Actually, your calculations are even further off than I thought. Rather than multiplying the 60 minute runtime (on low) by the 270 lumen brightness (on high) from the 5.11 data sheet, you have somehow posited 270 lumens for 1.5 hours - which seems to have come straight out of thin air.
This means that your calculations are off by a factor of six.
Moderators, this needs to be modded down because of the blatant falsity of the calculations.
B5_Geek:
First, before doing your equations, please go and read the flashlight maker's own data sheet, which is linked from the Future of Things article. It explains that the 270 lumen output is only for 15 minutes, and that a longer runtime is available at a greatly reduced light output.
Thus all of your hasty, uninformed and premature numerical calculations are off by a factor of four.
Please read the much more accurate and informative post on the Future of Things site by Robert B., who correctly explained the engineering numbers that you have so eagerly pontificated about without bothering to look at the actual data.
"Its no surprise that Linux supports more devices."
I say! Hallo over there.
Could some of you fine upstanding penguins please find it in your pint-size reptilian hearts to migrate over here to Van Daemon's Land this season, and help our poor bewildered little FreeBSD creature rebuild his USB nest?
This is no joke, penguin people. Seriously, I need to keep a Kubuntu machine handy just to read the SD cards from my Canon. That simple task crashes FreeBSD. Regularly, reliably crashes it.
I will probably be hunted down and speared with a tiny fork for this. But I think we need some penguin DNA over here, because no one has been able to properly deal with this for the past six years or more.
There's a recent article at Linux.com about the ancient FreeBSD kernel panic involved in this, that has now even tripped up the PC-BSD project. http://www.linux.com/feature/149224
And now, I must scurry hurry to hide from the fork prongs!
With PC-BSD, you can mount separate partitions on as many separate physical drives as you have. But you do have to mark the Advanced checkbox on the drives/partitions installation screen. The default is to install everything on one drive without requiring the user to know anything at all about the whole subject. But the installation screens do put this in small type. Maybe it should be made more obvious to people not wearing their glasses.
The developers are very amenable to usability suggestions. Go to pcbsd.org and mention it. It isn't some huge corporation doing this, you know, where your voice will never be heard. There are only a few developers and they frequently improve such things at user request. You sound like you're in a "too bad, it can't be changed, I'll have to stop using the software" mindset after dealing with other systems. Not so with this one. There are few enough testers that everyone's voice counts.
Version 1.4 will be out shortly. People are bashing away at RC2 at the moment.
Go to pcbsd.org and click on Download|Snapshots if you'd like to test it.
Information Week has given itself a black eye by saying nothing at all of any interest or substance about this issue, while hyping a report that it can't even describe adequately. All this means is that a "Black is White, Up is Down" paper will be forthcoming soon from an industry shill. The only news here is that this a self-inflicted reminder not to read Information Week.
The Wikipedia lithium phosphate battery link with better formatting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphat e_battery/
The Energy Blog is a source of some good up to date information about automotive power developments using safer lithium phosphate LiFePO4 batteries:
The Energy Blog, at http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/batterie s/
It talks about the upcoming GM Volt car, airship batteries, A123 Systems batteries (used for several years now in power tools) moving into automotive use, Altair NanoSafe batteries being used in electric pickup trucks, Mitsubishi's investment in a LiFePO4 battery manufacturing plant expected to produce vehicle batteries in 2008, and Nissan and NEC combining to invest in a safe automotive lithium ion battery manufacturing plant with products expected in 2009.
In response to the many sweepingly inaccurate comments above about high energy density batteries being inherently unsafe, energy density alone does not make a chemical battery spectacularly dangerous.
The LiFePO4 batteries appear to be roughly as safe as alkaline or NiMH cells (which have a broadly similar energy density per volume, but aren't as energy dense by weight).
Lithium primary (disposable) 3.0v cells are not nearly as safe as alkaline and NiMH, despite being approximately as energy dense. When made with good quality control, they're reasonably OK to use in devices that use only one lithium cell. Even then, when poorly manufactured, they can overheat and burn or explode. They are not really reasonably safe to use in devices that use two or more cells in series.
LiIon batteries of the conventional kind are also notably more unsafe when two or more such cells are used in series.
"Couple this with reactive/flamable substance that make up batteries, and you have a lightshow.... Some designs minimize the risk, none remove it."
This is (lately) misinformation. It's basically true of any conventional LiIon battery type. But unlike the LiIon chemistry in common use today in laptop batteries, the newer lithium phosphate (LiFePO4) LiIon chemistry is inherently non-flammable and non-explosive. It's also considerably less energy dense than standard LiIon chemistries and more expensive to manufacture, thus big business' near-total lack of interest in rushing to develop it for consumer devices over the past several years. But it is now used in a few high current drain applications where conventional LiIon would be a poor choice, e.g. in some DeWalt power tools. When the cost comes down enough, you'll see lots more of these batteries, notably in electric vehicles, where they effectively eliminate laptop-type LiIon's barely-restrained violent urge to turn vehicles into smoldering heaps of rubble.
Slashdot Mirror
This means that your calculations are off by a factor of six.
B5_Geek:
First, before doing your equations, please go and read the flashlight maker's own data sheet, which is linked from the Future of Things article. It explains that the 270 lumen output is only for 15 minutes, and that a longer runtime is available at a greatly reduced light output.
Thus all of your hasty, uninformed and premature numerical calculations are off by a factor of four.
Please read the much more accurate and informative post on the Future of Things site by Robert B., who correctly explained the engineering numbers that you have so eagerly pontificated about without bothering to look at the actual data.
I say! Hallo over there.
Could some of you fine upstanding penguins please find it in your pint-size reptilian hearts to migrate over here to Van Daemon's Land this season, and help our poor bewildered little FreeBSD creature rebuild his USB nest?
This is no joke, penguin people. Seriously, I need to keep a Kubuntu machine handy just to read the SD cards from my Canon. That simple task crashes FreeBSD. Regularly, reliably crashes it.
I will probably be hunted down and speared with a tiny fork for this. But I think we need some penguin DNA over here, because no one has been able to properly deal with this for the past six years or more.
There's a recent article at Linux.com about the ancient FreeBSD kernel panic involved in this, that has now even tripped up the PC-BSD project. http://www.linux.com/feature/149224
And now, I must scurry hurry to hide from the fork prongs!
Sincerely - a frightened daemon captive
With PC-BSD, you can mount separate partitions on as many separate physical drives as you have. But you do have to mark the Advanced checkbox on the drives/partitions installation screen. The default is to install everything on one drive without requiring the user to know anything at all about the whole subject. But the installation screens do put this in small type. Maybe it should be made more obvious to people not wearing their glasses.
The developers are very amenable to usability suggestions. Go to pcbsd.org and mention it. It isn't some huge corporation doing this, you know, where your voice will never be heard. There are only a few developers and they frequently improve such things at user request. You sound like you're in a "too bad, it can't be changed, I'll have to stop using the software" mindset after dealing with other systems. Not so with this one. There are few enough testers that everyone's voice counts.
Version 1.4 will be out shortly. People are bashing away at RC2 at the moment.
Go to pcbsd.org and click on Download|Snapshots if you'd like to test it.
Information Week has given itself a black eye by saying nothing at all of any interest or substance about this issue, while hyping a report that it can't even describe adequately. All this means is that a "Black is White, Up is Down" paper will be forthcoming soon from an industry shill. The only news here is that this a self-inflicted reminder not to read Information Week.
The Wikipedia lithium phosphate battery link with better formatting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphat e_battery/
The Energy Blog is a source of some good up to date information about automotive power developments using safer lithium phosphate LiFePO4 batteries:
The Energy Blog, at http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/batterie s/
It talks about the upcoming GM Volt car, airship batteries, A123 Systems batteries (used for several years now in power tools) moving into automotive use, Altair NanoSafe batteries being used in electric pickup trucks, Mitsubishi's investment in a LiFePO4 battery manufacturing plant expected to produce vehicle batteries in 2008, and Nissan and NEC combining to invest in a safe automotive lithium ion battery manufacturing plant with products expected in 2009.
In response to the many sweepingly inaccurate comments above about high energy density batteries being inherently unsafe, energy density alone does not make a chemical battery spectacularly dangerous.
The LiFePO4 batteries appear to be roughly as safe as alkaline or NiMH cells (which have a broadly similar energy density per volume, but aren't as energy dense by weight).
Lithium primary (disposable) 3.0v cells are not nearly as safe as alkaline and NiMH, despite being approximately as energy dense. When made with good quality control, they're reasonably OK to use in devices that use only one lithium cell. Even then, when poorly manufactured, they can overheat and burn or explode. They are not really reasonably safe to use in devices that use two or more cells in series.
LiIon batteries of the conventional kind are also notably more unsafe when two or more such cells are used in series.
"Couple this with reactive/flamable substance that make up batteries, and you have a lightshow. ... Some designs minimize the risk, none remove it."
t e_battery/
This is (lately) misinformation. It's basically true of any conventional LiIon battery type. But unlike the LiIon chemistry in common use today in laptop batteries, the newer lithium phosphate (LiFePO4) LiIon chemistry is inherently non-flammable and non-explosive. It's also considerably less energy dense than standard LiIon chemistries and more expensive to manufacture, thus big business' near-total lack of interest in rushing to develop it for consumer devices over the past several years. But it is now used in a few high current drain applications where conventional LiIon would be a poor choice, e.g. in some DeWalt power tools. When the cost comes down enough, you'll see lots more of these batteries, notably in electric vehicles, where they effectively eliminate laptop-type LiIon's barely-restrained violent urge to turn vehicles into smoldering heaps of rubble.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phospha