Only if you can find the private key used to sign the chip's public key - think of it as a proxy for a signing authority running inside a black box inside the processor. An application (either local or over the network) that wants to determine if your processor is "trusted" will basically initiate a secure communications channel with that black box - your emulation layer is now effectively a man-in-the-middle, and if the protocol is resistant to MITM attacks, you can't do anything about it. If the black box has been disabled because your emulator isn't "trusted", then you can't establish trust for the emulated OS either.
The GPL requires that you be able to produce the binary, including all tools required to do that. A signing tool (including the key) would seem to be included. Separating the key file would seem to go beyond "mere aggregation", as well - thus, the key file is one of those "binary files" that requires you distribute source and all tools (even if it is part of a boot loader - that the boot loader has enough knowledge to have a specific key for a Linux kernel would seem to make it go beyond the mere aggregation exception).
Has this argument been used with regard to the TiVo situation, and if so, what were the counter-arguments?
Even if they move the security check to the application level (e.g. boot loader generates a checksum, makes it available to the application that checks for proper functioning), I think the same thing would happen - it goes beyond mere aggregation. In addition, that seems pretty easy to hack (figure out what checksum a valid kernel would have, and then set it for the application layer to see.
Thanks for the information, I wasn't aware of that (obviously)! Sounds like GUID could be easily supported in Open Firmware, I wonder how easy it would be to make EFI support Apple's partition format (GUID sounds very similar to Apple's, although GUID appears to add some redundancy - I've never had a problem with a partition map failing on an Apple-formatted drive, though, and it would be easy to add in a backup partition map by convention, e.g. at the very end of the drive, if that's what you wanted).
What I haven't seen is any reason why EFI is better than Open Firmware (better for everyone else, that is - obviously, it is better for Intel since they can control it). The Wikipedia article says that EFI mandates the use of FAT (and, presumably, the ancient creaky ought-to-be-obsolete DOS partitioning format).
Linux already can boot under OF (e.g. the PPC version of Linux), making that work under an x86 version of OF should be trivial. Loading a BIOS emulator under OF to boot Windows should also be fairly easy to do. Writing a bootstrap loader that implements OF, for old machines that want to boot an OS that only boots under OF, should also be feasible (see e.g. the OpenBIOS project.
Google's is all over the place as far as high vs. low resolution images. Champaign-Urbana is in low-res, whereas there are a few high-res areas with tiny towns nearby (e.g. Homer or Downs ). Bloomington-Normal, just north-west of Downs, is surrounded on both sides by high-res blocks. In Peoria, East Peoria is low-res, West Peoria is high-res. Dawson, Buffalo and this little unnamed bundle of houses are the most interesting things in a mostly empty block of high-res, whereas Decatur just to the east is low-res.
Most of Grand Junction is low-res (including my brother's house), but Redlands just to the west is in a strip of high-res.
The center of Lake Tahoe is mostly high-res, whereas most of the surrounding area is low-res.
Yup, you select the base zone (e.g. Central = -6), and whether or not DST applies to your location. If you enable DST, then it automatically adjusts based on the setting in the broadcast.
My car clock is off by several seconds a day, very annoying. Even more annoying is that the car has On-Star, which gets a GPS signal, and is connected in to the radio (which is where the clock is). Why can't it just update the clock whenever it has the correct time from the GPS? It would also be nice if it had a data port to transmit the GPS location for use by a PDA.
Even worse than my car is the clock in one of my Linksys routers. It is fast by about 8 seconds per MINUTE, and only updates from an NTP server once every hour or two. I don't understand why it can't adjust the timebase of the clock to correct the error, it doesn't even have to do a full NTP synchronization, just say "hmm, clock says one hour, NTP say 50 minutes, reset clock and adjust timebase as needed".
For non-atomic watches, how hard would it be to do the same thing, based on my manually setting the time? My watch is fairly stable, but fast by about 20 seconds a month. If I set it at the beginning of the month, then set it again at the end of the month, it should be able to be accurate to within a few seconds per year (if I'm using an accurate and precise source).
The WWVB broadcast contains DST information. As long as every place in the US switches on the same day, and they don't change the switch time from 2AM, any "Atomic Clock" will automatically do the right thing. See the time code format information from NIST (although, annoyingly, it show two DST bits, but says the descriptions of them are "in the text", which is only available (as far as I can find) in a PDF of NIST Time and Frequency Services.
It probably explains the behavior of my clock, which goes to DST properly, but then goes back to standard time at 0000 UTC. It is probably resetting the "going to DST" bit at the new day, but not setting the "now in DST" bit. The next time it picks up a broadcast after 0000, the bit is set correctly and it fixes itself.
There's an interesting bit in one of the publications that says that devices should have a rule to change the DST setting if it hasn't received the signal for a while. I think it should probably NOT change the DST setting at all until it has received a signal, unless the user manually overrides.
Internally, Unix-like systems keep time as GMT. However, log files are often written using local time.
Fixing this on virtually all Unix-like systems (including Linux and Mac OSX) is simply a matter of modifying the timezone files. Many (most?) systems now use compiled zone info files, which keeps historical track of when changes occurred (which means that on such a system, you'll get correct translations of GMT times for this year, even when checking it next year using the new start/end times).
Where this will be a pain is with embedded systems, e.g. VCRs, TV sets, some watches/clocks, thermostats, microwave ovens, etc. Of course, many of those systems don't do automatic adjustments, some do it based on a broadcast signal (which I believe includes a DST flag), and "Atomic Clocks" get the signal from WWV, which does have a DST flag. As long as every place in the US that switches from/to DST does so on the same day, and they don't change the switchover time to something other than 1AM/2AM, there should be no problem.
I have an "Atomic Clock" wall clock which always adjusts forward (11 hours forward to go one hour backward). When switching to standard time, it does its thing right at 2AM. Then, I think at 0000 UTC, it skips forward one hour back to DST, and then at midnight or 1AM or something it goes back to being correct. Not sure if it does it when going the other direction. I think it has something to do with a "DST change pending" flag vs. a "current DST setting" value, and getting confused when the first one turns off after the end of the day it changes.
I don't know about now, but when I lived there as a child in around 1962, I know that our lawn irrigation came from the reservoir. We'd occasionally get fish or crawdads swimming around our lawn, which I always got really excited about.
Amazon is still selling it (now labeled "Adults Only"). PC version is #1 in video games, #1 in electronics; Xbox version is #2 in video games, #5 in electronics; and the PS2 version is #5 in video games, #10 in electronics. It stands to reason that they would have sold it before, even if it was labeled AO then.
Actually, that's a good argument for using a dead-code and dead-data analysis-and-removal program. Data model references should be explicit enough to figure out what isn't being referenced any longer (whether directly from code or from other parts of the data). Eliminate all code that isn't accessible, then basically garbage-collect the data with references from the code as the base.
As far as the PC version is concerned, what's the difference whether the content was "already there" or was added by a mod downloaded from the Internet? If there's no way to see the content except by modifying the game (or save file) in some way, then the content isn't "really there". Now, I suppose if there was 4 GB of hardcore porn that could be unlocked by creating a file of the right name with "give me porn" as the contents, I might agree that it was "mostly there" and should be rated as such. This is so far from that I don't see why it was ever a problem.
As for the PS2 version, you can't get the nude models (as I understand it) and you need a way to hack the save game (I guess you can do that with a Game Shark or equivalent?). For most people, they just aren't going to be able to do that. I'm certainly not going to go out and buy something just so I can unlock some cheesy fake sex, nor is it worth the trouble to me to save a game file to the hard drive, take the drive out and install it in a machine that has one of those old-fangled IDE interfaces, figure out the format on the disk, modify the saved game, re-install the drive and copy it back out to a memory card.
That said, I did go out and buy it that evening before Best Buy had a chance to pull it from the shelf. I wouldn't be surprised to see a large sales spike for the game in the week leading up to it, more than enough to make up for temporary loss of sales. I note that Amazon still has it for sale, and have it marked as Adults Only.
How much does a (new) router that can connect using a modem cost? Price of router + modem + access point is probably going to be more than this device (though with a real access point, you'd get much better wireless performance than the WiFlyer). It also won't be very portable, and you'll need three wall warts to support it!
There are lots of old hand-me-down laptops with wireless. A second phone line costs real money. You'd also need an ISP that allows you to connect more than once, plus if you don't have an unlimited account, you're using your minutes at twice the rate. For most people, it isn't worth it (makes more sense to just go with broadband at that point). Besides, it doesn't do you any good for the hotel room, which is the primary thing this thing seems to be aimed at.
I've used an AT&T calling card (Sam's Club, 3.47 cents/minute) - best I could do was 28K, which is actually pretty amazing considering how it gets routed. A lot of hotels allow free local calls, but then you need to be using a national ISP, and have a local access number, for that to help. In my case, I was dialing up from Hawaii to my local ISP.
Can't you just share your dialup connection to the Ethernet port, and plug the wireless router's WAN port into the Ethernet port? You might need a crossover cable if it isn't a Mac. If you turn off DHCP in the router, you should also just be able to connect the ethernet port to one of the LAN ports on the router (leaving the WAN port disconnected) - then something connecting wirelessly will use DHCP from the computer, not the router. Either should work, although the second is much better if you want to connect between the two computers locally in both directions (file sharing, printer sharing, etc). Just ignore the WAN port and it is a simple access point.
You could even do it with DHCP in the router turned on and don't use "connection sharing", just connect the computer to one of the LAN ports and use normal DHCP - but I don't know how Windows decides which is your primary (default) Internet connection if you have both an ethernet connection and a dialup connection established. On a Mac or Linux machine, you could use route commands to force it if the default is wrong. Worse case you could enable RIP, but again I don't know if you can use that on Windows (and it still might not enable the PPP connection as the default gateway).
Long cord to the wall. An ethernet cable between two laptops. And it all goes crashing to the ground the first time someone has to get up to go to the bathroom and trips over one of those cords. Hotel rooms are often very inconvenient for where the phone jack might be located, this makes a LOT of sense. If I travelled more and had to use hotels that didn't have ethernet (or wireless) access, I'd certainly consider buying one of these things. I almost bought one of the old Airport base stations several years ago with a build-in modem, but it was just a bit too expensive and bulky.
For home use, I've had problems getting phone access to where the machine is (and tying down a laptop with a long phone cord is just stupid and annoying).
Not solving the laptop problem, but solving the dual-access problem without running long runs of ethernet cable, my solution in the past, when I was running an old APS clone Mac with OS9 and a laptop running Mac OSX was to set up a small wireless router, connect the OS9 machine to one of the ports, and have the laptop connect to it (with static addresses on both, DHCP on the base station turned off, nothing connected to the WAN port of the router). Then I could ssh in to the OSX machine and run a script to manually start up natd (OSX standard options allow connection sharing, but only if it is acting as the network base, not if it is connecting to something else). Worked great, more reliable than using the Linksys "Wireless Gaming Adapter" (which really sucks!) to connect the other way.
Driving from Illinois to California and back, it was quite obvious that running the AC didn't hurt gas mileage appreciably, even in 90-plus degree weather. Opening the windows put more of an obvious drag on the car than turning on the AC (e.g. cruise control - watch the tach when you change conditions, or feel the gas pedal move). It was also interesting that the car I was driving seemed to get better gas mileage at higher speeds (e.g. 70-75 through Colorado) than at lower speeds (e.g. 50-55 in Iowa). The effects of up-and-down mountain driving, and high altitude driving, were less consistent.
The peltier effect IS a heat pump. I don't know where you get the idea that it doesn't take a lot of energy to compress the gas down in the first place (which you have to do to get it to release the heat). That energy can't be recovered when the gas expands after it has cooled down.
What I've always wondered is if you could do a more direct air-conditioning by compressing the air you want cooled, running it through cooling fins, then expanding the air and releasing it.
Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly
'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay
$50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of
things, until the Sergeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it
up and said.
...
"KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"
I went over to the sergeant, said, "Sergeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm
sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench
'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and
said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints
off to Washington."
No, your new second would be about.86 old seconds long, so even shorter than it is currently. There are 86,000 seconds/day now; with 10 hours/100 minutes/100 seconds, there would be 100,000 seconds.
No, the original purpose was to save energy during war time. Farmers have no problem getting up at whatever time they need to, they don't need a clock on the wall saying "8 o'clock, time to start farming".
The problem is that they refuse to unbundle. They insist on providing ISP services in order to get their data transport services. IF there was true competition, they'd offer a transport-only service to any ISP that wanted it, at a fair price (i.e. NOT more to the (independent) ISP than it costs to get: a data-line PLUS Internet connectivity PLUS Web space PLUS e-mail space PLUS DNS/NNTP/SMTP (etc.) PLUS customer service, for the bundled transport + ISP services from the phone or cable company). It's not a "free market" if some other company is making my choices for me.
Solve that problem by requiring that the company that gets the rights to string wire and cable all over the place be allowed to ONLY deliver that service - actual phone delivery or data delivery would be required to be split off to independent companies that would compete on an equal basis. This is easily justified because the physical stringing of lines is a "natural monopoly" situation. This could be extended to other infrastructure - power is delivered by a generating plant to the "power line company", which only charges for the distribution. Gas lines the same way.
Cellulose doesn't ferment all by itself, it has to be digested in some way first. There are some bacteria that break down cellulose into a form that can then be fermented, but it's an extra step.
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Only if you can find the private key used to sign the chip's public key - think of it as a proxy for a signing authority running inside a black box inside the processor. An application (either local or over the network) that wants to determine if your processor is "trusted" will basically initiate a secure communications channel with that black box - your emulation layer is now effectively a man-in-the-middle, and if the protocol is resistant to MITM attacks, you can't do anything about it. If the black box has been disabled because your emulator isn't "trusted", then you can't establish trust for the emulated OS either.
The GPL requires that you be able to produce the binary, including all tools required to do that. A signing tool (including the key) would seem to be included. Separating the key file would seem to go beyond "mere aggregation", as well - thus, the key file is one of those "binary files" that requires you distribute source and all tools (even if it is part of a boot loader - that the boot loader has enough knowledge to have a specific key for a Linux kernel would seem to make it go beyond the mere aggregation exception).
Has this argument been used with regard to the TiVo situation, and if so, what were the counter-arguments?
Even if they move the security check to the application level (e.g. boot loader generates a checksum, makes it available to the application that checks for proper functioning), I think the same thing would happen - it goes beyond mere aggregation. In addition, that seems pretty easy to hack (figure out what checksum a valid kernel would have, and then set it for the application layer to see.
Thanks for the information, I wasn't aware of that (obviously)! Sounds like GUID could be easily supported in Open Firmware, I wonder how easy it would be to make EFI support Apple's partition format (GUID sounds very similar to Apple's, although GUID appears to add some redundancy - I've never had a problem with a partition map failing on an Apple-formatted drive, though, and it would be easy to add in a backup partition map by convention, e.g. at the very end of the drive, if that's what you wanted).
What I haven't seen is any reason why EFI is better than Open Firmware (better for everyone else, that is - obviously, it is better for Intel since they can control it). The Wikipedia article says that EFI mandates the use of FAT (and, presumably, the ancient creaky ought-to-be-obsolete DOS partitioning format).
Linux already can boot under OF (e.g. the PPC version of Linux), making that work under an x86 version of OF should be trivial. Loading a BIOS emulator under OF to boot Windows should also be fairly easy to do. Writing a bootstrap loader that implements OF, for old machines that want to boot an OS that only boots under OF, should also be feasible (see e.g. the OpenBIOS project.
Google's is all over the place as far as high vs. low resolution images. Champaign-Urbana is in low-res, whereas there are a few high-res areas with tiny towns nearby (e.g. Homer or Downs ). Bloomington-Normal, just north-west of Downs, is surrounded on both sides by high-res blocks. In Peoria, East Peoria is low-res, West Peoria is high-res. Dawson, Buffalo and this little unnamed bundle of houses are the most interesting things in a mostly empty block of high-res, whereas Decatur just to the east is low-res.
Most of Grand Junction is low-res (including my brother's house), but Redlands just to the west is in a strip of high-res.
The center of Lake Tahoe is mostly high-res, whereas most of the surrounding area is low-res.
Yup, you select the base zone (e.g. Central = -6), and whether or not DST applies to your location. If you enable DST, then it automatically adjusts based on the setting in the broadcast.
My car clock is off by several seconds a day, very annoying. Even more annoying is that the car has On-Star, which gets a GPS signal, and is connected in to the radio (which is where the clock is). Why can't it just update the clock whenever it has the correct time from the GPS? It would also be nice if it had a data port to transmit the GPS location for use by a PDA.
Even worse than my car is the clock in one of my Linksys routers. It is fast by about 8 seconds per MINUTE, and only updates from an NTP server once every hour or two. I don't understand why it can't adjust the timebase of the clock to correct the error, it doesn't even have to do a full NTP synchronization, just say "hmm, clock says one hour, NTP say 50 minutes, reset clock and adjust timebase as needed".
For non-atomic watches, how hard would it be to do the same thing, based on my manually setting the time? My watch is fairly stable, but fast by about 20 seconds a month. If I set it at the beginning of the month, then set it again at the end of the month, it should be able to be accurate to within a few seconds per year (if I'm using an accurate and precise source).
The WWVB broadcast contains DST information. As long as every place in the US switches on the same day, and they don't change the switch time from 2AM, any "Atomic Clock" will automatically do the right thing. See the time code format information from NIST (although, annoyingly, it show two DST bits, but says the descriptions of them are "in the text", which is only available (as far as I can find) in a PDF of NIST Time and Frequency Services.
It probably explains the behavior of my clock, which goes to DST properly, but then goes back to standard time at 0000 UTC. It is probably resetting the "going to DST" bit at the new day, but not setting the "now in DST" bit. The next time it picks up a broadcast after 0000, the bit is set correctly and it fixes itself.
There's an interesting bit in one of the publications that says that devices should have a rule to change the DST setting if it hasn't received the signal for a while. I think it should probably NOT change the DST setting at all until it has received a signal, unless the user manually overrides.
Internally, Unix-like systems keep time as GMT. However, log files are often written using local time.
Fixing this on virtually all Unix-like systems (including Linux and Mac OSX) is simply a matter of modifying the timezone files. Many (most?) systems now use compiled zone info files, which keeps historical track of when changes occurred (which means that on such a system, you'll get correct translations of GMT times for this year, even when checking it next year using the new start/end times).
Where this will be a pain is with embedded systems, e.g. VCRs, TV sets, some watches/clocks, thermostats, microwave ovens, etc. Of course, many of those systems don't do automatic adjustments, some do it based on a broadcast signal (which I believe includes a DST flag), and "Atomic Clocks" get the signal from WWV, which does have a DST flag. As long as every place in the US that switches from/to DST does so on the same day, and they don't change the switchover time to something other than 1AM/2AM, there should be no problem.
I have an "Atomic Clock" wall clock which always adjusts forward (11 hours forward to go one hour backward). When switching to standard time, it does its thing right at 2AM. Then, I think at 0000 UTC, it skips forward one hour back to DST, and then at midnight or 1AM or something it goes back to being correct. Not sure if it does it when going the other direction. I think it has something to do with a "DST change pending" flag vs. a "current DST setting" value, and getting confused when the first one turns off after the end of the day it changes.
I don't know about now, but when I lived there as a child in around 1962, I know that our lawn irrigation came from the reservoir. We'd occasionally get fish or crawdads swimming around our lawn, which I always got really excited about.
Amazon is still selling it (now labeled "Adults Only"). PC version is #1 in video games, #1 in electronics; Xbox version is #2 in video games, #5 in electronics; and the PS2 version is #5 in video games, #10 in electronics. It stands to reason that they would have sold it before, even if it was labeled AO then.
Actually, that's a good argument for using a dead-code and dead-data analysis-and-removal program. Data model references should be explicit enough to figure out what isn't being referenced any longer (whether directly from code or from other parts of the data). Eliminate all code that isn't accessible, then basically garbage-collect the data with references from the code as the base.
As far as the PC version is concerned, what's the difference whether the content was "already there" or was added by a mod downloaded from the Internet? If there's no way to see the content except by modifying the game (or save file) in some way, then the content isn't "really there". Now, I suppose if there was 4 GB of hardcore porn that could be unlocked by creating a file of the right name with "give me porn" as the contents, I might agree that it was "mostly there" and should be rated as such. This is so far from that I don't see why it was ever a problem.
As for the PS2 version, you can't get the nude models (as I understand it) and you need a way to hack the save game (I guess you can do that with a Game Shark or equivalent?). For most people, they just aren't going to be able to do that. I'm certainly not going to go out and buy something just so I can unlock some cheesy fake sex, nor is it worth the trouble to me to save a game file to the hard drive, take the drive out and install it in a machine that has one of those old-fangled IDE interfaces, figure out the format on the disk, modify the saved game, re-install the drive and copy it back out to a memory card.
That said, I did go out and buy it that evening before Best Buy had a chance to pull it from the shelf. I wouldn't be surprised to see a large sales spike for the game in the week leading up to it, more than enough to make up for temporary loss of sales. I note that Amazon still has it for sale, and have it marked as Adults Only.
How much does a (new) router that can connect using a modem cost? Price of router + modem + access point is probably going to be more than this device (though with a real access point, you'd get much better wireless performance than the WiFlyer). It also won't be very portable, and you'll need three wall warts to support it!
There are lots of old hand-me-down laptops with wireless. A second phone line costs real money. You'd also need an ISP that allows you to connect more than once, plus if you don't have an unlimited account, you're using your minutes at twice the rate. For most people, it isn't worth it (makes more sense to just go with broadband at that point). Besides, it doesn't do you any good for the hotel room, which is the primary thing this thing seems to be aimed at.
I've used an AT&T calling card (Sam's Club, 3.47 cents/minute) - best I could do was 28K, which is actually pretty amazing considering how it gets routed. A lot of hotels allow free local calls, but then you need to be using a national ISP, and have a local access number, for that to help. In my case, I was dialing up from Hawaii to my local ISP.
Can't you just share your dialup connection to the Ethernet port, and plug the wireless router's WAN port into the Ethernet port? You might need a crossover cable if it isn't a Mac. If you turn off DHCP in the router, you should also just be able to connect the ethernet port to one of the LAN ports on the router (leaving the WAN port disconnected) - then something connecting wirelessly will use DHCP from the computer, not the router. Either should work, although the second is much better if you want to connect between the two computers locally in both directions (file sharing, printer sharing, etc). Just ignore the WAN port and it is a simple access point.
You could even do it with DHCP in the router turned on and don't use "connection sharing", just connect the computer to one of the LAN ports and use normal DHCP - but I don't know how Windows decides which is your primary (default) Internet connection if you have both an ethernet connection and a dialup connection established. On a Mac or Linux machine, you could use route commands to force it if the default is wrong. Worse case you could enable RIP, but again I don't know if you can use that on Windows (and it still might not enable the PPP connection as the default gateway).
Long cord to the wall. An ethernet cable between two laptops. And it all goes crashing to the ground the first time someone has to get up to go to the bathroom and trips over one of those cords. Hotel rooms are often very inconvenient for where the phone jack might be located, this makes a LOT of sense. If I travelled more and had to use hotels that didn't have ethernet (or wireless) access, I'd certainly consider buying one of these things. I almost bought one of the old Airport base stations several years ago with a build-in modem, but it was just a bit too expensive and bulky.
For home use, I've had problems getting phone access to where the machine is (and tying down a laptop with a long phone cord is just stupid and annoying).
Not solving the laptop problem, but solving the dual-access problem without running long runs of ethernet cable, my solution in the past, when I was running an old APS clone Mac with OS9 and a laptop running Mac OSX was to set up a small wireless router, connect the OS9 machine to one of the ports, and have the laptop connect to it (with static addresses on both, DHCP on the base station turned off, nothing connected to the WAN port of the router). Then I could ssh in to the OSX machine and run a script to manually start up natd (OSX standard options allow connection sharing, but only if it is acting as the network base, not if it is connecting to something else). Worked great, more reliable than using the Linksys "Wireless Gaming Adapter" (which really sucks!) to connect the other way.
Driving from Illinois to California and back, it was quite obvious that running the AC didn't hurt gas mileage appreciably, even in 90-plus degree weather. Opening the windows put more of an obvious drag on the car than turning on the AC (e.g. cruise control - watch the tach when you change conditions, or feel the gas pedal move). It was also interesting that the car I was driving seemed to get better gas mileage at higher speeds (e.g. 70-75 through Colorado) than at lower speeds (e.g. 50-55 in Iowa). The effects of up-and-down mountain driving, and high altitude driving, were less consistent.
The peltier effect IS a heat pump. I don't know where you get the idea that it doesn't take a lot of energy to compress the gas down in the first place (which you have to do to get it to release the heat). That energy can't be recovered when the gas expands after it has cooled down.
What I've always wondered is if you could do a more direct air-conditioning by compressing the air you want cooled, running it through cooling fins, then expanding the air and releasing it.
Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sergeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said.
"KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"
I went over to the sergeant, said, "Sergeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
No, your new second would be about .86 old seconds long, so even shorter than it is currently. There are 86,000 seconds/day now; with 10 hours/100 minutes/100 seconds, there would be 100,000 seconds.
No, the original purpose was to save energy during war time. Farmers have no problem getting up at whatever time they need to, they don't need a clock on the wall saying "8 o'clock, time to start farming".
The problem is that they refuse to unbundle. They insist on providing ISP services in order to get their data transport services. IF there was true competition, they'd offer a transport-only service to any ISP that wanted it, at a fair price (i.e. NOT more to the (independent) ISP than it costs to get: a data-line PLUS Internet connectivity PLUS Web space PLUS e-mail space PLUS DNS/NNTP/SMTP (etc.) PLUS customer service, for the bundled transport + ISP services from the phone or cable company). It's not a "free market" if some other company is making my choices for me.
Solve that problem by requiring that the company that gets the rights to string wire and cable all over the place be allowed to ONLY deliver that service - actual phone delivery or data delivery would be required to be split off to independent companies that would compete on an equal basis. This is easily justified because the physical stringing of lines is a "natural monopoly" situation. This could be extended to other infrastructure - power is delivered by a generating plant to the "power line company", which only charges for the distribution. Gas lines the same way.
Cellulose doesn't ferment all by itself, it has to be digested in some way first. There are some bacteria that break down cellulose into a form that can then be fermented, but it's an extra step.