free market equals unfettered exchange of goods or services across all borders with zero regulation or tax on the transfer, and zero regulation on what exactly the product or service is.
I understand it, I just don't think it is all that wise a move, based on what I have written elsewhere in the thread. I want some minimum consumer guarantees and warranties, I want some rather good environmental general protections codified into law so that companies don't get to "choose" whether ot not to grossly pollute or sell hazarzdous or defective or posionous products based on this quarters profits figures, and I am a nationalist so I want my neighbor and myself to have our elected government to do what is in our best interest, especially as it revoles what is commonly called "the middle classes", and to not to fixate on what is some transnational corporations best interest or some foreign nation's best interest.
I know the latter can be construed differently as to what is "best" based on opinion and tastes, that's why I think we need *some* regs and we can hassle the details out as we go along and do different things. To me it is about some fair compromises and some natural order of reality concepts, otherwise known as common sense and taking the generational "long view" of things, which is what I do personally in my outlooks and opinions usually. for example, I am a conservationist and environmentalist, but not to an extreme point of view that we should just cease all human activity so that the slugs and cute bunnies can thrive at our expense. I am a human, I get ot exist *too*. It is inevitable we as humans will have an impact on the planet-so do all other species. I think it is fair that we recognize that and try to always do better, not to de-evolve and do worse or even maintain some nebulous status quo of crapping in our own nests.
It is beyond the scope of a single post to come up with all the little nuances there, so I will leave that part alone.
I agree, barter and tangibles exchange (as opposed to shuffling everything through the middleman skim "money" system) are the here and now method of freeing yourself as much as possible from onerous government and overly expensive and/or defective products. For example, I try to grow as much of our food as possible, and have paid off a very modest solar rig, so I have some of my food covered and some of my electrical needs covered without having to come up with extra cash in perpetuity."Cash" is just to get you "stuff", so if you can go directly to the "stuff" you are better off and usually get a better deal.
nobody except nvidia and the employees and stock holders. Nvidia could just go "oh well, we hit the top of the line,what we have is plenty good enough for human eyeballs now and for the far away future, guess we'll close up shop and go home now". That means they would have to all go out and look for jobs-with companies doing the same exact thing, coming out with new products they can sell so they can stay working.
It's the nature of the beast, we live in a society where you need to "keep making money" in order to live, more or less, and that seems to have evolved around manufacturing, sales, throw the old away, lather rinse repeat.
Unfortunately, I don't know a way around this system until we come up with the universal anything-goes replicator that can take any input and output anything you want.
I am as far from a keynesian as you can get, right off the bat I don't believe in fiat currencies, they are a major scam and an example of a controlling monopoly limited to a private few. Also why I am against income taxes while under a fiat currency and credit out of thin air economy, they are a command and control social engineering exercise, they have nothing to do with funding government and everything to do with the old keep em divided and conquered routine that the greedsters always pull on their subject populations. Really, the gist of my argument is right here, it's that feudalism has never gone away, we just keep reinventing it and calling it something else..
You have danced around environment, somehow negating the reality that trespass and tort are also regulations or means to address regs. OK, theoretically, trespass against what? Your pollution drifting downstream to anothers property, where it gets into their water supply? If there are no regs for that, then there's no crime, so no tort could be filed. If you say that the first guys pollution "trespassed" onto the next guys property, again, you have to make trespass a crime, violation of which means you have violated some regulation. It makes no diff really which word you use, you have laws and regulations-or not. Sell diseased or contaminated food. Well, if someone croaks or gets sick and tries to sue you in court for damages, how can they bring a case if you have the disclaimer "not responsible for anything, caveat emptor, there are no regs". No regs, no crime, no lawsuit then. Unless you held them down and force fed them, no crime committed, there would be no food regulations in a "free market". You could even lie about your product, but if lying wasn't covered by a law or regulation, oh well. You haven't killed or sickened them directly, you let them choose to eat your bogus stuff, their lookout, so they can't hold your responsible, correct?
See where this might become a problem? Would you have some dividing line over how many humans got to die before the "market corrected itself"? How would the humans know in advance what was safe or not, trial and error? Remember, lying wouldn't be illegal, if it was, that means it is a regulation to not lie.
A tad risky, eh wot?
And child labor in the industrial age came about from collusion on keeping living costs so high that families were forced to go that route to stay in poverty outside of below poverty, whatever that word is. People literally couldn't afford to live without multiple incomes inside a family. They couldn't afford to buy land because the herditary system of total land inheritance precluded any land from even being on the market for them to buy, forcing them into servitude to de "lords". the "lords" onjce in opwnership of the land were sort of reluctatnt to let it go to anyone else, usually took some little war to rearrange borders. The joe sixpack serf workers had the choice of being on the country plantation at the lords mercy, or living in town where they were at the landlords and factory owners mercy. and, we can see what happened in the past when it was like that (it still is some places).
And that is my main point, and I admit it is Calvinistic, you will and do see quite a few completely bogus and greedy and outright mean people rise to the top, because they are ruthless, and they don't care about people, they dig on power.
Now I know from your wrtings that you DO honestly care about people and your employees, but I can assure you this is RARE in most of the world. IF all humans were angels, sure, totally free and unregulated would work, that is my main point, they aren't. I can't put it any plainer, just too many extraordinarily evil people in the world, and they try real hard to get to positions of authority, and succeed at that, whether it is business, civilian government or military government.
Cream rises, but so does the shit. Because of the shit, we will need at least some regs. I don't wish it so,really, I DON'T, p
regulations, which brings us back to it won't work without them. And "insurance" for what? If there's no regulations, there wouldn't be any penalties of note for them to break in the first place, so not much need for insurance other than fire insurance. And as to public versus private land, again, historically, a lot of examples where private concerns who "owned the land" just dumped willy nilly. And none of that addresses child labor laws, workplace safety, etc.
It does no good if all or most (really, I am forced to speak *most* generally on this topic) the business ignore any workplace safety, you can take your labor down the street and almostbigco inc has the same lack of caring.
I realise in the real world there are exceptions, there are some voluntarily concerned and well meaning businesses, but taken as a general topic and to an endgame, I can't see how you will stop the giant greedsters from taking over, short of periodic violent uprisings and heads on pikes. You either have some thought out regs or you don't. If you go the route of regs, you will never have this theoretical "free" market. How about the stock market? With no regs, how would you ever hope to beat the corporate insiders trading? It would destroy confidence in the market (already low) virtually overnight.
Myself, I prefer "fair" market concept, some minimum but very well enforced market regulations and business regs. I think it could be greatly fixed/enhanced by disallowing the concept of a career full time politician or governmental worker inside the bureaucracy, but that is another subject entirely.
You won't be able to eliminate human weaknesses or vices, so all you can do realistically is remove as many ways as possible for them to be realised on the "potential victim" population.
you repeal the law of humanness. A totally free market would result in MEGABIGCO Inc. owning the world and everyone being some sort of electronic plantation worker for them, never quite making enough "money" to ever get out of debt to them. You will inevitably go from lot of companies to cartels to a monopoly, because that makes more money for the monopoly owners, and because humanness means that they will continue to impose their will on governmental processes. We already went through this crap and debate in our semi recent human past. it's been tried and found severely lacking. A "free" market means zero environmental regulations, what is in it for them? They don't care if their factory pollutes the water table over someplace, the bosses and owners will just live where that doesn't happen and buy up all the land around them to give them a clean environment, and stuff like that. It means no minimum wage,back to child labor, no safe working conditions, etc, because that is their historically proven over and over again humans as bosses track record back before these regs existed. This is *precisely* because companies are run by humans and megalomaniacs and greedsters strive for top dog positions all the time,and they get there, "by hook or CROOK", hence why those sorts of bad news policies flow downstream in the "giving orders" chain of commands structure, in government or business.
The "free" market is one of those things that it is easy to say and might sound sort of good in theory, but it won't ever fly or work as advertised without tremendous negative effects. For an example of an area with more or less "anything goes free markets", look at the horn of africa.
you can get various flashlights with instant or close to it light without disposable batteries. Freeplay makes a windup light, which would probably be the best for your purposes-bright and right there- (they make good quality stuff, I have two of their clockwork spring radios), and you can get the "squeeze as you go" light (looks like handgrips) from various online sporting goods places (these would be the least expensive, I have seen them as low as five bucks, but you lose one hand for doing work as you have to keep squeezing), and you can get flashlights that you shake for a few moments/minutes to get some light for a few moments/minutes.
With that said, any of the LED based flashlights you can score most anyplace with good quality batteries will last a LONG time in normal use compared to a normal incandescent styled bulb. The biggest problem there is that they last so long the batteries might corrode on ya before the juice runs out.
Who is covering up anything??? From day one, the project originator Negroponte has said that this device would be designed to run on purely open source software. Read those words again until you understand that part. If me saying that out loud is a "coverup", that is a rather strange view. OSX is not pure open source software. The software they will be receiving is. It's open now and always will be. OSX is not, even if steve jobs offers the first install free as in beer. That is raw verifiable data. The MIT project wants pure open source so that developing nations can move freely into the computing age,this is the long view they have, from a cost, customization and useability factor, to not face the prospect of having to compromise or jump through hoops some time in the future-which could happen with closed source propietary stuff, that they will have access to all, not part, ALL, the souce code they need without licensing worries forever, at least the chance at it, and he doesn't want the kids fooling around with closed source when free and open will allow them a lot more freedom and flexibility and save them-their nations on down the road,a lot of money in the long run. these kids who are going to be getting these laptops ARE going to be these various nations devs later on, not all of them, but a lot of them, a lot of them WILL BE coding their first on these machines, that's part of the deal,and that's how this stuff works, kids grow up, learn on the way, get jobs, become productive members of their nations societies. With total open source it makes it a lot easier for them to pull this off.
This is just *data*, it is not debateable opinion, you can go google around yourself for what he has said about open source versus the alternatives, I just checked, a lot of references. That's partially what the project is about, exposing them to both the hardware and the software, the hardware gets subsidised and provided as inexpensively as possible, and the software gets donated free and it is also FREE. That's it, that's the project. And OSX or Windows just don't fit that capital "F" free deal there, even if they offered an intro small letter "f" free version.
Like I said, negroponte isn't hiding, go argue with him over it, call him up, send an email, whatever, I was just reporting what I have read of what he has said on the subject of open source,numerous times, paraphrased. He's not even close to being hard to understand on this point.
...all the MSM sources who are more than happy to report as factual "news" ANYTHING the government propoganda spinmeisters say about critical events. Any. Thing.
I'd like to see a lot more of the MSM sources yell out PROVE IT whenever the government declares such and such is "true facts" and not let them hide behind that catch a-all phrase "national security" and "unnamed sources" and like that. It's well past time to consider that stuff BS as a default.. When they announced "we have clear overwhelming evidence that Iraq is hiding WMD" and they were going to be using "unmanned sophisticated aerial drones to attack the US" and all that other crapola, and similar such like, the stuff they faked out congress and the US people and the UN folks with, the stuff to go to actual *war* on, they offered no proof, just their statements and allusions, and the MSM that google indexes pretty much all fell in lockstep as reporting these tidbits as "fact". How about the government "fat" bin laden tape, remember that one with the pudgy actor in the ay-rab costume? They all reported that as "fact" when it was an obvious phony psyops effort. It was ludicrous. How about the CIA TWA 800 "explanation", that little cartoon they all pushed that defied physics and fell squarely into the beyond junk science realm? I mean this goes so far back I can't remember when it wasn't this way. How about the false "gulf of tonkin" multiple attacks? YEARS later McNamara admits it was "massaged" severely, but it did no good at the time to have the media offer it as "fact" and take their word on it. How about agent orange when they swore up and down it was harmless, but years later it came out they absolutely knew it wasn't harmless, yet the MSM back then all reported it as "scientific data".
It does no good if after the fact of this "news" reporting there are "corrections", when critical votes are at stake shortly in some election or bill considerations and national policies are being set based on delibarately promoted and known falsehoods being pushed as "news". And the news media that is still indexed by google continues to follow this same pattern (generally speaking, of course there are some smaller exceptions). Let the "news" sources start saying "alleged" more, ESPECIALLY when it comes to government statements, from the US government or any other government for that matter, and I would have more respect for them and also google.
Why not just 2 for a pledge to get one, or even just sell them outright at 150$ (if they can actually be made and shipped for $100), with the recipient getting one laptop and 50 bucks donation towards the project? I am not so sure they will get 100,000 pledges, but perhaps. If they only get 99,000 pledges does that mean the whole deal is off, or what? Even the official project is not committed to this effort yet from reading the commentary there. The "first world" is awash in charities that all want our "spare" money,so I think they should be more realistic on this.
That's because from the outset they insisted on totally free and open source code *only*. These are going primarily to developing nations and they wanted an absolute guarantee that the code would be available in it's entirety for the budding devs there to tweak on. OSX, even if given away "free" as in beer right now would still have no such guarantee or access to all the code forever, unless apple wants a change of heart and GPLs(or very very close) all their code, which I doubt was part of their offering to the project when they said "free"..
Ya, it's a weird fact but just when some OS is getting pretty stable and a lot of the old bugs get fixed, a new one come out and we get to start the process all over again. ALL the old bugs never do get fixed,plus security updates slow down dramatically, so as a result no matter which you run (new for features or old for functionality and stability), you get buggy plus insecure in either one.
We also get the amazing morphing functionality aspect, such and such and this and that all working fine in old version, new version half of them are now busted again.
Perhaps the entire process is flawed, maybe a new sort of model is needed for software advances. Remember the article a short time ago, the discussion about a possible kernel dev freeze to fix bugs? I'd like to see that with most software in general, just a periodic total freeze on new features and bug fixes and security fixes only for an extended time period. Maybe every other year or something like that for a total audit period. I *would* say that six month release cycles in distros have grown annoying, I think that is just way too fast and has lead to the state of perpetual beta ware.
It is not hard to identify and differentiate between the most obvious and modularized basic hardware components of a computer system and the basic layout of arch-operating system-application programs. I mean, c'mon. That should be a bare minimum for anyone to be called a working computer user, at least get you to basic learner level. After that might come basic internet useage do's and don'ts.
I would not even come close to trusting a professional delivery driver if they couldn't identify the engine as opposed to the starter or the oil filter, or who couldn't explain the difference between a turn signal and the air conditioning knob. I wouldn't trust ANY driver who couldn't grok the difference between a steering wheel and the wheels on the road. Yet with computers we give users a free skate on learning any *basic* fundamentals, then wonder why they get stuck so often and get hosed using the web. They get turned loose with a complex machine and told "good luck!"
What happens is they are SO ignorant of the basics that even trying to do rudimentary help and tech support(friends/family/professional) with them becomes ludicrous, when they confuse the monitor with the computer for instance. I have seen that, someone pointing at the monitor calling it the computer. what they thought that box sitting next to it was I do not know. "How much RAM do you have?" "I have a pentium, says so right on the box!" UN-acceptable. Shows not even one single hour in self discipline and even trying to understand something like that. It is NOT a toaster and shouldn't be sold or used like it is a toaster, and we shouldn't encourage by quiet acceptance that level of ignorance. Note, I didn't say stupidity, I said self imposed ignorance..
We SHOULD insist people learn the raw basics, especially if they are in a position of being PAID to "use" a computer, or if they insist on involving others constantly to "help them" with various trivial small problems..
I don't know exactly how to go about this, but having tutorials built into consumer operating systems would be a good first step. First boot (just another example of a possibility), you sit through an interactive explanation of how to use what is sitting in front of you, what the components are, how to use the menu, etc, etc,. Something like that could help, and use lotsa pictures. I bet a lot of people would actually appreciate it, most folks want to be independent and to use what they have, but we have to recognize that to a lot of people it is overwhelming, everything they use is new and complex to them, so it has to be put to them in easy to understand chunks.
Certainly makes a difference. Buried pots cable is pretty robust. I remember back in january 2000 we had a near week long power outtage due to ice, etc, knocking down a lot of tree limbs and breaking the wires, but the phone stayed up because they had buried the cable. We hade solar so we never lost power at all, and it was nice to be able to continue using the net and phone.
Now how those buried cables would do in *floods* I have no idea. I guess it would depend on the local switching boxes staying intact and not flooding out.
I just saw "glass spheres" and thought about bumping around in a fuel tank while you are driving. Just a-wondering how tough a glass sphere one buhzillionth of an inch would be.
To *me*, and I readily admit I am skeptical and suspicious when big business and government collide (and collude), but the "hydrogen economy" seems designed on purpose to keep the same billionaires and their corporations...billionaires and "in control" of transportation and energy.
I think I prefer right now and for the near future just normal liquid biofuels. We don't have to do any radical change to either vehicles or fuel delivery infrastructure, a pumpable liquid is a pumpable liquid after all. And the tech is here and it works, we really don't need a lot more government and industry billion dollar "studies", we just need the fuel produced in larger quantities and shipped. For example, using existing gas stations, just trash midrange, keep low test and high test, and use the midrange tanks for E-85, done, maybe swap out a bit of the plumbing perhaps, but nothing like setting up hydrogen production facilites and massive miniature christmas tree bulb factories, etc.
Then we need a switch (an option at the car dealers at all the current various price ranges, same as the "normal" cars) to "plug in" hybrids, which they could make right now if they wanted to, a lot of backyard gadgeteers have built them already to prove it is possible. This could offset a large part of the transportation load, especially for short and mid range commuters, drastically reduce the concentrated pollution in the urban areas, the fuel part would be almost all carbon neutral, and a lot of the battery part can be addressed by such things as home solar panel arrays with overnight charging to the plug in hybrids from the home battery bank. This would also improve the over-all national "fuel" supply but with little to no impact on the normal electrical grid demand. The Sun is practical fusion power,the only one we have really, we have the existing tech to use it directly, and plants use the same fusion energy to grow and we can get a large percentage of the fuel we need from them. What's not to like?
An individual can now purchase and own a vehicle,but you'll still pay "rent" forever on making it run, and the rent money goes to already uberrich guys, who already have enough political and economic power, IMO. Remember that picture of the exxon hog jowled CEO giggling as he testified in congress over the massive petroleum price hikes? The dude who got hundreds of millions for selling gas, like that's a problem right now? Do we really need to keep paying that guy and dudes like him like that, letting this energy cartel just keep dictating prices to us and how we do our transportation? I think *not*, we can do better, and right now.
It would be nice to start to become your own fuel producer. Even just some significant part would help your wallet, the economy, and the environment. The Sun -practical fusion power- helps solve these problems with tech we have today.
This sounds like when you get a "free" or very low cost cellphone, but you have to agree to a "plan" for a time period, say two years to get the upfront subsidy, which means you still will be paying for the phone, just you don't see the cost *directly* for the phone itself.
more bad analogy time!
Hey, the big oil companies should do this! You get a free car from them, or heavily subsidised upfront, in return it is designed to only use their brand of gas, which unfortunately is a dollar more a gallon. You get a spiffy new gashog faster and cheaper upfront though, so it just has to be a "better deal"!
I would say the elections since 2002 are all suspect because of blackbox voting now. 2000 were skewed from judicial intervention of course, another can of worms I see no reason to trust the results, very broadly speaking of course. My state of Georgia in 2002 was the first state to go all electronic, diebold machines primarily AFAIK. The results were..most peculiar, they didn't reflect either pre or post polling, several contests had "unexpected upsets".
I protested the nature of the closed source system with no audit trail and with apparently some strange access features to the devices and so on. Got the run around severely from the officials. They got mad REALLY QUICK because I dared suggest something negative-just the possibility-about the system in place we were supposed to trust. Them-"It's secure" me-"Well, how can a civilian poll watcher count the results if a dispute arises? It used to be all we had were pieces of paper that anyone could count" "The computer gives us the count, and if there's a dispute, we just run it through the computer again" and etc, along those lines. It was worse than talking to a brick wall I tell you. I can't claim the results were skewed with 100% certainty of course (I suspect they *were* skewed), but I can't see where they can claim they were "honest or fair", either, it is impossible with the way it was set up and run.
I pointed out to them I have had the privelege in the past of verifying the ballot box as being "clean and empty" at the start of polling,being first in line that was how it was done previously, something that DOESN'T EXIST anymore. It didn't matter to them, because now it is computerised so it is "better". I said without a transparent source code and lockdown of the machines (no modems attached real time, no one hanging around with "emergency boot software", etc, in other words, but they have all that apparently) that we as the citizen voters have NO WAY of checking the "ballot box" to see if it is empty at the start or has gotten "stuffed" somehow during the process or altered by a few clicks one way or the other, etc. It didn't matter to them because some committee had done that "checking" previous to the election so we got to trust a few politicans and the computer and the private company who designed,built and operated it. Nuts on the surface. A used car at Lemon Motors with the hood welded shut and the salesman saying "trust me, it's got the big V-8 you wanted for towing a trailer, you can even ask my boss, he'll tell you the same thing".
...gets the black one, because he cuts the checks, so his just has to be cooler, and it has to cost more, to *prove* somehow that it is cooler. You know how that deal goes... That's my guess.
Redhat (or any other distro) could solve that by a one time unlimited fee payment, I think it is 60 thousand dollars, then they could legally do the MP3 playback thing, although you don't get the source.
Yes, it isn't pure, I would also bet that 99% of folks who run linux have a few bits and bytes of impure code on their systems already.
Now I have no idea on the video drivers from the big two, other than you need the binary blobs to run the latest and even then they sorta sucketh. There are a few open source driver projects, but they get little support or notice, including the complete video card project here
Not too long ago. It was a used one from a small local bank in my rural area, they had upgraded and this guy had it in a shop for some mods to be done for the new owner (I tried to buy it but the new owner thought it was too cool, wanted to keep it for a home mega server or something). It had 12 scsi drives and 4 processors, IIRC PPs, but I might be wrong on that, forget now..anyway, a nifty looking mega tower. I wanted it for..well because it was dang cool, that's why! Figured I'd slap a good vid and sound card in there until the power bill came in, then do something more practical with it..anyway, I didn't get it.
Now, I have no idea what used to be on it (even if they wiped it securely, which I doubt)(hmmm), but I can't *imagine* reproducing even that on a small thumb drive, let alone what new stuff has to do nowadays. So, I don't think that is the exact question, and for that matter, this theoretical secure thumbdrive needs to be inserted into a working computer to be of much use, so there ya go on that. I think it's only to store some login and administrative tools, which are probably done remotely now.
Therefore, is the submitter just asking for getting the whole bank computer system to just turn itself on? Is that the real question? Something to eliminate the remote admin access and to make the local branches independent and still able to function in the event of a near catstrophic emergency? That is my guess,there is a lot of contingency planning going on now around the nation, that this is homeland security worst case scenario bird flu or terrorist attack or economic meltdown or whatever related.
Best idea for a keyboard I have heard of in a long time. Here's another one you can have for the design- raised shift keys. they don't need to be in the same plane and be just as hard to press down. Your hands are not shaped that way, not are your little fingers as strong or flexible. The shift keys operate off your little fingers and need to be slightly raised (like 50% higher than the rest) and angled inwards slightly, and only take 1/2 the pressure to activate that the normal keys do. Either that or a foot switch-really, just for the shift key.
Some keyboard guys need to do this, as well as thinking about the aging population with very stiff arthritic fingers. Just like they make a few big button phones, there's a reason, older eyes, older fingers, geting there meselfs..... And that demographic has ca$hto spend on stuff designed with them in mind. Goofy stuff, can openers, had to swap out the buck store one for a ten buck one with huge handles to twist for my GF, so her hands could do it. It was CHEAP at ten bucks for what it did (no, don't want an electric one at this time, I still try to do biodrive small do dads if possible). I got her an MS natural keyboard, it is closer to what she needs but not perfect.
Anyway, you go MAKE some money with that idea with the dedicated word processor keyboard with specialty keys (insert link key, anchor key, more). Most excellent idea.
The monitor...hmmm, perhaps one you could mash a button, twist, lock and have it either landscape wide or portrait tall and it would adjust the screen some way. I'd buy one of them.
..when someone would bring this up. Both the nymph stage and the adult stage of dragonflies primarily eat mosquitoes. Along with mosquito eating minnows, it's a great way to let nature balance things out better. There's a few companies out there now that do dragonfly breeding and sales, just so people can have dragon fly ponds, etc. Some municipal areas have tried it on a mass scale as well, introducing thousands of the insects. The deal is, you have to *choose*, you can't both spray or go the dragonfly route, spraying will kill off the dragonflies pretty quickly. The other method I have been reading about is breeding just humongous hordes of sterile male mosquitoes and releasing them en masse in critical areas.
The largest problem with malaria control-treatments for the victims I mean- has been the use of single drugs. WHO has very forcefully and lately gone around the world and REALLY got down on that practice and is advising for the multiple drug approach for treatments.
This has looked promising for awhile now, hydrogen directly emitted by algae, that can be farmed in ponds and collected. A direct solar to hydrogen process.
I would like that for home heating, have a pond/pool in the backyard, with a cover, hydrogen from the algae collected and burnt in the furnace/heater or used as the energy source to run a ground effect heat pump? good for heating and cooling then.. Something like that anyway... If there's enough, run it through a fuel cell for electricity, or burn it in a gas engine generator that has been converted to run on it.
With that said, I am still more in favor-for now-with using liquid biofuels for transportation purposes, at least as an adjunct to gasoline or diesel. Some blends require zero conversion on already exisiting vehicles, and the nation's infrastructure for fuel delivery is completely built to take advantage of them.
The biggest problem with hydrogen is that it is a bear to store in a tank properly. I have read about some research into sequestering it inside of an additional chemical lattice such as metal hydrides, or turning it into other compounds that are either heat or additional chemical catalyst activated for hydrogen release. So far no big winners though. A static algae hydrogen generator wouldn't really need a lot of storage, just enough to act as a buffer for your normal demand. I imagine you could adjust output merely by altering the temperature inside the pond/pool, and that part could be automated with normal greenhouse and pond equipment that is available now. Now keeping the algae strains *pure* and keeping out other forms of algae might be a real problem.
Interesting stuff, I just love alternative energy ideas for some reason.
...I guess. To my girlfriend, using a cooking recipe analogy would be more appropriate (fast food meal, 18 course high level fatcat state dinner in Paris, etc), whereas talking to any of my bubba gearhead friends, I would use cars (engine/drivetrain/body/accessories, etc). You would have to tailor (there's another one, garment construction and weaving and different materials and threads, etc) the analogy to what that person already understands in their field of interest/expertise.
Myself, I don't want to know, I'd rather ya'all smart guys who can type fast slug it out, see who wins, I just want my browser secure and printer to print, thankew so much and stuff. And here ya go, have a nice fat strawberry just came out of my garden today, I manage "solar photosynthetic energy conversion" combined sentient and non sentient biological factories with a little "terraforming" on the side. You'll have to figure out what analogy might work for me to 'splain programming...what I have figured out is that part of it requires you to really rag on other dudes over whether to use sanskrit or aramaic or something like that. All greek to me...
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free market equals unfettered exchange of goods or services across all borders with zero regulation or tax on the transfer, and zero regulation on what exactly the product or service is.
I understand it, I just don't think it is all that wise a move, based on what I have written elsewhere in the thread. I want some minimum consumer guarantees and warranties, I want some rather good environmental general protections codified into law so that companies don't get to "choose" whether ot not to grossly pollute or sell hazarzdous or defective or posionous products based on this quarters profits figures, and I am a nationalist so I want my neighbor and myself to have our elected government to do what is in our best interest, especially as it revoles what is commonly called "the middle classes", and to not to fixate on what is some transnational corporations best interest or some foreign nation's best interest.
I know the latter can be construed differently as to what is "best" based on opinion and tastes, that's why I think we need *some* regs and we can hassle the details out as we go along and do different things. To me it is about some fair compromises and some natural order of reality concepts, otherwise known as common sense and taking the generational "long view" of things, which is what I do personally in my outlooks and opinions usually. for example, I am a conservationist and environmentalist, but not to an extreme point of view that we should just cease all human activity so that the slugs and cute bunnies can thrive at our expense. I am a human, I get ot exist *too*. It is inevitable we as humans will have an impact on the planet-so do all other species. I think it is fair that we recognize that and try to always do better, not to de-evolve and do worse or even maintain some nebulous status quo of crapping in our own nests.
It is beyond the scope of a single post to come up with all the little nuances there, so I will leave that part alone.
I agree, barter and tangibles exchange (as opposed to shuffling everything through the middleman skim "money" system) are the here and now method of freeing yourself as much as possible from onerous government and overly expensive and/or defective products. For example, I try to grow as much of our food as possible, and have paid off a very modest solar rig, so I have some of my food covered and some of my electrical needs covered without having to come up with extra cash in perpetuity."Cash" is just to get you "stuff", so if you can go directly to the "stuff" you are better off and usually get a better deal.
nobody except nvidia and the employees and stock holders. Nvidia could just go "oh well, we hit the top of the line,what we have is plenty good enough for human eyeballs now and for the far away future, guess we'll close up shop and go home now". That means they would have to all go out and look for jobs-with companies doing the same exact thing, coming out with new products they can sell so they can stay working.
It's the nature of the beast, we live in a society where you need to "keep making money" in order to live, more or less, and that seems to have evolved around manufacturing, sales, throw the old away, lather rinse repeat.
Unfortunately, I don't know a way around this system until we come up with the universal anything-goes replicator that can take any input and output anything you want.
I am as far from a keynesian as you can get, right off the bat I don't believe in fiat currencies, they are a major scam and an example of a controlling monopoly limited to a private few. Also why I am against income taxes while under a fiat currency and credit out of thin air economy, they are a command and control social engineering exercise, they have nothing to do with funding government and everything to do with the old keep em divided and conquered routine that the greedsters always pull on their subject populations. Really, the gist of my argument is right here, it's that feudalism has never gone away, we just keep reinventing it and calling it something else..
You have danced around environment, somehow negating the reality that trespass and tort are also regulations or means to address regs. OK, theoretically, trespass against what? Your pollution drifting downstream to anothers property, where it gets into their water supply? If there are no regs for that, then there's no crime, so no tort could be filed. If you say that the first guys pollution "trespassed" onto the next guys property, again, you have to make trespass a crime, violation of which means you have violated some regulation. It makes no diff really which word you use, you have laws and regulations-or not. Sell diseased or contaminated food. Well, if someone croaks or gets sick and tries to sue you in court for damages, how can they bring a case if you have the disclaimer "not responsible for anything, caveat emptor, there are no regs". No regs, no crime, no lawsuit then. Unless you held them down and force fed them, no crime committed, there would be no food regulations in a "free market". You could even lie about your product, but if lying wasn't covered by a law or regulation, oh well. You haven't killed or sickened them directly, you let them choose to eat your bogus stuff, their lookout, so they can't hold your responsible, correct?
See where this might become a problem? Would you have some dividing line over how many humans got to die before the "market corrected itself"? How would the humans know in advance what was safe or not, trial and error? Remember, lying wouldn't be illegal, if it was, that means it is a regulation to not lie.
A tad risky, eh wot?
And child labor in the industrial age came about from collusion on keeping living costs so high that families were forced to go that route to stay in poverty outside of below poverty, whatever that word is. People literally couldn't afford to live without multiple incomes inside a family. They couldn't afford to buy land because the herditary system of total land inheritance precluded any land from even being on the market for them to buy, forcing them into servitude to de "lords". the "lords" onjce in opwnership of the land were sort of reluctatnt to let it go to anyone else, usually took some little war to rearrange borders. The joe sixpack serf workers had the choice of being on the country plantation at the lords mercy, or living in town where they were at the landlords and factory owners mercy. and, we can see what happened in the past when it was like that (it still is some places).
And that is my main point, and I admit it is Calvinistic, you will and do see quite a few completely bogus and greedy and outright mean people rise to the top, because they are ruthless, and they don't care about people, they dig on power.
Now I know from your wrtings that you DO honestly care about people and your employees, but I can assure you this is RARE in most of the world. IF all humans were angels, sure, totally free and unregulated would work, that is my main point, they aren't. I can't put it any plainer, just too many extraordinarily evil people in the world, and they try real hard to get to positions of authority, and succeed at that, whether it is business, civilian government or military government.
Cream rises, but so does the shit. Because of the shit, we will need at least some regs. I don't wish it so,really, I DON'T, p
regulations, which brings us back to it won't work without them. And "insurance" for what? If there's no regulations, there wouldn't be any penalties of note for them to break in the first place, so not much need for insurance other than fire insurance. And as to public versus private land, again, historically, a lot of examples where private concerns who "owned the land" just dumped willy nilly. And none of that addresses child labor laws, workplace safety, etc.
It does no good if all or most (really, I am forced to speak *most* generally on this topic) the business ignore any workplace safety, you can take your labor down the street and almostbigco inc has the same lack of caring.
I realise in the real world there are exceptions, there are some voluntarily concerned and well meaning businesses, but taken as a general topic and to an endgame, I can't see how you will stop the giant greedsters from taking over, short of periodic violent uprisings and heads on pikes. You either have some thought out regs or you don't. If you go the route of regs, you will never have this theoretical "free" market. How about the stock market? With no regs, how would you ever hope to beat the corporate insiders trading? It would destroy confidence in the market (already low) virtually overnight.
Myself, I prefer "fair" market concept, some minimum but very well enforced market regulations and business regs. I think it could be greatly fixed/enhanced by disallowing the concept of a career full time politician or governmental worker inside the bureaucracy, but that is another subject entirely.
You won't be able to eliminate human weaknesses or vices, so all you can do realistically is remove as many ways as possible for them to be realised on the "potential victim" population.
you repeal the law of humanness. A totally free market would result in MEGABIGCO Inc. owning the world and everyone being some sort of electronic plantation worker for them, never quite making enough "money" to ever get out of debt to them. You will inevitably go from lot of companies to cartels to a monopoly, because that makes more money for the monopoly owners, and because humanness means that they will continue to impose their will on governmental processes. We already went through this crap and debate in our semi recent human past. it's been tried and found severely lacking. A "free" market means zero environmental regulations, what is in it for them? They don't care if their factory pollutes the water table over someplace, the bosses and owners will just live where that doesn't happen and buy up all the land around them to give them a clean environment, and stuff like that. It means no minimum wage,back to child labor, no safe working conditions, etc, because that is their historically proven over and over again humans as bosses track record back before these regs existed. This is *precisely* because companies are run by humans and megalomaniacs and greedsters strive for top dog positions all the time,and they get there, "by hook or CROOK", hence why those sorts of bad news policies flow downstream in the "giving orders" chain of commands structure, in government or business.
The "free" market is one of those things that it is easy to say and might sound sort of good in theory, but it won't ever fly or work as advertised without tremendous negative effects. For an example of an area with more or less "anything goes free markets", look at the horn of africa.
you can get various flashlights with instant or close to it light without disposable batteries. Freeplay makes a windup light, which would probably be the best for your purposes-bright and right there- (they make good quality stuff, I have two of their clockwork spring radios), and you can get the "squeeze as you go" light (looks like handgrips) from various online sporting goods places (these would be the least expensive, I have seen them as low as five bucks, but you lose one hand for doing work as you have to keep squeezing), and you can get flashlights that you shake for a few moments/minutes to get some light for a few moments/minutes.
With that said, any of the LED based flashlights you can score most anyplace with good quality batteries will last a LONG time in normal use compared to a normal incandescent styled bulb. The biggest problem there is that they last so long the batteries might corrode on ya before the juice runs out.
Who is covering up anything??? From day one, the project originator Negroponte has said that this device would be designed to run on purely open source software. Read those words again until you understand that part. If me saying that out loud is a "coverup", that is a rather strange view. OSX is not pure open source software. The software they will be receiving is. It's open now and always will be. OSX is not, even if steve jobs offers the first install free as in beer. That is raw verifiable data. The MIT project wants pure open source so that developing nations can move freely into the computing age,this is the long view they have, from a cost, customization and useability factor, to not face the prospect of having to compromise or jump through hoops some time in the future-which could happen with closed source propietary stuff, that they will have access to all, not part, ALL, the souce code they need without licensing worries forever, at least the chance at it, and he doesn't want the kids fooling around with closed source when free and open will allow them a lot more freedom and flexibility and save them-their nations on down the road,a lot of money in the long run. these kids who are going to be getting these laptops ARE going to be these various nations devs later on, not all of them, but a lot of them, a lot of them WILL BE coding their first on these machines, that's part of the deal,and that's how this stuff works, kids grow up, learn on the way, get jobs, become productive members of their nations societies. With total open source it makes it a lot easier for them to pull this off.
This is just *data*, it is not debateable opinion, you can go google around yourself for what he has said about open source versus the alternatives, I just checked, a lot of references. That's partially what the project is about, exposing them to both the hardware and the software, the hardware gets subsidised and provided as inexpensively as possible, and the software gets donated free and it is also FREE. That's it, that's the project. And OSX or Windows just don't fit that capital "F" free deal there, even if they offered an intro small letter "f" free version.
Like I said, negroponte isn't hiding, go argue with him over it, call him up, send an email, whatever, I was just reporting what I have read of what he has said on the subject of open source,numerous times, paraphrased. He's not even close to being hard to understand on this point.
...all the MSM sources who are more than happy to report as factual "news" ANYTHING the government propoganda spinmeisters say about critical events. Any. Thing.
I'd like to see a lot more of the MSM sources yell out PROVE IT whenever the government declares such and such is "true facts" and not let them hide behind that catch a-all phrase "national security" and "unnamed sources" and like that. It's well past time to consider that stuff BS as a default.. When they announced "we have clear overwhelming evidence that Iraq is hiding WMD" and they were going to be using "unmanned sophisticated aerial drones to attack the US" and all that other crapola, and similar such like, the stuff they faked out congress and the US people and the UN folks with, the stuff to go to actual *war* on, they offered no proof, just their statements and allusions, and the MSM that google indexes pretty much all fell in lockstep as reporting these tidbits as "fact". How about the government "fat" bin laden tape, remember that one with the pudgy actor in the ay-rab costume? They all reported that as "fact" when it was an obvious phony psyops effort. It was ludicrous. How about the CIA TWA 800 "explanation", that little cartoon they all pushed that defied physics and fell squarely into the beyond junk science realm? I mean this goes so far back I can't remember when it wasn't this way. How about the false "gulf of tonkin" multiple attacks? YEARS later McNamara admits it was "massaged" severely, but it did no good at the time to have the media offer it as "fact" and take their word on it. How about agent orange when they swore up and down it was harmless, but years later it came out they absolutely knew it wasn't harmless, yet the MSM back then all reported it as "scientific data".
It does no good if after the fact of this "news" reporting there are "corrections", when critical votes are at stake shortly in some election or bill considerations and national policies are being set based on delibarately promoted and known falsehoods being pushed as "news". And the news media that is still indexed by google continues to follow this same pattern (generally speaking, of course there are some smaller exceptions). Let the "news" sources start saying "alleged" more, ESPECIALLY when it comes to government statements, from the US government or any other government for that matter, and I would have more respect for them and also google.
Why not just 2 for a pledge to get one, or even just sell them outright at 150$ (if they can actually be made and shipped for $100), with the recipient getting one laptop and 50 bucks donation towards the project? I am not so sure they will get 100,000 pledges, but perhaps. If they only get 99,000 pledges does that mean the whole deal is off, or what? Even the official project is not committed to this effort yet from reading the commentary there. The "first world" is awash in charities that all want our "spare" money,so I think they should be more realistic on this.
That's because from the outset they insisted on totally free and open source code *only*. These are going primarily to developing nations and they wanted an absolute guarantee that the code would be available in it's entirety for the budding devs there to tweak on. OSX, even if given away "free" as in beer right now would still have no such guarantee or access to all the code forever, unless apple wants a change of heart and GPLs(or very very close) all their code, which I doubt was part of their offering to the project when they said "free"..
Ya, it's a weird fact but just when some OS is getting pretty stable and a lot of the old bugs get fixed, a new one come out and we get to start the process all over again. ALL the old bugs never do get fixed,plus security updates slow down dramatically, so as a result no matter which you run (new for features or old for functionality and stability), you get buggy plus insecure in either one.
We also get the amazing morphing functionality aspect, such and such and this and that all working fine in old version, new version half of them are now busted again.
Perhaps the entire process is flawed, maybe a new sort of model is needed for software advances. Remember the article a short time ago, the discussion about a possible kernel dev freeze to fix bugs? I'd like to see that with most software in general, just a periodic total freeze on new features and bug fixes and security fixes only for an extended time period. Maybe every other year or something like that for a total audit period. I *would* say that six month release cycles in distros have grown annoying, I think that is just way too fast and has lead to the state of perpetual beta ware.
It is not hard to identify and differentiate between the most obvious and modularized basic hardware components of a computer system and the basic layout of arch-operating system-application programs. I mean, c'mon. That should be a bare minimum for anyone to be called a working computer user, at least get you to basic learner level. After that might come basic internet useage do's and don'ts.
I would not even come close to trusting a professional delivery driver if they couldn't identify the engine as opposed to the starter or the oil filter, or who couldn't explain the difference between a turn signal and the air conditioning knob. I wouldn't trust ANY driver who couldn't grok the difference between a steering wheel and the wheels on the road. Yet with computers we give users a free skate on learning any *basic* fundamentals, then wonder why they get stuck so often and get hosed using the web. They get turned loose with a complex machine and told "good luck!"
What happens is they are SO ignorant of the basics that even trying to do rudimentary help and tech support(friends/family/professional) with them becomes ludicrous, when they confuse the monitor with the computer for instance. I have seen that, someone pointing at the monitor calling it the computer. what they thought that box sitting next to it was I do not know. "How much RAM do you have?" "I have a pentium, says so right on the box!" UN-acceptable. Shows not even one single hour in self discipline and even trying to understand something like that. It is NOT a toaster and shouldn't be sold or used like it is a toaster, and we shouldn't encourage by quiet acceptance that level of ignorance. Note, I didn't say stupidity, I said self imposed ignorance..
We SHOULD insist people learn the raw basics, especially if they are in a position of being PAID to "use" a computer, or if they insist on involving others constantly to "help them" with various trivial small problems..
I don't know exactly how to go about this, but having tutorials built into consumer operating systems would be a good first step. First boot (just another example of a possibility), you sit through an interactive explanation of how to use what is sitting in front of you, what the components are, how to use the menu, etc, etc,. Something like that could help, and use lotsa pictures. I bet a lot of people would actually appreciate it, most folks want to be independent and to use what they have, but we have to recognize that to a lot of people it is overwhelming, everything they use is new and complex to them, so it has to be put to them in easy to understand chunks.
Certainly makes a difference. Buried pots cable is pretty robust. I remember back in january 2000 we had a near week long power outtage due to ice, etc, knocking down a lot of tree limbs and breaking the wires, but the phone stayed up because they had buried the cable. We hade solar so we never lost power at all, and it was nice to be able to continue using the net and phone.
Now how those buried cables would do in *floods* I have no idea. I guess it would depend on the local switching boxes staying intact and not flooding out.
I just saw "glass spheres" and thought about bumping around in a fuel tank while you are driving. Just a-wondering how tough a glass sphere one buhzillionth of an inch would be.
To *me*, and I readily admit I am skeptical and suspicious when big business and government collide (and collude), but the "hydrogen economy" seems designed on purpose to keep the same billionaires and their corporations...billionaires and "in control" of transportation and energy.
I think I prefer right now and for the near future just normal liquid biofuels. We don't have to do any radical change to either vehicles or fuel delivery infrastructure, a pumpable liquid is a pumpable liquid after all. And the tech is here and it works, we really don't need a lot more government and industry billion dollar "studies", we just need the fuel produced in larger quantities and shipped. For example, using existing gas stations, just trash midrange, keep low test and high test, and use the midrange tanks for E-85, done, maybe swap out a bit of the plumbing perhaps, but nothing like setting up hydrogen production facilites and massive miniature christmas tree bulb factories, etc.
Then we need a switch (an option at the car dealers at all the current various price ranges, same as the "normal" cars) to "plug in" hybrids, which they could make right now if they wanted to, a lot of backyard gadgeteers have built them already to prove it is possible. This could offset a large part of the transportation load, especially for short and mid range commuters, drastically reduce the concentrated pollution in the urban areas, the fuel part would be almost all carbon neutral, and a lot of the battery part can be addressed by such things as home solar panel arrays with overnight charging to the plug in hybrids from the home battery bank. This would also improve the over-all national "fuel" supply but with little to no impact on the normal electrical grid demand. The Sun is practical fusion power,the only one we have really, we have the existing tech to use it directly, and plants use the same fusion energy to grow and we can get a large percentage of the fuel we need from them. What's not to like?
An individual can now purchase and own a vehicle,but you'll still pay "rent" forever on making it run, and the rent money goes to already uberrich guys, who already have enough political and economic power, IMO. Remember that picture of the exxon hog jowled CEO giggling as he testified in congress over the massive petroleum price hikes? The dude who got hundreds of millions for selling gas, like that's a problem right now? Do we really need to keep paying that guy and dudes like him like that, letting this energy cartel just keep dictating prices to us and how we do our transportation? I think *not*, we can do better, and right now.
It would be nice to start to become your own fuel producer. Even just some significant part would help your wallet, the economy, and the environment. The Sun -practical fusion power- helps solve these problems with tech we have today.
bad analogy time
This sounds like when you get a "free" or very low cost cellphone, but you have to agree to a "plan" for a time period, say two years to get the upfront subsidy, which means you still will be paying for the phone, just you don't see the cost *directly* for the phone itself.
more bad analogy time!
Hey, the big oil companies should do this! You get a free car from them, or heavily subsidised upfront, in return it is designed to only use their brand of gas, which unfortunately is a dollar more a gallon. You get a spiffy new gashog faster and cheaper upfront though, so it just has to be a "better deal"!
I would say the elections since 2002 are all suspect because of blackbox voting now. 2000 were skewed from judicial intervention of course, another can of worms I see no reason to trust the results, very broadly speaking of course. My state of Georgia in 2002 was the first state to go all electronic, diebold machines primarily AFAIK. The results were..most peculiar, they didn't reflect either pre or post polling, several contests had "unexpected upsets".
I protested the nature of the closed source system with no audit trail and with apparently some strange access features to the devices and so on. Got the run around severely from the officials. They got mad REALLY QUICK because I dared suggest something negative-just the possibility-about the system in place we were supposed to trust. Them-"It's secure" me-"Well, how can a civilian poll watcher count the results if a dispute arises? It used to be all we had were pieces of paper that anyone could count" "The computer gives us the count, and if there's a dispute, we just run it through the computer again" and etc, along those lines. It was worse than talking to a brick wall I tell you. I can't claim the results were skewed with 100% certainty of course (I suspect they *were* skewed), but I can't see where they can claim they were "honest or fair", either, it is impossible with the way it was set up and run.
I pointed out to them I have had the privelege in the past of verifying the ballot box as being "clean and empty" at the start of polling,being first in line that was how it was done previously, something that DOESN'T EXIST anymore. It didn't matter to them, because now it is computerised so it is "better". I said without a transparent source code and lockdown of the machines (no modems attached real time, no one hanging around with "emergency boot software", etc, in other words, but they have all that apparently) that we as the citizen voters have NO WAY of checking the "ballot box" to see if it is empty at the start or has gotten "stuffed" somehow during the process or altered by a few clicks one way or the other, etc. It didn't matter to them because some committee had done that "checking" previous to the election so we got to trust a few politicans and the computer and the private company who designed,built and operated it. Nuts on the surface. A used car at Lemon Motors with the hood welded shut and the salesman saying "trust me, it's got the big V-8 you wanted for towing a trailer, you can even ask my boss, he'll tell you the same thing".
..right on, man! Another scam war for perpetual blood profits, with the added bonus of a free big brother society at home.
...gets the black one, because he cuts the checks, so his just has to be cooler, and it has to cost more, to *prove* somehow that it is cooler. You know how that deal goes... That's my guess.
Redhat (or any other distro) could solve that by a one time unlimited fee payment, I think it is 60 thousand dollars, then they could legally do the MP3 playback thing, although you don't get the source.
t OpenGraphics&PHPSESSID=f1b5ef6703ea1d97e80ffec79dd f088e
Yes, check this page out
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
Yes, it isn't pure, I would also bet that 99% of folks who run linux have a few bits and bytes of impure code on their systems already.
Now I have no idea on the video drivers from the big two, other than you need the binary blobs to run the latest and even then they sorta sucketh. There are a few open source driver projects, but they get little support or notice, including the complete video card project here
http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Abou
Not too long ago. It was a used one from a small local bank in my rural area, they had upgraded and this guy had it in a shop for some mods to be done for the new owner (I tried to buy it but the new owner thought it was too cool, wanted to keep it for a home mega server or something). It had 12 scsi drives and 4 processors, IIRC PPs, but I might be wrong on that, forget now..anyway, a nifty looking mega tower. I wanted it for..well because it was dang cool, that's why! Figured I'd slap a good vid and sound card in there until the power bill came in, then do something more practical with it..anyway, I didn't get it.
Now, I have no idea what used to be on it (even if they wiped it securely, which I doubt)(hmmm), but I can't *imagine* reproducing even that on a small thumb drive, let alone what new stuff has to do nowadays. So, I don't think that is the exact question, and for that matter, this theoretical secure thumbdrive needs to be inserted into a working computer to be of much use, so there ya go on that. I think it's only to store some login and administrative tools, which are probably done remotely now.
Therefore, is the submitter just asking for getting the whole bank computer system to just turn itself on? Is that the real question? Something to eliminate the remote admin access and to make the local branches independent and still able to function in the event of a near catstrophic emergency? That is my guess,there is a lot of contingency planning going on now around the nation, that this is homeland security worst case scenario bird flu or terrorist attack or economic meltdown or whatever related.
Best idea for a keyboard I have heard of in a long time. Here's another one you can have for the design- raised shift keys. they don't need to be in the same plane and be just as hard to press down. Your hands are not shaped that way, not are your little fingers as strong or flexible. The shift keys operate off your little fingers and need to be slightly raised (like 50% higher than the rest) and angled inwards slightly, and only take 1/2 the pressure to activate that the normal keys do. Either that or a foot switch-really, just for the shift key.
Some keyboard guys need to do this, as well as thinking about the aging population with very stiff arthritic fingers. Just like they make a few big button phones, there's a reason, older eyes, older fingers, geting there meselfs..... And that demographic has ca$hto spend on stuff designed with them in mind. Goofy stuff, can openers, had to swap out the buck store one for a ten buck one with huge handles to twist for my GF, so her hands could do it. It was CHEAP at ten bucks for what it did (no, don't want an electric one at this time, I still try to do biodrive small do dads if possible). I got her an MS natural keyboard, it is closer to what she needs but not perfect.
Anyway, you go MAKE some money with that idea with the dedicated word processor keyboard with specialty keys (insert link key, anchor key, more). Most excellent idea.
The monitor...hmmm, perhaps one you could mash a button, twist, lock and have it either landscape wide or portrait tall and it would adjust the screen some way. I'd buy one of them.
..when someone would bring this up. Both the nymph stage and the adult stage of dragonflies primarily eat mosquitoes. Along with mosquito eating minnows, it's a great way to let nature balance things out better. There's a few companies out there now that do dragonfly breeding and sales, just so people can have dragon fly ponds, etc. Some municipal areas have tried it on a mass scale as well, introducing thousands of the insects. The deal is, you have to *choose*, you can't both spray or go the dragonfly route, spraying will kill off the dragonflies pretty quickly. The other method I have been reading about is breeding just humongous hordes of sterile male mosquitoes and releasing them en masse in critical areas.
e s2006.pdf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4318356.stm
The largest problem with malaria control-treatments for the victims I mean- has been the use of single drugs. WHO has very forcefully and lately gone around the world and REALLY got down on that practice and is advising for the multiple drug approach for treatments.
http://www.who.int/malaria/docs/TreatmentGuidelin
or short version with all the links
http://www.who.int/malaria/
This has looked promising for awhile now, hydrogen directly emitted by algae, that can be farmed in ponds and collected. A direct solar to hydrogen process.
, 00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54456
I would like that for home heating, have a pond/pool in the backyard, with a cover, hydrogen from the algae collected and burnt in the furnace/heater or used as the energy source to run a ground effect heat pump? good for heating and cooling then.. Something like that anyway... If there's enough, run it through a fuel cell for electricity, or burn it in a gas engine generator that has been converted to run on it.
With that said, I am still more in favor-for now-with using liquid biofuels for transportation purposes, at least as an adjunct to gasoline or diesel. Some blends require zero conversion on already exisiting vehicles, and the nation's infrastructure for fuel delivery is completely built to take advantage of them.
The biggest problem with hydrogen is that it is a bear to store in a tank properly. I have read about some research into sequestering it inside of an additional chemical lattice such as metal hydrides, or turning it into other compounds that are either heat or additional chemical catalyst activated for hydrogen release. So far no big winners though. A static algae hydrogen generator wouldn't really need a lot of storage, just enough to act as a buffer for your normal demand. I imagine you could adjust output merely by altering the temperature inside the pond/pool, and that part could be automated with normal greenhouse and pond equipment that is available now. Now keeping the algae strains *pure* and keeping out other forms of algae might be a real problem.
Interesting stuff, I just love alternative energy ideas for some reason.
...I guess. To my girlfriend, using a cooking recipe analogy would be more appropriate (fast food meal, 18 course high level fatcat state dinner in Paris, etc), whereas talking to any of my bubba gearhead friends, I would use cars (engine/drivetrain/body/accessories, etc).
You would have to tailor (there's another one, garment construction and weaving and different materials and threads, etc) the analogy to what that person already understands in their field of interest/expertise.
Myself, I don't want to know, I'd rather ya'all smart guys who can type fast slug it out, see who wins, I just want my browser secure and printer to print, thankew so much and stuff. And here ya go, have a nice fat strawberry just came out of my garden today, I manage "solar photosynthetic energy conversion" combined sentient and non sentient biological factories with a little "terraforming" on the side. You'll have to figure out what analogy might work for me to 'splain programming...what I have figured out is that part of it requires you to really rag on other dudes over whether to use sanskrit or aramaic or something like that. All greek to me...