No, it's not. To get the same amount of power in orbit, you need a similar amount of surface area. A bit less because there's no atmospheric absorption, but even if you can improve by an order of magnitude, you still have a massive installation that has to be launched at a cost of $millions per ton. Build the plant on earth, and you can use trucks to move the installation at $pennies per ton. Plus you can use cheaper engineering because you don't need to space-harden everything, and you've got no problem preventing your orbital power station from becoming a death ray.
According to this article (which also contains more detail on building and shipping the Engine), the machine will be on display for 6 months, then it will be moved to Myhrvold's home. So if you want to see it, don't wait too long.
(I found another article which claims the Engine will be at the museum for a year. The CHM website doesn't have definitive data.)
I saw the one at the Science Museum a few years ago, and it's awesome. Well worth a trip.
between the one in the Science Museum and this new machine? TFS states "two tons heavier", but the article doesn't mention it, nor the CHM website. The London machine weighs 5.5 tons including its printer, the CHM machine also is listed at 5 tons. What gives?
Gold plated connectors? Sorry bud, but your connectors on your gear are most likely tin or copper, and the gold plating actually decreases conductivity... Gold is used for two reasons. 1. Corrosion resistance. Not an issue for the first few years, but I've seen older plugs corrode significantly. 2. Gold is soft, which means it will deform around e.g. scratches on the connector it mates to. This means the contact area is larger than on non-plated connectors, reducing resistance. So even when the mating connector isn't goldplated, it makes sense to use s goldplated connector.
That's only true for limited values of "fly", though. The task was to keep the aircraft straight and level in variable crosswinds. This can be accomplished with a simple feedback loop. Things like landing are much more complex.
Electricity use for lighting in North America is only about 1% of the total. Most electricity is used by heavy industry, steel mills, aluminium smelters and the like. So even if all tungsten bulbs are replaced with twirly-whirlies, it will make practically no difference. In a large office building, most lights are fluorescent already and the cost of adding more light switches outweighs any energy savings. Rubbish. Maybe a steel mill won't notice the difference for its offices, but an office without huge power-gobbling plant attached certainly will. A quick calculation suggests that my office (20 people) has about 60 fluorescent tubes. Running those 24 instead of 8 hours/day would use an extra 33 kWh/day, =12000 kWh/year. Certainly enough to warrant installing a few switches, if that's even necessary. I can't imagine installing lighting in a building without providing light switches. The only reason lights aren't being switched off is that people can't be arsed to flip a switch. OK, in large buildings it can be difficult to switch everything off including hallways etc, but office spaces should be dark when not in use.
Even in my home, if I turn all the ligths off, I use less electricity made with hydro/nuclear/wind power and more natural gas in the furnace, so overall turning the lights off generates more smoke than leaving them on. The heat generated by your lights is negligible relative to the 25 kW or so generated by the heating system in your home. Also, using an electric heater is inefficient because you've got the 50% generating loss at the power plant. Your heating system can convert natural gas into heat with over 80% efficiency. When the climate is hot enough that you need AC instead of heating, every W of heat load counts.
Bose's genius lies in making their speakers sound spectacular and impressive to the untrained ear. Their 'indirect sound' trickery gives you "stereo" in the entire room, at the expense of a muddled sound. I haven't heard their surround systems, but the problem's bound to be even worse there. Similarly, the frequency response of their speakers makes them stand out when you compare speakers, but pay a bit more attention and you'll notice the frequency response is as flat as a mountain range. IOW, they don't care about what sounds good, they care about marketing to the unwashed masses.
I don't really care who he invites as guest stars, as long as he keeps his hands off the Dr Who legacy. When Torchwood was first announced, I had high hopes. An adult version of Dr Who? Bring it on! As it turned out, Torchwood was Dr Who without the humor, and plus an agenda. The end result was, IMO, rubbish.
So, is Dawkins a decent actor? References to evolution had better be along these lines. Dr Who is not the place for a lecture.
5 oz = 140 ml, 16 oz = 454 ml. I just measured the largest mug I have available, and that's 250 ml. A normal teacup (IMO) is 125 ml. I've the impression tea/coffee cup sizes have been stable for a long time (and for china cups, they still are), it's only in the last few decades we've started to use mugs of increasingly ridiculous size for some reason. Things may be different in the US (home of the "Supersize" meals and drinks, after all), though.
Over here (.nl), I've got 48/48 Mbps over fiber for 50 month including TV and phone service. A few months ago (speed then was 24/24 Mbps) I did some experiments, and it actually achieved those speeds (both up and download) using a Bittorent client.
Until now, projectors needed ungodly amounts of light to project an image bright enough to be usable in a non-darkened room. Either these miniprojectors use some kind of superefficient light source, or that 60" image can only be seen in total darkness.
One explanation for this is that we consider symmetrical faces to be attractive (very few people are perfectly symmetrical). Averaging multiple photos will make for a decently symmetrical face.
ADB. It was brilliant in its day, better than USB in some areas, e.g. it included the ability to switch your computer on/off from the keyboard. Also, Apple made a habit of including ADB ports in its monitors, so you could plug your keyboard and mouse into the monitor. Pity that never caught on either.
Without [next] the [next] stupid [next] clickthroughs [next] and [next] ads [next]: 1. DB-25 parallel port 2. PS/2 3. FireWire 4. SCSI 5. SCART 6. ISA 7. AGP 8. PCMCIA 9. Kryten's groin (from Red Dwarf) 10. game cartridge port
That's all good and well in theory, but how well does it work in practice? IDK how large the source for the average Linux distribution is, but I bet we're talking about dozens, if not hundreds of megabytes of code. You're never going to be able to audit all of it on your own, the only way to do an audit is to assemble a group of people and divide the work. But what if an insidious programmer added seemingly innocuous bits of code to dozens of files, so no single auditor is likely to see the entire backdoor code?
Also, the 'many eyes' argument in favor of FOSS sounds nice, but there's no guarantee those 'many eyes' ever see the entire source code. Seldom-used features will also rarely be audited, if ever.
Such a world would be bloody annoying, to the point where I'd invest in a portable EMP generator so I could scramble/fry any nearby screens. I'm getting information overload as it is. Also, covering everything in displays would come at a huge cost. Even if the displays are cheap, they'll inevitably use electricity. I don't look forward to having a power bill for my wallpaper.
OK, if you really want a truly secure safe OS (and by extension, to a browser mapped to the same address space), this is what you need in your OS: [long explanation] In other words, Windows Vista?
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not. To get the same amount of power in orbit, you need a similar amount of surface area. A bit less because there's no atmospheric absorption, but even if you can improve by an order of magnitude, you still have a massive installation that has to be launched at a cost of $millions per ton. Build the plant on earth, and you can use trucks to move the installation at $pennies per ton. Plus you can use cheaper engineering because you don't need to space-harden everything, and you've got no problem preventing your orbital power station from becoming a death ray.
"I'd hate to spoil it for you, but in the end, the boat sinks" (quote from an ER episode)
Pfft, amateur. The version I saw included a police box and Kylie Minogue.
According to this article (which also contains more detail on building and shipping the Engine), the machine will be on display for 6 months, then it will be moved to Myhrvold's home. So if you want to see it, don't wait too long.
(I found another article which claims the Engine will be at the museum for a year. The CHM website doesn't have definitive data.)
I saw the one at the Science Museum a few years ago, and it's awesome. Well worth a trip.
between the one in the Science Museum and this new machine? TFS states "two tons heavier", but the article doesn't mention it, nor the CHM website. The London machine weighs 5.5 tons including its printer, the CHM machine also is listed at 5 tons. What gives?
1. Corrosion resistance. Not an issue for the first few years, but I've seen older plugs corrode significantly.
2. Gold is soft, which means it will deform around e.g. scratches on the connector it mates to. This means the contact area is larger than on non-plated connectors, reducing resistance. So even when the mating connector isn't goldplated, it makes sense to use s goldplated connector.
That's only true for limited values of "fly", though. The task was to keep the aircraft straight and level in variable crosswinds. This can be accomplished with a simple feedback loop. Things like landing are much more complex.
So, this is basically a solid-state version of mercury delay lines?
The only reason lights aren't being switched off is that people can't be arsed to flip a switch. OK, in large buildings it can be difficult to switch everything off including hallways etc, but office spaces should be dark when not in use. Even in my home, if I turn all the ligths off, I use less electricity made with hydro/nuclear/wind power and more natural gas in the furnace, so overall turning the lights off generates more smoke than leaving them on. The heat generated by your lights is negligible relative to the 25 kW or so generated by the heating system in your home. Also, using an electric heater is inefficient because you've got the 50% generating loss at the power plant. Your heating system can convert natural gas into heat with over 80% efficiency.
When the climate is hot enough that you need AC instead of heating, every W of heat load counts.
Bose's genius lies in making their speakers sound spectacular and impressive to the untrained ear. Their 'indirect sound' trickery gives you "stereo" in the entire room, at the expense of a muddled sound. I haven't heard their surround systems, but the problem's bound to be even worse there.
Similarly, the frequency response of their speakers makes them stand out when you compare speakers, but pay a bit more attention and you'll notice the frequency response is as flat as a mountain range.
IOW, they don't care about what sounds good, they care about marketing to the unwashed masses.
I don't really care who he invites as guest stars, as long as he keeps his hands off the Dr Who legacy. When Torchwood was first announced, I had high hopes. An adult version of Dr Who? Bring it on! As it turned out, Torchwood was Dr Who without the humor, and plus an agenda. The end result was, IMO, rubbish.
So, is Dawkins a decent actor? References to evolution had better be along these lines. Dr Who is not the place for a lecture.
5 oz = 140 ml, 16 oz = 454 ml. I just measured the largest mug I have available, and that's 250 ml. A normal teacup (IMO) is 125 ml.
I've the impression tea/coffee cup sizes have been stable for a long time (and for china cups, they still are), it's only in the last few decades we've started to use mugs of increasingly ridiculous size for some reason. Things may be different in the US (home of the "Supersize" meals and drinks, after all), though.
Over here (.nl), I've got 48/48 Mbps over fiber for 50 month including TV and phone service. A few months ago (speed then was 24/24 Mbps) I did some experiments, and it actually achieved those speeds (both up and download) using a Bittorent client.
Until now, projectors needed ungodly amounts of light to project an image bright enough to be usable in a non-darkened room. Either these miniprojectors use some kind of superefficient light source, or that 60" image can only be seen in total darkness.
it's a rickroll.
One explanation for this is that we consider symmetrical faces to be attractive (very few people are perfectly symmetrical). Averaging multiple photos will make for a decently symmetrical face.
Sleep/wake is nice, but ADB Macs could be started up from the keyboard as well.
Those had connectors with an extra pin, which made them more expensive and a source of problems (couldn't use hubs or USB extension cable).
ADB. It was brilliant in its day, better than USB in some areas, e.g. it included the ability to switch your computer on/off from the keyboard.
Also, Apple made a habit of including ADB ports in its monitors, so you could plug your keyboard and mouse into the monitor. Pity that never caught on either.
Without [next] the [next] stupid [next] clickthroughs [next] and [next] ads [next]:
1. DB-25 parallel port
2. PS/2
3. FireWire
4. SCSI
5. SCART
6. ISA
7. AGP
8. PCMCIA
9. Kryten's groin (from Red Dwarf)
10. game cartridge port
That's all good and well in theory, but how well does it work in practice?
IDK how large the source for the average Linux distribution is, but I bet we're talking about dozens, if not hundreds of megabytes of code. You're never going to be able to audit all of it on your own, the only way to do an audit is to assemble a group of people and divide the work. But what if an insidious programmer added seemingly innocuous bits of code to dozens of files, so no single auditor is likely to see the entire backdoor code?
Also, the 'many eyes' argument in favor of FOSS sounds nice, but there's no guarantee those 'many eyes' ever see the entire source code. Seldom-used features will also rarely be audited, if ever.
Such a world would be bloody annoying, to the point where I'd invest in a portable EMP generator so I could scramble/fry any nearby screens. I'm getting information overload as it is.
Also, covering everything in displays would come at a huge cost. Even if the displays are cheap, they'll inevitably use electricity. I don't look forward to having a power bill for my wallpaper.
[long explanation] In other words, Windows Vista?
That's no moon!