Technology and Wisdom = Better Humanity
We should be wiser in using technology for human happiness.
Monday 9 July 2007, 1:02 AM
A DC-based culture is growing.
In 1880 approximately, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse contended between two kinds of electricity: Direct Current and Alternate Current. DC lost because there were no good ways to transport it to distant places without huge losses. AC has the advantage of being transformed to higher voltages and transmitted at lower currents.
One and quarter century later, we don't even pay attention when we see the huge towers with electrical conductors on top at 160 kilovolts or higher. It is a necessary evil that one has to put with in order to live in a "civilized" world. AC has other disadvantages: every village needs a transformer substation to lower the voltage from kilovolts to 220 or 110 volts, depending on the country. Voltage in Japan is 100 volts, and in a ship it is 400 volts. In a place where heavy motors are used, the installation is three-phase. That makes home appliances purchased in Europe incompatible with houses in the U.S.; one has to buy a transformer to accommodate the difference.
Since 1970 or so, however, a growing number of electrical devices have been produced, requiring low DC voltage, due to semiconductors: electronic gadgets and appliances, such as radios, cameras, recorders, toys and computers. To solve the incompatibility, AC to DC power supplies and batteries have been developed. Today, some of the thriving industries are in the category of power supply, battery and battery-charger manufacturers. Batteries allow the devices to be portable, because they are not connected to the "power grid", so they give the user of the device freedom of locomotion while doing useful work: cellphones and portable computers, for example. What would be the next step to tip the balance toward DC? Lighting. The solution is before us: Light Emitting Diodes--LEDs. If one takes a look at LEDs Magazine, one sees that in 2006 superLEDs came into existence, single LEDs that can emit more than 100 lumens. That is a significant achievement, if one considers that a 100-watt incandescent bulb outputs 1200 lumens. It is even more compelling to know that the energy transduction efficiency of a LED can reach higher levels than even the Compact Fluorescent Lamps--CFLs. LEDs are better than CFLs because they work at low voltages and contain no mercury. It is harder to make CFLs work with batteries, and when they do, they produce high ElectroMagnetic Interference--EMI. Therefore, LEDs for illumination are here to stay, and they will push the balance toward a DC culture in the world.
The gigantic AC power grid has no reason to grow any more, one of the last outposts of megacorporations, after telecommunications. DC culture makes people independent from powerful multinationals.
Tuesday 12 June 2007, 2:00 AM
Why there is no traffic on ZDNet.co.uk?
I posted an article a week ago on the Vista Upgrade Blog, and that article is still on top of the column, meaning that nobody added an article.
Either bloggers have nothing to say, or are discouraged by the small traffic.
I have a theory to explain the phenomenon:
The server is slow, and visitors are not allowed free entry into the site.
I placed a link to my first article on linuxtoday.com and in a few hours there were 10 comments. One of the comments said Why do you blog in such a difficult site? or something similar.
It is not fun to blog at ZDNet.co.uk
I expect comments on this. Let us shake it.
Monday 4 June 2007, 3:35 AM
Strengths of Open Source opposing Microsoft patent threats
Recently, two actions by Microsoft seriously called the attention of the open source community. One is the strange alliance with Novell and another is the unproven statement that GNU/Linux infringes on 235 Microsoft patents. Although the community has the feeling that these actions are outrageous and illegal, it does not know how best to deal with them, since in the U.S. one has to spend much money in order to respond to unfounded statements by anyone, especially when the opponent is very wealthy.
I have the impression that open source to challenge it in a justice court is exactly what Microsoft desires, so we should not get into this dangerous and expensive game.
Therefore, I propose another game, in which the open source is strong where Microsoft is weak.
Let us organize an event, where we place two large tables in a convention room. At the head of one table, one places a server hardware running Windows Server 2007 prepared as a thin client server with well-known applications: MS Office, Adobe suite, Interne Explorer 7, Outlook, for example. At the head of the other table, one places the same server hardware running a GNU/Linux distribution (RedHat or Ubuntu Server) prepared as thin client server with open-source applications such as OpenOffice, the Gimp, Firefox, Evolution etc. Along the tables, as many client PCs as possible are connected as thin clients, so that all sorts of people would run applications on the servers simultaneously, trying to overload the corresponding server with their input. On the wall there will be a projection showing how many applications are open on the server, and how they are loaded, like htop on GNU/Linux, so the surrounding people and journalists can see, and document, the load changes, the memory load, etc. in real time. It would be more fun if external users be allowed to log in to those servers and participate in the effort to use intensively the applications.
My contention is that the Windows server can take less load from thin clients because the applications cannot handle many users, while the open source applications are able to handle many simultaneous users without crashing. For this reason, if many users open MS Word on their terminals, the server has to launch many copies of the application thus filling memory and going for the swap space sooner, eventually going to thrashing mode.
I remember that this kind of test was done before, but never in public, side by side. This test will be entertaining if the important people of both sides show up, address the public in keynotes, and exchange ideas about the ongoing contest.
The objective is to show for all to see how lean and mean GNU/Linux is as compared to Windows, and demonstrate that they are so different that GNU/Linux cannot be infringing so many patents and behave so differently. It is impossible to describe such differences with words, so we need a great, visible show. I guess people would like to buy stuff there, and there would be less waste of time and money than in a courtroom.
