If by "powerful air conditioning" you mean being surrounded by the, near absolute zero, vaccuum of space, then yes it does. All they have to do if she starts to overheat is crack a window.;-)
The previous post only applies to buying a car at the actual, new car, sale price. If a dealer is willing to give me a reasonable discount on a "program car" then I might be more willing to take a chance on having to go through the warrenty process in the unlikely event that it had been damaged by prior use.
While I'm, in no way, a fan of the previous poster's attitude, I think you missed a point. While it may be true that the manufacturer's warrenty covers any damage early in the car's life, that still means you have to deal with having the dealer make the repair. Many dealers don't have loaner cars and some low end ones will even fight with you over what, exactly, is and isn't covered by the warrenty (my parents had to deal with this over their Hyundai Sonata and will never buy a car from that company again because of it). Even when all that goes smoothly, its still a hastle I'd rather avoid. Besides, I don't have the money to throw down on one of the manufacturer's I could assume would be almost guaranteed to treat their customers right in the case of a warrently issue (BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, etc.).
Actually, yes. To a large extent, Energy == Green. In our global economy, most forms of energy are commodities. This means that if I use only green energy to run my factory then that means that there is that much less of that green energy availible for other uses. Those other uses will then have to get their energy from, most likely, not so green sources. Wether you, individually, use green energy or not, the same amount of energy will be produced world-wide from the same mix of green and non-green sources. The only way to change that is to push for the development of new green energy technologies and to push for those, and existing green energy technology, be used for new energy producing facilities.
A turbocharged diesel may use direct injection, such as in the VW TDI engines, but it uses direct injection for the diesel fuel. The system in the article uses direct injection only for the pure ethanol which is injected seperately, and out of phase, from the main fuel. The pure ethanol isn't, primarily, meant to be burned. It serves to cool the cylinder through evaporative cooling. If it were injected with the fuel (as is the case with 10% ethanol mixed fuel from a gas station, it would just be burned with the rest of the fuel and wouldn't cause any cooling effect. This is also why the pure ethanol has to be stored in a seperate reservoir. This may end up being the achilles heel of the design as similar systems have been introduced to the market in the past (the 60s) and failed because people were too lazy/annoyed to bother keeping the seperate reservoir filled.
As an amendment to my previous post, I came across a reason for using, at least, a 50/50 mix of ethanol with your water injection. It turns out that the ethanol provides some measure of anti-freeze effect to the mix. This would be extremely important in many parts of the world as the temperature often falls below the freezing point in populated areas. Still, even a 50/50 mix is an improvement to using pure ethanol that could, otherwise, be used in the fuel and increases the cost of the mix.
it definitely addresses you issue. Even before computer controls, they were able to retard the timing automatically. Today, it would only require the addition of a simple gauge in the ethanol tank to detect if it is empty.
True, that and an increased public awareness of the political problems presented by foreign oil may help improve the acceptance of a system like this. It has been suggested in another post that pure water injection could be used (and has been used in the past) to provide a similar advantage. This has the advantage of being a much more plentiful resource and would free up more of that ethanol to be used as a fuel rather than a coolant (also displacing more of that foreign oil). I think I like that idea better.
Very true, and that would be why, as much as they hate him, the US government still has to deal with him. However, I'm sure that they are very interested in any methods (ex. ethanol) that might allow them to, at least, minimise his importance.
It was posted by someone else in another post. You'll note that even without computer controls they were able to design their system to retard timing in the even the ethanol tank went dry. In the end, the problem that lead to the ceasing of production was, apparently, sociological. People were to lazy/annoyed to bother keeping the second tank full.
Higher gas prices and better consumer awareness of the political importance of using less foreign oil may help to ease the adoption of a similar system. We'll have to see if it gets picked up by any of the major car makers.
Not pure ethanol, but close enough. Especially when you concider that the reason it failed had nothing to do with the effectiveness of the technology. It was a sociological issue of people being to lazy to keep the ethanol/water tank filled.
Actually, his name is Hugo but, otherwise, you are correct. While the president of Brazil is pretty left leaning (and somewhat of a friend of Chavez's) the US government would much prefer dealing with him over Chavez.
If you read the section, you'll notice that, even without fancy computer controls, they had designed the engine to retard timing when the reservoir was empty. The reason they discontinued the engine really was that people just didn't bother keeping the thing filled.
Unfortunately, people are lazy. Unless the system is designed to kill the engine when the ethanol tank runs dry they won't bother keeping it full. If you did kill the engine that way they would, simply, refuse to buy the car (as was the case in the 60's).
You either need to read the article or, if you have, brush up on your reading comprehension skills. The technique used in the article is supposed to allow them to push the turbo pressure much higher than any modern car can handle, even when using high octane fuel. They're talking about using a separate direct injection system to pump a small amount of pure ethanol into the cylinder out of phase with the gasoline. It would cool the cylinder enough to stop knock when the gas is injected at extreme pressures. Supposedly, you would have to replace the ethanol about as often as you have to replace the oil (every few months).
Next time, please try reading the article instead of seeing "ethanol" and "turbocharger" in the summary and shooting your mouth off.
Another way of looking at it is that (going by he article's numbers) if present lithium ion batteries have 120-150 WH/kg and these new batteries are released at the expected 500-700 WH/kg thats, approximately, a little over a 4x increase in energy density. Which means that you will either get 4x the lifespan of a lot of extra power.
Ah, yes. I did intend that to be 33.3 kWH/kg. The math should still be correct though as far as the efficiency values are concerned. I typed 33.3 WH/kg. but assumed 33.3 kWH/kg. in my calculations.
Everything I've ever heard about turbine engines suggests that the smaller they get the less efficient they are. The efficiency numbers are completely in the realm I can believe based on that. I guess I was hoping that someone would find a mistake to suggest that the efficiency wasn't quite that bad. One potentially mitigating factor would be if the professor interviewed for the article had been thinking of, relatively, small cells when he mentioned his WH/kg. estimates. In that case, the packaging/turbine(s)/generator/electronics might, actually, represent a meaningful percentage of the package's weight. This would improve the efficiency value some but I doubt it would make a huge difference. That may be some of the difference he was referring to when he mentioned his initial release energy densities (500-700 WH/kg). versus his mature technology densities (1200-1500 WH/kg).
I forgot about fuel cells (god knows how, they're all over the place in the news it seems). They also have the potential to consume more stable fuels such as ethanol/methanol without emitting toxic fumes in enclosed areas. Hopefully, they mature before this technology takes hold.
He says that he expects the initial products to be about 500-700 Watt-Hours/kg. and to, potentially, go as high as 1200-1500 Watt-Hours/kg. in the distant future.
My understanding is that this thing is supposed to run off of Hydrogen. It'd almost have, to as many consumer electronics are run indoors and most other fuels I know about give off toxic fumes when used in combustion engines.
Now, assuming that the weight of the turbine (~4mm square) and packaging is negligible, most of the weight is fuel. In that case, we are looking at an efficiency of 1.5% - 2.1% for the initial models and 3.6% - 4.5% for the extreme upper end of what this guy thinks is foreseeable with this technology. 1.5% - 4.5% efficiency? That's horrible! Remember, pure hydrogen doesn't exist naturally on this planet. You had to spend large amounts of energy in the first place to produce the hydrogen that will be stored in these batteries (how exactly they plan on storing it I don't know because even the best, present day, techniques leak like a sieve because of the extremely small size of the hydrogen molecule).
Don't get me wrong, I can see where people would want something like this. The potential energy density compared to the compact form factor would open up new possibilities for portable equipment. There in lies the problem. The instant gratification of this technology will be almost impossible to fight. If every piece of small electronics had this kind of power source, cell phones, PDAs, laptops, etc. would become leaps-and-bounds more powerful and, at the same time, would be consuming energy at, potential, an exponentially higher rate.
The only way I can see this not becoming ubiquitous is if some other technology, like batteries, beats it to that energy density level. I don't think that's likely to happen because, even at these miserable efficiency rates, liquid fuels still have a massive lead in energy density over even the most promising, potential, battery technology known.
I hope there is an error in my math. Another possibility is that, as is so often the case, the author of the article doesn't have a clue of what he's talking about and had warped the facts of the story. The fact that he has suggested the possibility of replacing full-sized power plants with massive arrays of these turbines gives me hope that that's the case. If any of you have a correction for my math, please let me know.
That, particular, sentence wasn't, directly, referring to the article. It was responding to the Parent poster's premise that no-one really needs to run Tor. The whole point of Tor is trying to ensure privacy (from overly invasive governments/agencies, corporate data-miners, etc.). The general attitude expressed by the parent and others is that we should be allowed to make serious attempts to ensure out privacy and I was trying to point out that attitudes like that seem to be in direct opposition to the concept of having a right to privacy (which, many, people believe is protected by the US Constitution).
Actually, he says "could be a huge headache for network-security administrators" and "could approach technological anarchy". Notice the use of the work "could" as opposed to the more definite "will".
Furthermore, just because something "could be a huge headache" for IT doesn't, necessarily, mean it isn't, still, part of their job responsibilities. Giving students/faculty at a university access to the Internet in the first place will, inevitably, produce headaches for IT. That said, it's also the only reason they have a job. It would be just as absurd for the IT department to attempt to strong-arm all the students/faculty into not using the Internet at all as a method of decreasing the IT workload.
The fact is, there are ways to deal with it in the event it ever, actually, became a problem such as announcing a ban on the software for student PCs and banning systems from the network as soon as Tor use is detected. It's not difficult to do and means that Tor would only cause the network to dissolve into "technological anarchy" if the IT people sat around and did nothing. If they were even more reasonable and even handed about it, they could ban or traffic shape Tor users that were found to be using an obscene amount of bandwidth (most likely to have had their system injected). This, probably, wouldn't even require a re-write of their network use policies.
"He has the RIGHT to use it, of course, nobody else should. It's a tool only for the gifted."
While I'm assuming you meant this to be sarcastic, YES HE DOES HAVE THAT RIGHT! Its called academic freedom and was, clearly, mentioned in the article. It allows him and other professors to do their job. There are plenty of times that professors research/teach about controversial topics or topics that could cause problems if they were abused. He was teaching a class directly related to Tor and was using it as a way to become more familiar with the software. He never suggests that the general student body, or even the rest of the university employees should, necessarily, be allowed to use the software. You and I may not have the right to use Tor on out employer's networks but, then again, we aren't college professors (unless you happen to be). They represent a, very specific, special case when it comes to thing like this.
As an example, I went to school for computer science. In one of my classes, on how operating systems work, our professor explained how a programmer could, very easily, take down almost any flavor of Unix system no matter how well secured the system was (thus causing headaches for anyone else using that system at the same time as was common in our CS computer labs). This was a fundamental flaw in the design of operating systems that, for Unix systems at least, was pretty universal. He also informed us, very clearly, that we were, in no uncertain terms, banned from using this technique on any of the lab systems (which ran Sun Unix). Furthermore, he informed us that, should we decide to try, they would, very easily, find out who did it and deal with them accordingly. This was an issue directly related to the subject of the class. Knowing it meant that we, as students, could avoid it in our own future software. There is a good chance that, at least one time, my professor had to write a program like this himself (or one of his colleagues did) and test it on one of the lab systems just to prove that it did, in fact, work that way.
The story is that an IT guy and two Campus Security goons came to his door and tried to strong-arm him into not using the software or teaching about it. It's like a bad scene from a melodramatic police drama. They tried to feed him some nebulous garbage about it being against "policy" (a policy he actually helped edit and probably knows better than they do) and use it to threaten his job. The story is about a professor having his job threatened for researching a topic they don't like which flys against the very essence of acade
We Americans don't live in a true democracy; we live in a constitutional republic. It was intentionally designed so that rule by the majority (a.k.a. the "tyranny of the majority" in the words of one founding father) is blunted. In fact, that was, specifically, one of the reasons for the creation of the Electoral College. In the event of the public being tricked into voting extremely unwisely, (voting for someone that intends to dissolve the government and set up a dictatorship or theocracy for example) there is someone there to make a reality check.
An example of the weakness of a true democracy is that, as I have seen mentioned by someone else on Slashdot in the past, 50.0000000000001% of the population could, potentially, vote to have the remaining portion of the American public executed because they don't like them (for whatever reason. race religion, etc.). In the U.S., that pesky thing called the Constitution would stop you from implementing that plan. Of course you could, theoretically, amend the constitution but I have heard arguments to the extent that amendments aren't capable of running counter to the content of the body of the constitution and, either way, you would then need much more that a simple majority.
In the end, everyone is supposed to be able to vote if they want to and, with some limited and controversial exceptions, (like prison convicts) they have that ability. On the other hand, as someone else mentioned, to simply force all people to vote, whether they want to or not, would be neither good for our society as a whole or an accurate implementation of even true democracy. If you really think about it, not showing up at the voting booth is a form of abstention and abstaining is a perfectly legitimate vote (especially if you don't know enough to make an informed decision)
You know, I recommend Google. For instance it took me less than a minute searching on Google to find this http://qbnz.com/highlighter/. It's called GeSHi, and, apparently, it is an open source library for generic syntax highlighting. Maybe you could put just a little bit of effort into looking for a solution before you try to get a community of thousands to spend their time doing it for you. A good first step would be to find your own answer to the other few problems you mentioned now that I've given you one for free.
The incentive is that at some point silicon turns into a pile of goop when you pump too much power through it. If, and when, we are able to move onto something stronger, like diamond semiconductors, then we will. But, even diamond breaks down at some point. We are hitting the practical limits of how much we can shrink the die size. This leaves us with only three real options for improvement. Those are to change semiconductor material (allowing us to pump more power in), to improve the chip designs, and to make use of multiple processors working in parallel to accomplish the task. Nvidia, ATI, Intel, and AMD are each making use of all of these options (to various extents) to help them compete.
You may not believe this, but nvidia and ATI actually do a great deal of design improvement already. The tight competition between the two companies stops them from resting on their laurels in the way 3DFX did before nvidia hit the scene. They both tend to put out a new product every six months or so. Each new release alternates between an overclock of the previous release and a complete chip redesign. The newest redesign for nvidia was the 7800GTX.
Both of these companies are in a position to avoid some of the legacy garbage that limits Intel's ability to re-design their chips because they don't have to support a legacy instruction set like x86. They have much more freedom to innovate and have done so in the last few generations of chip redesigns. Over the last few generations they have added much greater flexibility to the shader engine (the 7800's major contribution was full Shader Standard 3.0 support).
And, once again, I'll restate that I don't care how much power the new designs use. Virtually no one that is interested in the cutting edge of video game graphics hardware cares about power consumption. Since pumping more power into the chips is one of the primary ways we have left to improve performance then efficiency runs counter to the true goal of video game graphics hardware which is graphics quality and/or realism. All that matters in the field of real-time graphics hardware is sheer performance numbers and the quality of the graphics the hardware is capable of producing. Is this solution revolutionary? I would have to say not really, though they have, supposedly, done a radical redesign of the PCB layout as well as the cooling system so that should count for something.
At some point there is going to be a theoretically most efficient chip design and a theoretically most efficient die size and the only method we will be left with to improve CPU speed will be material science and thermodynamics to pump as much power into each chip as possible without melting it.
My point is that these cards are, both, impressive and worth spending money on for the people that are into video games (and have the excess disposable income to spend on them) because people that are into that sort of thing value image quality (for a number of reasons as I've mentioned before) and don't care at all about energy efficiency. Perhaps you aren't even close to being the target market for this product but that doesn't mean that that target market doesn't exist or that those people are total fools for buying this stuff. It also doesn't mean that this technology isn't "cutting edge" even though it wantonly throws away the isolated aspect of energy efficiency in order to excel at the opposing aspect of raw performance.
"Pumping a lot of electricity into a circuit is ***NOT*** "cutting edge".
I'm sure my 3.2Ghz P4 could run at 4.2Ghz if I nitrogen cooled it and pumped 16 times the current into it.
Big deal. Show me where they get this performance at an EQUAL or LOWER amount of waste?
The SR-71 is not exactly a good example. They sacrifice payload and a lot of fuel to fly that high and fast. Compare that to a 757. Last time I did the rough calculation per person transported a 757 wasn't that much less efficient than your average SUV [all while travelling much faster and further]. That's progress. That's also 20 years ago.
Show me the SR-71 version 2.0 which uses less fuel or has a higher payload... etc..."
I'm sorry if you don't like it, but efficiency isn't the end all and be all of "cutting edge". In fact, it's almost the opposite. Cutting edge things very often sacrifice all thought about efficiency in the drive to be the absolute best at whatever they were designed to do. Being the absolute best at its primary function is what defines something as cutting edge.
Efficiency is only considered "cutting edge" for devices designed specifically to be efficient (Volkswagen Lupo, Hybrid cars, etc.) If the 7800 line from nvidia happens to be the most refined GPU designed to date and the only way to make it faster is to design a better cooling system, optimize the PCB layout, and pump more power into it then yes that does make it cutting edge. You can't assign your own, personal, definition of "cutting edge" that ties it directly to the power efficiency of a device and then expect everyone else to agree with you (well, I suppose you can, but they won't).
I think the SR-71 was a perfect example. Who cares that it sacrificed payload and fuel? Was it designed to be a cargo craft? No! It was designed to be the, absolutely, fastest aircraft ever created. And, at the time it was created, it was (and still is to the best of public knowledge). Furthermore, could you make a 757 go just as fast as an SR-71 by sacrificing all the payload and fuel? No! The 757, as efficient as it may be, lacks the basic materials science technology and mechanical engine design need to attain those speeds no matter how hard you push it.
Yes, the 757 is cutting edge (or was when it was designed) but the point is that they are both cutting edge for the primary function each was designed for (efficiency for the 757 and pure speed for the SR-71). You may value efficiency higher than any other factor of a device, but that would be your opinion and would run cournter to the primary design goal of a great many devices designed today. I think, perhaps, you are confusing your opinion with the actual meaning of the term "cutting edge".
On a similar but slightly different note games like F.E.A.R. aren't really that much better because of the graphics. Just because it *can* use those cards doesn't mean you need to. And this gets back to the whole point, why are people impressed with tech demos, er, um, ah, games that require such heavy lifting just to look half decent?
Yet again, this is your opinion. You may have a threshold at which you can't see, or don't care about, a noticeable difference between say Quake 3 and F.E.A.R. but, most people can (even if they aren't willing to shell out the massive amount of money needed to get one of the high end video cards needed to play at that quality level). My point wasn't that it "can use those cards" but that it also gets a tangible benefit from those cards in highly competitive play. Your argument smacks of Ludditeism and, if take to its logical extreme, would question why we ever stopped using slide rules in favor of calculators (surely, the most energy efficient way to do math problems).
Would you be equally impressed with my sloppy game engine? Oh but it's good I mean it requires a 2.8Ghz AMD64 to run!!! That must mean it's good!!!
"Things like these cards make no sense. My FX5200 was capable of playing games like UT2k4 just fine. My 6600 is more than enough for things like Far Cry. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to get faster cards. I'm asking why are you impressed? Engineering is about making the most from the least."
Yes, making the most from the least is one thing engineering is about but it isn't the only thing. I know engineering types often like to focus on that aspect of engineering. I tend to find it impressive as well. A good example would be the Apollo 13 incident.
However, another perfectly valid aspect of engineering is taking the sum total of human knowledge and experience and using it to advance the cutting edge of technology. Good examples of this would be the original moon landing, the SR-71 spy plane, and any number of the other, cutting edge, technological toys that are designed for the U.S. military. In fact, many people would consider these just as impressive, if not more so, than someone making the most out of limited supplies. To each their own but please don't try to push your personal preference as the "true ideal" of engineering. It tends to come off as arrogance and/or, as has been said, "sour grapes".
Also, speaking as someone who used to play a great deal of FPS games, the biggest and badest hardware can make a great deal of difference in game performance. Being able to play the newest FPS games like F.E.A.R. at the highest resolutions/quality while maintaining a FPS higher than the refresh rate of the monitor (so that any dips in FPS still max out the monitor) provides a definite competitive edge. You would have to be pretty good to notice it (better than I ever was) but the difference is there and people that good do exist. As we all know, these games keep coming out with higher and higher hardware requirements. The general trend has been that the most cutting edge ones are designed to run, significantly, slower than 75 - 80 FPS average on anything but the most cutting edge video cards (Doom 3, F.E.A.R., etc.). If you absolutely needed some kind of "practical" excuse for people to be wishing for this hardware then there it is.
The previous response to your post makes a number of valid points but I would like to add a few myself. Judges and juries in the U.S (and I would assume in Canada as well) take a very dim view of people that represent themselves in anything more important than traffic court. This can, sometimes, border on being prejudicial. So, even if she has a clean cut case, she almost has to hire at least one lawyer to represent her or she is already at a disadvantage. Once that is done, all the corporation has to do is drag on their legal defense and subsequent appeals indefinitely until she is bankrupt. This doesn't, necessarily, have to be for a long time because lawyers tend to earn extremely high hourly incomes when compared to the average, middle class, income.
On a side note, I think your paraphrased version of "If you aren't guilty then you shouldn't have anything to worry about/hide" (often used to justify unreasonable search and seizure) is incredibly naive. Modern law is incredibly complex and, as the previous poster mentioned, it is very hard to prove the exact details of a past event unless it was meticulously documented. It is also completely possible for a large team of highly paid corporate lawyers to completely twist the facts in a way that, intentionally, confuses the judge/jury. In traffic court, it is possible (though still difficult) to prevail over a single opposing lawyer by defending yourself and relying on the clarity of the truth. But, when you're an average person defending yourself in criminal/civil court against a team of corporate lawyers with one average defense attorney on you side then your chance drop significantly.
Slashdot Mirror
If by "powerful air conditioning" you mean being surrounded by the, near absolute zero, vaccuum of space, then yes it does. All they have to do if she starts to overheat is crack a window. ;-)
-GameMaster
An addendum:
The previous post only applies to buying a car at the actual, new car, sale price. If a dealer is willing to give me a reasonable discount on a "program car" then I might be more willing to take a chance on having to go through the warrenty process in the unlikely event that it had been damaged by prior use.
-GameMaster
While I'm, in no way, a fan of the previous poster's attitude, I think you missed a point. While it may be true that the manufacturer's warrenty covers any damage early in the car's life, that still means you have to deal with having the dealer make the repair. Many dealers don't have loaner cars and some low end ones will even fight with you over what, exactly, is and isn't covered by the warrenty (my parents had to deal with this over their Hyundai Sonata and will never buy a car from that company again because of it). Even when all that goes smoothly, its still a hastle I'd rather avoid. Besides, I don't have the money to throw down on one of the manufacturer's I could assume would be almost guaranteed to treat their customers right in the case of a warrently issue (BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, etc.).
-GameMaster
Actually, yes. To a large extent, Energy == Green. In our global economy, most forms of energy are commodities. This means that if I use only green energy to run my factory then that means that there is that much less of that green energy availible for other uses. Those other uses will then have to get their energy from, most likely, not so green sources. Wether you, individually, use green energy or not, the same amount of energy will be produced world-wide from the same mix of green and non-green sources. The only way to change that is to push for the development of new green energy technologies and to push for those, and existing green energy technology, be used for new energy producing facilities.
-GameMaster
A turbocharged diesel may use direct injection, such as in the VW TDI engines, but it uses direct injection for the diesel fuel. The system in the article uses direct injection only for the pure ethanol which is injected seperately, and out of phase, from the main fuel. The pure ethanol isn't, primarily, meant to be burned. It serves to cool the cylinder through evaporative cooling. If it were injected with the fuel (as is the case with 10% ethanol mixed fuel from a gas station, it would just be burned with the rest of the fuel and wouldn't cause any cooling effect. This is also why the pure ethanol has to be stored in a seperate reservoir. This may end up being the achilles heel of the design as similar systems have been introduced to the market in the past (the 60s) and failed because people were too lazy/annoyed to bother keeping the seperate reservoir filled.
-GameMaster
As an amendment to my previous post, I came across a reason for using, at least, a 50/50 mix of ethanol with your water injection. It turns out that the ethanol provides some measure of anti-freeze effect to the mix. This would be extremely important in many parts of the world as the temperature often falls below the freezing point in populated areas. Still, even a 50/50 mix is an improvement to using pure ethanol that could, otherwise, be used in the fuel and increases the cost of the mix.
-GameMaster
I believe this is addressed in the article but if not here goes.
# Turbo_Jetfire
This link was posted, by someone else, earlier in the discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_V8_engine
it definitely addresses you issue. Even before computer controls, they were able to retard the timing automatically. Today, it would only require the addition of a simple gauge in the ethanol tank to detect if it is empty.
-GameMaster
True, that and an increased public awareness of the political problems presented by foreign oil may help improve the acceptance of a system like this. It has been suggested in another post that pure water injection could be used (and has been used in the past) to provide a similar advantage. This has the advantage of being a much more plentiful resource and would free up more of that ethanol to be used as a fuel rather than a coolant (also displacing more of that foreign oil). I think I like that idea better.
-GameMaster
Very true, and that would be why, as much as they hate him, the US government still has to deal with him. However, I'm sure that they are very interested in any methods (ex. ethanol) that might allow them to, at least, minimise his importance.
-GameMaster
You make a lot of good points, especially about using water rather than ethanol. You might find this interesting:
# Turbo_Jetfire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_V8_engine
It was posted by someone else in another post. You'll note that even without computer controls they were able to design their system to retard timing in the even the ethanol tank went dry. In the end, the problem that lead to the ceasing of production was, apparently, sociological. People were to lazy/annoyed to bother keeping the second tank full.
Higher gas prices and better consumer awareness of the political importance of using less foreign oil may help to ease the adoption of a similar system. We'll have to see if it gets picked up by any of the major car makers.
-GameMaster
Posted by someone else elsewhere:
# Turbo_Jetfire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_V8_engine
Not pure ethanol, but close enough. Especially when you concider that the reason it failed had nothing to do with the effectiveness of the technology. It was a sociological issue of people being to lazy to keep the ethanol/water tank filled.
-GameMaster
Actually, his name is Hugo but, otherwise, you are correct. While the president of Brazil is pretty left leaning (and somewhat of a friend of Chavez's) the US government would much prefer dealing with him over Chavez.
-GameMaster
This link was posted by someone else responding to the original post.
# Turbo_Jetfire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_V8_engine
If you read the section, you'll notice that, even without fancy computer controls, they had designed the engine to retard timing when the reservoir was empty. The reason they discontinued the engine really was that people just didn't bother keeping the thing filled.
Unfortunately, people are lazy. Unless the system is designed to kill the engine when the ethanol tank runs dry they won't bother keeping it full. If you did kill the engine that way they would, simply, refuse to buy the car (as was the case in the 60's).
-GameMaster
You either need to read the article or, if you have, brush up on your reading comprehension skills. The technique used in the article is supposed to allow them to push the turbo pressure much higher than any modern car can handle, even when using high octane fuel. They're talking about using a separate direct injection system to pump a small amount of pure ethanol into the cylinder out of phase with the gasoline. It would cool the cylinder enough to stop knock when the gas is injected at extreme pressures. Supposedly, you would have to replace the ethanol about as often as you have to replace the oil (every few months).
Next time, please try reading the article instead of seeing "ethanol" and "turbocharger" in the summary and shooting your mouth off.
-GameMaster
Another way of looking at it is that (going by he article's numbers) if present lithium ion batteries have 120-150 WH/kg and these new batteries are released at the expected 500-700 WH/kg thats, approximately, a little over a 4x increase in energy density. Which means that you will either get 4x the lifespan of a lot of extra power.
-GameMaster
Ah, yes. I did intend that to be 33.3 kWH/kg. The math should still be correct though as far as the efficiency values are concerned. I typed 33.3 WH/kg. but assumed 33.3 kWH/kg. in my calculations.
Everything I've ever heard about turbine engines suggests that the smaller they get the less efficient they are. The efficiency numbers are completely in the realm I can believe based on that. I guess I was hoping that someone would find a mistake to suggest that the efficiency wasn't quite that bad. One potentially mitigating factor would be if the professor interviewed for the article had been thinking of, relatively, small cells when he mentioned his WH/kg. estimates. In that case, the packaging/turbine(s)/generator/electronics might, actually, represent a meaningful percentage of the package's weight. This would improve the efficiency value some but I doubt it would make a huge difference. That may be some of the difference he was referring to when he mentioned his initial release energy densities (500-700 WH/kg). versus his mature technology densities (1200-1500 WH/kg).
I forgot about fuel cells (god knows how, they're all over the place in the news it seems). They also have the potential to consume more stable fuels such as ethanol/methanol without emitting toxic fumes in enclosed areas. Hopefully, they mature before this technology takes hold.
-GameMaster
He says that he expects the initial products to be about 500-700 Watt-Hours/kg. and to, potentially, go as high as 1200-1500 Watt-Hours/kg. in the distant future.
My understanding is that this thing is supposed to run off of Hydrogen. It'd almost have, to as many consumer electronics are run indoors and most other fuels I know about give off toxic fumes when used in combustion engines.
Hydrogen has an energy density of ~33.3 Watt-Hours/kg. ( http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/MichelleFung.s html/ )
Now, assuming that the weight of the turbine (~4mm square) and packaging is negligible, most of the weight is fuel. In that case, we are looking at an efficiency of 1.5% - 2.1% for the initial models and 3.6% - 4.5% for the extreme upper end of what this guy thinks is foreseeable with this technology. 1.5% - 4.5% efficiency? That's horrible! Remember, pure hydrogen doesn't exist naturally on this planet. You had to spend large amounts of energy in the first place to produce the hydrogen that will be stored in these batteries (how exactly they plan on storing it I don't know because even the best, present day, techniques leak like a sieve because of the extremely small size of the hydrogen molecule).
Don't get me wrong, I can see where people would want something like this. The potential energy density compared to the compact form factor would open up new possibilities for portable equipment. There in lies the problem. The instant gratification of this technology will be almost impossible to fight. If every piece of small electronics had this kind of power source, cell phones, PDAs, laptops, etc. would become leaps-and-bounds more powerful and, at the same time, would be consuming energy at, potential, an exponentially higher rate.
The only way I can see this not becoming ubiquitous is if some other technology, like batteries, beats it to that energy density level. I don't think that's likely to happen because, even at these miserable efficiency rates, liquid fuels still have a massive lead in energy density over even the most promising, potential, battery technology known.
I hope there is an error in my math. Another possibility is that, as is so often the case, the author of the article doesn't have a clue of what he's talking about and had warped the facts of the story. The fact that he has suggested the possibility of replacing full-sized power plants with massive arrays of these turbines gives me hope that that's the case. If any of you have a correction for my math, please let me know.
-GameMaster
That, particular, sentence wasn't, directly, referring to the article. It was responding to the Parent poster's premise that no-one really needs to run Tor. The whole point of Tor is trying to ensure privacy (from overly invasive governments/agencies, corporate data-miners, etc.). The general attitude expressed by the parent and others is that we should be allowed to make serious attempts to ensure out privacy and I was trying to point out that attitudes like that seem to be in direct opposition to the concept of having a right to privacy (which, many, people believe is protected by the US Constitution).
-GameMaster
Actually, he says "could be a huge headache for network-security administrators" and "could approach technological anarchy". Notice the use of the work "could" as opposed to the more definite "will".
Furthermore, just because something "could be a huge headache" for IT doesn't, necessarily, mean it isn't, still, part of their job responsibilities. Giving students/faculty at a university access to the Internet in the first place will, inevitably, produce headaches for IT. That said, it's also the only reason they have a job. It would be just as absurd for the IT department to attempt to strong-arm all the students/faculty into not using the Internet at all as a method of decreasing the IT workload.
The fact is, there are ways to deal with it in the event it ever, actually, became a problem such as announcing a ban on the software for student PCs and banning systems from the network as soon as Tor use is detected. It's not difficult to do and means that Tor would only cause the network to dissolve into "technological anarchy" if the IT people sat around and did nothing. If they were even more reasonable and even handed about it, they could ban or traffic shape Tor users that were found to be using an obscene amount of bandwidth (most likely to have had their system injected). This, probably, wouldn't even require a re-write of their network use policies.
"He has the RIGHT to use it, of course, nobody else should. It's a tool only for the gifted."
While I'm assuming you meant this to be sarcastic, YES HE DOES HAVE THAT RIGHT! Its called academic freedom and was, clearly, mentioned in the article. It allows him and other professors to do their job. There are plenty of times that professors research/teach about controversial topics or topics that could cause problems if they were abused. He was teaching a class directly related to Tor and was using it as a way to become more familiar with the software. He never suggests that the general student body, or even the rest of the university employees should, necessarily, be allowed to use the software. You and I may not have the right to use Tor on out employer's networks but, then again, we aren't college professors (unless you happen to be). They represent a, very specific, special case when it comes to thing like this.
As an example, I went to school for computer science. In one of my classes, on how operating systems work, our professor explained how a programmer could, very easily, take down almost any flavor of Unix system no matter how well secured the system was (thus causing headaches for anyone else using that system at the same time as was common in our CS computer labs). This was a fundamental flaw in the design of operating systems that, for Unix systems at least, was pretty universal. He also informed us, very clearly, that we were, in no uncertain terms, banned from using this technique on any of the lab systems (which ran Sun Unix). Furthermore, he informed us that, should we decide to try, they would, very easily, find out who did it and deal with them accordingly. This was an issue directly related to the subject of the class. Knowing it meant that we, as students, could avoid it in our own future software. There is a good chance that, at least one time, my professor had to write a program like this himself (or one of his colleagues did) and test it on one of the lab systems just to prove that it did, in fact, work that way.
The story is that an IT guy and two Campus Security goons came to his door and tried to strong-arm him into not using the software or teaching about it. It's like a bad scene from a melodramatic police drama. They tried to feed him some nebulous garbage about it being against "policy" (a policy he actually helped edit and probably knows better than they do) and use it to threaten his job. The story is about a professor having his job threatened for researching a topic they don't like which flys against the very essence of acade
We Americans don't live in a true democracy; we live in a constitutional republic. It was intentionally designed so that rule by the majority (a.k.a. the "tyranny of the majority" in the words of one founding father) is blunted. In fact, that was, specifically, one of the reasons for the creation of the Electoral College. In the event of the public being tricked into voting extremely unwisely, (voting for someone that intends to dissolve the government and set up a dictatorship or theocracy for example) there is someone there to make a reality check.
An example of the weakness of a true democracy is that, as I have seen mentioned by someone else on Slashdot in the past, 50.0000000000001% of the population could, potentially, vote to have the remaining portion of the American public executed because they don't like them (for whatever reason. race religion, etc.). In the U.S., that pesky thing called the Constitution would stop you from implementing that plan. Of course you could, theoretically, amend the constitution but I have heard arguments to the extent that amendments aren't capable of running counter to the content of the body of the constitution and, either way, you would then need much more that a simple majority.
In the end, everyone is supposed to be able to vote if they want to and, with some limited and controversial exceptions, (like prison convicts) they have that ability. On the other hand, as someone else mentioned, to simply force all people to vote, whether they want to or not, would be neither good for our society as a whole or an accurate implementation of even true democracy. If you really think about it, not showing up at the voting booth is a form of abstention and abstaining is a perfectly legitimate vote (especially if you don't know enough to make an informed decision)
-GameMaster
You know, I recommend Google. For instance it took me less than a minute searching on Google to find this http://qbnz.com/highlighter/. It's called GeSHi, and, apparently, it is an open source library for generic syntax highlighting. Maybe you could put just a little bit of effort into looking for a solution before you try to get a community of thousands to spend their time doing it for you. A good first step would be to find your own answer to the other few problems you mentioned now that I've given you one for free.
-GameMaster
The incentive is that at some point silicon turns into a pile of goop when you pump too much power through it. If, and when, we are able to move onto something stronger, like diamond semiconductors, then we will. But, even diamond breaks down at some point. We are hitting the practical limits of how much we can shrink the die size. This leaves us with only three real options for improvement. Those are to change semiconductor material (allowing us to pump more power in), to improve the chip designs, and to make use of multiple processors working in parallel to accomplish the task. Nvidia, ATI, Intel, and AMD are each making use of all of these options (to various extents) to help them compete.
You may not believe this, but nvidia and ATI actually do a great deal of design improvement already. The tight competition between the two companies stops them from resting on their laurels in the way 3DFX did before nvidia hit the scene. They both tend to put out a new product every six months or so. Each new release alternates between an overclock of the previous release and a complete chip redesign. The newest redesign for nvidia was the 7800GTX.
Both of these companies are in a position to avoid some of the legacy garbage that limits Intel's ability to re-design their chips because they don't have to support a legacy instruction set like x86. They have much more freedom to innovate and have done so in the last few generations of chip redesigns. Over the last few generations they have added much greater flexibility to the shader engine (the 7800's major contribution was full Shader Standard 3.0 support).
And, once again, I'll restate that I don't care how much power the new designs use. Virtually no one that is interested in the cutting edge of video game graphics hardware cares about power consumption. Since pumping more power into the chips is one of the primary ways we have left to improve performance then efficiency runs counter to the true goal of video game graphics hardware which is graphics quality and/or realism. All that matters in the field of real-time graphics hardware is sheer performance numbers and the quality of the graphics the hardware is capable of producing. Is this solution revolutionary? I would have to say not really, though they have, supposedly, done a radical redesign of the PCB layout as well as the cooling system so that should count for something.
At some point there is going to be a theoretically most efficient chip design and a theoretically most efficient die size and the only method we will be left with to improve CPU speed will be material science and thermodynamics to pump as much power into each chip as possible without melting it.
My point is that these cards are, both, impressive and worth spending money on for the people that are into video games (and have the excess disposable income to spend on them) because people that are into that sort of thing value image quality (for a number of reasons as I've mentioned before) and don't care at all about energy efficiency. Perhaps you aren't even close to being the target market for this product but that doesn't mean that that target market doesn't exist or that those people are total fools for buying this stuff. It also doesn't mean that this technology isn't "cutting edge" even though it wantonly throws away the isolated aspect of energy efficiency in order to excel at the opposing aspect of raw performance.
-GameMaster
"Pumping a lot of electricity into a circuit is ***NOT*** "cutting edge".
... etc..."
I'm sure my 3.2Ghz P4 could run at 4.2Ghz if I nitrogen cooled it and pumped 16 times the current into it.
Big deal. Show me where they get this performance at an EQUAL or LOWER amount of waste?
The SR-71 is not exactly a good example. They sacrifice payload and a lot of fuel to fly that high and fast. Compare that to a 757. Last time I did the rough calculation per person transported a 757 wasn't that much less efficient than your average SUV [all while travelling much faster and further]. That's progress. That's also 20 years ago.
Show me the SR-71 version 2.0 which uses less fuel or has a higher payload
I'm sorry if you don't like it, but efficiency isn't the end all and be all of "cutting edge". In fact, it's almost the opposite. Cutting edge things very often sacrifice all thought about efficiency in the drive to be the absolute best at whatever they were designed to do. Being the absolute best at its primary function is what defines something as cutting edge.
Efficiency is only considered "cutting edge" for devices designed specifically to be efficient (Volkswagen Lupo, Hybrid cars, etc.) If the 7800 line from nvidia happens to be the most refined GPU designed to date and the only way to make it faster is to design a better cooling system, optimize the PCB layout, and pump more power into it then yes that does make it cutting edge. You can't assign your own, personal, definition of "cutting edge" that ties it directly to the power efficiency of a device and then expect everyone else to agree with you (well, I suppose you can, but they won't).
I think the SR-71 was a perfect example. Who cares that it sacrificed payload and fuel? Was it designed to be a cargo craft? No! It was designed to be the, absolutely, fastest aircraft ever created. And, at the time it was created, it was (and still is to the best of public knowledge). Furthermore, could you make a 757 go just as fast as an SR-71 by sacrificing all the payload and fuel? No! The 757, as efficient as it may be, lacks the basic materials science technology and mechanical engine design need to attain those speeds no matter how hard you push it.
Yes, the 757 is cutting edge (or was when it was designed) but the point is that they are both cutting edge for the primary function each was designed for (efficiency for the 757 and pure speed for the SR-71). You may value efficiency higher than any other factor of a device, but that would be your opinion and would run cournter to the primary design goal of a great many devices designed today. I think, perhaps, you are confusing your opinion with the actual meaning of the term "cutting edge".
On a similar but slightly different note games like F.E.A.R. aren't really that much better because of the graphics. Just because it *can* use those cards doesn't mean you need to. And this gets back to the whole point, why are people impressed with tech demos, er, um, ah, games that require such heavy lifting just to look half decent?
Yet again, this is your opinion. You may have a threshold at which you can't see, or don't care about, a noticeable difference between say Quake 3 and F.E.A.R. but, most people can (even if they aren't willing to shell out the massive amount of money needed to get one of the high end video cards needed to play at that quality level). My point wasn't that it "can use those cards" but that it also gets a tangible benefit from those cards in highly competitive play. Your argument smacks of Ludditeism and, if take to its logical extreme, would question why we ever stopped using slide rules in favor of calculators (surely, the most energy efficient way to do math problems).
Would you be equally impressed with my sloppy game engine? Oh but it's good I mean it requires a 2.8Ghz AMD64 to run!!! That must mean it's good!!!
If you can't see the difference in visual quality
"Things like these cards make no sense. My FX5200 was capable of playing games like UT2k4 just fine. My 6600 is more than enough for things like Far Cry. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to get faster cards. I'm asking why are you impressed? Engineering is about making the most from the least."
Yes, making the most from the least is one thing engineering is about but it isn't the only thing. I know engineering types often like to focus on that aspect of engineering. I tend to find it impressive as well. A good example would be the Apollo 13 incident.
However, another perfectly valid aspect of engineering is taking the sum total of human knowledge and experience and using it to advance the cutting edge of technology. Good examples of this would be the original moon landing, the SR-71 spy plane, and any number of the other, cutting edge, technological toys that are designed for the U.S. military. In fact, many people would consider these just as impressive, if not more so, than someone making the most out of limited supplies. To each their own but please don't try to push your personal preference as the "true ideal" of engineering. It tends to come off as arrogance and/or, as has been said, "sour grapes".
Also, speaking as someone who used to play a great deal of FPS games, the biggest and badest hardware can make a great deal of difference in game performance. Being able to play the newest FPS games like F.E.A.R. at the highest resolutions/quality while maintaining a FPS higher than the refresh rate of the monitor (so that any dips in FPS still max out the monitor) provides a definite competitive edge. You would have to be pretty good to notice it (better than I ever was) but the difference is there and people that good do exist. As we all know, these games keep coming out with higher and higher hardware requirements. The general trend has been that the most cutting edge ones are designed to run, significantly, slower than 75 - 80 FPS average on anything but the most cutting edge video cards (Doom 3, F.E.A.R., etc.). If you absolutely needed some kind of "practical" excuse for people to be wishing for this hardware then there it is.
-GameMaster
The previous response to your post makes a number of valid points but I would like to add a few myself. Judges and juries in the U.S (and I would assume in Canada as well) take a very dim view of people that represent themselves in anything more important than traffic court. This can, sometimes, border on being prejudicial. So, even if she has a clean cut case, she almost has to hire at least one lawyer to represent her or she is already at a disadvantage. Once that is done, all the corporation has to do is drag on their legal defense and subsequent appeals indefinitely until she is bankrupt. This doesn't, necessarily, have to be for a long time because lawyers tend to earn extremely high hourly incomes when compared to the average, middle class, income.
On a side note, I think your paraphrased version of "If you aren't guilty then you shouldn't have anything to worry about/hide" (often used to justify unreasonable search and seizure) is incredibly naive. Modern law is incredibly complex and, as the previous poster mentioned, it is very hard to prove the exact details of a past event unless it was meticulously documented. It is also completely possible for a large team of highly paid corporate lawyers to completely twist the facts in a way that, intentionally, confuses the judge/jury. In traffic court, it is possible (though still difficult) to prevail over a single opposing lawyer by defending yourself and relying on the clarity of the truth. But, when you're an average person defending yourself in criminal/civil court against a team of corporate lawyers with one average defense attorney on you side then your chance drop significantly.
-GameMaster