Hey, that's awesome, thanks. Looks like there's instructions for making a FreeDOS bootable USB drive with makebootfat . Do you know if there's anything special I have to do (eg. config the existing D510 BIOS) to make the D510 boot that FreeDOS USB drive? I've actually got a few of these D510s, and it could be a lot better to run AGP videocards on them than to buy new PCs with the same resulting specs.
These companies that sold PCs which officially allowed Linux on them never really supported Linux. The profit margins in supporting Windows are large enough, but the relatively tiny revenue from Linux sales doesn't scale up along with the costs of extending support to Linux. Especially when Linux vendors like Red Hat and Ubuntu receive most of the support requests that don't go to the public community.
But that means we're stuck. I've got a Compaq EVO D510 minitower that is still a perfectly good PC for a Web terminal (and even most office work). But its onboard SVGA chip relies on the P4/4.3GHz CPU too much, and the PCI bus is also already pretty loaded. So I bought a Radeon HD 4350 AGP that promises 1080p HDMI. But it turns out the old BIOS (that otherwise never needed upgrade) doesn't support the board. Unless it's flashed with the latest ROM image. Which HP does still distribute, but only in a Windows.exe app. No Windows, no AGP HD. I don't even think FreeDOS will run the.exe; Wine certainly doesn't ("can't load the driver"). And I don't even see any Q/A in the community over the years addressing this problem, even in the fairly well populated Ubuntu forums.
Too bad, since Linux runs far longer on old HW than "planned obsolescence" Windows bloatware ever does.
This story is tagged "patents", but it's not about patents. The copied data was a trade secret. Patents are by definition publicly published information. Trade secrets are different. Patents are easily abusable government monopolies that often violate free speech. Actual industrial secrets are essential to remaining competitive, as this case demonstrates. It's cheaper, faster and less risky for a Chinese (or any other) corporation to copy the data that GM (or anyone else) produced over a period of time and at a significant cost, than it is for that competitor to produce its own. The secret was violated by violating agreements and other deception.
I didn't say that we should become fully dependent on geothermal generation. Though I don't see what the risk is, I'm against any monopoly, whether by people or by a technology, when there are alternatives that better fit some demands.
But we should replace all our nukes with geothermal. Nukes are dirty, dangerous and expensive. They're dependent on supplies of the rarest elements, the proliferation of which creates even more serious security risks in weapons. They should be phased out.
By the time you'd built an extra 10% of our capacity in nuke plants, at least 10-12 years and more like 15-20-30, we could have built an extra 40% (2-4 years each) in geothermal, and maybe a lot more. Which would let us phase out the 10% nukes currently contribute. Meanwhile adding all the other energy generation systems - and efficiency systems - wherever we can make or save energy. And yes, we should both build energy storage systems, whether thermal, gravity, electrochemical or otherwise, as well as invest in inventing and perfecting new ones.
I never said we should pursue only geothermal. But we should shunt all our enthusiasm for nukes into geothermal instead. And do a lot more than that.
Geothermal power plants are the best substitute for nuke plants. They're highly efficient, create practically no emissions (especially once they're built), are fast to build and put online, present practically no security or pollution risks, and generate continuous baseloads. They don't depend on finite supplies of dirty fuel mostly produced in dirty ways mostly in foreign countries. All at scales only nuke plants have delivered. With a smart electric grid routing power around the country, even the few places where they can't be built at all (because of faultlines) can still get their power.
Thank you for maintaining a (typically Dutch) friendly and reasonable tone in your side of this thread:).
I don't entirely agree with your assessment of this story, since these windmills would not store large amounts of power, just buffering from wind gusts that generate power spikes which quickly subside, flattening the supply curve for the grid to handle with a little more time to work. There's probably a practically sized water tank that can handle the storage for them.
I wonder why the Netherlands doesn't just pump larger volumes of water right into and out of the neighboring sea for power storage, rather than send energy to Norway for storage far uphill. The Netherlands is largely below sea level. Windmills on water pipes could send 100x the water into the sea up only 1% of the elevation change done in Norway, to store the same power. As you say, the direct pumping could be higher efficiency than conversion to and from electricity for the long haul to Norway.
This boondoggle costs TI money, and not just in bad marketing. It costs money to lock down your platform. What does TI get out of it? Is TI afraid that people will use some FOSS operating system that flourishes on TI, to run the same apps on some competing HW, so people will buy the competing HW instead of the TI calculator? If not, what the hell is TI screwing its shareholders for by wasting this expense with no revenue to gain from it?
Each centrifuge weighs 4500 pounds (2 metric tons), maxes out at a throughput of 200 gallons (757 liters) of oil and water mixture per minute, and can remove more than 99 percent of the oil from the water, which can then be pumped back into the Gulf. [...] Costner did explain to Congress that his machines function best in the open ocean, where oil has only recently left the well and reached the surface. After months of spillage, most of the oil is no longer in the ideal form for collection.
Even if these machines do achieve 99% removal, they're not going to really work. How many of these 2 ton machines are we going to make, in how long a time? 200 gallons a minute is 288000 gallons of oil/water mix a day. Even if the machine were working on the direct streams of oil that are mostly not water already, the broken well was spewing at least 50,000 barrels per day, which is 2.1 million gallons a day. That's 8 machines - possibly enough, if that oil were diverted into a container. But after millions of gallons of dispersants have caused that oil to mix with water at thousands of times the dilution - many thousands of these machines, to be manufactured faster than the oil spreads through ever more water over days, weeks, months. And since a gallon of oil contaminates somewhere from 100,000 to a million gallons of water, these machines would be needed in quantities up to millions. All during that time the oil is destroying life throughout the Gulf.
In other words, these machines aren't any good for protecting the water and its ecosystems (and industries like fishing) from oil. They're good for salvaging oil from water for sale:
remove more than 99 percent of the oil from the water, which can then be pumped back into the Gulf.
The Gulf doesn't need that water pumped back in. There's plenty of water in the Gulf. That's just an excuse to use these machines to clean up the oil recovered in tankers, so BP can sell it for something like $75 a barrel.
The only thing that's ever mattered to BP is maximizing the amount of oil it can get out of that well, in the shortest time, to sell it. Of course that's why they drill wells. But when the well blows up, protecting us from the damage should be job #1 - and #2, and #3. These machines, and the continuing interest in them, shows that for BP job #1 on down is just getting and selling oil.
And Costner will be there to help them. No shame in Costner investing to make a buck. But in pitching it as cleaning the Gulf is really shameless.
Google bought Keyhole SW several years ago. SketchUp is Google now as surely as any of the many other divisions Google has bought. There's no "trick" into buying SketchUp Pro when you download. It's a separate option on the download page, with the free version featured but the Pro version available for money. Just like any other SW with a free version and pay version with more features. The free version isn't crippled at all, but people I know who use it professionally do use the extra features.
SketchUp is exactly like any other software with a free version from a big company that also makes money from a paid and supported version. Right down to the failure to release a Linux version.
Google refuses to release a Linux version of SketchUp. Even though SketchUp is the editor for Google Earth, and that whole sector of Google's products and services.
SketchUp 7 doesn't work so well on Wine. Not with an Intel embedded graphics chip, anyway. Yeah, I could get a new PC with a new graphics chip, but the old one works well except for these kinds of occasional incompatibilities. Everything else I use in software is free/OSS, so I don't feel like spending money on new HW to run the free SW.
Does Wine 1.2 run SketchUp now? If not, how do we get Google to either release a Linux version, or patch Wine to make it work?
Hemp clothing is for more than just "hippies" (whoever they are). Hemp is a great fiber for textiles, which is why it was used for centuries/millennia. Synthetic fiber corps like Dupont helped create marijuana prohibition because hemp was too competitive with their new products.
Maybe only "hippies" know about that, but the fabric is for everyone. You can't smoke it.
Policy is not politics. Just making policy on some knowledge is not politicization of it. When politicians pressure the knowledge underlying the policy using their power over the public rather than science, that's politicization.
Unless you're a Republican. Then every policy is political. Because all government is socialism, which is evil.
I suggest you try being a public liar who makes up inane quibbles and colossal lies to attack quality science in the name of paranoia and corporate profits. Then you'll find that you're not quite ignored or defined as a public liar, but that there's always a venue in public media with an audience for your lies. And a bankroll to pay you to keep up your trolling.
The reason AGW "proponents" (people demonstrating it with facts and logic) have "the upper hand" is because they're correct. The people lying to deny it shouldn't get anything but laughter and a kick in the ass. That they have any place in the public debate shows how disproportionate is their power to lie. Because it's worth so much money to the polluters and the lying media outlets that love them.
Copyright is a "right" only because the Constitution created it, unlike actual rights. It's a privilege, a monopoly created by the government:
Article I, Section 8 The Congress shall have power [...] To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
That promotion is at odds with the explicit right to freedom of the press and the implicit right to freedom of commerce. The test of whether copyright's terms are based in a legitimate power of the Congress is whether it is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. And when the absence or failure of that government promotion by protection doesn't leave science or the useful arts without progress, the test doesn't show the protection to be based on that power.
Leaving aside whether entertainment is either science or a useful art, it's also clear that copyright prevents progress in it, as well as in science and the undeniably useful arts. Progress in those fields is measured in knowledge and creativity, which has for a long time been prevented by copyright.
So we have clear evidence that copyright prevents progress, and a lack of evidence that its promotion is necessary or effective.
Copyright is unconstitutional in all but the most rare cases.
The only time my credit card was robbed was by a hotel, in Paris. The FBI ignored me, the French police ignored me, my credit card company ignored me after they canceled the charge (without evidence). It's a "cost of doing business" to them, but my hours of time, long distance phone bills, and inconvenience are a cost to me. And to the next person that hotel robs, or the hotel down the street.
It's obvious that credit cards should have one-time passwords for distribution. One password per transaction, assigned to a specific amount of money. The card's chip can keep a cache of them, to be read by merchant's machines or the owner's pocket display or USB.
Why do I even have to give my card to some waiter while they run it through their machine? They should bring me a wireless terminal and get my one time password for the bill amount.
And why can't I have a USB reader for submitting my one time password and billing info to a Web page, instead of having to retype it every time? How about connecting to my phone, so all I have to do to pay any bill is give a phone#, then say "OK" when the invoice message comes through, which sends back the one time password for that amount to that recipient?
$TRILLIONS flow through these cards. As they have for decades, including two decades on the Web and a decade while we've carried smartphones. Why isn't this simple and basically foolproof yet?
Who would have guessed animals would evolve compound lenses through genetics? The right selective breeding might take time, but eventually a FRICKIN' LASER might grow from our faces. I think they're already close in the shark labs. What could possibly go wrong?
You'll have to wait for the genetic engineering version. So you should put all your money into v1.0 stemcell research, to speed up the time to the version you want for yourself.
But really what we want is stemcell therapies that restore the macula to a fully working retina without further complication. Especially if the stemcells come from the patient themself, without requiring a separate donor, or tissue banks.
It also led to the leakage of sensitive military information after an Army Ranger accepted 'Robin's' friend request on Facebook and his photos from Afghanistan exposed geolocation information accessible to 'Robin.'
Posting secret military pictures to your Facebook page is a breach of security, even if all your "friends" on Facebook have security clearance. Facebook itself doesn't have clearance. There's no guarantee Facebook staff can't look at the pictures. There's no guarantee someone can't crack Facebook security and look at the pictures without authorization. And now obviously that "friend" you let look at the pictures could be someone unauthorized.
There's got to be a military rule prohibiting posting such secret pictures to Facebook, or rather a rule allowing disclosure to only proper sites which don't include Facebook. If there is, the Army ranger was the security hole. If there isn't, the ranger was still the security hole, though there's a bigger one in the loose rules that didn't prevent their failure.
The actual geoid is narrower than the image with its margins. But it's not in WUXGA ratio, either. So I scaled it to 2087xW, keeping aspect ratio, making the geoid 1920 pixels wide, with 70 blank lines below, which I cropped at 1920x1080. Then I copy/pasted more lines in the intensity scale bar, then copied the bar's meters legend number, dropped their grey background for transparent, and pasted them inside the bar. I copy/pasted the new bar below the geoid, completing a WUXGA image.
When I set it as my desktop image, I realized the top Ubuntu bar pushes the image down, obscuring the scale numbers. But it still looks good, so I'm not going to do it again.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, that's awesome, thanks. Looks like there's instructions for making a FreeDOS bootable USB drive with makebootfat . Do you know if there's anything special I have to do (eg. config the existing D510 BIOS) to make the D510 boot that FreeDOS USB drive? I've actually got a few of these D510s, and it could be a lot better to run AGP videocards on them than to buy new PCs with the same resulting specs.
These companies that sold PCs which officially allowed Linux on them never really supported Linux. The profit margins in supporting Windows are large enough, but the relatively tiny revenue from Linux sales doesn't scale up along with the costs of extending support to Linux. Especially when Linux vendors like Red Hat and Ubuntu receive most of the support requests that don't go to the public community.
But that means we're stuck. I've got a Compaq EVO D510 minitower that is still a perfectly good PC for a Web terminal (and even most office work). But its onboard SVGA chip relies on the P4/4.3GHz CPU too much, and the PCI bus is also already pretty loaded. So I bought a Radeon HD 4350 AGP that promises 1080p HDMI. But it turns out the old BIOS (that otherwise never needed upgrade) doesn't support the board. Unless it's flashed with the latest ROM image. Which HP does still distribute, but only in a Windows .exe app. No Windows, no AGP HD. I don't even think FreeDOS will run the .exe; Wine certainly doesn't ("can't load the driver"). And I don't even see any Q/A in the community over the years addressing this problem, even in the fairly well populated Ubuntu forums.
Too bad, since Linux runs far longer on old HW than "planned obsolescence" Windows bloatware ever does.
I believe the proper term for "crapware" is "crapps".
This story is tagged "patents", but it's not about patents. The copied data was a trade secret. Patents are by definition publicly published information. Trade secrets are different. Patents are easily abusable government monopolies that often violate free speech. Actual industrial secrets are essential to remaining competitive, as this case demonstrates. It's cheaper, faster and less risky for a Chinese (or any other) corporation to copy the data that GM (or anyone else) produced over a period of time and at a significant cost, than it is for that competitor to produce its own. The secret was violated by violating agreements and other deception.
I didn't say that we should become fully dependent on geothermal generation. Though I don't see what the risk is, I'm against any monopoly, whether by people or by a technology, when there are alternatives that better fit some demands.
But we should replace all our nukes with geothermal. Nukes are dirty, dangerous and expensive. They're dependent on supplies of the rarest elements, the proliferation of which creates even more serious security risks in weapons. They should be phased out.
By the time you'd built an extra 10% of our capacity in nuke plants, at least 10-12 years and more like 15-20-30, we could have built an extra 40% (2-4 years each) in geothermal, and maybe a lot more. Which would let us phase out the 10% nukes currently contribute. Meanwhile adding all the other energy generation systems - and efficiency systems - wherever we can make or save energy. And yes, we should both build energy storage systems, whether thermal, gravity, electrochemical or otherwise, as well as invest in inventing and perfecting new ones.
I never said we should pursue only geothermal. But we should shunt all our enthusiasm for nukes into geothermal instead. And do a lot more than that.
Geothermal power plants are the best substitute for nuke plants. They're highly efficient, create practically no emissions (especially once they're built), are fast to build and put online, present practically no security or pollution risks, and generate continuous baseloads. They don't depend on finite supplies of dirty fuel mostly produced in dirty ways mostly in foreign countries. All at scales only nuke plants have delivered. With a smart electric grid routing power around the country, even the few places where they can't be built at all (because of faultlines) can still get their power.
Thank you for maintaining a (typically Dutch) friendly and reasonable tone in your side of this thread :).
I don't entirely agree with your assessment of this story, since these windmills would not store large amounts of power, just buffering from wind gusts that generate power spikes which quickly subside, flattening the supply curve for the grid to handle with a little more time to work. There's probably a practically sized water tank that can handle the storage for them.
I wonder why the Netherlands doesn't just pump larger volumes of water right into and out of the neighboring sea for power storage, rather than send energy to Norway for storage far uphill. The Netherlands is largely below sea level. Windmills on water pipes could send 100x the water into the sea up only 1% of the elevation change done in Norway, to store the same power. As you say, the direct pumping could be higher efficiency than conversion to and from electricity for the long haul to Norway.
This boondoggle costs TI money, and not just in bad marketing. It costs money to lock down your platform. What does TI get out of it? Is TI afraid that people will use some FOSS operating system that flourishes on TI, to run the same apps on some competing HW, so people will buy the competing HW instead of the TI calculator? If not, what the hell is TI screwing its shareholders for by wasting this expense with no revenue to gain from it?
There's more to math than mathematicians. Your mathematics isn't the only math people do.
Even if these machines do achieve 99% removal, they're not going to really work. How many of these 2 ton machines are we going to make, in how long a time? 200 gallons a minute is 288000 gallons of oil/water mix a day. Even if the machine were working on the direct streams of oil that are mostly not water already, the broken well was spewing at least 50,000 barrels per day, which is 2.1 million gallons a day. That's 8 machines - possibly enough, if that oil were diverted into a container. But after millions of gallons of dispersants have caused that oil to mix with water at thousands of times the dilution - many thousands of these machines, to be manufactured faster than the oil spreads through ever more water over days, weeks, months. And since a gallon of oil contaminates somewhere from 100,000 to a million gallons of water, these machines would be needed in quantities up to millions. All during that time the oil is destroying life throughout the Gulf.
In other words, these machines aren't any good for protecting the water and its ecosystems (and industries like fishing) from oil. They're good for salvaging oil from water for sale:
The Gulf doesn't need that water pumped back in. There's plenty of water in the Gulf. That's just an excuse to use these machines to clean up the oil recovered in tankers, so BP can sell it for something like $75 a barrel.
The only thing that's ever mattered to BP is maximizing the amount of oil it can get out of that well, in the shortest time, to sell it. Of course that's why they drill wells. But when the well blows up, protecting us from the damage should be job #1 - and #2, and #3. These machines, and the continuing interest in them, shows that for BP job #1 on down is just getting and selling oil.
And Costner will be there to help them. No shame in Costner investing to make a buck. But in pitching it as cleaning the Gulf is really shameless.
Google bought Keyhole SW several years ago. SketchUp is Google now as surely as any of the many other divisions Google has bought. There's no "trick" into buying SketchUp Pro when you download. It's a separate option on the download page, with the free version featured but the Pro version available for money. Just like any other SW with a free version and pay version with more features. The free version isn't crippled at all, but people I know who use it professionally do use the extra features.
SketchUp is exactly like any other software with a free version from a big company that also makes money from a paid and supported version. Right down to the failure to release a Linux version.
Google refuses to release a Linux version of SketchUp. Even though SketchUp is the editor for Google Earth, and that whole sector of Google's products and services.
SketchUp 7 doesn't work so well on Wine. Not with an Intel embedded graphics chip, anyway. Yeah, I could get a new PC with a new graphics chip, but the old one works well except for these kinds of occasional incompatibilities. Everything else I use in software is free/OSS, so I don't feel like spending money on new HW to run the free SW.
Does Wine 1.2 run SketchUp now? If not, how do we get Google to either release a Linux version, or patch Wine to make it work?
Hemp clothing is for more than just "hippies" (whoever they are). Hemp is a great fiber for textiles, which is why it was used for centuries/millennia. Synthetic fiber corps like Dupont helped create marijuana prohibition because hemp was too competitive with their new products.
Maybe only "hippies" know about that, but the fabric is for everyone. You can't smoke it.
Policy is not politics. Just making policy on some knowledge is not politicization of it. When politicians pressure the knowledge underlying the policy using their power over the public rather than science, that's politicization.
Unless you're a Republican. Then every policy is political. Because all government is socialism, which is evil.
I suggest you try being a public liar who makes up inane quibbles and colossal lies to attack quality science in the name of paranoia and corporate profits. Then you'll find that you're not quite ignored or defined as a public liar, but that there's always a venue in public media with an audience for your lies. And a bankroll to pay you to keep up your trolling.
The reason AGW "proponents" (people demonstrating it with facts and logic) have "the upper hand" is because they're correct. The people lying to deny it shouldn't get anything but laughter and a kick in the ass. That they have any place in the public debate shows how disproportionate is their power to lie. Because it's worth so much money to the polluters and the lying media outlets that love them.
Copyright is a "right" only because the Constitution created it, unlike actual rights. It's a privilege, a monopoly created by the government:
That promotion is at odds with the explicit right to freedom of the press and the implicit right to freedom of commerce. The test of whether copyright's terms are based in a legitimate power of the Congress is whether it is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. And when the absence or failure of that government promotion by protection doesn't leave science or the useful arts without progress, the test doesn't show the protection to be based on that power.
Leaving aside whether entertainment is either science or a useful art, it's also clear that copyright prevents progress in it, as well as in science and the undeniably useful arts. Progress in those fields is measured in knowledge and creativity, which has for a long time been prevented by copyright.
So we have clear evidence that copyright prevents progress, and a lack of evidence that its promotion is necessary or effective.
Copyright is unconstitutional in all but the most rare cases.
The only time my credit card was robbed was by a hotel, in Paris. The FBI ignored me, the French police ignored me, my credit card company ignored me after they canceled the charge (without evidence). It's a "cost of doing business" to them, but my hours of time, long distance phone bills, and inconvenience are a cost to me. And to the next person that hotel robs, or the hotel down the street.
It's obvious that credit cards should have one-time passwords for distribution. One password per transaction, assigned to a specific amount of money. The card's chip can keep a cache of them, to be read by merchant's machines or the owner's pocket display or USB.
Why do I even have to give my card to some waiter while they run it through their machine? They should bring me a wireless terminal and get my one time password for the bill amount.
And why can't I have a USB reader for submitting my one time password and billing info to a Web page, instead of having to retype it every time? How about connecting to my phone, so all I have to do to pay any bill is give a phone#, then say "OK" when the invoice message comes through, which sends back the one time password for that amount to that recipient?
$TRILLIONS flow through these cards. As they have for decades, including two decades on the Web and a decade while we've carried smartphones. Why isn't this simple and basically foolproof yet?
Who would have guessed animals would evolve compound lenses through genetics? The right selective breeding might take time, but eventually a FRICKIN' LASER might grow from our faces. I think they're already close in the shark labs. What could possibly go wrong?
The code is just "US Cyber Command" encrypted.
Prove I'm wrong!
Haha - you just haven't seen genetic engineering of cellular scale data recorders and neural splice playback yet.
You'll have to wait for the genetic engineering version. So you should put all your money into v1.0 stemcell research, to speed up the time to the version you want for yourself.
This implant is a lot better than going blind.
But really what we want is stemcell therapies that restore the macula to a fully working retina without further complication. Especially if the stemcells come from the patient themself, without requiring a separate donor, or tissue banks.
Posting secret military pictures to your Facebook page is a breach of security, even if all your "friends" on Facebook have security clearance. Facebook itself doesn't have clearance. There's no guarantee Facebook staff can't look at the pictures. There's no guarantee someone can't crack Facebook security and look at the pictures without authorization. And now obviously that "friend" you let look at the pictures could be someone unauthorized.
There's got to be a military rule prohibiting posting such secret pictures to Facebook, or rather a rule allowing disclosure to only proper sites which don't include Facebook. If there is, the Army ranger was the security hole. If there isn't, the ranger was still the security hole, though there's a bigger one in the loose rules that didn't prevent their failure.
Vandalism or defective boom? Until there's some evidence of whatever split open that boom, there's no way to know which it is.
Actually, I was able to export the SVG of the image from page 9 of that PDF:
pdf2svg GOCE-Science-Data-Processing-System-Status-and-Plans.pdf page9.svg 9
Checked it to be sure:
eog page9.svg
Then opened it in the gimp:
gimp page9.svg
The actual geoid is narrower than the image with its margins. But it's not in WUXGA ratio, either. So I scaled it to 2087xW, keeping aspect ratio, making the geoid 1920 pixels wide, with 70 blank lines below, which I cropped at 1920x1080. Then I copy/pasted more lines in the intensity scale bar, then copied the bar's meters legend number, dropped their grey background for transparent, and pasted them inside the bar. I copy/pasted the new bar below the geoid, completing a WUXGA image.
When I set it as my desktop image, I realized the top Ubuntu bar pushes the image down, obscuring the scale numbers. But it still looks good, so I'm not going to do it again.
What a pain in the ass. But it's pretty now.