Sellafield is right up in the north west of england. London is in the south east. The people who decided where to put Sellafield(then Windscale) are, however, based in London. Strangely they decided the best place for it was as far away as possible.
Probably for the best, since they had an accident there in 1957. If the plant were near London, more people would have been exposed to radionucleides.
So if a kid gets convicted of aggrevated premeditated murder in the US (anyway, in a state that has a death penalty) and gets sentenced to death, how do you mete out a percentage of a death sentence to his/her parents? Do you just assume a life span of, say, 80 years and say that 50% of a death sentence is 40 years in prison?
Speaking seriously, this whole idea is wrong. Parents aren't always responsible for the crimes of their children. Some kids are raised in the best of homes and still end up becoming criminals for whatever reason.
According to the article, a device installed in every gas pump will query the car's *odometer* by radio and charge a "gas tax" based on the car's mileage since the last fill-up. This is still invasive since it will record where you filled up (unless the database is designed for anonymity) but it's much less invasive than GPS.
Why use a microprocessor when you can have the DC voltage from the rectified 2.4Ghz signal turn on a transistor which activates a flashing LED (or an analog flasher circuit). Surely that kind of arrangement would use much less power than running a processor (even a "tiny" one) all of the time.
They were very selective about what groups they offered access to. For example, alt.tasteless stopped existing in their heirarchy after some comments about AOL were posted in the group.
In the rush to make cell phones smaller and lighter, the designers have left out an important consideration - namely the size of a the human finger tip.
Same with car stereos. My Volvo 240 has an aftermarket Pioneer radio with buttons that are much too small to be pushed with a gloved finger. By contrast, all of the controls that originally came with the car are composed of large buttons, dials, and switches which are easily usable with gloves on.
What kind of a world do we live in where the most readily available information about an electonic device of immense historical importance is information put together by and for people who were outsiders trying to break in? Why isn't all of Ma Bell's old secret internal documentation out in the open where future generations can learn from it?
Not really secret, but the Rutgers University science library in Piscattaway, NJ has copies of the Bell Technical Journal dating back to the 1920s.
with the SSID NICE_GUY because I *want* people to be able to surf the 'net from the street. If I'm in a strange town with a laptop, I sometimes find the ability to check my mail useful; I'm just returning the favor.
-b.
but it seems to me that you need to burn fuel to drive pistons in an internal combustion engine and you need heat for steam turbines - would there be any practical way to combine the two?
One way is to use the hot exhaust gasses to drive a gas turbine. Use the compressor of the gas turbine to pump more air into the engine's intake. It's called turbocharging and it's done frequently.
Another way is to couple the turbine to the engine's output shaft and use the turbine to generate more power directly. I believe this is called a turbo-compound engine - such engines were used in the last generation of large piston-powered aircraft (B-29 and B-36 bombers, Douglas DC-6 and DC-7, etc)
According to pops, the Stanley was a terrific car in most respects, and fast as all get-out, but it had one fatal flaw. You had to heat the boiler up for a long time before you could get going. No running out the convenience store for a gallon of milk in that car.
This shouldn't be a problem with a steam car that uses a flash boiler which boils a small amount of water at a time rather than trying to bring its entire water supply to a boil at once. The real problem with commercially viable steam cars might be their water supplies freezing in cold weather. Then again, mixing in some type of antifreeze might solve that problem. Either that, or only using a small amount of water, held in an insulated tank.
For a number of people it's the best option since the emission and fuel requirements killed the station wagon.
In the 1990s. Now we're starting to get a decent choice of station wagons again:
* the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix
* Subaru Legacy
* Volvo V50 & V70
* BMW 3- and 5- series
* Mercedes C-class and E-class
* VW Jetta and Passat
* Dodge Magnum - this one is a true full-sized wagon with a 3000+ lb towing capacity
* Saab 9-5
* Scion xB
Unfortunately, as usual, Ford seems to be slow on the uptake and has discontinued their Taurus wagon in favor of the Freestyle ugly monstrosity. I don't know why they can't just offer an AWD wagon version of the 500.
Hondas can hit 300k if taken care of. A BMW would probably go through two engines and transmissions by then. Plus maybe some air struts (depending on model), power this & that breaking 5 times, and pretty much anything that has the capability to break.
Well, I can't speak for BMWs lasting 300k, but my family did have an old (1982 IIRC) 528e that lasted 175k before some moron broadsided the car on the NJ Turnpike. The engine was original and hadn't been touched, and it ran well, though there was a small puff of oil smoke when first starting it in the morning (probably needed valve seals). The 5-speed transmission and clutch were also original. All of the power bits worked except for one window which was broken by a thief who stole the radio - the window never quite closed right even after being fixed. The body of the car has no rust whatsoever, although the filler tube of the fuel tank did rust once and had to be replaced. All in all, it was a pretty damn good car. The one flaw that it had was its anemic engine - it was 2.8L and put out an earth-shaking 120hp.
German cars aren't the only cars that are well-built, though. We also had a Chevy Caprice wagon that we drove for 190k miles on the original engine and transmission, though a similar Oldsmobile wagon that we had earlier seized up at 70k or so miles. My current car is a Volvo 245 with the original drivetrain, very little rust, and 175k miles on it.
As far as Hondas, I'm not a big fan of them for other reasons, namely that most of them are front-heavy, understeering, and ill-handling. The S2000, NSX, and most of their bikes are exceptions to that rule, however. If I were going to go Japanese, I'd go for either a Toyota MR-Spyder or a Mazda Miata.
Lastly, as far as Consumer Reports, they seem to rate reliability as more important than durability. I'd rather have a car that occasionally needs minor problems fixed but runs to 250k miles than one that works flawlessly and then conks out at 95k miles, which is coincidentally 5k after the warrantee expires.
In the desert of California and Nevada, there are (or were until recently) certain phone customers that could only be reached through an operator and could only dial out through an operator. These phones are known as toll stations. There is a resort hotel in California whose phone number is Drakesbad - via Susanville - 2.
-b., whose uncle's phone number in Poland was "Lacko 42" until 2001.
Consider the chilling of the earth into an iceage like climate, with darkness and cold the power requirements will go up radically, ask California if they think there's plenty of extra power.
A large asteroid strike would definitely be The End Of The World As We Know It, but not necessarily the end of life altogether. I'd suspect that 1% or 0.1% of humankind will end up surviving. Humans have proven themselves to be remarkably adaptable and resourceful in the face of adversity. As far as "asking California", it's unlikely that California would have an energy shortage if its population was reduced by 99%.
Unless the asteroid is large enough to severely disturb the Earth's orbit or cause the Earth to break apart, a large asteroid impact won't kill all of the humans on this planet. A lot of life will be destroyed by tidal waves, if the thing crashes into the ocean (but there are high mountains), and by lack of sunlight and earthquakes if the asteroid crashes into land. However, unlike the dinosaurs, we have means to generate power artificially, either by nuclear reactors or even through burning oil - there'll be a lot of oil available after 95% of humanity dies off. This power can be used to generate artificial sunlight to sustain plants and animals through the ensuing darkness and ice age.
I'm more worried about humankind annihilating itself through accidental nuclear war - the radiation might very well render the Earth barren.
I agree with Young about the need for manned space travel. It will even have benefits for the Earth, like the construction of solar power satellites to beam power down to the planet - no more need for nuclear power, which is perceived as unsafe, or fossil fuel power, which is dirty and limited in supply.
Now, imagine a universal, world-wide standard for low power devices.
Actually, there is a standard 12V outlet design used throughout the world. It's called a car cigarette lighter socket, and it can carry 10-20A without melting, unlike Ethernet cabling, which would probably catch fire quickly.
NYC had 110VDC power in places until the 1970s - for all I know, maybe it still does. In the early 70s, my dad got a job as the caretaker of a church uptown. He plugged a TV into a normal looking outlet, which resulted in the smoke being let out of the TVs circuitry. It turned out that the outlet was DC, not AC, which caused bad things to happen to the TV's transformer.
One time I licked a phone line to see if it was in fact plugged into the wall behind my desk. It would have been a hard crawl to get back there to check- and I assumed that phone line voltage was pretty low (like licking a 9V). Oh man did a get a good shock from that.
'phone lines are 50VDC when the phone is on hook, about 12VDC when the phone is off hook, and 100VAC at about 20Hz when the phone is ringing. Ouch! When working on phone lines in your house, always take one extension off hook to avoid getting zapped.
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I want monkeys to be able to type faster, so that I can get my copy of the works of Shakespeare without waiting 10,000 years.
-b.
Probably for the best, since they had an accident there in 1957. If the plant were near London, more people would have been exposed to radionucleides.
-b.
-b.
Speaking seriously, this whole idea is wrong. Parents aren't always responsible for the crimes of their children. Some kids are raised in the best of homes and still end up becoming criminals for whatever reason.
-b.
-b.
-b.
-b.
-b.
Same with car stereos. My Volvo 240 has an aftermarket Pioneer radio with buttons that are much too small to be pushed with a gloved finger. By contrast, all of the controls that originally came with the car are composed of large buttons, dials, and switches which are easily usable with gloves on.
-b.
Not really secret, but the Rutgers University science library in Piscattaway, NJ has copies of the Bell Technical Journal dating back to the 1920s.
-b.
There's a rotary-dial pay phone in the car repair shop at the corner of Ashwood St. and Morris Ave. It worked as of a few months ago. -b.
with the SSID NICE_GUY because I *want* people to be able to surf the 'net from the street. If I'm in a strange town with a laptop, I sometimes find the ability to check my mail useful; I'm just returning the favor. -b.
-b.
GM's OnStar can already track your car, shut it down remotely ("in case of theft"), and lock/unlock it remotely.
-b.
One way is to use the hot exhaust gasses to drive a gas turbine. Use the compressor of the gas turbine to pump more air into the engine's intake. It's called turbocharging and it's done frequently.
Another way is to couple the turbine to the engine's output shaft and use the turbine to generate more power directly. I believe this is called a turbo-compound engine - such engines were used in the last generation of large piston-powered aircraft (B-29 and B-36 bombers, Douglas DC-6 and DC-7, etc)
-b.
This shouldn't be a problem with a steam car that uses a flash boiler which boils a small amount of water at a time rather than trying to bring its entire water supply to a boil at once. The real problem with commercially viable steam cars might be their water supplies freezing in cold weather. Then again, mixing in some type of antifreeze might solve that problem. Either that, or only using a small amount of water, held in an insulated tank.
-b.
In the 1990s. Now we're starting to get a decent choice of station wagons again:
* the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix
* Subaru Legacy
* Volvo V50 & V70
* BMW 3- and 5- series
* Mercedes C-class and E-class
* VW Jetta and Passat
* Dodge Magnum - this one is a true full-sized wagon with a 3000+ lb towing capacity
* Saab 9-5
* Scion xB
Unfortunately, as usual, Ford seems to be slow on the uptake and has discontinued their Taurus wagon in favor of the Freestyle ugly monstrosity. I don't know why they can't just offer an AWD wagon version of the 500.
-b.
Well, I can't speak for BMWs lasting 300k, but my family did have an old (1982 IIRC) 528e that lasted 175k before some moron broadsided the car on the NJ Turnpike. The engine was original and hadn't been touched, and it ran well, though there was a small puff of oil smoke when first starting it in the morning (probably needed valve seals). The 5-speed transmission and clutch were also original. All of the power bits worked except for one window which was broken by a thief who stole the radio - the window never quite closed right even after being fixed. The body of the car has no rust whatsoever, although the filler tube of the fuel tank did rust once and had to be replaced. All in all, it was a pretty damn good car. The one flaw that it had was its anemic engine - it was 2.8L and put out an earth-shaking 120hp.
German cars aren't the only cars that are well-built, though. We also had a Chevy Caprice wagon that we drove for 190k miles on the original engine and transmission, though a similar Oldsmobile wagon that we had earlier seized up at 70k or so miles. My current car is a Volvo 245 with the original drivetrain, very little rust, and 175k miles on it.
As far as Hondas, I'm not a big fan of them for other reasons, namely that most of them are front-heavy, understeering, and ill-handling. The S2000, NSX, and most of their bikes are exceptions to that rule, however. If I were going to go Japanese, I'd go for either a Toyota MR-Spyder or a Mazda Miata.
Lastly, as far as Consumer Reports, they seem to rate reliability as more important than durability. I'd rather have a car that occasionally needs minor problems fixed but runs to 250k miles than one that works flawlessly and then conks out at 95k miles, which is coincidentally 5k after the warrantee expires.
-b.
-b., whose uncle's phone number in Poland was "Lacko 42" until 2001.
A large asteroid strike would definitely be The End Of The World As We Know It, but not necessarily the end of life altogether. I'd suspect that 1% or 0.1% of humankind will end up surviving. Humans have proven themselves to be remarkably adaptable and resourceful in the face of adversity. As far as "asking California", it's unlikely that California would have an energy shortage if its population was reduced by 99%.
-b.
I'm more worried about humankind annihilating itself through accidental nuclear war - the radiation might very well render the Earth barren.
I agree with Young about the need for manned space travel. It will even have benefits for the Earth, like the construction of solar power satellites to beam power down to the planet - no more need for nuclear power, which is perceived as unsafe, or fossil fuel power, which is dirty and limited in supply.
-b.
Is a CRM-114 Discriminator required at both ends of the cable to allow the power to pass through?
-b.
Actually, there is a standard 12V outlet design used throughout the world. It's called a car cigarette lighter socket, and it can carry 10-20A without melting, unlike Ethernet cabling, which would probably catch fire quickly.
-b.
-b.
'phone lines are 50VDC when the phone is on hook, about 12VDC when the phone is off hook, and 100VAC at about 20Hz when the phone is ringing. Ouch! When working on phone lines in your house, always take one extension off hook to avoid getting zapped.
-b.