I think range is still a limit for most. I live in the Washington, DC metro area. WMATA (the regional transit provider) runs mostly hybrid diesel and CNG buses. They have found that while CNG is cheaper on a per mile basis just concerning fuel cost, most of the CNG buses can't handle a double shift on one fill of CNG so they end up having a lower percent utilization than a diesel since they have to head back to the garage for a long refill after each driver's shift. Their CNG buses typically fill overnight as they take several hours to fill. A diesel takes minutes to fill, so even with the same range per fill, a diesel can run nearly continuously. Not all the WMATA garages support CNG and plans to build CNG infrastructure at more of their garages have gone slower than originally planned and my understanding is the primary reason is the operational constraints of CNG fueling.
Electric vehicles currently have the same kind of limitations as CNG. Without expensive infrastructure for doing things like en route charging, a bus needs to be able to comfortably run two shifts back to back before a transit authority can use them on a wide scale - probably roughly a 300 mile city range. The charging infrastructure even in a garage is expensive. Swapping enough batteries for a 300 mile bus range is also labor intensive. I agree that electric makes sense here, but the infrastructure just isn't there yet.
Van based trucks (think UPS) are light enough that they're not that hard to electrify from today's standards. However a medium duty truck like a box truck gets roughly the same kind of fuel economy as a transit bus and so the amount of energy you have to carry to make them work well today is still expensive and hard to do.
And many people beat the crap out of rental cars. I've rented cars numerous times that I start up and they say "Next oil change due: Immediately", which I then proceed to drive for a week and put 3000 miles on it. I've never had a rental car break down on me, but the evidence has generally been that they're not well maintained and they get away with it because the cars are relatively new. Many people also drive rental cars like they're stolen. Buying one seems like a bad deal to me.
You can custom order a car in the US. I've done it, and based on my experience, will do it again next time I want a new car. I got exactly the options I wanted without getting stuck paying for stuff I don't want or would never use. In my case, I ordered before the production began, so I waited 3 months for my car, but for most models already in production, the turnaround is usually 4-6 weeks.
Granted, you can get some good deals on cars that are just sitting and therefore have been marked down (you have more negotiating power there), but in my case, getting exactly what I wanted was more important - and I bought through Costco (still uses a dealership but the pricing is prenegotiated). Since I was buying a brand new model, the Costco pricing killed whatever I could have negotiated on my own, but YMMV on models that have been out for a while.
It's probably how VW got a Euro spec engine to meet US regulations. Euro specs measure pollution per distance - the way to win is to burn fuel really efficiently. US specs measure pollution per unit of fuel consumption - the way to win is to burn fuel really cleanly. That difference is a big reason why they have much more fuel efficient vehicles in Europe. It's much easier to get a larger engine to burn cleaner. Most manufacturers that sell the same engine in both continents use different tunings in each, where the EU one gets better fuel economy and the US one burns cleaner.
Manufacturers have been trying to bring the incredible economy that small diesels in Europe get to the US for years but it turns out making a diesel that is significantly more efficient than a comparable gas engine and also meets EPA regulations is really hard. For example, Mazda has been promising Skyactiv-D (diesel) engines in the US for years now, but they keep getting delayed because they're not satisfied with their performance.
I don't have experience with Corsera courses, but I am currently an OMSCS student at Georgia Tech (http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/). So far, the lessons (YouTube videos through Udacity) have been well done. However, the course discussions on the forums (Piazza) in some cases have been more valuable than the courses themselves. In particular, we've had a great thread going on about real world agile vs. non-agile development models as we've seen them in the professional world.
The difference may be that while not all students are US based, all students have to apply for admission to the program, with minimum credentials being a BS degree (generally in a STEM field) with a 3.0 and TOEFL scores for non-native speakers. Students are expecting rigorous courses and are generally graded at least a little bit on forum participation, so students have incentives to participate and the faculty and other students don't put up with "give me the answers" type posts (those would be an honor code violation and could easily get you kicked out). Maybe having to be admitted to a real school makes all the difference?
I have worked with automated vehicle locator data throughout the US as a source of data integrated into my company's products. Getting a fire department's AVL data is easy. Never had any objections if they have the hardware installed. Getting police AVL data is next to impossible in most places thanks to the union agreements. I am unaware of a single US police department that has AVL on by default for their vehicles. Those that have AVL systems installed have it configured so the officer can turn it on and off, usually at the flip of a switch on the dashboard.
It's such an issue with the unions that we've had trouble with getting some departments to have AVL enabled in the police cruisers leading and following a parade just for the duration of the parade. It makes the command center's job much easier if they know the exact extents of where the parade is in real time, but you can figure out the information in other ways so it would seem like something that wouldn't get a lot of push back. I can't even imagine trying to get an always on system installed in a department, regardless of who you pitch it to.
The overhead projector they used in the article is 3500 lumens, but I can speak from their experience that their output isn't that high. LCD panels take a lot of light pushed through them to project a bright image, because the panel is relatively opaque. Overhead projectors are almost completely transparent, so take very little light to produce a bright image. I have a 1991 Proxima Ovation A822C 640x480 data + video LCD overhead projector panel and a 3500 lumen 3M 9200 overhead projector. Showing transparencies, the projector produces a nice bright white color, which looks about the same as a 3500 lumen LCD projector. Throw my LCD panel on it, and the light output drops to under half of the 650 lumen LCD projector that I frequently borrow. I'd guess that the OHP + LCD panel is about equivalent to a 250 lumen LCD projector.
The projector they built looks a lot brighter than mine, probably due to a newer LCD, and not having two layers of protective glass over it, like my LCD panel. However, to make their panel look bright, they tweaked the driver settings. That just changes the color gradients, and doesn't actually make the projector brighter. Even with their tweaks, I doubt that their output breaks 1000 lumens. It would be interesting to get it measured and see what it actually produces. Maybe someone with a lumen meter can fill us all in.
Saw the 9:00 in Roanoake (Virginia). The actual ending WAS what I was expecting, but the way that the story got there wasn't.
Awesome CG . . . much better than in Reloaded IMHO. Worth the ticket price just to see the CG.
I actually think I like it almost as much as the original (ask me again in a week once I've sorted it out more). I didn't like Reloaded near as well.
I liked the way all the philosophy from Reloaded and the original came together in Revolutions. I like both previous movies better because of Revolutions . . . exact opposite of Reloaded, which made me like the original less since I was confuesd.
Go see Revolutions! It's a lot more fun than work or classes!
How can the company that has a monopoly over nearly everything on the desktop complain abou a lack of choice for users? Maybe it feels a little different when your monopoly isn't stable and there's real competition out there. If I were buying a portable player right now, ir would be an iPod for sure. I wouldn't even look at players with Windows Media support. I've liked using iTunes on OSX, but have never owned a mac. Now I have to wait for apple to release iTunes for Linux so I can try the store:) Well, maybe it's worth booting into windows to try, but not being able to play the AAC tracks on Linux wouldn't be good.
I'm in the same boat. I've had a CD burner for over 5 years now, and have not seen any high quality discs go bad, except for getting scratched. However, I've seen those cheap, plain silver surface only discs go bad from the top reflective layer starting to peal in about 18 months. I lost most of a relatively unimportant backup to those discs. That's why I will only buy discs with a heavier duty top surface now.
I stored the discs that started to peel on a spindle in a dark closet when they weren't in use. I think that part of the problem may have been scratches on the top surface that over time allowed the top layer to pull apart. But it also seems a little suspicious that I could have scratched 7-10 CDs in exactly the same way.
I still have some of the plain discs left, and I intend to put CD labels on all of the remaining ones to give them some extra protection. Anyone else have similar experiences?
I have a Magicolor 2300DL, well actually, I have two of them. I got one back in December for $800 from Staples. I picked up a second in February when it went on sale for $600 at Staples (one for each end of the house). The printer rocks. It prints photo quality output on plain paper. The output looks slightly better on color laser paper (the $0.02 a sheet variety), but the difference is small.
The printer has parallel, USB, and 10/100 ethernet connections. I personally use the ethernet connection exclusively. It does 16 pages a minute in greyscale, and 4 pages per minute in color. While a lot of the more expensive color lasers can do single pass color printing and get 20+ ppm, 4 ppm for 8 x 10 color photos at top quality easily beats any inkjet. I printed my Christmas card (~100 copies x 2 pages full color) in under 2 hours. It used to take me days of printing with an inkjet.
My only issue with the Magicolor 2300DL is that it is not postscript. My primary desktop OS is Red Hat 9. Greyscale printing is perfect from linux. Color printing is not photo quality, as you can see patterning in the output. Linux printing is also slower than Windows. Linux printing does work well enough to be usable (it's the only printer set up on my linux boxen), but if you're going for true photo quality, for now, you'll need a windows PC lying around. Linux drivers can be found on linuxprinting.orgjump directly to the 2300DL linuxprinting.org page or the driver page, which also gives info on the protocol used by the 2300DL.
As far as toner goes, I've had a hard time finding the high capacity 4500 page toner cartriges for everything but black. The standard 1500 page cartridges go for about $70, the large color ones for about $120, and the black ones (only comes as large) for about $80. The toner is a little more expensive than other lasers, but any laser toner is dirt cheap compared to ink.
The list price is $800, but you can probably pick it up for $600 if you can wait a little while for it to go on sale. It's definitely worth the extra $100 and the wait.
I'm slowly being convinced that only the Libertarians really care about freedom from government intrusion into our lives. Personally, I'm conservative (I sit on the fence between the Republicans and the Libertarians). I support the president. But I find it hard to support Ashcroft's justice department when it seems like we're heading towards a police state. What I'd really like to see is a party that favors small and medium business, as the major parties of today seem to either favor industry or big business. Really what I'm looking for is a truly moderate party.
It is very easy to mistake completely legitimate files on your computer for pirated content. For example, I could use Kazaa to download live tracks of my favorite bands in concert. If sanctioned by the band, these files would be legal. I could also have the band's latest CD ripped on my PC for loading into my MP3 player. These files would be legal too. Assuming that I had file sharing with other users disabled in Kazaa, the RIAA could come after me for using Kazaa, even though I did nothing illegal. It would be hard to prove where the tracks I ripped came from, and the RIAA could claim I downloaded them off Kazaa. Of course, if I owned the CD, I could legally download the files off Kazaa for use in my MP3 player. Basically, how is the RIAA going to know that the copyrighted songs on my PC are truly pirated? With the destruction of my PC as proposed by Sen. Hatch, I bet they would destroy my PC before checking. Do we want to tolerate injustices like that in our society?
The best way to turn a free society into a police state is quiet erosion of the citizen's rights.
Almost all music is mastered in the digital domain today. Even the music that you can still buy on vinyl. Professional audio editing is much easier using nonlinear editing tools, which are all digital. If you don't think the sound of the CD is up to par with other sources, maybe you need the newer formats of SACD or DVD-A. Personally, I can hear the difference between those formats and standard CD, but the difference is minimal. I'd rather have a 5.1 channel format than a higher sampling rate.
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I think range is still a limit for most. I live in the Washington, DC metro area. WMATA (the regional transit provider) runs mostly hybrid diesel and CNG buses. They have found that while CNG is cheaper on a per mile basis just concerning fuel cost, most of the CNG buses can't handle a double shift on one fill of CNG so they end up having a lower percent utilization than a diesel since they have to head back to the garage for a long refill after each driver's shift. Their CNG buses typically fill overnight as they take several hours to fill. A diesel takes minutes to fill, so even with the same range per fill, a diesel can run nearly continuously. Not all the WMATA garages support CNG and plans to build CNG infrastructure at more of their garages have gone slower than originally planned and my understanding is the primary reason is the operational constraints of CNG fueling.
Electric vehicles currently have the same kind of limitations as CNG. Without expensive infrastructure for doing things like en route charging, a bus needs to be able to comfortably run two shifts back to back before a transit authority can use them on a wide scale - probably roughly a 300 mile city range. The charging infrastructure even in a garage is expensive. Swapping enough batteries for a 300 mile bus range is also labor intensive. I agree that electric makes sense here, but the infrastructure just isn't there yet.
Van based trucks (think UPS) are light enough that they're not that hard to electrify from today's standards. However a medium duty truck like a box truck gets roughly the same kind of fuel economy as a transit bus and so the amount of energy you have to carry to make them work well today is still expensive and hard to do.
And many people beat the crap out of rental cars. I've rented cars numerous times that I start up and they say "Next oil change due: Immediately", which I then proceed to drive for a week and put 3000 miles on it. I've never had a rental car break down on me, but the evidence has generally been that they're not well maintained and they get away with it because the cars are relatively new. Many people also drive rental cars like they're stolen. Buying one seems like a bad deal to me.
You can custom order a car in the US. I've done it, and based on my experience, will do it again next time I want a new car. I got exactly the options I wanted without getting stuck paying for stuff I don't want or would never use. In my case, I ordered before the production began, so I waited 3 months for my car, but for most models already in production, the turnaround is usually 4-6 weeks.
Granted, you can get some good deals on cars that are just sitting and therefore have been marked down (you have more negotiating power there), but in my case, getting exactly what I wanted was more important - and I bought through Costco (still uses a dealership but the pricing is prenegotiated). Since I was buying a brand new model, the Costco pricing killed whatever I could have negotiated on my own, but YMMV on models that have been out for a while.
It's probably how VW got a Euro spec engine to meet US regulations. Euro specs measure pollution per distance - the way to win is to burn fuel really efficiently. US specs measure pollution per unit of fuel consumption - the way to win is to burn fuel really cleanly. That difference is a big reason why they have much more fuel efficient vehicles in Europe. It's much easier to get a larger engine to burn cleaner. Most manufacturers that sell the same engine in both continents use different tunings in each, where the EU one gets better fuel economy and the US one burns cleaner.
Manufacturers have been trying to bring the incredible economy that small diesels in Europe get to the US for years but it turns out making a diesel that is significantly more efficient than a comparable gas engine and also meets EPA regulations is really hard. For example, Mazda has been promising Skyactiv-D (diesel) engines in the US for years now, but they keep getting delayed because they're not satisfied with their performance.
I don't have experience with Corsera courses, but I am currently an OMSCS student at Georgia Tech (http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/). So far, the lessons (YouTube videos through Udacity) have been well done. However, the course discussions on the forums (Piazza) in some cases have been more valuable than the courses themselves. In particular, we've had a great thread going on about real world agile vs. non-agile development models as we've seen them in the professional world.
The difference may be that while not all students are US based, all students have to apply for admission to the program, with minimum credentials being a BS degree (generally in a STEM field) with a 3.0 and TOEFL scores for non-native speakers. Students are expecting rigorous courses and are generally graded at least a little bit on forum participation, so students have incentives to participate and the faculty and other students don't put up with "give me the answers" type posts (those would be an honor code violation and could easily get you kicked out). Maybe having to be admitted to a real school makes all the difference?
I have worked with automated vehicle locator data throughout the US as a source of data integrated into my company's products. Getting a fire department's AVL data is easy. Never had any objections if they have the hardware installed. Getting police AVL data is next to impossible in most places thanks to the union agreements. I am unaware of a single US police department that has AVL on by default for their vehicles. Those that have AVL systems installed have it configured so the officer can turn it on and off, usually at the flip of a switch on the dashboard.
It's such an issue with the unions that we've had trouble with getting some departments to have AVL enabled in the police cruisers leading and following a parade just for the duration of the parade. It makes the command center's job much easier if they know the exact extents of where the parade is in real time, but you can figure out the information in other ways so it would seem like something that wouldn't get a lot of push back. I can't even imagine trying to get an always on system installed in a department, regardless of who you pitch it to.
You must have gone to TJHSST!
The overhead projector they used in the article is 3500 lumens, but I can speak from their experience that their output isn't that high. LCD panels take a lot of light pushed through them to project a bright image, because the panel is relatively opaque. Overhead projectors are almost completely transparent, so take very little light to produce a bright image. I have a 1991 Proxima Ovation A822C 640x480 data + video LCD overhead projector panel and a 3500 lumen 3M 9200 overhead projector. Showing transparencies, the projector produces a nice bright white color, which looks about the same as a 3500 lumen LCD projector. Throw my LCD panel on it, and the light output drops to under half of the 650 lumen LCD projector that I frequently borrow. I'd guess that the OHP + LCD panel is about equivalent to a 250 lumen LCD projector.
The projector they built looks a lot brighter than mine, probably due to a newer LCD, and not having two layers of protective glass over it, like my LCD panel. However, to make their panel look bright, they tweaked the driver settings. That just changes the color gradients, and doesn't actually make the projector brighter. Even with their tweaks, I doubt that their output breaks 1000 lumens. It would be interesting to get it measured and see what it actually produces. Maybe someone with a lumen meter can fill us all in.
Saw the 9:00 in Roanoake (Virginia). The actual ending WAS what I was expecting, but the way that the story got there wasn't.
Awesome CG . . . much better than in Reloaded IMHO. Worth the ticket price just to see the CG.
I actually think I like it almost as much as the original (ask me again in a week once I've sorted it out more). I didn't like Reloaded near as well.
I liked the way all the philosophy from Reloaded and the original came together in Revolutions. I like both previous movies better because of Revolutions . . . exact opposite of Reloaded, which made me like the original less since I was confuesd.
Go see Revolutions! It's a lot more fun than work or classes!
How can the company that has a monopoly over nearly everything on the desktop complain abou a lack of choice for users? Maybe it feels a little different when your monopoly isn't stable and there's real competition out there. If I were buying a portable player right now, ir would be an iPod for sure. I wouldn't even look at players with Windows Media support. I've liked using iTunes on OSX, but have never owned a mac. Now I have to wait for apple to release iTunes for Linux so I can try the store :) Well, maybe it's worth booting into windows to try, but not being able to play the AAC tracks on Linux wouldn't be good.
I'm in the same boat. I've had a CD burner for over 5 years now, and have not seen any high quality discs go bad, except for getting scratched. However, I've seen those cheap, plain silver surface only discs go bad from the top reflective layer starting to peal in about 18 months. I lost most of a relatively unimportant backup to those discs. That's why I will only buy discs with a heavier duty top surface now.
I stored the discs that started to peel on a spindle in a dark closet when they weren't in use. I think that part of the problem may have been scratches on the top surface that over time allowed the top layer to pull apart. But it also seems a little suspicious that I could have scratched 7-10 CDs in exactly the same way.
I still have some of the plain discs left, and I intend to put CD labels on all of the remaining ones to give them some extra protection. Anyone else have similar experiences?
The printer has parallel, USB, and 10/100 ethernet connections. I personally use the ethernet connection exclusively. It does 16 pages a minute in greyscale, and 4 pages per minute in color. While a lot of the more expensive color lasers can do single pass color printing and get 20+ ppm, 4 ppm for 8 x 10 color photos at top quality easily beats any inkjet. I printed my Christmas card (~100 copies x 2 pages full color) in under 2 hours. It used to take me days of printing with an inkjet.
My only issue with the Magicolor 2300DL is that it is not postscript. My primary desktop OS is Red Hat 9. Greyscale printing is perfect from linux. Color printing is not photo quality, as you can see patterning in the output. Linux printing is also slower than Windows. Linux printing does work well enough to be usable (it's the only printer set up on my linux boxen), but if you're going for true photo quality, for now, you'll need a windows PC lying around. Linux drivers can be found on linuxprinting.org jump directly to the 2300DL linuxprinting.org page or the driver page, which also gives info on the protocol used by the 2300DL.
As far as toner goes, I've had a hard time finding the high capacity 4500 page toner cartriges for everything but black. The standard 1500 page cartridges go for about $70, the large color ones for about $120, and the black ones (only comes as large) for about $80. The toner is a little more expensive than other lasers, but any laser toner is dirt cheap compared to ink.
The list price is $800, but you can probably pick it up for $600 if you can wait a little while for it to go on sale. It's definitely worth the extra $100 and the wait.
I'm slowly being convinced that only the Libertarians really care about freedom from government intrusion into our lives. Personally, I'm conservative (I sit on the fence between the Republicans and the Libertarians). I support the president. But I find it hard to support Ashcroft's justice department when it seems like we're heading towards a police state. What I'd really like to see is a party that favors small and medium business, as the major parties of today seem to either favor industry or big business. Really what I'm looking for is a truly moderate party.
It is very easy to mistake completely legitimate files on your computer for pirated content. For example, I could use Kazaa to download live tracks of my favorite bands in concert. If sanctioned by the band, these files would be legal. I could also have the band's latest CD ripped on my PC for loading into my MP3 player. These files would be legal too. Assuming that I had file sharing with other users disabled in Kazaa, the RIAA could come after me for using Kazaa, even though I did nothing illegal. It would be hard to prove where the tracks I ripped came from, and the RIAA could claim I downloaded them off Kazaa. Of course, if I owned the CD, I could legally download the files off Kazaa for use in my MP3 player. Basically, how is the RIAA going to know that the copyrighted songs on my PC are truly pirated? With the destruction of my PC as proposed by Sen. Hatch, I bet they would destroy my PC before checking. Do we want to tolerate injustices like that in our society?
The best way to turn a free society into a police state is quiet erosion of the citizen's rights.
Almost all music is mastered in the digital domain today. Even the music that you can still buy on vinyl. Professional audio editing is much easier using nonlinear editing tools, which are all digital. If you don't think the sound of the CD is up to par with other sources, maybe you need the newer formats of SACD or DVD-A. Personally, I can hear the difference between those formats and standard CD, but the difference is minimal. I'd rather have a 5.1 channel format than a higher sampling rate.