"Back" to hard-line capitolism? The last time people in America felt that they could speak their mind in public, they were assaulted by lawyers. The United States still jails their citizens for the slightest use of some harmless plants and chemicals and regularly suppresses religious freedom by putting "under god" into the pledge of allegance and forcing children to repeat it. Their no later term abortion policy (whatever the perceived need) takes away the fundamental human right of a woman's health and requires (REQUIRES!!) deaths of women in many, many situations.
The truth is that the only reason The United States could be considered a "beacon of freedom in anything" is because they pay only the slightest lip service to international law and systematically, institutionally, defy legitimate and reasonable sovereignety (for example, I would consider the ridiculous invasion of a sovereign country with no threat to our country a breach of international law and human rights. While it is OK to invade a country like Afganistan whos governing organisation supported rings of terrorists who flew planes into our buildings, and leave a country who has nothing to do with them protected).
In other words, your entire post is based off your grossly innacurate perception of another country. you are biasd to your country rather than proud, and your post proves it.
No, you cannot run a PC off a 12V battery. The reason is that the PC requires 12v, 5v, and 3.3v. The ATX power specification requires these voltages. You also need 5v for some drives.
Another reason you cannot run off a 12V directly is that the ATX power supply will condition the power. newer motherboard/processor combinations require VERY VERY clean power sources. the slightest noise in the signal will cause the machine to lock up, memory to go corrupt, etc.
12V DC-DC ATX power supplies do exist. They are simple circuits that just split the power into different voltages, and condition the current. They are tremendously more effecient than an AC-DC PSU which gets very hot and is relatively inefficient.
If you decide to go the route of the desktop for this project (which is possible, but I still recommend a laptop with DC/DC power adapter) then here is what you need to get:
Start with an ATX or microATX case. If you choose microATX, make sure that it accepts a normal ATX power supply. You can buy DC-DC ATX power supplies online (but microATX ones are harder to find) As long as your microATX case takes the ATX PSU (i have one i bought for $30 online that does just this, I think enlight's microATX also does it) then purchase an ATX DC-DC power supply online. 180 or 200W should be enough. You may also want to consider a Shuttle Cube barebones with nForce2 motherboard. In this case you could probably still use the DC/DC power supply, but you would have to have it sitting external to the unit (in the back somewhere) Maybe paint it black so it doesn't look ugly, or put it in some sort of asthetically pleasing case of your choice.
- Don't go for the highest power CPU and video card. Select either AthlonXP (barton core only), Duron (latest core), Pentium3, or if you can get your hands on it, Pentium M processor. DO NOT buy a pentium 4 or P4 based Celeron you will seriously regret it. the newer AMD AthlonXP Barton cores have very good power saving features and if you don't overclock it, you will not be in so much hurt. In fact, it is possible with newer motherboards to underclock the chip and under volt it. I would definately consider doing this once you get your system up and running for the long run.
- Select a motherboard for your processor. if you are going with athlonXP or duron, I would recommend the nForce2 Ultra motherboard. Get the one with integrated video. You don't want a seperate video card taking up extra power. The integrated video is decent 3D with quality similar to Geforce MX series. NForce2 Ultra's dual channel memory controller should HELP make up for some slowdowns get for having a lower powered/underclocked CPU.
- With the nforce board (or other comparable board) you won't need addon cards like NIC or Sound. (hopefully your motherboard will be supported under linux with sound and NIC drivers) if you do need addon cards, use only your absolute minimum requirements.
- Buy LARGE 5400RPM hard drives. Don't go for 7200RPM, and don't buy small ones. If you want 160 gigs, don't go out and buy 4x 40GB drives. Just buy one. if a RAID array is required, then still try to stick with 5400RPM drives as large as possible. The larger your drive the fewer you will require in your system. Don't use a buncha extra drives you have laying around. Spend extra on this project and do it right with a single drive solution.
- This next step is a little harder to do with commodity equipment, but is possible. Buy fans that will adjust their speed depending on temperature. Most "temperature sensitive" fans are tuned so that in any real world circumstance, they are either full time full speed, or full time minimum speed. You won't find many fans that are tuned so they slow down when your PC sleeps and speed up when the temp rises due to CPU load. You need seperate logic to do such things. The simplest way to go is with a "fan bus" which has manual knobs on the front of the computer. You turn the fans down as low as they go when you get up and leave your PC idle. AVOID fans smaller than 80mm like the plague. Don't put active cooling on your motherboard chipset, insted opt for a larger heatsink on the northbridge, with quality mounting and quality heatsink grease. Also, opt for expensive but massive and large heatsinks for the CPU. Don't even bother with a 60mm heatsink, as it will cost you in the long run. I personally use 80x80mm alpha heatsinks (with copper inlay) with a 92mm fan that has a 92-> 80mm plastic fan "adapter" cone. This way you can buy LOW SPEED 92mm fan that uses negligable electricity rather than buying high powered high speed 60mm fans. Consider using a single 120MM case fan in the front of the PC running at 5 or 7 volts (you can do this by changing the wires on the MO
"Pair this with a small, power-saving bare-bones PC, and I would imagine you would have a setup that would be comparable in wattage to a laptop. Perhaps even better, considering that you are still using gobs of power from the DC->AC->DC conversion when charging the laptop batteries.
Finding a DC LCD Monitor may be a bit harder, but I'm sure they are out there somewhere. If you are feeling adventurous, you could even modify a monitor for DC..."
For the laptop, they sell 12vDC->DC converters in most retail stores. buy.com and bestbuy both sell them. They come with interchangeable plugs where you can fit any model laptop onto it. Be sure to check compatability of the power adapter with yoru laptop before purchase.
As for LCD monitors, most also have external AC Adapters. All you need to do is find out what pin does what in the power connector. Then buy an approprieately speced DC->DC converter (just like the one for the laptop) and you might have to cut and splice the connector yourself.
unless the LCD monitor has an integrated AC Adapter (like the viewsonic VP171B) then this trick will work provided you are technically inclined to sort out which pins provide which voltages and how many amps each one requires minimum.
Please don't underestimate the power savings from going DC only. As long as you keep your main power lines high quality and short (from the solar pannel to your batteries, and from batteries to devices) then DC power can cut your solar pannel requirements down by 30-50%.
All we need now is one of these that will electrically produce hydrogen to store in its cells when the power is on (ie, sun is out) and use that generated hydrogen to power your devices at night.. imagine a truely rechargeable battery that did not lose its ability after successive discharges (like chemical batteries do)
Don't forget to mention how this is accomplished. You will need what is called a DC-DC converter. They sell universal ones at retail outlets where you just pick which connector your laptop uses. It is ment to be powered off 12V DC (like a car or marine battery or alternator) and basically cleans up the source, and splits it into 12v,5v, and 3.3v rails.
If you use solar pannels with the standard laptop power supply, you are seriously wasting lots of electricity in the form of heat.
Also watch out. if you are going to go all DC (ie, no power inverters for AC) then you will want to make sure to keep your power cables from the pannel to the house short and thick. low voltage DC current isn't like high volt AC. Longer and thinner cables won't carry your electricity very well and will greatly reduce the wattage your solar pannels will provide to you.
its not a blanket statement. Nvidia drivers for both nForce motherboard chipset and GeForce Graphics chipsets has never _EVER_ been of production quality. nVidia under linux is asking for trouble.
It's too bad too because combined with their drivers for windows, they have the best motherboard platform even when compared to intel chipsets... its a real shame.
Only QT has it. It is perfectly legal and accepted in the KDE community to produce KDE applications with the GTK+ toolkit.
Sodipodi already does this, and there is a ongoing project to make it negligable work to write full GTK+ applications that link to KDE libs for DCOP communication, print and file dialogues, KIO Slaves, drag-n-drop, etc..
This is how they are getting OOo and mozilla looking like KDE, using the same techniques.
(note: this is not currently possible for GNOME+Qt development)
In other words, KDE already has compatibility and choice for your toolkit of choice, and it is improving every day. GNOME doesn't.
If you read my post, you would have read that the MINIMUM requirement is a windows license, with optional compiler, server OS, SQL server, MSDN, etc..
if you want to write programs for MS server, you must shell out money for their server OS. if you want to write applications using MS SQL Server, you must shell out money to license it. if you want the support from MS, you must shell out the money for MSDN. if you want to write applications that integrate into Office, you must shell out money to buy an office developer license. etc etc etc.. I never implied that you needed all these. I simply stated you need it if you plan on developing for it.
If you are just programing for windows XP Pro, then yea, you might be able to get away with $299.99 and use a free compilier. Good luck with MFC if you plan on making a non-trivial GUI.
"What if they suddenly decide to increase the price ten-fold? And then a new developer joins the team and needs a development license. What am I to do? Start porting to GTK+?"
What if MS decides to increase their windows license price ten fold? What are you to do then??? the HORROR!
MS Windows XP Professional License: $299.99 MS Office 2003 Pro: $549.99 (developer edition $$??) MS Visual Studio.NET 2003 Pro: $999.99 MS SQL Server License: Big money MS Server 2003 License: Big money MS MSDN Subscription: $2,000+/year
Mac OS X: $99 Apple G5 Computer capable of running os X: $1000 price premium over equivilent x86 hardware.
You must have AT MINIMUM the Windows XP Pro license, and a license to a compiler (and if your not using ms visual, why even bother on windows). This adds up. and it is REQUIRED to obtain in order to develop for the windows platform. This license must be purchased for EVERY developer involved in the project. On top of those minimums, there are all the addons, MSDN Subscriptions (which almost every big time MS Developer has), office developer, SQL server, IIS Server, etc etc etc etc... the list goes on. After adding a couple of extra licenses, you end up paying MORE than the QT license. You can say.. "i want a base which is free for everyone, including developers" but you can't use "no fees on windows" as an excuse for this statement. Not only this, but you still must pay for your GUI Toolkit on windows platform, as GTK+ is not 100% ported and working, QT costs, and MFC is a project's death card.
In other words, your argument is void because of its purpose. Tell me you want the gratis development platform for everyone "just because" and then at least you will have a coherent argument. But the MS EXCUSE just doesn't cut it.
I'm not pushing for GTK+ or QT to be the default, im just pushing for the stop of ignorant arguments. so here goes:
"But I think it's wrong to force this policy onto all users of the system"
Even IF QT/KDE became the default desktop, there is NOTHING preventing anybody from writting KDE applications using the GTK+ toolkit. There are already projects out there that do just this. and they integrate nicely, and look identical to eachother. Speed isn't an issue cos GTK and Qt libs are already required on any GUI desktop on linux anyway, just because of the diversity of the applications already in existance. If GTK+ and Qt were the only 2 major toolkits on linux desktops, that would be better than any other platform in existance: Windows, Mac OS X both have several different competing toolkits that are used commonly on every day end user desktops (QT, Cocoa, Carbon, MFC, GTK, Borland[?] Visual Basic).
You must also realize that there aren't many GTK+ commercial/closed apps. But there are plenty for Qt already. Why is that if companies aren't willing to pay for it? (photoshop elements, theKompany software, Opera, to name a few)
What grudge? Look at the article, there are many Debian developers who are supporting this effort. Debian has no grudge against KDE. in fact, Debian ships one of the best KDE distros out there. To say that there is a grudge between the 2 projects is just ridiculous.
The conflicts are coming from Bruce Peren's vision of having a completely gratis operating system that coporations can then add value to and resell.
The problem is that QT cannot be resold with closed source applications without royalties.
The answer for Bruce is to use GNOME only and exclude KDE. Never mind that you can still develop KDE applications using the GTK+ gratis toolkit (provided you would want to use a toolkit that is as primitive as GTK+)
The answer for the rest of us is: "Qt has tons of commercial programs using it because of its cross platform design and top notch API... GTK doesn't. KDE has a larger user base.... GNOME doesn't. KDE uses OO toolkit to achieve its integration... GNOME is stuck in the stone age. KDE had all the problems GNOME is currently working on figured out 2 years ago... GNOME still doesn't. And KDE is a worldwide project... GNOME is a US Centric project."
The facts are that KDE coporate and enterprise desktops have been deployed and in production usage for years in massive quantities, and GNOME is just barely starting out. GNOME itself was created just because RMS didn't like the QPL license, and he was afraid KDE would take over the Linux desktop and stick us all with Qt royalties. Now that Qt is GPL, bruce perens is complaing that it is "too GPL"... Give me a BREAK!
There is no more RedHat as a major distro. They got rid of their standard desktop OS... So redhat is no longer a major player in the linux desktop market.
So there is: SuSe, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware for desktop Linux OS's. Maybe you can claim Fedora is, but that project is already as good as dead. I know SuSe and makdrake uses KDE, Debian uses either, and both integrate extremely well, and gentoo and slackware I don't know their default, but they both ship with the latest KDE...
So.. really there aren't any big named GNOME desktop Linux vendors left... (unless you count Sun and Novell, which have yet to ship a GNOME desktop linux distro in any significant volume)
In other words, you are talking like GNOME is deployed on the two largest distributions as default, when in fact, it isn't.
With QT, you have the choice: QPL, GPL, or QT Pay.
The QPL allows you to write software falling under the "open source" definition. The GPL allows you to write software falling under the GPL, and the QT Pay license allows you to write closed source software. The only license that charges is the pay license. The QPL and GPL are both FREE. And the QPL and GPL together support all forms of free and opensource software. Before QT was GPL'd, the QPL was the only free license, and it supported all free software licenses, including BSD, GPL, MIT, Artistic, etc..
The ONLY REASON that Qt added the GPL option was because RMS had a fit and started the GNOME project because RMS thinks that the QPL is incompatible with the QPL (which BTW, RMS is really the only person who really thinks that)
In other words, your post is uninformed, ignorant, and just plain flamebait.
ISV's who program for windows don't seem to be having any problems paying for the Microsoft Visual C++ License they must purchase in order to program for the windows environment...
(or borland compiler, or other commercial development environment)
This is what Proprietary software is ALL ABOUT. Integrating someone else's technology into yours, pay royalties for it, and then sell it at a profit. Have you ALL LOST YOUR MIND???? This is how it has been done for YEARS. Closed source software has ALWAYS worked on this model, and the price of QT licensing is negligable compared to the cost of paying developers to use GTK+, and longer development cycles which exist for non OO based GUI tools. If a closed source software company can't afford a few thousand dollars for QT licenses, they need to seriously reconsider their business model.
Considering PyQT and PerlQT now, the LARGEST developer and user DE on linux, and the top notch and stable KDE, there is really no reason whatsoever to even imply this measly licensing fee for non GPL apps excuse for this one. Its the most ridiculous excuse I have ever been exposed to. Seriously.
The main point? Closed source proprietary technology houses HAVE NO PROBLEM paying negligable royalties when the alternative is increased cost due to longer development cycles forced by GNOME/GTK+, and smaller and less helpful community based almost exclusively in the US.
This does NOT exclude smaller companies from the competition. They always have the option to use GTK+ with themes to match the target DE (this functionality already exists and is being extended every day) if they need gratis GUI libraries for use in proprietary software. It is also not a problem to write GTK+ applications that integrate into KDE's libraries for printing, file browsing, etc.
In a nutshell, licensing should have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with choosing GNOME.
Communist china is more liberal than the US in almost every government aspect. Larger government, state owned businesses, state housing everywhere.
In the US, it just so happens that the conservative audience is also the less enlightened citizens that typically push for the human rights violations on US soil (drug war, enemy "terrorist" combatant arrests, racism and seperatists, taxing food for poverty class, non-existant freedom of speech via DMCA, etc.)... In China, since there are no conservatives to attract the less enlightened, it is the less enlightened liberals that do the same type of things... and since democracy does not exist in any form there, there is no accountability against these people.
...AIDS education is equivilent to baptist religion in the United States of America.
...Citizens of the United States of America pay 2-3x as much for US Made Rx drugs than any other people in other countries pay for US Made drugs. And George W Bush's recent seniors drug bill just made it illegal to go to canada to purchase drugs.
Well, if you could find a motherboard that small, usually they come with a "mini" IDE Connector... Not one for laptop hard drives but for Compact Flash cards... Compact Flash is pin compatible with IDE ATA/33 interface and that is what you would probably be using for a DIY ultra small PC of the size you are thinking about...
I know, compactFlash is still a little bulky, but it is the only cost effective flash memory I am aware of that uses standard interfaces you would find on everyday motherboard chipsets...
Maybe because some people want "phones" and not big bulky "PDAs" taking up their space in their skimpy pockets they give you nowadays in clothing.
I'd much rather flip open a phone and answer a call than bust out a PDA and hold it up to my face like im holding a phone from zack morris's locker.
Who needs a full featured PDA with a phone built in when you can get a full featured phone with a PDA built in?
The question is worth asking, and so far, that is why the motorolla MPx200 (windows smartphone) with SD/MMC Memory slot and stero headphone jack with fully featured PDA Applications is among the most popular of GSM phones currently in the united states. It has all the fancy stuff you would find in a PDA, plus it comes with a built in media player, something you don't normally find integrated in a palm. The only thing it lacks is PDF and excell document viewers/editors but I have read on the internet that they are available to download. Those flash MP3 players cost over 150$ at bestbuy for just 128-256MB. The 299$ list price tag on a high end smartphone is well worth the investment just for the mp3 player alone so you don't have to carry around 2 seperate devices.
Take a look at the screenshots on this link and tell me you would rather have a full size Palm Tungsten W or Handspring PDA phone insted of this high resolution (but smaller screen) smartphone in a small and light flip design.
"tons of applications because it runs PalmOS, and is supported by a company that's been in the business of making pda / cell phones for a while now?"
If you haven't noticed, Linux has been around longer than Palm OS. It has more applications available. QT/Embedded has been around for a reasonable while now and it is very fast. Pretty much all the smartphones being manufactured in china are coming with linux on them. Including motorolla, the world's second largest handset manufacturer. By the time they hit the streets in the US, I'm sure we will be seeing some very interesting products. I'm talking stuff that blows palms out of the water. Konqurer built into the phone, etc etc..
This is because the FCC doesn't require full compliance until later in 2004 for the less than top 100. This means that some providers are already setup to exchange numbers with some, but others aren't with others. All the providers can do it, just not to all the others. It means they need to enter more data into the database before it will work right for everything.. just hold tight
where I live, ATT can accept customers from cingular but not sprint.
when gateway switched their sales and service databases to seible, they only gave us some java frontend that takes about 3 minutes per checkbox and dropdown menu to select any options in the menu. The seible reps admit this is true, and have yet to find a solution. They claim they are not compatible with windows XP because of sun's lawsuit. Sounds to me more like they are only compatible with an outdated and illegal version of java.
On top of this, now it takes about 45 steps to file a warranty work order rather than a few clicks before seible...
Slashdot Mirror
"Back" to hard-line capitolism? The last time people in America felt that they could speak their mind in public, they were assaulted by lawyers. The United States still jails their citizens for the slightest use of some harmless plants and chemicals and regularly suppresses religious freedom by putting "under god" into the pledge of allegance and forcing children to repeat it. Their no later term abortion policy (whatever the perceived need) takes away the fundamental human right of a woman's health and requires (REQUIRES!!) deaths of women in many, many situations.
The truth is that the only reason The United States could be considered a "beacon of freedom in anything" is because they pay only the slightest lip service to international law and systematically, institutionally, defy legitimate and reasonable sovereignety (for example, I would consider the ridiculous invasion of a sovereign country with no threat to our country a breach of international law and human rights. While it is OK to invade a country like Afganistan whos governing organisation supported rings of terrorists who flew planes into our buildings, and leave a country who has nothing to do with them protected).
In other words, your entire post is based off your grossly innacurate perception of another country. you are biasd to your country rather than proud, and your post proves it.
The funny thing is....
ECS motherboards == PC Chips motherboards
lol
Oh well, they still make half decent parts provided you select the correct chipset.
You don't think that the iranian earthquake is a loss of an opportunity to progress?
Hello,
No, you cannot run a PC off a 12V battery. The reason is that the PC requires 12v, 5v, and 3.3v. The ATX power specification requires these voltages. You also need 5v for some drives.
Another reason you cannot run off a 12V directly is that the ATX power supply will condition the power. newer motherboard/processor combinations require VERY VERY clean power sources. the slightest noise in the signal will cause the machine to lock up, memory to go corrupt, etc.
12V DC-DC ATX power supplies do exist. They are simple circuits that just split the power into different voltages, and condition the current. They are tremendously more effecient than an AC-DC PSU which gets very hot and is relatively inefficient.
If you decide to go the route of the desktop for this project (which is possible, but I still recommend a laptop with DC/DC power adapter) then here is what you need to get:
Start with an ATX or microATX case. If you choose microATX, make sure that it accepts a normal ATX power supply. You can buy DC-DC ATX power supplies online (but microATX ones are harder to find) As long as your microATX case takes the ATX PSU (i have one i bought for $30 online that does just this, I think enlight's microATX also does it) then purchase an ATX DC-DC power supply online. 180 or 200W should be enough. You may also want to consider a Shuttle Cube barebones with nForce2 motherboard. In this case you could probably still use the DC/DC power supply, but you would have to have it sitting external to the unit (in the back somewhere) Maybe paint it black so it doesn't look ugly, or put it in some sort of asthetically pleasing case of your choice.
- Don't go for the highest power CPU and video card. Select either AthlonXP (barton core only), Duron (latest core), Pentium3, or if you can get your hands on it, Pentium M processor. DO NOT buy a pentium 4 or P4 based Celeron you will seriously regret it. the newer AMD AthlonXP Barton cores have very good power saving features and if you don't overclock it, you will not be in so much hurt. In fact, it is possible with newer motherboards to underclock the chip and under volt it. I would definately consider doing this once you get your system up and running for the long run.
- Select a motherboard for your processor. if you are going with athlonXP or duron, I would recommend the nForce2 Ultra motherboard. Get the one with integrated video. You don't want a seperate video card taking up extra power. The integrated video is decent 3D with quality similar to Geforce MX series. NForce2 Ultra's dual channel memory controller should HELP make up for some slowdowns get for having a lower powered/underclocked CPU.
- With the nforce board (or other comparable board) you won't need addon cards like NIC or Sound. (hopefully your motherboard will be supported under linux with sound and NIC drivers) if you do need addon cards, use only your absolute minimum requirements.
- Buy LARGE 5400RPM hard drives. Don't go for 7200RPM, and don't buy small ones. If you want 160 gigs, don't go out and buy 4x 40GB drives. Just buy one. if a RAID array is required, then still try to stick with 5400RPM drives as large as possible. The larger your drive the fewer you will require in your system. Don't use a buncha extra drives you have laying around. Spend extra on this project and do it right with a single drive solution.
- This next step is a little harder to do with commodity equipment, but is possible. Buy fans that will adjust their speed depending on temperature. Most "temperature sensitive" fans are tuned so that in any real world circumstance, they are either full time full speed, or full time minimum speed. You won't find many fans that are tuned so they slow down when your PC sleeps and speed up when the temp rises due to CPU load. You need seperate logic to do such things. The simplest way to go is with a "fan bus" which has manual knobs on the front of the computer. You turn the fans down as low as they go when you get up and leave your PC idle. AVOID fans smaller than 80mm like the plague. Don't put active cooling on your motherboard chipset, insted opt for a larger heatsink on the northbridge, with quality mounting and quality heatsink grease. Also, opt for expensive but massive and large heatsinks for the CPU. Don't even bother with a 60mm heatsink, as it will cost you in the long run. I personally use 80x80mm alpha heatsinks (with copper inlay) with a 92mm fan that has a 92-> 80mm plastic fan "adapter" cone. This way you can buy LOW SPEED 92mm fan that uses negligable electricity rather than buying high powered high speed 60mm fans. Consider using a single 120MM case fan in the front of the PC running at 5 or 7 volts (you can do this by changing the wires on the MO
"Pair this with a small, power-saving bare-bones PC, and I would imagine you would have a setup that would be comparable in wattage to a laptop. Perhaps even better, considering that you are still using gobs of power from the DC->AC->DC conversion when charging the laptop batteries.
Finding a DC LCD Monitor may be a bit harder, but I'm sure they are out there somewhere. If you are feeling adventurous, you could even modify a monitor for DC..."
For the laptop, they sell 12vDC->DC converters in most retail stores. buy.com and bestbuy both sell them. They come with interchangeable plugs where you can fit any model laptop onto it. Be sure to check compatability of the power adapter with yoru laptop before purchase.
As for LCD monitors, most also have external AC Adapters. All you need to do is find out what pin does what in the power connector. Then buy an approprieately speced DC->DC converter (just like the one for the laptop) and you might have to cut and splice the connector yourself.
unless the LCD monitor has an integrated AC Adapter (like the viewsonic VP171B) then this trick will work provided you are technically inclined to sort out which pins provide which voltages and how many amps each one requires minimum.
Please don't underestimate the power savings from going DC only. As long as you keep your main power lines high quality and short (from the solar pannel to your batteries, and from batteries to devices) then DC power can cut your solar pannel requirements down by 30-50%.
All we need now is one of these that will electrically produce hydrogen to store in its cells when the power is on (ie, sun is out) and use that generated hydrogen to power your devices at night.. imagine a truely rechargeable battery that did not lose its ability after successive discharges (like chemical batteries do)
Don't forget to mention how this is accomplished. You will need what is called a DC-DC converter. They sell universal ones at retail outlets where you just pick which connector your laptop uses. It is ment to be powered off 12V DC (like a car or marine battery or alternator) and basically cleans up the source, and splits it into 12v,5v, and 3.3v rails.
If you use solar pannels with the standard laptop power supply, you are seriously wasting lots of electricity in the form of heat.
Also watch out. if you are going to go all DC (ie, no power inverters for AC) then you will want to make sure to keep your power cables from the pannel to the house short and thick. low voltage DC current isn't like high volt AC. Longer and thinner cables won't carry your electricity very well and will greatly reduce the wattage your solar pannels will provide to you.
its not a blanket statement. Nvidia drivers for both nForce motherboard chipset and GeForce Graphics chipsets has never _EVER_ been of production quality. nVidia under linux is asking for trouble.
It's too bad too because combined with their drivers for windows, they have the best motherboard platform even when compared to intel chipsets... its a real shame.
"Community wouldn't benefit. Trolltech would."
Trolltech IS the QT Community. When trolltech benefits, everyone benefits because of better QT.
Qt's price is why you can port a linux QT app to the mac in negligable time... for free.
Qt's price is why you can write KDE with all its features and quality in the amount of time it has taken... for free.
Qt's price is why Qt is the easiest to use, most robust, simplest, highest performance, and most powerful GUI toolkit available... for free.
Qt's price is why Konquror is the lightest weight, fully featured, fastest, and most compliant web browser on the planet... for free.
Qt's price is what makes Quanta become the best web development kit on the linux platform... for free.
Everyone who uses the desktop (including windows users who unknowningly install Qt applications) will benefit from trolltech's profits.
... have this restriction.
Only QT has it. It is perfectly legal and accepted in the KDE community to produce KDE applications with the GTK+ toolkit.
Sodipodi already does this, and there is a ongoing project to make it negligable work to write full GTK+ applications that link to KDE libs for DCOP communication, print and file dialogues, KIO Slaves, drag-n-drop, etc..
This is how they are getting OOo and mozilla looking like KDE, using the same techniques.
(note: this is not currently possible for GNOME+Qt development)
In other words, KDE already has compatibility and choice for your toolkit of choice, and it is improving every day. GNOME doesn't.
If you read my post, you would have read that the MINIMUM requirement is a windows license, with optional compiler, server OS, SQL server, MSDN, etc..
if you want to write programs for MS server, you must shell out money for their server OS. if you want to write applications using MS SQL Server, you must shell out money to license it. if you want the support from MS, you must shell out the money for MSDN. if you want to write applications that integrate into Office, you must shell out money to buy an office developer license. etc etc etc.. I never implied that you needed all these. I simply stated you need it if you plan on developing for it.
If you are just programing for windows XP Pro, then yea, you might be able to get away with $299.99 and use a free compilier. Good luck with MFC if you plan on making a non-trivial GUI.
"What if they suddenly decide to increase the price ten-fold? And then a new developer joins the team and needs a development license. What am I to do? Start porting to GTK+?"
What if MS decides to increase their windows license price ten fold? What are you to do then??? the HORROR!
MS Windows XP Professional License: $299.99 .NET 2003 Pro: $999.99
MS Office 2003 Pro: $549.99 (developer edition $$??)
MS Visual Studio
MS SQL Server License: Big money
MS Server 2003 License: Big money
MS MSDN Subscription: $2,000+/year
Mac OS X: $99
Apple G5 Computer capable of running os X: $1000 price premium over equivilent x86 hardware.
You must have AT MINIMUM the Windows XP Pro license, and a license to a compiler (and if your not using ms visual, why even bother on windows). This adds up. and it is REQUIRED to obtain in order to develop for the windows platform. This license must be purchased for EVERY developer involved in the project. On top of those minimums, there are all the addons, MSDN Subscriptions (which almost every big time MS Developer has), office developer, SQL server, IIS Server, etc etc etc etc... the list goes on. After adding a couple of extra licenses, you end up paying MORE than the QT license. You can say.. "i want a base which is free for everyone, including developers" but you can't use "no fees on windows" as an excuse for this statement. Not only this, but you still must pay for your GUI Toolkit on windows platform, as GTK+ is not 100% ported and working, QT costs, and MFC is a project's death card.
In other words, your argument is void because of its purpose. Tell me you want the gratis development platform for everyone "just because" and then at least you will have a coherent argument. But the MS EXCUSE just doesn't cut it.
I'm not pushing for GTK+ or QT to be the default, im just pushing for the stop of ignorant arguments. so here goes:
"But I think it's wrong to force this policy onto all users of the system"
Even IF QT/KDE became the default desktop, there is NOTHING preventing anybody from writting KDE applications using the GTK+ toolkit. There are already projects out there that do just this. and they integrate nicely, and look identical to eachother. Speed isn't an issue cos GTK and Qt libs are already required on any GUI desktop on linux anyway, just because of the diversity of the applications already in existance. If GTK+ and Qt were the only 2 major toolkits on linux desktops, that would be better than any other platform in existance: Windows, Mac OS X both have several different competing toolkits that are used commonly on every day end user desktops (QT, Cocoa, Carbon, MFC, GTK, Borland[?] Visual Basic).
You must also realize that there aren't many GTK+ commercial/closed apps. But there are plenty for Qt already. Why is that if companies aren't willing to pay for it? (photoshop elements, theKompany software, Opera, to name a few)
What grudge? Look at the article, there are many Debian developers who are supporting this effort. Debian has no grudge against KDE. in fact, Debian ships one of the best KDE distros out there. To say that there is a grudge between the 2 projects is just ridiculous.
The conflicts are coming from Bruce Peren's vision of having a completely gratis operating system that coporations can then add value to and resell.
The problem is that QT cannot be resold with closed source applications without royalties.
The answer for Bruce is to use GNOME only and exclude KDE. Never mind that you can still develop KDE applications using the GTK+ gratis toolkit (provided you would want to use a toolkit that is as primitive as GTK+)
The answer for the rest of us is: "Qt has tons of commercial programs using it because of its cross platform design and top notch API... GTK doesn't. KDE has a larger user base.... GNOME doesn't. KDE uses OO toolkit to achieve its integration... GNOME is stuck in the stone age. KDE had all the problems GNOME is currently working on figured out 2 years ago... GNOME still doesn't. And KDE is a worldwide project... GNOME is a US Centric project."
The facts are that KDE coporate and enterprise desktops have been deployed and in production usage for years in massive quantities, and GNOME is just barely starting out. GNOME itself was created just because RMS didn't like the QPL license, and he was afraid KDE would take over the Linux desktop and stick us all with Qt royalties. Now that Qt is GPL, bruce perens is complaing that it is "too GPL"... Give me a BREAK!
There is no more RedHat as a major distro. They got rid of their standard desktop OS... So redhat is no longer a major player in the linux desktop market.
So there is: SuSe, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware for desktop Linux OS's. Maybe you can claim Fedora is, but that project is already as good as dead. I know SuSe and makdrake uses KDE, Debian uses either, and both integrate extremely well, and gentoo and slackware I don't know their default, but they both ship with the latest KDE...
So.. really there aren't any big named GNOME desktop Linux vendors left... (unless you count Sun and Novell, which have yet to ship a GNOME desktop linux distro in any significant volume)
In other words, you are talking like GNOME is deployed on the two largest distributions as default, when in fact, it isn't.
BZZZZZZZT WRONG... ERROR...
With QT, you have the choice: QPL, GPL, or QT Pay.
The QPL allows you to write software falling under the "open source" definition. The GPL allows you to write software falling under the GPL, and the QT Pay license allows you to write closed source software. The only license that charges is the pay license. The QPL and GPL are both FREE. And the QPL and GPL together support all forms of free and opensource software. Before QT was GPL'd, the QPL was the only free license, and it supported all free software licenses, including BSD, GPL, MIT, Artistic, etc..
The ONLY REASON that Qt added the GPL option was because RMS had a fit and started the GNOME project because RMS thinks that the QPL is incompatible with the QPL (which BTW, RMS is really the only person who really thinks that)
In other words, your post is uninformed, ignorant, and just plain flamebait.
ISV's who program for windows don't seem to be having any problems paying for the Microsoft Visual C++ License they must purchase in order to program for the windows environment...
(or borland compiler, or other commercial development environment)
This is what Proprietary software is ALL ABOUT. Integrating someone else's technology into yours, pay royalties for it, and then sell it at a profit. Have you ALL LOST YOUR MIND???? This is how it has been done for YEARS. Closed source software has ALWAYS worked on this model, and the price of QT licensing is negligable compared to the cost of paying developers to use GTK+, and longer development cycles which exist for non OO based GUI tools. If a closed source software company can't afford a few thousand dollars for QT licenses, they need to seriously reconsider their business model.
Considering PyQT and PerlQT now, the LARGEST developer and user DE on linux, and the top notch and stable KDE, there is really no reason whatsoever to even imply this measly licensing fee for non GPL apps excuse for this one. Its the most ridiculous excuse I have ever been exposed to. Seriously.
The main point? Closed source proprietary technology houses HAVE NO PROBLEM paying negligable royalties when the alternative is increased cost due to longer development cycles forced by GNOME/GTK+, and smaller and less helpful community based almost exclusively in the US.
This does NOT exclude smaller companies from the competition. They always have the option to use GTK+ with themes to match the target DE (this functionality already exists and is being extended every day) if they need gratis GUI libraries for use in proprietary software. It is also not a problem to write GTK+ applications that integrate into KDE's libraries for printing, file browsing, etc.
In a nutshell, licensing should have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with choosing GNOME.
.. What I can't understand is that the development effort is *much* bigger [In the United States] for Gnome than for KDE"
In fact, KDE has a larger developer and user base than any other desktop environment (besides windows) in the world.
"Honestly, you all make me sick."
You are just ignorant.
Communist china is more liberal than the US in almost every government aspect. Larger government, state owned businesses, state housing everywhere.
In the US, it just so happens that the conservative audience is also the less enlightened citizens that typically push for the human rights violations on US soil (drug war, enemy "terrorist" combatant arrests, racism and seperatists, taxing food for poverty class, non-existant freedom of speech via DMCA, etc.)... In China, since there are no conservatives to attract the less enlightened, it is the less enlightened liberals that do the same type of things... and since democracy does not exist in any form there, there is no accountability against these people.
...AIDS education is equivilent to baptist religion in the United States of America.
...Citizens of the United States of America pay 2-3x as much for US Made Rx drugs than any other people in other countries pay for US Made drugs. And George W Bush's recent seniors drug bill just made it illegal to go to canada to purchase drugs.
...Internal Government agencies murder and jail for life farmers for producing state sanctioned crops.
...freedom of speech is nonexistant in the United States of America.
...soldiers are given amphetamines to enhance battle skills.
...infanticide of children in poverty is commonplace
...
of course the list goes on...
Well, if you could find a motherboard that small, usually they come with a "mini" IDE Connector... Not one for laptop hard drives but for Compact Flash cards... Compact Flash is pin compatible with IDE ATA/33 interface and that is what you would probably be using for a DIY ultra small PC of the size you are thinking about...
I know, compactFlash is still a little bulky, but it is the only cost effective flash memory I am aware of that uses standard interfaces you would find on everyday motherboard chipsets...
Maybe because some people want "phones" and not big bulky "PDAs" taking up their space in their skimpy pockets they give you nowadays in clothing.
I'd much rather flip open a phone and answer a call than bust out a PDA and hold it up to my face like im holding a phone from zack morris's locker.
Who needs a full featured PDA with a phone built in when you can get a full featured phone with a PDA built in?
The question is worth asking, and so far, that is why the motorolla MPx200 (windows smartphone) with SD/MMC Memory slot and stero headphone jack with fully featured PDA Applications is among the most popular of GSM phones currently in the united states. It has all the fancy stuff you would find in a PDA, plus it comes with a built in media player, something you don't normally find integrated in a palm. The only thing it lacks is PDF and excell document viewers/editors but I have read on the internet that they are available to download. Those flash MP3 players cost over 150$ at bestbuy for just 128-256MB. The 299$ list price tag on a high end smartphone is well worth the investment just for the mp3 player alone so you don't have to carry around 2 seperate devices.
Take a look at the screenshots on this link and tell me you would rather have a full size Palm Tungsten W or Handspring PDA phone insted of this high resolution (but smaller screen) smartphone in a small and light flip design.
"tons of applications because it runs PalmOS, and is supported by a company that's been in the business of making pda / cell phones for a while now?"
If you haven't noticed, Linux has been around longer than Palm OS. It has more applications available. QT/Embedded has been around for a reasonable while now and it is very fast. Pretty much all the smartphones being manufactured in china are coming with linux on them. Including motorolla, the world's second largest handset manufacturer. By the time they hit the streets in the US, I'm sure we will be seeing some very interesting products. I'm talking stuff that blows palms out of the water. Konqurer built into the phone, etc etc..
"I'm 100% sure this applies to China, and many other second/third world countries"
China isn't 2nd or 3rd world. Visit any of their large cities or their farmers, and you will understand.
This is because the FCC doesn't require full compliance until later in 2004 for the less than top 100. This means that some providers are already setup to exchange numbers with some, but others aren't with others. All the providers can do it, just not to all the others. It means they need to enter more data into the database before it will work right for everything.. just hold tight
where I live, ATT can accept customers from cingular but not sprint.
too bad they switched to seible..
when gateway switched their sales and service databases to seible, they only gave us some java frontend that takes about 3 minutes per checkbox and dropdown menu to select any options in the menu. The seible reps admit this is true, and have yet to find a solution. They claim they are not compatible with windows XP because of sun's lawsuit. Sounds to me more like they are only compatible with an outdated and illegal version of java.
On top of this, now it takes about 45 steps to file a warranty work order rather than a few clicks before seible...