Grandal - Slashdot User

Submission + - Audi Gives Silent Electric Car Synthetic Sound (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Thursday April 12, 2012 @12:52PM

itwbennett writes: "Audi's electric cars are quiet, maybe too quiet, which is why Audi spent 3 years creating replicated engine noise for its electric car models. We're so conditioned to the noise of an engine revving that a driver behind the wheel of a too-quiet car may not realize how fast he's driving, and a pedestrian relying on auditory clues may be unaware of an approaching vehicle, says Ralf Kunkel, Head of Audi Acoustics."

Submission + - Nest Labs calls Honeywell lawsuit "worse than patent troll" (theverge.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool on Thursday April 12, 2012 @10:29AM

UnknowingFool writes: Over a year ago, Nest Labs launched the Learning Thermostat. The brainchild of Tony Fadell, former head of Apple's iPod and iPhone division, the Learning Thermostat promised a self-programming and wifi-enabled thermostat that would save energy costs. After some glowing reviews, Nest found itself in a patent infringement lawsuit against Honeywell. Nest responded with multiple claims calling Honeywell "worse than a patent troll". Among Nest's claims: Honeywell hid prior art (some on some previous patents that they owned) and inapplicable patents (patent on mechanical potentiometer when Nest's product does not include one). Nest's stance is that Honeywell filed the lawsuits not to extract money but to set back progress so that they can control the industry.

Comment Quit moaning about the fan... (Score 4, Informative) 441

by Grandal on Monday November 18, 2002 @06:44PM (#4702297) Attached to: Nvidia GeForceFX(NV30) Officially Launched

It will be on their enthusiast-level card, but it looks like there will be a version for you mainstreamers too:

"NVIDIA has hinted at offering another version of the GeForce FX at a lower clock speed that would only occupy a single slot cutout, but we will have to wait until the product line is announced before we can find out what the differences will be. Our initial guess would indicate that a simple reduction in clock speed would be enough to go with a more conventional cooling setup."

And:

"The other issue that users may have is noise, luckily NVIDIA has taken steps to make sure that the GeForce FX is one of the most quiet running cards they've ever produced. Borrowing technology from their mobile parts and combining it with the FX Flow cooling system, NVIDIA is able to dynamically reduce the speed of the fan based on the graphical needs of the system. When sitting in a 2D situation the card will scale back the clock speed of parts of the 3D pipeline that aren't in use, thus allowing the fan to spin much slower. As soon as you start using the GPU for games or any other 3D intensive applications, the clock speeds up as does the fan. The idea is that if you're gaming you're not as concerned with noise as when you are typing in Word."

Link: http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1749&p=6

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