I'm wondering if the Department of Justice's case against MicroSoft is gonna quietly go away under Bush.
Yes, it will.
The Republicans feel that business is business; Microsoft is just conducting normal business practices, and that is how they have achieved their dominance.
Now, on one hand, the Republicans hands-off attitude towards business is wonderful.
On the other hand, in this case, some very special tweaking has to be done to extricate Microsoft from their current position. Clearly, they are not the party to do this.
If ever there was a clear-cut reason for a Linux-loving computer geek to get out there and vote, it's for Gore, and for this very reason. Even if he does claim to have invented the Internet. <sigh>
i don't like *any* of the candidates. low turn-outs should signal that people are apathetic about the choices we're given, and don't agree with anyone.
Urk. Completely.
I'm a fiscal Republican but a social Democrat. I've yet to see a candidate that ever made me feel at all inspired.
How about if the Republican party ceased to be in the pocket of all sorts of religious organizations? And if the Democrats could actually allow a woman the right to chose without hugely inflating the debt?
How about some balance between the two?
So far, the two-partied system seems to work only by massive changes in equilibrium. It's frighteningly disorienting.
This time, the choice is a little more clear. Since a President Bush (yuck) would be appointing a whole bunch of Supreme Court judges - with the possible ability to therefore overturn Roe vs. Wade and a whole bunch of other important social issues, I'm alarmed that Bush has a good chance of getting the White House. (And please don't think that I think abortion is a good idea; it does devalue life and encourage people not to take responsibility for their actions, but to ban it outright is to ignore the fact that it will happen no matter what the policy.)
While many pundits will complain that Bush is the governer of maybe the worst-managed state in the Union, it's important to note that Governer William Jefferson Clinton of Arkansas was in about the same position when he took power. But, Clinton is Presidential. Not only did he clearly have fun in office (and some of that was even *without* Ms. Lewinsky), he was also a professional in all matters of foreign affairs. And, he was a thoroughly likeable individual for the world to see as the American leader.
Gore hasn't got the same joi-de-vivre as Clinton has, but at least he's an elegant and digified statesman, a boring but professional person.
Bush, however, is that amiable guy sitting over there at the end of the bar, spinning yarns; he's interesting and exciting. If you met him - probably in a dimly-lit sports bar in the backwoods of Texas - you'd think he was a tractor salesman. He will command the respect of the world not through dignity, but only through sheer power. This is not the best way to influence international or domestic diplomacy.
Bush is *no* statesman. The fact that he's leading in the polls arguably because more of the electorate things he'd be a more fun guy with whom to have a beer arguably proves the every dictator right: perhaps the people *aren't* smart enough to choose their own destiny after all.
And when you don't particularily care for either candidate's platform and yet you've resigned yourself to the fact that one or the other is going to be calling the shots, may as well not bother.
(not any of those third party buttfuckers like nader or browne either.)
Nader is dangerous. Sure, he sounds noble enough on the surface, but he's a great way to:
drive businesses away through punishing regulations and embrace of a society where no one makes over $100,000/year
ensure that the Republicans (in this case, probably the greater of the two evils currently offered) are given the Presidency next.
While I don't like either Gore or Bush especially, I'd prefer to see Gore in power; I think he'll do a lot less damage than a Bush presidency.
But I also wish that truly interesting people were actually running. Liberman and Cheney are far more presidential than either one of their runningmates.
Now, having said all this, breathe easy. First off, moderate me down if I've said something false or off-topic, not because you disagree with the political views. As a Canadian citizen, I get to watch the foray without it affecting me in any huge way, I can only comiserate, as the Canadian federal elections are coming up on November 27th.
I assure you, the Canadian choices are every bit as bleak as in the US. Only, instead of two viable bleak choices, there are 5 up here.
I'd run for office in Canada myself, but I hope to be out of here long before whoever is about to be elected here calls the next election.
Until then, though, I've already registered with Elections Canada for an official Abstain Vote. It's my way of registering my displeasure with all the candidates offered, without it being assumed that I'm simply a case of voter apathy.
In the search for the worst band in the (known) universe, only one name comes to mind: The Tragically Hip.
Only if you live in Canada, where you're forced to endure their horrible, whiny vocalist over and over because of Canadian Content laws, can you really begin to understand the scope of the torment.
Their song "Bobcageon", played all through the summer of 1999, was marketed as rock, and since it's Canadian and was new at the time, it was one of the songs that Q107 and other Canadian radio stations had to use to fill the 40% of their airtime that has to be new Canadian music.
Bobcageon is one of those rare and special songs that makes you crave the weight of a 20 lb sledgehammer in your hands.
And, when you're heard it once on the way to work and once on the way home every day for a week, you're craving an equal-size pickaxe instead of a hammer.
I'm quite proud to be Canadian and not American. At least if I was unemployed and had cancer, I wouldn't be left to die.
Part of the beauty of the American system of doing things is that it forces you to be productive.
However, the Canadian system attempts to spread the country's wealth among all citizens, not just those who have legitimately earned it.
I think this fits the definition of Communism pretty well; while Canada is not quite that bad, it's getting there.
Communism (and socialism) are great on paper, but they fail to address a fundamental human flaw: All people are lazy. Sure, some more so than others. But if you're going to give your people 50 rubles every day regardless of whether or not they bother to show up to work, how many people will actually show up to work?
The gross domestic product of the nation then collapses. Don't believe me? Take a look around Eastern Europe.
The economies where people have the most chance for personal success are also those where the perils of failure are the most devastating: United States, Hong Kong, etc.
Why is it we spend millions of dollars a year treating homeless heroin addicts who seldom contribute anything back to the economy in turn? Come on, people have to take some personal responsibility for their lives.
Here's a thought about socialized medicine. Since there's no great cost savings incentive to quit smoking or lose weight because OHIP (provincial HMO) will pay for all your medical expenses, how about we deny all coverage for lung cancer victims who have smoked since it was known that smoking was harmful? How about we make obese people who have heart attacks pay for their treatment? People who drive their cars without wearing their seatbelts should have to pay for the doctor to staple their skulls back together.
Then, you can legalize all those nasty things without worrying about the burden to the healthcare system, sit back, and watch Darwinian Theory take care of things.
Oh, I can't wait to see how many people send me back nasty responses...:) Stirring it up is sooo much fun.
You are either really naive or a complete moron, if you think Canada will not follow and declare drug information illegal too. Canada routinely mirrors Federal laws passed by FCC and other similar American organizations. This is a fact: Canada cannot think on its own, it has to do like Big (Bill) Brother does.
Exactly. Thank you.
If I at least had something besides misguided copycat policy to show for my contributions to the government's coffers, I might not feel so raped by the process.
With Canadian taxes, I'm paying for the Cadillac, but I'm getting a Cavalier.
That belief also explains why the distrust towards the system is not as prevalent in Canadian society compared to the US, where more people think the system is too broken to be fixed.
Oh puh-leease.
Canada, same as the US, never has a party that is representative of any rational person's viewpoint.
Sure, there's the Canadian Alliance (Reform) Party, which is the Christian Right's party. While they'd probably balance the budget, they'd also turn Canada into a religious state. (Wanna live in a religious state? I understand Iran is really nice this time of the year.) Further, I'm not entirely sure that I want a party running the country with their name, the "Canadian Reform Alliance Party". Hmmmm... What are their initials? Didn't they check that name with any marketing focus groups?
The Progressive Conservative party is a vote thrown away: we may be stupid, but we're not stupid enough to have forgotten Mulroney. Besides, they're just the predecessor to the Canadian Alliance.
The Liberal Party racks up the debt, have proven themselves to be thoroughly ineffective, and pushes ill-conceived ideas that are divisive to national unity - things like multiculturalism. If someone immigrates here, I damned well want them to integrate into Canadian society, not to divide it. Refugees coming to Canada should be proudly stickering their 1987 Honda Accords with Canadian flags, not reflective gold "I love Uganda" bumper stickers.
And speaking of dividing Canadian society, we have the Bloc Quebecois. If General Lee were a contemporary Canadian, this would be his party.
Finally, we have the New Democratic Party. They're actually a little left of the small but vocal Socialist Party. The NDP pushes unions to the point where Canadian industry buckles under the strain. Why would you do business in Canada when an NDP government can turn labor laws around so that unskilled Toronto municipal parking attendants make $21/hr?
The situation here is every bit as bad as in the US. In the US, you have 2 channels and nothing on. In Canada, we got the fully-loaded cable-box of politics; like the song goes, "57 channels and nothing on".
All I want is a party of social liberals and fiscal conservatives. People who believe in capitalism, low taxes, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, equal civil rights for everyone. I can't believe I'm the only one who wants that.
At least in the US, there's unity, and a little better balance. Anyone wanna get a Canuck a Green Card? Check out my user bio.
the gag law prevents the results which are known in eastern canada from being transmitted to the west where they could possibly undermine voters' decision making process. the gag law is in effect so as not to undermine democracy!!
Obviously. But, why would you go after the guy who is reporting it on his website?
Elections Canada is the real bunch of idiots here; they shouldn't allow any info out until the west coast polls are closed.
I'm so sick of this idiocy. I spend over 50% of my income in taxes, and I have no services or even any national pride to show for it.
I have proof that God exists, and that He's mean-spirited: He chose for me to be born north of the 49th parallel.
When I rule there will be no more of this because we will take over Canada first, before moving on to the rest of the world.
Please hurry. As a Canadian, my country affords me endless opportunities for international humiliation with its ill-conceived and protectionist policies.
Wanna see another recent Slashdot article on the erosion of free speech in Canada? Click here.
Anyone know any good American immigration lawyers who'll want to be a part of the massive publicity of a Canadian driving across the border at Niagara Falls and promptly claiming refugee status?
I don't like hateful material any more than anyone else, but seeing stuff like this makes me ashamed to be a Canadian.
Isn't it understood that when you limit freedom of speech only to that which you find acceptable, the speech is no longer free? This isn't such a tough concept.
Canadians' speech is free so long as they don't do anything that feels offensive to government officials. Hmmm...
Well, under those rules, Red China has free speech, too! Just make sure you only say nice things about the communist party.
I'd rather turn away from things that disgust me (like the KKK's recent success in joining Missouri's Adopt-a-Road program), rather than worrying about the steady erosion of my rights. Part of the cost of freedom is seeing and hearing things that may offend you.
And they want to go after the American who owns the website - for comments he didn't even post!
Once again, my country provides an international forum to embarrass me.
Jeez, as if being raped by Revenue Canada wasn't bad enough.
Anyone wanna hire a good, hard-working computer geek who yearns for the responsibility and pride of being an American citizen? Check out my user bio for more info.
you have absolutely no employable
skills in any other field.
<grin> I can program in Assembly language. It's great for everything from embedded controllers to whole operating systems. Ever harness the real power of your computer?
Forget the sound card, that's for script kiddies. I hooked up three very old (and very loud) floppy disk drives to my computer and made them play Flight of the Bumblebees in three-part harmony.
(Well, actually, it was four, if you count the fact that light percussion was done by toggling one head-to-disk (drive enable) solenoid; the heavy percussion was done with three at once.)
Useful? Well, I got top marks in my high school computer class. Everyone else was playing Chopsticks by drawing notes onto a score with an early Macintosh music program.
The teacher's level was such that he knew approximately what BASIC was, in the great scheme of computer languages.
C++ is for amateurs; libraries are for the lazy.
(Oh, I'm really gonna get it for that one... Go ahead, at least if you moderate me down, the 49 karma points will be more interesting to look at for a change than the 50.)
For those of you have been to Las Vegas, you've seen just such a thing in action. I have no idea what the resolution of them is (I'd imagine something like 320x200 or MAYBE 640x480 tops). I actually got a chance to get up close to one while it was operating (it was about 6 feet tall), mounted into a wall. Examing it more closely there were indeed little triads of R-G-B LEDs, which when viewed at a range necessary to actually make out that fact were extremely bright.
Very cool. Yeah, actually, you don't need to go to Vegas to see that. Times Square has a couple, and Toronto's Gardiner Expressway are peppered with advertising billboards that use LED video. There's also one at Richmond and John Streets on the Famous Players Paramount Theater. Not really practical for the masses, but once they work out color purity issues, they'll cease to be a poor man's Sony JumboTron (which actually uses tiny little 3-pixel CRTs called "Trinilites").
That, and much like putting your nose against a projection tv, it was impossible to make out much detail.
Just imagine if the resolution were essentially infinite, if you never saw pixels or scanning lines. How cool would porn be then, huh?
What's interesting about 'Vegas is the fact that cruising the strip you can actually see several generations of technology, from the monochrome incandescent bulb displays, all the way up to the state-of-the-art LED full-color animated displays that are viewable in direct sunlight.
You know, some of the old incandescent signs were cool, too. Back in the days before microprocessors, banks of lights would be turned on and off by a cam wheel, much like hitting the address line on a suitably-programmed EPROM turns on whatever data lines you've chosen. And the cam outputs usually fed relays, which did the gruntwork. Thank god for CMOS logic, optocouplers and triacs; if you want a retro incandescent sign, that's the only way.
Re:And lo, the mechanic speaks.
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Except that turbine engines are now used in main battle tanks, like the M-1 Abrams, and the T-80-something, or whatever the latest Russian model is, which also uses a turbine engine. So what is the engineering reason which makes turbines practical for tanks, but not for automobiles?
They don't have to conform to Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) laws. Or emissions standards. They're an off-road vehicle.
And the poor efficiency (mileage) of a turbine is probably quite inconsequential when you're talking about something that takes gallons per mile, not miles per gallon, based on its sheer bulk, inelegant steering system, and the friction of treads against the ground, regardless of how you power it.
In fact, a turbine has a very important advantage here. The reciprocating mass of a piston engine makes it comparably slow to build RPMs, but its greater sealing makes it more efficient. While I know nothing about tanks, I'm sure they've got fairly simple transmissions that can take great advantage of the fact that a good turbine can spool up quickly, can run fairly low (if a 5,000 RPM idle is low) and has a bigger RPM range than pistons. The simpler drivetrain makes it less vulnerable to breakdown under attack, among other things.
The performance of the M-1 using a turbine is far superior to the older diesel engined tanks.
Probably, yes. Diesels aren't known for great speed. Volkswagen Turbo-Diesels and a few others have gotten around this, but by and large, diesel engines aren't great for torque or horsepower (which is torque over time, essentially) per cubic inch.
Diesels are known for great gas mileage, though, because the fuel produces a lot more BTU of heat per milliliter. But they don't do it suddenly the way gasoline does.
Diesels are known for being tough to start in a cold climate. Since the heat of compression is what ignites the fuel/air mixture, glow plugs are employed for cold winter mornings. Even so, they can be tough to get running. While jet/turbine engines or a gasoline piston motor can have trouble too, I've always dreaded being the poor sucker who gets to help someone start a cold Mercedes/VW/Isuzu/etc. diesel engine on a cold Ottawa morning.
Half the problem is getting the diesel into the fuel pump. I've seen in jelly up. Neither gasoline nor kerosene/naptha (jet fuel) does that readily, since it's a far lighter hydrocarbon.
Of course, once the diesel is running, the friction and heat of combustion quickly warm the motor to its normal operating temperature and all is well, even if it's -50C with the wind chill. (And Ottawa does get that cold. Don't believe me? Mid-January, 1993; the only things that started in that cold were *well-maintained* Chevettes, Volares, Ladas (Russian cars that are sparsely sold in Canada), older Volvos and stuff. Seems EFI computers don't use components rated to those temperatures.)
You don't choose where wars get fought. Nor do you want a tank that wouldn't start easily after it's just been airlifted in the cold of a transport at 20,000 feet and has just been parachuted to troops in the middle of hostility.
So, while a diesel engine is great for a ship or a big rig or even a commuter car in a warm climate, it's not very good for something where speed might be important - like a tank which may have to get out of the line of fire.
A metaphor: spring-powered BB gun.
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kinda like a large container of gasoline? Besides, I love a glorious death
If your gasoline tank leaks, it's only deadly dangerous if it also gets ignited.
A tank of compressed air under sufficent pressure and with sufficient volume to serve as the motive power for a vehicle will be deadly with a simple leak. Forget ignition; a pinhole could kill you.
In a vessel of compressed gas, leaks tend to spread.
If, in a controlled fashion, there is enough pressure and enough volume of compressed gas to move the vehicle at respectable speeds over respectable distances through the inefficiencies of tires, transmissions, and the friction incurred in a piston engine, just think of how fast, how far, and in what direction the vehicle will travel if the tank is ruptured.
And if you think it won't happen, think again.
If you rear-end a car and split the gasoline tank, chances are you'll just make a (potentially dangerous) puddle.
But if you rear-end a car and split open a tank of compressed gas, the energy stored in that tank is going to be released like a big strong spring being flicked across a room.
Ever play with a spring-powered BB gun? Think of your tank of compressed air as being a metaphor for the spring. Think of the BB as being a car, hurtled out of control as the spring is released suddenly.
Finally, think of how far the BB can embed itself into the object at which it happens to be pointed.
Any questions?
Re:And lo, the mechanic speaks.
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Not to burst your bubble, but why saddle the thing with pistons and all those moving parts and the associated friction? A better idea (maybe in use already?) would be to use the compressed air to spin a small turbine that drives a flywheel.
Yeah, but the problem with a turbine is that it doesn't make complete use of the fuel passing through it.
In a car, the piston engine won out over *many* attempts (noteably by Chrysler) to build a turbine car, because most of the force of the expanding gases in a piston engine is used to push down the piston. In a turbine, however, only a small amount of that kinetic energy is used to push the turbine blades and create rotational energy - the rest of that kinetic energy goes out the exhaust.
Now, in the case of a jet aircraft, the turbine really only needs to power the compressor that runs the engine - the actual pressure of the exhaust gases leaving the engine is what produces the airplane's forward thrust. In a car, this isn't practical; capturing the energy with the turbine blades is too inefficient, and powering your car with the exhaust would cause jet blast in traffic. (On the good side, this would deter tailgating.)
So, in all likelihood, the automotive turbine will go down in history as a really cool curiosity. (However, it did pioneer the use of many inexpensive high-temperature alloys that are used in today's car engines.)
The flywheel could then be used to drive a generator and the electricity would power the vehicle. That way you maximize the energy in the compressed air... you spin the flywheel at a constant speed except at startup.
Absolutely. You spin your engine at its most efficient speed, and then use other technologies to couple that power to the wheels. Let's say this is done with a piston engine. Good idea; this is why hybrid cars are starting to come about. But if the engine is running entirely on compressed air, I'm not sure if the additional cost of a hybrid system will be worth the incremental savings in fuel costs. The marketplace will have to bear out whether the added weight and cost makes that feasible.
With a gasoline engine, the appeal, in particular, is that when a gas engine runs at its most efficient speed, it produces less emissions for the amount of mechanical power it is creating. It's not the gas mileage, though that's a great selling feature. And it simplifies engine design to meet a given emissions target for a vehicle. If the engine is running off compressed air, though, do you care? The efficiency and emissions questions are mostly going to come about at the compression stations that produce the "fuel" for these cars.
The wheel motors would also be the brakes scavenging some wasted power during stopping by acting as generators.
Again, worth the cost, weight, decreased reliability penalty from added vehicle complexity? Probably not. Regenerative brakes are a great idea in electric cars and in hybrid cars (which are that way more for emissions reasons, rather than for gas mileage issues). In either an electric or a hybrid car, this is a very simple extension to the system that you've already implemented to power the vehicle. The cost and impact are minimal, the payoffs are good. But, I don't see them really being important enough to bother on air cars.
Re:And lo, the mechanic speaks.
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Yeah, guys, I agree with you completely. It's a great idea. I love it, it's the economy car of the future, but with one great reservation: compressed tanks. I've seen compressed air tanks go off, I've seen compressed acetylene cylinders go off, and I don't want to share the road with a fleet of the aging Toyota Tercels of the future, all equipped with thermally cycled, corroded and metal-fatigued compressed air tanks.
Job one every morning was to drain all the water out of the air tanks. You pull a cord which opens a valve and lets the air in the tank blow out the water that settles in the bottom. You wouldn't believe all the muck that is in the air that winds up in that water.
<grin> A few years ago, I got my air brake license so that I could drive the company Hino around. (Ugh. Hated the Hino. Loved my TopKick.) This was in the Ottawa and Toronto areas in Canada. Toronto's climate is about the same as Detroit or Chicago's, but Ottawa makes a cold winter's day in Maine seem warm.
Evidenly, the moisture in the brake tanks collects, and will freeze into ice just with the drop in pressure when you apply your brakes hard and fast, let alone when the weather is really cold.
Since the average driver lets their car run out of fuel occasionally, or does minimal maintenance, or can drive for miles without noticing the low oil pressure light, do we want to trust them to add air tank deicer? What kinds of weird compressed air fitting leaks and failures are these things gonna develop when they're frozen up? This is scary.
If the tanks aren't drained for a few days they will spray out a grey goo that's just nasty.
LOL.... I'm not perfect either. I have a compressor in my garage, and the bottom of the tank is a bitch to get at. Because I don't empty it as often as I should, I'm starting to get corrosion on the inside of the tank from the water just sitting there. I've been spraying air tool oil into the tank lately just to ensure that the corrosion doesn't get out of hand.
My point is that low maintenance will only be moved from the engine to the compressor (another high maintenance item) and the associated holding tanks.
I'm only worried about the idiots with whom I have to share the road. The people who aren't smart enough to know that a tractor-trailer can't stop as fast as a car and therefore cut them off are oblivious to the laws of physics, and therefore to the basics of driving and vehicle maintenance. At least if a gas tank leaks, it has to be ignited before you have a problem. If a tank that is compressed hard enough that it powers your vehicle fails, you and your vehicle will be airborne.
In principle, this is a great way to store the energy required to operate a vehicle. In practice, this scares the shit out of me.
The following is parodied in response to a previous post that someone made about air tank ruptures:
OK, I want to know how many of you have ever seen the results of a gasoline explosion? Talk about cars blowing up like they do in the movies. GASOLINE at those kinds of pressures is DANGERIOUS. And they want gas stations? What are they going to have, big cans of gas out in the open? Oh yeah, I want huge amounts of combustible liquid underground, right in my neibourhood.
Oh yes, gasoline is undeniably evil and dangerous as all hell to have around. But in my experience, even when it does get free, it's not *that* likely to catch fire. In other words, the only energy released when you gas tank leaks is the energy that was used to put the gasoline in the tank. It still retains its chemical energy. The more subtle dangers of leaked gasoline (ie. pollution) are less immediate in the case of a gasoline leak.
A tank of compressed air only provides energy as a function of the pressure at which it is stored relative to the pressure of the atmosphere to which it will be allowed to escape when its work is done. If your tank ruptures, you lose that stored energy. Period. And that stored energy will often cause the more rapid release of further stored energy. How? When the tank fissures, the force of the escaping air will help to push the sides of the crack apart the way a cushion of air suspends a hovercraft. A chain reaction ensues: as the hole gets bigger, the air releases more force as it passes through the hole, and therefore the hole continues to grow.
Naturally, when a cylinder of compressed gas fails, the results can be quite spectacular. Rarely are things this catastrophic with spilled liquid fuels.
I work for a marine electronics company. Many large marine engines are started either with a smaller engine, or with a large and sudden injection of compressed air into a cylinder, since a conventional starter motor wouldn't be practical at the sizes we're talking about. I was in the engine room of a fairly small tanker; the engine was a SEMT Pielstick, about 300L in displacement. The engine wasn't running, but they were preparing to start it, so they had the electric-powered compressors (which run off either diesel gensets or shore power) running to charge the starting tank. Then, a weld on the side of the tank failed.
While no one was killed, the results were catastrophic: the end of the tank, which was by that point charged to about 170PSI, was propelled across the engine room and actually managed to perforate a hull plate into a ballast tank. The hull plate was over 1" thick steel. Fortunately, the ship was loaded so the ballast tank was empty.
Given that this was in the engine room of an American-flagged tanker (*not* a Russian submarine!), and a well-maintained one at that, I'm not sure how I feel about sharing the road with a fleet of aging cars with aging compressed gas cylinders on board.
I've also seen a cast iron acetylene tank, uncapped without being secured, knocked over and with the regulator and valve broken off. Sure, someone was being careless; sadly, this sort of stuff happens. 3 square inches or so of leak, tank that weighs 75lbs, and is full of gas at a pressure of (let's guess, I don't know for sure) 130 PSI...
3 square inches x 130 pounds per square inch of force = 390 pounds of thrust. On the back of a tank that weighs about 75 lbs. For one thing, it's airborne. Secondly, it continues to accelerate until it either hits something or exhausts its supply of compressed gas. Did I mention that it was a cast iron cylinder?
Fortunately, it didn't catch fire. But it did take out a big piece of a cinderblock wall.
I think that's my problem. With gasoline, *if* it leaks, and *if* it gets ignited, you're in mortal peril.
But with compressed gases, *if* it leaks, you're in mortal peril.
You claim to be such an authority on fuels and engines, perhaps you can tell the PhD's at the auto companies how to do it.
<sigh> You know, you're my first-ever encounter with an omniscient being.
Please allow me to bow down to you.
As evidence of your clear understanding of *every field anyone ever discusses on/.*, allow me to suggest that readers take a look at this link.
I come to Slashdot because I enjoy a friendly and intelligent discourse with other technically-literate people. Apparently, I contribute well: I seem to have proven that one's collected karma is limited to 50.
I don't know everything. I don't even profess to know everything. However, I have worked in a variety of fields. I've repelled off the sides of running MAN B&W 40-foot-tall marine diesel engines to change sensors. I've also repelled off the face of the JumboTron at the SkyDome, changing trinilights.
In my hobbies, I do all sorts of things that would likely disturb you. At the moment, there are two car engines in my living room.
I am paid a handsome annual salary to design engine management systems for marine engines. And I don't mean little yachts, either. I have saved over $450,000 in diesel fuel costs this year alone for one of our bigger local customers, a great lakes shipping company that runs a fleet of live-bottom bulkers.
I am familiar with engine and fuel chemistry, theory of operation, practical operation, the electronics and computer systems that control them, and every environmental law in both Canada and the United States to which they must conform.
And yet, I clearly don't know as much about engine and fuel systems as you do; you're so savvy that you clearly have a more informed opinion on everything than I do.
Little fact of biology: if the human body didn't produce something to fit those receptors, we wouldn't have those receptors. Selection would stop removing the defective mutations and the unused receptor system would eventually become non-functional.
Ah, yes. It's another field in which you are a self-proclaimed expert.
No doubt due to the fact that most Europeans pay more in extra taxes to their bloated, inefficient, bureaucratic governments for those same functions than Americans do via charity. This has the further benefit that Americans can tell a poorly-run charity to go to hell, and send their money elsewhere (or keep it); Europeans can't do that to their governments.
Add political science to the list... (though, I *do* happen to agree with you on that point, Canada *does* follow the European mindset there)
and the Social Security system is one of our biggest fiscal time-bombs
...and an economist... (though, again, I agree with you, though earlier in that paragraph, you called Gore repugnant; based on your enviro-wackiness, I'm not sure if you've figured out who to vote for yet.)
An aircraft can easily be 20% or more fuel by weight at takeoff. Suppose you can raise that to 30% for your electric aircraft, and the batteries hold 20 WH/pound; the net aircraft energy-to-weight is 6 WH/pound.
...and an aviation expert...
There's oxygen in the electrolyte (H2SO4), so the battery as a whole has something a bit closer to the elements of life.
And a biochemist...
Bunch of misconceptions in this response.
A 200 mAH cell does not have to be discharged at 200 mA or less. The press release said "in a 200mAh device, 9A in 10 seconds" (whatever that means). Nothing in the press release mentioned how big this 200 mAH cell is, how much it weighs, or the voltage. That 200 mAH cell might be the size of the end of your pinky finger, in which case a decent-sized battery would be umpteen amp-hours.
...and an electrical engineer...
this implies a peak power output of 450 KW from a 10 KWH battery pack. This is equivalent to about 600 horsepower. With the proper power electronics and motors, an electric car with these batteries could eat Corvettes for breakfast. Taking a full charge in 5 minutes means that regenerative braking is a lot easier, and so is quick charging.
...and an automotive engineer.
You are truly omniscient. I wish I was as intelligent and universally-informed as you are.
You must carry your Bachelor of Science in [insert name of irrelevant field chosen only by career students] from [insert name of school with low expectations] with great pride to your wonderful job as [insert menial janitorial or food service position] at [insert name of pretentious but passe hotel].
(I'll try to get to your other post tomorrow; I had no time last night.)
Thanks, but don't bother. My self-mandated daily act of charity will not be tolerating you.
As a side note... remember that the article (which you obviously did not read) created a lamp using WHITE LEDs. Not Red, Green, and Blue, but WHITE, because the RGB PN junctions are inside the LED itself.
Actually, I did read it. These are *not* white LEDs, which actually have a phosphorous coating on a blue LED die. These are RGB LEDs.
They were encased in T-1 3/4 cases with 4 pins (as opposed to the usual two) sticking out. A T-1 3/4 is approximately 1/4" in diameter. (Not close enough for drilling panels, but close enough for napkin calculations like these.) 800x600 in T-1 3/4 LEDs (of any color, RGB, or white) would be 200 inches wide by 150 inches tall.
Do the math if you wanted to build that using discrete red, green and blue LEDs....
Each one costs about $20. Power usage is rated at 120mw maximum, and unless you're watching a pure white screen you will never use that much for every LED, so let's assume 1/2 that power under normal operating circumstances
Until you watch MTV and someone does put up a completely white screen. You cannot count on that. And those LEDs are not rated to full power for all three junctions continuously.
You wouldn't necessarily have to have all the LEDs on all the time though. You could strobe the LEDs at 60Hz and persistence of vision would give the impression of a nice stable image. This could reduce the cost of electricity (and also the amount of heat generated) by a huge factor.
True, yes, and I did mention the technique of multiplexing display elements. It's easily done, and it yields terrific results. But, anything that you would be displaying on a system like that would be multiplexed anyway - VGA images? TV pictures? They're all scanned, one line at a time. Unless you were to build the circuitry to hold that in video RAM of some sort rather than just building a passive monitor, it would remain that way.
And you needn't solder the LEDs by hand, or solder them at all. You could probably (with some practice) manufacture a monolithic array of LEDS, with the majority of interconnects already done.
Sure. Then you get into the same issues of lot-to-lot and even diode-to-diode inconsistencies. This is how newer large electronic billboards and stuff are already being done. Notice their patchy color purity?
You could also reduce the size of each LED element (how big does a pn junction need to be?) in the array. Just a thought.
I don't know how big the PN junction has to be to produce light, but as far as I know, it's no bigger than any other PN junction - the critical issue with them becomes the chemicals doped. (Ie. what makes a P type region a P-type region, what makes N type N-type, etc.)
But this would be no more relevant than it is in, let's say, the cache on an Athlon, which has way more PN junctions in a tiny area than this whole gargantuan display would have.
The problem is that we're used to the cooling issues surrounding very large highly-integrated CMOS logic. Remember, too, that the perfect CMOS gate has an infinite input impedance and therefore the stage before it needs no current to drive it and therefore no heat can be produced... but we all know that's not true.
Now, as if that weren't bad enough, an LED is *not* a high impedance device like CMOS, which relies only on the presence of a charge to operate. LEDs are current-operated devices. They won't light up at all until you're passing more than their threshold current through them. Once they're lit, they operate fairly linearly from barely on to their absolute limits - the more power they dissipate, the more brightly they light.
As far as I know - and I'm not a semiconductor physicist - the minimum threshold current is what it takes to actually break down the PN junction and make current flow in forward-biased mode. On most LEDs, that's an energy of about 0.5mA at 1.2-1.6V (or 0.0006W), but it seems to depend more on the LED's designed wavelength (and therefore PN doping) than its junction size or rated brightness. 0.0006W per LED across a 640x480 display is still an imperceptibly black screen, by the way. And one that's taking almost 200W for that blackness. If this is a small display, you have to get rid of that (approx) 200W of waste heat just at idle.
I doubt that the cache on an Athlon has to get rid of 200W of waste heat at idle, and yet they're fairly well heatsinked...
Digital Light Projector - brand name for a technology developed by TI. Basically, you have a chip with an array of micro-mirrors that you use to deflect light from a projector. These are a lot brighter than LCD displays.
Yeah; I've heard of them, but I've never actually seen one. It sounds like it takes the best of the Hughes/JVC (xenon bulb for the main projection), arrayed video device like an LCD display (oh well, can't be perfect), and adds to that the fact that the display element neither creates the light (like a CRT projector), nor does it have to transmit it (like an LCD projector). It strikes me that the fact that the light doesn't actually pass through the imaging element would save it from a lot of heating. Even if it does heat up, since it's reflective, you could spackle a huge heatsink or even a liquid cooling system to the back of the reflective imaging device, if you need to pass a lot of light across it. This is an exciting projector.
They were kind of pricey ($50k), but are starting to make inroads in the portable presentation projector market.
$50k is about what a new VPH-1270 was going for, last time I was involved with them. (Yeah, I'm sure they've been discontinued now.) So, that sort of money doesn't seem to be too badly out of line. I assume it's a single imaging system, too, meaning that you wouldn't have to do convergence of the individual colors.
Last time this came up, I found some models for $9k-$5k.
It sounds to me like these things are basically in competition with the LCD projectors, but are brighter because the imaging device would be less concerned with heating. I'd expect they'll still have many of the same resolution problems as an LCD display (ie. ever try to run 640x480 on your 800x600 notebook screen?), but with a few advantages that will make them take over. Eventually. There's inertia to overcome.
It's stuff like this that reminds me why I've always loved Texas Instruments.
While I have some older mopar vehicles that run on gasoline I would not mind running them off moonshine.
Absolutely. You would probably have to do a small retrofit (fuel pump diaphrams, fuel hoses, carburetor floats, timing adjustments) if they're pre-1990 models. Otherwise, it's no big deal.
On the other hand I would be open to other alternatives such as electric.
My issues with electric cars are as follows:
Toxic chemical hazard, especially in accidents. (I don't wanna get third-degree chemical burns to my face because of a fender-bender; any electric vehicle is likely to carry a lot more battery electrolyte than a modern car carries gasoline.)
Electrical Infrastructure. Do we really have the electrical capacity to charge these things? No. Do we want to build more coal plants to recharge them? No. Nuclear? No.
Temperature Issues. I live in a northern climate. Batteries lose capacity in cold weather. At least once an internal combustion engine is running in the cold, it regulates itself to an efficient temperature. Are we going to waste precious battery power to run electric battery blankets when we're driving electric cars through subarctic cold snaps? But it would seem to be better to goto alcohol for legacy vehicle that are on the road now. Would that not have a better effect in the short term than slowly selling electric vehicles.
Absolutely. In fact, my 1976 Dodge Ram has an aftermarket fuel pump. The fuel lines and fittings are all alcohol-safe. And the carburetor float is made of stamped and soldered brass. My truck *loves* running on alcohol; with minor timing and mixture tweaks it runs less than 2 PPM unburnt HC out the exhaust when running 10% methanol. That's impressive, since the motor has never been rebuilt, has over 130,000 miles on it, and never came with catalytic converters.
Henry Ford himself wanted to use alcohol. Would help farmers. Of course there are some alcohol in the vehical laws that might have to be considered. Personally I will go the alcohol way until they have other alternatives that can be implemeted now at a good cost.
Alcohol is, at the moment, the only alternative fuel that has any prospect of large-scale viability. Here in Toronto, Canada, it's fairly well available; most gasoline has at least 3% ethanol in the mix, though there are some that advertise more. But in the Ottawa area, there are gas stations that sell 10% methanol, and that blend seems to give a good burn with a little tweaking. A vehicle with a properly-running EFI system should cope with this with no problem, since the oxygen sensor and the knock detector will recalibrate the timing and the fuel/air mixture on the fly in ways that my truck cannot.
I've also run the truck on 75% methanol, which caused issues because I didn't actually set the ignition timing and carburetor jetting appropriately. But rest assured, that'd be quite a nice replacement for pure gasoline, and on most vehicles, the retrofit would be minimal. (Most EFI engines, especially more recent ones, are even designed to cope specifically with this.) The bigger issue is one of supply, since not enough is produced now to do that.
Some good burn-in software... continuously compile your linux kernel, that will keep your CPU pretty busy, and provide errors if something doesn't work.
That, and go to SETI@Home's website.
Their Top 100 list suggests that maybe Sun, Silicon Graphics, Compaq, Intel, IBM, Apple and HP all use SETI at Home for burn-in...
If the CPU screws up, it's unlikely to create a data unit that gets passed back to SETI and screws up their project; it's more likely that the computer will just spit out a kernel panic or stop responding or something. If the system is otherwise stable, that should be all the error message you need.
BTW, burn-in is used by builders to prevent shipping D.O.A. systems to customers. As far as I've ever known in all my years with electronics, an extended run won't make any physical changes to the ICs that would make it more reliable. If anything, the heat of being overclocked and run 24/7 is likely to upset the metallurgy of solder joints and the doping of semiconductors more than anything else...
Bottom line is that you're *proving* that it's reliable, not *making* it reliable.
If they can have a few of these in a "can" to make a multicolor spotlight, what would be the chances of using 3 of these just like the 3 individual colored lamps used in front projection TV's? Would it be cost effective if it could be done?
No. The issues again are resolution, the physical size of the LEDs, the current required t feed them, and the cost of the LEDs and their driver logic.
Considering first off that an LCD display is basically a large integrated circuit, if LEDs were made as large ICs like this, it would be possible. But an LCD pixel really uses no current: like CMOS logic, it's a potential-operated high-impedance device. There's actually very little energy used; it just passes light from the backlight selectively. However, an LED matrix panel like you'd need for this would still be a current-operated device. The device would generate its own light - and heat. While an LED is a very efficient way to make light, they need a certain threshold current to be useable. This threshold current is sufficient that the display would guzzle huge amounts of power.
There are ways to multiplex the display to get around that, but by the time an LED array is big enough in resolution to compete with today's technologies, the driver circuits are incredibly large, with huge component counts. While CRT drive circuits are unweildy (flyback, deflection, cathode drives and stuff), they're nothing compared to what this thing would require. Sure, the LED matrix wouldn't need a 30kV power supply to drive an accelerating anode (like an CRT does). Instead, the LED matrix would require drive circuits that were capable of supporting 307,200 LEDs. And that's for a paltry 640x480 display in only one color. You'd need 921,600 LED junctions for 640x480 with RGB.
The only way it would be practical to build this would be a large LED matrix as a single array. Production yield rates, current requirements and cooling are the issues that I see with that. If you think a PIII Xeon is a pig, wait 'til you see a single chip that big.
Alternate video projection technologies are far more refined:
CRT projectors (like Sony's venerable VPH-1040 and 1270, Zenith/Aquastar, some Barco models) offer excellent resolution, good brightness and are flexible to a wide variety of different input signals. Downside: cost, size, limited lifespan of expensive projection CRTs, limited portability due to need to adjust convergence with each time they're moved relative to the screen.
LCD projectors (most of the little table-top projectors being offered in computer magazines) offer portability because of small size and weight, as well as the fact that they're no tougher to set up than a slide projector. Disadvantages: limited resolution, don't adapt very well to being used at varying resolutions, limited brightness due to technological limits on how hot you can make an LCD sheet, uses conventional projector bulb which usually fails at the worst possible time.
Finally, the Hughes/JVC Image Light Amplifier video projectors. These things are nuts. They combine the best features of a CRT projector with more conventional projection technology. They were developed for NASA to use at Mission Control in the 1960s, and have been continually refined ever since. Can display huge images visible in full sunlight. Very flexible as to resolution of the incoming image. Problems: cost over $500,000. The last one I set up took a 240V 200A power drop. Has a large xenon projector light that takes 20 minutes to warm up, relies on expensive and limited-life projection CRTs to draw an image onto special LCD "image light amplifiers". Fragile optics to split light from xenon projector bulb, pass it through three ILAs which serve as the screens for the projection CRTs, filter it into primary colors and then shoot it out three separate lenses to the screen. Weighs over 600 lbs. Requires convergence and purity adjustments to align it to the screen. Causes severe eye damage if you accidentally look into any one of the lenses. Suitable only for long-term installation in very large facilities.
Even so, to put the LED projector into perspective, the Hughes/JVC projector is far better adapted to your living room.
Biggest I've ever had in my living room was a Sony VPH-1272. And that was a gorgeous floor-to-ceiling movie. Too bad it was before the DVD came out, and I had to cope with VHS.
Um, that shouldn't make any difference, should it? The heat you feel from a spotlight is down to all the electromatic waves [be it visible light/ir/etc] hitting you and transferring energy. Provided the LED lamp is of the same intenisty then it shoulkd be just as warm
No, it's not the light that makes you feel warm. It's the radiant heat that gets thrown off the bulb that makes you feel warm. Of couse, the radiant heat is electromagnetic energy - IR at that - but the difference is that a more efficient lighting technology throws off less IR and more visible light.
Compare a fluorescent desk light with an incandescent desk light. They may both put out the same amount of light, but the incandescent will warm the stuff around it more (since it wastes more energy as IR, surface temperature and convective heat).
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I'm wondering if the Department of Justice's case against MicroSoft is gonna quietly go away under Bush.
Yes, it will.
The Republicans feel that business is business; Microsoft is just conducting normal business practices, and that is how they have achieved their dominance.
Now, on one hand, the Republicans hands-off attitude towards business is wonderful.
On the other hand, in this case, some very special tweaking has to be done to extricate Microsoft from their current position. Clearly, they are not the party to do this.
If ever there was a clear-cut reason for a Linux-loving computer geek to get out there and vote, it's for Gore, and for this very reason. Even if he does claim to have invented the Internet. <sigh>
i don't like *any* of the candidates. low turn-outs should signal that people are apathetic about the choices we're given, and don't agree with anyone.
Urk. Completely.
I'm a fiscal Republican but a social Democrat. I've yet to see a candidate that ever made me feel at all inspired.
How about if the Republican party ceased to be in the pocket of all sorts of religious organizations? And if the Democrats could actually allow a woman the right to chose without hugely inflating the debt?
How about some balance between the two?
So far, the two-partied system seems to work only by massive changes in equilibrium. It's frighteningly disorienting.
This time, the choice is a little more clear. Since a President Bush (yuck) would be appointing a whole bunch of Supreme Court judges - with the possible ability to therefore overturn Roe vs. Wade and a whole bunch of other important social issues, I'm alarmed that Bush has a good chance of getting the White House. (And please don't think that I think abortion is a good idea; it does devalue life and encourage people not to take responsibility for their actions, but to ban it outright is to ignore the fact that it will happen no matter what the policy.)
While many pundits will complain that Bush is the governer of maybe the worst-managed state in the Union, it's important to note that Governer William Jefferson Clinton of Arkansas was in about the same position when he took power. But, Clinton is Presidential. Not only did he clearly have fun in office (and some of that was even *without* Ms. Lewinsky), he was also a professional in all matters of foreign affairs. And, he was a thoroughly likeable individual for the world to see as the American leader.
Gore hasn't got the same joi-de-vivre as Clinton has, but at least he's an elegant and digified statesman, a boring but professional person.
Bush, however, is that amiable guy sitting over there at the end of the bar, spinning yarns; he's interesting and exciting. If you met him - probably in a dimly-lit sports bar in the backwoods of Texas - you'd think he was a tractor salesman. He will command the respect of the world not through dignity, but only through sheer power. This is not the best way to influence international or domestic diplomacy.
Bush is *no* statesman. The fact that he's leading in the polls arguably because more of the electorate things he'd be a more fun guy with whom to have a beer arguably proves the every dictator right: perhaps the people *aren't* smart enough to choose their own destiny after all.
And when you don't particularily care for either candidate's platform and yet you've resigned yourself to the fact that one or the other is going to be calling the shots, may as well not bother.
(not any of those third party buttfuckers like nader or browne either.)Nader is dangerous. Sure, he sounds noble enough on the surface, but he's a great way to:
drive businesses away through punishing regulations and embrace of a society where no one makes over $100,000/year
ensure that the Republicans (in this case, probably the greater of the two evils currently offered) are given the Presidency next.
While I don't like either Gore or Bush especially, I'd prefer to see Gore in power; I think he'll do a lot less damage than a Bush presidency.
But I also wish that truly interesting people were actually running. Liberman and Cheney are far more presidential than either one of their runningmates.
Now, having said all this, breathe easy. First off, moderate me down if I've said something false or off-topic, not because you disagree with the political views. As a Canadian citizen, I get to watch the foray without it affecting me in any huge way, I can only comiserate, as the Canadian federal elections are coming up on November 27th.
I assure you, the Canadian choices are every bit as bleak as in the US. Only, instead of two viable bleak choices, there are 5 up here.
I'd run for office in Canada myself, but I hope to be out of here long before whoever is about to be elected here calls the next election.
Until then, though, I've already registered with Elections Canada for an official Abstain Vote. It's my way of registering my displeasure with all the candidates offered, without it being assumed that I'm simply a case of voter apathy.
In the search for the worst band in the (known) universe, only one name comes to mind: The Tragically Hip.
Only if you live in Canada, where you're forced to endure their horrible, whiny vocalist over and over because of Canadian Content laws, can you really begin to understand the scope of the torment.
Their song "Bobcageon", played all through the summer of 1999, was marketed as rock, and since it's Canadian and was new at the time, it was one of the songs that Q107 and other Canadian radio stations had to use to fill the 40% of their airtime that has to be new Canadian music.
Bobcageon is one of those rare and special songs that makes you crave the weight of a 20 lb sledgehammer in your hands.
And, when you're heard it once on the way to work and once on the way home every day for a week, you're craving an equal-size pickaxe instead of a hammer.
I'm quite proud to be Canadian and not American. At least if I was unemployed and had cancer, I wouldn't be left to die.
Part of the beauty of the American system of doing things is that it forces you to be productive.
However, the Canadian system attempts to spread the country's wealth among all citizens, not just those who have legitimately earned it.
I think this fits the definition of Communism pretty well; while Canada is not quite that bad, it's getting there.
Communism (and socialism) are great on paper, but they fail to address a fundamental human flaw: All people are lazy. Sure, some more so than others. But if you're going to give your people 50 rubles every day regardless of whether or not they bother to show up to work, how many people will actually show up to work?
The gross domestic product of the nation then collapses. Don't believe me? Take a look around Eastern Europe.
The economies where people have the most chance for personal success are also those where the perils of failure are the most devastating: United States, Hong Kong, etc.
Why is it we spend millions of dollars a year treating homeless heroin addicts who seldom contribute anything back to the economy in turn? Come on, people have to take some personal responsibility for their lives.
Here's a thought about socialized medicine. Since there's no great cost savings incentive to quit smoking or lose weight because OHIP (provincial HMO) will pay for all your medical expenses, how about we deny all coverage for lung cancer victims who have smoked since it was known that smoking was harmful? How about we make obese people who have heart attacks pay for their treatment? People who drive their cars without wearing their seatbelts should have to pay for the doctor to staple their skulls back together.
Then, you can legalize all those nasty things without worrying about the burden to the healthcare system, sit back, and watch Darwinian Theory take care of things.
Oh, I can't wait to see how many people send me back nasty responses... :) Stirring it up is sooo much fun.
You are either really naive or a complete moron, if you think Canada will not follow and declare drug information illegal too. Canada routinely mirrors Federal laws passed by FCC and other similar American organizations. This is a fact: Canada cannot think on its own, it has to do like Big (Bill) Brother does.
Exactly. Thank you.
If I at least had something besides misguided copycat policy to show for my contributions to the government's coffers, I might not feel so raped by the process.
With Canadian taxes, I'm paying for the Cadillac, but I'm getting a Cavalier.
That belief also explains why the distrust towards the system is not as prevalent in Canadian society compared to the US, where more people think the system is too broken to be fixed.
Oh puh-leease.
Canada, same as the US, never has a party that is representative of any rational person's viewpoint.
Sure, there's the Canadian Alliance (Reform) Party, which is the Christian Right's party. While they'd probably balance the budget, they'd also turn Canada into a religious state. (Wanna live in a religious state? I understand Iran is really nice this time of the year.) Further, I'm not entirely sure that I want a party running the country with their name, the "Canadian Reform Alliance Party". Hmmmm... What are their initials? Didn't they check that name with any marketing focus groups?
The Progressive Conservative party is a vote thrown away: we may be stupid, but we're not stupid enough to have forgotten Mulroney. Besides, they're just the predecessor to the Canadian Alliance.
The Liberal Party racks up the debt, have proven themselves to be thoroughly ineffective, and pushes ill-conceived ideas that are divisive to national unity - things like multiculturalism. If someone immigrates here, I damned well want them to integrate into Canadian society, not to divide it. Refugees coming to Canada should be proudly stickering their 1987 Honda Accords with Canadian flags, not reflective gold "I love Uganda" bumper stickers.
And speaking of dividing Canadian society, we have the Bloc Quebecois. If General Lee were a contemporary Canadian, this would be his party.
Finally, we have the New Democratic Party. They're actually a little left of the small but vocal Socialist Party. The NDP pushes unions to the point where Canadian industry buckles under the strain. Why would you do business in Canada when an NDP government can turn labor laws around so that unskilled Toronto municipal parking attendants make $21/hr?
The situation here is every bit as bad as in the US. In the US, you have 2 channels and nothing on. In Canada, we got the fully-loaded cable-box of politics; like the song goes, "57 channels and nothing on".
All I want is a party of social liberals and fiscal conservatives. People who believe in capitalism, low taxes, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, equal civil rights for everyone. I can't believe I'm the only one who wants that.
At least in the US, there's unity, and a little better balance. Anyone wanna get a Canuck a Green Card? Check out my user bio.
the gag law prevents the results which are known in eastern canada from being transmitted to the west where they could possibly undermine voters' decision making process. the gag law is in effect so as not to undermine democracy!!
Obviously. But, why would you go after the guy who is reporting it on his website?
Elections Canada is the real bunch of idiots here; they shouldn't allow any info out until the west coast polls are closed.
I'm so sick of this idiocy. I spend over 50% of my income in taxes, and I have no services or even any national pride to show for it.
I have proof that God exists, and that He's mean-spirited: He chose for me to be born north of the 49th parallel.
When I rule there will be no more of this because we will take over Canada first, before moving on to the rest of the world.
Please hurry. As a Canadian, my country affords me endless opportunities for international humiliation with its ill-conceived and protectionist policies.
Wanna see another recent Slashdot article on the erosion of free speech in Canada? Click here.
Anyone know any good American immigration lawyers who'll want to be a part of the massive publicity of a Canadian driving across the border at Niagara Falls and promptly claiming refugee status?
This makes me sick.
I don't like hateful material any more than anyone else, but seeing stuff like this makes me ashamed to be a Canadian.
Isn't it understood that when you limit freedom of speech only to that which you find acceptable, the speech is no longer free? This isn't such a tough concept.
Canadians' speech is free so long as they don't do anything that feels offensive to government officials. Hmmm...
Well, under those rules, Red China has free speech, too! Just make sure you only say nice things about the communist party.
I'd rather turn away from things that disgust me (like the KKK's recent success in joining Missouri's Adopt-a-Road program), rather than worrying about the steady erosion of my rights. Part of the cost of freedom is seeing and hearing things that may offend you.
And they want to go after the American who owns the website - for comments he didn't even post!
Once again, my country provides an international forum to embarrass me.
Jeez, as if being raped by Revenue Canada wasn't bad enough.
Anyone wanna hire a good, hard-working computer geek who yearns for the responsibility and pride of being an American citizen? Check out my user bio for more info.
Actually thats funny!
It gets worse. I gave the source code for the routines that step the drives to make the noise to a friend of mine.
He's since turned it into a MIDI player.
you have absolutely no employable skills in any other field.
<grin> I can program in Assembly language. It's great for everything from embedded controllers to whole operating systems. Ever harness the real power of your computer?
Forget the sound card, that's for script kiddies. I hooked up three very old (and very loud) floppy disk drives to my computer and made them play Flight of the Bumblebees in three-part harmony.
(Well, actually, it was four, if you count the fact that light percussion was done by toggling one head-to-disk (drive enable) solenoid; the heavy percussion was done with three at once.)
Useful? Well, I got top marks in my high school computer class. Everyone else was playing Chopsticks by drawing notes onto a score with an early Macintosh music program.
The teacher's level was such that he knew approximately what BASIC was, in the great scheme of computer languages.
C++ is for amateurs; libraries are for the lazy.
(Oh, I'm really gonna get it for that one... Go ahead, at least if you moderate me down, the 49 karma points will be more interesting to look at for a change than the 50.)
For those of you have been to Las Vegas, you've seen just such a thing in action. I have no idea what the resolution of them is (I'd imagine something like 320x200 or MAYBE 640x480 tops). I actually got a chance to get up close to one while it was operating (it was about 6 feet tall), mounted into a wall. Examing it more closely there were indeed little triads of R-G-B LEDs, which when viewed at a range necessary to actually make out that fact were extremely bright.
Very cool. Yeah, actually, you don't need to go to Vegas to see that. Times Square has a couple, and Toronto's Gardiner Expressway are peppered with advertising billboards that use LED video. There's also one at Richmond and John Streets on the Famous Players Paramount Theater. Not really practical for the masses, but once they work out color purity issues, they'll cease to be a poor man's Sony JumboTron (which actually uses tiny little 3-pixel CRTs called "Trinilites").
That, and much like putting your nose against a projection tv, it was impossible to make out much detail.Just imagine if the resolution were essentially infinite, if you never saw pixels or scanning lines. How cool would porn be then, huh?
What's interesting about 'Vegas is the fact that cruising the strip you can actually see several generations of technology, from the monochrome incandescent bulb displays, all the way up to the state-of-the-art LED full-color animated displays that are viewable in direct sunlight.You know, some of the old incandescent signs were cool, too. Back in the days before microprocessors, banks of lights would be turned on and off by a cam wheel, much like hitting the address line on a suitably-programmed EPROM turns on whatever data lines you've chosen. And the cam outputs usually fed relays, which did the gruntwork. Thank god for CMOS logic, optocouplers and triacs; if you want a retro incandescent sign, that's the only way.
Except that turbine engines are now used in main battle tanks, like the M-1 Abrams, and the T-80-something, or whatever the latest Russian model is, which also uses a turbine engine. So what is the engineering reason which makes turbines practical for tanks, but not for automobiles?
They don't have to conform to Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) laws. Or emissions standards. They're an off-road vehicle.
And the poor efficiency (mileage) of a turbine is probably quite inconsequential when you're talking about something that takes gallons per mile, not miles per gallon, based on its sheer bulk, inelegant steering system, and the friction of treads against the ground, regardless of how you power it.
In fact, a turbine has a very important advantage here. The reciprocating mass of a piston engine makes it comparably slow to build RPMs, but its greater sealing makes it more efficient. While I know nothing about tanks, I'm sure they've got fairly simple transmissions that can take great advantage of the fact that a good turbine can spool up quickly, can run fairly low (if a 5,000 RPM idle is low) and has a bigger RPM range than pistons. The simpler drivetrain makes it less vulnerable to breakdown under attack, among other things.
The performance of the M-1 using a turbine is far superior to the older diesel engined tanks.Probably, yes. Diesels aren't known for great speed. Volkswagen Turbo-Diesels and a few others have gotten around this, but by and large, diesel engines aren't great for torque or horsepower (which is torque over time, essentially) per cubic inch.
Diesels are known for great gas mileage, though, because the fuel produces a lot more BTU of heat per milliliter. But they don't do it suddenly the way gasoline does.
Diesels are known for being tough to start in a cold climate. Since the heat of compression is what ignites the fuel/air mixture, glow plugs are employed for cold winter mornings. Even so, they can be tough to get running. While jet/turbine engines or a gasoline piston motor can have trouble too, I've always dreaded being the poor sucker who gets to help someone start a cold Mercedes/VW/Isuzu/etc. diesel engine on a cold Ottawa morning.
Half the problem is getting the diesel into the fuel pump. I've seen in jelly up. Neither gasoline nor kerosene/naptha (jet fuel) does that readily, since it's a far lighter hydrocarbon.
Of course, once the diesel is running, the friction and heat of combustion quickly warm the motor to its normal operating temperature and all is well, even if it's -50C with the wind chill. (And Ottawa does get that cold. Don't believe me? Mid-January, 1993; the only things that started in that cold were *well-maintained* Chevettes, Volares, Ladas (Russian cars that are sparsely sold in Canada), older Volvos and stuff. Seems EFI computers don't use components rated to those temperatures.)
You don't choose where wars get fought. Nor do you want a tank that wouldn't start easily after it's just been airlifted in the cold of a transport at 20,000 feet and has just been parachuted to troops in the middle of hostility.
So, while a diesel engine is great for a ship or a big rig or even a commuter car in a warm climate, it's not very good for something where speed might be important - like a tank which may have to get out of the line of fire.
kinda like a large container of gasoline? Besides, I love a glorious death
If your gasoline tank leaks, it's only deadly dangerous if it also gets ignited.
A tank of compressed air under sufficent pressure and with sufficient volume to serve as the motive power for a vehicle will be deadly with a simple leak. Forget ignition; a pinhole could kill you.
In a vessel of compressed gas, leaks tend to spread.
If, in a controlled fashion, there is enough pressure and enough volume of compressed gas to move the vehicle at respectable speeds over respectable distances through the inefficiencies of tires, transmissions, and the friction incurred in a piston engine, just think of how fast, how far, and in what direction the vehicle will travel if the tank is ruptured.
And if you think it won't happen, think again.
If you rear-end a car and split the gasoline tank, chances are you'll just make a (potentially dangerous) puddle.
But if you rear-end a car and split open a tank of compressed gas, the energy stored in that tank is going to be released like a big strong spring being flicked across a room.
Ever play with a spring-powered BB gun? Think of your tank of compressed air as being a metaphor for the spring. Think of the BB as being a car, hurtled out of control as the spring is released suddenly.
Finally, think of how far the BB can embed itself into the object at which it happens to be pointed.
Any questions?
Not to burst your bubble, but why saddle the thing with pistons and all those moving parts and the associated friction? A better idea (maybe in use already?) would be to use the compressed air to spin a small turbine that drives a flywheel.
Yeah, but the problem with a turbine is that it doesn't make complete use of the fuel passing through it.
In a car, the piston engine won out over *many* attempts (noteably by Chrysler) to build a turbine car, because most of the force of the expanding gases in a piston engine is used to push down the piston. In a turbine, however, only a small amount of that kinetic energy is used to push the turbine blades and create rotational energy - the rest of that kinetic energy goes out the exhaust.
Now, in the case of a jet aircraft, the turbine really only needs to power the compressor that runs the engine - the actual pressure of the exhaust gases leaving the engine is what produces the airplane's forward thrust. In a car, this isn't practical; capturing the energy with the turbine blades is too inefficient, and powering your car with the exhaust would cause jet blast in traffic. (On the good side, this would deter tailgating.)
So, in all likelihood, the automotive turbine will go down in history as a really cool curiosity. (However, it did pioneer the use of many inexpensive high-temperature alloys that are used in today's car engines.)
The flywheel could then be used to drive a generator and the electricity would power the vehicle. That way you maximize the energy in the compressed air... you spin the flywheel at a constant speed except at startup.Absolutely. You spin your engine at its most efficient speed, and then use other technologies to couple that power to the wheels. Let's say this is done with a piston engine. Good idea; this is why hybrid cars are starting to come about. But if the engine is running entirely on compressed air, I'm not sure if the additional cost of a hybrid system will be worth the incremental savings in fuel costs. The marketplace will have to bear out whether the added weight and cost makes that feasible.
With a gasoline engine, the appeal, in particular, is that when a gas engine runs at its most efficient speed, it produces less emissions for the amount of mechanical power it is creating. It's not the gas mileage, though that's a great selling feature. And it simplifies engine design to meet a given emissions target for a vehicle. If the engine is running off compressed air, though, do you care? The efficiency and emissions questions are mostly going to come about at the compression stations that produce the "fuel" for these cars.
The wheel motors would also be the brakes scavenging some wasted power during stopping by acting as generators.Again, worth the cost, weight, decreased reliability penalty from added vehicle complexity? Probably not. Regenerative brakes are a great idea in electric cars and in hybrid cars (which are that way more for emissions reasons, rather than for gas mileage issues). In either an electric or a hybrid car, this is a very simple extension to the system that you've already implemented to power the vehicle. The cost and impact are minimal, the payoffs are good. But, I don't see them really being important enough to bother on air cars.
Yeah, guys, I agree with you completely. It's a great idea. I love it, it's the economy car of the future, but with one great reservation: compressed tanks. I've seen compressed air tanks go off, I've seen compressed acetylene cylinders go off, and I don't want to share the road with a fleet of the aging Toyota Tercels of the future, all equipped with thermally cycled, corroded and metal-fatigued compressed air tanks.
Job one every morning was to drain all the water out of the air tanks. You pull a cord which opens a valve and lets the air in the tank blow out the water that settles in the bottom. You wouldn't believe all the muck that is in the air that winds up in that water.<grin> A few years ago, I got my air brake license so that I could drive the company Hino around. (Ugh. Hated the Hino. Loved my TopKick.) This was in the Ottawa and Toronto areas in Canada. Toronto's climate is about the same as Detroit or Chicago's, but Ottawa makes a cold winter's day in Maine seem warm.
Evidenly, the moisture in the brake tanks collects, and will freeze into ice just with the drop in pressure when you apply your brakes hard and fast, let alone when the weather is really cold.
Since the average driver lets their car run out of fuel occasionally, or does minimal maintenance, or can drive for miles without noticing the low oil pressure light, do we want to trust them to add air tank deicer? What kinds of weird compressed air fitting leaks and failures are these things gonna develop when they're frozen up? This is scary.
If the tanks aren't drained for a few days they will spray out a grey goo that's just nasty.LOL.... I'm not perfect either. I have a compressor in my garage, and the bottom of the tank is a bitch to get at. Because I don't empty it as often as I should, I'm starting to get corrosion on the inside of the tank from the water just sitting there. I've been spraying air tool oil into the tank lately just to ensure that the corrosion doesn't get out of hand.
My point is that low maintenance will only be moved from the engine to the compressor (another high maintenance item) and the associated holding tanks.I'm only worried about the idiots with whom I have to share the road. The people who aren't smart enough to know that a tractor-trailer can't stop as fast as a car and therefore cut them off are oblivious to the laws of physics, and therefore to the basics of driving and vehicle maintenance. At least if a gas tank leaks, it has to be ignited before you have a problem. If a tank that is compressed hard enough that it powers your vehicle fails, you and your vehicle will be airborne.
In principle, this is a great way to store the energy required to operate a vehicle. In practice, this scares the shit out of me.
The following is parodied in response to a previous post that someone made about air tank ruptures:
OK, I want to know how many of you have ever seen the results of a gasoline explosion? Talk about cars blowing up like they do in the movies. GASOLINE at those kinds of pressures is DANGERIOUS. And they want gas stations? What are they going to have, big cans of gas out in the open? Oh yeah, I want huge amounts of combustible liquid underground, right in my neibourhood.Oh yes, gasoline is undeniably evil and dangerous as all hell to have around. But in my experience, even when it does get free, it's not *that* likely to catch fire. In other words, the only energy released when you gas tank leaks is the energy that was used to put the gasoline in the tank. It still retains its chemical energy. The more subtle dangers of leaked gasoline (ie. pollution) are less immediate in the case of a gasoline leak.
A tank of compressed air only provides energy as a function of the pressure at which it is stored relative to the pressure of the atmosphere to which it will be allowed to escape when its work is done. If your tank ruptures, you lose that stored energy. Period. And that stored energy will often cause the more rapid release of further stored energy. How? When the tank fissures, the force of the escaping air will help to push the sides of the crack apart the way a cushion of air suspends a hovercraft. A chain reaction ensues: as the hole gets bigger, the air releases more force as it passes through the hole, and therefore the hole continues to grow.
Naturally, when a cylinder of compressed gas fails, the results can be quite spectacular. Rarely are things this catastrophic with spilled liquid fuels.
I work for a marine electronics company. Many large marine engines are started either with a smaller engine, or with a large and sudden injection of compressed air into a cylinder, since a conventional starter motor wouldn't be practical at the sizes we're talking about. I was in the engine room of a fairly small tanker; the engine was a SEMT Pielstick, about 300L in displacement. The engine wasn't running, but they were preparing to start it, so they had the electric-powered compressors (which run off either diesel gensets or shore power) running to charge the starting tank. Then, a weld on the side of the tank failed.
While no one was killed, the results were catastrophic: the end of the tank, which was by that point charged to about 170PSI, was propelled across the engine room and actually managed to perforate a hull plate into a ballast tank. The hull plate was over 1" thick steel. Fortunately, the ship was loaded so the ballast tank was empty.
Given that this was in the engine room of an American-flagged tanker (*not* a Russian submarine!), and a well-maintained one at that, I'm not sure how I feel about sharing the road with a fleet of aging cars with aging compressed gas cylinders on board.
I've also seen a cast iron acetylene tank, uncapped without being secured, knocked over and with the regulator and valve broken off. Sure, someone was being careless; sadly, this sort of stuff happens. 3 square inches or so of leak, tank that weighs 75lbs, and is full of gas at a pressure of (let's guess, I don't know for sure) 130 PSI...
3 square inches x 130 pounds per square inch of force = 390 pounds of thrust. On the back of a tank that weighs about 75 lbs. For one thing, it's airborne. Secondly, it continues to accelerate until it either hits something or exhausts its supply of compressed gas. Did I mention that it was a cast iron cylinder?
Fortunately, it didn't catch fire. But it did take out a big piece of a cinderblock wall.
I think that's my problem. With gasoline, *if* it leaks, and *if* it gets ignited, you're in mortal peril.
But with compressed gases, *if* it leaks, you're in mortal peril.
You claim to be such an authority on fuels and engines, perhaps you can tell the PhD's at the auto companies how to do it.
<sigh> You know, you're my first-ever encounter with an omniscient being.
Please allow me to bow down to you.
As evidence of your clear understanding of *every field anyone ever discusses on /.*, allow me to suggest that readers take a look at this link.
I come to Slashdot because I enjoy a friendly and intelligent discourse with other technically-literate people. Apparently, I contribute well: I seem to have proven that one's collected karma is limited to 50.
I don't know everything. I don't even profess to know everything. However, I have worked in a variety of fields. I've repelled off the sides of running MAN B&W 40-foot-tall marine diesel engines to change sensors. I've also repelled off the face of the JumboTron at the SkyDome, changing trinilights.
In my hobbies, I do all sorts of things that would likely disturb you. At the moment, there are two car engines in my living room.
I am paid a handsome annual salary to design engine management systems for marine engines. And I don't mean little yachts, either. I have saved over $450,000 in diesel fuel costs this year alone for one of our bigger local customers, a great lakes shipping company that runs a fleet of live-bottom bulkers.
I am familiar with engine and fuel chemistry, theory of operation, practical operation, the electronics and computer systems that control them, and every environmental law in both Canada and the United States to which they must conform.
And yet, I clearly don't know as much about engine and fuel systems as you do; you're so savvy that you clearly have a more informed opinion on everything than I do.
Little fact of biology: if the human body didn't produce something to fit those receptors, we wouldn't have those receptors. Selection would stop removing the defective mutations and the unused receptor system would eventually become non-functional.Ah, yes. It's another field in which you are a self-proclaimed expert.
No doubt due to the fact that most Europeans pay more in extra taxes to their bloated, inefficient, bureaucratic governments for those same functions than Americans do via charity. This has the further benefit that Americans can tell a poorly-run charity to go to hell, and send their money elsewhere (or keep it); Europeans can't do that to their governments.Add political science to the list... (though, I *do* happen to agree with you on that point, Canada *does* follow the European mindset there)
and the Social Security system is one of our biggest fiscal time-bombs...and an economist... (though, again, I agree with you, though earlier in that paragraph, you called Gore repugnant; based on your enviro-wackiness, I'm not sure if you've figured out who to vote for yet.)
An aircraft can easily be 20% or more fuel by weight at takeoff. Suppose you can raise that to 30% for your electric aircraft, and the batteries hold 20 WH/pound; the net aircraft energy-to-weight is 6 WH/pound....and an aviation expert...
There's oxygen in the electrolyte (H2SO4), so the battery as a whole has something a bit closer to the elements of life.And a biochemist...
Bunch of misconceptions in this response. A 200 mAH cell does not have to be discharged at 200 mA or less. The press release said "in a 200mAh device, 9A in 10 seconds" (whatever that means). Nothing in the press release mentioned how big this 200 mAH cell is, how much it weighs, or the voltage. That 200 mAH cell might be the size of the end of your pinky finger, in which case a decent-sized battery would be umpteen amp-hours....and an electrical engineer...
this implies a peak power output of 450 KW from a 10 KWH battery pack. This is equivalent to about 600 horsepower. With the proper power electronics and motors, an electric car with these batteries could eat Corvettes for breakfast. Taking a full charge in 5 minutes means that regenerative braking is a lot easier, and so is quick charging....and an automotive engineer.
You are truly omniscient. I wish I was as intelligent and universally-informed as you are.
You must carry your Bachelor of Science in [insert name of irrelevant field chosen only by career students] from [insert name of school with low expectations] with great pride to your wonderful job as [insert menial janitorial or food service position] at [insert name of pretentious but passe hotel].
(I'll try to get to your other post tomorrow; I had no time last night.)Thanks, but don't bother. My self-mandated daily act of charity will not be tolerating you.
As a side note... remember that the article (which you obviously did not read) created a lamp using WHITE LEDs. Not Red, Green, and Blue, but WHITE, because the RGB PN junctions are inside the LED itself.
Actually, I did read it. These are *not* white LEDs, which actually have a phosphorous coating on a blue LED die. These are RGB LEDs.
They were encased in T-1 3/4 cases with 4 pins (as opposed to the usual two) sticking out. A T-1 3/4 is approximately 1/4" in diameter. (Not close enough for drilling panels, but close enough for napkin calculations like these.) 800x600 in T-1 3/4 LEDs (of any color, RGB, or white) would be 200 inches wide by 150 inches tall.
Do the math if you wanted to build that using discrete red, green and blue LEDs....
Each one costs about $20. Power usage is rated at 120mw maximum, and unless you're watching a pure white screen you will never use that much for every LED, so let's assume 1/2 that power under normal operating circumstancesUntil you watch MTV and someone does put up a completely white screen. You cannot count on that. And those LEDs are not rated to full power for all three junctions continuously.
You wouldn't necessarily have to have all the LEDs on all the time though. You could strobe the LEDs at 60Hz and persistence of vision would give the impression of a nice stable image. This could reduce the cost of electricity (and also the amount of heat generated) by a huge factor.
True, yes, and I did mention the technique of multiplexing display elements. It's easily done, and it yields terrific results. But, anything that you would be displaying on a system like that would be multiplexed anyway - VGA images? TV pictures? They're all scanned, one line at a time. Unless you were to build the circuitry to hold that in video RAM of some sort rather than just building a passive monitor, it would remain that way.
And you needn't solder the LEDs by hand, or solder them at all. You could probably (with some practice) manufacture a monolithic array of LEDS, with the majority of interconnects already done.Sure. Then you get into the same issues of lot-to-lot and even diode-to-diode inconsistencies. This is how newer large electronic billboards and stuff are already being done. Notice their patchy color purity?
You could also reduce the size of each LED element (how big does a pn junction need to be?) in the array. Just a thought.I don't know how big the PN junction has to be to produce light, but as far as I know, it's no bigger than any other PN junction - the critical issue with them becomes the chemicals doped. (Ie. what makes a P type region a P-type region, what makes N type N-type, etc.)
But this would be no more relevant than it is in, let's say, the cache on an Athlon, which has way more PN junctions in a tiny area than this whole gargantuan display would have.
The problem is that we're used to the cooling issues surrounding very large highly-integrated CMOS logic. Remember, too, that the perfect CMOS gate has an infinite input impedance and therefore the stage before it needs no current to drive it and therefore no heat can be produced... but we all know that's not true.
Now, as if that weren't bad enough, an LED is *not* a high impedance device like CMOS, which relies only on the presence of a charge to operate. LEDs are current-operated devices. They won't light up at all until you're passing more than their threshold current through them. Once they're lit, they operate fairly linearly from barely on to their absolute limits - the more power they dissipate, the more brightly they light.
As far as I know - and I'm not a semiconductor physicist - the minimum threshold current is what it takes to actually break down the PN junction and make current flow in forward-biased mode. On most LEDs, that's an energy of about 0.5mA at 1.2-1.6V (or 0.0006W), but it seems to depend more on the LED's designed wavelength (and therefore PN doping) than its junction size or rated brightness. 0.0006W per LED across a 640x480 display is still an imperceptibly black screen, by the way. And one that's taking almost 200W for that blackness. If this is a small display, you have to get rid of that (approx) 200W of waste heat just at idle.
I doubt that the cache on an Athlon has to get rid of 200W of waste heat at idle, and yet they're fairly well heatsinked...
You forgot one:
Indeed I did, thank you.
Digital Light Projector - brand name for a technology developed by TI. Basically, you have a chip with an array of micro-mirrors that you use to deflect light from a projector. These are a lot brighter than LCD displays.Yeah; I've heard of them, but I've never actually seen one. It sounds like it takes the best of the Hughes/JVC (xenon bulb for the main projection), arrayed video device like an LCD display (oh well, can't be perfect), and adds to that the fact that the display element neither creates the light (like a CRT projector), nor does it have to transmit it (like an LCD projector). It strikes me that the fact that the light doesn't actually pass through the imaging element would save it from a lot of heating. Even if it does heat up, since it's reflective, you could spackle a huge heatsink or even a liquid cooling system to the back of the reflective imaging device, if you need to pass a lot of light across it. This is an exciting projector.
They were kind of pricey ($50k), but are starting to make inroads in the portable presentation projector market.$50k is about what a new VPH-1270 was going for, last time I was involved with them. (Yeah, I'm sure they've been discontinued now.) So, that sort of money doesn't seem to be too badly out of line. I assume it's a single imaging system, too, meaning that you wouldn't have to do convergence of the individual colors.
Last time this came up, I found some models for $9k-$5k.It sounds to me like these things are basically in competition with the LCD projectors, but are brighter because the imaging device would be less concerned with heating. I'd expect they'll still have many of the same resolution problems as an LCD display (ie. ever try to run 640x480 on your 800x600 notebook screen?), but with a few advantages that will make them take over. Eventually. There's inertia to overcome.
It's stuff like this that reminds me why I've always loved Texas Instruments.
While I have some older mopar vehicles that run on gasoline I would not mind running them off moonshine.
Absolutely. You would probably have to do a small retrofit (fuel pump diaphrams, fuel hoses, carburetor floats, timing adjustments) if they're pre-1990 models. Otherwise, it's no big deal.
On the other hand I would be open to other alternatives such as electric.My issues with electric cars are as follows:
Toxic chemical hazard, especially in accidents. (I don't wanna get third-degree chemical burns to my face because of a fender-bender; any electric vehicle is likely to carry a lot more battery electrolyte than a modern car carries gasoline.)
Electrical Infrastructure. Do we really have the electrical capacity to charge these things? No. Do we want to build more coal plants to recharge them? No. Nuclear? No.
Temperature Issues. I live in a northern climate. Batteries lose capacity in cold weather. At least once an internal combustion engine is running in the cold, it regulates itself to an efficient temperature. Are we going to waste precious battery power to run electric battery blankets when we're driving electric cars through subarctic cold snaps?
But it would seem to be better to goto alcohol for legacy vehicle that are on the road now. Would that not have a better effect in the short term than slowly selling electric vehicles.
Absolutely. In fact, my 1976 Dodge Ram has an aftermarket fuel pump. The fuel lines and fittings are all alcohol-safe. And the carburetor float is made of stamped and soldered brass. My truck *loves* running on alcohol; with minor timing and mixture tweaks it runs less than 2 PPM unburnt HC out the exhaust when running 10% methanol. That's impressive, since the motor has never been rebuilt, has over 130,000 miles on it, and never came with catalytic converters.
Henry Ford himself wanted to use alcohol. Would help farmers. Of course there are some alcohol in the vehical laws that might have to be considered. Personally I will go the alcohol way until they have other alternatives that can be implemeted now at a good cost.Alcohol is, at the moment, the only alternative fuel that has any prospect of large-scale viability. Here in Toronto, Canada, it's fairly well available; most gasoline has at least 3% ethanol in the mix, though there are some that advertise more. But in the Ottawa area, there are gas stations that sell 10% methanol, and that blend seems to give a good burn with a little tweaking. A vehicle with a properly-running EFI system should cope with this with no problem, since the oxygen sensor and the knock detector will recalibrate the timing and the fuel/air mixture on the fly in ways that my truck cannot.
I've also run the truck on 75% methanol, which caused issues because I didn't actually set the ignition timing and carburetor jetting appropriately. But rest assured, that'd be quite a nice replacement for pure gasoline, and on most vehicles, the retrofit would be minimal. (Most EFI engines, especially more recent ones, are even designed to cope specifically with this.) The bigger issue is one of supply, since not enough is produced now to do that.
Some good burn-in software... continuously compile your linux kernel, that will keep your CPU pretty busy, and provide errors if something doesn't work.
That, and go to SETI@Home's website.
Their Top 100 list suggests that maybe Sun, Silicon Graphics, Compaq, Intel, IBM, Apple and HP all use SETI at Home for burn-in...
If the CPU screws up, it's unlikely to create a data unit that gets passed back to SETI and screws up their project; it's more likely that the computer will just spit out a kernel panic or stop responding or something. If the system is otherwise stable, that should be all the error message you need.
BTW, burn-in is used by builders to prevent shipping D.O.A. systems to customers. As far as I've ever known in all my years with electronics, an extended run won't make any physical changes to the ICs that would make it more reliable. If anything, the heat of being overclocked and run 24/7 is likely to upset the metallurgy of solder joints and the doping of semiconductors more than anything else...
Bottom line is that you're *proving* that it's reliable, not *making* it reliable.
If they can have a few of these in a "can" to make a multicolor spotlight, what would be the chances of using 3 of these just like the 3 individual colored lamps used in front projection TV's? Would it be cost effective if it could be done?
No. The issues again are resolution, the physical size of the LEDs, the current required t feed them, and the cost of the LEDs and their driver logic.
Considering first off that an LCD display is basically a large integrated circuit, if LEDs were made as large ICs like this, it would be possible. But an LCD pixel really uses no current: like CMOS logic, it's a potential-operated high-impedance device. There's actually very little energy used; it just passes light from the backlight selectively. However, an LED matrix panel like you'd need for this would still be a current-operated device. The device would generate its own light - and heat. While an LED is a very efficient way to make light, they need a certain threshold current to be useable. This threshold current is sufficient that the display would guzzle huge amounts of power.
There are ways to multiplex the display to get around that, but by the time an LED array is big enough in resolution to compete with today's technologies, the driver circuits are incredibly large, with huge component counts. While CRT drive circuits are unweildy (flyback, deflection, cathode drives and stuff), they're nothing compared to what this thing would require. Sure, the LED matrix wouldn't need a 30kV power supply to drive an accelerating anode (like an CRT does). Instead, the LED matrix would require drive circuits that were capable of supporting 307,200 LEDs. And that's for a paltry 640x480 display in only one color. You'd need 921,600 LED junctions for 640x480 with RGB.
The only way it would be practical to build this would be a large LED matrix as a single array. Production yield rates, current requirements and cooling are the issues that I see with that. If you think a PIII Xeon is a pig, wait 'til you see a single chip that big.
Alternate video projection technologies are far more refined:
CRT projectors (like Sony's venerable VPH-1040 and 1270, Zenith/Aquastar, some Barco models) offer excellent resolution, good brightness and are flexible to a wide variety of different input signals. Downside: cost, size, limited lifespan of expensive projection CRTs, limited portability due to need to adjust convergence with each time they're moved relative to the screen.
LCD projectors (most of the little table-top projectors being offered in computer magazines) offer portability because of small size and weight, as well as the fact that they're no tougher to set up than a slide projector. Disadvantages: limited resolution, don't adapt very well to being used at varying resolutions, limited brightness due to technological limits on how hot you can make an LCD sheet, uses conventional projector bulb which usually fails at the worst possible time.
Finally, the Hughes/JVC Image Light Amplifier video projectors. These things are nuts. They combine the best features of a CRT projector with more conventional projection technology. They were developed for NASA to use at Mission Control in the 1960s, and have been continually refined ever since. Can display huge images visible in full sunlight. Very flexible as to resolution of the incoming image. Problems: cost over $500,000. The last one I set up took a 240V 200A power drop. Has a large xenon projector light that takes 20 minutes to warm up, relies on expensive and limited-life projection CRTs to draw an image onto special LCD "image light amplifiers". Fragile optics to split light from xenon projector bulb, pass it through three ILAs which serve as the screens for the projection CRTs, filter it into primary colors and then shoot it out three separate lenses to the screen. Weighs over 600 lbs. Requires convergence and purity adjustments to align it to the screen. Causes severe eye damage if you accidentally look into any one of the lenses. Suitable only for long-term installation in very large facilities.
Even so, to put the LED projector into perspective, the Hughes/JVC projector is far better adapted to your living room.
Biggest I've ever had in my living room was a Sony VPH-1272. And that was a gorgeous floor-to-ceiling movie. Too bad it was before the DVD came out, and I had to cope with VHS.
Um, that shouldn't make any difference, should it? The heat you feel from a spotlight is down to all the electromatic waves [be it visible light/ir/etc] hitting you and transferring energy. Provided the LED lamp is of the same intenisty then it shoulkd be just as warm
No, it's not the light that makes you feel warm. It's the radiant heat that gets thrown off the bulb that makes you feel warm. Of couse, the radiant heat is electromagnetic energy - IR at that - but the difference is that a more efficient lighting technology throws off less IR and more visible light.
Compare a fluorescent desk light with an incandescent desk light. They may both put out the same amount of light, but the incandescent will warm the stuff around it more (since it wastes more energy as IR, surface temperature and convective heat).