"She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone. The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users. Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on."
Even better 1000 points per second, and accurate to +/-.1mm at 10 meters... Cost & robustness tend to keep it out of the construction markets & limited to precision industrial metrology apps though.
They also succesfully lobbied for high duties on import motorcycles... then in a completely unprecendented move, lobbied to have them reduced when it was clear that they were not going to go under. FWIW, Japan still has extrodinarially high duties on US made motorcycles.
For example, Edison(who strongly believed DC was much safer, outweighing transmission problems) was mostly responsible for death by electrocution; he figured the public would be shocked by how easily a man was killed by AC, and would fear it as a result...putting an end to Tesla, who was quickly taking Edison Electric to the cleaners, with more efficient generation and transmission.
Actually Edision had it in for George Westinghouse (not Tesla) when he aided in the creation of the electric chair, leading to the once popular, though short lived term "Westinghoused" for someone who was executed in the chair.
After the first electrocution, which didn't exactly go off without a hitch, Westinghouse was quoted as saying "they could have done it better with an axe".
Argh!!! People, patent does not equal copyright. Copyright does not equal patent.
The problem as it is constantly regurgitated is that patents (which should have their foundation on scientific achievement) are too easily granted, while copyright (available to most anything) lasts entirely too long. I know that it appears to be only a minor f'up, but if we are going to bitch about this stuff, we need to be able to clearly explain what we are talking about without furthur confusing the issues.
Now repeat after me; A patent is a different animal than a copyright, just as a whale is different animal than an elephant.
Even better is The Burden Brothers. Some of the best music I've heard in a while, and definitely worth checking out. Of note is most all members of the band have done the whole signed on a big label thing and are not looking to do it again. Amongst other things, they see a big label as a major hinderence to success, the best quote from them... it feels really good to be able to just go in the studio and put a song out that fast. I mean, I would still be waiting for approval at Interscope."
I'm sure if anyone wants some good insight into why the RIAA should go away the boys from the burden brothers would be happy to give you an earfull.
Who the hell needs a parallel port on a subnotebook?
I do you insensitive clod! I'm also the one who needs a 10bazillion GHZ processor, 200+terrabytes of RAM, 8 full hours of battery life (measured at 100% processor usage), workstation quality graphics, all in a subnotebook with a 15" screen.
BTW, I've enjoyed quite greatly everyone else in the world subsidizing my needs over the past few years and would like to keep it that way, so will you people please stop claiming that grandma doesn't need all this to send some e-mail, and definitely stop with the claims that cube dwellers don't need this kind of power for word processing.
Think how much the industry is making on Plasma screens. Do they have any real incentive to start selling a cheaper alternative?
Yes they have tons of incentive, they can make more money! Currently, Profit margins on plasma screens are very high - about 30%. Simple econ 101 tells you that the manufacturers can do this because people are willing to pay that much. Even if the television only cost $500 to manufacture, people would still pay $4000+. So of course the industry has the incentive to sell a cheaper alternative - but that doesn't always mean that it'll cost less.
Taken from a company selling ammo better designed to kill...
Unaltered Ball Ammo -- Military ball ammo tends to provide extremely poor, unpredictable terminal performance for edible game and varmints on all but head shots. The pointy bullet will either slip right through the animal (producing little tissue disruption), or tumble (producing massive tissue damage), and is easily deflected by even small bones. The result is very unpredictable performance. It is inhumane and unsportsmanlike to use such ammo except for head shots. Therefore, the effective hunting range of ball ammo is the approximately 1-2" diameter head shot kill zone. For most military rifles, that will severely limit the usefulness of the weapon.
Why is it unhumane? Simple, because it won't kill the animal, only wound it. An interesting note on this (though a quick google search didn't give a good source), is that militarized ammo is specifically designed to not kill, but only wound(a wounded soldier removes not only the wounded from battle, but also the do-gooder care taker). Ammo outside of the military, including all hunting ammo and that used by most law enforcement agencies, is designed to kill.
1: How am i going to charge it in my parking lot at work? at my dorm? Yep, you can't yet, and I doubt you ever will, but if the people demanding electric cars would put up the cash to buy them, I'd be more than willing to be that credit card enabled chargers would spring up all over the place.
2: It just wont get me very far here in Kansas How far do you want to go today? Electric cars are not and have never been aimed at 1000+ mile runs out in the sticks, but rather the city commuter who travels an average of 30 miles per day in city trafic.
4: Small. I like big cars, or better yet Trucks. You cant have an electric Truck - it just makes no sense unless you haul barbie furniture You do know that electric engines have more low end grunt than most gasoline engines could ever dream of. In fact one of the markets EV's have been succesful in is in city delivery vechicles.
FWIW, I'm not much of a proponent of EV's replacing everyone's cars (actually, this would be a bad thing). However, I do believe that, like most alternatives, they do have their place (think postal delivery vechicles). Unfortunately, with everyone believing that any growth in the EV market will ultimately force them out of their oversized grocery getter, I don't think that they will ever be given the chance to prove thier worth.
I agree that buying a diamond would ultimately support some buisnesses that I would rather not support (De Beers), so when the time came for me to pledge loyalty to the world diamond cartel I called my Mom and explained my feelings to her and asked if I could give her diamond to my girl. After she called me the "cheepest son of a bitch ever" (her words, not mine), she admitted that she thought it would be a wonderful idea...
Someone once told me the diagnostic "computer" for late model BMWs, which probably has all of the computational power of your average Palm Pilot, costs around $30,000
Actually, by the time they fail you are probably looking at just a few thousand max, but bitch about that price, realize taht in addition to the computational power of a Palm Pilot, it is also designed to withstand extreame temperature conditions (Northern Alaska to the Middle of the Desert), dust, dirt, mud, rain, etc... Oh, yea it also is very tested to ensure that it won't fail even as the systems around it do...
As I'm sure you've figured out, predicting performance can be excruciatingly difficult on a system as complex as an automobile - this is why extensive testing still ensues all designs in the Automotive world, but that doesn't mean that the commercially available CAD/CAE tools available aren't useful, just that there are too many variables and too little available computing power to model up a whole car and know exactly how it will perform.
Balpark numbers on subsystems can be had with some general purpose CAE design tools(Pro/Mechanica, Dynamic Desiner Motion, Visual Nastran, & Working Model are most common). If you are running on something less than a Cray, these will all require you to simplify your desings - thus the ballpark numbers. I'm looking forward to the day that I can open up a multithousand part assembly, run an FEA project, and have results in less than an hour - all on my desktop workstation. Right now something as simple as a MiniBaja vehicle or FormulaSAE chassis can easily take over 16hrs to run through a single FEA solution on a modern dual processor X86 system. BTW - if you are still in college, SAE Student competitions are a fantastic way to get some experience on how to make a car go.
A great tool that is known to produce very accurate predictions for engines is Desktop Dyno (sorry URL not handy). But again, it wants simplified parameters (not physical geometry), so the program will only be as good as the numbers you feed it, on the plus side it has a good part database so aslong as you stick to COTSH you will get accurate results.
MathCAD and Mathmatica are also very useful, but requrie strong engineering knowledge to be useful, again it all comes down to the results being only as good as the numbers you feed it.
The two big ones you mentioned (Catia and ADAMS) are also fantastic tools, but are both expensive and complex enough that unless it's your job (and you get constant training), you probably won't ever become useful with them - The world of mechanical simulation isn't as well documented at the book store as even the most obscure programing methodologies.
Slashdot Mirror
From yet another recent study...
"She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone. The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users. Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4628914.stm
Way better than 1ft resolution out of the box, but if you are serious, I bet they could dumb it down a bit.http://www.arcsecond.com/index.aspx
Look at the picture again - I'd say the "NAVY" painted tword the back of the aircraft pegs it as being a Naval Aircraft.
Even better 1000 points per second, and accurate to +/-.1mm at 10 meters... Cost & robustness tend to keep it out of the construction markets & limited to precision industrial metrology apps though.
They also succesfully lobbied for high duties on import motorcycles... then in a completely unprecendented move, lobbied to have them reduced when it was clear that they were not going to go under. FWIW, Japan still has extrodinarially high duties on US made motorcycles.
For example, Edison(who strongly believed DC was much safer, outweighing transmission problems) was mostly responsible for death by electrocution; he figured the public would be shocked by how easily a man was killed by AC, and would fear it as a result...putting an end to Tesla, who was quickly taking Edison Electric to the cleaners, with more efficient generation and transmission.
Actually Edision had it in for George Westinghouse (not Tesla) when he aided in the creation of the electric chair, leading to the once popular, though short lived term "Westinghoused" for someone who was executed in the chair.
After the first electrocution, which didn't exactly go off without a hitch, Westinghouse was quoted as saying "they could have done it better with an axe".
Argh!!! People, patent does not equal copyright. Copyright does not equal patent.
The problem as it is constantly regurgitated is that patents (which should have their foundation on scientific achievement) are too easily granted, while copyright (available to most anything) lasts entirely too long. I know that it appears to be only a minor f'up, but if we are going to bitch about this stuff, we need to be able to clearly explain what we are talking about without furthur confusing the issues.
Now repeat after me; A patent is a different animal than a copyright, just as a whale is different animal than an elephant.
I'm sure if anyone wants some good insight into why the RIAA should go away the boys from the burden brothers would be happy to give you an earfull.
Who the hell needs a parallel port on a subnotebook?
I do you insensitive clod! I'm also the one who needs a 10bazillion GHZ processor, 200+terrabytes of RAM, 8 full hours of battery life (measured at 100% processor usage), workstation quality graphics, all in a subnotebook with a 15" screen.
BTW, I've enjoyed quite greatly everyone else in the world subsidizing my needs over the past few years and would like to keep it that way, so will you people please stop claiming that grandma doesn't need all this to send some e-mail, and definitely stop with the claims that cube dwellers don't need this kind of power for word processing.
Oh yea, who the hell needs 802.11G?
Think how much the industry is making on Plasma screens. Do they have any real incentive to start selling a cheaper alternative?
Yes they have tons of incentive, they can make more money! Currently, Profit margins on plasma screens are very high - about 30%. Simple econ 101 tells you that the manufacturers can do this because people are willing to pay that much. Even if the television only cost $500 to manufacture, people would still pay $4000+. So of course the industry has the incentive to sell a cheaper alternative - but that doesn't always mean that it'll cost less.
Taken from a company selling ammo better designed to kill...
Unaltered Ball Ammo -- Military ball ammo tends to provide extremely poor, unpredictable terminal performance for edible game and varmints on all but head shots. The pointy bullet will either slip right through the animal (producing little tissue disruption), or tumble (producing massive tissue damage), and is easily deflected by even small bones. The result is very unpredictable performance. It is inhumane and unsportsmanlike to use such ammo except for head shots. Therefore, the effective hunting range of ball ammo is the approximately 1-2" diameter head shot kill zone. For most military rifles, that will severely limit the usefulness of the weapon.
Why is it unhumane? Simple, because it won't kill the animal, only wound it. An interesting note on this (though a quick google search didn't give a good source), is that militarized ammo is specifically designed to not kill, but only wound(a wounded soldier removes not only the wounded from battle, but also the do-gooder care taker). Ammo outside of the military, including all hunting ammo and that used by most law enforcement agencies, is designed to kill.
1: How am i going to charge it in my parking lot at work? at my dorm?
Yep, you can't yet, and I doubt you ever will, but if the people demanding electric cars would put up the cash to buy them, I'd be more than willing to be that credit card enabled chargers would spring up all over the place.
2: It just wont get me very far here in Kansas
How far do you want to go today? Electric cars are not and have never been aimed at 1000+ mile runs out in the sticks, but rather the city commuter who travels an average of 30 miles per day in city trafic.
3: Lack of speed. When I need to merge, I need to get up and GO damn it.
Exactly how fast do you merge?
4: Small. I like big cars, or better yet Trucks. You cant have an electric Truck - it just makes no sense unless you haul barbie furniture
You do know that electric engines have more low end grunt than most gasoline engines could ever dream of. In fact one of the markets EV's have been succesful in is in city delivery vechicles.
FWIW, I'm not much of a proponent of EV's replacing everyone's cars (actually, this would be a bad thing). However, I do believe that, like most alternatives, they do have their place (think postal delivery vechicles). Unfortunately, with everyone believing that any growth in the EV market will ultimately force them out of their oversized grocery getter, I don't think that they will ever be given the chance to prove thier worth.
I agree that buying a diamond would ultimately support some buisnesses that I would rather not support (De Beers), so when the time came for me to pledge loyalty to the world diamond cartel I called my Mom and explained my feelings to her and asked if I could give her diamond to my girl. After she called me the "cheepest son of a bitch ever" (her words, not mine), she admitted that she thought it would be a wonderful idea...
I'd provide a link as well, but alas I can't find one either... is that because one doesn't exist?
Before anyone praises "On2 Technologies" too much...
(Score:-1,Wrong Article)
Someone once told me the diagnostic "computer" for late model BMWs, which probably has all of the computational power of your average Palm Pilot, costs around $30,000
Actually, by the time they fail you are probably looking at just a few thousand max, but bitch about that price, realize taht in addition to the computational power of a Palm Pilot, it is also designed to withstand extreame temperature conditions (Northern Alaska to the Middle of the Desert), dust, dirt, mud, rain, etc... Oh, yea it also is very tested to ensure that it won't fail even as the systems around it do...
As I'm sure you've figured out, predicting performance can be excruciatingly difficult on a system as complex as an automobile - this is why extensive testing still ensues all designs in the Automotive world, but that doesn't mean that the commercially available CAD/CAE tools available aren't useful, just that there are too many variables and too little available computing power to model up a whole car and know exactly how it will perform.
Balpark numbers on subsystems can be had with some general purpose CAE design tools(Pro/Mechanica, Dynamic Desiner Motion, Visual Nastran, & Working Model are most common). If you are running on something less than a Cray, these will all require you to simplify your desings - thus the ballpark numbers. I'm looking forward to the day that I can open up a multithousand part assembly, run an FEA project, and have results in less than an hour - all on my desktop workstation. Right now something as simple as a MiniBaja vehicle or FormulaSAE chassis can easily take over 16hrs to run through a single FEA solution on a modern dual processor X86 system. BTW - if you are still in college, SAE Student competitions are a fantastic way to get some experience on how to make a car go.
A great tool that is known to produce very accurate predictions for engines is Desktop Dyno (sorry URL not handy). But again, it wants simplified parameters (not physical geometry), so the program will only be as good as the numbers you feed it, on the plus side it has a good part database so aslong as you stick to COTSH you will get accurate results.
MathCAD and Mathmatica are also very useful, but requrie strong engineering knowledge to be useful, again it all comes down to the results being only as good as the numbers you feed it.
The two big ones you mentioned (Catia and ADAMS) are also fantastic tools, but are both expensive and complex enough that unless it's your job (and you get constant training), you probably won't ever become useful with them - The world of mechanical simulation isn't as well documented at the book store as even the most obscure programing methodologies.