That's very strange. Then someone should go tell VirusList.com that because when I do a query for "linux" I get 1156 hits. Ok, so maybe they are not all technically viruses because the first 306 are classified as backdoors, then came the denial of services, then... I didn't look at the rest because I just got tired of clicking the next page button.
Virus or not, there is plenty of malware out there so it is still prudent to be regularly check your system and be aware of these threats, even on Linux. [c|k]lamav, chkrootkit, and rkhunter are your friends and don't mind working late at night while you sleep. Setting up ipfilter to to default deny for outgoing services is also a good idea. I like firestarter because it lets you monitor what apps are connected to the net on what ports to catch some types of covert channels and back doors.
Ok everyone, just move along. Did you hear me? Everyone just go home! We are now closing the doors of/. just because this self proclaimed expert says so. Last one out turn out the lights, Ok?
This guy is so wrong I have to laugh. All I can say is this guy should change professions, as he obvioulsy does not understand anything about the market he is pretending to write about.
With more time on our hands by not working don't you think we might just hack some new code to pass the time? I have so many ideas that I just can't find the time to do anything because my "research" at work demands all my time. The more time I have available away from work the more OS bugs I can fix and new algorithms and programs I can write and share.
You make a good point, but there are other ways to reduce your carbon footprint on this planet and this car could help. I would propose having a solar grid-tied system at home which supplies power to the utilities during the day when you are at work and then recharging the car at home while you are there. The power company is still generating CO2 but your usage is offset for a net result of zero emissions during the course of the day.
As for the basic economics of going all-electric with this one I ran some numbers of my own and determined my Prius cost me as much as $5.60 per commute per day (66mi,3.50/gal,42+mpg winter with a lead foot, but usually around 47), and the Aptiva (80 wh/mi, BG&E rates) would only cost me $0.63 for the all-electric version. Doing solar would drive the cost up a little but it would still be far cheaper than being all gas powered as I am today. Not only would is save me money but it is also the first electric car that is capable of doing that 66 mi commute on one charge, as I would otherwise have to get my office to install an electric meter in the parking lot if I had any other electric vehicle. I'd buy one today, as this is almost exactly the car I wanted to design and build for myself, but the bummer is the car is only available to residents of California. Anyone out there want to take delivery for me? I'd just have to figure out how to charge it every day for the drive back home to the east coast.:}
If Microsoft wants to change the world I suggest they try to create a tool that will just 'run anywhere'. Sure, they could create the killer Developer environment and drive the droves of mindless programmers to their wonderful platform, I'm all for it, but at the end of the day if I can't run the final application on my platform then its just useless. What irks me is that Microsoft puts so much time, effort, and money into making sure I can't run it on (pick your platform of choice, any, just not written by Microsoft) platform X. All Microsoft has to do to get my support is to stop keeping others from interoperating. This this 'experience' you want to talk about is just a usability issue of the 'Internet', which Microsoft seems to think should be renamed to the 'Inter-NOT'. When I can run Silverlight on any platform that Microsoft didn't write, then and only then, will I give it the light of day.
I don't think credibility is the only reason. Think of it this way; Geeks read Ars, but WE already know the answers to the question! For an intelligent bunch of geeks this debate is already self evident. Politicians and legislators unfortunately only read the NYT, so if you want to get the word out to where it really matters then NYT is where the story should be headlined. It doesn't make the NYT any better than Ars for getting the facts, but 'the mainstream media' is where the political change will ultimately come from. At least that is until more geeks and/.'ers get elected to some prominent government office. Then Ars and NYT will be of equal value for social change, or hopefully even be reversed.
a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course
What I herd was:
"We make such cheap air planes that we can't even keep a normal level of Electro Magnetic Radiation from crashing it",
...and furthermore
"We are inviting all terrorists to come and try to kill all our passengers and put us in financial bankruptcy, because we couldn't take the time and expense to use the proper shielded cables in our navigational wiring harnesses"
Obviously they need to hire a few real engineers rather than just clueless mouth piece. Think about it this way;: The guys laptop, sitting less than a foot away (remember that r^2 EMI power density?), is much better shielded than the multi-million dollar air plane having countless human lives hanging in the balance on a daily basis? Darn, Where is my clue stick hiding these days...
.. and then linked together by an application written in C, to dynamically loaded/replaceable libraries written in C, and all for running on an OS written primarily in C. Yup, that 'Ada language' sure is secure! I can't tell you how many times I have seen mission critical Ada code linked to faulty C libraries or calling unsafe functions some where below it. Quite often Ada type checking breaks, or becomes null and void, at those interface boundaries and then all bets are off.
Ok, I can see where your are going with this one, but let us just have a little fun for a moment.
Why on earth should engineering majors study optics, when so few will work with optics?
I do believe that even mechanical engineers need to do failure analysis, alignment, and predictions, and many of these methodologies employ both acoustics and optics. If you don't understand your own equipment then what good is it to try to design and test anything?
Why should a computer science major study operating systems, when scant few of them will actually work on an operating system?
As an application programmer we often find ourselves with performance issues. Diagnosing those issues requires a fundamental understanding of how operating systems work. When I was at NASA we had a database application someone wrote that was dog slow, and it was all because of the scheduler algorithm on that OS. Fortunately having that kind of understanding I realized that the OS parameters could be tweaked slightly and the application changed in minor ways such that its process priority did not get bumped down as much. Ever hear of inserting a sleep(0) to speed up your application? Most people would think that is silly, but it made the runtime difference between 7 hours and 14 days! If your friendly 'programmer' knew nothing about OS's they might just find themselves out of a job in similar circumstances unless they learn quickly and under pressure. Sometimes its better to just know the solutions than to watch you friends go out the door.
Why should English majors study poetry, when so few will become poets?
Because it helps with vocabulary. Exercising the brain has a tendency to make you good at what you spend time doing. If you need to write well you need to exercise that portion of your brain so that you can better choose the right words to use.
Why should Business majors study economics, when so few will actually become economists?
Because the basic foundation of doing business is built upon understanding the market forces. If you don't understand the market forces your business is just going to fail. The basic courses in economics gives you incite into those forces.
Why should a home owner buy fire detectors, when so few will have their house burn down?
Um, because you have to? No, actually is that one would be stupid not to, that's why its the law. Of course there are many other stupid laws we could take pot shots at.;)
Why should people buy the Journal, when it publishes such stupid crap?
Ok, looks like you got me on that one. Why people look towards 'professional opinion makers' completely stumps me. Everybody has an opinion, but being able to make an informed opinion does not require you to know someone else's opinion. Go research the facts for yourself and you will make a much better decision for your own circumstance, rather than blindly listening to someone else's opinion that is in a different line of business and lives in a different part of the country.
From that comment I gather that this 'design' is in a very questionable state. If a real prototype has not been proven to work then this design is worth roughly the negative value of the piece of paper its written on. The physics of silicon is very involved at the nano-structure level and getting it right on the first go is very difficult considering having a single ion in the wrong strata could short out the entire cell and it would produce nothing. For a 3D cell to work it would have to use the physical properties of light such that different wavelengths of light penetrate to different depths before absorption, and each depth needs to have the ability to trap and carry that charge out to a collection grid on the surface without interfering with the other layers collection grids. Each grid would then set up a charged field that would potentially affect the silicon around it thereby defeating much of the gains of increased 3D collection area. For a 12 year old to get that right on paper the first time would be nothing short of astonishing. My advice? Build a prototype first then talk to reporters later, and then this will be surly slashdot worthy. I'll give the kid a lot of credit here, but lets not jump the gun until we know some variation of this actually works.
Same story here, only one street in my neighbourhood had such a bad cable signal they could not even get a broadband connection going. I was just getting ready to extend a helping hand with a wifi booster and directional antenna, but then the cable company finally dragged a cable through a wetlands preserve and across a neighbours back yard just to get a decent signal to the last 1/4 mile on that street. The signal and transfer speeds still suck, but at least they are connected! It only took the 'whole community' to threaten and complain to the cable company, just get that much, so I wonder what it would take to get a real 'high speed' connection all the way way out there, all but a 1000 ft from the local city limit. Ok cable co, I can even yell that far, why can't you get a decent broadband signal there?
Re:Motorcycle, not a car; Agreed, but...
on
DIY Hybrid Car Kit
·
· Score: 1
Sorry, but I can not quite equate manoeuvrability to "safety". I have, or should I say had, several friends who would tell you today that their extra manoeuvrability didn't quite help enough. That's one major reason I don't ride any more. You would be making a big mistake to rely on manoeuvrability as any kind of safety feature.
As far as the crumple zones and structure, the vehicle pretty much has that via the epoxy glass laminated foam core. That stuff can take a real pounding and adsorb a lot of force for its weight. Ever check out what a crash helmet is made from? I can tell you its not steel! Crash tests would be necessary to ensure that the proper thickness and shape is used for maximum protection. The lighter weight also is more susceptible to wind and high speed ground effects, but with the proper trim and airflow testing it could be made reasonably safe there too. There is also no reason the vehicle could not have air bags, stability control, and other safety features yet still remain light in weight. It would be high tech and perhaps quite expensive, but very possible. It is likely that any 'production' vehicle will have to have such devices. A kit like this one on the other hand is likely a bad idea for the average experimenter, because they would not opt to add the extra safety gear that would make it equivalent to a normal production car.
Re:Motorcycle, not a car; Agreed, but...
on
DIY Hybrid Car Kit
·
· Score: 1
While I agree with your assessment, there are some things to consider as well.
First, its design is far safer than a motorcycle. In fact its safer than a trike, because most all three wheelers to date are made backwards, in that they are completely unstable while decelerating on a turn. This one is the right way around so it is much more stable during the evasive manoeuvres that count. I don't care a whole hill of beans how fast a vehicle accelerates, but its got to stop fast without flipping over or its just not safe enough to drive. If you added an active stability control system to this machine you would have a safer machine than most inexpensive cars on the street.
Second, loosing a wheel (4->3) does shed a lot of weight, and gives a major boost to the power weight ratio which directly translates to MPG. There is no 4 wheeled EV that is capable of making my home-to-work round trip, or I'd have bought it in a heart beat. By my own calculations I believe a three wheeled EV/Hybrid could do it easily. My poor Prius just broke 100K last week, and its less than 3 years old. I had played with the idea of designing and building something very close to this vehicle myself but I don't have nearly the kind of time needed to actually build one, and like many others have noted here, how do you get permission to actually put one on the road? If it does qualify as a motorcycle that would be a good thing. A kit would be nice, but I'd much rather buy one off the lot, which due to availability won't be happening any time soon.
If I could buy this off the lot I'd probably do it in a heartbeat.
I agree, pound cake was invented quite a while ago. Although your recipe is almost unique (you'll have to ask my ex about that one) I doubt it would sell very well anyway.
Take my word for it, having a patent can get very expensive with all the filing fees renewals etc.. I believe IBM was trying to make a point on how useless patents are these days. Raise the bar for qualifying a patent application or scrap the system.
Take my advise, never admit that you know old languages or the next thing you will know is that your company is shipping you off to CA. The last time 'I' made that mistake I spent the next 9 months in a closet converting 1 MeG SLOC of PL/1 into C.
At some point they will BE the network. All cars will be netted together to form a "total situation awareness" network that will make it very difficult to have a two car collision. Your breaks may fail but the other cars will know that and try to avoid you.
The down side is if you try and run someone off the road and your car might be BSOD'd by the guy behind you with a Ping-O-Death. Your car simply drops off the net and the other cars won't be able to "actively" avoid you in quite the same way.
With all the road-rage out there these days this sounds like a really bad idea. I hear that "Windows Drivers" are notoriously hard to understand when something goes wrong, and nearly impossible to negotiate with unless you have years of training. My advise is to keep your doors locked at all times.
I am want to work on a Solar concentrator that will spin a Sterling engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine which drives an electric generator. Just mount a Stirling engine to the focal point with a reflective surface http://www.sprol.com/?p=265 that concentrates the heat, and add a sun tracker system to it and you will have free electricity for life! Of course how much power you generate depends on the dish diameter, your geographical location, and the reflective surface you use. In any case a Stirling is more efficient that the current photovoltaic technology we have available today. I would be doing this now except I don't have the "reflective surface" and the required sun tracker hardware in place yet. My tiny little 6" lathe just won't spin a six foot disk no matter how hard I try, and nobody seems to be throwing these big dishes out when I am conveniently available.
#1 Acceptance of OS? Not likely, at least not willingly. Shared source is fine by them because they still own it, and it give the perception of MS being more "open" to all those like the EU who want to see improvement. But this does little in the big scheme of things. It's just a new cosmetic facade for the same 800 pound gorilla.
#2 New approach to releases? Oh yes, but then going to a subscription based software infrastructure only compounds the current problems of being tethered to the M$ name brand. Microsoft will invent many new ways to deactivate "their" software whenever you forget to pay tribute.
#3 Secure revenue by buying out? Whats new about this? Microsoft has always bought out or simply crushed their financially for years.
#4 Interoperability? What? Microsoft? Get real! Microsoft's only use for "standards" is so they have a way to be incompatible. If everybody follows the standard they are guaranteed not to interoperate with MS software.
#5 More Microsoft than Gates? What is that about? Who cares who is shown as running the show? I don't buy software because of who markets it, I would only buy it because it solves a problem. Lately they have only created problems to be solved, so I generally look elsewhere for my solutions unless the 800 lb gorilla gets in my way and I am forced to buy something in order to "interoperate" differently than any other software that is available.
If you are really worried about your wife then buy yourself a USB keyboard and mouse for such occasions, otherwise use the alcohol cleaner towelettes that you get for cleaning eye glasses and wipe it down. If you are that paranoid then do both, buy a USB mouse and keyboard and wipe them down too before giving them to your wife, as somebody at Dell may have had the same virus you contracted from your laptop! I'll just trust that you will feel better being 'ultra paranoid' rather than being just moderatly so. Science has shown time and again that exposure to germs and viruses build up your immune system to help fight off future infections, by the way. Do you really want her to catch the next recombinant version of the same virus you had, or the one you had? Then she can have the luxury of giving it back to you.:-)
... say Firefox's "network.prefetch-next = true" by default setting? If a browser prefetches all the pages in the users current web page (i.e. a Google search) even when the user does not click on a single link then the web site would get just as much false statistics about what the users were viewing. There is no 'bot' involved like the article seems to imply of AVG, but producing traffic to unvisited pages is still 'fake traffic'. There is a reason for each activity, one is speed and the other safety. Is one really more wrong than the other?
Its also been used in large transformers for years. The "technology advance" here worth noting is in being able to produce it while casting/moulding objects that are not thin and flat. It had been done as sheets for years, but casting a part that is something like 7 times the strength of titanium is much more useful. Unfortunately, the problem to solve is its brittleness. Things that shatter are much less useful.
I say mod the parent up! The "Open Source" model should be seen academically as the ultimate genetic algorithm in source code. The model is even self correcting so long as the developers are driven by the users needs, and not the smell of money filtering down the chain of command. The people that need the software to 'just work' are the very ones that are best qualified to describe the needs of the code base, and if those needs are held close at hand by the very one that is empowered to make those very changes then much more thought goes into the final solution of that particular instance of code. If that same instance of code in the evolution fo that software is deemed useful by the population at large, then the 'genetic traits' of that solution are eventually carried forward to all successive code generations, that is until a better solution comes along. Open Source is purely driven by the survival of the fittest. The best ones and zeros win the game.
Slashdot Mirror
Virus or not, there is plenty of malware out there so it is still prudent to be regularly check your system and be aware of these threats, even on Linux. [c|k]lamav, chkrootkit, and rkhunter are your friends and don't mind working late at night while you sleep. Setting up ipfilter to to default deny for outgoing services is also a good idea. I like firestarter because it lets you monitor what apps are connected to the net on what ports to catch some types of covert channels and back doors.
This guy is so wrong I have to laugh. All I can say is this guy should change professions, as he obvioulsy does not understand anything about the market he is pretending to write about.
With more time on our hands by not working don't you think we might just hack some new code to pass the time? I have so many ideas that I just can't find the time to do anything because my "research" at work demands all my time. The more time I have available away from work the more OS bugs I can fix and new algorithms and programs I can write and share.
As for the basic economics of going all-electric with this one I ran some numbers of my own and determined my Prius cost me as much as $5.60 per commute per day (66mi,3.50/gal,42+mpg winter with a lead foot, but usually around 47), and the Aptiva (80 wh/mi, BG&E rates) would only cost me $0.63 for the all-electric version. Doing solar would drive the cost up a little but it would still be far cheaper than being all gas powered as I am today. Not only would is save me money but it is also the first electric car that is capable of doing that 66 mi commute on one charge, as I would otherwise have to get my office to install an electric meter in the parking lot if I had any other electric vehicle. I'd buy one today, as this is almost exactly the car I wanted to design and build for myself, but the bummer is the car is only available to residents of California. Anyone out there want to take delivery for me? I'd just have to figure out how to charge it every day for the drive back home to the east coast. :}
If Microsoft wants to change the world I suggest they try to create a tool that will just 'run anywhere'. Sure, they could create the killer Developer environment and drive the droves of mindless programmers to their wonderful platform, I'm all for it, but at the end of the day if I can't run the final application on my platform then its just useless. What irks me is that Microsoft puts so much time, effort, and money into making sure I can't run it on (pick your platform of choice, any, just not written by Microsoft) platform X. All Microsoft has to do to get my support is to stop keeping others from interoperating. This this 'experience' you want to talk about is just a usability issue of the 'Internet', which Microsoft seems to think should be renamed to the 'Inter-NOT'. When I can run Silverlight on any platform that Microsoft didn't write, then and only then, will I give it the light of day.
I don't think credibility is the only reason. Think of it this way; Geeks read Ars, but WE already know the answers to the question! For an intelligent bunch of geeks this debate is already self evident. Politicians and legislators unfortunately only read the NYT, so if you want to get the word out to where it really matters then NYT is where the story should be headlined. It doesn't make the NYT any better than Ars for getting the facts, but 'the mainstream media' is where the political change will ultimately come from. At least that is until more geeks and /.'ers get elected to some prominent government office. Then Ars and NYT will be of equal value for social change, or hopefully even be reversed.
What I herd was:
Obviously they need to hire a few real engineers rather than just clueless mouth piece. Think about it this way;: The guys laptop, sitting less than a foot away (remember that r^2 EMI power density?), is much better shielded than the multi-million dollar air plane having countless human lives hanging in the balance on a daily basis? Darn, Where is my clue stick hiding these days...
.. and then linked together by an application written in C, to dynamically loaded/replaceable libraries written in C, and all for running on an OS written primarily in C. Yup, that 'Ada language' sure is secure! I can't tell you how many times I have seen mission critical Ada code linked to faulty C libraries or calling unsafe functions some where below it. Quite often Ada type checking breaks, or becomes null and void, at those interface boundaries and then all bets are off.
I do believe that even mechanical engineers need to do failure analysis, alignment, and predictions, and many of these methodologies employ both acoustics and optics. If you don't understand your own equipment then what good is it to try to design and test anything?
As an application programmer we often find ourselves with performance issues. Diagnosing those issues requires a fundamental understanding of how operating systems work. When I was at NASA we had a database application someone wrote that was dog slow, and it was all because of the scheduler algorithm on that OS. Fortunately having that kind of understanding I realized that the OS parameters could be tweaked slightly and the application changed in minor ways such that its process priority did not get bumped down as much. Ever hear of inserting a sleep(0) to speed up your application? Most people would think that is silly, but it made the runtime difference between 7 hours and 14 days! If your friendly 'programmer' knew nothing about OS's they might just find themselves out of a job in similar circumstances unless they learn quickly and under pressure. Sometimes its better to just know the solutions than to watch you friends go out the door.
Because it helps with vocabulary. Exercising the brain has a tendency to make you good at what you spend time doing. If you need to write well you need to exercise that portion of your brain so that you can better choose the right words to use.
Because the basic foundation of doing business is built upon understanding the market forces. If you don't understand the market forces your business is just going to fail. The basic courses in economics gives you incite into those forces.
Um, because you have to? No, actually is that one would be stupid not to, that's why its the law. Of course there are many other stupid laws we could take pot shots at. ;)
Ok, looks like you got me on that one. Why people look towards 'professional opinion makers' completely stumps me. Everybody has an opinion, but being able to make an informed opinion does not require you to know someone else's opinion. Go research the facts for yourself and you will make a much better decision for your own circumstance, rather than blindly listening to someone else's opinion that is in a different line of business and lives in a different part of the country.
From that comment I gather that this 'design' is in a very questionable state. If a real prototype has not been proven to work then this design is worth roughly the negative value of the piece of paper its written on. The physics of silicon is very involved at the nano-structure level and getting it right on the first go is very difficult considering having a single ion in the wrong strata could short out the entire cell and it would produce nothing. For a 3D cell to work it would have to use the physical properties of light such that different wavelengths of light penetrate to different depths before absorption, and each depth needs to have the ability to trap and carry that charge out to a collection grid on the surface without interfering with the other layers collection grids. Each grid would then set up a charged field that would potentially affect the silicon around it thereby defeating much of the gains of increased 3D collection area. For a 12 year old to get that right on paper the first time would be nothing short of astonishing. My advice? Build a prototype first then talk to reporters later, and then this will be surly slashdot worthy. I'll give the kid a lot of credit here, but lets not jump the gun until we know some variation of this actually works.
Now that's odd. I don't seem to recall 'the Soup Nazi' throwing any chairs on Seinfeld. I thought he only did that in the M$ board room?
Same story here, only one street in my neighbourhood had such a bad cable signal they could not even get a broadband connection going. I was just getting ready to extend a helping hand with a wifi booster and directional antenna, but then the cable company finally dragged a cable through a wetlands preserve and across a neighbours back yard just to get a decent signal to the last 1/4 mile on that street. The signal and transfer speeds still suck, but at least they are connected! It only took the 'whole community' to threaten and complain to the cable company, just get that much, so I wonder what it would take to get a real 'high speed' connection all the way way out there, all but a 1000 ft from the local city limit. Ok cable co, I can even yell that far, why can't you get a decent broadband signal there?
As far as the crumple zones and structure, the vehicle pretty much has that via the epoxy glass laminated foam core. That stuff can take a real pounding and adsorb a lot of force for its weight. Ever check out what a crash helmet is made from? I can tell you its not steel! Crash tests would be necessary to ensure that the proper thickness and shape is used for maximum protection. The lighter weight also is more susceptible to wind and high speed ground effects, but with the proper trim and airflow testing it could be made reasonably safe there too. There is also no reason the vehicle could not have air bags, stability control, and other safety features yet still remain light in weight. It would be high tech and perhaps quite expensive, but very possible. It is likely that any 'production' vehicle will have to have such devices. A kit like this one on the other hand is likely a bad idea for the average experimenter, because they would not opt to add the extra safety gear that would make it equivalent to a normal production car.
First, its design is far safer than a motorcycle. In fact its safer than a trike, because most all three wheelers to date are made backwards, in that they are completely unstable while decelerating on a turn. This one is the right way around so it is much more stable during the evasive manoeuvres that count. I don't care a whole hill of beans how fast a vehicle accelerates, but its got to stop fast without flipping over or its just not safe enough to drive. If you added an active stability control system to this machine you would have a safer machine than most inexpensive cars on the street.
Second, loosing a wheel (4->3) does shed a lot of weight, and gives a major boost to the power weight ratio which directly translates to MPG. There is no 4 wheeled EV that is capable of making my home-to-work round trip, or I'd have bought it in a heart beat. By my own calculations I believe a three wheeled EV/Hybrid could do it easily. My poor Prius just broke 100K last week, and its less than 3 years old. I had played with the idea of designing and building something very close to this vehicle myself but I don't have nearly the kind of time needed to actually build one, and like many others have noted here, how do you get permission to actually put one on the road? If it does qualify as a motorcycle that would be a good thing. A kit would be nice, but I'd much rather buy one off the lot, which due to availability won't be happening any time soon.
If I could buy this off the lot I'd probably do it in a heartbeat.
That would be much too inefficient (8-20%), and an oven is terribly inefficient with electricity too. What you need is an oven built with a large Fresnel Lens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens or reflective solar concentrators http://www.instructables.com/id/Multifacet-parabolic-solar-concentrator/. On a sunny day of course!
I agree, pound cake was invented quite a while ago. Although your recipe is almost unique (you'll have to ask my ex about that one) I doubt it would sell very well anyway.
Take my word for it, having a patent can get very expensive with all the filing fees renewals etc.. I believe IBM was trying to make a point on how useless patents are these days. Raise the bar for qualifying a patent application or scrap the system.
Take my advise, never admit that you know old languages or the next thing you will know is that your company is shipping you off to CA. The last time 'I' made that mistake I spent the next 9 months in a closet converting 1 MeG SLOC of PL/1 into C.
http://www.semdesigns.com/Products/Services/MainframeMigration.html
But then you will still need to deal with legacy algorithms.
The down side is if you try and run someone off the road and your car might be BSOD'd by the guy behind you with a Ping-O-Death. Your car simply drops off the net and the other cars won't be able to "actively" avoid you in quite the same way.
With all the road-rage out there these days this sounds like a really bad idea. I hear that "Windows Drivers" are notoriously hard to understand when something goes wrong, and nearly impossible to negotiate with unless you have years of training. My advise is to keep your doors locked at all times.
I am want to work on a Solar concentrator that will spin a Sterling engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine which drives an electric generator. Just mount a Stirling engine to the focal point with a reflective surface http://www.sprol.com/?p=265 that concentrates the heat, and add a sun tracker system to it and you will have free electricity for life! Of course how much power you generate depends on the dish diameter, your geographical location, and the reflective surface you use. In any case a Stirling is more efficient that the current photovoltaic technology we have available today. I would be doing this now except I don't have the "reflective surface" and the required sun tracker hardware in place yet. My tiny little 6" lathe just won't spin a six foot disk no matter how hard I try, and nobody seems to be throwing these big dishes out when I am conveniently available.
#2 New approach to releases? Oh yes, but then going to a subscription based software infrastructure only compounds the current problems of being tethered to the M$ name brand. Microsoft will invent many new ways to deactivate "their" software whenever you forget to pay tribute.
#3 Secure revenue by buying out? Whats new about this? Microsoft has always bought out or simply crushed their financially for years.
#4 Interoperability? What? Microsoft? Get real! Microsoft's only use for "standards" is so they have a way to be incompatible. If everybody follows the standard they are guaranteed not to interoperate with MS software.
#5 More Microsoft than Gates? What is that about? Who cares who is shown as running the show? I don't buy software because of who markets it, I would only buy it because it solves a problem. Lately they have only created problems to be solved, so I generally look elsewhere for my solutions unless the 800 lb gorilla gets in my way and I am forced to buy something in order to "interoperate" differently than any other software that is available.
If you are really worried about your wife then buy yourself a USB keyboard and mouse for such occasions, otherwise use the alcohol cleaner towelettes that you get for cleaning eye glasses and wipe it down. If you are that paranoid then do both, buy a USB mouse and keyboard and wipe them down too before giving them to your wife, as somebody at Dell may have had the same virus you contracted from your laptop! I'll just trust that you will feel better being 'ultra paranoid' rather than being just moderatly so. Science has shown time and again that exposure to germs and viruses build up your immune system to help fight off future infections, by the way. Do you really want her to catch the next recombinant version of the same virus you had, or the one you had? Then she can have the luxury of giving it back to you. :-)
... say Firefox's "network.prefetch-next = true" by default setting? If a browser prefetches all the pages in the users current web page (i.e. a Google search) even when the user does not click on a single link then the web site would get just as much false statistics about what the users were viewing. There is no 'bot' involved like the article seems to imply of AVG, but producing traffic to unvisited pages is still 'fake traffic'. There is a reason for each activity, one is speed and the other safety. Is one really more wrong than the other?
http://www.google.com/patents?id=Kq4yAAAAEBAJ&dq=4256039 Filing date: Jan 2, 1979
Its also been used in large transformers for years. The "technology advance" here worth noting is in being able to produce it while casting/moulding objects that are not thin and flat. It had been done as sheets for years, but casting a part that is something like 7 times the strength of titanium is much more useful. Unfortunately, the problem to solve is its brittleness. Things that shatter are much less useful.
I say mod the parent up! The "Open Source" model should be seen academically as the ultimate genetic algorithm in source code. The model is even self correcting so long as the developers are driven by the users needs, and not the smell of money filtering down the chain of command. The people that need the software to 'just work' are the very ones that are best qualified to describe the needs of the code base, and if those needs are held close at hand by the very one that is empowered to make those very changes then much more thought goes into the final solution of that particular instance of code. If that same instance of code in the evolution fo that software is deemed useful by the population at large, then the 'genetic traits' of that solution are eventually carried forward to all successive code generations, that is until a better solution comes along. Open Source is purely driven by the survival of the fittest. The best ones and zeros win the game.