So, while understanding the technology limitations is surely important, the solution is not to do nothing, just because we can't achieve perfect results just yet.
I'm not sure that's really true. For some computing problems you are actually better off waiting a while to get started (due to Moor's Law). Energy tech. may be another one of those kinds of situations where the tech will be so much better in the future that we're better off saving our money. We have something like 100 years of coal, gas, oil in North America so there's really no hurry.
I'm pretty sure the folks who run the conventional power plants account for the cost of the materials needed to build/maintain their plants and we see the result on our electric bill (coal/gas are much cheaper). IMHO the only argument for green tech has to do with the external costs of polution, CO2 etc . If you're talking strictly about the cost to build, operate, and maintain there's really no contest.
As a fellow believer of the 2nd Amendment, I think talk of "overthrow[ing] this government now" is quite premature and irresponsible.
Agreed. If enough of the population can be convinced that freedom is worthwhile we can still make progress via the vote. If not then a revolution is likely to make things worse rather than better.
Because in the real world that's how revolutions work. At first jet engines were for military aircraft only. At first guns were only better than the bow and arrow if you had a bunch of other folks watching your back while you reloaded. The first computers were monstrosities that only made sense for large organisations. You don't sit on technology until it's the perfect solution for everyone, you make it good enough for some, sell it, and keep on with the improvements.
At what point has the balance of power shifted enough to the private sector that it has a significant influence on the public sector in these areas?
Probably at the point where the corporations gain "rights" as if they were people. In other words it's already happened. I'm a pretty big Libertarian but one area where I disagree with many of them is the whole idea of corporate citizenship. I see nothing wrong with government having a role in protecting The People from corporate abuse.
Never mind the fact that traffic deaths (in the US at least) have been decreased INCREDIBLY with the aforementioned technologies.
Of course, the average age of drivers has also changed during the same period. How can you be sure the change in traffic deaths has to do with tech. rather than the number of older/safer drivers on the road?
I really don't think that absolutely groundbreaking AI is needed for this, though.
Maybe not to handle a modern well marked highway but It'll be a while before they can handle the typical neighbourhoods without lane markings and stop signs overgrown by trees etc much less construction zones and parking lots. IMHO the real question is if we develop cars that can deal with 90% of the driving will our driving skills become so poor that we can't properly handle the 10% where humans are still needed.
In order to thaw the credit market, the US government had to spend money to make it attractive to invest and issue guarantees by way of loans and low interest rates in order to thaw the credit market.
Yes except that in order to get that money that it spent the government had to borrow it..... from essentially the same investors who provide money to the rest of the credit market. It's not at all clear that the amount of money in circulation actually increased, they just re-directed money that would have otherwise been loaned to individuals and private businesses and instead put it into hastily thrown together projects of questionable value.
In my own state I see this bizarre thing going on where important long standing programs are being cut due to a lack of funds while at the same time a few state and local government agencies are getting money thrown at them for things that the local voters would never have approved of spending their own money on. To me that seems like a major step backward in terms of efficiency. For example, a nearby city got a chunk of stimulus to buy fancy new swat gear that they rarely use while the state police can't even afford to pay pilots to fly their existing helicopter fleet which gets called out all the time.
I think you guys are mis-reading that (or I am). I took it to mean that this method of CONVERTING skin cells to be more like embryonic stem cells is more effective than previous methods of CONVERSION. I don't think they were saying that these new cells are more effective treatments than embryonic stem cells.
Items 1 - 4 are basically "beyond the scope" of the BB Theory and anything at or before the Bang falls under the heading of speculation. I don't see how that's a big problem though, I don't know how my great grandparents first met but I'm pretty sure it happened.
5. Yeah that's pretty amazing.
6 a . Afaik that's the $64,000 question. The gas clearly wasn't completely uniform and it had to have expanded at exactly the right rate with just the right amount of "clumpyness". Maybe studying gasses in a similar state will provide some clues.
6 b. This is the same question as 5. Basically if the expansion was fast enough it wouldn't ever collapse back to a singularity.
Compare the 1990 Civic [wikipedia.org] with the 2010 Civic [wikipedia.org]. The new Civic has a wheelbase roughly eight inches longer. The overall vehicle is roughly a foot longer. The 2010 model is about three inches wider, and about three inches taller.
Well, you've got to have somewhere to put all of those airbags and side impact beams so unless you want the interior to shrink the car has to get bigger. Crumple zones may play a part as well. I may be wrong but I thought that minimum height requirements for head lights/tail lights/bumper had increased. If that's true it would explain the additional height.
As a real world, example, the Econetic Ford Fiesta is now available in the US, meeting full US specs. It produces 120BHP, more than European versions, but the NYT review mocks it for its low power and suggests it is slower than a rowing boat. That's nonsense, but it's the sort of thing rednecks like to believe. It does about 40MPUSG. It would have been hard to achieve that in a 1990 Fiesta, which would typically get around 28-33MPUSG. Yet it is much safer and much faster.
No doubt our standards have changed. Even a typical 4 door sedan these days will give a 5.0L Mustang from the late 80's a run for it's money in terms of 0-60 and 1/4 mile times. The thing is though, the average vehicle weight has also increased dramatically. Econoboxes like the Honda CRX used to weigh in at under 2000lb, just try to find a 2000lb car these days. If we adopt the weight savings and aerodynamic improvements being developed for hybrids and EVs, in gas/diesel cars we'd probably see similar economy. Check out the highway mileage of a Corvette some time.
1. You could try not driving like an idiot. If you're gunning it in the snow (except for specific cases where you WANT under/over steer) then then the problem is between the seat and the steering wheel. The key to driving in the snow is avoiding sudden manoeuvres because your tires have the best traction when they're not spinning/skidding. It's also best to make one change at a time, steering, OR braking, OR acceleration but not more than one at a time. Look, I love having fun in the snow just like everyone else but when you're around other cars that's not the time for games.
2. The default behaviour of a FWD car to continue in a straight line while both turning and accelerating is far safer for most drivers than the behaviour of a RWD car which tends to spin (rapidly, if you have a short wheelbase like in my Bronco). In a FWD car letting off the throttle (which is the natural reaction of most people anyway) will eliminate the under steer almost immediately. If you really want to induce over steer in a FWD car you can do it by turning first then dabbing the brakes for just a second.
3. If you really want easy driving in the snow get an AWD car. My wife's Subaru makes it so easy to get up the long twisty hill to our house in the winter it almost feels like cheating. In a RWD car it's just plain impossible (without chains anyway). In a FWD car you can do it but it's a tough balancing act between maintaining enough momentum to get up the hill but not so much that you slide off in the corners. With AWD it's trivial.
This seems like as good a place as any to ask. On my Droid I don't have Flash but I do have the Youtube app. It's fairly crappy in some respects but the videos play great. How does that work exactly. Is Youtube sending the video in an alternate format or what?
GP is correct, the chemical and nuclear reactions are completely analogous, in each there is a change in mass due to a change in bond energies, but this change is much smaller in magnitude in chemical reactions.
No, in chemical reactions there is NO change in mass.
However, in a collision on a road with a clearly posted speed limit of 60 miles per hour, a collision between somebody doing 60 mph and somebody doing 90 mph, the increased danger comes from people *exceeding* the speed limit because they have unilaterally decided that the speed limit is too slow.
Agreed.
The solution there is more, and more aggressive, enforcement of the speed limit.
The thing is, around here at least the vast majority of accidents happen in poor weather. It's not a matter of someone exceeding the speed limit but rather someone going the speed limit even when it's not safe to do so. The other thing I've seen several times is as follows: I'm on a highway with a speed limit of 75mph
The road is snowy/icy and the safe speed in my estimation is 50mph.
Someone is going 30mph in the right lane and the left lane is so poorly plowed that the safe speed there is only maybe 20mph. A cluster of people then builds up around the slowpoke until someone gets up the guts to pass. That person spins out taking out the entire cluster.
The only thing that will fix that kind of thing is better driver education/training as well as enough smarts for the slowpoke to move to the left and let people pass on the right even though that would normally be backwards.
I should add that high speed limits can cause the same problem. Around here it's pretty common, especially at the beginning of winter, for some people to insist on driving the whole 75mph that is printed on the signs even on ice/snow and when they meet up with people driving at a reduced speed bad things tend to happen.
Not that I disagree with you but you also have to consider the speeds of the other traffic on the road. Some of the most dangerous situations are ones where you have traffic traveling at wildly different speeds on the same road. Setting unreasonably low speed limits can cause this by creating one class of traffic following the limit and another class traveling much faster.
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I'm not sure that's really true. For some computing problems you are actually better off waiting a while to get started (due to Moor's Law). Energy tech. may be another one of those kinds of situations where the tech will be so much better in the future that we're better off saving our money. We have something like 100 years of coal, gas, oil in North America so there's really no hurry.
Ironically the places where population growth is the slowest is in the west where energy use per person is the highest.
I'm pretty sure the folks who run the conventional power plants account for the cost of the materials needed to build/maintain their plants and we see the result on our electric bill (coal/gas are much cheaper). IMHO the only argument for green tech has to do with the external costs of polution, CO2 etc . If you're talking strictly about the cost to build, operate, and maintain there's really no contest.
Anyone else here remember a TV show called "Space Cadets"?
As a fellow believer of the 2nd Amendment, I think talk of "overthrow[ing] this government now" is quite premature and irresponsible.
Agreed. If enough of the population can be convinced that freedom is worthwhile we can still make progress via the vote. If not then a revolution is likely to make things worse rather than better.
That's ok I don't have Windows....I have Office
Because in the real world that's how revolutions work. At first jet engines were for military aircraft only. At first guns were only better than the bow and arrow if you had a bunch of other folks watching your back while you reloaded. The first computers were monstrosities that only made sense for large organisations. You don't sit on technology until it's the perfect solution for everyone, you make it good enough for some, sell it, and keep on with the improvements.
Probably at the point where the corporations gain "rights" as if they were people. In other words it's already happened. I'm a pretty big Libertarian but one area where I disagree with many of them is the whole idea of corporate citizenship. I see nothing wrong with government having a role in protecting The People from corporate abuse.
You don't ride taxicabs in Munich
Very interesting link. Thanks!
Of course, the average age of drivers has also changed during the same period. How can you be sure the change in traffic deaths has to do with tech. rather than the number of older/safer drivers on the road?
Maybe not to handle a modern well marked highway but It'll be a while before they can handle the typical neighbourhoods without lane markings and stop signs overgrown by trees etc much less construction zones and parking lots. IMHO the real question is if we develop cars that can deal with 90% of the driving will our driving skills become so poor that we can't properly handle the 10% where humans are still needed.
Yes except that in order to get that money that it spent the government had to borrow it ..... from essentially the same investors who provide money to the rest of the credit market. It's not at all clear that the amount of money in circulation actually increased, they just re-directed money that would have otherwise been loaned to individuals and private businesses and instead put it into hastily thrown together projects of questionable value.
In my own state I see this bizarre thing going on where important long standing programs are being cut due to a lack of funds while at the same time a few state and local government agencies are getting money thrown at them for things that the local voters would never have approved of spending their own money on. To me that seems like a major step backward in terms of efficiency. For example, a nearby city got a chunk of stimulus to buy fancy new swat gear that they rarely use while the state police can't even afford to pay pilots to fly their existing helicopter fleet which gets called out all the time.
You might want to give K-9 Mail a shot rather than the default Android Mail app.
I think you guys are mis-reading that (or I am). I took it to mean that this method of CONVERTING skin cells to be more like embryonic stem cells is more effective than previous methods of CONVERSION. I don't think they were saying that these new cells are more effective treatments than embryonic stem cells.
Disclosing the details of any individual NSL is illegal but I've never heard of it being illegal to disclose statistics of the number of NSLs served.
Items 1 - 4 are basically "beyond the scope" of the BB Theory and anything at or before the Bang falls under the heading of speculation. I don't see how that's a big problem though, I don't know how my great grandparents first met but I'm pretty sure it happened.
5. Yeah that's pretty amazing.
6 a . Afaik that's the $64,000 question. The gas clearly wasn't completely uniform and it had to have expanded at exactly the right rate with just the right amount of "clumpyness". Maybe studying gasses in a similar state will provide some clues.
6 b. This is the same question as 5. Basically if the expansion was fast enough it wouldn't ever collapse back to a singularity.
Sure, because EVERY car has to be able to replace a pickup in order to be useful.
Well, you've got to have somewhere to put all of those airbags and side impact beams so unless you want the interior to shrink the car has to get bigger. Crumple zones may play a part as well. I may be wrong but I thought that minimum height requirements for head lights/tail lights/bumper had increased. If that's true it would explain the additional height.
No doubt our standards have changed. Even a typical 4 door sedan these days will give a 5.0L Mustang from the late 80's a run for it's money in terms of 0-60 and 1/4 mile times. The thing is though, the average vehicle weight has also increased dramatically. Econoboxes like the Honda CRX used to weigh in at under 2000lb, just try to find a 2000lb car these days. If we adopt the weight savings and aerodynamic improvements being developed for hybrids and EVs, in gas/diesel cars we'd probably see similar economy. Check out the highway mileage of a Corvette some time.
1. You could try not driving like an idiot. If you're gunning it in the snow (except for specific cases where you WANT under/over steer) then then the problem is between the seat and the steering wheel. The key to driving in the snow is avoiding sudden manoeuvres because your tires have the best traction when they're not spinning/skidding. It's also best to make one change at a time, steering, OR braking, OR acceleration but not more than one at a time. Look, I love having fun in the snow just like everyone else but when you're around other cars that's not the time for games.
2. The default behaviour of a FWD car to continue in a straight line while both turning and accelerating is far safer for most drivers than the behaviour of a RWD car which tends to spin (rapidly, if you have a short wheelbase like in my Bronco). In a FWD car letting off the throttle (which is the natural reaction of most people anyway) will eliminate the under steer almost immediately. If you really want to induce over steer in a FWD car you can do it by turning first then dabbing the brakes for just a second.
3. If you really want easy driving in the snow get an AWD car. My wife's Subaru makes it so easy to get up the long twisty hill to our house in the winter it almost feels like cheating. In a RWD car it's just plain impossible (without chains anyway). In a FWD car you can do it but it's a tough balancing act between maintaining enough momentum to get up the hill but not so much that you slide off in the corners. With AWD it's trivial.
This seems like as good a place as any to ask. On my Droid I don't have Flash but I do have the Youtube app. It's fairly crappy in some respects but the videos play great. How does that work exactly. Is Youtube sending the video in an alternate format or what?
No, in chemical reactions there is NO change in mass.
Agreed.
The thing is, around here at least the vast majority of accidents happen in poor weather. It's not a matter of someone exceeding the speed limit but rather someone going the speed limit even when it's not safe to do so. The other thing I've seen several times is as follows:
I'm on a highway with a speed limit of 75mph
The road is snowy/icy and the safe speed in my estimation is 50mph.
Someone is going 30mph in the right lane and the left lane is so poorly plowed that the safe speed there is only maybe 20mph. A cluster of people then builds up around the slowpoke until someone gets up the guts to pass. That person spins out taking out the entire cluster.
The only thing that will fix that kind of thing is better driver education/training as well as enough smarts for the slowpoke to move to the left and let people pass on the right even though that would normally be backwards.
I should add that high speed limits can cause the same problem. Around here it's pretty common, especially at the beginning of winter, for some people to insist on driving the whole 75mph that is printed on the signs even on ice/snow and when they meet up with people driving at a reduced speed bad things tend to happen.
Not that I disagree with you but you also have to consider the speeds of the other traffic on the road. Some of the most dangerous situations are ones where you have traffic traveling at wildly different speeds on the same road. Setting unreasonably low speed limits can cause this by creating one class of traffic following the limit and another class traveling much faster.