's electric hammer!

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[hungsolo]

I seem to remember from school that the only thing Edison actually invented was the phonograph. That's it, nothing more.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[Anonymous Coward]

He did invent a lightbulb too. Note that I said a lightbulb and not the lightbulb, since there had been various kinds of working lightbulbs decades before Edison developed his. The thing with his lightbulb though, was that it was much more durable. He did contribute greatly to the evolution of the lightbulb, he certainly didn't invent it as a concept though.

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[Atario]

AC is indeed dangerous, but more likely to burn you than stop your heart

Yep. In fact, after awhile you hardly notice the ACs around here.

(Funny how some statments are true whether or not you take them out of context.)

Re:Rapidly Diminishing in Edison's Day

[SillySlashdotName]

Correct.

Fibrillation is a random, chaotic electrical firing of the heart muscles - and no coordinated contraction or blood pumping happens.

Defibrillators sends an electrical impulse through the heart TO STOP IT ENTIRELY by causing the cells to fire, then enter an absolutly refractory period and allow the normal pacemaking cells (in the AV node, before the Bundle of His) which should recover first to try to take over paceing the heart. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Defibrillators are also used in cardioversion, where a faster than normal heart beat is treated to slow it down. Sometimes Adenosine is used instead. A bolus of Adenosine is given IV. It is quite interesting to watch a patients' face when their heart stops from the medication, then restarts a second or two later...

Re:tall tales

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Not true (as other posters have already pointed out):
there are some nice, low-tech designs shown at

http://www.itdg.org/html/technical_enquiries/doc s/ human_water_lifters.pdf

Edison was an evil bastard...

[EmbeddedJanitor]

... as discussed bany times before. This fellow sounds far more pleasant.

Re:Edison was an evil bastard...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so right. Edison was bad for making money from his work. You on the other hand, work at McDonald's pro bono.

Re:tall tales

[TXG1112]

Of course you can. I myself have seen water come out of a thousand foot deep well. What you can't do is suck up water under vacuum over 1 atm. You can most certainly push water up thousands of feet.

Here is a company that sells pumps that do just that. (See under vertical turbine pumps).

Not a lot.

[Mold]

A formal education has a tendency to specialize a person enough that, while they may make great advancements in a field, they won't be general enough to be of too much note to most of the world.

Crazy

[2057]

But at 17, he produced his first invention: a radio that operated without batteries. It was made out of a matchbox, wires, and headphones, and was powered by the low voltage electricity produced by a person's body.

Thats insane! He's more Mcguyver then the Wizard of Menlo Park!

Re:Crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Crystal radios don't even need the body's voltage, as far as I know. The body does, however, make a pretty good (and portable) antenna, so I figure that's probably what he did. (Regular 'transistor radio' earpieces are still the high-impedance kind needed for a crystal set, though if he fabricated his own... he really deserves a prize.)

Slashdot Honorific Life Membership

[ArcticCelt]

If slashdot start to give an annual "honorific life membership" he should be one of the first to get the title. Kudos to the guy! :)

Re:Slashdot Honorific Life Membership

[Colonel Cholling]

If slashdot start to give an annual "honorific life membership" he should be one of the first to get the title. Kudos to the guy! :)

What would he do with a /. membership? I thought the article said he was "semi-literate."

He might put the rest of us at a disadvantage...

Re:Slashdot Honorific Life Membership

[l810c]

What would he do with a /. membership? I thought the article said he was "semi-literate."

Exactly, he'll fit right in :P

Re:Slashdot Honorific Life Membership

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly the above two posts have not RTFP. As per the meaning of the parent post, Slashdot members are not even semi-literate. Yes...this has a degenerative meaning.

Re:Slashdot Honorific Life Membership

[SillySlashdotName]

I thought the article said he was "semi-literate."

Don't we have enough editors already?

Project Wardak?

[Fred_Bloggs]

I don't suppose there are any /.'ers out there in or near Afghanistan. Are there?

If there were, it would be really cool to contact Ghulam and see if he would be interested in publishing his inventions on the web. There are a lot of third world countries out there who could use them.

So anyone out there up for Project Wardak?

Cheers

Re:Project Wardak?

[Colonel Cholling]

I don't suppose there are any /.'ers out there in or near Afghanistan. Are there?

I hope so... I was wondering how you say "you insensitive clod" in Pashto.

Re:Project Wardak?

[outofpaper]

This is the best idea yet. Why dont' we try and contact him though the jornalist that wrote the article.

Re:Project Wardak?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope so... I was wondering how you say "you insensitive clod" in Pashto.

la anta kerabha ab'thane

It could be translated like "you are a not sensitive idiot". The ' is a glottal stop.

Mohammed Kaif

Re:tall tales

[Oligonicella]

Troll indeed. And an idiot to boot. My well is 385 foot deep. You need to read more.

he should get patents, and here's why.

[deft]

not getting patents doesnt make him better.... it just lets others rip him off.

now, lets say this obviously charitable guy gets his due, and decides some of it will be used to futhur even more charitable inventions, then his good can be multiplied greatly. maybe hire an assitant, or get some parts.

heck, he could donate it all if he doesn't want it, but he's lining someone elses pockets if he doesnt get it himself, and I doubt the other guy is as scrupulous as he is.

Re:he should get patents, and here's why.

[gl4ss]

it's not ripping him off if he wants the ideas to be implemented.. if he just displays the ideas in use and doesn't patent them then they're effectively 'free' ideas forever.

besides than that, it would probably cost him more than what it would be worth(the guy is living on 200$ per month, which might get a living in afghanistan but sure as heck doesn't make a lot of budget for applying for patents).

so, tell me, what difference would there be in him patenting the stuff he does and then licensing them for free(which is what he would want to do) and not patenting at all? and how the hell is the money lining up in someone elses pockets, you think they wouldn't forward the licensing costs to the buyers of the manufactured stuff if they had to pay for the licenses? the solar powered water pump business just doesn't work that way, if he had a patent and could demand say 30$ per pump then the price of the pump would be 30$ higher, this is something that the guy doesn't want.

so in short, he wants others to 'rip him off', he just calls it helping his fellow men.

Re:he should get patents, and here's why.

[Jamie Lokier]

so, tell me, what difference would there be in him patenting the stuff he does and then licensing them for free(which is what he would want to do) and not patenting at all?

By not patenting at all, other people can alter his inventions and patent those as new inventions - yes, citing his as prior art upon which they improved. Improvements are patentable, even minor ones. Those other people can then restrict the use of those alterations, charging license fees or even blocking all work along that line of improvement.

However, if he patented and licensed for free, then he could prevent other people from taking control of improvements of his inventions: he could force "derived inventions" to be just as free as his own (by analogy with derived works in copyright).

That's a huge difference. It's analagous to the difference between public domain and GPL, and the results might be just as significant. I don't know of anyone who's tried it yet.

-- Jamie

Re:he should get patents, and here's why.

[Anonymous Coward]

he cant get patents.

As has been pointed out before, most (if not all) of his ideas have prior art and have been already patented in different forms before....

technically speaking,this is merely derivative even though he probably has never heard of them before

Re:he should get patents, and here's why.

[gl4ss]

huh? wouldn't those improvements would be patentable anyways? most of his inventions are such little improvements/adaptions anyways.

Pod Marent Up!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not science this is engineering

[Edmund Blackadder]

This story was filed under an incorrect heading.

Re:This is not science this is engineering

[dave420]

Everything's science, dude :)

Re:tall tales

[The Pim]

Duh, there are ways to lift water more than 10 meters. Now which of those ways is this guy employing on deep wells in undeveloped Afghanistan, with only solar power? My dollar says he's got a suction pump, and the report was exaggerated. What's yours say? (I'd seriously love to be humbled here; I've already learned lots from other respondants.)

Not Edison

[tuxlove]

To compare this man to Edison does him a disservice. Edison was a capitalist to the core, to the point of pushing bad technology over good if it would make him more money. For example, he was an opponent of AC power, because with AC power you can have large central power centers; with DC power, you have to have many local power distribution centers because transmission is much less efficient over distance. He wanted DC power even though it sucks, because he wanted to have a stake in every one of the numerous distribution centers required to make it work. Lucky for all of us he lost that battle.

This Afghani sounds like a good person, one who actually cares about people more than money. That would set him far above Edison.

Re:Not Edison

[Quasar1999]

He lost the battle, but he didn't really lose the war.

Sure Edison didn't profit from this directly, but the fact that we have a relative few AC power generation centers (compared to how many we'd have if we went DC) has caused huge problems. First, if everyone needed a DC power station in their neighbourhood, don't you think alternate sources of energy would have taken over by now... the "it's not in my backyard" syndrome, and the ability to just plug in and get power without any clue of where it comes from is a bad thing, especially when that power comes from polluting sources.

But more on topic, now that everything is coming in as AC, have you noticed how many damned DC convertors we have? Every device/appliance has one, short of the original light bulbs and some heaters. Computers, TV's, stereos, microwaves, etc.. I could list at least 80% of the things in your house as needing a DC convertor. He might have been after making loads of money off having tons of DC power plants in every neighbourhood... hell, I'm willing to bet that was the case... but think about the difference it could have made had he gotten his way. I'm sure we would have cleaner methods of producing required power, and I'm positive we wouldn't be wasting all this material in all of our device converting relatively high voltage AC to low voltage DC. Isn't it cheaper to make convertors from DC to AC for the few devices that need them? All I can think of is anything with a motor.

I don't think this Afghani is really such a good person compared to Edison... had Edison gotten his way, we all might be better off, and no one would remember that he was all for money, not the betterment of humanity. High morals be damned, I just want things to work out well in the end.

Re:Not Edison

[ScrewMaster]

No, it isn't cheaper to convert from DC to AC. Quite the opposite, in fact. A DC to AC inverter is a fairly sophisticated device requiring a power oscillator driving a transfomer, and if you want a relatively pure sine wave to drive inductive devices (transformers and motors) its even more complex and expensive. On the other hand, dropping 110VAC to a few volts DC is a trivial affair involving a transformer, a diode bridge and a filter cap. The wall-wart that runs your cordless phone is an example of that, although for more expensive devices (such as cell phones) switching converters are becoming more popular because the high frequency employed means a teeny little transformer is all that you need. Saves even more on materials.

You're wrong about distributed power stations. That would have been possible regardless of the transmission medium, but the reason that it is not done is simple economy of scale. Building lots of small facilities is substantially more costly than building a few centralized ones. Rather than being able to locate coal or oil-fired power plants in remote areas, we would be forced to have them right next door. Bad idea all around, and given the Bush Administration's propensity for eliminating power-plant pollution-control requirements I don't think I'd want to live near one of your neighborhood power plants. The closest were coming to that is the nuclear pebble reactor, which ironically may make your dream of local power plants a reality, but I still wouldn't want to live near one.

And I don't know what you mean about "alternate sources of energy", that's really easy to say but a lot harder to accomplish. Maybe if cold-fusion had panned out that would be possible, but then I'd say go even further and make small power sources for individual buildings.

Truth is, it's been over a hundred years since Edison's time, and we still haven't found anything substantially better than what we have, and if we had gone down Edison's road and made a huge investment in a DC power system without any long-distance transport capability we would have found ourselves royally screwed. Heavy industry as we know it would probably have been impossible, since there would be no way to concentrate the amount of energy they require. To give you an example, United States Steel's Continuous Casting facility in Indiana has thirty seven separate private substations, drawing power from numerous points in the grid and from multiple power plants. It took that many just to get them enough power to run the big Sumitomo concast. However, for them to have built enough self-generating capacity to power just that one unit would have been prohibitive, I was told when I was out there once some years ago. Not hard to believe, once I realized that firing up one melt requires several hundred megawatts. No, there's really no question that Westinghouse and Tesla had the right idea, and we're damned lucky that Edison blew it.

Re:Not Edison

[Cecil]

I have often wished that houses had a single AC-to-DC transformer along with DC power sockets to alleviate the need for all the wall-warts laying around. So I do sympathize with your goal.

However, even if 80% of the devices in your house take AC power it doesn't mean they use 80% of the power. Far, far from it.

Like you said, anything with a motor. That means: Refridgerator, air conditioner, ceiling fans, exhaust fans, furnace, vacuum, washer, dryer, dishwaser, pool/sump/cistern pumps, etc. Add incandescent lighting and electric stoves into the mix, and I bet you can account for 80% of household electricity usage right there.

And, as someone else said, AC-to-DC is a lot easier than DC-to-AC.

Re:Not Edison

[Idarubicin]

Every device/appliance has one, short of the original light bulbs and some heaters. Computers, TV's, stereos, microwaves, etc.. I could list at least 80% of the things in your house as needing a DC convertor.

Actually, microwaves contain a big step-up transformer--they need a big chunk of high voltage current to do their thing. If you had DC mains, you'd have to convert to AC first, then rectify back to DC at higher voltage. Others on the thread have noted that building DC to AC converters is more costly than going the other way, too.

Yes, you have many DC appliances--but they operate at different voltages. Heck, your PC has 3.3, 5, and 12 volt rails. Converting between one DC voltage and another is a real pain in the neck, unless you don't mind wasting a ton of juice.

The real killer problem is that if you want to supply DC to homes at a voltage directly useful in small appliances (say 12 V) then you need to have absolutely massive wires to carry all the current. Let's say you want 200 W at 12 V for your computer--that's going to be nearly 17 amps. To run a hair dryer (1000 W) that's going to be more than eighty amps. If you're cooking dinner in the microwave, the air conditioner is running, plus you have the computer and a few lights on, you're pushing three hundred amps. In newly constructed homes, my understanding is that 200 amp service is the norm; older buildings may only have 100 amp or even sixty amp service. At 200 amps you're looking at pretty hefty cables. If each home starts requiring cable that can handle a thousand amps, you're getting into a lot of copper awfully quickly--even if the supply is relatively local.

Internal wiring would also have to be much heavier to avoid overheating. Resistance heating goes up linearly with resistance--but as the square of current. You probably wouldn't want to have to lift a hundred-foot extension cord.

Yes, you could get away with the same thickness of wiring you use now if you supply high-voltage DC inside the home, but then you would need a step-down transformer for all the same appliances that have wall warts now.

Re:Not Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

Wallwarts sit there dissipating energy as heat the entire time they're plugged in, regardless of whether or not the device they are to power is actually switched on or not. Sneaky little power bandits that add up to wasted energy.

Now, imagine you have a large transformer that's dedicated to the DC devices in your home... it's got to be sized to handle all of your potential loads simultaneously but, chances are, would hardly ever see anywhere near full load. A larger transformer means larger losses (as heat).

Maybe DC-DC converter tech (with inherent lower losses) would be the answer for the future, but would be much more expensive in the present than just an f-ing wallwart.

Re:Not Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave the engineering to the engineers, OK? We use AC for power transmission, because it is immensely more efficient and simple than using DC. It's also easier to make whatever voltage DC you need out of (essentially) any voltage AC than to make whatever DC voltage you need out of some other voltage DC.

This is basic EE stuff. If you really think that you, with no EE training at all, are qualified to tell us all why Edison was right and Tesla was wrong ----

--- you need some ego reduction. If it were that simple, we'd have changed over long ago.

Re:Not Edison

[DunbarTheInept]

You claim, as near as I can tell, that the adaption of AC is the reason for having the mistake of there only existing a small number of power plants, each putting out a large capacity, instead of a large number of smaller local plants.

On this I call bullshit, because while AC *can* work over longer distances, it doesn't *have to*. One could build a short range AC power system just as easily as a short range DC one. And yet they still didn't end up doing it that way. Why? Because it's not actually better that way as you claim. Operating an electrical plant has an overhead cost that is rather signifigant, and so it's cheaper to have one plant putting out a lot of power than having 100 plants putting out a little power each. Consider the analogy of mass transit. Operating a compact car is cheaper, uses less fuel, and produces less pollution than operating a passenger bus. But if you need to move 40 people across town, with the bus you only "pay" that overhead cost once, and so moving 40 people on one bus is still less of a waste overall than moving ten compact cars with four people in each one.

Re:Not Edison

[DunbarTheInept]

30 meters of copper wire makes a noticable resistor in a circuit that is only operating on a small voltage like 5 or 12 volts. Thus the voltage you get at the wall socket would vary tremendously depending on how far the socket is from the house's transformer. (or you'd have to use much more expensive house wiring.)

This would mean the standard would have to have a large tolerance window on the voltage the appliace should expect to receive from the wall socket, enough of one to be largely useless. (There is some tolerance in the large voltage AC currents too, but from the point of view of a relative ratio, the difference between, say, 107 volts and 110 volts is not nearly as signifigant as the difference between 9 volts and 12 volts, even though both are only "three volts apart".)

(By the way, in response to another point you mentioned, there do exist AC motors.)

Re:Thomas Edison? Sounds more like Ben Franklin

[Danny Rathjens]

"When offered a patent for the fireplace's design, Benjamin Franklin turned it down. He did not want to make a profit. He wanted all people to benefit from his invention."

Quote from http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfra nklin_inventions.htm

Ah, and someone quoted Franklin on the issue in a slashdot article before:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/03/18/1339201.shtm l

Can we please set up

[311Stylee]

a paypal account for this guy or something? He should be well-funded. He certainly seems to have proven the old fable that "nessesity is the mother of invention".

Re:tall tales

[Walt Dismal]

How do you think water gets to the toilets on the top floor of a skyscraper?

It stands to reason, many top executives suck bigtime.

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

Now which of those ways is this guy employing on deep wells in undeveloped Afghanistan, with only solar power?

It's only got to be 20 meters to support his claim and nobody said it was a good pump. It may only produce a trickle or it may charge batteries for days before pumping. It may run little buckets on a conveyer belt down the well. The fact is that if your not humbled by now after thinking you can spout of some fact and then being reminded by everybody that you are a dumbass, you are not going to be humbled even if you saw the pump working.

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you can't suck water higher than 10 meters. How to you think water gets to the toilets on the top floor of a skyscraper?

Ummm, how the fuck should I know. I go out the window just like every other civilized person.

Re:tall tales

[The Pim]

As I asked another respondant (and this was the point of my original post), which of those methods do you think is being employed in undeveloped Afghanistan on solar power? Serious question. Your reference itself said that deep-well pumps are difficult to maintain; I bet they're also expensive and hard to install.

pressure, not weight

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pressure that affects how much something hurts when it goes over your foot, not the total weight. A "very lightweight" car is almost certainly far over 500 lbs, yet having a 500 lb anvil on your foot would hurt an awful lot. You would have a newly acquired flat foot. Car tires are usually pumped up to 30 psi, so a car with slightly flat tires would be painful, but not damage your foot very much. That applies to heavy cars just as much as to light ones.

As an estimate: assume a tire pressure of 20 psi, and approximate the end of your foot as a right angle triangle with sides 5 inches and 4 inches long. That gives 10 square inches of contact area, or 200 lbs of weight on your feet.

Re:pressure, not weight

[Anonymous Coward]

As an estimate: assume a tire pressure of 20 psi, and approximate the end of your foot as a right angle triangle with sides 5 inches and 4 inches long...

Assuming the car left New York traveling west at a steady 55mph, how much would it need to speed down so that it doesn't crush your foot in San Francisco? Show your work.

Re:pressure, not weight

[Anonymous Coward]

Something doesn't add up. If I have a 10psi tire, no car, resting on my hand (say 10sq inches) it won't weigh 100lbs on my hand. But the tire only weighs 20 pounds total.

Re:pressure, not weight

[Afrosheen]

Everyone seems to be forgetting basic weight distribution as well. If you have a 500lb car with 4 tires, then you have 4 places for the weight to be distributed across. HOWEVER it's not equal distribution.

With a midengined car, the majority of the weight is near or over the rear axle. Thus, the front tires of the car are bearing less load than the rears. Add a standard Afghan passenger at around 150lbs or so on the driver's side and the balance shifts somewhat.

Taking all of this into consideration, the best place to run over your foot is the passenger side front tire, which supports the least weight as long as there's only the driver in the car and no luggage. Even the driver's side front tire doesn't exert as much weight as either of the rear tires.

Re:pressure, not weight

[SillySlashdotName]

2000 pound car. Approx 144 square inches of contact for all 4 tires.

2000 pounds/144 square inches gives slightly under 14 pounds per square inch of pressure - only slightly LESS than atmospheric pressure at sea level (14.7 pounds per square inch).

All the slight shifts due to engine placement or driver or no driver isn't going to change this much. I.e., assumming the driver weighed almost 900 pounds. Then the 2000 pound car will weigh almost 2900 pounds including the driver. The pressure goes all the way up to a staggering 20 pounds per square inch.

Point being, the flexibility of the tires allows the pressure to be distributed more evenly. Another poster noted that a 500 pound anvil on your foot would hurt more than a car, and they are correct - because the anvil is not flexible and the weight concentrates in a smaller contact area, so there is a higher pound/sq. in. on parts of your foot.

I had my foot run over by a Chrysler Newport (land barge) - no idea of how much it weighed, but would guess 2000 as a MINIMUM. It was the drivers front tire and it only ran over the front half of the front part of my foot. They were moving slowly, but I was not sure I had been run over until I checked the tire markes across the toe of the shoe. Did not hurt me or the shoes.

Re:tall tales

[Gorobei]

A simple deep-well pump would be a motor at the wellhead that drives a loop of rope that reaches to just below the water. Attach some buckets to the rope, add a sluice at the head, and you are done.

Note that one definition of "pump" is "a device that raises water." We are so used to high-power pumps that we tend to think of them as things that pressurize and accelerate fluids using blades, etc.

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

As I asked another respondant (and this was the point of my original post), which of those methods do you think is being employed in undeveloped Afghanistan on solar power? Serious question. Your reference itself said that deep-well pumps are difficult to maintain; I bet they're also expensive and hard to install.

Stupid Afghans can't maintain a well. They probably all gave up and went thirsty.

Afghanistan's Tesla?

[Flamesplash]

Seems like a cool guy, but I'm still waiting for the second coming of Tesla. The man had a CAD program in his head, truly a genius, and yet the last I looked for a biography I could find only one. Very sad.

Re:Afghanistan's Tesla?

[Anonymous Coward]

still waiting for the second coming of Tesla. The man had a CAD program in his head, truly a genius, and yet the last I looked for a biography I could find only one.

Did you try typing in "Nikola Tesla" into Google? The first hit is a PBS page about him (that went along with a TV special they did about him, I believe). The second hit lists about 20 Tesla-related books.

Re:Afghanistan's Tesla?

[bananahammock]

Wikepedia (perhaps you've already seen this) provides a relatively thorough bio on Tesla: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

(not sure how to do the clickity link)

Re:Afghanistan's Tesla?

[otomo_1001]

just do this and submit as html.

<a href="http://www.wherever.com/subdir/etc/so/forth" >text for the link </a>

wardak

[sh123469]

I commend this fellow. His abilities and his persistence are inspirational. Whether or not he has patented or something has been done before, he deserves praise for his inventiveness and willingness to work on and share ideas that are new to him.

False Alarm

[karniv0re]

When the intruder stepped on the wire, it triggered the cassette player, which played a tape shouting, "There's a thief!". It also activated the camera, which would take a picture of the burglar.

"Damn it Ali, your cart-alarm is going off again! There's people trying to sleep!"

Re:Thomas Edison? Sounds more like Ben Franklin

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, patents are the opposite of secret. They're published, so that everyone can benefit from them... once the patent expires.

No doubt Franklin published his inventions to ensure that 'prior art' existed, thus guaranteeing that any patents by others could be easily invalidated.

Probably would have fucked him up

[Anonymous Coward]

Like it does most folks - don't think, regurgitate.

Re:tall tales

[The Pim]

Note that one definition of "pump" is "a device that raises water."

I have trouble believing that an English-speaking reporter could see or even hear a description of a rope and bucket device and call it a "pump". Sure, it's possible, but simple exaggeration or misunderstanding (maybe it was 20 feet?) sounds more plausible to me. Yes, I was being a smart-ass, but I haven't heard a better explanation.

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I was being a smart-ass, but I haven't heard a better explanation.

That's because the pump isn't described. You saw that not enough information to defend claim so you decided it would be a good troll topic.

Re:get him first

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the parent's post was an attempt at humor/sarcasm.

Tinkering

[jtheory]

Like many a Slashdotter, his parents were once very worried and he eschews patents

We were very worried? But we didn't even know about him before the article...

Actually, I know I've seen other articles about Afghani ingenuity in "tinkering"... they've been making due for a long time with very little, so an inventive mind (especially with machines) is very useful. If something breaks, and there's no way you're going to be able to get a new one, you try to fix it. Seems like this guy really had a talent for it.

My grandfather loved tinkering as well, partly related to memories of tough times during the Great Depression (he owned an electric supplies company and had money later... but the guy still never threw ANYTHING out).

Some neat inventions: a device that would automatically close the windows when it rained, an automatic garage door opener (using a plate in the driveway), and a little train that carried concrete and such things (and children, later) around the property on sections of wooden track. His last project was a model train set he was building from scratch, with working signals and so on.

Re:tall tales

[Gorobei]

Maybe the English-speaking reporter read the first entry at dictionary.com or opened his Oxford English Dictionary and read:

Pump (pronounciation and derivation)
Machines for raising water were in ancient and medieval use...

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple solution. Close off the well air tight. Pressurize the well to 2 atm. Evacuate the air above the well to 0 atm. 2 times 10 meters=20 meters. Do it with the same pump and you have something very useful in a poor country.

D

Wrong similarity...

[stienman]

'The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money,'

Then he's definitely not like Thomas Edison.

-Adam

Re:get him first

[Moocowsia]

I'm not so sure about that. I think it was more of an attempt at intelligence.

Re:get him first

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry honey. The first racist post of this topic was the gentleman saying he preferred "nigger-rigged" not this tame aspersion.

Since when is a religion a race? Whites, blacks, orientals and Mexicans can be Muslim. He was clearly casting aspersions upon the man's religious leanings not his race. Nor is "Afghan" a race. Afghan is a nationality not a race.

You seem to be particularly racist by dividing up nationalities as races. What's next? Political speciation? Religious phylums?

Re:tall tales

[The Pim]

An English-speaking reporter has to consult his dictionary on the word "pump"? Now you're trolling me. ;-)

Woot ! It was a CRYSTAL RADIO

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was NOT powered by the human body. You are a bunch of incredible imbeciles. Viva la France!

Re:Thomas Edison? Sounds more like Ben Franklin

[amliebsch]

Patents require you to publicly disclose the specs. In fact, you can download them for free from the USPTO website. The "problem" with patents is not that they are secret, it is that they grant monopoly power.

The benefit of patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents serve a very useful function. They give protection to an inventor to exclude others for a short period of time from profiting from his/her invention in exchange for exposing the details of how the invention works. The legal protection provided by a patent will often lead to a quicker implemenation of the device described in the patent and a subsequent rapid availabilty to the average person. If the patent did not exist many inventions would never become widely available becuase there would be no way to safely finance their production.

The system is abused sometimes, as all systems are, but that does not mean the basic concept and motivation behind patents is evil, or that they don't provide benefits.

I sincerely....

[zogger]

...like this guy. The world needs more people like him. And he's doing it on a paltry 200 dollars a month, which I am sure is a lot over there, but still. When you think of what 200$ does in the US or any western nation, he's a champ.

And I'll add my cybervote, slashdot needs an icon of this guy whenever we are discussing something new and freely offered out there.

Re:I sincerely....

[SillySlashdotName]

According to what I can find, that equates to about $45,000 per month in the US.

$180 - $200 is the average ANNUAL income in Afghanistan, according to the last census the median (NOT average) annual income in the US was about $42,228.

Annually, he is making about the equivilant of $500,000 (half a million) dollars in US terms.

What was the word you used? Paltry? I don't think so.

New invention -- please read

[lavaface]

I feel like this is an appropriate place to post this idea. For quite some time, I have pondered the possibility of a keylight system powered by the human body. It works like this: when it's dark out and you're fumbling for the keyhole, could your body power a small LED (or other light source) around the key hole so you can clearly see. Your electricity would pass through the key and touch a contact on the door handle which would cause a faint glow. Has something like this been done? Is it possible?

I don't have the money for a patent search so I'm just throwing it out there. If someone invents it and makes a killing, help a poor student out with a lil' somthin'.

Which makes me wonder, is there an "open patent society" of some sort that can shepard ideas like this for the public domain. I seem to recall coming across a forum for inventions like this but I can't find it in my bookmarks. Much thanks!

Life imitates fiction

[ross.w]

He sounds like Professor Branestawm.

I have a few of the books about this bloke, he was always inventing weird stuff and then having it go wrong.

Re:Life imitates fiction

[misterbleepy]

I think the real inventor was the guy who did the illustrations for those books - W. Heath Robinson http://www.btinternet.com/~a.ghinn/heath.htm Do I need a sig for my first post?

Re:Life imitates fiction

[ross.w]

That's very true, and he did a lot of similar cartoons for other people.

Unfortunately the later Prof. Branestawm books lacked the W. Heath Robinson illustrations.

I always found it difficult to figure out though, how something cranked by hand and made mostly of old broom handles could cause such mayhem as they invariably do in the stories.

Anyone can independently confirm the story?

[PaulBu]

Well, some phrases did sound a bit fishy to me, and I thought that my fellow /.er would ask for a bit more of a proof or at least confirmation of the fact, rather than getting into the usual "patents-vs.-public good" discussion.

I grew up in Soviet Russia (yeah, for real this time!) and we did have our share of "backyard inventors" kicking socks off the capitialist pigs in semi-techical news strories (yes, it was just state-run propaganda, of course, though some ideas were not too bad). And, BTW, does the name of Lysenko mean anything to this crowd? ;-/

If the story is true, it is really remarkable, though I am not really sure how the fact of him being "semi-literate" really fits into the story (we have all been semi-literate at some stages of our life, and a guy like him would have learned the "tough skill" by now ;-) ), except that to maybe make other not-too-literate people feel good about themselves. (yes, that was the part that made me a bit suspicious)

Paul B.

Re:Anyone can independently confirm the story?

[Anonymous Coward]

except that to maybe make other not-too-literate people feel good about themselves.

They probably won't be reading the article anyway.

Re:Anyone can independently confirm the story?

[PaulBu]

Are you REALLY sure that the original article was published with the explicit intention to be read by /. crowd? ;-)

Paul B,

sucking water

[Richard_J_N]

Actually, you *can* suck water higher than 10 metres. That's how it goes up tall trees - by a mixture of osmotic pressure from the roots, and transpirational pull from the leaves. The surface tension of the water is principally responsible: it prevents the "column" of water from tearing.

Re:sucking water

[Ztras]

Trees, on Earth at least, can get to be 427 feet. After that gravity overcomes surface tension in the plant's circulatory system.

And if any are scratching their heads trying to remember where the quote came from, it is this month's Wired

... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[PaulBu]

Hmm, man, I guess you are a bit confused... You know those characters, like, '1', '2', '3', up to '9' -- those vere actually made "in the midst of Arab culture", And I guess '0' too (though not sure), but the reast are definitely called "Arabic numerals", as opposed to "Roman numerals" of the I,II, III, IV... variety. And the symbol of 'X' as well as the word al-gebra was of the same descent.

So, I think that you do confuse current fundamentalist Arab politicians/"warriors" with "the Arab culture"...

Paul B.

Re:... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[dfenstrate]

I wasn't the parent poster, but although the numbers are great, Arab culture hasn't contributed shit to the world for the past several centuries.

Why? Because the middle east has largely been ruled by dogmatic, corrupt and brutal dictors or otherwise severly backwards regimes for the past several centuries.

Even this 'inventor', admirable as his tinkering is, creates crude versions of things we've had here for decades, with leftover pieces of western origin.

That folks in afgahnistan now have the freedom that is a prerequisite to becoming a country that contributes more than raw materials to the world is fantastic.

Certainly, if Ghulam Sediq Wardak's curiosity and methodology is allowed to proser and spread, we can expect good things from Afgahnistant.

My point then is that the parent poster wasn't too far off in implying that Arab culture has added little to the world besides some (admittedly very useful) math hundreds of years ago.

They couldn't even get their own oil out of the ground if it wasn't for western engineers and equipment.

Much of middle east/arab culture is clearly diseased. Only by shedding it and adopting lessons from people more advanced then them in science, organization or particular skills can they hope to once again contribute to civilization.

Don't call me racist, either, because I'm talking about culture, which is a learned set of behaviors and attitudes. And spare me any notions of cultural equivalancy, as such talk seems more geared to keeping the world a quaint tourist attraction for the western world instead of a functioning society.

Some cultures are better than others. Western civilization is clearly superior to the Arabic/Islamic subcultures that supply anti-US terrorists. Don't believe me? Think I'm prejudice? Go ahead and come up with something that the Arab world does better than the western world in modern history.

500 year old contributions were great... 500 years ago.

Re:... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Arabic numerals" are really Hindu numerals. They were in use for almost a thousand years by the Indians. The Arabs imported them and modified them. Not to surprising, the Europeans imported them and modified them from the Arabs.

It's also al-jabr that is the origin of the word algebra. Keep in mind that Al Khowarizmi did not invent algebra; he accomplished advances in it.

The Latin symbol X was imported from Greek. Using letters to represent unknowns was also a Greek practice.

I guess in Soviet Russia they don't teach much world history.

Re:... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[PaulBu]

Hey, man, I totally agree with you! (E.g., see my other post in the same thread...) I was just nitpicking on the necessity to make a distinctioin between the "Arab culture" of the 500 years ago and present total lack of it.

Paul B.

P.S. And nice .signature too! ;-)

Re:... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[PaulBu]

You might have valid points, but the smell of an AC troll just makes me say: No comment... ;-(

Re:... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[Anonymous Coward]

The Arabs didn't invent "Arabic numerals", the Indians did. People in the West just thought the Arabs did because the Arabs brought them from India to the West through their trading empire.

Similarly, the Arabs preserved some Roman and Greek knowledge after the Fall of the Roman Empire, but I can't think of anything the Arabs actually invented or discovered themselves, even in those instances when they get (undeserved) credit for it.

Re:... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that "Arabic numberals" weren't actually invented by Arabs. Arabic numberals were invented by Indians, and brought to Europe by Arabs(so europeans call them Arabic numberals).

Re:... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering I shot you down for being an ignoramous speaking as an authority, I don't expect any comment.

Re:... in the midst of an Arab culture... ???

[kbahey]

Oh Boy. Where would one start ...

You are confusing many things here: Arab vs. Muslim vs. Middle Eastern vs. Afghan. Other posters have refuted this one sufficiently, but it only goes to show how well America understands the rest of the world, when an Afghan is termed "Arab" not by one, but two people who are in a position to know better.

This is just like lumping together American Evangelicals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Solomon Islands' Mormons, and Filipino Catholics all as "Christian" and making them an enemy or something.

You are also mixing up eras, and drawing blanket judgements.

Arab culture hasn't contributed shit to the world for the past several centuries.

Perhaps nothing global in scale, but the culture itself is very alive in literature, poetry, and other areas. You do not hear about it because it is not in your own language or in your field(s) of interest.

Lookup Nobel prize winners: Naguib Mahfouz (Literature), Ahmed Zewail (Chemistry), Elias James Corey (Chemistry), Peter Brian Medawar (Medicine) and Ferid Mourad (Medicine). Some are Christians and some are Muslims, but all are Arabs.

Also, what did (say) Iceland, India, China , ...etc. contribute in the last several centuries? Not as much as Western Europe or its daughter cutlures (America, ...etc)

My point then is that the parent poster wasn't too far off in implying that Arab culture has added little to the world besides some (admittedly very useful) math hundreds of years ago.

You need to check other fields too, such as Avicenna and Al Razi in medicine, Avicenna, Al Farabi, Avempace, Abubacer, Averroes in Philosophy. Alhazen in optics, Al Tusi in Astronomy, Gaber Ibn Hayyan and Maslama Al Majriti (Madrid) in Chemistry and others in various fields too many to list here (Google for Muslim Science or Islamic History of Science).

The point is, every civilization has a golden age: Ancient Egypt had theirs early on, Greece and Rome had theirs later. The Muslim world had that after. Now it is the age of Western Europe, and its daughters.

Civilization does not belong to one people exclusively, and not others. It is an all-human thing. Some contribute less now, but more later, and vice versa. Civilization is an accumulation of knowledge over millenia from various cultures.

Do some Googling again: Lookup Dr. George Saliba specifically and his writings on Islamic contributions to Science. His conclusion? The European Rennaisance could not have happened without Muslim works in Science, and the borrowing continued well into the 17th century.

Now, when you say things like:

They couldn't even get their own oil out of the ground if it wasn't for western engineers and equipment.

Much of middle east/arab culture is clearly diseased.

Only by shedding it and adopting lessons from people more advanced then them in science, organization or particular skills can they hope to once again contribute to civilization.

Some cultures are better than others.

Western civilization is clearly superior to the Arabic/Islamic subcultures that supply anti-US terrorists. Don't believe me? Think I'm prejudice? Go ahead and come up with something that the Arab world does better than the western world in modern history.

All this stems from a colonial mentality of "civilize the savages".

Why? Because the middle east has largely been ruled by dogmatic, corrupt and brutal dictors or otherwise severly backwards regimes for the past several centuries.

Here, you have a point, and a start of a good diagnosis of what is wrong there.

Let us do some digging: Almost all the Arab and Muslim countries were under colonial rule since the mid 19th century or so. During World War I, the Arabs sided with the British against the Ottomans, and were promised independance and a state. That did not happen. After World War II, military coupes starting popping up all the place (much like Africa and a large portion of Latin America). These gave rise to military dictatorships, much of them are present now across the region. These are very repressive and do not tolerate any form of dissent (think about how Saddam was, and you get the idea).

Darl? Is that you?

[akb]

'The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money,' he says. 'I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world.'

The similarities to that other great humanitarian innovator are just uncanny.

A Radio?

[boatboy]

Of note- just a few years ago, he would have gotten in a lot of trouble for his little radio, especially if it played music or was used by a woman. Hmph. Maybe getting rid of a totalitarian regime can have a positive outcome after all!

Re:A Radio?

[DunbarTheInept]

While I agree with your disdain for the Taleban (I would extend that to anyone attempting a theocracy), it's important to point out that according to the article the radio in question was invented well before they were in power. It was his first real invention.

(Of note, if you look at the dates of inventions in the list shown, is how it goes right from an invention in 1972 to one in 1996, with nothing in-between. Apparently he didn't do a whole lot during the soviet occupation.)

Re:A Radio?

[boatboy]

Point taken. Neither Communism nor Totalitarianism support innovation.

Re:A Radio?

[plugger]

Communism and Totalitarianism are manifestly not exclusive, but I reckon that 20 years of war probably caused the people more suffering than either would alone.

You must give great head to someone at /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, you post hardcore flamebait like above but most of your posts are modded 4 and 5. The only logical answer is you suck dick, a lot and very good.

Go masterbate to your jpeg of Ann Coulter and leave the world alone. You give true conservatives a bad name.

Re:tall tales

[dukeisgod]

I'm no civil engineer, but I'm pretty sure that water pressure forces water up the pipes to the toilets on high floors. There isn't a pump there that feeds your faucet.

Re:tall tales

[dfenstrate]

I'm no civil engineer, but I'm pretty sure that water pressure forces water up the pipes to the toilets on high floors. There isn't a pump there that feeds your faucet.

Well, there are pumps at the water source, unless it's high above the median elevation of the city. As for the buildings themselves.....

City water pressure is usually about 50 Psi. At 44.5 psi per 100 feet of water column height, that's enough pressure to get a trickle of water 10 stories up (from the elevation of the pumps) Any higher than that, or if you want decent water pressure on higher floors, and the building needs a water tower on top and a pump at the bottom.

Look at sattelite pictures of cities. You'll see small water towers on every roof.

He will do like all slashdotter...

[ArcticCelt]

What would he do with a /. membership? I thought the article said he was "semi-literate."

He will do like all slashdotter... semi-read the articles.

Re:He will do like all slashdotter...

[builderbob_nz]

Come now, I wouldn't exactly put it that way. I mean this is /. right? Who honestly reads all the articles? I for one only read the ones that interest me, yet I'll skim though most of the posts for my daily dose of humor.

A nice solution?

[earlbecke]

In response to the grandparent post, creative work without pay is ridiculous. So authors shouldn't expect to get paid for commercial publication of their stories? Or we just shouldn't try to make money off of our work at all--since, god knows, no one else on earth gets paid for the work they invest in whatever it is they happen to do. Books should be published for free, without any regard for paying all those involved and the cost of production? Please. Maybe it would work for someone who is creative as a hobby who just posts stuff on their geocities site, but not for someone like me who, uh, wants to avoid getting a "real" job. (Coincidentally, suggesting that ALL programmers should do open-source work without pay of any kind is also ridiculous for all practical purposes, and seems to be what is being advocated here.)

Now, adopting a more open-source approach to creative works IS a good idea and one that I strongly advocate. In fact, I license all of my publically-available work with Creative Commons, and if you haven't heard of them, it's much like the GPL adapted for creative works. (Images, text, and even music now.)

As a writer and artist, I want money for COMMERCIAL uses of my work. I don't want people taking credit for my work itself, either. The only copyright violations that upset me are the use of my work for commercial purposes without my permission and other people taking credit for my work. If someone's making copies for personal use, to share with friends, or making a derivative work (using an image in a collage, fan fiction, quoting me, whatever), I'm frankly flattered and I don't care. That's not the same as just giving it away free for anyone to do what they want with it, but this attitude is not shared by some (very famous and successful, by the way) authors and most big publishers, which I think is sad.

That's just my take on the issue, and I think it's a nice compromise between idealism and the fact that you actually need to make money in order to survive, and of course, to afford the materials necessary to make creative works to begin with.

Re:A nice solution?

[rburgess3]

I agree with you. From what I read of the article (shocking, in'it?) he needs to patent his work to prevent someone less altruistic from doing so and using their monopoly to maximise profit, as opposed to availability.

By gaining the official stamp of approval on his IP, Mr. Wardak gains exactly what he says he wants to do (and nobody can say that he hasn't already put his money where his mouth is): the power to ensure widest dissemination of his inventions.

Just my $0.02. With his work patented Mr. Wardak can dictate licenses: "Feel free to use this invention of mine to improve your lot in life, whether by use or sale". Without the patents, he has no control.

Re:A nice solution?

[SillySlashdotName]

From what I read of the article (shocking, in'it?)

HERETIC!! Next thing ya know, people will have to READ the articles before posting...SLASHDOT IS DOOMED! DOOMED, I TELL YA!

More seriously, you should have read the entire article. It is pointed out that many of his 'inventions' are neither new ideas nor patentable - although I see it as an indication of an active mind that he 'invented' things to fill an observed void, and an active mind is good.

In addition, note that the article says he is supported by his grown children, as well as living rent free and receiving $200/month while working on his 'solar car'. Not sure what the average income in his area is, but I would think he is making out like a sheik. Forbes and others put the average ANNUAL income at about $180 - $200 for Afghanistan as a whole ( is your friend)

For illustration purposes, the last census showed that the MEDIAN (not the same as average) income in the US was $42,228. In the US, he would have to be making over $500,000 per year to have the same relative pay - and that is ONLY for working on the solar powered car.

Another example. At 17 he built a radio. Actually he built (from the article) "more than a thousand" radios and sold them for "less than two dollars a piece." That means he received right at 10 years average income FROM THAT ONE 'INVENTION'. At age 17.

At that same ratio, in the US a 17 YO would have to create an invention that produced an income of over $450,000 to be equivalent.

As far as patents, it may not be possible - again, from the article "I have seen some of his inventions, like this car," said Edrish, a lecturer in the electronics department of Kabul University. "They are new for Afghans, but these things have already been invented elsewhere in the world." - and he may even be infringing others patents if other patent holders wanted to force the issue (and if the patents are valid in Afghanistan...)

Re:A nice solution?

[rburgess3]

I'm embarrased, it's true... I read MOST of the articles...

That said, just because SOME (some != all) of his ideas have already been thought of by other people, he should just give it up and not try? No no no. That's what the patent system is FOR. The patent office says "Sorry sir, someone already thought of the bread slicing machine," and you move on to the next wonderful idea. No biggie. However, that's exactly what Mr. Wardak SHOULD be doing, so that when Big Bad Corporate Entity shows up with something that Wardak beat them to, the patent office can say "Sorry Mr. Entity, Mr. Wardak already has a patent for the wheel. But he says that you are free to use it for the betterment of all, you just don't get to have a monopoly on it."

As for the money issue, one can't really compare standards of living between third world countries and industrialized ones. So he gets $200/month, which is a similar percentage gap to someone making $4000+/month here in the US, all that tells me is that someone thought it was necessary that he have a small amount of money to purchase the supplies he needs to keep creating. He has to IMPORT supplies to create that solar car, I'm quite positive that Afghanistan has no semi-conductor industry to speak of. Don't confuse income gaps in differing economies with standard of living. The person making ~$500,000/y is living a MUCH more comfortable life.

And even if he's not purchasing the supplies himself, the fact that he's doing something for $200/mo. that it takes teams of professionals years of work and MILLIONS of dollars to do is incredible. Don't be such a nay-sayer.

My original argument still stands: to protect your work for posterity, to fully maximise distribution, not profit, you need to have established the primacy of your idea at the patent office. IOW: In order for Mr. Wardak to give his ideas away, he must establish that he owns the monopoly. Until that happens, his ideas are still 'up-for-grabs' because he cannot prove that his ideas came before someone else's.

Re:A nice solution?

[SillySlashdotName]

Correction. His $200 per month is not equivalent to "$4000+/month" unless you mean $4000+$38,228/month. The actual numbers I used are $42,228 per month.

Also, you are right in that the first people to develope some of his ideas may have needed millions of dollars to impliment their ideas, remember this man is using parts that have already been created - no machining, no theory, no understanding of WHY it works, no creating of new pieces with new purposes.

In another post I liken it to putting a bicycle together without the instruction manual. What he is doing is difficult - I don't think I would either have thought to do it or even thought of the possibilities in his place, so kudos to him - but not not of the level people are atributing to him.

Reminds me of the show "JunkYard Wars". All the pieces are there, the contestants just have to put them together.

As far as his inventions being protected, reread the part about his inventinos not being new other than in his area. Therefore they are not eligible for patent at any rate. In fact, if Afghanistan honors others patents, he might be infringing on others patent rights - and making a good living off them, as well. Granted, $200/month is not worth the lawyer fees to prosecute him in the US, but hailing him as some kind of De Vinci is misplaced.

To use your terms, in order for him to profit from his inventions he must not make enough to appear on the radar of the inventions patent owners.

Re:A nice solution?

[Red Alastor]

More seriously, you should have read the entire article. It is pointed out that many of his 'inventions' are neither new ideas nor patentable - although I see it as an indication of an active mind that he 'invented' things to fill an observed void, and an active mind is good.

Prior art almost never prevent people from getting patents in practice

Five hundred years...

[Grendel Drago]

A millenium ago, the Christian world was benighted, mired in superstition. Literature and art were at a standstill. The greatest minds of the era (e.g., Moses Maimonedes) fled to the Arab world, where they wouldn't be hunted down and set on fire. It wasn't safe to be a Jew in Christendom; many of them fled to Muslim-controlled territories.

Today, the Arab world is benighted, mired in superstition. Literature and art are at a standstill. The greatest minds of the era (e.g., about half of the engineering faculty at most American universities) flee the Arab world, so they won't be hunted down and set on fire. It isn't safe to be a Jew in the Arab world; many of them choose to live instead in Christian nations.

The wheel turns.

--grendel drago

Re:Five hundred years...

[Cardbox]

It wasn't safe to be a Jew in Muslim Spain either. The philosopher Moses Maimonides had to flee Spain to avoid attempts to convert him by force. He fled to Cairo (1159) where he became head of the Jewish community in Egypt.
On the other hand, Avicenna (Abu Ibn-Sina, the greatest mediaeval Muslim philosopher) had his books burned and barely escaped with his life... because if something's already in the Koran, there's no need to say it again, and if it isn't, then it's false and mustn't be said.
See (eg.) Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science.

Re:Five hundred years...

[turgid]

You soon won't be allowed to say that sort of thing in the UK.

Re:Five hundred years...

[plugger]

Only inciting hatred will fall foul of that law, not inciting discrimination or being strongly critical. There is already a similar law against inciting racial hatred, and I have to say it has impinged on my life not one iota. Hopefully it has stopped at least one family having their lives blighted by idiots.

Re:Five hundred years...

[turgid]

Hopefully it has stopped at least one family having their lives blighted by idiots.

That's true, but when it comes to "criticism" of a religion, who defines what is criticism and what is hatred? Some may judge that criticism is blasphemy and therefore hatred. Harmless jokes may be outlawed. What about the "holy" and "righteous" who chose to harass those of no religion, or a different one? At what point does vigorous evangelism become intimidation? Where do you draw the line? Who gets to chose?

I'm posting this at +2 because I'm going out on a limb here: I agree with the grandparent poster. That's a politically-incorrect thing to say, and it might make people angry. I have not targetted Muslims specifically, but I suppose it could be classed as racist, and by implication religionist.

The Arab world is a hotbed of oppression, religious fundamentalism, hatred and cruelty, just like Christian Europe many hundreds of years ago. That's what I can figure out from the media (TV, radio, newspapers) and no wonder there are so many people from that region desperate to leave. I believe that we in civillised countries owe it to these people to accomodate as many of them as we can and allow them to prosper. I just wish the religious loony ones wouldn't come over here and spread their lies, ignorance and hatred.

OK, I've spoken. It may be naieve and simplistic, but that's my take on things.

Religion and polititcs suck.

Re:Five hundred years...

[kbahey]

It wasn't safe to be a Jew in Muslim Spain either. The philosopher Moses Maimonides had to flee Spain to avoid attempts to convert him by force. He fled to Cairo (1159) where he became head of the Jewish community in Egypt.

So, another Muslim country (Egypt) gave refuge to the Jewish sage/philosopher. That says a lot I think: that not all Arab countries were the same, and that many were tolerant. Remember where the Jews who were expelled from Spain and Portugal went? Many ended up in the Ottoman Empire.

Also, your conclusion that is was not safe for Jews in Spain in not correct. There were lots of Jews in Muslim Spain, the most famous is Ha-Nagid and his father, who were ministers to the Muslim rulers.

because if something's already in the Koran, there's no need to say it again, and if it isn't, then it's false and mustn't be said

Is that your own conclusion or you have a reference for that? The only quote similar to this one is an apocryphal tale about the Caliph Omar alleged burning of the Library of Alexandria (that is about 4 centuries before Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Modern research shows that this tale is not true.

See (eg.) Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science

Toby Huff is somewhat prejudiced, to say the least. Google some time for Dr. George Saliba's replies to his "research".

Lion Overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

Some guy on slashdot:
"...the lion's share doesn't mean the majority. The lion's share is 100%...everything."

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
"lion's share- The greatest or best part."

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer:
"lion's share- The greater part or most of something..."

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary:
"Lion's share- All, or nearly all; the best or largest part..."

It's the nations, stupid.

[Grendel Drago]

Sure. Go to your local university. Look at the names of the engineering faculty. Surprise! Arabs tend to be rather well represented there. They come to this nation to do their work because it's at the forefront of light and learning, while Afghanistan, Iran, etc. are crawling out of the dark ages again.

Bear in mind that the most prominent philosopher on the middle ages, Moses Maimonides, fled Spain to work in the middle east, serving at the court of Saladin. The Christian world produced great thinkers (though he was a Jew, he did come out of the Christian-controlled part of Europe); it just couldn't do anything with them. Likewise, the best and brightest of the Arab world don't fit in in their home countries. Which is terribly sad. But doesn't reflect on the Arab people at all, just on their stupid theocracies.

--grendel drago

Re:It's the nations, stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Augustin Cauchy. Pierre de Fermat. Evariste Galois. Marin Mersenne. René Descartes. Blaise Pascal. Johannes Kepler. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss. Richard Dedekind. David Hilbert. Georg Cantor. Isaac Newton. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.

Any of these sound familiar to you?

An article! Whee!

[Grendel Drago]

I... I have a happy that he has an article about himself. I've spruced it up a tiny bit as well. Great idea!

--grendel drago

No need to call me stupid.....

[dfenstrate]

Because I agree with you. I was describing a failed culture that rules much of the middle east. That the inept, brutal theocracies & dictatorships are the norm over there says something about the culture that produced and continues to live under such a system. I'm don't want to sound like I'm blaming the victim, as it's rather complex, but their rulers are nonetheless a product of their cultures.

Your pointing out that their brightest have fled to the United States only reinforces my point.

Wether a person is of arab descent means nothing to me. How they live their lives means everything. Sadly, the middle east is mired in despotism right now, and many parts harbor a horribly failed muslim/arab culture that produces our terrorist enemies.

Re:No need to call me stupid.....

[Halo1]

Because I agree with you. I was describing a failed culture that rules much of the middle east. That the inept, brutal theocracies & dictatorships are the norm over there says something about the culture that produced and continues to live under such a system.

And thanks to who can several remain in force? Yes, thanks to Western support, because we need their oil, so as long as they're nice to us, we help them. Just look at e.g. Saudi-Arabia.

Re:No need to call me stupid.....

[plugger]

It's not just a culture thing. Western Europe, specifically Britain and France, happily ruled the place in the early 20th Century, then hurriedly left the place after WW2. The lack of democratic preparation must have contributed to the proliferation of autocratic, power-accumulating elites in that part of the world.

For one...

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy Sediq is not a geek...he is married to a woman!

I call shennanigans: the Illuminati posted this article to try to make geeks around the world less dedicated to their studies by comparing to other so-called "Sediq" geek in hopes to socialy engineer every geek in the world to contemplate dating women for marriage.

But then again, the Illuminati are reputed to be slave-punchers of even the largest of industrialised nations, such as the security agreements between the citizen-subjects of the United States corporation within these federated republics of these several [confederated] states. Would that mean that I could be also upholding the Illuminati by emphasing getting a wife is a ploy to make us stop being geeks to plot against them by weilding the voice of freedom? Am I slave-punching geeks, that the Illuminati have their endless stream of matrix technologies they use to subvert and controll freedom: RFID, TIA, Rattlesnake Project.

Damn! There are multiple dimensions to multiple dimensions and they all converge back to the controll of the Illuminati!

Where is Professor Farnsworth when you need him? I need him to build a box containing a parallel universe for every Illuminati venue, that I can eavsedrop the outcome of each aspect of their control!

I dont believe the whole story.

[Technomancer]

The Philips Compact Cassette was introduced in 1965 http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/tape4.html
and was first shown 1963 and mass produced starting 1966 http://www.sony.net/Fun/SH/1-17/h1.html
Also, more here http://www.fact-index.com/c/co/compact_audio_casse tte.html

In 1964, when he was 22, a theft in his village inspired him to invent a burglar alarm that would also take a picture of the intruder.

His system involved surrounding a house with concealed wires that were attached to a battery, an audio cassette player and a camera. When the intruder stepped on the wire, it triggered the cassette player, which played a tape shouting, "There's a thief!". It also activated the camera, which would take a picture of the burglar.


So I dont believe he had an audio cassette player in 1964.

Also, he has to be very rich, outfitting his 1980 VW with solar panels,

120w solar panel costs like $500 or more. To power a car he needs lets say at least 10hp engine, so this is 7456.999 watt. lets say his electric engine is close to 100% efficient, so he will need only 62 panels * $500 = $31k.

the panels will need 62*1.425*0.652 = 57.6042 m^2 area which is about 7.5*7.5 meters or 22*22 feet for americans. good luck fitting this on any Volkswagen.

I SMELL BULLSHIT!

Re:I dont believe the whole story.

[AndrewHowe]

Er, no. The solar panels will charge batteries.

Re:I dont believe the whole story.

[Shotgun]

Don't know about the audio cassette, but the car needn't necessarily be run directly from the solar panel. Insert battery.

I work for 8hrs, drive for 40min. That's a ratio of 13:1 (give or take a smidge). That brings the require panel surface down to 4m^2. About 6ftx6ft, or about the hood and roof space of a VW.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you lower the requirements 8*)

Still don't know about that audio cassette thing.

Re:I dont believe the whole story.

[SillySlashdotName]

RTFA.

Sixth sentence.

In a week, the vehicle is scheduled to be driven through the streets of Kabul, without using petrol, water or batteries.

Emphasis added.

You were saying...

Re:I dont believe the whole story.

[Anonymous Coward]

So? Yes I was saying, for a very good reason. Solar panels are not a good match for electric vehicles because they don't supply enough instantaneous power. Ultracapacitors are not batteries, and they would work in this kind of setup. But it doesn't matter what you say, with current technology and Afghani sunlight, a purely solar powered VW is not going to be spectacular.
Thanks for your obnoxious reply though, it really made my day. BTW I know what I am talking about. So back off.

Re:I dont believe the whole story.

[super awesome]

It also said that his children were all grown up and that they were either financing him or supporting him in some way.

Re:I dont believe the whole story.

[SillySlashdotName]

Are you the poster of the single line

"Er, no. The solar panels will charge batteries."?

If so, then you DON'T know what you are talking about, as the article specifically states there will not be batteries used.

Maybe you know solar power. Maybe you know electric vehicles. Maybe you know everything there is to know about 'ultracapacitors' - but the comment posted shows the poster DOESN'T know what they are talking about when the article states no batteries and the comment states batteries.

Where are you coming up with 'ultracapacitors', anyway? I don't see them in the article. Yes they would work in this setup, but so would a portable fusion reactor or even sails - and they were not mentioned in the article, either.

Anyone can win an argument IF THEY ARE ALLOWED TO MAKE UP STUFF AS THEY GO.

I am not arguing that what he is doing is going to be spectacular. I personally don't think it will work very well - mainly because of the point you brought up that they do not provide enough instantaneous power. 25KPH? On a good slope, maybe, with a tailwind.

Re:I dont believe the whole story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you born so obnoxious or did you have to work at it?
I suggest the article is wrong, or that something equivalent to batteries is being used, or the car will be underwhelming. I brought up ultracapacitors because they can be used instead of batteries. They have high specific power but low specific energy. That can be OK if you have something else (like solar) to charge them up. The capacitor takes care of acceleration (and regen braking, if you have it). But for cruising UC's aren't a long term source of energy.
I don't know what sort of VW it is but let's say it's a Beetle. How much PV can you strap on it? Maybe 3m^2. You're not realistically going to get more than about 300W with affordable tech. 300W will run a bicycle at 25km/h, just about... A Beetle is a lot heavier than a bike, and has a much greater frontal area. If you pushed it, you might get it started, and 300W might keep it going, but only if you changed the tyres for low rolling resistance... I don't think it would be better than walking.

Invented the Alarm Clock???

[BrianMarshall]

I seem to recall that Edison invented the alarm clock so that he could sleep on the job (as a night watchman, I think) but wake up before the supervisor came around.

Laziness is the father of invention.

Amen!

[Grendel Drago]

Amen, sir, amen. There should be a standard for DC power distribution and usage within the house. 24V (48V? 12V?) power should be right next to the 110VAC outlets. Another one of those great ideas which is so, so unlikely to ever happen. Bah.

--grendel drago

Re:Amen!

[Cecil]

I'll note that there are already standard DC plugs. You see them on the opposite end of every wall-wart transformer. Officially I believe the various sizes indicate various voltages, but it's unclear whether the industry actually adheres to that.

Of course, there's no such thing as patch cords to connect from a power source to a device, because there are no power sources. That's a fairly trivial problem, though. More of a problem is the simple fact that you do have multiple voltages to deal with. Unlike everything in the AC world which expects 110VAC (or 240VAC in specific cases) the DC world uses everything from 48V, 12V, 9V, 6V, 5V, 3.5V, and of course the completely arbitrary voltages needed by laptops (19.6V? huh?)

It's not entirely difficult to step down from one voltage to another if the house is wired for 48V DC, but it is wasteful. I am not an electrician, I don't know how to solve this problem, but I don't suspect it would be cost-effective to have to run 15 different voltage cables out to each DC outlet so certainly something has to be done.

If we could get the consumer electronics industry to standardize on, say, 12V and 5V (and if they absolutely need something else, they can deal with it in the device) then we'd be talking. Unfortunately, that process will probably be like pulling teeth. On an alligator.

solar panels here http://www.solar-electric.com/

[Technomancer]

http://www.solar-electric.com/
http://www.solar-e lectric.com/kc-120.html

Re:tall tales

[dukeisgod]

I've never noticed water towers on top of any of the tall buildings here, including some 30+ story condos I've worked on. But it would make sense if a building is taller than the city's water tower, and/or far enough away that the resistance from the pipes may come into effect.

Two bucks a radio... Oh yeah!

[wine_slob]

While it's great to hear about this man and his creative pursuits, it's also nice to hear that he was able to make a living off of his creativity.

$2 per radio made out of a matchbox, some wires and a set of headphones, in Afghanistan probably allows for a reasonable margin. If he patented the things and the adoption rate was high, he'd be a pretty wealthy man.

Kudos for not putting cash over community, but also kudos for not going broke in the process.

Re:Two bucks a radio... Oh yeah!

[SillySlashdotName]

Reasonable margin? Yeah, right.

When the average ANNUAL income is $180 - $200, or less than $1 per day, at $2 you are talking about more than two days earnings. Assuming you make $30,000 US per year, you make around $120 per day. So he would be charging you the equivalent of $240 - $360 for his matchbox, some wires and a set of headphones.

Reasonable margin. Riiiight.

Re:Two bucks a radio... Oh yeah!

[wine_slob]

Should I have said more than a reasonable margin...?

The point remains the same, he wasn't just handing 'em out for free. It sounds like he makes a comfortable living doing what he loves to do. That's pretty cool.

Calling Homeland Security...

[MrCreosote]

No Patents!!!????

He should be thrown into Camp X-Ray. He is clearly a threat to the whole American way of life!

Of course.

[Grendel Drago]

Uh, sure. Are you trying to point out that great thinkers came from Europe? All of yours are (based on a quick scan) post-Enlightenment, definitely post-Rennaisance. I was talking about the Dark Ages. Medieval times. Burning times.

--grendel drago

Re:Of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jordanus Nemorarius. Roger Bacon. Adelard of Bath. Leonardo Fibonacci. Albertus Magnus.

You probably have only heard of Fibonacci with your rather limited training in mathematics. You can take a few guesses why there was a dearth of mathematical development in Europe during the Dark Ages, and if you conclude that it's because they would be burned, then you're an ignoramous.

Re:Of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whereas you're a telepath, what with knowing all about parent poster's education and that. Or were you just hoping that the statement would be true for the majority of readers?

cooler

[Doc Ruby]

Edison didn't work for the "good of society", he did it for money. Which makes his inventions (even the majority in his name, but not from his hand/head) no less important or valuable. But there's no reason to saint Edison. Now Carrier, the inventor of the air conditioning, *that* is beatitude, regardless of his profit motive.

Water ballast

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you can't suck water higher than 10 meters. How to you think water gets to the toilets on the top floor of a skyscraper?

I know how!!! After a long day asking questions at Disneyland of Anaheim California, and subsequently sleeping the night at a *Holiday Inn Express*, I was revealed how they pump water in the toilettes to the top of the sky scrapers in New York....

Whenever someone flushed the toilette, it would actualy flush up to a septic tank the next floor above and continued flushing upto a higher septic tank and further continue to the roof-top of the sky-scraper where the massive ammounts of American chyme pride are stored in the uber of uber septic tanks. This vertical flushing that I speak of is possible by New York's water-main having such good pressure and as well because today's toilettes are intentionally the "low-flow" models that it takes about five hard flushes to push vertically that meatwad through the pipes and get the help of the water pressure to converge it upwards as well. And then here comes the difficult calculative part, which is the reason why Dipper Dan and many other prophesional Septic Tank maintenance companies require a high-school diploma for their service; at the septic tank the sludge is poored into the tank and they use one of those small Disneyland popcorn machine miniature clowns, the ones that turn a crank to keep the corn cracking, and that's the bean counter they use to time the "uber flushing mechanism" for when the whole thing begins the massive surge that allows New York's leading bottled water company to successfully pump New York mountain spring-water higher than 10 meters of pipe that you speak of.

(I don't see any New Mexico cattle-punchers around, so I think its safe to plug New York non-Salsa products...)
Yes, we all know the best mountain spring water is from New York city!

Bigot!

[Anonymous Coward]

The new term slapping shit together with baling wire and appeals to Jebus is called African-American engineering.

In a box...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you how long it takes to learn how to think inside the box: 4 years.

Unless you also want to limit your thinking to just one field, inside the box: 8 years.

Re:tall tales

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't suck water more than 10m so what you do is push water up. Mount a cylinderical pump at the bottom of the well/bore and force the water up.
-ex borefield tech. the things we do to get through uni.

For skyscraper, repressurising pumps are mounted in basements and pump water to a number of local storage tanks that provide water for a few floors. The tanks mean that the pump does not providing pressure at the tap, gravity still does that.

I don't get it...

[ModernGeek]

How he is different from your average geek-american? Edison did a lot of unique things, and this guy just did stuff that people like us do all the time and don't think anything of it. Just because he lives in a third world country, and doesn't capitalise on his stuff doesn't mean he is better than your average geek from America/UK/NZ/etc.

Feel free to mod this down, but it needs to be said...

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

this guy just did stuff that people like us do all the time and don't think anything of it

Yeah, I'm quite sure all of us buid solar powered cars, make home-made burglar alarms and batteryless radios, and design pumps suitable for widepread use in developing countries in our spare time. Not.

Most people on this site couldn't build a radio from a junior hobbyists kit.

Re:I don't get it...

[ConceptJunkie]

No kidding (although I could :-)

This guy should be on a stamp. This is exactly the kind of philanthropy and forward-thinking that brought us Linux, and while Sediq will porobably never become rich, he is making contributions to society just as if he were rich.

Re:get him first

[dnahelix]

The Indians aren't stealing our jobs. Our corporate leaders are giving away our jobs to Indians and whoever else will do them cheaply, so they can have a few more weeks at the island resort while we all cash our unemployment checks (if we're lucky). PS. KEN LAY ROT IN HELL YOU INDICTED BASTARD!

Re:get him first

[dnahelix]

Bush & Co. (aka Helliburton) aren't worried about the solar-powered VW as a terrorist threat, they're worried about it as a threat to the oil companies! I'm sure the wan't to kill the fucker.

Re:tall tales

[po8]

Even going 10m on a single pump stage is quite difficult. The normal procedure used for electric jet pumps in wells (which routinely pump 75m), is to "stage" the pumps: provide a series of intermediate pump mechanisms every few meters along the way that repressurize the water for the next leg.

I would think that a staged Archimedes' screw type design would work well in this application.

Hire himmmm Bill-Ji

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like Bill tried to buy some of his 'inventions'. It is really interesting that
all these journeys end in Afganistan ;-)

Re:Thomas Edison? Sounds more like Ben Franklin

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, Franklin

Franklin is out of favor for saying the bit about "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." that the neo-cons hate so much. Go ahead and reference that quote and watch how quickly the sugary poison vendors are to jump out and attack.

Sorry to break it to you

[JustKidding]

But the article doesn't mention anything new he invented. Making an invention means designing and building something that hasn't been build before. Solar-powered cars are nothing new (heck, our (the dutch) team won the last solar challenge). Water boilers that automaticly turn off when the water is boiling aren't exactly new either. None of the other things mentioned in the article are new inventions, although ofcourse, some of his inventions are now 40 years old, and may or may not have existed at that time.

Besided that, I don't think his so-called inventions even compare remotely to what Tesla invented. He's basicly just tying two or more existing devices together to make something "new", while Tesla was a scientist, and he discovered things that are still being tought to EE and physics students now.

Maybe a formal education might have saved him a lot of time re-inventing things that have existed for a long time, and spend this time inventing something new.

Re:Sorry to break it to you

[SillySlashdotName]

Agreed, but remember these things ARE new - to him.

Unfortunately, he is taking things that can be - and have been - combined in those same combinations by others and putting them together. Quite a bit like putting a bicycle together with all the parts but without the instructions, I would think, rather than developing the first tesla coil or AC motor.

Fable version 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard a different version:

"The lion, the fox and the wolf go hunting together. They kill an antilope,and the lion tells the wolf to make shares. The wolf divides the kill into three equal portions. The lion is enraged and rips the wolf to shreds. Then he tells the fox to make shares. The fox quickly lumps all the meat in one big pile and gives it to the lion.

"Good, fox", say the lion, "You know how things work!"

"I had a good teacher", replies the fox.

"Give your teacher my compliments!", roars the lion.

"I would gladly, if he were still alive!", says the fox quietly.

DC is even more deadly than AC

[saigon_from_europe]

keeping in mind that DC of the same voltage would have been just as deadly

Actually, it would be more deadly. AC current tends to go through outer parts of the conductor (this is because of induction). That way, it is more likely that it will "miss" your heart or other organs, making less damage.

Unfortunately I don't know what is considered limit for DC voltage. In Europe, 50V AC is considered when you design inhouse electrical wiring.

On extremely high frequencies, you may be used as conductor without any harm, since all the current will go trough the upper thin part of your skin.

But this is all OT.

Re:DC is even more deadly than AC

[wfberg]

Unfortunately I don't know what is considered limit for DC voltage. In Europe, 50V AC is considered when you design inhouse electrical wiring.

Well, my power supply is 230V, AC and, IIRC up to 16 amps. (20 and 25 amps are also common values).

Perhaps you mean the Safety Extra Low Voltage norm (Low Voltage is anything between 50-1000V AC and 75-1500V DC).

SELV specifies that the maximum potential difference between anything you can contact on a device, or anything on the device and ground, must not exceed 42.4 V peak, or 60V DC.

Devices conforming to SELV don't need to be grounded, nor do they need special insulation.

60V is not very nice to feel btw - it's the ringing voltage on a regular POTS phone line - been there, been shocked by it.

Even at those voltages you can cause quite some damage, given enough amps.

Edison? Please.

[Anonymous Coward]

If he doesn't desire patents, and wants to help his fellow man, perhaps we should compare him to a much better man, like Ben Franklin.

Re:Edison? Please.

[js290]

Franklin help founded a country... this guy is just a turban wearing commie. ;-)

Too late

[hey!]

If patents were as cheap as domain names (Patents as Cheap As $7.99 When You Register 25 or More!), we would have applications flooding the patent office, thus more patents on every stupid thing in the world.

Too late. Patents are cheap for corporations.

The typical gatekeeper patent is take an area of emerging technology and then take a buch fo things technolgy that people are workign with, then patent using anything from column a with anything from column b with anything from column c. Then, charge admission to play.

Re:110V?

[Cardbox]

So how much copper, approximately, would the USA save by moving from 110V to 230V? And how many MWH of power would be saved, per year, by the reduced resistive losses?

"Traditional" vacuum flask?

[spRed]

"The young man goes to a tin teapot in the kitchen which is powered by a solar panel. When the water comes to the boil, the boy makes the tea, pours it into a traditional vacuum flask"

I call abuse of cute adjectives! I haven't read up on Afghan culture but I'm willing to bet vacuum thermoses are about as "traditional" as solar panels.

doesn't make a difference

[Anonymous Coward]

If more weight is supported on one wheel, the tire will squish more and there will be extra contact surface. The squishing will increase the air pressure slightly. I won't give a number since I'm not familiar with tire geometry and don't want to look it up, but the amount is small.

For the other guy who wanted to hold the entire car on his hand, he's not just squishing the tire; he's squishing it down to the hub and air pressure is no longer coming into play.

So the answer is that it doesn't matter if the weight is not evenly balanced between the tires. The air pressure is what matters. The guys feet are safe regardless of the position of the engine and driver, or which tire runs over him. If you want to hurt him, you have to pump up the tires more!

Greetings, Robert Kilroy-Silk!

[pommiekiwifruit]

So you do have read /. !

JUNIS LIVES AGAIN

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody remembers him anymore, huh?

but he hasn't got the money

[fantomas]

...it's likely he hasn't got the money so the whole thing is irrelevent anyway. It feels like a lot of the posts are arguing "he's stupid because he doesn't understand/ can't afford the global patenting system so he deserves to be screwed". Which is happening right across less developed countries. Doesn't mean it's necessararily right, surely? I heard (welcome to be dis/proved) there's a US company which has the patent rights on Basmati rice, been grown in India for 5000 years... I really don't understand this...

Ah, yes, the inevitable communist

[blueZ3]

Communism, unfortunately, is one of those ideas that is brilliant in theory and (IMO) impossible in practice. When Marx came up with the "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" idea, he completely failed to account for two (almost) universal human conditions: greed and sloth. In the end, the only way to get "from each" is coersion and disagreements about what contstitutes a "need" are inevitable. You wind up with a few thousand commissars living in dachas on the Volga, and a few hundred-million colectivized farmers living in utter poverty. No thanks. Creativity and communism (in practice), while not mutually exclusive, certainly aren't sublimely compatible.

Edison was a thief and a con-artist...

[Anonymous Coward]

...he deserves no credit for anything but a light bulb and maybe not even that, he probably stole it from someone else.
Nikola Tesla for example got employed by Edison in his early years after coming to America. Edison has milked and cashed on it and who know what else he got out.

Re:Edison was a thief and a con-artist...

[narcc]

Not even the lightbulb...
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledi son.htm

Edison was like the "Bill Gates" of the late 19th century. One helluva business man, but not much of an innovator.

It makes me wonder if, in 100 years, people will credit Bill Gates for inventing the operating system.

Per Ghulam Sediq Wardak, here's my contribution...

[iamcf13]

I want to render a service to my countrymen and to all people in the world.
-- Ghulam Sediq Wardak

Ok, here is my contribution back to the internet community:

SpamByte: Game Over, Spammers/Computer Crackers...

It doesn't go that high.

[fireboy1919]

This isn't a collection of fables that many different people hear different places and are therefore prone to variation. Aesop's Fables is a book. You can got to Gutenberg and get them.

If you heard a version that was different than the fables, it's not one of Aesop's Fables.

Re:It doesn't go that high.

[Eccles]

But who's to say that Aesop's Fable is the final arbiter? Clearly the original poster meant <%100, and many of us understood it that way. If we use actual lions as the basis (which existed long before Aesop), we'll find that the lion doesn't eat everything of a large kill, as swift, sneaky types will take a small piece and run or fly off with it, or they'll eat some before the lion gets there and steals the kill.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

like Edison?

[confused one]

This guy isn't out for profit.

Edison was a strictly for profit dude. Ever heard of Edison Electric a.k.a. G.E.?

In other news....

[kalirion]

The body of Sediq Wardak was pulled out of the flaming wreckage of a modified Volkswagon today, after a U.S. pilot mistook the vehicle for a mobile WMD factory and called in a full cruise missile strike.

You cannot persuade by saying nothing

[dfenstrate]

I'm making assertations. If you disagree, demonstrate otherwise, or be quiet. You won't persuade me of anything by simply asking open-ended questions. Do you fancy yourself a psychologist or something?

Isn't it possible that culture has other functions than to contribute to people outside of them?

Certainly. And quite frankly, I wouldn't give a shit if these cultures in question didn't so often breed fanatics intent on killing us. Since they have our attention, I'm advocating their cultures change, in our self interest.

Our 'right' to do so comes from the fact that
A. They've attacked us.
B. We can.

I simply hope we have the national will to carry it out, and that if we cannot effect the change of cultures intent on killing us so that they're no longer interested in doing so, we can make them respect our power enough to leave us alone.

Self preservation, really. simple concept.

Re: You cannot persuade by saying nothing

[hey!]

You cannot persuade by saying nothing

Oh, but you can. It's known as an appeal to emotion. The less actual content by which the "argument" can ge grasped and pinned down, the more powerful it is. The only way to address an appeal to emotion is indirectly, by undermining it.

I'm making assertations. If you disagree, demonstrate otherwise, or be quiet. You won't persuade me of anything by simply asking open-ended questions. Do you fancy yourself a psychologist or something?

I'm not trying to persuade you believe the opposite of your opinions, because that would be pointless. Your opinions are not negatable because they are based on vague assumptions and invalid interpretations of well defined terms. I am trying, in a non-confrontational way, to invite you to be more explicit and clear about these things, rather than to pointlessly argue with you in an emotionally charged way.

Our 'right' to do so comes from the fact that
A. They've attacked us.
B. We can.

This is case in point. Who, exactly, do you mean by they? Depending on who you mean, I can agree or disagree with you.

For example:

A. Al Qaeda
B. Al Qaeda and groups/governments that are demonstrably allied with or deliberately assisting them.
C. Al Qaeda and anyone that is linked with them in any way.
D. All muslim arabs
E. All arabs, including secular and christian arabs.
F. All mulsims, including non-arabs such as Turks, Pashtuns, Azeris, South Asians, etc.
G. Every country other than the US and its explicit allies.

I am with you up to B.

Re: You cannot persuade by saying nothing

[dfenstrate]

It's known as an appeal to emotion

Doesn't work all that well on this engineer. To me your questions were akin to having me make your argument for you. Not gonna happen.

A. Al Qaeda
B. Al Qaeda and groups/governments that are demonstrably allied with or deliberately assisting them

I'm fine up until there, too. Though C needs a great deal of scrutiny.

Re: You cannot persuade by saying nothing

[dfenstrate]

It's known as an appeal to emotion. The less actual content by which the "argument" can be grasped and pinned down, the more powerful it is

On a side note, the left's fascination with emotion is destructive- as if good intentions was enough to make up for horrible results of various policies- as if 'think of the children!' was really a legitimate basis for laws- I could go on, but I'll spare you.

In addition, a powerful argument is one that proves it's point without resorting to mystification and betting on an emotional reaction from the target. A 'powerful' emotional argument all by itself is a waste of time and an object for the Oprah Winfrey show alone.

Should you be able to combine legitimate, solid argument points with a good emotional appeal, then you will have a strong position indeed.

But you haven't done such a thing.

Re: You cannot persuade by saying nothing

[hey!]

Doesn't work all that well on this engineer.

I'm an engineer as well, and have worked for decades with engineers. I little evidence that engineers are any more impervious to emotion than any other kind of human being, especially outside their field of expertise. Being ingenious and knowledgeable in some sphere doesn't make you immunun from emotionalistic reasoning. The people who planned the 9/11 hijackings were extremely ingenious, and made themselves well informed on our weaknesses. This is exactly the kind of attack a first class engineer would dream up. However, the thinking behind them was emotional and illogical in the extreme.


To me your questions were akin to having me make your argument for you. Not gonna happen.

Well, I suppose that's a difference between us. I dont' see this as an argument. As much as you might want me to, I can't take issue with your opinion, which is vaguely that "arab civilization" is corrupt and degenerate, because I can't see exactly how far you mean this opinion to go. Depending on how I slice it, I can find things I agree with. On the other hand, within its broad ill defined boundaries there are things I don't agree with, particularly things that stink of cultural and historical determinism.

I would like you to change your opinion, but not by merely substituting one set of beliefs with its negation. I'd like your opinion to be more precise. To be more precise requires that you become more informed.

A. Al Qaeda
B. Al Qaeda and groups/governments that are demonstrably allied with or deliberately assisting them

I'm fine up until there, too. Though C needs a great deal of scrutiny.

This makes my point. It makes no sense for me to argue with you, because we actually agree -- once the boundaries of your opinoins are more carefully drawn. I know this seems pedantic, but the issue of the relationship of what can broadly be termed the Muslim world and the west is critically important to get right. For example, I was very favorably disposed towards regime change in Iraq, but I was against the way the war was planned and executed. We went in with a lot of wildly unrealistic assumptions, because our feelings about our system of government and our position in the world post 9/11 overwhelmed our meager store of knowledge of the specific situation we were getting into.

argumentum ad verecundiam

[FreeUser]

Some guy on slashdot:
"...the lion's share doesn't mean the majority. The lion's share is 100%...everything." [ and offers a literary quote proving his hypothesis ]

Some other guy on slashdot quotes assorted "official" sources, each of which has copied the other's mistakes, akin to what reporters commonly do today. C.f. argumentum ad verecundiam (in particular, a quick perusal of various encylopedia and literary sources clearly indicates that the experts, including the dictionaries you cite, are not in universal agreement on this point, so quoting a subset of experts that happen to agree with your opinion, while ignorning the rest, is a logical fallacy).

Having done a little digging on my own (google can be your friend, but a dictionary can be even better) it appears that "some guy on slashdot" got it right, while the various dictionaries you quote in fact copied not only each other's mistakes, but the mistakes as they have propogated into common parlence. As to the 'chicken-or-egg' question of whether the misuse first began among the semi-literate masses, or was spoon-fed to them by the semi-literate media and/or erroneous reference compendia, can only be left to speculation.

Re:argumentum ad verecundiam

[wfberg]

Having done a little digging on my own (google can be your friend, but a dictionary can be even better) it appears that "some guy on slashdot" got it right, while the various dictionaries you quote in fact copied not only each other's mistakes, but the mistakes as they have propogated into common parlence. As to the 'chicken-or-egg' question of whether the misuse first began among the semi-literate masses, or was spoon-fed to them by the semi-literate media and/or erroneous reference compendia, can only be left to speculation.

Dictionaries should report on what a term means in common parlance. They're to be used to look up utteranced from common parlance, so you can understand what the language user was on about. If the dictionary said "100%", even though people overwhelmingly mean "the greater part", you could get quite confused, especially if English was not your first language.

Dictionaries that list the original meaning, or rather, the evolution of words and their meanings also exist. Those are called etymological dictionaries. There are also dictionaries that list jargon, specialized technical terms, business dictionaries, etc.

To say which meaning of a word is the correct one is entirely dependent on who you're going to be communication that word to. The point is to bring the messages across, after all.

Re:argumentum ad verecundiam

[bluethundr]

Having done a little digging on my own (google can be your friend, but a dictionary can be even better) it appears that "some guy on slashdot" got it right, while the various dictionaries you quote in fact copied not only each other's mistakes, but the mistakes as they have propogated into common parlence. As to the 'chicken-or-egg' question of whether the misuse first began among the semi-literate masses, or was spoon-fed to them by the semi-literate media and/or erroneous reference compendia, can only be left to speculation.

huh. who knew I'd spark all this debate with an off-hand comment? interesting and amazing.

As much as I appreciate Google as the wonderful tool that it indeed is, I can't afford to think of it as the "be all end all" repository of human knowledge. It maybe the closest thing to the Library of Alexandria we have in modern civilzation. Seemingly more than most, but at that not even close to a "deep web" search engine because that problem as yet hasn't been adequately formulated yet. Tim Berners Lee and crew as well as a great many others are, no doubt, hard at work on the case.

But until the semantic web (or some alternative approach) emerges and is accepted and becomes a reality for most, all that even the best search engines are currently capable of doing is skimming over roughly the top 5% of the entire sum of knowledge and information on the web. It's the same problem that Dr. Bush addressed in his famous paper but on a much grander scale than perhaps even he could imagine.

From serendipit-e:

Firstly, it's worth remembering that Google only indexes a third of the web's nine billion pages. That it does so as comprehensively, if not more so, than anyone else, isn't at issue. Information costs money, and this has taken the sheen off the 'Internet' as it was once sold to us. The most valuable collections limit their access, for very good economic reasons: they can't afford not to.

The best collections are Web-accessible, after a fashion. For example, San Francisco Library's public collections are one of the Web's treasures - and accessible to any visitor who takes time to pick up a Library card - but beyond the crawlers. They represent the tip of the iceberg of the Internet that Google can't see - but that the rest of us can enjoy.

However this brain drain, this emptying of the commons simply isn't what we were promised ten years ago, when the Internet was first sold to the public as, amongst other things, an almost infinite source of information. Ten years on, the reality hasn't lived up to the promise, and as Net Time co-founder Geert Lovink pointed out in a panel on Saturday, and as we've noted too, Internet usage in the West is stalling. The public is not stupid, and is now reaching for the off switch.

While it isn't exactly fair to blame Google for this. Google has succeeded in becoming the branding for the Great Internet Project. But obviously, it can't be responsible for the content, which leaves us all somewhat underwhelming. But the corporation continues to highlight the metaphysical properties of its technology with some absurd claims, and at the very least, encourages commentators to describe its collection as something it isn't.

I can definetly appreciate the value of having multiple sources for your information. But as far as I'm aware, only the OED is the accepted standard for defining both current and historical usage of any word or term. The OED does not seek to impose their views on anyone, the approach I appreciate the most. They merely preserve past meanings based upon historical documents and glean neologisms emerging from popular useage. C

Re: Edison Electrocuted Dogs

[johnrpenner]

edison was the bill gates of his time.

to spread FUD about AC electricity, he went around
electrocuting dogs to scare people away from using AC.

During the 1880s, electric service was just beginning to be sold to
towns and cities. Thomas Edison and his companies used direct current (DC).
George Westinghouse and his companies used alternating current (AC).
Both Edison and Westinghouse tried to convince potential customers of
the superiority of their systems. Edison and his staff used an AC generator
to electrocute dozens of dogs, cats, even cows and horses in an attempt to
demonstrate that Westinghouse's equipment was dangerous. Edison's lobbying
was successful and the Medico-Legal Society, charged by NY Department of
Prisons with designing the Electric Chair...

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
(Thomas Alva Edison)

If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once
with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found
the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings,
knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him
ninety per cent of his labour.

(Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)

I FOR ONE

[alexborges]

Wellcome our new, kabul-ubergeek-hacker overlord

Re:110V?

[plugger]

I'd say no copper saved in the short term, as you would have to throw out all your old appliances.

It would be interesting to see the respective domestic electrucution deaths per capita in, say, the US and UK. I wonder if your 110V supply kills fewer people than our 230V.

grammar nitpick

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean "making do", not "making due"

Re:grammar nitpick

[jtheory]

True, I did. And that's after starting my post with a grammar nitpick of my own... oh, well.

Easy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and come up with something that the Arab world does better than the western world in modern history.

common exerpt: "cover your face, woman, or you get 1 meeeelion lashes from my fricken laser whip!"

Arab world: Lower divorce rate!

Badum-cheesh! You're a great audience; Thanks and I'll be trolling slashdot for the remainder of the evening!

Shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be the fist to learn the maxim of articles of political engagement:
provide relative evidence of your adversary's law which is offensive by the rul of your adversary's law.

If your adversary says they are Christian, says God hates fags, does not provide any scripture of the Apostles of Jesus the Christ that God hates fags, then the only course for you to follow is to engage them by their own law.

According to the old testament, "God" says that homosexuality is an abomination. Of course abomination is an abomination, because homosexuality provides no advances to man-kind and at least it is caused by an error in the genentics of someone to be homosexual.

But thinking inside the box... did not God create the error to make someone a homosexual? Study hard to reveal the answer.

Yet looking towards further anomalies of man-kind; consider hermaphrodites, the elusive people that have both a fully-functioning vagina and a fully-functional penis...did not God create the error or perhaps possibility to make someone a hermaphrodite? Perhaps even the Old Testament's first couple chapters reveal an omition that Adam was possibly a hermaphrodite, and God separated "woman" from "man"; in other words God separated vagina from penis, making two sexually dimorphic and unique beings of the same genetics.

However God allegedly wrote specifically that "man shall not lay with man for it is an abomination." Did you ever consider an abomination to be of any lesser sin as it pertains to the actions of a "man and a man", as opposed to a sin such as murder that will take the life of another which allows none to repent of any past sins.

I suppose the real sin is "stealing" from your fellow man; and this is also can be looked parallel as being "murder" because anyone who murderers another can also be looked upon as stealing their life that which cannot be given back but by God.

For your information, I the man responding to you, hope to be known as a follower of Jesus and there is only one law we have and it compounds all laws:

Love your neighbor.

Re:tall tales

[wfberg]

I've never noticed water towers on top of any of the tall buildings here, including some 30+ story condos I've worked on.

These days you also rarely see those little elevator shacks that you sometimes see on top of buildings. It's all built-in.

The waterpressure in my flat is actually much better (i.e. higher) than in regular low-rise houses exactly because it's pumped in this way. That makes for excellent showering :)

Re:110V? electrocution deaths?

[Anonymous Coward]

I discovered that 110 doesn't kill you when I "drove the wall" with my dad's old key while standing barefoot on a concrete floor 23 or so years ago.

Hmmmm. Although now that I think about it: things may have been different if I had been left handed...

Re:get him first

[4midori]

Someone get this guy a lab and funding! Seriously, imagine what he could do with more support and some linux boxes.

Learn more about Tesla

[Atario]

Go here and poke around
Go here and read

Oh, and while you're at it, check out this movie about a guy who was a lot like Tesla, except he was saddled with living in the Soviet Union.

Edison ?

[chrysalis]

You mean Tesla, right? I don't think Edison ever invented anything himself.

Skin Effect

[cr0sh]

What you speak about is true - the "skin effect" is something that AC does, but is only truely effective at higher frequencies of AC, and not so much at the low frequencies of our power system (although, IIRC, some of the major grid interconnects use slightly higher frequencies and convert at each end to minimize losses and increase transmission distances).

Tesla's seems to have had a number of goals, all with the combined goal (ok, maybe not the ill-conceived flying bedstead aeroplane patent) of a world power distribution system. He was very keen on resonant frequencies, and the use of resonance to transmit power and information over long distances without wires (ie, Wardenclyffe) - ultimately making power "too cheap to meter". This goal of course was counter to that of his financial backers (Westinghouse, mainly), which of course eventually pulled their money.

Re:get him first

[dnahelix]

Troll, but True!

Re: AC/DC efficiency

[EdmundSS]

Edison was stuck on the DC plan which doesn't transmit over distance very well.

At a given voltage, DC is more efficient for long distance than AC (lower transmission losses). However, Edison's DC, using low voltage and massive current, is less efficient than Tesla's high voltage AC.

AC is the best for delivery to the end user (because of transformers) -- which is why it appears at a socket near you :-)

Articles like this open my eyes...

[zerofoo]

I've always viewed parts of the world like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia as either too poor to pursue technological innovation, or too "oil rich" to care about anything else.

I guess that was stupid and elitist of me to think that only "industrialized" nations are capable of technological curiosity. Who knows, maybe sometime in the future we can have the entire world participating in technological research. Wouldn't that be great?

-ted

"Lysenko mean anything to this crowd?"

[buckminsterinsd]

PaulBu spoketh the following:

> And, BTW, does the name of Lysenko mean anything to this crowd? ;-/

Just off the top of my head, wasn't he a Soviet genetist that came up with some hair-brained theory of evolution? Since he was some sort of state minister of science, he sent anyone that disagreed with his crazy ass idea to an extended vacation in the Gulag. This produced a major set back in biological sciences in the USSR. His name is now associated with any politicalization of science - "Lysenkoism"

Was I close?

best regards,

buck

Re:"Lysenko mean anything to this crowd?"

[PaulBu]

Yes, that was the story!

Paul B.

Re:"Lysenko mean anything to this crowd?"

[buckminsterinsd]

Paul sez:

> Yes, that was the story!

Great!!

So what fabulous prize did I win for submitting the correct answer? After all, this is an internet game show.

Shit, I just hope its not another vacation in the Gulag. Boring...

OK, question for our lovely audience:

Does anyone in the audience know what Lysenko's
brain dead theory was all about?

You have thirty seconds.

dum de dum (that's our theme music playing in the background... )

best regards,

buck (a wannabe game show host who wants to do Vanna White)

Re:Afghanistan's Tesla? (Biography information)

[jackrd]

I don't know where you were looking but there's actually quite a bit of information on him and his inventions. I was really into Tesla when I was younger (and still am for that matter) and as a result have done a few biographies/reports on him. One of the most interesting reads is his autobiography, which is available online at this place as well as a few others. Amazon also lists quite a few books and videos. There's a lot of wierd things surrounding his life and inventions, such as the FBI confiscating his papers after he died, reports of an electric car he mad that ran off a mysterious black box at up to 70mph, and numerous claims purporting him to have come from Atlantis and/or outer space.

I said paltry

[zogger]

in US terms. And also you have to take into concideration, that manufactured goods tend to have a more similar price than a dissimilar price as you go around the world. there are some differences, but not nearly as profound as housing and food, those vary a lot more, everythi8ng else is closer to a world price. Just because county xyz has a median income of 500$ say, doesn't automatically make a new cadillac be 350$ there, which it would by your analogy with the US. correct? A good point? This applies to most goods that have to be imported there, so basically he has to make do with mostly junk in order to do his inventions, as at that salary he can't get much. Notice he was using an 80 VW for his electric car, and I bet he bought that 5th hand after it was completely totally wore out on their rough roads there. He developed the skin static potential radio because even a 10 or 20$ radio is probably too expensive for mass adoption. And so forth. His housing costs and food are probably cheaper, after that, he has to pay almost what we pay for manufactured goods, and I don't know what electrical power costs,for his shop. I have a good idea what he had to pay for the solar panels unless he got them donated, as I own a solar rig myself, and 6 panels and a charge controller would be close to a half a years pay for him, minimum,going to 9 months or a complete year, at a 2400$ years pay schedule, depending on their size.

He is not rolling in dough, and a half a million comparison is using statistics between the US and afghanistan is inappropriate in this instance if you compare all his costs of living and development. Really, he does a lot on still a shoestring budget,even for afghanistan, it's a very low figure for someone of his obvious capabilities and intellect and what he's been able to pull off. Heck, 2400$ wouldn't get a random haliburton VP out of bed to count his money this week from just one government padded contract.

Wikipedia is your friend...

[PaulBu]

Here

Basically his "idea" was that genes do not exist and species change into one another responding to the environment. Was quite popular with communist leaders due to political ramifications, from "Soviet science will grow tomatoes in the siberian snow" to "A bit of GULAG treatment turns thieves and reactionaries into new Communist people" (one can argue that the latter point was sometimes quite true).

Paul B.

A Small Lesson In Economics

[Capitalist1]

And I quote:
"He employed people to invent things for him, and then he stole their IP."

If he employed them to invent things for him, it wasn't *their* IP. It was his. He paid for it. He paid for the lab in which they developed it, provided the materials, etc. He couldn't have "stolen" something that, by agreement, was his already once the payment was made.

Also, did he actually claim that he, himself, sitting at a bench, had invented these things? Or was he giving a sales pitch? There's a big difference between delusional credit-stealing and telling people that you're the go-to-guy to get all the newest, whiz-bang gadgets, no matter what wording the salesman chooses.