From their web site: General Fusion is a Canadian venture capital-backed company led by a team of experienced physicists and technology development experts. We are working with government, institutional and industrial partners and consultants to develop a full-scale proof-of-concept fusion generator to demonstrate a net gain in energy within four years – something that traditional approaches have never achieved. Commercialization would take place before the end of the decade.
Image of a Plasma Injector
“The closest to a potential reactor scheme is what General Fusion is proposing.”
—R. Kirkpatrick, Los Alamos National Laboratory [Popular Science, January 2009]
Running a highly reliable RTOS like QNX on nuclear reactor controllers is quite reassuring to me.
Finding out that other control systems use embedded NT or XP is not reassuring, especially when they are networked.
The requirements for a safety critical system are much different than for general purpose computing.
Stuxnet should not have been possible on factory controllers.
Who is using moderate priced ERP software that they like?
What is a good choice of ERP software for a small company that will grow into a medium sized company ($5million to $20million)?
I would like to avoid the experience Montclair State University had, and work with a good software package that doesn't need a lot of expensive consulting to customize it for my company.
Be also aware that this statement is about carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant, although it is a greenhouse gas.
China is also ramping up it's release of pollutants as it installs many more coal fired power plants (in addition to nuclear, solar, wind, dams etc.). The NOX and SOX and other pollutants released by industries and power plants are a worse problem than CO2.
China has a tough problem. It is expensive to expand industry without polluting, and they have often taken the cheap route in the past.
I was surprised to see that the MSN Direct watch service is still running, but not accepting new customers. It's shutting down in a few months.
direct.msn.com says, "Notice: Beginning November 1st, 2010, Microsoft will no longer be accepting new subscriptions to the MSN Direct Smart Watch service. As announced in 2009, Microsoft will continue MSN Direct Smart Watch service until January 1, 2012. All existing customers as of October 31st, 2010 will still continue to receive service until January 1, 2012.
A programmable watch with communications is a great idea. The market will help pick the right features/size/ price, and these two watches help that process as people explore new applications.
Texas Instruments has 3 watch styles with low-power MSP430 microcontrollers. The $200 models have Bluetooth and the older $49 watches have a simpler digital display and ISM band wireless links.
> "they dropped that stuff like a bad habit"
The didn't drop the test equipment line, they split HP into 2 companies, HP and Agilent.
Agilent is still making fine test equipment.
http://www.agilent.com/
It seems that Microsoft is trying to do the right thing by removing the use of supercookies.
Why not list the names of the other companies using these cookies so we can avoid them rather than single out Microsoft who is doing something about it?
Did anyone find the article listing the companies found to be using supercookies in July?
"In July, Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student at Stanford, revealed that some companies..."
We may avoid the offending sites, but usually we won't know if advertisers on those sites are using them.
The Mbed is another board to consider to get a microcontroller project up and running quickly.
It has a ARM processor, 512k flash, 64k RAM, and it plugs into a breadboard.
A C compiler is available online "in the cloud" to build your application with free libraries for the peripherals.
It also has ethernet and USB, so it is quite a bit more capable than the Arduino.
See http://www.mbed.org/ for details.
For those that would like to try Go on a PC, there is a good version on Go for DOS & Windows called IGO by David Fotland, and it's free.
I've been using the DOS version which runs fine in a DOS window on a Windows PC.
There is a Windows version called Igowin and a version for the iPhone or iPod Touch or iPad.
I haven't tried the iPhone version yet.
IGO plays on a reduced sized 9x9 board, but is good for an introduction to the game.
The fill size version with a 19x19 board is called The Many Faces of Go and is available for purchase.
The readme.txt file says:
This program contains the same go engine as The Many Faces of Go, but
only uses the first 5 levels (out of 10). It uses the same graphics
as The Many Faces of Go, but is limited to 9x9 boards only.
I think it would be beneficial for elevators to close doors and move on if the passengers are ready.
I suspect most elevators do make use of this input to increase throughput.
Perhaps only Otis elevators don't use this input. A good slogan for their competitors would be "Our Close buttons work."
Take a look at this week's Nova episode "Trapped in an Elevator".
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/trapped-elevator.html
They talk about how one hotel had a 30% increase in elevator throughput by getting users to input the floor they wanted rather than just use up/down buttons.
They could then pick up all people going to the same floor and optimize which elevator to send.
They will have to spend big to get out of the zone of irrelevancy. It sounds like a miscalculation born of arrogance to me.
A few posts have made the point that Amazon is better at presenting relevant content than Google when it comes to showing a catalog of things you are likely to buy.
Another reason that I think Amazon will succeed in this venture is that they have a large customer base that trusts them.
A study was done that found that Amazon.com is the most trusted brand in U.S.A.
When learning someone else's code, I have found Juergen Mueller's C Exploration Tools to be very useful.
The CFT utility (C Function Tree Generator) provides a summary of the functions and calling hierarchy.
The CST utility (C Structure Tree Generator) gives a summary of the data structures and how they are nested.
I don't think these utilities have been updated for quite a while.
Can anyone suggest more modern versions of tools that do similar code analysis and reporting?
Embedded-Code.com sells C source code for FAT32/FAT16 drivers for use in embedded projects.
In their product web page they have an interesting section titled "Don't think you need FAT32?". In that paragraph they say that FAT32 is less susceptible to a single point of failure than FAT16 due to the use of a backup copy of critical data structures in the boot record.
See their MMC/SD Memory Card FAT16/FAT32 Driver page.
I presume this is referring to the second copy of the FAT table.
Do all OS's back up with a second FAT copy (or other data) to make the media more reliable.
Are there other steps an embedded application can take to make SD cards more reliable?
e.g. read back after write, use checksums or CRCs in data files, use FEC (forward error correction), write two copies of files...???
Is it better to use a non-FAT file system for reliability if PC compatibility isn't essential.
The explanations are simple and the diagrams are helpful. It contains both basic circuit theory and example circuits to show how components are used.
I bought the Radio Shack version of this book back in grade school. It was very helpful in learning how to read schematics and build basic projects. A bit of helpful advise is also mixed in throughout.
His Engineer's Notebook series of books are also helpful to get basic circuit ideas.
Does anyone have any comments pro/con on SpinRite from Gibson Research (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm).
It claims to detect and repair disk errors before they are a problem with a low level scan.
I bought it an used it on a server drive that had errors disk DOS file copies. It fixed the problem and no data was lost, but I don't have any other experience with it.
The program sounds pretty amazing from their web site.
Are many companies using it for preventative maintenance to avoid data loss on their servers?
Slashdot Mirror
2.4 percent = $249 million
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html
Expression Studio 4 Web Professional * Estimated Retail Price $149 USD
Expression Studio 4 Ultimate * Estimated Retail Price $599 USD
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Purchase.aspx
What do you think of their approach? They is a mechanical-acoustic means of compressing the plasma.
http://www.generalfusion.com/
From their web site: General Fusion is a Canadian venture capital-backed company led by a team of experienced physicists and technology development experts. We are working with government, institutional and industrial partners and consultants to develop a full-scale proof-of-concept fusion generator to demonstrate a net gain in energy within four years – something that traditional approaches have never achieved. Commercialization would take place before the end of the decade. Image of a Plasma Injector
“The closest to a potential reactor scheme is what General Fusion is proposing.” —R. Kirkpatrick, Los Alamos National Laboratory [Popular Science, January 2009]
Finding out that other control systems use embedded NT or XP is not reassuring, especially when they are networked.
The requirements for a safety critical system are much different than for general purpose computing.
Stuxnet should not have been possible on factory controllers.
What is a good choice of ERP software for a small company that will grow into a medium sized company ($5million to $20million)?
I would like to avoid the experience Montclair State University had, and work with a good software package that doesn't need a lot of expensive consulting to customize it for my company.
China is also ramping up it's release of pollutants as it installs many more coal fired power plants (in addition to nuclear, solar, wind, dams etc.). The NOX and SOX and other pollutants released by industries and power plants are a worse problem than CO2.
China has a tough problem. It is expensive to expand industry without polluting, and they have often taken the cheap route in the past.
http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/expert-advice-mss-misinformation-and-ten-truths-12353
direct.msn.com says, "Notice: Beginning November 1st, 2010, Microsoft will no longer be accepting new subscriptions to the MSN Direct Smart Watch service. As announced in 2009, Microsoft will continue MSN Direct Smart Watch service until January 1, 2012. All existing customers as of October 31st, 2010 will still continue to receive service until January 1, 2012.
...And lots of companies were building smart phones before Apple hit upon the iPhone with the most successful combination of features (so far).
Texas Instruments has 3 watch styles with low-power MSP430 microcontrollers. The $200 models have Bluetooth and the older $49 watches have a simpler digital display and ISM band wireless links.
https://estore.ti.com/Search.aspx?k=watch
http://www.metawatch.org/
https://estore.ti.com/MSP-WDS430BT2000D-Bluetooth-Wearable-Watch-development-system-with-Digital-display-P2447.aspx
https://estore.ti.com/MSP-WDS430BT1000AD-Bluetooth-Wearable-Watch-development-system-with-Analog-Digital-display-P2446.asp
https://estore.ti.com/eZ430-Chronos-433-eZ430-Chronos-Wireless-Watch-Development-Tool-P1734.aspx
> "they dropped that stuff like a bad habit" The didn't drop the test equipment line, they split HP into 2 companies, HP and Agilent. Agilent is still making fine test equipment. http://www.agilent.com/
Why not list the names of the other companies using these cookies so we can avoid them rather than single out Microsoft who is doing something about it?
Did anyone find the article listing the companies found to be using supercookies in July? "In July, Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student at Stanford, revealed that some companies..."
We may avoid the offending sites, but usually we won't know if advertisers on those sites are using them.
The Mbed is another board to consider to get a microcontroller project up and running quickly. It has a ARM processor, 512k flash, 64k RAM, and it plugs into a breadboard.
A C compiler is available online "in the cloud" to build your application with free libraries for the peripherals. It also has ethernet and USB, so it is quite a bit more capable than the Arduino.
See http://www.mbed.org/ for details.
For those that would like to try Go on a PC, there is a good version on Go for DOS & Windows called IGO by David Fotland, and it's free.
I've been using the DOS version which runs fine in a DOS window on a Windows PC.
There is a Windows version called Igowin and a version for the iPhone or iPod Touch or iPad.
I haven't tried the iPhone version yet.
IGO plays on a reduced sized 9x9 board, but is good for an introduction to the game.
The fill size version with a 19x19 board is called The Many Faces of Go and is available for purchase.
The readme.txt file says:
This program contains the same go engine as The Many Faces of Go, but only uses the first 5 levels (out of 10). It uses the same graphics as The Many Faces of Go, but is limited to 9x9 boards only.
To download:
http://www.smart-games.com/igo.html
http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.html
[the Windows has info on the iPod version]
"Sustainable energy - without the hot air", available as a free PDF download.
I haven't read it yet, but I will given his credibility with the article and other book.
http://www.withouthotair.com/ or http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/
Here is a podcast of a lecture he gave at Cambridge on the topic of sustainable energy.
http://mediaplayer.group.cam.ac.uk/component/option,com_mediadb/task,play/idstr,CU-CSF-Lectures_2008-12_David_MacKay/vv,-1/Itemid,42
I think it would be beneficial for elevators to close doors and move on if the passengers are ready. I suspect most elevators do make use of this input to increase throughput. Perhaps only Otis elevators don't use this input. A good slogan for their competitors would be "Our Close buttons work." Take a look at this week's Nova episode "Trapped in an Elevator". http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/trapped-elevator.html They talk about how one hotel had a 30% increase in elevator throughput by getting users to input the floor they wanted rather than just use up/down buttons. They could then pick up all people going to the same floor and optimize which elevator to send.
They will have to spend big to get out of the zone of irrelevancy. It sounds like a miscalculation born of arrogance to me.
A few posts have made the point that Amazon is better at presenting relevant content than Google when it comes to showing a catalog of things you are likely to buy.
Another reason that I think Amazon will succeed in this venture is that they have a large customer base that trusts them. A study was done that found that Amazon.com is the most trusted brand in U.S.A.
Here is a link to a blog discussing it: "Study: Amazon.com is most trusted brand in U.S." http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10457727-62.html
Note: Some brands that did well in other countries were Nokia, Toyota, Colgate, Pampers. Microsoft was #1 most trusted in the Czeck Republic.
The CFT utility (C Function Tree Generator) provides a summary of the functions and calling hierarchy.
The CST utility (C Structure Tree Generator) gives a summary of the data structures and how they are nested.
I don't think these utilities have been updated for quite a while. Can anyone suggest more modern versions of tools that do similar code analysis and reporting?
In their product web page they have an interesting section titled "Don't think you need FAT32?". In that paragraph they say that FAT32 is less susceptible to a single point of failure than FAT16 due to the use of a backup copy of critical data structures in the boot record. See their MMC/SD Memory Card FAT16/FAT32 Driver page.
I presume this is referring to the second copy of the FAT table. Do all OS's back up with a second FAT copy (or other data) to make the media more reliable.
Are there other steps an embedded application can take to make SD cards more reliable? e.g. read back after write, use checksums or CRCs in data files, use FEC (forward error correction), write two copies of files ...???
Is it better to use a non-FAT file system for reliability if PC compatibility isn't essential.
The explanations are simple and the diagrams are helpful. It contains both basic circuit theory and example circuits to show how components are used.
I bought the Radio Shack version of this book back in grade school. It was very helpful in learning how to read schematics and build basic projects. A bit of helpful advise is also mixed in throughout.
His Engineer's Notebook series of books are also helpful to get basic circuit ideas.
The program sounds pretty amazing from their web site.
Are many companies using it for preventative maintenance to avoid data loss on their servers?