Interpreting your own numbers: Q1 2013 22.9 Q2 2013 19.5 That is a drop of 14.8% Q1 2014 26 Q2 2014 16.35 That is a drop of 37.1% The rate has down more than double from Q1 to Q2 between 2013 and 2014.
Comparing two different quarters doesn't tell you much - items like this sell at very different rates in different times of the year. You get much better insight comparing Q1s to other Q1s, etc. Which in the iPad's case is down, yes, but it's directly after the iPad's best quarter ever, and is a year after Apple had a particularly good quarter for iPads due to fulfilling a backlog (according to another post in this thread.)
So in my estimation - too early to claim "cooling," and definitely nowhere near "freezing."
Q2 2014 - 16.35 million.
Q2 2013 - 19.5 million.
Yes, that's a drop in sales.
But, it's after the following:
Q1 2014 (includes holiday shopping) - 26.0 million.
That's the all-time high sales volume for iPads in a quarter. 2nd best is Q1 2013 at 22.9, significantly less.
In my mind, the way to interpret these recent iPad sales numbers is that there was a huge buying spree for the holidays that somewhat satiated demand. (Only somewhat - Q2 2014 is still the 4th best quarter for sales.) These numbers don't suggest to me that the "fever is officially cooling." Maybe it is, but more than just one quarter of numbers is needed to show that.
Seriously... Why have the US banks not rolled Chip & Pin out yet? This wouldn't be an issue if they had, and it's almost certainly costing them a lot more in refunded transactions than a roll out would have.
It's not costing the banks anything - the costs of the refunded transactions are the responsibility of the merchants. I don't see any financial incentive for banks to do anything different. It'll have to be either a legal regulation or a consumer backlash, and I don't see either happening right away.
If I'm reading their 2012 year-end report correctly, JP Morgan getting fined $14 billion when they had $97 billion in revenue, $28 billion in pre-tax profit, and paid $7.6 billion in taxes, is like an individual getting fined $183k when they have an income of $1.268 million, expenses of $836k, an adjusted gross income of $375k, and $99k in taxes. Meaning after the fine, they'd still have $92k of disposable play money.
That's the sort of fine I wouldn't mind much.
Yeah, I'd say that JP Morgan's wrist stung for a few seconds. That'll teach 'em, right?
By the way, CMU has another project, NELL, that's been running since Jan 2012 doing the same thing, but with text. Its accumulated knowledge base is downloadable.
An example of knowledge it has gleaned: God died at age 14.
How much fuel did the Shuttle use to begin its return to Earth? I can't imagine it was very much. I imagine it would take even less to start a 20 kg weight on a reentry path. And I'm not assuming the target would be within range of "the" satellite, I'm assuming it would be in range of any one of multiple satellites.:-) But your point does bring to mind a problem - time delay. Reentry would be at an oblique angle. Just like it's not good for air superiority, it's not so good for mobile ground targets, yes? But devastating against stationary ones?
Of course, another reply brings up a good point - there's probably enough time spent in the atmosphere for a 10cm sphere of lead weighing 47 kg to reach it's terminal velocity of... uh... 491 m/s (?) at sea level. So 5.7 MJ of energy - about 1.4 kg of TNT equivalent. Or a 3000 lbs car at 145 mph. Unfortunate, but not devastating.
So yeah, on further thought, GGGP's suggestion of satellites as a replacement for aircraft probably isn't going to work, either with energy beam weapons, kinetic weapons, or explosives of some sort.
Oh, and bump that sphere of lead up to 1 meter diameter, which is 11,342 kg, and it's terminal velocity is 1555 m/s, yielding 13.7 kilotons of TNT equivalent, a bit more than Little Boy.
Assuming it doesn't burn up during reentry, of course.
Sigh... beam and other pure energy weapons are currently many years off. The energy requirements for these devices are ridiculous compared to our power supplies currently. Perhaps that will change and they'll become more efficient, or some new (fusion?) extremely high density/light weight power storage system will be found. These weapons won't matter until someone overcomes the power density of the high energy explosives currently used. Realistically, I don't think they'll ever really make it, the physics of it just don't work out without our learning something completely unexpected, which is also likely given how little we know about the universe at the moment
Don't discount satellite based kinetic energy weapons. (Although those probably won't do much for air superiority.) One kg of TNT contains (arbitrarily defined for purposes of explosive yields) 4.184 MJ of energy - one kg of dumb mass will have the 4.184 MJ of kinetic energy when traveling at 2892 m/s - about Mach 8.5. LEO satellites orbit at about 8,000 m/s, so it's doable. Consider the 20,000 kg Albert Einstein resupply craft launched in June - given the proper reentry configuration, at, say, 5000 m/s it was the equivalent of a 60 tons TNT bomb. The most powerful conventional bomb known to exist, the "FOAB," is estimated at 44 tons.
Launch a satellite with a telescope and a thousand 10kg reentry capable masses, and you have a weapon nobody can defend against unless they too have space capabilities. (And are unlikely to happen due to political reasons.)
Of course, none of that is as powerful as the GP's payload suggestion - ninjas.
I wonder what Professor Abelson's views are on the reality of exercising the powers of criminal prosecution, and the responsibilities of prosecutors to exhibit seykhel.
A courteous, polite response on Slashdot. Was not expecting that.:)
Haha, thanks. I find that courteous, polite responses are good at getting more courteous, polite responses - which I often find much more informative and insightful than a harsh, condescending or sarcastic response. I read and comment on Slashdot to learn, is all. Unfortunately, there are often initially some harsh, condescending or sarcastic responses that one has to deal with...
I guess the take-away from all this is that now, just like in "the old days" Thanshin talks about, an experienced builder can spec a reasonable gaming machine in a couple of hours - and that now, also just like in the old days, somebody new to DIY would still have to take a few days to learn what's what.
Yeah, sorry for the iMac comment. When I totaled up the component costs and hit $2000 I was taken aback enough to neglect to recall that the comment of yours I was responding to was in turn a response to a comment specifically about building a gaming rig.
You can likely shave off some of the cost by dealhunting as well assuming you aren't heavily time constrained.
Emphasis is mine. That was mostly the point of my spec-listing exercise. GP suggested a machine could be spec'ed out in an hour or two, but based on the feedback I'm getting, their methodology results in a pretty pricey setup. Seems like GGP was more accurate about the time it takes to put together an affordable but well performing computer. (However I'm not sure GGP was correct about it being easier to do back then than now. Seems like either way, a well thought out build will take a solid day or two of research?)
I built a new games machine last year. That had the second-fastest i7 at the time, 32GB of RAM, the GTX660 GPU you mentioned, a 200GB-ish SSD, 3TB hard drive and a few other bells and whistles. Even including $100 for Windows, it only cost $1500.
That sounds like a much more reasonable price. Where'd I go wrong? GP suggested taking just a step or two back from the top-of-the-line, so instead of picking a $1000 CPU, I picked a $570 one. GPU was under $300 instead of $1000. Etc. How'd you manage to put together a machine that sounds like every bit as fast or faster as the one I spec'ed out, but for $443 less?
Perhaps the GP's suggestion on how to spec a PC in an hour or two will result in a nice, but overpriced, machine? Perhaps GGP Thanshin's comment about being an informed builder of a PC taking more than a day is correct?
The specs you listed above are for a gaming computer. Your Mac is a nice machine and it can certainly play some games, but it wouldn't be ideal for that purpose.
Yes, you're right. I really wasn't even planning on mentioning the Mac at the end, I was trying out GP's suggestion that one could spec out a DIY computer in just a couple hours. So I followed their suggestions on how to pick parts as best I could, and I was rather surprised at the end price. Made me think of the stereotypically overpriced computer, the iMac. So that was a spontaneous addition at the end. My apologies. Anyway, yes, if I go back and redo the component list with cheaper parts, it will probably take me just another 25 minutes like before. Something with a sub-$200 CPU, sub-$100 motherboard, 4GB RAM, 256GB HDD, etc.? Probably under $800 for a headless system?
I just tried your method. Basically went to Newegg and sorted items by cost and picked the ones that were approximately in the ranges you specified.
CPU: $569.99 Intel Core i7-3930K. 327 reviews, 5/5 average. 3.2 GHz
Motherboard: $232.99 Asus Sabertooth Z77. 770 reviews, 4/5 average.
Oops, wrong socket.
Motherboard: $224.99 Asus P9X79 LE. 47 reviews, 4/5 average.
Video card: Hmm, lots there in the $700 - $1000 range. What about best rated in $200 to $300 range? $259.99 ASUS GTX660. 2GB. 128 reviews, 5/5 average. No idea how fast it is compared to other cards, though.
Power supply: No wattage spec listed for video card. Hmm. Highest rated in $100 - $200 range is: $109.99 Rosewill Capstone-750. 160 reviews, 5/5 average. Surely 750W is enough.
RAM: $79.99 G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3. 1725 reviews, 5/5. Times two, for 16 GB RAM.
SSD storage: $454.00 (!) Samsung 840 Pro Series 512 GB.
Cooling: Uh oh. Newegg lists four different categories for LGA 2011 socket compatible CPU coolers. Motherboard description has no more detail than "LGA 2011 socket." Time to research...
Case: Featured item is $59.99 Rosewill Challenger-US ATX mid-tower. Sure, why not. 321 reviews, 4/5.
Time spent: About 25 minutes, not counting whatever research on heatsinks I'd have to do.
Total cost: $2071.92. Holy cow!
Okay, make that a $225.99 Samsung 256 GB.
New total cost: $1843.91.
And I still don't have a monitor or CPU cooler. No idea whether the above items are compatible either.
IIRC, Dell's really nice 27" monitor is $999.
So $2842?
Still need keyboard and mouse...
Nah, forget it. As a computer software nerd, but not a PC building nerd, I'll just go with a 27" iMac for $1999. Granted only an i5 CPU and 8 GB, but comes with a great OS and a gorgeous 27" monitor. (BTO with i7, 16GB and 256GB SSD bumps the price to $2599.) It has a GTX 775M instead of GTX 660 - no idea which is faster. At least I know all the components will work together, and they're properly supported by the OS.
Not that I meant that as a criticism of the DIY route. It's just a hobby that's not for me.
If history is any indication, the answer is "No." Might as well have been asking during previous iPhone releases "Did Apple Make a Mistake By Continuing To Sell The Older Model At a Reduced Price?"
the iPhone 5C - almost certainly a low-margin device
How certain is "almost certain"? Considering the history of various sites gleefully posting the component cost list of any new iPhone and pointing out that the sum is a lot less than the sale price, I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone 5c has just as much a margin as Apple's flagship phone products. In the US - iPhone 5s unlocked price: $649. iPhone 5c unlocked price: $549. iPhone 4S unlocked price: $450.
Looks like your electricity and Internet are holding up. Got access to clean water and food? I just read a report that residents of Jamestown a bit north of you are being evacuated by air...
Longmont resident here, too, but on the south side. I've read that due to the St Vrain to our north and Left Hand Creek to the south, we're essentially cut off from the rest of Colorado for the moment. It's actually sunny right now, but I've also read that dams in the mountains will be doing controlled releases to reduce the risk of catastrophic failure, so river levels on the flats will remain high for a while. In the meantime, my wife's offices in Boulder are shut down, but she can VPN in from home without issue today. Yesterday the access was more spotty - electricity didn't appear to be very reliable.
Here's how he put it regarding the "disaster waiting to happen" thing.
We've been suffering a long drought in my hometown of Boulder, Colo., including unusually hot weather for the past few summers. The ground has been pretty hard, and we've had fires, which reduce the vegetation. It's been worrisome for some time, because we knew if it rained hard, we could be in trouble.
We're in trouble.
Unfortunately, there have been three deaths I've heard of. And there appears to be a lot of transportation infrastructure damage, in addition to homes and offices flooded.
One way is through receiving information being presented by somebody else. Books, teachers, and possibly IPads, are good for this.
Another way is by trying things yourself. Legos. A chemistry set. An electronics kit. A computer with an easily accessible programming interface. An iPad is not good at this. It doesn't need anything fancy, IMO - just support an iterative language, procs and funcs, math and strings and arrays and pointers and stuff, basic input from keyboard, maybe mouse and/or touch, and basic output of text and graphics (rects and circles, individual pixels.) Kids could then explore math, logic, control flow, they could create things... There's joy in creation that isn't present in being lectured to. Don't bother with OOP, memory management, windows/views. We want kids to do the programming equivalent of building with Legos, rather than build an actual rocket ship.
It's fast as hell. It can do 0 - 60 in 4 seconds despite weighing 4600 pounds. Electric motors operate at max torque at all RPMs.
Nitpick - max power at all RPMs. If a power source supplies a constant 10kw, the electric motor will of course operate at a constant power of 10kw. It should be obvious that 10kw equates to very different torque values a 1 rpm and 10,000 rpm.
The advantage of electric motors, which you allude to, is that the max power (150 kw, 200 hp, whatever) is available immediately, rather than only once engine revs climb high enough like in a petrol engine. (Although due to real-world esoteric reasons I don't fully understand, the efficiency with which that power is turned into motive force isn't constant throughout the rev range - max torque of many electric motors is actually not right at 0 rpm, but the concept is close enough to reality to illustrate the differences between electric motors and internal-combustion engines.)
So a Tesla Model S will essentially operate at 310 kw regardless of engine speed, while an ICE with the same peak power output will generate 310 kw only at one specific RPM, and will be less, sometimes a lot less, at all other speeds.
ps - why is one a "motor" and another an "engine?" What's the difference?
Slashdot Mirror
Interpreting your own numbers: Q1 2013 22.9 Q2 2013 19.5 That is a drop of 14.8% Q1 2014 26 Q2 2014 16.35 That is a drop of 37.1% The rate has down more than double from Q1 to Q2 between 2013 and 2014.
Comparing two different quarters doesn't tell you much - items like this sell at very different rates in different times of the year. You get much better insight comparing Q1s to other Q1s, etc. Which in the iPad's case is down, yes, but it's directly after the iPad's best quarter ever, and is a year after Apple had a particularly good quarter for iPads due to fulfilling a backlog (according to another post in this thread.)
So in my estimation - too early to claim "cooling," and definitely nowhere near "freezing."
Hmm. iPad sales:
Q2 2014 - 16.35 million.
Q2 2013 - 19.5 million.
Yes, that's a drop in sales.
But, it's after the following:
Q1 2014 (includes holiday shopping) - 26.0 million.
That's the all-time high sales volume for iPads in a quarter. 2nd best is Q1 2013 at 22.9, significantly less.
In my mind, the way to interpret these recent iPad sales numbers is that there was a huge buying spree for the holidays that somewhat satiated demand. (Only somewhat - Q2 2014 is still the 4th best quarter for sales.) These numbers don't suggest to me that the "fever is officially cooling." Maybe it is, but more than just one quarter of numbers is needed to show that.
Seriously... Why have the US banks not rolled Chip & Pin out yet? This wouldn't be an issue if they had, and it's almost certainly costing them a lot more in refunded transactions than a roll out would have.
It's not costing the banks anything - the costs of the refunded transactions are the responsibility of the merchants. I don't see any financial incentive for banks to do anything different. It'll have to be either a legal regulation or a consumer backlash, and I don't see either happening right away.
If I'm reading their 2012 year-end report correctly, JP Morgan getting fined $14 billion when they had $97 billion in revenue, $28 billion in pre-tax profit, and paid $7.6 billion in taxes, is like an individual getting fined $183k when they have an income of $1.268 million, expenses of $836k, an adjusted gross income of $375k, and $99k in taxes. Meaning after the fine, they'd still have $92k of disposable play money.
That's the sort of fine I wouldn't mind much.
Yeah, I'd say that JP Morgan's wrist stung for a few seconds. That'll teach 'em, right?
By the way, CMU has another project, NELL, that's been running since Jan 2012 doing the same thing, but with text. Its accumulated knowledge base is downloadable.
An example of knowledge it has gleaned: God died at age 14.
How much fuel did the Shuttle use to begin its return to Earth? I can't imagine it was very much. I imagine it would take even less to start a 20 kg weight on a reentry path. And I'm not assuming the target would be within range of "the" satellite, I'm assuming it would be in range of any one of multiple satellites. :-) But your point does bring to mind a problem - time delay. Reentry would be at an oblique angle. Just like it's not good for air superiority, it's not so good for mobile ground targets, yes? But devastating against stationary ones?
Of course, another reply brings up a good point - there's probably enough time spent in the atmosphere for a 10cm sphere of lead weighing 47 kg to reach it's terminal velocity of... uh... 491 m/s (?) at sea level. So 5.7 MJ of energy - about 1.4 kg of TNT equivalent. Or a 3000 lbs car at 145 mph. Unfortunate, but not devastating.
So yeah, on further thought, GGGP's suggestion of satellites as a replacement for aircraft probably isn't going to work, either with energy beam weapons, kinetic weapons, or explosives of some sort.
Oh, and bump that sphere of lead up to 1 meter diameter, which is 11,342 kg, and it's terminal velocity is 1555 m/s, yielding 13.7 kilotons of TNT equivalent, a bit more than Little Boy.
Assuming it doesn't burn up during reentry, of course.
But then... Why go flying?
Sigh ... beam and other pure energy weapons are currently many years off. The energy requirements for these devices are ridiculous compared to our power supplies currently. Perhaps that will change and they'll become more efficient, or some new (fusion?) extremely high density/light weight power storage system will be found. These weapons won't matter until someone overcomes the power density of the high energy explosives currently used. Realistically, I don't think they'll ever really make it, the physics of it just don't work out without our learning something completely unexpected, which is also likely given how little we know about the universe at the moment
Don't discount satellite based kinetic energy weapons. (Although those probably won't do much for air superiority.) One kg of TNT contains (arbitrarily defined for purposes of explosive yields) 4.184 MJ of energy - one kg of dumb mass will have the 4.184 MJ of kinetic energy when traveling at 2892 m/s - about Mach 8.5. LEO satellites orbit at about 8,000 m/s, so it's doable. Consider the 20,000 kg Albert Einstein resupply craft launched in June - given the proper reentry configuration, at, say, 5000 m/s it was the equivalent of a 60 tons TNT bomb. The most powerful conventional bomb known to exist, the "FOAB," is estimated at 44 tons.
Launch a satellite with a telescope and a thousand 10kg reentry capable masses, and you have a weapon nobody can defend against unless they too have space capabilities. (And are unlikely to happen due to political reasons.)
Of course, none of that is as powerful as the GP's payload suggestion - ninjas.
You know, I've been thinking recently
flyneye, you are hereby ordered to immediately report to the nearest Adjustment Center, reference 45323835.
With love,
Your all-seeing overlords
So if one were to grep the source code for "uid = 0" today, I assume that any instances found are legit?
I wonder what Professor Abelson's views are on the reality of exercising the powers of criminal prosecution, and the responsibilities of prosecutors to exhibit seykhel.
A courteous, polite response on Slashdot. Was not expecting that. :)
Haha, thanks. I find that courteous, polite responses are good at getting more courteous, polite responses - which I often find much more informative and insightful than a harsh, condescending or sarcastic response. I read and comment on Slashdot to learn, is all. Unfortunately, there are often initially some harsh, condescending or sarcastic responses that one has to deal with...
I guess the take-away from all this is that now, just like in "the old days" Thanshin talks about, an experienced builder can spec a reasonable gaming machine in a couple of hours - and that now, also just like in the old days, somebody new to DIY would still have to take a few days to learn what's what.
Yeah, sorry for the iMac comment. When I totaled up the component costs and hit $2000 I was taken aback enough to neglect to recall that the comment of yours I was responding to was in turn a response to a comment specifically about building a gaming rig.
You can likely shave off some of the cost by dealhunting as well assuming you aren't heavily time constrained.
Emphasis is mine. That was mostly the point of my spec-listing exercise. GP suggested a machine could be spec'ed out in an hour or two, but based on the feedback I'm getting, their methodology results in a pretty pricey setup. Seems like GGP was more accurate about the time it takes to put together an affordable but well performing computer. (However I'm not sure GGP was correct about it being easier to do back then than now. Seems like either way, a well thought out build will take a solid day or two of research?)
I built a new games machine last year. That had the second-fastest i7 at the time, 32GB of RAM, the GTX660 GPU you mentioned, a 200GB-ish SSD, 3TB hard drive and a few other bells and whistles. Even including $100 for Windows, it only cost $1500.
That sounds like a much more reasonable price. Where'd I go wrong? GP suggested taking just a step or two back from the top-of-the-line, so instead of picking a $1000 CPU, I picked a $570 one. GPU was under $300 instead of $1000. Etc. How'd you manage to put together a machine that sounds like every bit as fast or faster as the one I spec'ed out, but for $443 less?
Perhaps the GP's suggestion on how to spec a PC in an hour or two will result in a nice, but overpriced, machine? Perhaps GGP Thanshin's comment about being an informed builder of a PC taking more than a day is correct?
The specs you listed above are for a gaming computer. Your Mac is a nice machine and it can certainly play some games, but it wouldn't be ideal for that purpose.
Yes, you're right. I really wasn't even planning on mentioning the Mac at the end, I was trying out GP's suggestion that one could spec out a DIY computer in just a couple hours. So I followed their suggestions on how to pick parts as best I could, and I was rather surprised at the end price. Made me think of the stereotypically overpriced computer, the iMac. So that was a spontaneous addition at the end. My apologies. Anyway, yes, if I go back and redo the component list with cheaper parts, it will probably take me just another 25 minutes like before. Something with a sub-$200 CPU, sub-$100 motherboard, 4GB RAM, 256GB HDD, etc.? Probably under $800 for a headless system?
I just tried your method. Basically went to Newegg and sorted items by cost and picked the ones that were approximately in the ranges you specified.
CPU: $569.99 Intel Core i7-3930K. 327 reviews, 5/5 average. 3.2 GHz
Motherboard: $232.99 Asus Sabertooth Z77. 770 reviews, 4/5 average.
Oops, wrong socket.
Motherboard: $224.99 Asus P9X79 LE. 47 reviews, 4/5 average.
Video card: Hmm, lots there in the $700 - $1000 range. What about best rated in $200 to $300 range? $259.99 ASUS GTX660. 2GB. 128 reviews, 5/5 average. No idea how fast it is compared to other cards, though.
Power supply: No wattage spec listed for video card. Hmm. Highest rated in $100 - $200 range is: $109.99 Rosewill Capstone-750. 160 reviews, 5/5 average. Surely 750W is enough. RAM: $79.99 G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3. 1725 reviews, 5/5. Times two, for 16 GB RAM.
SSD storage: $454.00 (!) Samsung 840 Pro Series 512 GB.
Cooling: Uh oh. Newegg lists four different categories for LGA 2011 socket compatible CPU coolers. Motherboard description has no more detail than "LGA 2011 socket." Time to research...
Case: Featured item is $59.99 Rosewill Challenger-US ATX mid-tower. Sure, why not. 321 reviews, 4/5.
Time spent: About 25 minutes, not counting whatever research on heatsinks I'd have to do.
Total cost: $2071.92. Holy cow!
Okay, make that a $225.99 Samsung 256 GB.
New total cost: $1843.91.
And I still don't have a monitor or CPU cooler. No idea whether the above items are compatible either.
IIRC, Dell's really nice 27" monitor is $999.
So $2842?
Still need keyboard and mouse...
Nah, forget it. As a computer software nerd, but not a PC building nerd, I'll just go with a 27" iMac for $1999. Granted only an i5 CPU and 8 GB, but comes with a great OS and a gorgeous 27" monitor. (BTO with i7, 16GB and 256GB SSD bumps the price to $2599.) It has a GTX 775M instead of GTX 660 - no idea which is faster. At least I know all the components will work together, and they're properly supported by the OS.
Not that I meant that as a criticism of the DIY route. It's just a hobby that's not for me.
the iPhone 5C - almost certainly a low-margin device
How certain is "almost certain"? Considering the history of various sites gleefully posting the component cost list of any new iPhone and pointing out that the sum is a lot less than the sale price, I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone 5c has just as much a margin as Apple's flagship phone products. In the US - iPhone 5s unlocked price: $649. iPhone 5c unlocked price: $549. iPhone 4S unlocked price: $450.
Looks like your electricity and Internet are holding up. Got access to clean water and food? I just read a report that residents of Jamestown a bit north of you are being evacuated by air...
The Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait has some video he posted yesterday.
Here's how he put it regarding the "disaster waiting to happen" thing.
We've been suffering a long drought in my hometown of Boulder, Colo., including unusually hot weather for the past few summers. The ground has been pretty hard, and we've had fires, which reduce the vegetation. It's been worrisome for some time, because we knew if it rained hard, we could be in trouble.
We're in trouble.
Unfortunately, there have been three deaths I've heard of. And there appears to be a lot of transportation infrastructure damage, in addition to homes and offices flooded.
There are multiple ways of learning.
One way is through receiving information being presented by somebody else. Books, teachers, and possibly IPads, are good for this.
Another way is by trying things yourself. Legos. A chemistry set. An electronics kit. A computer with an easily accessible programming interface. An iPad is not good at this. It doesn't need anything fancy, IMO - just support an iterative language, procs and funcs, math and strings and arrays and pointers and stuff, basic input from keyboard, maybe mouse and/or touch, and basic output of text and graphics (rects and circles, individual pixels.) Kids could then explore math, logic, control flow, they could create things... There's joy in creation that isn't present in being lectured to. Don't bother with OOP, memory management, windows/views. We want kids to do the programming equivalent of building with Legos, rather than build an actual rocket ship.
This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine and more than a thousand times faster than a dental drill.
ORLY?
Obligatory xkcd: (from today, no less) http://xkcd.com/1257/
Here's a highly moderated comment on why, from 2004:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=95064&cid=8153826
Dang. Learned another new thing today. Thanks.
Awesome, thanks for that - those are some of the "real-world esoteric reasons I don't fully understand" that I mentioned in my previous comment.
Nitpick - max power at all RPMs. If a power source supplies a constant 10kw, the electric motor will of course operate at a constant power of 10kw. It should be obvious that 10kw equates to very different torque values a 1 rpm and 10,000 rpm.
The advantage of electric motors, which you allude to, is that the max power (150 kw, 200 hp, whatever) is available immediately, rather than only once engine revs climb high enough like in a petrol engine. (Although due to real-world esoteric reasons I don't fully understand, the efficiency with which that power is turned into motive force isn't constant throughout the rev range - max torque of many electric motors is actually not right at 0 rpm, but the concept is close enough to reality to illustrate the differences between electric motors and internal-combustion engines.)
So a Tesla Model S will essentially operate at 310 kw regardless of engine speed, while an ICE with the same peak power output will generate 310 kw only at one specific RPM, and will be less, sometimes a lot less, at all other speeds.
ps - why is one a "motor" and another an "engine?" What's the difference?