I'd like to point out that the world's coverage by buildings is significantly less than 1%, or even what you'd need to satisfy 100% of our electrical needs, as opposed to total power demand(heating, transportation, chemical engineering, etc...)
As an aside, I once calced that if every car in the USA transitioned to an electric vehicle, the average household usage of electricity would go up 50% - using average EV miles per kwh, average household electricity usage, average miles, etc...
Also, not every building is in a spot where solar panels would work. Sometimes they're obscured by other buildings, geographical features, just too far north(especially in the winter), etc...
We want a MIX of power. Energy storage at the scales you'd need is simply too expensive with no end to that in sight. Realistically speaking, without said storage you're not going to see more than 20% of total electricity usage being solar. Day use of electricity is ~50% higher than night. Day=3, night =2, increase=1, 1/5=20%
There are laws out there where the onus could be placed back on the business. Look at various companies with higher than Chinese work standards. Apple is the biggest target here. Apple finds violations all the time, but mostly because they do their own investigative work.
So if you make the business liable for illegal marketing tactics even if it didn't, ala 'constructive ignorance' rules that have legal precedent in the Nuremberg trials* such that commanding officers can be held responsible for the crimes of their troops even if they didn't know about said crimes, if they WOULD have known if they're carried out their duties of command properly.
A few cases of this would either kill the lead market or make businesses pay a lot more attention to what their 'lead generators' are doing.
Personally, I see a few more ways as well: 1. Require 'lead generators' to be registered, bonded, and insured. Break the rules? Lose your bond. 2. Police Stings. They get a warrant for 'all available information' for calls to a pre-selected line 3. Omnivore type data collection. It should be possible today to track down said telemarketers faster than it's worth it for them to move.
*I'm not a lawyer, but am military, thus the bias in my knowledge.
"Even a minute or two" - If you're checking that intensely you're probably spending more time screening and reconnecting than you're saving with the screening.
Personally, I'd consider ANY delays for #1,2, and 5 too much for some of that. Especially #2 - in some areas at least you can't call a payphone back. #6,7, and 8 sometimes they can't be arsed to leave a message in the first place.
I'm afraid it doesn't. Much of the cost is in sorting and bulk mail tends to be pre-sorted which cuts down the cost to the post office. There are economies of scale at work here.
I used to work for a postal prep company - You are correct that most of the cost of your average first class letter is sorting. What many don't realize is that you can get discounts on first class mailings as well, as long as they are presorted, bar coded, etc... You know your monthly bills? Those are required to go first class, but are printed in pre-sorted order to keep the mailing costs down.
The mailing requirements for bulk mail are even nastier to shave those last few cents off. Roughly speaking, anything wrong with any given piece's addressing? Into the trash it goes.
I agree with your premise that postal spam should cost more but since 95+% of the mail I get (and thus the revenue the post office gets) goes straight to the trash I don't see this happening any time soon.
I'm down to the point that only about 50% goes direct into the trash.
1. Suppressors are legal, just a $200 tax. Use: Ability to shoot without hearing protection without damage. Since they're generally still over 100 db, they aren't exactly "silent". 2. Ceramic/plastic guns are still, to my knowledge, beyond our technological abilities. The law was passed from the development of the Glock and similar polymer framed guns, but all guns to date have more than the necessary amount of metal in the barrel alone. 3. "cop-killer" rounds - are restricted, but a lot of people have mistaken beliefs about them, much like the plastic guns. The humble.30-30 round, along with virtually every other center-fire rifle cartridge, will blow through lvl3 soft body armor at range without a problem. Handgun rounds are, of course, very tricky. For example, AP 5.7mm rounds exist. They are not capable of penetrating out of the FiveSeven handgun, only out of the FN-90 bullpup. They don't have enough velocity to penetrate out of the shorter barrel of the handgun. Teflon coatings don't make for armor piercing rounds, what it is is that AP rounds are typically made out of harder materials, thus the use of teflon to reduce barrel wear with them.
And I feel very unsafe working with stupid stoners that toked up at lunch and are now opperating heavy equiptment and dangererous tools and potentially endangering my life.
All but the stupidest/most extreme of legalization proponents allow the same rules as alcohol - IE you're expected to be 'sober', IE not intoxicated on ANY drugs, when you come to work unless you've made other arrangements with your employer*, and even then only if you're NOT going to be operating any potentially dangerous equipment.
If they 'toked up' at lunch they deserve to be fired, and I am a proponent of legalization.
Quite possibly. Moreover pharmaceutical heroin is far safer than the street variety. Addictive yes, but the major side effect of regulated use is constipation. Heroin is a terrific candidate for legalization and regulation. Meth and less sure of.
Lots of people who object to legalizing drugs point to Meth being legalized as a bad thing because it's effects are so negative. I want to point out that Meth is an development and artifact of the drug war, much like crack cocaine, "bath salts" and "incense" along with the popularity of hard liquors during prohibition.
Personally I figure that stimulants like cocaine would be able to kill most of the meth market. The remainder would probably be better off doing 'pharmacy grade' meth as opposed to the nasty stuff they use now.
We are talking about drugs where one bad decisions by a 15 year old will destroy his life.
Then you prohibit to minors, not adults. Don't punish the kid for using it, punish the adult(somewhere in the chain) who provided it to a minor. Also, from what I've been seeing, most of the negative effects of drug use at this point actually stems from prohibition.
IE the drug isn't so bad because of it's effects, it's bad because of the effects from being caught using it.
I guess it depends on your flavor of 'partial'. I view the issue of one of harm mitigation, risk management, and that the whole thing ends up being shades of grey - the specific flavor of legalization will probably on vary a little on the actual effects.
IE I 'support' everything from full up legalization, regulation, and taxation to 'only' legalizing the safest drug of a given field that's strong enough to attract most of the users, specifically looking for drug 'types'. Well, along with that you'd want to legalize drugs that are safer, but weaker than necessary for full effect. You might legalize opium while keeping heroin illegal. Make cocaine legal while keeping meth illegal.
On the other hand, pharmaceutical grade Meth probably won't be anywhere near as damaging as the illegally produced stuff, so under a regulated and taxed market you might be able to push the vast majority of users onto cocaine by simply manipulating the regulations and tax rates so that Meth costs X times more than cocaine.
As for widespread meth use - studies have shown that what I'd call 'maladapted' or nonfunctional addict rate remains the same whether drugs are prohibited or not.
The question is whether the benefits of criminalization, the avoidance of widespread use, can be achieved without criminalization.
Indeed. The question is also whether you can avoid the downsides of criminalization, to include but not limited to- Police militarization, increased police power(such as cash confiscation, reporting levels), surveillance, intrusion into other people's business Secondary markets - I can't get my pseudo-ephedrine anywhere near as easily due to the 'war on meth'. There's other effects as well Pollution - illegal producers of drugs don't worry about it Organized crime - the core of it's diet is feeding the drug black market Drug violence - crime against users/dealers that can't report to police, their own defense, territorial wars, 'street justice' of betrayers
Basically, the idea is that criminalization isn't actually preventing the addicts, isn't preventing the crimes, at prohibitive costs in resources, time, and lives.
I don't think "I think you're a drug dealer because you seem shady and you have a lot of money I can't account for because I'm not your personal ho-bag and not privy to your private affairs" should count as reasonable belief.
But that's what they turned it into. 'Constructive ignorance'. I believe my first introduction into the concept came from the Nuremberg trials, and it's now a military principle. If you're the commander of a body of troops, you're responsible for their actions even if you had no knowledge of them, if you would have known about said actions if you'd been doing your job of commanding them properly.
The moment the installer thought 'it's probably drug money' he should have stopped or asked. Then the drug dealers could have thought up some excuse that didn't involve the money being from illegal drug sales, taking the onus back onto themselves. It's not a court, so no penalty for lying.
If someone comes at you with a knife and you point a gun at him, he is very unlikely to keep coming, and far more likely to head in the other direction, perhaps in some haste, if he has a brain in his head. Only if he is an idiot are you likely to have to pull the trigger. And if he is an idiot with a knife coming after you, you had better have a trigger to pull.
Indeed, and often these incidents go unreported because, well, the police are not your friend. By all means, call them if you are the victim of a crime involving losses, but in some areas reporting that you drove off the home invaders with a gun is simply asking to have the gun confiscated, your home searched for drugs*, and you arrested for assault.
In other areas they'll ask you to shoot quicker, of course. Mileage varies an incredible amount. Know how your local PD leans, there are 'liberal'** departments in staunch 'conservative' states and vice versa...
*And plantings are not unknown. **Used only to provide stereotypical meaning. Couldn't think of a better description at the moment. Liberal = anti-self defense, Conservative=bloody minded. Not that those are actually all that representative.
Indeed, it's also supposed to be specific knowledge that THAT device will be used illegally. When you diffuse it to 'gun makers' as opposed to dealers, Smith & Wesson is in the same boat as GM. They KNOW that some of their creations will be used to wrongly kill people. Whether by direct action, DUI, or accident. They just have no knowledge that the specific unit being shipped is any more likely than any other will be used badly.
If they had specific enough knowledge, odds are they'd deny some sales.
ue everyone and anyone who used the word "Mini", up to and including the Mini Cooper.
Reminds me of the time McDonalds sued "McDonald's Restaurant" for trademark infringement. The golden arches almost had to rename all their restaurants when it came out that the McDonalds family had been running a restaurant there since before the USA become a country...
Just because they are choices you do not like, does not mean they are not choices.
In general, consumers WANT to give you money, surprisingly enough. However, the amount they're willing to pay, the time they're willing to wait, the restrictions they're willing to put up with varies.
Subscribing to cable is not an option everywhere. Subscribing to cable and HBO is expensive as all heck if all you're going to watch is "Game of Thrones". Consumers are impatient - they're not going to want to wait a year, at least not all of them. Box sets are still expensive.
As a media marketer, it's in my best interest to realize that the consumer market is varied, and depending on my pricing and options offered the piracy rate can vary wildly, along with my sales. HBO has probably determined that getting money from the premium customers and letting the rest pirate is the better option than gathering more of the market, but watering down the price it can extract from premium customers.
If GM or other major car companies ends up assuming additional liability for each car they sell, I'd expect them to largely self-insure. Then again, utilizing existing insurance channels might be for the best.
I would NOT be surprised to see a legislative bill that indemnifies manufacturers of a autonomous car and puts the onus on the owner/operator, or even a switch to 'no fault' type insurance, in order to encourage them, so long as they test as being safer than average human drivers to a high confidence level, probably using DUI convicts as test beds.
Given a reasonably self driving car, I see a shift away from breath testers for driving to 'you can only take self-driving cars for X years', even if the system costs $40k. Just the breath system is like $10k for the first year, what with all the maintenance required, going by the road signs declaring 'YOUR FIRST DUI CAN COST $X', with breakdowns. Add in the thousands probably saved in insurance, etc... It adds up.
If GM ends up assuming additional liability for each car they sell, I'd expect them to largely self-insure. Then again, utilizing existing insurance channels might be for the best.
I would NOT be surprised to see a legislative bill that indemnifies manufacturers of a autonomous car and puts the onus on the owner/operator, or even a switch to 'no fault' type insurance, in order to encourage them, so long as
That might be the simplest tax system, but it'd end up being the most complicated welfare system, and thus unmanageable. For one, how do you accurately assess 'needs'?
there's no way to avoid doing social engineering with taxes.
There's taxation as social engineering, then there's social engineering from taxation. I figure that Iseltzer was talking that taxation should not primarily be a form of social engineering, but of revenue generation.
The problem you get with areas like Massachusetts is that they go WAY overboard with the 'taxation as social engineering' idea, viewing the engineering as a primary motivation. Well, either that or they're for so much in spending that they have to excessively 'massage' tax rates and have special taxes so they don't kill businesses with a level tax across numerous industries. The more complicated the tax system, the less efficient it is - they spend more money enforcing it, and people spend more money complying.
If you tax more or less simply to gain the revenue needed to run government, with the engineering mostly being simply to reduce the negative social effects(IE keep income/sales/property taxes balanced; consider not taxing food; keep income taxes at least somewhat progressive; have a homestead exemption so that the first $40k or so of your primary home's value isn't taxed, etc...), you end up with a far simpler system than where social engineering is primary, you tend to have specific taxes on specific activities, and your tax code book ends up looking worse than the federal government's.
They really aren't. They might one day, if we lick this supercapacitor problem, the problem being they're still too expensive.
Do you have any cites on this? The sources say they're coming, that GE is working on 'tougher' batteries; that are designed to survive the physical stress and last longer than LiIon. Admittedly, it says that environmental regulations is a major reason they're going to enter the market; not just fuel savings: Reasons I saw they're coming: 1. Cheapest way to meet new regulations 2. Reduces fuel costs 3. Reduces maintenance costs
Trains were deliberately deprecated in the US to sell cars, I can't imagine it hasn't happened in other countries.
Passenger trains maybe, but as much cargo as ever is moved by rail in the USA today. There's plenty of market in the USA, and as you mention the rest of the world is even larger.
Since when have hackers and other criminals ever worried about legal niceties?
When their activities will lead the cops right too them? Federal cops? While I enjoy dumb criminal stories as much as anybody else, dumb criminals aren't typically sophisticated enough to make something capable of spoofing GPS.
You construct something capable of spoofing a police drone enough that it crashes, you're going to cause a widespread disruption of civilian GPS sources, and that's what will provide enough evidence(along with various other logging/tracking systems) to build a very good idea of the location and capabilities of said system. It'll also get the FCC and military very interested in you.
Now, if the police are stupid enough to NOT use even basic encryption/authentication/anti jamming techniques, well, they almost deserve to lose a drone or two.
"Petrol" is the UK's term for Gasoline. Here in the USA, "gasoline" refers to a very specific part of the distillation stack, and diesel is a different part. "Petroleum diesel" or "Petrodiesel" is specifying the source of the diesel(IE it's not biodiesel or otherwise artificially produced). It's not calling it 'Petrol' to specify that it's 'gasoline'.
Putting either fuel in an engine intended for the other will generally result in a broken engine. They are not substitutable.
First, I screwed up my post a bit: I didn't mean a series EV, I meant series HYBRID, though that should be obvious from the 'diesel' comment.
Anyways, let's first consider usage: You seem to be assuming more highway tractor-trailer usage than what I was picturing - which was the 'standard' family with a truck to haul their camper/boat trailer/toy hauler on the weekends. While start/stop amounts depend on the driving patterns of the vehicle, I think we can both admit that lots of trucks are used more as cars than actual towing. Though I wouldn't be surprised if somebody could scale down a locomotive system today and keep it efficient enough to beat existing engine systems, though inertia in the industry would slow adoption.
On towing: The hardest, most difficult part on the engine/transmission today is STARTING a load. Most engines in trucks intended for towing are relatively massively oversize for HAULING a load at highway speeds in order to be able to get the load started and up to highway speeds at an acceptable pace. Once at highway speeds, a loaded trailer that causes the engine to groan at startup presents the same wind profile as an empty one, you just have more friction drag to worry about. 100% torque at 0 rpm in order to overcome static friction is ideal for this. The fact that, unlike with internal combustion engines, you can 'overload' a properly designed electric motor to over 400% it's rated capacity for a few seconds is just cake(electric motors normally have 100% load set for a continuous duty cycle).
This is why I specified 'electric motors', I'm fully aware that batteries are relative crud compared to hydrocarbon fuels today. Electric = great motor;lousy energy storage. IC = lousy motor, incredibly dense energy storage.
Diesels 'like' to operate within a very specific RPM and power load for highest efficiency. By removing the physical transmission and providing 'just enough' battery to act as an evening agent, you allow this to happen, which means that a series hybrid, properly constructed and used, should allow you to operate the diesel powerplant in it's most efficient band essentially continuously, making it even more efficient and offsetting any additional losses through the generation system. The battery pack should contain enough power to start, stop, and preferably get over any expected hills/mountains, though if you have enough of those you might just end up going with a bigger battery. Somebody buying a dedicated tow vehicle should be able to work out the proper sizing, and perhaps even have slots you can put additional batteries in if it makes sense, sort of like how Tesla has 3 different sized battery packs for their model S.
In the end I figure it'd be considered a 'weak' hybrid, only capable of a few miles without the diesel engine providing power. But if it allows you to go down a size or two on the engine, eliminate the transmission, etc...?
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I'd like to point out that the world's coverage by buildings is significantly less than 1%, or even what you'd need to satisfy 100% of our electrical needs, as opposed to total power demand(heating, transportation, chemical engineering, etc...)
As an aside, I once calced that if every car in the USA transitioned to an electric vehicle, the average household usage of electricity would go up 50% - using average EV miles per kwh, average household electricity usage, average miles, etc...
Also, not every building is in a spot where solar panels would work. Sometimes they're obscured by other buildings, geographical features, just too far north(especially in the winter), etc...
We want a MIX of power. Energy storage at the scales you'd need is simply too expensive with no end to that in sight. Realistically speaking, without said storage you're not going to see more than 20% of total electricity usage being solar. Day use of electricity is ~50% higher than night. Day=3, night =2, increase=1, 1/5=20%
There are laws out there where the onus could be placed back on the business. Look at various companies with higher than Chinese work standards. Apple is the biggest target here. Apple finds violations all the time, but mostly because they do their own investigative work.
So if you make the business liable for illegal marketing tactics even if it didn't, ala 'constructive ignorance' rules that have legal precedent in the Nuremberg trials* such that commanding officers can be held responsible for the crimes of their troops even if they didn't know about said crimes, if they WOULD have known if they're carried out their duties of command properly.
A few cases of this would either kill the lead market or make businesses pay a lot more attention to what their 'lead generators' are doing.
Personally, I see a few more ways as well:
1. Require 'lead generators' to be registered, bonded, and insured. Break the rules? Lose your bond.
2. Police Stings. They get a warrant for 'all available information' for calls to a pre-selected line
3. Omnivore type data collection. It should be possible today to track down said telemarketers faster than it's worth it for them to move.
*I'm not a lawyer, but am military, thus the bias in my knowledge.
Not to mention the whole 'We'll toss you in prison if you don't talk. If you DO talk, we'll simply let you off with a fine'.
"Even a minute or two" - If you're checking that intensely you're probably spending more time screening and reconnecting than you're saving with the screening.
Personally, I'd consider ANY delays for #1,2, and 5 too much for some of that. Especially #2 - in some areas at least you can't call a payphone back. #6,7, and 8 sometimes they can't be arsed to leave a message in the first place.
I'm afraid it doesn't. Much of the cost is in sorting and bulk mail tends to be pre-sorted which cuts down the cost to the post office. There are economies of scale at work here.
I used to work for a postal prep company - You are correct that most of the cost of your average first class letter is sorting. What many don't realize is that you can get discounts on first class mailings as well, as long as they are presorted, bar coded, etc... You know your monthly bills? Those are required to go first class, but are printed in pre-sorted order to keep the mailing costs down.
The mailing requirements for bulk mail are even nastier to shave those last few cents off. Roughly speaking, anything wrong with any given piece's addressing? Into the trash it goes.
I agree with your premise that postal spam should cost more but since 95+% of the mail I get (and thus the revenue the post office gets) goes straight to the trash I don't see this happening any time soon.
I'm down to the point that only about 50% goes direct into the trash.
It doesn't throw the parasites who installed the robots in prison then throw away the key.
Bah, if hitmen aren't solving your problem, you're not employing enough of them.
1. Suppressors are legal, just a $200 tax. Use: Ability to shoot without hearing protection without damage. Since they're generally still over 100 db, they aren't exactly "silent". .30-30 round, along with virtually every other center-fire rifle cartridge, will blow through lvl3 soft body armor at range without a problem. Handgun rounds are, of course, very tricky. For example, AP 5.7mm rounds exist. They are not capable of penetrating out of the FiveSeven handgun, only out of the FN-90 bullpup. They don't have enough velocity to penetrate out of the shorter barrel of the handgun. Teflon coatings don't make for armor piercing rounds, what it is is that AP rounds are typically made out of harder materials, thus the use of teflon to reduce barrel wear with them.
2. Ceramic/plastic guns are still, to my knowledge, beyond our technological abilities. The law was passed from the development of the Glock and similar polymer framed guns, but all guns to date have more than the necessary amount of metal in the barrel alone.
3. "cop-killer" rounds - are restricted, but a lot of people have mistaken beliefs about them, much like the plastic guns. The humble
And I feel very unsafe working with stupid stoners that toked up at lunch and are now opperating heavy equiptment and dangererous tools and potentially endangering my life.
All but the stupidest/most extreme of legalization proponents allow the same rules as alcohol - IE you're expected to be 'sober', IE not intoxicated on ANY drugs, when you come to work unless you've made other arrangements with your employer*, and even then only if you're NOT going to be operating any potentially dangerous equipment.
If they 'toked up' at lunch they deserve to be fired, and I am a proponent of legalization.
*Maybe you're a artist that works best stoned.
Quite possibly. Moreover pharmaceutical heroin is far safer than the street variety. Addictive yes, but the major side effect of regulated use is constipation. Heroin is a terrific candidate for legalization and regulation. Meth and less sure of.
Lots of people who object to legalizing drugs point to Meth being legalized as a bad thing because it's effects are so negative. I want to point out that Meth is an development and artifact of the drug war, much like crack cocaine, "bath salts" and "incense" along with the popularity of hard liquors during prohibition.
Personally I figure that stimulants like cocaine would be able to kill most of the meth market. The remainder would probably be better off doing 'pharmacy grade' meth as opposed to the nasty stuff they use now.
We are talking about drugs where one bad decisions by a 15 year old will destroy his life.
Then you prohibit to minors, not adults. Don't punish the kid for using it, punish the adult(somewhere in the chain) who provided it to a minor. Also, from what I've been seeing, most of the negative effects of drug use at this point actually stems from prohibition.
IE the drug isn't so bad because of it's effects, it's bad because of the effects from being caught using it.
I guess it depends on your flavor of 'partial'. I view the issue of one of harm mitigation, risk management, and that the whole thing ends up being shades of grey - the specific flavor of legalization will probably on vary a little on the actual effects.
IE I 'support' everything from full up legalization, regulation, and taxation to 'only' legalizing the safest drug of a given field that's strong enough to attract most of the users, specifically looking for drug 'types'. Well, along with that you'd want to legalize drugs that are safer, but weaker than necessary for full effect. You might legalize opium while keeping heroin illegal. Make cocaine legal while keeping meth illegal.
On the other hand, pharmaceutical grade Meth probably won't be anywhere near as damaging as the illegally produced stuff, so under a regulated and taxed market you might be able to push the vast majority of users onto cocaine by simply manipulating the regulations and tax rates so that Meth costs X times more than cocaine.
As for widespread meth use - studies have shown that what I'd call 'maladapted' or nonfunctional addict rate remains the same whether drugs are prohibited or not.
The question is whether the benefits of criminalization, the avoidance of widespread use, can be achieved without criminalization.
Indeed. The question is also whether you can avoid the downsides of criminalization, to include but not limited to-
Police militarization, increased police power(such as cash confiscation, reporting levels), surveillance, intrusion into other people's business
Secondary markets - I can't get my pseudo-ephedrine anywhere near as easily due to the 'war on meth'. There's other effects as well
Pollution - illegal producers of drugs don't worry about it
Organized crime - the core of it's diet is feeding the drug black market
Drug violence - crime against users/dealers that can't report to police, their own defense, territorial wars, 'street justice' of betrayers
Basically, the idea is that criminalization isn't actually preventing the addicts, isn't preventing the crimes, at prohibitive costs in resources, time, and lives.
I don't think "I think you're a drug dealer because you seem shady and you have a lot of money I can't account for because I'm not your personal ho-bag and not privy to your private affairs" should count as reasonable belief.
But that's what they turned it into. 'Constructive ignorance'. I believe my first introduction into the concept came from the Nuremberg trials, and it's now a military principle. If you're the commander of a body of troops, you're responsible for their actions even if you had no knowledge of them, if you would have known about said actions if you'd been doing your job of commanding them properly.
The moment the installer thought 'it's probably drug money' he should have stopped or asked. Then the drug dealers could have thought up some excuse that didn't involve the money being from illegal drug sales, taking the onus back onto themselves. It's not a court, so no penalty for lying.
If someone comes at you with a knife and you point a gun at him, he is very unlikely to keep coming, and far more likely to head in the other direction, perhaps in some haste, if he has a brain in his head. Only if he is an idiot are you likely to have to pull the trigger. And if he is an idiot with a knife coming after you, you had better have a trigger to pull.
Indeed, and often these incidents go unreported because, well, the police are not your friend. By all means, call them if you are the victim of a crime involving losses, but in some areas reporting that you drove off the home invaders with a gun is simply asking to have the gun confiscated, your home searched for drugs*, and you arrested for assault.
In other areas they'll ask you to shoot quicker, of course. Mileage varies an incredible amount. Know how your local PD leans, there are 'liberal'** departments in staunch 'conservative' states and vice versa...
*And plantings are not unknown.
**Used only to provide stereotypical meaning. Couldn't think of a better description at the moment. Liberal = anti-self defense, Conservative=bloody minded. Not that those are actually all that representative.
Indeed, it's also supposed to be specific knowledge that THAT device will be used illegally. When you diffuse it to 'gun makers' as opposed to dealers, Smith & Wesson is in the same boat as GM. They KNOW that some of their creations will be used to wrongly kill people. Whether by direct action, DUI, or accident. They just have no knowledge that the specific unit being shipped is any more likely than any other will be used badly.
If they had specific enough knowledge, odds are they'd deny some sales.
ue everyone and anyone who used the word "Mini", up to and including the Mini Cooper.
Reminds me of the time McDonalds sued "McDonald's Restaurant" for trademark infringement. The golden arches almost had to rename all their restaurants when it came out that the McDonalds family had been running a restaurant there since before the USA become a country...
Just because they are choices you do not like, does not mean they are not choices.
In general, consumers WANT to give you money, surprisingly enough. However, the amount they're willing to pay, the time they're willing to wait, the restrictions they're willing to put up with varies.
Subscribing to cable is not an option everywhere. Subscribing to cable and HBO is expensive as all heck if all you're going to watch is "Game of Thrones". Consumers are impatient - they're not going to want to wait a year, at least not all of them. Box sets are still expensive.
As a media marketer, it's in my best interest to realize that the consumer market is varied, and depending on my pricing and options offered the piracy rate can vary wildly, along with my sales. HBO has probably determined that getting money from the premium customers and letting the rest pirate is the better option than gathering more of the market, but watering down the price it can extract from premium customers.
If GM or other major car companies ends up assuming additional liability for each car they sell, I'd expect them to largely self-insure. Then again, utilizing existing insurance channels might be for the best.
I would NOT be surprised to see a legislative bill that indemnifies manufacturers of a autonomous car and puts the onus on the owner/operator, or even a switch to 'no fault' type insurance, in order to encourage them, so long as they test as being safer than average human drivers to a high confidence level, probably using DUI convicts as test beds.
Given a reasonably self driving car, I see a shift away from breath testers for driving to 'you can only take self-driving cars for X years', even if the system costs $40k. Just the breath system is like $10k for the first year, what with all the maintenance required, going by the road signs declaring 'YOUR FIRST DUI CAN COST $X', with breakdowns. Add in the thousands probably saved in insurance, etc... It adds up.
If GM ends up assuming additional liability for each car they sell, I'd expect them to largely self-insure. Then again, utilizing existing insurance channels might be for the best.
I would NOT be surprised to see a legislative bill that indemnifies manufacturers of a autonomous car and puts the onus on the owner/operator, or even a switch to 'no fault' type insurance, in order to encourage them, so long as
That might be the simplest tax system, but it'd end up being the most complicated welfare system, and thus unmanageable. For one, how do you accurately assess 'needs'?
there's no way to avoid doing social engineering with taxes.
There's taxation as social engineering, then there's social engineering from taxation. I figure that Iseltzer was talking that taxation should not primarily be a form of social engineering, but of revenue generation.
The problem you get with areas like Massachusetts is that they go WAY overboard with the 'taxation as social engineering' idea, viewing the engineering as a primary motivation. Well, either that or they're for so much in spending that they have to excessively 'massage' tax rates and have special taxes so they don't kill businesses with a level tax across numerous industries. The more complicated the tax system, the less efficient it is - they spend more money enforcing it, and people spend more money complying.
If you tax more or less simply to gain the revenue needed to run government, with the engineering mostly being simply to reduce the negative social effects(IE keep income/sales/property taxes balanced; consider not taxing food; keep income taxes at least somewhat progressive; have a homestead exemption so that the first $40k or so of your primary home's value isn't taxed, etc...), you end up with a far simpler system than where social engineering is primary, you tend to have specific taxes on specific activities, and your tax code book ends up looking worse than the federal government's.
They really aren't. They might one day, if we lick this supercapacitor problem, the problem being they're still too expensive.
Do you have any cites on this? The sources say they're coming, that GE is working on 'tougher' batteries; that are designed to survive the physical stress and last longer than LiIon. Admittedly, it says that environmental regulations is a major reason they're going to enter the market; not just fuel savings:
Reasons I saw they're coming:
1. Cheapest way to meet new regulations
2. Reduces fuel costs
3. Reduces maintenance costs
Trains were deliberately deprecated in the US to sell cars, I can't imagine it hasn't happened in other countries.
Passenger trains maybe, but as much cargo as ever is moved by rail in the USA today. There's plenty of market in the USA, and as you mention the rest of the world is even larger.
Since when have hackers and other criminals ever worried about legal niceties?
When their activities will lead the cops right too them? Federal cops? While I enjoy dumb criminal stories as much as anybody else, dumb criminals aren't typically sophisticated enough to make something capable of spoofing GPS.
You construct something capable of spoofing a police drone enough that it crashes, you're going to cause a widespread disruption of civilian GPS sources, and that's what will provide enough evidence(along with various other logging/tracking systems) to build a very good idea of the location and capabilities of said system. It'll also get the FCC and military very interested in you.
Now, if the police are stupid enough to NOT use even basic encryption/authentication/anti jamming techniques, well, they almost deserve to lose a drone or two.
"Petrol" is the UK's term for Gasoline. Here in the USA, "gasoline" refers to a very specific part of the distillation stack, and diesel is a different part.
"Petroleum diesel" or "Petrodiesel" is specifying the source of the diesel(IE it's not biodiesel or otherwise artificially produced). It's not calling it 'Petrol' to specify that it's 'gasoline'.
Putting either fuel in an engine intended for the other will generally result in a broken engine. They are not substitutable.
My google search shows that they're still in the prototype stages, but they're coming.
Given that locomotives are listed as having 30 year lifespans, I'm not surprised that development is lagging on them compared to cars.
First, I screwed up my post a bit: I didn't mean a series EV, I meant series HYBRID, though that should be obvious from the 'diesel' comment.
Anyways, let's first consider usage: You seem to be assuming more highway tractor-trailer usage than what I was picturing - which was the 'standard' family with a truck to haul their camper/boat trailer/toy hauler on the weekends. While start/stop amounts depend on the driving patterns of the vehicle, I think we can both admit that lots of trucks are used more as cars than actual towing. Though I wouldn't be surprised if somebody could scale down a locomotive system today and keep it efficient enough to beat existing engine systems, though inertia in the industry would slow adoption.
On towing: The hardest, most difficult part on the engine/transmission today is STARTING a load. Most engines in trucks intended for towing are relatively massively oversize for HAULING a load at highway speeds in order to be able to get the load started and up to highway speeds at an acceptable pace. Once at highway speeds, a loaded trailer that causes the engine to groan at startup presents the same wind profile as an empty one, you just have more friction drag to worry about. 100% torque at 0 rpm in order to overcome static friction is ideal for this. The fact that, unlike with internal combustion engines, you can 'overload' a properly designed electric motor to over 400% it's rated capacity for a few seconds is just cake(electric motors normally have 100% load set for a continuous duty cycle).
This is why I specified 'electric motors', I'm fully aware that batteries are relative crud compared to hydrocarbon fuels today. Electric = great motor;lousy energy storage. IC = lousy motor, incredibly dense energy storage.
Diesels 'like' to operate within a very specific RPM and power load for highest efficiency. By removing the physical transmission and providing 'just enough' battery to act as an evening agent, you allow this to happen, which means that a series hybrid, properly constructed and used, should allow you to operate the diesel powerplant in it's most efficient band essentially continuously, making it even more efficient and offsetting any additional losses through the generation system. The battery pack should contain enough power to start, stop, and preferably get over any expected hills/mountains, though if you have enough of those you might just end up going with a bigger battery. Somebody buying a dedicated tow vehicle should be able to work out the proper sizing, and perhaps even have slots you can put additional batteries in if it makes sense, sort of like how Tesla has 3 different sized battery packs for their model S.
In the end I figure it'd be considered a 'weak' hybrid, only capable of a few miles without the diesel engine providing power. But if it allows you to go down a size or two on the engine, eliminate the transmission, etc...?