Innovation is certainly not dead, but a lot of innovators are on strike. Think "Atlas Shrugged" and Galt's Gulch. With today's IP environment which heavily favors large corporations whether or not you work for them, I for one refuse to play the game. Did the patent game both under my name and as a consultant, created lots of fun stuff, but for what you end up getting out of it, it is simply not worth the extraordinary time investment. I personally know at least half a dozen just like me, and I'm not exactly the most socially connected nerd...
What I invent now I do for fun and for just myself and my friends.
Perhaps they will license music like OEM Microsoft software, that is, per computer and not transferrable. Replace your motherboard or get a new computer? Buy a new OS, all apps, and all content.
Why gouge once when you can gouge year after year?
Take apart a General Scanning galvanometer and you will see a very similar design, and that is at least 20 years old. The galvos are torque motors used for mirror positioning in laser systems.
Big old clunker, only had dual 8 inch floppy drives.
I had a VT-52 terminal, ASCII only, no graphics.
The box itself had 16k words of core memory and no boot ROM card, so each time I started it I had to toggle in the boot code on the front panel switches. Fortunately I figured out a VERY short routine which worked. The core memory consisted of two 8K by 18 bit (2 parity bits) planes, each of which was a quad wide card for the Unibus backplane, and two logic cards each of which was hex wide. The RX-01 floppy drive required an interface card, as did the serial interface for the VT-52. IIRC those two were quad width. This thing pulled well over 1000 watts of power.
RT-11 was very much like DOS. A friendly DEC field service person gave me the full software distribution, which operated quite differently than the way Microsoft does. What you get is a bootable OS which brings you into a SYSGEN procedure. In this, you specify exactly what you have for peripherals, what their bus addresses and interrupts are, and the code essentially assembles and links up a custom version of the OS for you. That's right, you actually had the source code right there. I took advantage of this to add my own "extensions" and later, device drivers (tricky until you got the hang of it).
RT-11 ran BASIC, which I used for most quicky stuff, and of course ASM.
Later on I acquired a Xerox Diablo removable cartridge hard drive (5 MB fixed, 5 MB removable) but still no boot card, they were still expensive. Eventually I picked up a Qbus box from where I worked (they used the cards in their own custom backplanes and boxes) and found a full set of 11/23 cards for $5 each (!!!) at some surplus place up in Woburn. There was even an AMD 2901 based math coprocessor which had a guaranteed maximum speed of 1 Mflop. Picked up a NEC spinwriter real cheap due to being only for 230 volts (big deal, sit a $5 autotransformer behind it).
Wrote my own checkbook balancing and accounting package, ran a small business from the system for years.
Switched to an IBM compatible AT clone at 10 MHz when I needed to run a PC board layout package (don't remember the name but it had a dongle) and this machine was slightly faster than the 11/23. Almost went Mac route but it was the availability of software that I needed that made the decision.
Competition from the Bells?
on
Vonage IPO
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I just upgraded to FIOS and was told for an additional $5 a month I could get unlimited long distance. When I asked how that came about the reply was that it was meant to compete against VoIP firms. So now I am using Verizon, pay $22 less per month than Vonage was, and am actually able to use my fax at full speed, something that was elusive with Vonage.
I remember hearing (quick ref: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006987.html) that you *are* required to show ID on demand by a law enforcement officer. I know around here (in NY) you *will* be arrested if you refuse.
Thus, there is apparently no right to even *be* in a public place without ID/anonymously, much less travel.
A billion dollar coal plant is useless without a continuous supply of coal, which must be bought at market rates.
Hydro, wind, solar are examples of power sources that for the most part only require equipment to take advantage of.
Coal, oil, gas, nuclear are examples of power sources which require an ongoing supply of fuel. Additionally, as a result of this, there is a continuous stream of waste byproducts from these plants.
This is not a new idea, I've seen this exact idea in (IIRC) Popular Science maybe 30 years ago. The blurb talked about the same issues covered by many/.'ers such as taking energy from the passing cars.
I always thought, again like many here, that the mechanism seemed too complex for it's job and couldn't pay for itself.
If you want to invent something interesting devise a way to take energy from cars going over a certain speed. That is, if the speed limit is 55 MPH and you go 65 have the system extract energy from your car and feed it into the grid. Sure, you can go 65, but you have to press your foot down like you wanted to go 70 to hit 65.
Today's cars are pretty sophisticated with multiple micros, data buses, and highly controlled engines including nested control loops.
Mechanics who deal with these autos might very well surprise you with their level of technical expertise and ability to quickly learn new technologies. The independent small town shop I use is owned by an old Navy mechanic and his son and I have been very impressed with their abilities (and I'm a degreed Mech E).
Just because they are covered in grease and grime doesn't mean they're not quite smart at what they do. Many spend a significant amount of time in some very good training on a regular basis. Don't discount these guys so quickly. I have no doubt these guys and many like them could master BMW's steam engine rapidly.
Before you go telling me of this or that stupid mechanic, think of your own industry/profession ant tell me everyone in it is an ace.
Some companies make it a policy that once laid off (they call it a "Reduction In Force") no employee may ever work for the company again. Odd, and I can't see the logic behind it. Another policy at one place I was at was that it was absolutely prohibited to discuss any details about a past employee with another company. The only thing that could be answered was a verification that the person was indeed an employee (and only HR could do this). Not salary verification, not performance, not why they left, not even position. I suspect this was primarily a CYA in regards to lawsuits.
Sounds odd but that's where I think they're headed.
The music industry needs new artists to keep making money but how to promote this new talent? Spitzer and other AGs are watching over their payola schemes making it harder to get radio airtime. Concerts are good, but getting to be very expensive undertakings. So how does the public get to hear the next great bands?
One way, even though they don't want to admit it, is by P2P networks. It is easy to listen to a song by some new artist you heard about. Very few people have enough money to just go out and buy CDs all the time and the risk of a lot of duds is too great, but downloading has much less adjusted risk, even with the much-publicized lawsuits.
There is a balance that must be achieved: all P2P downloading and no buying means no income for the publishers and artists, yet no downloading cuts off a very vital marketing channel.
With draconian copyright laws it is becomming a more serious offense to make a digital copy than to steal the CD from a store. Worse yet, governments seem all too willing to abdicate enforcement and police powers to these corporations. When the government and RIAA/MPAA have control of our computers and own all our data, it will be too late, the battle will have been lost, and we will enter a new historical period of information slavery.
All attempts to equate P2P with international terrorism must be soundly rebuffed. A threat to failing business models is *NOT* the same as the threat of killing innocent people. How bad to these proposals have to get before the RIAA/MPAA are kicked the hell out of these legal processes?
The only thing I've gotten over is my initial excitement of their announcement.
Right now I use NetFlix and two local video rental stores. NetFlix gives me as much time as I want and I get 3 days from the local stores. I need this flexibility as my schedule is frequently unpredictable. If I want something really fast, I have it in my VCR or DVD player within 15 minutes. More obscure stuff comes from NetFlix. Now some company tells me I can download? Great! But wait... After a long download (longer than it would take me to get to a video store and back), I only have 24 hours to watch it? And what if I want it on my big screen TV? Will they allow my computer to output it as a high quality signal? Remember, that to allow this would mean I could potentially record it, do you think they'd allow that?
I have had enough headaches with DRM over the years, starting with the non "D" scheme cooked up by Macrovision. For years (and still in some family setups) I had to get boxes which removed the Macrovision signals, not to make copies (doesn't make sense to make copies these days) but to just watch with decent quality.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but once I buy something I want what I paid for. If I don't like the terms, or I don't get what I should have (in my sole opinion!), I will stop purchasing and my hard earned cash will be spent on other things.
You may pooh-pooh the 24 hour thing, but it is enough to keep this consumer away.
Couldn't read the full article as it is now "premium content" but if you can make compressed air you can make electricity, and use that electricity for more than refrigeration. The comments about the vortex tubes' inefficiency are correct, so even if you figure the inefficiencies of (solar/labor/water power) to electric then operation of either a freon or Peltier cooler, you are better off.
If someone wants to do something really interesting for the third world, make an adsorbtion freezer using solar concentrators for the heat source. This article discusses some issues: http://me.sjtu.edu.cn/english/scientific_research/ tpad.htm
In today's legal environment, yes. Anything that you "agree" to is a contract and you are bound by its terms. "By using this product, you agree that we may destroy it at any time and you have no recourse. Have a nice day!"
Seriously, the courts are leaning that way and I suspect it will be the marketplace, rather than the courts or legislation, which stops this insanity.
How about if you had two of them linked together remotely? Would there be the same objection to remotely interacting with your wife/girlfriend/SO (you would each be with a model of the other)? In order for a remote system to reasonably handle the comm delay there would need to be some degree of autonomy. That's another step removing the system from absolute exact response, although it would have to learn so as to more carefully match reality. Now how about if a machine in the center learned the interactions to a much higher degree and then could run a simulation? The lines could get blurry here pretty quickly!
When will people quit whining about RF interference from powerline broadband? Who cares. RF is a dead technology that noone born in this century still finds cool.
I care about RF interference and I am not a ham. When the next hurricane sweeps through town, or the next terrorist attack takes out internet and telephone communications, HF will be there to get the messages through. That is, unless the bands are flooded with noise from BPL, which can carry from areas where the power grid is still up into disaster areas.
Perhaps you will be less selfish when your area gets hit.
Money and power are clinching their position in this country, and VERY rapidly. Combine the "Patriot" act with limiting freedom of the press to gutting of whistleblower laws to widespread corruption and add in a good dose of "liberal" bashing taking the form of "get tough on crime" and you get what we have.
Too late now, I'm afraid, and it will ge a *LOT* worse before getting any better.
More like a ball and chain. The school my son goes to has laptops all over for student use and there is a pretty strict policy on their use. You can even check them out from the library. The kids are all saavy enough to know those are for certain specific tasks and most have their own computers at home for other things like IM, chat (downloading inappropriate pictures...) etc.
The point being, when they loan you a computer, it is only for projects they tell you to do. My son's school isn't nearly as strict as TFA's school but that is how many schools see it. The way to deal with this is to only use the school's computers for what is absolutely necessary and everything else must be done on non-school machines. Lack of use may kill the program, but that is the result of their policy, no more, no less.
It's been a while, but when I was in HS we had one teletype with acoustic modem to a county timesharing computer (HP 3000). I was the school geek and shared passwords with head geeks at other schools and of course we figured out the alternate password trick on accounts and also how to get the admin password so we pretty much owned the system. We never messed anything up but one day were discovered and told in no uncertain terms to CUT IT OUT or we would lose access permanently. No police, no heavy handed shit, just cut it out or we would lose our toy.
The people in this country need to adopt a "zero tolerance" attitude toward stupid knee-jerk laws like these. Fire the school administrators, elect a new DA. Our kids are our future!
I have a box which will expose film from digital images. Made by Matrix, it cost me $50 on eBay and works off a $29 National Instruments GPIB board. Does over 12 megapixels natively. Show up with an undeveloped roll of film, ask them to develop and print one set, then when you pick it up order enlargements and I'll bet you never run into any problems whatsoever. I haven't.
You say that with such certainty? Pardon me, but who the hell gave you the right to tell others what they can and cannot do? Porn, guns, gambling, drugs, filesharing, prostitution, alcohol and a million other things are here to stay and we need to figure out how to deal with them all in an intelligent way so that they can exist without causing undue damage to society. Prohibition has proved throughout history to be ineffectual at best and terribly damaging at worst. All of these have elements that clearly go over the line but prohibition just makes it worse. C'mon, if you really are in Mensa you should know that already.
There are good reasons to log dynamic IP assignments and what we need are controls over what is done with that information rather than not capturing it. Whether any government can step up to the plate as being truly representative of the people remains to be seen, though. Is not keeping the log a good solution under conditions where the government is owned by corporate interests? I don't know.
So, tell me, what's your particular beef with porn? Is it more important than the large mob chanting that they want to blow up the city I live near?
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Innovation is certainly not dead, but a lot of innovators are on strike. Think "Atlas Shrugged" and Galt's Gulch. With today's IP environment which heavily favors large corporations whether or not you work for them, I for one refuse to play the game. Did the patent game both under my name and as a consultant, created lots of fun stuff, but for what you end up getting out of it, it is simply not worth the extraordinary time investment. I personally know at least half a dozen just like me, and I'm not exactly the most socially connected nerd...
What I invent now I do for fun and for just myself and my friends.
Perhaps they will license music like OEM Microsoft software, that is, per computer and not transferrable. Replace your motherboard or get a new computer? Buy a new OS, all apps, and all content.
Why gouge once when you can gouge year after year?
Take apart a General Scanning galvanometer and you will see a very similar design, and that is at least 20 years old. The galvos are torque motors used for mirror positioning in laser systems.
Another patent based on prior art?
Big old clunker, only had dual 8 inch floppy drives.
I had a VT-52 terminal, ASCII only, no graphics.
The box itself had 16k words of core memory and no boot ROM card, so each time I started it I had to toggle in the boot code on the front panel switches. Fortunately I figured out a VERY short routine which worked. The core memory consisted of two 8K by 18 bit (2 parity bits) planes, each of which was a quad wide card for the Unibus backplane, and two logic cards each of which was hex wide. The RX-01 floppy drive required an interface card, as did the serial interface for the VT-52. IIRC those two were quad width. This thing pulled well over 1000 watts of power.
RT-11 was very much like DOS. A friendly DEC field service person gave me the full software distribution, which operated quite differently than the way Microsoft does. What you get is a bootable OS which brings you into a SYSGEN procedure. In this, you specify exactly what you have for peripherals, what their bus addresses and interrupts are, and the code essentially assembles and links up a custom version of the OS for you. That's right, you actually had the source code right there. I took advantage of this to add my own "extensions" and later, device drivers (tricky until you got the hang of it).
RT-11 ran BASIC, which I used for most quicky stuff, and of course ASM.
Later on I acquired a Xerox Diablo removable cartridge hard drive (5 MB fixed, 5 MB removable) but still no boot card, they were still expensive. Eventually I picked up a Qbus box from where I worked (they used the cards in their own custom backplanes and boxes) and found a full set of 11/23 cards for $5 each (!!!) at some surplus place up in Woburn. There was even an AMD 2901 based math coprocessor which had a guaranteed maximum speed of 1 Mflop. Picked up a NEC spinwriter real cheap due to being only for 230 volts (big deal, sit a $5 autotransformer behind it).
Wrote my own checkbook balancing and accounting package, ran a small business from the system for years.
Switched to an IBM compatible AT clone at 10 MHz when I needed to run a PC board layout package (don't remember the name but it had a dongle) and this machine was slightly faster than the 11/23. Almost went Mac route but it was the availability of software that I needed that made the decision.
I just upgraded to FIOS and was told for an additional $5 a month I could get unlimited long distance. When I asked how that came about the reply was that it was meant to compete against VoIP firms. So now I am using Verizon, pay $22 less per month than Vonage was, and am actually able to use my fax at full speed, something that was elusive with Vonage.
I am not sure I would invest in them just yet.
I went through the AMSAT site and some others and couldn't find any mention of what they used, just that is was 28 volts.
I wonder if they relied on an aqueous based chemistry, which degrades rapidly below 0 C or did actually use something good for lower temps like LiSO2.
Just curious.
Also, did they even try to put this setup into a temperature/pressure chamber to see how it would work while on the ground?
I remember hearing (quick ref: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006987.html) that you *are* required to show ID on demand by a law enforcement officer. I know around here (in NY) you *will* be arrested if you refuse.
Thus, there is apparently no right to even *be* in a public place without ID/anonymously, much less travel.
'The Internet was completely funded by porn,'
Perhaps, but IIRC all the Macrovision "picture enhancers" were sold so people could copy rented porn tapes.
Maybe in this case porn using the newest digital protections will cause a thriving black market for the newest cracks.
A billion dollar coal plant is useless without a continuous supply of coal, which must be bought at market rates.
Hydro, wind, solar are examples of power sources that for the most part only require equipment to take advantage of.
Coal, oil, gas, nuclear are examples of power sources which require an ongoing supply of fuel. Additionally, as a result of this, there is a continuous stream of waste byproducts from these plants.
This is not a new idea, I've seen this exact idea in (IIRC) Popular Science maybe 30 years ago. The blurb talked about the same issues covered by many /.'ers such as taking energy from the passing cars.
I always thought, again like many here, that the mechanism seemed too complex for it's job and couldn't pay for itself.
If you want to invent something interesting devise a way to take energy from cars going over a certain speed. That is, if the speed limit is 55 MPH and you go 65 have the system extract energy from your car and feed it into the grid. Sure, you can go 65, but you have to press your foot down like you wanted to go 70 to hit 65.
Today's cars are pretty sophisticated with multiple micros, data buses, and highly controlled engines including nested control loops.
Mechanics who deal with these autos might very well surprise you with their level of technical expertise and ability to quickly learn new technologies. The independent small town shop I use is owned by an old Navy mechanic and his son and I have been very impressed with their abilities (and I'm a degreed Mech E).
Just because they are covered in grease and grime doesn't mean they're not quite smart at what they do. Many spend a significant amount of time in some very good training on a regular basis. Don't discount these guys so quickly. I have no doubt these guys and many like them could master BMW's steam engine rapidly.
Before you go telling me of this or that stupid mechanic, think of your own industry/profession ant tell me everyone in it is an ace.
Some companies make it a policy that once laid off (they call it a "Reduction In Force") no employee may ever work for the company again. Odd, and I can't see the logic behind it. Another policy at one place I was at was that it was absolutely prohibited to discuss any details about a past employee with another company. The only thing that could be answered was a verification that the person was indeed an employee (and only HR could do this). Not salary verification, not performance, not why they left, not even position. I suspect this was primarily a CYA in regards to lawsuits.
Sounds odd but that's where I think they're headed.
The music industry needs new artists to keep making money but how to promote this new talent? Spitzer and other AGs are watching over their payola schemes making it harder to get radio airtime. Concerts are good, but getting to be very expensive undertakings. So how does the public get to hear the next great bands?
One way, even though they don't want to admit it, is by P2P networks. It is easy to listen to a song by some new artist you heard about. Very few people have enough money to just go out and buy CDs all the time and the risk of a lot of duds is too great, but downloading has much less adjusted risk, even with the much-publicized lawsuits.
There is a balance that must be achieved: all P2P downloading and no buying means no income for the publishers and artists, yet no downloading cuts off a very vital marketing channel.
With draconian copyright laws it is becomming a more serious offense to make a digital copy than to steal the CD from a store. Worse yet, governments seem all too willing to abdicate enforcement and police powers to these corporations. When the government and RIAA/MPAA have control of our computers and own all our data, it will be too late, the battle will have been lost, and we will enter a new historical period of information slavery.
All attempts to equate P2P with international terrorism must be soundly rebuffed. A threat to failing business models is *NOT* the same as the threat of killing innocent people. How bad to these proposals have to get before the RIAA/MPAA are kicked the hell out of these legal processes?
"Get over it already."
The only thing I've gotten over is my initial excitement of their announcement.
Right now I use NetFlix and two local video rental stores. NetFlix gives me as much time as I want and I get 3 days from the local stores. I need this flexibility as my schedule is frequently unpredictable. If I want something really fast, I have it in my VCR or DVD player within 15 minutes. More obscure stuff comes from NetFlix. Now some company tells me I can download? Great! But wait... After a long download (longer than it would take me to get to a video store and back), I only have 24 hours to watch it? And what if I want it on my big screen TV? Will they allow my computer to output it as a high quality signal? Remember, that to allow this would mean I could potentially record it, do you think they'd allow that?
I have had enough headaches with DRM over the years, starting with the non "D" scheme cooked up by Macrovision. For years (and still in some family setups) I had to get boxes which removed the Macrovision signals, not to make copies (doesn't make sense to make copies these days) but to just watch with decent quality.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but once I buy something I want what I paid for. If I don't like the terms, or I don't get what I should have (in my sole opinion!), I will stop purchasing and my hard earned cash will be spent on other things.
You may pooh-pooh the 24 hour thing, but it is enough to keep this consumer away.
That is *exactly* what I had in mind!!
Couldn't read the full article as it is now "premium content" but if you can make compressed air you can make electricity, and use that electricity for more than refrigeration. The comments about the vortex tubes' inefficiency are correct, so even if you figure the inefficiencies of (solar/labor/water power) to electric then operation of either a freon or Peltier cooler, you are better off.
/ tpad.htm
If someone wants to do something really interesting for the third world, make an adsorbtion freezer using solar concentrators for the heat source. This article discusses some issues: http://me.sjtu.edu.cn/english/scientific_research
In today's legal environment, yes. Anything that you "agree" to is a contract and you are bound by its terms. "By using this product, you agree that we may destroy it at any time and you have no recourse. Have a nice day!"
Seriously, the courts are leaning that way and I suspect it will be the marketplace, rather than the courts or legislation, which stops this insanity.
How about if you had two of them linked together remotely? Would there be the same objection to remotely interacting with your wife/girlfriend/SO (you would each be with a model of the other)? In order for a remote system to reasonably handle the comm delay there would need to be some degree of autonomy. That's another step removing the system from absolute exact response, although it would have to learn so as to more carefully match reality. Now how about if a machine in the center learned the interactions to a much higher degree and then could run a simulation? The lines could get blurry here pretty quickly!
I dunno. Didn't China get Microsoft to filter the entire net for them?
When will people quit whining about RF interference from powerline broadband? Who cares. RF is a dead technology that noone born in this century still finds cool.
I care about RF interference and I am not a ham. When the next hurricane sweeps through town, or the next terrorist attack takes out internet and telephone communications, HF will be there to get the messages through. That is, unless the bands are flooded with noise from BPL, which can carry from areas where the power grid is still up into disaster areas.
Perhaps you will be less selfish when your area gets hit.
Money and power are clinching their position in this country, and VERY rapidly. Combine the "Patriot" act with limiting freedom of the press to gutting of whistleblower laws to widespread corruption and add in a good dose of "liberal" bashing taking the form of "get tough on crime" and you get what we have.
Too late now, I'm afraid, and it will ge a *LOT* worse before getting any better.
What kind of mess have we left for our kids?
More like a ball and chain. The school my son goes to has laptops all over for student use and there is a pretty strict policy on their use. You can even check them out from the library. The kids are all saavy enough to know those are for certain specific tasks and most have their own computers at home for other things like IM, chat (downloading inappropriate pictures...) etc.
The point being, when they loan you a computer, it is only for projects they tell you to do. My son's school isn't nearly as strict as TFA's school but that is how many schools see it. The way to deal with this is to only use the school's computers for what is absolutely necessary and everything else must be done on non-school machines. Lack of use may kill the program, but that is the result of their policy, no more, no less.
It's been a while, but when I was in HS we had one teletype with acoustic modem to a county timesharing computer (HP 3000). I was the school geek and shared passwords with head geeks at other schools and of course we figured out the alternate password trick on accounts and also how to get the admin password so we pretty much owned the system. We never messed anything up but one day were discovered and told in no uncertain terms to CUT IT OUT or we would lose access permanently. No police, no heavy handed shit, just cut it out or we would lose our toy.
The people in this country need to adopt a "zero tolerance" attitude toward stupid knee-jerk laws like these. Fire the school administrators, elect a new DA. Our kids are our future!
I have a box which will expose film from digital images. Made by Matrix, it cost me $50 on eBay and works off a $29 National Instruments GPIB board. Does over 12 megapixels natively. Show up with an undeveloped roll of film, ask them to develop and print one set, then when you pick it up order enlargements and I'll bet you never run into any problems whatsoever. I haven't.
Or Linux on a snazzy new Mac?
Is anyone doing that already (on existing Macs)? It might do a lot toward unifying computing platforms.
I can see special distros for the new Macs...
You say that with such certainty? Pardon me, but who the hell gave you the right to tell others what they can and cannot do? Porn, guns, gambling, drugs, filesharing, prostitution, alcohol and a million other things are here to stay and we need to figure out how to deal with them all in an intelligent way so that they can exist without causing undue damage to society. Prohibition has proved throughout history to be ineffectual at best and terribly damaging at worst. All of these have elements that clearly go over the line but prohibition just makes it worse. C'mon, if you really are in Mensa you should know that already.
There are good reasons to log dynamic IP assignments and what we need are controls over what is done with that information rather than not capturing it. Whether any government can step up to the plate as being truly representative of the people remains to be seen, though. Is not keeping the log a good solution under conditions where the government is owned by corporate interests? I don't know.
So, tell me, what's your particular beef with porn? Is it more important than the large mob chanting that they want to blow up the city I live near?