yes i looked at the 3-wheelers. i wanted to get 3 people in it. a 3-wheeler would be hard pushed to fit a 100kg 2ft x 2.5ft x 18in 5kW off-the-shelf Diesel Generator as well as the drivetrain *and* 3 people into the available space. a 2-seater is easy but that would make it a sports car. i want something that a young family such as ours (we have a 3-year-old daughter) could take seriously, and that really means 4 wheels, even if 3 is stable.
plus, think about it from a safety aspect: 3 wheels means that there's less car. less car means that other road users *see* less car. that means that there's a risk that they might encroach on the space of the car, in crowded traffic. a standard-looking "box" design makes room for itself. the fact that the inner core is highly aerodynamic is what the patent's all about:)
yes, it's to be registered as a Category L7E (Quadbike), power restricted to 15kW (20HP). if you've ever looked up the specs on quad-bikes you'll know that that's more than enough to get to 70mph, even with a 4x4 quad with a CVT gearbox... eventually:)
you're absolutely right, though: there's absolutely no chance it would pass as a standard car. paradoxically, however, analysis shows that quad-bike cars in Europe, such as the Aixam Mega, the Ligier and others, are involved in *less* accidents than standard cars. perhaps it's because they look so ridiculous that other road users give them a wide berth, just as they would a "Learner Driver"; perhaps it's because the 0-60 time is typically double or triple that of a standard car, the driver knows damn well that they can't take risks. all of which, as far as i'm concerned, is good news.
wasn't this basically the premise of "Interface"? when are we gonna get a radio-controlled president? oh wait - that was george bush. how did that work out?
unless this policy is actually enshrined into the articles of incorporation of the company, it is, unfortunately, bullshit. actually it's worse than that: it's corporate financial irresponsibility, and as such can result in the directors being ousted by the shareholders and could also result in the directors being prosecuted and struck off from ever being permitted to be directors, ever again.
professor muhammad yunus, economics professor and joint winner of the 2006 nobel peace prize, puts it best in his book "creating a world without poverty". another useful source is the documentary "The Corporation".
a Corporation's Directors are LEGALLY NOT ALLOWED to do anything OTHER than enact the articles of incorporation. for the directors to do otherwise is very very serious. i do not understand why directors do not understand this.
so for the directors to allow this announcement to be made means, quite simply, that unless there's been a shareholder meeting at which 75% of the shareholders agreed to have this new Patent Policy to be added to the Articles of Incorporation, they're straightforward lying through their teeth.
unfortunately, lying in order to get money is legally permissible and is not against the Articles of Incorporation.
"If it wanted to steal a beach, Russia would send a forklift."
i attended a security briefing whilst working in a secure environment where i was, rather unusually, going to be going on holiday to china (hence the concern of the company i was working for, and the reason why they gave me the security briefing).
according to that briefing, the description of china's intelligence strategy is correct: yes, china intelligence operatives will simply approach absolutely any chinese citizen and grill them. tourists who happened to be on holiday who took photos of a U.S. naval ship, which contains pictures of the antenna arrays on the top of the ship and so on. and, because of the chinese culture of rote-learning, chinese citizens memorisation abilities are legendary.
russia on the other hand, i was told, would send in sleeper-agents, specially-trained, and activate them as needed, decades later. if you've seen the film "Red", although that's highly specialist area (assassins), it's pretty accurate as to the strategy that's deployed by russian intelligence, generally.
from a different source, i've heard rumour of someone who found out that russia has sleeper agents in british schools. sounds far-fetched, and like all sleeper-agent intelligence operations is easily deniable as "insane conspiracy theory" ha ha ha look what he's smoking. except this guy who found out is - was - an MP - and was getting death threats. he'd come home and find that all the pictures of his family had been turned to face the wall. real comforting stuff.
We have a couple of problems here: As you point out, hybrids are more expensive than they should be for purely cost-concious consumers. Secondly, though, with all-electric cars (or even gasoline-assisted electrics like the Volt) coming out, it's becoming more and more obvious that hybrids are destined to be a short-lived stepping stone and not the long-term solution to our oil and pollution problems.
no - they won't. illustration: if you converted all cars in the world over to electric, the national power grids of every country - those that had reliable ones - would instantly overload and shut down.
that's for the countries that had reliable power grids.
for those cities and countries where power is a serious problem (bangalore, beijing) and where they have to operate on a rotating basis (beijing: 3 day week), you'd cause massive problems because all of a sudden a random and very large percentage of the city's population simply wouldn't be able to get to work, even if the factories were actually operational.... and they'd probably have to go to a 2 day week due to the extra loading on the grid!
like many people, eln, you simply haven't thought this through properly. batteries are a STORAGE mechanism, NOT a power source. you STILL have to actually get the power from somewhere. and no, solar panels or wind farms (which are sucking up the supply of neodymium faster than EV cars are) are not the answer.
So, basically, hybrids aren't cost effective enough for people buying primarily on cost, and they're not green enough for people buying primarily on environmental friendliness. As all-electrics continue to improve, the age of the hybrid will come to an end.
the CURRENT design of hybrids aren't cost-effective enough nor are they green enough.
the reason is very very simple: if the car has the same size as an ICE equivalent, has the same aerodynamics as an ICE equivalent, has the same weight as an ICE equivalent, has the same tyres as an ICE equivalent, and has an on-board charging system that's still basically no more or no less than an ICE (with a generator attached to it in the case of Series Hybrid), where the bloody hell do you imagine that *any* significant energy savings could possibly be realised?
the energy savings have to come from somewhere. the one biggest saving by a long long margin is aerodynamics. the second is weight (rolling resistance, friction, intertia and gravity). it's basic physics, and it's completely unavoidable!
i don't know why anybody's surprised that if you don't reduce energy losses, you don't make any savings, regardless of the components that go into the vehicle. which is why i've been doing a "money where mouth is" thing and actually designed an ultra-efficient hybrid electric vehicle - http://lkcl.net/ev. it's 350kg, it's a Category L7E, and the target is 5kW energy consumption at 60mph. it's not hard to do. the key is in the aerodynamics.
eyy, i loved living in holland. i was there for 15 months. i can pronounce "scheveningen" with no trace of an accent:) i know many dutch people find den haag to be boring, but i loved it. the beach parties - shutupanddance.nl - were just awesome.
To me projects like this sound too much like "Every major village needs a McDonalds so people can have access to healty fast food". Right!
yes, that's right! every macdonalds in every country is tasked with making sure that there is at least one national dish of that country available on its menu. in belgium, that's a very nice chef's salad. try it - it's nice! i got mine at the mcdonald's in ghent.
Ethically you want to do what is closest to your heart if you will, but unfortunately you need to eat, and usually this involves doing the opposite of ethical (or at least far from what the ideal-ethics tell you)
So I propose this. How about you release version 1.0 and 1.5 for example (or 1.0 and 2.0 or something) as regular closed-source software, and then when the next version comes out, you release the previous one as open source (e.g. release 1.0 and 2.0 for pay, when you release 3.0 for licensing you release at the same time v1.0 as open source)
this is what trolltech, mysql and other companies did. it never goes down well. it's _extremely_ unpopular, and absolutely guarantees that there will be no community *other* that paid-up staff members involved in the actual development of the software.
the reason is very simple: any person wishing to help make improvements to the software knows full well that they might as well not bother, because the free software version that they're using is hopelessly out-of-date.
in the case of QT, what actually happened was that the version 3 of QT (QT3) actually developed into an independent fork. the trinity desktop team now have taken full responsibility for its maintenance. bit of a digression here, but that version is years old, _but_ it has the advantage that it's much much smaller (faster, less code) than QT4 or QT5. QT4 is severe bloat-ware that performs extremely badly on ARM9 and ARM11 platforms.
anyway the point is: the "model" you propose only really works if you're a large corporation with lots of resources and lots of money and are willing to piss people off and make even the free software community absolutely desperate and beholden to you. that works for things like mysql and qt but dude, your software had better be _really_ shit hot to make these non-community-inclusive options work.
the guy who created ruby on rails makes his living by touring the world doing talks, lectures and training on the software that he is the world's leading expert on: ruby on rails. everyone knows that if you want advice on ruby on rails, you go to him, because he is the one that a) wrote it and thus b) has the best working map of the entire software base in the electrical memory (immediate recall) of his brain c) has the ready-to-go speeches and documentation-drone sentences down pat and *also* in the electrical memory of his brain
(chemical memory is where long-term memories are stored: they're harder to get at. you know the phenomenon. can't quite remember something, but 1 minute later or usually after a good night's sleep "bingo!" - that's chemical memory).
the main thing to remember about the free software business model is that it is a *gratitude* business model, not a "desperation / control / last resort" model. as in: when comparing free software to proprietary software, you buy proprietary software out of desperation because there *isn't* any alternative free software, knowing full well that you will get screwed, locked-in and your entire data is now hopelessly entangled in the relationship with the vendor of the proprietary software.
by contrast, you know that, with free software, the person you're entrusting your data to does *not* have you at their mercy. you notice in the posts above - the ones that have been marked as "interesting" and "informative" - they all are variants on keeping the customer entirely at your mercy, so that they *have* no choice but to come to you. that's not really good for you, or for them. apart from anything, it assumes that you _will_ be available for the rest of your life to serve at their pleasure!
so, contrary to expectations, anyone who uses your [free software] product actually *knows* this, and makes a *deliberate* and conscious decision to contact you and offer you some money for a support contract, knowing full well that you _could_ have gone the proprietary route... and didn't.
in other words, you get a better class of customer; the relationship is entirely different; you are *not* beholden to each other - each of you can walk away at any time... i could go on, but you see how it's just generally a much healthier way to do business?
all it takes is that you trust people, and have confidence in yourself. if people like what you've done, and it's actually useful, you stand a chance of making money regardless. if they don't like it, or it's not useful, then... well... they've done you a favour by not having you waste any more of your life on useless software, haven't they? in which case you could go do something more productive:)
it's fascinating to read something from someone who's clearly clued up. i have obtained a copy of the IEEE 802.22 whitespaces broadband specification, and i know of someone who would be willing to help implement it (he's an RF engineer) if the uses are limited to non-military and non-commercial. so there is potentially a *legal* way to get the range required.
and don't worry about obliterating expensive infrastructure: the incumbent "large" telcos have *already* written off the emerging markets because nobody in them can afford to pay the kinds of premiums and contracts that are demanded. the "competitors" - if you can call them that - are the local telcos who buy 2nd-hand end-of-lifed GSM towers at 1/10th of the cost. and they're not exactly providing a fast network using 20-year-old technology, are they?:)
what you're describing is what Professor Muhammad Yunus (joint winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize) outlines, in his book, "Creating a World without Poverty". in it he describes the best way to achieve the results that you've highlighted.
the absolute most critical point that professor yunus makes is that you can't just go in blithely and "help" people. you *HAVE* to get them to help themselves (or at least offer them the *opportunity* to help themselves). it's none of our business - not a government and not a charity - to go dictating what's best for people. that's what's so brilliant about the micro-loans system: the PEOPLE decide what they want to do - they decide what works for them, and, out of sheer overwhelming gratitude they go for it like you just wouldn't believe.
the loan repayment success rate is so high (over 98%) that the Grameen bank actually considers it THEIR failure if people get into difficulties. compare that to an EIGHTY SEVEN percent default rate in the west (which starts to make you appreciate that there's something desperately wrong with the western mindset). the Grameen Bank is so successful that they don't even bother retaining any lawyers. at all.
it may interest you to know that one of the chapters of Professor Yunus's book calls for IT specialists to take the initiative and create some infrastructure that would help people to uplift themselves out of poverty. that still hasn't really happened yet, and i'm really perplexed and slightly frustrated that it hasn't happened.
well... y'know what? even brownian motion gets it right if there's enough molecules. the trick is in being able to spot the one molecule that pops out at the right place at the right time, and this is no different, really.
out of hundreds of articles on climate theory predictions, at least _one_ of them had to get it right. the problem is this, however: that correctness could only be spotted in retrospect, and so doesn't actually help us *unless* the article goes on to predict a bit further into the future, and even then it *still* doesn't really help us to solve the problem (which is that action needs to be taken) because, once again, people really won't listen until it's yet *again* too late.
all of which goes to just highlight that the problem is not the predictions, but that nothing's been done *about* those predictions. so that just leaves it to us to DO something, as individuals. which is why i'm actually doing something, in two areas that i am interested in: cars - http://lkcl.net/ev - and computers - http://rhombus-tech.net./ what are _you_ doing, slashdot reader?
If you've read Professor Yunus's Book, "Creating a World without Poverty" in which he describes the concept of "Social Business" as an alternative to pathological profit-maximisation, you will fully appreciate his interpretation of "Corporate Social Responsibility" being synonymous with "Corporate Financial *irresponsibility*".
the damage caused by allowing Corporations to get so out of control at a National (and an International) level should by now be quite obvious, with these kinds of examples such as Fukushima. there is an alternative pathogen which consumes all resources and maximises its own gain to the absolute exclusion of all other considerations: it's called Cancer. Profit-maximising Corporations are a Cancer and should be treated as a disease.
it would be world-changing, without a shadow of doubt. imagine having transatlantic cables the thickness of the present internet fibreoptic cables that distributed terawatts of power as well as information. it would not need to be high voltage, so there would be no risk of arcing.
now imagine those cables running across the world's deserts, to a massive array of solar collectors.
now imagine those cables running to deep ocean temperature-differential power stations (water 1 mile down is 3-4 centigrade lower temperature: you can get about 100 megawatts out of that).
now imagine those power generators - distributed across the world so that they continuously generated power - connected into that world-wide, world-accessible power distribution grid.
you basically would never have the problem of running out of electricity, ever. it's not to say that people in african countries would not try to shimmy up the telegraph poles with crocodile clips in order to try to filch off some power, so you'd have to take that into account and provide them with easy-to-access power sockets at ground level in order to make it unnecessary for them to try to plug themselves into what would be effectively an infinite current sink that could turn them into ash within milliseconds if they tried leeching it, but apart from that little problem you'd basically be able to solve the world's power needs at very little cost per human.
The hard part about programming is understanding and decomposing the problem. If you're not any good at that, then no matter what language you use, you're going to struggle and produce crap.
there was a report a few years ago about an entrepreneur who *refused* to employ computer science majors. he only employed english language majors. the reason was he said that it was easier to communicate with english language majors in order to teach them programming, and they were more effective and also worked better when introduced into teams, than the people who had been taught programming at university.
so there is definitely something to learn here. but my god if imperial college had tried to get me to read jane austen instead of teaching me object-orientated and parallel computing architectures i would have hit the roof. mind you if they'd asked me to scan the book in and do some parallel processing on its contents then.. hmmm....:)
the extension of this idea is to use evolution-style techniques. from an automated perspective, that means deploying genetic algorithms to improve the code. unfortunately that means that good tests have to be written in order to verify that the code so (eventually) generated is actually "correct". many people would fail to go to the trouble of writing good enough tests.
yes - the alternative is seen to be to "read every line of code and make it run in your head".
i can't handle that. a) i can't be bothered b) i have some strangeness going on in my tiny brain that makes line-by-line logic rather hard to do. so there's an intermediary style - one in between the line-by-line and the genetic algorithms approach - that i've use for programming, successfully for 20 years: accelerated development cycles.
in essence it's incredibly simple: pack in as many compiles into a day as you can possibly manage. optimise the development environment - and the code structure - such that this is possible. install ccache, install distcc, get a compile-farm, don't do complete rebuilds but make sure that the Makefiles are properly structured to detect changes to source files etc. etc.
by increasing the amount of times that the program is run and tested, you automatically increase the productivity, just as TFA says.
HOWEVER, there is a CAVEAT.
as i found out when the samba team dismissed the work that i had spent three years developing (and proving to my satisfaction by having run tens of thousands of tests over that three year period) if you follow the above development technique it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to actually explain how a particular solution was derived.
the reason is because you literally don't know. you know that it works, because across the entire set of parameters under which the code is utilised, you KNOW that it works. but the actual bugfixes? when presented with your *own* code and asked "why did you do it like this??" you can't exactly answer "well i tried 50 iterations of modifying the code and this was the one that actually worked" when you're expected to answer "the technical answer is that this algorithm is an implementation of a well-known algorithm that is described on page N of K&R's recipes on c programming: let me take you through a line-by-line code review and walk through it with you".
the key here is that the person who is asking you to justify the coding decisions is expecting you to be ABLE to do a line-by-line code walk-through, but because you've never done one of those in your LIFE let alone on the code that you wrote only a few weeks ago...
but the real problem comes when you've developed 5 to 10x more code than anyone else in the group, through this type of technique. not only does it show up your peers as potentially seeming to be incompetent, but it also means potentially that you wrote code that is very very difficult for the average programmer to understand.
that makes for a massive maintenance headache.
there was a survey done over 10 years ago, of the productivity vs salary across several professions. most professions, the ratio of salary to productivity for a range of employees varied by a factor of about 1.5. e.g. one person paid $10k could have a productivity metric of say "2.0" but their colleague paid $20k could have a productivity metric of say "6": (20/6.0) / (10/2.0) = 1.5
but for programmers, the variation came out at a whopping 10 to one discrepancy. in other words, someone who was paid only double the salary of one of their peers could be TWENTY times more productive than their lower-paid colleague.
it would be very very interesting to redo this survey, specifically for programmers, but this time taking into account the *techniques* that they use to develop code.
i remember the book because humanity was fighting against a much superior race of "invaders". when humanity "won", they left... but the parting words were something to the effect of "we are leaving because you are not worthy".
I read that one too - very memorable ending, almost made it seem like a bitter victory. Wasn't it an Arthur C. Clarke novel?
yes that was the point: the invaders were so wayyyy superior in intelligence that they actually considered most races - humans included - to be "cattle". but what the humans didn't appreciate is that this super-intelligent race *mentored* these "inferior" alien species.
mind you it is so utterly compelling a story because it is so damn important to let people choose their *own* destiny:)
there's a re-publication of some of the most amazing sci-fi books, which to be honest take a little getting used to: the sci-fi masterworks series. "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny is a particularly beautiful tale. then there's Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" which is just breathtaking in its scope and prescience: i found it particularly funny that the foreword by Stephen Baxter said "Stapledon got everything right except of course for the bits about the United States" when in fact he was right on the nose, having predicted the fall of the League of Nations, the rise of the United Nations, the detonation of the Atomic Bomb and more.
then there's "The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov, which was the book written very early on that explains the background of the entire Asimov "Foundation" series. this book was noteworthy for its use of the word "Computer" as a title, like "Professor", to refer to one with the highly responsible task of "Performing Computations" - in this case, the job of working out the "minimum necessary change" to alter the future in order to keep it on track.
i have a challenge for you, jjp9999. read *all* of asimov's books, including the ones written at the behest of the asimov estate, in a timespan where you will actually remember details from one book to the next. "robby the robot", which he wrote in conjunction with his wife. the early "robot" books which describe susan calvin's experiences - she screams "LIAR!!" at one robot, as it dies. remember to include the one written by greg bear, "forward the foundation" i think it is, as well as the "New Law" Robots, and pay attention also to Giskard's role. i think you will find the sheer scope of asimov's vision as he paints a picture which develops over - and beyond - the span of his life - to be absolutely stunning. but it does take patience: some of the isaac bailey series are quite methodical, being detective novels, and can be somewhat... well, tedious isn't the right word. you just have to be patient: it's worth it.
then there's a couple of books which even i've forgotten the name of the authors. one of them very much reminds me of that new sci-fi series with the lead character from "The Librarian Series"... i remember the book because humanity was fighting against a much superior race of "invaders". when humanity "won", they left... but the parting words were something to the effect of "we are leaving because you are not worthy". and there was another - again, alien invaders, where the premise of the book was that just by learning the *language* of the invaders actually changed human DNA - or allowed it to change - to enhance and augment the person's intelligence... and physiology... into one of the aliens. both of these books were well written, and i've just spoiled the plot for anyone wishing to read either of them, but i would really appreciate someone letting me know who the authors are if they know either of these books, because i'd quite like to read them again.
mr bounces-on-the-mattresses maharish mahesh yogi also said that democracy in its modern form is the weakest form of government. the very fact that one policy can be put into place yet ripped out and its reverse enacted by an alternative government means that simple decisions which are critical to the long-term viability of a nation just cannot be made, but worse than that is that the politicians themselves *know* this and don't bother to even think long-term!
maharishi therefore advocated that at the top of government should be pretty much life-long "powerless kings". effectively powerless, but acting as "proclamators" and as a mediator and a figurehead. below them you have local governance as well as "advisors" in specialist areas, where absolutely anyone (worth listening to) with a particular area of expertise can be an advisor.
what you end up with in this figurehead whose job it is to listen to what sane and sensible people have to say, and then tell everyone what the outcome was. it's then up to *them* - the people - to actually galvanise *themselves* to actually take action, either at a local or a national level.
at a local level, there *is* no "dependence" on "the guvvernmunt" to like... solve everything: local people are on their own to sort out day-to-day problems and governance, with the additional backup that if things are a bit beyond them they can always ask for help further up the chain.
the interesting is if the UK went back about 800 years in its governance system, it would probably have something pretty close to this. mind you it would be a bit weird to have all the stuff about being a feudal slave and a freeman in the mix as well...:)
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i have to question the "wisdom" of interfering with traditional ways of living, like this. i remember seeing a report somewhere that said it was disgraceful that people in poor countries didn't have lights, to which the answer is, "so you want to have people not only become dependent on electricity, but you also want them to stop living in tune with nature, make them deprive themselves of sleep, and place them in front of flickering light sources?"
in other words, they wanted to inflict the exact same kind of pain and suffering that the first world subjects itself to, onto the third world.
in this case, they seek to inflict non-traditional cooking routines and methods onto these people who have lived generations of lives eating at times which make sense in their environment.
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yes i looked at the 3-wheelers. i wanted to get 3 people in it. a 3-wheeler would be hard pushed to fit a 100kg 2ft x 2.5ft x 18in 5kW off-the-shelf Diesel Generator as well as the drivetrain *and* 3 people into the available space. a 2-seater is easy but that would make it a sports car. i want something that a young family such as ours (we have a 3-year-old daughter) could take seriously, and that really means 4 wheels, even if 3 is stable.
plus, think about it from a safety aspect: 3 wheels means that there's less car. less car means that other road users *see* less car. that means that there's a risk that they might encroach on the space of the car, in crowded traffic. a standard-looking "box" design makes room for itself. the fact that the inner core is highly aerodynamic is what the patent's all about :)
yes, it's to be registered as a Category L7E (Quadbike), power restricted to 15kW (20HP). if you've ever looked up the specs on quad-bikes you'll know that that's more than enough to get to 70mph, even with a 4x4 quad with a CVT gearbox... eventually :)
you're absolutely right, though: there's absolutely no chance it would pass as a standard car. paradoxically, however, analysis shows that quad-bike cars in Europe, such as the Aixam Mega, the Ligier and others, are involved in *less* accidents than standard cars. perhaps it's because they look so ridiculous that other road users give them a wide berth, just as they would a "Learner Driver"; perhaps it's because the 0-60 time is typically double or triple that of a standard car, the driver knows damn well that they can't take risks. all of which, as far as i'm concerned, is good news.
wasn't this basically the premise of "Interface"? when are we gonna get a radio-controlled president? oh wait - that was george bush. how did that work out?
unless this policy is actually enshrined into the articles of incorporation of the company, it is, unfortunately, bullshit. actually it's worse than that: it's corporate financial irresponsibility, and as such can result in the directors being ousted by the shareholders and could also result in the directors being prosecuted and struck off from ever being permitted to be directors, ever again.
professor muhammad yunus, economics professor and joint winner of the 2006 nobel peace prize, puts it best in his book "creating a world without poverty". another useful source is the documentary "The Corporation".
a Corporation's Directors are LEGALLY NOT ALLOWED to do anything OTHER than enact the articles of incorporation. for the directors to do otherwise is very very serious. i do not understand why directors do not understand this.
so for the directors to allow this announcement to be made means, quite simply, that unless there's been a shareholder meeting at which 75% of the shareholders agreed to have this new Patent Policy to be added to the Articles of Incorporation, they're straightforward lying through their teeth.
unfortunately, lying in order to get money is legally permissible and is not against the Articles of Incorporation.
"If it wanted to steal a beach, Russia would send a forklift."
i attended a security briefing whilst working in a secure environment where i was, rather unusually, going to be going on holiday to china (hence the concern of the company i was working for, and the reason why they gave me the security briefing).
according to that briefing, the description of china's intelligence strategy is correct: yes, china intelligence operatives will simply approach absolutely any chinese citizen and grill them. tourists who happened to be on holiday who took photos of a U.S. naval ship, which contains pictures of the antenna arrays on the top of the ship and so on. and, because of the chinese culture of rote-learning, chinese citizens memorisation abilities are legendary.
russia on the other hand, i was told, would send in sleeper-agents, specially-trained, and activate them as needed, decades later. if you've seen the film "Red", although that's highly specialist area (assassins), it's pretty accurate as to the strategy that's deployed by russian intelligence, generally.
from a different source, i've heard rumour of someone who found out that russia has sleeper agents in british schools. sounds far-fetched, and like all sleeper-agent intelligence operations is easily deniable as "insane conspiracy theory" ha ha ha look what he's smoking. except this guy who found out is - was - an MP - and was getting death threats. he'd come home and find that all the pictures of his family had been turned to face the wall. real comforting stuff.
We have a couple of problems here: As you point out, hybrids are more expensive than they should be for purely cost-concious consumers. Secondly, though, with all-electric cars (or even gasoline-assisted electrics like the Volt) coming out, it's becoming more and more obvious that hybrids are destined to be a short-lived stepping stone and not the long-term solution to our oil and pollution problems.
no - they won't. illustration: if you converted all cars in the world over to electric, the national power grids of every country - those that had reliable ones - would instantly overload and shut down.
that's for the countries that had reliable power grids.
for those cities and countries where power is a serious problem (bangalore, beijing) and where they have to operate on a rotating basis (beijing: 3 day week), you'd cause massive problems because all of a sudden a random and very large percentage of the city's population simply wouldn't be able to get to work, even if the factories were actually operational.... and they'd probably have to go to a 2 day week due to the extra loading on the grid!
like many people, eln, you simply haven't thought this through properly. batteries are a STORAGE mechanism, NOT a power source. you STILL have to actually get the power from somewhere. and no, solar panels or wind farms (which are sucking up the supply of neodymium faster than EV cars are) are not the answer.
So, basically, hybrids aren't cost effective enough for people buying primarily on cost, and they're not green enough for people buying primarily on environmental friendliness. As all-electrics continue to improve, the age of the hybrid will come to an end.
the CURRENT design of hybrids aren't cost-effective enough nor are they green enough.
the reason is very very simple: if the car has the same size as an ICE equivalent, has the same aerodynamics as an ICE equivalent, has the same weight as an ICE equivalent, has the same tyres as an ICE equivalent, and has an on-board charging system that's still basically no more or no less than an ICE (with a generator attached to it in the case of Series Hybrid), where the bloody hell do you imagine that *any* significant energy savings could possibly be realised?
the energy savings have to come from somewhere. the one biggest saving by a long long margin is aerodynamics. the second is weight (rolling resistance, friction, intertia and gravity). it's basic physics, and it's completely unavoidable!
i don't know why anybody's surprised that if you don't reduce energy losses, you don't make any savings, regardless of the components that go into the vehicle. which is why i've been doing a "money where mouth is" thing and actually designed an ultra-efficient hybrid electric vehicle - http://lkcl.net/ev. it's 350kg, it's a Category L7E, and the target is 5kW energy consumption at 60mph. it's not hard to do. the key is in the aerodynamics.
eyy, i loved living in holland. i was there for 15 months. i can pronounce "scheveningen" with no trace of an accent :) i know many dutch people find den haag to be boring, but i loved it. the beach parties - shutupanddance.nl - were just awesome.
To me projects like this sound too much like "Every major village needs a McDonalds so people can have access to healty fast food". Right!
yes, that's right! every macdonalds in every country is tasked with making sure that there is at least one national dish of that country available on its menu. in belgium, that's a very nice chef's salad. try it - it's nice! i got mine at the mcdonald's in ghent.
I believe parent has nailed it.
Ethically you want to do what is closest to your heart if you will, but unfortunately you need to eat, and usually this involves doing the opposite of ethical (or at least far from what the ideal-ethics tell you)
So I propose this. How about you release version 1.0 and 1.5 for example (or 1.0 and 2.0 or something) as regular closed-source software, and then when the next version comes out, you release the previous one as open source (e.g. release 1.0 and 2.0 for pay, when you release 3.0 for licensing you release at the same time v1.0 as open source)
this is what trolltech, mysql and other companies did. it never goes down well. it's _extremely_ unpopular, and absolutely guarantees that there will be no community *other* that paid-up staff members involved in the actual development of the software.
the reason is very simple: any person wishing to help make improvements to the software knows full well that they might as well not bother, because the free software version that they're using is hopelessly out-of-date.
in the case of QT, what actually happened was that the version 3 of QT (QT3) actually developed into an independent fork. the trinity desktop team now have taken full responsibility for its maintenance. bit of a digression here, but that version is years old, _but_ it has the advantage that it's much much smaller (faster, less code) than QT4 or QT5. QT4 is severe bloat-ware that performs extremely badly on ARM9 and ARM11 platforms.
anyway the point is: the "model" you propose only really works if you're a large corporation with lots of resources and lots of money and are willing to piss people off and make even the free software community absolutely desperate and beholden to you. that works for things like mysql and qt but dude, your software had better be _really_ shit hot to make these non-community-inclusive options work.
the key here is confidence in yourself.
the guy who created ruby on rails makes his living by touring the world doing talks, lectures and training on the software that he is the world's leading expert on: ruby on rails. everyone knows that if you want advice on ruby on rails, you go to him, because he is the one that a) wrote it and thus b) has the best working map of the entire software base in the electrical memory (immediate recall) of his brain c) has the ready-to-go speeches and documentation-drone sentences down pat and *also* in the electrical memory of his brain
(chemical memory is where long-term memories are stored: they're harder to get at. you know the phenomenon. can't quite remember something, but 1 minute later or usually after a good night's sleep "bingo!" - that's chemical memory).
the main thing to remember about the free software business model is that it is a *gratitude* business model, not a "desperation / control / last resort" model. as in: when comparing free software to proprietary software, you buy proprietary software out of desperation because there *isn't* any alternative free software, knowing full well that you will get screwed, locked-in and your entire data is now hopelessly entangled in the relationship with the vendor of the proprietary software.
by contrast, you know that, with free software, the person you're entrusting your data to does *not* have you at their mercy. you notice in the posts above - the ones that have been marked as "interesting" and "informative" - they all are variants on keeping the customer entirely at your mercy, so that they *have* no choice but to come to you. that's not really good for you, or for them. apart from anything, it assumes that you _will_ be available for the rest of your life to serve at their pleasure!
so, contrary to expectations, anyone who uses your [free software] product actually *knows* this, and makes a *deliberate* and conscious decision to contact you and offer you some money for a support contract, knowing full well that you _could_ have gone the proprietary route... and didn't.
in other words, you get a better class of customer; the relationship is entirely different; you are *not* beholden to each other - each of you can walk away at any time... i could go on, but you see how it's just generally a much healthier way to do business?
all it takes is that you trust people, and have confidence in yourself. if people like what you've done, and it's actually useful, you stand a chance of making money regardless. if they don't like it, or it's not useful, then... well... they've done you a favour by not having you waste any more of your life on useless software, haven't they? in which case you could go do something more productive :)
it's fascinating to read something from someone who's clearly clued up. i have obtained a copy of the IEEE 802.22 whitespaces broadband specification, and i know of someone who would be willing to help implement it (he's an RF engineer) if the uses are limited to non-military and non-commercial. so there is potentially a *legal* way to get the range required.
and don't worry about obliterating expensive infrastructure: the incumbent "large" telcos have *already* written off the emerging markets because nobody in them can afford to pay the kinds of premiums and contracts that are demanded. the "competitors" - if you can call them that - are the local telcos who buy 2nd-hand end-of-lifed GSM towers at 1/10th of the cost. and they're not exactly providing a fast network using 20-year-old technology, are they? :)
what you're describing is what Professor Muhammad Yunus (joint winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize) outlines, in his book, "Creating a World without Poverty". in it he describes the best way to achieve the results that you've highlighted.
the absolute most critical point that professor yunus makes is that you can't just go in blithely and "help" people. you *HAVE* to get them to help themselves (or at least offer them the *opportunity* to help themselves). it's none of our business - not a government and not a charity - to go dictating what's best for people. that's what's so brilliant about the micro-loans system: the PEOPLE decide what they want to do - they decide what works for them, and, out of sheer overwhelming gratitude they go for it like you just wouldn't believe.
the loan repayment success rate is so high (over 98%) that the Grameen bank actually considers it THEIR failure if people get into difficulties. compare that to an EIGHTY SEVEN percent default rate in the west (which starts to make you appreciate that there's something desperately wrong with the western mindset). the Grameen Bank is so successful that they don't even bother retaining any lawyers. at all.
it may interest you to know that one of the chapters of Professor Yunus's book calls for IT specialists to take the initiative and create some infrastructure that would help people to uplift themselves out of poverty. that still hasn't really happened yet, and i'm really perplexed and slightly frustrated that it hasn't happened.
anyway, bit of an old article that's still relevant: http://www.advogato.org/article/966.html
Profit-maximising Corporations are a Cancer and should be treated as a disease.
Yes, lets go back to the old system where the king was in charge and everyone else was peasants.
or, how about using Community-Interest-Companies instead? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Interest_Company
well... y'know what? even brownian motion gets it right if there's enough molecules. the trick is in being able to spot the one molecule that pops out at the right place at the right time, and this is no different, really.
out of hundreds of articles on climate theory predictions, at least _one_ of them had to get it right. the problem is this, however: that correctness could only be spotted in retrospect, and so doesn't actually help us *unless* the article goes on to predict a bit further into the future, and even then it *still* doesn't really help us to solve the problem (which is that action needs to be taken) because, once again, people really won't listen until it's yet *again* too late.
all of which goes to just highlight that the problem is not the predictions, but that nothing's been done *about* those predictions. so that just leaves it to us to DO something, as individuals. which is why i'm actually doing something, in two areas that i am interested in: cars - http://lkcl.net/ev - and computers - http://rhombus-tech.net./ what are _you_ doing, slashdot reader?
If you've read Professor Yunus's Book, "Creating a World without Poverty" in which he describes the concept of "Social Business" as an alternative to pathological profit-maximisation, you will fully appreciate his interpretation of "Corporate Social Responsibility" being synonymous with "Corporate Financial *irresponsibility*".
the damage caused by allowing Corporations to get so out of control at a National (and an International) level should by now be quite obvious, with these kinds of examples such as Fukushima. there is an alternative pathogen which consumes all resources and maximises its own gain to the absolute exclusion of all other considerations: it's called Cancer. Profit-maximising Corporations are a Cancer and should be treated as a disease.
it would be world-changing, without a shadow of doubt. imagine having transatlantic cables the thickness of the present internet fibreoptic cables that distributed terawatts of power as well as information. it would not need to be high voltage, so there would be no risk of arcing.
now imagine those cables running across the world's deserts, to a massive array of solar collectors.
now imagine those cables running to deep ocean temperature-differential power stations (water 1 mile down is 3-4 centigrade lower temperature: you can get about 100 megawatts out of that).
now imagine those power generators - distributed across the world so that they continuously generated power - connected into that world-wide, world-accessible power distribution grid.
you basically would never have the problem of running out of electricity, ever. it's not to say that people in african countries would not try to shimmy up the telegraph poles with crocodile clips in order to try to filch off some power, so you'd have to take that into account and provide them with easy-to-access power sockets at ground level in order to make it unnecessary for them to try to plug themselves into what would be effectively an infinite current sink that could turn them into ash within milliseconds if they tried leeching it, but apart from that little problem you'd basically be able to solve the world's power needs at very little cost per human.
The hard part about programming is understanding and decomposing the problem. If you're not any good at that, then no matter what language you use, you're going to struggle and produce crap.
there was a report a few years ago about an entrepreneur who *refused* to employ computer science majors. he only employed english language majors. the reason was he said that it was easier to communicate with english language majors in order to teach them programming, and they were more effective and also worked better when introduced into teams, than the people who had been taught programming at university.
so there is definitely something to learn here. but my god if imperial college had tried to get me to read jane austen instead of teaching me object-orientated and parallel computing architectures i would have hit the roof. mind you if they'd asked me to scan the book in and do some parallel processing on its contents then.. hmmm.... :)
the extension of this idea is to use evolution-style techniques. from an automated perspective, that means deploying genetic algorithms to improve the code. unfortunately that means that good tests have to be written in order to verify that the code so (eventually) generated is actually "correct". many people would fail to go to the trouble of writing good enough tests.
yes - the alternative is seen to be to "read every line of code and make it run in your head".
i can't handle that. a) i can't be bothered b) i have some strangeness going on in my tiny brain that makes line-by-line logic rather hard to do. so there's an intermediary style - one in between the line-by-line and the genetic algorithms approach - that i've use for programming, successfully for 20 years: accelerated development cycles.
in essence it's incredibly simple: pack in as many compiles into a day as you can possibly manage. optimise the development environment - and the code structure - such that this is possible. install ccache, install distcc, get a compile-farm, don't do complete rebuilds but make sure that the Makefiles are properly structured to detect changes to source files etc. etc.
by increasing the amount of times that the program is run and tested, you automatically increase the productivity, just as TFA says.
HOWEVER, there is a CAVEAT.
as i found out when the samba team dismissed the work that i had spent three years developing (and proving to my satisfaction by having run tens of thousands of tests over that three year period) if you follow the above development technique it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to actually explain how a particular solution was derived.
the reason is because you literally don't know. you know that it works, because across the entire set of parameters under which the code is utilised, you KNOW that it works. but the actual bugfixes? when presented with your *own* code and asked "why did you do it like this??" you can't exactly answer "well i tried 50 iterations of modifying the code and this was the one that actually worked" when you're expected to answer "the technical answer is that this algorithm is an implementation of a well-known algorithm that is described on page N of K&R's recipes on c programming: let me take you through a line-by-line code review and walk through it with you".
the key here is that the person who is asking you to justify the coding decisions is expecting you to be ABLE to do a line-by-line code walk-through, but because you've never done one of those in your LIFE let alone on the code that you wrote only a few weeks ago...
but the real problem comes when you've developed 5 to 10x more code than anyone else in the group, through this type of technique. not only does it show up your peers as potentially seeming to be incompetent, but it also means potentially that you wrote code that is very very difficult for the average programmer to understand.
that makes for a massive maintenance headache.
there was a survey done over 10 years ago, of the productivity vs salary across several professions. most professions, the ratio of salary to productivity for a range of employees varied by a factor of about 1.5. e.g. one person paid $10k could have a productivity metric of say "2.0" but their colleague paid $20k could have a productivity metric of say "6": (20/6.0) / (10/2.0) = 1.5
but for programmers, the variation came out at a whopping 10 to one discrepancy. in other words, someone who was paid only double the salary of one of their peers could be TWENTY times more productive than their lower-paid colleague.
it would be very very interesting to redo this survey, specifically for programmers, but this time taking into account the *techniques* that they use to develop code.
i remember the book because humanity was fighting against a much superior race of "invaders". when humanity "won", they left... but the parting words were something to the effect of "we are leaving because you are not worthy".
I read that one too - very memorable ending, almost made it seem like a bitter victory. Wasn't it an Arthur C. Clarke novel?
yes that was the point: the invaders were so wayyyy superior in intelligence that they actually considered most races - humans included - to be "cattle". but what the humans didn't appreciate is that this super-intelligent race *mentored* these "inferior" alien species.
mind you it is so utterly compelling a story because it is so damn important to let people choose their *own* destiny :)
yeah really don't know if it was ACC...
there's a re-publication of some of the most amazing sci-fi books, which to be honest take a little getting used to: the sci-fi masterworks series. "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny is a particularly beautiful tale. then there's Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" which is just breathtaking in its scope and prescience: i found it particularly funny that the foreword by Stephen Baxter said "Stapledon got everything right except of course for the bits about the United States" when in fact he was right on the nose, having predicted the fall of the League of Nations, the rise of the United Nations, the detonation of the Atomic Bomb and more.
then there's "The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov, which was the book written very early on that explains the background of the entire Asimov "Foundation" series. this book was noteworthy for its use of the word "Computer" as a title, like "Professor", to refer to one with the highly responsible task of "Performing Computations" - in this case, the job of working out the "minimum necessary change" to alter the future in order to keep it on track.
i have a challenge for you, jjp9999. read *all* of asimov's books, including the ones written at the behest of the asimov estate, in a timespan where you will actually remember details from one book to the next. "robby the robot", which he wrote in conjunction with his wife. the early "robot" books which describe susan calvin's experiences - she screams "LIAR!!" at one robot, as it dies. remember to include the one written by greg bear, "forward the foundation" i think it is, as well as the "New Law" Robots, and pay attention also to Giskard's role. i think you will find the sheer scope of asimov's vision as he paints a picture which develops over - and beyond - the span of his life - to be absolutely stunning. but it does take patience: some of the isaac bailey series are quite methodical, being detective novels, and can be somewhat... well, tedious isn't the right word. you just have to be patient: it's worth it.
then there's a couple of books which even i've forgotten the name of the authors. one of them very much reminds me of that new sci-fi series with the lead character from "The Librarian Series"... i remember the book because humanity was fighting against a much superior race of "invaders". when humanity "won", they left... but the parting words were something to the effect of "we are leaving because you are not worthy". and there was another - again, alien invaders, where the premise of the book was that just by learning the *language* of the invaders actually changed human DNA - or allowed it to change - to enhance and augment the person's intelligence... and physiology... into one of the aliens. both of these books were well written, and i've just spoiled the plot for anyone wishing to read either of them, but i would really appreciate someone letting me know who the authors are if they know either of these books, because i'd quite like to read them again.
mr bounces-on-the-mattresses maharish mahesh yogi also said that democracy in its modern form is the weakest form of government. the very fact that one policy can be put into place yet ripped out and its reverse enacted by an alternative government means that simple decisions which are critical to the long-term viability of a nation just cannot be made, but worse than that is that the politicians themselves *know* this and don't bother to even think long-term!
maharishi therefore advocated that at the top of government should be pretty much life-long "powerless kings". effectively powerless, but acting as "proclamators" and as a mediator and a figurehead. below them you have local governance as well as "advisors" in specialist areas, where absolutely anyone (worth listening to) with a particular area of expertise can be an advisor.
what you end up with in this figurehead whose job it is to listen to what sane and sensible people have to say, and then tell everyone what the outcome was. it's then up to *them* - the people - to actually galvanise *themselves* to actually take action, either at a local or a national level.
at a local level, there *is* no "dependence" on "the guvvernmunt" to like ... solve everything: local people are on their own to sort out day-to-day problems and governance, with the additional backup that if things are a bit beyond them they can always ask for help further up the chain.
the interesting is if the UK went back about 800 years in its governance system, it would probably have something pretty close to this. mind you it would be a bit weird to have all the stuff about being a feudal slave and a freeman in the mix as well... :)
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i have to question the "wisdom" of interfering with traditional ways
of living, like this. i remember seeing a report somewhere that
said it was disgraceful that people in poor countries didn't have
lights, to which the answer is, "so you want to have people not only become dependent on electricity, but you also want them to stop living in tune with nature, make them deprive themselves of sleep, and place them in front of flickering light sources?"
in other words, they wanted to inflict the exact same kind of pain and suffering that the first world subjects itself to, onto the third world.
in this case, they seek to inflict non-traditional cooking routines and methods onto these people who have lived generations of lives eating at times which make sense in their environment.
_why_??
but anyone who takes money in return for absolutely no rights in the ownership of their work *is* a slave^H^H^H^H^Hemployee.