And my point was that if they can come get it, then it isn't yours is it?
Ok, you're right, when I said "for all intents and purposes", I neglected to include this disclaimer: "If your intent is to stop paying for it (even if due to circumstances beyond your control) then you don't own it since the bank is going to repossess it and may even sue you to recover the cost of the loan if they can't recoup the value of the remaining loan when they sell it". So if you're thinking about making expensive mods to the car, then you might think about putting away enough money to pay for the car first.
Also they need a human to take it to the door and ring the bell. How am I going to know the truck is outside?
It sends you a text message and tells you that the truck will be there in 5 minutes and if you don't go out and pick up your package, then you can drive across town to wait in line at the UPS service center.
How about no? I paid for it to be delivered to my doorstep. I AM NOT driving across town to pick something up because I wasn't home at 2:30 pm on a Tuesday. What are we supposed to do, take off work every time we are expecting a package? Think before you type.
That depends on what you paid for -- did you pay for deluxe to your door delivery by a man in white gloves and a tophat, or did you pay for economy delivery where you have to pick it up at curbside? If you paid for to-your-door delivery, you'll get it, but not everyone will.
Can't agree with you on that one. If that were the case then why did the finance company sue my brother for the value of a truck they repo'd from him? When they came to pick it up, all that was left was a stipped down hull of a cab- even the frame was gone. You may respond because that was the collateral for the loan. Indeed it is but then who really owns it? I also see that you said for 'all intents and purposes' and you would be correct if one only assumes good things happen. So you make your payments and when the loan is done then it truly becomes yours but what happens when the shit turns south? You find out who really owns your car then! No one wants think about the bad stuff happening but it does sometimes. So my advice to anyone with a car payment is don't do anything to it other than basic maintenance. If it gets repo'd that $5000 you paid for the 22's and the $10k ghosted flame paint job with Sailor Moon highlights will 100% totally wasted. If you are gonna mod, then you take the cash you were gonna buy parts with and you pay the car off faster. One could also buy them and just put them in storage but even then if it gets repo'd you'd have parts for 1997 Honda Civic which you can't use.
Simply put, if you make payments, for all intents and purposes you do NOT own that object. It is borrowed.
Well yeah, I thought that part was obvious - if you don't pay for it, you don't own it because you didn't pay for it.
For actual disaster scenarios, there is abundant evidence that ad-hoc groups of strangers often cooperatively self-organize moderately effectively rather than degenerate into massive murderous brawls. There have been lots of disasters that cast groups of hundreds to thousands of people into resource-limited refugee situations; these rarely turn into bloodbath riots --- typically, you'll see far more efficient and egalitarian distribution of resources (regardless of race/gender/socioeconomic status) than you're likely to encounter in "normal" society. You'll always have a few especially obnoxious assholes, but they rarely succeed in much more than turning the crowds' antipathy towards themselves. Rude, self-entitled behavior is far more likely to be tolerated over "frivolous" resources like a concert ticket than over food, water, shelter, and communications in an emergency with a crowd of strangers.
Additionally, an automated truck won't suffer from overheated brakes...
If you're going as far to automate the truck for reasons of efficiency and lowered operating cost, you may as well make it a diesel-electric hybrid. Electric motors are made for torque that could shame any diesel, are relatively nice and quiet, and with a capacitor or battery in the mix, the diesel part can be downsized to the base operating load. Brings in many advantages trains currently have to the trucking fleet, and overheated brakes and complaints about engine braking noise are a thing of the past. Resistive or regenerative braking would definitely be the way to go, saving the airbrakes and whatever wear and tear for hard braking or coming to a full stop.
On top of that you can also have much better control over traction occuring in the drivetrain if each wheel is independently powered. Might even be useful to add some much lighter and smaller auxillary driveline motors to the trailers themselves that can help boost one side or act as a drag brake and keep it all pointed in the right direction.
Regardless of the current state of automation, I wonder why no big rig manufactuers have started on implementing this type of powertrain yet? New semis are already expensive, so it can't be cost. Tied up by some patent troll or what?
Hybrids excel at stop-and-go loads, so give limited benefit to a long-haul truck that spends most of its time on the open highway.
Truckers and trucking companies know exactly where their money goes so if a hybrid drivetrain saved enough fuel to pay for itself, they'd definitely be buying them.
As for resistance braking, I wonder how much heat a resistor bank would need to dissipate to keep a 40 ton truck below the legal speed limit on a 10 mile 4% grade. Once the batteries are charged, the electricity would have to go somewhere.
"I expect that there will be a riot around each one of these charging stations."
Because New Yorkers obviously haven't figured out that every car (including taxis) comes equipped with a charging outlet.
I'd imagine that most of the people that own cars (that aren't flooded in underground garages) will have already evacuated from the disaster zone rather than hang around in an area with no electricity, water, or food.
But these fees will actually be lower, since you'll be moving around at night. Like buying an overnight train ticket in Europe, you save the hotel cost that day. Why spend $1400 a month in car payments? Ask about half my extended family that question. I don't know the answer, but they DO spend it.
If you drive instead of camping, you'll spend more on fuel than camping fees - drive 8 hours @ 50mph and you'll burn 30 gallons of fuel @ 12mpg, or around $120 worth.
But if you're ok going without water/sewer/electric hookups, you can also save money by parking at a Walmart instead of a campground.
Have a lot of riots broken out around park benches recently? How many people get punched in the face for sitting on a bench reading a newspaper too long on a crowded morning? Folks generally manage to not go berserk over lack of access to other first-come, first-serve public accommodations; what's so special about these phone charging stations? Anyone on the verge of punching someone over charging time (that they could get at home, work, or a cafe) is likely going to find some other reason to punch someone anyway.
I was talking more about a disaster situation where hundreds of people will want to charge their phones at a charge station that takes 2 hours to charge 4 phones (or whatever).
I have seen a fight (or at least yelling and pushing) for a public bench at a concert at a public park were there was a dispute over who was "hovering" over the bench the longest and who was "entitled" to use the bench as the current occupants left the bench.
Jaron was seriously concerned about disruption in the paid-driver industries, e.g. truckers, taxis and delivery people. This could be another blue collar industry about to be decimated. Jaron speaks from the point of view as a muscian, where digitalization comprised his ability to make a living in that profession since Napster days.
Was it really easier to make a living at music before the pre-napster days? I had some friends that formed a band and spend some time touring small venues in the pre-napster days, and they barely made enough money for food and gas. At least today they'd be able to make their own CD's to sell at shows, promote the band and publish their tour schedule online, and sell albums online to fans with no distribution costs (no need to sink thousands of dollars into pressing a big pile of CD's, then beg record store owners to sell them).
Maybe digital music makes it harder for studios today, but for the average musician, are things really worse?
One aspect of autonomous vehicles that few people seem to consider is its potential effect on the housing market.
Another aspect of that will be the way people can move further out. 2 hours commute to work? Not really a problem.
6AM - roll out of house bed into the car bed. No point in a distinction for bachelors. Car starts going. 7AM - wake up to coffee made. Take a shower (cruise-ship-sized), get dressed. 7:30AM - breakfast is ready (made by the AI). Eat, check messages, read the news. 8AM - car arrives at work.
5PM - hop back in car. Finish up work, take a nap, watch a movie, screw around on Slashdot, etc. 7PM - arrive home. Spend some time with the family, etc.
Weekly - replenish supplies in vehicle. The water and septic will be automatic, but refrigerated items will either be manual or by the butler droid.
Let's hope we're on clean strong-force energy by then.
You can already do most of the above on a heavy-rail train or ferry (other than shower). And with a lot less energy cost than everyone carrying around their living quarters while they drive to work and then sending their car out to the suburbs to find parking. And even though trains are expensive, they are less expensive than adding enough road capacity to handle commuters in single occupancy vehicles.
While some people may be fine with a 2 hour commute (2 hours is not uncommon today), many don't want to ad 4 hours onto their workday, even if they get to read the newspaper or eat on the way, so I don't see self-driving cars making a 2 hour commute more tolerable.
So now a big public investment in building and maintaining these ridiculous charging stations. In just a few weeks they will all be vandalized. And all of this for people with iPhones that don't want to bother to plan ahead for themselves.
AT&T is paying for them.
It would be far wiser to set up public phones, either wired or wireless (or both), that people could use for free in a declared emergency and could use at other times for minimal costs if they are too poor to pay the outrageous cell phone charges in this country.
Outrageous cell phone charges? A Net10 200 minute 30 day card costs $15 -- 7.5c/minute. Is that outrageous? There are even cheaper deals available if you shop around.
Of course, in NYC, if you cover a network with ruggedized pay phones. most will be vandalized. And they don't even have interesting parts that the vandals might want, such as fragile expensive solar panels.
What is a vandal going to do with a broken solar panel that they ripped out of a charging kiosk? Few vandals want the parts they destroy - and if they do, they are no longer vandals, they are thieves.
How many riots broke out around gas stations after Sandy? New Yorkers seemed to keep it pretty much together.
A gas station has a well defined queue (i.e. the road), an attendant that works there, and people in general are waiting in their cars, separated from each other.
When hundreds of people crowd around a 4 phone charge station with no obvious queuing order, there's going to much more chance for tempers to flare "Hey! Why are you charging an iPad? You just want to play games but I need to charge my phone to call my mother!" or "Hey, you've been here for an hour already, why don't you unplug and let someone else charge for a while!?"
One aspect of autonomous vehicles that few people seem to consider is its potential effect on the housing market.
Consider the size of the RV market, and the number of people who prefer the RV lifestyle after they retire. Now consider the fact that one of the more annoying aspects of owning an RV is that you have to drive it everywhere yourself.
Now imagine twenty years from now when you'll be able to buy an autonomous RV. You go to sleep in it, and in the middle of the night it takes you to whatever destination you desire. In the morning, you open the door and you're in a new city. What you really own is not an RV, but a magic house that can take you anywhere you desire, a few hundred miles every night.
With that kind of freedom, how many people would choose to become high-tech nomads, and never live on fixed piece of property again? In fact, I think this will be a major profit center for automakers. Most people won't bother owning cars when they can call for one on a smartphone, but $100K to $200K super-RVs will become the home of choice and the way for GM and Ford to stay in business.
I thought it was the cost of fuel, car payments, maintenance, etc that kept people away from the RV lifestyle? Traveling 1000 miles/month means nearly $400/month in a 12mpg RV. Plus a $125K RV financed for 10 years is going to cost you around $1400/month in car payments. And then there's all the fees for camping. And maintaining a heavily used liveaboard motorhome is not cheap. So why spend $2500/month in a home-on-wheels when you could have a nice house (with much more room) for less?
And of course, not everyone wants to wake up in a different place each week, far from friends and family.
The implications weren't obvious at first, but consider: there's no need for a supermarket close to a population center where real estate is expensive (ie - it can be in the warehouse district), there's no need for public access (aisles, displays of product, open freezers), no need for cashiers. The entire process can be made into a Kiva order fulfillment system.
Not likely. Dry goods (i.e. the stuff Amazon sells) is one thing, but food is entirely different. Most people like to see, smell, feel, and, when possible, taste the food they buy. Why do you think that Internet based groceries services have failed?
Amazon is getting into the grocery delivery business:
Well the autonomous train problem is a lot simpler, and it still hasn't been done successfully. Lets fix this one first...and you can bet it'll have a kill switch and audio/video monitoring...and since it's not your car, you can't disable it.
Many airports I've been to have autonomous trains.
Yup. Because there is no way a computer can take into consideration wind, drag, traction, weight, speed, available torque, current momentum and also keep track of obstacles and get to where it wants to go. A computer powerful enough to handle that kind of stuff would not be able to fit into hat box. Then you would also need at least two more of them for back up and sensors as well. That stuff together might weigh as much as a truck driver!
Additionally, an automated truck won't suffer from overheated brakes - it will know exactly how warm the brakes are during the descent and can calculate how much of a safety margin it has. If it's not safe to proceed, then the truck can pull over until the brakes cool, and the dispatcher isn't going to argue with the truck that it's goofing off when he sees 30 minutes of downtime on the side of the road.
Plus when an automated truck loses control, it won't hesitate to drive off the road to avoid hitting a driver even if driving off the road means plunging down a cliff - the automated truck isn't going to put its own safety above human drivers.
I was thinking about robotic trucking the other day, and I think you might be right, but for some other reasons too.
What happens when _everyone_ learns that the robot trucks (and other vehicles) will NOT hit them? I'd bet the incidence of human drivers cutting off robotic vehicles increases dramatically. It may get so bad that it is difficult for trucks to drive through heavy traffic at all, as they will always yield to other vehicles to avoid an accident. Your average truck driver not only won't do that, he can't afford to.
Necron69
Robotic drivers won't suspend the laws of physics, nor will they pay your insurance premiums. When you cut off a truck too closely and he can't stop in time before he hits you, the video will be automatically uploaded to your insurance company to pay for the damages.
Also they need a human to take it to the door and ring the bell. How am I going to know the truck is outside?
It sends you a text message and tells you that the truck will be there in 5 minutes and if you don't go out and pick up your package, then you can drive across town to wait in line at the UPS service center.
If you are paying 200-600 a month you do not own a car. That is when the bank owns the car and you are buying it in installments.
That depends on your definition of "own". Once you sign the paperwork car is yours to do what you want with it - in general the financing company is not going to look over your shoulder and keep you from modifying it. You can drill a hole in the roof and add an antenna. You can drill a dozen holes in the trunk and add a spoiler. You can add a lift kit or a lowering kit (or both and let them cancel out).
The bank may hold the title until you pay off the car, but the car is still yours for all intents and purposes.
This is much different than a lease where you'll be expected to return the car back to a sellable condition at the end of the lease. (or pay the leasing company to do it).
If this system were 100% effective and preventing all known CP images from being searchable or even downloaded, then wouldn't that drive demand for brand new images to be created that don't trip the filters?
I fail to see how this will be useful in a (real) emergency. After all, how long did it take for 9/11 to be known among the masses? This was in 2001, long before smartphones became the norm and long before wi-fi was everywhere.
What do you define as a "real" emergency? Since not everyone watches news 24x7, it could take hours before people know about it. An attack against a chemical plant or refinery could send a cloud of hazardous gas wafting across a city (even a burning building can yield toxic gases), so having a mechanism that can notify many people within a few minutes to shelter-in-place or evacuate sounds better than waiting hours for people to find out about it on the news. Tsunamis are another type of disaster where it's important for people to receive warnings as quickly as possible, since there may only be hours or only minutes of warning before it hits, and the earthquake that triggered it may be too far away to have been felt.
I've got no problem with weather or AMBER alerts since you can disable them, in fact weather alerts might actually be useful during tornado season. But just let us disable everything if we don't want it. The entire "presidential alert" just seems like something you'd see in 1984 to spread propaganda.
A "presidential alert" seems much like a natural extension of the Emergency Broadcast System that's been in place in some form since the 1950's (and there's no opt-out for EBS (now EAS) alerts either). Since I rarely listen to radio or broadcast TV, it's unlikely that I'd hear an emergency alert that's not sent to my phone.
Application specific concrete that has stood up for two millenia beats our common, everyday, casual-use concrete. Compare it to the stuff used for capping deep water oil wells and I'll be more impressed. [/sarcasm]
What's the design life time for an oil well cap? I always figured that they only had to last for decades, maybe a century before mother nature took over and sealed the well permanently.
... fly ash, an industrial waste product from the burning of coal that is commonly used to produce modern, green concrete.
I am so tired, so goddamn tired, of marketing. How the *fuck* does concrete being made out of the ashes of fossil fuel wind up as green?
All hail Bill.
Because it uses waste material from an industrial process (i.e. electrical production) that's completely unrelated to the production of the concrete? Reuse of waste products is "green", even if the waste product comes from a non-green industry.
It's the same reason Ethical Vegetarians can still wear leather shoes without feeling guilty because hundreds of millions of cattle will be slaughtered for meat each year yielding plenty of leather regardless of how many shoes are produced.
It's great that missions that take decades of planning change every few years - keeps those rocket scientists on their toes and ensures that they'll never make any progress! Besides, if anyone knows how to use non-political fair and balanced criteria to set scientific priorities, it's Congress!
If the stupid rock might contain trillions USD of rare earths (or rare whatever), then the private sector will step forward and fund the mission. It looks like some are organizing to do just that. Meanwhile, NASA should spend taxpayer money on broader goals (keeping in mind that the asteroid mining may be a failure), such as reducing the costs of human space travel and determining human capacity for travel to/living on planets w/o atmospheres.
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And my point was that if they can come get it, then it isn't yours is it?
Ok, you're right, when I said "for all intents and purposes", I neglected to include this disclaimer: "If your intent is to stop paying for it (even if due to circumstances beyond your control) then you don't own it since the bank is going to repossess it and may even sue you to recover the cost of the loan if they can't recoup the value of the remaining loan when they sell it". So if you're thinking about making expensive mods to the car, then you might think about putting away enough money to pay for the car first.
Also they need a human to take it to the door and ring the bell. How am I going to know the truck is outside?
It sends you a text message and tells you that the truck will be there in 5 minutes and if you don't go out and pick up your package, then you can drive across town to wait in line at the UPS service center.
How about no? I paid for it to be delivered to my doorstep. I AM NOT driving across town to pick something up because I wasn't home at 2:30 pm on a Tuesday. What are we supposed to do, take off work every time we are expecting a package? Think before you type.
That depends on what you paid for -- did you pay for deluxe to your door delivery by a man in white gloves and a tophat, or did you pay for economy delivery where you have to pick it up at curbside? If you paid for to-your-door delivery, you'll get it, but not everyone will.
Can't agree with you on that one. If that were the case then why did the finance company sue my brother for the value of a truck they repo'd from him? When they came to pick it up, all that was left was a stipped down hull of a cab- even the frame was gone. You may respond because that was the collateral for the loan. Indeed it is but then who really owns it? I also see that you said for 'all intents and purposes' and you would be correct if one only assumes good things happen. So you make your payments and when the loan is done then it truly becomes yours but what happens when the shit turns south? You find out who really owns your car then! No one wants think about the bad stuff happening but it does sometimes. So my advice to anyone with a car payment is don't do anything to it other than basic maintenance. If it gets repo'd that $5000 you paid for the 22's and the $10k ghosted flame paint job with Sailor Moon highlights will 100% totally wasted. If you are gonna mod, then you take the cash you were gonna buy parts with and you pay the car off faster. One could also buy them and just put them in storage but even then if it gets repo'd you'd have parts for 1997 Honda Civic which you can't use.
Simply put, if you make payments, for all intents and purposes you do NOT own that object. It is borrowed.
Well yeah, I thought that part was obvious - if you don't pay for it, you don't own it because you didn't pay for it.
For actual disaster scenarios, there is abundant evidence that ad-hoc groups of strangers often cooperatively self-organize moderately effectively rather than degenerate into massive murderous brawls. There have been lots of disasters that cast groups of hundreds to thousands of people into resource-limited refugee situations; these rarely turn into bloodbath riots --- typically, you'll see far more efficient and egalitarian distribution of resources (regardless of race/gender/socioeconomic status) than you're likely to encounter in "normal" society. You'll always have a few especially obnoxious assholes, but they rarely succeed in much more than turning the crowds' antipathy towards themselves. Rude, self-entitled behavior is far more likely to be tolerated over "frivolous" resources like a concert ticket than over food, water, shelter, and communications in an emergency with a crowd of strangers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_in_New_Orleans#Civil_disturbances
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/hurricane-sandy-looting-brooklyn-coney-island_n_2047183.html
Which big disasters in the USA *didn't* result in looting and other public disturbances?
Additionally, an automated truck won't suffer from overheated brakes...
If you're going as far to automate the truck for reasons of efficiency and lowered operating cost, you may as well make it a diesel-electric hybrid. Electric motors are made for torque that could shame any diesel, are relatively nice and quiet, and with a capacitor or battery in the mix, the diesel part can be downsized to the base operating load. Brings in many advantages trains currently have to the trucking fleet, and overheated brakes and complaints about engine braking noise are a thing of the past. Resistive or regenerative braking would definitely be the way to go, saving the airbrakes and whatever wear and tear for hard braking or coming to a full stop.
On top of that you can also have much better control over traction occuring in the drivetrain if each wheel is independently powered. Might even be useful to add some much lighter and smaller auxillary driveline motors to the trailers themselves that can help boost one side or act as a drag brake and keep it all pointed in the right direction.
Regardless of the current state of automation, I wonder why no big rig manufactuers have started on implementing this type of powertrain yet? New semis are already expensive, so it can't be cost. Tied up by some patent troll or what?
Hybrids excel at stop-and-go loads, so give limited benefit to a long-haul truck that spends most of its time on the open highway.
Truckers and trucking companies know exactly where their money goes so if a hybrid drivetrain saved enough fuel to pay for itself, they'd definitely be buying them.
As for resistance braking, I wonder how much heat a resistor bank would need to dissipate to keep a 40 ton truck below the legal speed limit on a 10 mile 4% grade. Once the batteries are charged, the electricity would have to go somewhere.
"I expect that there will be a riot around each one of these charging stations."
Because New Yorkers obviously haven't figured out that every car (including taxis) comes equipped with a charging outlet.
I'd imagine that most of the people that own cars (that aren't flooded in underground garages) will have already evacuated from the disaster zone rather than hang around in an area with no electricity, water, or food.
> And then there's all the fees for camping
But these fees will actually be lower, since you'll be moving around at night. Like buying an overnight train ticket in Europe, you save the hotel cost that day. Why spend $1400 a month in car payments? Ask about half my extended family that question. I don't know the answer, but they DO spend it.
If you drive instead of camping, you'll spend more on fuel than camping fees - drive 8 hours @ 50mph and you'll burn 30 gallons of fuel @ 12mpg, or around $120 worth.
But if you're ok going without water/sewer/electric hookups, you can also save money by parking at a Walmart instead of a campground.
Have a lot of riots broken out around park benches recently? How many people get punched in the face for sitting on a bench reading a newspaper too long on a crowded morning? Folks generally manage to not go berserk over lack of access to other first-come, first-serve public accommodations; what's so special about these phone charging stations? Anyone on the verge of punching someone over charging time (that they could get at home, work, or a cafe) is likely going to find some other reason to punch someone anyway.
I was talking more about a disaster situation where hundreds of people will want to charge their phones at a charge station that takes 2 hours to charge 4 phones (or whatever).
I have seen a fight (or at least yelling and pushing) for a public bench at a concert at a public park were there was a dispute over who was "hovering" over the bench the longest and who was "entitled" to use the bench as the current occupants left the bench.
Jaron was seriously concerned about disruption in the paid-driver industries, e.g. truckers, taxis and delivery people. This could be another blue collar industry about to be decimated. Jaron speaks from the point of view as a muscian, where digitalization comprised his ability to make a living in that profession since Napster days.
Was it really easier to make a living at music before the pre-napster days? I had some friends that formed a band and spend some time touring small venues in the pre-napster days, and they barely made enough money for food and gas. At least today they'd be able to make their own CD's to sell at shows, promote the band and publish their tour schedule online, and sell albums online to fans with no distribution costs (no need to sink thousands of dollars into pressing a big pile of CD's, then beg record store owners to sell them).
Maybe digital music makes it harder for studios today, but for the average musician, are things really worse?
One aspect of autonomous vehicles that few people seem to consider is its potential effect on the housing market.
Another aspect of that will be the way people can move further out. 2 hours commute to work? Not really a problem.
6AM - roll out of house bed into the car bed. No point in a distinction for bachelors. Car starts going.
7AM - wake up to coffee made. Take a shower (cruise-ship-sized), get dressed.
7:30AM - breakfast is ready (made by the AI). Eat, check messages, read the news.
8AM - car arrives at work.
5PM - hop back in car. Finish up work, take a nap, watch a movie, screw around on Slashdot, etc.
7PM - arrive home. Spend some time with the family, etc.
Weekly - replenish supplies in vehicle. The water and septic will be automatic, but refrigerated items will either be manual or by the butler droid.
Let's hope we're on clean strong-force energy by then.
You can already do most of the above on a heavy-rail train or ferry (other than shower). And with a lot less energy cost than everyone carrying around their living quarters while they drive to work and then sending their car out to the suburbs to find parking. And even though trains are expensive, they are less expensive than adding enough road capacity to handle commuters in single occupancy vehicles.
While some people may be fine with a 2 hour commute (2 hours is not uncommon today), many don't want to ad 4 hours onto their workday, even if they get to read the newspaper or eat on the way, so I don't see self-driving cars making a 2 hour commute more tolerable.
So now a big public investment in building and maintaining these ridiculous charging stations. In just a few weeks they will all be vandalized. And all of this for people with iPhones that don't want to bother to plan ahead for themselves.
AT&T is paying for them.
It would be far wiser to set up public phones, either wired or wireless (or both), that people could use for free in a declared emergency and could use at other times for minimal costs if they are too poor to pay the outrageous cell phone charges in this country.
Outrageous cell phone charges? A Net10 200 minute 30 day card costs $15 -- 7.5c/minute. Is that outrageous? There are even cheaper deals available if you shop around.
Of course, in NYC, if you cover a network with ruggedized pay phones. most will be vandalized. And they don't even have interesting parts that the vandals might want, such as fragile expensive solar panels.
What is a vandal going to do with a broken solar panel that they ripped out of a charging kiosk? Few vandals want the parts they destroy - and if they do, they are no longer vandals, they are thieves.
How many riots broke out around gas stations after Sandy? New Yorkers seemed to keep it pretty much together.
A gas station has a well defined queue (i.e. the road), an attendant that works there, and people in general are waiting in their cars, separated from each other.
When hundreds of people crowd around a 4 phone charge station with no obvious queuing order, there's going to much more chance for tempers to flare "Hey! Why are you charging an iPad? You just want to play games but I need to charge my phone to call my mother!" or "Hey, you've been here for an hour already, why don't you unplug and let someone else charge for a while!?"
One aspect of autonomous vehicles that few people seem to consider is its potential effect on the housing market.
Consider the size of the RV market, and the number of people who prefer the RV lifestyle after they retire. Now consider the fact that one of the more annoying aspects of owning an RV is that you have to drive it everywhere yourself.
Now imagine twenty years from now when you'll be able to buy an autonomous RV. You go to sleep in it, and in the middle of the night it takes you to whatever destination you desire. In the morning, you open the door and you're in a new city. What you really own is not an RV, but a magic house that can take you anywhere you desire, a few hundred miles every night.
With that kind of freedom, how many people would choose to become high-tech nomads, and never live on fixed piece of property again? In fact, I think this will be a major profit center for automakers. Most people won't bother owning cars when they can call for one on a smartphone, but $100K to $200K super-RVs will become the home of choice and the way for GM and Ford to stay in business.
I thought it was the cost of fuel, car payments, maintenance, etc that kept people away from the RV lifestyle? Traveling 1000 miles/month means nearly $400/month in a 12mpg RV. Plus a $125K RV financed for 10 years is going to cost you around $1400/month in car payments. And then there's all the fees for camping. And maintaining a heavily used liveaboard motorhome is not cheap. So why spend $2500/month in a home-on-wheels when you could have a nice house (with much more room) for less?
And of course, not everyone wants to wake up in a different place each week, far from friends and family.
The implications weren't obvious at first, but consider: there's no need for a supermarket close to a population center where real estate is expensive (ie - it can be in the warehouse district), there's no need for public access (aisles, displays of product, open freezers), no need for cashiers. The entire process can be made into a Kiva order fulfillment system.
Not likely. Dry goods (i.e. the stuff Amazon sells) is one thing, but food is entirely different. Most people like to see, smell, feel, and, when possible, taste the food they buy. Why do you think that Internet based groceries services have failed?
Amazon is getting into the grocery delivery business:
http://fresh.amazon.com/
Well the autonomous train problem is a lot simpler, and it still hasn't been done successfully. Lets fix this one first. ..and you can bet it'll have a kill switch and audio/video monitoring...and since it's not your car, you can't disable it.
Many airports I've been to have autonomous trains.
Yup. Because there is no way a computer can take into consideration wind, drag, traction, weight, speed, available torque, current momentum and also keep track of obstacles and get to where it wants to go. A computer powerful enough to handle that kind of stuff would not be able to fit into hat box. Then you would also need at least two more of them for back up and sensors as well.
That stuff together might weigh as much as a truck driver!
Additionally, an automated truck won't suffer from overheated brakes - it will know exactly how warm the brakes are during the descent and can calculate how much of a safety margin it has. If it's not safe to proceed, then the truck can pull over until the brakes cool, and the dispatcher isn't going to argue with the truck that it's goofing off when he sees 30 minutes of downtime on the side of the road.
Plus when an automated truck loses control, it won't hesitate to drive off the road to avoid hitting a driver even if driving off the road means plunging down a cliff - the automated truck isn't going to put its own safety above human drivers.
I was thinking about robotic trucking the other day, and I think you might be right, but for some other reasons too.
What happens when _everyone_ learns that the robot trucks (and other vehicles) will NOT hit them? I'd bet the incidence of human drivers cutting off robotic vehicles increases dramatically. It may get so bad that it is difficult for trucks to drive through heavy traffic at all, as they will always yield to other vehicles to avoid an accident. Your average truck driver not only won't do that, he can't afford to.
Necron69
Robotic drivers won't suspend the laws of physics, nor will they pay your insurance premiums. When you cut off a truck too closely and he can't stop in time before he hits you, the video will be automatically uploaded to your insurance company to pay for the damages.
Also they need a human to take it to the door and ring the bell. How am I going to know the truck is outside?
It sends you a text message and tells you that the truck will be there in 5 minutes and if you don't go out and pick up your package, then you can drive across town to wait in line at the UPS service center.
If you are paying 200-600 a month you do not own a car. That is when the bank owns the car and you are buying it in installments.
That depends on your definition of "own". Once you sign the paperwork car is yours to do what you want with it - in general the financing company is not going to look over your shoulder and keep you from modifying it. You can drill a hole in the roof and add an antenna. You can drill a dozen holes in the trunk and add a spoiler. You can add a lift kit or a lowering kit (or both and let them cancel out).
The bank may hold the title until you pay off the car, but the car is still yours for all intents and purposes.
This is much different than a lease where you'll be expected to return the car back to a sellable condition at the end of the lease. (or pay the leasing company to do it).
If this system were 100% effective and preventing all known CP images from being searchable or even downloaded, then wouldn't that drive demand for brand new images to be created that don't trip the filters?
I fail to see how this will be useful in a (real) emergency. After all, how long did it take for 9/11 to be known among the masses? This was in 2001, long before smartphones became the norm and long before wi-fi was everywhere.
What do you define as a "real" emergency? Since not everyone watches news 24x7, it could take hours before people know about it. An attack against a chemical plant or refinery could send a cloud of hazardous gas wafting across a city (even a burning building can yield toxic gases), so having a mechanism that can notify many people within a few minutes to shelter-in-place or evacuate sounds better than waiting hours for people to find out about it on the news. Tsunamis are another type of disaster where it's important for people to receive warnings as quickly as possible, since there may only be hours or only minutes of warning before it hits, and the earthquake that triggered it may be too far away to have been felt.
I've got no problem with weather or AMBER alerts since you can disable them, in fact weather alerts might actually be useful during tornado season. But just let us disable everything if we don't want it. The entire "presidential alert" just seems like something you'd see in 1984 to spread propaganda.
A "presidential alert" seems much like a natural extension of the Emergency Broadcast System that's been in place in some form since the 1950's (and there's no opt-out for EBS (now EAS) alerts either). Since I rarely listen to radio or broadcast TV, it's unlikely that I'd hear an emergency alert that's not sent to my phone.
Application specific concrete that has stood up for two millenia beats our common, everyday, casual-use concrete. Compare it to the stuff used for capping deep water oil wells and I'll be more impressed. [/sarcasm]
What's the design life time for an oil well cap? I always figured that they only had to last for decades, maybe a century before mother nature took over and sealed the well permanently.
I am so tired, so goddamn tired, of marketing. How the *fuck* does concrete being made out of the ashes of fossil fuel wind up as green?
All hail Bill.
Because it uses waste material from an industrial process (i.e. electrical production) that's completely unrelated to the production of the concrete? Reuse of waste products is "green", even if the waste product comes from a non-green industry.
It's the same reason Ethical Vegetarians can still wear leather shoes without feeling guilty because hundreds of millions of cattle will be slaughtered for meat each year yielding plenty of leather regardless of how many shoes are produced.
It's great that missions that take decades of planning change every few years - keeps those rocket scientists on their toes and ensures that they'll never make any progress! Besides, if anyone knows how to use non-political fair and balanced criteria to set scientific priorities, it's Congress!
If the stupid rock might contain trillions USD of rare earths (or rare whatever), then the private sector will step forward and fund the mission. It looks like some are organizing to do just that. Meanwhile, NASA should spend taxpayer money on broader goals (keeping in mind that the asteroid mining may be a failure), such as reducing the costs of human space travel and determining human capacity for travel to/living on planets w/o atmospheres.
http://www.planetaryresources.com/ is one of them.