Remember Mr. Hincapie's spectacular http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2006/apr06/roubaix06/index.php?id=s002crash at paris-roubaix last year?
That was his aluminum steerer tube that failed.
I too am a cyclist and worked in the industry for a time. The carbon fiber the industry has been getting is not the same as the mil-spec/aircraft grade stuff. As others have pointed out, there are many, many factors that go into materials failure, such as fatigue life, tensile strength, etc. Layup, curing, process, etc. all factor into the "performance" of carbon fiber and its potential to fail. Aluminum fails. Carbon fiber fails. One is not inherently superior to the other. Each has their advantages and disadvantages.
Comparing a cycling fork to an airframe in inappropriate. Comparing the standards between the two industries is inappropriate; a torque wrench is considered a "hi-tech" tool in a bike shop.
As for "so many cyclists have died," I'm going to get out the broom and call shenanigans. Mr. Zinn has a little http://www.velonews.com/tech/report/articles/3270.0.htmlwrite-up on the issue and my guess is that he would've addressed the issue of "so many" deaths. Being fairly immersed in the community, I've never personally heard of cyclist dying from a carbon fork failure, although other failures (such as a flat tire) have led to some serious accidents. Considering that cf is used on the crowns of some mountain bike suspension forks, my guess is any issues with strength and durability would be found out pretty quickly.
Every job that I have taken here in the US (in three different states) has had a period of time (varied in length, never shorter than 60 days) that as long as I fill out the paperwork of my basic information (name, address, etc), I am covered; no questions asked, and more often than not it was explicitly written on the paperwork that I couldn't be denied for any reason other than not filling out the paperwork by the designated date.
The system is badly broken, but it's not keeping me (or you) chained to any desk.
Averages always scare me so I went to http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ask/electricity_faqs.asp the source and looked up average energy usage in New Jersey (as opposed to the nation), 748kWh, the average cost(in cents)/kWh for New Jersey, 11.74, and you get an average monthly electric bill of $87.73 in New Jersey.
Total yearly average electricity cost for New Jersey is $1,052.76.
Michael Strizki heats and cools his house year-round and runs a full range of appliances including such power-guzzlers as a hot tub and a wide-screen TV without paying a penny in utility bills.
My guess is that this means two things: Mr. Strizki uses more electricity than the "average" house, and if his house used conventional utilities is yearly bill would be much higher than the national average. I say this because ~85% of New Jersey homes are heated by something other than electricity, the vast majority of being natural gas and includes hot water heating (lost the hard link to the EIA page).
Also, the average Mid-Atlantic home uses 1,001 gallons of gasoline/year according to the EIA using their most recent statistics that are from calendar year 2001 (the year that the article is citing as the National average expenditure on gasoline was $1520 that year); considering that gas is now $2.32/gal in the Mid Atlantic region, his fuel costs would be significantly higher than the ~$1300 they were in 2001.
Total yearly energy costs for a household in New Jersey are now significantly higher than they were in 2001; the really rough numbers show that the current average New Jersey home gets much closer to that $4000 number than it did in 2001.
First, they aired the episodes in a random order so there was no continuity
Second, they changed the time it was aired, then changed the day, all within a span of three weeks
Third, and most insulting, is that they assumed the demographic watching Firefly would switch to watching Fastlane, as some of the numbers from Nielson were similar
Sadly, I've had more people become "fans" of the show after the cancellattion by loaning them the DVDs, with most of them not being scifi fans.
I've had DirectTV for the last seven years, off and on, in five different states from Baltimore to San Francisco. While I'm not affiliated with any compnay, DirecTV now considers me a "VIP customer" and I'll share my experiences with both geosychronous and gopher based technology.
Two things first: As others posters have so eloquently said, Tivo and DirecTV is a beautiful, symbiotic creation. There is no reason to consider anything else if you plan on using a PVR of any type (especially if you are a new subscriber due to the fantastic deals on equipment).
Comcast is, again, Satan's revenge. All the horror stories are true, the customer service is worse, and downtime a corporate mantra.
Signal loss is not an issue with properly connected and installed equipment. I lost signal once in Colorado during a record snowstorm that had some obscene rate of fall (in the inches per hour range). Otherwise, no outages other than a cable cut by a cable installer (no joke, he was installing in a neighbors unit and tried to split off of what he thought was an existing cable connection) and a ground that went bad.
Programming availability will be either the same or better than your local cable provider, depending on offerings, and usually more flexible in adding channels a la carte. Prices are better, and you can't get the sports packages anywhere else. I now live in Chicago (still no reception problems) and the only way to see hockey on TV with any regularity is with NHL Center Ice (The NFL Sunday ticket is also fantastic as you aren't stuck watching whatever game the local affiliate is shoving down your throat).
The decision is yours, but I have now been Satellite consistent for the last 3 years and couldn't be happier. I also pay about 10 bucks a month with local channels, tivo, and an upgraded package than my fiance does for basic cable.
To quote the article on the technology they are basing this rolling weapon on, the MDARS is "a robotic watchdog that patrols the Westminster lab's snow-covered back yard looking for "intruders." It drives several feet, eyes a parking sign and halts, apparently puzzled, until a human attendant reprograms MDARS to move on."
Shouldn't they wait for that little DARPA sponsored race in the desert to finish up before giving away all that R&D money? At least that way, the supply convoy won't freeze when it sees "Tehran 137km"
Converters are something else entirely, enjoying inherent efficiencies over inverters so there is little groundbreaking news there. As for non-standard (non-ATX) inverters, even the exeltech's, known for solid, reliable, super-clean, pure sine wave output of dc to ac power have a peak efficiency of 90%. What Toms and others like to quote is the real world, not claimed, performance.
Show me an ATX supply with those kind of efficiencies (not even the current active ps have those numbers) and I will be the first to buy at a mortal price. Having a rack of computers to feed, anything to reduce the food budget would be nice. Did I mention how appealing those PowerPC 970 chips are at 90nm? Power consumption in the low 20W range....that is efficiency.
Toms Hardware just did a roundup of 15 different, name brand power supplies here. To quote their conclusion page, "The efficiency factor of 72% is among the best in the test panel" when talking about one of the power supplies. Even Exeltech, considered some of the best inverters on the market, only see efficiencies in the 88% range, and they don't have to deal with that pesky ATX format. Maybe there has been a breakthrough the rest of us don't know about; if so, could you share?
Slashdot Mirror
Remember Mr. Hincapie's spectacular http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2006/apr06/roubaix06/index.php?id=s002crash at paris-roubaix last year? That was his aluminum steerer tube that failed. I too am a cyclist and worked in the industry for a time. The carbon fiber the industry has been getting is not the same as the mil-spec/aircraft grade stuff. As others have pointed out, there are many, many factors that go into materials failure, such as fatigue life, tensile strength, etc. Layup, curing, process, etc. all factor into the "performance" of carbon fiber and its potential to fail. Aluminum fails. Carbon fiber fails. One is not inherently superior to the other. Each has their advantages and disadvantages. Comparing a cycling fork to an airframe in inappropriate. Comparing the standards between the two industries is inappropriate; a torque wrench is considered a "hi-tech" tool in a bike shop. As for "so many cyclists have died," I'm going to get out the broom and call shenanigans. Mr. Zinn has a little http://www.velonews.com/tech/report/articles/3270.0.htmlwrite-up on the issue and my guess is that he would've addressed the issue of "so many" deaths. Being fairly immersed in the community, I've never personally heard of cyclist dying from a carbon fork failure, although other failures (such as a flat tire) have led to some serious accidents. Considering that cf is used on the crowns of some mountain bike suspension forks, my guess is any issues with strength and durability would be found out pretty quickly.
Every job that I have taken here in the US (in three different states) has had a period of time (varied in length, never shorter than 60 days) that as long as I fill out the paperwork of my basic information (name, address, etc), I am covered; no questions asked, and more often than not it was explicitly written on the paperwork that I couldn't be denied for any reason other than not filling out the paperwork by the designated date. The system is badly broken, but it's not keeping me (or you) chained to any desk.
Total yearly average electricity cost for New Jersey is $1,052.76.
My guess is that this means two things: Mr. Strizki uses more electricity than the "average" house, and if his house used conventional utilities is yearly bill would be much higher than the national average. I say this because ~85% of New Jersey homes are heated by something other than electricity, the vast majority of being natural gas and includes hot water heating (lost the hard link to the EIA page).
Also, the average Mid-Atlantic home uses 1,001 gallons of gasoline/year according to the EIA using their most recent statistics that are from calendar year 2001 (the year that the article is citing as the National average expenditure on gasoline was $1520 that year); considering that gas is now $2.32/gal in the Mid Atlantic region, his fuel costs would be significantly higher than the ~$1300 they were in 2001.
Total yearly energy costs for a household in New Jersey are now significantly higher than they were in 2001; the really rough numbers show that the current average New Jersey home gets much closer to that $4000 number than it did in 2001.
Fox did everything it could to kill this show.
First, they aired the episodes in a random order so there was no continuitySecond, they changed the time it was aired, then changed the day, all within a span of three weeks
Third, and most insulting, is that they assumed the demographic watching Firefly would switch to watching Fastlane, as some of the numbers from Nielson were similar
Sadly, I've had more people become "fans" of the show after the cancellattion by loaning them the DVDs, with most of them not being scifi fans.
I've had DirectTV for the last seven years, off and on, in five different states from Baltimore to San Francisco. While I'm not affiliated with any compnay, DirecTV now considers me a "VIP customer" and I'll share my experiences with both geosychronous and gopher based technology.
Two things first: As others posters have so eloquently said, Tivo and DirecTV is a beautiful, symbiotic creation. There is no reason to consider anything else if you plan on using a PVR of any type (especially if you are a new subscriber due to the fantastic deals on equipment).
Comcast is, again, Satan's revenge. All the horror stories are true, the customer service is worse, and downtime a corporate mantra.
Signal loss is not an issue with properly connected and installed equipment. I lost signal once in Colorado during a record snowstorm that had some obscene rate of fall (in the inches per hour range). Otherwise, no outages other than a cable cut by a cable installer (no joke, he was installing in a neighbors unit and tried to split off of what he thought was an existing cable connection) and a ground that went bad.
Programming availability will be either the same or better than your local cable provider, depending on offerings, and usually more flexible in adding channels a la carte. Prices are better, and you can't get the sports packages anywhere else. I now live in Chicago (still no reception problems) and the only way to see hockey on TV with any regularity is with NHL Center Ice (The NFL Sunday ticket is also fantastic as you aren't stuck watching whatever game the local affiliate is shoving down your throat).
The decision is yours, but I have now been Satellite consistent for the last 3 years and couldn't be happier. I also pay about 10 bucks a month with local channels, tivo, and an upgraded package than my fiance does for basic cable.
To quote the article on the technology they are basing this rolling weapon on, the MDARS is "a robotic watchdog that patrols the Westminster lab's snow-covered back yard looking for "intruders." It drives several feet, eyes a parking sign and halts, apparently puzzled, until a human attendant reprograms MDARS to move on."
Shouldn't they wait for that little DARPA sponsored race in the desert to finish up before giving away all that R&D money? At least that way, the supply convoy won't freeze when it sees "Tehran 137km"
ted stryker? ==stop calling me shirley==
Converters are something else entirely, enjoying inherent efficiencies over inverters so there is little groundbreaking news there. As for non-standard (non-ATX) inverters, even the exeltech's, known for solid, reliable, super-clean, pure sine wave output of dc to ac power have a peak efficiency of 90%. What Toms and others like to quote is the real world, not claimed, performance.
Show me an ATX supply with those kind of efficiencies (not even the current active ps have those numbers) and I will be the first to buy at a mortal price. Having a rack of computers to feed, anything to reduce the food budget would be nice. Did I mention how appealing those PowerPC 970 chips are at 90nm? Power consumption in the low 20W range....that is efficiency.
Toms Hardware just did a roundup of 15 different, name brand power supplies here. To quote their conclusion page, "The efficiency factor of 72% is among the best in the test panel" when talking about one of the power supplies. Even Exeltech, considered some of the best inverters on the market, only see efficiencies in the 88% range, and they don't have to deal with that pesky ATX format. Maybe there has been a breakthrough the rest of us don't know about; if so, could you share?