Just the driver electronics for the LCD itself. Traditionally, amorphous silicon LCDs have driver chips (made of bulk silicon) flip-chip bonded to the substrate because the amorphous transistors aren't up to the task.
Despite the publicity stunt of building a microcontroller on glass (which, if I recall, ran at about 8 MHz), they will be using this technology (at least right now) to make the display better, cheaper, etc, not to integrate all of the digital logic onto the display.
Think about it this way: it's really cheap to build a microcontroller on a silicon wafer, and it works great when you're done. Putting a bunch of digital logic on the display would be cool (hey, I can see through my microprocessor!), but it's not going to happen right now because it would hurt yield too much. Also, while the mobility of these transistors is better (and probably more consistent), they're still thin-film devices. They wouldn't be appropriate for building a high speed microprocessor.
This is a subject I care about since I listen to a lot of internet radio.
A short piece on the Radio Paradise web site discussing this issue: The Death of Web Radio?
A fairly detailed (though obviously NOT unbiased) site dedicated to saving internet radio: Save Internet Radio
-Phil
There are smaller ones out there, but if I'm not mistaken, this board is designed to be compatible with standard ATX cases. I haven't actually used the board, but it looks to have
(1) standard ATX locations for I/O ports, (2) standard spacing for its (one) PCI slots (so it could be used with the standard first cutout on an ATX case), and (3) standard mounting holes (of course, there are less of them).
So, when they say its the smallest form factor, they don't mean its the smallest PC. There are many much smaller embedded X86 machines, internet appliances, etc. I think they mean it's the smallest "standard" form factor motherboard.
To make a truly transparent circuit board, you would need:
* copper-clad lucite or plexiglass (or another clear insulator; pyrex?) * a way to etch off the copper without clouding the transparent surface underneath * some nice transparent epoxy with which to glue the layers together.
Unless you made it out of glass, it might have some big problems with heat, and keeping a nice smooth transparent surface might be tough. If you did make it out of glass, I can see drilling and plating vias being a real bitch.
Mr. Lessig has written an interesting article, and I think it was worth reading.
Still, I think he has misses the point. He says (I paraphrase) that the internet has the possibility to fundamentally change the system, but that we are simply using it to recreate the old system on a larger/different scale.
Cable television, he also says, was the first Napster. But I think both of these are completely wrong.
As has been pointed out before, and as bears pointing out again, Napster was a file sharing service which allowed people to share files they already had on their computers. Napster itself generated no content, not even content copied from other providers. It was not a one to many medium, as cable television certainly is.
As far as I see it, Napster was really a search engine -- but one with an interesting usage agreement. "We will tell you where to find music on other people's computers, but only if you run our software and agree to share your music." And you didn't even really have to share your music, if you didn't want to! Napster worked because of the fact that a lot of people thought it was a really cool idea, not because they provided better content.
How would a compulsory licensing scheme work for something like this? It wouldn't at all. It doesn't even apply. Are you going to say that facilitating the transfer of a music file over the internet, even if that file doesn't pass through your server, and even if both parties may in fact already legitimately have license to the file makes you subject to a fee (although, apparently, this is what the courts decided)? Otherwise you're left with charging everyone who uses the service for files that are downloaded from their machines.
Furthermore, the internet has the capability to be as many things as people desire simultaneously. It is not limited to reconfigured one-to-many offerings and commercial ventures. Nor is it limited to free exchange of ideas. Internet bandwidth is not unlimited, but neither is the "bandwidth" of a person. The beauty of a computer network is that it is an on demand service, and one person can seek out whatever he or she wants.
Cable television, radio, film: all of these are bound by issues of streaming. There are a limited number of TV or radio stations, even on cable or satellite, and they all broadcast only in real time. Therefore, a decision has to be made regarding what is available. Likewise, movie theaters can only show a certain number of movies per day, and so they must choose to show those they think will make the most money.
But look at video rental! Video rental is more like a file-sharing model: you can get whatever movie you want (as long as you can find the right video store), and you can watch it when you want. Movies come from many different studios and directors, and video stores facilitate finding them. Unlike non-commercial file-sharing, there is copy protection built into the movies, however, so that when you want to watch one, you have to pay for the privilege.
I can envision a real-world/napster hybrid: "Here is a list of club members and the movies/CDs/books they own. If you are a member of the club, you have the right to request a copy of any movie/CD/book owned by a club member. If more than one member owns the work, you may choose which member to ask. Having received a copy of the work, you are now considered to own it also and may receive requests for copies." I am pretty sure that there are clubs like this for trading, especially, DVDs.
Finally, while there may be much more commericial content available electronically than before, it is also easier than ever for an individual to create his own content.
I noticed that RSI Digital, the makers of the binary watch, also have a link (currently "under construction") for an InfraRed watch.
Just what we all need: a watch that can only be viewed with night vision goggles or by insects.
The binary watch is pretty cool, especially since it uses a matrix display. I would think you could program it to display the time in a variety of bases. Hex time? Ternary time? Display the time in base nine and really confuse everyone.
Just as a note of caution, most circuit boards use lead/tin solder, even the new ones. I'd be somewhat hesitant to cut them up and breathe the dust (which would also contain fiberglass particles).
I think places that sell recycled circuit-board objects (such as clipboards)have them specially cleaned to remove all of the solder.
The article mentions Theseus' approach to asynchronous design -- Null Convention Logic (NCL) -- but does not go into any detail.
For more info, check out Theseus' white paper on the subject: ncl_paper.pdf.
I read this a couple of years ago and thought it was fascinating. At the time, I tried to design some "primitives" that could be implemented in an FPGA to at least try out some of the ideas. Not a trivial excercise.
Artificial gravity would seem to be the way to go. How do you do it? There have been a lot of proposals, of course, and everyone has seen movies like 2001 with big rotating spacecraft and huge spoke-wheeled space stations.
One of the most interesting proposals I've seen would use a spacecraft that starts as a single small module for launch, but then seperates into two pieces. Linked together by a long tether, the two halves of the craft rotate about each other during transit in order to create centripetal gravity.
I believe that the tether is also used as a power cable, and the power source is in one module with the crew and provisions in the other. In this way, you get a small, light ship with the artificaial gravity benefits that come from have a very long rotational axis. If you're using a nuclear power source, you also get distance-based shielding.
--I like flat panel monitors, but fish tastes good.
There are several things that disturb me about this report, but I am particularly disturbed by its falacious logic. Many of the issues raised seem unrelated and should be examined seperately.
The ascendancy of international business: it is my opinion that we would not have the current situation without collusion by world governments. Though many people feel that libertarians support big business vis-a-vis their advocacy of limited government regulation, its just the opposite in some cases. It is my opinion that the current situation has arisen as a result of government intervention in the economy. To quote the report:
"Of the U.S. corporations on the list, 44 did not pay the full standard 35 percent federal corporate tax rate during the period 1996-1998. Seven of the firms actually paid less than zero in
federal income taxes in 1998 (because of rebates). These include: Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom, McKesson and the world's biggest corporation--General Motors."
Obviously, these companies have clout, and they get what they want. Whatever the case may be today, they achieved their current status with the help of a lot of governments, especially that of the US. Tax breaks, foreign policy decisions and US neocolonialism have helped big business become what it is today. More government regulation hardly seems to be the answer; more like reform corporate law to limit the US government's ability to help corporations get what they want.
Comparison to GDP: GDP is defined, roughly, as the total value of goods and services produced by a nation within that nation. These companies are part of countries' economies and contribute -- to a greater or lesser extent -- to the GDPs of a lot of countries. They are not seperable concepts.
When IPS says "General Motors is now bigger than Denmark", I would have to say, "So what?" Their report also says that less than 20% of US companies' sales are made outside of the US. Isn't it more meaningful, then, to compare GM's income to the US GDP overall and -- seperately -- look at the per capita US GDP vs. that of Denmark? Denmark is not that big a country. Its population is far smaller than that of the US (july 2000 est. population 5,336,394); I'm sure the GDP of Monaco is smaller than the income of an awful lot of companies, but this is meaningless because Monaco has a population of about 30,000!
This report makes some interesting points, but I for one, don't think it does so very well. Take this paragraph, for instance:
"Still, Americans may be less concerned about the growing gap between profits and employees
because of the country's record low unemployment rate. What is often ignored in the mainstream
media is the fact that unemployment problems remain prevalent elsewhere in the world...Joblessness around the world hurts the United States because it reduces the capacity of consumers in other countries to purchase U.S. products..."
What was this report about again? It's supposedly bad that big companies are making more profits utilizing fewer employees, and the reason that Americans should be concerned is...because that makes people in other countries less able to buy our goods? Something seems circular here...
Yeah, maybe big US corporations don't like this report, but it's conclusions are mostly of the scare tactic variety. Still, the quality (or lack thereof) of IPS's report should not be construed as an endorsement of big business worldwide practices. I, too, feel that businesses wield too much political and societal influence. I just don't think IPS has any answers.
True, and even 64/66 PCI (528 MB/s) would be maxing out trying to keep up with a fast firewire streem at 3200 Mb/s (of course, try finding a device or system that could utilize 3200 Mb/s anyway).
However, one of the things that Apple has done (or at the very least has talked about), I believe, is to move the FireWire off of the PCI bus in their latest chip sets and connect it directly to the G4 processor bus, giving them the potential for superior performance.
In general, this makes sense to me. At 3200 Mb/s what would prevent us from having a system with an internal expansion architecture based entirely on 1394 that did away with PCI entirely? The connectors would sure as hell be a lot smaller. Isochronous data transfer might work really well for a video card and other such devices, too.
(Your BIOS will have to support 1394, of course, to even be able to display POST information).
If Intel would get their heads out of their asses when it comes to 1394, they could use the same approach architecturally: front side bus bridges directly to PCI, 1394, and main memory.
Philip Odom
Just Imagine: women everywhere would then have the opportunity to bear children who would be the offspring of the greatest pinball players of our day. Maybe we could start a whole chain. It might include the Linux Wizards Spermbank (would the children of such an enterprise have to be GPLed?). On a slightly more related note, if such license restrictions stand up, I guess we'll all start reading lots of negative reviews of "that one game, by that big company that makes a bunch of bad games. You know the one!" podom
I've been pretty satisfied by what I've seen of flywheel safety enclosures, so that's not too much of a worry. Precession is only a problem for a flywheel when off-center torque is applied. Proper mounting of the fly-wheel and proper design of the control system for the magnetic bearings take care of this problem and negate the need for a second flywheel. As for heat problems, mounting in a vacuum and using magnetic bearings certainly help to cut down on friction-generated heat, which is very important (of course, these are necessary to get acceptable efficiency out of the system anyway), but they create problems of their own. If you think about it for a second, you'll realize that the flywheel and rotor comprise a system which, during normal operation, touches nothing and is surrounded by a vacuum. It's still going to get hot, though, because of the induced current in the rotor windings. Where does this heat go? There's no convection or conduction, so the only cooling path is through direct radiation, which is very inefficient. High efficiency motors and electrical noise reduction become VERY important in flywheel design for this reason. phil.
Just thought I'd elaborate on the previous reply to this post. I'm good friends with one of the engineers working on the flywheel bus project at CEM, so I've gotten to check out a lot of their work. If you think about it, the average vehicle remains almost completely level all the time. Even fairly steep hills are generally less than 5 degrees (a 6% grade, which is quite a lot, is only 3.43 degrees). The gimbals upon which the flywheels are mounted allow 10-15 degrees travel from the verticle axis. The flywheels are, or course, mounted so that the axis of rotation is verticle, allowing the bus to turn without any problem. The system to return the flywheel to vertical is gravity-based, with the mounting point of the flywheel battery within the gimbal placed slightly above the flywheels center of gravity. Being an electrical engineer, I find the mounting and mechanical aspects of the design interesting, but the electronics required for the complete system are even more ponderous. Precise, simultaneous control of six three-phase motor/generators is required: four traction motors mounted directly to the bus wheels, which also act as regenerative brakes; the flywheel battery motor/generator; and the generator attached to the diesel motor. In addition, this control system must also set the throttle angle of the diesel motor based on the current energy demands of the bus and flywheel system, etc. It's quite a piece of work, but I'm looking forward to seeing it all in action out on the city streets here. Hopefully we'll all be buying cars with flywheel batteries and fuel cells in the not-too-distant future as well. phil
That's an interesting point. However, I think it's fair to point out that people seem more than willing to pay the prices that have been set for CDs, even if they do grumble a little bit from time to time. CD sales continue to increase, despite MP3 and other forms of digital music.
I people were really that unhappy with the price of CDs, they wouldn't buy them; they are certainly not a necessity, like food or electricity (which is also arguable). Even though libertarians in general might not be in favor of price collusion or unfair trade practices, they also believe that the federal government has no granted power to step in and do anything about it unless there is a genuine interstate commerce issue.
People talk like the entertainment industry is the spawn of satan. I don't like them any more than most, but I see that what they are controlling is a pure luxury item. Sure, I would like it better if music recording and playback technology were cheaper and more open, but, I don't have to buy it! That I do seems a validation of the supply and demand system.
As a side note, libertarians have a fundamental respect for personal liberty and personal property, including intellectual property (for which there is a constitutional mandate of protection). This respect would be extremely important to a society with little government control or intervention. Maybe copyright terms are a little too long, though. We could also use a better definition of fair use and a clarification of what buying music entitles one to.
Slashdot Mirror
Just the driver electronics for the LCD itself. Traditionally, amorphous silicon LCDs have driver chips (made of bulk silicon) flip-chip bonded to the substrate because the amorphous transistors aren't up to the task.
Despite the publicity stunt of building a microcontroller on glass (which, if I recall, ran at about 8 MHz), they will be using this technology (at least right now) to make the display better, cheaper, etc, not to integrate all of the digital logic onto the display.
Think about it this way: it's really cheap to build a microcontroller on a silicon wafer, and it works great when you're done. Putting a bunch of digital logic on the display would be cool (hey, I can see through my microprocessor!), but it's not going to happen right now because it would hurt yield too much. Also, while the mobility of these transistors is better (and probably more consistent), they're still thin-film devices. They wouldn't be appropriate for building a high speed microprocessor.
-podom
This is a subject I care about since I listen to a lot of internet radio. A short piece on the Radio Paradise web site discussing this issue: The Death of Web Radio? A fairly detailed (though obviously NOT unbiased) site dedicated to saving internet radio: Save Internet Radio -Phil
There are smaller ones out there, but if I'm not mistaken, this board is designed to be compatible with standard ATX cases. I haven't actually used the board, but it looks to have
(1) standard ATX locations for I/O ports,
(2) standard spacing for its (one) PCI slots (so it could be used with the standard first cutout on an ATX case), and
(3) standard mounting holes (of course, there are less of them).
So, when they say its the smallest form factor, they don't mean its the smallest PC. There are many much smaller embedded X86 machines, internet appliances, etc. I think they mean it's the smallest "standard" form factor motherboard.
Phil
-1 offtopic:
To make a truly transparent circuit board, you would need:
* copper-clad lucite or plexiglass (or another clear insulator; pyrex?)
* a way to etch off the copper without clouding the transparent surface underneath
* some nice transparent epoxy with which to glue the layers together.
Unless you made it out of glass, it might have some big problems with heat, and keeping a nice smooth transparent surface might be tough. If you did make it out of glass, I can see drilling and plating vias being a real bitch.
Sounds very cool, though. I'll get right on it.
Phil
Mr. Lessig has written an interesting article, and I think it was worth reading.
Still, I think he has misses the point. He says (I paraphrase) that the internet has the possibility to fundamentally change the system, but that we are simply using it to recreate the old system on a larger/different scale.
Cable television, he also says, was the first Napster. But I think both of these are completely wrong.
As has been pointed out before, and as bears pointing out again, Napster was a file sharing service which allowed people to share files they already had on their computers. Napster itself generated no content, not even content copied from other providers. It was not a one to many medium, as cable television certainly is.
As far as I see it, Napster was really a search engine -- but one with an interesting usage agreement. "We will tell you where to find music on other people's computers, but only if you run our software and agree to share your music." And you didn't even really have to share your music, if you didn't want to! Napster worked because of the fact that a lot of people thought it was a really cool idea, not because they provided better content.
How would a compulsory licensing scheme work for something like this? It wouldn't at all. It doesn't even apply. Are you going to say that facilitating the transfer of a music file over the internet, even if that file doesn't pass through your server, and even if both parties may in fact already legitimately have license to the file makes you subject to a fee (although, apparently, this is what the courts decided)? Otherwise you're left with charging everyone who uses the service for files that are downloaded from their machines.
Furthermore, the internet has the capability to be as many things as people desire simultaneously. It is not limited to reconfigured one-to-many offerings and commercial ventures. Nor is it limited to free exchange of ideas. Internet bandwidth is not unlimited, but neither is the "bandwidth" of a person. The beauty of a computer network is that it is an on demand service, and one person can seek out whatever he or she wants.
Cable television, radio, film: all of these are bound by issues of streaming. There are a limited number of TV or radio stations, even on cable or satellite, and they all broadcast only in real time. Therefore, a decision has to be made regarding what is available. Likewise, movie theaters can only show a certain number of movies per day, and so they must choose to show those they think will make the most money.
But look at video rental! Video rental is more like a file-sharing model: you can get whatever movie you want (as long as you can find the right video store), and you can watch it when you want. Movies come from many different studios and directors, and video stores facilitate finding them. Unlike non-commercial file-sharing, there is copy protection built into the movies, however, so that when you want to watch one, you have to pay for the privilege.
I can envision a real-world/napster hybrid: "Here is a list of club members and the movies/CDs/books they own. If you are a member of the club, you have the right to request a copy of any movie/CD/book owned by a club member. If more than one member owns the work, you may choose which member to ask. Having received a copy of the work, you are now considered to own it also and may receive requests for copies." I am pretty sure that there are clubs like this for trading, especially, DVDs.
Finally, while there may be much more commericial content available electronically than before, it is also easier than ever for an individual to create his own content.
The internet is not a book, it's paper.
Phil
I noticed that RSI Digital, the makers of the binary watch, also have a link (currently "under construction") for an InfraRed watch.
Just what we all need: a watch that can only be viewed with night vision goggles or by insects.
The binary watch is pretty cool, especially since it uses a matrix display. I would think you could program it to display the time in a variety of bases. Hex time? Ternary time? Display the time in base nine and really confuse everyone.
-podom
Just as a note of caution, most circuit boards use lead/tin solder, even the new ones. I'd be somewhat hesitant to cut them up and breathe the dust (which would also contain fiberglass particles).
I think places that sell recycled circuit-board objects (such as clipboards)have them specially cleaned to remove all of the solder.
Phil
The article mentions Theseus' approach to asynchronous design -- Null Convention Logic (NCL) -- but does not go into any detail. For more info, check out Theseus' white paper on the subject: ncl_paper.pdf. I read this a couple of years ago and thought it was fascinating. At the time, I tried to design some "primitives" that could be implemented in an FPGA to at least try out some of the ideas. Not a trivial excercise.
Artificial gravity would seem to be the way to go. How do you do it? There have been a lot of proposals, of course, and everyone has seen movies like 2001 with big rotating spacecraft and huge spoke-wheeled space stations. One of the most interesting proposals I've seen would use a spacecraft that starts as a single small module for launch, but then seperates into two pieces. Linked together by a long tether, the two halves of the craft rotate about each other during transit in order to create centripetal gravity. I believe that the tether is also used as a power cable, and the power source is in one module with the crew and provisions in the other. In this way, you get a small, light ship with the artificaial gravity benefits that come from have a very long rotational axis. If you're using a nuclear power source, you also get distance-based shielding. --I like flat panel monitors, but fish tastes good.
Preface: IAAL (Libertarian)
There are several things that disturb me about this report, but I am particularly disturbed by its falacious logic. Many of the issues raised seem unrelated and should be examined seperately.
The ascendancy of international business: it is my opinion that we would not have the current situation without collusion by world governments. Though many people feel that libertarians support big business vis-a-vis their advocacy of limited government regulation, its just the opposite in some cases. It is my opinion that the current situation has arisen as a result of government intervention in the economy. To quote the report:
"Of the U.S. corporations on the list, 44 did not pay the full standard 35 percent federal corporate tax rate during the period 1996-1998. Seven of the firms actually paid less than zero in
federal income taxes in 1998 (because of rebates). These include: Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom, McKesson and the world's biggest corporation--General Motors."
Obviously, these companies have clout, and they get what they want. Whatever the case may be today, they achieved their current status with the help of a lot of governments, especially that of the US. Tax breaks, foreign policy decisions and US neocolonialism have helped big business become what it is today. More government regulation hardly seems to be the answer; more like reform corporate law to limit the US government's ability to help corporations get what they want.
Comparison to GDP: GDP is defined, roughly, as the total value of goods and services produced by a nation within that nation. These companies are part of countries' economies and contribute -- to a greater or lesser extent -- to the GDPs of a lot of countries. They are not seperable concepts.
When IPS says "General Motors is now bigger than Denmark", I would have to say, "So what?" Their report also says that less than 20% of US companies' sales are made outside of the US. Isn't it more meaningful, then, to compare GM's income to the US GDP overall and -- seperately -- look at the per capita US GDP vs. that of Denmark? Denmark is not that big a country. Its population is far smaller than that of the US (july 2000 est. population 5,336,394); I'm sure the GDP of Monaco is smaller than the income of an awful lot of companies, but this is meaningless because Monaco has a population of about 30,000!
This report makes some interesting points, but I for one, don't think it does so very well. Take this paragraph, for instance:
"Still, Americans may be less concerned about the growing gap between profits and employees
because of the country's record low unemployment rate. What is often ignored in the mainstream
media is the fact that unemployment problems remain prevalent elsewhere in the world...Joblessness around the world hurts the United States because it reduces the capacity of consumers in other countries to purchase U.S. products..."
What was this report about again? It's supposedly bad that big companies are making more profits utilizing fewer employees, and the reason that Americans should be concerned is...because that makes people in other countries less able to buy our goods? Something seems circular here...
Yeah, maybe big US corporations don't like this report, but it's conclusions are mostly of the scare tactic variety. Still, the quality (or lack thereof) of IPS's report should not be construed as an endorsement of big business worldwide practices. I, too, feel that businesses wield too much political and societal influence. I just don't think IPS has any answers.
Phil
True, and even 64/66 PCI (528 MB/s) would be maxing out trying to keep up with a fast firewire streem at 3200 Mb/s (of course, try finding a device or system that could utilize 3200 Mb/s anyway). However, one of the things that Apple has done (or at the very least has talked about), I believe, is to move the FireWire off of the PCI bus in their latest chip sets and connect it directly to the G4 processor bus, giving them the potential for superior performance. In general, this makes sense to me. At 3200 Mb/s what would prevent us from having a system with an internal expansion architecture based entirely on 1394 that did away with PCI entirely? The connectors would sure as hell be a lot smaller. Isochronous data transfer might work really well for a video card and other such devices, too. (Your BIOS will have to support 1394, of course, to even be able to display POST information). If Intel would get their heads out of their asses when it comes to 1394, they could use the same approach architecturally: front side bus bridges directly to PCI, 1394, and main memory. Philip Odom
Just Imagine: women everywhere would then have the opportunity to bear children who would be the offspring of the greatest pinball players of our day. Maybe we could start a whole chain. It might include the Linux Wizards Spermbank (would the children of such an enterprise have to be GPLed?). On a slightly more related note, if such license restrictions stand up, I guess we'll all start reading lots of negative reviews of "that one game, by that big company that makes a bunch of bad games. You know the one!" podom
I've been pretty satisfied by what I've seen of flywheel safety enclosures, so that's not too much of a worry. Precession is only a problem for a flywheel when off-center torque is applied. Proper mounting of the fly-wheel and proper design of the control system for the magnetic bearings take care of this problem and negate the need for a second flywheel. As for heat problems, mounting in a vacuum and using magnetic bearings certainly help to cut down on friction-generated heat, which is very important (of course, these are necessary to get acceptable efficiency out of the system anyway), but they create problems of their own. If you think about it for a second, you'll realize that the flywheel and rotor comprise a system which, during normal operation, touches nothing and is surrounded by a vacuum. It's still going to get hot, though, because of the induced current in the rotor windings. Where does this heat go? There's no convection or conduction, so the only cooling path is through direct radiation, which is very inefficient. High efficiency motors and electrical noise reduction become VERY important in flywheel design for this reason. phil.
Just thought I'd elaborate on the previous reply to this post. I'm good friends with one of the engineers working on the flywheel bus project at CEM, so I've gotten to check out a lot of their work. If you think about it, the average vehicle remains almost completely level all the time. Even fairly steep hills are generally less than 5 degrees (a 6% grade, which is quite a lot, is only 3.43 degrees). The gimbals upon which the flywheels are mounted allow 10-15 degrees travel from the verticle axis. The flywheels are, or course, mounted so that the axis of rotation is verticle, allowing the bus to turn without any problem. The system to return the flywheel to vertical is gravity-based, with the mounting point of the flywheel battery within the gimbal placed slightly above the flywheels center of gravity. Being an electrical engineer, I find the mounting and mechanical aspects of the design interesting, but the electronics required for the complete system are even more ponderous. Precise, simultaneous control of six three-phase motor/generators is required: four traction motors mounted directly to the bus wheels, which also act as regenerative brakes; the flywheel battery motor/generator; and the generator attached to the diesel motor. In addition, this control system must also set the throttle angle of the diesel motor based on the current energy demands of the bus and flywheel system, etc. It's quite a piece of work, but I'm looking forward to seeing it all in action out on the city streets here. Hopefully we'll all be buying cars with flywheel batteries and fuel cells in the not-too-distant future as well. phil
That's an interesting point. However, I think it's fair to point out that people seem more than willing to pay the prices that have been set for CDs, even if they do grumble a little bit from time to time. CD sales continue to increase, despite MP3 and other forms of digital music.
I people were really that unhappy with the price of CDs, they wouldn't buy them; they are certainly not a necessity, like food or electricity (which is also arguable). Even though libertarians in general might not be in favor of price collusion or unfair trade practices, they also believe that the federal government has no granted power to step in and do anything about it unless there is a genuine interstate commerce issue.
People talk like the entertainment industry is the spawn of satan. I don't like them any more than most, but I see that what they are controlling is a pure luxury item. Sure, I would like it better if music recording and playback technology were cheaper and more open, but, I don't have to buy it! That I do seems a validation of the supply and demand system.
As a side note, libertarians have a fundamental respect for personal liberty and personal property, including intellectual property (for which there is a constitutional mandate of protection). This respect would be extremely important to a society with little government control or intervention. Maybe copyright terms are a little too long, though. We could also use a better definition of fair use and a clarification of what buying music entitles one to.
-phil