Am I the only EE... that's a little concerned about the long-term effects of... microwave radiation?
No, you're not.
There may be some correlation but the reality is that lab tests are largely indicating that there is no measurable effect, and the transceivers (cell phones, bluetooth, wireless networks, etc) have been around for so little time that it's not going to be easy to determine the correlation, nevermind causation.
We'll know more in 10-20 years. My guess is that it would take a very high power at a very specific frequency for a very long time in order to do measurable damage. If cell phones caused brain tumors (as has been suggested off and on through the years) then I suspect you'd find the correlation right about now - I know people who have had cell phones glued to their heads for a decade. Surely there's a large enough population of users to tease out some correlation.
The ideal cost of an object is the maximum each individual customer is willing to pay for it.
By not publicly setting a price one can "personalize" the price for each individual customer, maximizing profit while not turning away lower paying customers.
Of course this only works when you can adequately segment your market, and make sure customers don't collude with each other. Sometimes, for big ticket items, contracts even specify that one can't release pricing or performance information. Whether they are enforcable is another matter...
Yes, but they are very narrow (probably require real damages to have occured due to the threat) and I imagine that the lawyers drafting the notice were very careful to exploit any loopholes so they wouldn't fall under those laws while still being as aggressive as they could be.
He indicates that he does a lot of shipping and ordered the boxes when he moved in. It wasn't until after he saw a friend of his using fedex boxes as furniture that he contemplated also using them as furniture. At one point he quips that whenever he needs another box he'd just take it out of his furniture (though I doubt he does).
Whether this is all true or not, I don't know, but that is his claim.
I'm certian he ordered more boxes primarily for furniture use after he got started, though.
If you want to see it improved and become something greater than one man's labour, use the GPL, because that's the only way you'll ever see the improvements. (Emphasis added)
Therefore, GPL'd software is NOT a gift. It is simply a resource that one may choose to use or not use. If one uses this community resource are bound by the restrictions outlined in the license.
As opposed to the GPL's form of forced reverse leeching?
Using the GPL is like saying, "If you don't follow my rules, you can't use my tools."
That's fine. I have no problem with authors choosing whatever license they want.
I would argue that *more* freedom comes to the user with software licensed under the BSD license. I have fewer restrictions when I choose BSD licensed software.
When I choose to license software under BSD, I am choosing to allow my users greater freedom than the GPL provides.
My community contributed software is a gift of my time and resources. I feel that gifts should come without strings and without expectations.
One can copyright the presentation of an out of copyright work.
For instance, you would be committing copyright infrignment if you photocopied a recently published version of Dante's Inferno. However, you would be fine photocopying an older published version where both the text and the presentation are out of copyright.
Same idea covers copying phone books - you can't copyright the list, but you can copyright the presentation.
The gutenburg project could copyright the text files. If they introduce deliberate errors (watermark the text) and find those same errors in a later printed version they could claim that someone copied their material and claim damages of some sort.
Of course, I may be completely wrong. IANAL etc. This discussion has occured so many times on Slashdot...
Prior to actually opening a regional office in China, Google didn't censor searches for China. Instead China simply blocked google.
Once they determined to conduct business in China and open an office there they were bound by law to follow the directives of the governement.
What makes better business sense:
Ignore china's laws, lose out on a large part of the world's population or
Work within China's laws and get your business going in a lucrative, growing market.
Yeah, that was a tough decision.
Notice how google has sales offices in rather afluent or economically growing countries?
One can take a stand and refuse to do business with an ethically unsound entity. Alternately, one can do business with the ethically unsound entity and try to effect change from within the boundaries dictated. I doubt Google is trying to change China in the way one might like.
However, I do not believe that working within the laws of China are contrary to their mission "Do no evil."
A problem with the current shuttle fleet is that they were designed to be mass manufactured and maintained. We were supposed to have a *fleet* of space shuttles. The cost of the shuttle would, under the original plan, be very small. We only ended up with a few of them and pretty much every part is custom made. Each shuttle has differences which exacerbate this problem.
However, it is very efficient in a number of parameters.
Armadillo Aerospace is attempting to produce a design which is easy to produce by limiting the use of custom parts and specialized work in both manufacture and maintenance. They are trading off a marginal amount of performance for a lot of manufacturability.
There the analogy ends since the space shuttle and the immediate goal of Armadillo have two completely different purposes.
The science of engines and propellants has matured, but there are so many combinations (propellant x engine design x vehicle design x etc) that it can be difficult to find exactly the kind of research you are looking for. Further, a lot of it is secret since most of this stuff was done for missile design.
Some may call this "seat of your pants" engineering, as opposed to design engineering. You try something, improve it until you find the optimum, then redesign it completely and start over. It is non-optimal for time and effort, but is low cost. It is enough to get started with something that works but has low efficiencies. Once one has a working design one can scale it only so far before having to go back to the redesign and test phase. At that point it often makes more sense to hire engineers capable of design engineering so the trial phase is shortened since the design is near optimal on the first try.
Many startups operate succesfully this way. Many have a mix of the two. Many fail when they invest all their money in engineering design, and then try to get more funding to build a prototype - it's much harder to sell an unproven paper design than it is to sell a working product that has flaws.
Looking at the code is the only way you can know for sure.
Know what? The developer's intent? The organization's intent?
At most, the disassembled code *may* show you what caused the incompatability. It won't describe to you in lurid detail how the developer plotted against the innocent user code. Once the incompatability is found you may not be able to discern whether it was intentional, and if so you certianly won't be able to determine malicious intent. At best you can infer it.
Besides - as Mitnick has demonstrated, information is more easily obtained from a person than a machine. In most cases where software attempts to break, fool, or otherwise fiddle with other software the reason we know is because the breakage is overt, or someone leaked information. The dissassembly and inspection nearly always comes after the discovery.
Keep in mind that sump pumps are designed for intermittent use. You may have some reliability issues if you use them at a duty cycle that is more than 5% or so.
Ok, so how exactly can a conference be unsuccessfully ended? Is this where the attendees launch a sit-in and prevent the conference from ending, or what?
It just seems like a hollow success.
"What was good about the conference you jsut attended sir?"
"Well, it ended. I'm quite thrilled by how well the organizers were able to get everyone to pack up and go - it was quite a success."
1. Chances are good that this is a labor intensive process. It's is likely slow, and the number of tapes and age of the equipment means jamming.
2. Note that the 'society' wants to get 1/4 million not just for the data conversion, but also a fund to study the data.
Quite frankly I might donate if it were simply to convert the data and make it publicly available. Note that they won't release the data until after it has been analyzed, and give no definite timeframe (months to a year).
Not that I'm against the project, but I don't know anything about this society, and the press release has very little information other than "Help us get our hands on the data by giving our society money." Do their members get access to the data as it's converted? What exactly is the process and timeline if they reach their goal? What happens to the money if they don't reach their goal?
1. Purchase computer with RAID
2. Purchase internet connection to another location (your home, perhaps)
3. Backup encrypted data to RAID server over internet.
It's safer than taking the backups home with you once a week (no transit loss if you employ good encryption, no damaged drives/tapes, etc). It can be more reliable, depending on the connection you pay for. If you want to cut costs, get a cheap fast DSL - if you want a fast recovery drive home, copy the data to a drive, and drive back.
It can be more costly than other online services, but it looks like my wife's in labor so I'm going to end this comment early.
The average 1.8ft^3 fridge uses between 300 and 400KwH per year. They also specify a 15 or 20 amp outlet, though that is likely due to compressor startup.
The point you make about duty cycle is a good one, and I had not considered that. Of course, duty cycle directly affects your measure of performance - how quickly can you cool a 6-pack. If the compressor fridge operates for 5 minutes and cools off the cans in 10 minutes, then that is the same as the peltier fridge running for (given 5% duty cycle) 100 minutes, and cooling the cans off in 100 minutes.
Further, if you assume the fridge takes ~350KwH per year (look at the energy star ratings on websites such as whirlpool or ge) then there's a 1KwH per day consumption.
If you run the 40watt peltier all day (24 hours) then there is slightly less than a 1KwH per day consumption - meaning that they are roughly equal in energy consumption if your 5% compressor duty cycle and 100% peltier duty cycle assumptions are correct.
Now one would have to take these and measure their performance side by side to find out which one is better. Due to cost cutting (even with energy star compliance) compressors are very inefficient. It could be that the peltier cooler would compare favorably against one, but technically the ideal peltier cooler is incapable of comparing favorably with the ideal compressor cooler.
We are, however, dealing with companies whose main goal is to reduce cost. The peltier fridge is obviously easier and cheaper to make. The compressor fridges are not nearly as efficient as they could be.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only EE
No, you're not.
There may be some correlation but the reality is that lab tests are largely indicating that there is no measurable effect, and the transceivers (cell phones, bluetooth, wireless networks, etc) have been around for so little time that it's not going to be easy to determine the correlation, nevermind causation.
We'll know more in 10-20 years. My guess is that it would take a very high power at a very specific frequency for a very long time in order to do measurable damage. If cell phones caused brain tumors (as has been suggested off and on through the years) then I suspect you'd find the correlation right about now - I know people who have had cell phones glued to their heads for a decade. Surely there's a large enough population of users to tease out some correlation.
-Adam
learn to live with (or on) humans
Please keep your fantasies to yourself.
-Adam
Note that Defcon has records for unamplified long distance links.
-Adam
The ideal cost of an object is the maximum each individual customer is willing to pay for it.
By not publicly setting a price one can "personalize" the price for each individual customer, maximizing profit while not turning away lower paying customers.
Of course this only works when you can adequately segment your market, and make sure customers don't collude with each other. Sometimes, for big ticket items, contracts even specify that one can't release pricing or performance information. Whether they are enforcable is another matter...
-Adam -Adam
"feudilism"
I considered removing the spell=1 but decided it didn't matter...
-Adam
I'm sorry. The economy you are dialing cannot be reached. Please hang up and try again. If you need help, dial "G" for Google.
-Adam
Sergey - Skynet is fully functional.
Larry - Time to take full control over the unwashed masses.
So... The great washed are ok then?
-Adam
You are not alone.
And yet you are alone.
So very alone...
-Adam
We've been duped!!
No, the dupe usually happens 12-72 hours after the original article.
-Adam
Yes, but they are very narrow (probably require real damages to have occured due to the threat) and I imagine that the lawyers drafting the notice were very careful to exploit any loopholes so they wouldn't fall under those laws while still being as aggressive as they could be.
-Adam
Read the website.
He indicates that he does a lot of shipping and ordered the boxes when he moved in. It wasn't until after he saw a friend of his using fedex boxes as furniture that he contemplated also using them as furniture. At one point he quips that whenever he needs another box he'd just take it out of his furniture (though I doubt he does).
Whether this is all true or not, I don't know, but that is his claim.
I'm certian he ordered more boxes primarily for furniture use after he got started, though.
-Adam
If you want to see it improved and become something greater than one man's labour, use the GPL, because that's the only way you'll ever see the improvements. (Emphasis added)
GPL: The cynic's license.
-Adam
Therefore, GPL'd software is NOT a gift. It is simply a resource that one may choose to use or not use. If one uses this community resource are bound by the restrictions outlined in the license.
-Adam
It's called leeching.
As opposed to the GPL's form of forced reverse leeching?
Using the GPL is like saying, "If you don't follow my rules, you can't use my tools."
That's fine. I have no problem with authors choosing whatever license they want.
I would argue that *more* freedom comes to the user with software licensed under the BSD license. I have fewer restrictions when I choose BSD licensed software.
When I choose to license software under BSD, I am choosing to allow my users greater freedom than the GPL provides.
My community contributed software is a gift of my time and resources. I feel that gifts should come without strings and without expectations.
-Adam
One can copyright the presentation of an out of copyright work.
For instance, you would be committing copyright infrignment if you photocopied a recently published version of Dante's Inferno. However, you would be fine photocopying an older published version where both the text and the presentation are out of copyright.
Same idea covers copying phone books - you can't copyright the list, but you can copyright the presentation.
The gutenburg project could copyright the text files. If they introduce deliberate errors (watermark the text) and find those same errors in a later printed version they could claim that someone copied their material and claim damages of some sort.
Of course, I may be completely wrong. IANAL etc. This discussion has occured so many times on Slashdot...
-Adam
Prior to actually opening a regional office in China, Google didn't censor searches for China. Instead China simply blocked google.
Once they determined to conduct business in China and open an office there they were bound by law to follow the directives of the governement.
What makes better business sense:
Ignore china's laws, lose out on a large part of the world's population
or
Work within China's laws and get your business going in a lucrative, growing market.
Yeah, that was a tough decision.
Notice how google has sales offices in rather afluent or economically growing countries?
One can take a stand and refuse to do business with an ethically unsound entity. Alternately, one can do business with the ethically unsound entity and try to effect change from within the boundaries dictated. I doubt Google is trying to change China in the way one might like.
However, I do not believe that working within the laws of China are contrary to their mission "Do no evil."
-Adam
Oooh, a bunch of white buildings
Mis-teer-ious!
-Adam
A problem with the current shuttle fleet is that they were designed to be mass manufactured and maintained. We were supposed to have a *fleet* of space shuttles. The cost of the shuttle would, under the original plan, be very small. We only ended up with a few of them and pretty much every part is custom made. Each shuttle has differences which exacerbate this problem.
However, it is very efficient in a number of parameters.
Armadillo Aerospace is attempting to produce a design which is easy to produce by limiting the use of custom parts and specialized work in both manufacture and maintenance. They are trading off a marginal amount of performance for a lot of manufacturability.
There the analogy ends since the space shuttle and the immediate goal of Armadillo have two completely different purposes.
The science of engines and propellants has matured, but there are so many combinations (propellant x engine design x vehicle design x etc) that it can be difficult to find exactly the kind of research you are looking for. Further, a lot of it is secret since most of this stuff was done for missile design.
Some may call this "seat of your pants" engineering, as opposed to design engineering. You try something, improve it until you find the optimum, then redesign it completely and start over. It is non-optimal for time and effort, but is low cost. It is enough to get started with something that works but has low efficiencies. Once one has a working design one can scale it only so far before having to go back to the redesign and test phase. At that point it often makes more sense to hire engineers capable of design engineering so the trial phase is shortened since the design is near optimal on the first try.
Many startups operate succesfully this way. Many have a mix of the two. Many fail when they invest all their money in engineering design, and then try to get more funding to build a prototype - it's much harder to sell an unproven paper design than it is to sell a working product that has flaws.
-Adam
Looking at the code is the only way you can know for sure.
Know what? The developer's intent? The organization's intent?
At most, the disassembled code *may* show you what caused the incompatability. It won't describe to you in lurid detail how the developer plotted against the innocent user code. Once the incompatability is found you may not be able to discern whether it was intentional, and if so you certianly won't be able to determine malicious intent. At best you can infer it.
Besides - as Mitnick has demonstrated, information is more easily obtained from a person than a machine. In most cases where software attempts to break, fool, or otherwise fiddle with other software the reason we know is because the breakage is overt, or someone leaked information. The dissassembly and inspection nearly always comes after the discovery.
-Adam
Keep in mind that sump pumps are designed for intermittent use. You may have some reliability issues if you use them at a duty cycle that is more than 5% or so.
Good luck, sounds like fun!
-Adam
Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?
According to RMS, no.
-Adam
Sixth DebConf Ends in Success
Ok, so how exactly can a conference be unsuccessfully ended? Is this where the attendees launch a sit-in and prevent the conference from ending, or what?
It just seems like a hollow success.
"What was good about the conference you jsut attended sir?"
"Well, it ended. I'm quite thrilled by how well the organizers were able to get everyone to pack up and go - it was quite a success."
-Adam
1. Chances are good that this is a labor intensive process. It's is likely slow, and the number of tapes and age of the equipment means jamming.
2. Note that the 'society' wants to get 1/4 million not just for the data conversion, but also a fund to study the data.
Quite frankly I might donate if it were simply to convert the data and make it publicly available. Note that they won't release the data until after it has been analyzed, and give no definite timeframe (months to a year).
Not that I'm against the project, but I don't know anything about this society, and the press release has very little information other than "Help us get our hands on the data by giving our society money." Do their members get access to the data as it's converted? What exactly is the process and timeline if they reach their goal? What happens to the money if they don't reach their goal?
-Adam
1. Purchase computer with RAID
2. Purchase internet connection to another location (your home, perhaps)
3. Backup encrypted data to RAID server over internet.
It's safer than taking the backups home with you once a week (no transit loss if you employ good encryption, no damaged drives/tapes, etc). It can be more reliable, depending on the connection you pay for. If you want to cut costs, get a cheap fast DSL - if you want a fast recovery drive home, copy the data to a drive, and drive back.
It can be more costly than other online services, but it looks like my wife's in labor so I'm going to end this comment early.
-Adam
The average 1.8ft^3 fridge uses between 300 and 400KwH per year. They also specify a 15 or 20 amp outlet, though that is likely due to compressor startup.
The point you make about duty cycle is a good one, and I had not considered that. Of course, duty cycle directly affects your measure of performance - how quickly can you cool a 6-pack. If the compressor fridge operates for 5 minutes and cools off the cans in 10 minutes, then that is the same as the peltier fridge running for (given 5% duty cycle) 100 minutes, and cooling the cans off in 100 minutes.
Further, if you assume the fridge takes ~350KwH per year (look at the energy star ratings on websites such as whirlpool or ge) then there's a 1KwH per day consumption.
If you run the 40watt peltier all day (24 hours) then there is slightly less than a 1KwH per day consumption - meaning that they are roughly equal in energy consumption if your 5% compressor duty cycle and 100% peltier duty cycle assumptions are correct.
Now one would have to take these and measure their performance side by side to find out which one is better. Due to cost cutting (even with energy star compliance) compressors are very inefficient. It could be that the peltier cooler would compare favorably against one, but technically the ideal peltier cooler is incapable of comparing favorably with the ideal compressor cooler.
We are, however, dealing with companies whose main goal is to reduce cost. The peltier fridge is obviously easier and cheaper to make. The compressor fridges are not nearly as efficient as they could be.
-Adam