It's scary, really. Basically only 26% of those polled actually believed Darwin.
To me, it seems a bit odd that you chose that statistic. Consider the original report. It says:
Life on earth has: * Existed in it's present form from the beginning ot time: 42% * Evolved over time: 48% * Don't know: 10%
Granted, some people believe evolution was guided by God, but if they're Christians (and there are a lot of christians in the US), that seems like a fine way to reconcile scientific fact with thier beliefs.
What I thought was interesting was that a clear majority thought republicans were more likely to protect religious values while democrats were more likely to protect individual freedoms.... and the people who hold these views elected a republican president.
It's an interesting study, and I advise anyone interested to look at it.
Aren't you assuming there's one Katrina-sized hurricaine every year?
If there was only a Katrina (i.e. complete destruction of New Orleans) every 15 years, that would equate to 2100/15 = 140 square miles of destruction per season... and Katrina-sized disasters happen less than every 15 years.
My personal opinion, though, is that our political system/news media care much more about things that have happened than things that might happen.
It's a lot easier to justify expensive building works and law changes when you have proof of the problem on the news many times a year.
Likewise, when a problem only takes the form of some the-end-is-nigh academic reports, you can probably find some people who think the opposite, or that the risk is much lower, and you can end up doing nothing. 'Global warming' and 'peak oil' are examples of that.
Academics reports have been wrong in the past, and it's easy (though now clearly stupid) to say "New Orleans hasn't flooded in hundreds of years. Why would it start flooding now?"
With the level of support sent by the US to disasters around the world (like the Boxing Day Tsunami), I wonder if the rest of the world is trying to help the US now?
A quick Google News reveals this article: "By Friday, offers had been received from Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Belgium, Britain, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates."
Some of the more interesting offers include:
Venezuela - "apart from the million dollars in monetary assistance, Venezuela is offering two mobile hospital units, each capable of assisting 150 people, 120 specialists in rescue operations, 10 water purifying plants, 18 electricity generators of 850 KW each, 20 tons of bottled water, and 50 tons of canned food."
Cuba - "1,100 doctors and 26 tons of medicine and equipment."
France - "a range of aircraft and two ships, with helicopters and planes capable of airlifting tons of supplies, a disaster unit with 20 soldiers, a civil defense detachment of 35 people and an airborne emergency unit"
Germany - "medical evacuation planes and airlift field hospitals, water purification systems and portable shelters"
Of course, one could criticise these offers as oppertunistic publicity-seeking, but then the same could be said of political photo-ops like Bush 'comforting survivors'.
Bush told ABC-TV: "I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it."
That is the dumbest question I have ever seen on Slashdot.
I disagree.
We have the power to hold equipment to arbratry standards, and we use that power to ensure safety. For example, power plugs are required to have fuses - not for every day use, but for emergencies. Likewise, we design our medical equipment not to kill patients in the event of an emergency, we put earth bonding straps on cranes to keep people safe if someone accidentally hits the boom into a power line, and so on.
Why don't we expand our arbratry safety standards into the realm of radio telecommunications?
I'm no expert, but in discussions about cell tower cancer risks, one often hears that cell towers don't pump out a gigantic wattage - they just have good design, such as very high gain antennas. Compaines like APC will sell you rack-mounted datacenter UPS systems offering many hundreds of watt-hours of backup power. Backup generators are also commonplace.
If it's possible, why don't we simply say to cell providers "You are required to provide the capacity for 99% of your customers to make one ten-minute call within 3 hours of any major emergency" as a precondition for selling them radio licenses?
Does political mail look like spam? Oh God, yes. Again, no surprise that a Bayesian style filter might get confused.
Perhaps the sub was unclear. What I'm particularly interested in is ISPs blocking e-mail based on lists of spamvertised URLs.
It would be pretty trivial for an ISP employee to add arbitrary URLs to such lists. Someone in AOL's anti-spam department could stop AOL users receiving e-mails referencing www.anncoulter.com or www.michaelmoore.com.
The referenced article implies that this has happened:-
Now we hear that messages regarding the Downing Street memos have been blocked from Comcast.net customers (one of the largest high-speed cable internet providers in the U.S.), based on content of the message -- a URL -- rather than subject line or sender address or domain.
Now, I'll admit the blocking could have been done by a Bayesian filter seeing HTML e-mail, or might have been in response to genuine spamming. If that's the case, we'll call this discussion hypothetical.
The point is: If we allow ISPs to block e-mails based on content, how can we make sure abuse does not take place?
At the moment, we seem to be relying on the professionalism of administrators and abuse desk workers. Is this good enough?
"Partisan" spam filtering is a farce. What the hell could the ISP possibly gain by surpressing political viewpoints? It's a software fuckup.
I took the word 'partisan' from the referenced article; with retrospect, I agree it isn't the right word.
I agree that a 'software fuckup' is the most likely explanation for these isolated incidents, but I think it's pretty clear why an ISP (or ISP employee) might want to suppress political viewpoints: To influence the political process.
The British economy was improved almost immeasurably by the Thatcherite reforms (even if the attempted social reforms left something to be desired).
Thatcher wasn't the satan she is sometimes made out to be, but you can't deny that she was ousted when interest rates approached 15%, heavily undermining support from the Conservatives' middle class, home-owning typical supporters.
It's understandable in a way:- you say the economy was improved almost immeasurably, but for some reason it lead to high interest rates and high unemployment. Not a way to win votes.
Also, many of her reforms create mixed feelings - for instance she privatised British Telecom, which free marketeers would tell us should have lead to competition, low prices, and flawless service. I think quite a lot of people would say we don't have that!
it gives 'new' and 'now' capacity (mW hours), discharge rate and graph, anticipated time to fully discharge, and so on. Seems like exactly what the poster was looking for.
It seems somewhat odd that some outlets prominently reported "two confirmed dead" when "an unknown number of dead" would seem to be clearer (although I acknowledge the former doesn't exclude the possibility of unconfirmed dead).
We can be pretty well assured that there will be more than two deaths. The London Underground will have been jam-packed.
As I post this, it's about 5 hours since the explosions, and the TV report I just watched said of 100 people taken to hospital, all but a handful (barely out of single digits) have been released - and even those kept in have a good prognosis.
A BBC 'Security Expert' suggested the bombs may have been much less powerful than expected.
I don't have any information beyond the reports, but if 50 people had been killed, I'd be genuinely suprised.
If you ask me, 'it' should behave like a pointer to the last accessed* variable. Last mentioned thing 'bob' would mean 'it's' expands to 'bob's'.
That would be sensible.
With english being a 'living language' and all, I ignore the "correct" way of doing it and always do it my way. Well, that and I never think to do it the right way in spite of being told many times.
Cheers,
Michael
*I suspect this word should have less letters, but I can't decide which ones to remove...
That's broadly dictated by your provider; granted, a phone can emitt more power to improve the phone to tower SNR, but you can't do much about the tower-to-phone SNR, except putting up more towers.
-a long battery life
Mostly constrained by battery technology, but you can by larger 'long life' battery packs for some phones.
When someone invents better batteries, you can bet the cell phone, camera, laptop, MP3 player, electric car, etc companies will jump on it.
-the ability to survive repeatedly being dropped onto a hard surface from a height of about 5 feet -waterproofing might be nice
I regularly had to chase crackheads, as well as hookers with their Johns off of our back steps. We would regularly find people sleeping in our dumpster in the morning.
May I suggest some large, bright floodlights?
You could place them on PIR so they only activate when people come nearby.
Is it just me.. or does that statment sort of contradict itself. One of the main things I enjoy about Douglas Adams works is the humor.
Well, the 'not all that funny' criticism falls into two categories:
1) Removed jokes, for instance the planning permission on the bottom of a filing cabinet in a locked underground toilet with a sign saying 'beware of the leopard' on the door. This is justifiable in a way; it simply wouldn't be practical to put everything from the books into the film.
2) Dry humour delivered in silence. For instance, 'do you know how much damage would be caused to this bulldozer if I let it run over you? / No / None at all'. It's funny. But no-one is laughing. I don't know how to fix that; it might be a problem with the film medium for this type of humour. A laughter track, for instance, would be shite.
Soooooooo.... what's my opinion? Well, it's a competently made movie. It's well cast, it has decent graphics, it has it's amusing moments. I would classify it as 'ok to good'. I would have classified the book as 'good to very good, tending towards the latter'. So no, I didn't think it was as good as the book, but it was ok. Nothing like as bad as that first review on slashdot made out.
The reason a UPS will have a huge transformer is because it has to put out a 50 or 60Hz sine wave, and not DC. Transformers running at 60Hz need far more inductance than ones running at, say, 500kHz (a common frequency for switching power supplies).
You seem to know a lot about this; I'd like to pick your brains, if I could.
My question is: Could you make a switching supply to convert 12VDC to 120VDC then transform that to AC with Pulse Width Modulation (like in some AC motor controllers, I understand)?
Even switching adapters are usually off by half a volt or more, and regular transformer bricks are +/- 30% or more.
I wasn't aware voltage error was that high! Presumably that's for unregulated power supplies?
One would certainly expect such deviation from an unregulated supply (in Europe, the tolerences on the standard 230V AC are such that you can get 220 to 240 volts and still be within specification) but I'd have hoped regulated supplies would be more accurate!
As you suggested, I looked into switching power supplies - it's certainly interesting technology!
The reason I assumed a large transformer would be needed was from a UPS unit I repaired a few months ago. It was only about 3 years old, but it contained a transformer that was heavier than a house brick!
You're quite right, of course; for a multiway power supply like this a switched-mode power supply sounds like the way to go!
What you're asking for is technically possible, but would have several problems.
Firstly, setting the voltages would be awkward. By far the easiest thing would be to give the user a switch with settings for 12v, 9v, 6v, 5v and 3v. But there are plenty of peripherals that need voltages like 14.1v. So a switch is right out. You could have a control knob, but you'd need some way for the user to know when the voltage was correct. Then you get into the domain of voltage meters, LCD displays and digital controls. Everything gets really complex. Oh, and the unit has to have a cover or something, so you can't accidentally change voltage with your feet.
Second, plugging in wouldn't be very user-friendly. You'd have lots of identical cables coming from an identical unit. How would you know which one you'd set to what?
Third, what current would you want it to work at? Too low and the thing would be useless because you couldn't attatch everything to it. Too high and the unit becomes very heavy (since transformers have lots of metal in, and for a large current you'd need a large transformer). The final device could end up as large and heavy as the power supplies it replaces.
Fourth, unless the user was fairly knowledgable, every cable from the device would have to be the largest of the cables being replaced (in case that output was used for a high current) and also the longest (in case the device was far away).
Fifth, some devices have unusual/proprietry power connectors. The device would have to come with an assload of interchangable connectors. Mobile phone connectors could be particularly annoying.
etc. etc.
Anyway, my point is: This is possible electronically, but would be hard to make into a cheap, easy to use device.
Re:mirror of full article
on
The Bender PC Case
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Also, Coral Cache, in case no-one has submitted it yet.
Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I don't know what that line of the article means, but I'm making it my IRC quit anyway.
Except, if Moller's specs are even close to right, traveling with two or three people to some harder-to-get-to places will involve using much, much less fuel than you'd use in a road vehicle
When driving on a flat road ata constant speed, doesn't the lion's share of the fuel go on overcoming air resistance?
Admittedly, if this system eliminated the stopping and starting of town driving, that would enhance the mean efficency, and flying 'as the crow flies' instead of by windy roads would make routes shorter. But can flying above a freeway really be more efficent than cruising on the freeway at the same speed?
Slashdot Mirror
It's scary, really. Basically only 26% of those polled actually believed Darwin.
To me, it seems a bit odd that you chose that statistic. Consider the original report. It says:
Life on earth has:
* Existed in it's present form from the beginning ot time: 42%
* Evolved over time: 48%
* Don't know: 10%
Granted, some people believe evolution was guided by God, but if they're Christians (and there are a lot of christians in the US), that seems like a fine way to reconcile scientific fact with thier beliefs.
What I thought was interesting was that a clear majority thought republicans were more likely to protect religious values while democrats were more likely to protect individual freedoms.... and the people who hold these views elected a republican president.
It's an interesting study, and I advise anyone interested to look at it.
Michael
Aren't you assuming there's one Katrina-sized hurricaine every year?
If there was only a Katrina (i.e. complete destruction of New Orleans) every 15 years, that would equate to 2100/15 = 140 square miles of destruction per season... and Katrina-sized disasters happen less than every 15 years.
My personal opinion, though, is that our political system/news media care much more about things that have happened than things that might happen.
It's a lot easier to justify expensive building works and law changes when you have proof of the problem on the news many times a year.
Likewise, when a problem only takes the form of some the-end-is-nigh academic reports, you can probably find some people who think the opposite, or that the risk is much lower, and you can end up doing nothing. 'Global warming' and 'peak oil' are examples of that.
Academics reports have been wrong in the past, and it's easy (though now clearly stupid) to say "New Orleans hasn't flooded in hundreds of years. Why would it start flooding now?"
Just my $0.02,
Michael
Hurrah! I was worried I'd have to get rid of the Hummer H2 I use to drive to the office every day!
Anyone who likes economic disincentives towards buying peniscars is Un-American!
With the level of support sent by the US to disasters around the world (like the Boxing Day Tsunami), I wonder if the rest of the world is trying to help the US now?
A quick Google News reveals this article: "By Friday, offers had been received from Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Belgium, Britain, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates."
Some of the more interesting offers include:
Venezuela - "apart from the million dollars in monetary assistance, Venezuela is offering two mobile hospital units, each capable of assisting 150 people, 120 specialists in rescue operations, 10 water purifying plants, 18 electricity generators of 850 KW each, 20 tons of bottled water, and 50 tons of canned food."
Cuba - "1,100 doctors and 26 tons of medicine and equipment."
France - "a range of aircraft and two ships, with helicopters and planes capable of airlifting tons of supplies, a disaster unit with 20 soldiers, a civil defense detachment of 35 people and an airborne emergency unit"
Germany - "medical evacuation planes and airlift field hospitals, water purification systems and portable shelters"
Of course, one could criticise these offers as oppertunistic publicity-seeking, but then the same could be said of political photo-ops like Bush 'comforting survivors'.
Oddly enough, I found this quote in the washington post:
Bush told ABC-TV: "I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it."
Michael
That is the dumbest question I have ever seen on Slashdot.
I disagree.
We have the power to hold equipment to arbratry standards, and we use that power to ensure safety. For example, power plugs are required to have fuses - not for every day use, but for emergencies. Likewise, we design our medical equipment not to kill patients in the event of an emergency, we put earth bonding straps on cranes to keep people safe if someone accidentally hits the boom into a power line, and so on.
Why don't we expand our arbratry safety standards into the realm of radio telecommunications?
I'm no expert, but in discussions about cell tower cancer risks, one often hears that cell towers don't pump out a gigantic wattage - they just have good design, such as very high gain antennas. Compaines like APC will sell you rack-mounted datacenter UPS systems offering many hundreds of watt-hours of backup power. Backup generators are also commonplace.
If it's possible, why don't we simply say to cell providers "You are required to provide the capacity for 99% of your customers to make one ten-minute call within 3 hours of any major emergency" as a precondition for selling them radio licenses?
Just my $0.02,
Michael
Does political mail look like spam? Oh God, yes. Again, no surprise that a Bayesian style filter might get confused.
Perhaps the sub was unclear. What I'm particularly interested in is ISPs blocking e-mail based on lists of spamvertised URLs.
It would be pretty trivial for an ISP employee to add arbitrary URLs to such lists. Someone in AOL's anti-spam department could stop AOL users receiving e-mails referencing www.anncoulter.com or www.michaelmoore.com.
The referenced article implies that this has happened:-
Now we hear that messages regarding the Downing Street memos have been blocked from Comcast.net customers (one of the largest high-speed cable internet providers in the U.S.), based on content of the message -- a URL -- rather than subject line or sender address or domain.
Now, I'll admit the blocking could have been done by a Bayesian filter seeing HTML e-mail, or might have been in response to genuine spamming. If that's the case, we'll call this discussion hypothetical.
The point is: If we allow ISPs to block e-mails based on content, how can we make sure abuse does not take place?
At the moment, we seem to be relying on the professionalism of administrators and abuse desk workers. Is this good enough?
"Partisan" spam filtering is a farce. What the hell could the ISP possibly gain by surpressing political viewpoints? It's a software fuckup.
I took the word 'partisan' from the referenced article; with retrospect, I agree it isn't the right word.
I agree that a 'software fuckup' is the most likely explanation for these isolated incidents, but I think it's pretty clear why an ISP (or ISP employee) might want to suppress political viewpoints: To influence the political process.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
The British economy was improved almost immeasurably by the Thatcherite reforms (even if the attempted social reforms left something to be desired).
Thatcher wasn't the satan she is sometimes made out to be, but you can't deny that she was ousted when interest rates approached 15%, heavily undermining support from the Conservatives' middle class, home-owning typical supporters.
It's understandable in a way:- you say the economy was improved almost immeasurably, but for some reason it lead to high interest rates and high unemployment. Not a way to win votes.
Also, many of her reforms create mixed feelings - for instance she privatised British Telecom, which free marketeers would tell us should have lead to competition, low prices, and flawless service. I think quite a lot of people would say we don't have that!
Michael
I'd second this, having used the software. Check out the screenshots:
t .htm
http://www.passmark.com/products/batmon_screensho
it gives 'new' and 'now' capacity (mW hours), discharge rate and graph, anticipated time to fully discharge, and so on. Seems like exactly what the poster was looking for.
Michael
Pretty much.
The BBC is currently saying 33 plus an unknown number of people on the bus.
It seems somewhat odd that some outlets prominently reported "two confirmed dead" when "an unknown number of dead" would seem to be clearer (although I acknowledge the former doesn't exclude the possibility of unconfirmed dead).
We can be pretty well assured that there will be more than two deaths. The London Underground will have been jam-packed.
As I post this, it's about 5 hours since the explosions, and the TV report I just watched said of 100 people taken to hospital, all but a handful (barely out of single digits) have been released - and even those kept in have a good prognosis.
A BBC 'Security Expert' suggested the bombs may have been much less powerful than expected.
I don't have any information beyond the reports, but if 50 people had been killed, I'd be genuinely suprised.
Michael
If you ask me, 'it' should behave like a pointer to the last accessed* variable. Last mentioned thing 'bob' would mean 'it's' expands to 'bob's'.
That would be sensible.
With english being a 'living language' and all, I ignore the "correct" way of doing it and always do it my way. Well, that and I never think to do it the right way in spite of being told many times.
Cheers,
Michael
*I suspect this word should have less letters, but I can't decide which ones to remove...
Lets expand that, ahall we... It's = It is (contracted form)
So, does "The dog's ball" expand to "The dog is ball"?
Michael
-a good strong signal that won't drop calls
That's broadly dictated by your provider; granted, a phone can emitt more power to improve the phone to tower SNR, but you can't do much about the tower-to-phone SNR, except putting up more towers.
-a long battery life
Mostly constrained by battery technology, but you can by larger 'long life' battery packs for some phones.
When someone invents better batteries, you can bet the cell phone, camera, laptop, MP3 player, electric car, etc companies will jump on it.
-the ability to survive repeatedly being dropped onto a hard surface from a height of about 5 feet
-waterproofing might be nice
Google and ye shall find.
Michael
"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it." -- Robert E. Lee
Could be useful for Slashdot then
Well, I'm sure pleased with the Slashdot Recolour script...
Michael
Calling the UK "England" is both offensive and ignorant.
I'm Welsh, and I'd jsut like to say I disagree with the parent; it's ignorant, sure, but it's not offensive. It's just ignorant.
Michael
Well, we can get DNSBLs that will block China, Korea, Nigeria, Argintina and Brazil. When will one be availiable to block all mail from the US?
Michael
I regularly had to chase crackheads, as well as hookers with their Johns off of our back steps. We would regularly find people sleeping in our dumpster in the morning.
May I suggest some large, bright floodlights?
You could place them on PIR so they only activate when people come nearby.
The people in my theater laughed at that. Not sure what you expected.
I'm not sure what I expected either. But that no-one in my theater laughed is a statement of fact.
Is it just me .. or does that statment sort of contradict itself.
One of the main things I enjoy about Douglas Adams works is the humor.
Well, the 'not all that funny' criticism falls into two categories:
1) Removed jokes, for instance the planning permission on the bottom of a filing cabinet in a locked underground toilet with a sign saying 'beware of the leopard' on the door. This is justifiable in a way; it simply wouldn't be practical to put everything from the books into the film.
2) Dry humour delivered in silence. For instance, 'do you know how much damage would be caused to this bulldozer if I let it run over you? / No / None at all'. It's funny. But no-one is laughing. I don't know how to fix that; it might be a problem with the film medium for this type of humour. A laughter track, for instance, would be shite.
Soooooooo.... what's my opinion? Well, it's a competently made movie. It's well cast, it has decent graphics, it has it's amusing moments. I would classify it as 'ok to good'. I would have classified the book as 'good to very good, tending towards the latter'. So no, I didn't think it was as good as the book, but it was ok. Nothing like as bad as that first review on slashdot made out.
7 out of 10 from me.
Michael
The reason a UPS will have a huge transformer is because it has to put out a 50 or 60Hz sine wave, and not DC. Transformers running at 60Hz need far more inductance than ones running at, say, 500kHz (a common frequency for switching power supplies).
You seem to know a lot about this; I'd like to pick your brains, if I could.
My question is: Could you make a switching supply to convert 12VDC to 120VDC then transform that to AC with Pulse Width Modulation (like in some AC motor controllers, I understand)?
Cheers,
Michael
Even switching adapters are usually off by half a volt or more, and regular transformer bricks are +/- 30% or more.
I wasn't aware voltage error was that high! Presumably that's for unregulated power supplies?
One would certainly expect such deviation from an unregulated supply (in Europe, the tolerences on the standard 230V AC are such that you can get 220 to 240 volts and still be within specification) but I'd have hoped regulated supplies would be more accurate!
As you suggested, I looked into switching power supplies - it's certainly interesting technology!
The reason I assumed a large transformer would be needed was from a UPS unit I repaired a few months ago. It was only about 3 years old, but it contained a transformer that was heavier than a house brick!
You're quite right, of course; for a multiway power supply like this a switched-mode power supply sounds like the way to go!
Cheers,
Michael
What you're asking for is technically possible, but would have several problems.
Firstly, setting the voltages would be awkward. By far the easiest thing would be to give the user a switch with settings for 12v, 9v, 6v, 5v and 3v. But there are plenty of peripherals that need voltages like 14.1v. So a switch is right out. You could have a control knob, but you'd need some way for the user to know when the voltage was correct. Then you get into the domain of voltage meters, LCD displays and digital controls. Everything gets really complex. Oh, and the unit has to have a cover or something, so you can't accidentally change voltage with your feet.
Second, plugging in wouldn't be very user-friendly. You'd have lots of identical cables coming from an identical unit. How would you know which one you'd set to what?
Third, what current would you want it to work at? Too low and the thing would be useless because you couldn't attatch everything to it. Too high and the unit becomes very heavy (since transformers have lots of metal in, and for a large current you'd need a large transformer). The final device could end up as large and heavy as the power supplies it replaces.
Fourth, unless the user was fairly knowledgable, every cable from the device would have to be the largest of the cables being replaced (in case that output was used for a high current) and also the longest (in case the device was far away).
Fifth, some devices have unusual/proprietry power connectors. The device would have to come with an assload of interchangable connectors. Mobile phone connectors could be particularly annoying.
etc. etc.
Anyway, my point is: This is possible electronically, but would be hard to make into a cheap, easy to use device.
Also, Coral Cache, in case no-one has submitted it yet.
Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I don't know what that line of the article means, but I'm making it my IRC quit anyway.
Michael
Except, if Moller's specs are even close to right, traveling with two or three people to some harder-to-get-to places will involve using much, much less fuel than you'd use in a road vehicle
When driving on a flat road ata constant speed, doesn't the lion's share of the fuel go on overcoming air resistance?
Admittedly, if this system eliminated the stopping and starting of town driving, that would enhance the mean efficency, and flying 'as the crow flies' instead of by windy roads would make routes shorter. But can flying above a freeway really be more efficent than cruising on the freeway at the same speed?
Just my $0.02,
Michael