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According to this site 2560 Meters = 1 Meg. So that would be 20,000,000 times 2560 = 51,200,000,000 metres = about a third of the way to the sun

I am soon going to New Orleans for a conference, and the hotel charges $14.95 per day for WiFi. Knowing that hot water is not metered, that's what I plan to do:

1. Assumption: hot water is produced by natural gas, temperature 50 kelvin above environment. Tap capacity 10 L/min. Natural gas cost: ca. $12 per 1000 cubic feet, equivalent to one million BTU.
2. Cost of energy is $12 per GJ, or 43 cents per MWh.
3. Power for heating of fully open tap: 10/60 x 4150 x 50 = 35 kW
4. Cost of fully open tap: 0.00042 $/second, or $1.51 an hour

Therefore, I will let hot water flow free for about 10 hours (every night, closing it at breakfast) and offset the profit they make on WiFi.

so natural gas costs 30% more per BTU input than fuel oil.

What planet do you live on?

heating oil $4.058/gallon, 138,700 BTU/gallon = $29.26 per million BTU
natural gas $ 0.55143 per hundred cubic feet (ccf), 102,000 BTU's per ccf = $5.41 per million BTU

Sincerely

I got www.infinity.com when I converted....is that what you intended? Here is the first page of that website, sans pagination...not very friendly, lmao.

Note: Do NOT enter "INTERNAL/" as part of your user name. This is a SunGard Application Service Provider environment, which may be accessed and used only for official business by authorized personnel. Unauthorized access or use of this environment is prohibited and may subject violators to administrative, and/or criminal, civil action. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy. All information on this environment may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, read, copied, audited, inspected and disclosed by and to authorized personnel. User Login User ID / Alias Password Remember my User ID Branch:trunk rev:27566 date:Tue, Jun 29 2010 03:55:27, EDT

To get to above, I used the following steps:

This site - www.onlineconversion.com which I found thanks to Google.

Then it was simple as selecting Number conversions, than bits to bytes, total time from start to finish, approx 10 minutes and I do not have any special insight into the subject, topic, though I have worked as an Data Conversion Consultant at one time in my past. Not sure that helped as much as being a programmer and figuring it was in binary....it was a fun excercise...was just wondering if I were right or not?

This calculator shows the BAC after a 185 lb man takes 4 hours to drink a quart of 95% ethanol to be 1.172%. That's way past coma, and would likely be lethal. It also shows that it would take 29 hours for your BAC to fall below 0.08% if it didn't kill you outright.

Original poster, if you're really that habituated to those sorts of BAC levels, please seek help before you kill yourself, or worse, someone else.

Most of the posts here and on Charlie's blog (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/12/21st_century_phone.html) seem to support the original assertion made by Charlie.

"They [Google] intend to turn 3G data service (and subsequently, LTE) into a commodity, like wifi hotspot service only more widespread and cheaper to get at. They want to get consumers to buy unlocked SIM-free handsets and pick cheap data SIMs. They'd love to move everyone to cheap data SIMs rather than the hideously convoluted legacy voice stacks maintained by the telcos; then they could piggyback Google Voice on it, and ultimately do the Google thing to all your voice messages as well as your email and web access."

Tom in comment 37 (Charlie's Blog) makes an economic case to support Charlie's assertion:

"Information is different as a commodity. Sending 1 bit basically has no direct cost associated to it. Nearly everything stems back to the infrastructure costs. Operating costs are pretty minor in comparison. As such, whenever you have a situation where your pricing is primarily based upon fixed costs and amortization of infrastructure capital costs, with no real per unit marginal cost, the price invariably ends up plummeting as performance per price of technology increases, service offerings become standardized, and it results into a race to the bottom."

I do not believe Google will succeed in turning the mobile network operators (MNOs) into cheap data providers by driving the MNOs to commoditization. The service provide by the MNOs is not bits through the air "with no real per unit marginal cost." The core service provided by the MNOs is access to the mobile spectrum. This core service will become more valuable over time and combined with additional services (voice, Internet, video on demand, mobile banking, financial transactions, identity transactions, new advertising models, etc.) will insure the long term success of the MNOs.

Either directly through partnerships or indirectly through data charges, the MNOs will participate in all revenues that flow through their networks.

There is a key insight missed by Charlie and others who have posted on this topic: Unlike cable and fiber which in theory could be laid in infinite amounts, spectrum bandwidth is a finite resource and the dominant MNOs have already been awarded incredibly valuable allocations.

An idea of the complexities of frequency allocation can be gained by viewing frequency allocation charts:

U.S. Frequency Allocations
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.PDF

U.K Frequency Alocations
http://www.onlineconversion.com/downloads/uk_frequency_allocations_chart.pdf

Additionally, several of the posts here and on Charlie's blog make the mistake of equating higher throughput with greater bandwidth. While each generation of mobile technology has increased throughput, bandwidth (the usable spectrum range) remains a finite and very valuable resource which is leased primarily by the dominant MNOs.

In the United States, bandwidth is usually allocated through a government (FCC) auction process. As more bandwidth is dedicated ("unleashed") for mobile use, the dominant MNOs are in the best position to win the auctions. This is exactly what happened in the 700 MHz auctions held in 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_spectrum_auction)

Even with improvements in throughput, consumer demands for new services on intelligent mobile devices will eventually push the limits of allocated bandwidth. What this means is the dominant MNOs have a resource (spectrum allocation) that will become even more valuable over time. What this also means is that consumers will be charged based on their data usage.

source: http://www.companypay.com/executive/compensation/at-t-inc.asp?yr=2008
Total compensation of the five active execs listed for 2007 $59,359,833.00

Source: http://www.celltowerinfo.com/faq-4.htm
cost to build a tower $100,000 - $300,000
so I'll take 200k as an average

source: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=59359833%2F200000&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
number of towers that builds if they take NO PAY AT ALL- 296.799

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states_of_america
surface area of the US 3,794,066 sq mi

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_site
range of a cell tower gsm 25miles otherwise 30-45 miles..

lets say 40 miles-- be generous
source http://www.onlineconversion.com/shape_area_circle.htm
area of a circle using 45 as the radius= 6361 miles

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=6361%2F3794066&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
6361 into the size of the USA .00167656546

you've taken away 100% of their compensation, and added 1/10 of one percent of the towers needed to blanket the nation

Converter says that UNIX time 1234567890 happened on 2009-02-13.

1 gallon = 4 qt.
1 quart = 2 pt.
1 pint = 2 c.
1 cup = 8 fl. oz.

In the UK they are different with the same names:

1 gallon = 4 quarts (8 pints/160 fl. oz.)
1 quart = 2 pints (40 fl. oz.)
1 pint = 2 cups (20 fl. oz.)
1 cup = 10 fl. oz.

See http://www.onlineconversion.com/article_UK_units.htm

and from http://www.metric-conversion-tables.com/imperialunitsmeasurement.htm

1 U.S. fluid ounce = 1.041 British fluid ounces
1 British fluid ounce = 0.961 U.S. fluid ounce
1 U.S. gallon = 0.833 British Imperial gallon
1 British Imperial gallon = 1.201 U.S. gallons

So the problem is that your (US) pint isn't my (UK) pint (and worse with gallons) - this is why SI units make more sense - and I wish we were using them more in the UK than we do currently on a day to day basis...

thanks to http://www.onlineconversion.com/fuel_consumption.htm

For those of you who either didn't take Physics, or slept through it, Watts and BTU's/hr are both measurements of POWER. Add up all the (input) wattages, and use something like http://www.onlineconversion.com/power.htm/ to convert. This site also has a conversion to 'tons of refrigeration' on that same page.
Also note - Don't EVER user the rated wattage of a power supply because that's what it SUPPLIES, not uses. Instead use the current draw multiplied by the voltage (US - 110 for single phase, 208 for dual phase in must commercial blgs, 220 only in homes or where you know thats the case). This is the 'VA' [Volt-Amps] unit. Use this number for 'watts' in the conversion to refrigeration needs.
Just FYI - a watt is defined as 'the power developed in a circuit by a current of one ampere flowing through a potential difference of one volt." see http://www.siliconvalleypower.com/info/?doc=glossary/, i.e. 1W = 1VA. The dirty little secret about power calculations is that there is another factor thrown in, typically about 0.65, called the 'power factor' that UPS and power supply manufacturers use to lower the overall wattage. That's why you always use VA (rather than the reported wattage) because in a pinch you can always measure both voltage and amperage(under load).
Basically do this - take all the amperage draws for all the devices in your rack/room/data center, multiply them by the applied voltage for that device (110 or 208) and add all the products together. Then convert that number to tons of refrigeration. This is your minimum required cooling for a lights out room. If you have people in the room, count 1100 BTU's/hr for each person and add that to the requirements (after conversion to whatever unit you're working with). Some HVAC contractors want specifications in BTU's/hr and other want it in tons. Don't forget lighting either if its not a 'lights out' operation. A 40W florescent bulb means its going to dissipate 40W (as in heat). You can use these numbers directly as they are a measure of the actual heat thrown, not of the power used to light the bulb.
Make sense?

Dennis Dumont

"An Ohio laboratory has produced genetically modified mice which 'can run five to six kilometres at a speed of 20 meters per minute on a treadmill, for up to six hours before stopping,' as well as a number of other remarkable feats.

H0w w!ll tH3¥ $t0p p30pl3 fr0m d0!ñg 4lt3rñ4t3 $34r©H3$ f0r b0mb 0r t3rr0r!$m? http://www.onlineconversion.com/haxor.htm

America has 9.6 million square kilometers of land. That converts to 960,000,000 hecatres. Jatropha produces 1,892 liters per hecatre. That means it would produce a theoretical 1,816,320,000,000 litres of fuel. 1.8 trillion litres of fuel. That's a little over 3x our current consumption rate, not about equal. Still not great though. I don't see biofuel being more than a niche supplier.

Note that gallons are not the same size in the US and the UK. A gallon in the UK is a bit over 1.2 US Gallons. Your "40mpg" UK BMW gets 33 mpg if you're using US Gallons, which is quite a bit lower than the 47mpg the Prius gets under even the revised EPA ratings that just came out.

Handy Converter

>it can run 10 hours, but how much fuel is that?

OK I JUST HAD TO look this up. Check my math if you must. I make no promises.
Lets break the question into its constituent parts:

A gallon of gasoline contains about 31,000 Calories
1 watthour = .860420 Calories (So, an ideal Calorie is equal to 86.042% of a watt.)
A gallon of gas contains 31000 Calories
Convert Calories per gallon into watts hours per gallon: 31000 * (86/100) = 26660 watt hours per gallon (at 100% efficiency)
That means the device would produce a single watt for 26,660 hours at 100% efficiency.(1,110.83DAYS) But it works at minus 5% efficiency = 25,327 hours (1,055.29 days) ))
and produces 100 watts, not a single watt, so divide by 100: the device would produce 100 watts for 253.27 hours, = 10.55 days, on a gallon of gas.

Now, YOUR question is how much gas would it take to run the device for 10 hours.
To get an hour of runtime's worth of fuel, divide a gallon by 253.27.
To make that 10 hour's worth, multiply the result by 10.
1 gallon [US, liquid] = 128 ounce [US, liquid]
Therefore, divide 128 fluid ounces by 253.27 and multiply by 10 =
5.05 fluid ounces

So the engine would run for 10 hours on a 5 fl.oz.(US) fuel tank.

sources:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question527.htm
http://www.onlineconversion.com/energy.htm
http://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm

>it can run 10 hours, but how much fuel is that?

OK I JUST HAD TO look this up. Check my math if you must. I make no promises.
Lets break the question into its constituent parts:

A gallon of gasoline contains about 31,000 Calories
1 watthour = .860420 Calories (So, an ideal Calorie is equal to 86.042% of a watt.)
A gallon of gas contains 31000 Calories
Convert Calories per gallon into watts hours per gallon: 31000 * (86/100) = 26660 watt hours per gallon (at 100% efficiency)
That means the device would produce a single watt for 26,660 hours at 100% efficiency.(1,110.83DAYS) But it works at minus 5% efficiency = 25,327 hours (1,055.29 days) ))
and produces 100 watts, not a single watt, so divide by 100: the device would produce 100 watts for 253.27 hours, = 10.55 days, on a gallon of gas.

Now, YOUR question is how much gas would it take to run the device for 10 hours.
To get an hour of runtime's worth of fuel, divide a gallon by 253.27.
To make that 10 hour's worth, multiply the result by 10.
1 gallon [US, liquid] = 128 ounce [US, liquid]
Therefore, divide 128 fluid ounces by 253.27 and multiply by 10 =
5.05 fluid ounces

So the engine would run for 10 hours on a 5 fl.oz.(US) fuel tank.

sources:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question527.htm
http://www.onlineconversion.com/energy.htm
http://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm

Three months later, at age 18, I was making $35/hour as a jack of all trades systems administrator. A year later I had been jacked up to Senior Network Analyst and was pulling in $60k. Two years later I was a systems administrator for a Fortune 100 company with full benefits. Now, only a decade later, I'm pulling in six figures between my systems administration position at my day job and the freelance projects I'm doing on the side.

So, you start off at $35/hr, which is about $72k/yr (a good rule of thumb is to double your hourly and multply by 1k to get yearly salary, but don't take my word for it, see onlineconversion.com). Then, a year later, you are "jacked up to Senior Network Analyst" and you are making $60k/yr. A $12k pay cut. Two years later, you don't mention salary, but you mention full benefits, implying that you didn't have full benefits before then. And then, ten years later, you're still a systems administrator? Okay, making $100k+ is good most places, but that's combined freelancing and regular job. I make almost that just at my day job. And you never mention where you are... if you're in Boston or NYC or San Fran (to name a few), none of these salary number are particularly great.

So, to summarize: pay cuts, no benefits, second jobs. Sounds pretty lame to me. Maybe a college education would have helped you avoid such pitfalls.

I think it is the same "cloud", but people from across the pond (either way) forgot to check the units.

From a handy online calculator, 463 kilometer = 287.694 862 006 mile.

That's close enough to make me think this is no coincidence.

Now, if today's article had said it was a propyl alcohol cloud, and the last article had said it was a methyl alcohol cloud, then I'd say maybe we're talkin' about two very different kettles of fish ... thanks to EmagGeek, I really did learn something from this thread!

Math skills to calculate tip? what is internet for?
http://www.onlineconversion.com/tip_calculator.htm
http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=5 910

Not to us brits. Our have a different naming scheme, that counts by factors of 6 after a factor of 18, as opposed to by factors of 3 after 3.

109 - millard (billion)
1018 - billion (quintillion)
1024 - trillion (septillion)

And so forth.

You insensitive clod!

Unix Time Conversion

Copy/paste 1112331600 and 1112439600 into the above site to test. (I guess the last 3 digits are milliseconds)

Apparently, it looks like it depends on your system clock! If you want 2GB now, set your date to the future!

Today is beer day
Tomorrow is 1's day
and Saturday is Mojoday.

Maybe we can invite those 1 million zombies to the shindig. Yow!

.. -.. --- (try here if, like me, you don't actually remember those days.

US Electricity production in 2003 was 3800 Billion KWh (=3.8 PWh =13 Quad); 21% nuclear (.76 PWh=2.6). For comparison, hydro was 7%; solar, geothermal, and other alternative sources about 1%.

Total energy consumption, however, is about 100 Quad, once you include all energy use ("petroleum, dry natural gas, coal, net hydro, nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, wood and waste electric power").

Since nuclear energy is used exclusively for electricity generation (neglecting the effect of a few floating cities), it would not be impossible to replace nuclear power with an expanded coal program, especially given the vast proven US coal reserves. However, coal-fired plants have arguably greater drawbacks-- coal ash is radioactive, and burning more coal would release more CO2.

Replacing nuclear power with an expanded alternatives program (wind or solar) would require an order of magnitude increase in generation capacity. It would also result in a cost increase; wind energy costs around .

Why don't we just install a "Spaceballs" style solar glass enclosure around the earth at 26000 miles from the center? Just high enough to keep the geostationary satellites inside (wouldn't want to lose our tv). The surface area should be about.

131,657,416,704,000,000 sq/ft

and cost

$5,924,583,751,680,000,000

in raw materials (maybe we could get a bulk discount)
we should also try to cash in on a "free installation"

The output of such a sphere would be

500,298,183,475,200,000 watts continuous

Or (for sake of easier calculation in an already complicated process) if only half of the sphere received light at any given time

250,149,091,737,600,000 watts continuous
250,149,091,737.6 kW continuous
250.15 Petawatt continuous

Power demand in 2002 for the entire world
13,747,393,531.8 kW continuous
0.0137474 Petawatt continuous

sure every living thing on earth would probably die and we would enter a perpetual ice age from the lack of light and heat but, you could throw away the sunscreen and with all that extra energy maybe we could string up some halogens or something along the inside! We could also sell advertising space on it.

All conversions made with http://www.onlineconversion.com/
Power consumption data from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/total.ht ml#IntlConsumption
Geostationary orbit data from how http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/imaging/howhigh.htm l
Radius of the earth from http://www.page.sannet.ne.jp/ikenoue/e-mode/earth. html (seems accurate)
Output and cost from RFTA

If you think that my math is wrong then check and let me know, too tired to think anymore.

• Upper Officers expected to see "green"/excellent status on the monitors anytime they stopped in. Even though the status was moderate to poor most of the time.
• The officer in charge of the developers would ask for a status on the latest developments, including unfinished features. Then he'd go use the unfinished features (they were hidden from normal users, but he had additional access), crash the system and blame us for shoddy programming.
• There was nothing closer than a 20 minute drive. So bringing lunch and at least a gallon of water was necessary.
• One of the "lead" programmers would spend the entire time gabbing with the enlisted men instead of working.
• We were required to wear canvas like button up shirts with baseball caps to identify us as civilians that are allowed on site.

Okay, let's work this out. He uses a 50kV at 4 milli-amp power supply. That's 200 W power supply. With that he creates approximately a pound of upward thrust.

You want to create 1500 lbs upward thrust. You'll need 300 kilowatts of power. Let's say you want to run it for one hour. You've used 300 kilowatt-hours (1.08 gigajoules) of energy.

According to here, you've actually used 8.19 gallons of automotive gasoline to power your device.

On the other hand, if your truck now weighs only 1000 lbs... you might be on to something!!

Yes I know the Simpsons reference, but let's see what Grandpa's car really got.

1 rod = 0.003125 miles
1 hogshead (US) = 63 gallons (US)

40 rods to the hogshead is 0.00198 mpg. Yikes!

Thank you, Online Conversion

I've updated the website a little bit, and here's the update copied from the website:

--Reprint follows--
I have received a ton of submissions, and have already replied to several submissions. My email box has about 100 or so emails sitting in it right now, and I'm slowly sifting through the recipes and adding things. There's about 26 pages printed so far, and I've got a lot of good ideas just waiting to be looked at. Keep 'em coming!

Also, for some help doing US to Metric conversions, I've found this site to be quite helpful. You may wish to use this to convert US units to Metric units and back again

For the sane people out there... here's some unit conversions:

25 Miles = 40.2336 Kilometers
1.68 Mach [dry air, 273 Kelvin] = 2005.6498391999999 kilometers/hour

For the insane people out there... here's some unit conversions:

1 Kilometer = 0.621371 Miles
12 Inches = 1 Foot
3 Feet = 1 Yard
1 Mile = 1,760 Yards
1 Mile = 5,280 Feet
1 Miles = 63,360 Inches

Just to give you a taste of some saner things:

1000 millimeter = 1 meter
100 centimeter = 1 meter
1000 meter = 1 kilometer

But wait! There's more!

1000 milliliter = 1 liter
100 centiliter = 1 liter
1000 liter = 1 kiloliter

Just go to onlineconversions and have fun!

God damn, RevAaron, your Newton evangelism is growing tiresome. The poster was trying to make a joke (and failing miserably, might I add) by noting that the physical unit "pound" is equal to about 4.5 Newtons. Don't believe me? Good. It's actually equal to 4.448222 newtons.

Now go back to your 6.22-Newton brick you call "portable," continue to embrace something that died years ago (isn't that called necrophilia?) and please stop posting to Slashdot from now on.