Well, good for you that you didn't need it, but that is beside the point. In countries with a cold climate, you could use the existing infrastructure for block heaters to keep the electric car's battery and interior warm. This will be beneficial for the range in polar conditions, i.e. you can make more miles on a charge.
btw where I live a block heater is completely useless because the temperature rarely drops below zero, though some 'muricans still think we all wear wooden shoes and ice-skate on the canals to work:P
Of course, pre-heating an ICE will not affect the range of the car, but managing the temperature of an EV's battery pack will. Charging an EV from a simple block heater pole can be done if you have plenty of time, doesn't trip a fuse (especially if you are not the only one) and doesn't piss off the parking lot owner for upping his electricity bill:-D Though some have converted them to charge electric cars, see for instance this example from Finland: https://insideevs.com/finland-...
Anyway, modern EV's do have sophisticated thermal management systems available, which eliminates the use of said block heater poles.
https://insideevs.com/hyundai-...
Regardless of what "we" don't need to use, many car parks in northern Scandinavian countries have power outlets for block heaters, which can be used to great benefit for heating up electric car batteries and keeping the car's interior warm. This mitigates a disadvantage of electric cars in polar conditions.
By the way, Diesel and bio-ethanol powered engines really do need to be warmed up when starting in extreme cold, be it through glow plugs (Diesel), auxiliary heater (runs on fuel) or an electric heater. Bio-ethanol or E85 is very popular in Sweden and winters are pretty cold there, hence the block heater in my flexifuel (runs both on E85 and petrol) Volvo.
They have this problem as well with fossil fueled cars, that is why many cars in colder climates (e.g. Scandiavian countries, Canada) are equipped with a block heater. My Volvo has one, plug it into mains an hour or two before you leave and a 550 Watt element in the engine block (replaces a freeze plug) will bring the coolant 20-30 degrees centigrade above ambient temperature. When plugged into a charger, many electric cars will do the same, they will pre-heat the batteries and heat up the car's interior when it's cold, to save battery consumption while on the move. Conversely, when it is hot summer, they will turn on the a/c.
This may be a little late in this discussion, but I would say that perseverance pays off in the long run.
It's like posting a resume on a job site and subsequent job interviews with much, much more emotion involved. It requires a lot of resilience, and you should be prepared for rejection. But most of all, you should have a clear picture of what you want in a realistic relationship, or what you would tolerate. It may even include someone who enjoys Star Trek even more than you do, who brings along more fantasy and scifi books than you could read in a lifetime and really does want to have a digital video recorder so we won't miss out on QI and Top Gear.
The moment I'm writing this, she's explaining to her father what the The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is all about. I am wearing my wedding ring (with her name in Morse code on it) with pride:-)
Google acquired DejaNews in 2001, which was basically an archive of usenet posts. It gives you access to Usenet and several other groups, but there is no such thing as the Google monopoly to Usenet.;) AFAIK there are no binaries in Google Groups.
Pieter, there is more Europe than just the Netherlands where you (and I) are from. Tax situations and fuel prices do differ from country to country. In France, for instance, approximately half the passenger cars are diesel powered, because the tax on them is the same. In The Netherlands it's only economical to switch to diesel if you will do more than approximately 30.000 kms a year, due to excessive sales tax for diesel cars and excessive road tax, unless you buy a four-wheeled moped like the Volkswagen Polo 1.2 TDI, which is tax exempt but takes all the fun out of driving.
And don't forget the car that sparked this discussion is nothing more or less than a successor to the Daewoo Lacetti with an Italian (VM Motori) diesel engine. So there's not much American to this car, apart from its Chevrolet badge.
How robust are the sound-data signals for the various old 8-bit machines? Is there redunancy, or if you have a just barely flaky tape, or just a small spec of static while you're taping do you lose that chunk of the program? Or does it repeat the same bit 4 times, then go one, etc, so that yo uare sure to have a good copy?
The original Commodore tape system recorded the data twice and added a CRC checksum according to this site (see "Storage" all the way down). This resulted in an overall speed of 300 Baud. Both parts were read in and compared, a difference resulted in a LOAD ERROR.
Later on, clever programmers developed fastloaders. The first thing they did, was to drop the redundancy, resulting in 50% loading speed increase. I owned a CBM8032, though the tape system is the same. It took 20 minutes to load a big chess program, so I stopped the tape after 11 minutes or so and ran the program anyway.
Oftentimes amateur radio is seen as an "old man's" game, as many of the newer geeks jump into computers immediately, and choose programming and networking as their fix of choice. I'd like to see more young people on the air! (I'm 25)
I'd like to see that, too. When I first started with ham radio, I was by far the youngest person in the local amateur radio club. However, I'm 32 now and still it is an old man's game to me. If I go to the local amateur radio club, I find myself between old people, who lost touch with modern technology or just don't care. It is just not interesting to geeks anymore, people go out and buy the stuff rather than building it themselves (or at least modify it to suit their needs). Most of them are even too stupid (or too old?) to operate a computer. If it wasn't for a couple of guys I know from universities (Eindhoven and Twente) and a local ham who is still very active with VHF and up, I would have given up amateur radio completely.
It is hard to say, but I think amateur radio has become obsolete when internet and cell phones became common. Not that it really has lost its technical aspects (especially not if you are in cutting edge technology like microwave), but it just doesn't appeal to young people anymore. It's doesn't appeal to employers either, though I have studied electronics engineering, I found more (and better pay) jobs as a UNIX and software engineer than as an electronics engineer. On the other hand, it is because of fellow radio amateurs that I came into contact with Linux and Open Source Software. Maybe it does have its advantages, being both a computer and radio geek;-)
For more information about Matrix Semiconductor's plans about the future, please read this article (http://www.matrixsemi.com/files/10076683300.pdf)
Although successful research has been done to rewritable technologies, they will focus on write-once memories for the time being:
The
Matrix model brings a very low cost point into the picture but with a write-once approach. Instead of buying one or two reprogrammable cards for semi-permanent storage, consumers would use many of the write once cards for permanent storage and add cards as needed. The advantage is always having a permanent copy of the file that cannot be erased and is accessible on demand.
I wasn't referring to the article (which I have read before posting, thank you very much), I referred to the company who is developing and marketing this technology. Their sole product to be launched somewhere in early 2002 is a write-once memory. Successful research may have been done to RAM and EEPROMs, however, they have not yet announced such products.
A very informative article can be found here. I will quote a piece of that article: Although the first product is a write-once variant of traditional reprogrammable Flash memory, it is reasonable to assume a fully reprogrammable part is a potential follow on product. The introduction date for this follow on is indeterminate at this time. Matrix has chosen to stay focused on putting the write-once product on designer's roadmaps instead of spreading their efforts into other areas where they could lose focus.
so what this technology may replace is CF, not chemical/"analog" film
The similarity with chemical film is, that the 3D-Memory device can be used once, until it's full. It's a write-once-read-many (WORM) device, unlike the CF, SmartMedia and Memory Stick devices, which are non-volatile RAM devices and can be re-used (Flash memory technology). Maybe a future development of the 3D-Memory technology will incorporate re-writable memory devices. So far, they are not even on the market.
Also, I'm not impressed by the memory sizes they are offering. The article says 64MB, which is readily available nowadays. Perhaps the price will make the difference. It must be cheap, no-one is going to buy a one-time-use device unless it's -say- 10 times cheaper than a comparable re-useable device.
From Matrix' website: Matrix 3-D Memory is a field-programmable, archival medium. Cards with 3DM are write-once and the programming can happen all at once or in parts over time. Once on the card, the data is secure for generations and can be read repeatedly.
So it's merely a writable-CD-on-a-chip. Maybe they will develop a rewritable version someday:-)
Now, which crowd is right? None. Which is the best? None. It depends on what you want, what crowd you fit in. If you're very technical, You
fall into the Slackware/Debian crowd. If you like what's popular, easy, and commercial, you'll like hanging out with the RedHat/Mandrake
folks. And if you like something very specific, or a close community, you'll like SuSE or something else.
True. Last weekend I have been in a crowd of approx. 2500 (HAL 2001), most of which took their own computer so it should give an answer to who is using what OS, and why. This question remains unanswered. It didn't really matter, everybody had its own reason to use what he or she liked. A micro-cosmos of that could be seen in our tent (I was visiting the event together with folks from the Dutch Linux user group NLLGG). Of course, everybody took their own Linux box with them, installed with his or her favorite distro. There is some tendency to Mandrake for beginners and Debian for experienced users, but there are several exceptions to the rule.
At the end of the weekend, a 15-year old kid dropped in our tent who became interested in Linux. The kid had some clue (at least he was familiar with the "man" command:-)), was programming VB in Windows and knew how Internet protocols work. After some discussion, we sent him off with a URL of the nearest Red Hat mirror (he has a cable modem and CD burner at home), because that was the easiest way to go. Support in our user group is plentiful for any popular distro, however, Red Hat is easiest to get.
One of our scientists just came from England, where there's a project to limit the speed of vehicles. Here's a link to information on the project.
There has been a similar project in The Netherlands. Follow this link.
It's based on GPS reception and digital mapping, basically the same technology as the car rental company used. But this is a one way communication only, since the interaction (speed limiting) takes place in the vehicle.
Maybe this is a lot better than fining your customer, just set a speed limit and you'll never get pulled over by a cop for speeding. But then again, how does the system detect work zones?
people try to steal our cars and take them to Mexico, EVERY SINGLE DAY.
I have checked out AirIQ's website and it looks like they're using cellphones to contact the base station, to transmit telemetry data gathered from the GPS receiver.
I used to work with the development of such tracking devices and cellular technology turned out to be a solution only if there's sufficient coverage of the cellular phone network. However, in Europe, where GSM has become commonplace, that is no problem. If you can get there by car, you can rest assured there's coverage. Roaming agreements between nationwide operators provide seamless coverage across the border.
So, how's that situation in the US? How well does a cellphone work in unpopulated areas? How well across the Mexican border?
I won't post the entire text of the scene,but it starts off with Dingo saying how she does like this scene, and goes on (for 24 seconds) about whether or not they should include the scene in the film, ending finally with "Get on with it" shouted by all the soldiers from the near battle at the end.
My parents have long ago videotaped The Holy Grail from Dutch public television, I copied the tape to VHS (it was recorded on the now obsolete Video2000 system) and have seen the movie many, many times:) This version had some differences compared to the versions I have seen fairly recently on Net5 (Dutch commercial station) and the BBC. The scene with Zoot's worrying twin sister and "Get on with it!!!" is included in the old show, for sure. But I don't know if that scene has been left out in the newer shows, I should check the other two tapes.
Apart from that, the old show is in letterbox format (widescreen) and it has a trailer in which the Monty Python team apparently tries to hire an announcer. You see Arthur and a knight (Bedevere? I recall this from memory), with Arthur "knighting" (correct my English pse) the other with his sword. You hear a candidate saying "Once upon a time..." but the first candidates are lousy speakers ("Un-ce aa-pon aa ti-me..."), and they are replaced, "Next!" (I think that's Eric Idle). The scene starts over time and time again. Then you see the castle in the background collapse (it's only a model:)) and Arthur apparently gets bored, so he stabs the knight. Then a Chinese speaker turns up. It looks like this is the perfect announcer (with English subtitles), but it turns out to be a Chinese restaurant commercial ("Only 5 minutes from this theatre!"). I have a Mandarin speaking girlfriend and she confirmed that the Chinese is genuine.
After that, the movie starts, with the fake Swedish subtitles and so on. (Is this the reason the Muppets' Swedish Chef becoming so popular among geeks?)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, good for you that you didn't need it, but that is beside the point. In countries with a cold climate, you could use the existing infrastructure for block heaters to keep the electric car's battery and interior warm. This will be beneficial for the range in polar conditions, i.e. you can make more miles on a charge. btw where I live a block heater is completely useless because the temperature rarely drops below zero, though some 'muricans still think we all wear wooden shoes and ice-skate on the canals to work :P
Of course, pre-heating an ICE will not affect the range of the car, but managing the temperature of an EV's battery pack will. Charging an EV from a simple block heater pole can be done if you have plenty of time, doesn't trip a fuse (especially if you are not the only one) and doesn't piss off the parking lot owner for upping his electricity bill :-D Though some have converted them to charge electric cars, see for instance this example from Finland: https://insideevs.com/finland-...
Anyway, modern EV's do have sophisticated thermal management systems available, which eliminates the use of said block heater poles.
https://insideevs.com/hyundai-...
Regardless of what "we" don't need to use, many car parks in northern Scandinavian countries have power outlets for block heaters, which can be used to great benefit for heating up electric car batteries and keeping the car's interior warm. This mitigates a disadvantage of electric cars in polar conditions. By the way, Diesel and bio-ethanol powered engines really do need to be warmed up when starting in extreme cold, be it through glow plugs (Diesel), auxiliary heater (runs on fuel) or an electric heater. Bio-ethanol or E85 is very popular in Sweden and winters are pretty cold there, hence the block heater in my flexifuel (runs both on E85 and petrol) Volvo.
They have this problem as well with fossil fueled cars, that is why many cars in colder climates (e.g. Scandiavian countries, Canada) are equipped with a block heater. My Volvo has one, plug it into mains an hour or two before you leave and a 550 Watt element in the engine block (replaces a freeze plug) will bring the coolant 20-30 degrees centigrade above ambient temperature. When plugged into a charger, many electric cars will do the same, they will pre-heat the batteries and heat up the car's interior when it's cold, to save battery consumption while on the move. Conversely, when it is hot summer, they will turn on the a/c.
...then it's surely a candidate for an Ig Noble Prize!
This may be a little late in this discussion, but I would say that perseverance pays off in the long run. It's like posting a resume on a job site and subsequent job interviews with much, much more emotion involved. It requires a lot of resilience, and you should be prepared for rejection. But most of all, you should have a clear picture of what you want in a realistic relationship, or what you would tolerate. It may even include someone who enjoys Star Trek even more than you do, who brings along more fantasy and scifi books than you could read in a lifetime and really does want to have a digital video recorder so we won't miss out on QI and Top Gear. The moment I'm writing this, she's explaining to her father what the The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is all about. I am wearing my wedding ring (with her name in Morse code on it) with pride :-)
Google acquired DejaNews in 2001, which was basically an archive of usenet posts. It gives you access to Usenet and several other groups, but there is no such thing as the Google monopoly to Usenet. ;) AFAIK there are no binaries in Google Groups.
Pieter, there is more Europe than just the Netherlands where you (and I) are from. Tax situations and fuel prices do differ from country to country. In France, for instance, approximately half the passenger cars are diesel powered, because the tax on them is the same. In The Netherlands it's only economical to switch to diesel if you will do more than approximately 30.000 kms a year, due to excessive sales tax for diesel cars and excessive road tax, unless you buy a four-wheeled moped like the Volkswagen Polo 1.2 TDI, which is tax exempt but takes all the fun out of driving. And don't forget the car that sparked this discussion is nothing more or less than a successor to the Daewoo Lacetti with an Italian (VM Motori) diesel engine. So there's not much American to this car, apart from its Chevrolet badge.
The Force has been serving Dutch Volkswagen owners since 1964:
Jedi
Street view
I wonder if they really have a lift, or just use The Force when they have to work underneath a car.
Hmmm... it looks like the site has been slashdotted. I only get to see this page: http://sffmedia.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi
The original Commodore tape system recorded the data twice and added a CRC checksum according to this site (see "Storage" all the way down). This resulted in an overall speed of 300 Baud. Both parts were read in and compared, a difference resulted in a LOAD ERROR.
Later on, clever programmers developed fastloaders. The first thing they did, was to drop the redundancy, resulting in 50% loading speed increase. I owned a CBM8032, though the tape system is the same. It took 20 minutes to load a big chess program, so I stopped the tape after 11 minutes or so and ran the program anyway.
I'd like to see that, too. When I first started with ham radio, I was by far the youngest person in the local amateur radio club. However, I'm 32 now and still it is an old man's game to me. If I go to the local amateur radio club, I find myself between old people, who lost touch with modern technology or just don't care. It is just not interesting to geeks anymore, people go out and buy the stuff rather than building it themselves (or at least modify it to suit their needs). Most of them are even too stupid (or too old?) to operate a computer. If it wasn't for a couple of guys I know from universities (Eindhoven and Twente) and a local ham who is still very active with VHF and up, I would have given up amateur radio completely.
It is hard to say, but I think amateur radio has become obsolete when internet and cell phones became common. Not that it really has lost its technical aspects (especially not if you are in cutting edge technology like microwave), but it just doesn't appeal to young people anymore. It's doesn't appeal to employers either, though I have studied electronics engineering, I found more (and better pay) jobs as a UNIX and software engineer than as an electronics engineer. On the other hand, it is because of fellow radio amateurs that I came into contact with Linux and Open Source Software. Maybe it does have its advantages, being both a computer and radio geek ;-)
73 de PA3FXW
Although successful research has been done to rewritable technologies, they will focus on write-once memories for the time being:
The Matrix model brings a very low cost point into the picture but with a write-once approach. Instead of buying one or two reprogrammable cards for semi-permanent storage, consumers would use many of the write once cards for permanent storage and add cards as needed. The advantage is always having a permanent copy of the file that cannot be erased and is accessible on demand.
A very informative article can be found here. I will quote a piece of that article:
Although the first product is a write-once variant of traditional reprogrammable Flash memory, it is reasonable to assume a fully reprogrammable part is a potential follow on product. The introduction date for this follow on is indeterminate at this time. Matrix has chosen to stay focused on putting the write-once product on designer's roadmaps instead of spreading their efforts into other areas where they could lose focus.
The similarity with chemical film is, that the 3D-Memory device can be used once, until it's full. It's a write-once-read-many (WORM) device, unlike the CF, SmartMedia and Memory Stick devices, which are non-volatile RAM devices and can be re-used (Flash memory technology). Maybe a future development of the 3D-Memory technology will incorporate re-writable memory devices. So far, they are not even on the market.
Also, I'm not impressed by the memory sizes they are offering. The article says 64MB, which is readily available nowadays. Perhaps the price will make the difference. It must be cheap, no-one is going to buy a one-time-use device unless it's -say- 10 times cheaper than a comparable re-useable device.
Matrix 3-D Memory is a field-programmable, archival medium. Cards with 3DM are write-once and the programming can happen all at once or in parts over time. Once on the card, the data is secure for generations and can be read repeatedly.
So it's merely a writable-CD-on-a-chip. Maybe they will develop a rewritable version someday :-)
True. Last weekend I have been in a crowd of approx. 2500 (HAL 2001), most of which took their own computer so it should give an answer to who is using what OS, and why. This question remains unanswered. It didn't really matter, everybody had its own reason to use what he or she liked. A micro-cosmos of that could be seen in our tent (I was visiting the event together with folks from the Dutch Linux user group NLLGG). Of course, everybody took their own Linux box with them, installed with his or her favorite distro. There is some tendency to Mandrake for beginners and Debian for experienced users, but there are several exceptions to the rule.
At the end of the weekend, a 15-year old kid dropped in our tent who became interested in Linux. The kid had some clue (at least he was familiar with the "man" command :-)), was programming VB in Windows and knew how Internet protocols work. After some discussion, we sent him off with a URL of the nearest Red Hat mirror (he has a cable modem and CD burner at home), because that was the easiest way to go. Support in our user group is plentiful for any popular distro, however, Red Hat is easiest to get.
Brinkie
See my HAL 2001 Photo Gallery
One of our scientists just came from England, where there's a project to limit the speed of vehicles. Here's a link to information on the project.
There has been a similar project in The Netherlands. Follow this link.
It's based on GPS reception and digital mapping, basically the same technology as the car rental company used. But this is a one way communication only, since the interaction (speed limiting) takes place in the vehicle.
Maybe this is a lot better than fining your customer, just set a speed limit and you'll never get pulled over by a cop for speeding. But then again, how does the system detect work zones?
-brinkie
people try to steal our cars and take them to Mexico, EVERY SINGLE DAY.
I have checked out AirIQ's website and it looks like they're using cellphones to contact the base station, to transmit telemetry data gathered from the GPS receiver.
I used to work with the development of such tracking devices and cellular technology turned out to be a solution only if there's sufficient coverage of the cellular phone network. However, in Europe, where GSM has become commonplace, that is no problem. If you can get there by car, you can rest assured there's coverage. Roaming agreements between nationwide operators provide seamless coverage across the border.
So, how's that situation in the US? How well does a cellphone work in unpopulated areas? How well across the Mexican border?
-brinkie
I won't post the entire text of the scene ,but it starts off with Dingo saying how she does like this scene, and goes on (for 24 seconds) about whether or not they should include the scene in the film, ending finally with "Get on with it" shouted by all the soldiers from the near battle at the end.
:) This version had some differences compared to the versions I have seen fairly recently on Net5 (Dutch commercial station) and the BBC. The scene with Zoot's worrying twin sister and "Get on with it!!!" is included in the old show, for sure. But I don't know if that scene has been left out in the newer shows, I should check the other two tapes.
:)) and Arthur apparently gets bored, so he stabs the knight. Then a Chinese speaker turns up. It looks like this is the perfect announcer (with English subtitles), but it turns out to be a Chinese restaurant commercial ("Only 5 minutes from this theatre!"). I have a Mandarin speaking girlfriend and she confirmed that the Chinese is genuine.
My parents have long ago videotaped The Holy Grail from Dutch public television, I copied the tape to VHS (it was recorded on the now obsolete Video2000 system) and have seen the movie many, many times
Apart from that, the old show is in letterbox format (widescreen) and it has a trailer in which the Monty Python team apparently tries to hire an announcer. You see Arthur and a knight (Bedevere? I recall this from memory), with Arthur "knighting" (correct my English pse) the other with his sword. You hear a candidate saying "Once upon a time..." but the first candidates are lousy speakers ("Un-ce aa-pon aa ti-me..."), and they are replaced, "Next!" (I think that's Eric Idle). The scene starts over time and time again. Then you see the castle in the background collapse (it's only a model
After that, the movie starts, with the fake Swedish subtitles and so on. (Is this the reason the Muppets' Swedish Chef becoming so popular among geeks?)
-brinkie