I choose to focus on burglaries because those take place in the home, and that is where most people store their guns.
If you're talking about concealed weapons carried at all time, then it's a completely different matter -- those are likely to be at hand in many more situations, on the other hand doing that also typically raises the odds of accidents.
I agree that multiplying by age is equally relevant for the crimes and the accidents. It makes both equally more likely. It was meant to illustrate that the odds of an accident aren't THAT low. One in 2500 lifetimes, would mean that in my town of 100K people, aproximately 40 of those would die from gun-accidents inside of 50 years, aproximately one a year. Probably 10 a year HURT by accidental gunfire. (yes this number comes out of my behind, but I hope you can agree that the TOTAL number of accidents is likely to be significantly higher than the number of LETHAL accidents)
There hasn't been a -single- case of anyone killed by a burglar in the last 10 years. Infact, there hasn't been a single case of anyone being killed by a stranger in the last 10 years. There's been a few manslaugthers, say someone (mostly a man) killing a wife (or a husband) in a quarrel or similar. Having more guns around wouldn't help with those. (infact it'd likely make it worse)
I guess my views -are- colored by living on a relatively peaceful place. Obviously the risk of accidents are relatively uninfluenced by where you live whereas the risk of crime varies wildly. Being murdered by a stranger is essentially a null risk in most of the world though. (Here the odds of being murdered at all are somewhat less than 0.1%, and about 75% of those are murders by someone you know well. Of the REMAINING 25% of the murders, 80% are in and by criminal gangs)
Put differently, if you are NOT an active member of a criminal gang, the odds that you (or your wife, or your children) will be murdered by someone you don't know well is something like 0.0025% or 1:20000. Which is completely ignorable. Notice that these are risks of dying that way AT ALL. Not risks of dying this way THIS YEAR.
Accidents and -lethal- accidents aren't the same. Not -everyone- who has a accident with a gun ends up killing someone. To the contrary, the most common kind of accident only damages property (sometimes not even that, it's possible to accidentally fire a gun and damage nothing), and most of the time when a accidental gunshot -does- hit someone, they survive it.
1150 accidental -deaths- for 200million guns may be correct. Accidents in total is going to be much higher. (allthough I agree that accidents that end up damaging only property aren't as serious) That's data for a single year though, so if you have a gun for your entire adult life, multiply it by 70 or thereabout, and you end up with 80.500 deaths among the 200mill guns, so one accidental death in 2500 lifelong gun-ownerships. (add in the ones hurt, unless you consider it an irrelevant detail to have a wife or kid with a bullet in the shoulder/arm/leg/whatever)
Deaths due to burglars choosing to fight or attack homeowners rather than evacuate when discovered are -much- less common than that.
Not really. If my claim was that -precisely- 1:10 is the proper ratio, then fine.
But the cases where a thief is discouraged at gunpoint, or shot, are so few they're essentially ignorable, while the number of gun-in-home accidents of various types (even if you exclude suicides) are high.
I agree with this. It is a useful way to weed out lots of philosophical wankery of no consequence.
It's a bit problematic for weeding out religious wankery though, because frequently people say: Knowing this allows my soul to experience a nicer afterlife.
If true, this would be useful. But there is no indication (and can be no indication) either way, true or not.
I personally see no reason to believe in stuff COMPLETELY without evidence -- there is an unlimited collection of such stuff afterall, much of it contradictory, so you can't believe in it all. And the absence of evidence leaves you no usable way of deciding *which* particular set of stuff to believe.
In practice most human beings seem to deal with this by the simple expedient of believing that which most people surrounding them in their childhood believed. That is easy to -understand-, but it's hard to claim it's particularily RATIONAL.
For example, the people being strict-line christians here are the very same people who would with a high likelihood be strict-line hindus (or muslims or whatever) had they been born somewhere else.
You know, some people think that scaring people needlessly is a NEGATIVE thing to do. Given that 99% of the people who come to your house are friendly or neutral, and no threat to you, having something that scares them all is a very strong reason NOT to have a scary dog.
99% of all thieves choose the "path of least resistance", the remaining 1% are only going to be interested in your house if you've got something particular in there.
So all you have to do is make them think your particular home is more trouble than the next one. Which is trivial, anything will do.
If it's -not- trivial, because all your neighbours have lots of security-gadgets too, then you're in the wrong neighbourhood.
For every -1- person who saves his home and/or family because he has a gun at home, knows how to, and actually is there to use it in the correct way at a breakin, there are -10- who then experience one of those family-members hurt by that gun because of improper use.
So buying a gun to make your family safe is MUCH more likely to end up putting a bullet in some body-part of a member of that family than it is to end up putting a bullet in a criminal.
I'll agree with you; today, the selection today is pretty bad -- mostly lead-acid powered NEVs. But there's a whole slew of quite reasonable EVs coming out in the next couple years, a number of them from major manufacturers and a number from startups.
I suspected as much: we basically agree on todays situation. You're more hopeful than I am about the near-future, but this is a point where I'd LOVE to be wrong. I'm kinda pessimistic, I consider it likely that by 2015, EVs will still be grossly inferior to ICs. Perhaps hybrid ICs like the Prius, but nevertheless vehicles that ultimately store the majority of their energy as burnable fluids (or perhaps also gas).
RV parks with 50 amp outlets most certainly do exist. I guess you've never used an RV.
You guess wrong. But it appears this is an area where North America differ hugely from Scandinavia. RV-parks would be impractical for recharging here, because most are at scenic, calm places, which tend to mean AWAY from major troughfares. Oftentimes just a few miles of the mainroad, but nevertheless impractical for a short stop.
We do however have tons and tons of "Rasteplass", http://www.vevring.no/images/Rasteplass.jpghttp://4murmansk.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/rasteplass11.jpg and similar. Facilities vary, but they generally all have atleast ample parking, tables and benches (for having a meal) and toilets. Many also have a kiosk or restaurant selling food and various other stuff of use to travelers or a place to play for children. Equipping these with rechargers would be feasible and practical. People -already- stop at these to have a break.
RV-outlets are typically 240V (like all our outlets) 10A or 16A here. So you can get only 2-3 KW, which mean that they'd need to be upgraded anyway, at 3KW you need 4 hours to charge 12Kwh... Just out of curiosity, what precisely do American RVs manage to use over 10KW for ? Are they electrically heated and used in the winther or something ? That's more power than I use for my entire -house-
I've never even heard of stranded people siphoning gas from a passing motorist. Who happened to carry the tube around with them? Or even stranger, a full gas can in their trunk?
Hardly anyone does -- because it's exceedingly rare to run out of gas. It's easy and cheap though. The best equipment is simply a 6-feet hose with a rubber-bladder on the middle with valves that force the fluid to go only one way. You put one end in each tank and repeatedly squeeze the bladder.
This sucks for large amounts, but a gallon is easily done in a minute or two. No big deal. I happen to have one because I use it for other purposes, but if running out of gas was a major problem, everyone would have them. They're only like $3 afterall, and take nearly no space at all. (6 feet of 0.5 inch tube, with a bladder on the middle)
4000 feet is 1219.2 meters. U=mgH. Fully loaded Aptera (including passengers and such), about 900kg. 900*9.81*1219.2 = 10.76MJ = just under 3 kilowatt hours. Call it 3kW even after motor losses.
EVs aren't magically 100% efficient though. Yes they're -much- better than ICs. But still, you can't charge a battery with 1KW and expect to get 1KW back out. Some is lost as heat. Same goes for motor and drivetrain (even if the latter can be much simplified) Same goes for generators. A generator fed 1KW worth of input does not infact produce 1KW worth of output. The losses add up. You do get -some- of the energy back. But not to the point where you can assume you essentially get it -all- back.
Hairpins mean regenerative braking, then accelerating.
Yes. So it means repeatedly converting 85% of the kinetic energy into chemical energy stored in the battery, and then converting 90% or so of THAT energy back into kinetic energy. Roundtrip losses around 25% or so. A 1000kg vehicle slowing down from 20m/s to 5m/s
Okay. So I was rude. I apologize. It's just I've had one-too-many head-in-sky people that fail to cleanly separate dreaming from reality. My base claim is that when people overwhelmingly DONT buy EVs today, it is because those actually available TODAY are grossly inferior to comparable IC-vehicles, and NOT because people have much resistance to the concept as such.
I know that -I- would've bougth an EV this january -- if one was actually available that would cover my needs. None exist that I know off.
I'd be very happy if this changed in the next few years, but sadly I think you are overoptimistic. And you're -still- firmly stuck in the future rather than talking what is actually available NOW.
The Aptera is "estimated" octobre 2008. I don't believe that for a second. Oh sure, they may have a prototype or a small pre-test run done by then. But I'd be willing to bet that by januar 1st 2009, less than 1000 Apteras will exist. Which means for practical ACTUAL people wanting to buy ACTUAL cars (not look at pictures of ones available "real soon now") it is not AVAILABLE.
VentureOne doesn't even have a prototype for the ones they CLAIM to PLAN to start selling in 2009. They do have a "Carver" which they say illustrates the principles they will use in the production-vehicles. In any case, these are NOT AVAILABLE today.
MiEV has -announced- that they "will" begin selling electric Colts in Japan in 2010.
These are all future -MAYBES- not cars available to normal car-buyers TODAY.
Same goes for RV-parks with recharge-options. I agree with you those would be superior to gas-stations IF THEY EXISTED. Today they empathically does NOT actually exist. For that matter, gas-stations are ALSO not currently equipped to actually recharge electric vehicles, certainly not rapidly.
When you say "modern EV batteries" you mean such that PERHAPS will BECOME available to the normal consumers in the next few years. Not such as are ACTUALLY installed in ACTUAL available EVs, no ?
Oh, and it's a lot easier AVOIDING running out of gas when I've got 700km range than it is to avoid running out of electricity when I've got 100km range, you know ? Also, the one time I -did- run out of gas this far in my life, I simply bought a gallon from the a passing car. They all have it you know, and it's REALLY not rocket-science to hand-pump a gallon from one car to another. Yes, this assumes you've got the equipment, which most don't because they never run out of gas anyway. The "equipment" costs all of $2 though and takes no space at all.
I also wonder how many miles I get out of a 100mile vehicle if 10 of those miles consist of climbing 4000 feet. My guess is, a lot less. Having to stop after 2 hours of driving, and recharging for 10 minutes, is one thing. Having to stop after half an hour of climbing and recharge for 10 minutes is another. (4-times average consumption actually sounds low to me, these are hairpins which mean in addition to the climb you've got constant speed-alterations accelerating out of every curve)
He did not get the TV for $500 because the thief (or the dealer) decided to be nice to him and give him a product worth 1000 for 500. No, he got it for 500 because that was the highest price the thief managed to get for the stolen TV. (if he could somehow sell it for 700 he WOULD!)
The -reason- he could not manage to get more than 500 -- allthough a shop manages to get 1000 for a physically identical TV is that the stolen TV really genuinenly is WORTH less.
It is true that the tv was not physically harmed, and thus -physically- it has the same PRACTICAL value as it used to have. But that is not all that counts. I gave already a long list of other things that contribute to VALUE. Even just "not supporting crime" has a VALUE to most people.
What would -you- rather buy, a probably-stolen unknown-origin physically-apparently-unharmed TV for $700, or a brand-new with-receipt from-well-respected-company in-original-carton TV for $1000 ?
I'm guessing that you'd go for the $1000 one. But that you'll still claim that no value is destroyed in the process that converts the first to the latter. (at half price you migth be tempted, at a low ENOUGH price many would choose the stolen one. So we can argue about how MUCH value is destroyed by stealing. But it's definitely a loss)
You'll also need to stimulate the non-stupid to have kids. As in make it more attractive to have kids even if you're well-educated and smart.
Currently there is a strong negative correlation between education and intelligence on one hand, and kids on the other hand.
For fairly obvious reasons really, first the smart girls tend to be smart enough to avoid getting pregnant with 17. If they are well-educated, this also means they spend a lot of time studying, and most want to work for a year or two to be established before getting kids, which mean many are like 30 before they even start considering it.
End-result ? 90% of the women with only basic-schooling have children, and they have 2.4 each on average.
35% of the women with a Masters or Doctorate (Hi Miriam!) never get children, and they have 1.3 each on the average.
Currently, in the west, the dumber you are, the more you're likely to breed. (said the guy with 3 kids *grin*)
Don't take my word for it. I think I just proved I'm dumb. Or something.
Dunno. The PS3 -currently- have downloadable demos and smaller games. Many of the downloadable demos are aproximately 1GB.
Nevertheless they work fine. Download swiftly and with no apparent capacity-problems. And those are free, so probably the average demo is downloaded more than the average movie would be. Also the fact that the movies are for-pay should allow Sony to beef up whatever arrangement they use for serving the data.
A bigger problem could be disk-capacity. 40GB ps3s will fill up in short order if you start purchasing 2GB-movies.
I agree with you that BlueRay-quality is unrealistic. DVD-quality should be doable though. Remember that there are -much- better compression-schemes than that used on DVD, so you don't need 9GB for DVD-quality, more like 2 if you use a modern codec.
Oh really ? You don't feel a -TINY- bit dishonest here ?
I state "perhaps 1% of the energy-density", you quote a site that says: The best mass-market rechargeable batteries today have an energy density of ~160Wh/kg. Next generation cells are expected to have energy densities of a few hundred Wh/kg. Gasoline has an energy density of ~12,000 Wh/kg In case your math-skills are down, 160/12.000 is pretty much in the 1% ballpark I mentioned.
I was talking about actual existing batteries by the way, not fantasy-ones. There are no cars available powered by fantasy-batteries. When there are, these things may change.
Furthermore, the article compares hypothethical FUTURE battery-cars with poor examples of TODAYS internal-combustion engines. For example, it quotes tank-to-wheel efficiencies at 20%, which is not even state of the art TODAY.
A perfectly normal modern diesel does 30%. More radical designs (still ones on the market TODAY) like hybrid diesels can do 45%. And there is no reason to assume that batteries will shortly more than double in performance whereas internal combustion based vehicles will make no progress whatsoever.
It is even -more- wrong in areas where heating is desireable, like 2/3rds of the year where I drive: Some of the "loss" in tank-wheels efficiency is used in heating the interior of the vehicle, defrosting windows etc.
So, in short, the article claims "equal" performance (86Kwh delivered from 350Kg of machinery), whereas the reality, if you buy best-of-breed from internal-combustion and batteries TODAY is more like, the battery-powered thingie will have 1:6th the range of the IC-one, and it'll spend twice the mass-budget to do that. Which isn't so bad. Where it gets ugly is when you add in that the IC can be completely retanked in a minute, whereas TODAYS electric vehicles need multiple hours to even do a 75% recharge. (the last few percents take even longer)
But yeah. My 2001 (not even current) Toyota does 750km, and refill in a minute. If an electric vehicle could do atleast 160km (100 miles) and recharge similarily quickly, it'd have a chance. If it could do 250km, recharge in a minute, the IC-cars would be dead.
You're right that people should take breaks when driving anyway, but the thing is, with 100 miles range, it means the thing is empty in a -single- hour of driving (okay, make that 1.5 for those of you not in germany), and with gas-stations being spread thin in some areas, there's a small margin. Signs with "last gas-station for 50miles" aren't rare where I live, so it WOULD be very impractical to need to stop at precisely timed intervals, and very often.
First, frequently thievery -does- physically destroy stuff, like locks or windows.
Second, thievery forces society to spend resources nonproductively. A burglar-alarm for example costs resources to make.
Third, even though the physical TV may be the same, the *value* is not. Try selling a TV you bougth yesterday in the shop, you won't get back even -close- to the entire price, not even -with- a receipt and the original packaging.
That is because people put a value on convenience (large selection in store versus hunting for one-offs used), they value CHOICE (again, you sell only that single one, which mean you're offering less choice) They value LEGALITY -- knowing or suspecting that something is stolen lowers the value of goods. They value -security- and prefer not having to deal with the more shadowy parts of society (which you do have to do if you want to buy a stolen tv) They value -accountability- (perceived or real), in many jurisdictions there are consumer-protection laws which are WORTH something to people. You typically won't be able to take advantage of them with a stolen TV.
Thing is. A stolen TV is worth less money (to everyone!) than a legal TV in a shop. Even if the two are -physically- identical.
Then it makes even -less- sense. The mean-time-to-data-loss is infinity, or close enough to infinity to make no difference if you've got a suitable count of independent copies.
If, for example, a perfectly ordinary disk fails once every 1500 days, and it takes a day to replace it and get the data onto the new disc, then 2 such discs stored geographically spread will both fail inside of the same day (=data-loss) once every 1500^2 days, or once every 6000 years. Okay, so you can get unlucky, use 3 and your expected time to data-loss is 10 million years.
So, by your first "thing to know" I'll better stop making copies of Ubuntu for work then ? It's not "fair use" and it's not for personal use. So, by your simplification, that is illegal.
By your second rule, I'll better tell my brother to stop selling prints of books out of Project Gutenberg. He has no permission, he didn't write the books, and he does it atleast partly to gain a few bucks. Illegal by your "simplification".
Sometimes when you simplify, you end up being just completely WRONG. Your example is oversimiplified to the point where it actually gives the wrong conclusions for lots of completely everyday activities.
Also, it's slanted; stuff that is LEGAL is claimed to be illegal, but the oposite is not true to the same degree.
First, it ignores physics. MTBF can't be used in reverse. Yes, it is possible that the MTBF on a newish disc is 300K hours or more, put differently, if you've got 1000 such discs running, then every 300 hours, about every 2 weeks, one will die.
This does however:
NOT imply that a average disc will last for 300K hours of operation, i.e. 47 years.
NOT imply that a disc that is idle 90% of the time will last for 470 years.
NOT imply that a disc that is idle 95% of the time will last for a millenium.
It would offcourse if degradation in idle state was -ZERO-. If aging made -ZERO- difference and if the MTBF-rates quoted are realistic AND constant over centuries (i.e. older discs DONT start to fail more often, not even if they're centuries old)
In short: bullshit. It's overwhelmingly likely that not a single disc out of 1000 will remain functional after a millenium, even if it is powered down 97% of the time. At which point no amount of redundancy, distributed or not, will help.
Also, the exersize is pointless. As long as storage-capacities keep growing exponentially, nearly the entire cost of storing a set of data is in the first few years. If you've paid what it costs to safeguard data for a decade, you've already paid 95% or thereabouts of what it costs to store it forever.
So, storing something safely for a very long time is actually a easy task, all you need to do is:
Create multiple copies at geographically distinct sites.
Regularily transfer the copies to newer larger media
Yeah, this -does- mean that data that nobody cares about will die. Tough luck.
For example, if you -currently- have a petabyte you want stored, you could buy 3 petabyte enterprise storage-servers, at a cost of perhaps $3million. You host these at three separate companies, say one in europe, one in japan, one in usa. For this you may pay $300.000/year. Total cost for first 5 years: $4.5 million
After 5 years you buy 3 new entry-level storage-servers. Storage/dollar has doubled ever 18 months, or a factor of 12 over 5 years. The servers now cost let's say $300K, and they're 4U-units rather than complete racks now, so hosting-costs is down to $50.000/year. Total cost for years 5-10: $550.000
After 10 years you buy 3 new 1U "small office" servers. They cost $21K in total. Hosting is $10K/year. Total cost for years 10-15: $71K.
After 15 years you sign up for the needed amount of space on 3 separate servers and pay $3K/year, or $15K for the period.
After 20 years you put the data on 3 thumbdrives and store them however one can cheaply store a thumbdrive, total cost perhaps $1000 Or you sign up with 3 separate el-cheapo hosting-providers and pay $300/year.
After 25, you send the data as an attachment to your choise of 3 free email-providers, they all come with atleast 500PB free storage anyway, it's not as if you'll notice the extra 1PB attachment.
More likely though, you've got much MORE data to take care of in the future, so you're still paying $1million/year. Only now that buys you a storage-solution where the old 1PB-archive is a completely trivial file, taking up a so minute fraction of the array that it's not even noticeable and the incremental cost is essentially zero.
I was wondering about that. 50K articles in 1K pages implies 50 articles/page, or about a single line for each "article". Thats not a encyclopedia -- that's a dictionary, if that.
Someone must've misunderstood something somewhere, because that can't be right.
Electric cars are great -- with one exception: batteries utterly suck.
A battery has perhaps 1% of the energy-density of gasoline, and to add insult to injury, needs hours to recharge whereas gasoline can be refilled in a minute.
This is a problem. Dragging around 1000 lbs of batteries to get the same amount of energy you'd get from a gallon or two of gasoline is inefficient and limits space in the vehicle.
It also makes electric infeasible for the vehicles that are used a lot, where the benefits to the environment would be greatest.
Invent a battery that can do even 10% of what gasoline can, and that recharge quickly, and electric cars would take over nearly completely in 5-10 years.
Crime is not generally a zero-sum game, it's a -negative- sum game.
A thief stealing your $1000 LCD-TV and selling it to finance his drug-consumption is likely to get a few hundred for it, tops, whereas you are out the full $1000.
Which is why crime doesn't just -redistribute- wealth, it -destroys- wealth.
Agree to that. But for non-puritans the worst part already happened.
I -do- mind having my nude photo taken in order to be allowed on a plane.
I mind a lot -MORE- though having to deliver a metric shitload (make that 2.356 imperial shitloads) of personal data in order to be allowed to fly.
Realistically, I look like an average adult. If someone gets off on blurry outlines of average adults, it's not as if such are in short supply anyway, and frankly I kinda doubt it. And I doubt these pictures are even stored at all, past the few seconds the guards spend inspecting them.
On the other hand, to even be allowed to fly into USA, your freedom-loving government insist that my plane-company provide them with a LONG list of personal data, to be stored indefinitely;
My name, sex and age. When I bougth the ticket. If it's a return-ticket or not. How I paid for the ticket. If I bought it directly, or trough a travel-agency. With whom I'm traveling. Age, name and sex of everyone I'm traveling with. What class I'm flying. My complete travel-itinerary for this trip. And so on.
I consider this a -much- worse invasion of privacy than some blurry nudes. And infact I refuse to comply. Which mean that I refuse to visit the USA at all presently (and have since 2001).
A pity. There's friends over there I'd like to see more often, and there's places I'd like to see and experience. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back, you'll regain some measure of privacy, if not, oh well, it's not as if there's a lack of other interesting places to go and things to do.
I liked the way planes worked on the tiny airport near where I grew up. A lot like buses do today. You wait until the plane lands. Stewardess comes out and opens the luggage-hatch. You yourself toss your luggage in and enter the plane. Stewardess comes around and checks that everyone has a ticket. Your name ain't on the ticket and at no point are you even asked who you are. Closes the doors, and off you go. You could drive into the parking-lot and see the plane land -- and make it no problem. Back then. Oh well. Guess I'm getting old.
Does not count at all for most jobs. Certainly most jobs an attractive applicant would WANT to have. You don't want to work for Dilberts boss is you can avoid it anyway.
We're currently hiring, and I can say that -which- particular school an applicant visited is almost completely irrelevant, down in the noise. We care what the applicant can do for our company.
This means we care if he/she has relevant experience. We care if he/she knows the technologies and methodologies that we use. (but if the answer is yes, we don't care where or how they where learned)
Sure, some of the 40 or so wars that USA has actively participated in after WW-II could fairly be described that way: you don't -like- it, but you feel (rigthly or not) compelled to act.
But that's not the entire story, not even close. It is rather hard to pretend that USA *hasn't* been acting agressively in the last 50 years with so high a number of international armed conflicts, the huge majority over situations that did not directly or indirectly threathen America. (but surely threathened American -insterests-)
I'd change the car upwards and the house downward.
Sure, you may change a car every 5 years, but the -average- car is a lot older than 5 years before it is removed from circulation, so even if you change your car in 5 years, it'll still take more than that for all cars to be switched.
The average car where I live is junked at about -15- years, so that means that improvements in cars today take about 15 years to reach the entire population of cars. (there'll be a few older ones around offcourse, but on the other hand some cars are junked significantly BEFORE, so it evens out)
On the other hand, your house. Moving to a smaller house is NOT the only way to significantly reduce the global-warming-additions from a house. There's an entire spectrum of possibilites, some cheap, simple and quick, others more expensive and significant.
You can save 5% on your power-bill TOMORROW by the simple expedient of replacing energy-inefficient bulbs with modern ones. Total investment is on the order of $100, and you'll have made that amount back in 3-6 months depending on if you run AC or if you're in an area where the added heat is beneficial.
You can save 10-15% by replacing the windows on a older house from what was average in 1980 and to modern good windows. Investment is something like $300/window more for large windows. Done in a week, no huge deal.
Isolation. Heat-pumps. Solar water-heaters. Isolation. etc etc etc.
A old house won't easily become as energy-efficient as a modern one. But in most cases it's fairly easy to save a significant amount of energy.
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I choose to focus on burglaries because those take place in the home, and that is where most people store their guns.
If you're talking about concealed weapons carried at all time, then it's a completely different matter -- those are likely to be at hand in many more situations, on the other hand doing that also typically raises the odds of accidents.
I agree that multiplying by age is equally relevant for the crimes and the accidents. It makes both equally more likely. It was meant to illustrate that the odds of an accident aren't THAT low. One in 2500 lifetimes, would mean that in my town of 100K people, aproximately 40 of those would die from gun-accidents inside of 50 years, aproximately one a year. Probably 10 a year HURT by accidental gunfire. (yes this number comes out of my behind, but I hope you can agree that the TOTAL number of accidents is likely to be significantly higher than the number of LETHAL accidents)
There hasn't been a -single- case of anyone killed by a burglar in the last 10 years. Infact, there hasn't been a single case of anyone being killed by a stranger in the last 10 years. There's been a few manslaugthers, say someone (mostly a man) killing a wife (or a husband) in a quarrel or similar. Having more guns around wouldn't help with those. (infact it'd likely make it worse)
I guess my views -are- colored by living on a relatively peaceful place. Obviously the risk of accidents are relatively uninfluenced by where you live whereas the risk of crime varies wildly. Being murdered by a stranger is essentially a null risk in most of the world though. (Here the odds of being murdered at all are somewhat less than 0.1%, and about 75% of those are murders by someone you know well. Of the REMAINING 25% of the murders, 80% are in and by criminal gangs)
Put differently, if you are NOT an active member of a criminal gang, the odds that you (or your wife, or your children) will be murdered by someone you don't know well is something like 0.0025% or 1:20000. Which is completely ignorable. Notice that these are risks of dying that way AT ALL. Not risks of dying this way THIS YEAR.
Oh, and reference ? http://www.ssb.no/
Accidents and -lethal- accidents aren't the same. Not -everyone- who has a accident with a gun ends up killing someone. To the contrary, the most common kind of accident only damages property (sometimes not even that, it's possible to accidentally fire a gun and damage nothing), and most of the time when a accidental gunshot -does- hit someone, they survive it.
1150 accidental -deaths- for 200million guns may be correct. Accidents in total is going to be much higher. (allthough I agree that accidents that end up damaging only property aren't as serious) That's data for a single year though, so if you have a gun for your entire adult life, multiply it by 70 or thereabout, and you end up with 80.500 deaths among the 200mill guns, so one accidental death in 2500 lifelong gun-ownerships. (add in the ones hurt, unless you consider it an irrelevant detail to have a wife or kid with a bullet in the shoulder/arm/leg/whatever)
Deaths due to burglars choosing to fight or attack homeowners rather than evacuate when discovered are -much- less common than that.
Not really. If my claim was that -precisely- 1:10 is the proper ratio, then fine.
But the cases where a thief is discouraged at gunpoint, or shot, are so few they're essentially ignorable, while the number of gun-in-home accidents of various types (even if you exclude suicides) are high.
I agree with this. It is a useful way to weed out lots of philosophical wankery of no consequence.
It's a bit problematic for weeding out religious wankery though, because frequently people say: Knowing this allows my soul to experience a nicer afterlife.
If true, this would be useful. But there is no indication (and can be no indication) either way, true or not.
I personally see no reason to believe in stuff COMPLETELY without evidence -- there is an unlimited collection of such stuff afterall, much of it contradictory, so you can't believe in it all. And the absence of evidence leaves you no usable way of deciding *which* particular set of stuff to believe.
In practice most human beings seem to deal with this by the simple expedient of believing that which most people surrounding them in their childhood believed. That is easy to -understand-, but it's hard to claim it's particularily RATIONAL.
For example, the people being strict-line christians here are the very same people who would with a high likelihood be strict-line hindus (or muslims or whatever) had they been born somewhere else.
You know, some people think that scaring people needlessly is a NEGATIVE thing to do. Given that 99% of the people who come to your house are friendly or neutral, and no threat to you, having something that scares them all is a very strong reason NOT to have a scary dog.
Get -anything-. Seriously.
99% of all thieves choose the "path of least resistance", the remaining 1% are only going to be interested in your house if you've got something particular in there.
So all you have to do is make them think your particular home is more trouble than the next one. Which is trivial, anything will do.
If it's -not- trivial, because all your neighbours have lots of security-gadgets too, then you're in the wrong neighbourhood.
It's worse than that.
For every -1- person who saves his home and/or family because he has a gun at home, knows how to, and actually is there to use it in the correct way at a breakin, there are -10- who then experience one of those family-members hurt by that gun because of improper use.
So buying a gun to make your family safe is MUCH more likely to end up putting a bullet in some body-part of a member of that family than it is to end up putting a bullet in a criminal.
I'll agree with you; today, the selection today is pretty bad -- mostly lead-acid powered NEVs. But there's a whole slew of quite reasonable EVs coming out in the next couple years, a number of them from major manufacturers and a number from startups.
I suspected as much: we basically agree on todays situation. You're more hopeful than I am about the near-future, but this is a point where I'd LOVE to be wrong. I'm kinda pessimistic, I consider it likely that by 2015, EVs will still be grossly inferior to ICs. Perhaps hybrid ICs like the Prius, but nevertheless vehicles that ultimately store the majority of their energy as burnable fluids (or perhaps also gas).
RV parks with 50 amp outlets most certainly do exist. I guess you've never used an RV.
You guess wrong. But it appears this is an area where North America differ hugely from Scandinavia. RV-parks would be impractical for recharging here, because most are at scenic, calm places, which tend to mean AWAY from major troughfares. Oftentimes just a few miles of the mainroad, but nevertheless impractical for a short stop.
We do however have tons and tons of "Rasteplass", http://www.vevring.no/images/Rasteplass.jpg http://4murmansk.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/rasteplass11.jpg and similar. Facilities vary, but they generally all have atleast ample parking, tables and benches (for having a meal) and toilets. Many also have a kiosk or restaurant selling food and various other stuff of use to travelers or a place to play for children. Equipping these with rechargers would be feasible and practical. People -already- stop at these to have a break.
RV-outlets are typically 240V (like all our outlets) 10A or 16A here. So you can get only 2-3 KW, which mean that they'd need to be upgraded anyway, at 3KW you need 4 hours to charge 12Kwh... Just out of curiosity, what precisely do American RVs manage to use over 10KW for ? Are they electrically heated and used in the winther or something ? That's more power than I use for my entire -house-
I've never even heard of stranded people siphoning gas from a passing motorist. Who happened to carry the tube around with them? Or even stranger, a full gas can in their trunk?
Hardly anyone does -- because it's exceedingly rare to run out of gas. It's easy and cheap though. The best equipment is simply a 6-feet hose with a rubber-bladder on the middle with valves that force the fluid to go only one way. You put one end in each tank and repeatedly squeeze the bladder.
This sucks for large amounts, but a gallon is easily done in a minute or two. No big deal. I happen to have one because I use it for other purposes, but if running out of gas was a major problem, everyone would have them. They're only like $3 afterall, and take nearly no space at all. (6 feet of 0.5 inch tube, with a bladder on the middle)
4000 feet is 1219.2 meters. U=mgH. Fully loaded Aptera (including passengers and such), about 900kg. 900*9.81*1219.2 = 10.76MJ = just under 3 kilowatt hours. Call it 3kW even after motor losses.
EVs aren't magically 100% efficient though. Yes they're -much- better than ICs. But still, you can't charge a battery with 1KW and expect to get 1KW back out. Some is lost as heat. Same goes for motor and drivetrain (even if the latter can be much simplified) Same goes for generators. A generator fed 1KW worth of input does not infact produce 1KW worth of output. The losses add up. You do get -some- of the energy back. But not to the point where you can assume you essentially get it -all- back.
Hairpins mean regenerative braking, then accelerating.
Yes. So it means repeatedly converting 85% of the kinetic energy into chemical energy stored in the battery, and then converting 90% or so of THAT energy back into kinetic energy. Roundtrip losses around 25% or so. A 1000kg vehicle slowing down from 20m/s to 5m/s
-woooooooooooooooooooooosh- perhaps you should try responding that which you are responding to ?
Okay. So I was rude. I apologize. It's just I've had one-too-many head-in-sky people that fail to cleanly separate dreaming from reality. My base claim is that when people overwhelmingly DONT buy EVs today, it is because those actually available TODAY are grossly inferior to comparable IC-vehicles, and NOT because people have much resistance to the concept as such.
I know that -I- would've bougth an EV this january -- if one was actually available that would cover my needs. None exist that I know off.
I'd be very happy if this changed in the next few years, but sadly I think you are overoptimistic. And you're -still- firmly stuck in the future rather than talking what is actually available NOW.
The Aptera is "estimated" octobre 2008. I don't believe that for a second. Oh sure, they may have a prototype or a small pre-test run done by then. But I'd be willing to bet that by januar 1st 2009, less than 1000 Apteras will exist. Which means for practical ACTUAL people wanting to buy ACTUAL cars (not look at pictures of ones available "real soon now") it is not AVAILABLE.
VentureOne doesn't even have a prototype for the ones they CLAIM to PLAN to start selling in 2009. They do have a "Carver" which they say illustrates the principles they will use in the production-vehicles. In any case, these are NOT AVAILABLE today.
MiEV has -announced- that they "will" begin selling electric Colts in Japan in 2010.
These are all future -MAYBES- not cars available to normal car-buyers TODAY.
Same goes for RV-parks with recharge-options. I agree with you those would be superior to gas-stations IF THEY EXISTED. Today they empathically does NOT actually exist. For that matter, gas-stations are ALSO not currently equipped to actually recharge electric vehicles, certainly not rapidly.
When you say "modern EV batteries" you mean such that PERHAPS will BECOME available to the normal consumers in the next few years. Not such as are ACTUALLY installed in ACTUAL available EVs, no ?
Oh, and it's a lot easier AVOIDING running out of gas when I've got 700km range than it is to avoid running out of electricity when I've got 100km range, you know ? Also, the one time I -did- run out of gas this far in my life, I simply bought a gallon from the a passing car. They all have it you know, and it's REALLY not rocket-science to hand-pump a gallon from one car to another.
Yes, this assumes you've got the equipment, which most don't because they never run out of gas anyway. The "equipment" costs all of $2 though and takes no space at all.
I also wonder how many miles I get out of a 100mile vehicle if 10 of those miles consist of climbing 4000 feet. My guess is, a lot less. Having to stop after 2 hours of driving, and recharging for 10 minutes, is one thing. Having to stop after half an hour of climbing and recharge for 10 minutes is another. (4-times average consumption actually sounds low to me, these are hairpins which mean in addition to the climb you've got constant speed-alterations accelerating out of every curve)
Nope. Really, REALLY no. Stop. Think !
He did not get the TV for $500 because the thief (or the dealer) decided to be nice to him and give him a product worth 1000 for 500. No, he got it for 500 because that was the highest price the thief managed to get for the stolen TV. (if he could somehow sell it for 700 he WOULD!)
The -reason- he could not manage to get more than 500 -- allthough a shop manages to get 1000 for a physically identical TV is that the stolen TV really genuinenly is WORTH less.
It is true that the tv was not physically harmed, and thus -physically- it has the same PRACTICAL value as it used to have. But that is not all that counts. I gave already a long list of other things that contribute to VALUE. Even just "not supporting crime" has a VALUE to most people.
What would -you- rather buy, a probably-stolen unknown-origin physically-apparently-unharmed TV for $700, or a brand-new with-receipt from-well-respected-company in-original-carton TV for $1000 ?
I'm guessing that you'd go for the $1000 one. But that you'll still claim that no value is destroyed in the process that converts the first to the latter. (at half price you migth be tempted, at a low ENOUGH price many would choose the stolen one. So we can argue about how MUCH value is destroyed by stealing. But it's definitely a loss)
You'll also need to stimulate the non-stupid to have kids. As in make it more attractive to have kids even if you're well-educated and smart.
Currently there is a strong negative correlation between education and intelligence on one hand, and kids on the other hand.
For fairly obvious reasons really, first the smart girls tend to be smart enough to avoid getting pregnant with 17. If they are well-educated, this also means they spend a lot of time studying, and most want to work for a year or two to be established before getting kids, which mean many are like 30 before they even start considering it.
End-result ? 90% of the women with only basic-schooling have children, and they have 2.4 each on average.
35% of the women with a Masters or Doctorate (Hi Miriam!) never get children, and they have 1.3 each on the average.
Currently, in the west, the dumber you are, the more you're likely to breed. (said the guy with 3 kids *grin*)
Don't take my word for it. I think I just proved I'm dumb. Or something.
Dunno. The PS3 -currently- have downloadable demos and smaller games. Many of the downloadable demos are aproximately 1GB.
Nevertheless they work fine. Download swiftly and with no apparent capacity-problems. And those are free, so probably the average demo is downloaded more than the average movie would be. Also the fact that the movies are for-pay should allow Sony to beef up whatever arrangement they use for serving the data.
A bigger problem could be disk-capacity. 40GB ps3s will fill up in short order if you start purchasing 2GB-movies.
I agree with you that BlueRay-quality is unrealistic. DVD-quality should be doable though. Remember that there are -much- better compression-schemes than that used on DVD, so you don't need 9GB for DVD-quality, more like 2 if you use a modern codec.
Oh really ? You don't feel a -TINY- bit dishonest here ?
I state "perhaps 1% of the energy-density", you quote a site that says: The best mass-market rechargeable batteries today have an energy density of ~160Wh/kg. Next generation cells are expected to have energy densities of a few hundred Wh/kg. Gasoline has an energy density of ~12,000 Wh/kg In case your math-skills are down, 160/12.000 is pretty much in the 1% ballpark I mentioned.
I was talking about actual existing batteries by the way, not fantasy-ones. There are no cars available powered by fantasy-batteries. When there are, these things may change.
Furthermore, the article compares hypothethical FUTURE battery-cars with poor examples of TODAYS internal-combustion engines. For example, it quotes tank-to-wheel efficiencies at 20%, which is not even state of the art TODAY.
A perfectly normal modern diesel does 30%. More radical designs (still ones on the market TODAY) like hybrid diesels can do 45%. And there is no reason to assume that batteries will shortly more than double in performance whereas internal combustion based vehicles will make no progress whatsoever.
It is even -more- wrong in areas where heating is desireable, like 2/3rds of the year where I drive: Some of the "loss" in tank-wheels efficiency is used in heating the interior of the vehicle, defrosting windows etc.
So, in short, the article claims "equal" performance (86Kwh delivered from 350Kg of machinery), whereas the reality, if you buy best-of-breed from internal-combustion and batteries TODAY is more like, the battery-powered thingie will have 1:6th the range of the IC-one, and it'll spend twice the mass-budget to do that. Which isn't so bad. Where it gets ugly is when you add in that the IC can be completely retanked in a minute, whereas TODAYS electric vehicles need multiple hours to even do a 75% recharge. (the last few percents take even longer)
But yeah. My 2001 (not even current) Toyota does 750km, and refill in a minute. If an electric vehicle could do atleast 160km (100 miles) and recharge similarily quickly, it'd have a chance. If it could do 250km, recharge in a minute, the IC-cars would be dead.
You're right that people should take breaks when driving anyway, but the thing is, with 100 miles range, it means the thing is empty in a -single- hour of driving (okay, make that 1.5 for those of you not in germany), and with gas-stations being spread thin in some areas, there's a small margin. Signs with "last gas-station for 50miles" aren't rare where I live, so it WOULD be very impractical to need to stop at precisely timed intervals, and very often.
First, frequently thievery -does- physically destroy stuff, like locks or windows.
Second, thievery forces society to spend resources nonproductively. A burglar-alarm for example costs resources to make.
Third, even though the physical TV may be the same, the *value* is not. Try selling a TV you bougth yesterday in the shop, you won't get back even -close- to the entire price, not even -with- a receipt and the original packaging.
That is because people put a value on convenience (large selection in store versus hunting for one-offs used), they value CHOICE (again, you sell only that single one, which mean you're offering less choice) They value LEGALITY -- knowing or suspecting that something is stolen lowers the value of goods. They value -security- and prefer not having to deal with the more shadowy parts of society (which you do have to do if you want to buy a stolen tv) They value -accountability- (perceived or real), in many jurisdictions there are consumer-protection laws which are WORTH something to people. You typically won't be able to take advantage of them with a stolen TV.
Thing is. A stolen TV is worth less money (to everyone!) than a legal TV in a shop. Even if the two are -physically- identical.
Then it makes even -less- sense. The mean-time-to-data-loss is infinity, or close enough to infinity to make no difference if you've got a suitable count of independent copies.
If, for example, a perfectly ordinary disk fails once every 1500 days, and it takes a day to replace it and get the data onto the new disc, then 2 such discs stored geographically spread will both fail inside of the same day (=data-loss) once every 1500^2 days, or once every 6000 years. Okay, so you can get unlucky, use 3 and your expected time to data-loss is 10 million years.
Which problem are they trying to solve again ?
So, by your first "thing to know" I'll better stop making copies of Ubuntu for work then ? It's not "fair use" and it's not for personal use. So, by your simplification, that is illegal.
By your second rule, I'll better tell my brother to stop selling prints of books out of Project Gutenberg. He has no permission, he didn't write the books, and he does it atleast partly to gain a few bucks. Illegal by your "simplification".
Sometimes when you simplify, you end up being just completely WRONG. Your example is oversimiplified to the point where it actually gives the wrong conclusions for lots of completely everyday activities.
Also, it's slanted; stuff that is LEGAL is claimed to be illegal, but the oposite is not true to the same degree.
First, it ignores physics. MTBF can't be used in reverse. Yes, it is possible that the MTBF on a newish disc is 300K hours or more, put differently, if you've got 1000 such discs running, then every 300 hours, about every 2 weeks, one will die.
This does however:
It would offcourse if degradation in idle state was -ZERO-. If aging made -ZERO- difference and if the MTBF-rates quoted are realistic AND constant over centuries (i.e. older discs DONT start to fail more often, not even if they're centuries old)
In short: bullshit. It's overwhelmingly likely that not a single disc out of 1000 will remain functional after a millenium, even if it is powered down 97% of the time. At which point no amount of redundancy, distributed or not, will help.
Also, the exersize is pointless. As long as storage-capacities keep growing exponentially, nearly the entire cost of storing a set of data is in the first few years. If you've paid what it costs to safeguard data for a decade, you've already paid 95% or thereabouts of what it costs to store it forever.
So, storing something safely for a very long time is actually a easy task, all you need to do is:
Yeah, this -does- mean that data that nobody cares about will die. Tough luck.
For example, if you -currently- have a petabyte you want stored, you could buy 3 petabyte enterprise storage-servers, at a cost of perhaps $3million. You host these at three separate companies, say one in europe, one in japan, one in usa. For this you may pay $300.000/year. Total cost for first 5 years: $4.5 million
After 5 years you buy 3 new entry-level storage-servers. Storage/dollar has doubled ever 18 months, or a factor of 12 over 5 years. The servers now cost let's say $300K, and they're 4U-units rather than complete racks now, so hosting-costs is down to $50.000/year.
Total cost for years 5-10: $550.000
After 10 years you buy 3 new 1U "small office" servers. They cost $21K in total. Hosting is $10K/year. Total cost for years 10-15: $71K.
After 15 years you sign up for the needed amount of space on 3 separate servers and pay $3K/year, or $15K for the period.
After 20 years you put the data on 3 thumbdrives and store them however one can cheaply store a thumbdrive, total cost perhaps $1000
Or you sign up with 3 separate el-cheapo hosting-providers and pay $300/year.
After 25, you send the data as an attachment to your choise of 3 free email-providers, they all come with atleast 500PB free storage anyway, it's not as if you'll notice the extra 1PB attachment.
More likely though, you've got much MORE data to take care of in the future, so you're still paying $1million/year. Only now that buys you a storage-solution where the old 1PB-archive is a completely trivial file, taking up a so minute fraction of the array that it's not even noticeable and the incremental cost is essentially zero.
I was wondering about that. 50K articles in 1K pages implies 50 articles/page, or about a single line for each "article". Thats not a encyclopedia -- that's a dictionary, if that.
Someone must've misunderstood something somewhere, because that can't be right.
Electric cars are great -- with one exception: batteries utterly suck.
A battery has perhaps 1% of the energy-density of gasoline, and to add insult to injury, needs hours to recharge whereas gasoline can be refilled in a minute.
This is a problem. Dragging around 1000 lbs of batteries to get the same amount of energy you'd get from a gallon or two of gasoline is inefficient and limits space in the vehicle.
It also makes electric infeasible for the vehicles that are used a lot, where the benefits to the environment would be greatest.
Invent a battery that can do even 10% of what gasoline can, and that recharge quickly, and electric cars would take over nearly completely in 5-10 years.
Actually, no.
Crime is not generally a zero-sum game, it's a -negative- sum game.
A thief stealing your $1000 LCD-TV and selling it to finance his drug-consumption is likely to get a few hundred for it, tops, whereas you are out the full $1000.
Which is why crime doesn't just -redistribute- wealth, it -destroys- wealth.
Agree to that. But for non-puritans the worst part already happened.
I -do- mind having my nude photo taken in order to be allowed on a plane.
I mind a lot -MORE- though having to deliver a metric shitload (make that 2.356 imperial shitloads) of personal data in order to be allowed to fly.
Realistically, I look like an average adult. If someone gets off on blurry outlines of average adults, it's not as if such are in short supply anyway, and frankly I kinda doubt it. And I doubt these pictures are even stored at all, past the few seconds the guards spend inspecting them.
On the other hand, to even be allowed to fly into USA, your freedom-loving government insist that my plane-company provide them with a LONG list of personal data, to be stored indefinitely;
My name, sex and age. When I bougth the ticket. If it's a return-ticket or not. How I paid for the ticket. If I bought it directly, or trough a travel-agency. With whom I'm traveling. Age, name and sex of everyone I'm traveling with. What class I'm flying. My complete travel-itinerary for this trip. And so on.
I consider this a -much- worse invasion of privacy than some blurry nudes. And infact I refuse to comply. Which mean that I refuse to visit the USA at all presently (and have since 2001).
A pity. There's friends over there I'd like to see more often, and there's places I'd like to see and experience. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back, you'll regain some measure of privacy, if not, oh well, it's not as if there's a lack of other interesting places to go and things to do.
I liked the way planes worked on the tiny airport near where I grew up. A lot like buses do today. You wait until the plane lands. Stewardess comes out and opens the luggage-hatch. You yourself toss your luggage in and enter the plane. Stewardess comes around and checks that everyone has a ticket. Your name ain't on the ticket and at no point are you even asked who you are. Closes the doors, and off you go. You could drive into the parking-lot and see the plane land -- and make it no problem. Back then. Oh well. Guess I'm getting old.
Does not count at all for most jobs. Certainly most jobs an attractive applicant would WANT to have. You don't want to work for Dilberts boss is you can avoid it anyway.
We're currently hiring, and I can say that -which- particular school an applicant visited is almost completely irrelevant, down in the noise. We care what the applicant can do for our company.
This means we care if he/she has relevant experience. We care if he/she knows the technologies and methodologies that we use. (but if the answer is yes, we don't care where or how they where learned)
Sure, some of the 40 or so wars that USA has actively participated in after WW-II could fairly be described that way: you don't -like- it, but you feel (rigthly or not) compelled to act.
But that's not the entire story, not even close. It is rather hard to pretend that USA *hasn't* been acting agressively in the last 50 years with so high a number of international armed conflicts, the huge majority over situations that did not directly or indirectly threathen America. (but surely threathened American -insterests-)
I'd change the car upwards and the house downward.
Sure, you may change a car every 5 years, but the -average- car is a lot older than 5 years before it is removed from circulation, so even if you change your car in 5 years, it'll still take more than that for all cars to be switched.
The average car where I live is junked at about -15- years, so that means that improvements in cars today take about 15 years to reach the entire population of cars. (there'll be a few older ones around offcourse, but on the other hand some cars are junked significantly BEFORE, so it evens out)
On the other hand, your house. Moving to a smaller house is NOT the only way to significantly reduce the global-warming-additions from a house. There's an entire spectrum of possibilites, some cheap, simple and quick, others more expensive and significant.
You can save 5% on your power-bill TOMORROW by the simple expedient of replacing energy-inefficient bulbs with modern ones. Total investment is on the order of $100, and you'll have made that amount back in 3-6 months depending on if you run AC or if you're in an area where the added heat is beneficial.
You can save 10-15% by replacing the windows on a older house from what was average in 1980 and to modern good windows. Investment is something like $300/window more for large windows. Done in a week, no huge deal.
Isolation. Heat-pumps. Solar water-heaters. Isolation. etc etc etc.
A old house won't easily become as energy-efficient as a modern one. But in most cases it's fairly easy to save a significant amount of energy.