They sort of do it with cars but only for the sake of styling.
The number of prototypes for a new car has gone down significantly, but they're still used at all stages of the design process. Noise/vibration/harshness tests are one big area where models aren't accurate enough yet. Endurance tests are also still done.
The aviation industry is ahead in this regard because it's insanely expensive to build a prototype of an airliner.
But even then: say I bought all of Apple's stock. If I relied on dividend alone, it would take me 53 years to make a profit on my investment. The only way I could profit in the short term is by trading the shares. It's devolved from a long-term profit projection into a pyramid scheme, IMO.
Yes and no. It rather depends on how you access the data. I still associate cloud computing with horrid, web-only interfaces. If you can mount the remote disk and have random access to the filesystem, backups get a lot easier.
You're forgetting the A part is just as much part of their charter as the S part. DARPA is a defence agency, so commercial and general aviation isn't part of their charter.
There's almost never a need to transport cargo through space. The stuff that gets packed in 40-ft containers usually isn't so time-critical that it needs transportation faster than is available now. Sending anything 60 miles up and giving it enough speed to get the correct ballistic trajectory (remember, no air to speak of at 60 miles) inevitably uses gigantic amounts of fuel. There is no way you can make airborne transport price-competitive with rail and water transport, so your suggestion would be pointless. The gains are to be had in making passenger transport more efficient.
The general aviation industry has advanced at a glacial pace ever since WW2, and it got worse with the excesses of litigation that almost put the GA manufacturers out of business. Electronic fuel injection is still regarded as newfangled and unproven, for instance. I know there are reasons for this (basically, developing an all-new engine that conforms to the safety standards can't be afforded the industry), but the end result is that any innovation seen in this competition will be viewed with deep distrust by the GA industry, and in 10 years, non-experimental GA planes will still be no more advanced than they are today.
For this application, I suspect it doesn't need to be. They want to have a general idea of which area an event takes place in. Full accuracy (e.g. the street address of the affected transformer) is only needed at lower level, and they should have mechanisms in place for that already.
Major power outages in the United States over the past decade have a recurring theme - the lack of wide-area situational understanding was a key factor that contributed to blackouts.
(emphasis mine)
How can you expect to manage something as complex as a continental power grid without having the data you need? It's not like this capability has only recently become available.
And for the lazy/impaired/unwilling to sweat, bikes with varying degrees of electric propulsion (from purely assistive, adding X% to your own pedal force, to full electric propulsion) are available as well.
I bet it would take someone less time to learn the app and create their model in Blender rather than learning and creating something through sculpting materials or injection-moulding.
I'm not so sure about that. I'd expect sculpting to have one big advantage over 3D CAD: when you sculpt, you work in 3D, instead of a 2D representation of a 3D model. I can sculpt complex shapes fairly rapidly, even with my limited experience. The sculpture may not be accurate to the mm, but it's close enough that it looks right, which for my purposes (scale modeling) is good enough. Learning to draw using 2D CAD tools has taken me more time than learning to sculpt. I don't have experience working in 3D beyond a few hours of fooling around with SketchUp, so I could be off, but to me 3D CAD doesn't seem to be easier to learn and do than 2D CAD.
I can see one stumbling block for 3D printing becoming more popular: the software you need to create a 3D model is generally expensive and difficult to use. Google Sketchup is a potential answer here, but the last time I checked, the 3D printing house I wanted to use didn't accept Sketchup files (and/or the free version of Sketchup doesn't allow export to any generic 3D format).
IMO, 3D printing solves one problem (generating copies of a design) but not the other (creating the design in the first place).
Traditionally, creating the design has been done in hardware (a master, which is used to produce moulds etc.). With a 3D printer, you can either build a master, scan it and clean up the data, or you can build the model in CAD. CAD is less messy, but I'm not convinced it's faster than building a master. Using CAD will result in more accurate models, though. A handmade master is hard to make completely symmetrical, for instance.
The first 3D printed scale model parts have already appeared, btw.
In the past, I haven't thought twice about taking electronics (laptop, mp3-player, palmtop) abroad. These regulations mean you basically can't count on crossing the border into the US with any of those, and would have to treat them as disposable. Instead of approaching Customs confident I've nothing to hide and won't be hassled beyond a cursory inspection, I'd have to have a backup plan for any data I want to use while in the US.
One more reason not to travel to the US, I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
In Argentina, duh.
If you're going to track where a photo came from, I'd expect a timestamp to be useful.
duh, you're missing the sign and parity bits.
They sort of do it with cars but only for the sake of styling.
The number of prototypes for a new car has gone down significantly, but they're still used at all stages of the design process. Noise/vibration/harshness tests are one big area where models aren't accurate enough yet. Endurance tests are also still done.
The aviation industry is ahead in this regard because it's insanely expensive to build a prototype of an airliner.
they still needed the physical test to confirm.
No, they (the FAA) still wanted the physical test for certification.
I'd think moving the entire plant at 88 mph would be the bigger engineering challenge.
But even then: say I bought all of Apple's stock. If I relied on dividend alone, it would take me 53 years to make a profit on my investment. The only way I could profit in the short term is by trading the shares. It's devolved from a long-term profit projection into a pyramid scheme, IMO.
How can a company with $24B in sales, $3B in profit, and $40B in cash and assets (2007 figures) have a market cap of $160B?
as a drive-by shooting?
The cloud is no different.
Yes and no. It rather depends on how you access the data. I still associate cloud computing with horrid, web-only interfaces. If you can mount the remote disk and have random access to the filesystem, backups get a lot easier.
You're forgetting the A part is just as much part of their charter as the S part. DARPA is a defence agency, so commercial and general aviation isn't part of their charter.
There's almost never a need to transport cargo through space. The stuff that gets packed in 40-ft containers usually isn't so time-critical that it needs transportation faster than is available now.
Sending anything 60 miles up and giving it enough speed to get the correct ballistic trajectory (remember, no air to speak of at 60 miles) inevitably uses gigantic amounts of fuel.
There is no way you can make airborne transport price-competitive with rail and water transport, so your suggestion would be pointless. The gains are to be had in making passenger transport more efficient.
The general aviation industry has advanced at a glacial pace ever since WW2, and it got worse with the excesses of litigation that almost put the GA manufacturers out of business. Electronic fuel injection is still regarded as newfangled and unproven, for instance.
I know there are reasons for this (basically, developing an all-new engine that conforms to the safety standards can't be afforded the industry), but the end result is that any innovation seen in this competition will be viewed with deep distrust by the GA industry, and in 10 years, non-experimental GA planes will still be no more advanced than they are today.
None of the four planes entered won the $50,000 prize; the best attempt achieved 28.8 miles per gallon.
versus
The "Prius of airplanes," the 100-horsepower-engine Pipistrel typically can go as fast as 170 mph and get 50 miles to the gallon.
So wasn't the Pipistrel Viper entered in the mileage competition, and why not if it'd have easily won?
And that's the way we like it. Now get off our lawn! *shakes fist*
Which idiot has been adding the pointless tag 'signed' to all recent stories?
Jean-Michel Jarre songs are made of water? Who knew?
For this application, I suspect it doesn't need to be. They want to have a general idea of which area an event takes place in. Full accuracy (e.g. the street address of the affected transformer) is only needed at lower level, and they should have mechanisms in place for that already.
is that this is news at all:
Major power outages in the United States over the past decade have a recurring theme - the lack of wide-area situational understanding was a key factor that contributed to blackouts.
(emphasis mine)
How can you expect to manage something as complex as a continental power grid without having the data you need? It's not like this capability has only recently become available.
And for the lazy/impaired/unwilling to sweat, bikes with varying degrees of electric propulsion (from purely assistive, adding X% to your own pedal force, to full electric propulsion) are available as well.
I bet it would take someone less time to learn the app and create their model in Blender rather than learning and creating something through sculpting materials or injection-moulding.
I'm not so sure about that. I'd expect sculpting to have one big advantage over 3D CAD: when you sculpt, you work in 3D, instead of a 2D representation of a 3D model.
I can sculpt complex shapes fairly rapidly, even with my limited experience. The sculpture may not be accurate to the mm, but it's close enough that it looks right, which for my purposes (scale modeling) is good enough.
Learning to draw using 2D CAD tools has taken me more time than learning to sculpt. I don't have experience working in 3D beyond a few hours of fooling around with SketchUp, so I could be off, but to me 3D CAD doesn't seem to be easier to learn and do than 2D CAD.
I can see one stumbling block for 3D printing becoming more popular: the software you need to create a 3D model is generally expensive and difficult to use.
Google Sketchup is a potential answer here, but the last time I checked, the 3D printing house I wanted to use didn't accept Sketchup files (and/or the free version of Sketchup doesn't allow export to any generic 3D format).
IMO, 3D printing solves one problem (generating copies of a design) but not the other (creating the design in the first place).
Traditionally, creating the design has been done in hardware (a master, which is used to produce moulds etc.).
With a 3D printer, you can either build a master, scan it and clean up the data, or you can build the model in CAD. CAD is less messy, but I'm not convinced it's faster than building a master.
Using CAD will result in more accurate models, though. A handmade master is hard to make completely symmetrical, for instance.
The first 3D printed scale model parts have already appeared, btw.
In the past, I haven't thought twice about taking electronics (laptop, mp3-player, palmtop) abroad. These regulations mean you basically can't count on crossing the border into the US with any of those, and would have to treat them as disposable. Instead of approaching Customs confident I've nothing to hide and won't be hassled beyond a cursory inspection, I'd have to have a backup plan for any data I want to use while in the US.
One more reason not to travel to the US, I suppose.
No lasers, less space than a shuttle, lame.
In other words, "that's no moon"?