Aaricia - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 719

by Aaricia on Thursday September 18, 2008 @03:57PM (#25060497) Attached to: 7th-Grader Designs Three Dimensional Solar Cell

The factor of 500 refers to the absorption only, not to conversion. It is perfectly imaginable to increase the absorption coefficient by such a factor.

The absorption coefficient of Silicon itself ranges from zero to 10^7 depending on the wavelength considered. See here http://www.ioffe.ru/SVA/NSM/Semicond/Si/Figs/145.gif

A factor of 500 is easily within reach when using other semiconductors with a direct bandgap (Si is indirect). InGaN would be such a material. It could cover the entire spectral range from IR to UV depending on composition.

Chinese Pirates Copy iPhone, Make Improvements 716

Posted by Zonk on Friday August 10, 2007 @09:37AM from the that's-the-entrepreneurial-spirit dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Popular Science notes that manufacturers in China duplicate many well-know products. This includes the Apple iPhone, imitations of which are rolling off the assembly line already. That might actually be a good thing for some users, who might enjoy the user experience of China's own miniOne. 'It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers.' The cloned iPhone uses a Linux-based system. 'The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.)' Using the iPhone as an example, the PopSci site walks through the process of making imitation technology."

Firefox and IE Still Not Getting Along 207

Posted by Zonk on Thursday July 26, 2007 @02:33PM from the kids-kids-kids dept.

juct writes "Heise describes a new demo showing how Firefox running under Windows XP SP2 can be abused to start applications. For this to work, however, Internet Explorer 7 needs to be installed. This severe security problem promises another round in the 'who-is-to-blame-war' between Mozilla and Microsoft. Mozilla currently is leading the race for a patch, as they have one ready in their bugzilla database. 'The authors of the demo note that there are many further examples of such vulnerabilities via registered URIs. What is so far visible is just "the tip of the iceberg". They state that registered URIs are tantamount to a remote gateway into your computer. To be on the safe side, users should, in the authors' opinion, deregister all unnecessary URIs - without, however, elucidating which are superfluous.'"

Second Life Shuts Down Gambling 263

Posted by kdawson on Thursday July 26, 2007 @10:18AM from the more-and-more-like-first-life dept.

Tech.Luver sends us to The Inquirer, which notes the banning of all gambling in Second Life. Here is the Linden Labs blog post about the change in policy, which is, to say the least, not popular. From the article: "[T]he large chunk of users that enjoyed using in-world casinos and betting Linden Dollars on events both inside and outside the game world will now have nothing left to do. Perhaps more to the point for Linden, the move will cut off the revenues earned from those owning Casino-style islands in the game, the owners of which are some of the top contributors to the Linden coffers through currency fees and land rental."

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