why wouldn't they? claiming ANY process is 100% efficent is plain out lieing.
Only if it's claimed that the thermodynamic efficiency is 100%. The word "efficiency" is also used in other contexts where values of 100% or more make sense, and do not violate the laws of thermodynamics.
For example, home heat pumps are generally given an efficiency rating that indicates the ratio of heat output vs. electrical input (i.e., how many watts of heat are blown out the vents divided by how many watts of electrical power are consumed). This value is usually greater than 100%, but this is OK because this definition does not include the heat which is removed from the outside air and transferred to the indoor air. In other words, that specific definition of efficiency does not consider the complete system, and it deliberately ignores some of the energy that's being consumed.
Heat pump efficiency is defined this way because it allows useful comparisons to other kinds of climate control devices. A plain electric space heater would consume 1000W of electrical power in order to dump 1000W into the room, while a heat pump might only consume 500W of electrical power (I made that number up) in order to dump the same 1000W into the same room. While that doesn't reflect the thermodynamic efficiency of the heat pump, it does let you see that this example heat pump will consume half the electrical power of a space heater in order to heat the same room.
I'm not trying to debate whether the "100%" value in TFA makes sense here, because I haven't read TFA yet. I'm just pointing out that there are valid and honest uses for the word "efficiency" where values of 100% or more make sense, without implying any sort of perpetual motion.
Why do people try so hard to crack a "secret" the company's going to reveal to the world in 48 hours?
Why do kids sneak in to the living room and shake all of the Christmas presents when they're going to open them up in 48 hours? Excitement. Anticipation. Enthusiasm. Some folks just can't bear the wait, and thus love to learn any clues that they can. Plus, Apple's deliberate attempts to keep things secret are an irresistible challenge to many folks who like to play detective.
The HMMWVs that I'm familiar with (up through at least the early 1990s) have entirely mechanical fuel injection systems. There's a solenoid for fuel shutoff and another for cold advance, but all of the timing and fuel metering is mechanical. I have a 1986 USMC surplus HMMWV, and I'm a lot more familiar with that fuel injection system than I'd like to be since my injection pump was shot when I got the truck!
There's a control box under the dash, but it's pretty low-tech stuff. Big relays and so forth. No CPU.
Now, in the later models that have the 4-speed, electronically controlled 4L80E transmission, as opposed to the mechanically controlled 3-speed Hydramatic 400 in the older trucks like mine, there's a control box for the transmission. I don't know whether it would be susceptible to a microwave doohickey like this one.
I used to have an old M561 Gama Goat. It had a Detroit Diesel 3-53 engine. It was fully mechanically controlled, and even the fuel shutoff was mechanical. I don't think it even had glow plugs. Other then running the starter motor, the electrical system was completely unnecessary to keep the vehicle running and moving. Ah, the good old days!:-)
California requires registration of handguns, and requires all transfers of firearms other than long guns over 50 years old to be processed through a licensed dealer. The make/model/serial number is only [supposed to be] sent to the state if it's a handgun, but in the case of long guns they'll still know that something was transferred, even if they don't know exactly what it is.
So, at least in California it would be easy to build a database query which returns the identities of law-abiding citizens who have legally purchased firearms. Wow, I sure feel safe now.
Non-free-will software? What is that, software you're forced to use while some jack-booted thug holds a gun to your forehead? I don't think we have any non-free-will software in the US.
My employer makes me use Outlook for my work email. Does that count?
Remember the "welp we had a glue factory fire so prices skyrocketed!" bullshit? Special glue just for memory ICs - and that scaled exactly with capacity? Yeah, that "glue factory fire."
That was a fire at a factory which made the epoxy resin used to encapsulate ICs. This wasn't "special glue just for memory ICs"; it was the black plastic stuff molded around each IC on the SIMM (or any other kinds of ICs with plastic packages, for that matter). Without that plastic overmold to protect the bond wires and support the leadframe, the ICs can't be handled, shipped, soldered down, etc. That fire messed up the whole electronics industry for a while. I'm not saying that the memory suppliers didn't gouge anybody (I have no information either way), but the resin factory fire really was a big deal. It caused problems at my company at the time, which made ICs used in hard disk drives.
I think that my biggest personal motivation to have a good SDK for my iPhone would be to have the ability to write a nice (but minimal) RPN scientific calculator application for it, assuming that nobody else does it for me first.
I certainly breathed a sigh of relief when I read this SDK announcement, because I was gambling on an eventual SDK release when I bought my iPhone, and I was really disappointed by the previous hints that web applications would be the only supported 3rd party programs. There are basic apps (like a better calculator) that I want to have in my pocket all the time... not just when I'm in a WiFi hot spot or in an area with good cell coverage.
My personal opinion is that the folks who have complained that there was no valid reason for Apple to not release an SDK along with the iPhone itself probably don't understand the scope of work that they're talking about. It's easy for me to believe that Apple's internal iPhone developers have been working in a development environment that's nowhere near the levels of completeness or quality that Apple would consider acceptable for general release. In my own area of work, I'll often work with in-house software and/or hardware tools that are barely good enough for my own use, but which would be a nightmare to try to support in the field with my company's customers. I can easily accept that it would take more time to come up with a good public SDK after cobbling together something good enough for internal use.
I haven't followed the whole situation closely enough to form an opinion about whether Apple has announced this SDK release in response to customer reactions or planned to do it all along. Either way, I'm glad to hear that an SDK is on the way. I'd rather have it today, of course, but if it takes until February to make it clean, then I guess I'll just need to wait.
I sure hope that individual users like me who just want to make their own shoddy little apps for their own use will be accommodated, as well as developers who will be creating apps which will see wider use (and thus will need to meet much higher standards of quality and reliability).
I wasn't responding to your joke. I was responding to all the negative, unknowing comments from people who have not had the chance to compare the United States and Brazil.
Well, that's a relief. We can't let ignorant generalizations about a people go unchallenged.
How about when your favorite prime-time suspense/action/drama serial gets replaced by coverage of the daily car chase, leaving a confusing gap in the season-long story arc that you can't fill in until the summer reruns? Grr.
Truck tires often use inner tubes to hold the air, so the 2 or more pieces of the wheel don't need to go together with an airtight seal. The split rims on the larger trucks that you might see on my web site are like this. I couldn't find any pictures online that are as good as the diagrams in my tech manuals, but this page might give you an idea of how these wheels work:
On the bolt-together HMMWV wheels (which use tubeless tires, and have either magnesium or rubber run-flat assemblies installed inside the tires) there's a big O ring seal that goes between the two wheel halves, and the wheels are designed to that the studs which hold the wheel halves together aren't in a pressurized area. Here's a page with some diagrams that show what's going on in one of the varieties of split rims that are used on the HMMWV:
There are probably other kinds of split-rim wheels, but these are the only two kinds I have experience with.
I should probably say something about the thread topic: My guess is that the guy who made the death-bed confession has a twisted sense of humor and is laughing his etherial ass off if there's an afterlife to do it from.
The "wheel" vs. "tire" terminology point is correct, but "no bolts required" is still not quite right.
Although they're much less common than one-piece wheels, many trucks use 2-piece wheels which have two halves that bolt together around the tire. This allows tires to be changed without needing to stretch the tire over the rim with tire irons. I have a military-surplus HMMWV which has such wheels, and I've changed the tires on them myself.
Automobile and light truck tires are usually mounted and dismounted with tire-changing machines these days, but tires on commercial trucks and industrial machines are still commonly changed the old-fashioned way with tire irons and a tire hammer. 2-piece rims (whether bolt-together, split rim, split locking ring, etc.) can make that job easier, especially if the tire needs to be changed in the field. I speak from personal experience here.;-)
I won't complain too loudly when one of my least favorite companies gets kicked in the corporate nuts a bit, but I don't get the rationale behind some of the different rules that they need to operate under.
I get that they're evil monopolistic bastages and have earned restrictions and punishments because of their business practices, but some of the "feature" restrictions (i.e., regarding Internet Exploder and this search feature) have never quite made sense to me. Maybe that's just because I don't have a deep enough understanding of the circumstances of their evil monopolistic bastagism, and probably never will because I don't like spending a lot of time reading or thinking about their stuff. Their efforts to not be interoperable annoy me and induce me to spend my money elsewhere when I have the option, but I've never felt that those specific anti-social behaviors were particularly unethical. I figure that Exploder and the like can fail on its own merits, and I'll just happily use Firefox or whatever other browser I feel like using. Or go buy a different OS if I don't like theirs, with the assistance of the legal spanking that makes it harder for them to keep me from doing that.
Yeah, I'm nit-picking here... I agree that they've earned some punishment, but I'm just quibbling about some specific actions and consequences which make me scratch my head, amongst all of their other clearly wrong behavior and well-earned punishment.
I don't get this, either. I'll openly admit to disliking Microsoft and most of their products with a passion, and I'm a happy user of various Google products and services. So it's safe to say that I have a pro-Google/anti-Microsoft bias in general. Still, I don't see why Google or anybody else should have much if any say in the features that Microsoft is allowed to put in their products, as long as Microsoft isn't plagiarizing other folks' stuff.
Would I personally be annoyed by their search feature if I was a Vista user? Maybe, maybe not, but they're not obligated to give me exactly what I want, just like I'm not obligated to buy their product. I happen to have switched over to using a Mac recently (I was previously a hardcore Linux zealot and I still like Linux, but I decided that OS X would fit my needs better for general-purpose use a few months ago, and so far I've been happy with that decision). OS X has its own hardwired-in search feature. I'm free to whine at Apple if I don't like it, they're free to ignore me if they want to, and I'm free to vote with my wallet if I don't like their response. That's the way I think it ought to be, and I don't see why it should be any different with Microsoft/Vista.
If Microsoft does Bad Stuff in their business practices then go after 'em, but I've never seen the logic in forcing them to change their operating system (even back in the old browser war days). I'll accept that using pricing and contracts to try to force their OEM customers to stay away from any other OS vendors may be illegal, anti-competitive and just downright mean, but I don't see anything wrong with Microsoft designing their operating system to not play well with others. I think that hurts them more than anybody else, because it makes folks like me get fed up, wipe their hard drives and install Linux instead, or even go buy Macs rather than facing the prospect of using their next OS release.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if it's claimed that the thermodynamic efficiency is 100%. The word "efficiency" is also used in other contexts where values of 100% or more make sense, and do not violate the laws of thermodynamics.
For example, home heat pumps are generally given an efficiency rating that indicates the ratio of heat output vs. electrical input (i.e., how many watts of heat are blown out the vents divided by how many watts of electrical power are consumed). This value is usually greater than 100%, but this is OK because this definition does not include the heat which is removed from the outside air and transferred to the indoor air. In other words, that specific definition of efficiency does not consider the complete system, and it deliberately ignores some of the energy that's being consumed.
Heat pump efficiency is defined this way because it allows useful comparisons to other kinds of climate control devices. A plain electric space heater would consume 1000W of electrical power in order to dump 1000W into the room, while a heat pump might only consume 500W of electrical power (I made that number up) in order to dump the same 1000W into the same room. While that doesn't reflect the thermodynamic efficiency of the heat pump, it does let you see that this example heat pump will consume half the electrical power of a space heater in order to heat the same room.
I'm not trying to debate whether the "100%" value in TFA makes sense here, because I haven't read TFA yet. I'm just pointing out that there are valid and honest uses for the word "efficiency" where values of 100% or more make sense, without implying any sort of perpetual motion.
http://sc.tri-bit.com/images/2/23/pony.jpg
You're obviously a shill for the toilet companies, with plans to sell a 100 meter tall super-toilet to each and every power plant...
Where's that "-1,000,000: Causes Projectile Vomiting" mod when we need it? :-)
Why do kids sneak in to the living room and shake all of the Christmas presents when they're going to open them up in 48 hours? Excitement. Anticipation. Enthusiasm. Some folks just can't bear the wait, and thus love to learn any clues that they can. Plus, Apple's deliberate attempts to keep things secret are an irresistible challenge to many folks who like to play detective.
The HMMWVs that I'm familiar with (up through at least the early 1990s) have entirely mechanical fuel injection systems. There's a solenoid for fuel shutoff and another for cold advance, but all of the timing and fuel metering is mechanical. I have a 1986 USMC surplus HMMWV, and I'm a lot more familiar with that fuel injection system than I'd like to be since my injection pump was shot when I got the truck!
There's a control box under the dash, but it's pretty low-tech stuff. Big relays and so forth. No CPU.
Now, in the later models that have the 4-speed, electronically controlled 4L80E transmission, as opposed to the mechanically controlled 3-speed Hydramatic 400 in the older trucks like mine, there's a control box for the transmission. I don't know whether it would be susceptible to a microwave doohickey like this one.
I used to have an old M561 Gama Goat. It had a Detroit Diesel 3-53 engine. It was fully mechanically controlled, and even the fuel shutoff was mechanical. I don't think it even had glow plugs. Other then running the starter motor, the electrical system was completely unnecessary to keep the vehicle running and moving. Ah, the good old days! :-)
California requires registration of handguns, and requires all transfers of firearms other than long guns over 50 years old to be processed through a licensed dealer. The make/model/serial number is only [supposed to be] sent to the state if it's a handgun, but in the case of long guns they'll still know that something was transferred, even if they don't know exactly what it is.
So, at least in California it would be easy to build a database query which returns the identities of law-abiding citizens who have legally purchased firearms. Wow, I sure feel safe now.
My employer makes me use Outlook for my work email. Does that count?
That was a fire at a factory which made the epoxy resin used to encapsulate ICs. This wasn't "special glue just for memory ICs"; it was the black plastic stuff molded around each IC on the SIMM (or any other kinds of ICs with plastic packages, for that matter). Without that plastic overmold to protect the bond wires and support the leadframe, the ICs can't be handled, shipped, soldered down, etc. That fire messed up the whole electronics industry for a while. I'm not saying that the memory suppliers didn't gouge anybody (I have no information either way), but the resin factory fire really was a big deal. It caused problems at my company at the time, which made ICs used in hard disk drives.
I think that my biggest personal motivation to have a good SDK for my iPhone would be to have the ability to write a nice (but minimal) RPN scientific calculator application for it, assuming that nobody else does it for me first.
I certainly breathed a sigh of relief when I read this SDK announcement, because I was gambling on an eventual SDK release when I bought my iPhone, and I was really disappointed by the previous hints that web applications would be the only supported 3rd party programs. There are basic apps (like a better calculator) that I want to have in my pocket all the time... not just when I'm in a WiFi hot spot or in an area with good cell coverage.
My personal opinion is that the folks who have complained that there was no valid reason for Apple to not release an SDK along with the iPhone itself probably don't understand the scope of work that they're talking about. It's easy for me to believe that Apple's internal iPhone developers have been working in a development environment that's nowhere near the levels of completeness or quality that Apple would consider acceptable for general release. In my own area of work, I'll often work with in-house software and/or hardware tools that are barely good enough for my own use, but which would be a nightmare to try to support in the field with my company's customers. I can easily accept that it would take more time to come up with a good public SDK after cobbling together something good enough for internal use.
I haven't followed the whole situation closely enough to form an opinion about whether Apple has announced this SDK release in response to customer reactions or planned to do it all along. Either way, I'm glad to hear that an SDK is on the way. I'd rather have it today, of course, but if it takes until February to make it clean, then I guess I'll just need to wait.
I sure hope that individual users like me who just want to make their own shoddy little apps for their own use will be accommodated, as well as developers who will be creating apps which will see wider use (and thus will need to meet much higher standards of quality and reliability).
Well, that's a relief. We can't let ignorant generalizations about a people go unchallenged.
Brazilians like jokes. Often a Brazilian takes advantage of, or begins to laugh about, a humorous situation in less than 500 milliseconds.
I began laughing about the irony of this response to my joke in less than 499 milliseconds.
U.S. officials were asked to reply to the arrest warrant requests by telephone, as all email service in Brazil appears to be out of order.
Could of been worse. It made my head asplode.
How about when your favorite prime-time suspense/action/drama serial gets replaced by coverage of the daily car chase, leaving a confusing gap in the season-long story arc that you can't fill in until the summer reruns? Grr.
Truck tires often use inner tubes to hold the air, so the 2 or more pieces of the wheel don't need to go together with an airtight seal. The split rims on the larger trucks that you might see on my web site are like this. I couldn't find any pictures online that are as good as the diagrams in my tech manuals, but this page might give you an idea of how these wheels work:
Split-Rim Tyre Repairs
On the bolt-together HMMWV wheels (which use tubeless tires, and have either magnesium or rubber run-flat assemblies installed inside the tires) there's a big O ring seal that goes between the two wheel halves, and the wheels are designed to that the studs which hold the wheel halves together aren't in a pressurized area. Here's a page with some diagrams that show what's going on in one of the varieties of split rims that are used on the HMMWV:
Changing Tires on Hummer Wheels
There are probably other kinds of split-rim wheels, but these are the only two kinds I have experience with.
I should probably say something about the thread topic: My guess is that the guy who made the death-bed confession has a twisted sense of humor and is laughing his etherial ass off if there's an afterlife to do it from.
I can get a can of Wadded Beef and some Corn Nog!
The "wheel" vs. "tire" terminology point is correct, but "no bolts required" is still not quite right.
;-)
Although they're much less common than one-piece wheels, many trucks use 2-piece wheels which have two halves that bolt together around the tire. This allows tires to be changed without needing to stretch the tire over the rim with tire irons. I have a military-surplus HMMWV which has such wheels, and I've changed the tires on them myself.
Automobile and light truck tires are usually mounted and dismounted with tire-changing machines these days, but tires on commercial trucks and industrial machines are still commonly changed the old-fashioned way with tire irons and a tire hammer. 2-piece rims (whether bolt-together, split rim, split locking ring, etc.) can make that job easier, especially if the tire needs to be changed in the field. I speak from personal experience here.
I won't complain too loudly when one of my least favorite companies gets kicked in the corporate nuts a bit, but I don't get the rationale behind some of the different rules that they need to operate under.
I get that they're evil monopolistic bastages and have earned restrictions and punishments because of their business practices, but some of the "feature" restrictions (i.e., regarding Internet Exploder and this search feature) have never quite made sense to me. Maybe that's just because I don't have a deep enough understanding of the circumstances of their evil monopolistic bastagism, and probably never will because I don't like spending a lot of time reading or thinking about their stuff. Their efforts to not be interoperable annoy me and induce me to spend my money elsewhere when I have the option, but I've never felt that those specific anti-social behaviors were particularly unethical. I figure that Exploder and the like can fail on its own merits, and I'll just happily use Firefox or whatever other browser I feel like using. Or go buy a different OS if I don't like theirs, with the assistance of the legal spanking that makes it harder for them to keep me from doing that.
Yeah, I'm nit-picking here... I agree that they've earned some punishment, but I'm just quibbling about some specific actions and consequences which make me scratch my head, amongst all of their other clearly wrong behavior and well-earned punishment.
I don't get this, either. I'll openly admit to disliking Microsoft and most of their products with a passion, and I'm a happy user of various Google products and services. So it's safe to say that I have a pro-Google/anti-Microsoft bias in general. Still, I don't see why Google or anybody else should have much if any say in the features that Microsoft is allowed to put in their products, as long as Microsoft isn't plagiarizing other folks' stuff.
Would I personally be annoyed by their search feature if I was a Vista user? Maybe, maybe not, but they're not obligated to give me exactly what I want, just like I'm not obligated to buy their product. I happen to have switched over to using a Mac recently (I was previously a hardcore Linux zealot and I still like Linux, but I decided that OS X would fit my needs better for general-purpose use a few months ago, and so far I've been happy with that decision). OS X has its own hardwired-in search feature. I'm free to whine at Apple if I don't like it, they're free to ignore me if they want to, and I'm free to vote with my wallet if I don't like their response. That's the way I think it ought to be, and I don't see why it should be any different with Microsoft/Vista.
If Microsoft does Bad Stuff in their business practices then go after 'em, but I've never seen the logic in forcing them to change their operating system (even back in the old browser war days). I'll accept that using pricing and contracts to try to force their OEM customers to stay away from any other OS vendors may be illegal, anti-competitive and just downright mean, but I don't see anything wrong with Microsoft designing their operating system to not play well with others. I think that hurts them more than anybody else, because it makes folks like me get fed up, wipe their hard drives and install Linux instead, or even go buy Macs rather than facing the prospect of using their next OS release.
Is it because I missed the irony of the statement that you came to me?
Why do you say Tell me more about failed a Turing test?
So, you're saying that you failed a Turing test? :-)
There's a very good reason why a megabyte should not be 1000 bytes, or 1024 bytes, either:
A megabyte is 1048576 bytes. Or maybe 1000000 bytes, depending on who you ask.