Did you ever hear about Bob Carver's little dust-up with the editors of Sterophile magazine?
He said he could tune the transfer function of one of his amps to match that of any of the super high-end amps that the golden ears crowd spooge over, such that they couldn't hear the difference in a double-blind test.
They took him up on it, he proved his claim, and they admitted as much in the next issue of their magazine. In the issue after that, though, they apparently realized that they'd just undermined their entire reason for existing, so they backpedalled like hell and tried to pretend that there really was a difference after all. Carver sued, and it seems to have gone to arbitration. Never heard what the upshot was.
Well, tube amps don't really clip as such, they just go non-linear. When you get to their current limit, the wave will take an asymptotic curve towards the limit, unlike a transistor.
In any case, if you operate an amp beyond its rated power, the results are crap.
Abolish the stupid car pool lanes. All they accomplish is narrowing the highways by one lane in each direction, causing traffic jams and increasing pollution.
New Jersey's policy of enforcing the lane control laws makes a lot more sense.
in the long run, is the global economy good for us?
The answer is very obviously yes, and if you don't understand that, then I recommend that you follow your own advice, and take a course in economics at your local community college.
You seem to have a weird hang-up about where particular business activities take place. We used to have 80%+ of our population working on farms. Is it bad that most of us no longer have any idea how to grow a crop of potatoes or milk a cow? We're moving up the value chain, and that's a good thing.
I'm working on a hardware project right now, and I've got very competitive bids from companies spread from California to Pennsylvania. If we go up to tens of thousands of units, we'll probably get them built in China or India where the costs are lower, but the USA has plenty of manufacturing capability if you're willing to look for it. Most of the American PCB/assembly shops I know about concentrate on quick-turn and small run (100-500 unit) prototyping work, because that's where the margins are better.
I don't know where you're working, but try Apple or Google, or any of about a thousand start-ups in the valley. Meritocracy is alive and well in Silicon Valley.
Oh, my god! I see it now! Thanks for your stunning insight, which you probably pulled out of your ass years ago! Why, those devious little slant-eyed bastards, how DARE they sell us stuff we want at prices we're willing to pay?
Once we've put them back in their place, maybe we can turn our ever-vigilant attention to interstate commerce. Did you know that Delaware is utterly dependent on states like Kansas and California for FOOD?
This is not the first time in history that a nation has used its economy as a weapon,
Oh, and what an insidious weapon it is... If tends to make the other country paranoid and stupid, as you've so brilliantly demonstrated.
Not quite. There are many more kit plane designs than half-billion-dollar airliner designs, but if you count up the number of aircraft rather than the number of types of aircraft, the majority are types that were designed by large teams.
The American manufacturing sector was pretty much raped by China
That is a load of xenophobic bullshit. Chinese businesses buy technology, and develop it in-house, just like businesses anywhere else in the world do. The decline of manufacturing work in the USA is due to Americans moving up the food chain to higher-value employment. Writing code (for example) pays better than turning a wrench, so people choose to pursue the better-paying, more interesting jobs.
what Japan did to our electronics sector
What Japan did to our electronics industry was make high-quality parts available at drastically lower cost. If we still had to get all our RAM from TI or Intel, or even worse, get our discrete transistors from Fairchild, the worldwide electronics industry would be retarded by at least a decade, maybe two.
China reached the point of significant industrialization in an incredibly short time by instituting an organized knowledge transfer program
China's industrialization has far more to do with their government simply allowing businesses to operate with a minimum of interference, than any active program of seeking information. Once it became possible to make money in China, people from Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and many other countries swarmed the place.
Nope, it dissolves in water. It's lighter than water, and it will evaporate at a lower temperature than water will, but you can't just skim it off the top.
Ethanol is a corporate welfare scam. The government knows it, ADM and Gargil know it, the DOE knows it, and the politicians are hoping that you and I don't. Generating fuel from algae or bacteria would be so much better on so many levels than fermenting corn, I really hope it comes to fruition.
Just imagine the effect on world politics if nobody cared who had control of the petroleum in the middle east, because it was selling for $4/bbl.
At $2.8 per Kg, this would be one of the cheapest ways yet to extract hydrogen, but it still leaves the problem of containing it in a vehicle, the cost of building the fuel cell or engine you'd burn it in, and so on. The fact is that gasoline has an incredible energy density by volume, and in absolute terms, it's still very, very cheap.
Something I find rather more promising is the work described in an earlier MIT review article, where bacteria are being modified to make gasoline directly. Just like petroleum-based gasoline, except that it's carbon-neutral, and sulphur-free. We're talking gasoline from anything that E. coli can ferment.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you ever hear about Bob Carver's little dust-up with the editors of Sterophile magazine?
He said he could tune the transfer function of one of his amps to match that of any of the super high-end amps that the golden ears crowd spooge over, such that they couldn't hear the difference in a double-blind test.
They took him up on it, he proved his claim, and they admitted as much in the next issue of their magazine. In the issue after that, though, they apparently realized that they'd just undermined their entire reason for existing, so they backpedalled like hell and tried to pretend that there really was a difference after all. Carver sued, and it seems to have gone to arbitration. Never heard what the upshot was.
-jcr
Cite a reference douche bag.
All the Kennedys qualify as reference douche bags.
At any rate, he said "one of the most important" sources of wealth is inheritance, which is obviously correct.
-jcr
The left lane is for passing only, you can't cruise in it. The upshot is that you don't get much tailgating and the resulting accidents.
-jcr
Well, tube amps don't really clip as such, they just go non-linear. When you get to their current limit, the wave will take an asymptotic curve towards the limit, unlike a transistor.
In any case, if you operate an amp beyond its rated power, the results are crap.
-jcr
Yeah, they're kind of like wine snobs.
-jcr
That would make it far easier to defeat. There are plenty of coatings available to spray on and make a dummy look like a person in IR.
-jcr
I'm an asshole so I like to report them.
You've got your causes and effects reversed. You like to report them because you're an asshole.
-jcr
Abolish the stupid car pool lanes. All they accomplish is narrowing the highways by one lane in each direction, causing traffic jams and increasing pollution.
New Jersey's policy of enforcing the lane control laws makes a lot more sense.
-jcr
I've heard that Carrie Fisher has had some drug and alcohol problems in the past, but if she's a furry, that's just too much.
-jcr
I don't think you're being fair to the people who participate in the Special Olympics.
-jcr
in the long run, is the global economy good for us?
The answer is very obviously yes, and if you don't understand that, then I recommend that you follow your own advice, and take a course in economics at your local community college.
-jcr
It's like asking why there are no electronics manufacturing plants in downtown Manhattan, but on a global scale.
Exactly!
Social division of labor works at all scales. Trade is voluntary, and both sides benefit: it's not a zero-sum game.
-jcr
You seem to have a weird hang-up about where particular business activities take place. We used to have 80%+ of our population working on farms. Is it bad that most of us no longer have any idea how to grow a crop of potatoes or milk a cow? We're moving up the value chain, and that's a good thing.
-jcr
Our electronics manufacturing sector is in ruins.
What's your next guess?
I'm working on a hardware project right now, and I've got very competitive bids from companies spread from California to Pennsylvania. If we go up to tens of thousands of units, we'll probably get them built in China or India where the costs are lower, but the USA has plenty of manufacturing capability if you're willing to look for it. Most of the American PCB/assembly shops I know about concentrate on quick-turn and small run (100-500 unit) prototyping work, because that's where the margins are better.
-jcr
I don't know where you're working, but try Apple or Google, or any of about a thousand start-ups in the valley. Meritocracy is alive and well in Silicon Valley.
-jcr
Oh, my god! I see it now! Thanks for your stunning insight, which you probably pulled out of your ass years ago! Why, those devious little slant-eyed bastards, how DARE they sell us stuff we want at prices we're willing to pay?
Once we've put them back in their place, maybe we can turn our ever-vigilant attention to interstate commerce. Did you know that Delaware is utterly dependent on states like Kansas and California for FOOD?
This is not the first time in history that a nation has used its economy as a weapon,
Oh, and what an insidious weapon it is... If tends to make the other country paranoid and stupid, as you've so brilliantly demonstrated.
-jcr
Most airplanes are designed by one person.
Not quite. There are many more kit plane designs than half-billion-dollar airliner designs, but if you count up the number of aircraft rather than the number of types of aircraft, the majority are types that were designed by large teams.
-jcr
a Quickdraw 3D Evangelist. He was a clueless idiot.
That was before my time, but it doesn't surprise me. Apple had a lot of third-rate players before Steve Jobs returned and did a major housecleaning.
-jcr
The American manufacturing sector was pretty much raped by China
That is a load of xenophobic bullshit. Chinese businesses buy technology, and develop it in-house, just like businesses anywhere else in the world do. The decline of manufacturing work in the USA is due to Americans moving up the food chain to higher-value employment. Writing code (for example) pays better than turning a wrench, so people choose to pursue the better-paying, more interesting jobs.
what Japan did to our electronics sector
What Japan did to our electronics industry was make high-quality parts available at drastically lower cost. If we still had to get all our RAM from TI or Intel, or even worse, get our discrete transistors from Fairchild, the worldwide electronics industry would be retarded by at least a decade, maybe two.
-jcr
China reached the point of significant industrialization in an incredibly short time by instituting an organized knowledge transfer program
China's industrialization has far more to do with their government simply allowing businesses to operate with a minimum of interference, than any active program of seeking information. Once it became possible to make money in China, people from Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and many other countries swarmed the place.
-jcr
America has 300,000 people
The USA has over three hundred million people.
-jcr
ethanol floats on water
Nope, it dissolves in water. It's lighter than water, and it will evaporate at a lower temperature than water will, but you can't just skim it off the top.
-jcr
I've seen proposals for algae produced biofuel that worked with saline water, and could be built in a desert - that would be ideal.
So, the middle east could still be a major fuel-producing region, even when it's no longer worth the cost to pump petroleum out of the ground?
-jcr
Ethanol is a corporate welfare scam. The government knows it, ADM and Gargil know it, the DOE knows it, and the politicians are hoping that you and I don't. Generating fuel from algae or bacteria would be so much better on so many levels than fermenting corn, I really hope it comes to fruition.
Just imagine the effect on world politics if nobody cared who had control of the petroleum in the middle east, because it was selling for $4/bbl.
-jcr
At $2.8 per Kg, this would be one of the cheapest ways yet to extract hydrogen, but it still leaves the problem of containing it in a vehicle, the cost of building the fuel cell or engine you'd burn it in, and so on. The fact is that gasoline has an incredible energy density by volume, and in absolute terms, it's still very, very cheap.
Something I find rather more promising is the work described in an earlier MIT review article, where bacteria are being modified to make gasoline directly. Just like petroleum-based gasoline, except that it's carbon-neutral, and sulphur-free. We're talking gasoline from anything that E. coli can ferment.
-jcr