True. Also consider that there are likely to be legal ramifications - in the current political scene it should be easy enough to get Congress involved in investigating the FBI. And then - not joking here - like the boy who cried "wolf", someone gets eaten.
Let's hope it's the people actually responsible for the names being added.
When you consider the use of a cow vs. the use of a small animal (like a hamster) you start having to understand how we turn physical motion into electricity.
A small animal like a hamster is really cute, but they don't produce much usable electrical power. They only run long enough to get a workout, and if they get tired... they stop running. Yes, someone actually turned their hamster's wheel into a generator. The hamster could light up LEDs, but that's nowhere near powering a laptop.
A cow, on the other hand, will produce excellent torque - if you can get it to walk - but then you waste some of that power changing the low-amp high-volt power into higher-amp lower-volt power. Remember - pumping water is essentially a high-torque/low-speed process, but most electrical generation is low-torque/high-speed. (But that's because most electrical generation is for AC power, not the charging of DC batteries. For DC charging, high-torque/low-RPM might work nicely.)
However, what they're probably going for here isn't the optimal conversion of animal power to electrical power. What they're probably trying to do is transform into electricity what they perceive to be widely available power.
My bad - typo'd the 'B' to a 'b'. Yes - $60/month for 60 KB/sec.
On the upside, at least I can take the cell modem and a laptop with me when we've got one of the kids at a gymnastics class. Not only can I get stuff done, but I don't have to look up and see the parents pretending they're more interested in the development of their children than posturing for each other.
Hm.. for a local-only phone line... Nope. 10 would still cost me more than $60/month. Ah well.
Well, I pay $60 a month for 60Kb/sec, when my only other alternatives are dial-up and satellite.
Dial-up is... well, dial-up.
Satellite has a lag (which personally doesn't affect me), is a bit more expensive ($200), and has more restrictive TOS's.
So yeah, I'm paying more than I'd like to pay - but it's optimal for my circumstances. We don't download large files very often, and I can leave the cellmodem on indefinitely. With bittorrent I can easily share files outward at night when I'm not using the bandwidth to do things.
So they really haven't learned their lesson. I personally think that CmdrTaco should sign up and start hosting Slashdot through it. Either that or point the loyal readers to a page he's hosting through it.
Perhaps they think they've learned their lesson - but they think the lesson isn't "Do what's right" to you and me, but rather "How can we make our business plan legally defensible?"
Seems if they get a lot more specific, then they'd have a greater chance defending it in court.
And if all of us geeks go over to other carriers, will Verizon notice? We're a pretty small minority.
The verizon TOS is why I use Sprint. I can't get DSL, cable or even FIOS - I'm one of 2 homes on a street, and the companies don't want to lay half a mile of cable (from either direction) to get to us. My 60kB cellmodem is better than dialup.
When Sprint says "unlimited data" on my cellmodem plan, they actually mean it.
My net research revealed too many people who'd been bit by Verizon's bad habits. Glad to see the courts have spanked them.
In reality, the terrorist threat is a several orders of a magnitude less than being killed by heart-disease. It's my view that in any problem solving situation, you should seek to solve the worst problem first and the smallest problem last.
So... I should turn in Ronald McDonald to Homeland Security??
Phelps said the research team is not saying these are necessarily the only brain regions involved in optimism.
In fact, they didn't even establish that the two regions were "responsible" for optimism - as TFA's title might suggest, but rather
When scenarios filled with optimism were imagined, two brain regions -- the rostral anterior cingulate and amygdala -- lit up with activity in the brain scans, the researchers said.
So what the researchers did say was that those parts of the brain seemed to be more active when thinking Happy Thoughts. There was no causality established.
Perhaps this is the part of the brain that responds to optimistic thoughts, and releases chemicals to make the flesh feel Happier?
Also keep in mind that the researchers couldn't get people to think neutral thoughts very well - they all tended towards positive thoughts in those situations.
I currently live a 100M or so from the beach in Melbourne Australia. Small intense storms come in over the bay heading directly toward the beach so you get the front "ledge" of the storm cloud coming over while behind you is clear and the drama is still out in the bay. If you stay still and face toward one of these storms roughly when the cloud/sky boundry is directly over the beach you will feel the wind do a 180deg flip as if the storm is enhaling warm air and exhaling cold with a slight pause in between. It is more pronounced with slow moving storms and can last for 15 minutes or so with a regular inhale/exhale cycle of about a minute. The first exhale of an intense summer storm can feel like someone opened a fridge door if you have been sitting with your back turned and not seen it approaching.
If I had mod points left, I'd be modding your post Interesting.
If you check here, you'll see that due to where they are (north
pole of moon on a crater rim) they have almost constant access to sunlight.
If I'm on the north pole of any tidally locked body, and (this is crucial) the normal of the plane of orbit of that body is perpendicular to the sun... then the north and south poles of that body will have almost constant access.
Here's how. If the north pole has none of the rest of the body to shade it, then from the point of view of the observer, the sun will always be halfway on the horizon. In other words, the sun will be half-hidden all of the time, sitting on the horizon and "going around" the body. So if I build a building on the north pole, then the upper floors will see the whole sun. If we add some reflective screens that will rotate and point at the sun, then we've got an increase in how much sunlight will hit our target (garden, photoelectric, or whatever).
Also keep in mind - there's no atmosphere to weaken the amount of sunlight. So even if the sun seems to be on the horizon, the light per square meter (measured with a normal pointing straight at the sun) will be considerably stronger. Instead of a satellite with lots of solar cells, consider a solar concentraing cell (those referred to in the link are already in space) inside an airspace connected to the base. Whatever sunlight isn't converted to electricity is converted to heat. All you have to do is pump cool water past the cell to keep it cool enough, and you can then capture the heat from the water.
So it's an environment with plenty of energy available (once tapped), lots of rock-based nutrients for plants, and a slow speed for landing (relative ground speed for landing is at a minimum at the poles). A perfect place to start hollowing out the inside of the moon for an even more secure moon base. Here's hoping they put one at each pole.
The politicians are unlikely to make the ban (on the tax) permanent - each time the ban is about to expire, they get to look good to their constituents without actually doing anything.
So it'll get extended... again... and then in N years we'll hear another net-centric story propagated by a media wanting our avid attention for politicians who want our unconditional vote.
It lists the efficiency. The watts per square meter will depend on the amount of sunlight in your location. 13% is mid-range, people have made up to 60%, but those are state-of-the-art and expensive.
Sorry, but 60% is not the world record. The world-record in efficiency is currently about 42.8%, held by the University of Delaware. Here's their press release.
However, the most efficient cells in production for commercial use are from Spectrolab, a Boeing subsidiary. They claim 40.7% as of December 2006 - which was the world's record until UD broke it 23 July 2007.
According to Spectrolab's web site, the cells they're producing for distribution include their Ultra Triple Junction cells, with a minimum efficiency of 28.3% and a typical terrestrial efficiency of 31% claimed.
In their FAQ, they claim that a concentration of 500 suns is typically optimal. On the earth, you then have to deal with the fact that 2/3 of the energy is not turned into electricity - which means a significant amount of heat to deal with. You would want to cool the cell with something, lest it burn up. Their FAQ mentions that using a 1 cm^2 cell, at 500 suns and 25C will produce about 17.5W - so you'd be "spending" at least 500 cm^2 of real estate to prodcue the 17.5W : 500 cm^2 for a Fresnel lens to focus it down to 1 cm^2 on the cell.
I think they'll sell to anyone as long as you're a U.S. citizen and agree to the export limitations. However, they have a minimum purchase of $5,000 - but you must spend more to get optimal pricing.
Well. My point is this: 60% is not what anyone's achieved. Most companies are just trying to get their $/Watt price as low as possible in order to get widespread acceptance - instead of attempting a new world-record.
I wish that someone had gotten to 60% - it's 2/3 of the way to the Carnot limit of 95% If you're referring to these guys and their "quantum dot cells", from their web site you'll see that it's still all theoretical.
BTW - you can buy a plastic Fresnel lens here, unless they've changed the web page. Be careful and wear a welding helmet (or equivalent) so that the intense concentration of sunlight on something won't be able to cause a light bright enough to burn your retina.
The poster wasn't referring to what the customer is allowed to do with the boxes, which is what you'll see from the buttons on the front and the remote's options.
The poster was referring to what sorts of things are technically possible with a digital cable box.
So is velociraptor going to be announced as the earliest known ancestor of birds?
I wonder why other velociraptor fossils haven't been found with feathers, if all velociraptors had them? If this is the first one where feathers were identified then I'd ask if it really is the same species. Is it possible that this new fossil is a different species, but one where the skeleton was close enough to velociraptor that a fossilized version is originally identified as one?
ISBNs on books are the IP of The US ISBN Agency, and since they have the sole authority in the U.S. to issue ISBNs, it's a bit of a stretch (read: LIE) for any other legal entity to claim that the ISBN printed on the book are their IP.
I hope that this will allow people to focus on the story, not just the glitter - that'd be an improvement. Not to say that I don't like snazzy-looking games and VR worlds, but rather I'm saying that if it became trivial for them to look good then game creation could focus on the story and interactions between players. That's part of the longevity of a story world.
Sounds like it would also give a leg up to those who are good writers, and we might see their works more easily put in front of people.
I just hope we don't get people and/or corporations trying to treat any of this like it's IP, and potentially ruin it for everyone.
I remember when VRML first came out. I played with it and could do fun things with it... but I can't write a game story to save my life. Well, when compared against a real writer.
Secondly, it is not necessary to probe the audio hardware and software 30 times a second, as is done in Vista. That overload on system resources is again not a bug, it is DEFECTIVE BY DESIGN.
First, let me say that I'm probably one of the last people in all of space-time that would try to stand up for Micro$oft.
Second, to say that something is defective by design... doesn't that imply that the designers chose a defective design on purpose?
I'm quite prepared to agree that M$ can't design a good piece of X to save their Y, but I'd have to know the individual designers to be able to claim that they designed something like video streaming in such a broken fashion on purpose. Doubly so, considering that there's nothing to EmbraceAndExtend by doing so - except to cause their customers to embrace something besides Vista.
Slashdot Mirror
TFA may have come from opednews.com, but it did read as an actual article and not as an Op-Ed piece.
Just because a story is shown on FooNews doesn't mean it's actually news, and just because it's on opednews.com ...
True. Also consider that there are likely to be legal ramifications - in the current political scene it should be easy enough to get Congress involved in investigating the FBI. And then - not joking here - like the boy who cried "wolf", someone gets eaten.
Let's hope it's the people actually responsible for the names being added.
You're absolutely right - those are all better ways of getting power - if they were trying to power the village.
I personally prefer a mixture of wind and solar, with possible inputs from animal (even human) sources.
When you consider the use of a cow vs. the use of a small animal (like a hamster) you start having to understand how we turn physical motion into electricity.
A small animal like a hamster is really cute, but they don't produce much usable electrical power. They only run long enough to get a workout, and if they get tired... they stop running. Yes, someone actually turned their hamster's wheel into a generator. The hamster could light up LEDs, but that's nowhere near powering a laptop.
A cow, on the other hand, will produce excellent torque - if you can get it to walk - but then you waste some of that power changing the low-amp high-volt power into higher-amp lower-volt power. Remember - pumping water is essentially a high-torque/low-speed process, but most electrical generation is low-torque/high-speed. (But that's because most electrical generation is for AC power, not the charging of DC batteries. For DC charging, high-torque/low-RPM might work nicely.)
However, what they're probably going for here isn't the optimal conversion of animal power to electrical power. What they're probably trying to do is transform into electricity what they perceive to be widely available power.
My bad - typo'd the 'B' to a 'b'. Yes - $60/month for 60 KB/sec.
On the upside, at least I can take the cell modem and a laptop with me when we've got one of the kids at a gymnastics class. Not only can I get stuff done, but I don't have to look up and see the parents pretending they're more interested in the development of their children than posturing for each other.
Hm.. for a local-only phone line... Nope. 10 would still cost me more than $60/month. Ah well.
Well, I pay $60 a month for 60Kb/sec, when my only other alternatives are dial-up and satellite.
Dial-up is... well, dial-up.
Satellite has a lag (which personally doesn't affect me), is a bit more expensive ($200), and has more restrictive TOS's.
So yeah, I'm paying more than I'd like to pay - but it's optimal for my circumstances. We don't download large files very often, and I can leave the cellmodem on indefinitely. With bittorrent I can easily share files outward at night when I'm not using the bandwidth to do things.
Oh - I forgot. Those who download pr0n! If they threaten to move off of Verizon (ewwww) then the company's sure to notice!
Perhaps they think they've learned their lesson - but they think the lesson isn't "Do what's right" to you and me, but rather "How can we make our business plan legally defensible?"
Seems if they get a lot more specific, then they'd have a greater chance defending it in court.
And if all of us geeks go over to other carriers, will Verizon notice? We're a pretty small minority.
The verizon TOS is why I use Sprint. I can't get DSL, cable or even FIOS - I'm one of 2 homes on a street, and the companies don't want to lay half a mile of cable (from either direction) to get to us. My 60kB cellmodem is better than dialup.
When Sprint says "unlimited data" on my cellmodem plan, they actually mean it.
My net research revealed too many people who'd been bit by Verizon's bad habits. Glad to see the courts have spanked them.
So... I should turn in Ronald McDonald to Homeland Security??
In fact, they didn't even establish that the two regions were "responsible" for optimism - as TFA's title might suggest, but rather
So what the researchers did say was that those parts of the brain seemed to be more active when thinking Happy Thoughts. There was no causality established.
Perhaps this is the part of the brain that responds to optimistic thoughts, and releases chemicals to make the flesh feel Happier?
Also keep in mind that the researchers couldn't get people to think neutral thoughts very well - they all tended towards positive thoughts in those situations.
If I had mod points left, I'd be modding your post Interesting.
If you check here, you'll see that due to where they are (north pole of moon on a crater rim) they have almost constant access to sunlight.
If I'm on the north pole of any tidally locked body, and (this is crucial) the normal of the plane of orbit of that body is perpendicular to the sun... then the north and south poles of that body will have almost constant access.
Here's how. If the north pole has none of the rest of the body to shade it, then from the point of view of the observer, the sun will always be halfway on the horizon. In other words, the sun will be half-hidden all of the time, sitting on the horizon and "going around" the body. So if I build a building on the north pole, then the upper floors will see the whole sun. If we add some reflective screens that will rotate and point at the sun, then we've got an increase in how much sunlight will hit our target (garden, photoelectric, or whatever).
Also keep in mind - there's no atmosphere to weaken the amount of sunlight. So even if the sun seems to be on the horizon, the light per square meter (measured with a normal pointing straight at the sun) will be considerably stronger. Instead of a satellite with lots of solar cells, consider a solar concentraing cell (those referred to in the link are already in space) inside an airspace connected to the base. Whatever sunlight isn't converted to electricity is converted to heat. All you have to do is pump cool water past the cell to keep it cool enough, and you can then capture the heat from the water.
So it's an environment with plenty of energy available (once tapped), lots of rock-based nutrients for plants, and a slow speed for landing (relative ground speed for landing is at a minimum at the poles). A perfect place to start hollowing out the inside of the moon for an even more secure moon base. Here's hoping they put one at each pole.
The politicians are unlikely to make the ban (on the tax) permanent - each time the ban is about to expire, they get to look good to their constituents without actually doing anything.
So it'll get extended... again... and then in N years we'll hear another net-centric story propagated by a media wanting our avid attention for politicians who want our unconditional vote.
Move Along.... nothing to really see here...
Ah - no. I'm not RMS. I was really trying to be funny with the omni-scent pun (many-smells).
Oh well... not my year to be funny. Well it wasn't last year either, but statistically I'm much closer to saying something funny!
I'm sure to be funny by the time Arthur C. Clarke's frozen man is found! Shame I'll be dead by then...
Oh. Well I'm an omniscent overlord.... </humor>
Sorry, but 60% is not the world record. The world-record in efficiency is currently about 42.8%, held by the University of Delaware. Here's their press release.
However, the most efficient cells in production for commercial use are from Spectrolab, a Boeing subsidiary. They claim 40.7% as of December 2006 - which was the world's record until UD broke it 23 July 2007.
According to Spectrolab's web site, the cells they're producing for distribution include their Ultra Triple Junction cells, with a minimum efficiency of 28.3% and a typical terrestrial efficiency of 31% claimed.
In their FAQ, they claim that a concentration of 500 suns is typically optimal. On the earth, you then have to deal with the fact that 2/3 of the energy is not turned into electricity - which means a significant amount of heat to deal with. You would want to cool the cell with something, lest it burn up. Their FAQ mentions that using a 1 cm^2 cell, at 500 suns and 25C will produce about 17.5W - so you'd be "spending" at least 500 cm^2 of real estate to prodcue the 17.5W : 500 cm^2 for a Fresnel lens to focus it down to 1 cm^2 on the cell.
I think they'll sell to anyone as long as you're a U.S. citizen and agree to the export limitations. However, they have a minimum purchase of $5,000 - but you must spend more to get optimal pricing.
Well. My point is this: 60% is not what anyone's achieved. Most companies are just trying to get their $/Watt price as low as possible in order to get widespread acceptance - instead of attempting a new world-record.
I wish that someone had gotten to 60% - it's 2/3 of the way to the Carnot limit of 95% If you're referring to these guys and their "quantum dot cells", from their web site you'll see that it's still all theoretical.
BTW - you can buy a plastic Fresnel lens here, unless they've changed the web page. Be careful and wear a welding helmet (or equivalent) so that the intense concentration of sunlight on something won't be able to cause a light bright enough to burn your retina.
The poster wasn't referring to what the customer is allowed to do with the boxes, which is what you'll see from the buttons on the front and the remote's options.
The poster was referring to what sorts of things are technically possible with a digital cable box.
So is velociraptor going to be announced as the earliest known ancestor of birds?
I wonder why other velociraptor fossils haven't been found with feathers, if all velociraptors had them? If this is the first one where feathers were identified then I'd ask if it really is the same species. Is it possible that this new fossil is a different species, but one where the skeleton was close enough to velociraptor that a fossilized version is originally identified as one?
You're right. My apologies - I left off my tags, as I thought it was obvious.
Now if I can only figure out how to be subtle, but not too subtle...
ISBNs on books are the IP of The US ISBN Agency, and since they have the sole authority in the U.S. to issue ISBNs, it's a bit of a stretch (read: LIE) for any other legal entity to claim that the ISBN printed on the book are their IP.
If you prefer, you can ask The National Information Standards Organization, which will tell you the for country X it's organization Y. For instance, Canadians will use their own agency.
The desire to destroy competition is alive and well. Let's hope this is one attempt which fails miserably.
HEY!!! That wasn't supposed to be funny.
Mod me up for something else, please... the karma is nice and crunchy. :)
(Yeah - this post was supposed to be funny. *sigh*)
I hope that this will allow people to focus on the story, not just the glitter - that'd be an improvement. Not to say that I don't like snazzy-looking games and VR worlds, but rather I'm saying that if it became trivial for them to look good then game creation could focus on the story and interactions between players. That's part of the longevity of a story world.
Sounds like it would also give a leg up to those who are good writers, and we might see their works more easily put in front of people.
I just hope we don't get people and/or corporations trying to treat any of this like it's IP, and potentially ruin it for everyone.
I remember when VRML first came out. I played with it and could do fun things with it... but I can't write a game story to save my life. Well, when compared against a real writer.
This sort of thing sure isn't going to convince me to join the collective.
Secondly, it is not necessary to probe the audio hardware and software 30 times a second, as is done in Vista. That overload on system resources is again not a bug, it is DEFECTIVE BY DESIGN
First, let me say that I'm probably one of the last people in all of space-time that would try to stand up for Micro$oft.
Second, to say that something is defective by design ... doesn't that imply that the designers chose a defective design on purpose?
I'm quite prepared to agree that M$ can't design a good piece of X to save their Y, but I'd have to know the individual designers to be able to claim that they designed something like video streaming in such a broken fashion on purpose. Doubly so, considering that there's nothing to EmbraceAndExtend by doing so - except to cause their customers to embrace something besides Vista.
Just a thought...