It doesn't need fresh water, you can grow algae in sea water -- something our world still has no shortage of.
You can irrigate it with sea water once. When the water evaporates leaving the salts behind, you are in a bit of a pickle. Even with "fresh" water irrigation the accumulation of salts is going to be a very real issue. Another poster suggested growing the algae "indoors" to recycle the water. While this may solve the salt accumulation issue, it does dramatically increase the start-up costs.
In Ultima III I used to love to create "roads" three chests wide between all the cities/dungeons/moongates so I could travel at will w/o fear of attack by wandering monsters. Then I learned that I could do the same in the ocean with boats, once I trapped the whirlpool.
L=Land M=Sea Monster O=Whirlpool S=Ship W=Water (fixed width font required)
WWWW LWLL LSLL LMOL LLLL
You could do this in the little fjord just north of Lord British's castle.
In a purely rational world your analysis would be correct. This isn't a rational world.
Nintendo has already won against the motion-sensitive controllers which are sure to follow. Nintendo has the mind share already. Mind share is a large part of why Apple's iPod remains on top, and it will be a large part of why Nintendo will continue to control the motion-controller game market.
It is assholes like you who replaced those awesome wood playgrounds of the 80s with that plastic shit so kids can't get splinters
They were replaced because the pressure-treated lumber they were constructed from contained high levels of arsenic, and children have a bad habit of putting hand-in-mouth, thus absorbing the arsenic. Now that non-arsenic PT lumber is readily available, you are seeing a resurgence of the wood playground sets.
The GP isn't exactly correct which also creates some errors in your post. No gas heater is ventless. All gas heaters are vented, even the near 100% efficient ones
The GP is exactly correct. A portable kerosene heater vents right into the room. So do these heaters. They are not a forced air furnace. They are a wall mount gas burner, typically the kind which warms ceramic blocks which then radiate. They do not vent externally. Thus they are 100% efficient.
That being said, you will die of carbon dioxide (not monoxide - they don't produce much at all) poisoning long before the oxygen is depleted. A 10% carbon dioxide atmosphere will lead to loss of conciousness and death for some. When the air reaches 20% carbon dioxide, you will be dead, and the gas burner will still be happily burning w/o producing CO.
The iRiver H3x0 is very affordable, has great community support, has easily replaceable batteries and hard drives, and runs Rockbox like a MFing champ.
The only way I see Apple getting into the console business is *after* they've taken the living room by storm with their other media offerings (iTV, etc.). Exactly the opposite of the way Microsoft and Sony are doing it.
Fair view, unless you consider console games an essential foot in the living room door.
Considering the ER-6i are 16 ohm phones, I'd be surprised if you could tell the difference between a 64kb/s MP3/AAC and a lossless encode when using them and the iPod Nano. The Nano can not drive such low impedance phones w/o significant bass rolloff and quite a bit of distortion. http://prohost.org/~hackie/audio/DAPS_16ohm.htm
The AKG 240S, on the other hand, are about perfect at 55 ohms, starting to get into the hard to drive category for iPods, but should respond very well and flat.
With 50+ billion, you could put a huge dent on fossil fuel burning
A ~7% tax on imported oil would raise equal amounts of money every year in the United States while having the added benefit of reducing consumption today.
1 - It can only be more convenient if they are everywhere people typically plug in portable electronics. That includes many public places such as coffee houses, airports, hotels, etc.
2 - Less idle current will not be needed if you must have transformers in outlets in all sorts of public places waiting for people to possibly plug in. It won't cost less because the expense of this one-powersupply-to-rule-them-all will never be regained when wall warts vampire away less than one dollar a year each.
3 - Standardized voltages will make this solution even less efficient. There are real losses involved in shifting DC voltages up and down, and legitimate reasons for different devices to run off of different voltages.
Wall warts only use about a watt when idle, but keep in mind there are maybe a billion of them in the world. A billion watts 24/7 is a lot of wasted power. If we can reduce that by gradually replacing them with a more efficent solution, it would probably be a good idea overall, even if you personally don't find it convenient.
Please don't paint me as a grinch. You are right, I don't find it convenient. I also don't see any efficiency gains, I see possible efficiency losses, and I see the wasteful expenditure of resources on what ends up being an aesthetic fix.
People think diesel is a dirtier fuel than gasoline.
Well, it is. By its very nature. Both the nature of the fuel and the nature of the combustion (timing). Steps can be taken to clean up the emissions of diesel ICEs, but they are dirtier than gasoline ones, no reasonable person can deny that.
That gets back to my original question/point. How is this solution better than higher quality/efficiency wall warts being shipped with devices? It surely doesn't cost less, it surely isn't more convenient, and it isn't as flexible.
So where does the circuitry come into play which provides the 1.5 - 12 volts required by DC appliances? So at what point does the idle energy saved pay for the expense of the dedicated device, the additional wiring, the line losses pumping low volt DC from my basement up two stories to my bedroom? If every room in all buildings aren't so wired, the benefits, the flexibility of cheap wall-warts are lost. There is no reason such sophisticated circuitry could and would not be designed into wall warts come the time when energy becomes more expensive.
Imagine: You have your standard outlet (by the conventions of your nation, of course), and you also have a low-voltage tap at each outlet. That low-voltage puts out a standardized voltage, has a standard current rating suitable for everything from a phone charger to a laptop battery recharger. Best yet: set it up so it's not drawing power from the grid when you're not charging anything.
How do you provide the low voltage to the tap in a more efficient manner than what could be done with a wall-wart?
That is dots per inch, not pixels per inch. Each dot only being one color, the full color spectrum only created by halftones. So the maximum data to be stored on an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper using your 9600dpi printer is: (8.5*9600)*(11*9600) dots with each dot being one of N+1 values Where N is the number of colour tanks/toners your printer has. The +1 is for the medium (paper). I'll be real nice and assume a 7 colour printer. N+1=8 8 possible values = 3 bits 000=1 001=2 010=3 011=4 100=5 101=6 110=7 111=8 3 bits So the math is 8.5*9600*11*9600*3 = storage in bits 3.23136 TiB is the theoretical maximum on paper with this 9600dpi printer. Of course you would need a 19,200 dpi scanner...but that is child's play.
Adverse possession is the actual (physical), visible (known), hostile (with intent)(in most jurisdictions), exclusive (keeping out title holder), possession of a piece of real property for a long enough time to claim title. You are thinking of eminent domain wherein the state reappropriates and redistributes title for the public good.
I never meant to imply the first generation Zune was intended to flop. The point I was trying to put across was that I believe the success or failure of this year's Zune is not relevant to the coming battle. Microsoft may very well lose that one also, but I don't believe anything (including miserable sales) will stop them from releasing a second generation.
I don't believe this first generation Zune, adapted as it was from an existing player, is meant to be anything more than a placeholder, a foot in the door. The really interesting battle, IMHO, will be the second generation Zune against whatever iPod exists when it comes out. Low sales, if anything, give Microsoft a chance to work out Zune Marketplace bugs, while treating the paying public like beta testers, which is their style. Higher sales would just mean the possibility of more angry customers during this trial run.
[birdsongs] Somewhere, an ornithologist read that article and died inside..
If drastic changes are made to the tempo or pitch of a bird song, would it still be recognized by the bird? That is the point of the study. The dolphins recognized the rhythm, regardless of pitch or tempo.
No, the 30GB has a claimed music playback time of 14h, the 60/80GB model has a claimed playback time of 20h. That being said, my 9 month old 60GB model gets 22 hours when using Apple's testing methodology, and ~19 in "real life".
Slashdot Mirror
You can irrigate it with sea water once. When the water evaporates leaving the salts behind, you are in a bit of a pickle.
Even with "fresh" water irrigation the accumulation of salts is going to be a very real issue.
Another poster suggested growing the algae "indoors" to recycle the water. While this may solve the salt accumulation issue, it does dramatically increase the start-up costs.
In Ultima III I used to love to create "roads" three chests wide between all the cities/dungeons/moongates so I could travel at will w/o fear of attack by wandering monsters.
Then I learned that I could do the same in the ocean with boats, once I trapped the whirlpool.
L=Land
M=Sea Monster
O=Whirlpool
S=Ship
W=Water
(fixed width font required)
WWWW
LWLL
LSLL
LMOL
LLLL
You could do this in the little fjord just north of Lord British's castle.
In a purely rational world your analysis would be correct. This isn't a rational world.
Nintendo has already won against the motion-sensitive controllers which are sure to follow. Nintendo has the mind share already. Mind share is a large part of why Apple's iPod remains on top, and it will be a large part of why Nintendo will continue to control the motion-controller game market.
They were replaced because the pressure-treated lumber they were constructed from contained high levels of arsenic, and children have a bad habit of putting hand-in-mouth, thus absorbing the arsenic.
Now that non-arsenic PT lumber is readily available, you are seeing a resurgence of the wood playground sets.
The GP is exactly correct.
A portable kerosene heater vents right into the room. So do these heaters. They are not a forced air furnace. They are a wall mount gas burner, typically the kind which warms ceramic blocks which then radiate. They do not vent externally. Thus they are 100% efficient.
That being said, you will die of carbon dioxide (not monoxide - they don't produce much at all) poisoning long before the oxygen is depleted. A 10% carbon dioxide atmosphere will lead to loss of conciousness and death for some. When the air reaches 20% carbon dioxide, you will be dead, and the gas burner will still be happily burning w/o producing CO.
The iRiver H3x0 is very affordable, has great community support, has easily replaceable batteries and hard drives, and runs Rockbox like a MFing champ.
Fair view, unless you consider console games an essential foot in the living room door.
Considering the ER-6i are 16 ohm phones, I'd be surprised if you could tell the difference between a 64kb/s MP3/AAC and a lossless encode when using them and the iPod Nano.
The Nano can not drive such low impedance phones w/o significant bass rolloff and quite a bit of distortion.
http://prohost.org/~hackie/audio/DAPS_16ohm.htm
The AKG 240S, on the other hand, are about perfect at 55 ohms, starting to get into the hard to drive category for iPods, but should respond very well and flat.
A ~7% tax on imported oil would raise equal amounts of money every year in the United States while having the added benefit of reducing consumption today.
2 - Less idle current will not be needed if you must have transformers in outlets in all sorts of public places waiting for people to possibly plug in. It won't cost less because the expense of this one-powersupply-to-rule-them-all will never be regained when wall warts vampire away less than one dollar a year each.
3 - Standardized voltages will make this solution even less efficient. There are real losses involved in shifting DC voltages up and down, and legitimate reasons for different devices to run off of different voltages.
Please don't paint me as a grinch. You are right, I don't find it convenient. I also don't see any efficiency gains, I see possible efficiency losses, and I see the wasteful expenditure of resources on what ends up being an aesthetic fix.
As my childhood grumpy old neighbor would always say:
"It's a sideWALK not a sideRIDE!"
Well, it is. By its very nature. Both the nature of the fuel and the nature of the combustion (timing). Steps can be taken to clean up the emissions of diesel ICEs, but they are dirtier than gasoline ones, no reasonable person can deny that.
That gets back to my original question/point. How is this solution better than higher quality/efficiency wall warts being shipped with devices? It surely doesn't cost less, it surely isn't more convenient, and it isn't as flexible.
So where does the circuitry come into play which provides the 1.5 - 12 volts required by DC appliances?
So at what point does the idle energy saved pay for the expense of the dedicated device, the additional wiring, the line losses pumping low volt DC from my basement up two stories to my bedroom? If every room in all buildings aren't so wired, the benefits, the flexibility of cheap wall-warts are lost.
There is no reason such sophisticated circuitry could and would not be designed into wall warts come the time when energy becomes more expensive.
How do you provide the low voltage to the tap in a more efficient manner than what could be done with a wall-wart?
I wonder on what information you base your belief that CDs are less energy/material efficient than the iTunes store?
yea, off by 1000, my bad.
That is dots per inch, not pixels per inch. Each dot only being one color, the full color spectrum only created by halftones. So the maximum data to be stored on an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper using your 9600dpi printer is:
(8.5*9600)*(11*9600) dots with each dot being one of N+1 values
Where N is the number of colour tanks/toners your printer has. The +1 is for the medium (paper).
I'll be real nice and assume a 7 colour printer.
N+1=8 8 possible values = 3 bits
000=1
001=2
010=3
011=4
100=5
101=6
110=7
111=8
3 bits
So the math is 8.5*9600*11*9600*3 = storage in bits
3.23136 TiB is the theoretical maximum on paper with this 9600dpi printer.
Of course you would need a 19,200 dpi scanner...but that is child's play.
Adverse possession is the actual (physical), visible (known), hostile (with intent)(in most jurisdictions), exclusive (keeping out title holder), possession of a piece of real property for a long enough time to claim title.
You are thinking of eminent domain wherein the state reappropriates and redistributes title for the public good.
I never meant to imply the first generation Zune was intended to flop. The point I was trying to put across was that I believe the success or failure of this year's Zune is not relevant to the coming battle. Microsoft may very well lose that one also, but I don't believe anything (including miserable sales) will stop them from releasing a second generation.
I don't believe this first generation Zune, adapted as it was from an existing player, is meant to be anything more than a placeholder, a foot in the door. The really interesting battle, IMHO, will be the second generation Zune against whatever iPod exists when it comes out.
Low sales, if anything, give Microsoft a chance to work out Zune Marketplace bugs, while treating the paying public like beta testers, which is their style. Higher sales would just mean the possibility of more angry customers during this trial run.
My diesel redlines at 3000, thank you very much.
If drastic changes are made to the tempo or pitch of a bird song, would it still be recognized by the bird?
That is the point of the study. The dolphins recognized the rhythm, regardless of pitch or tempo.
No, the 30GB has a claimed music playback time of 14h, the 60/80GB model has a claimed playback time of 20h.
That being said, my 9 month old 60GB model gets 22 hours when using Apple's testing methodology, and ~19 in "real life".
The article did question whether it would be "bottom up" (record labels making changes) or "top down" (governments imposing licensing structures).