Okay, I may have gotten a bit silly with my arguments. I'm certainly an advocate of renewable fuel sources, so the "hydrogen doesn't exist freely" argument is a wash.
I understand that gases can be compressed, although H2 needs to be at something like 5000 or 10000 psi (roughly 35 or 70 MPa) to store enough fuel in a reasonably-sized container. I'm not exactly relishing the idea of having one of those in my backseat.
Hydrogen is also flammable in widely ranging concentrations and the flame is nearly invisible. Just a minor safety issue (not that gasoline is exactly safe, but something to think about)
Anyway, I'm sure a lot of neat hydrogen tech will come out in the next decade or so. I just wanted to point out that hydrogen isn't a catch-all solution. There are some big problems for handling it.
Hmm. Maybe I've become brainwashed, but I think some of your experiences may be a bit outdated. Most of the newer diesels I've seen have turbochargers to compensate for some of the performance issues. I know that there are a lot of gas/petrol cars out there that sound a heck of a lot worse than many diesels. I guess I haven't seen any black smoke coming out of TDI cars, but I guess they weren't accelerating hard at the time. I know that Biodiesel reduces most of the nasties coming out of the tailpipe, but I know there's a category or two where things are still bad (or maybe worse, I forget).
Of course, biodiesel isn't available everywhere. Even the ultra-low sulfur diesel fuels aren't easy to find in the U.S.
After that picture was taken, the price went up to $3.13.
I'm pretty sure that biodiesel can be produced for less than that. Production just hasn't been scaled up enough yet. In the U.S., biodiesel is only produced at a fraction of the rate of bio-ethanol.
Also, don't forget that when you compare fossil fuels to biofuels, part of the biofuel cost comes from fermenting/converting the source material into fuel. Crude oil has already gone through that process, and only refining needs to be done.
For what it's worth, I'd be happy to pay more for fuel if I knew it was coming from a closed-cycle system (the carbon produced by burning biofuels was originally absorbed by not-long-dead plant life). One issue is that we appear to be just using too much energy. If all of the cropland in the U.S. was used to produce ethanol, we'd still fall short in fueling all of our vehicles.
We simply need to become more efficient in energy usage.
Hydrogen has issues. A hydrocarbon fuel source/transportation mechanism is much more practical, at least for the next several decades.
Hydrogen doesn't exist freely, it has to be made from something. It is also the least dense element in the universe, so the storage tanks in a vehicle would have to be massive. Hydrogen also has the nasty ability to seep out of pretty much anything.
Many people advocate the idea of using hydrogen reformers to convert hydrocarbon fuels into hydrogen. This is more efficient than electrolysis, though a lot of environmentalists are worried that the big oil companies will use fossil fuels like petroleum as the source fuel. A simple, efficient, and tiny ethanol-to-hydrogen reformer was demonstrated earlier this year, so that might be used in the future.
Fuel cells cost a lot of money and require exotic materials in many cases. They are also very fragile. People hope this will change, but it's hard to say if it will ever happen.
Heh. I hope you meant "mpg+" rather than "mph+";-)
Yeah, I was disappointed when Saturn dropped their SL line, since they got better mileage than the current cars. My mom got one in 1996 (it might be a '97 model), and it averages 38-40 mpg, I believe. The numbers go down a bit in the winter due to the different gasoline blend, but it's still pretty good.
Yeah, I was looking at saving money to buy a TDI Golf before my job disappeared. I'm a bit concerned about getting one here in the U.S. where the fuel is chock full o' sulfur, but I've been hoping to see biodiesel expand (I'm still shocked that it's unavailable here in Minneapolis, though there are a number of filling stations in the western part of Minnesota according to biodiesel.org).
For the moment, I'm still driving an old '88 Chevy Cavalier. Even with it's heavy automatic transmission, it still gets 30 mpg or so. Then again, I often can't accelerate worth a damn, but being able to just keep up with Twin Cities traffic is good enough.
Still, I think the people who are complaining about low mileage in their hybrids are probably not driving the cars properly (slamming on the brakes rather than allowing the regenerative systems do their magic, accelerating too rapidly, etc.) Also, even in the TDI world, it has been noted that some cars just don't get the mileage they're supposed to get. It might be something messed up in the engine or transmission, who knows.. Even after being popular for 100 years, cars are still a mystery to us all;-)
I generally reserve my "Benedict Arnold company" remarks to those that do not pay their taxes. I certainly don't like outsourcing jobs (I've been out of work for 6 months because of it), but I think companies that skimp on their duties to the city/county/state/country that provides them protection are definitely not good citizens and are significantly worse than companies that merely outsource work.
Doesn't this amount to collusion of some sort? Microsoft, being legally determined to be a monopoly in a court of law, may be taking illegal actions by organizing with a competitor to try to squeeze the Linux market. But, I may be getting ahead of myself.
Just sitting on the topic of hypersonic travel for a second, I am recalling that high-speed planes such as the SR-71, X-15, and shuttle orbiter require a significant amount of cool-down time once they land and before anyone can approach or exit the vehicles. Some sources state that the outside of an SR-71 is 120 degrees C when it lands. Just a tad toasty. Of course, that's 1960s technology and some smart engineers may have found adequate cooling systems since then. Still, it's something that could take a significant chunk of time away in a real-life scenario.
Hmm. The Germany government has been supporting OpenFacts for some time. I guess I've tried to get people interested in that site, but it hasn't gotten very far (in the English version, at least -- the Germans seem to be doing well in the Deutsch version)
The good news for the new project is that all OpenFacts material is public domain, so it's fair to cut-n-paste off that site (well, if there's anything very useful).
Um, and how is this site run by LinuxQuestions independent, exactly? I guess I don't quite understand how that can be the case. Whatever, I guess.
In Minneapolis, most newer signals don't have push buttons (which can be aggravating when there's little traffic), but they will always light up the "walk" sign. However, most older ones which have the push buttons will not light the "walk" sign unless the button was pushed. Usually, this isn't an issue, since people will just walk when the light is green, but certain problems come up.
Pedestrians wishing to cross at "T" intersections that are coming from the top of the T to one of the other corners can get stuck at a "don't walk" sign without being able to see if the traffic light is green or not. Also, there can be problems at intersections with left-turn arrows, since pedestrians get into the habit of going against "don't walk" signs when they see green. In this case they can end up walking right into the path of turning cars. Obviously, people paying attention will either wait or at least make sure no cars have their turn signals on, but I think even people accustomed to such intersections let their minds drift from time to time.
Of course, I think most road and building designers just make awful decisions regarding pedestrians most of the time anyway. I'm sure many college students have cursed their campus's architects since buildings often tend to lie right in the path you want to go. I suppose it's not a big deal in many cases, but some of these buildings are very large and can require quite an excursion to go around. Often, I suppose security is considered to be a big overriding issue, but sometimes things just get to be silly. At least one dorm at the University of Minnesota requires some students to walk about two city blocks inside to get from their rooms to the front doorall other doors are alarmed fire exits. I'm all for promoting exercise, but that's kind of ridiculous, in my opinion.
I don't think Wikipedia can really be a top-tier scholarly resource. It's a bit more like a quick reference, with many facts that would have to be re-verified if anyone wanted to use them. Most articles are highly accurate (if a bit thin on the details), and there are discussions on the article "Talk" pages whenever disputes arise.
My only real concern is that people will forget that some bits of Wikipedia can be inaccurate, leading to feedback loops of information. Something might get posted in a Wikipedia article and then get used by a historian or researcher who should know better, and then that validation could lead people to believe the information to be entirely true. We'll have to see how that plays out.
I've heard that Wikipedia is already getting more hits than many online references, and the site has many more articles than most other places. Of course, many of the articles are one-liners, or mere demographic information for tiny towns in the middle of Kansas. I recently saw someone mention that Encyclopdia Britannica has 750,000 items in its index (they have less than 100,000 articles), so Wikipedia getting that many articles would be a good next step.
The main thing that prevents vandalizm is that some people continually watch the "Recent Changes" page for vandalism, and others will put certain articles on their "Watchlist." Whenever things change, people are watching. Additionally, complete page histories are kept on the server, so pages can be reverted to good edits very easily.
There are some problems. Some edits can escape notice and get lost, although the page history can allow people to go back and review the changes.
I don't know the whole server story, but as far as I know, Wikipedia's current server farm is at least a generation older than it should be. My understanding is that new servers were put in place a few months ago, but they had severe hardware troubles. The site was pushed back onto older servers for the time being, and money was raised to buy the new server farm mentioned in this article.
The site's current servers have been slow on a regular basis for the last month. They were pretty much slashdotted even before this article popped up.
I just did a quick search for prior art on Google Groups. Not the best thing, but a rough example of what was done back then: [old message]
That's actually a message referring to another one that was sent by the method I described. The message-ID indicates the server it was on. Unfortunately, it's not quite the same as the patent, with the mail address being user1234@tc.umn.edu and the server being user1234.email.umn.edu. But, it's damn similar, IMHO.
The University of Minnesota has been doing this for years. Each student gets a username (usually something like abcd1234), and gets an address like abcd1234@umn.edu. Due to the large number of students, they're farmed out to several servers. To make it easy for the user to remember what system to access, they would contact abcd1234.email.umn.edu to retrieve their mail via POP3 access (or whatever).
This sort of system was in place back when I first took some summer courses in 1996, though I'm sure it was around before then.
Heh. I hadn't noticed this article until just now, but maybe my subconscious hit it: I ended up importing the book Free as in Freedom, a book written about RMS, into Wikisource today.
I have little doubt that Windows (NT/2k/XP) and Linux are pretty much on par in terms of stability and reliability. However, much of the stability of Windows gets washed away by the fact that many software installs and OS updates require you to reboot the system. With Linux, only a small handful of things require you to reboot the system.
Replacing the Linux kernel obviously requires a reboot, and rebooting is often recommended when updating some of the core libraries and programs (glibc, init). Even parts of the kernel can be changed (via kernel modules) while the system is booted. I'm sure that some of this capability actually exists in Windows, but the mantra of that OS appears to be, "If at first you don't succeed, try rebooting."
I can't expect people to drop everything every few days in order to update. I find it painful to reboot on the monthly basis that I usually do on Linux...
Ah, of course. I keep thinking RGB, RGB, RGB, but there are other ways of encoding image data...
I ordered one of these pcHDTV cards on Thursday, so hopefully it will arrive tomorrow. However, I'm still figuring out what sort of hardware I want to have surrounding the thing. The website says that a 2GHz P4 would be adequate for a system without an nVidia card, but I'd like to put some wiggle room on top of that.
Now hopefully I won't run into any money troubles while I assemble everything;-)
Uncompressed HDTV uses a lot of bandwidth. Compressed HDTV does not. Assuming 24 bits per pixel, a 1080i signal would require nearly 200MBytes per second (and even more if whatever device you're talking to only does 32bpp), which goes far beyond the standard 133MByte/s of a normal PCI bus. However, it's well within the domain of a 64-bit PCI66 slot or an AGP 1x slot (both of which operate at 533MByte/s, if memory serves).
A full-bandwidth ATSC stream can carry nearly 20 Mbit/s of data, which translates to around 2.5MByte/s.
The GNU Radio people weren't really doing either of those things -- they did a really raw capture of that ~20Mbit/s stream (though with error correction added in, an ATSC broadcast runs more like 25-30Mbit/s). With the sampling hardware they used, it added up to something around 40MByte/s of data being captured, according to their How to HDTV page.
Interesting. I know that the no-name DVD drive (the only identifier it spits out is "DVDROM 10X") in my main system doesn't read DVD-Rs, but I haven't tried any other formats with it yet. I've heard that DVD+R and DVD+RW discs are more reflective, so I'll have to try them out when I get some money to buy discs to test with.
I have suspected that DVD-R is actually the most compatible format, but I'm glad I trusted my instinct to go buy one of the DVD+/-RW drives that are appearing now..
Hmm. I just have a problem with someone charging $900 for JavaScript code that is easily viewable by almost any visitor to a site. It's common practice to steal bits of HTML and JavaScript, so I'm surprised people would get so annoyed when they try to sell code for use on the Web..
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I may have gotten a bit silly with my arguments. I'm certainly an advocate of renewable fuel sources, so the "hydrogen doesn't exist freely" argument is a wash.
I understand that gases can be compressed, although H2 needs to be at something like 5000 or 10000 psi (roughly 35 or 70 MPa) to store enough fuel in a reasonably-sized container. I'm not exactly relishing the idea of having one of those in my backseat.
Hydrogen is also flammable in widely ranging concentrations and the flame is nearly invisible. Just a minor safety issue (not that gasoline is exactly safe, but something to think about)
Anyway, I'm sure a lot of neat hydrogen tech will come out in the next decade or so. I just wanted to point out that hydrogen isn't a catch-all solution. There are some big problems for handling it.
Hmm. Maybe I've become brainwashed, but I think some of your experiences may be a bit outdated. Most of the newer diesels I've seen have turbochargers to compensate for some of the performance issues. I know that there are a lot of gas/petrol cars out there that sound a heck of a lot worse than many diesels. I guess I haven't seen any black smoke coming out of TDI cars, but I guess they weren't accelerating hard at the time. I know that Biodiesel reduces most of the nasties coming out of the tailpipe, but I know there's a category or two where things are still bad (or maybe worse, I forget).
Of course, biodiesel isn't available everywhere. Even the ultra-low sulfur diesel fuels aren't easy to find in the U.S.
Heh, well, this isn't entirely comparing apples to apples, but: 91 octane premium full-service at $3.11 per gallon in California
After that picture was taken, the price went up to $3.13.
I'm pretty sure that biodiesel can be produced for less than that. Production just hasn't been scaled up enough yet. In the U.S., biodiesel is only produced at a fraction of the rate of bio-ethanol.
Also, don't forget that when you compare fossil fuels to biofuels, part of the biofuel cost comes from fermenting/converting the source material into fuel. Crude oil has already gone through that process, and only refining needs to be done.
For what it's worth, I'd be happy to pay more for fuel if I knew it was coming from a closed-cycle system (the carbon produced by burning biofuels was originally absorbed by not-long-dead plant life). One issue is that we appear to be just using too much energy. If all of the cropland in the U.S. was used to produce ethanol, we'd still fall short in fueling all of our vehicles.
We simply need to become more efficient in energy usage.
Hydrogen has issues. A hydrocarbon fuel source/transportation mechanism is much more practical, at least for the next several decades.
Hydrogen doesn't exist freely, it has to be made from something. It is also the least dense element in the universe, so the storage tanks in a vehicle would have to be massive. Hydrogen also has the nasty ability to seep out of pretty much anything.
Many people advocate the idea of using hydrogen reformers to convert hydrocarbon fuels into hydrogen. This is more efficient than electrolysis, though a lot of environmentalists are worried that the big oil companies will use fossil fuels like petroleum as the source fuel. A simple, efficient, and tiny ethanol-to-hydrogen reformer was demonstrated earlier this year, so that might be used in the future.
Fuel cells cost a lot of money and require exotic materials in many cases. They are also very fragile. People hope this will change, but it's hard to say if it will ever happen.
Heh. I hope you meant "mpg+" rather than "mph+" ;-)
Yeah, I was disappointed when Saturn dropped their SL line, since they got better mileage than the current cars. My mom got one in 1996 (it might be a '97 model), and it averages 38-40 mpg, I believe. The numbers go down a bit in the winter due to the different gasoline blend, but it's still pretty good.
Yeah, I was looking at saving money to buy a TDI Golf before my job disappeared. I'm a bit concerned about getting one here in the U.S. where the fuel is chock full o' sulfur, but I've been hoping to see biodiesel expand (I'm still shocked that it's unavailable here in Minneapolis, though there are a number of filling stations in the western part of Minnesota according to biodiesel.org).
;-)
For the moment, I'm still driving an old '88 Chevy Cavalier. Even with it's heavy automatic transmission, it still gets 30 mpg or so. Then again, I often can't accelerate worth a damn, but being able to just keep up with Twin Cities traffic is good enough.
Still, I think the people who are complaining about low mileage in their hybrids are probably not driving the cars properly (slamming on the brakes rather than allowing the regenerative systems do their magic, accelerating too rapidly, etc.) Also, even in the TDI world, it has been noted that some cars just don't get the mileage they're supposed to get. It might be something messed up in the engine or transmission, who knows.. Even after being popular for 100 years, cars are still a mystery to us all
I generally reserve my "Benedict Arnold company" remarks to those that do not pay their taxes. I certainly don't like outsourcing jobs (I've been out of work for 6 months because of it), but I think companies that skimp on their duties to the city/county/state/country that provides them protection are definitely not good citizens and are significantly worse than companies that merely outsource work.
Doesn't this amount to collusion of some sort? Microsoft, being legally determined to be a monopoly in a court of law, may be taking illegal actions by organizing with a competitor to try to squeeze the Linux market. But, I may be getting ahead of myself.
Just sitting on the topic of hypersonic travel for a second, I am recalling that high-speed planes such as the SR-71, X-15, and shuttle orbiter require a significant amount of cool-down time once they land and before anyone can approach or exit the vehicles. Some sources state that the outside of an SR-71 is 120 degrees C when it lands. Just a tad toasty. Of course, that's 1960s technology and some smart engineers may have found adequate cooling systems since then. Still, it's something that could take a significant chunk of time away in a real-life scenario.
Hmm. The Germany government has been supporting OpenFacts for some time. I guess I've tried to get people interested in that site, but it hasn't gotten very far (in the English version, at least -- the Germans seem to be doing well in the Deutsch version)
The good news for the new project is that all OpenFacts material is public domain, so it's fair to cut-n-paste off that site (well, if there's anything very useful).
Um, and how is this site run by LinuxQuestions independent, exactly? I guess I don't quite understand how that can be the case. Whatever, I guess.
This is just picking nits, I suppose...
In Minneapolis, most newer signals don't have push buttons (which can be aggravating when there's little traffic), but they will always light up the "walk" sign. However, most older ones which have the push buttons will not light the "walk" sign unless the button was pushed. Usually, this isn't an issue, since people will just walk when the light is green, but certain problems come up.
Pedestrians wishing to cross at "T" intersections that are coming from the top of the T to one of the other corners can get stuck at a "don't walk" sign without being able to see if the traffic light is green or not. Also, there can be problems at intersections with left-turn arrows, since pedestrians get into the habit of going against "don't walk" signs when they see green. In this case they can end up walking right into the path of turning cars. Obviously, people paying attention will either wait or at least make sure no cars have their turn signals on, but I think even people accustomed to such intersections let their minds drift from time to time.
Of course, I think most road and building designers just make awful decisions regarding pedestrians most of the time anyway. I'm sure many college students have cursed their campus's architects since buildings often tend to lie right in the path you want to go. I suppose it's not a big deal in many cases, but some of these buildings are very large and can require quite an excursion to go around. Often, I suppose security is considered to be a big overriding issue, but sometimes things just get to be silly. At least one dorm at the University of Minnesota requires some students to walk about two city blocks inside to get from their rooms to the front doorall other doors are alarmed fire exits. I'm all for promoting exercise, but that's kind of ridiculous, in my opinion.
Bah, I'm wandering off-topic now...
I don't think Wikipedia can really be a top-tier scholarly resource. It's a bit more like a quick reference, with many facts that would have to be re-verified if anyone wanted to use them. Most articles are highly accurate (if a bit thin on the details), and there are discussions on the article "Talk" pages whenever disputes arise.
My only real concern is that people will forget that some bits of Wikipedia can be inaccurate, leading to feedback loops of information. Something might get posted in a Wikipedia article and then get used by a historian or researcher who should know better, and then that validation could lead people to believe the information to be entirely true. We'll have to see how that plays out.
I've heard that Wikipedia is already getting more hits than many online references, and the site has many more articles than most other places. Of course, many of the articles are one-liners, or mere demographic information for tiny towns in the middle of Kansas. I recently saw someone mention that Encyclopdia Britannica has 750,000 items in its index (they have less than 100,000 articles), so Wikipedia getting that many articles would be a good next step.
The main thing that prevents vandalizm is that some people continually watch the "Recent Changes" page for vandalism, and others will put certain articles on their "Watchlist." Whenever things change, people are watching. Additionally, complete page histories are kept on the server, so pages can be reverted to good edits very easily.
There are some problems. Some edits can escape notice and get lost, although the page history can allow people to go back and review the changes.
I don't know the whole server story, but as far as I know, Wikipedia's current server farm is at least a generation older than it should be. My understanding is that new servers were put in place a few months ago, but they had severe hardware troubles. The site was pushed back onto older servers for the time being, and money was raised to buy the new server farm mentioned in this article.
The site's current servers have been slow on a regular basis for the last month. They were pretty much slashdotted even before this article popped up.
I just did a quick search for prior art on Google Groups. Not the best thing, but a rough example of what was done back then: [old message]
That's actually a message referring to another one that was sent by the method I described. The message-ID indicates the server it was on. Unfortunately, it's not quite the same as the patent, with the mail address being user1234@tc.umn.edu and the server being user1234.email.umn.edu. But, it's damn similar, IMHO.
The University of Minnesota has been doing this for years. Each student gets a username (usually something like abcd1234), and gets an address like abcd1234@umn.edu. Due to the large number of students, they're farmed out to several servers. To make it easy for the user to remember what system to access, they would contact abcd1234.email.umn.edu to retrieve their mail via POP3 access (or whatever).
This sort of system was in place back when I first took some summer courses in 1996, though I'm sure it was around before then.
Heh. I hadn't noticed this article until just now, but maybe my subconscious hit it: I ended up importing the book Free as in Freedom , a book written about RMS, into Wikisource today.
I have little doubt that Windows (NT/2k/XP) and Linux are pretty much on par in terms of stability and reliability. However, much of the stability of Windows gets washed away by the fact that many software installs and OS updates require you to reboot the system. With Linux, only a small handful of things require you to reboot the system.
Replacing the Linux kernel obviously requires a reboot, and rebooting is often recommended when updating some of the core libraries and programs (glibc, init). Even parts of the kernel can be changed (via kernel modules) while the system is booted. I'm sure that some of this capability actually exists in Windows, but the mantra of that OS appears to be, "If at first you don't succeed, try rebooting."
I can't expect people to drop everything every few days in order to update. I find it painful to reboot on the monthly basis that I usually do on Linux...
Ah, of course. I keep thinking RGB, RGB, RGB, but there are other ways of encoding image data...
;-)
I ordered one of these pcHDTV cards on Thursday, so hopefully it will arrive tomorrow. However, I'm still figuring out what sort of hardware I want to have surrounding the thing. The website says that a 2GHz P4 would be adequate for a system without an nVidia card, but I'd like to put some wiggle room on top of that.
Now hopefully I won't run into any money troubles while I assemble everything
I have one word for you: Mentos
Uncompressed HDTV uses a lot of bandwidth. Compressed HDTV does not. Assuming 24 bits per pixel, a 1080i signal would require nearly 200MBytes per second (and even more if whatever device you're talking to only does 32bpp), which goes far beyond the standard 133MByte/s of a normal PCI bus. However, it's well within the domain of a 64-bit PCI66 slot or an AGP 1x slot (both of which operate at 533MByte/s, if memory serves).
A full-bandwidth ATSC stream can carry nearly 20 Mbit/s of data, which translates to around 2.5MByte/s.
The GNU Radio people weren't really doing either of those things -- they did a really raw capture of that ~20Mbit/s stream (though with error correction added in, an ATSC broadcast runs more like 25-30Mbit/s). With the sampling hardware they used, it added up to something around 40MByte/s of data being captured, according to their How to HDTV page.
Heh, well, when the card only has drivers for Linux (so far, at least), I think they can get away with that.
That's probably because many DVD+R/RW drives proclaim right on the box that they are "the most compatible format!"
Interesting. I know that the no-name DVD drive (the only identifier it spits out is "DVDROM 10X") in my main system doesn't read DVD-Rs, but I haven't tried any other formats with it yet. I've heard that DVD+R and DVD+RW discs are more reflective, so I'll have to try them out when I get some money to buy discs to test with.
I have suspected that DVD-R is actually the most compatible format, but I'm glad I trusted my instinct to go buy one of the DVD+/-RW drives that are appearing now..
Hmm. I just have a problem with someone charging $900 for JavaScript code that is easily viewable by almost any visitor to a site. It's common practice to steal bits of HTML and JavaScript, so I'm surprised people would get so annoyed when they try to sell code for use on the Web..