My Illinois drivers license doesn't have my social security number either.
The state used to offer you the option of having your SSN printed on the license for convenience, because merchants would use it to verify checks, but the folks at the driver services office no longer give you that option because of the prevalence of identity theft.
The drivers license number has been unrelated the holder's social security number in Illinois for decades.
Had my Macbook pro for months now and never one gotten a shock.
I too have a Macbook Pro, and I have felt the tingly sensation of voltage alternating at 60Hz on the outer case. The reason you didn't feel it was that you, yourself, were not grounded and so you didn't complete the circuit. You have to be grounded to the earth ground or the neutral conductor to notice the voltage.
It is common to ground the outer case of electronic devices to the ground of the electronics - that way static discharges to the case don't end up going into expensive semiconductors. Normally this ground connection is not an issue; however, leakage currents can make their way through the power adapter and can apply an AC bias to the "ground" voltage on the DC side of the power supply - so effectively what should be 0VDC actually is floating around 60-70VAC. Because it's a leakage current through the very high resistance between the AC side and the DC side of the power adapter, there usually is very little current (a few microamps) available, so if you complete the circuit to ground via your body, you'll usually only feel a tingle at most. It's really not anything to worry about - more of a curiosity than anything else.
Taking this to a little more of an extreme... back when I was a teenager, my room had a concrete floor with linoleum flooring on it, and I had a 1960s-era Hickok vacuum tube tester with a metal front panel and an unpolarized plug. I was sitting on the floor one day testing vacuum tubes, as teenagers are apt to do, and I noticed that whenever I touched the front panel I felt a strong buzzing sensation in my hand. I unplugged the tube tester, and plugged it back in with the plug rotated 180 degrees and the AC voltage on the front panel was gone. I cut the antique power cord off the next day and installed a grounded plug and power cord.
No, sorry, that's incorrect. You don't understand the problem that needs to be repaired in this case.
You are correct that it is possible to hand-degauss a seriously magnetized shadow mask, in fact there are degaussing coils sold specifically for TV repair people to do just that when the built-in degaussing coil around the picture tube is not strong enough to remove severe magnetism left in the shadow mask. I've done it myself back when I used to repair television sets in the 1980s.
You cannot degauss out a bent shadow mask, because the problem is not residual magnetism left in the shadow mask, the shadow mask is physically deformed by a neodymium magnet. You can't fix that with a magnet, you can only make it worse.
Try moving strong magnets across your c.r.t. displays, its fun!
This is only safe with weak magnets.
Neodymium magnets, such as those you can salvage from hard drives, can not only magnetize the shadow mask, they can permanently distort it. Degauss cycles will not fix that - the only way to repair a monitor damaged in that way is to replace the picture tube.
Do this in a retail environment and you may find yourself talking with the police.
I dislike LED brake lights because they appear to flicker.
I see this most of all on Cadillacs, when the parking lights are on, but the brake lights are not - particularly if you turn your head while looking at the lights. The LEDs on Cadillacs apparently are dimmed by a PWM circuit that flashes the LEDs rapidly to simulate the lower brightness level. This is a totally inappropriate way of controlling the brightness of lights on a moving vehicle, because it makes for weird strobe-light effects in traffic, and it's actually more expensive and introduces more failure points than the alternative. It really makes Cadillacs look bad.
The aftermarket LED lights used on heavy trucks do not flicker unless there is a bad connection somewhere. They are designed using the simplest method of dimming for the parking light function - a simple pair of diodes to isolate the brake and parking light inputs, and a resistor in line with the parking light input.
Pretty much all LED third brake light (CHMSL) modules do not flicker at all as they generally have no dimming function and are either on or off. If you're seeing them flicker, you may be hallucinating.
I also see rainbows on 4x DLP projectors. Do I have superman eyes?
I live in snow country. It gets down to zero degrees outside sometimes; it was eight degrees all last week. A compact fluorescent won't even heat up and light in that weather. My electrician warned me not to use 'em for the attic; he said they'd just buzz and nothing much would happen.
Your electrician is wrong. You may want to find another electrician who has kept up to date on current technology.
Old style magnetic ballast fluorescent lights will not start in cold temperatures, but modern CF bulbs will. High Output (HO) fluorescent lamps will also work in low temperatures (they are what is used in a lot of outdoor advertising signs, and look like regular fluorescent tubes but they use a different type of ballast).
I live 50 miles northwest of Chicago and all of my outdoor lights are CF - they take about 30 seconds to come to full brightness at 0 degrees F, but they work fine. I replaced about 500W of incandescent outdoor lights with less than 100W of CF bulbs and I get the same, or better, light output. According to my outdoor thermometer we have been down below 10 degrees F here at night one or two times already this winter and we have not had any problems with the CF bulbs. I found I actually had to put smaller 7W lamps in some of the outdoor fixtures because the 14W lamps were too bright on my porch.
Outdoors and in attics, it's all about incandescent lights.
Maybe in attics where you only use the lights once in a while for short periods, but for outdoor use incandescents are obsolete energy (and money) wasters.
I don't understand why MSL will travel at an average of 30 meters per hour while the winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge traveled at an average of 30 kilometers per hour.
There are no gas stations on Mars.
DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles were based mostly on normal motor vehicles with internal combustion engines and readily available fuels.
The Mars rovers are solar powered. The sunlight isn't very strong on Mars and the rover can't carry an unlimited amount of solar panels, therefore the speed of the rover is limited by the available solar energy it can store up in its batteries.
Multiplying Amps by 127 doesn't take power factor into consideration and gives you VA, not Watts, unless your load is purely resistive. It can give you a vague idea of whether you're saving any power or not, but not always since electronic and inductive loads can draw current at different parts of the AC waveform such that a clamp ammeter won't show.
No you didn't. You licensed it. Microsoft still "own" it. you agreed to abide by their license when you handed them money. No, I didn't agree to the license, at least not in terms of a contract, because they didn't present their license to me before I bought the software. I bought the software. It is a physical thing and I paid money for it, therefore I own it.
The license forces it. It is a legal document. Microsoft have every right to demand you agree by their license. No, it does not. Microsoft may be a big company, but they're still bound by law, as is any agreement you as their customer make with them. You cannot sign away statutory rights. This type of language in a software license is just a clever ruse that they hope you think is actually enforceable and that you won't try to challenge.
Software publishers do not have law enforcement powers - that is reserved for the state. They cannot force their way into your place of business or home and search for unlicensed copies of software. Absent of evidence of software "piracy" (a maritime offense, so if you don't own a boat you're in the clear), the most they could do is sue for breach of contract (if their license with you is actually held to be a valid contract) on the grounds that you said you'd let them in, and now you won't.
He says the next model will be able to fly at an altitude of 15 feet. That implies that the current yellow model flies lower than 15 feet. Even if the rotors suddenly broke off (which might be a likely occurrence) and it lost all lift, you don't have that far to fall. You might get a broken leg or a concussion from falling less than 15 feet, but the main safety issue is probably going to be bystanders hit by flying pieces of rotor.
Which is why I'm wondering why in the post-9/11 environment we don't see more "luxury semi-private-charter" type thingies showing up with smaller planes, where they drive you out to the flight line from your home. No time-wasting trip through airport security. No "arrive at least 3hrs before your flight." In fact, if you're 5 minutes late they'd.. just wait for you.
Have you priced it? I have. $500 for a commercial flight, or $3500 for a charter from the Chicago area to North Carolina. Which do you think most people's budgets will let them choose?
Kinda makes the market for that type of service a little small. Anyone who can afford to spend that much on a flight, already does.
No GM vehicle has any mechanisms that have to do with the functioning of the airbags or ABS integrated into the radio. They are not stupid enough to expose themselves to liability like this by integrating a safety-critical system (such as airbags or ABS function) into a part of the car that is often replaced by the owner, like the radio.
What they did integrate into the radio were things like all the audio chimes for things like Onstar, lights-on/door open/key-in, low brake fluid (yes, there's a warning chime for that now), seatbelt warning, memory seat function (ok this one makes no sense for it to be integrated into the radio, I'll admit), parking brake warning, and in some cases the steering wheel controls for the heater and air conditioning.
There are, however, several aftermarket interface modules that allow you to install an aftermarket audio system while keeping all of the factory functions (except perhaps the steering wheel audio controls which would depend on your aftermarket stereo supporting those).
I'm thinking more of the corporate psychology of a company having found flaws in two of its products. Product A is no longer on the market (and so no longer brings in sales revenue), and has a shrinking user base due to normal attrition (old systems being replaced due to failure or scheduled replacement, etc). Product B is still on the market (still making some money) and is probably stable in terms of number of installed systems for the time being. Which product would they be mostly likely to devote their resources to fixing first?
MS says they'll support Win2k through 2010 (although I'm not clear what the form of that support will be over that time), but that's not that far away now (it'll be 2008 in another quarter), and they could always move that date up for some internal reason.
That, and the apparent performance improvements in Windows XP, although slight, make replacing Windows 2000 with Windows XP a good idea, if you can get XP cheap enough and if you have a reason to reinstall the OS (we lost the OS drive in one system, so the OS had to be reinstalled anyway). XP Pro costs $139 for the OEM version from TigerDirect; buy a cheap piece of system hardware like a RAM stick or a hard drive (I had to buy an HD to replace the failed one anyway) with it and you meet the OEM requirements.
I've used Win2k since the Corporate Preview Program, but its time has passed.
I have a few systems in the office still using Windows 2000 (we just got rid of our last NT4 system last month), but last week we had a hard drive crash in one of them. I took the opportunity to install Windows XP SP2 on it yesterday and reinstalled the same few (3) applications on it.
The same applications are running noticeably faster. I'm not sure why, since this system really didn't have a lot of clutter on it before, and it was kept pretty clean (we don't allow users to install anything and the drive was defragmented regularly). This system is used for just one task so it was easy to keep it clean; on top of that the hardware is basically the same (apart from having a new same-speed hard drive). It's possible that XP has more performance optimizations particularly in the UI - I don't really know.
Not only that but perhaps more importantly, XP is still actively supported by Microsoft, so as more vulnerabilities are found in Windows, there's a better chance of MS releasing a patch - Win2K is not as actively supported by MS because it's no longer a money maker for them (i.e. you can still buy XP, but you can't buy Win2k).
I haven't read up on lunar drilling, but wouldn't it make sense to use a rotary hammer (hammer drill)? Short impacts can overcome the resistance of the surface being drilled, without overcoming the average (over time) force exerted by gravity.
And the Titanic was built to not sink, and Chernobyl was built not to melt down, and Challenger was built not to explode, and the Tacoma Narrows bridge was built not to collapse, etc, etc, etc...
Ok, let's refute your specious points one by one.
The Chernobyl reactor that failed was not built to not melt down - and it was being operated outside of its designed normal operating envelope which is what actually caused the catastrophic failure. Hell, the thing didn't even have a containment vessel.
The Space Shuttle Challenger didn't initiate the explosion, the solid rocket boosters did, which was because they were being used at too cold of an environmental temperature and, against warnings from the manufacturer, the shuttle was launched anyway (human error once again, but not in the design, in the use of the machine in question).
The Tacoma Narrows bridge apparently was not designed not to collapse - the designer failed to factor in the high wind speeds in the Tacoma Narrows and the resulting resonant effect on the structure into the bridge design.
In other words, your post is a bunch of pointless fear mongering along the lines of "humans can't do anything right". That is complete and utter nonsense - humans design things that work in extreme circumstances all the time. You might as well have said "Won't somebody think of the children!?!?".
Concrete donesn't just spontaneously crack when it is cold. It cracks the same reason ice cracks - it is trying to expand into a confined area.
A dome such as this is not confined. It can expand or contract as much as it wants. It also has no seams. Hence it will not crack.
No, concrete cracks because it shrinks as it cures, and full curing can take years. A large monolithic piece of concrete as described is virtually guaranteed to crack due to internal stresses. This is unavoidable, but it can be designed for by inclusion of so-called expansion joints or scored lines to induce cracking in areas that won't be such a problem.
Concrete is also porous, and a smart design takes this into account. No amount of sealant can solve this issue, but moisture that wicks through the concrete or travels through cracks can be directed to where it will cause less of a problem. Sealants can always be relied upon - to fail.
Ask anyone who makes their living engineering large concrete structures.
I played around with raw LCD displays in high school - like the ones in watches and calculators. If you applied a DC voltage to them, the segments (or pixels in the case of a monitor panel) became black, but then quickly faded away. In order to keep the crystals twisted, you had to apply a rapidly switching voltage, or an AC voltage. It's not just a simple change of state.
It's true that very little current is used, but it seems to me that because it requires electricity to stay turned on because the electricity creates a torque on the liquid crystal, an LCD pixel must be using some tiny amount of power all the time it is "on" - therefore a white screen on an LCD monitor will use less power than a black screen. It is microscopic, but that's not the same thing as "no actual power consumption" - and I'd have to think that keeping all the pixels on my 30" widescreen monitor black would be a small but measurable increase in power consumption.
The old SAE gross HP rating was taken at the flywheel, but with no accessories driven by the engine, and with n optimized exhaust system. This meant that things like the water pump were driven by a separate electric motor - there was no alternator, power steering pump, or a/c compressor on the engine during the test. The optimized exhaust system was usually a set of aftermarket headers designed to wring out far more power than you'd get with the stock exhaust actually used on the car.
The SAE net HP rating is taken at the flywheel with all of the accessories installed, and with the same exhaust system in place as would be used if the engine was installed in the car.
The difference between the two ways of rating the HP yielded vastly different numbers - with the old SAE gross HP rating basically being a lie, and the SAE net HP being much more similar to the HP you could expect from the actual engine in the car.
In a similar way, if you used this formula to generate a mobius strip in the 3D program of your choice and then print it out on a 3D printer, it ceases to be a true mobius strip and becomes an object that is shaped like a mobius strip. it is a subtle, but definable, difference.
Wouldn't that apply to anything made of atoms regardless of whether it's produced on a 3D printer, carved from stone, or whatever? I'm thinking of the atoms as similar to 3D pixels - even a mobius strip assembled atom by atom is bumpy at the atomic scale and not representative of the pure mathematical form.
A better question is if it will work at all in Paris... or anywhere. The image is an obvious fake for all the reasons you mention and the incompatibility of US / EU phone systems. How about a picture of a real phone?
It's a GSM phone. You know, GSM, the so-called Global System for Mobile communications... the main system in Europe, and on a number of US providers. As long as there is service on one of the GSM bands supported by the phone, it will work. My boss uses his Cingular (GSM) Treo 650 all over the place, including France. You should see the roaming charges for data use in China though.
In response to the GP... I wonder how many people in Paris are actually using Fahrenheit these days, anyways... aside from American tourists with fake iPhones, that is.;)
You have to be in Paris to see the temperature there? That's funny, I have access to this thing called the Internet that lets me see all kinds of things like the temperature in other places, without me having to actually be there. You should try it some time.
The key element here is a manual transmission, which enables a much more flexible power distribution.
You're joking. This would be a 13 speed transmission?
Actually, an automatic transmission is much more flexible because the torque converter provides additional torque multiplication and acts as a variable ratio gearset. Modern automatics are very efficient too - the older models used to waste a lot of power as heat, but newer ones produce fuel efficiency levels very close to that of a manual transmission.
I usually hear your type of arguments for small engines in large vehicles from people who have never driven the types of vehicles they're claiming to be knowledgeable about.
A pickup truck with a 1.9L engine would be a road hazard. There have been small pickup trucks sold in the US market with 1.9L engines. Most of them have since been crushed, shredded, and recycled into new steel products, because they weren't really usable for anything that people buy pickup trucks for.
You'll note that there are two "output" numbers engines are rated by: horsepower, and torque. My 5.7L V8 made somewhere between 300 and 400 lb ft of torque (and about 270 HP) reliably, on a daily basis. No small four cylinder engine is going to be able to do that reliably without being made of exotic materials, or without requiring major (overhaul) service on a very short interval.
The key is picking the right engine for the application. I have an 826cc motorcycle which is incredibly fun, but putting that engine into a car is a recipe for not keeping up with the rest of the road traffic, or melting the engine down on the way to work.
Electronic controls do not give anything that a well engineered engine does not
Huh?
Show me a car engine that can meet current emissions requirements without electronic controls while running on fuel that you can buy at your local gas station. You can't, because it simply isn't possible. Even diesels have computer controls these days.
Electronic controls are an absolute requirement for gasoline engines because of the fine level of control of air/fuel mixture and ignition timing required to burn the fuel efficiently and somewhat cleanly whilst not destroying the engine in the process.
One car I owned recently (a 1995 Chevy) had an 11:1 compression ratio and ran on 87 octane fuel (that's the lowest grade of gasoline available in most of the USA). Without electronic controls such as knock sensing, O2 sensor feedback, mass airflow measurement, and the precise control of both the quantity and timing of fuel injection and the timing of the ignition by a computer, it simply would have been impossible to reach the power level that engine developed (or even to drive at all with an 11:1 CR on 87 octane fuel without knocking holes in the pistons) and at the same time producing HC and CO emissions that were a fraction of the same size (5.7L V8) engine from ten model years earlier.
An easy example of how electronic controls have improved the reliability of modern cars is the elimination of the ignition distributor. Pretty much all modern cars do not have distributors now, because they were such a common point of failure for ignition systems that they made cars break down due to things like worn out cap and rotor, or burned points (going back to before 1975 when electronic ignition became pretty much mandatory). Take a look at the tune-up intervals in a modern car's maintenance schedule. It used to be you'd have to change half the ignition system out every couple of years - now the whole thing is good for at least 100K miles in most cases.
Without modern electronic engine controls, US cities would still be blanketed photochemical smog from vehicle exhaust, and people's cars would be significantly less fuel efficient and far less reliable.
Your statement that electronic controls are not a vast improvement over the previous mechanical and vacuum controls is patently incorrect.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry sir, it appears you have swallowed a map.
My Illinois drivers license doesn't have my social security number either.
The state used to offer you the option of having your SSN printed on the license for convenience, because merchants would use it to verify checks, but the folks at the driver services office no longer give you that option because of the prevalence of identity theft.
The drivers license number has been unrelated the holder's social security number in Illinois for decades.
Had my Macbook pro for months now and never one gotten a shock.
I too have a Macbook Pro, and I have felt the tingly sensation of voltage alternating at 60Hz on the outer case. The reason you didn't feel it was that you, yourself, were not grounded and so you didn't complete the circuit. You have to be grounded to the earth ground or the neutral conductor to notice the voltage.
It is common to ground the outer case of electronic devices to the ground of the electronics - that way static discharges to the case don't end up going into expensive semiconductors. Normally this ground connection is not an issue; however, leakage currents can make their way through the power adapter and can apply an AC bias to the "ground" voltage on the DC side of the power supply - so effectively what should be 0VDC actually is floating around 60-70VAC. Because it's a leakage current through the very high resistance between the AC side and the DC side of the power adapter, there usually is very little current (a few microamps) available, so if you complete the circuit to ground via your body, you'll usually only feel a tingle at most. It's really not anything to worry about - more of a curiosity than anything else.
Taking this to a little more of an extreme... back when I was a teenager, my room had a concrete floor with linoleum flooring on it, and I had a 1960s-era Hickok vacuum tube tester with a metal front panel and an unpolarized plug. I was sitting on the floor one day testing vacuum tubes, as teenagers are apt to do, and I noticed that whenever I touched the front panel I felt a strong buzzing sensation in my hand. I unplugged the tube tester, and plugged it back in with the plug rotated 180 degrees and the AC voltage on the front panel was gone. I cut the antique power cord off the next day and installed a grounded plug and power cord.
No, sorry, that's incorrect. You don't understand the problem that needs to be repaired in this case.
You are correct that it is possible to hand-degauss a seriously magnetized shadow mask, in fact there are degaussing coils sold specifically for TV repair people to do just that when the built-in degaussing coil around the picture tube is not strong enough to remove severe magnetism left in the shadow mask. I've done it myself back when I used to repair television sets in the 1980s.
You cannot degauss out a bent shadow mask, because the problem is not residual magnetism left in the shadow mask, the shadow mask is physically deformed by a neodymium magnet. You can't fix that with a magnet, you can only make it worse.
Try moving strong magnets across your c.r.t. displays, its fun!
This is only safe with weak magnets.
Neodymium magnets, such as those you can salvage from hard drives, can not only magnetize the shadow mask, they can permanently distort it. Degauss cycles will not fix that - the only way to repair a monitor damaged in that way is to replace the picture tube.
Do this in a retail environment and you may find yourself talking with the police.
I dislike LED brake lights because they appear to flicker.
I see this most of all on Cadillacs, when the parking lights are on, but the brake lights are not - particularly if you turn your head while looking at the lights. The LEDs on Cadillacs apparently are dimmed by a PWM circuit that flashes the LEDs rapidly to simulate the lower brightness level. This is a totally inappropriate way of controlling the brightness of lights on a moving vehicle, because it makes for weird strobe-light effects in traffic, and it's actually more expensive and introduces more failure points than the alternative. It really makes Cadillacs look bad.
The aftermarket LED lights used on heavy trucks do not flicker unless there is a bad connection somewhere. They are designed using the simplest method of dimming for the parking light function - a simple pair of diodes to isolate the brake and parking light inputs, and a resistor in line with the parking light input.
Pretty much all LED third brake light (CHMSL) modules do not flicker at all as they generally have no dimming function and are either on or off. If you're seeing them flicker, you may be hallucinating.
I also see rainbows on 4x DLP projectors. Do I have superman eyes?
No, probably just a brain tumor.
I live in snow country. It gets down to zero degrees outside sometimes; it was eight degrees all last week. A compact fluorescent won't even heat up and light in that weather. My electrician warned me not to use 'em for the attic; he said they'd just buzz and nothing much would happen.
Your electrician is wrong. You may want to find another electrician who has kept up to date on current technology.
Old style magnetic ballast fluorescent lights will not start in cold temperatures, but modern CF bulbs will. High Output (HO) fluorescent lamps will also work in low temperatures (they are what is used in a lot of outdoor advertising signs, and look like regular fluorescent tubes but they use a different type of ballast).
I live 50 miles northwest of Chicago and all of my outdoor lights are CF - they take about 30 seconds to come to full brightness at 0 degrees F, but they work fine. I replaced about 500W of incandescent outdoor lights with less than 100W of CF bulbs and I get the same, or better, light output. According to my outdoor thermometer we have been down below 10 degrees F here at night one or two times already this winter and we have not had any problems with the CF bulbs. I found I actually had to put smaller 7W lamps in some of the outdoor fixtures because the 14W lamps were too bright on my porch.
Outdoors and in attics, it's all about incandescent lights.
Maybe in attics where you only use the lights once in a while for short periods, but for outdoor use incandescents are obsolete energy (and money) wasters.
Where, pray tell, is this place known as "Idiocity"?
According to Google Maps it's at the Art Institute of Chicago
I don't understand why MSL will travel at an average of 30 meters per hour while the winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge traveled at an average of 30 kilometers per hour.
There are no gas stations on Mars.
DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles were based mostly on normal motor vehicles with internal combustion engines and readily available fuels.
The Mars rovers are solar powered. The sunlight isn't very strong on Mars and the rover can't carry an unlimited amount of solar panels, therefore the speed of the rover is limited by the available solar energy it can store up in its batteries.
Multiplying Amps by 127 doesn't take power factor into consideration and gives you VA, not Watts, unless your load is purely resistive. It can give you a vague idea of whether you're saving any power or not, but not always since electronic and inductive loads can draw current at different parts of the AC waveform such that a clamp ammeter won't show.
There's a short explanation of the difference here: http://www.powervar.com/Eng/ABCs/CalcVAWATTS.asp
Software publishers do not have law enforcement powers - that is reserved for the state. They cannot force their way into your place of business or home and search for unlicensed copies of software. Absent of evidence of software "piracy" (a maritime offense, so if you don't own a boat you're in the clear), the most they could do is sue for breach of contract (if their license with you is actually held to be a valid contract) on the grounds that you said you'd let them in, and now you won't.
He says the next model will be able to fly at an altitude of 15 feet. That implies that the current yellow model flies lower than 15 feet. Even if the rotors suddenly broke off (which might be a likely occurrence) and it lost all lift, you don't have that far to fall. You might get a broken leg or a concussion from falling less than 15 feet, but the main safety issue is probably going to be bystanders hit by flying pieces of rotor.
Which is why I'm wondering why in the post-9/11 environment we don't see more "luxury semi-private-charter" type thingies showing up with smaller planes, where they drive you out to the flight line from your home. No time-wasting trip through airport security. No "arrive at least 3hrs before your flight." In fact, if you're 5 minutes late they'd.. just wait for you.
Have you priced it? I have. $500 for a commercial flight, or $3500 for a charter from the Chicago area to North Carolina. Which do you think most people's budgets will let them choose?
Kinda makes the market for that type of service a little small. Anyone who can afford to spend that much on a flight, already does.
No GM vehicle has any mechanisms that have to do with the functioning of the airbags or ABS integrated into the radio. They are not stupid enough to expose themselves to liability like this by integrating a safety-critical system (such as airbags or ABS function) into a part of the car that is often replaced by the owner, like the radio.
What they did integrate into the radio were things like all the audio chimes for things like Onstar, lights-on/door open/key-in, low brake fluid (yes, there's a warning chime for that now), seatbelt warning, memory seat function (ok this one makes no sense for it to be integrated into the radio, I'll admit), parking brake warning, and in some cases the steering wheel controls for the heater and air conditioning.
There are, however, several aftermarket interface modules that allow you to install an aftermarket audio system while keeping all of the factory functions (except perhaps the steering wheel audio controls which would depend on your aftermarket stereo supporting those).
I'm thinking more of the corporate psychology of a company having found flaws in two of its products. Product A is no longer on the market (and so no longer brings in sales revenue), and has a shrinking user base due to normal attrition (old systems being replaced due to failure or scheduled replacement, etc). Product B is still on the market (still making some money) and is probably stable in terms of number of installed systems for the time being. Which product would they be mostly likely to devote their resources to fixing first?
MS says they'll support Win2k through 2010 (although I'm not clear what the form of that support will be over that time), but that's not that far away now (it'll be 2008 in another quarter), and they could always move that date up for some internal reason.
That, and the apparent performance improvements in Windows XP, although slight, make replacing Windows 2000 with Windows XP a good idea, if you can get XP cheap enough and if you have a reason to reinstall the OS (we lost the OS drive in one system, so the OS had to be reinstalled anyway). XP Pro costs $139 for the OEM version from TigerDirect; buy a cheap piece of system hardware like a RAM stick or a hard drive (I had to buy an HD to replace the failed one anyway) with it and you meet the OEM requirements.
I've used Win2k since the Corporate Preview Program, but its time has passed.
I have a few systems in the office still using Windows 2000 (we just got rid of our last NT4 system last month), but last week we had a hard drive crash in one of them. I took the opportunity to install Windows XP SP2 on it yesterday and reinstalled the same few (3) applications on it.
The same applications are running noticeably faster. I'm not sure why, since this system really didn't have a lot of clutter on it before, and it was kept pretty clean (we don't allow users to install anything and the drive was defragmented regularly). This system is used for just one task so it was easy to keep it clean; on top of that the hardware is basically the same (apart from having a new same-speed hard drive). It's possible that XP has more performance optimizations particularly in the UI - I don't really know.
Not only that but perhaps more importantly, XP is still actively supported by Microsoft, so as more vulnerabilities are found in Windows, there's a better chance of MS releasing a patch - Win2K is not as actively supported by MS because it's no longer a money maker for them (i.e. you can still buy XP, but you can't buy Win2k).
I haven't read up on lunar drilling, but wouldn't it make sense to use a rotary hammer (hammer drill)? Short impacts can overcome the resistance of the surface being drilled, without overcoming the average (over time) force exerted by gravity.
And the Titanic was built to not sink, and Chernobyl was built not to melt down, and Challenger was built not to explode, and the Tacoma Narrows bridge was built not to collapse, etc, etc, etc...
Ok, let's refute your specious points one by one.
The Chernobyl reactor that failed was not built to not melt down - and it was being operated outside of its designed normal operating envelope which is what actually caused the catastrophic failure. Hell, the thing didn't even have a containment vessel.
The Space Shuttle Challenger didn't initiate the explosion, the solid rocket boosters did, which was because they were being used at too cold of an environmental temperature and, against warnings from the manufacturer, the shuttle was launched anyway (human error once again, but not in the design, in the use of the machine in question).
The Tacoma Narrows bridge apparently was not designed not to collapse - the designer failed to factor in the high wind speeds in the Tacoma Narrows and the resulting resonant effect on the structure into the bridge design.
In other words, your post is a bunch of pointless fear mongering along the lines of "humans can't do anything right". That is complete and utter nonsense - humans design things that work in extreme circumstances all the time. You might as well have said "Won't somebody think of the children!?!?".
Concrete donesn't just spontaneously crack when it is cold. It cracks the same reason ice cracks - it is trying to expand into a confined area.
A dome such as this is not confined. It can expand or contract as much as it wants. It also has no seams. Hence it will not crack.
No, concrete cracks because it shrinks as it cures, and full curing can take years. A large monolithic piece of concrete as described is virtually guaranteed to crack due to internal stresses. This is unavoidable, but it can be designed for by inclusion of so-called expansion joints or scored lines to induce cracking in areas that won't be such a problem.
Concrete is also porous, and a smart design takes this into account. No amount of sealant can solve this issue, but moisture that wicks through the concrete or travels through cracks can be directed to where it will cause less of a problem. Sealants can always be relied upon - to fail.
Ask anyone who makes their living engineering large concrete structures.
I played around with raw LCD displays in high school - like the ones in watches and calculators. If you applied a DC voltage to them, the segments (or pixels in the case of a monitor panel) became black, but then quickly faded away. In order to keep the crystals twisted, you had to apply a rapidly switching voltage, or an AC voltage. It's not just a simple change of state.
The wikipedia article on LCDs bears this out.
It's true that very little current is used, but it seems to me that because it requires electricity to stay turned on because the electricity creates a torque on the liquid crystal, an LCD pixel must be using some tiny amount of power all the time it is "on" - therefore a white screen on an LCD monitor will use less power than a black screen. It is microscopic, but that's not the same thing as "no actual power consumption" - and I'd have to think that keeping all the pixels on my 30" widescreen monitor black would be a small but measurable increase in power consumption.
The old SAE gross HP rating was taken at the flywheel, but with no accessories driven by the engine, and with n optimized exhaust system. This meant that things like the water pump were driven by a separate electric motor - there was no alternator, power steering pump, or a/c compressor on the engine during the test. The optimized exhaust system was usually a set of aftermarket headers designed to wring out far more power than you'd get with the stock exhaust actually used on the car.
The SAE net HP rating is taken at the flywheel with all of the accessories installed, and with the same exhaust system in place as would be used if the engine was installed in the car.
The difference between the two ways of rating the HP yielded vastly different numbers - with the old SAE gross HP rating basically being a lie, and the SAE net HP being much more similar to the HP you could expect from the actual engine in the car.
In a similar way, if you used this formula to generate a mobius strip in the 3D program of your choice and then print it out on a 3D printer, it ceases to be a true mobius strip and becomes an object that is shaped like a mobius strip. it is a subtle, but definable, difference.
Wouldn't that apply to anything made of atoms regardless of whether it's produced on a 3D printer, carved from stone, or whatever? I'm thinking of the atoms as similar to 3D pixels - even a mobius strip assembled atom by atom is bumpy at the atomic scale and not representative of the pure mathematical form.
A better question is if it will work at all in Paris ... or anywhere. The image is an obvious fake for all the reasons you mention and the incompatibility of US / EU phone systems. How about a picture of a real phone?
;)
It's a GSM phone. You know, GSM, the so-called Global System for Mobile communications... the main system in Europe, and on a number of US providers. As long as there is service on one of the GSM bands supported by the phone, it will work. My boss uses his Cingular (GSM) Treo 650 all over the place, including France. You should see the roaming charges for data use in China though.
In response to the GP... I wonder how many people in Paris are actually using Fahrenheit these days, anyways... aside from American tourists with fake iPhones, that is.
You have to be in Paris to see the temperature there? That's funny, I have access to this thing called the Internet that lets me see all kinds of things like the temperature in other places, without me having to actually be there. You should try it some time.
The key element here is a manual transmission, which enables a much more flexible power distribution.
You're joking. This would be a 13 speed transmission?
Actually, an automatic transmission is much more flexible because the torque converter provides additional torque multiplication and acts as a variable ratio gearset. Modern automatics are very efficient too - the older models used to waste a lot of power as heat, but newer ones produce fuel efficiency levels very close to that of a manual transmission.
I usually hear your type of arguments for small engines in large vehicles from people who have never driven the types of vehicles they're claiming to be knowledgeable about.
A pickup truck with a 1.9L engine would be a road hazard. There have been small pickup trucks sold in the US market with 1.9L engines. Most of them have since been crushed, shredded, and recycled into new steel products, because they weren't really usable for anything that people buy pickup trucks for.
You'll note that there are two "output" numbers engines are rated by: horsepower, and torque. My 5.7L V8 made somewhere between 300 and 400 lb ft of torque (and about 270 HP) reliably, on a daily basis. No small four cylinder engine is going to be able to do that reliably without being made of exotic materials, or without requiring major (overhaul) service on a very short interval.
The key is picking the right engine for the application. I have an 826cc motorcycle which is incredibly fun, but putting that engine into a car is a recipe for not keeping up with the rest of the road traffic, or melting the engine down on the way to work.
Electronic controls do not give anything that a well engineered engine does not
Huh?
Show me a car engine that can meet current emissions requirements without electronic controls while running on fuel that you can buy at your local gas station. You can't, because it simply isn't possible. Even diesels have computer controls these days.
Electronic controls are an absolute requirement for gasoline engines because of the fine level of control of air/fuel mixture and ignition timing required to burn the fuel efficiently and somewhat cleanly whilst not destroying the engine in the process.
One car I owned recently (a 1995 Chevy) had an 11:1 compression ratio and ran on 87 octane fuel (that's the lowest grade of gasoline available in most of the USA). Without electronic controls such as knock sensing, O2 sensor feedback, mass airflow measurement, and the precise control of both the quantity and timing of fuel injection and the timing of the ignition by a computer, it simply would have been impossible to reach the power level that engine developed (or even to drive at all with an 11:1 CR on 87 octane fuel without knocking holes in the pistons) and at the same time producing HC and CO emissions that were a fraction of the same size (5.7L V8) engine from ten model years earlier.
An easy example of how electronic controls have improved the reliability of modern cars is the elimination of the ignition distributor. Pretty much all modern cars do not have distributors now, because they were such a common point of failure for ignition systems that they made cars break down due to things like worn out cap and rotor, or burned points (going back to before 1975 when electronic ignition became pretty much mandatory). Take a look at the tune-up intervals in a modern car's maintenance schedule. It used to be you'd have to change half the ignition system out every couple of years - now the whole thing is good for at least 100K miles in most cases.
Without modern electronic engine controls, US cities would still be blanketed photochemical smog from vehicle exhaust, and people's cars would be significantly less fuel efficient and far less reliable.
Your statement that electronic controls are not a vast improvement over the previous mechanical and vacuum controls is patently incorrect.