I was clear about a shuttle already in orbit coming down without much fuel. Sure, shuttle loaded with that huge fuel tank for takeoff could probably be taken out with a high powered rifle. Sounds like a good retirement plan for the shuttles? load them all full of nukes launch them to as high of altitude as we can get them at, and leave them there until a bush gets back into office (doh). I bet no pilot is really needed on-board for this mission.
Seams like it would decrease the bandwidth per page viewed. Although this could improve the browsing experience to the point where people browse more sites on the phone (using tabs and such) that it could increase overall bandwidth usage. (must resist car analogy) but much like better fuel economy cars just caused people to drive more, increasing overall fuel use. (sorry)
My first thought was similar, how is this OSS related when no bug has been released? However, with this hack, he now claims to have the entire code and architecture used in the proprietary chip. So this chip is no longer "closed" so if the security relies on being closed, then that security will soon be non-existent as it see the light of day. No advantage to open source, just any advantages of being closed, doesn't exist forever either. With that information he can at the very minimum now replace that chip with his own, that would pass the TPMS credentials test. But it will also open up scrutiny to a algorithm the company clearly went to great lengths to protect.
technology has advanced to the point where it could be shot out of the sky now.
I am not so confident of that. True china can hit a satellite going a few thousand mph in a consistent orbit that is not weaving or avoiding, similar for our rockets, they can break up stuff flying horizontally in low earth orbit. I am not so sure if the space shuttle, once in it's higher orbit, could be caught so easy. IE the shuttle has the energy of orbit to make small changes that would take it out of range of any detected launch of anything attempting to catch it in orbit altitude. If it went on a kamikaze straight down mode no fuel, I doubt anything currently known would be both maneuverable enough, and pack enough punch to destroy the shuttle and payload falling straight down from the sky, at say Mach 10+. Hit it, sure, but break everything into small pieces before landfall?
I see with the emission trading in my industry does things a TAX doesn't do. Despite having a couple years before the regulation comes into full affect we have pushed out products that meet the future regulation out now at significant additional cost. We are doing this so that low volume models that don't make economic sense for emissions development can continue to be sold with those credits. Without any credits we would have simply announced those low volume models would be discontinued at the emissions date, and dropped them then. The customers in the past actually stocked up last minute on these products that were discontinued, before the regulation change. And we would not have implemented any of the reductions we have done into full production until the last minute (because it is very pricey to add the emissions equipment.) Had you just put the tax on earlier many more products would just be eliminated sooner, a real economy drag, with possibly no reductions. Also sometimes it turns out in research to be feasible to push emissions much lower than anyone thought was reasonable, again if the tax level was set at what was thought to be a difficult level, their would be little incentive to investigate any over-kill solution. With credits, the unexpected carrot is worth trying for. With a penalty system, risk reward of success is guessed up front, if it looks too difficult marketing pulls the plug early.
I guess it is easy to assume trucks and SUV's have large boxy front ends because it's manly or something, and cars have sleek skinny ones because the owners are more aero observant. But if you pop the hood you'll start to see the difference. Pop the hood on a 250 HP 3/4 ton pickup and a 250 hp car, and you'll find a truck radiator covering some 25 cubic feet of front surface area vs maybe 6 on the car, the truck will also be 3* as thick. It will have a much larger higher speed fan on the engine, and some electric fans pushing air as well, the car won't be nearly as much, low speed electric fan. Probably even a dedicated brake/steering cooler on the truck. That is just what you'll see. If you compare equal engines, say a 350 cu in from a truck vs a sports car, you would find the truck having things like 4 bolt main on the crank, also holding 2* the bearing surface, higher flow internal pumps And you'll find all this upgraded hardware will still come with a lower engine rating, like the 280 hp in my old chevy truck vs the 350 hp of the same engine block in a Camaro of the same year. We haven't even gotten into the transmission, where the torque converter is designed to have a peek efficiency at a high load, where the car will have a very aggressive pitch that will provide very high efficiency at low torques and speeds, since that is where they run 90% of the time. So while the Truck Automatic may lose 30 HP at a 300 hp Load, the car will likely lose closer to 75hp, without the cooling to dissipate that extra load. Since the tow rating is so low on most cars, they don't expect to do much and don't really discuss the extra maintenance. But pull a trucks towing service maintenance schedule, even with all this extra equipment it is likely to need 50% more maintenance than the cars, if used for towing (or the same without the towing work.) Of course the hybrid trailer could balance some of this by recouping braking energy to reduce the power required to accelerate, but that doesn't matter if you try to climb a hill on a already heat soaked engine that is long enough to push it over. Only for flat road slower city stuff could you try to keep the cars average HP draw the same, and not have some sustained at a high peek draw.
Steve Jobs also seams to think a significant portion are willing to be without Microsoft. My Asus EEE net-book running Ebuntu runs a significant number of windows apps under wine, and has so many other free apps that cover 99% of what you would want to do with a small laptop. (of course any pripriority apps are questionable under wine.) Of course 90% e-books does not = 90% ARM. I am sure he would be happy with 90% netbooks, 20% ARM+LINUX. Thus 18% of laptop sales would be arm; 72% would then be x86; leaving 10% as full laptops.
Dual axle trailers reduce this issue. The hay trailer model (rear axle with a front steered front axle as well) eliminates that issue, but introduces more problems. Since virtually no one can back one of those without some assistance. I could see a single dually tire pod at the tongue that is electrically steerable. The best option is producing towing cars with heavy duty cooling systems and a rear beefed up suspension (air or hydraulic adjustable ride.) I see the fact that even high HP cars don't have sufficient cooling or engine components to make a single hill climb as being the biggest deal. A current corvette or BMW producing 300 hp for about 2 minutes solid would blow the motor and transmission (if auto anyway.) I like the idea of a rear engine Porsche, where I could place a cooler on the front of the trailer and hook up a cooling line, so you don't have to change the look of the car, always carry...
I doubt they care about the technology, they care about who is controlling the technology. IE Amazon is taking control of the technology and is to offer a 70 percent royalty rate for books while the current publishers give out less than a $1 a book (more like 3-6%) if they are allowed to cut out the publishers. I am sure the publishers would be willing to pass on the savings, they don't want to pass on the control. B&N is doing similar at 35% payout rate and with google's book settlement google will scan you book, format it as a e-book, and sell it while giving authors 63%.
FYI, My theory is you place strain gauges, or other force measurement device in the trailer tongue, and also a sensor detecting hitch angle. Thus you could use the electrical motors to guarantee you never ever create a force from the trailer that is perpendicular to the direction of travel of the tow vehicle. Since electric motors can produce nearly instantaneous and linear force correction they would be capable of maintaining this, while all frictional brakes can only produce a drag, and are very non-linear and slow (in comparison) they cannot do the same. IE motors could brake the inside wheel, and use that energy to produce a force on the outside wheel negating the jackknife affect. Electric brakes could occasionally brake a inside trailer wheel dragging the car back into line, but would not be very desirable (wasting energy and destroying the brake pads of the trailer) unless it somehow knew the tow vehicle was in enough trouble to need help. Trying to climb a slippery road towing a hybrid trailer can (in theory) propel it's own weight, and negate the jackknife affect at the same time. The main focus was being able to carry a heavier load behind any car, not have a battery trailer that pushes on a regular basis.
But when a corporation lives off the work of an individual long since dead, that's a sign of something gone askew.
This would still be true without copyright. With copyright, and the Google book settlement, at least google can't keep 63% of the money, they either have to find the copyright holder, or give it to the pool of current copyright holders (and their family can stop this if wanted.) With the copyright expired, Google would be free to sell the work but keeps 100% of the profit. I mean sure anyone else who could find the original book and could scan it themselves can then add it to Project Gutenberg, but Google/Amazon/Barnes&Noble have all figured out how to make a profit off of that as well. (sells nooks, kindles, adverts on their site, that all are quick to redirect you to paid for books as well)
using their creations for profit without even giving them notice.
you'll get notice, google will send you the greater of 63% of Revenues Earned in Google Book Search or $60. At that point you can just take your money, and either let it keep coming, or opt out and send your book back into obscurity.
you'd never get an antenna like the one in the photo down a Yorkshire cave.
FYI the antenna as transported was several short sections of PVC and a roll of wire. I have a hard time imaging a cave that is navigable by people that couldn't somehow shove say 1 meter sections of PVC into. If your saying the caves never expands to a size greater than a 2m diameter cube, then I agree they couldn't set it up.
As with most cost savings, the math is a simple concept. The real numbers are never so easy to come up with. IE I have a truck, I can count the number of days I used it as a truck last year, multiply by the rental rate. I come out much higher than the fuel savings, so savings didn't cut it right? But then again if I got a car that could tow a small trailer, I could add back in most of those days and it would be a savings. But because I had the truck I took my dads RV out, no one in my area rents a truck setup to tow anything that size (RV was close to me, his truck was 1000miles away) so I would have had to rent a RV instead, cost advantage back to owning. But I wouldn't have actually gone (savings), and it was a blast (loss)... Not to mention I have no idea what I will do this year, so do I trade it in, then buy another in a year if needed? Since I like my truck, and it's setup the way I like it, thus it was never a serious question to begin with, for me.
yeah because those have never failed/sarcasm I guess that the motorcycle rider in me, most people with significant time on a motorcycle have had a cable stick/freeze/brake on them (not much of a spring return on them.) Even this drive by wire failure appears to be more of the mechanical part of the electric pedal sticking than a electrical fault. See a drive by wire system can have redundancy and diagnostics, so if done right should be safer. All that said, I agree with you;) My 06 diesel truck (manual trans) is electronic throttle, but at least it doesn't then have to then drive a servo motor to control the air like a gasoline car. IE the gas electronic throttle replaces a single failure item you can visually inspect with half a dozen that are more difficult to inspect. Since the diesel has more direct; signal to ECM to injectors. While the car has signal to ECM to servo motor to air flow to MAF sensor to injector.
FYI, these cars have these things called wheels;). Wheels have to overcome the same static friction (rolling resistance, deformation only) per revolution regardless if it is accelerating for the first revolution or if it is going 100mph and repeating a revolution. See regardless if your going 0 MPH, or 100 mph the relative speed of the tire at the contact patch of the tire and road remains 0 (unless your tire start slipping/spinning, then it is overcoming static friction.) All this means, is it will take a much greater force to overcome your brakes at 0 speed, since then you have to overcome their sliding friction, but it takes very little HP, since HP is work over time, which is force over a distance. 0 distance means 0 Work, regardless force, and thus 0 HP. But since the engine has gears between it and the wheels, and the brakes don't. The engine thus has it's greatest advantage at low gearing, though the brakes are guaranteed to win at higher speeds (if working) but the brakes also have to overcome momentum, so will take time, and could overheat before stopping completely.
I agree, with a few exceptions, brakes produce a constant max torque with no gearing advantage, they may produce 600 hp at 50 mph, but significantly less at near 0 speeds. The engine has multiple gears so with a automatic it will get a very low effective gear ratio, so it is likely at full power many cars with hot brakes will overcome those brakes at very low speeds 10 mph. Brakes fade as they get hot, so if you don't go full in, to bring it to a stop fairly soon or can just pull it down to 10 mph, eventually the brakes will catch fire burn the seals to the slave cylinder and all brakes go away, then you accelerate back up. probably be considerable time at a slow speed though, should have chosen a slow speed crash or a kill then.
He can upload his creation to his own iPhone without hassle
not unless he has paid $99, and got his parents to agree to the developers agreement. Not sure where you got "only on a Windows box" development for Windows Mobile." Last I knew QT, and many other frameworks exist, and work on all windows mobile devices, and can be developed on most platforms. Don't get me wrong, Just because I believe Disney's Steve Jobs, is the root of evil, doesn't mean I think Microsoft is much better. Apple would never have released a public SDK for the iPhone had it not been for hackers opening it up first (sure big companies like EA, etc would be allowed to outsourcing development to India for the iphone...) No such need for Windows mobile, So I do think it is best for developers/geeks/informed to steer people away from closed platforms when possible, Since WinMo is slightly more open than the iPhone it is slightly better choice. Android is even more open, so that is a better choice... Doesn't matter if you want to develop for your phone/mp3 player, etc it is better to encourage companies that are run by people who are not trying to lock out the small guy by things like extending copy-rights forever, and take away as many user rights as possible, which is what Steve Jobs is IMHO.
Thats the thing, for free, but only on a Mac, they can see what it would look like on a iPod. So the school has 3 Mac's, 3 kids at a time can do something unique, and show it to anyone on that Mac. At home, no Mac can't show anyone at home, and also can't develop at home (w/o Mac). Kid want's it on his phone, $99 + developers contract, and since the kids are under 18 they have to get the parents approval and their money. Or they can likely find a similar app at the app store and pay $5 for it. Shows his friend the neat gadget, can't put it on their phone even if he is a developer now. Even if they paid the submit fee, and wait the 3 months for approval, for it to come back too similar to another app, so all he can tell the friends is, yeah I made something just like this... Pretty soon their all screw developing, it's cheaper to just buy someone else's work.
I volunteer for a "Joint Technological Education" initiative for high schools in Arizona. This is kind of the trade-off I am trying to work through. Cisco and others give away access to some hardware/software allowing the kids to become Cisco certified before graduating High school. If going to college and moving down a true engineering role is the goal, a more generic hands on tech would be best, allowing them to learn any networking hardware... However finding a job right out of high school is going to be easier with a Cisco certification. Same with accounting, when the goal is a job strait out of high-school and your limited in the amount of time/skill to educate, giving them the minimum education to start working in the field immediately is better than preparing them for a college entrance that never happens. As a engineer I would rather move everyone towards the generic, don't hold them back from the best option at a college degree path (even for students who don't have that as a current plan.)
lithium's fivefold advantage in how much of the energy actually gets to the wheels?
Probably more like 2.5 to 3 fold. Density is better for fuel, and the delivery cost is lower ~1% for fuel vs more like 40%-50% for electric (granted electric is to the home, while the fuel is to the road side.) Also lifetime of gasoline motors are 20 fold greater than for current lithium batteries. Probably why hybrid is the way, that way you can have the density+lifetime of fuel, yet get the regen of electric, but not put as many cycles on the high cost batteries, and have fewer of them. And also avoid the low efficiency periods of the engine.
Only if the electric can be done without batteries. So sure if we could connect all of our cars to a high voltage electric wire while driving. Currently the cost of batteries doubles the cost of electric and throws the cost advantage back to fuel.
I would really like to see trailers with electric wheel motors, for cars. You can't tow a 2000 pound trailer with a 1500 # car, because the trailer would drive it off the road in a emergency stop. A hybrid trailer could have the batteries and motors, and never use the car's brakes and help with accelerate... We could rent just the trailer. Then again too many people never learned to drive with a trailer. Especially a hybrid RV trailer, the main reason I have a 3/4 ton pickup.
The only issue is that kids are excited easily to develop for something they already have access to. IE the local high-school has a robotics class where only the geeks sign up for. And a class to write a program for the iPod, that has a lot more (initial) interest. So they get everyone with a ipod wanting to do something cool with it, but then they can't load it onto their own i-pod very easy, and have to have a mac, which they don't have at home and if they do, the $99 required fee is not cheap to the kids at this school... So they are very excited for about 3 days, then get more and more disappointed and many leave. If the iPod/iPhone/iPad development was open how many of these kids would have started playing at home as well, and felt challenged to out-do their friends? So nothing wrong with having some open options, and some closed options, but don't pretend that a popular platform for youth being closed has a up-side.
meant to say "that can't be done in real time, even by the NSA" for the AES-256 used by these phones. Of course that's only true if the venders didn't put in a backdoor for governments.
Slashdot Mirror
I was clear about a shuttle already in orbit coming down without much fuel. Sure, shuttle loaded with that huge fuel tank for takeoff could probably be taken out with a high powered rifle. Sounds like a good retirement plan for the shuttles? load them all full of nukes launch them to as high of altitude as we can get them at, and leave them there until a bush gets back into office (doh). I bet no pilot is really needed on-board for this mission.
Seams like it would decrease the bandwidth per page viewed. Although this could improve the browsing experience to the point where people browse more sites on the phone (using tabs and such) that it could increase overall bandwidth usage. (must resist car analogy) but much like better fuel economy cars just caused people to drive more, increasing overall fuel use. (sorry)
My first thought was similar, how is this OSS related when no bug has been released? However, with this hack, he now claims to have the entire code and architecture used in the proprietary chip. So this chip is no longer "closed" so if the security relies on being closed, then that security will soon be non-existent as it see the light of day. No advantage to open source, just any advantages of being closed, doesn't exist forever either. With that information he can at the very minimum now replace that chip with his own, that would pass the TPMS credentials test. But it will also open up scrutiny to a algorithm the company clearly went to great lengths to protect.
technology has advanced to the point where it could be shot out of the sky now.
I am not so confident of that. True china can hit a satellite going a few thousand mph in a consistent orbit that is not weaving or avoiding, similar for our rockets, they can break up stuff flying horizontally in low earth orbit. I am not so sure if the space shuttle, once in it's higher orbit, could be caught so easy. IE the shuttle has the energy of orbit to make small changes that would take it out of range of any detected launch of anything attempting to catch it in orbit altitude. If it went on a kamikaze straight down mode no fuel, I doubt anything currently known would be both maneuverable enough, and pack enough punch to destroy the shuttle and payload falling straight down from the sky, at say Mach 10+. Hit it, sure, but break everything into small pieces before landfall?
I see with the emission trading in my industry does things a TAX doesn't do. Despite having a couple years before the regulation comes into full affect we have pushed out products that meet the future regulation out now at significant additional cost. We are doing this so that low volume models that don't make economic sense for emissions development can continue to be sold with those credits. Without any credits we would have simply announced those low volume models would be discontinued at the emissions date, and dropped them then. The customers in the past actually stocked up last minute on these products that were discontinued, before the regulation change. And we would not have implemented any of the reductions we have done into full production until the last minute (because it is very pricey to add the emissions equipment.)
Had you just put the tax on earlier many more products would just be eliminated sooner, a real economy drag, with possibly no reductions.
Also sometimes it turns out in research to be feasible to push emissions much lower than anyone thought was reasonable, again if the tax level was set at what was thought to be a difficult level, their would be little incentive to investigate any over-kill solution. With credits, the unexpected carrot is worth trying for. With a penalty system, risk reward of success is guessed up front, if it looks too difficult marketing pulls the plug early.
I guess it is easy to assume trucks and SUV's have large boxy front ends because it's manly or something, and cars have sleek skinny ones because the owners are more aero observant. But if you pop the hood you'll start to see the difference. Pop the hood on a 250 HP 3/4 ton pickup and a 250 hp car, and you'll find a truck radiator covering some 25 cubic feet of front surface area vs maybe 6 on the car, the truck will also be 3* as thick. It will have a much larger higher speed fan on the engine, and some electric fans pushing air as well, the car won't be nearly as much, low speed electric fan. Probably even a dedicated brake/steering cooler on the truck. That is just what you'll see. If you compare equal engines, say a 350 cu in from a truck vs a sports car, you would find the truck having things like 4 bolt main on the crank, also holding 2* the bearing surface, higher flow internal pumps And you'll find all this upgraded hardware will still come with a lower engine rating, like the 280 hp in my old chevy truck vs the 350 hp of the same engine block in a Camaro of the same year. We haven't even gotten into the transmission, where the torque converter is designed to have a peek efficiency at a high load, where the car will have a very aggressive pitch that will provide very high efficiency at low torques and speeds, since that is where they run 90% of the time. So while the Truck Automatic may lose 30 HP at a 300 hp Load, the car will likely lose closer to 75hp, without the cooling to dissipate that extra load. Since the tow rating is so low on most cars, they don't expect to do much and don't really discuss the extra maintenance. But pull a trucks towing service maintenance schedule, even with all this extra equipment it is likely to need 50% more maintenance than the cars, if used for towing (or the same without the towing work.)
Of course the hybrid trailer could balance some of this by recouping braking energy to reduce the power required to accelerate, but that doesn't matter if you try to climb a hill on a already heat soaked engine that is long enough to push it over. Only for flat road slower city stuff could you try to keep the cars average HP draw the same, and not have some sustained at a high peek draw.
Steve Jobs also seams to think a significant portion are willing to be without Microsoft. My Asus EEE net-book running Ebuntu runs a significant number of windows apps under wine, and has so many other free apps that cover 99% of what you would want to do with a small laptop. (of course any pripriority apps are questionable under wine.)
Of course 90% e-books does not = 90% ARM. I am sure he would be happy with 90% netbooks, 20% ARM+LINUX. Thus 18% of laptop sales would be arm; 72% would then be x86; leaving 10% as full laptops.
Dual axle trailers reduce this issue. The hay trailer model (rear axle with a front steered front axle as well) eliminates that issue, but introduces more problems. Since virtually no one can back one of those without some assistance. I could see a single dually tire pod at the tongue that is electrically steerable.
The best option is producing towing cars with heavy duty cooling systems and a rear beefed up suspension (air or hydraulic adjustable ride.) I see the fact that even high HP cars don't have sufficient cooling or engine components to make a single hill climb as being the biggest deal. A current corvette or BMW producing 300 hp for about 2 minutes solid would blow the motor and transmission (if auto anyway.) I like the idea of a rear engine Porsche, where I could place a cooler on the front of the trailer and hook up a cooling line, so you don't have to change the look of the car, always carry...
I doubt they care about the technology, they care about who is controlling the technology. IE Amazon is taking control of the technology and is to offer a 70 percent royalty rate for books while the current publishers give out less than a $1 a book (more like 3-6%) if they are allowed to cut out the publishers. I am sure the publishers would be willing to pass on the savings, they don't want to pass on the control. B&N is doing similar at 35% payout rate and with google's book settlement google will scan you book, format it as a e-book, and sell it while giving authors 63%.
FYI, My theory is you place strain gauges, or other force measurement device in the trailer tongue, and also a sensor detecting hitch angle. Thus you could use the electrical motors to guarantee you never ever create a force from the trailer that is perpendicular to the direction of travel of the tow vehicle. Since electric motors can produce nearly instantaneous and linear force correction they would be capable of maintaining this, while all frictional brakes can only produce a drag, and are very non-linear and slow (in comparison) they cannot do the same. IE motors could brake the inside wheel, and use that energy to produce a force on the outside wheel negating the jackknife affect. Electric brakes could occasionally brake a inside trailer wheel dragging the car back into line, but would not be very desirable (wasting energy and destroying the brake pads of the trailer) unless it somehow knew the tow vehicle was in enough trouble to need help. Trying to climb a slippery road towing a hybrid trailer can (in theory) propel it's own weight, and negate the jackknife affect at the same time.
The main focus was being able to carry a heavier load behind any car, not have a battery trailer that pushes on a regular basis.
But when a corporation lives off the work of an individual long since dead, that's a sign of something gone askew.
This would still be true without copyright. With copyright, and the Google book settlement, at least google can't keep 63% of the money, they either have to find the copyright holder, or give it to the pool of current copyright holders (and their family can stop this if wanted.) With the copyright expired, Google would be free to sell the work but keeps 100% of the profit. I mean sure anyone else who could find the original book and could scan it themselves can then add it to Project Gutenberg, but Google/Amazon/Barnes&Noble have all figured out how to make a profit off of that as well. (sells nooks, kindles, adverts on their site, that all are quick to redirect you to paid for books as well)
using their creations for profit without even giving them notice.
you'll get notice, google will send you the greater of 63% of Revenues Earned in Google Book Search or $60. At that point you can just take your money, and either let it keep coming, or opt out and send your book back into obscurity.
you'd never get an antenna like the one in the photo down a Yorkshire cave.
FYI the antenna as transported was several short sections of PVC and a roll of wire. I have a hard time imaging a cave that is navigable by people that couldn't somehow shove say 1 meter sections of PVC into. If your saying the caves never expands to a size greater than a 2m diameter cube, then I agree they couldn't set it up.
As with most cost savings, the math is a simple concept. The real numbers are never so easy to come up with. IE I have a truck, I can count the number of days I used it as a truck last year, multiply by the rental rate. I come out much higher than the fuel savings, so savings didn't cut it right? But then again if I got a car that could tow a small trailer, I could add back in most of those days and it would be a savings. But because I had the truck I took my dads RV out, no one in my area rents a truck setup to tow anything that size (RV was close to me, his truck was 1000miles away) so I would have had to rent a RV instead, cost advantage back to owning. But I wouldn't have actually gone (savings), and it was a blast (loss)...
Not to mention I have no idea what I will do this year, so do I trade it in, then buy another in a year if needed?
Since I like my truck, and it's setup the way I like it, thus it was never a serious question to begin with, for me.
cable-actuated throttle,
yeah because those have never failed /sarcasm I guess that the motorcycle rider in me, most people with significant time on a motorcycle have had a cable stick/freeze/brake on them (not much of a spring return on them.) Even this drive by wire failure appears to be more of the mechanical part of the electric pedal sticking than a electrical fault. See a drive by wire system can have redundancy and diagnostics, so if done right should be safer. ;) My 06 diesel truck (manual trans) is electronic throttle, but at least it doesn't then have to then drive a servo motor to control the air like a gasoline car. IE the gas electronic throttle replaces a single failure item you can visually inspect with half a dozen that are more difficult to inspect. Since the diesel has more direct; signal to ECM to injectors. While the car has signal to ECM to servo motor to air flow to MAF sensor to injector.
All that said, I agree with you
FYI, these cars have these things called wheels ;). Wheels have to overcome the same static friction (rolling resistance, deformation only) per revolution regardless if it is accelerating for the first revolution or if it is going 100mph and repeating a revolution. See regardless if your going 0 MPH, or 100 mph the relative speed of the tire at the contact patch of the tire and road remains 0 (unless your tire start slipping/spinning, then it is overcoming static friction.)
All this means, is it will take a much greater force to overcome your brakes at 0 speed, since then you have to overcome their sliding friction, but it takes very little HP, since HP is work over time, which is force over a distance. 0 distance means 0 Work, regardless force, and thus 0 HP. But since the engine has gears between it and the wheels, and the brakes don't. The engine thus has it's greatest advantage at low gearing, though the brakes are guaranteed to win at higher speeds (if working) but the brakes also have to overcome momentum, so will take time, and could overheat before stopping completely.
I agree, with a few exceptions, brakes produce a constant max torque with no gearing advantage, they may produce 600 hp at 50 mph, but significantly less at near 0 speeds. The engine has multiple gears so with a automatic it will get a very low effective gear ratio, so it is likely at full power many cars with hot brakes will overcome those brakes at very low speeds 10 mph. Brakes fade as they get hot, so if you don't go full in, to bring it to a stop fairly soon or can just pull it down to 10 mph, eventually the brakes will catch fire burn the seals to the slave cylinder and all brakes go away, then you accelerate back up. probably be considerable time at a slow speed though, should have chosen a slow speed crash or a kill then.
He can upload his creation to his own iPhone without hassle
not unless he has paid $99, and got his parents to agree to the developers agreement.
Not sure where you got "only on a Windows box" development for Windows Mobile." Last I knew QT, and many other frameworks exist, and work on all windows mobile devices, and can be developed on most platforms. Don't get me wrong, Just because I believe Disney's Steve Jobs, is the root of evil, doesn't mean I think Microsoft is much better. Apple would never have released a public SDK for the iPhone had it not been for hackers opening it up first (sure big companies like EA, etc would be allowed to outsourcing development to India for the iphone...) No such need for Windows mobile, So I do think it is best for developers/geeks/informed to steer people away from closed platforms when possible, Since WinMo is slightly more open than the iPhone it is slightly better choice. Android is even more open, so that is a better choice... Doesn't matter if you want to develop for your phone/mp3 player, etc it is better to encourage companies that are run by people who are not trying to lock out the small guy by things like extending copy-rights forever, and take away as many user rights as possible, which is what Steve Jobs is IMHO.
Thats the thing, for free, but only on a Mac, they can see what it would look like on a iPod. So the school has 3 Mac's, 3 kids at a time can do something unique, and show it to anyone on that Mac. At home, no Mac can't show anyone at home, and also can't develop at home (w/o Mac). Kid want's it on his phone, $99 + developers contract, and since the kids are under 18 they have to get the parents approval and their money. Or they can likely find a similar app at the app store and pay $5 for it. Shows his friend the neat gadget, can't put it on their phone even if he is a developer now. Even if they paid the submit fee, and wait the 3 months for approval, for it to come back too similar to another app, so all he can tell the friends is, yeah I made something just like this... Pretty soon their all screw developing, it's cheaper to just buy someone else's work.
I volunteer for a "Joint Technological Education" initiative for high schools in Arizona. This is kind of the trade-off I am trying to work through. Cisco and others give away access to some hardware/software allowing the kids to become Cisco certified before graduating High school. If going to college and moving down a true engineering role is the goal, a more generic hands on tech would be best, allowing them to learn any networking hardware... However finding a job right out of high school is going to be easier with a Cisco certification. Same with accounting, when the goal is a job strait out of high-school and your limited in the amount of time/skill to educate, giving them the minimum education to start working in the field immediately is better than preparing them for a college entrance that never happens. As a engineer I would rather move everyone towards the generic, don't hold them back from the best option at a college degree path (even for students who don't have that as a current plan.)
lithium's fivefold advantage in how much of the energy actually gets to the wheels?
Probably more like 2.5 to 3 fold. Density is better for fuel, and the delivery cost is lower ~1% for fuel vs more like 40%-50% for electric (granted electric is to the home, while the fuel is to the road side.) Also lifetime of gasoline motors are 20 fold greater than for current lithium batteries. Probably why hybrid is the way, that way you can have the density+lifetime of fuel, yet get the regen of electric, but not put as many cycles on the high cost batteries, and have fewer of them. And also avoid the low efficiency periods of the engine.
Only if the electric can be done without batteries. So sure if we could connect all of our cars to a high voltage electric wire while driving. Currently the cost of batteries doubles the cost of electric and throws the cost advantage back to fuel.
I would really like to see trailers with electric wheel motors, for cars. You can't tow a 2000 pound trailer with a 1500 # car, because the trailer would drive it off the road in a emergency stop. A hybrid trailer could have the batteries and motors, and never use the car's brakes and help with accelerate... We could rent just the trailer. Then again too many people never learned to drive with a trailer.
Especially a hybrid RV trailer, the main reason I have a 3/4 ton pickup.
The only issue is that kids are excited easily to develop for something they already have access to. IE the local high-school has a robotics class where only the geeks sign up for. And a class to write a program for the iPod, that has a lot more (initial) interest. So they get everyone with a ipod wanting to do something cool with it, but then they can't load it onto their own i-pod very easy, and have to have a mac, which they don't have at home and if they do, the $99 required fee is not cheap to the kids at this school... So they are very excited for about 3 days, then get more and more disappointed and many leave. If the iPod/iPhone/iPad development was open how many of these kids would have started playing at home as well, and felt challenged to out-do their friends?
So nothing wrong with having some open options, and some closed options, but don't pretend that a popular platform for youth being closed has a up-side.
meant to say "that can't be done in real time, even by the NSA" for the AES-256 used by these phones. Of course that's only true if the venders didn't put in a backdoor for governments.