That's range. 300 Km when running at a constant 100 Km/h speed. I wonder how much range it has under normal conditions (going 100-120 in the highway, 0-60 in the city). 150-200 Km perhaps? That's not good enough:-(
My dad's Passat 1.9TDI does 1000 Km under normal conditions, with just 55 litres of diesel. I know. I've measured it.
I've read a few IEEE articles on EVs in the past, and range seems to be their major problem right now. Also, Lithium batteries tend to die every couple of years and need to be replaced (too expensive).
Well, I live in Cyprus and (since we used to be a British colony) we use the same plugs as the UK.
As you probably know, many electronic devices (stereos, VCRs, etc.) don't need earth. Now, since Cyprus is a small island, most merchants import such devices from many different European and/or Far East countries. And some times they "forget" to order/change them to use the correct plugs (there is a law against this of course, but many people tend to ignore it).
So, you end up with a plug with two rounded prongs, instead of one with three rectagular ones.
What do you do?
a) You take a ballpoint pen, b) you stick it in the earth hole to override the safety and, c) force the plug in the remaining two holes.
The fact that the space between the two progs is a little shorter than the space between the holes is a minor inconvenience.
This is what happens when you combine British safety procedures with the - ahem - practical minds of the Mediterranean people.
From what I know, China (at least since Mao's death) has been a capitalist country (a.k.a. "to get rich is honourable").
This doesn't mean of course that they are a democratic one: they don't seem to treat people with "alternative" political views very well. And also there is this Thibet thing. Nevertheless, these things have nothing to do with them having an open, capitalist economy, which they do to a very high degree.
Since I'm not an expert in History and my English is not very good, I expect someone else to elaborate on the above and/or correct them.
The problem is that it shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Unfortunately, I don't know of any western-model country, anywhere in the world, who realizes this.
It just shows how far the "American Dream" is from "Real Freedom".
I agree this is an excellent idea. Personally, I enjoy working both with on-line stuff and with databases (although my grades in both DB courses I've taken while at school were among my lowest).
However, a proprietary piece of software - sold for $450 is not the best way to surface an excellent idea. What we need is a protocol: a common query language for searching the web that will be easily supported by today's available search engines. Something like this would enable programmers to easily interface their programs with web search engines (which i guess is a good thing).
Also, if their manual is correct, no inserts, updates or deletes are allowed. A carefully drafted protocol like the one mentioned above should support all these, e.g. for adding documents into search engines, removing deleted web sites, coping with new URLs and so on.
Imagine:
delete *
from Yahoo
where errcode = 404
update Yahoo
set url = redirected_url
where redirecton = True
...Sooner or later, these outlying regions are going to have significant Internet connectivity...
I must wonder about that: My country is a small island of 700000 people. In spite the fact that a large percentage of the population has Internet access, our international Internet connections for the whole country sum up to a few hundreds of Mbps and the largest local ISP has a total of (i think) 30 Mbps of international connections.
This is enough for the local needs - so it's definitely not going to grow very much - but it is hardly enough to host the large "free information" server farms that are imagined in this document.
Conclusion: Given the fact that most of the countries that haven't signed the international copyright treaties are small, I wonder if they will ever have any "significant Internet connectivity" at all.
I have a friend in my country's national telephone company who I recently persuaded to arrange a lecture for me and a few others about a technology they have been testing: ADSL.
It's supposed to be able to connect your PC directly with the telco's ATM network. It uses normal copper lines for the last 1000m to your home and optical fiber for the rest of the ride (which is the existing infrastructure in most PSTN networks these days). It gives bandwidths between 640 Kbps and 8 Mbps, depending on how much you pay.
Does anyone know how does this compare with in-home fiber connections?
First of all, I must ask you to forgive my bad English, as my native language is Greek.
These days, it seems that American capitalists have embarked in a struggle against the free flow of information on the Internet, by filing lawsuits, "inventing" new on-line services that you have to pay for, etc. I don't want to sound pessimistic, but this could lead us one day to a proprietary Internet where the only free information is the advertisements.
We all know that the best way to get rid of all this nonsense is to host free content and services in countries other than the U.S. and the core E.U. This will also have the wonderful site-effect of boosting the education level of the people of such countries. Imagine mirror farms in paces considered by many as "third world", serving knowledge to the entire humanity. Free software, free education, free books, music and movies, free communication for all.
Unfortunately, no one has done this at a large scale, yet. Why? Don't know. The only thing I know is that if I had some money (to set up the servers and buy an E1 line) and some help, I'd be glad to do it myself.
Slashdot Mirror
It can fit in just 9 bits:
010
001
111
So, I you can say you're a hacker by signing your e-mails with "143". Or "0x8F".
That's range. 300 Km when running at a constant 100 Km/h speed. I wonder how much range it has under normal conditions (going 100-120 in the highway, 0-60 in the city). 150-200 Km perhaps? That's not good enough :-(
My dad's Passat 1.9TDI does 1000 Km under normal conditions, with just 55 litres of diesel. I know. I've measured it.
I've read a few IEEE articles on EVs in the past, and range seems to be their major problem right now. Also, Lithium batteries tend to die every couple of years and need to be replaced (too expensive).
Well, I live in Cyprus and (since we used to be a British colony) we use the same plugs as the UK.
As you probably know, many electronic devices (stereos, VCRs, etc.) don't need earth. Now, since Cyprus is a small island, most merchants import such devices from many different European and/or Far East countries. And some times they "forget" to order/change them to use the correct plugs (there is a law against this of course, but many people tend to ignore it).
So, you end up with a plug with two rounded prongs, instead of one with three rectagular ones.
What do you do?
a) You take a ballpoint pen,
b) you stick it in the earth hole to override the safety and,
c) force the plug in the remaining two holes.
The fact that the space between the two progs is a little shorter than the space between the holes is a minor inconvenience.
This is what happens when you combine British safety procedures with the - ahem - practical minds of the Mediterranean people.
This doesn't mean of course that they are a democratic one: they don't seem to treat people with "alternative" political views very well. And also there is this Thibet thing. Nevertheless, these things have nothing to do with them having an open, capitalist economy, which they do to a very high degree.
Since I'm not an expert in History and my English is not very good, I expect someone else to elaborate on the above and/or correct them.
Brilliant research! Plus accurate geography! I'm impressed!!!
(the capital of Yugoslavia is Belgrade and Kosovo is a region, not a city)
The problem is that it shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Unfortunately, I don't know of any western-model country, anywhere in the world, who realizes this. It just shows how far the "American Dream" is from "Real Freedom".
However, a proprietary piece of software - sold for $450 is not the best way to surface an excellent idea. What we need is a protocol: a common query language for searching the web that will be easily supported by today's available search engines. Something like this would enable programmers to easily interface their programs with web search engines (which i guess is a good thing).
Also, if their manual is correct, no inserts, updates or deletes are allowed. A carefully drafted protocol like the one mentioned above should support all these, e.g. for adding documents into search engines, removing deleted web sites, coping with new URLs and so on.
Imagine:
delete *
from Yahoo
where errcode = 404
update Yahoo
set url = redirected_url
where redirecton = True
I must wonder about that: My country is a small island of 700000 people. In spite the fact that a large percentage of the population has Internet access, our international Internet connections for the whole country sum up to a few hundreds of Mbps and the largest local ISP has a total of (i think) 30 Mbps of international connections.
This is enough for the local needs - so it's definitely not going to grow very much - but it is hardly enough to host the large "free information" server farms that are imagined in this document.
Conclusion: Given the fact that most of the countries that haven't signed the international copyright treaties are small, I wonder if they will ever have any "significant Internet connectivity" at all.
I have a friend in my country's national telephone company who I recently persuaded to arrange a lecture for me and a few others about a technology they have been testing: ADSL.
It's supposed to be able to connect your PC directly with the telco's ATM network. It uses normal copper lines for the last 1000m to your home and optical fiber for the rest of the ride (which is the existing infrastructure in most PSTN networks these days). It gives bandwidths between 640 Kbps and 8 Mbps, depending on how much you pay.
Does anyone know how does this compare with in-home fiber connections?
These days, it seems that American capitalists have embarked in a struggle against the free flow of information on the Internet, by filing lawsuits, "inventing" new on-line services that you have to pay for, etc. I don't want to sound pessimistic, but this could lead us one day to a proprietary Internet where the only free information is the advertisements.
We all know that the best way to get rid of all this nonsense is to host free content and services in countries other than the U.S. and the core E.U. This will also have the wonderful site-effect of boosting the education level of the people of such countries. Imagine mirror farms in paces considered by many as "third world", serving knowledge to the entire humanity. Free software, free education, free books, music and movies, free communication for all.
Unfortunately, no one has done this at a large scale, yet. Why? Don't know. The only thing I know is that if I had some money (to set up the servers and buy an E1 line) and some help, I'd be glad to do it myself.
Anyone interested?
skillos@yahoo.com