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The Almighty Buck

British Columbia To Charge Recycling Fee 172

Posted by kdawson from the pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Next week the province of British Columbia will begin adding a recycling fee to new computers and TVs to pay for their free electronics recycling program. The list of what is acceptable for recycling is short, namely computers, printers, and TVs — you cannot recycle personal audio players or cell phones. What is unclear is whether the definition of 'desktop computer' includes self-built computers, and if so, their plans for adding fees for individual components such as motherboards, etc." The article notes that the recovered e-waste will not be sent to developing countries for processing. But one report says that the e-waste won't be recycled at all, but rather burned in a smelter.

Change Google's Background Color To Save Energy? 519

Posted by CowboyNeal from the turned-off-until-further-notice dept.
i_like_spam writes "Recent commentary at Nature Climate Change describes an on-going debate about the energy savings associated with the background colors used by high-traffic websites such as Google and the NYTimes. A back of the envelope calculation has suggested energy savings of 750 Megawatt hours per year if Google switched their background from white to black. In response, a new version of Google called Blackle was created. However, other calculations by the Wall Street Journal suggest minimal energy savings."
Wireless Networking

Cell Towers Not Responsible For Illness 355

Posted by kdawson from the tinfoil-underwear dept.
drewmoney notes a BBC article on a major UK study of whether cell towers (or "mobile phone masts" as they are called in the UK) cause illness. The study concluded strongly that symptoms of illness caused by mobile phone masts are all in the mind. People claiming sensitivity to radio emissions showed more symptoms in trials, according to the article, whether signals were being emitted or not. Quoting: "Dozens of people who believed the masts triggered symptoms such as anxiety, nausea and tiredness could not detect if signals were on or off in trials. However, the Environmental Health Perspectives study stressed people were nonetheless suffering 'real symptoms.' Campaign group Mast Sanity said the results were skewed as 12 people in the trials dropped out because of illness."
Upgrades

Submission + - New "Air Mouse" Freespace motion-control L (blogsome.com)

Submitted by
Matthew Erwin
Matthew Erwin writes: "Logitech MX Air Mouse http://dailytech.blogsome.com/2007/07/14/logitech- mx-air-mouse/ New release of Logitech MX Air Mouse Freespace motion-control, gesture command, and wireless. Offers new way to navigate your computer easily. Unlike ordinary mouse, you don't need to put the Logitech MX Air Mouse on the table to make it work. You can use Logitech MX Air Mouse from the comfort of your bed (it works just like TV remote controller), absolutely sounds great... Logitech MX Air Mouse adopted new technologies to make this mouse works like a magic: Freespace motion-control, gesture command, and wireless. The suggested price for Logitech MX Air Mouse set at $149.99 and will come to America (as Beckham did) next month. [Logitech MX Air Mouse]"
Media

Submission + - HD DVD outsells Blu-ray in Europe (hdtvinfo.eu) 1

Submitted by
Xbm360
Xbm360 writes: "HD DVD players have a bigger market share then Blu-ray players in Europe according to a HD DVD lobby group. http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/content/view/61/1/ Although these figures seems very positive for the European DVD lobby group, these figures doesn't reflect the sales of the cheapest Blu-ray player; the Playstation 3, because the research does only reflect the stand-alone players."
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA Demo: Ultra Realistic Human Head

Submitted by
Bozdemir
Bozdemir writes: "Finally we will able to control real-like characters, Nvidia unleashed a new technology, this is a nice proof of what will the future games will look like, ultra realism ! It is a new epoch ! Take look at the screen shots. (These are real time screen shots, not a render of hours-long processing :) ) , this is a demo made for GeForce 8800 Ultra, you may learn the details from the demo site of Nvidia. Check out it now ! http://www.buraak.com/2007/05/24/nvidia-demo-human -head/"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Wal-Mart to sell Dell computers

Submitted by
ATMD
ATMD writes: "The BBC is reporting that Wal-Mart is to start selling low-end Dell machines in stores in the USA, Cananda and Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, few further details are given at the moment. Whatever happened to "you can't buy Dell in the shops"?"
Power

Submission + - 644 Horsepower, 350 Mile Range Electric Vehicle

Submitted by the.fukin.man
the.fukin.man writes: Zap the people behind bringing Smart cars to the US. Have made the best prototype vehicle ever." A combination of the lightweight aluminium vehicle architecture, a new efficient drive and advanced battery management systems is intended to enable a range of up to 350 miles between charges, with a rapid 10-minute recharging time. An auxiliary power unit is planned to support longer distance journeys. The good news for sports enthusiasts is the performance courtesy of a killer power-to- weight ratio. — four in-hub electric motors, deliver 161 bhp apiece, which add together for 644 horsepower in all wheel drive mode, and capable of powering the ZAP-X to a top speed of 155mph." Suck it oil. http://www.gizmag.com/go/6780/
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Make an open source brain machine

Submitted by
ptorrone
ptorrone writes: "Here's a video and PDF on how to hack your brain by making Mitch Altman's Brain Machine! (Mitch is the inventor of the TV-B-Gone). The brain machine flashes LEDs into your eyes and beeps sounds into your ears to make your brain waves sync up into beta, alpha, theta, and delta brainwaves. The project builds on another open source project. Mitch used Ladyada's open source MiniPOV (persistence of vision kit) — switched out LEDs and added new capacitors, resistors and then rewrote the firmware to make it into a brain machine."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Why Gnu-Linux will soon be THE gaming OS.

Submitted by dcrockerjr
dcrockerjr writes: After graphics and sound rendering what is the biggest gaming processor hog: AI & path finding. Enter Nvidia's announcement that their graphics cards can be used as an extra processor when not used for graphics. Consider that Gnu-Linux is already used in high end multi-processor supercomputers and blades, and has a lead over windows in making use of extra processors. Add a motherboard manufacturer thats willing to put around 7 graphics card slots on a board. Now add an open source project for AI & path finding acceleration as a GPLv3 alternative to CUDA. Hence: Gnu-Linux THE gaming OS. Nvidia may also find themselves in competition with creative for audio acceleration. In the other corner, as rig prices rise, IBM or Sun could partner with AMD to bring low end blades to gamers. Imagine games like Starcraft with no unit limit... less scripted more responsive games... Links: http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;99052718 6;fp;16;fpid;0 http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1582455.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda.html
Businesses

Submission + - The Price of Flights to Perth, Australia.

Submitted by
ideataxi
ideataxi writes: "The price of Flights to Perth, Australia, over the last 10 years have dropped considerably. This is predominantly because Australia is in the top 3 countries, for Brits to emigrate to each year. Migrationwatch UK state that there are presently 5.5 million expats living abroad, with a third of this number immigrating to Australia solely."
Data Storage

Submission + - Terabyte Hard Drive Review

Submitted by
hungryhamster
hungryhamster writes: "Let's take a look at the first terabyte hard drive, the Deskstar 7K1000 from Hitachi Global Storage, and see just how it performs. For an impressive $399 ($0.39/gig), is it worth your bucks? Extreme Tech provides an in-depth review of Hitachi's first Terabyte HHD. Benchmark Tests, performance charts, and comparisons with other HHDs are included. This is an interesting read. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2131552 ,00.asp"
Power

Submission + - Peak Coal in 15 years?

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Richard Heinberg has written an opinion at Energy Bulletin on two European studies which look at available data on proven coal reserves and consumption patterns which conclude the the 155 year figure for coal use is badly over estimated. Apparently, growth of coal use in China implies peak production there in 5 to 15 years while the US is already in decline in terms of energy extraction though not yet in terms of volume extraction owing to substitution of lower quality coal.

Heinberg discusses a number of implications including for climate change, suggesting that sequestration efforts may be seen as too expensive as coal prices begin to rise. Another idea is that

There is no "business-as-usual" option, even ignoring environmental impacts, given the resource constraints. Nations that are currently dependent on coal — China and the US especially — would be wise to begin reducing consumption now, not only in the interests of climate protection, but also to reduce societal vulnerability arising from dependence on a resource that will soon become more scarce and expensive.
Very few replacement technologies are scalable on this kind of time-scale: bio-fuels are already impacting food prices while the nuclear industry faces permiting, construction and training bottlenecks. Even solar faces a two year energy investment cost despite rapid monetary cost reductions, and , together with wind faces intermittancy issues. This news is unsettling and merits further consideration."
Input Devices

Submission + - The 3D air-mouse you wear as a ring

Submitted by
GadgetMike
GadgetMike writes: "The old pointing device we use every day, the mouse, has been in use for decades now, without suffering any major improvements or concept changes. That until now, when a group of five WPI undergraduates developed something new, the MagicMouse. The goal of this project was to create and advanced method of using software that utilizes 3D coordinates, like Google Earth and others. And what better way of doing this than having a 3D mouse? MagicMouse is a three-dimensional ultrasonic computerised pointing device, that you can wear as a ring around you finger. That's how, this design, easy to use, intuitive and wireless, virtually eliminates the need of using the old mouse.

The final product is small, low powered and extremely discrete. Combine these, the great number of applications that might benefit from it and the fact that it's cheap (155$ worth of parts were used for the concept), and you might get a real winner from the 3D MagicMouse."

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