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Nanotech Pinball and Miniature Engines
glenmark writes "Researchers at the Solid State Electronics Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed the world's smallest pinball game. The video is fascinating. The flippers are electrostatically-actuated monocrystalline silicon cantilevers. I hope Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie see this. I have a feeling they would get a kick out of it." And in another nanotech story, psmears writes "Three hundred times more powerful than ordinary batteries, but much lighter and smaller? Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid. Further information at Research-TV including photos and a film."
Berkeley has been working on mini and micro rotary engines for a little while now. Rotaries are really better for this application as they have less moving parts. Their mini rotary engine is about the size of a penny while their micro rotary engine has a rotor of size 1mm! Rotaries have no valves which makes them much easier to produce at this size.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I hate to break it to the mod's, but this is not offtopic. In fact, it's quite funny.
See, the micro-engine charges the cellphones. Combustion + ear = ear on fire. That was his joke. Even if you thought it unfunny, it was on-topic.
Posted with a bonus in hopes that someone will see this.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
Huh?
It is an MPEG codec. DivX is an implementation of MPEG-4. If you want source code for a decoder see the ffmpeg (as libavcodec) or xvid codecs. Between then, I've not see an OS with a POSIX layer that's not been able to compile a decoder engine. Granted, there are large bunches of optional parts that the various decoders don't all cover, but I've not yet see any problems with ffmpeg decoder.
If by MPEGS you mean MPEG-1, then yes - that is slightly more portable than MPEG-4 codecs, but not noticably (better support on embeded systems). They do however, have poorer picture quality, and larger bitrates. So, it's not really a good choice for internet distribution. MPEG-2 would also be better than MPEG-1, but it's also not quite as good as MPEG-4, interms of low bitrate quality. And for a web demo, the lower the bitrate, the better.
If you've got a particular platform in mind, then drop a line, and I'll see if I can find a pre-compiled setup for it.
Here is a mirror of the video if you want to check it out:
pinball_720x540_(divx).avi
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...