I have one of these and it is a very clever design and seemed to be about the best deal around when I purchased it -- http://bluumaxcnc.com/BluumaxCNC.html
Going the micro-controller route, I'd consider the Picaxe -- Pic based, with a built-in Basic interpreter and a great support forum. Plus they are way cheaper than the basic stamps.
The methane only happens if you let the algae die, drop to the bottom and anaerobically degrade. If you keep the solids down and also harvest the algae (and turn it into bio-fuel), then it should work.
So that is about 100, 9x15 mile sized ponds. Not quite Indiana (and who says they need to be on land)?
Maybe put them out in Nevada where the sun shines all the time. And pump waste water from LA to give the algae water and nutrients. Someone else needs to do the energy (pumping, mixers, etc.) and cost-of-water calculations. But carbon offsets for all of aviation should be pretty valuable.
How much of a role do state and local election boards play in making standardization and certification of electronic voting machines (methods) difficult? What advantage is there to local and state control of election systems (they seem to greatly complicate the landscape for an open, user verifiable -- i.e. paper receipt, etc. --, nation-wide system)?
I somewhat disagree. I have two kids - one 14 and one 11. They are great kids - both are top students, one recently won a short story contest, the other plays piano and soccer. We go to museums and concerts. We hike and see nature. And yet - when my son is around the Play Station everything else falls away and becomes so much less interesting. And my daughter can spend hours noodling on the internet at a fan site (at least she is learning to Photo Shop banners).
My point - I take the PS away and all of a sudden my son is doing something else like reading or out riding his bike. I am walking a fine line of being a total prick and tossing all the electonics out of the house and letting them experience those things that almost all of their peers are experiencing (gaming and the power of computers and the internet).
We need to recognize how powerful this technology is to the developing adolescent brain. There are many things we as a society protect young children from - maybe this stuff falls in that category. Even though the "free speech" part of me cringes at how one accomplishes this.
The interesting part is that the bush whitehouse has stalled the OPR investigation by refusing to give the investigators clearance -- these are Justice Dept. officials. That same whitehouse quickly gave clearance to the FBI when they were investigating who leaked the NSA wiretapping program in the first place.
This is the blatantly political part - say that secrecy is so important you dare not allow one dept. to look into goings on, but quickly let another investigate when it serves your political agenda.
Yes - we've been running Notes since about when it came out. And I agree that the development environment/models are byzantine at times - it really was one of the early ways to employ community participation databases and discussions. I think the world of Wikis, Blogs, and discussion groups owe much to Notes (in terms of concepts and interface). Also - they have had a very good security model from the start - so running Notes as an e-mail client has allowed us to avoid many active-X borne problems that MS clients were prone to a few years back. The only bump in the road was the Internet - but they covered well on this by exposing Notes DBs through browser clients and also bolting on Java, XML support, etc.
I hadn't thought much of the fear of various nano-dusts, etc. getting loose in the environment until my son broke one of those squishy pillows full of little beads open in his room. I encountered a pile of tiny little beads and others clinging to the wall and on every surface and finding their way into other rooms, etc. Even after a good vacuuming I threw my hands up and decided that these things would be around for awhile. That, and taking note of the recent enviro-news on the persistence of Teflon related chemicals in the general environment and also around where it is made.
I just hope they have the part figured out about how to control and contain this stuff before some folks end up with lungs full of titanium dioxide nano particles (I wonder what the disease will be called -- white lung?).
I'm mainly thinking about the pre-manufactured product's raw materials and the areas in and around where they might create this stuff.
A good example of why we need an Open Source voting method.
Take Corporate interests out of this story and there is no motivation to cover something up or to protect trade secrets (or uphold a clause in the contract that Mr. Heller was working under).
I also bought one of these and spent additional time and money getting cards (Tampa Bay Digital) for it, a bigger HD ( what, like 80 MEG? or something ), etc. Neat machine - even wrote a program in C to type out checks to pay my bills on a cheap daisy wheel printer.
That name brand cereal box is often upwards of dollars more expensive than the store brand - and the difference is largely driven by the money General Mills or Kellogg's spends marketing the brands. The cost of the two boxes are probably within cents of each other (and the actual product is probably the same).
So if they need to spend 25-50 cents for a display that will allow them to sell the product at a higher price (like they do now) -- I don't think it will slow them down.
Think how neat those non-muggles newspapers photos look...
Because, I guess that overall Sun has done more in the "Open Source" direction than MS has.
Take Java - the basic tools have been around for years - some might say it is the main thing Sun has of value, yet I can still go and download them and use them without worrying about future ratcheting up of fees (my choice not to worry). The paranoid might say that Sun is just waiting to stick everyone, but it seems like they are playing very conservative (and probably correctly, since they are a for profit company).
If Sun had the strength and depth of an IBM, then they might have open-sourced Java a long time ago.
Compare that to VB or Front Page -- both of which were introduced at fairly low entry price points and then quickly increased (and made more bloated and complex) once people started to use them.
I guess my point is that I trust Sun a bit more than MS.
All I know is that OO keeps getting better and faster, that it isn't costly like MS office, doesn't have a closed file format like MS office and that it has cross-platform versions. Sounds like the right stuff to me.
How do we even think that the concept of nano has any meaning at all to an alien entity -- our nano might be their humungo. Firesign Theatre said it best (I paraphrase):
"Don't look now, General, but an alien has landed in your scrambled eggs..."
I tend to agree - it will be those mundane issues, like providing power, keeping the sensors calibrated and making sure the sensor / environment interface (ie: - interferences - like boundry layer affects, bio-slime, air borne films and dust, chemical plating, etc., etc.) that will make this system hard to keep stable (even though redundancy and massiveness will help).
And then when the big sensor net is telling us to do something - AT ONCE - we'll be thinking... "do I really trust that those sensors are telling the truth - or did they all drift by a bit".
I started thinking the same. Sounds all groovy when they say anyone could search for sensors. What if that turns into -- anyone with the right license, costly technology, etc. And how are we to decide if the people looking at these sensors are friends or foes (seems like some new bureaucracy will step in and clamp controls on access to many of these devices)?
And yet - how powerful for the public if they could go to a web site and see the water quality at the nearby beach for the past few days.
Slashdot Mirror
I have one of these and it is a very clever design and seemed to be about the best deal around when I purchased it -- http://bluumaxcnc.com/BluumaxCNC.html
Yes - I can install the latest Ubuntu on a 3-4 year old machine and it actually runs better than it did with the original OS.
Going the micro-controller route, I'd consider the Picaxe -- Pic based, with a built-in Basic interpreter and a great support forum. Plus they are way cheaper than the basic stamps.
http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PICAXE
http://www.phanderson.com/picaxe/picaxe.html
The methane only happens if you let the algae die, drop to the bottom and anaerobically degrade. If you keep the solids down and also harvest the algae (and turn it into bio-fuel), then it should work.
So that is about 100, 9x15 mile sized ponds. Not quite Indiana (and who says they need to be on land)?
Maybe put them out in Nevada where the sun shines all the time. And pump waste water from LA to give the algae water and nutrients. Someone else needs to do the energy (pumping, mixers, etc.) and cost-of-water calculations. But carbon offsets for all of aviation should be pretty valuable.
How much of a role do state and local election boards play in making standardization and certification of electronic voting machines (methods) difficult? What advantage is there to local and state control of election systems (they seem to greatly complicate the landscape for an open, user verifiable -- i.e. paper receipt, etc. --, nation-wide system)?
Yes - the "Hugh Grant" formula for fame - ANY air time is good for you.
My point - I take the PS away and all of a sudden my son is doing something else like reading or out riding his bike. I am walking a fine line of being a total prick and tossing all the electonics out of the house and letting them experience those things that almost all of their peers are experiencing (gaming and the power of computers and the internet).
We need to recognize how powerful this technology is to the developing adolescent brain. There are many things we as a society protect young children from - maybe this stuff falls in that category. Even though the "free speech" part of me cringes at how one accomplishes this.
I like jEdit too ... cross platform with Windows and Linux, buffer tabs and other nice plugins.
This Washington Post article contains more information about this story.
The interesting part is that the bush whitehouse has stalled the OPR investigation by refusing to give the investigators clearance -- these are Justice Dept. officials. That same whitehouse quickly gave clearance to the FBI when they were investigating who leaked the NSA wiretapping program in the first place.
This is the blatantly political part - say that secrecy is so important you dare not allow one dept. to look into goings on, but quickly let another investigate when it serves your political agenda.
Yes - we've been running Notes since about when it came out. And I agree that the development environment/models are byzantine at times - it really was one of the early ways to employ community participation databases and discussions. I think the world of Wikis, Blogs, and discussion groups owe much to Notes (in terms of concepts and interface). Also - they have had a very good security model from the start - so running Notes as an e-mail client has allowed us to avoid many active-X borne problems that MS clients were prone to a few years back. The only bump in the road was the Internet - but they covered well on this by exposing Notes DBs through browser clients and also bolting on Java, XML support, etc.
Where are the cardboard boxes you can throw the stacks in after they've sat on your desk for two years?
I hadn't thought much of the fear of various nano-dusts, etc. getting loose in the environment until my son broke one of those squishy pillows full of little beads open in his room. I encountered a pile of tiny little beads and others clinging to the wall and on every surface and finding their way into other rooms, etc. Even after a good vacuuming I threw my hands up and decided that these things would be around for awhile. That, and taking note of the recent enviro-news on the persistence of Teflon related chemicals in the general environment and also around where it is made.
I just hope they have the part figured out about how to control and contain this stuff before some folks end up with lungs full of titanium dioxide nano particles (I wonder what the disease will be called -- white lung?).
I'm mainly thinking about the pre-manufactured product's raw materials and the areas in and around where they might create this stuff.
A good example of why we need an Open Source voting method.
Take Corporate interests out of this story and there is no motivation to cover something up or to protect trade secrets (or uphold a clause in the contract that Mr. Heller was working under).
Resources at - http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
.
I also bought one of these and spent additional time and money getting cards (Tampa Bay Digital) for it, a bigger HD ( what, like 80 MEG? or something ), etc. Neat machine - even wrote a program in C to type out checks to pay my bills on a cheap daisy wheel printer.
That name brand cereal box is often upwards of dollars more expensive than the store brand - and the difference is largely driven by the money General Mills or Kellogg's spends marketing the brands. The cost of the two boxes are probably within cents of each other (and the actual product is probably the same).
...
So if they need to spend 25-50 cents for a display that will allow them to sell the product at a higher price (like they do now) -- I don't think it will slow them down.
Think how neat those non-muggles newspapers photos look
Support -
http://openvoting.org/
Not only open voting, but open source for the firmware that takes your vote.
They have been doing good things in California.
Take Java - the basic tools have been around for years - some might say it is the main thing Sun has of value, yet I can still go and download them and use them without worrying about future ratcheting up of fees (my choice not to worry). The paranoid might say that Sun is just waiting to stick everyone, but it seems like they are playing very conservative (and probably correctly, since they are a for profit company).
If Sun had the strength and depth of an IBM, then they might have open-sourced Java a long time ago.
Compare that to VB or Front Page -- both of which were introduced at fairly low entry price points and then quickly increased (and made more bloated and complex) once people started to use them.
I guess my point is that I trust Sun a bit more than MS.
But, time will tell.
All I know is that OO keeps getting better and faster, that it isn't costly like MS office, doesn't have a closed file format like MS office and that it has cross-platform versions. Sounds like the right stuff to me.
This is already being done at hundreds of landfills in the US and around the world. One example:
E .htm
http://www.lacsd.org/swaste/Facilities/LFGas/PHGT
(Hopefully the Slashdot effect won't cause a major power outage in Southern California!)
I thought that would take some wheeling and dealing ... Thanks.
Could you provide link(s) to where you bought? Prices seem pretty good.
Thanks
How do we even think that the concept of nano has any meaning at all to an alien entity -- our nano might be their humungo. Firesign Theatre said it best (I paraphrase):
..."
"Don't look now, General, but an alien has landed in your scrambled eggs
I tend to agree - it will be those mundane issues, like providing power, keeping the sensors calibrated and making sure the sensor / environment interface (ie: - interferences - like boundry layer affects, bio-slime, air borne films and dust, chemical plating, etc., etc.) that will make this system hard to keep stable (even though redundancy and massiveness will help).
... "do I really trust that those sensors are telling the truth - or did they all drift by a bit".
And then when the big sensor net is telling us to do something - AT ONCE - we'll be thinking
I started thinking the same. Sounds all groovy when they say anyone could search for sensors. What if that turns into -- anyone with the right license, costly technology, etc. And how are we to decide if the people looking at these sensors are friends or foes (seems like some new bureaucracy will step in and clamp controls on access to many of these devices)?
And yet - how powerful for the public if they could go to a web site and see the water quality at the nearby beach for the past few days.