There are earlier references. In 1981, Niven & Pournelle described a very similar device in OATH OF FEALTY. The main character (whose name escapes me at the moment) has sub-cutaneous implants that allow her two-way communication with a very large computer nicknamed "MILLIE".
The setup consisted of sub-cutaneous implants which detect nerve signals associated with sub-vocalized speech and transmit them via RF to MILLIE. MILLIE then translates the signals into words/commands. MILLIE sends messages back via RF, which are picked up by an implanted receiver and signals are sent to a cochlear implant. So the heroine and the computer talk back and forth via radio.
Heinlein almost got it right 40 year earlier when some of his characters in THE PUPPET MASTERS used what amounted to an implanted cell phone that used bone conduction for both speaking and listening.
Nice attempt at FUD there, skippy. It's a pity you're misinformed and ignorant of the true facts.
Not FUD, just relaying a story from the press illustrating a potentially deadly Windows problem. It was offered in good faith to illustrate the point that OS problems (not just Windows) could have potentially deadly consequences. Thank you for adding further very informative references to what actually happened.
Misinformed? No more than everyone else who heard the original story, and only to the extent that I did not find other explainations for the incident.
Ignorant? Sure. That's not a failing, its merely a correctible condition.
Calm discussion is one thing. Slinging FUD accusations is another.
Ok, I'll bite. How about the USS Yorktown shutdown in 1997. A Windows NT bug crashed their engine control system and required that they be towed to port. Dockside repairs took several days. You can get the full story here.
Had this happened in a battle, it would have likely resulted in loss of life and probably the ship.
Need? Who said anything about needing it? Said I wanted to make one.
If you really want a 'useful' reason: how about a simple computer that you can use while outdoors that you don't need to store in a backpack, stick in a pocket, or wear ala Steve Mann. I want to see if a staff computer might actually *be* useful.
But I do like your idea of waving it menacingly at those rascalous whippersnappers. 'dag-nab-it' is a little long for enter. Perhaps 'dang-it'?
I've wanted to build a custom portable computer into a staff/walking stick for a while. This would be perfect for the display. A 2 inch curve is about right to wrap around the top of a staff, particularly if it is widened to about a 5 inch circumference at the top.
I agree. I don't think they can kill, or even seriously maim the GPL without doing violence to copyright and/or contract law (not that the SC has already done that in Eldred v. Ashcroft, as you pointed out). I believe the worst they can do is call into question certain parts of the GPL.
I was just stating Darl & Company's twisted belief is that when people GPL code it means that the code has really been put into the public domain.
Their reasoning is that: 1) the intent behind GPLing software is to make the code freely available to the public (lie/error #1).
2) Since the GPL is "obviously" illegal (lie/error #2) AND unconstitutional (lie/error #3), then GPLed code automatically becomes Public Domain (lie/error #3) because the author intended it to be freely available (reprise lie/error #1) and they can use it however they want (lie/error #4).
I definitely think their position is completely wrong. In fact, I have found it hard to follow their so-called reasoning all along.
In other words, if the GPL is valid, then SCO has no case. If the GPL is invalid, then SCO is breaking the copyright of lots of individual copyright holders. Either way, they lose
I agree, but that isn't what SCO is hoping.
SCO has argued both directly and indirectly that when the GPL is declared invalid, then any GPLed software will be in the public domain and not covered under ANY copyright protection.
As far as SCO's officers are concerned, they can use SAMBA or any other GPLed software however they want because its already in the public domain because the GPL is illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, and fattening.
SCO Group is a bunch of lying, grasping, petty intellectual property thieves. And like most petty people, they see everyone else as being like themselves, only worse.
For months I couldn't figure out if SCO Group's main problem was that their 'leaders' are terminally stupid or terminally greedy.
I finally realized that they are both.
Re:Spirit not that impressive...?
on
News from Mars
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· Score: 1
Not to bring down the Spirit guys or their great work, but their talk of pioneering 30cm moves sound a bit dull compared with Lunokhod
Yup, they sure don't build them like they used to... Why in my day we did things in space... put men on the Moon... robots were big clunky and lasted for years... Hey where are you going ya young whipper-snapper...
How about we put Hubble on the Moon? It might make a nice little observatory and you don't have to worry about its failing gyros... assuming you could land it without crashing AND figure out how to make it work on the ground.
I know its unrealistic, but it sounds cool. Much better than making Hubble a "ballistically implanted reef" (got to love that phrase).
It was fully demonstrated in 1974 with a single person vehicle on a mile-long track, so it did exist... 30 years ago.
What makes it different is the way lift force is generated. It uses Lenz induction to generate an opposing magnetic field in the track. Much like an airplane, the faster the vehicle goes the more lift force is generated. This makes the track cheaper, easier to build & maintain, and easily mass produced. The safety factor is better and the speeds can be higher because the cruising clearance goes up with the speed (15 cm clearance at about 330 mph).
It does still need to actively control the things like magnet power and flight stability, but far less than the other two types of maglevs. As a bonus you get to steal alot of analysis and dynamic control solutions from aircraft technology.
What mortally wounded magneplane is that the U.S. Government abandoned all its maglev train research in the mid-1970s. We abandoned alot of things back then for stupid reasons. The last Saturn 5 rocket sits rusting on the ground at Kennedy Space Center for no good reason other than space was a "been there, done that" issue for Congress, as well as a successful Democratic program under a Republican (Nixon) administration.
The other blow that kept it down was that someone did ONE study that showed that the direct repulsion method resulted in a slightly higher (10%) lift/drag ratio than the magneplane design. What the study did not account for was all the other real-world factors: maximum top speed, total cost of operation, safety, right-of-way requirements, etc.
Something similar happened in the '90s when NASA selected the Lockheed Venture Star SSTO (single stage to orbit) design over the McDonald-Douglas Delta Clipper SSTO. Lockheed had a rather poor and overly challenging paper design, which ultimately failed in development. McD. had a working phase one development vehicle that had been flying hover & swoop tests over New Mexico for over a year. Better designs get left behind all too often. It isn't because they 'don't really exist'. All to often they get intentionally torpedoed because they work too well.
After I posted last night, I found some additional 2002 research that stated lower speed mageplanes could use permanent magnets instead of superconducting magnets. I haven't seen anything else other than some comparative design studies done in 1990.
BTW, high-temperature superconductors are good enough now that they can be used in industrial applications. So it would require liquid nitrogen and not liquid helium for a powered magnet design.
Funny that you should mention that maglevs have more in common with planes that trains.
Back in 1969 some MIT researchers came up with a 3rd type of maglev vehicle. They called the whole system Magneplane. It appeared to be a real breakthrough idea.
A little background. Maglev trains can generally be divided into two design types: attractors and repulsors:
The attractor seeks to levitate the train by maintaining a dynamically stabilized attractive lift up to the rails. The clearance is usually millimeters and the control problems get exponentially worse with higher speeds. It also means that the linear motor is seperate from the attractor magnets, which adds to the cost and complextity. Overall, not a very good solution for economical high-speed transport.
The repulsor system typically uses coils embedded in the track to lift the train. As you can imagine this makes the track quite expensive as well as providing some rather interesting system control problems. Throw in other things like having the track figure out the train movement dynamics, drag problems due to induction, etc, and it becomes obvious that this approach is inherently limited too.
Now we come to the 3rd approach that MIT's Henry Kolm and Richard Thornton devised. Instead of using magnetism to replace a train's wheels (what the other approaches do), they decided to create a magnetic 'flight' system. It is simplicity itself: use the Lentz magnetic induction force to levitate a moving train. Put a superconducting field magnet in the bottom of the vehicle. Put the vehicle on a trough shaped aluminum track. Run it on small wheels until the train 'lifts' off the track due to magnetic induction. You can propel the train with conventional ducted fans or jet engines, or you can put linear electro-magnetic 'kicker' motors at the bottom of some (not all) of the track sections for quieter flight and more efficient propulsion. The track is competitive with current high-speed rail costs (US$15M per mile) and half the cost of other maglev systems ($36M-$48M). The track doesn't have to have millimeter tolerances, as the vehicle rides multiple centimeters above the track. In fact, the higher the speed the higher it rides above the track, which makes it much safer too. You get to run the vehicle at much higher speeds. Because its flying, it naturally banks into the track curves. This means that you can run tighter (and thus less expensive) curves. It is inherently safe, because if you lose power to the track propulsors or the internal magnet then you glide safely to a stop.
And they thought of this in 1969.
It doesn't look like they have done much with this since 1999. Their web page hasn't been updated in quite a while.
I've seen far too many great ideas like this languish and die over the years. It drives me nuts.
The important thing is not the current but the power...As more power is used on the output side, the current and the relative phase change on the input side to supply more power to the piezoelectric resonator.
Exactly right. I think sfe_software's confusion may come from not being able to visualize the mechanisms which cause power draw on the output side of the piezo to affect power draw on the input side.
IANAP, but here goes:
The piezo element is sitting there with no input power applied and nothing connected to the output side. You connect a voltage pulse to the input side. The piezo element starts to vibrate from the pulsing voltage due to piezo-electric effect. The element hasn't reached its natural capacity to store mechanical power yet (eg its resonance frequency), so the current flowing from the power source increases due to the power draw by the piezo element.
When the piezo element can absorb no more power (eg it is at resonance), the current draw from the input drops off. The voltage pulse is still driving the piezo element, but much less power is being transfered now.
The piezo element is now vibrating at its natural resonance frequency and a small amount of power is being lost from friction (heat) and natural emission (heat/light/sound). The piezo element requires some power from the input side to maintain its present vibrational resonance. If you pulled the plug on the input side, the resonance vibrations in the piezo element would quickly decay away to nothing due to friction.
Now see what happens when you connect an electric load across the output side of the piezo element:
The vibrations in the piezo element are creating a voltage across the element's output side due again to the piezo electric effect. No power is being consumed at the output, because no current is flowing. Now connect a load to element's output side. The load sees a voltage and draws power as a result. Vibrational energy in the the piezo element is now being transformed into current in the load. Since there is now less vibrational energy in the piezo element (it is not at resonance anymore), the element starts pulling in power from the input side. The more power that gets sucked out of the element by the load, the more that the piezo element sucks out of its input. So power is transfered from the element's input side to the load on its output side.
So the more power you draw from the piezo element, the more gets pulled in from the input source.
That's a simple step-by-step summary of the process. I know its more complicated than what I described, but I think the description hits the high points.
Thanks! Google is my friend. I wouldn't have found that info very fast without it.
The NPR story sounds fishy to me. Its more likely an "elephant repellant" logic error (can't remember the 'real' name of the logical fallacy): "I bought an Elephant Repellant and it works!", "How do you know its not a scam?", "See any elephants around here?"
Basically they may have a false correlation between two facts: 1) gay marriage legalized 2) marriages went to hell. The reasons for #2 are most likely completely unrelated to #1. I think my KJV Bible is safe and will remain BBQ sauce free.
- The primary purpose of a marriage is to grant legal status to a man and a woman for the purpose of raising a family.
I agree that is the main traditional purpose of marriage. It is not the current reality, though. According to the U.S Census Bureau 1997 Population Profile, there are more U.S. marriages without children than ones with children: 28.8% (childless) vs. 25.0% (with children) of all households. If we generously assume that half of that 28.8% are couples whose children are now out of the house, then you still get 14.4% of all of the U.S. marriages are childless. Given that the report stated that there were 99.6 million households in 1996, that means that there were at least 14 million couples in the U.S. enjoying the legal status of marriage without producing the desired and protected social benefit(eg kids).
Now look at that pg 29 chart again. Notice that it shows non-family households totaled 5.1% in 1996. That works out to about 5 million non-married multi-person households. Lets assume that sexual preference statistics hold and that roughly 10% of those households are same-sex relationships. That means there were about 1 million gay/lesbian couples living together in the U.S. in 1996. Lets further assume that ALL of them would get married if they could (a bad assumption but bear with me). That means that the total number of childless marriages would, at most, go from 14 million to 15 million. That's a change of 7%. This is neither a threat to the American Way Of Life (TM, Pat. Pend, Your mileage may vary) or a huge change. Even if homosexuality weirds you out (it does me even though I've got a few gay friends), this is obviously an outdated reason to restrict marrage to bisexual couples. There are enough married couples already who, by choice or circumstance, are not having kids. Adding a few more to that list isn't going to do any harm and may in fact do some social good.
- Marriage is 'special'. Places that have allowed same sexed marriages have seen increased divorce and infidelity. Same sexed marriage takes away the 'specialness' of marriage.,
This isn't a secular argument, its a thinly disquised religious argument. I'll eat my copy of the King James Bible if you can show me REAL statistics that back this up. Even if true, divorce has risen to near the 50% mark without the morally-corrupting influence of same-sex marriages. And infidelity increases, why? Are all the straight married dudes trying to re-affirm their masculinity with a little after-hours "work" becsuse they saw the gay couple next door kissing goodbye in the morning? Please throw this argument back into the oven, it hasn't cooked yet.
- Marriage is not a right, it is, at best, a tradition or custom. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman.
A textbook example of circular reasoning: "marriages can't be same-sex, because marriages aren't same-sex". As far as it being "at best a tradition or custom", in our society it carries considerably more legal weight and privilege than simple tradition and custom. There are real, tangible benefits to marrage: clear lines of inheritance, property co-ownership, inclusion in medical benefits, etc. Of course the social aspect is just as important too. Being married you get the benefit of the social acknowledgement of your commitment to your partner. I argue that marriage not only isn't a quaint little custom, it is the foundation of society at large and thus IS a right. Just because the sexual preferences of the two people weirds us out doesn't mean we should deny them the right and the privilege of joining together in civil union.
Ah yes the Lloyd's bailout, good catch. Other major insurance companies usually get bailout moneys from the government when natural disasters occur. Its a big part of most "emergency relief" funds. Most people don't realize that its happening, since news organizations are usually more interested in covering the disasters themselves.
That said, insurance companies still make very good money using what appear to be basic cliological-style tools: mass behavior studies, death statistics, etc.
Government bailouts of insurance companies seem to me to be (optimistically) more about trying to assure the continuity of insurance coverage so that people who need it are paid what they are owed when disaster occurs. Of course the cynical (me included) also note that the insurance companies are heavy lobbyists and supporters of those in power, so bailouts are really just a way of paying off the insurance companies for previous "favors". No matter which bailout reason you believe, its just the government making sure the "house" (insurance companies) never loses so bad that the "game" is shut down.
Advertisers similarly make money by predicting who will buy what kind of products/services and what will increase those sales using statistics about image exposure, target group demographics, sub-group buying habits, and so on.
Ultimately it is possible to predict and manipulate mass behavior sufficiently well to achieve your goals. Businesses and political parties rely more and more on predictive modeling and manipulation to achieve changes in mass behavior. Its working too. Basically, "they" have succeeded (whether by accident or design) in using these tools to turn the U.S. into a FUD driven mass of techno-peasant consumers.
I'd already read enough about Lorenz and Mandelbrot to know that little errors don't just go away if you pick a bigger sample, and subsequently couldn't ignore the major flaw that is "psychohistory" and enjoy the books.
Hmmm, guess all those multi-billion dollar Insurance and Advertising companies went broke years ago and nobody noticed. Chaos theory of course destroys ALL attempts at statistical analysis.
I recommend you read the latest re-printing of Michael Flynn's In The Country of the Blind. Make sure you read the appendices he added to the latest addition. I think you will be surprised at just how close we are to the beginnings of Cliology (aka "psychohistory").
Even if you don't buy the premise of the book, its a great read.
Slashdot Mirror
There are earlier references. In 1981, Niven & Pournelle described a very similar device in OATH OF FEALTY. The main character (whose name escapes me at the moment) has sub-cutaneous implants that allow her two-way communication with a very large computer nicknamed "MILLIE".
The setup consisted of sub-cutaneous implants which detect nerve signals associated with sub-vocalized speech and transmit them via RF to MILLIE. MILLIE then translates the signals into words/commands. MILLIE sends messages back via RF, which are picked up by an implanted receiver and signals are sent to a cochlear implant. So the heroine and the computer talk back and forth via radio.
Heinlein almost got it right 40 year earlier when some of his characters in THE PUPPET MASTERS used what amounted to an implanted cell phone that used bone conduction for both speaking and listening.
I.V.
That assumes that there IS someone at SCO competent enough to use mailmerge.
You forgot to preface it with "Dear Darl".
Not FUD, just relaying a story from the press illustrating a potentially deadly Windows problem. It was offered in good faith to illustrate the point that OS problems (not just Windows) could have potentially deadly consequences. Thank you for adding further very informative references to what actually happened.
Misinformed? No more than everyone else who heard the original story, and only to the extent that I did not find other explainations for the incident.
Ignorant? Sure. That's not a failing, its merely a correctible condition.
Calm discussion is one thing. Slinging FUD accusations is another.
Ok, I'll bite. How about the USS Yorktown shutdown in 1997. A Windows NT bug crashed their engine control system and required that they be towed to port. Dockside repairs took several days. You can get the full story here.
Had this happened in a battle, it would have likely resulted in loss of life and probably the ship.
Does anybody other than Apple and IBM use it?
It is used in many of the US's modern weapons, particularly ones that need to process lots of image (seeker) data in real time.
Oh, and the Spirit & Opportunity Mars rovers use hardened PPCs if I recall.
faster than a speeding popup...
more powerful than a Beowulf cluster of those...
able to destroy entire webservers with a single link..
Its Super Slashdot!
Sorry, Mr. Mxyzptlk made me do it. Cheers.
which will then sit there and look cool, and do absolutely nothing since there is no hard disk, keyboard, or mouse.
Which will then be the first 3 hardware hacks done after making it Darwin/Linux/OSDeuxJour bootable.
I.V.
I meant widen the staff head *circumference* to 5", not widen the display curve.
Need? Who said anything about needing it? Said I wanted to make one.
If you really want a 'useful' reason: how about a simple computer that you can use while outdoors that you don't need to store in a backpack, stick in a pocket, or wear ala Steve Mann. I want to see if a staff computer might actually *be* useful.
But I do like your idea of waving it menacingly at those rascalous whippersnappers. 'dag-nab-it' is a little long for enter. Perhaps 'dang-it'?
cheers,
I.V.
I've wanted to build a custom portable computer into a staff/walking stick for a while. This would be perfect for the display. A 2 inch curve is about right to wrap around the top of a staff, particularly if it is widened to about a 5 inch circumference at the top.
I agree. I don't think they can kill, or even seriously maim the GPL without doing violence to copyright and/or contract law (not that the SC has already done that in Eldred v. Ashcroft, as you pointed out). I believe the worst they can do is call into question certain parts of the GPL.
I was just stating Darl & Company's twisted belief is that when people GPL code it means that the code has really been put into the public domain.
Their reasoning is that:
1) the intent behind GPLing software is to make the code freely available to the public (lie/error #1).
2) Since the GPL is "obviously" illegal (lie/error #2) AND unconstitutional (lie/error #3), then GPLed code automatically becomes Public Domain (lie/error #3) because the author intended it to be freely available (reprise lie/error #1) and they can use it however they want (lie/error #4).
I definitely think their position is completely wrong. In fact, I have found it hard to follow their so-called reasoning all along.
In other words, if the GPL is valid, then SCO has no case. If the GPL is invalid, then SCO is breaking the copyright of lots of individual copyright holders. Either way, they lose
I agree, but that isn't what SCO is hoping.
SCO has argued both directly and indirectly that when the GPL is declared invalid, then any GPLed software will be in the public domain and not covered under ANY copyright protection.
As far as SCO's officers are concerned, they can use SAMBA or any other GPLed software however they want because its already in the public domain because the GPL is illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, and fattening.
SCO Group is a bunch of lying, grasping, petty intellectual property thieves. And like most petty people, they see everyone else as being like themselves, only worse.
For months I couldn't figure out if SCO Group's main problem was that their 'leaders' are terminally stupid or terminally greedy.
I finally realized that they are both.
Not to bring down the Spirit guys or their great work, but their talk of pioneering 30cm moves sound a bit dull compared with Lunokhod
Yup, they sure don't build them like they used to... Why in my day we did things in space... put men on the Moon... robots were big clunky and lasted for years... Hey where are you going ya young whipper-snapper...
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Cheers,
I.V.
How about we put Hubble on the Moon? It might make a nice little observatory and you don't have to worry about its failing gyros... assuming you could land it without crashing AND figure out how to make it work on the ground.
I know its unrealistic, but it sounds cool. Much better than making Hubble a "ballistically implanted reef" (got to love that phrase).
It was fully demonstrated in 1974 with a single person vehicle on a mile-long track, so it did exist... 30 years ago.
What makes it different is the way lift force is generated. It uses Lenz induction to generate an opposing magnetic field in the track. Much like an airplane, the faster the vehicle goes the more lift force is generated. This makes the track cheaper, easier to build & maintain, and easily mass produced. The safety factor is better and the speeds can be higher because the cruising clearance goes up with the speed (15 cm clearance at about 330 mph).
It does still need to actively control the things like magnet power and flight stability, but far less than the other two types of maglevs. As a bonus you get to steal alot of analysis and dynamic control solutions from aircraft technology.
What mortally wounded magneplane is that the U.S. Government abandoned all its maglev train research in the mid-1970s. We abandoned alot of things back then for stupid reasons. The last Saturn 5 rocket sits rusting on the ground at Kennedy Space Center for no good reason other than space was a "been there, done that" issue for Congress, as well as a successful Democratic program under a Republican (Nixon) administration.
The other blow that kept it down was that someone did ONE study that showed that the direct repulsion method resulted in a slightly higher (10%) lift/drag ratio than the magneplane design. What the study did not account for was all the other real-world factors: maximum top speed, total cost of operation, safety, right-of-way requirements, etc.
Something similar happened in the '90s when NASA selected the Lockheed Venture Star SSTO (single stage to orbit) design over the McDonald-Douglas Delta Clipper SSTO. Lockheed had a rather poor and overly challenging paper design, which ultimately failed in development. McD. had a working phase one development vehicle that had been flying hover & swoop tests over New Mexico for over a year. Better designs get left behind all too often. It isn't because they 'don't really exist'. All to often they get intentionally torpedoed because they work too well.
After I posted last night, I found some additional 2002 research that stated lower speed mageplanes could use permanent magnets instead of superconducting magnets. I haven't seen anything else other than some comparative design studies done in 1990.
BTW, high-temperature superconductors are good enough now that they can be used in industrial applications. So it would require liquid nitrogen and not liquid helium for a powered magnet design.
Funny that you should mention that maglevs have more in common with planes that trains.
Back in 1969 some MIT researchers came up with a 3rd type of maglev vehicle. They called the whole system Magneplane. It appeared to be a real breakthrough idea.
A little background. Maglev trains can generally be divided into two design types: attractors and repulsors:
The attractor seeks to levitate the train by maintaining a dynamically stabilized attractive lift up to the rails. The clearance is usually millimeters and the control problems get exponentially worse with higher speeds. It also means that the linear motor is seperate from the attractor magnets, which adds to the cost and complextity. Overall, not a very good solution for economical high-speed transport.
The repulsor system typically uses coils embedded in the track to lift the train. As you can imagine this makes the track quite expensive as well as providing some rather interesting system control problems. Throw in other things like having the track figure out the train movement dynamics, drag problems due to induction, etc, and it becomes obvious that this approach is inherently limited too.
Now we come to the 3rd approach that MIT's Henry Kolm and Richard Thornton devised. Instead of using magnetism to replace a train's wheels (what the other approaches do), they decided to create a magnetic 'flight' system. It is simplicity itself: use the Lentz magnetic induction force to levitate a moving train. Put a superconducting field magnet in the bottom of the vehicle. Put the vehicle on a trough shaped aluminum track. Run it on small wheels until the train 'lifts' off the track due to magnetic induction. You can propel the train with conventional ducted fans or jet engines, or you can put linear electro-magnetic 'kicker' motors at the bottom of some (not all) of the track sections for quieter flight and more efficient propulsion. The track is competitive with current high-speed rail costs (US$15M per mile) and half the cost of other maglev systems ($36M-$48M). The track doesn't have to have millimeter tolerances, as the vehicle rides multiple centimeters above the track. In fact, the higher the speed the higher it rides above the track, which makes it much safer too. You get to run the vehicle at much higher speeds. Because its flying, it naturally banks into the track curves. This means that you can run tighter (and thus less expensive) curves. It is inherently safe, because if you lose power to the track propulsors or the internal magnet then you glide safely to a stop.
And they thought of this in 1969.
It doesn't look like they have done much with this since 1999. Their web page hasn't been updated in quite a while.
I've seen far too many great ideas like this languish and die over the years. It drives me nuts.
Maybe someone will "rediscover" it someday
Cheers,
I.V.
I immediately pictured a logo with the little red guy slam dunking a basketball, with the caption "NetBSD: Nothing But Net" might be good.
I.V.
Yours is more accurate, but the analogy I thought of when I read SCO's "prove you aren't stealing from us" line was the age old 'bad cop' question:
"When did you stop beating your wife!"
The important thing is not the current but the power...As more power is used on the output side, the current and the relative phase change on the input side to supply more power to the piezoelectric resonator.
Exactly right. I think sfe_software's confusion may come from not being able to visualize the mechanisms which cause power draw on the output side of the piezo to affect power draw on the input side.
IANAP, but here goes:
The piezo element is sitting there with no input power applied and nothing connected to the output side. You connect a voltage pulse to the input side. The piezo element starts to vibrate from the pulsing voltage due to piezo-electric effect. The element hasn't reached its natural capacity to store mechanical power yet (eg its resonance frequency), so the current flowing from the power source increases due to the power draw by the piezo element.
When the piezo element can absorb no more power (eg it is at resonance), the current draw from the input drops off. The voltage pulse is still driving the piezo element, but much less power is being transfered now.
The piezo element is now vibrating at its natural resonance frequency and a small amount of power is being lost from friction (heat) and natural emission (heat/light/sound). The piezo element requires some power from the input side to maintain its present vibrational resonance. If you pulled the plug on the input side, the resonance vibrations in the piezo element would quickly decay away to nothing due to friction.
Now see what happens when you connect an electric load across the output side of the piezo element:
The vibrations in the piezo element are creating a voltage across the element's output side due again to the piezo electric effect. No power is being consumed at the output, because no current is flowing. Now connect a load to element's output side. The load sees a voltage and draws power as a result. Vibrational energy in the the piezo element is now being transformed into current in the load. Since there is now less vibrational energy in the piezo element (it is not at resonance anymore), the element starts pulling in power from the input side. The more power that gets sucked out of the element by the load, the more that the piezo element sucks out of its input. So power is transfered from the element's input side to the load on its output side.
So the more power you draw from the piezo element, the more gets pulled in from the input source.
That's a simple step-by-step summary of the process. I know its more complicated than what I described, but I think the description hits the high points.
Hope it helps, sfe_software visualize it.
Cheers,
I.V.
Thanks! Google is my friend. I wouldn't have found that info very fast without it.
The NPR story sounds fishy to me. Its more likely an "elephant repellant" logic error (can't remember the 'real' name of the logical fallacy): "I bought an Elephant Repellant and it works!", "How do you know its not a scam?", "See any elephants around here?"
Basically they may have a false correlation between two facts: 1) gay marriage legalized 2) marriages went to hell. The reasons for #2 are most likely completely unrelated to #1. I think my KJV Bible is safe and will remain BBQ sauce free.
Cheers,
I.V.
- The primary purpose of a marriage is to grant legal status to a man and a woman for the purpose of raising a family.
I agree that is the main traditional purpose of marriage. It is not the current reality, though. According to the U.S Census Bureau 1997 Population Profile, there are more U.S. marriages without children than ones with children: 28.8% (childless) vs. 25.0% (with children) of all households. If we generously assume that half of that 28.8% are couples whose children are now out of the house, then you still get 14.4% of all of the U.S. marriages are childless. Given that the report stated that there were 99.6 million households in 1996, that means that there were at least 14 million couples in the U.S. enjoying the legal status of marriage without producing the desired and protected social benefit(eg kids).
Now look at that pg 29 chart again. Notice that it shows non-family households totaled 5.1% in 1996. That works out to about 5 million non-married multi-person households. Lets assume that sexual preference statistics hold and that roughly 10% of those households are same-sex relationships. That means there were about 1 million gay/lesbian couples living together in the U.S. in 1996. Lets further assume that ALL of them would get married if they could (a bad assumption but bear with me). That means that the total number of childless marriages would, at most, go from 14 million to 15 million. That's a change of 7%. This is neither a threat to the American Way Of Life (TM, Pat. Pend, Your mileage may vary) or a huge change. Even if homosexuality weirds you out (it does me even though I've got a few gay friends), this is obviously an outdated reason to restrict marrage to bisexual couples. There are enough married couples already who, by choice or circumstance, are not having kids. Adding a few more to that list isn't going to do any harm and may in fact do some social good.
- Marriage is 'special'. Places that have allowed same sexed marriages have seen increased divorce and infidelity. Same sexed marriage takes away the 'specialness' of marriage.,
This isn't a secular argument, its a thinly disquised religious argument. I'll eat my copy of the King James Bible if you can show me REAL statistics that back this up. Even if true, divorce has risen to near the 50% mark without the morally-corrupting influence of same-sex marriages. And infidelity increases, why? Are all the straight married dudes trying to re-affirm their masculinity with a little after-hours "work" becsuse they saw the gay couple next door kissing goodbye in the morning? Please throw this argument back into the oven, it hasn't cooked yet.
- Marriage is not a right, it is, at best, a tradition or custom. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman.
A textbook example of circular reasoning: "marriages can't be same-sex, because marriages aren't same-sex". As far as it being "at best a tradition or custom", in our society it carries considerably more legal weight and privilege than simple tradition and custom. There are real, tangible benefits to marrage: clear lines of inheritance, property co-ownership, inclusion in medical benefits, etc. Of course the social aspect is just as important too. Being married you get the benefit of the social acknowledgement of your commitment to your partner. I argue that marriage not only isn't a quaint little custom, it is the foundation of society at large and thus IS a right. Just because the sexual preferences of the two people weirds us out doesn't mean we should deny them the right and the privilege of joining together in civil union.
A very long response to a short post.
Happy Holidays,
I.V.
Ah yes the Lloyd's bailout, good catch. Other major insurance companies usually get bailout moneys from the government when natural disasters occur. Its a big part of most "emergency relief" funds. Most people don't realize that its happening, since news organizations are usually more interested in covering the disasters themselves.
That said, insurance companies still make very good money using what appear to be basic cliological-style tools: mass behavior studies, death statistics, etc.
Government bailouts of insurance companies seem to me to be (optimistically) more about trying to assure the continuity of insurance coverage so that people who need it are paid what they are owed when disaster occurs. Of course the cynical (me included) also note that the insurance companies are heavy lobbyists and supporters of those in power, so bailouts are really just a way of paying off the insurance companies for previous "favors". No matter which bailout reason you believe, its just the government making sure the "house" (insurance companies) never loses so bad that the "game" is shut down.
Advertisers similarly make money by predicting who will buy what kind of products/services and what will increase those sales using statistics about image exposure, target group demographics, sub-group buying habits, and so on.
Ultimately it is possible to predict and manipulate mass behavior sufficiently well to achieve your goals. Businesses and political parties rely more and more on predictive modeling and manipulation to achieve changes in mass behavior. Its working too. Basically, "they" have succeeded (whether by accident or design) in using these tools to turn the U.S. into a FUD driven mass of techno-peasant consumers.
Now where did I put that remote...
I.V.
Hmmm, guess all those multi-billion dollar Insurance and Advertising companies went broke years ago and nobody noticed. Chaos theory of course destroys ALL attempts at statistical analysis.
I recommend you read the latest re-printing of Michael Flynn's In The Country of the Blind. Make sure you read the appendices he added to the latest addition. I think you will be surprised at just how close we are to the beginnings of Cliology (aka "psychohistory").
Even if you don't buy the premise of the book, its a great read.
I.V.
Tolerance is a two-way street, people.
I think I just found a bumper sticker for my car.
Thanks!