That is what I was talking about when I said "even if the shaft speed must stay the same." Piston engines used with constant speed props have a decently wide power curve, but small efficiency curve. From reading about this engine, I get the impression it has an extremely narrow power and efficiency curve due to tuning of the shockwaves against the rotor vanes. A constant power engine wouldn't work well in an aircraft without a light and efficient energy storage system. It would either be tuned for climb and high-altitude takeoffs, and be extremely overpowered and inefficient the rest of the time, or it would be tuned for cruise and require a 10,000 foot runway for takeoff at low altitudes, and not be able to even get off the ground at high altitude airports.
The blow out panels are a couple of square feet, in the cargo area or behind interior wall panels in case their is a pressurization system failure so the fuselage doesn't overpressurize. But they aren't in the roof. I've never heard of "speculation" as to Aloha 243. I understand it was pretty conclusively metal fatigue from pressure cycling, and salt water corrosion, along with the fact Boeing hadn't put a lot of thought into how to stop a hull rupture when it started. Now planes have reinforced tear strips specifically designed to stop a tear that has formed in the fuselage.
Navy dive tables for no decompression limits start at 310 minutes @ 35 feet, but residual nitrogen levels are calculated for dives at even 10 feet. If you dive at 15 feet for over 2 hours, a standard recreational decompression stop is probably recommended, but doesn't look like it is required.
Well I'd say I'm somewhere between intermediate and power user. I've been using Office 07 and the ribbon menu for about a year now in Outlook, Word, and Excel. We're still on Access 03, and I infrequently need to use PowerPoint. This amount of time is generally sufficient for computer savvy people to adjust to a new layout and recover any lost productivity or unlock the new features' potential.
I still hate the ribbon interface and feel like I am slightly less productive than before. More than half the time, I need features that aren't offered in the ribbon. So I need to use keyboard shortcuts, or pop out the old options box from the bottom of the menu option group. Since I don't see the keyboard shortcuts in the drop down menus anymore, I am starting to forget some of the ones I use less. I also frequently get confused about what is in some of the ribbon groups like "Page Layout", "View", "Review" or whatever, because conceptually they are so close, even if they group different types of visual layout actions.
Unless this engine is able to widely change its power output, even if the shaft speed must stay the same, it won't be useful for light aircraft until batteries become much lighter, and electric motors become even more powerful. It sounds like it has one best power output and shaft speed. That won't work well for aircraft of any type unless they are series hybrid too.
I vaguely recall reading a more informative article about this engine that said the rotor had to turn at a specific speed, and airlfow through it had to be fairly specific, because of the engine design. Since it relies on a pressure wave hitting a specific part of the rotor vanes to compress the air, mix the fuel, then extract the energy of the expanding air, throttling it wouldn't work without having a completely different rotor design.
You are very optimistic. I wish this were the case. But the level of hysteria and misinformation of public is so high with nuclear, I think Fukushima will retard nuclear reactor development and construction by at least a decade.
Fukushima reactors are by far NOT a modern plant. It was about the oldest design still considered safe to operate in the West. Chernobyl was such a dangerous design, and omitted so many safety systems, that it NEVER would have been licensed to operate in the west, not even in the 1960's.
The Infineon chip either supports or doesn't support the 1700 mhz band, depending on who you talk to. The chip spec sheets I've been able to track down don't mention 1700 mhz. If the chip supports it, there is a remote chance a firmware update could get it working. But I have never heard of a cell device where the manufacturer and operator chose to enable different bands with a firmware update. It would probably require another FCC device licensing round. I don't think they generally feel like it is worth it when then can just sell you a new device after a 2 year contract. Also with AT&T wanting to shut down T-Mobile's 1700/2100 network probably within a year of takeover and change it to LTE, I think the chances of an iPhone firmware update that enabled the T-Mobile 3G network even if it was technically possible are somewhere between not going to happen and not a chance in hell.
I doubt in particular this one supercomputer of less than 2,000 PS3's caused them too much consternation or lost profit. They were probably worried about game cheats, game copying, and the tens of thousands of hacked personal PS3's that people would buy fewer games for. I always thought they should have offered a version for supercomputing that had the Other OS option, access to the GPU and any disabled cores, no Bluray, a gig eth port, and USB booting. I think they should have been able to justify it at a 50% premium over the current cost. That might have put it at about $900 at release, but today it should be more like $450.
A lot of Sony's problem isn't just this. It is stupid design decisions, like starting the PS3 run with Bluray (should have come with DVD and been refreshed and/or an add on when prices came down), and treating customers with such disrespect (by disabling Other OS and removing PS2 hardware support). I don't buy Sony items specifically because of some of their annoying business habits.
I agree with most of your points, however this one bothers me...
and in general on tax-payers time you have no right to be doing private correspondance on government payroll and equipment
Aside from the fact governments seem to have a hard time hiring quality people, keeping them motivated, and firing or encouraging them to move on when they get burnt out, one would hope most government employees are professionals. You hire a professional to do a job. That job may take 30 or 40 or 50 hours a week. To a certain extent you can add tasks if you think they are underutilized. A professional should be trusted to do their job well and in a reasonable amount of time (unless there is evidence to the contrary), and use company or government resources to take care of personal matters over the phone or internet to the extent it allows them to stay focused and productive at work. Now hourly and contract (union) workers may have to set guidelines for this to prevent abuse. But even those people should be given access to work communication resources to resolve personal matters to a reasonable extent. Otherwise the work product you get out of these disrespected people will probably be equivalent to the resources you provided them (meaning crap).
"no other carrier would give the level of freedom Apple wanted"
Given that there were no other indications of dicussion with other carriers in the piece, I took that as a bit of writer hyperbole. Sprint and Verizon were known for locking down their devices strictly. Verizon was in the catbird seat of the industry and would have little internal motivation to innovate. Sprint and T-Mobile were small players on the national scene, good coverage in some regions, not great in others. And there were no other good options besides Apple wholesaling minutes. As much as I love T-Mobile, If I was SJ, I would have asked AT&T first, Verizon second, T-Mobile, then Sprint, and then I would have gone wholesale, unless I felt like that would slow my negotiations and at some point I might need to jump direct to wholesaling minutes.
AT&T Wireless was pretty good. Cingular ran me off after they integrated Houston Cellular under their umbrella. Then Cingular bought AT&T Wireless and ran me off again. And now they'll most likely run me off from T-Mobile once they assuredly mess with my non-contract plan.
In the USA, most companies have a $200 or $250 contract termination fee on subsidized smartphones purchased as part of a 24 month service contract, and the service might be around $80/month for up to 2 or 5 gigs of data, unlimited texts, and a lot or unlimited minutes. You probably also paid $150-200 as a "downpayment" on the phone. If you don't complete your contract, the full amount of the termination fee is due immediately. So buying a phone and breaking your contract right away costs $350 minimum, or generally about the same as that phone unlocked from an independent dealer. So there is really no advantage to buying a contract phone, breaking the contract, and getting another SIM card. In fact you could only switch between AT&T and T-Mobile. After this sale goes through, there'll be no other national cell company in the USA using SIM cards besides AT&T.
I still haven't seen any evidence that Steve Jobs offered it to T-Mobile USA or anyone else besides AT&T and Verizon. I imagine if T-Mobile had a chance to secure it for both countries, they would have seriously pursued it and it would have been popular leaked knowledge.
I feel your pain, and if you can stomach being an AT&T customer for a little while, all I can suggest is if you are off-contract, sign up for a 2 year plan in about 9 months, and you'll get almost 3 more years of probably similar service, or if they don't you'll be able to cancel. Me, I'm going to risk staying on my non-contract Even More Plus plan as long as they'll let me, and the minute AT&T increases my rate, decreases my internet cap, or discontinues @Home, I'l bolt for Virgin. I hate AT&T for many reasons, including rolling over and playing dead for the NSA, and hate that my money will go to them for a little while, but I don't see a good alternative being that I really like my @Home phone service too. I really doubt AT&T can keep their greedy hands to themselves for long.
No one in the USA, especially with national coverage. Maybe there are some very small regional players, maybe... If you are a non-US citizen, I'd suggest a cheap phone and pay as you go on Virgin or Boost when you are here.
Google could have, but they are pretty selective in features and bugs they think are worthy of Android addressing. Many Blackberries had UMA and it worked good. The HTC G2 has UMA, along with I think the Samsung Vibrant. CyanogenMod has it in version 7. I've heard it isn't as good about transitioning from WiFi to the cell network during a call. It used to require tight integration with the hardware. I think T-Mobile commissioned an independent company to write a more platform independent software only implementation for them, but by that time, it was too late to mean anything substantial to the company.
You are so right in how they could have competed better. I've suggested several of those items on their company forum. You had a few great ones that I hadn't thought of.
Another you didn't mention is their @Home service, which is basically a VoIP adapter for your standard home phone run on GSM over IP like WiFi calling. The public hardly heard about it, the ones that did got confused (along with their sales people) between it and WiFi calling, which was introduced with a small ad campaign, with a similar name, and same price, at about the same time. I think WiFi calling was originally called unlimited WiFi@Home. @Home suffered from technical problems due to buggy Linksys/Cisco firmware in their router/adapter, was offered only to postpaid cellular customers, but only if your family plan had 4 lines or less.
It was much less than other options like Vonage and Time Warner phone service. But they tried to make it a perk for a limited subset of their customers, rather than a way to capture and retain customers. And they never invested in upgrades to the service beyond voicemail like other VOiP options had, even if it would have required some modest price increases.
I think if they had introduced it at a different time and price than WiFi calling, with a very different name and substantial ad campaign, allowed affluent techno savvy customers that had 5 cell lines of service to add one or more @home lines to their plan, charged say $19 for non cellular and prepaid customers, $9 for postpaid customers, and added features over time or in partnership with Google Voice like internet voicemail with customizable forwarding, messaging, logging, and recording options from an easy to use website, that it would have been very successful and increased the stickiness of their customers.
By far the biggest reason I haven't switched from T-Mobile to Sprint after the AT&T sales announcement was that I have @Home and don't want to lose it.
I read that long ago, and just reread it to be sure. Nowhere does it say Jobs approached T-Mobile, or anyone other than Verizon and AT&T. It even implies without specifically saying, that AT&T was his first partner, and when they were having negotiating difficulties, he tried Verizon who rejected the idea outright.
FlexPay was prepaid service on any offered postpay plan. At most T-Mobile could get stuffed with overages for one month, and I bet they cut it off relatively quickly. I can't imagine this being a real factor in their loss of subscribers. This part about it affecting their time-to-market for other projects (products) is interesting. It sounds like you have some insider info about what is going on there.
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Well first it would have to get approximately 10 times worse than it is now, before it was approximately equal to Chernobyl, then we can discuss #8.
That is what I was talking about when I said "even if the shaft speed must stay the same." Piston engines used with constant speed props have a decently wide power curve, but small efficiency curve. From reading about this engine, I get the impression it has an extremely narrow power and efficiency curve due to tuning of the shockwaves against the rotor vanes. A constant power engine wouldn't work well in an aircraft without a light and efficient energy storage system. It would either be tuned for climb and high-altitude takeoffs, and be extremely overpowered and inefficient the rest of the time, or it would be tuned for cruise and require a 10,000 foot runway for takeoff at low altitudes, and not be able to even get off the ground at high altitude airports.
I thought the printer sharing only worked with a very few "supported" printers, and wasn't actively being updated. Is this not true?
The blow out panels are a couple of square feet, in the cargo area or behind interior wall panels in case their is a pressurization system failure so the fuselage doesn't overpressurize. But they aren't in the roof. I've never heard of "speculation" as to Aloha 243. I understand it was pretty conclusively metal fatigue from pressure cycling, and salt water corrosion, along with the fact Boeing hadn't put a lot of thought into how to stop a hull rupture when it started. Now planes have reinforced tear strips specifically designed to stop a tear that has formed in the fuselage.
Navy dive tables for no decompression limits start at 310 minutes @ 35 feet, but residual nitrogen levels are calculated for dives at even 10 feet. If you dive at 15 feet for over 2 hours, a standard recreational decompression stop is probably recommended, but doesn't look like it is required.
Well I'd say I'm somewhere between intermediate and power user. I've been using Office 07 and the ribbon menu for about a year now in Outlook, Word, and Excel. We're still on Access 03, and I infrequently need to use PowerPoint. This amount of time is generally sufficient for computer savvy people to adjust to a new layout and recover any lost productivity or unlock the new features' potential.
I still hate the ribbon interface and feel like I am slightly less productive than before. More than half the time, I need features that aren't offered in the ribbon. So I need to use keyboard shortcuts, or pop out the old options box from the bottom of the menu option group. Since I don't see the keyboard shortcuts in the drop down menus anymore, I am starting to forget some of the ones I use less. I also frequently get confused about what is in some of the ribbon groups like "Page Layout", "View", "Review" or whatever, because conceptually they are so close, even if they group different types of visual layout actions.
Unless this engine is able to widely change its power output, even if the shaft speed must stay the same, it won't be useful for light aircraft until batteries become much lighter, and electric motors become even more powerful. It sounds like it has one best power output and shaft speed. That won't work well for aircraft of any type unless they are series hybrid too.
I vaguely recall reading a more informative article about this engine that said the rotor had to turn at a specific speed, and airlfow through it had to be fairly specific, because of the engine design. Since it relies on a pressure wave hitting a specific part of the rotor vanes to compress the air, mix the fuel, then extract the energy of the expanding air, throttling it wouldn't work without having a completely different rotor design.
You are very optimistic. I wish this were the case. But the level of hysteria and misinformation of public is so high with nuclear, I think Fukushima will retard nuclear reactor development and construction by at least a decade.
Fukushima reactors are by far NOT a modern plant. It was about the oldest design still considered safe to operate in the West. Chernobyl was such a dangerous design, and omitted so many safety systems, that it NEVER would have been licensed to operate in the west, not even in the 1960's.
The Infineon chip either supports or doesn't support the 1700 mhz band, depending on who you talk to. The chip spec sheets I've been able to track down don't mention 1700 mhz. If the chip supports it, there is a remote chance a firmware update could get it working. But I have never heard of a cell device where the manufacturer and operator chose to enable different bands with a firmware update. It would probably require another FCC device licensing round. I don't think they generally feel like it is worth it when then can just sell you a new device after a 2 year contract. Also with AT&T wanting to shut down T-Mobile's 1700/2100 network probably within a year of takeover and change it to LTE, I think the chances of an iPhone firmware update that enabled the T-Mobile 3G network even if it was technically possible are somewhere between not going to happen and not a chance in hell.
I doubt in particular this one supercomputer of less than 2,000 PS3's caused them too much consternation or lost profit. They were probably worried about game cheats, game copying, and the tens of thousands of hacked personal PS3's that people would buy fewer games for. I always thought they should have offered a version for supercomputing that had the Other OS option, access to the GPU and any disabled cores, no Bluray, a gig eth port, and USB booting. I think they should have been able to justify it at a 50% premium over the current cost. That might have put it at about $900 at release, but today it should be more like $450.
A lot of Sony's problem isn't just this. It is stupid design decisions, like starting the PS3 run with Bluray (should have come with DVD and been refreshed and/or an add on when prices came down), and treating customers with such disrespect (by disabling Other OS and removing PS2 hardware support). I don't buy Sony items specifically because of some of their annoying business habits.
Aside from the fact governments seem to have a hard time hiring quality people, keeping them motivated, and firing or encouraging them to move on when they get burnt out, one would hope most government employees are professionals. You hire a professional to do a job. That job may take 30 or 40 or 50 hours a week. To a certain extent you can add tasks if you think they are underutilized. A professional should be trusted to do their job well and in a reasonable amount of time (unless there is evidence to the contrary), and use company or government resources to take care of personal matters over the phone or internet to the extent it allows them to stay focused and productive at work. Now hourly and contract (union) workers may have to set guidelines for this to prevent abuse. But even those people should be given access to work communication resources to resolve personal matters to a reasonable extent. Otherwise the work product you get out of these disrespected people will probably be equivalent to the resources you provided them (meaning crap).
Given that there were no other indications of dicussion with other carriers in the piece, I took that as a bit of writer hyperbole. Sprint and Verizon were known for locking down their devices strictly. Verizon was in the catbird seat of the industry and would have little internal motivation to innovate. Sprint and T-Mobile were small players on the national scene, good coverage in some regions, not great in others. And there were no other good options besides Apple wholesaling minutes. As much as I love T-Mobile, If I was SJ, I would have asked AT&T first, Verizon second, T-Mobile, then Sprint, and then I would have gone wholesale, unless I felt like that would slow my negotiations and at some point I might need to jump direct to wholesaling minutes.
AT&T Wireless was pretty good. Cingular ran me off after they integrated Houston Cellular under their umbrella. Then Cingular bought AT&T Wireless and ran me off again. And now they'll most likely run me off from T-Mobile once they assuredly mess with my non-contract plan.
In the USA, most companies have a $200 or $250 contract termination fee on subsidized smartphones purchased as part of a 24 month service contract, and the service might be around $80/month for up to 2 or 5 gigs of data, unlimited texts, and a lot or unlimited minutes. You probably also paid $150-200 as a "downpayment" on the phone. If you don't complete your contract, the full amount of the termination fee is due immediately. So buying a phone and breaking your contract right away costs $350 minimum, or generally about the same as that phone unlocked from an independent dealer. So there is really no advantage to buying a contract phone, breaking the contract, and getting another SIM card. In fact you could only switch between AT&T and T-Mobile. After this sale goes through, there'll be no other national cell company in the USA using SIM cards besides AT&T.
I still haven't seen any evidence that Steve Jobs offered it to T-Mobile USA or anyone else besides AT&T and Verizon. I imagine if T-Mobile had a chance to secure it for both countries, they would have seriously pursued it and it would have been popular leaked knowledge.
I feel your pain, and if you can stomach being an AT&T customer for a little while, all I can suggest is if you are off-contract, sign up for a 2 year plan in about 9 months, and you'll get almost 3 more years of probably similar service, or if they don't you'll be able to cancel. Me, I'm going to risk staying on my non-contract Even More Plus plan as long as they'll let me, and the minute AT&T increases my rate, decreases my internet cap, or discontinues @Home, I'l bolt for Virgin. I hate AT&T for many reasons, including rolling over and playing dead for the NSA, and hate that my money will go to them for a little while, but I don't see a good alternative being that I really like my @Home phone service too. I really doubt AT&T can keep their greedy hands to themselves for long.
No one in the USA, especially with national coverage. Maybe there are some very small regional players, maybe... If you are a non-US citizen, I'd suggest a cheap phone and pay as you go on Virgin or Boost when you are here.
I read that as Apple IIGSes and thought, what is he doing replacing a cellphone with a 25 year old computer.
Google could have, but they are pretty selective in features and bugs they think are worthy of Android addressing. Many Blackberries had UMA and it worked good. The HTC G2 has UMA, along with I think the Samsung Vibrant. CyanogenMod has it in version 7. I've heard it isn't as good about transitioning from WiFi to the cell network during a call. It used to require tight integration with the hardware. I think T-Mobile commissioned an independent company to write a more platform independent software only implementation for them, but by that time, it was too late to mean anything substantial to the company.
Sorry, it wasn't WiFi@Home, it was Hotspot@Home. That's still not to be confused with plain old T-Mobile@Home home phone service.
You are so right in how they could have competed better. I've suggested several of those items on their company forum. You had a few great ones that I hadn't thought of.
Another you didn't mention is their @Home service, which is basically a VoIP adapter for your standard home phone run on GSM over IP like WiFi calling. The public hardly heard about it, the ones that did got confused (along with their sales people) between it and WiFi calling, which was introduced with a small ad campaign, with a similar name, and same price, at about the same time. I think WiFi calling was originally called unlimited WiFi@Home. @Home suffered from technical problems due to buggy Linksys/Cisco firmware in their router/adapter, was offered only to postpaid cellular customers, but only if your family plan had 4 lines or less.
It was much less than other options like Vonage and Time Warner phone service. But they tried to make it a perk for a limited subset of their customers, rather than a way to capture and retain customers. And they never invested in upgrades to the service beyond voicemail like other VOiP options had, even if it would have required some modest price increases.
I think if they had introduced it at a different time and price than WiFi calling, with a very different name and substantial ad campaign, allowed affluent techno savvy customers that had 5 cell lines of service to add one or more @home lines to their plan, charged say $19 for non cellular and prepaid customers, $9 for postpaid customers, and added features over time or in partnership with Google Voice like internet voicemail with customizable forwarding, messaging, logging, and recording options from an easy to use website, that it would have been very successful and increased the stickiness of their customers.
By far the biggest reason I haven't switched from T-Mobile to Sprint after the AT&T sales announcement was that I have @Home and don't want to lose it.
I read that long ago, and just reread it to be sure. Nowhere does it say Jobs approached T-Mobile, or anyone other than Verizon and AT&T. It even implies without specifically saying, that AT&T was his first partner, and when they were having negotiating difficulties, he tried Verizon who rejected the idea outright.
FlexPay was prepaid service on any offered postpay plan. At most T-Mobile could get stuffed with overages for one month, and I bet they cut it off relatively quickly. I can't imagine this being a real factor in their loss of subscribers. This part about it affecting their time-to-market for other projects (products) is interesting. It sounds like you have some insider info about what is going on there.