An internal combustion engine might extract 25% of the power from gasoline, however, a battery might only store 30% of the power from the original oil used to generate the electricity
The answer here is to try to avoid using oil to generate the electricity in the first place. Assuming the energy of a system for other forms of electricity generation is less than its output then it can be used to offset oil production. People have sucessfully used solar panels and small, roof-mounted domestic wind turbines to top up electric car batteries. Solar panels on car roofs might offer some small additional input. You'd need to do a full cost-benefit analysis for each proposed system, though, to ensure that the energy output over the lifetime is greater than the input and that there are no problematic wastes or excessive maintenance costs.
My preference would be for the small wind turbine. Already these are available for augmenting domestic power supplies, but domestic power usage tends to drop overnight, so if the wind is still up, why not charge up the car with it? (Or the storage heaters).
We are designing a Campus Grid (we have the middleware ready to go). Part of our cost calculations include energy costs. Rhys Newman at Oxford University has been doing some work in this area running jobs on PCs running cycle scavenging software, connected via metering boxes to the mains so that the usage can be monitored.
Given that most PCs in offices are left on and running (if idle) 24-7 then the typical utilisation of an idle PC is around 125W and one doing batch computing about 250W. The relative cost from normal practice would be different if the PCs were suspended, hibernated, or powered off overnight, of course.
" In June 2002, Meucci was officially credited by the United States House of Representatives with the invention of the telephone, instead of Alexander Graham Bell."
Meucci got to the patent office before either of them. Unfortunately Meucci could not afford a full patent initially and filed an outline patent which was valid for (if my memory serves me correctly) for two years, renewable, but was unable to keep up the payments on even this.
MS may feel that the personnel deployed on the Linux and Unix work would be better deployed elsewhere, or let go to save money. It isn't a case of 'redundant line' but efficiencies and core business. Linux anti-virus software is not part of MS's core business. It may mean that other firms wishing to recruit staff to work on Linux anti-virus may be able to cherry pick, though.
If the energy saved in running the car is greater than any extra energy used in creating it (and a lot of that energy goes into making the body, fittings, and fixtures, not just the drive train) then you come out ahead. Also (although you need to see how manufacture occurs) you may come out ahead in terms of oil usage. Oil has many uses and is a non-renewable resource that currently tends to be found under the territory of unstable parts of the world so avoiding its use for something as mundane as transport is a good idea if you can manage it.
With regard to the contents of the batteries, many items we use contain toxic components. We have to deal with either recycling or safe disposal of all of these, and it's another factor to bear in mind in the overall cost-benefit analysis of a hybrid car.
However the best thing to do is to go for energy efficiency, and this can take many forms. Cars for commuting are actually inefficient in terms of the main aim of a car of getting person from A to B as you need to get the car from A to B too, but the car isn't the one going to work. Cars can be a convenient form of portable personal space, though, which makes journeys more tolerable even though if everyone is driving then congestion makes them take longer.
This would also require new business models. Reusing freely from 'Natural Capitalism' rather than providing a digital camera, computer, or whatever, companies could provide a 'digital camera' service that provides you with the tools to take digital pictures. You could then choose to use a particular service and price point depending on the performance you need - e.g. cutting edge, a certain image resolution, or the cheapskates option. As a camera becomes no longer of interest to those who want the cutting edge technology the physical device could be reused by those who need a lower sophistication of device to achieve their contracted service level. Thus recycling (up to the point the device no longer works) becomes automatic. Also it becomes in the interest of service providers or those who supply the service providers with physical product to make the items durable rather than disposable since it is then economically worthwhile extending their lifecycle.
This does mean a different view of ownership to the one currently favoured, but apart from collectors most people just want something that does the job rather than being very attached to the item itself.
Sure, OpenOffice is great, but commercial enterprises will stick with commercial solutions for which there is support.
Actually there may be increasing interest in the new standards body approved formats in many instances as this is more likely to assure backwards compatibility and readability in the future. Given requirements for data retention this may become increasingly important.
If MS's revenue dropped to zero then fund managers and others would sell MS shares very soon thereafter. In fact these days if your revenue does not continually increase you can be in trouble in the stock market. So it is nonsense to suggest that MS could simply sit on the revenue and ride it out. In terms of the way company governance works they would not be allowed to since the management is legally required to deliver best value to the shareholders.
Unless things stay exactly the same forever someone will complain (especially retired colnels in the Home Counties). Of course if they stay the same, someone will complain.
Does the GPL specifically indicate that no limitations should be placed on reuse of any portions of the code? I presume it does, which would mean that Nokia's statement would mean that the Linux kernel could not be distributed under the GPL, and given that it contains GPL code it could not not be distributed under the GPL. I.e. deadlock.
As I read it it means that anything that is infringing now in the kernel is fine, and those same infringements in future kernels are also fine, but that new things introduced into the kernel may or may not be fine.
AFAIK the GPL refers to copyright on code, not patents. However code that contains an implementation of a patented process, method, etc., may run into problems, at least in certain jurdisdictions, that would make distribution under the GPL difficult or impossible. But the patent itself cannot be GPLed or anything like that.
I makes me wonder exactly why we continue this ridiculous tradition
As long as noone other than willing participants get hurt I am all in favour of ridiculous traditions (like rolling down a hill after a wheel of cheese, for example).
I think there is definitely a market for subscription services for people abroad, even just for the Archers, if at the right rate.
I wouldn't mind the programmes being available for longer than a week but this would require larger servers to archive the material and more bandwidth if it meant more people listening in.
Oh, and another handy feature of the current system - if you are listening to Start the Week on the bus on the way to work and your radio battery goes flat, you can simply listen to it on the computer during your lunch break!
There have been statements to the effect that the BBC will be making parts of its back catalogue available also, and this may be a first stab at the related technology. Suggestions were that the back catalogue items to be made available would be from the 1960s and 70s of things not generally worth making into full, commercial DVD releases. For historians of the 1960s and 70s access to past news programmes (plus the eventual advent of suitable search technology, which will be a while coming) would be useful.
Lift optimising behaviour is a special case of general flocking behaviour that provides a particular evolutionary benefit for long journeys, for example by geese. Basic flocking behaviour (for example flocks of starlings) doesn't exhibit this. The latter requires relatively small numbers of local rules to create the emergent behaviour. There is still debate on how locally each bird looks to determine its flight path and to what extent it looks to birds beyond its immediate locality.
Slashdot Mirror
The answer here is to try to avoid using oil to generate the electricity in the first place. Assuming the energy of a system for other forms of electricity generation is less than its output then it can be used to offset oil production. People have sucessfully used solar panels and small, roof-mounted domestic wind turbines to top up electric car batteries. Solar panels on car roofs might offer some small additional input. You'd need to do a full cost-benefit analysis for each proposed system, though, to ensure that the energy output over the lifetime is greater than the input and that there are no problematic wastes or excessive maintenance costs.
My preference would be for the small wind turbine. Already these are available for augmenting domestic power supplies, but domestic power usage tends to drop overnight, so if the wind is still up, why not charge up the car with it? (Or the storage heaters).
Does grandma need direct web connect?
These are the sort of calculations we are doing for out Campus Grid.
Given that most PCs in offices are left on and running (if idle) 24-7 then the typical utilisation of an idle PC is around 125W and one doing batch computing about 250W. The relative cost from normal practice would be different if the PCs were suspended, hibernated, or powered off overnight, of course.
Those of us developing Campus Grids do take this into account in costing models!
" In June 2002, Meucci was officially credited by the United States House of Representatives with the invention of the telephone, instead of Alexander Graham Bell."
Meucci got to the patent office before either of them. Unfortunately Meucci could not afford a full patent initially and filed an outline patent which was valid for (if my memory serves me correctly) for two years, renewable, but was unable to keep up the payments on even this.
Remember that it was Meucci, not Bell, that invented the telephone.
Maybe the term should be changed to Freedom Software (for the liks of GPLed works) and Free Software (for zero cost).
MS may feel that the personnel deployed on the Linux and Unix work would be better deployed elsewhere, or let go to save money. It isn't a case of 'redundant line' but efficiencies and core business. Linux anti-virus software is not part of MS's core business. It may mean that other firms wishing to recruit staff to work on Linux anti-virus may be able to cherry pick, though.
With regard to the contents of the batteries, many items we use contain toxic components. We have to deal with either recycling or safe disposal of all of these, and it's another factor to bear in mind in the overall cost-benefit analysis of a hybrid car.
However the best thing to do is to go for energy efficiency, and this can take many forms. Cars for commuting are actually inefficient in terms of the main aim of a car of getting person from A to B as you need to get the car from A to B too, but the car isn't the one going to work. Cars can be a convenient form of portable personal space, though, which makes journeys more tolerable even though if everyone is driving then congestion makes them take longer.
Do these houses come flat packed for home assembly? :-)
This does mean a different view of ownership to the one currently favoured, but apart from collectors most people just want something that does the job rather than being very attached to the item itself.
Sure, OpenOffice is great, but commercial enterprises will stick with commercial solutions for which there is support.
Actually there may be increasing interest in the new standards body approved formats in many instances as this is more likely to assure backwards compatibility and readability in the future. Given requirements for data retention this may become increasingly important.
If MS's revenue dropped to zero then fund managers and others would sell MS shares very soon thereafter. In fact these days if your revenue does not continually increase you can be in trouble in the stock market. So it is nonsense to suggest that MS could simply sit on the revenue and ride it out. In terms of the way company governance works they would not be allowed to since the management is legally required to deliver best value to the shareholders.
Unless things stay exactly the same forever someone will complain (especially retired colnels in the Home Counties). Of course if they stay the same, someone will complain.
Does the GPL specifically indicate that no limitations should be placed on reuse of any portions of the code? I presume it does, which would mean that Nokia's statement would mean that the Linux kernel could not be distributed under the GPL, and given that it contains GPL code it could not not be distributed under the GPL. I.e. deadlock.
As I read it it means that anything that is infringing now in the kernel is fine, and those same infringements in future kernels are also fine, but that new things introduced into the kernel may or may not be fine.
AFAIK the GPL refers to copyright on code, not patents. However code that contains an implementation of a patented process, method, etc., may run into problems, at least in certain jurdisdictions, that would make distribution under the GPL difficult or impossible. But the patent itself cannot be GPLed or anything like that.
As long as noone other than willing participants get hurt I am all in favour of ridiculous traditions (like rolling down a hill after a wheel of cheese, for example).
Will it run faster on newer hardware too? That's what I really want to know...
I wouldn't mind the programmes being available for longer than a week but this would require larger servers to archive the material and more bandwidth if it meant more people listening in.
Oh, and another handy feature of the current system - if you are listening to Start the Week on the bus on the way to work and your radio battery goes flat, you can simply listen to it on the computer during your lunch break!
There have been statements to the effect that the BBC will be making parts of its back catalogue available also, and this may be a first stab at the related technology. Suggestions were that the back catalogue items to be made available would be from the 1960s and 70s of things not generally worth making into full, commercial DVD releases. For historians of the 1960s and 70s access to past news programmes (plus the eventual advent of suitable search technology, which will be a while coming) would be useful.
If it is available for use outside the UK then it will be useful for people on holiday or ex-pats.
AFAIK it is also intended as a prelude to making some older content that is not being aired or being released on DVD available.
Lift optimising behaviour is a special case of general flocking behaviour that provides a particular evolutionary benefit for long journeys, for example by geese. Basic flocking behaviour (for example flocks of starlings) doesn't exhibit this. The latter requires relatively small numbers of local rules to create the emergent behaviour. There is still debate on how locally each bird looks to determine its flight path and to what extent it looks to birds beyond its immediate locality.