The next step is a video/still camera that detects an infrared source and closes an iris to keep the light from bouncing back.
I was thinking more along the lines of military flares for heat seeking rockets and chaff for radar guided munitions.
I would go to an event with my wife. She would be wearing a dress covered with sequins, half of which are lenses out of disposable cameras. Just how many false targets can it track?
A good lens hood would go a long way to protecting a camera. A lens hood is good to prevent lens flare from floodlights and video projectors mounted above a stage or presentation.
Question? Is the above discussion in violation of the DMCA?
It is known that the phantom load (key off) is large enough to deplete the 12V system badly if left parked for extended periods of time
This is a known issue. The load is real, not phantom. The alarm system is on and the reciever for the key fob draws juice. The draw combined with a tiny 12v GelCel provides about a 2 week charge.
I commute, so the issue is not a problem. If I am going to park a few days, I disconnect the 12V battery.
I haven't had the time to do a power survey, but I do intend to find all the standby devices from the alarm to the radio clock, to the NAV system and complete a system audit of all the devices using power. I may then transfer them to a second battery isolated from the primary 12V battery. A cheaper 12V gel battery could power the clock and keep the radio presets for a few days and not drain the other battery much like an RV dual battery system.
Due to the subscription base for TIVO services, advertisers have a very good idea from the box data how much the commercial skip is used. That's why the easy commercial skip is in such a tug-o-war right now. They want it to be too difficult to be convenient. Notice how they tried to fade away commercial skip un-noticed with a software update? TIVO is under great pressure on this issue from both sides. For the bathroom break, they know how often armchair quarterbacks take a snack or bathroom break, They know how many commercial breaks there are. If you made a sandwitch every break, you would blimp out in no time. They know you don't leave for all the breaks.
Finding that little CD logo is becoming (actually, has become) nearly impossible to do anymore.
And if shiny round pieces of plastic that didn't have the logo didn't sell, DRM on fake CD's would be already dead. Sadly there is enough demand for DRM CD's to keep making them.
nothing released in the last year has had it.
I've noticed. My purchases have reflected this. My last few CD's were purchased from Goodwill.
I Rip, Mix, and Burn my CD's. I also honor the DMCA. I don't buy DRM CD's.
But the Prius is less sensitive to driving style than other vehicles (in my experience, at least!) so the fudge factors may not be accurate for the Prius. I suspect most Prius drivers get better mileage on the highway than in the city; I know I do.
I have found the Prius very sensitive to driving style. In stop and creep driving, shutting off the AC makes a big difference in engine run time. Having the speed pick up downhill and slowing uphill (making a run at a hill) instead of using the cruise control make very noticable changes in mileage. Too much launch and stop traffic is very hard on the mileage. Many cities have go 35MPH to the next light driving. This is very bad.
Country roads with a few stop signs are where I got my best mileage. 25-45MPH driving does meet the better mileage than freeway driving expectation. Stop signs can be rolled up to and pulled away gently without the guy behind you laying on the horn.
Freeway on cruise control, 48MPG, country over hill and dale and a few small towns, 54MPG on 150+ mile trip. In town commute of 30 miles can be as bad as 38MPG depending on AC use.
The worst I got was in the winter when the car remained a long time in warm up mode because I was swiping the heat for cabin comfort and running the AC compressor for the defroster. One tank was as low as 28MPG, but that's the very worst I got.
Maybe Sony should sue Microsoft for not giving them a good way to prohibit users from exercising their fair use rights. That's a Slashdot article I want too see; Microsoft getting sued (yay!) but by Sony because they want strict media access control (boo!).
You are thinking inside the box. The simple fact is MS doesn't own the Phillips Compact Disk standard. MS is trying to sell a format that they do own. Seen any secure WMA files lately? They simply haven't gotten the labels to bite yet because too many players in cars and such still won't play the format.
Does anybody know if the CD contains the Compact Disk logo? So far I have avoided the copy protected disks simply by not buying any CD without the Compact Disk logo as registered by Phillips. I wouldn't want any DMCA liability that the band advocates by defeating a protection mechanism.
I mean be realistic here plenty of people buy text copies just because they don't like reading online. The real problem that faces paper publishers is the rise of e-readers and the same threat that faces the music industry.
The threat facing paper newspapers is lack of circulation. Who wants news a day late? In the Portland OR area, we turned down a free year subscription to the daily paper when we subscribed to the Sunday edition. We had the free daily and canceled it when we took a vacation. They need circulation numbers to sell advertising. The daily paper for months went from the sidewalk right into the recycle bin. Nobody in the family had the time or interest to read the paper in a busy schedule. News of interest is more quickly found online. That's why we did not take a free daily subscription after our vacation.
The newspaper does not want borrowed copies of their paper. They need the circulation numbers to supply the advertisers. A scanned copy does not provide additional readership numbers. This is what is evil to the paper. It's the same evil that plagues the NYT when a free reg required article is posted on slashdot. they can't count the circulation outside their control.
I wonder if advertisers have any idea how many daily papers are out there simply because they are free. I wonder how many newspapers are recycled without even being opened?
I also wonder how the CO2 is reduced from 5.5% to 0%, unless the hydrocarbons go up, and the simple oxidized carbons go down
From the article cut and paste;
For instance, on carbon monoxide, Daimler/Chrysler gives a rating of 5.5 grams per mile for this model of car. The Drive Clean rating for the Jeep was zero.
Carbon Monoxide is CO. CO2 is carbon Dioxide.
I hope that helps. There were no CO2 claims made. It is also grams/mile for this model of car, not percent. Please use the correct units of measure. You may confuse those who haven't read the article.
Fun fact: At $3 per gallon gasoline, with current ICE and alternator efficiencies, electricity onboard a moving car costs 55 cents per kWh.
Do you have any numbers for the Prius? It does not use a belt driven alternator. It does use some very high effeciency motor/generators on the 300 volt side and uses a high effeciency DC-DC converter from the HV to 12V side. I know the system burns very little gas/day when I use it with a 1KW inverter to give 120VAC. It's my best emergency generator for fuel economy and will run for days on a tank of gas. (I've tested it.)
No. Hybrids are successful mostly because they recapture braking energy and allow the engine to be shut down when it is making more power than necessary.
Everybody brags up the regen braking. That's only a small part of what makes a hybrid work. I have a power monitor on my car that shows the regenerated KWH on a graph. The more regenerative braking I do, the worse effeciency I get. I drive to use as little regenerative braking as possible. Getting a couple KWH going down a hill into town is nice, but jackrabbit start and stops to get high regeneration numbers is very hard on gas milage.
Now to substantiate the above claim. If I roll up to a stop sign without using the brakes by using the wind resistance and tire resistance, I've traveled a long way slowing down and not burning gas. I do burn gas taking off again. Point well taken, but if I roar up to the stopsign and hit the brakes, I burn gas plowing air up to the stop sign, and then lose about half the regenerative power in the process of generating it and storing it. Anybody who does robotics knows start,stop robot driving is hard on the battery even with regenerative braking. The motor gets hot from high current. A gradual acceleration and deceleration is much easier on battery life. The same is true for a hybrid. This provides little regenerative braking recovery.
A hybrid saves gas mostly by getting by with a much smaller gas engine. The performance is replaced by the battery electric end. As such my 1.5 Liter Prius has nearly the same get up and go as my retired Ford Mustang with the 2.3 Liter engine. The electric motors/CV Transmission and battery is about the same weight as the larger engine and transmission it replaced. Now the engine shuts off going down hills, rolling up to stoplights, and stays off until traffic proceeds again. On the freeway the hybrid gets better milage because of the smaller engine. In town it does even better because it doesn't plow as much air at slower speeds, has regenerative braking, and doesn't burn gas idling at the light. Most cars have a lower EPA rating for in town driving. The Prius has a higher rating for in town driving.
This system adds energy to water to get hydrogen and oxygen, and then figures burning the hydrogen with oxygen to get water will net them a gain.
I read the article. That's not what I got from the article. They put in Hydrogen and Oxygen in with the gasoline/air mix. They clain it makes the gasoline burn cleaner and completely so they get a little more power from burning the gasoline and throw less Carbonmonoxide and other unburned hydrocarbons (greenhouse gasses per article) out the tailpipe for the catalytic converter to deal with. I would guess the free hydrogen and oxygen helps getting the reaction going much like putting gasoline on a pile of wood to get it burning quickly. In a combustion chamber you have a limited amount of time to burn the contents. anything unburned gets tossed out. I think this is what the system is after. It is trying to leave little leftover for the catalytic converter to use to make a warm tailpipe. If you could properly completely burn gas inside the engine, then there would not be unburned gasses to make the catalytic converter nice and warm. It's probably where they got the cold tailpipe statement near the end of the article.
They don't have the catalytic converter functioning due to a lack of unburned hydrocarbons to fuel it. (assumption on my part) This is why the tailpipe may be running cooler.
That 35% (note) number in the article is the first error I noticed. He contrasts the thermodynamic efficiency of an engine, which he claims is a (highish) 35% with 97% of the fuel being burned using this gizmo.
There are other errors also. A car engine is a heat engine using the expansion of gas from the heat of combustion to work. Chemicaly, there is little expansion. Then they mention the tailpipe is cold and not hot to the touch. Something is not adding up. Where does the heat of combustion go? The math for the process is missing. It passed an emissions test. Big deal. So does my car.
Oops, I replied to the wrong post. I'll try again.
I'll buy a scooter.
OK. That's not too much of an option for me. I have a wife and 2 kids.
I also live in the part of the country that gets well below freezing part of the year and gets drenched in rain much of the rest of the year. Heat, AC, Defroster, watertight roof, and 4 wheels instead of 2 on slippery surfaces are valuable.
I'll take you up on that, with one added stipulation. We both start with no car and an equal amount of money. With the money we have to buy both a new car and the gas to run it in the race. You buy the Prius and I'll buy a reliable econo-box. First one out of gas loses.
You are on. I keep cars for about 150-200K miles. Be sure to include gas prices 5 years from now in the calculations.
Mine is a 2002 with 60K miles. Let's compare lifetime expenses in 2012.
Your anecdote about using your car as a generator is just dumb. Clever idea, but since you aren't moving you are not recovering any kinetic energy to produce electricity. Basically your car was an automated generator. Since your car engine moves a whole lot more equipment when running than your average $300 generator and the act of charging is less than 100% efficient, you basically traded the convenience of having it automated for actually making efficient use of the available fuel.
I'll address this one by itself because of all the wrong assumptions.
You are right on the money about the automated generator part. The second part regarding the effeciency is way wrong. It is true that it moves more stuff. Let's compare it to what it replaces. It replaces a 4 KW generator. The 4 KW generator was sized to start and run 2 fridges, the fireplace fan, the computer, some lights and the TV. I replaced the 4 KW generator with a 1KW inverter. A 4 KW generator was chosen due to the fact most generators have very little surge capacity. Most electric motors take 3-5 times their run current to start. A 4 KW generator takes about 3 gallons to fill for a run time of about 4-8 hours depending on load or about 10 gallons a day. The big engine runs at 3600 RPM whether it is running a couple 27 W CF lights or starting a couple fridges.
Contrast that to the car. The 1KW inverter has great short term surge capacity due to the battery and it's design. The gas engine size and response do not affect it's output. Starting the freezer does not reboot the PC or flicker the lights. 24 hours of operation used about 2 gallons of gas. Most of the time the car engine is shut down, even when using a heavy load. The electric generator end is about 20KW. A 1KW load and less means short run times. It also runs at a fast idle so it's very quiet. I bought the car for its effeciency on the road.
The inverter install cost just under $100. I'll let you price 4KW generators on your own.
Economics are definitely not a reason to buy a hybrid at this time.
I dissagree. I don't expect gas prices under $2/gal anytime soon. I have 60K on my Prius, so I'm rapidly reaching the payback time.
In case you can't figure it out, the extra cost of buying a hybrid requires, even with the $3.00/gal petrol these days, that you drive an extra hundred thousand miles before it becomes cost effective.
My last car I retired at 250K miles. I fully intend to have it in the payback period. The 100K miles thing was calculated when gas was $165/gal. It isn't anymore. Next, I bought my used. Most of the premium was pre-paid for me.
So, after those R&D costs are regained, why don't the prices drop?
They do. Check your history. What price was 4.77 MHZ 8088 CPU's selling for before they were no longer made due to lack of demand?
Do the same for a 80286 at 8 Mhz, and a 80486 at 20 Mhz.
The price is still up because the new R & D cost is for the current line of product.
You are quite welcome to contact Intel and obtain the rights to the 8088 and crank them out at $20 each. Be advised the market demand is very limited.
You are better off to spend time on research an get the next generation of 5 Ghz multi-core processor to market. I'll bet you can't make them and sell them for $20 each.
I'll have to remember this next time the Hybrid Cost-benefit argument shows up on my fave car forum.
It is the best and quietest emergency generator I have ever owned. It has the added bonus of having regular oil changes and a fresh tank of fuel most of the time. You don't have to try to find the left over weed eater fuel to put in a rusted up generator buried in weeds in the back yard under the bushes in an unexpected outage and wonder why the carberator is all gummed up.
If I am traveling, I always have it with me.
I use it to get to work, and emergency power, and power for camping. I don't mess with lanterns and ice anymore. A bar fridge and CF bulb in a lamp do a better job. Most 47 watt CF bulbs put out a lot more light than any coleman lantern.
Anyone who isn't still double declutching is a puff.
Dude, most of the Slashdot crowd has no idea what that is. They are not old enough.
For those who do not know what double clutching is, here is the explination.
At the back of the engine is a clutch. The shaft from the clutch goes into the transmission. The transmission is used to change gear ratios. When pulling out from a light in low gear, the engine rev's to a high speed until you need to shift into a higher gear like from first to second. Most people who drive a clutch simply push in the clutch and stick it into second gear and let out the clutch and think nothing of it. A synchro in the transmission takes care of the problem that in the next gear, the engine and input shaft must be turning at a lower speed than it was when it was taken out of first gear. With your foot off the gas the engine comes quickly to a lower speed. The clutch at input shaft however are still spinning at high speed. Jabbing it into second gear gives that old truck grinding of gears. Letting the clutch again after the engine has slowed quickly brings the transmission shaft close to the right speed for the transmission to mesh in second gear without grinding off a pound of metal.
Shifting up was not too much of a problem as eventualy the input shaft will coast to a slow speed and permit putting it into second.
Going down a hill and downshifting was not near as nice. In high gear the engine speed is relatively slow. In wanting to downshift, getting the input shaft up to a high RPM to downshift from 3rd into second required taking it out of third (using the clutch once), reving the engine and using the clutch a second time to drop it into second. Double clutching was used on older transmissions mostly for downshifting and on some trucks also for upshifting.
Talanted drivers never ground the gears getting it into the next gear. Everyone else ground a little hitting the gears.
That is why they put synchro rings in manual transmissions. It made shifting a lot easier.
I love it, it just helps my gas mileage,I can easily get 40mpg on the highway.
And my Prius which has auto almost everything, has more room, more power, and get about 10 more MPG on the highway and at least 30 more mpg in stop and crawl traffic.
A good computer in charge of a low loss CV transmission can and does beat a manual transmission. The computer even takes care of stopping and starting the engine in slow traffic where you ride the clutch and brakes and leave the engine idle.
A prius is much more effecient in stop and crawl traffic than any manual transmission. It doesn't overheat in a traffic back-up simply because it doesn't bother to burn the gas.
Don't knock well done power everything. I guess if I wanted to cut some power draw, I could run without the heater and pull the fuse on the electric power steering, but I don't expect it to make much of a difference in effeciency.
I'll race you. The race consists of 10 gallons of gas and freeway rush hour conditions. Last one out of gas wins.
I left my car locked with the key in it for several days. I was using it for emergency electric power. I did not run out of gas. I also did not refill it. The gas station was also out of power and could not pump gas. Sticking in a 1KW inverter was a good choice.
It was nice to not have to run out and start the car for a few minuts every half hour to keep the battery up. It took care of it by itself.
It ran a side by side fridg, small chest freezer, some lights, the blower on the fireplace, the TV and Computer. It was kind of nice during the ice storm last winter.
Microsoft is really pushing people towards Linux- Win2000 and Win98 are already gone from store shelves, and I give XP about 6 months after Vista is released to disappear.
Are you kidding? My old Goodwill machine just got matched with it's OS. You just have to keep checking back. Now the old machine now has the CD and CD key to go with it. It's like buying dishes at goodwill. Keep looking. Eventualy the 8th matching plate will show up.
PC's are no different.
It just takes much longer since the CD of the OS is becomming rare with the new versions. Win 98SE is not too hard to find for under $10.
If it's denied because degauss destroyed it, we take it as a loss. We don't mind.
If it still works after degaussing, be afraid. Be very afraid. Head positioning on most drives is done by reading interlaced servo tracks. If the servo tracks did not get erased, neither did the data. Do not trust the degaussing to delete your data by itself. Data is destroyed only when the Servo track is also destroyed making the drive a paperweight.
The late-middle aged lady who wants to type and print the church newsletter has ABSOLUTELY no use for a computer without a hard drive and even less of an idea how to install one even if she did have budget to get one.
Unfortunately most charities will not make any promises that the PC will be donated to said lady. It could end up anywhere. As such most company policies regarding data destruction will remain in place. A deleted drive looks the same as an un destroyed drive to the shipping clerk. A PC missing the drive is a no-brainer to the shipping department that the data is not there. Most companies don't want to take the entire department cast off stack and take the time and space to set up 200+ machines to wipe them. It's just simpler to stack them and remove drives and then place them on the done pallet ready to ship.
Removing the drive does not have the task of using a table, connecting things, loading software, waiting for the process to finish, etc. A dock jockey with a screwdriver is much faster and the results are reliable.
What's missed here is a Real Time OS is being compared to Windows XP. Windows anything is not a real time OS. It keeps getting pushed into real time use, simply because it is there, but it is not the best tool for the job. Having an OS respond in real time to interupts is like having a mouse that doesn't freeze for several seconds at a time on a busy system. (if you run Windows, you know what I'm talking about.) Using Windows in a real time environment such as video encoding, or such almost always produces the ocasional jump or glitch because Windows is not a real time OS. Interupts get ignored during such things as a disk access.
Slashdot Mirror
The next step is a video/still camera that detects an infrared source and closes an iris to keep the light from bouncing back.
I was thinking more along the lines of military flares for heat seeking rockets and chaff for radar guided munitions.
I would go to an event with my wife. She would be wearing a dress covered with sequins, half of which are lenses out of disposable cameras. Just how many false targets can it track?
A good lens hood would go a long way to protecting a camera. A lens hood is good to prevent lens flare from floodlights and video projectors mounted above a stage or presentation.
Question? Is the above discussion in violation of the DMCA?
It is known that the phantom load (key off) is large enough to deplete the 12V system badly if left parked for extended periods of time
This is a known issue. The load is real, not phantom. The alarm system is on and the reciever for the key fob draws juice. The draw combined with a tiny 12v GelCel provides about a 2 week charge.
I commute, so the issue is not a problem. If I am going to park a few days, I disconnect the 12V battery.
I haven't had the time to do a power survey, but I do intend to find all the standby devices from the alarm to the radio clock, to the NAV system and complete a system audit of all the devices using power. I may then transfer them to a second battery isolated from the primary 12V battery. A cheaper 12V gel battery could power the clock and keep the radio presets for a few days and not drain the other battery much like an RV dual battery system.
or using the tivo-ff past it.
Due to the subscription base for TIVO services, advertisers have a very good idea from the box data how much the commercial skip is used. That's why the easy commercial skip is in such a tug-o-war right now. They want it to be too difficult to be convenient. Notice how they tried to fade away commercial skip un-noticed with a software update? TIVO is under great pressure on this issue from both sides.
For the bathroom break, they know how often armchair quarterbacks take a snack or bathroom break, They know how many commercial breaks there are. If you made a sandwitch every break, you would blimp out in no time. They know you don't leave for all the breaks.
Finding that little CD logo is becoming (actually, has become) nearly impossible to do anymore.
And if shiny round pieces of plastic that didn't have the logo didn't sell, DRM on fake CD's would be already dead. Sadly there is enough demand for DRM CD's to keep making them.
nothing released in the last year has had it.
I've noticed. My purchases have reflected this. My last few CD's were purchased from Goodwill.
I Rip, Mix, and Burn my CD's. I also honor the DMCA. I don't buy DRM CD's.
I spend my entertainment dollars elswhere.
But the Prius is less sensitive to driving style than other vehicles (in my experience, at least!) so the fudge factors may not be accurate for the Prius. I suspect most Prius drivers get better mileage on the highway than in the city; I know I do.
I have found the Prius very sensitive to driving style. In stop and creep driving, shutting off the AC makes a big difference in engine run time. Having the speed pick up downhill and slowing uphill (making a run at a hill) instead of using the cruise control make very noticable changes in mileage. Too much launch and stop traffic is very hard on the mileage. Many cities have go 35MPH to the next light driving. This is very bad.
Country roads with a few stop signs are where I got my best mileage. 25-45MPH driving does meet the better mileage than freeway driving expectation. Stop signs can be rolled up to and pulled away gently without the guy behind you laying on the horn.
Freeway on cruise control, 48MPG, country over hill and dale and a few small towns, 54MPG on 150+ mile trip. In town commute of 30 miles can be as bad as 38MPG depending on AC use.
The worst I got was in the winter when the car remained a long time in warm up mode because I was swiping the heat for cabin comfort and running the AC compressor for the defroster. One tank was as low as 28MPG, but that's the very worst I got.
Maybe Sony should sue Microsoft for not giving them a good way to prohibit users from exercising their fair use rights. That's a Slashdot article I want too see; Microsoft getting sued (yay!) but by Sony because they want strict media access control (boo!).
You are thinking inside the box. The simple fact is MS doesn't own the Phillips Compact Disk standard. MS is trying to sell a format that they do own. Seen any secure WMA files lately? They simply haven't gotten the labels to bite yet because too many players in cars and such still won't play the format.
Does anybody know if the CD contains the Compact Disk logo? So far I have avoided the copy protected disks simply by not buying any CD without the Compact Disk logo as registered by Phillips. I wouldn't want any DMCA liability that the band advocates by defeating a protection mechanism.
I mean be realistic here plenty of people buy text copies just because they don't like reading online. The real problem that faces paper publishers is the rise of e-readers and the same threat that faces the music industry.
The threat facing paper newspapers is lack of circulation. Who wants news a day late? In the Portland OR area, we turned down a free year subscription to the daily paper when we subscribed to the Sunday edition. We had the free daily and canceled it when we took a vacation. They need circulation numbers to sell advertising. The daily paper for months went from the sidewalk right into the recycle bin. Nobody in the family had the time or interest to read the paper in a busy schedule. News of interest is more quickly found online. That's why we did not take a free daily subscription after our vacation.
The newspaper does not want borrowed copies of their paper. They need the circulation numbers to supply the advertisers. A scanned copy does not provide additional readership numbers. This is what is evil to the paper. It's the same evil that plagues the NYT when a free reg required article is posted on slashdot. they can't count the circulation outside their control.
I wonder if advertisers have any idea how many daily papers are out there simply because they are free. I wonder how many newspapers are recycled without even being opened?
I also wonder how the CO2 is reduced from 5.5% to 0%, unless the hydrocarbons go up, and the simple oxidized carbons go down
From the article cut and paste;
For instance, on carbon monoxide, Daimler/Chrysler gives a rating of 5.5 grams per mile for this model of car. The Drive Clean rating for the Jeep was zero.
Carbon Monoxide is CO. CO2 is carbon Dioxide.
I hope that helps. There were no CO2 claims made. It is also grams/mile for this model of car, not percent. Please use the correct units of measure. You may confuse those who haven't read the article.
Fun fact: At $3 per gallon gasoline, with current ICE and alternator efficiencies, electricity onboard a moving car costs 55 cents per kWh.
Do you have any numbers for the Prius? It does not use a belt driven alternator. It does use some very high effeciency motor/generators on the 300 volt side and uses a high effeciency DC-DC converter from the HV to 12V side. I know the system burns very little gas/day when I use it with a 1KW inverter to give 120VAC. It's my best emergency generator for fuel economy and will run for days on a tank of gas. (I've tested it.)
No. Hybrids are successful mostly because they recapture braking energy and allow the engine to be shut down when it is making more power than necessary.
Everybody brags up the regen braking. That's only a small part of what makes a hybrid work. I have a power monitor on my car that shows the regenerated KWH on a graph. The more regenerative braking I do, the worse effeciency I get. I drive to use as little regenerative braking as possible. Getting a couple KWH going down a hill into town is nice, but jackrabbit start and stops to get high regeneration numbers is very hard on gas milage.
Now to substantiate the above claim. If I roll up to a stop sign without using the brakes by using the wind resistance and tire resistance, I've traveled a long way slowing down and not burning gas. I do burn gas taking off again. Point well taken, but if I roar up to the stopsign and hit the brakes, I burn gas plowing air up to the stop sign, and then lose about half the regenerative power in the process of generating it and storing it. Anybody who does robotics knows start,stop robot driving is hard on the battery even with regenerative braking. The motor gets hot from high current. A gradual acceleration and deceleration is much easier on battery life. The same is true for a hybrid. This provides little regenerative braking recovery.
A hybrid saves gas mostly by getting by with a much smaller gas engine. The performance is replaced by the battery electric end. As such my 1.5 Liter Prius has nearly the same get up and go as my retired Ford Mustang with the 2.3 Liter engine. The electric motors/CV Transmission and battery is about the same weight as the larger engine and transmission it replaced. Now the engine shuts off going down hills, rolling up to stoplights, and stays off until traffic proceeds again. On the freeway the hybrid gets better milage because of the smaller engine. In town it does even better because it doesn't plow as much air at slower speeds, has regenerative braking, and doesn't burn gas idling at the light. Most cars have a lower EPA rating for in town driving. The Prius has a higher rating for in town driving.
This system adds energy to water to get hydrogen and oxygen, and then figures burning the hydrogen with oxygen to get water will net them a gain.
I read the article. That's not what I got from the article. They put in Hydrogen and Oxygen in with the gasoline/air mix. They clain it makes the gasoline burn cleaner and completely so they get a little more power from burning the gasoline and throw less Carbonmonoxide and other unburned hydrocarbons (greenhouse gasses per article) out the tailpipe for the catalytic converter to deal with. I would guess the free hydrogen and oxygen helps getting the reaction going much like putting gasoline on a pile of wood to get it burning quickly. In a combustion chamber you have a limited amount of time to burn the contents. anything unburned gets tossed out. I think this is what the system is after. It is trying to leave little leftover for the catalytic converter to use to make a warm tailpipe. If you could properly completely burn gas inside the engine, then there would not be unburned gasses to make the catalytic converter nice and warm. It's probably where they got the cold tailpipe statement near the end of the article.
They don't have the catalytic converter functioning due to a lack of unburned hydrocarbons to fuel it. (assumption on my part) This is why the tailpipe may be running cooler.
That 35% (note) number in the article is the first error I noticed. He contrasts the thermodynamic efficiency of an engine, which he claims is a (highish) 35% with 97% of the fuel being burned using this gizmo.
There are other errors also. A car engine is a heat engine using the expansion of gas from the heat of combustion to work. Chemicaly, there is little expansion. Then they mention the tailpipe is cold and not hot to the touch. Something is not adding up. Where does the heat of combustion go?
The math for the process is missing.
It passed an emissions test. Big deal. So does my car.
Oops, I replied to the wrong post. I'll try again.
I'll buy a scooter.
OK. That's not too much of an option for me. I have a wife and 2 kids.
I also live in the part of the country that gets well below freezing part of the year and gets drenched in rain much of the rest of the year. Heat, AC, Defroster, watertight roof, and 4 wheels instead of 2 on slippery surfaces are valuable.
I'll take you up on that, with one added stipulation. We both start with no car and an equal amount of money. With the money we have to buy both a new car and the gas to run it in the race. You buy the Prius and I'll buy a reliable econo-box. First one out of gas loses.
You are on. I keep cars for about 150-200K miles. Be sure to include gas prices 5 years from now in the calculations.
Mine is a 2002 with 60K miles. Let's compare lifetime expenses in 2012.
Yeah, the thing about that though is that your car costs twice as much (~$20,000) as my car (~$10,000).
That's initial cost. Care to compare operating expenses over the next 200K miles?
Your anecdote about using your car as a generator is just dumb. Clever idea, but since you aren't moving you are not recovering any kinetic energy to produce electricity. Basically your car was an automated generator. Since your car engine moves a whole lot more equipment when running than your average $300 generator and the act of charging is less than 100% efficient, you basically traded the convenience of having it automated for actually making efficient use of the available fuel.
I'll address this one by itself because of all the wrong assumptions.
You are right on the money about the automated generator part. The second part regarding the effeciency is way wrong. It is true that it moves more stuff. Let's compare it to what it replaces. It replaces a 4 KW generator. The 4 KW generator was sized to start and run 2 fridges, the fireplace fan, the computer, some lights and the TV. I replaced the 4 KW generator with a 1KW inverter. A 4 KW generator was chosen due to the fact most generators have very little surge capacity. Most electric motors take 3-5 times their run current to start. A 4 KW generator takes about 3 gallons to fill for a run time of about 4-8 hours depending on load or about 10 gallons a day. The big engine runs at 3600 RPM whether it is running a couple 27 W CF lights or starting a couple fridges.
Contrast that to the car. The 1KW inverter has great short term surge capacity due to the battery and it's design. The gas engine size and response do not affect it's output. Starting the freezer does not reboot the PC or flicker the lights. 24 hours of operation used about 2 gallons of gas. Most of the time the car engine is shut down, even when using a heavy load. The electric generator end is about 20KW. A 1KW load and less means short run times. It also runs at a fast idle so it's very quiet. I bought the car for its effeciency on the road.
The inverter install cost just under $100. I'll let you price 4KW generators on your own.
Economics are definitely not a reason to buy a hybrid at this time.
I dissagree. I don't expect gas prices under $2/gal anytime soon. I have 60K on my Prius, so I'm rapidly reaching the payback time.
In case you can't figure it out, the extra cost of buying a hybrid requires, even with the $3.00/gal petrol these days, that you drive an extra hundred thousand miles before it becomes cost effective.
My last car I retired at 250K miles. I fully intend to have it in the payback period. The 100K miles thing was calculated when gas was $165/gal. It isn't anymore. Next, I bought my used. Most of the premium was pre-paid for me.
So, after those R&D costs are regained, why don't the prices drop?
They do. Check your history. What price was 4.77 MHZ 8088 CPU's selling for before they were no longer made due to lack of demand?
Do the same for a 80286 at 8 Mhz, and a 80486 at 20 Mhz.
The price is still up because the new R & D cost is for the current line of product.
You are quite welcome to contact Intel and obtain the rights to the 8088 and crank them out at $20 each. Be advised the market demand is very limited.
You are better off to spend time on research an get the next generation of 5 Ghz multi-core processor to market. I'll bet you can't make them and sell them for $20 each.
I'll have to remember this next time the Hybrid Cost-benefit argument shows up on my fave car forum.
It is the best and quietest emergency generator I have ever owned. It has the added bonus of having regular oil changes and a fresh tank of fuel most of the time. You don't have to try to find the left over weed eater fuel to put in a rusted up generator buried in weeds in the back yard under the bushes in an unexpected outage and wonder why the carberator is all gummed up.
If I am traveling, I always have it with me.
I use it to get to work, and emergency power, and power for camping. I don't mess with lanterns and ice anymore. A bar fridge and CF bulb in a lamp do a better job. Most 47 watt CF bulbs put out a lot more light than any coleman lantern.
Anyone who isn't still double declutching is a puff.
Dude, most of the Slashdot crowd has no idea what that is. They are not old enough.
For those who do not know what double clutching is, here is the explination.
At the back of the engine is a clutch. The shaft from the clutch goes into the transmission. The transmission is used to change gear ratios. When pulling out from a light in low gear, the engine rev's to a high speed until you need to shift into a higher gear like from first to second. Most people who drive a clutch simply push in the clutch and stick it into second gear and let out the clutch and think nothing of it. A synchro in the transmission takes care of the problem that in the next gear, the engine and input shaft must be turning at a lower speed than it was when it was taken out of first gear. With your foot off the gas the engine comes quickly to a lower speed. The clutch at input shaft however are still spinning at high speed. Jabbing it into second gear gives that old truck grinding of gears. Letting the clutch again after the engine has slowed quickly brings the transmission shaft close to the right speed for the transmission to mesh in second gear without grinding off a pound of metal.
Shifting up was not too much of a problem as eventualy the input shaft will coast to a slow speed and permit putting it into second.
Going down a hill and downshifting was not near as nice. In high gear the engine speed is relatively slow. In wanting to downshift, getting the input shaft up to a high RPM to downshift from 3rd into second required taking it out of third (using the clutch once), reving the engine and using the clutch a second time to drop it into second. Double clutching was used on older transmissions mostly for downshifting and on some trucks also for upshifting.
Talanted drivers never ground the gears getting it into the next gear. Everyone else ground a little hitting the gears.
That is why they put synchro rings in manual transmissions. It made shifting a lot easier.
I love it, it just helps my gas mileage,I can easily get 40mpg on the highway.
And my Prius which has auto almost everything, has more room, more power, and get about 10 more MPG on the highway and at least 30 more mpg in stop and crawl traffic.
A good computer in charge of a low loss CV transmission can and does beat a manual transmission. The computer even takes care of stopping and starting the engine in slow traffic where you ride the clutch and brakes and leave the engine idle.
A prius is much more effecient in stop and crawl traffic than any manual transmission. It doesn't overheat in a traffic back-up simply because it doesn't bother to burn the gas.
Don't knock well done power everything. I guess if I wanted to cut some power draw, I could run without the heater and pull the fuse on the electric power steering, but I don't expect it to make much of a difference in effeciency.
I'll race you. The race consists of 10 gallons of gas and freeway rush hour conditions. Last one out of gas wins.
I left my car locked with the key in it for several days. I was using it for emergency electric power. I did not run out of gas. I also did not refill it. The gas station was also out of power and could not pump gas. Sticking in a 1KW inverter was a good choice.
It was nice to not have to run out and start the car for a few minuts every half hour to keep the battery up. It took care of it by itself.
It ran a side by side fridg, small chest freezer, some lights, the blower on the fireplace, the TV and Computer. It was kind of nice during the ice storm last winter.
Microsoft is really pushing people towards Linux- Win2000 and Win98 are already gone from store shelves, and I give XP about 6 months after Vista is released to disappear.
Are you kidding? My old Goodwill machine just got matched with it's OS. You just have to keep checking back. Now the old machine now has the CD and CD key to go with it. It's like buying dishes at goodwill. Keep looking. Eventualy the 8th matching plate will show up.
PC's are no different.
It just takes much longer since the CD of the OS is becomming rare with the new versions. Win 98SE is not too hard to find for under $10.
2) Use acetylene torch and reduce drive to slag.
Outdated thermite also works. Thermite demonstrations were the best part if working in a classified area.
If it's denied because degauss destroyed it, we take it as a loss. We don't mind.
If it still works after degaussing, be afraid. Be very afraid. Head positioning on most drives is done by reading interlaced servo tracks. If the servo tracks did not get erased, neither did the data.
Do not trust the degaussing to delete your data by itself. Data is destroyed only when the Servo track is also destroyed making the drive a paperweight.
The late-middle aged lady who wants to type and print the church newsletter has ABSOLUTELY no use for a computer without a hard drive and even less of an idea how to install one even if she did have budget to get one.
Unfortunately most charities will not make any promises that the PC will be donated to said lady. It could end up anywhere. As such most company policies regarding data destruction will remain in place. A deleted drive looks the same as an un destroyed drive to the shipping clerk. A PC missing the drive is a no-brainer to the shipping department that the data is not there.
Most companies don't want to take the entire department cast off stack and take the time and space to set up 200+ machines to wipe them. It's just simpler to stack them and remove drives and then place them on the done pallet ready to ship.
Removing the drive does not have the task of using a table, connecting things, loading software, waiting for the process to finish, etc. A dock jockey with a screwdriver is much faster and the results are reliable.
that "real time = real fast."
Often, nothing could be further from the truth.
What's missed here is a Real Time OS is being compared to Windows XP. Windows anything is not a real time OS. It keeps getting pushed into real time use, simply because it is there, but it is not the best tool for the job. Having an OS respond in real time to interupts is like having a mouse that doesn't freeze for several seconds at a time on a busy system. (if you run Windows, you know what I'm talking about.) Using Windows in a real time environment such as video encoding, or such almost always produces the ocasional jump or glitch because Windows is not a real time OS. Interupts get ignored during such things as a disk access.