I love how position is often triangulated by connecting points to form something other than a triangle.
I thought the "triangulation" name came from forming a triangle between yourself and each remote point (and depending on the accuracy you desire, there could be many remote points)
It's not that you're drawing one big triangle on a map, you're using many (or at least several) triangles to known points.
because a minimum of four satellites are required in the sky for a smartphone or vehicle to use their signals to calculate a positional fix.
Lets be more accurate here. A minimum of 4 satellites are required to be in the sky that can be observed at the same time from the same point on earth. Hopefully these satellites are relatively close together, because otherwise they might never all be visible at the same time. And if they are, since they are in low earth orbit they will pass by relatively quickly and only be briefly useable during each orbit. So, if the orbits are close this may allow a little bit of testing, but the "system" is still too satellite poor to be of any real use for navigation (at least unless you combine the signals with info from other U.S. or Russian satellites).
If you'd quoted the previous sentence: it becomes possible to test Galileo end-to-end, it'd be clear that they meant that it is possible to test the system, no one said it's a usable navigation system.
Why is Europe spending billions to create their own GPS constellation when the US government already went through the hassle and expense? The GPS system is free and open to use by anyone with a GPS receiver. This strikes me as nothing but a political move, as if to say "We're independent and don't need America to provide anything for us". This is a completely redundant and pointless project by the EU.
Even as an American I can see the value in having a completely separate system for satellite navigation. Even ignoring the ability of the USA to reduce the accuracy (or completely shut off) the system, the system is still a potential single point of failure subject to software problems or a rogue agent controlling the ground stations. Much better to have a completely separate redundant system with no common elements.
You can still purchase as much soda as you like, you just can't purchase it in large containers. Sounds like a balance between public health and freedom to choose.
As someone who likes to buy a large (32oz) beverage at fast food places with lunch and sip at it my leisure for the rest of the day whenever I'm in NYC: fuck you. Even if the price is the same, I will be stuck having to carry two containers, and make damn sure to chuck the extra one in the middle of the street, hopefully to get lodged in a storm drain and cause some flooding.
I think you've demonstrated why people can't be relied upon to make reasonable decisions on their own.
Besides, you sound like you're in the minority - it seems that few people buy a 32 oz soda and sip on it all day long as it warms up and becomes flat.
Wrong on every single one. All of those were first developed/implemented by private individuals who then worked mightily to convince their governments who were not exactly jumping at the chance to spend resources to fully implement their ideas at first.
So you mean the governments waited until there was evidence that the solution would help resolve the problem before forcing it upon the public?
As to the NYC soda laws, they're a stupid and personally-intrusive violation of individual liberty to choose how to live one's life. Politicians who try to enact and enforce such laws are tyrants and should be executed.
You can still purchase as much soda as you like, you just can't purchase it in large containers. Sounds like a balance between public health and freedom to choose.
When you treat government regulation as evil in a black-and-white way, you open yourself to falling down a slippery slope.
Do you think all laws that restrict what you put in your body should be done away with? How about restrictions on alcohol? How about drug laws? (I'm not talking about pot, but do you think all drugs should be completely unrestricted and available over the counter? Should Propfol be available over the counter so anyone that wants to experiment with home anesthesiology (or just getting high) should be able to? Should antibiotics be available on the shelves of your local drug store so you can self-medicate yourself when you have a cold?) Does your desire for freedom extend to those that make and prepare food? If a restaurant owner wants to use melamine to enhance the flavor of his burritos, are you ok (possibly contingent upon him labeling it clearly on the menu)? Sure, it might be harmful, but it's so damn tasty.
Do you really want to live in a society where no law is allowed to infringe upon anyone's personal liberties? How would such a society prevent one citizen from infringing upon the rights of others? How would such a society limit its citizens abilities to engage in self-destructive behaviors that the rest of society has to pay for?
However, public health policy is not about solving every fringe case
It also seems to be about punishing absolutely everyone. Even thin individuals are punished by nonsense like this. Why are people so concerned about safety (in this case it's safety from... a large container of soda).
Well, that's another way to look at it - forcing everyone to get the whooping cough vaccine (even adults are now recommended to get the vaccine/booster) punishes even healthy people who may never contract whooping cough. In severe cases, the vaccine can even kill the recipient. Even mild reactions can be painful and annoying so that sounds like even more of a punishment than telling you that you can't purchase a 32 ounce soda.
Limiting drink sizes sounds like a pretty mild punishment if it's punishment at all. Have you ever walked into a restaurant, ordered a large soda, and then when they hand you "only" 16 ounces, or even a 12 once can, you shouted to the waiter "Damn! Why am I being punished by this restaurant!!?!"
Besides, just because you're thin doesn't necessarily mean you can regularly drink large quantities of sugar without any adverse health effects. There are certainly people that can freely consume as much sugar as they like without gaining weight, developing diabetes, etc, but most people aren't so lucky, and it's the general majority that this policy is supposed to help.
So what do you like to drink. We'll try and get that banned, too.
Mostly water during the day, usually green tea or coffee in the morning, and even the occasional soda a couple times a month. But never in 32 ounce quantities at a time. If this law restricts Starbucks Venti and Trenta sizes, I'd be fine with that.
But this isn't a ban on any drink, more of a limit. One that's easy to get around for those that are really determined to get their entire day's supply of sugar in a single drink.
Plus, why could I not then just drink multiple ones? Makes as much sense as those TSA rules about x amount in a bottle. So instead of one big bottle that's not allowed, you put the solution in two small ones, each of which is allowed.
> I cannot sell you this 16oz cup of soda, but you can buy these two 8oz for the same price.
It doesn't make sense if the goal is to prevent all people from consuming more than x ounces of soda.
However, public health policy is not about solving every fringe case - it's about changing behavior in the general population. Sometimes public health policy decisions can even be harmful for certain individuals, but the overall health benefit is worth it (i.e. a small percentage of the population may be allergic to a vaccination, but overall vaccinations save more lives than are lost to complications from the vaccine).
I can believe that banning soda sizes larger than 16 ounces will result in a net decrease in consumption. There are certainly going to be some people that, when limited to a "tiny" 16 ounce soda, they'll get around the ban by buying two 16 ouncers when they really just wanted a 24 ounce soda, but 2 sodas are harder to carry than one, and are in general more expensive (though I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-for-one specials after the ban (Buy one 16 oz and get one free!). It seems unlikely that many people are going to buy a hot dog from a vendor and try to juggle two 16 ounce sodas in their hands - but if they really need that much sugar, they still have that option, which is why these plaintiffs will probably not win this lawsuit.
That kind of thing has been around for a while for your non-driverless car. You can get cameras that continuously record, only saving the last few minutes if you hit a button (or, with some systems I expect, a pedestrian).
This is off topic, but what are some good brands of these consumer dash cams? I've seen lots of $30 models for sale (which I'm assuming are crap), and a few $500+ models with GPS tracking and optional "phone home" tracking that seem to be targeted toward trucks and commercial vehicles.
What is a good, relatively inexpensive, "set it and forget it" dash cam that I can mount in my car and have it keep a continuous video log of my last few hours of driving?
I can see quite a bit of value for the military use of drones. They put fewer pilots at risk, and it's probably cheaper to train a drone pilot than the a "real" pilot, although I could be wrong.
Of course, they are trading "fewer pilots at risk" with "more people on the ground at risk". A helicopter is extremely expensive to own and operate and has a pilot on board that cares a lot about keeping himself alive (thus keeping the helicopter in the air). If they have a fleet of 6 drones that are much cheaper to operate (thus are more heavily used than helicopters), there's a higher risk that one of those drones will malfunction and crash to the ground, possibly on someone's house or car. Granted a "small" drone will cause less damage than a larger helicopter, but that's not going to make the headlines much better when a drone crashes into a crowded football stadium.
In a military operation killing a few civilians on the bad guys side is treated as a cost of war -- but what's the reaction going to be when a drone chasing a car thief crashes into a back yard birthday party?
If you want to provide good support, you train well paid, dedicated staff with a high retention rate.
Otherwise claiming that you support your products is just a very expensive PR stunt.
There are differing qualities of outsourced call centers. My company needed a build a 10 seat call center staffed 6am-midnight localtime to handle reservations and questions, we had several known peaks throughout the year where we'd have to double the staff to handle special events. We ended up outsourcing the whole thing to an airline call center that also does outsourcing (our product was a travel product so it was a natural fit). They dedicated 6 lead agents to us, we flew them to our location so they could learn about our product, then we did on site training at the call center for an additional 20 agents that would be floaters that were assigned to us as-needed. One of our staff members went-onsite during the first 2 weeks to help them take calls. answer questions, and build out their knowledge base of frequently asked questions, then we always had local staff on-call so the contact center lead could call with questions.
Worked well, few callers knew that our call center was not "local". And while their service was not "cheap" when you compare their per-hour rate to what we'd pay a local agent, overall, we paid about half what we would have to run our own call center (and had nearly unlimited capacity to handle calls). Since they had the ability to dynamically size the pool of agents that took calls for our product, we only had 6 dedicated agents, where if we had a local call center we would have had to have 15 or more dedicated agents to handle normal call volume (we'd at least 2 shifts to handle the 18 hour day), with more during peak periods.
We got consistently positive feedback on our call center, and I really think that outsourcing let us provide a better experience than if we tried to build it in house.
What's to stop companies from continuing the "private registration" feature that they already offer (often for a significant fee) to hide the domain owners name, address and other personal details? If the "owner" of the domain has to have their real contact info on file with the domain, then for customers that want to remain private GoDaddy and other registrars can "own" the domain with a contract giving exclusive use of the domain to whoever paid for the domain.
An NPC is definitely not a bot. Bots are PCs being controlled by macros and/or programs.
Well that depends on your definition of "Bot", if you chose to take the narrow view that a Bot is only a hacked computer that's part of a bot network, then yeah, you're right. But if take the more general definition of Bot (as in "short for robot"), then an NPC is a Bot.
Bots have been around on the internet much longer than Wow, as have NPCs.
Damn your thick headed. I'm saying gasoline is many times more powerful than batteries so you need a shit ton of batteries to get the same power as a gallon of gas.
*you're
I don't know the mass of a "shit ton", but if you look at my followup post, it takes well under half a ton of batteries to equal the energy content of a gallon of gasoline. And even less if you consider how much of the energy from gasoline actually makes it to your wheels compared with an electric drivetrain.
And I think you mean "energy" rather than "power".
Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) Voltage per Cell: 3.2V Capacity: 100Ah Size: LxWxH 7.04in x 2.44in x 8.58in Weight: 7.71 Lbs
So at 320 Wh per cell, it would take about 100 of them to be equivalent to a gallon of gas, would weigh 770 lbs, and would fit in the space of 8 cubic feet (a cube 2 feet per side). Wiring and cooling would add to the weight and volume.
It means that a single gallon of gasoline contains more power than an 18 wheeler full of lithium batteries. Think about it...
I thought about it, and I decided that it's bullshit. Even a little common sense thinking makes it clearly improbable -- an electric car can hold only a tiny fraction of an 18 wheeler load of batteries, yet range is commonly 70 miles or more -- more than twice as far as a typical gasoline power car can travel on a single gallon of gas. Are you really suggesting that an electric car is so energy efficient that it only needs a tiny fraction of the energy that a gasoline power car needs to travel the same distance?
You can't buy a radio that transmits certain frequencies without a license.
Deal with it.
Well...you can't legally buy a radio that transmits certain frequencies without a license... but there are plenty of overseas and even domestic sources that will sell you radios that will transmit on any band you desire. Or you can easily make your own with generic off-the-shelf electronics. I don't think it's quite so easy to create your own powerful laser, without buying a premade laser module.
There needs to be *at a minimum* public education on this issue, and if nobody is willing to do that, then handheld lasers need to be outright banned for unlicensed individuals. This opinion is unpopular for slashdot, but shit really has gotten out of hand.
So you believe it would have been better if the person had pepper sprayed you, instead?
Better warning labels would be a good idea, but far more dangerous things are unrestricted. Just because lasers are "new" doesn't make them fundamentally different from any other weapon.
If I had the choice between being pepper sprayed or hit in the eyes with a powerful laser, I'd choose the pepperspray.
The pepper spray can still cause injury or even death, but permanent injury is unlikely. The laser can leave me blind or nearly-blind and it's possible that I will never know who shot the laser across a darkened room, but the user of a pepperspray canister is much closer and more visible.
Stuff has gotten of hand like everyone thinking the right response to every little thing is a ban and long prison sentences. There are or will likely be 3000+ incidents recorded for the US by the end of 2012. Less than on hundred of the incidents have or will produce any sort of effect on the pilot. So far only four pilots went for a eye exam after the incidents. By all means outlaw it, classify it as simple assault and prosecute those who do it but 3 years for an activity that has produced 4 eye exams seems silly.
How about if it results in a plane crash when the pilot is blinded momentarily while on near approach and crashes while trying to execute a go-around while temporarily blinded. Would 3 years still be silly in that case? Or do you think there should be a very light sentence unless actual injury or death occurs? After all, kids will be kids, and they probably won't cause a plane crash or blind a pilot permanently (until they get a hold of a more powerful laser), so what's the harm?
But I am not a fan govt interference and I would rather they spend time educating people/children and making the punishments well known, than legislating laser frequencies.
The dangers of guns are well known as are the penalties for using them to commit a crime, yet there are still over 10,000 homicides by gun in the USA every year. It's going to take more than education to prevent laser crime.
You want a technical solution that shields the pilots/airborne vehicle from lasers? That would be technically impossible. So there you go, other than legal, what other solutions do you have?
How about a mechanism that tracks the location each pilots eyes, and then looks for laser light
When it detects a laser, it blanks out a small portion of the LCD enabled windshield that's between each eye and the ground.
If the laser is a relatively small point source relative to the overall area of the windshield than it should work as long as the windshield is clean and free of scratches that would disperse the light. I thought I remembered reading about a similar mechanism being proposed for cars designed to act as an automatic sun visor by blacking out the area of the windshield between the driver's eyes and the sun.
When I moved to and from Hawaii (I think only about 2 or 3 weeks of that time is on a boat but another week or two in storage on each end led to 7 weeks from dropoff to delivery on the other end), I didn't do anything special with my electronics. Just packed computers and electronics in boxes the same way I'd pack them if I were moving across town - surrounded them with sheets, towels, etc for cushioning before putting into a box. I had planned on putting the delicate electronics stuff in a plastic trash bag for protection from water, but ran out of time when packing and didn't bother. The carrier stacked the boxes about 7 feet high on a pallet and cling wrapped the whole pallet in plastic for loading into the container. For the TV, I bought a big moving box and wrapped it in bubblewrap inside the box. If you have an expensive TV, U-haul has a $90 TV moving box with foam inserts just like the original manufacturer's box.
When they delivered one of the pallets to my house, one of the pallets fell off the flatbed truck when they where wheeling it off, but with the exception of a few broken dishes, everything survived the fall -- including the computer.
Aside from that mishap, everything else came out fine.
I brought 2 backup hard drives with me on the plane - one in carry on, one in checked bags, but the hard drives in the shipped computers are fine. It's been almost 2 years, and I'm still using one of the computers as a fileserver and it's working fine with the drives that came from Hawaii.
Oh, if you want insurance, make sure you buy extra coverage - the default coverage from the carrier was like 25 cents a pound or something like that.
We hear that all the time, about how high European prices are.
However, across the pond, people there live far closer together, and have a lot more options than a car. You have trains, trams, streetcars, buses, teleport pads out of Larry Niven books, and roads that are in good repair. In Europe, people can live in a city core and not get a 9mm round to the cranium because some 15 year old is needing to take a video of gunning down a tourist for their "blood in" ritual.
In the US, to live within walking distance of a job, you have to be pretty rich. Bicycling distance is different, but if you don't get run over (hit and runs are extremely common, and the local PD doesn't bother with the case unless someone has something obvious like video of it), you are an easy moving target for gangbangers. As soon as you park and lock your bike up, there is a good chance that it either will be completely missing or not all there (wheels, forks, seats, etc.) Buses? It can take 3-4 hours to get just a few miles due to bad routes, and usually homeless people tend to set up their bedrooms, bathrooms, and soliciting centers in them. Of course, people can mention motorcycles, and they are fast, thrifty on gas, and don't take up much space. However, every rider I know has some sort of permanent injury they got from riding, usually courtesy of a car desiring the space the motorcycle was currently taking up.
So, for most Americans who can't afford to live in the high zoot residential townhomes, a car is a necessity. Yes, it sucks, but that is how life is. You won't find any help from the government anytime soon thanks to all the dollars being poured in to prop up political candidates with the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" meme which is turning the country into some Ayn Randish circle of Hell [1].
You live in the wrong city - why would you continue to live in a city where you are constantly in fear of your life and the local police won't help you?
There are lots of nice cities and towns throughout the USA where you can live relatively close to work (or near a usable transit system) without being afraid of getting shot in the head when you go to work.
Some cities that come to mind include San Francisco, Portland OR, Seattle, Santa Cruz.
You may have to adjust your standard of living - instead of a large suburban house, you may be in a small city apartment (which you can do even with kids, you may not have a yard, but will have a park + large playground a short walk away), but that's a tradeoff that millions of people are happy to make.
If you want to save gas, but think a motorcycle is too dangerous, look into a small hybrid car Back when i commuted on an FJ1200, my gas milage was in the low 30's (a new FJR1300 is rated at 39mpg). A Prius will give you over 40mpg. If you don't want a hybrid, a Volkswagon TDI diesel will also give you over 40mpg. Or if you want a more conventional gas powered car, look at Honda Fit (mpg in the 30's), or Mazda3 skyactive (up to 40mpg highway).
I have a 12 mile bike commute, which is close to the upper bound of how far many people are willing to bike (an hour each way is a little farther than many people are wiling to ride), but it lets me live affordably close to SF without paying exhorbitant apartment rates. I live within an easy walk to a train station, so I can choose between commuting by bike or by train. I have a car, but put around 6000 miles/year on it, mostly for out of town trips. I don't even drive to the grocery store since I live within a 2 minute walk to the store.
I'm not wealthy, I just chose where to live based on having a non-car commute.
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I love how position is often triangulated by connecting points to form something other than a triangle.
I thought the "triangulation" name came from forming a triangle between yourself and each remote point (and depending on the accuracy you desire, there could be many remote points)
It's not that you're drawing one big triangle on a map, you're using many (or at least several) triangles to known points.
because a minimum of four satellites are required in the sky for a smartphone or vehicle to use their signals to calculate a positional fix.
Lets be more accurate here. A minimum of 4 satellites are required to be in the sky that can be observed at the same time from the same point on earth. Hopefully these satellites are relatively close together, because otherwise they might never all be visible at the same time. And if they are, since they are in low earth orbit they will pass by relatively quickly and only be briefly useable during each orbit. So, if the orbits are close this may allow a little bit of testing, but the "system" is still too satellite poor to be of any real use for navigation (at least unless you combine the signals with info from other U.S. or Russian satellites).
If you'd quoted the previous sentence: it becomes possible to test Galileo end-to-end, it'd be clear that they meant that it is possible to test the system, no one said it's a usable navigation system.
Why is Europe spending billions to create their own GPS constellation when the US government already went through the hassle and expense? The GPS system is free and open to use by anyone with a GPS receiver. This strikes me as nothing but a political move, as if to say "We're independent and don't need America to provide anything for us". This is a completely redundant and pointless project by the EU.
Even as an American I can see the value in having a completely separate system for satellite navigation. Even ignoring the ability of the USA to reduce the accuracy (or completely shut off) the system, the system is still a potential single point of failure subject to software problems or a rogue agent controlling the ground stations. Much better to have a completely separate redundant system with no common elements.
You can still purchase as much soda as you like, you just can't purchase it in large containers. Sounds like a balance between public health and freedom to choose.
As someone who likes to buy a large (32oz) beverage at fast food places with lunch and sip at it my leisure for the rest of the day whenever I'm in NYC: fuck you. Even if the price is the same, I will be stuck having to carry two containers, and make damn sure to chuck the extra one in the middle of the street, hopefully to get lodged in a storm drain and cause some flooding.
I think you've demonstrated why people can't be relied upon to make reasonable decisions on their own.
Besides, you sound like you're in the minority - it seems that few people buy a 32 oz soda and sip on it all day long as it warms up and becomes flat.
Wrong on every single one. All of those were first developed/implemented by private individuals who then worked mightily to convince their governments who were not exactly jumping at the chance to spend resources to fully implement their ideas at first.
So you mean the governments waited until there was evidence that the solution would help resolve the problem before forcing it upon the public?
As to the NYC soda laws, they're a stupid and personally-intrusive violation of individual liberty to choose how to live one's life. Politicians who try to enact and enforce such laws are tyrants and should be executed.
You can still purchase as much soda as you like, you just can't purchase it in large containers. Sounds like a balance between public health and freedom to choose.
When you treat government regulation as evil in a black-and-white way, you open yourself to falling down a slippery slope.
Do you think all laws that restrict what you put in your body should be done away with? How about restrictions on alcohol? How about drug laws? (I'm not talking about pot, but do you think all drugs should be completely unrestricted and available over the counter? Should Propfol be available over the counter so anyone that wants to experiment with home anesthesiology (or just getting high) should be able to? Should antibiotics be available on the shelves of your local drug store so you can self-medicate yourself when you have a cold?) Does your desire for freedom extend to those that make and prepare food? If a restaurant owner wants to use melamine to enhance the flavor of his burritos, are you ok (possibly contingent upon him labeling it clearly on the menu)? Sure, it might be harmful, but it's so damn tasty.
Do you really want to live in a society where no law is allowed to infringe upon anyone's personal liberties? How would such a society prevent one citizen from infringing upon the rights of others? How would such a society limit its citizens abilities to engage in self-destructive behaviors that the rest of society has to pay for?
However, public health policy is not about solving every fringe case
It also seems to be about punishing absolutely everyone. Even thin individuals are punished by nonsense like this. Why are people so concerned about safety (in this case it's safety from... a large container of soda).
Well, that's another way to look at it - forcing everyone to get the whooping cough vaccine (even adults are now recommended to get the vaccine/booster) punishes even healthy people who may never contract whooping cough. In severe cases, the vaccine can even kill the recipient. Even mild reactions can be painful and annoying so that sounds like even more of a punishment than telling you that you can't purchase a 32 ounce soda.
Limiting drink sizes sounds like a pretty mild punishment if it's punishment at all. Have you ever walked into a restaurant, ordered a large soda, and then when they hand you "only" 16 ounces, or even a 12 once can, you shouted to the waiter "Damn! Why am I being punished by this restaurant!!?!"
Besides, just because you're thin doesn't necessarily mean you can regularly drink large quantities of sugar without any adverse health effects. There are certainly people that can freely consume as much sugar as they like without gaining weight, developing diabetes, etc, but most people aren't so lucky, and it's the general majority that this policy is supposed to help.
So what do you like to drink. We'll try and get that banned, too.
Mostly water during the day, usually green tea or coffee in the morning, and even the occasional soda a couple times a month. But never in 32 ounce quantities at a time. If this law restricts Starbucks Venti and Trenta sizes, I'd be fine with that.
But this isn't a ban on any drink, more of a limit. One that's easy to get around for those that are really determined to get their entire day's supply of sugar in a single drink.
Plus, why could I not then just drink multiple ones?
Makes as much sense as those TSA rules about x amount in a bottle. So instead of one big bottle that's not allowed, you put the solution in two small ones, each of which is allowed.
> I cannot sell you this 16oz cup of soda, but you can buy these two 8oz for the same price.
It doesn't make sense if the goal is to prevent all people from consuming more than x ounces of soda.
However, public health policy is not about solving every fringe case - it's about changing behavior in the general population. Sometimes public health policy decisions can even be harmful for certain individuals, but the overall health benefit is worth it (i.e. a small percentage of the population may be allergic to a vaccination, but overall vaccinations save more lives than are lost to complications from the vaccine).
I can believe that banning soda sizes larger than 16 ounces will result in a net decrease in consumption. There are certainly going to be some people that, when limited to a "tiny" 16 ounce soda, they'll get around the ban by buying two 16 ouncers when they really just wanted a 24 ounce soda, but 2 sodas are harder to carry than one, and are in general more expensive (though I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-for-one specials after the ban (Buy one 16 oz and get one free!). It seems unlikely that many people are going to buy a hot dog from a vendor and try to juggle two 16 ounce sodas in their hands - but if they really need that much sugar, they still have that option, which is why these plaintiffs will probably not win this lawsuit.
That kind of thing has been around for a while for your non-driverless car. You can get cameras that continuously record, only saving the last few minutes if you hit a button (or, with some systems I expect, a pedestrian).
This is off topic, but what are some good brands of these consumer dash cams? I've seen lots of $30 models for sale (which I'm assuming are crap), and a few $500+ models with GPS tracking and optional "phone home" tracking that seem to be targeted toward trucks and commercial vehicles.
What is a good, relatively inexpensive, "set it and forget it" dash cam that I can mount in my car and have it keep a continuous video log of my last few hours of driving?
I can see quite a bit of value for the military use of drones. They put fewer pilots at risk, and it's probably cheaper to train a drone pilot than the a "real" pilot, although I could be wrong.
Of course, they are trading "fewer pilots at risk" with "more people on the ground at risk". A helicopter is extremely expensive to own and operate and has a pilot on board that cares a lot about keeping himself alive (thus keeping the helicopter in the air). If they have a fleet of 6 drones that are much cheaper to operate (thus are more heavily used than helicopters), there's a higher risk that one of those drones will malfunction and crash to the ground, possibly on someone's house or car. Granted a "small" drone will cause less damage than a larger helicopter, but that's not going to make the headlines much better when a drone crashes into a crowded football stadium.
In a military operation killing a few civilians on the bad guys side is treated as a cost of war -- but what's the reaction going to be when a drone chasing a car thief crashes into a back yard birthday party?
No exceptions.
If you want to provide good support, you train well paid, dedicated staff with a high retention rate.
Otherwise claiming that you support your products is just a very expensive PR stunt.
There are differing qualities of outsourced call centers. My company needed a build a 10 seat call center staffed 6am-midnight localtime to handle reservations and questions, we had several known peaks throughout the year where we'd have to double the staff to handle special events. We ended up outsourcing the whole thing to an airline call center that also does outsourcing (our product was a travel product so it was a natural fit). They dedicated 6 lead agents to us, we flew them to our location so they could learn about our product, then we did on site training at the call center for an additional 20 agents that would be floaters that were assigned to us as-needed. One of our staff members went-onsite during the first 2 weeks to help them take calls. answer questions, and build out their knowledge base of frequently asked questions, then we always had local staff on-call so the contact center lead could call with questions.
Worked well, few callers knew that our call center was not "local". And while their service was not "cheap" when you compare their per-hour rate to what we'd pay a local agent, overall, we paid about half what we would have to run our own call center (and had nearly unlimited capacity to handle calls). Since they had the ability to dynamically size the pool of agents that took calls for our product, we only had 6 dedicated agents, where if we had a local call center we would have had to have 15 or more dedicated agents to handle normal call volume (we'd at least 2 shifts to handle the 18 hour day), with more during peak periods.
We got consistently positive feedback on our call center, and I really think that outsourcing let us provide a better experience than if we tried to build it in house.
What's to stop companies from continuing the "private registration" feature that they already offer (often for a significant fee) to hide the domain owners name, address and other personal details? If the "owner" of the domain has to have their real contact info on file with the domain, then for customers that want to remain private GoDaddy and other registrars can "own" the domain with a contract giving exclusive use of the domain to whoever paid for the domain.
An NPC is definitely not a bot. Bots are PCs being controlled by macros and/or programs.
Well that depends on your definition of "Bot", if you chose to take the narrow view that a Bot is only a hacked computer that's part of a bot network, then yeah, you're right. But if take the more general definition of Bot (as in "short for robot"), then an NPC is a Bot.
Bots have been around on the internet much longer than Wow, as have NPCs.
Damn your thick headed. I'm saying gasoline is many times more powerful than batteries so you need a shit ton of batteries to get the same power as a gallon of gas.
*you're
I don't know the mass of a "shit ton", but if you look at my followup post, it takes well under half a ton of batteries to equal the energy content of a gallon of gasoline. And even less if you consider how much of the energy from gasoline actually makes it to your wheels compared with an electric drivetrain.
And I think you mean "energy" rather than "power".
It means that a single gallon of gasoline contains more power than an 18 wheeler full of lithium batteries. Think about it...
I thought about it, and I decided that it's bullshit.
I did some more thinking and wanted to see how heavy and how big a rechargable battery pack would be that's the equivalent of a gallon of gas.
I found these cells:
Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4)
Voltage per Cell: 3.2V
Capacity: 100Ah
Size: LxWxH 7.04in x 2.44in x 8.58in
Weight: 7.71 Lbs
So at 320 Wh per cell, it would take about 100 of them to be equivalent to a gallon of gas, would weigh 770 lbs, and would fit in the space of 8 cubic feet (a cube 2 feet per side). Wiring and cooling would add to the weight and volume.
It means that a single gallon of gasoline contains more power than an 18 wheeler full of lithium batteries. Think about it...
I thought about it, and I decided that it's bullshit. Even a little common sense thinking makes it clearly improbable -- an electric car can hold only a tiny fraction of an 18 wheeler load of batteries, yet range is commonly 70 miles or more -- more than twice as far as a typical gasoline power car can travel on a single gallon of gas. Are you really suggesting that an electric car is so energy efficient that it only needs a tiny fraction of the energy that a gasoline power car needs to travel the same distance?
A Nissan Leaf has a 24KWh battery, and a gallon of gas has 33KWh of energy (assuming you can burn it at 100% efficiency). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent for details.
You can't buy a radio that transmits certain frequencies without a license.
Deal with it.
Well...you can't legally buy a radio that transmits certain frequencies without a license... but there are plenty of overseas and even domestic sources that will sell you radios that will transmit on any band you desire. Or you can easily make your own with generic off-the-shelf electronics. I don't think it's quite so easy to create your own powerful laser, without buying a premade laser module.
So you believe it would have been better if the person had pepper sprayed you, instead?
Better warning labels would be a good idea, but far more dangerous things are unrestricted. Just because lasers are "new" doesn't make them fundamentally different from any other weapon.
If I had the choice between being pepper sprayed or hit in the eyes with a powerful laser, I'd choose the pepperspray.
The pepper spray can still cause injury or even death, but permanent injury is unlikely. The laser can leave me blind or nearly-blind and it's possible that I will never know who shot the laser across a darkened room, but the user of a pepperspray canister is much closer and more visible.
Stuff has gotten of hand like everyone thinking the right response to every little thing is a ban and long prison sentences. There are or will likely be 3000+ incidents recorded for the US by the end of 2012. Less than on hundred of the incidents have or will produce any sort of effect on the pilot. So far only four pilots went for a eye exam after the incidents. By all means outlaw it, classify it as simple assault and prosecute those who do it but 3 years for an activity that has produced 4 eye exams seems silly.
How about if it results in a plane crash when the pilot is blinded momentarily while on near approach and crashes while trying to execute a go-around while temporarily blinded. Would 3 years still be silly in that case? Or do you think there should be a very light sentence unless actual injury or death occurs? After all, kids will be kids, and they probably won't cause a plane crash or blind a pilot permanently (until they get a hold of a more powerful laser), so what's the harm?
It would be cheaper to place a few cube corner retroreflectors in the cockpit, to give send the beam back to the guy who's holding the laser.
Doesn't that just help the guy aiming the laser know when he's hit his target?
But I am not a fan govt interference and I would rather they spend time educating people/children and making the punishments well known, than legislating laser frequencies.
The dangers of guns are well known as are the penalties for using them to commit a crime, yet there are still over 10,000 homicides by gun in the USA every year. It's going to take more than education to prevent laser crime.
You want a technical solution that shields the pilots/airborne vehicle from lasers? That would be technically impossible. So there you go, other than legal, what other solutions do you have?
How about a mechanism that tracks the location each pilots eyes, and then looks for laser light
When it detects a laser, it blanks out a small portion of the LCD enabled windshield that's between each eye and the ground.
If the laser is a relatively small point source relative to the overall area of the windshield than it should work as long as the windshield is clean and free of scratches that would disperse the light. I thought I remembered reading about a similar mechanism being proposed for cars designed to act as an automatic sun visor by blacking out the area of the windshield between the driver's eyes and the sun.
But how do you deal with all that smug?
By not whining about how I have no choice to drive my car no matter how expensive gas is?
It takes some lifestyle changes (and maybe relocation) to avoid a car-centric lifestyle, but it's not hard to do.
When I moved to and from Hawaii (I think only about 2 or 3 weeks of that time is on a boat but another week or two in storage on each end led to 7 weeks from dropoff to delivery on the other end), I didn't do anything special with my electronics. Just packed computers and electronics in boxes the same way I'd pack them if I were moving across town - surrounded them with sheets, towels, etc for cushioning before putting into a box. I had planned on putting the delicate electronics stuff in a plastic trash bag for protection from water, but ran out of time when packing and didn't bother. The carrier stacked the boxes about 7 feet high on a pallet and cling wrapped the whole pallet in plastic for loading into the container. For the TV, I bought a big moving box and wrapped it in bubblewrap inside the box. If you have an expensive TV, U-haul has a $90 TV moving box with foam inserts just like the original manufacturer's box.
When they delivered one of the pallets to my house, one of the pallets fell off the flatbed truck when they where wheeling it off, but with the exception of a few broken dishes, everything survived the fall -- including the computer.
Aside from that mishap, everything else came out fine.
I brought 2 backup hard drives with me on the plane - one in carry on, one in checked bags, but the hard drives in the shipped computers are fine. It's been almost 2 years, and I'm still using one of the computers as a fileserver and it's working fine with the drives that came from Hawaii.
Oh, if you want insurance, make sure you buy extra coverage - the default coverage from the carrier was like 25 cents a pound or something like that.
We hear that all the time, about how high European prices are.
However, across the pond, people there live far closer together, and have a lot more options than a car. You have trains, trams, streetcars, buses, teleport pads out of Larry Niven books, and roads that are in good repair. In Europe, people can live in a city core and not get a 9mm round to the cranium because some 15 year old is needing to take a video of gunning down a tourist for their "blood in" ritual.
In the US, to live within walking distance of a job, you have to be pretty rich. Bicycling distance is different, but if you don't get run over (hit and runs are extremely common, and the local PD doesn't bother with the case unless someone has something obvious like video of it), you are an easy moving target for gangbangers. As soon as you park and lock your bike up, there is a good chance that it either will be completely missing or not all there (wheels, forks, seats, etc.) Buses? It can take 3-4 hours to get just a few miles due to bad routes, and usually homeless people tend to set up their bedrooms, bathrooms, and soliciting centers in them. Of course, people can mention motorcycles, and they are fast, thrifty on gas, and don't take up much space. However, every rider I know has some sort of permanent injury they got from riding, usually courtesy of a car desiring the space the motorcycle was currently taking up.
So, for most Americans who can't afford to live in the high zoot residential townhomes, a car is a necessity. Yes, it sucks, but that is how life is. You won't find any help from the government anytime soon thanks to all the dollars being poured in to prop up political candidates with the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" meme which is turning the country into some Ayn Randish circle of Hell [1].
You live in the wrong city - why would you continue to live in a city where you are constantly in fear of your life and the local police won't help you?
There are lots of nice cities and towns throughout the USA where you can live relatively close to work (or near a usable transit system) without being afraid of getting shot in the head when you go to work.
Some cities that come to mind include San Francisco, Portland OR, Seattle, Santa Cruz.
You may have to adjust your standard of living - instead of a large suburban house, you may be in a small city apartment (which you can do even with kids, you may not have a yard, but will have a park + large playground a short walk away), but that's a tradeoff that millions of people are happy to make.
If you want to save gas, but think a motorcycle is too dangerous, look into a small hybrid car Back when i commuted on an FJ1200, my gas milage was in the low 30's (a new FJR1300 is rated at 39mpg). A Prius will give you over 40mpg. If you don't want a hybrid, a Volkswagon TDI diesel will also give you over 40mpg. Or if you want a more conventional gas powered car, look at Honda Fit (mpg in the 30's), or Mazda3 skyactive (up to 40mpg highway).
I have a 12 mile bike commute, which is close to the upper bound of how far many people are willing to bike (an hour each way is a little farther than many people are wiling to ride), but it lets me live affordably close to SF without paying exhorbitant apartment rates. I live within an easy walk to a train station, so I can choose between commuting by bike or by train. I have a car, but put around 6000 miles/year on it, mostly for out of town trips. I don't even drive to the grocery store since I live within a 2 minute walk to the store.
I'm not wealthy, I just chose where to live based on having a non-car commute.