Doesn't sound like your house is gonna win any design awards.
No, but on my list of priorities, that's so low as to be invisible. My apartment is full of wires anyway: home theater with big-ass cabling, audio links to and from two computers, phones, etc.
Why wouldn't you run wireless?
My reasons: 1. It's more work to set up and configure than a wired network. Maybe I'm atypical, but the experiences I've had with wireless networks were all bad. Byzantine installation procedures, networks incredibly slow or not working for obscure reasons, etc.
2. The WAP is YA device that draws power 24/7.
3. It's YA attack vector you have to make sure is and stays secure (passwords, patches).
4. It's slower than 100B-T. I regularly transfer dozens of GB on my home network (including to/from laptops).
5. I managed to wire my apartment without any demolition. The only money I spent was on the cabling itself. I'll grant it's not the most invisible installation ever, but see above.
6. As I said in the GP post, in my experience opportunities to be truly wireless are rare. If you're going to need power anyway, one more wire won't matter.
Or if you use a laptop and don't feel like being tethered to your desk.
I'm not tethered to my desk. I've got a few Ethernet cables lying around the living room, so I can plug in wherever. I need to run wires to my laptop anyway (power, often USB (audio output) as well), so one more isn't going to bother me.
Link to the company that wrote the report: CNW Marketing The report is behind the 'Dust zip folder.zip' link. The ZIP contains a 15 MB Word file [1]. There's also an Excel spreadsheet containing only the final numbers (cost/mile).
Looking at their website, and their decision to publish the report as a bloody Word file, does not fill me with confidence that they know what they're talking about. Maclink Plus is currently choking on the Word doc, so can't say anything about the content of that file yet.
I was just thinking the opposite. What is it with this 'respect for the dead' nonsense? It's not as if the dead body minds, or will even notice.
I mean, I can understand the mantra to a certain extent when it's about recently-deceased people, although in practice that's more about respect for the next-of-kin (and incredibly annoying even then, at least that's my reaction to the CSI scenes where they ask for permission to do an autopsy and the family refuses). But a 3-ky old mummy? Who cares?
But the story shows that this indeed is the case; at least the people who are cheap enough to buy pirated software at flea markets put a low enough value on their time to download the stuff themselves in order to avoid even the minimal cost of pirated discs.
I, for one, don't avoid pirated discs because of the cost issue, but because it's less hassle and faster to download a movie [1] than to have to go out, find a physical pirate store (Hell, I wouldn't know where to find one) and buy the movie I want.
1: Sure, the actual downloading takes a few hours, but the only effort for me is a few minutes on thep(cough)ay.org or somesuch.
Sure, it'd be fun to have the fastest computer available, but lots of power comes with drawbacks: noise and high electricity bills.
My main machine is a Mac Mini G4, and you know, it's fast enough for just about everything I do. It's nice and quiet, and doesn't draw ludicrous amounts of power. The only drawback is its lack of room for internal harddisks. I've got two external disks connected for a total of 500 GB, and I still don't have enough space.
I'm shopping for a PVR at the moment. AFAIK, any current machine would do for this purpose; the only thing that may pose a problem is HDTV playback. But given the lack of HDTV broadcasts where I live, this wouldn't be a dealbreaker.
My work machine could do with a bit more power, but in my job (writing technical documents), the CPU rarely is the bottleneck. Disk speed is more of an issue. I just replaced the 4200 rpm disk in my laptop with a 7200 rpm disk, and the difference is quite remarkable. My ultimate work machine would be a laptop with 4 GB RAM on the fastest bus available [1], a RAID-0 using four of the fastest drives available [1], a 15" internal screen and 2 DVI ports that can drive a 30" screen each. Then again, with that RAID it wouldn't be very portable.
1: note the lack of technicalities. I've no idea which speeds we'd be talking about. Mostly, I just don't care enough to keep up.
I mean, once in a while it's fun to be working from the yard or a cafe or something, but it's disastrous for my health. After a few hours of working with a laptop at a table (as opposed to a desk set to the proper height) my back aches and my wrists start complaining. Also, working on a tiny laptop screen sucks.
All in all, I prefer working at my desk. It's got the right ergonomics, a huge monitor etc. If I don't feel like working at the office I can always work from home, where I've also got a decent setup.
would it be of any use against an opponent who can track radio signals? I don't think cell phone protocols can do all of the fancy frequency hopping and other tricks that most military radios use
No, but you may have noticed that the current opponent isn't that sophisticated in this regard. This is an opportunity to make comm gear more ubiquitous without having to spend major $$$ on military-grade radios. Also, IDK how good the UI on military-grade radios is, but when you want to talk to people outside your own unit I doubt it's as easy as speeddialing someone on your mobile.
does the TacBSR interface with the rest of the world? The article suggests it uses a VOIP link, but is that link wireless or wired? Does it have an Ethernet port, can it interface with telephony equipment?
Also, it'd be interesting to see what happens when you start a TacBSR in an area that already has cell phone coverage. Can you specify who can and who can't use the TacBSR network? Can it talk to the billing system of the local telco (not so interesting for military use, but may be a factor during disaster relief, when civilians will use the system)?
People think it's wrong to discriminate based on race, but when discrimination occurs based on religion (on a small scale, I'm not talking about the holocaust), it's suddenly justified because that's part of the religious doctrine?
It's only discrimination if one differentiates based on irrelevant characteristics. When interviewing for a job, religion is (mostly) irrelevant. When deciding on a potential mate, it certainly isn't. Religion is an important part of a person's way of life. Dating someone who's incompatible in this regard will put extra strain on the relationship, judging by the mixed (Christian/atheist) couples I know.
It sucks to be dumped this way, but don't dismiss a girl's decision to not date you as her giving in to peer pressure/religious doctrine. She's just as likely taking the long view and deciding to back out now rather than having to live with someone she can't share her most fundamental beliefs with.
From a previous discussion of 'securely erasing a HD' ISTR that 'powerful' is an understatement. You pretty much need an MRI scanner to be sure your data is dead. Consumer-grade magnets won't do.
Aircraft are four orders of magnitude more expensive than cars, operate under rather different circumstances and to a different set of performance and economic parameters. Spending $$$ on light materials is a far easier tradeoff in an airliner than in a car.
The most efficient internal-combustion engine ever devised,
Not by a long shot. For its time, and for being a petrol engine it was pretty good, but much more efficient designs (using 40% less fuel to produce the same amount of power) are available now.
Comparison here. Note the Napier Nomad, which used similar ideas to the R-3350 but burned diesel.
The R-3350 is a two-row aircooled radial, not the most efficient layout to begin with.
Whoever wrote the article doesnt understand why SUVs and trucks have big engines. Its not because they are powerful, its because they need lots of torque.
Lots of torque can also be accomplished with a smaller turbocharged engine, with a diesel or with a hybrid drivetrain. Engines in American cars are that big mainly due to inertia/boneheadedness of the companies that make them.
Um, no. The pressure in the cylinder is maybe 10 bar (10:1 compression ratio) at TDC. Double that for a turbocharged vehicle, double again for a turbodiesel. 40 bar at most. Fuel injection pressure can be as high as 1600 bar (on common rail diesels).
I think a more realistic possibility is that vehicles will just get much lighter. As an example, if Boeing can make the Dreamliner out of carbon fibre, perhaps it's not that long before we start seing reasonably priced, mass-produced carbon fibre car bodies. There's also reasonably good odds of significant price reduction in titanium and titanium alloys, and aluminium use is becoming more widespread in the automotive industry.
The (European) average vehicle is almost twice as heavy now as it was 25 years ago (compare the Golf I to the Golf V). We're adding crap faster than we can save weight. There are exceptions (Jaguar XK), but notice that that's not exactly an average vehicle.
New construction materials all have drawbacks: carbon fibre panels don't dent, they shatter. This would massively increase the repair cost, and make it harder to design the car for crash safety. Similarly, aluminium is harder to fabricate and repair, and titanium is notoriouly difficult to work with. All of these techniques would make the car a lot more expensive.
If they use this to increase turbocharger pressure, I'd expect turbo lag [1] to become a problem again. It'd be better to increase the compression ratio instead. Or maybe combine ethanol injection with some of the variable-compression designs that have been surfacing lately.
Also: why would premature combustion still be a problem in a direct-injection engine? It should be possible to inject the fuel when it is needed, and not before. Or would that lead to timing problems?
1: turbo lag is the delay between pressing the accelerator and power output rising. It's affected by the size of the turbocharger, boost pressure and a few less important factors.
Would this lead to segregation of the internet into zones defined by the language used for the domain name? At the moment, I can access e.g. Japanese websites easily, even if the content of that site is in a language I don't understand [1]. If non-Roman domain names become popular, will I still be able to access them, or will they disappear behind untypeable URLs? A search engine may be able to mitigate this problem somewhat, but ATM I sometimes get search results for Japanese-language pages only because my search term is present in the URL.
1: yes, a site can still be useful in this case and no, despite the stereotype it's not just for porn.
I don't think the military would use this on a large scale, and certainly not in a war zone.
1. it's an active system. The military avoid the use of active sonar on subs as much as possible.
2. it's impractical. These beacons would have a range of maybe 100 km, so you'd need to seed lots of them if you wanted to cover a large area.
3. the beacon can be compromised by the enemy.
The only military use I see is to aid navigation on the approaches of the sub's home port, so it can stay underwater as long as possible. Even then, those approaches are mapped accurately enough that they can navigate using inertial navigation.
Due to #2, I expect this system will be popular in situations where you operate in a limited area, but need accurate positioning within that area. Scientific exploration and sea mining/drilling operations come to mind. Submarine cable operations as well, perhaps (for accurate positioning in relation to the ship).
... there is real mass transit so that companies don't have to invest money in doing this for themselves.
Not entirely. The Netherlands has a pretty good public transportation system, but I know of several companies that run their own bus services (Nedcar, Thales). These typically are large factories that are located on industrial estates. Industrial areas are often served badly by public transportation, even over here.
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Doesn't sound like your house is gonna win any design awards.
No, but on my list of priorities, that's so low as to be invisible. My apartment is full of wires anyway: home theater with big-ass cabling, audio links to and from two computers, phones, etc.
Why wouldn't you run wireless?
My reasons:
1. It's more work to set up and configure than a wired network. Maybe I'm atypical, but the experiences I've had with wireless networks were all bad. Byzantine installation procedures, networks incredibly slow or not working for obscure reasons, etc.
2. The WAP is YA device that draws power 24/7.
3. It's YA attack vector you have to make sure is and stays secure (passwords, patches).
4. It's slower than 100B-T. I regularly transfer dozens of GB on my home network (including to/from laptops).
5. I managed to wire my apartment without any demolition. The only money I spent was on the cabling itself. I'll grant it's not the most invisible installation ever, but see above.
6. As I said in the GP post, in my experience opportunities to be truly wireless are rare. If you're going to need power anyway, one more wire won't matter.
Or if you use a laptop and don't feel like being tethered to your desk.
I'm not tethered to my desk. I've got a few Ethernet cables lying around the living room, so I can plug in wherever. I need to run wires to my laptop anyway (power, often USB (audio output) as well), so one more isn't going to bother me.
In Soviet Russia, paper trails YOU!
And not some crappy press release.
Link to the company that wrote the report: CNW Marketing
The report is behind the 'Dust zip folder.zip' link. The ZIP contains a 15 MB Word file [1]. There's also an Excel spreadsheet containing only the final numbers (cost/mile).
Looking at their website, and their decision to publish the report as a bloody Word file, does not fill me with confidence that they know what they're talking about. Maclink Plus is currently choking on the Word doc, so can't say anything about the content of that file yet.
I was just thinking the opposite. What is it with this 'respect for the dead' nonsense? It's not as if the dead body minds, or will even notice.
I mean, I can understand the mantra to a certain extent when it's about recently-deceased people, although in practice that's more about respect for the next-of-kin (and incredibly annoying even then, at least that's my reaction to the CSI scenes where they ask for permission to do an autopsy and the family refuses). But a 3-ky old mummy? Who cares?
But the story shows that this indeed is the case; at least the people who are cheap enough to buy pirated software at flea markets put a low enough value on their time to download the stuff themselves in order to avoid even the minimal cost of pirated discs.
I, for one, don't avoid pirated discs because of the cost issue, but because it's less hassle and faster to download a movie [1] than to have to go out, find a physical pirate store (Hell, I wouldn't know where to find one) and buy the movie I want.
1: Sure, the actual downloading takes a few hours, but the only effort for me is a few minutes on thep(cough)ay.org or somesuch.
Monitor: GVS Panoramic quintuple display. 5x 20", 9600x1200 resolution, or
Zenview Arena, 6 screens, one 2560x1600 and five 1600x1200
Input: 3D motion controller 3DConnexion SpacePilot
Sure, it'd be fun to have the fastest computer available, but lots of power comes with drawbacks: noise and high electricity bills.
My main machine is a Mac Mini G4, and you know, it's fast enough for just about everything I do. It's nice and quiet, and doesn't draw ludicrous amounts of power. The only drawback is its lack of room for internal harddisks. I've got two external disks connected for a total of 500 GB, and I still don't have enough space.
I'm shopping for a PVR at the moment. AFAIK, any current machine would do for this purpose; the only thing that may pose a problem is HDTV playback. But given the lack of HDTV broadcasts where I live, this wouldn't be a dealbreaker.
My work machine could do with a bit more power, but in my job (writing technical documents), the CPU rarely is the bottleneck. Disk speed is more of an issue. I just replaced the 4200 rpm disk in my laptop with a 7200 rpm disk, and the difference is quite remarkable.
My ultimate work machine would be a laptop with 4 GB RAM on the fastest bus available [1], a RAID-0 using four of the fastest drives available [1], a 15" internal screen and 2 DVI ports that can drive a 30" screen each. Then again, with that RAID it wouldn't be very portable.
1: note the lack of technicalities. I've no idea which speeds we'd be talking about. Mostly, I just don't care enough to keep up.
Leeme alone! It's too early to get up yet!
I mean, once in a while it's fun to be working from the yard or a cafe or something, but it's disastrous for my health. After a few hours of working with a laptop at a table (as opposed to a desk set to the proper height) my back aches and my wrists start complaining.
Also, working on a tiny laptop screen sucks.
All in all, I prefer working at my desk. It's got the right ergonomics, a huge monitor etc. If I don't feel like working at the office I can always work from home, where I've also got a decent setup.
would it be of any use against an opponent who can track radio signals? I don't think cell phone protocols can do all of the fancy frequency hopping and other tricks that most military radios use
No, but you may have noticed that the current opponent isn't that sophisticated in this regard. This is an opportunity to make comm gear more ubiquitous without having to spend major $$$ on military-grade radios. Also, IDK how good the UI on military-grade radios is, but when you want to talk to people outside your own unit I doubt it's as easy as speeddialing someone on your mobile.
Isn't this what the first mobile phones were?
No. This is a mobile cell tower in a box, not just one phone.
does the TacBSR interface with the rest of the world? The article suggests it uses a VOIP link, but is that link wireless or wired? Does it have an Ethernet port, can it interface with telephony equipment?
Also, it'd be interesting to see what happens when you start a TacBSR in an area that already has cell phone coverage. Can you specify who can and who can't use the TacBSR network?
Can it talk to the billing system of the local telco (not so interesting for military use, but may be a factor during disaster relief, when civilians will use the system)?
So, is that an Imperial enormous amount, or a metric enormous amount?
Just making sure I have this straight, it's (in climbing order of magnitude)
huge
enormous
gigantic
stupendous
???
People think it's wrong to discriminate based on race, but when discrimination occurs based on religion (on a small scale, I'm not talking about the holocaust), it's suddenly justified because that's part of the religious doctrine?
It's only discrimination if one differentiates based on irrelevant characteristics. When interviewing for a job, religion is (mostly) irrelevant. When deciding on a potential mate, it certainly isn't. Religion is an important part of a person's way of life. Dating someone who's incompatible in this regard will put extra strain on the relationship, judging by the mixed (Christian/atheist) couples I know.
It sucks to be dumped this way, but don't dismiss a girl's decision to not date you as her giving in to peer pressure/religious doctrine. She's just as likely taking the long view and deciding to back out now rather than having to live with someone she can't share her most fundamental beliefs with.
From a previous discussion of 'securely erasing a HD' ISTR that 'powerful' is an understatement. You pretty much need an MRI scanner to be sure your data is dead. Consumer-grade magnets won't do.
Aircraft are four orders of magnitude more expensive than cars, operate under rather different circumstances and to a different set of performance and economic parameters. Spending $$$ on light materials is a far easier tradeoff in an airliner than in a car.
The most efficient internal-combustion engine ever devised,
Not by a long shot. For its time, and for being a petrol engine it was pretty good, but much more efficient designs (using 40% less fuel to produce the same amount of power) are available now.
Comparison here. Note the Napier Nomad, which used similar ideas to the R-3350 but burned diesel.
The R-3350 is a two-row aircooled radial, not the most efficient layout to begin with.
Whoever wrote the article doesnt understand why SUVs and trucks have big engines. Its not because they are powerful, its because they need lots of torque.
Lots of torque can also be accomplished with a smaller turbocharged engine, with a diesel or with a hybrid drivetrain. Engines in American cars are that big mainly due to inertia/boneheadedness of the companies that make them.
Um, no. The pressure in the cylinder is maybe 10 bar (10:1 compression ratio) at TDC. Double that for a turbocharged vehicle, double again for a turbodiesel. 40 bar at most. Fuel injection pressure can be as high as 1600 bar (on common rail diesels).
I think a more realistic possibility is that vehicles will just get much lighter. As an example, if Boeing can make the Dreamliner out of carbon fibre, perhaps it's not that long before we start seing reasonably priced, mass-produced carbon fibre car bodies. There's also reasonably good odds of significant price reduction in titanium and titanium alloys, and aluminium use is becoming more widespread in the automotive industry.
The (European) average vehicle is almost twice as heavy now as it was 25 years ago (compare the Golf I to the Golf V). We're adding crap faster than we can save weight. There are exceptions (Jaguar XK), but notice that that's not exactly an average vehicle.
New construction materials all have drawbacks: carbon fibre panels don't dent, they shatter. This would massively increase the repair cost, and make it harder to design the car for crash safety.
Similarly, aluminium is harder to fabricate and repair, and titanium is notoriouly difficult to work with. All of these techniques would make the car a lot more expensive.
If they use this to increase turbocharger pressure, I'd expect turbo lag [1] to become a problem again. It'd be better to increase the compression ratio instead. Or maybe combine ethanol injection with some of the variable-compression designs that have been surfacing lately.
Also: why would premature combustion still be a problem in a direct-injection engine? It should be possible to inject the fuel when it is needed, and not before. Or would that lead to timing problems?
1: turbo lag is the delay between pressing the accelerator and power output rising. It's affected by the size of the turbocharger, boost pressure and a few less important factors.
Would this lead to segregation of the internet into zones defined by the language used for the domain name? At the moment, I can access e.g. Japanese websites easily, even if the content of that site is in a language I don't understand [1].
If non-Roman domain names become popular, will I still be able to access them, or will they disappear behind untypeable URLs? A search engine may be able to mitigate this problem somewhat, but ATM I sometimes get search results for Japanese-language pages only because my search term is present in the URL.
1: yes, a site can still be useful in this case and no, despite the stereotype it's not just for porn.
I don't think the military would use this on a large scale, and certainly not in a war zone.
1. it's an active system. The military avoid the use of active sonar on subs as much as possible.
2. it's impractical. These beacons would have a range of maybe 100 km, so you'd need to seed lots of them if you wanted to cover a large area.
3. the beacon can be compromised by the enemy.
The only military use I see is to aid navigation on the approaches of the sub's home port, so it can stay underwater as long as possible. Even then, those approaches are mapped accurately enough that they can navigate using inertial navigation.
Due to #2, I expect this system will be popular in situations where you operate in a limited area, but need accurate positioning within that area. Scientific exploration and sea mining/drilling operations come to mind. Submarine cable operations as well, perhaps (for accurate positioning in relation to the ship).
... there is real mass transit so that companies don't have to invest money in doing this for themselves.
Not entirely. The Netherlands has a pretty good public transportation system, but I know of several companies that run their own bus services (Nedcar, Thales). These typically are large factories that are located on industrial estates. Industrial areas are often served badly by public transportation, even over here.