The point isn't that you have to lift a weight, the point is that storing energy by lifting a weight is a bad way to store energy. Why not turn a crank that powers a battery? Why not a spring?
The reason it's "gravity powered" and not battery/spring powered, despite the fact that batteries and springs have much higher energy:weight, energy:space, and energy:price ratios, is because this lamp is a toy for "eco-sensitive" people (the sort who read about "green gadget" contests), and "gravity powered" sounds cool and innovative, but "spring powered" sounds 18th century.
(And please save me the "you don't know what it's like"/"you are so spoiled" stuff, like you're the only person who's aware that the third world exists or that I "forgot")
Not sure if this will become a product too soon. The best possible efficiency is 1700 lumens/watt (a fluorescent lamp is 100 lumens/watt, LEDs and incandescent lights are even less efficient). Taking the best possible efficiency this lamp would require 1/2 a watt over four hours, that's 4*60*60*(1/2)=7200 joules.
1 joule is the energy needed to move about 0.1kg 1 meter up, so that's 720g of weight lifted 1 meter up as a best case scenario.
In reality this would have to be a pretty hefty weight and/or a pretty long lamp and/or a pretty dim light to be practical.
Just imagine every four hours having to go over to your lamp, bend over (remember to use your legs not your back!), and lift up a 10kg weight up to your chest height. And if this is really supposed to save power this is probably going to be one of many lamps, so you then have to go around the room lifting 10kg weights.
I can't see that catching on. Maybe if we lived on a much heavier planet so that it took a lot more energy to lift things, then one lift would last for long enough for it to be worthwhile.
Assembler on "risc"? One of the reasons for not using risc is to make assembly programming easier, because you don't have to do every little thing yourself.
The meme is: x86 is slow because the instruction set is old and caters to the needs of assembly programmers.
I was interested in this, but it turns out nowhere in my entire continent of Australasia is eligible.:(
The weird thing is I did authenticate as a student for their Office 2007 student discount, so I wonder why so few places can authenticate with this new deal.
Data warehousing and clustering is also available in MS SQL Server. Mod SQL Server +1 Underrated
Re:"How will you use XML in years to come?"
on
The Future of XML
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· Score: 1
JSON is inflicting Javascript on everyone. There are other programming languages out there.
On the browser? If you want to use AJAX-like technology, JavaScript is still the only viable and portable option as the programming language for the client side.
But do we want to make that even harder to change?
Why when you can view everything you need to know about Drupal themes (including version 6+) here. You basically unpack the theme, put it in the themes directory, and go into the admin panel to enable it.
There, I just condensed 260 pages that costs money into something free and easy to do. As far as modifying your CSS to find your custom needs, well, that's for a completely different book and one that I would actually read -- if it helped more than what I've been able to learn myself online. "Download phpBB" -- A book on writing a forum system in PHP "condensed" into 2 words!
I think you've got a few things totally backwards here, I'll try and explain the Iranian situation in a (full-post-sized) nutshell.
A responsible citizen, yes, would want the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands, and make sure that their government leaders are accountable and responsible.
On the other hand, if you're an American politician trying to sell a war, Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt play very well to your cause on both sides of the table.
First off America is pretty war weary (to put it lightly), I really doubt trying to push another war though is a great political move.
Secondly; Bush doesn't have to please to general public, he's on his last legs whether whether or not he kindles some favor.
As it stands, I don't believe that the Iranian people are all too upset at their government.
It's a lot more complicated than that. Mahmoud came in promising wealth for the poor, and has delivered in many cases, but failed elsewhere. At the moment the Iranian economy isn't going well (e.g. inflation at 25%, according to non-government sources), and there has even been gas rationing (in a country with massive gas reserves!) which really didn't go down too well.
Then you have the Islamic reforms, with headscarfs being more strictly enforced and a suppression of the clothing young Iranians want to wear. This is popular with some but not others. There's also suppression of government criticism in the media, and media also needs to be very tame (think FCC-on-steriods). (Young) Iranians aren't ignorant (as I understand Iranian education stands out from other Middle-Eastern countries by a long way); they are often pro-West and pro-reform, and they don't like the media oppression or Mahmoud jailing the students which lead protests.
The nuclear program is an interesting one. It seems that, like Chavez, Mahmoud likes to be seen as a crusader for the little guy, even if it doesn't parallel what goes on in Iran. What's ironic is that you say Bush is stirring this up to gain some political favor, when in fact the opposite is true; Mahmoud milks the Iran vs the evil empire angle for all it's worth.
When they reach a new threshold with uranium enrichment, or manage to launch a satellite, cue the government media's patriotic music and euphoria. (I feel I need to point out that this is actual government media, not to be confused with the tin-foil Fox-is-controlled-by-the-government "government media")
Iran getting powerful weapons, launching satellites, and capturing British soldiers in defiance of the West is great for Mahmoud, and ever since a US report came out last year saying that they aren't pursuing nuclear weapons to the extent previously thought Mahmoud has become less and less popular.
I've read that in Iran they joke that Mahmoud wouldn't bother with his nuclear program if the US wasn't opposed to it.
Not only have his lesser government members begun to criticize his policy, but he recently got snubbed by the Supreme Leader of Iran himself, something which is a big political blow for him. (It's like a member of the Vatican getting chided by the Pope for something he said; it's not supposed to happen)
Likewise, the Iranian government doesn't strike me as being all that secretive.
Read up about Natanz and Iran's dealings with the IAEA. Even Russia, who has supported and assisted with Iran's civilian nuclear program, is now saying they are concerned about Iran's recent satellite launch.
One thing for sure is that Iran is not Iraq 2. There aren't many parallels between them, and the biggest and most important difference in my opinion is this: In Iran Mahmoud is subject to checks and balances, he isn't a dictator and he has to watch where he treads. Economic sanctions and internal political pressure will definitely be enough, I would be astonished if it came to war.
Right, but it needs to be something short that anyone can use. The equivalent to "disk". I don't think people are going to start referring to a "mass storage device" in conversation, or even "MSD"
Do we have a short name for solid state drives? Is SSD as good as HDD? You can't say "write to the disk" either.. Write to the chip? The drive?
"Drive" seems like the only way of referring to a large amount of persistent memory in a computer, but it's a bit ambiguous. If there's no separate word to refer to a generic persistent storage device people are bound to call them hard disks.
In addition to routing IPv6 has so many addresses that we'll be able to give any device an IP address, so mobile phone networks will be able to be a proper part of the internet
Seriously, is there anyone who doesn't think this is either a precursor to military action, or a direct attack on Iran's about-to-launch Euro-based oil market?
4 cuts, as far as I am concerned, is no co-incidence. I literally expect to turn on the TV and see bombs falling any day now. Economy down, turn up the war machine. It really is a common historical sequence.
I think it's going to be the end of the world. The four horsemen draw near. OMG FOUR horsemen?! Coincidence? I don't think so.
What's a "science reporter"? Whoever they are I thing their level of education reflects the target audience, it's as simple as that. New Scientist readers aren't interested in the mass of hadrons (and neither am I), they want to hear about experimental unified theories expressed in a vain attempt to appear comprehensible to a layman.
Real physics is hard and time consuming, but people still like to try and see the bigger picture. The result are these magazines, it's not such a terrible thing.
It's impossible to keep a language compatible while adding good new features. I'd rather have good new features than be able to run legacy and modern applications on the same platform.
If it's a backwards compatible update it's probably either really cludgy, or the updates are fairly trivial, and they'd be getting just as much slack for that. If it's a version upgrade (x.0 and not 1.x) that means backwards compatibility can be broken, that's pretty much the universal convention, from languages to operating systems.
Australians could take part in the original version, so everyone should be able to take part in this one. As a computer science (& physics) student in Australia I think you underestimate how difficult it is to participate in the SoC program here. The SoC program is supposed to be as long as a summer holiday, but during your summer holiday we have our winter holiday, which is as long as your winter holiday.
I don't think you can do an SoC project in a winter holiday. I actually had a big coding job during my last winder holiday, and it's a pretty tight time frame. It ended up lasting half way through the next semester which was a big pain to deal with.
But I'm very interested in this. I definitely know some pieces of open source software that I'd love to work on. The summer/winter thing was a big barrier so having a southern hemisphere SoC is great.
That would leave proof, and that would totally ruin the fun of coming up with some elaborate baseless conspiracy theory. What good is a conspiracy theory if there's a way to disprove it that doesn't require a submarine?
Turns the biosphere into gray goo? I really doubt there's anything (DNA based or otherwise) that replicates so much better than bacteria that it can turn everything, including bacteria, into gray goo. If something came close a bacteria strain would find a way to break it down, and thrive itself.
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The point isn't that you have to lift a weight, the point is that storing energy by lifting a weight is a bad way to store energy. Why not turn a crank that powers a battery? Why not a spring?
The reason it's "gravity powered" and not battery/spring powered, despite the fact that batteries and springs have much higher energy:weight, energy:space, and energy:price ratios, is because this lamp is a toy for "eco-sensitive" people (the sort who read about "green gadget" contests), and "gravity powered" sounds cool and innovative, but "spring powered" sounds 18th century.
(And please save me the "you don't know what it's like"/"you are so spoiled" stuff, like you're the only person who's aware that the third world exists or that I "forgot")
Not sure if this will become a product too soon. The best possible efficiency is 1700 lumens/watt (a fluorescent lamp is 100 lumens/watt, LEDs and incandescent lights are even less efficient). Taking the best possible efficiency this lamp would require 1/2 a watt over four hours, that's 4*60*60*(1/2)=7200 joules.
1 joule is the energy needed to move about 0.1kg 1 meter up, so that's 720g of weight lifted 1 meter up as a best case scenario.
In reality this would have to be a pretty hefty weight and/or a pretty long lamp and/or a pretty dim light to be practical.
Just imagine every four hours having to go over to your lamp, bend over (remember to use your legs not your back!), and lift up a 10kg weight up to your chest height. And if this is really supposed to save power this is probably going to be one of many lamps, so you then have to go around the room lifting 10kg weights.
I can't see that catching on. Maybe if we lived on a much heavier planet so that it took a lot more energy to lift things, then one lift would last for long enough for it to be worthwhile.
Assembler on "risc"? One of the reasons for not using risc is to make assembly programming easier, because you don't have to do every little thing yourself.
The meme is: x86 is slow because the instruction set is old and caters to the needs of assembly programmers.
I was interested in this, but it turns out nowhere in my entire continent of Australasia is eligible. :(
The weird thing is I did authenticate as a student for their Office 2007 student discount, so I wonder why so few places can authenticate with this new deal.
Just check the latest pedophile census for all your accurate pedophile statistics.
Oh wait.. there isn't a pedophile census. But then what reliable, consistent data is the article based on?
And that's the .. um .. beauty of open source code. Not like Microsoft.
Unless the library is massive, has 5 floors and no elevators, there are monsters everywhere, and the index is floating below the ceiling.
(It's worth noting hydroelectric dams have been used for power generation for a long time now)
Data warehousing and clustering is also available in MS SQL Server. Mod SQL Server +1 Underrated
On the browser? If you want to use AJAX-like technology, JavaScript is still the only viable and portable option as the programming language for the client side.
But do we want to make that even harder to change?There, I just condensed 260 pages that costs money into something free and easy to do. As far as modifying your CSS to find your custom needs, well, that's for a completely different book and one that I would actually read -- if it helped more than what I've been able to learn myself online. "Download phpBB" -- A book on writing a forum system in PHP "condensed" into 2 words!
Secondly; Bush doesn't have to please to general public, he's on his last legs whether whether or not he kindles some favor.
It's a lot more complicated than that. Mahmoud came in promising wealth for the poor, and has delivered in many cases, but failed elsewhere. At the moment the Iranian economy isn't going well (e.g. inflation at 25%, according to non-government sources), and there has even been gas rationing (in a country with massive gas reserves!) which really didn't go down too well.
Then you have the Islamic reforms, with headscarfs being more strictly enforced and a suppression of the clothing young Iranians want to wear. This is popular with some but not others. There's also suppression of government criticism in the media, and media also needs to be very tame (think FCC-on-steriods). (Young) Iranians aren't ignorant (as I understand Iranian education stands out from other Middle-Eastern countries by a long way); they are often pro-West and pro-reform, and they don't like the media oppression or Mahmoud jailing the students which lead protests.
The nuclear program is an interesting one. It seems that, like Chavez, Mahmoud likes to be seen as a crusader for the little guy, even if it doesn't parallel what goes on in Iran. What's ironic is that you say Bush is stirring this up to gain some political favor, when in fact the opposite is true; Mahmoud milks the Iran vs the evil empire angle for all it's worth.
When they reach a new threshold with uranium enrichment, or manage to launch a satellite, cue the government media's patriotic music and euphoria. (I feel I need to point out that this is actual government media, not to be confused with the tin-foil Fox-is-controlled-by-the-government "government media")
Iran getting powerful weapons, launching satellites, and capturing British soldiers in defiance of the West is great for Mahmoud, and ever since a US report came out last year saying that they aren't pursuing nuclear weapons to the extent previously thought Mahmoud has become less and less popular.
I've read that in Iran they joke that Mahmoud wouldn't bother with his nuclear program if the US wasn't opposed to it.
Not only have his lesser government members begun to criticize his policy, but he recently got snubbed by the Supreme Leader of Iran himself, something which is a big political blow for him. (It's like a member of the Vatican getting chided by the Pope for something he said; it's not supposed to happen)
Read up about Natanz and Iran's dealings with the IAEA. Even Russia, who has supported and assisted with Iran's civilian nuclear program, is now saying they are concerned about Iran's recent satellite launch.
One thing for sure is that Iran is not Iraq 2. There aren't many parallels between them, and the biggest and most important difference in my opinion is this: In Iran Mahmoud is subject to checks and balances, he isn't a dictator and he has to watch where he treads. Economic sanctions and internal political pressure will definitely be enough, I would be astonished if it came to war.
Right, but it needs to be something short that anyone can use. The equivalent to "disk". I don't think people are going to start referring to a "mass storage device" in conversation, or even "MSD"
Despite the interesting/insightful mod I think the GP's comment was a joke
Do we have a short name for solid state drives? Is SSD as good as HDD? You can't say "write to the disk" either.. Write to the chip? The drive?
"Drive" seems like the only way of referring to a large amount of persistent memory in a computer, but it's a bit ambiguous. If there's no separate word to refer to a generic persistent storage device people are bound to call them hard disks.
In addition to routing IPv6 has so many addresses that we'll be able to give any device an IP address, so mobile phone networks will be able to be a proper part of the internet
Seriously, is there anyone who doesn't think this is either a precursor to military action, or a direct attack on Iran's about-to-launch Euro-based oil market?
4 cuts, as far as I am concerned, is no co-incidence. I literally expect to turn on the TV and see bombs falling any day now. Economy down, turn up the war machine. It really is a common historical sequence.
I think it's going to be the end of the world. The four horsemen draw near. OMG FOUR horsemen?! Coincidence? I don't think so.What's a "science reporter"? Whoever they are I thing their level of education reflects the target audience, it's as simple as that. New Scientist readers aren't interested in the mass of hadrons (and neither am I), they want to hear about experimental unified theories expressed in a vain attempt to appear comprehensible to a layman.
Real physics is hard and time consuming, but people still like to try and see the bigger picture. The result are these magazines, it's not such a terrible thing.
Surprise surprise, a male (Karim Nayernia) invented the technique. I guess that's how superfluous we are?
But hey it's alright to be sexist; you're female.
It's impossible to keep a language compatible while adding good new features. I'd rather have good new features than be able to run legacy and modern applications on the same platform.
If it's a backwards compatible update it's probably either really cludgy, or the updates are fairly trivial, and they'd be getting just as much slack for that. If it's a version upgrade (x.0 and not 1.x) that means backwards compatibility can be broken, that's pretty much the universal convention, from languages to operating systems.
I don't think you can do an SoC project in a winter holiday. I actually had a big coding job during my last winder holiday, and it's a pretty tight time frame. It ended up lasting half way through the next semester which was a big pain to deal with.
But I'm very interested in this. I definitely know some pieces of open source software that I'd love to work on. The summer/winter thing was a big barrier so having a southern hemisphere SoC is great.
That would leave proof, and that would totally ruin the fun of coming up with some elaborate baseless conspiracy theory. What good is a conspiracy theory if there's a way to disprove it that doesn't require a submarine?
Which degree gets you $100k?
Redmond, Washington
Turns the biosphere into gray goo? I really doubt there's anything (DNA based or otherwise) that replicates so much better than bacteria that it can turn everything, including bacteria, into gray goo. If something came close a bacteria strain would find a way to break it down, and thrive itself.