Oh when I said from 0-24, I meant what would otherwise be zero (without any heating), and then having the streets at 24 degrees (i.e. very warm).
I doubt a water system would be very maintainable, and there could be come limits there. I was thinking of something more solid-state (i.e. giant versions of the "cooker hob rings", but underground.
Going outside at this time of year is a pain because it's cold. Here's a really weird random question: If we had (hypothetically) unlimited energy/power (and I do mean unlimited), could we effectively, cheaply and practically heat all our streets from 0 to say 24 degrees c, or would it be too noisy, costly on parts, or otherwise impractical?
Specifically, I was either thinking of some giant fan assisted heaters (which are probably too noisy), or more likely, a giant network of underground heaters which continually pump out heat upwards so you feel it above ground. I realise it would have to be a lot of power, but I'm not sure how much (I'm guessing several megawatts for a typical 100 semi-detached house street?). Living in that kind of setting is another tiny step towards a nicer place for all imo.
Forget LCD - I'm sure you've heard of OLED. It will be better than CRT in most or every way.
However, have you heard of QLED (quantum dots)? It's been making the news recently, and promises again to be better than *even* OLED in every way that OLED could even remotely fall short, including better colour, much brighter, more energy efficient (even OLED requires colour filters), easily printable, better resolution, and even thinner. And it should obsolete all current lighting technologies too. See these links:
When these things become available (or even when OLED does), I'm sure you'll be the first to throw (along with any incandescent, flourescent, or LED bulbs you happen to have) the CRT in the trash;) .
Yes a lot of the problem is holes in our knowledge of the presumably complicated battery physics, but I bet we'd have a lot more insight if these things could be analyzed and seen in realtime without any of the tedious preparation and other obstacles. Ideally, we'd even have the battery running as normal the whole time, though that may be almost impossible.
I find it pretty amazing that we don't really still understand why these things wear out. It's a bit more forgivable for something like the human brain which is much more complicated, and where we can't easily poke around for obvious reasons.
But batteries?
I'm guessing our tools to get a peak of the microscopic realm must still be in their early stages technogically.
I'm closer to being a Google fan than most probably, but after seeing the video, they intend to abolish the desktop, and nothing (yes none of your own files) will be stored on your own computer. I'm sorry, but ignoring everything else, I dread the amount of lag if everything ran off the internet. Programs such as Photoshop or Visual Studio would download every time instead of run immediately? No thanks.
In a perfect world with infinite bandwidth, and no lag, maybe it's doable.
What would make me truly respect them is if they came up with something like BeOS, or QNX (Haiku), but which also had a metadata/database file system where everything is searched for, and folders become less of an issue (or not needed at all). Encouraging programs to be more self-contained would also be a step forwards too.
My best guess (as someone who believes in a 'soul', but also realizes this can lead to some potentially absurd conclusions) is that for each small electric replacement, your consciousness will proportionally fade away. At bit like when you're half asleep say if half your brain was replaced.
I tend to think particles in the brain are mapped to an immaterial 'location' of the immaterial soul for want of a better analogy.
* Gas/petrol usually costs about 15 cents per mile. This (and other electric cars presumably) will cost just under 4 cents per mile (based on current electricity costs), so the overall cost is only 4x cheaper (I was hoping for a full 10x or even 100x cheaper, but it's still good).
* It takes 10 hours to do a full recharge to do a full 40 mile recharge on 120 volt, but only 4 hours with a 240 volt supply. Maybe America et al. should switch to the 240v power like Europe to get faster charging (our kettles boil in half the time too). I'm not sure if anyone in the world has 480 volt mains, but that sounds as though it could be useful.
Thanks muchly for the informative replies. Hopefully then I can avoid the GPL restrictions by just using LGPL where possible (dual license is possible if the particular vendor supports it I guess though).
Yes, I would rather provide a link to my own site for the user to download the QT sources, or even better, like you say, directly to the Nokia QT download site.
I imagine including the QT source with my program will bloat the distribution by several megs otherwise, so I'd rather just include the binaries/DLLs.
Hopefully, the LGPL will be compatible with a GPL license should I need to include another library that uses that kind of license with my software as well.
I'm a little happier now that you've clarified that (good links). Though there are still a couple of small question marks in my mind (and the impossibility of upgrading still bugs me to death, but never mind).
For example, there was the point further down in that thread. I'll just quote an edited version here, and maybe you or someone else can help:
"* The vendor also needs to provide access to Qt libraries to the end-user (customer), and the vendor is obliged to give the end-user (customer) the tools to modify them, and re-load them into the device."
When it says provide access, does it mean so that I would leave the Qt DLLs intact? Obviously, I would provide them because my own software has to use them. So maybe I misunderstand that point.
Also, when it says I would be obliged to give the end-user (customer) the tools to modify them, can someone clarify what that means? I think the files in question are DLLs. Does it just mean that they can replace the DLLs with updated versions?
I initially wanted to use Qt for my latest project, but I'm rather concerned at the license which says you can't upgrade to a commercial version of the Qt license if you start the project as the free (beer) LGPL license. It makes no sense because a project may start off small, but then expand later.... and at that point, you can't then use the better (albeit expensive) full license. I moaned about the subject here:
Glad to hear they're finally beginning to disambiguate between those two horrors! Ideally of course, humanity would be using a base 8 or 16 (though 12 looks good) number system here instead of 10 and scrap any base 10 stuff, but I doubt that will happen for a while yet!
You say not to write shell scripts in it, but surely there's a library (Boost maybe?) that provides a wrapper to make it just as easy as any other language?
Yes, I've always thought something like that would be theoretically best. In a similar vein, we could do the same for cache/memory. Have tiny amounts right next to the registers, and double the amount of memory for greater caches, but have half of those, and then 4x, and have only a quarter of those ad infinitum, up to the very largest pool of memory.
I think something like that could be infinitely scalable, though I don't know too much about CPU designs, so I could be way off base.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh when I said from 0-24, I meant what would otherwise be zero (without any heating), and then having the streets at 24 degrees (i.e. very warm).
I doubt a water system would be very maintainable, and there could be come limits there. I was thinking of something more solid-state (i.e. giant versions of the "cooker hob rings", but underground.
Yes, I was thinking of something more solid-state, so there's zero maintenance. I think underground heating is the only way of achieving this.
Going outside at this time of year is a pain because it's cold. Here's a really weird random question: If we had (hypothetically) unlimited energy/power (and I do mean unlimited), could we effectively, cheaply and practically heat all our streets from 0 to say 24 degrees c, or would it be too noisy, costly on parts, or otherwise impractical?
Specifically, I was either thinking of some giant fan assisted heaters (which are probably too noisy), or more likely, a giant network of underground heaters which continually pump out heat upwards so you feel it above ground. I realise it would have to be a lot of power, but I'm not sure how much (I'm guessing several megawatts for a typical 100 semi-detached house street?). Living in that kind of setting is another tiny step towards a nicer place for all imo.
Forget LCD - I'm sure you've heard of OLED. It will be better than CRT in most or every way.
;) .
However, have you heard of QLED (quantum dots)? It's been making the news recently, and promises again to be better than *even* OLED in every way that OLED could even remotely fall short, including better colour, much brighter, more energy efficient (even OLED requires colour filters), easily printable, better resolution, and even thinner. And it should obsolete all current lighting technologies too. See these links:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=19591482
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot_display
http://dvice.com/archives/2010/12/quantum-dot-led.php
When these things become available (or even when OLED does), I'm sure you'll be the first to throw (along with any incandescent, flourescent, or LED bulbs you happen to have) the CRT in the trash
Hi again, I'm trying to reconcile your comment with this one, which seems to indicate it's slightly tricky (a bit of an understatement):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1903996&cid=34507858
Sorry, do you actually research in the field of battery tech?
That did cross my mind. I have heard it elsewhere, but I expected better from the Slashdot editors.
(yes, that last bit was a joke).
The CRT is a mature technology too. Doesn't mean it's ideal, or nearly ideal. Anyway, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_electron_microscopy#Limitations
Yes a lot of the problem is holes in our knowledge of the presumably complicated battery physics, but I bet we'd have a lot more insight if these things could be analyzed and seen in realtime without any of the tedious preparation and other obstacles. Ideally, we'd even have the battery running as normal the whole time, though that may be almost impossible.
I find it pretty amazing that we don't really still understand why these things wear out. It's a bit more forgivable for something like the human brain which is much more complicated, and where we can't easily poke around for obvious reasons.
But batteries?
I'm guessing our tools to get a peak of the microscopic realm must still be in their early stages technogically.
I think a better purpose for NASA would be to concentrate on making factories which produce spaceship factories.
What ever did happen to the Virgin funded project to get the (rich only for now) public into space?
Yes, I realised that after posting it. Slashdot doesn't have an editing facility though as you know.
I'm closer to being a Google fan than most probably, but after seeing the video, they intend to abolish the desktop, and nothing (yes none of your own files) will be stored on your own computer. I'm sorry, but ignoring everything else, I dread the amount of lag if everything ran off the internet. Programs such as Photoshop or Visual Studio would download every time instead of run immediately? No thanks.
In a perfect world with infinite bandwidth, and no lag, maybe it's doable.
What would make me truly respect them is if they came up with something like BeOS, or QNX (Haiku), but which also had a metadata/database file system where everything is searched for, and folders become less of an issue (or not needed at all). Encouraging programs to be more self-contained would also be a step forwards too.
My best guess (as someone who believes in a 'soul', but also realizes this can lead to some potentially absurd conclusions) is that for each small electric replacement, your consciousness will proportionally fade away. At bit like when you're half asleep say if half your brain was replaced.
I tend to think particles in the brain are mapped to an immaterial 'location' of the immaterial soul for want of a better analogy.
Some vital stats:
* Gas/petrol usually costs about 15 cents per mile. This (and other electric cars presumably) will cost just under 4 cents per mile (based on current electricity costs), so the overall cost is only 4x cheaper (I was hoping for a full 10x or even 100x cheaper, but it's still good).
* It takes 10 hours to do a full recharge to do a full 40 mile recharge on 120 volt, but only 4 hours with a 240 volt supply. Maybe America et al. should switch to the 240v power like Europe to get faster charging (our kettles boil in half the time too). I'm not sure if anyone in the world has 480 volt mains, but that sounds as though it could be useful.
Most info obtained from here: http://gm-volt.com/chevy-volt-faqs
I hope they're also talking about standard GPU supercomputers (which are as we know pretty cheap at less than £100 for the low end!)
Thanks muchly for the informative replies. Hopefully then I can avoid the GPL restrictions by just using LGPL where possible (dual license is possible if the particular vendor supports it I guess though).
Yes, I would rather provide a link to my own site for the user to download the QT sources, or even better, like you say, directly to the Nokia QT download site.
I imagine including the QT source with my program will bloat the distribution by several megs otherwise, so I'd rather just include the binaries/DLLs.
Hopefully, the LGPL will be compatible with a GPL license should I need to include another library that uses that kind of license with my software as well.
Hi, I'm the OP.
I'm a little happier now that you've clarified that (good links). Though there are still a couple of small question marks in my mind (and the impossibility of upgrading still bugs me to death, but never mind).
For example, there was the point further down in that thread. I'll just quote an edited version here, and maybe you or someone else can help:
"* The vendor also needs to provide access to Qt libraries to the end-user (customer), and the vendor is obliged to give the end-user (customer) the tools to modify them, and re-load them into the device."
When it says provide access, does it mean so that I would leave the Qt DLLs intact? Obviously, I would provide them because my own software has to use them. So maybe I misunderstand that point.
Also, when it says I would be obliged to give the end-user (customer) the tools to modify them, can someone clarify what that means? I think the files in question are DLLs. Does it just mean that they can replace the DLLs with updated versions?
I initially wanted to use Qt for my latest project, but I'm rather concerned at the license which says you can't upgrade to a commercial version of the Qt license if you start the project as the free (beer) LGPL license. It makes no sense because a project may start off small, but then expand later.... and at that point, you can't then use the better (albeit expensive) full license. I moaned about the subject here:
.NET/Winforms/WPF looks ever more tempting.
http://www.qtforum.org/article/34891/licensing-issue.html
I'm hoping Nokia will adjust their stance on this issue, otherwise
Glad to hear they're finally beginning to disambiguate between those two horrors! Ideally of course, humanity would be using a base 8 or 16 (though 12 looks good) number system here instead of 10 and scrap any base 10 stuff, but I doubt that will happen for a while yet!
You say not to write shell scripts in it, but surely there's a library (Boost maybe?) that provides a wrapper to make it just as easy as any other language?
Hey, reminds me of the general attitude towards saving electrical energy.
I wonder if the original writers knew about template programming.
Can we start to see the end of the fad with shiny screens (generally with LCD screens)?
They invariably make viewing worse from what I've found.
Very weird humour that for a number of reasons, but I love it!
Yes, I've always thought something like that would be theoretically best. In a similar vein, we could do the same for cache/memory. Have tiny amounts right next to the registers, and double the amount of memory for greater caches, but have half of those, and then 4x, and have only a quarter of those ad infinitum, up to the very largest pool of memory. I think something like that could be infinitely scalable, though I don't know too much about CPU designs, so I could be way off base.