I have thought a bit about this before. Actually, electromagnetic waves travel even slower than the speed of light in silicon because the relative permittivity of about 10 limits the speed to around a third of it.
The conclusions I reached are that CPU design has to take this speed into account and that this is probably one of the reasons why big chips need some kind of staged pipeline system.
You're right, they're talking about the possible dangers of Li-ion batteries. I was only reading the second link of the FAA which talks about the ban of non-recharcheable batteries. Sorry.
I can imagine that LiAlH can be quite dangerous. I've never used it myself but heard of it in a lecture.
We aren't robots. There's a reason why most players with a 800 cpi mouse use a sensitivity lower than what would be required to get pixel-perfect accuracy: They need it to be able to aim accurately enough in a short enough time. With a too high sensitivity, one can't aim efficiently (fast AND accurately), even if the settings technically still allow high accuracy when the player is given enough time.
Now, when playing with a pretty low sensitivity, one needs a fast mouse so he's not totally crippled in movement and can still turn around fast enough. Before there were fast mice available (MS Explorer 3.0 was the first one, AFAIK), the average sensitivity was higher because the drawback of a low one was still big.
Of course, not all players are created equal. When I say that no one profits of 1600 cpi compared to 800, this is from personal observation and there might well be some accuracy specialist somewhere that would like it. I just guess there aren't many of them.
BTW: I'm pretty sure you're able to reach the physical limits of your Diamondback but you have to do a certain experiment as the modern sensors notice when they lose track and don't "trip out" like the old ones but keep outputting the last known speed and direction until they are able to track again. Disable acceleration and use a low sensitivity on the desktop or in a game. Aim at some object (e.g. edge of the screen on desktop, pillar in game) and set the mouse to one side of your mouse pad. Now move it to the other side quickly and move it back slowly. If you didn't surpass the limit, the cursor/crosshair should be at nearly the same position. If you did, it will have traveled further than during the fast movement.
Note that there are other factors limiting aim speed in games than just the mouse: Without DirectInput (DGA input in Linux), the cursor can reach the sides of the screen. Doom 3 managed to limit the speed or stop the crosshair even with DirectInput/DGA when I last tried...
Know that I don't say the Diamondback is a bad mouse or that 1.4 m/s is way too slow. I tried out the Diamondback some time ago and thought it was quite good. I just wasn't able to do fast 180 degrees turns with my sensitivity (25 cm/360 degrees). My plan was to try to get the S2020 (MX510 sensor) working in the Diamondback but then I noticed the delay problem of the side buttons and didn't want to mod a mouse when there's still a chance that I might get a flawless one. I then sold it to someone who really wanted it.
It seems like they increase the resolution with every generation while sadly neglecting the maximum speed.
The MX510 (800 cpi) is able to track up to about 3.4 m/s, the MX300, too (with raised USB polling rate at 400 cpi). The Razer Diamondback (1600 cpi) has a maximum speed of about 1.4 m/s, very probably as much as the MX518 (same or similar sensor, I couldn't measure it, yet). The article talks of about 45 ips (1.14 m/s) in those 2000 cpi mice...
I can't think of any good shooter player who would actually benefit from a resolution higher than 800 cpi but I know there are many who like to move their mouse faster than 1.4 m/s.
Raising the resolution by sacrificing maximum tracking speed is very easy: They can just scale the chip down and/or change the optics. It seems that they don't like to make a chip more complex (MX300, A2020 was the last big upgrade).
This is bad news for the gamers who got used to their MX510's speed and don't find anything else than "Ultra Gamerz 4000 dpi" with a max speed of 1 m/s when they need a replacement in a few years. Maybe someone clever will invest in a few MX510 and make a lot of money.:)
Now this actually raises some interesting questions that (as I understand it) are still mostly unsolved in evolution biology.
What fascinates me the most is that just the DNA isn't enough to encode even simple organisms as it is necessary for the proteins to reach their destinations which only works if several membranes are already in place and working (equipped with the correct proteins).
It's of course very hard to understand how the first cells could emerge and even harder to prove that an idea is actually correct. But there are some experiments that demonstrate that RNA can be the result of high temperature reactions of a simple mix of gases. It is also known that certain RNA molecules can function as (normally quite inefficient) enzymes which could lead to self-replicating RNA.
The chances for N randomly chosen characters out of 80 to form a given sequence of length N is 1/80^N, not 1/N^80.
I don't want to sound cocky and yes, such mistakes can happen. But as I don't like your attitude and, as others pointed out, this explanation doesn't make much sense either for or against evolution, I like to point it out.:)
You name suggests that you're actually interested in biology or maybe even studying it. I wonder whether you believe in creationism or whether you just wanted to start a discussion about the foundation of science while combating the prejudice that biologists don't use math enough.;)
Some posters have already explained that the efficiency claims are definitely wrong. Thanks for that.
I was wondering why such a bad idea could win this competition and came to the conclusion that it has to be the silicon needed for the Peltier elements. This probably sounded familiar to the Intel guys or maybe they actually hope that this project leads to more silicon demand.:)
The constant heat would be one of the main disadvantages of nuclear batteries and it's why I don't think that they're useful for much else besides space probes. To power for example a notebook, the battery would have to be able to deliver about 60 W constantly, regardless of how much power's being used (I think the efficient ones go down to about 10 W when idle so there's a lot of wasted energy, even with the notebook running 24/7.).
Another problem is safety. AKAImBatman and some others really downplay this issue. I know a little bit about radioactivity (school, university) and I still have a lot of respect of it.
Comparing a nuclear battery sized to power a notebook to the tiny bit of Am241 in a smoke detector is totally stupid: I won't calculate the power dissipated by the Am in a detector but it's just enough to ionize a bit of air so I guess it's micro Watts or even less and still I wouldn't want to touch it with bare hands. Now compare this to 80 W worth of radiation... Having such a thing besides me would scare the sh*t out of me.
No idea why neither the post nor the article mentioned it but they surely don't use X-rays.
From what I've read about these machines before, they use the far infrared, which probably goes through most clothes (even near infrared goes through many). No idea what the exact wavelength is.
If they used ionizing radiation, I'd prefer to strip down instead of walking through these scanners and needlessly increasing my radiation dose.
I don't know more about the phenomenon (yet), I just wanted to confirm it and the story you told.
I'm studying nanoscale science (still at the beginning) and we visited the institute where the guy you mentioned is working. He introduced us to the institute and some technical aspects and we were led through the laboratories, which was very interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
I have thought a bit about this before. Actually, electromagnetic waves travel even slower than the speed of light in silicon because the relative permittivity of about 10 limits the speed to around a third of it.
The conclusions I reached are that CPU design has to take this speed into account and that this is probably one of the reasons why big chips need some kind of staged pipeline system.
You're right, they're talking about the possible dangers of Li-ion batteries. I was only reading the second link of the FAA which talks about the ban of non-recharcheable batteries. Sorry.
I can imagine that LiAlH can be quite dangerous. I've never used it myself but heard of it in a lecture.
The batteries they talk about here do contain elemental lithium. See here for example: http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Stories/ 003.2/index.html
No, there's support in FFmpeg for the Sorenson 3 CoDec.
We aren't robots. There's a reason why most players with a 800 cpi mouse use a sensitivity lower than what would be required to get pixel-perfect accuracy: They need it to be able to aim accurately enough in a short enough time. With a too high sensitivity, one can't aim efficiently (fast AND accurately), even if the settings technically still allow high accuracy when the player is given enough time.
Now, when playing with a pretty low sensitivity, one needs a fast mouse so he's not totally crippled in movement and can still turn around fast enough. Before there were fast mice available (MS Explorer 3.0 was the first one, AFAIK), the average sensitivity was higher because the drawback of a low one was still big.
Of course, not all players are created equal. When I say that no one profits of 1600 cpi compared to 800, this is from personal observation and there might well be some accuracy specialist somewhere that would like it. I just guess there aren't many of them.
BTW: I'm pretty sure you're able to reach the physical limits of your Diamondback but you have to do a certain experiment as the modern sensors notice when they lose track and don't "trip out" like the old ones but keep outputting the last known speed and direction until they are able to track again. Disable acceleration and use a low sensitivity on the desktop or in a game. Aim at some object (e.g. edge of the screen on desktop, pillar in game) and set the mouse to one side of your mouse pad. Now move it to the other side quickly and move it back slowly. If you didn't surpass the limit, the cursor/crosshair should be at nearly the same position. If you did, it will have traveled further than during the fast movement.
Note that there are other factors limiting aim speed in games than just the mouse: Without DirectInput (DGA input in Linux), the cursor can reach the sides of the screen. Doom 3 managed to limit the speed or stop the crosshair even with DirectInput/DGA when I last tried...
Know that I don't say the Diamondback is a bad mouse or that 1.4 m/s is way too slow. I tried out the Diamondback some time ago and thought it was quite good. I just wasn't able to do fast 180 degrees turns with my sensitivity (25 cm/360 degrees). My plan was to try to get the S2020 (MX510 sensor) working in the Diamondback but then I noticed the delay problem of the side buttons and didn't want to mod a mouse when there's still a chance that I might get a flawless one. I then sold it to someone who really wanted it.
It seems like they increase the resolution with every generation while sadly neglecting the maximum speed.
:)
The MX510 (800 cpi) is able to track up to about 3.4 m/s, the MX300, too (with raised USB polling rate at 400 cpi). The Razer Diamondback (1600 cpi) has a maximum speed of about 1.4 m/s, very probably as much as the MX518 (same or similar sensor, I couldn't measure it, yet). The article talks of about 45 ips (1.14 m/s) in those 2000 cpi mice...
I can't think of any good shooter player who would actually benefit from a resolution higher than 800 cpi but I know there are many who like to move their mouse faster than 1.4 m/s.
Raising the resolution by sacrificing maximum tracking speed is very easy: They can just scale the chip down and/or change the optics. It seems that they don't like to make a chip more complex (MX300, A2020 was the last big upgrade).
This is bad news for the gamers who got used to their MX510's speed and don't find anything else than "Ultra Gamerz 4000 dpi" with a max speed of 1 m/s when they need a replacement in a few years. Maybe someone clever will invest in a few MX510 and make a lot of money.
So how would you explain how the blood clotting system came to be? Do you believe in an intelligent designer? Would that be a god or an alien?
Now this actually raises some interesting questions that (as I understand it) are still mostly unsolved in evolution biology.
What fascinates me the most is that just the DNA isn't enough to encode even simple organisms as it is necessary for the proteins to reach their destinations which only works if several membranes are already in place and working (equipped with the correct proteins).
It's of course very hard to understand how the first cells could emerge and even harder to prove that an idea is actually correct. But there are some experiments that demonstrate that RNA can be the result of high temperature reactions of a simple mix of gases. It is also known that certain RNA molecules can function as (normally quite inefficient) enzymes which could lead to self-replicating RNA.
The chances for N randomly chosen characters out of 80 to form a given sequence of length N is 1/80^N, not 1/N^80.
:)
;)
I don't want to sound cocky and yes, such mistakes can happen. But as I don't like your attitude and, as others pointed out, this explanation doesn't make much sense either for or against evolution, I like to point it out.
You name suggests that you're actually interested in biology or maybe even studying it. I wonder whether you believe in creationism or whether you just wanted to start a discussion about the foundation of science while combating the prejudice that biologists don't use math enough.
Some posters have already explained that the efficiency claims are definitely wrong. Thanks for that.
:)
I was wondering why such a bad idea could win this competition and came to the conclusion that it has to be the silicon needed for the Peltier elements. This probably sounded familiar to the Intel guys or maybe they actually hope that this project leads to more silicon demand.
I second that.
The constant heat would be one of the main disadvantages of nuclear batteries and it's why I don't think that they're useful for much else besides space probes. To power for example a notebook, the battery would have to be able to deliver about 60 W constantly, regardless of how much power's being used (I think the efficient ones go down to about 10 W when idle so there's a lot of wasted energy, even with the notebook running 24/7.).
Another problem is safety. AKAImBatman and some others really downplay this issue. I know a little bit about radioactivity (school, university) and I still have a lot of respect of it.
Comparing a nuclear battery sized to power a notebook to the tiny bit of Am241 in a smoke detector is totally stupid: I won't calculate the power dissipated by the Am in a detector but it's just enough to ionize a bit of air so I guess it's micro Watts or even less and still I wouldn't want to touch it with bare hands. Now compare this to 80 W worth of radiation... Having such a thing besides me would scare the sh*t out of me.
No idea why neither the post nor the article mentioned it but they surely don't use X-rays.
From what I've read about these machines before, they use the far infrared, which probably goes through most clothes (even near infrared goes through many). No idea what the exact wavelength is.
If they used ionizing radiation, I'd prefer to strip down instead of walking through these scanners and needlessly increasing my radiation dose.
I don't know more about the phenomenon (yet), I just wanted to confirm it and the story you told.
I'm studying nanoscale science (still at the beginning) and we visited the institute where the guy you mentioned is working. He introduced us to the institute and some technical aspects and we were led through the laboratories, which was very interesting.
Of course he told us the story about the misunderstanding, too. Here's the guy: http://www-isis.u-strasbg.fr/nano/ Here are several publications about the phenomenon and other topics: http://www-isis.u-strasbg.fr/nano/pub.html