Its also been known there is no free lunch, and one generally gets what one pays for.
The problem is corporations tolerate buggy stuff if they can get it fast.
To make matters worse, the bugginess of it encourages the customers who bought in will pay more for "hopeware" in the future, that supposedly fixes the bug.
Its the business response of the problem I studied in economics of the situation of selling a man a hammer - once he's bought one, he'll never buy another as he won't another one if the hammer was made right in the first place. Far more profitable to sell "cancer treatments" - than a "cure".
I've ran across way too much "fancy presentation" stuff that simply doesn't work right. Its like hiring someone based on their dress, haircut, demeanor, and strong handshake - while ignoring what they bring to the table as far as knowing how to do the job.
I do this on my own for the precise reasons you state.
Right now, I live in a area without much temperature extremes, and close proximity to industrial supply houses.
After I get enough empirical data, and a good gut feeling of how to make this work, or if it will, I will then go somewhere like Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas to implement it large scale.
( Incidentally, the pressures aren't much higher than that found in a barbeque bottle left in the sun. Albeit I do have more piping and repurposed junk window air conditioner compressors involved )
I notice my car gets wet from condensation. Its "beaming" its thermal energy off into the night sky - just as it will accept energy from the sun during the day, becoming quite hot.
I figure if I am streaming 90 degree water into a solar collector at night, it may cool it off to 80 degrees or so - especially if I combine it with evaporative cooling.
Its the typical "it gets cold at night" thing.
If you were in outer space with an infrared detector over my house at night, you should see my solar collector "lit up".
The idea is I have a lot of BTU I want to get rid of in my quest to liquefy propane gas at high pressure. I can heat up air ( conventional method of doing it ), or transfer the heat to a cooler mass, ( water in my case ), evaporate water with it, and I want to experiment to see how much BTU I can radiate with a standard solar collector panel ( the ones with liquid channels ).
I would like to experiment with standard PV panels bonded onto liquid-channel panels so that during the day, the PV makes electricity, while the liquid panels not only cool the PV array, but provide preheat for a 100 gallon water tank.
Fluid circulation pumps will route water from the tank, through the collector, then back to the tank as long as collector temperature exceeds tank temperature.
Of course, once the sun sets, the panel is no longer experiences an influx of about 1KW/m^2 solar energy.
At night, it will cool off and become quite cold all by itself as it faces the night sky. That's when I am going to attempt to heat the panel back up by circulating water used to cool the propane exchanger ( condenser ). I see it as about 100 square foot of blackbody radiator. What I want is some practical experience on how many BTU I can get rid of doing it this way, as the circulator pumps draw much less energy than the fans required to move the air in a liquid-air exchanger.
I already have an aluminum roof. That thing gets so cold during the summer I have been having a problem with condensation causing mildew problems. Despite outside air temps of 80-90 F. For condensation to form, the roof has to drop below dew point temperature, and judging from how fast I am condensing liquid water from the air, I get a gut feeling I am already beaming out quite a lot of heat.
So, in a sense, I am "beaming" the energy to deep space just as a light bulb "beams" the energy of its heated filament into a dark room.
By far, the most practical is to simply evaporative cool the system... but what if water is not freely available ( design for the Middle East. ).
That is what I liked about your post. You saw the heat being generated in a server farm, and noted it was just the right temperature for use in a laundromat. A helluva lot of BTU that could have been used - wasted. If more people had your mindset, we could enjoy our creature comforts without paying twice for energy. It simply doesn't make sense to waste things.
I am in the process of redoing my A/C so that I use a liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger ( tube-in-tube; actually mechanized as a length of copper tubing in a rubber hose ) so I can take advantage of the approx 60 deg F city water.
I figure if I am going to irrigate, the plants won't mind it at all if I warm it to about 85-90F. The refrigeration loop runs on propane - plain old barbeque gas no less. As a refrigerant, not a fuel.
The main concern I have had is the refrigerant loop runs at higher pressure than city water, so the system has to be designed in such a manner as any possible leak can not be injected into the city water main, hence using water going to irrigation - any propane leak would be harmlessly vented through the irrigation system. Not that I expect it to happen, but I never know when I will get a pinhole leak in anything and must design for that possibility.
The other end of the refrigerant loop freezes a children's swimming pool full of water in a styrofoam lined enclosure under an outdoor patio. Ice water is circulated to cool the house. The system runs offpeak hours to make ice.
I am presently looking into whether or not I can use solar collectors in reverse at night to get rid of heat, effectively using them as a blackbody radiator beaming the heat to deep space.
Nobody seems much interested in this technology, as the powers that be are now saying peak oil is a joke and we have more oil than one can imagine. I plan to move out of the city one day, I want to know I can reconstruct things that make life a lot more comfortable. What I lack in money I intend to make up for in ingenuity.
That is a good one. I'll have to run that up the flagpole at Starbucks when I drop by...
What you do is set up a "ad-hoc" network with your machine,,, then put whatever you want as the SSID. Just secure yourself with a password...nasty one... you don't have to remember it because you are going to delete the whole thing once its serves its purpose..
I'll bookmark this one... that's an interesting link!
You are right... every cutting edge technology has its share of cranks - what makes it really bad is quite a few cranks use credentials from respected institutions to lend credibility to their scam.
I can't help but think of deliberately running a fancoil unit with an unbalanced fan so it vibrates the evaporator coil.
Or, possibly mounting piezoelectric "shakers" to the evaporator tubes and deliberately manufacturing them to resonate.
Thanks, Hessian, for bringing this up. Anything I can do to increase efficiency in refrigeration is of great interest to me.
There are a lot of unpublished tricks I have come across that significantly increase refrigeration efficiency, but have not implemented because the expense of dealing with the increased sophistication was greater than the expense of energy loss in the simple system. This trick you showed me will make an interesting study.
I will keep it in the lab for now, as I am sure I will also face metal fatiguing and work-hardening issues.
It should not be possible to do this. But, in order to be interoperable with others, I have to use software whose ulterior motivations are unknown to me.
I was taught in computer science the risks of mixing code and data, yet we send "applets", claimed safe.
How do I know when one carries a keylogger or password stealer trojan?
I'd rather not have code in my data at all. This whole thing started when we assigned certain ANSI sequences to do execute, then the birth of the "ANSI bomb". So early 80's. We still have not learned our lesson.
Yes, I fear cyberterrorism in the same way I would fear climbing a tall ladder around those who would gleefully topple the thing just to watch me fall.
Would you feel safe climbing a tall ladder after you have had one inexplicably fail?
With all the antivirus companies out there trying to keep mischief out of overcomplex software, I would gladly settle for a secure subset of a much simpler software for stuff involving online business. Say, pure vanilla HTML which honors a simple subset of text, images, and sound. Any business needing an extension would have to provide it - and be responsible for its behaviour.
Everybody knows the power to tax is the power to destroy.
If you kill off a business, or even as much as discourage anyone from starting a business in the first place, money never changes hands, and NO tax is collected. Worse yet, unemployed people bug their government for handouts.
Where does a business put their money?
They hire people. They construct buildings. They pay shareholders. They buy meals in restaurants. Their employees buy homes.
None of this would have happened without the benefits of business.
Destroying a business with tax, litigation, legislation, red tape, whatever, makes about as much sense as uprooting a crop before it ever bears fruit.
We can't eat money.
Cherish those who have figured out how to organize us into some sort of productive activity.
All I ask is that competition be fair - "gaming" the system by erecting "barriers to entry" just reeks of turf-gang type behaviour and should not be tolerated.
I can see sliding tax scales on wealth accumulation,.. but taxing businesses for making a buck just seems crazy.
That buck is the life-blood of that business, and it needs that buck to perpetuate itself and grow.
Would we be better off without business? Everything I have was made by a business.
If there is anything discouraging STEM, its not Neal. He's not even on the radar screen.
Slashdot brought the dragon right out for everyone to see.
How can we get our kids interested in science, which revolves around a lot of diligent work searching for truth, only to find the rewards start out with being called the teacher's pet, progressing through "being a Boy Scout", "not a 'team player'", then forcible unemployment because one feels obligated to "do that which is right"?
The comments here on Slashdot reinforced my observation that "being liked" is far more financially productive than "being right". No wonder the kids see through it.
I got canned for standing up for what I thought was right.
Many others had the same experience.
Like religion, rejection based on your beliefs comes with the territory. A manager may want something based on how well a salesman did his job, whereas an engineer may reject it based on his experience of seeing stuff like that fail in the field. Political power ultimately rules.
From what I can tell, this country no longer needs STEM workers, as other countries can do this much cheaper than we can. I am amazed at all the high-tech parts I can get from aliexpress.com.
And I am also alarmed that a lot of datasheets I am interested in are in Chinese. I have disassembled several Chinese Lithium Ion battery chargers and noted how cleverly they were made - with Chinese house-numbered parts, no less.
We cultivate a need for financial professionals, lawyers, insurance, and real-estate investment. Look at our tax laws - they really cream anybody earning a buck.
I don't blame businesses for not trying to innovate in the USA.
I am afraid to try as well. No sooner than I produce and try to sell anything, I will get sued - if for nothing more than paralyzing me until I financially die. This is on top of all the paperwork IRS requires of anyone that actually tries to DO anything in this country. Our Congress passes so much frivolous special-interest law that no-one can do anything without exposing themselves to lawsuits. Only the financially strongest can survive at that game.
We may still love science, But we find something else to do for a paycheck.
I have just finished reading all the replies. Thanks for all the replies.
This subject is likely the greatest enigma many of us face... that is why are we here? Do we serve a purpose in some greater scheme of things? Or are we nothing more than flotsam made up of random assemblages of matter?
Ancient religious artifacts reveal this has vexed mankind for as far back as we have recorded history.
"Tyranny of Choice" further frustrates the investigator, as there are many religious beliefs. Which one, if any, have it right?
All religions I have experienced to date will tell me that they are right and the others are wrong, yet my observations of their behavior tell me they are no different from anyone else. The "salesmanship" and "leadership" techniques used are readily identifiable by anyone who is aware of how this kind of psychology is used to influence the human psyche.
As for God=Creator, I never did define God. If I could, then I would lead the greatest religion the world has ever known, and be right. Provably right. Not hopefully right.
As far as Science vs. Religion, all I know is that every lie I have ever known came from Man. Men have that way of "leadership" which involves bending the truth to their liking. I find it hard to trust anything coming through men that I cannot verify. Unlike my scientific equipment, men will often give me biased, false, or unsubstantiated reports designed to sway my response to what they want me to do. Their whole existence seems to revolve around being liked, not being right.
Nothing really wrong with that, its the human condition, but when one is searching for absolute truths, one needs facts, not superstition.
I appreciate all of the differing viewpoints posted on this forum. You guys are why I keep coming to this site.
Its my senses...and what mathematical and physics I take to be true.
I observe the complexity of biochemistry. The physics of life astounds me..
A reading of "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe cemented my beliefs. Francis Collins' "The Language of God: a Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" gave me what I consider undeniable evidence for belief in a creation - and a creator ( God ).
The "Big Bang Theory" reeks of "let there be light" to me. My knowledge of thermodynamics - especially the concept of entropy - tells me the Universe, left to its own, should run down.
In short, everything I see seems to demand a creator.
Whatever this is... its big... and nothing like me - I have way too many constraints and way too little intelligence - I can barely scrape up enough stuff to even have a belief, much less explain just how this stuff around me came to be.
Now, here's the rub... I have taken much flak for this.
The most compelling evidence I have, by far, that God is nothing more than a figment of the imagination.. superstition.. a "palm reader" for the gullible. A moneymaking plan.... comes from people who profess to know God!
As a scientist type, insanely curious, it drives me up the wall to see the wonders I do, then communicate to what I consider superstitious palm reader types whose prime function seems to be erecting toll booths on the "highway to heaven" to collect tithes. They get to rocking back and forth in the pulpit, one hand wagging in the air like some Hitler scene, and the other gripping the microphone so he can just about swallow the thing - and that forced pious look on their faces,. and I am supposed to take them seriously?
This is worshipping God? It looks more like a bunko scheme to me. They get a bunch of people worked up in a fervent frenzy reminiscent of a pyramid meeting, then pass the plate. If they could not hide behind "freedom of religion", I am sure they would all be facing bunko charges of defrauding the public like a bunch of gypsy fortunetellers.
Their favorite chant seems to center on whether I place my belief in science or God. I tell them there is no difference. God is Truth, and the whole purpose of science is to reveal/discover that which is true.
My tagline for years has displayed my belief. Its THEM I have little confidence in.
Maybe I worship the God of truth through study of his work ( scientifically ) and they worship Him by throwing parties in his name at someone else's expense,
I have had pressure-sensitive floor pads for years. You place them under the carpet. Inside them are strips of spring steel which contact each other under pressure.
They are very 60's , commonly used by shopkeepers to alert them when a customer entered. I got a few to alert me when someone was messing around my house. This was many years ago. The devices have long been replaced with other technologies.
So, would this be prior art?
( And I want to replace the whole shebang again... this time with HB100 modules. ).
Just last night, I experienced a "drive-by" download of the "S.M.A.R.T. HDD" virus.
First, Firefox closed all by itself. I thought at the time "Oh well, another hostile JavaScript"...but its required to talk to Business sites. Better shut down and restart Windows to rid myself of it.
When I did, my Windows 7 machine restarted funny, black background, then suddenly all these windows popped up telling me my hard drive was terribly sick. Words like "critical" were flashing in red on several windows. Damn near made me soil my pants. It all looked so legit, especially the way vendors bundle all sorts of software from vendors I have never heard of in machines these days. The "S.M.A.R.T. Check" window then informed me I only had a trial version of their software and offered a payment opportunity if I wanted an immediate upgrade, or I could give it an administrator password to continue. I smelled a rat.
I put the machine to sleep.
I logged onto Google from an uncompromised machine running K-Meleon under WIN95. And verified I had this thing.
To Microsoft's credit, their "system restore points" worked. I was able to restore the system to a point baselined a week ago, and the virus disappeared.
Not satisfied yet, I got a fresh download of "Windows Defender" definitions and ran a quick scan. Nothing found. Later that night, I set the machine to do a "full scan" and it found a backdoor and a password stealer.
I get the idea the backdoor and password stealer were part of the "S.M.A.R.T." package, but needed an admin password to install them, and thats why quickscan did not find them.. Maybe someone else who has seen this beast can enlighten me.
While I am impressed that Microsoft's virus scanner found these ( according to the sources on Google, this is a hard-to-find polymorphic virus ), I have this question:
Why is it we have all this authentication, administrator and user privilege levels, and yet a rogue program can install itself in such a manner - from a restricted user account - so as to survive a reboot?
From an administrator account, yes, administrators need to install permanently residing software... but lowly users? Any software we install should be sandboxed to our own user account, and definitely not survive a reboot!
The fact I could recognize this as rogue software, and that Microsoft provided me with the methods of recognizing and removing it shows we have come a long way, but there is quite a bit left to go - things like what I just experienced should never happen.
If this "echelon" thingie our taxpayer dollars are funding actually works, can it be programmed to also look for virus signatures - so that the emitter of these signatures gets a knock on their door from 3-letter secret government agencies? Dammit, I am paying for this as a taxpayer - put all this snooping to some good use if you are going to snoop in the first place. I want some of that "safety" I have sacrificed my privacy for.
It would make no difference to me if they were free.
OTA TV is free. And it can be a real PITA at times with incessant commercial interruptions.
Commercially released stuff, laden with DRM, is simply more aggravation for me than its worth.
I never bought a Zune for the same reason. The MP3 technology I have is fine by me.
I have learned from experience that bending over backwards trying to appease special interests who want me to install their codecs or whatever to use their content is fraught with danger of bad software lodged in my machine which is sometimes very difficult to remove.
I would much rather have something safe, using standard public formats, than something laced with proprietary technologies. I feel very uncomfortable dealing with legal documents written in a foreign language as well. Even in plain English, its difficult to deal with many businesses who resort to fine grey print on the back of business forms to nail their paying customer.
When it comes to any financial dealings, or allowing rogue software in my machine, I simply do not trust. I have had too many businesses violate the trust I placed in them.
Amazon / PayPal-Ebay is dominating internet marketing because they have been paying a heck of a lot of attention to earning trust. I note Amazon has bent over backwards ( for me, at least ), to make sure I have had a pleasant experience on their site. Every Amazon merchant I have done business with has done a fine job - and Amazon reinforces this with customer reviews that are not controlled by the merchant. I have put a lot of reviews up. ( I give most 5 star ).
I am just now getting started on Alibaba, with their "escrow" service.
I do not think a lot of the businesses, trying to trick the customer base by forcing proprietary software on them, realizes how valuable the trust is - and how difficult it will be to earn trust once the customer feels screwed.
Unfortunately, a lot of small businessmen get screwed when one miscreant pulls a fast one. All the door-to-door salesmen in a neighborhood pay the price if just one con-artist is making the rounds.
Personally, I am scared as heck to give payment credentials to anyone on the net, with the exception of Alibaba and Amazon, ( and a few businesses like Digi-Key and Saelig ).
Do I feel screwed when I get some DRM'd piece of crap I paid for and I can't get it to work? Damm right I do!
it sold the victim a cell phone that happens to be desirable to criminals.
Interesting....
The thief has a stolen cellphone.
Privacy laws supposedly exist for the paying legitimate owner of the phone.
Do these laws also apply to someone who has NOT entered into ANY sort of agreement with the seller?
Ehhhh. I am Law Enforcement. I know about this stolen phone. Nobody has signed any sort of agreements regarding privacy....
Heck no, don't turn it off!!!! This one, in particular, gets my full attention., Juicy stuff is probably going to come over this circuit, and there is no agreement anywhere for this guy to come back after me for loss of his privacy.
we just don't have the muscles for anything like that
You just struck a chord with me. I was just munching on a chicken breast.
A good handful of meat.
More than I have in my pec.
And that's just what it takes to power a chicken!
Food for thought. ( Ohhh bad pun, baaaad pun)
But honestly, if more of us had a good feel for the physics around us, we wouldn't be fooled nearly so easy by pranksters saying their kid's aloft in a balloon ( which obviously does not have sufficient volume to displace enough air to hoist a 40 pound kid! ), or inventors claiming devices producing enormous amounts of energy from a small "investment".
Heck, I just ordered some really cool 18650 lithium-ion battery chargers from China, and was amazed at the performance they had. I saw other reviews showing the design elegance of the PCB in them, so naturally I had to look up the chips to see how I could use their clever designs in some of my stuff.
I found the datasheets all right - and they are all in Chinese!
Don't worry about the pay - the government can print up anything they want. The one thing the government has to concern with is training their managers - which appear to be people some top mucky-muck is indebted to and rewarded with a "good job" in the aerospace industry. Those people have got to learn to tolerate productivity in the workplace, not just set directives and micromanage. I have never seen anything run as badly as government-funded institutions.
As we outsource more and more stuff, we become more and more dependent on those serving us. If they decide to stop sourcing a critical part, - or worse - decide its in their interest to supply a part which is "bugged" so it can be told to self-destruct ( much like some of today's software will do ) via an undocumented instruction sequence, they can insure world peace by making sure weapons using these devices fail before they do their deed.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember the post we had yesterday, where many of us bemoaned that we had to lie in order to get a job?
And employers were looking for the speedy solution instead of a well-thought out solution? It takes more time to do it right.
older means wiser to computer security
Its also been known there is no free lunch, and one generally gets what one pays for.
The problem is corporations tolerate buggy stuff if they can get it fast.
To make matters worse, the bugginess of it encourages the customers who bought in will pay more for "hopeware" in the future, that supposedly fixes the bug.
Its the business response of the problem I studied in economics of the situation of selling a man a hammer - once he's bought one, he'll never buy another as he won't another one if the hammer was made right in the first place. Far more profitable to sell "cancer treatments" - than a "cure".
I've ran across way too much "fancy presentation" stuff that simply doesn't work right. Its like hiring someone based on their dress, haircut, demeanor, and strong handshake - while ignoring what they bring to the table as far as knowing how to do the job.
I do this on my own for the precise reasons you state.
Right now, I live in a area without much temperature extremes, and close proximity to industrial supply houses.
After I get enough empirical data, and a good gut feeling of how to make this work, or if it will, I will then go somewhere like Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas to implement it large scale.
( Incidentally, the pressures aren't much higher than that found in a barbeque bottle left in the sun. Albeit I do have more piping and repurposed junk window air conditioner compressors involved )
At night, my roof faces the black sky.
I notice my car gets wet from condensation. Its "beaming" its thermal energy off into the night sky - just as it will accept energy from the sun during the day, becoming quite hot.
I figure if I am streaming 90 degree water into a solar collector at night, it may cool it off to 80 degrees or so - especially if I combine it with evaporative cooling.
Its the typical "it gets cold at night" thing.
If you were in outer space with an infrared detector over my house at night, you should see my solar collector "lit up".
The idea is I have a lot of BTU I want to get rid of in my quest to liquefy propane gas at high pressure. I can heat up air ( conventional method of doing it ), or transfer the heat to a cooler mass, ( water in my case ), evaporate water with it, and I want to experiment to see how much BTU I can radiate with a standard solar collector panel ( the ones with liquid channels ).
I would like to experiment with standard PV panels bonded onto liquid-channel panels so that during the day, the PV makes electricity, while the liquid panels not only cool the PV array, but provide preheat for a 100 gallon water tank.
Fluid circulation pumps will route water from the tank, through the collector, then back to the tank as long as collector temperature exceeds tank temperature.
Of course, once the sun sets, the panel is no longer experiences an influx of about 1KW/m^2 solar energy.
At night, it will cool off and become quite cold all by itself as it faces the night sky. That's when I am going to attempt to heat the panel back up by circulating water used to cool the propane exchanger ( condenser ). I see it as about 100 square foot of blackbody radiator. What I want is some practical experience on how many BTU I can get rid of doing it this way, as the circulator pumps draw much less energy than the fans required to move the air in a liquid-air exchanger.
I already have an aluminum roof. That thing gets so cold during the summer I have been having a problem with condensation causing mildew problems. Despite outside air temps of 80-90 F. For condensation to form, the roof has to drop below dew point temperature, and judging from how fast I am condensing liquid water from the air, I get a gut feeling I am already beaming out quite a lot of heat.
So, in a sense, I am "beaming" the energy to deep space just as a light bulb "beams" the energy of its heated filament into a dark room.
By far, the most practical is to simply evaporative cool the system... but what if water is not freely available ( design for the Middle East. ).
That is what I liked about your post. You saw the heat being generated in a server farm, and noted it was just the right temperature for use in a laundromat. A helluva lot of BTU that could have been used - wasted. If more people had your mindset, we could enjoy our creature comforts without paying twice for energy. It simply doesn't make sense to waste things.
Excellent insight there.
I am in the process of redoing my A/C so that I use a liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger ( tube-in-tube; actually mechanized as a length of copper tubing in a rubber hose ) so I can take advantage of the approx 60 deg F city water.
I figure if I am going to irrigate, the plants won't mind it at all if I warm it to about 85-90F. The refrigeration loop runs on propane - plain old barbeque gas no less. As a refrigerant, not a fuel.
The main concern I have had is the refrigerant loop runs at higher pressure than city water, so the system has to be designed in such a manner as any possible leak can not be injected into the city water main, hence using water going to irrigation - any propane leak would be harmlessly vented through the irrigation system. Not that I expect it to happen, but I never know when I will get a pinhole leak in anything and must design for that possibility.
The other end of the refrigerant loop freezes a children's swimming pool full of water in a styrofoam lined enclosure under an outdoor patio. Ice water is circulated to cool the house. The system runs offpeak hours to make ice.
I am presently looking into whether or not I can use solar collectors in reverse at night to get rid of heat, effectively using them as a blackbody radiator beaming the heat to deep space.
Nobody seems much interested in this technology, as the powers that be are now saying peak oil is a joke and we have more oil than one can imagine. I plan to move out of the city one day, I want to know I can reconstruct things that make life a lot more comfortable. What I lack in money I intend to make up for in ingenuity.
No, but it might be able to sense when you leave the room during a commercial...
It would count that commercial as being undelivered and try, try, try again until it succeeds in delivering it.
That is a good one. I'll have to run that up the flagpole at Starbucks when I drop by...
What you do is set up a "ad-hoc" network with your machine,,, then put whatever you want as the SSID. Just secure yourself with a password...nasty one... you don't have to remember it because you are going to delete the whole thing once its serves its purpose..
"And that little piggie went wee wee wee all the way home!"
Thanks, Sav!
I'll bookmark this one... that's an interesting link!
You are right... every cutting edge technology has its share of cranks - what makes it really bad is quite a few cranks use credentials from respected institutions to lend credibility to their scam.
What'cha think about this one?
http://www.terawatt.com/
Anyone using this in industrial refrigeration?
I can't help but think of deliberately running a fancoil unit with an unbalanced fan so it vibrates the evaporator coil.
Or, possibly mounting piezoelectric "shakers" to the evaporator tubes and deliberately manufacturing them to resonate.
Thanks, Hessian, for bringing this up. Anything I can do to increase efficiency in refrigeration is of great interest to me.
There are a lot of unpublished tricks I have come across that significantly increase refrigeration efficiency, but have not implemented because the expense of dealing with the increased sophistication was greater than the expense of energy loss in the simple system. This trick you showed me will make an interesting study.
I will keep it in the lab for now, as I am sure I will also face metal fatiguing and work-hardening issues.
Home site of Telecrapper...
Hilarious YouTube links there.
Try one of these...
Telecrapper 2000
When you get bored, listen to your victims discovering what they have been pitching to...
My fear is based on my trust ( or lack of it ).
I have had my share of web mischief.
It should not be possible to do this. But, in order to be interoperable with others, I have to use software whose ulterior motivations are unknown to me.
I was taught in computer science the risks of mixing code and data, yet we send "applets", claimed safe.
How do I know when one carries a keylogger or password stealer trojan?
I'd rather not have code in my data at all. This whole thing started when we assigned certain ANSI sequences to do execute, then the birth of the "ANSI bomb". So early 80's. We still have not learned our lesson.
Yes, I fear cyberterrorism in the same way I would fear climbing a tall ladder around those who would gleefully topple the thing just to watch me fall.
Would you feel safe climbing a tall ladder after you have had one inexplicably fail?
With all the antivirus companies out there trying to keep mischief out of overcomplex software, I would gladly settle for a secure subset of a much simpler software for stuff involving online business. Say, pure vanilla HTML which honors a simple subset of text, images, and sound. Any business needing an extension would have to provide it - and be responsible for its behaviour.
Everybody knows the power to tax is the power to destroy.
If you kill off a business, or even as much as discourage anyone from starting a business in the first place, money never changes hands, and NO tax is collected. Worse yet, unemployed people bug their government for handouts.
Where does a business put their money?
They hire people. They construct buildings. They pay shareholders. They buy meals in restaurants. Their employees buy homes.
None of this would have happened without the benefits of business.
Destroying a business with tax, litigation, legislation, red tape, whatever, makes about as much sense as uprooting a crop before it ever bears fruit.
We can't eat money.
Cherish those who have figured out how to organize us into some sort of productive activity.
All I ask is that competition be fair - "gaming" the system by erecting "barriers to entry" just reeks of turf-gang type behaviour and should not be tolerated.
I can see sliding tax scales on wealth accumulation,.. but taxing businesses for making a buck just seems crazy.
That buck is the life-blood of that business, and it needs that buck to perpetuate itself and grow.
Would we be better off without business? Everything I have was made by a business.
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/520078286-MQ-3-Alcohol-Ethanol-Sensor-Module-Breathalyser-Gas-Checker-Breath-Detector-090346-wholesalers.html
If you are thinking of driving home, it would be a helluva lot cheaper if this device told you about it before the Highway Patrol does.
Your devotion to science is driven by the same faction that drives mine.
.
We had a discussion on Slashdot a few days ago of correct test answers being marked as wrong. It was full of very interesting comments.
If there is anything discouraging STEM, its not Neal. He's not even on the radar screen.
Slashdot brought the dragon right out for everyone to see.
How can we get our kids interested in science, which revolves around a lot of diligent work searching for truth, only to find the rewards start out with being called the teacher's pet, progressing through "being a Boy Scout", "not a 'team player'", then forcible unemployment because one feels obligated to "do that which is right"?
The comments here on Slashdot reinforced my observation that "being liked" is far more financially productive than "being right". No wonder the kids see through it.
I got canned for standing up for what I thought was right.
Many others had the same experience.
Like religion, rejection based on your beliefs comes with the territory. A manager may want something based on how well a salesman did his job, whereas an engineer may reject it based on his experience of seeing stuff like that fail in the field. Political power ultimately rules.
From what I can tell, this country no longer needs STEM workers, as other countries can do this much cheaper than we can. I am amazed at all the high-tech parts I can get from aliexpress.com
And I am also alarmed that a lot of datasheets I am interested in are in Chinese. I have disassembled several Chinese Lithium Ion battery chargers and noted how cleverly they were made - with Chinese house-numbered parts, no less.
We cultivate a need for financial professionals, lawyers, insurance, and real-estate investment. Look at our tax laws - they really cream anybody earning a buck.
I don't blame businesses for not trying to innovate in the USA.
I am afraid to try as well. No sooner than I produce and try to sell anything, I will get sued - if for nothing more than paralyzing me until I financially die. This is on top of all the paperwork IRS requires of anyone that actually tries to DO anything in this country. Our Congress passes so much frivolous special-interest law that no-one can do anything without exposing themselves to lawsuits. Only the financially strongest can survive at that game.
We may still love science, But we find something else to do for a paycheck.
No, Neal, you are not killing STEM.
Our system is.
I have just finished reading all the replies. Thanks for all the replies.
This subject is likely the greatest enigma many of us face... that is why are we here? Do we serve a purpose in some greater scheme of things? Or are we nothing more than flotsam made up of random assemblages of matter?
Ancient religious artifacts reveal this has vexed mankind for as far back as we have recorded history.
"Tyranny of Choice" further frustrates the investigator, as there are many religious beliefs. Which one, if any, have it right?
All religions I have experienced to date will tell me that they are right and the others are wrong, yet my observations of their behavior tell me they are no different from anyone else. The "salesmanship" and "leadership" techniques used are readily identifiable by anyone who is aware of how this kind of psychology is used to influence the human psyche.
As for God=Creator, I never did define God. If I could, then I would lead the greatest religion the world has ever known, and be right. Provably right. Not hopefully right.
As far as Science vs. Religion, all I know is that every lie I have ever known came from Man. Men have that way of "leadership" which involves bending the truth to their liking. I find it hard to trust anything coming through men that I cannot verify. Unlike my scientific equipment, men will often give me biased, false, or unsubstantiated reports designed to sway my response to what they want me to do. Their whole existence seems to revolve around being liked, not being right.
Nothing really wrong with that, its the human condition, but when one is searching for absolute truths, one needs facts, not superstition.
I appreciate all of the differing viewpoints posted on this forum. You guys are why I keep coming to this site.
Well, here's the puzzle I face...
Its my senses...and what mathematical and physics I take to be true.
I observe the complexity of biochemistry. The physics of life astounds me..
A reading of "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe cemented my beliefs. Francis Collins' "The Language of God: a Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" gave me what I consider undeniable evidence for belief in a creation - and a creator ( God ).
The "Big Bang Theory" reeks of "let there be light" to me. My knowledge of thermodynamics - especially the concept of entropy - tells me the Universe, left to its own, should run down.
In short, everything I see seems to demand a creator.
Whatever this is... its big... and nothing like me - I have way too many constraints and way too little intelligence - I can barely scrape up enough stuff to even have a belief, much less explain just how this stuff around me came to be.
Now, here's the rub... I have taken much flak for this.
The most compelling evidence I have, by far, that God is nothing more than a figment of the imagination.. superstition.. a "palm reader" for the gullible. A moneymaking plan.... comes from people who profess to know God!
As a scientist type, insanely curious, it drives me up the wall to see the wonders I do, then communicate to what I consider superstitious palm reader types whose prime function seems to be erecting toll booths on the "highway to heaven" to collect tithes. They get to rocking back and forth in the pulpit, one hand wagging in the air like some Hitler scene, and the other gripping the microphone so he can just about swallow the thing - and that forced pious look on their faces,. and I am supposed to take them seriously?
This is worshipping God? It looks more like a bunko scheme to me. They get a bunch of people worked up in a fervent frenzy reminiscent of a pyramid meeting, then pass the plate. If they could not hide behind "freedom of religion", I am sure they would all be facing bunko charges of defrauding the public like a bunch of gypsy fortunetellers.
Their favorite chant seems to center on whether I place my belief in science or God. I tell them there is no difference. God is Truth, and the whole purpose of science is to reveal/discover that which is true.
My tagline for years has displayed my belief. Its THEM I have little confidence in.
Maybe I worship the God of truth through study of his work ( scientifically ) and they worship Him by throwing parties in his name at someone else's expense,
I am one confused puppy.
Amazon
Alibaba
As you can see, these things are a real goldmine on the retailer's slotwall peg.
I have had pressure-sensitive floor pads for years. You place them under the carpet. Inside them are strips of spring steel which contact each other under pressure.
They are very 60's , commonly used by shopkeepers to alert them when a customer entered. I got a few to alert me when someone was messing around my house. This was many years ago. The devices have long been replaced with other technologies.
So, would this be prior art?
( And I want to replace the whole shebang again... this time with HB100 modules. ).
Amen!
Just last night, I experienced a "drive-by" download of the "S.M.A.R.T. HDD" virus.
First, Firefox closed all by itself. I thought at the time "Oh well, another hostile JavaScript"...but its required to talk to Business sites. Better shut down and restart Windows to rid myself of it.
When I did, my Windows 7 machine restarted funny, black background, then suddenly all these windows popped up telling me my hard drive was terribly sick. Words like "critical" were flashing in red on several windows. Damn near made me soil my pants. It all looked so legit, especially the way vendors bundle all sorts of software from vendors I have never heard of in machines these days. The "S.M.A.R.T. Check" window then informed me I only had a trial version of their software and offered a payment opportunity if I wanted an immediate upgrade, or I could give it an administrator password to continue. I smelled a rat.
I put the machine to sleep.
I logged onto Google from an uncompromised machine running K-Meleon under WIN95. And verified I had this thing.
To Microsoft's credit, their "system restore points" worked. I was able to restore the system to a point baselined a week ago, and the virus disappeared.
Not satisfied yet, I got a fresh download of "Windows Defender" definitions and ran a quick scan. Nothing found. Later that night, I set the machine to do a "full scan" and it found a backdoor and a password stealer.
I get the idea the backdoor and password stealer were part of the "S.M.A.R.T." package, but needed an admin password to install them, and thats why quickscan did not find them.. Maybe someone else who has seen this beast can enlighten me.
While I am impressed that Microsoft's virus scanner found these ( according to the sources on Google, this is a hard-to-find polymorphic virus ), I have this question:
Why is it we have all this authentication, administrator and user privilege levels, and yet a rogue program can install itself in such a manner - from a restricted user account - so as to survive a reboot?
From an administrator account, yes, administrators need to install permanently residing software... but lowly users? Any software we install should be sandboxed to our own user account, and definitely not survive a reboot!
The fact I could recognize this as rogue software, and that Microsoft provided me with the methods of recognizing and removing it shows we have come a long way, but there is quite a bit left to go - things like what I just experienced should never happen.
If this "echelon" thingie our taxpayer dollars are funding actually works, can it be programmed to also look for virus signatures - so that the emitter of these signatures gets a knock on their door from 3-letter secret government agencies? Dammit, I am paying for this as a taxpayer - put all this snooping to some good use if you are going to snoop in the first place. I want some of that "safety" I have sacrificed my privacy for.
It would make no difference to me if they were free.
OTA TV is free. And it can be a real PITA at times with incessant commercial interruptions.
Commercially released stuff, laden with DRM, is simply more aggravation for me than its worth.
I never bought a Zune for the same reason. The MP3 technology I have is fine by me.
I have learned from experience that bending over backwards trying to appease special interests who want me to install their codecs or whatever to use their content is fraught with danger of bad software lodged in my machine which is sometimes very difficult to remove.
I would much rather have something safe, using standard public formats, than something laced with proprietary technologies. I feel very uncomfortable dealing with legal documents written in a foreign language as well. Even in plain English, its difficult to deal with many businesses who resort to fine grey print on the back of business forms to nail their paying customer.
When it comes to any financial dealings, or allowing rogue software in my machine, I simply do not trust. I have had too many businesses violate the trust I placed in them.
Amazon / PayPal-Ebay is dominating internet marketing because they have been paying a heck of a lot of attention to earning trust. I note Amazon has bent over backwards ( for me, at least ), to make sure I have had a pleasant experience on their site. Every Amazon merchant I have done business with has done a fine job - and Amazon reinforces this with customer reviews that are not controlled by the merchant. I have put a lot of reviews up. ( I give most 5 star ).
I am just now getting started on Alibaba, with their "escrow" service.
I do not think a lot of the businesses, trying to trick the customer base by forcing proprietary software on them, realizes how valuable the trust is - and how difficult it will be to earn trust once the customer feels screwed.
Unfortunately, a lot of small businessmen get screwed when one miscreant pulls a fast one. All the door-to-door salesmen in a neighborhood pay the price if just one con-artist is making the rounds.
Personally, I am scared as heck to give payment credentials to anyone on the net, with the exception of Alibaba and Amazon, ( and a few businesses like Digi-Key and Saelig ).
Do I feel screwed when I get some DRM'd piece of crap I paid for and I can't get it to work? Damm right I do!
Interesting....
...
The thief has a stolen cellphone.
Privacy laws supposedly exist for the paying legitimate owner of the phone.
Do these laws also apply to someone who has NOT entered into ANY sort of agreement with the seller?
Ehhhh. I am Law Enforcement. I know about this stolen phone. Nobody has signed any sort of agreements regarding privacy.
Heck no, don't turn it off!!!! This one, in particular, gets my full attention., Juicy stuff is probably going to come over this circuit, and there is no agreement anywhere for this guy to come back after me for loss of his privacy.
You just struck a chord with me. I was just munching on a chicken breast.
A good handful of meat.
More than I have in my pec.
And that's just what it takes to power a chicken!
Food for thought. ( Ohhh bad pun, baaaad pun)
But honestly, if more of us had a good feel for the physics around us, we wouldn't be fooled nearly so easy by pranksters saying their kid's aloft in a balloon ( which obviously does not have sufficient volume to displace enough air to hoist a 40 pound kid! ), or inventors claiming devices producing enormous amounts of energy from a small "investment".
Anybody remember Borland?
That is still my compiler of choice for making quickie DOS runs to check out some algorithm or interface.
It has always puzzled me as to why we needed all these new languages, when a library of C++ functions should do it.
C++ is a damn clever language - and properly implemented like Borland did, it makes for compact snappy code.
We will get H1-B's from China.
Heck, I just ordered some really cool 18650 lithium-ion battery chargers from China, and was amazed at the performance they had. I saw other reviews showing the design elegance of the PCB in them, so naturally I had to look up the chips to see how I could use their clever designs in some of my stuff.
I found the datasheets all right - and they are all in Chinese!
Don't worry about the pay - the government can print up anything they want. The one thing the government has to concern with is training their managers - which appear to be people some top mucky-muck is indebted to and rewarded with a "good job" in the aerospace industry. Those people have got to learn to tolerate productivity in the workplace, not just set directives and micromanage. I have never seen anything run as badly as government-funded institutions.
As we outsource more and more stuff, we become more and more dependent on those serving us. If they decide to stop sourcing a critical part, - or worse - decide its in their interest to supply a part which is "bugged" so it can be told to self-destruct ( much like some of today's software will do ) via an undocumented instruction sequence, they can insure world peace by making sure weapons using these devices fail before they do their deed.