I was thinking in terms of temporary coverage - IE, hanging over the mountains of Afghanistan to give radio coverage to an operation in a valley, flying over a sports event to give fast uplink to media staff, trailing round-the-world yacht races for constant coverage and communications
But not as air transport. If it can fly without need for refuelling, it can stand in for a communications satellite, endlessly and automatically circling one spot above the cloud level
The wars of recent years have been a major money-spinner for shady businesses and shady politics - viz the sale of near-unserviceable ex-soviet weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq by brokers, the tying of government contracts in Iraq to western suppliers of telecomms equipment (Iraq had a fairly functional GSM network and this was nearly ripped out in favour of CDMA), the Westernisation of the oil industry in Iraq..
the broader fraud in my eyes is the concept that western systems of bid & contract and multi-party democracy can work anywhere. Maybe its true on a long-enough timeline, but we're seeing short-term consequences in terms of bidding that isnt fair, contracts not based on good principles of business and knowledge (above all things capitalism requires good knowledge and assessment of the options), 'multi-party systems' that just formalise existing factions on tribal, cultural and religious lines.
What this guy did if accurately reported is shameful, criminal and wrong. I hope he'll be made an example of. I don't imagine it will make much difference on a larger scale. All thats unusual is he got caught.
Firstly, I respect your mathematic approach to this. However. In the UK the 2.5 is rated for about 25mpg using our gallons, which are bigger, and the diesel is rated for about 45mpg (also UK gallons). Anecdotal experience suggests the 2.5 will underperform on stated figures and the diesel will excel on them. Seriously, you should start from an assumption that the diesel beats the gasoline engine by a larger proportion..
I'm European. I spent 11 years driving Diesels. Now I'm back in a petrol / gasoline vehicle and intending to convert it to run on LPG autogas. My reasons? Modern diesel engines.
the 3 diesel cars I ran all had one thing in common - the same 90-horsepower 1753cc Ford 8-valve diesel turbo engine. It was ludicrously simple, noisy, rough-running, but produced LOTS of torque at fairly low revs and in a fairly narrow band when the turbocharger was online and in full boost had a fairly impressive ability to sprint.. it required lots of gear changes but could keep up with fast-accelerating traffic. Oil changes were at 10,000 mile intervals and only required 5w30 semi-synthetic, which is cheap. Engine life was 200,000 miles.
When my last one died of extreme old age I started looking around and found that all the replacement vehicles available at my price point and feature requirements had dual-mass flywheels, high-pressure / commonrail fuel injection, variable geometry turbochargers - and seriously reduced life expectancy. The 1990s cars I owned were designed for simplicity, reliability and economy (45 miles per UK gallon average efficiency, 55+mpg on longer runs). Their replaements were designed as drop-in replacements for petrol drivers with comparable performance, and the compromises and complexity required to give that extra urgency had a bad effect on the long term reliability and costs.
My 2-litre 2001-model Volvo V40 is screamingly insane in performance comparisons, and probably far more reliable. Unlike the new diesels it will probably also last 180,000 miles. And with the LPG conversion will be cheaper to run than a diesel.
Not a physicist, please be gentle if this is ludicrous but would it be possible to do signalling using targeted infrared lasers once in orbit (where no atmospheric drag precludes extending an external pod) and use commercial aviation bands at normal power levels for in-atmosphere flight?
yeah but the change in an automatic car happens in hundreds of milliseconds, about 30 seconds after the human operator of a manual car has figured out which gear he needs to be in for the next bit of road and already changed gear;-)
I'm sorry but thats laughably inaccurate. The ideal shift requires knowledge of road conditions ahead, rising or falling gradients, the curve of the road, traffic conditions. Only a human operator can provide that., A gearbox can only measure torque, revs and response. It cant even come close to the efficiency of a competent human operator... and as pointed out above it won't pre-switch either. Although to be fair this applies to IC engines, electric cars / transmission WILL change the balance back in favour of automatic or even fixed-ratio gearboxes
I'm a techy at heart but an Accountant by profession. I work for a major IBM reseller. Let me just add here that the institutional incompetence of IBM extends way beyond its support departments. IBM Accounts Receivable habitually allocates payments received to the oldest outstanding invoices rather than the ones for which it was paid as they seemingly get commissions based on reducing overdue outstandings: This results in support cases being prematurely closed and promised credit notes not arriving ("Ah, but you paid the invoice in full") as well as multiple payment demands for invoices already paid on our systems. They've even cancelled deliveries based on our not having paid certain un-queried invoices because their AR staff had misallocated payments against items known to be in dispute
Look up (on Youtube) a MightyCarMods video called 'iPad Dash Install' or similar. they cover installing a tablet into a Double DIN car stereo mount with some widening (a 7 inch tablet would fit a double DIN car stereo mount unextended). If you have a car worth improving this way you can use a tablet to get onscreen album access while driving, extra car gauges (engine temp, mileage, boost, emissions) via OBD-2 interfaces, FM or DAB radio on-the-go cia USB dongles, etc
That logic generally works where economic allocation of resources is practiced. It fails where a resource is commonly available in perceived high quantities and the means to use it are simply obtained or inexpensive. For example, increased sales of radio transceivers won't make the price of radio communication higher, as after the sunk capital cost the only expense is the electricity to power it. Instead the experience just degrades in quality. Likewise, using the atmosphere as a dumping ground for waste gases won't become more expensive by purely economic means.
In both cases there will be an ability, if not a tendency, to overconsume in the lack of a non-economic regulator.
using a 2-litre 4cyl car I've tested this using OBD diagnostic tools. Coasting down gradients in neutral at 40mph shows a very high mileage per gallon of 60-80mpg. Coasting down in gear causes the OBD reader to lock to its highest reading - 240mpg. Its worth staying in gear as long as possible then declutching for the last bit of slope to build up speed.
Electronic engine stops do not operate while the car is in-gear and moving - for safety reasons as doing a full engine shutdown by accident by knocking the button could have catastrophic results
I have a large Android handset (Razr xt890), the Opera Mobile browser is brilliant for quick access to my favourite sites - the UI is perfectly tuned for use as a news, weather, forums browser (big icons for faves as it starts, and its incredibly fast). Other stuff, I use Chrome on it as my bookmarks sync to that...
if people are needing internet access to certain sites, maybe its time for a mobile browser that caches, big-style. Interactive sites like facebook, twitter etc can't be usefully cached as the usage is based on direct and timely interaction,but a lot of recreational reading, news, sports, humour and weather could be. A browser set to download 4 links' deep of on-site content for certain predefined sites could save a lot of material in a few minutes to be perused at leisure offline
Back when we only had dial-up and paid per minute this wasnt uncommon. As a solution to make the best and most efficient use of a scare commodity (connectivity) its still relevant.
No - AND its based in Malaysia. Which is why I'm awaiting an official Google app to access Drive. Hell will freeze over before I trust a company based in neither the EU or USA with something as important as my passwords...
... being a free software user doesnt mean you need to be a free service user: If you aren't paying, you aren't the customer.
I use both Google Drive & Dropbox (for different usage cases and purposes) but my really important backups - including everything from both the other two - go into Amazon S3, as I have a contract there with the supplier, and knowing I'm a paying customer of a profitable service means I'm much less likely to have to rethink my backup strategy due to a withdrawal of a free offer. The time spent doing an initial backup of all my files I want to protect means I dont want to have to do that often, incremental backups are much easier to live with.
"I thought it was clear enough that Windows RT is to be the Windows version for ARM tablet devices that will compete directly with iPad and Android tablets"
To make this sentence accurate I need to shorten it: "I thought it was clear enough that Windows RT is to be the Windows version for ARM tablet devices". There, nothing laughable in it any more..
I'm inclined to agree, also because I suspect the kind of mindset who would actually DO this isn't the sort of person who would ever admit it - not least because he's forever besmirched his chance of ever doing it again. I suspect McAfee's suffering the after effects of various experimental chemicals, or delusions brought on by withdrawal symptoms
The irony is that in 2001 I had a PC with a 1.1ghz Athlon which could boot Windows 98SE to desktop in 11 seconds. A modern Linux OS with a really stripped down UI can boot on modern fast hardware in about the same length of time but a full bells and whistles UI takes 20 to 40s - windows or linux.. Its almost as though additional UI features were added to the max and extended every time PC power improved in order to deny too fast an experience...
I am tempted to agree with the submitter actually - My first experience of UNIX was on a SAP production server running CDE and I found it very usable and consistent. Also I like 'CDE' as it's my initials.
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I was thinking in terms of temporary coverage - IE, hanging over the mountains of Afghanistan to give radio coverage to an operation in a valley, flying over a sports event to give fast uplink to media staff, trailing round-the-world yacht races for constant coverage and communications
But not as air transport. If it can fly without need for refuelling, it can stand in for a communications satellite, endlessly and automatically circling one spot above the cloud level
The wars of recent years have been a major money-spinner for shady businesses and shady politics - viz the sale of near-unserviceable ex-soviet weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq by brokers, the tying of government contracts in Iraq to western suppliers of telecomms equipment (Iraq had a fairly functional GSM network and this was nearly ripped out in favour of CDMA), the Westernisation of the oil industry in Iraq..
the broader fraud in my eyes is the concept that western systems of bid & contract and multi-party democracy can work anywhere. Maybe its true on a long-enough timeline, but we're seeing short-term consequences in terms of bidding that isnt fair, contracts not based on good principles of business and knowledge (above all things capitalism requires good knowledge and assessment of the options), 'multi-party systems' that just formalise existing factions on tribal, cultural and religious lines.
What this guy did if accurately reported is shameful, criminal and wrong. I hope he'll be made an example of. I don't imagine it will make much difference on a larger scale. All thats unusual is he got caught.
Firstly, I respect your mathematic approach to this. However. In the UK the 2.5 is rated for about 25mpg using our gallons, which are bigger, and the diesel is rated for about 45mpg (also UK gallons). Anecdotal experience suggests the 2.5 will underperform on stated figures and the diesel will excel on them. Seriously, you should start from an assumption that the diesel beats the gasoline engine by a larger proportion..
I'm European. I spent 11 years driving Diesels. Now I'm back in a petrol / gasoline vehicle and intending to convert it to run on LPG autogas. My reasons? Modern diesel engines.
the 3 diesel cars I ran all had one thing in common - the same 90-horsepower 1753cc Ford 8-valve diesel turbo engine. It was ludicrously simple, noisy, rough-running, but produced LOTS of torque at fairly low revs and in a fairly narrow band when the turbocharger was online and in full boost had a fairly impressive ability to sprint.. it required lots of gear changes but could keep up with fast-accelerating traffic. Oil changes were at 10,000 mile intervals and only required 5w30 semi-synthetic, which is cheap. Engine life was 200,000 miles.
When my last one died of extreme old age I started looking around and found that all the replacement vehicles available at my price point and feature requirements had dual-mass flywheels, high-pressure / commonrail fuel injection, variable geometry turbochargers - and seriously reduced life expectancy. The 1990s cars I owned were designed for simplicity, reliability and economy (45 miles per UK gallon average efficiency, 55+mpg on longer runs). Their replaements were designed as drop-in replacements for petrol drivers with comparable performance, and the compromises and complexity required to give that extra urgency had a bad effect on the long term reliability and costs. My 2-litre 2001-model Volvo V40 is screamingly insane in performance comparisons, and probably far more reliable. Unlike the new diesels it will probably also last 180,000 miles. And with the LPG conversion will be cheaper to run than a diesel.
Not a physicist, please be gentle if this is ludicrous but would it be possible to do signalling using targeted infrared lasers once in orbit (where no atmospheric drag precludes extending an external pod) and use commercial aviation bands at normal power levels for in-atmosphere flight?
yeah but the change in an automatic car happens in hundreds of milliseconds, about 30 seconds after the human operator of a manual car has figured out which gear he needs to be in for the next bit of road and already changed gear ;-)
I'm sorry but thats laughably inaccurate. The ideal shift requires knowledge of road conditions ahead, rising or falling gradients, the curve of the road, traffic conditions. Only a human operator can provide that., A gearbox can only measure torque, revs and response. It cant even come close to the efficiency of a competent human operator... and as pointed out above it won't pre-switch either. Although to be fair this applies to IC engines, electric cars / transmission WILL change the balance back in favour of automatic or even fixed-ratio gearboxes
I'm a techy at heart but an Accountant by profession. I work for a major IBM reseller. Let me just add here that the institutional incompetence of IBM extends way beyond its support departments. IBM Accounts Receivable habitually allocates payments received to the oldest outstanding invoices rather than the ones for which it was paid as they seemingly get commissions based on reducing overdue outstandings: This results in support cases being prematurely closed and promised credit notes not arriving ("Ah, but you paid the invoice in full") as well as multiple payment demands for invoices already paid on our systems. They've even cancelled deliveries based on our not having paid certain un-queried invoices because their AR staff had misallocated payments against items known to be in dispute
Look up (on Youtube) a MightyCarMods video called 'iPad Dash Install' or similar. they cover installing a tablet into a Double DIN car stereo mount with some widening (a 7 inch tablet would fit a double DIN car stereo mount unextended). If you have a car worth improving this way you can use a tablet to get onscreen album access while driving, extra car gauges (engine temp, mileage, boost, emissions) via OBD-2 interfaces, FM or DAB radio on-the-go cia USB dongles, etc
That logic generally works where economic allocation of resources is practiced. It fails where a resource is commonly available in perceived high quantities and the means to use it are simply obtained or inexpensive. For example, increased sales of radio transceivers won't make the price of radio communication higher, as after the sunk capital cost the only expense is the electricity to power it. Instead the experience just degrades in quality. Likewise, using the atmosphere as a dumping ground for waste gases won't become more expensive by purely economic means.
In both cases there will be an ability, if not a tendency, to overconsume in the lack of a non-economic regulator.
using a 2-litre 4cyl car I've tested this using OBD diagnostic tools. Coasting down gradients in neutral at 40mph shows a very high mileage per gallon of 60-80mpg. Coasting down in gear causes the OBD reader to lock to its highest reading - 240mpg. Its worth staying in gear as long as possible then declutching for the last bit of slope to build up speed.
My Volvo has a hydraulic clutch, thats effectively drive by wire.
Electronic engine stops do not operate while the car is in-gear and moving - for safety reasons as doing a full engine shutdown by accident by knocking the button could have catastrophic results
I have a large Android handset (Razr xt890), the Opera Mobile browser is brilliant for quick access to my favourite sites - the UI is perfectly tuned for use as a news, weather, forums browser (big icons for faves as it starts, and its incredibly fast). Other stuff, I use Chrome on it as my bookmarks sync to that...
if people are needing internet access to certain sites, maybe its time for a mobile browser that caches, big-style. Interactive sites like facebook, twitter etc can't be usefully cached as the usage is based on direct and timely interaction,but a lot of recreational reading, news, sports, humour and weather could be. A browser set to download 4 links' deep of on-site content for certain predefined sites could save a lot of material in a few minutes to be perused at leisure offline
Back when we only had dial-up and paid per minute this wasnt uncommon. As a solution to make the best and most efficient use of a scare commodity (connectivity) its still relevant.
This is desperation in action, in a market where they arent a leader and probably never will be
No - AND its based in Malaysia. Which is why I'm awaiting an official Google app to access Drive. Hell will freeze over before I trust a company based in neither the EU or USA with something as important as my passwords...
... being a free software user doesnt mean you need to be a free service user: If you aren't paying, you aren't the customer.
I use both Google Drive & Dropbox (for different usage cases and purposes) but my really important backups - including everything from both the other two - go into Amazon S3, as I have a contract there with the supplier, and knowing I'm a paying customer of a profitable service means I'm much less likely to have to rethink my backup strategy due to a withdrawal of a free offer. The time spent doing an initial backup of all my files I want to protect means I dont want to have to do that often, incremental backups are much easier to live with.
"I thought it was clear enough that Windows RT is to be the Windows version for ARM tablet devices that will compete directly with iPad and Android tablets"
To make this sentence accurate I need to shorten it: "I thought it was clear enough that Windows RT is to be the Windows version for ARM tablet devices". There, nothing laughable in it any more..
Pretty sure it'd be at best 5th. RIM and Symbian might be dying but WinRT was stillborn
It was Ok though - he supplied McAfee AV on each of the laptops
I'm inclined to agree, also because I suspect the kind of mindset who would actually DO this isn't the sort of person who would ever admit it - not least because he's forever besmirched his chance of ever doing it again. I suspect McAfee's suffering the after effects of various experimental chemicals, or delusions brought on by withdrawal symptoms
The irony is that in 2001 I had a PC with a 1.1ghz Athlon which could boot Windows 98SE to desktop in 11 seconds. A modern Linux OS with a really stripped down UI can boot on modern fast hardware in about the same length of time but a full bells and whistles UI takes 20 to 40s - windows or linux.. Its almost as though additional UI features were added to the max and extended every time PC power improved in order to deny too fast an experience...
I am tempted to agree with the submitter actually - My first experience of UNIX was on a SAP production server running CDE and I found it very usable and consistent. Also I like 'CDE' as it's my initials.