I appreciate you're asking a genuine question, and one that clearly is relevent to at least one mod, but I'm frankly amazed that you don't understand the way the world works.
I also think that "Microsoft is a U.S. based company that must obey U.S. laws"...when it is trading in the US, whereas it must obey EU laws when it is trading in the EU! If it doesn't trade in the EU (and forgoes all that juicy profit) it doesn't have to obey EU laws.
Otherwise, I, a brit, could to go the US and sell alcohol to 18-year-olds without an issue. After all, I'm a UK citizen, surely I must obey UK laws... Mind you, then the yanks could come over here with guns... Eek!
I wouldn't be surprised if even more than half of MS's paying customers were in the EU.
I often get the impression that the yanks on this site think they outnumber the limeys by a huge factor. In fact there's only about five times as many (300 million to to 60 million).
Now add in Germany, Turkey, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, The Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Hungary and a few more to get the EU, and you're up to about half a billion. That's half as big again as the US, and could easily scale to be more than half the licensed users of MS products.
Don't confuse Punctuated Equilibrium with macro-evolution. The IDers tend to use as macro-evolution to describe a substantial change in a single generation.
Punctuated Equilibrium, while not gradual, is still across a few thousand generations. Think of it as more of a 'rapid gradualism' than the macro-evolution idea of a sudden eruption of feathers on a surprised looking archeopteric chick so loved of the anti-evolution brigade;-)
Sadly nobody but IDers claim a difference between micro and macro evolution. In fact, they are the only people who use those words.
Apparently for them, a journey of a thousand miles does not start with a single step. It can only be achieved by some kind of magician with a pair of seven-league boots.
Except for one tiny detail: why aren't each of the list elements links to the google search they represent? I can't be arsed to hit ctrl-k, type them in and hit alt-enter. I am far too... I am far too lazy aren't I? Bugger.
I just spoke to house.co.uk because I can't read my electricity bill online (weirdly I can read my gas bill!). They informed me that 'FireFox is not compatible with House' - I told them that it's the other way round and that they just lost a customer!
The more different (but standards compliant) browsers out there, the better the experience for all of us.
I do the same, and, as of about six months ago (on the advice of one of my friends) I include the line "I would not let my team release this website to production". It has amazed me how much this changes the response from "We don't support XXX" to "We will look at the problem".
It will of course, be at least partly to do with the rise of FireFox but I like to think it's partly me too;-)
IIRC, his 'invention' was making it truly portable by not bothering with the recording circuits, which were much bulkier than the playback circuits (don't ask me why).
That was clearly technical and non-obvious (after ten years of lugging around kit the size of a small briefcase), but I'm not sure that 'miss out X' can be counted as 'inventing'.
I agree with all your points, give or take, but the terms I was taught still work for me and I don't think you have contradicted them, just disagreed with the terminology. [Although as I said to someone else in this thread, yes, you're right about the state change, I hadn't thought of Stirling engines. A state change is typical but not the only way to get work from heat.] I'm a physicist not an engineer, and these are convenient terms for me to think in.
It remains my impression - correct me if you can show evidence - that the work expansion in an basic internal engine is primarily due to the product being gaseous (ie any explosive combustion will work, hence the example I gave of an ethanol engine running at a constant 101C) whereas the expansion in an external engine is entirely due to heating. I appreciate that that is a simple view, but I think it's valid. Quite how you argue that large diesels 'destroy' the concept of internal vs external escapes me. The fuel is still either being burnt in the chamber where the work takes place or out of it. Hmm. 'In' vs 'Out'. Still sounds quite like 'internal' vs 'external' to me.
As to there being a 'correct' distinction between engine types, that's semantically laughable; the fact that steam is just a working fluid is a point I made some while ago; returning to my absolute original point, you could use diesel fuel to provide the heat to power an external combustion engine perfectly well, as indeed some car company or other has apparently done!
There's a phrase in Snowcrash that has always stuck in my mind, describing a young mum with two kids "that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline".
My first arrives next year. I've got the foresight, and by god I'm going to find the energy! No way will I let him or her become a little whiny brat, talking cereal or not;-)
I agree - except that the engine types I was referring to were 'internal' and 'external', not Otto vs Diesel cycle. It is article about steam engines!
Co-incidentally, my brother did the same thing once, not to save money, but just cos he was in france and didn't know the names on the pump. A real d'oh moment.
And if you really think that steam engine is NOT temperature limited why not prove it. Make the ultimate steam engine. Burn H2 in a pure O2 atmosphere. You will get the hottest possible steam and feed that into a none cooled steam engine!
I never said that (straw man?), and you are again equating steam and external combustion! Steam is a form of external combustion, just petrol is only one kind of internal.
For example, If you have an external combustion engine with an expanding substance of, say, sulphur, in a chamber made of an high temp ceramic, then you might indeed make an external combustion engine that used pure H2/O2 fuel. (No, I haven't looked up the boiling point of sulphur.)
Your fallacy is this: internal vs external is not the same as petrol vs steam any more than television vs theatre is the same as Simpsons vs Shakespear. See what I'm getting at?
Decoupled drives are slightly less efficient at speed, but your average suburban vehicle falls to zero per cent efficiency at every traffic light (or going downhill for engines that require a minimum fuel input all the time).
The advantage of the fully decoupled engine is that it is at the same efficiency all the time, and around town that's a win.
Firstly you wouldn't need to pressurise the water at all. It's in a different volume.
But moreover, the guy was arguing against external on the grounds that diesel power is better. I was just pointing out that there's no contradiction - you don't have to burn diesel internally. One way you waste a lot of heat, the other way you waste a lot of expansion (The engine in TFA attempts to use both). I was not arguing for a diesel external combustion engine to take over the world!
Yes, modern steam turbines need high purity water. They also use vastly higher pressures than found in a motor car and whizzy little fan blades. Thankfully, these new cars don't, which is what I was saying: it's an engineering choice!
Diesel is any fuel that will ignite under pressure (with occasional assistance from glowplugs...). An external engine is any engine with an energy source outside the piston. There is no necessary correlation. I'll give you the Stirling cycle though, I didn't think of those;-)
I'll back down a bit and argue that heat is not a *requirement* of an internal engine either, only expansion. Take the buring of ethanol as a simple example:
c6h1206 + 902 = 6c02 + 6h20 (I think;-)
There is no *requirement* for a working temp of >100C in order to get work out of the system, so long as the working temp is hot enough that the the h20 is gaseous after combustion. In fact, excess heat always needs to be removed from the system (hence my original comment).
Slashdot Mirror
I also think that "Microsoft is a U.S. based company that must obey U.S. laws" ...when it is trading in the US, whereas it must obey EU laws when it is trading in the EU! If it doesn't trade in the EU (and forgoes all that juicy profit) it doesn't have to obey EU laws.
Otherwise, I, a brit, could to go the US and sell alcohol to 18-year-olds without an issue. After all, I'm a UK citizen, surely I must obey UK laws... Mind you, then the yanks could come over here with guns... Eek!
Justin.
I often get the impression that the yanks on this site think they outnumber the limeys by a huge factor. In fact there's only about five times as many (300 million to to 60 million).
Now add in Germany, Turkey, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, The Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Hungary and a few more to get the EU, and you're up to about half a billion. That's half as big again as the US, and could easily scale to be more than half the licensed users of MS products.
Justin.
You're absolutely right, and dear god, don't let the grand-parent write any important code involving sorting/comparing sets of data.
For information stored in hierarchical granularity, sort order is 'biggest to smallest'. There is no other correct answer.
Justin.
Don't confuse Punctuated Equilibrium with macro-evolution. The IDers tend to use as macro-evolution to describe a substantial change in a single generation.
;-)
Punctuated Equilibrium, while not gradual, is still across a few thousand generations. Think of it as more of a 'rapid gradualism' than the macro-evolution idea of a sudden eruption of feathers on a surprised looking archeopteric chick so loved of the anti-evolution brigade
J.
I read it as a dollar ninety-eight at first glance, and thought "whew, bargain!".
Justin.
Sadly nobody but IDers claim a difference between micro and macro evolution. In fact, they are the only people who use those words.
Apparently for them, a journey of a thousand miles does not start with a single step. It can only be achieved by some kind of magician with a pair of seven-league boots.
Justin.
Except for one tiny detail: why aren't each of the list elements links to the google search they represent? I can't be arsed to hit ctrl-k, type them in and hit alt-enter. I am far too... I am far too lazy aren't I? Bugger.
Justin.
Don't get a sulk on. You (implicitly) criticised someone else's usage wrongly and got corrected. Be a man and take the hit.
Justin.
Justin.
I just spoke to house.co.uk because I can't read my electricity bill online (weirdly I can read my gas bill!). They informed me that 'FireFox is not compatible with House' - I told them that it's the other way round and that they just lost a customer!
The more different (but standards compliant) browsers out there, the better the experience for all of us.
Justin.
Justin.
Possibly only fatal to the antenna too.
The suggestion is that Beagle is sitting in a martian crater wondering 'where did all the humans go?'!
J.
Bloody doubt it, I was singing it in the playground before O'Brien wrote his opus ...sonny.
Did it occur to you that it might be older than the show?
J.
...something's blocking access to the story. (Millions of other slashdotters most likely.)
Justin.
"He sees you when you're sleeping,
He sees when you're awake,
He knows when you've been bad or good
And when you masturbate"
Those were the words when I was a kid, anyway.
Justin.
I do the same, and, as of about six months ago (on the advice of one of my friends) I include the line "I would not let my team release this website to production". It has amazed me how much this changes the response from "We don't support XXX" to "We will look at the problem".
;-)
It will of course, be at least partly to do with the rise of FireFox but I like to think it's partly me too
J.
IIRC, his 'invention' was making it truly portable by not bothering with the recording circuits, which were much bulkier than the playback circuits (don't ask me why).
That was clearly technical and non-obvious (after ten years of lugging around kit the size of a small briefcase), but I'm not sure that 'miss out X' can be counted as 'inventing'.
J.
I agree with all your points, give or take, but the terms I was taught still work for me and I don't think you have contradicted them, just disagreed with the terminology. [Although as I said to someone else in this thread, yes, you're right about the state change, I hadn't thought of Stirling engines. A state change is typical but not the only way to get work from heat.] I'm a physicist not an engineer, and these are convenient terms for me to think in.
It remains my impression - correct me if you can show evidence - that the work expansion in an basic internal engine is primarily due to the product being gaseous (ie any explosive combustion will work, hence the example I gave of an ethanol engine running at a constant 101C) whereas the expansion in an external engine is entirely due to heating. I appreciate that that is a simple view, but I think it's valid. Quite how you argue that large diesels 'destroy' the concept of internal vs external escapes me. The fuel is still either being burnt in the chamber where the work takes place or out of it. Hmm. 'In' vs 'Out'. Still sounds quite like 'internal' vs 'external' to me.
As to there being a 'correct' distinction between engine types, that's semantically laughable; the fact that steam is just a working fluid is a point I made some while ago; returning to my absolute original point, you could use diesel fuel to provide the heat to power an external combustion engine perfectly well, as indeed some car company or other has apparently done!
Justin.
There's a phrase in Snowcrash that has always stuck in my mind, describing a young mum with two kids "that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline".
;-)
My first arrives next year. I've got the foresight, and by god I'm going to find the energy! No way will I let him or her become a little whiny brat, talking cereal or not
J.
I agree - except that the engine types I was referring to were 'internal' and 'external', not Otto vs Diesel cycle. It is article about steam engines!
Co-incidentally, my brother did the same thing once, not to save money, but just cos he was in france and didn't know the names on the pump. A real d'oh moment.
J.
I never said that (straw man?), and you are again equating steam and external combustion! Steam is a form of external combustion, just petrol is only one kind of internal.
For example, If you have an external combustion engine with an expanding substance of, say, sulphur, in a chamber made of an high temp ceramic, then you might indeed make an external combustion engine that used pure H2/O2 fuel. (No, I haven't looked up the boiling point of sulphur.)
Your fallacy is this: internal vs external is not the same as petrol vs steam any more than television vs theatre is the same as Simpsons vs Shakespear. See what I'm getting at?
Justin.
Diesel is a cycle.
Decoupled drives are slightly less efficient at speed, but your average suburban vehicle falls to zero per cent efficiency at every traffic light (or going downhill for engines that require a minimum fuel input all the time).
The advantage of the fully decoupled engine is that it is at the same efficiency all the time, and around town that's a win.
Justin.
Firstly you wouldn't need to pressurise the water at all. It's in a different volume.
But moreover, the guy was arguing against external on the grounds that diesel power is better. I was just pointing out that there's no contradiction - you don't have to burn diesel internally. One way you waste a lot of heat, the other way you waste a lot of expansion (The engine in TFA attempts to use both). I was not arguing for a diesel external combustion engine to take over the world!
Yes, modern steam turbines need high purity water. They also use vastly higher pressures than found in a motor car and whizzy little fan blades. Thankfully, these new cars don't, which is what I was saying: it's an engineering choice!
Justin.
Diesel is any fuel that will ignite under pressure (with occasional assistance from glowplugs...). An external engine is any engine with an energy source outside the piston. There is no necessary correlation. I'll give you the Stirling cycle though, I didn't think of those ;-)
;-)
I'll back down a bit and argue that heat is not a *requirement* of an internal engine either, only expansion. Take the buring of ethanol as a simple example:
c6h1206 + 902 = 6c02 + 6h20 (I think
There is no *requirement* for a working temp of >100C in order to get work out of the system, so long as the working temp is hot enough that the the h20 is gaseous after combustion. In fact, excess heat always needs to be removed from the system (hence my original comment).
Justin.