I must say I totally agree with you - including the Comet in such a list is utterly stupid. Sure by modern standards you can easily look back and point out various issues with the plane's design, but at the time, none of that was known. Every advance in a field is going to look quaint once sufficient time has passed. And as for the comment that "people died!", well that's a shame, but people die all the time. People died in Spitfires and P51s too, in far greater numbers. Does the fact that these aircraft were not proof against being shot down make them bad? Arse. (I know you didn't make that point, but if I'm going to rant I'd rather do it in one go).
SMS is much more expensive than data (though for no good technical reason - it's a traditional way for carriers to fleece users), so it makes sense to use data when possible. But if you don't want to use iMessage, you are not obliged to - it's an opt-in setting.
So people aren't flocking to become programmers?Good. It's not like the current rate has held technology back in any way - there are plenty of programmers - certainly enough to keep up with the rate that technology itself demands. More programmers wouldn't increase that, it would only make salaries lower. And that's probably why there seems to be a push from industry to get more people interested: more programmers = cheaper wages.
This could be a good opportunity to wake up the populace to the very real threat to their liberty that mass surveillance is. Or it could just be a stupid "action" thriller that focusses on the wrong thing entirely - Snowden's flight. I'll reserve judgement, but my bet would be on the latter.
Which means that by the standards of most of the rest of the world, he's probably a little to the right of centre. I can't understand you Americans - what's exactly so terrible about a little bit of social justice and equality? That's all the left stand for. You've been so brainwashed by years of anti-communist propaganda that anything that even slightly whiffs of "the left" is automatically, viscerally rejected without any real thought. For whatever the left's faults might be, the right's are far, far worse. We've now had thirty-odd years of right-wing government across most of the developed western world, and where has it got us? The rich have got richer and the poor are poorer, and no-one is any happier. What a great system! How about considering a few mild alternatives, or at the very least some moderation?
I do have a bluray player, made by Sony. But that's only because it was free - a local disc retailer had a deal which was "buy 4 BR discs, get the player thrown in", which seemed pretty good. But it's a crap piece of gear. It blows its fan hard all the time, yet runs very hot (why???), constantly pesters for software updates (it's internet connected, maybe that should go), its "apps" are rubbish, and it's so light that just pushing the disc drawer closed pushes the entire unit backwards until it falls off the back of the stack it sits on (can't put it on the bottom because of all the heat it generates). It probably gets used less than once a month right now.
It's an obvious thing, yet apparently wilfully ignored: Dalton, the first scientist to come up with a recognisable modern atomic theory, is not honoured in the naming of the elements, yet all sorts of (no doubt worthy, but obscure) physicists have been, and even having their universities honoured (Berkelium, Lawrencium, etc). It's really about time this oversight was corrected. Personally I feel it should have been done for something a lot more common and 'early', but as we're now mopping up the tail-enders, so be it.
Let's hear it for Daltonium!
How about having two pistons sharing a combustion chamber in a horizontally opposed arrangement? The forces would cancel leaving no net force on the outer casing. Also, to return the pistons, why not just make the other ends a combustion chamber as well, so it's double-acting? Again, forces cancel.
I would imagine the real tricky thing would be to make the pistons work effectively as magnets within the generator coils - permanent magnets (even very strong rare-earth ones) wouldn't give you enough field - you'd want a coil in there, which immediately makes the thing a lot trickier to make - how do you connect to an isolated hot moving piston inside a cylinder?
There is not a good left-leaning news channel out there. BBC rocks
I don't believe the BBC is left-leaning. It's interesting that it is accused of being so from time to time, often by the current UK government. I think that says a hell of a lot more about them and their position on the political spectrum than the BBC.
I wish Australia would ban these shows too, then maybe the free-to-air stations might have to get off their lazy arses and make some decent home-grown shows instead. It's no wonder the commercial channels are dying out here - lazy content, too many adverts far too often, horrible cheap-and-nasty titling graphics, constant pop-ups. It's unwatchable. They don't get it, and the sooner they die the better. Or they could, you know, improve.
No, you are not going to match the efficient of a modern 6 or 7 speed transmission with a generator, a run of cable, and an electric motor.
I think it's arguable - it comes out really very close. It's not just the efficiency though, it's the dramatic weight saving. No heavy engine case, flywheel, clutch, gearbox, driveshaft, differential, even brakes - assuming the motors are part of the wheels, which seems to be the way to go. Don't worry about the unsprung weight, 100kW motors weighing only 20kg for this application have been made, they end up with less or equal unsprung weight than a traditional set-up. Weight-savings in the drive train allow further weight-saving in the overall chassis.
Transmitting the power around the vehicle in copper wires instead of mechanical shafts makes a lot of sense.
I've wondered for years why car manufacturers don't design a pure electric car (plug-in), and fit it with a fixed RPM generator for extended range instead of trying to design a hugely convoluted hybrid drive train that can receive power from both.
I agree, but it's slowly starting to dawn on them that this is an efficient approach (it's only been 50 years since the railways realised the same thing). Parallel hybrids like the Prius make me laugh - it's like they really don't know how to proceed with electric, they only know the traditional IC approach, so they bolt the motor on to that and solve the difficulties mechanically. Remarkably, it is nevertheless a reliable vehicle despite its complexity, but technically, it's a dead-end. Series hybrids work much better, and the range extender" part of the equation is now being tackled by some innovative IC designs that generate electricity directly without rotating motion - using diesel fuel at a fixed RPM should in theory realise up to double the overall efficiency compared with a typical petrol-powered car now, and the savings in weight improves that even further.
The focus on the electric element suggests that DARPA is more concerned with the stealthiness of the motorcycle than it is efficiency
Wha? Electric motors are way more efficient than IC engines (90%+ vs. 25%), so having an electric drive makes this more efficient. Stealthiness also follows from efficiency - sound is energy, so a lot of sound is an indication of an unnecessary waste of energy.
How about they just design a phone that doesn't shatter when you drop it?
Yeah, they could, I dunno, make a harder kind of glass that doesn't shatter. Sounds familiar.
The point is that the Motorola design might be a cheaper solution, bit the phone simply looks shittier. Some people, presumably yourself, don't care about that, but plenty of others do. It's the sort of thing that makes a Mercedes a Mercedes, and a Lexus a not-quite-right knock off of the same thing.
Nope. Read it again. It mentions falling out when they open, but not getting crushed when they're retracted. I've looked in many aircraft's undercarriage bays - they are designed to fit the wheel and leg and that's about it, not much extra room.
I split Ironbark now and again - while it's harder to split than most other Eucalypts, the key thing is to avoid pieces where a branch, err, branched. The extra wood in those areas and the fact that they follow complex stress-lines make them virtually impossible to split. If you're cutting up a tree you probably won't have a choice, but if you're just picking up unsplit logs from a yard, it's easy to avoid the knotty pieces.
I don't mind splitting by hand, it's a good workout. Mind you I rarely feel like lighting a hot fire afterwards.
all I want in there is an amp and speakers with a jack for audio input
Yep, me too. I have a 1999 Holden (Isuzu) Rodeo V6. It's a low-tech car, no computers or gizmos at all (excluding the engine's ECU). Like an old nail, it's utterly reliable - it has 350,000km on it and it just works, day in, day out. In the Australian climate it's not even going to rust away.
My one concession to modern in-car electronics was just last weekend upgrading the stock radio (with cassette!) to a new Sony head unit which plays CDs, FM and (key feature) has a front input jack. Along with a 12V cigarette-lighter to USB power adapter, I'm all set. The whole kit and caboodle cost me $AU85.
While sorta fun, those games are not simulations. All you revealed was the program(mer)'s built-in biases and assumptions, rather than any insight about what happens in reality. If you could set up a simulation without any biases and with enough variables it might tell you something, but I have a feeling it couldn't be done.
The irony in your post is that you also need to grow up about Apple, and recognise that for a lot of people, they are exactly what people want. Ranting about them is just as childish as being an uncritical fanboy.
As for security, what's the problem exactly? How's all those Android viruses working out for everyone?
In the 1976 film of the book, Thomas Newton invents an instant camera that allows you to see the pictures you've just shot immediately... by opening the back of the camera and pulling out the 36-image film strip. I guess the true future of instant cameras was hard to predict, even though the necessary technology was already in existence.
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I must say I totally agree with you - including the Comet in such a list is utterly stupid. Sure by modern standards you can easily look back and point out various issues with the plane's design, but at the time, none of that was known. Every advance in a field is going to look quaint once sufficient time has passed. And as for the comment that "people died!", well that's a shame, but people die all the time. People died in Spitfires and P51s too, in far greater numbers. Does the fact that these aircraft were not proof against being shot down make them bad? Arse. (I know you didn't make that point, but if I'm going to rant I'd rather do it in one go).
Don't bother; don't buy/eat that crap.
SMS is much more expensive than data (though for no good technical reason - it's a traditional way for carriers to fleece users), so it makes sense to use data when possible. But if you don't want to use iMessage, you are not obliged to - it's an opt-in setting.
So people aren't flocking to become programmers?Good. It's not like the current rate has held technology back in any way - there are plenty of programmers - certainly enough to keep up with the rate that technology itself demands. More programmers wouldn't increase that, it would only make salaries lower. And that's probably why there seems to be a push from industry to get more people interested: more programmers = cheaper wages.
This could be a good opportunity to wake up the populace to the very real threat to their liberty that mass surveillance is. Or it could just be a stupid "action" thriller that focusses on the wrong thing entirely - Snowden's flight. I'll reserve judgement, but my bet would be on the latter.
way to[sic] left for me
Which means that by the standards of most of the rest of the world, he's probably a little to the right of centre. I can't understand you Americans - what's exactly so terrible about a little bit of social justice and equality? That's all the left stand for. You've been so brainwashed by years of anti-communist propaganda that anything that even slightly whiffs of "the left" is automatically, viscerally rejected without any real thought. For whatever the left's faults might be, the right's are far, far worse. We've now had thirty-odd years of right-wing government across most of the developed western world, and where has it got us? The rich have got richer and the poor are poorer, and no-one is any happier. What a great system! How about considering a few mild alternatives, or at the very least some moderation?
I do have a bluray player, made by Sony. But that's only because it was free - a local disc retailer had a deal which was "buy 4 BR discs, get the player thrown in", which seemed pretty good. But it's a crap piece of gear. It blows its fan hard all the time, yet runs very hot (why???), constantly pesters for software updates (it's internet connected, maybe that should go), its "apps" are rubbish, and it's so light that just pushing the disc drawer closed pushes the entire unit backwards until it falls off the back of the stack it sits on (can't put it on the bottom because of all the heat it generates). It probably gets used less than once a month right now.
Yeah, it's funny, deliberately mistaking a quaint currency unit for an even more quaint unit of weight.
You forgot Elcaset: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elcaset. Then again, nobody remembers Elcaset.
It's an obvious thing, yet apparently wilfully ignored: Dalton, the first scientist to come up with a recognisable modern atomic theory, is not honoured in the naming of the elements, yet all sorts of (no doubt worthy, but obscure) physicists have been, and even having their universities honoured (Berkelium, Lawrencium, etc). It's really about time this oversight was corrected. Personally I feel it should have been done for something a lot more common and 'early', but as we're now mopping up the tail-enders, so be it.
Let's hear it for Daltonium!
How about having two pistons sharing a combustion chamber in a horizontally opposed arrangement? The forces would cancel leaving no net force on the outer casing. Also, to return the pistons, why not just make the other ends a combustion chamber as well, so it's double-acting? Again, forces cancel.
I would imagine the real tricky thing would be to make the pistons work effectively as magnets within the generator coils - permanent magnets (even very strong rare-earth ones) wouldn't give you enough field - you'd want a coil in there, which immediately makes the thing a lot trickier to make - how do you connect to an isolated hot moving piston inside a cylinder?
There is not a good left-leaning news channel out there. BBC rocks
I don't believe the BBC is left-leaning. It's interesting that it is accused of being so from time to time, often by the current UK government. I think that says a hell of a lot more about them and their position on the political spectrum than the BBC.
I wish Australia would ban these shows too, then maybe the free-to-air stations might have to get off their lazy arses and make some decent home-grown shows instead. It's no wonder the commercial channels are dying out here - lazy content, too many adverts far too often, horrible cheap-and-nasty titling graphics, constant pop-ups. It's unwatchable. They don't get it, and the sooner they die the better. Or they could, you know, improve.
No, you are not going to match the efficient of a modern 6 or 7 speed transmission with a generator, a run of cable, and an electric motor.
I think it's arguable - it comes out really very close. It's not just the efficiency though, it's the dramatic weight saving. No heavy engine case, flywheel, clutch, gearbox, driveshaft, differential, even brakes - assuming the motors are part of the wheels, which seems to be the way to go. Don't worry about the unsprung weight, 100kW motors weighing only 20kg for this application have been made, they end up with less or equal unsprung weight than a traditional set-up. Weight-savings in the drive train allow further weight-saving in the overall chassis.
Transmitting the power around the vehicle in copper wires instead of mechanical shafts makes a lot of sense.
I've wondered for years why car manufacturers don't design a pure electric car (plug-in), and fit it with a fixed RPM generator for extended range instead of trying to design a hugely convoluted hybrid drive train that can receive power from both.
I agree, but it's slowly starting to dawn on them that this is an efficient approach (it's only been 50 years since the railways realised the same thing). Parallel hybrids like the Prius make me laugh - it's like they really don't know how to proceed with electric, they only know the traditional IC approach, so they bolt the motor on to that and solve the difficulties mechanically. Remarkably, it is nevertheless a reliable vehicle despite its complexity, but technically, it's a dead-end. Series hybrids work much better, and the range extender" part of the equation is now being tackled by some innovative IC designs that generate electricity directly without rotating motion - using diesel fuel at a fixed RPM should in theory realise up to double the overall efficiency compared with a typical petrol-powered car now, and the savings in weight improves that even further.
The focus on the electric element suggests that DARPA is more concerned with the stealthiness of the motorcycle than it is efficiency
Wha? Electric motors are way more efficient than IC engines (90%+ vs. 25%), so having an electric drive makes this more efficient. Stealthiness also follows from efficiency - sound is energy, so a lot of sound is an indication of an unnecessary waste of energy.
How about they just design a phone that doesn't shatter when you drop it?
Yeah, they could, I dunno, make a harder kind of glass that doesn't shatter. Sounds familiar.
The point is that the Motorola design might be a cheaper solution, bit the phone simply looks shittier. Some people, presumably yourself, don't care about that, but plenty of others do. It's the sort of thing that makes a Mercedes a Mercedes, and a Lexus a not-quite-right knock off of the same thing.
Nope. Read it again. It mentions falling out when they open, but not getting crushed when they're retracted. I've looked in many aircraft's undercarriage bays - they are designed to fit the wheel and leg and that's about it, not much extra room.
It's short for Margarine. I assume that's what they're talking about anyway. Very common short form where I come from (UK).
Never mind the lack of oxygen and the cold, what about simply getting crushed when the gear is retracted? That's game over at 200 ft.
I split Ironbark now and again - while it's harder to split than most other Eucalypts, the key thing is to avoid pieces where a branch, err, branched. The extra wood in those areas and the fact that they follow complex stress-lines make them virtually impossible to split. If you're cutting up a tree you probably won't have a choice, but if you're just picking up unsplit logs from a yard, it's easy to avoid the knotty pieces.
I don't mind splitting by hand, it's a good workout. Mind you I rarely feel like lighting a hot fire afterwards.
all I want in there is an amp and speakers with a jack for audio input
Yep, me too. I have a 1999 Holden (Isuzu) Rodeo V6. It's a low-tech car, no computers or gizmos at all (excluding the engine's ECU). Like an old nail, it's utterly reliable - it has 350,000km on it and it just works, day in, day out. In the Australian climate it's not even going to rust away.
My one concession to modern in-car electronics was just last weekend upgrading the stock radio (with cassette!) to a new Sony head unit which plays CDs, FM and (key feature) has a front input jack. Along with a 12V cigarette-lighter to USB power adapter, I'm all set. The whole kit and caboodle cost me $AU85.
While sorta fun, those games are not simulations. All you revealed was the program(mer)'s built-in biases and assumptions, rather than any insight about what happens in reality. If you could set up a simulation without any biases and with enough variables it might tell you something, but I have a feeling it couldn't be done.
The irony in your post is that you also need to grow up about Apple, and recognise that for a lot of people, they are exactly what people want. Ranting about them is just as childish as being an uncritical fanboy.
As for security, what's the problem exactly? How's all those Android viruses working out for everyone?
In the 1976 film of the book, Thomas Newton invents an instant camera that allows you to see the pictures you've just shot immediately... by opening the back of the camera and pulling out the 36-image film strip. I guess the true future of instant cameras was hard to predict, even though the necessary technology was already in existence.