i heard this 'anecdote' from my case manager, and as such was struggling to try to find information about how bad pollution is for the lungs. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_11_1_Pollution_Versus_Tobacco.asp suggests that cancer risk is higher with tobacco than with pollution, but that "Dirty air does contribute to lung cancer risk, but has a greater impact on heart disease, asthma, and chronic bronchitis"
so you could suffer a heart attack just from jogging in smog, or develop asthma just from living in NYC.
well, it lacks carbon, for one. for another it's a solid mass, not a leak prone gas. so it's not the same level of environmental problem, unless it starts smoldering or burning.
"Once they are gone, you'll go back to sucking down the equivalent of a cigarette drag every time you breathe outdoors"
that reminds me, there was a new york city marathon runner, never smoked, and when they died their lungs were as black as a life long smoker of 60 years, a 3 pack a day smoker's lungs.
even with 'tough' anti pollution laws, you can still get three packs a day worth of crud in your lungs just from running outdoors in a large city.
"So unless you make it a point to light your refrigerator on fire at the end of its lifecycle you really don't have a case there."
no the point was THIS material is the parity with 'compressed' gas in a compressor system, you don't use a mix of 66% hydrogen and 33% oxygen in a compressor because it's only a matter of time before it explodes in a giant fireball. this material is flammable! and you want to use it to what? heat and cool stuff?!!?
okay so really it smolders and doesn't 'combust' into a giant fireball, but that smoldering releases more toxic dioxin than anything else known to man! and you're going to see just how hot you can get it by cooling a freezer to 0 f? yeah, i don't think so. that was my point. it can only be used where you've designed it to never reach smoldering temperatures even on say a 120 f day in a desert region without a fan or with a failsafe temperature shut off, that could cause your entire freezer or fridge to rot... compared to highly reliable compressor tech that lasts for decades and very rarely fail.
they're both made from metal, but the heat sink has a lot more metal, and it has to be aluminum, whereas a compressor is typically steel, steel is a poor heat sink. if you've ever looked at the back of a fridge, you'd notice that they use the least amount of metal possible to radiate away the heat, the problem with this new thing is it creates a big flat hot spot from which one needs to apply a processor style heat sink, from aluminum if it's going to carry away 21 degrees of temp change...
this new tech might be viable, but researchers will find out how well it scales, what it really costs, and if it's more energy efficient than compressor based systems. it also has to be durable, compressors last for decades. i've seen a working compressor over 60 years old. if this tech isn't durable that too will be a strike against it.
that's why researchers research things instead of mass producing products without even testing if they work.
you missed the point. polystyrene is flammable, but completely lacks the poly-vinyl-chlorine.
chlorine is an important part of many poison gasses, although 'pure' chlorine is more of an irritant combined with vinyl the chlorine gas is Quite toxic, that's the big problem, in some states it's becoming illegal to use PVC piping, because in a fire when people are trapped breathing fumes, the toxic vinyl chloride gas can kill not only trapped victims but can make onlookers and rescuer crews sick, if they survive.
I know the following link is greenpeace, but they had the most comprehensive page about why Poly vinyl chloride (PVC) is so toxic.
remember, this device is being proposed as a replacement for the compressor/gas phase of a fridge, not the outer housing.
and since it uses PVC (plus a few more elements) it's quite toxic should it catch on fire.
ahh the smell of chlorine gas in the morning... i can see a couple problems with this material 1. it can only change 21 degrees a cycle, this means you need multiple separate units of the stuff to cycle on and off to cool more, and since it's toxic when burned, it can't do high temperature heating. it also can't do refrigeration in an environment where it might reach it's melting point. yeah you can use heat sinks on the hot side, do you really think heat sinks are cheaper than reliable, safe, CHEAP compressor technology? if there is a significant savings on energy usage (not discussed) then yeah it's great, it's also since it's a polymer easily made into clothing articles, but they seemed to add a number of ideas that don't make sense like 'fire fighter equipment' if it's highly flammable, and creates toxic chlorine gas, it's not suitable for firefighting! and basic electric heating of gloves* is already possible, what advantage does this device have? that it can't raise the temp of your gloves by more than 21 degrees F of the temp outside? um yeah... neat, cool, new way to cool or heat stuff, doesn't mean it has any commercial value, unless it's properties are better than what we're using now.
* = or perhaps of whole snow mobile suits, as i've seen for some modern snow mobiles...
fixed that for you, not only to parkers get cool shade, the parking lot, gets to provide green energy, and when it rains, people can avoid getting hit by rain in a parking lot if the lines of panels are big enough and long enough to provide shelter from rain as well as sun.
it would take a lot of capacity for nanosolar to really get annoying to more costly PV companies, that or they'd have to undercut the competitors. but if nanosolar really can create massive capacity, i think the first thing they should do is sell 'wal-mart' on having PV shaded parking lots. wal-mart uses incredible amounts of electricity for AC systems in summers, and heating in winter, as well as for lighting year round, having shade from PV for cars (leaving enough of a gap for the existing trees flowers etc to survive) and all that power plus all the 'good' press that walmart now desperately wants to counter it's image of destroying small town america...
and if they can compete with coal in america, then the next logical step is to compete with the price of coal for steel production. can you imagine laser smelting of steel? i know you need carbon to make steel, but you also need intense heat, if the intense heat comes from industrial sized Infrared lasers, then you produce a lot less toxic waste producing steel. the price of big industrial lasers is big, but they last a long long time, and they might negate the need for big smoke stacks and big scrubbers and what to do with the toxic remnants afterwards... ahh i can dream can't i?
they've had their 1.65 million dollar toy for 2 months now, if it produces 1 gw a year, they should have sold 1/6th a GW of solar cells or 166 megawatts, enough for 16 commercial 10 mw plants.
No it isn't. Oil is so TODAY. And it will be our short term future as well because no large scale migration on the scale you greens assume is coming has ever occured. Hell, it took a decade to migrate from VHS to DVD and the installed physical plant for home video is literally trivial compared to a full rip and replace for the whole petroleum extraction, refining, transport/storage, automobile market."
I'll bite, you don't count brazil, when you claim no large scale move from fossil fuels to bio fuels has ever been attempted. it's been done, once, in a country where it's very easy to grow sugar cane, harvest it, and make both electricity and also ethanol from the harvest of natures bounty. in fact they no longer need to import oil because their existing oil infrastructure can supply all the fuel they need that doesn't come from green sources. although, myself i'd rank cane sugar as a 'yellow' energy source, the massive massive deforestation required to produce enough cane sugar to feed a moderate sized country like brazil has had terrible side effects.
algae is already being tested as a commercially viable energy source, algea can be produced with much much less land usage, for example, soybeans, which require crop rotation with corn(corn needing 2 years for every year of soy), would require 150 times as many acers of dedicated growing land as algae. Currently the majority of biodiesel comes from soy, although palm oil has been up and coming in rain forest nations. palm oil is still a greenish energy source, since it comes from the fruit of trees, although rain forest must be destroyed to make palm oil plantations, at least trees can maintain the ability of that land to remain arable for future generations.
algae requires a lot of water, but even salt water can be used, and if we pump enough salt water onto land, it might offset melt water that will eventuially flood the earth if global warming isn't stopped. because we as a people can only change how we do things as a nation, and lead by example, if china takes 50 years to follow suit, what will be wil be. oh hey, did i mention partially treated sewage can be used as a growth catylst for algae?
the idea of using algae instead of oil was first thought up in the 70's if we'd had real leadership, it would have grown and prospered the way cane ethanol did in brazil, and we'd know if there are any nasty side effects... or if it's a truly green source of energy.
the single biggest threat to the earth though is human population. like locusts ravaging acres of land, we're destroying every sort or natural habitat to build roads, houses, malls, factories, and of course dumps to throw away everything we bought that broke or we didn't like...
in 100 years there will be twice as many people on the same sized earth, that's not a pretty picture for those who want nature to be able to progess in natural ways.
"It's all based on the latest and greatest in learning research, I swear.:)"
then most likely whomever you work for made you sign away the rights to it, even though they aren't a game developer, most likely it some way pertains to work you've done for your employer, and it's going to be untouchable.
now, you could look into the DS homebrew scenehttp://www.ndshb.com/, maybe find a couple credible homebrewers who are willing to slave away on your idea to produce a totally free product that will turn heads, and get them serious 6 figure jobs... or whatever it is they slave over homebrew games for...
that site might not be the best, it was just a top google site.
"or promote the use of small diesels (which can run on bio-diesel 99% using 1% diesel to prevent fungal growth (it's that toxic) and release almost no harmful emissions, except a slight burned grease smell)"
There fixed that for you. and if we use algae to produce all that diesel, we can simultaneously use up a lot of waste water processing requirements (algae loves human sewage) as well as have a totally local, totally green energy source. as well as have a huge source of starch/dextrose for production of ethanol for those who want to run e-85.
frankly I think that using a product so toxic that using just 1% of it is enough to prevent fungal growth, as a combustible fuel is awful, no matter what price has been paid in the past. Diesel fuel hasn't gone down in price even with the price of oil going down either. this makes clean mass producible algae based bio-diesel even more attractive. it certainly hasn't made soy-diesel any more attractive, because soy uses more 'energy' in fertilizer, farm equipment, and transit fuel, as well as processing cost. algae needs water, which means in general it can be grown near aquifers, that means it can be shipped over water from growing to processing plants. this drops costs incredibly, because fuel per tonnage is so low over aquatic lanes.
business users like control, order and stability. the more business users evaluating linux, the more likely bugs will be discovered and patched, that give linux better features, furthermore, closed source development will evolve, and prosper, IBM already has worked many hours bringing lotus technology to linux, if it thrives and prospers, other closed source developments will follow, vendors will 'lock' into linux platforms based on the solutions available, and some of those solutions will be open source software.
as more business users get used to enterprise class linux solutions, more of them will turn to 'linux' at home as desktop users, some of those users will be talented high paid programmers, with pet needs, and will donate time and energy to free open source software, thus giving a direct payback to linux.
you might as well have asked, why did people use DOS when there was unix developing, or instead of CP/M. they used it because business used it. if business doesn't come back to windows tech, microsoft has lost control of the most important root to have control over. just as ISS never over took apache, microsoft will be in free fall if wide spread linux in the business is adopted.
then you should rent, until the price/premium goes down. and it will.
if you don't like renting, remember that anydvdHD from slysoft now handles BD+ encrypted discs. combo a Blu-ray burner, (i think they're down to $400 now) plus the cost of anydvdhd well, the price is quite high, 79 euros, for just anydvd with anydvdhd, but still, they're the only guys who've got BD+ cracked at the moment.. add $12 a disc for bulk quantity of a decent grade of BD-r and if you rip 100 movies, you've spent $17 a movie, about the same cost as buying DVD, but getting blu-ray quality.
only problem, dvd shrink won't do HD content... ATI's avivo will encode mpeg2 into h264, and claims to transcode as well, but otherwise there is 'TSReMux' a very user unfriendly application is one of the few that can shrink blu-ray content, there was also a guide for encoding to h264 for PS3/xbox 360 playback here http://www.videohelp.com/guides/ripbot264-ps3-xbox-360-h-264-encoding-guide-id1079#1079
oh well, someone will come along and write a easy to use blu-ray shrink app soon, the economy is already there for the pirate willing to do the leg work, of h264 transcoding.
knowing the county i live in, soon there will be a guy doing DVDs for $3 or blu-ray for $20 a pop, and when the price for him/her goes down, so will the blu-ray pirate discs, and most likely i would just have to ask my county case manager who does it because 'everybody' knows who does it. yeah that sounds wierd, but nobody cares in rural areas. copyright that's for fancy places like Hollywood.
early DVDs did look like trash, i have a whole box of trashy DVDs that came out when DVD players were new, they were all old films, and they had clearly undergone 1-pass encoding with everything default for using a single layer disc. it wasn't until dual layer discs became common that really top notch film encodes were available. the hardware the software, it just wasn't mature. n-pass encoding wasn't even possible, not to mention 'transcoding' which can often produce a superior compression, by analyzing how each frame was encoded, and running a special filter to compress it more based on the type of frame they're working with.
yeah there are different types of frames, and they compress and artifact differently surprise!
anyways, DVD is good, people are happy with DVD, and your ex can torch your entire dvd collection in the oven in 15 seconds on broil. (also ruining the oven. in the process) this is progress!
Blu-ray does very little, for a huge premium, thanks to the PS3 though, eventually the tech will get cheaper. it took what 12 years for DVD to surpass VHS usage? expect at least that long for blu-ray.
I was the first guy on my block with a DVD player, and i spent something like $800 in hardware costs to be the first guy on the block, and i mainly rented DVDs, and paid more to rent them and I loved it. the same draw isn't there for blu-ray, yes i want a blu-ray burner i want 25 gig discs for backing up data! but i'm not in the same situation as i was then, so now i won't be the first with a blu-ray burner, but i am looking forward to the day where i can afford blu-ray media and a burner. for movies? not so much, i'll rent them, like i do with dvds.
just realized, you meant blu-ray support. if you want to watch blu-ray get http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html anydvdHD, now with blu-ray support, once you've removed the protections, VLC will decode the streams, just fine. yeah it means shelling out money, sorry but after the CSS problems few open source guys with the talent want to tackle blu-ray protection.
Best FOSS DVD/media player ever. not only does it skip the retarded FBI warning, it skips all the can not skip past sections and directly loads the main menu, if the DVD was mastered to annoy people who directly load the main menu, you can specify the menu number, manually with the open disc dialog.
works on windows and linux, give VLC a shot. VLC is also the only client i've found for internet radio that works if the cast isn't an ogg stream, under linux.
did i mention it slices, dices and makes julian fries too? (you can even 'save stream' internet radio, arr)
first off, the constitution affects laws passed by the government, as to if they're constitutional, privacy laws are not unconstitutional, but the constitution clearly leaves these 'other powers' to state or local legislation.
that's why there isn't a national anti-voyeurism law, there are plenty of cities, and a few states where voyeurism is plainly illegal and can put you behind bars. he has 'undressing' photos, he's violated the most common voyeurism laws that ban 'sensual' voyeurism images. some anti voyeurism laws want to ban non sensual cases as well, but that's a legal minefield i'm not going to get into.
so now the question arises does he live in a city or state where this is illegal? if not, they've still got him on vanilla computer hacking, he installed or modified software on 10 computers to illegally gain voyeurism photos by uploading to a server. computer hacking is a federal law, so he can go to a federal prison for computer hacking. there is no way around this, the software he put on there doesn't benefit the end user at all, he'd need more than the chewbacca defense, to avoid federal hacking charges.
too bad there were no images of minors mentioned, if he did store images of minors he'd be susceptible under anti-pedophile laws which would put him an a criminal sex offender list.
so he's a criminal under three counts, there may be additional civil lawsuits that the 'victims' can sue him for, depending on local laws. but the criminal offenses are there, and the victims as such can sue him for damages (costs related to repairing their computer systems, via his hacking conviction) they might get 'emotional' or punitive damages if anti voyeurism laws exist. so civil litigation is a possibility. most likely it's small claims court stuff where you don't need a lawyer, though.
yes it has, with inconsistent results, for instance my older dvd burner is less likely to read through a very badly scratched or partially delaminated discs, while my new drive reads some of those discs just fine.
'nes on a chip' still doesn't mean it's as slow, when they change the feature size of transistors, they run cooler, and thus faster, so a 'nes on a chip' will still probably run in the 12-20 mhz range, the speed limit being it's on board ram/rom which might not clock as fast as the cpu part.
modern Z-80 chips get 50 mhz, at the cost of having more expensive memory parts, original Z-80s were running around the 1-4 mhz range.
"Trying to get a TCP stack working on a 1.25Mhz 8 bit machine is no mean feat"
you assume that because the NES had a 1.25 mhz z-80, that this device is using a 1.25 mhz machine.
it's quite common to find that the chip used is actually much much faster than the original, because those are the kind of 8-bit chips that are popular for embedded systems.
so most likely, this 'victor-70' which comes with 2 PSX style controllers, a mouse, a gun, and of course a keyboard that acts as the base unit, might actually have a much faster chip than the NES. perhaps as much as 50 MHz, although with all the accessories, they most likely picked the cheapest 8-bit controller that could run nes software, which is still probably 12-20 mhz or better.
i bought a fancy cartridge cleaning kit, lost the fluid, and any time a cart gave me problems, i ran the kit along the contacts dry, even though the kit was made for the NES, it had swabs i could use on SNES and genesis carts etc.
very rarely will the contacts have anything more than dust on it... it's very hard to corrode the authentic gold plated connectors of a legit cart. if you're running non-legit nes software, then you've probably got a flash memory based device designed to hook into the nes.
carbonates, like calcium carbonate, don't worry we'll mine it all up and feed it to feed lot cattle while we double their size in 6 months.
rain moves the carbonates, and makes more room for further carbonation, so more rain increases the capacity of this heat sink, to a point. if the rain is intense and short followed by weeks of heat, it works best for this process.
it's the heat of the desert that drives the chemistry that allows formation of carbonates. and rain that refreshes the availability of oxygen and stuff that will bond to oxygen, while flushing the carbonates into ground water, so they can make limestone formations.
exactly, i've fixed a lot of badly scratched discs with simple cheap car wax.
scratches create grooves that bend light, wax fills those grooves, and light doesn't bend as much, enough for the media to go from unreadable to readable. I've fixed numerous rental media that people abuse and scratch up... i clean first, the wax is optional unless the disc looks like it needs it to read, or if it errors after cleaning.
Slashdot Mirror
unfortunately the best i can do relates to a foreign city http://www.walk.com.au/pedestriancouncil/Page.asp?PageID=186
i heard this 'anecdote' from my case manager, and as such was struggling to try to find information about how bad pollution is for the lungs. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_11_1_Pollution_Versus_Tobacco.asp suggests that cancer risk is higher with tobacco than with pollution, but that "Dirty air does contribute to lung cancer risk, but has a greater impact on heart disease, asthma, and chronic bronchitis"
so you could suffer a heart attack just from jogging in smog, or develop asthma just from living in NYC.
well, it lacks carbon, for one. for another it's a solid mass, not a leak prone gas. so it's not the same level of environmental problem, unless it starts smoldering or burning.
"Once they are gone, you'll go back to sucking down the equivalent of a cigarette drag every time you breathe outdoors"
that reminds me, there was a new york city marathon runner, never smoked, and when they died their lungs were as black as a life long smoker of 60 years, a 3 pack a day smoker's lungs.
even with 'tough' anti pollution laws, you can still get three packs a day worth of crud in your lungs just from running outdoors in a large city.
"So unless you make it a point to light your refrigerator on fire at the end of its lifecycle you really don't have a case there."
no the point was THIS material is the parity with 'compressed' gas in a compressor system, you don't use a mix of 66% hydrogen and 33% oxygen in a compressor because it's only a matter of time before it explodes in a giant fireball. this material is flammable! and you want to use it to what? heat and cool stuff?!!?
okay so really it smolders and doesn't 'combust' into a giant fireball, but that smoldering releases more toxic dioxin than anything else known to man! and you're going to see just how hot you can get it by cooling a freezer to 0 f? yeah, i don't think so. that was my point. it can only be used where you've designed it to never reach smoldering temperatures even on say a 120 f day in a desert region without a fan or with a failsafe temperature shut off, that could cause your entire freezer or fridge to rot... compared to highly reliable compressor tech that lasts for decades and very rarely fail.
they're both made from metal, but the heat sink has a lot more metal, and it has to be aluminum, whereas a compressor is typically steel, steel is a poor heat sink. if you've ever looked at the back of a fridge, you'd notice that they use the least amount of metal possible to radiate away the heat, the problem with this new thing is it creates a big flat hot spot from which one needs to apply a processor style heat sink, from aluminum if it's going to carry away 21 degrees of temp change...
this new tech might be viable, but researchers will find out how well it scales, what it really costs, and if it's more energy efficient than compressor based systems. it also has to be durable, compressors last for decades. i've seen a working compressor over 60 years old. if this tech isn't durable that too will be a strike against it.
that's why researchers research things instead of mass producing products without even testing if they work.
just to make sure, you mean degrees F not C right? i don't always put the F there when it was in TFA...
if your 10 degrees was C that totally reverses the statement from 'incredible' to 'plausible'
you missed the point. polystyrene is flammable, but completely lacks the poly-vinyl-chlorine.
chlorine is an important part of many poison gasses, although 'pure' chlorine is more of an irritant combined with vinyl the chlorine gas is Quite toxic, that's the big problem, in some states it's becoming illegal to use PVC piping, because in a fire when people are trapped breathing fumes, the toxic vinyl chloride gas can kill not only trapped victims but can make onlookers and rescuer crews sick, if they survive.
I know the following link is greenpeace, but they had the most comprehensive page about why Poly vinyl chloride (PVC) is so toxic.
remember, this device is being proposed as a replacement for the compressor/gas phase of a fridge, not the outer housing.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/how-to-find-and-avoid-toxic-vi
and since it uses PVC (plus a few more elements) it's quite toxic should it catch on fire.
ahh the smell of chlorine gas in the morning... i can see a couple problems with this material 1. it can only change 21 degrees a cycle, this means you need multiple separate units of the stuff to cycle on and off to cool more, and since it's toxic when burned, it can't do high temperature heating. it also can't do refrigeration in an environment where it might reach it's melting point. yeah you can use heat sinks on the hot side, do you really think heat sinks are cheaper than reliable, safe, CHEAP compressor technology? if there is a significant savings on energy usage (not discussed) then yeah it's great, it's also since it's a polymer easily made into clothing articles, but they seemed to add a number of ideas that don't make sense like 'fire fighter equipment' if it's highly flammable, and creates toxic chlorine gas, it's not suitable for firefighting! and basic electric heating of gloves* is already possible, what advantage does this device have? that it can't raise the temp of your gloves by more than 21 degrees F of the temp outside? um yeah... neat, cool, new way to cool or heat stuff, doesn't mean it has any commercial value, unless it's properties are better than what we're using now.
* = or perhaps of whole snow mobile suits, as i've seen for some modern snow mobiles...
"even above parking lots."
fixed that for you, not only to parkers get cool shade, the parking lot, gets to provide green energy, and when it rains, people can avoid getting hit by rain in a parking lot if the lines of panels are big enough and long enough to provide shelter from rain as well as sun.
it would take a lot of capacity for nanosolar to really get annoying to more costly PV companies, that or they'd have to undercut the competitors. but if nanosolar really can create massive capacity, i think the first thing they should do is sell 'wal-mart' on having PV shaded parking lots. wal-mart uses incredible amounts of electricity for AC systems in summers, and heating in winter, as well as for lighting year round, having shade from PV for cars (leaving enough of a gap for the existing trees flowers etc to survive) and all that power plus all the 'good' press that walmart now desperately wants to counter it's image of destroying small town america...
and if they can compete with coal in america, then the next logical step is to compete with the price of coal for steel production. can you imagine laser smelting of steel? i know you need carbon to make steel, but you also need intense heat, if the intense heat comes from industrial sized Infrared lasers, then you produce a lot less toxic waste producing steel. the price of big industrial lasers is big, but they last a long long time, and they might negate the need for big smoke stacks and big scrubbers and what to do with the toxic remnants afterwards... ahh i can dream can't i?
they've had their 1.65 million dollar toy for 2 months now, if it produces 1 gw a year, they should have sold 1/6th a GW of solar cells or 166 megawatts, enough for 16 commercial 10 mw plants.
i realize demand is higher than that...
"> Oil is yesterday.
No it isn't. Oil is so TODAY. And it will be our short term future as well because no large scale migration on the scale you greens assume is coming has ever occured. Hell, it took a decade to migrate from VHS to DVD and the installed physical plant for home video is literally trivial compared to a full rip and replace for the whole petroleum extraction, refining, transport/storage, automobile market."
I'll bite, you don't count brazil, when you claim no large scale move from fossil fuels to bio fuels has ever been attempted. it's been done, once, in a country where it's very easy to grow sugar cane, harvest it, and make both electricity and also ethanol from the harvest of natures bounty. in fact they no longer need to import oil because their existing oil infrastructure can supply all the fuel they need that doesn't come from green sources. although, myself i'd rank cane sugar as a 'yellow' energy source, the massive massive deforestation required to produce enough cane sugar to feed a moderate sized country like brazil has had terrible side effects.
algae is already being tested as a commercially viable energy source, algea can be produced with much much less land usage, for example, soybeans, which require crop rotation with corn(corn needing 2 years for every year of soy), would require 150 times as many acers of dedicated growing land as algae. Currently the majority of biodiesel comes from soy, although palm oil has been up and coming in rain forest nations. palm oil is still a greenish energy source, since it comes from the fruit of trees, although rain forest must be destroyed to make palm oil plantations, at least trees can maintain the ability of that land to remain arable for future generations.
algae requires a lot of water, but even salt water can be used, and if we pump enough salt water onto land, it might offset melt water that will eventuially flood the earth if global warming isn't stopped. because we as a people can only change how we do things as a nation, and lead by example, if china takes 50 years to follow suit, what will be wil be. oh hey, did i mention partially treated sewage can be used as a growth catylst for algae?
the idea of using algae instead of oil was first thought up in the 70's if we'd had real leadership, it would have grown and prospered the way cane ethanol did in brazil, and we'd know if there are any nasty side effects... or if it's a truly green source of energy.
the single biggest threat to the earth though is human population. like locusts ravaging acres of land, we're destroying every sort or natural habitat to build roads, houses, malls, factories, and of course dumps to throw away everything we bought that broke or we didn't like...
in 100 years there will be twice as many people on the same sized earth, that's not a pretty picture for those who want nature to be able to progess in natural ways.
"It's all based on the latest and greatest in learning research, I swear. :)"
then most likely whomever you work for made you sign away the rights to it, even though they aren't a game developer, most likely it some way pertains to work you've done for your employer, and it's going to be untouchable.
now, you could look into the DS homebrew scenehttp://www.ndshb.com/, maybe find a couple credible homebrewers who are willing to slave away on your idea to produce a totally free product that will turn heads, and get them serious 6 figure jobs... or whatever it is they slave over homebrew games for...
that site might not be the best, it was just a top google site.
"or promote the use of small diesels (which can run on bio-diesel 99% using 1% diesel to prevent fungal growth (it's that toxic) and release almost no harmful emissions, except a slight burned grease smell)"
There fixed that for you. and if we use algae to produce all that diesel, we can simultaneously use up a lot of waste water processing requirements (algae loves human sewage) as well as have a totally local, totally green energy source. as well as have a huge source of starch/dextrose for production of ethanol for those who want to run e-85.
the downside of bio-diesel production is it totally killed the glycerol market. but new ways of using glycerol, and new methods for using glycerol from bio-diesel show a promising chemical market for the future of 'green' energy companies. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/biodiesel-bypoduct-could-yield-valuable-chemicals.php
frankly I think that using a product so toxic that using just 1% of it is enough to prevent fungal growth, as a combustible fuel is awful, no matter what price has been paid in the past. Diesel fuel hasn't gone down in price even with the price of oil going down either. this makes clean mass producible algae based bio-diesel even more attractive. it certainly hasn't made soy-diesel any more attractive, because soy uses more 'energy' in fertilizer, farm equipment, and transit fuel, as well as processing cost. algae needs water, which means in general it can be grown near aquifers, that means it can be shipped over water from growing to processing plants. this drops costs incredibly, because fuel per tonnage is so low over aquatic lanes.
business users like control, order and stability. the more business users evaluating linux, the more likely bugs will be discovered and patched, that give linux better features, furthermore, closed source development will evolve, and prosper, IBM already has worked many hours bringing lotus technology to linux, if it thrives and prospers, other closed source developments will follow, vendors will 'lock' into linux platforms based on the solutions available, and some of those solutions will be open source software.
as more business users get used to enterprise class linux solutions, more of them will turn to 'linux' at home as desktop users, some of those users will be talented high paid programmers, with pet needs, and will donate time and energy to free open source software, thus giving a direct payback to linux.
you might as well have asked, why did people use DOS when there was unix developing, or instead of CP/M. they used it because business used it. if business doesn't come back to windows tech, microsoft has lost control of the most important root to have control over. just as ISS never over took apache, microsoft will be in free fall if wide spread linux in the business is adopted.
then you should rent, until the price/premium goes down. and it will.
if you don't like renting, remember that anydvdHD from slysoft now handles BD+ encrypted discs. combo a Blu-ray burner, (i think they're down to $400 now) plus the cost of anydvdhd well, the price is quite high, 79 euros, for just anydvd with anydvdhd, but still, they're the only guys who've got BD+ cracked at the moment.. add $12 a disc for bulk quantity of a decent grade of BD-r and if you rip 100 movies, you've spent $17 a movie, about the same cost as buying DVD, but getting blu-ray quality.
only problem, dvd shrink won't do HD content... ATI's avivo will encode mpeg2 into h264, and claims to transcode as well, but otherwise there is 'TSReMux' a very user unfriendly application is one of the few that can shrink blu-ray content, there was also a guide for encoding to h264 for PS3/xbox 360 playback here http://www.videohelp.com/guides/ripbot264-ps3-xbox-360-h-264-encoding-guide-id1079#1079
oh well, someone will come along and write a easy to use blu-ray shrink app soon, the economy is already there for the pirate willing to do the leg work, of h264 transcoding.
knowing the county i live in, soon there will be a guy doing DVDs for $3 or blu-ray for $20 a pop, and when the price for him/her goes down, so will the blu-ray pirate discs, and most likely i would just have to ask my county case manager who does it because 'everybody' knows who does it. yeah that sounds wierd, but nobody cares in rural areas. copyright that's for fancy places like Hollywood.
early DVDs did look like trash, i have a whole box of trashy DVDs that came out when DVD players were new, they were all old films, and they had clearly undergone 1-pass encoding with everything default for using a single layer disc. it wasn't until dual layer discs became common that really top notch film encodes were available. the hardware the software, it just wasn't mature. n-pass encoding wasn't even possible, not to mention 'transcoding' which can often produce a superior compression, by analyzing how each frame was encoded, and running a special filter to compress it more based on the type of frame they're working with.
yeah there are different types of frames, and they compress and artifact differently surprise!
anyways, DVD is good, people are happy with DVD, and your ex can torch your entire dvd collection in the oven in 15 seconds on broil. (also ruining the oven. in the process) this is progress!
Blu-ray does very little, for a huge premium, thanks to the PS3 though, eventually the tech will get cheaper. it took what 12 years for DVD to surpass VHS usage? expect at least that long for blu-ray.
I was the first guy on my block with a DVD player, and i spent something like $800 in hardware costs to be the first guy on the block, and i mainly rented DVDs, and paid more to rent them and I loved it. the same draw isn't there for blu-ray, yes i want a blu-ray burner i want 25 gig discs for backing up data! but i'm not in the same situation as i was then, so now i won't be the first with a blu-ray burner, but i am looking forward to the day where i can afford blu-ray media and a burner. for movies? not so much, i'll rent them, like i do with dvds.
just realized, you meant blu-ray support. if you want to watch blu-ray get http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html anydvdHD, now with blu-ray support, once you've removed the protections, VLC will decode the streams, just fine. yeah it means shelling out money, sorry but after the CSS problems few open source guys with the talent want to tackle blu-ray protection.
three words: Video LAN Client.
Best FOSS DVD/media player ever. not only does it skip the retarded FBI warning, it skips all the can not skip past sections and directly loads the main menu, if the DVD was mastered to annoy people who directly load the main menu, you can specify the menu number, manually with the open disc dialog.
works on windows and linux, give VLC a shot. VLC is also the only client i've found for internet radio that works if the cast isn't an ogg stream, under linux.
did i mention it slices, dices and makes julian fries too? (you can even 'save stream' internet radio, arr)
first off, the constitution affects laws passed by the government, as to if they're constitutional, privacy laws are not unconstitutional, but the constitution clearly leaves these 'other powers' to state or local legislation.
that's why there isn't a national anti-voyeurism law, there are plenty of cities, and a few states where voyeurism is plainly illegal and can put you behind bars. he has 'undressing' photos, he's violated the most common voyeurism laws that ban 'sensual' voyeurism images. some anti voyeurism laws want to ban non sensual cases as well, but that's a legal minefield i'm not going to get into.
so now the question arises does he live in a city or state where this is illegal? if not, they've still got him on vanilla computer hacking, he installed or modified software on 10 computers to illegally gain voyeurism photos by uploading to a server. computer hacking is a federal law, so he can go to a federal prison for computer hacking. there is no way around this, the software he put on there doesn't benefit the end user at all, he'd need more than the chewbacca defense, to avoid federal hacking charges.
too bad there were no images of minors mentioned, if he did store images of minors he'd be susceptible under anti-pedophile laws which would put him an a criminal sex offender list.
so he's a criminal under three counts, there may be additional civil lawsuits that the 'victims' can sue him for, depending on local laws. but the criminal offenses are there, and the victims as such can sue him for damages (costs related to repairing their computer systems, via his hacking conviction) they might get 'emotional' or punitive damages if anti voyeurism laws exist. so civil litigation is a possibility. most likely it's small claims court stuff where you don't need a lawyer, though.
yes it has, with inconsistent results, for instance my older dvd burner is less likely to read through a very badly scratched or partially delaminated discs, while my new drive reads some of those discs just fine.
'nes on a chip' still doesn't mean it's as slow, when they change the feature size of transistors, they run cooler, and thus faster, so a 'nes on a chip' will still probably run in the 12-20 mhz range, the speed limit being it's on board ram/rom which might not clock as fast as the cpu part.
modern Z-80 chips get 50 mhz, at the cost of having more expensive memory parts, original Z-80s were running around the 1-4 mhz range.
"Trying to get a TCP stack working on a 1.25Mhz 8 bit machine is no mean feat"
you assume that because the NES had a 1.25 mhz z-80, that this device is using a 1.25 mhz machine.
it's quite common to find that the chip used is actually much much faster than the original, because those are the kind of 8-bit chips that are popular for embedded systems.
so most likely, this 'victor-70' which comes with 2 PSX style controllers, a mouse, a gun, and of course a keyboard that acts as the base unit, might actually have a much faster chip than the NES. perhaps as much as 50 MHz, although with all the accessories, they most likely picked the cheapest 8-bit controller that could run nes software, which is still probably 12-20 mhz or better.
what's wrong with just using a dry Q-tip?
i bought a fancy cartridge cleaning kit, lost the fluid, and any time a cart gave me problems, i ran the kit along the contacts dry, even though the kit was made for the NES, it had swabs i could use on SNES and genesis carts etc.
very rarely will the contacts have anything more than dust on it... it's very hard to corrode the authentic gold plated connectors of a legit cart. if you're running non-legit nes software, then you've probably got a flash memory based device designed to hook into the nes.
carbonates, like calcium carbonate, don't worry we'll mine it all up and feed it to feed lot cattle while we double their size in 6 months.
rain moves the carbonates, and makes more room for further carbonation, so more rain increases the capacity of this heat sink, to a point. if the rain is intense and short followed by weeks of heat, it works best for this process.
it's the heat of the desert that drives the chemistry that allows formation of carbonates. and rain that refreshes the availability of oxygen and stuff that will bond to oxygen, while flushing the carbonates into ground water, so they can make limestone formations.
exactly, i've fixed a lot of badly scratched discs with simple cheap car wax.
scratches create grooves that bend light, wax fills those grooves, and light doesn't bend as much, enough for the media to go from unreadable to readable. I've fixed numerous rental media that people abuse and scratch up... i clean first, the wax is optional unless the disc looks like it needs it to read, or if it errors after cleaning.