Comment Re:Half!?!? (Score 1) 557
The major losses are not in transmission, they are in converting the energy stored in the coal, gas,... to electric energy. For a coal plant, this process is about 40% efficient.
Comment Re:So? (Score 1) 557
You should also consider the efficiency of the power plant when calculating the difference between NG and electric heat. The efficiency of a typical coal fired electric plant (most common in USA) is about 40%. So for every 1W of energy it produces it uses about 2.5W. Therefore, 1W of heat from your electric light bulb will require 2.5W of energy (Neglecting any distribution losses). 1W of heat from NG (assuming 90% efficient furnace and 10% distribution overhead) will use about 1.25W of energy.
This is why resistive heating is not a great option for heating.
If you do the same calculation for a heat pump running at 250% efficiency: 1W output => (1/250%)/40% = 1W input.
Submission + - A Verizon iPhone May Be on the Way
Hugh Pickens writes: "The WSJ is reporting that Apple plans to produce a new iPhone later this year that will work with phone carriers other than AT&T. According to sources, the new iPhone will work with CDMA, used by Verizon Wireless, AT&T's main competitor, as well as Sprint Nextel Corp. and a handful of cellular operators in countries including South Korea and Japan. For AT&T, the Apple relationship has been crucial, helping to make the carrier the US leader in the lucrative smart-phone market and for several quarters, AT&T's growth has come almost single-handedly from the iPhone. Verizon has publicly stated its interest in the iPhone, but people familiar with the situation say Apple originally decided against developing a phone for Verizon to keep its development process simple since CDMA is incompatible with the GSM standard used by AT&T. The GSM iPhone will cotinue to be made by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. while the CDMA iPhone model will be made by Pegatron Technology Corp., the contract manufacturing subsidiary of Taiwan's ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Making the iPhone available through Verizon, which has over 91 million customers, as well as potentially other CDMA carriers could open up a significant new market for Apple. Since Apple already dominates smart-phone sales through existing partners, so "sooner rather than later, Apple is going to have to look to find incremental distribution," says analyst Toni Sacconaghi who estimates Verizon could help Apple nearly double the number of iPhone users in the US. A Verizon iPhone may still just be a pipe dream. Still, Yukari Iwatani Kane, co-author of the article, has previously reported some Apple rumors in the Wall Street Journal that turned out to be fairly accurate — so maybe that grain of salt doesn't have to be quite so big."
Submission + - Malware capital of the world is Shaoxing, China (zdnet.com)
suraj.sun writes: Symantec announced on Monday that Shaoxing, China was malware capital of the world last month. That’s just one of the takeaways in the company’s March 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report, an analysis of the origins of targeted attacks and malicious emails used to gain access to sensitive corporate data.
According to Symantec’s research, nearly 30 percent of all malicious attacks came from China — with 21.3 percent from Shaoxing alone. Runner-up to the crown was Taipei, at 16.5 percent, with London taking the bronze at 14.8 percent.
On a national scale, China trumped all, followed by Romania, with 21.1 percent of attempted attacks, and the United States, with 13.8 percent.
Symantec MessageLabs : http://www.messagelabs.com/resources/press/47235
ZDNet : http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=32452
According to Symantec’s research, nearly 30 percent of all malicious attacks came from China — with 21.3 percent from Shaoxing alone. Runner-up to the crown was Taipei, at 16.5 percent, with London taking the bronze at 14.8 percent.
On a national scale, China trumped all, followed by Romania, with 21.1 percent of attempted attacks, and the United States, with 13.8 percent.
Symantec MessageLabs : http://www.messagelabs.com/resources/press/47235
ZDNet : http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=32452
Submission + - Self-Destructing USB Stick Sold as Un-Hackable 3
Hugh Pickens writes: "PC World reports that Victorinox, maker of the legendary Swiss Army Knife, has launched a new super-secure memory stick that sounds like something out of Mission: Impossible. The Secure Pro USB comes in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB sizes, and provides a variety of security measures including fingerprint identification, a thermal sensor, and even a self-destruct mechanism. Victorinox says the Secure is "the most secure [device] of its kind available to the public." The Secure features a fingerprint scanner and a thermal sensor "so that the finger alone, detached from the body, will still not give access to the memory stick's contents." The product uses an integrated Single Chip Technology, so that there are no external and accessible lines between the different coding/security steps, as on multi-chip solutions making cracking the hardware impossible. Then there's the self-destruct mechanism. While offering no explanation of how it works, Victorinox will only say that if someone tries to forcibly open the memory stick it triggers a self-destruct mechanism that "irrevocably burns [the Secure's] CPU and memory chip." At a contest held in London, Victorinox put its money where its mouth was and put the Secure Pro to the test offering a £100,000 cash prize ($149,000) to a team of professional hackers if they could break into the USB drive within two hours. They failed."
Comment Re:Interesting (Score 1) 389
To send me coupons in the mail.
Comment Re:Interesting (Score 1) 389
I suppose if the kid got into my salon's database he/she would learn my name, phone number, address, and that I like my hair cut with a number 2 guard and my sideburns trimmed.
I could be concerned if 75% of this information was not in the White Pages.
Comment Re:Tax Cheats? (Score 1) 325
All over the US there are private roads and people voluntarily pay tolls to travel them because, brace yourself again, they provide a much more pleasant commute. They deal with traffic congestion immediately, they undertake repairs and maintenance quickly and effectively, without bloated government bureaucracy making repairs and improvements take years and cost tax payers millions of dollars and they do it with their own money.
Toll roads work pretty well for highways, but they would be a nightmare for surface streets. If corporation XYZ controls the street connecting your driveway to the outside world, you are pretty much screwed if they decide jack the toll rate up. What would your solution be? Would you have multiple toll roads connecting to your house so you could decide which way would be the cheapest way to travel to work? Expanding or building new roads would be more expensive and slower then it is now as corporations would not have emanate domain to fall back on if someone won't sell.
Comment Who reads this?? (Score 1) 367
99% of data that is worth accessing is accessed enough to ensure it is in a readable format. As far as the other 1%, it will give our children of the future something to do. Sounds like another stupid excuse for everything to be open and free. Some things are better proprietary and expensive.
Multifunction Printers — The Forgotten Security Risk? 153
eweekhickins writes to share an article in eWeek highlighting the forgotten risks that a multifunction printer could possibly offer. Brendan O'Connor first called attention to the vulnerabilities of these new devices at a Black Hat talk in '06 and warns that these are no longer "dumb" machine sitting in the corner and should be treated with their own respective security strategy. "During his Black Hat presentation in 2006, O'Connor picked apart the security model of a Xerox WorkCentre MFP, showing how the device operated more like a low-end server or workstation than a copier or printer--complete with an AMD processor, 256MB of SDRAM and an 80GB hard drive and running Linux, Apache and PostGreSQL. He showed how the authentication on the device's Web interface can be easily bypassed to launch commands to completely hijack a new Xerox WorkCentre machine."
