There's always loss whenever anything is pugged in period. The PS1/One both have a "Soft" switch in the front (a push button kind, just like on the PS2, VCRs and TVs). A real "hard" switch would be one like on old PCs where you actually fliped something like a lightswitch and a relay actualy opened/closed (you can still find these at times on the back of PC power supplies). So no, it's not that the new systems have a "soft" power switch as the old onese did as well. It is mostly the RF and Infrared ports the new ones have and the electronics required to operate them.
Back onto transformers, modern transformers are actualy quite efficient. Every power supply I've seen advertised are 80%+ efficient (80 is low today, many power supplies, including ones as large as 600W are upwards of 90% efficient. Usually they are less efficient at peak levels, which is why they are usually overbuilt. At these low levels, there shouldn't be much change over that loss. The main thing using power here is going to be the recievers in the consoles, maybe some of the power loss is due to the requirement to keep a clean voltage. However, this would probably be pretty constant/linear at all levels and wouldn't contribute much to the idle power consumption.
do you meen to tell me that it takes 10 times the power to do that today then 5 years ago?
If by 10:1 you mean that 0.2W that the PS1 consumed to the 2W that the PS2 consumes. No. Seeing as how the PS1 did not have any sort of remote control at all, it did not need to do that. The only thing it did while sleeping was... sleep. It did not monitor the Infrared port or anything else except it's little button sitting on the top.
I only hope that this completely unfair addition to their laws gets overturned sooner in the UK.
There isn't any equivalent to the US Bill of Rights in the UK. The only people that can overturn this is probably the same MPs who voted for it in the first place. So it's probably going to be around for a good long time.
Furthermore, I think privatization of schools is another case of getting rid of the bad with the good; okay, assuming you improve quality, you're decreasing quantity. What is more important, Johnny learning quantum mechanics at age 16, or the hundreds of poorer, less intelligent students that could potentially benefit from education? You're socializing a society, not providing a service to an elite few.
How about we take a middle road? Allow school vouchers. Most school districts spend $7k-$10k on average per student. Instead, give them a voucher for the ammount that the school system would otherwise spend on the student that is usable at ANY school the parents choose to place their child in. Give the public school system some equal competition for once.
Richard Feynman wrote about this in one of his autobiographies. I sugest you read them. Of the things that happened while he was on a textbook selection commitee:
1) He was the only one who actually read through all the submitted booksR
2) What was supposed to be a well balanced curriculum, was evicerated by either the board or the local government because some books cost too much.
One other thing I read recently is that history books have been watered down so as to be able to be sold to as wide a market as possible. People in New York and Georgia are going to have two very different views over the Civil War. As such, they would normally purchase two books with two different portrayals of what the reasons were behind it. Personally, I think this is a good thing.
If public schools are so inherently awful, then how does everyone else manage to make it work so well?
Because in the other countries the school systems are not required to take every single student all the way through 12th grade, no matter the school. Students are tested periodically to even get into the schools. Highschools have entrance tests and they only accept the top X students. Don't get a high enough scoore? You can't go to that school. Try one of the less prestigious ones. Get low enough? You're going to one that only has blue collar tracks for study.
Oh, and these ARE the public schools. Also, most countries in Europe only provide test scores to the more prestigious schools. Where as in the US the numbers are from a cross section of all the schools.
I think between the two of us we have a fundamental difference of belief in what we would like to see done.
I would rather have the lower taxes associated with licensing the patents and technology created.
You would rather have the knowledge available to everyone (tax payer or not) without paying a portion of the revenue.
As for the government having an "unfair advantage", I'm not sure how. By law, the governmnet does not have to pay royalties on patents for anything it purchases. It has, what some see, as unlimited funds in the form of taxes. (We probably both disagree with that statement). However, if someone else were to develope the technology first, they would still be able to license it. It just so happens that one of the governmental research organizations developed it first.
Patent it and then license the patent to whoever wants it for a reasonable amount to collect money to offset the developement costs. Money then goes towards developing more new technology. (Although currently they do this and it goes back into the general fund)
With states like oklahoma passing laws against selling violent games to children... they might have a problem on their hands with age verification. Or maybe they wont be able to sell games with lots of violence online, crippling them back down to the simple games of xbox live arcade.
Credit Cards have an age verification system that has been in use for years. That's probably how they will find out if the buyer is 18 or not. That's assuming the laws aren't overturned on constitutional grounds.
Except that would require some security hole that was architecture based rather than API based.
A cross platform virus merely needs to be able to find a hole in each of the two OS's. It does not necessarily have to be the same hole that it exploits in each one. This is how I figure the first cross platform viruses will work, customized code for each OS.
I've read all that and do believe myself that DDT is the best anti-mosquito chemical out there. There was an interesting story on the BBC this morning related to DDT and it's affect on humans.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5145450.stm
I'm going to predict that once macs hit the %10 to %15 market share, a lot more malware will be seen that targets them. Personaly, I'm waiting for the first cross platforms virus that targets both mac and windows now that they are both on x86.
Personally, while I enjoy space opera as a genre, I'd rather NOT see wars between space colonies.
Given history and a lot of the space opera/scifi I've read, war between space colonies would be unlikely. MUCH more likely would be war between Space Colonies and Earth where earth gets a couple a great big rocks droped on it from above.
The recent record was set at a track (in Arizona) that was different from the previous record holder's ride (in Germany). In fact, aren't there bound to be many differences?
Easiest way to find out. Compare the average speeds of Formula1 racing from various tracks. I say Formula1 instead of NASCAR as Formula1 has tracks all over the world instead of just in the US.
However, more to the point, you are right in that there are many conditions that can make the difference. Aside from the weather and the pavement itself, the design of the track can make a difference. Banking, distances of straightaways and so on will affect the maximum speed. Just lookin at the NASCAR, the top speeds on different tracks can vary by about 50 mph. This is mainly due to the difference between road courses (10+ turns, both left and right) and "round" tracks (left or right turn only, general circle/oval/triangle shape). Among the non-road courses, the top speeds are much closer together. The main difference between them is the angle of the banks on the turns, the lengths of the straightaways, the number of turns and the sharpness of the turns. Most drivers prefer the larger tracks as it allows them to go faster. The smaller tracks with shorter straightaways and (usually) sharpter turns have measurabley slower speeds than the larger ones do.
An "ideal" comparison for a race might be to get everyone out to White Sands, New Mexico. It's about as flat as you can get and a nice long straightaway longer than you'd ever need. Either that or the Bonneville Speedway in Utah, which already has a track set up for racing.
Sorry, what does "zogheimerz" mean? Babelfish isn't too helpful on the translation, it comes up as "pulling home ore" when translating German->English.
When riding an "upright" bicycle, riding behind close behind another competitor requires about 1/3 less effort. (Sheltering.)
It's called "Drafting" and is known to every racing fan and bicycle enthusiast I have ever met.
As for the recumbents not drafting, that's not true. While the bonus may be reduced slightly, there would still be an incentive to draft. Drafting works no matter what kind of vehicle you are in.
What the UCI could do is set up a different league for recumbent racing. Keep the two seperate, such as NASCAR with trucks and cars.
Backhoe power outages are much less likely to happen with overhead power lines. There's also shovel outages, which took out the phone lines to my neighborhood once (dam cable company).
You made me think of something reading over the gold amounts. Perhaps Blizzard and Square/Enix should have statistics page for the game. One that lists the total number players/characters, the total amount of gold currently floating in the user accounts around the game, the total amount of Arcanite bars, Arcane Crystals, etc...
Would be interesting from a statistics perspective to say the least.
If so, can you describe a plausible "planet killer" threat which would make Earth so inhospitable to human life that you'd actually be better off somewhere else in the solar system?
How abou the 6 mile wide asteroid that was supposed to have wiped ouot the dinosaurs? Some meteor large enough to kick up enough dust into the atmosphere to cause a multi-year winter?
A different dissaster could be when one of the super volcanos blows (such as the one that Yellow Stone national park is in. Or, WW3 is always a possibility as well.
Im just happy that it didnt hit anywhere else.
Like New York, or any other big city.
I almost (alomst!) wish it landed near enough one to cause some decent damage. Then maybe people would take the threat of a planet killer serious enough to get a properly funded space program going so a some of us could get off planet (like me). AD ASTRA!
which meant that when I lost one of my Futurama DVDs all I could do legally is buy another
I'd double check that if I were you. A few of the DVD manufacturers (Fox included, I believe), have a system set up so that if a disk fails, you can replace it for something like $5-$7. Basically, the cost of the media, processing and shiping.
As for other peaceful missions. The US military helped out after the south east asia earthquake, Hurricane Katrina and other times simply because they are capable of getting many places and moving supplies quicker than most others. Something like this could be useful for first responders heading into an area just to find out what the status is. At least for areas where a helicopter couldn't necessarily land, anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
There's always loss whenever anything is pugged in period. The PS1/One both have a "Soft" switch in the front (a push button kind, just like on the PS2, VCRs and TVs). A real "hard" switch would be one like on old PCs where you actually fliped something like a lightswitch and a relay actualy opened/closed (you can still find these at times on the back of PC power supplies). So no, it's not that the new systems have a "soft" power switch as the old onese did as well. It is mostly the RF and Infrared ports the new ones have and the electronics required to operate them.
Back onto transformers, modern transformers are actualy quite efficient. Every power supply I've seen advertised are 80%+ efficient (80 is low today, many power supplies, including ones as large as 600W are upwards of 90% efficient. Usually they are less efficient at peak levels, which is why they are usually overbuilt. At these low levels, there shouldn't be much change over that loss. The main thing using power here is going to be the recievers in the consoles, maybe some of the power loss is due to the requirement to keep a clean voltage. However, this would probably be pretty constant/linear at all levels and wouldn't contribute much to the idle power consumption.
do you meen to tell me that it takes 10 times the power to do that today then 5 years ago?
... sleep. It did not monitor the Infrared port or anything else except it's little button sitting on the top.
If by 10:1 you mean that 0.2W that the PS1 consumed to the 2W that the PS2 consumes. No. Seeing as how the PS1 did not have any sort of remote control at all, it did not need to do that. The only thing it did while sleeping was
1) Internal clocks/batteries
2) IR Remote ports that need to be monitored as they can be used to turn on the consoles.
I only hope that this completely unfair addition to their laws gets overturned sooner in the UK.
There isn't any equivalent to the US Bill of Rights in the UK. The only people that can overturn this is probably the same MPs who voted for it in the first place. So it's probably going to be around for a good long time.
Furthermore, I think privatization of schools is another case of getting rid of the bad with the good; okay, assuming you improve quality, you're decreasing quantity. What is more important, Johnny learning quantum mechanics at age 16, or the hundreds of poorer, less intelligent students that could potentially benefit from education? You're socializing a society, not providing a service to an elite few.
How about we take a middle road? Allow school vouchers. Most school districts spend $7k-$10k on average per student. Instead, give them a voucher for the ammount that the school system would otherwise spend on the student that is usable at ANY school the parents choose to place their child in. Give the public school system some equal competition for once.
Richard Feynman wrote about this in one of his autobiographies. I sugest you read them. Of the things that happened while he was on a textbook selection commitee:
1) He was the only one who actually read through all the submitted booksR 2) What was supposed to be a well balanced curriculum, was evicerated by either the board or the local government because some books cost too much.
One other thing I read recently is that history books have been watered down so as to be able to be sold to as wide a market as possible. People in New York and Georgia are going to have two very different views over the Civil War. As such, they would normally purchase two books with two different portrayals of what the reasons were behind it. Personally, I think this is a good thing.
If public schools are so inherently awful, then how does everyone else manage to make it work so well?
Because in the other countries the school systems are not required to take every single student all the way through 12th grade, no matter the school. Students are tested periodically to even get into the schools. Highschools have entrance tests and they only accept the top X students. Don't get a high enough scoore? You can't go to that school. Try one of the less prestigious ones. Get low enough? You're going to one that only has blue collar tracks for study.
Oh, and these ARE the public schools. Also, most countries in Europe only provide test scores to the more prestigious schools. Where as in the US the numbers are from a cross section of all the schools.
I think between the two of us we have a fundamental difference of belief in what we would like to see done.
I would rather have the lower taxes associated with licensing the patents and technology created.
You would rather have the knowledge available to everyone (tax payer or not) without paying a portion of the revenue.
As for the government having an "unfair advantage", I'm not sure how. By law, the governmnet does not have to pay royalties on patents for anything it purchases. It has, what some see, as unlimited funds in the form of taxes. (We probably both disagree with that statement). However, if someone else were to develope the technology first, they would still be able to license it. It just so happens that one of the governmental research organizations developed it first.
Patent it and then license the patent to whoever wants it for a reasonable amount to collect money to offset the developement costs. Money then goes towards developing more new technology. (Although currently they do this and it goes back into the general fund)
With states like oklahoma passing laws against selling violent games to children... they might have a problem on their hands with age verification. Or maybe they wont be able to sell games with lots of violence online, crippling them back down to the simple games of xbox live arcade.
Credit Cards have an age verification system that has been in use for years. That's probably how they will find out if the buyer is 18 or not. That's assuming the laws aren't overturned on constitutional grounds.
Except that would require some security hole that was architecture based rather than API based.
A cross platform virus merely needs to be able to find a hole in each of the two OS's. It does not necessarily have to be the same hole that it exploits in each one. This is how I figure the first cross platform viruses will work, customized code for each OS.
How in the world can a chemical that every human produces be patented? Isn't that prior art?
Same way that Aspirin, Penicilin, Insulin and many other chemicals have been patented.
I've read all that and do believe myself that DDT is the best anti-mosquito chemical out there. There was an interesting story on the BBC this morning related to DDT and it's affect on humans. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5145450.stm
I'm going to predict that once macs hit the %10 to %15 market share, a lot more malware will be seen that targets them. Personaly, I'm waiting for the first cross platforms virus that targets both mac and windows now that they are both on x86.
Personally, while I enjoy space opera as a genre, I'd rather NOT see wars between space colonies.
Given history and a lot of the space opera/scifi I've read, war between space colonies would be unlikely. MUCH more likely would be war between Space Colonies and Earth where earth gets a couple a great big rocks droped on it from above.
The recent record was set at a track (in Arizona) that was different from the previous record holder's ride (in Germany). In fact, aren't there bound to be many differences?
Easiest way to find out. Compare the average speeds of Formula1 racing from various tracks. I say Formula1 instead of NASCAR as Formula1 has tracks all over the world instead of just in the US.
However, more to the point, you are right in that there are many conditions that can make the difference. Aside from the weather and the pavement itself, the design of the track can make a difference. Banking, distances of straightaways and so on will affect the maximum speed. Just lookin at the NASCAR, the top speeds on different tracks can vary by about 50 mph. This is mainly due to the difference between road courses (10+ turns, both left and right) and "round" tracks (left or right turn only, general circle/oval/triangle shape). Among the non-road courses, the top speeds are much closer together. The main difference between them is the angle of the banks on the turns, the lengths of the straightaways, the number of turns and the sharpness of the turns. Most drivers prefer the larger tracks as it allows them to go faster. The smaller tracks with shorter straightaways and (usually) sharpter turns have measurabley slower speeds than the larger ones do.
An "ideal" comparison for a race might be to get everyone out to White Sands, New Mexico. It's about as flat as you can get and a nice long straightaway longer than you'd ever need. Either that or the Bonneville Speedway in Utah, which already has a track set up for racing.
Sorry, what does "zogheimerz" mean? Babelfish isn't too helpful on the translation, it comes up as "pulling home ore" when translating German->English.
When riding an "upright" bicycle, riding behind close behind another competitor requires about 1/3 less effort. (Sheltering.)
It's called "Drafting" and is known to every racing fan and bicycle enthusiast I have ever met.
As for the recumbents not drafting, that's not true. While the bonus may be reduced slightly, there would still be an incentive to draft. Drafting works no matter what kind of vehicle you are in.
What the UCI could do is set up a different league for recumbent racing. Keep the two seperate, such as NASCAR with trucks and cars.
Backhoe power outages are much less likely to happen with overhead power lines. There's also shovel outages, which took out the phone lines to my neighborhood once (dam cable company).
You made me think of something reading over the gold amounts. Perhaps Blizzard and Square/Enix should have statistics page for the game. One that lists the total number players/characters, the total amount of gold currently floating in the user accounts around the game, the total amount of Arcanite bars, Arcane Crystals, etc... Would be interesting from a statistics perspective to say the least.
If so, can you describe a plausible "planet killer" threat which would make Earth so inhospitable to human life that you'd actually be better off somewhere else in the solar system?
How abou the 6 mile wide asteroid that was supposed to have wiped ouot the dinosaurs? Some meteor large enough to kick up enough dust into the atmosphere to cause a multi-year winter?
A different dissaster could be when one of the super volcanos blows (such as the one that Yellow Stone national park is in. Or, WW3 is always a possibility as well.
Single planet species don't survive.
http://www.foxhome.com/replacement/
Im just happy that it didnt hit anywhere else. Like New York, or any other big city.
I almost (alomst!) wish it landed near enough one to cause some decent damage. Then maybe people would take the threat of a planet killer serious enough to get a properly funded space program going so a some of us could get off planet (like me). AD ASTRA!
which meant that when I lost one of my Futurama DVDs all I could do legally is buy another
I'd double check that if I were you. A few of the DVD manufacturers (Fox included, I believe), have a system set up so that if a disk fails, you can replace it for something like $5-$7. Basically, the cost of the media, processing and shiping.
how would a military mission be in peace?
Espionage, spying, extracting a turncoat....
As for other peaceful missions. The US military helped out after the south east asia earthquake, Hurricane Katrina and other times simply because they are capable of getting many places and moving supplies quicker than most others. Something like this could be useful for first responders heading into an area just to find out what the status is. At least for areas where a helicopter couldn't necessarily land, anyway.