Relay stations, from a transmitter standpoint, are actually just as likely to get upgrades as the main base. Control and monitoring is just as important; once upon a time, I was working with a transmitter where we actually had a wire running from the transmitter to our studio. Once every shift, the DJ on duty had to take transmitter readings in order to stay FCC compliant. Shifting to a new transmitter that automatically logged those readings to a paper printer was a step up. Later, shifting to one that emailed the logs to our station engineer meant the DJs had no work to do, and the engineer had much less. Relay stations have the same logging and control requirements - if your base station goes down, your relays have to as well. And you're correct - output power is regulated, we got an upgrade in our allowable power which is why we boosted our output, but the point remains - stations will usually seek power upgrades if there's any chance of receiving them, as it increases their listening area, and thereby advertising base and thereby advertising rates. Do you work in radio, out of curiosity? I did, for a while, and saw quite a bit of change in both relay and base transmitters. Upgrades happen more frequently than every ten years, for sure.
Even a year can make a big difference in communications technology. And since it takes a fair amount of time to design and build a satellite, by the time a launch happens, technology has advanced significantly. Unless they built a spare (*very* rare, just too damn expensive), its usually only a small amount more expensive to just design and build a new one than it would be to retool and relaunch the same exact satellite, and the potential for increased profit is usually higher than the difference in cost. The lines are rarely still operating to simply pump out another one - satellites are essentially custom jobs, built one or two at a time. Think of it like this - sure, if we wanted to go back to the moon, we know building a Saturn V and Apollo could do it, but it would probably be cheaper to do a new design than it would to retool for the old designs.
Now, if you could repair in orbit, maybe it would be worth it, but its likely that the cost of launch+repair+upgrade would significantly exceed just redesigning and relaunching - remember that launches for people cost a lot more than launches for stuff.
My health insurance *requires* me to get a set of health screenings every other year. If I don't, my rate (which is quite reasonable, thank you corporate America for paying a large portion of it for me) doubles until I do. As of right now, they won't raise rates if I come up as fat, lazy, etc. on the screening, but I couldn't exactly argue with them if they did. They do request that if you come up with some sort of negative indicator, that you talk to a professional about ways to mitigate it (i.e. come up fat, talk to a physical trainer, come up smoker, talk to someone who specializes in helping people quit). Since they'll pay a good portion of most of those visits, again, can't complain.
Then again, I don't have an HMO, I have real health care, so my experience is probably totally not typical. But it may be coming sooner than you think.
Which countless studies would these be? Considering that the first one I can recall reading back when I was working with traffic engineers was this one, from which I quote:
"# Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent. The level of confidence of this estimate is 44 percent. The 95 percent confidence limits for this estimate ranges from a reduction in accidents of 11 percent to an increase of 26 percent.
"Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent. The level of confidence of this estimate in 59 percent. The 95 percent confidence limits for this estimate ranges from a reduction in accidents of 21 percent to an increase of 10 percent."
In other words, their best guess shows that raised speed limits provided for a safer drive than lowered ones. This is because most speed limits are set too low for the flow of traffic, which has next to nothing to do with the actual speed limit (many, many sources for that statement).
For safety, certain lane widths are required for certain speeds. The wider a lane is, the higher the speed it can safely support. There are very simple reasons for this, and I will explain them in simple terms for your simple mind.
Your reaction time is essentially a constant. The time required for you to correct slight oversteer in one direction or another is fixed. HOWEVER. At higher speed, the amount of lateral motion is higher. Thus, wider lanes allow for more lateral motion in a safe fashion, while narrower lanes do not. Toll lanes are narrower than highway lanes, and thus are not safe to travel through at highway speeds.
"Yeah. I went in to get my car worked on, and the tech needed to pull it to get to some OBDII data; their scanner and your box don't co-exist nicely."
Disconnection explained. And I doubt it would be that hard to hack a dedicated micro to look at OBDII messages, retransmit all non-speed messages unchanged, and cap speed messages to a selectable value +/- a random changing value. That'd be doable on a PIC, for chrissake, much less something legit like a HC08.
You're wrong. Speed limits *should* be designed such that they represent the median maximum safe speed. However, they aren't. They're designed to get the local authorities revenue. This is because traffic engineers do not get final say on the limit, the local authorities do. Exactly like red light timing is often adjusted to lower safety but increase red-light running revenue, speed limits are often adjusted for the same reason.
In some states, someone going 75 in the left lane and not allowing someone going 85 to pass is driving JUST AS ILLEGALLY as the person going 85. Failure to allow a vehicle to pass IS a moving violation in some places.
Before you bring race into it (and, having lived in Detroit, I know race *is* part of it) I would suggest there are 3 MUCH bigger reasons why mass transit in Detroit is a non-starter.
That's funny. I bet they upgrade more often than you think; to add new remote control capabilities, more efficiency, etc. Of course, I only base that on having worked at a radio station for 4 years and seen two transmitter upgrades while I was there (increased power w/ telephone control, then an upgrade to add TCP-IP control capabilities).
The technology for satellites is *not* static at all. Remember that when you have a resource that limited, even a 5% upgrade in channel capacity is worth it. Comms sat technology is not static; otherwise, why don't they launch the same satellite they did 5 years ago? Because we have things like turbo codes and LDPC coding allowing better channel capacity, more efficient designs for transmitters and receivers, new semiconductors allowing more processing, etc. If you can only launch one satellite, you make sure it is the BEST you can afford.
Jesus christ. It was a joke. You remember jokes? The funny things that make people laugh?
1) It was a joke. 2) Women have been pilots. Eileen Collins comes to mind (first female Shuttle pilot/commander), as does Jeana Yaeger (pilot on Voyager... which happened to be a Scaled product, and who makes SpaceShipOne?) Private industry has been *far* more accepting of female pilots than NASA, as NASA's pilot culture was initially dominated by, and remains affected by, military test/fighter pilot culture, which is *very* male.
Get a sense of humor. Then get a clue. Then you can go back, read my post, and realize it was meant to be a joke, and then you can go sulk in a corner because no one thinks you're very funny. Oh, and get an account so that people can block your unfunny automatically.
Even there, the logic remains - it would cost more to deorbit intact and repair than it would be worth to repair them. The point is that satellites are a highly technology oriented product, and like all high tech, depreciate very quickly.
Well, there were also the Hubble repairs, which are *similar* though not the same, and some stuff with WESTAR and PALAPA comm birds, the only two satellite retrievals that were Earth-refurbed and then relaunched. Solar Max was retrieved and repaired on orbit, as well as a couple more comm birds.
But basically, those missions were subsidized by NASA to test the Shuttle's facility with such mission goals - no one was willing to pay for them.
I live in Wicker Park. Vehicle theft isn't a huge problem, but it happens. Its all about knowing the neighborhoods, and not parking in stupid places. Much like anything else - avoid dark streets, park on main roads and in well lit areas, and you'll be fine.
Yes, you may be able to leave your house unlocked, but I can walk 200 feet out of my front door and go to a good bar, 500 feet and go to a great bar with good music, 1000 feet and go to a great bar with great music, and 2000 feet and go to the movies. And I don't live in the soulless goddamn suburbs. I'll turn the key in exchange for that.
By the time a satellite *needs* to be pulled out of orbit to be refueled/repaired, it is generally old technology worth less than the launch cost for a retrieval mission. This is why the shuttle's satellite repair function was basically unused, and why no one has bothered to even think of doing something like this.
There are rare exceptions, but not enough of them to justify designing something to do it.
See the above poster for why, but I was right, and you were wrong. Deprecated is what happens to an obsolete computer standard, and depreciated is what happens to an obsolete computer on your tax return. One refers to the value of something (ia), while the other is used either to express disapproval of something, or very specifically, to refer to something that has been rendered obsolete (a).
Its an easy pair of words to misuse, as their meanings are *very* close in a certain sense - they even share a common meaning (to disapprove or belittle). However, the correct usage when referring to an obsolete standard is deprecate, and the correct usage when referring to your taxes is depreciate.
This was up in Norwood Park. But I live in Wicker Park, and I've definitely seen people breaking into cars (and had stuff stolen from around my apartment, though no one has yet broken into it.) And about 6 blocks west, in Humboldt Park, I've witnessed drive-bys. I don't know what part you live in, but you're either unobservant or very, very lucky.
Trunk of your car is better than nothing in Chicago, though, and certainly better than the front seat. As long as they don't know there's anything in the trunk, they're less likely to hit your car.
Especially if you drive a beater that looks like it couldn't possibly have anything valuable in it, and leave it in a good neighborhood with lots of Jettas and SUVs and expensive crap. (coughLincolnParkcough).
On the other hand, I've sat with the owners and watched their 300k mile, damn near dead, Chevy Nova get stolen from in front of their house. I mean, they wanted it to be stolen, since getting it towed (there were brake problems to the point that they didn't want to drive it, not safe) would have cost as much as a junkyard would have given them, but still, its kinda funny to sit with someone who's *watching* their car get stolen. I love Chicago.
Re:He was a philosopher, not a physicist.
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The Unknown Newton
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Actually, Sc.D is often just another name for the same thing - MIT's admissions page flat out states "Sc.D and Ph.D are interchangeable for the School of Engineering and Sciences". It still exists, though its less common than a Ph.D.
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Relay stations, from a transmitter standpoint, are actually just as likely to get upgrades as the main base. Control and monitoring is just as important; once upon a time, I was working with a transmitter where we actually had a wire running from the transmitter to our studio. Once every shift, the DJ on duty had to take transmitter readings in order to stay FCC compliant. Shifting to a new transmitter that automatically logged those readings to a paper printer was a step up. Later, shifting to one that emailed the logs to our station engineer meant the DJs had no work to do, and the engineer had much less. Relay stations have the same logging and control requirements - if your base station goes down, your relays have to as well. And you're correct - output power is regulated, we got an upgrade in our allowable power which is why we boosted our output, but the point remains - stations will usually seek power upgrades if there's any chance of receiving them, as it increases their listening area, and thereby advertising base and thereby advertising rates. Do you work in radio, out of curiosity? I did, for a while, and saw quite a bit of change in both relay and base transmitters. Upgrades happen more frequently than every ten years, for sure.
Even a year can make a big difference in communications technology. And since it takes a fair amount of time to design and build a satellite, by the time a launch happens, technology has advanced significantly. Unless they built a spare (*very* rare, just too damn expensive), its usually only a small amount more expensive to just design and build a new one than it would be to retool and relaunch the same exact satellite, and the potential for increased profit is usually higher than the difference in cost. The lines are rarely still operating to simply pump out another one - satellites are essentially custom jobs, built one or two at a time. Think of it like this - sure, if we wanted to go back to the moon, we know building a Saturn V and Apollo could do it, but it would probably be cheaper to do a new design than it would to retool for the old designs.
Now, if you could repair in orbit, maybe it would be worth it, but its likely that the cost of launch+repair+upgrade would significantly exceed just redesigning and relaunching - remember that launches for people cost a lot more than launches for stuff.
My health insurance *requires* me to get a set of health screenings every other year. If I don't, my rate (which is quite reasonable, thank you corporate America for paying a large portion of it for me) doubles until I do. As of right now, they won't raise rates if I come up as fat, lazy, etc. on the screening, but I couldn't exactly argue with them if they did. They do request that if you come up with some sort of negative indicator, that you talk to a professional about ways to mitigate it (i.e. come up fat, talk to a physical trainer, come up smoker, talk to someone who specializes in helping people quit). Since they'll pay a good portion of most of those visits, again, can't complain.
Then again, I don't have an HMO, I have real health care, so my experience is probably totally not typical. But it may be coming sooner than you think.
Which countless studies would these be? Considering that the first one I can recall reading back when I was working with traffic engineers was this one, from which I quote:
"# Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent. The level of confidence of this estimate is 44 percent. The 95 percent confidence limits for this estimate ranges from a reduction in accidents of 11 percent to an increase of 26 percent.
"Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent. The level of confidence of this estimate in 59 percent. The 95 percent confidence limits for this estimate ranges from a reduction in accidents of 21 percent to an increase of 10 percent."
In other words, their best guess shows that raised speed limits provided for a safer drive than lowered ones. This is because most speed limits are set too low for the flow of traffic, which has next to nothing to do with the actual speed limit (many, many sources for that statement).
Yeah. Buncha assholes in both of those counties, really. If I ever move back to Detroit, I'm gonna go live downtown just to spite them.
(Grew up in Washtenaw County, have lots of friends living downriver and in Eastern Market now, I miss Detroit.)
Well, if you're stuck in ice, normally your wheels spin like crazy, your speedometer *does* in fact rise quite high, and you still don't move.
Your speedometer measures, not your speed, but the speed of your tires. If your tires are slipping, your speedometer will be wrong.
Also, a motorcycle can't cause as much damage as a car or truck - less mass, less kinetic energy to destroy things with.
For safety, certain lane widths are required for certain speeds. The wider a lane is, the higher the speed it can safely support. There are very simple reasons for this, and I will explain them in simple terms for your simple mind.
Your reaction time is essentially a constant. The time required for you to correct slight oversteer in one direction or another is fixed. HOWEVER. At higher speed, the amount of lateral motion is higher. Thus, wider lanes allow for more lateral motion in a safe fashion, while narrower lanes do not. Toll lanes are narrower than highway lanes, and thus are not safe to travel through at highway speeds.
Some people race their car legally on tracks.
I think it's silly, but it is legal.
"You disconnected your box."
"Yeah. I went in to get my car worked on, and the tech needed to pull it to get to some OBDII data; their scanner and your box don't co-exist nicely."
Disconnection explained. And I doubt it would be that hard to hack a dedicated micro to look at OBDII messages, retransmit all non-speed messages unchanged, and cap speed messages to a selectable value +/- a random changing value. That'd be doable on a PIC, for chrissake, much less something legit like a HC08.
You're wrong. Speed limits *should* be designed such that they represent the median maximum safe speed. However, they aren't. They're designed to get the local authorities revenue. This is because traffic engineers do not get final say on the limit, the local authorities do. Exactly like red light timing is often adjusted to lower safety but increase red-light running revenue, speed limits are often adjusted for the same reason.
In some states, someone going 75 in the left lane and not allowing someone going 85 to pass is driving JUST AS ILLEGALLY as the person going 85. Failure to allow a vehicle to pass IS a moving violation in some places.
Before you bring race into it (and, having lived in Detroit, I know race *is* part of it) I would suggest there are 3 MUCH bigger reasons why mass transit in Detroit is a non-starter.
GM.
Ford.
Chrysler.
I wonder if you could get away with it if you properly marked your car: "Warning - mantrap under seat".
That's funny. I bet they upgrade more often than you think; to add new remote control capabilities, more efficiency, etc. Of course, I only base that on having worked at a radio station for 4 years and seen two transmitter upgrades while I was there (increased power w/ telephone control, then an upgrade to add TCP-IP control capabilities).
The technology for satellites is *not* static at all. Remember that when you have a resource that limited, even a 5% upgrade in channel capacity is worth it. Comms sat technology is not static; otherwise, why don't they launch the same satellite they did 5 years ago? Because we have things like turbo codes and LDPC coding allowing better channel capacity, more efficient designs for transmitters and receivers, new semiconductors allowing more processing, etc. If you can only launch one satellite, you make sure it is the BEST you can afford.
Jesus christ. It was a joke. You remember jokes? The funny things that make people laugh?
1) It was a joke.
2) Women have been pilots. Eileen Collins comes to mind (first female Shuttle pilot/commander), as does Jeana Yaeger (pilot on Voyager... which happened to be a Scaled product, and who makes SpaceShipOne?) Private industry has been *far* more accepting of female pilots than NASA, as NASA's pilot culture was initially dominated by, and remains affected by, military test/fighter pilot culture, which is *very* male.
Get a sense of humor. Then get a clue. Then you can go back, read my post, and realize it was meant to be a joke, and then you can go sulk in a corner because no one thinks you're very funny. Oh, and get an account so that people can block your unfunny automatically.
Even there, the logic remains - it would cost more to deorbit intact and repair than it would be worth to repair them. The point is that satellites are a highly technology oriented product, and like all high tech, depreciate very quickly.
Well, there were also the Hubble repairs, which are *similar* though not the same, and some stuff with WESTAR and PALAPA comm birds, the only two satellite retrievals that were Earth-refurbed and then relaunched. Solar Max was retrieved and repaired on orbit, as well as a couple more comm birds.
But basically, those missions were subsidized by NASA to test the Shuttle's facility with such mission goals - no one was willing to pay for them.
I live in Wicker Park. Vehicle theft isn't a huge problem, but it happens. Its all about knowing the neighborhoods, and not parking in stupid places. Much like anything else - avoid dark streets, park on main roads and in well lit areas, and you'll be fine.
Yes, you may be able to leave your house unlocked, but I can walk 200 feet out of my front door and go to a good bar, 500 feet and go to a great bar with good music, 1000 feet and go to a great bar with great music, and 2000 feet and go to the movies. And I don't live in the soulless goddamn suburbs. I'll turn the key in exchange for that.
Or, you know, some passives in the path. Maybe an LED that shows that its on? There's a few mA right there, depending on the LED.
Technically, it isn't unloaded, but he was close enough to correct in usage.
ding-ding-ding we have a winner!
By the time a satellite *needs* to be pulled out of orbit to be refueled/repaired, it is generally old technology worth less than the launch cost for a retrieval mission. This is why the shuttle's satellite repair function was basically unused, and why no one has bothered to even think of doing something like this.
There are rare exceptions, but not enough of them to justify designing something to do it.
Oh, great, now even the prizes are bigoted!
See the above poster for why, but I was right, and you were wrong. Deprecated is what happens to an obsolete computer standard, and depreciated is what happens to an obsolete computer on your tax return. One refers to the value of something (ia), while the other is used either to express disapproval of something, or very specifically, to refer to something that has been rendered obsolete (a).
Its an easy pair of words to misuse, as their meanings are *very* close in a certain sense - they even share a common meaning (to disapprove or belittle). However, the correct usage when referring to an obsolete standard is deprecate, and the correct usage when referring to your taxes is depreciate.
This was up in Norwood Park. But I live in Wicker Park, and I've definitely seen people breaking into cars (and had stuff stolen from around my apartment, though no one has yet broken into it.) And about 6 blocks west, in Humboldt Park, I've witnessed drive-bys. I don't know what part you live in, but you're either unobservant or very, very lucky.
Trunk of your car is better than nothing in Chicago, though, and certainly better than the front seat. As long as they don't know there's anything in the trunk, they're less likely to hit your car.
Especially if you drive a beater that looks like it couldn't possibly have anything valuable in it, and leave it in a good neighborhood with lots of Jettas and SUVs and expensive crap. (coughLincolnParkcough).
On the other hand, I've sat with the owners and watched their 300k mile, damn near dead, Chevy Nova get stolen from in front of their house. I mean, they wanted it to be stolen, since getting it towed (there were brake problems to the point that they didn't want to drive it, not safe) would have cost as much as a junkyard would have given them, but still, its kinda funny to sit with someone who's *watching* their car get stolen. I love Chicago.
Actually, Sc.D is often just another name for the same thing - MIT's admissions page flat out states "Sc.D and Ph.D are interchangeable for the School of Engineering and Sciences". It still exists, though its less common than a Ph.D.