In theory I could install Linux on my Dell Axim X5.
But would I still be able to use the Compact Flash network card?
Would I still be able to use the Compact Flash VGA adapter to do PowerPoint type presentations (with reasonable response times).
Can I sync to a desktop or server.
If I can do all that (plus the usual - browse the web, read email, listen to mp3s, listen to BBC Radio 4 on the internet) then take me to a Linux distribution!
Pencils are easier to replace than printers, and
don't require a booth to be closed when the break.
Boxes with slots in the top to put pieces of paper
tend to be relatively immune to hardware or software
errors. I've yet to have to reboot a piece of paper.
To paraphrase Einstein (who was paraphrasing Occam),
the voting system should be as complex as required,
and no more so.
The downfall, and also the beauty, of marking
pieces of paper by hand, is that it is so low
tech it is largely proof against technical
malfunctions. Also I suspect it is easier to
prepare ballots for the visually impaired
(in braile) to allow them to vote secretly than
manage an electronic voting system for the
visually impaired.
Paper ballots are not immune to fraud by
any means, of course, mostly by either
ballot box stuffing, or loss of ballots boxes.
I think there is definitely work to be done
there.
Also complex ballots for multiple candidates
and issues are hard to count by hand speedily,
and I think optical scanning would be useful
here. However, I don't see the need to be
so much in a hurry to get the result of the
election out almost even before you've had
time to vote. I don't see any vice in democracy
taking a few hours to count, in an effort to
be sure. After all, it is often at the end of
months of campaigning!
I think the biggest change needed in voting
is one or more 'none of the above' categories,
to encourage people to take part in the process,
even if they don't wish to vote for any of the
candidates on offer.
I use my PC for a number of things - word
processing, internet, general use, playing
flight sims on, and for recording. The
latter is difficult when using microphones
as the thing (AMD XP2000) is so noisy even
after I put a Zalman flower and
northbridge fan on it. I bought a noiseless
power supply fan to replace my current one
(which has begun making odd noises this week)
but it was delivered with no indication of
polarity, and I don't fancy getting it the
wrong way round when playing with 240V!
I was considering getting a laptop at some
point for recording, as modern ones give me enough
power to run virtual instruments, and all
my recording gear is outboard. The little M100
mini ITX would be fine for the hard disk recording
part of it, but wouldn't be enough for virtual
instruments. But if I was building a new PC
with the TNN500A I could build a single PC
to allow me to play flight sims and
hard disk. If I could get a laptop
that I could meaningfully play flight sims on, however I could save the cost of the main
PC! Graphics power is the problem here, though.
In theory a laptop would allow me to
take my hard disk recording out on the road,
but given that this requires taking a mixer,
the audio interface, the laptop, various
power bricks, etc., and still only gives
me 4 simultaneous channels, then for recording
a live gig I think I'd rather just take
my cassette 4 track (which is also more
forgiving of overly hot inputs) and then
copy that to disk later. If the 4 track
got beer poured into it I'd be less upset
too!
My wife insists on having a fan on 24 hours
a day because of her tinnitus. The mini ITX
box looks very cute, but she likes computer
fan noise! The mini ITX almost tempting as a
PVR as a more flexible alternative to a SkyPlus
box, plus access to internet radio in the living
room, though.
For $399 (which isn't many s at the moment)
that is actually quite tempting, especially
for music recording, which is what I need low
noise for. However I am not sure that 800MHz
is going to be enough to run all the usual
direct to disk recording, virtual instruments,
etc, which is a shame!
Bizzarely Quake has been used as a tool to
examine reinforcement learning in dynamic
scenarios. So there's interest in running
Quake on the massively parallel machine,
although perhaps not the little mini ITX
box.
Using a Sony GDM here, technically a Silicon Graphics, but with a simple modification to make it work with standard VGA inputs, and a VGA to 13W3 convertor. It's 10 years old now at least, and looks great.
I do want to move to an LCD screen, though, as a CRT causes interference with direct to disk recording
The Euro is strong against the dollar. This accounts for some of the difference in price (not that long ago the Euro and USD were at parity). A strong Euro relative to the source of imports may make the imports cheaper, but the source is a country other than the USA or EU. Other sources of price may be differences in the markets between the EU and USA, bargaining power of retailers, etc, or competition between retailers (or lack thereof). Part of it may be the longer warranty period. You certainly can't assume that all of it is due to this.
The real truth of the matter is that what is likely happening is that people in the EU get to buy the same crap players as we do in the US but instead of paying $30 for a 90 day warrenty they get to may $100 for a 2 year warrenty.
The going rate for a cheap DVD player in the
UK is now about 40, which is about $70. Part of
this apparently high cost is going to be the
relative strength of sterling against the dollar,
so the price here will seem a little inflated. If
sterling falls a bit, then it could easily equate
to $60. So the prices are proportionately
rather higher, but in absolute terms, not
that much higher.
Part of the reason why the cost isn't that
much more in absolute terms is that under UK
law at least, outside the manufacturer's or
retailer's stated warranty period they have to
offer you a repair during the standard lifetime
of that product (up to a maximum of 6 years
in England) but this repair doesn't have to
be free. Hence despite this consumer protection
the cost to the retailer isn't necessarily that
onerous. This is also why extended warranties
are available here. Extended warranties here
are really an insurance product that insures
the consumer against the cost of the repair
tha must be offered when it falls outside the
initial warranty period.
For one thing, in Belgium at least, pet stores were required to give two years warranty on animals... and if they died for whatever reason, they had to replace them.
Is this actually true, or one of those
urban myths about the EU, like the straight
banana directive (which never existed)?
I've not heard of this 2 year warranty thing
in the UK. In the UK the requirement is that
a product should last for either the time
specified by the warranty issued by the manufacturer
or retailer a reasonable period for that product,
whichever is longer, up to a maximum period of
time (6 years in England and Wales, 5 years in
Scotland, not sure what it is in Northern Ireland,
Isle of Man, etc).
I am currently in a strange position as I forgot
to register our clothes dryer when I bought it.
Registration is free, and entitles you to a 5
year guarantee. The dryer broke about 2 months
after we got it, and failed with the same
fault again about 15 months after that. The
first fault was fixed under the standard guarantee, but the second was outside the initial
year, and also outside the 1 year warranty for
the initial repair, so I had to pay 75 for the
repair. The question is, given that for free
I could have had a 5 year guarantee, can I argue
that the manufacturer appears to expect the
good to last 5 years anyway, and it should be
considered to be under a 5 year warranty automatically, let alone the standard consumer
rights that extend up to 6 years?
I'm not sure I can be bothered to take
the manufacturer to task over this, though.
No, that's a value ascribed for some types
of calculation in cost:benefit analyses.
The financial cost and value of a human life in
reality are different to this value, different
to each other, and different for different
individuals. The emotional value is different
again.
As an example, imagine someone who was
brought up in humble surroundings. The cost of
that person's education, food, etc. prior to them
being able to generate economic activity may have
been small. This same person may (as some
people from orphanages have) go on to be a
captain of industry, producing a large amount
of economic activity, and thus have high value.
Neither of these figures may be $100,000.
Even someone who is not a captain of industry
may have value in the sense that their loss may
reduce in less economic activity, their death
may depress others and thus reduce the economic
activity of others, and so on.
Lastly the value of a human life is different
for different people or organisations. The
government may see it in terms of lost economic
activity or taxes. Loved ones will see it very
differently.
I would, however, advise you to look up your state/province/county annual financial reports. They can be quite illuminating about the thought processes of those who create them. You'll find that in them roads have cost, but only the toll roads have "value," inherent in their income to the state. A road with no tolls is treated as overhead to payed for by tax levy.
The road may have little direct positive financial contribution to the budget of the
state or province, but this is totally different
from it not having a value! The road has value
to the state or province in allowing its law
enforcement officers to travel on it, for example.
(Defraying the cost of having to go everywhere
by helicopter if there were no roads, for example). The roads also have value for the
general populace.
I have E.F Schumacher's book. I still have
no clue what you are on about.
Keyensianism was appropriate at the time as
it was a way of putting money in the hand of
people at the bottom of the pile who would
assuredly spend it, thus generating economic
activity to provide them with the goods and
services that they wanted to spend the money
on. It isn't a bad strategy as a short term
measure to get you out of a depression, if
the government has the financial reserves
to do it.
A competing theory is that of trickle down
which involves allowing the rich to keep more
of their profits, in the hope that this will
stimulate economic activity by encouraging them
to open more training shoe factories, or so on.
This is less certain to work as whilst you can
be fairly sure that those at the bottom of the
pile will spend money they have, you can't be
sure that those who already have more than they
can spend will do the same.
In any case, both approaches have serious
problems in a globalised economy as the additional
economic activity generated might be in buying
cheap DVD players from abroad, or in creating
DVD making factories in a foreign country. In
both instances the government's spending, or
reduction in revenue may be subsidising offshore
business. In a globalised economy the government
probably needs to try to give the economy a
competitive edge in some area in some way.
Then there's land use... The amount of land necessary to produce around one megawatt, iirc is like 4 or 5 acres.
A suggestion is to put them on the roofs of
buildings. Maintenance is more complex, of course.
In theory the energy could be exported back to the
main grid, but this may require more complexity
than is necessary as the energy generated could
simply be used in that building to offset requirements from the main grid. In practical terms
it probably means that it is most useful in larger
buildings, such as offices (see University
of Nottingham, UK for an example). It may be
that more direct solar energy systems rather than
PV cells, even with lower thermal efficiency,
have better cost:benefit ratios in these situations, though. In places which have a good
deal of sunlight and require air conditioning
then it seems sensible to at least consider
the use of more direct solar energy air conditioning systems. E.g. Southern India.
Change in agricultural land use or reduction
in the ice caps will probably account for a
greater change in albedo than use of solar
energy systems. The energy incident on the earth's
surfacr is around 700W/square metre in good,
clear conditions and the earth's surface is about
5x10E15 square metres. Extensive use of solar
energy could make a difference - I don't know
what the energy requirements would be and
the change in albedo it would require. Maybe
if we painted all houses white apart from the
solar panels it would cancel out:-)
Burning fossil fuels, or using nuclear fuel
also releases heat into the environment that
would not also be present. Only biomass is likely
to be approaching neutral in this respect.
Solar? Far too inefficent and produces too many toxins.
It doesn't necessarily produce toxins.
Solar
cells to convert to electricity directly tend to
require toxic chemicals. In theory you could manufacture carefully to avoid release of toxins and
recycle all cells, but this may not be practicable
or cost effective, althouth you'd have to balance the toxic effects against the costs and benefits of other energy generation systems.
What is much less polluting is to use solar
energy more directly. You can heat water directly
and use this as a source of hot water, either
directly, or via a heat exchanger to produce
electricity. Alternatively there are ways to use
convection currents to run air conditioning systems. These are obviously less energy efficient
but the energy is essentially free. You still need
to do a cost-benefit analysis to ensure that
the energy required to manufacture all the required plumbing outweighs the energy saved,
of course. It's a great potential boon to the
plumbing industry too!
The U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution were groundbreaking documents, stunningly radical in their time. However, the seeds of the US Constitution - the legal framework of the first modern democracy - hark back to the Magna Carta, which is about 500 years older and devised in Britain.
There isn't really much relationship between
the Magna Carta and the US Constitution.
The US Constitution has its roots firmly
in the Englightenment of the 18th century, which
was influenced by the events in the English
Civil War (which was actually
several wars) and movements prevalent
at that time, e.g. the Levellers, and also by
French and Scottish philosophers (mostly).
The Magna Carta was a political settlement
concerned with feudalism, and feudalism was
eventually usurped, but it was relatively minor
compared to other limits put on kingly power in
places such as Poland or by the Italian Communes
of the Renaissance.
You can bet that a whole lot more people were involved in the invention of the lightbulb (and related technologies) than only Edison
Notably Swann.
Edison gets credit for
the creations of his entire lab, which he headed,
in addition to things he personally created. This is not to knock the man, since he obviously had
some excellent project management and motivational skills to get so many innovations out the door!
Also note that Bell didn't invent the
telephone (it was an Italian), to note something
from a couple of posts above. Bell did manage
to commercialise the telephone, however.
Slashdot Mirror
In theory I could install Linux on my Dell Axim X5.
But would I still be able to use the Compact Flash
network card?
Would I still be able to use the Compact Flash VGA
adapter to do PowerPoint type presentations (with
reasonable response times).
Can I sync to a desktop or server.
If I can do all that (plus the usual -
browse the web, read email, listen to mp3s, listen
to BBC Radio 4 on the internet) then take me
to a Linux distribution!
Pencils are easier to replace than printers, and don't require a booth to be closed when the break. Boxes with slots in the top to put pieces of paper tend to be relatively immune to hardware or software errors. I've yet to have to reboot a piece of paper. To paraphrase Einstein (who was paraphrasing Occam), the voting system should be as complex as required, and no more so.
What happens when the printer breaks?
The downfall, and also the beauty, of marking pieces of paper by hand, is that it is so low tech it is largely proof against technical malfunctions. Also I suspect it is easier to prepare ballots for the visually impaired (in braile) to allow them to vote secretly than manage an electronic voting system for the visually impaired.
Paper ballots are not immune to fraud by any means, of course, mostly by either ballot box stuffing, or loss of ballots boxes. I think there is definitely work to be done there.
Also complex ballots for multiple candidates and issues are hard to count by hand speedily, and I think optical scanning would be useful here. However, I don't see the need to be so much in a hurry to get the result of the election out almost even before you've had time to vote. I don't see any vice in democracy taking a few hours to count, in an effort to be sure. After all, it is often at the end of months of campaigning!
I think the biggest change needed in voting is one or more 'none of the above' categories, to encourage people to take part in the process, even if they don't wish to vote for any of the candidates on offer.
I use my PC for a number of things - word processing, internet, general use, playing flight sims on, and for recording. The latter is difficult when using microphones as the thing (AMD XP2000) is so noisy even after I put a Zalman flower and northbridge fan on it. I bought a noiseless power supply fan to replace my current one (which has begun making odd noises this week) but it was delivered with no indication of polarity, and I don't fancy getting it the wrong way round when playing with 240V!
I was considering getting a laptop at some point for recording, as modern ones give me enough power to run virtual instruments, and all my recording gear is outboard. The little M100 mini ITX would be fine for the hard disk recording part of it, but wouldn't be enough for virtual instruments. But if I was building a new PC with the TNN500A I could build a single PC to allow me to play flight sims and hard disk. If I could get a laptop that I could meaningfully play flight sims on, however I could save the cost of the main PC! Graphics power is the problem here, though.
In theory a laptop would allow me to take my hard disk recording out on the road, but given that this requires taking a mixer, the audio interface, the laptop, various power bricks, etc., and still only gives me 4 simultaneous channels, then for recording a live gig I think I'd rather just take my cassette 4 track (which is also more forgiving of overly hot inputs) and then copy that to disk later. If the 4 track got beer poured into it I'd be less upset too!
My wife insists on having a fan on 24 hours a day because of her tinnitus. The mini ITX box looks very cute, but she likes computer fan noise! The mini ITX almost tempting as a PVR as a more flexible alternative to a SkyPlus box, plus access to internet radio in the living room, though.
For $399 (which isn't many s at the moment) that is actually quite tempting, especially for music recording, which is what I need low noise for. However I am not sure that 800MHz is going to be enough to run all the usual direct to disk recording, virtual instruments, etc, which is a shame!
Bizzarely Quake has been used as a tool to examine reinforcement learning in dynamic scenarios. So there's interest in running Quake on the massively parallel machine, although perhaps not the little mini ITX box.
Using a Sony GDM here, technically a Silicon
Graphics, but with a simple modification
to make it work with standard VGA inputs,
and a VGA to 13W3 convertor. It's 10 years
old now at least, and looks great.
I do want to move to an LCD screen, though,
as a CRT causes interference with direct to
disk recording
So the questions is - can I make by XP 2000 run any faster than it does now without needing a set of fans in it that make it even louder?
Second question is what modifications do I need to do to turn my GeForce 3 into a 5950 Ultra without costing me a penny? (Note: not serious here)
Cheapest players - Dixons - 37.98 ($70.81), Richer Sounds 29.95 ($53.31) given sterling being worth about $1.78 today.
The Euro is strong against the dollar. This accounts for some of the difference in price (not that long ago the Euro and USD were at parity). A strong Euro relative to the source of imports may make the imports cheaper, but the source is a country other than the USA or EU. Other sources of price may be differences in the markets between the EU and USA, bargaining power of retailers, etc, or competition between retailers (or lack thereof). Part of it may be the longer warranty period. You certainly can't assume that all of it is due to this.
The real truth of the matter is that what is likely happening is that people in the EU get to buy the same crap players as we do in the US but instead of paying $30 for a 90 day warrenty they get to may $100 for a 2 year warrenty.
The going rate for a cheap DVD player in the UK is now about 40, which is about $70. Part of this apparently high cost is going to be the relative strength of sterling against the dollar, so the price here will seem a little inflated. If sterling falls a bit, then it could easily equate to $60. So the prices are proportionately rather higher, but in absolute terms, not that much higher.
Part of the reason why the cost isn't that much more in absolute terms is that under UK law at least, outside the manufacturer's or retailer's stated warranty period they have to offer you a repair during the standard lifetime of that product (up to a maximum of 6 years in England) but this repair doesn't have to be free. Hence despite this consumer protection the cost to the retailer isn't necessarily that onerous. This is also why extended warranties are available here. Extended warranties here are really an insurance product that insures the consumer against the cost of the repair tha must be offered when it falls outside the initial warranty period.
For one thing, in Belgium at least, pet stores were required to give two years warranty on animals... and if they died for whatever reason, they had to replace them.
Is this actually true, or one of those urban myths about the EU, like the straight banana directive (which never existed)?
I've not heard of this 2 year warranty thing in the UK. In the UK the requirement is that a product should last for either the time specified by the warranty issued by the manufacturer or retailer a reasonable period for that product, whichever is longer, up to a maximum period of time (6 years in England and Wales, 5 years in Scotland, not sure what it is in Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, etc).
I am currently in a strange position as I forgot to register our clothes dryer when I bought it. Registration is free, and entitles you to a 5 year guarantee. The dryer broke about 2 months after we got it, and failed with the same fault again about 15 months after that. The first fault was fixed under the standard guarantee, but the second was outside the initial year, and also outside the 1 year warranty for the initial repair, so I had to pay 75 for the repair. The question is, given that for free I could have had a 5 year guarantee, can I argue that the manufacturer appears to expect the good to last 5 years anyway, and it should be considered to be under a 5 year warranty automatically, let alone the standard consumer rights that extend up to 6 years?
I'm not sure I can be bothered to take the manufacturer to task over this, though.
Point taken absolutely.
No, that's a value ascribed for some types of calculation in cost:benefit analyses.
The financial cost and value of a human life in reality are different to this value, different to each other, and different for different individuals. The emotional value is different again.
As an example, imagine someone who was brought up in humble surroundings. The cost of that person's education, food, etc. prior to them being able to generate economic activity may have been small. This same person may (as some people from orphanages have) go on to be a captain of industry, producing a large amount of economic activity, and thus have high value. Neither of these figures may be $100,000.
Even someone who is not a captain of industry may have value in the sense that their loss may reduce in less economic activity, their death may depress others and thus reduce the economic activity of others, and so on.
Lastly the value of a human life is different for different people or organisations. The government may see it in terms of lost economic activity or taxes. Loved ones will see it very differently.
I would, however, advise you to look up your state/province/county annual financial reports. They can be quite illuminating about the thought processes of those who create them. You'll find that in them roads have cost, but only the toll roads have "value," inherent in their income to the state. A road with no tolls is treated as overhead to payed for by tax levy.
The road may have little direct positive financial contribution to the budget of the state or province, but this is totally different from it not having a value! The road has value to the state or province in allowing its law enforcement officers to travel on it, for example. (Defraying the cost of having to go everywhere by helicopter if there were no roads, for example). The roads also have value for the general populace.
I have E.F Schumacher's book. I still have no clue what you are on about.
Keyensianism was appropriate at the time as it was a way of putting money in the hand of people at the bottom of the pile who would assuredly spend it, thus generating economic activity to provide them with the goods and services that they wanted to spend the money on. It isn't a bad strategy as a short term measure to get you out of a depression, if the government has the financial reserves to do it.
A competing theory is that of trickle down which involves allowing the rich to keep more of their profits, in the hope that this will stimulate economic activity by encouraging them to open more training shoe factories, or so on. This is less certain to work as whilst you can be fairly sure that those at the bottom of the pile will spend money they have, you can't be sure that those who already have more than they can spend will do the same.
In any case, both approaches have serious problems in a globalised economy as the additional economic activity generated might be in buying cheap DVD players from abroad, or in creating DVD making factories in a foreign country. In both instances the government's spending, or reduction in revenue may be subsidising offshore business. In a globalised economy the government probably needs to try to give the economy a competitive edge in some area in some way.
Cars kill ten a day on average in accidents the UK alone.
Then there's land use... The amount of land necessary to produce around one megawatt, iirc is like 4 or 5 acres.
A suggestion is to put them on the roofs of buildings. Maintenance is more complex, of course. In theory the energy could be exported back to the main grid, but this may require more complexity than is necessary as the energy generated could simply be used in that building to offset requirements from the main grid. In practical terms it probably means that it is most useful in larger buildings, such as offices (see University of Nottingham, UK for an example). It may be that more direct solar energy systems rather than PV cells, even with lower thermal efficiency, have better cost:benefit ratios in these situations, though. In places which have a good deal of sunlight and require air conditioning then it seems sensible to at least consider the use of more direct solar energy air conditioning systems. E.g. Southern India.
Change in agricultural land use or reduction in the ice caps will probably account for a greater change in albedo than use of solar energy systems. The energy incident on the earth's surfacr is around 700W/square metre in good, clear conditions and the earth's surface is about 5x10E15 square metres. Extensive use of solar energy could make a difference - I don't know what the energy requirements would be and the change in albedo it would require. Maybe if we painted all houses white apart from the solar panels it would cancel out :-)
Burning fossil fuels, or using nuclear fuel also releases heat into the environment that would not also be present. Only biomass is likely to be approaching neutral in this respect.
Solar? Far too inefficent and produces too many toxins.
It doesn't necessarily produce toxins.
Solar cells to convert to electricity directly tend to require toxic chemicals. In theory you could manufacture carefully to avoid release of toxins and recycle all cells, but this may not be practicable or cost effective, althouth you'd have to balance the toxic effects against the costs and benefits of other energy generation systems.
What is much less polluting is to use solar energy more directly. You can heat water directly and use this as a source of hot water, either directly, or via a heat exchanger to produce electricity. Alternatively there are ways to use convection currents to run air conditioning systems. These are obviously less energy efficient but the energy is essentially free. You still need to do a cost-benefit analysis to ensure that the energy required to manufacture all the required plumbing outweighs the energy saved, of course. It's a great potential boon to the plumbing industry too!
The U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution were groundbreaking documents, stunningly radical in their time. However, the seeds of the US Constitution - the legal framework of the first modern democracy - hark back to the Magna Carta, which is about 500 years older and devised in Britain.
There isn't really much relationship between the Magna Carta and the US Constitution. The US Constitution has its roots firmly in the Englightenment of the 18th century, which was influenced by the events in the English Civil War (which was actually several wars) and movements prevalent at that time, e.g. the Levellers, and also by French and Scottish philosophers (mostly).
The Magna Carta was a political settlement concerned with feudalism, and feudalism was eventually usurped, but it was relatively minor compared to other limits put on kingly power in places such as Poland or by the Italian Communes of the Renaissance.
Isn't Nigella a Domestic Goddess? In which case a knighthood (surely a damehood?) would be a demotion!
You can bet that a whole lot more people were involved in the invention of the lightbulb (and related technologies) than only Edison
Notably Swann.
Edison gets credit for the creations of his entire lab, which he headed, in addition to things he personally created. This is not to knock the man, since he obviously had some excellent project management and motivational skills to get so many innovations out the door!
Also note that Bell didn't invent the telephone (it was an Italian), to note something from a couple of posts above. Bell did manage to commercialise the telephone, however.