Unlike the Analog vs. Digital dilema that requires government intervation, SD vs. HD is something that can be left up to the market to decide. If a broadcaster can make more money by dividing their spectrum allocation into 4 SD channels, good for them. I believe that HD provides enough improvemnt that once the majority of consumers get a taste of HD they won't want to watch SD anymore. Of course, the specific content being broadcast makes a huge difference. Anybody who has seen a sporting event in native HD will never want to watch it in SD again. Something like CSPAN on the other hand would be much better off showing four SD channels. Citcoms and dramas are somewhere in the middle, the HD quality doesn't make the show much better.
A question I have is when a broadcaster decides to use their spectrum as four SD channels, is that choice somewhat permanent? Or can they for example broadcast 4 SD channels during the day and switch to a single full HD channel for primetime? If the later is easy, I suspect most stations will go that route.
This is the only new idea I've read in this entire thread. The ones who want this part of the spectrum are the only ones who are going to profit from this financially. So why not let them carry the finacial burden for making it happen.
"and the reason you can't change seats *after* boarding an airplane"
Since when? I've never been stopped from changing seats after the boarding door closed. I fly at least 20,000 miles per year both pre and post 9/11. Knowing where somebody was sitting is of almost no value in identifying bodies after a crash. In fact, they are rarely identifying bodies, most of it is body parts.
There are a lot of more important things in the decision of living in the suburbs vs cities. Even if gas was $10 per gallon, most parents would still prefer to raise their kids in the suburbs. Of course parents are not well represented in the/. crowd considering most haven't even managed to get a girlfriend.
...is how much energy does it take to squeeze the coal? Because if they end up having to burn 30% more coal to generate the additional energy needed to squeeze the coal, then it's not much of a gain.
I have 3 stories and around 3000 ft^2 with the receiver in the middle floor near the center of the house. It worked fine from the middle floor, but was very flaky on the other floors specially as I moved away from the center of the house. As linear distance goes, it wasn't even close to 50ft from the receiver when it fails.
I replaced it with a home brew wired ir distribution that injects and extracts the ir signal on my home-run coax lines. I have receivers in each room injecting the signal into the coax and a trasmitter on my equipament rack receiving that signal and emitting the ir towards the equipament. The only problem with this is that now I now have DC current running through my coax lines and therefore need to be careful that the proper filter is in place before plugging in any equipament into the coax. www.smarthome.com has everything you need and decent descriptions, but not the best prices.
I bought one of those and it works great if I'm in the next room, but is very unreliable once I went upstairs (this is in an all wood and drywall construction). I replaced it with a whole house ir distribution system that works like a champ with all the my original remotes.
Works great on my XP. The sound quality for calls within the US was indistinguishable from a land line call. International calls sounded good enough but have a bit of a delay that you have to get used to, it's no worse then a cell to cell international call. I've also received calls from Skypeout on my land line and had no idea it was from Skype until I was told.
...is an RSS feed URL for it's news site that accepts search parameters in the URL. That way users can create infinite customizable news feeds to meet their interests. It would be just like executing a news search on their server, but the results would be returned to my aggregate in RSS XML so it can skip stuff I already read.
What is it about books that make them a more noble and respected source of information? Are you a better person for having read the book then seeing the movie? Do you think reading romance novels makes you more educated then somebody who just watches the History channel all they.
Me thinks the information is independent of the delivery method and it's all about what you choose to consume. There is just as much crap on the shelves of Barnes & Nobles as there is on your TV.
If you are in mid sprint and simply stop moving your legs, you will go splat on the ground just like a bird that simply stops flying.
Humans most prominent feature may be unusual intelligence, but I think you are greatly discounting the role our body shape plays in our accomplishments. Imagine if we had our brains trapped in the body of a snake or fish, how much of what we have today would be possible? How do we know for sure that some other animals aren't also very intelligent but don't have the means to express it in a way we recognize.
If a bird needs so much of it's brain capacity for flight, then how come insects are also able to fly with brains thousands of times smaller then birds? I would argue that a bird actually uses very little of it's brain for the mechanics of moving through the air, that is mostly handled by muscle memory. The brain only comes into play when deciding where to go. I would argue that a bird has no idea how it flies, just like a 2 year old has no idea how it walks, they just do it. A human pilot actually has to have in depth understanding of the mechanics of flight. But maybe I just proved your point there by showing that humans use their brains to be able to do something birds do naturally.
The only reason NYTimes has their current price structure is to justify the $20 mil they charge Lexis-Nexus for the same information. It would be hard for them to get that money out of Lexis-Nexus if the same information was freely available online.
Birds aren't too smart because flying is hard to do.
This doesn't make any sense no matter how many times I read it.
First of, birds are the most intelligent animals after mamals. Flying for a bird is no more difficult then running for a human. Despite their small brains, birds learn to fly way faster then humans learn to walk. Insects also fly and they are definetly dumber then birds. I can make a paper airplane fly and it has no brain power at all. Basic auto pilot on a light aircraft have about as much processing power as a pocket calculator. I've learned to fly airplanes and don't think I've become dumber in the process.
There is almost no correlation between flying and intelligence or processing power. Any correlation that does exist would be positive, not negative.
From another point of few, that is one of the biggest problems with the patent system. Large corporations can afford to have patent lawyers on staff, so their cost per individial patent is much smaller and they can flood the patent office with applications hoping that some stick. A small company or individual, on the other hand, has to think long and hard whether their invention is worth the $10K-$20K it will cost to patent it. Not to mention that if the invention is really good, you will probably go bankrupt trying to defend it in court from the big guys before you make a dime on it.
Wouldn't the sound of a specific fall greatly depend on the size and shape of the fall, the volume of material flowing, what it's flowing over and into, etc...? Otherwise, all waterfalls on earth should sound the same and I know that is not the case.
The extraction prices are probably accurate. The problem is that after the $10 per bbl, you still end up with what the industry considers crappy oil compared to the light sweet stuff flowing out of the midddle east. This means it requires much more refining with it's associated costs. So this option has to be significantly cheaper before refiners start buying it.
Pictures...Not Very Elegant
on
Video T-shirts
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It may be the first time it's been done, but judging by the pictures, it's not a very elegant solution. It's not so much a video t-shirt, but a t-shirt with a hole in it covering up what is probably a heavy vest carrying all the equipament. I was expecting some new technology with flexible OLED's or something mounted right on the shirt. This is nothing more then anyone here could do with an old laptop and a black t-shirt.
Re:so could you use thestalks of corn and other ag
on
Ethanol From Waste Straw
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Even if they do this tomorrow, it is unlikely that you would see any changes in energy prices. Any cost savings from this would first go to pay for the research and the rest would become greater profits for the company. Once people are used to paying a certain price for energy, the only way that price comes down is via competition, not via a reduction in cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Map of China's Coal Fires
Coal fires produce about 2-3% of the total world carbon dioxide production due to fossil fuels.
Some of Chinese coal fires have been dated to the Pleistocene Era!
Unlike the Analog vs. Digital dilema that requires government intervation, SD vs. HD is something that can be left up to the market to decide. If a broadcaster can make more money by dividing their spectrum allocation into 4 SD channels, good for them. I believe that HD provides enough improvemnt that once the majority of consumers get a taste of HD they won't want to watch SD anymore. Of course, the specific content being broadcast makes a huge difference. Anybody who has seen a sporting event in native HD will never want to watch it in SD again. Something like CSPAN on the other hand would be much better off showing four SD channels. Citcoms and dramas are somewhere in the middle, the HD quality doesn't make the show much better. A question I have is when a broadcaster decides to use their spectrum as four SD channels, is that choice somewhat permanent? Or can they for example broadcast 4 SD channels during the day and switch to a single full HD channel for primetime? If the later is easy, I suspect most stations will go that route.
This is the only new idea I've read in this entire thread. The ones who want this part of the spectrum are the only ones who are going to profit from this financially. So why not let them carry the finacial burden for making it happen.
"and the reason you can't change seats *after* boarding an airplane" Since when? I've never been stopped from changing seats after the boarding door closed. I fly at least 20,000 miles per year both pre and post 9/11. Knowing where somebody was sitting is of almost no value in identifying bodies after a crash. In fact, they are rarely identifying bodies, most of it is body parts.
There are a lot of more important things in the decision of living in the suburbs vs cities. Even if gas was $10 per gallon, most parents would still prefer to raise their kids in the suburbs. Of course parents are not well represented in the /. crowd considering most haven't even managed to get a girlfriend.
Depending on who you ask, hydroelectric dams are just as dangerous to the environment as the alternatives.
What part of virtual reality requires AI and what does it have to do with the Turing test?
...is how much energy does it take to squeeze the coal? Because if they end up having to burn 30% more coal to generate the additional energy needed to squeeze the coal, then it's not much of a gain.
I was really surprised to hear about this bombing, so I looked it up. Here is a cnn article about it.
I have 3 stories and around 3000 ft^2 with the receiver in the middle floor near the center of the house. It worked fine from the middle floor, but was very flaky on the other floors specially as I moved away from the center of the house. As linear distance goes, it wasn't even close to 50ft from the receiver when it fails.
I replaced it with a home brew wired ir distribution that injects and extracts the ir signal on my home-run coax lines. I have receivers in each room injecting the signal into the coax and a trasmitter on my equipament rack receiving that signal and emitting the ir towards the equipament. The only problem with this is that now I now have DC current running through my coax lines and therefore need to be careful that the proper filter is in place before plugging in any equipament into the coax. www.smarthome.com has everything you need and decent descriptions, but not the best prices.
I bought one of those and it works great if I'm in the next room, but is very unreliable once I went upstairs (this is in an all wood and drywall construction). I replaced it with a whole house ir distribution system that works like a champ with all the my original remotes.
Works great on my XP. The sound quality for calls within the US was indistinguishable from a land line call. International calls sounded good enough but have a bit of a delay that you have to get used to, it's no worse then a cell to cell international call. I've also received calls from Skypeout on my land line and had no idea it was from Skype until I was told.
...is an RSS feed URL for it's news site that accepts search parameters in the URL. That way users can create infinite customizable news feeds to meet their interests. It would be just like executing a news search on their server, but the results would be returned to my aggregate in RSS XML so it can skip stuff I already read.
What is it about books that make them a more noble and respected source of information? Are you a better person for having read the book then seeing the movie? Do you think reading romance novels makes you more educated then somebody who just watches the History channel all they.
Me thinks the information is independent of the delivery method and it's all about what you choose to consume. There is just as much crap on the shelves of Barnes & Nobles as there is on your TV.
I guess you never heard of www.ebay.de, which seems to be quite popular.
If you are in mid sprint and simply stop moving your legs, you will go splat on the ground just like a bird that simply stops flying.
Humans most prominent feature may be unusual intelligence, but I think you are greatly discounting the role our body shape plays in our accomplishments. Imagine if we had our brains trapped in the body of a snake or fish, how much of what we have today would be possible? How do we know for sure that some other animals aren't also very intelligent but don't have the means to express it in a way we recognize.
If a bird needs so much of it's brain capacity for flight, then how come insects are also able to fly with brains thousands of times smaller then birds? I would argue that a bird actually uses very little of it's brain for the mechanics of moving through the air, that is mostly handled by muscle memory. The brain only comes into play when deciding where to go. I would argue that a bird has no idea how it flies, just like a 2 year old has no idea how it walks, they just do it. A human pilot actually has to have in depth understanding of the mechanics of flight. But maybe I just proved your point there by showing that humans use their brains to be able to do something birds do naturally.
The only reason NYTimes has their current price structure is to justify the $20 mil they charge Lexis-Nexus for the same information. It would be hard for them to get that money out of Lexis-Nexus if the same information was freely available online.
Birds aren't too smart because flying is hard to do.
This doesn't make any sense no matter how many times I read it.
First of, birds are the most intelligent animals after mamals. Flying for a bird is no more difficult then running for a human. Despite their small brains, birds learn to fly way faster then humans learn to walk. Insects also fly and they are definetly dumber then birds. I can make a paper airplane fly and it has no brain power at all. Basic auto pilot on a light aircraft have about as much processing power as a pocket calculator. I've learned to fly airplanes and don't think I've become dumber in the process.
There is almost no correlation between flying and intelligence or processing power. Any correlation that does exist would be positive, not negative.
From another point of few, that is one of the biggest problems with the patent system. Large corporations can afford to have patent lawyers on staff, so their cost per individial patent is much smaller and they can flood the patent office with applications hoping that some stick. A small company or individual, on the other hand, has to think long and hard whether their invention is worth the $10K-$20K it will cost to patent it. Not to mention that if the invention is really good, you will probably go bankrupt trying to defend it in court from the big guys before you make a dime on it.
What's an obsolet laptop to a person who has never seen a computer?
Wouldn't the sound of a specific fall greatly depend on the size and shape of the fall, the volume of material flowing, what it's flowing over and into, etc...? Otherwise, all waterfalls on earth should sound the same and I know that is not the case.
The extraction prices are probably accurate. The problem is that after the $10 per bbl, you still end up with what the industry considers crappy oil compared to the light sweet stuff flowing out of the midddle east. This means it requires much more refining with it's associated costs. So this option has to be significantly cheaper before refiners start buying it.
Boy, I'm glad I don't have to QA your work!
It may be the first time it's been done, but judging by the pictures, it's not a very elegant solution. It's not so much a video t-shirt, but a t-shirt with a hole in it covering up what is probably a heavy vest carrying all the equipament. I was expecting some new technology with flexible OLED's or something mounted right on the shirt. This is nothing more then anyone here could do with an old laptop and a black t-shirt.
Even if they do this tomorrow, it is unlikely that you would see any changes in energy prices. Any cost savings from this would first go to pay for the research and the rest would become greater profits for the company. Once people are used to paying a certain price for energy, the only way that price comes down is via competition, not via a reduction in cost.