The gear selector was not designed by some dudes 100 years ago. The automatic transmission is much newer, and there were many iterative designs through the years which ultimately landed in the familiar P-RNDL console mounted selector that you think has always existed. The design converged on this because manufacturers repeatedly took the best elements of a design and moved it forward. The same reason why all cars have round steering wheels, column mounted switches, and gas tank fillers on the right or left rear quarter panel.
You can still have a gear selector that for all intents and purposes, looks and operates like a mechanical linkage but merely is an electrical switch sending signals through a wire.
Should we require manual chokes and timing advance, as well? The transmission is just one more thing in an automobile that used to require manual operation but through technology, the function has been automated. The only difference between it and other items is that many people (myself included) feel that the act of rowing your own gears is part of the driving pleasure, so the option do so has remained. But the requirement for a multi ratio transmission is only a necessity of the nature of an internal combustion engine and it's torque curve.
MT don't force you to use the parking brake. I've met a few drivers of MT's from flat states that never used the parking brake. And with a manual transmission, you are more engaged in the driving experience. It has become such an 'automatic' activity for me, it requires little more thought than breathing.
...which I have no problem with on a subscription service. I am paying a low fee for the temporary ability to view a large catalog on-demand. I don't have an issue with DRM in this case, except when it interferes with my ability to watch such as with data caps, or when I'm on a poor/no network area (airplane). This addresses those issues. Where I don't accept the DRM is when I 'buy' a digital copy of a movie. If I am dependent on the distributor to affirm my privilege to watch the movie in a month, year, 20 years, etc, then I don't own it.
I did have an issue with an Audi several years ago. My cruise control would periodically turn itself on. They checked the computer, and it was reading occasional faults in the cruise control switch, so they replaced it. The problem continued. Sometimes over bumps, but also sometimes when I would turn on my turn signal. The turn signal and cruise control switches were both stalks on the left side of the column. The dealer read the codes again, and again said the cruise control switch was reporting faults and wanted to change it again. When I protested, and pointed out that it would turn on when I turned on my turn signal, they assumed that I was mistaking the two stalks. (to which point I asked them to investigate why my turn signal was turning on when I activated my cruise control...) It was only after the service manager finally driving it around and being able to duplicate the issue that they believed me. They ultimately replaced the control module in the steering column, which contained both switches, which solved the problem. Not saying that the brakes and gas pedal go into the same control module, but I can certainly see a case where the control module has a fault which is reading the wrong input.
I drive manuals, too. But they do have their problems in this type of situation. I had a friend who was rear-ended by a manual driver, twice. A driver first hit the clutch, but missed the brake and rolled (at a rather high speed) into him. Then, after the hit and rebound, her foot came off the clutch, at which point the engage engaged again, and lurched her back into him.
If we are a simulation, then we aren't bound by the rules and laws of the 'physical' universe in which we were created. So the fact that computing power has progressed so rapidly in OUR world serves as no evidence that the same level of progress is possible in the REAL world, so you can't use our advancement as proof for anything.
Actually, most of the gross (up to all for some high-profile movies) goes to the distributor and studio for the first couple weeks of a movie release. The theater's main source of revenue for those periods is refreshments. The theater's keep goes up after the first couple of weeks.
NHTSA estimates that airbags save about 600 lives per year. http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/p... Even if they are off by an order of magnitude, the number of deaths from faulty airbags pales in comparison. Sucks if you were one of the 10 or so deaths from what would have been a minor accident, but it's similar to vaccines. Millions of lives have been saved from vaccines, but if you are one of the rare people who has a serious reaction to a vaccine.
Why does every car need to have a 900km (550mile) range? In the US, most people drive less than 50 miles round-trip to work. Most households have 2 or more cars. Why can we not replace at least one car in those households with an electric car that gets 100 miles per charge? That easily covers the daily commute and typical errands, even if you can't charge it while at work. (my employer currently has 4 out of 1000 spaces with electric charging capability, and it's easy to add more) You can use the second ICE car for family trips that require longer distances.
I don't know why a $29k Nissan leaf (before any incentives) or a $42k BMW i3 would be considered for the 'super wealthy' when the average new car price is $32k, unless you consider the average new car buyer 'super wealthy'. Sure, you can point to the Tesla S and BMW i8 as examples of the technology that are only accessible to the wealthy, but that one end of the market.
Why do batteries need to be guaranteed for 12-16 years? No new ICE car has a warranty that long. People pay thousands to replace transmissions on cars half as old. The current retail price for a replacement battery pack for a Chevy Volt is about $3500, although failure rates for the actual batteries even to 120k miles is very low. It's usually the control circuitry, which costs much less to replace.
I used to think that's what I wanted, too. But I think what is actually happening is that our data is moving to the cloud. As it does, you can basically go to any terminal and essentially have a roaming profile (without the 10 minute initial login delay that you have for Windows AD roaming profiles) for any computing device you go to. As it is now, when I'm on my desktop, I use my Chrome browser that has all my bookmarks and history. When I go to a phone, the same information is there. My documents are in Google Drive (or OneDrive, or Box, etc).The disk of the device becomes less important. It's moved a lot in this direction in just the last few years, and in 10 more years, I think it will essentially be seamless.
I have both Comcast cable TV (basic service with Internet is the same price as Internet alone) and I have DirecTV. Video quality on DirecTV is better, BY FAR, than Comcast. Comcast is so over compressed, even my completely non-technie wife notices that something is 'wrong' with the picture. Sure, some channels (like kids channels and shopping channels) are more compressed than others on DirecTV, but the ones where you want the quality have it. Neither, however, compares to OTA.
'Batteries' come in many forms. From lead-acid (cheap and plentiful) to LiPo chemical batteries (expensive, but lightweight and dense). Batteries can also be in the form of an electric pumping station that pumps water from a low altitude to a higher one during periods of generation surplus so that hydro plants can generate power at night.
Except that under the subscription model you own nothing. When you buy the CD, movie, etc, you own an infinitesimally smaller piece of the music library for your $12, With the subsciption model, you only have access as long as you keep paying that $12, and if they change their agreement with the artists/record companies, you access to your favorite artist might be removed next month. When you buy a DVD or CD, you own that forever.
No. The point of the article is that the next energy transition could only take a decade. Not THE next decade. WHEN the next breakthrough happens, the transition won't be as long as previous transitions. It might not start for 20 years. But when some as yet unknown technology is created, the whole world will transition in 10 years hence.
USB charging ports get flaky or flat out stop charging, buttons break, etc. For a device that you keep on your person practically every waking hour, and interact with dozens of times a day, getting 3 years is difficult. Same with laptops. I've seen coworkers who usually leave their laptops in the docking station every night, and their computers are pristine after 4 years, and others who take them on the road constantly, and after 2 years, they are falling apart.
...or, you could be full of shot. Toyota has bean counters and lawyers, too.https://www.google.com/url?q=http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/toyota-pay-12b-hiding-deadly-unintended-acceleration/story%3Fid%3D22972214&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjGqL_Ih4nMAhWMGh4KHXZxDEEQFggbMAA&sig2=KfEpauQqINZ4LyceD6eclQ&usg=AFQjCNFecORiFoxGZ1gMYOyd66NyX34U-Q
It doesn't have to be consistent. A person beyond distance x would NEVER be able to respond within a specified time-frame. We are talking about latency measurements on the scale of nanoseconds, which could certainly be done in hardware, if not software. If I measure the response time to someone and determine that the minimum response time of a beacon is 50ns, then I can be assured that they are not more than (about) 26 feet away.
Or, for $50/year you can get a GoogleApps account, plus $15 for the domain registration. You don't HAVE to use the Gmail web interface. You can bring your own POP/IMAP client. It's cheaper than rolling your own mail server, just in terms of the power savings if nothing else, and probably with better availability.
The Earth was at an equilibrium before we got here. And "we" are a product of that equilibrium. Our bodies are the product of an evolution that depended on the state of the Earth at the equilibrium. By releasing 4% more than that amount by releasing carbon that's been stored for millions of years below the crust, it can't be reabsorbed, and builds up. 4%+4%+4%... adds up pretty quickly. The Earth will likely find a new equilibrium again, but our bodies won't fit it very well. Sure, humans can develop technologies to deal with an environment that largely doesn't fit our physiology, but that requires energy. And that energy (unless we make serious changes) comes from the use of fossil fuels which, (if we don't use them up first...) releases even more CO2, and pushes us further away from an environment which suits our meager bodies.
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Elon is the Chairman of Solar City. The founders are his cousins.
The gear selector was not designed by some dudes 100 years ago. The automatic transmission is much newer, and there were many iterative designs through the years which ultimately landed in the familiar P-RNDL console mounted selector that you think has always existed. The design converged on this because manufacturers repeatedly took the best elements of a design and moved it forward. The same reason why all cars have round steering wheels, column mounted switches, and gas tank fillers on the right or left rear quarter panel.
You can still have a gear selector that for all intents and purposes, looks and operates like a mechanical linkage but merely is an electrical switch sending signals through a wire.
...all the more reason to NOT use an electronic parking brake!
Should we require manual chokes and timing advance, as well? The transmission is just one more thing in an automobile that used to require manual operation but through technology, the function has been automated. The only difference between it and other items is that many people (myself included) feel that the act of rowing your own gears is part of the driving pleasure, so the option do so has remained. But the requirement for a multi ratio transmission is only a necessity of the nature of an internal combustion engine and it's torque curve.
MT don't force you to use the parking brake. I've met a few drivers of MT's from flat states that never used the parking brake. And with a manual transmission, you are more engaged in the driving experience. It has become such an 'automatic' activity for me, it requires little more thought than breathing.
...which I have no problem with on a subscription service. I am paying a low fee for the temporary ability to view a large catalog on-demand. I don't have an issue with DRM in this case, except when it interferes with my ability to watch such as with data caps, or when I'm on a poor/no network area (airplane). This addresses those issues. Where I don't accept the DRM is when I 'buy' a digital copy of a movie. If I am dependent on the distributor to affirm my privilege to watch the movie in a month, year, 20 years, etc, then I don't own it.
I did have an issue with an Audi several years ago. My cruise control would periodically turn itself on. They checked the computer, and it was reading occasional faults in the cruise control switch, so they replaced it. The problem continued. Sometimes over bumps, but also sometimes when I would turn on my turn signal. The turn signal and cruise control switches were both stalks on the left side of the column. The dealer read the codes again, and again said the cruise control switch was reporting faults and wanted to change it again. When I protested, and pointed out that it would turn on when I turned on my turn signal, they assumed that I was mistaking the two stalks. (to which point I asked them to investigate why my turn signal was turning on when I activated my cruise control...) It was only after the service manager finally driving it around and being able to duplicate the issue that they believed me. They ultimately replaced the control module in the steering column, which contained both switches, which solved the problem. Not saying that the brakes and gas pedal go into the same control module, but I can certainly see a case where the control module has a fault which is reading the wrong input.
I drive manuals, too. But they do have their problems in this type of situation. I had a friend who was rear-ended by a manual driver, twice. A driver first hit the clutch, but missed the brake and rolled (at a rather high speed) into him. Then, after the hit and rebound, her foot came off the clutch, at which point the engage engaged again, and lurched her back into him.
If we are a simulation, then we aren't bound by the rules and laws of the 'physical' universe in which we were created. So the fact that computing power has progressed so rapidly in OUR world serves as no evidence that the same level of progress is possible in the REAL world, so you can't use our advancement as proof for anything.
Actually, most of the gross (up to all for some high-profile movies) goes to the distributor and studio for the first couple weeks of a movie release. The theater's main source of revenue for those periods is refreshments. The theater's keep goes up after the first couple of weeks.
NHTSA estimates that airbags save about 600 lives per year. http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/p... Even if they are off by an order of magnitude, the number of deaths from faulty airbags pales in comparison. Sucks if you were one of the 10 or so deaths from what would have been a minor accident, but it's similar to vaccines. Millions of lives have been saved from vaccines, but if you are one of the rare people who has a serious reaction to a vaccine.
Why does every car need to have a 900km (550mile) range? In the US, most people drive less than 50 miles round-trip to work. Most households have 2 or more cars. Why can we not replace at least one car in those households with an electric car that gets 100 miles per charge? That easily covers the daily commute and typical errands, even if you can't charge it while at work. (my employer currently has 4 out of 1000 spaces with electric charging capability, and it's easy to add more) You can use the second ICE car for family trips that require longer distances.
I don't know why a $29k Nissan leaf (before any incentives) or a $42k BMW i3 would be considered for the 'super wealthy' when the average new car price is $32k, unless you consider the average new car buyer 'super wealthy'. Sure, you can point to the Tesla S and BMW i8 as examples of the technology that are only accessible to the wealthy, but that one end of the market.
Why do batteries need to be guaranteed for 12-16 years? No new ICE car has a warranty that long. People pay thousands to replace transmissions on cars half as old. The current retail price for a replacement battery pack for a Chevy Volt is about $3500, although failure rates for the actual batteries even to 120k miles is very low. It's usually the control circuitry, which costs much less to replace.
I used to think that's what I wanted, too. But I think what is actually happening is that our data is moving to the cloud. As it does, you can basically go to any terminal and essentially have a roaming profile (without the 10 minute initial login delay that you have for Windows AD roaming profiles) for any computing device you go to. As it is now, when I'm on my desktop, I use my Chrome browser that has all my bookmarks and history. When I go to a phone, the same information is there. My documents are in Google Drive (or OneDrive, or Box, etc).The disk of the device becomes less important. It's moved a lot in this direction in just the last few years, and in 10 more years, I think it will essentially be seamless.
I have both Comcast cable TV (basic service with Internet is the same price as Internet alone) and I have DirecTV. Video quality on DirecTV is better, BY FAR, than Comcast. Comcast is so over compressed, even my completely non-technie wife notices that something is 'wrong' with the picture. Sure, some channels (like kids channels and shopping channels) are more compressed than others on DirecTV, but the ones where you want the quality have it. Neither, however, compares to OTA.
'Batteries' come in many forms. From lead-acid (cheap and plentiful) to LiPo chemical batteries (expensive, but lightweight and dense). Batteries can also be in the form of an electric pumping station that pumps water from a low altitude to a higher one during periods of generation surplus so that hydro plants can generate power at night.
Except that under the subscription model you own nothing. When you buy the CD, movie, etc, you own an infinitesimally smaller piece of the music library for your $12, With the subsciption model, you only have access as long as you keep paying that $12, and if they change their agreement with the artists/record companies, you access to your favorite artist might be removed next month. When you buy a DVD or CD, you own that forever.
No. The point of the article is that the next energy transition could only take a decade. Not THE next decade. WHEN the next breakthrough happens, the transition won't be as long as previous transitions. It might not start for 20 years. But when some as yet unknown technology is created, the whole world will transition in 10 years hence.
USB charging ports get flaky or flat out stop charging, buttons break, etc. For a device that you keep on your person practically every waking hour, and interact with dozens of times a day, getting 3 years is difficult. Same with laptops. I've seen coworkers who usually leave their laptops in the docking station every night, and their computers are pristine after 4 years, and others who take them on the road constantly, and after 2 years, they are falling apart.
...or, you could be full of shot. Toyota has bean counters and lawyers, too.https://www.google.com/url?q=http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/toyota-pay-12b-hiding-deadly-unintended-acceleration/story%3Fid%3D22972214&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjGqL_Ih4nMAhWMGh4KHXZxDEEQFggbMAA&sig2=KfEpauQqINZ4LyceD6eclQ&usg=AFQjCNFecORiFoxGZ1gMYOyd66NyX34U-Q
It doesn't have to be consistent. A person beyond distance x would NEVER be able to respond within a specified time-frame. We are talking about latency measurements on the scale of nanoseconds, which could certainly be done in hardware, if not software. If I measure the response time to someone and determine that the minimum response time of a beacon is 50ns, then I can be assured that they are not more than (about) 26 feet away.
Or, for $50/year you can get a GoogleApps account, plus $15 for the domain registration. You don't HAVE to use the Gmail web interface. You can bring your own POP/IMAP client. It's cheaper than rolling your own mail server, just in terms of the power savings if nothing else, and probably with better availability.
The Earth was at an equilibrium before we got here. And "we" are a product of that equilibrium. Our bodies are the product of an evolution that depended on the state of the Earth at the equilibrium. By releasing 4% more than that amount by releasing carbon that's been stored for millions of years below the crust, it can't be reabsorbed, and builds up. 4%+4%+4%... adds up pretty quickly. The Earth will likely find a new equilibrium again, but our bodies won't fit it very well. Sure, humans can develop technologies to deal with an environment that largely doesn't fit our physiology, but that requires energy. And that energy (unless we make serious changes) comes from the use of fossil fuels which, (if we don't use them up first...) releases even more CO2, and pushes us further away from an environment which suits our meager bodies.
After watching a few hours of reality TV (and by that I mean the Republican debates) I think your math is spot on.
Pennies stop terrorism. Do you know how much $1million in pennies weighs? Surprised that wasn't in TFA.