A lot of bluff and bluster against Microsoft for defending a patent. Barnes and Noble needs to attack the patent or the patent system. Fighting a PR battle is evidence that B&N doesn't have the facts necessary to win the patent fight.
Locutus said, For 20 years their PC OS has been their one and only profit generator...
Fiscal year 2010 operating income:
Windows & Windows Live -- $12.977 billion
Server and Tools -- $5.491 billion
Microsoft Business Division -- $11.776 billion
Entertainment and Devices -- $679 million
The problem, as they see it, is Microsoft's inability to actually bring this into common usage for regular television viewing. "It seems like the company is tied too much to the Xbox's substantial gaming revenue to split the Xbox TV stuff off as a separate product â" even though there's a huge population of non-gamers who probably have no interest in buying an Xbox.
Sales as a separate product would be incremental and would not hurt Xbox or Kinect sales to gamers. However developing and supporting an interface between Kinect and all the world's TVs and cable boxes would be... difficult... and not worth any incremental revenue.
The market for universal remotes is not an attractive one.
Development of Sea Level Rise Scenarios for Climate Change Assessments of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
... subsurface water and hydrocarbon extractionâ" are especially problematic in Asian delta regions where population densities and agricultural production are greatest and most critical for socioeconomic reasons. In most cases, the rates of subsidence in deltaic environments, human-induced or even naturally occurring, are many times greater than the rates of historical or projected eustatic sea level rise expected with climate change.
The Baker Electric Automobile was in production from 1899 to 1914 -- I guess electric cars were not and never will be competitive with gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. What? Better batteries? Better motors? You mean that the technology has caught up and electric cars might now be viable?
Maybe Plato was just ahead of the available technology.
We estimate that 3,800,000 5 MW wind turbines, 49,000 300 MW concentrated solar plants, 40,000 300 MW solar PV power plants, 1.7 billion 3 kWrooftop PV systems, 5350 100 MWgeothermal power plants, 270 new 1300 MWhydroelectric power plants, 720,000 0.75 MWwave devices, and 490,000 1 MWtidal turbines can power a 2030 WWS world that uses electricity and electrolytic hydrogen for all purposes.... Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic.
I'm sure everybody will want to study the papers in detail. And hold on to your checkbooks.
I read TFA and noted that they are not using the regenerator. I also went to the company's website where they say, "From garden equipment and generators to cars, trucks, trains and ships, we see a day when our planet will be powered in a sustainable manner by just One Engine -- the Cyclone Engine."
Ships are the only application where condensing will not be a problem due to the quantity of cooling water available.
They also state that one of the things their engine will not require in automotive applications is a radiator.
Further from their web site, "Steam escapes the cylinders through exhaust ports and... enters the patent-pending condensing unit where it turns back into water, and... collects in a sealed pan at the bottom of the condenser. Note, this is a closed-loop system -- the water does not need to be replaced or topped-off.... Blowers spin fresh air around the condenser to speed the cooling process."
No mention of why the condenser is so effective -- certainly an important part of their secret sauce.
Your link explains why condensing steam locomotives weren't popular. "Spent steam is fed through the thick pipe on the locomotive's left side to the condensing tender, where five steam turbine driven fans in the roof blows air down through the radiators on each side of the tender... The Class 25 was a complex locomotive that required high maintenance... The equally complex tender also required frequent maintenance."
Re: Bill Lear -- don't forget the eight track tape. His other secret was Learium, a magic fluid that expanded more than water when heated/vaporized. The potential of Learium was never realized and the secret never revealed. It turned out that he didn't have the condenser problem solved which is just one of the many reasons that his steam cars and busses never reached production.
And not a very good old hat. For the few that were in service, "The system was intended to reduce the problems of getting enough water to steam locomotives running through desert and very arid areas." (from your link) Carrying lots of water was a better solution for most railroad applications.
The fatal flaw in portable/mobile steam applications to date has been the need for large radiators (really really large radiators) to cool the steam, converting it back to water to complete the cycle. I see no magic fairy dust in this device that solves that problem.
The alternative is to carry enough water to run the engine without recycling and eliminate the condensers. And that's a lot of water.
Please show me where cold snowy winters in Britain/Northern Europe were predicted as a consequence of global warming -- or of elevated atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Or is this all post-hoc?
Wear and tear is a variable cost. Charging an electric car is added revenue. If the added revenue isn't greater than the variable cost (wear and tear plus fuel more or less) then the electric company indeed has a big problem.
Variable time-of-day pricing relies on shifting loads (running the drier, the washer, the dishwasher as well as commercial users) from day to night to use generators that would otherwise be shut down.
It's also a given that e-waste is currently a huge problem Your authority for this statement? ... pieces of glass... Recycling glass (especially the small amount in an LCD) is a fool's errand. The volume of LCD glass "filling landfills" is vanishingly small and the main resource used in manufacture is energy (heat) used to melt the glass during production. The energy required to use recycled glass is almost the same as used in new manufacture.
Worm:Win32/Visal.B is a new worm, written in Visual Basic, that is currently propagating in part using social-engineering. We strongly encourage customers to be cautious about clicking suspicious or even simply unexpected links in email, even if it's sent by someone you know. Getting infected by Visal.B is an example of what happens if you aren't careful.
One trend that makes the idea of turning organic waste into usable power for data centers is the moves by several firms to build facilities in rural locations, where high-speed networks allow them to take advantage of the cost advantages of such areas.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of bluff and bluster against Microsoft for defending a patent. Barnes and Noble needs to attack the patent or the patent system. Fighting a PR battle is evidence that B&N doesn't have the facts necessary to win the patent fight.
Let me introduce to you,
Office for the Mac ...
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/
Microsoft OneNote for the iPhone.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id410395246?mt=8
Office Web Apps
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/web-apps-help/create-office-documents-in-your-web-browser-HA101812526.aspx
At one time, Microsoft was the largest maker (aside from Apple) of software for the Mac. Maybe it's still true.
Locutus said, For 20 years their PC OS has been their one and only profit generator ...
Fiscal year 2010 operating income:
Windows & Windows Live -- $12.977 billion
Server and Tools -- $5.491 billion
Microsoft Business Division -- $11.776 billion
Entertainment and Devices -- $679 million
MSFT Annual Report
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar10/10k_fr_dis.html
It turns out that you are wrong.
The problem, as they see it, is Microsoft's inability to actually bring this into common usage for regular television viewing. "It seems like the company is tied too much to the Xbox's substantial gaming revenue to split the Xbox TV stuff off as a separate product â" even though there's a huge population of non-gamers who probably have no interest in buying an Xbox.
Sales as a separate product would be incremental and would not hurt Xbox or Kinect sales to gamers. However developing and supporting an interface between Kinect and all the world's TVs and cable boxes would be ... difficult ... and not worth any incremental revenue.
The market for universal remotes is not an attractive one.
Full transcript here.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/10-290.pdf
Development of Sea Level Rise Scenarios for Climate Change Assessments of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1165/downloads/OF10-1165pages1-10.pdf
The real danger comes not from the seas rising but from the land sinking.
Eluded. Alluded. Potatoe. Potatoe. Let's call the whole thing off.
The Baker Electric Automobile was in production from 1899 to 1914 -- I guess electric cars were not and never will be competitive with gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. What? Better batteries? Better motors? You mean that the technology has caught up and electric cars might now be viable?
Maybe Plato was just ahead of the available technology.
The oft repeated rule of thumb is that 80% of a product is bought by 20% of the customers. Here, 80% of the product is bought by 99% of the customers.
The top 1% of users consume 20% of the bandwidth ...
This Stanford PR piece has received a lot of "coverage" -- mostly cut and paste.
Here are links to the original papers.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf
We estimate that 3,800,000 5 MW wind turbines, 49,000 300 MW concentrated solar plants, 40,000 300 MW solar ...
PV power plants, 1.7 billion 3 kWrooftop PV systems, 5350 100 MWgeothermal power plants, 270
new 1300 MWhydroelectric power plants, 720,000 0.75 MWwave devices, and 490,000 1 MWtidal
turbines can power a 2030 WWS world that uses electricity and electrolytic hydrogen for all purposes.
Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic.
I'm sure everybody will want to study the papers in detail. And hold on to your checkbooks.
I read TFA and noted that they are not using the regenerator. I also went to the company's website where they say, "From garden equipment and generators to cars, trucks, trains and ships, we see a day when our planet will be powered in a sustainable manner by just One Engine -- the Cyclone Engine."
Ships are the only application where condensing will not be a problem due to the quantity of cooling water available.
They also state that one of the things their engine will not require in automotive applications is a radiator.
Further from their web site, "Steam escapes the cylinders through exhaust ports and ... enters the patent-pending condensing unit where it turns back into water, and ... collects in a sealed pan at the bottom of the condenser. Note, this is a closed-loop system -- the water does not need to be replaced or topped-off. ... Blowers spin fresh air around the condenser to speed the cooling process."
No mention of why the condenser is so effective -- certainly an important part of their secret sauce.
Your link explains why condensing steam locomotives weren't popular. ... The Class 25 was a complex locomotive that required high maintenance ... The equally complex tender also required frequent maintenance."
"Spent steam is fed through the thick pipe on the locomotive's left side to the condensing tender, where five steam turbine driven fans in the roof blows air down through the radiators on each side of the tender
Re: Bill Lear -- don't forget the eight track tape.
His other secret was Learium, a magic fluid that expanded more than water when heated/vaporized. The potential of Learium was never realized and the secret never revealed.
It turned out that he didn't have the condenser problem solved which is just one of the many reasons that his steam cars and busses never reached production.
And not a very good old hat. For the few that were in service, "The system was intended to reduce the problems of getting enough water to steam locomotives running through desert and very arid areas."
(from your link)
Carrying lots of water was a better solution for most railroad applications.
The fatal flaw in portable/mobile steam applications to date has been the need for large radiators (really really large radiators) to cool the steam, converting it back to water to complete the cycle. I see no magic fairy dust in this device that solves that problem.
The alternative is to carry enough water to run the engine without recycling and eliminate the condensers. And that's a lot of water.
Why oh why would Vodaphone give a DEALER the credentials necessary to access " ... the personal details of millions of customers ... "?
Please show me where cold snowy winters in Britain/Northern Europe were predicted as a consequence of global warming -- or of elevated atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Or is this all post-hoc?
What's a Fax Machine?
In the NorthEast about 20% of homes are heated electrically. In the midwest it's about 30%. (EIA, 2005)
Wear and tear is a variable cost. Charging an electric car is added revenue. If the added revenue isn't greater than the variable cost (wear and tear plus fuel more or less) then the electric company indeed has a big problem.
Variable time-of-day pricing relies on shifting loads (running the drier, the washer, the dishwasher as well as commercial users) from day to night to use generators that would otherwise be shut down.
Most charging will be done at night, when electricity use (home and business) is otherwise low.
InformationWeek speculates that ...
Another word for "speculate" is "guess." A news organization should do neither.
It's also a given that e-waste is currently a huge problem
... pieces of glass ...
Your authority for this statement?
Recycling glass (especially the small amount in an LCD) is a fool's errand. The volume of LCD glass "filling landfills" is vanishingly small and the main resource used in manufacture is energy (heat) used to melt the glass during production. The energy required to use recycled glass is almost the same as used in new manufacture.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2010/09/09/emerging-malware-issue-visal-b.aspx
Details here:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Search.aspx?query=Visal.B
And here:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=Worm%3AWin32%2FVisal.B
Which is why most (all?) carriers sell phones online. I think Apple manages to sell a few iPhones online as well.
One trend that makes the idea of turning organic waste into usable power for data centers is the moves by several firms to build facilities in rural locations, where high-speed networks allow them to take advantage of the cost advantages of such areas.
An example of this trend is the world's largest, the Lakeside Technology Center (sounds rural enough) located ... in downtown Chicago.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/special-report-the-worlds-largest-data-centers/worlds-largest-data-center-350-e-cermak/