The current problem is increased absorption of solar energy due to CO2 output from electric and transporation energy production. If the CO2 component were eliminated, absorption would drop off drastically. Until we were using enough more energy than we use today to create a thermal problem despite the increased ability to get rid of heat the elimination of greenhouse gas production would create, we're still better off getting our power through orbital solar.
The NASA space power satellite (SPS) [nasa.gov] system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. in the hopes that we might get to that price point someday. Shipping to synchronous orbit is quite a bit cheaper than shipping to the moon. Note that the URL is from the Wayback Machine. Since the Bush Administration killed the Solar Power Satellite program, it appears that they'd rather none of the rest of us were thinking about it.
Perhaps India's space agency should be looking at targets a lot closer to home.
Would that be based on $64.73/barrel oil (NYMEX - today)? $75/barrel oil? $100/barrel oil? $200/barrel oil? $unavailable-at-any-price oil?
Unless you're a member of the abiotic oil cult (related to the "global warming is junk science" cult), you know that the long-term trend for oil prices and therefore gasoline prices is upwards.
Each form of alternative transporation energy has a per-barrel price that makes it competitive with fossil fuel, with the possible exception of hydrogen.
if it's only viable under factory conditions
on
Driving on Starch
·
· Score: 1
the output is hydrogen gas, which means that one is back into the problems with transportation and storage which have caused most informed people to look elsewhere for a source of transportation energy.
Which would make the new process interesting chemistry but otherwise fairly useless.
build new companies out of good ideas that don't quite fit into google by putting them together with VCs, buying a minority interest in the company and thereby keeping a share of the cashflow of any company that works out?
Google does hire really smart people, and the percentage of things that work out from these people will probably be better than VCs are seeing now.
This will also get them lots of bright entepreneurial types. As for losing critical employees, google's constantly hiring anyway, and google can always make completing the current project a precondition for their helping employees strike out on their own.
This also builds google a business ecosphere which it'll probably find ways to leverage.
What Cringely sees as trouble I see as opportunity.
power meter, I'd certainly use a big file in order to bring the needle up to a constant reading... so peak Tx power = average Tx power. Analog meters don't work so well on millisecond transmissions. Good science, badly explained. And in your case, badly understood.
OLPC and this are feel good ideas when too much of this world does have clean drinking water and adequate medicine or food for the day.
Did you see the post above this one that said that the majority of the population of the world is URBAN?
The Third World is industrializing... and peasant/village lifestyles are disappearing. Especially in areas where what's under the land is a hell of a lot more valuable to some corporation than anything peasants can grow on it.
A peasant kid now who lives to grow up is going to be most likely, living in one of the shanty towns growing like mushrooms around Third World cities. The ticket out of the new-gen slums is going to be knowing something about modern technology.
Is it really safe drinking water and food you care about, or is it the nagging fear some kid getting an OLPC laptop will start out learning enough technology that someday, your job will be offshored to her?
I've spent more hours than I want to think about in Silicon Valley traffic (some things work best in meatspace) reflecting that the great majority of people around me have home computers comparable to what they use at the office and network connections. . . so why are they around me driving at 5 miles per hour belching fumes, contributing to air pollution and global warming when they could be at home online actually getting something done? Why am I paying as a taxpayer for multilane freeways that enable people to do this? Why are companies buying employees computers and renting / leasing / buying office space when they don't have to?
This makes the 20th year I've spent telecommuting. I started at an engineering gig telecommuting with a MacPlus and a 1200 baud modem before there was a word for what I was doing, turning my work in via company BBS. Now I write about technology... and telecommute with a dual core AMD on a box running linux with a broadband connection. I think I've missed one deadline in that 20 years.
That makes.conf files look pellucidly clear... at least.conf files have human-readable comments in them.
There is indeed too much CLI stuff involved with Linux, but it's going away year by year.
Setting up your network used to be command line, now just about any modern distro will find the LAN and hook up to it automatically.
You used to need it to run multimedia, now run Automatix or an equivalent for another distro and it's running. Palm PDAs used to require a command line session, now, just open jpilot or kpilot and plug into the USB.
Printer and wireless drivers are still a PITA, but Dell starting to mass-market Ubuntu boxes will probably force a solution to the problem, Dell is big enough to tell vendors "you want to sell Windows printers or wireless adaptors through us? Deliver us Linux drivers or we'll find somebody else who will." If not, the other big box vendors will lean on their peripheral vendors when they join the rush to the exits. . . the "Vista is crap" message has hit the general public, MS plans to stop selling XP real soon now, and the box vendors really would like to sell their computers with OSs on them for some reason.
I make a living with my computer in my SOHO setting. The main reason I use Debian (testing) with VMware Server running my Windows legacy stuff is that it's EASIER to keep running in terms of stability and security than Windows ever was for me.
And... there aren't enough women in the Linux community. However, that'll fix itself as Linux moves into the mass market. There was a time when the percentage of women users of cyberspace looked like the numbers for current Linux users. Cyberspace is mass market now and IIRC, a slight majority of the online community is women now.
Ubuntu is Debian-based, meaning apt-based software installation instead of rpm. Automated installation via repository is so much easier than it is in rpm-based distros (Fedora, RHEL, SuSE/SLED) that you couldn't pay me to switch back to Fedora or SuSE based distros... apt-get practically never flakes out and handles dependencies right practically all the time.
Software installation that Just Works (IMO, superior to either rpm or Windows - never tried OSX) is A Really Good Idea for Linux newbies.
VMware Server-beta for Linux and let people figure out for themselves whether to install Windows (DOS through 64-bit Vista), Solaris, or some Linux flavor (preconfigured for almost everything) in a VM... or all of the above in multple VMs if they've got enough memory. No need to reboot and a shared clipboard between guest(s) and hosts.
Once the Linux platform gets big enough, there will be Linux apps people who run Windows or OSX are really going to need sooner or later because they aren't out for either OSX or Windows.
The CEO is using Ubuntu on the 17" screen laptop he (or more likely, household help) hauls around his estate. I'm pretty sure he's actually using it because he's running VMware Workstation... meaning that he's most likely running a Windows VM. So he's got access to the Linux apps he's learning and to Windows legacy apps. If he simply wanted to scare MS, he could load up Ubuntu, announce that he owns a Ubuntu box, and stick the computer in a closet until he got the price break from MS and after that, he has somebody install Windows.
Why would he be learning Ubuntu and Linux apps? Because he knows that Windoze is a PITA and believes Linux is the Next Big Thing.
to most people who have to run legacy Windoze apps. With dual boot, it always seems that the next app you need to open is always on the other OS. Unless one is a serious gamer, running a Windows VM rather than a dual boot is more useful. I also thought that Apple's decision to sell Boot Camp instead of preinstalling VMware Server was moderately stupid. With a desktop virtual machine setup, one cuts and pastes on a share clipboard between apps on different OSs. (one can also run a Windows app and a *nix app on the same file at the same time... VERY carefully)
I don't see any reason why they couldn't offer VMware Server with Windows (preferably, XP, though a VM might even tame Vista) installed in a VM and dual boot with a preinstalled Windows.
The CEO of Dell has a laptop with Ubuntu and VMware Workstation on it... I assume that the VM isn't set up to give Michael Dell an advance look at Solaris or OpenBSD. So somebody at Dell Inc. knows how to set up VMware with Windows. I think they should share this with all their Ubuntu customers
I suspect that after word got around, even people with no interest in Ubuntu would buy the VMware combination simply to get a reliable, stable Vista and run Vista full-screen.
I personally run the notoriously insecure and unstable Windows 98SE on VMware Server over Debian (testing)... it is now neither unstable nor insecure... and I've got the speed optimizations and shared filespace I talked about earlier. But I only use it for a handful legacy apps, by and large, the Linux stuff is better.
In public/private key (e.g. GPG/PGP) crypto, it doesn't matter who gets the public key... that's why they're PUBLISHED on key servers and web pages and I've seen them in e-mail sigs and even Usenet sigs. Having the public key means you can send someone a message, not read his mail.
Of course, securing your private key is your problem.
"I think [insert politician name here] is unfit for public office" might be considered "hate speech" by the politician... and now can be reported as such to the provider.
A tool that makes it easier for politicians to harass people who don't like them is a censorship tool.
For the Germans, or for the Japanese? Odd, I would have figured that the only job he'd be able to hold down in a military would be concentration camp guard.
in Debian (Ubuntu?) open/etc/init.d/rc AS ROOT and change concurrency=none to concurrency=shell . Worked for me... of course, usual disclaimers, if you do this and your computer melts into slag from which Cthulhu appears and eats you, I'm not respons..........[i0m =09=,k9mu9n8yby7ba70tyc7 n=0987
NO CARRIER
They've even got version 9 out. (finally)... so the only sites you won't be able to view flash video on are ones run by retarded web developers whose sites won't recognize flash player on a non-Windows host.
Slashdot Mirror
The current problem is increased absorption of solar energy due to CO2 output from electric and transporation energy production. If the CO2 component were eliminated, absorption would drop off drastically. Until we were using enough more energy than we use today to create a thermal problem despite the increased ability to get rid of heat the elimination of greenhouse gas production would create, we're still better off getting our power through orbital solar.
Monkeyboy at his worst is probably saner and better-connected to reality than anyone I know of on the GOP ticket even on their good days.
and "Insane" McCain and the "Crazy Talk Express". . . a match made somewhere or other, I'm sure. They deserve each other.
That's a very interesting number.
The NASA space power satellite (SPS) [nasa.gov] system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. in the hopes that we might get to that price point someday. Shipping to synchronous orbit is quite a bit cheaper than shipping to the moon. Note that the URL is from the Wayback Machine. Since the Bush Administration killed the Solar Power Satellite program, it appears that they'd rather none of the rest of us were thinking about it.
Perhaps India's space agency should be looking at targets a lot closer to home.
Would that be based on $64.73/barrel oil (NYMEX - today)? $75/barrel oil? $100/barrel oil? $200/barrel oil? $unavailable-at-any-price oil?
Unless you're a member of the abiotic oil cult (related to the "global warming is junk science" cult), you know that the long-term trend for oil prices and therefore gasoline prices is upwards.
Each form of alternative transporation energy has a per-barrel price that makes it competitive with fossil fuel, with the possible exception of hydrogen.
external combustion than internal combustion.
the output is hydrogen gas, which means that one is back into the problems with transportation and storage which have caused most informed people to look elsewhere for a source of transportation energy.
Which would make the new process interesting chemistry but otherwise fairly useless.
build new companies out of good ideas that don't quite fit into google by putting them together with VCs, buying a minority interest in the company and thereby keeping a share of the cashflow of any company that works out?
Google does hire really smart people, and the percentage of things that work out from these people will probably be better than VCs are seeing now.
This will also get them lots of bright entepreneurial types. As for losing critical employees, google's constantly hiring anyway, and google can always make completing the current project a precondition for their helping employees strike out on their own.
This also builds google a business ecosphere which it'll probably find ways to leverage.
What Cringely sees as trouble I see as opportunity.
power meter, I'd certainly use a big file in order to bring the needle up to a constant reading... so peak Tx power = average Tx power. Analog meters don't work so well on millisecond transmissions. Good science, badly explained. And in your case, badly understood.
NO!
I've spent more hours than I want to think about in Silicon Valley traffic (some things work best in meatspace) reflecting that the great majority of people around me have home computers comparable to what they use at the office and network connections. . . so why are they around me driving at 5 miles per hour belching fumes, contributing to air pollution and global warming when they could be at home online actually getting something done? Why am I paying as a taxpayer for multilane freeways that enable people to do this? Why are companies buying employees computers and renting / leasing / buying office space when they don't have to?
This makes the 20th year I've spent telecommuting. I started at an engineering gig telecommuting with a MacPlus and a 1200 baud modem before there was a word for what I was doing, turning my work in via company BBS. Now I write about technology... and telecommute with a dual core AMD on a box running linux with a broadband connection. I think I've missed one deadline in that 20 years.
Telecommuting works.
That makes .conf files look pellucidly clear... at least .conf files have human-readable comments in them.
There is indeed too much CLI stuff involved with Linux, but it's going away year by year.
Setting up your network used to be command line, now just about any modern distro will find the LAN and hook up to it automatically.
You used to need it to run multimedia, now run Automatix or an equivalent for another distro and it's running. Palm PDAs used to require a command line session, now, just open jpilot or kpilot and plug into the USB.
Printer and wireless drivers are still a PITA, but Dell starting to mass-market Ubuntu boxes will probably force a solution to the problem, Dell is big enough to tell vendors "you want to sell Windows printers or wireless adaptors through us? Deliver us Linux drivers or we'll find somebody else who will." If not, the other big box vendors will lean on their peripheral vendors when they join the rush to the exits. . . the "Vista is crap" message has hit the general public, MS plans to stop selling XP real soon now, and the box vendors really would like to sell their computers with OSs on them for some reason.
I make a living with my computer in my SOHO setting. The main reason I use Debian (testing) with VMware Server running my Windows legacy stuff is that it's EASIER to keep running in terms of stability and security than Windows ever was for me.
And... there aren't enough women in the Linux community. However, that'll fix itself as Linux moves into the mass market. There was a time when the percentage of women users of cyberspace looked like the numbers for current Linux users. Cyberspace is mass market now and IIRC, a slight majority of the online community is women now.
is find out how to change the Window manager to KDE.
That kind of irritation is like turning off Active Desktop on Windows and Clippy on MS Office used to be for me.
Minimalist made sense when the hot new machines were K6-350s. For most of us, that was quite a few years ago.
Ubuntu is Debian-based, meaning apt-based software installation instead of rpm. Automated installation via repository is so much easier than it is in rpm-based distros (Fedora, RHEL, SuSE/SLED) that you couldn't pay me to switch back to Fedora or SuSE based distros... apt-get practically never flakes out and handles dependencies right practically all the time.
Software installation that Just Works (IMO, superior to either rpm or Windows - never tried OSX) is A Really Good Idea for Linux newbies.
VMware Server-beta for Linux and let people figure out for themselves whether to install Windows (DOS through 64-bit Vista), Solaris, or some Linux flavor (preconfigured for almost everything) in a VM... or all of the above in multple VMs if they've got enough memory. No need to reboot and a shared clipboard between guest(s) and hosts.
Once the Linux platform gets big enough, there will be Linux apps people who run Windows or OSX are really going to need sooner or later because they aren't out for either OSX or Windows.
The CEO is using Ubuntu on the 17" screen laptop he (or more likely, household help) hauls around his estate. I'm pretty sure he's actually using it because he's running VMware Workstation... meaning that he's most likely running a Windows VM. So he's got access to the Linux apps he's learning and to Windows legacy apps. If he simply wanted to scare MS, he could load up Ubuntu, announce that he owns a Ubuntu box, and stick the computer in a closet until he got the price break from MS and after that, he has somebody install Windows.
Why would he be learning Ubuntu and Linux apps? Because he knows that Windoze is a PITA and believes Linux is the Next Big Thing.
to most people who have to run legacy Windoze apps. With dual boot, it always seems that the next app you need to open is always on the other OS. Unless one is a serious gamer, running a Windows VM rather than a dual boot is more useful. I also thought that Apple's decision to sell Boot Camp instead of preinstalling VMware Server was moderately stupid. With a desktop virtual machine setup, one cuts and pastes on a share clipboard between apps on different OSs. (one can also run a Windows app and a *nix app on the same file at the same time... VERY carefully)
I don't see any reason why they couldn't offer VMware Server with Windows (preferably, XP, though a VM might even tame Vista) installed in a VM and dual boot with a preinstalled Windows.
Or simply preinstall VMware Server, set up the speed optimizations and a shared SAMBA Linux/Windows filespace (easy if you know how, but a pain to dig up the info) and let customers load Windows onto it (works with everything from DOS to Vista 64-bit) who actually want it.
The CEO of Dell has a laptop with Ubuntu and VMware Workstation on it... I assume that the VM isn't set up to give Michael Dell an advance look at Solaris or OpenBSD. So somebody at Dell Inc. knows how to set up VMware with Windows. I think they should share this with all their Ubuntu customers
I suspect that after word got around, even people with no interest in Ubuntu would buy the VMware combination simply to get a reliable, stable Vista and run Vista full-screen.
I personally run the notoriously insecure and unstable Windows 98SE on VMware Server over Debian (testing)... it is now neither unstable nor insecure... and I've got the speed optimizations and shared filespace I talked about earlier. But I only use it for a handful legacy apps, by and large, the Linux stuff is better.
In public/private key (e.g. GPG/PGP) crypto, it doesn't matter who gets the public key... that's why they're PUBLISHED on key servers and web pages and I've seen them in e-mail sigs and even Usenet sigs. Having the public key means you can send someone a message, not read his mail.
Of course, securing your private key is your problem.
"I think [insert politician name here] is unfit for public office" might be considered "hate speech" by the politician... and now can be reported as such to the provider.
A tool that makes it easier for politicians to harass people who don't like them is a censorship tool.
how are you so well acquainted with Valenti's personal bio?
For the Germans, or for the Japanese? Odd, I would have figured that the only job he'd be able to hold down in a military would be concentration camp guard.
in Debian (Ubuntu?) open /etc/init.d/rc AS ROOT and change concurrency=none to concurrency=shell . Worked for me... of course, usual disclaimers, if you do this and your computer melts into slag from which Cthulhu appears and eats you, I'm not respons..........[i0m =09=,k9mu9n8yby7ba70tyc7 n=0987
NO CARRIER
GO DOWNLOAD ONE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE DID
They've even got version 9 out. (finally)... so the only sites you won't be able to view flash video on are ones run by retarded web developers whose sites won't recognize flash player on a non-Windows host.
"we can only hope to achieve"
So did the Vtech shooter.When are you going to celebrate his life?
SINCERITY IN BELIEFS DOES NOT NECESSARILY MAKE WHAT IS BELIEVED IN A GOOD IDEA.