That was my immediate thought. Any decent system needs to ensure that it isn't running at a loss. To make that happen, they need an accounting system in place.
Rather than a loss, they managed a significant profit. The profit didn't go to the company.
I've seen lots of affiliate systems (sign up for a sight, the referring webmaster gets x%). In the adult industry, it's called shaving. The referring webmaster has a percentage of their sales (I've seen up to 25%), where it isn't recorded that they got the sale. Instead, it is credited to another account. The owner of the system doesn't always know. They see sales come in. They see payments go out. The shaved sales go to one of the developer's accounts (usually to a difficult to trace 3rd party).
If I were the developer, I'd have a friend in another country set up his affiliate account. The "lost" sales get paid out to him. He keeps a percentage, and pays me the rest. It can be very difficult to trace until there is a code audit. The audits don't usually come until the boss knows there's something funny going on. As long as the boss is getting a large profit, they have no reason to audit.
In the rest of the corporate world, it's skimming. Accountants can make it look like the missing funds are going to nondescript costs.
In both skimming and shaving, it becomes obvious when the person doing it gets too greedy. Like, it's difficult to justify that $1M/yr goes to miscellaneous custodian costs. And yes, I've seen exactly that, in a company that only made about $3M/yr profit. Sometimes it goes to consumable costs. It can be tricky to track if they're smart. When they get greedy, smart falls out of the equation.
You need to read up more on economics. Maybe swing by a local college and audit some economics courses.
No, most (all?) of the current in use today is backed by nothing. Well, nothing more than the idea that it's worth something.
I have a $20 bill in my pocket. It's not worth anything. There is a perceived value of it, so I can exchange that piece of paper for goods and services.
If it were backed by anything, there would be an obligation by the issuing party to exchange it for the commodity it was backed by. You can't go to the federal reserve and say "I want to exchange my $20 note for $20 worth of gold". Best case, you'd get a smile, pat on the head, and be sent on your way.
We effectively work with a bartering system. The perceived value of one service or object, for another. You can barter drugs, ammunition, or sex. That doesn't make any of them a currency, even though they'd each be good examples in your description. Actually, I think I like my examples better than the ugly paper in my pocket.
I worked for a background information company a while back. I did a broad search for my real name (i.e., not my Slashdot name), and found all the other "me"s out there. There are several right around my age. There were doctors, lawyers, and a pilot. One, approximately my age, didn't live very far way, so we could easily be mixed up.
I had some nefarious thoughts as I was looking at their full record. I had their DOB, SSN, address history, phone numbers. I could have easily become a doppelganger.
Damn. I just checked on Intelius.com for myself. I know how they pull some of their records, and they use the same resources as some employment verification companies. The real me on there, based on age, cities shows all the wrong employers, the wrong education, and an extra relative that I don't have. Great. Maybe I should go try to buy a gun, to see what new shit comes up. It's been a few years.
Maybe it's just time to change my name to a string of random letters, and live in a nice cabin in the woods. I hear the property Ted Kaczynski was living on is available now. He lived pretty quietly out there for a while.
You can make a somewhat functional oscilloscope with a Windows PC that has a sound card, Zelscope (or other free software), a headphone plug, a few resisters, and some alligator clips. For the fairly primitive stuff I've needed, it's worked fine. For higher frequencies (i.e., not in the normal audio range), you'd have to look at something better, but there are perfectly functional USB devices that will do the job for cheap.
If you want the Porsche of O'scopes, you'd have to pay the premium prices. It all depends on what you're trying to measure.
I lived in LA, and had two Fry's within a few miles of my house. I was explicitly forbidden from shopping without a chaperone (i.e., my girlfriend), because I'd always buy extra stuff, and I'd be gone for hours. Fry's is my favorite toy store.
Now, where I live, the nearest Fry's is about 490 miles away. Any time I travel to a city with Fry's, I make a point of going, just because. I don't really *need* anything, but let me loose in there, and I'll find all kinds of things I didn't need before, but I can't live without now. I'm not in some remote hole, I'm in one of the top 20 markets in the US. Take that as you will. Nielsen television/radio markets. DMAs. OMB MSAs. Yet, we don't rank high enough to get a Fry's.
Funny you mention a lot of stuff that I'm working on as a side project. I decomputerized the engine in one of my vehicles, because when I really got into it, the design was horrible from the electronic and physical standpoints. Who the hell blocks 50% of the airflow to half the cylinders with a chunk of plastic to hold the injector spider (ya, weird design). My neighbors thought I was nuts, because I just kept pulling out parts saying "Nope. Bad. What the fuck were they thinking? That's awful, gone."
There was an awful lot of "What the fuck were they thinking?"
As it turns out, with this particular design, the transmission doesn't understand that the vehicle is moving, so it goes into limp mode. It has 2nd and 3rd gear only in limp mode. So I'm recreating the transmission control computer. Who needs automatic, when you can have push button shifting? The aftermarket unit is something like $700. To replace the transmission with the older mechanical one costs something like $1,000.
So I have:
3 shift solenoids that are on or off depending on the gear it should be in
1 PWM controlled solenoid, to determine the TCC (a computer operated torque converter)
3 shifter position sensors (I believe, I'd have to check my notes) to say what the gearshift is in.
1 brake position sensor (on/off)
1 variable resistance throttle position sensor.
1 pulse sensor for the vehicle speed sensor.
All in all, a pretty simple setup. I'm giving two push buttons, to shift up or down, for the forward speeds. Automatic was horrible at picking gears anyways. But now I have to run 3 solenoids to pick the gear, and send the appropriate duty cycle PWM to the TCC, based on the TPS and gear.
Like 1st gear low TPS gets a low duty cycle or it would stall. Full throttle in any gear gets a pretty high duty cycle.
Reading around, I could only find one company with a fairly open box, but it's pricy, and you get to assemble everything yourself. Or you can spend a bunch of money on a purpose built box that you have no control over.
I had to get a oscilloscope, to make sure the PWM was what I intended to put out. I got creative there, and found some software to use with a sound card. It works pretty well. It's not perfect, but good enough for this purpose, since I know what it's suppose to generate. I wouldn't try to tune something I wasn't controlling the source on though. Honestly, it had been years since I had used an oscilloscope. I was very happy with my results, and even sang to it by clipping it onto a microphone (probes, alligator clips, same thing. {grin}). I sang a C3 at 129.20Hz, which should have been 130.81Hz. Not bad, considering I didn't listen to a reference tone first, especially since I can't sing for shit.
Now picture going into a Radio Shack and saying that's what you're trying to do. They glazed over after the first 10 seconds, and then just said "if you need help finding anything, just ask." I asked for a bigger box to put the parts into while I was shopping.:) I did send them on a quest to find LEDs for me. Just saying "find me red, yellow, green, and blue LEDs, all rated for the same voltage" caused them trouble. I wasn't *trying* to be difficult. I just wanted to be able to swap them without playing too much with different resistors. As I recall, they found them online, but they'd have to order them.
Just asking for some heatsinks for some of the components I grabbed turned out to be too much for one store. It's not like I had a *huge* box, it was just a few parts out of their bins. They had some at one store, and a different type at another store, but not enough for the project. I relegated myself to repurposing old CPU heatsinks that I have at home. They'll do fine.
If it's a religious owned/operated school, save the mythology for the theology class. Be fair, make it a honest comparative religions class, so they can see how their stories compare with the rest.
For public schools, leave the mythology out entirely, except in the historical context.
Teaching kids the mythology encourages them to grow up to be adults that believe the mythology. They fail to grow up and learn in the real world there is a cause and effect relationship.
The last thing I need is someone coming into my office asking for help, and then praying to their deity to solve it. When I fix their problem, they'll thank their deity, who didn't have a thing to do with it.
I swear, if one more person prays for a fix, I'm going to stop working. Let the deity of their choice fix it, and I'll go helping other people.
Ya buddy, your deity works in mysterious ways, that's why you still can't log into your email, and your application server is still down. Keep praying, maybe it will miraculously recover. Ha.
I worry every time I have to go through a background check. It's not that I've done anything, or I intend to do anything. There's always a chance for human error.
I had an interaction with the police once. They got rather irate that I had a felony warrant. At least the officer asked for them to look at it carefully. It was my name, but my DOB was about 30 years off. That was years ago, and hasn't come up again, so I'm guessing the warrant was satisfied.
We're all just one clerical error away from failing a background check. About the time you're going through the background check, isn't the best time to try to get it fixed. Well, unless you're flying, then we're all one soundex match away from someone with a name or alias that sounds similar ours to get put on the no-fly list. Good luck getting off of that.
Well, at least in Florida, I (an individual firearms owner) can sell to another individual in person.
I was told by the operator of a gun store, that I *can* choose to ask FDLE to run a background check for the purpose of selling a firearm. They will only give a yes/no answer to if the buyer is ok to sell to.
I, as a private individual, *can* sell to anyone, in any state. It has to be shipped to a federally licensed firearms dealer who is willing to do the transfer (i.e., pretty much any gun store). Around here, the cost to do the transfer is about $25, paid by the buyer. For the sake of not having the weapon seized in transit, it has been recommended to me, to ask a local store to handle the outbound shipment. The receiving dealer is responsible for ensuring local laws are followed. For example, if you live in California, and I sell you an AR-15, but not in a California-legal configuration, they are obliged not to give it to you. Likewise, if you don't meet the legal requirements to own a firearm, they will refuse it. I haven't personally been involved in such a transaction, but it is my understanding that if the transaction cannot be completed (the weapon is not legal in that jurisdiction, or the owner cannot take possession of it), it will be returned to me.
If you sell me a firearm, I, as a CCW holder, can pick up the weapon at the receiving store immediately, but they still call FDLE to ensure there's nothing new on my record. If I didn't have a valid CCW, there may be a waiting period, depending on the type of weapon.
There are some things that are illegal in Florida, but not everywhere. I happened to stumble across a few while looking at alternative ammunition. The "dragon's breath" shotgun shells are illegal here. I just thought they were interesting, although I don't see them being very practical. Flechette shotgun shells are also illegal. In theory, I could go buy them in another state. I may also be able to mail order them. If I am caught possessing or using them, I may be in trouble.
I needed a VOM, mostly because I wasn't totally sure where mine was. They had a real cheap one for something like $7.99. Great!
I got it home, and there's no battery. I opened it up, and it doesn't take a regular battery. The battery was about $15, and they didn't stock it. Nowhere locally stocked it. I could order it online, but that kind of defeats the purpose of picking up a cheap multimeter to use the same day.
$8 isn't usually something I worry about, but it was the principle. How can you sell a multimeter, that doesn't work without buying a battery, *AND* you don't stock the battery. If I got the battery, now I have a $23 multimeter, with a consumable part at $15/ea. I couldn't even give it away to someone without them hating me for giving them a crap multimeter with an expensive battery.
So I went back to the store and bitched them out. Someone in that store is responsible for ordering. Somewhere in their system should have said "You need to stock these too". When I was btiching them out, I asked, "have you ever seen that battery?" Nope, to the best of their knowledge (the floor guy *and* the manager) they never stocked it. I guess enough people take home the worthless multimeter, and either order it online, or just toss it in the tool box and forget about it.
I'm not a customer to fund them by buying worthless crap.
Marijuana is an accepted illicit product in most IT departments. As long as you're not smoking out in your office or the server room, no one cares.:)
I came to accept that years ago. I don't smoke, but I'd say >50% of those in IT do, either recreational or habitual. I toss that in my "short term memory, forget it after I find out", and just tabulate it in my running counter of "does/doesn't smoke pot".
When I've been hunting for potential employees, I hold off on even attempting to find their Facebook page until they're hired and we're friendly at work. Usually everything else says we'll be friends, and FB just confirms that we have similar interests. Or we have nothing in common, but we still socialize.
One guy I hired, I didn't know he liked the zombie genre until after he was hired, and we friended each other, because we were getting on well. Then I left the company. We still talk about zombies. As it turns out, we have an indirect relationship outside of work, spanning 1000 miles. (him -> sister -> spouse -> girlfriend's sister -> girlfriend -> me). The spouse in the list laughed, because I "knew" her two different ways, without ever meeting her. I think I still have fewer degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon.
Give 'em a chance. Just rattle through what you want and why, so you can see the dumb look on their face.:) Sometimes you can hear the audible "WOOSH", without them saying anything. It's quite amazing.
I would agree. People don't want to fix that expensive [something electronic], when they already know everything is surface mount, and they don't have the skill to fix it. The cost for the replacement part and tools is higher than the cost of the replacement unit.
We are in a disposable society now. Throw away your old electronics and buy new ones.
There are fewer hobbyists now. I was at one of the Radio Shacks that actually sells components. I spent probably 2 hours doing parts conversions in my head to see what could work, and redesigning parts, because virtually nothing I wanted was in stock. Even for 4 transistors, I spent time going through what they had to find what was "good enough", versus what I wanted. Part of that time, I was restocking their stuff, because things I was looking for were tossed back in the wrong drawers. Not just one compartment off, they'd be in the wrong rack entirely. They tried to help, but they knew more about the cell phones and batteries, than they knew about the components. At least one guy working there knew what a transistor or resistor was. We had a decent talk while I shopped for parts. When I couldn't find something (like heatsinks for the transistors I settled on), he checked the other local store inventory, and then ended up telling me I had to buy it online.
I was looking for another component the other day. I don't remember what it was, but it was something fairly simple. Their site had "Web Only" right the photo. The same for every potentially compatible part.
Don't forget, journalists can't even get IT terms right, even though they have IT guys who work right there with them. They're more than happy to call IT to hear "have you turned it off and on again", but they won't call to ask for proper terminology for aircraft.
It's not much of an excuse. A few quick Google searches, or a phone call, would have given them all the right words to use. They might even string them together somewhat coherently.
I thought they had most the original parts in a museum. The only reference I could find on the props is that they are 2-bladed Ratier. That's a manufacturer who is still in business, so the specs should be available on what was produced during the period.
They were using car engines. I strongly suspect there are details available on those. I don't know enough about Bugatti's, but the cars still exist and are sold. It should be possible to find parts. It's not like you'll go down to your local auto parts store and order them though.
I couldn't find any specs on the weight, but it should be doable to convert a modern V8 to be aircraft worthy with the required horsepower. There are people who convert the Chevy LS1 engine to be safe for aircraft use. They're all aluminum instead of magnesium, but modern engines use stronger alloys so the engine may be lighter. You can get over 500hp from a LS1 with about $3k in parts. So about $10k per engine. If I were building it, it would cost a bit more, just because I'd want the reliability of better parts. It's all up to the builder, and they didn't invite either of us to play.
Using a LSX motor definitely goes along with the original concept, and keeps the budget in a reasonable range.
You can Google "LS1 airplane" for web pages that have working examples.
So you're saying it could have been a really cool recon aircraft.:) I don't know, it looks like it should have been maneuverable, and guns could have been somewhere. Where? hell if I know.
It wasn't designed as a military aircraft though, it was designed to break speed records, and racing.
Their pictures do show inline 8's, which would be huge. They also say they're race car engines, which normally wouldn't do very well with pesky things like inverted flight or even unbalanced turns (i.e., bank, but continue straight on the original vector).
I couldn't find anything on the fuel capacity, max takeoff weight, or the fuel burn rate. It may have been a cool high speed aircraft, but may not have been able to fly very far at all.
The replica is using the wrong engines, which they admitted to. Less than half the power, and they're using modern motorcycle engines. I can't find anything on the weight of the Bugatti 50-series engines. I did find that the site specifically references the Type 50P engine, and others talking about the plane say it was a Type 50B engine. There are plenty of mentions of the Type 50B being used in cars, but nothing on the Type 50P.
So, no matter what they build, it won't have the same performance as the original prototype. That is, assuming it even gets off the ground. Plenty of prototypes and experimental aircraft never got off the ground, or had... well, unintended intersection of the aircraft and terrain. It sounds like they have some real experts on it, so it'll probably fly.
I'd prefer recreations on some of the Horton Ho aircraft. The Horton Ho 229 would have been an amazing aircraft. I guess we (the Allied side) were lucky they never made it to production.
The only full size of the Horton Ho 229 I know of was a replica airframe to evaluate its radar signature.
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I already have bets in on the last words being either "Hold my beer and watch this!" or "What could possibly go wrong?".
Earth is a toxic waste repository for the dominant invasive species.
That was my immediate thought. Any decent system needs to ensure that it isn't running at a loss. To make that happen, they need an accounting system in place.
Rather than a loss, they managed a significant profit. The profit didn't go to the company.
I've seen lots of affiliate systems (sign up for a sight, the referring webmaster gets x%). In the adult industry, it's called shaving. The referring webmaster has a percentage of their sales (I've seen up to 25%), where it isn't recorded that they got the sale. Instead, it is credited to another account. The owner of the system doesn't always know. They see sales come in. They see payments go out. The shaved sales go to one of the developer's accounts (usually to a difficult to trace 3rd party).
If I were the developer, I'd have a friend in another country set up his affiliate account. The "lost" sales get paid out to him. He keeps a percentage, and pays me the rest. It can be very difficult to trace until there is a code audit. The audits don't usually come until the boss knows there's something funny going on. As long as the boss is getting a large profit, they have no reason to audit.
In the rest of the corporate world, it's skimming. Accountants can make it look like the missing funds are going to nondescript costs.
In both skimming and shaving, it becomes obvious when the person doing it gets too greedy. Like, it's difficult to justify that $1M/yr goes to miscellaneous custodian costs. And yes, I've seen exactly that, in a company that only made about $3M/yr profit. Sometimes it goes to consumable costs. It can be tricky to track if they're smart. When they get greedy, smart falls out of the equation.
You need to read up more on economics. Maybe swing by a local college and audit some economics courses.
No, most (all?) of the current in use today is backed by nothing. Well, nothing more than the idea that it's worth something.
I have a $20 bill in my pocket. It's not worth anything. There is a perceived value of it, so I can exchange that piece of paper for goods and services.
If it were backed by anything, there would be an obligation by the issuing party to exchange it for the commodity it was backed by. You can't go to the federal reserve and say "I want to exchange my $20 note for $20 worth of gold". Best case, you'd get a smile, pat on the head, and be sent on your way.
We effectively work with a bartering system. The perceived value of one service or object, for another. You can barter drugs, ammunition, or sex. That doesn't make any of them a currency, even though they'd each be good examples in your description. Actually, I think I like my examples better than the ugly paper in my pocket.
Boost Mobile - $35/mo, unlimited voice, data, text.
I guess I lucked out.
I worked for a background information company a while back. I did a broad search for my real name (i.e., not my Slashdot name), and found all the other "me"s out there. There are several right around my age. There were doctors, lawyers, and a pilot. One, approximately my age, didn't live very far way, so we could easily be mixed up.
I had some nefarious thoughts as I was looking at their full record. I had their DOB, SSN, address history, phone numbers. I could have easily become a doppelganger.
Damn. I just checked on Intelius.com for myself. I know how they pull some of their records, and they use the same resources as some employment verification companies. The real me on there, based on age, cities shows all the wrong employers, the wrong education, and an extra relative that I don't have. Great. Maybe I should go try to buy a gun, to see what new shit comes up. It's been a few years.
Maybe it's just time to change my name to a string of random letters, and live in a nice cabin in the woods. I hear the property Ted Kaczynski was living on is available now. He lived pretty quietly out there for a while.
You can make a somewhat functional oscilloscope with a Windows PC that has a sound card, Zelscope (or other free software), a headphone plug, a few resisters, and some alligator clips. For the fairly primitive stuff I've needed, it's worked fine. For higher frequencies (i.e., not in the normal audio range), you'd have to look at something better, but there are perfectly functional USB devices that will do the job for cheap.
If you want the Porsche of O'scopes, you'd have to pay the premium prices. It all depends on what you're trying to measure.
You know, there are a lot of people who hate you.
I lived in LA, and had two Fry's within a few miles of my house. I was explicitly forbidden from shopping without a chaperone (i.e., my girlfriend), because I'd always buy extra stuff, and I'd be gone for hours. Fry's is my favorite toy store.
Now, where I live, the nearest Fry's is about 490 miles away. Any time I travel to a city with Fry's, I make a point of going, just because. I don't really *need* anything, but let me loose in there, and I'll find all kinds of things I didn't need before, but I can't live without now. I'm not in some remote hole, I'm in one of the top 20 markets in the US. Take that as you will. Nielsen television/radio markets. DMAs. OMB MSAs. Yet, we don't rank high enough to get a Fry's.
Funny you mention a lot of stuff that I'm working on as a side project. I decomputerized the engine in one of my vehicles, because when I really got into it, the design was horrible from the electronic and physical standpoints. Who the hell blocks 50% of the airflow to half the cylinders with a chunk of plastic to hold the injector spider (ya, weird design). My neighbors thought I was nuts, because I just kept pulling out parts saying "Nope. Bad. What the fuck were they thinking? That's awful, gone."
There was an awful lot of "What the fuck were they thinking?"
As it turns out, with this particular design, the transmission doesn't understand that the vehicle is moving, so it goes into limp mode. It has 2nd and 3rd gear only in limp mode. So I'm recreating the transmission control computer. Who needs automatic, when you can have push button shifting? The aftermarket unit is something like $700. To replace the transmission with the older mechanical one costs something like $1,000.
So I have:
3 shift solenoids that are on or off depending on the gear it should be in
1 PWM controlled solenoid, to determine the TCC (a computer operated torque converter)
3 shifter position sensors (I believe, I'd have to check my notes) to say what the gearshift is in.
1 brake position sensor (on/off)
1 variable resistance throttle position sensor.
1 pulse sensor for the vehicle speed sensor.
All in all, a pretty simple setup. I'm giving two push buttons, to shift up or down, for the forward speeds. Automatic was horrible at picking gears anyways. But now I have to run 3 solenoids to pick the gear, and send the appropriate duty cycle PWM to the TCC, based on the TPS and gear.
Like 1st gear low TPS gets a low duty cycle or it would stall. Full throttle in any gear gets a pretty high duty cycle.
Reading around, I could only find one company with a fairly open box, but it's pricy, and you get to assemble everything yourself. Or you can spend a bunch of money on a purpose built box that you have no control over.
I had to get a oscilloscope, to make sure the PWM was what I intended to put out. I got creative there, and found some software to use with a sound card. It works pretty well. It's not perfect, but good enough for this purpose, since I know what it's suppose to generate. I wouldn't try to tune something I wasn't controlling the source on though. Honestly, it had been years since I had used an oscilloscope. I was very happy with my results, and even sang to it by clipping it onto a microphone (probes, alligator clips, same thing. {grin}). I sang a C3 at 129.20Hz, which should have been 130.81Hz. Not bad, considering I didn't listen to a reference tone first, especially since I can't sing for shit.
Now picture going into a Radio Shack and saying that's what you're trying to do. They glazed over after the first 10 seconds, and then just said "if you need help finding anything, just ask." I asked for a bigger box to put the parts into while I was shopping. :) I did send them on a quest to find LEDs for me. Just saying "find me red, yellow, green, and blue LEDs, all rated for the same voltage" caused them trouble. I wasn't *trying* to be difficult. I just wanted to be able to swap them without playing too much with different resistors. As I recall, they found them online, but they'd have to order them.
Just asking for some heatsinks for some of the components I grabbed turned out to be too much for one store. It's not like I had a *huge* box, it was just a few parts out of their bins. They had some at one store, and a different type at another store, but not enough for the project. I relegated myself to repurposing old CPU heatsinks that I have at home. They'll do fine.
School children should be taught *facts*.
If it's a religious owned/operated school, save the mythology for the theology class. Be fair, make it a honest comparative religions class, so they can see how their stories compare with the rest.
For public schools, leave the mythology out entirely, except in the historical context.
Teaching kids the mythology encourages them to grow up to be adults that believe the mythology. They fail to grow up and learn in the real world there is a cause and effect relationship.
The last thing I need is someone coming into my office asking for help, and then praying to their deity to solve it. When I fix their problem, they'll thank their deity, who didn't have a thing to do with it.
I swear, if one more person prays for a fix, I'm going to stop working. Let the deity of their choice fix it, and I'll go helping other people.
Ya buddy, your deity works in mysterious ways, that's why you still can't log into your email, and your application server is still down. Keep praying, maybe it will miraculously recover. Ha.
I worry every time I have to go through a background check. It's not that I've done anything, or I intend to do anything. There's always a chance for human error.
I had an interaction with the police once. They got rather irate that I had a felony warrant. At least the officer asked for them to look at it carefully. It was my name, but my DOB was about 30 years off. That was years ago, and hasn't come up again, so I'm guessing the warrant was satisfied.
We're all just one clerical error away from failing a background check. About the time you're going through the background check, isn't the best time to try to get it fixed. Well, unless you're flying, then we're all one soundex match away from someone with a name or alias that sounds similar ours to get put on the no-fly list. Good luck getting off of that.
Well, at least in Florida, I (an individual firearms owner) can sell to another individual in person.
I was told by the operator of a gun store, that I *can* choose to ask FDLE to run a background check for the purpose of selling a firearm. They will only give a yes/no answer to if the buyer is ok to sell to.
I, as a private individual, *can* sell to anyone, in any state. It has to be shipped to a federally licensed firearms dealer who is willing to do the transfer (i.e., pretty much any gun store). Around here, the cost to do the transfer is about $25, paid by the buyer. For the sake of not having the weapon seized in transit, it has been recommended to me, to ask a local store to handle the outbound shipment. The receiving dealer is responsible for ensuring local laws are followed. For example, if you live in California, and I sell you an AR-15, but not in a California-legal configuration, they are obliged not to give it to you. Likewise, if you don't meet the legal requirements to own a firearm, they will refuse it. I haven't personally been involved in such a transaction, but it is my understanding that if the transaction cannot be completed (the weapon is not legal in that jurisdiction, or the owner cannot take possession of it), it will be returned to me.
If you sell me a firearm, I, as a CCW holder, can pick up the weapon at the receiving store immediately, but they still call FDLE to ensure there's nothing new on my record. If I didn't have a valid CCW, there may be a waiting period, depending on the type of weapon.
There are some things that are illegal in Florida, but not everywhere. I happened to stumble across a few while looking at alternative ammunition. The "dragon's breath" shotgun shells are illegal here. I just thought they were interesting, although I don't see them being very practical. Flechette shotgun shells are also illegal. In theory, I could go buy them in another state. I may also be able to mail order them. If I am caught possessing or using them, I may be in trouble.
OOhhh, I could rant. And I will.
I needed a VOM, mostly because I wasn't totally sure where mine was. They had a real cheap one for something like $7.99. Great!
I got it home, and there's no battery. I opened it up, and it doesn't take a regular battery. The battery was about $15, and they didn't stock it. Nowhere locally stocked it. I could order it online, but that kind of defeats the purpose of picking up a cheap multimeter to use the same day.
$8 isn't usually something I worry about, but it was the principle. How can you sell a multimeter, that doesn't work without buying a battery, *AND* you don't stock the battery. If I got the battery, now I have a $23 multimeter, with a consumable part at $15/ea. I couldn't even give it away to someone without them hating me for giving them a crap multimeter with an expensive battery.
So I went back to the store and bitched them out. Someone in that store is responsible for ordering. Somewhere in their system should have said "You need to stock these too". When I was btiching them out, I asked, "have you ever seen that battery?" Nope, to the best of their knowledge (the floor guy *and* the manager) they never stocked it. I guess enough people take home the worthless multimeter, and either order it online, or just toss it in the tool box and forget about it.
I'm not a customer to fund them by buying worthless crap.
Marijuana is an accepted illicit product in most IT departments. As long as you're not smoking out in your office or the server room, no one cares. :)
I came to accept that years ago. I don't smoke, but I'd say >50% of those in IT do, either recreational or habitual. I toss that in my "short term memory, forget it after I find out", and just tabulate it in my running counter of "does/doesn't smoke pot".
When I've been hunting for potential employees, I hold off on even attempting to find their Facebook page until they're hired and we're friendly at work. Usually everything else says we'll be friends, and FB just confirms that we have similar interests. Or we have nothing in common, but we still socialize.
One guy I hired, I didn't know he liked the zombie genre until after he was hired, and we friended each other, because we were getting on well. Then I left the company. We still talk about zombies. As it turns out, we have an indirect relationship outside of work, spanning 1000 miles. (him -> sister -> spouse -> girlfriend's sister -> girlfriend -> me). The spouse in the list laughed, because I "knew" her two different ways, without ever meeting her. I think I still have fewer degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon.
Give 'em a chance. Just rattle through what you want and why, so you can see the dumb look on their face. :) Sometimes you can hear the audible "WOOSH", without them saying anything. It's quite amazing.
I would agree. People don't want to fix that expensive [something electronic], when they already know everything is surface mount, and they don't have the skill to fix it. The cost for the replacement part and tools is higher than the cost of the replacement unit.
We are in a disposable society now. Throw away your old electronics and buy new ones.
There are fewer hobbyists now. I was at one of the Radio Shacks that actually sells components. I spent probably 2 hours doing parts conversions in my head to see what could work, and redesigning parts, because virtually nothing I wanted was in stock. Even for 4 transistors, I spent time going through what they had to find what was "good enough", versus what I wanted. Part of that time, I was restocking their stuff, because things I was looking for were tossed back in the wrong drawers. Not just one compartment off, they'd be in the wrong rack entirely. They tried to help, but they knew more about the cell phones and batteries, than they knew about the components. At least one guy working there knew what a transistor or resistor was. We had a decent talk while I shopped for parts. When I couldn't find something (like heatsinks for the transistors I settled on), he checked the other local store inventory, and then ended up telling me I had to buy it online.
I was looking for another component the other day. I don't remember what it was, but it was something fairly simple. Their site had "Web Only" right the photo. The same for every potentially compatible part.
Welcome to the corporate world. Please take a complementary parachute before boarding the corporation.
Prior art! :)
I agree totally.
At least we know the Horton Ho flying wings were at least inspiration for later aircraft.
Don't forget, journalists can't even get IT terms right, even though they have IT guys who work right there with them. They're more than happy to call IT to hear "have you turned it off and on again", but they won't call to ask for proper terminology for aircraft.
It's not much of an excuse. A few quick Google searches, or a phone call, would have given them all the right words to use. They might even string them together somewhat coherently.
I thought they had most the original parts in a museum. The only reference I could find on the props is that they are 2-bladed Ratier. That's a manufacturer who is still in business, so the specs should be available on what was produced during the period.
They were using car engines. I strongly suspect there are details available on those. I don't know enough about Bugatti's, but the cars still exist and are sold. It should be possible to find parts. It's not like you'll go down to your local auto parts store and order them though.
I couldn't find any specs on the weight, but it should be doable to convert a modern V8 to be aircraft worthy with the required horsepower. There are people who convert the Chevy LS1 engine to be safe for aircraft use. They're all aluminum instead of magnesium, but modern engines use stronger alloys so the engine may be lighter. You can get over 500hp from a LS1 with about $3k in parts. So about $10k per engine. If I were building it, it would cost a bit more, just because I'd want the reliability of better parts. It's all up to the builder, and they didn't invite either of us to play.
Using a LSX motor definitely goes along with the original concept, and keeps the budget in a reasonable range.
You can Google "LS1 airplane" for web pages that have working examples.
So you're saying it could have been a really cool recon aircraft. :) I don't know, it looks like it should have been maneuverable, and guns could have been somewhere. Where? hell if I know.
It wasn't designed as a military aircraft though, it was designed to break speed records, and racing.
Their pictures do show inline 8's, which would be huge. They also say they're race car engines, which normally wouldn't do very well with pesky things like inverted flight or even unbalanced turns (i.e., bank, but continue straight on the original vector).
I couldn't find anything on the fuel capacity, max takeoff weight, or the fuel burn rate. It may have been a cool high speed aircraft, but may not have been able to fly very far at all.
The replica is using the wrong engines, which they admitted to. Less than half the power, and they're using modern motorcycle engines. I can't find anything on the weight of the Bugatti 50-series engines. I did find that the site specifically references the Type 50P engine, and others talking about the plane say it was a Type 50B engine. There are plenty of mentions of the Type 50B being used in cars, but nothing on the Type 50P.
So, no matter what they build, it won't have the same performance as the original prototype. That is, assuming it even gets off the ground. Plenty of prototypes and experimental aircraft never got off the ground, or had ... well, unintended intersection of the aircraft and terrain. It sounds like they have some real experts on it, so it'll probably fly.
I'd prefer recreations on some of the Horton Ho aircraft. The Horton Ho 229 would have been an amazing aircraft. I guess we (the Allied side) were lucky they never made it to production.
The only full size of the Horton Ho 229 I know of was a replica airframe to evaluate its radar signature.