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Comment Re:Odd... (Score 1) 164

by ElectricRook (#28119659) Attached to: Revived LHC Could Run Through the Winter

That thing costs how many billions, and they shut it down because of higher electricity rates?

I thought it would have its own power generators.

What's the total cost of ownership compared to the cost of power?

I guess they don't have the concept of "the cost of lost opportunity"

Comment Re:24 hour charge?? (Score 1) 196

by ElectricRook (#28103933) Attached to: Green GT's All-Electric Supercar Unveiled

Um... Stock car race?

There are many classes of racing, many of them very close to stock production with the addition of safety equipment.

However not having a top speed of 250MPH kind of takes the appeal out of it.

I have a friend that races in a mazda miata class.

But it's important to remember that a motor racing hobby is much more expensive and addictive than say Heroin.... (er maybe not quite more addictive)

Comment Re:24 hour charge?? (Score 1) 196

by ElectricRook (#28103809) Attached to: Green GT's All-Electric Supercar Unveiled

An electric car will do pretty well. It can provide a good weight to horse power ratio. One of the challenges in electric cars, is battery life. Discharge a lead acid battery more than 10%, and it's life goes from years to weeks. In a race, you don't care about battery life past the race. And with some engineering, a battery swap could come down to a reasonable pit stop.

But the sex-appeal of something that does not rock the stands, or throw a flame is really low.
Intel

Submission + - Intel's Nehalem EX to gain error correction (idg.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Intel's eight-core Nehalem EX server processor will include a technology derived from its high-end Itanium chips that helps to reduce data corruption and ensure reliable server performance. The processor will include an error correction feature called MCA Recovery, which will detect and fix errors that could otherwise cause systems to crash — it will be able to detect system errors originating in the CPU or system memory and work with the operating system to correct them."
Earth

Submission + - Paint the World White to Fight Global Warming 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Dr. Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white and said at the opening of the St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium that by lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the color of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world's cars off the roads for 11 years. Pale surfaces reflect up to 80 per cent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20 per cent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed. An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning. Since 2005 California has required all flat roofs on commercial buildings to be white and Georgia and Florida give incentives to owners who install white or light-colored roofs. Put another way, boosting how much urban rooftops reflect would be a one-time carbon-offset equivalent to preventing 44 billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. For the first time, we're equating the value of reflective roof surfaces and CO2 reduction," says Dr. Hashem Akbari. "This does not make the problem of global warming go away. But we can buy ourselves some time.""
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - The 787, The Electric Airplane (therunningtally.com)

Submitted by
Drivintin
Drivintin writes: " Here is a piece highlighting the first electric start of a large turbine engine. The Boeing 787, Dreamliner, is shifting away from not only bleed air systems, but in some cases even hydraulic systems to electrical ones. This in THEORY should increase safety and reliability. There is even a video showing the first electric start of the engines."
Idle

Submission + - Playing a DVD: Harder Than Rocket Science? (myway.com)

Submitted by dacut
dacut writes: After successfully repairing the Hubble Space Telescope, astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis found themselves with a free day due to thunderstorms which delayed their return. They attempted to pass the time by watching movies, only to find that their laptops did not have the proper software, and Houston was unable to help. No word, alas, on what software was involved, though we can assume that software/codec updates are a tad difficult when you're orbiting the planet at 17,200MPH.
Portables

Submission + - Canonical Giveth the Gift of Android-on-Ubuntu (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ArsTechnica reports that "At the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, Canonical has unveiled a prototype Android execution environment that will allow Android applications to run on the Ubuntu Linux distribution."
Space

Submission + - Space rock yields carbon bounty (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Formic acid, a molecule implicated in the origins of life, has been found at record levels on a meteorite that fell into a Canadian lake in 2000. Cold temperatures on Tagish Lake prevented the volatile chemical from dissipating quickly. On Earth, formic acid is commonly found in the stings of insects such as ants, but Professor Sephton it is likely to have been an important "ingredient in the kitchen" on Earth before life began. The acid is known to act as a "reducing agent" — acting as a magnet for oxygen atoms during chemical reactions — and facilitate the conversion of some amino acids into others. It may also be implicated in the transformation of the more primitive RNA into DNA.
Security

Submission + - Phony TCP Retransmissions Can Hide Secret Messages 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "New Scientist reports that a team of steganographers at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland have figured out how to send hidden messages using the internet's transmission control protocol (TCP) using a method that might help people in totalitarian regimes avoid censorship. Web, file transfer, email and peer-to-peer networks all use TCP, which ensures that data packets are received securely by making the sender wait until the receiver returns a "got it" message. If no such acknowledgement arrives (on average 1 in 1000 packets gets lost or corrupted), the sender's computer sends the packet again in a system known as TCP's retransmission mechanism. The new steganographic system, dubbed retransmission steganography (RSTEG), relies on the sender and receiver using software that deliberately asks for retransmission even when email data packets are received successfully. "The receiver intentionally signals that a loss has occurred," says Wojciech Mazurczyk. "The sender then retransmits the packet but with some secret data inserted in it." Could a careful eavesdropper spot that RSTEG is being used because the first sent packet is different from the one containing the secret message? As long as the system is not over-used, apparently not, because if a packet is corrupted the original packet and the retransmitted one will differ from each other anyway, masking the use of RSTEG."
The Internet

Submission + - European Parliament in for shock from Pirate Party (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the European Parliament elections coming up it's a chance for residents of different countries to make a difference with the parties they vote for to represent their interests. One such party that looks set to win a number of seats is called The Pirate Party and is standing for Sweden. It has already become the third most popular party in the country and is now expected to do well in the elections. Rick Falk Vinge, the leader of The Pirate Party, said: "Our politicians are digital illiterates ... We need politicians that will not let themselves be bullied by foreign powers. To vote in the EU elections is more important than ever before."

Comment Re:Prediction (Score 4, Insightful) 403

by ElectricRook (#28035751) Attached to: Right-to-Repair Law To Get DRM Out of Your Car

in Socialist Europe, 60-70% taxation.

Here on the Left coast, we're already there...

California state income tax is ~10%, California sales tax is 9%, Federal income tax is 36%, SSI 6%, Medicare 2%, plus all the little add on stuff to the phone bill, electricity, vehicle license fee.

Except that my RSU stocks are taxed at 70% of value the day they are granted. So they are basically worthless... (RSUs are Registered Shares that high tech workers now get instead of options, thank the Carpenters Union)

A friend of mine lost his house over RSUs, he did not unload them when he received them. In the 2001 crash, they went from $70 to $13, and the tax bill was 70% of $70, so he had a tax bill of $49 on an asset worth $13. Multiply this by a few thousand RSUs.

The tax man was less than sympathetic.

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