Here's a recording I made of one of the Artcraft rolls, Chicago March on an untuned Duo-Art player piano, and with it's Duo-Art system out of operation, so it does not serve the quality of the roll complete justice!
I have myself a Duo-Art player piano, and have lots of those QRS Music rolls, and although the work of QRS is impressive, there were and are smaller roll producers, who made and makes much better quality music rolls, Artcraft being one of the very few who still makes such rolls. Since there's less mass production involved, the perforations are more accurate providing for better musical quality.
There are lots of old non-operational player pianos, as I have learned, in at least the english speaking parts of the world. One should look for one and pick it up, sometimes almost for free, and then learn how to restore it self, properly.
It is however important to have done research, so one picks a piano well suited for restoration, and which plays standard rolls!
Most people will have to have the regular piano part refitted and restored by a professional company or piano tuner, and then learn how to restore the player part of the piano, which is fully achievable. There are also professional player piano restorers out there, but then we are talking about expencive work a little in the same class as restoring, let's say perhaps not cars, however more like restoring small motor bikes or big furniture.
ALso important to know that restoring player pianos involves using original types of materials, which means hot hide glue and not epoxy which would ruin the possibilty to open up wooden parts and restore them again, later!
Also, it would be a huge mistake, to use PVC tubes instead of rubber tubes, since PVC dissolves and becomes 'goo' in 10-15 years time, while rubber, though hardering and eventually cracks, might last for 50 years depending on atmospheric conditions.
Restoring a player grand piano or an orchestrion however, could be compared to restoring a car, measuring the amount of work having to be done.
Back to Artcraft rolls; if you have a regular, or much better, a Duo-Art player piano, I can really recommend the Artcraft rolls, which are really well made, perforations being very correctly made, so the music doesn't sound so "mechanical", as with some other piano rolls. Chicago March is probably a bad example in that manner, however it was the recording I already had put on the web, a few years ago, or I would have linked to a better example of how fine-tuned those Artcraft rolls might sound on a well tuned operational Duo-Art piano.
For those who are looking to alternative sources of piano rolls, here's the home page of an (albeit) small producer of piano rolls.
Artcraft music rolls, in addition to producing regular, what is called, standard 88 note rolls, also produce Duo-Art rolls, which contains control punches which automatically adjust the sound level of the music, and is able to enhance single notes, so the music is more realistic, like a real piano player would achieve.
You would need a special Duo Art player piano, to get the most out of those rolls, but luckily, Duo-Art rolls are 'backwards compatible' with regular 88 note piano rolls, which means, you just have to tape over some of the holes on the right and left side of the tracker bar on a regular 88 note player piano, to play those Duo-Art rolls!
I don't think people are aware what implications this could have for what really could exist 'out there'.
If the natural laws are quite different in many other universes, warp travel, time travel could be possible, or even life itself could be much more common or varied, and it could be easier perhaps, to travel far, in other universes than our own. Energy-based life-forms, even "gods" in the meaning of very powerful beings, which have spread out in the galaxies and taking control, might exist. They might exist here too, however the physical constants of our universe makes it very cumbersome to travel and communicate, and radiation is also a problem, so it seems like we are somewhat alone in our corner of the galaxy. That is, unless this is correct!
Thus - the 'reality' of some of our science fiction stories could be true in other universes, while we live in a "boring" one with few means of transportation and (quick) communication over long distances. Even the brane we reside upon seem to be very stiff, since gravity waves haven't been observed (yet), so no easy wormhole solutions for transportation seem feasible with moderate amounts of energy.
Even though other universes probably never can be observed directly, this is exciting stuff, hopefully we will be able to collect at least indirect evidence of other universes, perhaps with some of the experiments done in the big hadron collider.
Not a bad idea. I was once driving 60 in 65 mph limit and on the right most lane, everyone was happy cruising on the other lanes except for one dude who was hell bent on me driving faster; when he brandished his gun it was enough motivation for me to take the next exit. Michael Moore pointed out that one bank gave you a free rifle, if you opened an account there, however a rifle in a car is not so practical to point at the target, out the window, which is why these guys give you a free revolver with your used car!
Uh, no. When people have a better standard of living, they usually postpone making lots of children, because they would need time for attending education first. The time left for making children is then limited, so that less
children are produced.
And in a rich and prosperous society, (like Norway where I live) with social services and social security and state pensions for the elderly, you don't need to have many children to ensure someone cares for you when you get old.
However too many places on earth deems this kind of society as too left-winged, even though like Norway, isn't socialist anymore, at all. So we are still looking into "doomsday" for at least some societies because they never get up to the level of prosperity needed to produce less children, and religion also have a negative impact, especially regarding resistance against the use of prevention.
How could Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 last so much longer then?
They are still transmitting after 30+ years, while Ulysses lasted 17 years, and was created later than the Voyager spacecrafts so that the RTG-technology assumingly must have gotten more advanced.
Microsoft did state they were working on a trimmed version of XP for computers such as the Eee btw, so its a moot point. It is phasing it out for desktops. What most of the public which has computer skills somewhat above the average, like me fetches though, is that there are well working Linux laptops on the market now, and that Microsoft phases out Windows XP at the same time as those laptops in need for a "light" OS are on the market.
(Strange, really, to consider Windows XP a "light" operating system anyway)
So if Microsoft still offers a stripped down version of Windows XP for ultra portables, it is not something which is being noticed by most of the somewhat computer skilled public, like I said - (Norway's largest) internet shop only sell the Linux version of the ASUS eee.
Am glad you pointed out, that Windows XP stripped version still be around, of course!
Which means - Microsoft will loose by phasing out the 'regular' Windows XP "that early", however it IS good news for all of us who realise how much hardware resources are vasted by the heavy OSes Microsoft makes. Even Windows XP and newer distributions of Linux put a heavy load on the computers, and even the ASUS eee with Linux, has somewhat limited battery time, and gets really warm, just to surf the web and check mail.
It might be strange to say that Microsoft phase out Windows XP "that early", since Windows XP have been around for a while now.
However the need for continously upgrading the operating systems to more resource demanding ones, diminishes, since the task of just suring the web and checking mail, has been about the same, for some years now, save playing div-x in high resolution, and handling websites with flash-animations.
Until we get 3D hologram surfing or even more extreme video codecs with space compression and thus more processing power needed to surf on the internet, a somewhat weaker PC than the ASUS eee which consumes even less battery, is in theory everything you need to properly surf and read your e-mail.
My Nintendo DS is somewhat too weak in processing power to properly surf the web with its Opera browser, however a portable PC would not need much more power to properly do it. So there's still a opening or "hole" in the market for real power saving ultra portable computers which could have had a battery time of 8 hours or more to do simple tasks when you are travelling. A friend has a Sony PSP which he browses the web with, regulary on internet cafe's - something like that in a larger size, would be optimal, when you are traveling, reading ebooks or surfing.
Now, this is odd - we just had the article Windows XP Lives, Thanks to Linux
and now it seems that Linux will be pretty much kept alive on computers amongst ordinary people thanks to Microsoft's aggressive policy towards phasing Windows XP out.
The real reason for this?
New, flash-based computers like the ASUS eee will for a couple of years still have limited resources of disk storage and RAM, and will obviously not work well with Windows Vista.
ASUS eee can be delivered with Linux and Windows XP, and if Microsoft phase out XP, people WILL move over to Linux, since ultra portable PCs really are popular on the market today.
99% of the buyers would like to use that PC just to check their mail and browse the web, since the screen is to small for any great PC-games to be played comfortably anyway, and checking mail and browsing the web can be easily done with the ASUS eee with its preinstalled Linux.
Seems like ASUS have done Linux a great favour, since they during the last days of Windows XP, even have managed to sell lots of eee-PCs with Linux, and the word of mouth is spreading - if my neighbour or regular college can browse the net with a Linux PC, so can I!
Here in Norway, it even seems like you only can get the Linux version of the eee.
Even my girlfriend has bought one, and it can even be used with internet banks here in Norway.
What happens if the battery's dead, and the charger is in the checked in luggage?
Will they stand ready with the correct charger so the laptop can be powered up, or
will they demand that you pull out the hard drive if that's possible, or that they
confiscate the laptop, if it's not easy to pull out the harddrive?
In 99% of the cases, people will have their laptop fully charged, before traveling
with a plane, however if you forget to charge the laptop before your flight or
long waiting times means you've run out of battery, it might look "suspicious" to
the security personel, that you enter the plane with a dead laptop, and then it's
time to start getting paranoid about having your laptop fully charged, before you enter the airplane.
However a fully charged laptop is potensially in a greater risk of bursting into flames,
if the battery's faulty, so the fight against terror is getting pretty silly at
this point. Am very curious of what would really happen, if the security personel
demands to check out a laptop, which happens to be dead because of an empty battery
with no spare charger present.
People who punish their animals with electric shocks are really sick people, those collars should have been forbidden, and something should be done with people who performs animal cruelty like this.
Actually, if you did murder 'a bunch of people' in Norway, you would most likely get the maximum
"lifetime" sentence of 21 years, PLUS indefinite psychiatric care 'behind bars', most probably under
much more humane conditions than in prisons in most countries in the world.
Less serious crimes
are of course much less seriously punished, often on the too light side, however when I hear about
what extreme punishments are carried out, by even our NATO-allied, and how they treat the
civil population in say, Iraq and POWs in say, Guanatanamo, I again feel somewhat more relaxed about
Norway's more humane approach to punishment and jail, even if some of the sentences are on the light side.
Our system's not perfect and I believe there might be prisoner abuse also in the norwegian systems, but
anyway our jails look nothing like the american ones, except perhaps one supermax prison, which has
been very controversial, because of the extreme isolation of the prisoners.
Regarding computer related "crimes", Norway is still something like heaven, Jon Lech Johansen did walk,
am not so sure he would have walked, if he had been living in (the wrong state) in the USA.
Building your own radio controlled flying saucer
on
UFOs In the News
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· Score: 2, Interesting
If an albeit clever amateur can build his own radio controlled flying saucers, then I for one, believe they have been tested for a long time by the military. The flying saucers which are based upon
the Coanda-effect could actually have been around since the
30's, with a fuel consumption which is 1/3 of a helicoptre's. Depending on the 'flatness' of the dish, you could create
saucers which are more suitable for hovering, like the radio controlled GFSUAV or more suitable for high velocity travel, where the dish works more like a wing, like those who people from time to time tell they have been seeing flying extremely quickly over the sky.
What really freaked me out, was that the GFSUAV's odd
shape, (which is not quite like the regular, frisbee shaped flying saucers), I have seen in a book about UFO's when I was a child.
Some of the unclear (and many years ago not so convincing) photographs, clearly showed flying saucers with a structure on top of it, just like the GFSUAV, but that long ago, I just dismissed those saucers as being unclear shots of hub caps or something.
More people ought to be surprised when they discover the similarities between some of those odd UFO shapes on older pictures, and the GFSUAV with the 'hat' on the top of the dish. Inside it you could have either a propeller or a jet engine, but what's most fascinating,
is that the GFSUAV is electric, driven by state of the art lithium batteries!
>This is mentioned in TFA (second page, heading "SOLID-STATE"). IIRC there are more materials that can do this, collectively they're called metal hydrides. >Metal hydride tanks are heavy and expensive: Mercedes built a car with a metal hydride fuel tank about 10 years ago, the tank alone cost $100k. >The temperature needed to release the hydrogen is about 300 deg C.
Which means, you'd be better off by storing the energy in nickel metal hydride batteries, like the Toyota RAV4 EV has,
no excessive heat, and several thousand charge cycles avilable depending on how well the computerized charging system
protects the batteries from under (reversing) or overcharge. Almost none of the batteries in the Toyota RAV4 EV have had to
be changed AFAIK. The Prius charge/discharge its pack just a little, so it will last, probably more than the lifetime
of the car. The price for batteries is still usually high, but not extreme, like the cost of all those hydrogen components.
Batteries are usually made of cheap and recyclable compounds, and yes, by mass production, it is fully feasible to get down the
price to much lower than what it is now.
Now even denser storage is possible, with zebra or litium batteries, so that a electric car a little over the average size,
can drive as far as a petroleum car on one charge.
The challenge will be to switch from gasoline stations, to efficient
charging stations. Quick charging (even super fast) is theoretically no problem, for most battery types.
One solution would be to have huge banks of supercapasitors on the charging stations, so that the wires from the grid
don't have to be inconveniently thick (and utterly expencive) On the other hand, ususally one would only require quick
charging when going for a longer trip, since an overnight charge at home, will take care of all the shorter daily trips,
that most people do. Which means, there should be less need for quick charging stations, than there is a need for
gasoline stations today!
The REAL challenge will be, getting people to understand that this will work better than a "hydrogen powered" future,
since producing, storing, transporting etc. hydrogen, is much more difficult and afflicted with much more energy losses than
an 'electrical powered' future with electrical wires and batteries transferring and storing the energy.
Hopefully, an increasing part of the electricity, will be produced cleanly, however shouldn't the sun shine, and the
wind not blow, the nature will accept that we burn _some_ coal or crunch some atoms, also in the future.
This recently came to my mind - wouldn't the thinning of the ozone layer actually make more ultraviolet radiation reaching deep into the earth's atmosphere, thus contributing to heat it up further more?
If I understand this correctly, a normal ozone layer, will make the earth look 'bluer', partly reflecting the UV radiation though it would only be visible with accurately calibrated cameras lacking a UV filter (The 'Skylight filter' on regular photo cameras)
It would have been very interesting to know, if this effect is great enough to be observed or measured and therefore
could be contributing to the global warming.
It would have been useful, if someone could come up with some charts or bar graphs, which show us how much of the energy in the solar radiation, which is in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. If that amount of energy is considerable, it could very well explain why the polar regions are warmed much more than the rest, since the ozone layer is much thinner there.
Seems like Wikipedia covers EV conversions in this article
Since a lot of the Beetles still run in South-America, an electric conversion kit for it could be a good idea.
The demand for EV conversion kits, even though many of them are not that well
designed, is another indicator, that the traditional car (and oil) industry, do not
want to fill the people's demand for electric cars, since they obviously will earn less on
them, because of the lesser demand for servicing, and the obvious need for uh, no oil.
Oh, even replacing the batteries, and even if they really were expencive, wouldn't make
the automobile industry's day, since the battery is (or should be) ONE component you can replace fairly
easily, if the car is reasonably well constructed, for a quick replacement of the batteries.
(Few are, to this date, however unless you use lead acid batteries, the batteries can last much longer than you would expect, or they really should!)
And who says you would want to buy a new battery from the original manufacturer, if this were priced after
the same scheme as ink cartridges? The batteries would be subject to a price competition, and maybe you
would stick to cheaper battery technology with a lower range, if your needs for driving were not that big, or
maybe you replace electric components or batteries yourself, 'robbing' the automotive industry for even more
bucks they'd planned to earn on service? Therefore also, GM owns the patent on the NiMH battery-patent
(they are in a patent dispute with Toyota), and control it, so that cells over something like
10AH cannot be licensed for production (Which, in turn, make them unpractical for homebrew
EVs) Guess they somehow 'ask questions', if your little EV-factory suddenly order 10000s of these
ones, to connect 10 or 20 by 20 in parallel and series for a hefty EV-battery, or they simply
give you a price which simply isn't affordable for your 'project'. NiHMs are very good batteries, but
need close monitoring, not to be under or overcharged, so they get damaged, which means, you
want battery packs with fewer, larger cells, not many smaller cells, for your EV conversion.
How about other alternatives?
Sturdy wet electrolyte filled NiCd batteries from SAFT are heavily overpriced, though they are
as easily made, as ordinary lead acid batteries, and for some 'mysterious reasons', there has been
much more trouble with them in our electric cars in Norway, than there probably is with them in airplanes,
trains, submarines etc. If you have a lot of money and know what you do, you could use NiCds, but must first
be able to get hold of them. (Which might prove difficult in countries outside those who have many EVs which use
them, like Norway)
Litium ion batteries are not so much in the hands of the automobile industry, but need very well constructed
circuits, to protect them from over or undercharge, plus you need to keep them not too cold during charge, are still expencive to buy (but not to produce) and is still no real option for those who want to convert their electric car 'at home', which means most people in practice are left with ordinary lead acid batteries as their only option, if they are going to do a conversion to electric.
Which means, you will probably not get the best range out of your lead acid electric converted automobile,
which together with the less resources those who make electric cars have, compared to the regular
automobile industry, makes people falsely believe that electric cars is doomed to be something awkward,
golfcart-like, only two seats, and only a short range, novelty item.
The truth is, as many Californians, and some Norwegians do know, that really good electric cars WERE
made some years ago, like the Toyota RAV 4 EV, GM EV1, Ford Ranger EV, Peugeot 106 EV, Citroën Saxo EV,
Berlingo Partner and not the least - Think City, although it has only two
A little off-topic perhaps, to mention ETP (Estimated Playing Time) of board games, but some similarities to multiplayer PC-games there are.
After having played many board strategy games like Axis & Allies, and usually ended up with 12h+ long games, and same story with Diplomacy, RISK 2210AD (which has a fixed number of rounds) and even The Settlers from Catan (which is supposed to have a exponential curve towards winning enough points to win), I sometimes wonder if the EPT printed on the box, or stated by the game vendor, isn't the TOTAL playing time, but EPT PER PLAYER!
It is difficult to state even roughly estimated playing times, since it would heavily depend upon the playing style and the mood of the players. Guess the same is valid for many multiplayer PC games too.
Charging your gadgets directly via the USB
on
USB Batteries
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I really wonder why charging of ALL sorts of gadgets which run on one lithium-ion cell isn't automatically done when you anyway connect that thing to the PC to transfer data? The USB port has 5V and one lithium-ion cell has a maximum of 4.15 volts, (So there's enough voltage difference to properly charge the lithium cell).
A few gadgets already does get charged when they anyway are connected to the PC, why not ALL of them?
I would be happy to save the cost for the regular charger, and find it very practical to plug it into my PC to have it charged, and for those
few who doesn't have a PC, or for whom it would not be practical to charge via the PC, a regular charger or a solar charger with a "USB"-plug, would be an obvious accessory.
(I really wonder how much extra money I have paid for all those chargers sitting around unused, from gadgets that broke or went out of use. Worst of all, all these chargers are still in working condition!)
Then we would also have gotten the bonus of a 5V charger plug being standarized, so that any one lithium cell-gadget can use any 5V charger, including any USB port, ending the trouble with the pileup of orphaned chargers.
Also, the regular plug-in of your whatever type of data collecting and/or processing gadget into your PC to get it charged, probably will be god for your (at the moment non-existing?) habits of taking backups of it before you loose it or break it - that is, if you also take regular backups of your hard drive...
While fuel cell driven gadgets might not contribute themselves to that much extra CO2, the consequences
of everyone switching over to them will. This demands some explanation.
First of all:
I certainly do NOT want gadgets which, like my printer with a chipped ink cartridge, makes me dependent on
consumables, instead of cheap electricity from the grid.
The situation is bad enough as it is, with extremely overpriced litium-ion batteries with a non-standard
shape, so it might be that most people, irritated by this, will welcome the changeover to fuel cell
based gadgets, ignoring the fact that the producers will make the hazzle for those of us who want to
refill our own (m)ethanol cartrigdges, as large as possible. Eg. regular Joe will end up throwing away
his gadget early, when fuel cartidges for that particular gadget gets rare and/or even more expencive.
Even if a cartridge could fuel a cell phone for two weeks, it means that Average Joe must have a small pile
of them, and at some point, they will be sold at fewer places, though maybe not also to a higher price.
And huge parts of the world have no electricity grid or a long distance to the civilisation - for example
in the Australian outback, I would rather charge my gadgets with a solar panel, than having to have a
load of fuel cells available, though I can see situations where it would be practical to use some, for
example shorter vacations where you bring less amounts of luggage.
One way or another, we get cheated, because of all the different battery packages, which hinders us from
buying standard cells or standard battery packages (including protection circuitry), so we pay 100USD for
a battery that really costs 5USD to make.
The ONLY solution to this mess, is that the industry due to environmental and consumer laws, are forced
to use standardized battery solutions, or standarized (m)ethanol, refill solutions (which might be very cheap, then),
however I cannot see this coming soon, though the continous replacement of gadgets also hurts the environment
and rise the CO2-pollution.
I have recently bought a Canon 350D camera, where the store tried to talk me out of buying a battery hand-grip
(containing 6xAA rechargeable 2600mAh cells in place of the 720mAh lithium-ion battery).
The photo store even warned be that the battery capacity would be less with the battery handgrip,
than with the "special quality" Canon lithium ion battery, and not surprisingly, I am not allowed by the PC-software,
to transfer pictures from the camera to the PC, if I don't use the 100USD Canon lithium battery, instead of my
cheap AA rechargeable batteries. Canon WANT me to use the most expencive battery solution (which costs in Europe,
eq. to 100USD) instead of my own AA-batteries which cost me a fraction of that, and has tons of capacity, unless
I let them sit unused until they self discharge. (A minor inconvenience compared to have "unlimited" battery capacity
when taking pictures of a wedding or something important event)
Guess they want only professional photographers who anyway has bough that 3000USD super-duper press zoom lens,
to buy the battery hand grip, since they photograph so much, that it would have been a really shame to ask them
to use the standard lithium battery with low capacity. Maybe also Canon does this to avoid consumers who don't
understand that their NiMH-batteries has a lot of self discharge, to complain so they have to explain for them
how to get the most of your NiMH-batteries.
Canon btw. has had a very consumer friendly policy with their printers, where the user has been able to refill
ink until recently but now they too chip their ink cartridges to stop refilling.
Anyway, I thrive much more with my battery-handgrip solution with high capacity with cheap, standard cells for my
digital camera, than with both the lithium battery, or any solution involving me having to buy some special liquid so I can take my photos. If the lithium battery which has to
It seems on the photos like they recovered their craft with no trouble at all, however wouldn't a such balloon usually land a long way from where it ascended due to jet streams in the atmosphere? They probably tracked the thing well with GPS and could follow it on the ground, however it seems like pure luck that they were able to pick up the craft before someone else found it in a neighbouring state or something?
>Kind of a long commitment, especially considering that Hawking has ALS and could croak at any time -- the fact that he has been living with a disease that >kills 95% of its sufferers within 5 years of diagnosis for 45 years vastly increases the chance of him dying at any moment.
A friend of mine, which now is an old man got myasthenia gravis many years ago. This is a muscle weakening disease somewhat similar to ALS which originally was as bad as ALS - you gradually lost muscle control until you died. However, many years ago, they managed to come up with a medicine, which could keep the symptomes mild, and the doctors told you had to take the medication for the rest of your life.
But it turned out that my friend eventually has gotten rid of his case of myasthenia gravis now for more than 25 years which probably is much longer than the typical temporary remission of the disease in some few cases, mentioned in the Wikipedia article.
Since Stephen Hawking is alive, (though not so well) so many years after he should have been dead, it tells us that Stehpen
Hawking doesn't have a typical case of ALS. When I was a child, we also learned that HIV was an absolute disease, if you first
got it, you couldn't get rid of it, and eventually you would develop AIDS and die. Again it turned out, that this was not so absolute either - scientists discovered that some people are immune to the HIV-virus.
The more we learn about the nature, the more we see that things we thought were absolutes, really not are that, so I would
trust that Stephen Hawking could live for even some more years. One would expect too - that he is given a top notch medical treatment to prevent him getting sick.
For example, he is probably vaccinated against the flu, and also is given medication like Tamiflu or antibiotics when the threat of getting sick is enlarged, as lung diseases easily kills people who are extremely paralyzed.
So if you easily get the cough in the winter time, this is not the job for you!
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a recording I made of one of the Artcraft rolls, Chicago March on an untuned Duo-Art player piano, and with it's Duo-Art system out of operation, so it does not serve the quality of the roll complete justice!
I have myself a Duo-Art player piano, and have lots of those QRS Music rolls, and although the work of QRS is impressive, there were and are smaller roll producers, who made and makes much better quality music rolls, Artcraft being one of the very few who still makes such rolls. Since there's less mass production involved, the perforations are more accurate providing for better musical quality.
There are lots of old non-operational player pianos, as I have learned, in at least the english speaking parts of the world. One should look for one and pick it up, sometimes almost for free, and then learn how to restore it self, properly.
It is however important to have done research, so one picks a piano well suited for restoration, and which plays standard rolls!
Most people will have to have the regular piano part refitted and restored by a professional company or piano tuner, and then learn how to restore the player part of the piano, which is fully achievable. There are also professional player piano restorers out there, but then we are talking about expencive work a little in the same class as restoring, let's say perhaps not cars, however more like restoring small motor bikes or big furniture.
ALso important to know that restoring player pianos involves using original types of materials, which means hot hide glue and not epoxy which would ruin the possibilty to open up wooden parts and restore them again, later!
Also, it would be a huge mistake, to use PVC tubes instead of rubber tubes, since PVC dissolves and becomes 'goo' in 10-15 years time, while rubber, though hardering and eventually cracks, might last for 50 years depending on atmospheric conditions.
Restoring a player grand piano or an orchestrion however, could be compared to restoring a car, measuring the amount of work having to be done.
Back to Artcraft rolls; if you have a regular, or much better, a Duo-Art player piano, I can really recommend the Artcraft rolls, which are really well made, perforations being very correctly made, so the music doesn't sound so "mechanical", as with some other piano rolls. Chicago March is probably a bad example in that manner, however it was the recording I already had put on the web, a few years ago, or I would have linked to a better example of how fine-tuned those Artcraft rolls might sound on a well tuned operational Duo-Art piano.
For those who are looking to alternative sources of piano rolls, here's the home page of an (albeit) small producer of piano rolls. Artcraft music rolls, in addition to producing regular, what is called, standard 88 note rolls, also produce Duo-Art rolls, which contains control punches which automatically adjust the sound level of the music, and is able to enhance single notes, so the music is more realistic, like a real piano player would achieve.
You would need a special Duo Art player piano, to get the most out of those rolls, but luckily, Duo-Art rolls are 'backwards compatible' with regular 88 note piano rolls, which means, you just have to tape over some of the holes on the right and left side of the tracker bar on a regular 88 note player piano, to play those Duo-Art rolls!
I don't think people are aware what implications this could have for what really could exist 'out there'.
If the natural laws are quite different in many other universes, warp travel, time travel could be possible, or even life itself could be much more common or varied, and it could be easier perhaps, to travel far, in other universes than our own. Energy-based life-forms, even "gods" in the meaning of very powerful beings, which have spread out in the galaxies and taking control, might exist. They might exist here too, however the physical constants of our universe makes it very cumbersome to travel and communicate, and radiation is also a problem, so it seems like we are somewhat alone in our corner of the galaxy. That is, unless this is correct!
Thus - the 'reality' of some of our science fiction stories could be true in other universes, while we live in a "boring" one with few means of transportation and (quick) communication over long distances. Even the brane we reside upon seem to be very stiff, since gravity waves haven't been observed (yet), so no easy wormhole solutions for transportation seem feasible with moderate amounts of energy. Even though other universes probably never can be observed directly, this is exciting stuff, hopefully we will be able to collect at least indirect evidence of other universes, perhaps with some of the experiments done in the big hadron collider.
Uh, no. When people have a better standard of living, they usually postpone making lots of children, because they would need time for attending education first. The time left for making children is then limited, so that less children are produced. And in a rich and prosperous society, (like Norway where I live) with social services and social security and state pensions for the elderly, you don't need to have many children to ensure someone cares for you when you get old. However too many places on earth deems this kind of society as too left-winged, even though like Norway, isn't socialist anymore, at all. So we are still looking into "doomsday" for at least some societies because they never get up to the level of prosperity needed to produce less children, and religion also have a negative impact, especially regarding resistance against the use of prevention.
How could Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 last so much longer then? They are still transmitting after 30+ years, while Ulysses lasted 17 years, and was created later than the Voyager spacecrafts so that the RTG-technology assumingly must have gotten more advanced.
Now, this is odd - we just had the article Windows XP Lives, Thanks to Linux
and now it seems that Linux will be pretty much kept alive on computers amongst ordinary people thanks to Microsoft's aggressive policy towards phasing Windows XP out.
The real reason for this?
New, flash-based computers like the ASUS eee will for a couple of years still have limited resources of disk storage and RAM, and will obviously not work well with Windows Vista. ASUS eee can be delivered with Linux and Windows XP, and if Microsoft phase out XP, people WILL move over to Linux, since ultra portable PCs really are popular on the market today.
99% of the buyers would like to use that PC just to check their mail and browse the web, since the screen is to small for any great PC-games to be played comfortably anyway, and checking mail and browsing the web can be easily done with the ASUS eee with its preinstalled Linux.
Seems like ASUS have done Linux a great favour, since they during the last days of Windows XP, even have managed to sell lots of eee-PCs with Linux, and the word of mouth is spreading - if my neighbour or regular college can browse the net with a Linux PC, so can I!
Here in Norway, it even seems like you only can get the Linux version of the eee. Even my girlfriend has bought one, and it can even be used with internet banks here in Norway.
What happens if the battery's dead, and the charger is in the checked in luggage? Will they stand ready with the correct charger so the laptop can be powered up, or will they demand that you pull out the hard drive if that's possible, or that they confiscate the laptop, if it's not easy to pull out the harddrive? In 99% of the cases, people will have their laptop fully charged, before traveling with a plane, however if you forget to charge the laptop before your flight or long waiting times means you've run out of battery, it might look "suspicious" to the security personel, that you enter the plane with a dead laptop, and then it's time to start getting paranoid about having your laptop fully charged, before you enter the airplane. However a fully charged laptop is potensially in a greater risk of bursting into flames, if the battery's faulty, so the fight against terror is getting pretty silly at this point. Am very curious of what would really happen, if the security personel demands to check out a laptop, which happens to be dead because of an empty battery with no spare charger present.
The german authorities count the "Church of Scientology, as a commercial organisation
Yeah, guess Nina Hagen isn't very happy about that...
People who punish their animals with electric shocks are really sick people, those collars should have been forbidden, and something should be done with people who performs animal cruelty like this.
Actually, if you did murder 'a bunch of people' in Norway, you would most likely get the maximum "lifetime" sentence of 21 years, PLUS indefinite psychiatric care 'behind bars', most probably under much more humane conditions than in prisons in most countries in the world.
Less serious crimes are of course much less seriously punished, often on the too light side, however when I hear about what extreme punishments are carried out, by even our NATO-allied, and how they treat the civil population in say, Iraq and POWs in say, Guanatanamo, I again feel somewhat more relaxed about Norway's more humane approach to punishment and jail, even if some of the sentences are on the light side.
Our system's not perfect and I believe there might be prisoner abuse also in the norwegian systems, but anyway our jails look nothing like the american ones, except perhaps one supermax prison, which has been very controversial, because of the extreme isolation of the prisoners.
Regarding computer related "crimes", Norway is still something like heaven, Jon Lech Johansen did walk, am not so sure he would have walked, if he had been living in (the wrong state) in the USA.
If an albeit clever amateur can build his own radio controlled flying saucers, then I for one, believe they have been tested for a long time by the military. The flying saucers which are based upon the Coanda-effect could actually have been around since the 30's, with a fuel consumption which is 1/3 of a helicoptre's. Depending on the 'flatness' of the dish, you could create saucers which are more suitable for hovering, like the radio controlled GFSUAV or more suitable for high velocity travel, where the dish works more like a wing, like those who people from time to time tell they have been seeing flying extremely quickly over the sky.
What really freaked me out, was that the GFSUAV's odd shape, (which is not quite like the regular, frisbee shaped flying saucers), I have seen in a book about UFO's when I was a child. Some of the unclear (and many years ago not so convincing) photographs, clearly showed flying saucers with a structure on top of it, just like the GFSUAV, but that long ago, I just dismissed those saucers as being unclear shots of hub caps or something.
More people ought to be surprised when they discover the similarities between some of those odd UFO shapes on older pictures, and the GFSUAV with the 'hat' on the top of the dish.
Inside it you could have either a propeller or a jet engine, but what's most fascinating, is that the GFSUAV is electric, driven by state of the art lithium batteries!
>This is mentioned in TFA (second page, heading "SOLID-STATE"). IIRC there are more materials that can do this, collectively they're called metal hydrides.
>Metal hydride tanks are heavy and expensive: Mercedes built a car with a metal hydride fuel tank about 10 years ago, the tank alone cost $100k.
>The temperature needed to release the hydrogen is about 300 deg C.
Which means, you'd be better off by storing the energy in nickel metal hydride batteries, like the Toyota RAV4 EV has, no excessive heat, and several thousand charge cycles avilable depending on how well the computerized charging system protects the batteries from under (reversing) or overcharge. Almost none of the batteries in the Toyota RAV4 EV have had to be changed AFAIK. The Prius charge/discharge its pack just a little, so it will last, probably more than the lifetime of the car.
The price for batteries is still usually high, but not extreme, like the cost of all those hydrogen components.
Batteries are usually made of cheap and recyclable compounds, and yes, by mass production, it is fully feasible to get down the price to much lower than what it is now.
Now even denser storage is possible, with zebra or litium batteries, so that a electric car a little over the average size, can drive as far as a petroleum car on one charge.
The challenge will be to switch from gasoline stations, to efficient charging stations. Quick charging (even super fast) is theoretically no problem, for most battery types.
One solution would be to have huge banks of supercapasitors on the charging stations, so that the wires from the grid don't have to be inconveniently thick (and utterly expencive)
On the other hand, ususally one would only require quick charging when going for a longer trip, since an overnight charge at home, will take care of all the shorter daily trips, that most people do. Which means, there should be less need for quick charging stations, than there is a need for gasoline stations today!
The REAL challenge will be, getting people to understand that this will work better than a "hydrogen powered" future, since producing, storing, transporting etc. hydrogen, is much more difficult and afflicted with much more energy losses than an 'electrical powered' future with electrical wires and batteries transferring and storing the energy.
Hopefully, an increasing part of the electricity, will be produced cleanly, however shouldn't the sun shine, and the wind not blow, the nature will accept that we burn _some_ coal or crunch some atoms, also in the future.
So - will Microsoft provide us with any defence against pointy sticks, then?
This recently came to my mind - wouldn't the thinning of the ozone layer actually make more ultraviolet radiation reaching deep into the earth's atmosphere, thus contributing to heat it up further more?
If I understand this correctly, a normal ozone layer, will make the earth look 'bluer', partly reflecting the UV radiation though it would only be visible with accurately calibrated cameras lacking a UV filter (The 'Skylight filter' on regular photo cameras) It would have been very interesting to know, if this effect is great enough to be observed or measured and therefore could be contributing to the global warming.
It would have been useful, if someone could come up with some charts or bar graphs, which show us how much of the energy in the solar radiation, which is in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. If that amount of energy is considerable, it could very well explain why the polar regions are warmed much more than the rest, since the ozone layer is much thinner there.
Seems like Wikipedia covers EV conversions in this article
Since a lot of the Beetles still run in South-America, an electric conversion kit for it could be a good idea.
The demand for EV conversion kits, even though many of them are not that well designed, is another indicator, that the traditional car (and oil) industry, do not want to fill the people's demand for electric cars, since they obviously will earn less on them, because of the lesser demand for servicing, and the obvious need for uh, no oil.
Oh, even replacing the batteries, and even if they really were expencive, wouldn't make the automobile industry's day, since the battery is (or should be) ONE component you can replace fairly easily, if the car is reasonably well constructed, for a quick replacement of the batteries. (Few are, to this date, however unless you use lead acid batteries, the batteries can last much longer than you would expect, or they really should!)
And who says you would want to buy a new battery from the original manufacturer, if this were priced after the same scheme as ink cartridges? The batteries would be subject to a price competition, and maybe you would stick to cheaper battery technology with a lower range, if your needs for driving were not that big, or maybe you replace electric components or batteries yourself, 'robbing' the automotive industry for even more bucks they'd planned to earn on service?
Therefore also, GM owns the patent on the NiMH battery-patent (they are in a patent dispute with Toyota), and control it, so that cells over something like 10AH cannot be licensed for production (Which, in turn, make them unpractical for homebrew EVs) Guess they somehow 'ask questions', if your little EV-factory suddenly order 10000s of these ones, to connect 10 or 20 by 20 in parallel and series for a hefty EV-battery, or they simply give you a price which simply isn't affordable for your 'project'. NiHMs are very good batteries, but need close monitoring, not to be under or overcharged, so they get damaged, which means, you want battery packs with fewer, larger cells, not many smaller cells, for your EV conversion.
How about other alternatives?
Sturdy wet electrolyte filled NiCd batteries from SAFT are heavily overpriced, though they are as easily made, as ordinary lead acid batteries, and for some 'mysterious reasons', there has been much more trouble with them in our electric cars in Norway, than there probably is with them in airplanes, trains, submarines etc. If you have a lot of money and know what you do, you could use NiCds, but must first be able to get hold of them. (Which might prove difficult in countries outside those who have many EVs which use them, like Norway)
Litium ion batteries are not so much in the hands of the automobile industry, but need very well constructed circuits, to protect them from over or undercharge, plus you need to keep them not too cold during charge, are still expencive to buy (but not to produce) and is still no real option for those who want to convert their electric car 'at home', which means most people in practice are left with ordinary lead acid batteries as their only option, if they are going to do a conversion to electric.
Which means, you will probably not get the best range out of your lead acid electric converted automobile, which together with the less resources those who make electric cars have, compared to the regular automobile industry, makes people falsely believe that electric cars is doomed to be something awkward, golfcart-like, only two seats, and only a short range, novelty item.
The truth is, as many Californians, and some Norwegians do know, that really good electric cars WERE made some years ago, like the Toyota RAV 4 EV, GM EV1, Ford Ranger EV, Peugeot 106 EV, Citroën Saxo EV, Berlingo Partner and not the least - Think City, although it has only two
A little off-topic perhaps, to mention ETP (Estimated Playing Time) of board games, but some similarities to multiplayer PC-games there are.
After having played many board strategy games like Axis & Allies, and usually ended up with 12h+ long games, and same story with Diplomacy,
RISK 2210AD (which has a fixed number of rounds) and even The Settlers from Catan (which is supposed to have a exponential curve towards winning enough points to win),
I sometimes wonder if the EPT printed on the box, or stated by the game vendor, isn't the TOTAL playing time, but EPT PER PLAYER!
It is difficult to state even roughly estimated playing times, since it would heavily depend upon the playing style and the mood of the players.
Guess the same is valid for many multiplayer PC games too.
>Sounds like a win/win/win situtation
Not for the oil industry...
I really wonder why charging of ALL sorts of gadgets which run on one lithium-ion cell isn't automatically done when you anyway connect that thing to the PC to transfer data?
The USB port has 5V and one lithium-ion cell has a maximum of 4.15 volts, (So there's enough voltage difference to properly charge the lithium cell).
A few gadgets already does get charged when they anyway are connected to the PC, why not ALL of them?
I would be happy to save the cost for the regular charger, and find it very practical to plug it into my PC to have it charged, and for those few who doesn't have a PC, or for whom it would not be practical to charge via the PC, a regular charger or a solar charger with a "USB"-plug, would be an obvious accessory.
(I really wonder how much extra money I have paid for all those chargers sitting around unused, from gadgets that broke or went out of use. Worst of all, all these chargers are still in working condition!)
Then we would also have gotten the bonus of a 5V charger plug being standarized, so that any one lithium cell-gadget can use any 5V charger, including any USB port, ending the trouble with the pileup of orphaned chargers.
Also, the regular plug-in of your whatever type of data collecting and/or processing gadget into your PC to get it charged, probably will be god for your (at the moment non-existing?) habits of taking backups of it before you loose it or break it - that is, if you also take regular backups of your hard drive...
End Of Utopic Dream
While fuel cell driven gadgets might not contribute themselves to that much extra CO2, the consequences of everyone switching over to them will. This demands some explanation.
First of all:
I certainly do NOT want gadgets which, like my printer with a chipped ink cartridge, makes me dependent on consumables, instead of cheap electricity from the grid.
The situation is bad enough as it is, with extremely overpriced litium-ion batteries with a non-standard shape, so it might be that most people, irritated by this, will welcome the changeover to fuel cell based gadgets, ignoring the fact that the producers will make the hazzle for those of us who want to refill our own (m)ethanol cartrigdges, as large as possible. Eg. regular Joe will end up throwing away his gadget early, when fuel cartidges for that particular gadget gets rare and/or even more expencive.
Even if a cartridge could fuel a cell phone for two weeks, it means that Average Joe must have a small pile of them, and at some point, they will be sold at fewer places, though maybe not also to a higher price.
And huge parts of the world have no electricity grid or a long distance to the civilisation - for example in the Australian outback, I would rather charge my gadgets with a solar panel, than having to have a load of fuel cells available, though I can see situations where it would be practical to use some, for example shorter vacations where you bring less amounts of luggage.
One way or another, we get cheated, because of all the different battery packages, which hinders us from buying standard cells or standard battery packages (including protection circuitry), so we pay 100USD for a battery that really costs 5USD to make.
The ONLY solution to this mess, is that the industry due to environmental and consumer laws, are forced to use standardized battery solutions, or standarized (m)ethanol, refill solutions (which might be very cheap, then), however I cannot see this coming soon, though the continous replacement of gadgets also hurts the environment and rise the CO2-pollution.
I have recently bought a Canon 350D camera, where the store tried to talk me out of buying a battery hand-grip (containing 6xAA rechargeable 2600mAh cells in place of the 720mAh lithium-ion battery).
The photo store even warned be that the battery capacity would be less with the battery handgrip, than with the "special quality" Canon lithium ion battery, and not surprisingly, I am not allowed by the PC-software, to transfer pictures from the camera to the PC, if I don't use the 100USD Canon lithium battery, instead of my cheap AA rechargeable batteries. Canon WANT me to use the most expencive battery solution (which costs in Europe, eq. to 100USD) instead of my own AA-batteries which cost me a fraction of that, and has tons of capacity, unless I let them sit unused until they self discharge. (A minor inconvenience compared to have "unlimited" battery capacity when taking pictures of a wedding or something important event)
Guess they want only professional photographers who anyway has bough that 3000USD super-duper press zoom lens, to buy the battery hand grip, since they photograph so much, that it would have been a really shame to ask them to use the standard lithium battery with low capacity. Maybe also Canon does this to avoid consumers who don't understand that their NiMH-batteries has a lot of self discharge, to complain so they have to explain for them how to get the most of your NiMH-batteries.
Canon btw. has had a very consumer friendly policy with their printers, where the user has been able to refill ink until recently but now they too chip their ink cartridges to stop refilling.
Anyway, I thrive much more with my battery-handgrip solution with high capacity with cheap, standard cells for my digital camera, than with both the lithium battery, or any solution involving me having to buy some special liquid so I can take my photos. If the lithium battery which has to
It seems on the photos like they recovered their craft with no trouble at all, however wouldn't a such balloon usually land a long way from where it ascended due to jet streams in the atmosphere? They probably tracked the thing well with GPS and could follow it on the ground, however it seems like pure luck that they were able to pick up the craft before someone else found it in a neighbouring state or something?
"And the first question is for you, Karl Marx. The Hammers - the Hammers is the nickname of what English football team?"
>Kind of a long commitment, especially considering that Hawking has ALS and could croak at any time -- the fact that he has been living with a disease that
>kills 95% of its sufferers within 5 years of diagnosis for 45 years vastly increases the chance of him dying at any moment.
A friend of mine, which now is an old man got myasthenia gravis many years ago. This is a muscle weakening disease somewhat similar to ALS which originally was as bad as ALS - you gradually lost muscle control until you died. However, many years ago, they managed to come up with a medicine, which could keep the symptomes mild, and the doctors told you had to take the medication for the rest of your life. But it turned out that my friend eventually has gotten rid of his case of myasthenia gravis now for more than 25 years which probably is much longer than the typical temporary remission of the disease in some few cases, mentioned in the Wikipedia article.
Since Stephen Hawking is alive, (though not so well) so many years after he should have been dead, it tells us that Stehpen Hawking doesn't have a typical case of ALS. When I was a child, we also learned that HIV was an absolute disease, if you first got it, you couldn't get rid of it, and eventually you would develop AIDS and die. Again it turned out, that this was not so absolute either - scientists discovered that some people are immune to the HIV-virus. The more we learn about the nature, the more we see that things we thought were absolutes, really not are that, so I would trust that Stephen Hawking could live for even some more years. One would expect too - that he is given a top notch medical treatment to prevent him getting sick. For example, he is probably vaccinated against the flu, and also is given medication like Tamiflu or antibiotics when the threat of getting sick is enlarged, as lung diseases easily kills people who are extremely paralyzed.
So if you easily get the cough in the winter time, this is not the job for you!