One of the problems with capacitors charging rapidly is that they can also discharge very rapidly too so any failure would not be graceful.
That's one of those ideas that sounds right but isn't necessarily actually true. Yes there are ways to rapidly discharge a cap but it doesn't follow that those are failure modes that would be likely. We use capacitors all over the place and most of the failures of them are demonstrably not from catastrophic discharge.
Cellphone batteries are already pretty scary when punctured, imagine something holding several times as much energy.
You ARE something that holds several times as much energy. The energy density of animal fat is roughly the same as that of gasoline and both are FAR higher than the energy density of a lithium-ion battery. Whether something is scary has very little to do with the amount of energy it holds. It is the rate and circumstances in which it can be released that matters.
That said, if something hits me hard enough to puncture my cell phone battery while I'm carrying my phone, the battery combustion is probably the least of my concerns. I'm likely much more concerned with whatever just speared or shot me.
You said it. We want a lot of energy in a hand-held format. But it's dangerous.
Do you have any comprehension of the amount of energy stored in a tank of gasoline? A lot of energy stored is not in and of itself dangerous. What matters is the means by which that energy can be released. Your body stores a huge amount of energy but there is no easy way to release that energy rapidly. Diesel has even more energy than gasoline but good luck igniting it. You can drop a lit match on diesel fuel and nothing will happen. Now do batteries and ultracaps have their own unique failure modes? Sure. But it's not hard to demonstrate that the chances of an explosion are pretty minimal.
That energy will get hacked for purposes both good and bad, and the bad purposes will include explosions.
Do you see a lot of exploding cars outside of fictional movies? Causing an explosion normally requires a criminal act typically involving external explosives. It's not actually a very easy thing to cause an explosion. (thank goodness) In most cases even if there is a catastrophic failure the car merely burns, it doesn't explode. I actually trust the engineers working on this stuff and I've worked with companies building battery packs for cars and other high energy applications over the years. They are pretty well aware of the possible failure modes and what to do about them. Explosions aren't something they are overly worried about.
First, the EPA sets two competing requirements: lower emissions and higher mileage. Do they have any engineering expertise that proves this is even possible?
It's already been done so yes it is demonstrably possible. And yes the EPA has access to engineers and scientists who can provide reasoned opinions about what is actually possible. Second, lower emissions and higher mileage are NOT diametrically opposed. Cars that are lighter and get higher fuel economy also have lower emissions in part because they burn less fuel. Vehicle emissions are in part a direct function of the amount of fuel burned. Burn less and you emit less by definition.
It's also possible that the EPA can get away with this by playing the evil, greedy corporation card saying, "The car companies don't want to do this because they are greedy,"
That argument about car companies would mostly be correct albeit crude. The car companies don't want to do it because it costs money to develop the technology and the products to meet the more stringent emissions standards.
I can pretty much guarantee that the consumer doesn't give a rat's ass about emissions when they could be saving money on gas which may also be artificially expensive.
First off there CLEARLY is a group of consumers that cares very much about emissions. See Prius owners and Leaf owners among others. Second, cars that save on gas also tend to be the same ones with lower emissions.
1) Are there any genuinely significant differences between them that make one preferable to the other?
Mostly that LibreOffice seems to have the more vibrant development effort behind it. OpenOffice seems to stagnate by comparison. I'd recommend trying both (they're free after all) but LibreOffice will fit most people's needs better I think. I think LO is a bit more feature rich today.
2) Do either of them properly open those f*cking.DOCX files?
Usually but no guarantees. The more complex the document the worse the chances of it working well. That said, I've standardized our company on LibreOffice and it's been quite a while since I've had to drag out a copy of Word to view a document.
3) Do either of them save as.DOCX or.DOC, since that seems to be what most employers and recruiters insist on sending/receiving?
Yes they can do it and it does DOC fairly well in most cases. Just don't get too fancy with the formatting. I usually send PDFs to employers however.
the 3.0L turbo diesel in my wife's Ram 1500 is very clean.. the tailpipe chromies still shine on the inside after 16,000 miles
Well that would be a first in my experience. Interesting since that's the very truck I'm considering for my next vehicle when I replace my current ride. I'm dubious that it's actually clean inside the tailpipe but I won't argue the issue.
The payback period for the added cost of the diesel engine is about 30-35K miles.
Diesel is about 15-20% more efficient than gasoline for an engine of equivalent power. If the price of diesel exceeds the price of gasoline by more than 20% then you will never recoup the added cost. Right now where I live diesel is about 25% higher than gasoline so for a comparable engine I would be losing money on the diesel.
Yeah, 22mpg sounds pretty low until you realize that he can get that while pulling 10,000lbs+ behind him more than likely.
No he won't. He'll be lucky to get half that pulling a trailer. The weight of the load plus the wind resistance will drop his fuel economy like lead balloon.
Humanity is crying out for better painkillers, and marijuana, yes, medical marijuana, has promise there. Or do you not consider management of severe chronic pain a valid medical reason?
I'll consider it a valid medical treatment when it is sold through a pharmacy like any other drug. It it works for pain management then I am all for it. I'm even willing to accept that there is evidence that it could be an effective treatment for some. HOWEVER, stop conflating the issue. Most people aren't going to get medical marijuana cards for pain management. They are getting them so they can get high. If you believe otherwise you are either naive or you are one of the people trying to get high yourself. I strongly believe that marijuana should be regulated roughly the same as tobacco or alcohol but I'm not dumb enough to believe the transparent arguments that people are making for non-existent medical conditions that conveniently can only be treated by getting high with weed.
If we want to use products of cannabis to treat medical conditions then that is fine but let's do it just like we do for any other drug. It needs to go through the FDA and be tested in double blind studies just like any other drug. Show me the evidence and the properly conducted medical studies and I'm 100% on board if it works.
And there are not a "tiny number" of people with chronic pain. I'd argue ALL the other drugs are as bad or worse than marijuana for that application.
And you received your medical degree from where exactly? You've already spouted off a bunch of half informed nonsense to try to make the side effects of existing medications sound more horrible than they really are. You've also only selected a few of the many pain killers out there. I've dealt with pain management with family members personally including my mother right now. Your argument demonstrates to me that you have no idea what you are talking about on that topic.
Tell that to the families with children with epilepsy being successfully treated for seizures and other symptoms using cannabis oil.
Just as soon as you provide adequate evidence in the form of unambiguous medical studies confirming its effectiveness for the conditions. Right now the evidence for cannibidiol is largely anecdotal and the effectiveness or lack thereof is unclear.
Even if it does work it doesn't follow that because a demonstrably small number of people get genuine medical relief I'm supposed to believe that everybody people seeking marijuana are actually doing so for legitimate medical reasons. You must be either high yourself or dumb if you believe that. I had a dispensary open up (briefly) right next door to my office about 3 years ago. I assure you that NOBODY (or near as makes no difference) that was showing up was the slightest bit ill. These were people looking to get high. The medical exemption was largely an effort for most people to make an end run around federal and state laws against the substance so they could get high. Nothing more.
Your information is extremely prejudiced, and out of date.
Prejudiced? Hardly. I don't give a shit at all if people want to smoke weed recreationally. I just want them to be honest about it and stop pretending that it has anything to do with medicine for all but a tiny handful of cases.
There are many people with debilitating diseases and conditions that cannabis can provide treatment or relief from.
"Many"? Define many. I'll concur that the number is greater than zero. However the real number is a LOT less than the number seeking the product through. My wife is a physician and has been asked plenty of times for a prescription for marijuana by someone with no relevant medical condition.
Marijuana is not at all harmful like cigarettes. Inhaling any smoke is not good for you, however, the main difference is that marijuana is just a dried out plant which is basically harmless.
Commercial tobacco, by comparison, is not just a plant but it is loaded with a plethora of toxic chemicals
First off, comparisons with tobacco based smokes is the very definition of damning with faint praise. There is basically nothing redeeming about tobacco based smokes. Second, marijuana has plenty of adverse effects of its own. Just because it isn't as toxic as other products isn't really germane.
Marijuana can also have health benefits
Spare me. "Medical marijuana" is in almost all cases nothing more than a fig leaf to cover people who want to get high. I do not actually care if people want to smoke weed but it offends me that they think I'm so stupid as to think more than a tiny number are doing so for any valid medical reason. I don't have a problem with people using it for actual medicinal properties (and it does appear to have some) but then it should be sold at a pharmacy like any other drug. I really don't have a problem with people smoking weed so long as they do so responsibly. I do have a problem with people pretending it is for medical conditions when it really isn't.
I have never heard of medicinal tobacco.
Tobacco is an important research crop and has its uses. It's not used so much directly as a medication but it does have some positive impact in this regard. Probably the only positive thing about it really.
I am suggesting they don't have much room for improvement, unless by improve, you mean : change to electric vehicles.
Diesels can almost without question be made substantially cleaner than they currently are. Far more research and money has been put into making gasoline engines clean than diesel if for no other reason than because diesels don't sell in the US car market. I have little reason to doubt that diesels couldn't be similarly improved.
That said your point is a fair one that we probably are well into diminishing returns on emission controls for internal combustion engines of any description. I think electric vehicles and plug in hybrids are the future. Honestly I'd buy one today if they sold a good one in the type of vehicle I'm looking for for a vaguely reasonable price. (pickup truck) I think it's just a matter of time.
Come on.... the limit is 0.053 parts per million..... 40 times that 2.12 parts per million.
40X is 40X. The limits exist for a reason and the PPM figures themselves are not important to the discussion. This is no different than any other company illegally dumping or burning toxic waste instead of paying to having it properly disposed of. Just because 2.12 PPM doesn't sound like a lot to you is irrelevant. They had the ability to dispose of this pollutant properly and knowingly chose to pollute instead to save a few bucks. I don't care if they were just barely over the limit or way of the limit like they actually were. What I do care about is that they committed fraud and that they made the air needlessly polluted.
Diesel engines haven't produced visible amounts of soot for over thirty years years.
I will be happy to show you any number of vehicles that will prove that statement incorrect. Furthermore even if it isn't visible it doesn't mean it isn't present and isn't a problem. I don't generally seem much of the exhaust from my truck but I'm quite sure it pollutes plenty despite its ULEV certification. Diesels today are MUCH cleaner than they once were and I'm sort of a fan of diesel engines (in relation to gasoline ones) but it's not as if they don't have room for improvement.
Really, the driveway, my 6.7L turbocharged Scoprion diesel engine just got 22mph heading to and from Duluth and the twin cities.
You're proud of 22mpg? Seriously? That's not even remotely impressive. If you got that kind of mileage out of a 6.7L engine then it means you weren't hauling anything which means you have a ludicrously over sized engine for the trip. 22mpg isn't anything special by the today's standards for truck fuel economy.
And all with with no black soot what so ever in the tail pipe, looks just like the day I bought it, shiny new metal inside the exhaust.
Unless you bought it yesterday I'm going to call BS on that one. No tailpipe, diesel or gas, stays shiny on the inside for long. I'm sure it's a nice truck but I'm equally sure about what comes out of the tailpipe and the corrosive properties thereof.
What you do not realize s that IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to get better, because of the variability of EVERYTHING.
Very little in this world exists without variability. You might end up with a pretty wide standard deviation at the end of the day but I don't buy for a second the argument that there is no room for improvement provided the project demands are reasonable ones.
The Proper solution is to accept reality and work around the FACT that you cannot get reasonable estimates for building software.
There are circumstances when providing an estimate for building software is impossible but it is demonstrably not true that it is universally impossible to estimate time required to build software. If software development were truly random as you claim then it would be impossible to manage and it clearly isn't. Pretending that you can never estimate development time for software is preposterous. As long as you are willing to put error bars (possibly large ones) on your estimate then many projects can be estimated. Estimates are rarely exact (that's why they're called estimates) but they absolutely can be useful. If you have adequate and firm specifications early on then you should be able to provide a reasonable estimate of time to completion in many cases. If you don't have adequate and firm specifications then you probably are correct that any estimates that follow will be nothing more than guesses with a high probability of being wildly wrong.
Unless you're doing something extraordinarily boring, like porting existing software to a new (but well-understood) platform with few, if any, unknowns, software development isn't like manufacturing or construction—it's research and development.
Well since I've done both software development AND manufacturing I'm going to have to disagree with you. Software development is quite a lot like low volume custom manufacturing for a complex product which is actually the kind of manufacturing my company does. Most of my time is actually spent engineering and specifying the product. Then we build it and typically spend some amount of time debugging. There invariably are errors in specification and frequently changes made to the product along the way. We have to build test equipment and we often have to revise the product based on those tests. It really is a lot like software development in a lot of important ways. Hell we even have the problems like throwing more people at it when it is late making it later.
His replacement might be worse and the House of Representatives may get even less done.
Is that actually possible? Seems like the only thing they do is have repeated pointless votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and de-fund Planned Parenthood along with periodically trying (and even succeeding once) to shut down the federal government over the spending cap.
Reagan also cut more taxes than anyone in history (dangerous facts)
No president has ever cut taxes or raised them. That's the responsibility of Congress. The President can suggest tax policies and can veto them but ultimately it is up to Congress to actually affirm or deny them. Now admittedly the President does have substantial influence on tax policy but saying Reagan or any other president raised taxes is technically incorrect. You could correctly say that he supported a tax increase or opposed one and that would be factual.
Between the two badges, that might be all of a few dozen cars sold in this country since 2008
There were quite a lot of Audi diesels sold in the US. Heck my sister owned a diesel A3 for a while. The Audi A3 diesel won all sorts of eco awards and it was hardly a secret in the US. The car sold reasonably well and they're not hard to find.
Porsche diesel on the other hand to my knowledge never did much in the US. I'm pretty sure I've never seen one myself.
I'm sure at some point someone in engineering said that this was wrong, that they shouldn't cheat like this. I'm sure he/she was quickly told to drop it or start looking for a new job.
Spare me. The engineers (plural) carried out this and were just as culpable as the management. The guy who executes a crime is just as guilty as the guy who orders the crime to be committed. They had to know this was illegal and they did it anyway and said nothing. They are criminals and deserve to be punished. The "nerds" are not innocent here any more than the "suits". This was fraud and any engineer that was involved and said nothing should go to jail.
The main reason why diesel consumer vehicles all but died in North America in the 90's was that they had developed a reputation as being "dirty"
Diesel engines of passenger cars died back in the late 70s and early 80s, mostly due to a bunch of absolutely terrible vehicles produced by the Big 3 during that time. It wasn't just that they were dirty (though they were) but they were incredibly unreliable and badly designed. They did things like converting gas engines to run diesel with disastrous results. It was so bad that demand for diesel vehicles in the US dried up for nearly 30 years. Now it appears that diesel has gotten another black eye which is unfortunate.
They will also care greatly when those cars must be retrofitted to force emissions-compliance, stripping them of their roadgoing performance.
There are two ways to fix the problem. One is to detune the motor. The other is to add emissions control equipment, most likely a urea injection system. Detuning is less expensive but makes the car perform worse. Emissions control equipment is MUCH more expensive and will have to be developed and produced since none currently exists for that motor. (not even clear if it is actually possible) Frankly VW is in a bad situation either way.
Find me a single customer who cared about the emissions output.
20 seconds on google will find plenty for you. You simply haven't bothered to look.
People buy diesel cars for the durability and the fuel economy, and VW delivered on those.
Those are some but not all of the reasons people buy these. VW quite explicitly marketed these cars and won awards for their "green" credentials.
How did it cost taxpayers money?
Customers who bought these cars received tax credits. Ergo this fraud cost US taxpayers millions of dollars in tax credits that never should have been issued since the car was not as Eco-friendly as VW claimed it was.
The only people this really affected were the shareholders.
Wrong. It affects customers, shareholders, management, employees, suppliers to VW, taxpayers, regulators, dealers, the German economy and pretty much anyone else even remotely connected to VW. It will probably even have spillover effects to other auto makers selling diesel engines.
Punishing the employees and shareholders does nothing, the vast majority of them had no idea this was happening.
Yes it does. It forces the corporation and management to take measures to ensure something like this does not happen again. Unfortunately there will be collateral damage here but that's not avoidable. If you do not punish the corporation for violating the law then you are effectively sanctioning company management to try again. The shareholders are the owners of the company. If the company commits fraud then the shareholders should feel the pain.
Never punish the innocent, it is worse than letting guilty people go free.
In cases like this the economic fallout even if the company wasn't punished at all would mean that innocent people are going to lose their jobs. It's unavoidable. There is no solution to this problem that does not involved economic pain to some people that don't really deserve it. That's just a fact of life in working in a large corporation sometimes. Would be no different if the company management made dumb (as opposed to illegal) decisions.
Why? Because the people who profited from this don't care if the company is fined into nothing in 5 years, they got theirs today.
The shareholders who are the actual owners of the company will care very much. Furthermore it's quite possible that criminal penalties will be handed out for this since it was fraud and I don't think it will be too hard to identify some/all of the guilty parties.
The CEO is leaving, he has his money from the past X years. What difference does it make to him what happens in the next X years?
He may or may not care but the guy who takes his place will have to care quite a lot. It's actually quite unlikely that the CEO was aware of this problem himself. It's not really the sort of thing he would normally deal with. If he didn't actually know then it's reasonable to assume he probably didn't condone or sanction this fraud. He's responsible since it happened on his watch but that doesn't mean he didn't care.
You need to find the people who actually did this, and punish them, not the millions of employees of a huge corporation who had no idea it was going on.
You need to punish both. The people who perpetrated this crime (and it IS a crime) as well as the corporation so that there is no temptation to do something similar again. There obviously needs to be controls in place for this sort of thing to ensure it doesn't repeat and the way to ensure that happens is through economic pain to the corporation.
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One of the problems with capacitors charging rapidly is that they can also discharge very rapidly too so any failure would not be graceful.
That's one of those ideas that sounds right but isn't necessarily actually true. Yes there are ways to rapidly discharge a cap but it doesn't follow that those are failure modes that would be likely. We use capacitors all over the place and most of the failures of them are demonstrably not from catastrophic discharge.
Cellphone batteries are already pretty scary when punctured, imagine something holding several times as much energy.
You ARE something that holds several times as much energy. The energy density of animal fat is roughly the same as that of gasoline and both are FAR higher than the energy density of a lithium-ion battery. Whether something is scary has very little to do with the amount of energy it holds. It is the rate and circumstances in which it can be released that matters.
That said, if something hits me hard enough to puncture my cell phone battery while I'm carrying my phone, the battery combustion is probably the least of my concerns. I'm likely much more concerned with whatever just speared or shot me.
You said it. We want a lot of energy in a hand-held format. But it's dangerous.
Do you have any comprehension of the amount of energy stored in a tank of gasoline? A lot of energy stored is not in and of itself dangerous. What matters is the means by which that energy can be released. Your body stores a huge amount of energy but there is no easy way to release that energy rapidly. Diesel has even more energy than gasoline but good luck igniting it. You can drop a lit match on diesel fuel and nothing will happen. Now do batteries and ultracaps have their own unique failure modes? Sure. But it's not hard to demonstrate that the chances of an explosion are pretty minimal.
That energy will get hacked for purposes both good and bad, and the bad purposes will include explosions.
Do you see a lot of exploding cars outside of fictional movies? Causing an explosion normally requires a criminal act typically involving external explosives. It's not actually a very easy thing to cause an explosion. (thank goodness) In most cases even if there is a catastrophic failure the car merely burns, it doesn't explode. I actually trust the engineers working on this stuff and I've worked with companies building battery packs for cars and other high energy applications over the years. They are pretty well aware of the possible failure modes and what to do about them. Explosions aren't something they are overly worried about.
First, the EPA sets two competing requirements: lower emissions and higher mileage. Do they have any engineering expertise that proves this is even possible?
It's already been done so yes it is demonstrably possible. And yes the EPA has access to engineers and scientists who can provide reasoned opinions about what is actually possible. Second, lower emissions and higher mileage are NOT diametrically opposed. Cars that are lighter and get higher fuel economy also have lower emissions in part because they burn less fuel. Vehicle emissions are in part a direct function of the amount of fuel burned. Burn less and you emit less by definition.
It's also possible that the EPA can get away with this by playing the evil, greedy corporation card saying, "The car companies don't want to do this because they are greedy,"
That argument about car companies would mostly be correct albeit crude. The car companies don't want to do it because it costs money to develop the technology and the products to meet the more stringent emissions standards.
I can pretty much guarantee that the consumer doesn't give a rat's ass about emissions when they could be saving money on gas which may also be artificially expensive.
First off there CLEARLY is a group of consumers that cares very much about emissions. See Prius owners and Leaf owners among others. Second, cars that save on gas also tend to be the same ones with lower emissions.
1) Are there any genuinely significant differences between them that make one preferable to the other?
Mostly that LibreOffice seems to have the more vibrant development effort behind it. OpenOffice seems to stagnate by comparison. I'd recommend trying both (they're free after all) but LibreOffice will fit most people's needs better I think. I think LO is a bit more feature rich today.
2) Do either of them properly open those f*cking .DOCX files?
Usually but no guarantees. The more complex the document the worse the chances of it working well. That said, I've standardized our company on LibreOffice and it's been quite a while since I've had to drag out a copy of Word to view a document.
3) Do either of them save as .DOCX or .DOC, since that seems to be what most employers and recruiters insist on sending/receiving?
Yes they can do it and it does DOC fairly well in most cases. Just don't get too fancy with the formatting. I usually send PDFs to employers however.
the 3.0L turbo diesel in my wife's Ram 1500 is very clean.. the tailpipe chromies still shine on the inside after 16,000 miles
Well that would be a first in my experience. Interesting since that's the very truck I'm considering for my next vehicle when I replace my current ride. I'm dubious that it's actually clean inside the tailpipe but I won't argue the issue.
The payback period for the added cost of the diesel engine is about 30-35K miles.
Diesel is about 15-20% more efficient than gasoline for an engine of equivalent power. If the price of diesel exceeds the price of gasoline by more than 20% then you will never recoup the added cost. Right now where I live diesel is about 25% higher than gasoline so for a comparable engine I would be losing money on the diesel.
Yeah, 22mpg sounds pretty low until you realize that he can get that while pulling 10,000lbs+ behind him more than likely.
No he won't. He'll be lucky to get half that pulling a trailer. The weight of the load plus the wind resistance will drop his fuel economy like lead balloon.
Humanity is crying out for better painkillers, and marijuana, yes, medical marijuana, has promise there. Or do you not consider management of severe chronic pain a valid medical reason?
I'll consider it a valid medical treatment when it is sold through a pharmacy like any other drug. It it works for pain management then I am all for it. I'm even willing to accept that there is evidence that it could be an effective treatment for some. HOWEVER, stop conflating the issue. Most people aren't going to get medical marijuana cards for pain management. They are getting them so they can get high. If you believe otherwise you are either naive or you are one of the people trying to get high yourself. I strongly believe that marijuana should be regulated roughly the same as tobacco or alcohol but I'm not dumb enough to believe the transparent arguments that people are making for non-existent medical conditions that conveniently can only be treated by getting high with weed.
If we want to use products of cannabis to treat medical conditions then that is fine but let's do it just like we do for any other drug. It needs to go through the FDA and be tested in double blind studies just like any other drug. Show me the evidence and the properly conducted medical studies and I'm 100% on board if it works.
And there are not a "tiny number" of people with chronic pain. I'd argue ALL the other drugs are as bad or worse than marijuana for that application.
And you received your medical degree from where exactly? You've already spouted off a bunch of half informed nonsense to try to make the side effects of existing medications sound more horrible than they really are. You've also only selected a few of the many pain killers out there. I've dealt with pain management with family members personally including my mother right now. Your argument demonstrates to me that you have no idea what you are talking about on that topic.
Tell that to the families with children with epilepsy being successfully treated for seizures and other symptoms using cannabis oil.
Just as soon as you provide adequate evidence in the form of unambiguous medical studies confirming its effectiveness for the conditions. Right now the evidence for cannibidiol is largely anecdotal and the effectiveness or lack thereof is unclear.
Even if it does work it doesn't follow that because a demonstrably small number of people get genuine medical relief I'm supposed to believe that everybody people seeking marijuana are actually doing so for legitimate medical reasons. You must be either high yourself or dumb if you believe that. I had a dispensary open up (briefly) right next door to my office about 3 years ago. I assure you that NOBODY (or near as makes no difference) that was showing up was the slightest bit ill. These were people looking to get high. The medical exemption was largely an effort for most people to make an end run around federal and state laws against the substance so they could get high. Nothing more.
Your information is extremely prejudiced, and out of date.
Prejudiced? Hardly. I don't give a shit at all if people want to smoke weed recreationally. I just want them to be honest about it and stop pretending that it has anything to do with medicine for all but a tiny handful of cases.
There are many people with debilitating diseases and conditions that cannabis can provide treatment or relief from.
"Many"? Define many. I'll concur that the number is greater than zero. However the real number is a LOT less than the number seeking the product through. My wife is a physician and has been asked plenty of times for a prescription for marijuana by someone with no relevant medical condition.
Marijuana is not at all harmful like cigarettes. Inhaling any smoke is not good for you, however, the main difference is that marijuana is just a dried out plant which is basically harmless.
Innocuous? Maybe. Harmless? Demonstrably not.
Commercial tobacco, by comparison, is not just a plant but it is loaded with a plethora of toxic chemicals
First off, comparisons with tobacco based smokes is the very definition of damning with faint praise. There is basically nothing redeeming about tobacco based smokes. Second, marijuana has plenty of adverse effects of its own. Just because it isn't as toxic as other products isn't really germane.
Marijuana can also have health benefits
Spare me. "Medical marijuana" is in almost all cases nothing more than a fig leaf to cover people who want to get high. I do not actually care if people want to smoke weed but it offends me that they think I'm so stupid as to think more than a tiny number are doing so for any valid medical reason. I don't have a problem with people using it for actual medicinal properties (and it does appear to have some) but then it should be sold at a pharmacy like any other drug. I really don't have a problem with people smoking weed so long as they do so responsibly. I do have a problem with people pretending it is for medical conditions when it really isn't.
I have never heard of medicinal tobacco.
Tobacco is an important research crop and has its uses. It's not used so much directly as a medication but it does have some positive impact in this regard. Probably the only positive thing about it really.
I am suggesting they don't have much room for improvement, unless by improve, you mean : change to electric vehicles.
Diesels can almost without question be made substantially cleaner than they currently are. Far more research and money has been put into making gasoline engines clean than diesel if for no other reason than because diesels don't sell in the US car market. I have little reason to doubt that diesels couldn't be similarly improved.
That said your point is a fair one that we probably are well into diminishing returns on emission controls for internal combustion engines of any description. I think electric vehicles and plug in hybrids are the future. Honestly I'd buy one today if they sold a good one in the type of vehicle I'm looking for for a vaguely reasonable price. (pickup truck) I think it's just a matter of time.
Come on.. .. the limit is 0.053 parts per million..... 40 times that 2.12 parts per million.
40X is 40X. The limits exist for a reason and the PPM figures themselves are not important to the discussion. This is no different than any other company illegally dumping or burning toxic waste instead of paying to having it properly disposed of. Just because 2.12 PPM doesn't sound like a lot to you is irrelevant. They had the ability to dispose of this pollutant properly and knowingly chose to pollute instead to save a few bucks. I don't care if they were just barely over the limit or way of the limit like they actually were. What I do care about is that they committed fraud and that they made the air needlessly polluted.
Diesel engines haven't produced visible amounts of soot for over thirty years years.
I will be happy to show you any number of vehicles that will prove that statement incorrect. Furthermore even if it isn't visible it doesn't mean it isn't present and isn't a problem. I don't generally seem much of the exhaust from my truck but I'm quite sure it pollutes plenty despite its ULEV certification. Diesels today are MUCH cleaner than they once were and I'm sort of a fan of diesel engines (in relation to gasoline ones) but it's not as if they don't have room for improvement.
Really, the driveway, my 6.7L turbocharged Scoprion diesel engine just got 22mph heading to and from Duluth and the twin cities.
You're proud of 22mpg? Seriously? That's not even remotely impressive. If you got that kind of mileage out of a 6.7L engine then it means you weren't hauling anything which means you have a ludicrously over sized engine for the trip. 22mpg isn't anything special by the today's standards for truck fuel economy.
And all with with no black soot what so ever in the tail pipe, looks just like the day I bought it, shiny new metal inside the exhaust.
Unless you bought it yesterday I'm going to call BS on that one. No tailpipe, diesel or gas, stays shiny on the inside for long. I'm sure it's a nice truck but I'm equally sure about what comes out of the tailpipe and the corrosive properties thereof.
What you do not realize s that IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to get better, because of the variability of EVERYTHING.
Very little in this world exists without variability. You might end up with a pretty wide standard deviation at the end of the day but I don't buy for a second the argument that there is no room for improvement provided the project demands are reasonable ones.
The Proper solution is to accept reality and work around the FACT that you cannot get reasonable estimates for building software.
There are circumstances when providing an estimate for building software is impossible but it is demonstrably not true that it is universally impossible to estimate time required to build software. If software development were truly random as you claim then it would be impossible to manage and it clearly isn't. Pretending that you can never estimate development time for software is preposterous. As long as you are willing to put error bars (possibly large ones) on your estimate then many projects can be estimated. Estimates are rarely exact (that's why they're called estimates) but they absolutely can be useful. If you have adequate and firm specifications early on then you should be able to provide a reasonable estimate of time to completion in many cases. If you don't have adequate and firm specifications then you probably are correct that any estimates that follow will be nothing more than guesses with a high probability of being wildly wrong.
Unless you're doing something extraordinarily boring, like porting existing software to a new (but well-understood) platform with few, if any, unknowns, software development isn't like manufacturing or construction—it's research and development.
Well since I've done both software development AND manufacturing I'm going to have to disagree with you. Software development is quite a lot like low volume custom manufacturing for a complex product which is actually the kind of manufacturing my company does. Most of my time is actually spent engineering and specifying the product. Then we build it and typically spend some amount of time debugging. There invariably are errors in specification and frequently changes made to the product along the way. We have to build test equipment and we often have to revise the product based on those tests. It really is a lot like software development in a lot of important ways. Hell we even have the problems like throwing more people at it when it is late making it later.
His replacement might be worse and the House of Representatives may get even less done.
Is that actually possible? Seems like the only thing they do is have repeated pointless votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and de-fund Planned Parenthood along with periodically trying (and even succeeding once) to shut down the federal government over the spending cap.
Reagan also cut more taxes than anyone in history (dangerous facts)
No president has ever cut taxes or raised them. That's the responsibility of Congress. The President can suggest tax policies and can veto them but ultimately it is up to Congress to actually affirm or deny them. Now admittedly the President does have substantial influence on tax policy but saying Reagan or any other president raised taxes is technically incorrect. You could correctly say that he supported a tax increase or opposed one and that would be factual.
Between the two badges, that might be all of a few dozen cars sold in this country since 2008
There were quite a lot of Audi diesels sold in the US. Heck my sister owned a diesel A3 for a while. The Audi A3 diesel won all sorts of eco awards and it was hardly a secret in the US. The car sold reasonably well and they're not hard to find.
Porsche diesel on the other hand to my knowledge never did much in the US. I'm pretty sure I've never seen one myself.
I'm sure at some point someone in engineering said that this was wrong, that they shouldn't cheat like this. I'm sure he/she was quickly told to drop it or start looking for a new job.
Spare me. The engineers (plural) carried out this and were just as culpable as the management. The guy who executes a crime is just as guilty as the guy who orders the crime to be committed. They had to know this was illegal and they did it anyway and said nothing. They are criminals and deserve to be punished. The "nerds" are not innocent here any more than the "suits". This was fraud and any engineer that was involved and said nothing should go to jail.
The main reason why diesel consumer vehicles all but died in North America in the 90's was that they had developed a reputation as being "dirty"
Diesel engines of passenger cars died back in the late 70s and early 80s, mostly due to a bunch of absolutely terrible vehicles produced by the Big 3 during that time. It wasn't just that they were dirty (though they were) but they were incredibly unreliable and badly designed. They did things like converting gas engines to run diesel with disastrous results. It was so bad that demand for diesel vehicles in the US dried up for nearly 30 years. Now it appears that diesel has gotten another black eye which is unfortunate.
They will also care greatly when those cars must be retrofitted to force emissions-compliance, stripping them of their roadgoing performance.
There are two ways to fix the problem. One is to detune the motor. The other is to add emissions control equipment, most likely a urea injection system. Detuning is less expensive but makes the car perform worse. Emissions control equipment is MUCH more expensive and will have to be developed and produced since none currently exists for that motor. (not even clear if it is actually possible) Frankly VW is in a bad situation either way.
Find me a single customer who cared about the emissions output.
20 seconds on google will find plenty for you. You simply haven't bothered to look.
People buy diesel cars for the durability and the fuel economy, and VW delivered on those.
Those are some but not all of the reasons people buy these. VW quite explicitly marketed these cars and won awards for their "green" credentials.
How did it cost taxpayers money?
Customers who bought these cars received tax credits. Ergo this fraud cost US taxpayers millions of dollars in tax credits that never should have been issued since the car was not as Eco-friendly as VW claimed it was.
The only people this really affected were the shareholders.
Wrong. It affects customers, shareholders, management, employees, suppliers to VW, taxpayers, regulators, dealers, the German economy and pretty much anyone else even remotely connected to VW. It will probably even have spillover effects to other auto makers selling diesel engines.
Punishing the employees and shareholders does nothing, the vast majority of them had no idea this was happening.
Yes it does. It forces the corporation and management to take measures to ensure something like this does not happen again. Unfortunately there will be collateral damage here but that's not avoidable. If you do not punish the corporation for violating the law then you are effectively sanctioning company management to try again. The shareholders are the owners of the company. If the company commits fraud then the shareholders should feel the pain.
Never punish the innocent, it is worse than letting guilty people go free.
In cases like this the economic fallout even if the company wasn't punished at all would mean that innocent people are going to lose their jobs. It's unavoidable. There is no solution to this problem that does not involved economic pain to some people that don't really deserve it. That's just a fact of life in working in a large corporation sometimes. Would be no different if the company management made dumb (as opposed to illegal) decisions.
Why? Because the people who profited from this don't care if the company is fined into nothing in 5 years, they got theirs today.
The shareholders who are the actual owners of the company will care very much. Furthermore it's quite possible that criminal penalties will be handed out for this since it was fraud and I don't think it will be too hard to identify some/all of the guilty parties.
The CEO is leaving, he has his money from the past X years. What difference does it make to him what happens in the next X years?
He may or may not care but the guy who takes his place will have to care quite a lot. It's actually quite unlikely that the CEO was aware of this problem himself. It's not really the sort of thing he would normally deal with. If he didn't actually know then it's reasonable to assume he probably didn't condone or sanction this fraud. He's responsible since it happened on his watch but that doesn't mean he didn't care.
You need to find the people who actually did this, and punish them, not the millions of employees of a huge corporation who had no idea it was going on.
You need to punish both. The people who perpetrated this crime (and it IS a crime) as well as the corporation so that there is no temptation to do something similar again. There obviously needs to be controls in place for this sort of thing to ensure it doesn't repeat and the way to ensure that happens is through economic pain to the corporation.