Comment Wrong day, Bunsen born on 31 March, not 1 April (Score 1) 127
Perhaps the original post should have said that 31 March was Robert Bunsen's birthday, because it was posted one day later on 1 April.
Comment Require comp sci degree for traffic engineers (Score 1) 705
I think the solution is to prevent the transportation official from using a computer until he gets a computer science qualification.
That should make it a bit harder for him to cause problems for others.
Balancing Choice With Irreversible Consequences In Games 352
The Moving Pixels blog has an article about the delicate balance within video games between giving players meaningful choices and consequences that cannot necessarily be changed if the player doesn't like her choice afterward. Quoting:
"One of my more visceral experiences in gaming came recently while playing Mass Effect 2, in which a series of events led me to believe that I'd just indirectly murdered most of my crew. When the cutscenes ended, I was rocking in my chair, eyes wide, heart pounding, and as control was given over to me once more, I did the only thing that I thought was reasonable to do: I reset the game. This, of course, only led to the revelation that the event was preordained and the inference that (by BioWare's logic) a high degree of magical charisma and blue-colored decision making meant that I could get everything back to normal. ... Charitably, I could say BioWare at least did a good job of conditioning my expectations in such a way that the game could garner this response, but the fact remains: when confronted with a consequence that I couldn't handle, my immediate player's response was to stop and get a do-over. Inevitability was only something that I could accept once it was directly shown to me."
Doctors Save Premature Baby Using Sandwich Bag 246
Born 14 weeks early, Lexi Lacey owes her life to some MacGyver inspired doctors and a sandwich bag. Lexi was so small at birth that even the tiniest insulating jacket was too big, but she fit into a plastic sandwich bag nicely. ''The doctors told us they had never known a baby born as prematurely as Lexi survive. She was so tiny the only thing they had to keep her body temperature warm was a sandwich bag from the hospital canteen — it's incredible to think that saved her life," says her mom.
Australian Politician Caught Viewing Porn 150
destinyland writes "An Australian Parliament member has resigned after admitting he'd used government computers to access porn and gambling sites. McLeay 'gave an uncomfortable press conference outside Parliament House,' notes one technology site, 'during which he admitted he had acted in a standard not expected of cabinet ministers.' Paul McLeay was also the Minister for Mineral and Forest Resources as well as the Minister for Ports and Waterways. In resigning, he apologized to his constituents and parliamentary colleagues, as well as to his wife and family."
Comment More expletives than explanations (Score 1) 266
The inventor of the black box flight recorder, David Warren, died recently.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/black-box-inventor-david-warren-dies-at-85/story-e6frg95x-1225895120709
David said in his talks that
The RAAF went as far as to note that “such a device is not required the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations”.
Live telemetry of aeroplane data could help revive this objection.
Palm Pre and WebOS Get Native Gaming 49
rboatright writes "WebOS developers have been waiting, and with the 1.3.5 release, Palm's open source page suddenly listed SDL. Members of the WebOS internals team took that as a challenge and within 24 hours had a working port of Doom running in SDL on the Pre, in a webOS card. 48 hours later, they not only had Quake running, but had found in the latest LunaSysMgr the requirements to launch a native app from the webOS app launcher from an icon just like any other app. At the same time, the team demonstrated openGL apps running. With full native code support, with I/O available via SDL, developers now have a preview into Palm's future intent with regard to native code SDK's, and a hint of what's coming."
Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221
Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."
Comment Re:Ok, let's get this thread straightened out. (Score 1) 553
(1) LEDs can in fact be dimmed by running less current through them, however their power efficiency drops, which negates the whole purpose of LED lighting. The most efficient way to dim an LED is to strobe it on faster than the human eye can detect By varying with fraction of the on/off cycle that the LED is on, the human eye perceives this as "dimmer".
This isn't the whole story. Dimming a LED by using less current makes it more efficient, because LEDs are more efficient at lower temperatures.
It is the driver circuit that can become less efficient. If the driver circuit uses 5% of the power, then when you dim to half power the driver circuit may be using the same power, which is now 10% of the total power. Your efficiency has gone from 95% to 90%. Incandescent globes and fluorescent tubes lose even more efficiency when they are dimmed. A linear regulator as a dimmer is inefficient. You need to use a switch mode regulator. These can use filtering to avoid the flicker, but this makes them a little more expensive.
LEDs and Fluorescents are about the same efficiency (give or take 20%). LEDs are better for dimming, rapid turn on, and narrow beams. Fluorescent are better for area lighting.
LEDs lights should be built with custom fixtures for several reasons. Firstly they need to run cool to be efficient, and this needs the cooling to be built into the fixture. Secondly they are point light sources and very annoying to the eye, requiring the use of diffusers. Finally, a single LED is currently about 3W maximum, so for a room light you need multiple LEDs, which means it needs to be bigger than a conventional incandescent globe. You can fit 10W of LEDs into a ES or BC style globe, but it isn't ideal.
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