If it could reflect light, it would not be "dark" - we could see the light reflected off it, just the same way we see normal matter. If it could absorb light, it would heat up and would likely emit blackbody radiation, and thus would not be dark.
As the previous poster pointed out, it is exactly because it does not affect light (except by gravity) that it is "dark".
I'm not going to appologize for keeping an open mind and waiting for all available evidence. I'm pretty sure I did not see a person with an open mind. I saw a person throwing insults left and right, and stubbornly sticking to his preconceived notions in the face of mounting evidence. That's not what an "open mind" means.
Which is more likely? A bunch of fucktarded engineers on slashdot figure out a major fraud by reading two dubious sources -OR- the judges from Endgadget, IDEO & The Designers Accord, and Inhabitat acutally tested the thing, saw it working and gave it the second prize at the Greener Gadgets Design Competition. Considering that the latter option is known to be false - this was a competition for designs, and the lamp was never built and showed to any judges - I'd say the former seems a lot more likely.
Now, here's one for you: Which is more likely? Every single high school physics class on the planet is teaching things which are blatantly wrong, and nobody noticed that we have no clue how gravity works and our formulas are off by a factor of 1000 or more, or that this design on paper was not very thoroughly scrutinized before being awarded the prize?
The article makes very specific claims. 50 pounds, 600-800 lumens, 4 hours, lamp about 1-2 meters high. That's all you need to work out the maths. There is nothing sketchy whatsoever.
There are many, many cases where people won't listen. If you disagree with some fundamental decisions of a project, they are not likely to change their mind just because you wrote a patch. Gimp has many such fundamental problems, such as the choices made in interface design. It's not a case where all they need is some help developing, it's definite choices they have made which conflict with what some people want.
The "know-it-alls" are actually doing very basic and very sound science. They are entirely correct that this cannot possibly work. You are in effect ignoring science by dismissing this, and relying only on blind faith.
Well then you are mistaken about how the open source world works. If you want something fixed you have several choices: fix it yourself, pay someone else to fix it... Unless of course your changes don't appeal to those who are running the project (which could be very likely in the case of the Gimp - many of its problems seem quite political), in which case you have to fork it, which means you now have a huge codebase to maintain by yourself.
Hmm, maybe this is the mistake the designer did in his calculations. It's easy enough to forget that mass is actually measured in kilograms and not grams, if you haven't done any physics in a while. His results are about a factor of 1000 off, too.
Go back to physics 101. Take your own advice. Your only available energy is m*g*h. Doesn't matter how many screws, slopes or loops you add. Those will only lead to losses in energy. You were told this numerous times already.
It's not just my opinion. It's the opinion of pretty much any graphics designer professional who has tried the Gimp. It's a simple fact that it is years or decades away from obsoleting Photoshop.
150 and 200 lumens per hour There is no such thing as "lumens per hour". Lumens is already a unit of energy flow per time. That is what the grandparent poster was trying to tell you, and you did not understand.
I think my laptop would require a slightly larger weight to pull this off. Not just your laptop. This light itself would require quite a bit larger a weight to be able to do what it claims. There simply isn't all that much potential energy in a weight that will fit inside a lamp like that.
Slashdot Mirror
If it could reflect light, it would not be "dark" - we could see the light reflected off it, just the same way we see normal matter. If it could absorb light, it would heat up and would likely emit blackbody radiation, and thus would not be dark.
As the previous poster pointed out, it is exactly because it does not affect light (except by gravity) that it is "dark".
So to you, science is just opinions? If you believe hard enough, you can do ANYTHING, no matter what the laws of physics say?
"Nuances"? That's a funny way to describe something that is entirely random.
Now, here's one for you: Which is more likely? Every single high school physics class on the planet is teaching things which are blatantly wrong, and nobody noticed that we have no clue how gravity works and our formulas are off by a factor of 1000 or more, or that this design on paper was not very thoroughly scrutinized before being awarded the prize?
The article makes very specific claims. 50 pounds, 600-800 lumens, 4 hours, lamp about 1-2 meters high. That's all you need to work out the maths. There is nothing sketchy whatsoever.
And it's essentially a fork. Which was my point.
There are many, many cases where people won't listen. If you disagree with some fundamental decisions of a project, they are not likely to change their mind just because you wrote a patch. Gimp has many such fundamental problems, such as the choices made in interface design. It's not a case where all they need is some help developing, it's definite choices they have made which conflict with what some people want.
The "know-it-alls" are actually doing very basic and very sound science. They are entirely correct that this cannot possibly work. You are in effect ignoring science by dismissing this, and relying only on blind faith.
I'd imagine that libraries as widely deployed as zlib and libjpeg would be quite vary of using multiple licenses for different code paths, though.
zlib and libjpeg use much more permissive licenses than the Apache License, and thus are still excluded from using this code.
Hmm, maybe this is the mistake the designer did in his calculations. It's easy enough to forget that mass is actually measured in kilograms and not grams, if you haven't done any physics in a while. His results are about a factor of 1000 off, too.
It's not just my opinion. It's the opinion of pretty much any graphics designer professional who has tried the Gimp. It's a simple fact that it is years or decades away from obsoleting Photoshop.
Uh, no, I'm pretty sure it works nowhere near that well.
Looking at Gimp and Photoshop, that sure hasn't worked out very well yet.
It does not matter. The only thing the gears can do is waste a little bit extra energy.
That's pretty much it. You can jiggle the numbers around a little bit, but it's still orders of magnitude off.
Do the maths. It would require something on the order of tons to work.
Exactly. Far too little. We're talking tons here.
It would be pretty awesome, if it was possible.
The maths just don't check out, however. There is no way to produce that much light for four hours with anything less than a ton or so of weight.