For me, it's the input device that counts
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Palmtop Nirvana?
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· Score: 1
The Atari Portfolio, circa 1989, is still the easiest-to-type-on handheld "PDA/computer" that's ever been made...including that Apple Newton thingy, by the way. The Zaurus comes in a distant third...and nothing I've used recently comes close to the Zaurus.
Without decent input capability, most of my remaining "desired PDA functionality" can be handled by a programmable wristwatch.
Hmmm...appears that they really don't want to "prominently promote" this service.
I mean...if it's such a godsend and all...if it's going to be such a killer feature...why is any mention of this so hard to find on their site?
Search for "parental" using their site search. Nothing found. Hmmm...
A quick google returned a reference to the Belkin Advantage page. Hmmm again...a flash advertisement, but no mention of ongoing charges. Except that you can pay an extra $10 for 6 months worth of "reporting"...
The most informative thing that I found (under "News") was a press release from last May.
Tried the Support search. Nothing. Nothing in any FAQs (that I could find). Nothing (that I saw, anyway) contained in the on-line (PDF) manuals. No way for me to decide (if I should be so inclined) that I *want* to buy a Belkin router, because I *want* censorware. I mean...if this is something that they wish to prominently promote...why aren't they?
From the press release: $19.99/year after the first 6 months? Hmmm...let's say your "free" 6 months are up. What do you want to bet that the only thing that your router will route "to" at that time will be a "your time is up...pay us money" site until a) you pay them money (at which time they *have* your credit card number...bwahhaahaaahhaa, now try to unsubscribe!), or b) you figure out how to disable this feature in the router. Gosh...hope you know what you're doing.
Sleaze. That's all it is. Sleaze.
Although, with all of my neighbors running un-encrypted wireless access points, it could be kind of fun signing them up for parental control and turning EVERYTHING off...
Re:Minor factual error: no "darkside" of the moon
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The Case for the Moon
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· Score: 1
But there *is* a mountain at the lunar pole that's illuminated perpetually...
Right beside some valleys that receive no direct sunlight, of course...oblique angle and all.
So, there is a known "always light" area on the moon. (Pink was wrong?)
Wouldn't do much for us in the way of beaming power to the earth, though (I wouldn't think, anyway) unless we figure out some way to cheaply move the power earth-side-southward about 5 degrees (since the axial tilt of the moon is about that, and the "light-bathed mountain" will tilt away from the earth about 2 weeks per month).
My dad-in-law has a 100 as well, but the 200 is actually still comfortable to use (the 100 isn't).
Near-zero boot time, and uptime for days (literally) when a "power pillow" made of C-cell nicads is plugged in (it puts the keyboard at the proper angle for comfortable typing).
Coupled up with an ancient Tandy 9-pin dot-matrix printer in "single-sheet" mode, taking minutes for church meetings...just what it's made to do.
Supposedly, quite a few reporters still use the old things, too. Quick, easy, reliable, and (with the proper software), able to transfer documents and files to a PC.
Built back when Bill Gates used to actually program...
OK...let's try for "one better." I'm still using an ISA Sound Blaster 16 SCSI card. And actually *using* the SCSI interface to talk to an old flatbed scanner...
I can't see any reason to upgrade until it dies. It'll still let my daugher play her ancient 16-bit DOS "kids' games" that choke under Win98 when the computer is booted up in DOS mode...just what the doctor ordered. It's faster than my scanner. Why change what's working well?
However, because they're using a third party's intellectual property in the context of the parody, it's a little fuzzier. Spaceballs parodying Star Wars is cool... Spaceballs parodying Star Wars with a title character named Strawberry Shortcake might be a different story.
Spaceballs parodying Star Wars (and the Wizard of Oz, and Alien, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, etc., etc., etc.) with a "title" character named after "Colonel Sandurz" is OK, though...I guess. ("What's the matter, Sandurz? Chicken??") And isn't "Lone Star" a kind of beer? Not to mention the minor character "Pizza The Hut". Although I have to agree...I'd have Barfed (sic) if one of the characters had actually been named Strawberry Shortcake.
Anyway...I'm thinking that someone at American Greetings was just being a *mite* too sensitive.
Opinion: Somebody at American Greetings thought that the strip was mildly amusing. It was shared with a few co-workers. The office gossip net moved the news of the parody around until it eventually came to the attention of an "uptight sphincter" that was looking for a distraction. Hope he/she's happy, now...I'm sure that nothing good can come of this.
The VCR is a program and cable provides the service allowing illegal copies to be recorded onto your VCR.
So should Cable be sued too?
But are the copies in and of themselves illegal? Or is it the act of transferring the copies that causes the problem? Or is it the intent to transfer the copies?
What this fellow seems to be promoting is nothing more than a "Big Dumb Booster"-based launch system. He's not worried about building a reusable launch vehicle a-la X-Prize, or an orbiter/re-entry vehicle, or a hypersonic jet engine. Kerosene, LOX, and a good pumping system...not necessarily elegant, but could be pretty effective.
Big thrust, low weight, "cheap" to manufacture, limited exposure to the "risky" science of re-entry (leave that to the folks worrying about the payload)...
In terms of innovations, Microsoft truly leads (agaist open-source). Microsoft tries to hire people with ideas, for the sole purpose of designing better interfaces and new concepts. I really, honestly, haven't seen much innovation from Linux.
Couple of nits:
"Linux" is a product. OSS is an "organization". So your comment, while true in the strictest sense, is kind of apples-and-oranges. Perhaps a better comparison would be Microsoft to OSS?
While Microsoft is pretty good at "innovating" an "experience", much of what Microsoft "Innovates" is a pretty wrapper around what once was OSS (e.g. the BSD-licenced Win 95 TCP/IP stack, the Kerberos implementation, various implementations of sundry Internet-centric protocols, the BSD zlib, etc.), or what once was someone else's purchased proprietary code (e.g. Visio), or even worse, some one else's stolen proprietary code (Stacker, Syn'X/SoftImage). Note that I've only mentioned code that Microsoft has actually USED, not their re-hashing of other successful products (spreadsheets, word processors, personal finance managers, etc.)
So no...maybe Linux doesn't Innovate. But I'm convinced that you can't make the same argument about OSS. And, I'm also convinced that, if the same measure were applied to OSS as to Microsoft, you'd find quite a bit of cross-pollination there...much of which would be OSS giving Microsoft the ability to do what it does today.
Another option - use the Doctor Who Vengeance on Varos method...three strikes and you're OH so out.
Kind of gives a new meaning to the term "survive a vote of no-confidence", doesn't it?
Seriously, though...that's basically what some other countries do (save the actual death of the polititian...pity, that, really, but...). Screw up enough, and you basically find yourself running against the person that people thought that they actually voted for in the first place (you, the politician). If you don't measure up, a new election is called.
Note that, even after a vote of no confidence, nothing says that you can't be re-elected. But it certainly would tend to shake a person up, I'd think.
The chief complaint that I've heard re: these models is that either would tend to bog the government down to a point where elected officials tend to move slowly, be very cautious, and don't accomplish very much. I would argue that this is not necessarily a bad thing.
The first thing that popped into my mind was that "Talking heads cannot be trusted to comment on Genetic Engineering. I mean, the lack of a torso is a dead giveaway...right?"
I mean...they shouldn't even try to participate in this discussion...right? After all, you should quit while you're a-head...
(ugh)
Then I browsed through the comments and got really depressed.
Oh, well...It's just Slashdot.
Question: What if the "pre-humans" in 2001: A Space Odyssey" watched their comrade pick up the bone, looked at each other, nodded, then tore the poor bastard to shreds...? The movie would have been quite a bit shorter...
Douglas Adams gave a pretty good synopsis of gestures as a form of control in the first Hitchhiker's Guide novel:
A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The ma- chine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.
I had always assumed that Douglas Adams was trying to illustrate our current situation through use of the absurd.
Could it be that, instead, he was a visionary instead?
Hmmm...wonder what the probability of *that* is...?
Last year the office issued an average of more than 3,000 patents a week. It is one of the few federal agencies that brings in more money than it spends.
Some of that money is siphoned off to other agencies _ more than $630 million since 1992.
The Patent Office has a positive cash flow. They actually take in more in fees than they consume, with the excess being diverted to non-productive (from a patent standpoint, anyway) agencies.
So, *of course* the only way for them to process more patents per time unit is to raise the fees.
Yes, I do realize that there are most likely mitigating factors (dealing with problems of expansion, etc.) that come in to play, here, which would make a noticable jump in speed more expensive. But, initial inspection of the problem does tend to make me think "plow the profits back in to the organization. Make *more* profits that way. Remember: The more we process, the more we *generate* here..."
Or could it possibly be an idea of "raise the fee enough to drive off all of these pesky little inventors...thus reducing our workload."
It will be interesting to see if the shock waves from the cavitation (the sudden formation of the tiny bubbles) affects the operation of the chip or erodes the surface, limiting the life.
No, no! It won't be the shock waves that reduces the life of the chip...rather, it will be the hard radiation from the resulting sonoluminescence and nuclear fusion that will undoubtedly occur.
I can't vouch for anything in the COBOL realm that's at all recent, except for the AS/400 (iSeries?) flavors...which (I understand) are quite a bit more advanced than traditional "big iron" versions. So, this may not be representative of most of the data out there. That being said...
1) I can read, write, etc. most flavors of data, "right out of the box". Short int to long float, "stringlike" ISO dates, etc. UNIX timestamps. I even have a homegrown library to convert a MUMPS HOROLOG into a usable timestamp (!!). Ugh!
2) That being said...very seldom do I do that sort of thing, since...well...basically, no one else does that sort of thing. COBOL has traditionally viewed dates as numeric values, most of the data "out there" was stored as packed (or somtimes zoned) decimal, and most of the code that we write today still builds upon data that has roots back in the (in my case) 1980s. So unless I'm writing an application specifically for interfacing to MUMPS or *n[iu]x, or making a standalone web app, I tend not to confuse things by changing how dates (or numbers, for that matter) are represented in the system.
Also, don't know what your experience was, but quite a bit of the COBOL environments around are EBCDIC-based. The AS/400 (helps you) "seamlessly" translates EBCDIC to ASCII (or DBCS to Unicode, or whatever), assuming that you're starting from EBCDIC to start with. If you're actually using COBOL to manipulate ASCII files, it gets to be a real slogfest, so most folks do a 1-pass translation to grab ASCII and output EBCDIC, and vice-versa when they're ready to update the record. That means that character representations (like CHAR or ZONED) are quite a bit easier to handle than a binary representation that has to be handled separately from other data.
As a matter of fact, one of the reasons that I still dig the AS/400 after "all these years", is that it does a passable job on just about any database-driven task that you can throw at it, from Windows-compatible file and print sharing to terabyte-sized, billion-record databases. And I can use everything from RPG (yuk), REXX and COBOL to C, Perl and Java to get to the data. If OS/400 isn't up to the task that I need to accomplish, I can run Linux (either natively or on an integrated PC) or Win2K...which I never have had to implement.
But, back to what you were saying:
The only reason that I can think of as to why we (big-iron programmers) don't do dates differently is due mostly to inertia. Translation/packing/unpacking isn't an issue. In today's world, I think the issue is more likely to be history, compatibility, portability (*everyone* has routines to read "ccyymmdd" dates), and the lack of any real direction on which way we really *should* store timestamps. Kind of along the lines of "this'll do until something better comes along"--and no one has really made the case that something out there is actually *better enough* for us to go back and review millions of lines of code in order to make sure that we properly support it.
"Computer...turn on the lights. And make it warmer in here" might be OK for human-computer INTERACTION. And, what the heck...for computer-computer interaction, too, in a pinch.
But as a "programming" paradigm? I guess it depends on what you mean by "programming" Scripting, almost certainly. But how about the "primitives" (obsolete FORTH reference) that allow such interaction to be parsed?
Ugh...I just had an ugly thought: Some por schmuck a hundred years from now is "programming" in a language that looks quite a bit like the old Infocom command parser. And he's writing an application that looks like something along the lines of trying to complete ZORK I in one long sentence...
You have a point, but only sort of...the "century indicator" in most Cobol implementations is based on the "leftmost" packed numeric digit stored in a 4-byte-long field...so, I suppose, you could claim that my programs aren't Y3k compliant, but they crtainly are Y2.1K compliant.
Example: At 1 second after 23:59:59 on x"1991231F" (which represents (sigh) "2099-12-31"), the date will become x"2000101F" ("2100-01-01). Which still works. Well...at least it works as well as it ever has...
So, it's entirely conceivable that we'll still be using (something that is loosely based on what we recognize as) COBOL in a century's time...and yep...I'll be happy to sign up right now to to maintain it then, too, if you'll guarantee that I'll have the opportunity.
Was it Groucho Marx that, when asked what he wanted people to say about him "in a hundred years", replied "He sure looks good for his age." ???
OK, here I am talking out of both sides of my mouth.
Something to keep in mind: "Adequate" Windows-PC computers are now *so cheap* that you almost can't afford *not* to own one if you have a legitimate need to access MS-centric servers. Which is, of course, what MS wants you to realize...
In our practice/business (physician-owned multispecialty), we've gone so far as to cascade "obsolete" computers (most recently, PII 350 MHz machines) to the homes of employees and physicians who have a demonstrated need for access to Clinic information.
But since you can now purchase a brand-new, gigahertz-plus "obsolete" mini-desktop computer for under $400 (or a laptop for under $900), I'd look at buying one to keep under the desk for just such an eventuality.
Most of the surgeons that I work with would "put up with" relying on a non-radiologist doc to add interp to an image exactly *once* before blowing a gasket (grin)...this is one of the cases where capitulation is (unfortunately) desirable.
---but---
At the same time, do the world a favor and don't stop being a squeaky wheel. Convince as many of your peers as possible that platform-dependence is a *bad thing*, and urge everyone to demand truly open apps. Until the users demand it, management won't make it part of any selection criteria--they probably think that "Designed for Microsoft Windows" is actually a *positive* thing!
My message to management:
Office is not an acceptable document exchange or archival (yuk!) format.
ActiveX is not an acceptable scripting medium.
If an application only runs in Explorer, it isn't "web-enabled", it's merely a Windows client-server app connecting via the http-port. Which is doubly bad.
It's OK for developers and vendors to target a specific platform. It's OK if that platform is Windows. Just be aware of what you're getting into when you choose such a platform. Make an informed decision...don't just accept it as an inevitability"
And--if a patient doesn't get adequate care because a physician runs a Mac instead of a Windows machine...that's unacceptable, and needs to be fixed, one way or another, IMMEDIATELY.
Thanks to a long list of overlapping issues, this is going to cause my employer (and a vendor that shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) a bit of a headache--and I doubt that we're alone in the world on this one.
We are running a Digital Imaging (digital radiology) sytstem that has a web-based server for allowing physicians to review images and interp from "any PC". The viewer itself is Java based...no client required (ahem...vendor speak. Client is downloaded automatically, perhaps? Anyway...) The elimination of the need to manage/install/maintain a client on thousands of different machines was one of the biggest reasons that management chose this particular system/particular vendor.
Background:
Here's how the IT assessment of the product went...
Yay...Java! This will run on any PC! Well, not Mac or Linux, but since we aren't a Mac or Linux shop, this is acceptable (this should have been our first clue).
Well--make that "any PC running Internet Explorer". Perhaps it's something with a particular DOM. We can live with that. We're running IE on all of our machines, anyway.
OK--make that "any Windows PC running Internet Explorer, using Microsoft's Virtual Machine. Sun's won't work". WTF? I thought this was JAVA. Let me guess...this was written using MS Visual J++, right?? Anyway, according to our management (who is undoubtedly quoting straight from the vendor), "it's a lot faster this way."
Ummm--make that "any Windows PC running Internet Explorer, using one of a few versions of Microsoft's Virtual Machine...the most recent ones will *break* the app". Now, where did *that* come from? But sure enough, if an employee gets overly "helpful" and tries to update their system (we still have some 9x systems on the network, and the boss won't let me firewall the Windows Update site), the application breaks. So whatever the vendor did isn't entirely "legal"...the latest VMs "fix" an undocumented feature that they are depending on...
Final analysis: "This sucks. Either plan on installing their Honest-to-Pete MS-VC++ client on 1,000 PCs or pick another vendor."
So, yes, management went ahead and bought the package - warts, J++ and all - from the vendor for a goodly sum, over the objections of the IS review committee. Yes, we've fought with said vendor for the last few months, to no avail (yet). No, the vendor (until now) claims that there is no reason to update their code to be fully Java-as-in-Sun compliant (or even Java-as-in-current-Microsoft compliant, for that matter), and that we should basically stop whining and get over it. But perhaps, just perhaps, we can now point to this and say "Look. Your cusomers *are* at risk. We *must* upgrade our JVM...we have no choice. If your software won't run on the resulting platform then it's not performing as indicated, which frees us from the contract and any pending payments coming due. Hint Hint."
Well, I'm not holding my breath on the vendor updating their code. I am holding my breath about this cycle of Windows Update problems, however. I imagine that the trouble tickets are already starting to come in to our PC support area. "The Radiology viewer doesn't work," they say. "I can't do my job...fix it now!" they demand. Much work to uninstall the new VM. Much work to re-install an older version so they can "do their job". And much sweating while we hope to dodge the bullet of a malicious Java applet through a combination of virus detection software and dumb luck.
Sometimes, a blind patch via Windows Update isn't the best thing to do, unfortunately.
Am I blaming Microsoft for building unsafe Operating System software? Well, yes, but I'm also a realist--you can't expect perfection. But what I'm really blaming Microsoft for is their knowing and purposeful design and dissimenation of a Java VM and Java development environment that was built to be incompatible with Sun's Java. I'm also blaming the vendor for helping support Microsof
My current machine (700MHz Duron @ 840Mhz, GF2 GTS)
I'm with ya, bud. Compared to mine, your setup rocks...700MHz Athlon classic, Voodoo 3500.
It's *just now* getting to be a bit of a bother. UT2003 Texture compression needs binary drivers (I'm mainly a Linux guy--can't yet get sourcecode for S3's intellectual property), and the V3500 that *used* to be able to run everything at 1024x768 with all eyecandy on is starting to force me backward in the newer games (Wolfenstein 3d at 800x600 at "medium eyecandy", etc).
With all of the socket/architecture revving that's been happening lately, it's getting harder to do component upgrades -- you pretty much need to replace the motherboard and go up from there. But hey...with prices the way they are today, I'm not complaining! Running a recent-but-still-inexpensive Athlon at a 333 MHz bus (synchronous with DDRam), and talking to a capable video card at 8x AGP sounds a LOT better to me than trying to push more out of an old (PII) BX or (AMD-based) Via *133 mobo. Bang for the buck, etc.
Looking *really* hard at a Barton 2500+ (when it comes out!) or a T'bred 2400+ or better on a NForce2 (with 512MB dual-channel DDR3200 or 3700), and a Radeon 9500 Pro. Still a hair over $600, though. I can wait...Hardware just gets cheaper and faster. And when I jump, it's gonna be *sweet*.
Sure, I could get a slower and cheaper CPU. But it would get obsolete sooner...
While this is obviously true, it might be worthwile to look at this another way, however.
Think about "top dollar" versus "mainstream priced". While you may find that you need to replace your "mainstream priced" computer a year or so (bear with me, here) sooner than you would a new "top of the line" model, it does pay to look at the cost of replacing the "mainstream priced" computer (or components) with a newer system.
I've always subscribed to the theory that your best rule-of-thumb value in computer equipment is to buy LAST YEAR'S top-of-the-line. That usually (again, with rule-of-thumb fuzziness) means that you'll get about 3/4 of the "usable" lifetime out of the system, as opposed to the newer box (4-5 year expected lifespan, etc.) This also means that since you're replacing the computer sooner, so you'll actually end up getting a newer computer a year or so sooner than you would if you spent big bucks, and felt like you needed to hold on longer. And if you time it right (and don't replace the computer until you *really* feel you need to), this means you can get yummy new hardware without guilt when you feel the "need for speed." So when UT2003 or DoomIII comes out, you have the cash to replace your machine with another "last year's top-of-the-line model".
Which means, if you're buying today, you may not have hyper-threading, but you'll still be running at comfortably over 2.4 GHz, with DDR3700 CAS2 RAM, on a GeForce Ti 4200 or Radeon 9500...not killer, but then again, nothing to sneeze at. You're getting the same performance for under $1800 that you would have paid over $3000 for last year.
If you take your time, and position yourself favorably for future upgrades (buying this year's mobo, with last year's CPU and video), you can even stretch it further.
Hey, up to you, though. Some folks like having the latest and greatest--that's part of the thrill. What sucks is when someone else comes in 9 months later and buys the same capability for half the price...
Hmmm...Thought that boron was used mostly for deposit control (maybe because the first thing that I think of when I hear "boron" is "Twenty-Mule-Team Borax?"
Lesee...Boron has a valence of ?3? How about bromine? It's a halogen, true, but it makes more "sense" to me than boron. Let's see: Ethyl bromide (ethelene dibromide?) and its buddy etheline chloride, however, have some antiknock properties IIRC, as well as an affinity for carbon and lead salts, so that would make more sense to me as a substitue or additive.
Another boron compound that's pretty stable and useful is boron nitride...it's a (dry) lubricant that can stand up to some pretty extreme temperatures...KIND of like PTFE. Don't think it would do very good in the combustion chamber, but would work out OK as an oil additive (which it is!).
Anyway, from what I can remember/find...various boron compounds were used by refineries such as the ARCO plants in the 60s to try to offset some of the fouling/deposit problems caused by TEL. I wonder if that's actually what was at work, here.
<opinion>
Here's my take on the story of the Boron brand: Boron was added to gasoline to reduce leading. The gasoline you were purchasing *was* leaded. Whoever was manufacturing this particular stream of gasoline decided to build something (that could be advertised as) "better" than the other gasolines around by hyping its anti-deposit properties. Saying that it contained boron is kind of like saying something like "with additive X12" or "with Techron" or some such...it doesn't really tell the whole story.
</opinion>
As far as toxicity--boron is pretty hard to transport (since it's so darned reactive, it tends to glom on to whatever it comes in contact with first)...but it has been shown to raise white blood cell counts and lower sperm counts. In the "real world" you'd almost have to come in direct contact with a (somewhat) anhydrous carrier (think "used motor oil") to get much of a bump.
Now, if you wanted to make an ammonia-based fuel, boron hydrides might make a good hydrogen carrier. No smoking, though...please! Along those lines, perhaps a boron-hydrogen adduct (BH3?) might be be useful in the same capacity, but as a hydrogen carrier, not an antiknock additive. It'd be unstable as hell, but would tend to burn rather completely.
Also, another way to boost power on engines was water injection - would drying the alcohol be quite as important? (of course you need to make sure your fuel system is corrosion proof, but then again, you should anyway!)
Well...water in the fuel system has its problems, beyond the obvious. Ignoring fuel system corrosion (addressable), exhaust system corrosion (ditto), the effect of latent heat reducing cylinder temperatures (one of the desired side-effects, but also causes problems in emissions and...starting the beast) and venturi temperature (important, if icing is at all an issue), we're still left with a less-than-perfect situation.
Remember: What water injection had "traditionally" been used for (slightly pre-WWII and onward) was to greatly increase power output in aviation/high-output vehicular engines for short periods of time. Get a plane up, get it *hot*, and then pour it on... It can be thought of as a "boost fluid", to be injected when the supercharger bypass is locked closed. Gobs of power...and fuel consumption...and wear...and pollution...
However, that was in klunky old engines that were in reality pretty dismal compared to what we have today. And yes, I know we still use boost fluids in modern aircraft and specialty vehicles. However, their role is still to "make gobs of power" rather than to be efficient or non-polluting. Some smaller modern engines (think "sportbikes") are running on street gas at compression levels comfortably over 10:1 (I don't think anyone manufactures a bike engine that runs over 11:1 now, but I could be mistaken). Some of the crazies are running 13:1, on pump Premium. Long overlap cam and retarded timing, I guess. I'd think you'd kill the darned thing the first time you goosed it.
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, an increase of absolute humidity resulting in an addition of 1 gram of water per 1 kg of "dry" air will boost the octane rating about 0.25 points. However, yin-for-yang, it will also decrease engine efficiency in the form of an increase in hydrocarbon emissions (albeit while slightly reducing NOx output). Go to 10% water in your methanol, and you're looking at a 3% DECREASE in power per unit burned, and a corresponding increase in unburnt fuel (duh!). You can make up the power (and go beyond) by supercharging...but then you're polluting even more and drastically reducing efficiency. Not the direction we want to go.
Net-net is that, compared to dry fuel and dry air, wet fuel and/or wet air is less efficient in an engine designed to burn dry fuel (unless, of course, you're running some sort of atmospheric augmentation, or a variable-compression engine). However, the fact remains that most vehicles won't be nearly as efficient if we have to run positive pressure simply to maintain an idle...and I have yet to see a truly viable variable-compression engine that I would purchase (Saab, for one, has a plinker that works fairly well...but doesn't really compare to, say, a Honda engine in terms of efficiency or longevity). If you go the other route and design an engine to burn wet fuel, you need to make certain that the car is "smart enough" to run on straight gas without problems...engine management is the key, here. And I still think that you're looking at an engine that would have to run boost just to idle properly.
What about having two tanks on your car (just like the planes, that have a tank for fuel, and a tank for boost fluid)? Build a super-high-strung engine, run it on gas until it's hot, then use boost fluid to prevent detonation. Use up your boost fluid, and the car goes into "limp home mode", running hopelessly rich (and/or running with no boost) to keep from killing itself with predetonation, and struggling simply to move itself. Hopefully, we could build a car smart enough that it wouldn't allow the owner to kill it. And build owners smart enough to put the right fluid in the right hole (I envision a filler that's 3 inches or better in diameter). Oh...and don't forget that you now need TWO gas cans "just in case".
Any cars that have been built with water injection (yes, there have been a few set up that way from the factory) were all dropped from the lineup soon after. Engine management (maintaining a correct stoichiometric mix coupled with appropriate ignition advance curves, etc.), although better today than a quarter-century ago, is still inexact enough that cars can barely pass emissions requirements in the best of conditions. We still don't really *know* what goes on inside a combustion chamber...Ogg knows how to make fire, but he's just not certain exactly what this "fire thingy" is.
Perhaps the "Holy Grail" of water injection would be in the form of an adiabatic (sp?) engine, using more of the engine's heat (increasing efficiency), using water in the fuel charge to reduce NOX (goes *way* up as temp increases), with a really *good* catalyst system in the exhaust, and with a net-net improvement in "performance" over a traditional gasoline engine. Don't know why the auto makers won't bring 'em out...sounds like a conspiracy to me...
So, basically, wet alcohol isn't a very good fuel in terms of emissions, efficiency, or cost. Dry alcohol isn't much better (trade hydrocarbons for NOx), but at least it's somewhat carbon-neutral.
So, I stick by what I said: TEL *was* more economically viable, at least until the cumulative effects on the environment were better understood. Wet alcohol *wasn't* a viable option when TEL was discovered. Dry alcohol *did* cost considerably more to produce. Remember, it was the 1920s when most of this conjecture took place. I'll restate what I said in my previous post: What *really* disappoints me is that (after we got that little WWII diversion out of the way) we still continued to use TEL when we knew better.
Slashdot Mirror
The Atari Portfolio, circa 1989, is still the easiest-to-type-on handheld "PDA/computer" that's ever been made...including that Apple Newton thingy, by the way. The Zaurus comes in a distant third...and nothing I've used recently comes close to the Zaurus.
Without decent input capability, most of my remaining "desired PDA functionality" can be handled by a programmable wristwatch.
I mean...if it's such a godsend and all...if it's going to be such a killer feature...why is any mention of this so hard to find on their site?
Search for "parental" using their site search. Nothing found. Hmmm...
A quick google returned a reference to the Belkin Advantage page. Hmmm again...a flash advertisement, but no mention of ongoing charges. Except that you can pay an extra $10 for 6 months worth of "reporting"...
The most informative thing that I found (under "News") was a press release from last May.
Tried the Support search. Nothing. Nothing in any FAQs (that I could find). Nothing (that I saw, anyway) contained in the on-line (PDF) manuals. No way for me to decide (if I should be so inclined) that I *want* to buy a Belkin router, because I *want* censorware. I mean...if this is something that they wish to prominently promote...why aren't they?
From the press release: $19.99/year after the first 6 months? Hmmm...let's say your "free" 6 months are up. What do you want to bet that the only thing that your router will route "to" at that time will be a "your time is up...pay us money" site until a) you pay them money (at which time they *have* your credit card number...bwahhaahaaahhaa, now try to unsubscribe!), or b) you figure out how to disable this feature in the router. Gosh...hope you know what you're doing.
Sleaze. That's all it is. Sleaze.
Although, with all of my neighbors running un-encrypted wireless access points, it could be kind of fun signing them up for parental control and turning EVERYTHING off...
moon.mountain
Right beside some valleys that receive no direct sunlight, of course...oblique angle and all.
So, there is a known "always light" area on the moon. (Pink was wrong?)
Wouldn't do much for us in the way of beaming power to the earth, though (I wouldn't think, anyway) unless we figure out some way to cheaply move the power earth-side-southward about 5 degrees (since the axial tilt of the moon is about that, and the "light-bathed mountain" will tilt away from the earth about 2 weeks per month).
Near-zero boot time, and uptime for days (literally) when a "power pillow" made of C-cell nicads is plugged in (it puts the keyboard at the proper angle for comfortable typing).
Coupled up with an ancient Tandy 9-pin dot-matrix printer in "single-sheet" mode, taking minutes for church meetings...just what it's made to do.
Supposedly, quite a few reporters still use the old things, too. Quick, easy, reliable, and (with the proper software), able to transfer documents and files to a PC.
Built back when Bill Gates used to actually program...
Tandy specs
Just my Sound Blaster 16 ISA card.
OK...let's try for "one better." I'm still using an ISA Sound Blaster 16 SCSI card. And actually *using* the SCSI interface to talk to an old flatbed scanner...
I can't see any reason to upgrade until it dies. It'll still let my daugher play her ancient 16-bit DOS "kids' games" that choke under Win98 when the computer is booted up in DOS mode...just what the doctor ordered. It's faster than my scanner. Why change what's working well?
Heh
:-P Will F hash do any better?
In the UK we call that square thingy a hash
Do you think C hash has done well here
(Or does "making a hash of it" get lost in the translation?)
Grin. (Oh, you Brits!)..but actually...
That "square thingy" is in reality an "octathorpe."
I suggest that we abbreviate "octathorpe" to "oct."...
And proclaim that the language is "F-oct."
Spaceballs parodying Star Wars (and the Wizard of Oz, and Alien, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, etc., etc., etc.) with a "title" character named after "Colonel Sandurz" is OK, though...I guess. ("What's the matter, Sandurz? Chicken??") And isn't "Lone Star" a kind of beer? Not to mention the minor character "Pizza The Hut". Although I have to agree...I'd have Barfed (sic) if one of the characters had actually been named Strawberry Shortcake.
Anyway...I'm thinking that someone at American Greetings was just being a *mite* too sensitive.
Opinion: Somebody at American Greetings thought that the strip was mildly amusing. It was shared with a few co-workers. The office gossip net moved the news of the parody around until it eventually came to the attention of an "uptight sphincter" that was looking for a distraction. Hope he/she's happy, now...I'm sure that nothing good can come of this.
MMM...Strawberries and beer...Now I'M distracted.
The VCR is a program and cable provides the service allowing illegal copies to be recorded onto your VCR.
So should Cable be sued too?
But are the copies in and of themselves illegal? Or is it the act of transferring the copies that causes the problem? Or is it the intent to transfer the copies?
Too bad it looks like ISPs are about to lose in a case just like this.
It's a little different...morpheus and grokster are programs, while Verizon provides a service that allows illegal copies to be transported.
UPS, FedEx, the USPS, any telephony carrier, and the US Department of Transportation have to pony up their records in similar situations...don't they?
Note: This doesn't mean that I *like* the way it is...I'm just saying that it looks like this is not as big a "leap" as we'd like to think...
What this fellow seems to be promoting is nothing more than a "Big Dumb Booster"-based launch system. He's not worried about building a reusable launch vehicle a-la X-Prize, or an orbiter/re-entry vehicle, or a hypersonic jet engine. Kerosene, LOX, and a good pumping system...not necessarily elegant, but could be pretty effective.
Big thrust, low weight, "cheap" to manufacture, limited exposure to the "risky" science of re-entry (leave that to the folks worrying about the payload)...
These guys may be on to something.
Couple of nits:
"Linux" is a product. OSS is an "organization". So your comment, while true in the strictest sense, is kind of apples-and-oranges. Perhaps a better comparison would be Microsoft to OSS?
While Microsoft is pretty good at "innovating" an "experience", much of what Microsoft "Innovates" is a pretty wrapper around what once was OSS (e.g. the BSD-licenced Win 95 TCP/IP stack, the Kerberos implementation, various implementations of sundry Internet-centric protocols, the BSD zlib, etc.), or what once was someone else's purchased proprietary code (e.g. Visio), or even worse, some one else's stolen proprietary code (Stacker, Syn'X/SoftImage). Note that I've only mentioned code that Microsoft has actually USED, not their re-hashing of other successful products (spreadsheets, word processors, personal finance managers, etc.)
So no...maybe Linux doesn't Innovate. But I'm convinced that you can't make the same argument about OSS. And, I'm also convinced that, if the same measure were applied to OSS as to Microsoft, you'd find quite a bit of cross-pollination there...much of which would be OSS giving Microsoft the ability to do what it does today.
Another option - use the Doctor Who Vengeance on Varos method...three strikes and you're OH so out.
Kind of gives a new meaning to the term "survive a vote of no-confidence", doesn't it?
Seriously, though...that's basically what some other countries do (save the actual death of the polititian...pity, that, really, but...). Screw up enough, and you basically find yourself running against the person that people thought that they actually voted for in the first place (you, the politician). If you don't measure up, a new election is called.
Note that, even after a vote of no confidence, nothing says that you can't be re-elected. But it certainly would tend to shake a person up, I'd think.
The chief complaint that I've heard re: these models is that either would tend to bog the government down to a point where elected officials tend to move slowly, be very cautious, and don't accomplish very much. I would argue that this is not necessarily a bad thing.
The first thing that popped into my mind was that "Talking heads cannot be trusted to comment on Genetic Engineering. I mean, the lack of a torso is a dead giveaway...right?"
I mean...they shouldn't even try to participate in this discussion...right? After all, you should quit while you're a-head...
(ugh)
Then I browsed through the comments and got really depressed.
Oh, well...It's just Slashdot.
Question: What if the "pre-humans" in 2001: A Space Odyssey" watched their comrade pick up the bone, looked at each other, nodded, then tore the poor bastard to shreds...? The movie would have been quite a bit shorter...
Douglas Adams gave a pretty good synopsis of gestures as a form of control in the first Hitchhiker's Guide novel:
A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as
Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The ma-
chine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by
means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became
more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive you merely had
to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your
hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of
muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly
still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.
I had always assumed that Douglas Adams was trying to illustrate our current situation through use of the absurd.
Could it be that, instead, he was a visionary instead?
Hmmm...wonder what the probability of *that* is...?
From the article:
Last year the office issued an average of more than 3,000 patents a week. It is one of the few federal agencies that brings in more money than it spends.
Some of that money is siphoned off to other agencies _ more than $630 million since 1992.
The Patent Office has a positive cash flow. They actually take in more in fees than they consume, with the excess being diverted to non-productive (from a patent standpoint, anyway) agencies.
So, *of course* the only way for them to process more patents per time unit is to raise the fees.
Yes, I do realize that there are most likely mitigating factors (dealing with problems of expansion, etc.) that come in to play, here, which would make a noticable jump in speed more expensive. But, initial inspection of the problem does tend to make me think "plow the profits back in to the organization. Make *more* profits that way. Remember: The more we process, the more we *generate* here..."
Or could it possibly be an idea of "raise the fee enough to drive off all of these pesky little inventors...thus reducing our workload."
Nah...they wouldn't think that way...would they?
It will be interesting to see if the shock waves from the cavitation (the sudden formation of the tiny bubbles) affects the operation of the chip or erodes the surface, limiting the life.
No, no! It won't be the shock waves that reduces the life of the chip...rather, it will be the hard radiation from the resulting sonoluminescence and nuclear fusion that will undoubtedly occur.
I can't vouch for anything in the COBOL realm that's at all recent, except for the AS/400 (iSeries?) flavors...which (I understand) are quite a bit more advanced than traditional "big iron" versions. So, this may not be representative of most of the data out there. That being said...
1) I can read, write, etc. most flavors of data, "right out of the box". Short int to long float, "stringlike" ISO dates, etc. UNIX timestamps. I even have a homegrown library to convert a MUMPS HOROLOG into a usable timestamp (!!). Ugh!
2) That being said...very seldom do I do that sort of thing, since...well...basically, no one else does that sort of thing. COBOL has traditionally viewed dates as numeric values, most of the data "out there" was stored as packed (or somtimes zoned) decimal, and most of the code that we write today still builds upon data that has roots back in the (in my case) 1980s. So unless I'm writing an application specifically for interfacing to MUMPS or *n[iu]x, or making a standalone web app, I tend not to confuse things by changing how dates (or numbers, for that matter) are represented in the system.
Also, don't know what your experience was, but quite a bit of the COBOL environments around are EBCDIC-based. The AS/400 (helps you) "seamlessly" translates EBCDIC to ASCII (or DBCS to Unicode, or whatever), assuming that you're starting from EBCDIC to start with. If you're actually using COBOL to manipulate ASCII files, it gets to be a real slogfest, so most folks do a 1-pass translation to grab ASCII and output EBCDIC, and vice-versa when they're ready to update the record. That means that character representations (like CHAR or ZONED) are quite a bit easier to handle than a binary representation that has to be handled separately from other data.
As a matter of fact, one of the reasons that I still dig the AS/400 after "all these years", is that it does a passable job on just about any database-driven task that you can throw at it, from Windows-compatible file and print sharing to terabyte-sized, billion-record databases. And I can use everything from RPG (yuk), REXX and COBOL to C, Perl and Java to get to the data. If OS/400 isn't up to the task that I need to accomplish, I can run Linux (either natively or on an integrated PC) or Win2K...which I never have had to implement.
But, back to what you were saying:
The only reason that I can think of as to why we (big-iron programmers) don't do dates differently is due mostly to inertia. Translation/packing/unpacking isn't an issue. In today's world, I think the issue is more likely to be history, compatibility, portability (*everyone* has routines to read "ccyymmdd" dates), and the lack of any real direction on which way we really *should* store timestamps. Kind of along the lines of "this'll do until something better comes along"--and no one has really made the case that something out there is actually *better enough* for us to go back and review millions of lines of code in order to make sure that we properly support it.
Natural language interaction, sure.
"Computer...turn on the lights. And make it warmer in here" might be OK for human-computer INTERACTION. And, what the heck...for computer-computer interaction, too, in a pinch.
But as a "programming" paradigm? I guess it depends on what you mean by "programming" Scripting, almost certainly. But how about the "primitives" (obsolete FORTH reference) that allow such interaction to be parsed?
Ugh...I just had an ugly thought: Some por schmuck a hundred years from now is "programming" in a language that looks quite a bit like the old Infocom command parser. And he's writing an application that looks like something along the lines of trying to complete ZORK I in one long sentence...
You have a point, but only sort of...the "century indicator" in most Cobol implementations is based on the "leftmost" packed numeric digit stored in a 4-byte-long field...so, I suppose, you could claim that my programs aren't Y3k compliant, but they crtainly are Y2.1K compliant.
Example: At 1 second after 23:59:59 on x"1991231F" (which represents (sigh) "2099-12-31"), the date will become x"2000101F" ("2100-01-01). Which still works. Well...at least it works as well as it ever has...
So, it's entirely conceivable that we'll still be using (something that is loosely based on what we recognize as) COBOL in a century's time...and yep...I'll be happy to sign up right now to to maintain it then, too, if you'll guarantee that I'll have the opportunity.
Was it Groucho Marx that, when asked what he wanted people to say about him "in a hundred years", replied "He sure looks good for his age." ???
Something to keep in mind: "Adequate" Windows-PC computers are now *so cheap* that you almost can't afford *not* to own one if you have a legitimate need to access MS-centric servers. Which is, of course, what MS wants you to realize...
In our practice/business (physician-owned multispecialty), we've gone so far as to cascade "obsolete" computers (most recently, PII 350 MHz machines) to the homes of employees and physicians who have a demonstrated need for access to Clinic information.
But since you can now purchase a brand-new, gigahertz-plus "obsolete" mini-desktop computer for under $400 (or a laptop for under $900), I'd look at buying one to keep under the desk for just such an eventuality.
Most of the surgeons that I work with would "put up with" relying on a non-radiologist doc to add interp to an image exactly *once* before blowing a gasket (grin)...this is one of the cases where capitulation is (unfortunately) desirable.
---but---
At the same time, do the world a favor and don't stop being a squeaky wheel. Convince as many of your peers as possible that platform-dependence is a *bad thing*, and urge everyone to demand truly open apps. Until the users demand it, management won't make it part of any selection criteria--they probably think that "Designed for Microsoft Windows" is actually a *positive* thing!
My message to management:
Office is not an acceptable document exchange or archival (yuk!) format.
ActiveX is not an acceptable scripting medium.
If an application only runs in Explorer, it isn't "web-enabled", it's merely a Windows client-server app connecting via the http-port. Which is doubly bad.
It's OK for developers and vendors to target a specific platform. It's OK if that platform is Windows. Just be aware of what you're getting into when you choose such a platform. Make an informed decision...don't just accept it as an inevitability"
And--if a patient doesn't get adequate care because a physician runs a Mac instead of a Windows machine...that's unacceptable, and needs to be fixed, one way or another, IMMEDIATELY.
Yes, maybe, but...
Thanks to a long list of overlapping issues, this is going to cause my employer (and a vendor that shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) a bit of a headache--and I doubt that we're alone in the world on this one.
We are running a Digital Imaging (digital radiology) sytstem that has a web-based server for allowing physicians to review images and interp from "any PC". The viewer itself is Java based...no client required (ahem...vendor speak. Client is downloaded automatically, perhaps? Anyway...) The elimination of the need to manage/install/maintain a client on thousands of different machines was one of the biggest reasons that management chose this particular system/particular vendor.
Background:
Here's how the IT assessment of the product went...
Yay...Java! This will run on any PC! Well, not Mac or Linux, but since we aren't a Mac or Linux shop, this is acceptable (this should have been our first clue).
Well--make that "any PC running Internet Explorer". Perhaps it's something with a particular DOM. We can live with that. We're running IE on all of our machines, anyway.
OK--make that "any Windows PC running Internet Explorer, using Microsoft's Virtual Machine. Sun's won't work". WTF? I thought this was JAVA. Let me guess...this was written using MS Visual J++, right?? Anyway, according to our management (who is undoubtedly quoting straight from the vendor), "it's a lot faster this way."
Ummm--make that "any Windows PC running Internet Explorer, using one of a few versions of Microsoft's Virtual Machine...the most recent ones will *break* the app". Now, where did *that* come from? But sure enough, if an employee gets overly "helpful" and tries to update their system (we still have some 9x systems on the network, and the boss won't let me firewall the Windows Update site), the application breaks. So whatever the vendor did isn't entirely "legal"...the latest VMs "fix" an undocumented feature that they are depending on...
Final analysis: "This sucks. Either plan on installing their Honest-to-Pete MS-VC++ client on 1,000 PCs or pick another vendor."
So, yes, management went ahead and bought the package - warts, J++ and all - from the vendor for a goodly sum, over the objections of the IS review committee. Yes, we've fought with said vendor for the last few months, to no avail (yet). No, the vendor (until now) claims that there is no reason to update their code to be fully Java-as-in-Sun compliant (or even Java-as-in-current-Microsoft compliant, for that matter), and that we should basically stop whining and get over it. But perhaps, just perhaps, we can now point to this and say "Look. Your cusomers *are* at risk. We *must* upgrade our JVM...we have no choice. If your software won't run on the resulting platform then it's not performing as indicated, which frees us from the contract and any pending payments coming due. Hint Hint."
Well, I'm not holding my breath on the vendor updating their code. I am holding my breath about this cycle of Windows Update problems, however. I imagine that the trouble tickets are already starting to come in to our PC support area. "The Radiology viewer doesn't work," they say. "I can't do my job...fix it now!" they demand. Much work to uninstall the new VM. Much work to re-install an older version so they can "do their job". And much sweating while we hope to dodge the bullet of a malicious Java applet through a combination of virus detection software and dumb luck.
Sometimes, a blind patch via Windows Update isn't the best thing to do, unfortunately.
Am I blaming Microsoft for building unsafe Operating System software? Well, yes, but I'm also a realist--you can't expect perfection. But what I'm really blaming Microsoft for is their knowing and purposeful design and dissimenation of a Java VM and Java development environment that was built to be incompatible with Sun's Java. I'm also blaming the vendor for helping support Microsof
My current machine (700MHz Duron @ 840Mhz, GF2 GTS)
I'm with ya, bud. Compared to mine, your setup rocks...700MHz Athlon classic, Voodoo 3500.
It's *just now* getting to be a bit of a bother. UT2003 Texture compression needs binary drivers (I'm mainly a Linux guy--can't yet get sourcecode for S3's intellectual property), and the V3500 that *used* to be able to run everything at 1024x768 with all eyecandy on is starting to force me backward in the newer games (Wolfenstein 3d at 800x600 at "medium eyecandy", etc).
With all of the socket/architecture revving that's been happening lately, it's getting harder to do component upgrades -- you pretty much need to replace the motherboard and go up from there. But hey...with prices the way they are today, I'm not complaining! Running a recent-but-still-inexpensive Athlon at a 333 MHz bus (synchronous with DDRam), and talking to a capable video card at 8x AGP sounds a LOT better to me than trying to push more out of an old (PII) BX or (AMD-based) Via *133 mobo. Bang for the buck, etc.
Looking *really* hard at a Barton 2500+ (when it comes out!) or a T'bred 2400+ or better on a NForce2 (with 512MB dual-channel DDR3200 or 3700), and a Radeon 9500 Pro. Still a hair over $600, though. I can wait...Hardware just gets cheaper and faster. And when I jump, it's gonna be *sweet*.
Sure, I could get a slower and cheaper CPU. But it would get obsolete sooner...
While this is obviously true, it might be worthwile to look at this another way, however.
Think about "top dollar" versus "mainstream priced". While you may find that you need to replace your "mainstream priced" computer a year or so (bear with me, here) sooner than you would a new "top of the line" model, it does pay to look at the cost of replacing the "mainstream priced" computer (or components) with a newer system.
I've always subscribed to the theory that your best rule-of-thumb value in computer equipment is to buy LAST YEAR'S top-of-the-line. That usually (again, with rule-of-thumb fuzziness) means that you'll get about 3/4 of the "usable" lifetime out of the system, as opposed to the newer box (4-5 year expected lifespan, etc.) This also means that since you're replacing the computer sooner, so you'll actually end up getting a newer computer a year or so sooner than you would if you spent big bucks, and felt like you needed to hold on longer. And if you time it right (and don't replace the computer until you *really* feel you need to), this means you can get yummy new hardware without guilt when you feel the "need for speed." So when UT2003 or DoomIII comes out, you have the cash to replace your machine with another "last year's top-of-the-line model".
Which means, if you're buying today, you may not have hyper-threading, but you'll still be running at comfortably over 2.4 GHz, with DDR3700 CAS2 RAM, on a GeForce Ti 4200 or Radeon 9500...not killer, but then again, nothing to sneeze at. You're getting the same performance for under $1800 that you would have paid over $3000 for last year.
If you take your time, and position yourself favorably for future upgrades (buying this year's mobo, with last year's CPU and video), you can even stretch it further.
Hey, up to you, though. Some folks like having the latest and greatest--that's part of the thrill. What sucks is when someone else comes in 9 months later and buys the same capability for half the price...
Hmmm...Thought that boron was used mostly for deposit control (maybe because the first thing that I think of when I hear "boron" is "Twenty-Mule-Team Borax?"
Lesee...Boron has a valence of ?3? How about bromine? It's a halogen, true, but it makes more "sense" to me than boron. Let's see: Ethyl bromide (ethelene dibromide?) and its buddy etheline chloride, however, have some antiknock properties IIRC, as well as an affinity for carbon and lead salts, so that would make more sense to me as a substitue or additive.
Another boron compound that's pretty stable and useful is boron nitride...it's a (dry) lubricant that can stand up to some pretty extreme temperatures...KIND of like PTFE. Don't think it would do very good in the combustion chamber, but would work out OK as an oil additive (which it is!).
Anyway, from what I can remember/find...various boron compounds were used by refineries such as the ARCO plants in the 60s to try to offset some of the fouling/deposit problems caused by TEL. I wonder if that's actually what was at work, here.
<opinion>
Here's my take on the story of the Boron brand: Boron was added to gasoline to reduce leading. The gasoline you were purchasing *was* leaded. Whoever was manufacturing this particular stream of gasoline decided to build something (that could be advertised as) "better" than the other gasolines around by hyping its anti-deposit properties. Saying that it contained boron is kind of like saying something like "with additive X12" or "with Techron" or some such...it doesn't really tell the whole story.
</opinion>
As far as toxicity--boron is pretty hard to transport (since it's so darned reactive, it tends to glom on to whatever it comes in contact with first)...but it has been shown to raise white blood cell counts and lower sperm counts. In the "real world" you'd almost have to come in direct contact with a (somewhat) anhydrous carrier (think "used motor oil") to get much of a bump.
Now, if you wanted to make an ammonia-based fuel, boron hydrides might make a good hydrogen carrier. No smoking, though...please! Along those lines, perhaps a boron-hydrogen adduct (BH3?) might be be useful in the same capacity, but as a hydrogen carrier, not an antiknock additive. It'd be unstable as hell, but would tend to burn rather completely.
Also, another way to boost power on engines was water injection - would drying the alcohol be quite as important? (of course you need to make sure your fuel system is corrosion proof, but then again, you should anyway!)
Well...water in the fuel system has its problems, beyond the obvious. Ignoring fuel system corrosion (addressable), exhaust system corrosion (ditto), the effect of latent heat reducing cylinder temperatures (one of the desired side-effects, but also causes problems in emissions and...starting the beast) and venturi temperature (important, if icing is at all an issue), we're still left with a less-than-perfect situation.
Remember: What water injection had "traditionally" been used for (slightly pre-WWII and onward) was to greatly increase power output in aviation/high-output vehicular engines for short periods of time. Get a plane up, get it *hot*, and then pour it on... It can be thought of as a "boost fluid", to be injected when the supercharger bypass is locked closed. Gobs of power...and fuel consumption...and wear...and pollution...
However, that was in klunky old engines that were in reality pretty dismal compared to what we have today. And yes, I know we still use boost fluids in modern aircraft and specialty vehicles. However, their role is still to "make gobs of power" rather than to be efficient or non-polluting. Some smaller modern engines (think "sportbikes") are running on street gas at compression levels comfortably over 10:1 (I don't think anyone manufactures a bike engine that runs over 11:1 now, but I could be mistaken). Some of the crazies are running 13:1, on pump Premium. Long overlap cam and retarded timing, I guess. I'd think you'd kill the darned thing the first time you goosed it.
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, an increase of absolute humidity resulting in an addition of 1 gram of water per 1 kg of "dry" air will boost the octane rating about 0.25 points. However, yin-for-yang, it will also decrease engine efficiency in the form of an increase in hydrocarbon emissions (albeit while slightly reducing NOx output). Go to 10% water in your methanol, and you're looking at a 3% DECREASE in power per unit burned, and a corresponding increase in unburnt fuel (duh!). You can make up the power (and go beyond) by supercharging...but then you're polluting even more and drastically reducing efficiency. Not the direction we want to go.
Net-net is that, compared to dry fuel and dry air, wet fuel and/or wet air is less efficient in an engine designed to burn dry fuel (unless, of course, you're running some sort of atmospheric augmentation, or a variable-compression engine). However, the fact remains that most vehicles won't be nearly as efficient if we have to run positive pressure simply to maintain an idle...and I have yet to see a truly viable variable-compression engine that I would purchase (Saab, for one, has a plinker that works fairly well...but doesn't really compare to, say, a Honda engine in terms of efficiency or longevity). If you go the other route and design an engine to burn wet fuel, you need to make certain that the car is "smart enough" to run on straight gas without problems...engine management is the key, here. And I still think that you're looking at an engine that would have to run boost just to idle properly.
What about having two tanks on your car (just like the planes, that have a tank for fuel, and a tank for boost fluid)? Build a super-high-strung engine, run it on gas until it's hot, then use boost fluid to prevent detonation. Use up your boost fluid, and the car goes into "limp home mode", running hopelessly rich (and/or running with no boost) to keep from killing itself with predetonation, and struggling simply to move itself. Hopefully, we could build a car smart enough that it wouldn't allow the owner to kill it. And build owners smart enough to put the right fluid in the right hole (I envision a filler that's 3 inches or better in diameter). Oh...and don't forget that you now need TWO gas cans "just in case".
Any cars that have been built with water injection (yes, there have been a few set up that way from the factory) were all dropped from the lineup soon after. Engine management (maintaining a correct stoichiometric mix coupled with appropriate ignition advance curves, etc.), although better today than a quarter-century ago, is still inexact enough that cars can barely pass emissions requirements in the best of conditions. We still don't really *know* what goes on inside a combustion chamber...Ogg knows how to make fire, but he's just not certain exactly what this "fire thingy" is.
Perhaps the "Holy Grail" of water injection would be in the form of an adiabatic (sp?) engine, using more of the engine's heat (increasing efficiency), using water in the fuel charge to reduce NOX (goes *way* up as temp increases), with a really *good* catalyst system in the exhaust, and with a net-net improvement in "performance" over a traditional gasoline engine. Don't know why the auto makers won't bring 'em out...sounds like a conspiracy to me...
So, basically, wet alcohol isn't a very good fuel in terms of emissions, efficiency, or cost. Dry alcohol isn't much better (trade hydrocarbons for NOx), but at least it's somewhat carbon-neutral.
So, I stick by what I said: TEL *was* more economically viable, at least until the cumulative effects on the environment were better understood. Wet alcohol *wasn't* a viable option when TEL was discovered. Dry alcohol *did* cost considerably more to produce. Remember, it was the 1920s when most of this conjecture took place. I'll restate what I said in my previous post: What *really* disappoints me is that (after we got that little WWII diversion out of the way) we still continued to use TEL when we knew better.