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Power

New Record For Solar Cell Power Efficiency 351

Posted by kdawson from the onward-to-50% dept.
mdsolar writes "Renewable Energy Access is reporting that a consortium led by researchers at the University of Delaware has achieved 42.8% efficiency with a silicon solar cell. The method uses lower concentration (factor of 20 magnification) than the previous record holder (40.7% efficiency) so that it may have a broader range of applications, since tolerances for pointing the device will be larger. They are now partnering with DuPont to build engineering and manufacturing prototypes. They expect to be in production in 2010. On a roof, such cells would require less than half the surface area to produce the same amount of power as today's standard solar panels, which have an efficiency of about 17%."

Change Google's Background Color To Save Energy? 519

Posted by CowboyNeal from the turned-off-until-further-notice dept.
i_like_spam writes "Recent commentary at Nature Climate Change describes an on-going debate about the energy savings associated with the background colors used by high-traffic websites such as Google and the NYTimes. A back of the envelope calculation has suggested energy savings of 750 Megawatt hours per year if Google switched their background from white to black. In response, a new version of Google called Blackle was created. However, other calculations by the Wall Street Journal suggest minimal energy savings."
Linux Business

Virtual Containerization 185

Posted by kdawson from the v12n-is-for-c14n dept.
AlexGr alerts us to a piece by Jeff Gould up on Interop News. Quoting: "It's becoming increasingly clear that the most important use of virtualization is not to consolidate hardware boxes but to protect applications from the vagaries of the operating environments they run on. It's all about 'containerization,' to employ a really ugly but useful word. Until fairly recently this was anything but the consensus view. On the contrary, the idea that virtualization is mostly about consolidation has been conventional wisdom ever since IDC started touting VMware's roaring success as one of the reasons behind last year's slowdown in server hardware sales."

Is KDE 4.0 the Holy Grail of Desktops? 511

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-does-that-make-gnome-then dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With KDE 4.0 being expected some time this year, expectation runs high in the linux/unix users camp and the media read a lot between the lines of what the KDE developers say and do. In some ways KDE will provide a standard as to how a desktop should look and behave. This interesting article wonders whether KDE 4.0 will become the complete desktop which will meet the needs of a wide cross section of computer users. One of the common complaints that some Linux users have over KDE is that it is too cluttered. And by addressing this need without putting off the power users, the KDE developers could make it an all in one Desktop. Keep in mind that KDE 4.0 is based on Qt 4.0 and so can be easily ported to Windows and other OSes too which makes this thought doubly relevant."

Comment Re:Google toolbar (Score 1) 181

by White Shadow (#13646299) Attached to: Google Firefox Toolbar Out Of Beta
Some of the features of the Google Toolbar are a bit computationally expensive (although I'm surprised creating a new window is so slow). One thing you can do is to remove buttons that you're not using from the toolbar; they won't use any extra CPU that way. This can be done by going to View -> Toolbars -> Customize (or right click on the toolbar and select Customize). From there, drag away any buttons that you don't plan on using. Also, simply hiding the toolbar isn't sufficient, you need to remove it from the toolbar completely. I hope that helps speed up your browser.

Comment Virus isn't gone just because you ran anti-virus (Score 1) 579

by Zelxyb (#12414413) Attached to: Handling Viruses in an Uncontrolled Network?
I feel like the highly-rated comments all miss one of the most important points: Once you're infected, running an anti-virus program doesn't fix your problems.

To me it sounds like it isn't that people don't want to have a "good" computer, but rather that they need to reinstall their operating system (and patch, etc.) but don't.

Comment Re:Not quite good enough but its a start... (Score 1) 217

by schlach (#11322106) Attached to: CBS Cleans House In Wake of Erroneous Story
I think you hit the nail on the head, there.

It gets to the point where your Republican senator has been there since time-immemorial, is a committee chair, and even though you disagree with him on everything, you still think, "Well, what could a freshman Democrat do for me? Is this guy really that bad? I mean, he's bringing home $50 million in "free" money for a fake indoor rain-forest that no one wants... Yay, our state!"

Does explain how one of the tightest races in last year's Presidential election still went 75%-25% in the Senate race.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Election 2004 2

Journal by schlach

Time to blow the dust off this thing, since slashdot became interesting again with the politics.slashdot.org section.

Comment The blurb is very misleading (Score 3, Informative) 228

by bethenco (#10221639) Attached to: Intel says Internet needs to change
PlanetLab is not "Intel's prototype". Intel did not start the project,
and has never been in control of it. PlanetLab is primarily an
academic project that receives funding from a number of corporations,
including HP, Google, AT&T, France Telecom, and Intel.

The steering committee consists of faculty members from four
universities along with one representative from HP and one from Intel.
The research staff is composed mainly of people from Princeton along
with at least one from Berkeley.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Calculator

Journal by HoldenCaulfield

Bleh, I want to post this to my livejournal, but can't access LJ due to the silly proxy. Anyway, the students are taking the math section of the Ohio Graduation Test (http://www.ode.state.oh.us/proficiency/OGT/default.asp). The test is required for graduation for the class of 2007 and beyond. Now apparently someone is providing the calculators for the test. You can order the calculator online here: http://www.copcoinc.com/htdocs/store/merchant.ihtml?step=7&listall=yes&catid=75
User Journal

Journal Journal: Email Client

Journal by HoldenCaulfield

I'm subbing, and therefore behind Bess. I wanted to check my email but couldn't, as they block access to webmail servers. Fortunately I found a very light POP client that let me get to it. (I don't get why Bess only filters on http ports.)

http://www.ultrafunk.com/
User Journal

Journal Journal: The Matrix: Rewritten

Journal by schlach

After watching the new Matrix: Recycled^H^H^H^H Matrix: Regrettable ^H^H^H^H i mean Matrix: Revolutions, I feel ripped off. There was some really good discussion on /. after Reloaded came out, multiple matrices within matrices, the Gibsonian feel of the unplugged agents, Smith's real story, etc. In fact, I think that any of those lines of discussion here were superior to what ultimately was released as (we can only hope) the conclusion.
Editorial

Journal Journal: Hello?

Journal by HoldenCaulfield

All right, so I thought I'd post an entry just to say that I've used the /. journal thing . . . probably won't replace the livejournal though
User Journal

Journal Journal: What's next?

Journal by schlach

I've been reading Rustin's, ces', and howell's complaints about slashdot, but otherwise I've already beaten them to it and gotten out of here.

I miss it.

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