My laptop has a pentium 4 CPU, 15" lcd, ddr main ram, discrete ATI graphics with 64 megs of dedicated 460mhz DDR ram, CD burner, etc....
In other words, is about as power hungry as laptops get. If everything was used at once (ie playing a 3d game on wlan, while burning a CD, with LCD at full brightness) it uses around 50 watts. But under normal use, i can still get over 3 hours of battery life on a 50 W h battery, giving an average power consumtion of around 15 watts.
I don't agree with your extrapolation, in that laptops seem to be heading in two divergent paths-sure, you now have your 17" laptops comming out, but they are 10 pounds and are designed more as "desknotes" which are only transported between placed with AC power. Some don't even come with batteries. Sure, those laptops will break 100 watts in the next year or two, but they will never be used portably, fuel cells or not, since they are so large and clumbersome.
On the other hand, most mainstream notebooks seem to be cutting down on power consumtion, with the introduction of centrino (ie pentium-m), the new transmetta processor, etc.... hell, even AMD is trying to cut down on power consumption on their mainstream chips (ie everything but the DTR series). These laptops, designed with wireless internet in mind, have been getting thinner, lighter, and have much reduced power consumtion than the previous generation. Many pentium M/transmetta laptops can already reach 5 hours on a 50Wh battery, and it will futher decrease with smaller semiconductor processes, OLED displays, etc
So there may be a few idiots who will use their giant 20" display laptops portably (which seems to be where that segment is headed), but most business/mainstream notebooks will not consume any more power than they do today.
but it can definately help with the balance sheet, and making investors see a strong balance sheet is more important than tax savings
Many of the large computer chains have sale items that come out to be free after mail in rebates. It doesn't take much to realize that its not a viable business model to give away your merchandise- Still, large chain stores do that typically near the end of a quarter, so they can boost the quarterly revenues, boosting stock prices, and later mark off the expense as marketing.
Its similar to what enron did, "sell" your energy to a subsidiary, mark it on the balance sheet as profit, then "buy" it back again and list is as a capital investment, when in reality nothing changed hands.
Yes, many of these business tactics make no sense from a rational point of view, but large corporations are usually more concerned with the perception of strong resuts than reality.
MP3, Ogg, and ACC are all use the DCT (discrete cosine transform) The only major codec that differs from these is MPC, which is a subband codec. There are no wavelet codecs in common use, but may offer some advantages in removing the "time smear" produced by transform codecs.
Virtually all of the differences between codecs is in the tuning of the psych model, the filters that decide which frequencies to retain and which ones to remove. (it is also the reason there is a HUGE difference between encoders, so when you're comparing an MP3 to an OGG, make sure you use the best encoder for each one if you're trying to compare the merits of each format) There is no simple mathematical function or scientific pricipal behind this, most of the fine tuning is done by trial and error. Because MP3 has the largest user base and has had such a long development time, its psych models are incredibly refined, and for maximum sound quality, LAME encoded MP3 is still one of the best. Of course there are also lots of nasty MP3 encoders out there like Xing (which seems to be what most p2p files are encoded on) which can't compete with Ogg at any bitrate.
Ogg and ACC are much more modern codecs, with some new coding tricks to increase efficiency, but they have only had a short development time, and the small user bases limit the amount of beta testing/bug reports/ problem samples that can be obtained to fine tune the encoders. Right now, they are much superior to MP3 at low bitrates (due to their increased coding efficiency), but for maximum sound quality, they can't match LAME encoded MP3's.
In a few years, Ogg and AAC will surpass MP3 in every way, but right now neither is totally transparent even at the highest settings for me.
Obviously you haven't used a modern notebook- EVERY single notebook cpu is DESIGNED to run at a temperature of 100 celcius+, (the boiling point of water for you americans), which translates to about 70 celcius on the surface.
laptops actually come with warning stickers that say "do not attempt to use this "laptop" device on your lap, or serious injury may occur" People who disregrard this actually have gotten 3rd degree burns.
because directly above every subduction zones is a range of volcanoes. while some material makes it to the mantle, some of it comes back up....
imagine the effect of an eruption like mount st. hellen's, except with radioactive fallout....
anyways, the technology to drill/bury anything on the oceanic crust (where subduction zones are located) is beyond anything we are technically capable of, if it was possible we woudn't need to talk about mining on the moon.
"has to be kept out of terrorist hands for thousands of years"...
considering your entire civilization has been around less than 300 years, and looking back at history most great empires (many more powerful than the us will ever be) i'm sure you won't have to worry about "terrorists" 10 000 years from now.
the last ice age was 10 000 years ago, the entire human civilization developed from the stone age to the modern age in that time frame. I don't think anyone can imagine what the world will be like in another 10 000 years (and much of the nuclear waste will still be radioactive then) but most likly any civilization we know of today will be long gone.
Cloned animals like dolly the sheep have mismatched mitochondrial DNA- the DNA in the nucleus comes from the cloned animal, which is injected into a donor egg from a different animal. The mitochondrial DNA in the organism all come from the donor cell. (so i guess technically none of those animals are 100% clones, unless mitochondrial DNA has little overall effect)
There have been reports of numerous defects and health problems in cloned animals, but there are a billion possible reasons (such as shortened telomers resulting in early aging) of which mismatched mitochondrial DNA could be one possible explanation.... But since cloning has been possible, this would suggest that any dependencies are very small....
Well, like it or not, drive/fly by wire is going to be commonplace over the next few years-
Some of the newer airbus planes, and pretty well any new passenger jet that comes out in the future will use all electrical control systems with no mechanical backup. If the system fails, you lose control of the plane.
This is also appearing in cars, some of the new BMW's (and many new concept cars) use electronic trottles, brakes and with no mechanical backups:
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2000/10/08/s to ry293607.asp
These systems will almost certainly become widespread over the next 5-10 years, and the failure of any of them is just as catastrophic as the failure of the control system in a segway-type device (imagine losing steering, main brakes, emergency brakes, and trottle in a car) I'd imagine that motorcycles won't be the exception, they will also be fully electronic.
Since mission critical electronic systems are being developed, they might as well be used for novel methods of transportation- this system may be cheaper to build, and almost certainly more efficient (the energy used to balance the user is likely negligible compared to the energy gained due to the lower mass (you can make it much smaller, and don't need the rigid frame between two wheels)and much reduced unsprung weight (ie moment of inertia) since it only has a single wheel). Most of all, it can be more exciting for those who are willing to accept the risk.
You can claim that this device shouldn't be made because it is less stable than a motorcycle, but the same thing could be said comparing a motorcycle to a car. A motorcylce design can also be considered "defective by design" compared to a car (it is only stable when traveling above a certain speed) but that hasn't stopped it from being built and adopted by people willing to accept the risk.
I agree that going to an electric system will only increase that risk, but what if that risk is incredibly small compared to other points of failure, like a flat tire? These electronic systems will have to be designed to be 99.9999999999999% reliable (use several complely redundent and isolated systems, and certainly don't use embedded MS software:) )if they are already trusted with entire passenger planes, and will be trusted for every car on the road 15 years from now- as such, is that risk even appreciable when compared to other points of failure? (ie if the chance of a soccer mom in an SUV sideswiping you is 1%, who cares if there is an extra 0.00000000000000001% risk of electronic systems failing?)
Again, the grandparent poster said it best- why not make the product, and let the users decide if the extra fun and potential increases in efficiency is worth the added risk?
Are you really a chip designer?
1- In CMOS technology (or any other logic type used in the last 20 years) there is absolutely no resistive path to ground. (except for gate leakage) Two complementary (the C in cmos) PMOS and NMOS transistors are used to eliminate the need for any resistive branch.
2-voltage is not "accumulated charge", its a difference in potential energy. Changing voltage levels in itself does not cause any power to be lost, and a logic level 0 certainly isn't produced by shoring vcc to ground.
Power is consumed in a logic circuit precisely because it stores energy- the capacitance of the transistor causes charge to be stored and later released to ground whenever the voltage level changes. Power consumtion in chips has been reduced over the last 30 years by reducing the amount of stored energy- by making transistors smaller and reducing capacitance.
Technically, you can create an oscillator by adding an inductor to the circuit, but that would increase complexity/cost with little benefit in itself. I am not familiar with reversable computing, but i would expect they would need a substantial change in logic structure to extract the stored energy. Also, without a change in logic structure, it would simply be a process improvement, not an entirely new branch of computing.
Yes, analog design is more involved than digital design, but the layout and composition of transistors, capacitors, interconnects, etc on any digital logic circuit are analog in themselves. THe only reason you don't have to deal with them is they are generated automatically with CAD tools. If resonators were found to be a viable way to decrease power consumtion, they could be easily added to your CAD tools and make their design just as simple as what you're used to.
However, i'm sure its not as simple as adding a resonator to the circuit, and most likely requires an entire new method of computing to extract the stored energy.
Of course popularity matters- many people have LEGAL collections of music in one specific format- most likely produced by ripping their CD/vinyl collections to their computers for the convenience of having all of their music in one place.
I don't understand the mindset of DRM workers like you who treat their potential customers as criminals. Many people play back music on a computer is for convenience, not to rip off starving artists....
Anyways, for example, i have approximately 100 CD's ripped onto my laptop in the MPC format. Buying a player that doesn't support MPC is out of the question because it would require about 50 hours to re-rip all those discs again. If a manufacturer released a player that supported the MPC format, i would buy it even if it was worse in other regards compared to the ipod. However, most manufacturers have balked at implementing the open source MPC decoder because the added development time/cost and support costs don't justify the increased sales from MPC users.
Now obviously ogg is more popular, and its users are much more religious about it, but in the end, many manufacturers have simply decided that the extra development/support costs don't outweigh the potential increase in sales.
If you want to support OGG, vote with your money and buy the players that do support it- If they sell well, other manufacturers are sure to take notice.
And here's the other point- what do you define as "all the formats"? If you're the typical consumer, its probably MP3 and WMA. If you're a computer geek, probably its MP3,.WAV, WMA, OGG, and AAC. But what about FLAC, monkey audio, MPC, Wavepack, DTS, AC3, ATRAC, ATRAC3, MP2, Mp3 pro, real audio, ADPCM, and and other formats that are out there that have sizable user bases? Somewhere you will have to draw the line, and popularity is the only logical way to do it.
Give me a break about being unpopular "because they are the only democracy in the middle east". I can't understand how people buy BS like that or "the terrorists attacked us because they are jealous of us".
Its really incredible how many people believe rhetoric like this, despite there being no rational justification for it, or any evidence to support it. Take it for what it is, mindless rhetoric to stop people from questioning, trying to understand a very complex geopolitical conflict, or thinking for themselves.
- Have you ever thought about the fact that Israel is also the only nuclear power in the middle east, has by far the most advanced military in the region, and frequently uses its military power to humiliate its neighbours? Or how about the millions of people living in poverty stricken refugee camps because of Israel's illegal occupation of territory? Certainly the thousands of civilian deaths they have caused has nothing to do with it...No, none of that has anything to do with the problem, its all because the freedom-hatin' Arabs can't stand democracy.... right...
2- The Jews have not been at odds with Arabs for thousands of years. (though that is probably true about Jews and the Europeans) They were conquered in the first century AD, and weren't there for most of the next 2000 years. Until about 1800 there were any Jews in the middle east, and the few that were there coexisted with the Arabs peacefully. Soon the Zionist movement started and many more immigrated to the area, and they also got along well. It wasn't until the founding of Israel after world war 2 (due to the European's guilt over the Holocaust), carving up land that previously belonged to others, followed by wars against virtually every one of its neighbours and the displacement of millions of refugees, that the current conflict with the Arab countries started.
I'm not taking sides in this dispute, but get your facts right and try thinking for yourself instead of simplifying everything down to one line justifications.
You're forgetting that only a fraction of an orbiting satellite's energy is in the form of gravitational potential energy- most of the energy is in the tangential direction (ie going sideways, across the sky like an airplane). A satellite is "flying" at a speed close to 30 000 km/h when it is in orbit. A huge chunk of this speed must be lost before it can gain a tiny component of speed downwards.
kinetic energy in orbiting satellite:
= 1/2 *mass * 9.81* ~6 500 000 metres
= ~ 30 million * mass of satellite
(comes from combining equations for kinetic energy and centripital acceleration)
gravitational PE:
= mass * 9.81 * ~200 000 metres
= ~ 2 million * mass of satellite
(ok, simplified formulas assuming constant acceleration due to gravity, but both equations would be affected the same if g was integrated)
This relationship clearly shows that the satellite has much more energy to lose by slowing down than by falling. If you want to add a fricional force slowing its fall, then the difference becomes even larger.
there IS Somthing that dictates the rates of change:
height = tangential velocity squared/9.81
-take two derivatives with respect to time, and you get:
acceleation down = 0.2038 *(negative tangential acceleration)
(again assuming constant g, but you'll find the same thing if you accounted for varing g)
The total speed is simply sqrt (Vtan squared + V down squared), and you'll find that in ALL cases, the total speed is decreasing.
So in all cases, the satellite is slowing down, regardless of the atmosphere or drag force. If you want to account for the drag also slowing it down in the vertical direction, then you'll find an even larger net deceleration.
Drag force ALWAYS slows down an object. In this case, it produces a negative acceleration in the tangential direction. Because of its lower velocity, the radius of orbit decreases, and there may be an acceration (smaller than the deceleration in the tangential direction) in the normal direction as a result until the new orbit is reached. Overall, the net speed is decreasing.
The only reason a satellite will continue falling into the earth is because the air becomes more and more dense, resulting in an ever-increasing decelleration in the tangential direction. yes, some gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy, but the acceration downwards because of this is smaller than the loss in tangential velocity due to drag.
So patent is totally wrong, grandparent is correct.
1. A properly run government system will have enough oversite/watchdogs to ensure that there is no corruption. On the other hand, corporate systems will ALWAYS favour the wealthy with no motivation for providing "equal care for everyone". Secondly, looking at corporate ethics, corruption is a much bigger problem in large corporations than government.
2. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0821-04.ht m Your asumption is way off, because of redundency and advertising between corporations, the overhead cost is more than double the cost in Canada, which has government run system.
3. It doesn't matter if its a government system or private, those same abusers have the same effect on the system.
"I'd rather buy 2 of his scooters than give my money to Dean Kamen."
Why? Why would you hate Deam Kamen?
He has invented dozens of revolutionary biomedical devices that have improved the lives of many people. (dialysis machines, wheelchairs, etc). Many design elements from the Segway, esp the redundent backup systems, come from his experience in biomedical devices.
Meanwhile, he has used much of the money made through this to promote engineering and technology to high school students, through the FIRST robotics competition(http://www.usfirst.org/)
This competition has raised the awareness of robotics and engineering to thousands of students, and probably a good reason why i'm studying engineering physics (with EE major) right now.
I don't see why a tech site like slashdot is so against him, when he has done so much in promoting technology to the masses.
I think the part that tips you off is the 4GHZ front side bus, in a chip that will supposedly be available by summer next year. Considering that virtually all computers today are under 400mhz, (the fastest computers just reached 800mhz), there's absolutely no way speeds (esp memory latencies needed to make it useful ) will increase 5-10x in 6 months. Hell, 4ghz is probably the speed of the fastest cpu's in summer 2004, and no way their FSB will be the same speed.
The 64bit "add in module" also sounds incredibly suspicious, why would a manufacturer split up their cosumer product line between 32 bit and 64 bit parts, considering that each requires software specially compiled for it. Adding the 64 bit extensions themselves takes little to no die space (as seen in Athlon64), if intel wanted to migrate to 64 bit, they would do it across their entire consumer line, not spit it up like that and get smoked by AMD.
I'm surprised how many people believe this article and the previous ones about prescot containing AMD's 64-bit extensions. These rumors seem incredibly far-fetched and implausible, and come from one of the least reliable rumor sites.
Don't believe everything you see on the internet
"When was the last Hollywood movie you saw that lectured you on causality"
That's what defines agood movie for you? In that case, i'd highly recommend The Fast and the Furious which is much deeper, with great philosophy and metaphors such as:
"It don't matter if you win by an inch or a mile- winning's winning"
"Its not how you stand by your car that counts, its how you race it- you gotta remember that"
"I live my life a quarter mile at a time"
"you never had me... you never had your car!"
Seriously, matrix reloaded seems like they ran a focus group, found out a list of things that made the first movie good, and threw it all togeher...
Special effects? fighting scenes? phillosophy? metaphors? sure, reloaded has all that, but its just seems thrown together in one big mess, without any of the coherency or vision of the first Matrix.
I disagree.
What it looks like is an examining bed with a few weight sensors interfaced to a computer (see the computer directly underneath "sofa") It can't do anything whatsoever, other than read off the weight and compare it to known users.
There is absolutely no technology involved, and any highschool student could duplicate what they did in a month. (4 few sensors, hooked up to an A/D board, interfaced to a computer, program consiting of one if/else if stucture).
Despite the total lack of innovation, the "developers" brainstormed up a list of possible applications, all of which are
A) useless
b) trivial to implement by anyone with experience in programming/EE.
Assist elderly people? you have to be kidding- the example they site is sounding an alarm when the user leaves the chair, which is totally unreleated to the "talking sofa" they described earlier, and also incredibly easy to implement (could be done with 1 battery, 1 spring loaded switch, 1 buzzer)
I can't believe this "invention" recieved national press coverage, go into any science fair/undergrad lab, and you will see far more innovative, complex, and useful devices.
Re:What's up with AMD's model names lately?
on
Athlon 64 Debuts
·
· Score: 1
Another example was Intel's release of the pentium-m, aka banias/centrino, which was a brand new chip designed almost entirely from the ground up for very low power consumption(some bits based on P3 and a modified p4 bus).
What was AMD's reaction? Instantly rename their existing laptop Athlon XP chips to Athlon-m, even though there were only superficial changes to the design. They still consumed huge amounts of power, and also performed worse, but the average consumer would think that it was a brand new chip similar to the pentium-m
And then there's the whole performance-rating scheme, which is becomming more and more misleading- Originally the ratings corresponded quite well to the original P4's, but as the P4's cache size increased and the athlon ran out of headroom, AMD's performance ratings became more and more exagerated. For example, the Athlon XP 3200+ is slower on every benchmark than a P4 3 GHZ, and the new extreme edition throws it off even more.
AMD has some great engineering, but their marketing department is one of the worst in the industry...
Try a different encoder. There is so much variance between different MP3's that simply stating a bitrate doesn't say very much. An MP3 encoded at ~192 average bitrate using LAME alt preset extreme actually sounds slightly better better to my ears than AAC with any encoder at the same bitrate. On the other hand, if your 192k/s MP3 is ripped with xing or downloaded off Kazza, then chances are it will be much worse than any AAC file.
Try some different encoders first, MP3 may be an outdated format, but more work has been put into fine-tuning the LAME encoder than encoders for any other format. The only lossy format that can *slightly* beat LAME VBR at high bitrates is MPC,and i bet no one on slashdot has even heard of it.
LAME MP3 sounds significantly better than AAC on my *dinky little* headphones, Sennheiser HD-600 with discrete amplification...
S3 is owned by VIA, one of the largest chipset manufacturers in the world. With Intel "exxxxtreme graphics", Nvidia Nforce, and now ATI's radeon IGP, virtually all of their competitors now include integrated video on their chipsets. If they didn't offer a competing product, they would soon be shut out of the market.
With the Nvidia nforce3 and ATI's radeon IGP 9000, integrated video is becomming quite advanced. (and they will certainly need to be advanced since the next version of windows will REQUIRE DX9 support) THere are also rumors of a deal between ATI and Intel for intel to use some of the latest tech in their integrated chipsets in time for Longhorn.... The only way for via to stay in the game is to invest the R&D dollars to develop the latest graphics technology.
"Remember, the U.S. is the starting point of democracy"
There have been countless civilizations over the years with varying degrees of freedom, and the US circa 2003 is hardly at the top these days.
"recognizes the view points of people differ and allows them to freely express those view points."
Yeah, why is it that upstanding citizens and people that love their country but disagrees with the current administration's foreign policies are immediately labled "traitors" or worse, "liberals"? Sure, no one will throw you in jail or kill you for speaking your mind, but having your reputation destroyed and being widely condemmed isn't much better. I'm sorry, but intellegent debate over ligitimate concerns has been replaced by the attitude of "either you are with us or you are against us"
"But another thing is, we don't CARE what other people think of us... which is another reason why *some* foreigners, particularly in Europe, do not like us even more. if we cow-towwed to their crap, we'd be the weak little brother of the great European Socialism"
The way i see it, you can manage your own country as you please- want to cut taxes amid huge deficits? its your decision, and it only affects American citizens....
But what you don't realize is the huge effects of American foreign policy and large American corporations have on billions of people around the world. Surely, if the US is "the starting point in democracy" as you put it, then they should listen to others when making these decisions, instead of unitalerally acting in its own interests.
The way i see it, on the national scale the US is a democracy, but on a global scale it acts more like a ruthless dictator of other countries.
Slashdot Mirror
My laptop has a pentium 4 CPU, 15" lcd, ddr main ram, discrete ATI graphics with 64 megs of dedicated 460mhz DDR ram, CD burner, etc.... In other words, is about as power hungry as laptops get. If everything was used at once (ie playing a 3d game on wlan, while burning a CD, with LCD at full brightness) it uses around 50 watts. But under normal use, i can still get over 3 hours of battery life on a 50 W h battery, giving an average power consumtion of around 15 watts. I don't agree with your extrapolation, in that laptops seem to be heading in two divergent paths-sure, you now have your 17" laptops comming out, but they are 10 pounds and are designed more as "desknotes" which are only transported between placed with AC power. Some don't even come with batteries. Sure, those laptops will break 100 watts in the next year or two, but they will never be used portably, fuel cells or not, since they are so large and clumbersome. On the other hand, most mainstream notebooks seem to be cutting down on power consumtion, with the introduction of centrino (ie pentium-m), the new transmetta processor, etc.... hell, even AMD is trying to cut down on power consumption on their mainstream chips (ie everything but the DTR series). These laptops, designed with wireless internet in mind, have been getting thinner, lighter, and have much reduced power consumtion than the previous generation. Many pentium M /transmetta laptops can already reach 5 hours on a 50Wh battery, and it will futher decrease with smaller semiconductor processes, OLED displays, etc
So there may be a few idiots who will use their giant 20" display laptops portably (which seems to be where that segment is headed), but most business/mainstream notebooks will not consume any more power than they do today.
but it can definately help with the balance sheet, and making investors see a strong balance sheet is more important than tax savings
Many of the large computer chains have sale items that come out to be free after mail in rebates. It doesn't take much to realize that its not a viable business model to give away your merchandise- Still, large chain stores do that typically near the end of a quarter, so they can boost the quarterly revenues, boosting stock prices, and later mark off the expense as marketing.
Its similar to what enron did, "sell" your energy to a subsidiary, mark it on the balance sheet as profit, then "buy" it back again and list is as a capital investment, when in reality nothing changed hands.
Yes, many of these business tactics make no sense from a rational point of view, but large corporations are usually more concerned with the perception of strong resuts than reality.
Nope.
MP3, Ogg, and ACC are all use the DCT (discrete cosine transform) The only major codec that differs from these is MPC, which is a subband codec. There are no wavelet codecs in common use, but may offer some advantages in removing the "time smear" produced by transform codecs.
Virtually all of the differences between codecs is in the tuning of the psych model, the filters that decide which frequencies to retain and which ones to remove. (it is also the reason there is a HUGE difference between encoders, so when you're comparing an MP3 to an OGG, make sure you use the best encoder for each one if you're trying to compare the merits of each format) There is no simple mathematical function or scientific pricipal behind this, most of the fine tuning is done by trial and error. Because MP3 has the largest user base and has had such a long development time, its psych models are incredibly refined, and for maximum sound quality, LAME encoded MP3 is still one of the best. Of course there are also lots of nasty MP3 encoders out there like Xing (which seems to be what most p2p files are encoded on) which can't compete with Ogg at any bitrate.
Ogg and ACC are much more modern codecs, with some new coding tricks to increase efficiency, but they have only had a short development time, and the small user bases limit the amount of beta testing/bug reports/ problem samples that can be obtained to fine tune the encoders. Right now, they are much superior to MP3 at low bitrates (due to their increased coding efficiency), but for maximum sound quality, they can't match LAME encoded MP3's.
In a few years, Ogg and AAC will surpass MP3 in every way, but right now neither is totally transparent even at the highest settings for me.
Obviously you haven't used a modern notebook- EVERY single notebook cpu is DESIGNED to run at a temperature of 100 celcius+, (the boiling point of water for you americans), which translates to about 70 celcius on the surface. laptops actually come with warning stickers that say "do not attempt to use this "laptop" device on your lap, or serious injury may occur" People who disregrard this actually have gotten 3rd degree burns.
because directly above every subduction zones is a range of volcanoes. while some material makes it to the mantle, some of it comes back up....
imagine the effect of an eruption like mount st. hellen's, except with radioactive fallout....
anyways, the technology to drill/bury anything on the oceanic crust (where subduction zones are located) is beyond anything we are technically capable of, if it was possible we woudn't need to talk about mining on the moon.
"has to be kept out of terrorist hands for thousands of years"... considering your entire civilization has been around less than 300 years, and looking back at history most great empires (many more powerful than the us will ever be) i'm sure you won't have to worry about "terrorists" 10 000 years from now. the last ice age was 10 000 years ago, the entire human civilization developed from the stone age to the modern age in that time frame. I don't think anyone can imagine what the world will be like in another 10 000 years (and much of the nuclear waste will still be radioactive then) but most likly any civilization we know of today will be long gone.
MS lost a total of 1 sale to China... However, the blank CDR makers just lost 999999 sales...
Cloned animals like dolly the sheep have mismatched mitochondrial DNA- the DNA in the nucleus comes from the cloned animal, which is injected into a donor egg from a different animal. The mitochondrial DNA in the organism all come from the donor cell. (so i guess technically none of those animals are 100% clones, unless mitochondrial DNA has little overall effect)
There have been reports of numerous defects and health problems in cloned animals, but there are a billion possible reasons (such as shortened telomers resulting in early aging) of which mismatched mitochondrial DNA could be one possible explanation.... But since cloning has been possible, this would suggest that any dependencies are very small....
Well, like it or not, drive/fly by wire is going to be commonplace over the next few years-
s to ry293607.asp
:) )if they are already trusted with entire passenger planes, and will be trusted for every car on the road 15 years from now- as such, is that risk even appreciable when compared to other points of failure? (ie if the chance of a soccer mom in an SUV sideswiping you is 1%, who cares if there is an extra 0.00000000000000001% risk of electronic systems failing?)
Some of the newer airbus planes, and pretty well any new passenger jet that comes out in the future will use all electrical control systems with no mechanical backup. If the system fails, you lose control of the plane.
This is also appearing in cars, some of the new BMW's (and many new concept cars) use electronic trottles, brakes and with no mechanical backups:
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2000/10/08/
These systems will almost certainly become widespread over the next 5-10 years, and the failure of any of them is just as catastrophic as the failure of the control system in a segway-type device (imagine losing steering, main brakes, emergency brakes, and trottle in a car) I'd imagine that motorcycles won't be the exception, they will also be fully electronic.
Since mission critical electronic systems are being developed, they might as well be used for novel methods of transportation- this system may be cheaper to build, and almost certainly more efficient (the energy used to balance the user is likely negligible compared to the energy gained due to the lower mass (you can make it much smaller, and don't need the rigid frame between two wheels)and much reduced unsprung weight (ie moment of inertia) since it only has a single wheel). Most of all, it can be more exciting for those who are willing to accept the risk.
You can claim that this device shouldn't be made because it is less stable than a motorcycle, but the same thing could be said comparing a motorcycle to a car. A motorcylce design can also be considered "defective by design" compared to a car (it is only stable when traveling above a certain speed) but that hasn't stopped it from being built and adopted by people willing to accept the risk.
I agree that going to an electric system will only increase that risk, but what if that risk is incredibly small compared to other points of failure, like a flat tire? These electronic systems will have to be designed to be 99.9999999999999% reliable (use several complely redundent and isolated systems, and certainly don't use embedded MS software
Again, the grandparent poster said it best- why not make the product, and let the users decide if the extra fun and potential increases in efficiency is worth the added risk?
Are you really a chip designer? 1- In CMOS technology (or any other logic type used in the last 20 years) there is absolutely no resistive path to ground. (except for gate leakage) Two complementary (the C in cmos) PMOS and NMOS transistors are used to eliminate the need for any resistive branch. 2-voltage is not "accumulated charge", its a difference in potential energy. Changing voltage levels in itself does not cause any power to be lost, and a logic level 0 certainly isn't produced by shoring vcc to ground. Power is consumed in a logic circuit precisely because it stores energy- the capacitance of the transistor causes charge to be stored and later released to ground whenever the voltage level changes. Power consumtion in chips has been reduced over the last 30 years by reducing the amount of stored energy- by making transistors smaller and reducing capacitance. Technically, you can create an oscillator by adding an inductor to the circuit, but that would increase complexity/cost with little benefit in itself. I am not familiar with reversable computing, but i would expect they would need a substantial change in logic structure to extract the stored energy. Also, without a change in logic structure, it would simply be a process improvement, not an entirely new branch of computing. Yes, analog design is more involved than digital design, but the layout and composition of transistors, capacitors, interconnects, etc on any digital logic circuit are analog in themselves. THe only reason you don't have to deal with them is they are generated automatically with CAD tools. If resonators were found to be a viable way to decrease power consumtion, they could be easily added to your CAD tools and make their design just as simple as what you're used to. However, i'm sure its not as simple as adding a resonator to the circuit, and most likely requires an entire new method of computing to extract the stored energy.
Of course popularity matters- many people have LEGAL collections of music in one specific format- most likely produced by ripping their CD/vinyl collections to their computers for the convenience of having all of their music in one place.
.WAV, WMA, OGG, and AAC. But what about FLAC, monkey audio, MPC, Wavepack, DTS, AC3, ATRAC, ATRAC3, MP2, Mp3 pro, real audio, ADPCM, and and other formats that are out there that have sizable user bases? Somewhere you will have to draw the line, and popularity is the only logical way to do it.
I don't understand the mindset of DRM workers like you who treat their potential customers as criminals. Many people play back music on a computer is for convenience, not to rip off starving artists....
Anyways, for example, i have approximately 100 CD's ripped onto my laptop in the MPC format. Buying a player that doesn't support MPC is out of the question because it would require about 50 hours to re-rip all those discs again.
If a manufacturer released a player that supported the MPC format, i would buy it even if it was worse in other regards compared to the ipod. However, most manufacturers have balked at implementing the open source MPC decoder because the added development time/cost and support costs don't justify the increased sales from MPC users.
Now obviously ogg is more popular, and its users are much more religious about it, but in the end, many manufacturers have simply decided that the extra development/support costs don't outweigh the potential increase in sales.
If you want to support OGG, vote with your money and buy the players that do support it- If they sell well, other manufacturers are sure to take notice.
And here's the other point- what do you define as "all the formats"? If you're the typical consumer, its probably MP3 and WMA. If you're a computer geek, probably its MP3,
Give me a break about being unpopular "because they are the only democracy in the middle east". I can't understand how people buy BS like that or "the terrorists attacked us because they are jealous of us". Its really incredible how many people believe rhetoric like this, despite there being no rational justification for it, or any evidence to support it. Take it for what it is, mindless rhetoric to stop people from questioning, trying to understand a very complex geopolitical conflict, or thinking for themselves. - Have you ever thought about the fact that Israel is also the only nuclear power in the middle east, has by far the most advanced military in the region, and frequently uses its military power to humiliate its neighbours? Or how about the millions of people living in poverty stricken refugee camps because of Israel's illegal occupation of territory? Certainly the thousands of civilian deaths they have caused has nothing to do with it...No, none of that has anything to do with the problem, its all because the freedom-hatin' Arabs can't stand democracy.... right... 2- The Jews have not been at odds with Arabs for thousands of years. (though that is probably true about Jews and the Europeans) They were conquered in the first century AD, and weren't there for most of the next 2000 years. Until about 1800 there were any Jews in the middle east, and the few that were there coexisted with the Arabs peacefully. Soon the Zionist movement started and many more immigrated to the area, and they also got along well. It wasn't until the founding of Israel after world war 2 (due to the European's guilt over the Holocaust), carving up land that previously belonged to others, followed by wars against virtually every one of its neighbours and the displacement of millions of refugees, that the current conflict with the Arab countries started. I'm not taking sides in this dispute, but get your facts right and try thinking for yourself instead of simplifying everything down to one line justifications.
You're forgetting that only a fraction of an orbiting satellite's energy is in the form of gravitational potential energy- most of the energy is in the tangential direction (ie going sideways, across the sky like an airplane). A satellite is "flying" at a speed close to 30 000 km/h when it is in orbit. A huge chunk of this speed must be lost before it can gain a tiny component of speed downwards. kinetic energy in orbiting satellite: = 1/2 *mass * 9.81* ~6 500 000 metres = ~ 30 million * mass of satellite (comes from combining equations for kinetic energy and centripital acceleration) gravitational PE: = mass * 9.81 * ~200 000 metres = ~ 2 million * mass of satellite (ok, simplified formulas assuming constant acceleration due to gravity, but both equations would be affected the same if g was integrated) This relationship clearly shows that the satellite has much more energy to lose by slowing down than by falling. If you want to add a fricional force slowing its fall, then the difference becomes even larger. there IS Somthing that dictates the rates of change: height = tangential velocity squared/9.81 -take two derivatives with respect to time, and you get: acceleation down = 0.2038 *(negative tangential acceleration) (again assuming constant g, but you'll find the same thing if you accounted for varing g) The total speed is simply sqrt (Vtan squared + V down squared), and you'll find that in ALL cases, the total speed is decreasing. So in all cases, the satellite is slowing down, regardless of the atmosphere or drag force. If you want to account for the drag also slowing it down in the vertical direction, then you'll find an even larger net deceleration.
Nope, grandparent is correct.
Drag force ALWAYS slows down an object. In this case, it produces a negative acceleration in the tangential direction. Because of its lower velocity, the radius of orbit decreases, and there may be an acceration (smaller than the deceleration in the tangential direction) in the normal direction as a result until the new orbit is reached. Overall, the net speed is decreasing.
The only reason a satellite will continue falling into the earth is because the air becomes more and more dense, resulting in an ever-increasing decelleration in the tangential direction. yes, some gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy, but the acceration downwards because of this is smaller than the loss in tangential velocity due to drag.
So patent is totally wrong, grandparent is correct.
1. A properly run government system will have enough oversite/watchdogs to ensure that there is no corruption. On the other hand, corporate systems will ALWAYS favour the wealthy with no motivation for providing "equal care for everyone". Secondly, looking at corporate ethics, corruption is a much bigger problem in large corporations than government. 2. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0821-04.ht m Your asumption is way off, because of redundency and advertising between corporations, the overhead cost is more than double the cost in Canada, which has government run system.
3. It doesn't matter if its a government system or private, those same abusers have the same effect on the system.
"I'd rather buy 2 of his scooters than give my money to Dean Kamen."
Why? Why would you hate Deam Kamen?
He has invented dozens of revolutionary biomedical devices that have improved the lives of many people. (dialysis machines, wheelchairs, etc). Many design elements from the Segway, esp the redundent backup systems, come from his experience in biomedical devices.
Meanwhile, he has used much of the money made through this to promote engineering and technology to high school students, through the FIRST robotics competition(http://www.usfirst.org/)
This competition has raised the awareness of robotics and engineering to thousands of students, and probably a good reason why i'm studying engineering physics (with EE major) right now.
I don't see why a tech site like slashdot is so against him, when he has done so much in promoting technology to the masses.
I think the part that tips you off is the 4GHZ front side bus, in a chip that will supposedly be available by summer next year. Considering that virtually all computers today are under 400mhz, (the fastest computers just reached 800mhz), there's absolutely no way speeds (esp memory latencies needed to make it useful ) will increase 5-10x in 6 months. Hell, 4ghz is probably the speed of the fastest cpu's in summer 2004, and no way their FSB will be the same speed. The 64bit "add in module" also sounds incredibly suspicious, why would a manufacturer split up their cosumer product line between 32 bit and 64 bit parts, considering that each requires software specially compiled for it. Adding the 64 bit extensions themselves takes little to no die space (as seen in Athlon64), if intel wanted to migrate to 64 bit, they would do it across their entire consumer line, not spit it up like that and get smoked by AMD. I'm surprised how many people believe this article and the previous ones about prescot containing AMD's 64-bit extensions. These rumors seem incredibly far-fetched and implausible, and come from one of the least reliable rumor sites. Don't believe everything you see on the internet
Would that level involve seeing the actual movie when it comes out?
"When was the last Hollywood movie you saw that lectured you on causality"
That's what defines agood movie for you? In that case, i'd highly recommend The Fast and the Furious which is much deeper, with great philosophy and metaphors such as:
"It don't matter if you win by an inch or a mile- winning's winning"
"Its not how you stand by your car that counts, its how you race it- you gotta remember that"
"I live my life a quarter mile at a time"
"you never had me... you never had your car!"
Seriously, matrix reloaded seems like they ran a focus group, found out a list of things that made the first movie good, and threw it all togeher...
Special effects? fighting scenes? phillosophy? metaphors? sure, reloaded has all that, but its just seems thrown together in one big mess, without any of the coherency or vision of the first Matrix.
I disagree. What it looks like is an examining bed with a few weight sensors interfaced to a computer (see the computer directly underneath "sofa") It can't do anything whatsoever, other than read off the weight and compare it to known users. There is absolutely no technology involved, and any highschool student could duplicate what they did in a month. (4 few sensors, hooked up to an A/D board, interfaced to a computer, program consiting of one if/else if stucture). Despite the total lack of innovation, the "developers" brainstormed up a list of possible applications, all of which are A) useless b) trivial to implement by anyone with experience in programming/EE. Assist elderly people? you have to be kidding- the example they site is sounding an alarm when the user leaves the chair, which is totally unreleated to the "talking sofa" they described earlier, and also incredibly easy to implement (could be done with 1 battery, 1 spring loaded switch, 1 buzzer) I can't believe this "invention" recieved national press coverage, go into any science fair/undergrad lab, and you will see far more innovative, complex, and useful devices.
Another example was Intel's release of the pentium-m, aka banias/centrino, which was a brand new chip designed almost entirely from the ground up for very low power consumption(some bits based on P3 and a modified p4 bus). What was AMD's reaction? Instantly rename their existing laptop Athlon XP chips to Athlon-m, even though there were only superficial changes to the design. They still consumed huge amounts of power, and also performed worse, but the average consumer would think that it was a brand new chip similar to the pentium-m And then there's the whole performance-rating scheme, which is becomming more and more misleading- Originally the ratings corresponded quite well to the original P4's, but as the P4's cache size increased and the athlon ran out of headroom, AMD's performance ratings became more and more exagerated. For example, the Athlon XP 3200+ is slower on every benchmark than a P4 3 GHZ, and the new extreme edition throws it off even more. AMD has some great engineering, but their marketing department is one of the worst in the industry...
Try a different encoder. There is so much variance between different MP3's that simply stating a bitrate doesn't say very much. An MP3 encoded at ~192 average bitrate using LAME alt preset extreme actually sounds slightly better better to my ears than AAC with any encoder at the same bitrate. On the other hand, if your 192k/s MP3 is ripped with xing or downloaded off Kazza, then chances are it will be much worse than any AAC file. Try some different encoders first, MP3 may be an outdated format, but more work has been put into fine-tuning the LAME encoder than encoders for any other format. The only lossy format that can *slightly* beat LAME VBR at high bitrates is MPC,and i bet no one on slashdot has even heard of it. LAME MP3 sounds significantly better than AAC on my *dinky little* headphones, Sennheiser HD-600 with discrete amplification...
S3 is owned by VIA, one of the largest chipset manufacturers in the world. With Intel "exxxxtreme graphics", Nvidia Nforce, and now ATI's radeon IGP, virtually all of their competitors now include integrated video on their chipsets. If they didn't offer a competing product, they would soon be shut out of the market. With the Nvidia nforce3 and ATI's radeon IGP 9000, integrated video is becomming quite advanced. (and they will certainly need to be advanced since the next version of windows will REQUIRE DX9 support) THere are also rumors of a deal between ATI and Intel for intel to use some of the latest tech in their integrated chipsets in time for Longhorn.... The only way for via to stay in the game is to invest the R&D dollars to develop the latest graphics technology.
"Remember, the U.S. is the starting point of democracy"
There have been countless civilizations over the years with varying degrees of freedom, and the US circa 2003 is hardly at the top these days.
"recognizes the view points of people differ and allows them to freely express those view points."
Yeah, why is it that upstanding citizens and people that love their country but disagrees with the current administration's foreign policies are immediately labled "traitors" or worse, "liberals"? Sure, no one will throw you in jail or kill you for speaking your mind, but having your reputation destroyed and being widely condemmed isn't much better. I'm sorry, but intellegent debate over ligitimate concerns has been replaced by the attitude of "either you are with us or you are against us"
"But another thing is, we don't CARE what other people think of us... which is another reason why *some* foreigners, particularly in Europe, do not like us even more. if we cow-towwed to their crap, we'd be the weak little brother of the great European Socialism"
The way i see it, you can manage your own country as you please- want to cut taxes amid huge deficits? its your decision, and it only affects American citizens....
But what you don't realize is the huge effects of American foreign policy and large American corporations have on billions of people around the world. Surely, if the US is "the starting point in democracy" as you put it, then they should listen to others when making these decisions, instead of unitalerally acting in its own interests.
The way i see it, on the national scale the US is a democracy, but on a global scale it acts more like a ruthless dictator of other countries.