Posts by Steve Todd

Re: Electric cars are better? - Yes, they are

Transmission losses add up to about 2.3% of peak load in the UK, charging losses add up to maybe 10%. Bad right? Factor in a fixed power plant can be tuned to run at 80%+ efficiency, that it can capture CO2, NOx and other nasties and that as the mix of power improves, so does the cleanliness of the car. The well to wheel efficiency is still higher than IC based vehicles, where the fuel needs to be refined, then transported to filling stations, which the cars need to travel to in order to refuel. You think that's a loss free process?

Most importantly the emissions for electric cars are away from town centres and other urban areas where they are less likely to be breathed by people nearby.

Re: So..@garden_snail @Santa

A large portion of the road fleet are company cars, which are taxed as a benefit in kind based on CO2 levels. It makes a considerable difference in cost for those drivers.

That story was thoroughly debunked, by Android sites even. It was shown (in an incomplete state) in February 2007, after the iPhone was announced.

http://androidcommunity.com/who-was-really-first-apple-vs-samsung-story-truly-debunked-20110420/

Re: Im sure that

There were other touch screen smart phones of the same era that managed to look far less like the iPhone. It wasn't like you couldn't build a smart phone without infringing on the Apple design, but Samsung seemed in particular to be keen to get as close as they could without actually putting an Apple logo on them. The design patent isn't just rounded corners, it's proportions, angles, bezel widths etc. your P900 wouldn't have fallen foul of the Apple Design Patent if it had come after it.

Re: Im sure that

If that was all the design patent said then you'd have a point. I had an XDA myself, but it looked nothing like the iPhone. The point of a design patent is to prevent your competitors from selling items that look near identical to your own (trade dress here in the UK). Prior to the iPhone Samsung phones looked nothing like it. Suddenly after the iPhone was released they looked very similar. Over time they've become more distinct, but it was a hurried job with a photocopier for the early devices.

@Richard Taylor

I'd be highly surprised if you could "easily distinguish the difference between their streaming and a CD", it's encoded using MP4/AAC @ 256K VBR, which double blind testing has shown that most folk can't tell the difference between this and a CD. You may have better kit for playing back CDs, but the same amp & speakers with an ABX switch fed by your CD player and a HiFi grade DAC may prove more instructive.

I'm using both Spotify and Apple Music at the moment. To my ear, and using a Marantz streaming music player, it produces better sound than Spotify @320K.

Re: Gits exhibiting loathsome behaviour

If they flew within 500ft of your farm, and the farm isn't within the approach path of a scheduled aerodrome (not a private strip), then report it to the CAA, not the MOT (who won't have a clue).

Re: Yeah...

1) it was hovering over it, at low altitude, not passing over it. Right to privacy?

2) it had done the same thing over a number of other local houses first. It was violating their right to privacy too.

3) he fired bird shot at it. By the time that comes down it doesn't present a risk of injury to people in the street.

4) it was a suburban area, not a packed urban one.

I'm tending to side with the shooter here, and that's not something I'd normally do.

Re: Hmmm @Mage

To be fair, VB6 as a language was very broken by that point. They needed to fix it, and doing so was always going to break compatibility.

Backwards compatibility has always been both a strength and a weakness of MS. They were maintaining behaviour in XP and beyond that dated back to bugs in DOS. There comes a time when you have to say "this is too broken, we're going to depreciate it in the next version and remove it from the next". The trick is to do this at a speed that the developers and users can handle.

Re: Apple iPhone 6 is a budget phone by today's specs!

Except that a crude reading of the specs fails to spot that it's substantially quicker than most of the Android competition at things that users want to do (like web browsing). The CPU clock may not look fast, but it's a custom 64 bit design that clock-for-clock is much quicker than the chip in the HTC for example. You'll also find the GPU punches above its weight, and is better integrated with the OS so that you can wring more out of what you have.

Re: Back of an envelope calculations

There are a number of good reasons why you"d not want to use lead acid (beyond just the weight).

Firstly, if you want to get more than a few hundred cycles out of them you need to limit yourself to not more than 50% discharge (30% if you want 10 years life out of them).

Secondly you lose power during charging lead acid (ignoring the losses in the charger circuitry) to the tune of about 15%

Thirdly you need a three stage charging circuit, and for the top 20% you need to trickle charge otherwise you knacker your battery life (as does NOT giving it a 100% charge).

The cost of a lead acid system may be lower in the short term, but it's more over the 10+ year lifespan we're talking about and produces some fairly noxious ewaste into the bargain.

Re: Not adding up

Checking online, yes 115Ah is achievable for that kind of price. There are still three issues I can see. Firstly cooling. You can't just strap them into a closed box the exact size of the pack, plus you need management electronics. Secondly lifespan. The cells I looked at all seem to be rated at about 500 cycles, to get 10 years or more use out of them you need to be quite conservative over your use and underrate the capacity (use at least 6 or 7 of them). Thirdly weight. They were over 25kg each, by the time you get 6 strapped together that's going to need some fairly hefty brackets to hold them on the wall.

Re: Not adding up

I'd check your math there. Five lead acid batteries giving 7kWh would work out at 116Ah @12V. A regular car battery is something like 40-50Ah