From the blog: "Some are wondering if this is a serious proposal or a ploy intended to derail the California High-Speed Rail project. Evidence seems to point to the latter. After all, the guy proposing this revolution in transit owns a car company."
I quit reading there.
I find the most interesting figure to be the rate (in watts) reported by the OS. In Ubuntu, this can be seen with the Power Statistics app as an attribute of the battery. For instance, now with USB peripherals and an external monitor, it reports 9.2 watts. If I use the built in screen dimmed, unplug USB peripherals and turn off wireless, it goes to 4.5 watts. I can't do much about my battery, but I can (to some extent) do something about the OS using power.
He has 5 kids. Hopefully he'll pass on his positive traits and his kids will multiply Musk's achievements.
Correction: Android compatibility never happened. I thought it shipped on the n9 with MeeGo "Harmattan" (which I did not own), but it did not. Apologies.
So the gist of this article is that Nokia is doing fantastic things with hardware, but Microsoft isn't keeping up and holding Nokia back. If Nokia had control of the OS, they'd be in much better shape. They would have this freedom with Android AND instant access to its software market. And Maemo/Meego was a fine OS (I owned the n800 and n900), which shipped with Android app compatibility. It's clear that Windows Phone was a horrible choice. How could they not see this coming when everyone was yelling at them telling them they were making a mistake?
I've bought many LEDs over the past two years. You can now get good A19 bulbs for $10 to $15 and good br30 for $20 to $25. Things are moving fast in led lighting. In addition to established brands Toshiba and Phillips I've been impressed with bulbs from Kobi and G7. There are too many companies entering the market to count and plenty of junk to avoid (stuff at Lowes), but LEDs are certainly improving quickly.
Chattanooga has fiber through https://www.epbfi.com/ From their website, 50/50 is $57.99, 100/100 is $69.99 up to 1G/1G @ $299.99. I think they they ran fiber on the power poles throughout the city. I don't know how they got around the monopolies, but I'm happy to see that they did. Though they're not cheap, the certainly demolish the incumbents' offerings on the mid to high end. My hope is that neighboring towns will feel the pressure of competition and we'll finally get to where we should have been 10-15 years ago.
ScatterBytes is NOT the backend for MEGA! I'm not sure how I gave that impression. I have however worked BitCoin into the service and to my delight, it has enabled the creation of registration free storage nodes. That means to run a storage node, all you'll need to provide is a BitCoin address to accept payments, and you can just put that in the configuration file. Uploading/Storing data still requires a verified email address because it seems necessary to me for billing. I'd like to support other payment options so I'm all ears.
I haven't released the updated software yet so please be patient. Shortly, I'm going to be publishing a Debian repository for the client and server to make installation and updating easy. I've also got some new (512 MB RAM) Model B Raspberry Pi's in the mail which I'm going to setup as storage nodes. I think they'd make great storage nodes due to their low cost and low power consumption. I welcome any feedback.
-Randall
You make some good points. I value my privacy and others' so I do want to offer payment options that respect privacy. I've done some initial study on bitcoin including trading for currency as that would be essential. I would appreciate any suggestions on implementation using bitcoin.
It is 1.95 cents. That is a cent sign and there is no dollar sign. I will try to make it less confusing.
Disclaimer 1 - This is my system
Disclaimer 2 - The System (ScatterBytes.net) is under heavy development and not currently online. I maybe shouldn't be advertising this on Slashdot, but I would like to get some feedback and if you are interested in adding a storage node or using a client, please respond here or through the website,
I currently only want people comfortable with a Linux and a CLI and with the stomach to host data on a system in beta.
You get paid to be a storage node and other than being generally always on, it doesn't matter what type of equipment you use because the system is highly redundant and node outages are expected. Payments are handled through Paypal - both sending and receiving. I'm working on a guide to use a Raspberry Pi as a storage node so that initial costs and power usage will be minimal. The Pi would also double as media/file storage for a local network.
As a client you choose how much redundancy you want. Anywhere from 2 to 20 (or more) mirrors for your data. You can also add parity. After encrypting and splitting a file, the client uploads the pieces to different storage nodes (assigned by a control node), which transfer those pieces to other storage nodes for replication. ALL communication is encrypted and nodes are verified using X.509 certificates signed by a scatterbytes.net CA. Files are encrypted by the client and only the client has the key so ONLY the client can read the data.
Agreed. My ~ $1200 13" Macbook Air has a resolution of 1440x900 (16:10) . I would expect at least the same from any "high end" 13" ultrabook. Otherwise, I'm very interested. I prefer Linux and would pay to have hardware that is WELL supported. The Air is nice, but it has quirks with Linux.
I just donated $20 and am downloading. I really like how you can choose where you want your money to go.
They've taken two approaches to raising funds (donations + shopping integration), while keeping Ubuntu free in the ways most of us care about vs. RedHat, who took a more restrictive route using their trademarks. If you like Ubuntu and are OK with either of these methods of fundraising, I suggest you support them. If they have more funds to make improvements and don't lose their way (queue the Unity comments), Ubuntu could easily surpass Windows and OS X in utility and value for the average user (not just for nerds and grandmas).
I'm not saying it needs to, but how cool would it be for a Free software OS to become the new "industry standard" as Windows has been for the last 15 or so years. I think it takes a leader/company with big resources and a solid plan to make it happen. We'd still have our options as to alternate window managers, etc, but we'd finally be free of working with the black box that is Windows.
According to figure 1 in the study.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x/full#f1
The environmental impact of the battery production is more about other factors than energy used. From the figure freshwater eco-toxicity (FETP), mineral resource depletion (MDP), human toxicity (HTP), and terrestrial acidification (TAP) are the largest impact items from battery production. So maybe a little too much attention is being put on the energy use, which is represented by global warming (GWP) and is a relatively small part of the production "impact".
From the article:
Considering how the potential problem shifts mostly arise from material requirements of EV production, effective recycling programs and improved EV lifetimes would constitute an appropriate first response.
This is the conclusion I came to. Most of the impact is not energy use, but other environmental factors, which can be addressed.
You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
