Who the hell is Bill Hilf, and what kind of drugs is he smoking?
You could try reading the article. He's the head of Microsoft's Linux division. Which is a bit like saying that Sun's Windows division just declared Microsoft Windows irrelevant. Who cares?
When I was a young-un', I used to work a sysadmin job that required me to come into work quite early in the morning. Early enough that it was still dark outside during the winter. I used to sit in the server room with the lights off, and watch the hubs and routers do their thing. It was mesmerizing to watch those panels of lights flash about. I hated getting out of bed so early, but it was always fun to just spend a few minutes watching das blinken lights.
Personally, I can't see what this guy is on about. Not for one minute.
I'm not disagreeing with you per se, but everyone else is calling it Atkinson's cycle. And if I understand the Atkinson cycle correctly, an "engine with asymmetric timings" is exactly what that cycle entails.
The European Mitsubishi Colt gets about the same real world MPG as the Prius. It has a 94BHP 3-cylinder advanced turbodiesel engine with no batteries to lug about, a Tiptronic gearbox, conventional steel construction and still gets 121g CO2 per mile. The dust to dust cost is far lower than a Prius because (a) steel needs less energy to make than aluminum and (b) it only needs a small lead acid starter battery. And it will cruise all day at 90+mph where legal.
*Ahem* "Diesel". Diesel almost always gets better mileage than gasoline. Unfortunately, there are eco-laws that make turbo-diesels impractical here in the states. That's why we need technologically sophisticated vehicles like the Prius.
That it is. And it amazes me how Microsoft gets away with it time and time again. All I can say is that they're masters of reasonable doubt. They really do threaten, cajole, and otherwise pressure others without making it seem like they're doing it, or at least seem like they're doing it illegally. (e.g. If you try and switch to free software, Microsoft will need to invoke the audit clause of the EULA to ensure that you're not using it as a cover for software piracy.)
I will say this: The Microsoft empire is crumbling, albeit ever-so slowly. Even if an attempt to be Microsoft-free doesn't succeed, it chips that much more out of Microsoft's armor. Eventually, damaging wounds will begin to appear. Microsoft won't disappear, but they may find themselves relegated to the semi-relevance of another three-letter computer giant.
Actually, iTunes vs. Digital Cable is almost 1 for 1. Especially if you're still using COAX to the back of an SDTV. The only time Digital Cable has a clear win is if the channel is in HD. If you still have analog cable, then iTunes wins for having double the vertical resolution. Any compression artifacts that you may see (which are actually quite rare or non-noticeable on iTunes) are far better to look at than the blurry state of 480i resolution.:-)
We CAN make small, [underpowered, cramped, and unreliable] fuel-efficient cars
I hope that answers your question?
I'm not against the idea of bringing back a sub-compact vehicle, but I'm afraid that the general American market isn't. The average consumer associates such vehicles with insufficient acceleration to use for interstate merging, uncomfortable seating that's not so great for long car trips, and cheap construction that will eventually cause maintenance problems. There are also the emotional issues that American drivers have related to the acceleration of their vehicles.
The problem is that these impressions aren't necessarily wrong. For one thing, you don't see many old Sprints still on the road, do you? I was actually driving a used Chevette long after my mother's Sprint was dead. (Though arguably, she did get her 100,000 miles out of it.) This is because no one will pay for high-quality construction of such a vehicle. It only has a 3 cylinder engine, so why should it be expensive? (Which belies the fact that smaller engineering often gets more difficult.)
Speaking of the engine, a 3 banger is NOT going to give you much acceleration. With one person in the car it won't do too bad. But it won't do great either. You get enough people freaking out during interstate merges ("I can't get up to speed fast enough! OMG, we're all going to DIE!"), and the reputation of the vehicle drops like a rock. Not to mention that people don't feel very safe in a Sprint when an SUV is bearing down on them.
Finally, Americans are used to a minimal standard of comfort. Sub-compacts suck at comfort. There just isn't a whole lot of room to work with. In order to keep the vehicle light, you have to sacrifice something. Very few drivers have wanted to make the sacrifice when a comparatively spacious Chevy Cavalier is only a few thousand more.
Priuses eliminate these problems. They're zippy, they're cool, they're high tech, they're not too shabby on space, and they still get good mileage. Ergo, Americans who wouldn't accept a Sprint will accept the Prius.
Number 1, my dear coward, you have an interesting definition of a "puff piece". A puff piece would contain lots of hype and little hard information. I think you'll find that my post contains the exact opposite.
Number 2, I just compared a Toyota Prius to a 3-cylinder Chevy Sprint. (The car that eventually became the Geo Metro.) Considering the overall unpopularity of the vehicle (right up there with the Chevette), I don't think that such a comparison would make for a very good "sales brochure".
Number 3, I don't own a Prius, nor am I all that interested in owning one. I don't even like Toyotas. But good engineering is good engineering. And good engineering is why the Prius is a superior vehicle to nearly every other car in its class. Owners love their Priuses, and there is good reason for that.
Now please be a good troll and nip off to somewhere else. That's right. One foot after another. That's a goooood trolley, wolley.
Think of PDFs as the final "compiled" product of ODFs. If you want to distribute the document in a non-editable, non-variable, and printable format that's accessible by all, PDFs are it. ODFs are more of the "source code" document used to produce the final PDF product. Thus the concerns about synchronization are handled by the method of pipelining the documents. All edits are made to the ODFs internally, then published to web under the PDF format.
If adopted, it would require all government agencies and services to use these two formats, and would permit other formats (such as OOXML) to be used only in a redundant capacity.Reflecting a pragmatic approach to the continuing consideration of OOXML by ISO/IEC JTC 1, the recommendation calls for Norway to 'promote the convergence of the ODF and OOXML, in order to avoid having two standards covering the same usage.'
The results of this investigation seem obvious to me. They'll find that there are no significant features of the OOXML format that aren't already replicated by ODF. They will also find that OOXML is needlessly complicated by support for odd bugs and backward compatibility issues with previous Microsoft Office releases. Finally, they will find that a dozen or so major software providers are actively supporting ODF while only Microsoft is actively promoting OOXML.
After the report is released, Microsoft money will step in and suppress it. The guys who wrote the report will be fired, and a new report will be written recommending OOXML as an "industry standard" with "longstanding vendor support". ODF supporters will be recast as small companies that could go belly up at any time. The whole standardization effort will collapse in the backlash, and nothing will get done.
On the bright side, they're keeping up the good fight. Without this pressure, nothing will ever change.
Alright, time for a reality check here. The Prius is doing such a damn good job on mileage not because it's a hybrid, but because it's an exceptionally well-designed car. Your own experiences with highway driving demonstrate that. Hybrid vehicles should actually get worse highway mileage because of their design. But the Prius doesn't. Why?
The answer lies in more than just its batteries. There are plenty of auto manufacturers jumping on the bandwagon by battery-backing their existing engine designs. That won't do much. Toyota took a different approach. For one, the engine of the Prius was replaced with a more efficient Atkinson Cycle engine. This engine would normally not be viable in a car, as its peak output is quite poor. However, the Prius uses stored battery power to provide maximum torque when accelerating. This makes up for the engine's poor peak power output. Furthermore, the torque delivered by electrical power is more fuel efficient than driving an Otto-cycle engine to sudden, peak power-output conditions.
But the engineers didn't stop there. They used the research behind Continuously Variable Transmissions (CVT) to develop a transmission that can evenly split the power between the electrical and gasoline powered components of the car. This transmission can smoothly transfer power between different sources and outputs, avoiding the limitations and excess power consumption of the traditional geared transmission. This transmission (which Toyota calls a "Power Split Transmission") is only workable in a small car like the Prius, due to the torque limitations of most CVT designs.
Finally, Toyota further hedged the car's bets with computer control and tuning over the entire power system, a low air-resistance body design, lightweight aluminum construction, and vacuum flask coolant storage for fast warm-up times.
What you're looking at is the modern equivalent of a Chevy Sprint. Those three bangers got great mileage at the expense of power and comfort. (My mother had one and managed to get 58 MPG on the highway!) The Prius uses modern technology to provide similar returns, but without the drawbacks that made the Sprint so unpopular in the first place.
Ever heard of "Grammar Nazis?" Yeah, it play on that. It's also a sideswipe at Godwin's Law.
Lighten up a little. Being so serious is going to take years off your life.
And in case you're wondering, I'm one of those people who "pay for shows without commercials". I have no cable service and rely on iTunes, DVDs, and websites like NBC.com. My reference (which was a joke anyway) was not aimed at your average, "I'm tired of sitting through commercials" consumer, but rather the extremists who think all commercials are evil and should be expunged from existence. Of course, these also tend to be the same people who think that they should get all this high-quality, commercial-free content without having to pay a dime for it. How that's supposed to work is anyone's guess.
In any case, I think I'll dub you, "overly serious Nazi". Because you're just so gosh-darn literal.:-P
Yes, thank you. That was completely my typo. And I fully agree. Apple has upgraded the video quality once already. As the average bandwidth improves, I see no reason why they wouldn't offer 720p in the future. It's just that right now there is no serious competition in that area. (The XBOx 360 stuff is still getting the kinks worked out.) So for now, at least, Apple is sitting pretty.
Have you seen the videos on NBC.com? The difference between the NBC.com videos and iTunes videos is like night and day. I'm probably one of the least picky people about my video quality, but even I think that NBC.com looks significantly worse than your average CRT television. It reminds me of watching television with rabbit ears, only worse.
Actually, iTunes shows are not without commercials. Many of the shows have commercials embedded in the movie file. What they are is without commercial interruptions. Commercials are placed on the tail end of the video where you can choose to watch them or shut off the playback. This is vastly superior to the DVD solution of, "you MUST watch these commercials every time you turn on this DVD."
I don't know about anyone else, but I actually like seeing occasional advertisements. Especially things like movie trailers and new show promotions. My problem is that I don't like being forced to watch them repetitively. iTunes gives you the best of both worlds in that respect, and in a way that is unlikely to offend the die-hard anti-commericalists. (Dare I say it? Anti-commercial Nazis?)
Let me see. I can go to NBC.com and watch a show in horrendously low quality with annoying commercials, or I can spend $1.99 a week to watch the same show in H.234 480p with no commerical interruptions. Oh, and I can collect the seasons and watch them whenever I want.
Seriously, this doesn't make any sense. And can television stations really say that they make more money per viewer with commercials than they do with iTunes downloads? As far as I see, the episodes on NBC.com are carrots intended to get viewers hooked on the shows. The quality is intentionally limited so as to convince new viewers to tune in on television or iTunes.
Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design, web usability guru Jakob Nielsen has said.
I hate to steal his thunder, but when have web firms ever payed attention to good design? I'm sure that such companies do exist, but every contract I've seen for a website design has resulted in something that would look absolutely gorgeous in print, but lacks usability when transfered to the more interactive medium of the web.
If you ask these firms to follow a particular procedure for development, they usually mess it up. Visually it may look right, but usability-wise it's just plain wrong. "Web 2.0 features" are just one more thing for design firms not to understand.
Now, if I can back up for a moment, I'd like to say that this situation is perfectly understandable. Website design firms are mainly staffed by artists rather than technologists. They may have skills enough to use off-the-shelf libraries to add whatever feature you're looking for, but they're not going to know how to properly implement a technology solution. That's why the world has Computer Science/Engineering majors.
The best solution is to develop a strong relationship with a specific design firm, then get them to ship only the mockups and assets used. Have the implementation of the mockups done by in-house programmers or trusted consultants. (I can't stress the "trusted" part enough here.) If the implementors find something that doesn't make sense visually, then they can send it back until the web design firm gets a feel for what is needed.
Together, these two teams will produce a far better website than either could have done independently. It may cost a bit more in the short term, but the result will cost you a lot less in maintenance in the long-term. Furthermore, the teamwork you develop between these teams will give your company a powerful source for website changes and improvements.
Considering how (relatively) common school shootings have become, I'm not against the idea of drilling kids on what to do in such a situation. If a set of procedures have been devised to combat the situation or at least keep it under control, then teaching it to the kids would probably be a positive thing. However, it does need to be taught to them.
You can't just spring a "real emergency" drill on them without first performing announced drills and properly training them. The result would be similar to the pandemonium that would result if it was announced that the school was really burning down every time there was a fire drill. That's no way to teach proper handling of the situation. You want everyone as calm and collected as can be.
The article is light on details, but I do hope some good comes of this. These teachers sound far too junior to be implementing this plan on their own. (Their first major mistake.) If schools take notice, however, perhaps more appropriate training and procedures can be put in place.
The *only* reason to use a console over a PC is because the games will be optimized for your specific set of hardware, so you can be sure that there are no compatibility issues and it will probably run pretty smooth.
Actually, there's another reason. The Internet Channel in the Wii provides a net-enabled entertainment center. For example, if you browse to video.stumbleupon.com on your Wii, you can watch various "channels" of net videos on your television. Not only does this easily allow you to share the experience with others around you, but it allows you to view the videos on a larger screen. (Most people still have far larger televisions than they do computer screens. Only us geeks use an HDTV as a computer monitor.:P)
You can't share that sort of content on a computer nearly as easily as you can on something like the Wii. Sure, you could hook up your computer with a TV-out, but how many average people are really going to do that? And that's not even mentioning sites that provide homebrew video game content through the web browser.
If you boost it to a very high speed (lets say ten thousand kilometres per second), you will not have much manuevering possibilities, due to to the massive amount of energy needed to divert it.
Actually, you need a lot less energy earlier in flight than you need later in flight. So the key is to consistently update the trajectory during flight. As it approaches, it can either hit directly, or attempt a soft-kill if it misses the target. Alternatively, a series of smaller nukes could be launched by fighters, as seen in the miniseries.
And still at that speed, the distance of two light seconds will take a full minute. And a missile that goes at such ludicrous speed is way beyond what can be built today, maybe as far away as real space battles:)
In a real space battle, your flight time would be a lot more than a minute. You'd be exchanging weapons fire over hours, even with weapons being launched out of magnetic accelerator tubes. Of course, that doesn't make very good TV, so they tend to not show how long it takes for weapons fire to be exchanged. Or, they take us in for some ludicriously close space battles. (e.g. The Pegasus taking out two Basestars during her destruction. That's nuts, and would never happen in real life. However, it made a neat-looking special effect.)
For instance, a capital ship is probably not going to be able to do much manuevouring fast enough to avoid getting hit.
Sure it can. Random boosts in different directions will send it flying off in unpredictable patterns. Even if we assume that it's not enough to prevent a laser strike (keep in mind that in space battles, you're targeting the proverbial needle in the haystack), it may throw off their firing solution, thus causing damage to non-critical sections.
And incoming missiles/attack craft would eventually get into the range where they are easy pickings for a computer targeted laser system.
Indeed. Lasers make wonderful point defense systems. I've argued the possibility of using them on today's carriers to stop incoming missiles. The problem is in finding lasers robust enough for warfare, and targeting systems good enough to target a fast moving object. Even with the technology of Galactica, effective targeting might pose a bit of a problem.
A 1-inch hole seems pretty effective if you like to breathe air
In a battleship, you would have it compartmentalized to prevent the loss of pressure in one section from leaking air out of other sections. (We've seen several episodes of Galactica where a single section depressurized, but posed no immediate threat to the remainder of the ship.) A 1 inch hold could be patched with an emergency kit rather quickly, potentially before the atmosphere in the section leaked out. One thing that they don't show in Galactica, but should, is that the crew should be in pressure suits when at battle stations. The ship is expected to take damage, so the crew should be ready for depressurization situations.
The countermeasures sound expensive and ad-hoc (it's not like they are going to get a chance to re-design their ships immediately).
The Cylons have an entire Empire to fall back on. They can withdraw until they can retrofit some of the coutermeasures, then come back swinging. New Basestars would be built with the countermeasures in the specs.
And finally, like I said, we are assuming Galactica has an absurd amount of power.
According to Baltar in Hand of God, Tyllium releases about 50 terajoules per kilogram burned. However, it seems unlikely (given the state of the Galactica's technology) that their reactors would be capable of buring a kilogram of fuel per second. Also, by the quantities seen in episodes like Dirty Hands, we don't see enough being processed to suggest that the Galactica burns fuel at that rate. So if I were to take a wild guess, I'd say her energy output is somewhere between 10 - 100 GW. Thus if we assume that she dumps her entire energy production into charging laser weapons, each laser would still take between 8.3 minutes to 50 seconds to charge.
Of course, this is assuming that Earth has tyllium technology.
Of course, nukes aren't likely to make it past the lasers (and to take out a missile you only need, what, megawatts?)
There are some useful tricks that can be used to make the hit more effective. First, you can use small maneuvering thrusters to make the flight path more erratic. Secondly, you can use flare-type weapons to make targeting systems ineffective. Thirdly, you can use a "shaped" nuclear charge.
"Shaped" nuclear charges were developed for use (in the real world) in the Orion Project. The basic idea is that a nuclear detonation is reflected by a strong plate (say, depleted uranium) in a specific direction. At the end of the device that will receive the energy of the blast, you place a strong, but easily vaporizable substance. IIRC, the Orion Project used rings of Tungsten. When detonated, the blast will vaporize the tungsten. The vaporized tungsten then carries the force of the blast to the target.
No laser can stop a cloud of vaporized particles from impacting with the fo
Simple. At the distances involved in space battles, a laser has the problem of targeting. Since it can take several seconds to reach the target, the enemy ship can use random manuevers to prevent the enemy targeting system from getting a solid lock. Missiles don't have this problem as they can update their course to match the movements of the enemy vessel. That makes them much more likely to hit.
Lasers also have the problem of being far too focused. Assuming you actually got close enough to an enemy to make it an effective weapon (something they tend to gloss over in the series, but we can assume based on some scenes that they occassionally jump in pretty close), a laser will tend to cut surgically rather than doing collateral damage. The problem is that you want collateral damage in these sorts of weapons. Making a 1 inch hole in the vessel isn't very useful unless you can hit a key area. (Such as a magazine.)
The problem with hitting a key area is that you're talking about incredibly precise targeting. In a pitched battle, it can be difficult to get that targeting data. Heck, it would be hard enough to get yourself oriented after a jump, much less probe the exact pitch, angle, and cross-section of the enemy to compute the correct firing solution. (And that's assuming you know the internal layout of the enemy vessel.)
Not to mention that an enemy that knows you're using laser weapons is likely to deploy countermeasures. Such countermeasures can include building prisms into key areas to dissapate the energy into less critical sections (though the prisms would probably be destroyed after each use), launching smoke weapons between you and your enemy to confuse targeting and force some loss of beam coherence, and building flash-steam pools near the skin of the ship. (If you read Footfall sometime, the characters used water flowing through the skin of the Orion to absorb the heat from laser weapons. The water would immediately flash into steam, requiring a fast circulation system AND the ship to spin on its axis to prevent any one side from being exposed for too long. I have confirmed with physicists that this solution is a workable, though not perfect, solution.)
Lastly, lasers require a great deal of power. You'd need to build a large number of nuclear reactors into a ship to have any hope of charging the laser weapons quickly. For example, a 5 terajoule pulse (1 terawatt for 5 seconds) would take a 1 GW reactor 1.3 hours to charge. Such lasers do exist and are being used for fusion research. However, they are not robust enough for warfare and would burn out quite easily. Maintenance would be extremely high.
In comparison, a small nuclear missile would pack an order of magnitude more power than we are discussing with a laser weapon. Larger hydrogen weapons would be capable of several orders of magnitude more power. Nuclear missiles can update their trajectory based on sensor data from both the missile itself and telemetry from the parent vessel. Nuclear missiles are also quite effective at collateral damage, making them much more useful for hammering an enemy. While the nature of space combat means that a great deal of that energy would not directly impact the vessel (no atmosphere to carry a shockwave), it would still be far more effective than a laser strike.
It was like watching Power Rangers (most in terms of horrible acting, but also in terms of horrible plot lines) with aliens while attempting to be edgy.
I guess you don't know much about pilots. Pilot shows are done on EXTREMELY low budgets, and are intended only to demonstrate what the final show might be like. On top of that, they also represent the first attempts at filming the show. The lessons learned from the pilot are then applied to the final product.
As a result, pilots usually have a great deal of cheese that doesn't exist in the final series. You kind of have to look at what it will be like rather than what it is right now. Personally, I liked the pilot as did many others. And there was a fan outcry to have the show produced. So I honestly don't see what you're complaining about.
Just so I'm clear, what do you want proof of, the fact that paper costs money or that space is limited?
Neither. Both are accepted. What is supposition is that these two facts prove the superiority of the new reading concept. Basic logic.
I said "space" not "paper space"
Your so-called "point" is that the new method is superior because technology does away with the limited space on paper, correct? Therefore, you are referring to "paper space". Screen space is just as limited. In most cases, even more so. GUIs get around this problem by offering scrolling, but the article does not mention studies into the disruptiveness of scrolling on the reading process. If you have to scroll more, you may be losing the benefits that researchers are so keen to introduce.
Totally irrelevant. More costs more money, that's all that is necessary.
It is NOT irrelevant. If this method is truly as superior as is claimed, then it would have many potential benefits in printed media. For example, we print books with extremely large type for those with exceptionally poor eyesight. (Check your library sometime. Many libraries have a special section devoted to these books.) Books utilizing this new method could be printed to assist those with reading disabilities. Yet they haven't. Thus we can deduce that there are potential problems with the methodology itself. Simple logic.
Please, if you respond this time, try to actually address my points.
Funny. I was just about to say the same thing.
Also, you may be interested in RichDiesel's post above. He provides an expert opinion that kind of blows your suppositions out of the water.
This sounds a bit like trying to teach the piano by numbering the notes. "Phasing" someone into the sheet music sounds like a good idea, but they end up becoming too reliant on the numbers. The result is that they end up having to learn how to read sheet music from scratch anyway.
The only effective method is to just teach the concept.
Slashdot Mirror
You could try reading the article. He's the head of Microsoft's Linux division. Which is a bit like saying that Sun's Windows division just declared Microsoft Windows irrelevant. Who cares?
Bah! "50 little stars?" You're not thinking big enough! We need MORE lights! And what goes better with lights and music? Especially Christmas music?
c =79587
http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopi
When I was a young-un', I used to work a sysadmin job that required me to come into work quite early in the morning. Early enough that it was still dark outside during the winter. I used to sit in the server room with the lights off, and watch the hubs and routers do their thing. It was mesmerizing to watch those panels of lights flash about. I hated getting out of bed so early, but it was always fun to just spend a few minutes watching das blinken lights.
Personally, I can't see what this guy is on about. Not for one minute.
That's not what just about every source of info on the 1NZ-FXE engine states, including Toyota's press releases.
http://www.pressroom.com.au/pressroom/sample/pres
http://www.pressroom.com.au/pressroom/sample/pres
http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-petrol-
http://www.hybridsynergydrive.com/en/petrol_engin
http://www.autoshop101.com/forms/Hybrid04.pdf
I'm not disagreeing with you per se, but everyone else is calling it Atkinson's cycle. And if I understand the Atkinson cycle correctly, an "engine with asymmetric timings" is exactly what that cycle entails.
*Ahem* "Diesel". Diesel almost always gets better mileage than gasoline. Unfortunately, there are eco-laws that make turbo-diesels impractical here in the states. That's why we need technologically sophisticated vehicles like the Prius.
That it is. And it amazes me how Microsoft gets away with it time and time again. All I can say is that they're masters of reasonable doubt. They really do threaten, cajole, and otherwise pressure others without making it seem like they're doing it, or at least seem like they're doing it illegally. (e.g. If you try and switch to free software, Microsoft will need to invoke the audit clause of the EULA to ensure that you're not using it as a cover for software piracy.)
I will say this: The Microsoft empire is crumbling, albeit ever-so slowly. Even if an attempt to be Microsoft-free doesn't succeed, it chips that much more out of Microsoft's armor. Eventually, damaging wounds will begin to appear. Microsoft won't disappear, but they may find themselves relegated to the semi-relevance of another three-letter computer giant.
Actually, iTunes vs. Digital Cable is almost 1 for 1. Especially if you're still using COAX to the back of an SDTV. The only time Digital Cable has a clear win is if the channel is in HD. If you still have analog cable, then iTunes wins for having double the vertical resolution. Any compression artifacts that you may see (which are actually quite rare or non-noticeable on iTunes) are far better to look at than the blurry state of 480i resolution. :-)
I hope that answers your question?
I'm not against the idea of bringing back a sub-compact vehicle, but I'm afraid that the general American market isn't. The average consumer associates such vehicles with insufficient acceleration to use for interstate merging, uncomfortable seating that's not so great for long car trips, and cheap construction that will eventually cause maintenance problems. There are also the emotional issues that American drivers have related to the acceleration of their vehicles.
The problem is that these impressions aren't necessarily wrong. For one thing, you don't see many old Sprints still on the road, do you? I was actually driving a used Chevette long after my mother's Sprint was dead. (Though arguably, she did get her 100,000 miles out of it.) This is because no one will pay for high-quality construction of such a vehicle. It only has a 3 cylinder engine, so why should it be expensive? (Which belies the fact that smaller engineering often gets more difficult.)
Speaking of the engine, a 3 banger is NOT going to give you much acceleration. With one person in the car it won't do too bad. But it won't do great either. You get enough people freaking out during interstate merges ("I can't get up to speed fast enough! OMG, we're all going to DIE!"), and the reputation of the vehicle drops like a rock. Not to mention that people don't feel very safe in a Sprint when an SUV is bearing down on them.
Finally, Americans are used to a minimal standard of comfort. Sub-compacts suck at comfort. There just isn't a whole lot of room to work with. In order to keep the vehicle light, you have to sacrifice something. Very few drivers have wanted to make the sacrifice when a comparatively spacious Chevy Cavalier is only a few thousand more.
Priuses eliminate these problems. They're zippy, they're cool, they're high tech, they're not too shabby on space, and they still get good mileage. Ergo, Americans who wouldn't accept a Sprint will accept the Prius.
Number 1, my dear coward, you have an interesting definition of a "puff piece". A puff piece would contain lots of hype and little hard information. I think you'll find that my post contains the exact opposite.
Number 2, I just compared a Toyota Prius to a 3-cylinder Chevy Sprint. (The car that eventually became the Geo Metro.) Considering the overall unpopularity of the vehicle (right up there with the Chevette), I don't think that such a comparison would make for a very good "sales brochure".
Number 3, I don't own a Prius, nor am I all that interested in owning one. I don't even like Toyotas. But good engineering is good engineering. And good engineering is why the Prius is a superior vehicle to nearly every other car in its class. Owners love their Priuses, and there is good reason for that.
Now please be a good troll and nip off to somewhere else. That's right. One foot after another. That's a goooood trolley, wolley.
Think of PDFs as the final "compiled" product of ODFs. If you want to distribute the document in a non-editable, non-variable, and printable format that's accessible by all, PDFs are it. ODFs are more of the "source code" document used to produce the final PDF product. Thus the concerns about synchronization are handled by the method of pipelining the documents. All edits are made to the ODFs internally, then published to web under the PDF format.
The results of this investigation seem obvious to me. They'll find that there are no significant features of the OOXML format that aren't already replicated by ODF. They will also find that OOXML is needlessly complicated by support for odd bugs and backward compatibility issues with previous Microsoft Office releases. Finally, they will find that a dozen or so major software providers are actively supporting ODF while only Microsoft is actively promoting OOXML.
After the report is released, Microsoft money will step in and suppress it. The guys who wrote the report will be fired, and a new report will be written recommending OOXML as an "industry standard" with "longstanding vendor support". ODF supporters will be recast as small companies that could go belly up at any time. The whole standardization effort will collapse in the backlash, and nothing will get done.
On the bright side, they're keeping up the good fight. Without this pressure, nothing will ever change.
Alright, time for a reality check here. The Prius is doing such a damn good job on mileage not because it's a hybrid, but because it's an exceptionally well-designed car. Your own experiences with highway driving demonstrate that. Hybrid vehicles should actually get worse highway mileage because of their design. But the Prius doesn't. Why?
The answer lies in more than just its batteries. There are plenty of auto manufacturers jumping on the bandwagon by battery-backing their existing engine designs. That won't do much. Toyota took a different approach. For one, the engine of the Prius was replaced with a more efficient Atkinson Cycle engine. This engine would normally not be viable in a car, as its peak output is quite poor. However, the Prius uses stored battery power to provide maximum torque when accelerating. This makes up for the engine's poor peak power output. Furthermore, the torque delivered by electrical power is more fuel efficient than driving an Otto-cycle engine to sudden, peak power-output conditions.
But the engineers didn't stop there. They used the research behind Continuously Variable Transmissions (CVT) to develop a transmission that can evenly split the power between the electrical and gasoline powered components of the car. This transmission can smoothly transfer power between different sources and outputs, avoiding the limitations and excess power consumption of the traditional geared transmission. This transmission (which Toyota calls a "Power Split Transmission") is only workable in a small car like the Prius, due to the torque limitations of most CVT designs.
Finally, Toyota further hedged the car's bets with computer control and tuning over the entire power system, a low air-resistance body design, lightweight aluminum construction, and vacuum flask coolant storage for fast warm-up times.
What you're looking at is the modern equivalent of a Chevy Sprint. Those three bangers got great mileage at the expense of power and comfort. (My mother had one and managed to get 58 MPG on the highway!) The Prius uses modern technology to provide similar returns, but without the drawbacks that made the Sprint so unpopular in the first place.
Ever heard of "Grammar Nazis?" Yeah, it play on that. It's also a sideswipe at Godwin's Law.
:-P
Lighten up a little. Being so serious is going to take years off your life.
And in case you're wondering, I'm one of those people who "pay for shows without commercials". I have no cable service and rely on iTunes, DVDs, and websites like NBC.com. My reference (which was a joke anyway) was not aimed at your average, "I'm tired of sitting through commercials" consumer, but rather the extremists who think all commercials are evil and should be expunged from existence. Of course, these also tend to be the same people who think that they should get all this high-quality, commercial-free content without having to pay a dime for it. How that's supposed to work is anyone's guess.
In any case, I think I'll dub you, "overly serious Nazi". Because you're just so gosh-darn literal.
Yes, thank you. That was completely my typo. And I fully agree. Apple has upgraded the video quality once already. As the average bandwidth improves, I see no reason why they wouldn't offer 720p in the future. It's just that right now there is no serious competition in that area. (The XBOx 360 stuff is still getting the kinks worked out.) So for now, at least, Apple is sitting pretty.
Have you seen the videos on NBC.com? The difference between the NBC.com videos and iTunes videos is like night and day. I'm probably one of the least picky people about my video quality, but even I think that NBC.com looks significantly worse than your average CRT television. It reminds me of watching television with rabbit ears, only worse.
Actually, iTunes shows are not without commercials. Many of the shows have commercials embedded in the movie file. What they are is without commercial interruptions. Commercials are placed on the tail end of the video where you can choose to watch them or shut off the playback. This is vastly superior to the DVD solution of, "you MUST watch these commercials every time you turn on this DVD."
I don't know about anyone else, but I actually like seeing occasional advertisements. Especially things like movie trailers and new show promotions. My problem is that I don't like being forced to watch them repetitively. iTunes gives you the best of both worlds in that respect, and in a way that is unlikely to offend the die-hard anti-commericalists. (Dare I say it? Anti-commercial Nazis?)
Let me see. I can go to NBC.com and watch a show in horrendously low quality with annoying commercials, or I can spend $1.99 a week to watch the same show in H.234 480p with no commerical interruptions. Oh, and I can collect the seasons and watch them whenever I want.
Seriously, this doesn't make any sense. And can television stations really say that they make more money per viewer with commercials than they do with iTunes downloads? As far as I see, the episodes on NBC.com are carrots intended to get viewers hooked on the shows. The quality is intentionally limited so as to convince new viewers to tune in on television or iTunes.
I hate to steal his thunder, but when have web firms ever payed attention to good design? I'm sure that such companies do exist, but every contract I've seen for a website design has resulted in something that would look absolutely gorgeous in print, but lacks usability when transfered to the more interactive medium of the web.
If you ask these firms to follow a particular procedure for development, they usually mess it up. Visually it may look right, but usability-wise it's just plain wrong. "Web 2.0 features" are just one more thing for design firms not to understand.
Now, if I can back up for a moment, I'd like to say that this situation is perfectly understandable. Website design firms are mainly staffed by artists rather than technologists. They may have skills enough to use off-the-shelf libraries to add whatever feature you're looking for, but they're not going to know how to properly implement a technology solution. That's why the world has Computer Science/Engineering majors.
The best solution is to develop a strong relationship with a specific design firm, then get them to ship only the mockups and assets used. Have the implementation of the mockups done by in-house programmers or trusted consultants. (I can't stress the "trusted" part enough here.) If the implementors find something that doesn't make sense visually, then they can send it back until the web design firm gets a feel for what is needed.
Together, these two teams will produce a far better website than either could have done independently. It may cost a bit more in the short term, but the result will cost you a lot less in maintenance in the long-term. Furthermore, the teamwork you develop between these teams will give your company a powerful source for website changes and improvements.
Considering how (relatively) common school shootings have become, I'm not against the idea of drilling kids on what to do in such a situation. If a set of procedures have been devised to combat the situation or at least keep it under control, then teaching it to the kids would probably be a positive thing. However, it does need to be taught to them.
You can't just spring a "real emergency" drill on them without first performing announced drills and properly training them. The result would be similar to the pandemonium that would result if it was announced that the school was really burning down every time there was a fire drill. That's no way to teach proper handling of the situation. You want everyone as calm and collected as can be.
The article is light on details, but I do hope some good comes of this. These teachers sound far too junior to be implementing this plan on their own. (Their first major mistake.) If schools take notice, however, perhaps more appropriate training and procedures can be put in place.
Actually, there's another reason. The Internet Channel in the Wii provides a net-enabled entertainment center. For example, if you browse to video.stumbleupon.com on your Wii, you can watch various "channels" of net videos on your television. Not only does this easily allow you to share the experience with others around you, but it allows you to view the videos on a larger screen. (Most people still have far larger televisions than they do computer screens. Only us geeks use an HDTV as a computer monitor.
You can't share that sort of content on a computer nearly as easily as you can on something like the Wii. Sure, you could hook up your computer with a TV-out, but how many average people are really going to do that? And that's not even mentioning sites that provide homebrew video game content through the web browser.
Actually, you need a lot less energy earlier in flight than you need later in flight. So the key is to consistently update the trajectory during flight. As it approaches, it can either hit directly, or attempt a soft-kill if it misses the target. Alternatively, a series of smaller nukes could be launched by fighters, as seen in the miniseries.
In a real space battle, your flight time would be a lot more than a minute. You'd be exchanging weapons fire over hours, even with weapons being launched out of magnetic accelerator tubes. Of course, that doesn't make very good TV, so they tend to not show how long it takes for weapons fire to be exchanged. Or, they take us in for some ludicriously close space battles. (e.g. The Pegasus taking out two Basestars during her destruction. That's nuts, and would never happen in real life. However, it made a neat-looking special effect.)
Sure it can. Random boosts in different directions will send it flying off in unpredictable patterns. Even if we assume that it's not enough to prevent a laser strike (keep in mind that in space battles, you're targeting the proverbial needle in the haystack), it may throw off their firing solution, thus causing damage to non-critical sections.
Indeed. Lasers make wonderful point defense systems. I've argued the possibility of using them on today's carriers to stop incoming missiles. The problem is in finding lasers robust enough for warfare, and targeting systems good enough to target a fast moving object. Even with the technology of Galactica, effective targeting might pose a bit of a problem.
In a battleship, you would have it compartmentalized to prevent the loss of pressure in one section from leaking air out of other sections. (We've seen several episodes of Galactica where a single section depressurized, but posed no immediate threat to the remainder of the ship.) A 1 inch hold could be patched with an emergency kit rather quickly, potentially before the atmosphere in the section leaked out. One thing that they don't show in Galactica, but should, is that the crew should be in pressure suits when at battle stations. The ship is expected to take damage, so the crew should be ready for depressurization situations.
The Cylons have an entire Empire to fall back on. They can withdraw until they can retrofit some of the coutermeasures, then come back swinging. New Basestars would be built with the countermeasures in the specs.
According to Baltar in Hand of God, Tyllium releases about 50 terajoules per kilogram burned. However, it seems unlikely (given the state of the Galactica's technology) that their reactors would be capable of buring a kilogram of fuel per second. Also, by the quantities seen in episodes like Dirty Hands, we don't see enough being processed to suggest that the Galactica burns fuel at that rate. So if I were to take a wild guess, I'd say her energy output is somewhere between 10 - 100 GW. Thus if we assume that she dumps her entire energy production into charging laser weapons, each laser would still take between 8.3 minutes to 50 seconds to charge.
Of course, this is assuming that Earth has tyllium technology.
There are some useful tricks that can be used to make the hit more effective. First, you can use small maneuvering thrusters to make the flight path more erratic. Secondly, you can use flare-type weapons to make targeting systems ineffective. Thirdly, you can use a "shaped" nuclear charge.
"Shaped" nuclear charges were developed for use (in the real world) in the Orion Project. The basic idea is that a nuclear detonation is reflected by a strong plate (say, depleted uranium) in a specific direction. At the end of the device that will receive the energy of the blast, you place a strong, but easily vaporizable substance. IIRC, the Orion Project used rings of Tungsten. When detonated, the blast will vaporize the tungsten. The vaporized tungsten then carries the force of the blast to the target.
No laser can stop a cloud of vaporized particles from impacting with the fo
Simple. At the distances involved in space battles, a laser has the problem of targeting. Since it can take several seconds to reach the target, the enemy ship can use random manuevers to prevent the enemy targeting system from getting a solid lock. Missiles don't have this problem as they can update their course to match the movements of the enemy vessel. That makes them much more likely to hit.
Lasers also have the problem of being far too focused. Assuming you actually got close enough to an enemy to make it an effective weapon (something they tend to gloss over in the series, but we can assume based on some scenes that they occassionally jump in pretty close), a laser will tend to cut surgically rather than doing collateral damage. The problem is that you want collateral damage in these sorts of weapons. Making a 1 inch hole in the vessel isn't very useful unless you can hit a key area. (Such as a magazine.)
The problem with hitting a key area is that you're talking about incredibly precise targeting. In a pitched battle, it can be difficult to get that targeting data. Heck, it would be hard enough to get yourself oriented after a jump, much less probe the exact pitch, angle, and cross-section of the enemy to compute the correct firing solution. (And that's assuming you know the internal layout of the enemy vessel.)
Not to mention that an enemy that knows you're using laser weapons is likely to deploy countermeasures. Such countermeasures can include building prisms into key areas to dissapate the energy into less critical sections (though the prisms would probably be destroyed after each use), launching smoke weapons between you and your enemy to confuse targeting and force some loss of beam coherence, and building flash-steam pools near the skin of the ship. (If you read Footfall sometime, the characters used water flowing through the skin of the Orion to absorb the heat from laser weapons. The water would immediately flash into steam, requiring a fast circulation system AND the ship to spin on its axis to prevent any one side from being exposed for too long. I have confirmed with physicists that this solution is a workable, though not perfect, solution.)
Lastly, lasers require a great deal of power. You'd need to build a large number of nuclear reactors into a ship to have any hope of charging the laser weapons quickly. For example, a 5 terajoule pulse (1 terawatt for 5 seconds) would take a 1 GW reactor 1.3 hours to charge. Such lasers do exist and are being used for fusion research. However, they are not robust enough for warfare and would burn out quite easily. Maintenance would be extremely high.
In comparison, a small nuclear missile would pack an order of magnitude more power than we are discussing with a laser weapon. Larger hydrogen weapons would be capable of several orders of magnitude more power. Nuclear missiles can update their trajectory based on sensor data from both the missile itself and telemetry from the parent vessel. Nuclear missiles are also quite effective at collateral damage, making them much more useful for hammering an enemy. While the nature of space combat means that a great deal of that energy would not directly impact the vessel (no atmosphere to carry a shockwave), it would still be far more effective than a laser strike.
I hope that answers your question?
I guess you don't know much about pilots. Pilot shows are done on EXTREMELY low budgets, and are intended only to demonstrate what the final show might be like. On top of that, they also represent the first attempts at filming the show. The lessons learned from the pilot are then applied to the final product.
As a result, pilots usually have a great deal of cheese that doesn't exist in the final series. You kind of have to look at what it will be like rather than what it is right now. Personally, I liked the pilot as did many others. And there was a fan outcry to have the show produced. So I honestly don't see what you're complaining about.
Neither. Both are accepted. What is supposition is that these two facts prove the superiority of the new reading concept. Basic logic.
Your so-called "point" is that the new method is superior because technology does away with the limited space on paper, correct? Therefore, you are referring to "paper space". Screen space is just as limited. In most cases, even more so. GUIs get around this problem by offering scrolling, but the article does not mention studies into the disruptiveness of scrolling on the reading process. If you have to scroll more, you may be losing the benefits that researchers are so keen to introduce.
It is NOT irrelevant. If this method is truly as superior as is claimed, then it would have many potential benefits in printed media. For example, we print books with extremely large type for those with exceptionally poor eyesight. (Check your library sometime. Many libraries have a special section devoted to these books.) Books utilizing this new method could be printed to assist those with reading disabilities. Yet they haven't. Thus we can deduce that there are potential problems with the methodology itself. Simple logic.
Funny. I was just about to say the same thing.
Also, you may be interested in RichDiesel's post above. He provides an expert opinion that kind of blows your suppositions out of the water.
This sounds a bit like trying to teach the piano by numbering the notes. "Phasing" someone into the sheet music sounds like a good idea, but they end up becoming too reliant on the numbers. The result is that they end up having to learn how to read sheet music from scratch anyway.
The only effective method is to just teach the concept.