If you're doing decent digital video or audio even today chances are you're going to be using Firewire
Y. But check again in 3 years, and I think the options will have diminished. The telling will be if Apple releases the new Intel Macs without it. I think it's even money that they won't.
I choose Firewire if I can
I do too. But it's starting to feel like the option is harder to find.
Consider this example: The original iMac had no floppy drive and used USB ports instead of ADB.
An oft cited example, but I think a more crucial one was the use of 802.11b in the original iBook. That has also spread wildly.
One could argue that Jobs is good at spotting successful trends early, and directs his hardware development accordingly, rather than dictating the direction of the market, but who cares? Often technology you see in Macs today you see in PCs in 2 years.
That said, there's been a number of mis-steps, too, usually the tech that was developed in house at Apple eg FireWire. Disappointing that they don't even include it on their new iPods--does make one wonder if it's going away. Fewer and fewer peripherals bother to support it at all, now, in favor of USB 2.0. BlueTooth is another example--while widely supported on Macs, it just still kinda sucks when trying to find and use a non-Apple BT product. That trend has yet to take off.
Internal security matters too. If you have telnet enabled on your "behind the VPN server", local users could use telnet too, and be sniffed by others on the corp network.
So it's easier to make the policy "no telnet on servers", which has the downside of requiring double encryption for remote users--VPN and ssh both--but has the advantage of requiring all connections, even local ones, to be encrypted.
No one's checking my papers.... No one's tapping my phone because I'm a) not calling overseas to countries that might harbour terrorists and b) I'm not linked to any terrorist organization.
What makes you think you would be told if they were doing this? The PATRIOT act and FISA allow such surveillance to be done in secret, which means that you wouldn't be told. You might well be being monitored right this very minute; this very post may have gone into the "jav1231" file.
In the absence of copyright law, what does 'proprietary' mean?
No source. I suppose you could hack on the binary all you want; knock yourself out. Smart vendors would tie their code to their stuff, so you couldn't run it without buying it.
Sure, sounds like a hefty fine. But IIRC the US also fined MSFT 1M a day during it's noncompliance period, and I don't believe they paid a penny of it. The outstanding bill will just become another negotiating point--likely along the lines of MSFT agreeing to concede to the other demands if the EU forgoes the fine.
As you say, it's interesting to consider the parts of AOL and Google that compete, but weren't covered by this agreement. Is there a chance that AOL will use an OSS browser IE FireFox or one of the -zillas? Will Mapquest and Google Maps still compete?
Although I confess that I'd like to see some synergy on these products, I think that unless their collaboration was specified that they'll continue to compete as they do now. The only merging that we'll see is in the product that was mentioned ie AIM/Gtalk; otherwise, we won't see AOL suddenly drop use of IE. And to hope for this coming about in the future just isn't really any more likely now.
OTOH, if Google bought AOL outright, that would be something. But this is, as currently written, just a strategic partnership, and only covers the areas explicitly specified. And may dissolve again at the end of its term with no more impact.
Hopefully USB really is universal in that one could use a high end non-Mac mouse in their Mac machine.
Indeed you can. You can always get at least the wheel and two buttons working; the ability to map the other buttons is not as given, but usually works too.
Personally, I use a Microsoft BlueTooth Intellimouse--and Mac users don't even need the BlueTooth dongle that comes with the mouse, as BT is now built into every Mac. Although it's not officially supported, I use all 5 buttons fine. The only sad thing is that there is no warning for when the batteries are going to die, like with the Apple BT keyboard.
In fact, I wouldn't be really surprised at all if Mac users made up a huge percentage of BT mice users (including eg the Microsoft mice, regardless of there being no support)--if you have to use a dongle with a PC, you may as well use an RF mouse. And I think most PCs still require a dongle for BT support.
"My printer won't print and gives an error of 'PC-Load Letter'. Can someone tell me please how to get my printer working?"
News for Nerds indeed. Someone please email me at relevancy@regained.com when this site no longer is worse than C-Net forums.
PS this question would have been marginally interesting if the OS in question was Linux. But as it is, please go ask your 13 year old kid how to keep windows running.
Setting up standard A/V equipment is a skill people need to have
No. No, it really isn't.
and only geeky people ever learn it properly. I can't tell you how many times people in the office need an IT person to setup the conference room projector for them.
Thank God for job security, right? And even better, it can't be outsourced to India.
Am I the only one here to realize that a study like this is actually a pointer to a huge market opportunity? I guess you'd have to convince folks that HD is worth paying a tech $50/hour to get it set up right, but they already dropped $1K+ on a HD TV, that that next pill shouldn't be too hard to swallow.
Personally, I'm waiting for a HD TiVO (or Imini-PVR) because time shifting is more important to me than image quality. That and I don't care to spend my new laptop budget on a new TV. So I don't really know what the fuss is about, other than to see this as the way TV content distributors are going to get you so dissatisfied with you current DRM-less media that you'll gladly take an asspounding DRM scheme.
Spec/price: RT5x2 with ten 500GB 7200 RPM drives, 9399.95--$.53/GB. FW800 instead of SFP Fibre; frankly I don't how that compares in terms of speed reliabiity.
vs Apples Xserve RAID: 14 500GB drives, $12999--also $.53/GB. I didn't delve into the specs to see if one has advantages over the other; for instance, there is on-site warranty support available for the Xserve RAID, but it admittedly costs more.
I suppose if you didn't have a rack and didn't want one, you'd prefer the wiebetch to the Xraid.
Lots of hard drives is fine as far as price goes, but they aren't an answer for long term storage. If anyone has an idea for storage in the 30 year range, I'd like to hear about it.
No one does, because, frankly, digital photography hasn't been around that long--so there are no solutions that were around in the 70s, that are now still working, to demonstrate that they are reliable over that kind of time period.
I think stacks of hard drives would suck, and could still fail on the shelf. I, like others above me, think you'd be best served by a RAID solution (not homebrew, but branded--I like Apple's and recommend if you currenlty use Apple gear, it'll hook right up to your G5 w/o need for a server). That'll protect your data for now, and be much more reliable than a stack of HDs--when one drive fails in a raid, you can replace it before all of the data on that drive is lost. Offload to tape for offsite storage or to "archive" your data and preserve the more recent photosets for instant recovery.
Will a RAID that you purchase today last for 30 years, provided you swap components as they fail? Nobody knows, since they haven't done it before. Even if you purchase a box from Dell or Apple, long as they've been around, they may not even be in business in 30 years to provide you with spare parts.
But with a hard drive based RAID, you can at least make a prettty painless transfer to the new solution that comes out every 5-7 years, or as finances and need permits.
Assuming you are willing to make the pre-existing G5 your file server, then yes, the "plus the cost of whatever server you hook it up to" goes to nothing.
If he is the only user, he doesn't need to operate it as a fileserver--in this case the Xserve RAID would serve as just a big external disk. Which could still be mounted anywhere he likes, not even in the same room, as he can connect to it via optical fibre with an adapter to the SFP of the Xraid.
Its not comperable to either of the above products for ease of setup
This guy is a photographer, which means two things: he'll have to pay someone to build this box for him, and if it breaks he needs to have it serviced the same day. The first case raises the price of your solution, and I don't know that the second requirement is available to him at all with your solution--although it is for any brand name RAID, inluding Apple's.
Folks who aren't in the busines of computers don't like to make it their business. Mechanics could build their own cars, too, but there's a good reason that the kit car isn't very common--regardless of the fact that it's cheaper.
The danger that a remake will face is that many of the elements that made the original
The message that we should challenge authority, that we have certain inalienable rights? I think it's no accident that there are unpopular wars occurring during the timing of the original and the remake.
Will the new Prisoner have a/. episode, where the prisioner has a plan for escape, but it invovles the use of Windows so he's modded to -1 and no one hears about it?
But seriously--this is an interesting time for this to be discussed. I believe it comes from a desire to challenge the group-mind attitude that has led to our current state of politics, just as the first one did. Hopefully the massive suckage of this remake won't obscure that message, but that'll be pretty hard to do.
If you burn hydrogen in there it will consume some of the oxygen and leave less for the diesel to burn with.
Certainly.
Making the cylinder environment hotter will do nothing but get your hotter soot in this situation.
Only if soot is a product of the diesel running out of oxygen; I don't know that to be true. There may be plenty of oxygen in the cylinder, or you can adjust the mix to provide more oxygen.
Rather, I think it may be because the diesel takes longer to reach combustion temperature than it is allowed to remain in the cylinder. If this is the case--and that's an if--if you increase the temperature fast enough, you'll burn more of the otherwise unburnt fuel.
Incomplete combustion occurs because too much fuel is present per mass of air in the cylinder.
Ever have a campfire? Although you had unlimited air supply, why did you have unburned logs at the conclusion of it? Answer: because the material that didn't burn didn't reach the heat needed to combust. If you took a blowtorch to those remaining logs, you may be able to get another fire going, as the particulate that didn't reach it's combustion point the first time is burned off. With enough unburned logs, you might be able to get more energy back than the blowtorch uses. Same principal here.
At least in my view this entire system is bunk and the person interviewed must have some financial interest in the promotion of this product.
Or maybe he just knows what he's talking about, and doesn't draw conclusions from a single faulty premise.
When something sounds too good to be true, always look for what they skate around.
Or, look for failures of logic and/or math. Using your numbers, and the numbers of a reply to your post: his truck drives 4500 miles a week, and he gets about 7mpg (1200 miles on 175 gallons). 4500/7=640 gallons consumed a week; 2.75/gallon=$1767 in fuel per week.
Your numbers assumed that this device might allow for a 10% in fuel savings--that'd be $176/week, or x4=$707/month, or very close to what the article estimated the savings were--$700/month. On a $14K device, you'd make it back in 20 months or so-although I also question the consequences of running a (10%?) hotter engine for those kinds of periods ie does it stress the cooling system, or wear the engine components faster?
The only ones suggesting that there is some magic in the hydrogen didn't RTFA. It was pretty clear to me, at least, that the extra power/fuel savings isn't from the hydrogen burn itself, but that the energy released by that burn allowed otherwise unburned (and therefore uncaptured) exhaust particulate to be consumed.
When you go to light a fire with a match, you get more energy in return than what it took to produce the match; you burn the kindling. Here we have kindling flowing out the tailpipe because it wasn't ignited--so the hydrogen is just a match. You naysayers are forgetting that ICE aren't 100% efficient already--so this process raises the efficiency of the primary fuel source, which apparently it can do in greater gains than it took to produce the hydrogen in the first place.
My question, though, is why not just produce the hydrogen at a plant and enrich the diesel with it at the refinery?
Maybe the hydrogen would evaporate out too fast? It'd certainly float to the top of the fuel pretty fast, so you'd have to mix it constantly. Maybe you could suspend it in something solid, but then you have a new particulate matter in the fuel stream, that also has to burn fast enough to make the hydrogen useable...
I suppose folks could carry tanks of hydrogen with them, that they inject into the air intakes--but I understand that gaseous hydrogen is a storage problem as the molecules are smaller than the molecules of any container, so they will evaporate straight out of even "air-tight" containers. One of the reasons that we don't yet have fuel-cells. And if you have a tank of hydrogen, you have other issues like explosion etc that you wouldn't with this device. You can electrolyze the water for hydrogen moments before it's consumed, so the storage issues are minimal.
You can't increase the efficiency unless you convert some energy which would *otherwise be wasted* into hydrogen.
No, not quite. You can increase the efficiency if you convert any energy that would otherwise be wasted in excess of the cost to generate the hydrogen + conversion inefficiencies. If the proposal was to use the generator to create hydrogen, and the hydrogen was being consumed as a primary fuel source, of course you'd come out behind due to conversion inefficiencies.
Instead, this case uses hydrogen as a reactant to realize more energy from the diesel fuel that would otherwise go unburned out the tailpipe. Fortunately, that unburned fuel is also a pollutant--so by burning more of it, you not only get more power but also cleaner exhaust.
Essentially, it's like holding a match to kindling. By capturing the energy of the now-burning kindling, you receive more energy than it cost to produce the match in the first place, and the heat of the match itself is inconsequential (as is the energy that was required to produce it.)
That so much wasted energy was going out the tailpipes is a travesty, so it's great that someone has figured out how to capture more of it. I wonder how many other applications this would be useful--home heating by oil, for example? Jet engines? Assuming they have the most expensive unit (at $14K), and if they're saving $700/month, these units will pay for themselves in a little less than 2 years. I wonder if it does long term damage to the engine + cooling system by running hotter than it was designed to?
Seriously, three Xbox 360 articles on the front page? There's astroturfing, and then there's Slashtroturfing. Give it a rest, guys. I mean, who gives a shit?
Gaming is an interesting phenomenon, and I follow the market and read Penny-Arcade--but I don't need to see all this advertising for Microsoft's next attempt to win another market.
I expected SGI to do a reverse split and bring their stock back above the $1 mark. To save me the googling, can someone explain why a company would rather be de-listed than reverse split?
Also, I have some friends that work there. How many companies recoup after a de-listing? I would guess not many.
A couple hundred years later, we like to believe that the ideals expressed during the founding of the country are still important, so a complaint such as this is likely to appeal to a US citizen that has even the slightest knowledge of history.
Then I'm sure you'll be interested to know that DC residents are taxed according to the law of the land, yet they have no representation in Congress to disput that taxation. And it has always been thus, and regardless of our history it hasn't changed yet.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're doing decent digital video or audio even today chances are you're going to be using Firewire
Y. But check again in 3 years, and I think the options will have diminished. The telling will be if Apple releases the new Intel Macs without it. I think it's even money that they won't.
I choose Firewire if I can
I do too. But it's starting to feel like the option is harder to find.
Consider this example: The original iMac had no floppy drive and used USB ports instead of ADB.
An oft cited example, but I think a more crucial one was the use of 802.11b in the original iBook. That has also spread wildly.
One could argue that Jobs is good at spotting successful trends early, and directs his hardware development accordingly, rather than dictating the direction of the market, but who cares? Often technology you see in Macs today you see in PCs in 2 years.
That said, there's been a number of mis-steps, too, usually the tech that was developed in house at Apple eg FireWire. Disappointing that they don't even include it on their new iPods--does make one wonder if it's going away. Fewer and fewer peripherals bother to support it at all, now, in favor of USB 2.0. BlueTooth is another example--while widely supported on Macs, it just still kinda sucks when trying to find and use a non-Apple BT product. That trend has yet to take off.
what's the advantage of SSH over telnet?
Internal security matters too. If you have telnet enabled on your "behind the VPN server", local users could use telnet too, and be sniffed by others on the corp network.
So it's easier to make the policy "no telnet on servers", which has the downside of requiring double encryption for remote users--VPN and ssh both--but has the advantage of requiring all connections, even local ones, to be encrypted.
No one's checking my papers.
What makes you think you would be told if they were doing this? The PATRIOT act and FISA allow such surveillance to be done in secret, which means that you wouldn't be told. You might well be being monitored right this very minute; this very post may have gone into the "jav1231" file.
And you would simply never know.
In the absence of copyright law, what does 'proprietary' mean?
No source. I suppose you could hack on the binary all you want; knock yourself out. Smart vendors would tie their code to their stuff, so you couldn't run it without buying it.
Sure, sounds like a hefty fine. But IIRC the US also fined MSFT 1M a day during it's noncompliance period, and I don't believe they paid a penny of it. The outstanding bill will just become another negotiating point--likely along the lines of MSFT agreeing to concede to the other demands if the EU forgoes the fine.
So I wouldn't spend that money until it arrives.
As you say, it's interesting to consider the parts of AOL and Google that compete, but weren't covered by this agreement. Is there a chance that AOL will use an OSS browser IE FireFox or one of the -zillas? Will Mapquest and Google Maps still compete?
Although I confess that I'd like to see some synergy on these products, I think that unless their collaboration was specified that they'll continue to compete as they do now. The only merging that we'll see is in the product that was mentioned ie AIM/Gtalk; otherwise, we won't see AOL suddenly drop use of IE. And to hope for this coming about in the future just isn't really any more likely now.
OTOH, if Google bought AOL outright, that would be something. But this is, as currently written, just a strategic partnership, and only covers the areas explicitly specified. And may dissolve again at the end of its term with no more impact.
Hopefully USB really is universal in that one could use a high end non-Mac mouse in their Mac machine.
Indeed you can. You can always get at least the wheel and two buttons working; the ability to map the other buttons is not as given, but usually works too.
Personally, I use a Microsoft BlueTooth Intellimouse--and Mac users don't even need the BlueTooth dongle that comes with the mouse, as BT is now built into every Mac. Although it's not officially supported, I use all 5 buttons fine. The only sad thing is that there is no warning for when the batteries are going to die, like with the Apple BT keyboard.
In fact, I wouldn't be really surprised at all if Mac users made up a huge percentage of BT mice users (including eg the Microsoft mice, regardless of there being no support)--if you have to use a dongle with a PC, you may as well use an RF mouse. And I think most PCs still require a dongle for BT support.
"My printer won't print and gives an error of 'PC-Load Letter'. Can someone tell me please how to get my printer working?"
News for Nerds indeed. Someone please email me at relevancy@regained.com when this site no longer is worse than C-Net forums.
PS this question would have been marginally interesting if the OS in question was Linux. But as it is, please go ask your 13 year old kid how to keep windows running.
Setting up standard A/V equipment is a skill people need to have
No. No, it really isn't.
and only geeky people ever learn it properly. I can't tell you how many times people in the office need an IT person to setup the conference room projector for them.
Thank God for job security, right? And even better, it can't be outsourced to India.
Am I the only one here to realize that a study like this is actually a pointer to a huge market opportunity? I guess you'd have to convince folks that HD is worth paying a tech $50/hour to get it set up right, but they already dropped $1K+ on a HD TV, that that next pill shouldn't be too hard to swallow.
Personally, I'm waiting for a HD TiVO (or Imini-PVR) because time shifting is more important to me than image quality. That and I don't care to spend my new laptop budget on a new TV. So I don't really know what the fuss is about, other than to see this as the way TV content distributors are going to get you so dissatisfied with you current DRM-less media that you'll gladly take an asspounding DRM scheme.
Spec/price: RT5x2 with ten 500GB 7200 RPM drives, 9399.95--$.53/GB. FW800 instead of SFP Fibre; frankly I don't how that compares in terms of speed reliabiity.
vs Apples Xserve RAID: 14 500GB drives, $12999--also $.53/GB. I didn't delve into the specs to see if one has advantages over the other; for instance, there is on-site warranty support available for the Xserve RAID, but it admittedly costs more.
I suppose if you didn't have a rack and didn't want one, you'd prefer the wiebetch to the Xraid.
Lots of hard drives is fine as far as price goes, but they aren't an answer for long term storage. If anyone has an idea for storage in the 30 year range, I'd like to hear about it.
No one does, because, frankly, digital photography hasn't been around that long--so there are no solutions that were around in the 70s, that are now still working, to demonstrate that they are reliable over that kind of time period.
I think stacks of hard drives would suck, and could still fail on the shelf. I, like others above me, think you'd be best served by a RAID solution (not homebrew, but branded--I like Apple's and recommend if you currenlty use Apple gear, it'll hook right up to your G5 w/o need for a server). That'll protect your data for now, and be much more reliable than a stack of HDs--when one drive fails in a raid, you can replace it before all of the data on that drive is lost. Offload to tape for offsite storage or to "archive" your data and preserve the more recent photosets for instant recovery.
Will a RAID that you purchase today last for 30 years, provided you swap components as they fail? Nobody knows, since they haven't done it before. Even if you purchase a box from Dell or Apple, long as they've been around, they may not even be in business in 30 years to provide you with spare parts.
But with a hard drive based RAID, you can at least make a prettty painless transfer to the new solution that comes out every 5-7 years, or as finances and need permits.
Assuming you are willing to make the pre-existing G5 your file server, then yes, the "plus the cost of whatever server you hook it up to" goes to nothing.
If he is the only user, he doesn't need to operate it as a fileserver--in this case the Xserve RAID would serve as just a big external disk. Which could still be mounted anywhere he likes, not even in the same room, as he can connect to it via optical fibre with an adapter to the SFP of the Xraid.
Its not comperable to either of the above products for ease of setup
This guy is a photographer, which means two things: he'll have to pay someone to build this box for him, and if it breaks he needs to have it serviced the same day. The first case raises the price of your solution, and I don't know that the second requirement is available to him at all with your solution--although it is for any brand name RAID, inluding Apple's.
Folks who aren't in the busines of computers don't like to make it their business. Mechanics could build their own cars, too, but there's a good reason that the kit car isn't very common--regardless of the fact that it's cheaper.
The danger that a remake will face is that many of the elements that made the original
The message that we should challenge authority, that we have certain inalienable rights? I think it's no accident that there are unpopular wars occurring during the timing of the original and the remake.
You are #827305. I am the new #176043.
Will the new Prisoner have a /. episode, where the prisioner has a plan for escape, but it invovles the use of Windows so he's modded to -1 and no one hears about it?
But seriously--this is an interesting time for this to be discussed. I believe it comes from a desire to challenge the group-mind attitude that has led to our current state of politics, just as the first one did. Hopefully the massive suckage of this remake won't obscure that message, but that'll be pretty hard to do.
And not a very funny one.
Esp. because you're wrong. 500M EU is equal to about $584 US, today. We don't yet live in a world where the $ is stronger than the EU.
If you burn hydrogen in there it will consume some of the oxygen and leave less for the diesel to burn with.
Certainly.
Making the cylinder environment hotter will do nothing but get your hotter soot in this situation.
Only if soot is a product of the diesel running out of oxygen; I don't know that to be true. There may be plenty of oxygen in the cylinder, or you can adjust the mix to provide more oxygen.
Rather, I think it may be because the diesel takes longer to reach combustion temperature than it is allowed to remain in the cylinder. If this is the case--and that's an if--if you increase the temperature fast enough, you'll burn more of the otherwise unburnt fuel.
Incomplete combustion occurs because too much fuel is present per mass of air in the cylinder.
Ever have a campfire? Although you had unlimited air supply, why did you have unburned logs at the conclusion of it? Answer: because the material that didn't burn didn't reach the heat needed to combust. If you took a blowtorch to those remaining logs, you may be able to get another fire going, as the particulate that didn't reach it's combustion point the first time is burned off. With enough unburned logs, you might be able to get more energy back than the blowtorch uses. Same principal here.
At least in my view this entire system is bunk and the person interviewed must have some financial interest in the promotion of this product.
Or maybe he just knows what he's talking about, and doesn't draw conclusions from a single faulty premise.
i>How are they getting the hydrogen again?
Strangely, those answers are in TFA. Thx for proving yourself a loon.
When something sounds too good to be true, always look for what they skate around.
Or, look for failures of logic and/or math. Using your numbers, and the numbers of a reply to your post: his truck drives 4500 miles a week, and he gets about 7mpg (1200 miles on 175 gallons). 4500/7=640 gallons consumed a week; 2.75/gallon=$1767 in fuel per week.
Your numbers assumed that this device might allow for a 10% in fuel savings--that'd be $176/week, or x4=$707/month, or very close to what the article estimated the savings were--$700/month. On a $14K device, you'd make it back in 20 months or so-although I also question the consequences of running a (10%?) hotter engine for those kinds of periods ie does it stress the cooling system, or wear the engine components faster?
The only ones suggesting that there is some magic in the hydrogen didn't RTFA. It was pretty clear to me, at least, that the extra power/fuel savings isn't from the hydrogen burn itself, but that the energy released by that burn allowed otherwise unburned (and therefore uncaptured) exhaust particulate to be consumed.
When you go to light a fire with a match, you get more energy in return than what it took to produce the match; you burn the kindling. Here we have kindling flowing out the tailpipe because it wasn't ignited--so the hydrogen is just a match. You naysayers are forgetting that ICE aren't 100% efficient already--so this process raises the efficiency of the primary fuel source, which apparently it can do in greater gains than it took to produce the hydrogen in the first place.
My question, though, is why not just produce the hydrogen at a plant and enrich the diesel with it at the refinery?
Maybe the hydrogen would evaporate out too fast? It'd certainly float to the top of the fuel pretty fast, so you'd have to mix it constantly. Maybe you could suspend it in something solid, but then you have a new particulate matter in the fuel stream, that also has to burn fast enough to make the hydrogen useable...
I suppose folks could carry tanks of hydrogen with them, that they inject into the air intakes--but I understand that gaseous hydrogen is a storage problem as the molecules are smaller than the molecules of any container, so they will evaporate straight out of even "air-tight" containers. One of the reasons that we don't yet have fuel-cells. And if you have a tank of hydrogen, you have other issues like explosion etc that you wouldn't with this device. You can electrolyze the water for hydrogen moments before it's consumed, so the storage issues are minimal.
You can't increase the efficiency unless you convert some energy which would *otherwise be wasted* into hydrogen.
No, not quite. You can increase the efficiency if you convert any energy that would otherwise be wasted in excess of the cost to generate the hydrogen + conversion inefficiencies. If the proposal was to use the generator to create hydrogen, and the hydrogen was being consumed as a primary fuel source, of course you'd come out behind due to conversion inefficiencies.
Instead, this case uses hydrogen as a reactant to realize more energy from the diesel fuel that would otherwise go unburned out the tailpipe. Fortunately, that unburned fuel is also a pollutant--so by burning more of it, you not only get more power but also cleaner exhaust.
Essentially, it's like holding a match to kindling. By capturing the energy of the now-burning kindling, you receive more energy than it cost to produce the match in the first place, and the heat of the match itself is inconsequential (as is the energy that was required to produce it.)
That so much wasted energy was going out the tailpipes is a travesty, so it's great that someone has figured out how to capture more of it. I wonder how many other applications this would be useful--home heating by oil, for example? Jet engines? Assuming they have the most expensive unit (at $14K), and if they're saving $700/month, these units will pay for themselves in a little less than 2 years. I wonder if it does long term damage to the engine + cooling system by running hotter than it was designed to?
Seriously, three Xbox 360 articles on the front page? There's astroturfing, and then there's Slashtroturfing. Give it a rest, guys. I mean, who gives a shit?
Gaming is an interesting phenomenon, and I follow the market and read Penny-Arcade--but I don't need to see all this advertising for Microsoft's next attempt to win another market.
I expected SGI to do a reverse split and bring their stock back above the $1 mark. To save me the googling, can someone explain why a company would rather be de-listed than reverse split?
Also, I have some friends that work there. How many companies recoup after a de-listing? I would guess not many.
A couple hundred years later, we like to believe that the ideals expressed during the founding of the country are still important, so a complaint such as this is likely to appeal to a US citizen that has even the slightest knowledge of history.
Then I'm sure you'll be interested to know that DC residents are taxed according to the law of the land, yet they have no representation in Congress to disput that taxation. And it has always been thus, and regardless of our history it hasn't changed yet.