if you only burn cd-rs, if you want a linux that can hot plug usb drives (even if they're in windows file systems) and write files to em, before burning dvds on windows... it's also pretty good, but linux just sucks at burning dvds. they use a retarded program called 'growisofs' that only makes coasters, because it's memory footprint is so big that the hd gets taxed out trying to add swapspaces, when you really only need the next 16 MB of the burn data cached to avoid buffer under-runs...
well, every linux dvd burning app uses the retarded growisofs that is clearly broken, and nobody cares because they only burn cds anyways..
i specifically picked out my dvd burner based on how reliable it is at burning dvds, after having a painful experience being an 'early' adopter of the 'pioneer a04' drive that could only handle pioneer blanks. so linux not working with it is retarded. everyone on the net was recommending the brand i bought.
but linux is great for web browsing, and im use, and the usb hd support is great, so i mean it's not like linux is worthless, it's just not nearly as good at basic tasks like dvd burning as windows is.
and linux has the best collection of 'simple' games ever, i remember buying cds full of sampler games in the past, and what linux has for free on the net now dwarfs those cd-rom collections in both simple game fun and selection.
i was referring to online crimes that have significant dollar value losses. why all slashdot first used pedophiles etc is beyond me.... so say instead of saying 'kevin mitnick you can never touch a computer again' we say 'you'll be using this isp, using a vpn we run so everything you do is monitored blah blah blah...'
mitnick had to work hard to get permission to have a cellular telephone, so clearly the fbi etc are tying to control what hackers do even after their jail term...
requiring convicted criminals to use a vpn would be a step in the right direction.
also much easier to implement than trying to build an internet around catching crooks.
so what do you do with the criminals from Africa who are connected to organized crime, who have whole 'internet cafes' and people standing watch so they can get out of there if the 'police' come, who are more than likely on the take anyways...
remember the 'untouchables' it took a special breed of cops to go against organized crime and get results, and with 'cyber crime' often being 'international crime' it's difficult to police.
'spying' on what people do over the net is really the only way to catch the criminals in the act. however, doing so in a country that you don't work for is impossible with the way the internet works. unless of course, you create a law governing how 'backbone' providers work with international police, to allow certain countries to be 'locked in' to a certain backbone, where the data traveling from that backbone to other backbones can be monitored... and evidence of crime can be monitored, and controlled.
doing something like that would discourage the growth of online crime in iran and africa without affecting internet usability in 'modernized' nations, but countries like china russia etc would be much harder to try and stop crime in, without completely redesigning the internet around catching criminals, the problem will only get worse.
remember the prohibition, when a layman could make a fair bit higher salary rum running, than doing decent work, crime spiraled out of control. an internet that doesn't care who does what or when or why and does everything to make any packet go through to recipient... will only breed a den of thieves.
can the global economy take a 7 billion dollar a year hit to cyber crime every year, for the next 20 years? no it can't and that's why tracing criminal activity is Going to become standard. right now to credit card fraud, identity theft, and check fraud scams etc... i seem to recall hearing that europe and the usa were combined losing 7 billion dollars a year, but it was on dateline nbc, not on the internet so the figure might be off.
tracking the criminals down is going to get easier, and the crime harder to pull off. It's only a matter of time.
although i Seriously doubt they're going to make it easier for the movie and music industries to track down users, and catch them 'in the act' what is going to get targeted is the stuff that really steals from the banks, and the rich and gives it to the criminals.
if i had the money I'd bet a billion dollars that within a decade hacking will be traceable world wide, through hardware ids before they get the money transfered from one bank account to another one.
if i had another billion dollars, I'd wager that in 10 years banks will process checks the way wal-mart does now, before they hand the user any money, and before they can 'wire' the money to another bank account, the original account is checked for the money, and the check is scanned by the computer for identifying marks, that can verify it as original.
taking 3 days to verify a cashiers check just doesn't cut it when that's what check cashing fraud scams are banking on.
I'm sorry, but even fortune 500 companies have problems with systems being compromised. you're thinking that for whatever reason they can control all the input and all the out put data.
yahoo which was an early pioneer in the internet space was highly dependent on FreeBSD, to date they still code and maintain Yahoo BSD, and submit considerable amounts of code to the FreeBSD project.
even with programmers writing their own operating system yahoo has had times where servers got compromised. furthermore, they have for years had data Crossing their network that Is Not end to end secure. because of common carrier laws, yahoo mail, yahoo briefcase, and even geocities doesn't guarantee that any of that data is free of viruses or exploits.
why do you think yahoo and google invested in captcha systems for their servers? it was to reduce spam and fraud committed with 'automatic' tools designed by crackers to make it easier to compromise systems and do their 'illicit' jobs.
and yes google is a fortune 500 at number 241 and yahoo is at 357. (for year 2007)
the whole point is that even 2 fortune 500 companies can transmit code that will compromise your system, because they are protected by common carrier laws. there is no promise that going to a geocities site won't in some way let hackers install software on your system, the whole point is that hackers build bots that do this for them so they make money, and fortune 500 companies have failed in coming up with a secure system against botnet installers, especially over networks where they have legal immunity.
even a small portion of files on download.com contain adware, even though download.com has a no adware policy. but we were talking about what fortune 500 companies are doing, for internet security, so i used the geocities/yahoo mail etc...
I can't recall which engine introduced gravity simulation, but i know that at some point they came up with some quick code and map settings that could alter the rate at which people fell, etc.
gravity on a quantum scale is difficult to simulate, but generally large heavenly bodies have a fairly constant gravity, with the exception of stars, which through fusion loose some mass to high energy particles. if you assume that the 'earth' is the extent of the simulation, or even the 'solar system' and the 'remaining data' is simple gathered by sensors outside the simulation. well, then it's different.
on the other hand, if you 'assume' that the 'super large mass' of dark matter is a 'thermally dead super galaxy' from hundreds of billions of years ago, then it's possible that technology to 'replicate sentient life' throughout galaxies may have been developed by races that created Dyson spheres, or developed nanotech robots that could self create organic peptides, or even microorganisms, capable of forming into basic life around the universe....
just imagine what a world that had stable intelligent life for more than 9 billion years might have created when they realized the way new 'smaller' galaxies formed from the then prominent super galaxies.
if a race that had successfully migrated from one older solar system to a younger one, they may well have constructed methods to propagate their race throughout the galaxies... if the age of the universe is vastly older than our own galaxy, then the likelihood of that technology reaching earth is much higher.
see, they take 'spent' fuel rods, then process them like they would mined uranium, to make 'new' fuel rods, taking away part of the atomic waste (although nowhere near all of it)
with water cooled rods you loose a significant portion of the uranium to corrosion however with sodium and liquid metal cooled reactors, you get much more of the original material...
so not every ounce of material is kept at the plants, since we can recycle the spent fuel rods.
the reason is simple. coal, and atomic power (and to a small extent, hydroelectric dams and windmill farms) are the power source for 'electricity' if 96% of the electric energy is converted to hydrogen you have a very serious problem for oil companies. because the oil platforms out to sea won't run dry for another 20-50 years, and the core of their business model is seeing that this energy is used.
if too many people switch to hydrogen cars, then oil becomes worthless, because coal can be mined cheaper, etc.
not to mention that wood can be burned as efficiently as coal, although at a slightly higher price, but environmentally speaking, parts of Wisconsin could become a 'bio renewable' energy source and then only the hydrogen has to be transported, or even the electricity to make the hydrogen gets transported.
so this has a really big impact. it's easier and cheaper to make and transport electricity than it is to ship oil and gas, and if at the end of the line it's 97% efficient, then making hydrogen at the point of sale could be massively cheaper than the kind of distribution network needed to sell oil.
i doubt hydrogen fuel cells will ever be truly viable, but hydrogen combustion isn't that hard to do with modern engine design either. it's so easy that gas ICEs can be converted to hydrogen ICEs for little cost (this is why over a million vehicles ran on woodgas in world war II, when oil supplies fell far short of demand.) shipping hydrogen around and storing it in mass quantities is more expensive than 'making it at the pump' from ordinary filtered water, so this technology may finally make a hydrogen economy viable, and thus render oil obsolete.
and the biggest plus side is producing 'hot' water as the output exhaust, puts fresh water back into the freshwater cycle as humidity, that will eventually become rain, produced from cars then much of that humidity will wind up precipitating on land, as it does with forests. hydrogen combustion could restore part of the freshwater cycle that clearing forests for cropland has removed, so it's twice as good for the environment, since it produces less emissions and produces humidity. although in some regions it will be cheaper to ship hydrogen rather than produce it at the pump, and in some areas it may be necessary to desalinate water, or use 'waste water' from sewer systems.
of course, oil can still be burned to make electricity, and with increased demand for electricity driven by a hydrogen economy they would likely sell a lot of oil for use in creating electricity, however this is sold much cheaper than gasoline and doesn't use the same refining process as gasoline (there is no need to 'crack' the chemicals to get shorter chains when you're burning oil for electricity, and not making gasoline) so the oil industry will loose many jobs, and the oil wells that are currently being tapped will wind up selling far below where they were expected to sell, causing oil exploration to basically stop completely, and eventually many generations from now bio-fuels will become the cheapest form of energy when fossil fuels run out.
charter cable has been doing this for a while too... i noticed it once when i typed in just the name of a website (without the www or the.com, which works fine in firefox, for well known sites, but it was in ie so it went to this charter redirect page...)
Apparently by resident they meant 'lackey of the local hospital' since the only documents i could find 'driving' savings from were hospitals, that now transmit medical data via computer, instead of sending them by courier to the major hospitals where specialists determine whats wrong etc. and how that creates jobs is beyond me, it sounds like it replaces the job of 'medical document carrier' with no jobs.
perhaps the manufacturer of medical equipment that transmits and allows specialists to return a diagnosis are based in Kentucky?
I know the internet has made stuff that you 'can't buy at the local wal-mart' easier to buy, which is surely a win for these niche market manufacturers, which are mostly USA based small companies, so perhaps there is some truth to the positive job growth in terms of products that before you had to hunt for in a major city at a store large enough to have all the special goods in stock.
or perhaps they're counting all the economic benefits of companies like yahoo and Google, Netflix etc.
Sears was built from its catalog, which was the closest thing to 'internet shopping' in the analog era. After they built their skyscraper they stopped growing, but once people thought nothing could stop sears stores from replacing the old downtown shopping, the way wal-mart has done in the modern era. personally, i save $30 a year over paying the 'wal-mart' price for blank DVD media. I don't buy the cheapest blanks or i would save more, but then I'd be worried about my data becoming corrupted, or never burning the first time.
fortune 500 companies can get compromised. It's not like it's impossible, and they are the most likely to have a sophisticated system for downing compromised systems (Intrusion detection systems, automatic filtering of forums eg: Slashdot has code that tries to reject links or code that is 'known bad' although not necessarily links to bad sites) and the ability to power power off or 'stop internet to' any single server without having to access it physically) but no system is 100% fool proof, besides which, who is going to prove that said fortune 500 company compromised john doe of new jersey's system when the server was comprised for.1 seconds before it got detected and shut off? if john doe doesn't discover the problem until 3 years later when the hacking group who originally compromised his system got hacked itself, and the system finally crashed, instead of just running malware in the screen saver...
i mean fortune 500 companies hire big shot lawyers to take care of the small fries, and they hire seven figure technology specialists to deal with any major problems.
speaking as someone who had malware on his computer unknowingly for 3 years, until other computer hackers (not the ones who originally installed the software) got into my system did i realize I had even been compromised.
so frankly, it would be hard for me to sue anyone, since my ISP doesn't watchdog my network activity to see if hackers are using my system, the hackers who rooted my system were professionals, but it's not like they can be sued...
I even had a hardware firewall, besides windows, but it was a cheap one, not like when i used to use a freebsd firewall... but freebsd got to be a major pain to install. now there is smooth wall 3.0... but since I've become so adverse to using windows on the net, that it's not even worth it to play online games.
say you're bill gates, and own Microsoft. say the 'fair tax' laws (tarrifs) get passed, then because we added tarrifs, other countries add tarrifs, to 'keep the playing field level' against our exports. it tends to snowball to the point where it becomes basically impossible to run a multi-national, so companies are broken up 'on paper' if not in fact, so for instance bill gates becomes the owner of several Microsoft entities operating in multiple countries, since money isn't tarrifed, he can still make all the money, and move wherever he wants to to enjoy his riches. so 'fair tax' laws don't necessarily help, unless you tie it to 'environmental protection standards' rather than to specific countries. then it might work, since most industrialized nations (except china) have fairly good environmental protection laws.
as to catastrophe, i never said fair tax laws will cause a global economic collapse, i said they wouldn't 'keep' money in the USA, although the lack of 'cheap energy' will eventually cause a fairly heavy strain on the global economy, and the us economy is in bad shape, from the past 30 years of 'exporting' money overseas. if there wasn't heavy foreign investment in the USA we would already be in a depression cycle.
well i said hydrogen fusion, but technically any form of 'cheap energy production' that could be patented, and was able to be sold for use in vehicles, or as a cheaper energy production method than king coal, for electricity, would be able to reverse the money flow to America.
of course, that money could then flow out of America if the founder was greedy...
and while 'fair tax' laws would be really good at disrupting the global economy (some one suggested that as a solution to America's hemorrhaging money overseas) the amount it would help America is in doubt. After all, once a rich person gets addicted to 'offshore' money, there is no guarantee they wouldn't simply move to Brazil, Japan or somewhere else than America.
We could restore a need for local industry through taxation, but we couldn't guarantee how much wealth we could keep 'inside America' money is liquid, and the rich can and will flee persecution by governments if they feel incensed by the laws.
For 300 years the British had a global array of colonies, supported by their navies... then the modern area began, and the ruthless taxation and primitive conditions were no longer enough to keep some of those colonies from revolting, and changing the global sphere of power.
Expecting the 'modern era' to survive, when we know oil is post-peak, most counties are running short of 'king coal' atomic energy, although widely used, can't possibly be increased without changing reactors to sodium or liquid metal based reactors, instead of water cooled reactors...
well, all I have to say is that the technology that enabled a 'nation' as large and powerful as America is beginning to crumble. because of when America was founded, it was only natural for the country to remain unified, had the technology of the 'British' era continued, there might well have been a successful split in the civil war, breaking America in two, and there would never have been a world war 1 much less a world war 2... since the technology needed to spur such massive war efforts would have never been invented...
to a certain extent bio-fuels could sustain a 'modern' world, but only on the backs of countless 'working poor' in nations where living conditions are atrocious. so frankly, i expect the future to be bleak, and revert to a world where the 'rich' live off the backs of the 'poor' in the third world nations. as such, technology that exists today may well be lost, due to the insanely high cost. As such, smaller governments will prevail, and the technology we have today that might allow global unification, will collapse like a deck of cards in the 'great economic collapse' of 2xxx (year uncertain as yet)
personally, i think that Europe is heading towards a single 'national' government, with the 'current' national governments becoming state like governmental bodies, but i don't see any reason for that process (if it happens) to spread world wide. although the European union currently lacks teeth, i have a feeling that it's just a matter of time before online crime, copyright law, etc causes the people in those countries to Want a stronger EU government that can go after criminals, universally protect the copyrighted material in all countries etc...
the reason why this will never go 'global' is simple. 'modern' nations are built in part off the resources of 'less developed countries' just look at how modern environmental regulations have driven global production to china... and consider where in the world 'copper' is currently being mined for use in America, Japan, Europe etc..
with oil running out, there will be a need for large tracts of land that need to produce 'renewable' energy resources, since it's cheaper to do in Africa and south America, that's where it will be done. unless of course, we start harvesting oil 'underneath' the sea, in underwater oil platforms that connect to an undersea pipeline in the arctic and antarctic oceans. the technology to do that exists, and if oil goes high enough, it will be done. personally, i think bio-fuels can be done for less than building undersea platforms to continue sucking at the teat of oil.
ah well, at least the undersea oil money won't necessarily go to the mid-east (unless they invest in the companies that start doing so, but nothing is stopping them from investing in bio-fuel companies either)
considering that 'woodgas' is mostly hydrogen, and accounts for 50% of the stored energy in wood, and the fact that managed forestry can allow (in wet climates) up to 4x the production of cutting 'natural' forests... i think we'd be better off just cutting down trees, making the woodgas, and spend the money on safer hydrogen gas storage in vehicles, and use this 'woodgas' production as a renewable energy source for cars.
in world war 2 over 1 million vehicles ran on woodgas, because of the oil crisis caused by the war. looking for expensive pie in the sky solutions is silly, we know we can build woodgas burning cars, and we know where in the world we can plant large wood farms, as a matter of fact, we know this so well, that there is currently a wood surplus... lumber based companies have been stockpiling so much wood because it's become so cheap due to overproduction... because of computers finally making a dent in paper consumption, among other factors (recycled plastic being used as a construction material instead of wood etc)
of course, making the vast tracts of land that are suitable for managed forestry into productive forests would cause a few problems with species extinction, but nothing is perfect. the best thing about managed forestry is that it helps preserve the 'fresh water cycle' and if used as an alternative fuel, it is carbon neutral. you also don't need tons of fossil fuels to make woodgas, they even sell portable 'woodgas' based camping stoves. they work like a modern range, but use way less fuel than a cooking fire, and they use the materials people tend to build cook fires with.
unless fusion power becomes realistic in the next 20 years, the alternative energy sources that really work are going to be the ones we wind up falling back on. even if we destroy every rain-forest on the earth to build them. (palm oil based bio-diesel would do just that, and it's one of the few currently viable alternative fuels)
if they burn down all the rain-forests to build cane sugar ethanol plants the rain-forests will dry up and eventually become grasslands that can't sustain sugarcane without irrigation.
at least palm oil bio-diesel leaves a rain-forest type environment behind, even if it lacks the diversity of life of a natural rain-forest.
The single best thing you can do for web exploits is to get a list based firewall, such as Peerguardian, iplist.sourceforge.net , or moblock the latter 2 are linux based, peer guardian 1 was released for mac os, and peer guardian 2 is for windows still, so no matter what os you use, there is a peer guardian application, if you just want the 'web exploit' sites blocked they have a separate list for that, i realize they were started as a 'blacklist' against people making p2p applications not work (seeding bad data, etc) but they are also really good for making web browsing safer. obviously some web exploits can be carried out without needing a special web server, as some exploits can be posted as bad links on social networking sites etc.
so you're saying iceland is a good place for a data center? i heard that with the geothermal energy that's been deployed there that aluminum smelting plant was popular there. http://www.alcoa.com/iceland/en/news/releases.asp
just because there is cheap electricity doesn't mean it's a good place to put a data center.
as a matter of fact, i seem to recall that America's aluminum industry is loosing out to foreign competition, because of various renewable energy sources that are just beginning to be taped. Since hydro-electric and geothermal plants produce energy more cheaply even than atomic energy, there has been a big shift to where aluminum is being made based on availability of renewable energy. most of America's big hydroelectric sites are tapped, and there aren't many geothermal sites available.
actually, part 2 is partially 'obsolete' many skilled crackers now work for that various organized crime syndicates, and they would get a nice bullet in the head for disclosing how their latest crack is compromising x million computers.
I found out recently that my computers have been rooted since at least 3 years ago, and I've found a number of 'methods' paid hackers use to keep systems infected. 1. adding a session to a cd/dvd/bdr that auto installs the root-kit on windows. and 2. scanning broadband blocks for 'unpatched' systems. 3. 'malware' sites etc. 4. the piece de la resistance I backed up my motherboard bios to a floppy diskette, then compared the dates to dl the 'same' bios from the motherboard manufacturer, and they had different md5 sums. working computers with a bios not provided by the manufacturer.
the root-kit was so stealthy only the various corrupted media, and a few inconsistencies like auto run disabling when certain dvds were put in that it was nearly impossible to tell anything was wrong. and since most computer places ignore the bios, thinking that bios virus would 'wipe' the bios, making it worthless, rather than replace it with working code that makes it a haven for mafia hackers... the infected backup media was how i determined how long i was rooted but in truth it may have been longer, if cd and dvd based root-kit re-installers were just getting started 3 years ago..
since then I've switched to infra recorder, for windows PCs, and making all cds and dvds 'finalized' so no additional sessions can be added. (infra recorder does this by default)
I don't know what i'm going to do when i get a BD-R drive, since it may take a while for open source to burn both data and video BD-Rs, and I will be getting a BD-R some time in the next 2 years...
"Actually, they burn sugar cane before harvest to make it lose the "razor sharp" leaves. It's a very environmentally damaging process due to carbon particulates. If you're going to use protective gear, you're going to have a more lucrative plantation using modern harvest methods."
I was more thinking along the lines of being less environmentally destructive, but when i realized how environmentally destructive cane is compared to other methods i decided it was moot to promote anything based on cane sugar as 'environmentally good.' Right now I'm more on the 'woodgas,' and 'cellulostic ethanol,' followed lastly by palm oil. since they're all based on trees, or shrubbery that tend to preserve the local aquifer, they are 'more desirable' although the palm oil craze is part of the Holocene Extinction event
Palm oil, which currently is the number one cause of 'converting' rain-forest to 'bio-fuel' factories. The plus side is you're using a tree fruit, rather than a tree. so the tree growing slow is not a problem, it still bears fruit every year once mature. Also to the plus side, trees 'sustain' the local aquifer, crops, and clear cutting create periods of high run-off, which can cause groundwater to drop, and even dry up local lakes and rivers.
Tree farming can be mitigate the run-off problem by harvesting in a 'staggered row' harvest, rather than clear cutting, but not all tree farms are run by environmentalists who'd use staggered harvesting even though it makes tree extraction slower, and thus less profitable.
If the rain-forests of the world are cut down to make farms (exceptions being 'tree farms' and rice paddies') and cities, they will turn to dust, and become massive tracts of desert within a few centuries. Far worse than the dust-bowl, which was caused by moving large farming outfits into a region that was for a generation had much higher than normal rain fall, because of a change in the global weather patterns. that region was never know to have trees in large numbers, and oceanic rainfall is blocked by mountain ranges. so when the weather pattern went back to normal the farms dried up, and blew away, although some blame the lack of 'crop rotation' the 7 years of high heat caused by a change in global weather patterns was the primary blame. the farms in that area now use soil conservation techniques, but as deforestation reduces the amount of global freshwater, and global warming makes dry areas drier, that area is likely to get hit by a drought that even crop rotation can't save (probably not for 50- 100 years or so though).
well, i may have been wrong, but it Is possible to use manual labor to produce sugarcane to produce ethanol. even if the leaves are razor sharp, they're still little more than paper, so protective gear that can resist the leaves wouldn't be that costly.
since much of Africa lacks any form sustainable economy, it would be possible for say, Europeans to invest in sugarcane plantations in parts of Africa where there is little if any work available at all. I never knew the cane itself had razor sharp leaves, but cane sugar grown locally and converted to ethanol locally and then exported to Europe could reduce the cost of transit across the EU, using manual labor would be cheaper and create sustainable economies while reducing the EU's dependence on russian and middle-eastern oil.
the main source of instability in africa is because they have no way to build sustainable economies to allow a stable government to keep corruption low. the main source of strife in the middle east is that the people themselves are poor, while the ruling class are wealthy beyond imagination due to oil exports. in china, there has been 5000 years of stability despite having a large poverty cast, simply because there were always jobs for them on the rice paddies.
the environmental concerns aside, biofuels are really the only 'long term' solution other than hydrogen fusion, solar, wind, and hydroelectric power sources. the world is already running out of uranium due to water cooled reactors (reactor rod lifespans are 50x longer in sodium or liquid metal reactors.) and 'hydrogen fuel cells' use more energy and resource in production than the vehicle itself uses over a lifetime of use. The us may have a hundred years of useful coal, but eventually that too will run out.
Wood could be burned at factories to produce hydrogen fuel, which could be used either with fuel cells, or true hydrogen combustion engines. the latter of the two being more environmentally friendly. the problem of course is cost. i know that palm oil is used to make bio-fuels, but it can only be grown in existing rain-forest areas. growing other varieties of trees allows the trees to be farmed in ares further north or further south, in areas where it would have less of an environmental impact.
and while tree farms do protect the hydrosphere, they tend to favor certain species of animals over others that prefer old growth forests. of course, forestry being the ancient art that it is, can be done entirely with humans, and beasts of burden. or it can be done modernly by robotic machines that can cut, de-branch, and load it to truck. of course there are also ways to do it halfway between, with humans using chainsaws, etc etc.
it would be interesting to know just how expensive tree farming would be in africa, or south america, as opposed to the united states, canada, or europe. if enough forests were planted in previously grassland regions then it could be a major step forward in reversing damage to the hydrosphere caused by global deforestation.
there are a lot of factors involved, but actually in brazil they don't use close to 1 gallon of oil to produce 3 gallons of ethanol. for one thing, brazil has a large manual labor workforce. low paying, that means, brazil can hire on hands to plant, and harvest the cane. the only fuel used is the transport machinery.
furthermore, the cane is burned to produce the ethanol, as well as electricity, the electricity created helps cover the cost of fuel to transport the cane, and ethanol around.
but there is still tragically a huge negative, the burning of cane has caused a huge increase of smog in brazil, you see when you burn the cane a lot of small particulate gets into the air. that's why in the us, they burn natural gas to make bio-ethanol, instead of the stalk and husk.
well, that's only 2 years before this patent was granted, and uw wisconsin was probably at the forefront of 'multi-core optimization research' looking at ibm's existing designs and 'improving on them' something that can still result in creating valid patents, that didn't become a big issue for intel until now that multi-core designs a reality of how 'desktops' are becoming more powerful.
IBM was already a huge multi-national even before the PC was born, so they would be sure to patent everything their researchers came up with. if there was a smaller firm i could understand them not getting the patent before a group of college researchers, but with IBM i highly doubt there would be prior art without some form of patent involved, leaving intel paying ibm instead of the University of wisconsin.
i can understand intel not wanting to pay twice for the same thing, and i know the patent office has a hard time with high tech patents, releasing patents for similar technology... but there really is no other way that intel is getting out of paying the uw than to find someone else to pay.
i remember 1996, very clearly, since it was the year i graduated high school. i was using a 486 33 hmz computer and had to use a wierd telnet dial-up thing to connect to the the college campus computers. It was the year i graduated high school, but i was in all college courses, it was a state program where highly academic students could get their state school funding applied to the first year or two of college.
the pentium might have been out in 96 or so, but i didn't get my first pentium system until 1997. so, frankly intel is in BIG trouble for trying to avoid paying royalties to warf. I'm fairly sure that amd paid up, for their X2s there is no reason why intel shouldn't be doing the same, since most of this money goes to support the college systems ability to do purely theoretical research long before technology is ready for mainstream.
prior art? i don't think there was even any mainframe groups working on multi-core processors in '96 so i doubt this patent will be tossed aside.
you need a device that can use the optical output, or HDMI, and pass through the HDMI video to the TV set.
originally the ps3 was going to have 2 hdmi ports, but they decided to just ship it with one.
it does allow the standard sony cable hook up for stereo sound, which might be fine for gamers who don't care to have surround sound.... but yeah, for a blue-ray player you need a modern stereo setup.
some gamers still play the xbox 360 or the ps3 on standard def tvs using the tv speakers. i know my nephew does, but he's only 16. he has a job, but i don't think he'll buy a hd tv or a stereo system anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
ubuntu definitely isn't for everybody.
if you only burn cd-rs, if you want a linux that can hot plug usb drives (even if they're in windows file systems) and write files to em, before burning dvds on windows... it's also pretty good, but linux just sucks at burning dvds. they use a retarded program called 'growisofs' that only makes coasters, because it's memory footprint is so big that the hd gets taxed out trying to add swapspaces, when you really only need the next 16 MB of the burn data cached to avoid buffer under-runs...
well, every linux dvd burning app uses the retarded growisofs that is clearly broken, and nobody cares because they only burn cds anyways..
i specifically picked out my dvd burner based on how reliable it is at burning dvds, after having a painful experience being an 'early' adopter of the 'pioneer a04' drive that could only handle pioneer blanks. so linux not working with it is retarded. everyone on the net was recommending the brand i bought.
but linux is great for web browsing, and im use, and the usb hd support is great, so i mean it's not like linux is worthless, it's just not nearly as good at basic tasks like dvd burning as windows is.
and linux has the best collection of 'simple' games ever, i remember buying cds full of sampler games in the past, and what linux has for free on the net now dwarfs those cd-rom collections in both simple game fun and selection.
i was referring to online crimes that have significant dollar value losses. why all slashdot first used pedophiles etc is beyond me.... so say instead of saying 'kevin mitnick you can never touch a computer again' we say 'you'll be using this isp, using a vpn we run so everything you do is monitored blah blah blah...'
mitnick had to work hard to get permission to have a cellular telephone, so clearly the fbi etc are tying to control what hackers do even after their jail term...
requiring convicted criminals to use a vpn would be a step in the right direction.
also much easier to implement than trying to build an internet around catching crooks.
so what do you do with the criminals from Africa who are connected to organized crime, who have whole 'internet cafes' and people standing watch so they can get out of there if the 'police' come, who are more than likely on the take anyways...
remember the 'untouchables' it took a special breed of cops to go against organized crime and get results, and with 'cyber crime' often being 'international crime' it's difficult to police.
'spying' on what people do over the net is really the only way to catch the criminals in the act. however, doing so in a country that you don't work for is impossible with the way the internet works. unless of course, you create a law governing how 'backbone' providers work with international police, to allow certain countries to be 'locked in' to a certain backbone, where the data traveling from that backbone to other backbones can be monitored... and evidence of crime can be monitored, and controlled.
doing something like that would discourage the growth of online crime in iran and africa without affecting internet usability in 'modernized' nations, but countries like china russia etc would be much harder to try and stop crime in, without completely redesigning the internet around catching criminals, the problem will only get worse.
remember the prohibition, when a layman could make a fair bit higher salary rum running, than doing decent work, crime spiraled out of control. an internet that doesn't care who does what or when or why and does everything to make any packet go through to recipient... will only breed a den of thieves.
can the global economy take a 7 billion dollar a year hit to cyber crime every year, for the next 20 years? no it can't and that's why tracing criminal activity is Going to become standard. right now to credit card fraud, identity theft, and check fraud scams etc... i seem to recall hearing that europe and the usa were combined losing 7 billion dollars a year, but it was on dateline nbc, not on the internet so the figure might be off.
tracking the criminals down is going to get easier, and the crime harder to pull off. It's only a matter of time.
although i Seriously doubt they're going to make it easier for the movie and music industries to track down users, and catch them 'in the act' what is going to get targeted is the stuff that really steals from the banks, and the rich and gives it to the criminals.
if i had the money I'd bet a billion dollars that within a decade hacking will be traceable world wide, through hardware ids before they get the money transfered from one bank account to another one.
if i had another billion dollars, I'd wager that in 10 years banks will process checks the way wal-mart does now, before they hand the user any money, and before they can 'wire' the money to another bank account, the original account is checked for the money, and the check is scanned by the computer for identifying marks, that can verify it as original.
taking 3 days to verify a cashiers check just doesn't cut it when that's what check cashing fraud scams are banking on.
I'm sorry, but even fortune 500 companies have problems with systems being compromised. you're thinking that for whatever reason they can control all the input and all the out put data.
yahoo which was an early pioneer in the internet space was highly dependent on FreeBSD, to date they still code and maintain Yahoo BSD, and submit considerable amounts of code to the FreeBSD project.
even with programmers writing their own operating system yahoo has had times where servers got compromised. furthermore, they have for years had data Crossing their network that Is Not end to end secure. because of common carrier laws, yahoo mail, yahoo briefcase, and even geocities doesn't guarantee that any of that data is free of viruses or exploits.
why do you think yahoo and google invested in captcha systems for their servers? it was to reduce spam and fraud committed with 'automatic' tools designed by crackers to make it easier to compromise systems and do their 'illicit' jobs.
and yes google is a fortune 500 at number 241 and yahoo is at 357. (for year 2007)
the whole point is that even 2 fortune 500 companies can transmit code that will compromise your system, because they are protected by common carrier laws. there is no promise that going to a geocities site won't in some way let hackers install software on your system, the whole point is that hackers build bots that do this for them so they make money, and fortune 500 companies have failed in coming up with a secure system against botnet installers, especially over networks where they have legal immunity.
even a small portion of files on download.com contain adware, even though download.com has a no adware policy. but we were talking about what fortune 500 companies are doing, for internet security, so i used the geocities/yahoo mail etc...
"But how does one simulate gravity?"
i believe you might want to ask John Carmack
I can't recall which engine introduced gravity simulation, but i know that at some point they came up with some quick code and map settings that could alter the rate at which people fell, etc.
gravity on a quantum scale is difficult to simulate, but generally large heavenly bodies have a fairly constant gravity, with the exception of stars, which through fusion loose some mass to high energy particles. if you assume that the 'earth' is the extent of the simulation, or even the 'solar system' and the 'remaining data' is simple gathered by sensors outside the simulation. well, then it's different.
on the other hand, if you 'assume' that the 'super large mass' of dark matter is a 'thermally dead super galaxy' from hundreds of billions of years ago, then it's possible that technology to 'replicate sentient life' throughout galaxies may have been developed by races that created Dyson spheres, or developed nanotech robots that could self create organic peptides, or even microorganisms, capable of forming into basic life around the universe....
just imagine what a world that had stable intelligent life for more than 9 billion years might have created when they realized the way new 'smaller' galaxies formed from the then prominent super galaxies.
if a race that had successfully migrated from one older solar system to a younger one, they may well have constructed methods to propagate their race throughout the galaxies... if the age of the universe is vastly older than our own galaxy, then the likelihood of that technology reaching earth is much higher.
"Nuclear plant: Every single ounce of fuel that plant has ever used is still in that picture (in holding tanks)."
apparently you've yet to hear of atomic rod recycling http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2006/02/president-bush-weekly-radio-address-18.html
see, they take 'spent' fuel rods, then process them like they would mined uranium, to make 'new' fuel rods, taking away part of the atomic waste (although nowhere near all of it)
with water cooled rods you loose a significant portion of the uranium to corrosion however with sodium and liquid metal cooled reactors, you get much more of the original material...
so not every ounce of material is kept at the plants, since we can recycle the spent fuel rods.
the reason is simple. coal, and atomic power (and to a small extent, hydroelectric dams and windmill farms) are the power source for 'electricity' if 96% of the electric energy is converted to hydrogen you have a very serious problem for oil companies. because the oil platforms out to sea won't run dry for another 20-50 years, and the core of their business model is seeing that this energy is used.
if too many people switch to hydrogen cars, then oil becomes worthless, because coal can be mined cheaper, etc.
not to mention that wood can be burned as efficiently as coal, although at a slightly higher price, but environmentally speaking, parts of Wisconsin could become a 'bio renewable' energy source and then only the hydrogen has to be transported, or even the electricity to make the hydrogen gets transported.
so this has a really big impact. it's easier and cheaper to make and transport electricity than it is to ship oil and gas, and if at the end of the line it's 97% efficient, then making hydrogen at the point of sale could be massively cheaper than the kind of distribution network needed to sell oil.
i doubt hydrogen fuel cells will ever be truly viable, but hydrogen combustion isn't that hard to do with modern engine design either. it's so easy that gas ICEs can be converted to hydrogen ICEs for little cost (this is why over a million vehicles ran on woodgas in world war II, when oil supplies fell far short of demand.) shipping hydrogen around and storing it in mass quantities is more expensive than 'making it at the pump' from ordinary filtered water, so this technology may finally make a hydrogen economy viable, and thus render oil obsolete.
and the biggest plus side is producing 'hot' water as the output exhaust, puts fresh water back into the freshwater cycle as humidity, that will eventually become rain, produced from cars then much of that humidity will wind up precipitating on land, as it does with forests. hydrogen combustion could restore part of the freshwater cycle that clearing forests for cropland has removed, so it's twice as good for the environment, since it produces less emissions and produces humidity. although in some regions it will be cheaper to ship hydrogen rather than produce it at the pump, and in some areas it may be necessary to desalinate water, or use 'waste water' from sewer systems.
of course, oil can still be burned to make electricity, and with increased demand for electricity driven by a hydrogen economy they would likely sell a lot of oil for use in creating electricity, however this is sold much cheaper than gasoline and doesn't use the same refining process as gasoline (there is no need to 'crack' the chemicals to get shorter chains when you're burning oil for electricity, and not making gasoline) so the oil industry will loose many jobs, and the oil wells that are currently being tapped will wind up selling far below where they were expected to sell, causing oil exploration to basically stop completely, and eventually many generations from now bio-fuels will become the cheapest form of energy when fossil fuels run out.
charter cable has been doing this for a while too... i noticed it once when i typed in just the name of a website (without the www or the .com, which works fine in firefox, for well known sites, but it was in ie so it went to this charter redirect page...)
Apparently by resident they meant 'lackey of the local hospital' since the only documents i could find 'driving' savings from were hospitals, that now transmit medical data via computer, instead of sending them by courier to the major hospitals where specialists determine whats wrong etc. and how that creates jobs is beyond me, it sounds like it replaces the job of 'medical document carrier' with no jobs.
perhaps the manufacturer of medical equipment that transmits and allows specialists to return a diagnosis are based in Kentucky?
I know the internet has made stuff that you 'can't buy at the local wal-mart' easier to buy, which is surely a win for these niche market manufacturers, which are mostly USA based small companies, so perhaps there is some truth to the positive job growth in terms of products that before you had to hunt for in a major city at a store large enough to have all the special goods in stock.
or perhaps they're counting all the economic benefits of companies like yahoo and Google, Netflix etc.
Sears was built from its catalog, which was the closest thing to 'internet shopping' in the analog era. After they built their skyscraper they stopped growing, but once people thought nothing could stop sears stores from replacing the old downtown shopping, the way wal-mart has done in the modern era. personally, i save $30 a year over paying the 'wal-mart' price for blank DVD media. I don't buy the cheapest blanks or i would save more, but then I'd be worried about my data becoming corrupted, or never burning the first time.
fortune 500 companies can get compromised. It's not like it's impossible, and they are the most likely to have a sophisticated system for downing compromised systems (Intrusion detection systems, automatic filtering of forums eg: Slashdot has code that tries to reject links or code that is 'known bad' although not necessarily links to bad sites) and the ability to power power off or 'stop internet to' any single server without having to access it physically) but no system is 100% fool proof, besides which, who is going to prove that said fortune 500 company compromised john doe of new jersey's system when the server was comprised for .1 seconds before it got detected and shut off? if john doe doesn't discover the problem until 3 years later when the hacking group who originally compromised his system got hacked itself, and the system finally crashed, instead of just running malware in the screen saver...
i mean fortune 500 companies hire big shot lawyers to take care of the small fries, and they hire seven figure technology specialists to deal with any major problems.
speaking as someone who had malware on his computer unknowingly for 3 years, until other computer hackers (not the ones who originally installed the software) got into my system did i realize I had even been compromised.
so frankly, it would be hard for me to sue anyone, since my ISP doesn't watchdog my network activity to see if hackers are using my system, the hackers who rooted my system were professionals, but it's not like they can be sued...
I even had a hardware firewall, besides windows, but it was a cheap one, not like when i used to use a freebsd firewall... but freebsd got to be a major pain to install. now there is smooth wall 3.0... but since I've become so adverse to using windows on the net, that it's not even worth it to play online games.
Windows firewall doesn't count, as it is the only firewall in history to score a 0 (out of 9,625 points) without actually being Malware. http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;159719021
so yes, there are more than 1 million PCs without Working firewalls, or working anti-virus.
say you're bill gates, and own Microsoft. say the 'fair tax' laws (tarrifs) get passed, then because we added tarrifs, other countries add tarrifs, to 'keep the playing field level' against our exports. it tends to snowball to the point where it becomes basically impossible to run a multi-national, so companies are broken up 'on paper' if not in fact, so for instance bill gates becomes the owner of several Microsoft entities operating in multiple countries, since money isn't tarrifed, he can still make all the money, and move wherever he wants to to enjoy his riches. so 'fair tax' laws don't necessarily help, unless you tie it to 'environmental protection standards' rather than to specific countries. then it might work, since most industrialized nations (except china) have fairly good environmental protection laws.
as to catastrophe, i never said fair tax laws will cause a global economic collapse, i said they wouldn't 'keep' money in the USA, although the lack of 'cheap energy' will eventually cause a fairly heavy strain on the global economy, and the us economy is in bad shape, from the past 30 years of 'exporting' money overseas. if there wasn't heavy foreign investment in the USA we would already be in a depression cycle.
well i said hydrogen fusion, but technically any form of 'cheap energy production' that could be patented, and was able to be sold for use in vehicles, or as a cheaper energy production method than king coal, for electricity, would be able to reverse the money flow to America.
of course, that money could then flow out of America if the founder was greedy...
and while 'fair tax' laws would be really good at disrupting the global economy (some one suggested that as a solution to America's hemorrhaging money overseas) the amount it would help America is in doubt. After all, once a rich person gets addicted to 'offshore' money, there is no guarantee they wouldn't simply move to Brazil, Japan or somewhere else than America.
We could restore a need for local industry through taxation, but we couldn't guarantee how much wealth we could keep 'inside America' money is liquid, and the rich can and will flee persecution by governments if they feel incensed by the laws.
For 300 years the British had a global array of colonies, supported by their navies... then the modern area began, and the ruthless taxation and primitive conditions were no longer enough to keep some of those colonies from revolting, and changing the global sphere of power.
Expecting the 'modern era' to survive, when we know oil is post-peak, most counties are running short of 'king coal' atomic energy, although widely used, can't possibly be increased without changing reactors to sodium or liquid metal based reactors, instead of water cooled reactors...
well, all I have to say is that the technology that enabled a 'nation' as large and powerful as America is beginning to crumble. because of when America was founded, it was only natural for the country to remain unified, had the technology of the 'British' era continued, there might well have been a successful split in the civil war, breaking America in two, and there would never have been a world war 1 much less a world war 2... since the technology needed to spur such massive war efforts would have never been invented...
to a certain extent bio-fuels could sustain a 'modern' world, but only on the backs of countless 'working poor' in nations where living conditions are atrocious. so frankly, i expect the future to be bleak, and revert to a world where the 'rich' live off the backs of the 'poor' in the third world nations. as such, technology that exists today may well be lost, due to the insanely high cost. As such, smaller governments will prevail, and the technology we have today that might allow global unification, will collapse like a deck of cards in the 'great economic collapse' of 2xxx (year uncertain as yet)
personally, i think that Europe is heading towards a single 'national' government, with the 'current' national governments becoming state like governmental bodies, but i don't see any reason for that process (if it happens) to spread world wide. although the European union currently lacks teeth, i have a feeling that it's just a matter of time before online crime, copyright law, etc causes the people in those countries to Want a stronger EU government that can go after criminals, universally protect the copyrighted material in all countries etc...
the reason why this will never go 'global' is simple. 'modern' nations are built in part off the resources of 'less developed countries' just look at how modern environmental regulations have driven global production to china... and consider where in the world 'copper' is currently being mined for use in America, Japan, Europe etc..
with oil running out, there will be a need for large tracts of land that need to produce 'renewable' energy resources, since it's cheaper to do in Africa and south America, that's where it will be done. unless of course, we start harvesting oil 'underneath' the sea, in underwater oil platforms that connect to an undersea pipeline in the arctic and antarctic oceans. the technology to do that exists, and if oil goes high enough, it will be done. personally, i think bio-fuels can be done for less than building undersea platforms to continue sucking at the teat of oil.
ah well, at least the undersea oil money won't necessarily go to the mid-east (unless they invest in the companies that start doing so, but nothing is stopping them from investing in bio-fuel companies either)
considering that 'woodgas' is mostly hydrogen, and accounts for 50% of the stored energy in wood, and the fact that managed forestry can allow (in wet climates) up to 4x the production of cutting 'natural' forests... i think we'd be better off just cutting down trees, making the woodgas, and spend the money on safer hydrogen gas storage in vehicles, and use this 'woodgas' production as a renewable energy source for cars.
in world war 2 over 1 million vehicles ran on woodgas, because of the oil crisis caused by the war. looking for expensive pie in the sky solutions is silly, we know we can build woodgas burning cars, and we know where in the world we can plant large wood farms, as a matter of fact, we know this so well, that there is currently a wood surplus... lumber based companies have been stockpiling so much wood because it's become so cheap due to overproduction... because of computers finally making a dent in paper consumption, among other factors (recycled plastic being used as a construction material instead of wood etc)
of course, making the vast tracts of land that are suitable for managed forestry into productive forests would cause a few problems with species extinction, but nothing is perfect. the best thing about managed forestry is that it helps preserve the 'fresh water cycle' and if used as an alternative fuel, it is carbon neutral. you also don't need tons of fossil fuels to make woodgas, they even sell portable 'woodgas' based camping stoves. they work like a modern range, but use way less fuel than a cooking fire, and they use the materials people tend to build cook fires with.
unless fusion power becomes realistic in the next 20 years, the alternative energy sources that really work are going to be the ones we wind up falling back on. even if we destroy every rain-forest on the earth to build them. (palm oil based bio-diesel would do just that, and it's one of the few currently viable alternative fuels)
if they burn down all the rain-forests to build cane sugar ethanol plants the rain-forests will dry up and eventually become grasslands that can't sustain sugarcane without irrigation.
at least palm oil bio-diesel leaves a rain-forest type environment behind, even if it lacks the diversity of life of a natural rain-forest.
The single best thing you can do for web exploits is to get a list based firewall, such as Peerguardian, iplist.sourceforge.net , or moblock the latter 2 are linux based, peer guardian 1 was released for mac os, and peer guardian 2 is for windows still, so no matter what os you use, there is a peer guardian application, if you just want the 'web exploit' sites blocked they have a separate list for that, i realize they were started as a 'blacklist' against people making p2p applications not work (seeding bad data, etc) but they are also really good for making web browsing safer. obviously some web exploits can be carried out without needing a special web server, as some exploits can be posted as bad links on social networking sites etc.
so you're saying iceland is a good place for a data center? i heard that with the geothermal energy that's been deployed there that aluminum smelting plant was popular there.
http://www.alcoa.com/iceland/en/news/releases.asp
just because there is cheap electricity doesn't mean it's a good place to put a data center.
as a matter of fact, i seem to recall that America's aluminum industry is loosing out to foreign competition, because of various renewable energy sources that are just beginning to be taped. Since hydro-electric and geothermal plants produce energy more cheaply even than atomic energy, there has been a big shift to where aluminum is being made based on availability of renewable energy. most of America's big hydroelectric sites are tapped, and there aren't many geothermal sites available.
actually, part 2 is partially 'obsolete' many skilled crackers now work for that various organized crime syndicates, and they would get a nice bullet in the head for disclosing how their latest crack is compromising x million computers.
I found out recently that my computers have been rooted since at least 3 years ago, and I've found a number of 'methods' paid hackers use to keep systems infected. 1. adding a session to a cd/dvd/bdr that auto installs the root-kit on windows. and 2. scanning broadband blocks for 'unpatched' systems. 3. 'malware' sites etc. 4. the piece de la resistance I backed up my motherboard bios to a floppy diskette, then compared the dates to dl the 'same' bios from the motherboard manufacturer, and they had different md5 sums. working computers with a bios not provided by the manufacturer.
the root-kit was so stealthy only the various corrupted media, and a few inconsistencies like auto run disabling when certain dvds were put in that it was nearly impossible to tell anything was wrong. and since most computer places ignore the bios, thinking that bios virus would 'wipe' the bios, making it worthless, rather than replace it with working code that makes it a haven for mafia hackers... the infected backup media was how i determined how long i was rooted but in truth it may have been longer, if cd and dvd based root-kit re-installers were just getting started 3 years ago..
since then I've switched to infra recorder, for windows PCs, and making all cds and dvds 'finalized' so no additional sessions can be added. (infra recorder does this by default)
I don't know what i'm going to do when i get a BD-R drive, since it may take a while for open source to burn both data and video BD-Rs, and I will be getting a BD-R some time in the next 2 years...
"Actually, they burn sugar cane before harvest to make it lose the "razor sharp" leaves. It's a very environmentally damaging process due to carbon particulates. If you're going to use protective gear, you're going to have a more lucrative plantation using modern harvest methods."
I was more thinking along the lines of being less environmentally destructive, but when i realized how environmentally destructive cane is compared to other methods i decided it was moot to promote anything based on cane sugar as 'environmentally good.' Right now I'm more on the 'woodgas,' and 'cellulostic ethanol,' followed lastly by palm oil. since they're all based on trees, or shrubbery that tend to preserve the local aquifer, they are 'more desirable' although the palm oil craze is part of the Holocene Extinction event
Palm oil, which currently is the number one cause of 'converting' rain-forest to 'bio-fuel' factories. The plus side is you're using a tree fruit, rather than a tree. so the tree growing slow is not a problem, it still bears fruit every year once mature. Also to the plus side, trees 'sustain' the local aquifer, crops, and clear cutting create periods of high run-off, which can cause groundwater to drop, and even dry up local lakes and rivers.
Tree farming can be mitigate the run-off problem by harvesting in a 'staggered row' harvest, rather than clear cutting, but not all tree farms are run by environmentalists who'd use staggered harvesting even though it makes tree extraction slower, and thus less profitable.
If the rain-forests of the world are cut down to make farms (exceptions being 'tree farms' and rice paddies') and cities, they will turn to dust, and become massive tracts of desert within a few centuries. Far worse than the dust-bowl, which was caused by moving large farming outfits into a region that was for a generation had much higher than normal rain fall, because of a change in the global weather patterns. that region was never know to have trees in large numbers, and oceanic rainfall is blocked by mountain ranges. so when the weather pattern went back to normal the farms dried up, and blew away, although some blame the lack of 'crop rotation' the 7 years of high heat caused by a change in global weather patterns was the primary blame. the farms in that area now use soil conservation techniques, but as deforestation reduces the amount of global freshwater, and global warming makes dry areas drier, that area is likely to get hit by a drought that even crop rotation can't save (probably not for 50- 100 years or so though).
well, i may have been wrong, but it Is possible to use manual labor to produce sugarcane to produce ethanol. even if the leaves are razor sharp, they're still little more than paper, so protective gear that can resist the leaves wouldn't be that costly.
since much of Africa lacks any form sustainable economy, it would be possible for say, Europeans to invest in sugarcane plantations in parts of Africa where there is little if any work available at all. I never knew the cane itself had razor sharp leaves, but cane sugar grown locally and converted to ethanol locally and then exported to Europe could reduce the cost of transit across the EU, using manual labor would be cheaper and create sustainable economies while reducing the EU's dependence on russian and middle-eastern oil.
the main source of instability in africa is because they have no way to build sustainable economies to allow a stable government to keep corruption low. the main source of strife in the middle east is that the people themselves are poor, while the ruling class are wealthy beyond imagination due to oil exports. in china, there has been 5000 years of stability despite having a large poverty cast, simply because there were always jobs for them on the rice paddies.
the environmental concerns aside, biofuels are really the only 'long term' solution other than hydrogen fusion, solar, wind, and hydroelectric power sources. the world is already running out of uranium due to water cooled reactors (reactor rod lifespans are 50x longer in sodium or liquid metal reactors.) and 'hydrogen fuel cells' use more energy and resource in production than the vehicle itself uses over a lifetime of use. The us may have a hundred years of useful coal, but eventually that too will run out.
a more eco-friendly approach is to create 'forests' that are harvested every 10-15 years, and use wood fuels for production of biofuels, since 'forests' even of the new-growth variety put more rain into the atmosphere than crops, this method would be viable even in rain-forest areas. however, while that method could replace coal, it is very difficult to make a 'wood fired car.'
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:asHJaqko_ZsJ:www.angelfire.com/ak5/energy21/woodfire.htm+powering+cars+with+wood&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Wood could be burned at factories to produce hydrogen fuel, which could be used either with fuel cells, or true hydrogen combustion engines. the latter of the two being more environmentally friendly. the problem of course is cost. i know that palm oil is used to make bio-fuels, but it can only be grown in existing rain-forest areas. growing other varieties of trees allows the trees to be farmed in ares further north or further south, in areas where it would have less of an environmental impact.
and while tree farms do protect the hydrosphere, they tend to favor certain species of animals over others that prefer old growth forests. of course, forestry being the ancient art that it is, can be done entirely with humans, and beasts of burden. or it can be done modernly by robotic machines that can cut, de-branch, and load it to truck. of course there are also ways to do it halfway between, with humans using chainsaws, etc etc.
it would be interesting to know just how expensive tree farming would be in africa, or south america, as opposed to the united states, canada, or europe. if enough forests were planted in previously grassland regions then it could be a major step forward in reversing damage to the hydrosphere caused by global deforestation.
there are a lot of factors involved, but actually in brazil they don't use close to 1 gallon of oil to produce 3 gallons of ethanol. for one thing, brazil has a large manual labor workforce. low paying, that means, brazil can hire on hands to plant, and harvest the cane. the only fuel used is the transport machinery.
furthermore, the cane is burned to produce the ethanol, as well as electricity, the electricity created helps cover the cost of fuel to transport the cane, and ethanol around.
but there is still tragically a huge negative, the burning of cane has caused a huge increase of smog in brazil, you see when you burn the cane a lot of small particulate gets into the air. that's why in the us, they burn natural gas to make bio-ethanol, instead of the stalk and husk.
well, that's only 2 years before this patent was granted, and uw wisconsin was probably at the forefront of 'multi-core optimization research' looking at ibm's existing designs and 'improving on them' something that can still result in creating valid patents, that didn't become a big issue for intel until now that multi-core designs a reality of how 'desktops' are becoming more powerful.
IBM was already a huge multi-national even before the PC was born, so they would be sure to patent everything their researchers came up with. if there was a smaller firm i could understand them not getting the patent before a group of college researchers, but with IBM i highly doubt there would be prior art without some form of patent involved, leaving intel paying ibm instead of the University of wisconsin.
i can understand intel not wanting to pay twice for the same thing, and i know the patent office has a hard time with high tech patents, releasing patents for similar technology... but there really is no other way that intel is getting out of paying the uw than to find someone else to pay.
yes, and given the patent number... a quick google patent search shows up that they got their patent in 1996.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=q5AbAAAAEBAJ&dq=5,781,752
i remember 1996, very clearly, since it was the year i graduated high school. i was using a 486 33 hmz computer and had to use a wierd telnet dial-up thing to connect to the the college campus computers. It was the year i graduated high school, but i was in all college courses, it was a state program where highly academic students could get their state school funding applied to the first year or two of college.
the pentium might have been out in 96 or so, but i didn't get my first pentium system until 1997. so, frankly intel is in BIG trouble for trying to avoid paying royalties to warf. I'm fairly sure that amd paid up, for their X2s there is no reason why intel shouldn't be doing the same, since most of this money goes to support the college systems ability to do purely theoretical research long before technology is ready for mainstream.
prior art? i don't think there was even any mainframe groups working on multi-core processors in '96 so i doubt this patent will be tossed aside.
you need a device that can use the optical output, or HDMI, and pass through the HDMI video to the TV set.
originally the ps3 was going to have 2 hdmi ports, but they decided to just ship it with one.
it does allow the standard sony cable hook up for stereo sound, which might be fine for gamers who don't care to have surround sound.... but yeah, for a blue-ray player you need a modern stereo setup.
some gamers still play the xbox 360 or the ps3 on standard def tvs using the tv speakers. i know my nephew does, but he's only 16. he has a job, but i don't think he'll buy a hd tv or a stereo system anytime soon.