It sounds good, like the Gravity Lamp which won a green prize a while back. Until you activate a few brain cells and realise that it can't possibly work.
Apart from the merely practical considerations of making such a device, used coffee grounds don't stick to paper, and doesn't even stain awfully well.
Used coffee goes on the compost heap.
However if there's any prize money going, I might unveil my motorbike powered by tea-bags. There are no photographs yet, but I can certainly provide a "design".
So they're back on Earth, and what do you know, the year is 2009. This is going to be cheap to produce...
Red Dwarf: Unplugged, which will feature the cast dealing with no sets, effects or autocue
...and getting cheaper all the time. Or should I say, it will have a minimal carbon-footprint, and be compatible with the current economic climate. Even the script will probably be recycled. Printed on recycled paper, I mean.
Contrast that with, say, the Joint Strike Fighter program+purchases:
"Total development costs are estimated at more than US$40 billion (underwritten largely by the United States), while the purchase of an estimated 2,400 planes is expected to cost an additional US$200 billion.[49]"
...and if you arrange all those Joint Strike Fighters in a circle, the circumference is nothing like 27km. And they don't get anywhere near the speed of light. And they hardly ever collide.
So all in all, the LHC is vastly better value for money.
My admittedly very poor understanding is that an M/AM event would look roughly like a gamma-ray burst, whereas this looked a lot more like a nova, albeit a very unusual one that didn't match any known profile.
Be very careful. If your post should collide with any other post in this thread, it's liable to annihilate in a shower of gamma rays.
Why do people need to use their phones in-flight anyway?
For the same reason people need to use their mobile phones whilst driving, whilst eating, whilst on the toilet, whilst using the other phone...
It's one of the basic human urges: eating, sleeping, reproducing, and yaking. Modern technology is working steadily towards a device which will make it possible to satisfy all four urges simultaneously.
'Flu viruses don't live very long outside the host. From the BMA:
A study by Bean et al [see reference 21] has reported that the influenza virus can survive on a hard non-porous surface such as plastic or stainless steel for 24-48 hours and on materials such as clothes, paper and tissues for 8-12 hours. [a] On hands, it is reported that the influenza virus can only survive for approximately 10 minutes, although this is more than enough time to allow transfer to other surfaces, such as cutlery, door handles, ATMs, hand rails and keyboards, to facilitate the spread of infection.
Tom Duncan wrote a series of three excellent books:
Adventures with Electronics, Adventures with Micro-Electronics, and Adventures with Digital-Electronics.
The projects are made on a breadboard, so you have great flexibility when you want to expand on the ideas in the book and build your own circuits. After each project there is a list of suggestions and variations.
There's a component list at the end of the book, so you can buy all the bits yourself (and a few extra for your own more ambitious projects after working through the book)
I've been keeping my data backed up to several different hard-drives using the free SyncToy software from MS. When technology marches on, I'll have an up-to-date copy of my data which can be transferred to from a single device to another medium in one go.
Mostly this works very well, but I've discovered that across tens of GB of data copy errors begin to creep in. It's only a bit here and there, but if you're unlucky it can make the file unreadable.
So, Slashdot: there's plenty of software out there for making backups, but how about software which checks them?
just to be pedantic, i doubt you're raw files are actually 12bit per pixel, its most probably 12bit per channel per pixel
Just to be even more pedantic, the raw files are in fact 12 (or 14) bits per pixel, because each pixel contains only a single colour channel. To create the displayed image, colours are interpolated for every pixel from the Bayer patterned original.
And before anybody tries to out-pedant me with a reference to Foveon sensors, remember that when quoting pixel numbers the Foveon marketing counts each colour layer separately.
Er, no. I was commenting on Megan McArdle's especially elegant turn of phrase. She writes well: that's all.
The obvious motives behind the subpoena have already been discussed.
The vaccines scare us because the diseases don't. And they don't because of the vaccines.
In the age of the sound bite and 10 second attention span (autistic or not), were bombarded with quotes which vary from the misleading to the meaningless, with no purpose other than to sound good.
Those two short sentences however, encapsulate a difficult and emotional subject in just 15 words.
They are a work of art. Wonderful.
Well they say in the video that it is almost 10 times as efficient in terms of Lumen's per watt (140 vs 15 for a normal bulb).
I wonder how this wonder bulb is cooled? According to their efficiency claims, roughly 200W is being lost as heat in a glass envelope the size of a tic-tac. Not many materials can stand that kind of power density for long. Is there a 1kW water pump somewhere they forgot to mention?
By the way, sodium vapour lamps get around 100 lm/W, so the potential efficiency gains for streetlighting are less than devastating. It will be much more interesting if the argon bulb can be used as domestic lighting, instead of those god-awful fluorescent things.
Even then the photon will be greatly diffracted, meaning you need a large detector - a 1.5m telescope in this case. With this setup the article reports a detection rate of roughly one in 3000.
If it looks too good to be true...
The energy stored by the weights is 271 joules, which spread over 4 hours is 19mW. If the entire system were 100% efficient, including the lamps, you'd get about 13 lumens.
Obama talks a good game, but why should I trust his intentions?
You can't know, of course. The same goes for any candidate. However, if your candidate gets into office and turns out to be a stinker, you don't have to vote for him second time around. Thus there is, in theory, a strong incentive for the president not to be a stinker. And that's about as much as US-brand democracy can do for you. If you can come up with a better way for voters to hold the President to the promises made during the campaign, then you might be onto something.
[Clinton did] not divorce her adulterous asshole of a husband
If the Clintons' relationship is strong enough to withstand an affair, then I say bravo. Of all the things the US President can do, which affect the lives of the country's citizens, adultery must be one of the least important.
"Nerds" either know this stuff, or are sufficiently switched-on to work it out before opening their mouths.
Maybe it's time to throw in the towel and start publishing stories about B-list celebrities.
Slashdot. News for your average Joe. Stuff to read whist getting a hair cut.
Shortly after the system goes online, it will start downloading adverts for more advert-infested DVDs. Disks will start multiplying exponentially, the world will plunge behind an event horizon, and the universe will be sucked into a supermassive black-hole of infinite advertising.
Much the same kind of thing happened when they started printing adverts for breakfast cereal on packets of breakfast cereal.
OK, but what should we call you? Unitedstatesians?
Even GWB would balk at that. Living in France, I might feel like suggesting something to do with monkeys, but that would be rude. I like America very much, except for the airports.
With the dollar so low at the moment, does anybody know if US iPhones can be used on European networks?
Isn't it rather easy to provide fake fingerprints? Using their kitchen-sink laboratory, the Mythbusters created false prints which were good enough to fool the most expensive fingerprint door locks. Are the scanners at airports any more sophisticated?
Ten years from now, when the last filament bulb has been smashed by a rampaging mob of environmentalists, how will we remember Edison? Yet Tesla will remain a household name, which we are reminded of whenever we step into our mag-lev flying cars.
Cameras and speed displays don't have radars in them.
This should read "Cameras and speed displays which I've seen don't have radars in them."
Round here, all the fixed cameras and speed-displays use radar. The mobile speed traps mostly use lasers, and the red-light cameras use induction loops.
The radar traps are often confused by multiple vehicles or by weather (driving snow, for example). Some types therefore take two pictures a fraction of a second apart, as a double-check. Unfortunately, the timing of the two pictures is not always as accurate as it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Must buy green phone ... chuck out old gas-guzzling phone ... save planet ... feel warm and fuzzy ...
Er, how much energy does it take to make the solar cells?
It sounds good, like the Gravity Lamp which won a green prize a while back. Until you activate a few brain cells and realise that it can't possibly work.
Apart from the merely practical considerations of making such a device, used coffee grounds don't stick to paper, and doesn't even stain awfully well. Used coffee goes on the compost heap.
However if there's any prize money going, I might unveil my motorbike powered by tea-bags. There are no photographs yet, but I can certainly provide a "design".
So they're back on Earth, and what do you know, the year is 2009. This is going to be cheap to produce...
Red Dwarf: Unplugged, which will feature the cast dealing with no sets, effects or autocue
...and getting cheaper all the time. Or should I say, it will have a minimal carbon-footprint, and be compatible with the current economic climate. Even the script will probably be recycled. Printed on recycled paper, I mean.
Contrast that with, say, the Joint Strike Fighter program+purchases: "Total development costs are estimated at more than US$40 billion (underwritten largely by the United States), while the purchase of an estimated 2,400 planes is expected to cost an additional US$200 billion.[49]"
So all in all, the LHC is vastly better value for money.
My admittedly very poor understanding is that an M/AM event would look roughly like a gamma-ray burst, whereas this looked a lot more like a nova, albeit a very unusual one that didn't match any known profile.
Be very careful. If your post should collide with any other post in this thread, it's liable to annihilate in a shower of gamma rays.
I had assumed the ISS was wireless already...
Why do people need to use their phones in-flight anyway?
For the same reason people need to use their mobile phones whilst driving, whilst eating, whilst on the toilet, whilst using the other phone...
It's one of the basic human urges: eating, sleeping, reproducing, and yaking. Modern technology is working steadily towards a device which will make it possible to satisfy all four urges simultaneously.
'Flu viruses don't live very long outside the host. From the BMA:
A study by Bean et al [see reference 21] has reported that the influenza virus can survive on a hard non-porous surface such as plastic or stainless steel for 24-48 hours and on materials such as clothes, paper and tissues for 8-12 hours. [a] On hands, it is reported that the influenza virus can only survive for approximately 10 minutes, although this is more than enough time to allow transfer to other surfaces, such as cutlery, door handles, ATMs, hand rails and keyboards, to facilitate the spread of infection.
..."Snakes in a Drain"
Tom Duncan wrote a series of three excellent books:
Adventures with Electronics, Adventures with Micro-Electronics, and Adventures with Digital-Electronics.
The projects are made on a breadboard, so you have great flexibility when you want to expand on the ideas in the book and build your own circuits. After each project there is a list of suggestions and variations.
There's a component list at the end of the book, so you can buy all the bits yourself (and a few extra for your own more ambitious projects after working through the book)
I've been keeping my data backed up to several different hard-drives using the free SyncToy software from MS. When technology marches on, I'll have an up-to-date copy of my data which can be transferred to from a single device to another medium in one go.
Mostly this works very well, but I've discovered that across tens of GB of data copy errors begin to creep in. It's only a bit here and there, but if you're unlucky it can make the file unreadable.
So, Slashdot: there's plenty of software out there for making backups, but how about software which checks them?
Just to be even more pedantic, the raw files are in fact 12 (or 14) bits per pixel, because each pixel contains only a single colour channel. To create the displayed image, colours are interpolated for every pixel from the Bayer patterned original.
And before anybody tries to out-pedant me with a reference to Foveon sensors, remember that when quoting pixel numbers the Foveon marketing counts each colour layer separately.
Ahh, there... I feel better now.
Er, no. I was commenting on Megan McArdle's especially elegant turn of phrase. She writes well: that's all. The obvious motives behind the subpoena have already been discussed.
In the age of the sound bite and 10 second attention span (autistic or not), were bombarded with quotes which vary from the misleading to the meaningless, with no purpose other than to sound good.
Those two short sentences however, encapsulate a difficult and emotional subject in just 15 words. They are a work of art. Wonderful.
chicken.
I wonder how this wonder bulb is cooled? According to their efficiency claims, roughly 200W is being lost as heat in a glass envelope the size of a tic-tac. Not many materials can stand that kind of power density for long. Is there a 1kW water pump somewhere they forgot to mention?
By the way, sodium vapour lamps get around 100 lm/W, so the potential efficiency gains for streetlighting are less than devastating. It will be much more interesting if the argon bulb can be used as domestic lighting, instead of those god-awful fluorescent things.
They use Corner reflectors looking like this.
Even then the photon will be greatly diffracted, meaning you need a large detector - a 1.5m telescope in this case. With this setup the article reports a detection rate of roughly one in 3000.
If it looks too good to be true... The energy stored by the weights is 271 joules, which spread over 4 hours is 19mW. If the entire system were 100% efficient, including the lamps, you'd get about 13 lumens.
You can't know, of course. The same goes for any candidate. However, if your candidate gets into office and turns out to be a stinker, you don't have to vote for him second time around. Thus there is, in theory, a strong incentive for the president not to be a stinker. And that's about as much as US-brand democracy can do for you. If you can come up with a better way for voters to hold the President to the promises made during the campaign, then you might be onto something.
If the Clintons' relationship is strong enough to withstand an affair, then I say bravo. Of all the things the US President can do, which affect the lives of the country's citizens, adultery must be one of the least important.
"Nerds" either know this stuff, or are sufficiently switched-on to work it out before opening their mouths.
Maybe it's time to throw in the towel and start publishing stories about B-list celebrities.
Slashdot. News for your average Joe. Stuff to read whist getting a hair cut.
Shortly after the system goes online, it will start downloading adverts for more advert-infested DVDs. Disks will start multiplying exponentially, the world will plunge behind an event horizon, and the universe will be sucked into a supermassive black-hole of infinite advertising.
Much the same kind of thing happened when they started printing adverts for breakfast cereal on packets of breakfast cereal.
US != North America != America
OK, but what should we call you? Unitedstatesians?
Even GWB would balk at that. Living in France, I might feel like suggesting something to do with monkeys, but that would be rude. I like America very much, except for the airports.
With the dollar so low at the moment, does anybody know if US iPhones can be used on European networks?
Isn't it rather easy to provide fake fingerprints? Using their kitchen-sink laboratory, the Mythbusters created false prints which were good enough to fool the most expensive fingerprint door locks. Are the scanners at airports any more sophisticated?
most people don't even know who Tesla was
Ten years from now, when the last filament bulb has been smashed by a rampaging mob of environmentalists, how will we remember Edison? Yet Tesla will remain a household name, which we are reminded of whenever we step into our mag-lev flying cars.
Cameras and speed displays don't have radars in them.
This should read "Cameras and speed displays which I've seen don't have radars in them."
Round here, all the fixed cameras and speed-displays use radar. The mobile speed traps mostly use lasers, and the red-light cameras use induction loops.
The radar traps are often confused by multiple vehicles or by weather (driving snow, for example). Some types therefore take two pictures a fraction of a second apart, as a double-check. Unfortunately, the timing of the two pictures is not always as accurate as it should be.