Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Just one problem (Score 1) 725

So the point is : why keep a perfectly working calendar thats accurate to 1 day in 3000 years for one in which we have to introduce a leap week every couple of years.

Yea, why not.
Though why stop there when you can just label the days 1-365, add a leap day every 4 years as usual and then just split the days up in chunks of 25 days and give them new names, then organize new weeks with 10 days in them of which 3 are weekend days, two in the end and one in the fourth day, .
And yea the weekdays need new names as well, we are keeping fridays cause i like fridays, but it's now on day 8, also thursday, cause it's named after thor and who can argue with the god of thunder.
Sundays, mondays and thuresdays are definitely gone, humpday need to be given a suggestive name and finally one of the days need to be named after the currently hottest girl at the time of it's adoption, i vote for Bianca Beauchamp.
The whole thing gets reset every day 1, so all the weekdays end up at the same place every time.
however 365 isn't evenly divisible by 25, so this means that the 15:th month is tiny (only 15-16 days), but it's the holiday month after all in where you place Christmas (or at least a version of it) on day 9 which is coincidentally right on the start of a weekend (you could even make it a 3 day weekend) it's Christmas after all.

Comment this algorithm doesn't handle turns that well (Score 1) 514

I have a self propelled lawnmower so as long as i hold a lever an just calmly walk behind it mowing is not an issue.
That is until i try to turn which requires me to use a comparatively large amount of force, it also takes a lot of time as you sort of have to stop, turn then go.
And this is where i think the algorithm is flawed, as it doesn't consider turns but only area covered.
I find just keeping to the outer edge of the unmoved area works best while straightening out curves as best as possible, then just mowing it sector by sector (as ours is not exactly convex in shape)

Comment Re:Video (Score 1) 289

If i understand the design correctly then it might just be able to sort of autorotate, if the rotors have enough inertia built in.
In case of engine failure it would configure the blades so that air rushing by would turn the rotors and then just before impact it would reconfigure the blades again for maximum lift and use that rotor speed to dampen the fall, just like a helicopter.
Though i would probably still prefer to use a parachute and an extra engine just in case.

Comment M$ would loose (Score 1) 617

if the law was enacted it would take a whole 45 seconds for someone to find an instance in where Microsoft did something with pirated software and then sue them relentlessly.
in fact pretty much everyone could sue everyone, even i with the microscopic amounts of software i made could sue everyone that sells everything from apple products to jet fighters, so no this is a non issue, it will never pass and if it did the courts would trow every case out the window for being really unpractical.
there are pirated software on every computer and i think in a lot of those cases Microsoft put it there.

Comment 5-8: but it's still ok (Score 1) 497

But their high quality with surgeprotectors and what not, besides one of them only runs like cellphone chargers and a few external HDDs.
Also their swedish so i could probably run another strip of it or two before anything starts to happen with them.
Though im thinking of replacing them with something better and sturdier perhaps even home made, with power monitoring.

Comment there is no difference (Score 1) 468

I can still judge people pretty accuratly on how much people know and care about their zodiac.
If they know anything more than what their sign is and if they care more than nothing about it then it's best to give them a wide berth for when they inevitably explode from drinking rocket fuel and colloidal silver.

Comment Re:Never (Score 1) 606

Current models do generate enough power.
A 100HP engine can generate about 75KW of electric power(given an ideal power conversion), if used correctly trough some magic electric thruster with a 100% efficiency rating it should be able to hold over 7500KG in an hover, normal cars weigh less than a third of that.

The main problem is really to convert that energy to motion, vasimir engines has an efficiency rating of like 0,000025N/W (though that engine is made for fuel efficiency not energy efficiency), ideally it should be close to 1N/W.

Ducted electric fans, and so on has a similar problem with efficiency and it's not until you get to helicopter sized blades it's really viable for lift, but then it's not really a flying car any more. and the noise pollution of millions of such cars would be a problem.

Riding om magnetic fields is a cute idea, but would require an prohibitively huge amount of power, also nothing could ever be made from ferromagnetic metals anymore.

So no the power is not the problem, it's power conversion into something useful that's the problem, and that lies may nobel prices away.

Comment Re:HDR? (Score 1) 287

Actually that link has mostly just tonemapped images with saturation turned up really high, some of those weren't even HDR from the beginning, while some of them use the double exposure manual cropping method, in which you expose the sky and the rest separately and photoshop them together.
True hdr should look like a normal image on a normal screen, perhaps the dynamic range can get compressed or tonemapped a little bit, but not totally.
ON an HDR display though it's another issue as it should have areas that are really dark and ones that are blindingly bright.

Comment Re:Diesel (Score 1) 1141

not really, diesel engines are more efficient because they don't waste as much fuel producing heat.

If you take two engines that has the same amount of HP you would see that the diesel is in fact larger.

Though those jetta engines are a bit crappy, it should be getting around 50MPG if it was fitted with a simmilar European engine.
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/#/new/jetta/which-model/engines/fuel-consumption

Slashdot Top Deals

It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

Working...