What about the Target cost involved in going to the store? I take in my flash card or CD to Target to save a few dollars on printing. But while I'm there I figure I'll just get some paper towels, and quickly spend $50 on stuff I didn't really need. Then I go back to pick them up, and drop another $50 on more stuff I can do without. Net saving, *minus* $95.
This is exactly the kind of thing we all (not just/.ers) need to get worked up about! Video games do far greater harm to our kids than moldy old school buildings that should have been gutted decades ago.
Blasting fantasy aliens will shorten a child's life way more effectively than spending a year without health insurance.
Better we concentrate on ending the nervous twitch that excessive gamepading can cause, rather than the total ego destruction that occurs when a parent/teacher/priest molests the child.
Let's deal with children with the warped perception that Master Chief is 'cool', and we can get to the constant cramming of blipverts selling piece of crap aspirations that can never, ever be realized later.
Let's stop the mega-corporations poisoning the poor children's minds with comic ultra-violence, so that they can concentrate on poisoning their bodies with chemicals in the environment, in the water, in the sludge-matic pound 'o' lard flame-wiped shite burger at the local worker exploitation outlet that embodies their future.
OR
We might pick something that actually matters, but that might require the expenditure of actual effort, and change it instead.
As sites such as Luminous Landscape (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/dq.sh tml) point out, we're already there on image quality. Digital and film have different characteristics that make a direct comparison difficult (there isn't really one measure of image quality), subjectively a good 6-8MP DSLR is about the same, and certainly something like a Canon EOS-1Ds is at least as good.
What is less common is having a 35mm-sized sensor, but even that is already available (in fact you can get digital backs for medium format cameras, if you have enough money).
Here's a comment I added to a thread about this on a religious website, where the author was suggestin this was evidence that God put us here:
"An analogy. I just looked round my workplace, and everyone is white. I have a model of how white people could form. "In that model it is not obvious at all how black people like Elijah Mohammed may have formed."
Hence, it looks very unlikely that there are black people, except for Elijah Mohammed, who was therefore clearly put here as a blessed sign from God. Of course, if I looked somewhere other than a small workspace in Minnesota I might have to revise how universal my model is."
Other subjects of interest include dobutamine, a drug that maintains muscle, and the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur, the only primate known to hibernate."
OK, so I can see how I could take DADLE and dobutamine, but how the hell am I going to inject a dose of Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur?
There's a very easy solution to at least part of this. The company that compiles the play charts excludes anything played as an ad. In fact, I'd guess that they theoretically do this already, which is why the stupid jingle for {insert product here} isn't on the billboard 100.
That doesn't change the fact that it is convincing the sheep that the record might be good. But that's their problem.
Switched from Blogger to Pivot last week, and so far it's working well. The key attractions for me were greater control and the minimal server requirements (PHP is about it). It works great, there are some really nice touches in there, and it's being actively developed.
Great piece of machinery - light, runs on AA batteries for ages, and while it's quite large (full size keyboard) it doesn't take up much room. And it's quite rudimendary so might not count as a computer in your mind! No USB though.
One of the attractions of Hydrogen is its storage potential, as that allows us to make full use of 'alternative' energy sources such as solar, wind etc. Whether it's in a garage that needs less frequent tanker visits because of the solar cells on it roof, or in a car that refuels itself and runs the air conditioning while parked on a hot day, or in a house like the one mentioned, hydrogen's best feature is not its cleanliness, but its ability to smooth the link between supply and demand that allows us to use these cleaner alternatives.
On a larger scale industrial installations would allow us to do the same thing, so that we could have fewer power stations running at 100% day and night, rather than having inefficient spinning reserve. And of course we could get by with less still if we all had a power station in the basement. There are alternatives such as using superconducting magnets, or compressed air, but the ubiquity and relative safety of hydrogen makes it a real enabler of such change. Assuming the political/economic will is there of course.
I think my point stands - in the UK it is possible to sign up for cheap electricity overnight, so if batteries or other technologies were simple and effective, people would use them and restock them each night. The fact is that they work pretty well, but they require maintenance and storage, they wear out, and they cost non-begligible amounts to buy in the first place.
Absolutely you can buy more units (or one big one). That's got nothing to do with the articles claim that 1kw approaches what you need to run a house, which is what I was commenting on.
I agree with what you say, but that's exactly where the article is lacking - even if this technology could be made production-ready in the next few years, it still won't make homes run stand-alone because the other technologies you mention aren't really consumer-friendly (doesn't mean they don't exist, or that some people don't use them of course).
As impressive as this is, I'll be happier when we have an energy storage system, be it a secondary tank to keep excess hydrogen, a decent battery setup, flywheels, SMES or even micro-CAES, that can match such a system. Until then this is a nice thing, but not the revolution it may have been played as.
As a practical measure I'm sure the researchers know that running on 1KW per day isn't practical - they live in MN like me, so at this time of year homes will have a 0.8KW blower motor running for much of the day to keep the house warm! And during the summer you can add an air conditioner to that (not in my house, cus I'm too much of an enviro-weenie).
Actually I'd happily sign up for one of these units in a few years time - I'm in favour of energy efficiency, and try to live it as much as I can e.g. cycle to work except when it's snowing, when I ride-share, all energy efficient appliances as I have to buy new ones (including light bulbs), etc.
I'd hate for people to get the wrong impression though. With additional technology, and a lot of care, one of these could run a house, but the CNN article is one in a long line of making people think this is an option that's right around the corner (though I'm hopeful).
From the article: "The cell could produce 1 kilowatt of power, nearly enough for an average home."
A bit of googling (http://www.arctic-cat.com/generators/wattage.asp) turns up numbers showing that an iron takes about 1.2KW, or just over 1KW for a toaster. So almost enough for an average home, so long as I wander round the house turning off everything else before flattening my shirt or browning some wheat. That's handy.
(This occured to me because I have a fusebox that can't cope with me using a medium iron and an electric heater on low in the same room. Domestic bliss.)
Part of my agreement was to notify the company of any arrangement of matter created during my time with them. Given that this is ludicrous (I would fall into a recursive loop of telling them about the report I was writing about the report I was writing about the report...) and that they have no means of allowing for such reporting, I figured that thos part of the contract wouldn't stand up to formal legal scrutiny and would void.
But then I don't have other jobs, or ideas, so it's not too important.
So the fact that you don't want one of the fancy phones means that they are not dominating the market? Have you tried not wanting Microsoft Windows, because the kind of competition your force of will creates is just what the EU is looking for.
I'm sure there's a superconductor engineer reading this somewhere, but in the meantime I'll point out that we don't really know what causes superconductivity. Cooper pairs are a good theory, but haven't been proven to be the cause. So coming up with a substance that is similar to a thing that might cause superconductivity is hopeful, but let's not get carried away.
Gregg Easterbrook has a good column (The 'EasterBlogg') on why this is nonsense:
http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml
Basically we've had climate change of this type fairly recently, and no mass extinctions besides what we've caused by chopping up various creatures to make our gonads bigger. Actually Easterbrook didn't make that last point, but his article is well worth a read.
My first suggestion whatever you decide is not to portray yourself as a 'potential' high school graduate. You're much more likely to get a scholarship if you can at least appear confident that you'll graduate high school.
Putting aside the fact that on a portable device you generally don't need really high quality files because of the listening situations you're often in...
500kbps is not 'reasonable quality' for Oggs. The encoder isn't tuned particularly well about about 200kbps, so anything higher is only giving marginal improvements and wasting a lot of space. Add to that the fact that above 160kbps Ogg becomes tricky to differentiate from the original, and certainly by 192 or thereabouts it's as close to perfect as it's likely to get.
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What about the Target cost involved in going to the store? I take in my flash card or CD to Target to save a few dollars on printing. But while I'm there I figure I'll just get some paper towels, and quickly spend $50 on stuff I didn't really need. Then I go back to pick them up, and drop another $50 on more stuff I can do without. Net saving, *minus* $95.
This is exactly the kind of thing we all (not just /.ers) need to get worked up about! Video games do far greater harm to our kids than moldy old school buildings that should have been gutted decades ago.
Blasting fantasy aliens will shorten a child's life way more effectively than spending a year without health insurance.
Better we concentrate on ending the nervous twitch that excessive gamepading can cause, rather than the total ego destruction that occurs when a parent/teacher/priest molests the child.
Let's deal with children with the warped perception that Master Chief is 'cool', and we can get to the constant cramming of blipverts selling piece of crap aspirations that can never, ever be realized later.
Let's stop the mega-corporations poisoning the poor children's minds with comic ultra-violence, so that they can concentrate on poisoning their bodies with chemicals in the environment, in the water, in the sludge-matic pound 'o' lard flame-wiped shite burger at the local worker exploitation outlet that embodies their future.
OR
We might pick something that actually matters, but that might require the expenditure of actual effort, and change it instead.
It's a judgement call, I guess.
As sites such as Luminous Landscape (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/dq.sh tml) point out, we're already there on image quality. Digital and film have different characteristics that make a direct comparison difficult (there isn't really one measure of image quality), subjectively a good 6-8MP DSLR is about the same, and certainly something like a Canon EOS-1Ds is at least as good.
What is less common is having a 35mm-sized sensor, but even that is already available (in fact you can get digital backs for medium format cameras, if you have enough money).
involving spectacle makers worldwide. Playboy contains articles, while providing the means to lose your sight sufficiently to be unable to read them.
Here's a comment I added to a thread about this on a religious website, where the author was suggestin this was evidence that God put us here:
"An analogy. I just looked round my workplace, and everyone is white. I have a model of how white people could form. "In that model it is not obvious at all how black people like Elijah Mohammed may have formed."
Hence, it looks very unlikely that there are black people, except for Elijah Mohammed, who was therefore clearly put here as a blessed sign from God. Of course, if I looked somewhere other than a small workspace in Minnesota I might have to revise how universal my model is."
(note: I don't follow any religion)
Other subjects of interest include dobutamine, a drug that maintains muscle, and the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur, the only primate known to hibernate."
OK, so I can see how I could take DADLE and dobutamine, but how the hell am I going to inject a dose of Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur?
Perhaps I could ask Richard Gere.
According to Debrett's the correct form would be "Sir Arthur", or if you're being very formal, "Sir Arthur C Clarke".
There's a very easy solution to at least part of this. The company that compiles the play charts excludes anything played as an ad. In fact, I'd guess that they theoretically do this already, which is why the stupid jingle for {insert product here} isn't on the billboard 100.
That doesn't change the fact that it is convincing the sheep that the record might be good. But that's their problem.
Happens in Minneapolis too, and they have a cool URL:
http://www.humanonastick.com/
Switched from Blogger to Pivot last week, and so far it's working well. The key attractions for me were greater control and the minimal server requirements (PHP is about it). It works great, there are some really nice touches in there, and it's being actively developed.
Cheers, Paul
http://www.ncus.org.uk/
Great piece of machinery - light, runs on AA batteries for ages, and while it's quite large (full size keyboard) it doesn't take up much room. And it's quite rudimendary so might not count as a computer in your mind! No USB though.
One of the attractions of Hydrogen is its storage potential, as that allows us to make full use of 'alternative' energy sources such as solar, wind etc. Whether it's in a garage that needs less frequent tanker visits because of the solar cells on it roof, or in a car that refuels itself and runs the air conditioning while parked on a hot day, or in a house like the one mentioned, hydrogen's best feature is not its cleanliness, but its ability to smooth the link between supply and demand that allows us to use these cleaner alternatives.
On a larger scale industrial installations would allow us to do the same thing, so that we could have fewer power stations running at 100% day and night, rather than having inefficient spinning reserve. And of course we could get by with less still if we all had a power station in the basement. There are alternatives such as using superconducting magnets, or compressed air, but the ubiquity and relative safety of hydrogen makes it a real enabler of such change. Assuming the political/economic will is there of course.
"automatically scans movies and censors them to make them kosher"
Time to throw out my copy of Babe: Pig in the City.
Actually, it was time to do that years ago...
I think my point stands - in the UK it is possible to sign up for cheap electricity overnight, so if batteries or other technologies were simple and effective, people would use them and restock them each night. The fact is that they work pretty well, but they require maintenance and storage, they wear out, and they cost non-begligible amounts to buy in the first place.
Absolutely you can buy more units (or one big one). That's got nothing to do with the articles claim that 1kw approaches what you need to run a house, which is what I was commenting on.
Cheers, Paul
I agree with what you say, but that's exactly where the article is lacking - even if this technology could be made production-ready in the next few years, it still won't make homes run stand-alone because the other technologies you mention aren't really consumer-friendly (doesn't mean they don't exist, or that some people don't use them of course).
As impressive as this is, I'll be happier when we have an energy storage system, be it a secondary tank to keep excess hydrogen, a decent battery setup, flywheels, SMES or even micro-CAES, that can match such a system. Until then this is a nice thing, but not the revolution it may have been played as.
As a practical measure I'm sure the researchers know that running on 1KW per day isn't practical - they live in MN like me, so at this time of year homes will have a 0.8KW blower motor running for much of the day to keep the house warm! And during the summer you can add an air conditioner to that (not in my house, cus I'm too much of an enviro-weenie).
Cheers, Paul
Actually I'd happily sign up for one of these units in a few years time - I'm in favour of energy efficiency, and try to live it as much as I can e.g. cycle to work except when it's snowing, when I ride-share, all energy efficient appliances as I have to buy new ones (including light bulbs), etc.
I'd hate for people to get the wrong impression though. With additional technology, and a lot of care, one of these could run a house, but the CNN article is one in a long line of making people think this is an option that's right around the corner (though I'm hopeful).
Cheers, Paul
From the article: "The cell could produce 1 kilowatt of power, nearly enough for an average home."
) turns up numbers showing that an iron takes about 1.2KW, or just over 1KW for a toaster. So almost enough for an average home, so long as I wander round the house turning off everything else before flattening my shirt or browning some wheat. That's handy.
A bit of googling (http://www.arctic-cat.com/generators/wattage.asp
(This occured to me because I have a fusebox that can't cope with me using a medium iron and an electric heater on low in the same room. Domestic bliss.)
Part of my agreement was to notify the company of any arrangement of matter created during my time with them. Given that this is ludicrous (I would fall into a recursive loop of telling them about the report I was writing about the report I was writing about the report...) and that they have no means of allowing for such reporting, I figured that thos part of the contract wouldn't stand up to formal legal scrutiny and would void.
But then I don't have other jobs, or ideas, so it's not too important.
"It would be for Depp Space One."
Man, Lance Bass is going to be upset when he finds out Johnny beat him to it.
So the fact that you don't want one of the fancy phones means that they are not dominating the market? Have you tried not wanting Microsoft Windows, because the kind of competition your force of will creates is just what the EU is looking for.
I'm sure there's a superconductor engineer reading this somewhere, but in the meantime I'll point out that we don't really know what causes superconductivity. Cooper pairs are a good theory, but haven't been proven to be the cause. So coming up with a substance that is similar to a thing that might cause superconductivity is hopeful, but let's not get carried away.
Cheers, Paul
So now you get to be the sweaty fat kid in gym class, but in the comfort of your own home.
Gregg Easterbrook has a good column (The 'EasterBlogg') on why this is nonsense:
http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml
Basically we've had climate change of this type fairly recently, and no mass extinctions besides what we've caused by chopping up various creatures to make our gonads bigger. Actually Easterbrook didn't make that last point, but his article is well worth a read.
Cheers, Paul
My first suggestion whatever you decide is not to portray yourself as a 'potential' high school graduate. You're much more likely to get a scholarship if you can at least appear confident that you'll graduate high school.
Cheers, Paul
Putting aside the fact that on a portable device you generally don't need really high quality files because of the listening situations you're often in...
500kbps is not 'reasonable quality' for Oggs. The encoder isn't tuned particularly well about about 200kbps, so anything higher is only giving marginal improvements and wasting a lot of space. Add to that the fact that above 160kbps Ogg becomes tricky to differentiate from the original, and certainly by 192 or thereabouts it's as close to perfect as it's likely to get.