Right up until now I thought US foreign policy was extremely poor. I feel I must apologise for thinking that, in fact US foreign policy is an act of unparalleled genius! North Korea is being largely ignored by the US as is Iran, not because they are not dangerous (they are) but you are simply employing them to gather enough nulear armaments together that you will later use to generate power, whilst silmutaneously reducing your dependency on fossil fuel and also creating world stabalisation. Outstanding work, forward thinking and downright cunning. I salute you!
I'm glad someone picked up on my literary trick! I did also point out earlier in my article that my opinion is also unqualified, adding another layer of abstract confusion to my statements. Or did I?:-)
I totally agree with you that Wikipeadia is an admirable attempt to catalog information, and it is indeed a step in the right direction. However, it still suffers from a lack of provinence over the sources of it's information. I trust a surgeon to remove my kidney because he is qualified and has a documented trail to prove his ability. I would not trust someone simply because he has a knife and a facemask.
We blew it guys, we had the promise of free, unrestricted knowledge - the ability for any man to share his knowledge with another. The freedom to aquire knowledge of any aspect of human achievment, from any culture at any time.
And what did we do with it? We used it for porn, greed and libelous behaviour. Much worse than that we propogated the publication of ill-informed opinion, of which I freely admit this is a part. Not only did we propogate it, we actually preferred our opinions to come from unqualified sources, because what we were being told from those that were qualified did not fit with what we wanted to hear. You only have to look at the myth of man made global warming to see this in action (and I know I will get flamed for that sentence, but that will only serve to prove I am right).
Wikipedia is the largest collection of ill-informed crap on the face of the planet, an admirable quest that has descended into a miasma of gibberish. It is now no more than a loose collection of opinion that may or may not be right. Certainly no use as a source of vital information - precicely because we cannot verify where the information came from and who is accountable.
However, the Internet's day has passed, the social experiment has failed and like radio, film and television before, it will descent into an over-regulated, commercial, empty shell of what it could have been.
QoS is the first step towards this regulation, it is the logical step towards the closing of the gate - you can say whatever you like but unless you have the bandwidth you will be unlikely to be heard. The loudest voices will be those that have the largest budget, just like every other aspect of our lives. The quality of your content will be naught compared to the size of your bandwidth, conversley the more bandwidth you have will affect the information you can receive.
In an ideal world the quality of information would be a factor in its propogation, however that does not lend itself to this medium, or any other for that matter. This is a lost cause, before it even started. I am not going to waste my time fighting it, instead I am going to find an alternative - perhaps the human social network is the only true forum, I don't know, but I do know that the wheels started falling off this cart a few years ago.
The trouble with solar energy is that it is not a clean source in itself. If we are talking photovoltaic cells then we are talking about producing tonnes of waste to produce these things (45kg of natural resource for every gramme of cell produced). We also need to consider the where these things are put - taking up valuable land resource. And we still don't get anything from them at night or in adverse weather conditions.
Alternatives to the photovoltaic cell are vacuum tubes, used to extract heat from sunlight/air and used to heat water. This works reasonably well in almost all conditions and does address the issues of hot water energy consumption, however they are fragile and do require maintenance to keep them clean. And it is not really viable to produce electricity.
Wind power is a real red herring - in principle it sounds really good - free energy whenever the wind blows but there are some very real issues with this. Primarily the supply is not consistent i.e. when the wind does not blow the lights will not go. So we cannot hang our hopes on the wind to power hospitals, street lights, security systems, server rooms, banks etc. The very fabric of our society demands an uninterruped supply of electricity and we have to provide that.
Now lets look at the argument in a little bit of detail from the carbon point of view. Wind turbines claim to displace CO2 on the basis that they produce electricity with less CO2 emissions than conventional oil and gas supply. This in itself is disputed because the very nature of wind farms means that they need to be located in remote windy areas, therefore need road access, cabling, transformers, pylons and a whole heap of concrete to put them in place, each one of which has a massive CO2 content. However, that aside, the benefits of wind are always pitched against conventional supply via oil and gas but never against nuclear as they fair extremely badly in CO2 terms (nuclear has zero emissions in CO2 terms and as Chernobyl has shown is bad for humans but damn good for nature). So, you will notice that wind advocates are anti-nuclear as they cannot compete - hence the numerous pieces of mis-information that you will be fed by the green lobbies.
Now, my US cousins are coming to the green environmental party a little later than us in Europe and with their usual enthusiam for everything they do. In Europe we were very quick to critisize the US for is stance on emissions and CO2, basically we had a national opinion that the "yanks" were being stupid redneck 8 litre gas guzzling morons. I decided to stand outside that point of view and try to see things from the US side and oddly I started to agree with the them. I still continue to hold this point of view. I ask you to stand back from the popular view that is now occurring - look at the sources of the information you are getting and form your own opinion. Question your sources, the green movement uses extremely bad science and incorrect public views to force through really bad technolgies. You may, like me, realise you are being manipulated and end up standing outside the popular view and you may also find yourself being thought of as an idiot, like me, but at least you will have some integrity.
The current rate and expected future usage are not the same thing, it's amusing that you think so. Anyway a lot of sources disagree with you and claim that at the expected rate of consumption (note my mention of China and India, not to mention places like the former USSR) we will hit an oil shortage within the next 50 or so years. Show me these sources.
The conventional generators are running at the time but overall you need less of them (note that during peak demand during the summer there is likely to be a lot of nice sunlight to use but not during other periods). Not to mention that there is some economic flexibility in power usage, if you can expect (over the whole grid and such) there to be more power at certain time you can lower the price at those times (this in turn will drive demand up somewhat during that time). AS one of the other posts points out predicting supply is indeed a complex task. I've worked in the industry at it was fascinating to see the work that took place, however you will now be adding an unpredictable supply to a difficult to predict demand. Can you show me any evidence to support your theory for your sunlight based supply and demand?
No, I simply am not stupid enough to make wild conclusions from a simple statement. See, I'd actually go and read WHY they're no longer expanding not just jump to random conclusions. I did. They couldn't.
Oh, did I touch a nerve there Mr. Engineer? That's like the most worthless example of "I know this area" that I've heard in a while. I know a lot of electrical engineers, and most know very little about this area as they've had no training or experience in it. I am not an electrical engineer. Are you trying to tell me the pigs turned you down?
I totally agree. Do not misunderstand my attitudes towards renewables - I detest them because they do not solve the problem, its simply bad engineering. I also however do not like what we are doing to our societies with the consumption of fossil fuels. We need to make changes to the way we live our lives and that will not include driving about in hydrogen cars - we will simply just not drive.
These are lovely ideas but if wind was any damn good the Dutch would still be using it, but they have stopped further wind turbine installations.
you think the Dutch don't use them No they have stopped expanding their wind turbine program. Read the fucking sentence you dolt.
The world oil consumption is not constant, the US alone has doubled it's oil consumption in the last few decades. Europe has stayed the same but with India and China entering the game that won't matter much probably. Actually the US rate of consumption increase is about 2% per annum, a bit more precise than "the last few decades", this is in line with population growth. Source : http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc _nus_mbblpd_a.htm I also said current rates of consumption so my original statement did factor this in.
Amazingly enough many people can consider using *gasp* multiple sources of electricity production, what a fucking amazing concept, no? Here's a hint: blackouts and summer heat waves, plenty of sun during that peak usage. Really and what does a conventional generator do when all this winderful fee energy is being generated? Exactly the same as it does when it is not i.e. they keep on running. Net reduction in Co2 emissions? Nill. You cannot switch a generator on or off like a light, they take time and effort to spin up. In fact the net effect is to increase carbon in atmosphere due to the production of cabling and equipment for renewable generation.
These are lovely ideas but if wind was any damn good the Dutch would still be using it, but they have stopped further wind turbine installations....there could be hundreds of reasons for them to stop, none having anything to do with how viable it is. Only an utter moron would consider that sentence to be any sort of argument at all on it's own. The significance of the Dutch abandoning the expansion of it's wind turbine program is that they cannot get the strategy to work. The have an open western seaboard with pissibly the best laminar airflow you can get and they still cannot get it to work. That is a reasoned and sentient argument, understood by intelligent people, something which you obviously struggle with.
I am an accredited engineer and you obviously fuck pigs for a living.
Wind only generates energy 27% of the time, duh. So, when you connect that to hydrogen to store the energy, duh, it, duh, goes through another loss of 40%, which duh, then gets converted back to energy it, duh, goes through another 40% reduction before you get electricity back. Duh.
So from you original 27% you get sod all back. I can substantiate these figures on demand for anyone that wants it. My comments are not flamebait, I am simply pointing out that many people are claiming the sky is falling in without any evidence to support it.
As for solar, it is practically useless for electricity production outside the tropical lattitudes. Again, what happens when it goes dark? We are back to the very lossy hydrogen storage approach. The point of the article above. Duh.
As far as I can tell there is no scarcity of resources such as oil or gas - any supply constraints are put in place by OPEC to ensure the price of oil does not fall below an economic level. There is enough known resource to last for 200 years at current rates of consumption.
As for wind and sun as sources of electrical power, can I ask what we do when it is dark? Or there is no wind blowing? These are lovely ideas but if wind was any damn good the Dutch would still be using it, but they have stopped further wind turbine installations.
It is time for real engineers to make the decisions on how we proceed and not unqualified "experts" of which there appears to be an almost limitless resource.
A lot of stuff has been HUGE in Japan, from dressing schoolgirls in sailor suits to the festival of the penis - but lets be clear, they are not necessarily things we would want to emulate over here. As a people (and yes I do know this is a huge stereotype) they are much more accepting of new technologies and for good reason - it has served them well and made them the world leaders in innovation. They have a geographic advantage in that they are on a relatively small series of islands and so they can roll out new technologies much faster.
Let's face it, my American cousins were never going to willingly invent mobile cellular technology with the fabulous expanse of land they have! That is a small country solution, the USA likes big country solutiuons like the Boeing 777 and what a fine job they have done of that too.
I am very suspicious of any small country technology that tries to make a global impact, the economies of scal do not allways work.
This is the inevitable result of the series of failed technologies that hang round the necks of all those involved in mobile telephone business like the large stinking albatross it is.
The whole industry is a series of calamatous errors, and before you start telling me about the huge amounts of money they make I wan't you to consider the difference between doing something "good" and making money. Drug barons make money - but their industry is hardly what you would call good. Similarly, the mobile phone companies have sytematically fought between themselves, with network operators killing off fledgling technologies like WAP by charging prohibitive access costs; to handset vendors packing so much unused technology into the handsets the network operators struggle to recoup their costs. Hardly good business practice, and let's face it the handsets are short lived unreliable pieces of junk that are pratically unuseable. I'm a geek and I can't even be arsed to use the calendar on my phone for fuxsake.
3G has been the biggest farce since the Noel Coward left the party. The technology is dreadful, truly awful to use. It is expensive, unreliable, impractical and worthless. Who in their right mind is going to hold a very expensive handset at arms length and shout at the 1" square image for the sake of making a video call? (inside obviously because you cannot see the screen in daylight and not on a train because the signal is too unreliable, nor where there are people around because you would hardly want to be seen making a prat of yourself and only to someone that has a compatible handset). Those poor network operators have had to write off the costs of the 3G license that they paid for e.g. Vodaphone's massive loss recently, and they still cannot find any way to make money off the connection. Sure, they make a few bucks/quid from laptop access but 802.11 is guzzling up paying customers faster than a $20 whore.
So, where do they go? More new technology? Like the Sony i-mode stuff? I seriously doubt that will ever be more than a passing fad for a few technophiles. No, that is not the answer. I don't know what is, and neither do the manufaturers, so in the meantime they will consolidate their costs, buy up companies like LG, Siemens & SAGEM and sell cheap handsets, that only barely work, until they find a more lucrative solution.
Cynical, perhaps, but that has been the history of this industry since the 80's. The only trick that really worked was SMS texting - and they did not catch onto that for about a year after it was popular.
As far as I am aware the current research uses stem cells from aborted foetuses.
This has obvious implications.
As far as I know the research has not looked at the use of adult stem cells as an alternative. Like any good research they deal with the science of the problem, it is for us to decide how or indeed if we with to implement. One thing is clear to me, however, it is an awful lot easier to have an opinion when you are not faced with the reality of impending blindness.
My wife has early onset RP and it does far more than affect night vision and peripheral vision - it ultimately causes all vision to be lost, from the outside in. In the past few months my wifes central vision in her right eye has started to fail dramatically.
Normally RP is diagnosed later on in life so the full effects of the disease are not normally experienced, however many suffer from childhood and it is those people that will benefit from this type of technology.
In tandem with this research there has also been progress made in retinal transplants using stem cell growth mediums to allow the cells to function normally.
Its nice to see some hope, particularly for my wife who has been told that she would be blind by the time she was ten. That was 23 years ago.
Eye um not bearly literate! & I have nevur worn a uniform neither, with or without my bollocks hanging out. Retract that statement or as it says in the bible "I'm gonna sue your arse, mutha".
It is geneally agreed that the latest Queen's speech (which is a speech made by the Queen using a script given to her by the incumbent government of the day) was a feeble affair which did little to reassure an already pissed off public.
The current Labout government run by T. Blair is generally seen to be scaremonegering over things like terrorism and crime to justify a new raft of draconian measures. Each one of these measures has been a cynical attempt to limit liberty within the UK. There has already been a government funded surevey judgning the "peoples" attitude towards ID cards which, according to the government, showed an overwhelming support for the scheme. Until, of course, it was discovered that the survey was far from impartial and the sample group was so small as to be non-representative.
Technology aside I fear for my children's liberty, they are already unable to do the stuff I used to do as a child - like blow things up with home made gunpowder, whittle wood with a knife (yes knives are soon to be banned in this moronic country) and when they get older they won't be able to smoke a cigarette (yep, smoking is banned too).
No, don't be lured by the technology, this is a bad thing. I hope my American cousin's don't let the president push them into accepting a loss of liberty in the name of some ficticious threat. It looks like this country is starting to fall foul of the lie that is "The war on terror"
Intel: Hello we would like to show you our processors and this lovely software called Linux and OpenOffice.
Oriental Bod: Very nice. The chips are a bugger to copy, we will just have to buy them. How much for the software?
Intel: Free.
Microsoft: You will be sued and die!
Oriental Bod: How much for your OS and office package Microsoft?
Microsoft: Same price as an average family home in your country, per box. Plus maintenance, anti-virus, defragemntation, remote support, admin tools and server costs. Plus downtime for virus attacks, patching, reboots on software install and the inevitable hacker attack. But if you read this document, the TCO is lower than the free software. Oh, I nearly forgot, we made Intel look bad because our OS's were so unreliable people thought the processors were bad too.
Intel: Mention AMD and you will be sued and die!
Oriental Bod: Hmm, so AMD and Open Source is cheaper in every conceivable way than Windows and Intel. And as it's open I can manufacture my own devices and release the drivers without having to go through Microsoft scrutiny, thereby making my time to domestic market much faster?
Intel: Except you will be better using our chips rather than AMD's.
Oriental Bod: But your 64bit chip is the same as their 64bit chip and the geeks in Open Source land have been playing with it for longer. We like AMD!
Microsoft: But Linux violates nearly 229 patents!
Oriental Bod: We violate hundreds of human rights but no-one seems to give a damn about that either! We will be working on our Human Rights record for years to come, your licensing is insignificant to us. Bring on the AMD and OO!
Being the canny Scot that I am, I have used my inate ingenuity and now all my computers at home are linked together using TTCPS. Yes Two Tin Cans and a Piece of String networking is the way forward.
I have already spoken to Linus T. who will be imlementing TTCPS in kernel 2.8, but I have released some modules which can be compiled into kernels 2.4 and 2.6 right now. Those of us on BSD can try the Two Steel Cans and a Piece of Cord (TSCPC) protocol but I'm not sure about compatability.
I've also received a letter from SCO's lawyers claiming that the string I used was from their own private ball and I should cease and desist. To counter this I am using twine spun by my own mother from the wool of our own sheep. I still maintain that the string I was using was just like any other piece of string and as SCO has been unable to specify what length they have missing I am not too worried.
Some geeks over at www.ttcpsgeek.org have been experimenting with High-Tensile string and have achieved remarkable increases in bandwidth - expect this to be ported back into TTCPSv2, due for release at the end of February.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh well, at least you read it as it was intended. I was expecting to be flamed, or modded to "Funny". Two great nations divided by one language!
Right up until now I thought US foreign policy was extremely poor. I feel I must apologise for thinking that, in fact US foreign policy is an act of unparalleled genius! North Korea is being largely ignored by the US as is Iran, not because they are not dangerous (they are) but you are simply employing them to gather enough nulear armaments together that you will later use to generate power, whilst silmutaneously reducing your dependency on fossil fuel and also creating world stabalisation. Outstanding work, forward thinking and downright cunning. I salute you!
I'm glad someone picked up on my literary trick! I did also point out earlier in my article that my opinion is also unqualified, adding another layer of abstract confusion to my statements. Or did I? :-)
I totally agree with you that Wikipeadia is an admirable attempt to catalog information, and it is indeed a step in the right direction. However, it still suffers from a lack of provinence over the sources of it's information. I trust a surgeon to remove my kidney because he is qualified and has a documented trail to prove his ability. I would not trust someone simply because he has a knife and a facemask.
You :-)
Bang and Blame
Bittersweet Me
We blew it guys, we had the promise of free, unrestricted knowledge - the ability for any man to share his knowledge with another. The freedom to aquire knowledge of any aspect of human achievment, from any culture at any time.
And what did we do with it? We used it for porn, greed and libelous behaviour. Much worse than that we propogated the publication of ill-informed opinion, of which I freely admit this is a part. Not only did we propogate it, we actually preferred our opinions to come from unqualified sources, because what we were being told from those that were qualified did not fit with what we wanted to hear. You only have to look at the myth of man made global warming to see this in action (and I know I will get flamed for that sentence, but that will only serve to prove I am right).
Wikipedia is the largest collection of ill-informed crap on the face of the planet, an admirable quest that has descended into a miasma of gibberish. It is now no more than a loose collection of opinion that may or may not be right. Certainly no use as a source of vital information - precicely because we cannot verify where the information came from and who is accountable.
However, the Internet's day has passed, the social experiment has failed and like radio, film and television before, it will descent into an over-regulated, commercial, empty shell of what it could have been.
QoS is the first step towards this regulation, it is the logical step towards the closing of the gate - you can say whatever you like but unless you have the bandwidth you will be unlikely to be heard. The loudest voices will be those that have the largest budget, just like every other aspect of our lives. The quality of your content will be naught compared to the size of your bandwidth, conversley the more bandwidth you have will affect the information you can receive.
In an ideal world the quality of information would be a factor in its propogation, however that does not lend itself to this medium, or any other for that matter. This is a lost cause, before it even started. I am not going to waste my time fighting it, instead I am going to find an alternative - perhaps the human social network is the only true forum, I don't know, but I do know that the wheels started falling off this cart a few years ago.
The trouble with solar energy is that it is not a clean source in itself. If we are talking photovoltaic cells then we are talking about producing tonnes of waste to produce these things (45kg of natural resource for every gramme of cell produced). We also need to consider the where these things are put - taking up valuable land resource. And we still don't get anything from them at night or in adverse weather conditions.
Alternatives to the photovoltaic cell are vacuum tubes, used to extract heat from sunlight/air and used to heat water. This works reasonably well in almost all conditions and does address the issues of hot water energy consumption, however they are fragile and do require maintenance to keep them clean. And it is not really viable to produce electricity.
Wind power is a real red herring - in principle it sounds really good - free energy whenever the wind blows but there are some very real issues with this. Primarily the supply is not consistent i.e. when the wind does not blow the lights will not go. So we cannot hang our hopes on the wind to power hospitals, street lights, security systems, server rooms, banks etc. The very fabric of our society demands an uninterruped supply of electricity and we have to provide that.
Now lets look at the argument in a little bit of detail from the carbon point of view. Wind turbines claim to displace CO2 on the basis that they produce electricity with less CO2 emissions than conventional oil and gas supply. This in itself is disputed because the very nature of wind farms means that they need to be located in remote windy areas, therefore need road access, cabling, transformers, pylons and a whole heap of concrete to put them in place, each one of which has a massive CO2 content. However, that aside, the benefits of wind are always pitched against conventional supply via oil and gas but never against nuclear as they fair extremely badly in CO2 terms (nuclear has zero emissions in CO2 terms and as Chernobyl has shown is bad for humans but damn good for nature). So, you will notice that wind advocates are anti-nuclear as they cannot compete - hence the numerous pieces of mis-information that you will be fed by the green lobbies.
Now, my US cousins are coming to the green environmental party a little later than us in Europe and with their usual enthusiam for everything they do. In Europe we were very quick to critisize the US for is stance on emissions and CO2, basically we had a national opinion that the "yanks" were being stupid redneck 8 litre gas guzzling morons. I decided to stand outside that point of view and try to see things from the US side and oddly I started to agree with the them. I still continue to hold this point of view. I ask you to stand back from the popular view that is now occurring - look at the sources of the information you are getting and form your own opinion. Question your sources, the green movement uses extremely bad science and incorrect public views to force through really bad technolgies. You may, like me, realise you are being manipulated and end up standing outside the popular view and you may also find yourself being thought of as an idiot, like me, but at least you will have some integrity.
I look forward to your reply.
I totally agree. Do not misunderstand my attitudes towards renewables - I detest them because they do not solve the problem, its simply bad engineering. I also however do not like what we are doing to our societies with the consumption of fossil fuels. We need to make changes to the way we live our lives and that will not include driving about in hydrogen cars - we will simply just not drive.
As for the peak production thing, its just a theory and it is already discredited - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Oiloutput1.gif
We cannot buy our way out of these things we need to look at our lifestyles and grow up a little.
I am an accredited engineer and you obviously fuck pigs for a living.
I am an IEEE acredited engineer, what the fuck are you?
Who exactly says peak oil was last year?
You are making this up.
Wind only generates energy 27% of the time, duh. So, when you connect that to hydrogen to store the energy, duh, it, duh, goes through another loss of 40%, which duh, then gets converted back to energy it, duh, goes through another 40% reduction before you get electricity back. Duh.
So from you original 27% you get sod all back. I can substantiate these figures on demand for anyone that wants it. My comments are not flamebait, I am simply pointing out that many people are claiming the sky is falling in without any evidence to support it.
As for solar, it is practically useless for electricity production outside the tropical lattitudes. Again, what happens when it goes dark? We are back to the very lossy hydrogen storage approach. The point of the article above. Duh.
As far as I can tell there is no scarcity of resources such as oil or gas - any supply constraints are put in place by OPEC to ensure the price of oil does not fall below an economic level. There is enough known resource to last for 200 years at current rates of consumption.
As for wind and sun as sources of electrical power, can I ask what we do when it is dark? Or there is no wind blowing? These are lovely ideas but if wind was any damn good the Dutch would still be using it, but they have stopped further wind turbine installations.
It is time for real engineers to make the decisions on how we proceed and not unqualified "experts" of which there appears to be an almost limitless resource.
....that will keep Windows Vista patched in real time!
A lot of stuff has been HUGE in Japan, from dressing schoolgirls in sailor suits to the festival of the penis - but lets be clear, they are not necessarily things we would want to emulate over here. As a people (and yes I do know this is a huge stereotype) they are much more accepting of new technologies and for good reason - it has served them well and made them the world leaders in innovation. They have a geographic advantage in that they are on a relatively small series of islands and so they can roll out new technologies much faster.
Let's face it, my American cousins were never going to willingly invent mobile cellular technology with the fabulous expanse of land they have! That is a small country solution, the USA likes big country solutiuons like the Boeing 777 and what a fine job they have done of that too.
I am very suspicious of any small country technology that tries to make a global impact, the economies of scal do not allways work.
This is the inevitable result of the series of failed technologies that hang round the necks of all those involved in mobile telephone business like the large stinking albatross it is.
The whole industry is a series of calamatous errors, and before you start telling me about the huge amounts of money they make I wan't you to consider the difference between doing something "good" and making money. Drug barons make money - but their industry is hardly what you would call good. Similarly, the mobile phone companies have sytematically fought between themselves, with network operators killing off fledgling technologies like WAP by charging prohibitive access costs; to handset vendors packing so much unused technology into the handsets the network operators struggle to recoup their costs. Hardly good business practice, and let's face it the handsets are short lived unreliable pieces of junk that are pratically unuseable. I'm a geek and I can't even be arsed to use the calendar on my phone for fuxsake.
3G has been the biggest farce since the Noel Coward left the party. The technology is dreadful, truly awful to use. It is expensive, unreliable, impractical and worthless. Who in their right mind is going to hold a very expensive handset at arms length and shout at the 1" square image for the sake of making a video call? (inside obviously because you cannot see the screen in daylight and not on a train because the signal is too unreliable, nor where there are people around because you would hardly want to be seen making a prat of yourself and only to someone that has a compatible handset). Those poor network operators have had to write off the costs of the 3G license that they paid for e.g. Vodaphone's massive loss recently, and they still cannot find any way to make money off the connection. Sure, they make a few bucks/quid from laptop access but 802.11 is guzzling up paying customers faster than a $20 whore.
So, where do they go? More new technology? Like the Sony i-mode stuff? I seriously doubt that will ever be more than a passing fad for a few technophiles. No, that is not the answer. I don't know what is, and neither do the manufaturers, so in the meantime they will consolidate their costs, buy up companies like LG, Siemens & SAGEM and sell cheap handsets, that only barely work, until they find a more lucrative solution.
Cynical, perhaps, but that has been the history of this industry since the 80's. The only trick that really worked was SMS texting - and they did not catch onto that for about a year after it was popular.
Yes, aborted foetuses:
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=5911
I only make statements when I have the facts, something that you should try.
As far as I am aware the current research uses stem cells from aborted foetuses.
This has obvious implications.
As far as I know the research has not looked at the use of adult stem cells as an alternative. Like any good research they deal with the science of the problem, it is for us to decide how or indeed if we with to implement. One thing is clear to me, however, it is an awful lot easier to have an opinion when you are not faced with the reality of impending blindness.
My wife has early onset RP and it does far more than affect night vision and peripheral vision - it ultimately causes all vision to be lost, from the outside in. In the past few months my wifes central vision in her right eye has started to fail dramatically.
Normally RP is diagnosed later on in life so the full effects of the disease are not normally experienced, however many suffer from childhood and it is those people that will benefit from this type of technology.
In tandem with this research there has also been progress made in retinal transplants using stem cell growth mediums to allow the cells to function normally.
Its nice to see some hope, particularly for my wife who has been told that she would be blind by the time she was ten. That was 23 years ago.
Eye um not bearly literate! & I have nevur worn a uniform neither, with or without my bollocks hanging out. Retract that statement or as it says in the bible "I'm gonna sue your arse, mutha".
And leave that *goat* alone you prevert!
It is geneally agreed that the latest Queen's speech (which is a speech made by the Queen using a script given to her by the incumbent government of the day) was a feeble affair which did little to reassure an already pissed off public.
The current Labout government run by T. Blair is generally seen to be scaremonegering over things like terrorism and crime to justify a new raft of draconian measures. Each one of these measures has been a cynical attempt to limit liberty within the UK. There has already been a government funded surevey judgning the "peoples" attitude towards ID cards which, according to the government, showed an overwhelming support for the scheme. Until, of course, it was discovered that the survey was far from impartial and the sample group was so small as to be non-representative.
Technology aside I fear for my children's liberty, they are already unable to do the stuff I used to do as a child - like blow things up with home made gunpowder, whittle wood with a knife (yes knives are soon to be banned in this moronic country) and when they get older they won't be able to smoke a cigarette (yep, smoking is banned too).
No, don't be lured by the technology, this is a bad thing. I hope my American cousin's don't let the president push them into accepting a loss of liberty in the name of some ficticious threat. It looks like this country is starting to fall foul of the lie that is "The war on terror"
Intel: Hello we would like to show you our processors and this lovely software called Linux and OpenOffice.
Oriental Bod: Very nice. The chips are a bugger to copy, we will just have to buy them. How much for the software?
Intel: Free.
Microsoft: You will be sued and die!
Oriental Bod: How much for your OS and office package Microsoft?
Microsoft: Same price as an average family home in your country, per box. Plus maintenance, anti-virus, defragemntation, remote support, admin tools and server costs. Plus downtime for virus attacks, patching, reboots on software install and the inevitable hacker attack. But if you read this document, the TCO is lower than the free software. Oh, I nearly forgot, we made Intel look bad because our OS's were so unreliable people thought the processors were bad too.
Intel: Mention AMD and you will be sued and die!
Oriental Bod: Hmm, so AMD and Open Source is cheaper in every conceivable way than Windows and
Intel. And as it's open I can manufacture my own devices and release the drivers without having to go through Microsoft scrutiny, thereby making my time to domestic market much faster?
Intel: Except you will be better using our chips rather than AMD's.
Oriental Bod: But your 64bit chip is the same as their 64bit chip and the geeks in Open Source land have been playing with it for longer. We like AMD!
Microsoft: But Linux violates nearly 229 patents!
Oriental Bod: We violate hundreds of human rights but no-one seems to give a damn about that either! We will be working on our Human Rights record for years to come, your licensing is insignificant to us. Bring on the AMD and OO!
Being the canny Scot that I am, I have used my inate ingenuity and now all my computers at home are linked together using TTCPS. Yes Two Tin Cans and a Piece of String networking is the way forward.
I have already spoken to Linus T. who will be imlementing TTCPS in kernel 2.8, but I have released some modules which can be compiled into kernels 2.4 and 2.6 right now. Those of us on BSD can try the Two Steel Cans and a Piece of Cord (TSCPC) protocol but I'm not sure about compatability.
I've also received a letter from SCO's lawyers claiming that the string I used was from their own private ball and I should cease and desist. To counter this I am using twine spun by my own mother from the wool of our own sheep. I still maintain that the string I was using was just like any other piece of string and as SCO has been unable to specify what length they have missing I am not too worried.
Some geeks over at www.ttcpsgeek.org have been experimenting with High-Tensile string and have achieved remarkable increases in bandwidth - expect this to be ported back into TTCPSv2, due for release at the end of February.
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