Actually, one of the complaints about standard metal-belt CVT's was they couldn't handle more than the output of the Honda Civic HX coupe (I drive one myself and believe me, the acceleration feel is very different than that of regular automatic transmissions because you don't feel the engine changing RPM's as the car accelerates).
However, Audi has overcome this problem with their Multitronic system, which uses a heavy-duty drive-chain belt instead of a metal-link belt. This means the Audi CVT can withstand up to 230 bhp easily; in fact, Multitronic is standard on front-wheel drive US-market Audi A4's fitted with the 1.8-liter L4 turbocharged engine and the 3.0-liter V6 engine.
AMD's speed rating MUCH more realistic
on
AthlonXP Released
·
· Score: 2
tshak,
I think the thing that really hurt Cyrix was the fact while the 6x86 CPU's looked good in performance on standard business office applications, they were downright horrible on any application that required heavy FPU use such as illustration and CAD programs and many games.
Fortunately, this is NOT the case for AMD's new Athlon XP CPU's. Note what I said in another posting on this message thread: the Athlon XP's superb FPU unit allows the 1800+ version to easily out-perform the Pentium 4 on most benchmark tests with the exception of those that a biased towards the memory access method used on the Pentium 4 and also apps that take full advantage of SSE2 instructions (those are still not yet very common).
Good CPU in spite of AMD marketing
on
AthlonXP Released
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I think in spite of AMD's awkward marketing plan for the Athlon XP CPU's, you have to admit they are impressively fast.
Both Anandtech and Tom's Hardware show the Athlon XP 1800+ to have pure-CPU performance that exceeds that for the Pentium 4 2,000 MHz CPU (with the exception of any program that takes full advantage of SSE2 instructions, which are still quite rare). This is a tribute to the fact that the Athlon CPU core itself is very fast, particularly the FPU unit.
Once people realize the Athlon XP's excellent performance I think the new CPU will be a good seller.
Re:Palm is just not exciting anymore
on
Pocket PC 2002
·
· Score: 2
I think essentially Palm PDA's have not much expanded beyond its glorified DayTimer replacement status.
The color display of the latest Palm and Handspring devices don't compare well against Pocket PC devices, sad to say.
Why lug around a fairly large tank of propellents with all its associated weight penalties and possible risk that restarting the rocket motor could damage the spacecraft? I believe that a quite plausible theory why the 1993 Mars Observer disappeared was that when they tried to restart the onboard rockets to slow the spacecraft down there was a propellent explosion that may have destroyed the spacecraft.
Besides, the Mars Global Surveyor showed that aerobraking can be done safely.
If you've read the book Skunk Works (of which the late Ben Rich--who headed Lockheed's Skunk Works for many years--was the co-author), he mentioned that when Lockheed looked at using liquid hydrogen as fuel for a Mach 2.5 spyplane (code named Suntan) he got a lot of extreme concerns from scientists who have dealt with LH2. In fact he mentioned a university lab that had done some research on LH2 and the lab sported small craters in the walls from LH2 explosions. The chapter of that book that dealt with the Suntan project was called Blowing Up Burbank, which was a pretty apt description given that Lockheed had enough LH2 at Burbank Airport that if there was an explosion caused by the LH2 igniting, it would have destroyed most of the Lockheed factory there and then some.
Unfortunately, I think people forget that hydrogen-fuelled jet airliners would likely use liquid hydrogen as its fuel.
Unlike hydrogen gas (which burns relatively safely), liquid hydrogen when it ignites will do it with a force that makes a dynamite explosion seem like a minor event. If the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center were fuelled by liquid hydrogen, the initial fuel explosion would have so much kinetic force that the building would have collapsed right there and then.
If I remember from the Challenger explosion, when the solid rocket booster leak ignited the fuel in the external fuel tank the force of the explosion was equivalent to a 1 kT tactical nuclear warhead. That's why liquid hydrogen must be handled with extreme care.
Even though it was a leak from the solid rocket boosters that caused the catastrophic ignition of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in the external fuel tank during the launch of Challenger in 1986 (as pointed out by others), I do understand the extreme dangers of LH2. I have read that when the Challenger's external tank exploded it did it with the force of a 1 kT tactical nuclear warhead.
In fact, while hydrogen gas burns with a benign-like invisible flame that goes upward, LH2 will ignite with a force that makes TNT seem like a minor incident. That's why when Lockheed looked at building a LH2-fuelled Mach 2.5 spyplane in the late 1950's EVERYBODY worried that a LH2 fuel explosion would flatten everything in the equivalent of a couple a city blocks.
Indeed, if those hijacked planes that crashed into the World Trade Center was fuelled by LH2, the kinetic force of the explosion from the LH2 igniting would be so strong that the towers would probably have collapsed almost immediately.
While using these tiny fuel cells may be great to extend battery life of cellphones, you can forget about bringing such a thing onto an airplane (for obvious security reasons).
Even the equivalent of the volume of ink in most ballpoint pens of methane is enough to cause quite a lot of damage inside the plane, especially inside a pressurized fuselage at altitude.
Actually, what caused the Hindenberg to burn and crash was the fact that the doping compound for the canvas covering of the airship was a combination of nitrocellulose and aluminum powder.
Guess what folks: these are the prime ingredients for solid rocket fuel. It was only good fortunate that a NASA scientist was able to get a sample of the Hindenberg's canvas covering that survived, and spectral analysis showed these two ingredients. Small wonder why when a small patch of that surviving canvas covering was ignited it burned very violently.
In short, the Hindenberg was a flying bomb waiting to happen.
I think everyone is trying to go about solving this problem the hard way.
Remember the full-body scanning systems that are now coming into use? If they can make it so you can scan a person in one second, it would immediately tell you everything on the person right down to what type of spare change being carried. Similar technology could make it possible to scan carry-on bags to find anything against a known database of contraband including small knives, ceramic knives, nail files, nail clippers, etc. If there is something hidden behind a bag that the scanner can't see the carry-on bag can be automatically flagged for closer visual inspection.
Actually, facial biometrics work best if the person can be more or less in one position for a good period of time.
A good example of this is the system used by casino resorts across the USA to catch known casino cheaters. Because a suspected cheater usually has to stay in one position to play blackjack, slots, crap tables, baccarat tables, etc., it makes it much easier to get a good facial shot for biometric comparison to a database of known casino cheaters.
Looking up XM's channel listings, I could understand your concerns, but their channel selection is way superior to what is available on land-based radio stations in even large metropolitan markets.
XM could literally save the Classical and some Oldies formats.
I think everyone is seriously missing the point of XM satellite radio.
The problem with today's music radio stations is that they've been so market-researched to death that the only formats I hear commonly are Adult Contemporary, Country & Western, Hip-Hop and some Heavy Metal. They've essentially wiped out Classical, many ethnic formats, Easy Listening, and Jazz formats, just for starters.
The potential for XM is enormous: a lot of music formats we used to hear widely and/or niche format music heard only regionally can now get national distribution again. Imagine being able to listen to techno and dance music from Europe and Japan (great music few people in the USA hear)--XM could provide an outlet for that soon.
I think there are a couple of things that could favor the US in its fight against bin Laden's forces.
First, we have the ability to monitor all ground movements of bin Laden's fighters around the clock using a combination of Predator UAV's, U-2's fitted with real-time satellite links and the JSTARS plane. That means we have real-time monitoring, and bin Laden's forces will be extremely vulnerable to attack above ground even if they move at night or bad weather.
Second, we can use highly-mobile special forces such as the Rangers, airborne divisions, and SEALS that can operate in very small teams and deliver a very deadly punch. This means bin Laden's forces will have almost nothing to shoot at in terms of return fire. People forget that later in the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan they used Spetznaz special forces with deadly efficiency against the Afghan fighters.
Finally, even caves may not be the best place to hide. The US has the GBU-28, a guided bomb powerful enough to collapse many cave systems (think of it as the modern equivalent to the British Tallboy bomb of the 1940's).
If you read my posting here, it will be a MAJOR challenge to make alcoholic beverages in the microgravity of Earth orbit, given that most alcoholic beverages by nature requires gravity to control the fermenting process.
We'll have to completely reinvent the fermenting process by using a totally new type of yeast, for starters. Who knows how will we try to make a hard liquor like Scotch, vodka, sake or Japanese shochu in space.
Brewing will be tough in microgravity
on
Beer In Space
·
· Score: 2
Folks,
I think it's going to be one heck of a challenge to make alcoholic beverages in the microgravity environment of space.
The reason is simple: just about every alcoholic beverage requires the use of gravity to control the fermenting process. There will be no such thing as top-fermented (British-style) beer or bottom-fermented (Central European-style) beer, for starters.
I wouldn't be surprised that a major Germany brewery or a British brewery will sponsor a major test of how beer brews in space that will be run on the Columbus module on the International Space Station.
Actually, Windows XP will run quite well on the new Xeon CPU's.
Remember, because Windows XP uses the Windows 2000 code base, it will better take advantage of the features of the Xeon CPU than Windows 95/98/ME, which is more optimized for Pentium II/III/Celeron CPU's.
I think the suggestion of building what the customer wants by stringing together a bunch of small utilities is the equivalent of trying to cook a meal from scratch ingredients--way too many people don't have the knowledge or experience to do it.
What something like Office XP does is integrate all the tools you need so it is available easily. Besides, given Microsoft's excellent Usability Lab, the whole program has a consistent interface, which makes learning the program that much easier.
Re:Poll: Rebuild Trade Center or Not?
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 2
The big question? Do we rebuild it?
The answer is a loud and emphatic YES.
But this time build it as a 170-story twin tower with post-Modernest design that has Art Deco touches. And make sure the buildings' structural integrity holds even if a 747-400 directly hits the towers fully-loaded with Jet A fuel.
Building a memorial park in place of the destroyed World Trade Center towers is defeatism, IMHO.
WE MAY BE TALKING 50,000 DEAD! That is without doubt an act of war.
I know I'll get modded way down for this, but I will not be surprised if our nuclear forces are now at DEFCON 2 alert, and instructions to target every terrorist-sponsoring state in the Middle East are already sent to our nuclear forces in preparation for a truly massive retaliatory attack. We may be kissing Damascus, Tehran, Baghdad, Tripoli, Khartoom and Kabul goodbye by the end of this week.:-(
Remember, Xbox sports a 10/100Base-T Ethernet adaptor and support for 480p/720p/1080i component video. It doesn't take much to figure out this could become the basis of a very nice home entertainment device if you combine the functions of WebTV and Ultimate TV into such a device.
If Microsoft markets it right it could become a hot seller for homes with monitors and projection TV's that support 480p/720p/1080i component video inputs.
I never saw a Taiwanese mouse pointer that had a scroll wheel on it until after Microsoft introduced them on the Intellimouse around 1995.
Yes, I am aware of optical mouse pointers (and indeed used a Mouse Systems mouse that required a special reflective surface mouse pad way back in 1988), but the arrival of Intellimouse Explorer a few years ago was a big breakthrough, especially you can use most surfaces for the mouse pointer.
By the way, it was actually Microsoft that kicked off the revolution in more ergonomic mouse pointer designs. Remember the famous Dove bar Microsoft Mouse from the late 1980's? That mouse forced Logitech to completely redesign their mouse pointers from a squarish box to the much more ergonomic Mouseman designs that better fit your hand. What's interesting is that Logitech's current First Mouse+, First Mouse+ Optical and iFeel Mouse are probably among the most comfortable mouse pointers to use (Logitech's current Mouseman-series mice are quite large and a bit unwieldy).
I remember using a Mouse Systems optical mouse that did require a reflective mousepad way back in 1988. That was not the most convenient thing to be sure.
The Intellimouse Explorer was one of the earliest mouse pointers that had an optical sensor that works on most surfaces--Logitech didn't come out with theirs until at least one year later.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, one of the complaints about standard metal-belt CVT's was they couldn't handle more than the output of the Honda Civic HX coupe (I drive one myself and believe me, the acceleration feel is very different than that of regular automatic transmissions because you don't feel the engine changing RPM's as the car accelerates).
However, Audi has overcome this problem with their Multitronic system, which uses a heavy-duty drive-chain belt instead of a metal-link belt. This means the Audi CVT can withstand up to 230 bhp easily; in fact, Multitronic is standard on front-wheel drive US-market Audi A4's fitted with the 1.8-liter L4 turbocharged engine and the 3.0-liter V6 engine.
tshak,
I think the thing that really hurt Cyrix was the fact while the 6x86 CPU's looked good in performance on standard business office applications, they were downright horrible on any application that required heavy FPU use such as illustration and CAD programs and many games.
Fortunately, this is NOT the case for AMD's new Athlon XP CPU's. Note what I said in another posting on this message thread: the Athlon XP's superb FPU unit allows the 1800+ version to easily out-perform the Pentium 4 on most benchmark tests with the exception of those that a biased towards the memory access method used on the Pentium 4 and also apps that take full advantage of SSE2 instructions (those are still not yet very common).
I think in spite of AMD's awkward marketing plan for the Athlon XP CPU's, you have to admit they are impressively fast.
Both Anandtech and Tom's Hardware show the Athlon XP 1800+ to have pure-CPU performance that exceeds that for the Pentium 4 2,000 MHz CPU (with the exception of any program that takes full advantage of SSE2 instructions, which are still quite rare). This is a tribute to the fact that the Athlon CPU core itself is very fast, particularly the FPU unit.
Once people realize the Athlon XP's excellent performance I think the new CPU will be a good seller.
I think essentially Palm PDA's have not much expanded beyond its glorified DayTimer replacement status.
The color display of the latest Palm and Handspring devices don't compare well against Pocket PC devices, sad to say.
That is correct!
Why lug around a fairly large tank of propellents with all its associated weight penalties and possible risk that restarting the rocket motor could damage the spacecraft? I believe that a quite plausible theory why the 1993 Mars Observer disappeared was that when they tried to restart the onboard rockets to slow the spacecraft down there was a propellent explosion that may have destroyed the spacecraft.
Besides, the Mars Global Surveyor showed that aerobraking can be done safely.
If you've read the book Skunk Works (of which the late Ben Rich--who headed Lockheed's Skunk Works for many years--was the co-author), he mentioned that when Lockheed looked at using liquid hydrogen as fuel for a Mach 2.5 spyplane (code named Suntan) he got a lot of extreme concerns from scientists who have dealt with LH2. In fact he mentioned a university lab that had done some research on LH2 and the lab sported small craters in the walls from LH2 explosions. The chapter of that book that dealt with the Suntan project was called Blowing Up Burbank, which was a pretty apt description given that Lockheed had enough LH2 at Burbank Airport that if there was an explosion caused by the LH2 igniting, it would have destroyed most of the Lockheed factory there and then some.
Unfortunately, I think people forget that hydrogen-fuelled jet airliners would likely use liquid hydrogen as its fuel.
Unlike hydrogen gas (which burns relatively safely), liquid hydrogen when it ignites will do it with a force that makes a dynamite explosion seem like a minor event. If the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center were fuelled by liquid hydrogen, the initial fuel explosion would have so much kinetic force that the building would have collapsed right there and then.
If I remember from the Challenger explosion, when the solid rocket booster leak ignited the fuel in the external fuel tank the force of the explosion was equivalent to a 1 kT tactical nuclear warhead. That's why liquid hydrogen must be handled with extreme care.
Even though it was a leak from the solid rocket boosters that caused the catastrophic ignition of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in the external fuel tank during the launch of Challenger in 1986 (as pointed out by others), I do understand the extreme dangers of LH2. I have read that when the Challenger's external tank exploded it did it with the force of a 1 kT tactical nuclear warhead.
In fact, while hydrogen gas burns with a benign-like invisible flame that goes upward, LH2 will ignite with a force that makes TNT seem like a minor incident. That's why when Lockheed looked at building a LH2-fuelled Mach 2.5 spyplane in the late 1950's EVERYBODY worried that a LH2 fuel explosion would flatten everything in the equivalent of a couple a city blocks.
Indeed, if those hijacked planes that crashed into the World Trade Center was fuelled by LH2, the kinetic force of the explosion from the LH2 igniting would be so strong that the towers would probably have collapsed almost immediately.
Mind you, if I smoked I'll dump my lighter in the checked luggage. Especially now the majority of international flights don't allow smoking anyway.
Folks,
While using these tiny fuel cells may be great to extend battery life of cellphones, you can forget about bringing such a thing onto an airplane (for obvious security reasons).
Even the equivalent of the volume of ink in most ballpoint pens of methane is enough to cause quite a lot of damage inside the plane, especially inside a pressurized fuselage at altitude.
Walter,
Actually, what caused the Hindenberg to burn and crash was the fact that the doping compound for the canvas covering of the airship was a combination of nitrocellulose and aluminum powder.
Guess what folks: these are the prime ingredients for solid rocket fuel. It was only good fortunate that a NASA scientist was able to get a sample of the Hindenberg's canvas covering that survived, and spectral analysis showed these two ingredients. Small wonder why when a small patch of that surviving canvas covering was ignited it burned very violently.
In short, the Hindenberg was a flying bomb waiting to happen.
I think everyone is trying to go about solving this problem the hard way.
Remember the full-body scanning systems that are now coming into use? If they can make it so you can scan a person in one second, it would immediately tell you everything on the person right down to what type of spare change being carried. Similar technology could make it possible to scan carry-on bags to find anything against a known database of contraband including small knives, ceramic knives, nail files, nail clippers, etc. If there is something hidden behind a bag that the scanner can't see the carry-on bag can be automatically flagged for closer visual inspection.
Actually, facial biometrics work best if the person can be more or less in one position for a good period of time.
A good example of this is the system used by casino resorts across the USA to catch known casino cheaters. Because a suspected cheater usually has to stay in one position to play blackjack, slots, crap tables, baccarat tables, etc., it makes it much easier to get a good facial shot for biometric comparison to a database of known casino cheaters.
Looking up XM's channel listings, I could understand your concerns, but their channel selection is way superior to what is available on land-based radio stations in even large metropolitan markets.
XM could literally save the Classical and some Oldies formats.
I think everyone is seriously missing the point of XM satellite radio.
The problem with today's music radio stations is that they've been so market-researched to death that the only formats I hear commonly are Adult Contemporary, Country & Western, Hip-Hop and some Heavy Metal. They've essentially wiped out Classical, many ethnic formats, Easy Listening, and Jazz formats, just for starters.
The potential for XM is enormous: a lot of music formats we used to hear widely and/or niche format music heard only regionally can now get national distribution again. Imagine being able to listen to techno and dance music from Europe and Japan (great music few people in the USA hear)--XM could provide an outlet for that soon.
I think there are a couple of things that could favor the US in its fight against bin Laden's forces.
First, we have the ability to monitor all ground movements of bin Laden's fighters around the clock using a combination of Predator UAV's, U-2's fitted with real-time satellite links and the JSTARS plane. That means we have real-time monitoring, and bin Laden's forces will be extremely vulnerable to attack above ground even if they move at night or bad weather.
Second, we can use highly-mobile special forces such as the Rangers, airborne divisions, and SEALS that can operate in very small teams and deliver a very deadly punch. This means bin Laden's forces will have almost nothing to shoot at in terms of return fire. People forget that later in the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan they used Spetznaz special forces with deadly efficiency against the Afghan fighters.
Finally, even caves may not be the best place to hide. The US has the GBU-28, a guided bomb powerful enough to collapse many cave systems (think of it as the modern equivalent to the British Tallboy bomb of the 1940's).
If you read my posting here, it will be a MAJOR challenge to make alcoholic beverages in the microgravity of Earth orbit, given that most alcoholic beverages by nature requires gravity to control the fermenting process.
We'll have to completely reinvent the fermenting process by using a totally new type of yeast, for starters. Who knows how will we try to make a hard liquor like Scotch, vodka, sake or Japanese shochu in space.
Folks,
I think it's going to be one heck of a challenge to make alcoholic beverages in the microgravity environment of space.
The reason is simple: just about every alcoholic beverage requires the use of gravity to control the fermenting process. There will be no such thing as top-fermented (British-style) beer or bottom-fermented (Central European-style) beer, for starters.
I wouldn't be surprised that a major Germany brewery or a British brewery will sponsor a major test of how beer brews in space that will be run on the Columbus module on the International Space Station.
Actually, Windows XP will run quite well on the new Xeon CPU's.
Remember, because Windows XP uses the Windows 2000 code base, it will better take advantage of the features of the Xeon CPU than Windows 95/98/ME, which is more optimized for Pentium II/III/Celeron CPU's.
AMEN.
I think the suggestion of building what the customer wants by stringing together a bunch of small utilities is the equivalent of trying to cook a meal from scratch ingredients--way too many people don't have the knowledge or experience to do it.
What something like Office XP does is integrate all the tools you need so it is available easily. Besides, given Microsoft's excellent Usability Lab, the whole program has a consistent interface, which makes learning the program that much easier.
The big question? Do we rebuild it?
The answer is a loud and emphatic YES.
But this time build it as a 170-story twin tower with post-Modernest design that has Art Deco touches. And make sure the buildings' structural integrity holds even if a 747-400 directly hits the towers fully-loaded with Jet A fuel.
Building a memorial park in place of the destroyed World Trade Center towers is defeatism, IMHO.
Folks,
:-(
This is way more than an act of terrorism.
WE MAY BE TALKING 50,000 DEAD! That is without doubt an act of war.
I know I'll get modded way down for this, but I will not be surprised if our nuclear forces are now at DEFCON 2 alert, and instructions to target every terrorist-sponsoring state in the Middle East are already sent to our nuclear forces in preparation for a truly massive retaliatory attack. We may be kissing Damascus, Tehran, Baghdad, Tripoli, Khartoom and Kabul goodbye by the end of this week.
Think about it.
Remember, Xbox sports a 10/100Base-T Ethernet adaptor and support for 480p/720p/1080i component video. It doesn't take much to figure out this could become the basis of a very nice home entertainment device if you combine the functions of WebTV and Ultimate TV into such a device.
If Microsoft markets it right it could become a hot seller for homes with monitors and projection TV's that support 480p/720p/1080i component video inputs.
I never saw a Taiwanese mouse pointer that had a scroll wheel on it until after Microsoft introduced them on the Intellimouse around 1995.
Yes, I am aware of optical mouse pointers (and indeed used a Mouse Systems mouse that required a special reflective surface mouse pad way back in 1988), but the arrival of Intellimouse Explorer a few years ago was a big breakthrough, especially you can use most surfaces for the mouse pointer.
By the way, it was actually Microsoft that kicked off the revolution in more ergonomic mouse pointer designs. Remember the famous Dove bar Microsoft Mouse from the late 1980's? That mouse forced Logitech to completely redesign their mouse pointers from a squarish box to the much more ergonomic Mouseman designs that better fit your hand. What's interesting is that Logitech's current First Mouse+, First Mouse+ Optical and iFeel Mouse are probably among the most comfortable mouse pointers to use (Logitech's current Mouseman-series mice are quite large and a bit unwieldy).
I remember using a Mouse Systems optical mouse that did require a reflective mousepad way back in 1988. That was not the most convenient thing to be sure.
The Intellimouse Explorer was one of the earliest mouse pointers that had an optical sensor that works on most surfaces--Logitech didn't come out with theirs until at least one year later.