venerdì 24 febbraio 2012

The Hacker Manifesto

by
+++The Mentor+++
Written January 8, 1986



Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers.
"Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.


But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's techno-brain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker?

Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn underachiever. They're all alike.


I'm in junior high or high school.
I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction.
I understand it.
"No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.


I made a discovery today. I found a computer.
Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up.

Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.


And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like
heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.

"This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid.
Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...



You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless.

We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic.

The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.

We explore... and you call us criminals.
We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals.

We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.

You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal.

My crime is that of curiosity.

My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.

My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.

You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

sabato 18 febbraio 2012

Energy storing solutions for grid peak demand backup.

No system alone is good enough, what you need is a combination that could be used both on short peak and on lung run wind/sun absence, something stable and reusable.

Batteries are not the answer, they have a prohibitive acquisition price, huge maintenance costs and expensive to dispose, not to mention a brief life span (4 to 7 years in the best cases)

But they are excellent to cover instantaneous peak request before other larger backup systems start producing (matter of minutes or at most half a hour)

Another backup is the hydro pumping storage, fantastic for long run, covers in lack of wind if you have enough storage, and many times you don't need to produce power to pump it up, you can dedicate some on the shore mills to direct mechanical pumping, saving some % of loss in the conversions.

Another tech is High Concentration Sun Temperature storage (with molten salts or graphite blocks, a technology I am working on with some specialized companies) to be used by night or in absence of wind to produce hot steam to turn a turbine generator, it enters in power production faster than the hydro, but a bit slower than the batteries, and depending on the size you can store energy for weeks ahead.
Another means is the submarine stream hydroelectric turbines, that are giving a steady production of high capacity for decades, energy that you can store by pumping water to use it to cover peak moments. My company Karinns Hydro Electric Turbines LTD. is looking for good places where to place turbines, from rivers to canals (small units) to submarine streams (huge units) and I presume around your places there is lots of potential.

One last thing is to hydrolyse water into gas, and store liquefied hydrogen to power Diesel generators when in need, the advantage is you use the extra power when you would have to dispose of, and can store it for decades, it will not evaporate or loose energy, but is an expensive method to start with, although some money can be recuperated in the process by selling liquefied oxygen to industry and hospitals, since you shall have this by-product anyway.

We can provide any of these solutions on demand, but the best would be a wise combination of them, that would generate stability in the grid, jobs, a lot of useful byproducts to sell, boost economy and eliminate the need of fossil and nuke energy one step at the time.

E-mail me at: popemil@libero.it and let's examine the possibilities together.

Copyrighted by Emil Pop, 2012, all rights reserved.

mercoledì 1 febbraio 2012

Dark Africa and Darker Asia, talk talk talk, no action!

Remote areas have a high share of the total amount of inhabitants of the target countries.

We are talking about millions of people. So there is a big market to explore and develop.

Distributors are easy to find. the problem is more to find project developers and funds. in contradiction to the government plans and funds, they are are rather hard to get access to.

You can find these areas all over the world, even islands like the Cape Verde, or Caribbean islands like Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Jamaica, Cuba, some of the smaller islands as well.

Many of those regions still use candles and kerosine lamps for the dark hours. Food can not be kept fresh.

Here is a lack of transportation etc.

Governments recognized the problems and are starting funds to develop these areas.

However programs by the governments are hard accessible.

Basically the rural and remote areas have small targets like villages etc.

For connecting those areas to the main grid you will need very long and expensive power lines.

Nobody wants to pay for that.

So local grids are most likely the best solutions.

And those grids can be powered by local hydro-, wind-, solar- or waste to energy conversion plants.

Big power plants require big capital, this attracts big sharks, big interested, and big envy in the group, thus this leads to big theft, anger, envy, reciprocal sabotage between fractions, and the money is gone before the plant is operational.

Besides if Hydro than this brings huge environmental issues and local catastrophes, builds a large evaporation basin that looses 30% of it's input water into thin air and needs constant maintenance or it gets clogged with mud in a decade.

Better solution are the micro hydro networks, by the river, on the river and in the river.

They usually produce double the needed or more for the small time investor, thus having a reasonable payback, and the extra energy can be added to the grid.

And if one drop can look like nothing, remember that a flood is made of the rain, and the rain is nothing but mere drops, gazillions of them...


And although at "regional scale accounting" this means more money spent on implementing, remember that each unit is the investment of somebody else, thus peanuts, and peanuts cash is easily collectable, besides maintainable is free since the owner in spar time keeps doing it a few hours a week to keep having power for himself and to sell so he can payback his investment.

The reality is that electrification of Africa this will not happen in the next 20 years without significant investment and it will still not reach the deepest rural areas.

Until this time, kerosene, biomass and sporadic electricity will be the standard.

Reverse rural electrification is happening with emerging micro-solar companies providing affordable solar products that include lighting and phone charging.

The products reach the markets through all sorts of means including rural micro-entrepreneurs, micro-finance schemes and NGOs.

For more info check out www.lightingafrica.org and www.barefootpower.com

To me there is a lot of talk and no action, this is why Africa and other parts of the world are behind, people don't grab their hacksaw and the hammer to do something, maybe rudimentary, but something of concrete to move ahead.

Is anybody of you here that sold any item to those people?
Is anybody of you here that bought something?
Is anybody of you that manufactured something?
Is anybody of you that organized something that lead to a solution that works?

When you can answer YES to the above questions, and provide proof, than Africa, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Sri Lanka and other parts of the world will start having a hope.

I can certainly answer YES here in Europe, and given a chance I am here to help anywhere where my skills, products and capacities are needed honestly.

Get organized, start doing something, and money and people will join, or just talk, and people will join... to talk back, but nothing will be realized.

I am not here to talk, but to promote micro-hydro, micro wind, HCPV and HCST and solar cooking, cheap, reliable, sturdy little things for the homeowner and small community, technologies that need little maintenance (mostly washing the dirt), and can be assembled locally by the buyer in most of the cases.

Is there anybody ready to start working?


I am already working, and I feel so lonely without others that share my ideology of MAKE IT HAPPEN and don't wait for the government with your hand stretched, they have nothing to give!


Copyrighted by Emil Pop, 2012, all rights reserved.