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Comment Bacteria = 360 MWh, Solar = 2,569 MWh (Score 1) 386

If I did my math right, 10,000 gallons of gasoline is approximatley 360,000 kWh. Each acre is ~4046 square meters so the incident solar energy is approximately 2023 kW assuming approximately 500 W/m2. Assuming 12 hours of light a day results in 8,860,740 kWh of incident solar energy. Taking the 29% efficiency number from wikipedia yields a final total of 2,569,600. So a first order estimate says the bacteria will yield 360 MWh versus 2,569 MWh for solar. I'm sure there are other considerations I left out including how much it would cost both in energy and dollars to create a one acre field of each, but I was curious how the numbers compared as well.
Classic Games (Games)

Hank Chien Reclaims Donkey Kong High Score 122

An anonymous reader writes "If you can say anything about Hank Chien, it's that he evidently doesn't take defeat very well. Sure, he knew not so deep down that his Donkey Kong World Record score wouldn't last forever, but he couldn't have foreseen that it would have been toppled so quickly. Twice, even. But he also knew that more Kong competition would be coming his way; namely Richie Knucklez Kong-Off in March. So Hank had something to prove, and prove he did. Scoring a massive 1,068,000 points in less than three hours, Hank has officially reclaimed the high score in Nintendo’s 1981 arcade classic."

Comment College Football != Entire Athletic Program (Score 3, Informative) 177

I believe the parent of this thread was specifically referring to college footbal, as this is the sport that has the highest paid coaches. The first reference you provide (don't have time to read the second one) is about athletic programs as a whole. You would likely find, that without football, athletic programs would lose substantially more.

Some quick googling found me the following article from 2006, http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/04/commentary/column_sportsbiz/sportsbiz/. One pertinent line is "USC's profit as a percentage of revenue is just 43 percent, below the average of 48 percent for all the reporting bowl teams [55], even when you include the 11 schools which lost money on their football programs. The top 20 football programs in terms of revenue have profit margins of about 60 percent, on average." And even these stats leave out secondary benefits, such as increased enrollment, donations, ...

Image

Selling Incandescent Light Bulbs As Heating Devices 557

Csiko writes "The European Union has banned by law trading of incandescent light bulbs due to their bad efficiency/ecology (most of the energy is transformed into heat). A company is now trying to bypass this restriction by offering their incandescent light bulb products as a heating device (article in German) instead of a light device. Still, their 'heat balls' give light as well as heating. So — every law can be bypassed if you have some creativity!"

Comment or Seagate... (Score 1) 516

I had tried over and over to build a computer that would work well for playing video and that would be easy to control, the video always seemed a little jerky, couldn't get the remote quite right, so I finally gave up a bought a Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ (www.Newegg.com P/N: N82E16822148499). It was on sale for $70 when I bought it, then went on sale for $50, now is out of stock. If it can be found anywhere, I would recommend it because it works great for me (sounds like I was looking to do the same thing). It can connect to my Windows shared drive and play the HD content perfectly. It can also access miscellaneous online sites like YouTube and NetFlix. I haven't had it long enough to see if there are easy ways to search and find media on the network shares, but I don't have a problem just browsing to the right folder and selecting the right file. I don't know how this device compares to the WD, but one thing I did notice about the WD is that the component video comes out of a little 1/4" jack + adapter, which I didn't think would be as robust as the RCA type plugs.

Comment Re:MATLAB ~= fast (Score 1) 334

There are many ways to avoid for loops in MATLAB. If there isn't a way to avoid the for loop it is usually because of the number of operations that are going on in the loop. If that many operations are going on in the for loop than the overhead of the for loop is diluted.

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