David Both

An article I co-authored with Bruce Garland, a co-worker at Cisco Systems, has been published in the June 2008 hardcopy issue of Linux Magazine. The article has not yet been put up on the Linux Magazine web site, so here is a link to my own DataBook® web site and the article Complete Kickstart.

NanoSolar has announced a new process for printing Photo-Voltaic Cells on sheets of material. The process is… Well here is their own press release.

Dear Nanosolar friend:

We wanted to let you know of a major milestone in solar energy technology we have now achieved:  The solar industry’s first 1GW production tool.

Yes, that’s 1GW of capacity from a single production tool!

You can see it yourself in action in a video we have decided to release and share with you.

Most production tools in the solar industry tend to have 10-30MW in annual production capacity.  So how is it possible to have a single tool with Gigawatt throughput?

This feat is fundamentally enabled through the proprietary nanoparticle ink we have invested so many years developing.  It allows us to deliver efficient solar cells (presently up to more than 14%) that are simply printed.

Printing is a simple, fast, and robust coating process that in particular eliminates the need for expensive high-vacuum chambers as traditionally used to deposit thin films.

Our 1GW CIGS coater cost $1.65 million. At the 100 feet-per-minute speed shown in the video, that’s an astonishing two orders of magnitude more capital efficient than a high-vacuum process: a twenty times slower high-vacuum tool would have cost about ten times as much per tool.

There’s still a lot of hard work to be done for us to bring solar power everywhere.  But at this time we wanted to share with you our excitement about transformational progress happening.

Thank you for your continued support of Nanosolar.  While deployment of our product will focus over the next 12 months on installations with our wholesale customers (which includes the world’s largest utility), we are looking forward to making our products more broadly available! to ever yone in 2009.

Martin Roscheisen
CEO, Nanosolar Inc.

Can it be? Can a car really run on water? I cannot tell you how this might be possible, but here is some video allegedly of a car invented by Genepax in Osaka, Japan, showing its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water.

The company hopes to go into mass production with a Japanese manufacturer.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid203719194/bclid86272812/bctid1600171070

I would like to believe this, but the chemistry of water is well known. Unless you put energy in the form of electricity into it to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen and then use a fuel cell to recombine them to produce electricity, there is nothing that I am aware of in pure water from which to extract energy.

I have started a new DataBook® web site.

This new web site will be primarily targeted to Linux. I am writing two new books, The DataBook for Linux Administrators and the DataBook for Linux Users.

These two books are compendia of data about Linux, particularly about Fedora Linux, for Administrators and users, respectively. They contain information that I have discovered over the several years I have been using Linux and that I need to maintain for myself, but I also want to make this infomration available to all comers.

Although the entire book Databook for OS/2 has been lost, I will try to recreate it as time permits. I expect this to be a long and tedious process, so don’t look for much progress any time soon.

Please visit the new DataBook web site at http://www.databook.bz/.

DataBook is a registered trademark of Millennium Technology.

Last week, Sunday, May 25 the Raleigh News and Observer carried an article about how one Coastal North Carolina county, Beaufort County, is looking for ways to deny social, medical and other services to Mexican “illegal” immigrants in the county. In some cases, it appears they would rather do away with services entirely if they cannot legally discriminate against one class of people.

Read the original article here.

Alice and I, along with many other wrote letters to the editor. The N&O did some major surgery to our letter.

Read our letter as published in the N&O.

And here is the full text of the letter that we sent to the N&O:

Regarding “County cold to migrant influx,” on the front page of your Sunday May 25 issue, we are appalled at the xenophobic racism and outright bigotry of the Beaufort County commissioners. It is unimaginable that anyone should think they can deny basic services based upon surname or looks.

Terminating prenatal care to all poor women because the county cannot legally discriminate against one group based upon race, skin color or ethnic heritage, whatever euphemisms, excuses or rationalizations may be applied, seems the epitome of ignorance served with a huge helping of hubris. Perhaps the next step is to force Hispanics to wear an armband with the flag of their home country on it like the Nazi’s forced the Jews to wear the Star of David.

The Beaufort County commissioners should not forget that the Spanish came to the new world before the English. So perhaps the Hispanics should run out those of English descent. Or maybe the Native Americans who came first should get rid of everyone else who came later.

We both have immigrants in our background. My maternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Venezuela in the  early 1900′s. I would hate to get hit by a car or bitten by a shark while in Beaufort and have no ID except for my skin color.  In fact the story makes me fear that I might be refused emergency services even if I do have valid ID on me. Getting run out of town in the dark of night is not high on our list of vacation priorities, either. This is not about illegal immigration or saving money. It is about racism pure and simple.

We go to the beach each year, and usually spend a good deal of money around Beaufort. However, we are unwilling to support either directly or indirectly, this kind of repugnant racial exclusion tolerated in Beaufort County. This year, and for the foreseeable future, we will be spending our money in other, more welcoming parts of the coast.

David and Alice Both

I guess we just don’t see any compassion in those conservatives.