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Comment Re:power (Score 1) 42

I'm sure that it will use a lookup table, but it's also going to have to build those tables dynamically because due to the nature of mechanical devices. 1) no two are identical and 2) they wear while in use, especially while running near the edge of materials technology, further exacerbating point #1. You really do need a learning control system if you're not in a perfect world, or doing something hilariously easy — which this isn't.

Submission + - Bill Gates Sponsoring Palladium-Based LENR Technology (kitco.com) 1

Baldrson writes: Kitco.com reports that: "Low energy nuclear reactor (LENR) technology, and by extension palladium, is attracting the attention of one of the richest men in the world and a pioneer inventor of new technology... In a recent visit to Italy, billionaire business man, investor and inventor Bill Gates said that for several years he has been a believer in the idea of LENR, and is a sponsor of companies developing the technology... During his trip to Italy he visited the national agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development (ENEA) where scientists have made significant progress towards a working design for low energy nuclear fusion. The centerpiece of their design is the same as in Mitsubishi’s: palladium. Creating palladium foil with just the right parameters, and managing stress levels in the material was a key issue, one that the researchers at EMEA were able to resolve several years ago." This is controversial to say the least. For example one of the first (1994) Idea Futures claims was that a palladium cold fusion device could produce even a small fraction of that claimed by many researchers over the last quarter century. That claim is presently selling at 2% odds and the judgement deadline is next week.

Comment Re: not original (Score 1) 190

One thing about your earlier example is that generators are not normally a necessity.

Unfortunately, even the furnace won't function in most places without power, so electricity is a necessity. Most of our equipment is very poorly thought-out like this. When I installed a replacement on-demand water heater in this house, I could get the same model with different suffixes corresponding to three different ignition systems: a plug-in, on-demand spark ignition; a dynamo-based, on-demand spark ignition; or a tradtional pilot, with a piezo igniter. I chose the piezo igniter because I know I live in the boonies and the power can go off here, and I still want to have hot water if that happens. Of course, having flow takes a generator, but it doesn't take a whole-house generator and the pump house is significantly distant from the house.

Comment Re: not original (Score 1) 190

Plus, how do you codify a house able to withstand a high tide 12 feet above normal?

You don't. You just expect it to be washed away, and you don't expect help. And anyone who expects to be able to depend on you in situations with heavy weather is a tool who deserves to fail. We keep propping up idiots and we wonder why the world keeps looking more and more like Idiocracy. Nobody but farmers should be living on a flood plain, and we should be farming it. Nothing but disposable (and once fallen, biodegradable) summer homes should be built on the beach. No flammable structures should be built in wildfire zones. No fragile structures in common quake zones. Yet we still have all of that. Yes, even that last one, California is still building shit-shacks made of nothing. They might not fall down in a quake, but they will slop themselves apart, and they're highly flammable even though this is wildfire country.

In short, we are not even using the most basic common sense when siting and building. It's all for profit, and there is no sense to the system whatsoever. In fact, people who try to do the right thing are usually hampered so as to continue to produce more business for the system, ye olde broken window fallacy in action.

Comment Re:Why is the White House involved? (Score 2) 227

Presidents, governors and mayors all do this kind of thing -- call up private businesses and ask them to do stuff. The mayor may call a local business and ask it to reconsider withdrawing its sponsorship of the local youth baseball league. The governor might call up union leaders and senior management in a strike, particularly if it affects things lots of people need like transit or health care.

This is the exercise of *soft* power, of influence rather than of compulsion. Obama can't call Apple and compel them to change their stance. But he can call Tim Cook and *persuade* him, possibly with more success than Michael Lynton, particuarly given that the two may be having some kind of dispute. Ego *does* play a role in CEO decision making.

Comment Re:Google's acquisition of Android Inc. Q.E.D. (Score 1) 88

If by that you mean it won't make anything except more money for the new Comwarner Cable for doing absolutely NOTHING, and removing a potentional compertitor from EVER becoming a threat, then yes it makes absolutely nothing.......

They're not potential competitors because in most markets they have monopolies on the right-of-way.

Also, there will be something REDUCED as a result of this merger. Comwarner CEO: "Hmm, we really don't need TWO marketing departments right? Or HR departments, or janatorial departments or........"

They will need just as much janitorial staff, but you're right, they won't need as many marketers, or HR employees. So that's a major win in my book. Are you sure you know what you're arguing?

Comment Re:Today it is porn, tomorrow it is your political (Score 1) 294

It will not be long that the UK government will choose to put any site they do not like into the black list.

That's how it is now. The "porn" sites are on the list, but the religious sites aren't, and their works are much more harmful to children, least because they include material which could be considered pornography under the government's own guidelines but primarily because of all the violence with specious justification.

Comment Re:Prohibitions do not work! (Score 1) 294

And if those services are not available in the UK, or not good enough in the UK, why not create the company and let the free market do the work?

We tried. No suitable product became available.

That no suitable product became available proves that such a product is either unworkable or undesirable. Problem solved!

David Cameron pushed the market into providing such a service.

No, it's something that masquerades as such a service. The provided solution does not work properly. If you sold customers such a product, it would be returned as being unsuitable for the stated purpose, because the mission is impossible. That is why no one produced a suitable product: it cannot be done.

Comment Re:Hasn't this been known? (Score 1) 163

Although there are some ways to secure DMA (like a white list of addresses/sizes that are safe to write to), all of the advertised functionality of USB3, such as the sustained data rates, would be very hard to achieve if you didn't have direct access to memory

Sigh. It's almost like slashdot is peopled by people who know fuck-all about computers, such as the existence of the IOMMU. Decent operating systems have support for these. They completely solve this problem with minimal overhead.

That's why Firewire ruled for live streaming of data for so long: DMA made it's rates reliable

Yes, firewire has the same problem, and the same solution.

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I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.

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