we've gotten a bunch of jobs like this - turning handwritten documents into searchable pdfs
We had to do this, too. For a Court, which requires the reasons, decisions, etc. to be publicly available online.
*Thousands* of documents, hundreds of pages each. The responsible department got me, as the IT guy, to set it up for them (after they'd already bought the stuff to do it).
Basically, a couple of Ricoh Aficio series copier/scanners, a couple of ancient Fujitsu sheet-feed scanners, and a bunch of students sitting all day in front of computers running OmniPage Pro.
The Ricohs were great on paper - fast, networked, etc. but their scanner drivers were poor (reminded me of bad CD-ROM drivers - "Copywrite 1995 Behavior Tech Computer. All right reverse." [sic,sic,sic]), and their service (contract) involved having to call the Ricoh guy because the scanner portions randomly wouldn't appear on the network, then wait for him to appear while at least one of the students sat idle. 2 stars out of 5.
Ancient Fujitsu scanners, black and white only, don't remember the model number, required proprietary SCSI cards, no support under Windows NT/XP/2K. These were commercial-grade super-expensive scanners when new (about 1990). Installed Windows 95 on a bunch of relics with ISA slots for the SCSI cards and let 'er rip. Scanning was fast, feed was reliable like a good-quality photocopier or fax machine. Only issue was requirement for an old computer running an old OS; better overall than Ricohs - 4 stars out 5.
OmniPage Pro 12 - reading was *excellent*, far better than anything else I've ever seen. Handled French and English, simple monochrome diagrams, etc. with only very small occasional formatting problems. Print to a PDF using Acrobat on the file server. Only real problem was stability, frequently locking up and losing the scan and OCR on page 99 of a 104 page document. 2 stars out of 5, being punitive because of frustration.
As they got to be more proficient with OPP, and as OPP's dictionaries filled up, we were able to add more and more computers and scanners, so that they were running around, tossing files into the scanners, stapling scanned documents back together, and occasionally rebooting one of the Windows 95 workstations. Peak was 15 computers and scanners.
Nothing special, just "Webbug" images, which spamfilters such as SpamAssasin (in the default setting) adds point to as more likely to be spam, so using DidTheyReadIt users mail is more likely to end up in a spamfolder than any other type of mail.
For sure, and this was my first thought, and the best way to have made it DidTheyReadIt work.
Based on the testimony and description, though, I'm concerned about the possibility that they might just be a slick-looking e-mail address collector for spammers.
Somewhat related: Anyone know how to implant a webbug image with Eudora? Eudora seems to embed images by MIME; it doesn't seem to handle an IMG tag pointing to an HTTP server. Would be useful with independent consulting; "freaking out" people by telling them exactly when they viewed their e-mail would be a handy way to break the Outlook and "but I like all the pretty pictures in my e-mail" habit.
While eating GM crops is almost definitely a non-issue...We have NO HOPE of having any idea what the cummulative long term consequences are for all GM crops.
If the GM crops are modified to be infertile (as most of them are), then they can't reproduce. You've already said that eating them is safe - therefore, what are the alternative issues?
by the all-knowing State of California and the environmentalist lobby.
You imply that the environmentalist lobby is "all-knowing"... even though it's sarcastic.
Just want to point out that if "environmentalists" really cared about the environment, they'd have useful degrees in math, science or engineering. Instead, they do "Women's Studies" or art history, then talk about scientific policy from their ignorance, and the masses believe them because they're "educated".
The world is all about change. To understand it and be able to "model" it scientifically, you need to understand rates of change - calculus. Nature's favorite number is, arguably, e. So, I'd expect anyone who credibly calls himself or herself an environmentalist to be able to differentiate (find the rate of change of) e^(2x). As a bare minimum for credibility, and certainly before I'll even entertain idiotic ideas like hydrogen-powered cars.
My father had precisely the same reaction with that message from a LaserJet II that I gave him a few years ago. I'm pretty sure that's exactly the message.
I don't understand why it's such a confusing message, but I also wouldn't have phrased it the same way. It's one of the most classic examples of the reason why engineers and developers should never be allowed to design user interfaces. (When they do, you end up with stuff like xine.)
Given a fixed number of display characters (14, IIRC), why not alternate - "OUT OF PAPER" with "LETTER - TOP" or "LETTER - BOTTOM" or "LEGAL - TRAY". I'm sure it would have been only slightly more expensive to do - a couple of extra lines of software, would have reduced tech support calls, and would have been useful even up to a III/IIID with the second (bottom) tray. Even easier would have just been "OUT OF LETTER", "OUT OF LEGAL", in situations with plain letter in the top cassette and letterhead in the bottom, I'd hope that whoever had put the paper in it originally could also figure out that there should have been letter-sized paper in both cassettes.
How 'bout the LaserJet I? I think "out of paper" was a 21 error.
DISCLAIMER and WARNING: I am an electrical engineer. I wrote a practice Ontario mechanic's license exam for the fun of it and passed with flying colors but lack the apprenticeship hours to pursue it for a full license. However, my roommate and best friend *is* a licensed auto mechanic and former Toyota employee. He has asked me into the shop to diagnose and repair dozens of electrical problems on brand-new Toyota cars when the mechanics can't fix it. So, I welcome attempts to change my mind, but you'd better know what you're talking about.
The NiMH batteries are much better on the environment than NiCD and Lead-Acid batteries. FWIW NiMHs are not considered hazardous waste by the EPA. There is some concern about the nickel in them (nothing concrete yet) but normal car batteries have lead (bad heavy metal) and sulfuric acid... not the best things in the world.
So, what's the electrolyte in NiMH, and what's the pH, in order to produce the energy density which is substantially more than a lead-acid car battery?
In enough concentration, even acetic acid (ie. vinegar) is extremely dangerous. (For one thing, it's a weak acid, meaning that it doesn't dissociate completely once it reaches equilibrium in the solution, meaning that the more reactants you add, the more acid effect you get!)
I would be more worried by the lead acid battery in a normal car than the NiMH batteries on a hybrid.
I wouldn't. The greater the energy density in a battery, the more inherently nasty the internal chemisty must be. Didn't you take high school chemistry?
Then again, I might be speaking out of my ass. After all, I only took two years of electrochemistry in my electrical engineering courses in University. It can't compare with the high school chemistry you obviously didn't take - or the common sense you obviously don't have - to not understand the basics of how electrical energy density must correspond to chemical energy density.
Have you seen how the toyota hybrid works (not the honda)? It is incredible simple. It uses a planetary gear CVT/Power Split which simplifies the transmission. No torque converter or clutch and no complicated multi-speed gear boxes. Pretty nifty. Other things like generators (alternators) and electric motors (starters) already have equivalents in normal cars.
Yeah, but mechanics don't like wires, in case you haven't noticed. Buy one a beer sometime and chat with him (or her). If they liked wires, they'd be electricians or electronics technicians. Mechanics generally get into the trade because they like moving parts - sorry, it sucks, but that's the way it is. Stop by your local community college sometime. Net effect is that, to them, it's more complicated and more daunting. They don't want to work on it. Therefore, your labor rates go up, the car becomes too expensive to fix, and gets scrapped sooner.
Good question, but keep in mind that most of the old cars currently are the ones that are responsible most of the pollution, as time goes on we get new cars that run cleaner and more efficient.
Poorly maintained cars are responsible for most of the pollution; age doesn't matter. Loads of people in 3-4 year old cars are failing emissions tests because their EGR valves are stuck open, PCV valves are stuck closed, or because their timing belts have jumped a notch. The beaters tend to be driven by people who actually know how to fix them, and hear every little knock or click and know to check things out.
You're towing the Greenpeace line which isn't based in scientific or statistical reality.
We also need to ask what portion of cars that are made now will be used in 6-8 years? Normal cars can need expensive repairs (new transmissions, new clutches) too and how many get junked for that?
Absolutely true. Lots of cars get junked when blown expensive parts make the car undrivable. So, what's going to happen when you add another really expensive part to the car? What's going to happen when the lifespan of that expensive part is *very* fi
I don't see doing NOTHING as an appropriate solution to the fact that some (very few relatively) people use high-performance equipment and vehicles.
Detroit aggressively markets SUVs exactly the way they aggressively marketed full-size station wagons a mere 20 years ago. Why? That's what people really want. That's what people go into the showroom to buy. And that's also where the profit margins are.
When they discover they can't afford to pay for the new SUV/Station_Wagon_of_Days_Gone_By, the salesman talks them into the new Focus/Cavalier/Neon. The ads for expensive cars sell cheap cars.
Now, since gasoline is relatively inexpensive and incomes are relatively high, far more people can buy either what they *actually* want, or the compromise mid-size, without going to the raspy feels-like-a-buzzy-little-Honda econobox.
You can't run an ad campaign telling people they don't want small cars - it won't work. For one thing, at over 6' tall, I'm not driving around in *any* car where my head is touching the roof, and North Americans tend to be physically bigger than most people in other parts of the world. Next, an ad campaign that tells people "it's not cool to drive small cars" is going to sell big cars better than any ad campaign Detroit could ever come up with! (Think of public trends around anti-smoking and anti-marijuana ads.)
So, what do you do? Increase gas taxes? It's already taxed more than enough and going to silly pork-barrel projects (rather than building roads which would reduce congestion and therefore fuel consumption), you'll have a revolt against the government. On the other hand, leave it to the laws of supply and demand (and those crazy Arabs) and filling up a Navigator will become so exorbitant that only the rich do it.
Leave it alone. The economy will work it out on its own. And the more you tamper with it, the more it will somehow backfire in your face.
Really?!?! The Dodge Slant-6 gets better gas milage then the 318?!?! I'd like to know what you did diffrently then everyone else I know who have owned Dodge/Crystler/Plymouth from the 70s. Everyone I knew who owned the slant 6 got sub 15mpg, where everyone including my self who owned the 318 V8 got 18mpg. I'm sure it's possible if taken care of properly, the slant-6 might be more fuel efficent than the a v8, and i've heard many people claim it was a good solid engine. I never believed them because of my personal observations.
You're an idiot. The Slant-6 is a smaller engine, with 170, 198 or 225 cubic inches of displacement (most common are the 225s). The 318 displaces 318 cubic inches.
Want that in Liters? The Slant-6 is at most a 3.7L engine, and the 318 is a 5.2L engine.
Now, all other things being equal and assuming a stoichiometrically correct 14.7:1 air:fuel ratio for both motors, the Slant-6 should use (225/318)*100 percent of the fuel a 318 uses.
The Slant-6 is the more fuel efficient motor. If you're getting less fuel efficiency that a 318, you're either comparing a Slant-6 pickup truck with a 318 Duster. Or you're comparing a Slant-6 with a catalytic converter with a 318 with no catalytic (noting that catalytic converters generally cost you 20% in gas mileage and only abate cosmetically unpleasant gases that nature destroys within minutes at human-livable temperatures and pressures). Or you're comparing a poorly-maintained Slant-6 with a well-maintained 318.
Interestingly, you cite less than 15 MPG for a Slant-6 vehicle. I used to have a 1983 Dodge Ram (fullsize pickup truck) with a Slant-6. Even towing a 1974 Plymouth Valiant on a 4-wheel float trailer (more than 5,000lbs; 3,000 for the car and 2,000 for the trailer) from Michigan to Ottawa, I managed to get 18MPG. Normally, of course, my mileage was substantially more. What were you towing to get less than 15MPG out of a Slant-6? I simply can't match it, apparently not even with a fully-loaded Class IV hitch.
Likewise. What makes NiCad batteries so environmentally toxic? That's right, cadmium. How about lead-acid batteries? Lead, and, well, acid. ** Now, what are NiMH batteries made of? Nickel (obviously) and various alloys of Vanadium, Titanium, Zirconium, more Nickel, Chromium (toxicity depends on type; source does not specify), Cobalt, and Iron (from here). In short, there is nothing in NiMH batteries that is as nasty as lead or cadmium. Which is why, if you google a bit, you'll discover a multitude of sites that state that NiMH batteries are much less harmful to the environment that NiCad or lead-acid.
Okay. Tell me what stores the energy in a secondary cell. The reactivity of the electrolytes versus the anodes and cathodes. Right? Or have you successfully applied for a variance from the Universe stating that basic chemistry doesn't apply in your little patch of the world?
Now, ignoring your little exemption from reality, I note ("**") that you indicated the ACID in a lead-ACID battery might be a problem, without considering the ALKALINE in a NiMH cell. In fact, you failed to consider the electrolyte at all.
Lemme tell you, if I want to get more energy density out of a battery, all I need to do is adjust the pH. Consider a car battery, because unless you've been living with the Amish, you've probably seen the electrolyte in that. You know, the stuff that looks like water. Ever seen yellowish oily-looking sulphuric acid? The pH is a little lower than you'll find in a car battery.
Now, unless you're interested in considering the potential reactivity of the electrolyte - not just the electrodes! - you're not actually considering all facets of the device.
If you really cared about the environment, you'd probably get something which imparts more useful knowledge than an arts degree.
That's probably not all that bad, for back then, with a car that was presumably run mostly on gasoline (lower energy content), since diesel wasn't extremely available...
Completely on gasoline.
Not to mention being a gigantic four passenger steel monstrosity. Who knows how much the thing weighed.
Four-passenger is gigantic? Please. By your definition, therefore, a Civic Hybrid is gigantic.
How much did it weigh? 3,900 lbs, by a cursory Googling. About 700lbs more than a 2003 Honda Accord.
Heck, most big blocks that could do that quater mile time certianly suck more gas than 13 mpg--whilst doing it, that is. My old 460 Ford got about 10, and the Back-aruda maybe got 13mpg with my driving habits.
Gear ratios in the axle? Highway or city? You rebuilt the carb, or a professional carb builder?
I would say the mileage was right inline with what was available at the time, especially considering that it was an automatic, with torque converter, and all.
No, the power turbine (driven fan) was the torque converter. It did not have a conventional torque converter.
There was certianly room for improvement, I think. I don't see why a fuel efficient turbine car could not be made, the technology was pretty new back then.
Did you not read the article?
"Executive" Summary: Turbines are very efficient when they're operated continuously at wide open throttle. Car engines do not operate continuously at wide open throttle, because of such esoteric and irrelevent concerns as city traffic. You figure it out.
I remember seeing one of the Chrysler turbine cars in my area. It did sound like a vacuum cleaner, but it was not loud. It just went down the street, whistling away, but I doubt the driver was stressing it any.
I can't imagine seeing the one and only still-running Chrysler Turbine car anywhere but the grounds of a car show. And I certainly can't imagine an irreplacable and highly sought-after car, with an appraised value of over $2 million, driving around the streets of $BUTTFUCK_NOWHERE for you to see it as you walk into the $SUPERMARKET_CHAIN_IN_YOUR_AREA. The alternative, of course, is that you actually saw one of the original 50 of them driving around before the project was canned. Which I consider to be highly unlikely - there were a little over 2,000 DeLoreans made over each of the three years of production - about 8,000 total. How many DeLoreans do *you* see driving around the streets of $BUTTFUCK_NOWHERE? There are still more than two orders of magnitude more DeLoreans driving around than there *ever* were Chrysler Turbine cars.
So I think you're on crack. Or you're just an idiot. Take yer pick.
2) David Dodge did same thing here in Canada, and, for the first time ever was successful in controlling it where you Americans failed -- there was no recession.
No recession here? Hahahahaha!
Okay, maybe there wasn't a recession in the strictest sense, but I can assure you...
So? Should we ban cell phones because people discard their batteries? Ban all computers because of the lead and such in the motherboards?
Let's assume that the average cellphone lasts 2 years. Let's assume that the average computer lasts 5 years. Let's assume that the average car lasts 8 years.
Now, how many batteries will that car have?
How many orders of magnitude bigger a waste stream than a computer does that become?
Yes. Cars are harder to work on now than they were 20 years ago. You can't work on the bodies for, say, Saturns either. The way you "repair" it is to discard the broken body piece.
Small damage is easily fixed with ordinary fiberglass repair techniques, requiring no special tools or training. Larger damage requires panel replacement, as it does with steel or aluminum bodies. Unlike steel or aluminum body panels, the fiberglass and plastic panels used on everything from Fieros to Saturns are not structural, they're simply bolted on - unlike the quarter panels, for example, of a steel or aluminum car body. Steel or aluminum quarter panels almost universally (the one exception in the past 30 years is the Checker) require welding for replacement.
Properly done aluminum corrodes at a much slower rate than the metals currently used in cars. I've not heard about aluminum in autos having a corrosion problem, but I know that in many other things (say, bicycles) aluminum is touted as lasting longer than steel.
Bicycles are not usually driven in snow and salt, which we have to contend with around here.
Properly done, neither steel nor aluminum corrodes. Too bad paint chips have a tendency to undo that "properly done" bodywork.
I'd be especially concerned about suspension perches on the aluminum structure. Since the suspension bushings, etc. will be held in place with steel bolts (I would hope!), the aluminum perches on the underside of the unibody will become sacrificial in the galvanic corrosion which will quickly follow. If the perches rot off, worst case scenario is a complete detachment of portions of the suspension from the structure of the automobile.
That happens every year with the "normal" updates. Mechanics didn't like working with electronic ignition, turbos, ECUs, fuel injection, or any other change. Why would this be any different?
It isn't.
How many thousands do the batteries cost? Have you actually called a parts department and asked, or are you just spreading FUD without checking facts?
Late-life vehicles are typically purchased for under $1000 and are driven by the working poor. Most of these vehicles are serviced with junkyard parts, $20 used starter motors, $15 used alternators, $150 used engines.
A replacement assist battery will be over $1000, I guarantee it. Junkyard batteries are never a good idea. The car will be scrapped earlier in its life, even if the rest of it is in fine mechanical condition.
If you don't plan on that scheduled maintence, you are stupid.
Do you amortize the cost of an engine rebuild over the life of your car, or do you simply junk it when you have blue clouds of worn piston rings and tell-tale rod knock coming from the bottom end? That's the sort of cost we're talking about here. I can do a rebuilt engine for most cars for under $1500, including labor.
If the batteries are removed, they will operate no better than a regular car with a battery removed (it will not work properly).
Uhh... No, a conventional car will not start without a battery, since the battery provides power for the starter motor and ignition system. On the other hand, a hybrid car has two batteries: the $50 at Wal*Mart 12V battery which starts the gasoline engine, and the assist battery.
I've driven a Civic Hybrid quite extensively and took the time to flip up the back seat and turn off the hybrid features by hitting the kill switch on the assist battery. This simulates having no assist battery whatsoever. The car would still start and run and even drive, but it wa
2) Again, NiMH and not lead acid or NiCAD so there isn't that massive environmental impact of the previous battery technologies. But I do agree we still need mandated recycling of some of these materials so they don't end up in lakes/etc.
You fail to understand even basic high school chemistry.
The greater the energy density of any battery, the greater the reactivity of the chemicals inside it.
4) our Dodge Dart is not getting very environmentally efficient milage( ie green house gases/etc ). There's more to good MPG with hybrid systems.
Your Dodge Dart would have to be at least 28 years old, since they were discontinued in 1976. Since it's now lasted a little over 3 times longer than the average car, all the greenhouse gases produced by burning the coal required to melt the steel and recycle it have been spared (WARNING! Calculating this might require a basic understanding of chemistry, mechanical engineering, manufacturing processes, and the cookie-cutter inefficiencies of die-stamping). Unless it's a taxicab, you'd be unlikely to make up the environmental damage from recycling the car in the incremental fuel economy increases from vehicle generation to generation.
Reciprocating piston engine concept been around a LONG time now, it fits the bill for the variable needs of cars, but still... it's ancient tech, and slamming something one way hard, then a microsecond later yanking it back the other way..well, I think we could do it better.
An engine is really just an air pump except it operates in reverse.
There are two kinds of pump. Positive displacement, and non-positive displacement.
A turbine engine - like a jet engine or a gas turbine - is not a positive displacement pump. As a result, not all of the expanding gases serve to drive the impeller (which eventually drives the wheels). Continuing the pump analogy, this would be equivalent to a centrifugal pump (think of centrifugal water pumps found in major appliances and "biscuit blowers" you can get for your computer) or a conventional axial fan (ship's propeller, cute little fan that keeps your computer's power supply from cooking).
A piston or vaned pump is positive displacement - the slip past the piston rings or vanes is minimal. A conventional reciprocating car engine is equivalent to a piston pump like you'd find in an air compressor, while a Wankel is more like a vaned pump like you'd find in industrial machinery and any place where you have to pump a fluid against a head (large rise). (My grey water toilet uses a Wolfcraft drill pump, which is a kind of vane pump.)
Gas turbines lose due to slip through the turbine. Also, I don't think most people are too keen on having super-hot exhaust gases. (One of the most recent turbine cars was the Chrysler Turbine car; it was an experimental car abandoned in the early 1960s because there was no way to make the gas mileage even remotely reasonable. There is precisely one still in operating condition, and I saw it driving on the show grounds at a car show - sounds like a vacuum cleaner! *HOT* blast as it drives slowly past.)
Wankel rotaries are beautiful, but by the time anyone had figured out how to make end seals for the rotors, emissions laws had demanded better control of combustion chamber shape. That was nearly impossible to do with a rotary motor, given that the combustion chamber's shape is dictated by the need to contact the end seals. I'd love to see how Mazda did it in the new RX-8.
A recent report shows that the trend is ALREADY towards more disposable cars due to all the high tech crap and tons of airbags and such in them. If the car is going to be "disposed" of anyway, perhaps it would be better if it were more efficient during its lifetime anyway?
Which requires more raw materials to manufacture batteries, controllers and electric motors, contributing only to a very slight increase in gas mileage.
Don't get me wrong - hybrids *are* neat, and they are a good idea. But I don't believe the technology has advanced to a point where the benefits outweigh the environmental costs of manufacturing it and replacing it more frequently (unserviceable, ill-suited materials like aluminum, etc.).
You have to start somewhere...automobile makers haven't capitalized on many of the low hanging fruits to improve fuel efficiency for DECADES.
That's complete bull. Detroit has always been interested in fuel efficiency, at least in their economy cars. Most of these features were also taken to performance and luxury cars, because most technical advances that increase fuel efficiency also increase performance.
Cases in point:
Aerodynamic body design, 1930s.
Overdrive transmissions, 1930s.
Switch to overhead valve motors starting in the 1940s.
Modern bearing design replacing babbit bearings, early 1950s.
Commencement of unibody construction technique in economy car models, 1930s.
Increased compression ratio in production cars, late 1950s.
Adoption of a tunnel-ram intake manifold, notably on Chrysler Slant-6, 1960. Chrysler Slant-6 wins Mobil Economy Run (race promoting fuel efficiency), 1960-1964.
Adoption of alternators instead of generators as silicon diodes became practical, early 1960s.
Adoption of electronic voltage regulators (reduce the drag of shorting the armature windings during periods when battery voltage is good), late 1960s.
Introduction of electronic ignition when suitable power transistors became available to drive ignition coils, late 1960s.
Introduction of electronic fuel injection when integrated circuits became sufficiently advanced, late 1960s.
Radial tires, late 1960s.
*ALL* of these features had their genesis before fuel economy laws or guidelines from the government. Almost all of these features are now standard on even the cheapest economy cars.
Just think where computer technology, or aircraft design, has gone in the same intervening period.
Moore's Law does not apply to cars. Mechanical engineering is a relatively mature discipline. Moore's Law ran its course in mechanical engineering soon after the invention of the wheel, during the Renaissance, or after the discovery of calculus - take your pick.
Aircraft design? Yeah, very nice. It's amazing how high-tech a car can be when you can sell it for several million dollars, arbitrarily tell buyers that it's going to run on whatever fuel you decide rather than what the local Mobil station pumps, and have it serviced every time it's driven. It's simply not comparable.
It is taking foreign car makers to pressure the US market to even begin this stuff>
No, it isn't. Detroit responds to what the market wants. The majority of American car buyers prefered big chrome-tipped tailfins and cars that got soft and cushy rides on inefficient bias-ply tires. You'll note that economy cars didn't sell very well until after 1974 (Arab oil embargo).
Why do you think we have SUVs now? (And I don't mean the Jeep Wagoneers, Dodge Ramchargers and Chevy Suburbans that have been around in small numbers in rural markets since at least the 1950s; I mean every soccer-mom and balding accountant driving a Ford Explorer or Grand Cherokee.)
Because the market still wants the big RWD full-frame V8-powered Caprice Estate station wagons. But Detroit can't make them anymore due to corporate average fuel economy standards. Noting that pickup trucks are exempt from CAF
It seems entirely reasonable to me, in the first instance, to rule in favour of the spammer.
Judge: Well, just lay off them a bit, while I think about it.
I've worked in IT in a court. One of my judges asked me to turn off the anti-spam software on his account so that he could understand the magnitude of the problem.
"Sir, are you really sure that you wish for me to do that?"
"Yup."
Note that this e-mail address is publicly available on several websites.
Note that comparing an aluminum hybrid to a galvanized steel compact, e.g. the Insight to a "regular" car, would not be an apples-to-apples comparison since if you were to remove all the weight from the electrical system (adding hydraulic brakes) and increase the engine size to match the lost horsepower, the new gas car would be more efficient than other gas cars on the road today, and might even be better on the highway than the hybrid. (Although it really should fail to beat the hybrid in the city)
Yeah, I think the weight of the hybrid electrical system offsets the weight savings from the aluminum body.
But there are several things which really upset me about hybrids:
I don't care what they say, sooner or later an accident will happen where the batteries are ruptured and smear electrolyte all over passengers.
No matter what you do, you're never gonna get all the cars or their batteries back for proper recycling. People do strange things to cars. They end up in lakes or rivers, or abandoned in the woods.
Aluminum is a difficult metal to work. Welding to the body to perform a collision repair is going to be expensive because it requires equipment that most body shops don't have - TIG welder, stock of aluminum sheet metal, person capable of TIG welding without warping thin sheet metal. Therefore, the cars will be scrapped more often after collisions. Also, aluminum rots extremely quickly in road and sea salt conditions - look at city buses, there's a reason all of the panels are interchangable with only 1/2 hour and a rivet gun.
Complexity - either real or perceived - of the drivetrain is increased. More and more people and shops will want to avoid working on them, which will drive up labor costs for service. Therefore, because they're expensive to fix, they'll get scrapped sooner.
Late-Life vehicles - Will driving this car be at all practical if the assist battery is disconnected? When the car is 6-8 years old and being driven around by its last owner and the battery dies, will it still be usable as a conventional car, or will it be scrapped rather than spending the many thousands of dollars a new battery will cost?
(In reality, I get about 37MPG on the highway, ~30 in the city... the car _is_ 13 years old)
1970 Dodge Dart 4-door sedan, mostly stock, seats 5 full-size (6 foot +) adults in comfort, modern radial tires, Slant-6 brings the thing up to highway speed quicker than most new econoboxes. And it's made of thick, solid steel. 34 years old, gets 25MPG highway, about 22MPG city.
Give each of your buddies regular 'user' accounts so a) they can't install crap, b) they can't directly access your files, and c) they can't screw it up. Each user has a profile and when they run whatever email client they want the files are stored in their profile. Sort of like... it was designed to do.
For sure! I'm assuming that since they don't own their own computers, they're probably not too capable with them. They're not likely to break Windows 2000 (which is slightly more secure than Windows 98). Of course, they still can break it if they want to.
Go with Eudora for e-mail. It plays well in multiple-user systems, and there's a free edition with spyware-free advertising. I've been using Eudora for years on all my Windows boxes, and I wish they'd come up with a Linux version. I love it all the way down to the sarcastic user interface:
"Eudora got tired of waiting for the server to respond"
"Register your copy of Eudora and we'll erect a giant statue of you on the lawn of our corporate headquarters - (offer void on the planet Earth)"
"There has been an error transferring your mail. I said: PASS <shhhh! Don't tell anyone.> and then the POP server ($ACCOUNT@$SERVER) said: ERR [AUTH] Password supplied for blah is incorrect."
BLAH BLAH BLAH button to view message headers.
"Your message to $ADDRESS regarding $SUBJECT is the sort of thing that might get your keyboard washed out with soap, if you get my drift. You might consider toning it down."
Oh, and unlike Mozilla's mail client, this thing actually has a real (underlining, passive) spell-checker instead of one that bonks you in the face over and over and over for every word it doesn't know. Mozilla's spell checker is, like, so 1994. KMail fixed that over a year ago!
Use a regular cd player/headphones, then put a board over it, put a big plastic play button in a hole in the center of the board. Then you extend the button so that it will hit play on the cd player.
Warning, though. If someone pounds a button really hard, then they'll crack the CD player's PC board.
Preferable: disassemble the CD player and put an arcade-machine pushbutton in parallel with the existing button.
Alternatively: make a button with limited travel, where the force is absorbed by the case. Use a spring-loaded plunger to actually push the button on the CD player, so that leaning on the button won't put more than the spring's compressive force onto the player's button.
What they really need to do is release better Linux drivers, and care more about Linux support in general.
Oh my, no.
It's got nothing to do with Linux.
All of their drivers are crap. Rather than make the ATI MultiMedia Center and hardware drivers *not* blue-screen Windows 2000 constantly, they spent a whole lot of time and effort on making it look stupid (like it was designed by a 17-year-old virgin with anime posters on his walls).
Support for discontinued products is also poor. Come on, when it's obsolete, just release the source for the drivers as you had them. I had several hundred ATI All in Wonder Pros installed at a TV station; they expected their investment was going to last: it didn't. What trade secrets are going to be lost by releasing that?
A long time ago, I swore off ever buying another ATI product.
I have yet to find anything useful that WINE will run though...
Oh yeah, WINE is far from perfect, but it's still very useful. Unfortunately, not for running M$ Office and stuff, mostly for lugging around those proprietary applications you need to cart around sometimes.
I had a good one. I used to manage a complete flight information system at Pearson International Airport. There were hundreds of little PCs which drove displays all over the place. And they were all running Windows 95 - the programmer hadn't had time to update the software so that it would run on NT/2K. (The data came in on serial ports - two wire, unidirectional data, very secure - but coded to talk directly to the hardware.)
Of course, I didn't want to buy one Windows license let alone 200. To say nothing of having to run around and reboot Windows every so often. So I tried the software with WINE. And it worked!
All future display units were deployed running in WINE. They only ever crashed when the CPU fans got choked with dust. Unlike the Windows (95) version, where we had a LAN available, I could also SSH into the machines and have complete command-line control including updating images and stuff remotely (by script). It was very nice.
If you've ever been to Toronto and seen a FIDS display booting up Linux late at night, that would have been me remotely restarting that unit after an update.
(The developer is working on porting his software to run on Linux natively; I sold him on the idea of escaping Windows.)
Does it have unrivalled compatability with all the worms and trojans too?:)
So, there I was, running Red Hat 7.3 on my desktop (yeah, I know, but it was quick and easy to install). I had a friend over who had never seen Linux before.
I opened KMail. "Oh, and the best part is, it's not running Windows, so you can't get any Windows e-mail viruses!" I boldly double-clicked on an attachment with a.scr extension.
WINE started up.
I had just infected my Linux workstation with a Windows e-mail virus.
Damn thing, actually associating all DOS/Windows binaries with WINE. Kind of undoes at least half of the security benefits of running Linux in the first place. [grumble]
I did none of my homework in any math class, ever. Others in my class did 100%. I regularly received high 90's in my classes, the others who did all of their homework regularly nearly (or completely) failed the class.
You're impressive!
It is not a linear relationship by far, it really depends on the person and their ability to solve the problems presented given what you know (given absolutes and learned methods).
Yeah. To a certain extent, it depends on your ability to learn by watching it being done - either in textbook examples or on the blackboard. Most people tend to learn by doing, though. I'm not saying that people like you don't exist - you certainly do - but you're not the majority.
By your difinitions of your classes, Calc I, Calc II, and half of Calc III (multivariable calc) were taught in my highschool as OAC (gr.13) Calculus.
I took OAC calculus, too.
In OAC Calculus, we did about 80% of the stuff in 69.104 Engineering Calculus I. Calculus I went beyond, teaching more advanced integration techniques (integration by parts including what to do to integrate "tough" things like (e^2x)*sin(3x), improper integrals (where one or both of the bounds is infinity), more techniques for solving definite integrals like volumes of revolution, etc. We also touched on basic separable differential equations. Nothing beyond basic integration (polynomials, simple functions of e^x, ln(x) and trig) was in the OAC curriculum, though it was covered in BC and Alberta (instead of Linear Algebra).
In Calculus II, half the course was differential equations of all sorts; the other half was sequences and series and all sorts of tests. We did nothing even remotely similar in high school.
Calculus III - You did partial derivatives, double and triple integrals and calculus of parametric equations in MCAOA? I'm sorry, I don't believe you. What was your textbook called? I probably have it on the bookshelf in my living room; none of the textbooks I've seen for the OAC curriculum have *any* of that.
Linear Algebra and Stats were also taught.
Yeah, my OAC Linear Algebra was 80% of the course in university; the other 20% was eigenvalues and eigenvectors, determinants, matrix inverses, orthogonality. We had none of that in MAGOA. (Noting also that BC and AB students in my class hadn't taken any linear algebra at all, concentrating more on calculus.)
Stats would have been the OAC Finite Math course. Didn't take it, wasn't an admissions prerequisite - but I would have, if I'd had the time.
Fourier Series, Calc IV, and Num.Methods were taught in Calc II in the college I went to (after the first three were re-hashed in Calc I).
Calculus IV? My Calculus IV and Numerical Methods were each a full semester; Fourier was one third of a semester. And we were moving pretty fast through all the course material. It's worth noting that the only people in my Calculus IV class were second year engineering students and 4th year honors math students. The math students were two years behind us in applied math, but they could blow us out of the water with theory and proofs!
Not to mention looking up formulas and obscure theorms online because our POS $150 textbook is so unclear I can read a paragraph 15 times and still not understand a single sentence. And I am not the only one. Math is tricky, and for some minds it is just plain difficult.
Oh yeah, I agree; sometimes it *does* take a lot of reading to get your head around something. And other times, you just need to follow through examples until you learn the method because the textbook describes the proof so poorly.
Note also that in my engineering program, our focus wasn't on proofs or theory. It was about practical applications of higher math. The whole idea is that math is a tool for us. Our tests and exams were "Solve this", "Integrate that", "Find the radius of convergence of this series". It was possible to do 100% of the problems on a test correctly, and as such, get an A+. Which is only fair; I don't consider that to be grade inflation. This is not an English Literature class or something else which is only qualitatively correct or incorrect.
I have a collection of Calculus books - over a dozen now, old textbooks from used bookstores. My personal favorite is the 1910 gem, Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus Thompson. Of course, it wasn't helpful beyond Calculus I, but I still refer to it when I've forgotten how to integrate something. It's helpful to have a bunch of different textbooks explaining the same thing; sooner or later you'll find an explanation which just makes things drop into place.
But if you still can't get it, you have to be honest with yourself and ask yourself how much of your homework you've really been doing.
You also have to consider the possibility of attention deficit disorder (ADD). I *couldn't* do math until I got it delt with; now I love math, and there are about 100 other facets of my life which have been improved as a result of diagnosis and treatment. (I think ADD is a different evolutionary behavior rather than a "disorder" as it's called. ADD helps me with a lot of things, coming up with creative and different ways of solving problems. But it does make some aspects of life in today's world tough. I take my Ritalin only when I need to focus.)
But the most important thing is that, in the immortal words of Bernie Perrier (a great high school calculus teacher), "Math is not a spectator sport". You *have to* do the homework. It's that simple.
I don't have a car, why should I learn how to change a tire?
Why do you want to force me to learn something which is a total waste of my time?
And, I suppose, other people would have similar ideas about calculus.
More likely, about Shakespeare. When was the last time you found Shakespeare to be useful?
Learning how to change a tire would be a lot more useful for the vast majority of people. Beyond that, sooner or later, you will be in a car which blows a tire. And the the owner/driver might not know how to - or be physically incapable of - changing it.
Furthermore, whether you're a cyclist or a pedestrian, you will be around cars if you're anywhere with an Internet connection. You need to know a little about how they work, so that you can understand how they fail. In particular how, for example, a blown tire is more likely to happen on the curb side because of broken glass, scrapes with curbs, etc. And how when a car blows a tire, the car tends to pull in that direction. How you might, therefore, as a cyclist or a pedestrian, want to know that when you hear the bang of a blowout that there's a fairly good chance the vehicle is going to veer in the direction of the sidewalk or bicycle lane. Where you are.
But an appreciation of that might or might not be of use to you.
Slashdot Mirror
we've gotten a bunch of jobs like this - turning handwritten documents into searchable pdfs
We had to do this, too. For a Court, which requires the reasons, decisions, etc. to be publicly available online.
*Thousands* of documents, hundreds of pages each. The responsible department got me, as the IT guy, to set it up for them (after they'd already bought the stuff to do it).
Basically, a couple of Ricoh Aficio series copier/scanners, a couple of ancient Fujitsu sheet-feed scanners, and a bunch of students sitting all day in front of computers running OmniPage Pro.
The Ricohs were great on paper - fast, networked, etc. but their scanner drivers were poor (reminded me of bad CD-ROM drivers - "Copywrite 1995 Behavior Tech Computer. All right reverse." [sic,sic,sic]), and their service (contract) involved having to call the Ricoh guy because the scanner portions randomly wouldn't appear on the network, then wait for him to appear while at least one of the students sat idle. 2 stars out of 5.
Ancient Fujitsu scanners, black and white only, don't remember the model number, required proprietary SCSI cards, no support under Windows NT/XP/2K. These were commercial-grade super-expensive scanners when new (about 1990). Installed Windows 95 on a bunch of relics with ISA slots for the SCSI cards and let 'er rip. Scanning was fast, feed was reliable like a good-quality photocopier or fax machine. Only issue was requirement for an old computer running an old OS; better overall than Ricohs - 4 stars out 5.
OmniPage Pro 12 - reading was *excellent*, far better than anything else I've ever seen. Handled French and English, simple monochrome diagrams, etc. with only very small occasional formatting problems. Print to a PDF using Acrobat on the file server. Only real problem was stability, frequently locking up and losing the scan and OCR on page 99 of a 104 page document. 2 stars out of 5, being punitive because of frustration.
As they got to be more proficient with OPP, and as OPP's dictionaries filled up, we were able to add more and more computers and scanners, so that they were running around, tossing files into the scanners, stapling scanned documents back together, and occasionally rebooting one of the Windows 95 workstations. Peak was 15 computers and scanners.
Task took 3 students 3 months full-time.
Nothing special, just "Webbug" images, which spamfilters such as SpamAssasin (in the default setting) adds point to as more likely to be spam, so using DidTheyReadIt users mail is more likely to end up in a spamfolder than any other type of mail.
For sure, and this was my first thought, and the best way to have made it DidTheyReadIt work.
Based on the testimony and description, though, I'm concerned about the possibility that they might just be a slick-looking e-mail address collector for spammers.
Somewhat related: Anyone know how to implant a webbug image with Eudora? Eudora seems to embed images by MIME; it doesn't seem to handle an IMG tag pointing to an HTTP server. Would be useful with independent consulting; "freaking out" people by telling them exactly when they viewed their e-mail would be a handy way to break the Outlook and "but I like all the pretty pictures in my e-mail" habit.
While eating GM crops is almost definitely a non-issue... We have NO HOPE of having any idea what the cummulative long term consequences are for all GM crops.
If the GM crops are modified to be infertile (as most of them are), then they can't reproduce. You've already said that eating them is safe - therefore, what are the alternative issues?
by the all-knowing State of California and the environmentalist lobby.
You imply that the environmentalist lobby is "all-knowing"... even though it's sarcastic.
Just want to point out that if "environmentalists" really cared about the environment, they'd have useful degrees in math, science or engineering. Instead, they do "Women's Studies" or art history, then talk about scientific policy from their ignorance, and the masses believe them because they're "educated".
The world is all about change. To understand it and be able to "model" it scientifically, you need to understand rates of change - calculus. Nature's favorite number is, arguably, e. So, I'd expect anyone who credibly calls himself or herself an environmentalist to be able to differentiate (find the rate of change of) e^(2x). As a bare minimum for credibility, and certainly before I'll even entertain idiotic ideas like hydrogen-powered cars.
"PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?!?"
My father had precisely the same reaction with that message from a LaserJet II that I gave him a few years ago. I'm pretty sure that's exactly the message.
I don't understand why it's such a confusing message, but I also wouldn't have phrased it the same way. It's one of the most classic examples of the reason why engineers and developers should never be allowed to design user interfaces. (When they do, you end up with stuff like xine.)
Given a fixed number of display characters (14, IIRC), why not alternate - "OUT OF PAPER" with "LETTER - TOP" or "LETTER - BOTTOM" or "LEGAL - TRAY". I'm sure it would have been only slightly more expensive to do - a couple of extra lines of software, would have reduced tech support calls, and would have been useful even up to a III/IIID with the second (bottom) tray. Even easier would have just been "OUT OF LETTER", "OUT OF LEGAL", in situations with plain letter in the top cassette and letterhead in the bottom, I'd hope that whoever had put the paper in it originally could also figure out that there should have been letter-sized paper in both cassettes.
How 'bout the LaserJet I? I think "out of paper" was a 21 error.
DISCLAIMER and WARNING: I am an electrical engineer. I wrote a practice Ontario mechanic's license exam for the fun of it and passed with flying colors but lack the apprenticeship hours to pursue it for a full license. However, my roommate and best friend *is* a licensed auto mechanic and former Toyota employee. He has asked me into the shop to diagnose and repair dozens of electrical problems on brand-new Toyota cars when the mechanics can't fix it. So, I welcome attempts to change my mind, but you'd better know what you're talking about.
The NiMH batteries are much better on the environment than NiCD and Lead-Acid batteries. FWIW NiMHs are not considered hazardous waste by the EPA. There is some concern about the nickel in them (nothing concrete yet) but normal car batteries have lead (bad heavy metal) and sulfuric acid... not the best things in the world.
So, what's the electrolyte in NiMH, and what's the pH, in order to produce the energy density which is substantially more than a lead-acid car battery?
In enough concentration, even acetic acid (ie. vinegar) is extremely dangerous. (For one thing, it's a weak acid, meaning that it doesn't dissociate completely once it reaches equilibrium in the solution, meaning that the more reactants you add, the more acid effect you get!)
I would be more worried by the lead acid battery in a normal car than the NiMH batteries on a hybrid.
I wouldn't. The greater the energy density in a battery, the more inherently nasty the internal chemisty must be. Didn't you take high school chemistry?
Then again, I might be speaking out of my ass. After all, I only took two years of electrochemistry in my electrical engineering courses in University. It can't compare with the high school chemistry you obviously didn't take - or the common sense you obviously don't have - to not understand the basics of how electrical energy density must correspond to chemical energy density.
Have you seen how the toyota hybrid works (not the honda)? It is incredible simple. It uses a planetary gear CVT/Power Split which simplifies the transmission. No torque converter or clutch and no complicated multi-speed gear boxes. Pretty nifty. Other things like generators (alternators) and electric motors (starters) already have equivalents in normal cars.
Yeah, but mechanics don't like wires, in case you haven't noticed. Buy one a beer sometime and chat with him (or her). If they liked wires, they'd be electricians or electronics technicians. Mechanics generally get into the trade because they like moving parts - sorry, it sucks, but that's the way it is. Stop by your local community college sometime. Net effect is that, to them, it's more complicated and more daunting. They don't want to work on it. Therefore, your labor rates go up, the car becomes too expensive to fix, and gets scrapped sooner.
Good question, but keep in mind that most of the old cars currently are the ones that are responsible most of the pollution, as time goes on we get new cars that run cleaner and more efficient.
Poorly maintained cars are responsible for most of the pollution; age doesn't matter. Loads of people in 3-4 year old cars are failing emissions tests because their EGR valves are stuck open, PCV valves are stuck closed, or because their timing belts have jumped a notch. The beaters tend to be driven by people who actually know how to fix them, and hear every little knock or click and know to check things out.
You're towing the Greenpeace line which isn't based in scientific or statistical reality.
We also need to ask what portion of cars that are made now will be used in 6-8 years? Normal cars can need expensive repairs (new transmissions, new clutches) too and how many get junked for that?
Absolutely true. Lots of cars get junked when blown expensive parts make the car undrivable. So, what's going to happen when you add another really expensive part to the car? What's going to happen when the lifespan of that expensive part is *very* fi
I don't see doing NOTHING as an appropriate solution to the fact that some (very few relatively) people use high-performance equipment and vehicles.
Detroit aggressively markets SUVs exactly the way they aggressively marketed full-size station wagons a mere 20 years ago. Why? That's what people really want. That's what people go into the showroom to buy. And that's also where the profit margins are.
When they discover they can't afford to pay for the new SUV/Station_Wagon_of_Days_Gone_By, the salesman talks them into the new Focus/Cavalier/Neon. The ads for expensive cars sell cheap cars.
Now, since gasoline is relatively inexpensive and incomes are relatively high, far more people can buy either what they *actually* want, or the compromise mid-size, without going to the raspy feels-like-a-buzzy-little-Honda econobox.
You can't run an ad campaign telling people they don't want small cars - it won't work. For one thing, at over 6' tall, I'm not driving around in *any* car where my head is touching the roof, and North Americans tend to be physically bigger than most people in other parts of the world. Next, an ad campaign that tells people "it's not cool to drive small cars" is going to sell big cars better than any ad campaign Detroit could ever come up with! (Think of public trends around anti-smoking and anti-marijuana ads.)
So, what do you do? Increase gas taxes? It's already taxed more than enough and going to silly pork-barrel projects (rather than building roads which would reduce congestion and therefore fuel consumption), you'll have a revolt against the government. On the other hand, leave it to the laws of supply and demand (and those crazy Arabs) and filling up a Navigator will become so exorbitant that only the rich do it.
Leave it alone. The economy will work it out on its own. And the more you tamper with it, the more it will somehow backfire in your face.
Really?!?! The Dodge Slant-6 gets better gas milage then the 318?!?! I'd like to know what you did diffrently then everyone else I know who have owned Dodge/Crystler/Plymouth from the 70s. Everyone I knew who owned the slant 6 got sub 15mpg, where everyone including my self who owned the 318 V8 got 18mpg. I'm sure it's possible if taken care of properly, the slant-6 might be more fuel efficent than the a v8, and i've heard many people claim it was a good solid engine. I never believed them because of my personal observations.
You're an idiot. The Slant-6 is a smaller engine, with 170, 198 or 225 cubic inches of displacement (most common are the 225s). The 318 displaces 318 cubic inches.
Want that in Liters? The Slant-6 is at most a 3.7L engine, and the 318 is a 5.2L engine.
Now, all other things being equal and assuming a stoichiometrically correct 14.7:1 air:fuel ratio for both motors, the Slant-6 should use (225/318)*100 percent of the fuel a 318 uses.
The Slant-6 is the more fuel efficient motor. If you're getting less fuel efficiency that a 318, you're either comparing a Slant-6 pickup truck with a 318 Duster. Or you're comparing a Slant-6 with a catalytic converter with a 318 with no catalytic (noting that catalytic converters generally cost you 20% in gas mileage and only abate cosmetically unpleasant gases that nature destroys within minutes at human-livable temperatures and pressures). Or you're comparing a poorly-maintained Slant-6 with a well-maintained 318.
Interestingly, you cite less than 15 MPG for a Slant-6 vehicle. I used to have a 1983 Dodge Ram (fullsize pickup truck) with a Slant-6. Even towing a 1974 Plymouth Valiant on a 4-wheel float trailer (more than 5,000lbs; 3,000 for the car and 2,000 for the trailer) from Michigan to Ottawa, I managed to get 18MPG. Normally, of course, my mileage was substantially more. What were you towing to get less than 15MPG out of a Slant-6? I simply can't match it, apparently not even with a fully-loaded Class IV hitch.
Likewise. What makes NiCad batteries so environmentally toxic? That's right, cadmium. How about lead-acid batteries? Lead, and, well, acid. ** Now, what are NiMH batteries made of? Nickel (obviously) and various alloys of Vanadium, Titanium, Zirconium, more Nickel, Chromium (toxicity depends on type; source does not specify), Cobalt, and Iron (from here). In short, there is nothing in NiMH batteries that is as nasty as lead or cadmium. Which is why, if you google a bit, you'll discover a multitude of sites that state that NiMH batteries are much less harmful to the environment that NiCad or lead-acid.
Okay. Tell me what stores the energy in a secondary cell. The reactivity of the electrolytes versus the anodes and cathodes. Right? Or have you successfully applied for a variance from the Universe stating that basic chemistry doesn't apply in your little patch of the world?
Now, ignoring your little exemption from reality, I note ("**") that you indicated the ACID in a lead-ACID battery might be a problem, without considering the ALKALINE in a NiMH cell. In fact, you failed to consider the electrolyte at all.
Lemme tell you, if I want to get more energy density out of a battery, all I need to do is adjust the pH. Consider a car battery, because unless you've been living with the Amish, you've probably seen the electrolyte in that. You know, the stuff that looks like water. Ever seen yellowish oily-looking sulphuric acid? The pH is a little lower than you'll find in a car battery.
Now, unless you're interested in considering the potential reactivity of the electrolyte - not just the electrodes! - you're not actually considering all facets of the device.
If you really cared about the environment, you'd probably get something which imparts more useful knowledge than an arts degree.
That's probably not all that bad, for back then, with a car that was presumably run mostly on gasoline (lower energy content), since diesel wasn't extremely available...
Completely on gasoline.
Not to mention being a gigantic four passenger steel monstrosity. Who knows how much the thing weighed.Four-passenger is gigantic? Please. By your definition, therefore, a Civic Hybrid is gigantic.
How much did it weigh? 3,900 lbs, by a cursory Googling. About 700lbs more than a 2003 Honda Accord.
Heck, most big blocks that could do that quater mile time certianly suck more gas than 13 mpg--whilst doing it, that is. My old 460 Ford got about 10, and the Back-aruda maybe got 13mpg with my driving habits.Gear ratios in the axle? Highway or city? You rebuilt the carb, or a professional carb builder?
I would say the mileage was right inline with what was available at the time, especially considering that it was an automatic, with torque converter, and all.No, the power turbine (driven fan) was the torque converter. It did not have a conventional torque converter.
There was certianly room for improvement, I think. I don't see why a fuel efficient turbine car could not be made, the technology was pretty new back then.Did you not read the article?
"Executive" Summary: Turbines are very efficient when they're operated continuously at wide open throttle. Car engines do not operate continuously at wide open throttle, because of such esoteric and irrelevent concerns as city traffic. You figure it out.
I remember seeing one of the Chrysler turbine cars in my area. It did sound like a vacuum cleaner, but it was not loud. It just went down the street, whistling away, but I doubt the driver was stressing it any.I can't imagine seeing the one and only still-running Chrysler Turbine car anywhere but the grounds of a car show. And I certainly can't imagine an irreplacable and highly sought-after car, with an appraised value of over $2 million, driving around the streets of $BUTTFUCK_NOWHERE for you to see it as you walk into the $SUPERMARKET_CHAIN_IN_YOUR_AREA. The alternative, of course, is that you actually saw one of the original 50 of them driving around before the project was canned. Which I consider to be highly unlikely - there were a little over 2,000 DeLoreans made over each of the three years of production - about 8,000 total. How many DeLoreans do *you* see driving around the streets of $BUTTFUCK_NOWHERE? There are still more than two orders of magnitude more DeLoreans driving around than there *ever* were Chrysler Turbine cars.
So I think you're on crack. Or you're just an idiot. Take yer pick.
2) David Dodge did same thing here in Canada, and, for the first time ever was successful in controlling it where you Americans failed -- there was no recession.
No recession here? Hahahahaha!
Okay, maybe there wasn't a recession in the strictest sense, but I can assure you...
Personally, I'll go stateside in a second as soon as George Dubya is out of office. He's even more draconian than the Canadian government "protecting" us from unpleasant things and "erosion of Canadian culture".
So? Should we ban cell phones because people discard their batteries? Ban all computers because of the lead and such in the motherboards?
Let's assume that the average cellphone lasts 2 years. Let's assume that the average computer lasts 5 years. Let's assume that the average car lasts 8 years.
Now, how many batteries will that car have?
How many orders of magnitude bigger a waste stream than a computer does that become?
Yes. Cars are harder to work on now than they were 20 years ago. You can't work on the bodies for, say, Saturns either. The way you "repair" it is to discard the broken body piece.
Small damage is easily fixed with ordinary fiberglass repair techniques, requiring no special tools or training. Larger damage requires panel replacement, as it does with steel or aluminum bodies. Unlike steel or aluminum body panels, the fiberglass and plastic panels used on everything from Fieros to Saturns are not structural, they're simply bolted on - unlike the quarter panels, for example, of a steel or aluminum car body. Steel or aluminum quarter panels almost universally (the one exception in the past 30 years is the Checker) require welding for replacement.
Properly done aluminum corrodes at a much slower rate than the metals currently used in cars. I've not heard about aluminum in autos having a corrosion problem, but I know that in many other things (say, bicycles) aluminum is touted as lasting longer than steel.
Bicycles are not usually driven in snow and salt, which we have to contend with around here.
Properly done, neither steel nor aluminum corrodes. Too bad paint chips have a tendency to undo that "properly done" bodywork.
I'd be especially concerned about suspension perches on the aluminum structure. Since the suspension bushings, etc. will be held in place with steel bolts (I would hope!), the aluminum perches on the underside of the unibody will become sacrificial in the galvanic corrosion which will quickly follow. If the perches rot off, worst case scenario is a complete detachment of portions of the suspension from the structure of the automobile.
That happens every year with the "normal" updates. Mechanics didn't like working with electronic ignition, turbos, ECUs, fuel injection, or any other change. Why would this be any different?
It isn't.
How many thousands do the batteries cost? Have you actually called a parts department and asked, or are you just spreading FUD without checking facts?
Late-life vehicles are typically purchased for under $1000 and are driven by the working poor. Most of these vehicles are serviced with junkyard parts, $20 used starter motors, $15 used alternators, $150 used engines.
A replacement assist battery will be over $1000, I guarantee it. Junkyard batteries are never a good idea. The car will be scrapped earlier in its life, even if the rest of it is in fine mechanical condition.
If you don't plan on that scheduled maintence, you are stupid.
Do you amortize the cost of an engine rebuild over the life of your car, or do you simply junk it when you have blue clouds of worn piston rings and tell-tale rod knock coming from the bottom end? That's the sort of cost we're talking about here. I can do a rebuilt engine for most cars for under $1500, including labor.
If the batteries are removed, they will operate no better than a regular car with a battery removed (it will not work properly).
Uhh... No, a conventional car will not start without a battery, since the battery provides power for the starter motor and ignition system. On the other hand, a hybrid car has two batteries: the $50 at Wal*Mart 12V battery which starts the gasoline engine, and the assist battery.
I've driven a Civic Hybrid quite extensively and took the time to flip up the back seat and turn off the hybrid features by hitting the kill switch on the assist battery. This simulates having no assist battery whatsoever. The car would still start and run and even drive, but it wa
2) Again, NiMH and not lead acid or NiCAD so there isn't that massive environmental impact of the previous battery technologies. But I do agree we still need mandated recycling of some of these materials so they don't end up in lakes/etc.
You fail to understand even basic high school chemistry.
The greater the energy density of any battery, the greater the reactivity of the chemicals inside it.
4) our Dodge Dart is not getting very environmentally efficient milage( ie green house gases/etc ). There's more to good MPG with hybrid systems.Your Dodge Dart would have to be at least 28 years old, since they were discontinued in 1976. Since it's now lasted a little over 3 times longer than the average car, all the greenhouse gases produced by burning the coal required to melt the steel and recycle it have been spared (WARNING! Calculating this might require a basic understanding of chemistry, mechanical engineering, manufacturing processes, and the cookie-cutter inefficiencies of die-stamping). Unless it's a taxicab, you'd be unlikely to make up the environmental damage from recycling the car in the incremental fuel economy increases from vehicle generation to generation.
Reciprocating piston engine concept been around a LONG time now, it fits the bill for the variable needs of cars, but still... it's ancient tech, and slamming something one way hard, then a microsecond later yanking it back the other way..well, I think we could do it better.
An engine is really just an air pump except it operates in reverse.
There are two kinds of pump. Positive displacement, and non-positive displacement.
A turbine engine - like a jet engine or a gas turbine - is not a positive displacement pump. As a result, not all of the expanding gases serve to drive the impeller (which eventually drives the wheels). Continuing the pump analogy, this would be equivalent to a centrifugal pump (think of centrifugal water pumps found in major appliances and "biscuit blowers" you can get for your computer) or a conventional axial fan (ship's propeller, cute little fan that keeps your computer's power supply from cooking).
A piston or vaned pump is positive displacement - the slip past the piston rings or vanes is minimal. A conventional reciprocating car engine is equivalent to a piston pump like you'd find in an air compressor, while a Wankel is more like a vaned pump like you'd find in industrial machinery and any place where you have to pump a fluid against a head (large rise). (My grey water toilet uses a Wolfcraft drill pump, which is a kind of vane pump.)
Gas turbines lose due to slip through the turbine. Also, I don't think most people are too keen on having super-hot exhaust gases. (One of the most recent turbine cars was the Chrysler Turbine car; it was an experimental car abandoned in the early 1960s because there was no way to make the gas mileage even remotely reasonable. There is precisely one still in operating condition, and I saw it driving on the show grounds at a car show - sounds like a vacuum cleaner! *HOT* blast as it drives slowly past.)
Wankel rotaries are beautiful, but by the time anyone had figured out how to make end seals for the rotors, emissions laws had demanded better control of combustion chamber shape. That was nearly impossible to do with a rotary motor, given that the combustion chamber's shape is dictated by the need to contact the end seals. I'd love to see how Mazda did it in the new RX-8.
A recent report shows that the trend is ALREADY towards more disposable cars due to all the high tech crap and tons of airbags and such in them. If the car is going to be "disposed" of anyway, perhaps it would be better if it were more efficient during its lifetime anyway?
Which requires more raw materials to manufacture batteries, controllers and electric motors, contributing only to a very slight increase in gas mileage.
Don't get me wrong - hybrids *are* neat, and they are a good idea. But I don't believe the technology has advanced to a point where the benefits outweigh the environmental costs of manufacturing it and replacing it more frequently (unserviceable, ill-suited materials like aluminum, etc.).
You have to start somewhere...automobile makers haven't capitalized on many of the low hanging fruits to improve fuel efficiency for DECADES.
That's complete bull. Detroit has always been interested in fuel efficiency, at least in their economy cars. Most of these features were also taken to performance and luxury cars, because most technical advances that increase fuel efficiency also increase performance.
Cases in point:
*ALL* of these features had their genesis before fuel economy laws or guidelines from the government. Almost all of these features are now standard on even the cheapest economy cars.
Just think where computer technology, or aircraft design, has gone in the same intervening period.
Moore's Law does not apply to cars. Mechanical engineering is a relatively mature discipline. Moore's Law ran its course in mechanical engineering soon after the invention of the wheel, during the Renaissance, or after the discovery of calculus - take your pick.
Aircraft design? Yeah, very nice. It's amazing how high-tech a car can be when you can sell it for several million dollars, arbitrarily tell buyers that it's going to run on whatever fuel you decide rather than what the local Mobil station pumps, and have it serviced every time it's driven. It's simply not comparable.
It is taking foreign car makers to pressure the US market to even begin this stuff>
No, it isn't. Detroit responds to what the market wants. The majority of American car buyers prefered big chrome-tipped tailfins and cars that got soft and cushy rides on inefficient bias-ply tires. You'll note that economy cars didn't sell very well until after 1974 (Arab oil embargo).
Why do you think we have SUVs now? (And I don't mean the Jeep Wagoneers, Dodge Ramchargers and Chevy Suburbans that have been around in small numbers in rural markets since at least the 1950s; I mean every soccer-mom and balding accountant driving a Ford Explorer or Grand Cherokee.)
Because the market still wants the big RWD full-frame V8-powered Caprice Estate station wagons. But Detroit can't make them anymore due to corporate average fuel economy standards. Noting that pickup trucks are exempt from CAF
It seems entirely reasonable to me, in the first instance, to rule in favour of the spammer.
Judge: Well, just lay off them a bit, while I think about it.
I've worked in IT in a court. One of my judges asked me to turn off the anti-spam software on his account so that he could understand the magnitude of the problem.
"Sir, are you really sure that you wish for me to do that?"
"Yup."
Note that this e-mail address is publicly available on several websites.
You can imagine the results.
Note that comparing an aluminum hybrid to a galvanized steel compact, e.g. the Insight to a "regular" car, would not be an apples-to-apples comparison since if you were to remove all the weight from the electrical system (adding hydraulic brakes) and increase the engine size to match the lost horsepower, the new gas car would be more efficient than other gas cars on the road today, and might even be better on the highway than the hybrid. (Although it really should fail to beat the hybrid in the city)
Yeah, I think the weight of the hybrid electrical system offsets the weight savings from the aluminum body.
But there are several things which really upset me about hybrids:
- I don't care what they say, sooner or later an accident will happen where the batteries are ruptured and smear electrolyte all over passengers.
- No matter what you do, you're never gonna get all the cars or their batteries back for proper recycling. People do strange things to cars. They end up in lakes or rivers, or abandoned in the woods.
- Aluminum is a difficult metal to work. Welding to the body to perform a collision repair is going to be expensive because it requires equipment that most body shops don't have - TIG welder, stock of aluminum sheet metal, person capable of TIG welding without warping thin sheet metal. Therefore, the cars will be scrapped more often after collisions. Also, aluminum rots extremely quickly in road and sea salt conditions - look at city buses, there's a reason all of the panels are interchangable with only 1/2 hour and a rivet gun.
- Complexity - either real or perceived - of the drivetrain is increased. More and more people and shops will want to avoid working on them, which will drive up labor costs for service. Therefore, because they're expensive to fix, they'll get scrapped sooner.
- Late-Life vehicles - Will driving this car be at all practical if the assist battery is disconnected? When the car is 6-8 years old and being driven around by its last owner and the battery dies, will it still be usable as a conventional car, or will it be scrapped rather than spending the many thousands of dollars a new battery will cost?
(In reality, I get about 37MPG on the highway, ~30 in the city... the car _is_ 13 years old)1970 Dodge Dart 4-door sedan, mostly stock, seats 5 full-size (6 foot +) adults in comfort, modern radial tires, Slant-6 brings the thing up to highway speed quicker than most new econoboxes. And it's made of thick, solid steel. 34 years old, gets 25MPG highway, about 22MPG city.
Moore's Law does not apply to the automobile!
Give each of your buddies regular 'user' accounts so a) they can't install crap, b) they can't directly access your files, and c) they can't screw it up. Each user has a profile and when they run whatever email client they want the files are stored in their profile. Sort of like
For sure! I'm assuming that since they don't own their own computers, they're probably not too capable with them. They're not likely to break Windows 2000 (which is slightly more secure than Windows 98). Of course, they still can break it if they want to.
Go with Eudora for e-mail. It plays well in multiple-user systems, and there's a free edition with spyware-free advertising. I've been using Eudora for years on all my Windows boxes, and I wish they'd come up with a Linux version. I love it all the way down to the sarcastic user interface:
"Eudora got tired of waiting for the server to respond"
"Register your copy of Eudora and we'll erect a giant statue of you on the lawn of our corporate headquarters - (offer void on the planet Earth)"
"There has been an error transferring your mail. I said: PASS <shhhh! Don't tell anyone.> and then the POP server ($ACCOUNT@$SERVER) said: ERR [AUTH] Password supplied for blah is incorrect."
BLAH BLAH BLAH button to view message headers.
"Your message to $ADDRESS regarding $SUBJECT is the sort of thing that might get your keyboard washed out with soap, if you get my drift. You might consider toning it down."
Oh, and unlike Mozilla's mail client, this thing actually has a real (underlining, passive) spell-checker instead of one that bonks you in the face over and over and over for every word it doesn't know. Mozilla's spell checker is, like, so 1994. KMail fixed that over a year ago!
Use a regular cd player/headphones, then put a board over it, put a big plastic play button in a hole in the center of the board. Then you extend the button so that it will hit play on the cd player.
Warning, though. If someone pounds a button really hard, then they'll crack the CD player's PC board.
Preferable: disassemble the CD player and put an arcade-machine pushbutton in parallel with the existing button.
Alternatively: make a button with limited travel, where the force is absorbed by the case. Use a spring-loaded plunger to actually push the button on the CD player, so that leaning on the button won't put more than the spring's compressive force onto the player's button.
What they really need to do is release better Linux drivers, and care more about Linux support in general.
Oh my, no.
It's got nothing to do with Linux.
All of their drivers are crap. Rather than make the ATI MultiMedia Center and hardware drivers *not* blue-screen Windows 2000 constantly, they spent a whole lot of time and effort on making it look stupid (like it was designed by a 17-year-old virgin with anime posters on his walls).
Support for discontinued products is also poor. Come on, when it's obsolete, just release the source for the drivers as you had them. I had several hundred ATI All in Wonder Pros installed at a TV station; they expected their investment was going to last: it didn't. What trade secrets are going to be lost by releasing that?
A long time ago, I swore off ever buying another ATI product.
I have yet to find anything useful that WINE will run though...
Oh yeah, WINE is far from perfect, but it's still very useful. Unfortunately, not for running M$ Office and stuff, mostly for lugging around those proprietary applications you need to cart around sometimes.
I had a good one. I used to manage a complete flight information system at Pearson International Airport. There were hundreds of little PCs which drove displays all over the place. And they were all running Windows 95 - the programmer hadn't had time to update the software so that it would run on NT/2K. (The data came in on serial ports - two wire, unidirectional data, very secure - but coded to talk directly to the hardware.)
Of course, I didn't want to buy one Windows license let alone 200. To say nothing of having to run around and reboot Windows every so often. So I tried the software with WINE. And it worked!
All future display units were deployed running in WINE. They only ever crashed when the CPU fans got choked with dust. Unlike the Windows (95) version, where we had a LAN available, I could also SSH into the machines and have complete command-line control including updating images and stuff remotely (by script). It was very nice.
If you've ever been to Toronto and seen a FIDS display booting up Linux late at night, that would have been me remotely restarting that unit after an update.
(The developer is working on porting his software to run on Linux natively; I sold him on the idea of escaping Windows.)
Does it have unrivalled compatability with all the worms and trojans too?
So, there I was, running Red Hat 7.3 on my desktop (yeah, I know, but it was quick and easy to install). I had a friend over who had never seen Linux before.
I opened KMail. "Oh, and the best part is, it's not running Windows, so you can't get any Windows e-mail viruses!" I boldly double-clicked on an attachment with a .scr extension.
WINE started up.
I had just infected my Linux workstation with a Windows e-mail virus.
Damn thing, actually associating all DOS/Windows binaries with WINE. Kind of undoes at least half of the security benefits of running Linux in the first place. [grumble]
I did none of my homework in any math class, ever. Others in my class did 100%. I regularly received high 90's in my classes, the others who did all of their homework regularly nearly (or completely) failed the class.
You're impressive!
It is not a linear relationship by far, it really depends on the person and their ability to solve the problems presented given what you know (given absolutes and learned methods).Yeah. To a certain extent, it depends on your ability to learn by watching it being done - either in textbook examples or on the blackboard. Most people tend to learn by doing, though. I'm not saying that people like you don't exist - you certainly do - but you're not the majority.
By your difinitions of your classes, Calc I, Calc II, and half of Calc III (multivariable calc) were taught in my highschool as OAC (gr.13) Calculus.I took OAC calculus, too.
In OAC Calculus, we did about 80% of the stuff in 69.104 Engineering Calculus I. Calculus I went beyond, teaching more advanced integration techniques (integration by parts including what to do to integrate "tough" things like (e^2x)*sin(3x), improper integrals (where one or both of the bounds is infinity), more techniques for solving definite integrals like volumes of revolution, etc. We also touched on basic separable differential equations. Nothing beyond basic integration (polynomials, simple functions of e^x, ln(x) and trig) was in the OAC curriculum, though it was covered in BC and Alberta (instead of Linear Algebra).
In Calculus II, half the course was differential equations of all sorts; the other half was sequences and series and all sorts of tests. We did nothing even remotely similar in high school.
Calculus III - You did partial derivatives, double and triple integrals and calculus of parametric equations in MCAOA? I'm sorry, I don't believe you. What was your textbook called? I probably have it on the bookshelf in my living room; none of the textbooks I've seen for the OAC curriculum have *any* of that.
Linear Algebra and Stats were also taught.Yeah, my OAC Linear Algebra was 80% of the course in university; the other 20% was eigenvalues and eigenvectors, determinants, matrix inverses, orthogonality. We had none of that in MAGOA. (Noting also that BC and AB students in my class hadn't taken any linear algebra at all, concentrating more on calculus.)
Stats would have been the OAC Finite Math course. Didn't take it, wasn't an admissions prerequisite - but I would have, if I'd had the time.
Fourier Series, Calc IV, and Num.Methods were taught in Calc II in the college I went to (after the first three were re-hashed in Calc I).Calculus IV? My Calculus IV and Numerical Methods were each a full semester; Fourier was one third of a semester. And we were moving pretty fast through all the course material. It's worth noting that the only people in my Calculus IV class were second year engineering students and 4th year honors math students. The math students were two years behind us in applied math, but they could blow us out of the water with theory and proofs!
Not to mention looking up formulas and obscure theorms online because our POS $150 textbook is so unclear I can read a paragraph 15 times and still not understand a single sentence. And I am not the only one. Math is tricky, and for some minds it is just plain difficult.
Oh yeah, I agree; sometimes it *does* take a lot of reading to get your head around something. And other times, you just need to follow through examples until you learn the method because the textbook describes the proof so poorly.
Note also that in my engineering program, our focus wasn't on proofs or theory. It was about practical applications of higher math. The whole idea is that math is a tool for us. Our tests and exams were "Solve this", "Integrate that", "Find the radius of convergence of this series". It was possible to do 100% of the problems on a test correctly, and as such, get an A+. Which is only fair; I don't consider that to be grade inflation. This is not an English Literature class or something else which is only qualitatively correct or incorrect.
I have a collection of Calculus books - over a dozen now, old textbooks from used bookstores. My personal favorite is the 1910 gem, Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus Thompson. Of course, it wasn't helpful beyond Calculus I, but I still refer to it when I've forgotten how to integrate something. It's helpful to have a bunch of different textbooks explaining the same thing; sooner or later you'll find an explanation which just makes things drop into place.
But if you still can't get it, you have to be honest with yourself and ask yourself how much of your homework you've really been doing.
You also have to consider the possibility of attention deficit disorder (ADD). I *couldn't* do math until I got it delt with; now I love math, and there are about 100 other facets of my life which have been improved as a result of diagnosis and treatment. (I think ADD is a different evolutionary behavior rather than a "disorder" as it's called. ADD helps me with a lot of things, coming up with creative and different ways of solving problems. But it does make some aspects of life in today's world tough. I take my Ritalin only when I need to focus.)
But the most important thing is that, in the immortal words of Bernie Perrier (a great high school calculus teacher), "Math is not a spectator sport". You *have to* do the homework. It's that simple.
I don't have a car, why should I learn how to change a tire?
Why do you want to force me to learn something which is a total waste of my time?
And, I suppose, other people would have similar ideas about calculus.
More likely, about Shakespeare. When was the last time you found Shakespeare to be useful?
Learning how to change a tire would be a lot more useful for the vast majority of people. Beyond that, sooner or later, you will be in a car which blows a tire. And the the owner/driver might not know how to - or be physically incapable of - changing it.
Furthermore, whether you're a cyclist or a pedestrian, you will be around cars if you're anywhere with an Internet connection. You need to know a little about how they work, so that you can understand how they fail. In particular how, for example, a blown tire is more likely to happen on the curb side because of broken glass, scrapes with curbs, etc. And how when a car blows a tire, the car tends to pull in that direction. How you might, therefore, as a cyclist or a pedestrian, want to know that when you hear the bang of a blowout that there's a fairly good chance the vehicle is going to veer in the direction of the sidewalk or bicycle lane. Where you are.
But an appreciation of that might or might not be of use to you.