When I can't use my Tivo, I'm not watching any more TV. Time-shifting is the ONLY way I can see the handful of programs I want to see around my schedule. Not to mention the fact that most of the stuff I watch isn't exactly prime-time, or even on when I'm awake. Without time-shifting, I won't be able to watch it anyway-- so why pay for it?
1. Do you like candy corn? 2. Have you ever seen that episode of the Simpsons where Hitler says "Das is nicht einen boobie!" to Grandpa in the war? 3. If you understood that both sides are ignoring that fact, why did you only point out one side's mistake? 4. Do you think a cat can make a three-story drop without breaking any bones? 5. Why do you hate solar panels? They only want to be loved. 6. Why is housing so ridiculously overpriced in the Bay Area? 7. Why does my original post sound like I'm such a gigantic ass? 8. How much bacon do you think it would take to make a vegetarian puke? 9. Why can't you put a jet engine in an Indy car? Or even just a turbine engine? 10. Does the fact that I have a homemade boat that floats on 55-gallon drums make me a redneck?
Economic efficiency is not the same as energy efficiency. Something can be economically efficient even if it is a losing bargain energy-wise. Consider diamond mining-- a lousy energy investment (i.e., 100% energy loss), but it still makes money.
At each stage of the process, by each group involved (drilling, refining, shipping, gas station etc...) the oil is marked up and sold for more than was paid for it.
I doubt that oil is a negative return on energy invested, but I suspect that a significant portion of the energy obtained is spent in obtaining it, much like manufacturing a solar panel.
The proponents of traditional energy often ignore this important fact, too. Did you think it was free to get oil out of the rock, shipped, refined, and shipped across the world to you to burn in your 16% efficient car?
(16% is the current best for tank-to-wheel efficiency according to http://www.fuelcells.org/fct/benefits.htm, 40% is obtainable with steam-- http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node80.html)
Your study is saying that a solar panel is a 150% return on investment for energy. If it makes more power than it takes to manufacture it, it sounds like a winner to me! It would seem to make sense to set up a solar-powered solar panel factory in a desert, with convenient access to abundant sun and silicon. Make panels, put them on the roof, and use the power to make more panels. Now that 40% can come from a solar source as well!
I have always wanted to see a similar study on the power required vs. power obtained via oil-- nobody ever seems to take note of the fact that oil has to be found, drilled for, shipped to a refinery, refined, shipped to storage, shipped to a station to dispense, and finally burned in an internal combustion engine with a current maximum tank-to-wheel efficiency of around 16% (http://www.fuelcells.org/fct/benefits.htm) efficiency. (Steam engines are around 40% -- http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node80.html)
On the rare occasions I watch something "live," I wait 10 minutes and then start watching the show-- that way I spend 20 minutes watching 20 minutes of TV with no commercials, and it's very nearly live. In fact, you get to the end at the same time as everyone else.
That said, Tivo has made it so I practically never watch anything live, at it's scheduled time, or all at once.
Ah, MODs. This is how I really got my start into electronic music-- pulling MODs down to my trusty Amiga 500 over a 1200bps connection to a BBS system somewhere. And then carefully recording them off to cassette for playback in my trusty station wagon.
It was a really cool thing to be a part of, and I'm glad somebody else remembers it!
One track in particular I wish I hadn't lost in a hard drive crash was a beautiful exercise in frogger-ish noises and gradually accelerating tempo. If only I knew what it was called.
If ads begin obscuring a show I watch, I will stop watching it. I don't watch ST:TNG anymore due to the awful squish-o-vision the network employs to squeeze crap in at the bottom. If it happens to anything I value watching (ie, the stuff I got cable for) I will cancel my cable subscription.
I don't watch much TV, and I skip over the ads of what I do watch with my Tivo. Ad-free TV has been nice, and I'd even be willing to pay for the shows I enjoy (one at a time-- I'm not paying for all the crap to get a few good shows a la cable), but if the options are ad-covered, distorted-aspect-ratio crap or nothing, nothing wins hands down.
So my Honda Civic HX, with its relatively small 120hp engine can make 89,520 watts. My average electricity usage is significantly lower than that. My small car could easily provide all the power I need and then some. Lord knows what you could run from an SUV.
Yet another list from yet another random /.er
on
Electronic Music 101?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
My favorites:
Hardfloor
check their classic TB Resuscitation, as well as the rest of their phenomenal 303-driven works (Respect, Funalogue, Homerun, etc...)
Vapourspace
Themes from Vapourspace remains my all-time favorite album ever, period. The whole thing rocks. Some good tracks on Sweep, too.
Plastikman (Richie Hawtin)
The king of minimalism. I would be remiss if I didn't recommend Spastik, a fantastic track. Check out all of his stuff.
Surgeon
It sounds like you're underwater, but it's bang-up good shit.
Steve Stoll
Hyperrealism is an excellent track
Josh Wink
Find the Tweakin' remix of Higher State of Conciousness-- fantastic breakbeatish house.
Joey Beltram
Classic.
Dieselboy
Drum and bass fun.
DJ Zinc's Super Sharp Shooter is a classic D&B track.
There's a million more, but that's what strikes me as favorites off the top of my head from my dusty record bin. Happy hunting, and thanks for posting this article-- I'm sure I'll find some sweet stuff I've never heard digging through everybody else's recommendations.
I was a member, but I recently cancelled my membership. The problem? They have a "wide" selection of anime titles, but when you get 3 or 4 discs into a 10-disc series, you discover that that's all they have. I emailed them a couple of times about it, and customer service indicates they have no plans to stock the rest. Specific examples I've bumped into:
Gasaraki: they have 1-4, but there are 8 total Bubblegum Crisis 2040: they have 3 of 6 Neon Genesis Evangelion: they have 3 of 8 series discs, and neither of the 2 movie DVDs Trigun: they have 6 of 8 Slayers: they have one movie, and 3 out of 52(!!!!) episodes. Blue Submarine #6: they have all of the series, but are missing the movie. Tenchi Universe: they have 6 of 8
I will apologize now if any of these movies are unavailable in region 1-- I didn't have time to check 'em all. But most of these certainly are.
It would be really nice if you could finish watching what you started, but sadly, that's not the case with Netflix.
D'oh! Unfortunately for them (if this is what they're really thinking), ScummVM has already been ported to the PocketPC. And I love it, and have already purchased 3 new games for it directly from LucasArts' online store.
I heard about SCUMMVM (and PocketScumm!) a month or so ago, and used it to play my old copy of Monkey Island. I had so much fun with it, that I bought Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and Sam & Max Hit the Road from LucasArts. I'm playing through IJFOA on my PocketPC at the moment. I will be buying The Dig and Full Throttle as soon as they're supported fully by SCUMMVM.
I hope that LucasArts takes a step back and realizes the three most important things here:
1. You need the original games to play scummvm. 2. Scummvm lets people play lucasarts games on platforms that aren't supported by the original SCUMM.exes, which means that people like me will buy games from lucasarts to use with scummvm! 3. Scummvm was reverse engineered, and does not infringe on the original SCUMM engine.
You would think LucasArts would *like* more sales, freely implemented support for new platforms and happy customers. I really hope this is a genuine mistake.
Re:I have searched this entire thread...
on
Baked Alaska
·
· Score: 1
Oddly enough, you're using the same argument you accuse the environmentalists of making-- that is, your only arguments seem to be:
1. Everybody on slashdot who is an environmentalist seems to be an idiot who can't provide me with whatever i consider to be a good enough reason, so it must not be true.
2. Well, we might be right, so let's keep polluting anyway.
Sound familiar? Arguing like this proves nothing for either side.
DVDs do store the data at 720x480, not 640x480, despite the fact that this is not a "square-pixel resolution" on a 4:3 screen. TVs don't have a fixed horizontal resolution-- they have a number of vertical scanlines, and the horizontal resolution varies with the quality of the source. It seems a bit odd for those of us who have grown up with fixed-pixel-width computer screens, but that's the way it works. Here's a decent link: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/vidres.htm
Anamorphic movies use the same 720x480 resolution, they just squeeze the widescreen image into the wrong shape, and then your DVD player scales the output to a "letterboxed" image if your TV is not widescreen.
With a 60hp starter motor, your engine doesn't have to ever run at low rpms when starting. In a Prius, you're at operating speed before it's even turned over once, which cuts out a chunk of the wear, I imagine.
This depends on the design of the hybrid system and what type of transmission is used. I think the design you're referring to uses the electric motor as the main drive, and a small gas engine to charge the batteries as needed.
As far as I know, none of the available hybrid automobiles are doing this. Honda uses a simpler design, where the main drive is a gas engine, with a small electric "assist" motor. The Insight and Civic are never running electric-only, and use their gas engine traditionally. The electric motor acts as a booster to give you more acceleration.
The Prius is more complicated, and allows electric-only driving. However, the main gas engine is still used to directly drive the wheels.
Now, the advent of CVT transmissions has produced some gains in this direction-- but they're not exclusive to hybrids. Because they're continuously variable, the engine rpm can stay relatively constant. My non-hybrid CVT civic has a couple of spots on the tach that it prefers-- somewhere around 2000 for cruising, and much higher for acceleration.
I'm currently driving a 2001 Civic HX CVT (non-hybrid) and averaging around 36mpg. (They claim 40, but we all know that the claims are always high.) The new hybrid civic claims 50+ mpg, and while I don't expect it to hit 50, I imagine it will do better than my conventional civic, despite having the same conventional body parts as all the other civics.
You don't have to charge the battery in a hybrid from an external source. Ever. Just put gas in. In fact, aggressive driving with lots of hard braking would charge it faster in current hybrids.
Honda has a sweet prototype called the DualNote that makes 400hp and gets 43mpg. I would certainly be in for that!! I'd be even happier at 200hp/86mpg, though. Something small and fun like a WRX that gets 86mpg would rule.
That's either one of the most common misconceptions about hybrid cars, or a magnificent troll. I'll answer it either way, just so somebody else isn't confused...
Current hybrids like the Prius, Insight, and Civic don't need external electric charging. Their batteries are very small, and store energy generated by braking or excess power from the gas engine if necessary. The economy comes from a couple of things:
1. You get back energy when you brake. 2. Your gas+electric motors combined are approximately the same power output as a traditional gas motor, but you can turn off part of a hybrid when you don't need it. So you've got the power you need for acceleration, but once you're cruising, the extra motor can cut out leaving you using less energy. 3. Your gas engine can shut off at stoplights, since your electric motor acts as the world's most kickass starter motor. (For example, the Prius' electric motor brings the gas engine to speed in less than one revolution) 4. Your electric motor doesn't waste power "idling".
At no point are you ever charging your battery with power generated from a power plant. They really are just more efficient than gas-only cars at the moment.
Man, stuff was hard back then, wasn't it. I'm so glad I was enough younger that when I bought my $2K machine, it was a 486SX-25, and I had the glory of Telnet to make it worthwhile.
Fortunately, the machine was enough faster than your 386 that I had time to waste at raves (good 'ol PURaves), playing video games on a console, and waiting for somebody to page me. And I paid for it all myself. And had enough time left over to get an engineering degree.
Seriously, though-- just because you had no fun whatsoever in college, doesn't mean it can't be done without help from some other source. This guy is talking about getting her a FLASHLIGHT for pete's sake. Hardly coddling.
At least they're trying to find a correct answer-- would you prefer they just picked a theory and stuck with it, contrary evidence be damned?
When science is wrong, it publicly says "oops," publishes a paper highlighting its mistakes and their corrections, and then goes back to trying to figure out how the new theory can be improved.
Re:So are they going to fix ignoring common words?
on
Google Experiments
·
· Score: 1
It is pretty annoying. In the meantime, to get both phrases and required (but common) words to work, try "+where +to +buy", which seems to work.
Of course, now you can't really search for terms that start with "+", even if you group them in quotes.
Slashdot Mirror
When I can't use my Tivo, I'm not watching any more TV. Time-shifting is the ONLY way I can see the handful of programs I want to see around my schedule. Not to mention the fact that most of the stuff I watch isn't exactly prime-time, or even on when I'm awake. Without time-shifting, I won't be able to watch it anyway-- so why pay for it?
A few...
1. Do you like candy corn?
2. Have you ever seen that episode of the Simpsons where Hitler says "Das is nicht einen boobie!" to Grandpa in the war?
3. If you understood that both sides are ignoring that fact, why did you only point out one side's mistake?
4. Do you think a cat can make a three-story drop without breaking any bones?
5. Why do you hate solar panels? They only want to be loved.
6. Why is housing so ridiculously overpriced in the Bay Area?
7. Why does my original post sound like I'm such a gigantic ass?
8. How much bacon do you think it would take to make a vegetarian puke?
9. Why can't you put a jet engine in an Indy car? Or even just a turbine engine?
10. Does the fact that I have a homemade boat that floats on 55-gallon drums make me a redneck?
Economic efficiency is not the same as energy efficiency. Something can be economically efficient even if it is a losing bargain energy-wise. Consider diamond mining-- a lousy energy investment (i.e., 100% energy loss), but it still makes money.
At each stage of the process, by each group involved (drilling, refining, shipping, gas station etc...) the oil is marked up and sold for more than was paid for it.
I doubt that oil is a negative return on energy invested, but I suspect that a significant portion of the energy obtained is spent in obtaining it, much like manufacturing a solar panel.
The proponents of traditional energy often ignore this important fact, too. Did you think it was free to get oil out of the rock, shipped, refined, and shipped across the world to you to burn in your 16% efficient car?
(16% is the current best for tank-to-wheel efficiency according to http://www.fuelcells.org/fct/benefits.htm, 40% is obtainable with steam-- http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node80.html)
Your study is saying that a solar panel is a 150% return on investment for energy. If it makes more power than it takes to manufacture it, it sounds like a winner to me! It would seem to make sense to set up a solar-powered solar panel factory in a desert, with convenient access to abundant sun and silicon. Make panels, put them on the roof, and use the power to make more panels. Now that 40% can come from a solar source as well!
I have always wanted to see a similar study on the power required vs. power obtained via oil-- nobody ever seems to take note of the fact that oil has to be found, drilled for, shipped to a refinery, refined, shipped to storage, shipped to a station to dispense, and finally burned in an internal combustion engine with a current maximum tank-to-wheel efficiency of around 16% (http://www.fuelcells.org/fct/benefits.htm) efficiency. (Steam engines are around 40% -- http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node80.html)
Except maybe Quake III over wifi with a friend flying in a *different* plane.
On the rare occasions I watch something "live," I wait 10 minutes and then start watching the show-- that way I spend 20 minutes watching 20 minutes of TV with no commercials, and it's very nearly live. In fact, you get to the end at the same time as everyone else.
That said, Tivo has made it so I practically never watch anything live, at it's scheduled time, or all at once.
Ah, MODs. This is how I really got my start into electronic music-- pulling MODs down to my trusty Amiga 500 over a 1200bps connection to a BBS system somewhere. And then carefully recording them off to cassette for playback in my trusty station wagon.
It was a really cool thing to be a part of, and I'm glad somebody else remembers it!
One track in particular I wish I hadn't lost in a hard drive crash was a beautiful exercise in frogger-ish noises and gradually accelerating tempo. If only I knew what it was called.
If ads begin obscuring a show I watch, I will stop watching it. I don't watch ST:TNG anymore due to the awful squish-o-vision the network employs to squeeze crap in at the bottom. If it happens to anything I value watching (ie, the stuff I got cable for) I will cancel my cable subscription.
I don't watch much TV, and I skip over the ads of what I do watch with my Tivo. Ad-free TV has been nice, and I'd even be willing to pay for the shows I enjoy (one at a time-- I'm not paying for all the crap to get a few good shows a la cable), but if the options are ad-covered, distorted-aspect-ratio crap or nothing, nothing wins hands down.
1 horsepower = 746 watts.
So my Honda Civic HX, with its relatively small 120hp engine can make 89,520 watts. My average electricity usage is significantly lower than that. My small car could easily provide all the power I need and then some. Lord knows what you could run from an SUV.
My favorites:
Hardfloor
check their classic TB Resuscitation, as well as the rest of their phenomenal 303-driven works (Respect, Funalogue, Homerun, etc...)
Vapourspace
Themes from Vapourspace remains my all-time favorite album ever, period. The whole thing rocks. Some good tracks on Sweep, too.
Plastikman (Richie Hawtin)
The king of minimalism. I would be remiss if I didn't recommend Spastik, a fantastic track. Check out all of his stuff.
Surgeon
It sounds like you're underwater, but it's bang-up good shit.
Steve Stoll
Hyperrealism is an excellent track
Josh Wink
Find the Tweakin' remix of Higher State of Conciousness-- fantastic breakbeatish house.
Joey Beltram
Classic.
Dieselboy
Drum and bass fun.
DJ Zinc's Super Sharp Shooter is a classic D&B track.
There's a million more, but that's what strikes me as favorites off the top of my head from my dusty record bin. Happy hunting, and thanks for posting this article-- I'm sure I'll find some sweet stuff I've never heard digging through everybody else's recommendations.
I was a member, but I recently cancelled my membership. The problem? They have a "wide" selection of anime titles, but when you get 3 or 4 discs into a 10-disc series, you discover that that's all they have. I emailed them a couple of times about it, and customer service indicates they have no plans to stock the rest. Specific examples I've bumped into:
Gasaraki: they have 1-4, but there are 8 total
Bubblegum Crisis 2040: they have 3 of 6
Neon Genesis Evangelion: they have 3 of 8 series discs, and neither of the 2 movie DVDs
Trigun: they have 6 of 8
Slayers: they have one movie, and 3 out of 52(!!!!) episodes.
Blue Submarine #6: they have all of the series, but are missing the movie.
Tenchi Universe: they have 6 of 8
I will apologize now if any of these movies are unavailable in region 1-- I didn't have time to check 'em all. But most of these certainly are.
It would be really nice if you could finish watching what you started, but sadly, that's not the case with Netflix.
Funny, I always thought it stood for "Who Wants Jack Daniels?"
D'oh! Unfortunately for them (if this is what they're really thinking), ScummVM has already been ported to the PocketPC. And I love it, and have already purchased 3 new games for it directly from LucasArts' online store.
http://arisme.free.fr/PocketScumm/
I heard about SCUMMVM (and PocketScumm!) a month or so ago, and used it to play my old copy of Monkey Island. I had so much fun with it, that I bought Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and Sam & Max Hit the Road from LucasArts. I'm playing through IJFOA on my PocketPC at the moment. I will be buying The Dig and Full Throttle as soon as they're supported fully by SCUMMVM.
.exes, which means that people like me will buy games from lucasarts to use with scummvm!
I hope that LucasArts takes a step back and realizes the three most important things here:
1. You need the original games to play scummvm.
2. Scummvm lets people play lucasarts games on platforms that aren't supported by the original SCUMM
3. Scummvm was reverse engineered, and does not infringe on the original SCUMM engine.
You would think LucasArts would *like* more sales, freely implemented support for new platforms and happy customers. I really hope this is a genuine mistake.
Oddly enough, you're using the same argument you accuse the environmentalists of making-- that is, your only arguments seem to be:
1. Everybody on slashdot who is an environmentalist seems to be an idiot who can't provide me with whatever i consider to be a good enough reason, so it must not be true.
2. Well, we might be right, so let's keep polluting anyway.
Sound familiar? Arguing like this proves nothing for either side.
DVDs do store the data at 720x480, not 640x480, despite the fact that this is not a "square-pixel resolution" on a 4:3 screen. TVs don't have a fixed horizontal resolution-- they have a number of vertical scanlines, and the horizontal resolution varies with the quality of the source. It seems a bit odd for those of us who have grown up with fixed-pixel-width computer screens, but that's the way it works. Here's a decent link: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/vidres.htm
Anamorphic movies use the same 720x480 resolution, they just squeeze the widescreen image into the wrong shape, and then your DVD player scales the output to a "letterboxed" image if your TV is not widescreen.
With a 60hp starter motor, your engine doesn't have to ever run at low rpms when starting. In a Prius, you're at operating speed before it's even turned over once, which cuts out a chunk of the wear, I imagine.
This depends on the design of the hybrid system and what type of transmission is used. I think the design you're referring to uses the electric motor as the main drive, and a small gas engine to charge the batteries as needed.
As far as I know, none of the available hybrid automobiles are doing this. Honda uses a simpler design, where the main drive is a gas engine, with a small electric "assist" motor. The Insight and Civic are never running electric-only, and use their gas engine traditionally. The electric motor acts as a booster to give you more acceleration.
The Prius is more complicated, and allows electric-only driving. However, the main gas engine is still used to directly drive the wheels.
Now, the advent of CVT transmissions has produced some gains in this direction-- but they're not exclusive to hybrids. Because they're continuously variable, the engine rpm can stay relatively constant. My non-hybrid CVT civic has a couple of spots on the tach that it prefers-- somewhere around 2000 for cruising, and much higher for acceleration.
I'm currently driving a 2001 Civic HX CVT (non-hybrid) and averaging around 36mpg. (They claim 40, but we all know that the claims are always high.) The new hybrid civic claims 50+ mpg, and while I don't expect it to hit 50, I imagine it will do better than my conventional civic, despite having the same conventional body parts as all the other civics.
You don't have to charge the battery in a hybrid from an external source. Ever. Just put gas in. In fact, aggressive driving with lots of hard braking would charge it faster in current hybrids.
Honda has a sweet prototype called the DualNote that makes 400hp and gets 43mpg. I would certainly be in for that!! I'd be even happier at 200hp/86mpg, though. Something small and fun like a WRX that gets 86mpg would rule.
That's either one of the most common misconceptions about hybrid cars, or a magnificent troll. I'll answer it either way, just so somebody else isn't confused...
Current hybrids like the Prius, Insight, and Civic don't need external electric charging. Their batteries are very small, and store energy generated by braking or excess power from the gas engine if necessary. The economy comes from a couple of things:
1. You get back energy when you brake.
2. Your gas+electric motors combined are approximately the same power output as a traditional gas motor, but you can turn off part of a hybrid when you don't need it. So you've got the power you need for acceleration, but once you're cruising, the extra motor can cut out leaving you using less energy.
3. Your gas engine can shut off at stoplights, since your electric motor acts as the world's most kickass starter motor. (For example, the Prius' electric motor brings the gas engine to speed in less than one revolution)
4. Your electric motor doesn't waste power "idling".
At no point are you ever charging your battery with power generated from a power plant. They really are just more efficient than gas-only cars at the moment.
Man, stuff was hard back then, wasn't it. I'm so glad I was enough younger that when I bought my $2K machine, it was a 486SX-25, and I had the glory of Telnet to make it worthwhile.
Fortunately, the machine was enough faster than your 386 that I had time to waste at raves (good 'ol PURaves), playing video games on a console, and waiting for somebody to page me. And I paid for it all myself. And had enough time left over to get an engineering degree.
Seriously, though-- just because you had no fun whatsoever in college, doesn't mean it can't be done without help from some other source. This guy is talking about getting her a FLASHLIGHT for pete's sake. Hardly coddling.
At least they're trying to find a correct answer-- would you prefer they just picked a theory and stuck with it, contrary evidence be damned?
When science is wrong, it publicly says "oops," publishes a paper highlighting its mistakes and their corrections, and then goes back to trying to figure out how the new theory can be improved.
It is pretty annoying. In the meantime, to get both phrases and required (but common) words to work, try "+where +to +buy", which seems to work.
Of course, now you can't really search for terms that start with "+", even if you group them in quotes.