50kg is still pretty damn heavy. Even a bodybuilder who lifts weights could not hold 50kg in each hand with their farm fully extended for more than a few seconds. You can't compare it to a forklift as forklifts simply lift things up and down. They can't easily lift things into place or position them at awkward angles. This suit can.
But forklifts can lift a whole lot of weight for their size. The little lift at my work lifts 3000lbs/1360kg and weighs about twice that to counterbalance the load. Smaller, short wheel base forklifts are counterbalanced using large a large weight at the rear. Think about it, you have 1000kg on the forks and moving at around 8-10kmh and you suddenly need to stop. With equal balance the lift would tip forward. So the heavy as hell counterweight makes sure that doesn't happen as the weight behind the mast is way more then what is on the mast. If you look at the rear of any lift it looks like a thick chunk of steel and it pretty much is. I bought an old 4000 lb/1814 kg capacity Clark Y40 for scrap value and towed it home on a 5 ton trailer. Man that thing was H-E-A-V-Y, 7000 lbs/3175 kg heavy, I thought I was going to blow the tranny in my 1 ton van. The frame consists of two 30-35mm steel plates that make up the side of the body, a large cross plate and a counterweight at the rear. Everything else just bolts to that huge mass.
So now that you have a good idea as to how stupid heavy forklifts are, the 100 kg lift capacity of a man sized suit appears much more sane for manipulating loads with precision and dexterity in a space constrained area. They are targeting the use for search and rescue but I would imagine such a suit could be used for any number of tasks which require one to repeatedly lift and maneuver heavy objects.
So what if the article does not have a huge conversation tacked on. You expect 500 comments about video game lighting? While the article is in fact very nerdy and jives with the whole "news for nerds" thing. It's one of those articles that caters to a limited number of people, namely video game developers. For most people its overly technical and beyond their understanding. There are plenty of other technical articles that don't get a large number of posts either.
Its different. I never did coke but a friend had a habit for a short time. He described it as having the biggest set of balls on the planet without the drunken haze and motor impairment along with a shit load of energy.
The best is when you see rental box trucks from Budget or Penske with bent frame rails. People don't realize that forklifts weigh twice what they lift to counterbalance. So a forklift that picks up 4000 pounds (common size) weighs around 8000. Drive that with a 2000 pound skid into a truck and you better hope it can deal with 10000 pounds concentrated into a few feet.
Actually the push is to move to installing APU's or Auxiliary Power Units. They typically have a small one or two cylinder diesel engine which is used to provide heat via the waste heat from the engine or cooling from an AC compressor. An added generator keeps the power on. The APU also keeps the main engine warm to eliminate cold starts. The problem is they are very costly, around 10 grand or more. Plus with all of the new emissions control equipment there is limited frame rail space left on most trucks.
Caterpillar, before they dropped out of the on-highway engine business, had an interesting system. They used a high voltage generator in place of the vehicle alternator which provided a few hundred volts (something like 300 volts). The high voltage low current was turned into 12V for engine and truck electronics while the 300V ran a heat pump for cabin/sleeper heating or cooling. When the truck was parked either a small diesel generator APU or shore power from a 120 or 240V socket could be used for heating, cooling and power. It was a bit complicated and I don't know if it ever made it to market. It was the only system to offer a true no idle solution if you used shore power.
There was also a startup company who is/was installing these large overhead HVAC units that had a tube which you stuck through your window and gives you heat, cooling and even offered an internet terminal.
You dont have too many of those drivers left. Today you have steerwheel holders who just look at it as a job and receive little training. Many are turned loose after just 2 weeks with an instructor. It used to be you had to work your way up from driving small vans or box trucks and then spent a few months with a professional before they trusted you behind the wheel of a big rig.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Ports mainly deal in bulk in the form of 20 and 40 foot intermodal containers and ro-ro (roll on/roll off). Ports are bottlenecks as they are points of entry or departure for freight to and from this country. You don't send a container on a ship from NY to florida, you do that via rail or truck. The problem people have with trucking is the interstate moving of goods where it might be more efficient to move items via rail from point to point within the borders. But in the end its more simple and efficient time and cost wise to ship via truck.
I know a guy who used to drive the F900's for them. He is retired now but every ones of those monsters were either scrapped or sold to an exporter where they went to South America. It is unknown if any of those trucks survived. Most of the CCC mixers they owned went to Quadrozzi who still operate in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway.
I am an antique truck nut, I even own a 1961 Mack B61T mostly all stock including the turbocharged 673 diesel, 9 speed duplex, jake brake, and Kaiser roof air conditioner. If I could find one of the F900's I can die a happy man lol.
I'm no friend of trucks, but I wanted to clarify that 80,000 is the typical maximum weight allowed for a semi-truck. That would more likely be a shorter-haul truck moving gravel or other materials instead of less dense cargo like Walmart products. For the long-haul, materials are transported by train.
It depends on the load being hauled but you would be surprised how heavy freight can get, even Walmart freight. A load of breakfast cereal or mattresses might be light but books, liquids and other bulky items like potting soil are not. So ensuring their trucks can gross out as close to 80k as they can get gives them flexibility.
80,000 is the federal weight limit for interstate highways. Most jurisdictions stick to that number for their limit but there are many that allow more with, and sometimes without, permits. In certain parts you can apply for overweight permits to carry more than the 80k. For example in NY you can apply for an overweight permit for dump trucks with 7 axles (semi trailer type) to carry 117,000 pounds/53070kg. Tankers can also go upward of 100,000 or perhaps more using more axles but not in NYC. I know a retired truck driver who hauled intermodal containers to/from the NY and NJ ports and he frequently ran into containers that weighed more than the container was rated for. One container had him hitting the scales at 90,000 pounds, 10,000 over the legal limit.
And I can assure you that while 80,000 pounds sounds like a lot it really isn't compared to vocational and heavy haul. Back in the day there was a concrete company in NY called Certified Concrete. They had custom built Mack F900's who's giant tandem rear axles alone carried 80,000 pounds. then throw on the 23,000 pound front axle and you had 103,000 lbs gross vehicle weight on just THREE axles. If you lived in NYC around the 70's you would remember these polkadotted monsters. Heavy haul can go nuts but typically lowboy's rated 50+ tons are not uncommon for moving large machinery.
Because in the end a truck still needs to get the freight to and from the train. There aren't enough rail terminals to be feasible for this to work. You have the problem of rail yard congestion as trucks line up and wait for hours to pick up their trailer or freight.
It sounds nice in theory but in the end its much simpler and economical to move smaller non bulk loads via truck.
What vehicles cannot be registered or operated on New York State sidewalks, streets or highways? You can't register or operate any of the motorized devices from the list below on any street, highway, parking lot, sidewalk or other area in New York State that allows public motor vehicle traffic. You may be arrested if you do.
Motor-assisted Bicycle - a bicycle to which a small motor is attached. A motor-assisted bicycle doesn't qualify for a registration as a motorcycle, moped or ATV and doesn't have the same equipment.
Reading the kickstarter page reveals more legal information:
Recently passed legislation in NYC (Local Law 40) outlaws "motorized scooters", defined as: "motorized scooter" shall mean any wheeled device that has handlebars that is designed to be stood or sat upon by the operator, is powered by an electric motor or by a gasoline motor that is capable of propelling the device without human power and is not capable of being registered with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles."
So since the ShareRoller requires one to be going 1-2mph before the motor will kick in (~one pedal stroke), it's not technically capable of propelling the device without human power, and is therefore designed to be exempt from Local Law 40.
And then this:
ShareRoller will technically require 'type approval' due to application of motor power without use of pedals, however there are no known cases of enforcement of the requirement for type approval.
The information from the DMV website is pretty cut and dry. This device turns a regular bike into a motor assisted bicycle. So its still illegal. NYC defines its own laws so while the system might technically be legal in NYC, its still illegal outside of NYC.
Bottom line is this: buyer beware, it is not clear whether this is legal or not. It would be a shame if the device gets people into trouble. The inventor should consult with the city and get a clear explanation as to whether this device is in fact legal for street use.
In a nutshell real time implies determinism, meaning it responds to interrupts or allows a task to run in a given amount of time in a guaranteed manner. E.g. if you needed to respond to an interrupt in less than 100us or a task MUST RUN every 10ms, an RTOS can guarantee that provided the hardware can handle the task at hand. in a timely manner.
Some people call a near lag free video display from a camera to a monitor real time or perhaps even a video game running smoothly (60+FPS). While they run in real time in the sense that they respond quickly to input, there is nothing under the hood which guarantees that those frames will be delivered on time all the time. They may experience lag or stuttering if another process running in the system needs a lot of CPU or I/O.
Whereas in a real time system, the camera or video game would force the OS to comply with their timing constraints. E.g. if the camera sent an interrupt that a frame was ready, the OS would drop everything and service that interrupt. Then a process handling the video frames would also be guaranteed so much time to take the frame and render it to the screen. Every other process would have to wait for free time. So if the CPU could render a frame in 5ms and you needed a frame to be rendered every 20ms on the dot for a constant timed 50FPS, then an RTOS could guarantee that. Other processes would have to wait. In a non RTOS, the OS would juggle processes, interrupts and threads as it sees fit.
Though, you have to be careful how you design because too many interrupts or long processing times can lead to disastrous performance as other processes are blocked while a real-time process and interrupts swamp the CPU. If that happens, you need dedicated hardware like fast micro-controllers, DSP's or FPGA's to do the heavy lifting and a RTOS on another CPU taking the processed data and doing something useful with it.
"TFA is confusing" Glad i'm not the only one, bear with me....
From what I can understand as a non-network-admin is that some private networks have their own suffix like.home and these can be mistakenly resolved for a public TLD since.home is now a valid TLD like.com. So if my home network is lordtaw.home and I have two systems: linux.lordtaw.home and windows.lordtaw.home, my router/DNS server can mistakenly try to resolve those domains to an external IP if it not configured correctly. And the fix if for external "public" DNS servers to return a specific loopback address which would hopefully show up in logs to alert me to the fact that my routers DNS server should know better than to try to publically resolve lordtaw.home over the internet. Correct?
True, Xenomai is like having a separate OS but the processes it runs are native Linux processes as Xenomai is a kernel module. To illustrate, I use a stupid Xzibit Yo Dawg meme: Yo dawg, I heard you like kernels. So we put a kernel in yo kernel so you can run deterministic processes while you normal process.
Xenomai isn't a totally separate environment. Xenomai processes can access anything a Linux process can (tread lightly here). Files, network etc. But hardware that needs to be controlled in a deterministic manner needs its own RT driver as that bypasses the kernel.
I never worked directly with windows RT development but I have used a CNC motion controller from Aerotech which does. They use INtime (older versions used Ardence RTX) to run their software motion controller (SMC) which communicated with intelligent drives over firewire. They supply RT drivers for common firewire chipsets like VIA and Ti as well as offer RT drivers for fieldbus cards like EtherCAT. They also offer a software PAC that runs alongside the SMC under INtime. User applications and their CNC HMI uses a C/C++ or.net library to talk to a communications library which in turn uses shared memory to talk to the real time processes. IPC using shared memory is fast and is also non blocking so there is no delay when an RT process needs to read or write shared memory.
disclaimer: I am not an RTOS expert but someone who dabbles in embedded hardware and software. I have done lots of research on the topic.
When Is a Better Career Opportunity Worth a Pay Cut?
When you can comfortably think it through and say to yourself: "This new job looks like it will be way more fulfilling than what I am doing now" *OR* "This new job looks like it won't have me looking to jump off a bridge every day like my current job"
*AND*
When you are financially stable enough to do so. E.g. you can live comfortably enough with your new salary while being able to satisfy debts (loans, mortgages etc.).
Then you can make your choice. If the new job doesn't pan out, the you keep looking. My current job is challenging yet fun, I do a range of things from custom software and electronics to industrial automation. Right now I am integrating a new IPG solid state laser (4kW, its a bad ass machine but they do go to 50kW!) with an existing workstation and moving the old pulsed laser to a dedicated workstation for a high volume job coming in. The awesome part is they leave me alone to design and build the systems while ALMOST handing me a blank check. I have really sharpened my skills and have worked with some very talented senior people. So far I really like working here. Is the pay good? Nope, its terrible for what I am doing but I am not anywhere near struggling to live. Plus I do work on the side which brings in extra cash when I need it. I am mainly happy in life. And that is the most important thing.
Yes, It was removed and is included in the mainline kernel. As to whether it is enabled by default is up to the distro. Steam OS is using it by default presumably for audio purposes (e.g. voice communication packets are guaranteed to be processed every XXXms). Or they could be using it for external inputs that needs some deterministic processing such as synchronizing the process for calculating the coordinates of accelerometers in a VR headset with the game. Other distros have no need to enable it as allowing random applications to specify priority could lead to disastrous performance.
To better explain real time and determinism: If you *absolutely need* precision timing for interrupts or code execution then preempt_rt/xenomai/RTOS is what you need. So say if I have a mechanical switch on a machine that sends an interrupt to a PC with an I/O card. That interrupt and its handler/process needs to respond to it within 60us, no exceptions otherwise something very bad happens mechanically in the machine because of timing. You don't want the machine process to wait for the ssh daemon to finish. You want the OS to drop everything and service that interrupt/process, NOW.
If your video game needs to render frames as fast as it can then you don't need real time, you just need a really fast CPU/GPU. You don't care whether the frames are guaranteed every 20ms(50FPS), or that they sync with another process down to the us. You just want them rendered as fast as possible to the screen.
RTOS implies determinism, the ability to execute things in a timely manner. That means prioritizing interrupts and allowing high priority threads and processes to preempt the kernel and other core OS processes or threads. Many people mistake real time for processing something as it arrives into the computer e.g. a near latency free video image on screen from a camera or reading a stream of GPS coords from a serial port. Lets go with the camera example. While this sounds like real time, there is no software or hardware that guarantees that the image software and camera driver will always deliver an image to the screen in a guaranteed and timely manner. For example if you start the camera application and you play a video game, does the "realtime" video application retain its low latency? Or will it stutter as its process fights for CPU time with the video game process as the OS sees fit? In a true RTOS, the video software AND driver TELLS the OS their priority and the OS obeys. They can be assigned a high priority so any other software will have to wait until there is spare CPU time.
Linux has two routes to achieve this: CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT Patches to the Linux kernel which removed the various locks in the kernel (aka big kernel lock) which allows a process to be prioritized over the kernel itself. IRQ's are also prioritized. You can run various processes and assign them a priority.
Xenomai Xenomai is a dual kernel approach where a vanilla Linux kernel is patched with Xenomai. It creates a separate kernel that allows its processes to preempt the Linux kernel and takes over handling interrupts through the I-pipe. This means all interrupts are handled by the Xenomai kernel and if an interrupt is destined for the Linux kernel, Xenomai passes them as a virtual interrupt. Xenomai also features its own HAL allowing hardware to be dedicated to Xenomai processes via RT drivers. You can also do things like dedicate a processor core to a specific task to guarantee there is ample CPU time. And Xenomai has a neat little trick, its kernel is a nucleus which can run various "skins" which are API's; e.g. you can use RT code using Native, POSIX, uITRON, VxWorks and a few other RT API's.
YMMV but both solutions have tradeoffs. There is a paper published (https://www.osadl.org/fileadmin/dam/rtlws/12/Brown.pdf) which compares the two popular Linux RT solutions. Preempt_rt is easier to implement as it is part of the mainline kernel, you only need to include a few headers and some gobals to define the process priority. But in tests it shows higher timing jitter than Xenomai. If you want maximum performance, then you need to look into Xenomai which requires a bit more setup, patching and using the various API's and RT hardware drivers.
BTW, Windows also has RT dual kernel systems. So yes even windows can be an RTOS. Look up Ardence RTX and INtime.
"I just wish my mom had access to the water your mom drank. Maybe I would have sprung fully fledged into the delivery room, ready to go job hunting the next day.
Microsoft hasn't changed its standpoint on trying to take control of everyone's computing experience. I seen to recall the secure EFI mandate where only a signed OS could boot on a PC (e.g. Windows 8). There was plenty of Microsoft hate to go around as people thought that a Windows 8 PC/server could not boot an unsigned OS like Linux or BSD simply because it would be impractical for the open source communities to keep signing new kernels. And of course Windows 8 tried to force everyone to like MS tablets by making your desktop a clumsy tablet.
But here is my take. I have been using Windows since 3.1 on my 486DX 33MHz. Since Windows 2000 came out the stability has improved immensely and Windows 7 is probably the best yet. The bad windows days were the 95/98 and god help you if you had..... ME. It does what it needs to do and most problems are bought about by bad hardware or bad drivers which, IMHO is the leading cause of Windows butt-hurt. Sure its a virus magnet because of security problems but I have never been infected simply because I know better than to open a random email attachment. Its the clueless folks who contribute to the bot nets. There is plenty of free and opensource software for windows, open office, gimp, Inkscape, kicad etc that enables most people to only have to pay for windows and use free software. If you need professional software then you pay for it. Simple. I mainly use windows for playing games though that is less and less of an issue as I don't play as many games. I also use it for a drafting CAD program, kicad and keeping track of my financials using open office. If I need to quickly work in Linux I can run my Linux VM using Virtual box (I never liked dual booting, last time I did it was in the 90's to play DOS games on 6.22 along side Windows 95).
Do I use operating systems besides Windows? You bet. I run Linux on almost every other system I own: media center PC, laptop, spare PC and development PC. My little home server runs FreeNAS, so that is FreeBSD and my router runs m0n0wall, also BSD based.
So Windows peacefully co-exists with opensource in my home.
GG is like Nitendo's Virtual Boy in a lot of respects... except VB was cooler.
The Virtual Boy was a lot of things: bulky, clumsy, headache inducing, boring, battery killing etc. But it was not cool. Its only hope of having any coolness comes from the fact that it is a piece of Nintendo history. Thats it.
My friend had one plus a few games and I played with it for a while. One word to describe it: terrible. He said I could have it as I wanted it for its collectors value. His mother threw it away without his knowing. It was a real shame.
If you block out the privacy invading camera for a moment (believe me, I am no fan of it) Google Glass is a pretty damn cool piece of technology. Its not perfect but I can imagine all sorts of applications especially in the areas of augmented reality.
I imagine it would be pretty fantastic in these areas: Imagine a construction crew arriving at a location and they pull up the plans which are then overlaid right before their eyes. They can literally see where the numerous underground pipes, wires and other subterranean items are as if they had x-ray vision. The crew would have a nice bright green shape drawn on the ground where they need to dig.
Or how about fixing your car/computer/whatever? Look under the hood and a guide highlights the part or area you need to investigate. Same can go for building maintenance. Just where the hell is the circuit breaker for the theater lights anyway? Oh I just follow this little green path on the floor to the glowing green square around the panel box and flip breaker #4.
Navigation can be overlaid in real time which is easier than a nav system because you follow a line painted right on the road as you are looking at it. Though that might be a thing of the past with self driving cars on the horizon.
And too many other things to list. Its really exciting tech but that damn camera ruins it for everyone.
I am no psychologist but from the stories it sounds as if the people were surrounded by chaos. They had no loving parent, no guidance and no one to rely on for help. Essentially they are lost souls. They go from one bad situation to another and make poor choices simply because they can't understand a normal life. And even though people try to do better later in life they have a lot of emotional baggage from their youth that comes back to haunt them. And that is when history repeats itself.
Imagine never growing up without money or a parent who gave a damn about you. I lost my father when I was 14 but my mother made sure we had money and got an education. She was on top of us pretty good and saw to it that we weren't getting into trouble or hanging out with the wrong crowd. And if my mother needed help there were other family members to help out.
Contrast that with having little to no family. No money. No education. No hope of ever getting out of that life. It must leave a person with a great feeling of despair. Its so depressing that I can't fathom it. And that chaos is passed down from one generation to another. But cycles can and are broken by determined individuals, often with outside help. Its not completely hopeless but for people in those situations they just don't understand how to get help.
I have one of their routers here at work (not my decision I can assure you). It works but its web config menu sucks and lacks many of the features you find in a decent router OS like m0n0wall or pfSense. But that is every crappy low end router. At home I run m0n0wall on an Alix board. That system is *ROCK SOLID* and I highly recommend it if you want a basic yet solid router for a connection of upward of 50 mbps or a bit more. If you want more speed for 100mbps+ then go with a Soekris NET6501 and pfSense.
*BUT* I have used Netgear switches exclusively at home since I bought my first networking kit from them back in 1999 (2 PCI 10/100 nics and a 4 port 10/100 hub). I have probably owned 6 or 7 different netgear switches over the years and they worked perfectly up until they were upgraded or retired. I don't buy the home networking products in the ugly plastic cases. Instead I only buy the business oriented switches in the metal cases. Sure you spend anywhere from 70-100 bucks for an 8 port switch (or a bit more if you want a smart switch) but they have yet to fail on me. Right now at home I have a Netgear GS110TP, the ALIX running m0n0wall and an Ubiquiti UniFi AP (its an awesome AP). You couldn't ask for a better, more solid home networking setup.
Slashdot Mirror
50kg is still pretty damn heavy. Even a bodybuilder who lifts weights could not hold 50kg in each hand with their farm fully extended for more than a few seconds. You can't compare it to a forklift as forklifts simply lift things up and down. They can't easily lift things into place or position them at awkward angles. This suit can.
But forklifts can lift a whole lot of weight for their size. The little lift at my work lifts 3000lbs/1360kg and weighs about twice that to counterbalance the load. Smaller, short wheel base forklifts are counterbalanced using large a large weight at the rear. Think about it, you have 1000kg on the forks and moving at around 8-10kmh and you suddenly need to stop. With equal balance the lift would tip forward. So the heavy as hell counterweight makes sure that doesn't happen as the weight behind the mast is way more then what is on the mast. If you look at the rear of any lift it looks like a thick chunk of steel and it pretty much is. I bought an old 4000 lb/1814 kg capacity Clark Y40 for scrap value and towed it home on a 5 ton trailer. Man that thing was H-E-A-V-Y, 7000 lbs/3175 kg heavy, I thought I was going to blow the tranny in my 1 ton van. The frame consists of two 30-35mm steel plates that make up the side of the body, a large cross plate and a counterweight at the rear. Everything else just bolts to that huge mass.
So now that you have a good idea as to how stupid heavy forklifts are, the 100 kg lift capacity of a man sized suit appears much more sane for manipulating loads with precision and dexterity in a space constrained area. They are targeting the use for search and rescue but I would imagine such a suit could be used for any number of tasks which require one to repeatedly lift and maneuver heavy objects.
Oh stop it. You're overreacting.
So what if the article does not have a huge conversation tacked on. You expect 500 comments about video game lighting? While the article is in fact very nerdy and jives with the whole "news for nerds" thing. It's one of those articles that caters to a limited number of people, namely video game developers. For most people its overly technical and beyond their understanding. There are plenty of other technical articles that don't get a large number of posts either.
Its different. I never did coke but a friend had a habit for a short time. He described it as having the biggest set of balls on the planet without the drunken haze and motor impairment along with a shit load of energy.
The best is when you see rental box trucks from Budget or Penske with bent frame rails. People don't realize that forklifts weigh twice what they lift to counterbalance. So a forklift that picks up 4000 pounds (common size) weighs around 8000. Drive that with a 2000 pound skid into a truck and you better hope it can deal with 10000 pounds concentrated into a few feet.
Actually the push is to move to installing APU's or Auxiliary Power Units. They typically have a small one or two cylinder diesel engine which is used to provide heat via the waste heat from the engine or cooling from an AC compressor. An added generator keeps the power on. The APU also keeps the main engine warm to eliminate cold starts. The problem is they are very costly, around 10 grand or more. Plus with all of the new emissions control equipment there is limited frame rail space left on most trucks.
Caterpillar, before they dropped out of the on-highway engine business, had an interesting system. They used a high voltage generator in place of the vehicle alternator which provided a few hundred volts (something like 300 volts). The high voltage low current was turned into 12V for engine and truck electronics while the 300V ran a heat pump for cabin/sleeper heating or cooling. When the truck was parked either a small diesel generator APU or shore power from a 120 or 240V socket could be used for heating, cooling and power. It was a bit complicated and I don't know if it ever made it to market. It was the only system to offer a true no idle solution if you used shore power.
There was also a startup company who is/was installing these large overhead HVAC units that had a tube which you stuck through your window and gives you heat, cooling and even offered an internet terminal.
You dont have too many of those drivers left. Today you have steerwheel holders who just look at it as a job and receive little training. Many are turned loose after just 2 weeks with an instructor. It used to be you had to work your way up from driving small vans or box trucks and then spent a few months with a professional before they trusted you behind the wheel of a big rig.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Ports mainly deal in bulk in the form of 20 and 40 foot intermodal containers and ro-ro (roll on/roll off). Ports are bottlenecks as they are points of entry or departure for freight to and from this country. You don't send a container on a ship from NY to florida, you do that via rail or truck. The problem people have with trucking is the interstate moving of goods where it might be more efficient to move items via rail from point to point within the borders. But in the end its more simple and efficient time and cost wise to ship via truck.
I know a guy who used to drive the F900's for them. He is retired now but every ones of those monsters were either scrapped or sold to an exporter where they went to South America. It is unknown if any of those trucks survived. Most of the CCC mixers they owned went to Quadrozzi who still operate in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway.
I am an antique truck nut, I even own a 1961 Mack B61T mostly all stock including the turbocharged 673 diesel, 9 speed duplex, jake brake, and Kaiser roof air conditioner. If I could find one of the F900's I can die a happy man lol.
It depends on the load being hauled but you would be surprised how heavy freight can get, even Walmart freight. A load of breakfast cereal or mattresses might be light but books, liquids and other bulky items like potting soil are not. So ensuring their trucks can gross out as close to 80k as they can get gives them flexibility.
80,000 is the federal weight limit for interstate highways. Most jurisdictions stick to that number for their limit but there are many that allow more with, and sometimes without, permits. In certain parts you can apply for overweight permits to carry more than the 80k. For example in NY you can apply for an overweight permit for dump trucks with 7 axles (semi trailer type) to carry 117,000 pounds/53070kg. Tankers can also go upward of 100,000 or perhaps more using more axles but not in NYC. I know a retired truck driver who hauled intermodal containers to/from the NY and NJ ports and he frequently ran into containers that weighed more than the container was rated for. One container had him hitting the scales at 90,000 pounds, 10,000 over the legal limit.
And I can assure you that while 80,000 pounds sounds like a lot it really isn't compared to vocational and heavy haul. Back in the day there was a concrete company in NY called Certified Concrete. They had custom built Mack F900's who's giant tandem rear axles alone carried 80,000 pounds. then throw on the 23,000 pound front axle and you had 103,000 lbs gross vehicle weight on just THREE axles. If you lived in NYC around the 70's you would remember these polkadotted monsters. Heavy haul can go nuts but typically lowboy's rated 50+ tons are not uncommon for moving large machinery.
Because in the end a truck still needs to get the freight to and from the train. There aren't enough rail terminals to be feasible for this to work. You have the problem of rail yard congestion as trucks line up and wait for hours to pick up their trailer or freight.
It sounds nice in theory but in the end its much simpler and economical to move smaller non bulk loads via truck.
Excellent. Now I can have freshly fornicated coffe to go with my orange juice.
I am surprised no one has told him motorized bicycles are illegal in NY state:
See here: http://dmv.ny.gov/node/1984
Reading the kickstarter page reveals more legal information:
And then this:
The information from the DMV website is pretty cut and dry. This device turns a regular bike into a motor assisted bicycle. So its still illegal. NYC defines its own laws so while the system might technically be legal in NYC, its still illegal outside of NYC.
Bottom line is this: buyer beware, it is not clear whether this is legal or not. It would be a shame if the device gets people into trouble. The inventor should consult with the city and get a clear explanation as to whether this device is in fact legal for street use.
Emacs killed my dog and Vi sold my identity to a Lebanese woman, i'm now homeless, broke and have no friends. Please be careful when choosing editors!
See my response here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4829197&cid=46333375
In a nutshell real time implies determinism, meaning it responds to interrupts or allows a task to run in a given amount of time in a guaranteed manner. E.g. if you needed to respond to an interrupt in less than 100us or a task MUST RUN every 10ms, an RTOS can guarantee that provided the hardware can handle the task at hand. in a timely manner.
Some people call a near lag free video display from a camera to a monitor real time or perhaps even a video game running smoothly (60+FPS). While they run in real time in the sense that they respond quickly to input, there is nothing under the hood which guarantees that those frames will be delivered on time all the time. They may experience lag or stuttering if another process running in the system needs a lot of CPU or I/O.
Whereas in a real time system, the camera or video game would force the OS to comply with their timing constraints. E.g. if the camera sent an interrupt that a frame was ready, the OS would drop everything and service that interrupt. Then a process handling the video frames would also be guaranteed so much time to take the frame and render it to the screen. Every other process would have to wait for free time. So if the CPU could render a frame in 5ms and you needed a frame to be rendered every 20ms on the dot for a constant timed 50FPS, then an RTOS could guarantee that. Other processes would have to wait. In a non RTOS, the OS would juggle processes, interrupts and threads as it sees fit.
Though, you have to be careful how you design because too many interrupts or long processing times can lead to disastrous performance as other processes are blocked while a real-time process and interrupts swamp the CPU. If that happens, you need dedicated hardware like fast micro-controllers, DSP's or FPGA's to do the heavy lifting and a RTOS on another CPU taking the processed data and doing something useful with it.
"TFA is confusing"
Glad i'm not the only one, bear with me....
From what I can understand as a non-network-admin is that some private networks have their own suffix like .home and these can be mistakenly resolved for a public TLD since .home is now a valid TLD like .com. So if my home network is lordtaw.home and I have two systems: linux.lordtaw.home and windows.lordtaw.home, my router/DNS server can mistakenly try to resolve those domains to an external IP if it not configured correctly. And the fix if for external "public" DNS servers to return a specific loopback address which would hopefully show up in logs to alert me to the fact that my routers DNS server should know better than to try to publically resolve lordtaw.home over the internet. Correct?
True, Xenomai is like having a separate OS but the processes it runs are native Linux processes as Xenomai is a kernel module. To illustrate, I use a stupid Xzibit Yo Dawg meme:
Yo dawg, I heard you like kernels. So we put a kernel in yo kernel so you can run deterministic processes while you normal process.
Xenomai isn't a totally separate environment. Xenomai processes can access anything a Linux process can (tread lightly here). Files, network etc. But hardware that needs to be controlled in a deterministic manner needs its own RT driver as that bypasses the kernel.
I never worked directly with windows RT development but I have used a CNC motion controller from Aerotech which does. They use INtime (older versions used Ardence RTX) to run their software motion controller (SMC) which communicated with intelligent drives over firewire. They supply RT drivers for common firewire chipsets like VIA and Ti as well as offer RT drivers for fieldbus cards like EtherCAT. They also offer a software PAC that runs alongside the SMC under INtime. User applications and their CNC HMI uses a C/C++ or .net library to talk to a communications library which in turn uses shared memory to talk to the real time processes. IPC using shared memory is fast and is also non blocking so there is no delay when an RT process needs to read or write shared memory.
disclaimer: I am not an RTOS expert but someone who dabbles in embedded hardware and software. I have done lots of research on the topic.
When you can comfortably think it through and say to yourself:
"This new job looks like it will be way more fulfilling than what I am doing now"
*OR*
"This new job looks like it won't have me looking to jump off a bridge every day like my current job"
*AND*
When you are financially stable enough to do so. E.g. you can live comfortably enough with your new salary while being able to satisfy debts (loans, mortgages etc.).
Then you can make your choice. If the new job doesn't pan out, the you keep looking. My current job is challenging yet fun, I do a range of things from custom software and electronics to industrial automation. Right now I am integrating a new IPG solid state laser (4kW, its a bad ass machine but they do go to 50kW!) with an existing workstation and moving the old pulsed laser to a dedicated workstation for a high volume job coming in. The awesome part is they leave me alone to design and build the systems while ALMOST handing me a blank check. I have really sharpened my skills and have worked with some very talented senior people. So far I really like working here. Is the pay good? Nope, its terrible for what I am doing but I am not anywhere near struggling to live. Plus I do work on the side which brings in extra cash when I need it. I am mainly happy in life. And that is the most important thing.
Yes, It was removed and is included in the mainline kernel. As to whether it is enabled by default is up to the distro. Steam OS is using it by default presumably for audio purposes (e.g. voice communication packets are guaranteed to be processed every XXXms). Or they could be using it for external inputs that needs some deterministic processing such as synchronizing the process for calculating the coordinates of accelerometers in a VR headset with the game. Other distros have no need to enable it as allowing random applications to specify priority could lead to disastrous performance.
To better explain real time and determinism:
If you *absolutely need* precision timing for interrupts or code execution then preempt_rt/xenomai/RTOS is what you need. So say if I have a mechanical switch on a machine that sends an interrupt to a PC with an I/O card. That interrupt and its handler/process needs to respond to it within 60us, no exceptions otherwise something very bad happens mechanically in the machine because of timing. You don't want the machine process to wait for the ssh daemon to finish. You want the OS to drop everything and service that interrupt/process, NOW.
If your video game needs to render frames as fast as it can then you don't need real time, you just need a really fast CPU/GPU. You don't care whether the frames are guaranteed every 20ms(50FPS), or that they sync with another process down to the us. You just want them rendered as fast as possible to the screen.
RTOS implies determinism, the ability to execute things in a timely manner. That means prioritizing interrupts and allowing high priority threads and processes to preempt the kernel and other core OS processes or threads. Many people mistake real time for processing something as it arrives into the computer e.g. a near latency free video image on screen from a camera or reading a stream of GPS coords from a serial port. Lets go with the camera example. While this sounds like real time, there is no software or hardware that guarantees that the image software and camera driver will always deliver an image to the screen in a guaranteed and timely manner. For example if you start the camera application and you play a video game, does the "realtime" video application retain its low latency? Or will it stutter as its process fights for CPU time with the video game process as the OS sees fit? In a true RTOS, the video software AND driver TELLS the OS their priority and the OS obeys. They can be assigned a high priority so any other software will have to wait until there is spare CPU time.
Linux has two routes to achieve this:
CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT
Patches to the Linux kernel which removed the various locks in the kernel (aka big kernel lock) which allows a process to be prioritized over the kernel itself. IRQ's are also prioritized. You can run various processes and assign them a priority.
Xenomai
Xenomai is a dual kernel approach where a vanilla Linux kernel is patched with Xenomai. It creates a separate kernel that allows its processes to preempt the Linux kernel and takes over handling interrupts through the I-pipe. This means all interrupts are handled by the Xenomai kernel and if an interrupt is destined for the Linux kernel, Xenomai passes them as a virtual interrupt. Xenomai also features its own HAL allowing hardware to be dedicated to Xenomai processes via RT drivers. You can also do things like dedicate a processor core to a specific task to guarantee there is ample CPU time. And Xenomai has a neat little trick, its kernel is a nucleus which can run various "skins" which are API's; e.g. you can use RT code using Native, POSIX, uITRON, VxWorks and a few other RT API's.
YMMV but both solutions have tradeoffs. There is a paper published (https://www.osadl.org/fileadmin/dam/rtlws/12/Brown.pdf) which compares the two popular Linux RT solutions. Preempt_rt is easier to implement as it is part of the mainline kernel, you only need to include a few headers and some gobals to define the process priority. But in tests it shows higher timing jitter than Xenomai. If you want maximum performance, then you need to look into Xenomai which requires a bit more setup, patching and using the various API's and RT hardware drivers.
BTW, Windows also has RT dual kernel systems. So yes even windows can be an RTOS. Look up Ardence RTX and INtime.
"I just wish my mom had access to the water your mom drank. Maybe I would have sprung fully fledged into the delivery room, ready to go job hunting the next day.
Nice Dune reference.
Microsoft hasn't changed its standpoint on trying to take control of everyone's computing experience. I seen to recall the secure EFI mandate where only a signed OS could boot on a PC (e.g. Windows 8). There was plenty of Microsoft hate to go around as people thought that a Windows 8 PC/server could not boot an unsigned OS like Linux or BSD simply because it would be impractical for the open source communities to keep signing new kernels. And of course Windows 8 tried to force everyone to like MS tablets by making your desktop a clumsy tablet.
But here is my take. I have been using Windows since 3.1 on my 486DX 33MHz. Since Windows 2000 came out the stability has improved immensely and Windows 7 is probably the best yet. The bad windows days were the 95/98 and god help you if you had ..... ME. It does what it needs to do and most problems are bought about by bad hardware or bad drivers which, IMHO is the leading cause of Windows butt-hurt. Sure its a virus magnet because of security problems but I have never been infected simply because I know better than to open a random email attachment. Its the clueless folks who contribute to the bot nets. There is plenty of free and opensource software for windows, open office, gimp, Inkscape, kicad etc that enables most people to only have to pay for windows and use free software. If you need professional software then you pay for it. Simple. I mainly use windows for playing games though that is less and less of an issue as I don't play as many games. I also use it for a drafting CAD program, kicad and keeping track of my financials using open office. If I need to quickly work in Linux I can run my Linux VM using Virtual box (I never liked dual booting, last time I did it was in the 90's to play DOS games on 6.22 along side Windows 95).
Do I use operating systems besides Windows? You bet. I run Linux on almost every other system I own: media center PC, laptop, spare PC and development PC. My little home server runs FreeNAS, so that is FreeBSD and my router runs m0n0wall, also BSD based.
So Windows peacefully co-exists with opensource in my home.
Jeez. What are you some kinda gangster rookie? Get with the program greenhorn. That is why you use someone elses car.
GG is like Nitendo's Virtual Boy in a lot of respects... except VB was cooler.
The Virtual Boy was a lot of things: bulky, clumsy, headache inducing, boring, battery killing etc. But it was not cool. Its only hope of having any coolness comes from the fact that it is a piece of Nintendo history. Thats it.
My friend had one plus a few games and I played with it for a while. One word to describe it: terrible. He said I could have it as I wanted it for its collectors value. His mother threw it away without his knowing. It was a real shame.
If you block out the privacy invading camera for a moment (believe me, I am no fan of it) Google Glass is a pretty damn cool piece of technology. Its not perfect but I can imagine all sorts of applications especially in the areas of augmented reality.
I imagine it would be pretty fantastic in these areas:
Imagine a construction crew arriving at a location and they pull up the plans which are then overlaid right before their eyes. They can literally see where the numerous underground pipes, wires and other subterranean items are as if they had x-ray vision. The crew would have a nice bright green shape drawn on the ground where they need to dig.
Or how about fixing your car/computer/whatever? Look under the hood and a guide highlights the part or area you need to investigate. Same can go for building maintenance. Just where the hell is the circuit breaker for the theater lights anyway? Oh I just follow this little green path on the floor to the glowing green square around the panel box and flip breaker #4.
Navigation can be overlaid in real time which is easier than a nav system because you follow a line painted right on the road as you are looking at it. Though that might be a thing of the past with self driving cars on the horizon.
And too many other things to list. Its really exciting tech but that damn camera ruins it for everyone.
I am no psychologist but from the stories it sounds as if the people were surrounded by chaos. They had no loving parent, no guidance and no one to rely on for help. Essentially they are lost souls. They go from one bad situation to another and make poor choices simply because they can't understand a normal life. And even though people try to do better later in life they have a lot of emotional baggage from their youth that comes back to haunt them. And that is when history repeats itself.
Imagine never growing up without money or a parent who gave a damn about you. I lost my father when I was 14 but my mother made sure we had money and got an education. She was on top of us pretty good and saw to it that we weren't getting into trouble or hanging out with the wrong crowd. And if my mother needed help there were other family members to help out.
Contrast that with having little to no family. No money. No education. No hope of ever getting out of that life. It must leave a person with a great feeling of despair. Its so depressing that I can't fathom it. And that chaos is passed down from one generation to another. But cycles can and are broken by determined individuals, often with outside help. Its not completely hopeless but for people in those situations they just don't understand how to get help.
I have one of their routers here at work (not my decision I can assure you). It works but its web config menu sucks and lacks many of the features you find in a decent router OS like m0n0wall or pfSense. But that is every crappy low end router. At home I run m0n0wall on an Alix board. That system is *ROCK SOLID* and I highly recommend it if you want a basic yet solid router for a connection of upward of 50 mbps or a bit more. If you want more speed for 100mbps+ then go with a Soekris NET6501 and pfSense.
*BUT*
I have used Netgear switches exclusively at home since I bought my first networking kit from them back in 1999 (2 PCI 10/100 nics and a 4 port 10/100 hub). I have probably owned 6 or 7 different netgear switches over the years and they worked perfectly up until they were upgraded or retired. I don't buy the home networking products in the ugly plastic cases. Instead I only buy the business oriented switches in the metal cases. Sure you spend anywhere from 70-100 bucks for an 8 port switch (or a bit more if you want a smart switch) but they have yet to fail on me. Right now at home I have a Netgear GS110TP, the ALIX running m0n0wall and an Ubiquiti UniFi AP (its an awesome AP). You couldn't ask for a better, more solid home networking setup.