Did you even read TFA (of course not, this is/.)? He goes through some pretty good justifications for his "illegal" downloading. This is one of the better written and most rational pieces I've read on piracy in quite a long time.
FTFA:
"Ownership" is starting to change its meaning. If you buy a movie from iTunes you "own" the right to watch it on certain devices within certain constraints. When you "own" a DVD, you have the right to watch it whenever and wherever you want. However: you must watch ten minutes of promos, trailers and anti-piracy threats. I'll take the download, please.
But often you can't do it legally: I recently wanted to show my son Disney's classic Jungle Book and intended to get it on iTunes. Unfortunately, it is currently incarcerated within The Disney Vault. So I'm afraid I simply DL'ed a pixel-clear pirate copy which arrived in seconds. My moral justification for this? I once bought the VHS. It's your own vault, Disney!
I actually disagree there (The "I'll take the download, please"). If I buy content, I want to use it when I want, where I want. I don't want artificial constraints about which devices I can use it on, or when I can use it. There has to be a happy medium between them. And frankly, the ten minutes of promos and trailers never bothered me. I simply go to the bathroom or do something else during them...
Reminds me of the story of the Tortoise and the Crab from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. The Crab kept buying a "Perfect record player". One that could reproduce any sound possible. The Tortoise kept bringing over records that would induce harmonics and destroy the player. The conclusion drawn by Hofstadter was that if it's perfect, by the very nature of its perfection it can be destroyed by a record. In fact, all record players that reproduce a sound predictably can be destroyed by a record entitled "I Cannot Be Played on Record Player x". So that means that anything useful as a record player is vulnerable.
I think you can draw the same analogy here. There's always a way to break any system, no matter how "secure" you make it. The key is does the record player actually play records (is the computer useful in computing)? You could make a perfectly secure computer, so long as you never turn it on. But by the very nature that it's running, it's vulnerable to SOMETHING. It's a byproduct of working with a complex system... An application of Gödel's incompleteness theorem proves that in any sufficiently powerful formal system, there's always a question that can break that system (or at least break it with respect to that system). So basically the only secure computer is one that's incapable of actual computation. Once it becomes useful, there will always be a way to break it...
All you did was reword (and un-necessarily complicate) the Prius transmission.
No, they run on entirely different principals. Sure, they have similar parts, but the method of operation is different. What you're saying would be equivalent to saying that my VW Jetta with an automatic DSG transmission is the same as a manual transmission. It has the same parts (a clutch (or two actually), mechanical gears, syncromeshes, etc). So wouldn't it be the same? No. Because mine is controlled by a shift box, so it's fundamentally different. Just like the Prius transmission. The Prius transmission takes two full power inputs, and varies the relative speed of them to produce different effective gear ratios. That's fundamentally different (albeit similar to) the transmission demonstrated in TFA (which uses one full power input, and two fractional inputs).
My Beetle's a Diesel engine, not an Otto.
Yes it is an Otto cycle engine. The Otto cycle engine is an engine that has a single moving piston, two or more valves and 4 unique strokes (intake, compression, power and exhaust). So most diesels used in cars are in fact Otto cycle engines.
You shouldn't make assumptions, because look what you did - embarrassed yourself.
I didn't make an assumption. The fact of the matter is that the VAST majority of reciprocating engines used in vehicles are Otto cycle engines. The only engines that are not Otto cycle are two stroke engines (VERY VERY rare for cars), turbine engines (even more rare) and Wankel engines. So it's a fair assumption that the car in the driveway of 99.99% of the people who will read this post will in fact have an Otto cycle engine.
You've got the volumetric efficiency relative to rpm part backwards. Volumetric efficiency goes down with rpm.
Not true. Volumetric efficiency is measured as the the volume of air taken in on each stroke vs the displacement of the cylinder. So if 1 liter of STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure) gets drawn into the cylinder, and the dispacement of that cylinder is 1.2 liters, the total efficiency is 1/1.2 (or about 83%). At 0 RPM and 100% throttle (well, any throttle position that isn't completely closed), volumetric efficiency is always 100%. But as the engine starts turning (at full throttle, otherwise the vacuum drawn by the throttle restriction will reduce efficiency), the actual efficiency will depend on intake design. Considering that OTTO cycle engines use valves, air is only drawn in 25% (about) of the time. So the vacuum drawn trying to draw that air in will cause the efficiency to drop. However, intake runners are designed for this. So basically, when the valve closes, the momentum of the air causes a pressure build up behind the valve. That pressure will cause the air to reverse direction. This leads to a harmonic wave in the intake runner. The frequency of the wave is dependent on the design of the intake runner (cross-sectional area, cylinder volume and length mainly, but curves and other obstructions do play a part). If the valve opening is timed properly with this frequency, the incoming pressure wave from the harmonic will actually force air into the cylinder. That's how some racing engines can actually achieve a higher than unity volumetric efficiency at a specific RPM. It's all relative to the design of the engine. Some engines may be designed for 2000 rpm. And increasing the RPM over that WILL decrease VE. But you cannot say as a general rule that VE is inversely proportional to RPM, because it isn't. And pumping losses are directly proportional to VE (in fact, the pumping losses are DUE to VE below 100%).
You do have a point that thermal and mechanical losses do increase with RPM (Mechanical due to friction, thermal due to the increased movement of air around the parts). However, your reasoning behind diesels being more previlent is flawed. It's not because they operate at a lower RPM. It's because of a few reasons. First off, diesel is denser (energy/volume) than Gasoline while still having a similar stoichiometric ratio with air. Secondly, diesels are typically built without a throttle blade. That means that even at idle or lower power settings, there is no restrictive plate to draw a vacuum (and hence harm VE). Since diesel doesn't behave as bad as gasoline when run lean, they typically control power output by controlling the fuel flow. Third, diesel engines tend to burn much hotter than gas engines (the flame front is significantly hotter), so there is a more complete burn. You combine these effects, and you can see why they are more efficient (and it's not because they run slower). The reason that diesel engines typically run "slower" is two fold. First, since diesel engines don't use spark plugs, timing is controlled by the mechanical fuel injectors (direct injection). They were simply not fast and accurate enough to time at high rpm. The second reason, is that diesel is slower burning than gasoline. So at higher RPMs, there's a large chance that combustion won't be complete when the exhaust stroke starts (resulting is a large drop in efficiency and a large increase in mechanical stress).
The Prius uses a single torque differential. This uses a pair of them reversed onto each other. The "output" on the Prius is the input on this. The two "inputs" relate to the two shafts. The unique thing about this is that it uses the two shafts and the relative motion between them to control the output speed. So while it uses some similar parts, the theory of operation is completely different. Just because it uses a planetary gear set, doesn't mean it's the same...
Unless you're talking about a torque converter in a traditional automatic transmission. It sacrifices speed (output is slower than input) and accordingly power (since HP = torque * RPM / 5252) to increase torque. For example: 200 ft-lbs of torque in at 5000 rpm (about 190 hp), and you'll get back out 215 ft-lbs at somewhere under 4600 rpm... The slippage actually increases torque (albeit at the expense of total power)...
Actually, the transmission in the Prius is completely different from this. The Prius takes two full power inputs (the engine and the electric motor), and adjusts the power output from the two (balancing them) to achieve the end ratio. This takes a single full power input (and two factional inputs, perhaps a very small fraction if friction losses are small enough), and produces a variable end ratio. Quite a big difference between them. For the Prius transmission to work, both engines need to be of comparable power (A 100 hp gas engine would need somewhere near a 100hp electric motor). This would likely work with a 100hp engine and a pair of 1/2 hp (or less, depending on precision and friction) electric motors.
And FYI, an OTTO cycle engine is not most efficient at 2000 rpm. It's most efficient at its horse power peak RPM, and at full throttle. Anything less than that (RPM or throttle), and you lose volumetric efficiency. And when I say efficient, I'm saying the power/fuel use is the maximum. It's all about the intake and exhaust design (you can tune them for maximum efficiency at a particular RPM for a particular engine design). That's why hybrids typically use smaller engines. So that you can run it closer to its peak power for longer (40hp at full throttle would be plenty to cruise on the highway and still be able to charge the batteries without needing to be throttled back).
Yes it does. There's an app (it's not free, maybe a few $$$) called "Remote RDP" that connects to both Windows RDP machines, and any Linux box running XRDP. It may work with VNC, but I've never tried it. I also have an app called "Connect Bot" installed which manages ssh connections. It supports full public key authentication and port forwarding.
Nope, I was referring to the iPhone at that point. See: Thoughts on Flash, the section entitled "Battery life"
To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power....SNIP...
The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.
The iPhone does have a hardware H.264 decoder... And that's what I was referring to when I said GPU. Sorry for the confusion...
Why is it Apple's job to modify their platform to accommodate Flash?
Well, it's not. However, it's a straw argument to not provide the APIs to let Flash use the GPU, and then complain that it doesn't use the GPU. That's the problem... Not that Flash is programmed bad, but that it doesn't take advantage of something that Apple's software does when Apple doesn't make it available.
If Adobe can't build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device, then too bad.
Correct. If it was Adobe complaining about Flash performance on Apple products, you'd have a point. Heck, even if it was a third party complaining, you'd have a point. But it's Apple that's complaining. They are not giving Adobe the tools to be able to make it better, and then slamming them publicly for not making it better...
It would be like Balmer saying that PowerPC sucks because it can't run Windows, even though it's MS's fault that they don't compile Windows for PowerPC... It would be like you complaining that I can't drive your car, after you removed the engine from it. It would be like a conference denying you entry, and then complaining that you never showed up... It would be like your company revoking your computer access, and then complaining that you don't do any work...
Most of Jobs' complaints are straw arguments (and some are blatant lies). That's what TFA was talking about. Sure, there is a decent thought or two in Jobs' letter. But the vast majority of it is pure FUD.
There's a huge difference. If you wanted to make a modification to an abandoned project, you could just fork it. Here, you can't. So you're tied to requesting the modification from MS... It's a similar theme to many OS projects, but it's not a similar situation...
Actually, it doesn't. It knows nothing about context. All it does know is what words are commonly used together. There's a huge difference between understanding the meaning of a sentence, and knowing the statistics of word relation. In order for TRUE speech recognition, you'd need context recognition. Otherwise the phrase "Some apples are green and others are red" makes just as much sense as "Some apples are bean and other side dead". It's only the context (the knowledge about Apples commonly having one of two colors: green and red) that lets you understand what the phrase really was. That's likely how our brains work. We create objects about stored memories and items. So when you hear the word apple, it pulls an instance of the class apple. Then, in the rest of the sentence, we compare that object to other objects conjured by the other words. Only then do we build the context of the sentence. That's how we intuitively know that the sentence should be "Some apples are green and others are red". Not because "green" and "red" are more commonly used with the word apple than "bean" and "dead". But you could make a sentence that would make sense with those words, "The apple fell onto a bean and ended up dead". Only if you understand something about Apples, Beans, dead, red and green, and the complex relation between them can you possibly try to understand the sentence. That's why rule based processing (how Google does it) will never be as accurate as a human. Not because it's a fundamental limit of recognition, but because it has none of the information about what each word means. Try giving a foreigner (non-English speaker) those two sentences and an English only dictionary. Do you think they'd be able to tell you which one was the proper sentence? No. Not because of a lack of information, but because of a lack of context. It's all about context... And until AI can contain complex information about words and their meaning, it has no hope of being accurate at text to speech on the large scale...
Exactly... In order to do anything more than just "the word that was just spoken was 'x'", you need contextual and object clues. Hofstadter did a great job talking about this in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Right now, computers can do nothing more than simple symbol lookups. Speech recognition tries to find the word that matches the vocal pattern. So when it stumbles, the result is useless (the same goes for OCR). With contextual recognition, it can more accurately guess at what was said (that's all we do. When we hear an address that ends with "United States", we automatically know that it's the same as if we heard "USA"). That's something that I do believe is possible, we just haven't gotten to that point yet. The problem is that right now, we don't have any kind of actual contextual analysis possible. We do have some hard coded context clues, but nothing that represents a system that can "learn". The interesting thing though is that to teach an AI program to "speak" a language you need to give it a vast amount of input. Who has lots of input, and gets constant information regarding the accuracy of said input? Search engines. So if anyone can do it, I'd bet that Google is a position to do it (along with the other major engines, it just seems like it would be one of Google's projects)...
Most (not all) antitrust legislation is aimed at preventing monopoly exploitation of alternate markets. There is little evidence that Apple has any sort of monopoly unless the category is defined so narrowly as to be useless.
Well, there is some prior case history on this. Back in the late 90's, MS was found guilty of exploiting a monopoly with Windows with regards to Netscape and Internet Explorer. They used their market position with Windows to push IE onto Windows Users. Never mind the fact that alternative operating systems existed. Never mind the fact that people COULD install other browsers once they installed Windows. They looked at the market space that was defined by Windows programs, and looked to see if MS was abusing that space. It's not a far fetched idea to translate that to the iPhone issue. Apple is locking off their internal market space by using what is a monopolistic hold on their operating system. The difference here, is that people CANNOT install competing software from another source than Apple. So in a sense, it is a clearer case than MS lost.
Users are free to choose another device if they feel that strongly about the situation.
And people were free to chose a different OS from Windows. Yet they still found the MS exploited a monopolistic hold on the OS to push IE. Apple clearly does have a monopolistic hold on the iPhone OS (Even stronger of one than MS did). The question is not are people free to choose another device, but are those with the device free to choose another avenue of operation (away from Apple). The average user isn't told that their phone won't run non-Apple approved apps before hand. The average user isn't told "If you don't like these policies, don't buy this phone". They are told "Check out what this phone can do!", and "Look at all these apps it can run!". Not to mention that once they buy the phone, they are locked into a multi-year contract which will cost them money to terminate. So at absolute least, if this is not an abuse of monopolistic power, it is a case of deceptive advertising. They are not presenting users with a fair and complete choice. They are showing one side of it, and then locking down the other. So yes, users are free to choose another device, but they aren't given enough information (without going out and knowing what to look for) to make that choice intelligently.
I still don't see why Apple aren't allowed to set the terms of participation in their program. If you sign up as an iphone/ipod/ipad developer, you know what you're getting into, and you know they can change their rules at any time.
Well, it's quite simple. They are allowed to set the terms of participation. However, I don't think they should be able to change their rules at any time (And/Or enforce them retroactively). If I signed up and agreed to their terms 6 months ago, I would be abiding by their rules to develop in {insert language x here} and convert to ObjC for submission. So I spend 6 months working on my application, only to be told today when I submit that it's no good because they "changed their rules". In my mind, there are few clearer examples of abuse of market position than that. It's an arbitrary rule set out do nothing but exact control (They have reasons why they did it, presumably to stick another knife in Adobe). But it does have significant collateral damage (being the developers who now have lost time because they were following the rules a month ago). And those interests do need to be protected.
Let's celebrate the leap forward that HTML5 and the video tag represent.
Well, that's exactly what's at stake here. You have Apple and MS vowing to only support H.264. You have Mozilla vowing to support only Theora. Where the other majors stand I'm not sure (Chrome and Opera). But if there isn't a wide adoption in the codec supported by the <video> tag, it's useless. What format would you put in? H.264 would work on a large number of browsers, but it wouldn't work on a large set as well. I wonder if the <video> implementation will have graceful fallback (I know you can put content inside if the browser doesn't support the tag, but can you do that if it doesn't support the codec)? So if it stays as is (where there are 2 codecs, each with a sizable amount of market), would we be seeing: <video src="H.264 SRC"><video src="Theora SRC"><embed src="flash content"></video></video>? Unless a standard can be agreed upon with HTML5, implementing it is only going to create more headaches than we have now...
Yes, but Google has already committed to fixing those shortcomings in FroYo (at least that's the implied release timeframe). Basically, they are going to uncouple everything from the core OS they can, and provide updates through the market just like for apps. So then it would do dependency tracking. So even though your phone is using an older "core" OS, it can update many of its libraries and "core" applications without the need for a full ROM.
There's really a fine line between the major player's stances on open source...:
Apple: Proprietary and Open Source can live together! Just as long as the Open Source is in our interests!
Google: Proprietary and Open Source can live together! Just as long as the Proprietary is in our interests!
RIM: Proprietary is where the money is, so we don't really care about Open Source at all...
From how I read that, it was akin to using flash. So if you used the tag, you could only use H.264. If you used the embed tag or the object tag, then you could use a plugin like flash or Windows Media (just like now). IMHO, that kind of defeats the point of the tag. Unless I misread/misunderstood that part...
That's the key point here. The article is a PR spin to try to make it seem like MS is protecting users. But in reality, it's an artificial limitation. They could quite easily make it a plugin system where it would ship with one or two codecs, and users could "install" others if they choose (in fact, they could make it semi-automatic. When it finds a video with a codec it doesn't have, it tries to find it, sort of how it works in Linux)... But no, they make the choice for us. It's the same with Apple's rejection of Theora... It's not about providing the best experience for users. It's about binding developers hands and removing choice. They tried to do it with ActiveX, but most sites rebelled which launched Flash into the limelight. They did it with their Quirks mode. They did it in IE8 by cherry picking the CSS 3 features they "thought were useful". Stop trying to make choices for us, and leave us (the developers) to choose what's best...
It's a pure example of Occam's Razor... The simplest solution is usually the correct one. So which is simpler, that 300M are right, and 4.3B are wrong? Or the 300M are right? Hrm...
Preposition 1: IP needs protecting
Preposition 2: We have the strongest IP laws
Conclusion: We protect IP the best
Is the same as:
Preposition 1: We need to reduce crime
Preposition 2: {insert race here} is arrested 3 times as much as any other race
Conclusion: We need to target {insert race here} to reduce crime
Both prepositions are technically correct, but the conclusion is flawed... Why? Because they are combined in a way that ignores their construction. People (Especially politicians) have no problem seeing why the second example is wrong. Yet most have a major problem seeing why the first is wrong...
Well, it's quite easy actually. Mount the user's desktop and folders on a network share, and don't give them permission to write to the C: drive. Done. The C: drive by definition won't have any private information on it, because the users don't have rights to put it there... And the best part of it? Windows has the capability to do that built right in! So no need to install or distribute third part software. No need to "assign" computers to users. Just log in to whatever computer you want, and all your data is right there... It won't really work for laptops that need to be used off line, but that's why I said full disk encryption for laptops is reasonable and justifiable. But I just can't see the need for full disk encryption on all computers. If you want to do it then fine, but there are ways of data protection that don't require it (and are probably MUCH more maintainable than just tossing full disk encryption on there)...
Fair enough. It's been 3 years since I worked in a Hospital, and 5 years since I've taken direct patient care. What I do remember is that most people who worked in health care had no idea about the true meaning of HIPAA. One incident rings clear in my head (Identifying details left out for HIPAA reasons):
I worked as an EMT for a medical transport company at the time. We would do inter-facility transports and critical care transports quite regularly (And some emergency transports as well). This particular job involved picking someone up at a Rehabilitation center and transporting him to a hospital (about 30 miles away). We walked up to the nursing station, and were handed a sealed envelope containing the patients records. As was usual practice, I went to open the envelope. The nurse stopped me and said, "You can't read that! It contains private information, and due to HIPAA you're not allowed to read it". I told her that I was to take patient care from her, and as such I have a right to know the relevant history of the patient. She argued with me that I didn't need to know anything. So I called my dispatcher and told him that she refused to give me the information and that I cannot legally take patient care without having access to it. He asked me to put her on the phone. After 10 minutes of talking with her, the nursing supervisor (basically the manager of patient care in the facility, the highest power on duty when it comes to this kind of thing) came up to us. I explained that based on the law, we're not allowed to take patient care unless we are provided with the information. She opened the envelope, and handed it to me. It turns out that it was a good thing that I stood my ground, because the patient had 2 highly communicable diseases and a serious blood borne pathogen. Knowing that information we were able to complete the transport and transfer of care in a safe manor. Had I just had said ok when the nurse refused to give me the paperwork (or had I waited until we were in the truck to look at it), there's a good chance that I may have been infected. The way they teach HIPAA, people tend to get an idea in their head that nobody should be given the information. It's a good thing that reason prevailed. I just wonder how many other people this particular nurse (and others like her) get screwed over because they don't stand up for themselves (or don't know to)...
This all boils down to misinterpretation of the laws governing medical information (Most importantly HIPPA - Health Insurance Privacy and Protection Act)... They don't need every machine being encrypted. All they need to do is make sure that the medical information is encrypted. And encrypting the hard drive has nothing to do with that. If they are providing you with web mail (something like Outlook Web Access), then what difference in reality does it make if you have your hard drive encrypted? All they need to do is set the headers properly to not allow client side caching. That way, you never have any data on your machine anyway. I don't see any reason that all the hard drives in the facility need to be encrypted. If they wanted to create an encrypted data partition, sure. If they want to encrypt laptops, fine. But why is sensitive data stored on local computers anyway? That should all reside on an encrypted network share (if for nothing else than data backup and compliance reasons). All they are doing is trying to cover their asses so that in case something does happen, they can say "well, but we took steps to try to lock down the data" even if those steps were ancillary and irrelevant to the problem at hand.
But in your case, there's a clear cut solution. Company policy says you need to only access their information from an encrypted computer. That leaves you with four options.
Encrypt your personal computer
Get a second computer just for work, and encrypt that
Have your employer provide you with a laptop or computer to take home to work with
Don't work from home
Don't forget, no matter how stupid you think the policy is (or it may actually be), it's still your job to abide by them (unless you have the power to change them, which it doesn't seem you do). So either comply, or don't. If you chose not to, realize that you may be let go... It's as simple as that.
So long as one of the pilots is actively engaged in monitoring, why can't the other do something less intensive? The work load is only high enough to really warrant 2 pilots when they are close to the ground (under about 18,000 feet, so during takeoff, climb, late decent and landing). During cruise, I'd rather have them not focus, so they can remain rested for when their attention is really needed. When you have pilots who fly for 8 hours over a 12 hour day with no lunch and nothing more than a bathroom break, playing mine sweeper is the least of my worries. So by this rational, are they going to ban eating in the cockpit as well? What about going to the bath room? Like anything, there will be abusers, but for the vast majority of cases, distractions may actually promote safety by letting pilots get some much needed mental rest (so long as only one pilot is distracted at a time)...
Slashdot Mirror
FTFA:
I actually disagree there (The "I'll take the download, please"). If I buy content, I want to use it when I want, where I want. I don't want artificial constraints about which devices I can use it on, or when I can use it. There has to be a happy medium between them. And frankly, the ten minutes of promos and trailers never bothered me. I simply go to the bathroom or do something else during them...
Reminds me of the story of the Tortoise and the Crab from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. The Crab kept buying a "Perfect record player". One that could reproduce any sound possible. The Tortoise kept bringing over records that would induce harmonics and destroy the player. The conclusion drawn by Hofstadter was that if it's perfect, by the very nature of its perfection it can be destroyed by a record. In fact, all record players that reproduce a sound predictably can be destroyed by a record entitled "I Cannot Be Played on Record Player x". So that means that anything useful as a record player is vulnerable.
I think you can draw the same analogy here. There's always a way to break any system, no matter how "secure" you make it. The key is does the record player actually play records (is the computer useful in computing)? You could make a perfectly secure computer, so long as you never turn it on. But by the very nature that it's running, it's vulnerable to SOMETHING. It's a byproduct of working with a complex system... An application of Gödel's incompleteness theorem proves that in any sufficiently powerful formal system, there's always a question that can break that system (or at least break it with respect to that system). So basically the only secure computer is one that's incapable of actual computation. Once it becomes useful, there will always be a way to break it...
Not true. Volumetric efficiency is measured as the the volume of air taken in on each stroke vs the displacement of the cylinder. So if 1 liter of STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure) gets drawn into the cylinder, and the dispacement of that cylinder is 1.2 liters, the total efficiency is 1/1.2 (or about 83%). At 0 RPM and 100% throttle (well, any throttle position that isn't completely closed), volumetric efficiency is always 100%. But as the engine starts turning (at full throttle, otherwise the vacuum drawn by the throttle restriction will reduce efficiency), the actual efficiency will depend on intake design. Considering that OTTO cycle engines use valves, air is only drawn in 25% (about) of the time. So the vacuum drawn trying to draw that air in will cause the efficiency to drop. However, intake runners are designed for this. So basically, when the valve closes, the momentum of the air causes a pressure build up behind the valve. That pressure will cause the air to reverse direction. This leads to a harmonic wave in the intake runner. The frequency of the wave is dependent on the design of the intake runner (cross-sectional area, cylinder volume and length mainly, but curves and other obstructions do play a part). If the valve opening is timed properly with this frequency, the incoming pressure wave from the harmonic will actually force air into the cylinder. That's how some racing engines can actually achieve a higher than unity volumetric efficiency at a specific RPM. It's all relative to the design of the engine. Some engines may be designed for 2000 rpm. And increasing the RPM over that WILL decrease VE. But you cannot say as a general rule that VE is inversely proportional to RPM, because it isn't. And pumping losses are directly proportional to VE (in fact, the pumping losses are DUE to VE below 100%).
You do have a point that thermal and mechanical losses do increase with RPM (Mechanical due to friction, thermal due to the increased movement of air around the parts). However, your reasoning behind diesels being more previlent is flawed. It's not because they operate at a lower RPM. It's because of a few reasons. First off, diesel is denser (energy/volume) than Gasoline while still having a similar stoichiometric ratio with air. Secondly, diesels are typically built without a throttle blade. That means that even at idle or lower power settings, there is no restrictive plate to draw a vacuum (and hence harm VE). Since diesel doesn't behave as bad as gasoline when run lean, they typically control power output by controlling the fuel flow. Third, diesel engines tend to burn much hotter than gas engines (the flame front is significantly hotter), so there is a more complete burn. You combine these effects, and you can see why they are more efficient (and it's not because they run slower). The reason that diesel engines typically run "slower" is two fold. First, since diesel engines don't use spark plugs, timing is controlled by the mechanical fuel injectors (direct injection). They were simply not fast and accurate enough to time at high rpm. The second reason, is that diesel is slower burning than gasoline. So at higher RPMs, there's a large chance that combustion won't be complete when the exhaust stroke starts (resulting is a large drop in efficiency and a large increase in mechanical stress).
The Prius uses a single torque differential. This uses a pair of them reversed onto each other. The "output" on the Prius is the input on this. The two "inputs" relate to the two shafts. The unique thing about this is that it uses the two shafts and the relative motion between them to control the output speed. So while it uses some similar parts, the theory of operation is completely different. Just because it uses a planetary gear set, doesn't mean it's the same...
Unless you're talking about a torque converter in a traditional automatic transmission. It sacrifices speed (output is slower than input) and accordingly power (since HP = torque * RPM / 5252) to increase torque. For example: 200 ft-lbs of torque in at 5000 rpm (about 190 hp), and you'll get back out 215 ft-lbs at somewhere under 4600 rpm... The slippage actually increases torque (albeit at the expense of total power)...
Actually, the transmission in the Prius is completely different from this. The Prius takes two full power inputs (the engine and the electric motor), and adjusts the power output from the two (balancing them) to achieve the end ratio. This takes a single full power input (and two factional inputs, perhaps a very small fraction if friction losses are small enough), and produces a variable end ratio. Quite a big difference between them. For the Prius transmission to work, both engines need to be of comparable power (A 100 hp gas engine would need somewhere near a 100hp electric motor). This would likely work with a 100hp engine and a pair of 1/2 hp (or less, depending on precision and friction) electric motors.
And FYI, an OTTO cycle engine is not most efficient at 2000 rpm. It's most efficient at its horse power peak RPM, and at full throttle. Anything less than that (RPM or throttle), and you lose volumetric efficiency. And when I say efficient, I'm saying the power/fuel use is the maximum. It's all about the intake and exhaust design (you can tune them for maximum efficiency at a particular RPM for a particular engine design). That's why hybrids typically use smaller engines. So that you can run it closer to its peak power for longer (40hp at full throttle would be plenty to cruise on the highway and still be able to charge the batteries without needing to be throttled back).
Yes it does. There's an app (it's not free, maybe a few $$$) called "Remote RDP" that connects to both Windows RDP machines, and any Linux box running XRDP. It may work with VNC, but I've never tried it. I also have an app called "Connect Bot" installed which manages ssh connections. It supports full public key authentication and port forwarding.
The iPhone does have a hardware H.264 decoder... And that's what I was referring to when I said GPU. Sorry for the confusion...
I was referring to the iPhone (which is what Jobs was referring to), not OSX...
Well, it's not. However, it's a straw argument to not provide the APIs to let Flash use the GPU, and then complain that it doesn't use the GPU. That's the problem... Not that Flash is programmed bad, but that it doesn't take advantage of something that Apple's software does when Apple doesn't make it available.
Correct. If it was Adobe complaining about Flash performance on Apple products, you'd have a point. Heck, even if it was a third party complaining, you'd have a point. But it's Apple that's complaining. They are not giving Adobe the tools to be able to make it better, and then slamming them publicly for not making it better...
It would be like Balmer saying that PowerPC sucks because it can't run Windows, even though it's MS's fault that they don't compile Windows for PowerPC... It would be like you complaining that I can't drive your car, after you removed the engine from it. It would be like a conference denying you entry, and then complaining that you never showed up... It would be like your company revoking your computer access, and then complaining that you don't do any work...
Most of Jobs' complaints are straw arguments (and some are blatant lies). That's what TFA was talking about. Sure, there is a decent thought or two in Jobs' letter. But the vast majority of it is pure FUD.
There's a huge difference. If you wanted to make a modification to an abandoned project, you could just fork it. Here, you can't. So you're tied to requesting the modification from MS... It's a similar theme to many OS projects, but it's not a similar situation...
Actually, it doesn't. It knows nothing about context. All it does know is what words are commonly used together. There's a huge difference between understanding the meaning of a sentence, and knowing the statistics of word relation. In order for TRUE speech recognition, you'd need context recognition. Otherwise the phrase "Some apples are green and others are red" makes just as much sense as "Some apples are bean and other side dead". It's only the context (the knowledge about Apples commonly having one of two colors: green and red) that lets you understand what the phrase really was. That's likely how our brains work. We create objects about stored memories and items. So when you hear the word apple, it pulls an instance of the class apple. Then, in the rest of the sentence, we compare that object to other objects conjured by the other words. Only then do we build the context of the sentence. That's how we intuitively know that the sentence should be "Some apples are green and others are red". Not because "green" and "red" are more commonly used with the word apple than "bean" and "dead". But you could make a sentence that would make sense with those words, "The apple fell onto a bean and ended up dead". Only if you understand something about Apples, Beans, dead, red and green, and the complex relation between them can you possibly try to understand the sentence. That's why rule based processing (how Google does it) will never be as accurate as a human. Not because it's a fundamental limit of recognition, but because it has none of the information about what each word means. Try giving a foreigner (non-English speaker) those two sentences and an English only dictionary. Do you think they'd be able to tell you which one was the proper sentence? No. Not because of a lack of information, but because of a lack of context. It's all about context... And until AI can contain complex information about words and their meaning, it has no hope of being accurate at text to speech on the large scale...
Exactly... In order to do anything more than just "the word that was just spoken was 'x'", you need contextual and object clues. Hofstadter did a great job talking about this in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Right now, computers can do nothing more than simple symbol lookups. Speech recognition tries to find the word that matches the vocal pattern. So when it stumbles, the result is useless (the same goes for OCR). With contextual recognition, it can more accurately guess at what was said (that's all we do. When we hear an address that ends with "United States", we automatically know that it's the same as if we heard "USA"). That's something that I do believe is possible, we just haven't gotten to that point yet. The problem is that right now, we don't have any kind of actual contextual analysis possible. We do have some hard coded context clues, but nothing that represents a system that can "learn". The interesting thing though is that to teach an AI program to "speak" a language you need to give it a vast amount of input. Who has lots of input, and gets constant information regarding the accuracy of said input? Search engines. So if anyone can do it, I'd bet that Google is a position to do it (along with the other major engines, it just seems like it would be one of Google's projects)...
Well, there is some prior case history on this. Back in the late 90's, MS was found guilty of exploiting a monopoly with Windows with regards to Netscape and Internet Explorer. They used their market position with Windows to push IE onto Windows Users. Never mind the fact that alternative operating systems existed. Never mind the fact that people COULD install other browsers once they installed Windows. They looked at the market space that was defined by Windows programs, and looked to see if MS was abusing that space. It's not a far fetched idea to translate that to the iPhone issue. Apple is locking off their internal market space by using what is a monopolistic hold on their operating system. The difference here, is that people CANNOT install competing software from another source than Apple. So in a sense, it is a clearer case than MS lost.
And people were free to chose a different OS from Windows. Yet they still found the MS exploited a monopolistic hold on the OS to push IE. Apple clearly does have a monopolistic hold on the iPhone OS (Even stronger of one than MS did). The question is not are people free to choose another device, but are those with the device free to choose another avenue of operation (away from Apple). The average user isn't told that their phone won't run non-Apple approved apps before hand. The average user isn't told "If you don't like these policies, don't buy this phone". They are told "Check out what this phone can do!", and "Look at all these apps it can run!". Not to mention that once they buy the phone, they are locked into a multi-year contract which will cost them money to terminate. So at absolute least, if this is not an abuse of monopolistic power, it is a case of deceptive advertising. They are not presenting users with a fair and complete choice. They are showing one side of it, and then locking down the other. So yes, users are free to choose another device, but they aren't given enough information (without going out and knowing what to look for) to make that choice intelligently.
Well, it's quite simple. They are allowed to set the terms of participation. However, I don't think they should be able to change their rules at any time (And/Or enforce them retroactively). If I signed up and agreed to their terms 6 months ago, I would be abiding by their rules to develop in {insert language x here} and convert to ObjC for submission. So I spend 6 months working on my application, only to be told today when I submit that it's no good because they "changed their rules". In my mind, there are few clearer examples of abuse of market position than that. It's an arbitrary rule set out do nothing but exact control (They have reasons why they did it, presumably to stick another knife in Adobe). But it does have significant collateral damage (being the developers who now have lost time because they were following the rules a month ago). And those interests do need to be protected.
Just my $0.02...
Well, that's exactly what's at stake here. You have Apple and MS vowing to only support H.264. You have Mozilla vowing to support only Theora. Where the other majors stand I'm not sure (Chrome and Opera). But if there isn't a wide adoption in the codec supported by the <video> tag, it's useless. What format would you put in? H.264 would work on a large number of browsers, but it wouldn't work on a large set as well. I wonder if the <video> implementation will have graceful fallback (I know you can put content inside if the browser doesn't support the tag, but can you do that if it doesn't support the codec)? So if it stays as is (where there are 2 codecs, each with a sizable amount of market), would we be seeing: <video src="H.264 SRC"><video src="Theora SRC"><embed src="flash content"></video></video>? Unless a standard can be agreed upon with HTML5, implementing it is only going to create more headaches than we have now...
Yes, but Google has already committed to fixing those shortcomings in FroYo (at least that's the implied release timeframe). Basically, they are going to uncouple everything from the core OS they can, and provide updates through the market just like for apps. So then it would do dependency tracking. So even though your phone is using an older "core" OS, it can update many of its libraries and "core" applications without the need for a full ROM.
There's really a fine line between the major player's stances on open source...:
Apple: Proprietary and Open Source can live together! Just as long as the Open Source is in our interests!
Google: Proprietary and Open Source can live together! Just as long as the Proprietary is in our interests!
RIM: Proprietary is where the money is, so we don't really care about Open Source at all...
Palm: I'm still here guys, don't forget about me!
From how I read that, it was akin to using flash. So if you used the tag, you could only use H.264. If you used the embed tag or the object tag, then you could use a plugin like flash or Windows Media (just like now). IMHO, that kind of defeats the point of the tag. Unless I misread/misunderstood that part...
That's the key point here. The article is a PR spin to try to make it seem like MS is protecting users. But in reality, it's an artificial limitation. They could quite easily make it a plugin system where it would ship with one or two codecs, and users could "install" others if they choose (in fact, they could make it semi-automatic. When it finds a video with a codec it doesn't have, it tries to find it, sort of how it works in Linux)... But no, they make the choice for us. It's the same with Apple's rejection of Theora... It's not about providing the best experience for users. It's about binding developers hands and removing choice. They tried to do it with ActiveX, but most sites rebelled which launched Flash into the limelight. They did it with their Quirks mode. They did it in IE8 by cherry picking the CSS 3 features they "thought were useful". Stop trying to make choices for us, and leave us (the developers) to choose what's best...
It's a pure example of Occam's Razor... The simplest solution is usually the correct one. So which is simpler, that 300M are right, and 4.3B are wrong? Or the 300M are right? Hrm...
Preposition 1: IP needs protecting
Preposition 2: We have the strongest IP laws
Conclusion: We protect IP the best
Is the same as:
Preposition 1: We need to reduce crime
Preposition 2: {insert race here} is arrested 3 times as much as any other race
Conclusion: We need to target {insert race here} to reduce crime
Both prepositions are technically correct, but the conclusion is flawed... Why? Because they are combined in a way that ignores their construction. People (Especially politicians) have no problem seeing why the second example is wrong. Yet most have a major problem seeing why the first is wrong...
Well, it's quite easy actually. Mount the user's desktop and folders on a network share, and don't give them permission to write to the C: drive. Done. The C: drive by definition won't have any private information on it, because the users don't have rights to put it there... And the best part of it? Windows has the capability to do that built right in! So no need to install or distribute third part software. No need to "assign" computers to users. Just log in to whatever computer you want, and all your data is right there... It won't really work for laptops that need to be used off line, but that's why I said full disk encryption for laptops is reasonable and justifiable. But I just can't see the need for full disk encryption on all computers. If you want to do it then fine, but there are ways of data protection that don't require it (and are probably MUCH more maintainable than just tossing full disk encryption on there)...
Fair enough. It's been 3 years since I worked in a Hospital, and 5 years since I've taken direct patient care. What I do remember is that most people who worked in health care had no idea about the true meaning of HIPAA. One incident rings clear in my head (Identifying details left out for HIPAA reasons):
I worked as an EMT for a medical transport company at the time. We would do inter-facility transports and critical care transports quite regularly (And some emergency transports as well). This particular job involved picking someone up at a Rehabilitation center and transporting him to a hospital (about 30 miles away). We walked up to the nursing station, and were handed a sealed envelope containing the patients records. As was usual practice, I went to open the envelope. The nurse stopped me and said, "You can't read that! It contains private information, and due to HIPAA you're not allowed to read it". I told her that I was to take patient care from her, and as such I have a right to know the relevant history of the patient. She argued with me that I didn't need to know anything. So I called my dispatcher and told him that she refused to give me the information and that I cannot legally take patient care without having access to it. He asked me to put her on the phone. After 10 minutes of talking with her, the nursing supervisor (basically the manager of patient care in the facility, the highest power on duty when it comes to this kind of thing) came up to us. I explained that based on the law, we're not allowed to take patient care unless we are provided with the information. She opened the envelope, and handed it to me. It turns out that it was a good thing that I stood my ground, because the patient had 2 highly communicable diseases and a serious blood borne pathogen. Knowing that information we were able to complete the transport and transfer of care in a safe manor. Had I just had said ok when the nurse refused to give me the paperwork (or had I waited until we were in the truck to look at it), there's a good chance that I may have been infected. The way they teach HIPAA, people tend to get an idea in their head that nobody should be given the information. It's a good thing that reason prevailed. I just wonder how many other people this particular nurse (and others like her) get screwed over because they don't stand up for themselves (or don't know to)...
But in your case, there's a clear cut solution. Company policy says you need to only access their information from an encrypted computer. That leaves you with four options.
Don't forget, no matter how stupid you think the policy is (or it may actually be), it's still your job to abide by them (unless you have the power to change them, which it doesn't seem you do). So either comply, or don't. If you chose not to, realize that you may be let go... It's as simple as that.
So long as one of the pilots is actively engaged in monitoring, why can't the other do something less intensive? The work load is only high enough to really warrant 2 pilots when they are close to the ground (under about 18,000 feet, so during takeoff, climb, late decent and landing). During cruise, I'd rather have them not focus, so they can remain rested for when their attention is really needed. When you have pilots who fly for 8 hours over a 12 hour day with no lunch and nothing more than a bathroom break, playing mine sweeper is the least of my worries. So by this rational, are they going to ban eating in the cockpit as well? What about going to the bath room? Like anything, there will be abusers, but for the vast majority of cases, distractions may actually promote safety by letting pilots get some much needed mental rest (so long as only one pilot is distracted at a time)...
So, 1 40gb tape, or 28,444 3.5" disks... I guess it all depends on how much you back up, but comparing a single tape to a milk crate full of disks...