The CVTs that you see in automobiles now are pretty much snowmobile transmissions on steroids.
The ones in hybrids, at least the Prius (and I'm pretty certain the Escape is similar), are much different and don't use belts, though I doubt they would work well in a locomotive either:
While I'm thinking about it, why aren't the car engines run like the train engines, with the diesel motor running at a more or less constant rate refueling the batteries that run the electric motors that actually turn the wheels
I'm no expert, but I do drive an electric and have been following them for some time; my understanding is:
In cars, the loss of efficiency from a two-stage power system makes the design pointless from that perspective, and few cars have enough room for both electric motors big enough to provide the necessary power and an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) big enough to feed it. If you downsized the ICE to an average power size, then you have to have electrical storage to provide the extra when you need it, for as long as you'll need the extra oomph, which comes to the same battery tradeoff we have now with electrics: cost or size/weight, as well as needing even more space.
In trains, the extra size/weight is an advantage (gives them more traction for pulling with), and such a setup solves the startup problem (diesel engines can't run at 0 rpm and a transmission that could handle that kind of power would be prohibitive and add maintenance costs), making the loss of efficiency worth it.
I also have a hybrid Escape, and well, to be honest, I think the biggest factor in my better gas mileage is the graph that shows what my mileage is over time as I travel at different speeds. Slowing down 5mph made a huge difference;-) (about 10-15%). The "official" reason is that they recover braking energy, but that's such a small factor that it's virtually useless. The batteries/electric motor do allow a smaller ICE, which uses less fuel in normal modes of operation than a larger engine would, and the electric provides the extra power when you need it, which is the sort of operation you are suggesting. The difference is that when the ICE is running, it's more or less directly providing power to the wheels, so you don't have the loss of efficiency from converting the energy to electricity first.
It also has a sort of "constant velocity transmission" such that you never lug the engine. I think this is the source of most of its real efficiency advantages, as it's always running at the optimum rpm for the power it's producing. It also should make it last longer: it has a 10,000 mile oil change spec, and in looking at the oil at 10,000 miles, it's cleaner than regular cars' oil at 4,000...a reflection of not stressing the engine the way you do when you have to shift (rather than making bigger explosions, you immediately make a lot more of them, i.e. it revs up at the drop of a hat, keeping the internal pressures, and thus stresses, lower).
I suspect this type of transmission might be viable in locomotives too, actually, and might be what they were talking about somewhere where I heard they were talking about a "hybrid locomotive", as it probably would improve their efficiency. I don't remember where that was though.
That is a disadvantage for it as an SUV, however: without a real transmission, you don't get the torque multiplication effect of gearing down, and the thing is useless in snow country or any place where you actually need a lot of starting torque (i.e. when you're stuck). But over 40,000 miles, I average 26mpg, vs the rated 19 for the standard V6. On a warm, dry day on flat ground, I'll get over 30.
To be fair, the overloaded website isn't luvaglio (http://www.luvaglio.com/) itself, which handles the load be being so exclusive, you can't even visit the website without an appointment. With snobbishness like that, they'd have to pay *me* the $1,000,000 to get me to take it...
There is also the article posted recently about how our tastes in music fixed by the time we're 20ish too, with the implication that we basically like what we listened to early on...
Even "depth" is something that is a matter of taste --- some people like it, be it book, music or movie, some don't. It's a matter of what you're trying to get out of the experience.
Good (difficult term but I'll let it ride) music tends not to have mass appeal
It's "good" if no one likes it??? Sorry, I have a fundamental problem with that notion and can't just "let it ride" --- it smacks of nothing but snobbery to me... The authors of the music may not be good if it's derivative and unoriginal, but if you don't know the history and are just listening to it, that's irrelevant. The question is, "do you enjoy listening to it?" If so, then it's good. While that will vary depending on your mood, if a lot of people like it, it seems to me that by definition, it's good.
It looks like a nice plug-n-play setup (how many people are *really* going to figure out how to install and run something as complex as asterisk for this?), but what do their marketing people think they're doing? Not that they're any different from most, but I go to their site and they say "look at all the cool things we have" (spelled in a "witty" way, of course!). Do they have any information at all on how to actually *buy* one of their cool products? Not a peep. Are they doing PR or trying to sell a product? And I won't even get into driving away customers by having annoying music on by default, or a stupidly fixed size tiny window of info...
Was this on the guest fs or the host fs? One of the things causing us to move slowly is that we've seen this a couple of times on the host fs, and not sure why. Once it happened when pre-allocating a virtual disk for a new system; we've been thinking we were triggering an obscure linux fs bug...
Virtualization good: Webservers, middle tier stuff, etc. Virtualization bad: DBs, memory intensive, CPU intensive.
We're starting to do the same. It looks the articles basically says "managing them is more complex, and you can overload the host". Well duh! They're no harder to manage (or not much) than that many physical machines, but it does make it a lot easier (cheaper!) to create new ones. And you don't virtualize a machine that's already using 50% of a real system. Or even 25%. Most of ours sit at 1% though. Modern processors are way overkill for most things they're being used for.
Perhaps the advantage is that you'll be able to gain access to a giant catalog of movies as opposed to simply what is in stock? Furthermore, locations could offer this huge selection of movies without even having stock?
A definite advantage to the store to expand the inventory without wasting space. A psychological advantage for stupid media execs who think that "using the same content-protection system as commercial discs" prevents piracy. To the knowledgeable consumer, it's massive waste of money the studios could turn into profit by just letting people download watermarked content. Then make sharing a watermarked file a parking ticket offense, and sharing a previously watermarked file a felony (i.e. where you stripped it out with a clear intent to distribute rather than just sharing it with a few friends like you would a real dvd). But no, rather than being interested in profit, the media execs are really interested in the illusion of control.
Speculation about name actors like that is silly. They only way they'd use big names is if they wanted to be in it so bad they took a *major* pay cut. Trek movies just don't bring in Harry Potter/X-Men/Spidey $$$'s any more. It would take some major cahones to gamble that putting names in it would change that, when you're pretty much guaranteed at least a little profit if you use decent unknowns to make it relatively inexpensively. And if JJ does manage to resurrect interest with a good story, they win big with a less expensive production.
And you're right: if this is to be a prequel, it needs 20-somethings in it.
...because no one will use it. They'll have full control.
zudeo is the only one that has it right: download quality clips, now that I'll do...when they get something actually interesting... streaming post stamps? I've got better things to do with my time...
I have a Sony Portable Reader --- in fact since, surprisingly, no one here seems to have reviewed it, I'm trying to find time to write one, but it must use different E-ink technology. It doesn't have a backlight, and the contrast degrades rapidly with the light. If there's a lot of light, it is quite readable, and the background even looks white, but with just a single lamp or a couple normal incandescent lights, it goes gray with a very slight greenish cast. Admittedly, I've been reading most of my books on the very brightly backlit Treo 650 for the last couple years, and I'm getting old enough that my light sensitivity has noticeably diminished (though far from being a problem yet), but I find the Reader to be somewhat worse than a real book. While it's readable if you set things up properly, I still find the Treo to be the best reading device so far. The small size is only a disadvantage for figures and images, and Acrobat Reader for the Palm isn't perfect in its translation, but it works well enough.
I'd really like to get a list of everyone who voted for the 2005 dst timezone changes and start a movement to make them take responsibility for the huge business cost of their stupid legislation. It has to be 100X the cost of what they expected the changes to save...
I plan on sending them a bill for my time. Not that I expect to get anything out of it, but to make the point. Personally, I think the whole DST system is one of the more idiotic things politicians have come up with...
Unfortunately, that sounds all too plausible...I live near Portland, OR, and I hadn't heard a thing about them until Boston went off. Actually, still haven't anything about where they were or much of anything really. So I don't think it was working too well...
Yes, but they got at least $2M worth of advertising out of the publicity --- I'd certainly never heard of the show before all this. In fact, if I were the Cartoon Network, I'd parody the Boston nonsense in the show --- I'll bet ratings, at least for that episode would soar and that they'd see a few stick around too. It doesn't look that interesting to me, so I've not bothered to take a look at it, but if I heard they were doing such a parody, I'd make a point of having my Tivo watch for it.
He lost me when he thought VHS was higher quality than DVD because if he looked real close, he could see occasional compression artifacts. To me, VHS *is* a compression artifact, and a pretty huge one.
I would happily pay $2/episode for downloadable episodes of my favorite shows I could play when, where and how I choose, especially if it allowed niche market shows to continue and not be destroyed by stupid distributors (any number shows and Fox, for example). That's basically what the DVDs cost...
I will not watch, even for free, postage stamp, streaming in fits, enforced commercial crap as NBC is presenting. I haven't watched commercials in shows since I got a TV with a remote and a mute button, and I'm not going to start now. If they want me to watch commercials, they can make creative ones like the current Apple ads, and many superbowl ads. I'll happily go watch them. Just not in the middle of other shows.
The key to fighting piracy is making legitimate viewing easier than pirating and charging reasonable prices. I believe that most people actually do want the shows they like to continue and will willingly support them if they can and it's not painful to do so. Right now, it's painful to do so. When that's fixed, piracy will resume its place as a nuisance, instead of being the showstopper.
That would make the Sony Connect store for ebooks illegal then, as the only device I know of that their DRM'd books work on is the Sony Portable Reader.
...the music companies would pay someone to develop a good, open-standard, drm solution that would be interoperable, easy to use and allow people to authorize a reasonable number of devices for access. It wouldn't really be *that* hard to do... but if they give up entirely, it won't really hurt my feelings...
It's no different than DirecTiVos, and just as legitimate. All this does is reinforce my resolve to only listen to music I've already purchased and avoid anything new.
I look forward to the day when the US is finally free of the metric system and we can finally call 2x4s 4.5x9.5s
Cute, but they would be called 5x10s. 2x4's are only 2"x4" rough cut. The planed ones that you almost always actually buy are 1.5"x 3.5".
Far too many years ago, I was in Germany for work. While there, I got to help a local I was working with do some construction in his garage. Although I'd used metric in school, not having grown up with it, it's like a foreign language that you have to mentally translate all the time and so I was expecting problems. Not so! It was *sooo* nice to do calculations in decimal rather than fractions that I can't imagine people not jumping at the chance to switch. The only reason not to is just plain stubborness.
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The CVTs that you see in automobiles now are pretty much snowmobile transmissions on steroids.
s sion
The ones in hybrids, at least the Prius (and I'm pretty certain the Escape is similar), are much different and don't use belts, though I doubt they would work well in a locomotive either:
http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-transmi
While I'm thinking about it, why aren't the car engines run like the train engines, with the diesel motor running at a more or less constant rate refueling the batteries that run the electric motors that actually turn the wheels
;-) (about 10-15%). The "official" reason is that they recover braking energy, but that's such a small factor that it's virtually useless. The batteries/electric motor do allow a smaller ICE, which uses less fuel in normal modes of operation than a larger engine would, and the electric provides the extra power when you need it, which is the sort of operation you are suggesting. The difference is that when the ICE is running, it's more or less directly providing power to the wheels, so you don't have the loss of efficiency from converting the energy to electricity first.
I'm no expert, but I do drive an electric and have been following them for some time; my understanding is:
In cars, the loss of efficiency from a two-stage power system makes the design pointless from that perspective, and few cars have enough room for both electric motors big enough to provide the necessary power and an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) big enough to feed it. If you downsized the ICE to an average power size, then you have to have electrical storage to provide the extra when you need it, for as long as you'll need the extra oomph, which comes to the same battery tradeoff we have now with electrics: cost or size/weight, as well as needing even more space.
In trains, the extra size/weight is an advantage (gives them more traction for pulling with), and such a setup solves the startup problem (diesel engines can't run at 0 rpm and a transmission that could handle that kind of power would be prohibitive and add maintenance costs), making the loss of efficiency worth it.
I also have a hybrid Escape, and well, to be honest, I think the biggest factor in my better gas mileage is the graph that shows what my mileage is over time as I travel at different speeds. Slowing down 5mph made a huge difference
It also has a sort of "constant velocity transmission" such that you never lug the engine. I think this is the source of most of its real efficiency advantages, as it's always running at the optimum rpm for the power it's producing. It also should make it last longer: it has a 10,000 mile oil change spec, and in looking at the oil at 10,000 miles, it's cleaner than regular cars' oil at 4,000...a reflection of not stressing the engine the way you do when you have to shift (rather than making bigger explosions, you immediately make a lot more of them, i.e. it revs up at the drop of a hat, keeping the internal pressures, and thus stresses, lower).
I suspect this type of transmission might be viable in locomotives too, actually, and might be what they were talking about somewhere where I heard they were talking about a "hybrid locomotive", as it probably would improve their efficiency. I don't remember where that was though.
That is a disadvantage for it as an SUV, however: without a real transmission, you don't get the torque multiplication effect of gearing down, and the thing is useless in snow country or any place where you actually need a lot of starting torque (i.e. when you're stuck). But over 40,000 miles, I average 26mpg, vs the rated 19 for the standard V6. On a warm, dry day on flat ground, I'll get over 30.
To be fair, the overloaded website isn't luvaglio (http://www.luvaglio.com/) itself, which handles the load be being so exclusive, you can't even visit the website without an appointment. With snobbishness like that, they'd have to pay *me* the $1,000,000 to get me to take it...
There is also the article posted recently about how our tastes in music fixed by the time we're 20ish too, with the implication that we basically like what we listened to early on...
Even "depth" is something that is a matter of taste --- some people like it, be it book, music or movie, some don't. It's a matter of what you're trying to get out of the experience.
Good (difficult term but I'll let it ride) music tends not to have mass appeal
It's "good" if no one likes it??? Sorry, I have a fundamental problem with that notion and can't just "let it ride" --- it smacks of nothing but snobbery to me... The authors of the music may not be good if it's derivative and unoriginal, but if you don't know the history and are just listening to it, that's irrelevant. The question is, "do you enjoy listening to it?" If so, then it's good. While that will vary depending on your mood, if a lot of people like it, it seems to me that by definition, it's good.
It looks like a nice plug-n-play setup (how many people are *really* going to figure out how to install and run something as complex as asterisk for this?), but what do their marketing people think they're doing? Not that they're any different from most, but I go to their site and they say "look at all the cool things we have" (spelled in a "witty" way, of course!). Do they have any information at all on how to actually *buy* one of their cool products? Not a peep. Are they doing PR or trying to sell a product? And I won't even get into driving away customers by having annoying music on by default, or a stupidly fixed size tiny window of info...
Was this on the guest fs or the host fs? One of the things causing us to move slowly is that we've seen this a couple of times on the host fs, and not sure why. Once it happened when pre-allocating a virtual disk for a new system; we've been thinking we were triggering an obscure linux fs bug...
Virtualization good: Webservers, middle tier stuff, etc.
Virtualization bad: DBs, memory intensive, CPU intensive.
We're starting to do the same. It looks the articles basically says "managing them is more complex, and you can overload the host". Well duh! They're no harder to manage (or not much) than that many physical machines, but it does make it a lot easier (cheaper!) to create new ones. And you don't virtualize a machine that's already using 50% of a real system. Or even 25%. Most of ours sit at 1% though. Modern processors are way overkill for most things they're being used for.
Perhaps the advantage is that you'll be able to gain access to a giant catalog of movies as opposed to simply what is in stock? Furthermore, locations could offer this huge selection of movies without even having stock?
A definite advantage to the store to expand the inventory without wasting space. A psychological advantage for stupid media execs who think that "using the same content-protection system as commercial discs" prevents piracy. To the knowledgeable consumer, it's massive waste of money the studios could turn into profit by just letting people download watermarked content. Then make sharing a watermarked file a parking ticket offense, and sharing a previously watermarked file a felony (i.e. where you stripped it out with a clear intent to distribute rather than just sharing it with a few friends like you would a real dvd). But no, rather than being interested in profit, the media execs are really interested in the illusion of control.
Speculation about name actors like that is silly. They only way they'd use big names is if they wanted to be in it so bad they took a *major* pay cut. Trek movies just don't bring in Harry Potter/X-Men/Spidey $$$'s any more. It would take some major cahones to gamble that putting names in it would change that, when you're pretty much guaranteed at least a little profit if you use decent unknowns to make it relatively inexpensively. And if JJ does manage to resurrect interest with a good story, they win big with a less expensive production.
And you're right: if this is to be a prequel, it needs 20-somethings in it.
Visual beauty will only get you so far.
Just as with people, beauty is what gets people's attention. You have to provide something useful, without being too much of a burden, to keep it.
...because no one will use it. They'll have full control.
zudeo is the only one that has it right: download quality clips, now that I'll do...when they get something actually interesting... streaming post stamps? I've got better things to do with my time...
I have a Sony Portable Reader --- in fact since, surprisingly, no one here seems to have reviewed it, I'm trying to find time to write one, but it must use different E-ink technology. It doesn't have a backlight, and the contrast degrades rapidly with the light. If there's a lot of light, it is quite readable, and the background even looks white, but with just a single lamp or a couple normal incandescent lights, it goes gray with a very slight greenish cast. Admittedly, I've been reading most of my books on the very brightly backlit Treo 650 for the last couple years, and I'm getting old enough that my light sensitivity has noticeably diminished (though far from being a problem yet), but I find the Reader to be somewhat worse than a real book. While it's readable if you set things up properly, I still find the Treo to be the best reading device so far. The small size is only a disadvantage for figures and images, and Acrobat Reader for the Palm isn't perfect in its translation, but it works well enough.
I'd really like to get a list of everyone who voted for the 2005 dst timezone changes and start a movement to make them take responsibility for the huge business cost of their stupid legislation. It has to be 100X the cost of what they expected the changes to save...
I plan on sending them a bill for my time. Not that I expect to get anything out of it, but to make the point. Personally, I think the whole DST system is one of the more idiotic things politicians have come up with...
Unfortunately, that sounds all too plausible...I live near Portland, OR, and I hadn't heard a thing about them until Boston went off. Actually, still haven't anything about where they were or much of anything really. So I don't think it was working too well...
Yes, but they got at least $2M worth of advertising out of the publicity --- I'd certainly never heard of the show before all this. In fact, if I were the Cartoon Network, I'd parody the Boston nonsense in the show --- I'll bet ratings, at least for that episode would soar and that they'd see a few stick around too. It doesn't look that interesting to me, so I've not bothered to take a look at it, but if I heard they were doing such a parody, I'd make a point of having my Tivo watch for it.
Not only Boston overreacting, but now the network itself? Where are the people willing to stand up for sanity? It's truly a sad day...
Next phishing attack: "Hi, we're from Harvard studying security. Please come login to your bank account on our computers".
If you believe what advertisers tell you instead of what your doctor tells you, you get what you deserve...
He lost me when he thought VHS was higher quality than DVD because if he looked real close, he could see occasional compression artifacts. To me, VHS *is* a compression artifact, and a pretty huge one.
I would happily pay $2/episode for downloadable episodes of my favorite shows I could play when, where and how I choose, especially if it allowed niche market shows to continue and not be destroyed by stupid distributors (any number shows and Fox, for example). That's basically what the DVDs cost...
I will not watch, even for free, postage stamp, streaming in fits, enforced commercial crap as NBC is presenting. I haven't watched commercials in shows since I got a TV with a remote and a mute button, and I'm not going to start now. If they want me to watch commercials, they can make creative ones like the current Apple ads, and many superbowl ads. I'll happily go watch them. Just not in the middle of other shows.
The key to fighting piracy is making legitimate viewing easier than pirating and charging reasonable prices. I believe that most people actually do want the shows they like to continue and will willingly support them if they can and it's not painful to do so. Right now, it's painful to do so. When that's fixed, piracy will resume its place as a nuisance, instead of being the showstopper.
That would make the Sony Connect store for ebooks illegal then, as the only device I know of that their DRM'd books work on is the Sony Portable Reader.
...the music companies would pay someone to develop a good, open-standard, drm solution that would be interoperable, easy to use and allow people to authorize a reasonable number of devices for access. It wouldn't really be *that* hard to do... but if they give up entirely, it won't really hurt my feelings...
It's no different than DirecTiVos, and just as legitimate. All this does is reinforce my resolve to only listen to music I've already purchased and avoid anything new.
I look forward to the day when the US is finally free of the metric system and we can finally call 2x4s 4.5x9.5s
Cute, but they would be called 5x10s. 2x4's are only 2"x4" rough cut. The planed ones that you almost always actually buy are 1.5"x 3.5".
Far too many years ago, I was in Germany for work. While there, I got to help a local I was working with do some construction in his garage. Although I'd used metric in school, not having grown up with it, it's like a foreign language that you have to mentally translate all the time and so I was expecting problems. Not so! It was *sooo* nice to do calculations in decimal rather than fractions that I can't imagine people not jumping at the chance to switch. The only reason not to is just plain stubborness.