180 million units per year for Linux based Android platforms does funny things to pricepoints and toolchains. You can get a full-blown Linux that supports programming in C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, Ada, and Go through the GNU Compiler Collection - and drivers to support all of these for almost any imaginable peripheral in a generation one platform. A great many other languages are available for free that plug into this. Students can build and test on a Linux PC and migrate to the ARM product or use an emulator.
That's a lot of choice to have. It lets you start just about anywhere you want - high level, low level, whatever. Any other choice of platform is going to limit your options. And where you start is where you can end because Linux doesn't top-out anywhere from this micro platform to High Performance Computing. Start anywhere else and eventually you run out of road. With Linux the student's investment in learning is well protected with a rich history and a long road ahead.
We've had enough of learning things just to forget them again. Respect the students' time by teaching them durable truths, not disposable fads.
At that time the fastest available Intel processor was the P100 - 100MHz. While technically it could address 4GB of RAM, in that day that much RAM might cost $64,000 - and of course there was no platform that offered nearly so much.
Now we're talking about platforms that are very different. For CES in January, which is probably the optimistic launch window for this product, we expect quad-core 1.5GHz ARM processors with 1GB of RAM and up to 64GB of storage in a cellular phone package at tens of millions of units of economies of scale.
Increasing the hardware performance by two orders changes the software somewhat. Using a common software platform and build tools reduces time-to-market, risks of missing the launch window, and expands the potential market. It's a good thing. Modern Linux isn't as performant as it once was on smaller platforms, but its platform flexibility and toolchain are second to none. A key example is kernel and drivers. ARM platforms get Linux kernels first and that's what power-on testing is done with. Device vendors know this and finish their Linux device drivers first so engineers can get to work on systems designs that include their products soonest. It's a race and if they aren't first with drivers for best-in-class featuresets, they sell nothing. If they win the race, manna from heaven. Other operating systems might or might not get drivers someday, but neither the fact nor timing is certain.
Before anybody gets freaky, "the year they hanged the lawyers" is a cultural reference to Robert Anson Heinlein, which in his science fiction work "The Number of the Beast" happened in 1965 in an alternate universe from which time there is no entry "lawyer" in the phone book (A tell for which universe you're in).
It's not a cultural reference to Shakespeare's Henry VI (1591), nor any prior work Shakespeare stole his inspiration from (which was his habit).
I'm going to echo walshy007 here. Google's big, but they can't yet fit everybody under their shield. People need to stand up for themselves. They're making money so they can set a little aside for that. They need to put some of their margin toward legal defense because that's the world we live in. That's the cost of providing progress now: you have to build in some lawyer money to the costs overhead.
For all of me this would go away if we hung all the lawyers.
I'd like providing progress to be free too, but until we do away with patents and/or hang the lawyers that's not going to happen.
Hanging the lawyers is looking more and more feasible and cost-effective each year.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Robert A Heinlein, Life-Line, 1939.
OK fine. I quoted the 1920 publication because I didn't have access to the priors. All of these are out of copyright. Did I get the author right at least?
I hope that lost soul loses his modpoints for a good long time. It's not a trivial thing to search 100 years of art and find a text so relevant and poignant to put at the top of the comment tree in the time provided. If i have to praise myself, that was well done.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
The Geysers is a relic. Geothermal heat has been commercially exploited there since 1852, and by natives for thousands of years before that as hot baths. It was first tapped for electricity 1960, the first commercial geothermal electricity plant in the US.
It's one of the cheapest powerplants in the world per KWh. (Well, whatever - many plants in a 30sq mi area). It's a dry steam plant. They do need to upgrade to modern binary cycle, where everything that comes up from the ground goes back into the ground - a closed cycle. They could get much more efficiency this way and eliminate the need for so much injection because binary cycle plants recover energy from a much lower temperature delta. They're probably not doing it yet because it's not yet the least expensive option at this site, but that's not the fault of modern geothermal power. I understand the upgrade is planned. The Geyser's site is almost unique, and I could not have been talking about this mode of geothermal energy for other people because other people don't have this rich resource.
WRT arsenic, arsenic is a valuable industrial chemical. No doubt someone will mine that arsenic and concrete sandwich one day. Per equivalent energy output coal produces far more arsenic in addition to more harmful things - and nuclear produces far more. I assure you that a few tons of arsenic are easier rendered inert and nontoxic than the mass of nuclear fuel that would be required to produce the same power. The Geysers powers 60% of the homes between Sacramento and the Oregon border - power for 1.1 million people.
The plants I was talking about don't use thermal resources located so close to the surface that increasing venting is an issue. That entire area has been venting toxic gases and fluids from beneath the ground for a hundred million years. That's what made it such a fertile field for early geothermal work. It was low-hanging fruit in a day when we lacked the tech to drill so deep and exploit the energy beneath our feet everywhere. There's a reason you don't drink the water in the hot spring.
As to anecdotal evidence of two-headed calves and such, against the region's natural output I'm doubtful that the powerplants made a significant environmental impact. Perhaps you have links to a study? For the general case it's neither here nor there because as I said, active geothermal regions aren't required for the modern Enhanced Geothermal Systems so those issues aren't present and if they were, the toxins would be put back where they came from.
PV is a grand idea. I support it wholeheartedly. I look forward to the day when a PV cell can generate more energy in its lifecycle than the energy required to produce it, install and maintain it, and recycle it. Hopefully by then they won't be made of the exact same chemicals you're complaining about. One day when PV achieves perhaps 30% efficiency and becomes as cheap as paint we'll all be able to unhook from the grid - or even power the grid with our excess.
Since this is going longish I may as well go the extra few feet and solve the whole problem. We wouldn't need so much power if we weren't wasting so much. Much power goes to heating and cooling homes - and much of that can be alleviated with insulation and roofs (and maybe walls) that are white where it's hot and black where it's cold. A roof that changes shade according to the desired temperature in the home would be a greater energy savings than PV cells. We have thermally color-changing paints, so this shouldn't be a big deal. Our electronics need to drop in power, and they are doing so now that we're moving to LCD TVs and ARM processors, lighting is moving to LED so that issue may go away without other action. Particularly with LED there is some good work to be done. The last big modern home energy sink is heating water. I do love my hot water. Hot water on tap is the hallmark of civilization. If you have some back issues of Mother Earth News from the 1980s they have many solutions to this problem, mos
Whatever. The plan failed. What it was and how it failed is irrelevant. There is no plan to be rid of the spent fuel now. Until there's a reliable plan for disposing of the waste, producing spent fuel is irresponsible.
I think we're better off with geothermal. It's like nuclear in that it uses a heatsource to heat a medium that conducts heat, and flashes to drive a turbine. Unlike nuclear instead of highly toxic nuclear fuel that generates even more toxic waste we have no plan to be permanently rid of, it uses an even more scientific space-age technology to heat the water commonly referred to as "a deep hole in the ground". As an added benefit, it's hard to steal a hole in the ground when you're done with it.
Before you call nuclear power cheap you have to come up with a plan and a cost for the whole lifecycle of a nuclear plant - including disposal of the spent fuel. Otherwise you don't know what you spent for the power you got. Since there is no plan to dispose if the spent fuel, there can be no costing associated with it. So we really have no idea how much this power actually costs yet. Cheap nuclear power is a myth.
Producing spent fuel with no plan to be permanently rid of it is simply irresponsible.
In Fukushima it wound up in the food chain fairly immediately. They were fortunate as the prevailing winds blow offshore, and the deliberate dumping of contaminated water went into a very big Pacific ocean - but large swaths of island were impacted anyway.
In the US it's a different story. Downwind from just about everywhere is the highly populated Eastern seaboard. In the middle of America the only way to dump that water is to put it into a tributary of the Mississipi.
Slashdot Mirror
180 million units per year for Linux based Android platforms does funny things to pricepoints and toolchains. You can get a full-blown Linux that supports programming in C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, Ada, and Go through the GNU Compiler Collection - and drivers to support all of these for almost any imaginable peripheral in a generation one platform. A great many other languages are available for free that plug into this. Students can build and test on a Linux PC and migrate to the ARM product or use an emulator.
That's a lot of choice to have. It lets you start just about anywhere you want - high level, low level, whatever. Any other choice of platform is going to limit your options. And where you start is where you can end because Linux doesn't top-out anywhere from this micro platform to High Performance Computing. Start anywhere else and eventually you run out of road. With Linux the student's investment in learning is well protected with a rich history and a long road ahead.
We've had enough of learning things just to forget them again. Respect the students' time by teaching them durable truths, not disposable fads.
At that time the fastest available Intel processor was the P100 - 100MHz. While technically it could address 4GB of RAM, in that day that much RAM might cost $64,000 - and of course there was no platform that offered nearly so much.
Now we're talking about platforms that are very different. For CES in January, which is probably the optimistic launch window for this product, we expect quad-core 1.5GHz ARM processors with 1GB of RAM and up to 64GB of storage in a cellular phone package at tens of millions of units of economies of scale.
Increasing the hardware performance by two orders changes the software somewhat. Using a common software platform and build tools reduces time-to-market, risks of missing the launch window, and expands the potential market. It's a good thing. Modern Linux isn't as performant as it once was on smaller platforms, but its platform flexibility and toolchain are second to none. A key example is kernel and drivers. ARM platforms get Linux kernels first and that's what power-on testing is done with. Device vendors know this and finish their Linux device drivers first so engineers can get to work on systems designs that include their products soonest. It's a race and if they aren't first with drivers for best-in-class featuresets, they sell nothing. If they win the race, manna from heaven. Other operating systems might or might not get drivers someday, but neither the fact nor timing is certain.
Before anybody gets freaky, "the year they hanged the lawyers" is a cultural reference to Robert Anson Heinlein, which in his science fiction work "The Number of the Beast" happened in 1965 in an alternate universe from which time there is no entry "lawyer" in the phone book (A tell for which universe you're in).
It's not a cultural reference to Shakespeare's Henry VI (1591), nor any prior work Shakespeare stole his inspiration from (which was his habit).
I'm going to echo walshy007 here. Google's big, but they can't yet fit everybody under their shield. People need to stand up for themselves. They're making money so they can set a little aside for that. They need to put some of their margin toward legal defense because that's the world we live in. That's the cost of providing progress now: you have to build in some lawyer money to the costs overhead.
For all of me this would go away if we hung all the lawyers.
I'd like providing progress to be free too, but until we do away with patents and/or hang the lawyers that's not going to happen.
Hanging the lawyers is looking more and more feasible and cost-effective each year.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Robert A Heinlein, Life-Line, 1939.
I can't wait until Windows Mobile gets some traction. "Verizon and HTC recommend Windows Phone 12!" on every page.
Then that would be yes, it's their fault. Who's fault could it be?
I don't know if you knew this, but Verizon Binged their Droids. There's no tying here.
The reasonable thing to do is not to marry them and go shopping for weapons together.
It means to take a bribe to ruin a good product by integrating an inferior search function. "Verizon binged my Droid".
That's going to be the most help. Make out the check to fsf. You're welcome.
OK fine. It's art. It is what it means to you. That is the point of art.
OK fine. I quoted the 1920 publication because I didn't have access to the priors. All of these are out of copyright. Did I get the author right at least?
Including you.
I hope that lost soul loses his modpoints for a good long time. It's not a trivial thing to search 100 years of art and find a text so relevant and poignant to put at the top of the comment tree in the time provided. If i have to praise myself, that was well done.
Slashdot is lost.
- Robert Frost, 1920
The Geysers is a relic. Geothermal heat has been commercially exploited there since 1852, and by natives for thousands of years before that as hot baths. It was first tapped for electricity 1960, the first commercial geothermal electricity plant in the US.
It's one of the cheapest powerplants in the world per KWh. (Well, whatever - many plants in a 30sq mi area). It's a dry steam plant. They do need to upgrade to modern binary cycle, where everything that comes up from the ground goes back into the ground - a closed cycle. They could get much more efficiency this way and eliminate the need for so much injection because binary cycle plants recover energy from a much lower temperature delta. They're probably not doing it yet because it's not yet the least expensive option at this site, but that's not the fault of modern geothermal power. I understand the upgrade is planned. The Geyser's site is almost unique, and I could not have been talking about this mode of geothermal energy for other people because other people don't have this rich resource.
WRT arsenic, arsenic is a valuable industrial chemical. No doubt someone will mine that arsenic and concrete sandwich one day. Per equivalent energy output coal produces far more arsenic in addition to more harmful things - and nuclear produces far more. I assure you that a few tons of arsenic are easier rendered inert and nontoxic than the mass of nuclear fuel that would be required to produce the same power. The Geysers powers 60% of the homes between Sacramento and the Oregon border - power for 1.1 million people.
The plants I was talking about don't use thermal resources located so close to the surface that increasing venting is an issue. That entire area has been venting toxic gases and fluids from beneath the ground for a hundred million years. That's what made it such a fertile field for early geothermal work. It was low-hanging fruit in a day when we lacked the tech to drill so deep and exploit the energy beneath our feet everywhere. There's a reason you don't drink the water in the hot spring.
As to anecdotal evidence of two-headed calves and such, against the region's natural output I'm doubtful that the powerplants made a significant environmental impact. Perhaps you have links to a study? For the general case it's neither here nor there because as I said, active geothermal regions aren't required for the modern Enhanced Geothermal Systems so those issues aren't present and if they were, the toxins would be put back where they came from.
PV is a grand idea. I support it wholeheartedly. I look forward to the day when a PV cell can generate more energy in its lifecycle than the energy required to produce it, install and maintain it, and recycle it. Hopefully by then they won't be made of the exact same chemicals you're complaining about. One day when PV achieves perhaps 30% efficiency and becomes as cheap as paint we'll all be able to unhook from the grid - or even power the grid with our excess.
Since this is going longish I may as well go the extra few feet and solve the whole problem. We wouldn't need so much power if we weren't wasting so much. Much power goes to heating and cooling homes - and much of that can be alleviated with insulation and roofs (and maybe walls) that are white where it's hot and black where it's cold. A roof that changes shade according to the desired temperature in the home would be a greater energy savings than PV cells. We have thermally color-changing paints, so this shouldn't be a big deal. Our electronics need to drop in power, and they are doing so now that we're moving to LCD TVs and ARM processors, lighting is moving to LED so that issue may go away without other action. Particularly with LED there is some good work to be done. The last big modern home energy sink is heating water. I do love my hot water. Hot water on tap is the hallmark of civilization. If you have some back issues of Mother Earth News from the 1980s they have many solutions to this problem, mos
Whatever. The plan failed. What it was and how it failed is irrelevant. There is no plan to be rid of the spent fuel now. Until there's a reliable plan for disposing of the waste, producing spent fuel is irresponsible.
Not really, no. Some are just better than others.
I think we're better off with geothermal. It's like nuclear in that it uses a heatsource to heat a medium that conducts heat, and flashes to drive a turbine. Unlike nuclear instead of highly toxic nuclear fuel that generates even more toxic waste we have no plan to be permanently rid of, it uses an even more scientific space-age technology to heat the water commonly referred to as "a deep hole in the ground". As an added benefit, it's hard to steal a hole in the ground when you're done with it.
Well since you asked... http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html
Before you call nuclear power cheap you have to come up with a plan and a cost for the whole lifecycle of a nuclear plant - including disposal of the spent fuel. Otherwise you don't know what you spent for the power you got. Since there is no plan to dispose if the spent fuel, there can be no costing associated with it. So we really have no idea how much this power actually costs yet. Cheap nuclear power is a myth.
Producing spent fuel with no plan to be permanently rid of it is simply irresponsible.
Well, they CAN explode. Just not in that way.
In Fukushima it wound up in the food chain fairly immediately. They were fortunate as the prevailing winds blow offshore, and the deliberate dumping of contaminated water went into a very big Pacific ocean - but large swaths of island were impacted anyway.
In the US it's a different story. Downwind from just about everywhere is the highly populated Eastern seaboard. In the middle of America the only way to dump that water is to put it into a tributary of the Mississipi.