In Europe, there is indeed a standard of fuel measurement, which is probably different from the US one;-)
The figure I announced for my Saxo is actual consumption from my own experience, in cruise mode on 110km/h roads (add 20% for 130km/h roads). In "commute rage" mode (ie, most mornings), I have to admit I burn at a faster rate (5.5 L/100km, 43mpg), which I find is definitely not too bad for nervous driving;-)
>>GM is tinkering with the idea of only running 4 of the 8 cylinders in some of their SUV engines (during low load/stops) in order to increase economy<<
In fact, "running only 4 of the 8 cylinders" probably means that while all 8 cylinders are mechanically still spinning, they don't get any fuel (and don't spark). This is not news at all: any engine with a modern injection system can do that (at least in Europe, all recent-ish electronic injection cars do something along these lines).
What "electric camshafts" (that is, valves controlled with electric actuators) will bring is the ability to let the shut down cylinders run in
closed circuit. As long as you can find in your engine two cylinders with a 180 difference, the net effect is not sensible (except on consumption and effective power, of course). As soon as you need more hp, the cylinders are "switched back on", ie, they get back fuel, air and sparks.
One current downside to electrically actuated valves is that at high RPM, the actuators begin to suck a lot of energy ; for the time being, they are much less efficient at these regimes than mechanically actuated valves.
The key point is developing actuators which reclaim energy when they work in the same direction as springback (ie, when they produce negative work), so that only the energy lost in the reclaim process has to be injected in.
(another one is that 14V is a bit too less... Electric valve engines will push too for 42V)
Most improvements will (and do) come from the elimination of mechanical commands (Sparks used to be commanded by the fixed platinum screws. Zip ! electronic spark control.
The carburator used to be mechanically commanded. Zip ! common-rail electronic injection everywhere. Cams are fixed regardless of the RPM. Soon, zip ! electric actuators mean the air part of the mix will also be dosed precisely according to the load, speed and required acceleration). However, I don't see variable-geometry (ie, replacing a fixed geometric characteristic by a mobile, mechanically-driven one) taking off anywhere soon. Too much extra weight and complexity.
One other line of improvements is the injection of water droplets once the combustion cycle is almost done, using a secondary high-pressure "common" rail. The expansion of water would greatly contribute to the available mechanical energy, and the exhaust temperature would go down (this particular feature would mean that the FAP particle filter I already mentioned couldn't work as good as it does, but hey, every extra kelvin sent into the atmosphere means energy spent for naught !)
I know that diesel has a poor reputation in the US ; from my week-long experience in Detroit it looks like there, there is no problem to find pumps (and it's cheaper as well as in France). This may very well vary in other states, though.
My car (a Citroën Saxo, which is everything you want but not a high-end car: http://www.citroen.fr/options.php?c_version=1CS8A5 V7G500A010
) slurps a little less than 4 L/100km (makes a little less than 59 mpg), and it does that using diesel (which overall is a more energy-efficient combustible than gasoline, not to mention more tax-friendly in my particular locale).
Oil is to be changed every 15000 km (9500 miles), or one year (whichever first). There is of course a display on the dashboard which shows not only the amount of oil left but also when you have to change it (and the tool-less reset procedure is documented if you really insist). So, it looks like the particular BMW feature you mentioned is actually quite commonplace nowadays...
Today's modern high-pressure common rail diesel engines (you named the first ones, the VW TDI, but
more recent and better stuff exists, like the PSA(=Peugeot/Citroën) HDi (really the best out there), Fiat's JTD, Renault's dCi, and even Ford Europe TDCi) are even more efficient, because under 3000-3500 rpm they use a much leaner mix ; yet once the boost kicks in, you have plenty of spare power. Actually, a car like the Peugeot Coupé 406, while initially strange (what, a Pininfarina pleasure car with a diesel ?) makes a lot of sense....
The special "lean" version of the Lupo announce 3 l/100km, that is, 78 mpg (!). However, to achieve that, VW uses a 3-cylinder engine which has atrocious noise and vibration characteristics. And while this is mostly a city-only car (because of its tiny size, despite a nice efficiency, this engine is a bit asthmatic as soon as you reach 90 km/h// 55mph...), it's way bigger than the Smart and has an enormous price.
(and unfortunately, there aren't versions of that car under the SEAT or Skoda brands, which are usually "VW technology at non-VW price")
The only drawback with diesel nowadays (that is, once your locale has passed laws mandating better refinement of the fuel itself, like EU has required like 10 years ago), is the particles emission. And even that is a solved problem.
Check out's Peugeot's self-cleaning FAP (particle filter). You can get it only on 406 and 607's, and on Citroën Xsara and C5 (higher end) for the moment, but it's bound to spread rather sooner than later. Check out Citroën and Peugeot's sites; how this device works is amazing.
In the near future, I can't wait for the arrival of the new generation common PSA/Ford smaller-size HDi engine. Basically, they want to do in 1.3 L what is done with the current 1.6L HDi rig, performance-wise (but with a proportional consumption...)
Middle term I want to see the electric camshafts replacing the crank stuff (this allows for a much more flexible cartography, which removes the need for some compromises). Also, the alterno-starters are going to rock in traffic jams (basically, the alternator and the starter are replaced by a single device, which is able to generate electricity when the thermic engine runs, and is able to not only start the thermic but also move the car up to 40 km/h. The use of this device is to run electric when you basically don't move and the battery's good. And as soon as you move again, the thermic smoothly kicks in. Check out for this Dynalto(PSA) / Adivi(Renault/Nissan) feature !)
Long-term, hydrogen-based stuff -- but I'll make a new post on slashdot beforehand.
Re:First minute free is NOT ubiquitous in the US
on
GPS Meets PCS
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· Score: 1
In the areas of Europe I know, a landline call to a cellphone get billed as a metered call using the cellphone rate.
Landline to cellphone gets billed usually a more expensive price (in the order of 0.34 EUR/min), because the cellcos are the ones who fix their inbound price (freely if M. Monti wasn't raising eyebrows from time to time). However, cellphones numbers are usually easily identifiable (if you're familiar with the phone number scheme of the country or member state you're in), so you know in advance what rate you're going to be charged.
Nowadays, most int'l carriers bill different rates for (landline to) int'l landline or int'l cellular. Also, doing an international call using your cellphone currently amounts to a scam (you usually get something like a half euro surcharge (per minute) on the worst int'l price available in your country. The choose-carrier-call-by-call schemes which now work great on land lines don't work at all for international cellphone (I'd much rather pay a normal cellphone call in addition to whatever my long-distance carrier charges me for cross-border calls). And there are not even that many companies providing call-through calls.
Roaming charges are currently considered a scam. About a whole euro/min, with much less services actually available than when you're in your local area. The only thing you have is real choice of the company you're using (just switch if one company's network sucks, it takes a few dozen seconds of twiddling with the handset). By default, most of the time, you end up being served by the very same company (or an affiliate to the same network) which is serving you in your local area. And they're all charging the same roaming rate (it's a triopoly at best anyways).
They used to be active in France too (less than in Spain, though). They also use France as a more or less safe haven (hopefully less safe), and there are sporadic reports of "revolutionary tax" being extorted as well.
... and finally they've copied the design and built their own clones.
I remember buying such a clone of the "Shuttle" pens in Kiev in 1988, indeed it was working upside down. However, it has the distinctive quality attributes of Soviet consumer-grade stuff...
Yep; sometimes, on secondary lines here in France, there are still some very old automotrices (the dirty red and white ones) around, which use direct gasoline engines. And yes, you not only feel the vibrations, but it's obvious when they switch gears...
Now they're at last replacing them, with the cool new blue-and-gray shell-shaped ones. Those use a turbine-electric hybrid, just like almost everything else. And it really can change the feeling of a less-than optimally revised secondary track.
Actually, in the whole EU (and that's going to be mandatory to those who ask membership too), you have to pass emission tests, every other year (the states don't have the power to override that, it's a directive).
Basically, if you don't pass, you either fix the problem (in France, you have 2 months), or you quit using that car. Simple enough, isn't it ? Only more than thirty or fourty year old cars are exempt; and you really don't see many of these outside collections.
(These new diesels are known as Clean Diesels, and are a favourite of my local bus company, which is how I know about them.)
Actually, your bus company's diesels lack the latest advancements -- a Peugeot 607 FAP (or Citroen C5 and Xsara, or -- again -- the newest Peugeot 307 FAP), are equipped with a self-regenerating particle re-burner. Basically, the thing makes the particles go through a catalyser, which eliminates them. Once every roughly 20000km, the engine's cycle is automatically tweaked, so the exhaust gases are a bit hotter for a while, which cleans the filter. You don't even notice anything.
While this new filter is currently fitted only on a single carmaker's higher level cars, you can bet that in 2 years, they'll be almost everywhere (just like the HDi/TDI/dCi/JTD engines rule the market today. Only the cheapest cars still have atmospheric [diesel] engines, and some carmakers like Fiat (owner of a famous fast expensive red car producer) seem to just sell common rail stuff these days.
My car is technically quite old ; it burns 4L/100km (of diesel), which is quite good. The next generation Peugeot/Ford[europe] low-end diesels have a target of 2.5L/100, which is quite excellent...
There are other "advances" (hmmm. Let's call that, re-advances). First is Aquazole (an emulsion of water in the diesel oil); most city bus companies use them nowadays (when they're not already burning natural gas). Aquazole is quite cool, in that the combustion is only necessary to heat the gases ; most of the mechanical energy comes from the (more or less) adiabatic relaxation of gases. It makes a lot of sense to have the strict minimum of petroleum-derived gases, and have the majority of relaxation gases being simply water vapour. When the proportion's right, the exhaust temperature is just a little above 100C, and the efficiency's at its best [*]. As Aquazole is a bit (energetically) expensive to produce, another way (which has been quite used in the aeronautic industry of the piston era) is to inject a suspension of water droplets in the cylinders just after the combustion began. Now these subsystems get a lot of attention too...
Anyway, reducing the overall fossil stuff consumed is a Good Thing. Whether the byproducts are soot, CO2, SO2, Pu, Th and whatnot, it's always dirt.
[*] unfortunately, lower temperature exhausts is diametrically opposite to the way particle filters work ; those need higher temperature exhaust gases to work efficiently. That'll certainly get worked out pretty soon, though.
(finally, the gasoline engines aren't sitting either. Common rail ("EDI/GDI/HPi"), Altivar [alternator is also an auxiliary electric engine. When you're sitting in a jam, or at a red light, you just don't burn anything] (1 or two years from Renault to market now), and electro-magnetically driven valves (dump the camshaft, and gain features like dynamically adjusting the valve cycle to better burn the combustible, or dynamically disable a few cylinders when they're not necessary, etc. Costs some electric power at high RPM, unfortunately, but counts as extremely cool in my book).
[electric engines will be cool when the batteries are able to last 200000km (not on a single charge, of course), and be produced, recharched, and recycled (ecologically) efficiently. As long as these batteries represent more polluent (concentrated in a small volume but still potentially extremely harmful) than what my Saxo will exhaust in its whole life cycle, then no thanks] [and I'm an all-out nuke fan]
It depends on the flat rate you've bought. I'm currently paying $35 for three hours on two (joined) lines. Above this, it's a proportional rate (SMS is $.15/message).
Local phone is $12 month (line) plus $.1/3 minutes ; I don't use their long distance (>30 km) service (the telco I use is $.03/minute country-wide, and $.08/min to call anywhere in the EU, USA and Canada. FT is between 3 and 10 times more expensive).
Wow, stop ! The Twelve stars don't represent countries, like the stars on the US flag do.
The EU's Twelve stars (which have been twelve since the inception of this flag) are a symbol of completness and perfection (citing europa.eu.int from memory. Aaaah, when will we have plain.eu as a ccTLD...)
>>>>>
If you do want to talk technology in sports broadcasts, let's talk about the Super Bowl, with the matrix-like images (which do work well), the masking of the 1st down line in real time, and the broadcasting ability to manipulate that many cameras and personal and produce a quality broadcast.
<<<<<
Well, I've watched the superbowl (one week later) [bored me to death, but that George Eddy commentator here has an atrocious accent which spoils whatever comments he does], and while I'd really love to see the "Matrix" effect in action over here, I must say that I'm unimpressed by the orangish 1st down line.
In the European Rugby Cup, and now in the VI Nations Tournament, whenever a penalty kick is to be kicked, they draw in real time a distance line, with the actual distance (though their advertised 10cm precision look a bit extreme for the capabilities of a 750x625 bitmap...), and that's about a second or two, no later, after the kicker has prepared his ball on the ground.
I'd really love to see a dynamic off-side line on replays of actions where a not that obvious penalty has been awarded (dual off-side lines for mauls, scrums and line-outs, of course)...
clean water ain't free in most Western places, anyway. And outside (barring Antarctica), it's not polluted anyway.
Re:Programmers Make Computers Slower Year by Year
on
Netscape 6 Vs. 4.7x
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· Score: 2
That could be worse ; I've seen a fresh engineer from a school which shall remain unnamed (okay, it's the ENSIMAG in Grenoble, France), who did implement (seriously !) bitfield operations.... using STRINGS !
Yes ; that guy was converting an int into a string consisting of '1' and '0', then did things like
if (a[i]='1') and not (b[i]='1') then
r[i] = '1' else r[i] = '0';
The worst part was that this guy applied something he said he had learned in school (okay, he had a much, much more competent colleague from the same place), and didn't see anything wrong there.
Oh, yeah, that was a couple years ago, the language was Delphi.
I'm sure I've read somewhere (maybe Science&Vie or maybe Science&Avenir), a dozen years ago, that there was a "probable possibility" of a chemistry similar to the one of carbon, but based on silicon ; the article went on doing quite a lot of comparisons, but did not fail to point out the pressure and temperature parameters would be much, much higher for a hypothetical silicon-nased life than for the carbon-based one.
1) Va te faire foutre, connard.
2) Achète toi un bon dico, peut-être qu'avec, ton post aurait ressemblé à autre chose que cet amas fécal.
3) quand à nos réels problèmes de discriminations diverses, je pense que c'est grave mais goutte d'eau face à ce que l'on peut voir dans "certains" pays prétendûment civilisateurs (la France a heureusement cessé de se prendre pour un tel pays, à Evian en 1962. Après une belle taule).
4) eh puis d'abord, un peu de lois et règlements extra-territoriaux en guise de retour à l'envoyeur, ça fait pas de mal. Dans ton cul.
Sorry, but this lame ass deserved this (and tant pis for my karma).
This is because "older" Diesel engines lack a particle filter. Most pollution from Diesel engines come from microparticles, of which a certain range of sizes can trigger allergologic problems.
Newer HDi/TDI (basically, all common-rail high pressure) engines produce particles of somewhat smaller size ; better, their mandatory computerised injection system makes it relatively easy to put particle filters AND have them autoclean (you need to have them checked every 80'000km or so).
Currently, only Peugeot sells this particle filter, on its flagship 607 model (see http://www.peugeot.com/gamme/fr/html/607.htm), but in 5 years or so, most reasonably advanced car diesel manufacturers will have adapted (still a lorry and coach problem to tackle).
Barring the particles, a diesel engine tends to be more efficient than a gasoline one ; which means less carbon *oxydes. Oh, and high pressure common rail injection even increases this efficiency and still lowers consumption (more power, less consumption for equal sized classic and HDi engines).
>>>> Flight was mastered by looking at how birds fly and experimenting.
>> Not really. Birds fly by flapping their wings and I don't know of a single successful aircraft that does this. Flight was mastered by understanding physical laws,
Actually, all heavy birds are mostly gliders, save the takeoff and landing. Take storks, for instance. They fly thousands of kms in a few weeks twice a year (well, for the 5% that survive the electric wires in Europe and the insecticids in Africa), almost without flapping.
What all gliding birds do, however, is to use variable geometry to achieve control. Copying that was a bad idea (Ader's plane did made a few bumps, replicas did fly, but that wasn't an efficient idea), but Ader plane replicas have shown that this was feasible, even with 1895 technology.
Re:Implications to Cryptography
on
Does P = NP?
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· Score: 1
You'd break Brooks' law (which I'd paraphrase as "double manpower, and get 25% of the previous productivity" (for a sufficiently big initial manpower).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know which @#$! gallons I used for these mpg ratings.
I used whatever the "units" program from the Debian "units" package gave me when I type
>>You have: 40l / 730km <br>
You want: mpg<<
(locale is POSIX on that system)
units says 1 mpg is 1.000002 mi/USgallon, so I guess the mpg figures I gave were US mpg figures.
Oh, screw non-metric. I won't convert next time.
In Europe, there is indeed a standard of fuel measurement, which is probably different from the US one ;-)
;-)
The figure I announced for my Saxo is actual consumption from my own experience, in cruise mode on 110km/h roads (add 20% for 130km/h roads). In "commute rage" mode (ie, most mornings), I have to admit I burn at a faster rate (5.5 L/100km, 43mpg), which I find is definitely not too bad for nervous driving
>>GM is tinkering with the idea of only running 4 of the 8 cylinders in some of their SUV engines (during low load/stops) in order to increase economy<<
In fact, "running only 4 of the 8 cylinders" probably means that while all 8 cylinders are mechanically still spinning, they don't get any fuel (and don't spark). This is not news at all: any engine with a modern injection system can do that (at least in Europe, all recent-ish electronic injection cars do something along these lines).
What "electric camshafts" (that is, valves controlled with electric actuators) will bring is the ability to let the shut down cylinders run in
closed circuit. As long as you can find in your engine two cylinders with a 180 difference, the net effect is not sensible (except on consumption and effective power, of course). As soon as you need more hp, the cylinders are "switched back on", ie, they get back fuel, air and sparks.
One current downside to electrically actuated valves is that at high RPM, the actuators begin to suck a lot of energy ; for the time being, they are much less efficient at these regimes than mechanically actuated valves.
The key point is developing actuators which reclaim energy when they work in the same direction as springback (ie, when they produce negative work), so that only the energy lost in the reclaim process has to be injected in.
(another one is that 14V is a bit too less... Electric valve engines will push too for 42V)
Most improvements will (and do) come from the elimination of mechanical commands (Sparks used to be commanded by the fixed platinum screws. Zip ! electronic spark control.
The carburator used to be mechanically commanded. Zip ! common-rail electronic injection everywhere. Cams are fixed regardless of the RPM. Soon, zip ! electric actuators mean the air part of the mix will also be dosed precisely according to the load, speed and required acceleration). However, I don't see variable-geometry (ie, replacing a fixed geometric characteristic by a mobile, mechanically-driven one) taking off anywhere soon. Too much extra weight and complexity.
One other line of improvements is the injection of water droplets once the combustion cycle is almost done, using a secondary high-pressure "common" rail. The expansion of water would greatly contribute to the available mechanical energy, and the exhaust temperature would go down (this particular feature would mean that the FAP particle filter I already mentioned couldn't work as good as it does, but hey, every extra kelvin sent into the atmosphere means energy spent for naught !)
I know that diesel has a poor reputation in the US ; from my week-long experience in Detroit it looks like there, there is no problem to find pumps (and it's cheaper as well as in France). This may very well vary in other states, though.
My car (a Citroën Saxo, which is everything you want but not a high-end car: http://www.citroen.fr/options.php?c_version=1CS8A
) slurps a little less than 4 L/100km (makes a little less than 59 mpg), and it does that using diesel (which overall is a more energy-efficient combustible than gasoline, not to mention more tax-friendly in my particular locale).
Oil is to be changed every 15000 km (9500 miles), or one year (whichever first). There is of course a display on the dashboard which shows not only the amount of oil left but also when you have to change it (and the tool-less reset procedure is documented if you really insist). So, it looks like the particular BMW feature you mentioned is actually quite commonplace nowadays...
Today's modern high-pressure common rail diesel engines (you named the first ones, the VW TDI, but
more recent and better stuff exists, like the PSA(=Peugeot/Citroën) HDi (really the best out there), Fiat's JTD, Renault's dCi, and even Ford Europe TDCi) are even more efficient, because under 3000-3500 rpm they use a much leaner mix ; yet once the boost kicks in, you have plenty of spare power. Actually, a car like the Peugeot Coupé 406, while initially strange (what, a Pininfarina pleasure car with a diesel ?) makes a lot of sense....
The special "lean" version of the Lupo announce 3 l/100km, that is, 78 mpg (!). However, to achieve that, VW uses a 3-cylinder engine which has atrocious noise and vibration characteristics. And while this is mostly a city-only car (because of its tiny size, despite a nice efficiency, this engine is a bit asthmatic as soon as you reach 90 km/h
(and unfortunately, there aren't versions of that car under the SEAT or Skoda brands, which are usually "VW technology at non-VW price")
The only drawback with diesel nowadays (that is, once your locale has passed laws mandating better refinement of the fuel itself, like EU has required like 10 years ago), is the particles emission. And even that is a solved problem.
Check out's Peugeot's self-cleaning FAP (particle filter). You can get it only on 406 and 607's, and on Citroën Xsara and C5 (higher end) for the moment, but it's bound to spread rather sooner than later. Check out Citroën and Peugeot's sites; how this device works is amazing.
In the near future, I can't wait for the arrival of the new generation common PSA/Ford smaller-size HDi engine. Basically, they want to do in 1.3 L what is done with the current 1.6L HDi rig, performance-wise (but with a proportional consumption...)
Middle term I want to see the electric camshafts replacing the crank stuff (this allows for a much more flexible cartography, which removes the need for some compromises). Also, the alterno-starters are going to rock in traffic jams (basically, the alternator and the starter are replaced by a single device, which is able to generate electricity when the thermic engine runs, and is able to not only start the thermic but also move the car up to 40 km/h. The use of this device is to run electric when you basically don't move and the battery's good. And as soon as you move again, the thermic smoothly kicks in. Check out for this Dynalto(PSA) / Adivi(Renault/Nissan) feature !)
Long-term, hydrogen-based stuff -- but I'll make a new post on slashdot beforehand.
In the areas of Europe I know, a landline call to a cellphone get billed as a metered call using the cellphone rate.
Landline to cellphone gets billed usually a more expensive price (in the order of 0.34 EUR/min), because the cellcos are the ones who fix their inbound price (freely if M. Monti wasn't raising eyebrows from time to time). However, cellphones numbers are usually easily identifiable (if you're familiar with the phone number scheme of the country or member state you're in), so you know in advance what rate you're going to be charged.
Nowadays, most int'l carriers bill different rates for (landline to) int'l landline or int'l cellular. Also, doing an international call using your cellphone currently amounts to a scam (you usually get something like a half euro surcharge (per minute) on the worst int'l price available in your country. The choose-carrier-call-by-call schemes which now work great on land lines don't work at all for international cellphone (I'd much rather pay a normal cellphone call in addition to whatever my long-distance carrier charges me for cross-border calls). And there are not even that many companies providing call-through calls.
Roaming charges are currently considered a scam. About a whole euro/min, with much less services actually available than when you're in your local area. The only thing you have is real choice of the company you're using (just switch if one company's network sucks, it takes a few dozen seconds of twiddling with the handset). By default, most of the time, you end up being served by the very same company (or an affiliate to the same network) which is serving you in your local area. And they're all charging the same roaming rate (it's a triopoly at best anyways).
East/west/SE relative to what ?
Anyway, you can achieve that very easily using the
non-domain part of your URL:
www.somecompany.com/east (or west, or tanzania, or whatever)
They used to be active in France too (less than in Spain, though). They also use France as a more or less safe haven (hopefully less safe), and there are sporadic reports of "revolutionary tax" being extorted as well.
... and finally they've copied the design and built their own clones.
I remember buying such a clone of the "Shuttle" pens in Kiev in 1988, indeed it was working upside down. However, it has the distinctive quality attributes of Soviet consumer-grade stuff...
Yep; sometimes, on secondary lines here in France, there are still some very old automotrices (the dirty red and white ones) around, which use direct gasoline engines. And yes, you not only feel the vibrations, but it's obvious when they switch gears...
Now they're at last replacing them, with the cool new blue-and-gray shell-shaped ones. Those use a turbine-electric hybrid, just like almost everything else. And it really can change the feeling of a less-than optimally revised secondary track.
Actually, in the whole EU (and that's going to be mandatory to those who ask membership too), you have to pass emission tests, every other year (the states don't have the power to override that, it's a directive).
Basically, if you don't pass, you either fix the problem (in France, you have 2 months), or you quit using that car. Simple enough, isn't it ? Only more than thirty or fourty year old cars are exempt; and you really don't see many of these outside collections.
(These new diesels are known as Clean Diesels, and are a favourite of my local bus company, which is how I know about them.)
Actually, your bus company's diesels lack the latest advancements -- a Peugeot 607 FAP (or Citroen C5 and Xsara, or -- again -- the newest Peugeot 307 FAP), are equipped with a self-regenerating particle re-burner. Basically, the thing makes the particles go through a catalyser, which eliminates them. Once every roughly 20000km, the engine's cycle is automatically tweaked, so the exhaust gases are a bit hotter for a while, which cleans the filter. You don't even notice anything.
While this new filter is currently fitted only on a single carmaker's higher level cars, you can bet that in 2 years, they'll be almost everywhere (just like the HDi/TDI/dCi/JTD engines rule the market today. Only the cheapest cars still have atmospheric [diesel] engines, and some carmakers like Fiat (owner of a famous fast expensive red car producer) seem to just sell common rail stuff these days.
My car is technically quite old ; it burns 4L/100km (of diesel), which is quite good. The next generation Peugeot/Ford[europe] low-end diesels have a target of 2.5L/100, which is quite excellent...
There are other "advances" (hmmm. Let's call that, re-advances). First is Aquazole (an emulsion of water in the diesel oil); most city bus companies use them nowadays (when they're not already burning natural gas). Aquazole is quite cool, in that the combustion is only necessary to heat the gases ; most of the mechanical energy comes from the (more or less) adiabatic relaxation of gases. It makes a lot of sense to have the strict minimum of petroleum-derived gases, and have the majority of relaxation gases being simply water vapour. When the proportion's right, the exhaust temperature is just a little above 100C, and the efficiency's at its best [*]. As Aquazole is a bit (energetically) expensive to produce, another way (which has been quite used in the aeronautic industry of the piston era) is to inject a suspension of water droplets in the cylinders just after the combustion began. Now these subsystems get a lot of attention too...
Anyway, reducing the overall fossil stuff consumed is a Good Thing. Whether the byproducts are soot, CO2, SO2, Pu, Th and whatnot, it's always dirt.
[*] unfortunately, lower temperature exhausts is diametrically opposite to the way particle filters work ; those need higher temperature exhaust gases to work efficiently. That'll certainly get worked out pretty soon, though.
(finally, the gasoline engines aren't sitting either. Common rail ("EDI/GDI/HPi"), Altivar [alternator is also an auxiliary electric engine. When you're sitting in a jam, or at a red light, you just don't burn anything] (1 or two years from Renault to market now), and electro-magnetically driven valves (dump the camshaft, and gain features like dynamically adjusting the valve cycle to better burn the combustible, or dynamically disable a few cylinders when they're not necessary, etc. Costs some electric power at high RPM, unfortunately, but counts as extremely cool in my book).
[electric engines will be cool when the batteries are able to last 200000km (not on a single charge, of course), and be produced, recharched, and recycled (ecologically) efficiently. As long as these batteries represent more polluent (concentrated in a small volume but still potentially extremely harmful) than what my Saxo will exhaust in its whole life cycle, then no thanks] [and I'm an all-out nuke fan]
>>I think the French can, but refuse as a matter of honour.<<
Actually, our language learning system, from kindergarten all the way up to college, really, really sucks. And it's been quite famous for that.
It depends on the flat rate you've bought. I'm currently paying $35 for three hours on two (joined) lines. Above this, it's a proportional rate (SMS is $.15/message).
/minute country-wide, and $.08/min to call anywhere in the EU, USA and Canada. FT is between 3 and 10 times more expensive).
Local phone is $12 month (line) plus $.1/3 minutes ; I don't use their long distance (>30 km) service (the telco I use is $.03
Wow, stop ! The Twelve stars don't represent countries, like the stars on the US flag do.
.eu as a ccTLD...)
The EU's Twelve stars (which have been twelve since the inception of this flag) are a symbol of completness and perfection (citing europa.eu.int from memory. Aaaah, when will we have plain
right on mark... The ESA did send a mission to Halley, too.
>>>>>
If you do want to talk technology in sports broadcasts, let's talk about the Super Bowl, with the matrix-like images (which do work well), the masking of the 1st down line in real time, and the broadcasting ability to manipulate that many cameras and personal and produce a quality broadcast.
<<<<<
Well, I've watched the superbowl (one week later) [bored me to death, but that George Eddy commentator here has an atrocious accent which spoils whatever comments he does], and while I'd really love to see the "Matrix" effect in action over here, I must say that I'm unimpressed by the orangish 1st down line.
In the European Rugby Cup, and now in the VI Nations Tournament, whenever a penalty kick is to be kicked, they draw in real time a distance line, with the actual distance (though their advertised 10cm precision look a bit extreme for the capabilities of a 750x625 bitmap...), and that's about a second or two, no later, after the kicker has prepared his ball on the ground.
I'd really love to see a dynamic off-side line on replays of actions where a not that obvious penalty has been awarded (dual off-side lines for mauls, scrums and line-outs, of course)...
just use something like .5 | \
acquire_image | anytopnm | pnmscale
ppmquant -fs -2 | pnmtopgm | pgmtopbm | \
pbmtoascii -2x4 >foo.txt
(where acquire_image is a suitable program, which spits an image in any format out of the desired source)
clean water ain't free in most Western places, anyway. And outside (barring Antarctica), it's not polluted anyway.
That could be worse ; I've seen a fresh engineer from a school which shall remain unnamed (okay, it's the ENSIMAG in Grenoble, France), who did implement (seriously !) bitfield operations.... using STRINGS !
Yes ; that guy was converting an int into a string consisting of '1' and '0', then did things like
if (a[i]='1') and not (b[i]='1') then
r[i] = '1' else r[i] = '0';
The worst part was that this guy applied something he said he had learned in school (okay, he had a much, much more competent colleague from the same place), and didn't see anything wrong there.
Oh, yeah, that was a couple years ago, the language was Delphi.
Needless to say, that guy was fired at once.
MP3 may be banned by HPH, but you can still use Ogg Vorbis : nowhere in the AUP has this format been banned
;-)
Penalty kick, line-up, try, conversion.
I'm sure I've read somewhere (maybe Science&Vie or maybe Science&Avenir), a dozen years ago, that there was a "probable possibility" of a chemistry similar to the one of carbon, but based on silicon ; the article went on doing quite a lot of comparisons, but did not fail to point out the pressure and temperature parameters would be much, much higher for a hypothetical silicon-nased life than for the carbon-based one.
1) Va te faire foutre, connard.
2) Achète toi un bon dico, peut-être qu'avec, ton post aurait ressemblé à autre chose que cet amas fécal.
3) quand à nos réels problèmes de discriminations diverses, je pense que c'est grave mais goutte d'eau face à ce que l'on peut voir dans "certains" pays prétendûment civilisateurs (la France a heureusement cessé de se prendre pour un tel pays, à Evian en 1962. Après une belle taule).
4) eh puis d'abord, un peu de lois et règlements extra-territoriaux en guise de retour à l'envoyeur, ça fait pas de mal. Dans ton cul.
Sorry, but this lame ass deserved this (and tant pis for my karma).
PS: real apologies to the others.
Heh -- ever wondered what those little T and M letters next to the MMX logo mean ?
Hint: this does not mean "patent pending".
This is because "older" Diesel engines lack a particle filter. Most pollution from Diesel engines come from microparticles, of which a certain range of sizes can trigger allergologic problems.
Newer HDi/TDI (basically, all common-rail high pressure) engines produce particles of somewhat smaller size ; better, their mandatory computerised injection system makes it relatively easy to put particle filters AND have them autoclean (you need to have them checked every 80'000km or so).
Currently, only Peugeot sells this particle filter, on its flagship 607 model (see http://www.peugeot.com/gamme/fr/html/607.htm), but in 5 years or so, most reasonably advanced car diesel manufacturers will have adapted (still a lorry and coach problem to tackle).
Barring the particles, a diesel engine tends to be more efficient than a gasoline one ; which means less carbon *oxydes. Oh, and high pressure common rail injection even increases this efficiency and still lowers consumption (more power, less consumption for equal sized classic and HDi engines).
>>>> Flight was mastered by looking at how birds fly and experimenting.
>> Not really. Birds fly by flapping their wings and I don't know of a single successful aircraft that does this. Flight was mastered by understanding physical laws,
Actually, all heavy birds are mostly gliders, save the takeoff and landing. Take storks, for instance. They fly thousands of kms in a few weeks twice a year (well, for the 5% that survive the electric wires in Europe and the insecticids in Africa), almost without flapping.
What all gliding birds do, however, is to use variable geometry to achieve control. Copying that was a bad idea (Ader's plane did made a few bumps, replicas did fly, but that wasn't an efficient idea), but Ader plane replicas have shown that this was feasible, even with 1895 technology.
You'd break Brooks' law (which I'd paraphrase as "double manpower, and get 25% of the previous productivity" (for a sufficiently big initial manpower).