One manufacturer is proposing to supply a 120 ml cartridge that last 10 hours on a laptop. The price is going to be an estimated $3 - $5 per.
Although wholesale costs for methanol are $0.33 per gallon. I'd be hesitant to pay five bucks to "recharge" my laptop once, OTOH I'd be willing to pay $2.50 for a gallon of methanol that's probably good for forty charges even though it might involve a bit of a hassle to transfer the liquid into "refill" containers.
I think this is how it'll work, there's this long tube running up the side of your screen that's open on the top. The methanol fuel will be colored red. When the red fuel level drops down to the letter "E" at the bottom, you take your syringe of extra fuel and stick it in the top of the tube, give a squirt and go back to playing "Half Life" for another ten hours.
I've used both of these products and found that when developing our product, exception reporting with Jetty was a pain to decipher. Tomcat, OTOH, has really nice exception reporting and is thus a pleasure to develop on.
For deployment, Jetty is small nice and lightweight. Also, if you plan to use customized tags, last I checked (9 months ago), Jetty didn't support them.
The laser mower would be more efficient than a robot. You place a laser in the middle of your yard and when you flip the switch, it rotates and makes one 360 degree pass and your're done.
Sometimes when you drive the groves in the pavement make different sounds and tones. You could do the same thing to the subway track so that the images would have a synched up audio "track"
hmmmmm is anyone here reminded of enders game. just wondering
Yep, I sure was. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. In this book children are trained in an orbital military academy. They are trained in tactics in a weightless environment. Great book. I enjoyed how it explored the intricacies of "schoolyard politics." Highly recommended (by me), but the rest of the Ender series was so-so IMHO.
You might be suprized that you can store all of the information of the universe (all 10^90 bits worth) on a popsickle(tm) stick.
Here's how you do it: First encode it all in a text string. Then convert the string to it's ASCII numerical equivalents, but keep all the numerical equivalents packed together so it's like a string. Now place a decimal point at the beginning. What you have is a fractional number between one and zero, i.e. a ratio. Carefully measure the popsicle stick and make a mark for your ratio. There, done! All the information of the universe on a popsicle stick.
I worked in Anchorage Alaska and we purchased a Data General MV/8000 mini-computer circa 1982. It was January and there was a cold snap. We wondered why our computer wasn't arriving as soon as we expected. Turns out the computer was shipped overland from Massachusetts to Alaska. Probably about a 4000+ mile journey. When it arrived I'm sure we could have successfully performed some Bose-Einstein condensate experiments within its cabinet it was so cold. Of course, when it finally reached room temperature and we could finally turn it on, it didn't work. The FE had to swap out just about every board on the computer to finally get it to work.
BTW, just how DO they ship those ShockWatch stickers to the manufacturers? Do they put it in an envelope and mark it FRAGILE? "Huh, FRAGILE. Shake-shake-shake. Doesn't look fragile to me."
Any homebrewer worth his salt knows that this is bogus because beer, being made from the four and only four ingredients: Water, Malt, Hops and Yeast (no freakin rice or wheat, thank you), will NOT sustain a bacterial culture. Why? Because the hops, adding bitterness, also make the Ph inhospitable to pathogens.
The fact is current fuel cell technology only works with hydrogen. This methanol cell works by first converting the methanol to hydrogen. The final product would probably be lighter, simpler and cheaper if it were fueled with straight h2.
The only drawback I can conceive is it's simpler to refuel with fluid than with pressurized h2.
I would tell them that even if you are in the business to sell closed source software, if you carefully choose the right open source software, you can deploy your product with zero royalties.
As an example, we were initially intending to offer our product with MS SQL Server. We started looking at the numbers and were really disheartened when we realized that at the price we were selling our product, we were making more money for Microsoft than ourselves!
We then started looking for a SQL Server replacement and found that both Borland InterBase and Postgresql were excellent products. Now we use so much open source software that we are at the point where our clients don't have to purchase any software, and since our product has been rewritten in Java, we don't even require windows anymore.
GRASS has been freely available (GPL'd) for many years and has been continuously upgraded. Grass is Unix based, runs in Linux as well as others including windows. It provides both raster as well as vector capabilities. So why write a new one? For more on GRASS check out one of the mirror sites: US Germany Japan
(There are other mirrors as well).
Billy The Mountain
you are typically limited to an 80 x 24 character format and usually monochrome. When you are doing POS, you have to make things intuitive because you are interacting a computer in a distracting and interruptive environment.
I think it's a mistake therefore, to forsake the GUI. For example, with a GUI you can make a tabbed interface to allow the presentation a lot of information without losing your way.
Also with a non-web based app, you're back to installing the software on each computer where it's going to be used.
What architecture would I use? JSP. (Check out jetty, a simple and free jsp server).
Marlin
A possibility here: Might it not be allowed for a licensed ham radio operator to switch on the transmitter connected to your bike? If the FCC licensing requirements were to allow this, you would then be connected to free packet radio without the pain of getting a ham license.
I live in a rural area and DSL and Cable are ruled out. Presently I still am using a modem but am considering using services offered by some of the cell phone companies that can bring in wireless service that supposedly competes with broadband. The company I was looking at charged $50 per month.
The advantage that those offering this type of service claims is that they can more easily add infrastructure than the operators relying on cable/fiber.
As the price of an education skyrockets, at the end of 4 years, your're typically several hundred thousand dollars in debt. This limits the freedom of what you can do after getting an education. You wind up having to work in a high pressure environment for years without much spending money left over after your student loan bill is paid.
Consider too that the internet changes everything. If you are smart enough and motiviated enough to use the internet to teach yourself, you have practically no limits to where you can go.
Slashdot Mirror
One manufacturer is proposing to supply a 120 ml cartridge that last 10 hours on a laptop. The price is going to be an estimated $3 - $5 per.
Although wholesale costs for methanol are $0.33 per gallon. I'd be hesitant to pay five bucks to "recharge" my laptop once, OTOH I'd be willing to pay $2.50 for a gallon of methanol that's probably good for forty charges even though it might involve a bit of a hassle to transfer the liquid into "refill" containers.
I think this is how it'll work, there's this long tube running up the side of your screen that's open on the top. The methanol fuel will be colored red. When the red fuel level drops down to the letter "E" at the bottom, you take your syringe of extra fuel and stick it in the top of the tube, give a squirt and go back to playing "Half Life" for another ten hours.
...to the statement. "My laptop's almost out of juice.
Although GRASS (GPL) is just now running on PC's via Cygwin, it was designed as a Unix GIS. What it provides:
* A framework for organizing, storing and retrieving maps.
* Map information that can be presented multiple layers at a time.
* A means of generating an image file based on various map layers.
* A map feature attribute mechanism. This is what allows you to control street names and how they appear as you zoom in and out.
* A C api with over 800 GIS functions. (Also a Java interface)
With GRASS, you could write a C program that monitors the GPS fix queries the map database and repeatadly presents the info as a image on your screen.
BTM
I've used both of these products and found that when developing our product, exception reporting with Jetty was a pain to decipher. Tomcat, OTOH, has really nice exception reporting and is thus a pleasure to develop on.
For deployment, Jetty is small nice and lightweight. Also, if you plan to use customized tags, last I checked (9 months ago), Jetty didn't support them.
BTM
The laser mower would be more efficient than a robot. You place a laser in the middle of your yard and when you flip the switch, it rotates and makes one 360 degree pass and your're done.
BTM
Sometimes when you drive the groves in the pavement make different sounds and tones. You could do the same thing to the subway track so that the images would have a synched up audio "track"
BTM
hmmmmm is anyone here reminded of enders game. just wondering
Yep, I sure was. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. In this book children are trained in an orbital military academy. They are trained in tactics in a weightless environment. Great book. I enjoyed how it explored the intricacies of "schoolyard politics." Highly recommended (by me), but the rest of the Ender series was so-so IMHO.
BTM
You might be suprized that you can store all of the information of the universe (all 10^90 bits worth) on a popsickle(tm) stick.
Here's how you do it: First encode it all in a text string. Then convert the string to it's ASCII numerical equivalents, but keep all the numerical equivalents packed together so it's like a string. Now place a decimal point at the beginning. What you have is a fractional number between one and zero, i.e. a ratio. Carefully measure the popsicle stick and make a mark for your ratio. There, done! All the information of the universe on a popsicle stick.
BTM
I heard NASA already has a solution to this, they're going to attach solar powered wings to the moon. Moon Wings!
BTM
I worked in Anchorage Alaska and we purchased a Data General MV/8000 mini-computer circa 1982. It was January and there was a cold snap. We wondered why our computer wasn't arriving as soon as we expected. Turns out the computer was shipped overland from Massachusetts to Alaska. Probably about a 4000+ mile journey. When it arrived I'm sure we could have successfully performed some Bose-Einstein condensate experiments within its cabinet it was so cold. Of course, when it finally reached room temperature and we could finally turn it on, it didn't work. The FE had to swap out just about every board on the computer to finally get it to work.
BTW, just how DO they ship those ShockWatch stickers to the manufacturers? Do they put it in an envelope and mark it FRAGILE? "Huh, FRAGILE. Shake-shake-shake. Doesn't look fragile to me."
"Dang, missed my flight. Now I've got to wait six hours. I'll be bored what am I going to do?
[Ding!] "I know! I'll send an email threatening to kill the President over the airport's Wi-Fi!
Then I can sit back and enjoy the show!
BTM
MOUSE (GPL) -- an OO framework for finite volume computations on unstructured grids.
Also, finite element analysis comes to mind as a fertile realm for OO. In fact there's a book on it:
Object Oriented Methods and Finite Element Analysis
Any homebrewer worth his salt knows that this is bogus because beer, being made from the four and only four ingredients: Water, Malt, Hops and Yeast (no freakin rice or wheat, thank you), will NOT sustain a bacterial culture. Why? Because the hops, adding bitterness, also make the Ph inhospitable to pathogens.
BTM
The fact is current fuel cell technology only works with hydrogen. This methanol cell works by first converting the methanol to hydrogen. The final product would probably be lighter, simpler and cheaper if it were fueled with straight h2.
The only drawback I can conceive is it's simpler to refuel with fluid than with pressurized h2.
BTM
As an example, we were initially intending to offer our product with MS SQL Server. We started looking at the numbers and were really disheartened when we realized that at the price we were selling our product, we were making more money for Microsoft than ourselves!
We then started looking for a SQL Server replacement and found that both Borland InterBase and Postgresql were excellent products. Now we use so much open source software that we are at the point where our clients don't have to purchase any software, and since our product has been rewritten in Java, we don't even require windows anymore.
BTM
GRASS has been freely available (GPL'd) for many years and has been continuously upgraded. Grass is Unix based, runs in Linux as well as others including windows. It provides both raster as well as vector capabilities. So why write a new one? For more on GRASS check out one of the mirror sites: US
Germany
Japan
(There are other mirrors as well). Billy The Mountain
I think it's a mistake therefore, to forsake the GUI. For example, with a GUI you can make a tabbed interface to allow the presentation a lot of information without losing your way.
Also with a non-web based app, you're back to installing the software on each computer where it's going to be used.
What architecture would I use? JSP. (Check out jetty, a simple and free jsp server). Marlin
Marlin
The advantage that those offering this type of service claims is that they can more easily add infrastructure than the operators relying on cable/fiber.
Frugal American printers found that they could save on ink costs:
Aluminium -> Aluminum, cha-ching 11%!
Colour -> Color, cha-ching 14%!
Favourite -> Favorite, cha-ching 11%!
Consider too that the internet changes everything. If you are smart enough and motiviated enough to use the internet to teach yourself, you have practically no limits to where you can go.
Dang! Now I'm gonna have to go back to Usenet. Marlin And the booth...and everything...lifted up...out of the parking lot...and into the Skyyyyyyyyy!