Software is at least 10 years behind hardware. In other words if they stopped making any progress in hardware it would be at least 10 years before software was developed to get anywhere close to the maximum benefits that the hardware is capable of accomplishing. Microsoft should be able to offer all hardware for free with a subscription of 2 or more years of their cloud computing. We should be able to offer enough services that even the fee would be better than free since the services should be able to save the user more money than it cost. A service that would save energy costs would be the primary one but I can see several more in house security, personal security, communications, and entertainment. For instance commercial tv should be abandoned. I see no reason for making me watch a commercial for a product I have no interest in buying. After or before the program is viewed a list of products or services should be available with the ability to click on any of them to receive more information. That way more products or services could sponsor the programs since people could click on those they are interested in buying in the near future. There are plenty of ways in house security that could save more money than they cost too. For instances shutting off electricity or gas when there is a short or leak could save a house from being destroyed. When this has happened several times the savings in insurance would be enough to justify the cost. I have sure hope that in the year 2020 or before they can provide this service since if I am still alive I will be 69 than.
I picked up my nephew in Nebraska last year and he had an accident where he required 4 stitches. I took him to the emergency room where they took all the information about him. Six months later they sent out a bill for over $400. They stated that they do not accept out of state insurance. I guess the people in Nebraska do not understand the word united as in United States. Why is it just as expensive to have 4 stitches as it is to get an abortion? So the people in Canada are better to Americans than we are to people who live out of state. Two years ago my mother died and left her family about $100,000. I gave her granddaughter about $10,000 for her share. When the government found out about it they took her off medicaid. Soon after she got herself a $2,000 medical bill. She did not pay it and when she filed for her state income tax the state took all of her refund. The refund money was suppose to help her pay for her property taxes and with her heating bills but I guess the medical cost have more priority. Everyone of my medical bills are more than 3 times as much as my insurance will pay and they always accept the amount the insurance pays. So what is an individual suppose to do when they are charged these criminal amounts. If we want these people to die because of lack of health care than it would be better if we did what the Nazi did and use a gas because it will kill without pain.
I was in Nebraska last year with my 7 year old nephew who needed medical assistance. They billed his mother stating that they do not accept out of state insurance. A couple of years ago I was in charge of distributing my mother's money. I made the mistake of giving my niece her money. The government seeing that she had a little bit of money(just $10,000) stripped her of medical and food benefits. While she had that money she had a $2,000 medical expense so they took her state income tax refund to pay for it. Why didn't I just give the money to the government instead? I did have to pay the federal and state governments over $15,000 in taxes. The gross national income is around $50,000 per person in this country and yet we have to take away money from the people who make less than the poverty level. I sure hope the tea party members are enjoying themselves while on their expensive cruise and while they are listening to the $100,000 speech by Sarah Palin. I am sure they can justify taking from the poor so they can spend all that money.
In the year 1973 I was employed by a company called Cascade Data. It was located in Cascade Michigan which was close to Grand Rapids. I was a computer programmer at the time. They manufactured computers that started with 16k bytes of magnetic core memory and could be double to 32k. They had a 5 Megabyte hard drive but most used a tape drive for storage. Input was from a typewriter like device as one would type in on a keyboard and the output was on paper. I wrote programs in both RPG and assembly languages. The computer was an eight bit processor so the registers were eight bits. This meant that the maximum number that a register could hold was 255. Just adding two numbers was fun since one would have to do add the least significant byte of one to its least significant byte of the other and than check for overflow and continue with the next byte. There were no multiply or divide instruction. To multiple 19 times 20 one would add 19 to a register 20 times. To divide 200 by 20 one would subtract 20 from 200 until one got a zero or negative number. It was not that much fun to program in assembly language but your program always took about half the memory that a RPG program did and with only 16k bytes of memory on some system, some programs just needed to be written in assembly. Unfortunately for me the company did not last very long as I was employed for only 6 months. The country fell into another recession and I got tired of looking for work so I went into the military. Today a 64 bit register will hold a number of 1.84 X 10 raised to the 19th power or at least 18 significant bytes so even the national debt would fit into one register. So it must be a little bit easier to program today than it was in 1973. After, I was asked to modify a existing program by one of their customers. They gave me two big boxes of computer cards and a printout of the program. I had to find the place where I wanted to modify the program and remove and replace the cards I needed to. Unfortunately two of the cards got interchanged and some time was spent troubleshooting it to locate the problem. I can only laugh when I think about it and how much easier it is today.
The solution for hard drugs(heroin, crack cocaine, etc) is that the government to allow people to be voluntarily tested for drug use. Those who have a positive return on any drug would be given that drug free in very small quantities. Anyone else giving or selling that drug to anyone would still be harshly punished so it would still be a problem for first time user to get their drugs. Drug pusher would not have an incentive to push drugs since once a user has used the drug they can go to the government to get the drug for free. All drug users would be given help to quit if they requested that. I would hope that the drug users would slowly quit or die and that the demand for illegal drugs would be reduced.
I think you are saying that all science is accomplished by humans. I think you are mistaken. In fact in the near future, I think most science will be done by computers. Where are the top 2 supercomputers? Where are the majority of the top 500 supercomputers? They are both in the United States. I believe that before 2040 or sooner the vast majority of people will not care about any advances in science because there will be no need for those advances. Why would I care if they come out with a 10 terabyte hard drive when I can not fill a 1 terabyte hard drive? I believe we can rebuild everything underground so that we no longer fear the environment and use a small fraction of the energy we use today. When that day comes the need for advancements in science will be in fields that have very little practical use for humans.
There is no excuse for not totally changing our school system. First we should eliminate the grade system. People should have the option of trying to learn a subject until they give up. If someone is trying to learn something than the school system should not shut them off. Second is that we should redefine what teachers do for a living. Computer should be used to teach our children. Teachers should be called motivators. They would have a one on one discussion with each student every day. They would monitor each students progress and attempt to solve the student's problems with learning and motivation to learn. An electronic text book should be written so that the student reads a few pages and than must answer some question. If the student does not pass than the student must reread the pages and take another test. It would not matter how many times the student had to reread the pages before the student learned the material. It certainly would not merit giving a student a low grade when that student needed only a little more time to learn it. One would not ask a young person what grade that person is in, one would only ask if the student was at that student age level in every subject that student was taking. I am excellent at mathematics and when I was in high school I was held back by the school system. I do not do so well in English and this is why my writings are not that well. I know that if I could have learned at my own pace I could have done much better.
I suppose you will not be happy until we see our first trillionaire. The top 1% of this country already have more power than the bottom 95%. We will find a way to reduce the high cost of health insurance when the need to do so is overwhelming. Only when the need is so great will we invest enough money to increase the healthfulness of people and the efficiency of the health care system. It can and will be done. This health care bill will only hasten its arrival. I see this as nothing more than making the rich solve this problem to maintain their wealth. I have confidence that they will be able to solve it as soon as they feel the need to do so.
I am writing this reply on a Ubuntu 9:10 OS computer. I am using firefox which is running under wine. I am using a vnc program to view this computer as it is in another room. I am using a windows xp computer for the viewing computer but the computer that will upload these remarks is the Ubuntu one. I did have problem with 9:04 and 8:10 but those problems disappeared within a month of upgrading. I have two quad computers both running Ubuntu 9:10 and both are doing fine as I can view and control both of them from my windows computer.
After my wife died I too had two cars. I would drive my car almost all of the times. After less than a year I looked at my insurance bill and realized that I was paying around $!0 a trip in insurance cost for the privilege of keeping my wife's car. So until the cost of insurance is based on how many miles a car is driven, I will keep myself limited to one car. It is far cheaper to pay a store to deliver a large item than it is to have a pick up truck and do it yourself. I see a commercial where the wife complains about her husband keeping an old truck. The husband says it is paid for and it delivers him breakfast every Saturday. I think the breakfast cost him at least $10 or more in insurance cost. I guess you think most families should have 3 cars(his, hers, and a family van). Than of course there is the need for two garages to store them which means a large lot and driveway. I can see why a family income of over $100,000 a year is needed.
According to the Jehovah Witnesses the end time started in 1914. On that year the devils were kicked out of heaven and came to Earth to reside thus explaining all the wars since that date. Between the years 1918 and 1925 they published an article stating that millions of people now living would never die. Jesus is suppose to return and rule over the Earth for a thousand years. No one will die during those thousand years and everyone will be judged at the end of the thousand years. Given it is 2009 the minimum age of someone living during those years is now 84 and using census data there are around 4.5 million people of that age. I guess that would still count as being in the millions but the time is running short when there will less than a million even if one includes everyone of that age on Earth.
I want a speaker and a microphone in every room of my house. I want the computer to communicate with me using them. I want the computer to be able to recognize noise as well as voice. For instance if there is a water or gas leak in your house the computer would hear it and shut the water or gas off. When I leave the house the computer would ask me how long it would be before I returned. The computer than could reduce energy use while I was not there. It would also know that no one should be in the house and notify someone if there were. I want the computer to keep track of me by the noise I make and ask me if something is wrong if I stop making any noises. I would tell the computer when I went to bed. If it determined if there was a problem with me(I had fallen and knocked myself out) it would contact someone to investigate. There are plenty of single people who are growing old and it would be nice if the computer could provide some help in every day life. For instance if I put something on the stove and leave the kitchen the computer could notify me after a few minutes to check it. When the clothes dryer shuts off the computer would tell me such.
This is definitely a bad way to use the internet. I mean downloading several Gigabytes of data an hour. Lets say one pays $20 for a dvd of a movie. Now lets compare that to downloading the same movie 50 times. 50 X 8 Gigabytes per download equals 400 Gigabytes or 3,200 Giga bits. Now lets give a fast internet speed of 5 Giga bits per second. It would take 640 hours of internet time or more than 2 months at 10 hours per day. There are not too many ISP that will charge less than $10 a month for their service. Lets say one watches one movie a day or 30 per month. 30 X 8 Gigabytes is 240 Gigabytes a month which would be a huge burden for almost all ISP's. Even if it is only 4 Gigabytes per movie, 120 Gigabytes a month is still way too big and if one goes to high definition we would have to have a internet speed in the giga bit range to handle it.
I do volunteer work for world community grid. I use to run 7 computers. I now run 4 quad computers. A quad will beat 4 computers in work done and will use less electricity than 4 computers running at comparable speeds. My electricity bill went down when running the 4 quads than it was with the 7 computers and daily contribution has more than doubled.
I should be able to log on to the irs.gov site in February and type in my social security number and the site should tell me how much money I made last year and than ask me several question and than tell me how much I owe or how much return I can expect. It should take 10 minutes at the most. I file the same way every year so it should not be much of a problem for the irs to figure out. I would rather pay the government $60 extra a year so it could go to a better cause than some CEO's large compensation.
I think that it will be soon cheaper to generate your own results using your own computer than relying on the generosity of people to donate computer time. There is the cost of bandwidth to download data and upload results. There is the fact that all results must be accomplished by at least two computers to ensure accuracy. If they do not agree than more computers must be used until there is agreement on the results. There is the cost of electricity and wear and tear on the donor's computers and whether or not that money could be donated to the cause and generate much bigger results. If the general public is used to create the results than the results should be open to the public. BOINC is still a great way to get results but its time is definitely limited.
I am a graduate of a university. I went to the university in the years 1967 to 1971. I paid for it by saving around $2,000 before I started and by having a part time job during the school year and a full time job in the summer. Today there is no way that would come even close to paying for an education even if one were to get today's minimum wages. I worked for $1.35 an hour at the time. Sometimes I would get $2.00 an hour. With all the advancements of technology since than we still seem to have the need to charge in proportion several times what I paid. The state of Michigan is still complaining about the cost it contributes to higher education. If we do not get the cost down than we might as well close them all down because they will be far beyond the ability of most of us to pay for anyway.
Can one put a led in a motion detector and have it work? Most cfl will not work in them. How many minutes must the light be off before it is economic to turn it off? If one leaves a room for less than 20 minutes and than returns and turns the light back on than if the room is lighted by a cfl than it would be better to leave it on. Cfl suffer from wear and tear from being turned off and on. This is especially true for a family of four or more with a single bathroom. It might be better to turn the light on and leave it on until the last person goes to bed. It takes a significant more energy to produce a cfl than a incandescent so if a cfl fails it takes a long time of savings to make up that difference.
If the proper motivation is provided to the student, the student will find a way to learn. I believe that the whole school system should be scraped. We are still using teaching techniques that were around a thousand years ago. Grades as in what grade am I in, and what grade did I get, should be abandoned. A subject should be taught until the student gets a satisfactory knowledge of the subject. Individualized education for all student is very much possible today. Teachers should stop call themselves teachers as the proper term is motivators. I see the day when all learning is done with a computer. I can see the day when the computer can ensure the proper student is present and is using the computer in the proper fashion. The teachers or motivators would have a 10 to 15 minute talk individually with every student every day to help the student with the proper motivation. I also see the day when a motivator is assigned to a group of students and that person has those students for several years. That would ensure they get to know the students so they can provide each student with their best method of learning(there are several ways for a student to learn) and that each student maintain the motivation to learn.
SETI has been running now for several years and has well into the hundred of thousands of years of cpu time. Since there have been no major announcements the only thing I can concluded is that they have found nothing at the places and time they looked. It seems to be the same for BOINC in that the only thing they have done is to prove a lot of molecules will not cure a given disease. If there is value in this why can't they get a sponsor such as Microsoft to offer free software. I do not mean to every one but at least they could have a daily lottery and the lucky winner would get something. I do use BOINC and I am a member of WCG and a slashdot team member there. The slashdot team has 2,175,719 results as of today. I have 23,164 results or more than 1% of the team even though the team has 3,948 members. I am in 868th position for all the members of wcg. There are a lot more universities, hospitals, and large corporations with access to a lot more computers than I have, so someone is not convincing these people to contribute. The number one contributor contributes over 2,500 results every day. I some time think why do I bother when my total contribution is only about 9 days of that member. Every result is calculated by at least two computers to ensure accuracy so the unique results are at least one half of the total results that are published.
This numbers are way to large to mean anything to me. What interests me is if this explosion had occurred anywhere in the milky way galaxy and the energy was directed at earth, would we still be here discussing the matter?
I do not know why the internet is not better than a phone to contact police and fire and ambulances and so should be considered a public service. One's computer should be able to detect a fire or a break in and automatically notify the proper authority without any human intervention. One's computer should be able to detect any medical problem in its owner and determine, if the owner can not respond, that a call for an ambulance is necessary. Fires in houses without any people at home alone would justify the internet. Would you want your house to burn down because a neighbor's house did and there was no one around to call the fire department. If everyone's house had some kind of burglary protection it would definitely cut down on the number of break ins and would benefit every one.
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If there is a technology to locate the license plate of the offending car and take its picture than there is a technology to determine if there is a automobile within a certain distance of the traffic light. It there is no traffic than the time of yellow should be zero. If there is traffic than it should be based on the safe braking distance of the traffic assuming they are traveling at the speed limit.
I recently changed from Verizon to Charter for my phone, television and internet. I was quoted a price of $70 a month but when the first bill arrived it was actually $90 a month as there are about $20 a month in fees and taxes. And that is only for the first year after which it will go up at least $10. I can not believe how expensive 911 calls are. In my case it would be cheaper for me if they charged me a $100 a minute for each call as I use it about once a decade. This is insane as internet and phone services should be a public services just like police and fire. What if they divided the cost of police and fire department equally amongst all of the population? It would be a very regressive tax. I digress here but the same goes for garbage collection as I pay about $10 a bag for it but I do not want to be charged per bag as that gives people incentive to just throw their garbage out in the rural areas and their are plenty of those within a mile of me and I live in the city.
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Software is at least 10 years behind hardware. In other words if they stopped making any progress in hardware it would be at least 10 years before software was developed to get anywhere close to the maximum benefits that the hardware is capable of accomplishing. Microsoft should be able to offer all hardware for free with a subscription of 2 or more years of their cloud computing. We should be able to offer enough services that even the fee would be better than free since the services should be able to save the user more money than it cost. A service that would save energy costs would be the primary one but I can see several more in house security, personal security, communications, and entertainment. For instance commercial tv should be abandoned. I see no reason for making me watch a commercial for a product I have no interest in buying. After or before the program is viewed a list of products or services should be available with the ability to click on any of them to receive more information. That way more products or services could sponsor the programs since people could click on those they are interested in buying in the near future. There are plenty of ways in house security that could save more money than they cost too. For instances shutting off electricity or gas when there is a short or leak could save a house from being destroyed. When this has happened several times the savings in insurance would be enough to justify the cost. I have sure hope that in the year 2020 or before they can provide this service since if I am still alive I will be 69 than.
I picked up my nephew in Nebraska last year and he had an accident where he required 4 stitches. I took him to the emergency room where they took all the information about him. Six months later they sent out a bill for over $400. They stated that they do not accept out of state insurance. I guess the people in Nebraska do not understand the word united as in United States. Why is it just as expensive to have 4 stitches as it is to get an abortion? So the people in Canada are better to Americans than we are to people who live out of state. Two years ago my mother died and left her family about $100,000. I gave her granddaughter about $10,000 for her share. When the government found out about it they took her off medicaid. Soon after she got herself a $2,000 medical bill. She did not pay it and when she filed for her state income tax the state took all of her refund. The refund money was suppose to help her pay for her property taxes and with her heating bills but I guess the medical cost have more priority. Everyone of my medical bills are more than 3 times as much as my insurance will pay and they always accept the amount the insurance pays. So what is an individual suppose to do when they are charged these criminal amounts. If we want these people to die because of lack of health care than it would be better if we did what the Nazi did and use a gas because it will kill without pain.
I was in Nebraska last year with my 7 year old nephew who needed medical assistance. They billed his mother stating that they do not accept out of state insurance. A couple of years ago I was in charge of distributing my mother's money. I made the mistake of giving my niece her money. The government seeing that she had a little bit of money(just $10,000) stripped her of medical and food benefits. While she had that money she had a $2,000 medical expense so they took her state income tax refund to pay for it. Why didn't I just give the money to the government instead? I did have to pay the federal and state governments over $15,000 in taxes. The gross national income is around $50,000 per person in this country and yet we have to take away money from the people who make less than the poverty level. I sure hope the tea party members are enjoying themselves while on their expensive cruise and while they are listening to the $100,000 speech by Sarah Palin. I am sure they can justify taking from the poor so they can spend all that money.
In the year 1973 I was employed by a company called Cascade Data. It was located in Cascade Michigan which was close to Grand Rapids. I was a computer programmer at the time. They manufactured computers that started with 16k bytes of magnetic core memory and could be double to 32k. They had a 5 Megabyte hard drive but most used a tape drive for storage. Input was from a typewriter like device as one would type in on a keyboard and the output was on paper. I wrote programs in both RPG and assembly languages. The computer was an eight bit processor so the registers were eight bits. This meant that the maximum number that a register could hold was 255. Just adding two numbers was fun since one would have to do add the least significant byte of one to its least significant byte of the other and than check for overflow and continue with the next byte. There were no multiply or divide instruction. To multiple 19 times 20 one would add 19 to a register 20 times. To divide 200 by 20 one would subtract 20 from 200 until one got a zero or negative number. It was not that much fun to program in assembly language but your program always took about half the memory that a RPG program did and with only 16k bytes of memory on some system, some programs just needed to be written in assembly. Unfortunately for me the company did not last very long as I was employed for only 6 months. The country fell into another recession and I got tired of looking for work so I went into the military. Today a 64 bit register will hold a number of 1.84 X 10 raised to the 19th power or at least 18 significant bytes so even the national debt would fit into one register. So it must be a little bit easier to program today than it was in 1973. After, I was asked to modify a existing program by one of their customers. They gave me two big boxes of computer cards and a printout of the program. I had to find the place where I wanted to modify the program and remove and replace the cards I needed to. Unfortunately two of the cards got interchanged and some time was spent troubleshooting it to locate the problem. I can only laugh when I think about it and how much easier it is today.
The solution for hard drugs(heroin, crack cocaine, etc) is that the government to allow people to be voluntarily tested for drug use. Those who have a positive return on any drug would be given that drug free in very small quantities. Anyone else giving or selling that drug to anyone would still be harshly punished so it would still be a problem for first time user to get their drugs. Drug pusher would not have an incentive to push drugs since once a user has used the drug they can go to the government to get the drug for free. All drug users would be given help to quit if they requested that. I would hope that the drug users would slowly quit or die and that the demand for illegal drugs would be reduced.
I think you are saying that all science is accomplished by humans. I think you are mistaken. In fact in the near future, I think most science will be done by computers. Where are the top 2 supercomputers? Where are the majority of the top 500 supercomputers? They are both in the United States. I believe that before 2040 or sooner the vast majority of people will not care about any advances in science because there will be no need for those advances. Why would I care if they come out with a 10 terabyte hard drive when I can not fill a 1 terabyte hard drive? I believe we can rebuild everything underground so that we no longer fear the environment and use a small fraction of the energy we use today. When that day comes the need for advancements in science will be in fields that have very little practical use for humans.
Yes1 I can just see it now. Porn staring Jo, Porn staring Ella, Porn with both Jo and Ella. It would greatly help my effeceintcy in watching porn.
There is no excuse for not totally changing our school system. First we should eliminate the grade system. People should have the option of trying to learn a subject until they give up. If someone is trying to learn something than the school system should not shut them off. Second is that we should redefine what teachers do for a living. Computer should be used to teach our children. Teachers should be called motivators. They would have a one on one discussion with each student every day. They would monitor each students progress and attempt to solve the student's problems with learning and motivation to learn. An electronic text book should be written so that the student reads a few pages and than must answer some question. If the student does not pass than the student must reread the pages and take another test. It would not matter how many times the student had to reread the pages before the student learned the material. It certainly would not merit giving a student a low grade when that student needed only a little more time to learn it. One would not ask a young person what grade that person is in, one would only ask if the student was at that student age level in every subject that student was taking. I am excellent at mathematics and when I was in high school I was held back by the school system. I do not do so well in English and this is why my writings are not that well. I know that if I could have learned at my own pace I could have done much better.
I suppose you will not be happy until we see our first trillionaire. The top 1% of this country already have more power than the bottom 95%. We will find a way to reduce the high cost of health insurance when the need to do so is overwhelming. Only when the need is so great will we invest enough money to increase the healthfulness of people and the efficiency of the health care system. It can and will be done. This health care bill will only hasten its arrival. I see this as nothing more than making the rich solve this problem to maintain their wealth. I have confidence that they will be able to solve it as soon as they feel the need to do so.
I am writing this reply on a Ubuntu 9:10 OS computer. I am using firefox which is running under wine. I am using a vnc program to view this computer as it is in another room. I am using a windows xp computer for the viewing computer but the computer that will upload these remarks is the Ubuntu one. I did have problem with 9:04 and 8:10 but those problems disappeared within a month of upgrading. I have two quad computers both running Ubuntu 9:10 and both are doing fine as I can view and control both of them from my windows computer.
After my wife died I too had two cars. I would drive my car almost all of the times. After less than a year I looked at my insurance bill and realized that I was paying around $!0 a trip in insurance cost for the privilege of keeping my wife's car. So until the cost of insurance is based on how many miles a car is driven, I will keep myself limited to one car. It is far cheaper to pay a store to deliver a large item than it is to have a pick up truck and do it yourself. I see a commercial where the wife complains about her husband keeping an old truck. The husband says it is paid for and it delivers him breakfast every Saturday. I think the breakfast cost him at least $10 or more in insurance cost. I guess you think most families should have 3 cars(his, hers, and a family van). Than of course there is the need for two garages to store them which means a large lot and driveway. I can see why a family income of over $100,000 a year is needed.
According to the Jehovah Witnesses the end time started in 1914. On that year the devils were kicked out of heaven and came to Earth to reside thus explaining all the wars since that date. Between the years 1918 and 1925 they published an article stating that millions of people now living would never die. Jesus is suppose to return and rule over the Earth for a thousand years. No one will die during those thousand years and everyone will be judged at the end of the thousand years. Given it is 2009 the minimum age of someone living during those years is now 84 and using census data there are around 4.5 million people of that age. I guess that would still count as being in the millions but the time is running short when there will less than a million even if one includes everyone of that age on Earth.
I want a speaker and a microphone in every room of my house. I want the computer to communicate with me using them. I want the computer to be able to recognize noise as well as voice. For instance if there is a water or gas leak in your house the computer would hear it and shut the water or gas off. When I leave the house the computer would ask me how long it would be before I returned. The computer than could reduce energy use while I was not there. It would also know that no one should be in the house and notify someone if there were. I want the computer to keep track of me by the noise I make and ask me if something is wrong if I stop making any noises. I would tell the computer when I went to bed. If it determined if there was a problem with me(I had fallen and knocked myself out) it would contact someone to investigate. There are plenty of single people who are growing old and it would be nice if the computer could provide some help in every day life. For instance if I put something on the stove and leave the kitchen the computer could notify me after a few minutes to check it. When the clothes dryer shuts off the computer would tell me such.
This is definitely a bad way to use the internet. I mean downloading several Gigabytes of data an hour. Lets say one pays $20 for a dvd of a movie. Now lets compare that to downloading the same movie 50 times. 50 X 8 Gigabytes per download equals 400 Gigabytes or 3,200 Giga bits. Now lets give a fast internet speed of 5 Giga bits per second. It would take 640 hours of internet time or more than 2 months at 10 hours per day. There are not too many ISP that will charge less than $10 a month for their service. Lets say one watches one movie a day or 30 per month. 30 X 8 Gigabytes is 240 Gigabytes a month which would be a huge burden for almost all ISP's. Even if it is only 4 Gigabytes per movie, 120 Gigabytes a month is still way too big and if one goes to high definition we would have to have a internet speed in the giga bit range to handle it.
I do volunteer work for world community grid. I use to run 7 computers. I now run 4 quad computers. A quad will beat 4 computers in work done and will use less electricity than 4 computers running at comparable speeds. My electricity bill went down when running the 4 quads than it was with the 7 computers and daily contribution has more than doubled.
I should be able to log on to the irs.gov site in February and type in my social security number and the site should tell me how much money I made last year and than ask me several question and than tell me how much I owe or how much return I can expect. It should take 10 minutes at the most. I file the same way every year so it should not be much of a problem for the irs to figure out. I would rather pay the government $60 extra a year so it could go to a better cause than some CEO's large compensation.
I think that it will be soon cheaper to generate your own results using your own computer than relying on the generosity of people to donate computer time. There is the cost of bandwidth to download data and upload results. There is the fact that all results must be accomplished by at least two computers to ensure accuracy. If they do not agree than more computers must be used until there is agreement on the results. There is the cost of electricity and wear and tear on the donor's computers and whether or not that money could be donated to the cause and generate much bigger results. If the general public is used to create the results than the results should be open to the public. BOINC is still a great way to get results but its time is definitely limited.
I am a graduate of a university. I went to the university in the years 1967 to 1971. I paid for it by saving around $2,000 before I started and by having a part time job during the school year and a full time job in the summer. Today there is no way that would come even close to paying for an education even if one were to get today's minimum wages. I worked for $1.35 an hour at the time. Sometimes I would get $2.00 an hour. With all the advancements of technology since than we still seem to have the need to charge in proportion several times what I paid. The state of Michigan is still complaining about the cost it contributes to higher education. If we do not get the cost down than we might as well close them all down because they will be far beyond the ability of most of us to pay for anyway.
Can one put a led in a motion detector and have it work? Most cfl will not work in them. How many minutes must the light be off before it is economic to turn it off? If one leaves a room for less than 20 minutes and than returns and turns the light back on than if the room is lighted by a cfl than it would be better to leave it on. Cfl suffer from wear and tear from being turned off and on. This is especially true for a family of four or more with a single bathroom. It might be better to turn the light on and leave it on until the last person goes to bed. It takes a significant more energy to produce a cfl than a incandescent so if a cfl fails it takes a long time of savings to make up that difference.
If the proper motivation is provided to the student, the student will find a way to learn. I believe that the whole school system should be scraped. We are still using teaching techniques that were around a thousand years ago. Grades as in what grade am I in, and what grade did I get, should be abandoned. A subject should be taught until the student gets a satisfactory knowledge of the subject. Individualized education for all student is very much possible today. Teachers should stop call themselves teachers as the proper term is motivators. I see the day when all learning is done with a computer. I can see the day when the computer can ensure the proper student is present and is using the computer in the proper fashion. The teachers or motivators would have a 10 to 15 minute talk individually with every student every day to help the student with the proper motivation. I also see the day when a motivator is assigned to a group of students and that person has those students for several years. That would ensure they get to know the students so they can provide each student with their best method of learning(there are several ways for a student to learn) and that each student maintain the motivation to learn.
SETI has been running now for several years and has well into the hundred of thousands of years of cpu time. Since there have been no major announcements the only thing I can concluded is that they have found nothing at the places and time they looked. It seems to be the same for BOINC in that the only thing they have done is to prove a lot of molecules will not cure a given disease. If there is value in this why can't they get a sponsor such as Microsoft to offer free software. I do not mean to every one but at least they could have a daily lottery and the lucky winner would get something. I do use BOINC and I am a member of WCG and a slashdot team member there. The slashdot team has 2,175,719 results as of today. I have 23,164 results or more than 1% of the team even though the team has 3,948 members. I am in 868th position for all the members of wcg. There are a lot more universities, hospitals, and large corporations with access to a lot more computers than I have, so someone is not convincing these people to contribute. The number one contributor contributes over 2,500 results every day. I some time think why do I bother when my total contribution is only about 9 days of that member. Every result is calculated by at least two computers to ensure accuracy so the unique results are at least one half of the total results that are published.
This numbers are way to large to mean anything to me. What interests me is if this explosion had occurred anywhere in the milky way galaxy and the energy was directed at earth, would we still be here discussing the matter?
I do not know why the internet is not better than a phone to contact police and fire and ambulances and so should be considered a public service. One's computer should be able to detect a fire or a break in and automatically notify the proper authority without any human intervention. One's computer should be able to detect any medical problem in its owner and determine, if the owner can not respond, that a call for an ambulance is necessary. Fires in houses without any people at home alone would justify the internet. Would you want your house to burn down because a neighbor's house did and there was no one around to call the fire department. If everyone's house had some kind of burglary protection it would definitely cut down on the number of break ins and would benefit every one. `+
If there is a technology to locate the license plate of the offending car and take its picture than there is a technology to determine if there is a automobile within a certain distance of the traffic light. It there is no traffic than the time of yellow should be zero. If there is traffic than it should be based on the safe braking distance of the traffic assuming they are traveling at the speed limit.
I recently changed from Verizon to Charter for my phone, television and internet. I was quoted a price of $70 a month but when the first bill arrived it was actually $90 a month as there are about $20 a month in fees and taxes. And that is only for the first year after which it will go up at least $10. I can not believe how expensive 911 calls are. In my case it would be cheaper for me if they charged me a $100 a minute for each call as I use it about once a decade. This is insane as internet and phone services should be a public services just like police and fire. What if they divided the cost of police and fire department equally amongst all of the population? It would be a very regressive tax. I digress here but the same goes for garbage collection as I pay about $10 a bag for it but I do not want to be charged per bag as that gives people incentive to just throw their garbage out in the rural areas and their are plenty of those within a mile of me and I live in the city.