You get two FM radio quality voice channels on ISDN
I'd be interested in knowing what kind of ISDN hardware you're using to get two FM quality channels on a single line. I work at a radio station, and the hardware we're using sounds fantastic, but to get FM radio quality it takes running two lines simultaneously with the left and right channels each on their own line. Are you referring to mono audio only? Are you sure you aren't actually using multiple lines to the same box? We're looking at upgrading our hardware to something with some newer codecs (and less latency, ugh) and it'd be nice to know if we could get something like FM stereo sound on a single line.
I can't imagine using 13,000 kWh per year. I'm in the US (midwest) and we get pretty cold winters and hot, humid summers here. My heat is gas, but A/C is obviously electric. I average about 200 kWh/month, and I don't even remotely try to conserve power other than turning my air off and opening a window whenever I can.
First, ducted fans are inefficient compared to rotors. You get a lot more force out of a large diameter and small exit velocity. Its why props are more efficient than turbofans, which are in turn more efficient than turbojets. The ONLY advantage is that the fan is out of the airstream, so high velocities are achievable.
That isn't the only advantage. You're completely ignoring the interaction between the inflow and the shroud, which can provide additional thrust. That combined with tip loss reductions and less problems with high velocity mean shrouded fans can typically be smaller for the same thrust. Depending on the shroud design it may save weight (when rotors start getting really big they get HEAVY) or the advantage may just be you get something more compact. Heck, reducing the tip vortices reduces noise, maybe that's their goal. The picture seems to be slashdotted so I can't really make a more informed comment.
Second, it has very low wing area, meaning you have very high wing loading (bad for fuel economy)
That's a pretty big oversimplification. Many factors will affect max range, and shifting around the span, aspect ratio and wing area will change just about all of them. Higher wing loadings can sometimes help shift up the velocity at which maximum range is achieved. So do you want to move the cargo as far as possible or get it there quickly. High wing loadings are also useful at low altitudes over urban areas, where strong ground winds hitting buildings can do all sorts of nasty things. High wing loadings perform better in the turbulence you can expect in that sort of situation.
Box wings can considerably reduce losses from the tip vorticity, but there is so little lift coming off those wings, there's no purpose. The only purpose to joined wings is that they provide structural rigidity to large, light, high aspect ratio wings for high altitude, long endurance craft. This is obviously not the case here.
Here I can completely agree with you. Back when I graduated, one of the teams of students looked pretty extensively into box wings. The conclusions was pretty clear that they aren't worth it. You may get good control of the tip vortices but the interactions between the front and rear wings are somewhat unpredictable and largely performance robbing. There's a lot less structural advantage than you would think as well. They were a neat thought, but unfortunately in practice just don't perform. Besides, there are plenty of other ways to control tip vortices: winglets, endplates, raked tip, etc.
You're right, water injection does have a well documented history in aircraft. It also has a fairly well documented history in race cars, specifically dragsters. Both are applications where you are going to be using 100% power for a sustained period of time. It's not a coincidence that this is the only power setting that water injection is actually effective. Read that wikipedia article that the tools who actually believe in water injection are linking to, unless it's been vandalized recently it'll say exactly the same thing. Water injection isn't effective at lower power levels because it will actually serve to quench the flame. Seeing as how your average passenger car is cruising at about 15% throttle, adding water is a quick way to start causing problems.
Counter-Counter Example The same story (expanded a bit more than the article you posted) with credit given at the bottom. Interesting example, I had to check several media outlets before I could find a credit. It would appear that outlets getting AP stories aren't required to publish the credit. I guess that's something I've never noticed having usually always seen the story from the source. Very interesting discovery.
Uh, what are you talking about? While there are a lot of AP stories that are just blurbs, any story they have with significant length to it is credited. Take this for example. I work at a radio station that subscribes to the AP newswire and most stories longer than one or two paragraphs have some sort of credit on them. I'm not the news guy though, maybe somebody else can share their experience with when the AP includes bylines. I guess personal preferences may vary, but if I wrote a blurb of a few sentences I wouldn't really care if my name was on it. For everything that counts they seem to usually provide proper credit.
Water Ice sublimes even in the earth's atmosphere. Ever wonder why ice cubes shrink after they've been in a freezer for a really long time? It's also the reason that all the ice will "melt" off your car if you expose it to the sun, even if it's below freezing out. Freezer burn on your food is also caused by sublimation. So yes, water ice does sublime, and in low pressures would probably do so even more.
GM's volume is higher on the Chevy S-10
I kinda doubt that since the S-10 isn't made anymore. It's been replaced by the Colorado, no idea where they're made. I suppose your point still stands that they must do enough volume that they replaced the S-10 with something, but I just thought I'd throw that out there.
This isn't the 25MHz spectrum, it's a 25MHz block of the 2.1GHz spectrum. Realizing that makes this story make a whole lot more sense. There's no possible way this would work in the HF range.
Any specific reason, or are you just spouting a bunch of crap? I've been using an MSI motherboard in a gaming machine I built for about a year and a half now, it's been one of the best motherboards I've ever used. Looking at reviews, they have a few models that are rated pretty low, some that are rated excellent. Just like every other motherboard manufacturer.
50 kW TV station? Nah, TV could very easily be in the 1-5 MW range. 50 kW is more like a powerful AM radio station or a somewhat weak FM radio station. Assuming you're in the US that is.
Not having a land line is a rarity... cell phones are still way more expensive to run, and for skype you need internet, which pretty much mandates having a phone as (a) dsl runs over a phone line, so (duh) you need a phone line to run it over, and (b) cable companies don't like selling packages without phones (it can be done but is hassle).
Nobody in my family under the age of 60 has a land line. My father hasn't had a land line for more than 8 years now, uses his cell phone for everything and wireless data for internet access since he spends a lot of time away from home. My mother got rid of hers several years ago, and has dsl for broadband over a dry line. Aunts, uncles, cousins, I can't think of anybody that hasn't dropped their land line in favor of cell phones. Many of them have cable without phone service (nobody I know has ever used cable phone service, I dont' know where you live but it isn't pushed at all here) and a few of them even have cable internet without cable TV.
Now I realize the above is just one giant anecdote, but in my experience having a land line is viewed as an odd and unnecessary expense since everybody has a cell phone anyway. Why pay for two phones, one of which you can't take with you?
I may just be pulling this out of my ass, but I'm fairly sure I remember reading that Firefly cost 1+ Mil per episode. All the CG work was probably a good chunk of that, but it demonstrates that you aren't going to be able to produce a show like Firefly and make a good profit with that business model unless you charge more than suggested or have a huge audience. Now, your average sitcom seems like it could easily survive by charging around 50 cents an episode, even with an audience of around half a million or so. Has anybody tried online only distribution yet?
One task I was given at a previous job was to set up a computer running a lot of different linux distros to find out if there would be anything extra required past a basic install (installing extra packages and such) to get our software running. As such I ended up installing about 10 different distros all on the same hard drive and all reusing the same swap partition and never ran into that problem. In fact I've never even heard of that problem before. Is it a recent development? Sounds like a strange bug, it'd be interesting to track down why it happens. I'd also like to know how I didn't run into it in such an extreme case.
That's interesting, I've never heard about paint like that before. All the light aircraft I've flown are riveted, not welded though. As such, visual inspections just pretty much involve looking for holes where rivets should be.
I'm an aeronautical engineer and I've done a fair amount of work on light sport aircraft designs. Because of the 120 kt speed limit, light sport aircraft never get going fast enough for parasitic drag to take strong effect. You're also neglecting the most important source of drag at low speeds, induced drag. Because of the ratios of induced drag to parasitic drag, the overall drag of the aircraft would most likely decrease the faster you go. It's a strange concept to work your head around, but the end result is that parasitic drag is so low I really doubt they're losing much at all with the wider body.
As far as the fuel economy goes, light sport aircraft are quite fuel efficient. It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect around 6 gph at 120 knots. That results in about 23 miles (statute) per gallon. Better than my truck, and I'm sure that mileage could be improved upon.
The 450D does have a live histogram when shooting in live view mode.
I don't find it that useful personally, but then I don't find live view that useful either.
This is one of the most ignorant comments I've ever seen on slashdot. People kill themselves every day to the complete surprise of friends and family. While it may be true that people who commit suicide often leave notes or previously reach out for help, that isn't always the case. I have no problem believing he killed himself without exhibiting any "warning signs," and without knowing more about the circumstances of his death it's impossible to form any kind of opinion on if his death was accidental.
That's the worst analogy in history. For someone talking about history, you don't know too much of it. It took reverse engineering to make the first "IBM compatible" computers. It was only later that IBM became more open.
What are you doing flying over populated areas in a > 1000 pound aircraft at the low altitudes this 20 lb object is maneuvering at?
How about landing? There are plenty of public use airports in and around Miami, some of them sitting right in the middle of residential and business districts this drone might be used in. Obviously landing requires you to get fairly low, so I imagine a runway approach is probably well within the range even this small device could be maneuvering in. Could you imagine driving your car into a 20 pound brick at highway speeds? I'd rather not end up flying my plane into a 20 pound drone.
I'd agree with pretty much everything you've said here. As long as they're kept out of all controlled airspace of any type, and stay away from airports, heliports, and every other place you'd expect to see low altitude operations then I don't have a huge problem with it. As much as I hate to propose additional rules to solve a problem, I think it might be worth it to reclassify the current uncontrolled airspace to keep drones out of most of it.
For anybody not in the know, uncontrolled airspace extends up to 1,200 feet above ground over much of the US. It's lower in some places, mostly around airports, and in some cases controlled airspace extends all the way to the ground. Rules are somewhat relaxed concerning what is allowed in uncontrolled airspace, and I imagine most drones would probably be operating in uncontrolled airspace. The problem is there are plenty of aircraft also operating in that airspace. I've personally done some photography work in uncontrolled airspace. Pipeline surveys, aerial searches, helicopter tours, these activities frequently occur under 1000 feet. Obviously automated and human controlled drones are going to be a big thing in the future and somebody is going to have to come up with a good way to keep them from killing people, hopefully before it actually happens.
So if I'm ever flying over Miami in a light plane I can look forward to trying to dodge robotic aircraft that could change direction with no advance warning and tear right through my aircraft. There's a reason you won't see UAV's getting FAA approval anytime soon, they are a serious hazard to air navigation. Visual navigation of aircraft requires just that, vision. Until they have a "see and avoid" system that's foolproof they aren't fit to share airspace where human lives are at stake.
Funny names, as opposed to Hardy Heron, Gutsy Gipsy, It's Gutsy Gibbon... not that that's any better.
amaroK, Now names like this just tick me off. All the KDE apps starting with K or throwing random K's in there is just annoying. Same thing with g's in gnome, and i's in OSX. I really don't understand why they can't just use a normal name and leave it at that.
Pidgin This one however I can't agree with at all. What's wrong with it? If you aren't familiar with the term look up pidgin language on google. I find the name very fitting for an IM program.
Somebody needs to man up and crapflood the fuck out of the FBI.
While part of me likes that idea, the rest of me thinks being more mature about it is probably the better way to go. How about we get some legislation passed protecting innocent people from this shit. Raiding a persons house based on something that no sane person would consider evidence has to be something even your average idiot American is capable of understanding. ...
On second thought, just use the botnet.
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Piston engine aircraft are still burning leaded gasoline today, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
You get two FM radio quality voice channels on ISDN
I'd be interested in knowing what kind of ISDN hardware you're using to get two FM quality channels on a single line. I work at a radio station, and the hardware we're using sounds fantastic, but to get FM radio quality it takes running two lines simultaneously with the left and right channels each on their own line. Are you referring to mono audio only? Are you sure you aren't actually using multiple lines to the same box? We're looking at upgrading our hardware to something with some newer codecs (and less latency, ugh) and it'd be nice to know if we could get something like FM stereo sound on a single line.
I can't imagine using 13,000 kWh per year. I'm in the US (midwest) and we get pretty cold winters and hot, humid summers here. My heat is gas, but A/C is obviously electric. I average about 200 kWh/month, and I don't even remotely try to conserve power other than turning my air off and opening a window whenever I can.
That isn't the only advantage. You're completely ignoring the interaction between the inflow and the shroud, which can provide additional thrust. That combined with tip loss reductions and less problems with high velocity mean shrouded fans can typically be smaller for the same thrust. Depending on the shroud design it may save weight (when rotors start getting really big they get HEAVY) or the advantage may just be you get something more compact. Heck, reducing the tip vortices reduces noise, maybe that's their goal. The picture seems to be slashdotted so I can't really make a more informed comment.
Second, it has very low wing area, meaning you have very high wing loading (bad for fuel economy)
That's a pretty big oversimplification. Many factors will affect max range, and shifting around the span, aspect ratio and wing area will change just about all of them. Higher wing loadings can sometimes help shift up the velocity at which maximum range is achieved. So do you want to move the cargo as far as possible or get it there quickly. High wing loadings are also useful at low altitudes over urban areas, where strong ground winds hitting buildings can do all sorts of nasty things. High wing loadings perform better in the turbulence you can expect in that sort of situation.
Box wings can considerably reduce losses from the tip vorticity, but there is so little lift coming off those wings, there's no purpose. The only purpose to joined wings is that they provide structural rigidity to large, light, high aspect ratio wings for high altitude, long endurance craft. This is obviously not the case here.
Here I can completely agree with you. Back when I graduated, one of the teams of students looked pretty extensively into box wings. The conclusions was pretty clear that they aren't worth it. You may get good control of the tip vortices but the interactions between the front and rear wings are somewhat unpredictable and largely performance robbing. There's a lot less structural advantage than you would think as well. They were a neat thought, but unfortunately in practice just don't perform. Besides, there are plenty of other ways to control tip vortices: winglets, endplates, raked tip, etc.
You're right, water injection does have a well documented history in aircraft. It also has a fairly well documented history in race cars, specifically dragsters. Both are applications where you are going to be using 100% power for a sustained period of time. It's not a coincidence that this is the only power setting that water injection is actually effective. Read that wikipedia article that the tools who actually believe in water injection are linking to, unless it's been vandalized recently it'll say exactly the same thing. Water injection isn't effective at lower power levels because it will actually serve to quench the flame. Seeing as how your average passenger car is cruising at about 15% throttle, adding water is a quick way to start causing problems.
Counter-Counter Example The same story (expanded a bit more than the article you posted) with credit given at the bottom. Interesting example, I had to check several media outlets before I could find a credit. It would appear that outlets getting AP stories aren't required to publish the credit. I guess that's something I've never noticed having usually always seen the story from the source. Very interesting discovery.
Uh, what are you talking about? While there are a lot of AP stories that are just blurbs, any story they have with significant length to it is credited. Take this for example. I work at a radio station that subscribes to the AP newswire and most stories longer than one or two paragraphs have some sort of credit on them. I'm not the news guy though, maybe somebody else can share their experience with when the AP includes bylines. I guess personal preferences may vary, but if I wrote a blurb of a few sentences I wouldn't really care if my name was on it. For everything that counts they seem to usually provide proper credit.
Water Ice sublimes even in the earth's atmosphere. Ever wonder why ice cubes shrink after they've been in a freezer for a really long time? It's also the reason that all the ice will "melt" off your car if you expose it to the sun, even if it's below freezing out. Freezer burn on your food is also caused by sublimation. So yes, water ice does sublime, and in low pressures would probably do so even more.
I kinda doubt that since the S-10 isn't made anymore. It's been replaced by the Colorado, no idea where they're made. I suppose your point still stands that they must do enough volume that they replaced the S-10 with something, but I just thought I'd throw that out there.
This isn't the 25MHz spectrum, it's a 25MHz block of the 2.1GHz spectrum. Realizing that makes this story make a whole lot more sense. There's no possible way this would work in the HF range.
Any specific reason, or are you just spouting a bunch of crap? I've been using an MSI motherboard in a gaming machine I built for about a year and a half now, it's been one of the best motherboards I've ever used. Looking at reviews, they have a few models that are rated pretty low, some that are rated excellent. Just like every other motherboard manufacturer.
50 kW TV station? Nah, TV could very easily be in the 1-5 MW range. 50 kW is more like a powerful AM radio station or a somewhat weak FM radio station. Assuming you're in the US that is.
Nobody in my family under the age of 60 has a land line. My father hasn't had a land line for more than 8 years now, uses his cell phone for everything and wireless data for internet access since he spends a lot of time away from home. My mother got rid of hers several years ago, and has dsl for broadband over a dry line. Aunts, uncles, cousins, I can't think of anybody that hasn't dropped their land line in favor of cell phones. Many of them have cable without phone service (nobody I know has ever used cable phone service, I dont' know where you live but it isn't pushed at all here) and a few of them even have cable internet without cable TV.
Now I realize the above is just one giant anecdote, but in my experience having a land line is viewed as an odd and unnecessary expense since everybody has a cell phone anyway. Why pay for two phones, one of which you can't take with you?
I may just be pulling this out of my ass, but I'm fairly sure I remember reading that Firefly cost 1+ Mil per episode. All the CG work was probably a good chunk of that, but it demonstrates that you aren't going to be able to produce a show like Firefly and make a good profit with that business model unless you charge more than suggested or have a huge audience. Now, your average sitcom seems like it could easily survive by charging around 50 cents an episode, even with an audience of around half a million or so. Has anybody tried online only distribution yet?
One task I was given at a previous job was to set up a computer running a lot of different linux distros to find out if there would be anything extra required past a basic install (installing extra packages and such) to get our software running. As such I ended up installing about 10 different distros all on the same hard drive and all reusing the same swap partition and never ran into that problem. In fact I've never even heard of that problem before. Is it a recent development? Sounds like a strange bug, it'd be interesting to track down why it happens. I'd also like to know how I didn't run into it in such an extreme case.
That's interesting, I've never heard about paint like that before. All the light aircraft I've flown are riveted, not welded though. As such, visual inspections just pretty much involve looking for holes where rivets should be.
I'm an aeronautical engineer and I've done a fair amount of work on light sport aircraft designs. Because of the 120 kt speed limit, light sport aircraft never get going fast enough for parasitic drag to take strong effect. You're also neglecting the most important source of drag at low speeds, induced drag. Because of the ratios of induced drag to parasitic drag, the overall drag of the aircraft would most likely decrease the faster you go. It's a strange concept to work your head around, but the end result is that parasitic drag is so low I really doubt they're losing much at all with the wider body.
As far as the fuel economy goes, light sport aircraft are quite fuel efficient. It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect around 6 gph at 120 knots. That results in about 23 miles (statute) per gallon. Better than my truck, and I'm sure that mileage could be improved upon.
The 450D does have a live histogram when shooting in live view mode. I don't find it that useful personally, but then I don't find live view that useful either.
This is one of the most ignorant comments I've ever seen on slashdot. People kill themselves every day to the complete surprise of friends and family. While it may be true that people who commit suicide often leave notes or previously reach out for help, that isn't always the case. I have no problem believing he killed himself without exhibiting any "warning signs," and without knowing more about the circumstances of his death it's impossible to form any kind of opinion on if his death was accidental.
Who modded this insightful?
How about landing? There are plenty of public use airports in and around Miami, some of them sitting right in the middle of residential and business districts this drone might be used in. Obviously landing requires you to get fairly low, so I imagine a runway approach is probably well within the range even this small device could be maneuvering in. Could you imagine driving your car into a 20 pound brick at highway speeds? I'd rather not end up flying my plane into a 20 pound drone.
I'd agree with pretty much everything you've said here. As long as they're kept out of all controlled airspace of any type, and stay away from airports, heliports, and every other place you'd expect to see low altitude operations then I don't have a huge problem with it. As much as I hate to propose additional rules to solve a problem, I think it might be worth it to reclassify the current uncontrolled airspace to keep drones out of most of it. For anybody not in the know, uncontrolled airspace extends up to 1,200 feet above ground over much of the US. It's lower in some places, mostly around airports, and in some cases controlled airspace extends all the way to the ground. Rules are somewhat relaxed concerning what is allowed in uncontrolled airspace, and I imagine most drones would probably be operating in uncontrolled airspace. The problem is there are plenty of aircraft also operating in that airspace. I've personally done some photography work in uncontrolled airspace. Pipeline surveys, aerial searches, helicopter tours, these activities frequently occur under 1000 feet. Obviously automated and human controlled drones are going to be a big thing in the future and somebody is going to have to come up with a good way to keep them from killing people, hopefully before it actually happens.
So if I'm ever flying over Miami in a light plane I can look forward to trying to dodge robotic aircraft that could change direction with no advance warning and tear right through my aircraft. There's a reason you won't see UAV's getting FAA approval anytime soon, they are a serious hazard to air navigation. Visual navigation of aircraft requires just that, vision. Until they have a "see and avoid" system that's foolproof they aren't fit to share airspace where human lives are at stake.
While part of me likes that idea, the rest of me thinks being more mature about it is probably the better way to go. How about we get some legislation passed protecting innocent people from this shit. Raiding a persons house based on something that no sane person would consider evidence has to be something even your average idiot American is capable of understanding.
On second thought, just use the botnet.