The change in pressure won't effect the volume of the coolant (assuming it is water.) Only a gas coolant would be effected. This does however effect the boots used by the Canadian military. Their winder boots have a pocket of air to help insulate them. They have a little air valve on their side that needs to be opened so that the boots don't explode during air transport.
By the way, if anyone ever needs some very warm, durable boots - check out an army surplus store. The only commercial boots that even come close are in the $300 range and aren't as durable. The military has some damn nice equipment...
Check out accelerateyourmac.com to find out how to overclock the iBook to 600 MHz at a 100MHz system bus. It appears to be very successful as Apple can't ship over 500MHz units for political reasons - they can't outdo their TiBook. As it stands, the iBook already comes with 100MHz memory - just ripe for some overclocking. Combine this with the fact that G3s can run at much higher speeds then the G4s used in the TiBook (just look at the 700MHz iMacs) and overclocking isn't as bad as it first sounds.
The guy that overclocked his iBook noted higher temperatures (of course) but they were well within CPU specs. However, because he also lowered the power-saving speed to 300MHz he found that battery life actually increased. Sounds very cool..
Really? When Intel did the same thing with the P4, everybody laughed and sniggered at them.
That's because Intel went from 12 in the PIII to 20 in the P4 (a 66% increase). At the same time, they went from 1GHz to 1.4GHz (a 40% increase.) So Intel increases the pipeline by 66% and only increases the MHz by 40% - that's why people laughed. Motorola, if they pull it off, will lengthen the pipeline by 43% and the MHz by 100%. See the difference?
In nearly every multistory building today, ventilator systems have to keep the higher floors from getting too warm because heat rises. A system should be designed to take the warm air from all the floors and pass it through turbines before it exits the roof....... it would save some electricity costs.
Placing a turbine in the flow of the hot air would just slow it down. In order to compensate for this you would have to apply even more power into the intake fans blowing cool air into the buildings. Because the motors and power systems aren't 100% efficient, the total efficiency goes down and you consume even more power.
You store the generated energy and re-sell it, or re-use it later on... Ok, so I'm not being realistic..
In reality you wouldn't store the power. Batteries are too damn expensive and it's far easier to just put it back on "the grid" and watch the power meter run backwards.
Willy
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 2
This should help with hijacked aircraft:
Have an emergency button placed in the cockpit that, it pushed, would put the plane into autopilot mode and prevented the pilot from being able to do anything. The plane could just go in circles until a pilot located on the ground in a aircraft simulator could take control of the aircraft and safely land it. If for some reason the button was accidentally pressed, the ground control could release the lock on the controls to re-enable the pilots to pilot the aircraft. It wouldn't stop the aircraft from being hijacked but at least the planes wouldn't get piloted into densly populated locations.
Well if the transister is switching 40x faster then you should be producing 1/40 of the heat (heat created depends on switching time and voltage - less time + less voltage = less heat.) This of course only counts if you're running at the same MHz and using the same type of material - they're not.
I would actually also be quite interested in the heat produced. I assume it would be higher - thus, you're not going to see them making any PPC chips out of these. However, the communication industry could benefit greatly from such devices (ie, small, simple, but very very fast.)
This all looks great but shouldn't effect the computer industry much. However, I'd still like to see Motorola's product catalog in a few years.
Apple will also be pushing into this realm very soon - they've already, with 1394 and iMovie, have pushed themselves into the home consumer market. Once OSX matures, they should finally have a great OS to market. Combine this with the fact that the 64bit G5 is due out early next year and that Steve Jobs runs both Apple and Pixar...... See the potential?
The real problem is of course that Apple doesn't have any hardware that's up to the challenge. They need some good rack-mount servers similar to those that IBM sell. Rumors of these servers exist and should they be true, Apple will finally have what it needs to become a player in this industry.
There are still lots of "if"s but regardless, I'd like to see SGI, IBM, and Apple all fighing for this market. It should produce some great products...
Very few people know much about global warming. But, when the the average temperature goes up so much that it starts to seriously effect people (forest fires - farmland turning to desert in America - skin cancer - the list goes on) people will believe.
Lets face it, most people follow the "see no evil - hear no evil -- well I guess there's no evil" philosophy. Aids didn't even get recognized as a problem until started effecting the general population. When the problem is clearly visible and starts costing us money then people will believe. Too bad we have to wait for it to become a problem before doing something about it.
This really shows how having an open source OS truely rocks. You are not tied down by only one type of CPU - no, open source gives you choice.
The PowerPC chips are vastly supperior to Intel when it comes to portable applications. They give lots of power while consuming under 5watts. There are also lots of other really cool chips out there (like ARM) that just don't make it into laptops because Windows only runs on Intel.
Now if you look at the iBook and you see that Apple made a pretty damn good laptop. They could do this because they don't have to worry as much about cooling or battery drain. Intel notebooks - dispite being well designed - have that CPU handicap which results in larger, heavier notebooks that don't last as long on a charge. Crusoe chips sound promising but they're still a hack and you'll get more performance/power-drain from a smarter design - like ARM. But this requires that your software be re-compiled for the new CPU architecture. Linux allows this... Linux rocks!!!!
I've been using 1394 for a short while (CDRW drive) and I have to say it works great. I don't know if the sony OS in the playstation supports hard drives over the 1394 bus but if it does then adding a hard drive will be trivial. There are even some smaller drives on the market now that can draw their power from the 1394 bus thus not requiring an external power source. Such a drive would be just as easy to install as a controller. The hardware infostructure is there with the PS2 - Sony just needs to enable it in the software.
The hard drive might run quietly but it won't last. I've worked on several "servers" made from cheap PC cases but upgraded to SCSI drives and they just don't last. The cases aren't built for it and they get too hot. I remember one server, after 8 months I did a hardware upgrade (added a wireless card) and the hard drive wouldn't spin up again. And that wasn't the only time I've had a hard drive refuse to spin up after under a year of use.
The moral of the story - the cooler you keep your hard drive the longer it will last. That's why server cases put fans over the hard drives. The Apple G3/G4 pro cases also circulate air around the hard drives. Putting your hard drive in a "quiet" case and then removing it's one source of cooling is just plain stupid. They'll learn in time..
Take a processor. It hits a branch instruction. While it is working out whether or not to take the branch, it keeps itself busy by executing instructions from one side or other of the branch. It gets it wrong, so when it realizes this, it throws away a bunch of work it has done. Hence branch misprediction it a Bad thing.
One thing that you forgot - it takes more time to go back and run the other branch if there is a longer pipeline. Hence, a CPU with a long pipeline will sit there idle as the data makes it's way through the pipeline.
To better visualize how a pipeline works I like to think of this little analogy:
Have a line of people passing buckets of water from a well to a burning house. Given that every person works at a given speed, it requires them a defined amount of time to move the water from one person to the next. The more people present, the smaller the distance required to move the water. This allows them to move more buckets in the same amount of time (or operate at a higher frequency - just like the P4.) The problem is it takes longer for the water to actually get to the fire (assuming 20 vs 10 people working at the same frequency.) Now lets say there are two different kinds of water (a very hypothetical situation.) Should the wrong type of water be sent and arrive at the house, the guy at the house would have to tell the guy at the well to send over the correct type of water. Now with more guys in between the two, it'll take longer for the correct water to get to the house. While the water is in transit - the guy at the house sits wasting his time.
So as you can see - more people increases the potential speed. The speed determines the volume of water being sent. This is great but if the wrong thing is sent it takes a long time because the correct "thing" has to travel through the enlarged pipeline.
A long pipeline is great if you're running code that doesn't have a pile of "branch if" instructions in it. Performing an "add" on every byte in a 4MB file (think Photoshop) will result in very efficient use of the CPU. However, if you're running code with lots of "if then" statements then you run the risk of wasting a great deal of CPU time. This is where a smaller pipeline helps (or should I say doesn't cause as much damage.)
The other big problem with a large pipeline is that it greatly increases the complexity of the chip design. More transisters result in the components of the CPU getting spread further apart - hence you need an even longer pipeline (think of the buring house example - the house just moved an extra block away from the well.)
Overall, chips with smaller pipelines offer far greater efficiency. Look at a G3 PPC CPU. It has a 4 stage pipeline. Because of this it maxes out at 700MHz but it is faster then a PIII when comparing MHz to MHz. All this and it's a third of the die size and typically uses only 5Watts. You can also look at the Alpha with it's 7 stage pipeline. It might not operate as fast (MHz) as todays P4s or Athlons but it still offers incredible performance.
The real advantage of the P4 will come with multimedia type applications. The problem is that it will quickly max out the memory bandwith. Now take an Athlon - it might not be quite as good for those same apps but so long as it can also max out memory bandwith you're not going to see a difference. As John Cormack (did I spell that right?) said in a receint/. posting - the new G4 is great but the main problem is memory bandwith. As CPUs double in speed this will become an even greater problem.
But does going to the x86 mean support for commodity hardware? If it were to ever happen I think Apple would make a "special" design - possibly with a ROM? - to prevent direct competition with Microsoft.
Now I'm not saying you're wrong - in fact you're probably right. I'm just saying that where there's a will there is a way and if the PowerPC flounders Apple will find a way to make it work.
All the government is doing is ensuring that every town and community has access to high-speed internet. Especially schools, hospitals, and other facilities associated with the government. It's to ensure that even those living in Tuktoyaktuk (yes, it really exists - Hole and Metalica actually had a concert up there a few years ago) will have the same access to educational material as those living in the capital. It's to ensure that growing up in a small community doesn't limit your potential. It's about equality and equal opportunity - and in that aspect is just like our medial system.
Apple laptops don't really need 2 PCMCIA slots
on
nVidia nForce
·
· Score: 1
Apple lost me as a customer when they decided not to put a PCMCIA/Cardbus slot on the iBook and only put one (not two) such slot in the PBG4. Both 'books may have the goodies I want now, but down the road I may be interested in a better modem, gigE, 10gigE, or something else and will be totally out of luck with no (or only one) card slot.
I agree that most PC laptops have more expansion options. However, very few people will ever use them. Modem speeds will not see any more big improvements. GigE is only really realistic for servers or possibly a net-boot computer - 100mBit or 400mBit 1394 is fast enough for all but the most demanding tasks - tasks not suited for a notebook in the first place. When one requires 10gigE I think it's safe to say that your laptop will have already been replaced.
The one thing all Apple notebooks have right now is a 400mBit 1394 connection. Damn they're great. Get an external IDE case and you can connect any IDE device (@~45MBytes/sec with the new 911 chipset) without rebooting. Connecting a CDRW or extenal HD has never been easier. Kudos to Sony for also including 1394 in most of their laptops.
With 1394, USB, Ethernet, Video out, and bulit in wireless slots I can think of very few reasons why even an iBook would ever require another expansion port. Seriously, everything is already included. Those that require SCSI or somethink like that can always use a 1394/SCSI converter. Now if you are one of the few people that can make use of a PCMCIA port that there is always the Ti Book. But will you really require 2 ports? It's hard enough as is to even use one.
I really like OSX so I'm unfortunately bound to Apple hardware. Fortunatly, features I find valuable in a system are present in most Apple systems (except cost.;)) I like their lack of noise, intelligent design, quality construction, and great OS/hardware support for power saving features. Even John Carmack has made a few posts here on/. regarding their quality hardware. CPU speeds may suck but then that has little to do with Apple and a lot to do with Motorola.
> No, don't do this. When the fan breaks it allows +12V to flow directly into sensitive +5V components. This destroys at least the motherboard and most likely some of the expansion cards.
So if we leave it at GND then when the fan breaks we get GND being pulled up to 12v??? I don't think so. Assuming the fan actually shorts out (worst possible situation), the worst that would happen is that the 12v supply would be pulled down to 5v. The 5v supply might jump a bit but the switching power supply would quickly detect the change in voltage and compensate for the change before any real voltage increase could occur.
Vector instructions can be used for many applications that you might not first think of. For example, check out this link to Stepwise.com for a good explanation on how altivec can be used to speed string comparisons.
What these benchmarks really show is that the gcc compilers for 80x86 are vastly superior to those for PowerPC. It also shows how the majority of Linux (kernel and user space apps) is un-optimized for PowerPC. It doesn't mean that PowerPC is slow - just that it's full potential isn't being taken advantage of. A more usefull comparison would be to compare binaries compiled with CodeWarrior. I'm sure a 1.2GHz Athlon would still kill any PowerPC but not to the same extent these benchmarks show.
One of the big bitches of electric cars is (besides battery life) the poor power/weight ratio of the electric engine against the gas (petrol) engine. Also, even more damning, is the relative reliability of the gas engine. What we really need are people putting alot more effort into making a better, lightweight electric engine.
There are lots of lightweight electric engines out there. Typically, they have them on airplanes. The only real difference with them is that they opperate at a higher frequency - hence requiring fewer coils (assuming it's an AC engine.) The only reason why most AC engines are so big is because they have to opperate at 60Hz to be compatable with their power source. If you looked at the specs for that new Honda hybrid, I wouldn't be suprised to see that the electric engine is significantly lighter then the gas engine.
I still don't see how gas engines are reliable. Electric engines have three main points of failure - the berrings, the electronics controlling the frequency, and the insulation between coils. Now gas engines have both berrings and electronics. While they don't have to worry about insulation, they also have another 100 or so possible points of failure. And look at how much easier it is to maintain an electric engine - grease the berrings. That's it - no filters to change or fluids to check. Electric engines are far more reliable then their gas counterparts.
In a nutshell (or a pinecone): it doesn't seem that increasedw forest growth will "cancel" out increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
And even if it did it would just give us more wood to harvest and eventually convert back to CO2. Sorry, but the only way to lower CO2 levels is to stop harvesting oil and then convert some "harvested" land back into forest.
It's really quite simple, as we harvest oil we take carbon that was nicely stored in the earth's crust and place it into our atmosphere. The atmosphere's current carbon to oxygen ratio is now being altered. While trees will help by stripping out some of that carbon, it's a temporary solution. The carbon will be released either when the wood rots or gets burned.
Another important fact is that the vast majority (>60%) of photo-synthesis takes place in the ocean. How great an effect do pine trees actually have on global CO2 levels? Doesn't sound too relevant to me. The effects of additional CO2 as they pertain to our oceans sounds much more interesting.
"A friend" of mine just tried this on a local server and found that it doesn't reboot the web server - or if it does it doesn't always come back. Expected 10 seconds of downtime but instead the server responds with an "error -3108".
Woops.... Hope they get it running again soon. "He" never would have done it had "he" known this was going to happen. But regardless, this exploit can most definately deny service to users. (Just check out www.ncix.com - they're down as I write this. I bet "my friend" will think twice before testing any other servers.)
If you design a router based on xxxx microcontroller then release the entire source code it makes it very easy to copy. A competing company could take your source, make a few changes for their specific hardware (not many if based on the same microcontroller) and then they have a competing product that is just as good for a faction of the R&D costs.
Then you have to also worry about actually adhering to the GPL. It's not that it's that expensive to do, just a big pain in the butt. The fact that you even have to think about it is reason enough for many people to avoid it. Why worry about it when BSD is available.
I'm sure that this is one of the main reasons why Apple went with BSD and Mach - they don't _have_ to release any source code. They also don't have to worry about people accusing them of holding back GPLed code or anything like that. It saves them from a lot of potential headaches. The fact that they have contributed back with Darwin is very surprising - and appreciated.
Intel made money of that purchase. They might not have made the silicon but they still own patents on USB. My point was why would a company pay patent fees to Intel when they could pay them to the 1394 consortium. Risk it on USB 2.0 or go with an already-present and standardized 1394. Going with 1394 is the less risky, more sensible decision. If it were the other way around you would already see license deals for USB 2.0 - have you seen any? They might exist but I can't find any - however 1394 deals are quite plentiful.
Oh yes, everyone supports the original USB because there is no competing technology. Not so for USB 2.0.
Slashdot Mirror
The east says "eh", the west sounds just like Seattle.
The change in pressure won't effect the volume of the coolant (assuming it is water.) Only a gas coolant would be effected. This does however effect the boots used by the Canadian military. Their winder boots have a pocket of air to help insulate them. They have a little air valve on their side that needs to be opened so that the boots don't explode during air transport.
By the way, if anyone ever needs some very warm, durable boots - check out an army surplus store. The only commercial boots that even come close are in the $300 range and aren't as durable. The military has some damn nice equipment...
The guy that overclocked his iBook noted higher temperatures (of course) but they were well within CPU specs. However, because he also lowered the power-saving speed to 300MHz he found that battery life actually increased. Sounds very cool..
Willy
That's because Intel went from 12 in the PIII to 20 in the P4 (a 66% increase). At the same time, they went from 1GHz to 1.4GHz (a 40% increase.) So Intel increases the pipeline by 66% and only increases the MHz by 40% - that's why people laughed. Motorola, if they pull it off, will lengthen the pipeline by 43% and the MHz by 100%. See the difference?
Willy
Placing a turbine in the flow of the hot air would just slow it down. In order to compensate for this you would have to apply even more power into the intake fans blowing cool air into the buildings. Because the motors and power systems aren't 100% efficient, the total efficiency goes down and you consume even more power.
Willy
In reality you wouldn't store the power. Batteries are too damn expensive and it's far easier to just put it back on "the grid" and watch the power meter run backwards.
Willy
Have an emergency button placed in the cockpit that, it pushed, would put the plane into autopilot mode and prevented the pilot from being able to do anything. The plane could just go in circles until a pilot located on the ground in a aircraft simulator could take control of the aircraft and safely land it. If for some reason the button was accidentally pressed, the ground control could release the lock on the controls to re-enable the pilots to pilot the aircraft. It wouldn't stop the aircraft from being hijacked but at least the planes wouldn't get piloted into densly populated locations.
Willy
I would actually also be quite interested in the heat produced. I assume it would be higher - thus, you're not going to see them making any PPC chips out of these. However, the communication industry could benefit greatly from such devices (ie, small, simple, but very very fast.)
This all looks great but shouldn't effect the computer industry much. However, I'd still like to see Motorola's product catalog in a few years.
Willy
The real problem is of course that Apple doesn't have any hardware that's up to the challenge. They need some good rack-mount servers similar to those that IBM sell. Rumors of these servers exist and should they be true, Apple will finally have what it needs to become a player in this industry.
There are still lots of "if"s but regardless, I'd like to see SGI, IBM, and Apple all fighing for this market. It should produce some great products...
Willy
Willy
Lets face it, most people follow the "see no evil - hear no evil -- well I guess there's no evil" philosophy. Aids didn't even get recognized as a problem until started effecting the general population. When the problem is clearly visible and starts costing us money then people will believe. Too bad we have to wait for it to become a problem before doing something about it.
Willy
The PowerPC chips are vastly supperior to Intel when it comes to portable applications. They give lots of power while consuming under 5watts. There are also lots of other really cool chips out there (like ARM) that just don't make it into laptops because Windows only runs on Intel.
Now if you look at the iBook and you see that Apple made a pretty damn good laptop. They could do this because they don't have to worry as much about cooling or battery drain. Intel notebooks - dispite being well designed - have that CPU handicap which results in larger, heavier notebooks that don't last as long on a charge. Crusoe chips sound promising but they're still a hack and you'll get more performance/power-drain from a smarter design - like ARM. But this requires that your software be re-compiled for the new CPU architecture. Linux allows this... Linux rocks!!!!
Willy
Willy
The moral of the story - the cooler you keep your hard drive the longer it will last. That's why server cases put fans over the hard drives. The Apple G3/G4 pro cases also circulate air around the hard drives. Putting your hard drive in a "quiet" case and then removing it's one source of cooling is just plain stupid. They'll learn in time..
Willy
One thing that you forgot - it takes more time to go back and run the other branch if there is a longer pipeline. Hence, a CPU with a long pipeline will sit there idle as the data makes it's way through the pipeline.
To better visualize how a pipeline works I like to think of this little analogy:
Have a line of people passing buckets of water from a well to a burning house. Given that every person works at a given speed, it requires them a defined amount of time to move the water from one person to the next. The more people present, the smaller the distance required to move the water. This allows them to move more buckets in the same amount of time (or operate at a higher frequency - just like the P4.) The problem is it takes longer for the water to actually get to the fire (assuming 20 vs 10 people working at the same frequency.) Now lets say there are two different kinds of water (a very hypothetical situation.) Should the wrong type of water be sent and arrive at the house, the guy at the house would have to tell the guy at the well to send over the correct type of water. Now with more guys in between the two, it'll take longer for the correct water to get to the house. While the water is in transit - the guy at the house sits wasting his time.
So as you can see - more people increases the potential speed. The speed determines the volume of water being sent. This is great but if the wrong thing is sent it takes a long time because the correct "thing" has to travel through the enlarged pipeline.
A long pipeline is great if you're running code that doesn't have a pile of "branch if" instructions in it. Performing an "add" on every byte in a 4MB file (think Photoshop) will result in very efficient use of the CPU. However, if you're running code with lots of "if then" statements then you run the risk of wasting a great deal of CPU time. This is where a smaller pipeline helps (or should I say doesn't cause as much damage.)
The other big problem with a large pipeline is that it greatly increases the complexity of the chip design. More transisters result in the components of the CPU getting spread further apart - hence you need an even longer pipeline (think of the buring house example - the house just moved an extra block away from the well.)
Overall, chips with smaller pipelines offer far greater efficiency. Look at a G3 PPC CPU. It has a 4 stage pipeline. Because of this it maxes out at 700MHz but it is faster then a PIII when comparing MHz to MHz. All this and it's a third of the die size and typically uses only 5Watts. You can also look at the Alpha with it's 7 stage pipeline. It might not operate as fast (MHz) as todays P4s or Athlons but it still offers incredible performance.
The real advantage of the P4 will come with multimedia type applications. The problem is that it will quickly max out the memory bandwith. Now take an Athlon - it might not be quite as good for those same apps but so long as it can also max out memory bandwith you're not going to see a difference. As John Cormack (did I spell that right?) said in a receint /. posting - the new G4 is great but the main problem is memory bandwith. As CPUs double in speed this will become an even greater problem.
Willy
Now I'm not saying you're wrong - in fact you're probably right. I'm just saying that where there's a will there is a way and if the PowerPC flounders Apple will find a way to make it work.
Very unlikely but still possible...
Willy
All the government is doing is ensuring that every town and community has access to high-speed internet. Especially schools, hospitals, and other facilities associated with the government. It's to ensure that even those living in Tuktoyaktuk (yes, it really exists - Hole and Metalica actually had a concert up there a few years ago) will have the same access to educational material as those living in the capital. It's to ensure that growing up in a small community doesn't limit your potential. It's about equality and equal opportunity - and in that aspect is just like our medial system.
I agree that most PC laptops have more expansion options. However, very few people will ever use them. Modem speeds will not see any more big improvements. GigE is only really realistic for servers or possibly a net-boot computer - 100mBit or 400mBit 1394 is fast enough for all but the most demanding tasks - tasks not suited for a notebook in the first place. When one requires 10gigE I think it's safe to say that your laptop will have already been replaced.
The one thing all Apple notebooks have right now is a 400mBit 1394 connection. Damn they're great. Get an external IDE case and you can connect any IDE device (@~45MBytes/sec with the new 911 chipset) without rebooting. Connecting a CDRW or extenal HD has never been easier. Kudos to Sony for also including 1394 in most of their laptops.
With 1394, USB, Ethernet, Video out, and bulit in wireless slots I can think of very few reasons why even an iBook would ever require another expansion port. Seriously, everything is already included. Those that require SCSI or somethink like that can always use a 1394/SCSI converter. Now if you are one of the few people that can make use of a PCMCIA port that there is always the Ti Book. But will you really require 2 ports? It's hard enough as is to even use one.
I really like OSX so I'm unfortunately bound to Apple hardware. Fortunatly, features I find valuable in a system are present in most Apple systems (except cost. ;)) I like their lack of noise, intelligent design, quality construction, and great OS/hardware support for power saving features. Even John Carmack has made a few posts here on /. regarding their quality hardware. CPU speeds may suck but then that has little to do with Apple and a lot to do with Motorola.
Willy
So if we leave it at GND then when the fan breaks we get GND being pulled up to 12v??? I don't think so. Assuming the fan actually shorts out (worst possible situation), the worst that would happen is that the 12v supply would be pulled down to 5v. The 5v supply might jump a bit but the switching power supply would quickly detect the change in voltage and compensate for the change before any real voltage increase could occur.
Willy
http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Technical/StringL ength.html
What these benchmarks really show is that the gcc compilers for 80x86 are vastly superior to those for PowerPC. It also shows how the majority of Linux (kernel and user space apps) is un-optimized for PowerPC. It doesn't mean that PowerPC is slow - just that it's full potential isn't being taken advantage of. A more usefull comparison would be to compare binaries compiled with CodeWarrior. I'm sure a 1.2GHz Athlon would still kill any PowerPC but not to the same extent these benchmarks show.
Willy
There are lots of lightweight electric engines out there. Typically, they have them on airplanes. The only real difference with them is that they opperate at a higher frequency - hence requiring fewer coils (assuming it's an AC engine.) The only reason why most AC engines are so big is because they have to opperate at 60Hz to be compatable with their power source. If you looked at the specs for that new Honda hybrid, I wouldn't be suprised to see that the electric engine is significantly lighter then the gas engine.
I still don't see how gas engines are reliable. Electric engines have three main points of failure - the berrings, the electronics controlling the frequency, and the insulation between coils. Now gas engines have both berrings and electronics. While they don't have to worry about insulation, they also have another 100 or so possible points of failure. And look at how much easier it is to maintain an electric engine - grease the berrings. That's it - no filters to change or fluids to check. Electric engines are far more reliable then their gas counterparts.
Willy
And even if it did it would just give us more wood to harvest and eventually convert back to CO2. Sorry, but the only way to lower CO2 levels is to stop harvesting oil and then convert some "harvested" land back into forest.
It's really quite simple, as we harvest oil we take carbon that was nicely stored in the earth's crust and place it into our atmosphere. The atmosphere's current carbon to oxygen ratio is now being altered. While trees will help by stripping out some of that carbon, it's a temporary solution. The carbon will be released either when the wood rots or gets burned.
Another important fact is that the vast majority (>60%) of photo-synthesis takes place in the ocean. How great an effect do pine trees actually have on global CO2 levels? Doesn't sound too relevant to me. The effects of additional CO2 as they pertain to our oceans sounds much more interesting.
Willy
Woops.... Hope they get it running again soon. "He" never would have done it had "he" known this was going to happen. But regardless, this exploit can most definately deny service to users. (Just check out www.ncix.com - they're down as I write this. I bet "my friend" will think twice before testing any other servers.)
Willy
Then you have to also worry about actually adhering to the GPL. It's not that it's that expensive to do, just a big pain in the butt. The fact that you even have to think about it is reason enough for many people to avoid it. Why worry about it when BSD is available.
I'm sure that this is one of the main reasons why Apple went with BSD and Mach - they don't _have_ to release any source code. They also don't have to worry about people accusing them of holding back GPLed code or anything like that. It saves them from a lot of potential headaches. The fact that they have contributed back with Darwin is very surprising - and appreciated.
Willy
Oh yes, everyone supports the original USB because there is no competing technology. Not so for USB 2.0.
Willy