They're used for high voltage DC transmission systems. Actually, they're probably overkill for a 4 MW supply as many plants have been built to handle hundreds of MW each.
and wherein the initial or complementary motions comprise motion in one or more of at least six fields of motion including lateral x, y, or z motion or rotational x, y, or z motion
Emphasis mine. They aren't claiming you have to detect all six. The "at least six fields" part is just defining the set of possible motions to detect; not that you have to detect all six of them. At least that is my take on that line.
I had a pedometer in the 90s that used motion to record events, each motion event would trigger an update on the display, it was hand held when reading the display, and it was a computing device that would calculate distance traveled (not to mention history). Sounds like it covers just about every aspect of that patent.
But a corporation is merely a construct of government. Every right that a corporation has should therefore be at the behest of the government. The government grants a corporation certain tax benefits and protections and in return can limit certain activities (such as politicking). If the corporation doesn't like this there is nobody stopping them from running their business as sole proprietorship (or partnership or whatever). Of course doing so opens them up to liability (among other things) but those are the risks you have to take if you want all the privileges of a person. In this case the corporations want all the privileges of a person while sharing none of the responsibilities.
I would assume that they don't want to put any more equipment up there than they have to. It's expensive to get stuff into space. So they might not want a separate mail server.
Any of the laptops they already have up there could run a mail server in the background without any issue. No extra equipment needed.
They probably don't want a live link, because they said they wanted to do really strict filtering to keep bandwidth low.
Simply apply the filter on the ground based server before it relays the mail up. Or if you want more human control then just set up a number of private email addresses on the shuttle mail server and have someone on the ground manually forward incoming mail to the shuttle addresses. Still a hell of a lot simpler than what they're doing now.
I have no reason to doubt that Arrington is being screwed here, and that he does in fact have intellectual property rights that are being trampled on, but how much hard work did he actually do on this thing? My understanding is that he mostly said, "I want this thing with these specs at this price, make it happen" and his manufacturing partner is the one that actually built it.
Well, to Arrignton's credit he (or the TechCrunch side of things) did build the first prototype. He also provided office space for Fusion Garage and no doubt was integral in the testing. There's also a lot of talk about setting up distribution and funding although it's hard to say how much of that was Arringtons doing. Overall I would say Arrington has contributed at least an equal share into the project.
Except, if I read the rest of that thread correctly Linus's suggestion to use the "nicer" fix wasn't a bad one. Using it didn't require the huge rewrite warned about but looks to only need another 5 lines or so of mutex code to get back to normal (although apparently normal may also have issues but that problem is outside the scope of this particular issue).
There hasn't been a good single player fantasy RPG game released in quite a while.
And I grew up on Wing Commander. From pixelated sprites to 3-D models. Nothing like nursing your ship through that last waypoint with one working mass driver hoping you don't meet any more nasties. Space sims seem to have dropped of the edge of the planet in recent years (EVE Online excepted). It would be nice to see one again so I can blow the dust off of my joystick.
Then the simple solution is to have the firmware record the batteries used. If the camera detects a 3rd party battery then toggle a warranty voiding bit in the firmware. If they want to be nice about it give the user a warning first (i.e. toggle the bit if the 3rd party battery is used twice or some such). Admittedly this assumes the warranty bit is readable when the camera is brought in for work but I'm willing to bet it would be unless the damage was catastrophic (in which case there would probably be other evidence of what kind of battery was used).
It's exactly because of these bagillion tax loop holes that the GST shouldn't have been cut. It's much harder to avoid paying the GST meaning the rich (or anyone for that matter) can't get out of it. As such it provides a much more stable income stream to the government (on the order of $5 billion per percentage point) which is fairly recession proof (something that would have been nice given the current economy).
Now having said that, I never claimed I don't like the tax cuts. I just said I would have prefered to see a reduction in income tax rates instead of the GST. And note I said reduction, I'm not calling for the elimination of income either (which while being a nice thought really isn't practical). No, I would prefered to see a raise in the personal exemption limit and/or a reduction in the lower bracket tax rates. Proportionally this helps the low to middle class much more than the rich and this is where the tax relief needs to be given.
Now, if you don't pay any income taxes, as you claim to, then you're either really rich and exploiting the system, running a personal business and claiming a lot of deductions, or you're really really poor (as in less than $10,000 taxable income). If you're rich I don't care. If you're really poor a GST cut really isn't going to save you a whole lot as the majority of your spending will be GST exempt already. If you run a business, then cuts in business taxes is probably a better deal than GST as well.
Actually the lower GST was a stupid idea whose only purpose was to buy off votes. It only really benefits the rich. If Harper had truly wanted to lower the tax burden in a meaningful way he would have reduced income taxes. This would have helped lower and middle income families much more than the GST cut did for the same cost in tax revenue. Unfortunately cutting the GST sounds so much better in sound bites during an election.
Can't really suggest a good document management program but I can tell you one to avoid. We use Livelink at my place of work and its indexing and search capabilities are horrible (some would say non-existent). For example every document added to Livelink gets a document number assigned to it. One would expect to be able to retrieve that document by using the same document number but if you enter it into the search bar Livelink returns no results found. Huh? Not to mention some odd UI behaviours like when you add a folder to the favourites box the original folder disappears from the standard file listing (meaning there is no single canonical listing of files and directories, you need to always look in 2 places).
1) They're for the brakes. Their configuration seems to support this possibility. Brakes on F1 or Lemans or similar cars will glow red hot on some corners making brake cooling a priority. Of course assuming they use some form of regenerative braking the load on the brakes should be reduced which brings us to:
2) Electric motor cooling. 100kw electric motors will get quite toasty if not cooled.
Lock-in has worked pretty well for Microsoft so far. They have no motivation to change strategies.
Problem is this isn't lock in. Not in the traditional sense at least. If they had said, "you can only transfer songs to another Microsoft enabled phone." That would be lock in. The user will want to keep buying Microsoft phones to keep their music. By nuking the music when you get rid of the phone there is no incentive to buy another Microsoft phone.
And yes, the person may be locked in to using a particular phone, but that doesn't work either because now the person isn't buying any new phones (with new Micrsoft OS licenses to go with them).
I guess you could argue that the phones OS is the lock-in factor and they are milking that. You want a MS phone? Be prepared to buy all your music again. But that is a dangerous strategy when there are plenty of healthy platforms still competing.
I guessing it's a "problem" because the carriers don't get to charge their transfer tax if you don't have any pictures/soundbites/songs/whatever to transfer.
The God Particle by Leon Ledderman is one of my favourite Physics books. It offers an incredibly accessible introduction to particle physics for the non science oriented while at the same time provides a fascinating look (for the science oriented) into the history of particle physics by someone involved in several of the key discoveries of the last 50 years.
This is all fine and dandy but until Nintendo fixes how the VC DRM works I won't be participating. I have a Wii but I refuse to buy any VC content because Nintendo insists on locking the downloads to the machine and not the user. Currently the only way you can transfer VC games/applications between Wiis is if you send it in for repair (note you can't use Nintendos express replacement option either, you have to physically send it in and wait for them to return a repaired or fixed version). In other words, if my Wii is stolen/lost/destroyed I have no way of recovering any of the games or apps I have bought and downloaded from Nintendo. I can't re-download them or restore them from an SD card. All the Wii points I've spent will be lost. Unfortunately I didn't realize this until I got the machine. I was really looking forward to playing the VC but when I found out how it really works I basically had to give up on it. Oh well, live and learn. At least Mario Galaxy and Metroid are fun.
Please read more carefully before you make incorrect phrases. Perhaps you should take your own advice to heart because as the previous poster noted, you are wrong.
The last reading has the least weight, as the first one determines the average Nope, given the description you have so nicely put in bold the first reading is the least signficant.
Take 3 readings, say 1 2 3 for the sake of argument. The text says the first two are averaged, so:
(1+2)/2 = 1.5
Now this average is averaged with the third reading
(1.5+3)/2 = 2.25
or in full
((1 + 2)/2 + 3)/2 = 1/4 + 2/4 + 3/2
Note the 3rd point is weighted twice that of the first 2 (i.e, its divided by 2, the first two points are divided by 4).
The real average should be:
(1+2+3) / 3 = 2
but the last point is being weighted more in the incorrect version so the average was given as 2.25
If the first point was weighted more you would expect the average to be less than 2.
It's basically using a mean instead of an average. mean and average are the same thing.
What this means is each reading could increase or decrease the score, as opposed to being consistant. If you take 3-4 tests each one could show you as "more drunk" when you might have started at.06 and ended at.30 (as an extreme example) or started at.15 and ended at.03. No, it's not. Each subsequent reading is basically being averaged into previous value with double the weight. There are cases where you would want to do this, i.e. damp out the history, but the code comments suggest this wasn't the case (of course the code may have been changed on purpose and somebody forgot to change the comments)
I mean seriously, what the fuck is the source code going to show? There is not going to be shit in there for intentional false positives. There wouldn't be any reason for that on the part of the maker. I also don't see how there could be accidental false positives related to the source as opposed to mechanical failure. I mean, it's a simple num>X check
I doubt very much it's a simple num>X check. The source probably contains either lookup tables or fitting parameters to map values recorded from the hardware to values indicating blood alcohol levels. There could be errors in these values. The article also doesn't say what value he blew. If it was 0.081 there may be rounding errors in the code that added that extra 0.001. Also the article mentions the device uses a Z80. As far as I know the Z80 doesn't have native floating point support so some scrutiny on how floating point is implemented could be in order. I doubt very much he'll find a real error but there is no harm in asking.
Of course my fear would be he does find a bug that has no material impact on the results but he gets off because he can show some part of the code is defective. In this case I would hope the judge/jury/prosecutor are smart enough to recognize a non critical bug for what it is.
They simply say one photon passes through the mask at a time. They didn't say the entire image was reconstructed using that single photon.
This sounds very similar to the double slit experiment were you send single photons through a double slit and record where they land on a screen placed behind the slits. Each photon will only light up one spot on the screen but if you collect enough samples you see a pattern start to emerge that looks like the interference pattern you would expect if light passed through both slits simultaneously. Basically, each photon which passes through the slits interfers with itself to to form the interference pattern.
In the article they are simply firing the photon through a mask with a pattern in it instead of a double slit. The photon acts as if it passed through all parts of the mask at the same time. But to reconstruct the image they would have to sample many photons passing through mask.
From what I can gather the important part of the article is that they have been able to slow down each photon in order to buffer it. So you can send 100 photons through the mask (one after another) then buffer those photons for 100 ns and then pass them on to a detector that reassembles the image from the 100 or so photons. I'm also guessing they can't slow down multiple photons at a time (at least not reliably) so the ability to serialize the photons is important as well.
CMOS sensors suffer from "fixed pattern noise" since each pixel has its own amplifier and not all of the amplifiers work at an equal level. This noise can be partially removed in post signal processing (Cannon I believe actually takes images 10 ms apart when you click the button, one lit and one dark and subtracts them, or something like that). CCD sensors suffer from charge migration (or smear) where some of the charge from one pixel can migrate to it's neighbours during the read process.
CCD sensors have a higher fill factor (close to 100%) and offer greater sensitivity to light (although they can also suffer from over exposure - haloing). CMOS have much lower filling factors since each pixel needs the amplifier and processing circuitry packed in beside it. These lower fill factors are not as much an issue when you have a large sensor as in most SLR cameras.
CCD sensors tend to be more expensive because they require a unique manufacturing process whereas CMOS sensors can leverage the existing CMOS manufacturing capacity. You can also build logic processing into a CMOS chip (offering higher chip integration) whereas all processing is done offchip for CCD's. And CMOS sensors tend to consume less power.
A movie that doesn't take six weeks to recover its costs.
But if we look at the all time money maker, Titanic, it didn't reach $200 million until it's fifth week. True, Titanic had a smaller number of screens but six weeks to $200 for King Kong, a remake of limited appeal, shouldn't be considered a disaster. It's this "I must have the biggest opening weekend" mentality that Hollywood pushes that's killing movies. Lets make a flashy film, push it really hard for the opening. Who cares if it sucks, by the time the people realize it we will have made our money back.
A good movie should be able to draw people in over time. It shouldn't require a massive advertising blitz and a huge opening weekend to be successful. Unfortunately the way the distribution channels have become structured these days I don't see Hollywood changing their game plan anytime soon.
Slashdot has covered this before and I will repost my comment from back then:
While production of ethanol can be inefficient rarely does it result in a net energy loss. Several different studies show anywhere from a 38% net gain in energy to over 100% depending on methods use. The generally cited claim of a net energy loss from producing ethanol all seem to come from only one paper written by David Pimental [the author of the paper quoted in this article]. To support his claims he seems to have taken a worst pratices view for every step in the production process, a realworld combination found in less than 5% of current ethanol production. The more comphrensive studies I've been able to find show a slight, albeit not stellar, net gain in energy. The most recent (2002) by Michigan State shows a net gain of 0.56 MJ/MJ of input for corn based ethanol production. If one looks at Cellulose based ethonal production, studies show almost a 2.5 net energy gain and it is easier on the environment since it requires less maintenance and fewer fertilizers.
For reference this site has some good links, including a rebuttal of the Pimental paper (as well as showing the Pimental article).
Well you learn something new everyday. I didn't relize Canon had released a wide print head already.
The nozzle count was the only thing 'new' I could see in the specs. HP has been building reservoir printers for a while now (mostly with their wide format printers). With the wide head they could get the speed up which seems to be the general gist of all their yelling (look, we can print really fast).
Slashdot Mirror
A giant AC-DC inverter would work, but where are you going to find such a thing that can handle 4 MW?
Static Inverter Plant
They're used for high voltage DC transmission systems. Actually, they're probably overkill for a 4 MW supply as many plants have been built to handle hundreds of MW each.
From the patent, claim #1:
Emphasis mine. They aren't claiming you have to detect all six. The "at least six fields" part is just defining the set of possible motions to detect; not that you have to detect all six of them. At least that is my take on that line.
I had a pedometer in the 90s that used motion to record events, each motion event would trigger an update on the display, it was hand held when reading the display, and it was a computing device that would calculate distance traveled (not to mention history). Sounds like it covers just about every aspect of that patent.
But a corporation is merely a construct of government. Every right that a corporation has should therefore be at the behest of the government. The government grants a corporation certain tax benefits and protections and in return can limit certain activities (such as politicking). If the corporation doesn't like this there is nobody stopping them from running their business as sole proprietorship (or partnership or whatever). Of course doing so opens them up to liability (among other things) but those are the risks you have to take if you want all the privileges of a person. In this case the corporations want all the privileges of a person while sharing none of the responsibilities.
Except for a couple things:
Any of the laptops they already have up there could run a mail server in the background without any issue. No extra equipment needed.
Simply apply the filter on the ground based server before it relays the mail up. Or if you want more human control then just set up a number of private email addresses on the shuttle mail server and have someone on the ground manually forward incoming mail to the shuttle addresses. Still a hell of a lot simpler than what they're doing now.
I have no reason to doubt that Arrington is being screwed here, and that he does in fact have intellectual property rights that are being trampled on, but how much hard work did he actually do on this thing? My understanding is that he mostly said, "I want this thing with these specs at this price, make it happen" and his manufacturing partner is the one that actually built it.
Well, to Arrignton's credit he (or the TechCrunch side of things) did build the first prototype. He also provided office space for Fusion Garage and no doubt was integral in the testing. There's also a lot of talk about setting up distribution and funding although it's hard to say how much of that was Arringtons doing. Overall I would say Arrington has contributed at least an equal share into the project.
Except, if I read the rest of that thread correctly Linus's suggestion to use the "nicer" fix wasn't a bad one. Using it didn't require the huge rewrite warned about but looks to only need another 5 lines or so of mutex code to get back to normal (although apparently normal may also have issues but that problem is outside the scope of this particular issue).
Ultima and Wing Commander in particular.
There hasn't been a good single player fantasy RPG game released in quite a while.
And I grew up on Wing Commander. From pixelated sprites to 3-D models. Nothing like nursing your ship through that last waypoint with one working mass driver hoping you don't meet any more nasties. Space sims seem to have dropped of the edge of the planet in recent years (EVE Online excepted). It would be nice to see one again so I can blow the dust off of my joystick.
Then the simple solution is to have the firmware record the batteries used. If the camera detects a 3rd party battery then toggle a warranty voiding bit in the firmware. If they want to be nice about it give the user a warning first (i.e. toggle the bit if the 3rd party battery is used twice or some such). Admittedly this assumes the warranty bit is readable when the camera is brought in for work but I'm willing to bet it would be unless the damage was catastrophic (in which case there would probably be other evidence of what kind of battery was used).
Yes I've looked at a tax form.
It's exactly because of these bagillion tax loop holes that the GST shouldn't have been cut. It's much harder to avoid paying the GST meaning the rich (or anyone for that matter) can't get out of it. As such it provides a much more stable income stream to the government (on the order of $5 billion per percentage point) which is fairly recession proof (something that would have been nice given the current economy).
Now having said that, I never claimed I don't like the tax cuts. I just said I would have prefered to see a reduction in income tax rates instead of the GST. And note I said reduction, I'm not calling for the elimination of income either (which while being a nice thought really isn't practical). No, I would prefered to see a raise in the personal exemption limit and/or a reduction in the lower bracket tax rates. Proportionally this helps the low to middle class much more than the rich and this is where the tax relief needs to be given.
Now, if you don't pay any income taxes, as you claim to, then you're either really rich and exploiting the system, running a personal business and claiming a lot of deductions, or you're really really poor (as in less than $10,000 taxable income). If you're rich I don't care. If you're really poor a GST cut really isn't going to save you a whole lot as the majority of your spending will be GST exempt already. If you run a business, then cuts in business taxes is probably a better deal than GST as well.
Actually the lower GST was a stupid idea whose only purpose was to buy off votes. It only really benefits the rich. If Harper had truly wanted to lower the tax burden in a meaningful way he would have reduced income taxes. This would have helped lower and middle income families much more than the GST cut did for the same cost in tax revenue. Unfortunately cutting the GST sounds so much better in sound bites during an election.
Can't really suggest a good document management program but I can tell you one to avoid. We use Livelink at my place of work and its indexing and search capabilities are horrible (some would say non-existent). For example every document added to Livelink gets a document number assigned to it. One would expect to be able to retrieve that document by using the same document number but if you enter it into the search bar Livelink returns no results found. Huh? Not to mention some odd UI behaviours like when you add a folder to the favourites box the original folder disappears from the standard file listing (meaning there is no single canonical listing of files and directories, you need to always look in 2 places).
Two Possibilities:
1) They're for the brakes. Their configuration seems to support this possibility. Brakes on F1 or Lemans or similar cars will glow red hot on some corners making brake cooling a priority. Of course assuming they use some form of regenerative braking the load on the brakes should be reduced which brings us to:
2) Electric motor cooling. 100kw electric motors will get quite toasty if not cooled.
Lock-in has worked pretty well for Microsoft so far. They have no motivation to change strategies.
Problem is this isn't lock in. Not in the traditional sense at least. If they had said, "you can only transfer songs to another Microsoft enabled phone." That would be lock in. The user will want to keep buying Microsoft phones to keep their music. By nuking the music when you get rid of the phone there is no incentive to buy another Microsoft phone.
And yes, the person may be locked in to using a particular phone, but that doesn't work either because now the person isn't buying any new phones (with new Micrsoft OS licenses to go with them).
I guess you could argue that the phones OS is the lock-in factor and they are milking that. You want a MS phone? Be prepared to buy all your music again. But that is a dangerous strategy when there are plenty of healthy platforms still competing.
I was having trouble visualizing how this works but then I found this link with a diagram of the eye's anatomy
I guessing it's a "problem" because the carriers don't get to charge their transfer tax if you don't have any pictures/soundbites/songs/whatever to transfer.
The God Particle by Leon Ledderman is one of my favourite Physics books. It offers an incredibly accessible introduction to particle physics for the non science oriented while at the same time provides a fascinating look (for the science oriented) into the history of particle physics by someone involved in several of the key discoveries of the last 50 years.
This is all fine and dandy but until Nintendo fixes how the VC DRM works I won't be participating. I have a Wii but I refuse to buy any VC content because Nintendo insists on locking the downloads to the machine and not the user. Currently the only way you can transfer VC games/applications between Wiis is if you send it in for repair (note you can't use Nintendos express replacement option either, you have to physically send it in and wait for them to return a repaired or fixed version). In other words, if my Wii is stolen/lost/destroyed I have no way of recovering any of the games or apps I have bought and downloaded from Nintendo. I can't re-download them or restore them from an SD card. All the Wii points I've spent will be lost. Unfortunately I didn't realize this until I got the machine. I was really looking forward to playing the VC but when I found out how it really works I basically had to give up on it. Oh well, live and learn. At least Mario Galaxy and Metroid are fun.
Take 3 readings, say 1 2 3 for the sake of argument. The text says the first two are averaged, so:
(1+2)/2 = 1.5
Now this average is averaged with the third reading
(1.5+3)/2 = 2.25
or in full
((1 + 2)
Note the 3rd point is weighted twice that of the first 2 (i.e, its divided by 2, the first two points are divided by 4).
The real average should be:
(1+2+3) / 3 = 2
but the last point is being weighted more in the incorrect version so the average was given as 2.25
If the first point was weighted more you would expect the average to be less than 2. It's basically using a mean instead of an average. mean and average are the same thing. What this means is each reading could increase or decrease the score, as opposed to being consistant. If you take 3-4 tests each one could show you as "more drunk" when you might have started at
I mean seriously, what the fuck is the source code going to show? There is not going to be shit in there for intentional false positives. There wouldn't be any reason for that on the part of the maker. I also don't see how there could be accidental false positives related to the source as opposed to mechanical failure. I mean, it's a simple num>X check
I doubt very much it's a simple num>X check. The source probably contains either lookup tables or fitting parameters to map values recorded from the hardware to values indicating blood alcohol levels. There could be errors in these values. The article also doesn't say what value he blew. If it was 0.081 there may be rounding errors in the code that added that extra 0.001. Also the article mentions the device uses a Z80. As far as I know the Z80 doesn't have native floating point support so some scrutiny on how floating point is implemented could be in order. I doubt very much he'll find a real error but there is no harm in asking.
Of course my fear would be he does find a bug that has no material impact on the results but he gets off because he can show some part of the code is defective. In this case I would hope the judge/jury/prosecutor are smart enough to recognize a non critical bug for what it is.
They simply say one photon passes through the mask at a time. They didn't say the entire image was reconstructed using that single photon.
This sounds very similar to the double slit experiment were you send single photons through a double slit and record where they land on a screen placed behind the slits. Each photon will only light up one spot on the screen but if you collect enough samples you see a pattern start to emerge that looks like the interference pattern you would expect if light passed through both slits simultaneously. Basically, each photon which passes through the slits interfers with itself to to form the interference pattern.
In the article they are simply firing the photon through a mask with a pattern in it instead of a double slit. The photon acts as if it passed through all parts of the mask at the same time. But to reconstruct the image they would have to sample many photons passing through mask.
From what I can gather the important part of the article is that they have been able to slow down each photon in order to buffer it. So you can send 100 photons through the mask (one after another) then buffer those photons for 100 ns and then pass them on to a detector that reassembles the image from the 100 or so photons. I'm also guessing they can't slow down multiple photons at a time (at least not reliably) so the ability to serialize the photons is important as well.
CMOS sensors suffer from "fixed pattern noise" since each pixel has its own amplifier and not all of the amplifiers work at an equal level. This noise can be partially removed in post signal processing (Cannon I believe actually takes images 10 ms apart when you click the button, one lit and one dark and subtracts them, or something like that). CCD sensors suffer from charge migration (or smear) where some of the charge from one pixel can migrate to it's neighbours during the read process.
CCD sensors have a higher fill factor (close to 100%) and offer greater sensitivity to light (although they can also suffer from over exposure - haloing). CMOS have much lower filling factors since each pixel needs the amplifier and processing circuitry packed in beside it. These lower fill factors are not as much an issue when you have a large sensor as in most SLR cameras.
CCD sensors tend to be more expensive because they require a unique manufacturing process whereas CMOS sensors can leverage the existing CMOS manufacturing capacity. You can also build logic processing into a CMOS chip (offering higher chip integration) whereas all processing is done offchip for CCD's. And CMOS sensors tend to consume less power.
Which is better? Darned if I know.
A movie that doesn't take six weeks to recover its costs.
But if we look at the all time money maker, Titanic, it didn't reach $200 million until it's fifth week. True, Titanic had a smaller number of screens but six weeks to $200 for King Kong, a remake of limited appeal, shouldn't be considered a disaster. It's this "I must have the biggest opening weekend" mentality that Hollywood pushes that's killing movies. Lets make a flashy film, push it really hard for the opening. Who cares if it sucks, by the time the people realize it we will have made our money back.
A good movie should be able to draw people in over time. It shouldn't require a massive advertising blitz and a huge opening weekend to be successful. Unfortunately the way the distribution channels have become structured these days I don't see Hollywood changing their game plan anytime soon.
Slashdot has covered this before and I will repost my comment from back then:
While production of ethanol can be inefficient rarely does it result in a net energy loss. Several different studies show anywhere from a 38% net gain in energy to over 100% depending on methods use. The generally cited claim of a net energy loss from producing ethanol all seem to come from only one paper written by David Pimental [the author of the paper quoted in this article]. To support his claims he seems to have taken a worst pratices view for every step in the production process, a realworld combination found in less than 5% of current ethanol production. The more comphrensive studies I've been able to find show a slight, albeit not stellar, net gain in energy. The most recent (2002) by Michigan State shows a net gain of 0.56 MJ/MJ of input for corn based ethanol production. If one looks at Cellulose based ethonal production, studies show almost a 2.5 net energy gain and it is easier on the environment since it requires less maintenance and fewer fertilizers.
For reference this site has some good links, including a rebuttal of the Pimental paper (as well as showing the Pimental article).
www.econet.sk.ca/pages/issues/ethanolinfone tenergybalance.htm
Well you learn something new everyday. I didn't relize Canon had released a wide print head already.
The nozzle count was the only thing 'new' I could see in the specs. HP has been building reservoir printers for a while now (mostly with their wide format printers). With the wide head they could get the speed up which seems to be the general gist of all their yelling (look, we can print really fast).