I, for one have had an intel x86 in my pocket for well over a decade. Garmin GPS-12, based on the intel 386ex. Lasts for 12h on 4AA batteries. I forget the exact date this came out - 96?
It's rather hard to source parts in some cases, and a kit with all the major semis might be interesting to those of us who would like to take the raspberry pi, and make it smaller, or bring out a different set of peripherals. The design risk if it was possible to take the pi, and edit the PCB design, to eliminate connectors, or add connectors is attractive, even though the cost of a several-off PCB isn't.
It would make it a tool for the education of electronic designers that aren't quite up to sourcing and designing a full linux system yet.
However, the power budget is achievable in the mass budget, the control gear is not fundamentally harder than a quadcopter - though a lot more numerous.
All of the constituent parts are readily available, it's 'simply' a case of putting them together in simple ways.
'40C' quality li-ion cells are not hard to find, nor are reasonable thrust/weight ratio ducted fan units, nor are ESCs.
Sure there are major issues, the control laws at liftoff and transition through ground effect will be freaky, but the large excess of (instantaneous) thrust over weight helps with that. Vortex ring is a concern. There don't seem any fundamental showstoppers, if you're willing to fly on something that will not kill you 99 times out of a hundred. Adding more 9's would mean a lot more testing and design.
I've got an analogous design of hoverboard. Around 30 kilos - so just about portable, can do nearly 2G of acceleration from a standing start, and will get you to around 3km altitude. Of course, it costs several tens of thousand dollars, and would make a noise that would make the dead go looking for earplugs, and has a 'flight' time of 3-4 minutes.
(15Kg of really fast discharge rated li-ion, around a hundred closely packed ducted fan units, and a nutter on top)
Umm - no. Permittivity of the dielectric is pretty much constant with temperature. Leakage current through that dielectric is strongly influenced by temperature.
Yes, effectively the software (the GPL portions of) is completely unlicensed, as it came without either: A) Copy of all sourcecode B) Written offer to provide all sourcecode.
Typically, any request to the maker of these tablets is met with 'no, you can't have any sourcecode, go away'. Or 'It's secret, and we've signed agreements that we can't give it to you'. (which means that they never had a valid licence in the first place from the people who developed it).
This is because they do very little development.
They take a 'board support package' - which is basically an OS written for a board with the same chips on as the target device, but utterly generic and designed for debug, supplied by a sweatshop somewhere that then slaps silly conditions around the distribution of source. Without looking too hard at the licence, they make up a copy of the board, modify the software lightly to maybe add a keyboard LED driver, put android on it, get it to the 'it only crashes every hour or so' stage, and then ship.
Actual compliance with the GPL process doesn't really enter into it, as all these people have the mindset that everything must be kept secret, so it's not even something they begin to consider.
There is a gpl-violations list. Taking the last week or so. There is a message copying a response from HTC about the inspire 4G, where they state that they are aware of GPL, and do intend to supply source, but in 90-120 days.
Source for the HTC thunderbolt kernel (which is released) is an old version that will not work with the current radio firmware. The pocketbook e-reader seems to entirely have no source. The position for vendors of the many android phones you see as direct imports is basically simple - there is never source available.
The cell-modem is in almost all cases (apart from the very bottom end) running on a completely seperate CPU. It is basically identical - and often connected the same way - as a plug-in USB cellmodem. There is seperate closed firmware, usually signed, on the modem, and the linux side never touches anything more than 'dial x'.
The scary part is not that Amazon can't make a Kindle in the US. Whether they do or don't, a moderate slice of the revenue from the kindle made in China will end up in the US, as profits.
The scary part is when Chinese owned and operated companies start selling chindles in the US, designed, built in china. All the value stays in China, with a tiny amount of revenue going to the sales and distribution network for them in the US.
When this starts to happen in a big way, over a large fraction of consumer goods, the balance of trade gets much, much sicker than it is at the moment.
Shortly after this, the USA (and indeed the west) in general has to devalue their currency in order to pay for imports, and the effective price of basic commodities rises.
The US/UK/... is at the moment living off the investments of the past. For the past 70 years or so we've been shooting ahead in productivity compared to the rest of the world, as we have benefited from the enormous infrastructural investments of the past. From roads, to freight networks which ensure that most of the food gets from the farm to the plate.
A lot of the rest of the world is doing _massive_ construction in what were quite undeveloped regions. This sets the scene for greatly improved productivity, and the rise of a local middle class. This then bootstraps into greatly improved wages, as the working class pay and conditions improve. Shortly meaning that in combination with revenues to the US dropping due to Chinese owned brands taking off, costs rise, due to increased wages in china driving demand for commodities from oil to grain.
Eventually, it all evens out when wages are more or less equal, and countries can specialise in random areas, and export to other countries that happen to want their stuff. But the process to get to that point is going to be horribly painful for the US. (US = any country in the west, China = any of the emerging economies)
Sure. But it's a different sort of radiation. The guys that invented the laser got a Nobel, but the radiation in that case comes from pushing the electrons round the nucleus into wierd configurations, and then causing them to relax back.
Radioactive decay can't be stimulated by lasers. The original article links eventually to what is basically a crackpot attempting to steal investors money. The whole basis of the article is a complete fabrication, or at best delusion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactivity "Radioactive decay is a stochastic (i.e., random) process at the level of single atoms, in that, according to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a given atom will decay."
Disprove this - by making it nonrandom - and you as a starting point have just got a nice shiny Nobel prize.
This neglects the reality that even with zero turn mowers, there is some cost to turning. You can't make a right angle turn at full speed. There isn't a mathematically correct solution unless you correctly model the costs of turning. If you're doing it 'by hand' - then you also need to model the cost of screwing up. It may be that comparatively simple schemes - such as an interleaved raster scan may be in practice optimal for a human to mow it.
The proximal cause of Concorde actually being cancelled was the maintenance company deciding it diddn't want to do it any more, and putting in a stupidly high quote for the renewal.
Sorry - you're right - I was using the numbers I'd used for my own panels, which don't work with the above, hence my bogon detector diddn't go off.
Nevertheless - in some cases, where you can make simple frameworks and place them on the ground, on land you already own, you can get payback in 6 years.
This is only the case if you are willing to DIY a large fraction of the system, or it can attract subsidy.
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I'm one of the unparticular people that will be buying 5 or so.
I, for one have had an intel x86 in my pocket for well over a decade.
Garmin GPS-12, based on the intel 386ex.
Lasts for 12h on 4AA batteries.
I forget the exact date this came out - 96?
It's not dead, it's pining for the fjords!
More to expose - for example - the camera interface.
It's rather hard to source parts in some cases, and a kit with all the major semis might be interesting to those of us who would like to take the raspberry pi, and make it smaller, or bring out a different set of peripherals.
The design risk if it was possible to take the pi, and edit the PCB design, to eliminate connectors, or add connectors is attractive, even though the cost of a several-off PCB isn't.
It would make it a tool for the education of electronic designers that aren't quite up to sourcing and designing a full linux system yet.
It's a 'sheet of a4' design, admittedly.
However, the power budget is achievable in the mass budget, the control gear is not fundamentally harder than a quadcopter - though a lot more numerous.
All of the constituent parts are readily available, it's 'simply' a case of putting them together in simple ways.
'40C' quality li-ion cells are not hard to find, nor are reasonable thrust/weight ratio ducted fan units, nor are ESCs.
Sure there are major issues, the control laws at liftoff and transition through ground effect will be freaky, but the large excess of (instantaneous) thrust over weight helps with that.
Vortex ring is a concern.
There don't seem any fundamental showstoppers, if you're willing to fly on something that will not kill you 99 times out of a hundred.
Adding more 9's would mean a lot more testing and design.
I've got an analogous design of hoverboard. Around 30 kilos - so just about portable, can do nearly 2G of acceleration from a standing start, and will get you to around 3km altitude.
Of course, it costs several tens of thousand dollars, and would make a noise that would make the dead go looking for earplugs, and has a 'flight' time of 3-4 minutes.
(15Kg of really fast discharge rated li-ion, around a hundred closely packed ducted fan units, and a nutter on top)
Or GBP 654.
Umm - no.
Permittivity of the dielectric is pretty much constant with temperature.
Leakage current through that dielectric is strongly influenced by temperature.
10W out.
Average walking speed is - say 1.5m/s.
10 joules/second /1.5m/s = 6.6N, equivalent to a half-a-degree slope (for me) or a rise of around 1.5cm/second in the path.
Various sources say around 40W is they typical power used to walk, so an increase by 25%.
Yes, effectively the software (the GPL portions of) is completely unlicensed, as it came without either:
A) Copy of all sourcecode
B) Written offer to provide all sourcecode.
Typically, any request to the maker of these tablets is met with 'no, you can't have any sourcecode, go away'.
Or 'It's secret, and we've signed agreements that we can't give it to you'. (which means that they never had a valid licence in the first place from the people who developed it).
This is because they do very little development.
They take a 'board support package' - which is basically an OS written for a board with the same chips on as the target device, but utterly generic and designed for debug, supplied by a sweatshop somewhere that then slaps silly conditions around the distribution of source. Without looking too hard at the licence, they make up a copy of the board, modify the software lightly to maybe add a keyboard LED driver, put android on it, get it to the 'it only crashes every hour or so' stage, and then ship.
Actual compliance with the GPL process doesn't really enter into it, as all these people have the mindset that everything must be kept secret, so it's not even something they begin to consider.
There is a gpl-violations list.
Taking the last week or so.
There is a message copying a response from HTC about the inspire 4G, where they state that they are aware of GPL, and do intend to supply source, but in 90-120 days.
Source for the HTC thunderbolt kernel (which is released) is an old version that will not work with the current radio firmware.
The pocketbook e-reader seems to entirely have no source.
The position for vendors of the many android phones you see as direct imports is basically simple - there is never source available.
The cell-modem is in almost all cases (apart from the very bottom end) running on a completely seperate CPU.
It is basically identical - and often connected the same way - as a plug-in USB cellmodem. There is seperate closed firmware, usually signed, on the modem, and the linux side never touches anything more than 'dial x'.
The scary part is not that Amazon can't make a Kindle in the US. Whether they do or don't, a moderate slice of the revenue from the kindle made in China will end up in the US, as profits.
The scary part is when Chinese owned and operated companies start selling chindles in the US, designed, built in china.
All the value stays in China, with a tiny amount of revenue going to the sales and distribution network for them in the US.
When this starts to happen in a big way, over a large fraction of consumer goods, the balance of trade gets much, much sicker than it is at the moment.
Shortly after this, the USA (and indeed the west) in general has to devalue their currency in order to pay for imports, and the effective price of basic commodities rises.
The US/UK/... is at the moment living off the investments of the past.
For the past 70 years or so we've been shooting ahead in productivity compared to the rest of the world, as we have benefited from the enormous infrastructural investments of the past. From roads, to freight networks which ensure that most of the food gets from the farm to the plate.
A lot of the rest of the world is doing _massive_ construction in what were quite undeveloped regions. This sets the scene for greatly improved productivity, and the rise of a local middle class.
This then bootstraps into greatly improved wages, as the working class pay and conditions improve. Shortly meaning that in combination with revenues to the US dropping due to Chinese owned brands taking off, costs rise, due to increased wages in china driving demand for commodities from oil to grain.
Eventually, it all evens out when wages are more or less equal, and countries can specialise in random areas, and export to other countries that happen to want their stuff.
But the process to get to that point is going to be horribly painful for the US.
(US = any country in the west, China = any of the emerging economies)
It was reduced today!
From 349 pounds to 332.
(official hp uk store)
Oh - and the order link doesn't actually work for the touchpad anyway.
I thought about mentioning that, but couldn't be bothered, thanks for the clarification.
There are all sorts of entertaining ideas around nuclear pumped x-ray lasers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative#X-ray_laser
Those work by smashing _really_ high energy particles into the nucleus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_chain_reaction
They are not doing it by influencing normal decay, any more than you can call having your car hit by a truck part of the normal aging process.
Sure.
But it's a different sort of radiation.
The guys that invented the laser got a Nobel, but the radiation in that case comes from pushing the electrons round the nucleus into wierd configurations, and then causing them to relax back.
Radioactive decay comes from within the nucleus.
Radioactive decay can't be stimulated by lasers.
The original article links eventually to what is basically a crackpot attempting to steal investors money.
The whole basis of the article is a complete fabrication, or at best delusion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactivity "Radioactive decay is a stochastic (i.e., random) process at the level of single atoms, in that, according to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a given atom will decay."
Disprove this - by making it nonrandom - and you as a starting point have just got a nice shiny Nobel prize.
This neglects the reality that even with zero turn mowers, there is some cost to turning.
You can't make a right angle turn at full speed.
There isn't a mathematically correct solution unless you correctly model the costs of turning.
If you're doing it 'by hand' - then you also need to model the cost of screwing up.
It may be that comparatively simple schemes - such as an interleaved raster scan may be
in practice optimal for a human to mow it.
The proximal cause of Concorde actually being cancelled was the maintenance company deciding it diddn't want to do it any more, and putting in a stupidly high quote for the renewal.
In addition, most app programmers test their application on their comparatively fast machine, while not running other stuff in the background.
If developers were forced to test their app on 4 year old hardware, then it would improve general performance lots.
Typical panels come with guarantees of >80% at 20 years.
Which is where the sealing, and the heat recovery ventilation kick in.
Sorry - you're right - I was using the numbers I'd used for my own panels, which don't work with the above, hence my bogon detector diddn't go off.
Nevertheless - in some cases, where you can make simple frameworks and place them on the ground, on land you already own, you can get payback in 6 years.
This is only the case if you are willing to DIY a large fraction of the system, or it can attract subsidy.