thanks to very the complete family records that Mormons keep as a matter of faith.
Interesting you should mention this, in fact. I'm all over taking pot shots at Mormons, sticking them in common burial pits (Mormon thinking = aristocracy), and so forth, but there are a number of things that mormons do well for stupid reasons, and you mentioned one of them.:)
Accurate family records is a Good Thing, in my opinion. Also, stockpiling against disaster is also a Good Thing. Not to mention the secret family cookbook of the Donner family...
(Ok, I almost can't say anything about Mormons as a whole without mentioning the Donner party)
for me superconductors are ONLY magnets.
kinda like make ANY shape with copper wire, cool
down and add charge, presto a "permanent magnet".
Can't you add a resistor to prevent blowing up the light bulb? Yeah, yeah, then what's the point of having a superconductor in the first place, right?
How about in phone lines? Internet lines? How would just having the wire itself be really really fast affect the whole system? In some places, that would move the bottleneck to the routers and switches, but have a net result of a speed increase.
Of course, the prospect of having a really powerful motor that runs on a 9v battery is sweet! Could they make a motor that'll drive my truck and only run on a bank of AA batteries?;)
mod parent down; this is bogus for any number of reasons, the most important of which is that NO ROOM TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTORS HAVE EVER BEEN DOCUMENTED, regardless of T_c/H_c/J_c characteristics. I call shenanigans.
Call shenanigans all you want, but if you actually understood the post, you would have understood that he was talking about a superconductor that conducted, got too hot, and wasn't capable of conducting anymore. It was still a superconductor in the sense that it was a broken superconductor. I got a light laugh off of it, at least.
In the meantime, I suggest you do with your mod points as you will, and the rest of us will use ours as we will. We don't need you to tell us how to mod.
The main problem with widespread personal air transport is that it's harder to fly a plane than it is to drive a car, and managing traffic and congestion are much harder. Both problems should gradually go away as computers get more advanced. Have patience.
Alright, I'll chime in here. First off, when the flying cars were first envisioned, the dynamics of the situation weren't fully realized.
That said, let's talk about body first. To make a flying car that is practical, it must be drivable on existing roads at speeds we're used to. Considering that there would quickly be legislation limiting flying areas in cities or eliminating them entirely, we must expect to still road the cars frequently for city driving. That means that aerodynamically, the car needs to be designed to stay on the ground. This is completely counter to the goals of anything that flies, where they need to have lift surfaces and so forth.
Then you get dead weight. That's everything in your car that doesn't make it fly while you're flying, and everything that doesn't make it drive while you're driving. More on this later.
Next problem: power source. It's possible, but unlikely to be useful to use the same engine for flying that you use for driving. However, existing street-legal IC engines do not have enough power to push the car on the ground and drive a propellor that is tough and fast enough to life the car, assuming you deal with the aerodynamic problems previously mentioned. So you need to split up the jobs somehow. It's my opinion that the solution lies in electrical motors at each wheel for road-driving and electrically-driven turbines. Either would be dead weight at certain times, but could be build small enough not to impact weight that much.
Then you've got the whole wing issue, and lift surface problem. It'd be great if some new scientific breakthrough enabled us to generate/use gravity waves to lift and drive the car, thus eliminating almost everything I've mentioned already, but it's not here and now. Here and now it's damned impossible to build a car that can fly, road properly, and still run on an IC engine, because of the lift surfaces required to do so. Assuming you can get the same IC engine to drive and spin a propeller, straighten out the body so it can lift when it needs to and stick to the road when it needs to, you'll still need wings and a tail, and that crap just doesn't fit in the lane. So it needs to fold out, and your problem has just multiplied itself into oblivion. Outside of that, hovering is an excellent option, but since hovering is a brute force method, it becomes very expensive in terms of power requirements.
When a small, portable electrical power source can be built, flying cars will become at least approachable in a practical sense. So we're either waiting for someone to design a generator that fits under the hood of your car or we're waiting for cold fusion. And that's just the start of solving this problem.
I do, however, agree with you and Feynman both that tax monies should be spent responsibly.
Catch-22, dude. Your post also cited that Russell had no idea there would be a practical use for his research and had a little-dick problem with that, but pursued the research anyway. In the absence of any conceivable practical application, how can a scientist know that his work will ultimately lead to a breakthrough that seriously impacts human life? He can't. Now, I'm not about to go off trying to fund all possible scientific research either, limited resources and all, but I'm perfectly happy spending my tax dollars funding research that may not have any immediate practical value.
I disagree with the AC to an extent, but he did get across the general idea that scientists feel pressured to dream up practical applications for their research. The general problem is that scientists are not engineers, although the two do frequently resemble one another. Engineers are the guys who dream up the practical uses, though.:)
By the way, do people really add other people to foe-lists over something like this?:-)
Yes, people really are that petty.:( I decided awhile back not to have any foes, and to celebrate every new freak that appears on my list.:) I'd rather spend my time liking/loving than hating, and I don't want to spend any time hating unnecessarily. I don't see a practical use for the 'foes' list, come to think of it, except to celebrate the aforementioned freaks.;)
It is news because of where it appears (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) and the fact that it is not just Microsoft cheerleading.
Um, as far as I know, the Seattle PI has been critical of Microsoft for a longtime. Just because is across a small pond from Seattle doesn't mean Microsoft is loved in this area. They contribute no jobs to the workforce, very little money to the local economy, and we've been in a serious depression since Boeing packed up most of its people and left. Why should Seattle PI be any less critical of Microsoft than anybody else?
ON the other hand, Microsoft did send audit letters to some school districts in the area, and we're *all* still mad about that.
My car is pretty low to the ground. It's been 6 months since I changed the oil, but as I recall, the pan I was using to drain the old oil into would slide under the car if I didn't jack it up.
Heh. I've had that problem before. Sometimes you just have to jack it up. I've got a 2001 Corolla, and if I use the wrong pan, I have to jack it up too. Of course, I've still got 3-5 drain pans laying around from when I did serious mechanic work, so I can usually find something to do the job with. Toyota also put the oil filter where it's easy to change. I can see where you might have trouble with it, though. The problem is that jacking your car up adds time to change the oil, and for me anything that adds time also creates incentive for me not to change the oil.;)
Which reminds me, I need to change my oil. Heh.
Actually, most of the books that you can get for any car, with the possible exception of the ones from the dealer that cost a ton of money, aren't totally accurate with what they tell you, except for the specs provided (those have to be accurate). When I worked at Jiffy Lube, we got a lot of your cars in there, and some of them were pretty hard to get out. I remember standing on the rail that goes around the catwalk in the pit with my back curved at a very uncomfortable angle, a hand up one way around the control arm and a hand up another way around the steering box, turning the oil filter 1/8 inch at a time until it fell down and bounced off my bump cap. So, yeah, sometimes your car is pretty hard to deal with.;) I have done plenty of cursing over that car. Still, I've also had it pretty easy with that car. I've never been able to pinpoint why it's really hard sometimes and why it's really easy other times, especially when it's the same damn car!
I suppose I could turn the wheel, yeah, but it was already up on jack stands to drain the oil, so that didn't really occur to me. My Corsica repair manual lists removing the wheel as a step.
Odd that they should list it as a step. Also odd that you're picking up the car to change your oil.:) I leave mine all on the ground when I change it. But then, I'm known to be crazy when it comes to fixing cars...
He asked me to figure out how to check the tranny fluid. No dice. I couldn't find the dip stick.
Hmmm, also bullshit. You check those by pulling the speedometer cable, but they're engineered to never lose any fluid. GM has been making disposable transmissions recently....
But it's one more maintenance item you don't have to worry about.
(My Chevy Corsica is a good example - I have to remove the right front wheel to reach the oil filter.)
Um, no you don't. Assuming you have factory-sized wheels, you can just turn the wheel. It's not easy, and I actually had an easier time getting it from underneath the car, but if you're pulling the wheel, you're doing something wrong.
A lot of maintenance issue with newer cars comes down to the fact that a normal typical human can not perform routine maintenance anymore
Bullshit. Just because you see plastic shit under the hood doesn't change the fact that the car uses all the same parts, in all the same places, and all the same tools to remove them. I've changed spark plugs in 95+ vehicles just as easily as I've changed them in my 71 chevy pickup, with the same fucking tools.
It's people looking under the hood and saying "Duh" without thinking that shouldn't be turning wrenches in the first place. But an oil change is an oil change, and performed exactly as it has been since the fucking oil filter was invented.
Take it from me, I've done literally thousands of the damn things on cars ranging from Model A's all the way up to, oh hell, I can't even remember what the newest, fanciest car I've serviced is. I remember the antiques much better, because they didn't have filters.;)
In any case, all of the maintenance procedures are exactly the same now as they've always been. It's pure bullshit that new cars aren't owner-serviceable. Do you think it takes $5000 worth of computers to change a few spark plugs? Hell, you don't even have to worry about setting ignition timing anymore, that makes your job easier.
I drove a Peugeot one time. I pulled up to a light next to a Pinto, and my fucking car stuck a white flag out the front! I couldn't believe it! My car was surrendering to a Pinto.
No, I hadn't. I got out of the mechanic business back when Nissan didn't have a high-performance sportscar, other than the Maxima sport-sedan. I had heard about this new-fangled variable valve timing, but it was still experimental. I'd like to pull open one of their valve covers.:) I suppose it was in 2000, or early 2001 that I got out of the mechanic business, never to return.
Not sure yet that Nissan's got their direction back, they did some pretty hare-brained things in the late 90s. Heh. We'll see, though. It'll be nice for NIssan to have a serious competitor, maybe it'll force Toyota to bring back the Supra line in a serious form. I always liked the Supras. My two favorite sports cars, not surprisingly I suppose, are the 1979 Supra (only made for 6 months) and the 1974 Datsun 240Z (not the ZX). I'll take either one, or both, if you've got 'em.;)
I seem to remember it being red, actually. It may have been green, though. This was something like 4 years ago that I saw it, though. The guy said it was his third conversion, so maybe you've seen articles on others that he's done? It was in Austin, TX, if that gives you any ideas.
The Pintos and the Vegas had something in common. They were some of the most reliable pieces of shit ever built. They start every morning, and run badly all fucking day. You never see them in the shop because they can literally be fixed with duct tape and chicken wire, or just by beating on them with a rock.
Heh, you just reminded me. Back in my mechanic days, a dude brought in an awesome looking lamborghini and wanted exhaust. We all stood around like 'wtf, he should be taking that to the dealer for exhaust work!'
So when it went up on the rack, after we had to build a special ramp just to get it on the rack, we all crowded underneath it to see what it looked like. We didn't get Lamborghinis in at all. It had a Corvette engine in it! Corvette tranny, et al. Confused, I started to notice a few other choice bits...
When the car came down, I opened the door and noticed it was *not* a gull wing door. So I read the production sticker.
It was a Lamborghini kit strapped onto a Fiero with a 'vette engine in it.
Slashdot Mirror
thanks to very the complete family records that Mormons keep as a matter of faith.
Interesting you should mention this, in fact. I'm all over taking pot shots at Mormons, sticking them in common burial pits (Mormon thinking = aristocracy), and so forth, but there are a number of things that mormons do well for stupid reasons, and you mentioned one of them. :)
Accurate family records is a Good Thing, in my opinion. Also, stockpiling against disaster is also a Good Thing. Not to mention the secret family cookbook of the Donner family...
(Ok, I almost can't say anything about Mormons as a whole without mentioning the Donner party)
Object-Oriented Religion?
Isn't that referred to as 'idolatry'?
Ah, thank you. I thought there was something wrong with it, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. :)
Of course, he completely understated the usefulness of his "magnet" as well, considering how much of our society is powered by electro-magnetism. :)
So we have Earth, Water, Wind and Fire???? What is the fifth ;)
A chick whose beauty is far overrated, a lot of bad music, and Bruce Willis who makes everything better. :) (That said, I love that movie :) )
for me superconductors are ONLY magnets. kinda like make ANY shape with copper wire, cool down and add charge, presto a "permanent magnet".
Can't you add a resistor to prevent blowing up the light bulb? Yeah, yeah, then what's the point of having a superconductor in the first place, right?
How about in phone lines? Internet lines? How would just having the wire itself be really really fast affect the whole system? In some places, that would move the bottleneck to the routers and switches, but have a net result of a speed increase.
Of course, the prospect of having a really powerful motor that runs on a 9v battery is sweet! Could they make a motor that'll drive my truck and only run on a bank of AA batteries? ;)
mod parent down; this is bogus for any number of reasons, the most important of which is that NO ROOM TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTORS HAVE EVER BEEN DOCUMENTED, regardless of T_c/H_c/J_c characteristics. I call shenanigans.
Call shenanigans all you want, but if you actually understood the post, you would have understood that he was talking about a superconductor that conducted, got too hot, and wasn't capable of conducting anymore. It was still a superconductor in the sense that it was a broken superconductor. I got a light laugh off of it, at least.
In the meantime, I suggest you do with your mod points as you will, and the rest of us will use ours as we will. We don't need you to tell us how to mod.
The main problem with widespread personal air transport is that it's harder to fly a plane than it is to drive a car, and managing traffic and congestion are much harder. Both problems should gradually go away as computers get more advanced. Have patience.
Alright, I'll chime in here. First off, when the flying cars were first envisioned, the dynamics of the situation weren't fully realized.
That said, let's talk about body first. To make a flying car that is practical, it must be drivable on existing roads at speeds we're used to. Considering that there would quickly be legislation limiting flying areas in cities or eliminating them entirely, we must expect to still road the cars frequently for city driving. That means that aerodynamically, the car needs to be designed to stay on the ground. This is completely counter to the goals of anything that flies, where they need to have lift surfaces and so forth.
Then you get dead weight. That's everything in your car that doesn't make it fly while you're flying, and everything that doesn't make it drive while you're driving. More on this later.
Next problem: power source. It's possible, but unlikely to be useful to use the same engine for flying that you use for driving. However, existing street-legal IC engines do not have enough power to push the car on the ground and drive a propellor that is tough and fast enough to life the car, assuming you deal with the aerodynamic problems previously mentioned. So you need to split up the jobs somehow. It's my opinion that the solution lies in electrical motors at each wheel for road-driving and electrically-driven turbines. Either would be dead weight at certain times, but could be build small enough not to impact weight that much.
Then you've got the whole wing issue, and lift surface problem. It'd be great if some new scientific breakthrough enabled us to generate/use gravity waves to lift and drive the car, thus eliminating almost everything I've mentioned already, but it's not here and now. Here and now it's damned impossible to build a car that can fly, road properly, and still run on an IC engine, because of the lift surfaces required to do so. Assuming you can get the same IC engine to drive and spin a propeller, straighten out the body so it can lift when it needs to and stick to the road when it needs to, you'll still need wings and a tail, and that crap just doesn't fit in the lane. So it needs to fold out, and your problem has just multiplied itself into oblivion. Outside of that, hovering is an excellent option, but since hovering is a brute force method, it becomes very expensive in terms of power requirements.
When a small, portable electrical power source can be built, flying cars will become at least approachable in a practical sense. So we're either waiting for someone to design a generator that fits under the hood of your car or we're waiting for cold fusion. And that's just the start of solving this problem.
It's only for tax reasons.
I do, however, agree with you and Feynman both that tax monies should be spent responsibly.
Catch-22, dude. Your post also cited that Russell had no idea there would be a practical use for his research and had a little-dick problem with that, but pursued the research anyway. In the absence of any conceivable practical application, how can a scientist know that his work will ultimately lead to a breakthrough that seriously impacts human life? He can't. Now, I'm not about to go off trying to fund all possible scientific research either, limited resources and all, but I'm perfectly happy spending my tax dollars funding research that may not have any immediate practical value.
I disagree with the AC to an extent, but he did get across the general idea that scientists feel pressured to dream up practical applications for their research. The general problem is that scientists are not engineers, although the two do frequently resemble one another. Engineers are the guys who dream up the practical uses, though. :)
By the way, do people really add other people to foe-lists over something like this? :-)
Yes, people really are that petty. :( I decided awhile back not to have any foes, and to celebrate every new freak that appears on my list. :) I'd rather spend my time liking/loving than hating, and I don't want to spend any time hating unnecessarily. I don't see a practical use for the 'foes' list, come to think of it, except to celebrate the aforementioned freaks. ;)
This is needlessly insulting.
You should have read my whole post, which occurred before this latest news of yours.
It is news because of where it appears (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) and the fact that it is not just Microsoft cheerleading.
Um, as far as I know, the Seattle PI has been critical of Microsoft for a longtime. Just because is across a small pond from Seattle doesn't mean Microsoft is loved in this area. They contribute no jobs to the workforce, very little money to the local economy, and we've been in a serious depression since Boeing packed up most of its people and left. Why should Seattle PI be any less critical of Microsoft than anybody else?
ON the other hand, Microsoft did send audit letters to some school districts in the area, and we're *all* still mad about that.
My car is pretty low to the ground. It's been 6 months since I changed the oil, but as I recall, the pan I was using to drain the old oil into would slide under the car if I didn't jack it up.
Heh. I've had that problem before. Sometimes you just have to jack it up. I've got a 2001 Corolla, and if I use the wrong pan, I have to jack it up too. Of course, I've still got 3-5 drain pans laying around from when I did serious mechanic work, so I can usually find something to do the job with. Toyota also put the oil filter where it's easy to change. I can see where you might have trouble with it, though. The problem is that jacking your car up adds time to change the oil, and for me anything that adds time also creates incentive for me not to change the oil. ;)
Which reminds me, I need to change my oil. Heh.
Actually, most of the books that you can get for any car, with the possible exception of the ones from the dealer that cost a ton of money, aren't totally accurate with what they tell you, except for the specs provided (those have to be accurate). When I worked at Jiffy Lube, we got a lot of your cars in there, and some of them were pretty hard to get out. I remember standing on the rail that goes around the catwalk in the pit with my back curved at a very uncomfortable angle, a hand up one way around the control arm and a hand up another way around the steering box, turning the oil filter 1/8 inch at a time until it fell down and bounced off my bump cap. So, yeah, sometimes your car is pretty hard to deal with. ;) I have done plenty of cursing over that car. Still, I've also had it pretty easy with that car. I've never been able to pinpoint why it's really hard sometimes and why it's really easy other times, especially when it's the same damn car!
I suppose I could turn the wheel, yeah, but it was already up on jack stands to drain the oil, so that didn't really occur to me. My Corsica repair manual lists removing the wheel as a step.
Odd that they should list it as a step. Also odd that you're picking up the car to change your oil. :) I leave mine all on the ground when I change it. But then, I'm known to be crazy when it comes to fixing cars...
He asked me to figure out how to check the tranny fluid. No dice. I couldn't find the dip stick.
Hmmm, also bullshit. You check those by pulling the speedometer cable, but they're engineered to never lose any fluid. GM has been making disposable transmissions recently....
But it's one more maintenance item you don't have to worry about.
(My Chevy Corsica is a good example - I have to remove the right front wheel to reach the oil filter.)
Um, no you don't. Assuming you have factory-sized wheels, you can just turn the wheel. It's not easy, and I actually had an easier time getting it from underneath the car, but if you're pulling the wheel, you're doing something wrong.
A lot of maintenance issue with newer cars comes down to the fact that a normal typical human can not perform routine maintenance anymore
Bullshit. Just because you see plastic shit under the hood doesn't change the fact that the car uses all the same parts, in all the same places, and all the same tools to remove them. I've changed spark plugs in 95+ vehicles just as easily as I've changed them in my 71 chevy pickup, with the same fucking tools.
It's people looking under the hood and saying "Duh" without thinking that shouldn't be turning wrenches in the first place. But an oil change is an oil change, and performed exactly as it has been since the fucking oil filter was invented.
Take it from me, I've done literally thousands of the damn things on cars ranging from Model A's all the way up to, oh hell, I can't even remember what the newest, fanciest car I've serviced is. I remember the antiques much better, because they didn't have filters. ;)
In any case, all of the maintenance procedures are exactly the same now as they've always been. It's pure bullshit that new cars aren't owner-serviceable. Do you think it takes $5000 worth of computers to change a few spark plugs? Hell, you don't even have to worry about setting ignition timing anymore, that makes your job easier.
I drove a Peugeot one time. I pulled up to a light next to a Pinto, and my fucking car stuck a white flag out the front! I couldn't believe it! My car was surrendering to a Pinto.
I'll never drive a French car again...
Hmmm, isn't the Plymouth Horizon a Hyundai car? I seem to recall it being identical to the Hyundai Excel...
No, I hadn't. I got out of the mechanic business back when Nissan didn't have a high-performance sportscar, other than the Maxima sport-sedan. I had heard about this new-fangled variable valve timing, but it was still experimental. I'd like to pull open one of their valve covers. :) I suppose it was in 2000, or early 2001 that I got out of the mechanic business, never to return.
Not sure yet that Nissan's got their direction back, they did some pretty hare-brained things in the late 90s. Heh. We'll see, though. It'll be nice for NIssan to have a serious competitor, maybe it'll force Toyota to bring back the Supra line in a serious form. I always liked the Supras. My two favorite sports cars, not surprisingly I suppose, are the 1979 Supra (only made for 6 months) and the 1974 Datsun 240Z (not the ZX). I'll take either one, or both, if you've got 'em. ;)
I seem to remember it being red, actually. It may have been green, though. This was something like 4 years ago that I saw it, though. The guy said it was his third conversion, so maybe you've seen articles on others that he's done? It was in Austin, TX, if that gives you any ideas.
I truly believe that Lee Iacocca
Hmm, what does the former CEO of Chrysler have to do with Ford?
The Pintos and the Vegas had something in common. They were some of the most reliable pieces of shit ever built. They start every morning, and run badly all fucking day. You never see them in the shop because they can literally be fixed with duct tape and chicken wire, or just by beating on them with a rock.
Amazing cars, though.
Mostpeople don't recognize a Trans Am if the hood is closed.
Or even still attached, for that matter.
Heh. I noticed that Chevy just started selling Camaros with primer-colored fenders and windows that don't go down.
Heh, you just reminded me. Back in my mechanic days, a dude brought in an awesome looking lamborghini and wanted exhaust. We all stood around like 'wtf, he should be taking that to the dealer for exhaust work!'
So when it went up on the rack, after we had to build a special ramp just to get it on the rack, we all crowded underneath it to see what it looked like. We didn't get Lamborghinis in at all. It had a Corvette engine in it! Corvette tranny, et al. Confused, I started to notice a few other choice bits...
When the car came down, I opened the door and noticed it was *not* a gull wing door. So I read the production sticker.
It was a Lamborghini kit strapped onto a Fiero with a 'vette engine in it.
Still a cool car, though, all things considered.