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Earth

Submission + - Solving the Energy Crisis by Tripling Electricity (withouthotair.com) 2

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: Sounds crazy, but as with all of University of Cambridge Prof. David J. C. MacKay's thinking, there's logic to back it up, along with a welcome dollop of British wit. His new book, "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" (available free online and in hard copy and released under a Creative Commons license), is a roadmap for kicking our fossil fuel habit. Along the way, MacKay demolishes "codswallop" arguments on both sides of the debate, and explains why tripling electricity demand is the solution. In MacKay's holistic approach, transportation and space heating move from fossil fuels to renewable electricity. The beauty of consuming very large amounts of extra electricity for transport and heating is that these two forms of demand are "easily-switch-off-and-on-able," MacKay says. A smart grid that controls vehicle charging and pumping into heat-stores matches demand to renewables' fluctuating supply, overcoming one of their biggest drawbacks. A recent review in Science magazine (PDF download) calls the book "a must-read analysis" and "found MacKay's book by turns exhilarating and terrifying."
Image

Powering Restaurants WIth Deep Fried Fuel Screenshot-sm 148

Posted by samzenpus from the the-power-of-grease dept.
Mike writes "Here's a brilliant idea for biofuels: rather than filtering used fry oil for use in vehicles, why not simplify matters and use it to heat and power the restaurant itself? The VegaWatt turns used vegetable oil into clean heat and energy for restaurants, eliminating the dirty and costly mess of oil disposal while producing 10-25% of the electricity needed to run a small restaurant. It also produces fuel free of chemicals or fossil fuels, unlike standard biodiesel."

GrandCentral Reborn As Google Voice 206

Posted by CmdrTaco from the probably-should-try-that-out-again dept.
Some anonymous person wrote in to say that Google has relaunched and rebranded GrandCentral as "Google Voice." The article says it will "revolutionize telephones. It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens." Sadly, the voicemail didn't integrate very nicely w/ my phone back in the day, so I guess I should give it a shot.
Power

New Electrode Lets Batteries Charge In 10 Seconds 348

Posted by samzenpus from the greased-electricity dept.
Al writes "A new lithium-ion electrode allows batteries to be charged and discharged in 10 seconds flat. Developed by Gerbrand Ceder, a professor of materials science at MIT, it could be particularly useful where rapid power bursts are needed, such as for hybrid cars, but also for portable electronic devices. In testing, batteries incorporating the electrodes discharged in just 10 seconds. In comparison, the best high-power lithium-ion batteries today discharge in a minute and a half, and conventional lithium-ion batteries, such as those found in laptops, can take hours to discharge. The new high rate electrode, the researchers calculate, would allow a one-liter battery based on the material to deliver 25,000 watts, or enough power for about 20 vacuum cleaners."
Television

Norwegian Broadcasting Sets Up Its Own Tracker 187

Posted by timothy from the some-things-are-neutral dept.
eirikso writes with an interesting story from Norway; the state broadcaster there has decided to put up some of its content on BitTorrent. "The tracker is based on the same OpenTracker software that the Pirate Bay has been using for the last couple of years. By using BitTorrent we can reach our audience with full quality, unencrypted media files. Experience from our early tests show that if we're the best provider of our own content we also gain control of it."
Unix

Why Do We Name Servers the Way We Do? 1397

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-no-more-muppets-please dept.
jfruhlinger writes "If you use a Unix machine, it probably has a funny name. And if you work in an environment where there are multiple Unix machines, they probably have funny names that are variations on a theme. No, you're not the only one! This article explores the phenomenon, showing that even the CIA uses a whimsical server naming scheme." What are some of your best (worst?) naming schemes?

Comment Re:25 years of .... (Score 1) 342

by Tragek (#26632687) Attached to: Plug-In Architecture On the Way For GCC

The FSF are the fundamentalists of the software world, in all fashions.

Read the rationale for this: "Developing nonfree software is not good for society, and we have no obligation to make it easier." No mention of the possibility that developers may be able to decide on their own.
Transportation

Scientists Teleport Information Between Ions a Meter Apart 220

Posted by Soulskill from the perfecting-those-heisenberg-compensators dept.
erickhill writes with word that scientists from the University of Maryland have successfully transferred information from one charged atom to another without having it cross the intervening space of about one meter. The academic paper is available in the journal Science, though it requires a subscription to see more than the abstract. Scientists have previously teleported unmolested qubits between photons of light, and between photons and clouds of atoms. But researchers have long sought to teleport qubits between distant atoms. Light's high speed of travel makes photons good transporters of information, but for storing quantum information, atoms are a much better choice because they're easier to hold on to. 'This is a big deal,' comments Myungshik Kim, a quantum physicist at Queen's University Belfast in the United Kingdom. 'To store information as it is in quantum form, you have to have a teleportation scheme available between two stationary qubits. Then you can store them and manipulate them later on.'"

Comment Re:Good analysis (Score 1) 785

by Tragek (#26427061) Attached to: In-Depth With the Windows 7 Public Beta

Well, the point he made about the new taskbar being "better", though "cribbed from cupertino".... I find that the ultimate hilarity. the one thing most people I know who use OS X _dislike_ is the dock. Myself included (though, I find pinning the dock to be significantly better, and that's basically done by default I think in 7. (to pin: defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start) )

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