I have to admit it. By now I guess those back issues of Byte really are very, very, old.
*grumble*
I guess I better start hacking together assisted living gear. My wheelchair is gonna do the quarter mile in 13.8, drive itself in a thick fog, and provide a couple of hundred teraflops besides:-)
If you mean that you have more time than money, read on. Otherwise just buy the thing, and pay the price.
Consider making a grid of IR-LEDs (say top and left side)and photodiodes (bottom and right side). Build small adressing circuit run from parallel port of PC to individually strobe LEDs and see which detectors do not react. Software from there.
The venerable lightpen is even cheaper, has better resolution, and can be hacked together in moments.
Epoxy three piezoelectric tranducers (bottom left, top left, bottom right corners) on a monitor tube, attach to a/d circuit, have software monitor for vibrations from finger touch (yes, I know it can be done with only two sensors, but three makes the software much easier...)
If you can live with defined areas, get some thinly aluminiumised Mylar, form touch areas and circuits between them, then use those cheapie lamp controllers (60 cycle crossing detectors) to make data for parallel port.
I've never tried it, but I have observed change in capacitance in a monitor tube if you place your hand on it as the beam sweeps across. Build simple cap meter on front of A/D converter and then see if software can decipher changes in position.
There are long lead times for some kinds of fiber cable, especially those that are designed for colocating with arial power lines.
A lot of operating companies are having problems getting diggable right of way, especially in environmentally sensistive areas. This leaves little choice but to use the existing poles and towers.
Sorry, someone had to write it. Might as well have been me.
You have to wonder about German courts, finding an online service owned by the biggest media distributor in the world guilty of copyright violations. On the other hand, you have to wonder about AOL/Time-Warner lawyers, too.
or a glass eyeball? Or an organic, freshly removed eyeball? Or an eyeball still firmly attached to it's eyesocket, which is in turn attached to a head, which in turn is being aimed at by a gun?
Retina scanners are not fooled by dead eyeballs because the various fluid pressures involved cause the retina to look a certain way. Does the iris change signifigantly after removal? Don't know, but I am sure we will find out, just after sombody is fool enough to use one of these things to lock up something valuable.
When are folks going to get it through their mental filters? You have to be able to give away value (or access to...) as a last resort to avoid violence or coersion. To do otherwise is a safety hazard, and should be viewed as irresponsible.
Do you have to take your contacts out to have this item work? Glasses on or off? Folks with glass eyes? Cataracts? Blind people?
Not to mention the question of whether the iris pattern is truly exclusive. It is one thing to say it is, but has anybody done any serious sized studies (n>100,000)?
Plus, the iris of a person's eye is visible from the outside of their body. Can a good photo portrait be used to fake a key? Doubt it, but it might be possible.
So now the bullies surround you at the fingerprint reader and say things like "okay, kid, stick you finger in". Think the school lunch lady is going to do anything about it? She just wants to go home and get off her feet, not find her car tires slashed in the parking lot. Not her jub to keep some punk in line. Bet you as long as the meals total the scans she could care less.
Granted, you cannot currently spend someone's finger, so the impetus for most of the bully tactics are far less. All you can get for it is a meal. But the precedent is dangerous. Just let there be one method of exchanging biometric ID for liquidity, and the human pieces-parts will start flying. after all, "it's not my finger..."
Actually, the article that was linked didn't have any reference to switching. Other backgrounds made references to servers, but still didn't give a good shot at what was being delivered down the final wire.
Even so, one wonders what the rediculously low number of channels is about.
You would think after all of these years that folks would figure this out. Since you know on which wire you are sending the video stream, simply have the set-top box communicate with the central office and select the channel for that particular wire, and do the switching at the central office.
You would think that phone guys would have thought of this...
most businesses seem to think they "don't need that new fangled contraption called the innernit."
Exactly. You are selling a product that most businesses can live without. And they do.
I am sorry that you are in a business that is highly competitive and has traditionally had low profit margins. You do not fix this by advertising or marketing, ever. The only way to fix this is by changing the business itself.
Internet folks forget what the real world is like, as thay are often the type that want to retreat from it. If internet stopped tomorrow there would be a hue and cry, but the world would go on. Money would still move, goods would still ship, babies would be born, and old folks would get laid to rest. This is where the real world is, and this is where businesses REALLY make money.
The only internet busineese that are going to make it are the ones that understand this, and provide some addded value to a "real-time" person or product. Advertising and marketing (the great bulk of internet content) is not adding value. It is trying to increase sales by making up for a lack of value in the product, by changing people's minds and perceptions. If the product had tremendous value, it would sell with just the force of word-of-mouth.
Real world added value is difficult to deliver, as most of the world does not run on pure data. You cannot eat data, you cannot burn it to stay warm, and it won't keep you dry in the rain. But data (which the internet delivers) can be turned into information (people think about the data) and then used to affect the real world. The key is in getting people to think about the data and apply it.
Get a different business model. Work hard. Make millions. And don't spam. It is not cost effective in the long run.
Been there, although it was the late seventies. Simple answer: If things have gone to the point where one person can have such an effect on an entire company, then that company has already passed the point of no return.
No management (unless thier heads are where the sun don't shine) would allow this, purely from the point of treating that one critical employee as a person, much less from the reliability angle.
Bite the bullet and get it over with quickly. Your coworkers will thank you later. Life goes on. Even the darkest day finally ends.
Also, be creative. Plan. Take their curricula vitae with you. Keep the cream, and spread the rest around. Your new employers may thank you, and so might your employee friends.
to give a company a clue about product design? Why don't they listen to people? They might even sell a prodcut or two. Okay, for the record:
1. All people really want is a slim tablet-shaped box with rounded corners, that has a touch sensitive TFT-style LCD screen on top, and a stylus that doesn't have a wire attached to it.
2. The screen needs to be about twelve inches diagonal or better, and the box needs to be as slim as possible.
3. Software just has to be capable of collecting written and drawn pages, and storing and retriving lots of them.
4. Operation in note-taking mode must be silent.
5. The box should have a keyboard, ethernet, and video output port.
6. When attached to a keyboard, the critter should act like a full-blown pentium-class pc.
Everything else is optional. This gets you the ability to take notes without paper, and without scaring the rest of the people in the meeting. It gets you the ability to read and use the computer while curled up on the couch, or sitting in the airport waiting for the flight. When you need a keyboard, you can either get a fold-up one or simply borrow one, and prop up the screen so it looks like a workstation. At home or office you simply have stock keyboard and bigger monitor.
nor is it a secret. Available in any good technically oriented library. Security through hiding knowledge never works in the long run. Thorough education of the consequences doesn't seem to have a better track record, though.
As long as the genetic diversity and population size are great enough, then probability is large that you will find the mouse that has the very strong resistance. They're the ones left moving.
This is actually a good representation of the problem, and I wonder if any research has been done to validate it? I couldn't find any that specifically dealt with employee communications, although there were some data on using these techniques for ops management.
Consider a node as a receiver, a processing unit, and zero or more transmitters. In any communications system there is always a chance of error, and there are methods of calculating error rates. This leads to the impedance concept.
If i ever get some spare time I will drop something like this into a modeling system and see if consistent results pop out.
1. What sort of genetic pool these mice came from. Was there any variability, or were were they single strain types?
2. What were the numbers studied? If they were less than decent poulation sizes (n>10000, approx.) then the results may not be as horrible as first glance might suggest.
3. What form of carrier mechanism was used? If it was of a sort not readily found in nature, this may server as a mitigating factor.
4. Consider the information source.
Race purists and bigots take note: Genetic diversity is your only hope for long term survival of this sort of holocaust, whether man-made or natural. All life must be given a chance. Evolution is just the filter.
Assuming that you are charging a reasonable rate for your services (approx $65/hr) then you only have to work seven hours out of the month to cover this.
Best bet would be to take the insurance company up on the best insurance they have to offer (from your point of view) and pay the extra, consider it as working one day for benefits. Or, possibly, also consider pre-paid legal along with the medical. This really takes the strain off when something comes to grief with the medical insurance company. Just make sure they know it.
Let's see, one day for benefits, three days for mortgage, one day for the car, eight days for taxes...8(
This is a blatant violation of a person's right to free speech. If the school in question receives any federal dollars (including research money), consider the following:
1. Find student who has a good cause but who has been beaten down for free speech in "inappropriate areas".
2. Get legal students to run down court precedents and applicable case law.
3. Present above to constitutional lawyer, offer him case on spec for fifty percent (maybe you want to haggle a little here). Keep some for yourself, and pay a little to the defendant. (after all, they deserve something).
4. Hopefully win court case. Not a sure thing, but you need to work on it.
5. If you win, start legal students to rounding up all other students with similar cases at other schools. Make bulk deal with lawyer. Try to space them out enough that there is no cause for consolidation as a class action.
This could be a nifty little side career while you are going to school.
Make sure that Joe Consumer knows that there are folks who DON'T have to pay. If everybody has to pay then dear old Joe will mutter something under his breath about "can't fight city hall" and pay up. But let him get wind that his neighbor doesn't have to, and boy howdy, he will want to know how. Tell him it's like the phone company, and he will go out of his way to screw it. Doesn't matter if he has to spend ten bucks to save a dime. "It's the principle, ya know?"
So, let us suppose that the extremely evil corporate copy protection coven have their nefarious way with the ATA standard, and these drives become a reality. What then? Perhaps:
1. Older ATA controllers will not have this built into their BIOS. Maybe there will be a run on them.
2. How much of the controller code is in flash, and can be updated? What happens if the updates get hacked? "oh, look, now it always returns 00h".
3. From what I could find of the specs, The drive serial number is on the magnetic media somewhere. How long before a "utility" is developed to overwrite/change this? A side note: Wrap this up in an email virus. Send to fifty of your ex-friends. Better than a reformat, and takes less time. I bet drive manufacturer's tech support will love this.
4. The specs also mentioned "Encrypted key space" Are parts of keys stored there? Is there a limit? Generate small encrypted random files. Register and repeat until overflowing. Tech support will love this, too.
5. How about releasing a bunch or really cool freeware, stuff the masses will want to run. Only it won't work on CPRM activated systems, and gives a short message about why not, and then suggests that the consumer return his computer for one that isn't broken.
The list goes on. You just have to think about it creatively. The best arrangement is going to be education, though. Make sure that joe consumer knows he's getting screwed, and that other folks around him aren't.
It doesn't follow that a thicker or larger mass is more critical. Particle (particularly neutron) transit is something that must be modelled for different shapes and volumes. Shape is often as important as mass and density for obtaining a continued reaction.
It surprises me that a foil configuration could support enough neutron capture to maintain a reaction. I am used to thinking that one needed at least a mean free path's worth of material, in three dimensions.
I live in an area where geothermal energy potential abounds, ranging from simply "it's twenty degrees warmer in that well than it should be" to "Liquid magma fifty meters beneath your tootsies". Regular energy sources (nat. gas, coal, oil, electricity) are hard to transport here, even though we have plenty. Many folks here want to live "off the grid", just because that is the kind of people they are (the warrants don't help any, either). With all of this, you would think that small or stand-alone geothermal would be making a serious dent in the energy needs of our population. Not so. Consider:
The cost of money. I can go out and up-front the money needed to install a heat pump to use low-grade underground heat (or whatever...) and it will cost me about twenty grand and maintenance costs over its lifespan, which will be about twenty years. Or, I can call the gas company, they will run the pipe to my property, install the meter, and they take care of all maintenance up to and including the pressure reducer. I have to buy the furnace and get it installed. About two grand up-front, and I get this bill for, say, a hundred dollars each month (it's cold here.) If I stick the difference between up-fronts in the bank (or don't have to wait until I earn it) then it starts to look real attractive to use the gas, and not the heat pump. Plus, I don't have to take care of the damn thing. I'm not interested. All I want is to turn up my thermostat and get more heat.
Politics also intrudes. In our state (Alaska) geothermal energy is highly regulated and is considered a scarce natural resource. As such, anyone using or tapping it must apply for a permit, and make royalty arrangements of up to fifty percent of value with the Department of Natural Resources. This applies even if it is on (under?) land you own. Also consider that most geothermal waters (the easiest source of energy to tap) are also highly mineralised, and under some circumstances considered toxic waste and must be dealt with as such. You certainly can't just dump them in the local watershed.
Even so, the local power companies have given it a go, and were balked by corrosion problems and lack of expertise.
Now, having said all that, I think I will get up and drive out to Chena and sit in the hot springs. Scootch around in the mud a little. Does you some good, you know?
Once you have made the am-242 into a thin film, how exactly do you get it to stop fissioning? (besides waiting for it to decay completely?) Practical reactors need to be controllable, especially in space where dumping excess heat is a monumental task. Look up the rules for reradiation in free space and you can see what I mean.
On the other hand, this might have some very interesting applications here at home. Consider that photovoltaic cells will respond to the beta radiation from something line this as well as visible light. It is not too hard to imagine a "battery" of PV cells coated with a thin layer of am-242, sealed inside of a casing. One wonders what kind of power you could get out of this sort of thing? The stuff has a sixteen hour half life, though, so lifespan may be an issue.
I agree wholeheartedly. Payment is a wonderful deterrent to such grief, provided you can adequately prove who caused said grief in the first place.
Having been involved in user billings from a variety of angles, I can tell you that sending a bill has little effect in such cases. Collecting money in advance, decrementing the account, and chopping the service off when it reaches zero does work, provided you can adequately tie the user of the service to the account being billed. Otherwise owner of said account calls up about the bill and gets a credit if you can't really nail this down.
Arbitrary currencies are an idea that I like, Especially if the currency is tied to a hardware artifact that can be tested for presence, say, you add another eighty gig of storage to the public pool, you get another x storage credits per month.
One of the things the article passed by here was the implications of having no mask. This system cuts, carves, and dopes directly on a wafer, and is called lithography only out of courtesy.
As there is no mask, the production of each die on the wafer will be a matter of programming. That programming can be changed on the fly, allowing for individualised integrated circuits at the same relative cost as mass-produced ones. Build one or build a million, they all have almost the same cost, even if they are all slightly different.
Applications abound: serial numbered processors (of course), processors with application-enabling software embedded directly in the microcode, on-chip encryption, processors optimised for different sets of problems, the ability to mix analog and digital circuitry on the same die, the ability to order only fifty of them at a time, all this leads to increased performance and extended use.
Consider also that it may be able to test the devices on the wafer without removing them from the manufacturing equipment. This allows for far cheaper wafer-scale integration. An entire system (chipset, if you like) is carved onto a wafer, and then tested in spot. Parts that failed are then recut in different areas of the wafer, and circuitry rerouted to the new part. Results are increased yield and a much less expensive packaging scenario, not to mention the miniaturisation gain.
Prudhoe Bay supplies all the oil it can to the other states, as there is little market for it here in Alaska (lack of refineries).
The Russians, who have lots of oil, are also the masters of oil pipeline technology, and build pipelines that make ours look downright silly. They have lots of transport for their oil. What they don't have are countries with hard currencies willing to purchase the oil.
If you think that drilling in Siberia is any less harmful to the ecology than Alaska, you have another thing coming. In Alaska, there are strict rules about how, where, when, and what happens in the oil patch, and there are a bunch of folks standing around to make sure the rules are followed. Penalties for infraction are severe. In Siberia, there are no such rules, and no folks watching, either.
Slashdot Mirror
*grumble*
I guess I better start hacking together assisted living gear. My wheelchair is gonna do the quarter mile in 13.8, drive itself in a thick fog, and provide a couple of hundred teraflops besides :-)
Consider making a grid of IR-LEDs (say top and left side)and photodiodes (bottom and right side). Build small adressing circuit run from parallel port of PC to individually strobe LEDs and see which detectors do not react. Software from there.
The venerable lightpen is even cheaper, has better resolution, and can be hacked together in moments.
Epoxy three piezoelectric tranducers (bottom left, top left, bottom right corners) on a monitor tube, attach to a/d circuit, have software monitor for vibrations from finger touch (yes, I know it can be done with only two sensors, but three makes the software much easier...)
If you can live with defined areas, get some thinly aluminiumised Mylar, form touch areas and circuits between them, then use those cheapie lamp controllers (60 cycle crossing detectors) to make data for parallel port.
I've never tried it, but I have observed change in capacitance in a monitor tube if you place your hand on it as the beam sweeps across. Build simple cap meter on front of A/D converter and then see if software can decipher changes in position.
All I can think of. Anybody else?
A lot of operating companies are having problems getting diggable right of way, especially in environmentally sensistive areas. This leaves little choice but to use the existing poles and towers.
Sorry, someone had to write it. Might as well have been me.
You have to wonder about German courts, finding an online service owned by the biggest media distributor in the world guilty of copyright violations. On the other hand, you have to wonder about AOL/Time-Warner lawyers, too.
Retina scanners are not fooled by dead eyeballs because the various fluid pressures involved cause the retina to look a certain way. Does the iris change signifigantly after removal? Don't know, but I am sure we will find out, just after sombody is fool enough to use one of these things to lock up something valuable.
When are folks going to get it through their mental filters? You have to be able to give away value (or access to...) as a last resort to avoid violence or coersion. To do otherwise is a safety hazard, and should be viewed as irresponsible.
Do you have to take your contacts out to have this item work? Glasses on or off? Folks with glass eyes? Cataracts? Blind people?
Not to mention the question of whether the iris pattern is truly exclusive. It is one thing to say it is, but has anybody done any serious sized studies (n>100,000)?
Plus, the iris of a person's eye is visible from the outside of their body. Can a good photo portrait be used to fake a key? Doubt it, but it might be possible.
Granted, you cannot currently spend someone's finger, so the impetus for most of the bully tactics are far less. All you can get for it is a meal. But the precedent is dangerous. Just let there be one method of exchanging biometric ID for liquidity, and the human pieces-parts will start flying. after all, "it's not my finger..."
Two advantages: easier to learn, and comprehensible by others (well, partially).
A google search pulled up a bunch of online training links. I'm just waiting for someone to make a speedwriting recogniser for my Visor.
Even so, one wonders what the rediculously low number of channels is about.
You would think that phone guys would have thought of this...
I am sorry that you are in a business that is highly competitive and has traditionally had low profit margins. You do not fix this by advertising or marketing, ever. The only way to fix this is by changing the business itself.
Internet folks forget what the real world is like, as thay are often the type that want to retreat from it. If internet stopped tomorrow there would be a hue and cry, but the world would go on. Money would still move, goods would still ship, babies would be born, and old folks would get laid to rest. This is where the real world is, and this is where businesses REALLY make money.
The only internet busineese that are going to make it are the ones that understand this, and provide some addded value to a "real-time" person or product. Advertising and marketing (the great bulk of internet content) is not adding value. It is trying to increase sales by making up for a lack of value in the product, by changing people's minds and perceptions. If the product had tremendous value, it would sell with just the force of word-of-mouth.
Real world added value is difficult to deliver, as most of the world does not run on pure data. You cannot eat data, you cannot burn it to stay warm, and it won't keep you dry in the rain. But data (which the internet delivers) can be turned into information (people think about the data) and then used to affect the real world. The key is in getting people to think about the data and apply it.
Get a different business model. Work hard. Make millions. And don't spam. It is not cost effective in the long run.
No management (unless thier heads are where the sun don't shine) would allow this, purely from the point of treating that one critical employee as a person, much less from the reliability angle.
Bite the bullet and get it over with quickly. Your coworkers will thank you later. Life goes on. Even the darkest day finally ends.
Also, be creative. Plan. Take their curricula vitae with you. Keep the cream, and spread the rest around. Your new employers may thank you, and so might your employee friends.
1. All people really want is a slim tablet-shaped box with rounded corners, that has a touch sensitive TFT-style LCD screen on top, and a stylus that doesn't have a wire attached to it.
2. The screen needs to be about twelve inches diagonal or better, and the box needs to be as slim as possible.
3. Software just has to be capable of collecting written and drawn pages, and storing and retriving lots of them.
4. Operation in note-taking mode must be silent.
5. The box should have a keyboard, ethernet, and video output port.
6. When attached to a keyboard, the critter should act like a full-blown pentium-class pc.
Everything else is optional. This gets you the ability to take notes without paper, and without scaring the rest of the people in the meeting. It gets you the ability to read and use the computer while curled up on the couch, or sitting in the airport waiting for the flight. When you need a keyboard, you can either get a fold-up one or simply borrow one, and prop up the screen so it looks like a workstation. At home or office you simply have stock keyboard and bigger monitor.
As long as the genetic diversity and population size are great enough, then probability is large that you will find the mouse that has the very strong resistance. They're the ones left moving.
Consider a node as a receiver, a processing unit, and zero or more transmitters. In any communications system there is always a chance of error, and there are methods of calculating error rates. This leads to the impedance concept.
If i ever get some spare time I will drop something like this into a modeling system and see if consistent results pop out.
2. What were the numbers studied? If they were less than decent poulation sizes (n>10000, approx.) then the results may not be as horrible as first glance might suggest.
3. What form of carrier mechanism was used? If it was of a sort not readily found in nature, this may server as a mitigating factor.
4. Consider the information source.
Race purists and bigots take note: Genetic diversity is your only hope for long term survival of this sort of holocaust, whether man-made or natural. All life must be given a chance. Evolution is just the filter.
Best bet would be to take the insurance company up on the best insurance they have to offer (from your point of view) and pay the extra, consider it as working one day for benefits. Or, possibly, also consider pre-paid legal along with the medical. This really takes the strain off when something comes to grief with the medical insurance company. Just make sure they know it.
Let's see, one day for benefits, three days for mortgage, one day for the car, eight days for taxes...8(
1. Find student who has a good cause but who has been beaten down for free speech in "inappropriate areas".
2. Get legal students to run down court precedents and applicable case law.
3. Present above to constitutional lawyer, offer him case on spec for fifty percent (maybe you want to haggle a little here). Keep some for yourself, and pay a little to the defendant. (after all, they deserve something).
4. Hopefully win court case. Not a sure thing, but you need to work on it.
5. If you win, start legal students to rounding up all other students with similar cases at other schools. Make bulk deal with lawyer. Try to space them out enough that there is no cause for consolidation as a class action.
This could be a nifty little side career while you are going to school.
Make sure that Joe Consumer knows that there are folks who DON'T have to pay. If everybody has to pay then dear old Joe will mutter something under his breath about "can't fight city hall" and pay up. But let him get wind that his neighbor doesn't have to, and boy howdy, he will want to know how. Tell him it's like the phone company, and he will go out of his way to screw it. Doesn't matter if he has to spend ten bucks to save a dime. "It's the principle, ya know?"
1. Older ATA controllers will not have this built into their BIOS. Maybe there will be a run on them.
2. How much of the controller code is in flash, and can be updated? What happens if the updates get hacked? "oh, look, now it always returns 00h".
3. From what I could find of the specs, The drive serial number is on the magnetic media somewhere. How long before a "utility" is developed to overwrite/change this? A side note: Wrap this up in an email virus. Send to fifty of your ex-friends. Better than a reformat, and takes less time. I bet drive manufacturer's tech support will love this.
4. The specs also mentioned "Encrypted key space" Are parts of keys stored there? Is there a limit? Generate small encrypted random files. Register and repeat until overflowing. Tech support will love this, too.
5. How about releasing a bunch or really cool freeware, stuff the masses will want to run. Only it won't work on CPRM activated systems, and gives a short message about why not, and then suggests that the consumer return his computer for one that isn't broken.
The list goes on. You just have to think about it creatively. The best arrangement is going to be education, though. Make sure that joe consumer knows he's getting screwed, and that other folks around him aren't.
It surprises me that a foil configuration could support enough neutron capture to maintain a reaction. I am used to thinking that one needed at least a mean free path's worth of material, in three dimensions.
The cost of money. I can go out and up-front the money needed to install a heat pump to use low-grade underground heat (or whatever...) and it will cost me about twenty grand and maintenance costs over its lifespan, which will be about twenty years. Or, I can call the gas company, they will run the pipe to my property, install the meter, and they take care of all maintenance up to and including the pressure reducer. I have to buy the furnace and get it installed. About two grand up-front, and I get this bill for, say, a hundred dollars each month (it's cold here.) If I stick the difference between up-fronts in the bank (or don't have to wait until I earn it) then it starts to look real attractive to use the gas, and not the heat pump. Plus, I don't have to take care of the damn thing. I'm not interested. All I want is to turn up my thermostat and get more heat.
Politics also intrudes. In our state (Alaska) geothermal energy is highly regulated and is considered a scarce natural resource. As such, anyone using or tapping it must apply for a permit, and make royalty arrangements of up to fifty percent of value with the Department of Natural Resources. This applies even if it is on (under?) land you own. Also consider that most geothermal waters (the easiest source of energy to tap) are also highly mineralised, and under some circumstances considered toxic waste and must be dealt with as such. You certainly can't just dump them in the local watershed.
Even so, the local power companies have given it a go, and were balked by corrosion problems and lack of expertise.
Now, having said all that, I think I will get up and drive out to Chena and sit in the hot springs. Scootch around in the mud a little. Does you some good, you know?
On the other hand, this might have some very interesting applications here at home. Consider that photovoltaic cells will respond to the beta radiation from something line this as well as visible light. It is not too hard to imagine a "battery" of PV cells coated with a thin layer of am-242, sealed inside of a casing. One wonders what kind of power you could get out of this sort of thing? The stuff has a sixteen hour half life, though, so lifespan may be an issue.
Having been involved in user billings from a variety of angles, I can tell you that sending a bill has little effect in such cases. Collecting money in advance, decrementing the account, and chopping the service off when it reaches zero does work, provided you can adequately tie the user of the service to the account being billed. Otherwise owner of said account calls up about the bill and gets a credit if you can't really nail this down.
Arbitrary currencies are an idea that I like, Especially if the currency is tied to a hardware artifact that can be tested for presence, say, you add another eighty gig of storage to the public pool, you get another x storage credits per month.
As there is no mask, the production of each die on the wafer will be a matter of programming. That programming can be changed on the fly, allowing for individualised integrated circuits at the same relative cost as mass-produced ones. Build one or build a million, they all have almost the same cost, even if they are all slightly different.
Applications abound: serial numbered processors (of course), processors with application-enabling software embedded directly in the microcode, on-chip encryption, processors optimised for different sets of problems, the ability to mix analog and digital circuitry on the same die, the ability to order only fifty of them at a time, all this leads to increased performance and extended use.
Consider also that it may be able to test the devices on the wafer without removing them from the manufacturing equipment. This allows for far cheaper wafer-scale integration. An entire system (chipset, if you like) is carved onto a wafer, and then tested in spot. Parts that failed are then recut in different areas of the wafer, and circuitry rerouted to the new part. Results are increased yield and a much less expensive packaging scenario, not to mention the miniaturisation gain.
The Russians, who have lots of oil, are also the masters of oil pipeline technology, and build pipelines that make ours look downright silly. They have lots of transport for their oil. What they don't have are countries with hard currencies willing to purchase the oil.
If you think that drilling in Siberia is any less harmful to the ecology than Alaska, you have another thing coming. In Alaska, there are strict rules about how, where, when, and what happens in the oil patch, and there are a bunch of folks standing around to make sure the rules are followed. Penalties for infraction are severe. In Siberia, there are no such rules, and no folks watching, either.