Uh, I'm not pro-current admin, or even pro-War On Terrorism (WOT), but you have a problem: Steven Aftergood reported that the State Department's reporting on deaths due to terrorism (I believe US citizens worldwide) has pretty consistently GONE UP.
By this measure alone, we're not at all safer since WOT. I'd argue that by ANY measure, we are less safe than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Certainly worldwide foreign service for the US (State, Defense, whatever) is more perilous than any time since WW2.
From "Three Days of the Condor" (1975):
W: I go back even further: to Ten years after the Great War, as we called it. Before we knew enough to number them.
Interesting, I'd wondered if getting AT LEAST 60% better than EPA was typical for the car, the engine, or what.
Now both Cliff & I are driving the car in a manner not quite recommended by the mfr: keeping revs below 2500 as much as possible, and not downshifting in favor of brakes. (Right, Cliff?)
This exact same driving strategy has never brought me this same improvement in MPG, so I'm assuming this engine's "dynamic-range" must be better. (Ok, audio term: I meant the engine's ability to efficiently meter and use fuel at the widest possible range of loads.)
I will say that this normally-aspirated engine is the first I've seen able to have high and low MPGs as far apart as a turbocharged engine I used to have. In both cases, a mellow driving strategy produces HUGE improvements in fuel economy. (Note: I said nothing about low speeds, or light-foot: there are plenty of times you might see me --uh-- passing. But I'm still proud of getting numbers so wildly higher than EPA.)
Thanks Cliff, I needed to know I wasn't crazy, and the guys at that hot line we can call weren't much help in this regard. I'm calling them today and pointing them to this thread...
I wanted to call it "George" but the teenager in the house has christened it "Foof." (Two o's, like "moon". Her 1st draft was naturally scatological.)
C'mon/.ers, let's come up with a name!
Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. -Paul Graham, "What You Can't Say" http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
OT: You do NOT know the difference in media...
on
War of the Worlds Remake
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have confidence in telling you I should know the difference between real and fake.
On 9/11, I took the bus (damn car), which for lack of a walk-thing put me out of media contact until I entered the shop where we have a TV. I unlock the door, look up, and the first thing I see was the first tower collapsing. I asked my coworkers what was going on, and I did NOT believe them for a good 30 seconds.
So next time you think you can tell mediated reality from fiction (TV, radio, print, film) FORGET IT. Just because you haven't been fooled, doesn't mean you can't be fooled.
A friend is training watchmakers at a technical college, and it is the most successful offering at the school. Before you poo-poo, said friend's been to Switzerland, and has all the international ratings. And his department's getting bux from the watch (mechanical) industry.
This was not a paid promotional announcement, just trying to say that the business is alive and well. Sure, there are a few more A+ certified PC techs than watch repairpersons, but it's not a dying art.
With respect, you're nuts. A museum must use the BEST long-term preseravtion practices, so future generations can extract the maximum amount of information from the artifact. In some cases, that means WORKING order. The artifact must be in the same condition as it was at acquisition for future scholars.
Now, to the Saturn V... The documents are lost. NASA, entropy, and time have most likely purged a significant ENOUGH percentage of the knowledge-base that attempting to rebuild one "from the plans" will be impossible. That is, given no examples, an attempt to build a perfect replica (I mean able to reach the moon in exactly the same way as Appolo 17) would be utterly impossible,
And it would be idiotic: Why try to navigate to the moon with those computers? The big value learned by a rocket-scientist from the S 5 are the MISTAKES to be avoided. The materials-science that made it are all thoroughly embedded in the processes currently available. (Think about the aluminum alloys developed for Apollo, and now think about the aluminum-tungsten carbide COMPOSITES developed for the F-22 Raptor.) Preserve the S 5 for the purposes of history, and appreciation, but harbor no illusions that this one will fly, nor serve as the precise template for a new anything.
"But wait, what about recovering after the fall of civilization?" Please, live in our world, play in theirs.
Finally, I've recently been to the one in Florida. I was in tears the whole time walking it's length. For THAT experience, I will help pay the $5million. If only.01% of the viewers in the future have that reaction, it's worth the societal-cost of preservation.
My daughter claims to have patented U, R, A, J, A, C, K, A, S, S, in both upper and lower case. Her lawyers will be contacting these idiots' lawyers ( Javaher & Weye) in the morning.
"'Good Night Wesley, sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.' Went on like that for three years..." --Wesley, as the Dread Pirate Roberts, "The Princess Bride" (1987)
Finally! All this talk of MAC-address locking, SSID changes, WEP key rotation. (All good steps if you can't use WPA)
And WPA fixes (almost) everything.
So while I give flinxmeister "The Hammer" for hitting the nail on the head, I've got to add my voice to the general theme, BANKS should NEVER go wireless.
Historic building? Asbestos? Cutting quarterly costs to make bonus targets? Fuggedaboutit. There ain't no "safe" wireless vis a vis any financial institution.
But for the rest of us, get the upgrades in place/.ers, WPA is the way to go. (Until I can get ".x" on my Ethernet...)
Wow, all these cogent thoughts from the EE's and CE's, but where are the ME's?!
-Too quiet for a bus?
Round my midwestern city, the noisy, stinky buses are, oh, let's say 30' long, with the engine at the stern. If you're depending on hearing them for avoidance, you're gonna be meat on the front bumper 100% of the time.
-Gyro-effect?
Intersting, a REAL ME (I only play one on/.) could calculate the precession-force but I think the more pressing problem is called "UNSPRUNG WEIGHT." For decades, wheel and tire manufacturers have made huge strides toward lighter products to reduce the UW. Lowering UW allows a more agile suspension. (Perhaps "Unsprung MASS" would be more scientifically accurate?) All that having been said, I think the benefits in design would outweigh this one problem...
-Various comments on Diesel Hybrids.
MIT's done the math, and I've ranted about this before: Forget Hydrogen as a transportation fuel (for a while), a high acceptance rate of Diesel hybrids would save the world. (Soot? Darkening of the earth? All soluble, and still more manageable problems than the far larger emissions from gasoline as a transport-fuel.)
These are a fairly logical solution to the problem, especially for allowing car-designers to make the car do what you want/need it to do: Carry your self and stuff in safety and comfort.
I, for one, welcome our new motor-in-wheel overlords. (Sorry 'bout that)
The standards may be moving too, but I think the decline maybe due to energy-density. (Or "money-density"?) Think about scientific experiments 100 years ago, and what the bleeding edge in tools required. Now compare that to CERN, pharmaco's, or any University's computer sciences department.
This "more expensive tools" argument doesn't apply evenly to the arts, but does have some relevance to writers and others involved in presentation. (Imagine the costs of reaching a small % of the audience in Ancient Rome, and in modern New York.)
So while "higher societal costs for just getting noticed" can apply to just being seen, there's also a very real increase in the costs of finding novelty. (The low-hanging fruit's already gone.)
There are two groups that must change to adopt VOIP: Those who buy it and those who maintain it.
We agree that publibly-traded, (more or less) profitable companies are endorsing VOIP. It is clearly advantageous for a major communications entity to focus on one specialty. IP can do both data and voice, so why not? For the Big Guys, the second problem is simply a matter of time. Culture change is a fact of business, and part of their plans.
For the smaller companies, they now see the Big Guys spending on VOIP, so their bean counters will start to listen. But their culure-change is not merely a problem, it's a show-stopper. The 30-year veteran of the telco dereg who's got 5ESS down pat is not going to sit happily in a classroom and learn Cisco's command-line for adds-moves-changes. And a mouse? Those are why they put glue-traps in the switchroom.
I may have a myopic view from the switchrooms I've sat in, but while we cheer the financials coming to favor VOIP, the inertia is going to take a lot longer.
PS: Don't curse your telecom guys, even the cranky one I depicted above is a hell of a good resource when troubleshooting the last mile. Can't beat experience when it comes to problems that appear to "fix themselves."
...when all the banks, law firms, hospitals, and other multi-site businesses will toss their 5ESS's for IP telephony.
Remember, we heard this before, and my then-employers couldn't have sold a VoIP GATEWAY with a gun. But we employed FULL TIME three retired and semi-retired switch-wizards to take care of all those AT&T^H^H^H^HLucent^H^H^H^H^H^HAvaya switches.
We've got to wait for a LOT of retirements (human) before we will see wide adoption of packet-telephony. It's homo sapiens sitting at the very end of the last mile that's hard to change. ("I've memorized 'ADD STA...' and I don't want to learn something new...")
That all said, I applaud AT&T's move to change their backbone. It's theirs, and it's just a protocol (as mentioned waay above). A publicly-traded company getting on this bandwagon will be a Good Thing (TM).
Metalstorm's product is not a railgun. It uses electrically-fired, chemically-propelled bullets preloaded in stacks inside the barrels. (So, stixteen bullets in a barrel.)
When a bullet's fired off the "top" (or front) of the stack, the one behind it flares out to prevent the combustion gasses from leaking back and lighting off the rest of the stack.
And since they're electrically fired, you can get some nice Slashdot-interesing speeds. Say, 1,000,000 rounds per minute?! (Actually, in the video, the 30k and 60k firings are more interesting.)
Compare this to a Phalanx (3000-4500/min) and the GAU-8a in the A-10 (3,900/min), or the miniguns in gunships and helicopters.
There are still some issues to be worked out (like reloading) but it SEEMS that it's a lot closer to market.
Both the Tango's website and their battery suppliers (Ovonics) offer info on this. If you use them to 80% depth of discharge (DoD) they'll last 450 cycles. If you use them to 20% DoD, 4000 cycles.
BTW, 20% DoD is 20 miles, precisely the average round-trip commute in the US (U of T survey).
According to Tango's creators, 20% DoD leads to a per-mile cost that is around HALF that of the Honda Insight. (Assumes 5 cents per kWH, WA prices. At 15 cents/kWH CA prices, the cost-per-mile equals the Insight.) Ok, that may prove optimistic IRL, but given the dimensions, it has a decent chance of coming true.
I'm as green as the next frog, but hydrogen's a LONG way from fueling transportation on this planet. Didn't MIT post a study showing diesel-powered hybrids as the shortest, fastest way to environmental remediation for our roads?
That's not to stop the U of W's process from fueling a large number of fixed polluters. For example, the giant cooling plant (part of a co-gen facility) for the building I work in could benefit from some H2. Bring it on, just don't waste time trying to get it into cars & trucks.
Slashdot Mirror
Aim for the center of mass, not the eyes.
Uh, I'm not pro-current admin, or even pro-War On Terrorism (WOT), but you have a problem: Steven Aftergood reported that the State Department's reporting on deaths due to terrorism (I believe US citizens worldwide) has pretty consistently GONE UP.
9 04 .html
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/06/060
By this measure alone, we're not at all safer since WOT. I'd argue that by ANY measure, we are less safe than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Certainly worldwide foreign service for the US (State, Defense, whatever) is more perilous than any time since WW2.
From "Three Days of the Condor" (1975):
W: I go back even further: to Ten years after the Great War, as we called it. Before we knew enough to number them.
H: You miss that kind of action, sir?
W: No....that kind of CLARITY.
Interesting, I'd wondered if getting AT LEAST 60% better than EPA was typical for the car, the engine, or what.
Now both Cliff & I are driving the car in a manner not quite recommended by the mfr: keeping revs below 2500 as much as possible, and not downshifting in favor of brakes. (Right, Cliff?)
This exact same driving strategy has never brought me this same improvement in MPG, so I'm assuming this engine's "dynamic-range" must be better. (Ok, audio term: I meant the engine's ability to efficiently meter and use fuel at the widest possible range of loads.)
I will say that this normally-aspirated engine is the first I've seen able to have high and low MPGs as far apart as a turbocharged engine I used to have. In both cases, a mellow driving strategy produces HUGE improvements in fuel economy. (Note: I said nothing about low speeds, or light-foot: there are plenty of times you might see me --uh-- passing. But I'm still proud of getting numbers so wildly higher than EPA.)
Thanks Cliff, I needed to know I wasn't crazy, and the guys at that hot line we can call weren't much help in this regard. I'm calling them today and pointing them to this thread...
"Keeping Blue Peacock warm involved swathing it in glass fibre pillows. "
9 92 .pdf
http://www.awe.co.uk/Images/blue_peacock_tcm6-1
I hate to ruin a good joke, I was loving every moment of it, too.
I wanted to call it "George" but the teenager in the house has christened it "Foof." (Two o's, like "moon". Her 1st draft was naturally scatological.) C'mon /.ers, let's come up with a name!
Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.
-Paul Graham, "What You Can't Say" http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
I have confidence in telling you I should know the difference between real and fake.
On 9/11, I took the bus (damn car), which for lack of a walk-thing put me out of media contact until I entered the shop where we have a TV. I unlock the door, look up, and the first thing I see was the first tower collapsing. I asked my coworkers what was going on, and I did NOT believe them for a good 30 seconds.
So next time you think you can tell mediated reality from fiction (TV, radio, print, film) FORGET IT. Just because you haven't been fooled, doesn't mean you can't be fooled.
"WOM=write once memory."
Goes along with other devices my college radio station patented:
"Monode= a tube with only one electrode." (To tie up loose ends in circuit diagrams)
"No-Ode=an active device with no leads at all."
Next week: Reverse Physics-It's not "heat", it's "the absence of cold."
A friend is training watchmakers at a technical college, and it is the most successful offering at the school. Before you poo-poo, said friend's been to Switzerland, and has all the international ratings. And his department's getting bux from the watch (mechanical) industry.
This was not a paid promotional announcement, just trying to say that the business is alive and well. Sure, there are a few more A+ certified PC techs than watch repairpersons, but it's not a dying art.
This is a nifty table that explains why Russian engines are so desireable.
This is a fluffier piece on the RD-180, now being built in the US under license.
Finally, this is a crowded table of all the Energomash engines. NOTE: this table's hard to read, and you'll find some WILD variants...
With respect, you're nuts. A museum must use the BEST long-term preseravtion practices, so future generations can extract the maximum amount of information from the artifact. In some cases, that means WORKING order. The artifact must be in the same condition as it was at acquisition for future scholars.
.01% of the viewers in the future have that reaction, it's worth the societal-cost of preservation.
Now, to the Saturn V...
The documents are lost. NASA, entropy, and time have most likely purged a significant ENOUGH percentage of the knowledge-base that attempting to rebuild one "from the plans" will be impossible. That is, given no examples, an attempt to build a perfect replica (I mean able to reach the moon in exactly the same way as Appolo 17) would be utterly impossible,
And it would be idiotic: Why try to navigate to the moon with those computers? The big value learned by a rocket-scientist from the S 5 are the MISTAKES to be avoided. The materials-science that made it are all thoroughly embedded in the processes currently available. (Think about the aluminum alloys developed for Apollo, and now think about the aluminum-tungsten carbide COMPOSITES developed for the F-22 Raptor.) Preserve the S 5 for the purposes of history, and appreciation, but harbor no illusions that this one will fly, nor serve as the precise template for a new anything.
"But wait, what about recovering after the fall of civilization?" Please, live in our world, play in theirs.
Finally, I've recently been to the one in Florida. I was in tears the whole time walking it's length. For THAT experience, I will help pay the $5million. If only
My daughter claims to have patented U, R, A, J, A, C, K, A, S, S, in both upper and lower case. Her lawyers will be contacting these idiots' lawyers ( Javaher & Weye) in the morning.
"'Good Night Wesley, sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.' Went on like that for three years..." --Wesley, as the Dread Pirate Roberts, "The Princess Bride" (1987)
Finally!
/.ers, WPA is the way to go. (Until I can get ".x" on my Ethernet...)
All this talk of MAC-address locking, SSID changes, WEP key rotation. (All good steps if you can't use WPA)
And WPA fixes (almost) everything.
So while I give flinxmeister "The Hammer" for hitting the nail on the head, I've got to add my voice to the general theme, BANKS should NEVER go wireless.
Historic building? Asbestos? Cutting quarterly costs to make bonus targets? Fuggedaboutit. There ain't no "safe" wireless vis a vis any financial institution.
But for the rest of us, get the upgrades in place
Wow, all these cogent thoughts from the EE's and CE's, but where are the ME's?!
/.) could calculate the precession-force but I think the more pressing problem is called "UNSPRUNG WEIGHT." For decades, wheel and tire manufacturers have made huge strides toward lighter products to reduce the UW. Lowering UW allows a more agile suspension. (Perhaps "Unsprung MASS" would be more scientifically accurate?) All that having been said, I think the benefits in design would outweigh this one problem...
-Too quiet for a bus?
Round my midwestern city, the noisy, stinky buses are, oh, let's say 30' long, with the engine at the stern. If you're depending on hearing them for avoidance, you're gonna be meat on the front bumper 100% of the time.
-Gyro-effect?
Intersting, a REAL ME (I only play one on
-Various comments on Diesel Hybrids.
MIT's done the math, and I've ranted about this before: Forget Hydrogen as a transportation fuel (for a while), a high acceptance rate of Diesel hybrids would save the world. (Soot? Darkening of the earth? All soluble, and still more manageable problems than the far larger emissions from gasoline as a transport-fuel.)
These are a fairly logical solution to the problem, especially for allowing car-designers to make the car do what you want/need it to do: Carry your self and stuff in safety and comfort.
I, for one, welcome our new motor-in-wheel overlords. (Sorry 'bout that)
The standards may be moving too, but I think the decline maybe due to energy-density. (Or "money-density"?) Think about scientific experiments 100 years ago, and what the bleeding edge in tools required. Now compare that to CERN, pharmaco's, or any University's computer sciences department.
This "more expensive tools" argument doesn't apply evenly to the arts, but does have some relevance to writers and others involved in presentation. (Imagine the costs of reaching a small % of the audience in Ancient Rome, and in modern New York.)
So while "higher societal costs for just getting noticed" can apply to just being seen, there's also a very real increase in the costs of finding novelty. (The low-hanging fruit's already gone.)
There are two groups that must change to adopt VOIP: Those who buy it and those who maintain it.
We agree that publibly-traded, (more or less) profitable companies are endorsing VOIP. It is clearly advantageous for a major communications entity to focus on one specialty. IP can do both data and voice, so why not? For the Big Guys, the second problem is simply a matter of time. Culture change is a fact of business, and part of their plans.
For the smaller companies, they now see the Big Guys spending on VOIP, so their bean counters will start to listen. But their culure-change is not merely a problem, it's a show-stopper. The 30-year veteran of the telco dereg who's got 5ESS down pat is not going to sit happily in a classroom and learn Cisco's command-line for adds-moves-changes. And a mouse? Those are why they put glue-traps in the switchroom.
I may have a myopic view from the switchrooms I've sat in, but while we cheer the financials coming to favor VOIP, the inertia is going to take a lot longer.
PS: Don't curse your telecom guys, even the cranky one I depicted above is a hell of a good resource when troubleshooting the last mile. Can't beat experience when it comes to problems that appear to "fix themselves."
...when all the banks, law firms, hospitals, and other multi-site businesses will toss their 5ESS's for IP telephony.
Remember, we heard this before, and my then-employers couldn't have sold a VoIP GATEWAY with a gun. But we employed FULL TIME three retired and semi-retired switch-wizards to take care of all those AT&T^H^H^H^HLucent^H^H^H^H^H^HAvaya switches.
We've got to wait for a LOT of retirements (human) before we will see wide adoption of packet-telephony. It's homo sapiens sitting at the very end of the last mile that's hard to change. ("I've memorized 'ADD STA...' and I don't want to learn something new...")
That all said, I applaud AT&T's move to change their backbone. It's theirs, and it's just a protocol (as mentioned waay above). A publicly-traded company getting on this bandwagon will be a Good Thing (TM).
Metalstorm's product is not a railgun. It uses electrically-fired, chemically-propelled bullets preloaded in stacks inside the barrels. (So, stixteen bullets in a barrel.)
When a bullet's fired off the "top" (or front) of the stack, the one behind it flares out to prevent the combustion gasses from leaking back and lighting off the rest of the stack.
And since they're electrically fired, you can get some nice Slashdot-interesing speeds. Say, 1,000,000 rounds per minute?! (Actually, in the video, the 30k and 60k firings are more interesting.)
Compare this to a Phalanx (3000-4500/min) and the GAU-8a in the A-10 (3,900/min), or the miniguns in gunships and helicopters.
There are still some issues to be worked out (like reloading) but it SEEMS that it's a lot closer to market.
Both the Tango's website and their battery suppliers (Ovonics) offer info on this. If you use them to 80% depth of discharge (DoD) they'll last 450 cycles. If you use them to 20% DoD, 4000 cycles.
BTW, 20% DoD is 20 miles, precisely the average round-trip commute in the US (U of T survey).
According to Tango's creators, 20% DoD leads to a per-mile cost that is around HALF that of the Honda Insight. (Assumes 5 cents per kWH, WA prices. At 15 cents/kWH CA prices, the cost-per-mile equals the Insight.) Ok, that may prove optimistic IRL, but given the dimensions, it has a decent chance of coming true.
I'm as green as the next frog, but hydrogen's a LONG way from fueling transportation on this planet. Didn't MIT post a study showing diesel-powered hybrids as the shortest, fastest way to environmental remediation for our roads?
That's not to stop the U of W's process from fueling a large number of fixed polluters. For example, the giant cooling plant (part of a co-gen facility) for the building I work in could benefit from some H2. Bring it on, just don't waste time trying to get it into cars & trucks.
I'll go back under my rock now...