The reason I mentioned corn, sewage, and natural gas is that right now all three are receiving significant public funding in the U.S. In the U.S. at least it doesn't matter how chemically inefficient something is, someone will do it if they can make money at it. It's a lot easier to make money when your raw materials are heavily subsidized...witness the continued success of the timber and cattle industries.
Ethanol is not currently an economically viable solution because it is burned in an internal combustion engine and it competes against cheap gas. Under that paradigm burning hydrogen doesn't make any sense either. But using it in a fuel cell, competing with very expensive gas, might.
Dependence on ground oil (specifically) is not really an environmental problem. It's much more of a political and resource management problem.
What environmental problems are not solved by biodiesel? Most of them. You still have to refine it in the same quantities. You still have to transport it in the same quantities. And you still burn it in the same quantities. The only environmental problem solved by biodiesel is the impact of the drilling rigs, which, in the grand scheme of things, is not a lot.
Increases in efficiency are the best solution to the overall environmental problems associated with internal combustion. Biodiesel helps but it is a much bigger deal in terms of national security than it is environmental.
An engineer named Richard Hartman developed antifog glasses for whitewater kayaking based on this concept several years ago. He developed a hydrophillic coating that was baked onto the lenses, and which prevented the formation of fog droplets. He even offered them for sale for a time--send him your prescription and he would send back a pair of glasses. I don't think he does that anymore.
Here is a post from 2001 answering some questions about the glasses.
Here is a search on the Boatertalk forum for most posts about it.
Underestimating importance of human resource
on
Has Google Peaked?
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· Score: 1
Cringely is underestimating the value of the human resource. Google now has a ton of very very smart people working for it, and it gives them a lot of freedom with which operate. Past experience with Bell Labs and Xerox PARC shows that such an environment can produce big innovation that results in huge corporate value. Xerox failed to capitalize on their innovations, but that was a management problem. Google is smarter--they throw their innovations into the marketplace ASAP to see what sticks.
Long-term, the most important aspect of a company's value is its people. Good people can innovate their way around industry crashes and dead-ends. Look at IBM and Microsoft for examples in the computing industry. Google has great people.
When you can conclusively and quantitatively define "race" and "intelligence", you might have something. Until then any extrapolation of statistical data to generalities is to a large extent a reflection of the biases and opinions of the person doing the extrapolating. Whether or not there is connection will depend in large part on how the terms are defined in the process.
In addition any measurement using a standardized test needs to acknowledge that what it is primarily measuring is correlation to the test designer--not intelligence in the abstract.
Just move all your contacts from Hotmail to Gmail. Then keep both accounts open and check them, but originate all new messages from within GMail. Within a couple months everyone will have your GMail account in their contacts due to replies.
I still keep and check my Hotmail account every so often, just in case some old friend got in touch or something. But mostly I'm on GMail now.
"When I meet with venture capitalists, or if I'm engaged in a conversation about going into partnership with someone, inevitably the question is, 'Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' " said Craig Donato, the founder and chief executive of Oodle, a site for searching online classified listings more quickly.
Geez, I wonder why the VC's always think of Google during our presentation for a search company named Oodle??
The U.S. is doing just fine in science and technology. The number of top-notch research universities in the U.S. alone is a good indicator when held for comparison against any other nation.
Sure, a lot of those graduate students are not U.S. citizens. But what most other nations (and their citizens) fail to understand is that the U.S. succeeds because it is an aggregator, not in spite of it. When a German sees a German student doing brilliant work at MIT, they focus on that person's German-ness. "Look," they say, "a German is doing brilliant work." But when an American sees the same thing, they focus on where the work is being done: the U.S. When the German is ready to work, it is likely they will go to work for an American company or university. And even if they return to Germany, they bring back American language and culture to Germany, while leaving the fruits of their work behind in the U.S., in English, as institutional knowledge. It's like a factory where foreign nationals come into the U.S. to drop off years of their best-quality work and research.
Anyone performing work in the U.S. is helping perpetuate the U.S. success in technical fields. And because the U.S. is a melting pot state, rather than a nation of people with a latent tribal identity, we're happy to take anyone who can help us keep moving forward. That is the base strength of America, and one not likely to change. In fact the Bush administration is fighting for more open immigration policies right now.
Einstein was born a German and did his most groundbreaking work as a German. But he died an American, and the U.S. implemented the greatest geopolitical advantage from his work--the nuclear bomb. That's a good metaphor for science and America in general.
The CD marked the beginning of the disassociation of the data and the physical system it's delivered on. But while the rest of us are worrying about the problems inherent to the data format, you're talking about the delivery system.
Between tapes and CDs there were TWO changes. One was the data "bucket"--laser-encoded optical disc vs. magnetic tape. The other was the data format--CD-DA vs. analog.
Likewise, HD-DVD is both a change in physical bucket AND format. You're saying that the physical bucket doesn't offer much in the way of increased convenience for its greater cost.
But the issue is the new data format, regardless of how it makes it into your home. I think you're right that that HD-DVD players and movies are not going to be a big hit anytime soon. In fact I think the writing is clear on the wall that the next big physical format break-through is the network. What's easier than putting a DVD into a machine? How about just pressing a button on a screen?
But the problems with the HD-DVD format, and the associated DRM provisions as implemented by Microsoft etc, will still be problems regardless of how the data is delivered physically! And these problems are being locked into the industry and into products now.
BPL faces the same type of distance limits that DSL does, making it just as poorly suited for long-distance rural deployments. In addition, it is most profitable where the number of customers per LV transformer is the highest--urban or dense suburban environments. BPL is a competitor to DSL and cable in almost every way, and will deployed as such.
Long-range wireless is still the best solution for rural broadband, particularly in wide-open, poorly vegetated regions like the southwest.
Isn't it amazing that the plucky ham operators understand RF that much better than the career, expert electrical engineers and physicists at the FCC, broadcast TV equipment vendors, emergency radio system vendors, consultancies, and city planning organizations, not to mention the various regulatory agencies and stakeholders in the European and South American countries where BPL is currently commercially deployed?
Thank god for these giants of theoretical and practical RF experience, who literally tower over the rest of the known world in the heights of their superior understanding of RF. Surely they will save us all from ourselves.
First of all, it makes no difference whether it's an ass-load or a shit-load of money, all that matters is whether a company can make more money that it spends. DSLAMs cost a lot of money too.
Second, the basis of the entire BPL industry is the means of passing the signal through or around the MV/LV transformer. That is the core competency of the companies--their core innovations and IP. A number of companies have been around for near a decade, doing trials and commercial deployments based on their technology.
Every trial so far has resulted in cancellation of services because the interference ruins too many other things.
There are full-scale commercial roll-outs of BPL in Europe and South America. Not trials--full commercial roll-outs. And they began literally years ago.
I interviewed the Chairman of Chilectra (subsidiary of power company Endesa) in 2002, when they were beginning their commercial roll-out in Santiago, Chile.
Nay-sayers like the parent (an AC, what a surprise) base their opinions on ancient information like the failed Norweb trial in England in 1997. Well cable modems and DSL didn't work very well either in 1997. Literally hundreds of BPL trials have been conducted successfully since then, with many companies world-wide now involved in commercial roll-out.
Google automatically includes stemming in searches, but not necessarily at the same ranking of the original search term. So while searches for "inkjet printer" and "inkjet printers" will not return the same results list, many of the results from each will be included somewhere in the results list of the other.
Sure, and Sony sells PS2 controllers separately--but not for XBox. In Apple's appliance model of computing, each new OS is an accessory sale, not a separate product line.
Any OS will be more reliable, secure, and just plain work better if it can be tweaked carefully for the exact hardware configuration it's running on. Linux and Unix allow anyone, including the end user, to customize their configuration to the exact hardware it's running on. It's not exactly easy though, is it?
Apple takes the opposite tack to achieve the same end result--rather than complete freedom to customize the software, they strictly limit the hardware.
Either way, the end result is a product in which the software and hardware are closely matched. Apple's way produces a much more limited set of final products, but at very little effort to the end user. Linux provides a lot more freedom, but at considerable cost to the user in terms of expertise or time.
But Microsoft tries to have it both ways. In order to realize the vast economy of scale that makes it so profitable, Windows is written once to accomodate a wide variety of hardware configurations. And you can't tweak it or modify it. So the end result is a generic software config running on generic hardware. It will never work as well as a dedicated OS on known hardware.
Finally it's important to understand Apple's approach to computing...they sell computers. Not computer parts. You can't buy a DVD player or a digital TV without its operating system, and you can't buy the operating system without the hardware. It's an appliance--you plug it in and use it. That's how Apple (Jobs) views computers, and it's why they won't license their OS. You might as well ask Sony to licence the OS running on their DVD player.
You have a horrible deadly condition. It might be congenital and there's nothing you can do about it. Or it might be curable with a lot of expensive drugs. You're not sure. Do you a) do nothing and clamor for surety, even as you lay on your death bed, or b) begin treatment with the best information available, while continuing to study the condition?
Slashdot Mirror
The reason I mentioned corn, sewage, and natural gas is that right now all three are receiving significant public funding in the U.S. In the U.S. at least it doesn't matter how chemically inefficient something is, someone will do it if they can make money at it. It's a lot easier to make money when your raw materials are heavily subsidized...witness the continued success of the timber and cattle industries. Ethanol is not currently an economically viable solution because it is burned in an internal combustion engine and it competes against cheap gas. Under that paradigm burning hydrogen doesn't make any sense either. But using it in a fuel cell, competing with very expensive gas, might.
"Hydrocarbons" pretty much describes any organic matter. Corn is chock full of hydrocarbons. As is human sewage. As is natural gas.
Dependence on ground oil (specifically) is not really an environmental problem. It's much more of a political and resource management problem.
What environmental problems are not solved by biodiesel? Most of them. You still have to refine it in the same quantities. You still have to transport it in the same quantities. And you still burn it in the same quantities. The only environmental problem solved by biodiesel is the impact of the drilling rigs, which, in the grand scheme of things, is not a lot.
Increases in efficiency are the best solution to the overall environmental problems associated with internal combustion. Biodiesel helps but it is a much bigger deal in terms of national security than it is environmental.
An engineer named Richard Hartman developed antifog glasses for whitewater kayaking based on this concept several years ago. He developed a hydrophillic coating that was baked onto the lenses, and which prevented the formation of fog droplets. He even offered them for sale for a time--send him your prescription and he would send back a pair of glasses. I don't think he does that anymore.
Here is a recent post describing his work.
Here is a post from 2001 answering some questions about the glasses.
Here is a search on the Boatertalk forum for most posts about it.
Cringely is underestimating the value of the human resource. Google now has a ton of very very smart people working for it, and it gives them a lot of freedom with which operate. Past experience with Bell Labs and Xerox PARC shows that such an environment can produce big innovation that results in huge corporate value. Xerox failed to capitalize on their innovations, but that was a management problem. Google is smarter--they throw their innovations into the marketplace ASAP to see what sticks.
Long-term, the most important aspect of a company's value is its people. Good people can innovate their way around industry crashes and dead-ends. Look at IBM and Microsoft for examples in the computing industry. Google has great people.
When you can conclusively and quantitatively define "race" and "intelligence", you might have something. Until then any extrapolation of statistical data to generalities is to a large extent a reflection of the biases and opinions of the person doing the extrapolating. Whether or not there is connection will depend in large part on how the terms are defined in the process.
In addition any measurement using a standardized test needs to acknowledge that what it is primarily measuring is correlation to the test designer--not intelligence in the abstract.
Just move all your contacts from Hotmail to Gmail. Then keep both accounts open and check them, but originate all new messages from within GMail. Within a couple months everyone will have your GMail account in their contacts due to replies.
I still keep and check my Hotmail account every so often, just in case some old friend got in touch or something. But mostly I'm on GMail now.
"When I meet with venture capitalists, or if I'm engaged in a conversation about going into partnership with someone, inevitably the question is, 'Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' " said Craig Donato, the founder and chief executive of Oodle, a site for searching online classified listings more quickly.
Geez, I wonder why the VC's always think of Google during our presentation for a search company named Oodle??
How is that any different from AOL?
The U.S. is doing just fine in science and technology. The number of top-notch research universities in the U.S. alone is a good indicator when held for comparison against any other nation.
Sure, a lot of those graduate students are not U.S. citizens. But what most other nations (and their citizens) fail to understand is that the U.S. succeeds because it is an aggregator, not in spite of it. When a German sees a German student doing brilliant work at MIT, they focus on that person's German-ness. "Look," they say, "a German is doing brilliant work." But when an American sees the same thing, they focus on where the work is being done: the U.S. When the German is ready to work, it is likely they will go to work for an American company or university. And even if they return to Germany, they bring back American language and culture to Germany, while leaving the fruits of their work behind in the U.S., in English, as institutional knowledge. It's like a factory where foreign nationals come into the U.S. to drop off years of their best-quality work and research.
Anyone performing work in the U.S. is helping perpetuate the U.S. success in technical fields. And because the U.S. is a melting pot state, rather than a nation of people with a latent tribal identity, we're happy to take anyone who can help us keep moving forward. That is the base strength of America, and one not likely to change. In fact the Bush administration is fighting for more open immigration policies right now.
Einstein was born a German and did his most groundbreaking work as a German. But he died an American, and the U.S. implemented the greatest geopolitical advantage from his work--the nuclear bomb. That's a good metaphor for science and America in general.
Goofy Goober Goober Goo
Article about it
Yahoo! Buzz
The CD marked the beginning of the disassociation of the data and the physical system it's delivered on. But while the rest of us are worrying about the problems inherent to the data format, you're talking about the delivery system.
Between tapes and CDs there were TWO changes. One was the data "bucket"--laser-encoded optical disc vs. magnetic tape. The other was the data format--CD-DA vs. analog.
Likewise, HD-DVD is both a change in physical bucket AND format. You're saying that the physical bucket doesn't offer much in the way of increased convenience for its greater cost.
But the issue is the new data format, regardless of how it makes it into your home. I think you're right that that HD-DVD players and movies are not going to be a big hit anytime soon. In fact I think the writing is clear on the wall that the next big physical format break-through is the network. What's easier than putting a DVD into a machine? How about just pressing a button on a screen?
But the problems with the HD-DVD format, and the associated DRM provisions as implemented by Microsoft etc, will still be problems regardless of how the data is delivered physically! And these problems are being locked into the industry and into products now.
I think you just meant secondary public offering.
BPL faces the same type of distance limits that DSL does, making it just as poorly suited for long-distance rural deployments. In addition, it is most profitable where the number of customers per LV transformer is the highest--urban or dense suburban environments. BPL is a competitor to DSL and cable in almost every way, and will deployed as such.
Long-range wireless is still the best solution for rural broadband, particularly in wide-open, poorly vegetated regions like the southwest.
Isn't it amazing that the plucky ham operators understand RF that much better than the career, expert electrical engineers and physicists at the FCC, broadcast TV equipment vendors, emergency radio system vendors, consultancies, and city planning organizations, not to mention the various regulatory agencies and stakeholders in the European and South American countries where BPL is currently commercially deployed?
Thank god for these giants of theoretical and practical RF experience, who literally tower over the rest of the known world in the heights of their superior understanding of RF. Surely they will save us all from ourselves.
The arrogance of the ham lobby is breathtaking.
First of all, it makes no difference whether it's an ass-load or a shit-load of money, all that matters is whether a company can make more money that it spends. DSLAMs cost a lot of money too.
Second, the basis of the entire BPL industry is the means of passing the signal through or around the MV/LV transformer. That is the core competency of the companies--their core innovations and IP. A number of companies have been around for near a decade, doing trials and commercial deployments based on their technology.
Every trial so far has resulted in cancellation of services because the interference ruins too many other things.
There are full-scale commercial roll-outs of BPL in Europe and South America. Not trials--full commercial roll-outs. And they began literally years ago.
I interviewed the Chairman of Chilectra (subsidiary of power company Endesa) in 2002, when they were beginning their commercial roll-out in Santiago, Chile.
Main.net technology is already being deployed commercially in several countries in Europe.
Nay-sayers like the parent (an AC, what a surprise) base their opinions on ancient information like the failed Norweb trial in England in 1997. Well cable modems and DSL didn't work very well either in 1997. Literally hundreds of BPL trials have been conducted successfully since then, with many companies world-wide now involved in commercial roll-out.
Queries for all-night love machines with dicks over 12" in length returned several hundred results!!
Actual mileage may vary!
Google automatically includes stemming in searches, but not necessarily at the same ranking of the original search term. So while searches for "inkjet printer" and "inkjet printers" will not return the same results list, many of the results from each will be included somewhere in the results list of the other.
Kind of bends the definition of "hybrid" a bit, at least as it's commonly used today in the commercial auto market.
Sure, and Sony sells PS2 controllers separately--but not for XBox. In Apple's appliance model of computing, each new OS is an accessory sale, not a separate product line.
Any OS will be more reliable, secure, and just plain work better if it can be tweaked carefully for the exact hardware configuration it's running on. Linux and Unix allow anyone, including the end user, to customize their configuration to the exact hardware it's running on. It's not exactly easy though, is it?
Apple takes the opposite tack to achieve the same end result--rather than complete freedom to customize the software, they strictly limit the hardware.
Either way, the end result is a product in which the software and hardware are closely matched. Apple's way produces a much more limited set of final products, but at very little effort to the end user. Linux provides a lot more freedom, but at considerable cost to the user in terms of expertise or time.
But Microsoft tries to have it both ways. In order to realize the vast economy of scale that makes it so profitable, Windows is written once to accomodate a wide variety of hardware configurations. And you can't tweak it or modify it. So the end result is a generic software config running on generic hardware. It will never work as well as a dedicated OS on known hardware.
Finally it's important to understand Apple's approach to computing...they sell computers. Not computer parts. You can't buy a DVD player or a digital TV without its operating system, and you can't buy the operating system without the hardware. It's an appliance--you plug it in and use it. That's how Apple (Jobs) views computers, and it's why they won't license their OS. You might as well ask Sony to licence the OS running on their DVD player.
You have a horrible deadly condition. It might be congenital and there's nothing you can do about it. Or it might be curable with a lot of expensive drugs. You're not sure. Do you a) do nothing and clamor for surety, even as you lay on your death bed, or b) begin treatment with the best information available, while continuing to study the condition?
The Interstate Commerce Commission begs to differ.