http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5005557-description.html Notably it’s about the how, and references older work on the basic concept. Odds-are that means the diode, if it’s covered at all, is under the Australian patents for the Solar Kettle design.
Read more →The issue is patents. Open Source derives it’s power from copyright law – they use the property right of “copyright” and then pool it by using the GPL and other such licenses which rest on copyright. Patent is a huge pain in the ass. You could do an open source patent pool, but that’s a [...]
Read more →This is a bit more complex to describe. Here’s how it works. Take two disks of glass, one black, one clear. Let us say they are 4″ in diameter, of indeterminate thickness. Now take a ring, say 1″ thick, 4″ in diameter, made from a strong insulator. Separate the two disks with this ring, enclosing [...]
Read more →This is how you do it.
Read more →Shows the whole process from start to finish. Could use more details on the tape anchors – we were pushed for time so we didn’t do them on every side – but this, combined with some of the detail shots from Combined Endeavor – is a comprehensive record of how to build a Hexayurt. Here’s [...]
Read more →Lawrence: We’ve taken Aqaba. Brighton: Taken Aqaba? Who has? Lawrence: We have. Our side in this war has. The wogs have. We have… Brighton: You mean the Turks have gone? Lawrence: No, they’re still there but they’ve no boots. Prisoners, sir. We took them prisoners, the entire garrison. No that’s not true. We killed some, [...]
Read more →So let’s talk about your impossible dream. You need some miracles. Good luck with that. But I can give you, as a 10-year veteran, my five counter-intuitive and probably immoral success secrets. 1. Self promote 2. Steal 3. Don’t Lie 4. Hate your enemies, but love your rivals. 5. Do less. http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/12/25/miracles/
Read more →At PARC we had a slogan: “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points.” It was based on a few things from the past like how smart you had to be in Roman times to multiply two numbers together; only geniuses did it. We haven’t gotten any smarter, we’ve just changed our representation system. We [...]
Read more →“MY NAME is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help.” A crumpled note, delivered to a passing rock star-turned-philanthropist? No, Mr Sokor is a much sharper communicator than that. He texted this [...]
Read more →The Event itself Note that all the presentations are online at that URL. My notes from the event – click on the blue links for the notes I made A gallery of the shelters I saw at the event. My presentation slides. Horribly low (audio) quality video of my talk. The talk was actually pretty [...]
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