You might want to try changing the channel on your router, sometimes the wireless chips don't see certain cahnnels very well.
Also you might need to downgrade your security to WPA only, some wireless chipsets STILL don't support WPA2, unbelieveably...
How is riding a bicycle or having an apple tree related to electricity generation? These are transportation issues which belong in another thread.
The simple fact is that electricity makes modern civilization possible, and that drastic cuts in electricity use through shortages or high prices will quickly return society back to the level of the 18th century.
However noble you think the idea of a 'downshift' is, electricity use is not an area that can be cut without serious societal ramifications. Most people do not wish to freeze in the dark.
The amount of energy arriving in the form of sunlight and stored in the oceans is so vast, all forms of manmade energy consumption look like a 10th decimal place rounding error in comparison. Waste heat simply won't make any difference to the equation.
The main thing that is warming the planet is excessive 'greenhouse' gas production, notably CO2 from coal and petroleum burning. This stops the re-radiation of IR radiation back into space, thereby warming the planet.
As for your comments on the stability of governments, I would imagine a government that can provide energy, heat and light for its citizens is far more likely to be stable than one which can't. In fact, I would imagine a government that lets its people freeze in the dark would be very likely to fall apart or be overthrown.
Again I ask you, where is there a large-scale tidal power station in operation? How likely is it that coastal communities are going to allow their harbours to be choked with industrial machinery? Considering the difficulties in even siting a windfarm, I would say not bloody likely.
Solar towers are more pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Sure it might work in some places in the world, at fantastic cost; but not useful for 99% of the worlds population.
The supply of oil and gas is a huge factor- the price is about to rocket upwards as the supply gets tight, this is the reason new nukes are crucially necessary. The green movement with its cold-war-era anti-nuke stupidity is starting a movement alright- to coal and runaway global warming. Supreme irony that.
This is largely due from the incredibly rapid decline of the North Sea oil and gas fields.
Britain developed the North Sea oil and gas in the 70s, this largely saved its economy by providing three decades of cheap oil and natural gas. However, the good times are now about to abruptly end. Oil production is down dramatically- nearly 50% since 1999.
In fact the North Sea is now well down on its peak production, and the UK will now be reliant on Russia and the various OPEC countries, many of whom are in decline themselves. The global competition for oil and gas is immense.
Unless the UK can commit to a new generation of nukes, the future here will be very dark indeed.
The issue of cost is a red herring; You might need 10MW of wind power to replace a single MW of baseload coal/gas/nuclear. This is the nature of wind, solar and tidal: they are not consistent and cannot be relied upon 24/7.
For example here in the UK, we recently had frosty weather across the country with absolutely no wind, and it was dark by 4pm. Considering peak time is 3.30 to 6.30 because of the combination of residential, commercial and industrial loads, this is the time when you need maximum reliablilty, and NO renewable energy would have been generated at all. As it was, the grid barely coped; there were very nearly blackouts just after christmas: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1964324, 00.html
Denmark has also had problems; they have only about 15% wind power and suffer from grid instability, which suggests this is the maximum about that a country should aim for. Also considering there is not a single large tidal power station in operation anywhere, it is an unproven technology.
I would encourage people to look at the example of France, which generates 80% of its electricity from Nuclear and exports it throughout Europe. They have never had a serious accident since the beginning of their nuke programme, and the programme is a source of pride for the French people.
With the recent Russian natural gas crisis and the realization that coal is a filthy technology, it seems to be either nuclear power with reprocessing (which reduces waste by 90%) or sitting in the dark. The green lobby seems to be very keen on the latter.
Generally the friction caused by the subduction creates immense heat, melting the rock layer that is subducted. When the rock melts, superheated steam causes volcanoes to form above the subduction zone. For an example, see http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~leeman/Cascades.gif
So unless you want volcanoes of nuke waste (!) it might be better to bury it in a geologically stable area, such as the middle of a continent.
Logically, if they started reprocessing waste, it would be such a small amount you would only need a single salt mine or similar.
Exactly. Any decent property manager would have installed a sprinkler system.
A water sprinkler system with localised heads would have prevented most of the damage. Each sprinkler head is basically an independent valve held shut by a temperature sensitive device, so you only get water spraying on or near the fire area. Sprinklers do NOT go off all at once, there is usually not enough pressure in the water supply for this.
Most fires start from something very small like a candle or electrical junction box, or burning paper outside the door or through the letterbox. The idea of a sprinkler system is to quickly put out this small fire before it grows and becomes unstoppable.
The 3D animated weather map has been hugely successful in New Zeland, it is very clear and shows what the weather will be like as the day goes on, complete with cloud, rain and wind (and sun!). It is far, far more useful than a static map.
It is also very reliable, I can only remember a few times when it failed to work properly, mainly due to poor operators rather than a machine crashing.
The BBC has done a terrible job of it- they have made Britain a dull brown colour, (its is quite a green and pleasant land outside London!) the animation is hard to follow and they don't show clouds- just their shadows.
They are about to fine tune it tomorrow from the feedback they have received, so we'll see what they come up with. In any case its a vast improvement from the "sunny, with some rain" forecasts of old...
Why is this semi-brainwashed post moderated Insightful?
High wages are good for the economy. The more people get paid, the more they spend. A single dollar spent increases GDP by $7. Competing on low wages is a race to poverty, and no first world country should be trying to do this.
I think trade has always led to stronger economies, and will do so- but rampant, unregulated free trade is wrecking the planet, and the uncertain nature of the beast is causing serious pain to many, in both first and third world countries.
I am sorry that you think your unions and government are so corrupt- but libertarian free trade is not the solution, reform of government is.
And regarding your comment about unions driving up wages, well its no coincidence that non-unionised fields like IT get savaged, if workers don't stand up for themselves no one else will...
Exactly- its damn sickening how slow and crap it is. What makes it worse is the complicity of the government, they are too afraid to take on Telecom and its undead army of lawyers.
Another example of how privatisation is basically a license to screw your customers...
One reason that people are tired is that they are working excessive hours. Todays society risks repeating the same mistakes as the Victorian era; when children as young as ten would work alongside adults for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week.
The eight hour day / 40 hour week was one of the Labour movements' greatest victories, but this has been largely eroded in modern professional occupations. Many people work crazy hours. There is a whole culture that working yourself and your family into the ground is a good thing.
However some enlightened governments have strategies to deal with this- the issue of work/life balance has been big recently- check http://www.dol.govt.nz/worklife/index.asp or http://www.dti.gov.uk/work-lifebalance/what.html
Whatever happened to the 60's notion that technology would have us working less?
IIRC, the Collossus uses about 1500 EF37A tubes. These are very low current, very low noise signal pentode. They run at about 250V / 3mA. They were widely used in audio gear including the Leak TL12 and so on.
I use Mullard EF37A input tubes in an audio amp I built. They are quite beautiful looking as seen here: www.r-type.org/exhib/aad0108.htm
More cool tubes stuff at www.diyaudio.com in the tube forum.
Exactly. They had advice from a top Melbourne law firm to leave Ansett the hell alone, but were desperate to expand at any cost...
Would you buy an airline whose planes were an average of 25 years old?!?!?!
AirNZ was stupid to buy ansett, but they provided a great scapegoat for the Aussies.
Hehe, actually the reason tube amps sound good is the lack of higher order harmonic distortion. A well designed tube amp will have predominantly second and third harmonics in the distortion spectrum, and almost no 4th, 5th,6th etc. These higher harmonics sound discordant and harsh. Transistor amps usually have a wide range of harmonic products, they almost never give you a breakdown, just the useless THD figure.
A small amount (
BTW, I use WW2 vintage transmitter tubes on a daily basis to listen to my CDs! Nothing like using tubes stamped RADAR for your hi-fi...
The patriot missiles were a huge failure- the scuds in most cases (90%) hit their targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia.
You were lied to by your military and media organisations.
More info at http://www.cdi.org/issues/bmd/Patriot.html
and http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/usa/1992/59740945-59743599.htm
I have been using a barra 4 20GB for 1.5 years now, and a 5400 80GB seagate with no problems...
I thought they were among the better drives...
Re:DVD-A and SACD aren't much better anyway
on
The Future of the CD
·
· Score: 1
Lamp amps? I think you mean tube amps...
And there is actually a good reason for the reason that they sound nicer: 1 or 2 percent 2nd harmonic distortion, adds a kind of subtle chorus effect. Transistors tend to add 3rd harmonic distortion which is multiplied by the use of a lot of negative feedback, creating unpleasant higher order harmonics.
A very long time ago an engineer simulated the shitty sound of lamp amps on an all-digital system with a very cheep DSP. The double blind tests revealed none was better than the other. The system didn't sell. He added dummy lamps. The system sold very well for a very high price IIRC
That sounds suspiciously like bullshit. It is difficult to emulate tube amps well, just ask the million guitarists who swear by the sound of tubes.
The problem is that designers minds work differently to that of the average tech- for a techy kind of person, its information first with look and feel a distant second...
For a designer, how it looks and feels is the ONLY thing that is important. Hence the flash monstrosities that take several minutes to load over dial up (sigh....)
That is the worst pile of cr*p I have seen... Who the hell wants a pink and blue loveheart on their business laptop? Unless you are some kind of wireless pimp...
I would imagine that the keyboard induced an RF signal down a power line, which was on the same local power circuit, and this was trasmitted through the second computers power supply (possibly due to poor filtering?)
From the article: "Additionally, the keyboard's radio signals can be transmitted to non-insulated cable. It is possible for the power cables in a computer to transfer the signal to the electricity network. Theoretically, 200 homes sharing the same circuit could tap into the signal directly from an electrical outlet."
There is a NewScientist article on how a new technique is 25 times more efficient at inserting DNA into an organism, making "home-brew" genetic engineering within the realms of possibility...
Quite an interesting article, despite the usual newscientist hyperbole: "The technique is very easy - you could do it on the farm." Umm yeah whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
You might want to try changing the channel on your router, sometimes the wireless chips don't see certain cahnnels very well. Also you might need to downgrade your security to WPA only, some wireless chipsets STILL don't support WPA2, unbelieveably...
How is riding a bicycle or having an apple tree related to electricity generation? These are transportation issues which belong in another thread.
The simple fact is that electricity makes modern civilization possible, and that drastic cuts in electricity use through shortages or high prices will quickly return society back to the level of the 18th century.
However noble you think the idea of a 'downshift' is, electricity use is not an area that can be cut without serious societal ramifications. Most people do not wish to freeze in the dark.
The amount of energy arriving in the form of sunlight and stored in the oceans is so vast, all forms of manmade energy consumption look like a 10th decimal place rounding error in comparison. Waste heat simply won't make any difference to the equation.
The main thing that is warming the planet is excessive 'greenhouse' gas production, notably CO2 from coal and petroleum burning. This stops the re-radiation of IR radiation back into space, thereby warming the planet.
As for your comments on the stability of governments, I would imagine a government that can provide energy, heat and light for its citizens is far more likely to be stable than one which can't. In fact, I would imagine a government that lets its people freeze in the dark would be very likely to fall apart or be overthrown.
Again I ask you, where is there a large-scale tidal power station in operation? How likely is it that coastal communities are going to allow their harbours to be choked with industrial machinery? Considering the difficulties in even siting a windfarm, I would say not bloody likely.
Solar towers are more pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Sure it might work in some places in the world, at fantastic cost; but not useful for 99% of the worlds population.
The supply of oil and gas is a huge factor- the price is about to rocket upwards as the supply gets tight, this is the reason new nukes are crucially necessary. The green movement with its cold-war-era anti-nuke stupidity is starting a movement alright- to coal and runaway global warming. Supreme irony that.
This is largely due from the incredibly rapid decline of the North Sea oil and gas fields.
d =630622
Britain developed the North Sea oil and gas in the 70s, this largely saved its economy by providing three decades of cheap oil and natural gas. However, the good times are now about to abruptly end. Oil production is down dramatically- nearly 50% since 1999.
In fact it fell 13% in just the last year! http://realtimenews.slb.com/news/story.cfm?storyi
In fact the North Sea is now well down on its peak production, and the UK will now be reliant on Russia and the various OPEC countries, many of whom are in decline themselves. The global competition for oil and gas is immense.
Unless the UK can commit to a new generation of nukes, the future here will be very dark indeed.
The issue of cost is a red herring; You might need 10MW of wind power to replace a single MW of baseload coal/gas/nuclear. This is the nature of wind, solar and tidal: they are not consistent and cannot be relied upon 24/7.
, 00.html
For example here in the UK, we recently had frosty weather across the country with absolutely no wind, and it was dark by 4pm. Considering peak time is 3.30 to 6.30 because of the combination of residential, commercial and industrial loads, this is the time when you need maximum reliablilty, and NO renewable energy would have been generated at all. As it was, the grid barely coped; there were very nearly blackouts just after christmas: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1964324
Denmark has also had problems; they have only about 15% wind power and suffer from grid instability, which suggests this is the maximum about that a country should aim for. Also considering there is not a single large tidal power station in operation anywhere, it is an unproven technology.
I would encourage people to look at the example of France, which generates 80% of its electricity from Nuclear and exports it throughout Europe. They have never had a serious accident since the beginning of their nuke programme, and the programme is a source of pride for the French people.
With the recent Russian natural gas crisis and the realization that coal is a filthy technology, it seems to be either nuclear power with reprocessing (which reduces waste by 90%) or sitting in the dark. The green lobby seems to be very keen on the latter.
Generally the friction caused by the subduction creates immense heat, melting the rock layer that is subducted. When the rock melts, superheated steam causes volcanoes to form above the subduction zone. For an example, see http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~leeman/Cascades.gif
So unless you want volcanoes of nuke waste (!) it might be better to bury it in a geologically stable area, such as the middle of a continent.
Logically, if they started reprocessing waste, it would be such a small amount you would only need a single salt mine or similar.
Exactly. Any decent property manager would have installed a sprinkler system.
A water sprinkler system with localised heads would have prevented most of the damage. Each sprinkler head is basically an independent valve held shut by a temperature sensitive device, so you only get water spraying on or near the fire area. Sprinklers do NOT go off all at once, there is usually not enough pressure in the water supply for this.
Most fires start from something very small like a candle or electrical junction box, or burning paper outside the door or through the letterbox. The idea of a sprinkler system is to quickly put out this small fire before it grows and becomes unstoppable.
The 3D animated weather map has been hugely successful in New Zeland, it is very clear and shows what the weather will be like as the day goes on, complete with cloud, rain and wind (and sun!). It is far, far more useful than a static map.
It is also very reliable, I can only remember a few times when it failed to work properly, mainly due to poor operators rather than a machine crashing.
The BBC has done a terrible job of it- they have made Britain a dull brown colour, (its is quite a green and pleasant land outside London!) the animation is hard to follow and they don't show clouds- just their shadows.
They are about to fine tune it tomorrow from the feedback they have received, so we'll see what they come up with. In any case its a vast improvement from the "sunny, with some rain" forecasts of old...
Why is this semi-brainwashed post moderated Insightful?
High wages are good for the economy. The more people get paid, the more they spend. A single dollar spent increases GDP by $7. Competing on low wages is a race to poverty, and no first world country should be trying to do this.
I think trade has always led to stronger economies, and will do so- but rampant, unregulated free trade is wrecking the planet, and the uncertain nature of the beast is causing serious pain to many, in both first and third world countries.
I am sorry that you think your unions and government are so corrupt- but libertarian free trade is not the solution, reform of government is.
And regarding your comment about unions driving up wages, well its no coincidence that non-unionised fields like IT get savaged, if workers don't stand up for themselves no one else will...
Exactly- its damn sickening how slow and crap it is. What makes it worse is the complicity of the government, they are too afraid to take on Telecom and its undead army of lawyers.
Another example of how privatisation is basically a license to screw your customers...
One reason that people are tired is that they are working excessive hours. Todays society risks repeating the same mistakes as the Victorian era; when children as young as ten would work alongside adults for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week.
The eight hour day / 40 hour week was one of the Labour movements' greatest victories, but this has been largely eroded in modern professional occupations. Many people work crazy hours. There is a whole culture that working yourself and your family into the ground is a good thing.
However some enlightened governments have strategies to deal with this- the issue of work/life balance has been big recently- check http://www.dol.govt.nz/worklife/index.asp or
http://www.dti.gov.uk/work-lifebalance/what.html
Whatever happened to the 60's notion that technology would have us working less?
IIRC, the Collossus uses about 1500 EF37A tubes. These are very low current, very low noise signal pentode. They run at about 250V / 3mA. They were widely used in audio gear including the Leak TL12 and so on.
I use Mullard EF37A input tubes in an audio amp I built. They are quite beautiful looking as seen here: www.r-type.org/exhib/aad0108.htm
More cool tubes stuff at www.diyaudio.com in the tube forum.
Exactly. They had advice from a top Melbourne law firm to leave Ansett the hell alone, but were desperate to expand at any cost...
Would you buy an airline whose planes were an average of 25 years old?!?!?!
AirNZ was stupid to buy ansett, but they provided a great scapegoat for the Aussies.
Hehe, actually the reason tube amps sound good is the lack of higher order harmonic distortion. A well designed tube amp will have predominantly second and third harmonics in the distortion spectrum, and almost no 4th, 5th,6th etc. These higher harmonics sound discordant and harsh.
Transistor amps usually have a wide range of harmonic products, they almost never give you a breakdown, just the useless THD figure.
A small amount (
BTW, I use WW2 vintage transmitter tubes on a daily basis to listen to my CDs! Nothing like using tubes stamped RADAR for your hi-fi...
The patriot missiles were a huge failure- the scuds in most cases (90%) hit their targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia.a /1992/59740945-59743599.htm
You were lied to by your military and media organisations.
More info at http://www.cdi.org/issues/bmd/Patriot.html and http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/us
I have been using a barra 4 20GB for 1.5 years now, and a 5400 80GB seagate with no problems... I thought they were among the better drives...
Lamp amps? I think you mean tube amps...
And there is actually a good reason for the reason that they sound nicer: 1 or 2 percent 2nd harmonic distortion, adds a kind of subtle chorus effect. Transistors tend to add 3rd harmonic distortion which is multiplied by the use of a lot of negative feedback, creating unpleasant higher order harmonics.
A very long time ago an engineer simulated the shitty sound of lamp amps on an all-digital system with a very cheep DSP. The double blind tests revealed none was better than the other. The system didn't sell. He added dummy lamps. The system sold very well for a very high price IIRC
That sounds suspiciously like bullshit. It is difficult to emulate tube amps well, just ask the million guitarists who swear by the sound of tubes.
For a designer, how it looks and feels is the ONLY thing that is important. Hence the flash monstrosities that take several minutes to load over dial up (sigh....)
That is the worst pile of cr*p I have seen... Who the hell wants a pink and blue loveheart on their business laptop? Unless you are some kind of wireless pimp...
Why don't you download me?
From the article: "Additionally, the keyboard's radio signals can be transmitted to non-insulated cable. It is possible for the power cables in a computer to transfer the signal to the electricity network. Theoretically, 200 homes sharing the same circuit could tap into the signal directly from an electrical outlet."
IOW, not secure...
Quite an interesting article, despite the usual newscientist hyperbole: "The technique is very easy - you could do it on the farm." Umm yeah whatever.
My theory is that large fans at low speed are more effective than small fans at high speed, and far quieter.
That would be one *smokin* athlon....