No, F1 gearboxes have nothing to do with Tiptronic. Porsche's Tiptronic system is a 'classic' automatic gearbox with torque converter, with the ability to manually select a gear (more flexibly than D-2-L on conventional gear selectors) added.
But don't F1 teams use gearboxes which are operated via two paddle switches (behind the steering wheel)? These gearboxes are semi-automatic: there is no mechanical linkage, the gearchange and clutch are operated under computer control. The driver does select the gear.
ECU hacking has been around for a while. For popular cars, you can get aftermarket ECUs which are tuned for more performance. On a non-turbo, street legal car, the best you can expect is a 10% power increase. On turbocharged cars you could get more (just turn up the boost), but you quickly run into reliability problems because the engine can't handle the increased loads.
To get significant power increases, you still need to apply 'old style' tuning tricks like adding forced induction, changing camshafts and uprating engine internals.
You're right. Much OSS development isn't about pleasing the masses. And that's a shame, because it leads to lots of software being published that's only usable for its author. Which in turn leads (I'd expect) to lots of software being published with identical (or near enough) functionality, but different interface approaches etc.
To me, this seems like a massive waste of effort. If the first author did his job properly (creating a program that would be more widely accessible), others wouldn't have to go duplicate the functionality he created.
Being a general purpose machine does not preclude having consistency among applications. This is not a matter of dumbing down the interface or constraining the power user, it is a matter of empowering ordinary non-geek users. If the fact that those ordinary non-geek users no longer need the propeller beanie priesthood to get their computers to do what they want is threatening to you, go find another line of work. It's not your sandbox anymore. Get used to it.
Being able to apply the skills learned on one application to another application is a 'power multiplier'. Research from a few years ago (when Apple had a massive lead over everyone else in this area) showed that Mac-users used many more applications than DOS/Windows users. Simply because they didn't have to waste time relearning the basics for every single program they installed.
You, and very few other people. It's incredibly annoying (from a user's POV) to have to learn a new UI for every application I use. A programmer that insists on wasting my time because I've got to 'learn to ride the camel backwards' to get his weirdass program to work, gets the boot from me. I'll find an alternative that's better designed.
The program's design is an integral part of the production process. Badly-designed software simply isn't of release-quality. Stable or not, if your UI is badly designed, your application is a beta.
It isn't a question of either/or (usability vs stability). You need both. Actually, you need a few more things. Documentation, for instance. Good documentation, not just manpages.
The US Coast Guard (IIRC) had this problem, too. Disks would wear out in something like 1.5 years. They investigated solutions, but in the end they decided to just swap the disks before they wore out.
No, he forgot to include a period. It should read:
"Christianity is forbidden here, and many Christians are persecuted by Muslims (more info on www.cbn.com). Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and many others, are forbidden to read the Christian bible, especially the Gospel."
Religious hate speech, however, does hurt these "other people" the same way as racial hate speech does
The problem with this is, who decides what is "hate speech"? People could (in fact, have got) into trouble because they repeated verbatim what was written in their holy book of choice. The Koran calls for Jihad, the Bible also contains phrases non-Christians don't want to hear. What is acceptable, and what isn't? And where does it end? What's now merely 'politically correct' may become 'mandatory' tomorrow. 1984, here we come!
There's a tradeoff here between freedom of speech and religion on one side, and the illegality of discrimination on the other.
I'd much rather have freedom of speech (and live with the fact that I can't do much about people being insulted) than "clean up the internet", thus silencing thousands of voices.
In the words of Voltaire: 'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'
...with their (equally ancient) Extended Keyboard II. It's just as solid as the IBM stuff (its development codename was 'Nimitz'...), but less noisy. Cost a fortune, though.
The current limit of 300-350km/h is because of structural problems on unadapted tracks at high speeds (the train is designed to go fast on adapted tracks and slower on regular ones).
The tracks used for 300 km/h service are adapted (ie different from 'classic' tracks which allow speeds of up to ~180 km/h). It's just that for 500 km/h you need even more adaptation. Especially the bends need to be wider, which makes it more difficult to plan the route.
There are more limitations: the current TGV trains are designed for service speeds of up to 350 km/h, i.e. they'll run reliably for >20 years at those speeds. Engineering for service speeds of 500 km/h is much more expensive. The trainset used for the record needed an overhaul after the attempt.
Also, at 500 km/h you need more power: during the record run, the four-car set consumed 13 MW. You can power two 10-car TGV trains at 300 km/h with that.
You also run into problems attaining these speeds. On the record run, it took 10 km to reach 300 km/h from standstill. 400 km/h took 23 km, 500 km/h took 48 km! On current TGV lines, stations aren't far enough apart to take advantage of 500 km/h. You can improve accelleration, but only by increasing power consumption even further. You may need more power cars, etc.
And that was with a regular train (no funny shit with the wheels, just a long straight railway)
Well, the train was not quite 'regular'. Some modifications were made to the train, including increased power output, bigger wheels and longer gearing, modified pantographs and some aerodynamic mods.
They tell you EVERYTHING you need to know without fluff.
No, they don't. They only tell you everything you need to know, provided you already know which command you need.
The manpages do NOT answer the most essential question of all, "how do I do X?", e.g. "how do I delete a file?"
IOW, the manpages are a good reference. But that's just part of the manual set a user needs. He also needs an introduction that answers questions like "how does a terminal window work" and "which commands do I need for task X".
So your argument is that we should all be equally vulnerable?
That is part of my argument, yes. Cars all conform to regulations about fender height, etc., making sure that in a car vs car collision, e.g. the cars hit each other's fenders. In a car vs SUV collision, the SUV will run over the car, rather than into it, making it much more likely the other party is injured. Only now are SUV makers starting to pay attention to this. It took Volvo to design an SUV that doesn't have this problem.
But the 'active safety', i.e. the ability to avoid a collision is much more important than this. You may *feel* safer in an SUV, but in reality you run a greater risk than in a normal car.
People in every type of car does that crap.
Of course I realize that. I notice the SUV drivers more because they're the bigger menace. I'd much rather have that Civic crash into me than an SUV.
I'll choose to drive something as close to a tank as I can get,
You'll still lose from a truck or a tree. And you're more likely to have an accident. How safe is that?
I've made my choice, too. I use the most dynamically proficient car I can get, I don't have a car phone, I have taken advanced driving courses (skid control, that sort of thing) so in an emergency I can react rather than waiting, paralyzed with fear, for the crash, and passengers think I'm rude because I pay attention to traffic rather than to them. I've made a habit of avoiding the idiot drivers rather than relying on armor to protect me.
God forbid that some of us should drive cars that can actually accelerate off a red light at a decent rate when carrying a few passengers or some cargo.
You don't need an SUV for that. This is much easier to achieve with a normal car than with a 2.5-ton behemoth.
And not being the one that gets crushed into a tiny cube in a collision might actually be a Good Thing.
In an SUV vs normal car collision, the SUV driver would be better off, yes. At the expense of the normal car driver, who ends up with an SUV in his lap. The car would be damaged far worse than in a car vs car collision. By driving an SUV, you increase the chance of killing the other party in a collision.
You're far better off in a car that actually has a chance of avoiding a collision. SUVs are less maneuverable and have a longer braking distance than a car, increasing the chance you'll plough into something if the unexpected happens.
Also, the people who buy SUVs because "they're safe" are usually the same ones who, once on the road, think they're invincible and don't give a damn about safety. So they start doing dumb things like using the phone, reading the newspaper, shaving, and generally not paying attention to traffic while driving.
If every SUV where banned today, would we really see a significant reduction in pollution? Keep in mind how much of it is produced by coal and gas power plants (because we're too stubborn and ignorant to embrace nuclear power).
That's no reason to keep driving gas guzzlers. Using vehicles that require four times the resources to accomplish the same goal is just plain dumb.
It's about activist-types and their Holy War against symbols of status and privelege.
No. It's about the irresponsible, "I don't care about anyone else" attitude many SUV drivers have.
symbols of status and privelege
Yeah, right. If you want status, buy a Mercedes S-class or a Jaguar XJ. Those are status symbols. An SUV is just a barge, a glorified tractor and an expression of the "mine's bigger" culture.
While your six banger may be able to hit 600 HP, it dosn't have shit for torque
I've done some comparisons between turbocharged and naturally-aspirated engines, and for standard cars, at least, if the BHP figures are the same, then so will the torque figures. The one difference is that the turbocharged engine will deliver its maximum torque at a *lower* RPM. The turbo engine will also return better mileage.
The one disadvantage of a turbocharger is its lag, so with a big-displacement engine you'll have more instantaneous reaction. But with a supercharger, that drawback is eliminated.
For tuned cars, torque figures are hard to come by. But I expect results would be substantially the same.
That's a very narrow definition. All that power is nice, but fairly useless if you can only apply it in a straight line. And that's the disadvantage of your 'muscle car' over a tuned Jap. At the first corner, you'll plough straight on, the stock suspension being unable to overcome all the inertia. Meanwhile, the Civic driver corners as if on rails. Guess who gets to the finish line first?
As the saying goes, there's no replacement for displacement.
I've got some 600 bhp cars that disagree with you. All it takes is a 2.6 litre straight six with two turbochargers. These are modified Nissan Skyline GT-Rs.
Yes, but your two-ton barge corners like crap, so you're only faster on a drag strip. In most real-world situations, those Banzaimobiles will run circles around you.
Or for the geek that appreciates higher quality audio.
I'd think that the geek that appreciates higher-quality audio would go the sensible route and get a good, dedicated audio CD player. No compression at all, no fan and HD noise, far less high-frequency electronics to interfere with the analog signals, far better analog stages and DA converters than the average computer...
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No, F1 gearboxes have nothing to do with Tiptronic. Porsche's Tiptronic system is a 'classic' automatic gearbox with torque converter, with the ability to manually select a gear (more flexibly than D-2-L on conventional gear selectors) added.
Those are called sequential gearboxes.
But don't F1 teams use gearboxes which are operated via two paddle switches (behind the steering wheel)? These gearboxes are semi-automatic: there is no mechanical linkage, the gearchange and clutch are operated under computer control. The driver does select the gear.
ECU hacking has been around for a while. For popular cars, you can get aftermarket ECUs which are tuned for more performance. On a non-turbo, street legal car, the best you can expect is a 10% power increase. On turbocharged cars you could get more (just turn up the boost), but you quickly run into reliability problems because the engine can't handle the increased loads.
To get significant power increases, you still need to apply 'old style' tuning tricks like adding forced induction, changing camshafts and uprating engine internals.
You're right. Much OSS development isn't about pleasing the masses. And that's a shame, because it leads to lots of software being published that's only usable for its author. Which in turn leads (I'd expect) to lots of software being published with identical (or near enough) functionality, but different interface approaches etc.
To me, this seems like a massive waste of effort. If the first author did his job properly (creating a program that would be more widely accessible), others wouldn't have to go duplicate the functionality he created.
Being a general purpose machine does not preclude having consistency among applications. This is not a matter of dumbing down the interface or constraining the power user, it is a matter of empowering ordinary non-geek users. If the fact that those ordinary non-geek users no longer need the propeller beanie priesthood to get their computers to do what they want is threatening to you, go find another line of work. It's not your sandbox anymore. Get used to it.
Being able to apply the skills learned on one application to another application is a 'power multiplier'. Research from a few years ago (when Apple had a massive lead over everyone else in this area) showed that Mac-users used many more applications than DOS/Windows users. Simply because they didn't have to waste time relearning the basics for every single program they installed.
You, and very few other people. It's incredibly annoying (from a user's POV) to have to learn a new UI for every application I use. A programmer that insists on wasting my time because I've got to 'learn to ride the camel backwards' to get his weirdass program to work, gets the boot from me. I'll find an alternative that's better designed.
The program's design is an integral part of the production process. Badly-designed software simply isn't of release-quality. Stable or not, if your UI is badly designed, your application is a beta.
It isn't a question of either/or (usability vs stability). You need both. Actually, you need a few more things. Documentation, for instance. Good documentation, not just manpages.
The US Coast Guard (IIRC) had this problem, too. Disks would wear out in something like 1.5 years. They investigated solutions, but in the end they decided to just swap the disks before they wore out.
"Advocates trying to speak for regular Internet users were basically told to sit down and shut up during a "public" workshop on digital rights management dominated by IT heavyweights and Big Hollywood at the U.S. Department of Commerce Wednesday. "
A Jew is simply someone who follows a certain monotheistic faith.
No, a Jew is someone who is of Jewish descent. Faith has nothing to do with it.
I think someone has his facts slightly reversed.
No, he forgot to include a period. It should read:
"Christianity is forbidden here, and many Christians are persecuted by Muslims (more info on www.cbn.com).
Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and many others, are forbidden to read the Christian bible, especially the Gospel."
An entirely correct statement, unfortunately.
Religious hate speech, however, does hurt these "other people" the same way as racial hate speech does
The problem with this is, who decides what is "hate speech"? People could (in fact, have got) into trouble because they repeated verbatim what was written in their holy book of choice. The Koran calls for Jihad, the Bible also contains phrases non-Christians don't want to hear. What is acceptable, and what isn't? And where does it end? What's now merely 'politically correct' may become 'mandatory' tomorrow. 1984, here we come!
There's a tradeoff here between freedom of speech and religion on one side, and the illegality of discrimination on the other.
I'd much rather have freedom of speech (and live with the fact that I can't do much about people being insulted) than "clean up the internet", thus silencing thousands of voices.
In the words of Voltaire: 'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'
...with their (equally ancient) Extended Keyboard II. It's just as solid as the IBM stuff (its development codename was 'Nimitz'...), but less noisy. Cost a fortune, though.
The current limit of 300-350km/h is because of structural problems on unadapted tracks at high speeds (the train is designed to go fast on adapted tracks and slower on regular ones).
The tracks used for 300 km/h service are adapted (ie different from 'classic' tracks which allow speeds of up to ~180 km/h). It's just that for 500 km/h you need even more adaptation. Especially the bends need to be wider, which makes it more difficult to plan the route.
There are more limitations: the current TGV trains are designed for service speeds of up to 350 km/h, i.e. they'll run reliably for >20 years at those speeds. Engineering for service speeds of 500 km/h is much more expensive. The trainset used for the record needed an overhaul after the attempt.
Also, at 500 km/h you need more power: during the record run, the four-car set consumed 13 MW. You can power two 10-car TGV trains at 300 km/h with that.
You also run into problems attaining these speeds. On the record run, it took 10 km to reach 300 km/h from standstill. 400 km/h took 23 km, 500 km/h took 48 km! On current TGV lines, stations aren't far enough apart to take advantage of 500 km/h. You can improve accelleration, but only by increasing power consumption even further. You may need more power cars, etc.
And that was with a regular train (no funny shit with the wheels, just a long straight railway)
Well, the train was not quite 'regular'. Some modifications were made to the train, including increased power output, bigger wheels and longer gearing, modified pantographs and some aerodynamic mods.
They tell you EVERYTHING you need to know without fluff.
No, they don't. They only tell you everything you need to know, provided you already know which command you need.
The manpages do NOT answer the most essential question of all, "how do I do X?", e.g. "how do I delete a file?"
IOW, the manpages are a good reference. But that's just part of the manual set a user needs. He also needs an introduction that answers questions like "how does a terminal window work" and "which commands do I need for task X".
So your argument is that we should all be equally vulnerable?
That is part of my argument, yes. Cars all conform to regulations about fender height, etc., making sure that in a car vs car collision, e.g. the cars hit each other's fenders. In a car vs SUV collision, the SUV will run over the car, rather than into it, making it much more likely the other party is injured. Only now are SUV makers starting to pay attention to this. It took Volvo to design an SUV that doesn't have this problem.
But the 'active safety', i.e. the ability to avoid a collision is much more important than this. You may *feel* safer in an SUV, but in reality you run a greater risk than in a normal car.
People in every type of car does that crap.
Of course I realize that. I notice the SUV drivers more because they're the bigger menace. I'd much rather have that Civic crash into me than an SUV.
I'll choose to drive something as close to a tank as I can get,
You'll still lose from a truck or a tree. And you're more likely to have an accident. How safe is that?
I've made my choice, too. I use the most dynamically proficient car I can get, I don't have a car phone, I have taken advanced driving courses (skid control, that sort of thing) so in an emergency I can react rather than waiting, paralyzed with fear, for the crash, and passengers think I'm rude because I pay attention to traffic rather than to them. I've made a habit of avoiding the idiot drivers rather than relying on armor to protect me.
God forbid that some of us should drive cars that can actually accelerate off a red light at a decent rate when carrying a few passengers or some cargo.
You don't need an SUV for that. This is much easier to achieve with a normal car than with a 2.5-ton behemoth.
And not being the one that gets crushed into a tiny cube in a collision might actually be a Good Thing.
In an SUV vs normal car collision, the SUV driver would be better off, yes. At the expense of the normal car driver, who ends up with an SUV in his lap. The car would be damaged far worse than in a car vs car collision. By driving an SUV, you increase the chance of killing the other party in a collision.
You're far better off in a car that actually has a chance of avoiding a collision. SUVs are less maneuverable and have a longer braking distance than a car, increasing the chance you'll plough into something if the unexpected happens.
Also, the people who buy SUVs because "they're safe" are usually the same ones who, once on the road, think they're invincible and don't give a damn about safety. So they start doing dumb things like using the phone, reading the newspaper, shaving, and generally not paying attention to traffic while driving.
If every SUV where banned today, would we really see a significant reduction in pollution? Keep in mind how much of it is produced by coal and gas power plants (because we're too stubborn and ignorant to embrace nuclear power).
That's no reason to keep driving gas guzzlers. Using vehicles that require four times the resources to accomplish the same goal is just plain dumb.
It's about activist-types and their Holy War against symbols of status and privelege.
No. It's about the irresponsible, "I don't care about anyone else" attitude many SUV drivers have.
symbols of status and privelege
Yeah, right. If you want status, buy a Mercedes S-class or a Jaguar XJ. Those are status symbols. An SUV is just a barge, a glorified tractor and an expression of the "mine's bigger" culture.
While your six banger may be able to hit 600 HP, it dosn't have shit for torque
I've done some comparisons between turbocharged and naturally-aspirated engines, and for standard cars, at least, if the BHP figures are the same, then so will the torque figures. The one difference is that the turbocharged engine will deliver its maximum torque at a *lower* RPM. The turbo engine will also return better mileage. The one disadvantage of a turbocharger is its lag, so with a big-displacement engine you'll have more instantaneous reaction. But with a supercharger, that drawback is eliminated.
For tuned cars, torque figures are hard to come by. But I expect results would be substantially the same.
there's never been a cd created that didn't use compression
But the CD is usually the best source material you can get. Applying lossy compression doesn't exactly improve the quality.
And what if she wants to have access to hundreds of songs wherever she goes without having to bring a bunch of cds with her?
Have you seen the thing? It's a 19" box. That's not portable. So much for "wherever".
If you want 'portable', buy an iPod.
Street racing is acceleration from a stoplight.
That's a very narrow definition. All that power is nice, but fairly useless if you can only apply it in a straight line. And that's the disadvantage of your 'muscle car' over a tuned Jap. At the first corner, you'll plough straight on, the stock suspension being unable to overcome all the inertia. Meanwhile, the Civic driver corners as if on rails. Guess who gets to the finish line first?
As the saying goes, there's no replacement for displacement.
I've got some 600 bhp cars that disagree with you. All it takes is a 2.6 litre straight six with two turbochargers. These are modified Nissan Skyline GT-Rs.
I'm faster
Yes, but your two-ton barge corners like crap, so you're only faster on a drag strip. In most real-world situations, those Banzaimobiles will run circles around you.
Or for the geek that appreciates higher quality audio.
I'd think that the geek that appreciates higher-quality audio would go the sensible route and get a good, dedicated audio CD player. No compression at all, no fan and HD noise, far less high-frequency electronics to interfere with the analog signals, far better analog stages and DA converters than the average computer...
When 23% of surveyed music consumers say they are not buying more music because they are downloading or copying their music for free,
That same survey also showed 25% of respondents buying MORE music because they are downloading or copying music for free.