Another idea I have tossed around in my head would be to build the passport such that it needs to be opened flat in order for the RFID to activate. That way, one would need to have physical access to the passport (like a customs agent would) in order to read get the RFID chip to respond. Otherwise, when the passport is closed up in your jacket or suitcase, it wouldn't be readable.
How to build a passport that requires such physical access? I haven't work out all of the details, because I am not an expert on RFID (or antenna design). However, it would be based on the fact that, when the passport is closed, the front and rear covers are facing each other, whereas when the passport is opened flat they aren't. Aligned and anti-aligned. The two physical states are separated by 180 degrees of rotation, something that a clever designer would be able to take advantage of, and would be impossible to spoof unless you had the passport in hand.
One thought that comes to mind would be to have the pickup antenna (from which the RFID tag gets its power) span across front and rear covers, across the fold, so that when the cover is closed, the antenna is essentially folded in half. Consider a simple antenna made up of a loop of wire. The strength of the signal it picks up depends, in part, on the amount of flux passing through that loop. Now fold the loop in half so that you have two half-circles of wire - the effectiveness of the antenna is greatly reduced, theoretically to zero.
Unfortunately, I don't think that this is necessarily practical, because repeatedly folding your antenna (over the course of 10 years) will eventually cause it to break. But, it's a start. It wouldn't be effective against all attacks, but would significantly reduce the possibility of casual skimming in an airport.
I think you are under the false assumption that all the mainstream OS's out there (Windows, OS X, and *nix) are all equally flawed with regards to security, and it's just that whoever happens to be on top has all their flaws exposed to the world. Such a position assumes that, just by creating a polished and fully-featured OS, it is inherently unstable or insecure.
I for one am sick of this argument, because it simply isn't true. It IS possible for the primary OS publisher out there - be it Microsoft or someone else - to release a secure OS for the masses. While being top dog does expose you to the most flak, it doesn't a priori prevent you from doing a good job in the first place.
The article goes on and on talking about how employers are more regularly checking social networking sites, and posters need to be aware of that, blah, blah, blah. We here at/., and an increasingly large number of people on the internet, understand this. Nothing to see here, move along.
What intrigues me more, and what no doubt interests the/. crowd more, is that the interviewer used the Patriot Act to circumvent the privacy controls of Facebook.com. The article mentions it in the context of the applicant using the privacy controls, but then doesn't bother to examine this troubling issue. I think we would all like to know a bit more about the justification the interviewer may have had to circumvent the privacy controls, and the methods used to do so. Which agency was this? They called it a "state agency" but that could mean just about any level of government. What was the position the person was applying for? Did it need a security clearance? Did the employer really need to see behind the curtain to hire the person, or was it just abuse of power? Was there some waiver signed that may, in the fine print, have given permission for the circumvention?
One of the advantages of a system like this is that it can be carbon neutral. The carbon in the methane comes from the carbon in the manure, which comes from the carbon in whatever plant matter the cow was eating. That carbon was taken from the atmosphere by the plants. So, taken as a cycle, the carbon dioxide released during methane combustion is offset by the carbon dioxide uptake of the plants that contributed to the manure.
This is in start contrast to the carbon dioxide emissions from fossile fuels, which release sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels is leading to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (over pre-industrial levels) within our lifetimes.
One of the key things in the iPod's early (and sustained) success has been its small form factor. Compare the size of the iPod to the size of a PSP or nintendo DS or a wireless PDA/smartphone (just visualize them in your head, I'm not comparing them as devices).
Now consider a device that combines most of the functions of these, as the article suggests: music player, video/picture playback, wireless internet capability, game-playing capability, all with a crisp color screen and XX hours battery life.
Does Microsoft have the ability to deliver all of these functions into a form factor that will have mass appeal, at a price that will allow it to compete with the iPod? I believe not. In fact, given the current state of the art, I think that we are still several years from the kind of miniaturization and manufacturing that anyone would need to be able to pull that off. I don't think that Microsoft will be the company to do it. It may not be Apple, either.
I've been waiting for the day when the iPod will have WiFi capabilities that allow it to beam music to an Airport Express module via AirTunes, and then on to the stereo. The iPod then becomes not just the source of the music, but a wireless remote control for it as well. I believe that such things exist - add ons for the iPod Dock, etc. - but I don't think they use WiFi (and so have reduced range or are just line-of-sight), nor can they display the iPod menus to you as you navigate the music collection.
Imagine hosting a party, walking from room to room, shmoozing, with your iPod in your pocket. You want to change the music playing throughout the house, you just pull it out and flick through the menus as you would if you alone were listening to it with headphones. A rare event, perhaps, but it's a gateway to very impressive (and useful) functionality.
And, as the summary stated, using WiFi would free the music player (iPod or otherwise) from transferring music and data files through cables. Of course, it would be a lot faster to transfer using cables (compare the transfer speed of Firewire of USB 2.0 to 802.11b/g). A more advanced functionality would allow you to browse and download from iTMS without a computer entirely.
I don't doubt that Apple has been working on this. Who knows, it might be a feature of the 6G iPod (whenever that comes out). But, since they haven't released it yet, there are obviously still formidable obstacles (engineering and economic) that keep it from primetime.
Personally, I'm surprised that Apple hasn't at least developed and released an add-on module for the iPod that provides all this WiFi capability (Airtunes, wireless synching, etc.) and plugs into the Dock Connector. Probably too much of a niche product for now.
Are you kidding? You can see the curvature of the earth by the time they separate (T+3 min). You can still see the curvature as they tumble back to earth, even sections of continents, weather patterns, etc. The Shuttle and SRBs are definitely very high up when they separate. As other people have already pointed out, the SRBs don't go with the shuttle all the way into orbit, just give the orbiter a boost through most of the atmosphere.
Dude, don't knock it. Normally, you wouldn't see the protruding metal stub, which is just an attachment point, but rather the cosmetic (and hopefully functional) prosthetic. Hopefully, by having such a secure attachment point, future prosthetics can do away with the big plastic cup/socket and straps that get used today, which would make them less obtrusive and function more like replacement limbs.
Learning is doing mistakes; people who never do mistakes are just good at shifting blame.
That may be so, but all of my alaska friends (about a dozen) would tell me that this man hasn't learned a thing in all the mistakes he's made. He's just as arrogant, self-serving, an opportunistic today as the day he arrived in D.C. He's been in the Senate since 1968! The person in that transcipt did not come across as an elder statesman, thoughtful with the accumulated wisdom of his years - he came across as an ignorant putz. So, in that sense, I agree with the grandparent-post: please, Alaska, don't vote this guy back again.
The problem is, he is very good for Alaska, an extremely effective representative for them.
I don't deny that VentureStar had a number of other problems going against it, some technological, many beaurocractic. But, I think one of the real problems that killed VentureStar and the DC-X was the simple fact that attempting single-stage-to-orbit is really ambitious. We've done very well in space flight by realizing that we don't need to carry everything up into orbit and back. That is the primary reason why rockets have stages, why there was a separate command and lunar module during Apollo, and why the shuttle uses booster rockets. By dropping stages along the way (reusable or otherwise), we reduce the amount of energy we need to reach orbit. Compared to a conventional rocket, an SSTO craft has a smaller percentage of its launch weight as payload.
I think the approach used by Scaled Composites for SpaceShipOne is right on the money - use a heavy lift aircraft to bring the spacecraft up to launch altitude. Doing so has several advantages: an aircraft tends to be simpler to develop and maintain, it can use jet fuel and breath atmosphere rather than hauling a more exotic fuel with an oxidizer, and the several miles of altitude that the spacecraft gets lifted to are the hardest ones of a space launch. Although the SS1 concept hasn't reached orbit, one could scale up their scenario and see that they'd have a significantly higher percentage of their launch weight as payload.
If creating a tiered internet:
1. does not worsen my connection *at all*
2. does not cost me *any* more money (assuming I am not benefiting from it), either directly or indirectly
3. is *entirely* paid for by people or companies that can benefit from it
why should I care?
Perhaps I can provide a reason why you should care about the debate, and why the pro-net-neutrality folks get up in arms over this.
If boils down, essentially, to the "If" you started off with. That is one freaking big "If."
1) It is possible that your connection, which I interpret as the speed at which content comes from the ISP's infrastructure to your house, will not change. You sign up for the connection, essentially the last mile's worth, pay your monthly fee, and let the bits fly. However, if content is being throttled within the ISP's infrastructure, upstream of your connection, then it would appear almost the same as if the ISP were slowing down your connection. You are only paying to use a part of the whole connection between your computer and, say, video.google.com. Even if that part remains a pristine highway, what good is it if there's a traffic jam at the tollbooth? Besides, when was the last time you actually got the advertised speed from your ISP, or even close to it? Perhaps you view it as ISPs only charging higher fees for faster connections, but I also see it as the ISPs having license to throttle other connections down. Nothing I have seen or heard in this debate ensures that it won't cut both ways.
2/3) The companies that would benefit from preferrential connections will inevitably pass that cost to the people that use their service. Do you think that you will not be one of those people? Someone would have to disregard Economics 101 to think that the consumer isn't going to see some additional expense from a tiered internet. If a content provider is paying more to have content delivered, it'll impact the way they do business. Perhaps they'll cover the extra cost through advertisements, maybe they'll go to a subscription model, maybe the existing subscriptions will become more expensive, maybe they'll have to produce lower quality content to reduce costs. They will have to do something to pay for the higher costs of doing business. In the case of a VoIP provider, the subsciption costs can only go up if the provider has to pay more for a preferred connection. The same is true of an electric utility company - if it costs more for them to transmit electricity, they will eventually raise subsciber fees to cover it.
In short, if we assume your three premises are correct, one could come to your conclusion that the consumer shouldn't care. However, I haven't seen good arguments that your three premises would bear out in a tiered-internet, so I reach a different conclusion - I care about how this plays out.
What our time with the 5400.3 ended up showing us was that the 2.5" was not as fast as a desktop drive.... It is important to note that the type of system for which one would choose a 2.5" SATA drive is not a workstation but rather a low power, small form factor, embedded processor, or silent computer....From what we observed, a 2.5" drive like the 5400.3 would be great for use in a silent system, home theater PC, PVR, or even....
They spent all this time putting together the test rig, test these two not-really-comparable drives side-by-side, and then come to the "duh" conclusion. They framed the matchup as a way to show that a laptop drive in a desktop would be worthwhile in terms of efficiency and noise.
And yet they didn't bother to test the power consumption or the emitted noise! The closest they came to it was to compare the mfg's specs for power consumption and emitted noise. But that was buried in the text at the bottom of page 3, and one must always take those numbers with a grain of salt. They compared specs of the 2.5" drive against a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, which was not a drive they did any of their subsequent performance testing on.
I really have to give Nintendo a lot of credit for going out on a limb and trying something new. When you think about it, game controllers haven't changed much in the last 20 years. You have a controller with a joystick or direction pad and a couple of buttons. Making the joystick analog instead of directional is an evolutionary change, as is having more and more buttons. The rest is just ergonomics - making the controller comfortable and sleek rather than a thumb-killer. Folks have been able to dress up controllers to look really cool, but they are essentially unchanged from the days of Atari and the NES.
This, on the other hand, is like a whole 'nother branch on the evolutionary tree. I hope that it gains some real traction and gets game developers thinking in unconventional ways. The samples from E3 indicate that they have already begun to do so. And, if imitation is the best form of flattery, it appears that sony is paying attention, too.
Reporters Without Borders tested Chinese search engines by using the following "subversive" key words: "6-4" (4 June, date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), "Falungong", "Tibet Independence", "Democracy", "Human rights" and "press freedom". The first ten results displayed by each search engine were analysed and then divided into "authorized" and "unauthorized" sources of information.
I am not a statistician, but that seems like kind of a small sample set for such a sweeping statement. Each search engine was judged based on just 60 reported websites (6 terms, 10 results apiece). I'd be interested to see what one would find on, say, the fifth page of results. The quality and relevance of the search returns on page five would decrease probably, but some oddball stuff can get through that way.
I do give them serious credit for even reporting the methodology - a lot of places that post stats (aside from tech reviewers) never post how they got those results, or under what conditions.
Since these ducted fan's aren't really jet engines, and certainly aren't what I had in mind when I saw the term "jet engine" in the headline (think very large and noisy!), here's a proposal for using a real, full-sized, jet engine for cooling your servers:
Take one jet engine,
Add stages to capture the thrust and transform it into more torque,
Connect output shaft to massive freakin' compressor turbine,
Use turbine to compress gaseous coolant back to a liquid,
Attach big large radiator/heat exchanger/water cooling tower
Viola! you now have many tonnes of refrigeration capacity, good for blowing cold air through your equipment room, or circulating liquid coolant directly to the chips.
The best part is, you get to have a jet engine tacked on to your server farm.
Does this mean the music industry will stop shitting on consumers? Will they lower prices, publish less crap and more good music, eliminate draconian DRM, reinstate fair use, and stop whining all the time?
The New York times just had an article describing that same phenomenon today: bloggers and MySpace users that post stuff that, amazingly enough, gets seen by their potential employers and loses them the job interview.
The real gotcha is that the charge power is not anywhere close to constant like the first 80% of a charge to a conventional battery. Within the first 20% of the charge cycle you'll have pushed 2/3 of the total power that cap is going to draw if it's readily available. With that in mind they'll probably have a built in cut-off similar to those used in Li-Ion batteries that prevents the cap from discharging below a certain point. which would certainly limit the available power but lessen the demands during charging.
It is possible to charge a capacitor at constant power. As a matter of fact, this is usually what is done with big capacitor banks. A typical capacitor, found on a circuit board, is usually placed across a constant voltage (there are lots of other uses, but we'll skip them for now). If one charges up a (big) capacitor bank from a voltage source, the inrush current is huge (enough to weld the contacts together), and usually causes something to break. Rather than just attach a capacitor across a voltage source and let fly, big capacitor banks are charged up with a controlled current source.
Generally, the energy stored in a capacitor is 1/2 * C * V^2, where C is the capacitance (duh), and V is the voltage across the capacitor. Going back to a capacitor's element law, I = C * dV/dt, where I is capacitor current, we can rewrite the energy equation as:
E = 1/(2*C) * I^2 * t^2
This means that, for a constant current charging of a capacitor, the energy in the cap will increase with the square of time. That's tricky, because it also means that the power required during chargeup increases linearly with time. On the other hand, if I is controlled so that it is not constant, but a function of time, we can make the energy increase linearly. If we let I(t) = const/sqrt(t), then the capacitor energy will be:
E(t) = 1/(2*C) (const/sqrt(t))^2 * t^2
or
E(t) = const^2 / (2*c) * t
Differentiate with respect to time, and we get the power it takes to charge the capacitor:
P(t) = const^2 / (2*C)
Now, obviously, we run into a problem at t=0 (1/sqrt(zero) = BAD). Well, since we've designed some intelligence into how we regulate the current going into the capacitor bank, let's add just a touch more: let I(t) = const for the first few seconds, and then const/sqrt(t) until the bank is fully charged. In that case, the power will ramp up linearly from zero to const^2/(2*C) over the first few seconds, and then remain constant from there on out.
My apologies to the comment I was responding to: you had said 5-10 minutes, and I read that as 5-10 seconds. I guess the hype of the article had gotten to me. So, that's a factor of 60 lower powre yuo'd need to charge your car. It's probably still a bit high to have sitting in your garage - or even at a filling station.
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Another idea I have tossed around in my head would be to build the passport such that it needs to be opened flat in order for the RFID to activate. That way, one would need to have physical access to the passport (like a customs agent would) in order to read get the RFID chip to respond. Otherwise, when the passport is closed up in your jacket or suitcase, it wouldn't be readable.
How to build a passport that requires such physical access? I haven't work out all of the details, because I am not an expert on RFID (or antenna design). However, it would be based on the fact that, when the passport is closed, the front and rear covers are facing each other, whereas when the passport is opened flat they aren't. Aligned and anti-aligned. The two physical states are separated by 180 degrees of rotation, something that a clever designer would be able to take advantage of, and would be impossible to spoof unless you had the passport in hand.
One thought that comes to mind would be to have the pickup antenna (from which the RFID tag gets its power) span across front and rear covers, across the fold, so that when the cover is closed, the antenna is essentially folded in half. Consider a simple antenna made up of a loop of wire. The strength of the signal it picks up depends, in part, on the amount of flux passing through that loop. Now fold the loop in half so that you have two half-circles of wire - the effectiveness of the antenna is greatly reduced, theoretically to zero.
Unfortunately, I don't think that this is necessarily practical, because repeatedly folding your antenna (over the course of 10 years) will eventually cause it to break. But, it's a start. It wouldn't be effective against all attacks, but would significantly reduce the possibility of casual skimming in an airport.
I think you are under the false assumption that all the mainstream OS's out there (Windows, OS X, and *nix) are all equally flawed with regards to security, and it's just that whoever happens to be on top has all their flaws exposed to the world. Such a position assumes that, just by creating a polished and fully-featured OS, it is inherently unstable or insecure.
I for one am sick of this argument, because it simply isn't true. It IS possible for the primary OS publisher out there - be it Microsoft or someone else - to release a secure OS for the masses. While being top dog does expose you to the most flak, it doesn't a priori prevent you from doing a good job in the first place.
The article goes on and on talking about how employers are more regularly checking social networking sites, and posters need to be aware of that, blah, blah, blah. We here at /., and an increasingly large number of people on the internet, understand this. Nothing to see here, move along.
/. crowd more, is that the interviewer used the Patriot Act to circumvent the privacy controls of Facebook.com. The article mentions it in the context of the applicant using the privacy controls, but then doesn't bother to examine this troubling issue. I think we would all like to know a bit more about the justification the interviewer may have had to circumvent the privacy controls, and the methods used to do so. Which agency was this? They called it a "state agency" but that could mean just about any level of government. What was the position the person was applying for? Did it need a security clearance? Did the employer really need to see behind the curtain to hire the person, or was it just abuse of power? Was there some waiver signed that may, in the fine print, have given permission for the circumvention?
What intrigues me more, and what no doubt interests the
One of the advantages of a system like this is that it can be carbon neutral. The carbon in the methane comes from the carbon in the manure, which comes from the carbon in whatever plant matter the cow was eating. That carbon was taken from the atmosphere by the plants. So, taken as a cycle, the carbon dioxide released during methane combustion is offset by the carbon dioxide uptake of the plants that contributed to the manure.
This is in start contrast to the carbon dioxide emissions from fossile fuels, which release sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels is leading to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (over pre-industrial levels) within our lifetimes.
One of the key things in the iPod's early (and sustained) success has been its small form factor. Compare the size of the iPod to the size of a PSP or nintendo DS or a wireless PDA/smartphone (just visualize them in your head, I'm not comparing them as devices).
Now consider a device that combines most of the functions of these, as the article suggests: music player, video/picture playback, wireless internet capability, game-playing capability, all with a crisp color screen and XX hours battery life.
Does Microsoft have the ability to deliver all of these functions into a form factor that will have mass appeal, at a price that will allow it to compete with the iPod? I believe not. In fact, given the current state of the art, I think that we are still several years from the kind of miniaturization and manufacturing that anyone would need to be able to pull that off. I don't think that Microsoft will be the company to do it. It may not be Apple, either.
Until it's able to split the atom, I'd say the feature list is incomplete.
I've been waiting for the day when the iPod will have WiFi capabilities that allow it to beam music to an Airport Express module via AirTunes, and then on to the stereo. The iPod then becomes not just the source of the music, but a wireless remote control for it as well. I believe that such things exist - add ons for the iPod Dock, etc. - but I don't think they use WiFi (and so have reduced range or are just line-of-sight), nor can they display the iPod menus to you as you navigate the music collection.
Imagine hosting a party, walking from room to room, shmoozing, with your iPod in your pocket. You want to change the music playing throughout the house, you just pull it out and flick through the menus as you would if you alone were listening to it with headphones. A rare event, perhaps, but it's a gateway to very impressive (and useful) functionality.
And, as the summary stated, using WiFi would free the music player (iPod or otherwise) from transferring music and data files through cables. Of course, it would be a lot faster to transfer using cables (compare the transfer speed of Firewire of USB 2.0 to 802.11b/g). A more advanced functionality would allow you to browse and download from iTMS without a computer entirely.
I don't doubt that Apple has been working on this. Who knows, it might be a feature of the 6G iPod (whenever that comes out). But, since they haven't released it yet, there are obviously still formidable obstacles (engineering and economic) that keep it from primetime.
Personally, I'm surprised that Apple hasn't at least developed and released an add-on module for the iPod that provides all this WiFi capability (Airtunes, wireless synching, etc.) and plugs into the Dock Connector. Probably too much of a niche product for now.
Are you kidding? You can see the curvature of the earth by the time they separate (T+3 min). You can still see the curvature as they tumble back to earth, even sections of continents, weather patterns, etc. The Shuttle and SRBs are definitely very high up when they separate. As other people have already pointed out, the SRBs don't go with the shuttle all the way into orbit, just give the orbiter a boost through most of the atmosphere.
Dude, don't knock it. Normally, you wouldn't see the protruding metal stub, which is just an attachment point, but rather the cosmetic (and hopefully functional) prosthetic. Hopefully, by having such a secure attachment point, future prosthetics can do away with the big plastic cup/socket and straps that get used today, which would make them less obtrusive and function more like replacement limbs.
If you were an amputee, I doubt you'd mind.
Learning is doing mistakes; people who never do mistakes are just good at shifting blame.
That may be so, but all of my alaska friends (about a dozen) would tell me that this man hasn't learned a thing in all the mistakes he's made. He's just as arrogant, self-serving, an opportunistic today as the day he arrived in D.C. He's been in the Senate since 1968! The person in that transcipt did not come across as an elder statesman, thoughtful with the accumulated wisdom of his years - he came across as an ignorant putz. So, in that sense, I agree with the grandparent-post: please, Alaska, don't vote this guy back again.
The problem is, he is very good for Alaska, an extremely effective representative for them.
The author must be from Massachusettes, possibly the Cape?
Lucas: I love the Power Glove - it's so bad. [with a competely serious look]
Corey: Yeah, well, uh, just keep your Power Gloves off her, pal, huh?
(no, I'm not such a geek I could quote that off the top of me head, I had help from the geeks at imdb).
I don't deny that VentureStar had a number of other problems going against it, some technological, many beaurocractic. But, I think one of the real problems that killed VentureStar and the DC-X was the simple fact that attempting single-stage-to-orbit is really ambitious. We've done very well in space flight by realizing that we don't need to carry everything up into orbit and back. That is the primary reason why rockets have stages, why there was a separate command and lunar module during Apollo, and why the shuttle uses booster rockets. By dropping stages along the way (reusable or otherwise), we reduce the amount of energy we need to reach orbit. Compared to a conventional rocket, an SSTO craft has a smaller percentage of its launch weight as payload.
I think the approach used by Scaled Composites for SpaceShipOne is right on the money - use a heavy lift aircraft to bring the spacecraft up to launch altitude. Doing so has several advantages: an aircraft tends to be simpler to develop and maintain, it can use jet fuel and breath atmosphere rather than hauling a more exotic fuel with an oxidizer, and the several miles of altitude that the spacecraft gets lifted to are the hardest ones of a space launch. Although the SS1 concept hasn't reached orbit, one could scale up their scenario and see that they'd have a significantly higher percentage of their launch weight as payload.
Stalemate my ass! There can be only one! On the other hand, none of those films have been released in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray yet.
If boils down, essentially, to the "If" you started off with. That is one freaking big "If."
1) It is possible that your connection, which I interpret as the speed at which content comes from the ISP's infrastructure to your house, will not change. You sign up for the connection, essentially the last mile's worth, pay your monthly fee, and let the bits fly. However, if content is being throttled within the ISP's infrastructure, upstream of your connection, then it would appear almost the same as if the ISP were slowing down your connection. You are only paying to use a part of the whole connection between your computer and, say, video.google.com. Even if that part remains a pristine highway, what good is it if there's a traffic jam at the tollbooth? Besides, when was the last time you actually got the advertised speed from your ISP, or even close to it? Perhaps you view it as ISPs only charging higher fees for faster connections, but I also see it as the ISPs having license to throttle other connections down. Nothing I have seen or heard in this debate ensures that it won't cut both ways.
2/3) The companies that would benefit from preferrential connections will inevitably pass that cost to the people that use their service. Do you think that you will not be one of those people? Someone would have to disregard Economics 101 to think that the consumer isn't going to see some additional expense from a tiered internet. If a content provider is paying more to have content delivered, it'll impact the way they do business. Perhaps they'll cover the extra cost through advertisements, maybe they'll go to a subscription model, maybe the existing subscriptions will become more expensive, maybe they'll have to produce lower quality content to reduce costs. They will have to do something to pay for the higher costs of doing business. In the case of a VoIP provider, the subsciption costs can only go up if the provider has to pay more for a preferred connection. The same is true of an electric utility company - if it costs more for them to transmit electricity, they will eventually raise subsciber fees to cover it.
In short, if we assume your three premises are correct, one could come to your conclusion that the consumer shouldn't care. However, I haven't seen good arguments that your three premises would bear out in a tiered-internet, so I reach a different conclusion - I care about how this plays out.
They spent all this time putting together the test rig, test these two not-really-comparable drives side-by-side, and then come to the "duh" conclusion. They framed the matchup as a way to show that a laptop drive in a desktop would be worthwhile in terms of efficiency and noise.
And yet they didn't bother to test the power consumption or the emitted noise! The closest they came to it was to compare the mfg's specs for power consumption and emitted noise. But that was buried in the text at the bottom of page 3, and one must always take those numbers with a grain of salt. They compared specs of the 2.5" drive against a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, which was not a drive they did any of their subsequent performance testing on.
Sloppy. I'd say they missed their own point.
I really have to give Nintendo a lot of credit for going out on a limb and trying something new. When you think about it, game controllers haven't changed much in the last 20 years. You have a controller with a joystick or direction pad and a couple of buttons. Making the joystick analog instead of directional is an evolutionary change, as is having more and more buttons. The rest is just ergonomics - making the controller comfortable and sleek rather than a thumb-killer. Folks have been able to dress up controllers to look really cool, but they are essentially unchanged from the days of Atari and the NES.
This, on the other hand, is like a whole 'nother branch on the evolutionary tree. I hope that it gains some real traction and gets game developers thinking in unconventional ways. The samples from E3 indicate that they have already begun to do so. And, if imitation is the best form of flattery, it appears that sony is paying attention, too.
I am not a statistician, but that seems like kind of a small sample set for such a sweeping statement. Each search engine was judged based on just 60 reported websites (6 terms, 10 results apiece). I'd be interested to see what one would find on, say, the fifth page of results. The quality and relevance of the search returns on page five would decrease probably, but some oddball stuff can get through that way.
I do give them serious credit for even reporting the methodology - a lot of places that post stats (aside from tech reviewers) never post how they got those results, or under what conditions.
Since these ducted fan's aren't really jet engines, and certainly aren't what I had in mind when I saw the term "jet engine" in the headline (think very large and noisy!), here's a proposal for using a real, full-sized, jet engine for cooling your servers:
Take one jet engine,
Add stages to capture the thrust and transform it into more torque,
Connect output shaft to massive freakin' compressor turbine,
Use turbine to compress gaseous coolant back to a liquid,
Attach big large radiator/heat exchanger/water cooling tower
Viola! you now have many tonnes of refrigeration capacity, good for blowing cold air through your equipment room, or circulating liquid coolant directly to the chips.
The best part is, you get to have a jet engine tacked on to your server farm.
Does this mean the music industry will stop shitting on consumers? Will they lower prices, publish less crap and more good music, eliminate draconian DRM, reinstate fair use, and stop whining all the time?
/resumes p2p downloading
Yeah, I didn't think so either.
The New York times just had an article describing that same phenomenon today: bloggers and MySpace users that post stuff that, amazingly enough, gets seen by their potential employers and loses them the job interview.
Generally, the energy stored in a capacitor is 1/2 * C * V^2, where C is the capacitance (duh), and V is the voltage across the capacitor. Going back to a capacitor's element law, I = C * dV/dt, where I is capacitor current, we can rewrite the energy equation as:
E = 1/(2*C) * I^2 * t^2
This means that, for a constant current charging of a capacitor, the energy in the cap will increase with the square of time. That's tricky, because it also means that the power required during chargeup increases linearly with time. On the other hand, if I is controlled so that it is not constant, but a function of time, we can make the energy increase linearly. If we let I(t) = const/sqrt(t), then the capacitor energy will be:
E(t) = 1/(2*C) (const/sqrt(t))^2 * t^2
or
E(t) = const^2 / (2*c) * t
Differentiate with respect to time, and we get the power it takes to charge the capacitor:
P(t) = const^2 / (2*C)
Now, obviously, we run into a problem at t=0 (1/sqrt(zero) = BAD). Well, since we've designed some intelligence into how we regulate the current going into the capacitor bank, let's add just a touch more: let I(t) = const for the first few seconds, and then const/sqrt(t) until the bank is fully charged. In that case, the power will ramp up linearly from zero to const^2
My apologies to the comment I was responding to: you had said 5-10 minutes, and I read that as 5-10 seconds. I guess the hype of the article had gotten to me. So, that's a factor of 60 lower powre yuo'd need to charge your car. It's probably still a bit high to have sitting in your garage - or even at a filling station.