this kinda should be obvious, but the technology uses waste heat, which means the energy is normally completely lost anyway. even harnessing a small amount of it is more efficient than just letting it be completely wasted. after all you aren't producing heat specifically for this technology... the heat has already been produced for some other application (such as exhaust heat being generated originally to power the crankshaft of a car engine).
i could definitely see use for this in the power industry, where there is usually huge cooling towers designed to condense steam passing through a turbine circuit by only a few degrees and in the process huge quantities of fresh cooling water gets evaporated into the atmosphere. in an age where both energy and potable water is in demand, any technology that can reduce the quantity of cooling water evaporated in cooling towers whilst simultaneously generating much needed useful energy, has to be a good thing.
my only reservation is where the technology sits in the spectrum of power generated, because if like solar, wind, geothermal etc it requires massive infrastructure investment for a relatively small payoff compared to coal and nuclear base load generators, it will only serve to share the same niche as other renewables. if on the other hand you can generate significant amounts of electricity with reasonable investment it will have a much better chance at widespread adoption.
the usual problem with any renewable energy sources is that whilst the energy may be "free" from the sun or wind or whatever, there is still a cost of development, construction and maintenance for the generators themselves and the infrastructure connecting the generators (such as massive amounts of cabling required for large wind farms). proponents of renewable energy often simply don't realize just how much power comes out of the large fossil fuel base load stations that they hate so much. one lignite power station with four units can generate in excess of 2000 MW. according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine#Records) the largest wind turbine in current operation is about 7.6 MW, so you would need 264 of these just to replace a single 2000 MW base load coal-fired power station, and that's assuming all wind turbines are generating at their full capacity 24/7, which is never the case. similar for solar, which only works during the day... you would need to cover huge areas of land at great expense to replace a single existing base load station. so whilst these monash researchers may not be doing anything as cool as mr fusion on back to the future, making the most of existing base load infrastructure by increasing its efficiency is helping to work towards a short term solution to a long term problem. its all well and good to say that we will aim to reduce emissions by 2020, but these guys are actually working on it rather than just talking about it.
there's been too many bad precedents already allowing corporations to get away with everything. one in the opposite direction certainly won't turn the tide against corporate favour, and it would be fought and appealed to death anyway, but this case is possibly at least one that apple's traditional entourage of lawyers might not have had much experience with so it's probably more likely to get further than any kind of patent or copyright infringement where apple can just open up their standard templates for court documents.
Religion is believing false things that you want to believe despite evidence to the contrary, by substituting faith (credulity) for evidence and reason.
sex shops are small businesses that hire local people... in a country where unemployment is a major concern, anyone attacking small business is a target (and rightfully so)
i don't care for anyone's addiction to pr0n, but i really don't give a fuck about apple... i hope the guy wins
I don't really like fidding with my machine. I have other things I want to be doing.
use windows or mac... your quote is one of their favourite catch cries over linux (even though in reality windows probably requires more maintenance than linux and mac probably about the same)
if you want to improve connections, probably better to look at improving tcp rather than whatever runs on top of it
a new http protocol isn't likely to affect packet loss (it's just the content of the tcp packet)
requests need to be sent every request because http is stateless, and trying to reduce the need to resend headers may reduce network traffic but will add server processing load (retrieving headers from a connection database), which on popular sites where network traffic is a problem, adding processing overhead to servers is also a problem
if you have a stateful application and aren't smart enough to use rpc then you're probably "holding it wrong" i personally use the iframe/js method for simplicity, but there are others that are more "proper" application-specific features are also more dependent on the capability of browsers, html spec, javascript, etc.
engineers find problems all the time but they are most often in the same boat as everyone else... shut the hell up and do your job (make it even more awesome and cheaper) or get a new job. granted engineers have safer jobs than many other professions (including probably programmers), but bosses that aren't engineers often don't make the right decision even if it ends up costing the company big down the track (this is often the case with maintenance planning for large plant such as in base load electricity generation). in this day and age of consulting, engineers may be expensive but they are still out there, and stupid managers seem to be quite happy to pay three times as much in the mere hope that they might find someone else that will tell them something different (and stick it to the original engineer who had the gall to tell him he needed to spend money on something other than corporate junkets).
fortunately many engineers also eventually find their way into management positions, and quite a few of the biggest companies are headed by engineers
how many of us consider the potential for bugs in ordinary software to adversely affect those that use it?
MIT License
BSD
GPL
programmers include these eulas so that they don't have to consider the effects or consequences of bugs in their software... eulas don't exactly impose any level of responsibility on the programmer (that's kinda the opposite of what they do actually)
if only real engineers could have these kind of eulas on their structural computations... imagine walking into a skyscraper with a big sign like this at the entrance:
"ENTER THIS SKYSCRAPER AT YOUR OWN RISK. SOME NUMBERS HAVE BEEN CRUNCHED TO COME UP WITH A DESIGN THAT WE THINK WILL WORK BUT WE DON'T OFFER ANY WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED THAT THIS SKYSCRAPER WILL BE FIT FOR PURPOSE, AND THE ENGINEERS WILL NOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL ETC DAMAGES. IF THIS BUILDING KILLS YOU... TOUGH SHIT."
I have created perfect driver software in assembly that handled EVERY possible input EXACTLY as they should
i'll bet that's the kind of half-assed confidence that the programmers of the Therac-25 had before they killed people
in some countries engineers (real ones, not fake software "engineers") can go to jail if they are proven negligent, and engineering qualification requirements are becoming embedded in laws and standards
fortunately in most cases computer programs don't kill people (the cases where they do are usually heavily regulated anyway, such as medicine and aviation) so end users have developed a kind of apathy towards computers where they have come to expect errors, especially in windows (if microsoft can't even have a product launch without a bsod then what hope has the rest of the programming fraternity got?).
real engineers are held to a high standard because the public expects it. if buildings routinely collapsed nobody would go in them.
programmers will only ever take responsibility when they are forced to by the public (and the legal system), and when that happens just watch how the number of software engineers goes from dime a dozen to a very expensive rarity. it takes a long time to build the credibility of a profession. doctors and other medical specialists are likely more trusted than engineers, but engineers rank fairly highly (which is why programmers like to associate themselves with engineering). programmers are no doubt more trusted than lawyers and second-hand car salesmen, but they are probably notable mainly for their impressive skills with a computer (however inconsistent and unreliable they may be), not their trustworthiness.
eulas may protect microsoft from criminal liability, but only their team of lawyers can protect them from civil suits
actually in many countries these sorts of clauses in eulas are nullified by consumer protection statutes, and you can't contract yourself out of statute law no matter what the contract wording is or how it was agreed to
Slashdot Mirror
If it IS broke.... don't fix it.
ahh you must work for microsoft
Sounds like a net energy loss
this kinda should be obvious, but the technology uses waste heat, which means the energy is normally completely lost anyway. even harnessing a small amount of it is more efficient than just letting it be completely wasted. after all you aren't producing heat specifically for this technology... the heat has already been produced for some other application (such as exhaust heat being generated originally to power the crankshaft of a car engine).
i could definitely see use for this in the power industry, where there is usually huge cooling towers designed to condense steam passing through a turbine circuit by only a few degrees and in the process huge quantities of fresh cooling water gets evaporated into the atmosphere. in an age where both energy and potable water is in demand, any technology that can reduce the quantity of cooling water evaporated in cooling towers whilst simultaneously generating much needed useful energy, has to be a good thing.
my only reservation is where the technology sits in the spectrum of power generated, because if like solar, wind, geothermal etc it requires massive infrastructure investment for a relatively small payoff compared to coal and nuclear base load generators, it will only serve to share the same niche as other renewables. if on the other hand you can generate significant amounts of electricity with reasonable investment it will have a much better chance at widespread adoption.
the usual problem with any renewable energy sources is that whilst the energy may be "free" from the sun or wind or whatever, there is still a cost of development, construction and maintenance for the generators themselves and the infrastructure connecting the generators (such as massive amounts of cabling required for large wind farms). proponents of renewable energy often simply don't realize just how much power comes out of the large fossil fuel base load stations that they hate so much. one lignite power station with four units can generate in excess of 2000 MW. according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine#Records) the largest wind turbine in current operation is about 7.6 MW, so you would need 264 of these just to replace a single 2000 MW base load coal-fired power station, and that's assuming all wind turbines are generating at their full capacity 24/7, which is never the case. similar for solar, which only works during the day... you would need to cover huge areas of land at great expense to replace a single existing base load station. so whilst these monash researchers may not be doing anything as cool as mr fusion on back to the future, making the most of existing base load infrastructure by increasing its efficiency is helping to work towards a short term solution to a long term problem. its all well and good to say that we will aim to reduce emissions by 2020, but these guys are actually working on it rather than just talking about it.
i guess you hold a bunch of patents for this technology already?
welcome to hindsight
there's been too many bad precedents already allowing corporations to get away with everything. one in the opposite direction certainly won't turn the tide against corporate favour, and it would be fought and appealed to death anyway, but this case is possibly at least one that apple's traditional entourage of lawyers might not have had much experience with so it's probably more likely to get further than any kind of patent or copyright infringement where apple can just open up their standard templates for court documents.
Religion is believing false things that you want to believe despite evidence to the contrary, by substituting faith (credulity) for evidence and reason.
science isn't without faith
I thought they only burned vivacious buxom females at the stake
only the religions that enjoy spit roast... breast is especially good eatin'
sex shops are small businesses that hire local people... in a country where unemployment is a major concern, anyone attacking small business is a target (and rightfully so)
i don't care for anyone's addiction to pr0n, but i really don't give a fuck about apple... i hope the guy wins
"stop poking me!"
I wonder if there is something about the last Pope they don't want leaked
he was probably a muslim extremist
The navier-stokes of a well designed craft are easy to program
maybe if you're Montgomery Scott of star trek vintage
what kind of guiding system do the drones use
made in china
zomg! are you implying NBC was wrong?! shame on you unamerican terrorist redneck!
and then the zerg discover the borg?
imagine a threesome with infested kerrigan and the borg queen... rawr!
"EDI is a Warplane. EDI must have targets."
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
I don't really like fidding with my machine. I have other things I want to be doing.
use windows or mac... your quote is one of their favourite catch cries over linux (even though in reality windows probably requires more maintenance than linux and mac probably about the same)
anyone who has been around *nix for a while, or has the remotest claim to nerd cred should be aware that middle-click is supposed to paste
hahahahaha you made a funny... right?
if you want to improve connections, probably better to look at improving tcp rather than whatever runs on top of it
a new http protocol isn't likely to affect packet loss (it's just the content of the tcp packet)
requests need to be sent every request because http is stateless, and trying to reduce the need to resend headers may reduce network traffic but will add server processing load (retrieving headers from a connection database), which on popular sites where network traffic is a problem, adding processing overhead to servers is also a problem
if you have a stateful application and aren't smart enough to use rpc then you're probably "holding it wrong"
i personally use the iframe/js method for simplicity, but there are others that are more "proper"
application-specific features are also more dependent on the capability of browsers, html spec, javascript, etc.
maybe they finally realized that most don't bother to RTFA anyway
maybe they should use this header:
Content-Encoding: gzip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_compression
why do we need a binary protocol to reduce network load when binary content transfers are already the norm?
binary protocol isn't going to make any difference, except create a huge migration overhead (good for creating jobs in the web dev industry i suppose)
applications that are bandwidth hungry (such as some games) likely already use their own binary protocols and won't ever change to any form of http
your website only has to fuck up once to lose a customer
engineers find problems all the time but they are most often in the same boat as everyone else... shut the hell up and do your job (make it even more awesome and cheaper) or get a new job. granted engineers have safer jobs than many other professions (including probably programmers), but bosses that aren't engineers often don't make the right decision even if it ends up costing the company big down the track (this is often the case with maintenance planning for large plant such as in base load electricity generation). in this day and age of consulting, engineers may be expensive but they are still out there, and stupid managers seem to be quite happy to pay three times as much in the mere hope that they might find someone else that will tell them something different (and stick it to the original engineer who had the gall to tell him he needed to spend money on something other than corporate junkets).
fortunately many engineers also eventually find their way into management positions, and quite a few of the biggest companies are headed by engineers
http://au.businessinsider.com/ceos-majored-in-engineering-2011-3?op=1#33-of-the-sp-500-ceos-undergraduate-degrees-are-in-engineering-and-only-11-are-in-business-administration-1
how many of us consider the potential for bugs in ordinary software to adversely affect those that use it?
MIT License
BSD
GPL
programmers include these eulas so that they don't have to consider the effects or consequences of bugs in their software... eulas don't exactly impose any level of responsibility on the programmer (that's kinda the opposite of what they do actually)
if only real engineers could have these kind of eulas on their structural computations... imagine walking into a skyscraper with a big sign like this at the entrance:
"ENTER THIS SKYSCRAPER AT YOUR OWN RISK. SOME NUMBERS HAVE BEEN CRUNCHED TO COME UP WITH A DESIGN THAT WE THINK WILL WORK BUT WE DON'T OFFER ANY WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED THAT THIS SKYSCRAPER WILL BE FIT FOR PURPOSE, AND THE ENGINEERS WILL NOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL ETC DAMAGES. IF THIS BUILDING KILLS YOU... TOUGH SHIT."
I have created perfect driver software in assembly that handled EVERY possible input EXACTLY as they should
i'll bet that's the kind of half-assed confidence that the programmers of the Therac-25 had before they killed people
in some countries engineers (real ones, not fake software "engineers") can go to jail if they are proven negligent, and engineering qualification requirements are becoming embedded in laws and standards
fortunately in most cases computer programs don't kill people (the cases where they do are usually heavily regulated anyway, such as medicine and aviation) so end users have developed a kind of apathy towards computers where they have come to expect errors, especially in windows (if microsoft can't even have a product launch without a bsod then what hope has the rest of the programming fraternity got?).
real engineers are held to a high standard because the public expects it. if buildings routinely collapsed nobody would go in them.
programmers will only ever take responsibility when they are forced to by the public (and the legal system), and when that happens just watch how the number of software engineers goes from dime a dozen to a very expensive rarity. it takes a long time to build the credibility of a profession. doctors and other medical specialists are likely more trusted than engineers, but engineers rank fairly highly (which is why programmers like to associate themselves with engineering). programmers are no doubt more trusted than lawyers and second-hand car salesmen, but they are probably notable mainly for their impressive skills with a computer (however inconsistent and unreliable they may be), not their trustworthiness.
eulas may protect microsoft from criminal liability, but only their team of lawyers can protect them from civil suits
actually in many countries these sorts of clauses in eulas are nullified by consumer protection statutes, and you can't contract yourself out of statute law no matter what the contract wording is or how it was agreed to
The Post is the most fundamental of civil organs.
a big fat cock fucking everything under it