There are a couple widly used modified version of Linux that attempt to be QNX like in that they handle "hard real time" scheduling and run on very low-end hardware.
There is only one UNIX clone I can think of, that would be Linux. The others such as BSD and the like re not clones they ARE UNIX. Well OK there is Mac OS and NextStep before that but they ARE UNIX too. Mac OSX code can betraced back to Bell Labs in the late 1960's but I'd bet every line is replaced by now.
I've worked on radar systems. There is always the problem of noise and "clutter" caused by returns from non-targets such as the ground (if looking down) or in this case all those airplanes that reflect energy back. The way to tell if it is a threat target (missle, morter shell...) is by the tradjectory. Birds and chaffe do not fly at supersonic speeds nor in parabolic arcs and the biggest one they do not fly intercept course to an aircraft ir terminal building. The radar simply "knows" where every aircraft and bulding is and test potential targets to determine if there is a threat.
A typical radar for this kind of applaction might send 1,000 pusles per second. As soon as a handfull of "hits" occure in abut the same location it creats a "track" in it's track database. Most of these tracks will be discarded when no more data comes in that would extend thier lenghts. But after a track has grown to a hunder points or so (in 0.1 seconds) it is "promoted" to being "real" and a tradjectory can be computed and then it might be classified as a treat or not depending on where it is headed. Modern system can track many targets and are small and light enough that the entire system can fit inside the nose cone of a fighter jet. If the airpot bought two or four of these radar systems it would be prety much unjamable.
As for the laser itself these can be quite powerfull. When the beam hits the metal skin the skin vaporizes so fast that the outflowing gas causes a reaction in the skin that crumbles it. We are not talking about slowly heating here. It is more like an explosion on the skin that causes structural failure by the force of the blast. The skin failure causes the rocket to fail. You would be surprized at how fast a laser can re-aim. A huge device that moves so fast that you don't see it move and of course you can always buy multiple lasers
How to fool this thing? Use a "new" kind of weapon like a suicide hang glider bomber or a four ton rock on a catapult. or an old World war II anti aircraft gun mounted on a flatbed truck or 30 guys with.50 cal hunting rifles ("elephant guns") shoot at the plane from the top of an apartment building or anything else no one is expecting.
Of couse it is software RAID. Every single last RAID is software. OK you might think there is such thing as hardware raid but if you look at the controller card you will find some kind of computer and some RAID software running on it. The only difference is that the software is burned into ROM on the card. If you buy this RAID system from sun you will never see the dual Operon or have need to know what software runs on it. You should think of these two Operons are a very, very powerful controller card.
So what about sports like skiing? You can't ski without skis. If they were to standradize on one type of ski then only the skiers who were by chance the "right" size for the standard ski would win. Many sports ARE about equipment. I was into sailing and knowing how to prep the boat for the conditions is a lot of the sport. Every sport envolves becomming an expert with the equipment
Swimming is a minimulist sport maybe even less so then running because wimmers don't use shoes. Put a fancy suit on me and I'll still be a horrble swimmer, I just barely finished 300 meters yesterday
Make some fake songs and put theem into an iTunes music library. Fake songs have all the meta data right but the audio part is filled with giberish. Microsoft's software scans your iPod library and gives you at MS's expense every fake song it finds. I'd bet that even if you know how to decrypt Apple's songs you could not tell gibberish (random shipets from of junk music) from real music. It should be easy to make the fake songs.
Woman calls in and say the computer is not working. I ask the normal questions. She says the screen is blank. So I ask if the computer make any disk access noises, beeps or anyhting at all when the power is turned on. She says "yes". Sound is normal but the machine is no-responvive.... We go out and look to find the power switch on the CRT monitor is "off". I did ask about power in a non-insulting way. I asked "can you here the fan running?". After that I learned to ask if there is any heat comming out the top of the CRT
What you are saying is that it's right up there with Television. TV is adictive too. I think fo the same reasons. Many peole like being a zombie. Possably drugs do the same. I don't know why but there must be something built-into many people that makes them prefer to be passive. Just look at the P2P networks. Why are they not filled with photos, videios and music that people made and want to share?
My guess is that it is basic human evolution. We evelooved over the ages so that 99% id the population are natural "followers" are pasive and not to creative while a very few are creative or leaders. This might lead to a better and smother running society. If a group of aps would be able to pick aleader then follow him they them work togetter. Then latter it's "grogg make fire, fire good I copy grogg" It only takes one or two "groggs" per thousand copiers. It is likey best that most simply did what worked and ate the food they know was there rather then wate time looking over that hill. Better that only a few went over the hill while the rest stayed with what worked.
We become aditicted to being passive because, I'm sure because most humans are simpled wired up that way.
Yes you are right. BOTH ends need to drop the resets. But all they need are for a few web proxies on the outside to dop packets. I could set one up in my house in 20 minutes. I imagine a few thousand people could set up proxy servers. This is so simple to do. You do not even need to write software in can be done with a firewall rule
Removing products from the WEU would be certain death for MS. Almost certainly there would be a big software industry in the EU that would compete world wide with MS. The new EU company could very well win most of Europe (duh) and China, India and so on, making MS at best.
No, MS's best stategy would be to make an EU edition Windowswith a different internal interface and publish the specs to that. Because if they sold the same product in the US and EU and published the specs for the EU product that would allow competition in the US. I'll bet after the fine is imposed they will offer specs for an EU edition of Windows. But they will do everything they can to delay the fine only giving in after the EU finaly has to go in an freeze their European bank account and take the fine by force
This will not protect the gun from use. It protects the ammo. If you steel the gun you can always make bullets for it that ignore the encrypted message and simply fire when ANY signal is recieved. But if you steel the ammo it would simply not fire in any gun without the right code. This might be usful if theft of ammo were a big issue. Possably the military might use it so if an an ammo supply were overrun the ammo could not be used. Might be good for say anti-tank rounds or and things like that. I doubt this was intended for hand guns
I would tend to agree with you except for one thing. The Supreme Court gets to pick the cases it hears. It only picks a slim minority of cases and lets the decisions of lower court stand in most cases. So we have to ask ourselves WHY did the Courst choose to hear this case. Most of the time they select a case where some interrsting point of law needs to be decided and they chose a case that will allow then to settle some point of law. Other times the case itself is importent. This sounds like a case where they want to settle something. Being over narrow would not do that. How ever they might still make a narrow judgment if the court can not agree on a widder one but I'll bet narrow is there their intent going in. I am a total non-ecpert too. I doubt many experts have time to read slashdot.
"Key things to do are to look for mis-spellings, and poor pictures."
I know of someone who sells a lot on eBay, really it is a part time bussines. She pics up items at garage sales and trift shops to resell on eBay. But you know what? She makes the photos and writeups look "just bad enough" that it does not appear to be a bussines sale. Even adds comments like "this does not fit me" It is not misrepresentation if it is true. I suspect many sellers have figured this out.
Some of you have missed my point. It is simply that the ONLY way this will be solved is by "self correction" ALL the oil and coal WILL be burned. The only question is the amounts left and the rates that it will be burned at. So there is some uncertaincy about if it will al be gone in 50 or 200 years but none about if it will all be gone. That fuel is "free money" we can pass laws about it but all that means is that someone els will burn the stuff or that we reduce the rate by some marginal amount.
At no time do I say this is a Good Thing. But it should be clear that it ALL will be burned and then there will be none.
We've heard medical people all tell us how much better prevention is then cure. Better it eat well and exercise then to get that double by-pass surgery. Same with crime but more so. Even if you catch the gang banger who shot the clerk at the store to robe the register it don't help the clerk. So when I'm in charge we will prevent crime. Yes we will. My plan is to put the thugs in jail BEFORE they comit the crime and there by prevent it. Police will be impowered to simply grab people off the streets who look like they may commit a crime in the future. With potential criminals eliminated we will all finaly be safe.
This is a self correcting problem. There is no way you can stop this. Fossel fuels are a form of "free energy" it's there in the ground all you have to do is dig it up and set it on fire. There is such strong incentive to do this that we will work as hard as we can to do it as fast as we can. The good news is that we are good at this and have likely burned up 1/2 of what's there. All we have to do is burn up the other half and the problem will be gone forever. So the next 100 years it will be hot. But for the next one million it will not. OK maybe my numbers are wrong and we've burned up only 1/4 or whatever. Still it will all be gone very soon in relative terms. Basically the human race stumbles along with stone tools for a million years then discovers hydrocaron and burns half the hydrocarbon on earth only 400 years then the other half in 100 years but then continues on for the next millions of years without using any hydrocarbon. In the larger view of things it's a "blip".
Yes, exactly. Could you imagine a typical PC user complaining that he can hear the fan running in his PC from "over three feet away". Of course not, noisy PCs are normal but audiable niose from an Apple product causes Apple user's to complain.
If you want to block adds get "bannerfilter" http://phroggy.com/bannerfilter/ It is free, easy to setup and use and catches most everything and you can add sites yourself just by editing a file. It works as an addition to "squid". You can install this on one machine on your local network and it can filter adds for the whole network. It is browser independent so the ads get blocked in Opera, Mozila, IE or whatever you use.
If she met the guy through some kind of "pen pal" system that used the US Postal Service to exchange written paper letters would she sue the USPS? My guess is not.
No, not with an Speed Graphic size camera. The problem is the optics. The resolving power of a lens is proportional to its diameter over the wavelenght of light. You would need a lens wioth a diameter measured in meters on the front of that Speed Craphics camera. This is in fact where these huge CCS are typically used. On telescopes with optics that are a few meters in diameter. Optics can't really be made faster than about f/2 so the focal lenght would be measured in meters too. So you would be be photographing a crowd unless you could move the camera a few miles away. Then you's have the problem of atmosperic blurring
What Mr. Ozzy will learn quickly is that MS _must_ build softwate the way it does if it wants to continue to be the monopoly it is. If they released software that was made of components that used a simple and published interfwce then that would open up competition. Third parties would offer components. No they NEED complexity and circular dependencies and back door interfaces.
I strongly suspect the Gates decided to bail now while Microsoft is at it's peak. I figure he knows what is going to happen in ten years.
But what if I write another book that says "It's cool to study stuff, do it". Now you have a problem. You have to figure out which book to follow. I claim that my book is better and with only seven words inside it is easier to undersatnd and a quicker read. I have yet to hear arguments in favor of that older and larger book that do not in the end become equivalent to "I just like it better".
Actually in the end that is all that matters "I just like it better" is a perfectly valid reason. Some people believe in a 2000 year old talking snake while I believe that I (yes ME the guy typing this) created the universe only five minutes ago. There is literaly no way to deside which is right so "I just like it better" works as good as anything else.
So now who are we to argue with the fundimentalist. What they like to beleive is up to them. Telling them they need to wise up and become a good (say) Catholic, is like teling them "blue" is not a good color and they should like "green" You can't tell someone what to like best.
That's what I do. I don't need a powerful server. How many peope really want to see my photos. Actually I keep track and it's a few hundred hits per day at peak times. Right now I use a Pentium powered tower but I plan to replace it with an older Apple G4 based Mac Mini to save power, space and noise. If every user hd his own web server none of the servers whould need to be very big, nor have fat pipes to the Internet.
You don't even need to buy a domain or have a static IP address. Go to www.dyndns.org and get a free account.
No matter how BAD the earth gets. Even with run away globl warmming and unbreathable air it will still be easier and cheaper to build an enclosed living space on Earth then to build it on, say, the moon. Even if all the air on earth were is disapear and the Earth were to be in hard vacuum it would still be cheaper to live inside a presure tank here then inside a presure tank on the moon because.
Even if you share the gaol of moving people off the Earth, now may not be the right time. If you start today it might take 150 years to build a sutainable industry in space, one that can operate without support from Earth. But if we start in 50 years it might take only 110 years to do the same thing.
To be free of Earth you need things like a stell and aluminum industral and plants that make basic metals and machine tools. How long until there is a factory of the moon that makes digial camera and childred's toys. Not this century.
Everty cell phone ALREADY has this feature. Once I misplaced my phone so I called the service and asked them where it was. They were able to give me the general location where they last saw it which was enough for me to recover the phone.
Cell phones periodically broadcast a message that says "is there a cell tower nearby?" and by this method figure out which tower to use for calls. As the phone moves it uses new toweres. The cell phone companies keep logs that record which tower your phone ha used.
Going one step farther, that "is there a cell tower nearby?" message might be heard by multiple towers and by looking at the signal strenght heard by each tower the phone can be located toeven better precision.
So this new service is really just an applaction the looks at existing information logs
Smart kids (and adults) who don't want to be tracked would siply turn the phones off.
Many ways to address that problem....
For low power systems they use a kind of set of capasitors. You charge them all in parallel and discharge them in series you can multiply a voltage many time this way.
But I assume the system would be designed so that the energy storage cap. works at a voltage many time what the device needing power needs. Many use a 300V cap to power a 3V device then you could discharge 99% of the energy before the voltage got to low
For high power applications (a car) Basically you can chop the output voltage off and on at about 30 Khz and make a high frequency square wave. Feed this into a small transformmer and then rectify the output of the transformmer. To regulater the output you can control the "duty cyctle" of the square wave In other word use the cap. to power a switching power supply.
Standrad alaline batteries drop their voltage too. Devices that need a fixed voltage will put a dc to dc converter on the output of the alaline cells. This can actually extend the battery life because the battery can still power to device as long as it can supply ANY current. I own a dive light that runs off 8 C size cells and it will maintain full brightness untill the battery as completely dead. Conventional lights need to replace battey when the bat is only 1/2 used because the lamp's output is very senitive to voltage. An8 cell light costs $10 to replace the batts. the DC/DC regulator paysfor itself quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at "FreeVMS" http://www.systella.fr/~bertrand/FreeVMS/indexGB.h tml
There are a couple widly used modified version of Linux that attempt to be QNX like in that they handle "hard real time" scheduling and run on very low-end hardware.
There is only one UNIX clone I can think of, that would be Linux. The others such as BSD and the like re not clones they ARE UNIX. Well OK there is Mac OS and NextStep before that but they ARE UNIX too. Mac OSX code can betraced back to Bell Labs in the late 1960's but I'd bet every line is replaced by now.
A typical radar for this kind of applaction might send 1,000 pusles per second. As soon as a handfull of "hits" occure in abut the same location it creats a "track" in it's track database. Most of these tracks will be discarded when no more data comes in that would extend thier lenghts. But after a track has grown to a hunder points or so (in 0.1 seconds) it is "promoted" to being "real" and a tradjectory can be computed and then it might be classified as a treat or not depending on where it is headed. Modern system can track many targets and are small and light enough that the entire system can fit inside the nose cone of a fighter jet. If the airpot bought two or four of these radar systems it would be prety much unjamable.
As for the laser itself these can be quite powerfull. When the beam hits the metal skin the skin vaporizes so fast that the outflowing gas causes a reaction in the skin that crumbles it. We are not talking about slowly heating here. It is more like an explosion on the skin that causes structural failure by the force of the blast. The skin failure causes the rocket to fail. You would be surprized at how fast a laser can re-aim. A huge device that moves so fast that you don't see it move and of course you can always buy multiple lasers
How to fool this thing? Use a "new" kind of weapon like a suicide hang glider bomber or a four ton rock on a catapult. or an old World war II anti aircraft gun mounted on a flatbed truck or 30 guys with .50 cal hunting rifles ("elephant guns") shoot at the plane from the top of an apartment building or anything else no one is expecting.
Of couse it is software RAID. Every single last RAID is software. OK you might think there is such thing as hardware raid but if you look at the controller card you will find some kind of computer and some RAID software running on it. The only difference is that the software is burned into ROM on the card. If you buy this RAID system from sun you will never see the dual Operon or have need to know what software runs on it. You should think of these two Operons are a very, very powerful controller card.
So what about sports like skiing? You can't ski without skis. If they were to standradize on one type of ski then only the skiers who were by chance the "right" size for the standard ski would win. Many sports ARE about equipment. I was into sailing and knowing how to prep the boat for the conditions is a lot of the sport. Every sport envolves becomming an expert with the equipment Swimming is a minimulist sport maybe even less so then running because wimmers don't use shoes. Put a fancy suit on me and I'll still be a horrble swimmer, I just barely finished 300 meters yesterday
Make some fake songs and put theem into an iTunes music library. Fake songs have all the meta data right but the audio part is filled with giberish. Microsoft's software scans your iPod library and gives you at MS's expense every fake song it finds. I'd bet that even if you know how to decrypt Apple's songs you could not tell gibberish (random shipets from of junk music) from real music. It should be easy to make the fake songs.
Next, here is what Apple might do....
Encrypt the metadata.
Woman calls in and say the computer is not working. I ask the normal questions. She says the screen is blank. So I ask if the computer make any disk access noises, beeps or anyhting at all when the power is turned on. She says "yes". Sound is normal but the machine is no-responvive. ... We go out and look to find the power switch on the CRT monitor is "off". I did ask about power in a non-insulting way. I asked "can you here the fan running?". After that I learned to ask if there is any heat comming out the top of the CRT
My guess is that it is basic human evolution. We evelooved over the ages so that 99% id the population are natural "followers" are pasive and not to creative while a very few are creative or leaders. This might lead to a better and smother running society. If a group of aps would be able to pick aleader then follow him they them work togetter. Then latter it's "grogg make fire, fire good I copy grogg" It only takes one or two "groggs" per thousand copiers. It is likey best that most simply did what worked and ate the food they know was there rather then wate time looking over that hill. Better that only a few went over the hill while the rest stayed with what worked.
We become aditicted to being passive because, I'm sure because most humans are simpled wired up that way.
Yes you are right. BOTH ends need to drop the resets. But all they need are for a few web proxies on the outside to dop packets. I could set one up in my house in 20 minutes. I imagine a few thousand people could set up proxy servers. This is so simple to do. You do not even need to write software in can be done with a firewall rule
Removing products from the WEU would be certain death for MS. Almost certainly there would be a big software industry in the EU that would compete world wide with MS. The new EU company could very well win most of Europe (duh) and China, India and so on, making MS at best. No, MS's best stategy would be to make an EU edition Windowswith a different internal interface and publish the specs to that. Because if they sold the same product in the US and EU and published the specs for the EU product that would allow competition in the US. I'll bet after the fine is imposed they will offer specs for an EU edition of Windows. But they will do everything they can to delay the fine only giving in after the EU finaly has to go in an freeze their European bank account and take the fine by force
This will not protect the gun from use. It protects the ammo. If you steel the gun you can always make bullets for it that ignore the encrypted message and simply fire when ANY signal is recieved. But if you steel the ammo it would simply not fire in any gun without the right code. This might be usful if theft of ammo were a big issue. Possably the military might use it so if an an ammo supply were overrun the ammo could not be used. Might be good for say anti-tank rounds or and things like that. I doubt this was intended for hand guns
I would tend to agree with you except for one thing. The Supreme Court gets to pick the cases it hears. It only picks a slim minority of cases and lets the decisions of lower court stand in most cases. So we have to ask ourselves WHY did the Courst choose to hear this case. Most of the time they select a case where some interrsting point of law needs to be decided and they chose a case that will allow then to settle some point of law. Other times the case itself is importent. This sounds like a case where they want to settle something. Being over narrow would not do that. How ever they might still make a narrow judgment if the court can not agree on a widder one but I'll bet narrow is there their intent going in. I am a total non-ecpert too. I doubt many experts have time to read slashdot.
I know of someone who sells a lot on eBay, really it is a part time bussines. She pics up items at garage sales and trift shops to resell on eBay. But you know what? She makes the photos and writeups look "just bad enough" that it does not appear to be a bussines sale. Even adds comments like "this does not fit me" It is not misrepresentation if it is true. I suspect many sellers have figured this out.
Some of you have missed my point. It is simply that the ONLY way this will be solved is by "self correction" ALL the oil and coal WILL be burned. The only question is the amounts left and the rates that it will be burned at. So there is some uncertaincy about if it will al be gone in 50 or 200 years but none about if it will all be gone. That fuel is "free money" we can pass laws about it but all that means is that someone els will burn the stuff or that we reduce the rate by some marginal amount. At no time do I say this is a Good Thing. But it should be clear that it ALL will be burned and then there will be none.
We've heard medical people all tell us how much better prevention is then cure. Better it eat well and exercise then to get that double by-pass surgery. Same with crime but more so. Even if you catch the gang banger who shot the clerk at the store to robe the register it don't help the clerk. So when I'm in charge we will prevent crime. Yes we will. My plan is to put the thugs in jail BEFORE they comit the crime and there by prevent it. Police will be impowered to simply grab people off the streets who look like they may commit a crime in the future. With potential criminals eliminated we will all finaly be safe.
This is a self correcting problem. There is no way you can stop this. Fossel fuels are a form of "free energy" it's there in the ground all you have to do is dig it up and set it on fire. There is such strong incentive to do this that we will work as hard as we can to do it as fast as we can. The good news is that we are good at this and have likely burned up 1/2 of what's there. All we have to do is burn up the other half and the problem will be gone forever. So the next 100 years it will be hot. But for the next one million it will not. OK maybe my numbers are wrong and we've burned up only 1/4 or whatever. Still it will all be gone very soon in relative terms. Basically the human race stumbles along with stone tools for a million years then discovers hydrocaron and burns half the hydrocarbon on earth only 400 years then the other half in 100 years but then continues on for the next millions of years without using any hydrocarbon. In the larger view of things it's a "blip".
Yes, exactly. Could you imagine a typical PC user complaining that he can hear the fan running in his PC from "over three feet away". Of course not, noisy PCs are normal but audiable niose from an Apple product causes Apple user's to complain.
If you want to block adds get "bannerfilter" http://phroggy.com/bannerfilter/ It is free, easy to setup and use and catches most everything and you can add sites yourself just by editing a file. It works as an addition to "squid". You can install this on one machine on your local network and it can filter adds for the whole network. It is browser independent so the ads get blocked in Opera, Mozila, IE or whatever you use.
If she met the guy through some kind of "pen pal" system that used the US Postal Service to exchange written paper letters would she sue the USPS? My guess is not.
No, not with an Speed Graphic size camera. The problem is the optics. The resolving power of a lens is proportional to its diameter over the wavelenght of light. You would need a lens wioth a diameter measured in meters on the front of that Speed Craphics camera. This is in fact where these huge CCS are typically used. On telescopes with optics that are a few meters in diameter. Optics can't really be made faster than about f/2 so the focal lenght would be measured in meters too. So you would be be photographing a crowd unless you could move the camera a few miles away. Then you's have the problem of atmosperic blurring
I strongly suspect the Gates decided to bail now while Microsoft is at it's peak. I figure he knows what is going to happen in ten years.
Actually in the end that is all that matters "I just like it better" is a perfectly valid reason. Some people believe in a 2000 year old talking snake while I believe that I (yes ME the guy typing this) created the universe only five minutes ago. There is literaly no way to deside which is right so "I just like it better" works as good as anything else.
So now who are we to argue with the fundimentalist. What they like to beleive is up to them. Telling them they need to wise up and become a good (say) Catholic, is like teling them "blue" is not a good color and they should like "green" You can't tell someone what to like best.
That's what I do. I don't need a powerful server. How many peope really want to see my photos. Actually I keep track and it's a few hundred hits per day at peak times. Right now I use a Pentium powered tower but I plan to replace it with an older Apple G4 based Mac Mini to save power, space and noise. If every user hd his own web server none of the servers whould need to be very big, nor have fat pipes to the Internet. You don't even need to buy a domain or have a static IP address. Go to www.dyndns.org and get a free account.
No matter how BAD the earth gets. Even with run away globl warmming and unbreathable air it will still be easier and cheaper to build an enclosed living space on Earth then to build it on, say, the moon. Even if all the air on earth were is disapear and the Earth were to be in hard vacuum it would still be cheaper to live inside a presure tank here then inside a presure tank on the moon because. Even if you share the gaol of moving people off the Earth, now may not be the right time. If you start today it might take 150 years to build a sutainable industry in space, one that can operate without support from Earth. But if we start in 50 years it might take only 110 years to do the same thing. To be free of Earth you need things like a stell and aluminum industral and plants that make basic metals and machine tools. How long until there is a factory of the moon that makes digial camera and childred's toys. Not this century.
Cell phones periodically broadcast a message that says "is there a cell tower nearby?" and by this method figure out which tower to use for calls. As the phone moves it uses new toweres. The cell phone companies keep logs that record which tower your phone ha used.
Going one step farther, that "is there a cell tower nearby?" message might be heard by multiple towers and by looking at the signal strenght heard by each tower the phone can be located toeven better precision.
So this new service is really just an applaction the looks at existing information logs
Smart kids (and adults) who don't want to be tracked would siply turn the phones off.
Many ways to address that problem.... For low power systems they use a kind of set of capasitors. You charge them all in parallel and discharge them in series you can multiply a voltage many time this way. But I assume the system would be designed so that the energy storage cap. works at a voltage many time what the device needing power needs. Many use a 300V cap to power a 3V device then you could discharge 99% of the energy before the voltage got to low For high power applications (a car) Basically you can chop the output voltage off and on at about 30 Khz and make a high frequency square wave. Feed this into a small transformmer and then rectify the output of the transformmer. To regulater the output you can control the "duty cyctle" of the square wave In other word use the cap. to power a switching power supply. Standrad alaline batteries drop their voltage too. Devices that need a fixed voltage will put a dc to dc converter on the output of the alaline cells. This can actually extend the battery life because the battery can still power to device as long as it can supply ANY current. I own a dive light that runs off 8 C size cells and it will maintain full brightness untill the battery as completely dead. Conventional lights need to replace battey when the bat is only 1/2 used because the lamp's output is very senitive to voltage. An8 cell light costs $10 to replace the batts. the DC/DC regulator paysfor itself quickly.