Yeah, I know. I was just copying ideas from other places to start with. Cryo-treating is out there somewhere, too.
I did come up with a few of my own ideas to try after getting established. Like having a compressed canister (probably CO2) that, when released into the room, is absorbed by the insulation sheath of the cables to reduce crosstalk. Good for a 6 month stint, be sure to treat the room again after that.
A while back, my roommate at the time and I considered making an audiophile cable company ourselves, on the theory that if you can't convince audiophiles that they're wrong (and I've certainly done my part to try), you can at least make money off of them. Setup is simple enough; make a little box to put a sine wave through a cable for 72 hours as a "break-in" procedure, or cryo-treat cables by pouring liquid N2 (easier to get then you'd think) over them and letting the N2 boil off. (Care has to be taken that the cables don't shatter from heating up too fast, though I never got far enough into the plan to try it.)
I eventually dropped the plan after deciding that I wasn't quite that evil, but before that, my roommate had a discussion with one of his coworkers at the retail shop he worked at (don't remember the exact exchange, but it went like this):
Roommate: I'm setting up a cryo-treatment and burn-in service. Should make lots of money off stupid people.
Coworker: What does cryo-treatment do?
R: Absolutely nothing, but people pay for it thinking it does.
C: Sounds interesting. I might buy a few cables from you to try it out.
So my roommate had flatly stated that it's just a big ripoff, and the guy still wanted it.
The US has lots of natural resources (steel, coal, wood, etc.). You can't just export those jobs. Note that the second highest industrial power, Japan, is an island nation with very little natural resources of its own. Where do you think they get the stuff to build all those Priuses?
And it's not even true that there aren't US-born manufacturing anymore. A good chunk of Toyota's output comes from the US. The VQ35DE engine that goes in a lot of Nissans is built in TN.
Increased efficiency often means replacing a low-paying, labor intensive, and possibily dangerous job with a higher paying technical one. While unemployment might be high at the moment, we're talking about decades long trends. If people were really sitting unemployed from increased efficiency instead of moving to other jobs, unemployment would be held over 10% by now.
The US manufacturing base is huge. Really unfathomably large. You could cut out half its output (measured in dollars) and it'd still be in the number one position for industrial output (assuming you don't combine the EU nations together).
Parts of california have nasty smog problems, which are largely driven by particulate emissions, which any diesel has in abundance. It isn't just hippy treehugger crap.
MaBell once told a court that the stealing of a document about 911 system enhancements cost them $79,944. Here's how they got that figure:
Kim Megahee, a Southern Bell security manager, had arrived at the document's value by simply adding up the "costs associated with the production" of the E911 Document. Those "costs" were as follows:
1. A technical writer had been hired to research and write the E911 Document. 200 hours of work, at $35 an hour, cost : $7,000. A Project Manager had overseen the technical writer. 200 hours, at $31 an hour, made: $6,200.
2. A week of typing had cost $721 dollars. A week of formatting had cost $721. A week of graphics formatting had cost $742.
3. Two days of editing cost $367.
4. A box of order labels cost five dollars.
5. Preparing a purchase order for the Document, including typing and the obtaining of an authorizing signature from within the BellSouth bureaucracy, cost $129.
6. Printing cost $313. Mailing the Document to fifty people took fifty hours by a clerk, and cost $858.
7. Placing the Document in an index took two clerks an hour each, totalling $43.
Bureaucratic overhead alone, therefore, was alleged to have cost a whopping $17,099. According to Mr. Megahee, the typing of a twelve- page document had taken a full week. Writing it had taken five weeks, including an overseer who apparently did nothing else but watch the author for five weeks. Editing twelve pages had taken two days. Printing and mailing an electronic document (which was already available on the Southern Bell Data Network to any telco employee who needed it), had cost over a thousand dollars.
But this was just the beginning. There were also the hardware expenses. Eight hundred fifty dollars for a VT220 computer monitor. Thirty-one thousand dollars for a sophisticated VAXstation II computer. Six thousand dollars for a computer printer. Twenty-two thousand dollars for a copy of "Interleaf" software. Two thousand five hundred dollars for VMS software. All this to create the twelve-page Document.
Plus ten percent of the cost of the software and the hardware, for maintenance. (Actually, the ten percent maintenance costs, though mentioned, had been left off the final $79,449 total, apparently through a merciful oversight).
Later in the '90s, Sun Microsystems told the FBI that Kevin Mitnick getting the Solaris source code cost them $80 million, which they never reported to their shareholders, and the source code in question was later given away (under a non-open source license) while Mitnick was still awaiting trial.
There are oil fields around Germany, Romania, and elsewhere. But more importantly, they have vastly improved public transportation compared to the US, and are less dependent on oil for electricity generation (France is almost 100% nuclear).
FDR tried and failed to fix the 1930s recession..... it ultimately took a world war to bring-back full employment. Without the war, FDR would have been voted out of office in 1940, and the recession would have stretched through most of the 1940s.
I have to dispute that. It's more likely that without a war in Europe, FDR wouldn't have ran (since the 2-term limit was tradition at that point, rather than constitutional requirement). FDR's Polio was a well kept secret, and was generally a likeable guy. Since Communisim didn't have the extreme negative connotation in American politics yet, the New Deal programs weren't viewed as a socialist monster.
So if he ran at that point, he probably would have won regardless of the war. He just might have choosen to respect tradition and not run.
I expect out of Sony what I believe my money is worth. Why does Sony expect me to buy something so hobbled when I'll almost certainly be able to buy the same thing in a format that isn't so deliberately broken?
A Stirling's efficiency is usually measured by how well it uses the energy that gets into it. Being an external combustion engine, it's a lot harder to burn fuel and get that energy into the engine than if the fuel is already burning inside it. So yes, it is more efficient than an Otto cycle engine by some measures, but that won't necessarily translate into better mpg.
But let me introduce you to the Atkinson cycle engine, a variation of the traditional Otto cycle with less top end power but better efficiency.
Do you have specific knowledge, or is this just deamonizing the people who actually are fixing the problem? (see also: hybrid Escalade, Chevy Volt, Ford Fiesta, etc.)
4-stroke recipricating gas engines are a very mature technology. There are still a few things we might be able to get out of them (high compression combined with direct injection, direct computer-controled valve timing, and hydrogen injection come to mind), but for the most part we've already taken them as far as they're going to go. There are still some things we might be able to get out of 2-strokes and rotories.
I remember a story from a long time ago, during Longhorn's early development, where Microsoft did a study of the cpu cycles needed for various tasks between WinXP and Linux. I've never been able to track the study down again since, but I remember that creating a new process took about an order of magnitude more cycles on Windows than Linux. Linux processes are also lighterweight in general; Linux admins think nothing of having 100 processes running, while Windows admins panic when it hits 50.
(The basic reasoning goes that Linux has an awesome processes model because its thread model sucks, and Windows has an awesome thread model because its process model sucks. That's why Apache2 has pluggable modules to make it run with either forking or threading.)
A lot of development from the early Longhorn was scrapped, so how does Vista fare? Does its process model still suck?
Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.
on
LHC Flips On Tomorrow
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Don't say that. Just keep quiet and when we're all still alive on Thursday, the naysayers will just go away.
Most mass market advertising does not try to provide information, it is providing associations. It presents something enjoyable (here it is assumed that Seinfeld+Gates==Enjoyable) and then presents the branding that they want to be associated with that enjoyable feeling.
BMWs are among the best drivers cars (except bought by too many people as a status symbol), and the Prius is a plasticy gadget car (and also bought by too many people as a status symbol). The main difference is that the BMW people are starting to buy Audis instead.
Yeah, I know. I was just copying ideas from other places to start with. Cryo-treating is out there somewhere, too.
I did come up with a few of my own ideas to try after getting established. Like having a compressed canister (probably CO2) that, when released into the room, is absorbed by the insulation sheath of the cables to reduce crosstalk. Good for a 6 month stint, be sure to treat the room again after that.
A while back, my roommate at the time and I considered making an audiophile cable company ourselves, on the theory that if you can't convince audiophiles that they're wrong (and I've certainly done my part to try), you can at least make money off of them. Setup is simple enough; make a little box to put a sine wave through a cable for 72 hours as a "break-in" procedure, or cryo-treat cables by pouring liquid N2 (easier to get then you'd think) over them and letting the N2 boil off. (Care has to be taken that the cables don't shatter from heating up too fast, though I never got far enough into the plan to try it.)
I eventually dropped the plan after deciding that I wasn't quite that evil, but before that, my roommate had a discussion with one of his coworkers at the retail shop he worked at (don't remember the exact exchange, but it went like this):
Roommate: I'm setting up a cryo-treatment and burn-in service. Should make lots of money off stupid people.
Coworker: What does cryo-treatment do?
R: Absolutely nothing, but people pay for it thinking it does.
C: Sounds interesting. I might buy a few cables from you to try it out.
So my roommate had flatly stated that it's just a big ripoff, and the guy still wanted it.
Followed by "Economic Crisis Will Cause Open Source to Dance the Macarena and Bark like a Chicken".
"They really hit the jackpot this time," said a regional arms expert. "There is not much they can do with the tanks, . . .
Really? Today's pirates must lack imagination. Though I supose if they had imagination, they'd be ninjas.
The US has lots of natural resources (steel, coal, wood, etc.). You can't just export those jobs. Note that the second highest industrial power, Japan, is an island nation with very little natural resources of its own. Where do you think they get the stuff to build all those Priuses?
And it's not even true that there aren't US-born manufacturing anymore. A good chunk of Toyota's output comes from the US. The VQ35DE engine that goes in a lot of Nissans is built in TN.
Increased efficiency often means replacing a low-paying, labor intensive, and possibily dangerous job with a higher paying technical one. While unemployment might be high at the moment, we're talking about decades long trends. If people were really sitting unemployed from increased efficiency instead of moving to other jobs, unemployment would be held over 10% by now.
Which means that the US is producing more with fewer people. What you're seeing is industry becoming more efficient, not that there's less of it.
Let's be honest here: our country has lost its manufacturing base.
No. As a percentage of GDP, goods production has gone up.
The US manufacturing base is huge. Really unfathomably large. You could cut out half its output (measured in dollars) and it'd still be in the number one position for industrial output (assuming you don't combine the EU nations together).
Parts of california have nasty smog problems, which are largely driven by particulate emissions, which any diesel has in abundance. It isn't just hippy treehugger crap.
MaBell once told a court that the stealing of a document about 911 system enhancements cost them $79,944. Here's how they got that figure:
Kim Megahee, a Southern Bell security manager, had arrived at the document's value by simply adding up the "costs associated with the production" of the E911 Document. Those "costs" were as follows:
1. A technical writer had been hired to research and write the E911 Document. 200 hours of work, at $35 an hour, cost : $7,000. A Project Manager had overseen the technical writer. 200 hours, at $31 an hour, made: $6,200.
2. A week of typing had cost $721 dollars. A week of formatting had cost $721. A week of graphics formatting had cost $742.
3. Two days of editing cost $367.
4. A box of order labels cost five dollars.
5. Preparing a purchase order for the Document, including typing and the obtaining of an authorizing signature from within the BellSouth bureaucracy, cost $129.
6. Printing cost $313. Mailing the Document to fifty people took fifty hours by a clerk, and cost $858.
7. Placing the Document in an index took two clerks an hour each, totalling $43.
Bureaucratic overhead alone, therefore, was alleged to have cost a whopping $17,099. According to Mr. Megahee, the typing of a twelve- page document had taken a full week. Writing it had taken five weeks, including an overseer who apparently did nothing else but watch the author for five weeks. Editing twelve pages had taken two days. Printing and mailing an electronic document (which was already available on the Southern Bell Data Network to any telco employee who needed it), had cost over a thousand dollars.
But this was just the beginning. There were also the hardware expenses. Eight hundred fifty dollars for a VT220 computer monitor. Thirty-one thousand dollars for a sophisticated VAXstation II computer. Six thousand dollars for a computer printer. Twenty-two thousand dollars for a copy of "Interleaf" software. Two thousand five hundred dollars for VMS software. All this to create the twelve-page Document.
Plus ten percent of the cost of the software and the hardware, for maintenance. (Actually, the ten percent maintenance costs, though mentioned, had been left off the final $79,449 total, apparently through a merciful oversight).
Later in the '90s, Sun Microsystems told the FBI that Kevin Mitnick getting the Solaris source code cost them $80 million, which they never reported to their shareholders, and the source code in question was later given away (under a non-open source license) while Mitnick was still awaiting trial.
There are oil fields around Germany, Romania, and elsewhere. But more importantly, they have vastly improved public transportation compared to the US, and are less dependent on oil for electricity generation (France is almost 100% nuclear).
FDR tried and failed to fix the 1930s recession..... it ultimately took a world war to bring-back full employment. Without the war, FDR would have been voted out of office in 1940, and the recession would have stretched through most of the 1940s.
I have to dispute that. It's more likely that without a war in Europe, FDR wouldn't have ran (since the 2-term limit was tradition at that point, rather than constitutional requirement). FDR's Polio was a well kept secret, and was generally a likeable guy. Since Communisim didn't have the extreme negative connotation in American politics yet, the New Deal programs weren't viewed as a socialist monster.
So if he ran at that point, he probably would have won regardless of the war. He just might have choosen to respect tradition and not run.
I expect out of Sony what I believe my money is worth. Why does Sony expect me to buy something so hobbled when I'll almost certainly be able to buy the same thing in a format that isn't so deliberately broken?
I'm also in favor in Texas seceding. Please, go away on your own, or else we'll give you back to Mexico.
All men are created equal. What they do later in life is a different matter.
A Stirling's efficiency is usually measured by how well it uses the energy that gets into it. Being an external combustion engine, it's a lot harder to burn fuel and get that energy into the engine than if the fuel is already burning inside it. So yes, it is more efficient than an Otto cycle engine by some measures, but that won't necessarily translate into better mpg.
But let me introduce you to the Atkinson cycle engine, a variation of the traditional Otto cycle with less top end power but better efficiency.
Oh, it's easy. Just build better engines.
Do you have specific knowledge, or is this just deamonizing the people who actually are fixing the problem? (see also: hybrid Escalade, Chevy Volt, Ford Fiesta, etc.)
4-stroke recipricating gas engines are a very mature technology. There are still a few things we might be able to get out of them (high compression combined with direct injection, direct computer-controled valve timing, and hydrogen injection come to mind), but for the most part we've already taken them as far as they're going to go. There are still some things we might be able to get out of 2-strokes and rotories.
Intelligent, rational, and logical people are fed up with the whole process. If they vote at all, it's on the basis of 'lesser of two evils'.
If you don't live on the east or west coast, yes.
Best Buy has never paid on commission. Circuit City used to, but doesn't now.
Of course there's a dark side. It's the side not pointed towards the sun.
I remember a story from a long time ago, during Longhorn's early development, where Microsoft did a study of the cpu cycles needed for various tasks between WinXP and Linux. I've never been able to track the study down again since, but I remember that creating a new process took about an order of magnitude more cycles on Windows than Linux. Linux processes are also lighterweight in general; Linux admins think nothing of having 100 processes running, while Windows admins panic when it hits 50.
(The basic reasoning goes that Linux has an awesome processes model because its thread model sucks, and Windows has an awesome thread model because its process model sucks. That's why Apache2 has pluggable modules to make it run with either forking or threading.)
A lot of development from the early Longhorn was scrapped, so how does Vista fare? Does its process model still suck?
Don't say that. Just keep quiet and when we're all still alive on Thursday, the naysayers will just go away.
I, however, would gladly spend at least 30 minutes tearing open a Prius just for fun.
Most mass market advertising does not try to provide information, it is providing associations. It presents something enjoyable (here it is assumed that Seinfeld+Gates==Enjoyable) and then presents the branding that they want to be associated with that enjoyable feeling.
Yes, this would be why marketting people should just off themselves.
BMWs are among the best drivers cars (except bought by too many people as a status symbol), and the Prius is a plasticy gadget car (and also bought by too many people as a status symbol). The main difference is that the BMW people are starting to buy Audis instead.