One tends to forget that a sliding door needs a lot of open space inside the wall. That space ends up being uninsulated, so it's gonna one cold and warm wall on either side of this door. Plus that section of wall can't have any supporting columns, so some much stronger columns and a stronger crossbeam have to be used. It's not something easily retrofitted into a house not already designd for it.
Also the first time somebody gets pinched by the door all their profits are going to go *poof* to handle that lawsuit.
And does the door come with a full-time person to keep all the mechanicals clean and lubed? Looks like a very high-maintenance gadget.
Otherwise it looks cool.
" No. There is no such thing as "raw digital signals through copper""
By "raw digital" I meant the standard signal levels between your typical IC's. one example is the old parallel printer port, which does a bit of a no-no in using a standard TTL 74LS394 to drive the cable. Not a super idea, generally when you go off-board one should use a driver chip better suited to wotking with the real world, where wires get crossed, shorted, or zapped by static.
Now that I re-read the comment I see they adumbrated a REPEATER. Of course, that's correct, just fuzzed up a bit in the description and by my brain.
Ah, we have something like a bootstapping problem here. AFAIK one never sends raw digital levels through copper, at least not for more than a few feet. The digital data gets converted to analog whistles schreeches and moans, the better to make it through miles of twisted pairs.
What you might be meaning to say is the DSL signals can be re-encoded into some more distance-worthy analog jumble, to be decoded at the other end. I assume there's been a little progress in modems since DSL was nailed down.
"You can't fake what you havent got."
-- Seymour Cray
Seymour was referring to virtual memory, but the same applies to copper wires.
They're probably relying on the statistical nature of communications: i.e. not everybody hits the "Next Blonde Bimbette" button at the same time.
The basic wire to the central office (funny, ours is on "Central Avenue") is likely no speedier than before. it's just getting used more efficiently.
Sorry to be sceptical, but if it takes in 2D images from a video card, as it says in the very fine (as in thin small, dilute) article, it's 2D, not 3D.
And as far as anybody knows, you can't project an image "onto" thin air. There's likely a thin diffuse surface out there acting as a projection screen.
Okay, I gotta eat a little crow: my numbers were a bit off. I was going by OLD numbers. The latest numbers I can find are a lot more charitable. Pls see: http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumerinfo/pdfs/solar _dish.pdf >
But even with these much higher numbers, the math doesnt seem to work out too swell. I get about a -120% return on investment over 20 years, using somewhat reasonable assumptions. That could turn positive if the price of transient electricity doubles, which could happen in a decade or so as a wild guess. So <crow> It just might be the time to start working on making a good economical stirling solar power system<crow>
it would be nice if TFA had a few facts comparing these to current transistors. Just being "small" isnt good enough. Quite a few things have to also be in the right range to make them competitive, such as voltage swing, current gain, switching speed, reliability, feedthrough and feedback capacitance, and probably more. And it's a bit presumptuous for anybody to extrapolate these things along the same improvement curve as transistors and IC's.
Even more impressive, Sergei can write English better than the average Slashdot editor. He doesnt have too many or too few commas, his clauses match their antecedents, and adverbs are not nine words away from their verb. That is something the up of which he will not put.
There have been several recent postings about Stirling engines, and this one about amazing MPG. All of them scientifically dubious at very best. There's the dang Laws of Thermodynamics that get in the way of all these pie-in-the-sky ventures.
Perhaps SlashDot could avoid a whole heapin steamin barrel of embarrasment if they'd just not blindly go with whatever some journalist has written . Most journalists don't have a clue about anything scientific. Why spread the misconceptions even further afield?
Okay, if I must rub your nose in it:
"With the exception of land (which you will need a lot of but it's all desert and not suited for much else) and a minimal staff, none of that junk is required."
Wrongo Bub:
(1) If you don't have plumbing, you need to have a stirling engine and generator at each dish. Which is insane. You apparently don't know about the volume vs. surface area scaling principles, which make small heat engines very inefficient. The smaller you make a heat engine, the more surface area there is relative to working fluid volume. For example, if you halve the height, width, and depth of a heat engine, you have 1/8 the working fluid, but 1/4 the surface area-- twice the heat loss. Same thing with generators vs bearing friction and windage losses. That's why commercial power plants use ONE heat engine and ONE generator, both huge. By using tiny heat engines and generators you're burdening yourself with several heavy penalties. That's why I jsut *assumed* you were going to have plumbing.
Now about not needing a heat sink: You say there's 90+ kilowatts of heat going into the Stirling engine, and the temperature difference across the engine is quite large. That implies that somehow you have a "heat sink" that can absorb 90*(1-Eff) Kilowatts while not going above a certain temperature. THAT is a non-negligible or avoidable item! We're talking major radiator there. You need a heat sink.
"Real Stirlings can reach 50 percent [stirlingengine.com] of this maximum theoretical value."
Hmmm, that's not a very impressive site. Mispellings, bogus physics, trying to tie into the "Segway", unimpressive products, broken links, not impressive at all.
OTOH: tA group of Japanese scientists spent three years building one in the lab and could only get 19% efficiency. With an infinite cold-water heat sink. Which makes me doubt the 50% claims you cite. I'll believe it when you can point to a Stiiling engine that can do 50% efficiency, in the real world, with real-world sources and sinks, preferably for a reasonable length of time, say a month or so. then we can talk.
It seems you're making up a lot more stuff than I am:
About the author that you disparge:
Microcomputer guru and pioneer Don Lancaster is the author of 35 technical books that include two million sellers. He has also published two videos, a CD ROM, a patent, and 1800+ technical articles.
Long a prolific author in the technical press, Don's current ezine columns include Blatant Opportunist and his GuruGrams. He authored the immensely popular Ask the Guru series in Computer Shopper, the Resource Bin series in Nuts &
Volts, and the Hardware Hacker and Tech Musings columns in Electronics Now.
Although predominately an ezine publisher at present, Don makes ongoing
contributions to such magazines as Circuit Cellar and Whole Earth Review.
Don is considered by some to be one of the fathers of the personal computer. For his outstanding early work in video display development. His T.V.Typewriter and other legendary early products are on permanent exhibition at the Boston Computer Museum.
Don has been called the patron saint of the Walter Mitties of the world for his unique ability to make complex technology simple and understandable.
His TTL Cookbook, CMOS Cookbook, and Active Filter Cookbook are industry classics. His Incredible Secret Money Machine is an alternate underground bible on small scale technical startups. Additional book info is found here.
Don is the webmaster of his Guru's Lair at www.tinaja.com This well received
site has consistently gotten accolades for outstandingly unique tech content.
Don has been an Apple developer and seeder, an Adobe developer, a Hewlett
Packard developer, and a Western Design Center developer. Don has done
consulting work for QMS, Motorola, and many major firms. He is recognized as a
leading independent PostScript and Acrobat authority.
Don has a BSEE degree from Lafayette College in 1961,and a MSEE from Arizona
State University in 1967. He has done postgraduate work at Carnegie Mellon and
has additional formal training in fields as diverse as anthropology, photography,
business law, technical illustraton, and fire science. He has fifteen years of
industrial electronic engineering experience.
Nonsense, there's billions of tons of its oxide sitting all over the place, on every beach. The local landscaping place will deliver it to my door for $28 a ton.
What there might be is a temporary imbalance between the production of highly-refined silicon and the demand. More demand than supply leads to higher prices. Higher prices encourage the refiners to make more refined silicon, either by adding extra shifts, or building more capacity. That's the way capitalism works.
Now the users of refined silicon make a judgement every day-- what can I make with this silicon? If a wafer can make 500 Pentium CPU's, worth $50,000, or one photovoltaic cell, which buyers are only willing to pay $100 for, guess which item will get made first?
When I look at web sites with names like "stirling-engine.com", "freeenergy.org", "greenpeace.org", "area51-power.org" and the like (all sites with an interest in inflating the efficiency), they crow about the Stirling's "high efficiency". That's it, no actual numbers.
When I look at web sites like "mit.edu", "uohio.edu", and the like, the papers there go on with 15 pages of integrals and come up with efficiencies of 15-20% TOPS for carefully lab-engineered engines using very exotic materials. No idea what the efficiency would be in the real world, probably much lower.
Guess which set of numbers I think are more likely?
(4) Don't you think that they would have hired some people from group (2) to go over the numbers with more detailed information?
Yes, the power company probably has.
(5) They apparantly have decided there is a good chance they will make money on this,
Maybe , but I suspect there's a 98% chance:
(1) The power company knows exactly how bad this Stirling cycle power plant will perform.
(2)The California Legislature thinks it can override the Laws of Thermodynamics with their own laws, and require utilities to try various unlikely schemes, perhaps with ridiculous subsidies.
(3) The power company will go along, and buy options to build gigawatts, build only another small pilot plant, find out it's uneconomical, and ask the Legislature for $33.33 billion more to build up tye whole scheme. Which said solons will balk at. Power company gets off the hook, legislators look thrifty and wise, and all is well in La-La land.
which leads me to my conclusion,
6) You don't hhave any idea what you are talking about.
Perhaps not, but with over 200 years of dismal Stirling cycle behavior, and very little progress in the last century, I'm probably more on the ball than off it.
Your storyline doesnt make any sense, economically. I think this is a bit more in line with reality: Photovoltaic panels are scarce because nobody, even with huge government subsidies, can afford to pay what they cost to produce distribute and sell.
If people were willing to pay enough $, the panels would be flying out of the factories. But using silicon for LCD screens is a whole lot more profitable.
No way the math works out on this. Let's make some very very charitable assumptions:
You can build a 37 foot steeerable dish for $10 grand.
You can borrow money for this shaky venture at 5% interest.
The rest of the equipment: heat collector at the focus, flexible piping, insulation, pipes, evaporators, heat sinks, pumps, working fluid, turbines, gears, cogs, lubricants, generators, buildings, staff, land all adds only $5M per 1,000 dishes, $5K per dish. { Note this requires slavery }
The Stirling cycle runs at 10% efficiency. { Note: most Stirling engines are about 5x less efficient that this}.
They make a breakthrough and develop an efficient Stiring regenerator, which is simultaneously long and short, conductive and insulating. See : www.tinaja.com/glib/muse116.pdf
All that stuff cleans and maintains itself at no cost.
So one dish generates 2KW for say an average of a third of a day-- about 3000 hrs/year. That's 6 megawatt-hours. At 5 cents a KWh that's $300 a year of income. But it costs you 15K*.05 or $750 per year just to pay the interest.
So even making wildly impossible assumptions, you can't even pay half the interest cost, much less make any headway on the principal.
And don't mention subsidies-- that's just throwing money away, each and every year. Nobody notices the subsidy for a small pilot project. But its not politically feasible for anything on a large scale.
>"The decision to make the gear down command a manual operation has nothing to do with making the astronauts not "feel completely like passengers".
Yep that's what NASA's PR department says. But IIRC the original design had fully automatic landings. It's only when the astronaut corps rebelled that a change was made for a cutover to "manual" landing, but usually only once the computers have done all the hard work of setting up the proper speed, altitude, and attitude. Even so, sometimes the cutover has resulted in considerable instability as the pilot gets a feel for the situation. A quick Google search seems to indicate some of the pilots have elected to keep their hands off til the last few seconds. So one way to look at it is manual landings are all about preserving the pilot's ego. At a non-negligible decrement of safety.
"oxygen"
"its source" not "it's source"
Logical leap: Chip wires, to be economically feasible are needed to be placed at a rate of many meters per second. Nanowires probably grow many powers of ten times slower than this. And one might surmise that iron interfaces very poorly to silicon.
If you're like me and only want to print out "The Onion", in color, once a week: by the time the next week rolls around, the inkjet heads have clogged. You waste a sheet or two of expensive paper in finding this out again for the galumpty-umph time.
If you use the "control panel" to clean the heads you have to put up with 5 minutes of Grandpa-getting-out-of-a-Miata-type groaning coming from the printer. And it wastes a whole boatload of ink in the process.
If you instead take the printhead to the sink and give it a Sitz bath, you get your fingertips all colored in the process, as you forgot how indelible the ink is.
Some of the HP IJPs require a 59MB download to install one 37k driver. And 39MB of slow, clunky, and unreliable "Print management" admin software doodads. Which do not want to uninstall themselves.
The HP installer hasnt heard of virtual LPT ports-- it bombs out if you don't have a real, live, 378h hardware LPT port, even if you wanted to use a USB virtual port.
Don't buy even slightly past their expiration data ink cartridges-- I thought I was a real winner buying a bunch of HP ones for $1 each cause they were a bit expired. The red ink had magically turned into dark brown, like overnight. Not good if you're printing skin, er, I mean job-related bar-graphs.
Don't buy one of those refilling kits, just don't.
Instead scarf up some lightly used color laser printer at some local auction. You won't regret it. Oh wait, you will if it needs a new photoconductor belt, $350.
Hate to nitpick the article, but there's a few inaccuracies:
.... "and then sped away "
I suspect they instead did a short blast from the attitude control thrusters. There's no way the Shuttle can "speed away" using those rather gentle thrusters. More like a gentle and slow and stately separation..... "into the blackness."
More likely this was done with full undiluted sunlight on one side, and rather bright reflection from the earth on the other side. Not exactly "blackness".
"They also planned to take down an antenna"
"Down?" There's a down up there?
A little poetical license may be okay, but when it conflicts with the facts, hmmm......
IMHO there is very very very little shill bidding, mainly because:
If you have half a brain you won't go over whatever you think the thing is worth.
A putative shill bidder has no idea what your limit is, so a goodly percentage of the time they get stuck buying the item. The seller has to pay eBay the regular auction closing fee. Seller loses money. Seller is stuck selling item again.
It woul dbe really easy for a computer to spot these shill-like patterns. The prices jockeying upwards, the seller either asking for a fee refund or them selling the same item again, and maybe again.
Why would a sane seller take the risk? There's typically millions of people loking at auctions, there's no real need to whip-up fake action action.
Here's some real experiences from 6 years of eBaying, both buying and selling:
Out of over 1200 items sold by me, I've gotten exactly ZERO bad checks. Two people didnt pay as promised. Not too shabby.
On the other hand, I reported to eBay a guy that was selling obviously copyright-infringing stuff. They responded they wouldnt do anything until THREE people reported it. I looked back in his list of buyers and got the requisite number of complaints. I got a boilerplate kiss-off e-mail from them-- eBay still declined to do ANYTHING to the scammer.
Slashdot Mirror
- Most diabetics are "type 2", which usually dont have anything to do with pancreatic inflamation.
- Even for "type 1's" or peole at risk of type 1, what are they supposed to do, get a MRI every day, at $800 per scan?
- Even so, even if an inflammation is found, what can be done? Be on immuno-surpressors for a long long time?
This sounds like a technique more usueful for ivory-tower research on the progression of inflamation, not terribly useful to the end sufferer.One tends to forget that a sliding door needs a lot of open space inside the wall. That space ends up being uninsulated, so it's gonna one cold and warm wall on either side of this door. Plus that section of wall can't have any supporting columns, so some much stronger columns and a stronger crossbeam have to be used. It's not something easily retrofitted into a house not already designd for it. Also the first time somebody gets pinched by the door all their profits are going to go *poof* to handle that lawsuit. And does the door come with a full-time person to keep all the mechanicals clean and lubed? Looks like a very high-maintenance gadget. Otherwise it looks cool.
" No. There is no such thing as "raw digital signals through copper"" By "raw digital" I meant the standard signal levels between your typical IC's. one example is the old parallel printer port, which does a bit of a no-no in using a standard TTL 74LS394 to drive the cable. Not a super idea, generally when you go off-board one should use a driver chip better suited to wotking with the real world, where wires get crossed, shorted, or zapped by static. Now that I re-read the comment I see they adumbrated a REPEATER. Of course, that's correct, just fuzzed up a bit in the description and by my brain.
Ah, we have something like a bootstapping problem here. AFAIK one never sends raw digital levels through copper, at least not for more than a few feet. The digital data gets converted to analog whistles schreeches and moans, the better to make it through miles of twisted pairs. What you might be meaning to say is the DSL signals can be re-encoded into some more distance-worthy analog jumble, to be decoded at the other end. I assume there's been a little progress in modems since DSL was nailed down.
"You can't fake what you havent got." -- Seymour Cray Seymour was referring to virtual memory, but the same applies to copper wires. They're probably relying on the statistical nature of communications: i.e. not everybody hits the "Next Blonde Bimbette" button at the same time. The basic wire to the central office (funny, ours is on "Central Avenue") is likely no speedier than before. it's just getting used more efficiently.
And as far as anybody knows, you can't project an image "onto" thin air. There's likely a thin diffuse surface out there acting as a projection screen.
A looong way from 3D image projection.
Okay, I gotta eat a little crow: my numbers were a bit off. I was going by OLD numbers. The latest numbers I can find are a lot more charitable. Pls see: http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumerinfo/pdfs/solar _dish.pdf >
But even with these much higher numbers, the math doesnt seem to work out too swell. I get about a -120% return on investment over 20 years, using somewhat reasonable assumptions. That could turn positive if the price of transient electricity doubles, which could happen in a decade or so as a wild guess. So <crow> It just might be the time to start working on making a good economical stirling solar power system<crow>
it would be nice if TFA had a few facts comparing these to current transistors. Just being "small" isnt good enough. Quite a few things have to also be in the right range to make them competitive, such as voltage swing, current gain, switching speed, reliability, feedthrough and feedback capacitance, and probably more. And it's a bit presumptuous for anybody to extrapolate these things along the same improvement curve as transistors and IC's.
Even more impressive, Sergei can write English better than the average Slashdot editor. He doesnt have too many or too few commas, his clauses match their antecedents, and adverbs are not nine words away from their verb. That is something the up of which he will not put.
Perhaps SlashDot could avoid a whole heapin steamin barrel of embarrasment if they'd just not blindly go with whatever some journalist has written . Most journalists don't have a clue about anything scientific. Why spread the misconceptions even further afield?
Now about not needing a heat sink: You say there's 90+ kilowatts of heat going into the Stirling engine, and the temperature difference across the engine is quite large. That implies that somehow you have a "heat sink" that can absorb 90*(1-Eff) Kilowatts while not going above a certain temperature. THAT is a non-negligible or avoidable item! We're talking major radiator there. You need a heat sink.
"Real Stirlings can reach 50 percent [stirlingengine.com] of this maximum theoretical value."
Hmmm, that's not a very impressive site. Mispellings, bogus physics, trying to tie into the "Segway", unimpressive products, broken links, not impressive at all. OTOH: tA group of Japanese scientists spent three years building one in the lab and could only get 19% efficiency. With an infinite cold-water heat sink. Which makes me doubt the 50% claims you cite. I'll believe it when you can point to a Stiiling engine that can do 50% efficiency, in the real world, with real-world sources and sinks, preferably for a reasonable length of time, say a month or so. then we can talk.
Long a prolific author in the technical press, Don's current ezine columns include Blatant Opportunist and his GuruGrams. He authored the immensely popular Ask the Guru series in Computer Shopper, the Resource Bin series in Nuts & Volts, and the Hardware Hacker and Tech Musings columns in Electronics Now.
Although predominately an ezine publisher at present, Don makes ongoing contributions to such magazines as Circuit Cellar and Whole Earth Review.
Don is considered by some to be one of the fathers of the personal computer. For his outstanding early work in video display development. His T.V.Typewriter and other legendary early products are on permanent exhibition at the Boston Computer Museum.
Don has been called the patron saint of the Walter Mitties of the world for his unique ability to make complex technology simple and understandable. His TTL Cookbook, CMOS Cookbook, and Active Filter Cookbook are industry classics. His Incredible Secret Money Machine is an alternate underground bible on small scale technical startups. Additional book info is found here.
Don is the webmaster of his Guru's Lair at www.tinaja.com This well received site has consistently gotten accolades for outstandingly unique tech content. Don has been an Apple developer and seeder, an Adobe developer, a Hewlett Packard developer, and a Western Design Center developer. Don has done consulting work for QMS, Motorola, and many major firms. He is recognized as a leading independent PostScript and Acrobat authority. Don has a BSEE degree from Lafayette College in 1961,and a MSEE from Arizona State University in 1967. He has done postgraduate work at Carnegie Mellon and has additional formal training in fields as diverse as anthropology, photography, business law, technical illustraton, and fire science. He has fifteen years of industrial electronic engineering experience.
So, who's got the fraudulent claims?
Nonsense, there's billions of tons of its oxide sitting all over the place, on every beach. The local landscaping place will deliver it to my door for $28 a ton.
What there might be is a temporary imbalance between the production of highly-refined silicon and the demand. More demand than supply leads to higher prices. Higher prices encourage the refiners to make more refined silicon, either by adding extra shifts, or building more capacity. That's the way capitalism works.
Now the users of refined silicon make a judgement every day-- what can I make with this silicon? If a wafer can make 500 Pentium CPU's, worth $50,000, or one photovoltaic cell, which buyers are only willing to pay $100 for, guess which item will get made first?
When I look at web sites like "mit.edu", "uohio.edu", and the like, the papers there go on with 15 pages of integrals and come up with efficiencies of 15-20% TOPS for carefully lab-engineered engines using very exotic materials. No idea what the efficiency would be in the real world, probably much lower.
Guess which set of numbers I think are more likely?
Yes, the power company probably has. (5) They apparantly have decided there is a good chance they will make money on this,
Maybe , but I suspect there's a 98% chance:
(1) The power company knows exactly how bad this Stirling cycle power plant will perform.
(2)The California Legislature thinks it can override the Laws of Thermodynamics with their own laws, and require utilities to try various unlikely schemes, perhaps with ridiculous subsidies.
(3) The power company will go along, and buy options to build gigawatts, build only another small pilot plant, find out it's uneconomical, and ask the Legislature for $33.33 billion more to build up tye whole scheme. Which said solons will balk at. Power company gets off the hook, legislators look thrifty and wise, and all is well in La-La land. which leads me to my conclusion, 6) You don't hhave any idea what you are talking about. Perhaps not, but with over 200 years of dismal Stirling cycle behavior, and very little progress in the last century, I'm probably more on the ball than off it.
If people were willing to pay enough $, the panels would be flying out of the factories. But using silicon for LCD screens is a whole lot more profitable.
- You can build a 37 foot steeerable dish for $10 grand.
- You can borrow money for this shaky venture at 5% interest.
- The rest of the equipment: heat collector at the focus, flexible piping, insulation, pipes, evaporators, heat sinks, pumps, working fluid, turbines, gears, cogs, lubricants, generators, buildings, staff, land all adds only $5M per 1,000 dishes, $5K per dish. { Note this requires slavery }
- The Stirling cycle runs at 10% efficiency. { Note: most Stirling engines are about 5x less efficient that this}.
- They make a breakthrough and develop an efficient Stiring regenerator, which is simultaneously long and short, conductive and insulating. See : www.tinaja.com/glib/muse116.pdf
- All that stuff cleans and maintains itself at no cost.
So one dish generates 2KW for say an average of a third of a day-- about 3000 hrs/year. That's 6 megawatt-hours. At 5 cents a KWh that's $300 a year of income. But it costs you 15K*.05 or $750 per year just to pay the interest.So even making wildly impossible assumptions, you can't even pay half the interest cost, much less make any headway on the principal.
And don't mention subsidies-- that's just throwing money away, each and every year. Nobody notices the subsidy for a small pilot project. But its not politically feasible for anything on a large scale.
>"The decision to make the gear down command a manual operation has nothing to do with making the astronauts not "feel completely like passengers". Yep that's what NASA's PR department says. But IIRC the original design had fully automatic landings. It's only when the astronaut corps rebelled that a change was made for a cutover to "manual" landing, but usually only once the computers have done all the hard work of setting up the proper speed, altitude, and attitude. Even so, sometimes the cutover has resulted in considerable instability as the pilot gets a feel for the situation. A quick Google search seems to indicate some of the pilots have elected to keep their hands off til the last few seconds. So one way to look at it is manual landings are all about preserving the pilot's ego. At a non-negligible decrement of safety.
Doesnt matter what it is, it's just there to give the pilot something to hold onto and look important.
"oxygen" "its source" not "it's source" Logical leap: Chip wires, to be economically feasible are needed to be placed at a rate of many meters per second. Nanowires probably grow many powers of ten times slower than this. And one might surmise that iron interfaces very poorly to silicon.
- IJPs is an anagram for "jips"!
- If you're like me and only want to print out "The Onion", in color, once a week: by the time the next week rolls around, the inkjet heads have clogged. You waste a sheet or two of expensive paper in finding this out again for the galumpty-umph time.
- If you use the "control panel" to clean the heads you have to put up with 5 minutes of Grandpa-getting-out-of-a-Miata-type groaning coming from the printer. And it wastes a whole boatload of ink in the process.
- If you instead take the printhead to the sink and give it a Sitz bath, you get your fingertips all colored in the process, as you forgot how indelible the ink is.
- Some of the HP IJPs require a 59MB download to install one 37k driver. And 39MB of slow, clunky, and unreliable "Print management" admin software doodads. Which do not want to uninstall themselves.
- The HP installer hasnt heard of virtual LPT ports-- it bombs out if you don't have a real, live, 378h hardware LPT port, even if you wanted to use a USB virtual port.
- Don't buy even slightly past their expiration data ink cartridges-- I thought I was a real winner buying a bunch of HP ones for $1 each cause they were a bit expired. The red ink had magically turned into dark brown, like overnight. Not good if you're printing skin, er, I mean job-related bar-graphs.
- Don't buy one of those refilling kits, just don't.
Instead scarf up some lightly used color laser printer at some local auction. You won't regret it. Oh wait, you will if it needs a new photoconductor belt, $350.Do Not ask me how I learned these things.
I suspect they instead did a short blast from the attitude control thrusters. There's no way the Shuttle can "speed away" using those rather gentle thrusters. More like a gentle and slow and stately separation. .... "into the blackness."
More likely this was done with full undiluted sunlight on one side, and rather bright reflection from the earth on the other side. Not exactly "blackness". "They also planned to take down an antenna" "Down?" There's a down up there? A little poetical license may be okay, but when it conflicts with the facts, hmmm......
"That's one small tug for a man, one less thing to worry about during re-entry"
- If you have half a brain you won't go over whatever you think the thing is worth.
- A putative shill bidder has no idea what your limit is, so a goodly percentage of the time they get stuck buying the item. The seller has to pay eBay the regular auction closing fee. Seller loses money. Seller is stuck selling item again.
- It woul dbe really easy for a computer to spot these shill-like patterns. The prices jockeying upwards, the seller either asking for a fee refund or them selling the same item again, and maybe again.
- Why would a sane seller take the risk? There's typically millions of people loking at auctions, there's no real need to whip-up fake action action.
Am I missing something..??