Yes, Stirling engines have been tried in the past, but not as far as I am able to determine in a hybrid vehicle. Ford had a Pinto that was direct-drive Stirling. It was able to pull out (slowly) after only 90 seconds of warm-up time, but Ford (correctly) determined that the average driver would not tolerate this lack of start-up performance. Also, a Stirling engine does not respond to a fuel throttle change very quickly. A hybrid vehicle does not suffer from these limitations. Basically, any system in which the Stirling engine pumps into an energy accumulator can make an acceptable Stirling car. Batteries seem to be the most obvious solution, but both pneumatic and flywheel systems should be feasible.
As far as I am concerned, the ultimate vehicle would be a Stirling-electric hybrid. A Stirling engine is capable of 50% thermal efficiency. As it is an external comustion engine, it can burn almost any fuel, solid, liquid, or gas. Unlike a fuel cell, there is no particular requirement for ultra-high purity in the fuel. Unlike a diesel or gasoline internal combustion engine, a Stirling engine works better in very cold weather. As a Stirling engine does not burn fuel under compression, it does not make NO2, and if the burner is adjusted correctly (could be automatic), does not make CO, either.
This is really the best of both worlds. The slow starting nature of a Stirling engine is no problem whatsoever in a vehicle that depends for acceleration on battery power, and the range limitations of batteries are addressed by constant re-charging by the Stirling engine (Which should have output needed to cruise at 55 with flat batteries, but no more) and by regenerative braking.
So, why haven't the Hybrid-EVs used a stirling engine yet?
I cannot seem to find a list on the site of what
is supported... I've been looking for weeks for
some means of playing a Windows Media Player audio
stream so that I can listen to a station that is on WarpRadio.com.
If anybody has ideas in this regard, I would love to hear them!!!
Even with a "Linmodem" driver, what have you got? You have saved maybe $1.50 in the manufacturing process and created a modem that will become unreliable under heavy processing loads. Mind you, I understand that some users of laptops are locked in to a soft modem, so this is great for them, but as somebody who has worked on Winmodem code, I really think that soft modems are not a trend to encourage at all!!!
Also, some of the FAX state transitions must occur within certain time windows. This is very hard to ensure with a soft modem. Doubly hard when the softmodem is a USB softmodem.
No friends, kudos to IBM for this, but please avoid soft modems if you can!
I suggested a similar mission element to the "Pluto Express" project several years ago. If you slam a heavy material into a solid body fast enough, you vaporize the surface and immediate subsurface layers, and heat them enough to radiate briefly as a black body. This radiation can be captured by a spectrograph, and provide an assay of the materal present.
I doubt this really has much to do with the art of deflecting comets, but certainly that could be a side benefit of the real experiment.
A comet, being an active body, is not a good target for an automated lander. Too much can go wrong in an automated descent and the rount trip light time is generally too long to do anything about issues which arise.
A passive impactor is much more likely to succeed.
The intention of that clause is to prevent the sale of "strips". A strip is a book which has been defaced by a bookseller because it was unsold, and its cover returned to the publisher for credit. They strip off the covers to reduce shipping, and on the supposition that a book that couldn't be sold is probably not worth getting back, and moreover, would be shopworn.
So; TOTALLY legal to sell a used book. Just not legal to sell a used book that has been defaced or re-bound.
Personally, I think that this is only a minor variation on the beef RIAA has/had with Napster; They would rather that books be "original purchaser license only". Should used record stores be similarly "discouraged"? I'm certain the RIAA would love to do just that.
I have my email vectored through pobox.com, and so I can change ISPs at a moment's notice, and not have to change my address. I recommend this service!
Seriously, the court has standards about such things. Pica, double spaced, 1.5" margins, etc. This might have been relaxed a bit for desktop publishing realities, but I'm quite certain the 1-point type is right out.
I wonder if there is any frozen passenger pigeon DNA around? I somehow doubt it. They were extinct in the 1930s, long before the prospect of making new life out of genes was considered.
There are a lot of contemporary "passenger pigeons"... Species which become extinct before we have ever been aware of their existence, for example.
So, Beware The Techno-fix!!! Nothing whatsoever will replace pollution reduction, habitat preservation, and hunting controls, though some will try to say that this innovation renders such commonsense conservation efforts redundant. Do not believe them. (The movie "Silent Running" shows the logical endpoint of such thinking.)
Sea monkeys are fun, but they are a pain to keep alive, you are always adding distilled water, and you always seem to have overfed them, no matter how little you give them.
These are closed ecologies. No input except light, and no output except heat. Keep the temperature and light levels correct, and these will recycle their contents for a very long time.
The Eco-spheres and Beach Worlds have a limited lifespan, at least, the shrimp they come with do. The environment provided is such that the shrimp seldom reproduce. They can live on after the shrimp have passed, as an ecology of sorts will still be possible with the micro-organisms. My Beach World has a number of just-visible Coepods in it, so even when the shrimp go, there will be a reproducing colony of arthropods in it. The ultimate limitation of the lifespan of any closed ecology is the sequestration of scarce trace minerals in molecules which nothing in the habitat has the energy to degrade.
The Bio-sphere, in contast is a reproducing system by design. Animals die in there all the time, but there always seem to be lots of small ones to grow into the vacancy.
I have had an 8" bio-sphere since December, 1999, and a 5" Beach World since May of this year. I have taken pains to make sure both have had the right sort of environment, and so have had a good experience with them. The Bio-Sphere lives at home with it's timer and lamp. The Beach World lives on my desk at work where even during the weekends it gets some natural light. I love looking at the shrimp swimming around while I write software!
This was a topic in the series of books called "Amateur Telescope Making" published by Scientific American back in the '30s. The problems of old are;
1. It is a "Zenith transit" instument; It can only look staight up without a sidereostat or similar device of flat mirrors that removes much of the economy of this method.
2. Tiny disturbances make ripples larger than one-quarter wavelength of yellow light. This messes up the image a lot. Modern technology can finally solve this problem with feedback loop motion contols and etc.
3. Mercury is expensive. So one needs a cavity that is very close to the final mirror surface such that only a film is required.
4. Mercury is a hazmat and evaporates over time.
It's nice to see this old dog hunting again, though. This isn't the first time and not likely to be the last time.
I really believe that if some good reporter were to investigate the financial dealings of the members of the DC Circuit Court, and those of their close family members, that attempts by Microsoft to influence this case will be found. Playing this one legally when none of the rest of their dealings with the public courts have been conducted that way would be too out of character for Microsoft. They believe they own all the marbles, and therefore the rules are up to them.
I agree. This comes of sitting through too many powerpoint presentations... But, linguistic usage does change over time, and not always for the better.
I agree. Most of the people who want free (beer) software have never, and will never, contribute anything to it. Most don't even write bug reports, much less *good* bug reports!
The piper must be paid. Either you pay in coin or time. As has been observed, the two are equivalent!
You may argue that $30 is a lot to pay for a beta... But if I could have downloaded this, it would take me hours, and then I would have to burn a disk. IMHO, it is a silly use of the net for everybody to download the same 400MB file!
Still, I think they should have set the price-point at $20. I suspect that it is $30 to limit the demand for something they only mean to get into the hands of people who have some actual testing to accomplish.
I also would not be amazed to find a rebate coupon with OSX when it ships for those who bought the demo. Apple have done it this way before.
I've heard of IP over uucp email, but this is really, really clever. Only, if you were running the server side of things, presumably, you could be traced. So, you would NOT want to use a server you owned. Who would set these up? Or does one rely on being able to compromise some host where the root password is "secret"?
Don't get me wrong, I am all for maximizing the available anonymity of the net, but we really need a hack that has the same effect, but which uses a standard server.
All in all, I'll buy the person who though of this a beer any time he or she is in town...
What we really need is a general-purpose X86 processor emulator for Linux; Something I can compile on an Alpha box and then load *any* X86-based system into it and expect it to run.
Well, you could bounce the problem to somebody already dealing with it by taking the internet feed from Mayberry.com or similar pre-filtered ISP. And IMHO, there is nothing wrong with this whatsoever as long as you make it clear to people using the service that this is a "G"-rated version of the internet. A Laundromat is not the place for unbridalled free speech; That is what the library and the university are for. When I consume television, I choose providers that have what I want. If I wanted T&A, I would choose Showtime. If I were to have a TV in the laundromat, however, it would be tuned to WGN or WTBS since T&A would unsuitable for that venue.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Stirling engines have been tried in the past, but not as far as I am able to determine in a hybrid vehicle. Ford had a Pinto that was direct-drive Stirling. It was able to pull out (slowly) after only 90 seconds of warm-up time, but Ford (correctly) determined that the average driver would not tolerate this lack of start-up performance. Also, a Stirling engine does not respond to a fuel throttle change very quickly. A hybrid vehicle does not suffer from these limitations. Basically, any system in which the Stirling engine pumps into an energy accumulator can make an acceptable Stirling car. Batteries seem to be the most obvious solution, but both pneumatic and flywheel systems should be feasible.
As far as I am concerned, the ultimate vehicle would be a Stirling-electric hybrid. A Stirling engine is capable of 50% thermal efficiency. As it is an external comustion engine, it can burn almost any fuel, solid, liquid, or gas. Unlike a fuel cell, there is no particular requirement for ultra-high purity in the fuel. Unlike a diesel or gasoline internal combustion engine, a Stirling engine works better in very cold weather. As a Stirling engine does not burn fuel under compression, it does not make NO2, and if the burner is adjusted correctly (could be automatic), does not make CO, either.
This is really the best of both worlds. The slow starting nature of a Stirling engine is no problem whatsoever in a vehicle that depends for acceleration on battery power, and the range limitations of batteries are addressed by constant re-charging by the Stirling engine (Which should have output needed to cruise at 55 with flat batteries, but no more) and by regenerative braking.
So, why haven't the Hybrid-EVs used a stirling engine yet?
Any ideas?
I cannot seem to find a list on the site of what
is supported... I've been looking for weeks for
some means of playing a Windows Media Player audio
stream so that I can listen to a station that is on WarpRadio.com.
If anybody has ideas in this regard, I would love to hear them!!!
Even with a "Linmodem" driver, what have you got? You have saved maybe $1.50 in the manufacturing process and created a modem that will become unreliable under heavy processing loads. Mind you, I understand that some users of laptops are locked in to a soft modem, so this is great for them, but as somebody who has worked on Winmodem code, I really think that soft modems are not a trend to encourage at all!!!
Also, some of the FAX state transitions must occur within certain time windows. This is very hard to ensure with a soft modem. Doubly hard when the softmodem is a USB softmodem.
No friends, kudos to IBM for this, but please avoid soft modems if you can!
I suggested a similar mission element to the "Pluto Express" project several years ago. If you slam a heavy material into a solid body fast enough, you vaporize the surface and immediate subsurface layers, and heat them enough to radiate briefly as a black body. This radiation can be captured by a spectrograph, and provide an assay of the materal present.
I doubt this really has much to do with the art of deflecting comets, but certainly that could be a side benefit of the real experiment.
A comet, being an active body, is not a good target for an automated lander. Too much can go wrong in an automated descent and the rount trip light time is generally too long to do anything about issues which arise.
A passive impactor is much more likely to succeed.
You misread that *totally*!!!
The intention of that clause is to prevent the sale of "strips". A strip is a book which has been defaced by a bookseller because it was unsold, and its cover returned to the publisher for credit. They strip off the covers to reduce shipping, and on the supposition that a book that couldn't be sold is probably not worth getting back, and moreover, would be shopworn.
So; TOTALLY legal to sell a used book. Just not legal to sell a used book that has been defaced or re-bound.
Personally, I think that this is only a minor variation on the beef RIAA has/had with Napster; They would rather that books be "original purchaser license only". Should used record stores be similarly "discouraged"? I'm certain the RIAA would love to do just that.
The gadget in question was called the Corvus Mirror.
I have my email vectored through pobox.com, and so I can change ISPs at a moment's notice, and not have to change my address. I recommend this service!
I cannot imagine voting for either Gore or Bush. That would indeed be wasting my vote.
Instead I am voting for the only honest man in the race; Harry Browne.
Was the requested ransom money paid out?
Seriously, the court has standards about such things. Pica, double spaced, 1.5" margins, etc. This might have been relaxed a bit for desktop publishing realities, but I'm quite certain the 1-point type is right out.
I wonder if there is any frozen passenger pigeon DNA around? I somehow doubt it. They were extinct in the 1930s, long before the prospect of making new life out of genes was considered.
There are a lot of contemporary "passenger pigeons"... Species which become extinct before we have ever been aware of their existence, for example.
So, Beware The Techno-fix!!! Nothing whatsoever will replace pollution reduction, habitat preservation, and hunting controls, though some will try to say that this innovation renders such commonsense conservation efforts redundant. Do not believe them. (The movie "Silent Running" shows the logical endpoint of such thinking.)
I feel more sorry for the ones on the salad bar...
> Why pay 80 bucks for sea monkies?
Sea monkeys are fun, but they are a pain to keep alive, you are always adding distilled water, and you always seem to have overfed them, no matter how little you give them.
These are closed ecologies. No input except light, and no output except heat. Keep the temperature and light levels correct, and these will recycle their contents for a very long time.
The Eco-spheres and Beach Worlds have a limited lifespan, at least, the shrimp they come with do. The environment provided is such that the shrimp seldom reproduce. They can live on after the shrimp have passed, as an ecology of sorts will still be possible with the micro-organisms. My Beach World has a number of just-visible Coepods in it, so even when the shrimp go, there will be a reproducing colony of arthropods in it. The ultimate limitation of the lifespan of any closed ecology is the sequestration of scarce trace minerals in molecules which nothing in the habitat has the energy to degrade.
The Bio-sphere, in contast is a reproducing system by design. Animals die in there all the time, but there always seem to be lots of small ones to grow into the vacancy.
I have both a Bio-Sphere and a Beach World. The URL for the manufacturer is Paragon Space Development Corporation.
I have had an 8" bio-sphere since December, 1999, and a 5" Beach World since May of this year. I have taken pains to make sure both have had the right sort of environment, and so have had a good experience with them. The Bio-Sphere lives at home with it's timer and lamp. The Beach World lives on my desk at work where even during the weekends it gets some natural light. I love looking at the shrimp swimming around while I write software!
I really like my "little worlds"!
This was a topic in the series of books called "Amateur Telescope Making" published by Scientific American back in the '30s. The problems of old are;
1. It is a "Zenith transit" instument; It can only look staight up without a sidereostat or similar device of flat mirrors that removes much of the economy of this method.
2. Tiny disturbances make ripples larger than one-quarter wavelength of yellow light. This messes up the image a lot. Modern technology can finally solve this problem with feedback loop motion contols and etc.
3. Mercury is expensive. So one needs a cavity that is very close to the final mirror surface such that only a film is required.
4. Mercury is a hazmat and evaporates over time.
It's nice to see this old dog hunting again, though. This isn't the first time and not likely to be the last time.
I really believe that if some good reporter were to investigate the financial dealings of the members of the DC Circuit Court, and those of their close family members, that attempts by Microsoft to influence this case will be found. Playing this one legally when none of the rest of their dealings with the public courts have been conducted that way would be too out of character for Microsoft. They believe they own all the marbles, and therefore the rules are up to them.
I agree. This comes of sitting through too many powerpoint presentations... But, linguistic usage does change over time, and not always for the better.
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
I agree. Most of the people who want free (beer) software have never, and will never, contribute anything to it. Most don't even write bug reports, much less *good* bug reports!
The piper must be paid. Either you pay in coin or time. As has been observed, the two are equivalent!
With Linux, we sleep on the shoulders of giants.
You may argue that $30 is a lot to pay for a beta... But if I could have downloaded this, it would take me hours, and then I would have to burn a disk. IMHO, it is a silly use of the net for everybody to download the same 400MB file!
Still, I think they should have set the price-point at $20. I suspect that it is $30 to limit the demand for something they only mean to get into the hands of people who have some actual testing to accomplish.
I also would not be amazed to find a rebate coupon with OSX when it ships for those who bought the demo. Apple have done it this way before.
I've heard of IP over uucp email, but this is really, really clever. Only, if you were running the server side of things, presumably, you could be traced. So, you would NOT want to use a server you owned. Who would set these up? Or does one rely on being able to compromise some host where the root password is "secret"?
Don't get me wrong, I am all for maximizing the available anonymity of the net, but we really need a hack that has the same effect, but which uses a standard server.
All in all, I'll buy the person who though of this a beer any time he or she is in town...
What we really need is a general-purpose X86 processor emulator for Linux; Something I can compile on an Alpha box and then load *any* X86-based system into it and expect it to run.
Well, you could bounce the problem to somebody already dealing with it by taking the internet feed from Mayberry.com or similar pre-filtered ISP. And IMHO, there is nothing wrong with this whatsoever as long as you make it clear to people using the service that this is a "G"-rated version of the internet. A Laundromat is not the place for unbridalled free speech; That is what the library and the university are for. When I consume television, I choose providers that have what I want. If I wanted T&A, I would choose Showtime. If I were to have a TV in the laundromat, however, it would be tuned to WGN or WTBS since T&A would unsuitable for that venue.
And a 600 MHz G4 still works better...