JohnDas FunDas & Ideas

Here’s an interesting article I found from ecoIron

Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background [on a CRT monitor! mjo] will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

You’ll find a lot of pages out there that claim “many studies have shown … that dark text on light background is easier to read”. I have always suspected that this is due to the historical accident that physical writing works best with dark ink on light paper-ish stuff. I wonder how many of “those studies” studied populations that grew up unbiased — i.e., grew up and learned to read without the historical accident of paper-based (dark on light) reading.

Only CRT displays use more energy to display brighter things. For everything else, it is completely false that a black display uses less energy than a white page. The backlight on an LCD is on for the entire LCD regardless of what is being shown. The black pixels are only black because the LCD blocks out light. Same with projectors, etc. You’re article is thoughtful, but invalid.

Something to consider: If Google were to change the color scheme to all black, Google would loose AT LEAST 50% of its user base (dare I say 80%?). The “tech Elite” could find work arounds such as using Firefox extensions (Stylish or Greasemonkey), but the vast majority would just switch REGARDLESS of the fact that functionality remained the same.

All the money Google would be saving people (assuming the accuracy of this article) would be guzzled in the end by Google’s competition: Yahoo And Microsoft have lots of white on their search pages.

Fact is, this entire idea of Google saving energy by switching to “black” would lose GOOGLE money, and not be much better energy wise at then end. Not only will it never happened, but even if it did no good would come of it (for anyone).

Save Energy - Prevent Global Warming by changing your computer (and website) colours

Screen savers originally were not meant to provide energy reductions, but they now provide a means for energy savings. The use of dark screen savers can mitigate bright backgrounds, reducing monitor power up to 20%. Screen recovery occurs within 1 second by hitting a key or moving the mouse. Nearly all of the standard Microsoft screen savers are efficient. If you supply your own, please try to use one that uses primarily dark colors.

To set your screen saver, select Start, Settings, Control Panel, Display, and Screen Saver tab. Under name, select a screen saver that uses mostly black and set the Wait time to 5 minutes (or less). The following Microsoft screen savers are energy efficient:

• 3D Flower Box
• 3D Flying Objects
• 3D Text
• Curves and Colors
• Flying Through Space
• Flying Windows
• Mystify Your Mind
• Scrolling Marquee

Note that the 3D Text and Scrolling Marquee allow you to display a personalized message on the screen saver; click on “Settings” after selecting the screen saver.

The following Microsoft screen savers are NOT energy efficient:

• Channel Screen Saver
• Travel

The following Microsoft screen savers also are likely to be inefficient, if only because they use the current display as their foundation. Because many common applications use white backgrounds, the screen will remain bright when the screen saver is active if the user is in any of those applications or uses bright colors in general. These screen savers include:

• Science
• The 60’s USA
• Windows 98

Also note that some screen savers, such as 3D Maze, allow the user to select the background, which cannot be controlled and may result in an inefficient configuration.

Energy Star is an important and automated means for realizing significant power savings. A Standby setting (available only in Windows 95) can drop power over 90 percent from maximum. Screen recovery occurs within 1-4 seconds by hitting a key or pushing a mouse. The Suspend setting can drop power nearly completely, although screen recovery can take up to 10 seconds. Energy Star is not supported by all computers or all operating systems. To activate Energy Star, perform these steps:

• Windows 95 - Select Start, Settings, Control Panel, and Display. (You also can right-click on your desktop and select Properties.) Select the Screen Saver tab. Choose a predominantly black screen saver and set it to wait 5 minutes. Click the Low-Power Standby box and set for 10 minutes. Click the Shut Off Monitor box and set for 20 minutes. Click Ok or Apply.
• Windows 98/ME/2000 - Select Start, Settings, Control Panel, and Display. (You also can right-click on your desktop and select Properties.) Select the Screen Saver tab. Choose a predominantly black screen saver and set it to wait 5 minutes. Click on “Settings” to reach the power management settings. Click the Shut Off Monitor box and set for 10 minutes. We recommend that you do not change any other settings that apply to the computer. Click Ok or Apply. (Note that these versions of Windows support only one power-down level, the Suspend state.)
• Windows NT does not support Energy Star, so you cannot activate the low-power settings through the Control Panel. You still can select a dark desktop background and screen saver. Energy Star still can be activated through the computer’s set-up program, which varies among computer models. Contact your computer support staff if you need assistance.
• Macintosh - Pending.

Note that different computers, operating systems, and monitors may produce different options. However, you should be able to create balanced settings that deliver energy savings. For more detailed implementation information and procedures for additional configurations, click here for instructions provided by the New South Wales Sustainable Energy Development Authority.

Of course, the ultimate energy saver is to power off your monitor, which will produce complete and immediate savings. Although screen savers and Energy Star produce automatic reductions, it takes time for the lowest level to be reached. If you go to a half-hour meeting, there will be no savings for the first five minutes, 20% savings for the next five minutes, 90% savings for the next ten minutes, and 95% savings for the last ten minutes. Energy Star saves 65% of the monitor’s power during the half hour. Powering off saves 100%. So if you know you will be away from your desk for a period, turn off your monitor. When you come back, turn it on again (and remember that it’s asleep, so push your mouse!), and it will wake up in 10 seconds. And this doesn’t apply just to your monitor. Turn off your lights. At night, turn off your printer, fax machine, coffee maker, or copier. Every minute that a machine is off saves energy. (Note that some components, such as your printer, can use a lot of power when they are turned on, so only turn off these machines for extended periods. Your printer should be powered off only if it will be idle for more than an hour.)

India decides to lift tsunami alert

Tsunami alert was sounded in Andaman & Nicobar -  Marina beach wears deserted look

The Marina beach in Chennai, one of the longest in the world, wore a deserted look this evening as police asked people who came there to leave, following the tsunami alert issued by the Centre.

Though the state has not issued any official warning, it had asked police to be on alert along the coastal areas and evacuate people, if the need arose.

Official sources said that police are watching the sea to see if there was any ‘unusual wave patterns’.

“We are going to withdraw the alert, we are sending the message,” the official at the home ministry’s National Disaster Management Authority told Reuters. “The technical advice is only to keep a watch until 10:30 p.m. at some places.”

A powerful earthquake measuring 8.2 has struck Indonesia’s Sumatra region, triggering tsunami warnings in the Indian Ocean and sparking panic in coastal areas across south-east Asia.

About two hours after the quake hit, Indonesia’s meteorological agency lifted its tsunami warning and said via a telephone text message that there had been no tsunami.

But Malaysian authorities have reported a tsunami measuring one to three metres in height and heading away from the epicentre of the quake.

The United States Geological Survey increased the quakes magnitude to 8.2 after an earlier measurement of 7.9.

Earthquakes of over 8.0 magnitude are the most violent on the scale.

Indonesia’s Global TV reports several buildings in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, have collapsed, while Metro TV reports some buildings have caught fire.

A Reuters witness says residents of Padang, north of the earthquake’s epicentre, have fled for higher ground.

“The city is in complete chaos. Everyone is heading to higher ground, I saw one house collapsed to the ground. I’m trying to save my family,” the witness said.

An aide to Padang Mayor Fauzi Bahar says there have been no initial reports of casualties.

“Some buildings suffered from broken glass but we have not heard of any major damage,” he said.

Indonesia’s Meteorological agency said via an SMS alert the quake’s epicentre was 159 kilometres south-west of Bengkulu, which is in south Sumatra.

Aust islands among areas warned

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued an Indian Ocean tsunami warning after the huge quake struck at 6:10 pm (9:10pm AEST).

Authorities from Malaysia and Sri Lanka issued independent warnings, as did India for the Andaman and Nicobar islands, and Australia for Christmas and Cocos Islands.

Police on Christmas Island have reported no increase in water levels since the alert was issued, despite the expected time of any tsunami coinciding with a high tide.

They say they tidal measuring instruments have not shown any fluctuations an hour after the predicted time for any wave caused by the earthquake.

Some residents of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand felt the quake and some buildings were evacuated.

Malaysian warning stands

In Malaysia, Mohd Rosaidi Cheabas, director of the Meteorology Department’s seismological division, says it is not following Indonesia in lifting the tsunami warning.

“Right now, the tsunami is already detected over Padang, Indonesia, at a height of one to three metres,” he said.

“We are not following Indonesia. We are still monitoring the movement of the tsunami wave to our region.”

He said the tsunami had been detected by a tide gauge and was not clear on the direction of the wave.

The division estimated that if the tsunami was headed for Malaysia, it could reach the north-western shores of the Malaysian peninsula after midnight AEST.

Malaysian authorities issued a tsunami warning for citizens to stay away from beaches.

Police on the resort island of Penang, hit in the 2004 tsunami, have been mobilised to evacuate people from beach-side hotels and other dwellings, a local government official said.

A huge earthquake struck the region on December 26, 2004, causing a massive tsunami and more than 230,000 deaths.

Indonesia suffers frequent quakes, lying on an active seismic belt on part of the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

- Reuters

The Voyager 1  spacecraft is a 733-kilogram robotic space probe of the outer solar system September 5, 1977, and currently operational. It visited Jupiter and Saturn and was the first probe to provide detailed images of the moons of these planets.

The US space agency’s (Nasa) venerable Voyager mission is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

Its two probes were launched within weeks of each other in 1977 to make a detailed study of the outer planets.

The probes were then sent on trajectories that will eventually take them out of the Solar System and into interstellar space.

Three decades on, they continue to return data from distances more than three times farther away than Pluto.

Currently, Voyager 1 is farthest away. Launched on 5 September 1977, it is about 15.5 billion km (9.7 billion miles) from the Sun.

To communicate with distant spacecraft, NASA’s Deep Space Network uses antenna with a diameter of up to 70 meters (230 feet). That is almost as big as a football field.

One of NASA’s most venerable spacecrafts celebrated three decades of flight Wednesday - thanks in large part to the efforts of the Savannah River Site.

Launched September 5, 1977 from Cape Canaveral, Fl., the Voyager 1 spacecraft is currently an estimated 9.7 billion miles from the sun, further than any other human-made object.

Arguably the only thing even more impressive than the vast distance traveled by the craft is the fact that it continues to relay information collected by its onboard instruments back to NASA.

“The Voyager mission is a legend in the annals of space exploration,” said Alan Stern, an associate administrator at NASA. “It opened our eyes to the scientific richness of the outer solar system, and it has pioneered the deepest exploration of the sun’s domain ever conducted.”

The craft, along with sister ship Voyager 2, are responsible for some of the most detailed information and images of the outer giant planets in our solar system - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - ever gathered.

The instruments responsible for collecting that data owe their longevity to an onboard nuclear battery - called a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG - that is fueled by plutonium 238, a material that was produced and purified at SRS.

“All of that information, all of those pictures you see in a textbook, all that detail, those are all things that we wouldn’t know” if it were not for the nuclear battery, said Thomas Robinson, who worked on the plutonium production for the Cassini-Huygens mission, one of more than 20 NASA crafts that have employed the RTGs onboard since 1961.

The RTG itself is relatively rather basic, say SRS experts. The battery relies on the plutonium’s decay to produce heat, which in turn is then converted into electricity to power the onboard instruments.

“Over the years the principal has remained the same, but the efficiency has improved,” said Charles Goergen, who also worked on the Cassini project at SRS.

NASA was forced to turn to nuclear science in order to ensure that their crafts would have a suitable amount of energy to operate in the depths of outer space. Solar panels were not an option because they fail to capture enough of the sun’s rays to be effective once the crafts start to leave Earth behind.

“That’s why we use (the plutonium),” said Rick Burns. “It provides a steady, continuous source of power that is reliable over a long period of time.”

The craft’s five instruments run on only around 300 watts, the amount of power needed to light up a bright light bulb, and NASA is capable of turning off one or more of the instruments if the RTG’s output were to wane.

Adding to the already large scale of the project is the golden record that each of the two Voyagers carry. The records act as a time capsule complete with greetings, images and sounds from Earth - as well as directions on how to find the planet if it is ever recovered by something or someone.

While many at SRS are familiar with the concept of their work being used on a grand stage, they say working with NASA was especially satisfying.

“There is a great deal of pride involved” for those at SRS that worked on the space projects, said Goergen. “We know that we played a role in the whole thing, it really means something.”

Who is Shakespeare - The Bard of Avon ?

Did ghost writers author this playwright-dramatist’s books ? England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon” (or simply “The Bard”) belonging to Stratford on Avon.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. He traveled to London sometime between 1585 and 1592 and began a successful career as an actor, writer, and part-owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later known as the King’s Men). He later retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later in 1616. Few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive and considerable speculation has been poured into this void, including questions concerning his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by others.

A small cohort of contrarian scholars who traffic in conspiracy theories about “who really wrote” the plays of William Shakespeare has been joined by two luminaries of the British stage — Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance — along with 285 other skeptics, who recently signed a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare.

The declaration, which is sponsored by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, takes no position on who wrote the masterpieces of English drama if Shakespeare himself did not. It merely cites what it characterizes as the skimpy evidence to support Shakespeare’s authorship, and asserts, not very trippingly on the tongue, that mainstream scholars should allow the issue to be the subject of research and discussion — without smirking.

The skeptics also cite a panoply of literary lights, including Charlie Chaplin and Sigmund Freud, who expressed doubt that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. After that lengthy exegesis, it’s unclear whether the skeptics are gilding the lily or just protesting too much. Regardless, they will have some difficulty persuading the virtually unanimous chorus of literary scholars who have dismissed the so-called “authorship question” as nonsense Anyway, those of you who want to read the Works of Shakespear(???) online, here is MIT’s free online library right here for download http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

This was the Web’s first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The site has offered Shakespeare’s plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.

Announcement: The restoration of the site following a disk failure has been delayed. The text of the plays is available now. The poetry and other services, including the search engine and forums, will return shortly. (Nov. 13, 2000)

For other Shakespeare resources, visit the Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet Web site.

The original electronic source for this server is the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare, which is freely available online. The HTML versions of the plays provided here are placed in the public domain.

The works available are :