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Comment H2 fuel cells are a nonstarter, SOFCs may not be (Score 1) 659

by otis wildflower (#47001829) Attached to: Future of Cars: Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Or Electric?

No nation is going to build an entire network of H2-dedicated pipelines and other infrastructure, so any sort of mass fueling of H2 will come from electrolysis (consumes freshwater and is expensive for power) or (most likely) reformation of natural gas piggybacking on the already-existing NG infrastructure.

So, how efficient would an H2 fuel cell vehicle be per mpg equivalent worth of reformed H2 from natural gas? How much is the net fuel cost per mile?

Now, IMO a more promising path would be using solid-oxide fuel cells that accept hydrocarbons directly, but IFF they can get at least 16-20kWh out of a gallon of gasoline, its volume and mass are comparable to an I4 or V6 engine, and the cost comes down to 5-10 cents per Watt.

Comment Re:Ion Audio (Score 1) 201

by otis wildflower (#46910943) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Which VHS Player To Buy?

That's been discontinued, and AFAIK only has PC drivers. Their replacement is just a composite -> USB box, but it does have OS X drivers.

Dunno if either has OSS support, alas.

I like the VCR2DVD deck idea, assuming one can be found that does a quality job. I reckon finding a higher-end (S) VHS deck (with 4+ heads, stereo, auto tracking, maybe jog/shuttle knob) and testing it with a few sacrificable tapes is the way to go for OP. For 8mm video I'd recommend finding a Digital8 deck or camera, since it internally converts analog 8mm/Hi8 to digital before sending it up the firewire link.

Comment Re:How could you do it? (Score 1) 276

by otis wildflower (#46535221) Attached to: Interviews: Ask J. Michael Straczynski What You Will

I'd recommend reading these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-...

And understanding the Hollywood screenwriting and production process a bit better before blaming JMS for that. Plus, if you don't have a credit in the movie, you don't get residuals, and professionals get paid.

Comment Re:Take a look at Synology's DSM (Score 2) 114

by otis wildflower (#46496189) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Management Interface On an IT Appliance?

Synology is busybox-based, with md/lvm tools etc., and for the most part behaves properly. The GUI is handy for remote access and management (with self-signed cert), and is pretty functional for all but the corneriest of corner cases.

This past week I needed to ssh in in order to e2fsck my storage prior to lvextending it. Kinda disappointed I had to do that, but the fact is that I could and did. Also, since the RAID is in software, in theory I could pull my 7 drive RAID out and stick it in another linux box and vg(im|ex)port it.

My 1812+ has adequate power for pushing ~100+MB/s with its dual-core Atom and 3GB (it took a spare laptop SO-DIMM), and runs at a pretty low wattage rate vs. a handbuild mid tower. It can't transcode, but I have WDTV Live boxes that support most codecs fairly well for that.
GUI

Ask Slashdot: Best Management Interface On an IT Appliance? 114

Posted by timothy from the one-you-never-need dept.
tippen writes "The management user interface on most networking and storage appliances are, shall we say, not up to the snuff compared to modern websites or consumer products. What are the best examples of good UX design on an IT appliance that you've managed? What was it that made you love it? What should companies (or designers) developing new products look to as best-in-class that they should be striving for?"
China

Helicopter Rescue For All Passengers Aboard Antarctic Research Ship 168

Posted by timothy from the who-pays-for-all-that-rescuing? dept.
The BBC reports (with video) that all aboard the ice-trapped MV Akademik Shokalskiy have been rescued by helicopter, after more than one icebreaker attempt to reach the vessel directly proved too challenging. Also at the New York Times, which reports "The twin-rotored helicopter, based on a Chinese icebreaker, the Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, flew several sorties across miles of packed ice to pluck scientists, tourists and journalists from a makeshift landing zone next to the marooned MV Akademik Shokalskiy research vessel."

Comment Is there an OSS player that will do iTunes libs? (Score 1) 317

by otis wildflower (#45628345) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best FLOSS iTunes Replacement In 2013?

At one point, one of the OSS iTunes replacements could actually properly handle an iTunes Library XML file, assuming you regex replaced the pathing appropriately, but at a certain point it became an unsupported feature. I think it was in early builds of Songbird with iTunes plugin.

Are there any OSS apps that play nice with a live iTunes Library file with playlists, count, rating, etc. support? I currently migrated my iTunes repo to my home NAS and repointed my Macs to it by option-starting iTunes. I'd like to be able to point an OSS app on Linux (or even Windows!) to that same NAS repo and have it Just Work Properly.

Any recommendations on something that actually works well and isn't some buggy pre-beta kludgefest?
United Kingdom

And Now For Something Completely Different: Monty Python Reunion Planned 168

Posted by timothy from the well-then-it's-not-completely-different dept.
cold fjord writes with this report from The Telegraph: "The original members of Monty Python will reunite more than 30 years after the comedy troupe last worked together. John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Michael Palin will officially announce their reformation at a London press conference on Thursday. The five surviving members have reportedly been in months of secret talks about getting the Flying Circus back on the road. The reunion comes after several failed attempts to reform by the group. However, according to The Sun, the surviving members realised 'it was now or never,' and had decided to embark upon 'a fully-fledged reunion.'" Related stories include this commentary, one take on the best of Python and this negative reaction, too.
Power

US Electrical Grid On the Edge of Failure 293

Posted by Soulskill from the but-investing-in-infrastructure-isn't-sexy dept.
ananyo writes "Facebook can lose a few users and remain a perfectly stable network, but where the national grid is concerned, simple geography dictates that it is always just a few transmission lines from collapse, according to a mathematical study of spatial networks. The upshot of the study is that spatial networks are necessarily dependent on any number of critical nodes whose failure can lead to abrupt — and unpredictable — collapse. The warning comes ten years after a blackout that crippled parts of the midwest and northeastern United States and parts of Canada. In that case, a series of errors resulted in the loss of three transmission lines in Ohio over the course of about an hour. Once the third line went down, the outage cascaded towards the coast, cutting power to some 50 million people. The authors say that this outage is an example of the inherent instability the study describes. But others question whether the team's conclusions can really be extrapolated to the real world. 'The problem is that this doesn't reflect the physics of how the power grid operates,' says Jeff Dagle, an electrical engineer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, who served on the government task force that investigated the 2003 outage."
AI

Death of the Car Salesman? BMW Makes AI App To Sell Electric Cars 168

Posted by Soulskill from the i'm-sorry-dave,-i-can't-let-you-walk-off-the-lot-without-this-beauty dept.
cartechboy writes "You thought Willy Loman had it bad. BMW is launching an artificial intelligence app allowing consumers to ask questions about its new BMW i3 electric car without the hassle of having to pick up the phone or go into a dealership. Potential customers can text a simple question about the i3 and the system builds an appropriate response in real-time using AI — interpreting words, sentiment, and context. The futuristic robo-car salesman was developed by 19-year-old entrepreneur Dmitry Aksenov and operates around the clock. No word on whether the app says, 'Wait here — I'll check with my sales manager,' like human car dealers often do."

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