Slashdot Mirror

There are lots of possible energy solutions. The idea of growing algae in giant fresh water lagoons has been well studied. See http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18138/ Sewage from large cities could be used to promote algae growth and the advantage of CO2 recycling and central energy production as well as sewage management would bring cost efficiencies that should keep costs reasonable. The biggest hurdle has been a suitable energy storage system. This kind of advance will be a major step in realizing an energy production system that does not rely on foreign oil.

More information and better reporting here:

http://medgadget.com/archives/2007/01/second_sight _me.html
and
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/16/retinal_bl indness_implant/
and
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18193/page 1/

Mostly we disagree because the total energy system is extremely complex among the different choices. Especially when considered in the context of existing infrastructure and current pollution. Which have their own unacceptable costs, even measured only in energy, especially counting the energy cost to cope with environmental collapse. But my analyses show ethanol to be the best bet, with some exceptions in the huge complex of niches that define how we consume fuel.

"Close" energy content depends what we mean by "close". The relative energy contents are gasoline: 42.7Mj:Kg; biodiesel: 37.8Mj:Kg; petrodiesel: 42.5Mj:Kg ethanol: 26.8Mj:Kg. Ethanol has 63% the energy content of gasoline, 63% of petrodiesel. Biodiesel is 89% of gasoline, 88% of petrodiesel. Ethanol is 71% of biodiesel. However, ethanol burns more completely than does bio/diesel or gasoline, more energy efficiently in the total process (including manufacturing the fuel). That makes their net energy budget even closer. The differences are outweighed by the rest of the system's inefficiencies.

Meanwhile, the carbon content is directly relevant, even when dealing with a "closed system" of bioproduction. Because we need more than just reduced emissions: we need net carbon decrease from our current overall pollution production. Reducing the carbon emissions while replacing petrofuel products like fertilizer and pesticide with ecological biomass strikes a triple whammy on current emissions and energy budgets. The carbon contents of various fuels were too tedious to compile for the sake of this argument, but also considering the "carbon equivalence" of different emissions, the biofuels' lower Greenhouse damage multiples are much greater than the petrofuels' energy efficiency.

Many fewer cars use diesel to replace with biodiesel than gasoline to replace with ethanol. The delivery infrastructure for diesel is also much less deployed. Biodiesel does have a place in this complex calculus, because diesel engines last dozens, perhaps hundreds of years, so replacing them has a higher energy cost than the inevitable replacement of gasoline engines with newer technology. This is especially true in diesel-fueled stationary power plants. But that's a fraction of gasoline use, especially in new markets like India and China. Where new tech is driving the production as much as new money to spend (usually both in the same hands).

I don't know how you can call fuelcells just a government subsidy scam when they already offer greater energy efficiency. Fuelcells are already operating at 60% energy efficiency, while gasoline internal combustion is still about 20% efficiency - their tech maturity suggests they're going to stay that inefficient. Fuelcells, just getting started with industrial R&D money, will gain to at least 80% within the next 10 years, while all our fuel options are still available to use in the infrastructure conversions. And since fuelcells perform better with ethanol than with gasoline, the relatively small advantage in gasoline energy content is completely wiped out in the multiple of extraction efficiency.

I suggested methanol because its higher toxicity is offset by its much lower emissions than even ethanol. These fuels are all toxic, so some form of handling is necessary, and some cost of damage inevitable. We generally don't handle any of the petrofuels properly - millions of Kg are spilled just at the pump nozzle every year. If we handled them all properly, the difference in handling the more toxic methanol would be small, especially in light of its advantages in emissions, which is ultimately the most toxic when it destroys our environment.

There is already recent biotech increasing

http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_a rticle.aspx?id=18124

C'mon story submitters, link to the ad-free, 1-page version of stories (if there is one) from now on.

Nobody wants to waste their time looking at ads.

Posted as Anonymous Coward to avoid karma whoring.

http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/01/Smoki ngBunny/1.aspx
http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/01/Discr eteFluids/1.aspx

what's the javascript error you're getting?

http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/01/Smoki ngBunny/1.aspx
http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/01/Discr eteFluids/1.aspx

what's the javascript error you're getting?

http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/01/Smoki ngBunny/1.aspx
http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/01/Discr eteFluids/1.aspx

Seems to check referer, so reload once.

http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/01/Smoki ngBunny/1.aspx
http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/01/Discr eteFluids/1.aspx

Seems to check referer, so reload once.

The Yahoo! News article got the figures wrong. To get only 2,000 words (a computer term, not a linguistic one) out of 160-kbits they'd have to be 80-bit words. The article at Technology Review has better maths and more information to boot.

Here, now there are two. Please qualify for which N slashdot is allowed to post. Thanks.

My first thought was "Well, only those who have experience with both operating systems are entitled to have an opinion; millions of people who have never run anything but Windows XP or Vista are not qualified to compare to something they don't know."

Then I said, "OK, so -how do you- compare operating systems for end-user machines?"

And I think this is the valid question. End-user OS need to be evaluated along a whole series of considerations, some of which could be quantitative, and others such as consistency of the user experience, are probably more qualitative.

But I now admit to my bias: I very much prefer OS X for a couple of reasons ('power user' of OS X vice 'normal user' of Win XP):
      (1) quality of the overall user experience (mentioned in the MIT "Technology Review" article, http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17992/pag e1/ )
      (2) reliability (but still not quite 100%)
      (3) security/anti-virus etc
      (4) support for -2- paradigms: Apple Mac GUI, and traditional Unix shell. About once a week I pop into the shell and do something that would be painful, annoying or even impossible to do from the GUI. I've installed the old Cygwin stuff on WinNT, but it's definitely NOT the same as having a real Unix kernel and shell.

But I've never programmed in either environment (all my development work was done on traditional Unix, but I'm Very Grateful for the new Aquamacs port of Emacs to OS X), nor have I done any performance assessment of either OS. So I hereby disqualify myself from having a -fully valid- opinion on this topic.

Your Mileage May Vary, but at least there's a reasonable way to measure that mileage. When it comes to OS evaluation, can anyone point to credible asssessment methodologies? (Who was it that said "If you can't measure it, it's not science." Lord Kelvin?)

          dave

we had another article yesterday.</plug>

And what's with this crazy story about Apple forming a phony (ha ha) company-- Ocean Telecom Services LLC-- to apply for the trademark? Can anyone explain to me how that would get around Cisco's trademark?

...but, instead, they profile Charles Simonyi and his quest to "re-program software".

He's developed an approach he calls intentional programming (or, more recently, intentional software), which he hopes will overturn programming. If Simonyi has his way, programmers will stop trying to manage their clients' needs. Instead, for every problem they're asked to tackle--whether inventory tracking or missile guidance--they will create generic tools that the computer users themselves can modify to guide the software's future evolution.

Read the article at Technology Review.

But apparently it takes a bored IT guy on slashdot to correct an international consortium of climatologists.

And why not? It took a bored minerals consultant and a bored economics professor to point out that the infamous hockey stick being touted by "real" scientist Michael Mann was actually spitting out hockey sticks with random data. If it has been accounted for, then please enlighten us... How much lower would the temperature be *EXACTLY* without the solar radiation increase according to the computer model you say accounts for such a thing?

I mean, we're all curious and you seem to know so much about it. So please, do share that information in between insulting the people who dare ask questions.

Technology Review had another article on this back in august. with the same image, in fact. and actually, it was here too.

and recently i saw an episode of mythbusters where they used the same (i think) technology to create a hovering triangle thing. they were testing "anti-gravity" devices, and this was the only thing that surprised them. when they plugged it in, it shot up in the air. after some bewilderment, they realized it was ionizing the air and blowing it down, in turn causing thrust upwards.

Not quite floating barges, but this has been proposed for very big turbines: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=16801&ch=biztech&sc=&pg=1 http://www.technologyreview.com/player/06/05/09Bul lis/3.aspx With coal and nuclear not options in California, wind, biomass, tidal, and solar thermal are the likely generating resources of the future. Tidal and solar thermal are the most promising in the long run. Prices of solar PV will likely not drop to viable costs and natural gas will continue its long price escalation, (besides it emits greenhouse gases that the others don't).

Not quite floating barges, but this has been proposed for very big turbines: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=16801&ch=biztech&sc=&pg=1 http://www.technologyreview.com/player/06/05/09Bul lis/3.aspx With coal and nuclear not options in California, wind, biomass, tidal, and solar thermal are the likely generating resources of the future. Tidal and solar thermal are the most promising in the long run. Prices of solar PV will likely not drop to viable costs and natural gas will continue its long price escalation, (besides it emits greenhouse gases that the others don't).

Anaesthetica has solid bone or rocks for brains

/. - Tell-us-something-we-don't-know.
Anaesthetica should have saved this bullshit for 2007/04/01, or anaesthetica is another one of those ignorant politicians' staffers or lobbyist. If anaesthetica is a staffer or OPEC or AgriBiz lobbyist, then they need to be honest enough to identify themselves as expressing corporatist interest and just spinning-truth to fit lies.

Last I checked, our planet's surface is about two-fucking-thirds water. For our/global economy and environment Hydrogen and SolarCell technology is the only way to solve energy/fuel and air-pollution problems permanently.

I hate stupid staffers, lobbyist, corporatist, and damn fool dogmatist with faux-answers.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39936.pdf
Results from the Vehicle/Infrastructure Learning Demonstration Project
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=17774&ch=energy
Cheap, Superefficient Solar Solar-power modules that concentrate the power of the sun are becoming more viable.
http://news.com.com/Solar+cell+breaks+efficiency+r ecord/2100-11395_3-6141527.html
Solar cell breaks efficiency record
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/12/06/027 228.shtml
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35174.pdf
Progress in High-Performance PV: Polycrystalline Thin-Film Tandem Cells
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0360-3199(97)00102-X
Affordable hydrogen supply pathways for fuel cell vehicles
http://dx.doi.org/index.html
http://www.greenwatts.com/docs/ProgressInPhotovolt aics.pdf
Energy Pay-Back and Life Cycle CO2 Emissions of the BOS in an Optimized 3.5 MW PV Installation

Anaesthetica has solid bone or rocks for brains

/. - Tell-us-something-we-don't-know.
Anaesthetica should have saved this bullshit for 2007/04/01, or anaesthetica is another one of those ignorant politicians' staffers or lobbyist. If anaesthetica is a staffer or OPEC or AgriBiz lobbyist, then they need to be honest enough to identify themselves as expressing corporatist interest and just spinning-truth to fit lies.

Last I checked, our planet's surface is about two-fucking-thirds water. For our/global economy and environment, Hydrogen and SolarCell technology is the only way to solve energy/fuel and air-pollution problems permanently.

I hate stupid staffers, lobbyist, corporatist, and damn fool dogmatist with faux-answers.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39936.pdf
Results from the Vehicle/Infrastructure Learning Demonstration Project
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=17774&ch=energy
Cheap, Superefficient Solar Solar-power modules that concentrate the power of the sun are becoming more viable.
http://news.com.com/Solar+cell+breaks+efficiency+r ecord/2100-11395_3-6141527.html
Solar cell breaks efficiency record
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/12/06/027 228.shtml
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35174.pdf
Progress in High-Performance PV: Polycrystalline Thin-Film Tandem Cells
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0360-3199(97)00102-X
Affordable hydrogen supply pathways for fuel cell vehicles
http://dx.doi.org/index.html
http://www.greenwatts.com/docs/ProgressInPhotovolt aics.pdf
Energy Pay-Back and Life Cycle CO2 Emissions of the BOS in an Optimized 3.5 MW PV Installation

My favorite was when the MIT Technology Review compared Negroponte (who's received a lot of funding to develop the OLPC and will be selling them in huge batches) to Andrew Carnegie, who used questionable robber-baron business practices to make tons of money, and then funded the building of libraries via grants nationwide, and then set up a maintenance grant provided that the city also contributed funds to the ongoing support of the library.

Anyhow. They're selling machines, at an overall low cost (though there's not much work on the actual implementation part of them yet), without letting people do pilot projects in their own countries before signing on to buy millions of machines through World-Bank debt-financing. Woot.

While I'm on a rant; while I think the OLPC counter-point to Bill's "why can't they just use cell phones?" comment is valid; who want to read a book on a cell phone (Ok, BESIDES me, that's not the point) cell phones are great communication tools, but poor educational tools. Nevertheless, the whole OLPC-will-prevent-genocide is poorly phrased. Citizen journalism will reduce the risk of genocide (I'm not sure I even buy this point, media coverage of Darfur has certainly had mixed, at best, results w/r/t US policy); but OLPC doesn't => citizen journalism any more than cell phone video recording, TelSur style handicams, and so on.

It would be, for example, surprising to see a new cell phone which is released which has really good function as a phone, huge battery life, and hasn't tried to converge in 10 other devices. It would be surprising purely in the sense that nobody else seems to be doing it.

Well that's not surprising either, there are a few of these. In fact this phone from Motorola was designed that way.

I was a staffer for an environmental group (mid-1990s) and was frustrated with the reflexive anti-nuclear instincts, when it seemed to clearly be the solution to the problems.

I left disgusted after a while, at least in part because of the rigid orthodoxy. Another orthodoxy was an opposition to any sort of emissions trading scheme.

But it seems as though the movement as a whole has been coming around. I was doing some reading a couple of years back and it seems like cap-and-trade is now a mainstream position within the movement and there are even some thinkers advocating more nuclear power (see, e.g., The Whole Earth Catalog guy, who also lists others such as Lovelock).

You're definitely not the only one. The problem with the cell phone industry is that it's going the way of most media, to the lowest-common-denominator. Luckily Motorola seems to be offering something for those of us that want just a basic phone: http://www.technologyreview.com/NanoTech/17663/

In Plastics Day in Surgery, Red Herring reports that an international team of U.S. and German researchers has developed a new kind of plastic that can shift between three different shapes when the temperature increases. Even if these polymeric triple-shape materials have not emerged from the lab, they could eventually be employed as removable stents and self-closing fasteners used by surgeons and more generally by the healthcare industry. But read more

This research work has been done partially at the MIT in Professor Robert Langers research lab. Please note that Ive already covered a previous Langers project in "Light Used to Design Shape-Shifting Plastics" (April 14, 2005).

For this new kind of plastic, Langer worked with Professor Andreas Lendlein, director of the Institute of Polymer Research at the GKSS Research Center in Teltow, Germany, and his team.

This research work has been published online before print by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the name "Polymeric triple-shape materials" (November 20, 2006). Here is a link to the abstract.

Shape-memory polymers represent a promising class of materials that can move from one shape to another in response to a stimulus such as heat. Thus far, these systems are dual-shape materials. Here, we report a triple-shape polymer able to change from a first shape (A) to a second shape (B) and from there to a third shape (C). Shapes B and C are recalled by subsequent temperature increases. Whereas shapes A and B are fixed by physical cross-links, shape C is defined by covalent cross-links established during network formation.

The triple-shape effect is a general concept that requires the application of a two-step programming process to suitable polymers and can be realized for various polymer networks whose molecular structure allows formation of at least two separated domains providing pronounced physical cross-links. These domains can act as the switches, which are used in the two-step programming process for temporarily fixing shapes A and B. It is demonstrated that different combinations of shapes A and B for a polymer network in a given shape C can be obtained by adjusting specific parameters of the programming process.

Below is a series of photographs illustrating this triple-shape effect. On the left is a tube which could be used as a stent and on the right is fastener consisting of a plate with anchors. From top to bottom, you can see the shape evolution when the temperature increases to 40C (in B) and 60C (in C). (Credit: MIT/GKSS Research Center). This image has been extracted from the PNAS paper mentioned above.

Picture

In "Morphing Materials Take On New Shapes," Technology Review describes this process in plain English.

Lendlein says the key to the new structures was developing two types of polymers that have distinct melting points. At room temperature, the material holds its first shape. But when heated above a certain temperature, areas throughout the material soften, allowing it to change to an intermediate shape. At a yet higher transition temperature, the rest of the material softens, allowing the structure to take its final shape.

But what would be these

plenty of computer simulations and estimates ... the rate of methane emission levels out; and no one has a *CLUE* why.

Gee... if the models are correct... shouldn't they have PREDICTED this? The "iron clad" proof held up by all the global warming cultists are nothing more than computer models. Models that spit out hockey sticks even when you input random data. Models that predict death, destruction, fire and brimstone. However when it comes to major observations that these all knowing models should have anticipated, they come up short.

What shocks me: You are so sold on the global warming religion, that you can't put those two things together yourself. If the models are correct, why didn't they predict this?

Climate models are not tricks. The physics goes in. The climate comes out. It's not a trivial curve-fitting exercise the way you seem to think.

Really? Because last time I heard, random data goes in and hockey stick graphs come out. Yeah, it seems the climate models produce hockey sticks regardless of what you put in them, physics or otherwise.

Technology Review has another article.</plug>

MIT Technology Review has another article</plug>

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=13757&ch=infotech

From this article, Linux passed Apple in 2004. I read an article somewhere where IDC was quoted saying Linux passed Apple in 2002. I think Linux was ahead of Apple for about a year and a half, but Apple rebounded because of the iPod halo effect and pulled back ahead of Linux in 2005.

In any case, Linux certainly hasn't gone /down/ in desktop market share, so it's got more than Apple had in 2003 at least, which is really pretty good.

Technology Review had another article on this yesterday.

Given articles like this on the difficulty of using said multi cores it seems like we could use more tools to improve the utility of these chips. More multi-core functionality in Xcode and related tools would be pretty cool.

Technology Review had another article on this in august.

That's simply not true. There are scientists working on making these procedures cheaper and more available to more people.

Well, I heard somewhere recently that the experts speculate we have already passed the worldwide peak oil production. Of course, its all speculation, even The Hubbert peak theory is elastic. Although I've never heard as high as 140+ years... It's not just about getting off the middle east's oil, Saudia Arabia is only our #3 source, after Canada and Mexico, its also about self sufficiency.

Then there's the question of when oil will no longer be economical. Simply by nature of economics we'll search out the more economic options as oil becomes uneconomical. Problem is, it takes time to switch like that, we'd need to be in transition when it becomes uneconomic or we'll suffer huge setbacks in economics terms.

Of course, no arguement for getting off oil would be complete without mentioning the environment and some shrill cries to "Think of the children, won't someone please think of the children." Its sad to hear someone say "It won't happen in my life time, so why should I care if their's change?" I prefer to think that an economical, self sufficient, clean(er) life style for my (or atleast other's) children is a goal worth working for. After all, isn't that, a better life for myself and my children, the American Dream?

carpenter's latest creation won the latest turing test prize.
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=17518&ch=infotech

george was last year's winner....

but when i submitted it last month, NOBODY LISTENED.

MIT's Technology Review had a similar article in july.

the have videos (.MOV) of a patient controlling a computer cursor and a prosthetic hand

MIT's Technology Review had a similar article in july.

the have videos (.MOV) of a patient controlling a computer cursor and a prosthetic hand

MIT's Technology Review had a similar article in july.

the have videos (.MOV) of a patient controlling a computer cursor and a prosthetic hand

does anybody have a link to the podcast referenced http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx? Cand=T&TRID=428 that's a .wav, or something useable?

all i can find is this funky doohikey: http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/media/parissm aragdis.mp3

the format is apparently called "mp3", whatever that is

does anybody have a link to the podcast referenced http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx? Cand=T&TRID=428 that's a .wav, or something useable?

all i can find is this funky doohikey: http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/media/parissm aragdis.mp3

the format is apparently called "mp3", whatever that is

marco...
marco...
marco...

In all seriousness, does anybody have a link to the podcast referenced http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx? Cand=T&TRID=428 that's a .wav, or something useable? I'd be curious to hear it.

BTW, digital musicians might recognize Paris' name from CSound (http://www.csounds.com/).

-yb

2006 Young Innovators Under 35 ..

Eddie Kohler
A better operating system

"Asbestos keeps personal data secure by "tagging" it with information about which programs or users can access it .. and Kohler hopes that within a few years, Asbestos will be an alternative to server operating systems such as Linux and Windows."

"(NSA) worked with Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) to develop a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture based on Type Enforcement, a mechanism first developed for the LOCK system."

"AppArmor security policies, called "profiles", completely define what system resources individual applications can access, and with what privileges."

Please see, as an example, http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=13426&ch=infotech which was featured here at /., in early 2004. What you also didn't know is that I was building computers with discrete transistors forty-three years ago; I suspect you might have been in diapers at that time. And at least we agree about Ontrack, the greatest destroyer (IMHO) of data ever to grow in Minnesota. IPV6 allows highly discrete addressing. IN fact, unbelievable and untenable discrete addressing. No-UNFATHOMABLE addressing. Apologists think that we just have to swallow it. TFA implies that Vista will cause problems; nay I say to that. IPV6 is the tragedy here; Vista is small potatoes by comparison.

Actually it's not true that 4 bytes are generated each 5 seconds, it's much more than that. From the paper:

Tried reading the real article?

Google research director Peter Norvig predicts that the prototype, which uses an audio identification technique invented outside Google and applied to a uniquely large database of recorded sound, will eventually evolve into a product.

Notice the missing "rather sooner than later".

"We weren't really pitching an application that we want to do here and now, but rather a concept," says Michael Fink, lead researcher on the project. Fink works at the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is spending the summer at Google. "We wanted to open people's minds to the possibility of using ambient audio as a medium for querying web content," he says.

>lets not forget that the government can obtain the data

What data?

Each 5-second chunk is represented by a 4-byte number. Google says the transformation is irreversible. If it were reversible, Google would have found a way to encode audio at 4*8/5==6.4 bits per second.

This is for detecting whether you've got a particular broadcast going. The privacy implications are that maybe you don't want this government knowing that you listen to NPR, and that there might be a stealth "upgrade" later from Google or from somebody malicious that would improve the resolution.

Better than The Register, here's a Technology Review article about Google's microphone sampling.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=17354&ch=infotech

I don't think Technology Review just makes this up.

Here's the article cited by The Register.