I do understand and was being a bit tongue in cheek about it. I assume that VW has a proper development process in place so this code had to. 1. Pass a design review. 2. Pass developer testing. 3. Pass a code review. 4. Pass QA There is no way that this just got slipped in by a few developers.
Actually it is simple. 1. The majority of the tech press is in SF. The best product on the web or the app store does not always win. It is the one that people know about. You come up with a cool app in Twin Falls, ID and you will be hard pressed get any buzz. 2. A lot of the venture capital people are in SF. 3. If your startup in SF goes belly up you can walk down the street and find a new job. 4. SF, Seattle, and Austin are seen as being cool tech centers.
Frankly it is probably the reason that Slashdot never became huge like Engadget dispite the fact that at one time it was the tech site on web for techies.
I live and work in South Florida. The PC was created in Boca Raton Florida. We used to have a ton of tech companies in South Florida and we have an extremely diverse population but very little in the way of start ups. I think a large part is the lack of colleges with strong tech programs in South Florida. The schools with the best tech programs are FSU, UF, and UCF which are all located central and north Florida. Florida is still loaded with tech companies like Harris, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and there is a lot of talent, cheap housing, good beaches, clean air, and sunshine but venture capital? Thriving start-up scene? Nope not at all.
To sell cars in the US VW had to pass the test. VW passed the test. I actually wonder if they did break any laws or regulations. They without a doubt broke the spirit of the law but... The simple truth is that the EPA probably has a regulation stating that the car can not have any special emissions testing modes that cause the care to perform in a way different than if driven under normal circumstances. It is possible that the engineers did not know the law but simply knew the test.
No we do not. We have several regional grids with limited interconnects. That is reason that the North East has twice had power outages but did not take down the entire country.
Simple wind speed is driven by temperature differentials by that time of night the earth, air, and water often are very close to the same temperature so the winds tend to drop. That is why most balloon launches are done near dawn.
"If your goal is to put something - anything - on the Moon in one piece, as a technology demonstrator, maybe that tradeoff works." Maybe but I find the idea of electrically powering the turbo pumps of the engine as very questionable vs classic turbo pumps. I wonder if they are using thermal batteries?
I got a better idea of what a good manager was from reading the book "The Soul of a New Machine". The problem with good managers is they look like they are doing nothing. A good manager fixes problems before they happen. You are going to need a logic analyzer next week and it shows up on your desk on Friday of this week. It is just transparent.
"You can make up for that lack by looking at a weather map and trying to identify a day when there is no wind at all over a region large enough to be covered by a national grid - or pretty close to continental in the case of the USA"
Yeah... So every site must have enough capacity to power the entire US to make up for the sites that get no wind? It is also not a case of no wind but of not enough wind and or too much wind. Too much wind the they feather the turbines to keep them from over speeding BTW. Also you will find very little wind in the US between the hours around 4am pst or 7am est. No oversimplification of the problem just does not work not to mention that having on giant nation wide grid like you describe would be very complex and hard to eliminate the potential for a total collapse. Wind is not reliable because to be reliable it must be always blowing at the right speed at enough sites to provide the needed power. Wind is much better than solar as far as availability but just like solar you must think of it as an opportunistic source that must be backed by peaking plants.
Actually gas is gas. All gas comes through a pipeline. ARCO and Shell are the same gas. After it leaves the pipeline the different companies add different additives but the gas it's self is the same. Now a rundown station may have more crude in it's tank than a new or well maintained station so that is an issue.
1. Google says it is not true. 2. Adding things like current speed and wheel angle can really help with dead reckoning when GPS is having a problem getting a lock like going through a tunnel. 3. Knowing how much fuel you have left and your current mpg can help it find the cheapest gas along your route.
The idea is that if you get one company other will follow. It can work but frankly manned spaceflight is one of those not for profit endeavors that is best left to the government. Rocket powered ballistic joy rides are just super rollercoaster for the rich.
No you do not get it it. The more weight they more fuel you have to carry which is more weight. To life more weight you must add more thrust which means more engines which means more weight and more fuel. You can not just keep adding more tanks and fuel you must then add more engines because it takes more thrust to lift the fuel and tanks which means you burn more fuel and need more tanks and so and so on. In the end you will have a Saturn V that puts 200Kg in LEO.
"which even the president of Greenpeace has stated is the best option, given our energy needs" No he did not. One of the former founders of Greenpeace said it not the current president of Greenpeace. BTW I support nuclear power but when posting facts one should make sure that they are facts otherwise the entire post becomes suspect.
"Which is more likely, Ockham: the first black Democratic president turns out to be more right-wing than Nixon, or just after the oath of office, he and his family are threatened by the Security-Intelligence empire that has more power than Hoover could have ever fantasized about?"
Simple President Obama found out that was not what he thought it was when he was running. The idea that US security agencies threatened the family of the President of the US is bat crap crazy. Your razor is very dull.
"Honestly, I think you have it backwards. The president and congress do what the NSA tells them. Not in a crazy conspiracy way. Just in the simple, "you don't want to risk an attack on your watch, do you?" sort of way." The NSA and CIA are under the president not congress he can fire the directors without congressional approval. So you are saying that he is breaking the law because he does not want to be blamed for an attack on US soil? Yea that makes things better.
Slashdot Mirror
I do understand and was being a bit tongue in cheek about it.
I assume that VW has a proper development process in place so this code had to.
1. Pass a design review.
2. Pass developer testing.
3. Pass a code review.
4. Pass QA
There is no way that this just got slipped in by a few developers.
Actually it is simple.
1. The majority of the tech press is in SF. The best product on the web or the app store does not always win. It is the one that people know about. You come up with a cool app in Twin Falls, ID and you will be hard pressed get any buzz.
2. A lot of the venture capital people are in SF.
3. If your startup in SF goes belly up you can walk down the street and find a new job.
4. SF, Seattle, and Austin are seen as being cool tech centers.
Frankly it is probably the reason that Slashdot never became huge like Engadget dispite the fact that at one time it was the tech site on web for techies.
I live and work in South Florida. The PC was created in Boca Raton Florida. We used to have a ton of tech companies in South Florida and we have an extremely diverse population but very little in the way of start ups. I think a large part is the lack of colleges with strong tech programs in South Florida. The schools with the best tech programs are FSU, UF, and UCF which are all located central and north Florida.
Florida is still loaded with tech companies like Harris, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and there is a lot of talent, cheap housing, good beaches, clean air, and sunshine but venture capital? Thriving start-up scene?
Nope not at all.
To sell cars in the US VW had to pass the test.
VW passed the test.
I actually wonder if they did break any laws or regulations. They without a doubt broke the spirit of the law but...
The simple truth is that the EPA probably has a regulation stating that the car can not have any special emissions testing modes that cause the care to perform in a way different than if driven under normal circumstances.
It is possible that the engineers did not know the law but simply knew the test.
My guess is the team just does not have time to support Wayland.
No we do not.
We have several regional grids with limited interconnects. That is reason that the North East has twice had power outages but did not take down the entire country.
Simple wind speed is driven by temperature differentials by that time of night the earth, air, and water often are very close to the same temperature so the winds tend to drop.
That is why most balloon launches are done near dawn.
Based on what?
"If your goal is to put something - anything - on the Moon in one piece, as a technology demonstrator, maybe that tradeoff works."
Maybe but I find the idea of electrically powering the turbo pumps of the engine as very questionable vs classic turbo pumps.
I wonder if they are using thermal batteries?
I got a better idea of what a good manager was from reading the book "The Soul of a New Machine".
The problem with good managers is they look like they are doing nothing.
A good manager fixes problems before they happen. You are going to need a logic analyzer next week and it shows up on your desk on Friday of this week.
It is just transparent.
"You can make up for that lack by looking at a weather map and trying to identify a day when there is no wind at all over a region large enough to be covered by a national grid - or pretty close to continental in the case of the USA"
Yeah...
So every site must have enough capacity to power the entire US to make up for the sites that get no wind?
It is also not a case of no wind but of not enough wind and or too much wind. Too much wind the they feather the turbines to keep them from over speeding BTW.
Also you will find very little wind in the US between the hours around 4am pst or 7am est.
No oversimplification of the problem just does not work not to mention that having on giant nation wide grid like you describe would be very complex and hard to eliminate the potential for a total collapse.
Wind is not reliable because to be reliable it must be always blowing at the right speed at enough sites to provide the needed power.
Wind is much better than solar as far as availability but just like solar you must think of it as an opportunistic source that must be backed by peaking plants.
"1. It is a company, so I assume they are lying"
Porsche is owned by the VW group. So you agree that Porsche is lying about Google wanting that data.
Actually gas is gas. All gas comes through a pipeline. ARCO and Shell are the same gas. After it leaves the pipeline the different companies add different additives but the gas it's self is the same.
Now a rundown station may have more crude in it's tank than a new or well maintained station so that is an issue.
1. Google says it is not true.
2. Adding things like current speed and wheel angle can really help with dead reckoning when GPS is having a problem getting a lock like going through a tunnel.
3. Knowing how much fuel you have left and your current mpg can help it find the cheapest gas along your route.
An arm version would be very interesting for sure.
The idea is that if you get one company other will follow. It can work but frankly manned spaceflight is one of those not for profit endeavors that is best left to the government.
Rocket powered ballistic joy rides are just super rollercoaster for the rich.
No you do not get it it.
The more weight they more fuel you have to carry which is more weight. To life more weight you must add more thrust which means more engines which means more weight and more fuel.
You can not just keep adding more tanks and fuel you must then add more engines because it takes more thrust to lift the fuel and tanks which means you burn more fuel and need more tanks and so and so on.
In the end you will have a Saturn V that puts 200Kg in LEO.
The more fuel you burn the more you have to lift the more you have to lift the more you have to burn......
All amazon has to do is add casting to it's amazon video app to allow cromecast to work with their content.
I question the electric turbopumps. In many ways it makes building the rocket much simpler but the performance hit will be brutal.
Get people all upset about asian tv makers so we can go light on VW and save those jobs.
"which even the president of Greenpeace has stated is the best option, given our energy needs"
No he did not.
One of the former founders of Greenpeace said it not the current president of Greenpeace.
BTW I support nuclear power but when posting facts one should make sure that they are facts otherwise the entire post becomes suspect.
"Which is more likely, Ockham: the first black Democratic president turns out to be more right-wing than Nixon, or just after the oath of office, he and his family are threatened by the Security-Intelligence empire that has more power than Hoover could have ever fantasized about?"
Simple President Obama found out that was not what he thought it was when he was running.
The idea that US security agencies threatened the family of the President of the US is bat crap crazy. Your razor is very dull.
"Honestly, I think you have it backwards. The president and congress do what the NSA tells them. Not in a crazy conspiracy way. Just in the simple, "you don't want to risk an attack on your watch, do you?" sort of way."
The NSA and CIA are under the president not congress he can fire the directors without congressional approval.
So you are saying that he is breaking the law because he does not want to be blamed for an attack on US soil? Yea that makes things better.
So President Obama is going to keep doing illegal things because an election is coming... Yeah that is better.
My mind is too limited to enumerate or even comprehend all that will go wrong much less what could go wrong with this?