Fujitsu makes the best tablets hands down, but they are pricey.
If you want a cheaper tablet, Kohjinsha makes netbooks that have flip around screens that turn into tablets. I don't know if they are sold wherever you happen to be living (America) but they are cheap and good.
Here protection is built into the actual breaker. Our breakers aren't just a simple hole in the wall with a bunch of slots for simple resettable manual fuses. Here is a picture an explanation of a general, low end breaker here: http://www.chuden.co.jp/manabu/shikumi/bundenban/index.html. The far left is the master circuit breaker, which would of course throw if the incoming lines had a surge. Just to the right of that is a device which detects power irregularities (literally "leaks"), the particular unit here can detect anomalies within a 15mA to 30mA resolution. A momentary burst of +30mA to a generic red LED would probably do some damage, but to one of these lights I seriously doubt a fluctuation of 30mA even coming close to damaging them unless the design is exceptionally poor - not likely since we are talking about Panasonic.
That is basically correct, pulsing is often done to run LEDs at a higher brightness than they would run at in optimal constant current conditions. By pulsing you can push more power into the LED, then give it a moment to cool back down (rest), then do it again - thusly getting a brighter albeit less constant light.
As for LED light bulbs, there will be either be a rectifier which will be forcing a constant line polarity (converting external AC to internal DC) or you'll have two chains of LEDs backwards to each other on an AC line. In the case there are two lines backwards to each other one line will turn on while the other turns off as the current alternates, then as the current alternates back that condition will reverse. As the LEDs are diodes, the chain backwards to the momentary current will simply impede reverse current. Though it may sound like a crude way to run DC LEDs on an AC line, it's actually very often used in large scale LED strip lighting as a cost/complexity cutting measure.
If lightning hit your house and you had no protection/conditioning circuitry ANY light or device you have plugged in is at serious risk anyway, so what the hell is your point?
In Japan power is conditioned both on the line and at the breaker. I have never seen or heard of equipment being damaged due to power issues, and that includes my building being hit by lightning last year which resulted in nothing more than a 5 minute brown out while the power conditioning system reset itself. Perhaps your country isn't as first world as you assumed it was.
As for over-voltage, LEDs have an efficiency peak which will essentially always be under the voltage they can safely handle. A generic red LED for example will often run at high efficiency at 2.0 to 2.2V but will be able to take up to 3.2V before encountering an accelerated wear/damage cycle (burn out). Furthermore I seriously doubt there is no protection and filtration circuitry. Running any motor or other inductive/reactive/dynamic load on a circuit will dramatically alter its electrical characteristics, and such devices are not uncommon on AC circuits to begin with. I have a feeling voltage/current fluctuation has been taken into account to a reasonable degree just like every other DC device you use in your house.
Your LEDs are of very low quality or you have too much current being passed through them which is over-stressing them. Even cheaper LEDs, if of a reasonable quality, won't fade measurably for years. I guess you are just purchasing cheap keyboards from manufacturers who decided to cut costs by using the worst LEDs they could find.
Fluorescent light bothers my eyes and the color-corrected bulbs make everything look weird. I use a combination of incandescent and diffused LED lighting in my office and I find it a pretty good combination. I'm looking forward to see how the light color comes out on these new bulbs from Panasonic, if they look natural enough/don't bother my eyes I'll probably be using them to replace my incandescent bulbs.
The problem with DRM is implementation. Most technical implementations of DRM make a product difficult to use freely. In the case of music, DRM often locks out into a single music player or prevents you from playing music on anything but proprietary software. Furthermore, you are often not able to play the track on more than one computer, and the proprietary software often only allows you to export the tracks or record them to CD at a much lower quality. Furthermore, users will find ways to circumvent DRM which just increases development cost and time because you have to continually try and patch holes. AS FOR GAME DRM I have purchased one game with DRM and that went quite terribly. I purchased the game, played it a few times, then ended up having to wipe and reinstall windows. The game refused to start up, stating I could only install one copy on one machine (this was the same machine, same copy of windows, same serial, etc.). Contacting support proved fruitless, and I soon grew so disgusted with the situation I gave up and now intend to never purchase a DRMed game ever again. Mind you this was a few years ago, but I doubt any improvement of DRM would give me as much freedom to use what I have purchased as a non-DRM solution.
Basically the same here. Though I actually don't use "portable" media much because I can just ssh/scp from my computer at home whenever I want (my router forwards WOL as well, so I can wake it up if the machine is turned off). However, for all my external media I need file permissions and often filesystem level encryption for business related data so I can't even consider fat32 as an option - I simply need at least ext3. And no, I really don't bother with Reiser or anything else - I just use what seems to be the accepted default fancy filesystem.
I hate to tell you this, but the OMAP is a terrible architecture and the BeagleBoard just doesn't perform well due to how the OMAP works. Access to peripheral memory is atrocious, SVideo just doesn't work, the DVI signals don't conform to proper international standards, the graphics chip claims OpenGL ES 2.0 but the only way to get it to work is to screw around with some proprietary closed source blob and when you do use you all the sudden get flaky video performance, random crashes, and at least in my experience nothing more than 16 bit color. Personally I've been able to write GLES applications on my 930P (which uses a UniPhier and runs an embedded real time Linux) that well outperformed anything I could get going on the OMAP/BeagleBoard. But to be fair, if you want to see just how crummy the OMAP is spec it against the i.MX515, which is a direct competitor. See if you can find a single point where the OMAP comes close to outperforming the i.MX515, and if you can consider if that is a point actually matters in real world performance. Mind you I don't even like FreeScale, but I've seen in numbers and in first hand how terribly TI designed the OMAP and there's no way I'd ever choose it.
The PC-Z1 is ARM based, uses one of the best system architectures around (waaay better than say OMAP), runs Ubuntu Netbook Remix in full, and will be available by the end of the month here in Japan. I don't believe I've seen a post about it on Slashdot, but a post about Hon Hai? I've never even heard of them.
Ok, this is kind of a blanket reply to all the above posts. I'm a Japanese national living in Japan, our equivalent of copyright seems to be quite similar to what Zordak is describing but there are some obvious differences as well.
1. Here a copyright is automatically issued at the moment of creation/release of a work. That includes schematics, circuits, pieces of art, etc. as long as the item was consciously made and can be replicated or mimicked. By that I mean you can't copyright things like people or snot bubbles (unless perhaps you were to actively preserve said snot bubble through a unique and technical process and declare it a work, but the PROCESS of solidifying it would require a patent to protect).
2. A copyright does not indicate a license, in fact a license actually removes rights from the copyright holder in order to enable others to use that work. If a license is not issued any replication of the work is strictly prohibited unless for personal and non-commercial uses wherein the work is replication of said work is done with absolutely no part of the original work used in the replication. That means yes, you can copy a movie, but you have to do so by actually getting a camera crew and actors and re-shooting the movie scene by scene (though the script would also be copyrighted so you may run into problems there). Also, the re-created work you would not be allowed to show to anyone or use for any commercial use, you'd only legally be able to watch it yourself.
3. In Japan, a copyright is irrevocable of its original creator. It can not be sold, is non-transferrable, and in the case someone created a work under the employ of a company in which creating that work was done with company resources on company time the copyright is to be held by the creator and the company and can not be licensed without the mutual consent of all rights holders.
And just a heads up to Zordak: in Japan a netlist is not only copyright-able, it is copyrighted at the moment it is created and either released or registered. However, if someone were to have already created that netlist previously they could nullify your copyright. Also even though there is the automatic copyright here that doesn't mean you can create something generic and claim everyone else is using a derivative work (trolling). In order to file legal action here you'd submit a fee for inspection of your work and the work of the offending party, at which point the works would be inspected by a board of professionals who would decide you were just trolling and you'd never make it any further. You could keep trying, but that would just be paying the government to repeatedly reject you which I don't think anyone has any particular problem with.
Oh, and if a copyrighted work is required to produce something necessary (say medication) but the copyright holder refuses to license or demands obscene licensing fees you can actually raise legal action to force licensing, but it is the responsibility of the court they decide on terms that are reasonable and more favorable to the copyright holder.
Here a patent (tokkyo) is for a process, system, idea, or general design. I could not for instance patent a work of art or a particular book, but I can patent a new type of material or printing press design. A patent is the same thing in America, yes? I'm assuming things are basically the same in America as our systems are somewhat linked and for what I know we honor American patents.
I wasn't trying to say the development process was short, and I'm not quite sure what system the author is developing; but it sounds like the author is perhaps way in over his head. There are many companies that exist solely for the purpose of providing technical assistance in developing new technologies for people with ideas. The Xerox machine for example, the inventor only had an idea and he hired a graduate student to develop it. The company I am a part of provides such development services as well, and I'm fairly confident if the author claims his system is as simple as he states it is we could have developed it for him into a product for less than $5,000US and in less than a few months.
That's a little hasty, I'd offer an employer free use and licensing rights on the patent for the duration of your employment, and give them a contract guaranteeing them use with a marginal license fee after. There's also the issue of exclusivity, but you should figure out what you want to do with that and possibly talk it over with your future employer.
Now, I have one question and please don't take this the wrong way: if you system is so simple it would take only a few weekends to build yourself, why is it taking you so long to develop? Many hobby kits have versions, as do essentially all complex electronic components. If you just filed for a patent you should be patent-pending soon, which means even if you sell kits or samples the users of your kits/samples will not be able to mass produce all they want - patent pending alone is enough to bring up and win a court case. Also, you don't really need a patent to copyright or license your idea, so why not do that now?
Mod parent up! I personally surf with flashblock and rarely hit the activate button. I rarely use youtube or video sites, and when I do there is a plugin called DownloadHelper I have set up to download, convert to standard mp4, then play the video for me in mplayer. But you know what, having an auto nastygram button would be awesome! If an auto-nastygram plugin exists I'd like to know the name of it.
In Japan we have a variety of certifications that usually cover any sort of test, but often certain companies will give small tests to weed out candidates in lower positions. Tests are usually for lower positions only, and often have nothing to do with coding or aptitude but rather creativity. Even then, this is only for people applying to entry level positions - the tests are often waived if someone is recruited (in the case of software development nice demos, winning contests, or holding a lot of licenses/certifications alone can get you recruited somewhat easily). For higher positions most coders would be insulted if you asked them in for an interview and handed them a test. Experienced coders especially will hold esteemed positions and pride comes along with that - so a test at that point would be for the most part insulting unless you made it a particularly interesting test.
I have a feeling this is something that goes beyond just Japanese culture. Many coders would rather submit a demo with source than take a test, and being handed a test many would find insulting.When I say demo, I should note I applied for a few positions that used demos as tests. These were often "one-day demos" or "6 hour demos", where you were given something to do, write the nicest code you could to achieve that and package it all up within that time limit. Not finishing wasn't a disqualifies either, and the themes were always just vague enough to be really interesting but still easily achievable within the time frame if you were actually a capable coder.
Who do you include in your definition of "People"? Are you trying to make some sort of point about Transhumanism or something? Are cyborgs ineligible for the new government provided insurance? Do clones get discounts? Do you need to re-enroll if you've transplanted your consciousness into another body? Tell me, I really want to know!
That's both interesting and quite scary. In Japan that 20% is simply determined by an equation on how much medical costs the average person against how much is being brought into the system - if more people got sick more often the amount covered would be reduced or the fees would go up. If I go in for a head cold or go in for heart surgery it's basically the same 20% that I pay. For insurance to "favor" one sickness over another based on which one is less expensive to heal is incredibly frightening. If the system works like that then the people who need care the most are probably the least likely to be adequately covered. Thank you for the summary; I'm glad I don't have to worry about this kind of thing, but it's a shame other people do.
That's interesting. Here in Japan we have both public and private insurance. For some reason a lot of people seem to think our medicine is socialized, but it absolutely is not, we just have public insurance anyone can enter in. But the terms on the public insurance are only what the program can provide (at the moment people with public health care only pay 20% of their bill, including medicine). Private insurance has benefits like they will pay the entire bill if you get cancer or they will cover extended treatments up to a certain amount each day (like 100,000Y a day for some procedure that takes weeks, anything over that you only pay a percentage of). Private insurance however costs a bit more and depending on the company has criteria for entry. The system seems to work quite well, I've certainly never had a problem with it and I'm only on the public health care program now. Two notes: 1. You don't actually have to have any type of insurance, you can go on without it (but why? that confident you won't get sick?) 2. You don't need to pay for public health insurance if you aren't a member of the program, it's NOT tax funded but rather the amount you pay is usually calculated as a small percentage of your income. If the American program is anything like how we do it in Japan private health systems should work fine. If however the public program were say funded by tax dollars, then you have a serious problem because everyone will be paying for it and if you are already paying for one thing it would be wasteful to pay for something else. That would most definitely impact private insurance.
So when you say the Murdoch argument with the BBC is analogous, that is implying to me you read somewhere everyone will be forced to pay for public health insurance in America reguardless of weather or not they have private insurance or not. Is that that case? If so that sounds like a really bad implementation of socialized medicine to me.
If people are using a free service and not your paid service, then a the least you can determine they don't see enough value in paying to receive your service than usign the free service.
If you are lucky, that's because your prices are simply too high for your content, or your payment mechanism is too difficult, or something like that. If you are unlucky it's because your actual content is bad, in which case you have nothing worth charing for to begin with.
I don't read much foreign or English news outside of Slashdot, but I get news on my phone in real time. There is the free Yahoo news service but I also subscribe to the Yomiuri which if I remember correctly is 63 Yen (like 65 cents US) per month and has a lot of good content. If your content is good enough and your price is cheap enough people will willingly pay for it, it's as simple as that.
And I realize it would be impossible to melt all the snow from a Vermont blizzard.
My point was, there was no mention in the article of putting these things in Japan, so what trucks do in in winter in Japan is completely irrelevant to the conversation.
So trucks in America don't use chains in the winter? What do they use? If they use chains it's perfectly relevant.
I'm sure that if somebody actually thought about it, they'd figure that putting these things in North Dakota is stupid, and anywhere north of Kentucky is probably pointless.
However, there are a lot of roads in Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada, and the like, that will receive very little to zero snow, even in winter. Basically, there's at least 15 states that could completely replace their entire road system with this stuff, and generate enough electricity for the needs of themselves, and another 15 states.
Instead of snow ploughs, at most they'd need to be washed every 6 months or so.
Maybe they should put water pipes in a layer under the electronics layer, so that they could all pump water through them from the Gulf of Mexico, and be self cleaning.
Of course, that would also involve desalination....
So you are saying the should only put these things in places that don't have snow? But the company trying to develop these explicitly stated they could melt off snow themselves, which is what I was commenting on.
I'm not sure you understood my comment. Nowhere did I give any advice to put chains on trucks. I was responding to a comment regarding how the developer of the solar road system claims the roads can heat themselves in snowy conditions. I had two points: Here in Japan (I guess they do it differently in America) the trucks chain up their tires when it snows, which would most certainly do a lot of damage to these kinds of roads. Also, to generate enough heat to constantly melt off snow from such a wide surface would almost certainly require far more energy than the panels could possibly produce, especially during the winter.
I've engineered small electric heating and cooling systems before for various projects, and have dealt with solar panels. I'll tell you right now, solar panels harvest next to no energy in cloudy weather (common for the winter, yes?) let alone in the rain or snow. On top of that they amount of energy required to produce heat is incredible, and even rather efficient heat producing materials like ni-chrome wire would suck the energy out of a capacitor bank in no time - not to mention the distribution of heat required to continually melt snow would require a feat of engineering wizardry. Oh, and here in Japan the trucks put chains on their tires in the winter when it is snowing, even if the upper "protective" glass layer can hold up against normal tires in normal conditions a cold panel being driven over by a shipping truck with chains on the tires would most definitely demolish it.
There are many different types of solar panels, composed of a variety of different materials with different photo-voltaic properties and different levels of construction difficulty. Unfortunately many of these materials are expensive, and especially in the case of thin-film panels a variety of not-so-nice materials can be used. While a constructed panel can be used enough to theoretically be worth its cost and cover its impact on construction (including the environmental impact of harvesting materials) most panels aren't repeatedly run over by trucks. If these actually get deployed I expect they'll all just get broken right away and you'll have a whole lot of potentially dangerous bio-waste to deal with.
I agree. This is not a solution, and why choose this over viable solutions available right now? Even if you wanted to use the roads for solar energy why not do something like use them as they are, or run pipes under/in the asphault and pump water through them for water heating in the summer (which would cool the roads as well) -and you could pump water through them in the winter to de-ice the roads. Of course that also creates problems when pipes crack and it would increase the cost of road construction, but still it seems waaaay more viable than this. In fact if I sat down for an afternoon I'll bet I could come up with 100 more viable ideas than this.
Slashdot Mirror
Fujitsu makes the best tablets hands down, but they are pricey. If you want a cheaper tablet, Kohjinsha makes netbooks that have flip around screens that turn into tablets. I don't know if they are sold wherever you happen to be living (America) but they are cheap and good.
Here protection is built into the actual breaker. Our breakers aren't just a simple hole in the wall with a bunch of slots for simple resettable manual fuses. Here is a picture an explanation of a general, low end breaker here: http://www.chuden.co.jp/manabu/shikumi/bundenban/index.html. The far left is the master circuit breaker, which would of course throw if the incoming lines had a surge. Just to the right of that is a device which detects power irregularities (literally "leaks"), the particular unit here can detect anomalies within a 15mA to 30mA resolution. A momentary burst of +30mA to a generic red LED would probably do some damage, but to one of these lights I seriously doubt a fluctuation of 30mA even coming close to damaging them unless the design is exceptionally poor - not likely since we are talking about Panasonic.
That is basically correct, pulsing is often done to run LEDs at a higher brightness than they would run at in optimal constant current conditions. By pulsing you can push more power into the LED, then give it a moment to cool back down (rest), then do it again - thusly getting a brighter albeit less constant light.
As for LED light bulbs, there will be either be a rectifier which will be forcing a constant line polarity (converting external AC to internal DC) or you'll have two chains of LEDs backwards to each other on an AC line. In the case there are two lines backwards to each other one line will turn on while the other turns off as the current alternates, then as the current alternates back that condition will reverse. As the LEDs are diodes, the chain backwards to the momentary current will simply impede reverse current. Though it may sound like a crude way to run DC LEDs on an AC line, it's actually very often used in large scale LED strip lighting as a cost/complexity cutting measure.
If lightning hit your house and you had no protection/conditioning circuitry ANY light or device you have plugged in is at serious risk anyway, so what the hell is your point? In Japan power is conditioned both on the line and at the breaker. I have never seen or heard of equipment being damaged due to power issues, and that includes my building being hit by lightning last year which resulted in nothing more than a 5 minute brown out while the power conditioning system reset itself. Perhaps your country isn't as first world as you assumed it was. As for over-voltage, LEDs have an efficiency peak which will essentially always be under the voltage they can safely handle. A generic red LED for example will often run at high efficiency at 2.0 to 2.2V but will be able to take up to 3.2V before encountering an accelerated wear/damage cycle (burn out). Furthermore I seriously doubt there is no protection and filtration circuitry. Running any motor or other inductive/reactive/dynamic load on a circuit will dramatically alter its electrical characteristics, and such devices are not uncommon on AC circuits to begin with. I have a feeling voltage/current fluctuation has been taken into account to a reasonable degree just like every other DC device you use in your house.
Even when compared against CFLs they seem to stack up reasonably well, some people ran the numbers in posts above you.
Your LEDs are of very low quality or you have too much current being passed through them which is over-stressing them. Even cheaper LEDs, if of a reasonable quality, won't fade measurably for years. I guess you are just purchasing cheap keyboards from manufacturers who decided to cut costs by using the worst LEDs they could find.
Fluorescent light bothers my eyes and the color-corrected bulbs make everything look weird. I use a combination of incandescent and diffused LED lighting in my office and I find it a pretty good combination. I'm looking forward to see how the light color comes out on these new bulbs from Panasonic, if they look natural enough/don't bother my eyes I'll probably be using them to replace my incandescent bulbs.
The problem with DRM is implementation. Most technical implementations of DRM make a product difficult to use freely. In the case of music, DRM often locks out into a single music player or prevents you from playing music on anything but proprietary software. Furthermore, you are often not able to play the track on more than one computer, and the proprietary software often only allows you to export the tracks or record them to CD at a much lower quality. Furthermore, users will find ways to circumvent DRM which just increases development cost and time because you have to continually try and patch holes. AS FOR GAME DRM I have purchased one game with DRM and that went quite terribly. I purchased the game, played it a few times, then ended up having to wipe and reinstall windows. The game refused to start up, stating I could only install one copy on one machine (this was the same machine, same copy of windows, same serial, etc.). Contacting support proved fruitless, and I soon grew so disgusted with the situation I gave up and now intend to never purchase a DRMed game ever again. Mind you this was a few years ago, but I doubt any improvement of DRM would give me as much freedom to use what I have purchased as a non-DRM solution.
Basically the same here. Though I actually don't use "portable" media much because I can just ssh/scp from my computer at home whenever I want (my router forwards WOL as well, so I can wake it up if the machine is turned off). However, for all my external media I need file permissions and often filesystem level encryption for business related data so I can't even consider fat32 as an option - I simply need at least ext3. And no, I really don't bother with Reiser or anything else - I just use what seems to be the accepted default fancy filesystem.
I hate to tell you this, but the OMAP is a terrible architecture and the BeagleBoard just doesn't perform well due to how the OMAP works. Access to peripheral memory is atrocious, SVideo just doesn't work, the DVI signals don't conform to proper international standards, the graphics chip claims OpenGL ES 2.0 but the only way to get it to work is to screw around with some proprietary closed source blob and when you do use you all the sudden get flaky video performance, random crashes, and at least in my experience nothing more than 16 bit color. Personally I've been able to write GLES applications on my 930P (which uses a UniPhier and runs an embedded real time Linux) that well outperformed anything I could get going on the OMAP/BeagleBoard. But to be fair, if you want to see just how crummy the OMAP is spec it against the i.MX515, which is a direct competitor. See if you can find a single point where the OMAP comes close to outperforming the i.MX515, and if you can consider if that is a point actually matters in real world performance. Mind you I don't even like FreeScale, but I've seen in numbers and in first hand how terribly TI designed the OMAP and there's no way I'd ever choose it.
The PC-Z1 is ARM based, uses one of the best system architectures around (waaay better than say OMAP), runs Ubuntu Netbook Remix in full, and will be available by the end of the month here in Japan. I don't believe I've seen a post about it on Slashdot, but a post about Hon Hai? I've never even heard of them.
PC-Z1 [NetWalker]: http://www.sharp.co.jp/netwalker/
Ok, this is kind of a blanket reply to all the above posts. I'm a Japanese national living in Japan, our equivalent of copyright seems to be quite similar to what Zordak is describing but there are some obvious differences as well.
1. Here a copyright is automatically issued at the moment of creation/release of a work. That includes schematics, circuits, pieces of art, etc. as long as the item was consciously made and can be replicated or mimicked. By that I mean you can't copyright things like people or snot bubbles (unless perhaps you were to actively preserve said snot bubble through a unique and technical process and declare it a work, but the PROCESS of solidifying it would require a patent to protect).
2. A copyright does not indicate a license, in fact a license actually removes rights from the copyright holder in order to enable others to use that work. If a license is not issued any replication of the work is strictly prohibited unless for personal and non-commercial uses wherein the work is replication of said work is done with absolutely no part of the original work used in the replication. That means yes, you can copy a movie, but you have to do so by actually getting a camera crew and actors and re-shooting the movie scene by scene (though the script would also be copyrighted so you may run into problems there). Also, the re-created work you would not be allowed to show to anyone or use for any commercial use, you'd only legally be able to watch it yourself.
3. In Japan, a copyright is irrevocable of its original creator. It can not be sold, is non-transferrable, and in the case someone created a work under the employ of a company in which creating that work was done with company resources on company time the copyright is to be held by the creator and the company and can not be licensed without the mutual consent of all rights holders.
And just a heads up to Zordak: in Japan a netlist is not only copyright-able, it is copyrighted at the moment it is created and either released or registered. However, if someone were to have already created that netlist previously they could nullify your copyright. Also even though there is the automatic copyright here that doesn't mean you can create something generic and claim everyone else is using a derivative work (trolling). In order to file legal action here you'd submit a fee for inspection of your work and the work of the offending party, at which point the works would be inspected by a board of professionals who would decide you were just trolling and you'd never make it any further. You could keep trying, but that would just be paying the government to repeatedly reject you which I don't think anyone has any particular problem with.
Oh, and if a copyrighted work is required to produce something necessary (say medication) but the copyright holder refuses to license or demands obscene licensing fees you can actually raise legal action to force licensing, but it is the responsibility of the court they decide on terms that are reasonable and more favorable to the copyright holder.
Here a patent (tokkyo) is for a process, system, idea, or general design. I could not for instance patent a work of art or a particular book, but I can patent a new type of material or printing press design. A patent is the same thing in America, yes? I'm assuming things are basically the same in America as our systems are somewhat linked and for what I know we honor American patents.
I wasn't trying to say the development process was short, and I'm not quite sure what system the author is developing; but it sounds like the author is perhaps way in over his head. There are many companies that exist solely for the purpose of providing technical assistance in developing new technologies for people with ideas. The Xerox machine for example, the inventor only had an idea and he hired a graduate student to develop it. The company I am a part of provides such development services as well, and I'm fairly confident if the author claims his system is as simple as he states it is we could have developed it for him into a product for less than $5,000US and in less than a few months.
Also, perhaps I used Copyright incorrectly. Here we have "è'--ä½oeæ©" which is automatically issued at the time of release of any created work. I could create software, hardware, an image, a document, an audio recording, it doesn't matter as soon as I create it and release it somehow I automatically get my rights to it. If someone were to copy it, regardless of weather or not I held a patent, I could raise legal action against them (unless I had already released it under a particular license which granted them use).
That's a little hasty, I'd offer an employer free use and licensing rights on the patent for the duration of your employment, and give them a contract guaranteeing them use with a marginal license fee after. There's also the issue of exclusivity, but you should figure out what you want to do with that and possibly talk it over with your future employer.
Now, I have one question and please don't take this the wrong way: if you system is so simple it would take only a few weekends to build yourself, why is it taking you so long to develop? Many hobby kits have versions, as do essentially all complex electronic components. If you just filed for a patent you should be patent-pending soon, which means even if you sell kits or samples the users of your kits/samples will not be able to mass produce all they want - patent pending alone is enough to bring up and win a court case. Also, you don't really need a patent to copyright or license your idea, so why not do that now?
Mod parent up! I personally surf with flashblock and rarely hit the activate button. I rarely use youtube or video sites, and when I do there is a plugin called DownloadHelper I have set up to download, convert to standard mp4, then play the video for me in mplayer. But you know what, having an auto nastygram button would be awesome! If an auto-nastygram plugin exists I'd like to know the name of it.
In Japan we have a variety of certifications that usually cover any sort of test, but often certain companies will give small tests to weed out candidates in lower positions. Tests are usually for lower positions only, and often have nothing to do with coding or aptitude but rather creativity. Even then, this is only for people applying to entry level positions - the tests are often waived if someone is recruited (in the case of software development nice demos, winning contests, or holding a lot of licenses/certifications alone can get you recruited somewhat easily). For higher positions most coders would be insulted if you asked them in for an interview and handed them a test. Experienced coders especially will hold esteemed positions and pride comes along with that - so a test at that point would be for the most part insulting unless you made it a particularly interesting test. I have a feeling this is something that goes beyond just Japanese culture. Many coders would rather submit a demo with source than take a test, and being handed a test many would find insulting.When I say demo, I should note I applied for a few positions that used demos as tests. These were often "one-day demos" or "6 hour demos", where you were given something to do, write the nicest code you could to achieve that and package it all up within that time limit. Not finishing wasn't a disqualifies either, and the themes were always just vague enough to be really interesting but still easily achievable within the time frame if you were actually a capable coder.
Who do you include in your definition of "People"? Are you trying to make some sort of point about Transhumanism or something? Are cyborgs ineligible for the new government provided insurance? Do clones get discounts? Do you need to re-enroll if you've transplanted your consciousness into another body? Tell me, I really want to know!
That's both interesting and quite scary. In Japan that 20% is simply determined by an equation on how much medical costs the average person against how much is being brought into the system - if more people got sick more often the amount covered would be reduced or the fees would go up. If I go in for a head cold or go in for heart surgery it's basically the same 20% that I pay. For insurance to "favor" one sickness over another based on which one is less expensive to heal is incredibly frightening. If the system works like that then the people who need care the most are probably the least likely to be adequately covered. Thank you for the summary; I'm glad I don't have to worry about this kind of thing, but it's a shame other people do.
That's interesting. Here in Japan we have both public and private insurance. For some reason a lot of people seem to think our medicine is socialized, but it absolutely is not, we just have public insurance anyone can enter in. But the terms on the public insurance are only what the program can provide (at the moment people with public health care only pay 20% of their bill, including medicine). Private insurance has benefits like they will pay the entire bill if you get cancer or they will cover extended treatments up to a certain amount each day (like 100,000Y a day for some procedure that takes weeks, anything over that you only pay a percentage of). Private insurance however costs a bit more and depending on the company has criteria for entry. The system seems to work quite well, I've certainly never had a problem with it and I'm only on the public health care program now. Two notes: 1. You don't actually have to have any type of insurance, you can go on without it (but why? that confident you won't get sick?) 2. You don't need to pay for public health insurance if you aren't a member of the program, it's NOT tax funded but rather the amount you pay is usually calculated as a small percentage of your income. If the American program is anything like how we do it in Japan private health systems should work fine. If however the public program were say funded by tax dollars, then you have a serious problem because everyone will be paying for it and if you are already paying for one thing it would be wasteful to pay for something else. That would most definitely impact private insurance. So when you say the Murdoch argument with the BBC is analogous, that is implying to me you read somewhere everyone will be forced to pay for public health insurance in America reguardless of weather or not they have private insurance or not. Is that that case? If so that sounds like a really bad implementation of socialized medicine to me.
If people are using a free service and not your paid service, then a the least you can determine they don't see enough value in paying to receive your service than usign the free service. If you are lucky, that's because your prices are simply too high for your content, or your payment mechanism is too difficult, or something like that. If you are unlucky it's because your actual content is bad, in which case you have nothing worth charing for to begin with. I don't read much foreign or English news outside of Slashdot, but I get news on my phone in real time. There is the free Yahoo news service but I also subscribe to the Yomiuri which if I remember correctly is 63 Yen (like 65 cents US) per month and has a lot of good content. If your content is good enough and your price is cheap enough people will willingly pay for it, it's as simple as that.
No...I understood your comment.
And I realize it would be impossible to melt all the snow from a Vermont blizzard.
My point was, there was no mention in the article of putting these things in Japan, so what trucks do in in winter in Japan is completely irrelevant to the conversation.
So trucks in America don't use chains in the winter? What do they use? If they use chains it's perfectly relevant.
I'm sure that if somebody actually thought about it, they'd figure that putting these things in North Dakota is stupid, and anywhere north of Kentucky is probably pointless.
However, there are a lot of roads in Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada, and the like, that will receive very little to zero snow, even in winter. Basically, there's at least 15 states that could completely replace their entire road system with this stuff, and generate enough electricity for the needs of themselves, and another 15 states.
Instead of snow ploughs, at most they'd need to be washed every 6 months or so. Maybe they should put water pipes in a layer under the electronics layer, so that they could all pump water through them from the Gulf of Mexico, and be self cleaning. Of course, that would also involve desalination....
So you are saying the should only put these things in places that don't have snow? But the company trying to develop these explicitly stated they could melt off snow themselves, which is what I was commenting on.
I'm not sure you understood my comment. Nowhere did I give any advice to put chains on trucks. I was responding to a comment regarding how the developer of the solar road system claims the roads can heat themselves in snowy conditions. I had two points: Here in Japan (I guess they do it differently in America) the trucks chain up their tires when it snows, which would most certainly do a lot of damage to these kinds of roads. Also, to generate enough heat to constantly melt off snow from such a wide surface would almost certainly require far more energy than the panels could possibly produce, especially during the winter.
I've engineered small electric heating and cooling systems before for various projects, and have dealt with solar panels. I'll tell you right now, solar panels harvest next to no energy in cloudy weather (common for the winter, yes?) let alone in the rain or snow. On top of that they amount of energy required to produce heat is incredible, and even rather efficient heat producing materials like ni-chrome wire would suck the energy out of a capacitor bank in no time - not to mention the distribution of heat required to continually melt snow would require a feat of engineering wizardry. Oh, and here in Japan the trucks put chains on their tires in the winter when it is snowing, even if the upper "protective" glass layer can hold up against normal tires in normal conditions a cold panel being driven over by a shipping truck with chains on the tires would most definitely demolish it.
There are many different types of solar panels, composed of a variety of different materials with different photo-voltaic properties and different levels of construction difficulty. Unfortunately many of these materials are expensive, and especially in the case of thin-film panels a variety of not-so-nice materials can be used. While a constructed panel can be used enough to theoretically be worth its cost and cover its impact on construction (including the environmental impact of harvesting materials) most panels aren't repeatedly run over by trucks. If these actually get deployed I expect they'll all just get broken right away and you'll have a whole lot of potentially dangerous bio-waste to deal with.
I agree. This is not a solution, and why choose this over viable solutions available right now? Even if you wanted to use the roads for solar energy why not do something like use them as they are, or run pipes under/in the asphault and pump water through them for water heating in the summer (which would cool the roads as well) -and you could pump water through them in the winter to de-ice the roads. Of course that also creates problems when pipes crack and it would increase the cost of road construction, but still it seems waaaay more viable than this. In fact if I sat down for an afternoon I'll bet I could come up with 100 more viable ideas than this.