The point is, the fastest production cars are now electric. The 918's motor is basically just there to charge the batteries, plus it provides a modest share of extra power, but the main acceleration is electric.
Consider it in the context of what people want. Go electric or resign yourself watching taillights tail lights recede in the distance. From now on, performance means electric, end of story. Break the price barrier and the damn will burst. Chances are, you already bought your last internal combustion car.
Mumble has already achieved an impressive level of functionality, is popular with gamers, and could use a bunch of helping hands right about now to get it the rest of the way towards truly slick. Open source => not spyware (unlike Skype).
Setting up a Mumble (Murmur) server is dead simple.
I'm an Android guy... won't endure Android tablets, they just don't cut it.
Yeah sure you are, that's why you sound exactly like an Apple marketdroid. Disagree with what? The numbers? They're black and white. Android tablets are beating Apple in the market. I guess customers don't see things the same way you do.
You cannot relicense anything unless you are the copyright owner.
With the BSD license, that's immaterial. You start your GPL project and import the BSD code. The BSD license for the imported code must be retained, however you may license the work as a whole under the GPL. Relicensing by any other name...
AThere may be some people who want to cut themselves off in a VR headset, but this is not the way my kids use it and I don't think they'd want to really
Imagine an entire subway car full of people wearing VR headsets, how would you tell which ones are actually homicidal robots?
Every human activity has a cost. Nothing is free in this world.
Who will pay to publish and host these papers?
That becomes less of a problem as time goes by and the cost of moving information approaches zero. For universities, it will soon be a smaller budget component than keeping the lights on and heating the classrooms, even if they have to bear the entire cost themselves. The cost of publication will be a rounding error next to salaries.
It's not just a moral obligation to make the fruit of public research publicly available, for researchers it is rapidly becoming a matter of survival. As far as I'm concerned, if a research paper is siloed behind a paywall, it doesn't exist. While that's a bit of a black and white attitude that makes some research unavailable to me, the trend is, there's such a huge flood of papers that are freely available that any paywalled bits tend to be covered or soon will be. Sure, there are still lots of disciplines where researchers must subscribe to the journals and publish in them or perish, but those are increasingly looking like islands, sinking one by one beneath the waves. To get citations, readers need to be able to find your research, and today finding research means finding it on the web. Rightly or wrongly, citation count has become the primary measure of the value of a paper and hence, the researcher. This is the pay-for encyclopedia thing playing out again. Britannica is loaded with beautifully written, authoritative articles that nobody reads and nobody cares about because Wikipedia is way more accessible. Paywall journals are headed the same way, the smarter ones will relaunch themselves as web portals, the stupid ones will just fizzle out and fade away pathetically, taking a few of the more gullible researchers with them.
With the massive reverse dihedral... including, what the hell is up with those upside down winglets on the carnard???... the natural flying attitude of this abortion is upside down. Ducted fans are great right, so if we just multiply them, wow, zoom! But consider the cross sectional drag of all those ducts you can't see between the biplane style airfoils and those wings are really just massive air brakes. Because all the lift comes form the top surface of the foil, the bottom foils are doing nothing except adding weight, the top surface flow will be completely turbulent because of all the nasty structural decoration. The hybrid fossil fuel/electric design enables loads of creative thrust positioning at the cost of an extra lossy conversion step. The weight of the power distribution cables will be very non trivial considering the absurd amounts of juice it will take to budge this pig off the pavement. There is nothing good about the tiny fans stuffed into little tubes in this context... lousy static lift performance and massive drag at speed.
Imagine electric aircraft that are more quiet, fuel-efficient and adaptable and are capable of runway-independent operations.
Yep, I'm imagining it. And it won't be using ducted fans if it wants to be quiet. Anyone who's actually used ducted fans knows they are much, much louder than either turbines or turbo props. And due to their relatively small size they're not particularly efficient either.
From the experience of RC modellers, around half as efficient as a free propeller for the same power input. Higher foil loading due to the smaller diameter as you say, increased structural weight and increased drag from the additional wetted surface of the duct. Plus, a duct operates efficiently only at its design airspeed, so either static thrust (for hovering) or operating range at top speed must be sacrificed. Then there is the practical issue that, in order to gain the benefit of reduced fan blade tip losses, manufacturing tolerances must be very tight and the system must be very rigid, pushing up the weight and cost.
My take on it, someone heard about the EDF model jet scene and thought it looked cool enough to scam some defence knuckledraggers whose only redeeming quality is to know the unlock codes to the money spigot. Engineering never came into it.
What's with the negative dihedral on the wings? Are they trying to be unstable?
No, they're trying to get funding purely on the strength of a cool CG render that has little to do with aeronautical engineering sanity. To hell with stability. The thumping base line is considerably more important in closing this deal, and maybe they threw in a hooker or two.
I think people will only seriously consider switching when Linux becomes more user friendly and superior to Windows for novice users (it's already superior if you understand ssh, bash scripting, systemctl, CLI, etc).
It already is if you use KDE. Now on the rare occasions I put my fingers on a Windows keyboard, I'm always surprised by how clumsy and confusing it is compared to what I normally use.
Slashdot Mirror
Everybody would prefer a fast car if they could afford it.
The point is, the fastest production cars are now electric. The 918's motor is basically just there to charge the batteries, plus it provides a modest share of extra power, but the main acceleration is electric.
Consider it in the context of what people want. Go electric or resign yourself watching taillights tail lights recede in the distance. From now on, performance means electric, end of story. Break the price barrier and the damn will burst. Chances are, you already bought your last internal combustion car.
Right, I guess video will land in the fullness of time, but voice meets my immediate needs.
Mumble has already achieved an impressive level of functionality, is popular with gamers, and could use a bunch of helping hands right about now to get it the rest of the way towards truly slick. Open source => not spyware (unlike Skype).
Setting up a Mumble (Murmur) server is dead simple.
So naturally the same standard applies to Microsoft?
Poster child for the Apple community much?
I'm an Android guy... won't endure Android tablets, they just don't cut it.
Yeah sure you are, that's why you sound exactly like an Apple marketdroid. Disagree with what? The numbers? They're black and white. Android tablets are beating Apple in the market. I guess customers don't see things the same way you do.
Android tablets starting to genuinely compete.
Starting? Android tablet sales passed Apple four years ago, currently outsell Apple by a factor of three, and the gap is widening.
Shrinking isn't "doing fine", especially when continuing to lose share to Android.
Oh, tick-tock was the bedrock of Intel's success? Silly me, I thought it was more about monopoly control and cutting off AMD's air supply.
You cannot relicense anything unless you are the copyright owner.
With the BSD license, that's immaterial. You start your GPL project and import the BSD code. The BSD license for the imported code must be retained, however you may license the work as a whole under the GPL. Relicensing by any other name...
If it's BSD we'll see animation houses suck up any research output and not contribute much of anything back.
If it's BSD then anyone who wants to can re-license it as GPL if they want to.
Also with deeper stories, better character development and more message. Arguably better imagery too. Oh, and better music.
AThere may be some people who want to cut themselves off in a VR headset, but this is not the way my kids use it and I don't think they'd want to really
Imagine an entire subway car full of people wearing VR headsets, how would you tell which ones are actually homicidal robots?
He took a number and waits in line, yes? People have promised various versions of that for a decade.
Two decades.
Grand plans indeed. Is this the same company that still has its infrastructure in php? Why does the "myspace" word pop into my head?
Every human activity has a cost. Nothing is free in this world.
Who will pay to publish and host these papers?
That becomes less of a problem as time goes by and the cost of moving information approaches zero. For universities, it will soon be a smaller budget component than keeping the lights on and heating the classrooms, even if they have to bear the entire cost themselves. The cost of publication will be a rounding error next to salaries.
It's not just a moral obligation to make the fruit of public research publicly available, for researchers it is rapidly becoming a matter of survival. As far as I'm concerned, if a research paper is siloed behind a paywall, it doesn't exist. While that's a bit of a black and white attitude that makes some research unavailable to me, the trend is, there's such a huge flood of papers that are freely available that any paywalled bits tend to be covered or soon will be. Sure, there are still lots of disciplines where researchers must subscribe to the journals and publish in them or perish, but those are increasingly looking like islands, sinking one by one beneath the waves. To get citations, readers need to be able to find your research, and today finding research means finding it on the web. Rightly or wrongly, citation count has become the primary measure of the value of a paper and hence, the researcher. This is the pay-for encyclopedia thing playing out again. Britannica is loaded with beautifully written, authoritative articles that nobody reads and nobody cares about because Wikipedia is way more accessible. Paywall journals are headed the same way, the smarter ones will relaunch themselves as web portals, the stupid ones will just fizzle out and fade away pathetically, taking a few of the more gullible researchers with them.
Or thinking something you should not think
With the massive reverse dihedral... including, what the hell is up with those upside down winglets on the carnard???... the natural flying attitude of this abortion is upside down. Ducted fans are great right, so if we just multiply them, wow, zoom! But consider the cross sectional drag of all those ducts you can't see between the biplane style airfoils and those wings are really just massive air brakes. Because all the lift comes form the top surface of the foil, the bottom foils are doing nothing except adding weight, the top surface flow will be completely turbulent because of all the nasty structural decoration. The hybrid fossil fuel/electric design enables loads of creative thrust positioning at the cost of an extra lossy conversion step. The weight of the power distribution cables will be very non trivial considering the absurd amounts of juice it will take to budge this pig off the pavement. There is nothing good about the tiny fans stuffed into little tubes in this context... lousy static lift performance and massive drag at speed.
From TFA:
Yep, I'm imagining it. And it won't be using ducted fans if it wants to be quiet. Anyone who's actually used ducted fans knows they are much, much louder than either turbines or turbo props. And due to their relatively small size they're not particularly efficient either.
From the experience of RC modellers, around half as efficient as a free propeller for the same power input. Higher foil loading due to the smaller diameter as you say, increased structural weight and increased drag from the additional wetted surface of the duct. Plus, a duct operates efficiently only at its design airspeed, so either static thrust (for hovering) or operating range at top speed must be sacrificed. Then there is the practical issue that, in order to gain the benefit of reduced fan blade tip losses, manufacturing tolerances must be very tight and the system must be very rigid, pushing up the weight and cost.
My take on it, someone heard about the EDF model jet scene and thought it looked cool enough to scam some defence knuckledraggers whose only redeeming quality is to know the unlock codes to the money spigot. Engineering never came into it.
What's with the negative dihedral on the wings? Are they trying to be unstable?
No, they're trying to get funding purely on the strength of a cool CG render that has little to do with aeronautical engineering sanity. To hell with stability. The thumping base line is considerably more important in closing this deal, and maybe they threw in a hooker or two.
The problem is one of QA. Poorly written firmware, unable to handle edge cases (e.g. power failure)
Nice post, except I would hardly call power failure an "edge case".
I think people will only seriously consider switching when Linux becomes more user friendly and superior to Windows for novice users (it's already superior if you understand ssh, bash scripting, systemctl, CLI, etc).
It already is if you use KDE. Now on the rare occasions I put my fingers on a Windows keyboard, I'm always surprised by how clumsy and confusing it is compared to what I normally use.