He has probably never used DOS, which too employed crude windows with a mouse, however the windows were 100% ASCII based and the mouse was only somewhat point-and-click. For navigation around the system, however, you had to use text commands. There was no point-and-click interface for the OS. That's exactly the same as the NLS (though the NLS was designed to run on a mainframe with terminals), except the NLS was significantly more command heavy than even DOS.
A large portion of the NLS developers moved to Xerox, and they brought the idea of the mouse with them. They then went on to develop the first GUI, which Apple engineers had a chance to peek at, and decided they should do the exact same thing for the LISA.
Xerox did not invent the mouse, but they did invent the GUI and the point-and-click interface. NLS had neither.
Kids understand that violent stuff you see in movies isn't something you should be trying at home. But when a kid doesn't really know anything about sex sees a video where a dude forces a girl to deeptroat him until she pukes... well that probably warps a kid's brain.
I don't see how you can honestly hold both opinions at the same time. If a kid is capable of recognizing that violence in movies is not something they should be trying on their friends at home, how is the same kid not capable of recognizing that forcing himself on another person is not OK? They are the same type of scenario, and require the same level of judgment.
For what its worth, I believe most people handle both violence and porn just fine. However, it is well known that some people don't handle either well, and it's really just a matter of what they are more exposed to that determines if they grow up to be serial murderers or serial rapists. Sometimes they end up being both.
Those people are also known as sociopaths or psychopaths, and more than likely their brain was screwed up from the get-go. Since both violence and sex are both natural human responses, it's actually pretty hard to argue that violence in movies (or games) or pornography had any influence at all. Before the Victorian age, violence and sex were far more prevalent in entertainment than they are today, yet society was not filled with people who ran around murdering and raping any more than our society today is filled with such people. And that was before they were any good at faking violence! Most of that stuff was real - people getting eaten, gladiators killing each other, etcetera. You couldn't even come to the realization that such things were not real, because they very much were. Yet their society was no more corrupt or violent than ours is today.
It is a commercialization and twisting of something good.
If sex is, by nature, something good, why is commercializing it bad? How can porn be a distortion of sex and therefore worthy of banning, while violence needs no distortion to be considered bad, yet it is not worthy of banning?
That's like saying "Apples are good for your health, but selling them is twisting it into something bad, so the sale of apples should be heavily regulated. Heroine, however, is bad whether you sell it or not, so there is no need to regulate its sale." WTF? You either believe sex is intrinsically good, and is therefore a good thing worthy of being glorified or fantasized about and yes, even sold, or you believe it is a necessary evil and needs to be restricted as much as possible. Saying "sex is good, but needs to be heavily restricted" is simply lying to yourself or everyone around you. You certainly don't believe it in your core, because it is a self-contradicting proposition.
You have no leg to stand on if you argue that porn is good but violence is bad.
And by the very same token, you have no leg to stand on if you argue that violence is acceptable but porn is bad. Most rational people would agree that violence is a necessary evil, which needs to be limited to the most extreme cases of need (i.e. - someone is assaulting you, or another country is trying to take over/destroy your country, so you need to bring a violent response to save yourself). I don't know of too many people, aside from the typical extreme religious zealot, who could honestly argue that sex is a necessary evil.
The honest argument stands much more in favor of porn being available than violence. Therefore, allowing violence in the App Store while saying porn is bad for kids is nothing more than pandering. In truth, if violence is OK, then it should be a given that porn is OK too, because porn is far lower on the scale things that are harmful to society when compared with violence. That's the hypocrisy the GP pointed out.
The only logical solution to your argument is to both pull the violence and keep the porn out.
You're forgetting the other logical solution, I think on purpose, which is what the GP was hinting at. The best solution is to allow both violence and porn, and leave it up to the individuals to decide. In the case of children, their parents should be given the necessary tools to restrict violence or porn or both (frankly, I'd restrict both). But the important thing is that the individual be allowed to choose what they do and do not want to be exposed to.
You have no right to restrict someone else's viewing of porn or violence, and neither do they have the right to force you to accept porn or violence.
Anybody know of a meat-based replacement for a plant-friendly person such as myself?
Just follow the meatitarian's motto: When in doubt, add bacon.
The tricky bit here is the bread. That's plant based. Perhaps you could use large cut deep-fried pork or beef skin as a suitable substitute?
If you want to get philosophical, though, you run into a much bigger problem: All meat comes from dead plants first. Cow's are built on massive quantities of grass, pigs are built on oats and anything else edible (which all come from plants at some point). It's a losing proposition.
Your only real option is to live on honey and honeybees. Plants offer the bees nectar in exchange for assisting their reproduction, so no plant is ever harmed in the production of honey. Since bees are fed on honey, they are fair game too. There are some birds that have this type of symbiotic relationship with plants, which would make them ok to eat, but you can't farm raise them because they must be a part of the cycle to make them plant friendly!
You could also live on maggots and flies, which only consume meat (and indirectly plants) after that meat has died from natural processes. Honey, maggots, maybe a hummingbird every once in a while, supplemented with a lot of fungus - yeah, I think you could really make a go of it!
Reminds me of a sort of "who's on first" style SNL bit with Christopher Walken:
He sings the song first pronouncing tomato and potato the same both times - he never alters the pronunciation. Someone comes on and tells him "No no, you need to switch the pronunciation", so he sings it again but pronounces them both the second way both times, still not alternating pronunciations. Then both of them get confused as the new guy tries to explain to Walken that he needs to alternate the pronunciation for tomato and potato. They both end up singing together, pronouncing tomato (both times) in one style and potato (again, both times) in the other style. They alternate pronunciation, but not for each iteration of tomato and potato like you are supposed to.
Google knows that 99.999% of users will keep Google as the default search on Chrome
Hell, 99.999% of Firefox users keep Google as the default. Also remember that nothing makes money for Google like Google Search - it's 95% of their revenue.
They don't need to track you through their browser, they already track you through their search engine and you* love them for it.;)
* By "you" I mean people in general, not necessarily you specifically
The whole concept of patents is to protect the patent inventor against competition and give him or her a monopoly.
You've got the method, but you don't have the purpose. The purpose for patents is to spur the sharing of inventive ideas for the benefit of society. See, before patents, ideas would generally be held as trade secrets by guilds. Often times these ideas would die, never to see the light of day, if the guild wasn't in a position to make use of them. This severely hampered innovation.
We want to get these innovations to be spread and known as widely as possible. This allows for the fastest implementation of those ideas, as well as speeding up the process of new innovations which are founded by those same ideas.
So, how do you make it so that everybody knows how the latest innovation works, yet still allow the inventor to extract sufficient profit out of the invention to make it worth the effort (and therefore worth inventing the next great thing)?
Simple, you give him a limited guaranteed monopoly that is long enough to extract most of the value from the invention, but make him describe his invention in detail such that another competent engineer could recreate the device. Then, the next great widget can be invented based on the revelations of the previous great widget, regardless of whether or not the new inventor is the same person as the old. Also, it gives the inventor of such a widget many options for monetizing his invention so that he can afford to create new inventions.
The purpose of patents is to benefit society. It is not to benefit inventors. We dangle the carrot of a limited monopoly to encourage as much invention as possible, but the success of the inventor is not the goal of patents. Spread of knowledge is the goal of patents. This is the same goal as copyrights, by the way.
Any time you see someone attempting to limit the spread of knowledge via patents or copyrights, you know immediately that they are working counter to the goals of copyrights and patents.
Now first of all to the Wild Fox project maintainers, this is the right move.
Why? It capitulates to a non-free standard, and if H.264 becomes the defacto standard for HTML5 it effectively destroys the ability of any free browsers without deep pockets behind them to compete in the market.
Google Chrome will be fine, as will Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer, but Mozilla may well be toast, and any other free alternatives that want to operate in a country that respects software patents.
This is not the right move. We have free compression formats that work just as well as H.264 but don't have any of the licensing baggage. One of those should be the HTML5 standard, with any additional codecs a browser vendor wishes to supply optional.
You don't fight a war by giving ground at every turn. Eventually you have to make a stand.
It really sucks to have an open standard (HTML5) that effectively requires a proprietary standard (H.264) to be fully functional. It isn't necessary either.
It's great to see IVT (Infinitely Variable Transmission) tech getting some attention again. It's important to note the it was invented around 1988 by Paul Pires in California.
Pfft, whatever, Leonardo da Vinci designed the first one. Pires was 500 years late to the party!
Didn’t a Japanese company (Honda?) already have those, a decade ago. If not much more?
They are commonly called CVTs, or continuously variable transmissions, and Leonardo DaVinci was the first person to design one. However, nobody else has a CVT that uses nothing but toothed gears and drive shafts throughout the entire system. All modern CVTs use either pulleys, belts and cones, friction plates, or exotic systems like hydrostatic motors to alter the ratios. These all have serious flaws. For example, belt and cone systems and friction plate systems are both prone to high wear and are limited in their ability to handle torque. Pulley systems fair better, particularly chain driven pulleys, but all three of these types still require a clutch to move into neutral or park. Hydrostatic systems handle very high torque very well, and so are often used in tractors or locomotives. However, they can't handle high RPMs, because pumping hydraulic fluid through a system generates a significant amount of heat, and at high speeds you start to get cavitation or hammering. This makes them impossible to use in high speed applications, like automobiles.
An all-gear system was generally considered to be impossible, however the one demonstrated by Steve Durnin looks legitimate, and it appears to have none of the drawbacks of other CVT systems and all of their benefits, and then some. If the efficiencies work out like they should (i.e. if shifting the planetary gears around the drive gear doesn't somehow have massive losses that aren't apparent), then this guy has literally invented the perfect transmission. It will seriously be an improvement over every transmission in any application imaginable. From the derailleur system of a bicycle to the CVT of a hybrid to automobiles to the biggest, beefiest transmissions in the biggest power generators in the world. Literally nothing will be better.
The prospects are so huge you almost have to bet that there is some intrinsic flaw in the system that you can't see. I know everyone who doubts it here on slashdot that I have read so far is completely wrong, generally saying the control motor is nothing more than another drive motor, which it clearly isn't, but there might be something else that's wrong with it.
The reaction torque is equal to the working torque...
No, it isn't.
- and the reaction torque path runs through that "secondary control shaft."
If either were the case, then as the secondary motor spun up either the drive motor would have to slow down or the total speed of the two drive shafts would change.
The drive motor never changes speed, and neither does the total speed of the two drive shafts.
In your scenario, the top shaft would not slow down as the bottom shaft sped up, it would simply keep spinning at the same speed. To get the system in neutral, the control shaft (and therefore the control motor that drives it) would have to spin at the same speed as the drive motor and shaft. In order to make the output shaft spin in reverse, the control motor would have to be twice the size of the drive motor!
That is obviously not what is happening, so now you have to look at what is happening. The control motor is spinning the planetary gears around the drive motor's ring gear and the output shaft's ring gear, effectively neutering all the torque the drive motor is applying. This is exactly the same as applying a clutch, without needing two friction plates - just a spinning motor and some planetary gears. When the control motor spins faster, the effect is to reverse the direction that the planetary gears need to spin to compensate for the torque being applied by the drive motor.
The only things the control motor is applying any power to are the planetary gears, and then only to affect their relationship to each other. It is completely isolated from the torque conversion loop, even though it looks like it is right in the middle of it. When the control motor is spinning at full speed (reverse), all of the power is still being supplied by the drive motor. You could swap out a bigger motor on the drive side and apply a load on the output side and the results would be identical. So long as the RPMs didn't change with the larger motor you wouldn't have to change any gearing on the control motor or any of the planetary gears.
How efficient such a car could be compared with cars equipped with conventional gear boxes?
That's what he's hiring a bunch of professional engineers to find out. In theory, the ICE would be able to run at maximum efficiency or power possible. It's hard to say what this should be without an engine and load size. Friction based CVT's generally add 1-2mpg, but this system should have fewer losses than a friction system. CVTs accelerate faster than automatics or manuals with the same size engine, and they are always able to achieve maximum torque, horsepower, or fuel efficiency for a given speed and throttle position.
They are not as useful for a pure electric car, as the electric motor is itself infinitely variable, however you could increase the top speed of an electric with a CVT. CVTs are extremely useful in hybrids - the gas engine is allowed to operate at its maximum efficiency (be it fuel or power) regardless of what the electric engine is doing. This system would be no different.
Once you get past all the extra machinery, it's a 3-shaft planetary differential being driven by two electric motors on the input sides, and with one output shaft. The "control motor" is geared down, so that it appears that a smaller motor can be used as the control motor.
Pay closer attention to what is going on there. If you are correct, either the total speed of the two drive shafts or the speed of the two input motors would need to change speed in relation to each other - the drive motor would need to be at full speed when the output shaft is at full speed, both the drive motor and the control motor would have to be running at half speed when the system is in neutral, and the drive motor would have to be stopped while the control motor is at full speed when the system is in reverse.
That is not at all what happens. The speed of the drive motor never changes, you can clearly see this by the speed of the ring gear directly connected to it, the speed of which also never changes. Also, the total speed of the drive shafts never change - when one is at full speed the other is stopped. When they are both running at the same speed they run at half the speed of a single shaft spinning alone. He was kind enough to mark the ends of each shaft with stripes to make this fact abundantly clear. This proves that no extra torque is being added to the system by the control shaft, else the drive motor would need to slow down to maintain the total speed of the two shafts (since the total doesn't change). That is clearly not the case. What the control shaft is doing is reducing the speed the planetary gears need to rotate to maintain the total speed of the system, which slows the output shaft down. This requires spinning the planetary gears in the opposite direction the drive motor is spinning them, which requires no more torque than is necessary to spin the gears themselves with no regard to what may be attached on either end. All of the drive force is still being applied by the drive motor, no matter what the control motor is doing.
It consisted of two input motors, whose relative speed determined the output speed.
The control motor is controlling the ratio of the planetary gears to each other, it is not applying power to the system. Watch the video from about 3:50 through to 5:30, and pay attention to the ring gear connected to the drive motor and its relationship with its planetary gear, as well as the total speed of the two central shafts. Hopefully you'll see what is going on - the drive motor is still the motor applying power to the drive shafts, even when the control motor is spinning at full speed to put the output shaft in reverse. The control motor is just altering the relationship between the planetary gears, even though it looks like it is in the middle of the torque conversion. It's really not.
Hate to reply to myself, but I forgot to add this:
However, for hybrid drives, you can simple direct all output from the engines to charge up batteries and drive the wheels electrically.
That's the system modern locomotives use. The only problem with it is it requires a huge electric motor and a good deal of batteries, which are far less energy dense that gasoline or diesel. This adds a lot of weight to the system. As I said, a gasoline engine of the same size and weight has far more power and range, it is simply less efficient than a gas to electric drive train.
The Chevy Volt will be using this system. While it is extremely efficient at short ranges - effectively 230mpg at 40 miles, which is maximum range on battery only - the longer the drive without a re-charge the less efficient it becomes. At 300 miles, the max range for the vehicle, its fuel efficiency gets down to the 70's. That's still kick-ass, but it's definitely optimized for short distances. It is also sure to be even less peppy than other hybrids like the Prius, which is already not at all peppy.
Can someone explain to a non-engineer where I've gone wrong?
Essentially, there are two sets of planetary gears on either side of the machine - one connected to the drive shaft and one connected to the output shaft. The two shafts in between alter the ratio of the two planetary shafts relative to each other.
The total speed of both shafts is determined by the drive motor. If you watch the video carefully, you'll see two things: The speed of the ring gear connected to the drive motor never changes, and the total speed of the two shafts never change. When the top shaft is spinning at full speed, the bottom shaft is stopped. As the bottom shaft speeds up the top shaft slows down (because both are attached to both planetary gears on either side, which are changing speed to compensate). This reduces the speed the output shaft is forced to spin, slowing it down. When both are spinning the same speed, they are spinning at half the speed that the top shaft was spinning at. This is neutral. When the bottom speeds up further, it is reversing the operation of the planetary gears, causing the output shaft to spin.
The difficult thing to get your head around is the fact that the control motor only affects the ratio between the planetary gears, all of the torque is being applied by the drive motor. To put it another way, rotating the bottom shaft changes the percentage of power the drive motor is applying to each shaft. When it applies power to the top shaft it is rotating the output shaft forward. When it applies power to the bottom shaft, it is rotating the output shaft backwards. When the two shafts are spinning at the same speed, it is applying equal amounts of power both forward and backward, which cancel each other out. The control drive never actually applies any power to the system, it just changes the ratios. This is evidenced by the fact that the total speed of the two drive shafts never change, nor does the speed of the drive motor.
By the way, it should work exactly the same if you apply a break to the top shaft instead of spinning the bottom shaft. However, this would introduce wear in the system, which is exactly what you don't want. I don't know if a small break would work, or if you'd need a big one.
Electric motors are also capable of a fraction of the output power and range of combustion engines for the same total size and weight (including motor and fuel).
There are pros and cons for everything, nothing is perfect. If there were a perfect engine, we'd all be using it, and nobody would be trying to come up with something better.
Unlike other CVTs, there is nothing to slip and wear outside of the usual gear wear you'll run into. The wear on this CVT should even be significantly less than in a traditional clutch-type transmission, because the teeth never change position.
This means little, if any, loss between the drive shaft and the output shaft, and an infinite number of gears between neutral and top speed.
No shit, they were also all based on a friction drive system. There are hard limits to how much torque you can put on a friction-based CVT, which is why they are never used in vehicles with more than a hundred horse power or so. Anything more and you introduce massive amounts of wear on the drive belts or plates (depending on the system).
On the opposite end are hydrostatic CVTs , which you never see in automobiles because they produce massive amounts of heat in the hydraulic system at high RPM. You see them in things like tractors and such, which need low gear ratios.
This CVT (or IVGT as he calls it) has none of those restrictions. The torque limits are identical to a standard geared transmission system, and there are no RPM limits. The only practical limits are the size of the gears you'll be able to fit in whatever your application is - just like a standard transmission.
The only thing the control motor needs to do is spin the planetary gears themselves. Remove the drive motor and output shaft and what you have left is what the control motor is spinning. It needs to be able to match the speed of the drive motor, but since it is only moving the gears themselves it does not need much torque, and thus it does not need to be very powerful.
To see what I'm talking about, watch the video from about 3:50 through 5:30. Pay close attention to the drive motor and the ring gear that is directly connected to it in relation to the planetary gear. At 5:20 or so they show the full forward to neutral to reverse operation from the perspective of the drive motor and its planetary gear. The drive motor never slows down, and never changes direction, yet the planetary gear speeds up, slows down, stops, and changes direction. This where the gear ratio is being changed. When the planetary gear is moving with the drive motor's ring gear, all of the torque is applied through the gears to the output shaft. Which requires the control shaft be stopped. When the planetary gear is stopped you remove all the torque from the system and the output shaft stops. Maintaining this requires spinning the control motor at the same speed as the "drive" shaft. When the planetary gear is moving in reverse, the ring gear is still moving forward at the same speed, but the output shaft is now moving in reverse. This requires that the control motor be spinning at full speed (which stops the "drive" motor).
I put "drive" in quotes, because both shafts are the drive shafts, the control motor simply changes their relation to each other to affect the speed and direction of the output shaft. You will notice that when only one shaft is spinning, it spins twice as fast as when both drives are spinning at the same speed, and the ratio remains the same between the two states. In other words, when the control shaft is stopped it's like you are rolling a log over the ground, with full traction. When the control shaft spins up to match the speed of the other shaft, it's like you are spinning a log on water. It has simply removed all your traction, it doesn't need a lot of force to do that, it simply needs to move at the same speed as the other shaft. When it speeds up even faster it's like adding a second log beneath the first log, and now you are moving in the opposite direction.
In other words, if what you state is correct, the the two motors must be additive. If that were the case, the drive motor would need to slow down in order to allow the top shaft to match the speed of the bottom shaft, which is now being spun by the control motor. Furthermore, in order for reverse to be the same speed as forward, where the control motor is stopped, then the drive motor would have to be stopped. This is not the case, the drive motor never changes speed.
The difficult thing to wrap your head around is that the control motor only influences the gear ratio, it is actually isolated from the torque conversion. That's why it needs two shafts in the middle with the control motor only controlling one. The two are related to each other, but the total speed of both shafts is directly related to the speed of the drive motor. When the control shaft is still, the planetary gear on the drive motor side is running at the same speed as the planetary gear on the output shaft side, but I believe at opposite directions. This provides the highest gear available. Increasing the speed on the control shaft decreases the speed on the non-control shaft, which causes the two sets of planetary gears on either side of the two shafts to slow down, and if the two central shafts are in harmony the planetary gears stop. In this state, none of the torque is transferred, and the drive motor is essentially spinning freely. Increasing the speed of the control shaft causes the other shaft to slow down further, which reverses the rotation of the planetary gears and causes the output shaft to move in reverse.
In every case, the control motor only affects the orientation of the planetary gears, not the actual power being applied to the gears themselves.
Check the video again, the main drive is still powering the gears. Pay particular attention to the ring gear connected to the drive motor, at about 3:50 through about 5:30 he goes through the whole process while showing the drive motor and its ring gear at key points, and at the about 5:25 he shows the system from the drive motor perspective going through full power, to neutral, to reverse in one shot. The ring gear connected to the drive motor never slows down, and never changes direction. The planetary gear connected to the ring gear does slow down, stop and reverse directions, as do the shafts in the middle, and so do the set of gears connecting to the output shaft and the output shaft itself. The control motor appears to only affect the relative speeds of the planetary gears to each other, which is what changes the final output speed. Since it's only affecting the speed the planetary gears spin around each other, and does not appear to affect the ring gear attached to the drive motor in anyway, the torque should also transfer cleanly through the system without applying any torque to the control motor.
In effect, the whole system is to change the speed of that main planetary gear connected to the ring gear that is connected to the drive motor. If that is stopped, no power is being applied to the output shaft. If it is rotating forward, power is being applied in the forward direction, if it is rotating backward the power is being applied in reverse. The control motor's (and the entire set of gears between the drive motor's ring gear and the output shaft) sole purpose is to change the speed and orientation of that planetary gear while maintaining a connection to the output shaft.
If the control motor were applying or receiving torque, you'd see a few things: One, when the control motor is powered off the drive motor would necessarily be applying torque to it, which would cause it to spin. It is clearly completely stopped in the video. Without a breaking system this is not possible if torque is being applied to the control shaft. Two, when the control motor is at full speed, which applies reverse, it would necessarily be working against the drive motor, and the top speed of reverse would be half of the top speed of the fully engaged forward speed. The two appear to be running at the same speed, and the motors appear to be exactly the same.
The easy proof that the control motor only needs to match the speed, and not the torque, of the drive motor is to disconnect the control motor completely and let it spin freely. If you do that and it doesn't spin, or if it only requires minimal torque to keep it from spinning (thus engaging the drive fully), then you have minimal torque requirements for the control motor, because it only has to be big enough to spin the planetary gears around each other.
My intuition is that it requires minimal torque for that control drive, and none of the torque being applied by the drive motor is being applied to the control motor. If the torque requirements were high you would need a braking system to apply power to the drive shaft, with zero break to produce neutral, and power to produce reverse. As I said before, the power of reverse would be limited to the power of the control motor, which would be fighting against the drive motor.
It sure as hell looks like this guy has figured out something spectacular - the all-gear CVT system should provide for minimal power loss and the infinite number of gears between zero and top gear should allow for maximum efficiency. The fact that there are no friction plates should mean less wear on the transmission, and less chance of catastrophic failure (burned out clutch + inability to rev-match = toothless gears). The only only thing left is to see if it is as efficient in practice as it is on paper.
Because friction CVTs work well for low power, confined space applications (like hybrids), and current non-friction CVTs (like hydrostatic CVTs) work well for high power, unrestricted space applications (like tractors).
There is nothing for moderate to high power, confined space applications, like gas and diesel powered automobiles.
Basically, the other bases are covered, the only large-scale application this would provide a major boost to is automobiles and similar applications to automobiles. Though, if this thing works well enough (assuming it actually scales up well from two small DC motors) it could replace all of them.
It had a spooky feel when driving that they never could get used to.
It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the friction-based CVT was limited to a small power-plant that limited its adoption.
No, it must have been the noise 100%.
Even though all hybrids run CVTs as well, and keep those engines at a constant RPM. But no, you're right, it's absolutely the noise, and not the fact that the CVTs are only effective on tiny engines.
Dumbass, people are more than willing to get used to something strange if it is clearly better. Tell someone they can go from 0-100 with completely smooth transitions, no lurching, and maximum acceleration and/or fuel economy (which is what this transmission would do, if it scales well) and that eerie humming will sound like a nice purr.
The reason the engine sound was eerie was because the smaller engines produced a higher pitched sound at those RPMs, and the sound wasn't well dampened. If the sound were more attractive and more of a background hum instead of a whine people wouldn't have a problem. Frankly, the noise problems of the CVTs were trivial, it was everything else about them that sucked, and kept them from gaining ground except in either very low power applications (like hybrids) where they actually perform well, or in high power applications (like tractors) where the larger non-friction CVTs can be used.
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He has probably never used DOS, which too employed crude windows with a mouse, however the windows were 100% ASCII based and the mouse was only somewhat point-and-click. For navigation around the system, however, you had to use text commands. There was no point-and-click interface for the OS. That's exactly the same as the NLS (though the NLS was designed to run on a mainframe with terminals), except the NLS was significantly more command heavy than even DOS.
A large portion of the NLS developers moved to Xerox, and they brought the idea of the mouse with them. They then went on to develop the first GUI, which Apple engineers had a chance to peek at, and decided they should do the exact same thing for the LISA.
Xerox did not invent the mouse, but they did invent the GUI and the point-and-click interface. NLS had neither.
Kids understand that violent stuff you see in movies isn't something you should be trying at home. But when a kid doesn't really know anything about sex sees a video where a dude forces a girl to deeptroat him until she pukes... well that probably warps a kid's brain.
I don't see how you can honestly hold both opinions at the same time. If a kid is capable of recognizing that violence in movies is not something they should be trying on their friends at home, how is the same kid not capable of recognizing that forcing himself on another person is not OK? They are the same type of scenario, and require the same level of judgment.
For what its worth, I believe most people handle both violence and porn just fine. However, it is well known that some people don't handle either well, and it's really just a matter of what they are more exposed to that determines if they grow up to be serial murderers or serial rapists. Sometimes they end up being both.
Those people are also known as sociopaths or psychopaths, and more than likely their brain was screwed up from the get-go. Since both violence and sex are both natural human responses, it's actually pretty hard to argue that violence in movies (or games) or pornography had any influence at all. Before the Victorian age, violence and sex were far more prevalent in entertainment than they are today, yet society was not filled with people who ran around murdering and raping any more than our society today is filled with such people. And that was before they were any good at faking violence! Most of that stuff was real - people getting eaten, gladiators killing each other, etcetera. You couldn't even come to the realization that such things were not real, because they very much were. Yet their society was no more corrupt or violent than ours is today.
It is a commercialization and twisting of something good.
If sex is, by nature, something good, why is commercializing it bad? How can porn be a distortion of sex and therefore worthy of banning, while violence needs no distortion to be considered bad, yet it is not worthy of banning?
That's like saying "Apples are good for your health, but selling them is twisting it into something bad, so the sale of apples should be heavily regulated. Heroine, however, is bad whether you sell it or not, so there is no need to regulate its sale." WTF? You either believe sex is intrinsically good, and is therefore a good thing worthy of being glorified or fantasized about and yes, even sold, or you believe it is a necessary evil and needs to be restricted as much as possible. Saying "sex is good, but needs to be heavily restricted" is simply lying to yourself or everyone around you. You certainly don't believe it in your core, because it is a self-contradicting proposition.
You have no leg to stand on if you argue that porn is good but violence is bad.
And by the very same token, you have no leg to stand on if you argue that violence is acceptable but porn is bad. Most rational people would agree that violence is a necessary evil, which needs to be limited to the most extreme cases of need (i.e. - someone is assaulting you, or another country is trying to take over/destroy your country, so you need to bring a violent response to save yourself). I don't know of too many people, aside from the typical extreme religious zealot, who could honestly argue that sex is a necessary evil.
The honest argument stands much more in favor of porn being available than violence. Therefore, allowing violence in the App Store while saying porn is bad for kids is nothing more than pandering. In truth, if violence is OK, then it should be a given that porn is OK too, because porn is far lower on the scale things that are harmful to society when compared with violence. That's the hypocrisy the GP pointed out.
The only logical solution to your argument is to both pull the violence and keep the porn out.
You're forgetting the other logical solution, I think on purpose, which is what the GP was hinting at. The best solution is to allow both violence and porn, and leave it up to the individuals to decide. In the case of children, their parents should be given the necessary tools to restrict violence or porn or both (frankly, I'd restrict both). But the important thing is that the individual be allowed to choose what they do and do not want to be exposed to.
You have no right to restrict someone else's viewing of porn or violence, and neither do they have the right to force you to accept porn or violence.
The correct solution is choice, not restriction.
Anybody know of a meat-based replacement for a plant-friendly person such as myself?
Just follow the meatitarian's motto: When in doubt, add bacon.
The tricky bit here is the bread. That's plant based. Perhaps you could use large cut deep-fried pork or beef skin as a suitable substitute?
If you want to get philosophical, though, you run into a much bigger problem: All meat comes from dead plants first. Cow's are built on massive quantities of grass, pigs are built on oats and anything else edible (which all come from plants at some point). It's a losing proposition.
Your only real option is to live on honey and honeybees. Plants offer the bees nectar in exchange for assisting their reproduction, so no plant is ever harmed in the production of honey. Since bees are fed on honey, they are fair game too. There are some birds that have this type of symbiotic relationship with plants, which would make them ok to eat, but you can't farm raise them because they must be a part of the cycle to make them plant friendly!
You could also live on maggots and flies, which only consume meat (and indirectly plants) after that meat has died from natural processes. Honey, maggots, maybe a hummingbird every once in a while, supplemented with a lot of fungus - yeah, I think you could really make a go of it!
Reminds me of a sort of "who's on first" style SNL bit with Christopher Walken:
He sings the song first pronouncing tomato and potato the same both times - he never alters the pronunciation. Someone comes on and tells him "No no, you need to switch the pronunciation", so he sings it again but pronounces them both the second way both times, still not alternating pronunciations. Then both of them get confused as the new guy tries to explain to Walken that he needs to alternate the pronunciation for tomato and potato. They both end up singing together, pronouncing tomato (both times) in one style and potato (again, both times) in the other style. They alternate pronunciation, but not for each iteration of tomato and potato like you are supposed to.
It's pretty frickin funny.
Google knows that 99.999% of users will keep Google as the default search on Chrome
Hell, 99.999% of Firefox users keep Google as the default. Also remember that nothing makes money for Google like Google Search - it's 95% of their revenue.
They don't need to track you through their browser, they already track you through their search engine and you* love them for it. ;)
* By "you" I mean people in general, not necessarily you specifically
The whole concept of patents is to protect the patent inventor against competition and give him or her a monopoly.
You've got the method, but you don't have the purpose. The purpose for patents is to spur the sharing of inventive ideas for the benefit of society. See, before patents, ideas would generally be held as trade secrets by guilds. Often times these ideas would die, never to see the light of day, if the guild wasn't in a position to make use of them. This severely hampered innovation.
We want to get these innovations to be spread and known as widely as possible. This allows for the fastest implementation of those ideas, as well as speeding up the process of new innovations which are founded by those same ideas.
So, how do you make it so that everybody knows how the latest innovation works, yet still allow the inventor to extract sufficient profit out of the invention to make it worth the effort (and therefore worth inventing the next great thing)?
Simple, you give him a limited guaranteed monopoly that is long enough to extract most of the value from the invention, but make him describe his invention in detail such that another competent engineer could recreate the device. Then, the next great widget can be invented based on the revelations of the previous great widget, regardless of whether or not the new inventor is the same person as the old. Also, it gives the inventor of such a widget many options for monetizing his invention so that he can afford to create new inventions.
The purpose of patents is to benefit society. It is not to benefit inventors. We dangle the carrot of a limited monopoly to encourage as much invention as possible, but the success of the inventor is not the goal of patents. Spread of knowledge is the goal of patents. This is the same goal as copyrights, by the way.
Any time you see someone attempting to limit the spread of knowledge via patents or copyrights, you know immediately that they are working counter to the goals of copyrights and patents.
It's a typo from someone who is clearly a non-native English speaker.
It should read as "impossible to freely use".
Now first of all to the Wild Fox project maintainers, this is the right move.
Why? It capitulates to a non-free standard, and if H.264 becomes the defacto standard for HTML5 it effectively destroys the ability of any free browsers without deep pockets behind them to compete in the market.
Google Chrome will be fine, as will Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer, but Mozilla may well be toast, and any other free alternatives that want to operate in a country that respects software patents.
This is not the right move. We have free compression formats that work just as well as H.264 but don't have any of the licensing baggage. One of those should be the HTML5 standard, with any additional codecs a browser vendor wishes to supply optional.
You don't fight a war by giving ground at every turn. Eventually you have to make a stand.
It really sucks to have an open standard (HTML5) that effectively requires a proprietary standard (H.264) to be fully functional. It isn't necessary either.
It's great to see IVT (Infinitely Variable Transmission) tech getting some attention again. It's important to note the it was invented around 1988 by Paul Pires in California.
Pfft, whatever, Leonardo da Vinci designed the first one. Pires was 500 years late to the party!
Didn’t a Japanese company (Honda?) already have those, a decade ago. If not much more?
They are commonly called CVTs, or continuously variable transmissions, and Leonardo DaVinci was the first person to design one. However, nobody else has a CVT that uses nothing but toothed gears and drive shafts throughout the entire system. All modern CVTs use either pulleys, belts and cones, friction plates, or exotic systems like hydrostatic motors to alter the ratios. These all have serious flaws. For example, belt and cone systems and friction plate systems are both prone to high wear and are limited in their ability to handle torque. Pulley systems fair better, particularly chain driven pulleys, but all three of these types still require a clutch to move into neutral or park. Hydrostatic systems handle very high torque very well, and so are often used in tractors or locomotives. However, they can't handle high RPMs, because pumping hydraulic fluid through a system generates a significant amount of heat, and at high speeds you start to get cavitation or hammering. This makes them impossible to use in high speed applications, like automobiles.
An all-gear system was generally considered to be impossible, however the one demonstrated by Steve Durnin looks legitimate, and it appears to have none of the drawbacks of other CVT systems and all of their benefits, and then some. If the efficiencies work out like they should (i.e. if shifting the planetary gears around the drive gear doesn't somehow have massive losses that aren't apparent), then this guy has literally invented the perfect transmission. It will seriously be an improvement over every transmission in any application imaginable. From the derailleur system of a bicycle to the CVT of a hybrid to automobiles to the biggest, beefiest transmissions in the biggest power generators in the world. Literally nothing will be better.
The prospects are so huge you almost have to bet that there is some intrinsic flaw in the system that you can't see. I know everyone who doubts it here on slashdot that I have read so far is completely wrong, generally saying the control motor is nothing more than another drive motor, which it clearly isn't, but there might be something else that's wrong with it.
The reaction torque is equal to the working torque...
No, it isn't.
- and the reaction torque path runs through that "secondary control shaft."
If either were the case, then as the secondary motor spun up either the drive motor would have to slow down or the total speed of the two drive shafts would change.
The drive motor never changes speed, and neither does the total speed of the two drive shafts.
In your scenario, the top shaft would not slow down as the bottom shaft sped up, it would simply keep spinning at the same speed. To get the system in neutral, the control shaft (and therefore the control motor that drives it) would have to spin at the same speed as the drive motor and shaft. In order to make the output shaft spin in reverse, the control motor would have to be twice the size of the drive motor!
That is obviously not what is happening, so now you have to look at what is happening. The control motor is spinning the planetary gears around the drive motor's ring gear and the output shaft's ring gear, effectively neutering all the torque the drive motor is applying. This is exactly the same as applying a clutch, without needing two friction plates - just a spinning motor and some planetary gears. When the control motor spins faster, the effect is to reverse the direction that the planetary gears need to spin to compensate for the torque being applied by the drive motor.
The only things the control motor is applying any power to are the planetary gears, and then only to affect their relationship to each other. It is completely isolated from the torque conversion loop, even though it looks like it is right in the middle of it. When the control motor is spinning at full speed (reverse), all of the power is still being supplied by the drive motor. You could swap out a bigger motor on the drive side and apply a load on the output side and the results would be identical. So long as the RPMs didn't change with the larger motor you wouldn't have to change any gearing on the control motor or any of the planetary gears.
Haha, yeah, I know what you mean.
The demonstration at 3:50-5:30 I found most useful, and went over it several times before I really saw what it was doing. It's pretty damn impressive.
How efficient such a car could be compared with cars equipped with conventional gear boxes?
That's what he's hiring a bunch of professional engineers to find out. In theory, the ICE would be able to run at maximum efficiency or power possible. It's hard to say what this should be without an engine and load size. Friction based CVT's generally add 1-2mpg, but this system should have fewer losses than a friction system. CVTs accelerate faster than automatics or manuals with the same size engine, and they are always able to achieve maximum torque, horsepower, or fuel efficiency for a given speed and throttle position.
They are not as useful for a pure electric car, as the electric motor is itself infinitely variable, however you could increase the top speed of an electric with a CVT. CVTs are extremely useful in hybrids - the gas engine is allowed to operate at its maximum efficiency (be it fuel or power) regardless of what the electric engine is doing. This system would be no different.
Once you get past all the extra machinery, it's a 3-shaft planetary differential being driven by two electric motors on the input sides, and with one output shaft. The "control motor" is geared down, so that it appears that a smaller motor can be used as the control motor.
Pay closer attention to what is going on there. If you are correct, either the total speed of the two drive shafts or the speed of the two input motors would need to change speed in relation to each other - the drive motor would need to be at full speed when the output shaft is at full speed, both the drive motor and the control motor would have to be running at half speed when the system is in neutral, and the drive motor would have to be stopped while the control motor is at full speed when the system is in reverse.
That is not at all what happens. The speed of the drive motor never changes, you can clearly see this by the speed of the ring gear directly connected to it, the speed of which also never changes. Also, the total speed of the drive shafts never change - when one is at full speed the other is stopped. When they are both running at the same speed they run at half the speed of a single shaft spinning alone. He was kind enough to mark the ends of each shaft with stripes to make this fact abundantly clear. This proves that no extra torque is being added to the system by the control shaft, else the drive motor would need to slow down to maintain the total speed of the two shafts (since the total doesn't change). That is clearly not the case. What the control shaft is doing is reducing the speed the planetary gears need to rotate to maintain the total speed of the system, which slows the output shaft down. This requires spinning the planetary gears in the opposite direction the drive motor is spinning them, which requires no more torque than is necessary to spin the gears themselves with no regard to what may be attached on either end. All of the drive force is still being applied by the drive motor, no matter what the control motor is doing.
It consisted of two input motors, whose relative speed determined the output speed.
The control motor is controlling the ratio of the planetary gears to each other, it is not applying power to the system. Watch the video from about 3:50 through to 5:30, and pay attention to the ring gear connected to the drive motor and its relationship with its planetary gear, as well as the total speed of the two central shafts. Hopefully you'll see what is going on - the drive motor is still the motor applying power to the drive shafts, even when the control motor is spinning at full speed to put the output shaft in reverse. The control motor is just altering the relationship between the planetary gears, even though it looks like it is in the middle of the torque conversion. It's really not.
Hate to reply to myself, but I forgot to add this:
However, for hybrid drives, you can simple direct all output from the engines to charge up batteries and drive the wheels electrically.
That's the system modern locomotives use. The only problem with it is it requires a huge electric motor and a good deal of batteries, which are far less energy dense that gasoline or diesel. This adds a lot of weight to the system. As I said, a gasoline engine of the same size and weight has far more power and range, it is simply less efficient than a gas to electric drive train.
The Chevy Volt will be using this system. While it is extremely efficient at short ranges - effectively 230mpg at 40 miles, which is maximum range on battery only - the longer the drive without a re-charge the less efficient it becomes. At 300 miles, the max range for the vehicle, its fuel efficiency gets down to the 70's. That's still kick-ass, but it's definitely optimized for short distances. It is also sure to be even less peppy than other hybrids like the Prius, which is already not at all peppy.
So, like I said, advantages and disadvantages.
Can someone explain to a non-engineer where I've gone wrong?
Essentially, there are two sets of planetary gears on either side of the machine - one connected to the drive shaft and one connected to the output shaft. The two shafts in between alter the ratio of the two planetary shafts relative to each other.
The total speed of both shafts is determined by the drive motor. If you watch the video carefully, you'll see two things: The speed of the ring gear connected to the drive motor never changes, and the total speed of the two shafts never change. When the top shaft is spinning at full speed, the bottom shaft is stopped. As the bottom shaft speeds up the top shaft slows down (because both are attached to both planetary gears on either side, which are changing speed to compensate). This reduces the speed the output shaft is forced to spin, slowing it down. When both are spinning the same speed, they are spinning at half the speed that the top shaft was spinning at. This is neutral. When the bottom speeds up further, it is reversing the operation of the planetary gears, causing the output shaft to spin.
The difficult thing to get your head around is the fact that the control motor only affects the ratio between the planetary gears, all of the torque is being applied by the drive motor. To put it another way, rotating the bottom shaft changes the percentage of power the drive motor is applying to each shaft. When it applies power to the top shaft it is rotating the output shaft forward. When it applies power to the bottom shaft, it is rotating the output shaft backwards. When the two shafts are spinning at the same speed, it is applying equal amounts of power both forward and backward, which cancel each other out. The control drive never actually applies any power to the system, it just changes the ratios. This is evidenced by the fact that the total speed of the two drive shafts never change, nor does the speed of the drive motor.
By the way, it should work exactly the same if you apply a break to the top shaft instead of spinning the bottom shaft. However, this would introduce wear in the system, which is exactly what you don't want. I don't know if a small break would work, or if you'd need a big one.
Electric motors are also capable of a fraction of the output power and range of combustion engines for the same total size and weight (including motor and fuel).
There are pros and cons for everything, nothing is perfect. If there were a perfect engine, we'd all be using it, and nobody would be trying to come up with something better.
Yup.
Unlike other CVTs, there is nothing to slip and wear outside of the usual gear wear you'll run into. The wear on this CVT should even be significantly less than in a traditional clutch-type transmission, because the teeth never change position.
This means little, if any, loss between the drive shaft and the output shaft, and an infinite number of gears between neutral and top speed.
No shit, they were also all based on a friction drive system. There are hard limits to how much torque you can put on a friction-based CVT, which is why they are never used in vehicles with more than a hundred horse power or so. Anything more and you introduce massive amounts of wear on the drive belts or plates (depending on the system).
On the opposite end are hydrostatic CVTs , which you never see in automobiles because they produce massive amounts of heat in the hydraulic system at high RPM. You see them in things like tractors and such, which need low gear ratios.
This CVT (or IVGT as he calls it) has none of those restrictions. The torque limits are identical to a standard geared transmission system, and there are no RPM limits. The only practical limits are the size of the gears you'll be able to fit in whatever your application is - just like a standard transmission.
The only thing the control motor needs to do is spin the planetary gears themselves. Remove the drive motor and output shaft and what you have left is what the control motor is spinning. It needs to be able to match the speed of the drive motor, but since it is only moving the gears themselves it does not need much torque, and thus it does not need to be very powerful.
To see what I'm talking about, watch the video from about 3:50 through 5:30. Pay close attention to the drive motor and the ring gear that is directly connected to it in relation to the planetary gear. At 5:20 or so they show the full forward to neutral to reverse operation from the perspective of the drive motor and its planetary gear. The drive motor never slows down, and never changes direction, yet the planetary gear speeds up, slows down, stops, and changes direction. This where the gear ratio is being changed. When the planetary gear is moving with the drive motor's ring gear, all of the torque is applied through the gears to the output shaft. Which requires the control shaft be stopped. When the planetary gear is stopped you remove all the torque from the system and the output shaft stops. Maintaining this requires spinning the control motor at the same speed as the "drive" shaft. When the planetary gear is moving in reverse, the ring gear is still moving forward at the same speed, but the output shaft is now moving in reverse. This requires that the control motor be spinning at full speed (which stops the "drive" motor).
I put "drive" in quotes, because both shafts are the drive shafts, the control motor simply changes their relation to each other to affect the speed and direction of the output shaft. You will notice that when only one shaft is spinning, it spins twice as fast as when both drives are spinning at the same speed, and the ratio remains the same between the two states. In other words, when the control shaft is stopped it's like you are rolling a log over the ground, with full traction. When the control shaft spins up to match the speed of the other shaft, it's like you are spinning a log on water. It has simply removed all your traction, it doesn't need a lot of force to do that, it simply needs to move at the same speed as the other shaft. When it speeds up even faster it's like adding a second log beneath the first log, and now you are moving in the opposite direction.
In other words, if what you state is correct, the the two motors must be additive. If that were the case, the drive motor would need to slow down in order to allow the top shaft to match the speed of the bottom shaft, which is now being spun by the control motor. Furthermore, in order for reverse to be the same speed as forward, where the control motor is stopped, then the drive motor would have to be stopped. This is not the case, the drive motor never changes speed.
The difficult thing to wrap your head around is that the control motor only influences the gear ratio, it is actually isolated from the torque conversion. That's why it needs two shafts in the middle with the control motor only controlling one. The two are related to each other, but the total speed of both shafts is directly related to the speed of the drive motor. When the control shaft is still, the planetary gear on the drive motor side is running at the same speed as the planetary gear on the output shaft side, but I believe at opposite directions. This provides the highest gear available. Increasing the speed on the control shaft decreases the speed on the non-control shaft, which causes the two sets of planetary gears on either side of the two shafts to slow down, and if the two central shafts are in harmony the planetary gears stop. In this state, none of the torque is transferred, and the drive motor is essentially spinning freely. Increasing the speed of the control shaft causes the other shaft to slow down further, which reverses the rotation of the planetary gears and causes the output shaft to move in reverse.
In every case, the control motor only affects the orientation of the planetary gears, not the actual power being applied to the gears themselves.
Check the video again, the main drive is still powering the gears. Pay particular attention to the ring gear connected to the drive motor, at about 3:50 through about 5:30 he goes through the whole process while showing the drive motor and its ring gear at key points, and at the about 5:25 he shows the system from the drive motor perspective going through full power, to neutral, to reverse in one shot. The ring gear connected to the drive motor never slows down, and never changes direction. The planetary gear connected to the ring gear does slow down, stop and reverse directions, as do the shafts in the middle, and so do the set of gears connecting to the output shaft and the output shaft itself. The control motor appears to only affect the relative speeds of the planetary gears to each other, which is what changes the final output speed. Since it's only affecting the speed the planetary gears spin around each other, and does not appear to affect the ring gear attached to the drive motor in anyway, the torque should also transfer cleanly through the system without applying any torque to the control motor.
In effect, the whole system is to change the speed of that main planetary gear connected to the ring gear that is connected to the drive motor. If that is stopped, no power is being applied to the output shaft. If it is rotating forward, power is being applied in the forward direction, if it is rotating backward the power is being applied in reverse. The control motor's (and the entire set of gears between the drive motor's ring gear and the output shaft) sole purpose is to change the speed and orientation of that planetary gear while maintaining a connection to the output shaft.
If the control motor were applying or receiving torque, you'd see a few things: One, when the control motor is powered off the drive motor would necessarily be applying torque to it, which would cause it to spin. It is clearly completely stopped in the video. Without a breaking system this is not possible if torque is being applied to the control shaft. Two, when the control motor is at full speed, which applies reverse, it would necessarily be working against the drive motor, and the top speed of reverse would be half of the top speed of the fully engaged forward speed. The two appear to be running at the same speed, and the motors appear to be exactly the same.
The easy proof that the control motor only needs to match the speed, and not the torque, of the drive motor is to disconnect the control motor completely and let it spin freely. If you do that and it doesn't spin, or if it only requires minimal torque to keep it from spinning (thus engaging the drive fully), then you have minimal torque requirements for the control motor, because it only has to be big enough to spin the planetary gears around each other.
My intuition is that it requires minimal torque for that control drive, and none of the torque being applied by the drive motor is being applied to the control motor. If the torque requirements were high you would need a braking system to apply power to the drive shaft, with zero break to produce neutral, and power to produce reverse. As I said before, the power of reverse would be limited to the power of the control motor, which would be fighting against the drive motor.
It sure as hell looks like this guy has figured out something spectacular - the all-gear CVT system should provide for minimal power loss and the infinite number of gears between zero and top gear should allow for maximum efficiency. The fact that there are no friction plates should mean less wear on the transmission, and less chance of catastrophic failure (burned out clutch + inability to rev-match = toothless gears). The only only thing left is to see if it is as efficient in practice as it is on paper.
Because friction CVTs work well for low power, confined space applications (like hybrids), and current non-friction CVTs (like hydrostatic CVTs) work well for high power, unrestricted space applications (like tractors).
There is nothing for moderate to high power, confined space applications, like gas and diesel powered automobiles.
Basically, the other bases are covered, the only large-scale application this would provide a major boost to is automobiles and similar applications to automobiles. Though, if this thing works well enough (assuming it actually scales up well from two small DC motors) it could replace all of them.
It had a spooky feel when driving that they never could get used to.
It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the friction-based CVT was limited to a small power-plant that limited its adoption.
No, it must have been the noise 100%.
Even though all hybrids run CVTs as well, and keep those engines at a constant RPM. But no, you're right, it's absolutely the noise, and not the fact that the CVTs are only effective on tiny engines.
Dumbass, people are more than willing to get used to something strange if it is clearly better. Tell someone they can go from 0-100 with completely smooth transitions, no lurching, and maximum acceleration and/or fuel economy (which is what this transmission would do, if it scales well) and that eerie humming will sound like a nice purr.
The reason the engine sound was eerie was because the smaller engines produced a higher pitched sound at those RPMs, and the sound wasn't well dampened. If the sound were more attractive and more of a background hum instead of a whine people wouldn't have a problem. Frankly, the noise problems of the CVTs were trivial, it was everything else about them that sucked, and kept them from gaining ground except in either very low power applications (like hybrids) where they actually perform well, or in high power applications (like tractors) where the larger non-friction CVTs can be used.