"aside from sunlight" is the operative phrase in the previous comment - that's like saying "aside from gasoline, a car is a closed system", as typical energy in incident sunlight is on the order of a kilowatt-hour per square meter per day, which is a huge amount.
What makes hybrids affordable is that there are massive government subsidies reducing the price of the car. This masks the fact that many of the parts for these cars are enormously expensive. A hybrid Civic that gets into a minor city-street collision with a minivan or SUV is probably going to be so expensive to repair, that the insurance company will want to total it out.
If it's just a "minor" collision then the chances that hybrid-specific parts are damaged is very low, and the repairs will be the exact same bodywork repairs that any other Civic would have to have done.
What would happen if someone hacked Slashdot and messed with the user preferences? Or randomly changed the post attributions to make the more reasonable posters look like they were posting the more extreme drivel?
While much less likely that Slashdot gets hacked or subverted, I suspect the havoc caused would be just as funny to those not involved.
...with the exception that our one and two dollar pieces have been converted from bills to coins
The analysis was for change in coins - The American system only uses coins for the range 1-99 cents, while the Canadian analysis has to consider 1-299 cents.
So if a Canadian got $1.74 in change with the 83-cent piece it would be (2) 83-cent, (1) 5-cent (3) 1-cent, rather than (1) 100-cent, (2) 25-cent, (2) 10-cent, (4) 1-cent.
I agre that there are some good points in the essay, but overall I think it is not the best analogy - carpentry (as another poster commented) is in many ways closer, but if restricting it to "arts" rather than "crafts", I would suggest that sculpture is a much better analogy.
While it is possible to just grab a block of stone and just chip away until you have something, most "master" sculptors don't do that - they usually start with sketches and other drawings, then progress through maquettes, and sometimes make multiple versions of the full-size pieces. Large bronzes are almost always done in sections that get connected to a pre-planned framework, and many of those sections get reused elsewhere, albeit with minor changes. (Take a careful look at any large Rodin exhibit and see for yourself).
The sculptor of a large piece is the creative lead, but almost always the actual implementation (once the design work is out of the way) is done with the help of assistants. Truly massive sculptures are almost never credited to a single individual; even if they are, it is understood that they did not do all the work themselves. (eg, the Statue of Liberty).
Traditional architects (as opposed to "software architects") are closely related, but they work in different materials and usually have more practical goals that "artistic" sculptors and obviously have much higher costs of failure than the sculptor. ("Oh, an ugly sculpture - nobody will pay me for that" versus "Oh, the bridge fell down, I just killed 27 people").
Re:Signed binaries subvert the GPL
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but there is a difference between the hardware and the software. GPL applies to software, not to hardware.
The DRM "features" that most posters are complaining about would have to be implemented in hardware (if they are in GPL'd software it would be possible to modify your copy of the source and compile a new version). As such, it is the hardware manufacturers who need to be persuaded that DRM is bad, not Linus.
The link points out the real reason this will never be a source of power for anything beyond tiny sensors - 78-80 microwatts is what the article says.
Looking at my cellphone battery (about 2 days on standby), I see that it is rated 1100 mAH. Since one watt is one volt-amp (DC only for this analysis, AC is approximately the same), that battery can produce about 1.1 watt-hours. If the phone used only 100 microwatts (.1 milliwatt), then the battery could run it for about 10000 hours, or more than a year.
So a basic order-of-magnitute calculation shows that getting any sort of consumer-level power from "background" vibration is some time off.
I suspect that the "vibration" of the phone/base was a side effect ot the recharging process, rather than the actual manner of recharging.
"Inductive" chargers (and connections) already exist and are widely used - my Braun electric toothbrush has one; many electric vehicles have them (don't want exposed 220V contacts that might hurt people). These work on the same principles as transformers that get power from one wire to another even though there is no direct flow of electrons.
The UCSD link has more technical information. Especially "illuminating" is the diagram at the bottom of the how it works page which clearly indicates (as does the text) that the material only has the odd effects for a very specific range of microwaves (10.4 to 11 GHz).
Slashdot Mirror
"aside from sunlight" is the operative phrase in the previous comment - that's like saying "aside from gasoline, a car is a closed system", as typical energy in incident sunlight is on the order of a kilowatt-hour per square meter per day, which is a huge amount.
While much less likely that Slashdot gets hacked or subverted, I suspect the havoc caused would be just as funny to those not involved.
socks and change
The analysis was for change in coins - The American system only uses coins for the range 1-99 cents, while the Canadian analysis has to consider 1-299 cents.
So if a Canadian got $1.74 in change with the 83-cent piece it would be (2) 83-cent, (1) 5-cent (3) 1-cent, rather than (1) 100-cent, (2) 25-cent, (2) 10-cent, (4) 1-cent.
While it is possible to just grab a block of stone and just chip away until you have something, most "master" sculptors don't do that - they usually start with sketches and other drawings, then progress through maquettes, and sometimes make multiple versions of the full-size pieces. Large bronzes are almost always done in sections that get connected to a pre-planned framework, and many of those sections get reused elsewhere, albeit with minor changes. (Take a careful look at any large Rodin exhibit and see for yourself).
The sculptor of a large piece is the creative lead, but almost always the actual implementation (once the design work is out of the way) is done with the help of assistants. Truly massive sculptures are almost never credited to a single individual; even if they are, it is understood that they did not do all the work themselves. (eg, the Statue of Liberty).
Traditional architects (as opposed to "software architects") are closely related, but they work in different materials and usually have more practical goals that "artistic" sculptors and obviously have much higher costs of failure than the sculptor. ("Oh, an ugly sculpture - nobody will pay me for that" versus "Oh, the bridge fell down, I just killed 27 people").
The DRM "features" that most posters are complaining about would have to be implemented in hardware (if they are in GPL'd software it would be possible to modify your copy of the source and compile a new version). As such, it is the hardware manufacturers who need to be persuaded that DRM is bad, not Linus.
The link points out the real reason this will never be a source of power for anything beyond tiny sensors - 78-80 microwatts is what the article says. Looking at my cellphone battery (about 2 days on standby), I see that it is rated 1100 mAH. Since one watt is one volt-amp (DC only for this analysis, AC is approximately the same), that battery can produce about 1.1 watt-hours. If the phone used only 100 microwatts (.1 milliwatt), then the battery could run it for about 10000 hours, or more than a year. So a basic order-of-magnitute calculation shows that getting any sort of consumer-level power from "background" vibration is some time off.
I suspect that the "vibration" of the phone/base was a side effect ot the recharging process, rather than the actual manner of recharging. "Inductive" chargers (and connections) already exist and are widely used - my Braun electric toothbrush has one; many electric vehicles have them (don't want exposed 220V contacts that might hurt people). These work on the same principles as transformers that get power from one wire to another even though there is no direct flow of electrons.
The UCSD link has more technical information. Especially "illuminating" is the diagram at the bottom of the how it works page which clearly indicates (as does the text) that the material only has the odd effects for a very specific range of microwaves (10.4 to 11 GHz).