>> ^Hybrid:

It's insane that the coiled loading process has not been mechanized.


Machines dont handle fibre spooling like that with enough finesse.

The cable shown in this video is of the unarmored variety. This is mainly laid in the deep segments of cable runs, where anchor drops are least likely to cause a cut. The cables that run from the shore out to depths that are unreachable by all but the largest seafaring vessels are armored even further with Kevlar sheaths covering quite a lot more steel wires wrapped around the thin inner core of the cable you see in this video.

Laying of the cable in the deep ocean requires a plow, the cable is literally sown several feet beneath the seabed with said plow to ensure that no anchor drops, or fishing nets can cause a cable cut.

Cables are laid in areas of ocean that are marked on sea charts as 'no-drop' zones. In most nations, dropping anchor in these areas carries a MONSTROUS fine, whether you cut the cable or not.

The first Ferraro Roche i ever had was as a kid. It got brung down to my home town from someones trip to the city. I wasn't allowed to have any cos they where for the adults. But after a few days of patiently biding my time - and keeping the chocolates out of sight by moving them to the top, back corner surrounded by other food - I asked if I could have one. Mum gave me the go ahead, and I grabbed one and smashed it.

I was completely unimpressed. Not very chocolaty, or sweet. Just this really weird taste - which didn't surprise me adults ate gross stuff all the time. So after chewing, and thinking I figured it wasnt to bad so I took another Ferraro Roche and bit it in half and thought some more about the flavour.

Then I looked at the half left in my hand, and it was filled with grey fibres, and then i realised it was all moving. Full to the brim with little weevils and their evil fluffy nesting material.

Moral of the story? I dont know but I still feel a bit ill thinking about it.

>> ^cybrbeast:
Why did the technology die with him? Surely more could be built?


One person with extraordinary vision, coupled with technological know-how, engineering brilliance and the ability to get his hands dirty and plain-and-simple build what he imagines is a rare thing.

In the case of the Britten bike, this is a partial list of what made his bike special:

1) Partial girder-link front suspension with adjustable anti-dive properties.
-fork-type suspensions compress under braking and extend during acceleration, changing the geometry and handling characteristics of the machine quite drastically during the different driving modes. Britten's suspension design allowed him to control pretty much all variables of suspension geometry under changing load, making the bike behave however the rider wished.
- The rear suspension, while perhaps not as revolutionary, was a beautiful piece. It was essentially a carbon-fibre banana swing-arm with a linkage to the adjustable shock/spring assembly. If you look at the bike you'll see that there's no spring/shock assembly near the rear suspension, rather note the spring/shock assembly directly behind the front wheel- this is for the rear suspension! The front shock assembly is hidden in the front suspension linkage and cowling.

2) The engine itself was a stressed-member.
-While certainly not unheard of, Britten took the concept to an extreme, essentially eliminating the frame from the motorcycle. The front and rear suspensions essentially bolted directly to the engine, thus saving many kilos over contemporary designs. Take a look at any current MotoGP or Superbike- most use the engine as a partial stressed-member, but they all have frame members linking the engine, steering heads and seat-assemblies. Britten really only had a vestigial sub-frame for the rider's seat.

3) Well-controlled aerodynamics and fully-ducted cooling system
-Britten paid close attention to airflow over, around and through his bike. Look how cleanly the rider's body tucks into the bodywork. He paid close attention to details, notice how clean the entire assembly is- no exposed wiring, nothing dangling into the airflow, that incredibly sleek rear swing-arm and rear tire hugger. This keeps the airflow smooth and un-disturbed. Motorcycles aren't terribly aerodynamic machines in the first place, but a wise man once said God is in the details.
-The engine itself is a water cooled design, but where's the radiator? It's in a fully-sealed duct directly beneath the rider's seat. High-pressure air is inlet from the front of the bike, through the radiator and is exhausted into the low pressure area beneath the rider and above/ahead of the rear wheel. Greater cooling equals higher power potential.

4) The motor
- 999cc 60 degree V-Twin, belt-driven DOHC design, twin injectors per cylinder, sophisticated electronic ignition, hand-made carbon fibre velocity stacks, wet sump. The motor was designed to breathe hard, pumping out torque and horsepower (166 hp @ 11800 rpm- not sure about the torque figures), and run cool and reliably under racing conditions. Nothing here that any other manufacturer couldn't have figured out on their own, but Britten had the insight and the will to make the best motor in the world at the time. The 60 degree configuration was, I assume chosen for packaging reasons. Normally this configuration would have bad primary balance characteristics, but Britten engineered his to such tight tolerances that the engine ran smoothly right up to redline (12500 rpm) without using a balance shaft.
I'll also point out here that Britten wasn't above using someone else's part if it was better than he could make himself- the gearbox was from a Suzuki superbike, and the cylinder liners and voltage regulator (both of which failed at the Daytona race in '92- the latter costing Britten the win) were from Ducati.

5) Carbon Fibre
- While Carbon Fibre had been around for 2 decades or so at this point, nobody had used it so extensively. Britten used the material for bodywork, wheels, engine parts, suspension girders and the rear swing-arm. There is still no other bike, not even the current Ducati Desmosedici MotoGP bike, that uses so much of this exotic material. The stuff then, as it is now, was hugely expensive and challenging to engineer for different applications. Britten made everything himself, in his garage, figuring it out as he went. This kept the total weight of the bike to a hugely impressive 138 kg.

Keep in mind that he did all of the above in 1991 and 1992, with the help of several neighbors and one part-time machinist, in his backyard shed! He made the bodywork by hand, using a wire frame and hot melt glue, crafting the wind-cheating shape and cooling ducting purely by eye. He cast the aluminum engine parts himself, heat-treating them in his wife's pottery kiln, and cooling the heat-treated parts with water from his swimming pool!

Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki... any one of these manufactures could today reproduce and expand on what Britten accomplished almost single-handedly. None of them will- there's too much at stake for them. It's far safer to stick with the tried-and-true, making small evolutionary changes over the years. A true visionary achiever (to coin a term) like Britten comes along only every once in a great while.

I suppose that this is what was really lost when John Britten died... vision, engineering acuity, hands-on knowledge, and pure will. Touched with a little craziness.

In reply to this comment by cybrbeast:
Why did the technology die with him? Surely more could be built?

>> ^cybrbeast:
Why did the technology die with him? Surely more could be built?


One person with extraordinary vision, coupled with technological know-how, engineering brilliance and the ability to get his hands dirty and plain-and-simple build what he imagines is a rare thing.

In the case of the Britten bike, this is a partial list of what made his bike special:

1) Partial girder-link front suspension with adjustable anti-dive properties.
-fork-type suspensions compress under braking and extend during acceleration, changing the geometry and handling characteristics of the machine quite drastically during the different driving modes. Britten's suspension design allowed him to control pretty much all variables of suspension geometry under changing load, making the bike behave however the rider wished.
- The rear suspension, while perhaps not as revolutionary, was a beautiful piece. It was essentially a carbon-fibre banana swing-arm with a linkage to the adjustable shock/spring assembly. If you look at the bike you'll see that there's no spring/shock assembly near the rear suspension, rather note the spring/shock assembly directly behind the front wheel- this is for the rear suspension! The front shock assembly is hidden in the front suspension linkage and cowling.

2) The engine itself was a stressed-member.
-While certainly not unheard of, Britten took the concept to an extreme, essentially eliminating the frame from the motorcycle. The front and rear suspensions essentially bolted directly to the engine, thus saving many kilos over contemporary designs. Take a look at any current MotoGP or Superbike- most use the engine as a partial stressed-member, but they all have frame members linking the engine, steering heads and seat-assemblies. Britten really only had a vestigial sub-frame for the rider's seat.

3) Well-controlled aerodynamics and fully-ducted cooling system
-Britten paid close attention to airflow over, around and through his bike. Look how cleanly the rider's body tucks into the bodywork. He paid close attention to details, notice how clean the entire assembly is- no exposed wiring, nothing dangling into the airflow, that incredibly sleek rear swing-arm and rear tire hugger. This keeps the airflow smooth and un-disturbed. Motorcycles aren't terribly aerodynamic machines in the first place, but a wise man once said God is in the details.
-The engine itself is a water cooled design, but where's the radiator? It's in a fully-sealed duct directly beneath the rider's seat. High-pressure air is inlet from the front of the bike, through the radiator and is exhausted into the low pressure area beneath the rider and above/ahead of the rear wheel. Greater cooling equals higher power potential.

4) The motor
- 999cc 60 degree V-Twin, belt-driven DOHC design, twin injectors per cylinder, sophisticated electronic ignition, hand-made carbon fibre velocity stacks, wet sump. The motor was designed to breathe hard, pumping out torque and horsepower (166 hp @ 11800 rpm- not sure about the torque figures), and run cool and reliably under racing conditions. Nothing here that any other manufacturer couldn't have figured out on their own, but Britten had the insight and the will to make the best motor in the world at the time. The 60 degree configuration was, I assume chosen for packaging reasons. Normally this configuration would have bad primary balance characteristics, but Britten engineered his to such tight tolerances that the engine ran smoothly right up to redline (12500 rpm) without using a balance shaft.
I'll also point out here that Britten wasn't above using someone else's part if it was better than he could make himself- the gearbox was from a Suzuki superbike, and the cylinder liners and voltage regulator (both of which failed at the Daytona race in '92- the latter costing Britten the win) were from Ducati.

5) Carbon Fibre
- While Carbon Fibre had been around for 2 decades or so at this point, nobody had used it so extensively. Britten used the material for bodywork, wheels, engine parts, suspension girders and the rear swing-arm. There is still no other bike, not even the current Ducati Desmosedici MotoGP bike, that uses so much of this exotic material. The stuff then, as it is now, was hugely expensive and challenging to engineer for different applications. Britten made everything himself, in his garage, figuring it out as he went. This kept the total weight of the bike to a hugely impressive 138 kg.

Keep in mind that he did all of the above in 1991 and 1992, with the help of several neighbors and one part-time machinist, in his backyard shed! He made the bodywork by hand, using a wire frame and hot melt glue, crafting the wind-cheating shape and cooling ducting purely by eye. He cast the aluminum engine parts himself, heat-treating them in his wife's pottery kiln, and cooling the heat-treated parts with water from his swimming pool!

Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki... any one of these manufactures could today reproduce and expand on what Britten accomplished almost single-handedly. None of them will- there's too much at stake for them. It's far safer to stick with the tried-and-true, making small evolutionary changes over the years. A true visionary achiever (to coin a term) like Britten comes along only every once in a great while.

I suppose that this is what was really lost when John Britten died... vision, engineering acuity, hands-on knowledge, and pure will. Touched with a little craziness.

Some interesting facts:

This policy is driving attention away from the governments attempt to implement ISP level censorship (mandatory filtering).

Filtering will choke the network speed.

If every household in Australia took it up, it would cost $5,000 AUD per to install and the wholesale cost of the service just to break even would be $60 AUD/month. If only 50% take it up, that cost rises to $200 per month (remember, that's no profit for retail or wholesale yet).

Australia's geographical isolation and dependancy on a few fibre optic links to the US gives us much higher data costs. Some ISP's in Australia still charge 15 cents per megabyte ($150 AUD per gigabyte) for excess data. Most of our plans sit in the 2-20 GB/month range. 100 Mbit will chew through that much data in a day .

Yes, we need the infrastructure, the existing copper is upwards of 60 y/o in some places. But this is another poorly thought out knee jerk by the idiot running communications. He picked the right answer to the problem and future proofing, but has no idea how to implement it, how to reduce costs, how to fund it (global credit crisis you say?!?!).

That's why they call us "the lucky country"... \= |

She needs to eat more fibre.

this looks awesome!

It looks like something from a James Bond film. Shaped exactly like a dolphin, this boat is the latest toy for millionaire adrenaline junkies. The Seabreacher can jump 10 feet in the air and even perform acrobatic tricks.
Created by two water sport fanatics, New Zealander Rob Innes, 33, and Californian Dan Piazza, the Seabreacher is made of out of fibre glass, stainless steel and aluminium and uses the discarded canopies of US fighter jets.
The two-seater craft can submerge 2 ft underwater for around 20 seconds at a time creating the dolphin-like dive effect.

from: www.dailymail.co.uk

Okay, apparently this has to be baby-step explained for everyone here.

Reason 1: People are not against using objects to improve themselves, turning oil into a synthetic fibre for clothing, or taking medication to prevent pregnancy. All of these things are unnatural, yet accepted by society. Air conditioning could be considered one of them. How many of you want to give up air conditioning/central heating, or for that matter, the internet?

Reason 2: The will of God is not viewed as a valid reason to ban homosexuality. I believe if it exists, God willed it to exist, and since there are homosexuals, God willed them to exist. Anyone who quotes Leviticus at me is an idiot. Also, other religions believe in other gods who may pardon or support homosexuals. Banning what their religion deems appropriate in favor of another religion is indeed theocratic.

Reason 3: The consumation of a marriage and resulting pregnancy is no longer viewed as a requirement of matrimony. There are 2.5 million infertile couples in the United States, and are incapible of producing children. Millions more have menopausal females and are unable to produce children. The people who fit in those two categories clearly outweigh the number of gays.

Reason 4: This may occur, but it is merely an optical illusion of statistics. More people seem to be getting cancer because people are more willing to talk about themselves and others who have the often terminal disease. If gay marriage and homosexual relations were allowed in society, more gays would identify themselves as homosexual because they don't fear public torture and death. In fact, straight people will not turn gay because it is legal.

The only scientific evidince connected to homosexuality is that it is genetic. Genetic "diseases" or "abnormalities" are not contagious by external contact, or internal contact for that matter.

Reason 5: This is a paradox. Children are born to a man and a woman. This is a fact. However, gays are born to straight men and women, meaning that it is impossible for straight parents to only raise straight children, because gays have been born and are being born as we speak. Tough break.

Reason 6: The reference to interracial marriages refers to periods of time in the 50s, 60s, and earlier, when interracial couples were deemed distasteful or wrong. Parents feared their children coming home with a 'colored' significant other, or thier lovely darling baby choosing a white for a spouse. Those lines have finally begun to blur, and interracial marriages have mostly been left alone, because a new scapegoat has appeared: gay marriages.

Reason 7: I assume many of you support single working parents. They're appallingly common in the United States, with divorce rates so high. The children of such parents don't have two role models. I grew up with mostly just my mother; my father spent a lot of time away on business. I don't consider myself 'deprived' or 'poorly raised' because I didn't know what men were 'supposed to act like', which is what a role model teaches.

"What is popular is right" Let's all jump off bridges. It'll be totally cool. What? We'll all die? No biggie, at least we'll all die together. And why don't we ban gay marriage while we're at it, and drill in Tennessee, because clearly there is oil in Tennessee. Right under Graceland.

If you didn't get anything before that, you won't get the end.

Final points:
- Just because it was said before doesn't mean we can't say it again. Hearing it out loud gave it a larger impact for me.
- America has a reputation for tolerance and freedom. Our direct policy is "The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". A consensual marriage is an inalienable right under those terms.
- This is the ultimate sarcastic slam. When listening to these 'reasons' to disallow gay marriage, you sit there, stop the video, and think; "something's not quite right about that logic..." and you know why. Because there is no logic.

Call me a fag, call me a prick, call me whatever string of meaningless letters pops into your head. But lay off of alien_concept. Because she's in support of gay rights, and she's absolutely right.

Never have I felt so compelled. Losing a brother leaves a mark like the loss of no other.

In reply to this comment by calvados:
My good schmaws, do you love the following and wish to upvote and endorse it with every fibre of your being?

http://www.videosift.com/video/Garnet-Rogers-Night-Drive-1

My good schmaws, do you love the following and wish to upvote and endorse it with every fibre of your being?

http://www.videosift.com/video/Garnet-Rogers-Night-Drive-1

As long as there is a demand for unmetered broadband, there will always be flat rate ISPs, regardless of what Verizon, AT&T or anyone other telco does.

There is no physical way that a metered service is going to be any different from a flat rate service, it will still suffer from the same slowdowns and be plagued with the same traffic shaping and bandwidth throttling that all networks suffer from.

Half of Japanese internet users are using 100Mbps fibre straight into their homes and US telcos are looking at 150Mbps fibre networks.

The argument for metered broadband is about turning bandwidth into a marketable commodity. It's about turning each chunk of data into a product that you have to pay for to be delivered. It's about greed.

He who controls the intertubes, controls the world.

It's not actually chrome.

From Wiki-peddy...
"On 10 September 2007 a special version of the Veyron called the Bugatti EB 16.4 Veyron "Pur Sang" was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The difference from a standard Veyron is the body finishing: the Pur Sang has none. Instead it reveals the Veyron's pure aluminium-carbon fibre body. Pur Sang is French, meaning thoroughbred or pure blood (literally). Production will be limited to 5 cars. The car will be included with high-gloss aluminum wheels with a diamond cut finish."

The internets sure are fragile. A chewed fibre-optic cable here, a corrupted router table there...

Thanks all!

After being one of the voting-lurking masses for nearly a year I came to my senses and realized how much fun submitting videos is. The rest, as they say, is history. I'm looking forward to my next fifty posts, which I already have lined up .

So what does a materials engineer do? It's a question with a long answer. Materials engineers make steel stronger, carbon fibre composites stiffer, turbine blades more tolerant of heat, fuel cells more efficient, batteries more powerful. They get metal out of rocks and silicon out of sand.

i heard they won't let him compete in the olympics because his carbon fibre legs give him an unfair advantage over other athletes, supposedly he's burning less energy with those "feet" than other people normaly would during the race