This type of design seems to be news only to Americans. You could call the current Smart car the descendent in spirit of those early cars due to its profile and 2 seater layout. In fact I believe there are even electric Smarts for sale now and unlike Googles car which look like something designed by a 5 year old girl, they don't look too bad.

You need to re-read what he wrote:

"That way, if the file was split into 10,000 packets, then the transmitter could send out a constant stream of packets module different primes and as soon as the receiver got any 10,000 of them "

How can you split something into 10K packets then get *any* 10K of them? He's either saying he sends more than 10K or the receiver has to receive all 10K packets that were sent to reconstruct the file which I doubt is what he meant.

"That way, if the file was split into 10,000 packets, then the transmitter could send out a constant stream of packets module different primes and as soon as the receiver got any 10,000 of them they could use the extended euclidean algorithm to reconstruct the original file."

So if the receiver got 10K copies of the 1st packet and nothing else it could still reconstruct the file? Thats impressive. Which college was this, Hogworts?

I don't care whether he's a professor or not - he got that bit wrong. I suggest you compare the torque peak vs power peak of a number of petrol powered car engines if you don't believe me.

Over and out.

"Take a look at page 12 on this document and note where the most efficient operating point is"

Any document that can't even get the location of the maximum torque correct isn't worth reading. It is NOT at max rpm as is indicated, that is normally where max power is located.

"I wonder if you are capable of reading. I did also write that a small engine may be less efficient than a larger engine if a large amount of power is demanded."

Yes, except this isn't the 1980s anymore - turbos operate over most of the engine rpm range and they allow a torque peak much lower down the range which means the turbo back pressure is occuring pretty much all the time.

"you keep suggesting that I don't know what I am talking about"

Seems to me all your knowledge comes from dodgy powerpoint presentations.

"Please don't post about things that you obviously do not understand. "

You obviously don't understand the irony of that comment.

" it's just a matter of squirting enough fuel in. The way to limit power output is to use the gearing to keep the engine speed low (look at a power curve some time)"

So have a wide open throttle and squirt more fuel in yet make the engine labour is your idea of saving fuel? Yeah, nice one, you should get a top engineers job any day now. All that happens in that scenario is the wasted extra fuel you're throwing into the cylinders gets turned into heat.

"However, a small engine in the same car allows the throttle to be opened wider for the same power output than the throttle for a large engine, hence reducing pumping losses versus the large engine"

The pumping losses you keep mentioning are minimal compared to the greater frictional losses in a larger engine. You ever wondered how much back pressure a turbo puts on the exhaust system? Its puts any losses in the throttle to shade.

You can't have the throttle fully open at low power with a petrol engine because you need to get the air - fuel ratio correct. So I'm not sure where you're getting your information from. Perhaps you're getting confused with how a diesel engine works.

>Heh I've moved down from a 929cc missile down to a more sensible 650cc with 1/3 of the horse power..

I assume you're talking about a motorbike?

Even a "sensible" 650cc bike will leave almost all cars apart from high end supercars for dead at the lights so on a day to day commute I doubt you'll notice much difference :o)

.... arn't the best solution. If they're so underpowered or peaky - like a lot of the new generation coming along - then people will tend to drive with their foot flat to the floor a lot mroe often which hammers fuel consumption and doesn't do the mechanicals any favours. Whereas with a bigger engine this is less of the case and you can get equivalent mpg except with a less stressed engine that isn't going to blow a seal after 75K miles because of components being worked to their limit to make up for the idiotically small capacity.

Of course left to their own devices no manufacturer would be dumb enough to put a 1.0L engine in a 1.5 ton car but EU regs now require silly emissions targets being met in these unrealistics tests so the manufacturers have no choice.

I think you're being optimistic. Diesel might have better fuel economy per unit volume than petrol or avgas, but diesel fuel is somewhat denser and therefore heavier than both.

Airships get their bouyancy for free. An aircraft has to drag its weight up into the sky using fuel so the last thing you want is a heavy engine with poor hp/ton ratio.

Its also very heavy and less efficient than pure diesel. The only reason its used in railway locomotives is that having an electrical connection to motors in the bogies (trucks to americans) its a LOT simpler and more reliable than mechanical linkages + gearboxes or compressor + hydraulic lines + hydraulic motors.

Uh huh. Listen , why not go off and have a beer with your loser buddies and argue about how they faked the moon landings from behind the grassy knoll.

In most large programs I've worked on the majority of heap resources were global because they're used in a multitude of areas, not just down one particular code path, so freeing them was done ah-hoc. C++ requires RAII because of the obsession with some people of using objects all the time regardless of whether its necessary: eg std::string instead of char*, vector instead of an array even if the max size is already known beforehand. And so on. They don't seem to realise that constant allocation and deallocation of memory absolutely cripples performance. Perhaps they think allocators are magic memory pixies who do it all with fairy dust and it takes no time at all.

Even conspiracy theory morons can figure them out and this is the result. There should be a mandatory IQ test before anyone is allowed to use any technology or access the internet.