Lets examine how much time $443 million will buy us for budget examination... The 2011 budget expenditures are an estimated $3.82 trillion. So $443 million out of $3.82 trillion is 0.000116 of our budget. or 0.0116 % of the budget. If we spread that spending evenly throughout the year then 0.0116% of the 8760 hours in the year accounts for 0.99 hours. That's right -- less than one hour. That $443 million dollars will buy us less than one hour of time for budget examination. The cost of the wars in Iran and Iraq, however, was over $1 trillion. That would have bought us over 9 days per year every year over the last 10 years.

Good point... The summary left off an important bit of information from TFA:

"Based on that technology, MIT researchers have made a button-sized power generator fueled by butane that can run three times longer than a lithium-ion battery of the same weight; the device can then be recharged instantly, just by snapping in a tiny cartridge of fresh fuel"

So... using this to convert butane to electrical energy it lasts three times longer than a lithium-ion battery of the same weight.

But if you look at energy density of the two fuel sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

You find that butane/propane/gas/diesel is about 45 megajoules / kg and Li-ion batteries store about 0.75 megajoule / kg. Converted energy 2.25 megajoules (3x Li-Ion) out of stored energy 45 megajoules = 5% efficiency rate converting butane heat to electrical energy using this device.

--David

News flash: There is nothing preventing companies from developing DRM or closed binaries on linux. nVidia already has closed binaries, hulu (with drm obviously) runs on a linux OS. The reason companies don't support linux desktop is solely because the linux desktop market is so small that companies do not see a profit benefit in supporting it. So email your favorite(?) company and let them know you are a linux user and you would like for them to support linux.

Replace the URL bar with a tool to support more than just one command? Isn't that what keyword searches are for? I find the firefox URL bar to be extremely useful when combined with keyword searches. Here's how:

Go to any search field for instance the google search box, right click and choose "Add a Keyword for this Search...".

Give the search a single character "keyword" (eg g for google).

Now when you want to do a search you can do the following sequence:

Ctl-L # access the URL bar
Keyword [SEARCH TERMS] # eg "g slashdot" will perform a google search for slashdot

These are some of the keyword searches I use most often:

p for pubmed
g for google
gs for google scholar
gm for google maps
w for wikipedia
d for duckduckgo
ed for english dictionary
sd for spanish dictionary

The URL bar is by far the most useful feature of Firefox!

You and the GP are missing the point here. God, obviously, will borrow Santa Clause's sleigh. Santa doesn't deliver all the presents at once, right? It takes time for him to ride his sleigh across the sky. So *logically* God will be driving Santa's magic sleigh across the sky approximately 6 hours behind the sun. Or maybe he's hitching a ride with FSM.

Seriously? ... Let me be the first to welcome you to the world of academic journals.

Ummm.. You guys do realize that "hydropower" means hydroelectric power? As in dammed rivers. Not "hydrogen power" as in hydrogen batteries? The parent is right, "hydrogen power" is just a form of portable energy. The GP whooshed. All of the alternative energies listed consist of converting a significant natural energy resource (like shining sun, blowing wind ... falling water) into electricity, with hamster power obviously being our most precious natural resource.

If only that were true. Video: intel i915.modeset=1, ATI nomodeset (until questionable drivers are installed). Downloading and compiling drivers for wifi (the new one I bought cause there was no chance of it working with an old card I dug up). Even after the headache of getting everything up and running X has crashed a few times. With Windows it just works. As much as it pains me to say that, its true. I am thinking I should go back to Fedora (first jump from Fedora to Ubuntu -- was with RedHat since well before Fedora split off and 10.04 has been a nightmare). You guys who say Ubuntu is best for hardware compatibility must be purchasing only hardware pre-screened to work. If you have a legacy system or didn't spec out every purchase for linux compatibility then it's a real pain in the ass. I would rather have out of the box hardware support over look and feel, bundled packages or anything else.

Good call not allowing an ipod in a physics class...

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/matlab-mobile/id370976661?mt=8

Get the 4 function calculators. You can test physics knowledge with a 4 function calculator. I would say a 3x4 index card (or a formula sheet) would also be acceptable. That way you could better test their ability to apply formulas rather than memorize them. If a student needs a translation dictionary then there are very reasonably priced self contained models available. Well worth the investment for any class that allows it.

And Tracfone/Net10 uses the ATT network which, in the US, is 10x better than T-Mobile. You couldn't pay me to use T-Mobile's network. You mean I get to have calls dropped, calls missed and a plain inability to call out most of the places I go for only $45 / month?! OH BOY! Where do I sign up!