There are many alternative concepts for low- or no-carbon energy in the drawers. Hoewever, most of them still have the status of an unproven technology. They are perceived as being driven mostly by tree-hugging nerds who can't do the math, or mad-scientist type of guys who are desperately fighting for a silly idea. For some this may be true, for some it certainly is not. But to know which tech belongs to which category, a serios research investment needs to happen.
Now imaginge that a country of the size of the United States would invest just the cost of 1 month worth of Iraq war into the development of alternative energys. A research facility town in a desert, funded with anything they need to prove whatever technology promises to deliver clean energy on a larger scale, and invest what is necessary to solve the problem, or dismiss the technology, could probably do more for the world climate and world economy than most other measures.
The Manhattan project was an example of an must-do project where absolutely anything needed to solve a complex technical problem was done, investing any manpower and money possibly needed to solve the task.
Now think of doing the same, but this time not to build the most destructive weapon on the planet, but to get rid of oil as the primary energy source, lose the handcuffs of oil dependency, and save the climate.
I suspect you're seeing real-time inventory in action
I doubt that because, as I said, I reloaded both pages at the same time, several times, to rule out any data change. And if the web shop's availability forecast should oscillate on a sub-second basis, what value should it have to the customer?
While I understand why a seller wants to offer the same thing at different prices for different customers (although I don't think it is ethical), it eludes me why they would want to present different delivery dates to different customers.
A while ago I was looking for a certain book. I came across a link to the same book sold at http://www.amazon.de/ (the German Amazon shop). I followed the link twice, but with two different browsers. I ended up looking at the same page with two different browsers, each with its own history and cookie cache. In one window I was presented with 1-2 days availability, in the other one I was told it would take 3 days. I reloaded both pages at the same time to rule out that any change in data was the cause for this. After I cleared all private data on both browsers, both showed the 3 days availability.
The only difference I can think of that Amazon could take into account for calculating the date is the data stored in certain tracking cookies. I don't have an Amazon account, so they can't have used my past buying behavior pattern, or even identified my as a previous customer.
I feel this behavior is hard to explain and unethical. It leaves me with the feeling of being lied at deliberately by an online shop, just based on their prediction of my buying or complaining behavior.
It accelerates from 0 to 100 kph (60 mph) in 17 seconds. That's not much, in the regions of a cheap 2+2 seat offroad car or a cheaper van. However, it accelerates much faster in the range of 0 - 50 kph range. It has a sequential 6 gear shift which can be switched between semiautomatic and automatic. The engine has 599 ccm (699 ccm in newer models), is available as a Diesel engine also, it has 40 kW (54 HP), the maximum speed is 130 kph (electronic cut-off, without it it goes about 165 kph). It has air condition, ESP, ABS, 4 airbags (2 as an extra), and although it is not cheap, it is VERY cost effective.
BTW, I have been driving at -25 C, and no, the body panels did not shatter when I slammed a door. It has rear wheel drive, which actually is more of a problem in winter.
You are right. My point was to illustrate how resilient the plastic is. If the impact is bigger, the material gets ripped apart.
Due to the module system of the smart car, it is much easier to just change the body panel and thus hide the damage. So if you buy a used smart, always be sure to investigate the chassis.
On the other hand, you have to be careful with normal cars too. If a newer BMW, for example, bumps into an obstacle, the first thing that is impacted are "impact boxes" located in the bumpers. They are crushed, absorbing a part of the energy. Changing these is expensive, but they are not visible from the outside.
But even on ordinary cars, there is alway the potential of hidden damage after an accident. Someone I know bought a used car in seemingly perfect state. When it went through the mandatory 2-year technical investigation (TÜV in Germany), they found out it basically FUBR because the frame was distorted. 5000 down the drain.
The article mentions a car that is already available which has full plastic parts. More info can be found at the Smart website. I drive one of these, and I have bumped into obstacles while parking several times. Unlike a metal body, the plastic panel just springs back into shape after a bump. With a metal body, it would have been damaged visibly.
Other Smart drivers reported that after a crash, the car had no visible damge while the invisible parts beneath the body panels had been damaged severely, but the robust body panel had been hiding the damage.
I can really recommend these cars. They are the ultimate opposite to an SUV. 2.49 m long (7.5 feet!), 695 kg gross weight, can turn on a dime... wonderful.
Of course, the Creator has created all living beings in such a way that their "evolution", as the rationalist "Spock" type of guys understand it, is plausible within their model of the world. Much like the dinosaur bones that he implanted into the dirt for our scientists to find them.
My company is offering full flex time too. Right now, we register our arrival and departure time, and we are getting paid for overtime. The higher management, however, wants to get rid of time registration completely. They are trying to sell this to the employees as total freedom of work and a sign of trust they have in us (the employees). The true rationale, however, is that once the time registration is gone, you won't get paid for overtime work, so the development plans can be even more rigid without the company having to pay overtime rates. From a management point of view, getting rid of the time registration process can save huge amounts of money. Ask your manager how he would like this one. But ask yourself first how you would like this... Of course, my fear is full flex time without time registration is a modern slavery.
This fix does not improve the user's security. It improves Microsoft's security. On the web page, they basically say: "We don't give a f* about how you share files over the internet, as long as you are not using MS Outlook". Obviously, the only reason for this is that they don't want the negative press next time an email worm starts traveling. This move shows that MS doesn't care about the customer's security. If they would, the right move was to encourage users to use Outlook for sending their attachments, but implement a security model so it would not be dangerous. Thanks, Microsoft. Thank you for caring.
The trial will be going on for years and years to come. The article is right in saying that it will distract Microsoft management from other tasks they have to accomplish, but the judgement, whatever it will be, won't be effective until the trial is settled. And, if the MS lawyers are worth their money (and I'm sure they are), this will be years from now. So of course this is good news, it's good news only morally, not in practice.
I believe it when I see it. The article says that Hamburg politicians and a consortium of local banks have signed a document of understanding that says that a treaty is going to be signed -- so nothing is really finished yet. It seems to me that no-one really knows what their decision really means. The article says that every Hamburg citizen will be entitled to get a free homepage of up to 10 pages -- given that the number of pages a website has is completely irrelevant compared to its size in bytes, I'm pretty sure none of the participants actually knew what everyone was talking about. I think it's a great idea, but I don't think we will see this in the near future.
The participants don't seem to know that the suggested email name scheme is ridiculous for a large town like hamburg;
they feel that offering a free online service is a good offering in Germany (which, as posters above have pointed out, isn't true since it's the f#@$ing Telekom minute fees that make surfing hideously expensive (I pay about DM 150 or 70 Dollars per month for surfing),
and they don't seem to know what they are saying: Getting 1,8 million potential new customers within days is something that would even challenge the largest ISPs in Germany; the small ISP they seem to be using will be washed away by the wave.
Nevertheless, it's a great idea, and I hope they will get some help from someone who can handle this and finally get it done.
I see a major merger coming our way -- IBM is starting to integrate their product names with the Hewlett Packard product naming conventions! Or maybe they hope people will take it for the newest HP printer and buy it right away.
This is about your 10th post to this story, including the silly "It's slasdotted." -- "It's up again." monologue. This may be an interesting story/discussion, but your posting all that crap with a +1 score bonus makes it sort of annoying.
Don't you think it's time for you to get a life?
One step close to Blade Runner!!!
on
Nano Logo
·
· Score: 1
Hey, remember that scene in Blade Runner when Deckard has the piece of snake skin examined, and the expert detects a nano logo on it? I always hated this scene becaue I thought is was a silly idea. Now reality has caught up with it. Like in the movie, artists, painters etc. can pour a bag of nano logo particles into their paint to mark their work. Print the lot number onto them and dump them into the chocolate bar you are producing, so that you can trace back even the slightest amount of it back to its origin. Mix nanologo particles into a car's paint so that the serial number is everywhere on the car, not just imprinted into the engine block. Mass produced nano logo particles could be used to make dollar bills, ID cards etc. harder to falsify. I'm sure there hundreds of ideas more what you can do with it, besides making integrated circuits.
It seems you have missed the point of Open Source entirely. OSS is not about "Anyone can get the source code", it's about "Anyone can get the source code, modify it, publish the results and do what the heck he wants with it (well, almost)". With respect to being "worthy": I read the press release as stating that you will have to become an "Affiliate" before you get the source code; and for becoming an affiliate you have to present a web site you are running. The press release is ambigious about this, so maybe I am wrong. (But if I am wrong: where is the download page for the source code?)
Altavista has been offering its search engine (executables) for download for quite a while here. It is not the same engine they use on their web site. Here is the press release from Altavista.
The article doesn't mention that Altavista is going to open source theit source code. It says that the source code will be given to applicants who can present a "real" web site they are running. It would be great news if the source code would truly be GP-licensed or whatever OS license model Altavista would choose, but I doubt they will do that. Also remember that the search engine that you can obtain from Alta Vista is not the same as the one that's running their web site. It used to be downloadable before, and my information is that it does not scale as good as the AltaVista.com web page search engine does.
Contrary to most people here, I don't think this is a good idea. If you have ever been to Italy, you have seen the consequences of having many small radio stations all over the place. It maybe okay if the weather is always perfect and you don't ever move away from where you are. But many people like me like listening to the radio while driving. Imagine that you are driving along, and your receiver hops to one station after another, because you constantly leave one broadcasting range and enter another. I remember when driving in Italy, I actually pulled over when there was a great song on the radio, because I would have left the broadcast range before the song had ended.
Even when walking, this can happen. Once when I was walking on the beach (with my portable FM receiver), I could hear one station when I turned my body to the East, and a different station when I turned to the West!
Even for stationary receiving, this could be a problem. Imaging you happen to live at the border of one station's broadcasting range. On a good day (or at night), you will be able to listen to the radio. On a bad day (rainy or foggy), you won't. Just great.
What I don't understand is this: Blind people are able to read Braille which, I understand, is comparable to a punchcard character code. Little bumps on a surface stand for the characters of the alphabet. To a non-visually impaired person like me, it is a miracle of skill and training to read characters where all I feel is a surface with bumps. This shows what the brain can do given enough training (and will.) So I think: Why should the brain implant be necessary? Why couldn't you deliver the "visual" information using a device close to a Braille converter? I imagine a little device that you can strap onto the back of your hand or wherever the skin has enough nervous endings to discriminate separate tactile impulses. The device would have little bumps ordered in a 10x10 array, raising and lowering them by electromagnetic switches, much like a Braille converter. So the blind person could have the visual input from the computer, translated into a tactile image that is delivered to the back of his hand, and he could feel the raw image like he is able to feel Braille writing. No brain implant would be needed, and it would make the device much cheaper and more usable for general purposes.
Microsoft has been fighting to get it's feet into the market of non-desktop computers. Looks as if they didn't succeed.
Linux can and must learn from this.
Same OS for different classes of devices is good for the company, but not necessarily for the customer. A software company can reduce maintenance costs by reducing the number of code bases. However, having the same look and feel for a Desktop PC and a set-top box or a wristwatch is, in my opinion, not desirable. A UI that was designed for choosing among 20 or more applications, switching back and forth between them, adding and configuring hardware and do extensive networking and interoperability is not the ideal UI for, say, a handheld device that features three applications, syncs automatically when in the cradle and must be usable by everyone who learned how to read a clock.
Why is the Palm OS more successful in the palmtop arena? Because it is not an adapted desktop PC OS, but a genuine handheld device OS. (Imagine it on a desktop PC with a mouse - wouldn't work!) I hope that Linux won't make the same mistake. I'd love to see Linux on a lot of sub-PC class devices, but please don't expect it to feature a full-blown X server or even KDE or whatever. Make it a small, efficient, stable and secure Linux subset with a dedicated user interface. Let Microsoft go astray on its own.
Some posts said that collecting and mining customer data will improve life for everyone since advertising, special offerings etc. will be suited for the recipient. I don't think so. Data Mining will enable companies to find out their valuable customers and identify those who are not interesting. Let's assume you have had a bad year and damaged your car three times, involving damage to other cars. Your insurance company dumped you, and you call Insurance X to get a new insurance. Before they even answer your call, they can have all your data (including insurance history) on a monitor, seeing that you could be a troublesome customer. They could refuse to give you a contract -- they wouldn't even have to answer the phone! I'm sure we will se a lot of cases where companies will tell you more or less frankly that you are not attractive as a customer for them. Your buying pattern will make you, nolens volens, part of a certain class of customers. If you don't like this class - tough luck. It will determine the treatment you get from a company. This will affect a lot of businesses, not just insurances. There will be warning messages along with any customer record saying "complains a lot", "easy spender" etc. that will be gathered by mining the customer's history and sold to whoever can afford it. This will make good service for good customers and bad or even no service for not-so-good customers.
See this article on a device that can be used for walking simulation. It involves concepts some concepts that have been mentioned in a lot of the articles above. They have built a proof-of-concept device. (Scroll down the article for an image.) By the way, I feel this discussion is an utterly interesting example of what brainstorming and "thinking outside the box" is about. Great!
Slashdot Mirror
Hey astronauts, maybe you should not have set a new country code every 15 minutes while passing over the next continent....
There are many alternative concepts for low- or no-carbon energy in the drawers. Hoewever, most of them still have the status of an unproven technology. They are perceived as being driven mostly by tree-hugging nerds who can't do the math, or mad-scientist type of guys who are desperately fighting for a silly idea.
For some this may be true, for some it certainly is not. But to know which tech belongs to which category, a serios research investment needs to happen.
Now imaginge that a country of the size of the United States would invest just the cost of 1 month worth of Iraq war into the development of alternative energys. A research facility town in a desert, funded with anything they need to prove whatever technology promises to deliver clean energy on a larger scale, and invest what is necessary to solve the problem, or dismiss the technology, could probably do more for the world climate and world economy than most other measures.
The Manhattan project was an example of an must-do project where absolutely anything needed to solve a complex technical problem was done, investing any manpower and money possibly needed to solve the task.
Now think of doing the same, but this time not to build the most destructive weapon on the planet, but to get rid of oil as the primary energy source, lose the handcuffs of oil dependency, and save the climate.
I suspect you're seeing real-time inventory in action
I doubt that because, as I said, I reloaded both pages at the same time, several times, to rule out any data change.
And if the web shop's availability forecast should oscillate on a sub-second basis, what value should it have to the customer?
While I understand why a seller wants to offer the same thing at different prices for different customers (although I don't think it is ethical), it eludes me why they would want to present different delivery dates to different customers.
A while ago I was looking for a certain book. I came across a link to the same book sold at http://www.amazon.de/ (the German Amazon shop). I followed the link twice, but with two different browsers. I ended up looking at the same page with two different browsers, each with its own history and cookie cache. In one window I was presented with 1-2 days availability, in the other one I was told it would take 3 days. I reloaded both pages at the same time to rule out that any change in data was the cause for this. After I cleared all private data on both browsers, both showed the 3 days availability.
The only difference I can think of that Amazon could take into account for calculating the date is the data stored in certain tracking cookies. I don't have an Amazon account, so they can't have used my past buying behavior pattern, or even identified my as a previous customer.
I feel this behavior is hard to explain and unethical. It leaves me with the feeling of being lied at deliberately by an online shop, just based on their prediction of my buying or complaining behavior.
Welcome to two new high level members of the Army:
General Protection Fault
and
Major Error!
And good luck to their subordinates.
It accelerates from 0 to 100 kph (60 mph) in 17 seconds. That's not much, in the regions of a cheap 2+2 seat offroad car or a cheaper van. However, it accelerates much faster in the range of 0 - 50 kph range. It has a sequential 6 gear shift which can be switched between semiautomatic and automatic. The engine has 599 ccm (699 ccm in newer models), is available as a Diesel engine also, it has 40 kW (54 HP), the maximum speed is 130 kph (electronic cut-off, without it it goes about 165 kph).
It has air condition, ESP, ABS, 4 airbags (2 as an extra), and although it is not cheap, it is VERY cost effective.
BTW, I have been driving at -25 C, and no, the body panels did not shatter when I slammed a door. It has rear wheel drive, which actually is more of a problem in winter.
You are right. My point was to illustrate how resilient the plastic is. If the impact is bigger, the material gets ripped apart.
Due to the module system of the smart car, it is much easier to just change the body panel and thus hide the damage. So if you buy a used smart, always be sure to investigate the chassis.
On the other hand, you have to be careful with normal cars too. If a newer BMW, for example, bumps into an obstacle, the first thing that is impacted are "impact boxes" located in the bumpers. They are crushed, absorbing a part of the energy. Changing these is expensive, but they are not visible from the outside.
But even on ordinary cars, there is alway the potential of hidden damage after an accident. Someone I know bought a used car in seemingly perfect state. When it went through the mandatory 2-year technical investigation (TÜV in Germany), they found out it basically FUBR because the frame was distorted. 5000 down the drain.
The article mentions a car that is already available which has full plastic parts. More info can be found at the Smart website. I drive one of these, and I have bumped into obstacles while parking several times. Unlike a metal body, the plastic panel just springs back into shape after a bump. With a metal body, it would have been damaged visibly.
Other Smart drivers reported that after a crash, the car had no visible damge while the invisible parts beneath the body panels had been damaged severely, but the robust body panel had been hiding the damage.
I can really recommend these cars. They are the ultimate opposite to an SUV. 2.49 m long (7.5 feet!), 695 kg gross weight, can turn on a dime... wonderful.
In the real world, any effort estimations are irrelevant anyway. I am sure everyone working in the business knows this situation:
Project manager says: "We have to add line item X to the project. What's the effort estimate for that?"
Me: "Twelve weeks."
PM: "But we need it in three weeks."
Me: "No way."
PM: "We have to. Shoot for" (names target date in three weeks).
Me: "Sure."
The due date is fixed, and the software development effort is determined by the available time afterwards.
Disclaimer: This remark is meant to be ironic.
This fix does not improve the user's security. It improves Microsoft's security. On the web page, they basically say: "We don't give a f* about how you share files over the internet, as long as you are not using MS Outlook".
Obviously, the only reason for this is that they don't want the negative press next time an email worm starts traveling.
This move shows that MS doesn't care about the customer's security. If they would, the right move was to encourage users to use Outlook for sending their attachments, but implement a security model so it would not be dangerous.
Thanks, Microsoft. Thank you for caring.
So of course this is good news, it's good news only morally, not in practice.
It seems to me that no-one really knows what their decision really means. The article says that every Hamburg citizen will be entitled to get a free homepage of up to 10 pages -- given that the number of pages a website has is completely irrelevant compared to its size in bytes, I'm pretty sure none of the participants actually knew what everyone was talking about.
I think it's a great idea, but I don't think we will see this in the near future.
Nevertheless, it's a great idea, and I hope they will get some help from someone who can handle this and finally get it done.
Or maybe they hope people will take it for the newest HP printer and buy it right away.
Don't you think it's time for you to get a life?
I always hated this scene becaue I thought is was a silly idea. Now reality has caught up with it.
Like in the movie, artists, painters etc. can pour a bag of nano logo particles into their paint to mark their work. Print the lot number onto them and dump them into the chocolate bar you are producing, so that you can trace back even the slightest amount of it back to its origin. Mix nanologo particles into a car's paint so that the serial number is everywhere on the car, not just imprinted into the engine block. Mass produced nano logo particles could be used to make dollar bills, ID cards etc. harder to falsify. I'm sure there hundreds of ideas more what you can do with it, besides making integrated circuits.
It seems you have missed the point of Open Source entirely. OSS is not about "Anyone can get the source code", it's about "Anyone can get the source code, modify it, publish the results and do what the heck he wants with it (well, almost)".
With respect to being "worthy": I read the press release as stating that you will have to become an "Affiliate" before you get the source code; and for becoming an affiliate you have to present a web site you are running.
The press release is ambigious about this, so maybe I am wrong. (But if I am wrong: where is the download page for the source code?)
Altavista has been offering its search engine (executables) for download for quite a while here. It is not the same engine they use on their web site.
Here is the press release from Altavista.
The article doesn't mention that Altavista is going to open source theit source code. It says that the source code will be given to applicants who can present a "real" web site they are running.
It would be great news if the source code would truly be GP-licensed or whatever OS license model Altavista would choose, but I doubt they will do that. Also remember that the search engine that you can obtain from Alta Vista is not the same as the one that's running their web site. It used to be downloadable before, and my information is that it does not scale as good as the AltaVista.com web page search engine does.
If you have ever been to Italy, you have seen the consequences of having many small radio stations all over the place. It maybe okay if the weather is always perfect and you don't ever move away from where you are.
But many people like me like listening to the radio while driving. Imagine that you are driving along, and your receiver hops to one station after another, because you constantly leave one broadcasting range and enter another. I remember when driving in Italy, I actually pulled over when there was a great song on the radio, because I would have left the broadcast range before the song had ended.
Even when walking, this can happen. Once when I was walking on the beach (with my portable FM receiver), I could hear one station when I turned my body to the East, and a different station when I turned to the West!
Even for stationary receiving, this could be a problem. Imaging you happen to live at the border of one station's broadcasting range. On a good day (or at night), you will be able to listen to the radio. On a bad day (rainy or foggy), you won't. Just great.
Blind people are able to read Braille which, I understand, is comparable to a punchcard character code. Little bumps on a surface stand for the characters of the alphabet. To a non-visually impaired person like me, it is a miracle of skill and training to read characters where all I feel is a surface with bumps. This shows what the brain can do given enough training (and will.)
So I think: Why should the brain implant be necessary? Why couldn't you deliver the "visual" information using a device close to a Braille converter? I imagine a little device that you can strap onto the back of your hand or wherever the skin has enough nervous endings to discriminate separate tactile impulses. The device would have little bumps ordered in a 10x10 array, raising and lowering them by electromagnetic switches, much like a Braille converter. So the blind person could have the visual input from the computer, translated into a tactile image that is delivered to the back of his hand, and he could feel the raw image like he is able to feel Braille writing.
No brain implant would be needed, and it would make the device much cheaper and more usable for general purposes.
Microsoft has been fighting to get it's feet into the market of non-desktop computers. Looks as if they didn't succeed.
Linux can and must learn from this.
Same OS for different classes of devices is good for the company, but not necessarily for the customer. A software company can reduce maintenance costs by reducing the number of code bases. However, having the same look and feel for a Desktop PC and a set-top box or a wristwatch is, in my opinion, not desirable.
A UI that was designed for choosing among 20 or more applications, switching back and forth between them, adding and configuring hardware and do extensive networking and interoperability is not the ideal UI for, say, a handheld device that features three applications, syncs automatically when in the cradle and must be usable by everyone who learned how to read a clock.
Why is the Palm OS more successful in the palmtop arena? Because it is not an adapted desktop PC OS, but a genuine handheld device OS. (Imagine it on a desktop PC with a mouse - wouldn't work!) I hope that Linux won't make the same mistake. I'd love to see Linux on a lot of sub-PC class devices, but please don't expect it to feature a full-blown X server or even KDE or whatever. Make it a small, efficient, stable and secure Linux subset with a dedicated user interface. Let Microsoft go astray on its own.
Some posts said that collecting and mining customer data will improve life for everyone since advertising, special offerings etc. will be suited for the recipient.
I don't think so. Data Mining will enable companies to find out their valuable customers and identify those who are not interesting. Let's assume you have had a bad year and damaged your car three times, involving damage to other cars. Your insurance company dumped you, and you call Insurance X to get a new insurance. Before they even answer your call, they can have all your data (including insurance history) on a monitor, seeing that you could be a troublesome customer. They could refuse to give you a contract -- they wouldn't even have to answer the phone!
I'm sure we will se a lot of cases where companies will tell you more or less frankly that you are not attractive as a customer for them.
Your buying pattern will make you, nolens volens, part of a certain class of customers. If you don't like this class - tough luck. It will determine the treatment you get from a company.
This will affect a lot of businesses, not just insurances. There will be warning messages along with any customer record saying "complains a lot", "easy spender" etc. that will be gathered by mining the customer's history and sold to whoever can afford it. This will make good service for good customers and bad or even no service for not-so-good customers.
See this article on a device that can be used for walking simulation. It involves concepts some concepts that have been mentioned in a lot of the articles above. They have built a proof-of-concept device. (Scroll down the article for an image.)
By the way, I feel this discussion is an utterly interesting example of what brainstorming and "thinking outside the box" is about. Great!