Not only has it been used in trains for generations but I saw a program on this sort of "hybrid" tech in 1987 at the GM pavilion at EPCOT center in Florida.
Hell, I've been thinking about putting this type of electric drive/battery/combustion powered generator combo in my current car for the last year (no money for it at the moment).
It has a big advantage over current hybrids in that if another fuel (ethonol,hydrogen,etc) becomes economic all you need to replace/upgrade is the IC engine, the rest of the drive train is left untouched. Dito for improvements in batteries and electric motors.
If anything would get J.Sixpacks attention it would be something like this.
Up till now the DRM BS that the media companies have been doing has been, at most, a mild inconvenience to the common person. But this would hit them ALL where it counts, their wallets. It might just get enough of the sheeple pissed off enough to pull their heads out of the sand and say "enough".
Of course I have also been accused of living in an idealistic dreamworld where people actually use their brains for more than keeping their skull from imploding into a vacuum.
You asked for features that improved Words functionality, not just made it prettier or gave it a new GUI.
Why does it seem like almost EVERY reply talks about the new look. The few "new features" that do get mentioned have NO BEARING on what a student would be doing. This is for high school for Goddess's sake, how many of use needed features like 3D shading and soft shadows? Do those things even show when the document gets printed? And will a teacher even care how pretty it looks on their screen if the student can't get their punctuation right?
In my opinion the school district has lost sight of what they are supposed to be doing, teaching students how to write, read, and balance their check books. My 2 cents, this is stupid and going to end up costing the school district money later, either with support/training/hardware issues or a lawsuit by some parent who hates M$.
Second, they don't make a claim that its "Perpetual motion", just that it doesn't have a gasoline engine.
What they are talking about is a battery powered electric motor driving a hydraulic pump which then drives the transmission and wheels. A variation of this was patented in 2000 (see link), but the basic concept has been around for much longer.
It works better when the hydraulic motor is bolted directly to the differential and there is a pressure tank in the system to recover energy when braking. The advantage of this kind of set up is the electric or combustion motor runs at a constant RMP/load setting, which is when they are most efficient. The combustion motor can also be a multi-fuel(gasoline, LPG, NG, ethanol, etc.) or diesel.
The guys in the articles or the writer just didn't mention that the batteries will need to be recharged eventually
"If people generally aren't concerned about the fuel efficiency of their cars, which leads to significant expenses, why would they suddenly be concerned about the energy efficiency of their computers when electricity is relatively cheap?"
Because attitudes are changing, slowly but its picking up speed.
Ask a Prius owner what they love about their car. One of the first things out of their mouths will be "it gets great gas mileage"
People are beginning to want value for their money because they have less (maybe real or just how they feel) of it to spend.
"The number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months"
"Except where the added performance will have no impact on the usage"
For situations where the end user REALLY wants or needs the speed, like PC gamers, dedicated game consoles, science, engineering and other applications where the increase in speed will have an impact. I think Moore will continue to apply for the processors used in those systems.
However, in situations where the added speed will have no real impact on the application then I think people will want cheap functional systems.
We are already at the point where the biggest bottle neck to working with a computer is how fast the end user can get the data entered, a faster system won't make you type any faster, or read any quicker. What most common end users want is a system that will let them browse the web, send/read email, IM their friends, view the media (images,.mpeg, mp3,documents) that they get in the emails and play some card games or suduku. My mom has celeron 400Mz based system that she is quite happy with, it does everything she wants it to do and its the same stuff all her friends do with their computers. A faster internet connection, not a faster computer, would have a bigger impact on her computing experience.
Like I said, lets not write them off until we are sure the rovers are dead.
Unless they lose signal completely both rovers could, and would, continue to provide invaluable data from whatever instruments were still operating. I've worked with some of the people involved in developing the software for both rovers and I know the OS they are running on better than most of the people programming for it. I can state that both rovers are far more adaptable than the majority of people give them credit for.
In most things I am a pessimist, but when it comes to those two I am the penultimate optimist.
Considering their history it would be premature to write them off so soon.
When the storm ends and the dust settles and no signal is received from Spirit and Opportunity then, and only then, will I raise a glass in memory of those two incredible machines and the end of their mission.
On a side note has anyone every thought of using Tesla's energy transmitter or other "beamed" energy delivery system (microwave?) to power a planetary probe? Use a big nuke power module, keep it in geostat orbit, or land it with the transmiter, and then drop the rovers down. years of power for the rovers and it could be used by later missions as well.
But I bet you won't see this in retail versions of Windows.
Oh yes you will, but in the retail version you will be able to change the default from "ON" to "OFF" after finding the click box that will be buried in some obscure sub-menu and clicking through a bunch of confirmation dialogs that will warn about how you will be adversely affecting the "Windows Experience" by disabling this "feature", and of course you'll still have to manually edit the registry to get it to actually save the selection.
Mining your data to generate targeted ads is how GMail works. It's how all Google online apps are ultimately going to work. You comparing apples to oranges, I can choose to use or not use an app from Google, M$ would likely push this "feature" as an update to their existing OSs or integrate it so closely with the core of their next OS it couldn't be removed without breaking the OS, just like they did with IE.
And anything Google does is by definition Not Evil No, Google is a search engine that also makes applications which I can choose to use or not use without affecting my ability to do business. M$ doesn't give you a choice of having IE, media player or the other integrated apps. Google has the potential to be as Evil as M$, when it happens/. will start complaining about them too.
If anything, you guys should be up in arms about how Google has obvious prior art on this "invention". The fact that there is so obviously prior art is why we are not mentioning it much, this would get thrown out of any fair court in the world at the first hint of a challenge, though note that I said "fair court".
Industrial Hemp is a great source of cellulose, yielding almost 4 times more usable cellulose per acre than trees. The same crop could also provide food and textiles. Plus it would be better for the soil with its deep roots preventing erosion, the plant is drought/pest resistant and does not need artificial fertilizers to thrive, unlike corn.
How many of histories most creative people might have been "cured" before they achived their greatness?
I will agree that this would be great in extreme cases, but I worry about how it would be used "cure" people who just have enough autism to see the world differently and who ask the questions that "normal" people never think to ask, or don't want to. You know, the questions like "could I still see my reflection in a mirror if I traveled at the speed of light?", Einstien asked that one, and brought forth modern physics.
Think about the all the things that where invented or discovered in the course of human history, I would bet that almost all of them where made by people who had autism or Aspergers to some degree.
Contrary to some opinions there are still lawers out there who would not work for the RIAA no mater how much money they where offered, because they have some morals. Unfortunatly they dont' always get the credit or respect they deserve thanks to the actions of some high profile bottom feeders that are out there.
As far as AMD and Intel are concerned, 32-bit-only processors are nearly gone already
I don't know about AMD but for intel about 90% of the chips they make are NOT for desktops but for embedded aplications, its a bigger market, more stable too, and they will not turn their backs on it.
"Probably not but they certainly won't become the main product. The main product is selling chips to people running Windows and if it's not supported in 32-bit the demand for new chips that are 32-bit will drop."
Actually, no.
About 90% of the processors made are for non-desktop applications, mostly embedded systems. Your right about the fact that the companies who have desktops/laptops as their core market will produce the systems that sell, but the chip makers will continue to make whatever the rest of the processor market wants, be it 4-bit(yes, they still make them) or 128-bit cores.
"You used the wrong search terms. I found lots of stuff, including this [infactcanada.ca] and this [stopcorporateabuse.org]."
Wrong search terms, lots of stuff, right.
Yet you do not provide the correct search string and only sight 2 select links, neither of which substantiates the claims I was challenging in the original post, ie., Nestle did something particularly bad or criminal over and above what other companies in that market do.
If I'm going to boycot Nestle and tell other people to follow my example, which I will if you can substantiate your claim, I prefer to have facts.
I googled 'Nestle "2 months" "baby formula" "new mothers" Africa' and didn't find anything that supports your claim about Nestle intentionaly trying to cause the women to not breast feed. I did find some articles that talked about when Nestle gave samples of powdered fomulae to women who did not have access to safe water and that the women also, in an effort to streach out what they had been given, added more water than was called for. There where deaths due to malnutrition (caused by the thinned formule) and dysentary (caused by the contaminated water) which considering that the women where likely malnurished, and therefore not lactating anyway, and drinking contaminated water it is hard to say without more info if the children died as a result of Nestle's actions as you insinuate in your comment. It apears that Nestle just showed poor judgment in not providing premixed fomula. There was no indication of criminally wrongfull intent by Nestle, nor was there anything about the fomulae itself being dangerous, they just wanted to get the women to use their product, they do the same thing everywhere.
I am not defending Nestle for their actions.
I am however asking you to substantiate your claims with facts and not rumor or inuendo.
The world already has enough people who act on rumors and inuendo, ignoring substantiated facts, they're called politicians.
You forgot to mention the massive FUD campain by edison aganst AC electricity, that Tesla held the patents for, and his atempts to force the use of DC instead.
Thank you for pointing out some of the Truths about edison and bringing up Tesla. Tesla was a true creative genius who's ideas where totaly original and so far out there we still don't fully understand everything he was doing, edison was just a hack with a good sense of how to make money by shafting other people and forcing his views/products on the masses.
Tesla gave away his work because he believed it would better the world, edison was just about getting personal wealth and power.
Yep, I've seen the same thing in smaller telescopes. I remember it being caused by the curvature of the mirrors around the edges being off a true parabolic, or something like that, it has been a long time since I read about it. I don't usualy see them in photos from big telescopes but in this case it might be an artifact of compositing the data from the different telescopes.
It would have been so cool to have watched this star blow up, at least until the radiation/shockwave/neutron flux killed me, but till then it would have been sooo coool.
Slashdot Mirror
Your right. This isn't new or unique.
Not only has it been used in trains for generations but I saw a program on this sort of "hybrid" tech in 1987 at the GM pavilion at EPCOT center in Florida.
Hell, I've been thinking about putting this type of electric drive/battery/combustion powered generator combo in my current car for the last year (no money for it at the moment).
It has a big advantage over current hybrids in that if another fuel (ethonol,hydrogen,etc) becomes economic all you need to replace/upgrade is the IC engine, the rest of the drive train is left untouched. Dito for improvements in batteries and electric motors.
If anything would get J.Sixpacks attention it would be something like this.
Up till now the DRM BS that the media companies have been doing has been, at most, a mild inconvenience to the common person. But this would hit them ALL where it counts, their wallets. It might just get enough of the sheeple pissed off enough to pull their heads out of the sand and say "enough".
Of course I have also been accused of living in an idealistic dreamworld where people actually use their brains for more than keeping their skull from imploding into a vacuum.
You asked for features that improved Words functionality, not just made it prettier or gave it a new GUI.
Why does it seem like almost EVERY reply talks about the new look. The few "new features" that do get mentioned have NO BEARING on what a student would be doing. This is for high school for Goddess's sake, how many of use needed features like 3D shading and soft shadows? Do those things even show when the document gets printed? And will a teacher even care how pretty it looks on their screen if the student can't get their punctuation right?
In my opinion the school district has lost sight of what they are supposed to be doing, teaching students how to write, read, and balance their check books. My 2 cents, this is stupid and going to end up costing the school district money later, either with support/training/hardware issues or a lawsuit by some parent who hates M$.
They are making it sound like its "Free Energy", my bad.
But the idea of using a hydraulic/electric or combustion system does work.
OK, First off the whole idea of using a hydraulic motor in a car is not new. http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6098738-descript ion.html
Second, they don't make a claim that its "Perpetual motion", just that it doesn't have a gasoline engine.
What they are talking about is a battery powered electric motor driving a hydraulic pump which then drives the transmission and wheels. A variation of this was patented in 2000 (see link), but the basic concept has been around for much longer.
It works better when the hydraulic motor is bolted directly to the differential and there is a pressure tank in the system to recover energy when braking. The advantage of this kind of set up is the electric or combustion motor runs at a constant RMP/load setting, which is when they are most efficient. The combustion motor can also be a multi-fuel(gasoline, LPG, NG, ethanol, etc.) or diesel.
The guys in the articles or the writer just didn't mention that the batteries will need to be recharged eventually
"It's becoming increasingly apparent that the second might need to be taken out and exercised in the near future. :("
The really sad part is that your probably right.
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act V, Scene V
Sounds like a good description of the Congress.
"If people generally aren't concerned about the fuel efficiency of their cars, which leads to significant expenses, why would they suddenly be concerned about the energy efficiency of their computers when electricity is relatively cheap?"
Because attitudes are changing, slowly but its picking up speed.
Ask a Prius owner what they love about their car. One of the first things out of their mouths will be "it gets great gas mileage"
People are beginning to want value for their money because they have less (maybe real or just how they feel) of it to spend.
"The number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months"
"Except where the added performance will have no impact on the usage"
For situations where the end user REALLY wants or needs the speed, like PC gamers, dedicated game consoles, science, engineering and other applications where the increase in speed will have an impact. I think Moore will continue to apply for the processors used in those systems.
However, in situations where the added speed will have no real impact on the application then I think people will want cheap functional systems.
We are already at the point where the biggest bottle neck to working with a computer is how fast the end user can get the data entered, a faster system won't make you type any faster, or read any quicker. What most common end users want is a system that will let them browse the web, send/read email, IM their friends, view the media (images,.mpeg, mp3,documents) that they get in the emails and play some card games or suduku. My mom has celeron 400Mz based system that she is quite happy with, it does everything she wants it to do and its the same stuff all her friends do with their computers. A faster internet connection, not a faster computer, would have a bigger impact on her computing experience.
Like I said, lets not write them off until we are sure the rovers are dead.
Unless they lose signal completely both rovers could, and would, continue to provide invaluable data from whatever instruments were still operating. I've worked with some of the people involved in developing the software for both rovers and I know the OS they are running on better than most of the people programming for it. I can state that both rovers are far more adaptable than the majority of people give them credit for.
In most things I am a pessimist, but when it comes to those two I am the penultimate optimist.
Considering their history it would be premature to write them off so soon.
When the storm ends and the dust settles and no signal is received from Spirit and Opportunity then, and only then, will I raise a glass in memory of those two incredible machines and the end of their mission.
On a side note has anyone every thought of using Tesla's energy transmitter or other "beamed" energy delivery system (microwave?) to power a planetary probe? Use a big nuke power module, keep it in geostat orbit, or land it with the transmiter, and then drop the rovers down. years of power for the rovers and it could be used by later missions as well.
But I bet you won't see this in retail versions of Windows.
Oh yes you will, but in the retail version you will be able to change the default from "ON" to "OFF" after finding the click box that will be buried in some obscure sub-menu and clicking through a bunch of confirmation dialogs that will warn about how you will be adversely affecting the "Windows Experience" by disabling this "feature", and of course you'll still have to manually edit the registry to get it to actually save the selection.
Mining your data to generate targeted ads is how GMail works. It's how all Google online apps are ultimately going to work.
/. will start complaining about them too.
You comparing apples to oranges, I can choose to use or not use an app from Google, M$ would likely push this "feature" as an update to their existing OSs or integrate it so closely with the core of their next OS it couldn't be removed without breaking the OS, just like they did with IE.
And anything Google does is by definition Not Evil
No, Google is a search engine that also makes applications which I can choose to use or not use without affecting my ability to do business. M$ doesn't give you a choice of having IE, media player or the other integrated apps. Google has the potential to be as Evil as M$, when it happens
If anything, you guys should be up in arms about how Google has obvious prior art on this "invention".
The fact that there is so obviously prior art is why we are not mentioning it much, this would get thrown out of any fair court in the world at the first hint of a challenge, though note that I said "fair court".
Maybe because they know something you obviously don't.
Industrial Hemp is a great source of cellulose, yielding almost 4 times more usable cellulose per acre than trees. The same crop could also provide food and textiles. Plus it would be better for the soil with its deep roots preventing erosion, the plant is drought/pest resistant and does not need artificial fertilizers to thrive, unlike corn.
Get the facts at http://www.votehemp.com/hemp_is_hip.html
And please, no lame jokes about how you can smoke it too, I've heard them all and they only show how little you know about the subject.
Why are you so sure its a good thing?
How many of histories most creative people might have been "cured" before they achived their greatness?
I will agree that this would be great in extreme cases, but I worry about how it would be used "cure" people who just have enough autism to see the world differently and who ask the questions that "normal" people never think to ask, or don't want to. You know, the questions like "could I still see my reflection in a mirror if I traveled at the speed of light?", Einstien asked that one, and brought forth modern physics.
Think about the all the things that where invented or discovered in the course of human history, I would bet that almost all of them where made by people who had autism or Aspergers to some degree.
"... best lawyers money can buy."
Not "... best lawyers you can get."
Contrary to some opinions there are still lawers out there who would not work for the RIAA no mater how much money they where offered, because they have some morals. Unfortunatly they dont' always get the credit or respect they deserve thanks to the actions of some high profile bottom feeders that are out there.
As far as AMD and Intel are concerned, 32-bit-only processors are nearly gone already
I don't know about AMD but for intel about 90% of the chips they make are NOT for desktops but for embedded aplications, its a bigger market, more stable too, and they will not turn their backs on it.
"Probably not but they certainly won't become the main product. The main product is selling chips to people running Windows and if it's not supported in 32-bit the demand for new chips that are 32-bit will drop."
Actually, no.
About 90% of the processors made are for non-desktop applications, mostly embedded systems. Your right about the fact that the companies who have desktops/laptops as their core market will produce the systems that sell, but the chip makers will continue to make whatever the rest of the processor market wants, be it 4-bit(yes, they still make them) or 128-bit cores.
Now the question is what are we (the FOSS community) going to do about it?
Or you could just keep the hood of your sinister black cloak up.
"You used the wrong search terms. I found lots of stuff, including this [infactcanada.ca] and this [stopcorporateabuse.org]."
Wrong search terms, lots of stuff, right.
Yet you do not provide the correct search string and only sight 2 select links, neither of which substantiates the claims I was challenging in the original post, ie., Nestle did something particularly bad or criminal over and above what other companies in that market do.
Could you provide some links please.
If I'm going to boycot Nestle and tell other people to follow my example, which I will if you can substantiate your claim, I prefer to have facts.
I googled 'Nestle "2 months" "baby formula" "new mothers" Africa' and didn't find anything that supports your claim about Nestle intentionaly trying to cause the women to not breast feed. I did find some articles that talked about when Nestle gave samples of powdered fomulae to women who did not have access to safe water and that the women also, in an effort to streach out what they had been given, added more water than was called for. There where deaths due to malnutrition (caused by the thinned formule) and dysentary (caused by the contaminated water) which considering that the women where likely malnurished, and therefore not lactating anyway, and drinking contaminated water it is hard to say without more info if the children died as a result of Nestle's actions as you insinuate in your comment. It apears that Nestle just showed poor judgment in not providing premixed fomula. There was no indication of criminally wrongfull intent by Nestle, nor was there anything about the fomulae itself being dangerous, they just wanted to get the women to use their product, they do the same thing everywhere.
I am not defending Nestle for their actions.
I am however asking you to substantiate your claims with facts and not rumor or inuendo.
The world already has enough people who act on rumors and inuendo, ignoring substantiated facts, they're called politicians.
You forgot to mention the massive FUD campain by edison aganst AC electricity, that Tesla held the patents for, and his atempts to force the use of DC instead.
Thank you for pointing out some of the Truths about edison and bringing up Tesla. Tesla was a true creative genius who's ideas where totaly original and so far out there we still don't fully understand everything he was doing, edison was just a hack with a good sense of how to make money by shafting other people and forcing his views/products on the masses.
Tesla gave away his work because he believed it would better the world, edison was just about getting personal wealth and power.
Yep, I've seen the same thing in smaller telescopes. I remember it being caused by the curvature of the mirrors around the edges being off a true parabolic, or something like that, it has been a long time since I read about it. I don't usualy see them in photos from big telescopes but in this case it might be an artifact of compositing the data from the different telescopes.
It would have been so cool to have watched this star blow up, at least until the radiation/shockwave/neutron flux killed me, but till then it would have been sooo coool.