The World != USA In the rest of the world, EOLAS wouldn't have a cat in hells chance, ANY publication of an idea in Europe or Japan BEFORE filing ( the only other markets that matter, probably) AUTOMATICALLY invalidates the patent.
I actually built a commericial laser tag system in the early 1990s with a lot of the ideas in your post. We used early laser diodes (670nm) and had sensors on the gun and on jackets covering the front and back of the players. The system couldn't use RF in those days, so the scores, and who had shot who were downloaded through a neat beam modulation scheme, a PC displayed the rankings of all the players in the game.
Unfortunately the people we developed it for were the kind of folks that might carry violin cases and made us an offer we couldn't refuse to go away and abandon the system when it failed to make them as much money as they had planned. We were pressured into building it too soon and after too little (destruction) testing. The development got so punishing I can vividly remember breaking down in the middle of the workshop when something went wrong during the deployment.
I still have the plans and the code somewhere, though I could do all of it with much less gear than I had to use last time.
I know of one building that melted the neutral cable of a three phase installation because the load was so full of third harmonic from the PC power supplies.
Here you are, all bitching about supplier issues, while the "open source" Meccano (Erector) set people can just make their OWN specialised pieces, if they see fit, plus they don't build models that effectively "GPF" if the cat stands on them. Meccano models can lift people.
Wallis was one of the finest aero engineers of the last century.
I think he got trapped in the intellectual exercise of destroying the dams, with a sophisticated weapon, developed in only 6 months from the order.
During the raid itself, something like 2/3 of the crews didn't return, and that persuaded him not to use the weapon again.
Later in the war, Wallis developed the "TallBoy" and "grand slam" bunker piercing bombs, which would be reinvemted after the war.
Anyone visiting Northern France (La Coupole, Wizernes, near St. Omer) can see the effect of Tallboy bombs on a concrete V2 bunker, now used as a museum in parts.
After the was Wallis went on to develop the British TSR2 fighter bomber, the first swing-wing Mach fighter, cancelled under mysterious circumstances in the late 1960s
Fair comment, but I don't think its true for all that. Stiction in ball races is negligible in this kind of app. I know all about stiction, since I spend my days developing instruments where we have to eliminate it. I expected that X million kroner machines would be running on hydrostatic bearings, or even air bearings. The slip rings are hardly going to put more than a few gm cm of torque.
Why does it take nearly infinite power to accelerate from rest at 9g and "only" 1.9 MW from 1.5 G to 9 G, since the rate is limited to 90g/sec ? surely since the torque required at a fixed rate is constant, the power is still finite ?
Steve
"Initially, the centrifuge arm turned at a slow, steady speed, producing a 1.5g "steady state" or baseline. Inertial restrictions require that the arm be in motion before a pilot starts pulling high-onset gs. Rapid g-onset would demand almost infinite power to go from a dead stop to a 10g/sec. rate the system is specified to deliver.
For an electrical engineer you don't know a lot do you ? A decent transformer of 48VA (2A, 24V) will run barely warm if its designed right. Increasingly transformer designers are using cheaper and cheaper techniques which has reduced the regulation of small transformers to as much as 75%. A 48VA TOROIDAL transformer runs basically cold, and is smaller than a clenched fist.
A an on-line (90-280 V AC In) SMPSU DOES NOT work in the way you describe. The input stage rectifies the incoming AC to high voltage DC (110 x root(2) )The High direct voltage (500 volts) is then chopped at very high frequency and transformed and isolated by a very small high frequency core.
The piezo electric method is interesting, but TANSTAAFL, and the catch is that piezo materials suffer from hysteresis loss, which results in, you guessed it, heat generation.
Electromagnetic transformers are close to perfect machines, particularly as the size increases.
Steve
Brilliant timing
on
Linux Toys
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
NOW, NOW you point out a cool gift idea. The 23rd of F^&*(( December. ONE shopping day to go.
Brilliant timing (not)
Steve
Re:Wow! A comprehensive survey of British engineer
on
Fingers Crossed for Beagle
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Absolutely. I ran into a woman at an airport last week who was an English teacher. We chatted, compared kids, that sort of things, had the "where have you been ? what have you been doing ?" conversation, and I was bitching about the appalling lack of imagination of the engineers I had been working with in Egypt. She then said "Imagination ? Oh an engineer doesn't need imagination. Its all about punching numbers into computers" I restrained myself, but pointed out that there was quite a lot more to it than that.
Its a complete cultural blindspot. C.P. Snow explored our national attitudes to science in his 1950's book "Two cultures". Little has changed, except we now make less than half of the stuff we made even by 1979 standards. Steve
On a scale of power generated per ton of input material it is incredibly efficient (bested only by those power sources which require no nonrenewable input, like wind/tidal/etc.)
Possibly not true, because for the same energy output you need a lot more material and maintenance with the "renewable" systems - a gigawatt of wind power would be 100 10MW windturbines - and 10meg windturbines would be VERY big.
Steve
(Balmer)....He also questioned the notion that the open source's community approach to fixing problems was superior to Microsoft's. "Why should code submitted randomly by some hacker in China and distributed by some open source project, why is that, by definition, better?"
...because any one and EVERYone can see the source, if they think there is a problem, they can announce it and even fix it. In the Micros$$$ world. You are, basically, screwed.
Steve
Re:it's pretty obvious...
on
Kylix in Limbo
·
· Score: 1
Open source, without that fishy smell. FreeBSD Bugger it, someone clean up after that Penguin....
...but it looks like they are accelerating the pace in space, since the front module of Shenzhou may be left in space as the core of their own space station. Knowing the mercantilist tradition of the Chinese, they may build the world's first space borne takeout on their first mission - it took the US 13 years after their first mission to build skylab, and the Russians more than 20, now on the Chinese' first mission they start to orbit station parts. These guys are aiming to go places fast.
It IS ALWAYS worth the time to preserve your favourite tools, even for old times sake. The OP obviously is as attached to his old calculator as a craftsman is to any of his collection of tools.
Slashdot Mirror
Well actually, thats exactly what we do, We have nice neat little weigh scales.
How does one measure a cup of butter ? Is that packed ?
How packed is your cup of flour. Or sugar.
Steve
The World != USA In the rest of the world, EOLAS wouldn't have a cat in hells chance, ANY publication of an idea in Europe or Japan BEFORE filing ( the only other markets that matter, probably) AUTOMATICALLY invalidates the patent.
Steve
If you email me, Id like to discuss it with you.
Steve
I actually built a commericial laser tag system in the early 1990s with a lot of the ideas in your post. We used early laser diodes (670nm) and had sensors on the gun and on jackets covering the front and back of the players. The system couldn't use RF in those days, so the scores, and who had shot who were downloaded through a neat beam modulation scheme, a PC displayed the rankings of all the players in the game.
Unfortunately the people we developed it for were the kind of folks that might carry violin cases and made us an offer we couldn't refuse to go away and abandon the system when it failed to make them as much money as they had planned. We were pressured into building it too soon and after too little (destruction) testing. The development got so punishing I can vividly remember breaking down in the middle of the workshop when something went wrong during the deployment.
I still have the plans and the code somewhere, though I could do all of it with much less gear than I had to use last time.
And it worked in full sunlight too.
Steve
Bummer.
Err. It does.
Steve
either we're 1/2 of them, or that should be 6 ;-)
Steve
LI-on life is probably worse on the nasty discharge cycle than L-A.
Steve
I know of one building that melted the neutral cable of a three phase installation because the load was so full of third harmonic from the PC power supplies.
Steve
Agreed.
The original article also mentions the "Great Red FireWall" - this should of course read "Great Red FireWall (tm) Cisco Routers"
Steve
It did say that once the astronauts hit the hypersonic air flow, they would have died instantly.
:-(
It doesn't make things any better to know that though.
Steve
Here you are, all bitching about supplier issues, while the "open source" Meccano (Erector) set people can just make their OWN specialised pieces, if they see fit, plus they don't build models that effectively "GPF" if the cat stands on them. Meccano models can lift people.
Steve
Wallis was one of the finest aero engineers of the last century.
I think he got trapped in the intellectual exercise of destroying the dams, with a sophisticated weapon, developed in only 6 months from the order.
During the raid itself, something like 2/3 of the crews didn't return, and that persuaded him not to use the weapon again.
Later in the war, Wallis developed the "TallBoy" and "grand slam" bunker piercing bombs, which would be reinvemted after the war.
Anyone visiting Northern France (La Coupole, Wizernes, near St. Omer) can see the effect of Tallboy bombs on a concrete V2 bunker, now used as a museum in parts.
After the was Wallis went on to develop the British TSR2 fighter bomber, the first swing-wing Mach fighter, cancelled under mysterious circumstances in the late 1960s
Steve
Fair comment, but I don't think its true for all that. Stiction in ball races is negligible in this kind of app. I know all about stiction, since I spend my days developing instruments where we have to eliminate it. I expected that X million kroner machines would be running on hydrostatic bearings, or even air bearings. The slip rings are hardly going to put more than a few gm cm of torque.
Steve
Why does it take nearly infinite power to accelerate from rest at 9g and "only" 1.9 MW from 1.5 G to 9 G, since the rate is limited to 90g/sec ? surely since the torque required at a fixed rate is constant, the power is still finite ?
Steve
"Initially, the centrifuge arm turned at a slow, steady speed, producing a 1.5g "steady state" or baseline. Inertial restrictions require that the arm be in motion before a pilot starts pulling high-onset gs. Rapid g-onset would demand almost infinite power to go from a dead stop to a 10g/sec. rate the system is specified to deliver.
From Stallman's article:
an attractive nuisance, a temptation to accept bondage
but some people LIKE accepting bondage.... Steve
My wife now takes one of those little metal things to cut dental floss instead, when she does cross-stich on the plane.
Steve
For an electrical engineer you don't know a lot do you ? A decent transformer of 48VA (2A, 24V) will run barely warm if its designed right. Increasingly transformer designers are using cheaper and cheaper techniques which has reduced the regulation of small transformers to as much as 75%. A 48VA TOROIDAL transformer runs basically cold, and is smaller than a clenched fist.
A an on-line (90-280 V AC In) SMPSU DOES NOT work in the way you describe. The input stage rectifies the incoming AC to high voltage DC (110 x root(2) )The High direct voltage (500 volts) is then chopped at very high frequency and transformed and isolated by a very small high frequency core.
The piezo electric method is interesting, but TANSTAAFL, and the catch is that piezo materials suffer from hysteresis loss, which results in, you guessed it, heat generation.
Electromagnetic transformers are close to perfect machines, particularly as the size increases.
Steve
NOW, NOW you point out a cool gift idea. The 23rd of F^&*(( December. ONE shopping day to go.
Brilliant timing (not)
Steve
Absolutely.
I ran into a woman at an airport last week who was an English teacher. We chatted, compared kids, that sort of things, had the "where have you been ? what have you been doing ?" conversation, and I was bitching about the appalling lack of imagination of the engineers I had been working with in Egypt. She then said "Imagination ? Oh an engineer doesn't need imagination. Its all about punching numbers into computers" I restrained myself, but pointed out that there was quite a lot more to it than that.
Its a complete cultural blindspot. C.P. Snow explored our national attitudes to science in his 1950's book "Two cultures". Little has changed, except we now make less than half of the stuff we made even by 1979 standards.
Steve
On a scale of power generated per ton of input material it is incredibly efficient (bested only by those power sources which require no nonrenewable input, like wind/tidal/etc.) Possibly not true, because for the same energy output you need a lot more material and maintenance with the "renewable" systems - a gigawatt of wind power would be 100 10MW windturbines - and 10meg windturbines would be VERY big. Steve
(Balmer)....He also questioned the notion that the open source's community approach to fixing problems was superior to Microsoft's. "Why should code submitted randomly by some hacker in China and distributed by some open source project, why is that, by definition, better?"
...because any one and EVERYone can see the source, if they think there is a problem, they can announce it and even fix it. In the Micros$$$ world. You are, basically, screwed.
Steve
Open source, without that fishy smell. FreeBSD
Bugger it, someone clean up after that Penguin....
...but it looks like they are accelerating the pace in space, since the front module of Shenzhou may be left in space as the core of their own space station. Knowing the mercantilist tradition of the Chinese, they may build the world's first space borne takeout on their first mission - it took the US 13 years after their first mission to build skylab, and the Russians more than 20, now on the Chinese' first mission they start to orbit station parts. These guys are aiming to go places fast.
Steve
It IS ALWAYS worth the time to preserve your favourite tools, even for old times sake. The OP obviously is as attached to his old calculator as a craftsman is to any of his collection of tools.
Economics has nothing to do with it !
Steve