I'm sorry, but no. The frame could be assembled by normal people without any training without being 3D-printed. It's just buzzword for buzzword's sake, and it's idiotic.
Let's see, so that's effectively a cylinder of 70cm diameter and 21,344km length. Give or take, that's 8,214,134 cubic meters of niobium-tin.
In a ratio of 75% niobium to 25% tin as you'll be wanting for your superconductor, you'll be needing about 6.2 million cubic meters (53.1 million metric tonnes) of niobium and 2.1 million cubic meters (15.5 million metric tonnes) of tin, presuming you don't have too much wastage. (I've already given you a little wiggle room with my rounding of both numbers. You're welcome!)
I'm presuming that won't be too much of a problem for you to scrounge up, right? After all, we've got at least 4.4 million tonnes of niobium and 4.8 metric tonnes of tin waiting to be mined here on Earth. That should get you started, if you can get it off the ground and on its way to Mars! Won't take much energy at all to have it mined and on its way!
And then you'll have something to work on machining into a really long, thick wire while you're waiting on the bean counters to approve creation and ramp-up of the small mining industry required to find your remaining 48.7 million tonnes of niobium and 10.7 million tonnes of tin...
/removes tongue from cheek //geek mode: Off ///waits for somebody to point out a rookie error in my math ////I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a rookie
I should also note here that it may not self-protect perfectly. Yes, it is prone to galvanic corrosion, and to pitting, crevice corrosion or staining from contact with impure water, salty or sulfurous air, alkali or dirt. However, that in no way changes the fact that aluminum does self-protect. It just doesn't self-protect against everything.
a) He implied most features are there. They're not. Exceptionally basic, entry-level features like the ability to rotate the page (!!) are missing unless you pay.
b) If you were talking about the PC, I'd agree the average user would be non-commercial. However, we're not talking about the PC, we're talking about a phone version. You know who uses Office on their phone? Business folk who are trying to travel light. You know who doesn't typically use Office on their phone, and who if by some rare chance does use it on their phone, most likely uses it solely as a reader? Consumers.
Therefore you are fundamentally incorrect, and Microsoft is being extremely misleading by representing it as free.
Or if you prefer, you could just look around your house. Chances are fairly good that you have some untreated aluminum (as opposed to aluminum alloys, which need treatment) somewhere -- perhaps in a window frame if your house is of the right age, or in pots, pans, camping gear, etc. You'll be able to recognize it from its dull finish, and the fact that it looks identical to the day you bought it. Were your assertion correct, it would long since have oxidized away to nothing...
Incidentally, one of those treatments for aluminum alloys? Alclading, which is just what it sounds like it would be, and which wouldn't work if your assertion was correct. It's the process of bonding a thin layer of pure aluminum to the surface of the alloy, thereby protecting the greater whole because the aluminum layer self-protects when it oxidizes.
Well yes, but weight matters more, and I can't very well compare torque when Divergent Microfactories hasn't stated it, now, can I?
But OK, I'll humor you. The Atom 500 has just 296 lb-ft of torque. That's actually a bit less than what you could find in a typical executive sedan like, say, the Audi A6 (325 lb-ft). The weight is the important bit, though: The Ariel weighs about one-third what the Audi does.
And like I said, it also weighs less than this supposed-supercar, despite being street-legal and providing you with not one but two seats.
So what, pray tell, is so special about this car that it merited being on Slashdot, other than that it contained the buzzword-du-jour in the press release?
Grandparent represented it as fully-featured other than obscure features like version tracking: That's not true. Microsoft are representing it as free, but for business use (which is the primary use for something like this), that's not true either.
Sorry you don't like my post, but that doesn't make it any less correct.
Frankly, this isn't terribly impressive. The Ariel Atom 500 will manage a 0-60 of 2.3 seconds or less from 200 *fewer* horsepower than the Blade, thanks to an even lighter weight of 1,213 pounds. And like the Blade, it has space frame construction, they just haven't wrapped some flimsy composite panels and a plexiglass windshield over it all. (But what did that add to the weight, really? I doubt it was 187 pounds, so the Atom is still lighter...)
All the Atom really lacks is the "look-at-us" headline-grabbing use of 3D printing, which doesn't seem to be bringing terribly much of an advantage to the table here. And I guess, the styling that's right out of a kid's calendar. But really, what's revolutionary here? It's certainly not the construction or performance...
Up next on Slashdot: A revolutionary new 3D-printed paperweight that holds down paper better than ever. It's going to revolutionize the paperweight industry!
Not correct. From the only authoritative source -- Microsoft themselves:
"Sign in with a free Microsoft account to create, edit and save documents for home use. A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to create, edit and save documents for business use."
And... "1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS.
a. Consumer Use. You may install and use one copy of the software on Android Phone devices you own or control in order to view existing documents. As allowed by the software, you may also create, edit or save documents for non-commercial use purposes.
b. Commercial Use. You may install and use one copy of the software on Android Phone devices you own or control in order to view existing documents. As allowed by the software, you may also create, edit or save documents for commercial use purposes IF you are a commercial Microsoft Office 365 subscriber with mobile device rights subject to the following terms:
Refer to your existing license terms for Microsoft Office 365 with mobile device rights (the “service”) to identify the entity licensing the software to you and for support information. The terms and conditions for the service apply to your use of the software. However, the software’s privacy statement applies to your use of the software in addition to the privacy statement for the service. You may find the privacy statement within the software, and as applicable, on the app store from which you obtained the software. You may use and install copies of the software on Android Phone devices you own or control subject to the service terms and conditions so long as you have a valid subscription license to the service that includes mobile device rights. If there is a conflict between the service terms and conditions and the above, the terms in this Section 1.b apply."
And finally... "Premium features on your Android tablet and phone with Office 365
Core editing is available for free on Android devices with screen sizes of 10.1 inches or less. The extra features below are available on Android tablets and phones with a qualifying Office 365 subscription. For information about the extra security and control features that are available for customers with an Office 365 for business plan, visit the mobile apps for business page.
Word
Track and review changes
Change page orientation
Insert page and section breaks
Highlight table cells with custom color shading
Enable columns in page layout
Customize headers and footers for different pages
PowerPoint
Save ink annotations from slide shows
Highlight table cells with custom color shading
A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to use the premium features"
That's not free, it's payware with a non-commercial use, feature-crippled, time-unlimited trial that has basic features removed which even home users would want such as page orientation, breaks, table colors and headers / footers.
Actually, it's tripled to quadrupled, but fuel still represents only a relatively small fraction of the total cost. (Somewhere on the order of 20-30% of the ticket price you're actually paying these days goes towards gas, or significantly lower if you bought a full-price ticket.) That doesn't remotely explain the fact that ticket prices have vastly increased.
Yeah, no it doesn't. Compare the overall tax rate paid by those individuals with that paid by big business some time -- it's enlightening. Hell, it's not uncommon to hear of major, profitable US companies paying little to no corporate taxes at all.
Sorry, but no, they're not. For routes I personally pay attention to, the base ticket cost has increased by a factor of two to three times in the space of the last 15 years, and that's *before* I even add on all the ancillary, hidden costs. The actual travel cost for my routes is now about five times what it was a couple of decades ago, and even after accounting for inflation (about 60% in the last two decades), that means the real-world cost has more than tripled.
I stopped reading after the first paragraph, where you are clearly and unmistakably wrong. Airlines in the US market are nowadays setting record profits, whether they're perpetually whining about costs or not.
You do realize there's a limit on the number of operations any given airport can handle, right? Unless you're going to force people to travel at unpopular times or spend a fortune upgrading airports and dealing with all the NIMBYs who whine whenever that happens, a lot of our large hub airports are already operating at, near or even well beyond their design capacity. "Down with the regulation" only works when deregulating can provide a noticeable advantage, but it can't when there's no room to expand.
Which is hardly a valid comparison, given that their entire fleet seats just 21 people. (And to seat all 21, they need three aircraft).
They've very cleverly used charging by weight to gain publicity on the theory that any publicity is good, but realistically they need to know your approximate weight anyway because their largest aircraft seats just nine passengers, and their smallest just three. Your weight is a significant issue in the weight and balance of the aircraft when it's that small.
You do realize that married couples pay for multiple tickets already, and so do families with kids? If anything, those with kids should be paying significantly less, because their weight is far less than that of an adult and they typically have far less baggage too -- yet the discount from a full adult ticket is extremely small indeed.
And it's not just devs who've gotten the message. It's been close to a decade since I last hosted a project on Sourceforge, and so I see myself merely as a normal end-user, but I've gotten the message, too. Sourceforge is no longer trustworthy, and I won't be downloading any project from it, ever again.
I couldn't disagree more. There has been a standard carry-on size for as long as I can remember, but it's only since airlines started nickel-and-diming their customers with hidden fees that most people started taking advantage of it.
And frankly, if you want efficient stowage, having a standard size is a GOOD thing. There's a reason container ships use standard container sizes, and that air freight uses standard unit load devices: It's the most efficient way possible to fit in the maximum quantity of cargo. The same is true of baggage -- if there's a standard carry-on size, overhead compartments get made (on all but the smallest aircraft) to fit that size as efficiently as possible.
And that's why the whole IATA proposal is bunkum -- if they decrease size just fractionally, all that will do on most aircraft is leave small spaces in each overhead compartment that aren't sufficient to fit another bag. You're not going to get any more people jamming bags in the overheads without a very significant change in bag size, or a redesign of the overheads to match the new, smaller bag sizes optimally.
I'm well aware of that. I'm also aware that it's relatively straightforward for an airline to determine their average passenger weight quite accurately, and to budget for that in setting their ticket prices. And I'm also aware that it's an idiotic issue to raise in the first place, because airlines have never charged by (or even measured) passenger weight in modern history.
BTW, here a carry-on follows Ryanair's example: 55x40x20cm, to fit in the overhead.
You've just identified your own problem: Ryanair. Stop trying to save yourself a few pennies and just buy a seat on a decent airline. Just as a random example, British Airways allows carry-on of 56x45x25cm. That might not sound a lot, but crunch the numbers and BA is giving you 43% greater carry-on allowance per passenger.
So-called "budget" airlines almost always work out to be significantly more-expensive than their traditional cousins when you actually sit down and do the maths. They're a false economy, but sadly morons who don't take the time to figure this out mean that they're taking over and will soon be the only way to travel.
You should probably invest in a better laptop, then. I type extremely fast -- the only person I know who types faster than me is my wife -- and good thing too, because my entire career is based around my creating and typing my own content.
My laptop password is 11 characters and takes me somewhere between three-quarters of a second and a full second to type, from the moment my fingers reach the keyboard after having clicked in the password field. My fingerprint scanner takes somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5 seconds to swipe, and doesn't require me to select a field first -- I just swipe straight away that the login screen appears. And only very seldom do I need to swipe a second time.
The result is that I'm into my laptop somewhere around a second or more quicker, and without increasing my chances of carpal tunnel unnecessarily, no matter how slightly. (On any given day I likely login several dozen times, because my laptop locks itself regularly after a short, secure delay.)
And the answer, like it or not, is regulation. Hidden fees are out of control in the airline industry, and it's high time that they were banned. The solution is simple: The advertised ticket price is the *only* thing the airline should be allowed to charge you for your seat, baggage (checked or carry-on up to a regulated size and weight), and any additional services offered to you during booking, in the airport or on the plane.
It's also high time that overbooking or fuel surcharges were banned, as well. It's not like the airline refunds you a portion of your ticket prices when gas costs less than expected, or refunds you if you decide not to travel on a ticket you paid for, so what possible reason is there for them to be allowed to raise the contractually-agreed price after you've already paid it or to sell your seat to somebody else as well and hope one of you doesn't show up?
Sadly, there's zero chance any of this will ever happen because our government operates solely in the interests of big business, not what's best for the general public. But I can dream, can't I?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but no. The frame could be assembled by normal people without any training without being 3D-printed. It's just buzzword for buzzword's sake, and it's idiotic.
Perhaps instead of posting nonsense, you could try Googling first.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ariel+ato...
Let's see, so that's effectively a cylinder of 70cm diameter and 21,344km length. Give or take, that's 8,214,134 cubic meters of niobium-tin.
/removes tongue from cheek
//geek mode: Off
///waits for somebody to point out a rookie error in my math
////I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a rookie
In a ratio of 75% niobium to 25% tin as you'll be wanting for your superconductor, you'll be needing about 6.2 million cubic meters (53.1 million metric tonnes) of niobium and 2.1 million cubic meters (15.5 million metric tonnes) of tin, presuming you don't have too much wastage. (I've already given you a little wiggle room with my rounding of both numbers. You're welcome!)
I'm presuming that won't be too much of a problem for you to scrounge up, right? After all, we've got at least 4.4 million tonnes of niobium and 4.8 metric tonnes of tin waiting to be mined here on Earth. That should get you started, if you can get it off the ground and on its way to Mars! Won't take much energy at all to have it mined and on its way!
And then you'll have something to work on machining into a really long, thick wire while you're waiting on the bean counters to approve creation and ramp-up of the small mining industry required to find your remaining 48.7 million tonnes of niobium and 10.7 million tonnes of tin...
I should also note here that it may not self-protect perfectly. Yes, it is prone to galvanic corrosion, and to pitting, crevice corrosion or staining from contact with impure water, salty or sulfurous air, alkali or dirt. However, that in no way changes the fact that aluminum does self-protect. It just doesn't self-protect against everything.
a) He implied most features are there. They're not. Exceptionally basic, entry-level features like the ability to rotate the page (!!) are missing unless you pay.
b) If you were talking about the PC, I'd agree the average user would be non-commercial. However, we're not talking about the PC, we're talking about a phone version. You know who uses Office on their phone? Business folk who are trying to travel light. You know who doesn't typically use Office on their phone, and who if by some rare chance does use it on their phone, most likely uses it solely as a reader? Consumers.
Therefore you are fundamentally incorrect, and Microsoft is being extremely misleading by representing it as free.
Aluminum does not self-protect when the surface oxidizes.
... its ability to resist corrosion due to the phenomenon of passivation."
Ummm... Yes. Yes, it does.
From Wiki: "Aluminium is remarkable for
Or if you prefer, you could just look around your house. Chances are fairly good that you have some untreated aluminum (as opposed to aluminum alloys, which need treatment) somewhere -- perhaps in a window frame if your house is of the right age, or in pots, pans, camping gear, etc. You'll be able to recognize it from its dull finish, and the fact that it looks identical to the day you bought it. Were your assertion correct, it would long since have oxidized away to nothing...
Incidentally, one of those treatments for aluminum alloys? Alclading, which is just what it sounds like it would be, and which wouldn't work if your assertion was correct. It's the process of bonding a thin layer of pure aluminum to the surface of the alloy, thereby protecting the greater whole because the aluminum layer self-protects when it oxidizes.
Well yes, but weight matters more, and I can't very well compare torque when Divergent Microfactories hasn't stated it, now, can I?
But OK, I'll humor you. The Atom 500 has just 296 lb-ft of torque. That's actually a bit less than what you could find in a typical executive sedan like, say, the Audi A6 (325 lb-ft). The weight is the important bit, though: The Ariel weighs about one-third what the Audi does.
And like I said, it also weighs less than this supposed-supercar, despite being street-legal and providing you with not one but two seats.
So what, pray tell, is so special about this car that it merited being on Slashdot, other than that it contained the buzzword-du-jour in the press release?
Grandparent represented it as fully-featured other than obscure features like version tracking: That's not true. Microsoft are representing it as free, but for business use (which is the primary use for something like this), that's not true either.
Sorry you don't like my post, but that doesn't make it any less correct.
Frankly, this isn't terribly impressive. The Ariel Atom 500 will manage a 0-60 of 2.3 seconds or less from 200 *fewer* horsepower than the Blade, thanks to an even lighter weight of 1,213 pounds. And like the Blade, it has space frame construction, they just haven't wrapped some flimsy composite panels and a plexiglass windshield over it all. (But what did that add to the weight, really? I doubt it was 187 pounds, so the Atom is still lighter...)
All the Atom really lacks is the "look-at-us" headline-grabbing use of 3D printing, which doesn't seem to be bringing terribly much of an advantage to the table here. And I guess, the styling that's right out of a kid's calendar. But really, what's revolutionary here? It's certainly not the construction or performance...
Up next on Slashdot: A revolutionary new 3D-printed paperweight that holds down paper better than ever. It's going to revolutionize the paperweight industry!
Not correct. From the only authoritative source -- Microsoft themselves:
"Sign in with a free Microsoft account to create, edit and save documents for home use. A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to create, edit and save documents for business use."
And... "1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS.
a. Consumer Use. You may install and use one copy of the software on Android Phone devices you own or control in order to view existing documents. As allowed by the software, you may also create, edit or save documents for non-commercial use purposes.
b. Commercial Use. You may install and use one copy of the software on Android Phone devices you own or control in order to view existing documents. As allowed by the software, you may also create, edit or save documents for commercial use purposes IF you are a commercial Microsoft Office 365 subscriber with mobile device rights subject to the following terms:
Refer to your existing license terms for Microsoft Office 365 with mobile device rights (the “service”) to identify the entity licensing the software to you and for support information. The terms and conditions for the service apply to your use of the software. However, the software’s privacy statement applies to your use of the software in addition to the privacy statement for the service. You may find the privacy statement within the software, and as applicable, on the app store from which you obtained the software. You may use and install copies of the software on Android Phone devices you own or control subject to the service terms and conditions so long as you have a valid subscription license to the service that includes mobile device rights. If there is a conflict between the service terms and conditions and the above, the terms in this Section 1.b apply."
And finally... "Premium features on your Android tablet and phone with Office 365
Core editing is available for free on Android devices with screen sizes of 10.1 inches or less. The extra features below are available on Android tablets and phones with a qualifying Office 365 subscription. For information about the extra security and control features that are available for customers with an Office 365 for business plan, visit the mobile apps for business page.
Word
Track and review changes
Change page orientation
Insert page and section breaks
Highlight table cells with custom color shading
Enable columns in page layout
Customize headers and footers for different pages
PowerPoint
Save ink annotations from slide shows
Highlight table cells with custom color shading
A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to use the premium features"
That's not free, it's payware with a non-commercial use, feature-crippled, time-unlimited trial that has basic features removed which even home users would want such as page orientation, breaks, table colors and headers / footers.
Actually, it's tripled to quadrupled, but fuel still represents only a relatively small fraction of the total cost. (Somewhere on the order of 20-30% of the ticket price you're actually paying these days goes towards gas, or significantly lower if you bought a full-price ticket.) That doesn't remotely explain the fact that ticket prices have vastly increased.
Yeah, no it doesn't. Compare the overall tax rate paid by those individuals with that paid by big business some time -- it's enlightening. Hell, it's not uncommon to hear of major, profitable US companies paying little to no corporate taxes at all.
Sorry, but no, they're not. For routes I personally pay attention to, the base ticket cost has increased by a factor of two to three times in the space of the last 15 years, and that's *before* I even add on all the ancillary, hidden costs. The actual travel cost for my routes is now about five times what it was a couple of decades ago, and even after accounting for inflation (about 60% in the last two decades), that means the real-world cost has more than tripled.
If the airline chooses to offer them to you, yes.
[citationneededbecauseyou'rewrong.jpg]
I stopped reading after the first paragraph, where you are clearly and unmistakably wrong. Airlines in the US market are nowadays setting record profits, whether they're perpetually whining about costs or not.
You do realize there's a limit on the number of operations any given airport can handle, right? Unless you're going to force people to travel at unpopular times or spend a fortune upgrading airports and dealing with all the NIMBYs who whine whenever that happens, a lot of our large hub airports are already operating at, near or even well beyond their design capacity. "Down with the regulation" only works when deregulating can provide a noticeable advantage, but it can't when there's no room to expand.
Which is hardly a valid comparison, given that their entire fleet seats just 21 people. (And to seat all 21, they need three aircraft).
They've very cleverly used charging by weight to gain publicity on the theory that any publicity is good, but realistically they need to know your approximate weight anyway because their largest aircraft seats just nine passengers, and their smallest just three. Your weight is a significant issue in the weight and balance of the aircraft when it's that small.
You do realize that married couples pay for multiple tickets already, and so do families with kids? If anything, those with kids should be paying significantly less, because their weight is far less than that of an adult and they typically have far less baggage too -- yet the discount from a full adult ticket is extremely small indeed.
And it's not just devs who've gotten the message. It's been close to a decade since I last hosted a project on Sourceforge, and so I see myself merely as a normal end-user, but I've gotten the message, too. Sourceforge is no longer trustworthy, and I won't be downloading any project from it, ever again.
I couldn't disagree more. There has been a standard carry-on size for as long as I can remember, but it's only since airlines started nickel-and-diming their customers with hidden fees that most people started taking advantage of it.
And frankly, if you want efficient stowage, having a standard size is a GOOD thing. There's a reason container ships use standard container sizes, and that air freight uses standard unit load devices: It's the most efficient way possible to fit in the maximum quantity of cargo. The same is true of baggage -- if there's a standard carry-on size, overhead compartments get made (on all but the smallest aircraft) to fit that size as efficiently as possible.
And that's why the whole IATA proposal is bunkum -- if they decrease size just fractionally, all that will do on most aircraft is leave small spaces in each overhead compartment that aren't sufficient to fit another bag. You're not going to get any more people jamming bags in the overheads without a very significant change in bag size, or a redesign of the overheads to match the new, smaller bag sizes optimally.
I'm well aware of that. I'm also aware that it's relatively straightforward for an airline to determine their average passenger weight quite accurately, and to budget for that in setting their ticket prices. And I'm also aware that it's an idiotic issue to raise in the first place, because airlines have never charged by (or even measured) passenger weight in modern history.
BTW, here a carry-on follows Ryanair's example: 55x40x20cm, to fit in the overhead.
You've just identified your own problem: Ryanair. Stop trying to save yourself a few pennies and just buy a seat on a decent airline. Just as a random example, British Airways allows carry-on of 56x45x25cm. That might not sound a lot, but crunch the numbers and BA is giving you 43% greater carry-on allowance per passenger.
So-called "budget" airlines almost always work out to be significantly more-expensive than their traditional cousins when you actually sit down and do the maths. They're a false economy, but sadly morons who don't take the time to figure this out mean that they're taking over and will soon be the only way to travel.
You should probably invest in a better laptop, then. I type extremely fast -- the only person I know who types faster than me is my wife -- and good thing too, because my entire career is based around my creating and typing my own content.
My laptop password is 11 characters and takes me somewhere between three-quarters of a second and a full second to type, from the moment my fingers reach the keyboard after having clicked in the password field. My fingerprint scanner takes somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5 seconds to swipe, and doesn't require me to select a field first -- I just swipe straight away that the login screen appears. And only very seldom do I need to swipe a second time.
The result is that I'm into my laptop somewhere around a second or more quicker, and without increasing my chances of carpal tunnel unnecessarily, no matter how slightly. (On any given day I likely login several dozen times, because my laptop locks itself regularly after a short, secure delay.)
And the answer, like it or not, is regulation. Hidden fees are out of control in the airline industry, and it's high time that they were banned. The solution is simple: The advertised ticket price is the *only* thing the airline should be allowed to charge you for your seat, baggage (checked or carry-on up to a regulated size and weight), and any additional services offered to you during booking, in the airport or on the plane.
It's also high time that overbooking or fuel surcharges were banned, as well. It's not like the airline refunds you a portion of your ticket prices when gas costs less than expected, or refunds you if you decide not to travel on a ticket you paid for, so what possible reason is there for them to be allowed to raise the contractually-agreed price after you've already paid it or to sell your seat to somebody else as well and hope one of you doesn't show up?
Sadly, there's zero chance any of this will ever happen because our government operates solely in the interests of big business, not what's best for the general public. But I can dream, can't I?