The heat is produced mainly from electrons pushing through long paths of thin wires and materials. As the electrons move through these wires they lose some of their kinetic energy to the wire, which causes the wires to heat. If you want to lessen this you will need to use something similar to superconducting materials, which have very small losses in this manner.
Of course, the one thing that most laypeople don't realize is that the "laws" of thermodynamics are really just approximations. In reality, entropy is a statistical measurement. There is nothing preventing a system from spontaneously getting more ordered rather than more disordered. It's just far more likely that the disorder in a system will increase.
Look at it like gambling in a casino. Sure, you could get lucky and win every hand. You could also lose every hand. What is most likely to happen, however, is to just lose a bit more than you win, resulting in an overall loss. This is basically how entropy works out. For every chance that a system might become more ordered, there are more chances that it will become disordered, thus you have an overall increase in entropy over the long term.
It doesn't do this by converting the heat into electricity however. What it does is effectively act as an alternator, converting the kinetic energy into electricity. The loss of kinetic energy slows the vehicle to a stop while charging a series of batteries. Thus, no heat from brake pads in the first place.
When decelerating or braking, the electric motor turns into a generator to charge the batteries automatically. It's a unique hybrid feature called regenerative braking. Normally when you brake, all that energy is converted into heat into the brakes. Toyota's Prius actually recaptures about 30 percent of that energy to recharge the nickel-medal-hydride batteries in the back
My question is why would anyone want to generate anything Matrix-style?
Energy? Burning the food that feeds a person would be more efficient at getting the energy out of it than harvesting the energy through a person.
Processing power? (insert stock joke about Beowulf cluster here...) The matrix is already supposed to be a ton of computers and supercomputers that can probably do it themselves.
Chemical production? Genetically engineered microorganisms would be a better choice - easier to extract the chemicals.
For that matter, why didn't the matrix computers just cut the nerves to the arms and legs of the matrix humans. If they can't move they can never escape. Not to mention that these people haven't walked for a long time, possibly ever. How can they do it when they get taken off the machines.
Yeah, yeah - I know it's just a movie. However, it's just an expensive knock-off of a much better movie named Dark City. The Matrix had lots of promise and tons of eye candy, but they never bothered to make it remotely plausible. It's basically another Hackers, just made for the masses who don't have a clue.
Anyone hear anything about the Mac version? I play the beta it all the time on my dual 533 G4 and it runs sweet on it! I can't wait to buy this sucker.
I know this is Open Source, but I generally thought that most Open Source software was better engineered than much of the commercial stuff out there.
What gave you that idea? Open source efforts may or may not be better engineered than non-open source stuff, but they are not guaranteed to be better. It all has to do with the number of people working on the project, the quality of the project, the project administration, etc.
Look at it this way, if you have a well-funded, well-organized, large commercial effort then it will most likely beat the pants off of a free, badly organized open-source effort with only a couple of developers. The reverse is true also.
Is open source better than commercial? Well, the result is free and it has the potential to produce a good product, but many times projects take a long time to develop, end up rough around the edges, are largely unsupported, and require a good knowledge of the product to operate it. If this was how a piece of commercial software turned out then it would tend to wither and die off (with some exceptions), because no one would pay for it.
There are some great open source efforts and some great commercial products, but you have to choose them on a case-by-case basis. I certainly prefer open source to commercial, all other factors being equal.
Signal to Noise ratio renders ternary logic useless.
The signal-to-noise ratio is similar for both binary and these type of trinary systems, if they are using similar hardware. The three states of a the trinary system given here are 0 (-x V), 1 (0 V), 2(+x V). In other words, the circuitry in both cases still uses the same voltages, and thus the same resolution. The only addition is current direction, which is just a modification of normal binary logic circuits.
the site design doesnt make it look very credible
So if someones site doesn't look fancy and professional then their ideas are no good? Perhaps the guy who made the site was too busy coming up with good ideas to have time to make a fancy frames-and-flash site. I think Steve Grubb did a great job with the site. It's simple and direct, he has tons of examples and tables to show you how the concept works. He also has a tutorial which brings you through the ideas gradually, culminating with the actual circuit designs so you can build your own versions of his ideas. What's not to like about it other than the fact that it is plain?
Well, I agree that MacOS 8 could crash pretty good under certain circumstances, but that's all in the past now. MacOS X is stable, easy to use, extremely compatible, looks good, and has just about every advantage a Unix-like OS can have. It's a great marriage between BSD and Macintosh.
I'm sure that it will only get better also. There are tons of developers churning out software for it, it's gotten rave reviews and people have taken notice. A lot of open source software has been checked and compiled and there are very few roadblocks to using most software packages for Unix-like OS's.
Hopefully a lot of the one-platform programs will branch out a bit more and become available to alternative operating systems. With modern compilers and great frameworks out there it's getting to be easier and easier to produce multiple versions of a program which will run on a variety of systems.
I'm sure I could be up in that range also, but MacOS X is pretty young and it's had a couple of updates that made changes to the kernel and required a reboot. Once it settles down a bit I'm sure I could keep it up a similar amount of time.
I think that I've managed to lock it completely up or get a kernel panic maybe twice in the past 9 months or so. Not bad for a brand new operating system.
What is the difference between a cancer cell and a "normal" cell?
Actually, this is one of the problems with treating cancer cells, they are simply regular cells that have broken down. There are a few general trends common to most cancer cells, however. Cancer cells are cells which divide without control or order and go on to invade and damage nearby tissues and organs. They can also break away and invade other parts of the body.
Because they are usually dividing more rapidly than normal cells, scientists can take advantage of this fact. Every time a cell divides it has to make a copy of its genetic material, such as DNA. Just like all other things in the world, every time a copy is made there is a chance of mistakes being made. By introducing radiation and chemicals you can increase the chances of a mistake being made. Thus a large number of cancer cells which would have been viable are now not able to live and die off. When combined with other treatments and the body's natural defenses, radiotherapy can go a long way toward sending a patient into remission.
Better targeting of the cancerous cells is important, however, because radiation also affects normal cell division. You can see this in the most rapidly dividing cells in our bodies, the hair, skin, stomach, and bone marrow, among others. Radiation hits all cells in the body hard and causes cell death all over, but more so in these rapidly dividing cells. This is why hair falls out, skin gets rough and lesioned, red and white blood cell counts drop, etc. It still hits cancer cells harder than normal cells, but if you can target the cancer cells with a better delivery mechanism then you will do less damage to the patient during treatment.
the only reason I ever shut my computer down is because it locks up
If you want to avoid this problem in the future, your best bet is to switch to a more stable operating system. Under MacOS X, which is BSD-based, I've had up-times of weeks. The only real reasons to reboot are the occasional kernel panic (once in a blue moon, usually after installing a badly written kernel extension) and the occasional updates to the operating system which change the kernel.
I would say that by using a Unix-like operating system such as Linux, MacOS X, BSD, etc., you will avoid having your computer lock up due to a program crash. You just kill the locked-up process and go right along using your system. It is so awesome to be free of crashes and lock-ups.
Have you read this linked page? Have you read any statements made by Apple that they are using this patent to prevent you from using the PNG format?
If you look at that page, you will see that Apple does offer a license for the patent as part of the SVG 1.0 patent which is being put together. It looks like they are just being cautious in order to keep their rights to the patent intact, but still allow it to be used for PNG and SVG.There are plenty of greedy corporations out there and Apple may in fact be one, but don't assume they are without looking at all the facts. Take a look at the sites listed in this article, write to Apple and ask questions, express your thoughts to Apple. If you are not then satisfied with what you see then you can make as much noise about it as you want. Making a big deal about this just because someone has implied wrongdoing on Apple's part is just being a follower.
Before anyone goes off the deep end, I would like to know if Apple is intending on using this to block development on PNG, or if they are holding the patent but don't plan on interfering. Has there been a statement made by Apple that they are blocking the use of the PNG format or the SVG 1.0 patent?
Holding a patent is one thing, vigorously going after people who use the patented technology is another. I'm not up on my legalese but I do see that Apple provides a RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms) license for the use of the technology. I'm not sure what the implications are, but it does look as if Apple is making an attempt to accommodate the SVG 1.0 patent.
If people think that Apple's terms, or the terms of any of the 11 other patent holders involved, are too strict then I'd say your best bet is to write a nice letter to Apple explaining why you think so. Apple holds a lot of patents and, from what I've seen so far, are fairly reasonable about opening them up. Of course they still want to hold on to their intellectual property, but they have opened up patents in the past for reasonable use.
I remember being able to hack Apple's DOS like crazy since it was on a boot portion of the disks, unlike the hardware DOS that systems like Commodore had. I had a neat little protection scheme where I swapped around the catalog track and added in some encryption to the data so it could only be read with a special boot disk I kept on me.
I also made a dummy version of a friends disk where I swapped all of his DOS commands around. Delete became run, format became catalog, etc. He was horrified when he thought he lost all the data on his disk, but then I relented and gave the original back to him.
Later, when the 3 1/2 floppies came out I remember using a soldering iron to burn holes in the disk cases in order to double-side the disks. It worked great if you made a template to space the hole properly.
Slashdot Mirror
The heat is produced mainly from electrons pushing through long paths of thin wires and materials. As the electrons move through these wires they lose some of their kinetic energy to the wire, which causes the wires to heat. If you want to lessen this you will need to use something similar to superconducting materials, which have very small losses in this manner.
Of course, the one thing that most laypeople don't realize is that the "laws" of thermodynamics are really just approximations. In reality, entropy is a statistical measurement. There is nothing preventing a system from spontaneously getting more ordered rather than more disordered. It's just far more likely that the disorder in a system will increase.
Look at it like gambling in a casino. Sure, you could get lucky and win every hand. You could also lose every hand. What is most likely to happen, however, is to just lose a bit more than you win, resulting in an overall loss. This is basically how entropy works out. For every chance that a system might become more ordered, there are more chances that it will become disordered, thus you have an overall increase in entropy over the long term.
It doesn't do this by converting the heat into electricity however. What it does is effectively act as an alternator, converting the kinetic energy into electricity. The loss of kinetic energy slows the vehicle to a stop while charging a series of batteries. Thus, no heat from brake pads in the first place.
Relevant quote from that article on techtv:
My question is why would anyone want to generate anything Matrix-style?
Energy? Burning the food that feeds a person would be more efficient at getting the energy out of it than harvesting the energy through a person.
Processing power? (insert stock joke about Beowulf cluster here...) The matrix is already supposed to be a ton of computers and supercomputers that can probably do it themselves.
Chemical production? Genetically engineered microorganisms would be a better choice - easier to extract the chemicals.
For that matter, why didn't the matrix computers just cut the nerves to the arms and legs of the matrix humans. If they can't move they can never escape. Not to mention that these people haven't walked for a long time, possibly ever. How can they do it when they get taken off the machines.
Yeah, yeah - I know it's just a movie. However, it's just an expensive knock-off of a much better movie named Dark City. The Matrix had lots of promise and tons of eye candy, but they never bothered to make it remotely plausible. It's basically another Hackers, just made for the masses who don't have a clue.
Anyone hear anything about the Mac version? I play the beta it all the time on my dual 533 G4 and it runs sweet on it! I can't wait to buy this sucker.
I know this is Open Source, but I generally thought that most Open Source software was better engineered than much of the commercial stuff out there.
What gave you that idea? Open source efforts may or may not be better engineered than non-open source stuff, but they are not guaranteed to be better. It all has to do with the number of people working on the project, the quality of the project, the project administration, etc.
Look at it this way, if you have a well-funded, well-organized, large commercial effort then it will most likely beat the pants off of a free, badly organized open-source effort with only a couple of developers. The reverse is true also.
Is open source better than commercial? Well, the result is free and it has the potential to produce a good product, but many times projects take a long time to develop, end up rough around the edges, are largely unsupported, and require a good knowledge of the product to operate it. If this was how a piece of commercial software turned out then it would tend to wither and die off (with some exceptions), because no one would pay for it.
There are some great open source efforts and some great commercial products, but you have to choose them on a case-by-case basis. I certainly prefer open source to commercial, all other factors being equal.
Signal to Noise ratio renders ternary logic useless.
The signal-to-noise ratio is similar for both binary and these type of trinary systems, if they are using similar hardware. The three states of a the trinary system given here are 0 (-x V), 1 (0 V), 2(+x V). In other words, the circuitry in both cases still uses the same voltages, and thus the same resolution. The only addition is current direction, which is just a modification of normal binary logic circuits.
the site design doesnt make it look very credible
So if someones site doesn't look fancy and professional then their ideas are no good? Perhaps the guy who made the site was too busy coming up with good ideas to have time to make a fancy frames-and-flash site. I think Steve Grubb did a great job with the site. It's simple and direct, he has tons of examples and tables to show you how the concept works. He also has a tutorial which brings you through the ideas gradually, culminating with the actual circuit designs so you can build your own versions of his ideas. What's not to like about it other than the fact that it is plain?
Well, I agree that MacOS 8 could crash pretty good under certain circumstances, but that's all in the past now. MacOS X is stable, easy to use, extremely compatible, looks good, and has just about every advantage a Unix-like OS can have. It's a great marriage between BSD and Macintosh.
I'm sure that it will only get better also. There are tons of developers churning out software for it, it's gotten rave reviews and people have taken notice. A lot of open source software has been checked and compiled and there are very few roadblocks to using most software packages for Unix-like OS's.
Hopefully a lot of the one-platform programs will branch out a bit more and become available to alternative operating systems. With modern compilers and great frameworks out there it's getting to be easier and easier to produce multiple versions of a program which will run on a variety of systems.
Very nice!
I'm sure I could be up in that range also, but MacOS X is pretty young and it's had a couple of updates that made changes to the kernel and required a reboot. Once it settles down a bit I'm sure I could keep it up a similar amount of time.
I think that I've managed to lock it completely up or get a kernel panic maybe twice in the past 9 months or so. Not bad for a brand new operating system.
What is the difference between a cancer cell and a "normal" cell?
Actually, this is one of the problems with treating cancer cells, they are simply regular cells that have broken down. There are a few general trends common to most cancer cells, however. Cancer cells are cells which divide without control or order and go on to invade and damage nearby tissues and organs. They can also break away and invade other parts of the body.
Because they are usually dividing more rapidly than normal cells, scientists can take advantage of this fact. Every time a cell divides it has to make a copy of its genetic material, such as DNA. Just like all other things in the world, every time a copy is made there is a chance of mistakes being made. By introducing radiation and chemicals you can increase the chances of a mistake being made. Thus a large number of cancer cells which would have been viable are now not able to live and die off. When combined with other treatments and the body's natural defenses, radiotherapy can go a long way toward sending a patient into remission.
Better targeting of the cancerous cells is important, however, because radiation also affects normal cell division. You can see this in the most rapidly dividing cells in our bodies, the hair, skin, stomach, and bone marrow, among others. Radiation hits all cells in the body hard and causes cell death all over, but more so in these rapidly dividing cells. This is why hair falls out, skin gets rough and lesioned, red and white blood cell counts drop, etc. It still hits cancer cells harder than normal cells, but if you can target the cancer cells with a better delivery mechanism then you will do less damage to the patient during treatment.
the only reason I ever shut my computer down is because it locks up
If you want to avoid this problem in the future, your best bet is to switch to a more stable operating system. Under MacOS X, which is BSD-based, I've had up-times of weeks. The only real reasons to reboot are the occasional kernel panic (once in a blue moon, usually after installing a badly written kernel extension) and the occasional updates to the operating system which change the kernel.
I would say that by using a Unix-like operating system such as Linux, MacOS X, BSD, etc., you will avoid having your computer lock up due to a program crash. You just kill the locked-up process and go right along using your system. It is so awesome to be free of crashes and lock-ups.
Have you read this linked page? Have you read any statements made by Apple that they are using this patent to prevent you from using the PNG format?
If you look at that page, you will see that Apple does offer a license for the patent as part of the SVG 1.0 patent which is being put together. It looks like they are just being cautious in order to keep their rights to the patent intact, but still allow it to be used for PNG and SVG.There are plenty of greedy corporations out there and Apple may in fact be one, but don't assume they are without looking at all the facts. Take a look at the sites listed in this article, write to Apple and ask questions, express your thoughts to Apple. If you are not then satisfied with what you see then you can make as much noise about it as you want. Making a big deal about this just because someone has implied wrongdoing on Apple's part is just being a follower.
Before anyone goes off the deep end, I would like to know if Apple is intending on using this to block development on PNG, or if they are holding the patent but don't plan on interfering. Has there been a statement made by Apple that they are blocking the use of the PNG format or the SVG 1.0 patent?
Holding a patent is one thing, vigorously going after people who use the patented technology is another. I'm not up on my legalese but I do see that Apple provides a RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms) license for the use of the technology. I'm not sure what the implications are, but it does look as if Apple is making an attempt to accommodate the SVG 1.0 patent.
If people think that Apple's terms, or the terms of any of the 11 other patent holders involved, are too strict then I'd say your best bet is to write a nice letter to Apple explaining why you think so. Apple holds a lot of patents and, from what I've seen so far, are fairly reasonable about opening them up. Of course they still want to hold on to their intellectual property, but they have opened up patents in the past for reasonable use.
I remember being able to hack Apple's DOS like crazy since it was on a boot portion of the disks, unlike the hardware DOS that systems like Commodore had. I had a neat little protection scheme where I swapped around the catalog track and added in some encryption to the data so it could only be read with a special boot disk I kept on me.
I also made a dummy version of a friends disk where I swapped all of his DOS commands around. Delete became run, format became catalog, etc. He was horrified when he thought he lost all the data on his disk, but then I relented and gave the original back to him.
Later, when the 3 1/2 floppies came out I remember using a soldering iron to burn holes in the disk cases in order to double-side the disks. It worked great if you made a template to space the hole properly.