A Hydrogren internal combustion engine would be great. In fact, many auto makers have prototype cars that run their engines off of hydrogen alone: such as this site explains. Still, a normal engine will NOT work correctly with significant amounts of hydrogden being burned, as it changes the mixture too much, requires a different amount of compression, might not work with the injectors properly, won't get contained by the current fuel system, and so on. Bascially, because hydrogen burns so easily, it requires a much different timing.
For a real life way to make your car run a little cleaner (Albeit with some LESS power, since ethanol has a lower energy density than gas), add ethanol to your gas tank. Many newer cars now support ethanol in the gas mix (they detect how much alcohol is present in the gasoline) and adjust the engine accordingly. I know the production Ford Ranger 3.0L has this right now, and I'm sure some other cars do too.
Is there any feasable way to make SMTP authenticated so spammers can't spoof their IP addresses? Everyone keeps asking but noone seems to know if it's possible.
Don't overlook your friendly local government!
on
Great Surplus Stores?
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· Score: 1
I've found LOADS of great stuff at my local (South Carolina) state surplus warehouse. Not sure how other states work, but I've bought projectors there ridicuously cheap (they through they were broken), $5 computers all day long, office furniture, milling machines, electron microscopes, old Macs, TV studio equipment, cars, you name it, it's been sold there. They come up with some whack stuff. Once saw a dentist chair there. Wasn't sure what I could do with it but was very close to buying it.
Well, that leaves two options for the future:
1) Cheap Superconductors
2) Cheap Fuel Cells
Wonder which will win? Hybrid technology is just a bandaid for now...
I'm waiting for an economical fuel cell that is mass produced. That will be the answer. That or a good battery (order of magnitude better than what we currently have).
6% is significant when you're talk about gigawatts of power. The main idea is, once you establish an electric vehicle infrastruture, it's much much easier to evenetually adapt the power infrastructure to become environmentally friendly as opposed to the current gasoline infrastructure, where there is practically no way to upgrade it to environmentally friendly status. In other words, there are many sources for electricity and it's relatively easy to change to them, compared to one source for oil.
Wrong wrong and, uh wrong. You forget that a sizable portion of the electricity that ends up at your outlet comes from clean renewable resources, such as hydro electric and wind and solar power. Also, producing power centrally is more efficent than widely distributed power production, as pollution controls can be supervised much easier. The electric car is fantastic because it allow this flexibility in power sources -- you can charge your electric car with whatever you want. Install a fuel cell at home, bam, your car is charged. Install a generator, bam, it's charged. You get the idea.
After looking at the article a bit, it's very interesting to note that the main reason the car was being discontinued was not sales nor popularity issues, but rather CHARGING issues! Apparently CARB (California's nazi regime of pollution control) mandated a new charger system that basically requires a redesign of the EV1 in order to be compatible. Hopefully with these new standards now set, we'll see electric cars back on the market soo.
To explain the charger problem, CARB mandated a conductive charger, or one that uses a direct electrical connection to the charging system. Many vehicles, including the EV1, currently use the Inductive charging system, which utilizes no electrical contact (for safety reasons) between the charger and the vehicle, but rather a inductive magnetic coupling. There is no cheap way to convert between the two systems, hence the discontinuing of the EV1.
Make an IPO. Plenty of "Small shop".COM companies in the late 90s got plenty of funding this way. If your idea is that good, then you should have no problem finding an investor to back your proposal. Goverment involvement in this area should be NONE AT ALL. I refuse to have my tax dollars going to some crack-head programmer who complains about not being able to keep up with the big guys. These days, to make a successful product, you don't need a good programmer, rather you need an excellent manager and marketing person. That's the name of the game these days.
Here's a thought: Remember in lab class when your teacher spins on a stool and sticks his arms out and slows down? What about all the construction/building going on around the planet, moving mass farther away from the center of the planet(skyscrapers, bridges, etc)? It must have some tiny effect.
Since SCSI drives are obviously not targetted at the commodity/home market, manufacturers spend a few extra bucks on the mechanical parts, including fluid bearings, better motors, and more testing time to build a drive more suited for a server market. With a better mechanical build, less heat is generated and higher MTBF figures are posted. Mechanically, there is little required difference between a SCSI and IDE drive, but electronically and in the market, there is. At the same time, these cooler, better drives do cost more for a reason!
"Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (Slac) Computer Services participated in the record-
breaking event."
...For those wondering what the hell SLAC is, how about try reading the article SUMMARY? Sheesh.
Just goes to show moderators don't even read the article summaries.
People go to arcades to get what they can't get at home. Whether it's a Dance Dance revolution machine of today, or Pac Man of the 80's, either were light years ahead of home technology. Unless manufacturers can successfully implement some coin-op based entertainment that users can't go home and plonk it into their XBox, why go out? Having been in the industry for over 10 years, I have seen the trends. The only thing that makes money in arcades today is redemption machines (the ones that spit out tickets), because it's legalized gambling for kiddies. Hopefully people will get bored with consoles eventually (anyone else out there starting to see a plateau in gameplay vs. graphics?) and the kids will venture into daylight again (This reminds me of the scene in the Simpsons when all the of kids come out into the daylight because Itchy and Scratchy got cancelled).
Also from basic economics -- opportunity cost. Consumers, theoretically, value something as what it would cost them to do the next best thing without it. Okay, so a copy of windows XP costs $300. Is what I'm doing with XP worth $300? Can I spend $300 elsewhere and get the same thing done (somewhere a gaggle of linux afficiandos scream 'YES!')? And this opportunity cost varies from product to product, and from person to person. Economocially speaking, it's NOT the same for every person out there, because every person has different needs and things to accomplish. For example, a graphing calculator ideally should cost more to a math major than a short-order cook at the local Waffle House.
I want an OLED phone. NOW!!! MOMMMY!!!
I think that's the next minor killer app for phones. Should significantly boost battery life, and leave more room for things like, oh I don't know, antennas?:-)
Interesting factoid: The name Donkey Kong is actually a translation mishap when they brought the game in from Japan. It was originally meant to be something along the line of Monkey Kong.
I really wish manufacturers would cut the crap and just give a FLOP rating off of some standard test that could be performed cross-platform. Then they can stop worrying about turning processors into microwave ovens and focus on more efficent silicon techniques. They are starting to run into problems in these high frequencies because on a motherboard, because by the time the signal reaches another side of the board, it has already switched from a 1 back to a 0 or whatever. That's fast.
Obligatory Bill Gates quote (surprised that no one has said it alreaady): 640k oughta be enough for anyone! Seriously, Moore's law is still keeping up for the most part, so at this rate, they've got about 36 months before 4-gb systems start to show up on the market.
Microsoft has been trying to push the Software as a Service model for a while now. The big idea a few years ago was that you would "rent" the software as you needed it. I'm not sure if they're still pursuing this, but Palladium would provide a nice convienent way of securing the back end of it and making application over a network more possible. Once this happens, all of a sudden, software is a service!
That actually brings up a very interesting topic: political activism built into games. I can think of a few off the top of my head:
Doom: kill Hitler at the end! Yay!
Red Alert: Repel the evil Soviet Invasion!
Any number of nab the terrorist FPS games, especially post 9/11...
Anyway, politics and world issues have affected games more than we think, subsequentially affecting the people who play them too. Often, you get the chance to reverse roles and play the bad guys for once. I wonder what sort of psychological effect this has on people.
"Regardless what the submitter says, the article says that car manufacturers aren't looking at it because plastic is 3x more expensive than galvanized steal."
Actually, new 2002 models, at least the Ford Explorer, doesn't use all steel panels anymore. I discovered that a decent portion of that panels (hood, tailgate, etc) are fabricated out of aluminum. This surprised me, especially when I tried to put magnetic decals on them. The main plus to plastic that I see is that it has the potential to be cheaper to fabricate as far as tooling costs go.
This is the chief reason to go look at some of the external sound cards on the market, including the Soundblaster Extigy card. At first I thought it was a piece of junk 'cause it used USB, but upon closer examination, this bad boy boasts a signal to noise ratio of over 100 db, which is great by most audio standards (Most CDs have this s/n level). I think it owes this in part to that fact it's in its own enclosure shielded from all the RF nasties floating around the case of a PC. I want one.
Actually, one of the cooler channels I used to frequent back in the old days was #oldwarez on efnet, 'cause you could find a lot of abandonware on there, which was otherwise unobtainable (even if you were willing to pay for it). Really good for a nostalgia trip. I have no idea if the channel's still around, I kicked my IRC habit a long time ago.
(there are even missiles that seek on RADAR emissions).
In other news, President Bush just deployed 500 linksys wireless access points for a "Missle Defense Shield". The project was estimated to cost $20 Billion.
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Dunno, but if you're still using Windows 9x/ME, your BSODs are gonna wear out those blue LEDs REAL quick...
For a real life way to make your car run a little cleaner (Albeit with some LESS power, since ethanol has a lower energy density than gas), add ethanol to your gas tank. Many newer cars now support ethanol in the gas mix (they detect how much alcohol is present in the gasoline) and adjust the engine accordingly. I know the production Ford Ranger 3.0L has this right now, and I'm sure some other cars do too.
Is there any feasable way to make SMTP authenticated so spammers can't spoof their IP addresses? Everyone keeps asking but noone seems to know if it's possible.
I've found LOADS of great stuff at my local (South Carolina) state surplus warehouse. Not sure how other states work, but I've bought projectors there ridicuously cheap (they through they were broken), $5 computers all day long, office furniture, milling machines, electron microscopes, old Macs, TV studio equipment, cars, you name it, it's been sold there. They come up with some whack stuff. Once saw a dentist chair there. Wasn't sure what I could do with it but was very close to buying it.
Well, that leaves two options for the future: 1) Cheap Superconductors 2) Cheap Fuel Cells Wonder which will win? Hybrid technology is just a bandaid for now... I'm waiting for an economical fuel cell that is mass produced. That will be the answer. That or a good battery (order of magnitude better than what we currently have).
6% is significant when you're talk about gigawatts of power. The main idea is, once you establish an electric vehicle infrastruture, it's much much easier to evenetually adapt the power infrastructure to become environmentally friendly as opposed to the current gasoline infrastructure, where there is practically no way to upgrade it to environmentally friendly status. In other words, there are many sources for electricity and it's relatively easy to change to them, compared to one source for oil.
Wrong wrong and, uh wrong. You forget that a sizable portion of the electricity that ends up at your outlet comes from clean renewable resources, such as hydro electric and wind and solar power. Also, producing power centrally is more efficent than widely distributed power production, as pollution controls can be supervised much easier. The electric car is fantastic because it allow this flexibility in power sources -- you can charge your electric car with whatever you want. Install a fuel cell at home, bam, your car is charged. Install a generator, bam, it's charged. You get the idea.
After looking at the article a bit, it's very interesting to note that the main reason the car was being discontinued was not sales nor popularity issues, but rather CHARGING issues! Apparently CARB (California's nazi regime of pollution control) mandated a new charger system that basically requires a redesign of the EV1 in order to be compatible. Hopefully with these new standards now set, we'll see electric cars back on the market soo.
To explain the charger problem, CARB mandated a conductive charger, or one that uses a direct electrical connection to the charging system. Many vehicles, including the EV1, currently use the Inductive charging system, which utilizes no electrical contact (for safety reasons) between the charger and the vehicle, but rather a inductive magnetic coupling. There is no cheap way to convert between the two systems, hence the discontinuing of the EV1.
Make an IPO. Plenty of "Small shop" .COM companies in the late 90s got plenty of funding this way. If your idea is that good, then you should have no problem finding an investor to back your proposal. Goverment involvement in this area should be NONE AT ALL. I refuse to have my tax dollars going to some crack-head programmer who complains about not being able to keep up with the big guys. These days, to make a successful product, you don't need a good programmer, rather you need an excellent manager and marketing person. That's the name of the game these days.
Here's a thought: Remember in lab class when your teacher spins on a stool and sticks his arms out and slows down? What about all the construction/building going on around the planet, moving mass farther away from the center of the planet(skyscrapers, bridges, etc)? It must have some tiny effect.
Since SCSI drives are obviously not targetted at the commodity/home market, manufacturers spend a few extra bucks on the mechanical parts, including fluid bearings, better motors, and more testing time to build a drive more suited for a server market. With a better mechanical build, less heat is generated and higher MTBF figures are posted. Mechanically, there is little required difference between a SCSI and IDE drive, but electronically and in the market, there is. At the same time, these cooler, better drives do cost more for a reason!
People go to arcades to get what they can't get at home. Whether it's a Dance Dance revolution machine of today, or Pac Man of the 80's, either were light years ahead of home technology. Unless manufacturers can successfully implement some coin-op based entertainment that users can't go home and plonk it into their XBox, why go out? Having been in the industry for over 10 years, I have seen the trends. The only thing that makes money in arcades today is redemption machines (the ones that spit out tickets), because it's legalized gambling for kiddies. Hopefully people will get bored with consoles eventually (anyone else out there starting to see a plateau in gameplay vs. graphics?) and the kids will venture into daylight again (This reminds me of the scene in the Simpsons when all the of kids come out into the daylight because Itchy and Scratchy got cancelled).
Also from basic economics -- opportunity cost. Consumers, theoretically, value something as what it would cost them to do the next best thing without it. Okay, so a copy of windows XP costs $300. Is what I'm doing with XP worth $300? Can I spend $300 elsewhere and get the same thing done (somewhere a gaggle of linux afficiandos scream 'YES!')? And this opportunity cost varies from product to product, and from person to person. Economocially speaking, it's NOT the same for every person out there, because every person has different needs and things to accomplish. For example, a graphing calculator ideally should cost more to a math major than a short-order cook at the local Waffle House.
I want an OLED phone. NOW!!! MOMMMY!!! I think that's the next minor killer app for phones. Should significantly boost battery life, and leave more room for things like, oh I don't know, antennas? :-)
Interesting factoid: The name Donkey Kong is actually a translation mishap when they brought the game in from Japan. It was originally meant to be something along the line of Monkey Kong.
I really wish manufacturers would cut the crap and just give a FLOP rating off of some standard test that could be performed cross-platform. Then they can stop worrying about turning processors into microwave ovens and focus on more efficent silicon techniques. They are starting to run into problems in these high frequencies because on a motherboard, because by the time the signal reaches another side of the board, it has already switched from a 1 back to a 0 or whatever. That's fast.
Obligatory Bill Gates quote (surprised that no one has said it alreaady): 640k oughta be enough for anyone! Seriously, Moore's law is still keeping up for the most part, so at this rate, they've got about 36 months before 4-gb systems start to show up on the market.
"OCSystem Enhanced Radeon 9700 Pro Level III SE"
This is too good to resist. They must've hired some Japanese marketers or something for this card. I can't imagine the NEXT release:
OCsystem Super Hyper Mega Ultra Happy Enhanced Radeon 9700 Expert Pro Level IVc SE XP 2.0 Edition
Is it too hard to simply notch up the model number by a few points?! Sheesh!
Microsoft has been trying to push the Software as a Service model for a while now. The big idea a few years ago was that you would "rent" the software as you needed it. I'm not sure if they're still pursuing this, but Palladium would provide a nice convienent way of securing the back end of it and making application over a network more possible. Once this happens, all of a sudden, software is a service!
That actually brings up a very interesting topic: political activism built into games. I can think of a few off the top of my head: Doom: kill Hitler at the end! Yay! Red Alert: Repel the evil Soviet Invasion! Any number of nab the terrorist FPS games, especially post 9/11... Anyway, politics and world issues have affected games more than we think, subsequentially affecting the people who play them too. Often, you get the chance to reverse roles and play the bad guys for once. I wonder what sort of psychological effect this has on people.
Actually, new 2002 models, at least the Ford Explorer, doesn't use all steel panels anymore. I discovered that a decent portion of that panels (hood, tailgate, etc) are fabricated out of aluminum. This surprised me, especially when I tried to put magnetic decals on them. The main plus to plastic that I see is that it has the potential to be cheaper to fabricate as far as tooling costs go.
This is the chief reason to go look at some of the external sound cards on the market, including the Soundblaster Extigy card. At first I thought it was a piece of junk 'cause it used USB, but upon closer examination, this bad boy boasts a signal to noise ratio of over 100 db, which is great by most audio standards (Most CDs have this s/n level). I think it owes this in part to that fact it's in its own enclosure shielded from all the RF nasties floating around the case of a PC. I want one.
No. We need death. We need strife.
That's why Sopranos is such a hit series. You lose half the cast every season!
Actually, one of the cooler channels I used to frequent back in the old days was #oldwarez on efnet, 'cause you could find a lot of abandonware on there, which was otherwise unobtainable (even if you were willing to pay for it). Really good for a nostalgia trip. I have no idea if the channel's still around, I kicked my IRC habit a long time ago.
(there are even missiles that seek on RADAR emissions).
In other news, President Bush just deployed 500 linksys wireless access points for a "Missle Defense Shield". The project was estimated to cost $20 Billion.