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Comment Does any one remember Georg Simon Ohm? (Score 1) 287

The founder of the Ohm's Law that says P = U x I (Power equals voltage times current)?

Imagine a voltage of 5 V, to draw 100 Watts from that you need a current of 20 Amperes. The german DIN 57100 requires a cable of 4mm to provides such a current.
Voltages inside a PC are usally 5V and 12 V. For 12 V you still need sort of 8,333 Amperes, that means 1mm for the cables. The other problem will be the plugs and sockets. 20 A is enough to sort of solder the contacts together or start a small fire if there is too little contact between them. Ok, lets imagine a device that can negotiate 100 Volts, then you just need 1 Amperes for 100 Watts. Fine, but that means that the USB connection now needs to be treated like a healt hazard because its over 65 Volts and can proivde more then 50 mA.

I'm really curious to see how they will jump over that physical obstacle. :-)

Comment The most exciting thing is (Score 5, Interesting) 268

that this kernel already got device IDs for next years Intel hardware. This is something completely new, since Intel so far had a much more closed policy and wouldn't have told device IDs prior to the chipset release.

Now there is a really good chance that driver code will make it into the distribution kernels until the new hardware will be released for mass production. So the chances that brand new hardware will work without any flaws in 2011 are higher than ever before.

Thanks to Intel for this change in their policy. This was a small step for Intel (since everybody "knows" that they will release new chips every year) but a giant leap for providing Linux hardware compatibility right "out-of-the-box".

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