So while the vehicle might be traveling faster than the wind in burst, it won't get you any place faster than the next wind powered vehicle.
. The vehicle accelerates to a a speed faster than the wind, then stays at that speed forever (as long as the speed of the wind is constant) and does not oscillate. It really will get you to your destination faster than e.g. a balloon traveling at precisely the speed of the wind.
There is a feedback loop, but it works like this: there is a wind velocity X, and a stable velocity Y for said X, where Y>X (for a properly designed vehicle using this technique). If the velocity momentarily exceeds Y, the friction losses of the wheels will be greater than the gain in push from the fan, and the car will slow down. If the velocity momentarily drops below Y, the friction losses of the wheels will be lower than the push from the fan, and the car will accelerate forward. It stabilizes at Y, faster than X. The feedback loop keeps it at that stable Y.
I don't believe it can, no matter how stable, energy in will never be greater than the energy out. A balloon wouldn't be a good example, another vehicle with just sails to catch the wind running side by side would be the best comparison. Basically, the sail vehicle would start off much quicker and be far ahead of this vehicle before the faster-than-wind vehicle got up to speed. Afterwards, it would just be an infinite slope towards the finish. I think what everyone misses here is the time part. It may go faster than the wind at some point, but it won't continue that way forever nor can it make up for the time. Basically the vehicle is just trading out time for speed. The mystery would lose a lot of luster if they did the same run with two side by side vehicles in a race (one straight sail, the other being the faster-than-wind vehicle). All I've seen for video footage is a single vehicle run, which takes the faster-than-wind part out of context and makes it appear to be perpetual energy, which it certainly is not. We all know that, but the single vehicle run is what gets everyone in an uproar over the laws of physics.
Here is what bothers me about this whole thing.
Although I believe it is theoretically possible, there is a certain whiff of woo about the experimenters. I'm not even saying they didn't achieve their objective--I'm just saying there are a couple of things about the experiment, especially with regard to the stored energy issue, that nearly broke my woo-meter.
From the official rules:
Energy shall not be accumulated and later used for propulsion of the yacht or to operate the controls of the yacht.
It seems to me that this would preclude the use of massive windmills (i.e., flywheels), such as the one on the craft. Later, the rules specifically prohibit flywheels:
It is not permissible to use stored energy to propel the yacht or operate its controls. This might includes things like compressed gas, stressed springs, batteries, capacitors and flywheels. This includes energy stored before a run or during a run. No pumps, generators or mechanical devices that are intended in part or whole to provide energy to storage devices are permitted. Stored energy in the form of momentum of the yacht, its wheels or other **normally moving** or flexing parts of the yacht is allowed. These forms of stored energy are inherent in the operation of the yacht and either do not add energy useful for increasing the speed of the yacht or **do so in a trivial way**.
(emphasis mine)
What constitutes a "normally moving" part of the yacht? What constitutes a "trivial" use of stored energy to increase its speed?
That's I thought to, but here is how it works with laymen terms for all (including myself). The vehicle is simply geared in a way that the propeller will move air from the front of the vehicle to the back faster than the air moves from the front to the back. So if the vehicle is moving 5 mph forward, the propeller is trying to force air in the same direction at 10 mph. What happens is, as the vehicle is being pushed by the wind, the vehicle moving forward is building kinetic energy. Eventually the vehicle reaches the maximum speed that the wind is able to push the vehicle. At the same time, the ground is supplying energy to the propeller to push the vehicle faster. So what is really happening is a waveform; the vehicle moves with the wind, then moves faster than the wind, then slows down, gains more energy, moves with the wind, faster, repeat, etc. Basically if you compared this vehicle side by side with another one with just sails for example, the vehicles would reach the same destination at the same time overall. So while the vehicle might be traveling faster than the wind in burst, it won't get you any place faster than the next wind powered vehicle.
Can you make an analogy involving cars? That would be usefull to many people here.
There was a flaw in the 1985 Delorean flux capacitor that would teleport you 99 years into the past when struck by lightning while in hover mode in the mid air. It was later discovered that the Delorean had a lightning rod built into the back that was never extended, and thus by activating the legacy lightning rod code (extending it upwards), it would defend against mid air lightning attacks.
A good analogy is like a leaky screw-driver, glad I could help.
I don't know about OO.org (sorry but it just doesn't compete with MS Office) but a lot of places are still running office 2000/2003 simply because it works well for them.
That's funny, I was going to say the same for Microsoft since MS Office can't compete with Open Office. There are just too many things that OO can do better than MS Office, I find it annoying when I have to work on a system with MS Office and find simple things like tabs within tables don't work properly for MS Office. The list is too long, I don't really need to complain about it, Open Office works for me and my business and all other businesses that I've setup over the years (which numbers in the hundreds now) no one cares so much anymore until they get stuck with a machine that is MS Office only and loathe the slowness plus lack of useful features.
To each their own, you can write, spreadsheet, presentation with them both, just some are more compatible, stable than others.
I'm sure you are right and thousands of professionals and scientists are wrong. After all, home-spun common sense beats elitist 'science' any day, right? Your use of such a powerful 'straw man' style of argument is proof. Of course 'not beating your child' is the same thing as 'wanting to be your kid's best friend' or 'never punishing your child.' And such exemplary anecdotes and unverified speculation!
You sir, posses a dizzying intellect.
Is that the same ones who said to give your kid a good spanking only a few decades earlier. I think it was. Your response is the ultimate 'straw man' argument because you rely on a made up response.
I offer you this then, kids are not all the same. Some can be raised with time outs, others needs some physical discomfort because they don't understand why they should not do things. When they get older and can understand what the word ramification means; then the physical punishment becomes a lot less effective/necessary. That's when parents move on to punishment via privilege subtraction such as no TV, car, friends, grounds, etc.
All I can guess is that you've never raised any kids yourself or if you did, you got lucky with kids that only needed a timeout to get the point across. Unless you've worked with every kid on the planet, your response shows a great lack understanding and insight about child raising that only you miss because everyone else here seems to get the point about physical punishment. You are just trying to slide in the 'think about the children' card for fun, go play the game elsewhere.
Basically, the existence of nuclear weapons make the old tactics obsolete. Remove the nuclear weapons and the old ways are no longer obsolete.
Of course the tough part is 'remove the nuclear weapons'.
Let's say the US and Russia totally ditch every nuke.
That's a one side argument though. You are assuming that the one nation left with a nuke isn't going to have any resistance deploying it. What good is having the most powerful weapon if you can't even get it out of your own country? If they fired off a nuke missile, it would get shot down before it even had a chance to blow up any neighboring country. It's not about having the most powerful weapon, it's about having the most powerful defense as it renders all offense useless during such times. A country with an elite military force coming into your country will do a lot more damage than the nuke missiles you fire back at them if they can't even reach their target.
Keep the computer in the living room.
Untangle for Linux might be a solution since it was already mentioned in the summary. It's free too
I never get used to the MM/DD way of typing dates. If it wasn't for the sarcastic remark (3/14, get it?) I wouldn't have caught it. Unfortunately, we will never get a Pi day over here, as 3/14 doesn't exist. A sad day for the European lovers of Pi (a secret fraternity of which we do not speak)
Yeah, and it's even not accurate, 355/113 is a better pi anyway. Divide it out, you'll see
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
