The "cow power" is just solar power collected first by the grass (or whatever) the cow eats, then by the cow. By the time the cow pushes the dynamo, the efficiency of using the 1KW:m^2 that falls on the growing stuff is in the hundredths of a percent. Sunlight might not be "consistently strong", but it's evidently strong enough to grow whatever the cattle eat. What it needs is a battery, which the OLPC has.
Instead of a dynamo of belts and pulleys, which requires a lot of maintenance and isn't portable (like many nomads and people who herd cattle), how about they work on fermenting that grass for fuelcells? The cattle won't have to work as hard, so they won't need as much grass, which extra grass can power the OLPC. The dynamos they're proposing must be supplied elsewhere anyway, even from Fiat taxis, so why not get fuelcells instead? And why not use the demand for them to grow local fuelcell production industries?
And if fuelcells are too expensive or complicated, why not just some standard PV cells, feeding the OLPC batteries? A PV collector the size of a cattle pen could power several OLPCs.
I like the idea of setting a browser's window as a separate app for a given site, so that site's app can be distinguished more easily from the other (many) browsers open at a time, many of those others just "casual", while some are persistent through the day.
But a separate app seems like a lot of overhead for a narrow solution. When I have a dozen Firefox windows open now, even though only half are persistent through the day, they all share the common resources. A separate app for each of the half-dozen persistent sites/apps means a lot of redundant app resources, in an already fat app (Firefox). I like the idea of securing each app from the other by separating processes, but that could be achieved with just proper programming the single app instance.
What is a better combo of all these features is just adding "window racks" to Firefox (and properly programming cross-site separation). I want to rack up several windows into a virtual rack that opens and closes all the windows together. So I can open a multiwindow session, with different apps in them, positioning/sizing the windows in the right arrangement for those apps in that session. I want to assign a "bookmark" (or app launcher) to that rack, assign a name to the rack that's displayed on each window, and probably an icon, too. And a rule that opens any clicked link in a new browser rack. That way the GUI is "partitioned" into my sessions for easily keeping them organized, both onscreen and in my mind when starting "apps".
Really this is a feature of the window manager (like X) that should be used by all apps. Because what I really want is a window rack of multiple apps I use all at once. I want to click a button and get my email, browser and spreadsheet apps launched at once, positioned properly on the screen. I could write a wrapper script right now to do that, and maybe even a GUI tool to populate "rack" scripts, but I want extra GUI support that makes all the windows in the rack clearly associated, maybe by a colored window border, common icon, or even (togglable) connecting lines. And I want the rack to enforce IPC permissions, so I don't even have to copy/drag/paste through my whole desktop, but rather just pop fields and objects among targets in the rack. IPC authorization among only "racked" (and otherwise explicitly associated) apps would make the whole OS more secure.
Window racks give me what I want. I think Prism is a long step down the wrong road.
I encourage NASA to launch many more of these balloons. Then I encourage someone to fund me flying around among them attaching WiFi APs with Pringles cans to them. 5. PROFIT!!!
I'm talking about HA, including failover, and write scaling. Also supporting separate apps distributed around a network that depend on a single dataset, requiring DB sync, but the write scaling should take care of that.
GPS or other radio signals combine the freedom of machine vision with the reliability of navigational rails, but without the infrastructure expense of either. Machine vision for vehicles could be very useful for avoiding unusual obstacles in the roadway, like a burned car, downed tree, pedestrian or other exception. But for most navigation, especially on highways across the country, radio is cheaper and more reliable. Let's pave these virtual roads with something designed for robots to see, without the limitations trying to replicate human vision without getting most of its benefits.
I do a lot of writes. It works better than MySQL, and was especially so when I started some of these apps and referential integrity and fuller SQL semantics were supported better by Postgres than by MySQL.
Google had to upgrade MySQL quite a lot for its use because MySQL needed a lot of improvement. Postgres was a lot closer to what I need right from the start, without having Google's development resources.
But then, you're an Anonymous Coward. You just like to criticize what you don't understand. If you had a well-founded criticism, you'd post with a consistent username.
Postgres is under the BSD license. I wonder whether a developer could port the MySQL GPL code directly to Postgres, and release the Postgres diff as patch, under the GPL. Does the GPL prohibit using a GPL patch on a BSD app?
They are different. My apps mostly replace the filesystem with DB records, and do a lot of logging for analysis/reporting.
Of course, the different scenarios we're discussing mean that MySQL would be best as a datamart frontend to Postgres. I'd love to write everything to a Postgres API, then deploy it with a script that ports the Postgres schema to a MySQL, which MySQL just replicates to the Postgres, and presents the MySQL interface to web apps. While the Postgres retains the master data, and presents an interface to apps which do a lot more writes.
I prefer Postgres to MySQL. I wonder whether these MySQL revisions will be generic enough to use to improve Postgres.
I also wish these two databases interoperated more. I'd like to use a MySQL proxy to my Postgres server, so apps depending on MySQL could still work, but use Postgres to actually process the data (or just serve as a master DB for replication). Porting apps between DBs, and huge projects to join across different apps' tables in different types of DB servers should be ancient history. Mixed DB-type clusters might not be high performance, but they'd get the iterative development started, after which performance could be just an optimization, which is the right way to do it anyway.
Tell that to the FAA and the air traffic controllers. And everyone on the ground under all those flying cars. Especially people like me in NYC, many of whom aren't so "under" at all.
Why can't a "roomba" have a large, powerful vacuum like the one you prefer, with a big battery (or fuelcell), and the intake of the sucking hose on a smaller vehicle that snakes into small corners? The main body can roll over to powerup stations, or even have a long cord with its own robot for keeping the cord clear of obstructions.
These are engineering tweaks. There's no fundamental limit. Which is why I say the industry should work on them incrementally.
I don't like the "prepared roadway" method of navigational context, because it's like rails. Too inflexible, too much expensive infrastructure (compared to global radio). Requires too much preplanning for handling exceptions explicitly.
The swarm network could be better, but among its problems are relying on other cars' systems to work to protect yours. In a collision, the breakdown in those systems could produce a chain reaction amplifying the collision among many other cars. And even the most trafficked roadways are sometimes empty, usually when people are too tired/drunk to drive themselves.
I'm not sure GPS is exactly right, for the reasons you say. But something like it, a WLAN of some kind, would be good. We've got enough cell coverage, especially along major roads, probably to use their signals differentially for location, as well as routing queries. In fact, I'd like to see the Federal government, via the FCC, require cell operators to offer the infrastructure to the DOT among the concessions they make in return for all their use of public property, from the airwaves to rights of way, to zoning variances.
If it's not human, and it's programmed to cry when you smack it, is that cruel? Isn't not smacking a crybot the actual cruelty? Like never driving your Porsche over 55MPH.
I still think incrementing (evolving) the early success of Roomba is the way to make robotics a permanent industry that gets us to what we all want: robot slaves without cruelty.
As for robocars, that's also within reach, dependent not so much on the car but on a system of GPS and networked control of that complex routing/collision system. A very different undertaking that probably should be tried on just long-distance trucking, with autopilot allowed only on highways with practically no other traffic, between points with simple interconnects. Then inside private compounds like factories and distro centers. Once proven to handle the multitude of exceptions, it could be time to start educating regular drivers to use autopilot on highways. Eventually there might be a single lane for "manual driving" on highways. But the hardest part is going to be getting people (like me) to allow some external control over guiding our car.
When we do pull that off, though, we'll finally have the navigation system that makes flying cars possible. So you can tell that I'm talking about the impossibly distant future:).
The most promising robot development is Roomba, because it's task oriented on a task humans don't want to do. But Roombas are too flimsy and noisy, and expensive. If companies just worked on that, making Roombas robust and cheap, and expanded them to washing clothes, dishes, and the rest of the home that isn't on the floor, they'd have enough complex behaviors that they could start adding "personality".
Tell me about all the children you've adopted, to stop this "wholesale murder". Especially all the ones from the 400,000 thrown in the trash every year by fertility clinics. Or just where you occasionally send a check or volunteer to help those children.
How about decreases in crimes by people who were never born, because their parents could get a legal abortion? And other family planning that made more kids who'd become old enough to commit crimes instead the product of more educated, well adjusted families? Also prenatal care and other health in ghettos.
The Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s made a generation that came of age in the late 1970s through 1990s (and still coming today) a lot more well adjusted.
I suppose lying is always "hypocritical". But explicit hypocrisy means subverting what you explicitly stand for. Greenpeace stands for protecting the environment and ending war. Attacking Apple, even if it were true, would be properly "hypocritical" if Greenpeace had damaged the environment or sent troops.
I'm not discussing the truth of Greenpeace's attacks. I'm discussing the spurious claim of hypocrisy, which is a much broader indictment of the org that is baseless.
Start paying attention, and stop changing the subject. Even if you're going to change the subject to a claim that Greenpeace stopped conservation efforts for the practical welfare of people in this world years ago, back it up with evidence. But even then, unless your evidence shows this attack on Apple violated that specific charter, you're not arguing with me, but with your own strawman.
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The "cow power" is just solar power collected first by the grass (or whatever) the cow eats, then by the cow. By the time the cow pushes the dynamo, the efficiency of using the 1KW:m^2 that falls on the growing stuff is in the hundredths of a percent. Sunlight might not be "consistently strong", but it's evidently strong enough to grow whatever the cattle eat. What it needs is a battery, which the OLPC has.
Instead of a dynamo of belts and pulleys, which requires a lot of maintenance and isn't portable (like many nomads and people who herd cattle), how about they work on fermenting that grass for fuelcells? The cattle won't have to work as hard, so they won't need as much grass, which extra grass can power the OLPC. The dynamos they're proposing must be supplied elsewhere anyway, even from Fiat taxis, so why not get fuelcells instead? And why not use the demand for them to grow local fuelcell production industries?
And if fuelcells are too expensive or complicated, why not just some standard PV cells, feeding the OLPC batteries? A PV collector the size of a cattle pen could power several OLPCs.
I like the idea of setting a browser's window as a separate app for a given site, so that site's app can be distinguished more easily from the other (many) browsers open at a time, many of those others just "casual", while some are persistent through the day.
But a separate app seems like a lot of overhead for a narrow solution. When I have a dozen Firefox windows open now, even though only half are persistent through the day, they all share the common resources. A separate app for each of the half-dozen persistent sites/apps means a lot of redundant app resources, in an already fat app (Firefox). I like the idea of securing each app from the other by separating processes, but that could be achieved with just proper programming the single app instance.
What is a better combo of all these features is just adding "window racks" to Firefox (and properly programming cross-site separation). I want to rack up several windows into a virtual rack that opens and closes all the windows together. So I can open a multiwindow session, with different apps in them, positioning/sizing the windows in the right arrangement for those apps in that session. I want to assign a "bookmark" (or app launcher) to that rack, assign a name to the rack that's displayed on each window, and probably an icon, too. And a rule that opens any clicked link in a new browser rack. That way the GUI is "partitioned" into my sessions for easily keeping them organized, both onscreen and in my mind when starting "apps".
Really this is a feature of the window manager (like X) that should be used by all apps. Because what I really want is a window rack of multiple apps I use all at once. I want to click a button and get my email, browser and spreadsheet apps launched at once, positioned properly on the screen. I could write a wrapper script right now to do that, and maybe even a GUI tool to populate "rack" scripts, but I want extra GUI support that makes all the windows in the rack clearly associated, maybe by a colored window border, common icon, or even (togglable) connecting lines. And I want the rack to enforce IPC permissions, so I don't even have to copy/drag/paste through my whole desktop, but rather just pop fields and objects among targets in the rack. IPC authorization among only "racked" (and otherwise explicitly associated) apps would make the whole OS more secure.
Window racks give me what I want. I think Prism is a long step down the wrong road.
Wake me when it can tell me why the Mona Lisa is smiling.
So the gondola was safely parachuted back to the ground. But what about the balloon? Is it still floating around up there somewhere, above 120Kft? If they launch a whole bunch of these balloons, won't they eventually offer a floating layer dispersed at 25 miles up? At 130Kft, the distance to the horizon is over 400mi in each direction, or 800mi between opposite horizons. So 30 balloons could see each other, and the ground, in a chain around the world. Less than 300 balloons could cover the under 150Km^2 land area, and under 75000 could cover the entire surface. The 126Mm circumference could signal between any two points in under 0.5s.
I encourage NASA to launch many more of these balloons. Then I encourage someone to fund me flying around among them attaching WiFi APs with Pringles cans to them. 5. PROFIT!!!
I'm talking about HA, including failover, and write scaling. Also supporting separate apps distributed around a network that depend on a single dataset, requiring DB sync, but the write scaling should take care of that.
I am in fact using DBI-Link to let Postgres queries connect to data in an LDAP DB. You have good reason to proudly plug the SW :).
You don't know any developers in NYC who would be good for throwing a MySQL datamart up on top of that, would you?
Me too.
Do you have a way to make Postgres clustering work as well/easily as MySQL clustering?
GPS or other radio signals combine the freedom of machine vision with the reliability of navigational rails, but without the infrastructure expense of either. Machine vision for vehicles could be very useful for avoiding unusual obstacles in the roadway, like a burned car, downed tree, pedestrian or other exception. But for most navigation, especially on highways across the country, radio is cheaper and more reliable. Let's pave these virtual roads with something designed for robots to see, without the limitations trying to replicate human vision without getting most of its benefits.
I do a lot of writes. It works better than MySQL, and was especially so when I started some of these apps and referential integrity and fuller SQL semantics were supported better by Postgres than by MySQL.
Google had to upgrade MySQL quite a lot for its use because MySQL needed a lot of improvement. Postgres was a lot closer to what I need right from the start, without having Google's development resources.
But then, you're an Anonymous Coward. You just like to criticize what you don't understand. If you had a well-founded criticism, you'd post with a consistent username.
Postgres is under the BSD license. I wonder whether a developer could port the MySQL GPL code directly to Postgres, and release the Postgres diff as patch, under the GPL. Does the GPL prohibit using a GPL patch on a BSD app?
They are different. My apps mostly replace the filesystem with DB records, and do a lot of logging for analysis/reporting.
Of course, the different scenarios we're discussing mean that MySQL would be best as a datamart frontend to Postgres. I'd love to write everything to a Postgres API, then deploy it with a script that ports the Postgres schema to a MySQL, which MySQL just replicates to the Postgres, and presents the MySQL interface to web apps. While the Postgres retains the master data, and presents an interface to apps which do a lot more writes.
I prefer Postgres to MySQL. I wonder whether these MySQL revisions will be generic enough to use to improve Postgres.
I also wish these two databases interoperated more. I'd like to use a MySQL proxy to my Postgres server, so apps depending on MySQL could still work, but use Postgres to actually process the data (or just serve as a master DB for replication). Porting apps between DBs, and huge projects to join across different apps' tables in different types of DB servers should be ancient history. Mixed DB-type clusters might not be high performance, but they'd get the iterative development started, after which performance could be just an optimization, which is the right way to do it anyway.
Tell that to the FAA and the air traffic controllers. And everyone on the ground under all those flying cars. Especially people like me in NYC, many of whom aren't so "under" at all.
Why can't a "roomba" have a large, powerful vacuum like the one you prefer, with a big battery (or fuelcell), and the intake of the sucking hose on a smaller vehicle that snakes into small corners? The main body can roll over to powerup stations, or even have a long cord with its own robot for keeping the cord clear of obstructions.
These are engineering tweaks. There's no fundamental limit. Which is why I say the industry should work on them incrementally.
I don't like the "prepared roadway" method of navigational context, because it's like rails. Too inflexible, too much expensive infrastructure (compared to global radio). Requires too much preplanning for handling exceptions explicitly.
The swarm network could be better, but among its problems are relying on other cars' systems to work to protect yours. In a collision, the breakdown in those systems could produce a chain reaction amplifying the collision among many other cars. And even the most trafficked roadways are sometimes empty, usually when people are too tired/drunk to drive themselves.
I'm not sure GPS is exactly right, for the reasons you say. But something like it, a WLAN of some kind, would be good. We've got enough cell coverage, especially along major roads, probably to use their signals differentially for location, as well as routing queries. In fact, I'd like to see the Federal government, via the FCC, require cell operators to offer the infrastructure to the DOT among the concessions they make in return for all their use of public property, from the airwaves to rights of way, to zoning variances.
If it's not human, and it's programmed to cry when you smack it, is that cruel? Isn't not smacking a crybot the actual cruelty? Like never driving your Porsche over 55MPH.
I still think incrementing (evolving) the early success of Roomba is the way to make robotics a permanent industry that gets us to what we all want: robot slaves without cruelty.
:).
As for robocars, that's also within reach, dependent not so much on the car but on a system of GPS and networked control of that complex routing/collision system. A very different undertaking that probably should be tried on just long-distance trucking, with autopilot allowed only on highways with practically no other traffic, between points with simple interconnects. Then inside private compounds like factories and distro centers. Once proven to handle the multitude of exceptions, it could be time to start educating regular drivers to use autopilot on highways. Eventually there might be a single lane for "manual driving" on highways. But the hardest part is going to be getting people (like me) to allow some external control over guiding our car.
When we do pull that off, though, we'll finally have the navigation system that makes flying cars possible. So you can tell that I'm talking about the impossibly distant future
The most promising robot development is Roomba, because it's task oriented on a task humans don't want to do. But Roombas are too flimsy and noisy, and expensive. If companies just worked on that, making Roombas robust and cheap, and expanded them to washing clothes, dishes, and the rest of the home that isn't on the floor, they'd have enough complex behaviors that they could start adding "personality".
Only in your unaborted mind. It's not too late: privatize abortion retroactively with a suicide.
Tell me about all the children you've adopted, to stop this "wholesale murder". Especially all the ones from the 400,000 thrown in the trash every year by fertility clinics. Or just where you occasionally send a check or volunteer to help those children.
I'm not most people. But my point was that the new project should be open to most people. No one seems to know whether it is, or what it costs.
Sadly, your mother didn't opt for abortion.
How about decreases in crimes by people who were never born, because their parents could get a legal abortion? And other family planning that made more kids who'd become old enough to commit crimes instead the product of more educated, well adjusted families? Also prenatal care and other health in ghettos.
The Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s made a generation that came of age in the late 1970s through 1990s (and still coming today) a lot more well adjusted.
I suppose lying is always "hypocritical". But explicit hypocrisy means subverting what you explicitly stand for. Greenpeace stands for protecting the environment and ending war. Attacking Apple, even if it were true, would be properly "hypocritical" if Greenpeace had damaged the environment or sent troops.
I'm not discussing the truth of Greenpeace's attacks. I'm discussing the spurious claim of hypocrisy, which is a much broader indictment of the org that is baseless.
Start paying attention, and stop changing the subject. Even if you're going to change the subject to a claim that Greenpeace stopped conservation efforts for the practical welfare of people in this world years ago, back it up with evidence. But even then, unless your evidence shows this attack on Apple violated that specific charter, you're not arguing with me, but with your own strawman.
Where's the cocaine transistor?