and M-Carbon can be the new Gorilla Glass. Needs a practical industrial process to make it economical, but the raw materials and process energy are cheap enough.
Yeah, I would hope so too, but the tech to do this has been around for decades and I haven't seen the slightest hint of it happening yet. Some people wire up 12V DC in a few outlets, but even that is problematic - requiring heavy wires if you're delivering any significant power.
Smart switching outlets that vary voltage based on some conversation with the appliance might take another 50 years to show up in the average house.
I'd think that a USB memory stick is a good bet for 25 years... kinda like RS232 ports, even if USB is passe', there will be conversion dongles for it for quite awhile.
Flash memory 25 year longevity prognosis: good, spinning hard drives: not so much.
Rather, the gatekeeper shouldn't gouge developers who are in the "keep the customer happy" phase of support - gouging must be done, I understand, but do it when the gougee is also reaping profits.
To me, the real problem is the timing of the fees. At "late stage" in a product life-cycle, the vendor fees really should lighten up, since neither the developer nor the vendor is likely looking at big future sales numbers. This is making a big negative impact on the existing customer base, and disincentivising patches and fixes.
Better to take a bigger slice out of initial sales to cover these kind of things and run patches through "at cost" or less.
And, like it or not, it _is_ more efficient to drive an extra 1500lbs of vehicle around that you are not using 90% of the time than it is to park it 90% of the time and buy a Prius to go with it.
Like "unlimited" racing - nobody will care (take on Stinger missiles in the 1/4 mile, anyone?)
The auto racing that is popular is all rule bound, winning isn't about building the fastest car, it's about building and driving the fastest car within the rules.
I'm just thinking along the lines of 70 bar (1000psi), working its way into places that people didn't know connected to the salt mine, say places underneath big sources of water...
All pipelines leak, even the ones that carry volatiles like natural gas - it's just the economics of lost product cost vs maintenance cost. Can't imagine anyone in that industry getting too worked up about a little leaking air. And, judging by the Lake Peigneur training and effective evacuation, I'm guessing everybody in charge figured that was going to happen sooner or later.
In North/Central Florida, we get sinkholes from over-pumping of the aquifers, Houston has had whole neighborhoods sink into Galveston bay from industrial scale water extraction. This is just another way to create "acts of God" risk for the insurance industry to deal with.
With a huge (call it infinite) reservoir, you can approach adiabatic. Air heats on the way in, but also cools on the way out. Dirt is a pretty good thermal insulator. If the caverns extend down to geo-thermal areas, you might even get some geo-thermal heating boost.
It's not a job creation scheme, it's supposed to make money for some power company. The jobs are being mentioned to make the locals feel better about having this thing nearby.
Yeah, because what could possibly go wrong with a bunch of high-pressure air pumped into an underground cavern?
I'm all for bashing Slashvertisment, but it's hard to call this that when it's a) Japan only, b) not yet released or priced, and c) of little commercial interest in the rest of the world.
I don't know what the report is calling Agile, but the flavor of Agile I believe in mostly consists of development code that always works, it does not preclude documentation, planning, architecture, or rework. The only thing my brand of Agile lacks are multi-day periods where there is no new visible progress because "the code's all ripped up for rework and we won't be ready to test/demo for a few weeks." (Though, to be fair, architecture revisions can occasionally trigger one of these "no visible progress" periods.)
If you could actually get an outsource team to work in that fashion, and could get management's attention on a regular enough basis to give them feedback, it could work. In my experience, outsource teams are anything but agile, and management generally only pays attention at T-40 hours and counting for contract delivery.
The "cloud" (both free or commercial) is very far to being a suitable solution for long term, secure store for private data.
Clarification: My "cloud" reference was to services like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. where your data is not only available from on the service, but also mirrored to all of your (and potentially your friends, colleagues, frenemies, etc.) devices.
Trusting a single entity with anything is foolish.
I like the encrypted file in the cloud idea, it also wouldn't hurt to have a USB stick + paper copy in a safe place.
Anything network accessible should be encrypted, but you don't want your password to expire with you - so the safely located copies should be plainly readable.
Shameless plug: The crypto in StegaMail isn't unbreakable, but it is memory hard (you have to process the entire image to brute force guess passwords - encode in a big image and lots of memory is required), and I liken steganography to hiding your money in a false soda can in the fridge - hide in plain sight. Breakable? Sure. Likely to be broken in a mass trawl of data? Not.
Other than "playing spy" - hiding passwords is the best use I have found for steganography.
Slashdot Mirror
For $10M, I think I could build a really big weather balloon and gondola too...
and M-Carbon can be the new Gorilla Glass. Needs a practical industrial process to make it economical, but the raw materials and process energy are cheap enough.
Yeah, I would hope so too, but the tech to do this has been around for decades and I haven't seen the slightest hint of it happening yet. Some people wire up 12V DC in a few outlets, but even that is problematic - requiring heavy wires if you're delivering any significant power.
Smart switching outlets that vary voltage based on some conversation with the appliance might take another 50 years to show up in the average house.
I'd think that a USB memory stick is a good bet for 25 years... kinda like RS232 ports, even if USB is passe', there will be conversion dongles for it for quite awhile.
Flash memory 25 year longevity prognosis: good, spinning hard drives: not so much.
Best to remove the battery now - if you can't figure out how to do that, buy something that can be serviced instead.
Rather, the gatekeeper shouldn't gouge developers who are in the "keep the customer happy" phase of support - gouging must be done, I understand, but do it when the gougee is also reaping profits.
Absolutely - I want a 7" smartphone, and I'm not going to carry one until they come out.
To me, the real problem is the timing of the fees. At "late stage" in a product life-cycle, the vendor fees really should lighten up, since neither the developer nor the vendor is likely looking at big future sales numbers. This is making a big negative impact on the existing customer base, and disincentivising patches and fixes.
Better to take a bigger slice out of initial sales to cover these kind of things and run patches through "at cost" or less.
And, like it or not, it _is_ more efficient to drive an extra 1500lbs of vehicle around that you are not using 90% of the time than it is to park it 90% of the time and buy a Prius to go with it.
- They stopped making the Crown Vic, that means 3 child families must use SUVs and Vans
Minivans are a better option than a full size van or an SUV. Better seating, more flexible, easier to drive and better mileage.
They still make the Impala, with front bench seat if you want. 34MPG highway (actual, experienced on a rental with 4 people and luggage aboard).
Like "unlimited" racing - nobody will care (take on Stinger missiles in the 1/4 mile, anyone?)
The auto racing that is popular is all rule bound, winning isn't about building the fastest car, it's about building and driving the fastest car within the rules.
I'm just thinking along the lines of 70 bar (1000psi), working its way into places that people didn't know connected to the salt mine, say places underneath big sources of water...
All pipelines leak, even the ones that carry volatiles like natural gas - it's just the economics of lost product cost vs maintenance cost. Can't imagine anyone in that industry getting too worked up about a little leaking air. And, judging by the Lake Peigneur training and effective evacuation, I'm guessing everybody in charge figured that was going to happen sooner or later.
In North/Central Florida, we get sinkholes from over-pumping of the aquifers, Houston has had whole neighborhoods sink into Galveston bay from industrial scale water extraction. This is just another way to create "acts of God" risk for the insurance industry to deal with.
East Texas: infinite demand for cool air 9 months of the year.
With a huge (call it infinite) reservoir, you can approach adiabatic. Air heats on the way in, but also cools on the way out. Dirt is a pretty good thermal insulator. If the caverns extend down to geo-thermal areas, you might even get some geo-thermal heating boost.
It's not a job creation scheme, it's supposed to make money for some power company. The jobs are being mentioned to make the locals feel better about having this thing nearby.
Yeah, because what could possibly go wrong with a bunch of high-pressure air pumped into an underground cavern?
Think of the jobs... Forget Lake Peigneur.
If drop-dead transparent convenience isn't an issue, then you can run all manner of client-side en/decryption software.
It's not hard to do, really, if you care. Thing is, most people don't.
I'm all for bashing Slashvertisment, but it's hard to call this that when it's a) Japan only, b) not yet released or priced, and c) of little commercial interest in the rest of the world.
Irrelevant, yes. Slashvertisment, not this time.
Fast, Cheap and Good: you can always get one if you try for it, two takes skill, all three is a lottery win.
I don't know what the report is calling Agile, but the flavor of Agile I believe in mostly consists of development code that always works, it does not preclude documentation, planning, architecture, or rework. The only thing my brand of Agile lacks are multi-day periods where there is no new visible progress because "the code's all ripped up for rework and we won't be ready to test/demo for a few weeks." (Though, to be fair, architecture revisions can occasionally trigger one of these "no visible progress" periods.)
If you could actually get an outsource team to work in that fashion, and could get management's attention on a regular enough basis to give them feedback, it could work. In my experience, outsource teams are anything but agile, and management generally only pays attention at T-40 hours and counting for contract delivery.
Open source car with open source engine components? Good luck.
Not hard to setup a trac server on top of svn (or several other source control systems). I have done this in the past at home.
I have also used a .txt file, comments in main.h, and/or TODO:s in the code.
The "cloud" (both free or commercial) is very far to being a suitable solution for long term, secure store for private data.
Clarification: My "cloud" reference was to services like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. where your data is not only available from on the service, but also mirrored to all of your (and potentially your friends, colleagues, frenemies, etc.) devices.
Trusting a single entity with anything is foolish.
I like the encrypted file in the cloud idea, it also wouldn't hurt to have a USB stick + paper copy in a safe place.
Anything network accessible should be encrypted, but you don't want your password to expire with you - so the safely located copies should be plainly readable.
My new goal is whatever a giant pile of very vocal people want to hear. Vote for me in 2012!
Shameless plug: The crypto in StegaMail isn't unbreakable, but it is memory hard (you have to process the entire image to brute force guess passwords - encode in a big image and lots of memory is required), and I liken steganography to hiding your money in a false soda can in the fridge - hide in plain sight. Breakable? Sure. Likely to be broken in a mass trawl of data? Not.
Other than "playing spy" - hiding passwords is the best use I have found for steganography.