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Litigious Rambus Wins Again
After Rambus's settlement deal with Samsung earlier this week, an anonymous reader writes with this snippet: "Memory technology company Rambus rounded out the week with another legal dispute ending in its favor as it fights to defend its patent portfolio. On Friday [the] US International Trade Commission ruled that graphics chip maker Nvidia infringed upon Rambus patents, according to statements released by the two companies on Friday. Rambus has been filing lawsuits against various technology companies for the past decade, claiming they violate patents held by the memory chip designer."
In general a high-speed chase is a safety problem when there are other vehicles around. Those vehicles would likely be knocked out by this as well. Pace makers, and collateral damage to other electronics including the police car itself would probably be way too unacceptable. Second problem is that the size of the panel require to generate sufficient power density is so big that the chasing police car would be unable to do high speed (think parachute). Plus it's simply cheaper to call the dispatcher and have them put in the OnStar kill order instead of outfitting each cop car with $200k of equipment.
My prediction is a bill or NHSTA rule requiring all new cars to have on-star installed. We're getting close, as I heard a commercial on the way home stating that all new GM (I think) cars would come equipped with OnStar. The OnStar approach makes much more sense anyway. You can send a signal to a fleeing car to limit power. Or if the car is stolen, tell the car to refuse to restart after it's stopped. Much safer than making the car stall in a potentially dangerous position.