Check out http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/ for a good source of Tablet talk from tableteers.
I am a medical student and I love my Tablet.
Pro's:
Very stable platform.
1.6 GHz P4, 512 Mb Ram, 60 GB HD, CD-RW/DVD,
14" LCD, WiFi, ~5 lbs.
Good battery life w/ hibernation.
Paperless note-taking and patient physicals.
Convertable, so I can quickly fall back to "laptop" if I need to.
Internal optical drive - no wires.
GW service replaced LCD, Keyboard and returned it in 5 days total w/ overnight shipping.
LCD hinge is rock-solid.
Con's:
GW's intial shipping was delay, delay, delay....
Dead pixels on LCD when Tablet arrived.
Key hinges on keyboard flimsy and two keys came loose.
Audio drivers need refinement - sound is either blaring or off when using headphones.
No built in eraser on pen.
Comes w/ MS Works w/ no option for Office when ordering.
I wish it had a touch stick in the keyboard.
Highlights When I take anatomy notes, I draw conceptually and I can easily switch colors and move objects around. If I get crowded on the page or the prof is disorganized in lecture, I can move ink around to make room or re-organize. The library has wireless, so I can run down there between classes and get my e-mail. I haven't written on paper for school-related reasons in several months. The equivalent of several notebooks and folders full of notes is on my HD and I only carry around one "notebook". I back up everything on my internal CD-RW often.
The jurisdiction of The Clean Air Act is the United States and its territories. This act is enforceable in a town of 1 person with no mandated testing or New York City and everything in between. If the vehicle is on the public road it is covered by this act.
Emissions testing falls under another area of this act and the local presence or absence of it does not exempt you from compliance concerning tampering with devices. You just aren't as likely to get caught if you do.
The population data you mentioned is regarding cities required to meet air quality standards. You don't have to test cars to do this. Some cities test cars and still don't consistently meet air quality standards (Denver and LA). Others don't test and meet the standards (Dallas). Weather, industry, and agriculture are big factors in this phenomena, but cars contribute too. It's up to your city to decide if checking cars will have a significant effect on air pollution and is politically feasable.
Re:According to whom??
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That is true. Farm and construction equipment are exempt too.
I beleive the original article in discussion was not about race cars or private tracks and neither was my post:)
Re:Warranty? How about emission laws and safety...
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Yes, it was about 98% and I am guilty of oversimplifying.
Optimum power for a gasoline engine is around 1:12 fuel:air mix. It produces more HC's and CO than the leaner mixture set by the engine computer - around 1:9 (off the top of my head) It's in this perfomance vs. clean burning range that increasing performance(energy) lowers fuel efficiency(energy/gallon). While you get more bang, you also burn the fuel less completely. This not-fully oxidized, exhausted fuel is wasted calories of energy, thus wasted fuel in an environmental and energy utilization sense. In a performance sense its not wasted becasue it gives you more horsepower, which is your goal. The direct realtionship you alluded to is also in this range, but it is between performance(energy) and fuel burned,
You said "The more efficiently a car burns fuel, the more power it makes" is generally true as you move from ~1:5 (barely running) to 1:9(optimum efficiency) Ultimately optimum fuel efficiency is not the same point on the curve as optimum power. Moving from 1:9 to 1:12 is an increase in power, but a reduction in efficiency. It is that part of the curve on which fine tuning occurs and I was discussing.
Incidentally, the additional fuel you burn should give you a corresponding increase in distance and not affect MPG if there was not an indirect relationship between power and fuel efficiency. ( The whole curve is really bell-shaped, so we are concerned with the interval between emissions control and max performance. MPG is affected becasue you increase the fuel delivery and don't burn all of it - i.e. waste gasoline. This is due to the chemical reaction equilibrium dynamics. As temp, pressure, and oxidized fuel increase in the chamber, further fuel burning slows. It takes too long to get that last bit and now you are off the optimum angle on the crank to produce max power with burning, so it is exhausted and another charge delivered. Horespower equals maximum and quick combustion during the optimum power angle on the crank. By adding more fuel, you just increase the amount that is burned in that critical time, but you also waste quite a bit more in the exhaust to do it. Its a trade off.
There are other computer adjustmemnts at play besides the main two: timing and fuel mix. Combustion chamber temperature plays into the performance vs. emissions issue, too. This control is concerned with nitrogen oxide (NO) emissions, which produces brown smog.
Thermodynamics tells you that the warmer an engine runs, the more efficient it becomes in its conversion of energy. The limiting factor in your car's engine is the temperature at which your oil begins to oxidize and fail as a lubricant. (This is much lower, ~500 degrees, than the melting point of metal components. Metal melts subsequent to friction after lubrication fails). Higher temperatures in the combustion chamber also produce greater amounts of NO, so the computer's programming is concerned with combustion chamber temps and controls auxillary fans, intake air temperature with a thermal air bybass system (TAB), timing, and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) to lower them.
EGR opens a valve and admits exhaust gas back into the combustion chamber - displacing maximum fuel/air charge. Since exhaust gas is inert and not an oxidizer its effect is to reduce the apparent displacement of the engine while maintaining fuel:air mix. This smaller charge reduces the temperature of the combustion stroke (and power) The goal is less NO emissions, but power is sacrificed.
Back in the 70's, carbeurated engines had to lower compression ratios, add EGR, and drop fuel:air ratios, among other measures, to meet emissions. They took significant performance hits. Manifold fuel injection, better intake mainfold design, and multiple chmamber valves has greatly helped in restoring the lost power despite the power-robbing emission control devices. A lighter-weight chasis gives the impression of more power, so most consumers are happy with the present performance of their vehicles.
Yes, yes, but have they found the transparent aluminum, yet?!! I am 20 years late on my delivery of these whales and.... Oh, nevermind, you wouldn't believe it anyways.
Your statement implies that a star is nothing but a hot collection of hydrogen and helium doing nothing, but bouncing off each other (being hot). If you let it cool you have cold hydrogen and helium? Your hot ball of gas works like this on a conventional scale, but if you massively increase the pressure with gravity by adding more and more hydrogen...light!
Solar hydrogen under massive gravitational compression is undergoing fusion to produce helium and is releasing radiation to keep you warm. The helium then undergoes fusion, and so on. These are nuclear reactions (H-bombs), not chemical reactions (forest fires), or just hot matter (boilers full of steam) When you detonate a nuclear weapon (uranium, plutonium, heavy water, or combinations of these) where does the radioactive iodine, cesium, etc come from? Fision and fusion - recombination of the neutrons and protons from one element into other elements release massive amounts of energy - far beyond simple oxidation reactions (the shuffling around of electrons).
The byproducts of solar fusion are carbon (diamond), oxygen, sodium, silicon, nitrogen, etc. All the elements on the periodic chart are the ashes of nuclear fusion of hydrogen. Supernovae spread them around the universe and a new star can form out of the residue (and a few nice planets, too). A second generation star (our sun) continues the nuclear burning - making heavier elements than the first star. Eventually, as the universe expands and cools, it can not sustain fusion with an abundance of heavy elements, low hydrogen density, and ever-weakening gravitational tug from far-flung matter. The lights go out.
It seems counter-intuitive, but hydrogen has the least entropy of all the elements. It's all down hill and chaos from there.
And that is the story of how you came to give your lover some stardust as an engagement token.
I just don't get this "lust for the diamond sun" business. Let's say you went there and dragged the whole thing back as nice cut, 5 carat, gaudy engagement rings (excluding the mass problems). You would have to give them away because the local collection of diamonds on earth wouldn't be so rare any more - hence its value. On the grand scale of the universe we just happen to live in a diamond deficient locale and humans (similar to ravens) like things that sparkle in the sunlight.
I sure am glad we got plenty of silicon to go around!!
Don't tell "W" there's a moon with a liquid methane ocean orbiting Saturn or he'll scrub the Mars mission.
Re:According to whom??
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· Score: 2, Informative
I checked with a lawyer friend of mine to see if I had missed something and he assured me that I had properly read these paragraphs and he explained it in more detail to me. He said to ask you to show the clause that specified that these provisions apply only to re-selling, dealerships, and repair shops. The category of persons in this section is "any" and the time frame refers to the intial and all future transactions/uses. Here is his analysis:
Section A. or any person to remove or render inoperative any device or element of design installed on or in a motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine in compliance with regulations under this subchapter prior to its sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser, or for any person knowingly to remove or render inoperative any such device or element of design after such sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser;
In English:
Nobody may remove or inactivate a piece of emission control equipment, which manufacturers are required by law to install. (i.e. cats, fuel vapor controls, engine computers). When you bought your car you became the ultimate purchaser. Nobody can remove the device prior to selling it to a purchaser or after the purchaser recieves the vehicle.
This section applies to the present ownership of the car and all future ownership. Even if you never sell your car, you are the ultimate purchaser and you or anyone else are forbidden to remove the device because you fall into the clause of "after such sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser".
Manufacturers install these devices in order to be in compliance with the Clean Air Act. Those devices are never to be removed by any person.
Section B closes a potential loophole where a person might leave a piece of equipment installed to satisfy Section A, but, additionally, install a second device which renders it innefective. It also applies to any person - (i.e. manufacturer, aftermarket shop, or consumer).
My argument simplified for you
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Since you are obviously confused about the thesis of my post, I have provided the following synopsis:
I did not argue the pros/cons of environmental regulations, as you seem to think and are angrily responding to.
I did explain the following facts: 1. It is illegal to tweak under current US Law. 2. It is also not safe if you don't understand the full ramifications of the tweak.
I urge you, Annonymous Coward, to wake up and RTFP! Don't get me started about the inherrent hypocracy of your post.
According to whom??
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· Score: 2, Informative
From Title 42, Chapter 85, Sub-chapter II, Part A, Sec 7522.a.3 of The Clean Air Act
"The following acts and the causing thereof are prohibited...
A. or any person to remove or render inoperative any device or element of design installed on or in a motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine in compliance with regulations under this subchapter prior to its sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser, or for any person knowingly to remove or render inoperative any such device or element of design after such sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser; or
B. for any person to manufacture or sell, or offer to sell, or install, any part or component intended for use with, or as part of, any motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine, where a principal effect of the part or component is to bypass, defeat, or render inoperative any device or element of design installed on or in a motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine in compliance with regulations under this subchapter, and where the person knows or should know that such part or component is being offered for sale or installed for such use or put to such use...."
From Title 42, Chapter 85, Sub-chapter II, Part A, Sec 7524.a of The Clean Air Act
"Any person who violates sections [1] 7522(a)(1), 7522(a)(4), or 7522(a)(5) of this title or any manufacturer or dealer who violates section 7522(a)(3)(A) of this title shall be subject to a civil penalty of not more than $25,000. Any person other than a manufacturer or dealer who violates section 7522(a)(3)(A) of this title or any person who violates section 7522(a)(3)(B) of this title shall be subject to a civil penalty of not more than $2,500. Any such violation with respect to paragraph (1), (3)(A), or (4) of section 7522(a) of this title shall constitute a separate offense with respect to each motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine. Any such violation with respect to section 7522(a)(3)(B) of this title shall constitute a separate offense with respect to each part or component. Any person who violates section 7522(a)(2) of this title shall be subject to a civil penalty of not more than $25,000 per day of violation."
See for the full text of The Clean Air Act. http://www.epa.gov/region5/defs/html/caa.htm
Warranty? How about emission laws and safety....
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· Score: 5, Informative
By tweaking fuel/air mixtures and ignition timing, the two main adjustable performance variables without removing or replacing parts, you are also drastically changing combustion byproducts. The ability of vehicles to meet emissions standards is largely dependent on the fine tuning the engine computer provides. The computer monitors exhaust gas composition, intake air volume, engine temp, air temp, throttle position, RPM, barometric pressure, etc. and mixes the optimum fuel/air ratio to minimize emissions for a given performance curve. You aren't just voiding the warranty by tweaking, you are violating federal air quality laws. Some don't care about the air they breath, but they might care about dying. (See next point)
A finer point is the consideration of incomplete combustion. There is an inverse relationship between performance and fuel efficiency. Where does all that extra fuel go to eak out that last bit of horsepower? It exits the combustion chamber in the form of partially combusted hydrocarbons (HC's) and CO. It takes too long to burn fuel completely to CO2 and H20 in a high performance envelope, so it is wasted and accounted as the cost of performance. Normally the HC's and CO exit the exhaust into the air in a off-street high performance vehicle. In a street production vehicle there is a catalytic converter between the exhaust manifold and the air. It is designed to clean up any residual uncombusted byproducts, normally a small % and runs around 1000-1500 degrees in temp, but it has heat shielding/insulation to protect the vehicle. If you changed the exhaust, through tweaking for performance, to release a higher percentage of HC's and CO, the catalytic converter will convert it to CO2 and H20. The problem is that there is much more combustion to complete and the cat's temp will rise drastically. Then your car catches on fire.
You might think this is a rare event, but it happens occasionally when engines are poorly tuned or leaking oil fumes in the exhaust and aren't checked out for emissions. Part of an emissions test involves analyzing exhaust gases prior to entering the cat. Converters are so efficient at finishing combustion that they can mask oil burning and overly rich mixtures.
I have seen several cars burn up this way. The funniest/most ironic happened to a police car. The police department was pulling strings with the emissions department and getting rubber stamped emissions stickers for their cruiser fleet without actually running the tests. One hot summer day a cruiser melted by the side of the road and started a moderate grass fire. It was determined through mechanic logs that the car had been using much more oil recently, but nothing was done to figure out why - just kept adding oil. All that oil was burning in the cat and eventually the heat shielding burned through and the car ignited.
Just like overclocking, you gotta do something about the excess heat. The tweakers might want to remove the cat (a violation of federal law) or keep a fire extinguisher in the car and the fire department on speed dial.
I used to turn wrenches for a living before going to med school.
Yep. I think clothing sellers/fashion queens/housewares are also good areas to find Ebay idiots. I've bought new cargo A&F pants with the tags still on for $0.99 + $3.00 S&H. The goofy part was the seller listed another pair the next week - still mis-spelled. She probably was wondering why her "Ebay business" wasn't living up to the Make-A-Fortune-on-Ebay promises of her new book.
Try permutations of Abercrombie & Fitch and Eddie Bauer. There are a lot of 'amercrombie', 'abercromie', 'finch', 'eddy', and 'bower' and all manner of combinations. Other good brands for mis-spelling: Onkyo, Panasonic, & Banana Republic.
The trick is to find listings that aren't cross-reference-able. (i.e. 'Abercromie & Finch' vs 'Abercromie & Finch cargo pants' - people can search for cargo pants and still find the latter listing)
Be creative - the ignorant human mind has great capacity for creative spelling.
I wasn't crying, but my heart was pounding, I was all pitted-out, and my stomach was in a knot. I guess the reader's visceral experience of being drawn into the drama and empathizing with the futility of the situation is indicative of the gravity of the situation and the author's skill at conveying it.
Many of us, after reading such a graphic detail of the possible horrors of exploration, would still volunteer to go up tomorrow. Truly, those that were lost have a legacy that continues. RIP.
the first extraterrestrial material captured from outside the moon's orbit.
Except for those pesky chunks of comets, asteroids and God-knows-what-else that keep crashing into our planet. Now we've gone and done it! We're in a Space Race with gravity! I suppose the next bright idea will be to rid the world of evil or something....
"New causes for a new millenium: Stop plate tectonics! End supernovae now! Prevent animal predation!"
Perhaps this article is looking at the wrong side of the coin and taking a pestimistic view of innovation and discovery. How many "idiots" failed at flight before the Wright brothers finally did it? Was their forerunners' effort for naught? Even today we might consider the Wright Flyer a flop - good pilots can barely get the thing to fly and nobody rushed to purchase and deploy their model. They didn't serve a meal and a movie onboard, and failed to fly to the next airport! That's primitive and useless by our modern standards. Judging old technology through our modern lens is a folly that fails to recognize the significance of the technology for its day.
I could go on with early attempts to cirumnavigate the globe, invent the lightbulb, etc. Many failures and cosmic wastes of money prevailed before a breakthrough occured. The buckets of gold handed to you by the Queen to go try something aren't as forthcoming. You have to support yourself with a capitalistic business model. The marketing of the tech product that isn't quite there is an effort (sometimes shady)to recoup R&D money. If you're lucky you get a few spin-offs along the way to pay your bills. If your're not, your business dies and leaves behind a product that "failed". Inevitably another business scoops up the pieces and finishes the job when there is enough money or advancement has solved the technical hurdles.
What matters, is the idea and the useful knowledge that comes from failing. Today's failure might just be the one useful piece of knowledge that makes tomorrow's success fall into place. In his list I see the forerunners and failures that have made Tablet PC, PDA, current GUI interfaces, DVD, etc. possible. So what if the previous business model and marketing attempts sucked. I am glad for my technophile little self that someone tried to make it happen, so I could enjoy their eventual fruits. Innovation is rarely a function of market penetration and stock price. This guy's column is suitable for the MBA crowd, not the tech crowd.
You might consider the following interview of a Bush energy advisor before laying all the blame at the feet of the environmentalists. Among others, he claims the precipitating events are de-regulation, over-use of gas-fired plants with insufficient natural gas supplies, and wasteful uses of electricity. Here's a conservative saying that building more infrastructure would not fix the problem, but re-regulation would. Hmmmm.
I used a 42S when I worked as a surveyor and really liked it. When I quit my job to go back to school I bought a 32SII and haven't missed the second line of display one bit. Of course, I had a good visual idea of the RPN stack in my head by then, so maybe a multi-line model would be helpful for the newbie, unless you needed the extra screen space for output. I did miss the 42S's softkeys when it came to writing/running programs, though.
The survey crew chief had a 48, but I could run the math and programs as fast as he could on my 42S The 48's big display was only used for tetris & video poker programs.
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Uh, you left something back there. I think it was the point.
The heater is either ON or OFF. It doesn't send hotter or cooler air because the thermostat-thermometer difference is greater or less.
In computer speak:
It is digital, not analog, so the way you increase room temperature is via a longer ON-cycle, not a hotter ON-cycle.
The thermostat only controls the set-point for the on/off cycle.
I am a medical student and I love my Tablet.
Pro's:
Very stable platform.
1.6 GHz P4, 512 Mb Ram, 60 GB HD, CD-RW/DVD,
14" LCD, WiFi, ~5 lbs.
Good battery life w/ hibernation.
Paperless note-taking and patient physicals.
Convertable, so I can quickly fall back to "laptop" if I need to.
Internal optical drive - no wires.
GW service replaced LCD, Keyboard and returned it in 5 days total w/ overnight shipping.
LCD hinge is rock-solid.
Con's:
GW's intial shipping was delay, delay, delay....
Dead pixels on LCD when Tablet arrived.
Key hinges on keyboard flimsy and two keys came loose.
Audio drivers need refinement - sound is either blaring or off when using headphones.
No built in eraser on pen.
Comes w/ MS Works w/ no option for Office when ordering.
I wish it had a touch stick in the keyboard.
Highlights
When I take anatomy notes, I draw conceptually and I can easily switch colors and move objects around. If I get crowded on the page or the prof is disorganized in lecture, I can move ink around to make room or re-organize. The library has wireless, so I can run down there between classes and get my e-mail. I haven't written on paper for school-related reasons in several months. The equivalent of several notebooks and folders full of notes is on my HD and I only carry around one "notebook". I back up everything on my internal CD-RW often.
The jurisdiction of The Clean Air Act is the United States and its territories. This act is enforceable in a town of 1 person with no mandated testing or New York City and everything in between. If the vehicle is on the public road it is covered by this act.
Emissions testing falls under another area of this act and the local presence or absence of it does not exempt you from compliance concerning tampering with devices. You just aren't as likely to get caught if you do.
The population data you mentioned is regarding cities required to meet air quality standards. You don't have to test cars to do this. Some cities test cars and still don't consistently meet air quality standards (Denver and LA). Others don't test and meet the standards (Dallas). Weather, industry, and agriculture are big factors in this phenomena, but cars contribute too. It's up to your city to decide if checking cars will have a significant effect on air pollution and is politically feasable.
That is true. Farm and construction equipment are exempt too.
:)
I beleive the original article in discussion was not about race cars or private tracks and neither was my post
Yes, it was about 98% and I am guilty of oversimplifying.
Optimum power for a gasoline engine is around 1:12 fuel:air mix. It produces more HC's and CO than the leaner mixture set by the engine computer - around 1:9 (off the top of my head) It's in this perfomance vs. clean burning range that increasing performance(energy) lowers fuel efficiency(energy/gallon). While you get more bang, you also burn the fuel less completely. This not-fully oxidized, exhausted fuel is wasted calories of energy, thus wasted fuel in an environmental and energy utilization sense. In a performance sense its not wasted becasue it gives you more horsepower, which is your goal. The direct realtionship you alluded to is also in this range, but it is between performance(energy) and fuel burned,
You said "The more efficiently a car burns fuel, the more power it makes" is generally true as you move from ~1:5 (barely running) to 1:9(optimum efficiency) Ultimately optimum fuel efficiency is not the same point on the curve as optimum power. Moving from 1:9 to 1:12 is an increase in power, but a reduction in efficiency. It is that part of the curve on which fine tuning occurs and I was discussing.
Incidentally, the additional fuel you burn should give you a corresponding increase in distance and not affect MPG if there was not an indirect relationship between power and fuel efficiency. ( The whole curve is really bell-shaped, so we are concerned with the interval between emissions control and max performance. MPG is affected becasue you increase the fuel delivery and don't burn all of it - i.e. waste gasoline. This is due to the chemical reaction equilibrium dynamics. As temp, pressure, and oxidized fuel increase in the chamber, further fuel burning slows. It takes too long to get that last bit and now you are off the optimum angle on the crank to produce max power with burning, so it is exhausted and another charge delivered. Horespower equals maximum and quick combustion during the optimum power angle on the crank. By adding more fuel, you just increase the amount that is burned in that critical time, but you also waste quite a bit more in the exhaust to do it. Its a trade off.
There are other computer adjustmemnts at play besides the main two: timing and fuel mix. Combustion chamber temperature plays into the performance vs. emissions issue, too. This control is concerned with nitrogen oxide (NO) emissions, which produces brown smog.
Thermodynamics tells you that the warmer an engine runs, the more efficient it becomes in its conversion of energy. The limiting factor in your car's engine is the temperature at which your oil begins to oxidize and fail as a lubricant. (This is much lower, ~500 degrees, than the melting point of metal components. Metal melts subsequent to friction after lubrication fails). Higher temperatures in the combustion chamber also produce greater amounts of NO, so the computer's programming is concerned with combustion chamber temps and controls auxillary fans, intake air temperature with a thermal air bybass system (TAB), timing, and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) to lower them.
EGR opens a valve and admits exhaust gas back into the combustion chamber - displacing maximum fuel/air charge. Since exhaust gas is inert and not an oxidizer its effect is to reduce the apparent displacement of the engine while maintaining fuel:air mix. This smaller charge reduces the temperature of the combustion stroke (and power) The goal is less NO emissions, but power is sacrificed.
Back in the 70's, carbeurated engines had to lower compression ratios, add EGR, and drop fuel:air ratios, among other measures, to meet emissions. They took significant performance hits. Manifold fuel injection, better intake mainfold design, and multiple chmamber valves has greatly helped in restoring the lost power despite the power-robbing emission control devices. A lighter-weight chasis gives the impression of more power, so most consumers are happy with the present performance of their vehicles.
Yes, yes, but have they found the transparent aluminum, yet?!! I am 20 years late on my delivery of these whales and.... Oh, nevermind, you wouldn't believe it anyways.
Your statement implies that a star is nothing but a hot collection of hydrogen and helium doing nothing, but bouncing off each other (being hot). If you let it cool you have cold hydrogen and helium? Your hot ball of gas works like this on a conventional scale, but if you massively increase the pressure with gravity by adding more and more hydrogen...light!
Solar hydrogen under massive gravitational compression is undergoing fusion to produce helium and is releasing radiation to keep you warm. The helium then undergoes fusion, and so on. These are nuclear reactions (H-bombs), not chemical reactions (forest fires), or just hot matter (boilers full of steam) When you detonate a nuclear weapon (uranium, plutonium, heavy water, or combinations of these) where does the radioactive iodine, cesium, etc come from? Fision and fusion - recombination of the neutrons and protons from one element into other elements release massive amounts of energy - far beyond simple oxidation reactions (the shuffling around of electrons).
The byproducts of solar fusion are carbon (diamond), oxygen, sodium, silicon, nitrogen, etc. All the elements on the periodic chart are the ashes of nuclear fusion of hydrogen. Supernovae spread them around the universe and a new star can form out of the residue (and a few nice planets, too). A second generation star (our sun) continues the nuclear burning - making heavier elements than the first star. Eventually, as the universe expands and cools, it can not sustain fusion with an abundance of heavy elements, low hydrogen density, and ever-weakening gravitational tug from far-flung matter. The lights go out.
It seems counter-intuitive, but hydrogen has the least entropy of all the elements. It's all down hill and chaos from there.
And that is the story of how you came to give your lover some stardust as an engagement token.
I just don't get this "lust for the diamond sun" business. Let's say you went there and dragged the whole thing back as nice cut, 5 carat, gaudy engagement rings (excluding the mass problems). You would have to give them away because the local collection of diamonds on earth wouldn't be so rare any more - hence its value. On the grand scale of the universe we just happen to live in a diamond deficient locale and humans (similar to ravens) like things that sparkle in the sunlight.
I sure am glad we got plenty of silicon to go around!!
Don't tell "W" there's a moon with a liquid methane ocean orbiting Saturn or he'll scrub the Mars mission.
I checked with a lawyer friend of mine to see if I had missed something and he assured me that I had properly read these paragraphs and he explained it in more detail to me. He said to ask you to show the clause that specified that these provisions apply only to re-selling, dealerships, and repair shops. The category of persons in this section is "any" and the time frame refers to the intial and all future transactions/uses. Here is his analysis:
Section A. or any person to remove or render inoperative any device or element of design installed on or in a motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine in compliance with regulations under this subchapter prior to its sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser, or for any person knowingly to remove or render inoperative any such device or element of design after such sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser;
In English:
Nobody may remove or inactivate a piece of emission control equipment, which manufacturers are required by law to install. (i.e. cats, fuel vapor controls, engine computers). When you bought your car you became the ultimate purchaser. Nobody can remove the device prior to selling it to a purchaser or after the purchaser recieves the vehicle.
This section applies to the present ownership of the car and all future ownership. Even if you never sell your car, you are the ultimate purchaser and you or anyone else are forbidden to remove the device because you fall into the clause of "after such sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser".
Manufacturers install these devices in order to be in compliance with the Clean Air Act. Those devices are never to be removed by any person.
Section B closes a potential loophole where a person might leave a piece of equipment installed to satisfy Section A, but, additionally, install a second device which renders it innefective. It also applies to any person - (i.e. manufacturer, aftermarket shop, or consumer).
Since you are obviously confused about the thesis of my post, I have provided the following synopsis:
I did not argue the pros/cons of environmental regulations, as you seem to think and are angrily responding to.
I did explain the following facts:
1. It is illegal to tweak under current US Law.
2. It is also not safe if you don't understand the full ramifications of the tweak.
I urge you, Annonymous Coward, to wake up and RTFP! Don't get me started about the inherrent hypocracy of your post.
From Title 42, Chapter 85, Sub-chapter II, Part A, Sec 7524.a of The Clean Air Act
See for the full text of The Clean Air Act.
http://www.epa.gov/region5/defs/html/caa.ht
By tweaking fuel/air mixtures and ignition timing, the two main adjustable performance variables without removing or replacing parts, you are also drastically changing combustion byproducts. The ability of vehicles to meet emissions standards is largely dependent on the fine tuning the engine computer provides. The computer monitors exhaust gas composition, intake air volume, engine temp, air temp, throttle position, RPM, barometric pressure, etc. and mixes the optimum fuel/air ratio to minimize emissions for a given performance curve. You aren't just voiding the warranty by tweaking, you are violating federal air quality laws. Some don't care about the air they breath, but they might care about dying. (See next point)
A finer point is the consideration of incomplete combustion. There is an inverse relationship between performance and fuel efficiency. Where does all that extra fuel go to eak out that last bit of horsepower? It exits the combustion chamber in the form of partially combusted hydrocarbons (HC's) and CO. It takes too long to burn fuel completely to CO2 and H20 in a high performance envelope, so it is wasted and accounted as the cost of performance. Normally the HC's and CO exit the exhaust into the air in a off-street high performance vehicle. In a street production vehicle there is a catalytic converter between the exhaust manifold and the air. It is designed to clean up any residual uncombusted byproducts, normally a small % and runs around 1000-1500 degrees in temp, but it has heat shielding/insulation to protect the vehicle. If you changed the exhaust, through tweaking for performance, to release a higher percentage of HC's and CO, the catalytic converter will convert it to CO2 and H20. The problem is that there is much more combustion to complete and the cat's temp will rise drastically. Then your car catches on fire.
You might think this is a rare event, but it happens occasionally when engines are poorly tuned or leaking oil fumes in the exhaust and aren't checked out for emissions. Part of an emissions test involves analyzing exhaust gases prior to entering the cat. Converters are so efficient at finishing combustion that they can mask oil burning and overly rich mixtures.
I have seen several cars burn up this way. The funniest/most ironic happened to a police car. The police department was pulling strings with the emissions department and getting rubber stamped emissions stickers for their cruiser fleet without actually running the tests. One hot summer day a cruiser melted by the side of the road and started a moderate grass fire. It was determined through mechanic logs that the car had been using much more oil recently, but nothing was done to figure out why - just kept adding oil. All that oil was burning in the cat and eventually the heat shielding burned through and the car ignited.
Just like overclocking, you gotta do something about the excess heat. The tweakers might want to remove the cat (a violation of federal law) or keep a fire extinguisher in the car and the fire department on speed dial.
I used to turn wrenches for a living before going to med school.
Yep. I think clothing sellers/fashion queens/housewares are also good areas to find Ebay idiots. I've bought new cargo A&F pants with the tags still on for $0.99 + $3.00 S&H. The goofy part was the seller listed another pair the next week - still mis-spelled. She probably was wondering why her "Ebay business" wasn't living up to the Make-A-Fortune-on-Ebay promises of her new book.
Try permutations of Abercrombie & Fitch and Eddie Bauer. There are a lot of 'amercrombie', 'abercromie', 'finch', 'eddy', and 'bower' and all manner of combinations. Other good brands for mis-spelling: Onkyo, Panasonic, & Banana Republic.
The trick is to find listings that aren't cross-reference-able. (i.e. 'Abercromie & Finch' vs 'Abercromie & Finch cargo pants' - people can search for cargo pants and still find the latter listing)
Be creative - the ignorant human mind has great capacity for creative spelling.
Legoes, Leggos, or Laygos anyone?
There's one on Marsl ay.cfm ?IM_ID=743
s /jan-2 7-2004/captions/image-1.html
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/disp
It seems memorials are popping up all over Mars
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-image
My most favorite Challenger jokes:
Q: Did you know Christa McAuliffe had dandruff?
A: Her head and shoulders washed up on the beach.
and
Q: What were Commander Scobee's last words?
A: No, Bud Light!
(The second one only works for those who remember the 80's)
I wasn't crying, but my heart was pounding, I was all pitted-out, and my stomach was in a knot. I guess the reader's visceral experience of being drawn into the drama and empathizing with the futility of the situation is indicative of the gravity of the situation and the author's skill at conveying it.
Many of us, after reading such a graphic detail of the possible horrors of exploration, would still volunteer to go up tomorrow. Truly, those that were lost have a legacy that continues. RIP.
Except for those pesky chunks of comets, asteroids and God-knows-what-else that keep crashing into our planet. Now we've gone and done it! We're in a Space Race with gravity! I suppose the next bright idea will be to rid the world of evil or something....
"New causes for a new millenium: Stop plate tectonics! End supernovae now! Prevent animal predation!"
Perhaps this article is looking at the wrong side of the coin and taking a pestimistic view of innovation and discovery. How many "idiots" failed at flight before the Wright brothers finally did it? Was their forerunners' effort for naught? Even today we might consider the Wright Flyer a flop - good pilots can barely get the thing to fly and nobody rushed to purchase and deploy their model. They didn't serve a meal and a movie onboard, and failed to fly to the next airport! That's primitive and useless by our modern standards. Judging old technology through our modern lens is a folly that fails to recognize the significance of the technology for its day.
I could go on with early attempts to cirumnavigate the globe, invent the lightbulb, etc. Many failures and cosmic wastes of money prevailed before a breakthrough occured. The buckets of gold handed to you by the Queen to go try something aren't as forthcoming. You have to support yourself with a capitalistic business model. The marketing of the tech product that isn't quite there is an effort (sometimes shady)to recoup R&D money. If you're lucky you get a few spin-offs along the way to pay your bills. If your're not, your business dies and leaves behind a product that "failed". Inevitably another business scoops up the pieces and finishes the job when there is enough money or advancement has solved the technical hurdles.
What matters, is the idea and the useful knowledge that comes from failing. Today's failure might just be the one useful piece of knowledge that makes tomorrow's success fall into place. In his list I see the forerunners and failures that have made Tablet PC, PDA, current GUI interfaces, DVD, etc. possible. So what if the previous business model and marketing attempts sucked. I am glad for my technophile little self that someone tried to make it happen, so I could enjoy their eventual fruits. Innovation is rarely a function of market penetration and stock price. This guy's column is suitable for the MBA crowd, not the tech crowd.
What if every /.er forwarded every piece of spam to their Senators and Reps before deleting it? Just make a group in your address book...
You will quit sending when they opt out - how many 'opt out' e-mails would you suppose they need to generate to shut off the Forward Spam Flood?
Just a thought.
You might consider the following interview of a Bush energy advisor before laying all the blame at the feet of the environmentalists. Among others, he claims the precipitating events are de-regulation, over-use of gas-fired plants with insufficient natural gas supplies, and wasteful uses of electricity. Here's a conservative saying that building more infrastructure would not fix the problem, but re-regulation would. Hmmmm.
l
See: http://www.guerrillanews.com/sci-tech/doc2927.htm
I used a 42S when I worked as a surveyor and really liked it. When I quit my job to go back to school I bought a 32SII and haven't missed the second line of display one bit. Of course, I had a good visual idea of the RPN stack in my head by then, so maybe a multi-line model would be helpful for the newbie, unless you needed the extra screen space for output. I did miss the 42S's softkeys when it came to writing/running programs, though.
The survey crew chief had a 48, but I could run the math and programs as fast as he could on my 42S The 48's big display was only used for tetris & video poker programs.
If you really want spam all the time try out http://spamradio.com/ Why read it when you can listen to it?