When was the last time a drone was spying on you? I'm getting sick of this drone hysteria that is being hyped by the media and now apparently also by slashdot.
+1
I don't think there is any other desktop system that has something like kio_slaves.. I love how it lets me edit text files (using kate with vim mode) on remote systems, open PDFs etc.
Also, KWin is great, multiple desktops with tiling support has become one of my favorite features when working on my laptop.
+1
There is no way you could control an RC helicopter using this. As you said, the controls are too imprecise and in addition wifi probably has too much lag.
Also, whether you will get a significant speedup by using the GPU really depends on the algorithm. Some algorithms may not even be possible to implement for the GPU (due to limitations of CUDA, OpenCL etc.).
Link to paper: http://www.rle.mit.edu/stir/documents/BilgicGA_MagResMed2011.pdf
I guess the reason this shows up on slashdot is that it was on MITnews (and of course the work was done at MIT).
It is nothing really groundbreaking (or novel for that matter). They use Compressive Sensing where they assume that the different scan types (T1, T2,etc) have a similar structure (same sparsity profile, enforced through shared precision hyperparameters in a Bayesian formulation).
If you have Linux PC that is accessible from the internet, then just use Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/). I use it all the time to synchronize my PC at work, my PC at home, and my laptop. It is quite fast, my synchronized folder is currently ~7GB and it takes maybe 10s to check for changes (not sure how Unison manages to do this).
On a more serious note, what does "in a few minutes" even mean? You can already charge commercially available lithium polymer batteries in about 15 minutes (4C charge rate). So the actual number of minutes would be nice to know.
Exactly. It's funny, a guy from comcast came by last week to see if we want to get any of their services.. I told him that we have DSL and we don't need cable. Then he asked if we get everything through DSL (TV, phone, internet), so I said yes, which is true as we use skype and mostly watch Hulu, Netflix, and movies from Amazon. He wanted to know how much we pay and I told him $35 per month.. then he just said good bye and left.
Being from Europe I was pretty surprised when I came to the US and learned that virtually all* banks use ordinary passwords for online banking..
*the ones I know of: Citi, Bank of America, US Bank
This is a good example how open systems drive innovation. Allowing people to tinker with the device (root access, access to the DSP) attracts hackers, which in this case lead to DSP accelerated Theora video decoding.
It's quite fitting that Apple is resisting Theora in HTML 5, mainly because their devices don't have accelerated Theora decoding (this is what I assume). While at the same time the restrictions imposed by Apple make it impossible to develop something like this for their iCrap devices (apart from not having root access, no API for accessing the DSP, it would also violate the developer agreement.. since you need some DSP assembly, which is not an approved language).
Before there was 5.1, 7.1 etc, there was Dolby Surround. I thought I could not or want not afford buying a Surround Decoder, so I built one together with a friend. Everything was made using discrete components, OpAmp's and so on. The craziest part was the audio delay for the rear channel. We built it using only 74-series TTL logic, no micro processor or DSP. You could even change the amount of delay by turning a potentiometer which was connected to a A/D converter, the output of the A/D converter was used to control the size of the ring buffer which stored the samples. The bad thing was that in the end it sounded not very good because it was only 8-Bit.. lol. It was a good project, it took us forever and we learned a lot. Today I would just take a DSP kit and code my surround decoder.. no need for soldering anymore.
IIRC, anything that doesn't superconduct at the temp of liquid nitrogen is a pain in the ass to use.
This may be true but commercial applications (like NMR spectrometers) actually use superconductors that are not superconductive at LN2 temperatures, they usually use liquid helium (4.2K) or use techniques to reach even lower temperatures. The point is that superconductors are mostly used to generate magnetic fields and the the amount of current a superconductor can carry (critical current) depends on both temperature and magnetic field. High temperature superconductors usually can't carry high currents at LN2 temperatures if a magnetic field is present. Actually, I don't know if it is possible to prove that a metal would not be superconducting at room temperatures if absolutely no magnetic field was present.
Yes, you are right the efficiency is 1-T(low)/T(high). As others pointed out, devices like this are also known as Peltier elements or thermocouples, depending on how they are used. If you want to use a thermocouple to convert heat to electric energy, you usually use several of them in series in order to increase the voltage. The problem is that thermocouples are made of metals, which are not only good at conducting electric current but are also good at conducting heat. So if you have thermocouples between a hot and a cold pool, a lot of heat will just be conducted through the metal and not converted into electric energy. I don't know maybe this company has found a way to design their devices such that the heat conduction is minimized, which would greatly increase the efficiency. I'm just guessing.
Slashdot Mirror
When was the last time a drone was spying on you? I'm getting sick of this drone hysteria that is being hyped by the media and now apparently also by slashdot.
intentionally left blank
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/mpg-of-a-human/
obligatory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g
+1 I don't think there is any other desktop system that has something like kio_slaves.. I love how it lets me edit text files (using kate with vim mode) on remote systems, open PDFs etc. Also, KWin is great, multiple desktops with tiling support has become one of my favorite features when working on my laptop.
Yep, a Crystal HD decoder should work. I put one into the mini-PCI slot of my 5 year old laptop recently. The decoder is about $20 on ebay.
+1 You can save additional money by having a phone that supports SIP (or skype) and make calls using WIFI whenever it is available.
+1 There is no way you could control an RC helicopter using this. As you said, the controls are too imprecise and in addition wifi probably has too much lag.
I tried, but adobe reader crashed when I clicked on "credits". (No joke, 9.4.2 on amd64 Linux)
Also, whether you will get a significant speedup by using the GPU really depends on the algorithm. Some algorithms may not even be possible to implement for the GPU (due to limitations of CUDA, OpenCL etc.).
They should just outsource the handling of nuclear weapons to a contractor. It's much cheaper and safer that way.
Link to paper: http://www.rle.mit.edu/stir/documents/BilgicGA_MagResMed2011.pdf I guess the reason this shows up on slashdot is that it was on MITnews (and of course the work was done at MIT). It is nothing really groundbreaking (or novel for that matter). They use Compressive Sensing where they assume that the different scan types (T1, T2,etc) have a similar structure (same sparsity profile, enforced through shared precision hyperparameters in a Bayesian formulation).
+1 for a Thinkpad I just moved from a T61 to a T420s and everything works flawlessly (on both of them).
What exactly is "standard CPU TDP"? My 4+ year or thinkpad T61 has a (total, not just CPU) TDP of about 15W during light use.
If you have Linux PC that is accessible from the internet, then just use Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/). I use it all the time to synchronize my PC at work, my PC at home, and my laptop. It is quite fast, my synchronized folder is currently ~7GB and it takes maybe 10s to check for changes (not sure how Unison manages to do this).
Exactly. It is especially ridiculous if you consider that most government funding to the University comes from the STEM fields..
On a more serious note, what does "in a few minutes" even mean? You can already charge commercially available lithium polymer batteries in about 15 minutes (4C charge rate). So the actual number of minutes would be nice to know.
Exactly. It's funny, a guy from comcast came by last week to see if we want to get any of their services.. I told him that we have DSL and we don't need cable. Then he asked if we get everything through DSL (TV, phone, internet), so I said yes, which is true as we use skype and mostly watch Hulu, Netflix, and movies from Amazon. He wanted to know how much we pay and I told him $35 per month.. then he just said good bye and left.
Being from Europe I was pretty surprised when I came to the US and learned that virtually all* banks use ordinary passwords for online banking.. *the ones I know of: Citi, Bank of America, US Bank
This is a good example how open systems drive innovation. Allowing people to tinker with the device (root access, access to the DSP) attracts hackers, which in this case lead to DSP accelerated Theora video decoding. It's quite fitting that Apple is resisting Theora in HTML 5, mainly because their devices don't have accelerated Theora decoding (this is what I assume). While at the same time the restrictions imposed by Apple make it impossible to develop something like this for their iCrap devices (apart from not having root access, no API for accessing the DSP, it would also violate the developer agreement.. since you need some DSP assembly, which is not an approved language).
I just bought a Creative Zen X-Fi.. I'm waiting for it to arrive and I'm crossing my fingers that it will work nicely with Amarok.
Before there was 5.1, 7.1 etc, there was Dolby Surround. I thought I could not or want not afford buying a Surround Decoder, so I built one together with a friend. Everything was made using discrete components, OpAmp's and so on. The craziest part was the audio delay for the rear channel. We built it using only 74-series TTL logic, no micro processor or DSP. You could even change the amount of delay by turning a potentiometer which was connected to a A/D converter, the output of the A/D converter was used to control the size of the ring buffer which stored the samples. The bad thing was that in the end it sounded not very good because it was only 8-Bit.. lol. It was a good project, it took us forever and we learned a lot. Today I would just take a DSP kit and code my surround decoder.. no need for soldering anymore.
Yes, you are right the efficiency is 1-T(low)/T(high). As others pointed out, devices like this are also known as Peltier elements or thermocouples, depending on how they are used. If you want to use a thermocouple to convert heat to electric energy, you usually use several of them in series in order to increase the voltage. The problem is that thermocouples are made of metals, which are not only good at conducting electric current but are also good at conducting heat. So if you have thermocouples between a hot and a cold pool, a lot of heat will just be conducted through the metal and not converted into electric energy. I don't know maybe this company has found a way to design their devices such that the heat conduction is minimized, which would greatly increase the efficiency. I'm just guessing.
> My print library doesn't have DRM on it. ..but you can't grep dead trees