First, that's 500 *full* cycles. Most people don't completely drain Lithium Ion batteries before recharging them.
Second, that's not 500 cycles until the battery dies, it's 500 cycles before the battery only holds a certain percentage — usually 80% — of it's initial charge.
What also kills Lithium Ion batteries is internal oxidation, which occurs whether the battery is cycled or not. Storing a battery at 100% charge actually causes the battery to lose life as much as five times faster than if the battery was at 50% charge. In other words, if your devices spend most of their time at less than full charge, your batteries will last longer than if you let them sit on the charger for years on end.
Speaking of which, I wish all notebooks, MP3 players, and other gadgets gave you the ability to set a charging limit. I've only seen the feature on some Sony notebooks (they call it a "battery care" utility). If you could limit your devices to, say, a 40% charge when they're just going to be sitting around the house all day, and only charge them up to full when you really need the battery life, you'd probably never need to replace a Lithium Ion battery again.
Having said that, I'm not entirely clear how you can use the device described to protect coastlines. It looks like you need a 360 degree coverage for the device to work. That's not going to work for something like say...China's coast.
I think it could be made to work... but it would suck to be in Iceland.
Getting the intensity of 326 suns on my roof isn't going to happen. GaAs wafers are not cheap.
Use a concentrator and a heliostat. The fact that solar cells work better at higher intensities is a *good* thing: That 3-4 inch wafer can collect the sunlight from a 5-6 foot fresnel lens. At that intensity it'll need good cooling during sunlit hours, but that's free hot water.
A true scientist would not say "God does not exist," but rather "there is no evidence that God exists," or even "there is no reason to believe that God exists."
It is a small point, yet crucial to the distinction of belief and truth.
Don't you see how this practice encourages the killing to be done in the first place?
It only encourages it if the person authorizing it has something to gain. If your legislators and judges are reaping profits from convictions, your legal system is broken.
To prevent a conflict of interest in stem cell research, require that the fertility clinic not be paid for the embryos, or be reimbursed for the extra handling involved only, and forbid stem cell research companies from operating their own fertility clinics. In other words, if you make the commercial production of embryos unprofitable, the problem solves itself.
As someone who considers "humane killing" an oxymoron of the first degree, I'm fine with the idea. The person being killed probably doesn't care much whether he's injected with a lethal poison or shot in the head. The person needing a transplant, on the other hand, cares very much about living a normal life.
Similarly, the embryos are already being created and destroyed en masse by fertility clinics. (And yet, for some reason, pro-lifers never complain about that.) Does the embryo care whether it's grown into organ tissue or thrown in the trash? Does a person suffering from a degenerative disease care about a cure?
An observatory seems a pretty odd place to censor. Why is it a secret? Is it something they're looking at? What are they doing at the Naval Observatory that they don't want us to know about?
Next up: The never ending confusion between the ASCII backspace (BS, character #8), the ASCII delete (DEL, #127), and the DEC VT-100 "Remove" escape sequence.:-)
Oh, don't get me started on that. If you ever decide to build your freeze-ray, take over the world, and with your iron fist implement a set of sane universal input/text standards — from keyboard scancodes to character encodings — look me up. I've got all my minion gear right here.
The closed apple (command) and open apple (option) keys were on the Apple III keyboard. The Apple III was released in 1980, which does predate MS-DOS by a year.
And my point was that "cmd" and "option" were associated with Apple long before they were a dos shell and a graphical menu. Even if the "option" key wasn't specifically labeled "option" until the Macintosh, it still predates any DOS use of "toolbars" that I'm aware of.
Regarding "return" versus "enter", I agree with the other poster: "Return" has kept its function since the typewriter days. "Backspace" has not. The average user uses the "return" key to move down and return to the beginning of the line, not to enter a command. Conversely, the average user uses the "backspace" key to delete the last character (or some other object), not to back space, to perform a leftward space in order to type another character on top of the last character. In both cases Apple's label is more accurate than IBM's.
I'm sorry, but "delete" != "backspace", cmd a dos shell, and "option" belongs on a toolbar.
For what it's worth, the apple/command key predates not only the dos shell, but MS-DOS itself. Same with the alt/option key. And "backspace" is a function on a typewriter.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, so that's what happened...
"Entertainment" is for real news regarding games, music, movies, books, and other entertainment-related subjects. Idle is for crap like this.
No, no! It's patchouli!
(...obligatory...)
First, that's 500 *full* cycles. Most people don't completely drain Lithium Ion batteries before recharging them.
Second, that's not 500 cycles until the battery dies, it's 500 cycles before the battery only holds a certain percentage — usually 80% — of it's initial charge.
What also kills Lithium Ion batteries is internal oxidation, which occurs whether the battery is cycled or not. Storing a battery at 100% charge actually causes the battery to lose life as much as five times faster than if the battery was at 50% charge. In other words, if your devices spend most of their time at less than full charge, your batteries will last longer than if you let them sit on the charger for years on end.
Speaking of which, I wish all notebooks, MP3 players, and other gadgets gave you the ability to set a charging limit. I've only seen the feature on some Sony notebooks (they call it a "battery care" utility). If you could limit your devices to, say, a 40% charge when they're just going to be sitting around the house all day, and only charge them up to full when you really need the battery life, you'd probably never need to replace a Lithium Ion battery again.
A "Windows Cloud"? Damn straight I'm holding my breath.
About two ounces.
Well, there's still lots of it underground, and higher prices usually lead to improved recovery methods.
Or it could all be coming from the secret Fusion plants operated by Illuminati, Men in Black, and the Easter Bunny.
Really?
That's not snow! It's falling Ash! Run little lander, ruuuuun!
I think we'll be safe, as long as he's not falling chainsaw side down.
Having said that, I'm not entirely clear how you can use the device described to protect coastlines. It looks like you need a 360 degree coverage for the device to work. That's not going to work for something like say...China's coast.
I think it could be made to work... but it would suck to be in Iceland.
Getting the intensity of 326 suns on my roof isn't going to happen. GaAs wafers are not cheap.
Use a concentrator and a heliostat. The fact that solar cells work better at higher intensities is a *good* thing: That 3-4 inch wafer can collect the sunlight from a 5-6 foot fresnel lens. At that intensity it'll need good cooling during sunlit hours, but that's free hot water.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/new_world_recor.php
TFA is slashdotted, but a little googling shows this happened two years ago.
A true scientist would not say "God does not exist," but rather "there is no evidence that God exists," or even "there is no reason to believe that God exists."
It is a small point, yet crucial to the distinction of belief and truth.
Don't you see how this practice encourages the killing to be done in the first place?
It only encourages it if the person authorizing it has something to gain. If your legislators and judges are reaping profits from convictions, your legal system is broken.
To prevent a conflict of interest in stem cell research, require that the fertility clinic not be paid for the embryos, or be reimbursed for the extra handling involved only, and forbid stem cell research companies from operating their own fertility clinics. In other words, if you make the commercial production of embryos unprofitable, the problem solves itself.
As someone who considers "humane killing" an oxymoron of the first degree, I'm fine with the idea. The person being killed probably doesn't care much whether he's injected with a lethal poison or shot in the head. The person needing a transplant, on the other hand, cares very much about living a normal life.
Similarly, the embryos are already being created and destroyed en masse by fertility clinics. (And yet, for some reason, pro-lifers never complain about that.) Does the embryo care whether it's grown into organ tissue or thrown in the trash? Does a person suffering from a degenerative disease care about a cure?
Well, there is precedent.
That's the point. It's not Games for Windows Live that sells GTA, it's GTA that sells Games for Windows Live.
On the plus side, I'm glad I didn't wait for GTA IV to be released before buying the rest of the series on Steam.
An observatory seems a pretty odd place to censor. Why is it a secret? Is it something they're looking at? What are they doing at the Naval Observatory that they don't want us to know about?
Next up: The never ending confusion between the ASCII backspace (BS, character #8), the ASCII delete (DEL, #127), and the DEC VT-100 "Remove" escape sequence. :-)
Oh, don't get me started on that. If you ever decide to build your freeze-ray, take over the world, and with your iron fist implement a set of sane universal input/text standards — from keyboard scancodes to character encodings — look me up. I've got all my minion gear right here.
The closed apple (command) and open apple (option) keys were on the Apple III keyboard. The Apple III was released in 1980, which does predate MS-DOS by a year.
And my point was that "cmd" and "option" were associated with Apple long before they were a dos shell and a graphical menu. Even if the "option" key wasn't specifically labeled "option" until the Macintosh, it still predates any DOS use of "toolbars" that I'm aware of.
Regarding "return" versus "enter", I agree with the other poster: "Return" has kept its function since the typewriter days. "Backspace" has not. The average user uses the "return" key to move down and return to the beginning of the line, not to enter a command. Conversely, the average user uses the "backspace" key to delete the last character (or some other object), not to back space, to perform a leftward space in order to type another character on top of the last character. In both cases Apple's label is more accurate than IBM's.
I'm sorry, but "delete" != "backspace", cmd a dos shell, and "option" belongs on a toolbar.
For what it's worth, the apple/command key predates not only the dos shell, but MS-DOS itself. Same with the alt/option key. And "backspace" is a function on a typewriter.
Yeah, I'd be surprised if Xinhua hadn't written both success and failure stories weeks ago.
Seriously, people — it's a common gaffe, not an evil Communist plot.
Why not just use a router that can meter your bandwidth? A cheap WRT54GL with DD-WRT or Tomato Firmware would do the trick.
More users != more computers. Plenty of people in China (and many other countries) don't own PCs — they use shared machines at Internet Cafes.
On the one hand, I'd love it if my home stereo could determine what song I was humming and start playing along.
On the other hand, my family would kill me.