Actually, Thomas Kamps did it first. His book is available in the same series as Kurt's book.
The Kamps turbine is probable one of the lightest designs ever. He did not use a turbocharger compressor instead choosing to build a radial compressor from wood bound with carbon fibres to keep it together. Of course you have to be pretty confident to spin a chunk of wood at > 80000rpm!
Windows XP/2000/NT is not actually based on VMS in any way. It is just that the core designer of VMS went off to work for Microsoft and became the core designer of NT.
Of course this does not change the fact that XP blows goats although I have made my current installation of XP reasonably stable by avoiding MS software. I have XP with Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice and my machine works way better than it did before.
An interesting factoid about the early Beetle is that (even with what, about 30hp or less) it was one of the only cars of the day that could cruise indefinitely at 100km/h on the new Autobahns without overheating. Even the big Mercs of the day had difficulty doing this. An amazing car by any standard.
Plus the weight of the driver of course. The lighter the vehicle the more the mass of the passengers affects the power to weight ratio. I saw this demonstrated most graphically a few weekends ago when I compared transplanting my 105kg frame into a mates Lotus Elise (790kg) vs him in my Subaru Impreza WRX STi (1400kg). Everything was affected much more in the Elise: handling, braking and accceleration, than the WRX.
In the case of the bike, it would be significantly slower with me on board than some 45kg model. We are talking 1.5kg/hp versus 1.2kg/hp (about 25%) Still be brutally quick, but definitely slower.
I, for one, don't half mind Enterprise. To me it seems more gritty and real than previous series. I never forget in one of the early episodes where the crew of the Enterprise were in a fire fight and demonstrated that, at least at that time, they had not lost the basic tactic of *taking cover*. The small team tactics of the other Star Trek series and movies always seemed to be a matter of stand out in the open full height and point your phaser at the enemy. The concept of hiding behind stuff to not be a target never occurred to anyone.
Most new cars are using Synthetic or Semi-synthetic oils and stretching the oil changes out a lot further than 3000 miles (4800km). All current model Subarus in Australia have 12500km service intervals (7800 miles). This applies even to the turbo cars. While I do intermediate oil changes, it says a lot that Subaru give a 3 year unlimited km warranty with that sort of treatment.
My wife just sold her 2001 Subaru Impreza WRX and downsized to a A$3200 SAAB 900 from 1988. Money saved and I have been having a ball working on the thing. 280000km and still running like a top and getting 11L/100km
I was watching an old MacGyver episode from Season 2 (1986) and he sketched the outline of a lake into his terminal and then matched it up against a geographical database.
That MacGyver was truly ahead of his time I tell you!
I am pretty sure that Microsoft has cash reserves of at least US$54 billion at last count. This means that US$10 billion is a possible if still ridiculous quantity of money.
Here is a c|net article that talks about their position last year: clicky clicky.
A rocket works by throwing mass in one direction at high velocity causing the same kinetic energy to be applied to the rocket but in the opposite direction. There is no "pushing against expanding gases" involved.
Richard.
The limitations of ECU modification
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 4, Informative
There are significant limitations on what can be achieved by ECU modification alone. Part of the reason why the guy in the article got such a huge performance boost was that the car was turbocharged in the first place. In all likelihood, most of the improvement came from an increase in boost.
In most modern normally aspirated vehicles ECU modifications do very little (we are talking 10% max) to performance unless the volumetric efficiency of the car is altered first by improving breathing (air filter, intake manifold, throttle body, inlet cam etc), improved exhaust (extractors, free flowing exhaust) or increasing the engine's ability to rev (blueprinting, valve train etc etc). Once these things have been done it is often vital that ECU mods are done to ensure that air/fuel mixtures remain with safe range (not too lean for petrol engines and not to rich for diesels).
On the flip side we have the behaviour of the stock ECU on many of the more sophisticated modern vehicles: particularly those that have low emissions status. Often traditional mods will not improve performance at all or only for a little while. For example, before the Subaru Impreza WRX was released in the US, a typical first modification was turbo or cat back exhaust. This had the effect of improving flow and also increased boost because the boost control was open loop (no feedback). The new GDB Impreza WRX is no where near as easy to modify. The ECU has closed loop control and will also retard timing to bring power down to stock levels. Another vehicle that does something similar are the LS1 V8 equipped Holden Commodores that we have here in Australia (the four door equivalent of the new Pontiac GTO). These use some form of torque modelling such that any modification will give a short performance boost but within days the ECU will bring torque back to stock levels.
In short, ECU modification is generally something that is done at the same time as other, more physical modifications.
I personally don't like the picture that you get from an LCD flat panel. All of the LCD TVs that I have seen seem to experience serious colour banding issues in areas of slight colour graduation (skies for example).
*Good* plasma screens (Fujitsu, *not* BenQ, Samsung etc!) seem to have a good advantage here.
Richard.
David Brin.
I believe David Brin to be one of the best hard science fiction authors writing today. Stong, complicated stories, engaging characters, set against backdrops of highly imaginative projections of our universe.
About the only novel that could have been better put together would be "The Postman" which I have not been able to read more than once. His Uplift series is particularly brilliant.
Richard.
Slashdot Mirror
The Kamps turbine is probable one of the lightest designs ever. He did not use a turbocharger compressor instead choosing to build a radial compressor from wood bound with carbon fibres to keep it together. Of course you have to be pretty confident to spin a chunk of wood at > 80000rpm!
Richard.
Of course this does not change the fact that XP blows goats although I have made my current installation of XP reasonably stable by avoiding MS software. I have XP with Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice and my machine works way better than it did before.
Richard.
Richard.
In the case of the bike, it would be significantly slower with me on board than some 45kg model. We are talking 1.5kg/hp versus 1.2kg/hp (about 25%) Still be brutally quick, but definitely slower.
Richard.
Richard.
Richard.
My wife just sold her 2001 Subaru Impreza WRX and downsized to a A$3200 SAAB 900 from 1988. Money saved and I have been having a ball working on the thing. 280000km and still running like a top and getting 11L/100km
That MacGyver was truly ahead of his time I tell you!
Richard.
Here is a c|net article that talks about their position last year: clicky clicky.
Richard.
Richard.
In most modern normally aspirated vehicles ECU modifications do very little (we are talking 10% max) to performance unless the volumetric efficiency of the car is altered first by improving breathing (air filter, intake manifold, throttle body, inlet cam etc), improved exhaust (extractors, free flowing exhaust) or increasing the engine's ability to rev (blueprinting, valve train etc etc). Once these things have been done it is often vital that ECU mods are done to ensure that air/fuel mixtures remain with safe range (not too lean for petrol engines and not to rich for diesels).
On the flip side we have the behaviour of the stock ECU on many of the more sophisticated modern vehicles: particularly those that have low emissions status. Often traditional mods will not improve performance at all or only for a little while. For example, before the Subaru Impreza WRX was released in the US, a typical first modification was turbo or cat back exhaust. This had the effect of improving flow and also increased boost because the boost control was open loop (no feedback). The new GDB Impreza WRX is no where near as easy to modify. The ECU has closed loop control and will also retard timing to bring power down to stock levels. Another vehicle that does something similar are the LS1 V8 equipped Holden Commodores that we have here in Australia (the four door equivalent of the new Pontiac GTO). These use some form of torque modelling such that any modification will give a short performance boost but within days the ECU will bring torque back to stock levels.
In short, ECU modification is generally something that is done at the same time as other, more physical modifications.
I personally don't like the picture that you get from an LCD flat panel. All of the LCD TVs that I have seen seem to experience serious colour banding issues in areas of slight colour graduation (skies for example). *Good* plasma screens (Fujitsu, *not* BenQ, Samsung etc!) seem to have a good advantage here. Richard.
David Brin. I believe David Brin to be one of the best hard science fiction authors writing today. Stong, complicated stories, engaging characters, set against backdrops of highly imaginative projections of our universe. About the only novel that could have been better put together would be "The Postman" which I have not been able to read more than once. His Uplift series is particularly brilliant. Richard.