Yes you can make it from atmospheric carbon. Why not just use hydrogen? Well for transportation hydrocarbons have some real advantages over hydrogen. They can be liquid at normal temperatures and have a much higher energy density than hydrogen. You extract the hydrogen from water and the carbon from the CO2 in the air. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15420884.400-escape-from-mars.html Shows how you can do it on Mars but hydrogen is hydrogen and co2 is co2.
"Is this be the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?" No. What it may be is a good start at ending the use of hydrocarbons for electrical power generation. Throw in some Wind, nuclear, some photovoltaics, some hydro, and maybe some biomass and you could reduce our use of coal, oil, and natural gas for power generation a lot.
This is one of the first good energy storage systems I have heard about. Yes it could really help with making solar thermal power a lot more practical.
For transportation I think we will be using hydrocarbons for a long time. The good thing is that you can make them from water, air, and electricity if you have too and you have enough cheap electricity.
Ease of use. DVRs are about 100 times easier to use than a DVD/VCR. Not easy to use as in I can't figure out how to do it but easy to use in that it only takes a few seconds to set a show to record. If Microsoft does it well and intergrates it with the Zune then it could be very cool. You can already use the 360 as a media extender so why not use it to sync your Zune and put videos of your favorite shows on the Zune or your PC so you can watch them later? How about letting you use your Zune as a wireless media extender for your 360? sort of a mini TV that you can take anywhere.
Sure there is proof. Facebook's main function is to get something on everybody. You are posting your life on Facebook and all your friends. Actually there seems to be some very tenuous connections as far as venture capital for Facebook and the CIA. I think it is more Tinfoil hat stuff than real but I could be wrong. Social networking sites could be of interest to law enforcement agencies. If someone has committed a crime or is on the run they will often turn to friends or friends of friends for help. If the police are looking for anyone the first thing they will do is contact the person friends, family, and co-workers. Social networking sites soft of put them all out there for the world to see. The scary thing is that they tend to be some pretty distant links on your friends links. On guy that I added as a friend I had one class in eleventh grade with. I haven't seen him since but he found me so I added him. So I just kind of doubt that the CIA is really backing Facebook but I don't doubt that they have an interest in it.
If it is true and Microsoft can get good integration with the Zune then it could be a big winner. Hack I may even get one if they can get it is HD and will work well with Comcast.
Well I have a good three DVD changer that a friend bought me for christmas a few years ago, an HD-DVD player I got on sale at Walmart for $98, a PS/2 that I never use to play DVDs, and an XBox they my wife just picked up for me for Christmas. Yes an old used XBox. I never got into the XBox but always wanted to play Crimson Skys so she got me one. All of those play DVDs and I never use the DVD player in the PS2 or the XBox. The PS3 is a good media expander but the price is still to high for me to get one just for that. But I already have the Wii so adding it to that makes a lot of sense to me.
Business data really is pretty small. It really is just text for the most part. Even if you start to scan every document 500 gigabytes is going to be a lot of documents. Most servers I bet are pretty small compared to what people are using at home. You just don't need to store video or even a lot of audio in most businesses. Of course this doesn't apply to video production houses, print shops, or any places that actually deals with a lot of media data. I know that my companies customer database is under one gigabyte in size. The accounting data is probably not a lot more, and our document management system is under 100 gigabytes. So yes most of our data could fit on a 160 gigabyte iPod.
The last thing that the Wii needs is to play DVDs. Right now I have no less than four devices hooked to my TV that can play DVDs. What I would love to see is for the Wii to be become a media extender. If I could play video from my home server on my wii that would be very handy. I hear that the Wii supports Flash with Opera so I guess I could convert all my video files to flash videos and set up a webserver so I could just click on them but...yuckkkk.
Oh I am no big fan of the RIAA but like I said this was just flaming for hits. I love all the comments that are being posted under my comment. They are all arguing about how we really could do this. I am all for going after pirates. I am not a big fan of companies that make money off of piracy. But I think we need to also protect consumers. If I could make laws I would make one that stated that a copyrighted work must be DRM free. If you want the law to protect your work then you can not do it yourself. It must be freely copyable. I would also like to have the rights revert back to the creator if the publisher stops publishing the work. Any record company that stops producing an album then the artist gets the rights back to the Album. Movies would be a lot harder to deal with does it go to the producer, director, actors, or screenplay author? But the thing is I don't get to make the laws and this blogger was just making up crap that sounds good but accomplishes nothing. The Slashdot faithful are just lapping it up and filling his pocketbook with hits.
"(1) If we can abrogate the ABM treaty, why not pull out of Berne? (I am being ironic here)" We could pull out of the Berne treaty but I don't see that happening.
The ABM treaty is interesting. The US did more than follow it for many years. In fact we dismantled our ABM site right after we opened it. The USSR stayed in the treaty but violated the daylights out of it for years. They built battle management radars that covered the entire nation and other violations. The US didn't raise a fuss because they where pretty useless systems for the most part. The big stink about the new ABM systems that the US is building has very little to do with any threat to Russia. What it does do is make missile exports worth less money. As people like to say all the time on Slashdot... Follow the money.
"Was that being shoddy? No, just practical. Look at how many PC cases ship with openings for floppy drives. When's the last time you used a floppy for anything?" They don't put in a none functioning floppy disk drive do they? They put in a bay. That bay can and is used for other devices, card readers, hard drives, and in the case of the 5-1/2" drive bays they are used for optical drives. Yes I would have a fit if they put in a floppy drive that didn't have a driver to make it work. Windows, Linux, or Mac it is the same standard, you put device on the computer it should work. And yes I know some people that still use dial up. They are usually people that only use the internet for email and to surf the web every now and then. They have broadband available to them but just don't see the need. I don't think they are the market for this machine but they do exist. I do use modems at work and at home. We use them at work for sending faxes and for accessing some equipment that has a modem built in. Winmodems can also be used as FXO/FXS cards for Linux based PBXs. Just because you don't see the need for one doesn't mean they are useless.
As far as any Windows box under several thousands of dollars worth more than one star? Yes I am afraid there are. I doubt that any are $200 but you are just dismissing the advantages that Windows does have over Linux. I love Linux and I think it has a lot of advantages over Windows but Windows does have some advantages over Windows. Off the shelf software. There is just more software available for Windows than Linux. When it comes to games Windows has a real advantage. For me there are three programs that keeps me running Windows. Flight Simulator, Quicken, and Tax Cut. Most of the best FOSS software is now available for Windows. Firefox, Apache, PHP, MySQL, GIMP, OpenOffice, and PostgresSQL all run under Windows just fine. So to dismiss Windows is both illogical and just unfair. Again I don't think you will find a better computer for $200 running Windows but it will not cost you several thousand dollars to find a better Windows based machine.
Again you keep defending this machine when there isn't any need to. I am saying it is an okay $200 PC that shows in my opinion a real lack of effort. I still find gOS an odd and flawed flavor of Linux. I would have gone with XUuntu or Zenworks. The use of Enlightenment is an interesting twist but again I think it is under used by gOS. Yes you can put on a different distro but this isn't just a review of the hardware. All I am saying is that the review is for the most part fair.
Now if you really like the hardware then you can buy the motherboard here http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001 for about $50. If you have an old case around you can build one into a nice little NAS or Linux work station.
You left out driving the stake into SCOs heart. The GNU ideals are GNUs. Frankly I find a lot of the GNU rantings to be annoying. I love Linux and use lots of FOSS and contribute to FOSS but I don't like the FSF religion. The entire deal with Microsoft is just odd. I have no idea what Novell is getting money for. Trust Novell? I don't trust Novell, IBM, Microsoft, or Google. If you trust any company you are going to eventually be disappointed.
This is just a dumb idea. 1. It really couldn't happen because it would violate more than a few international agreements. 2. corporate vs personal copyrights? A lot of artists when they start make money incorperate. Where do there works fit in?
It is a non solution to a real problem. But lots of people will click on the blog and read the ads and they will make money off it. Thank you for playing and paying.
"Over 25 years (nearly half the current evolution of computers) all bets are off and being a standard guarantees nothing." Not really. Well documented file formats from more than 25 years ago are still readable. You can still get data out of ASCII and Comma delimited ASCII files. IFF graphics files are still readable on most paint programs as well. A well documented file formats have a pretty good history as far as future support. Where things really go south is when you get into media support. You may have no trouble with the file format but you may have no way to read that disk, tape, or deck of punch cards.
Yep but there are some innovative FOSS projects. Minix3 is very interesting if some what immature. But for the most part I am also tired of FOSS just making copies of off the shelf software. Probably the most "innovative" popular FOSS program is Firefox. The plug ins are what makes it innovative but even that has parallels.
The real truth is that I havn't seen any really innovative software in years. Open or closed source.
"We both know the "lose points for the winmodem" argument is bogus. I don't know anyone who still uses dial-up, not when broadband starts at $9.95/month and doesn't tie up your phone line. It would be like taking off points because it has no zip or floppy drive." No I take off points for not having the drivers. I would be just as bent at any non functioning hardware. It is just shoddy. If they hadn't put the hardware on it would have been better than including non-functioning hardware. Again it is just shoddy. Yes I know most printers work but not all. Multi-function printers are still a royal pain and often don't work. As I said I think this a 1 1/2 star machine. It could have been so much better with just a little attention to detail and could have become part of an entire Linux market. So I still say it is a feeble attempt or a 1 1/2 star machine. As to not shopping at Walmart. I don't shop at Walmart of my Groceries because other stores serve my needs better. Shopping at Walmart is no morally better or worse than Shopping at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, or any other large store.
When did I compare this computer with a Windows Box? I simply stated that I thought that the review was fair.
I am disappointed with this machine. Why not try and make this a great machine instead of an OK machine? Walmart has a great opportunity here and it is being wasted. They could sell not only this computer but also printer that they know will work with it. Digital music players that they know will work with. Digital Cameras that they know will work with. And software that runs under Linux.
I am ragging on this PC because it was a poor attempt that could have been much better.
Maybe I just have higher aspirations for Linux than most people.
Well since nVidia is providing less FOSS support I would guess you only use Intel video cards? Of course Intel does write that FOSS driver and from what I have read it is poorly documented and the driver is just about unreadable. At least AMD is trying to do what the FOSS zelots have been asking for.
I got an HD-DVD player for $98. It was on sale at Walmart and I am willing to loose $98 if Blueray wins. That is the key to winning IMHO. The first that can offer players for less than $100 will win. I will say that the HD-DVD versions of "What Dreams May Come" looked great.
This car wouldn't meet US crash standards or emissions. Heck it probably wouldn't meet US emissions standards for a motorcycle much less for a car. For the same amount of money just pick up a used Kia. It will be cleaner, safer, and better made.
I don't know if they are legal here and I wouldn't care all that much. But it is a problem for some people. But again you keep saying that none of these issues matter. Incomplete hardware support, difficulties with installing software, bad auto detection and setting of the screen resolution, and a less than green power supply, none of this matters because it is Linux. What I am saying is that this is a one and a half star system just as the review says. It is really too bad. Just imagine if they had built a really good Linux system, one that has Firefox, FSpot, Banshee, GnuCash, Flash, all the codecs that you need to play audio and video, and OpenOffice. Then add in hardware that works and has working drivers and you would have a PC that could make a real impact, instead we have an okay pc that is an okay value.
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Yes you can make it from atmospheric carbon.
Why not just use hydrogen? Well for transportation hydrocarbons have some real advantages over hydrogen. They can be liquid at normal temperatures and have a much higher energy density than hydrogen. You extract the hydrogen from water and the carbon from the CO2 in the air.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15420884.400-escape-from-mars.html
Shows how you can do it on Mars but hydrogen is hydrogen and co2 is co2.
"Is this be the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?" No.
What it may be is a good start at ending the use of hydrocarbons for electrical power generation. Throw in some Wind, nuclear, some photovoltaics, some hydro, and maybe some biomass and you could reduce our use of coal, oil, and natural gas for power generation a lot.
This is one of the first good energy storage systems I have heard about. Yes it could really help with making solar thermal power a lot more practical.
For transportation I think we will be using hydrocarbons for a long time. The good thing is that you can make them from water, air, and electricity if you have too and you have enough cheap electricity.
Ease of use. DVRs are about 100 times easier to use than a DVD/VCR. Not easy to use as in I can't figure out how to do it but easy to use in that it only takes a few seconds to set a show to record.
If Microsoft does it well and intergrates it with the Zune then it could be very cool. You can already use the 360 as a media extender so why not use it to sync your Zune and put videos of your favorite shows on the Zune or your PC so you can watch them later?
How about letting you use your Zune as a wireless media extender for your 360? sort of a mini TV that you can take anywhere.
Sure there is proof. Facebook's main function is to get something on everybody. You are posting your life on Facebook and all your friends.
Actually there seems to be some very tenuous connections as far as venture capital for Facebook and the CIA. I think it is more Tinfoil hat stuff than real but I could be wrong.
Social networking sites could be of interest to law enforcement agencies. If someone has committed a crime or is on the run they will often turn to friends or friends of friends for help. If the police are looking for anyone the first thing they will do is contact the person friends, family, and co-workers. Social networking sites soft of put them all out there for the world to see. The scary thing is that they tend to be some pretty distant links on your friends links.
On guy that I added as a friend I had one class in eleventh grade with. I haven't seen him since but he found me so I added him.
So I just kind of doubt that the CIA is really backing Facebook but I don't doubt that they have an interest in it.
If it is true and Microsoft can get good integration with the Zune then it could be a big winner.
Hack I may even get one if they can get it is HD and will work well with Comcast.
Well that is your answer. Now some GPS systems with dedicated base stations are now getting down to like 1cm.But they tend to be very expensive.
Well I have a good three DVD changer that a friend bought me for christmas a few years ago, an HD-DVD player I got on sale at Walmart for $98, a PS/2 that I never use to play DVDs, and an XBox they my wife just picked up for me for Christmas. Yes an old used XBox. I never got into the XBox but always wanted to play Crimson Skys so she got me one. All of those play DVDs and I never use the DVD player in the PS2 or the XBox.
The PS3 is a good media expander but the price is still to high for me to get one just for that. But I already have the Wii so adding it to that makes a lot of sense to me.
Business data really is pretty small. It really is just text for the most part.
Even if you start to scan every document 500 gigabytes is going to be a lot of documents.
Most servers I bet are pretty small compared to what people are using at home. You just don't need to store video or even a lot of audio in most businesses.
Of course this doesn't apply to video production houses, print shops, or any places that actually deals with a lot of media data.
I know that my companies customer database is under one gigabyte in size. The accounting data is probably not a lot more, and our document management system is under 100 gigabytes. So yes most of our data could fit on a 160 gigabyte iPod.
The last thing that the Wii needs is to play DVDs.
Right now I have no less than four devices hooked to my TV that can play DVDs.
What I would love to see is for the Wii to be become a media extender. If I could play video from my home server on my wii that would be very handy. I hear that the Wii supports Flash with Opera so I guess I could convert all my video files to flash videos and set up a webserver so I could just click on them but...yuckkkk.
Oh I am no big fan of the RIAA but like I said this was just flaming for hits. I love all the comments that are being posted under my comment. They are all arguing about how we really could do this.
I am all for going after pirates. I am not a big fan of companies that make money off of piracy. But I think we need to also protect consumers.
If I could make laws I would make one that stated that a copyrighted work must be DRM free. If you want the law to protect your work then you can not do it yourself. It must be freely copyable.
I would also like to have the rights revert back to the creator if the publisher stops publishing the work.
Any record company that stops producing an album then the artist gets the rights back to the Album.
Movies would be a lot harder to deal with does it go to the producer, director, actors, or screenplay author?
But the thing is I don't get to make the laws and this blogger was just making up crap that sounds good but accomplishes nothing. The Slashdot faithful are just lapping it up and filling his pocketbook with hits.
In other words this is all heat and no light.
"(1) If we can abrogate the ABM treaty, why not pull out of Berne? (I am being ironic here)"
We could pull out of the Berne treaty but I don't see that happening.
The ABM treaty is interesting. The US did more than follow it for many years. In fact we dismantled our ABM site right after we opened it. The USSR stayed in the treaty but violated the daylights out of it for years. They built battle management radars that covered the entire nation and other violations. The US didn't raise a fuss because they where pretty useless systems for the most part. The big stink about the new ABM systems that the US is building has very little to do with any threat to Russia. What it does do is make missile exports worth less money. As people like to say all the time on Slashdot... Follow the money.
"Was that being shoddy? No, just practical. Look at how many PC cases ship with openings for floppy drives. When's the last time you used a floppy for anything?"
They don't put in a none functioning floppy disk drive do they?
They put in a bay. That bay can and is used for other devices, card readers, hard drives, and in the case of the 5-1/2" drive bays they are used for optical drives. Yes I would have a fit if they put in a floppy drive that didn't have a driver to make it work. Windows, Linux, or Mac it is the same standard, you put device on the computer it should work.
And yes I know some people that still use dial up. They are usually people that only use the internet for email and to surf the web every now and then. They have broadband available to them but just don't see the need. I don't think they are the market for this machine but they do exist. I do use modems at work and at home. We use them at work for sending faxes and for accessing some equipment that has a modem built in. Winmodems can also be used as FXO/FXS cards for Linux based PBXs. Just because you don't see the need for one doesn't mean they are useless.
As far as any Windows box under several thousands of dollars worth more than one star? Yes I am afraid there are. I doubt that any are $200 but you are just dismissing the advantages that Windows does have over Linux. I love Linux and I think it has a lot of advantages over Windows but Windows does have some advantages over Windows.
Off the shelf software. There is just more software available for Windows than Linux. When it comes to games Windows has a real advantage. For me there are three programs that keeps me running Windows. Flight Simulator, Quicken, and Tax Cut. Most of the best FOSS software is now available for Windows. Firefox, Apache, PHP, MySQL, GIMP, OpenOffice, and PostgresSQL all run under Windows just fine. So to dismiss Windows is both illogical and just unfair. Again I don't think you will find a better computer for $200 running Windows but it will not cost you several thousand dollars to find a better Windows based machine.
Again you keep defending this machine when there isn't any need to. I am saying it is an okay $200 PC that shows in my opinion a real lack of effort. I still find gOS an odd and flawed flavor of Linux. I would have gone with XUuntu or Zenworks. The use of Enlightenment is an interesting twist but again I think it is under used by gOS. Yes you can put on a different distro but this isn't just a review of the hardware. All I am saying is that the review is for the most part fair.
Now if you really like the hardware then you can buy the motherboard here http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001 for about $50. If you have an old case around you can build one into a nice little NAS or Linux work station.
Or you could get this http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A5400410 if you just want to plug and play.
You left out driving the stake into SCOs heart.
The GNU ideals are GNUs. Frankly I find a lot of the GNU rantings to be annoying. I love Linux and use lots of FOSS and contribute to FOSS but I don't like the FSF religion.
The entire deal with Microsoft is just odd. I have no idea what Novell is getting money for.
Trust Novell? I don't trust Novell, IBM, Microsoft, or Google. If you trust any company you are going to eventually be disappointed.
This is just a dumb idea.
1. It really couldn't happen because it would violate more than a few international agreements.
2. corporate vs personal copyrights? A lot of artists when they start make money incorperate. Where do there works fit in?
It is a non solution to a real problem. But lots of people will click on the blog and read the ads and they will make money off it.
Thank you for playing and paying.
"Over 25 years (nearly half the current evolution of computers) all bets are off and being a standard guarantees nothing."
Not really. Well documented file formats from more than 25 years ago are still readable. You can still get data out of ASCII and Comma delimited ASCII files. IFF graphics files are still readable on most paint programs as well.
A well documented file formats have a pretty good history as far as future support.
Where things really go south is when you get into media support. You may have no trouble with the file format but you may have no way to read that disk, tape, or deck of punch cards.
My company still gets requests from people that need data from 15 years ago or more.
Your GPS probably lacks WAAS "is WAAS available in the EU?" And or DGPS.
Both of those will get you down to around 1-2 Meter resolution.
Yep but there are some innovative FOSS projects.
Minix3 is very interesting if some what immature.
But for the most part I am also tired of FOSS just making copies of off the shelf software. Probably the most "innovative" popular FOSS program is Firefox. The plug ins are what makes it innovative but even that has parallels.
The real truth is that I havn't seen any really innovative software in years. Open or closed source.
"We both know the "lose points for the winmodem" argument is bogus. I don't know anyone who still uses dial-up, not when broadband starts at $9.95/month and doesn't tie up your phone line. It would be like taking off points because it has no zip or floppy drive."
No I take off points for not having the drivers. I would be just as bent at any non functioning hardware. It is just shoddy. If they hadn't put the hardware on it would have been better than including non-functioning hardware. Again it is just shoddy.
Yes I know most printers work but not all. Multi-function printers are still a royal pain and often don't work.
As I said I think this a 1 1/2 star machine. It could have been so much better with just a little attention to detail and could have become part of an entire Linux market. So I still say it is a feeble attempt or a 1 1/2 star machine.
As to not shopping at Walmart. I don't shop at Walmart of my Groceries because other stores serve my needs better.
Shopping at Walmart is no morally better or worse than Shopping at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, or any other large store.
When did I compare this computer with a Windows Box?
I simply stated that I thought that the review was fair.
I am disappointed with this machine. Why not try and make this a great machine instead of an OK machine?
Walmart has a great opportunity here and it is being wasted.
They could sell not only this computer but also printer that they know will work with it. Digital music players that they know will work with. Digital Cameras that they know will work with. And software that runs under Linux.
I am ragging on this PC because it was a poor attempt that could have been much better.
Maybe I just have higher aspirations for Linux than most people.
Yep I am using NetFlix. My wife bought one HD-DVD and that is probably all we will buy until the shake out happens.
Well since nVidia is providing less FOSS support I would guess you only use Intel video cards?
Of course Intel does write that FOSS driver and from what I have read it is poorly documented and the driver is just about unreadable.
At least AMD is trying to do what the FOSS zelots have been asking for.
I got an HD-DVD player for $98.
It was on sale at Walmart and I am willing to loose $98 if Blueray wins.
That is the key to winning IMHO.
The first that can offer players for less than $100 will win.
I will say that the HD-DVD versions of "What Dreams May Come" looked great.
This car wouldn't meet US crash standards or emissions.
Heck it probably wouldn't meet US emissions standards for a motorcycle much less for a car.
For the same amount of money just pick up a used Kia. It will be cleaner, safer, and better made.
I don't know if they are legal here and I wouldn't care all that much. But it is a problem for some people. But again you keep saying that none of these issues matter. Incomplete hardware support, difficulties with installing software, bad auto detection and setting of the screen resolution, and a less than green power supply, none of this matters because it is Linux.
What I am saying is that this is a one and a half star system just as the review says.
It is really too bad. Just imagine if they had built a really good Linux system, one that has Firefox, FSpot, Banshee, GnuCash, Flash, all the codecs that you need to play audio and video, and OpenOffice. Then add in hardware that works and has working drivers and you would have a PC that could make a real impact, instead we have an okay pc that is an okay value.