It would need a new connector, because you can only get stereo stereo from the iPod as far as I can tell.
For a surround output to an audio system, you would need a new connector offering at least 4 channels (Front L/R, rear L/R), line level. They'd probably make it straight-up 5.1, though.
And how do you get surround sound from a pair of headphones with only with a left and right channel?
Easily. Headphones have two channels (L/R), you have two ears (L/R). Your brain does some pretty heavy duty phase analysis to figure out where a sound is coming from. In fact, binaural recording is a technique where two microphones (L/R) are mounted on a form resembling the human head, but you need to wear headphones for the full effect.
A portable device could either use 4 channel headphones (expensive, requires 4 amplifiers to drive them, would increase battery consumption) or could use a DSP integrated circuit to decode the surround sound channels, perform the phase analysis done by the human brain, and send this synthetic binaural signal to regular headphones.
But it's still a lot of work for little payoff. Most of the use for surround sound in any form is movies. Music tends to be mixed to 2 channels from the perspective of a listener sitting in front of the stage, so I think its importance in a portable device primarily used for music is pretty limited.
Transformers and Schoolyard Trauma
on
Retro Vision
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· Score: 1
I'm the first to admit, the concept of the transformers was cool, but the TV show was not.
No. Transformers(TM) are not cool, were never cool, and never will be cool.
They're hideous chunks of cheap-assed made-in-$INSERT_THIRD_WORLD_MANUFACTURING_HELLHOLE _DU_JOUR plastic crap that all the kids with mucous running down their noses in endless streams clamored to have.
My big resentment is not that all my 1980s peers had them. As a kid who was *always* into electronics, I was always building or playing with something involving - you guessed it - transformers. Note that's not Transformers(TM), that's transformers.
You can't *imagine* how many times I wanted to beat someone over the head with precious iron laminates for telling me that the object in my hand was *not* a transformer.
To add insult to injury, one of my aunts gave me a Transformer(TM) for Christmas one year. Since it couldn't be returned for something more useful than some silly "Let's pretend that we're going to kick some Decepticon ass" garbage, I certainly enjoyed pounding it in the school yard with a 5lb chunk of Hammond.
"Wanna see which is the most powerful transformer of them all", I asked as children cried about the impending destruction of the effluence they all wanted.
That plastic crap didn't stand a chance against those strong silicon-iron laminates. It kinda smeared into them, like lipstick into a brick. I still have that transformer, and it still bears a silver and red streak.
ethical corporations do better in the long run, and this isn't a simple karma question. Be good to people and they'll be good to you. They're not just "customers" or "consumers," but people. This stuff is real, it's not a game. There aren't just rules, there are laws and morals and values.
Unfortunately, though, I believe that Microsoft's successes are personally less important to Ballmer and especially Gates than the vision which drives them. Microsoft is simply a tool to build their vision.
I'm quite sure they honestly believe that having everyone using Microsoft software - to the exclusion of all alternatives - is a good thing. Much like Hitler was probably sure that eliminating the Jews and annexing Poland and Austria was a good thing for Germans.
Great...what a wonderfull place to be huh? A bit ironic isn't it? Being here on slashdot, if you're not part of the geek culture exclusively you get ostracized, at least lately it seems that way to me.
Dude... I know your pain. I *hate* anime (what's with the stupid monolithic teeth?), I haven't seen LOTR because it's all about hobbits and wizards and crap, and I've rebuilt the big-block V8 in my 27 year old pickup truck.
This is just payback for all the beatings most computer geeks took on the playground.
Your nick is "BigBlockMopar" and you're talking about ecological projects?
Hello my AC stalker, who nit-picks everything I ever say, but lacks the balls to post with his username. Good to see you again, you've been quieter recently. I so enjoy shooting you down.
Yup. I'm into muscle cars - you know, the big 1960s and 1970s American V8s. Guys like me are usually interested in getting the most power out of these already powerful engines. Now, guess what the laws of stoichimetry say about power? Yup, clean burn, to get the most power out of every single drop of gasoline.
Consequently, many restored 1960s and 1970s musclecars burn *cleaner* on HC and CO emissions than the state-mandated emissions tests on modern cars. And note that this is without catalytic converters which restrict the exhaust flow and therefore cause up to a 20% decrease in the mileage of so-festooned newer cars.
However, old cars (before 1972-1973) do not have EGR systems (which reduce fuel efficiency and therefore increase CO2 emissions). Not having EGR systems causes the emission of NOx gases. Fortunately, NOx is created in - and stable at - the temperatures and pressures inside the engine's cylinders. When it reaches our temperature and pressure, it disintegrates fairly readily.
How about burning your car,
I think that wouldn't be beneficial to the environment. For one thing, the combustion of plastics and vinyls (primarily interior padding and wiring harness components) is always messy, especially when they're designed to be flame-retardant.
Another thing would be that the vehicle would then have to be replaced. Manufacturing a car requires terrific energy resources even assuming perfect reclamation of materials by recycling. You should really try calculating how much CO2 is liberated during the combustion of coal in a steel mill in order to manufacture a car. Lifetime tailpipe emissions are nothing compared to the manufacturing; and modern cars are only incrementally more efficient (Moore's Law does not apply to cars). It's more environmentally friendly to maintain your car and keep it as long as possible than it is to replace it after a mere 20 years. I'd invite you to do the math. You will find all the required understanding in even a first year college chemistry textbook.
chrysler has a long history of making the least fuel effecient and most highly polluting engines on the market,
Really? That's news to me. Let's see... where would you like me to start?
While the only foreign manufacturer of note (VW) was still making their highly inefficient air-cooled Beetle engines, Detroit was building water-cooled (good for emissions) flathead engines. In 1959, Chrysler introduced their Slant-6, an OHV inline 6 on a 30-degree incline and using a tunnel-ram intake manifold. It was an extremely high-tech engine conceived for fuel efficiency and powered their economy cars (while Ford and GM didn't offer efficient and clean OHV engines for their cheapest offerings).
From the 1960 to 1966 model year, Chrysler's Slant-6 won the Mobil Economy Race, going further on a tank of fuel than other offerings.
At the same time, Chrysler's car bodies were almost all lightweight unibodies with the sole exceptions of the Imperials and trucks. This while Ford and GM continued to build huge quantites of heavy full-frame cars into the 1980s.
By the 1970s, the Slant-6 was still more refined, fuel-efficient and clean-burning than most of GM and Ford's early OHV engines - you will note that GM and Ford had to discontinue a greater percentage of their engine lines in the early 1970s as the Clean Air Act and CAFE were introduced. Even so, the Slant-6 was fitted with feedback carbs and electronic spark advance systems. While they were buggy, the feedback carbs and spark advance systems were pioneering steps toward today's full-feedback EFI systems.
You'll note that by the late 1970s, Detroit was using electronic ignition (if not with spark advance) on all their offerings, while the
If I have gray water toilets, how are the dogs and cats in my house supposed to get water!
Using the bowl of clean water you provide.
My cat was never a toilet-drinker anyway, but the gray water really did surprise my buddy's dog the first time it came over.
Don't unplug your computer to save energy!
on
DIY HVAC
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· Score: 1
Don't leave your VCR, radio and all other electric devices on standby all the time. They use up a significant amount of power each year.
If you have to heat your house for the majority of the year, that suggestion is idiocy.
All the electricity consumed within your house serves to heat it. How?
The heat from the ~5% inefficiency of the clock radio or VCR's transformer radiates into your house as heat. The light from the display eventually gets absorbed by something dark and is re-radiated as heat. The sound from fans, motors, etc. is just vibration of air molecules and is attenuated over distance as the air molecules rub against each other and create heat.
With the exception of light, RF and sound which escape your house, 100% of the electrical energy that you consume in your house serves to heat it. Electric heaters are 100% efficient, whether the device consuming the energy is a space heater or a computer (how many watts of energy go out the VGA, audio and network ports? Effectively zero.).
Now, you can calculate the cost of fuels - oil/gas heat versus electricity - and the per-BTU cost of the heat from each energy. In my case, with a 35 year old oil furnace (which I cannot replace right now for a variety of reasons), the efficiency of the furnace is only about 70%, so my cost per BTU of heat from oil goes up 30%. Which makes it cheaper for me to leave all the lights on, to fire up a collection of old machines crunching SETI@Home units.
So, in my case, it's more cost effective and energy efficient to leave the clock radio and VCR plugged in.
Never mind, of course, the fact that turn on and turn off cycles have a tendency to damage electronic equipment, especially the consumer stuff which are designed for continuous duty and optimized for low cost. Blowing a MOSFET in my VCR's power supply or a filter capacitor in my clock radio are both going to be more expensive to repair than the energy the clock radio or VCR would have consumed.
So... do the math before you make unfounded blanket statements. It sounds like scientific policy conceived of the massive technical knowledge conferred with an arts degree. (I get *so* tired of the "I'm educated! I have a valuable opinion about everything!" crap, and they seem to be especially prone to idiotic brainwashing at weird campus rallies.)
Re:Gray Water Toilet - pictures and info!
on
DIY HVAC
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Fuck you. My stuff, my rules. Who lets shit like building codes fuck our society?
Well, yeah. I'm quite a Libertarian, but unfortunately this is just one of those things where there have to be government-enforced standards. (You're certainly not going to trust contractors to do the right thing, are you?)
Why are building codes important? Look at fire and earthquake damage in third-world countries like Taiwan and Iran... 300 people die in department store fire in Taipei... Notice that sort of stuff doesn't happen in the US, Canada, EU or Australia very often?
Gray Water Toilet - pictures and info!
on
DIY HVAC
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Would there be anything wrong with using your shower water as toilet water? I honestly can't see anything wrong with that and it'd certainly cut down on somebody's water bill from month to month.
I meant to reply here rather than my post in the previous parent, I clicked on the link and brainfarted about the subject.
I did also consider using the water from the shower, but in practice, the water from the washing machine provides enough water to keep the storage barrel full.
Whether you have one or several toilets, the number of flushes per day is probably proportional to the number of people in the house. Since the laundry usage is also proportional to the number of people in the house, the water barrel is likely to remain full, but I'm sure there'd be no harm in dropping a pipe off the clean-out port at the bottom of the bathtub/shower U-trap, putting in another U-trap to serve as a vapor barrier, and draining that into the barrel. A couple of barrels should probably also be paralleled for a high-volume multiple toilet installation, but if you store too much water, it will start to grow (stinky) algae.
I tried paralleling barrels, but in practice, I didn't need to - just two people in my house. It'd be very easy to do, just a hose connecting fittings near the bottoms of each barrel, and they'll reach an equilibrium even if it's several minutes after the washing machine has finished a drain cycle.
As for what's wrong with gray water toilets, I don't know. I know it's against building codes here, but I don't know why. My system, not being a permanent installation or requiring any modification to the existing plumbing, skirts the rules about building codes.
I have yet to find a single disadvantage to my gray water system.
Gray-Water Toilets!
on
DIY HVAC
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· Score: 4, Interesting
directly tie-in to the temperature zoning system featured in this Slashdot posting.
The temperature controller is an *excellent* idea, I think I'll take a look at incorporating it into my house.
Here's my little (non-computerized) ecological project: a gray water toilet which recycles water from my washing machine.
It's obviously not the work of a professional engineer, but that's what makes it neat. Taking a just barely functional knowledge of what's going on and solving a problem using available tools. I suspect this guy isn't going to be the professional EE you all think he should be for at least 4 more years
Actually, I've seen a lot of EEs do the same thing, with no more understanding than the basic voltage drop analysis. You have to keep in mind that an engineering degree confers exactly the *opposite* thing to the practical knowledge required in the real world. Those people who make good engineers already got their practical knowledge from playing with Lego and hacking their bicycle.
You see, the reason why a D cell is bigger than a C cell is bigger than a AA cell is bigger than a AAA cell despite all putting out ~1.5V is because of current capacity. A modern D cell will put out 1.5V into a 1A load for many (~15) hours, while a modern AAA cell will put out 1.5V into a 1A load for around an hour and ten minutes.
Trivia question: why is there AA, AAA, C and D but no A or B? Answer: The A battery was a big 1.5V lantern battery used to heat the filaments in radios before rectifier tubes were practical to allow the radio to be plugged in to a regular outlet, and the B battery was a 30V, 45V or 90V battery used to provide the plate voltages for the tubes in these radios. The B battery stuck around until the early transistor radios of the late 1950s replaced all the tube portables. You can actually still buy both battery types but generally only through big electronic parts suppliers.
(Quoting Duracell's alkaline battery data sheets, difficult to link directly to the PDF so click on "Technical Bulletin" and scroll to page 9/13, D cell 15Ah (15,000mAh) and AAA cell 1.15Ah (1,150mAh).)
Go to Radio Shack and buy a multimeter. Stick it in current mode, and measure the current consumed by the iPod. Then look up the mAh (milliamp-hour) ratings for the type of battery you wish to use - NiMH, Energizer Lithium, Duracells, whatever. Do not mix battery types (brands, chemistries, etc), ages (new batteries and old batteries should never be put together in series), or sizes (AA, 9V, D-cells, etc.) because you will have some discharge faster than others, sometimes to the point of actually trying to "recharge" the weakest cells off the strongest cells.
Figure out which battery size you need to use based on whatever you consider to be an acceptable battery life for long trips, and use it. Of course, there will be design trade-offs in order to achieve a reasonable size - shorter battery life or bigger and heavier batteries - some compromise will probably have to be reached. If all you care about is battery life, for example, just stick the iPod directly across a car battery.
Get appropriate sized battery holders at Radio Shack or any number of electronic parts places - MCM Electronics, All Electronics, Digikey, Newark, Electrosonic, etc. Connect them in series and build them into a plastic or aluminum box, properly secured and screwed down. Use heat shrink tubing instead of electrical tape for all connections, and use a grommet (those little plastic things where the power cord enters your kettle or toaster or whatever) to prevent the wires getting frayed.
And, most importantly, once you know the current the iPod consumes, multiply that number by two and buy a fuse with that rating. Put it in a holder in the battery box - that way, if the power cord to the iPod gets caught and damaged, or if the iPod fails catastrophically - there won't be a fire.
This shouldn't get posted until there are detailed instructions on how to build:)
Yeah, a few thousand people build them.
Then a few dozen virii are written which cause these infected machines to wander about the house taking photographs of everything, and send the pictures back to some Chechnyan e-mail address.
A couple of days later, burglars are dispatched.
Paranoid is just the smart way to be, since the whole world is out to get you.
Don't Knock US/Imperial/SAE Measurements!
on
Mars Rovers Update
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· Score: 4, Insightful
They're so incredibly smart, in fact, that they don't even need to convert metric measurements to the archaic system they insist on using.
Don't knock US/SAE measurements, there's a good reason they've stayed around.
For scientific analysis, without question, Metric rules.
But when you're actually building and working on things, most of the time a 10% tolerance is good enough. As a result, usually you can stick your thumb across something and say, "Yup, that's an inch - close enough". The base units are more intuitive, although admittedly the interconversion between units is a bitch - but conversions are more common in analysis than construction/maintenance.
My perspective here? Canada went Metric in 1976. I grew up in Metric. I went to school in Metric, fuelled up my cars in Metric, got a set of Metric wrenches when I was a kid, etc. Heck, you wanna know Metric inside and out? Try taking an engineering degree in Canada!
And yet, I know I'm 6'4" tall, 185lbs. I don't know in Metric.
Every time I work on a car, I want to know first, Metric or SAE? (And I don't mean the speedometer, they've all been Metric in Canada since 1976.) Not because I care which wrenches, sockets and feeler gauges I bring, but because I like working on SAE much more.
Why?
I've had more cars with Metric fasteners and specs than I have SAE, and yet, somehow, I can still just put my thumb across a bolt and know, "Hey, that's not 1/2", that's 7/16"!" Why can't I do that with Metric? I sure which I could, especially since I've got more experience with Metric.
Re:Layers on Panels are a Bad Idea
on
Mars Rovers Update
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I like the way how you try to appear intelligent and how you capitalize "bad idea" to show what an eleet hax0r you are.
Ah, yes. My AC Fan Club at work again. I've been suspecting for a while that I have a stalker.
The subject line is the title of a diatribe, and in general, as a title, it should be capitalized.
If I wanted to be an "eleet hax0r", I probably would have capitalized the "A", for the full effect of "A Bad Idea". But I didn't.
Furthermore, I'm not gonna be much of a hax0r anyway; I'm an electronics guy, not a programmer. While I can make "Hello, World" in everything from TI BASIC to 680x0 assembly language, my programming style is so much brute force and ignorance that Microsoft keeps on trying to hire me to write Outlook security patches.
So there ya go.
Re:Layers on Panels are a Bad Idea
on
Mars Rovers Update
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Yea, well, but i suppose accumulated dust attenuates way more light than a few thin plastic sheets, no?
Probably after a time, yeah. But the folks at NASA aren't stupid; I'm sure they would have come up with something like that - at least *after* Pathfinder if not before - and decided that cost/benefit analysis didn't make it worthwhile.
(ie. launch weight of the sheets and pulling mechanism, chances of binding and either obscuring a panel or getting caught in the wheels or instruments, chances of it catching the wind like a sail during sheet removal, reduced efficiency of cells over the long run rather than reduced efficiency of cells simply due to dust accumulation toward the end of the mission, etc.)
Layers on Panels are a Bad Idea
on
Mars Rovers Update
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· Score: 4, Insightful
A thread attached to a corner of every plastic sheet running diagonally to the opposite corner and an electric motor that activates when the sheet is dirty. Stack 10 sheets of this and voila, lifetime of the rover multiplied x10.
Conceptually, this is a great idea, except for one problem:
Every layer of $whatever you put on the panels attenuates some of the light striking the panels. The sunlight is also that much dimmer there (at the very least by the inverse square law of distance from the sun, if not also because of atmospheric conditions), so every single watt-hour those things can capture is critical.
Of course, to compensate for the thin film layers, they could have made the solar panels bigger - but that adds launch weight... not to mention the bigger solar panels would make the whole thing more top heavy and likely to tip over due to wind or ground obstructions, meaning you'd want to add size and wheelbase to this thing, meaning you'd need more solar panels... Do we see a vicious circle yet? [grin]
It could be a component, but only one piece. The really tough part if creating the software that intelligently drives. There are so many oddball cases you have to deal with in driving that it will be a very long time before this is possible.
I don't think the goal is that loft at this point - we're talking about an aid for the (human) driver to see through fog.
Quoted from the first line of the article:
Imagine driving down a twisty mountain road on a dark foggy night. Visibility is near-zero, yet you still can see clearly. Not through your windshield, but via an image on a screen in front of you.
This would be nearly impossible to implement by radar alone, but this is a step towards it.
The problem, of course, is clutter. Fog, snow and rain all obscure your view through radar because of clutter and attenuation. Even with a very intelligent algorithm combining the skills of hundreds of experienced mariners, finding the sweet spot on the clutter and gain controls is difficult.
Another issue is "obstructions" which won't cause an echo at all - like the very big fall waiting for you on the other side of the missing guardrail.
Let's consider a worst-case scenario. It's raining. The gain and clutter are configured to give you a clear view of cars in front of you, guardrails, concrete obstructions, rocks, etc despite the driving rain.
A few minutes ago, a truck drove down the road and a forklift pallet of toilet paper fell off the truck. Do you think your radar is going to show you its echo? I think its relatively weak echo will be filtered out as clutter...
How about something more substantial, a big square rooftop HVAC unit sitting on the road, one of its four corners pointed directly at you? Even under the best possible circumstances, it's going to be very hard to get an echo off that, since there isn't a surface normal to the RF energy leaving your car...
Or a kid, wandering around the road. Daddy had an accident because he trusted too much in his automotive radar system, and has been hurt. The clutter on your own radar system is set high enough to obsure the echoes from the water droplets of the driving rainstorm. Now, what kind of echo are we going to get off a human being, considering that we're mostly water?
I've seen people on radar systems. You really don't see much, and I don't care whether it's X-band or S-band, a crappy little Furuno bought at the yacht club or a $200,000 interswitched Lloyds type-approved Racal-Decca ARPA radar used on an aircraft carrier. You're still not gonna see much of a target.
While I was designing radar video systems for Litton (before the tech collapse), we had constant reports that bridge crews were using the radar for navigation, rather than properly sighting, having crew on watch, and bringing the ship to a slow speed with due consideration of conditions.
The ship's captain probably has 20 years experience at sea, and is now in charge of a multi-million dollar vehicle with many lives on board. These are responsible, intelligent and experienced people. And they often take their radar's accuracy for granted.
How, then, are we going to get Joe Sixpack who currently thinks nothing of driving around in his SUV, cellphone planted to his ear, to understand that the radar image presented to him is NOT infallible? That it is, despite its ability to "see" through fog, snow and rain, actually less accurate than the human eye?
Hell, how are we even going to teach him to read the display? With several years of experience reading PPI radar displays, there's no way in hell that I would ever try to use it (or just a quadrant sweep) to drive a car. It's just not as intuitive as it would seem, and I can't even begin to imagine what sort of work would be required to try to create something like a TV picture of the road ahead.
First off, to scan the image, the transceiver's antenna would have to be scanned - physically moved around - at the same speed as the desired refresh rate of the
A similar diatribe to ESR's could be written on trying to burn a backup DVD under RH9. Gave up; I just FTP my backup over to my Lose2003 box, where the driver worky-worky.
No, no! The driver works *perfectly*, it's just that it requires correct entry of hardware parameters in one of the assembly language sources! Yeesh! Don't blame the hard-working open-source developer for your MCSE-like lack of computer knowledge!
Seriously, though, I'm so glad to see ESR ranting about the state of userland GUI stuff. I've been doing it for a while, but it's often dismissed as a FUD campaign by people who don't like what I'm saying.
Congratulations, once you have that leaf spring creation in place you might be quicker off the traffic light but only to find yourself flying off the road on the next turn.
Stoplight confrontations are drag racing. You want leaf springs or ladder bars in the rear suspension.
Besides, the alternatives are even worse for handling. Torque tube rear axles, MacPherson struts and coil springs are all horrible.
Without going to the extra weight and complexity of having a double A arm fully independent rear suspension (which makes an improvement but fails the cost/benefit analysis for most purposes), leaf springs on a solid rear axle are about as good as you're gonna get. There's a reason why this old design has hung around for ~100 years now (more, if you consider carriages).
That's the problem with the Detroit approach: They don't know how to build a car that handles.
Then explain to me why you see so many police forces driving Crown Vics.
You have to keep in mind that until the 1980s, people didn't want a car which handled. People wanted a car which floated you along like you were in a comfy sofa. My 1974 Valiant has overkill power steering and gives you no feedback from thr road: I can dry steer that car from lock to lock by using my little finger to give the wheel a quick twist. And, amazingly enough, that's what people wanted!
Having said that, Detroit's cars of the 1960s through to the late 1970s typically could handle very well despite their mass, due to conservative design using the inherently good geometry of the double A arm front suspensions and leaf spring rears. Change the shocks, make sure all the suspension bushings are in as-new condition, and throw on a modern set of tires. A 4,500lb 1970 Impala with modern tires, shocks and a competent driver will take out the latest $JUST_ABOUT_ANYTHING in any traffic cone zig-zag contest you want.
Why?
Because MacPherson struts suck.
When you turn the steering wheel, you want the centerline of the deflection of the front wheels to be dead center in the tread of the tire. Anything else gives you scrub. The problem with MacPherson struts is that the center of the turn is in a straight line directly under the top plates, which are generally located at least 2" back from the center of the tire.
On the other hand, with the double A arm suspension used in the front of 90% of 1960s-1970s American RWD cars, the center of steering deflection is in the ball joints which are typically located inside the rim, much closer to the design ideal.
I tried to read the articles you linked to, but gave up after waiting 45 seconds for the server to replay.
Sorry, I'm getting Slashdotted. 2,274 visits from that article.
Here's a better project for you. Take the works out of that iMac that's currently hosting your website. Toss them in the dumpster.
Actually, it's an old Dell Pentium 90 with 48 megs of RAM and a 1 gig hard drive.
Cut out the back of the case, and wedge in a dual Opteron motherboard with at least a gigabyte of DDR ram. Use the space that the monitor formerly occupied to hold a half-terabyte RAID of SCSI hard drives.
That would be *so* sweet. But why not just put it into a regular rack-mount server case?
Lemme guess... 3" diameter sounds-like-a-chainsaw exhaust tip and resonator, connected to the factory's 1" or so diameter stock exhaust system, 300lbs of stereo equipment with lots of tacky flashing lights in his "race car", and a big "Powered by Honda" sticker somewhere?
He claimed the mods to his Civic was giving him roughly 300+ HP.
I could get 300+ horses out of that motor, easily. In fact, I'd do it for him pro bono. 'Course, the only problem is that the engine wouldn't last more than about 10 minutes with the stuff I'd be dumping into the air filter. (Diesel engine starting fluid and NOS...)
Of course, it still wouldn't make a front wheel drive car fast, the weight transfer during heavy acceleration is to the rear of the car (and onto the rear wheels), so his traction would become worse and worse as the power was increased...:) (That's for any Slashdot reader who doesn't know why FWD sucks.)
He told me stories about blowing Mustangs off the road etc..
Heheh... What he didn't tell you is that the Mustangs he blew off the road all had that wheezy little 2.3L four-cylinder engine, over 200,000 miles, and behind the wheel are middle-aged secretaries who didn't even know that they were racing him!
Oddly enough, I actually did see him at the track. The tree went green and he drove down the track like the many other Civics and squeek out something in the high 17's. He knows I was there and he knows I saw him run and I know he saw me running my 91 Mustang (mid 14's/~96mph 100% pure stock with 2.73 rear and 125k miles).
2.73 and you did that? Impressive, you've taken good care of your motor!
Ya know, if you have the AOD transmission, you could get pretty radical on your rear gears and not lose much gas mileage unless you're always on the freeways. A set of 3.51 or so gears would really bring that thing to life and probably shave off more than a second on your 1/4 mile.
The next day at work he said he would have done so much better and got times close to mine if he wasn't spinning so much at the line. Well there was no spinning and his trap speed supported his time perfectly
Heh... You know, I've done mid 17s with a perfectly stock stickshift Chevette; 16.6 when I replaced the Holley carb with the larger one off a 1982 Dodge Aries. You should tell him that.
Of course, there's always excuses that he can blame for his poor times, but when it comes right down to it, it's either car or driver. You were there the same day and did downright good times on your car, so the track and weather were good. We already know the car is faulty (half the engine is missing, and what is there is pointing the wrong way), and I suspect the driver driver isn't much better (half the brain is missing, and what is there is located in his ass).
but I was not about to argue with him. This guy was in some serious denial. I am not a FF guy myself but I have seen many sport compacts with some great times, of course for every one that is truely impressive, there are 100's that are really confused.
Most of them are really confused. By the time you've spent the money to get respectable times out of any FWD car, you could have bought a real car, with a real engine, and been turning real (not just "well, that's pretty good for a Civic") times.
Super-sticky tires and suspension mods are expensive and still don't compensate for the inescapable laws of inertial weight transfer which give RWD cars a benefit and FWD cars a disadvantage. The small motor may achieve massive volumetric efficiency, but there's still not enough volume to provide the raw power of a less-efficient big V8.
The guy is delusional, and unless you have some very special reason to love the car's engine and transmission, there's simply no intelligent reason to build it up. It's a tool, you don't spend hours filing down a pair of linesman's pliers to make them into (poor) needlenoses, when you can simply go out and buy
On the other end of the spectrum. I knew a guy with a Civic that put a 12v computer P/S fan in his air intake ducting to "increase" airflow into the engine.
The power supply fan would do very little, since it drives so little air. Most throttle bodies and carburetors are rated in the hundreds of CFM, most small fans like that are rated in the dozens of CFM. If anything, it would reduce the engine's peak power.
At partial throttle, the fan will drive a small amount of extra air into the engine meaning that the throttle won't have to be open as far for a given amount of power.
At wide open throttle, the engine's vacuum would massively outstrip the fan's flow, and the engine would end up dragging the fan. The energy required to spin the fan would be coming from the fast-moving air trying to enter the engine. The restriction and turbulence caused by the fan would reduce the volumne of air drawn into the motor, and therefore reduce the peak wide-open-throttle power.
People who do stuff like this - and, in fact, try to "tune" a Honda or other silly front wheel drive car - almost universally know nothing about cars, then try to take on Mustangs and Camaros which are, by virtue of large displacement V8 engines and rear wheel drive, far more suited to the task of stoplight confrontations.
If the guy were serious, he'd install a very high volume fan. Vacuum cleaner fans have been used as "electric superchargers" but require 120V in your car. Turbochargers and superchargers are far more reliable.
If he were really serious, he'd yank out that cute little 4 cylinder engine and transaxle and sell them. Then he'd cut out the rear suspension, weld perches onto his roll cage to attach the leaf springs or ladder bars. He'd stuff in a nice differential and rear axle (probably a Ford 9"), and stick a big V8 and automatic transmission driving the rear wheels. Personally, I'd stuff a big block Mopar V8 in there, but an early 1980s Buick 3.8L V6 would keep a Civic street drivable, getting over 25MPG and turning reliable low 12-second 1/4 mile times.
If he did that, then he would have a serious car for stoplight confrontations.
The job sites kept sending me nothing but "work at home" jobs (probably stuffing envelopes or telemarketing or something else distasteful.) The headhunters (when I could get one to return my calls, that is) sent me nothing but low-paying entry-level jobs that didn't interest me at all.
Heheh... I got one off Monster or Hotjobs - can't remember which. They called me up and we arranged an interview in a rented hotel boardroom. They wouldn't tell me the name of the company citing secrecy (note that I've worked for defense contractors, so I've seen this before); just told me that it suited me based on my profile.
Well, I donned my best suit and tie and went to the interview.
Turned out they wanted me to be a cold-calling life insurance salesman, paid commission only. I started yelling right there in the meeting room about how they'd wasted my time. Made sure to tell the rest of the people who were waiting there with me that it was a scam. 4 other job-seekers left.
Man, was I furious.
Then, there's the horror story of the spam that comes from these places. Got one offer, just the other day, of a waiter position at Swiss Chalet (Canadian chicken joint). Apparently, they pulled my e-mail address from one of the sites and started hitting me with it. I've since dealt with the problem (sending a warning to Cara Operations which runs Swiss Chalet that their headhunters are spamming).
Another site to *avoid* is 2jobsearch.net. When I put my resume there in 2001, they looked like a real recruiter. Now, I get the daily "AIONetwork Newsletter" which is just spam for debt consolidation scams with domain names like biz-dot.net and places like that. Fortunately, their spam is easy to filter, even though their upstream provider (startdedicated.com) has received loads of spam complaints from me and apparently refuses to do anything.
Forget the job hunting websites, they're just crap. Pound the pavement yourself.
I'm a creative problem-solver. With each resume that I hand-delivered with properly-researched names on the cover letter, I attached a small can of WD-40. In the cover letter, I referred to it as a problem-solver, just like me. Indeed, it got my resume noticed, and I got a bunch of interviews and offers from it.
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It would need a new connector, because you can only get stereo stereo from the iPod as far as I can tell.
For a surround output to an audio system, you would need a new connector offering at least 4 channels (Front L/R, rear L/R), line level. They'd probably make it straight-up 5.1, though.
And how do you get surround sound from a pair of headphones with only with a left and right channel?Easily. Headphones have two channels (L/R), you have two ears (L/R). Your brain does some pretty heavy duty phase analysis to figure out where a sound is coming from. In fact, binaural recording is a technique where two microphones (L/R) are mounted on a form resembling the human head, but you need to wear headphones for the full effect.
A portable device could either use 4 channel headphones (expensive, requires 4 amplifiers to drive them, would increase battery consumption) or could use a DSP integrated circuit to decode the surround sound channels, perform the phase analysis done by the human brain, and send this synthetic binaural signal to regular headphones.
But it's still a lot of work for little payoff. Most of the use for surround sound in any form is movies. Music tends to be mixed to 2 channels from the perspective of a listener sitting in front of the stage, so I think its importance in a portable device primarily used for music is pretty limited.
I'm the first to admit, the concept of the transformers was cool, but the TV show was not.
No. Transformers(TM) are not cool, were never cool, and never will be cool.
They're hideous chunks of cheap-assed made-in-$INSERT_THIRD_WORLD_MANUFACTURING_HELLHOLE _DU_JOUR plastic crap that all the kids with mucous running down their noses in endless streams clamored to have.
My big resentment is not that all my 1980s peers had them. As a kid who was *always* into electronics, I was always building or playing with something involving - you guessed it - transformers. Note that's not Transformers(TM), that's transformers.
You can't *imagine* how many times I wanted to beat someone over the head with precious iron laminates for telling me that the object in my hand was *not* a transformer.
To add insult to injury, one of my aunts gave me a Transformer(TM) for Christmas one year. Since it couldn't be returned for something more useful than some silly "Let's pretend that we're going to kick some Decepticon ass" garbage, I certainly enjoyed pounding it in the school yard with a 5lb chunk of Hammond.
"Wanna see which is the most powerful transformer of them all", I asked as children cried about the impending destruction of the effluence they all wanted.
That plastic crap didn't stand a chance against those strong silicon-iron laminates. It kinda smeared into them, like lipstick into a brick. I still have that transformer, and it still bears a silver and red streak.
ethical corporations do better in the long run, and this isn't a simple karma question. Be good to people and they'll be good to you. They're not just "customers" or "consumers," but people. This stuff is real, it's not a game. There aren't just rules, there are laws and morals and values.
Unfortunately, though, I believe that Microsoft's successes are personally less important to Ballmer and especially Gates than the vision which drives them. Microsoft is simply a tool to build their vision.
I'm quite sure they honestly believe that having everyone using Microsoft software - to the exclusion of all alternatives - is a good thing. Much like Hitler was probably sure that eliminating the Jews and annexing Poland and Austria was a good thing for Germans.
This makes Microsoft especially terrifying.
Great...what a wonderfull place to be huh? A bit ironic isn't it? Being here on slashdot, if you're not part of the geek culture exclusively you get ostracized, at least lately it seems that way to me.
Dude... I know your pain. I *hate* anime (what's with the stupid monolithic teeth?), I haven't seen LOTR because it's all about hobbits and wizards and crap, and I've rebuilt the big-block V8 in my 27 year old pickup truck.
This is just payback for all the beatings most computer geeks took on the playground.
Be strong, my friend. :)
Your nick is "BigBlockMopar" and you're talking about ecological projects?
Hello my AC stalker, who nit-picks everything I ever say, but lacks the balls to post with his username. Good to see you again, you've been quieter recently. I so enjoy shooting you down.
Yup. I'm into muscle cars - you know, the big 1960s and 1970s American V8s. Guys like me are usually interested in getting the most power out of these already powerful engines. Now, guess what the laws of stoichimetry say about power? Yup, clean burn, to get the most power out of every single drop of gasoline.
Consequently, many restored 1960s and 1970s musclecars burn *cleaner* on HC and CO emissions than the state-mandated emissions tests on modern cars. And note that this is without catalytic converters which restrict the exhaust flow and therefore cause up to a 20% decrease in the mileage of so-festooned newer cars.
However, old cars (before 1972-1973) do not have EGR systems (which reduce fuel efficiency and therefore increase CO2 emissions). Not having EGR systems causes the emission of NOx gases. Fortunately, NOx is created in - and stable at - the temperatures and pressures inside the engine's cylinders. When it reaches our temperature and pressure, it disintegrates fairly readily.
How about burning your car,
I think that wouldn't be beneficial to the environment. For one thing, the combustion of plastics and vinyls (primarily interior padding and wiring harness components) is always messy, especially when they're designed to be flame-retardant.
Another thing would be that the vehicle would then have to be replaced. Manufacturing a car requires terrific energy resources even assuming perfect reclamation of materials by recycling. You should really try calculating how much CO2 is liberated during the combustion of coal in a steel mill in order to manufacture a car. Lifetime tailpipe emissions are nothing compared to the manufacturing; and modern cars are only incrementally more efficient (Moore's Law does not apply to cars). It's more environmentally friendly to maintain your car and keep it as long as possible than it is to replace it after a mere 20 years. I'd invite you to do the math. You will find all the required understanding in even a first year college chemistry textbook.
chrysler has a long history of making the least fuel effecient and most highly polluting engines on the market,
Really? That's news to me. Let's see... where would you like me to start?
While the only foreign manufacturer of note (VW) was still making their highly inefficient air-cooled Beetle engines, Detroit was building water-cooled (good for emissions) flathead engines. In 1959, Chrysler introduced their Slant-6, an OHV inline 6 on a 30-degree incline and using a tunnel-ram intake manifold. It was an extremely high-tech engine conceived for fuel efficiency and powered their economy cars (while Ford and GM didn't offer efficient and clean OHV engines for their cheapest offerings).
From the 1960 to 1966 model year, Chrysler's Slant-6 won the Mobil Economy Race, going further on a tank of fuel than other offerings.
At the same time, Chrysler's car bodies were almost all lightweight unibodies with the sole exceptions of the Imperials and trucks. This while Ford and GM continued to build huge quantites of heavy full-frame cars into the 1980s.
By the 1970s, the Slant-6 was still more refined, fuel-efficient and clean-burning than most of GM and Ford's early OHV engines - you will note that GM and Ford had to discontinue a greater percentage of their engine lines in the early 1970s as the Clean Air Act and CAFE were introduced. Even so, the Slant-6 was fitted with feedback carbs and electronic spark advance systems. While they were buggy, the feedback carbs and spark advance systems were pioneering steps toward today's full-feedback EFI systems.
You'll note that by the late 1970s, Detroit was using electronic ignition (if not with spark advance) on all their offerings, while the
If I have gray water toilets, how are the dogs and cats in my house supposed to get water!
Using the bowl of clean water you provide.
My cat was never a toilet-drinker anyway, but the gray water really did surprise my buddy's dog the first time it came over.
Don't leave your VCR, radio and all other electric devices on standby all the time. They use up a significant amount of power each year.
If you have to heat your house for the majority of the year, that suggestion is idiocy.
All the electricity consumed within your house serves to heat it. How?
The heat from the ~5% inefficiency of the clock radio or VCR's transformer radiates into your house as heat. The light from the display eventually gets absorbed by something dark and is re-radiated as heat. The sound from fans, motors, etc. is just vibration of air molecules and is attenuated over distance as the air molecules rub against each other and create heat.
With the exception of light, RF and sound which escape your house, 100% of the electrical energy that you consume in your house serves to heat it. Electric heaters are 100% efficient, whether the device consuming the energy is a space heater or a computer (how many watts of energy go out the VGA, audio and network ports? Effectively zero.).
Now, you can calculate the cost of fuels - oil/gas heat versus electricity - and the per-BTU cost of the heat from each energy. In my case, with a 35 year old oil furnace (which I cannot replace right now for a variety of reasons), the efficiency of the furnace is only about 70%, so my cost per BTU of heat from oil goes up 30%. Which makes it cheaper for me to leave all the lights on, to fire up a collection of old machines crunching SETI@Home units.
So, in my case, it's more cost effective and energy efficient to leave the clock radio and VCR plugged in.
Never mind, of course, the fact that turn on and turn off cycles have a tendency to damage electronic equipment, especially the consumer stuff which are designed for continuous duty and optimized for low cost. Blowing a MOSFET in my VCR's power supply or a filter capacitor in my clock radio are both going to be more expensive to repair than the energy the clock radio or VCR would have consumed.
So... do the math before you make unfounded blanket statements. It sounds like scientific policy conceived of the massive technical knowledge conferred with an arts degree. (I get *so* tired of the "I'm educated! I have a valuable opinion about everything!" crap, and they seem to be especially prone to idiotic brainwashing at weird campus rallies.)
Fuck you. My stuff, my rules. Who lets shit like building codes fuck our society?
Well, yeah. I'm quite a Libertarian, but unfortunately this is just one of those things where there have to be government-enforced standards. (You're certainly not going to trust contractors to do the right thing, are you?)
Why are building codes important? Look at fire and earthquake damage in third-world countries like Taiwan and Iran... 300 people die in department store fire in Taipei... Notice that sort of stuff doesn't happen in the US, Canada, EU or Australia very often?
Would there be anything wrong with using your shower water as toilet water? I honestly can't see anything wrong with that and it'd certainly cut down on somebody's water bill from month to month.
I meant to reply here rather than my post in the previous parent, I clicked on the link and brainfarted about the subject.
My toilet costs me about $200/year to flush (based on number of flushes per day counted for a typical week, and the size of the toilet's tank). So I built a system to refill it using water from my washing machine.
I did also consider using the water from the shower, but in practice, the water from the washing machine provides enough water to keep the storage barrel full.
Whether you have one or several toilets, the number of flushes per day is probably proportional to the number of people in the house. Since the laundry usage is also proportional to the number of people in the house, the water barrel is likely to remain full, but I'm sure there'd be no harm in dropping a pipe off the clean-out port at the bottom of the bathtub/shower U-trap, putting in another U-trap to serve as a vapor barrier, and draining that into the barrel. A couple of barrels should probably also be paralleled for a high-volume multiple toilet installation, but if you store too much water, it will start to grow (stinky) algae.
I tried paralleling barrels, but in practice, I didn't need to - just two people in my house. It'd be very easy to do, just a hose connecting fittings near the bottoms of each barrel, and they'll reach an equilibrium even if it's several minutes after the washing machine has finished a drain cycle.
As for what's wrong with gray water toilets, I don't know. I know it's against building codes here, but I don't know why. My system, not being a permanent installation or requiring any modification to the existing plumbing, skirts the rules about building codes.
I have yet to find a single disadvantage to my gray water system.
directly tie-in to the temperature zoning system featured in this Slashdot posting.
The temperature controller is an *excellent* idea, I think I'll take a look at incorporating it into my house.
Here's my little (non-computerized) ecological project: a gray water toilet which recycles water from my washing machine.
It's obviously not the work of a professional engineer, but that's what makes it neat. Taking a just barely functional knowledge of what's going on and solving a problem using available tools. I suspect this guy isn't going to be the professional EE you all think he should be for at least 4 more years
Actually, I've seen a lot of EEs do the same thing, with no more understanding than the basic voltage drop analysis. You have to keep in mind that an engineering degree confers exactly the *opposite* thing to the practical knowledge required in the real world. Those people who make good engineers already got their practical knowledge from playing with Lego and hacking their bicycle.
You see, the reason why a D cell is bigger than a C cell is bigger than a AA cell is bigger than a AAA cell despite all putting out ~1.5V is because of current capacity. A modern D cell will put out 1.5V into a 1A load for many (~15) hours, while a modern AAA cell will put out 1.5V into a 1A load for around an hour and ten minutes.
Trivia question: why is there AA, AAA, C and D but no A or B? Answer: The A battery was a big 1.5V lantern battery used to heat the filaments in radios before rectifier tubes were practical to allow the radio to be plugged in to a regular outlet, and the B battery was a 30V, 45V or 90V battery used to provide the plate voltages for the tubes in these radios. The B battery stuck around until the early transistor radios of the late 1950s replaced all the tube portables. You can actually still buy both battery types but generally only through big electronic parts suppliers.
(Quoting Duracell's alkaline battery data sheets, difficult to link directly to the PDF so click on "Technical Bulletin" and scroll to page 9/13, D cell 15Ah (15,000mAh) and AAA cell 1.15Ah (1,150mAh).)
Go to Radio Shack and buy a multimeter. Stick it in current mode, and measure the current consumed by the iPod. Then look up the mAh (milliamp-hour) ratings for the type of battery you wish to use - NiMH, Energizer Lithium, Duracells, whatever. Do not mix battery types (brands, chemistries, etc), ages (new batteries and old batteries should never be put together in series), or sizes (AA, 9V, D-cells, etc.) because you will have some discharge faster than others, sometimes to the point of actually trying to "recharge" the weakest cells off the strongest cells.
Figure out which battery size you need to use based on whatever you consider to be an acceptable battery life for long trips, and use it. Of course, there will be design trade-offs in order to achieve a reasonable size - shorter battery life or bigger and heavier batteries - some compromise will probably have to be reached. If all you care about is battery life, for example, just stick the iPod directly across a car battery.
Get appropriate sized battery holders at Radio Shack or any number of electronic parts places - MCM Electronics, All Electronics, Digikey, Newark, Electrosonic, etc. Connect them in series and build them into a plastic or aluminum box, properly secured and screwed down. Use heat shrink tubing instead of electrical tape for all connections, and use a grommet (those little plastic things where the power cord enters your kettle or toaster or whatever) to prevent the wires getting frayed.
And, most importantly, once you know the current the iPod consumes, multiply that number by two and buy a fuse with that rating. Put it in a holder in the battery box - that way, if the power cord to the iPod gets caught and damaged, or if the iPod fails catastrophically - there won't be a fire.
This shouldn't get posted until there are detailed instructions on how to build
Yeah, a few thousand people build them.
Then a few dozen virii are written which cause these infected machines to wander about the house taking photographs of everything, and send the pictures back to some Chechnyan e-mail address.
A couple of days later, burglars are dispatched.
Paranoid is just the smart way to be, since the whole world is out to get you.
They're so incredibly smart, in fact, that they don't even need to convert metric measurements to the archaic system they insist on using.
Don't knock US/SAE measurements, there's a good reason they've stayed around.
For scientific analysis, without question, Metric rules.
But when you're actually building and working on things, most of the time a 10% tolerance is good enough. As a result, usually you can stick your thumb across something and say, "Yup, that's an inch - close enough". The base units are more intuitive, although admittedly the interconversion between units is a bitch - but conversions are more common in analysis than construction/maintenance.
My perspective here? Canada went Metric in 1976. I grew up in Metric. I went to school in Metric, fuelled up my cars in Metric, got a set of Metric wrenches when I was a kid, etc. Heck, you wanna know Metric inside and out? Try taking an engineering degree in Canada!
And yet, I know I'm 6'4" tall, 185lbs. I don't know in Metric.
Every time I work on a car, I want to know first, Metric or SAE? (And I don't mean the speedometer, they've all been Metric in Canada since 1976.) Not because I care which wrenches, sockets and feeler gauges I bring, but because I like working on SAE much more.
Why?
I've had more cars with Metric fasteners and specs than I have SAE, and yet, somehow, I can still just put my thumb across a bolt and know, "Hey, that's not 1/2", that's 7/16"!" Why can't I do that with Metric? I sure which I could, especially since I've got more experience with Metric.
I like the way how you try to appear intelligent and how you capitalize "bad idea" to show what an eleet hax0r you are.
Ah, yes. My AC Fan Club at work again. I've been suspecting for a while that I have a stalker.
The subject line is the title of a diatribe, and in general, as a title, it should be capitalized.
If I wanted to be an "eleet hax0r", I probably would have capitalized the "A", for the full effect of "A Bad Idea". But I didn't.
Furthermore, I'm not gonna be much of a hax0r anyway; I'm an electronics guy, not a programmer. While I can make "Hello, World" in everything from TI BASIC to 680x0 assembly language, my programming style is so much brute force and ignorance that Microsoft keeps on trying to hire me to write Outlook security patches.
So there ya go.
Yea, well, but i suppose accumulated dust attenuates way more light than a few thin plastic sheets, no?
Probably after a time, yeah. But the folks at NASA aren't stupid; I'm sure they would have come up with something like that - at least *after* Pathfinder if not before - and decided that cost/benefit analysis didn't make it worthwhile.
(ie. launch weight of the sheets and pulling mechanism, chances of binding and either obscuring a panel or getting caught in the wheels or instruments, chances of it catching the wind like a sail during sheet removal, reduced efficiency of cells over the long run rather than reduced efficiency of cells simply due to dust accumulation toward the end of the mission, etc.)
A thread attached to a corner of every plastic sheet running diagonally to the opposite corner and an electric motor that activates when the sheet is dirty.
Stack 10 sheets of this and voila, lifetime of the rover multiplied x10.
Conceptually, this is a great idea, except for one problem:
Every layer of $whatever you put on the panels attenuates some of the light striking the panels. The sunlight is also that much dimmer there (at the very least by the inverse square law of distance from the sun, if not also because of atmospheric conditions), so every single watt-hour those things can capture is critical.
Of course, to compensate for the thin film layers, they could have made the solar panels bigger - but that adds launch weight... not to mention the bigger solar panels would make the whole thing more top heavy and likely to tip over due to wind or ground obstructions, meaning you'd want to add size and wheelbase to this thing, meaning you'd need more solar panels... Do we see a vicious circle yet? [grin]
It could be a component, but only one piece. The really tough part if creating the software that intelligently drives. There are so many oddball cases you have to deal with in driving that it will be a very long time before this is possible.
I don't think the goal is that loft at this point - we're talking about an aid for the (human) driver to see through fog.
Quoted from the first line of the article:
Imagine driving down a twisty mountain road on a dark foggy night. Visibility is near-zero, yet you still can see clearly. Not through your windshield, but via an image on a screen in front of you.
This would be nearly impossible to implement by radar alone, but this is a step towards it.
The problem, of course, is clutter. Fog, snow and rain all obscure your view through radar because of clutter and attenuation. Even with a very intelligent algorithm combining the skills of hundreds of experienced mariners, finding the sweet spot on the clutter and gain controls is difficult.
Another issue is "obstructions" which won't cause an echo at all - like the very big fall waiting for you on the other side of the missing guardrail.
Let's consider a worst-case scenario. It's raining. The gain and clutter are configured to give you a clear view of cars in front of you, guardrails, concrete obstructions, rocks, etc despite the driving rain.
A few minutes ago, a truck drove down the road and a forklift pallet of toilet paper fell off the truck. Do you think your radar is going to show you its echo? I think its relatively weak echo will be filtered out as clutter...
How about something more substantial, a big square rooftop HVAC unit sitting on the road, one of its four corners pointed directly at you? Even under the best possible circumstances, it's going to be very hard to get an echo off that, since there isn't a surface normal to the RF energy leaving your car...
Or a kid, wandering around the road. Daddy had an accident because he trusted too much in his automotive radar system, and has been hurt. The clutter on your own radar system is set high enough to obsure the echoes from the water droplets of the driving rainstorm. Now, what kind of echo are we going to get off a human being, considering that we're mostly water?
I've seen people on radar systems. You really don't see much, and I don't care whether it's X-band or S-band, a crappy little Furuno bought at the yacht club or a $200,000 interswitched Lloyds type-approved Racal-Decca ARPA radar used on an aircraft carrier. You're still not gonna see much of a target.
While I was designing radar video systems for Litton (before the tech collapse), we had constant reports that bridge crews were using the radar for navigation, rather than properly sighting, having crew on watch, and bringing the ship to a slow speed with due consideration of conditions.
The ship's captain probably has 20 years experience at sea, and is now in charge of a multi-million dollar vehicle with many lives on board. These are responsible, intelligent and experienced people. And they often take their radar's accuracy for granted.
How, then, are we going to get Joe Sixpack who currently thinks nothing of driving around in his SUV, cellphone planted to his ear, to understand that the radar image presented to him is NOT infallible? That it is, despite its ability to "see" through fog, snow and rain, actually less accurate than the human eye?
Hell, how are we even going to teach him to read the display? With several years of experience reading PPI radar displays, there's no way in hell that I would ever try to use it (or just a quadrant sweep) to drive a car. It's just not as intuitive as it would seem, and I can't even begin to imagine what sort of work would be required to try to create something like a TV picture of the road ahead.
First off, to scan the image, the transceiver's antenna would have to be scanned - physically moved around - at the same speed as the desired refresh rate of the
A similar diatribe to ESR's could be written on trying to burn a backup DVD under RH9. Gave up; I just FTP my backup over to my Lose2003 box, where the driver worky-worky.
No, no! The driver works *perfectly*, it's just that it requires correct entry of hardware parameters in one of the assembly language sources! Yeesh! Don't blame the hard-working open-source developer for your MCSE-like lack of computer knowledge!
Seriously, though, I'm so glad to see ESR ranting about the state of userland GUI stuff. I've been doing it for a while, but it's often dismissed as a FUD campaign by people who don't like what I'm saying.
Congratulations, once you have that leaf spring creation in place you might be quicker off the traffic light but only to find yourself flying off the road on the next turn.
Stoplight confrontations are drag racing. You want leaf springs or ladder bars in the rear suspension.
Besides, the alternatives are even worse for handling. Torque tube rear axles, MacPherson struts and coil springs are all horrible.
Without going to the extra weight and complexity of having a double A arm fully independent rear suspension (which makes an improvement but fails the cost/benefit analysis for most purposes), leaf springs on a solid rear axle are about as good as you're gonna get. There's a reason why this old design has hung around for ~100 years now (more, if you consider carriages).
That's the problem with the Detroit approach: They don't know how to build a car that handles.Then explain to me why you see so many police forces driving Crown Vics.
You have to keep in mind that until the 1980s, people didn't want a car which handled. People wanted a car which floated you along like you were in a comfy sofa. My 1974 Valiant has overkill power steering and gives you no feedback from thr road: I can dry steer that car from lock to lock by using my little finger to give the wheel a quick twist. And, amazingly enough, that's what people wanted!
Having said that, Detroit's cars of the 1960s through to the late 1970s typically could handle very well despite their mass, due to conservative design using the inherently good geometry of the double A arm front suspensions and leaf spring rears. Change the shocks, make sure all the suspension bushings are in as-new condition, and throw on a modern set of tires. A 4,500lb 1970 Impala with modern tires, shocks and a competent driver will take out the latest $JUST_ABOUT_ANYTHING in any traffic cone zig-zag contest you want.
Why?
Because MacPherson struts suck.
When you turn the steering wheel, you want the centerline of the deflection of the front wheels to be dead center in the tread of the tire. Anything else gives you scrub. The problem with MacPherson struts is that the center of the turn is in a straight line directly under the top plates, which are generally located at least 2" back from the center of the tire.
On the other hand, with the double A arm suspension used in the front of 90% of 1960s-1970s American RWD cars, the center of steering deflection is in the ball joints which are typically located inside the rim, much closer to the design ideal.
I tried to read the articles you linked to, but gave up after waiting 45 seconds for the server to replay.
Sorry, I'm getting Slashdotted. 2,274 visits from that article.
Here's a better project for you. Take the works out of that iMac that's currently hosting your website. Toss them in the dumpster.Actually, it's an old Dell Pentium 90 with 48 megs of RAM and a 1 gig hard drive.
Cut out the back of the case, and wedge in a dual Opteron motherboard with at least a gigabyte of DDR ram. Use the space that the monitor formerly occupied to hold a half-terabyte RAID of SCSI hard drives.That would be *so* sweet. But why not just put it into a regular rack-mount server case?
You described this guy perfectly..
Lemme guess... 3" diameter sounds-like-a-chainsaw exhaust tip and resonator, connected to the factory's 1" or so diameter stock exhaust system, 300lbs of stereo equipment with lots of tacky flashing lights in his "race car", and a big "Powered by Honda" sticker somewhere?
He claimed the mods to his Civic was giving him roughly 300+ HP.
I could get 300+ horses out of that motor, easily. In fact, I'd do it for him pro bono. 'Course, the only problem is that the engine wouldn't last more than about 10 minutes with the stuff I'd be dumping into the air filter. (Diesel engine starting fluid and NOS...)
Of course, it still wouldn't make a front wheel drive car fast, the weight transfer during heavy acceleration is to the rear of the car (and onto the rear wheels), so his traction would become worse and worse as the power was increased... :) (That's for any Slashdot reader who doesn't know why FWD sucks.)
He told me stories about blowing Mustangs off the road etc..
Heheh... What he didn't tell you is that the Mustangs he blew off the road all had that wheezy little 2.3L four-cylinder engine, over 200,000 miles, and behind the wheel are middle-aged secretaries who didn't even know that they were racing him!
Oddly enough, I actually did see him at the track. The tree went green and he drove down the track like the many other Civics and squeek out something in the high 17's. He knows I was there and he knows I saw him run and I know he saw me running my 91 Mustang (mid 14's/~96mph 100% pure stock with 2.73 rear and 125k miles).
2.73 and you did that? Impressive, you've taken good care of your motor!
Ya know, if you have the AOD transmission, you could get pretty radical on your rear gears and not lose much gas mileage unless you're always on the freeways. A set of 3.51 or so gears would really bring that thing to life and probably shave off more than a second on your 1/4 mile.
The next day at work he said he would have done so much better and got times close to mine if he wasn't spinning so much at the line. Well there was no spinning and his trap speed supported his time perfectly
Heh... You know, I've done mid 17s with a perfectly stock stickshift Chevette; 16.6 when I replaced the Holley carb with the larger one off a 1982 Dodge Aries. You should tell him that.
Of course, there's always excuses that he can blame for his poor times, but when it comes right down to it, it's either car or driver. You were there the same day and did downright good times on your car, so the track and weather were good. We already know the car is faulty (half the engine is missing, and what is there is pointing the wrong way), and I suspect the driver driver isn't much better (half the brain is missing, and what is there is located in his ass).
but I was not about to argue with him. This guy was in some serious denial. I am not a FF guy myself but I have seen many sport compacts with some great times, of course for every one that is truely impressive, there are 100's that are really confused.
Most of them are really confused. By the time you've spent the money to get respectable times out of any FWD car, you could have bought a real car, with a real engine, and been turning real (not just "well, that's pretty good for a Civic") times.
Super-sticky tires and suspension mods are expensive and still don't compensate for the inescapable laws of inertial weight transfer which give RWD cars a benefit and FWD cars a disadvantage. The small motor may achieve massive volumetric efficiency, but there's still not enough volume to provide the raw power of a less-efficient big V8.
The guy is delusional, and unless you have some very special reason to love the car's engine and transmission, there's simply no intelligent reason to build it up. It's a tool, you don't spend hours filing down a pair of linesman's pliers to make them into (poor) needlenoses, when you can simply go out and buy
On the other end of the spectrum. I knew a guy with a Civic that put a 12v computer P/S fan in his air intake ducting to "increase" airflow into the engine.
The power supply fan would do very little, since it drives so little air. Most throttle bodies and carburetors are rated in the hundreds of CFM, most small fans like that are rated in the dozens of CFM. If anything, it would reduce the engine's peak power.
At partial throttle, the fan will drive a small amount of extra air into the engine meaning that the throttle won't have to be open as far for a given amount of power.
At wide open throttle, the engine's vacuum would massively outstrip the fan's flow, and the engine would end up dragging the fan. The energy required to spin the fan would be coming from the fast-moving air trying to enter the engine. The restriction and turbulence caused by the fan would reduce the volumne of air drawn into the motor, and therefore reduce the peak wide-open-throttle power.
People who do stuff like this - and, in fact, try to "tune" a Honda or other silly front wheel drive car - almost universally know nothing about cars, then try to take on Mustangs and Camaros which are, by virtue of large displacement V8 engines and rear wheel drive, far more suited to the task of stoplight confrontations.
If the guy were serious, he'd install a very high volume fan. Vacuum cleaner fans have been used as "electric superchargers" but require 120V in your car. Turbochargers and superchargers are far more reliable.
If he were really serious, he'd yank out that cute little 4 cylinder engine and transaxle and sell them. Then he'd cut out the rear suspension, weld perches onto his roll cage to attach the leaf springs or ladder bars. He'd stuff in a nice differential and rear axle (probably a Ford 9"), and stick a big V8 and automatic transmission driving the rear wheels. Personally, I'd stuff a big block Mopar V8 in there, but an early 1980s Buick 3.8L V6 would keep a Civic street drivable, getting over 25MPG and turning reliable low 12-second 1/4 mile times.
If he did that, then he would have a serious car for stoplight confrontations.
Hacking cars? Check this out, it's my buddy's 1986 Chevette. He cut off the back end of the car and welded on the tailfins of a 1956 Dodge Custom Royal. Together, we built a Chevette Targa... it had started out to be a hard-top convertible, but we never finished it.
Me? I do engine swaps. Then I go drag racing.
The WD-40 idea is a great one but seems rather expensive; especially if unemployed!
But say that this gets you employed just *one* day sooner...
20 pocket sized cans of WD-40 at about $2 each - $40.
Money made by getting a job a day sooner due to good "advertising campaign" - $200+.
Net savings - $160+.
The job sites kept sending me nothing but "work at home" jobs (probably stuffing envelopes or telemarketing or something else distasteful.) The headhunters (when I could get one to return my calls, that is) sent me nothing but low-paying entry-level jobs that didn't interest me at all.
Heheh... I got one off Monster or Hotjobs - can't remember which. They called me up and we arranged an interview in a rented hotel boardroom. They wouldn't tell me the name of the company citing secrecy (note that I've worked for defense contractors, so I've seen this before); just told me that it suited me based on my profile.
Well, I donned my best suit and tie and went to the interview.
Turned out they wanted me to be a cold-calling life insurance salesman, paid commission only. I started yelling right there in the meeting room about how they'd wasted my time. Made sure to tell the rest of the people who were waiting there with me that it was a scam. 4 other job-seekers left.
Man, was I furious.
Then, there's the horror story of the spam that comes from these places. Got one offer, just the other day, of a waiter position at Swiss Chalet (Canadian chicken joint). Apparently, they pulled my e-mail address from one of the sites and started hitting me with it. I've since dealt with the problem (sending a warning to Cara Operations which runs Swiss Chalet that their headhunters are spamming).
Another site to *avoid* is 2jobsearch.net. When I put my resume there in 2001, they looked like a real recruiter. Now, I get the daily "AIONetwork Newsletter" which is just spam for debt consolidation scams with domain names like biz-dot.net and places like that. Fortunately, their spam is easy to filter, even though their upstream provider (startdedicated.com) has received loads of spam complaints from me and apparently refuses to do anything.
Forget the job hunting websites, they're just crap. Pound the pavement yourself.
I'm a creative problem-solver. With each resume that I hand-delivered with properly-researched names on the cover letter, I attached a small can of WD-40. In the cover letter, I referred to it as a problem-solver, just like me. Indeed, it got my resume noticed, and I got a bunch of interviews and offers from it.
Just keep working at it.
IBM and Hitachi are two of the few manufacturers that still offer 3-year warranties on IDE hard drives.
And don't Daewoos, Kias and Hyundais come with a 7 year warranty, while even the cutesy brands like Acura and BMW only have 3 to 5 years?