I just finished coding a video overlay processor in FPGA - it could easily put these timestamps on, still or video, in real time if you like. The same chip can also do jpeg encoding.
Stock tires on a 1991 Miata generated 1.0 Gs of braking on a crappy 40 year old asphalt surface (ex blimp airfield), reliably and repeatably as measured by a Valentine G-Analyst. Other fun numbers from that day:
1st gear launch with clutch slip - 0.5G max (makes sense with an open differential) 1st gear clutch engaged acceleration - 0.33g throughout most of the RPM range 2nd gear - 0.25g 3rd gear - 0.2g, note the progression: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 - it's what the G-Analyst said, it doesn't line up exactly with the transmission ratios.
As I noted above, if anybody is "limit braking" in a normal car, you should notice not only the brake lights, but also the rear end of the car jacked up in the air due to weight transfer.
Their speed is not measured by the photos. The speed is measured before the photos are taken.
That statement was crafted by lawyers as a basis for plausible deniability. The two photos are there to convince joe average that that is the method they use, just incase he's thinking of challenging their radar calibration.
In this case, it looks like their radar was off (inaccurate) - it happens, quite a bit actually. As I understand police speed-doppler, at least on some models they get an audio output that can be used to discriminate good speed lock from garbage, and a well trained conscientious officer can avoid giving tickets out based on garbage readings from the radar gun. The automatic lock/reject algorithms are a bit more prone to making up numbers, sometimes wildly off - and I think a lot of the robot-cams are prone to these problems - technicians are supposed to screen the "catches" (possibly with those two photos) to make sure they're not sending tickets to a low flying buzzard, or possibly vehicles that obviously aren't doing what the radar says they are.
In this case, I'd bet the guy was close enough to guilty that the tech missed it. Now that it's in court, the company has to put on their infallible face or risk losing their contract renewal. A reasonable judge should determine that the man had no impetus to slow down that quickly at that particular time and give him the benefit of the doubt. A technically minded judge should note that his vehicle would be jacked up in the rear from weight transfer if he was braking that hard. A politically minded judge will rule whatever way is most likely to advance his career - which sadly has nothing to do with truth or justice.
I remember highway signs going up in the late 70s with miles and km, the cars started to have dual scale speedos, packages in the grocery store started being dual labeled in ounces and grams... it was a big deal for a few years, "leadership" was taking us in that direction, then it kind of fizzled about the same time that Carter failed to bring peace to the Middle East.
I liked Carter, and still do, but the nation was never really behind him, and the metric conversion thing seemed to flame out with him.
Nice try, more complex than that, but yes it smells when it runs rich. Thing is, it has had this running rich above 12psi of boost condition for 14 years now - only in the last few years has the smell of brimstone accompanied it.
At that company that wasn't promoting me, they (more than once, I think) laid a guy off, he got a job at another company, then was sent back in to the company which laid him off as a consultant - making more money for himself and costing the company over 2x what they were paying him before the layoff - not 2x hourly rate, 2x overall per month.
Fractions are great - if you lived in Babylonian times when you might be asked to do two computations a day.
I especially like 1/60th - with perfect factors of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20 and 30 - much more versatile than 1/100th that only breaks down into 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25 and 50.
The cost of "dual calibration" of a speedometer is not prohibitive, digital dashboards could switch for pennies a copy - if the manufacturers wanted them to.
Kind of like region coding for DVDs, but heavier and with four wheels.
Pride, stubbornness, and a general dislike for Jimmy Carter killed the metric system in the U.S.
Computers have perpetuated our ability to use imperial units without suffering too much - and I think vendors like the confusion that comes from making things with mixed metric/imperial parts.
The upstroke isn't the problem as much as the differential pressure vs time - a knock is essentially a detonation across most of the chamber volume at once, the difference between getting smacked in the head with a 5 pound pillow, and getting smacked in the head with a 5 pound iron skillet moving at the same speed - both impart the same energy (assume your head is soft enough that the skillet doesn't rebound), but with different dP/dt curves.
No more spark, but if they don't handle the laser power switching pulses well, they can be just as bad. The potential for improvement is there, but I'm not sure the motivation is sufficient to make it happen.
My 1980 Honda Civic used a 3 barrel carburetor to produce one (tiny) rich air/fuel mixture and two channels of lean mixture. The rich was fed by a separate valve to a tiny pre-ignition chamber that the spark plug lived in, and the rest of the 336cc cylinder was filled with lean mixture.
That engine was the last one, by any major manufacturer, to pass US emissions standards without a catalytic converter - it was inherently clean burning enough to meet the 1980 standards without one. It was also rather efficient (30mpg when being flogged like a rented horse, closer to 40 if you drove conservatively) and basically indestructible - at 150Kmi, it was the brakes and electrical system that were in bad shape, engine was running like a champ.
Lean burn is attractive for efficiency and emissions, if you can avoid misfires and pre-ignition 'knock.'
Sparkplugs cost around $3 to $6 each. It seems that a laser strong enough to get through the carbon build up is going to cost more than that. Since plugs now last well over 36,000 miles in new vehicles, it seems trying to improve on an inexpensive technology with a high tech solution is anything but economical.
Missing the point - lasers are cool
And... that $20 DVD burner from Newegg contains a lot more than just a laser... produced in automotive fleet quantities, most solid state lasers would get pretty cheap - I'd think it's the optically clear window capable of withstanding the combustion chamber that's a trick, but it's pretty small, and again should be cheap in quantity.
Don't forget sulfur - for the last few years, sulfur content in automotive fuel has been noticeably higher, regardless of what the regulations say, you can smell it in exhaust much more than 10 years ago.
I'm sure we'll have even more interesting contaminants coming from tar sands and the other new sources of crude.
I worked near (unfortunately not for) a director who classified his best engineers as managers so they could participate in the higher level party, but didn't drag them along to all the higher level meetings.
Sadly, in my experience, that was a unique situation.
I think there are still a few places where you can reach the top of the ladder in a purely technical role.
Define "top" - anywhere I have been, the ownership sharing (stock options, etc.) topped out around 1% for techie types, while the "leadership people" would be holding 20% (each) and up.
In larger organizations, the percentages were smaller (due to higher overall head count), but the ratios were similar - management track always brought high multiples of the tech track for stock options and bonuses. They'd whine and cry about how techies got a higher base, but the numbers broke down something like 100 base for a top tech, 90 base for a similar level manager, 10% possible bonus for the tech (awarded 80% of the time), 30% bonus for the similar level manager (awarded 45% of the time), 3-5x more stock options for the management types, typically awarded on advancement.
The kicker was that a top tech had no upward mobility, the equivalent level manager had 6 more layers of advancement below CEO, each with bigger bonuses and stock options than the layer below. Base never went much above 130, but bonuses could exceed 100%, and stock options frequently netted 10x that.
As for stress levels, is it more stressful to have meetings where you discuss how the axe is about to fall, or to know that such meetings are happening but not being invited or informed until the day the pink slip comes?
In good times, a top tech can work 20-30 years and retire to a modest but comfortable lifestyle. A manager a couple of levels up can (potentially) net the same retirement nest-egg overnight and pursue their own goals at age 30 or 40, instead of 55+.
Sort of like the stock market, risk vs reward - tech track is a little safer day to day, but on average it nets less in the long term.
I don't understand why people crave management so much.
Because, as you approach the top 10% of any company I've ever known, techies hit a glass ceiling. They say that there's a parallel technical ladder, but it in reality it doesn't reach the top. Technical track compensation hits the wall before the hockey stick curve gets interesting.
Even if you don't care about making 7 figures, if you're not being invited to board meetings, they're "protecting you from details you shouldn't have to worry about or don't care about," and also steering the ship without your input.
It's hard for me to feel content as an engineer below decks on the Titanic.
If internal advancement was the way to go, they'd be offering you significantly more than your external opportunity. This rarely happens. It worked for me in my first job (10 years from entry level programmer to top of R&D), but at the second, I hired in just below director (better benefits and equal pay to "top of R&D" in the other town), and I would have remained just below director for a veeeeeery long time if I had stayed - that place was more interested in "cross pollination" than developing their existing staff.
I think I saw a brand new microwave at Lowes last night for $35...
I'd be more worried about collateral damage like the vaporized metal and / or plastic getting out of the microwave and coating things I wouldn't want coated with that stuff, like my alveoli.
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I just finished coding a video overlay processor in FPGA - it could easily put these timestamps on, still or video, in real time if you like. The same chip can also do jpeg encoding.
Stock tires on a 1991 Miata generated 1.0 Gs of braking on a crappy 40 year old asphalt surface (ex blimp airfield), reliably and repeatably as measured by a Valentine G-Analyst. Other fun numbers from that day:
1st gear launch with clutch slip - 0.5G max (makes sense with an open differential)
1st gear clutch engaged acceleration - 0.33g throughout most of the RPM range
2nd gear - 0.25g
3rd gear - 0.2g, note the progression: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 - it's what the G-Analyst said, it doesn't line up exactly with the transmission ratios.
As I noted above, if anybody is "limit braking" in a normal car, you should notice not only the brake lights, but also the rear end of the car jacked up in the air due to weight transfer.
Their speed is not measured by the photos. The speed is measured before the photos are taken.
That statement was crafted by lawyers as a basis for plausible deniability. The two photos are there to convince joe average that that is the method they use, just incase he's thinking of challenging their radar calibration.
In this case, it looks like their radar was off (inaccurate) - it happens, quite a bit actually. As I understand police speed-doppler, at least on some models they get an audio output that can be used to discriminate good speed lock from garbage, and a well trained conscientious officer can avoid giving tickets out based on garbage readings from the radar gun. The automatic lock/reject algorithms are a bit more prone to making up numbers, sometimes wildly off - and I think a lot of the robot-cams are prone to these problems - technicians are supposed to screen the "catches" (possibly with those two photos) to make sure they're not sending tickets to a low flying buzzard, or possibly vehicles that obviously aren't doing what the radar says they are.
In this case, I'd bet the guy was close enough to guilty that the tech missed it. Now that it's in court, the company has to put on their infallible face or risk losing their contract renewal. A reasonable judge should determine that the man had no impetus to slow down that quickly at that particular time and give him the benefit of the doubt. A technically minded judge should note that his vehicle would be jacked up in the rear from weight transfer if he was braking that hard. A politically minded judge will rule whatever way is most likely to advance his career - which sadly has nothing to do with truth or justice.
I remember highway signs going up in the late 70s with miles and km, the cars started to have dual scale speedos, packages in the grocery store started being dual labeled in ounces and grams... it was a big deal for a few years, "leadership" was taking us in that direction, then it kind of fizzled about the same time that Carter failed to bring peace to the Middle East.
I liked Carter, and still do, but the nation was never really behind him, and the metric conversion thing seemed to flame out with him.
Nice try, more complex than that, but yes it smells when it runs rich. Thing is, it has had this running rich above 12psi of boost condition for 14 years now - only in the last few years has the smell of brimstone accompanied it.
At that company that wasn't promoting me, they (more than once, I think) laid a guy off, he got a job at another company, then was sent back in to the company which laid him off as a consultant - making more money for himself and costing the company over 2x what they were paying him before the layoff - not 2x hourly rate, 2x overall per month.
Yes, I recall voting for Change a couple of years back, and I will continue voting for it at every opportunity.
Unfortunately, among voters, I appear to be a minority.
No, but I have used a string folded in half, on occasion.
Tape measure is the conventional tool.
I agree, much easier to cut a board in half than into 0.5 (seriously).
Fractions are great - if you lived in Babylonian times when you might be asked to do two computations a day.
I especially like 1/60th - with perfect factors of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20 and 30 - much more versatile than 1/100th that only breaks down into 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25 and 50.
The cost of "dual calibration" of a speedometer is not prohibitive, digital dashboards could switch for pennies a copy - if the manufacturers wanted them to.
Kind of like region coding for DVDs, but heavier and with four wheels.
Pride, stubbornness, and a general dislike for Jimmy Carter killed the metric system in the U.S.
Computers have perpetuated our ability to use imperial units without suffering too much - and I think vendors like the confusion that comes from making things with mixed metric/imperial parts.
The upstroke isn't the problem as much as the differential pressure vs time - a knock is essentially a detonation across most of the chamber volume at once, the difference between getting smacked in the head with a 5 pound pillow, and getting smacked in the head with a 5 pound iron skillet moving at the same speed - both impart the same energy (assume your head is soft enough that the skillet doesn't rebound), but with different dP/dt curves.
No more spark, but if they don't handle the laser power switching pulses well, they can be just as bad. The potential for improvement is there, but I'm not sure the motivation is sufficient to make it happen.
My 1980 Honda Civic used a 3 barrel carburetor to produce one (tiny) rich air/fuel mixture and two channels of lean mixture. The rich was fed by a separate valve to a tiny pre-ignition chamber that the spark plug lived in, and the rest of the 336cc cylinder was filled with lean mixture.
That engine was the last one, by any major manufacturer, to pass US emissions standards without a catalytic converter - it was inherently clean burning enough to meet the 1980 standards without one. It was also rather efficient (30mpg when being flogged like a rented horse, closer to 40 if you drove conservatively) and basically indestructible - at 150Kmi, it was the brakes and electrical system that were in bad shape, engine was running like a champ.
Lean burn is attractive for efficiency and emissions, if you can avoid misfires and pre-ignition 'knock.'
Sparkplugs cost around $3 to $6 each. It seems that a laser strong enough to get through the carbon build up is going to cost more than that. Since plugs now last well over 36,000 miles in new vehicles, it seems trying to improve on an inexpensive technology with a high tech solution is anything but economical.
Missing the point - lasers are cool
And... that $20 DVD burner from Newegg contains a lot more than just a laser... produced in automotive fleet quantities, most solid state lasers would get pretty cheap - I'd think it's the optically clear window capable of withstanding the combustion chamber that's a trick, but it's pretty small, and again should be cheap in quantity.
Don't forget sulfur - for the last few years, sulfur content in automotive fuel has been noticeably higher, regardless of what the regulations say, you can smell it in exhaust much more than 10 years ago.
I'm sure we'll have even more interesting contaminants coming from tar sands and the other new sources of crude.
If it burns through steel, it won't be much use in an engine.
I worked near (unfortunately not for) a director who classified his best engineers as managers so they could participate in the higher level party, but didn't drag them along to all the higher level meetings.
Sadly, in my experience, that was a unique situation.
I was implying that the sites that cater to non-self improvers do not appeal to me.
I am trying to not always need to have the last word in an argument - does that count as a desire for self improvement?
Depends where you work.
I think there are still a few places where you can reach the top of the ladder in a purely technical role.
Define "top" - anywhere I have been, the ownership sharing (stock options, etc.) topped out around 1% for techie types, while the "leadership people" would be holding 20% (each) and up.
In larger organizations, the percentages were smaller (due to higher overall head count), but the ratios were similar - management track always brought high multiples of the tech track for stock options and bonuses. They'd whine and cry about how techies got a higher base, but the numbers broke down something like 100 base for a top tech, 90 base for a similar level manager, 10% possible bonus for the tech (awarded 80% of the time), 30% bonus for the similar level manager (awarded 45% of the time), 3-5x more stock options for the management types, typically awarded on advancement.
The kicker was that a top tech had no upward mobility, the equivalent level manager had 6 more layers of advancement below CEO, each with bigger bonuses and stock options than the layer below. Base never went much above 130, but bonuses could exceed 100%, and stock options frequently netted 10x that.
As for stress levels, is it more stressful to have meetings where you discuss how the axe is about to fall, or to know that such meetings are happening but not being invited or informed until the day the pink slip comes?
In good times, a top tech can work 20-30 years and retire to a modest but comfortable lifestyle. A manager a couple of levels up can (potentially) net the same retirement nest-egg overnight and pursue their own goals at age 30 or 40, instead of 55+.
Sort of like the stock market, risk vs reward - tech track is a little safer day to day, but on average it nets less in the long term.
I don't understand why people crave management so much.
Because, as you approach the top 10% of any company I've ever known, techies hit a glass ceiling. They say that there's a parallel technical ladder, but it in reality it doesn't reach the top. Technical track compensation hits the wall before the hockey stick curve gets interesting.
Even if you don't care about making 7 figures, if you're not being invited to board meetings, they're "protecting you from details you shouldn't have to worry about or don't care about," and also steering the ship without your input.
It's hard for me to feel content as an engineer below decks on the Titanic.
If internal advancement was the way to go, they'd be offering you significantly more than your external opportunity. This rarely happens. It worked for me in my first job (10 years from entry level programmer to top of R&D), but at the second, I hired in just below director (better benefits and equal pay to "top of R&D" in the other town), and I would have remained just below director for a veeeeeery long time if I had stayed - that place was more interested in "cross pollination" than developing their existing staff.
I think I saw a brand new microwave at Lowes last night for $35...
I'd be more worried about collateral damage like the vaporized metal and / or plastic getting out of the microwave and coating things I wouldn't want coated with that stuff, like my alveoli.
Gotta love anything that involves 150KV spark arcs, but Og the caveman does it better with plain old fire.