I always figured that the safest way to wipe a hard drive would be to heat it up above the Curie temperature. Once all of those domains are randomized, there ain't no information left. Anyone have any idea what T_C is for a hard drive platter? I would guess its in the 700K range, which unfortunately is too hot for your standard oven. But if you have a friend who works at a brick oven pizza parlor, that would probably do the trick.
Well, 3.5 cents/kwh may have been a reasonable target for standard electricity generation technologies a few years ago, but not in today's commodity price environment. Gas fired power plants are typically the cheapest to build (500-1000 $/kw contstruction cost) but the marginal cost of the most efficient plants is now north of $50/MWh (5 cents/kwh). This is easy to see from the current price of natural gas futures (~$7/MMBTU) and the fact that the highest efficiency plants yet built are about 7 MW/MMBTU. Throw in a few $/MWh for plant operation and maintenance expenses and you're already north of the 5 cents/kwh quoted and we haven't even gotten to amortizing the construction cost of the plant.
Coal is a much cheaper fuel than gas so coal-fired power plants are cheaper on a marginal cost basis but the constuction costs are substantially higher and as a result of the highly successful emissions cap and trade programs in the US emissions costs have been internalized to the tune of several dollars per megawatt hour.
The bottom line is that 5 cents/kWh would be an extremely attractive all-in price for electricity generation in today's markets. Until this claimed price has been borne out by widescale deployment, however, I'll remain sceptical.
The release of a flat panel iMac has been rumored for a long time. See for example this article from July.
While the reported component order gives the rumor slightly stronger legs, don't forget that Apple already buys lots of 15" LCDs for their 15" Studio Display. It would be very interesting to know how many of these monitors Apple currently sells per month. Perhaps the additional 100kmonitors/month is simply forecasting additional demand?
True, it has to be or it destroys your pipework. I'm talking about the pipework that is exposed to the water that is heated by the rods (the radioactive steam cycle, for plants that are built that way) -
eventually neutron sources (like that water that is converted to heavy water by radiation) irradiate the pipework, making it radioactive and a furthur waste problem. Similar things happen in plants with other liquids in the loop that is exposed to the fuel. Obviously the steam that goes through the turbines has never touched the fuel, and the cooling water that runs through the cooling towers doesn't touch the turbine.
I hate to be the voice of reason, but regular water, regardless of how many neutrons it is exposed to cannot in turn irradiate other materials with neutrons. When hydrogen absorbs a neutron it becomes deuterium which is a stable isotope. If deuterium in turn absorbs a neutron it becomes tritium, which is a radioactive isotope. Tritium, however, beta-decays with about a 10 year half life, to produce Helium-3, a stable noble gas. While its true that the 1.4 MeV betas emitted from the (negligibly small) amount of tritiated primary cooling water could damage the pipes, it cannot make them radioactive since it does not emit neutrons.
It always seems to be Sony that brings about a revolution in electronics, be it the Walkman, or the DVD.
I don't think its fair to credit Sony alone for the revolutionary developments in electronics of the last 25 years. Both the CD and DVD formats were developed in collaborations with others (primarily Phillips if my memory serves correctly). And when one thinks of a "revolution" spawned by Sony its hard not to think immediately of Betamax and its ultimate failure.
I think the important question to ask as Sony enters the PDA business is what new ideas are they going to bring to the product? The CNET story states "Analysts expect Sony to eventually release a family of devices that will feature stronger multimedia and wireless capabilities than the Clie." Wireless capabilities? Can you say Palm VII? Multimedia? Thank you, marketing!
To consider a development in the PDA world revolutionary, I would look to some major change in the way that we interact with the device rather than just additional bells and whistles. (I'm thinking something along the lines of wearables.
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I always figured that the safest way to wipe a hard drive would be to heat it up above the Curie temperature. Once all of those domains are randomized, there ain't no information left. Anyone have any idea what T_C is for a hard drive platter? I would guess its in the 700K range, which unfortunately is too hot for your standard oven. But if you have a friend who works at a brick oven pizza parlor, that would probably do the trick.
Well, 3.5 cents/kwh may have been a reasonable target for standard electricity generation technologies a few years ago, but not in today's commodity price environment. Gas fired power plants are typically the cheapest to build (500-1000 $/kw contstruction cost) but the marginal cost of the most efficient plants is now north of $50/MWh (5 cents/kwh). This is easy to see from the current price of natural gas futures (~$7/MMBTU) and the fact that the highest efficiency plants yet built are about 7 MW/MMBTU. Throw in a few $/MWh for plant operation and maintenance expenses and you're already north of the 5 cents/kwh quoted and we haven't even gotten to amortizing the construction cost of the plant.
Coal is a much cheaper fuel than gas so coal-fired power plants are cheaper on a marginal cost basis but the constuction costs are substantially higher and as a result of the highly successful emissions cap and trade programs in the US emissions costs have been internalized to the tune of several dollars per megawatt hour.
The bottom line is that 5 cents/kWh would be an extremely attractive all-in price for electricity generation in today's markets. Until this claimed price has been borne out by widescale deployment, however, I'll remain sceptical.
While the reported component order gives the rumor slightly stronger legs, don't forget that Apple already buys lots of 15" LCDs for their 15" Studio Display. It would be very interesting to know how many of these monitors Apple currently sells per month. Perhaps the additional 100kmonitors/month is simply forecasting additional demand?
I don't think its fair to credit Sony alone for the revolutionary developments in electronics of the last 25 years. Both the CD and DVD formats were developed in collaborations with others (primarily Phillips if my memory serves correctly). And when one thinks of a "revolution" spawned by Sony its hard not to think immediately of Betamax and its ultimate failure.
I think the important question to ask as Sony enters the PDA business is what new ideas are they going to bring to the product? The CNET story states "Analysts expect Sony to eventually release a family of devices that will feature stronger multimedia and wireless capabilities than the Clie." Wireless capabilities? Can you say Palm VII? Multimedia? Thank you, marketing! To consider a development in the PDA world revolutionary, I would look to some major change in the way that we interact with the device rather than just additional bells and whistles. (I'm thinking something along the lines of wearables.