A similar (maybe the same?) material has been in existence long enough for someone to make a toy out of it, exploiting just the behavior you're curious about. link.
Well, if you're talking about devices that cause turbulence for the sake of boundary-layer adhesion, vortex generators have been in use on aircraft for years. More recently, they have been adapted to automotive use. Take a look at the trailing edge of the Lancer Evolution IX's roof... It has a line of 8-9 (if you count the antenna) vortex generators.
I recall using the term in this context as far back as 1994. It wouldn't surprise me if MS had a hand in furthering the PC = [computer running windows] assumption. Doesn't that seem like something MS would aim for? Have everyone just assume that if you're talking about a mainstream computer system, it must be running their OS product? While Apple certainly picked up the term to point out how their products differ, suggesting that they more or less created the term is giving them too much credit. The above ad is nice piece of evidence that "PC" was a well known term back in '98, but don't give Apple credit for much more than using the term.
The tendencies seen in politicians strikes me as an intentionally adopted behavior, rather than genetic predisposition. If a politician changes his/her ways as a result of some failure, that can be read on the surface (as deep as politics seems to get these days) as admitting he/she was wrong in some form. Politicians do their best to look as absolutely pristine as they can manage, so as to give the competition as little mud to sling as possible.
I don't think a gun would be necessary for the 'cage' driver in your scenario... You're talking about assaulting someone who is actively in control of somewhere between 2 and 8 thousand pounds of metal, plastic and glass. If the vehicles are in motion, a little swerve would encourage any motorcyclist to move away from the driver's window. If the vehicles are stopped, turning the steering wheel hard to the right and throwing it in reverse would quickly acquaint the two-wheeled attacker with the larger vehicle's driver's side door, fender and/or tire. Oh, and when the cops cart you away for making terroristic threats, can I have your user number?
LEDs don't have to be directional, they just commonly are. Using a large electrical contact to heat sink the emitter die (as is generally done) means that light output is limited to 180 degrees. Most high power LED manufacturers leave it at that by simply putting a dome over the emitter, leaving light collection and focusing to external optics. Smaller component LEDs don't have enough output to be effective for area lighting, and external optics for each emitter would consume a lot of space. As such, the manufacturer will often shape the heat sink/contact into a cone which focuses the light in a general direction and then profiles the plastic casing so it acts as a lens, focusing it further.
Oh, and CCFL stands for Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lighting - it's been in use as LCD backlighting for ages.
Am I the only one that gets a blank dark grey window? Clicking "Check for Updates" and "Get More Applications" just brings up a dialog stating: "The iTunes Applications Store is not currently available. Please try again later."
The leak may not have been on the police side of things. Killmer may have commented to the perp (somebody on his landscape management crew) that he had located the stolen controller. The perp had an "Oh sh!t" moment, then called over to the ranch where it had been hooked up and let them know to keep an eye out.
Agreed... If I were on the design team, I would have pushed for a method of lifting it up to the gutter... A simple hooked pole and a loop on the robot's body would be fine. Of course, you would need some method of triggering it once it was up there... Maybe a two-way remote that would alert the operator when it reaches the end of a run?
> The driver for lowering satellite radio prices and improving content is persuading people that it's worthwhile to adopt satellite radio and pay the subscription fees. A market war between two satellite providers would only drive prices up and deteriorate service quality.
Umm, no. These satellite radio services are run by corporations. Corporations will squeeze as much money out of their market (consumers) as they can manage... They're legally required to do so. That means if their service becomes popular, they'll leave the prices right where they are. This sort of thing can be seen with prices of CDs - when CDs were new tech, the music industry said 'yeah, they're expensive now, but they'll get cheaper as popularity and production increases'. Popularity and production increased... No price drops. These satellite services won't waste money (their profit margin) on better content unless they think it will bring in even more customers. If they're the only game in town, they would need to convert land based radio users over to satellite radio. In that case, advertising and price reductions would probably be their best bet... They already have superior content. If there's a competing satellite service with similar content, stealing customers from the competitor would be a good tactic. You already know the competitor's customers are potential paying satellite radio subscribers, you just need to convince them to switch. Price drops could do that, if the savings justifies the inconvenience, but better content would make a much better carrot.
Peltier modules are nowhere near as efficient as sterling engines. Using a peltier module, you would be lucky to get enough power to light a small LED from the typical chipset to atmosphere temperature differential. They work fine as heat pumps since you've already got a big sink strapped to the hot side, but when you start trying to use them the other way around - to generate power from a temperature differential - their inefficiency shows through.
I picked up a 2-pack of those things from costco maybe 6 months ago for around $25. The outlets are at a right angle compared to the featured strip and pivot 180 degrees, so you can stagger devices on the top, left and right sides of the strip. Why would I want a strip that's bulkier, less functional and 10x the price?
Eliminating the mirrors might result in a measurable decrease in drag since they hang out in the air flow along side the vehicle. Wipers on the other hand are generally mounted at the transition between the hood and windshield. Since the windshield slopes upward at a greater angle than the hood, you get a slower moving, high pressure area at the transition. A disruption as small as a wiper or two in an already disrupted airflow isn't going to make a huge difference.
That is of course possible, but the plausibility of the argument is highly dependent on how often the unit records a data point. If it's once a second (a common GPS display update period), no f'n way. If it's every 10-15 seconds, maybe if you're driving a 'vette. Every minute is probably within the grasp of of the average car. Keep in mind that to maintain an average speed value, you would have to accelerate up to a given speed for a period of time, and then brake to a speed equally below the desired average value for an equal period of time. In this case, that would mean spending around half of a given minute driving at the radar-claimed 62 mph followed by another half minute driving at 28 mph - 17 mph under the posted speed limit. Again, it's possible, but seems rather unlikely to me.
Who's wasting who's time? This call for help will draw almost purely on the resources of people that would otherwise just sit and passively read the headlines. Sure, the general public could very well miss something that a trained professional would pick up on, but that just means you shouldn't use untrained public input to rule out an area, only to draw attention to it. If you leave the search up to just the professionals, they'll end up going through every single image. If they were to use an hour a day to check the top images sugested by the public, it would make little difference in their overall productivity, assuming they have some kind of checklist for areas that have already been examined. When their usual search routine brings up an image that has already been flagged by the public and checked, why check it again? They could just move on to the next image, resulting in very little net lost time.
"Since I bought the console, I own the hardware, I should be allowed to extract any added value from it I want, right?" IIRC, the DMCA says you can't sell or distribute copyright protection circumvention devices. In that case, you can extract all the value you want from your console, you just can't get anyone else's help in doing so, or help anyone else if you figure out a way to do so.
Coasting in neutral to a stop may actually consume more gas than coasting in gear. Modern fuel injected cars cut off the fuel supply to the engine when the throttle is closed, and the engine above idle speed. That means if you coast to a stop in gear (compression braking), you're not using any fuel. If you shift to neutral while coasting, the engine speed will drop and it will start using fuel to maintain idle.
"But seriously, 18 is as good as it gets?" You've got a moderately large normally aspirated V6, moving over 3000 lbs of less-than-spectacular aerodynamics via an AWD drive train. Yes, that's as good as it gets. I drive a '91 Honda CRX... 1.6l inline 4 (125 hp), about 2200 lbs, decent aero (it's sort of the spiritual predescessor of the Insight), front wheel drive, 4-speed automatic. I get 34-37 mpg mixed city/highway, and 42 mpg on long highway trips, cruising at about 75 mph. The relatively light weight and suspension design allows the car to handle quite well and accelerate respectably. This is not exotic technology. In fact, it's 15+ year old technology. If you skip ahead a few years and look at the '96-00 generation of Civics, Honda sold a model on the japaneese market with a 1.5l, 126 hp inline 4, claimed to be capable of 70 mpg. The trick? A CVT transmission (something that's becoming almost common-place in the past few years), a little valve train mojo to let the engine computer disable one of the intake valves, and a wide-band oxygen sensor. No hybrid gear, traffic sensors or even special body work. Where are these designs now? Who knows! Certainly not the US. But then, it's not like Americans would buy a NORMAL fuel efficient car... It's got to have some new flashy gizmo or technology they can brag about to their friends and co-workers.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but LEDs have made some major leaps and bounds in the past few years. CREE claims 50-80 lumens/watt in their production power LEDs http://www.cree.com/products/xlamp.asp, and as high as 100 with experimental designs. Osram recently announced a 1000 lumen LED (really 6 LED dies packed into one device) that will be sent to market this summer. http://www.physorg.com/news93198212.html
I don't think you even need to go that far. The DRM schemes I've read about keep a list of authorized devices, hard copies, ect. All you need to do is keep that list on a server instead of the home computer (assuming they aren't already). If a device is stolen, the owner reports it's device ID to the central server. If someone tries add a stolen device ID to a DRM'd file's authorized list, it logs their IP/routing/whatever and flags an admin, who can report it to proper authorities.
Slashdot Mirror
A similar (maybe the same?) material has been in existence long enough for someone to make a toy out of it, exploiting just the behavior you're curious about. link.
Well, if you're talking about devices that cause turbulence for the sake of boundary-layer adhesion, vortex generators have been in use on aircraft for years. More recently, they have been adapted to automotive use. Take a look at the trailing edge of the Lancer Evolution IX's roof... It has a line of 8-9 (if you count the antenna) vortex generators.
I recall using the term in this context as far back as 1994. It wouldn't surprise me if MS had a hand in furthering the PC = [computer running windows] assumption. Doesn't that seem like something MS would aim for? Have everyone just assume that if you're talking about a mainstream computer system, it must be running their OS product? While Apple certainly picked up the term to point out how their products differ, suggesting that they more or less created the term is giving them too much credit. The above ad is nice piece of evidence that "PC" was a well known term back in '98, but don't give Apple credit for much more than using the term.
The tendencies seen in politicians strikes me as an intentionally adopted behavior, rather than genetic predisposition. If a politician changes his/her ways as a result of some failure, that can be read on the surface (as deep as politics seems to get these days) as admitting he/she was wrong in some form. Politicians do their best to look as absolutely pristine as they can manage, so as to give the competition as little mud to sling as possible.
I don't think a gun would be necessary for the 'cage' driver in your scenario... You're talking about assaulting someone who is actively in control of somewhere between 2 and 8 thousand pounds of metal, plastic and glass. If the vehicles are in motion, a little swerve would encourage any motorcyclist to move away from the driver's window. If the vehicles are stopped, turning the steering wheel hard to the right and throwing it in reverse would quickly acquaint the two-wheeled attacker with the larger vehicle's driver's side door, fender and/or tire.
Oh, and when the cops cart you away for making terroristic threats, can I have your user number?
Hey, look on the bright side: If officers are using their time more efficiently, we'll need fewer of them to get the job done, right?
Yeah, right.
LEDs don't have to be directional, they just commonly are. Using a large electrical contact to heat sink the emitter die (as is generally done) means that light output is limited to 180 degrees. Most high power LED manufacturers leave it at that by simply putting a dome over the emitter, leaving light collection and focusing to external optics. Smaller component LEDs don't have enough output to be effective for area lighting, and external optics for each emitter would consume a lot of space. As such, the manufacturer will often shape the heat sink/contact into a cone which focuses the light in a general direction and then profiles the plastic casing so it acts as a lens, focusing it further.
Oh, and CCFL stands for Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lighting - it's been in use as LCD backlighting for ages.
Am I the only one that gets a blank dark grey window? Clicking "Check for Updates" and "Get More Applications" just brings up a dialog stating: "The iTunes Applications Store is not currently available. Please try again later."
The leak may not have been on the police side of things. Killmer may have commented to the perp (somebody on his landscape management crew) that he had located the stolen controller. The perp had an "Oh sh!t" moment, then called over to the ranch where it had been hooked up and let them know to keep an eye out.
Agreed... If I were on the design team, I would have pushed for a method of lifting it up to the gutter... A simple hooked pole and a loop on the robot's body would be fine. Of course, you would need some method of triggering it once it was up there... Maybe a two-way remote that would alert the operator when it reaches the end of a run?
But they replaced it with an auto-aim key... I'm kinda conflicted.
> lol
I take it you have shares in big oil?
Wait... You mean it's not dishwasher-safe?
> The driver for lowering satellite radio prices and improving content is persuading people that it's worthwhile to adopt satellite radio and pay the subscription fees. A market war between two satellite providers would only drive prices up and deteriorate service quality.
Umm, no.
These satellite radio services are run by corporations. Corporations will squeeze as much money out of their market (consumers) as they can manage... They're legally required to do so. That means if their service becomes popular, they'll leave the prices right where they are. This sort of thing can be seen with prices of CDs - when CDs were new tech, the music industry said 'yeah, they're expensive now, but they'll get cheaper as popularity and production increases'. Popularity and production increased... No price drops.
These satellite services won't waste money (their profit margin) on better content unless they think it will bring in even more customers. If they're the only game in town, they would need to convert land based radio users over to satellite radio. In that case, advertising and price reductions would probably be their best bet... They already have superior content. If there's a competing satellite service with similar content, stealing customers from the competitor would be a good tactic. You already know the competitor's customers are potential paying satellite radio subscribers, you just need to convince them to switch. Price drops could do that, if the savings justifies the inconvenience, but better content would make a much better carrot.
Peltier modules are nowhere near as efficient as sterling engines. Using a peltier module, you would be lucky to get enough power to light a small LED from the typical chipset to atmosphere temperature differential. They work fine as heat pumps since you've already got a big sink strapped to the hot side, but when you start trying to use them the other way around - to generate power from a temperature differential - their inefficiency shows through.
I picked up a 2-pack of those things from costco maybe 6 months ago for around $25. The outlets are at a right angle compared to the featured strip and pivot 180 degrees, so you can stagger devices on the top, left and right sides of the strip. Why would I want a strip that's bulkier, less functional and 10x the price?
Eliminating the mirrors might result in a measurable decrease in drag since they hang out in the air flow along side the vehicle. Wipers on the other hand are generally mounted at the transition between the hood and windshield. Since the windshield slopes upward at a greater angle than the hood, you get a slower moving, high pressure area at the transition. A disruption as small as a wiper or two in an already disrupted airflow isn't going to make a huge difference.
I think "extortion" fits the situation a little better. Blackmail requires a criminal act.
That is of course possible, but the plausibility of the argument is highly dependent on how often the unit records a data point. If it's once a second (a common GPS display update period), no f'n way. If it's every 10-15 seconds, maybe if you're driving a 'vette. Every minute is probably within the grasp of of the average car.
Keep in mind that to maintain an average speed value, you would have to accelerate up to a given speed for a period of time, and then brake to a speed equally below the desired average value for an equal period of time. In this case, that would mean spending around half of a given minute driving at the radar-claimed 62 mph followed by another half minute driving at 28 mph - 17 mph under the posted speed limit.
Again, it's possible, but seems rather unlikely to me.
Who's wasting who's time? This call for help will draw almost purely on the resources of people that would otherwise just sit and passively read the headlines.
Sure, the general public could very well miss something that a trained professional would pick up on, but that just means you shouldn't use untrained public input to rule out an area, only to draw attention to it. If you leave the search up to just the professionals, they'll end up going through every single image. If they were to use an hour a day to check the top images sugested by the public, it would make little difference in their overall productivity, assuming they have some kind of checklist for areas that have already been examined. When their usual search routine brings up an image that has already been flagged by the public and checked, why check it again? They could just move on to the next image, resulting in very little net lost time.
"Since I bought the console, I own the hardware, I should be allowed to extract any added value from it I want, right?"
IIRC, the DMCA says you can't sell or distribute copyright protection circumvention devices. In that case, you can extract all the value you want from your console, you just can't get anyone else's help in doing so, or help anyone else if you figure out a way to do so.
Coasting in neutral to a stop may actually consume more gas than coasting in gear. Modern fuel injected cars cut off the fuel supply to the engine when the throttle is closed, and the engine above idle speed. That means if you coast to a stop in gear (compression braking), you're not using any fuel. If you shift to neutral while coasting, the engine speed will drop and it will start using fuel to maintain idle.
"But seriously, 18 is as good as it gets?"
You've got a moderately large normally aspirated V6, moving over 3000 lbs of less-than-spectacular aerodynamics via an AWD drive train. Yes, that's as good as it gets.
I drive a '91 Honda CRX... 1.6l inline 4 (125 hp), about 2200 lbs, decent aero (it's sort of the spiritual predescessor of the Insight), front wheel drive, 4-speed automatic. I get 34-37 mpg mixed city/highway, and 42 mpg on long highway trips, cruising at about 75 mph. The relatively light weight and suspension design allows the car to handle quite well and accelerate respectably. This is not exotic technology. In fact, it's 15+ year old technology.
If you skip ahead a few years and look at the '96-00 generation of Civics, Honda sold a model on the japaneese market with a 1.5l, 126 hp inline 4, claimed to be capable of 70 mpg. The trick? A CVT transmission (something that's becoming almost common-place in the past few years), a little valve train mojo to let the engine computer disable one of the intake valves, and a wide-band oxygen sensor. No hybrid gear, traffic sensors or even special body work.
Where are these designs now? Who knows! Certainly not the US. But then, it's not like Americans would buy a NORMAL fuel efficient car... It's got to have some new flashy gizmo or technology they can brag about to their friends and co-workers.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but LEDs have made some major leaps and bounds in the past few years. CREE claims 50-80 lumens/watt in their production power LEDs http://www.cree.com/products/xlamp.asp, and as high as 100 with experimental designs.
Osram recently announced a 1000 lumen LED (really 6 LED dies packed into one device) that will be sent to market this summer. http://www.physorg.com/news93198212.html
I don't think you even need to go that far. The DRM schemes I've read about keep a list of authorized devices, hard copies, ect. All you need to do is keep that list on a server instead of the home computer (assuming they aren't already). If a device is stolen, the owner reports it's device ID to the central server. If someone tries add a stolen device ID to a DRM'd file's authorized list, it logs their IP/routing/whatever and flags an admin, who can report it to proper authorities.