Again. Who is using these to power a real car sized EV? No one.
Do you know why? Tesla, GM, AC Propulsion all staffed by idiots? Not likely.
Because as you size up BLDC motor, it's part load efficiency keeps dropping. You actually spend most of your time running at low/part loads with even lower efficiency than you get in a similarly powerful AC induction motor.
So what you see is smaller motors are BLDC and larger (EV sized) ones tend to be AC induction. Real world efficiency of EV motor/Inverter running at 90% is an extremely reasonable, if not optimistic number.
As far as heat dissipation. Remember that those are peak loads that are only seen intermittently. EV motors overheat and many cars go into reduced power mode when that happens (at EV races).
I was just going ballpark and you are pulling out theoretical best case numbers to nitpick with.
Real world charge/discharge of an actual battery pack is going to include running through a BMS and power conversions, losses in cabling etc.
Tesla Motors claims 86% Charge/Discharge efficiency of the battery. Actual users of real EVs of all types report numbers dipping into the 70% range.
Also who is using these super efficient DC motors in EVs? Tesla is using AC induction. LEAF/Volt use AC synchronous. Tesla Also claims 88% efficiency of their Motor/Inverter drive. I doubt you will find any real world EV motor producing an Average better than 90%.
My using 90% for the conversions was ballpark but compared to the real world numbers, it was likely erring on the side of generosity.
Significant losses are incurred at every conversion step, they will continue to drive efficiency targeted designs away from the pure series hybrid approach.
Strange no one is pursuing this given some of the other strange engine designes with opposed pistons, free pistons, etc.
But I will argue again, that series hybrid is a mistake and single load even more.
That 38% in a pure series hybrid gets multiplied by about 90% efficiency of the generator and 90% efficiency of the EV motor..38*.9*.9 = ~30% driving the wheels.
A Prius has 37% efficiency for it's gas engine (Tested at Argonne labs) and and 90% efficiency for mechanical coupling..37% *.9 = ~33%.
That doesn't look too bad, but we are still talking about a 10% difference in fuel economy in favor of Prius.
But if you go through battery charge/discharge into the mix you 90% conversion. So.38*.9*.9*.9 = 27%. Now you are at a 20% deficit in fuel economy.
I think you find most designs with a lot resources behnind them, are going to shoot for 10-20% fuel economy boost of including a mechanical coupling driving their wheels (Just like Ford/Toyota/GM are doing on their EREVs/PHEVS).
Only people lacking resources are going to go pure series hybrid, like conversion hacks and the Fisker.
Stirling heat engines are not really suited for automotive applications (low power density) and while the theoretical efficiency is higher than an ICE, I don't think I have actually seen a case of practical application exceeding ICE efficiency, especially not a in practical size for automotive use. I am less familiar with Kalina Cycle, but a quick look shows it is likely even less suited.
Once you decouple the wheels it is nice to open your mind it ICE alternatives, but the reality is that even just running a generator most esoteric solutions have even more practical limitations than an ICE for automotive use. One that has come up several times in this thread in this topic, is using a turbine. But practical designs small enough to be used in car return under 30% efficiency and likely will cost 6 figures just for the turbine.
Yes a Fisker is much Heavier than a Corvette, but that is the cost of including a pile of batteries, but it will have minimal effect on highway MPG, where air resistance is the primary energy loss. The Fisker should be a cautionary tale against the pure series hybrid.
Anyone who looks at this in any depth will discover that pure series hybrids are essentially an efficiency dead end.
You can achieve near 90% energy transfer mechanically, that is closer to 80% going through a Generator/Motor, and closer to 70% if you try Generator/Motor/Battery.
All the major efforts for PHEV/EREV applications will use some kind of mechanical connection to drive the wheels.
Plug In Prius does it. Chevy Volt does it. Ford CMAX energi does it.
Fisker is the lone production car that is pure series and that would likely do to the lack of resources to pull it off and it is definitely a big part of the reason for the abysmal fuel economy in range extender mode.
This project is doomed from the start. Slashdot really shouldn't be taking advertisement for funding this project. I even wonder if it is a scam.
That is not the end of the story. Engines have an operating point at which they are most efficient. If you couple the engine to a generator/battery system, you can use the engine ONLY in this mode, while a mechanical coupling to the wheels requires operation of the engine at lower efficiencies. Perhaps this does not outweigh the losses of the generator/battery/motor train, but I wonder if if might with an engine that was a completely new design aimed at single-mode operation.
Again, that is another idea that has more surface appeal than any real depth.
Engines don't have some super efficient peak where you can make up this difference, what they do have is a small trough, of low efficiency, usually at very low load. At highway speeds they are in the efficient range, so you gain no advantage there at all. It is more for low speed stop n go, where standard hybrids already do an excellent job of keeping cars out of the low efficiency trough, that you might get some small advantage.
The Volt and the Fisker Karma are two cars that offer a bit of a case study. Two companies with much larger resources (Money, PHDs etc) than some enthusiasts tackled this problem.
GM engineered in a mechanical coupling despite the additional cost/complexity because of the efficiency payoff. They get 37 MPG in RE mode. Fisker with less resources took the pure series shortcut. They get only 20 MPG out of a GM Turbo 4 Cyl. That is worse than massive V8 in a Corvette.
The resources of this project are minuscule compared even to Fisker, and the results can reasonably be expected to be even worse (if actually ever gets finished).
Once you dig into it, pure series hybrid cars are really not a good idea.
But once you look at the numbers for energy conversions, it is actually more efficient to mechanically couple an ICE to the wheels than to use it as a generator and run an EV motor.
This is the reason the Chevy Volt has a mechanical coupling to the wheels, when driving on the highway in Range extender mode.
It gets even worse if you start putting power into the batteries from the generator.
I find the iPad too small for several uses. I would love a tablet with an 8.5x11" useable screen.
Yep. For a home or office tablet, I would also like something bigger than an iPad.
For full page applications like PDFs/Comic books/Magazines, I would rather have a bigger screen than 10". But using carbon fiber or something to keep weight in check.
For the more portable one-handed/ereader application, I would prefers something even smaller than 7". 5"-6" with minimal side bezels would be fine.
I realize this is in the same range as big smartphones. But big smartphones/plans are extremely expensive.
I really don't see a place for a 7" tablet for me. It is too big to be really portable, really as comfortable as a simple e-reader (I have one).
Though regardless of my preferences, Apple really should have something between 4" and 10".
That is really the key element to me, and the most significant assembly work. The actual components actually need to come from the suppliers where-ever they may be.
If they are actually doing the circuit board building population in the USA, I think that warrants a made in USA kudos.
If they are putting the assembled circuit board in a case, that is just lame BS.
Good to have VLC on any OS, but it isn't my favorite player anywhere and it does seem a bit flaky under Linux.
Under Linux, it will often lose sync in DTS/DD SPDIF passthrough, and worse it will occasionally crash and completely lock up Linux. So I use smplayer instead, which has no issue with DTS/DD passthrough and it never takes down Linux.
On Windows it doesn't have either of these problems, but I prefer MPC-HC on Windows.
Internet bloggers seems to think companies function, the way they would if Internet bloggers were in charge.
So MS announces a competing product without a price and it is instantly: Abandon project?
That is just silly.
The decision to wait and see on WinRT is probably a sensible one. This product is starting out with essentially no ecosystem. HP recently got burned releasing their own tablet with essentially no ecosystem to back it up (Touchpad).
The x86 version would be the only Windows tablet I would consider. WinRT is going to be barren for some time.
It really costs them nothing to wait this one out. I consider that prudence.
Not that I care, because HP isn't likely to be a tablet leader anyway, Asus/Samsung produce better mobile product.
There seems to be one thing worse than being Microsoft's enemy. That is being their partner.
1: Elop takes over, and Osbournes them by announcing the switch to Windows Phone with no Windows Phone actually coming anytime soon. 2: Microsoft announces that Win8 will have a new Kernel and that currently for sale phones (Nokia Phones) won't be upgrading to new kernel, thus killing desire for current Nokia phones. 3: Microsoft starts making it's own Windows phones.
Step 3 is hypothetical at this point, but looks like it might be enough to kill already weakened Nokia.
Am I the only one relishing the thought of buying one of these ultra-cheap subsidised Microsoft tablets, reformatting it, and loading it up with Android/Tizen/whatever?
Likely only the software will be subsidized, just so these can compete with Android tablets. So there will be no great savings.
Uh, Rec. 709 is a small portion of the visible color gamut..
Uh, So?
Standards exist for a reason. Just about all available Media is produced for Rec. 709/sRGB.
Showing it with wider color primaries will not make it look more real, it will make it look more unnatural.
Wide gamut PC monitors were all the rage 3 or 4 years ago, until people started realizing it made it nearly impossible to get neutral color and the tide turned back to sRGB screens.
Gamut isn't simply a case of more == better. In the vast majority of cases, more == worse.
If previous reports of >$80 for OEM WinRT are correct, only Microsoft can reasonably afford to build low end Windows RT tablets, as the $80 becomes prohibitive software cost for low end tablets (where WinRT will compete). For Microsoft it is just inter-divisional funny money.
How do HW OEMs compete with a $200 Kindle Fire (or rumored Google Branded $200 tablet) when saddled with $80+ OS?
I used to run KDE, but then after an upgrade to a new Kubuntu release KDE seemed to get weird(changed menu/panels) and more bloated.
Now I run XFCE, and will do so until that gets weird and bloated.
Then I will switch to something lighter, and run that until it gets weird and bloated.
And so on. It seems creeping featuritis will kill all DE's eventually. I don't really need a desktop to do much, and I don't need 3D effects, and transparency. I just need some decent menus/panels and some smoothness/speed/reliability. Beyond that less is more.
There is absolutely no point to store the up-sampled audio on disk. It is just a waste of space (and more licensing fees for Dolby)
It is extremely common for output DAC HW to do up-sampling and digital filtering these days. This already removes the ringing without the need for storing the up-sampled data, which is completely pointless. I doubt there is any modern DAC HW that is still using native 44.1/48 and analog filters in the output stage.
Here is a link to the original paper by Dr. Peter Craven where he mathematically proves that an apodizing filter can make audible improvements in sound reproduction.
You can't mathematically prove something sounds better. Most adults can't even hear 16KHz, let alone 20 KHz and beyond, or detect subtle variations in those ranges.
You have to do double blind testing. Double blind testing has shown even real 24/96KHz can't be discerned from 16/44.1KHz by audiophiles and recording pros.
Copyrights often involve works of pure creativity. Locking them up has no real negative effect on society, as no one else would really independently discover them, nor is industry/society dependent on them.
So I have no problem with "life of the author" copyrights. Or 50 years in case of the author death, so the heirs can have some benefit. But not life +50 or any other outrageous schemes. So Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit should have expired by now, but they would have provided more than ample opportunities for Tolkien to benefit throughout his entire life and his heirs some benefit afterwards.
Patents on the other hand, to often describe common sense solutions to industry problems, that could easily and independently arrived at. Blocking/locking down common solutions to common problems, drags down productivity of industry and society.
Lacking any real merit system, patents should be shortened because of this negative effect.
Best would be if patents were awarded on merit. No easy general/common sense application awarded at all. But that isn't going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Again. Who is using these to power a real car sized EV? No one.
Do you know why? Tesla, GM, AC Propulsion all staffed by idiots? Not likely.
Because as you size up BLDC motor, it's part load efficiency keeps dropping. You actually spend most of your time running at low/part loads with even lower efficiency than you get in a similarly powerful AC induction motor.
So what you see is smaller motors are BLDC and larger (EV sized) ones tend to be AC induction. Real world efficiency of EV motor/Inverter running at 90% is an extremely reasonable, if not optimistic number.
As far as heat dissipation. Remember that those are peak loads that are only seen intermittently. EV motors overheat and many cars go into reduced power mode when that happens (at EV races).
I was just going ballpark and you are pulling out theoretical best case numbers to nitpick with.
Real world charge/discharge of an actual battery pack is going to include running through a BMS and power conversions, losses in cabling etc.
Tesla Motors claims 86% Charge/Discharge efficiency of the battery. Actual users of real EVs of all types report numbers dipping into the 70% range.
Also who is using these super efficient DC motors in EVs? Tesla is using AC induction. LEAF/Volt use AC synchronous.
Tesla Also claims 88% efficiency of their Motor/Inverter drive. I doubt you will find any real world EV motor producing an Average better than 90%.
My using 90% for the conversions was ballpark but compared to the real world numbers, it was likely erring on the side of generosity.
Significant losses are incurred at every conversion step, they will continue to drive efficiency targeted designs away from the pure series hybrid approach.
Thanks for the link, did more searching and found a newer one:
Hhere they mention getting 38% efficiency. Not too Shabby.
http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19970012689
Strange no one is pursuing this given some of the other strange engine designes with opposed pistons, free pistons, etc.
But I will argue again, that series hybrid is a mistake and single load even more.
That 38% in a pure series hybrid gets multiplied by about 90% efficiency of the generator and 90% efficiency of the EV motor. .38*.9*.9 = ~30% driving the wheels.
A Prius has 37% efficiency for it's gas engine (Tested at Argonne labs) and and 90% efficiency for mechanical coupling. .37% *.9 = ~33%.
That doesn't look too bad, but we are still talking about a 10% difference in fuel economy in favor of Prius.
But if you go through battery charge/discharge into the mix you 90% conversion. So .38*.9*.9*.9 = 27%. Now you are at a 20% deficit in fuel economy.
I think you find most designs with a lot resources behnind them, are going to shoot for 10-20% fuel economy boost of including a mechanical coupling driving their wheels (Just like Ford/Toyota/GM are doing on their EREVs/PHEVS).
Only people lacking resources are going to go pure series hybrid, like conversion hacks and the Fisker.
Stirling heat engines are not really suited for automotive applications (low power density) and while the theoretical efficiency is higher than an ICE, I don't think I have actually seen a case of practical application exceeding ICE efficiency, especially not a in practical size for automotive use. I am less familiar with Kalina Cycle, but a quick look shows it is likely even less suited.
Once you decouple the wheels it is nice to open your mind it ICE alternatives, but the reality is that even just running a generator most esoteric solutions have even more practical limitations than an ICE for automotive use. One that has come up several times in this thread in this topic, is using a turbine. But practical designs small enough to be used in car return under 30% efficiency and likely will cost 6 figures just for the turbine.
Yes a Fisker is much Heavier than a Corvette, but that is the cost of including a pile of batteries, but it will have minimal effect on highway MPG, where air resistance is the primary energy loss. The Fisker should be a cautionary tale against the pure series hybrid.
Anyone who looks at this in any depth will discover that pure series hybrids are essentially an efficiency dead end.
You can achieve near 90% energy transfer mechanically, that is closer to 80% going through a Generator/Motor, and closer to 70% if you try Generator/Motor/Battery.
All the major efforts for PHEV/EREV applications will use some kind of mechanical connection to drive the wheels.
Plug In Prius does it.
Chevy Volt does it.
Ford CMAX energi does it.
Fisker is the lone production car that is pure series and that would likely do to the lack of resources to pull it off and it is definitely a big part of the reason for the abysmal fuel economy in range extender mode.
This project is doomed from the start. Slashdot really shouldn't be taking advertisement for funding this project. I even wonder if it is a scam.
That is not the end of the story. Engines have an operating point at which they are most efficient. If you couple the engine to a generator/battery system, you can use the engine ONLY in this mode, while a mechanical coupling to the wheels requires operation of the engine at lower efficiencies. Perhaps this does not outweigh the losses of the generator/battery/motor train, but I wonder if if might with an engine that was a completely new design aimed at single-mode operation.
Again, that is another idea that has more surface appeal than any real depth.
Engines don't have some super efficient peak where you can make up this difference, what they do have is a small trough, of low efficiency, usually at very low load. At highway speeds they are in the efficient range, so you gain no advantage there at all. It is more for low speed stop n go, where standard hybrids already do an excellent job of keeping cars out of the low efficiency trough, that you might get some small advantage.
The Volt and the Fisker Karma are two cars that offer a bit of a case study. Two companies with much larger resources (Money, PHDs etc) than some enthusiasts tackled this problem.
GM engineered in a mechanical coupling despite the additional cost/complexity because of the efficiency payoff. They get 37 MPG in RE mode.
Fisker with less resources took the pure series shortcut. They get only 20 MPG out of a GM Turbo 4 Cyl. That is worse than massive V8 in a Corvette.
The resources of this project are minuscule compared even to Fisker, and the results can reasonably be expected to be even worse (if actually ever gets finished).
Once you dig into it, pure series hybrid cars are really not a good idea.
On the surface this seems like a great idea.
But once you look at the numbers for energy conversions, it is actually more efficient to mechanically couple an ICE to the wheels than to use it as a generator and run an EV motor.
This is the reason the Chevy Volt has a mechanical coupling to the wheels, when driving on the highway in Range extender mode.
It gets even worse if you start putting power into the batteries from the generator.
I find the iPad too small for several uses. I would love a tablet with an 8.5x11" useable screen.
Yep. For a home or office tablet, I would also like something bigger than an iPad.
For full page applications like PDFs/Comic books/Magazines, I would rather have a bigger screen than 10". But using carbon fiber or something to keep weight in check.
For the more portable one-handed/ereader application, I would prefers something even smaller than 7". 5"-6" with minimal side bezels would be fine.
I realize this is in the same range as big smartphones. But big smartphones/plans are extremely expensive.
I really don't see a place for a 7" tablet for me. It is too big to be really portable, really as comfortable as a simple e-reader (I have one).
Though regardless of my preferences, Apple really should have something between 4" and 10".
That is really the key element to me, and the most significant assembly work. The actual components actually need to come from the suppliers where-ever they may be.
If they are actually doing the circuit board building population in the USA, I think that warrants a made in USA kudos.
If they are putting the assembled circuit board in a case, that is just lame BS.
I think VLC quality is ok, but I like MPC-HC interface better and I can't remember the last time I had to fall back to VLC on Windows.
In fact MPC-HC does a better job of working with files like .wtv that I record with my tuner. In VLC the seek bar doesn't work.
BTW I found MPC-HC updates were lagging, so now I get my MPC-HC from Russian page, where there are weekly updates:
http://www.xvidvideo.ru/changelog-media-player-classic-home-cinema.html
Good to have VLC on any OS, but it isn't my favorite player anywhere and it does seem a bit flaky under Linux.
Under Linux, it will often lose sync in DTS/DD SPDIF passthrough, and worse it will occasionally crash and completely lock up Linux. So I use smplayer instead, which has no issue with DTS/DD passthrough and it never takes down Linux.
On Windows it doesn't have either of these problems, but I prefer MPC-HC on Windows.
Internet bloggers seems to think companies function, the way they would if Internet bloggers were in charge.
So MS announces a competing product without a price and it is instantly: Abandon project?
That is just silly.
The decision to wait and see on WinRT is probably a sensible one. This product is starting out with essentially no ecosystem. HP recently got burned releasing their own tablet with essentially no ecosystem to back it up (Touchpad).
The x86 version would be the only Windows tablet I would consider. WinRT is going to be barren for some time.
It really costs them nothing to wait this one out. I consider that prudence.
Not that I care, because HP isn't likely to be a tablet leader anyway, Asus/Samsung produce better mobile product.
There seems to be one thing worse than being Microsoft's enemy. That is being their partner.
1: Elop takes over, and Osbournes them by announcing the switch to Windows Phone with no Windows Phone actually coming anytime soon.
2: Microsoft announces that Win8 will have a new Kernel and that currently for sale phones (Nokia Phones) won't be upgrading to new kernel, thus killing desire for current Nokia phones.
3: Microsoft starts making it's own Windows phones.
Step 3 is hypothetical at this point, but looks like it might be enough to kill already weakened Nokia.
Actually at first glance I thought it was kind of neat.
Then I thought about actually using it and it strikes me as ergonomically FUBAR.
It has a floppy "hinge", so it doesn't turn this into a laptop. You really can't use it in your lap, as you are reliant on having a table/desk and using the kickstand to support the screen, while the floppy cover just lies there.
http://www.microsoft.com/global/surface/en/us/publishingimages/new/gallery_2_large.jpg
Asus solves the keyboard much better with the Transformer Tablets that acutally make it into a mini-laptop:
http://netbooksreview.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/asus_transformer_release_date_price.jpg
The floppy keyboard cover is long on gimmick, short on substance.
No I am simply arguing for standards, instead of ill defined "wider" color gamut, that is simply, bigger number is better nonsense.
Unless you have media AND players, AND displays all working in lockstep, you get worse results, not better.
You need standards body to meet, create a new wider gamut standard and build new product at all stages to meet it.
Going it alone is pointless spec whoring.
Am I the only one relishing the thought of buying one of these ultra-cheap subsidised Microsoft tablets, reformatting it, and loading it up with Android/Tizen/whatever?
Likely only the software will be subsidized, just so these can compete with Android tablets. So there will be no great savings.
Uh, Rec. 709 is a small portion of the visible color gamut. .
Uh, So?
Standards exist for a reason. Just about all available Media is produced for Rec. 709/sRGB.
Showing it with wider color primaries will not make it look more real, it will make it look more unnatural.
Wide gamut PC monitors were all the rage 3 or 4 years ago, until people started realizing it made it nearly impossible to get neutral color and the tide turned back to sRGB screens.
Gamut isn't simply a case of more == better. In the vast majority of cases, more == worse.
They need to sell them at a fairly large profit to feed the machine.
Microsoft does pour money into markets for years at zero or negative profits in hopes of eventually winning. Just look at Bing.
They still have Desktop OS/Office monopoly machine printing money until something they pour money on catches fire.
This could be their way of seeding the WinRT market that doesn't really make sense for OEMs (anyone?).
If previous reports of >$80 for OEM WinRT are correct, only Microsoft can reasonably afford to build low end Windows RT tablets, as the $80 becomes prohibitive software cost for low end tablets (where WinRT will compete). For Microsoft it is just inter-divisional funny money.
How do HW OEMs compete with a $200 Kindle Fire (or rumored Google Branded $200 tablet) when saddled with $80+ OS?
LCD TVs already easily match Rec. 709 color primaries (similar to sRGB used in standard color destkop monitors).
Since TV signals and Blu Rays are all using this standard, using a non standard wider gamut emitter, just gets you unnatural colors.
If you like artifical, oversaturated hues, great, but if you want natural looking color this does nothing for you.
IIRC, LGs new 55" OLED TV will be corresponding to Rec. 709 color primaries, not the outlandish Neon of OLED smartphones.
For a TV, what you want is properly calibrated Rec. 709 color, not, nonsense about 50% more colors.
I used to run KDE, but then after an upgrade to a new Kubuntu release KDE seemed to get weird(changed menu/panels) and more bloated.
Now I run XFCE, and will do so until that gets weird and bloated.
Then I will switch to something lighter, and run that until it gets weird and bloated.
And so on. It seems creeping featuritis will kill all DE's eventually. I don't really need a desktop to do much, and I don't need 3D effects, and transparency. I just need some decent menus/panels and some smoothness/speed/reliability. Beyond that less is more.
Edison will always get my disdain for running the most disgusting smear/FUD campaign that I am aware of.
He repeatedly and publicly executed animals to "prove" the danger of AC current.
He fried Cats/Dogs/horses/cows and even an Elephant, just to discredit a fellow inventor.
This is pure snake oil.
There is absolutely no point to store the up-sampled audio on disk. It is just a waste of space (and more licensing fees for Dolby)
It is extremely common for output DAC HW to do up-sampling and digital filtering these days. This already removes the ringing without the need for storing the up-sampled data, which is completely pointless. I doubt there is any modern DAC HW that is still using native 44.1/48 and analog filters in the output stage.
So this is total redundant nonsense.
Here is a link to the original paper by Dr. Peter Craven where he mathematically proves that an apodizing filter can make audible improvements in sound reproduction.
You can't mathematically prove something sounds better. Most adults can't even hear 16KHz, let alone 20 KHz and beyond, or detect subtle variations in those ranges.
You have to do double blind testing. Double blind testing has shown even real 24/96KHz can't be discerned from 16/44.1KHz by audiophiles and recording pros.
Anything they are trying to sell beyond this is placebo snake oil.
http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_emperors_new_sampling/
Copyrights often involve works of pure creativity. Locking them up has no real negative effect on society, as no one else would really independently discover them, nor is industry/society dependent on them.
So I have no problem with "life of the author" copyrights. Or 50 years in case of the author death, so the heirs can have some benefit. But not life +50 or any other outrageous schemes. So Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit should have expired by now, but they would have provided more than ample opportunities for Tolkien to benefit throughout his entire life and his heirs some benefit afterwards.
Patents on the other hand, to often describe common sense solutions to industry problems, that could easily and independently arrived at. Blocking/locking down common solutions to common problems, drags down productivity of industry and society.
Lacking any real merit system, patents should be shortened because of this negative effect.
Best would be if patents were awarded on merit. No easy general/common sense application awarded at all. But that isn't going to happen.
Browsers can be restricted for security reasons.
But what about Microsoft's special treatment for MS Office on the ARM desktop?
I could see Libre Office folks having a real beef with that kind of special treatment.
But it is probably more likely they couldn't be bothered with such a tiny market as Win8ARM desktop.