According to my Thermodynamics professor, big heavy Sterling engines can be more efficient than internal combustion, but as of 1985 they hadn't managed to make them efficient ones enough to fit into "normal" vehicles.
Uh... when did you meet him? Last time I met him (2003, I think) he had his own mountaintop dream home (complete with enclosed helicopter garage), a private island chosen because it was in helicopter range, Citation jet, and what appeared to be a prototype generation company staffed with 200 people just so he could turn out his ideas as quickly as possible. He didn't seem to need adoption. Besides, his folks still hang at the house - mum made snacks for us.
Too bad that it's being produced by someone who thinks a $20K wheelchair and a $5K scooter are "practical." Maybe he's learned his lesson, but I bet this econobox will come in over $30K to the public.
Does it strike anyone else as improbable that any significant amount of ammonia gas will be anywhere near that 17kg chunk of metal that survives reentry?
The punitive damages in the FDCPA are not ruinous to the entity paying the damages, merely sufficient to discourage inappropriate behavior. Neither are they sufficient to support a team of land-sharks to pursue them.
I find this to be true in Windows networking as well (big linear reads are pretty quick, little chunk access is dog-slow.)
To the parent: in addition to documenting the money/time cost impact of implementing a policy that has no value (beyond standardization) in your department, you can throw a little FUD on the fire: when a standard disk gets corrupted, you lose the corrupted portion, when certain (frequently written) parts of an encrypted partition get corrupted, you can lose the whole partition.
Apple has the option to put a user's whole home partition in a File Vault. I tested this on a MacBook Pro since we were considering implementing a HIPPA sensitive system on OS-X. The MBP had a tendency to not shut down cleanly, especially with the drivers they were circulating in 2006 - it only took about 3 of these unclean shutdowns to hose my encrypted home partition, essentially locking me out of the machine entirely. I knew all the passwords, but the best that escalated AppleCare could come up with was to reformat the drive and start over. I still have the unclean shutdowns, but now (without File Vault) when they cause a little corruption, Disk Doctor cleans it up and I don't have to do a whole system restore. I keep only the sensitive files in File Vault, encrypting the whole drive is too risky for me.
If all IDs in the country are easily faked, this is a measurement that the enforcing officer can take in the field. I'm sure there are lots of Vietnamese police who wholeheartedly approve of this new duty.
The thing most fundamentally wrong with Java / JavaScript was the hype it was promoted with, say, 10 years ago, when I had to spend significant time and effort explaining to the CEO why we are NOT coding our new project in this new language he read about on the plane.
Even today, Java / JavaScript is hobbled and slow compared to the hardware execution engines Sun promised for it in 1996-7. Yes, you can make it do some snappy/fast things - but it still consumes more computing resource than the equivalent code written in something like C.
In the plus column, you can do some cool things with JavaScript pretty quick and easy, and once you learn it as your first language, you can become so enamored with it that you think it can and will do all things for all people... but I digress.
...When are we going to realize that browser maturity and performance are going to be on opposing curves and jumping ship to an immature browser just sets you up to lose functionality for a short period of time until the performance can be gobbled up by it...
This is a defeatist attitude which, when extrapolated to unreasonable extremes, assumes that the perfect algorithm for every situation has already been found and applied.
No significant software product is optimal in all respects, least of all those on the cutting edge. It is possible to increase speed and functionality, adding features at near zero cost to existing features, and this will continue to be true for a very long time.
Now, it is entirely possible, and much easier, to create bloat, waste and excessive overhead, and there's something in the water in Redmond (and most other places) that seems to promote this type of software development - which, of course, makes optimization and improvement so much easier when you are starting from chucklehead baselines.
If we, as a society, wish to spend (waste?) a significant portion of our lives arguing about copyright, copyleft, fair use, and lawsuit, then, yes, everything online can be protected.
For a practical thought exercise, what do you think will happen if you create a mock Sarah Palin strip-tease video (with appropriate political satire thrown in for fair use of her image and name) and post it anywhere online, regardless of copyright statement?
How is this different from any other content that you invest time and money in creating and then post online?
When the effort of defending the copyright exceeds the effort of creating the original material by a significant margin, a practical person would walk away.
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According to my Thermodynamics professor, big heavy Sterling engines can be more efficient than internal combustion, but as of 1985 they hadn't managed to make them efficient ones enough to fit into "normal" vehicles.
I'd like to have wood burning as an alternative... use whatever the pumps are selling normally, but having a choice is nice.
There was a lot of hype about "Ginger" (the silly scooter) being Sterling powered before it came out... I haven't seen that version yet.
Uh... when did you meet him? Last time I met him (2003, I think) he had his own mountaintop dream home (complete with enclosed helicopter garage), a private island chosen because it was in helicopter range, Citation jet, and what appeared to be a prototype generation company staffed with 200 people just so he could turn out his ideas as quickly as possible. He didn't seem to need adoption. Besides, his folks still hang at the house - mum made snacks for us.
Dean has a soft spot for Sterlings.
I have a wife and two small children, which one do I tow behind the Aptera in a trailer?
Space, and deep sea, both have a tremendous "cold side" for the Sterling to dump into - which is key to making a Sterling shine.
Even still, the post above quoting 3-6% efficiency is way off base.
Too bad that it's being produced by someone who thinks a $20K wheelchair and a $5K scooter are "practical." Maybe he's learned his lesson, but I bet this econobox will come in over $30K to the public.
Because they wouldn't let him near a orbit calculation or a maintenance procedure...
Florida is in the ocean east of Mexico.
Live turkeys, of course! Don't you know your WKRP?
Kinetic energy of 40lbs at 100mph is the same as 4000lbs at 10mph - significant dent, but I doubt the insurer would total it.
Assuming a capable laser system, would a gentle laser push towards earth be a good way to clean up space junk? Would away from earth be better?
A laser which would simply annihilate the junk would be admittedly cooler, but could de-orbit be accomplished with much less power?
Last time I tried to get my car to roll backwards by turning on the headlights, it took a really long time....
Does it strike anyone else as improbable that any significant amount of ammonia gas will be anywhere near that 17kg chunk of metal that survives reentry?
The punitive damages in the FDCPA are not ruinous to the entity paying the damages, merely sufficient to discourage inappropriate behavior. Neither are they sufficient to support a team of land-sharks to pursue them.
It will end when they start losing consistently... build up enough case law and this will happen.
I find this to be true in Windows networking as well (big linear reads are pretty quick, little chunk access is dog-slow.)
To the parent: in addition to documenting the money/time cost impact of implementing a policy that has no value (beyond standardization) in your department, you can throw a little FUD on the fire: when a standard disk gets corrupted, you lose the corrupted portion, when certain (frequently written) parts of an encrypted partition get corrupted, you can lose the whole partition.
Apple has the option to put a user's whole home partition in a File Vault. I tested this on a MacBook Pro since we were considering implementing a HIPPA sensitive system on OS-X. The MBP had a tendency to not shut down cleanly, especially with the drivers they were circulating in 2006 - it only took about 3 of these unclean shutdowns to hose my encrypted home partition, essentially locking me out of the machine entirely. I knew all the passwords, but the best that escalated AppleCare could come up with was to reformat the drive and start over. I still have the unclean shutdowns, but now (without File Vault) when they cause a little corruption, Disk Doctor cleans it up and I don't have to do a whole system restore. I keep only the sensitive files in File Vault, encrypting the whole drive is too risky for me.
In the world I live in, the budget is never there.
If all IDs in the country are easily faked, this is a measurement that the enforcing officer can take in the field. I'm sure there are lots of Vietnamese police who wholeheartedly approve of this new duty.
The thing most fundamentally wrong with Java / JavaScript was the hype it was promoted with, say, 10 years ago, when I had to spend significant time and effort explaining to the CEO why we are NOT coding our new project in this new language he read about on the plane.
Even today, Java / JavaScript is hobbled and slow compared to the hardware execution engines Sun promised for it in 1996-7. Yes, you can make it do some snappy/fast things - but it still consumes more computing resource than the equivalent code written in something like C.
In the plus column, you can do some cool things with JavaScript pretty quick and easy, and once you learn it as your first language, you can become so enamored with it that you think it can and will do all things for all people... but I digress.
Feeding the troll: If I give away a product that feeds advertising dollars back to me, in the millions, am I really a non-capitalist?
...When are we going to realize that browser maturity and performance are going to be on opposing curves and jumping ship to an immature browser just sets you up to lose functionality for a short period of time until the performance can be gobbled up by it...
This is a defeatist attitude which, when extrapolated to unreasonable extremes, assumes that the perfect algorithm for every situation has already been found and applied.
No significant software product is optimal in all respects, least of all those on the cutting edge. It is possible to increase speed and functionality, adding features at near zero cost to existing features, and this will continue to be true for a very long time.
Now, it is entirely possible, and much easier, to create bloat, waste and excessive overhead, and there's something in the water in Redmond (and most other places) that seems to promote this type of software development - which, of course, makes optimization and improvement so much easier when you are starting from chucklehead baselines.
And tomorrow: Cuba!
If we, as a society, wish to spend (waste?) a significant portion of our lives arguing about copyright, copyleft, fair use, and lawsuit, then, yes, everything online can be protected.
For a practical thought exercise, what do you think will happen if you create a mock Sarah Palin strip-tease video (with appropriate political satire thrown in for fair use of her image and name) and post it anywhere online, regardless of copyright statement?
How is this different from any other content that you invest time and money in creating and then post online?
When the effort of defending the copyright exceeds the effort of creating the original material by a significant margin, a practical person would walk away.
See: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-10-27/