Are you saying that in theory, life is unlikely here?
What theory actually says this?
Think about it: we're on the fringes of the galaxy, out in the boondocks...one of the emptiest, coldest, and darkest part.
Well, no, not really. We're pretty close to a reasonably warm star. Given the evidence, if seems that our distance from that star is more important than its distance to other stars.
If anything, life would be most likely to exist closer to the core.
Why?
What theory says that being in an area with higher star density would be more conducive to life?
I can formulate several theories to explain why being close to the "core" is worse:
Too much radiation.
Too much heat.
Too high a density of "renegade" objects (like comets and meteors), preventing a stable ecosystem from forming on a given planet....
This is a 22", 3840x2400 display. I still wonder why that kind of technology never caught on. I know the IBM displays (and the Viewsonics) were expensive, starting at $17000 or so (the VS was "only" $9000 new), but I had hoped that there might be economies of scale eventually. Sadly, these panels haven't been manufactured for about 5 years. Every once in a while there's a rumor that someone is making a new model, but it never seems to happen.
I'm also wondering just what happened for (almost) everyone to decide that 1080 is enough vertical pixels.
Profit drives innovation, so we'll see where things stand in a few years.
Not quite.
Competition drives innovation, and profit is a primary motive behind competition. In the absence of competition, profit is a disincentive for innovation, simply because R&D costs money (which reduces profit).
There is no requirement that a corporation make money, or that if it does that the shareholders get paid any of the profits. There is no requirement that the board of directors be composed of shareholders at all, let alone those with large percentages of the voting shares.
The board of directors and the officers have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. This means that they must use the investment money responsibly, and should actually be trying to earn money for the company and the shareholders. The laws are basically there to prevent someone from starting a company, getting investment money, and then "losing" all of it due to poor decision making (paying themselves all of the investment money as a salary, for example).
Even if there were a requirement to maximize profits, that is a vague phrase. Maximize over what time scale? A financial quarter? A year, a decade, a century...? You can't spend any money on research if you're maximizing for the quarter, but it sure helps in the 10-100 year time frame. Spending money on clean-up technology is a bit like paying for insurance. Neither is a good investment until something bad happens.
Of course none of this prevents shareholders from suing officers and directors, but that's not because they actually have a good reason to.
The resolution of the machine is irrelevant, it's the tool size that matters. If you have a 1/2" diameter end mill, you cut a 1/2" swath through the material. It makes no difference if you have 0.01 inch resolution or 0.00001 inch resolution, you'll still step over by about 1/2 inch when using that tool.
So you can see how optimised tool paths, and so on are literally god when it comes to CNC.
Yep, for production machining, optimized toolpaths are a very good thing. The common limiting factor for small machines though is spindle horsepower. The machine can only remove so much metal per hour, and that's directly proportional to the spindle horsepower. It varies with many factors (cutter material, cutter coating, cutter speed, coolant/lubricant, etc), but it's the thing that limits the depth of cut you can use for a given end mill. There's also no such thing as an "optimal path". There are many factors that determine what may be optimal in a given situation - surface finish (the look of it), surface roughness, tool life, machine rigidity, and more.
Sure, there are free OS alternatives to the stuff I paid for, but I don't have the time left to live, nor the inclination to pay the electric bill, that using the free OS alternatives requires.
I sure hope you're talking about non-optimal free CAM, because as it happens, the most capable machine controller available (for less than $5000) happens to be the open source one. I only put in the price limit because I hope that the vendors selling the more expensive controllers actually have some better features than EMC2 - I know what you have doesn't.
Incidentally, if you want to help finance the web hosting for this project, and you happen to need web hosting as well, use this link: http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?80098
It's just the definition of an operating system, that's all.
The OS is there to provide a standardized (for that OS - not necessarily across OSes) interface to hardware resources. This includes memory, disk space, CPU time, and of course user interface hardware.
If there were no OSes, everyone would have to include e.g. filesystem software within any program that wanted to use the disk drive. The whole point of Windows was to insulate the programmer from the hardware - you use the same GDI calls whether you have a Diamond, 3dFX, Number Nine, or Matrox card (back in the old days). The driver and OS insulate the application from the specifics of talking to the hardware.
Video games are a bit of a special case, because they are the most performance-limited applications most people see. For most applications, there should be no need to know anything about the hardware implementation - only its capabilities (resolution, color depth, etc). The OS API should insulate the programmer from having to know the details of the underlying hardware. For specific applications though, where the highest performance is needed, the application needs to just reserve the hardware resources and ask the OS to get out of the way. Databases need this for memory and disk management, and video games need this for graphics hardware. There shouldn't be a need for a browser to get to this level.
I doubt that the cost goes down much though. The PCIe interface chip isn't free, and neither is the card bracket. The PC board itself is also much larger, and has to be thicker than those used on most hard drives. The cost differences are probably a wash.
A distant second place, and actually better in some ways, is to make public EVERY WORD that lobbyists and elected officials exchange.
I realize that this would affect both supposedly "bad" and supposedly "good" lobbyists equally, and that's just fine with me. Neither should have the opportunity to influence our policymakers the way they do now.
They should make a law that requires transcripts of all discussions with lobbyists to be published.
And define a lobbyist as "anyone who claims to represent the opinions of anyone else".
Re:It is bad, wrong way to go about it
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
In the case of government run health care the government loses money when it treats people who are sick.
Fixed that for you.
Actually, this is the case with private insurance as well.
In the course of debate, people have talked about how the insurance companies are necessary to keep the cost of medical care low. In fact, it makes no real difference what the actual caregivers receive, it only matters how much the insurance company pays out.
Profit = income - expenses.
The insurance companies lower expenses by not approving treatments, as well as contracting lower payments for treatment. There was a recent report (I don't have a link) discussing the effect of low insurance contract rates on the rates for everyone else. The gist of it was that the low rates the insurance companies pay for services are subsidized by the much higher rates others pay. When everyone has insurance the rates will have to increase, because there will no longer be a pool of high-paying uninsured.
I think what people keep forgetting is that we have a system that rewards companies (hospitals, doctors, insurance) for not making people well. In my view, hospitals shouldn't be for-profit institutions. I'd generalize that actually, any business that isn't necessary in the ideal case should not be for profit. (think fire departments - the best case for a fire department is if they can educate people and prevent fires) There's an incentive to create or prolong problems when your business is based on treating those problems.
According to NASA the Marquette Island rock is a coarse-grained rock that indicates it cooled slowly from molten rock, allowing crystals time to grow. Such composition suggests it originated deep in the crust, not at the surface where it would cool quicker and have finer-grained texture, NASA stated.
Note that they explicitly say that the rock did not cool on the surface, where it would have cooled quickly. Therefore, it's very likely that it did not come from an eruption of Olympus Mons.
A few people have said it already, but I'd like to reiterate:
Don't expect software to be able to do this for you. Tax laws change every year, both federal and state. Requirements for corporate filings change every year. Payroll requirements change every year (withholding amounts for FICA, FUTA, unemployment, health insurance requirements, etc).
I have an S-corp, but I don't do any of this myself.
I have a payroll service that costs $50 or so per month. For that cost, they do direct deposit, tax withholding, and also file quarterly 941 forms and prepare W-2s at the end of the year. All deductions are calculated by them, and their guarantee is that if they make a mistake, they take liability for it - ie, they'll pay any penalties or interest that arise as a result.
I have a lawyer who charges less than $200/year to prepare corporate filings. Additionally, they provide me with a list of changes to corporate laws over the course of the year. They highlight anything that may be important for me as a small business owner.
I have a CPA who prepares the corporate tax return. I do the day-to-day accounting (I happen to have Peachtree for Windows, I couldn't find anything open source or Linux based in 2000 when I started this business), but the CPA checks things over and prepares the corporate return and shareholder K-1 forms. This costs about $1000/year.
Overall, I pay roughly $2000/year for all of these services. I think this is well worth it, since I not only don't have to spend the time actually doing this work, but I also don't have to spend the time learning how I need to do it differently every year. I also get some measure of effective insurance, at least with the payroll company, since they are responsible for any mistakes they might make (they haven't made any yet).
I note that most of the question was really directed at legal questions. You can certainly get boilerplate contracts from several places. You may want to find a local lawyer and have them write you one. Get a confidentiality agreement, a subcontractor agreement, and a contract for services (that you provide). Once you have those, you can essentially reuse them for future contracts. There aren't a lot of requirements for meeting minutes (though one thing you should watch out for is that you are required to send a notice of shareholder meetings some 30 days before they're scheduled, or you need to have a "waiver of notice" form signed by all the shareholders. Of course this may not be true in your state) - just a list of people present, a very simple list of topics covered (summaries of the conversation are good, but are not necessary), and the dated signatures of the corporate secretary and president, who in my state can't be the same person.
The bottom line is that there is a lot of expertise needed to do these things right and keep up with all the annual changes. The cost of hiring experts is not that high, so it should be pretty close to a no-brainer.
Well, most of it is stupid, but as an example, I now know that if I want to create an explosive device, I need to use smaller than 28 gauge wire - so I should stick to 30 or, just to be safe, 36-gauge.
The IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) would be able to extract 99% of the energy in the fuel, rather than the 1% we get from the types of reactor used today.
There's a big difference between admitting to a bug that you can fix with a low/no-cost firmware upgrade, and admitting to a bug which requires a massive recall, and announcing to the market you'll be charging them more for '486 chips until you pay for the replacements.
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Android is the Open Source replacement
on
No More OpenMoko Phone
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· Score: 2, Interesting
With the advent of Android on Linux, OpenMoko can safely retire. There will be a flood of Android hardware out soon in addition to the G1 and at least some of it will be hackable or open enough for developers to delve into the stack if they want. For example, you'll be able to improve the hardware drivers, add functionality left out by the original makers because they feared patent infringement, and take advantage of hardware acceleration that didn't make it into the shipping product. Perhaps the only sacrosanct portion kept off limits will be the radio stack itself, which if hacked could invalidate the CE mark, FCC, GCF, PTCRB, etc.
Android is software, not hardware. There is no guarantee that you will be able to write drivers, because not all manufacturers will give you datasheets without an NDA. There's no guarantee that you would get the source code to hardware drivers, since those can be non-GPL (resulting in a tainted kernel, but who cares, right?).
Unlike Android, OpenMoko is software and hardware.
You can also run Android on the OpenMoko hardware if you like (or Debian, or at least two other tailored distributions).
To the others asking, yes, the all the hardware is also open-source. You can download a pdf file with the schematics, and Pro/E models of the case. I asked Sean about "source" files for the schematics, and they haven't released them as yet. They're in Orcad, which is a multi-thousand dollar PCB design package. The gerber files for PCB manufacture are also not available (though I think they're in the pdf as well, so you'd at least get some good hints on layout there).
All software, including hardware emulators, is available online. Additionally, and what really sets them apart, is that you can get complete documentation from the manufacturers of every part they use - the processor, RF components, memory chips, etc. That's one thing that took a lot of time, and really restricted their design.
It's too bad Sean didn't mention the downsizing last week at the Embedded Systems Conference, but I guess that would have been pretty depressing to hear anyway.
The following is from a great book by A.K. Dewdney: Yes, We Have no Neutrons.
The formula is N = R* x Fp x Ne x Fl x Fi x Fc x L
For which: R* = number of new stars that form in our galaxy each year Fp = fraction of stars having planetary systems Ne = average number of life-supporting planets per star Fl = fraction of those planets on which life develops Fi = fraction of life forms that become intelligent Fc = fraction of intelligent beings that develop radio L = average lifetime of a communicating society
The formula has appeared in several popular science magazines with the values set to:
N = 10 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 0.01 x 0.1 x L
So, N = 0.01 x L
The only numbers in the formula which anything other than a guess can be made are R* and L. Based on current observations most set R* at 10. Everything else in the formula would be a wild guess, except for L. More is known about L than any other part of the formula, since we are a communication society. Since we receive more and more of our communication from satellites, cable, and the internet, we are broadcasting less and less away from the earth. In the near future we will likely go dark as a significant source of radio/broadcast signals capable of being detected from space. If we say that our source of signals is about 100 years, drop the 100 back into the formula and you get 1. That must be us.
You have a slight units error in your analysis.
R* x Fp x Ne results in the number of new life supporting planets *per year*.
Multiplying the next three terms (Fl x Fi x Fc) gives us the fraction (or probablility) of those planets that will eventually have intelligent life.
So, to get the number of coexisting societies per galaxy, you can more or less take the number of new societies per year and multiply by the number of years during which those societies will be able to detect each other (L). The number of new detectable societies (with your wildly optimistic probabilities:) ) = 1.
That's not 1 technological society ever, that's an average of one in existence for any given year, in our galaxy.
There can be many many civilizations that rise and fall, and never know each other, over the course of billions of years.
Spending has gone up with both parties in control of the presidency or the congress. The main difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats raise taxes when they spend more, but the Republicans don't. Here's a nice write-up on the national debt over the years:
Unfortunately, he doesn't provide inflation-adjusted graphs, which would be interesting.
This is one thing I find funny about "political sloganism" - the Republicans always talk about "tax and spend Democrats", but never talk about the fact that the republicans are the "don't tax but spend anyway" party. As an individual you can't spend money if you don't make money, and there's no reason for the government to be any different. (and many reasons for the government to be the same - read "The Creature From Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin for a lot of interesting information about how the financial system works)
In what ways do you suppose the FreeRunner is light years behind?
I know one deficiency, that it's only tri-band (you have to select 850 or 950, and you get 1800/1900 in addition). It's also a bit bigger than some other phones. I guess the choice of GPRS instead of EDGE may also count against it. Hmmm.
So I guess I know three deficiencies:) Any others you can think of?
Interesting. We don't have that particular restriction on "yard signs" as far as I can tell. Of course you're not allowed to put them in someone else's yard, including city building lawns, but you are allowed to put them on the "treelawn" - the place between the road and sidewalk. The rule we do have is that you must remove any signs you put up - the trash is yours to keep.:)
As for Democrats breaking the law more often than Republicans - I don't know. There are people who will do anything they can to get their candidate elected. There are things that aren't against the law (like lying or misleading people) that are done by conservative and republican people/groups. In this state (Vermont), we had a state equal rights amendment on the ballot in the mid-'80s. The intent was basically to insure that women would get equal wages for equal work. The day before the election, a conservative group (I don't remember which one) took out full page ads in all the major newspapers, telling people that if they passed this amendment, mothers would be forced to go out to work, they wouldn't be allowed to stay at home to raise their kids. Small businesses would die, the economy would tumble... I know people who saw those ads and voted no because of them (including one woman who had been in the full-time military, and had a full-time job anyway).
I know that there are dishonest people in and out of both major parties. What's funny to me is that you specifically said that you don't want Republicans doing dishonest things, but you don't seem to care if Democrats do, since (I assume) it allows you to point the finger at the Democrats and say "see, they're dishonest!".
Personally, I'd prefer it if *neither* party did anything dishonest or illegal - that would actually allow us to maybe have free and fair elections in this country
Slashdot Mirror
In theory, life on this planet is an absurd idea.
Why?
Are you saying that in theory, life is unlikely?
Are you saying that in theory, life is unlikely here?
What theory actually says this?
Think about it: we're on the fringes of the galaxy, out in the boondocks...one of the emptiest, coldest, and darkest part.
Well, no, not really. We're pretty close to a reasonably warm star. Given the evidence, if seems that our distance from that star is more important than its distance to other stars.
If anything, life would be most likely to exist closer to the core.
Why?
What theory says that being in an area with higher star density would be more conducive to life?
I can formulate several theories to explain why being close to the "core" is worse:
Too much radiation.
Too much heat.
Too high a density of "renegade" objects (like comets and meteors), preventing a stable ecosystem from forming on a given planet. ...
We're not special...we're the exception.
Well, we don't really know that now, do we? :)
IBM made a much higher resolution display in 2001:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
This is a 22", 3840x2400 display. I still wonder why that kind of technology never caught on. I know the IBM displays (and the Viewsonics) were expensive, starting at $17000 or so (the VS was "only" $9000 new), but I had hoped that there might be economies of scale eventually. Sadly, these panels haven't been manufactured for about 5 years. Every once in a while there's a rumor that someone is making a new model, but it never seems to happen.
I'm also wondering just what happened for (almost) everyone to decide that 1080 is enough vertical pixels.
Profit drives innovation, so we'll see where things stand in a few years.
Not quite.
Competition drives innovation, and profit is a primary motive behind competition. In the absence of competition, profit is a disincentive for innovation, simply because R&D costs money (which reduces profit).
There is no requirement that a corporation make money, or that if it does that the shareholders get paid any of the profits. There is no requirement that the board of directors be composed of shareholders at all, let alone those with large percentages of the voting shares.
The board of directors and the officers have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. This means that they must use the investment money responsibly, and should actually be trying to earn money for the company and the shareholders. The laws are basically there to prevent someone from starting a company, getting investment money, and then "losing" all of it due to poor decision making (paying themselves all of the investment money as a salary, for example).
Even if there were a requirement to maximize profits, that is a vague phrase. Maximize over what time scale? A financial quarter? A year, a decade, a century ...? You can't spend any money on research if you're maximizing for the quarter, but it sure helps in the 10-100 year time frame. Spending money on clean-up technology is a bit like paying for insurance. Neither is a good investment until something bad happens.
Of course none of this prevents shareholders from suing officers and directors, but that's not because they actually have a good reason to.
Try pyobd2 instead. It was typoed in the GP post.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyobd2/
You're right, I splashed the cash and bought.
Mach3 CNC controller
MeshCAM
Rhino
[snip the math and analysis]
The resolution of the machine is irrelevant, it's the tool size that matters. If you have a 1/2" diameter end mill, you cut a 1/2" swath through the material. It makes no difference if you have 0.01 inch resolution or 0.00001 inch resolution, you'll still step over by about 1/2 inch when using that tool.
So you can see how optimised tool paths, and so on are literally god when it comes to CNC.
Yep, for production machining, optimized toolpaths are a very good thing. The common limiting factor for small machines though is spindle horsepower. The machine can only remove so much metal per hour, and that's directly proportional to the spindle horsepower. It varies with many factors (cutter material, cutter coating, cutter speed, coolant/lubricant, etc), but it's the thing that limits the depth of cut you can use for a given end mill. There's also no such thing as an "optimal path". There are many factors that determine what may be optimal in a given situation - surface finish (the look of it), surface roughness, tool life, machine rigidity, and more.
Sure, there are free OS alternatives to the stuff I paid for, but I don't have the time left to live, nor the inclination to pay the electric bill, that using the free OS alternatives requires.
I sure hope you're talking about non-optimal free CAM, because as it happens, the most capable machine controller available (for less than $5000) happens to be the open source one. I only put in the price limit because I hope that the vendors selling the more expensive controllers actually have some better features than EMC2 - I know what you have doesn't.
There are some open source CAM programs, but none of them are really good enough to replace something like MasterCAM at this point.
There's a list of programs on the linuxcnc.org wiki, here: http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Cam
Incidentally, if you want to help finance the web hosting for this project, and you happen to need web hosting as well, use this link: http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?80098
It's just the definition of an operating system, that's all.
The OS is there to provide a standardized (for that OS - not necessarily across OSes) interface to hardware resources. This includes memory, disk space, CPU time, and of course user interface hardware.
If there were no OSes, everyone would have to include e.g. filesystem software within any program that wanted to use the disk drive. The whole point of Windows was to insulate the programmer from the hardware - you use the same GDI calls whether you have a Diamond, 3dFX, Number Nine, or Matrox card (back in the old days). The driver and OS insulate the application from the specifics of talking to the hardware.
Video games are a bit of a special case, because they are the most performance-limited applications most people see. For most applications, there should be no need to know anything about the hardware implementation - only its capabilities (resolution, color depth, etc). The OS API should insulate the programmer from having to know the details of the underlying hardware. For specific applications though, where the highest performance is needed, the application needs to just reserve the hardware resources and ask the OS to get out of the way. Databases need this for memory and disk management, and video games need this for graphics hardware. There shouldn't be a need for a browser to get to this level.
Funny.
I think that's the first Buckaroo Banzai signature I've seen on Slashdot :)
Now that's funny.
I had a professor who said it like this:
Math is the only pure science
Physics is chunky math
Chemistry is wet physics
Biology is gooey chemistry
(or something like that)
(most SSD are 2.5", not 3.5")
PCIe "hard drives" already exist.
Here's a 1TB model: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227500
There are others in 250GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities.
I doubt that the cost goes down much though. The PCIe interface chip isn't free, and neither is the card bracket. The PC board itself is also much larger, and has to be thicker than those used on most hard drives. The cost differences are probably a wash.
Well yes, that's the point.
It would be better to ban lobbying outright.
A distant second place, and actually better in some ways, is to make public EVERY WORD that lobbyists and elected officials exchange.
I realize that this would affect both supposedly "bad" and supposedly "good" lobbyists equally, and that's just fine with me. Neither should have the opportunity to influence our policymakers the way they do now.
They should make a law that requires transcripts of all discussions with lobbyists to be published.
And define a lobbyist as "anyone who claims to represent the opinions of anyone else".
In the case of government run health care the government loses money when it treats people who are sick.
Fixed that for you.
Actually, this is the case with private insurance as well.
In the course of debate, people have talked about how the insurance companies are necessary to keep the cost of medical care low. In fact, it makes no real difference what the actual caregivers receive, it only matters how much the insurance company pays out.
Profit = income - expenses.
The insurance companies lower expenses by not approving treatments, as well as contracting lower payments for treatment. There was a recent report (I don't have a link) discussing the effect of low insurance contract rates on the rates for everyone else. The gist of it was that the low rates the insurance companies pay for services are subsidized by the much higher rates others pay. When everyone has insurance the rates will have to increase, because there will no longer be a pool of high-paying uninsured.
I think what people keep forgetting is that we have a system that rewards companies (hospitals, doctors, insurance) for not making people well. In my view, hospitals shouldn't be for-profit institutions. I'd generalize that actually, any business that isn't necessary in the ideal case should not be for profit. (think fire departments - the best case for a fire department is if they can educate people and prevent fires) There's an incentive to create or prolong problems when your business is based on treating those problems.
From the article:
According to NASA the Marquette Island rock is a coarse-grained rock that indicates it cooled slowly from molten rock, allowing crystals time to grow. Such composition suggests it originated deep in the crust, not at the surface where it would cool quicker and have finer-grained texture, NASA stated.
Note that they explicitly say that the rock did not cool on the surface, where it would have cooled quickly. Therefore, it's very likely that it did not come from an eruption of Olympus Mons.
A few people have said it already, but I'd like to reiterate:
Don't expect software to be able to do this for you. Tax laws change every year, both federal and state. Requirements for corporate filings change every year. Payroll requirements change every year (withholding amounts for FICA, FUTA, unemployment, health insurance requirements, etc).
I have an S-corp, but I don't do any of this myself.
I have a payroll service that costs $50 or so per month. For that cost, they do direct deposit, tax withholding, and also file quarterly 941 forms and prepare W-2s at the end of the year. All deductions are calculated by them, and their guarantee is that if they make a mistake, they take liability for it - ie, they'll pay any penalties or interest that arise as a result.
I have a lawyer who charges less than $200/year to prepare corporate filings. Additionally, they provide me with a list of changes to corporate laws over the course of the year. They highlight anything that may be important for me as a small business owner.
I have a CPA who prepares the corporate tax return. I do the day-to-day accounting (I happen to have Peachtree for Windows, I couldn't find anything open source or Linux based in 2000 when I started this business), but the CPA checks things over and prepares the corporate return and shareholder K-1 forms. This costs about $1000/year.
Overall, I pay roughly $2000/year for all of these services. I think this is well worth it, since I not only don't have to spend the time actually doing this work, but I also don't have to spend the time learning how I need to do it differently every year. I also get some measure of effective insurance, at least with the payroll company, since they are responsible for any mistakes they might make (they haven't made any yet).
I note that most of the question was really directed at legal questions. You can certainly get boilerplate contracts from several places. You may want to find a local lawyer and have them write you one. Get a confidentiality agreement, a subcontractor agreement, and a contract for services (that you provide). Once you have those, you can essentially reuse them for future contracts. There aren't a lot of requirements for meeting minutes (though one thing you should watch out for is that you are required to send a notice of shareholder meetings some 30 days before they're scheduled, or you need to have a "waiver of notice" form signed by all the shareholders. Of course this may not be true in your state) - just a list of people present, a very simple list of topics covered (summaries of the conversation are good, but are not necessary), and the dated signatures of the corporate secretary and president, who in my state can't be the same person.
The bottom line is that there is a lot of expertise needed to do these things right and keep up with all the annual changes. The cost of hiring experts is not that high, so it should be pretty close to a no-brainer.
- Steve
Well, most of it is stupid, but as an example, I now know that if I want to create an explosive device, I need to use smaller than 28 gauge wire - so I should stick to 30 or, just to be safe, 36-gauge.
That type of breeder reactor isn't the only alternative.
Try this one instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor
The IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) would be able to extract 99% of the energy in the fuel, rather than the 1% we get from the types of reactor used today.
There's a big difference between admitting to a bug that you can fix with a low/no-cost firmware upgrade, and admitting to a bug which requires a massive recall, and announcing to the market you'll be charging them more for '486 chips until you pay for the replacements.
There, fixed that for you.
With the advent of Android on Linux, OpenMoko can safely retire. There will be a flood of Android hardware out soon in addition to the G1 and at least some of it will be hackable or open enough for developers to delve into the stack if they want. For example, you'll be able to improve the hardware drivers, add functionality left out by the original makers because they feared patent infringement, and take advantage of hardware acceleration that didn't make it into the shipping product. Perhaps the only sacrosanct portion kept off limits will be the radio stack itself, which if hacked could invalidate the CE mark, FCC, GCF, PTCRB, etc.
Android is software, not hardware. There is no guarantee that you will be able to write drivers, because not all manufacturers will give you datasheets without an NDA. There's no guarantee that you would get the source code to hardware drivers, since those can be non-GPL (resulting in a tainted kernel, but who cares, right?).
Unlike Android, OpenMoko is software and hardware.
You can also run Android on the OpenMoko hardware if you like (or Debian, or at least two other tailored distributions).
To the others asking, yes, the all the hardware is also open-source. You can download a pdf file with the schematics, and Pro/E models of the case. I asked Sean about "source" files for the schematics, and they haven't released them as yet. They're in Orcad, which is a multi-thousand dollar PCB design package. The gerber files for PCB manufacture are also not available (though I think they're in the pdf as well, so you'd at least get some good hints on layout there).
All software, including hardware emulators, is available online. Additionally, and what really sets them apart, is that you can get complete documentation from the manufacturers of every part they use - the processor, RF components, memory chips, etc. That's one thing that took a lot of time, and really restricted their design.
It's too bad Sean didn't mention the downsizing last week at the Embedded Systems Conference, but I guess that would have been pretty depressing to hear anyway.
- Steve
[snip]
The following is from a great book by A.K. Dewdney: Yes, We Have no Neutrons.
The formula is N = R* x Fp x Ne x Fl x Fi x Fc x L
For which:
R* = number of new stars that form in our galaxy each year
Fp = fraction of stars having planetary systems
Ne = average number of life-supporting planets per star
Fl = fraction of those planets on which life develops
Fi = fraction of life forms that become intelligent
Fc = fraction of intelligent beings that develop radio
L = average lifetime of a communicating society
The formula has appeared in several popular science magazines with the values set to:
N = 10 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 0.01 x 0.1 x L
So, N = 0.01 x L
The only numbers in the formula which anything other than a guess can be made are R* and L. Based on current observations most set R* at 10. Everything else in the formula would be a wild guess, except for L. More is known about L than any other part of the formula, since we are a communication society. Since we receive more and more of our communication from satellites, cable, and the internet, we are broadcasting less and less away from the earth. In the near future we will likely go dark as a significant source of radio/broadcast signals capable of being detected from space. If we say that our source of signals is about 100 years, drop the 100 back into the formula and you get 1. That must be us.
You have a slight units error in your analysis.
R* x Fp x Ne results in the number of new life supporting planets *per year*.
Multiplying the next three terms (Fl x Fi x Fc) gives us the fraction (or probablility) of those planets that will eventually have intelligent life.
So, to get the number of coexisting societies per galaxy, you can more or less take the number of new societies per year and multiply by the number of years during which those societies will be able to detect each other (L). The number of new detectable societies (with your wildly optimistic probabilities :) ) = 1.
That's not 1 technological society ever, that's an average of one in existence for any given year, in our galaxy.
There can be many many civilizations that rise and fall, and never know each other, over the course of billions of years.
Tinfoil glasses :)
Spending has gone up with both parties in control of the presidency or the congress. The main difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats raise taxes when they spend more, but the Republicans don't. Here's a nice write-up on the national debt over the years:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
Unfortunately, he doesn't provide inflation-adjusted graphs, which would be interesting.
This is one thing I find funny about "political sloganism" - the Republicans always talk about "tax and spend Democrats", but never talk about the fact that the republicans are the "don't tax but spend anyway" party. As an individual you can't spend money if you don't make money, and there's no reason for the government to be any different. (and many reasons for the government to be the same - read "The Creature From Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin for a lot of interesting information about how the financial system works)
In what ways do you suppose the FreeRunner is light years behind?
I know one deficiency, that it's only tri-band (you have to select 850 or 950, and you get 1800/1900 in addition). It's also a bit bigger than some other phones. I guess the choice of GPRS instead of EDGE may also count against it. Hmmm.
So I guess I know three deficiencies :) Any others you can think of?
Interesting. We don't have that particular restriction on "yard signs" as far as I can tell. Of course you're not allowed to put them in someone else's yard, including city building lawns, but you are allowed to put them on the "treelawn" - the place between the road and sidewalk. The rule we do have is that you must remove any signs you put up - the trash is yours to keep. :)
As for Democrats breaking the law more often than Republicans - I don't know. There are people who will do anything they can to get their candidate elected. There are things that aren't against the law (like lying or misleading people) that are done by conservative and republican people/groups. In this state (Vermont), we had a state equal rights amendment on the ballot in the mid-'80s. The intent was basically to insure that women would get equal wages for equal work. The day before the election, a conservative group (I don't remember which one) took out full page ads in all the major newspapers, telling people that if they passed this amendment, mothers would be forced to go out to work, they wouldn't be allowed to stay at home to raise their kids. Small businesses would die, the economy would tumble ... I know people who saw those ads and voted no because of them (including one woman who had been in the full-time military, and had a full-time job anyway).
I know that there are dishonest people in and out of both major parties. What's funny to me is that you specifically said that you don't want Republicans doing dishonest things, but you don't seem to care if Democrats do, since (I assume) it allows you to point the finger at the Democrats and say "see, they're dishonest!".
Personally, I'd prefer it if *neither* party did anything dishonest or illegal - that would actually allow us to maybe have free and fair elections in this country