Am I already way out of touch with this current college generation? Geesh, it's only been 8 years since I was there myself. People are acting as if Facebook is sending out spies to listen in on them and then post it to the site. That's not what it is -- they're publishing *to your frends* info *you* post on the site to in a new way. Don't want your Facebook friends to find out you broke up with your girlfriend? How about not posting it on Facebook and Myspace? That'll take care of the "privacy problems".
How about a new "social networking" site: www.MyBlackHole.com. You post your info, and then the site immediately deletes it. Sounds like about what these whiners want.
Also bugs me that some of these articles are indicating that this is a rare case of "political activism" by this generation. If this is what passes for political activism, we've got problems.
Your premise is that renewables have an edge over fossil fuels in remote locations (including disaster zones), but I think that needs to be qualified a bit. That's probably true for a situation where a one-time delivery of fairly sizeable equipment is possible, but continuous supply of fuel would be challenging. There are certainly niche markets where this is the best solution right now. (I'm amazed by the fact that nearly every traffic counter you see on roadways is solar-powered these days. They're not doing it because the Department of Transportation is super-green, but because it's the right tool for the job.) I buy your case for a mountainside repeater, too.
But disaster zones? The amount of energy you can cram into a small package and deploy quickly with a gas or diesel generator is far beyond what you could do with any current renewable. Send in a truck with a big generator and a few thousand gallons of fuel, and you've got a LOT of energy and a lot higher peak output than any comparable renewable. That's exactly the situation where burning some fossil fuels can be justified pretty easily. As others have said here, I'm extremely skeptical of any system that claims to pack 150kW into a shipping container. Unless this thing unfurls to the size of a football field, it's hard to imagine how it can produce that amount of power.
In my opinion, the mid-term solution is to get to a situation where most of our energy comes from renewables, using fossil fuels only where you NEED the ability to pack a lot of energy (with high peak output) into a small, portable package. That's something fossil fuels do well, but renewables don't. To me, that means running most everything in your home and business on renewable energy, and saving the gas for portable generators, chainsaws, camp stoves, helicopters, etc. Of course, eventually we'd hope that all these "unplugged" devices will move to hydrogen, but I expect it to be a while before I can fill my chainsaw with hydrogen (or slap in a battery pack that will last half a day).
I block pop-ups because they interfere with my browsing, and Flash ads because they sometimes use ridiculous amounts of processor (or memory?). LowerMyBills.com ads especially cause real problems for me -- essentially freezing my browser (Firefox or IE, it doesn't matter) and making scrolling on the page painfully slow. I'm on a relatively old laptop (PII 366), but still, this should never happen.
I don't block banner ads, because I appreciate free content and services and don't mind having to scroll past advertising if it helps pay for it.
Or are all ads Pay Per-Click rather than Per-Impression these days? If it's Per-Click, then simply seeing the ads doesn't help the content provider any (assuming you don't click them, which most of us on/. probably do very rarely). In that case I guess blocking them doesn't make you a freeloader any more than just not clicking them does...
For reference, I've measured power consumption on my laptop and my old box that acts as a linux server. The laptop is a Dell PII 366Mhz with a 15" screen that draws about 22 watts total. The server is a Dell Optiplex PII 400Mhz and draws about 30 watts without a monitor. When the hard drive is working at the max (e.g. a sustained file transfer) it goes up to about 45 watts. Overall, I find that the server costs me about $2.50 to run 24/7.
I agree with others: An old laptop is probably a great solution if you can find one cheaply.
The Power Meter the guy mentions in the article is exactly the sort of thing I'd planned to build myself to figure out how much electricity my various electronics consume. I'd planned to do it with a Radio Shack multimeter (that includes current reading) that I'd splice into a little extension cord. But... It would be awesome if there was a relatively inexpensive product that'd do the same. Anyone seen one? The cheapest option from the company he mentions costs $150.
I hope their rocket design is better than their web skilz... Nice site with better than 1/2 the page (at 1024x768) taken up by a cheesy graphic and menu.
I traded a few e-mails last year with Damien (the lead developer). He said a Windows port was being actively worked on and was just a few weeks/months off. Anyone heard anything on this? I was hoping to use GnomeMeeting in our office, where there's no chance of switching to Linux desktops anytime soon.
I've been using Gallery as an online photo album for a little over a year. It's an absolutely awesome PHP-based tool. Very slick UI, automatic thumbnailing and creation of comfortable screen-size images, plus tie-ins to digital printing services (e.g. Shutterfly). There's even Gallery Remote, which is a nicely done Java app to allow you to drag-and-drop entire batches photos directly into your online galleries. I often have my pics on my site within minutes of returning home.
I'm more or less a linux newbie, but I found Gallery to be really easy to set up and host from my home box over my cable connection (with a bit of port forwarding... damn you port-blocking ISP bastards!). If you want to use a commercial host, the requirements for Gallery are pretty minimal. The only non-standard thing required is the netPBM image libraries. It uses a pretty slick mechanism to store serialzed data in text files, so no DB required.
From the context I'm assuming these are pre-release copies, but the article shouldn't have assumed that all/. readers would instantly recognize this term.
If you want to create SWF (Flash) animations, there are much cheaper alternatives to buying Flash from Macromedia. SWF is an open format, and there are other manufacturers of creation tools. Swish is one I've heard a fair bit about. Others are available for Tucows. You can even create SWF files from within PHP with the MING libraries. In short, I don't think SVG will replace SWF simply because of cost.
"Splash" pages and annoying ads have given Flash a bad name. As a backend programmer who has dabbled with Flash, I think it's a pretty awesome tool when used correctly. You can interact with server-side scripts (e.g. PHP/Perl) and create some very cool tools that react in real time rather than waiting for page loads. It even accepts data input in the form of XML. I think it's a bit of a toss-up on Flash menus. They can be annoying, processor-intensive, and unecessary but they can also replace horribly buggy IE-only DHTML. Part of the problem is that Flash is simple enough that almost anyone can do a hackish implementation, but it really takes some time to understand how really take advantage of the medium.
Anybody else wonder why the poster choose to link "SVG" (and his screen name... hmmm...) to an obviously commercial site hawking a book (learnsvg.com) rather than to the W3C SVG pages? The W3C site is certainly a better authority on the topic.
Yes, bummer indeed. When I first saw this post I thought they had created transgenic fish with luciferase, the enzyme that makes fireflies glow. Scientists have been inserting that into all sorts of critters recently for legitimate bioassay purposes. This BBC page has a number of exambles of both flourescent (using jellyfish proteins like these fish) and truly glow-in-the-dark critters.
I haven't been following this closely, but there was a ton of buzz a year or so back about AOL switching to a Mozilla-based browser. IIRC CompuServe even tried it for a release or two. So have these plans gone away, or do they just plan to use Mozilla without contributing now?
Re:The question needs to be more specific
on
Is VoIP the Way to Go?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I agree. I posted this message to Ask Slashdot several times recently and it got rejected. Isn't this a heck of a lot better than what this post asks?
A couple days ago this/. article asked whether price competition would run VoIP-to-POTS companies out of business. It specifically mentioned Packet8, Vonage, and VoicePulse. I've been considering switching to a VoIP-to-POTS provider for quite a while now, and wonder what experience other SlashDotters have had with these or related services. To be specific, I want a solution that lets me use my regular analog phone through my broadband connection to call POTS users (e.g. my mom) AND gives me a phone # for others to call me. Solutions like Net2Phone (which I've used for years) or Skype that require me to use headphones/mic in front of my computer just don't cut it. Nor do I want to buy any new hardware (like SIPphone requires). Recent/. articles discuss Skype Vs. SIPphone and Other VoIP issues, but none contain the sort of info I'm looking for. What advice can you give about cost, performance, security, ease-of-setup, etc?
Slashdot Mirror
Am I already way out of touch with this current college generation? Geesh, it's only been 8 years since I was there myself. People are acting as if Facebook is sending out spies to listen in on them and then post it to the site. That's not what it is -- they're publishing *to your frends* info *you* post on the site to in a new way. Don't want your Facebook friends to find out you broke up with your girlfriend? How about not posting it on Facebook and Myspace? That'll take care of the "privacy problems". How about a new "social networking" site: www.MyBlackHole.com. You post your info, and then the site immediately deletes it. Sounds like about what these whiners want. Also bugs me that some of these articles are indicating that this is a rare case of "political activism" by this generation. If this is what passes for political activism, we've got problems.
Your premise is that renewables have an edge over fossil fuels in remote locations (including disaster zones), but I think that needs to be qualified a bit. That's probably true for a situation where a one-time delivery of fairly sizeable equipment is possible, but continuous supply of fuel would be challenging. There are certainly niche markets where this is the best solution right now. (I'm amazed by the fact that nearly every traffic counter you see on roadways is solar-powered these days. They're not doing it because the Department of Transportation is super-green, but because it's the right tool for the job.) I buy your case for a mountainside repeater, too. But disaster zones? The amount of energy you can cram into a small package and deploy quickly with a gas or diesel generator is far beyond what you could do with any current renewable. Send in a truck with a big generator and a few thousand gallons of fuel, and you've got a LOT of energy and a lot higher peak output than any comparable renewable. That's exactly the situation where burning some fossil fuels can be justified pretty easily. As others have said here, I'm extremely skeptical of any system that claims to pack 150kW into a shipping container. Unless this thing unfurls to the size of a football field, it's hard to imagine how it can produce that amount of power. In my opinion, the mid-term solution is to get to a situation where most of our energy comes from renewables, using fossil fuels only where you NEED the ability to pack a lot of energy (with high peak output) into a small, portable package. That's something fossil fuels do well, but renewables don't. To me, that means running most everything in your home and business on renewable energy, and saving the gas for portable generators, chainsaws, camp stoves, helicopters, etc. Of course, eventually we'd hope that all these "unplugged" devices will move to hydrogen, but I expect it to be a while before I can fill my chainsaw with hydrogen (or slap in a battery pack that will last half a day).
I block pop-ups because they interfere with my browsing, and Flash ads because they sometimes use ridiculous amounts of processor (or memory?). LowerMyBills.com ads especially cause real problems for me -- essentially freezing my browser (Firefox or IE, it doesn't matter) and making scrolling on the page painfully slow. I'm on a relatively old laptop (PII 366), but still, this should never happen. I don't block banner ads, because I appreciate free content and services and don't mind having to scroll past advertising if it helps pay for it. Or are all ads Pay Per-Click rather than Per-Impression these days? If it's Per-Click, then simply seeing the ads doesn't help the content provider any (assuming you don't click them, which most of us on /. probably do very rarely). In that case I guess blocking them doesn't make you a freeloader any more than just not clicking them does...
For reference, I've measured power consumption on my laptop and my old box that acts as a linux server. The laptop is a Dell PII 366Mhz with a 15" screen that draws about 22 watts total. The server is a Dell Optiplex PII 400Mhz and draws about 30 watts without a monitor. When the hard drive is working at the max (e.g. a sustained file transfer) it goes up to about 45 watts. Overall, I find that the server costs me about $2.50 to run 24/7. I agree with others: An old laptop is probably a great solution if you can find one cheaply.
The Power Meter the guy mentions in the article is exactly the sort of thing I'd planned to build myself to figure out how much electricity my various electronics consume. I'd planned to do it with a Radio Shack multimeter (that includes current reading) that I'd splice into a little extension cord. But... It would be awesome if there was a relatively inexpensive product that'd do the same. Anyone seen one? The cheapest option from the company he mentions costs $150.
I hope their rocket design is better than their web skilz... Nice site with better than 1/2 the page (at 1024x768) taken up by a cheesy graphic and menu.
I traded a few e-mails last year with Damien (the lead developer). He said a Windows port was being actively worked on and was just a few weeks/months off. Anyone heard anything on this? I was hoping to use GnomeMeeting in our office, where there's no chance of switching to Linux desktops anytime soon.
I'm more or less a linux newbie, but I found Gallery to be really easy to set up and host from my home box over my cable connection (with a bit of port forwarding... damn you port-blocking ISP bastards!). If you want to use a commercial host, the requirements for Gallery are pretty minimal. The only non-standard thing required is the netPBM image libraries. It uses a pretty slick mechanism to store serialzed data in text files, so no DB required.
Yeah, yeah. I read the article... but the /. post could have been a lot more clear.
From the context I'm assuming these are pre-release copies, but the article shouldn't have assumed that all /. readers would instantly recognize this term.
If you want to create SWF (Flash) animations, there are much cheaper alternatives to buying Flash from Macromedia. SWF is an open format, and there are other manufacturers of creation tools. Swish is one I've heard a fair bit about. Others are available for Tucows. You can even create SWF files from within PHP with the MING libraries. In short, I don't think SVG will replace SWF simply because of cost.
"Splash" pages and annoying ads have given Flash a bad name. As a backend programmer who has dabbled with Flash, I think it's a pretty awesome tool when used correctly. You can interact with server-side scripts (e.g. PHP/Perl) and create some very cool tools that react in real time rather than waiting for page loads. It even accepts data input in the form of XML. I think it's a bit of a toss-up on Flash menus. They can be annoying, processor-intensive, and unecessary but they can also replace horribly buggy IE-only DHTML. Part of the problem is that Flash is simple enough that almost anyone can do a hackish implementation, but it really takes some time to understand how really take advantage of the medium.
Anybody else wonder why the poster choose to link "SVG" (and his screen name... hmmm...) to an obviously commercial site hawking a book (learnsvg.com) rather than to the W3C SVG pages? The W3C site is certainly a better authority on the topic.
Yes, bummer indeed. When I first saw this post I thought they had created transgenic fish with luciferase, the enzyme that makes fireflies glow. Scientists have been inserting that into all sorts of critters recently for legitimate bioassay purposes. This BBC page has a number of exambles of both flourescent (using jellyfish proteins like these fish) and truly glow-in-the-dark critters.
I haven't been following this closely, but there was a ton of buzz a year or so back about AOL switching to a Mozilla-based browser. IIRC CompuServe even tried it for a release or two. So have these plans gone away, or do they just plan to use Mozilla without contributing now?
A couple days ago this /. article asked whether price competition would run VoIP-to-POTS companies out of business. It specifically mentioned Packet8, Vonage, and VoicePulse. I've been considering switching to a VoIP-to-POTS provider for quite a while now, and wonder what experience other SlashDotters have had with these or related services. To be specific, I want a solution that lets me use my regular analog phone through my broadband connection to call POTS users (e.g. my mom) AND gives me a phone # for others to call me. Solutions like Net2Phone (which I've used for years) or Skype that require me to use headphones/mic in front of my computer just don't cut it. Nor do I want to buy any new hardware (like SIPphone requires). Recent /. articles discuss Skype Vs. SIPphone and Other VoIP issues, but none contain the sort of info I'm looking for. What advice can you give about cost, performance, security, ease-of-setup, etc?