zentu - Slashdot User

Comment Just on the shelf (Score 1) 576

by zentu on Sunday October 25, 2009 @04:22PM (#29866875) Attached to: Linear measure of books on shelves in my dwelling:

That is about 150 feet of shelves, now if you want to get a better idea, you need to also ask how many boxes of books one has. I can easily fill 2 or 3 Billy Bookshelves and mostly have them also done in 2 deep rows. I don't have enough square feet to get enough linear feet without building myself a maze that could hold a Minotaur, but he would have to be very narrow to walk through it.

Chimpanzees Exchange Meat For Sex 313

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 08, 2009 @08:48PM from the what-do-I-get-for-a-cheeseburger dept.

the_therapist writes "A team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, studied chimps in the Tai Forest reserve in Ivory Coast and discovered that chimpanzees enter into 'deals' whereby they exchange meat for sex. Among the findings are that 'male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts.' They also found this to be 'a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are.'"

Political Upheaval In Fictional Czech State 21

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday February 03, 2009 @07:00PM from the I-want-to-be-ambassador dept.

Rog-Mahal writes "The fictional Kingdom of Wallachia has made the front page of Czech newspapers lately. The practical joke turned tourist attraction started by photographer Tomas Harabis has been locked is a power struggle between Bolek Polivka, the current king, and Harabis, the foreign minister. The faux country has received international attention over the years: 'Wallachia makes money several ways, including offering tastings of its famed plum brandy, slivovitz, to corporate clients. Its biggest source of revenue is the Wallachian passport, which costs the equivalent of $7.69. There are roughly 90,000 citizens of the make-believe nation, once including George W. Bush, who was given a passport some years ago by a Czech living in Texas. Mr. Bush's citizenship was revoked in 2003 after the United States invaded Iraq. The passport has created some confusion, however. When a man from Pakistan recently asked the kingdom for political asylum, Mr. Harabis said he had to gently explain that Wallachia was not a real country. The Wallachian passport now warns: "This passport is not yet an official document of the Czech Republic."' We can only hope for a peaceful end to hostilities."

Submission + - World's largest supercooled magnet gets going

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23, 2006 @10:57PM

An anonymous reader writes: The world's largest superconducting electromagnet has been turned on at full power for the first time. Designed as part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at the international high-energy physics lab CERN in Geneva, the ATLAS magnet worked at the first attempt. Called the Barrel Toroid after its shape, the magnet is built from eight 5-metre by 25-metre rectangular coils cooled to -269C and carrying a current of 20,000 amps. It was powered up at full strength on Nov. 9 after which the energy in the coils, equivalent of about 10,000 cars travelling at 70km per hour, was allowed to dissipate. In use, the magnet will be used to bend the paths of particles formed (see demo) from the collision of protons or lead ions accelerated to near light speeds in 27km diameter subterranean contra-rotating circular beams. The ATLAS experiment is one of five in the LHC, and engages 1,800 scientists from 165 universities and laboratories in 35 countries.

Submission + - Apple orders 12 million iPhones

Submitted by

Waqas

on Wednesday November 15, 2006 @03:53PM

Waqas writes: "Apple has placed an order for 12 million iPhones to be built by a Taiwanese contract manufacturer, according to an analyst citing reports from Asia. The Chinese-language Commercial Times on Wednesday cited Taiwan-based sources within Apple's iPod component supply chain as saying the phone is due to arrive during the first half of next year.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/54274.html
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2006/11/14/af x3175021.html
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=19763&hed =Apple+iPhones+Get+Call&sector=Industries&subsecto r=Communications"

Submission + - Judge OK's Challenge to RIAA's $750-per-song Claim

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Thursday November 09, 2006 @11:32PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In UMG v. Lindor, in Brooklyn federal court, the presiding judge has held that Marie Lindor can try to prove that the RIAA's claim of $750-per-song statutory damages is a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, since she has evidence that the actual wholesale price of the downloads is only 70 cents. This decision activates an earlier ruling by the Magistrate in the case that the record labels must now turn over "all relevant documents" regarding the prices at which they sell legal downloads to online retailers, and produce a witness to give a deposition by telephone on the subject. Judge Trager rejected the RIAA's claim that the defense was frivolous, pointing out that the RIAA had cited no authorities contradicting the defense, but Ms. Lindor's attorneys had cited cases and law review articles indicating that it was a valid defense. See Decision at pp. 6-7."

Submission + - Solar power becoming more affordable

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Thursday November 09, 2006 @11:27PM

prostoalex writes: "With both startups and large companies such as Boeing working on solar power, the technology is becoming more affordable, MIT Technology Review says. Solar power concentrators are all in rage now: "The thinking behind concentrated solar power is simple. Because energy from the sun, although abundant, is diffuse, generating one gigawatt of power (the size of a typical utility-scale plant) using traditional photovoltaics requires a four-square-mile area of silicon, says Jerry Olson, a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. A concentrator system, he says, would replace most of the silicon with plastic or glass lenses or metal reflectors, requiring only as much semiconductor material as it would take to cover an area the size of a typical backyard. And because decreasing the amount of semiconductor needed makes it affordable to use much more efficient types of solar cells, the total footprint of the plant, including the reflectors or lenses, would be only two to two-and-a-half square miles. (This approach is distinct from concentrated thermal solar power, which concentrates the heat from the sun to power turbines or sterling engines.)""

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