Energy contained in the air velocity is proportional to density times the velocity squared, known as the velocity pressure. Depending on how your changes in direction are being made, the pressure loss at each 90 deg turn can be anywhere between 0.1 times the velocity pressure to 3 or 4 times the velocity pressure. More important in an underfloor supply plenum than 90 deg turns is the effect of blockages from cables, etc.
Of course you are right, and thanks, but since the overall discussion was at a pretty low technical level I kept it simple (maybe too simple?). Although I'm familiar with such things as velocity pressure (Vp), static pressure (Sp), laminar flow, pitot tubes, frictional losses, radii of turns, transitional losses, capture velocities, etc., there was only so much ASHRAE technical stuff I could put into a one paragraph/. reply and have it still make sense.
But you are certainly right - it is a lot more complicated that just saying that 90 degree turns suck energy out of the airflow.
PS - do you have any stats or research that has examined the environmental effects associated with large platforms in the sea, such as oil platforms? Would that research be valid in this situation, given the large sea floor footprint that such platforms possess, a trait not shared by a floating powerstation tethered to an anchor?
Oh, you don't REALLY want to use the environmental record of offshore drilling platforms to bolster your arguement that the power stations won't have an effect, do you? I can't imagine a worse example for you to have chosen...but of course you missed the point entirely that there simply is no data to say the power platforms would be harmless as you insisted. And that INCLUDES your pseudo-data that because they would only take up 0.0000037% (or something like that) of the world's total ocean area they just haaaaave to be harmeless. What a ridiculous statistic THAT was. How embarrasing.
Oh, and as for my "advertizing" misspelling, not everyone is as provincial as you to assume that the AMERICAN way to spell is the only way. How embarrasing for you, again! You must get out more often - broadens the mind, don'tcha know. Moron.
the first is that turbulence underneath the floor can turn the directed kinetic energy of the air into heat...this can be a real drag
You gotta be kidding me. Do you really think the heat generated from turbulence would even be MEASURABLE? If it were as you say we could just heat our houses this winter with fans - wouldn't that be nice.
It soens't matter what the airflow looks like. If you put X cubic feet of air per second into something at one end, you're damn well going to get X cubic feet of air per second out at the other end. (Or it's going to explode, or has a leak.)
All that can happen that you might need a larger fan to push the same amount of air, and it might exit the other end more spread out, instead of in a stream.
Right, however your simple solution of a "larger fan" may translate into $200,000 air handler and $75,000 yeary operating cost vs a $100,000 system and $10,000 yearly operating costs with an efficient duct system.
If, however, this is an issue you can duct the air in either 2 45 degree or three 30 degree bends. This all but eliminates the offending backpressure
Not true at all. It lessens it, but does not elliminate it. In fact, of more importance is the radius of the turns. A 90 degree turn with a radius of 4 duct diameters is more efficient that two 45 degree turns with radii of 1 duct diameter.
As long as the space under the floor has a negative or positive atmosphere I can't see how somme turns have anything to do with the air flow.
Air has mass that is being moved through the system. If you have a straight duct run you only have to accelerate the air from zero fps to the duct velocity (Vd) once. If the air makes just three 90 degree turns you have to accelerate the same air from zero to Vd four times and that takes six times the energy (yes, six, there are other losses as well). That's a LOT of extra energy.
Torturous air paths in the ventilations system increase the initial and operating costs of the air handling system as well as decreasing the cooling capacity. The air doesn't even have to be in a duct or plenum. Every time it changes direction, even in an open room, the air handling system has to supply the energy to move it. This makes the linearity of the air path very important. (Note that this does not apply for the air inside equipment where turbulent air is desirable for good heat transfer).
So yes, you are right technically - as long as you have negative pressure at the collection point the system will work. The issue is whether you pay $5,000/year for that negative pressure or $30,000/yr.
Oh, no doubt about it. You could have your site with.tv tld and most people wouldn't even assotiate it with Tuvalu and you could put whatever you like on it and host it in China or Cuba or Venezuela.
Except that YOU live in the US. I think the rationalizaton that it would be easy to circumvent the US law is wrong. You create your blog in the US at your keyboard and then just post it offshore. I wouldn't bet my next 10 to 15 years of freedom on the legal theory that the US wouldn't have jurisdiction. I imagine the prosecutor and judge would both have a good laugh when someone tries to use it as a defense. It would be a lot like saying, "Yo, Judge. Yes, I robbed the bank in the US, but I kept the money in the Cayman Islands - you have no jurisdiction!"
Try to think about the size of a wind turbine in comparison to the SURFACE AREA OF ANY MAJOR OCEAN. Seriously, for a just a moment.
Do you work for the Outdoor Advertizing Council? I ask because that has been their arguement for no restrictions on billboard placement for years. How can anyone object to billbords in scenic locations, they ask, because they take up less than one tenth of one percent of the available view.
Here is some real reality as opposed to PR reality. These platforms will be placed where power is needed (isnt that obvious?) and no one needs power in the middle of the North Atlantic or North Pacific. Power is needed where people are and that is along the coasts.
These things may be a good idea, I don't have enough information to make up my mind about them yet, but one thing I know is that using false statistics to justify them on a square meter basis vs the entire planet's ocean area is useless.
Let's say you want to have a total of 1000 platforms, each with 4 turbines. This would require (approx) 0.00000322% of the surfacea area of the Pacific. It is unlikely that such turbines would have a measurable effect on global weather patterns.
They used to say that about jet contrails' effect on global weather patterns too, and look how wrong that was. Maybe it would be hard to effect global weather patterns directly with these things, but I can see them effecting the local marine life and ecology such as coral reefs, fish spawning grounds or whale migratory or mating patterns (shadows, electric fields, noise, etc). And then I can easily see how the loss of coral reefs, or a decline in fish stocks or the whale population COULD have global consequences. The platforms also might be good for these things but we don't know that either.
Again, I'm not saying these are a bad idea, only that we don't have enough information yet to be assured that they are harmless. The parent post had a reasonable concern about possible negative effects of these platforms and your off the cuff dismissal of even the POSSIBILITY of negative effects is missplaced.
They are also prone to directional issues. A teammate of mine slammed on the brakes hard in a race to avoid a crash and the lateral forces on his fishtailing rear wheel snapped his Zipp 303 (a carbon rimmed bicycle wheel) in half. The wheel was stronger than an aluminum rim in one direction, but weak under minor lateral forces that an Al rim would easily have weathered
You are making an error. Composite materials do not have inherent problems with directional forces. The wheel your friend used may have had lateral strength problems, but the composite itself was not at fault. The composite wheel was DESIGNED to be weak laterally to save weight. The weave of the composite material was purposefully adjusted to give strength only in the rotational direction. That's a design problem, not a materials problem. If your friend ordered an aluminum wheel that was slotted to save weight but was weak laterally as a result would you blame "aluminum" if it failed? No, you would rightfully blame the design(er).
...a cell phone detector can only count cell phones. For example, a bus with 18 people using cellphones on it is not 18 cars. A video camera, on the other hand, can tell you exactly how many cars are on the road, and what types and sizes, and their speeds.
This is insightful? The system described isn't interested in how many cellphones are being used on a road so it can't be "fooled" by 18 people in a bus. It is interested in how far cellphones travel in a given amount of time. A cellphone taking 15 minutes to jump from cell tower A to B to C to D along a specific roadway has a definite rate of travel associated with it. No one really cares how many vehicles are on the road, only how fast traffic is moving. TV cameras do allow counting cars, but counting cars was just a way to estimate traffic flow because the number is cars is usually inversely proportional to the speed of traffic. In other words, why estimate traffic flow by counting cars when you can directly measure speed by tracking cell phone movement? Five or thirty cell phones traveling quickly from tower A to B and then sitting for 30 minutes in tower C's coverge area indicates a traffic jam. Who cares if they are in a bus?
The constitution applies to Federal laws, and perhaps state and local ones in some cases. It has no applicability to schools, employers, or anything else.
Well, not quite true. Constitutional requirements apply to government, and that includes all federal, state and local governments all the time. I'm no constitutional scholar, but I think you are also mistaken about the Constitution not being "law". It is the Law of the Land. If it were not law how could the courts rule on the constitutional issues since courts only deal in law by definition.
People do have constitutional rights in most schools since most schools are government institutions. The major exceptions are a)private schools including religious schools, and b)that most students are minors The courts have ruled that minor children have less (but still not zero) constitutional protections. Hence town curfews can be legal for minors but not for adults.
Of course there are new exceptions to our constitutional rights cropping up all the time. Until recently it was accepted that even non-citizens were protected by the Constitution when in this country, but the Bush administration has decided they are not. Also the Constitution applied on US military bases outside the US but the Bush administration did away with that as well in order to deny legal representation to prisoners at Quantonimo (and other places) and perhaps even to torture them with impunity. Fortunately the courts have reversed the no legal counsel rule while the torture issue is still, unbelievably, undecided and being fought by the Bush White House. Additionally, in constitution-nullifying related action, the Bush administration has privatized portions of the US military by taking US special forces members, asking them to retire and them re-hiring them as private contractors. Since private contractors are not technically government agents bound by constitutional restraints nor the Geneva Conventions nor US law when outside the country they are therefore free to do anything they want. You can thank your Attorney General Roberto Gonzales for rationalizing those travesties. Right now they only operate outside the US, but let there be another terrorist attack and right-wing para-military squads disguised as private security forces may very well be operating in YOUR neighborhood.
Sorry, I'm off on a rant here, but I think it is important to know exactly what your constitutional rights are and not to inadvertently give them away by thinking that state and local governments are not restrained to act constitutionally. IMO the Constitution is under the greatest threat since it was written and I hope and pray that the harm being done to it will be corrected by future administrations and prohibited by legislation.
You better be careful with your "guns out" talk - you'll have the secret service at your door.
Greed, avarice, hubris, misrepresentation and manipulation are not crimes. You diminish the power of your argument by being so hyperbolic. The conflict of interest Frist is being investigated for is not a crime - only a violation of house rules (the INSIDER TRADING is the crime), and even then he is not charged, only under investigation. Also, not telling all you know in front of a Grand Jury is not a crime unless you commit perjury by keeping your mouth shut.
I'm sick and tired of these people too, but shouting easy-to-deflect absurd charges is not the way to get rid of them. I understand your outrage at what these people do, but you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting them put in jail simply for being incompetent greedy jerks. A reasoned, rational argument carries much more weight than a hyperbolic irrational rant.
Especially right now, while this government is run by people under indictment for suppressing info, attacking legitimate dissenters, publishing lies unchallenged by most media, violating conflict-of-interest restraints on commercial communications, secret deals to launder money for illegal advertising.
You are jumping the gun. At the present time the only major indictment for a government official is for violating Texas election laws and money-laundering (DeLay). Investigations are on-going for insider trading (Frist), for perjury and interfering with an investigation (Rove, Libby and others) and for disclosure of the identity of an undercover CIA agent (Libby, Rove, Cheney and others)...and of course conspiracy in the last two instances. I suspect Libby, with his stupid "Aspens" letter to Judith Miller, is also facing indictment for interfering with a witness.
[If I can insert an editorial comment here: How can anyone so stupid as to write that Aspens letter be in such a resposnible position in our government?]
All the other indictments you mention above (suppressing info, attacking legitimate dissenters, publishing lies unchallenged by most media, violating conflict-of-interest restraints on commercial communications [whatever that is]) are not crimes. Amoral, reprehensible and deserving of being thrown out of office perhaps, but not crimes. Of course the Bush administration was also found in violation of the prohibition against government-sponsored propoganda for their Medicare "news reports", but no one is going to be indicted for that.
I'm torn between marveling at the enginuity behind this and pointing out that this is really bluring the line between 'computer' and 'glorified watch'. Even the wikipedia article it links to describes this as a clockwork mechanism.
First, I wouldn't rely on Wikipedia as a definitive source for anything, but that is another topic.
Second, just because a device uses a clockwork mechanism doesn't mean it is a clock. For example, the fire-control computers used on ships in WWII used clockwork mechanicanism to accurately predict the fall of shells and no one denies that they were computers.
It seems to me that the difference between a "watch" and a "computer" is that the watch doesn't calculate or predict anything, it just tells you what time it is now, while a computer does predict and calculate based on variable input. This device could clearly be used to predict or calculate the positions of the planets, sun and moon in the past or the future. Seems pretty obviously a computer to me.
The problem is that this isn't a press release, it's (intended to be) an unbiased source of information. The difference lies in knowing where a particular party's conflict of interest lies.
Surely you don't think PR firms are limited to press releases. Any PR firm worth its fees will tell you that they are not biased, but are just trying to get the truth out so people can make up their minds. I am sure PR forms feel perfectly at home and well within their rights to contribute to Wikipedia. You and I may not agree, but let's face it - unless the words are illegal (defamatory, etc) they can do it.
I think we are on the same side here (PR hacks rank even higher than corporate lawyers on my "most despised" list), except that you don't seem to recognize the subtlety and deviousness of good PR. Good PR can flavor the perception of the situation just by the language they use to describe it. Think you can spot it? Probably not unless it is poorly done. Unfortunately good PR is not lying and neither is it illegal. It is deceptive, but good PR makes sure the misconception lies in the head of the listener and not in the words of the speaker. No newspaper is going to run an expose on a PR firm expressing its clients' opinions even if it is on Wikipedia.
As to PR professionals, surreptitiously editing without disclosing their affiliation might not be such a good idea. If they get caught, Wikipedia's profile is such that such interference would likely be of interest to the mainstream media, and would probably embarrass the company more than any changes to the article would be worth.
I hear what you are saying but neither Wikipedia nor PR is of much interest to the mainstream media. Can you see the headline: "PR Firm Caught Writing Article Favorable to Clients". Not exactly news is it? If you are placing your faith in the MSM as a control of PR in Wikipedia then it is probably wishfull thinking.
Even if a PR firm was discovered editing Wikipedia I seriously doubt they would be embarrassed. After all they make their living by knowing how to lie by telling the truth and they would only tell the truth in their edits. Selected truth for sure, but the truth nevertheless. Even if discovered they would always be able to defend their edits - its what they do for a living.
In fact, I'd be greatly surprised if many, many Wikipedia articles have not been written by or at least edited by PR hacks.
I hate to come across as an asshat, but could everyone please stop referring to Wikipedia as "Wiki". It is a wiki, one of many. It's like referring to Slashdot as "News site".
Well, technically "Wiki" would be a valid shortening of Wikipedia and is identifiable as such by the capitalization. If people were calling it "wiki" that would be another story. Hey, you're the one who wanted to get specific with the language.... (grin)
"on one entry, me and several friends have inside sources (one being the entry) and when we try to correct it, or correct misinformation that has been posted, the sites owner locks it down or chooses the misinformation over what is even know as fact. starting to distrust information found on there due to personal experience."
I agree with a previous poster that given the quality of information contained in it, Wikipedia is only good for trivia and not to be trusted for any serious reference. If the quote above (from a Wiki contributor) is any indication of the writing quality of the contributors I don't even want to use it for trivia.
What is of most concern for me is the amount of information lifted from Wiki articles and then inserted into other "informative" web sites. These sites then appear to independently verify the original Wiki information. Of course it is really all fruit of the same poisoned tree, but unidentifiable as such. Misinformation and poor quality articles on Wiki reache out and contaminate much more than the Wiki site itself.
Especially if this is a state by state law, it will become a patchwork of licenses here and there, unenforceable and the seller's will just relocate their "location" on ebay to a friendly state.... Most of the fraud done on ebay are by low volume sellers who build up their feedback to somewhere in the double-digits and then pull either a high-priced scam, or probably more likely a dump a bunch of lots (medium priced, say computers for a low price) and never deliver.... Nowadays, when government usually do something (and other local governments want to be fast on the heels to follow), it's not for the good of the people, it's about control and increasing the revenue stream
You are missing the purpose of licensing and bonding consignent sellers. It is not to protect the buyers on Ebay from fraud, it is to protect the local customers who hire the auction resellers. As for it being a revenue stream for local government, I seriously doubt that a $35 fee is going to do much more than cover the costs of administering the licensing process. I think consumer protection laws are a good thing, and if a local consumer protection law forces a fly-by-night business to close up or move to another state to avoid it then I say good riddance.
Anyway, your contention that this will cause the honest resellers to move to a regulation-free state just doesn't make much sense -1)move to avoid a $35 fee? get serious, and 2)how could a store re-selling local goods for local people move to another state?
200 people firing flaming arrows at your single ship all at once -or- 200 people with expensive polished bronze plates, hoping for no cloud cover, working in complete unison, hoping your ship doesn't move even slightly, aiming a beam of light which will catch one part of your ship on fire after 10 minutes of focus.
Easy choice but let me state the situation more accurately. I'm a ship's captain and I have the choice of facing flaming arrows or an invisible heat beam. The arrows I can see, can easily put out with buckets of water (half miss the ship anyway), and can easily reduce the effectiveness of by simply wetting the ship down...or...
A heat beam that I can't see, burns my firefighting sailors when they try to put it out, sets my ship afire in ten minutes no matter what I do, is weilded by 200 disciplined troops that have been practicing for months to burn ships (and love doing it), is being used in the Mediterranean where there is always a blindingly hot sun and never any clouds, and for which I have no defence? Hmmmmm, I think I'll take the fire arrows please.
Or he would have realized that simply firing flaming arrows at the ships would have been a HELLUVA lot more effective, MUCH more efficient, and makes you MUCH less obvious and vulnerable to the enemy.
Oh I don't think that is necessarily so at all. You are making the oft repeated error of assuming that the ancient Greeks and Romans were not as smart as we are. I am sure the Romans navy had well established procedures to deal with fire arrows and could put them out pretty easily. You are making the incorrect assumption that they would be too stupid to throw water on the arrows that hit the ships. A totally new weapon such as the "death beam" would make it MUCH harder to put out the fires, first because the Romans might not have even realized they were under attack until it was too late; second, because the areas being heated were much larger than a flaming arrow would heat, making the fire harder to extinguish; and lastly, as the MIT students discovered, the area surrounding the beam gets too hot for people to stand in - limiting the ability of the sailors to douse the fires with buckets of water.
Sooooo. I think you get the point that you saying that "Archimedes must not have been too smart" because you came up with simple way to set the ships on fire that would never have worked is a lot like the family dog thinking the humans aren't to smart because they don't know that the dog dish refills itself.
Such is not the case with Verizon POTS service. You can get a dialtone even during a blackout.
Don't count on it. My Verizon phone went dead immediately in the New York blackout a few years ago. The POTS phones in other parts of the city that worked for a while went dead after only an hour or so as Verizon's backup batteries went dead. You say Cablevision doesn't guarantee you phone service in blackouts while Verizon does? Just try to find that in your contract with Verizon, neither do they.
Incidently, cell phones, as well as working in blackouts when VOIP or POTS do not, provide enough light to navigate pitch black stairwells just by the light from their LCD screens. Try that with a plain old POTS phone.
Come on, people, think about it. RFID on everything? It's not going to happen. The statistical data gained would be horribly inaccurate because nobody would ever know whether or not you're actually the one wearing the shoes. For instance, what if they were a gift for somebody 3,000 miles away?
Why is everyone thinking advertising and marketing here!? That's the least of my worries. I see this as the greatest boon to police-state surveillance ever conceived.
Ok, you buy that pair of shoes with your credit card in NY nd the RFID becomes associated with you. You then ship them 3,000 miles to Seattle and the police RFID detectors pick them up. The police know you can't be in two places at once, but now they are aware of a known associate of yours 3,000 miles away. You aren't under investigation you say? well so what - maybe your friend is or maybe the Feds are just logging data to see if they can find some suspicious correlations.
But suppose you keep the sneakers for yourself in NY. The FBI street scanners detect you and your shoes so they know what part of town you hang out in, but wait, there are other sets of RFID tags that are frequently near yours so now the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, FBI, TSA and local police (our new information sharing poicies at work) know who your associates are. Maybe a real human doesn't know it yet, but the computer does. But wait! your RFID tags (or one of your friend's tags) were on 42nd Street at the same time there was an anti-war rally! You and your associates are now suspected as being unpatriotic subversives by the FBI data-mining bot. Bing! Your name shows up on a list of potential subversives and all your RFID data is upgraded from "not interesting" to "suspicious".
The scarry part is that all this can be done automatically with inexpensive street scanners and data-mining robots looking for "suspicious" activity or associations.
Getting a targeted ad from NIKE is the least of my worries about RFID surveillance.
I mean really. Right now, anyone can go through my garbage
Sure, but its hard to do. With RFID the garbage scanning vehicle can simply drive down the street inspecting the content of *everyone's* garbage. What if the police find your trash has way too many syringes and no insulin bottles? Are you now a suspected drug user? What about boxes of small glassine envelopes that are so handy for stamp collecting and for drug dealing - do you go on the suspected drug dealer list at the police maintain because you use a lot of them?
Oh, but you are going to microwave or EMP all your trash (many people on/. seem to think this is a realistic solution), but of course the garbage scanning vehicle notes that YOUR trash has no RFIDs and you become a prime terrorist suspect because terrorists would surely destroy their RFIDs.
3. Perscriptions. Your employer probably already knows if you're on the company insurance plan, and your insurance company certainly knows unless you self pay. But again, insurance co. would love to know as much as possible about you, legal or not. They're not going to tell you they went through your trash.
Many people, fearing retaliation from their employers, often see doctors outside of their health plan . I've done this myself. Examples are drug counseling or treatment, psychological counseling, anti-depressants, treatments for STD, AIDS drugs, etc. Although in theory there is some legal protection against health data collected by company health plans being used by the company for other reasons, in reality it is a very thin wall (for example do you turn your doctor bills over to your HR department for procesing?). However, we all know that once a company discovers a bad behavior in an employee it then can easily trump up some other reason to get rid of them. Even the anonymity of going to a non-company doctor goes away if your trash can be scanned for med-relted RFID tags.
Slashdot Mirror
Energy contained in the air velocity is proportional to density times the velocity squared, known as the velocity pressure. Depending on how your changes in direction are being made, the pressure loss at each 90 deg turn can be anywhere between 0.1 times the velocity pressure to 3 or 4 times the velocity pressure. More important in an underfloor supply plenum than 90 deg turns is the effect of blockages from cables, etc.
/. reply and have it still make sense.
Of course you are right, and thanks, but since the overall discussion was at a pretty low technical level I kept it simple (maybe too simple?). Although I'm familiar with such things as velocity pressure (Vp), static pressure (Sp), laminar flow, pitot tubes, frictional losses, radii of turns, transitional losses, capture velocities, etc., there was only so much ASHRAE technical stuff I could put into a one paragraph
But you are certainly right - it is a lot more complicated that just saying that 90 degree turns suck energy out of the airflow.
My, my, techy ain't we?
PS - do you have any stats or research that has examined the environmental effects associated with large platforms in the sea, such as oil platforms? Would that research be valid in this situation, given the large sea floor footprint that such platforms possess, a trait not shared by a floating powerstation tethered to an anchor?
Oh, you don't REALLY want to use the environmental record of offshore drilling platforms to bolster your arguement that the power stations won't have an effect, do you? I can't imagine a worse example for you to have chosen...but of course you missed the point entirely that there simply is no data to say the power platforms would be harmless as you insisted. And that INCLUDES your pseudo-data that because they would only take up 0.0000037% (or something like that) of the world's total ocean area they just haaaaave to be harmeless. What a ridiculous statistic THAT was. How embarrasing.
Oh, and as for my "advertizing" misspelling, not everyone is as provincial as you to assume that the AMERICAN way to spell is the only way. How embarrasing for you, again! You must get out more often - broadens the mind, don'tcha know. Moron.
the first is that turbulence
underneath the floor can turn the directed kinetic energy
of the air into heat...this can be a real drag
You gotta be kidding me. Do you really think the heat generated from turbulence would even be MEASURABLE? If it were as you say we could just heat our houses this winter with fans - wouldn't that be nice.
It soens't matter what the airflow looks like. If you put X cubic feet of air per second into something at one end, you're damn well going to get X cubic feet of air per second out at the other end. (Or it's going to explode, or has a leak.)
All that can happen that you might need a larger fan to push the same amount of air, and it might exit the other end more spread out, instead of in a stream.
Right, however your simple solution of a "larger fan" may translate into $200,000 air handler and $75,000 yeary operating cost vs a $100,000 system and $10,000 yearly operating costs with an efficient duct system.
If, however, this is an issue you can duct the air in either 2 45 degree or three 30 degree bends. This all but eliminates the offending backpressure
Not true at all. It lessens it, but does not elliminate it. In fact, of more importance is the radius of the turns. A 90 degree turn with a radius of 4 duct diameters is more efficient that two 45 degree turns with radii of 1 duct diameter.
As long as the space under the floor has a negative or positive atmosphere I can't see how somme turns have anything to do with the air flow.
Air has mass that is being moved through the system. If you have a straight duct run you only have to accelerate the air from zero fps to the duct velocity (Vd) once. If the air makes just three 90 degree turns you have to accelerate the same air from zero to Vd four times and that takes six times the energy (yes, six, there are other losses as well). That's a LOT of extra energy.
Torturous air paths in the ventilations system increase the initial and operating costs of the air handling system as well as decreasing the cooling capacity. The air doesn't even have to be in a duct or plenum. Every time it changes direction, even in an open room, the air handling system has to supply the energy to move it. This makes the linearity of the air path very important. (Note that this does not apply for the air inside equipment where turbulent air is desirable for good heat transfer).
So yes, you are right technically - as long as you have negative pressure at the collection point the system will work. The issue is whether you pay $5,000/year for that negative pressure or $30,000/yr.
Oh, no doubt about it. You could have your site with .tv tld and most people wouldn't even assotiate it with Tuvalu and you could put whatever you like on it and host it in China or Cuba or Venezuela.
Except that YOU live in the US. I think the rationalizaton that it would be easy to circumvent the US law is wrong. You create your blog in the US at your keyboard and then just post it offshore. I wouldn't bet my next 10 to 15 years of freedom on the legal theory that the US wouldn't have jurisdiction. I imagine the prosecutor and judge would both have a good laugh when someone tries to use it as a defense. It would be a lot like saying, "Yo, Judge. Yes, I robbed the bank in the US, but I kept the money in the Cayman Islands - you have no jurisdiction!"
Try to think about the size of a wind turbine in comparison to the SURFACE AREA OF ANY MAJOR OCEAN. Seriously, for a just a moment.
Do you work for the Outdoor Advertizing Council? I ask because that has been their arguement for no restrictions on billboard placement for years. How can anyone object to billbords in scenic locations, they ask, because they take up less than one tenth of one percent of the available view.
Here is some real reality as opposed to PR reality. These platforms will be placed where power is needed (isnt that obvious?) and no one needs power in the middle of the North Atlantic or North Pacific. Power is needed where people are and that is along the coasts.
These things may be a good idea, I don't have enough information to make up my mind about them yet, but one thing I know is that using false statistics to justify them on a square meter basis vs the entire planet's ocean area is useless.
Let's say you want to have a total of 1000 platforms, each with 4 turbines. This would require (approx) 0.00000322% of the surfacea area of the Pacific. It is unlikely that such turbines would have a measurable effect on global weather patterns.
They used to say that about jet contrails' effect on global weather patterns too, and look how wrong that was. Maybe it would be hard to effect global weather patterns directly with these things, but I can see them effecting the local marine life and ecology such as coral reefs, fish spawning grounds or whale migratory or mating patterns (shadows, electric fields, noise, etc). And then I can easily see how the loss of coral reefs, or a decline in fish stocks or the whale population COULD have global consequences. The platforms also might be good for these things but we don't know that either.
Again, I'm not saying these are a bad idea, only that we don't have enough information yet to be assured that they are harmless. The parent post had a reasonable concern about possible negative effects of these platforms and your off the cuff dismissal of even the POSSIBILITY of negative effects is missplaced.
They are also prone to directional issues. A teammate of mine slammed on the brakes hard in a race to avoid a crash and the lateral forces on his fishtailing rear wheel snapped his Zipp 303 (a carbon rimmed bicycle wheel) in half. The wheel was stronger than an aluminum rim in one direction, but weak under minor lateral forces that an Al rim would easily have weathered
You are making an error. Composite materials do not have inherent problems with directional forces. The wheel your friend used may have had lateral strength problems, but the composite itself was not at fault. The composite wheel was DESIGNED to be weak laterally to save weight. The weave of the composite material was purposefully adjusted to give strength only in the rotational direction. That's a design problem, not a materials problem. If your friend ordered an aluminum wheel that was slotted to save weight but was weak laterally as a result would you blame "aluminum" if it failed? No, you would rightfully blame the design(er).
...a cell phone detector can only count cell phones. For example, a bus with 18 people using cellphones on it is not 18 cars. A video camera, on the other hand, can tell you exactly how many cars are on the road, and what types and sizes, and their speeds.
This is insightful? The system described isn't interested in how many cellphones are being used on a road so it can't be "fooled" by 18 people in a bus. It is interested in how far cellphones travel in a given amount of time. A cellphone taking 15 minutes to jump from cell tower A to B to C to D along a specific roadway has a definite rate of travel associated with it. No one really cares how many vehicles are on the road, only how fast traffic is moving. TV cameras do allow counting cars, but counting cars was just a way to estimate traffic flow because the number is cars is usually inversely proportional to the speed of traffic. In other words, why estimate traffic flow by counting cars when you can directly measure speed by tracking cell phone movement? Five or thirty cell phones traveling quickly from tower A to B and then sitting for 30 minutes in tower C's coverge area indicates a traffic jam. Who cares if they are in a bus?
The constitution applies to Federal laws, and perhaps state and local ones in some cases. It has no applicability to schools, employers, or anything else.
Well, not quite true. Constitutional requirements apply to government, and that includes all federal, state and local governments all the time. I'm no constitutional scholar, but I think you are also mistaken about the Constitution not being "law". It is the Law of the Land. If it were not law how could the courts rule on the constitutional issues since courts only deal in law by definition.
People do have constitutional rights in most schools since most schools are government institutions. The major exceptions are a)private schools including religious schools, and b)that most students are minors The courts have ruled that minor children have less (but still not zero) constitutional protections. Hence town curfews can be legal for minors but not for adults.
Of course there are new exceptions to our constitutional rights cropping up all the time. Until recently it was accepted that even non-citizens were protected by the Constitution when in this country, but the Bush administration has decided they are not. Also the Constitution applied on US military bases outside the US but the Bush administration did away with that as well in order to deny legal representation to prisoners at Quantonimo (and other places) and perhaps even to torture them with impunity. Fortunately the courts have reversed the no legal counsel rule while the torture issue is still, unbelievably, undecided and being fought by the Bush White House. Additionally, in constitution-nullifying related action, the Bush administration has privatized portions of the US military by taking US special forces members, asking them to retire and them re-hiring them as private contractors. Since private contractors are not technically government agents bound by constitutional restraints nor the Geneva Conventions nor US law when outside the country they are therefore free to do anything they want. You can thank your Attorney General Roberto Gonzales for rationalizing those travesties. Right now they only operate outside the US, but let there be another terrorist attack and right-wing para-military squads disguised as private security forces may very well be operating in YOUR neighborhood.
Sorry, I'm off on a rant here, but I think it is important to know exactly what your constitutional rights are and not to inadvertently give them away by thinking that state and local governments are not restrained to act constitutionally. IMO the Constitution is under the greatest threat since it was written and I hope and pray that the harm being done to it will be corrected by future administrations and prohibited by legislation.
You better be careful with your "guns out" talk - you'll have the secret service at your door.
Greed, avarice, hubris, misrepresentation and manipulation are not crimes. You diminish the power of your argument by being so hyperbolic. The conflict of interest Frist is being investigated for is not a crime - only a violation of house rules (the INSIDER TRADING is the crime), and even then he is not charged, only under investigation. Also, not telling all you know in front of a Grand Jury is not a crime unless you commit perjury by keeping your mouth shut.
I'm sick and tired of these people too, but shouting easy-to-deflect absurd charges is not the way to get rid of them. I understand your outrage at what these people do, but you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting them put in jail simply for being incompetent greedy jerks. A reasoned, rational argument carries much more weight than a hyperbolic irrational rant.
Especially right now, while this government is run by people under indictment for suppressing info, attacking legitimate dissenters, publishing lies unchallenged by most media, violating conflict-of-interest restraints on commercial communications, secret deals to launder money for illegal advertising.
You are jumping the gun. At the present time the only major indictment for a government official is for violating Texas election laws and money-laundering (DeLay). Investigations are on-going for insider trading (Frist), for perjury and interfering with an investigation (Rove, Libby and others) and for disclosure of the identity of an undercover CIA agent (Libby, Rove, Cheney and others)...and of course conspiracy in the last two instances. I suspect Libby, with his stupid "Aspens" letter to Judith Miller, is also facing indictment for interfering with a witness.
[If I can insert an editorial comment here: How can anyone so stupid as to write that Aspens letter be in such a resposnible position in our government?]
All the other indictments you mention above (suppressing info, attacking legitimate dissenters, publishing lies unchallenged by most media, violating conflict-of-interest restraints on commercial communications [whatever that is]) are not crimes. Amoral, reprehensible and deserving of being thrown out of office perhaps, but not crimes. Of course the Bush administration was also found in violation of the prohibition against government-sponsored propoganda for their Medicare "news reports", but no one is going to be indicted for that.
I'm torn between marveling at the enginuity behind this and pointing out that this is really bluring the line between 'computer' and 'glorified watch'. Even the wikipedia article it links to describes this as a clockwork mechanism.
First, I wouldn't rely on Wikipedia as a definitive source for anything, but that is another topic.
Second, just because a device uses a clockwork mechanism doesn't mean it is a clock. For example, the fire-control computers used on ships in WWII used clockwork mechanicanism to accurately predict the fall of shells and no one denies that they were computers.
It seems to me that the difference between a "watch" and a "computer" is that the watch doesn't calculate or predict anything, it just tells you what time it is now, while a computer does predict and calculate based on variable input. This device could clearly be used to predict or calculate the positions of the planets, sun and moon in the past or the future. Seems pretty obviously a computer to me.
The problem is that this isn't a press release, it's (intended to be) an unbiased source of information. The difference lies in knowing where a particular party's conflict of interest lies.
Surely you don't think PR firms are limited to press releases. Any PR firm worth its fees will tell you that they are not biased, but are just trying to get the truth out so people can make up their minds. I am sure PR forms feel perfectly at home and well within their rights to contribute to Wikipedia. You and I may not agree, but let's face it - unless the words are illegal (defamatory, etc) they can do it.
I think we are on the same side here (PR hacks rank even higher than corporate lawyers on my "most despised" list), except that you don't seem to recognize the subtlety and deviousness of good PR. Good PR can flavor the perception of the situation just by the language they use to describe it. Think you can spot it? Probably not unless it is poorly done. Unfortunately good PR is not lying and neither is it illegal. It is deceptive, but good PR makes sure the misconception lies in the head of the listener and not in the words of the speaker. No newspaper is going to run an expose on a PR firm expressing its clients' opinions even if it is on Wikipedia.
As to PR professionals, surreptitiously editing without disclosing their affiliation might not be such a good idea. If they get caught, Wikipedia's profile is such that such interference would likely be of interest to the mainstream media, and would probably embarrass the company more than any changes to the article would be worth.
I hear what you are saying but neither Wikipedia nor PR is of much interest to the mainstream media. Can you see the headline: "PR Firm Caught Writing Article Favorable to Clients". Not exactly news is it? If you are placing your faith in the MSM as a control of PR in Wikipedia then it is probably wishfull thinking.
Even if a PR firm was discovered editing Wikipedia I seriously doubt they would be embarrassed. After all they make their living by knowing how to lie by telling the truth and they would only tell the truth in their edits. Selected truth for sure, but the truth nevertheless. Even if discovered they would always be able to defend their edits - its what they do for a living.
In fact, I'd be greatly surprised if many, many Wikipedia articles have not been written by or at least edited by PR hacks.
I hate to come across as an asshat, but could everyone please stop referring to Wikipedia as "Wiki". It is a wiki, one of many. It's like referring to Slashdot as "News site".
Well, technically "Wiki" would be a valid shortening of Wikipedia and is identifiable as such by the capitalization. If people were calling it "wiki" that would be another story. Hey, you're the one who wanted to get specific with the language.... (grin)
"on one entry, me and several friends have inside sources (one being the entry) and when we try to correct it, or correct misinformation that has been posted, the sites owner locks it down or chooses the misinformation over what is even know as fact. starting to distrust information found on there due to personal experience."
I agree with a previous poster that given the quality of information contained in it, Wikipedia is only good for trivia and not to be trusted for any serious reference. If the quote above (from a Wiki contributor) is any indication of the writing quality of the contributors I don't even want to use it for trivia.
What is of most concern for me is the amount of information lifted from Wiki articles and then inserted into other "informative" web sites. These sites then appear to independently verify the original Wiki information. Of course it is really all fruit of the same poisoned tree, but unidentifiable as such. Misinformation and poor quality articles on Wiki reache out and contaminate much more than the Wiki site itself.
Especially if this is a state by state law, it will become a patchwork of licenses here and there, unenforceable and the seller's will just relocate their "location" on ebay to a friendly state. ... Most of the fraud done on ebay are by low volume sellers who build up their feedback to somewhere in the double-digits and then pull either a high-priced scam, or probably more likely a dump a bunch of lots (medium priced, say computers for a low price) and never deliver. ... Nowadays, when government usually do something (and other local governments want to be fast on the heels to follow), it's not for the good of the people, it's about control and increasing the revenue stream
You are missing the purpose of licensing and bonding consignent sellers. It is not to protect the buyers on Ebay from fraud, it is to protect the local customers who hire the auction resellers. As for it being a revenue stream for local government, I seriously doubt that a $35 fee is going to do much more than cover the costs of administering the licensing process. I think consumer protection laws are a good thing, and if a local consumer protection law forces a fly-by-night business to close up or move to another state to avoid it then I say good riddance.
Anyway, your contention that this will cause the honest resellers to move to a regulation-free state just doesn't make much sense -1)move to avoid a $35 fee? get serious, and 2)how could a store re-selling local goods for local people move to another state?
Which would be most effective and efficient?
200 people firing flaming arrows at your single ship all at once -or-
200 people with expensive polished bronze plates, hoping for no cloud cover, working in complete unison, hoping your ship doesn't move even slightly, aiming a beam of light which will catch one part of your ship on fire after 10 minutes of focus.
Easy choice but let me state the situation more accurately. I'm a ship's captain and I have the choice of facing flaming arrows or an invisible heat beam. The arrows I can see, can easily put out with buckets of water (half miss the ship anyway), and can easily reduce the effectiveness of by simply wetting the ship down...or...
A heat beam that I can't see, burns my firefighting sailors when they try to put it out, sets my ship afire in ten minutes no matter what I do, is weilded by 200 disciplined troops that have been practicing for months to burn ships (and love doing it), is being used in the Mediterranean where there is always a blindingly hot sun and never any clouds, and for which I have no defence? Hmmmmm, I think I'll take the fire arrows please.
Or he would have realized that simply firing flaming arrows at the ships would have been a HELLUVA lot more effective, MUCH more efficient, and makes you MUCH less obvious and vulnerable to the enemy.
Oh I don't think that is necessarily so at all. You are making the oft repeated error of assuming that the ancient Greeks and Romans were not as smart as we are. I am sure the Romans navy had well established procedures to deal with fire arrows and could put them out pretty easily. You are making the incorrect assumption that they would be too stupid to throw water on the arrows that hit the ships. A totally new weapon such as the "death beam" would make it MUCH harder to put out the fires, first because the Romans might not have even realized they were under attack until it was too late; second, because the areas being heated were much larger than a flaming arrow would heat, making the fire harder to extinguish; and lastly, as the MIT students discovered, the area surrounding the beam gets too hot for people to stand in - limiting the ability of the sailors to douse the fires with buckets of water.
Sooooo. I think you get the point that you saying that "Archimedes must not have been too smart" because you came up with simple way to set the ships on fire that would never have worked is a lot like the family dog thinking the humans aren't to smart because they don't know that the dog dish refills itself.
Such is not the case with Verizon POTS service. You can get a dialtone even during a blackout.
Don't count on it. My Verizon phone went dead immediately in the New York blackout a few years ago. The POTS phones in other parts of the city that worked for a while went dead after only an hour or so as Verizon's backup batteries went dead. You say Cablevision doesn't guarantee you phone service in blackouts while Verizon does? Just try to find that in your contract with Verizon, neither do they.
Incidently, cell phones, as well as working in blackouts when VOIP or POTS do not, provide enough light to navigate pitch black stairwells just by the light from their LCD screens. Try that with a plain old POTS phone.
Come on, people, think about it. RFID on everything? It's not going to happen. The statistical data gained would be horribly inaccurate because nobody would ever know whether or not you're actually the one wearing the shoes. For instance, what if they were a gift for somebody 3,000 miles away?
Why is everyone thinking advertising and marketing here!? That's the least of my worries. I see this as the greatest boon to police-state surveillance ever conceived.
Ok, you buy that pair of shoes with your credit card in NY nd the RFID becomes associated with you. You then ship them 3,000 miles to Seattle and the police RFID detectors pick them up. The police know you can't be in two places at once, but now they are aware of a known associate of yours 3,000 miles away. You aren't under investigation you say? well so what - maybe your friend is or maybe the Feds are just logging data to see if they can find some suspicious correlations.
But suppose you keep the sneakers for yourself in NY. The FBI street scanners detect you and your shoes so they know what part of town you hang out in, but wait, there are other sets of RFID tags that are frequently near yours so now the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, FBI, TSA and local police (our new information sharing poicies at work) know who your associates are. Maybe a real human doesn't know it yet, but the computer does. But wait! your RFID tags (or one of your friend's tags) were on 42nd Street at the same time there was an anti-war rally! You and your associates are now suspected as being unpatriotic subversives by the FBI data-mining bot. Bing! Your name shows up on a list of potential subversives and all your RFID data is upgraded from "not interesting" to "suspicious".
The scarry part is that all this can be done automatically with inexpensive street scanners and data-mining robots looking for "suspicious" activity or associations.
Getting a targeted ad from NIKE is the least of my worries about RFID surveillance.
I mean really. Right now, anyone can go through my garbage
/. seem to think this is a realistic solution), but of course the garbage scanning vehicle notes that YOUR trash has no RFIDs and you become a prime terrorist suspect because terrorists would surely destroy their RFIDs.
Sure, but its hard to do. With RFID the garbage scanning vehicle can simply drive down the street inspecting the content of *everyone's* garbage. What if the police find your trash has way too many syringes and no insulin bottles? Are you now a suspected drug user? What about boxes of small glassine envelopes that are so handy for stamp collecting and for drug dealing - do you go on the suspected drug dealer list at the police maintain because you use a lot of them?
Oh, but you are going to microwave or EMP all your trash (many people on
3. Perscriptions. Your employer probably already knows if you're on the company insurance plan, and your insurance company certainly knows unless you self pay. But again, insurance co. would love to know as much as possible about you, legal or not. They're not going to tell you they went through your trash.
Many people, fearing retaliation from their employers, often see doctors outside of their health plan . I've done this myself. Examples are drug counseling or treatment, psychological counseling, anti-depressants, treatments for STD, AIDS drugs, etc. Although in theory there is some legal protection against health data collected by company health plans being used by the company for other reasons, in reality it is a very thin wall (for example do you turn your doctor bills over to your HR department for procesing?). However, we all know that once a company discovers a bad behavior in an employee it then can easily trump up some other reason to get rid of them. Even the anonymity of going to a non-company doctor goes away if your trash can be scanned for med-relted RFID tags.