People raise families on minimum wage jobs all the time. Two decades of high wages puts you far ahead of nearly everyone around you. It only poses a problem if you're lousy at managing money, and can't stop yourself from spending like it's going to spoil.
If I have to spend all my personal time learning things for the next job then there isn't much point being in technology at all.
Have you got something else that pays nearly as well lined-up? I can show you scores of people working minimum wage jobs who would kill to earn a good IT salary. Why do you think people burn themselves out? Because you could live for several years on what you earn in one, that is if you're any good at managing money. Work for 20 years and retire, if you want to see the benefits.
CAFE standards forced automakers to shrink the size of cars
Federal fuel efficiency standards stayed stagnant for 40 years! Where was this sudden need to build SUVs?
Thus SUVs became popular and the minivan was invented. Those became my generation's station wagon.
Minivans were around long before SUVs, so that's certainly not a reason to develop the later.
Any automaker who doesn't make something the public wants soon goes out of business. The manufacturers just build whatever will sell.
GM built lots of SUVs, as the market wanted... And so, they went bankrupt. Good job, there.
Car makers actually tried very hard to push people into trucks and SUVs, because the margins are much higher than passenger cars. They were certainly NOT just meeting customer demand.
There's nothing to compromise on. Twin engine jets can fly any route, and they are cheaper to buy and cheaper to operate.
Trijets also happen to have incredible design complications that make them highly undesirable in general, and it seems unlikely we'll ever see them return:
But what inherent "law" makes an engine that's twice as powerful cost less than twice as much?
Mostly labor, I suppose. Maybe if the lines were 100% automated, smaller engines could be fractionally cheaper, assuming not just assembly, but testing and certification are fully automated as well.
You also run up against Carnot's Theorem (almost a "law"), which says that larger engines can develop much greater fuel efficiency. This is why the most efficient engines are huge cargo ship's diesel engines, and certainly not your lawn-mower... While that doesn't make the engine cost more, directly, it requires two separate engines be much more than half as large as a bigger one. Not to mention airlines would be less likely to buy a less-efficient jet, even if the cost were no higher.
Handling and manufacturing seems would be easier with smaller parts to offset savings from scale.
Once you're talking about parts larger or heavier than a person can easily carry, it doesn't matter if they're slightly too heavy, or vastly too heavy. A more powerful crane isn't much more expensive, and either requires the same amount of operators, maintenance, facilities, etc.
A smaller engine is just about human size, making it easier for a single person or fewer persons to inspect, clean, fix, transport, etc.
It's much easier to inspect big engines... Everything you need to look at is bigger, and the openings between parts are bigger, too.
Even if it wasn't, inspecting twice as many parts is still going to take at least twice as long, however big or small they are.
Do you find you can build models significantly faster with Lego bricks than you could with Duplo bricks?
Wow you would think the PHD level engineers that have been designing jet engines for decades would have thought of that... and maybe if it was so easy, they would have done it by now ?
They did do it. Several jet engines used to have screening.
a huge speed (in many cases several times the speed of sound)...
The topic is obviously passenger jet aircraft... none of which surpass the speed of sound, so you're clearly exaggerating for no reason.
you stick a grill in there, you are reducing the possible airflow.
This is a rather idiotic statement. Rather ironic considering that you're chiding the GP for how unintelligent his suggestion was.
In any design, you choose how much throughput you need, and design accordingly. With a grill, it's a fairly simple matter to increase the surface area far beyond that of normal engine intake size. Look at, say, EVERY AIR FILTER made, for whatever purpose, to see one trivial way to greatly increase the surface area and improve airflow.
Even most basic grill that actually does something useful will be at least a 30% reduction in engine power (50% is more likely
I'm 97.3% sure those numbers were summarily pulled out of your backside. Not calculated, not an educated guess... nothing.
Yes, yes, there are many reasons jets don't have grills, but that doesn't change the fact you're loudly spouting nonsense.
so now you'll need twice as many engines. Which means twice the fuel,
That's complete bull. Even if an engine can only be run at 70% or 50% of capacity, due to insufficient airflow... that does NOT mean that it still consumes as much fuel as when it's run at 100% capacity.
The criminally insane are permanently housed in jails, today, because the state hospitals were defunded. Rulings on involuntary commitment for non-criminal offenders are not relevant in such cases.
Do you really think they've not thought of this and that you're somehow more adept, smarter, and insightful than they are?
That's an idiotic state of mind you're in. First of all, a baseless appeal to authority is not only a logical fallacy, but also a completely unnecessary conversational dead-end.
More importantly, there are innumerable cases where a lone individual has come up with something, quite simple, which everybody else overlooked, often for a long time. I'd start off with sound recording, which could easily have been invented centuries earlier.
I'd say you're projecting your own ignorance of the topic on others. Just because you don't know enough to intelligently contribute to the subject, certainly does not mean nobody else here can do so. Sadly it's becoming less common, here.
Fracking-related (actually wastewater reinjection) quakes demonstrate it is feasible with current technology.
No. Fracking earthquakes are shallow, not remotely deep enough to affect tectonic plate activity. And there's not enough data, yet, to say whether small earthquakes due to fracking reduce the likelihood of larger, naturally occurring earthquakes at all.
We have never drilled down remotely close enough to affect tectonic activities. The expense is fairly astronomical.
Things Berlin does not have include active volcanoes, serious earthquakes, hurricanes and typhoons, tornadoes, various types of floodings from the sea (including tsunamis) and floodings from rivers.
The 1992 Roermond earthquake was a magnitude 5.3. At least in Earthquake zones, building codes can be more strict so damage is minimal.
Berlin is far north and has major storms. Snow and ice kill people every year, and things like respiratory infections, hypothermia, etc., kill many more.
"We've determined that on May 17, 2015, there will be a 6.0-level earthquake in San Francisco. We believe the accuracy of this prediction to be 90%." [...] Now what? Evacuate 800,000 people?
Absolutely, the city would be evacuated. That's much higher prediction accuracy than we can get with hurricanes, yet cities are evacuated for those, sometimes even several times per year.
Of course, the minority, whor are living in structures engineered to withstand very high earthquake loads would remain behind. But at least they'd have plenty of warning to strap down appliances before-hand, and stay away from dangerous spots on that day.
Not to mention there would be a rush on home-improvement stores and contractors, as everyone rushes to reinforce their shoddy old buildings.
You don't put a grill over the engine, because all that would do with a large birdstrike is add bits of metal into the mass of bird going into the engine.
You seem to be assuming a pretty wimpy "grill", when in fact they could be made extremely strong.... Think: Prison bars.
In addition, a nice sharp beveled angle is required, so the debris can be deflected and pushed away from the engine.
Additionally, jet turbines around the 50s certainly DID have screens, in an attempt to prevent debris from entering engines. The GE J47 is the first one that comes up in a quick search. And I recall videos of airborne de Havilland Comets with screens over the intakes. It was only later that lots or R&D money and advanced metallurgy resulted in turbine blades which could tolerate just massive abuse, not to mention larger engines with fewer blades, that manufacturers decided screens were unnecessary.
That's a bit much, don't you think? That you can essentially destroy your life in a single act,
If he was spouting racist, neo-Nazi or KKK ideals, would you feel the same?
All our actions have consequences. If you're convicted of stealing a car when you're 18, you can forget about getting a highly paid position in IT for the rest of your life. And how about getting yourself addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling? Welcome to being an adult, where a great many things can ruin your life to some degree.
I'm sure he'll be a great burger flipper, and once he leaves for a lower-rent area, he'll still be able to support himself, but he was very lucky to have his position, and he spoiled it. Once he gives up on getting it back, and moves on, he will do just fine.
It was the left that pushed to clear out the mental hospitals.
No, it was Regan.
Over 30 years ago, when Reagan was elected President in 1980, he discarded a law proposed by his predecessor that would have continued funding federal community mental health centers. This basically eliminated services for people struggling with mental illness.
He made similar decisions while he was the governor of California, releasing more than half of the stateâ(TM)s mental hospital patients and passing a law that abolished involuntary hospitalization of people struggling with mental illness. This started a national trend of de-institutionalization. http://www.povertyinsights.org...
Even if they don't get ti fixed, Kepler has had an absolutely amazing run. The initial planned mission lifetime was 3.5 years, and that was in 2009. So we've gotten almost twice as much out of it as it was planned.
That's a lie (or ignorance). It has been a mission plagued with problems that has not met expectations. I don't know if it has fulfilled it's planned mission, but if so, it was only just recently:
The initial planned lifetime was 3.5 years, but greater-than-expected noise in the data, from both the stars and the spacecraft, meant additional time was needed to fulfill all mission goals. Initially, in 2012, the mission was expected to be extended until 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You guys could always redirect the effort these negative comments take to sourcing and submitting stories to us, and voting in the firehose. Probably not as fun as complaining though
I heard the same suggestions from editors on SoylentNews, but no amount of submitting more sci/tech stories changed their editorial direction in the slightest. If/. isn't getting sufficient interesting submissions, you're free to NOT post 20 stories per day... Problem solved.
And you're doing it wrong if you're depending on the Firehose for anything important... That was basically a joke project for people who wanted to waste a lot of time here, similar to Digg. Editorial direction should certainly not be dictated by lowest-common-denominator up-votes, or else this place will be a tabloid in short order.
Due to traction limitations of steel-on-steel, locomotives are heavy by design
Locomotives are heavy, because they need to haul the equivalent of a MOUNTAIN behind them. As far as I know, no intentional attempt to add extra ballast is involved in the design. There certainly aren't any big blocks of lead included in the chassis; the most common method to add weight.
Steel-on-steel traction isn't an issue... Locomotives carry loads of sand, which can be dropped onto the tracks in front of the wheels, as needed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If traction was a significant issue, locomotives could easily include more bogeys/trucks, or alternative designs with higher friction.
Verizon, unfortunately, is amply evil and not bumbling enough to stop themselves.
It's only too clear that you've never dealt with Verizon... If the CEO caught fire, it would take weeks for anybody to grab an extinguisher. There are isolated islands of competence inside the beast, to be sure, but the company is so far beyond dysfunctional that I'm surprised it hasn't utterly imploded. Their rent-seeking ability, to demand insanely high prices, is the only reason they're even slightly profitable.
jets sure get you A HELL OF A LOT FASTER to your destination!
Speeds are only double, at best. That matters a lot on longer, intercontinental routes, but not too much on short routes. Going through airport check-in and security screening often take longer than the actual flight. There are several other potential ways an electric-prop craft could trim some time off your travel...
they operate all the time at pretty much the optimum efficiency setting.
Actually: "Compared to advanced piston engine airliners of the 1950s, current jet airliners are only marginally more efficient per passenger-mile."
weight penalty from the mechanical->electric and electric->mechanical steps.
Fuel cells are more thermodynamically efficient than even the best turbines at converting hydrocarbons into work, and they conveniently happen to output electricity, directly.
Fuel cells are being developed that can run directly on common liquid hydrocarbon fuels, not just hydrogen.
At lower-speeds, props are much more efficient than turbofans, and props can of course be easily driven by electric motors.
The lower speeds of prop-driven planes gives additional added efficiency in lower aerodynamic drag, as well.
Instead of retrofitting such a system onto current jets, combine electric propulsion with "blended wing" aircraft, and the future of passenger air travel could be vastly quieter and more fuel efficient, albeit slower.
And electrically-driven aircraft is incredibly simplified, to the point that airlines would want them for their lower maintenance costs and less downtime, even if the efficiency wasn't substantially better... See my quote above, as airlines previously embraced inefficient turbines for just this reason.
the hydrocarbon-fueled aircraft gets lighter and more efficient as it burns fuel, while batteries stay the same weight
But the batteries just need wires and switches to move the power around, where explosive liquid fuel needs fuel tanks, fire suppression systems, redundant electric boost pump and mechanical pumps, valves, cross-feed, filters, drainage, filling connectors, thermometers and heating, bleed-air pressurizing system, and let's not forget the ENGINE, where the fuel is burned, as well as a big starter battery/APU, exhaust system, and more. Note that (like batteries) NONE of that disappears, or gets any lighter, as the fuel is burned, and almost all of it, both maintenance complexity and weight, could be eliminated in a fully-electric system.
I'm afraid you don't know what double insulated means.
I know precisely what double insulated means.
you still don't electrocute someone by swapping the hot and neutral.
Go swap the wiring on a basic table/floor lamp with E27 socket, plug it in, and change the bulb (preferably with wet hands, while holding onto a faucet). Then get back to me.
Slashdot Mirror
People raise families on minimum wage jobs all the time. Two decades of high wages puts you far ahead of nearly everyone around you. It only poses a problem if you're lousy at managing money, and can't stop yourself from spending like it's going to spoil.
Have you got something else that pays nearly as well lined-up? I can show you scores of people working minimum wage jobs who would kill to earn a good IT salary. Why do you think people burn themselves out? Because you could live for several years on what you earn in one, that is if you're any good at managing money. Work for 20 years and retire, if you want to see the benefits.
Federal fuel efficiency standards stayed stagnant for 40 years! Where was this sudden need to build SUVs?
Minivans were around long before SUVs, so that's certainly not a reason to develop the later.
GM built lots of SUVs, as the market wanted... And so, they went bankrupt. Good job, there.
Car makers actually tried very hard to push people into trucks and SUVs, because the margins are much higher than passenger cars. They were certainly NOT just meeting customer demand.
There's nothing to compromise on. Twin engine jets can fly any route, and they are cheaper to buy and cheaper to operate.
Trijets also happen to have incredible design complications that make them highly undesirable in general, and it seems unlikely we'll ever see them return:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mostly labor, I suppose. Maybe if the lines were 100% automated, smaller engines could be fractionally cheaper, assuming not just assembly, but testing and certification are fully automated as well.
You also run up against Carnot's Theorem (almost a "law"), which says that larger engines can develop much greater fuel efficiency. This is why the most efficient engines are huge cargo ship's diesel engines, and certainly not your lawn-mower... While that doesn't make the engine cost more, directly, it requires two separate engines be much more than half as large as a bigger one. Not to mention airlines would be less likely to buy a less-efficient jet, even if the cost were no higher.
Once you're talking about parts larger or heavier than a person can easily carry, it doesn't matter if they're slightly too heavy, or vastly too heavy. A more powerful crane isn't much more expensive, and either requires the same amount of operators, maintenance, facilities, etc.
It's much easier to inspect big engines... Everything you need to look at is bigger, and the openings between parts are bigger, too.
Even if it wasn't, inspecting twice as many parts is still going to take at least twice as long, however big or small they are.
Do you find you can build models significantly faster with Lego bricks than you could with Duplo bricks?
They did do it. Several jet engines used to have screening.
The topic is obviously passenger jet aircraft... none of which surpass the speed of sound, so you're clearly exaggerating for no reason.
This is a rather idiotic statement. Rather ironic considering that you're chiding the GP for how unintelligent his suggestion was.
In any design, you choose how much throughput you need, and design accordingly. With a grill, it's a fairly simple matter to increase the surface area far beyond that of normal engine intake size. Look at, say, EVERY AIR FILTER made, for whatever purpose, to see one trivial way to greatly increase the surface area and improve airflow.
I'm 97.3% sure those numbers were summarily pulled out of your backside. Not calculated, not an educated guess... nothing.
Yes, yes, there are many reasons jets don't have grills, but that doesn't change the fact you're loudly spouting nonsense.
That's complete bull. Even if an engine can only be run at 70% or 50% of capacity, due to insufficient airflow... that does NOT mean that it still consumes as much fuel as when it's run at 100% capacity.
The criminally insane are permanently housed in jails, today, because the state hospitals were defunded. Rulings on involuntary commitment for non-criminal offenders are not relevant in such cases.
That's an idiotic state of mind you're in. First of all, a baseless appeal to authority is not only a logical fallacy, but also a completely unnecessary conversational dead-end.
More importantly, there are innumerable cases where a lone individual has come up with something, quite simple, which everybody else overlooked, often for a long time. I'd start off with sound recording, which could easily have been invented centuries earlier.
I'd say you're projecting your own ignorance of the topic on others. Just because you don't know enough to intelligently contribute to the subject, certainly does not mean nobody else here can do so. Sadly it's becoming less common, here.
No. Fracking earthquakes are shallow, not remotely deep enough to affect tectonic plate activity. And there's not enough data, yet, to say whether small earthquakes due to fracking reduce the likelihood of larger, naturally occurring earthquakes at all.
We have never drilled down remotely close enough to affect tectonic activities. The expense is fairly astronomical.
The 1992 Roermond earthquake was a magnitude 5.3. At least in Earthquake zones, building codes can be more strict so damage is minimal.
Berlin is far north and has major storms. Snow and ice kill people every year, and things like respiratory infections, hypothermia, etc., kill many more.
There have been numerous floods, and cyclones as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Absolutely, the city would be evacuated. That's much higher prediction accuracy than we can get with hurricanes, yet cities are evacuated for those, sometimes even several times per year.
Of course, the minority, whor are living in structures engineered to withstand very high earthquake loads would remain behind. But at least they'd have plenty of warning to strap down appliances before-hand, and stay away from dangerous spots on that day.
Not to mention there would be a rush on home-improvement stores and contractors, as everyone rushes to reinforce their shoddy old buildings.
You seem to be assuming a pretty wimpy "grill", when in fact they could be made extremely strong.... Think: Prison bars.
In addition, a nice sharp beveled angle is required, so the debris can be deflected and pushed away from the engine.
Additionally, jet turbines around the 50s certainly DID have screens, in an attempt to prevent debris from entering engines. The GE J47 is the first one that comes up in a quick search. And I recall videos of airborne de Havilland Comets with screens over the intakes. It was only later that lots or R&D money and advanced metallurgy resulted in turbine blades which could tolerate just massive abuse, not to mention larger engines with fewer blades, that manufacturers decided screens were unnecessary.
You seriously should read other replies to a comment before chiming-in, yourself. Particularly when you're several days late to the discussion.
If he was spouting racist, neo-Nazi or KKK ideals, would you feel the same?
All our actions have consequences. If you're convicted of stealing a car when you're 18, you can forget about getting a highly paid position in IT for the rest of your life. And how about getting yourself addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling? Welcome to being an adult, where a great many things can ruin your life to some degree.
I'm sure he'll be a great burger flipper, and once he leaves for a lower-rent area, he'll still be able to support himself, but he was very lucky to have his position, and he spoiled it. Once he gives up on getting it back, and moves on, he will do just fine.
No, it was Regan.
That's a lie (or ignorance). It has been a mission plagued with problems that has not met expectations. I don't know if it has fulfilled it's planned mission, but if so, it was only just recently:
I think we should sue Apple... to force them to go remove the tape from his webcam.
I heard the same suggestions from editors on SoylentNews, but no amount of submitting more sci/tech stories changed their editorial direction in the slightest. If /. isn't getting sufficient interesting submissions, you're free to NOT post 20 stories per day... Problem solved.
And you're doing it wrong if you're depending on the Firehose for anything important... That was basically a joke project for people who wanted to waste a lot of time here, similar to Digg. Editorial direction should certainly not be dictated by lowest-common-denominator up-votes, or else this place will be a tabloid in short order.
Locomotives are heavy, because they need to haul the equivalent of a MOUNTAIN behind them. As far as I know, no intentional attempt to add extra ballast is involved in the design. There certainly aren't any big blocks of lead included in the chassis; the most common method to add weight.
Steel-on-steel traction isn't an issue... Locomotives carry loads of sand, which can be dropped onto the tracks in front of the wheels, as needed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If traction was a significant issue, locomotives could easily include more bogeys/trucks, or alternative designs with higher friction.
It's only too clear that you've never dealt with Verizon... If the CEO caught fire, it would take weeks for anybody to grab an extinguisher. There are isolated islands of competence inside the beast, to be sure, but the company is so far beyond dysfunctional that I'm surprised it hasn't utterly imploded. Their rent-seeking ability, to demand insanely high prices, is the only reason they're even slightly profitable.
Speeds are only double, at best. That matters a lot on longer, intercontinental routes, but not too much on short routes. Going through airport check-in and security screening often take longer than the actual flight. There are several other potential ways an electric-prop craft could trim some time off your travel...
Actually: "Compared to advanced piston engine airliners of the 1950s, current jet airliners are only marginally more efficient per passenger-mile."
Fuel cells are more thermodynamically efficient than even the best turbines at converting hydrocarbons into work, and they conveniently happen to output electricity, directly.
Fuel cells are being developed that can run directly on common liquid hydrocarbon fuels, not just hydrogen.
At lower-speeds, props are much more efficient than turbofans, and props can of course be easily driven by electric motors.
The lower speeds of prop-driven planes gives additional added efficiency in lower aerodynamic drag, as well.
Instead of retrofitting such a system onto current jets, combine electric propulsion with "blended wing" aircraft, and the future of passenger air travel could be vastly quieter and more fuel efficient, albeit slower.
And electrically-driven aircraft is incredibly simplified, to the point that airlines would want them for their lower maintenance costs and less downtime, even if the efficiency wasn't substantially better... See my quote above, as airlines previously embraced inefficient turbines for just this reason.
But the batteries just need wires and switches to move the power around, where explosive liquid fuel needs fuel tanks, fire suppression systems, redundant electric boost pump and mechanical pumps, valves, cross-feed, filters, drainage, filling connectors, thermometers and heating, bleed-air pressurizing system, and let's not forget the ENGINE, where the fuel is burned, as well as a big starter battery/APU, exhaust system, and more. Note that (like batteries) NONE of that disappears, or gets any lighter, as the fuel is burned, and almost all of it, both maintenance complexity and weight, could be eliminated in a fully-electric system.
At least Frontier and Vonage have cancellation/termination fees baked-in to their contracts.
I know precisely what double insulated means.
Go swap the wiring on a basic table/floor lamp with E27 socket, plug it in, and change the bulb (preferably with wet hands, while holding onto a faucet). Then get back to me.
No true Scotsman.