Posts by WatAWorld
230 posts • joined Friday 24th February 2012 23:04 GMT
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk arguments are pathetic
Elon Musk's arguments basically assert that his car has major design faults and is unfit for purpose and must be babied to work. Specifically:
1. Musk says his car failed because it was not fully recharged.
A car should not require complete re-fueling or re-charging to make a non-maximum range journey.
2. Musk said his car failed because the journalist attempted to keep the interior temperature more than 42°F warmer than the exterior temperature.
If a car cannot heat the interior to 73°F when the outside temperature is 30°F it won't be able to heat the interior to 63°F when the outside temperature is 20°F. And in Canada, when the outside temperature is -30F Musk's car will not be able to keep the interior above 12°F (-11°C).
3. Musk said his car failed because the journalist drove it faster than 54mph.
If the car cannot do highway speeds without drastic loss or range, it is useless on highways.
4. Musk said the car failed because it was driven in a city.
If a car cannot handle a short trip in a city, it is useless for city driving.
5. Musk said the car failed because the journalist passed by a charging station without stopping.
If a car has to stop at every charging station or fuel depot it is useless.
Useless on highways, useless in cities, useless in winter, unable to pass a re-charging station without stopping -- Elon Musk, you're in a hole and the more you dig the deeper it is getting.
Why not take this info and create a freelance article on the electric vehicle of your choice.
You obviously know nothing about testing a product to any meaningful extent.
You do not test a products range by fully charging it and driving it 10 miles. You need to try to simulate the worst most grueling days of a year in just the testing time you have, perhaps a few days. Otherwise you're producing a sweet heart piece of promotional literature, not a serious journalistic report.
You seem to know words, so why not take that info and create a freelance article on the electric vehicle of your choice.
I'm sure there are plenty far better than the Tesla and it would be nice to read about them too.
But you do have to admit, by attacking journos Tesla is grabbing media attention. Attention seeking might be part of a deliberate PR campaign to raise their profile and get more subsidies from taxpayers, or it might be an honest mistake.
I can see subsidizing electric cars, but why should middle class taxpayers subsidize an car in the luxury price range that is created for wealthy people to show boat an image of being "green"?
From the Battery University
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/discharging_at_high_and_low_temperatures
"The performance of all battery chemistries drops drastically at low temperatures. At –20°C (–4°F) most nickel-, lead- and lithium-based batteries stop functioning. Although NiCd can go down to –40°C (-40°F), the permissible discharge is only 0.2C (5-hour rate). Specially built Li- ion brings the operating temperature down to –40°C, but only on discharge and at a reduced discharge. With lead acid we have the danger of the electrolyte freezing, which can crack the enclosure. Lead acid freezes more easily with a low charge when the specific gravity of the electrolyte is more like water."
earlier,
"Batteries achieve optimum service life if used at 20°C (68°F) or slightly below, and nickel-based chemistries degrade rapidly when cycled at high ambient temperatures. If, for example, a battery operates at 30°C (86°F) instead of a more moderate room temperature, the cycle life is reduced by 20 percent. At 40°C (104°F), the loss jumps to a whopping 40 percent, and if charged and discharged at 45°C (113°F), the cycle life is only half of what can be expected if used at 20°C (68°F)."
And to further confound thing, maximum charging rates are reduced under adverse temperature.
Where I live -- in the land of hydro-electric power* -- the overnight low temperatures are less than 5°C for 6 months a year.
"Fast charging of most batteries is limited to a temperature of 5 to 45°C (41 to 113°F); for best results consider narrowing the temperature bandwidth to between 10°C and 30°C (50°F and 86°F). Nickel-based batteries are most forgiving in accepting charge at low temperatures, however, when charging below 5°C (41°F), the ability to recombine oxygen and hydrogen diminishes. If NiCd and NiMH are charged too rapidly, pressure builds up in the cell that will lead to venting. Not only do escaping gases deplete the electrolyte, the hydrogen released is highly flammable. The charge current of all nickel-based batteries should be reduced to 0.1C below freezing."
* Canada's prairie provinces.
Re: Hey, Jack ...
The electrical codes mandate those 100A and 200A services due to expected use with expected technology, expected technology that does not include your "super charger".
So you are going to turn off at least the dryer, refrigerator, air conditioner, water heater and furnace in your home when you plug in that super charger.
From the physics, it seems range calculations with electric cars should more accurate
Looking at the physics, a battery powered car should not be affected by wind or rain any more than any other kind of car -- wind and rain reduce milege through their effect on wind drag and rolling resistance, which does not vary with the engine.
An electric car should be less affected by stop-and-go traffic than a combustion engine car which needs to keep running while stopped. Mind you, in adverse weather any kind of car still needs to expend energy heating or cooling the interior when stopped.
The joules consumed to heat the interior will not vary according to engine type, but in a combustion engine waste heat can be used. When waste heat is put to a useful purpose, overall efficiency goes up.
And electric motors very efficient and the types you would use in a car are very efficient over a wide range of rotational speeds.
Electric motors are often over 90% efficient. The inefficiency comes in generating, transmitting and storing the electricity.
Electric cars will have their range vary with *temperature* a lot more than cars with fossil fuel or fuel cell engines. That is the only respect in which their range should be less predictable than other cars.
But then it ought to be possible to obtain a temperature forecast for the next 8 hours and accurately predict range from that. (I imagine that if the US's National Weather Service does not broadcast a machine decodable temperature forecast it will in the foreseeable future. Until then manual entry would be required, as is done in aircraft.)
He did use an ample safety margin, he charged it up to 185 miles for a 125 mile journey.
You state the hack lacks the minimum required reasoning skills to use new technology.
He charged it up to 185 miles for a 125 mile journey. In your considered engineering judgement what would be an adequate safety margin?
You say, "You should always factor in a safety buffer" and in fact the journalist left an ample safety margin.
Incidentally, living in one of the colder parts of Canada, I can tell you that the decline in battery storage with temperature is predictable and can be calculated. For a given model of battery there will be a curve.
The vehicle's distance calculator should include ambient temperature in calculating the range.
Therefore *I wonder* if that 1/3 drop in charge was actually a 1/3 drop in computed range.
in much of the world, electric cars would be powered by fossil fuels
Sadly, in much of the world electric cars would be powered by fossil fuels, coal, oil or gas fired electric generating stations, with the added inefficiency of transmission lines, transformers and (most of all) the weight of batteries or fuel cells. And, strictly speaking, nuclear power is not renewable either.
Electric powered vehicles only use renewable energy when the power in the electric mains comes from renewable energy.
So currently only electric cars charged-up the minority of regions where the electric power primarily comes from hydro-electric generating stations are using renewable energy. So not the UK, not California, not New York.
Re: In what way
Yes, highway milage (similar to racetrack mileage) is usually quite a bit longer than (stop and go) city traffic mileage.
Re: Writer was intent on high risk of failure
I would not be impressed with an electric car that didn't warn if the dome light was set to always on or the headlights were on when the driver's door was open. And I'd expect an automatic shut off after 30 minutes or so.
Re: Interesting dichotomy ...
Yes, the right to be forgotten is a fight of the people against the snoopers that work for our own governments.
The biggest threat to us is not some company using browsing habits to sell us chewing gum.
The biggest threat to us is our own intelligence and law enforcement community shutting down political opinion by using emails and browsing habits to black mail elected and amateur politicians and commenters.
To an American a democratic government is a government that follows the will of "the people".
"The people" being Americans.
Tony Blair and his Labour government were an excellent example of a democratic government following the will of the people.
Re: Solution
It was sarcasm aimed at the tenancy of domineering Americans to use arguments based on some self-styled preacher's feeling of what god wants.
Re: More EU beauracracy. Business costs up once again
On a backup tape with 20 files, how do you erase a file in the middle?
You copy tape to tape leaving the middle file out.
The technical question is, when someone asks to be forgotten how much time does a company have to comply? How often must that batch clean-up process be run?
Sounds laughable
The USA would have lost WWII, which it entered 3 years late purely to defend itself after being attacked at Pearl Harbor.
Now you see what we put up with in Canada
Trade war real war, the US government never fails to take a "you're with us or against us" attitude at the drop of a hat.
Give people one more human right than they have in the USA and it is like you've broken the 10 Commandments.
The US government is just worried that people in other countries having reasonable rights will make the USA look terrible by comparison.
They've seen what happened with healthcare, being #31 in the world in longevity, and they don't want any other gross and total embarrassments.
Re: and another thing.
1. So teach history of businesses, enterprise.
2. "Business is accounting" in the same way that "computer science is keyboarding." Your local mouse business course was a mouse course because it was designed that way, not because business is trivial.
Re: and another thing.
In Canada, where private schools are rare and very very pricy, sales, business and investing are core subjects.
If the upper class wanted to keep the middle class down it would avoid having the middle class taught key business and investment skills.
The more ignorant we are, the easier it is for them to rip us off.
Flashback to 1840 and the addition of writing to the ciriculumn
Imagine the dramatic change which could be possible in just a few years... Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use verbal communication by bored teachers, we could have 11-year-olds able to write plays like Shakespeare.
By 16, they could have an understanding of formal logic previously covered only in in the seminars of Plato.
In other words, you can teach kid oils painting at age 11 but that won't make give us a nation of 16 year-old Picassos.
Basically we're back to outsiders (including IT industry executives) assuming what we do is trivial, that their neighbour's kid could do it, and that with more widespread training we could be paid little more than minimum wage.
Flies in the face of the "programmers are interchangeable" principle
"The common link is the framework, and knowing how to use it properly."
Which would mean proper training plus proper pay and benefits.
But top management would rather temporarily boost profits by going cheap and poorly trained.
No doubt the Chinese government was looking for the source of the leaks
It is sad that the China's dissidents are more patriotic to the country than members of China's government.
China's military, China's civil service, and most of all, China's political leaders are traitors against their own people.
- Sitting here waiting to be hacked.
Re: The equivalent of sending a gunboat...
A great analogy. So the Chinese are saying to the NY Times, you have a computer system only so long as we tolerate your computer system. We can take you down and destroy you any time we want.
Re: Infected university servers. Well, la-de-daa...
They aren't windows, they're mostly Linux and Unix, how in the world can university servers be hacked ???
Just me and my sarcasm.
Re: D'oh indeed!
He missed the memo. He wants the release memos to appear in the update pop-up, as if anyone is going to read them there.
And apparently he did not do a small scale test before rolling out the Java update to his customers.
Re: Thanks Oracle, for showing us how to fix security issues
Yes right, now you have Linux security issues. But since Linux is not popular you don't read about these on the front pages of magazines and newspapers and what you do not know about does not bother you.
Re: Just one more thing....!
Apple is not particularly friendly to other developers products.
If people want to get a Mac they should understand that and not make themselves dependent on other software.
There is a reason most companies use PCs. The code is more tested, more of the vulnerabilities have been found and fixed, but also it is far more open and accepting to third party apps and languages.
Re: Duh, perhaps there are too many bugs in Java 6 and it's time for an update?
You word it as though there were no choice but to stay on Java 6. That would be partly valid for a while if it was a customer, but this is a developer speaking.
The application does not require Java 6; it requires an update so it will work with Java 7.
The developer should update it.
As for customers stuck with lazy developers, after a period of time (say the time it takes for 11 releases to come out) they should start looking for new a vendor.
Java 6 is insecure, of course it needs to be deleted
Java 7 in one version 11.
How long is this guy going to make his users keep insecure old Java 6 around for?
Time to get with it. No more insisting customers have insecure software.
The people we elect, the political opposition, the celebrities people we listen to, will be saying and doing what the bureaucrats tell them.
Re: At least ...
Politicians are the ones most likely to be blackmailed.
The data does not even have to get into unauthorized hands.
Politicians can be blackmailed by the authorized folks in the security establishments.
"Oh, you don't want to go to war? You don't want to triple our budget? You don't want to expand our powers to search and seize without warrants? Do you remember that party you went to 10 years ago on August 7th 2015? That girl Sally who said she was 18?"
Re: Wise words
Sure, and then we define, say "liberalism" as the new terror threat and our loyal plods at Cheltenham carry out their bureaucratic duty of turning over data on those who favour liberalism to the regular police.
Re: The obvious strategy to counter this is:
They'll try to make that illegal.
And then they'll use that illegality to hurt the job and election prospects of those who try to counter them.
As far as I can tell, any existing "neural network" of research into government is about black helicopters, who killed JFK and discussion of what is in the newspapers.
Politicians will probably be the biggest loosers from snoop laws
Politicians will probably be the biggest loosers from snoop laws.
Think about who was most affected by J. Edgar Hoover's manually done snooping and his files.
It was politically active people -- politicians, elected or otherwise, journalists, cabinet members.
With more snooping the police and intelligence agencies and whichever political party is in power will be able to neutralize politicians.
Just as J. Edgar Hoover kept himself in power long after he should have retired, just as he suppressed law enforcement attacks on the USA's Italian mafia, emails from teenage years, facebook posts, letters to editors, from years and decades earlier can be used by bureaucratic snoops to force politicians to conform to the bureaucracy's wishes.
My feeling is that snooping regulations, even "merely" allowing police to obtain information from ISPs without wire taps, will effectively eliminate the power of the entire political class.
Our nations will be run by bureaucrats.
So why are politicians in governments around the democratic world allowing this to happen? Good question. Maybe it is too late alreaady.
93,000 signatures at the moment
The signature count is rising rapidly.
Re: Progressives everywhere
You're an example of someone who touts the existence of black helicopters who wishes us to quietly submit to the New World Order.
At the other end of the spectrum you have Hollywood and LA.
The Hollywood types say they're liberal, peaceful, against war, and in favour of big government.
But every hour of every working day the people of Hollywood are making or promoting films that promote domestic violence, gun violence, war and black helicopter theories, thus creating the culture of the right-wing and red-neck America.
Oxymoron only if you don't look at it from a logical cause and effect perspective
The difference is they denied access to the internet to innocent people merely because those people lived in China.
We would be denying these censors access to the USA because of their own personal actions.
People should be held accountable for their criminal and immoral actions during working hours.
The desktop PC market has matured. Almost everyone has one and almost everyone has one that will be adequate for another 2 to 4 years. Whereas tablets are a new toy, and the tablet market is immature.
Some people will carry a large smart phone, plus have a PC at home and smart TV device at home.
Other people will carry a a small cell phone and tablet or laptop, plus have a PC at home and smart TV device at home.
Desktops aren't going anywhere. Just the volume of sales is going down because we've got them already.
I remember my Java and Linux friends spouting that junk too.
Every system is insecure.
I remember my Java and Linux friends spouting that junk too. "Oh, it is so secure because it is open source, people can look at it." "Oh, no vulnerabilities because so many people have looked at it and for sure someone would notice any vulnerabilities."
If you know enough about about any complex software you can eventually break it.
But it isn't just software, it is anything. It is why you don't share your password, why government's have "top secret" classifications, why you don't let the thug down the street borrow your car keys.
Publishing bank vault combinations and armoured car schedules
Publishing bank vault combinations and armoured car schedules would also benefit bank security research I suppose.
"The US Windows Phone market share grew 50% between Q2 and Q3 2012" that seems like gaining ground to me.
I am thinking you are an accountant, because you can't look at a change in systems and see what it means unless you have links and spreadsheets.
Imagine we outsourced the British Army to Pakistan. Less cost. Guys can shoot just as good. What would the change be to the effectiveness of Britain's national defense?
Do you need links and spread sheets to tell me that?
It has nothing to do with Windows for phones, Android or iOS. It has everything to do with outsourcing key parts of the business.
It is not that Windows means no need for programmers, it is hiring programmers whose loyalty is to boosting their billings to Nokia.
I see the MS reference now, someone else made the same oversight below
There is a huge difference, a mammoth difference, between doing an MS (or IBM) and opening an office in India and hiring staff loyal to you there, and outsourcing to staff loyal to another company.
Switching to an outsourcer, means having staff dedicated to transferring as much wealth as possible from your company to their company.
It matters not if the outsources is in India, the USA or UK -- look at the NHS e-health contracting. Look at other government contracting to domestic body shops.
It is the change in IT staff allegiance that kills your business. They go from being loyal leaches trying to cost their company as little as possible to leaches loyal to an external blood sucking enterprise that is trying to drain your company of as much wealth as possible.
between opening an office in India and hiring staff loyal to you, and outsourcing to staff
There is a huge difference, a mammoth difference, between opening an office in India and hiring staff loyal to you there, and outsourcing where you're getting staff loyal to another company.
Opening an office in India, or other comparatively low wage area, like Ireland or Canada, that cuts payroll expenses.
Switching to an outsourcer, means having staff dedicated to transferring as much wealth as possible from your company to their company.
Re: im sick of getting turned down at job interviews for not being indian
Indian, Chinese, American, ...
Re: Finally!
Are they leaving technology and going to strictly stick to sales and marketing other people's products?
Re: Hardly
So Chemist, you preferred x86 assembler?
Why don't I believe that.
They're cutting productivity, not costs.
They're switching from staff loyal to making them Nokia profitable to staff loyal to billing Nokia as much as possible.
The sound you hear is a death knell.
Good to hear this now as I'd been thinking of getting one of their phones.
Re: Nokia to align IT function with its business focus
I don't know why you're on about MS over this.
It happens with any OS, including the mainframe IBM OSes that were around when Bill Gates was a lad in shorts and Unix.
But you're right about the bribes, er uh, "fishing trips, free meals, conventions in Bahamas, etc. that are an integral part of doing business". I didn't mention them in my earlier post.
And if the bribes aren't enough, chances are your executive quits and gets hired on at a huge salary by the new outsourcer.
The outsourced IT department's job #1 will now be boosting billings
In general, the problem with outsourcing IT is that other people's staff have different objectives than your own staff.
Rather than boosting your own company's profits, the outsourced IT staff now want to boost the bodyshop's profits.
That means hazy project objectives, specification creep, hard coding variables, hard to maintain code, reduced documentation, failure to streamline procedures, not passing on savings from when procedures are streamlined.
All the wasteful stuff your own IT department tried to fight are highly desirable billing opportunities for your newly outsourced IT department.
Re: Ms Fail?
"But Norton is malware or atleast it used to be, ..."
Yes, Norton has improved. I guess the computer makers that pre-install it realized that the bugs Norton used to cause cost way more money and cost too many customers than the money they got for pre-installing it were worth. So Norton improved a fair bit.
But I prefer Kaspersky. Look for sales, the #1 or #2 AV (depending on month and platform) at $20 for 3 machines if you spend 15 minutes looking around web stores.
Re: Ms Fail?
If you were responsible for 10 computers at a business, or if getting your PhD degree depended on your computer could you still live with zero day hazards?
