The automobile needs to be redesigned from the ground up. We're still using the same basic design that Henry Ford popularized: cheap, bulky, easy to manufacture, and constructed mostly of steel. The average car weighs 20 times more than the driver. Right there, you cut efficiency of getting from point A to B by twenty-fold even if you had an impossible perfectly efficient engine. Obviously, there's a limit to how efficient a vehicle can be following law of diminishing returns as you try to make the vehicle and motor lighter. However, we're nowhere remotely near that point with the 99% inefficient metal beasts we drive today.
Food for thought: a 300lb. hybrid recumbent bike / motorcycle design, somewhat bullet shaped, made out of modern composite plastics with large crumple zones and a strong rollbar. It has interchangable wheels for different seasons (if necessary) and generally has a very low rolling resistance. The vehicle is powered by a 10hp electric motor, which (if the vehicle had no rolling or air resistance) and assuming a 200lb driver, would reach 35mph in 3.7s. Reasonably, lets say 6s, but less if you decide to help out by pedaling. Obviously the power source is the greatest weight. Fuel cells would be ideal, but even without, modern lithium ion batteries would be a decent replacement at 300W/kg power density and 100Wh/kg energy density. 10hp = 7460W, so you'd need about 55 pounds for the Li-Ion batteries. A 1000W solar array ($5000), will fully charge the batteries in about 3-4 hours in full sunlight. So now you have a very cheap vehicle which will last nearly forever (except the batteries and tires), require virtually no maintenance, and once paid for, be free to operate as long as you live somewhere with halfway decent sun-hours. Who wants to build one? (-;
Your new system will also have a bunch of security features built into the hardware that you're likely unaware of. Will some consumers be unhappy? Sure. Will the media companies care about them? No. Will there be anything we can do about it then? Not likely.
Yes, it's called the boycott and the strike. Sure, it sounds really blue collar, doesn't it. But it could very well become necessary and happen. If all pissed off employees of various companies developing DRM crap got up and left, guess what? Bye bye DRM. The board members could talkselves blue in the face, but guess what? They have no power other than what their engineers give them. And no doubt those same employees would leave carrying crypto keys to be shared unto the world. The problem, is if too many of the engineers don't care. This is the very reason we need geek entrepreneurs to set things straight in the industry.
Since when is a harddrive not a semipermanent media that can be easily taken off site? I'm surprised this comment got modded up so high. And since when are tapes such a reliable media compared to a hard disk? So burn-in the drive for a few days before using it for backups. And use a S.M.A.R.T. utility to diagnose the drive before each backup to reduce the chance that something is getting ready to fail.
Your best option is to put all data on a 2-disk mirrored RAID and use another drive as a removable for an off-site or fire-safe backup. The probability of 3 hard disks failing simultaneously, one not in use, is so incredibly small it's laughable. And for that non-zero chance, if it happens, you can pay to have the spindle of one of the failed drives transferred to a new drive in a clean room.
For those who wish to write Open Source software for a living (yeah, that means earning money): Do OSS consulting and provide people with complete hardware/software solutions for all their needs. If something doesn't exist, develop it yourself and somehow tack that onto their bill, even if it's just labeled as a raw labor cost. Guaranteed, they'll still be saving boatloads of money in comparison to proprietary solutions which must be replaced every couple years. And if enough OSS geeks start doing this, it'll become easier for everyone since less of the needed software will be missing when starting out on a job. Granted, there will always be in-house programming customizations to do, but they too will become smaller.
If you truly believe in Open Source, become a master programmer make it your livelihood. Word will spread quickly if you do a much better job than all those MSCE certified dolts and help businesses reduce their fixed costs in the process. And if you find yourself earning too much money, you can always take a year off for leisure, personal education, and coding on pet projects. Sounds like a dream, but its not. However, first you must move beyond the mental box that says the only "stable job" is working 9-5 making somebody else rich. Small, flexible business are the key to the further expansion of already successful OSS.
I know that's a popular viewpoint around here and one that I hold myself. But in this case, I'm not sure that viewpoint is being represented. Instead, people are discussing the degree to which these kids should be punished for their acts of lameness. A virus is just code. You can write it on a napkin as Haiku. You can print it on a t-shirt. You can represent it as a prime number. And without a vulnerable system, the virus would have no meaning, except as a random code fragment that doesn't work. In some cases, a perfectly legitimate binary (or heck, any data) for one system can be detected as a virus for another. If these kids had not initiated harmful distribution this virus, but rather published the code on a webpage along with documentation of the vulnerability, and yet somebody else turned it loose, should they still be held accountable? Or what about a good virus/worm that can be used by administrators to quickly and controllably patch up a network, but which may be harmful if released "into the wild." (I can name no examples, but it's a theoretical possibility). Kinda different way of looking at it, eh?
Wanna make money from writing Open Source software? Do OSS consulting and provide people with complete hardware/software solutions for all their needs. If something doesn't exist, develop it yourself and somehow tack that onto their bill, even if it's just labeled as a raw labor cost. Guaranteed, they'll still be saving boatloads of money in comparison to proprietary solutions which must be replaced every couple years. And if enough OSS geeks start doing this, it'll become easier for everyone since less of the needed software will be missing when starting out on a job. Granted, there will always be in-house programming customizations to do, but they too will become smaller.
If you truly believe in Open Source, become a master programmer make it your livelihood. Word will spread quickly if you do a much better job than all those MSCE certified dolts and help businesses reduce their fixed costs in the process. And if you find yourself earning too much money, you can always take a year off for leisure, personal education, and coding on pet projects. Sounds like a dream, but its not. However, first you must move beyond the mental box that says the only "stable job" is working 9-5 making somebody else rich. Small, flexible business are the key to the further expansion of already successful OSS. I'll let y'all know when I finish my book. (-:
I mean, sure, all the energy combined from the treadmills, bikes and rowing machines at a large sized gym would probably only be enough power to power up the computer at the front desk of that gym
Sure, this post got mod'ed up for it's humor, but what you propose is far more feasible than you may imagine. Do the math. Even during light exercise like pedaling a stationary bike, the body uses around 200-300 kCal/hour. That's about 230-350 watts, albeit most of that is just waste body heat and metabolic processes. Still, it would be quite reasonable to capture somewhere in the range of 50-100 watts from a bike using a generator instead of friction resistance. Given proper design, a gym could get ALL of its electrical needs from exercise machines, which would very quickly pay for the cost of the generators, storage batteries, and regulators. Yes folks. Intelligent green design just plain makes sense. Now this crazy solar tower may be a different story. (-:
Is that true? I always thought this was some sort of urban legend. I find it somewhat hard to believe.
Nope, it's quite true and quite easy with many popular mail clients that allow loading of external references from the net. Ever get an e-mail that caused the download of anything (pictures, website, etc.) after it was viewed? If so, your mail client is suseptible. All a spammer has to do is include some sort of ID number generated at the time of sending in the external HTML reference and as soon as his server gets the request, he knows that your address is valid. Then your name gets added to the gold list of valid e-mails and sold to some other spammer. Granted, this is not done as much in practice as it could be, but the possibility definitely exists and you should check how your mail client handles external links.
Debian (and deb/apt packaging) is successful because it is a community project. Thousands of people working in harmony towards a common goal, each doing their own small part with great care will always outperform a commercial effort. That's the core strength of the Open Source movement, minor politics aside. Does such collaboration always happen that way? Of course not. But when it does, it's a wonderful thing. And with the Debian project, it has. RedHat, Mandrake, et.al. have largely ignored this concept and this makes me rather leary. Corporations exist primarily to produce "value-added" products and services. Nothing's wrong with that. But you don't truly add value to Open Source software by packaging it in non-standard or inferior ways, especially when complete and superior distributions already exist. So why make your own distro that has all sorts of quirks and discrepancies? To trap less adept customers into needing your tailored support services for that specific distribution. And to familiarlize less adept administrators with supporting your own distribution's quirks so they don't feel like switching. Don't get me wrong, there's a huge market for Open Source support services. But breaking away from the community spirit and doing things your own way is not the way to do it. There is absolutely no valid reason for there to be so many distributions of Linux and related OSS. And there is no reason why Linux companies cannot just support community-based distributions like Debian and Slackware. Or maybe they're afraid they'll actually have to face competition in providing the best support services.
And now for some quick anti-Debian FUD debunking:
1.) Debian is not harder to install and configure. If you have problems with it, you're either using an ancient version on modern hardware (ie. kernel fixes since then) or you are missing basic requisite knowledge that you should have with any distribution. Glossing it over now with a friendly GUI isn't going to help later when problems arise or you need to do something more complicated with your system.
2.) Debian is not slow and it does not suffer because default packaged binaries do not use Pentium optimizations. The performance increase with architecture optimizations is negligable for most software. And Debian does make full use of other compiler optimizations that do not break compatibility with certain hardware. On the other hand, if you would like heavier optimization, (say, PentiumPro or Athlon) for certain packages, Debian source packages work almost as smoothly as the BSD ports system.
That's funny. I receive at most one or two SPAMs per month. (The handful that slip through onto the Debian mailing lists don't really count.) Maybe people are just becoming more stupid in how they give out their addresses. Oh yeah.. and then there are HTML tags that 'phone home,' supported by many popular mail clients. Of course, we can all thank MS for Hotmail: an endless supply of throw-away mail accounts.
For those who care to reduce spam and other online (and offline) annoyances, see Junkbusters web site, also home to the free (GPL) filtering proxy by the same name.
I'll second that. I got a Tektronix 466 on Ebay for about $100. I took it apart, cleaned the control contacts, calibrated it, and now it works great. Don't bother with computer-based scope crap and DEFINITELY don't use your soundcard. Most likely, it's ADC is junk. And you'll only be able to test audio-range frequencies anyhow. Probably no higher than 10-15Khz. if your soundcard is like most and quite non-linear.
I don't know why so many people get hung up over the MS Office Linux compatiblity. Frankly, the word processor, as a concept, is archaic and slowly on its way out. The spreadsheet is still useful because of its interactivity and power to visualize data. Presentation programs are only good for large scale meetings / lectures, and a waste otherwise. Open Source should be about creating NEW solutions, not repeating what has worked in the past. It's the old inefficient companies, gummed up with worn out management, that insist on keeping with the status quo. People aren't taking advantage of Open Source software for what it excels most at: flexibility and easy innovation. Today's typical office computer environment consists of a bunch of desktops running an Office suite, a mailbox-oriented communications suite, and a handful of clunky database apps to fit sundry needs. Each desktop is a seperate environment with it's own local storage and configuration. A server sits in the back room to pass around documents and coordinate messanging services. This philosophy of design is decrepit, inefficient, costly, and often frustrating, both for users and admins. It's time for some fresh thinking and Open Source is the wide open door. Imagine, instead, an office where every desktop may be used by any user and never needs specific software installation or maintenance. Yes, it's the network-centric model of powerful servers and thinner, diskless clients. But the technology exists to do it the right way this time--cheaply, easily, and effectively. Take that as a base and branch. Once this base is set, the possibilities are endless. A mostly paperless office. A powerful, highly-tuned intrannet system that lets employees truly manage all available data smoothly. Abstracted tasks and many times the automation in use today. Every company is a little different. But that's a good thing. It means there's a huge market for Open Source consulting and in-house programming services.
OK, so the source code is available. That's a start. But it's not truly free. It's encumbered by patents and other restrictions.
So, given a code base for reference (ala reverse engineering), all we need is for somebody outside of the US, where software patents don't apply, to develop a GPL replacement written from the ground up, but which is unofficially 100% compatible with the VP3 format. Ideally, it may even be possible to work around their patents somehow, which would free content producers from having to pay royalty fees (as with MP3).
Of course, that's assuming that VP3 is really a format worth emulating compared to the patent-free video codec the Ogg Vorbis people are working on. But hey, even they may be able to gain some insight from looking at the VP3 code.
Something that most people forget is that ALL of the MPEG codecs are possibly non-free in the US due to software patent issues. This is because MPEG as an ISO standards body accepts patented technology when deciding on standards.. (oh yeah, and because the US has evil software patents in the first place) Contrast, for example W3C, the web standards body, which does not accept patented technology, although this was recently debated. So either way, open standard or not, MPEG4 is freely available for use on Linux.
Software patents are a threat to free software and free speech. Just say NO!
Yes folks, this method is absolutely tried and true. It has worked for the venerable software industry for years! There really is no other way to develop your software!
1.) A good piece of software starts by scratching where's there's no itch. But that doesn't matter, because with the right marketing, you can create an itch where one previously did not exist. Your software should be covered by as many US patents as possible to prevent other software developers from trying to scratch the same itch.
2.) Write everything yourself. Never reuse your own code or that of others. Modular code is your enemy. Avoid it like the plague.
3.) If your first implementation doesn't work, kludge it until it does.
4.) Interesting problems should be handed off to somebody else, or better yet, developed by a third party as an undocumented module with highly restrictive licensing. Your users will never know the difference.
5.) If you lose interest in a program, your last duty is to make it disappear from the face of the earth as quickly and quietly as possible. (this includes discontinuing all tech support and preferably changing your 800 number) Turning the software over to public domain or releasing the source code might somehow help a competitor.
6.) Treat your users as scum. You know far better than them how to develop the software and what features they need. If the complexity of the code base becomes overwhelming, you clearly need more middle managers to increase your programmers' productivity. Now is also a good time to double the price of the software to meet increased development costs.
7.) Never, ever release source code to any of your software. Your customers don't have any use for it anyhow and you might somehow help your competitors. If customers complain about a bug, wait 6 months before fixing it and charge a nominal fee plus shipping for the update. Requests for features should be written on small slips of paper, placed in a hat, and drawn at random no less than one year after a major version release.
8.) Your customers should have no part in the debugging effort. Beta-testers, if allowed, should be registered and be given time-expiring binaries only.
9.) Choice of data structures is of lower priority than rapid code development. Your users can always buy faster hardware.
10.) Do not attempt to foster an online community of your users. They'll just complain, flood your support resources, and worst, they might even band together and develop free software to replace their need for yours!
11.) The next best thing to having good ideas is stealing them from others and then claiming them as yours. (preferably with broad patents) The latter is always better as it saves you R&D costs.
12.) Often, the most striking and innovating solutions come from realizing that it's your users' needs that are wrong, not your software.
13.) Perfection (in design) is achieved when your software has enough features to run untolerably slow on anything but the fastest currently available hardware. Some hardware vendors may offer kickbacks for this service.
14.) As a tool, truly great software should have only one use. Your software should have safeguards to prevent customers from using it in ways you did not intend. Anyone who successfully finds new uses for your software should be sued immediately under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
15.) Don't be afraid to mangle data in any way you see fit. After all, yours is the only software that needs to access it anyhow. Leaving it intact may allow competing software to operate on the same data or encourage users to request new ways for your software to process the data.
16.) If your software requires its own language or command set, it should be as convoluted as possible to discourage users from using anything but the GUI you've designed. Syntax of the language should be based on an innovative combination of Old English, Arabic, Hiragana, and Swahili.
17.) Any secret encoding schemes or passwords critical to your software's security should be stored in a file called 'no_secrets_here.dat' to confuse would-be hackers. The contents should be ascii-armored and successively encrypted an even number of times using ROT-13. Anyone who dares break your security scheme can be sued under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
18.) Give your programmers the problems they are least interrested in. Otherwise, they might get excited and try to change the program specifications without first consulting middle management.
19.) Provided your lead software development manager has a medium at least as good as an overhead slide projector and knows how to increase productivity with threats of downsizing, you can always let go of a programmer or two.
This satire made possible by Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Read his works if you want your software to succeed instead. (-:
Accident or not, social skills and social relationships (Clinton skill based version or W. Bush inherited version.. they both work) are the source of all power, and the only talent that really matters in life. To be a geek is to live in ignorance or disbelief of this fundamental truth.
Well that's partly what I was getting at, but you've taken it way too far by assuming the stereotype that "to be a geek" is to lack both social skills and the ability to discover those which are latent. The point is, geeks need to throw away their own lies about themselves and realize their potential as both technical elite and highly relational entrepreneurs. There's this ugly myth that people are either one or the other that needs demolished. Of course, those maintaining the status quo don't really want it to change. They're quite happy treating engineers and programmers like dogs who all their dirty work.
Consider how many geeks complain about their freedoms being threatened and then go work their day job writing proprietary software or designing hardware wrapped up in patents and trade secrets owned by their employer. Guess what? The only reason unethical corporations exist with the power to control 'our' technology is because we GIVE it to them. Business execs don't produce technology, they buy it and sell it. Their only power is the dangling carrot of higher salaries and (supposed) job security. When geeks take entrepreneurship into their own hands, then we'll get somewhere. Be 'greedy.' Capture markets with ethical enterprise. You deserve more than those morons who drank and partied their way through business school and now control your career because they accidentally discovered strength in fraternity. Stop believing the lie that you don't have what it takes to survive outside of the hampster wheel.
With all these dim views of the future of cyberspace, and current trends do point in that direction, perhaps it is time to start implementing a FreeNet. Something outside of the mainstream Internet, away from corporate and government controls. Something entirely for geeks, by geeks.
Good idea, but misdirected. What we need is an entirely geek-run, open-IP company to develop a revolutionary and truly innovative communication device / network / etc. that everyone will want to use simply because it is so superior to anything else out there. Envision the following:
- Cost $300 for a residential base station / relay / router / LAN uplink with far more powerful transceiver, enabling wider community networks. (~5 mile range)
- Cost $200-300 for basic portable device
- long range wireless communication on unlicensed freq. (at least 1/2 mile range) and at least 1Mbps bandwidth with a good signal
- short range (10m) wireless communication at 10Mbps or higher
- P2P network protocol, somewhat like Bluetooth but with extensive load sharing, secure routing, and full encryption and authentication at the protocol level.
- 2Gb or more solid state or optical storage, preferably removable. Filesystem is encrypted.
- modular user interface (ie. could be PDA, could be a fairly dumb communications device)
That's a huge goal and it would mean a large amount of R&D and thinking outside the box of commodity components, but imagine the ramifications if it could be pulled off. The power to change lies in numbers and markets, not hiding and complaining.
ThinkFree Office is a joke. The word free belongs nowhere in its name. I'd rather be forced to use MS Office than that crap. But fortunately, with OpenOffice, I need neither. Subscription apps are epitamy of what any Linux user loaths.
By careful selection of materials, ENECO scientists are creating highly efficient, solid state conversion devices, called "thermal diodes," that will operate from 200 to 450 Celsius -- typical temperatures for waste heat and for concentrated solar radiation.
The very best commercial solar cells today are about 18-20% efficient. The best (research) cell on record, was 32% efficient. It's really too bad they don't give any more specifics on this semi-conductor based device, because it wouldn't be too hard to figure a rough solar cell efficiency equivalent (based on the area of a concentrating lens or mirror)
Now perhaps a more interesting use of such a device would be to increase the efficiency of fuel cells, which themselves are not so efficient and produce lots of waste heat. In a residential setting, this heat can be used for hot water and during winter months. But in a vehicle, I can't think of much use otherwise. Powering headlights, A/C, etc. would be great. Especially if they were white LED headlights of course.. (-;
For your reading pleasure:
http://www.nrel.gov/hot-stuff/press/5399world.ht ml
http://acre.murdoch.edu.au/refiles/pv/text.html
Slashdot Mirror
The automobile needs to be redesigned from the ground up. We're still using the same basic design that Henry Ford popularized: cheap, bulky, easy to manufacture, and constructed mostly of steel. The average car weighs 20 times more than the driver. Right there, you cut efficiency of getting from point A to B by twenty-fold even if you had an impossible perfectly efficient engine. Obviously, there's a limit to how efficient a vehicle can be following law of diminishing returns as you try to make the vehicle and motor lighter. However, we're nowhere remotely near that point with the 99% inefficient metal beasts we drive today.
Food for thought: a 300lb. hybrid recumbent bike / motorcycle design, somewhat bullet shaped, made out of modern composite plastics with large crumple zones and a strong rollbar. It has interchangable wheels for different seasons (if necessary) and generally has a very low rolling resistance. The vehicle is powered by a 10hp electric motor, which (if the vehicle had no rolling or air resistance) and assuming a 200lb driver, would reach 35mph in 3.7s. Reasonably, lets say 6s, but less if you decide to help out by pedaling. Obviously the power source is the greatest weight. Fuel cells would be ideal, but even without, modern lithium ion batteries would be a decent replacement at 300W/kg power density and 100Wh/kg energy density. 10hp = 7460W, so you'd need about 55 pounds for the Li-Ion batteries. A 1000W solar array ($5000), will fully charge the batteries in about 3-4 hours in full sunlight. So now you have a very cheap vehicle which will last nearly forever (except the batteries and tires), require virtually no maintenance, and once paid for, be free to operate as long as you live somewhere with halfway decent sun-hours. Who wants to build one? (-;
Your new system will also have a bunch of security features built into the hardware that you're likely unaware of. Will some consumers be unhappy? Sure. Will the media companies care about them? No. Will there be anything we can do about it then? Not likely.
Yes, it's called the boycott and the strike. Sure, it sounds really blue collar, doesn't it. But it could very well become necessary and happen. If all pissed off employees of various companies developing DRM crap got up and left, guess what? Bye bye DRM. The board members could talkselves blue in the face, but guess what? They have no power other than what their engineers give them. And no doubt those same employees would leave carrying crypto keys to be shared unto the world. The problem, is if too many of the engineers don't care. This is the very reason we need geek entrepreneurs to set things straight in the industry.
Since when is a harddrive not a semipermanent media that can be easily taken off site? I'm surprised this comment got modded up so high. And since when are tapes such a reliable media compared to a hard disk? So burn-in the drive for a few days before using it for backups. And use a S.M.A.R.T. utility to diagnose the drive before each backup to reduce the chance that something is getting ready to fail.
Your best option is to put all data on a 2-disk mirrored RAID and use another drive as a removable for an off-site or fire-safe backup. The probability of 3 hard disks failing simultaneously, one not in use, is so incredibly small it's laughable. And for that non-zero chance, if it happens, you can pay to have the spindle of one of the failed drives transferred to a new drive in a clean room.
For those who wish to write Open Source software for a living (yeah, that means earning money): Do OSS consulting and provide people with complete hardware/software solutions for all their needs. If something doesn't exist, develop it yourself and somehow tack that onto their bill, even if it's just labeled as a raw labor cost. Guaranteed, they'll still be saving boatloads of money in comparison to proprietary solutions which must be replaced every couple years. And if enough OSS geeks start doing this, it'll become easier for everyone since less of the needed software will be missing when starting out on a job. Granted, there will always be in-house programming customizations to do, but they too will become smaller.
If you truly believe in Open Source, become a master programmer make it your livelihood. Word will spread quickly if you do a much better job than all those MSCE certified dolts and help businesses reduce their fixed costs in the process. And if you find yourself earning too much money, you can always take a year off for leisure, personal education, and coding on pet projects. Sounds like a dream, but its not. However, first you must move beyond the mental box that says the only "stable job" is working 9-5 making somebody else rich. Small, flexible business are the key to the further expansion of already successful OSS.
I know that's a popular viewpoint around here and one that I hold myself. But in this case, I'm not sure that viewpoint is being represented. Instead, people are discussing the degree to which these kids should be punished for their acts of lameness. A virus is just code. You can write it on a napkin as Haiku. You can print it on a t-shirt. You can represent it as a prime number. And without a vulnerable system, the virus would have no meaning, except as a random code fragment that doesn't work. In some cases, a perfectly legitimate binary (or heck, any data) for one system can be detected as a virus for another. If these kids had not initiated harmful distribution this virus, but rather published the code on a webpage along with documentation of the vulnerability, and yet somebody else turned it loose, should they still be held accountable? Or what about a good virus/worm that can be used by administrators to quickly and controllably patch up a network, but which may be harmful if released "into the wild." (I can name no examples, but it's a theoretical possibility). Kinda different way of looking at it, eh?
Wanna make money from writing Open Source software? Do OSS consulting and provide people with complete hardware/software solutions for all their needs. If something doesn't exist, develop it yourself and somehow tack that onto their bill, even if it's just labeled as a raw labor cost. Guaranteed, they'll still be saving boatloads of money in comparison to proprietary solutions which must be replaced every couple years. And if enough OSS geeks start doing this, it'll become easier for everyone since less of the needed software will be missing when starting out on a job. Granted, there will always be in-house programming customizations to do, but they too will become smaller.
If you truly believe in Open Source, become a master programmer make it your livelihood. Word will spread quickly if you do a much better job than all those MSCE certified dolts and help businesses reduce their fixed costs in the process. And if you find yourself earning too much money, you can always take a year off for leisure, personal education, and coding on pet projects. Sounds like a dream, but its not. However, first you must move beyond the mental box that says the only "stable job" is working 9-5 making somebody else rich. Small, flexible business are the key to the further expansion of already successful OSS. I'll let y'all know when I finish my book. (-:
I mean, sure, all the energy combined from the treadmills, bikes and rowing machines at a large sized gym would probably only be enough power to power up the computer at the front desk of that gym
Sure, this post got mod'ed up for it's humor, but what you propose is far more feasible than you may imagine. Do the math. Even during light exercise like pedaling a stationary bike, the body uses around 200-300 kCal/hour. That's about 230-350 watts, albeit most of that is just waste body heat and metabolic processes. Still, it would be quite reasonable to capture somewhere in the range of 50-100 watts from a bike using a generator instead of friction resistance. Given proper design, a gym could get ALL of its electrical needs from exercise machines, which would very quickly pay for the cost of the generators, storage batteries, and regulators. Yes folks. Intelligent green design just plain makes sense. Now this crazy solar tower may be a different story. (-:
Is that true? I always thought this was some sort of urban legend. I find it somewhat hard to believe.
Nope, it's quite true and quite easy with many popular mail clients that allow loading of external references from the net. Ever get an e-mail that caused the download of anything (pictures, website, etc.) after it was viewed? If so, your mail client is suseptible. All a spammer has to do is include some sort of ID number generated at the time of sending in the external HTML reference and as soon as his server gets the request, he knows that your address is valid. Then your name gets added to the gold list of valid e-mails and sold to some other spammer. Granted, this is not done as much in practice as it could be, but the possibility definitely exists and you should check how your mail client handles external links.
Debian (and deb/apt packaging) is successful because it is a community project. Thousands of people working in harmony towards a common goal, each doing their own small part with great care will always outperform a commercial effort. That's the core strength of the Open Source movement, minor politics aside. Does such collaboration always happen that way? Of course not. But when it does, it's a wonderful thing. And with the Debian project, it has. RedHat, Mandrake, et.al. have largely ignored this concept and this makes me rather leary. Corporations exist primarily to produce "value-added" products and services. Nothing's wrong with that. But you don't truly add value to Open Source software by packaging it in non-standard or inferior ways, especially when complete and superior distributions already exist. So why make your own distro that has all sorts of quirks and discrepancies? To trap less adept customers into needing your tailored support services for that specific distribution. And to familiarlize less adept administrators with supporting your own distribution's quirks so they don't feel like switching. Don't get me wrong, there's a huge market for Open Source support services. But breaking away from the community spirit and doing things your own way is not the way to do it. There is absolutely no valid reason for there to be so many distributions of Linux and related OSS. And there is no reason why Linux companies cannot just support community-based distributions like Debian and Slackware. Or maybe they're afraid they'll actually have to face competition in providing the best support services.
And now for some quick anti-Debian FUD debunking:
1.) Debian is not harder to install and configure. If you have problems with it, you're either using an ancient version on modern hardware (ie. kernel fixes since then) or you are missing basic requisite knowledge that you should have with any distribution. Glossing it over now with a friendly GUI isn't going to help later when problems arise or you need to do something more complicated with your system.
2.) Debian is not slow and it does not suffer because default packaged binaries do not use Pentium optimizations. The performance increase with architecture optimizations is negligable for most software. And Debian does make full use of other compiler optimizations that do not break compatibility with certain hardware. On the other hand, if you would like heavier optimization, (say, PentiumPro or Athlon) for certain packages, Debian source packages work almost as smoothly as the BSD ports system.
That's funny. I receive at most one or two SPAMs per month. (The handful that slip through onto the Debian mailing lists don't really count.) Maybe people are just becoming more stupid in how they give out their addresses. Oh yeah.. and then there are HTML tags that 'phone home,' supported by many popular mail clients. Of course, we can all thank MS for Hotmail: an endless supply of throw-away mail accounts.
For those who care to reduce spam and other online (and offline) annoyances, see Junkbusters web site, also home to the free (GPL) filtering proxy by the same name.
I'll second that. I got a Tektronix 466 on Ebay for about $100. I took it apart, cleaned the control contacts, calibrated it, and now it works great. Don't bother with computer-based scope crap and DEFINITELY don't use your soundcard. Most likely, it's ADC is junk. And you'll only be able to test audio-range frequencies anyhow. Probably no higher than 10-15Khz. if your soundcard is like most and quite non-linear.
I don't know why so many people get hung up over the MS Office Linux compatiblity. Frankly, the word processor, as a concept, is archaic and slowly on its way out. The spreadsheet is still useful because of its interactivity and power to visualize data. Presentation programs are only good for large scale meetings / lectures, and a waste otherwise. Open Source should be about creating NEW solutions, not repeating what has worked in the past. It's the old inefficient companies, gummed up with worn out management, that insist on keeping with the status quo. People aren't taking advantage of Open Source software for what it excels most at: flexibility and easy innovation. Today's typical office computer environment consists of a bunch of desktops running an Office suite, a mailbox-oriented communications suite, and a handful of clunky database apps to fit sundry needs. Each desktop is a seperate environment with it's own local storage and configuration. A server sits in the back room to pass around documents and coordinate messanging services. This philosophy of design is decrepit, inefficient, costly, and often frustrating, both for users and admins. It's time for some fresh thinking and Open Source is the wide open door. Imagine, instead, an office where every desktop may be used by any user and never needs specific software installation or maintenance. Yes, it's the network-centric model of powerful servers and thinner, diskless clients. But the technology exists to do it the right way this time--cheaply, easily, and effectively. Take that as a base and branch. Once this base is set, the possibilities are endless. A mostly paperless office. A powerful, highly-tuned intrannet system that lets employees truly manage all available data smoothly. Abstracted tasks and many times the automation in use today. Every company is a little different. But that's a good thing. It means there's a huge market for Open Source consulting and in-house programming services.
Looks like Win98 is slated for execution June 30, 2003.
The emperor Penguin does not share your optimistic apraisal.
OK, so the source code is available. That's a start. But it's not truly free. It's encumbered by patents and other restrictions.
So, given a code base for reference (ala reverse engineering), all we need is for somebody outside of the US, where software patents don't apply, to develop a GPL replacement written from the ground up, but which is unofficially 100% compatible with the VP3 format. Ideally, it may even be possible to work around their patents somehow, which would free content producers from having to pay royalty fees (as with MP3).
Of course, that's assuming that VP3 is really a format worth emulating compared to the patent-free video codec the Ogg Vorbis people are working on. But hey, even they may be able to gain some insight from looking at the VP3 code.
OOps.. that should read "not freely available"
Something that most people forget is that ALL of the MPEG codecs are possibly non-free in the US due to software patent issues. This is because MPEG as an ISO standards body accepts patented technology when deciding on standards.. (oh yeah, and because the US has evil software patents in the first place) Contrast, for example W3C, the web standards body, which does not accept patented technology, although this was recently debated. So either way, open standard or not, MPEG4 is freely available for use on Linux.
Software patents are a threat to free software and free speech. Just say NO!
Yes folks, this method is absolutely tried and true. It has worked for the venerable software industry for years! There really is no other way to develop your software!
1.) A good piece of software starts by scratching where's there's no itch. But that doesn't matter, because with the right marketing, you can create an itch where one previously did not exist. Your software should be covered by as many US patents as possible to prevent other software developers from trying to scratch the same itch.
2.) Write everything yourself. Never reuse your own code or that of others. Modular code is your enemy. Avoid it like the plague.
3.) If your first implementation doesn't work, kludge it until it does.
4.) Interesting problems should be handed off to somebody else, or better yet, developed by a third party as an undocumented module with highly restrictive licensing. Your users will never know the difference.
5.) If you lose interest in a program, your last duty is to make it disappear from the face of the earth as quickly and quietly as possible. (this includes discontinuing all tech support and preferably changing your 800 number) Turning the software over to public domain or releasing the source code might somehow help a competitor.
6.) Treat your users as scum. You know far better than them how to develop the software and what features they need. If the complexity of the code base becomes overwhelming, you clearly need more middle managers to increase your programmers' productivity. Now is also a good time to double the price of the software to meet increased development costs.
7.) Never, ever release source code to any of your software. Your customers don't have any use for it anyhow and you might somehow help your competitors. If customers complain about a bug, wait 6 months before fixing it and charge a nominal fee plus shipping for the update. Requests for features should be written on small slips of paper, placed in a hat, and drawn at random no less than one year after a major version release.
8.) Your customers should have no part in the debugging effort. Beta-testers, if allowed, should be registered and be given time-expiring binaries only.
9.) Choice of data structures is of lower priority than rapid code development. Your users can always buy faster hardware.
10.) Do not attempt to foster an online community of your users. They'll just complain, flood your support resources, and worst, they might even band together and develop free software to replace their need for yours!
11.) The next best thing to having good ideas is stealing them from others and then claiming them as yours. (preferably with broad patents) The latter is always better as it saves you R&D costs.
12.) Often, the most striking and innovating solutions come from realizing that it's your users' needs that are wrong, not your software.
13.) Perfection (in design) is achieved when your software has enough features to run untolerably slow on anything but the fastest currently available hardware. Some hardware vendors may offer kickbacks for this service.
14.) As a tool, truly great software should have only one use. Your software should have safeguards to prevent customers from using it in ways you did not intend. Anyone who successfully finds new uses for your software should be sued immediately under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
15.) Don't be afraid to mangle data in any way you see fit. After all, yours is the only software that needs to access it anyhow. Leaving it intact may allow competing software to operate on the same data or encourage users to request new ways for your software to process the data.
16.) If your software requires its own language or command set, it should be as convoluted as possible to discourage users from using anything but the GUI you've designed. Syntax of the language should be based on an innovative combination of Old English, Arabic, Hiragana, and Swahili.
17.) Any secret encoding schemes or passwords critical to your software's security should be stored in a file called 'no_secrets_here.dat' to confuse would-be hackers. The contents should be ascii-armored and successively encrypted an even number of times using ROT-13. Anyone who dares break your security scheme can be sued under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
18.) Give your programmers the problems they are least interrested in. Otherwise, they might get excited and try to change the program specifications without first consulting middle management.
19.) Provided your lead software development manager has a medium at least as good as an overhead slide projector and knows how to increase productivity with threats of downsizing, you can always let go of a programmer or two.
This satire made possible by Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Read his works if you want your software to succeed instead. (-:
Accident or not, social skills and social relationships (Clinton skill based version or W. Bush inherited version.. they both work) are the source of all power, and the only talent that really matters in life. To be a geek is to live in ignorance or disbelief of this fundamental truth.
Well that's partly what I was getting at, but you've taken it way too far by assuming the stereotype that "to be a geek" is to lack both social skills and the ability to discover those which are latent. The point is, geeks need to throw away their own lies about themselves and realize their potential as both technical elite and highly relational entrepreneurs. There's this ugly myth that people are either one or the other that needs demolished. Of course, those maintaining the status quo don't really want it to change. They're quite happy treating engineers and programmers like dogs who all their dirty work.
Consider how many geeks complain about their freedoms being threatened and then go work their day job writing proprietary software or designing hardware wrapped up in patents and trade secrets owned by their employer. Guess what? The only reason unethical corporations exist with the power to control 'our' technology is because we GIVE it to them. Business execs don't produce technology, they buy it and sell it. Their only power is the dangling carrot of higher salaries and (supposed) job security. When geeks take entrepreneurship into their own hands, then we'll get somewhere. Be 'greedy.' Capture markets with ethical enterprise. You deserve more than those morons who drank and partied their way through business school and now control your career because they accidentally discovered strength in fraternity. Stop believing the lie that you don't have what it takes to survive outside of the hampster wheel.
'Every man dies. Not every man really lives.'
With all these dim views of the future of cyberspace, and current trends do point in that direction, perhaps it is time to start implementing a FreeNet. Something outside of the mainstream Internet, away from corporate and government controls. Something entirely for geeks, by geeks.
Good idea, but misdirected. What we need is an entirely geek-run, open-IP company to develop a revolutionary and truly innovative communication device / network / etc. that everyone will want to use simply because it is so superior to anything else out there. Envision the following:
- Cost $300 for a residential base station / relay / router / LAN uplink with far more powerful transceiver, enabling wider community networks. (~5 mile range)
- Cost $200-300 for basic portable device
- long range wireless communication on unlicensed freq. (at least 1/2 mile range) and at least 1Mbps bandwidth with a good signal
- short range (10m) wireless communication at 10Mbps or higher
- P2P network protocol, somewhat like Bluetooth but with extensive load sharing, secure routing, and full encryption and authentication at the protocol level.
- 2Gb or more solid state or optical storage, preferably removable. Filesystem is encrypted.
- modular user interface (ie. could be PDA, could be a fairly dumb communications device)
That's a huge goal and it would mean a large amount of R&D and thinking outside the box of commodity components, but imagine the ramifications if it could be pulled off. The power to change lies in numbers and markets, not hiding and complaining.
Well.. I've always suspected that avid Windows users were mentally handicapped. That's an accessibility option that's hard coded. (-:
ThinkFree Office is a joke. The word free belongs nowhere in its name. I'd rather be forced to use MS Office than that crap. But fortunately, with OpenOffice, I need neither. Subscription apps are epitamy of what any Linux user loaths.
(subject line spoken in a gruff voice like in the old Wendy's commercials)
I guess that "billion dollars spent on Linux" must be going towards buying IBM execs bigger leather chairs and fine art to decorate the hallways.
If they want the advantages of Open Source community, they ought to try being part of the community. Lameness.
"All your waste are reduce by us!!"
*groan*
By careful selection of materials, ENECO scientists are creating highly efficient, solid state conversion devices, called "thermal diodes," that will operate from 200 to 450 Celsius -- typical temperatures for waste heat and for concentrated solar radiation.
t ml
The very best commercial solar cells today are about 18-20% efficient. The best (research) cell on record, was 32% efficient. It's really too bad they don't give any more specifics on this semi-conductor based device, because it wouldn't be too hard to figure a rough solar cell efficiency equivalent (based on the area of a concentrating lens or mirror)
Now perhaps a more interesting use of such a device would be to increase the efficiency of fuel cells, which themselves are not so efficient and produce lots of waste heat. In a residential setting, this heat can be used for hot water and during winter months. But in a vehicle, I can't think of much use otherwise. Powering headlights, A/C, etc. would be great. Especially if they were white LED headlights of course.. (-;
For your reading pleasure:
http://www.nrel.gov/hot-stuff/press/5399world.h
http://acre.murdoch.edu.au/refiles/pv/text.html