The remaining 19 Watts must be dissipated as heat within the charger itself: What you describe is a fire hazard, not a cell phone charger.
Because so many night lights spontaneously burst into flames?
And nobody would EVER buy a terribly inefficient $2 no-name Chinese made cell phone car charger...
It's not my fault that people buy cars that barely work.
Recommending activities that'll leave other people stranded in an emergency, due to your own ignorance of automobiles and electronics, is ENTIRELY your own fault.
A gasoline fire engulfs the whole car and can kill everybody pretty fast.
Umm... Unless it doesn't.
I've seen plenty of gasoline fires that were "restricted to the motor area". In fact that's likely the most common type, as fuel lines break and keep spraying fuel onto the hot engine (unless the driver has the presence of mind to shut off the key immediately).
Until you kill someone because you got drunk at the bar or purchased from a distributor which wouldn't have happened if you hadn't used a fake ID.
And because I went outside to get the mail, a butterfly flaps its wings, and causes a hurricane in the Caribbean that kills thousands. Clearly, the USPS is a murderous criminal organization that should be outlawed...
The above statement makes every bit as much sense as yours...
All those things you said, particularly the space travel bits, could easily have been claimed by Fascist Germany under Hitler. First high-power TV broadcasts, first man-made objects into space, first jet powered aircraft, originators of the non-stop interstate highway system, high standards of living, etc., etc.
Technical progress does not necessarily track freedom of expression and human rights.
Hmm... Lots of those are about memory price fixing. Many memory manufacturers were found guilty of the same, and Apple isn't there because THEY DON'T MANUFACTURE MEMORY. Ditto for TFT-LCDs.
Samsung is ripe to get in more trouble than Apple, because they're a vastly larger company, with interests in innumerable diverse industries that Apple doesn't care to be involved in.
Besides, why are you giving Apple a free pass, when THEY BUY SAMSUNG PARTS for their own products, and apparently don't care about all of the above?
it scares the crap out of me that I would have continued to defend the US as the savior and guardian of the open and free internet if it wasn't for a single guy leaking some stuff.
Well then you were INCREDIBLY uninformed and a DECADE behind, because the US government's mass surveillance has been made public several times in the previous years.
* "News reports in December 2005 first revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting Americansâ(TM) phone calls and Internet communications."
* "a USA Today story in May 2006 and the statements of several members of Congress, revealed that the NSA is also receiving wholesale copies of American's telephone and other communications records."
* "In early 2006, EFF obtained whistleblower evidence from former AT&T technician Mark Klein showing that AT&T [...] makes copies of all emails web browsing and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and provides those copies to the NSA." -- https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying
* "In 2008, [the US] Congress granted telecoms immunity for cooperating with the government's intelligence-gathering activities." Obviously, you only need "immunity" from prosecution if you were complicit in committing criminal acts. --http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=26717
Hell, what did you think Barak Obama's 2008 presidential campaign promises about surveillance and government secrecy reforms were all about? -- http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9845595-7.html
If you only found out about all of this recently, you'd have to been locked in a cave, or be a drooling moron.
I really didn't get the point of Snowden's leaks, or the public outcry after the fact, since this stuff has been public knowledge for many years now. I will say he had a decidedly positive impact, as the EFF's lawsuit (above) that was halted on national security grounds, was allowed to proceed after Snowden made enough of the program public knowledge that the state secrets excuse was laughable.
Basically, the government can force you to do anything it wants, and there's nothing you can do about it.
After a judge signs the warrant... Yes. As it has always been.
Was there some constitutional protection, prohibiting law enforcement from requesting your SSL private keys? Because I don't remember that part...
Certainly nobody was asked to testify against themselves. And the unreasonable search and seizure part doesn't apply because there was ample evidence, and the judge signed-off on the warrant.
I'm uneasy with the growing secrecy and creeping authoritarianism, but your rant is completely worthless and baseless.
the corner gas station brought in a huge portable genset
That's the rare exception, NOT the rule. Read about any disaster, even routine ones like hurricane evacuations, and you'll find innumerable stories about gas stations being shutdown.
I don't know about your car, but mine will keep a mobile device running for a very long time (at least a week, in my testing) and still be able to start,
If you've got a second car, or just a second car battery, and a full tank of gas... fine. But if not, you're taking a huge chance, and HOPING your car will start when you really NEED it. You might have had good luck, but try it in the worst case, needing to start your car late at night, in the middle of winter, with a freezing car battery, and your results may be very different.
With your cell phone charger drawing a couple amps, you could potentially run your car battery empty in a single night, if your charger or phone misbehave at all... Something simple like leaving a navigation app running in the background could do it. A cheap junk charger left plugged in might do it. etc.
Even with a temporary gasoline shortage, chances are good that you'll be using the car periodically anyway to go get more food from the grocery store [...] and the battery can be recharged at that time.
You're seriously underestimating the impact of life after a "disaster", and seem to be assuming a small scale, short-term blackout.
In any case, the electricity from your car is NOT "free". Every watt you suck out has to be replenished by burning more gasoline. Even if you need to drive somewhere, you WILL burn more gasoline to charge up your depleted battery in addition to the trip. And with car alternators being designed to only just barely supply enough power for your cars electrical system in the normal usage case, any higher drain can cause breakdowns, as anyone who has installed a powerful after-market car stereo can attest to.
When you're outdoors and need that little bit of extra juice, it's usually dark and bad weather.
Then you pop-in those AA batteries you've been solar-charging and use them. If you don't have enough power stored, then you didn't plan very well, and either aren't carrying enough battery capacity, or got too small of a solar panel for your needs.
You seem to think you're going to light a candle and charge your cell phone in 5 minutes... In fact peltiers will provide you a TINY trickle charge (far less than a cheap and tiny solar panel; even with a raging inferno to power it), and will require just as much pre-planning and coordination to ensure you don't run out of power when you need it.
Just because a few people are taking what Nokia is practically giving away for free, rather than buying a non-free product elsewhere, doesn't mean they "like" it.
If your life expectancy was, say, 30 years, you wouldn't be too concerned with cancer risks, either. Probably not too many ancient tortises thriving in the radiation areas, or any other extremely long-lived animals (like humans).
Peltiers are terribly inefficient in the best case. The only one I've seen that makes sense is a wood-stove heat circulating fan, since the fan does double-duty.
If you want to recharge your batteries or phone off-grid, you really can't do better than solar. Here's a $20 charger that'll charge batteries from and to USB, or from solar. Only thing it's missing is a tiny white LED for backup flashlight use:
Both will give 4 AA batteries an 80% charge in a day of sunlight, which is enough to charge your phone from zero. If you need faster charging than that, you'll need to spend a bit more. Something like this 7 watt panel should suffice:
"Actually, there's nothing in MicroUSB itself that makes it particularly fragile."
You must be kidding... MicroUSB requires a ridiculously thin, non-conductive (i.e. plastic), flat piece right in the center, to hold the contacts. How can "tiny reed of plastic" not be fragile? Sure, you could potentially make it strong, using the very latest aerospace synthetic composite materials, but that's only necessary because it's a fragile piece of crap.
Compare microUSB with the thick metal pins of a nice solid barrel plug, and try to tell me MicroUSB is designed to be strong...
I do like that devices are doing charging on a port they'd already have, and that everything has standardized on a single voltage, and is backwards compatible with normal USB... I do. But when you start getting in to all the crazy variations in current, and different wiring tricks to tell the devices that they're connected to a high-power charger, you get to the seventh circle of hell pretty quickly, with mutually incompatible chargers needed for Android devices, versus Apple devices, versus different types of tablet, and more.
There has to be a vastly better way to accomplish the goal than the mess we've got now.
This is also an example of technology pushing social change further than it has ever been able to go by itself.
We've had fire and the wheel for a few years now... We can stop putting every news story under the umbrella of: "Technology was involved, somehow".
And if/. is the supposed hall of reverence for all things technology, why isn't every story mentioning homosexuality, followed up with links to current scientific research as they narrow in on biological causes, and develop therapies that can prevent or reverse the condition?
Like deodorant. Who needs that? If your camping, you don't need it. If there is a break down in social order, you don't need it.
You don't strictly need deodorant, just as you don't strictly need toilet paper, aspirin and antacid, but they're tiny items that'll last a long time. And you'll be feeling a bit miserable if you omit these tiny conveniences.
Camp shower? I'm pretty sure where I come from they call those waterfalls. Or you could just go swimming in the lake.
In an emergency, you don't have the luxury of finding the nearest waterway. Out here in the south west, "waterfalls" don't really exist, and the "lake" you want to go swim in (if there is even one within 100 miles of you) may be extremely dangerous, or massively polluted due to whatever the disaster. I know plenty of folks in New Orleans were surrounded by water, yet dying for a shower. Sounds like you're the one being quite biased and short-sighted here.
Also importantly, a camp shower serves a secondary purpose as a water carrier. A lightweight 5 gallon water bag is nice to have, and if it can also gravity feed your water filter, it'll be a very handy addition, even in a short trip where you don't need a shower. Alternatively, a large camelbak bag can also do double duty in place of a camp shower.
Further, how are you going to carry all this stuff?
That's not something people need a reminder of... They'll figure that out without my help. Whether they prefer backpacks, duffel bags, old suitcases, hobo bindles, or anything else, is not my concern. People can reasonably figure out how they'd prefer to carry their supplies around. And the correct answer for someone who is accustomed to hiking/backpacking, won't be right for someone who has several OHVs lying around.
But wouldn't you rather hangout at home for a month and forget your datacenter?
Your home may have collapsed, flooded, burned down, etc. Commercial buildings do tend to remain standing after far more stress. And don't forget, the IT first responders (reestablishing communications) are nearly as important as the recognized emergency services (police/fire/medical), and folks like power-line technicians. None of the above will have the luxury of just sitting at home (even if they avoided the disaster) and waiting for someone else to go out and restore civilization.
For your emergency survival kit, take a good long look at all the options for camping gear. If you aren't prepared for a month of camping, alone, way out in the wilderness, with just your emergency kit, you aren't prepared for a fire/flood/hurricane/earthquake. You'd be amazed at the dozens of small things you will need (or seriously want) but would never think of until you try a few days of camping.
* Hiking water filter or lots of purification tablets (1 gallon per person, per day)
* Multi-gallon water containers, and camp shower
* Tent or large tarp
* Air mattress & pump, or foam pad
* Heavy blankets or sleeping bag
* Heavy waterproof jacket, several changes of clothes, perhaps shoes, etc.
* Plenty of dehydrated food, and salt
* Lighter/matches, propane canisters and 1-burner stove, plus cooking pot/pan and utensils
* Prescription drugs, or just aspirin, antacids, etc.
* First aid kit with numerous bandages, antiseptic (iodine/alcohol), burn ointment, and sewing kit.
If a student spies on someone its a crime but if government does the same it's not.
If a *cop* cuffs you, throws you in the back of his car, and locks you up in a tiny cell, it's okay, but if *I* do it to my ex, somehow I'm the bad guy? Hrmph.
does not include the logistics or time required to initially copy the data onto SD cards, and then back off of the cards upon reaching the destination
The time to read/write the cards is only a couple hours... Not a big impact on the 40 hour trip.
What's really being omitted is price (many millions of dollars) and latency (if you need one tiny file, you're still left waiting 40 hours).
The later is the real problem with all of this. Your office in New York probably can't INSTANTLY use all of these petabytes of files when they get them... they probably only need a few gigabytes of files right now, then a few gigabytes more tomorrow, etc., etc. So for a realistic workload, the fiber optic connection is better and "faster", due to the insane latency of driving cross-country.
If carrying A-Bombs across the eastern coast is a routine flight I would love to know what the USAF considers an exceptional flight.
This was 1961, at the height of nuclear proliferation. The US government was selling uranium-235, in blister packs, out the back door of every nuclear power plant. Radioactive material was the iPhone of its day. Nobody knew enough to be afraid of it, yet. We were a small step away from having millions of plutonium-powered cars driving around.
It's only today that we're hyper-sensitive about the risks of accidents... Back then, we were pretty sure we'd be on the receiving end of 1,000 Soviet ICBMs any old day, so a stray US nuke wasn't such a big deal.
Of course, if one nuke HAD accidentally gone off over over US soil, you have to wonder if the military could own-up to their failure killing tens of thousands of dead Americans, or if it would be called a Russian attack and cause a full-scale retaliation.
My point is the Prius is a plug-in hybrid with limited range in part because it uses Ni-MH batteries.
The Prius would be a hybrid with limited range if it used Li-Ion batteries as well...
If it was reconfigured with Li-technology batteries it would have a better range like its competitors such as the Volt
The capacity improvements of Li-Ion over NiMH per volume vary... But is typically around 30%. And all the other benefits you hint at are exactly the OPPOSITE of reality...
The Volt is a very different vehicle, and changing the Prius battery certainly won't make them competitors.
GNU hasn't got a damn thing to do with it. GNU is just some crap userland tools which are trivially easy to replace with something else. The important part is X11/Linux.
The reason RMS insists on sticking GNU in the name is pure self-promotion, and he's a shameless blowhard.
Slashdot Mirror
Because so many night lights spontaneously burst into flames?
And nobody would EVER buy a terribly inefficient $2 no-name Chinese made cell phone car charger...
Recommending activities that'll leave other people stranded in an emergency, due to your own ignorance of automobiles and electronics, is ENTIRELY your own fault.
So you're suggesting not to park a Tesla in your garage, I take it?
Umm... Unless it doesn't.
I've seen plenty of gasoline fires that were "restricted to the motor area". In fact that's likely the most common type, as fuel lines break and keep spraying fuel onto the hot engine (unless the driver has the presence of mind to shut off the key immediately).
And because I went outside to get the mail, a butterfly flaps its wings, and causes a hurricane in the Caribbean that kills thousands. Clearly, the USPS is a murderous criminal organization that should be outlawed...
The above statement makes every bit as much sense as yours...
All those things you said, particularly the space travel bits, could easily have been claimed by Fascist Germany under Hitler. First high-power TV broadcasts, first man-made objects into space, first jet powered aircraft, originators of the non-stop interstate highway system, high standards of living, etc., etc.
Technical progress does not necessarily track freedom of expression and human rights.
Hmm... Lots of those are about memory price fixing. Many memory manufacturers were found guilty of the same, and Apple isn't there because THEY DON'T MANUFACTURE MEMORY. Ditto for TFT-LCDs.
Samsung is ripe to get in more trouble than Apple, because they're a vastly larger company, with interests in innumerable diverse industries that Apple doesn't care to be involved in.
Besides, why are you giving Apple a free pass, when THEY BUY SAMSUNG PARTS for their own products, and apparently don't care about all of the above?
Well then you were INCREDIBLY uninformed and a DECADE behind, because the US government's mass surveillance has been made public several times in the previous years.
* In December 2005, U.S. District and FISA court judge James Robertson resigned in protest over warrant-less wiretapping on US citizens. -- http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=1429647
* "News reports in December 2005 first revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting Americansâ(TM) phone calls and Internet communications."
* "a USA Today story in May 2006 and the statements of several members of Congress, revealed that the NSA is also receiving wholesale copies of American's telephone and other communications records."
* "In early 2006, EFF obtained whistleblower evidence from former AT&T technician Mark Klein showing that AT&T [...] makes copies of all emails web browsing and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and provides those copies to the NSA."
-- https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying
There were well-publicized lawsuits over this issue:
-- http://news.cnet.com/ATT-sued-over-NSA-spy-program/2100-1028_3-6033501.html
And even if you missed all of that:
* "In 2008, [the US] Congress granted telecoms immunity for cooperating with the government's intelligence-gathering activities." Obviously, you only need "immunity" from prosecution if you were complicit in committing criminal acts.
--http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=26717
Hell, what did you think Barak Obama's 2008 presidential campaign promises about surveillance and government secrecy reforms were all about? -- http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9845595-7.html
If you only found out about all of this recently, you'd have to been locked in a cave, or be a drooling moron.
I really didn't get the point of Snowden's leaks, or the public outcry after the fact, since this stuff has been public knowledge for many years now. I will say he had a decidedly positive impact, as the EFF's lawsuit (above) that was halted on national security grounds, was allowed to proceed after Snowden made enough of the program public knowledge that the state secrets excuse was laughable.
After a judge signs the warrant... Yes. As it has always been.
Was there some constitutional protection, prohibiting law enforcement from requesting your SSL private keys? Because I don't remember that part...
Certainly nobody was asked to testify against themselves. And the unreasonable search and seizure part doesn't apply because there was ample evidence, and the judge signed-off on the warrant.
I'm uneasy with the growing secrecy and creeping authoritarianism, but your rant is completely worthless and baseless.
That's the rare exception, NOT the rule. Read about any disaster, even routine ones like hurricane evacuations, and you'll find innumerable stories about gas stations being shutdown.
If you've got a second car, or just a second car battery, and a full tank of gas... fine. But if not, you're taking a huge chance, and HOPING your car will start when you really NEED it. You might have had good luck, but try it in the worst case, needing to start your car late at night, in the middle of winter, with a freezing car battery, and your results may be very different.
With your cell phone charger drawing a couple amps, you could potentially run your car battery empty in a single night, if your charger or phone misbehave at all... Something simple like leaving a navigation app running in the background could do it. A cheap junk charger left plugged in might do it. etc.
You're seriously underestimating the impact of life after a "disaster", and seem to be assuming a small scale, short-term blackout.
In any case, the electricity from your car is NOT "free". Every watt you suck out has to be replenished by burning more gasoline. Even if you need to drive somewhere, you WILL burn more gasoline to charge up your depleted battery in addition to the trip. And with car alternators being designed to only just barely supply enough power for your cars electrical system in the normal usage case, any higher drain can cause breakdowns, as anyone who has installed a powerful after-market car stereo can attest to.
At least on EARTH you can. Yes.
Then you pop-in those AA batteries you've been solar-charging and use them. If you don't have enough power stored, then you didn't plan very well, and either aren't carrying enough battery capacity, or got too small of a solar panel for your needs.
You seem to think you're going to light a candle and charge your cell phone in 5 minutes... In fact peltiers will provide you a TINY trickle charge (far less than a cheap and tiny solar panel; even with a raging inferno to power it), and will require just as much pre-planning and coordination to ensure you don't run out of power when you need it.
Just because a few people are taking what Nokia is practically giving away for free, rather than buying a non-free product elsewhere, doesn't mean they "like" it.
If your life expectancy was, say, 30 years, you wouldn't be too concerned with cancer risks, either. Probably not too many ancient tortises thriving in the radiation areas, or any other extremely long-lived animals (like humans).
And what's the first thing you'll be unable to get in a power outage? That's right, gasoline.
Sticks and twigs tend to be more plentiful, since you can't run your car on it.
Peltiers are terribly inefficient in the best case. The only one I've seen that makes sense is a wood-stove heat circulating fan, since the fan does double-duty.
If you want to recharge your batteries or phone off-grid, you really can't do better than solar. Here's a $20 charger that'll charge batteries from and to USB, or from solar. Only thing it's missing is a tiny white LED for backup flashlight use:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0042Z14FO/
Or you can go a little cheaper if you don't want the USB functionality, and prefer more flexibility:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0098SWJUE/
Both will give 4 AA batteries an 80% charge in a day of sunlight, which is enough to charge your phone from zero. If you need faster charging than that, you'll need to spend a bit more. Something like this 7 watt panel should suffice:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CJJ4OUW/
"Actually, there's nothing in MicroUSB itself that makes it particularly fragile."
You must be kidding... MicroUSB requires a ridiculously thin, non-conductive (i.e. plastic), flat piece right in the center, to hold the contacts. How can "tiny reed of plastic" not be fragile? Sure, you could potentially make it strong, using the very latest aerospace synthetic composite materials, but that's only necessary because it's a fragile piece of crap.
Compare microUSB with the thick metal pins of a nice solid barrel plug, and try to tell me MicroUSB is designed to be strong...
I do like that devices are doing charging on a port they'd already have, and that everything has standardized on a single voltage, and is backwards compatible with normal USB... I do. But when you start getting in to all the crazy variations in current, and different wiring tricks to tell the devices that they're connected to a high-power charger, you get to the seventh circle of hell pretty quickly, with mutually incompatible chargers needed for Android devices, versus Apple devices, versus different types of tablet, and more.
There has to be a vastly better way to accomplish the goal than the mess we've got now.
We've had fire and the wheel for a few years now... We can stop putting every news story under the umbrella of: "Technology was involved, somehow".
And if /. is the supposed hall of reverence for all things technology, why isn't every story mentioning homosexuality, followed up with links to current scientific research as they narrow in on biological causes, and develop therapies that can prevent or reverse the condition?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation
Or is that bit of technology too politically incorrect to mention?
You don't strictly need deodorant, just as you don't strictly need toilet paper, aspirin and antacid, but they're tiny items that'll last a long time. And you'll be feeling a bit miserable if you omit these tiny conveniences.
In an emergency, you don't have the luxury of finding the nearest waterway. Out here in the south west, "waterfalls" don't really exist, and the "lake" you want to go swim in (if there is even one within 100 miles of you) may be extremely dangerous, or massively polluted due to whatever the disaster. I know plenty of folks in New Orleans were surrounded by water, yet dying for a shower. Sounds like you're the one being quite biased and short-sighted here.
Also importantly, a camp shower serves a secondary purpose as a water carrier. A lightweight 5 gallon water bag is nice to have, and if it can also gravity feed your water filter, it'll be a very handy addition, even in a short trip where you don't need a shower. Alternatively, a large camelbak bag can also do double duty in place of a camp shower.
That's not something people need a reminder of... They'll figure that out without my help. Whether they prefer backpacks, duffel bags, old suitcases, hobo bindles, or anything else, is not my concern. People can reasonably figure out how they'd prefer to carry their supplies around. And the correct answer for someone who is accustomed to hiking/backpacking, won't be right for someone who has several OHVs lying around.
Your home may have collapsed, flooded, burned down, etc. Commercial buildings do tend to remain standing after far more stress. And don't forget, the IT first responders (reestablishing communications) are nearly as important as the recognized emergency services (police/fire/medical), and folks like power-line technicians. None of the above will have the luxury of just sitting at home (even if they avoided the disaster) and waiting for someone else to go out and restore civilization.
For your emergency survival kit, take a good long look at all the options for camping gear. If you aren't prepared for a month of camping, alone, way out in the wilderness, with just your emergency kit, you aren't prepared for a fire/flood/hurricane/earthquake. You'd be amazed at the dozens of small things you will need (or seriously want) but would never think of until you try a few days of camping.
* Hiking water filter or lots of purification tablets (1 gallon per person, per day)
* Multi-gallon water containers, and camp shower
* Tent or large tarp
* Air mattress & pump, or foam pad
* Heavy blankets or sleeping bag
* Heavy waterproof jacket, several changes of clothes, perhaps shoes, etc.
* Plenty of dehydrated food, and salt
* Lighter/matches, propane canisters and 1-burner stove, plus cooking pot/pan and utensils
* Prescription drugs, or just aspirin, antacids, etc.
* First aid kit with numerous bandages, antiseptic (iodine/alcohol), burn ointment, and sewing kit.
* Large knife/hatchet/saw
* Shovel, toilet paper, and soap.
* Toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant
* Solar AA/AAA battery and cell phone charger combo
* Spare LED flashlight
* AM/FM/shortwave radio, and perhaps CB/FRS/GMRS/Ham radios
* Compass and a map
* Probably a few others that slipped my mind.
And be sure most of the above is in fully submersible, water-tight containers, like freezer bags or food storage bins.
If a *cop* cuffs you, throws you in the back of his car, and locks you up in a tiny cell, it's okay, but if *I* do it to my ex, somehow I'm the bad guy? Hrmph.
The time to read/write the cards is only a couple hours... Not a big impact on the 40 hour trip.
What's really being omitted is price (many millions of dollars) and latency (if you need one tiny file, you're still left waiting 40 hours).
The later is the real problem with all of this. Your office in New York probably can't INSTANTLY use all of these petabytes of files when they get them... they probably only need a few gigabytes of files right now, then a few gigabytes more tomorrow, etc., etc. So for a realistic workload, the fiber optic connection is better and "faster", due to the insane latency of driving cross-country.
Good thinking! Because when the experts who investigated the incident say things like:
"The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52,"
Or:
"one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".
Well, you KNOW you've got a PERFECTLY SAFE bit of kit, there. Right?
This was 1961, at the height of nuclear proliferation. The US government was selling uranium-235, in blister packs, out the back door of every nuclear power plant. Radioactive material was the iPhone of its day. Nobody knew enough to be afraid of it, yet. We were a small step away from having millions of plutonium-powered cars driving around.
It's only today that we're hyper-sensitive about the risks of accidents... Back then, we were pretty sure we'd be on the receiving end of 1,000 Soviet ICBMs any old day, so a stray US nuke wasn't such a big deal.
Of course, if one nuke HAD accidentally gone off over over US soil, you have to wonder if the military could own-up to their failure killing tens of thousands of dead Americans, or if it would be called a Russian attack and cause a full-scale retaliation.
The Prius would be a hybrid with limited range if it used Li-Ion batteries as well...
The capacity improvements of Li-Ion over NiMH per volume vary... But is typically around 30%. And all the other benefits you hint at are exactly the OPPOSITE of reality...
The Volt is a very different vehicle, and changing the Prius battery certainly won't make them competitors.
Absolutely no bearing on the subject of this conversation...
GNU hasn't got a damn thing to do with it. GNU is just some crap userland tools which are trivially easy to replace with something else. The important part is X11/Linux.
The reason RMS insists on sticking GNU in the name is pure self-promotion, and he's a shameless blowhard.