Posts by Matt 33 14 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jun 2009
Read the previous post - in big parts of mainland Europe (so not the UK), three phase is supplied to houses as standard to run 'big' consumers like electric hobs, washing machines etc.
Don't forget most folk live in apartment buildings too, not large detached houses typical of US suburbia.
£500 Fiat banger (nowt wrong with that) to Landie Defender - you would have been disappointed, and I owned both at one point. Defenders are somewhat 'agricultural'.
And yes it seems a little harsh to consider lack of resistance to a pikey with hiab-truck to be a security flaw...show me a car that doesn't suffer from this? (South African flame-thrower upgrades notwithstanding!)
In the UK at least, it already is a crime (felony/misdemeanour distinction doesn't apply, crime = crime).
And, as we love CCTV here, all scrap yards I know of have CCTV of people vehicles coming in, maintain logs and records of who they take stuff from....
In other words, there's an awful lot of bull talked about in the UK press: It already is illegal, the police have the sanctions at their disposal, they just need to get off their elbows and use the technology and law available to them
Uh-huh. I’m guessing you’ve never modified a vehicle to an extent that changes are notifiable to the DVLA, such as changed the engine? Then actual human beings make decisions and send you letters, asking for proof that the work was completed, such as an invoice from the garage that did the work. Which is tricky when you did the work yourself.
As it transpires, I’ve found that on the phone the operatives have proved very helpful. It’s the idiots who draft the rules that the operatives must slavishly follow that are the real useless dullards, with the rules serving no purpose other than to provide more work for the DVLA. May these mandarin’s undergarments be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels.
That said, I agree with you, for the vast majority of the DVLAs ‘customers’ (I hate that word, as customer implies you have a choice about giving them your business) – they will never need to phone them, but those of us who like to fettle our vehicles the story is very different.
Also, perhaps the DVLA would oblige its customers by refraining from selling their data to anyone it deems fit (I.e. proffers a cheque book).
/rant
Actually, with electric vehicles it's easy to have all-wheel-drive - at least in terms of weight penalty, because the motors can be in-wheel and all you need is to get power to them and some feedback. Compared to a mechanical system of gearboxes, shafts, transferboxes, diffs etc, it's a piece of cake.
If only they could sort the whole battery-capacity/re-charge time thing...
Repeat after me: until there is a credible alternative to Outlook, or rather Exchange, for email/calendar/managed mailboxes on Linux then businesses simply will not switch. And don’t tell me email clients such as Thunderbird with the calendar plugin are an alternative because they’re not.
The RAE owes me a new keyboard: eLORAN??? Really?
Next they'll be saying "These DVD thingies are unproven Yank-technology, what we need is eBetamax"
As Lewis states, the US gubmint has absolutely no interest in letting the GPS system degrade or otherwise fall out of the sky...if watch leaders are incapable of using the MK1 eyeball, dead reckoning and chart plotting, and RADAR then they're f-useless and should be re-assigned to bilge painting duty.
/rant
What state of the US drives on the left…oh, wait, the 51st state, I get it now.
But seriously, you sure you don’t mean left-hand drive cars? (for driving on the right side of the road)
Speaking of which, if fruit-loop politicians in the US are bent on forcing unworkable ‘big-brother’ tech on the unwashed masses, the UK gubmint (whatever the colour) won’t be far behind…
Assuming you're not trolling, please re-read the read the article in its entirety. Whilst you're at it, have a look at the Wikipedia article on Autogyros – the design featured in this article is NOT a helicopter.
Where do you get a MTOW of 5 tons from? And who said the turbines will be mounted on the roof? And moreover how do you know that these turbines will be incapable of lifting said 5 tons into the air? The turbine (singular) in this design powers the ‘pusher fan’ or the generator (for drive in ground mode). Yes at ’10 k feet’ you ‘start’ to need oxygen, but you can still breathe – most helicopter cabins are not pressurised.
@ Andus McCoatover
In the earlier article, Lewis talks about flight computers doing most of the flying, while the jarhead ‘steering’ points in it the direction it needs to go. This isn’t UAV remote-flyboy tech, though admittedly, it wouldn’t be difficult add this capability in.
@ xj25vm
Actually, a gas turbine driving a generator, which in turn could power, say, four in-wheel motors potentially could be a lot lighter, or at least comparable in weight to, a conventional four-wheel drive system. Don’t forget, this consists of an engine, gearbox, transfer box, centre-diff, forward axle/diff, rear axle/diff – that’s an awful lot of weight. Ask anyone who has, say, restored a Land Rover…
Yes losers on the internet complain about everything/blame 'nu-liebor'/swan-roasting asylum seekers and how we're all going to hell in a hand cart. Don't feed the trolls. Ignore them. They matter not. Sad people who spend their lunch hour replying to posts on a...oh, wait.
My experience of these 'women into engineering' campaigns is that they do backfire - in that the girlies find it patronising to move on to something else. Believe it or not the younger generations do actually think of themselves as equal. I speakth as one who has in the past been in schools trying to encourage students into engineering, and my experience is that girls are just as interested as boys.
Ones suspects that, like John Tracey, Thunderbird has a personal hygiene problem...
I'll get me coat....
Incidentally the Thunderbirds analogy holds true throughout the versions
Thunderbird 1: Fast but not much use
Thunderbird2: Could do lots but not very fast
Thunderbird3: Largely pointless but can go into sp....ok I'll shut up.
No they shouldn't...the flight test data would've been invalid cos they would, effectively, be flying a different airframe. Which isn't helpful for the FAA/JAA certification. So they would've had to have repeated the tests...which would have been even more demoralising for said Boeing employees, pushing to do a pointless test knowing full well they'd have had to repeat the test anyway.
Sounds like Boeing management had their project-planning caps on for a change. Airtime in a flying test bed is veeeeeeeery expensive, hence why they stuff the thing full of instrumentation and follow the 'do it right first time' approach, and try, as close as possible, to match the production aircraft.
Incidentally, at a presentation given to us as final year engineering students, shortly before the launch of the A380, the Airbus wonk claimed that "we don't build prototypes anymore".
Me: "So who are you going to sell the first aircraft off the line to, the one that's been stuffed with the aforementioned instrumentation?"
AW: "Oh, that's got too many holes and extra wires in it, we keep that, as a flying test bed, for testing future upgrades and the like"
Me: "So the difference between that and prototype is?"
AW: "Er...."
@ SteveX
Yes they do, but structural analysis (FEA, etc) will only tell you so much, especially as far as composites are concerned...hence why they test it 1:1 scale before they let the wetware take it for a spin...
It's worth bearing in mind that CAD stands for Computer AIDED Design - doesn't remove the need for the good ol' Mk1 Greymatter. Nowt more dangerous than a CAD-jockey just unthinkingly throwing stuff together in the virtual environment and expecting it to work IRL...
The one with a copy of "Basic Concepts of Engineering" in the pocket and the flame-proof lining.
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