No problem. Just throw an electric generator in the back to charge it while you drive.
Do you have any idea how large and how heavy a 100-200 kW electric generator is? Have a look.
But, truth be told, all trucks use this method, with improvements. First, they keep the engine in the front, under the hood. Second, they skip the hybrid part:-)
I described instances when gas stations have no gas.
Looks contrived to me. What would be the circumstances where power, that is heavily dependent on a long chain of wires that are open to elements, is present, but fuel tankers - that depend on nothing but weather - cannot make it.
So by their thinking, renting a gasoline car for a long trip represents extra cost.
They are correct. The extra cost that they need to pay for the rental car is payable right now. The wear of their own car is in the far future. Even if both numbers are the same (and they are not!) it is in their interest to delay this expense because there is a nonzero chance that the car will be sold (or damaged) before that date. p <= 1.0.
A rental car does save the resource of your own car. However you pay for that saving immediately - and in triplicate. Rental cars are not magical vehicles, they are not produced by fairies. They wear out and they need replacement. You (who else?) pay for that. On top of that, you pay for the risks (insurance), and you pay for the profits of the business, and you pay for all the business expenses (personnel, idle cars, building, parking, etc.) Rentals are very, very expensive. I considered renting a small 4WD SUV for a trip in early march over some mountain passes, and it would have cost me $500 for five days. That's way too much. (I drove my Prius instead.)
Renting is not convenient if you are working alone. You need to find someone to go with you to drive your own car back, and that has to be done twice. It's a hassle. Some rental places offer car delivery and pickup, but I haven't had a chance to test that service because of the costs.
$200 of gas per month is about 50 gallons (200L.) Gasoline is about 36 MJ/L, so he used up 7.2 GJ, or 2000 kWh. I cannot imagine that amount of electric power being free. How much does he pay for a kWh? Is he on an EV rate plan? A typical cost of energy in that tier from PG&E would be about 34 cents/kWh, so he would be paying about $680/mo for energy alone. I do know that EV rate is lower, but still this is not something he should be silent about. How much does he pay for charging?
Fuel is extremely cheap, and basically free if you have solar panels on your house.
Nothing is free. Solar panels provide you with "free" electric power only if you do not count the cost of the solar setup. You have to pay up front everywhere, and then try to recoup your investment later. This is not a good strategy. Most people prefer the "pay as you go" plan. Once you spent $50K on the solar setup you are essentially tied to your house - this setup cannot be moved elsewhere if you must move, and you may not get compensated for it when you sell the house.
I have the solar setup; it works. However it will not become financially profitable in the nearest decade. Chances are that it will fail somehow by then - and then it will never be profitable. I cannot recommend installing solar to anyone, unless you have too much money. Solar power just costs too much.
In essence, SUVs and trucks are very power-hungry vehicles. They can be loaded with a ton of stuff, and they can tow huge trailers. Batteries that can deliver so much power would cost a million dollars, and they would occupy too much space - and they would take a significant part of the weight of the vehicle.
There is yet another catch. Large batteries cannot be charged in a reasonable time using a reasonable charger. A truck can have a tank that holds 25-30 gallons of gasoline. That is equivalent to 26 MJ/L * (30*4) = 3 GJ, or 833 kWh of energy. A Tesla Supercharger delivers 120 kW. This means that to charge a truck with a Supercharger you need 7 hours. Charging at home, at 10% of that, would be a very sad story. Obviously, any vehicle that cannot be recharged in 8 hours at home is DOA in the market - and nobody is going to park their truck overnight at a supercharger:-)
Another unwelcome fact is that trucks are workhorses of the industry. They do not have an easy life of commuter cars that mostly are parked. Trucks are moving, and they are towing, and they are carrying stuff. They burn through all this energy very quickly. An EV truck owner would need a personal nuclear power station in the basement if he wants to keep his truck charged; then he can hope to cover about 12mpg * 30 = 360 miles per day. This may be, actually, not enough - if you haul a trailer with cattle your effective mileage will be much lower. I have friends who own a ranch and transport cattle all the time. They wouldn't even consider an EV truck - unless it comes with at least a 10 GJ battery from a flying saucer and a personal 1 MW charger.
Right now, all you have is the commuter market. And forgetting to change one night means you go no where the next day, which makes even that market nervous.
You don't have to forget. Most of the US power grid is hanging on wooden poles along the roads, where drunks have an excellent chance to hit them. Power failures in winter are quite common; power failures in summer, which are caused by overload, are also known to happen. You do not want to be stranded at your home, with a car that does not move, and with no power, and with a serious need to go somewhere *right now*. An EV is a fair weather vehicle that is suitable only for a forgiving usage pattern. It could be a good second car... but not for the price of four new gas cars.
guess what when you use a debit/credit card there is a transaction fee too. Also the fee is on average about 0.0001 BTC or currently 8 cents
How much will that fee be, in percentage, if I want to send you 50 cents? As BTC becomes more and more expensive, this fee will be also more and more important. Besides, why should I pay 8 cents from a purchase of a sandwich to someone I do not know? A cheeseburger costs $1.29; those 8 cents represent 6.2% - who in his right mind will want to overpay 6% just for the privilege of paying? I can pay with cash and avoid the fee altogether; or I can pay the same money with a card.
By the way, the card fee is built into the price already. If you want to pay cash, you simply pay more to the seller. Hardly any seller offers cash discount. BTC fees will be also part of the price; but, unlike card network fees, they are not a payment for a service - they are a royalty for using some fraction of the block that a miner produced.
You mean other than the public ledger called a block chain that is the basic foundation of the bitcoin protocol?
Yes. Aunt Jane is not likely to figure out how blockchain works, and there is nobody with authority who could explain that to her. More importantly, there is no arbitration. Today banks are doing arbitration in disputes that involve card payments and transfers. BTC is nothing but cash - and it has as little protection as cash has.
The catch is that 99.999% of people on this planet never had a chance to invest into BTC. They will not want to participate in the economy that is dominated by a few early adopters; they will not want to fight for scraps; they will not want to work for weeks and months to buy a coin that Satoshi et al. generated in milliseconds.
The BTC economy was always centered about spending the coins. Deflation was always far away, at least in the minds of pioneers. It was true when nobody needed the coins, but everyone could make a few just for fun. But in last few years, as the BTC market increased, deflation turned into a crushing problem, making spending of BTC into a foolish act.
As more people trust it, it will tend to fluctuate less.
I would say fewer and fewer people will be trusting BTC over time. The first wave of enthusiasts came and went. Some of them are sitting on serious supplies of BTC in their wallets. There is nothing left, profit-wise, for the later mass of customers to be enticed with. A common man cannot do mining; the currency requires complex software and a lot of time to catch up; transactions are not free (if you want them to complete); there is no central authority who can clearly and without doubt tell Aunt Jane that her money have arrived, or why it hasn't arrived yet, and where it is (banks can do that.)
On top of that, BTC is not directly accepted in most places; this means that you have to buy and sell currency all the time, enriching moneychangers. Theft of BTC is possible by many *new* methods. Why would then anyone need all this PITA at this time? Do we not have enough of currencies already that are in wide use?
Three spools of solder; wick; fluxes; ethanol, Q-tips, tools
Hakko "hot air pencil" tool
HP 438A power meter with two sensors
HP 1725A oscilloscope (2 ch, 275 MHz max.)
HP 6652A power supply
Lambda LQ-521 power supply
HP 3577A network analyzer
HP 8660C signal generator
HP 8620C signal generator
Wiltron 610D sweeper
Agilent E4407B spectrum analyzer
An oscilloscope, even an ancient one as this, is essential. No board can be declared "done" until you inspect what needs to be inspected. Without it you just don't know. A logic analyzer is history, and it is of no use whatsoever. Most designs don't even have busses anymore; if they do, they are deep inside ICs. Whatever little is outside, it is serial, at many Gbps (SATA, DVI, PCIe.) If you are debugging DDR, probing it is nearly useless without a well designed probe and pads for it. Generally, protocol analyzers - which is the latest generation of generic logic analyzers - are pretty useful if you have a specific problem with USB or PCIe. But they are not what a hobbyist can easily make or buy; and they, at today's speeds, require connection pads and an active probe.
The mob will have an inside guy that will be able to tell them exactly where every cop is at any given moment.
The dispatcher already knows that, it's her job. Otherwise where would she send a backup if necessary? The GPS data would be made available to the same people who work the radio; the only difference is that they don't need to ask cops for their location, and they would know their position on the way to the assignment.
OK, guys, no cruisers within 20 minutes from here - let's hit them.
Officers are dispatched, and are reporting their location, all the time - by talking to the dispatcher, usually over an open channel. (At best it's P25.) Their location is known well enough for a criminal, but not well enough for the backup (especially if something happens on the way to destination.)
However the GPS data can be easily encrypted, and it will be always correct and up to date. A criminal cannot easily intercept and interpret a GPS data packet. Complexity of that work would be far higher than just buying a scanner at Radio Shack.
You certainly do contradict yourself. You say "live and let live", yet you publicly call those people stupid, irrational, and that they contribute little to society.
I see where the confusion is. It appears that you define "let live" as "be silent about perceived flaws in actions of others." I define it as "do not interfere with individuals, but feel free to express your opinion about the behavior in general."
Me, I genuinely feel a little sorry for you. You've shut yourself off from half of the human experience because you're too timid.
I know that I haven't done many things that others did... but I don't want to do those things, and I am quite happy about it. I believe you haven't done some things that I did - and you would be also happy about that, if given the list. There is no need to experience "everything," otherwise you'd want to see the inside of a prison too, because it's also a part of human experience.
I'm almost absolutely positive that you've done nothing to improve anyone's life either
It's not important who I am. I make no claims of being too smart. We are talking statistics here. The number of geniuses who have enriched humanity and at the same time engaged in risky sports is *already* very, very low, compared to the number of similar geniuses who refrained from, say, street racing, or bungee jumping. It's matter of public records, and I offered a few examples already. There are several causes of this effect.
One of the simplest causes: reading books can make you smarter; but climbing mountains can make you only stronger. This would be a benefit only to a neanderthal society. Take Archimedes' Death Ray, for example (let's assume the legend is true. Technically, it does work.) Imagine two armies today: one is a high-tech US Army, and another belongs to Genghiz Khan, and is 10x larger, and each warrior is 10x stronger physically. Which army will win, on average?
That's *hardly* the philosophy you claimed in your reply, "to each his own".
There is not necessarily a contradiction here. Don't you know of an activity that you personally do not approve and do not perform, but - out of tolerance for views of others - allow others to participate in? I may think that it is stupid to climb mountains, or drive in circles for hours for no good reason, and it fits the dictionary entry as "pointless; worthless" - as long as you do not assign any worth to the endeavor. Of course, assigning worth is a personal issue - but so is my opinion, and yours, and everyone else's.
they are (in your mind) an indicator of people who provide little value to society
One can always skim through biographies of a few major scientists (Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Lev Landau, Niels Bohr) and notice that they are not known for thrill-seeking behavior - outside of theoretical physics, at least:-) You can also go through the list of drivers in NASCAR, Indy and F-1 in hope to find anyone who was nominated for a Nobel Prize - or even who can tell right away what Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is about. Despite the fact that every one of them owns a cell phone.
If you think space tourism isn't going to advance space endeavors, you're just kidding yourself.
You can always strap a donkey to a cart instead of a horse to save money; but it won't be an advancement of transportation. The transportation was advanced not in evolutionary, but in revolutionary steps. Those steps did not directly follow one from another. But those spaceplanes are just rehashes of a concept that is already well understood and that is already at its theoretical limit. The most damning fact is that it is very expensive - and it's not going to be much less expensive in the future. Sure, you can sacrifice orbit height (to just touch the space,) and you can make it a suborbital hop, and you can save some energy on air launch... but those are just inconsequential improvements that have no bearing on the problem how to launch 10,000 tons of parts to Mars, or how to automatically assemble them into ten robotic TBMs and five plants that manufacture fuel (or something) for return of the expedition.
You are making a mistake here, equating risk-taking with excitement and happiness. There are many people in this world who are much happier with a book in hand; who do not need to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. To each his own.
Do you think Sir Richard Branson is a "lightweight in the department of value to humankind" because of his risky hobbies in the air and on the ocean?
Nothing that Sir Richard Branson did so far affected my life, or life of millions of other people. If one day he builds a space elevator, I will be the first to say that he is one smart guy. But what should I laud him for today?
You might get a chance to tell him so if you book a ride with Virgin Galactic into space.
Only if that ride would be functional, and not just for entertainment of bored millionaires. Otherwise I would have to deify everyone who provides expensive entertainment to rich people (like safari, for example.) Call me when his actions really advance humanity.
Do you ever drive more than 10 mph over the limit?
No, I do not. What for? I drive with the speed of traffic, and in most cases it is just below 10 mph over the limit. I'm perfectly OK with letting other people to fly by in the left lane, only to be stopped by police a few miles down the road for a small contribution to municipal coffers.
Perhaps you wanted to reply to the AC who made this mistake. I do not correct other people's typos on Slashdot. Everyone understands who he was talking about.
if you're no living life to the extreme you're a waste of space
As matter of fact, most geniuses, scientists, professors are pretty rational, and they don't do anything stupid. Most of those who do are lightweights in the department of value to humankind. It's news (like this article) when these groups overlap.
I, personally, despise thrill - I have no use for risk. I have better things to do.
In this particular case not sure how essential for life is, or not. But lets suppose that it is the difference between life and death to have it or not. Having a quality one improve your chances, but having none (for one of the reasons i posted above, and probably more, like not profitable to produce for some markets, delivery time, etc) is having no chances.
This problem should be restated as a different set of outcomes:
The instrument produces true positive. This is correct, and the patient will be treated.
The instrument produces false positive. This is not life-threatening, but will result in additional testing and additional expenses.
The instrument produces true negative. This is correct, and the patient is healthy.
The instrument produces false negative. The patient will not be treated; this is life-threatening.
There is no instrument. The doctor is aware of the fact, and she will then either send the patient to a specialist who has an ECG, or will diagnose based on other symptoms, being aware that ECG is not available.
Now, what is safer for the patient: (a) the doctor knows that ECG is not available, but will request it if other symptoms indicate it; or (b) the doctor has the ECG, and it may be wrong.
You can see that in (b) the doctor may be convinced to dismiss other symptoms since the ECG shows no problem. In (a) the doctor does not have that bias, and the correct ECG will be ordered from someone else purely based on other symptoms. Positive bias is not life-threatening, and we set it aside. Negative bias is dangerous. This shows that (a) is better than (b) because (b) can only make things worse, but cannot make them better. The same applies to the first quad of outcomes (with this cheap ECG available) - it can help in #1, it cannot help in #2 and #3, and it can be fatal in #4. Sometimes not knowing something is safer than thinking that you know it and being wrong about that.
This works if the external ECG is available. However this instrument may be used in areas where no other ECG is available (somewhere in Africa, for example.) Then the calculations will be only dependent on instrument's own probability of error. In absence of better tools this ECG will be useful.
In the other hand, a device that you can't buy or is not available probably will harm you more than not having it.
I don't practice medicine; however I work with electrical test equipment every day. An instrument is all but useless if you cannot trust its readings.
Now, let's say this ECG shows something suspicious. What will you think? Is this a true abnormality, or it's a noise from the instrument? But here is a worse case: this ECG shows nothing wrong; you lead the patient out of the door, and he drops dead three yards from your office - because the ECG failed to detect a problem that was there all along.
Tools and equipment are cost of doing business, and as I understand these expenses are deducted from taxable income of your business. Why would you want to buy an uncertified device, risk huge, "open and shut" malpractice lawsuits, *and* give a third of the saved money to the government?
In part, you are right. Batteries have to be competitive with traditional fuels. While some people may want EVs for "green" reasons that only they can understand, they do not represent any significant part of the market. I bought my car (Prius) not because I wanted to save the planet, but simply because I needed a new car, and Prius was a very good choice in many aspects - comfort (CVT rules!) and mieage, and reliability, and price, and cargo space, and passenger seats, and cost of service. Saving the planet? Not on my salary. Let Al Gore do that on his.
But moving pollution elsewhere, in itself, is not such a bad idea. First of all, even if the volume of pollution is unchanged, moving it away from cities helps already. However large power stations are more efficient, such as they produce less pollution per kWh of energy, compared to a car. It remains to be seen what effect the transmission losses have; but the losses are present in both cases; an ICE is not very efficient, and it is largely heating the Universe. At the same time, charging of an EV is not a lossless process either, and the batteries do not last forever - they contain polluting chemicals, and they need energy to be produced and recycled.
Remote power stations have yet another advantage - they can use cheaper or cleaner fuels. Coal is cheaper, and is plentiful. Sunlight, hydro, wind, geothermal, tide, etc. are cleaner. Those are options that you can exercise. You have no such options with gas-powered cars; they only can run on oil products by definition - and supply of oil is, apparently, limited.
If I can prove by experiment that can drive more safely while texting than most people with their attention fully focused on the road will I be exempt from these kinds of laws
Major math fail. Accidents are driven by statistics. What you do and what other people do is not related. If you are more dangerous today than yesterday, the average also rises.
Note that if you are such an excellent driver, you still may need that last bit of skill if an idiot decides to something idiotic in your path. You will not get that last bit of skill if you are distracted.
Slashdot Mirror
No problem. Just throw an electric generator in the back to charge it while you drive.
Do you have any idea how large and how heavy a 100-200 kW electric generator is? Have a look.
But, truth be told, all trucks use this method, with improvements. First, they keep the engine in the front, under the hood. Second, they skip the hybrid part :-)
I described instances when gas stations have no gas.
Looks contrived to me. What would be the circumstances where power, that is heavily dependent on a long chain of wires that are open to elements, is present, but fuel tankers - that depend on nothing but weather - cannot make it.
So by their thinking, renting a gasoline car for a long trip represents extra cost.
They are correct. The extra cost that they need to pay for the rental car is payable right now. The wear of their own car is in the far future. Even if both numbers are the same (and they are not!) it is in their interest to delay this expense because there is a nonzero chance that the car will be sold (or damaged) before that date. p <= 1.0.
A rental car does save the resource of your own car. However you pay for that saving immediately - and in triplicate. Rental cars are not magical vehicles, they are not produced by fairies. They wear out and they need replacement. You (who else?) pay for that. On top of that, you pay for the risks (insurance), and you pay for the profits of the business, and you pay for all the business expenses (personnel, idle cars, building, parking, etc.) Rentals are very, very expensive. I considered renting a small 4WD SUV for a trip in early march over some mountain passes, and it would have cost me $500 for five days. That's way too much. (I drove my Prius instead.)
Renting is not convenient if you are working alone. You need to find someone to go with you to drive your own car back, and that has to be done twice. It's a hassle. Some rental places offer car delivery and pickup, but I haven't had a chance to test that service because of the costs.
$200 of gas per month is about 50 gallons (200L.) Gasoline is about 36 MJ/L, so he used up 7.2 GJ, or 2000 kWh. I cannot imagine that amount of electric power being free. How much does he pay for a kWh? Is he on an EV rate plan? A typical cost of energy in that tier from PG&E would be about 34 cents/kWh, so he would be paying about $680/mo for energy alone. I do know that EV rate is lower, but still this is not something he should be silent about. How much does he pay for charging?
Fuel is extremely cheap, and basically free if you have solar panels on your house.
Nothing is free. Solar panels provide you with "free" electric power only if you do not count the cost of the solar setup. You have to pay up front everywhere, and then try to recoup your investment later. This is not a good strategy. Most people prefer the "pay as you go" plan. Once you spent $50K on the solar setup you are essentially tied to your house - this setup cannot be moved elsewhere if you must move, and you may not get compensated for it when you sell the house.
I have the solar setup; it works. However it will not become financially profitable in the nearest decade. Chances are that it will fail somehow by then - and then it will never be profitable. I cannot recommend installing solar to anyone, unless you have too much money. Solar power just costs too much.
In essence, SUVs and trucks are very power-hungry vehicles. They can be loaded with a ton of stuff, and they can tow huge trailers. Batteries that can deliver so much power would cost a million dollars, and they would occupy too much space - and they would take a significant part of the weight of the vehicle.
There is yet another catch. Large batteries cannot be charged in a reasonable time using a reasonable charger. A truck can have a tank that holds 25-30 gallons of gasoline. That is equivalent to 26 MJ/L * (30*4) = 3 GJ, or 833 kWh of energy. A Tesla Supercharger delivers 120 kW. This means that to charge a truck with a Supercharger you need 7 hours. Charging at home, at 10% of that, would be a very sad story. Obviously, any vehicle that cannot be recharged in 8 hours at home is DOA in the market - and nobody is going to park their truck overnight at a supercharger :-)
Another unwelcome fact is that trucks are workhorses of the industry. They do not have an easy life of commuter cars that mostly are parked. Trucks are moving, and they are towing, and they are carrying stuff. They burn through all this energy very quickly. An EV truck owner would need a personal nuclear power station in the basement if he wants to keep his truck charged; then he can hope to cover about 12mpg * 30 = 360 miles per day. This may be, actually, not enough - if you haul a trailer with cattle your effective mileage will be much lower. I have friends who own a ranch and transport cattle all the time. They wouldn't even consider an EV truck - unless it comes with at least a 10 GJ battery from a flying saucer and a personal 1 MW charger.
Right now, all you have is the commuter market. And forgetting to change one night means you go no where the next day, which makes even that market nervous.
You don't have to forget. Most of the US power grid is hanging on wooden poles along the roads, where drunks have an excellent chance to hit them. Power failures in winter are quite common; power failures in summer, which are caused by overload, are also known to happen. You do not want to be stranded at your home, with a car that does not move, and with no power, and with a serious need to go somewhere *right now*. An EV is a fair weather vehicle that is suitable only for a forgiving usage pattern. It could be a good second car... but not for the price of four new gas cars.
guess what when you use a debit/credit card there is a transaction fee too. Also the fee is on average about 0.0001 BTC or currently 8 cents
How much will that fee be, in percentage, if I want to send you 50 cents? As BTC becomes more and more expensive, this fee will be also more and more important. Besides, why should I pay 8 cents from a purchase of a sandwich to someone I do not know? A cheeseburger costs $1.29; those 8 cents represent 6.2% - who in his right mind will want to overpay 6% just for the privilege of paying? I can pay with cash and avoid the fee altogether; or I can pay the same money with a card.
By the way, the card fee is built into the price already. If you want to pay cash, you simply pay more to the seller. Hardly any seller offers cash discount. BTC fees will be also part of the price; but, unlike card network fees, they are not a payment for a service - they are a royalty for using some fraction of the block that a miner produced.
You mean other than the public ledger called a block chain that is the basic foundation of the bitcoin protocol?
Yes. Aunt Jane is not likely to figure out how blockchain works, and there is nobody with authority who could explain that to her. More importantly, there is no arbitration. Today banks are doing arbitration in disputes that involve card payments and transfers. BTC is nothing but cash - and it has as little protection as cash has.
The catch is that 99.999% of people on this planet never had a chance to invest into BTC. They will not want to participate in the economy that is dominated by a few early adopters; they will not want to fight for scraps; they will not want to work for weeks and months to buy a coin that Satoshi et al. generated in milliseconds.
The BTC economy was always centered about spending the coins. Deflation was always far away, at least in the minds of pioneers. It was true when nobody needed the coins, but everyone could make a few just for fun. But in last few years, as the BTC market increased, deflation turned into a crushing problem, making spending of BTC into a foolish act.
Imagine that three years ago you bought a hotdog for 1 BTC. How would you feel about that today?
The only wise thing you can do with BTC is hold it.
As more people trust it, it will tend to fluctuate less.
I would say fewer and fewer people will be trusting BTC over time. The first wave of enthusiasts came and went. Some of them are sitting on serious supplies of BTC in their wallets. There is nothing left, profit-wise, for the later mass of customers to be enticed with. A common man cannot do mining; the currency requires complex software and a lot of time to catch up; transactions are not free (if you want them to complete); there is no central authority who can clearly and without doubt tell Aunt Jane that her money have arrived, or why it hasn't arrived yet, and where it is (banks can do that.) On top of that, BTC is not directly accepted in most places; this means that you have to buy and sell currency all the time, enriching moneychangers. Theft of BTC is possible by many *new* methods. Why would then anyone need all this PITA at this time? Do we not have enough of currencies already that are in wide use?
Here is what I have at this very moment:
An oscilloscope, even an ancient one as this, is essential. No board can be declared "done" until you inspect what needs to be inspected. Without it you just don't know. A logic analyzer is history, and it is of no use whatsoever. Most designs don't even have busses anymore; if they do, they are deep inside ICs. Whatever little is outside, it is serial, at many Gbps (SATA, DVI, PCIe.) If you are debugging DDR, probing it is nearly useless without a well designed probe and pads for it. Generally, protocol analyzers - which is the latest generation of generic logic analyzers - are pretty useful if you have a specific problem with USB or PCIe. But they are not what a hobbyist can easily make or buy; and they, at today's speeds, require connection pads and an active probe.
The mob will have an inside guy that will be able to tell them exactly where every cop is at any given moment.
The dispatcher already knows that, it's her job. Otherwise where would she send a backup if necessary? The GPS data would be made available to the same people who work the radio; the only difference is that they don't need to ask cops for their location, and they would know their position on the way to the assignment.
OK, guys, no cruisers within 20 minutes from here - let's hit them.
Officers are dispatched, and are reporting their location, all the time - by talking to the dispatcher, usually over an open channel. (At best it's P25.) Their location is known well enough for a criminal, but not well enough for the backup (especially if something happens on the way to destination.)
However the GPS data can be easily encrypted, and it will be always correct and up to date. A criminal cannot easily intercept and interpret a GPS data packet. Complexity of that work would be far higher than just buying a scanner at Radio Shack.
You certainly do contradict yourself. You say "live and let live", yet you publicly call those people stupid, irrational, and that they contribute little to society.
I see where the confusion is. It appears that you define "let live" as "be silent about perceived flaws in actions of others." I define it as "do not interfere with individuals, but feel free to express your opinion about the behavior in general."
Me, I genuinely feel a little sorry for you. You've shut yourself off from half of the human experience because you're too timid.
I know that I haven't done many things that others did... but I don't want to do those things, and I am quite happy about it. I believe you haven't done some things that I did - and you would be also happy about that, if given the list. There is no need to experience "everything," otherwise you'd want to see the inside of a prison too, because it's also a part of human experience.
I'm almost absolutely positive that you've done nothing to improve anyone's life either
It's not important who I am. I make no claims of being too smart. We are talking statistics here. The number of geniuses who have enriched humanity and at the same time engaged in risky sports is *already* very, very low, compared to the number of similar geniuses who refrained from, say, street racing, or bungee jumping. It's matter of public records, and I offered a few examples already. There are several causes of this effect.
One of the simplest causes: reading books can make you smarter; but climbing mountains can make you only stronger. This would be a benefit only to a neanderthal society. Take Archimedes' Death Ray, for example (let's assume the legend is true. Technically, it does work.) Imagine two armies today: one is a high-tech US Army, and another belongs to Genghiz Khan, and is 10x larger, and each warrior is 10x stronger physically. Which army will win, on average?
That's *hardly* the philosophy you claimed in your reply, "to each his own".
There is not necessarily a contradiction here. Don't you know of an activity that you personally do not approve and do not perform, but - out of tolerance for views of others - allow others to participate in? I may think that it is stupid to climb mountains, or drive in circles for hours for no good reason, and it fits the dictionary entry as "pointless; worthless" - as long as you do not assign any worth to the endeavor. Of course, assigning worth is a personal issue - but so is my opinion, and yours, and everyone else's.
they are (in your mind) an indicator of people who provide little value to society
One can always skim through biographies of a few major scientists (Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Lev Landau, Niels Bohr) and notice that they are not known for thrill-seeking behavior - outside of theoretical physics, at least :-) You can also go through the list of drivers in NASCAR, Indy and F-1 in hope to find anyone who was nominated for a Nobel Prize - or even who can tell right away what Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is about. Despite the fact that every one of them owns a cell phone.
If you think space tourism isn't going to advance space endeavors, you're just kidding yourself.
You can always strap a donkey to a cart instead of a horse to save money; but it won't be an advancement of transportation. The transportation was advanced not in evolutionary, but in revolutionary steps. Those steps did not directly follow one from another. But those spaceplanes are just rehashes of a concept that is already well understood and that is already at its theoretical limit. The most damning fact is that it is very expensive - and it's not going to be much less expensive in the future. Sure, you can sacrifice orbit height (to just touch the space,) and you can make it a suborbital hop, and you can save some energy on air launch... but those are just inconsequential improvements that have no bearing on the problem how to launch 10,000 tons of parts to Mars, or how to automatically assemble them into ten robotic TBMs and five plants that manufacture fuel (or something) for return of the expedition.
Your mundane, boring-ass existence. :-)
You are making a mistake here, equating risk-taking with excitement and happiness. There are many people in this world who are much happier with a book in hand; who do not need to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. To each his own.
Do you think Sir Richard Branson is a "lightweight in the department of value to humankind" because of his risky hobbies in the air and on the ocean?
Nothing that Sir Richard Branson did so far affected my life, or life of millions of other people. If one day he builds a space elevator, I will be the first to say that he is one smart guy. But what should I laud him for today?
You might get a chance to tell him so if you book a ride with Virgin Galactic into space.
Only if that ride would be functional, and not just for entertainment of bored millionaires. Otherwise I would have to deify everyone who provides expensive entertainment to rich people (like safari, for example.) Call me when his actions really advance humanity.
Do you ever drive more than 10 mph over the limit?
No, I do not. What for? I drive with the speed of traffic, and in most cases it is just below 10 mph over the limit. I'm perfectly OK with letting other people to fly by in the left lane, only to be stopped by police a few miles down the road for a small contribution to municipal coffers.
Its Irwin not Irving you twadwaffle
Perhaps you wanted to reply to the AC who made this mistake. I do not correct other people's typos on Slashdot. Everyone understands who he was talking about.
This is a troll? I don't know the circumstances of his death
As far as I recall, this is exactly what killed him.
if you're no living life to the extreme you're a waste of space
As matter of fact, most geniuses, scientists, professors are pretty rational, and they don't do anything stupid. Most of those who do are lightweights in the department of value to humankind. It's news (like this article) when these groups overlap.
I, personally, despise thrill - I have no use for risk. I have better things to do.
In this particular case not sure how essential for life is, or not. But lets suppose that it is the difference between life and death to have it or not. Having a quality one improve your chances, but having none (for one of the reasons i posted above, and probably more, like not profitable to produce for some markets, delivery time, etc) is having no chances.
This problem should be restated as a different set of outcomes:
Now, what is safer for the patient: (a) the doctor knows that ECG is not available, but will request it if other symptoms indicate it; or (b) the doctor has the ECG, and it may be wrong.
You can see that in (b) the doctor may be convinced to dismiss other symptoms since the ECG shows no problem. In (a) the doctor does not have that bias, and the correct ECG will be ordered from someone else purely based on other symptoms. Positive bias is not life-threatening, and we set it aside. Negative bias is dangerous. This shows that (a) is better than (b) because (b) can only make things worse, but cannot make them better. The same applies to the first quad of outcomes (with this cheap ECG available) - it can help in #1, it cannot help in #2 and #3, and it can be fatal in #4. Sometimes not knowing something is safer than thinking that you know it and being wrong about that.
This works if the external ECG is available. However this instrument may be used in areas where no other ECG is available (somewhere in Africa, for example.) Then the calculations will be only dependent on instrument's own probability of error. In absence of better tools this ECG will be useful.
In the other hand, a device that you can't buy or is not available probably will harm you more than not having it.
I don't practice medicine; however I work with electrical test equipment every day. An instrument is all but useless if you cannot trust its readings.
Now, let's say this ECG shows something suspicious. What will you think? Is this a true abnormality, or it's a noise from the instrument? But here is a worse case: this ECG shows nothing wrong; you lead the patient out of the door, and he drops dead three yards from your office - because the ECG failed to detect a problem that was there all along.
Tools and equipment are cost of doing business, and as I understand these expenses are deducted from taxable income of your business. Why would you want to buy an uncertified device, risk huge, "open and shut" malpractice lawsuits, *and* give a third of the saved money to the government?
In part, you are right. Batteries have to be competitive with traditional fuels. While some people may want EVs for "green" reasons that only they can understand, they do not represent any significant part of the market. I bought my car (Prius) not because I wanted to save the planet, but simply because I needed a new car, and Prius was a very good choice in many aspects - comfort (CVT rules!) and mieage, and reliability, and price, and cargo space, and passenger seats, and cost of service. Saving the planet? Not on my salary. Let Al Gore do that on his.
But moving pollution elsewhere, in itself, is not such a bad idea. First of all, even if the volume of pollution is unchanged, moving it away from cities helps already. However large power stations are more efficient, such as they produce less pollution per kWh of energy, compared to a car. It remains to be seen what effect the transmission losses have; but the losses are present in both cases; an ICE is not very efficient, and it is largely heating the Universe. At the same time, charging of an EV is not a lossless process either, and the batteries do not last forever - they contain polluting chemicals, and they need energy to be produced and recycled.
Remote power stations have yet another advantage - they can use cheaper or cleaner fuels. Coal is cheaper, and is plentiful. Sunlight, hydro, wind, geothermal, tide, etc. are cleaner. Those are options that you can exercise. You have no such options with gas-powered cars; they only can run on oil products by definition - and supply of oil is, apparently, limited.
If I can prove by experiment that can drive more safely while texting than most people with their attention fully focused on the road will I be exempt from these kinds of laws
Major math fail. Accidents are driven by statistics. What you do and what other people do is not related. If you are more dangerous today than yesterday, the average also rises.
Note that if you are such an excellent driver, you still may need that last bit of skill if an idiot decides to something idiotic in your path. You will not get that last bit of skill if you are distracted.