Then playing game shows isn't for you. On a complete tangent to your (perfectly reasonable) point, it might amuse you to know that I actually DID win a car on a TV game show... (some years ago)
It didn't involve any "Monty Hall" problems though.;-) Just good general knowledge and fast reflexes on the buzzer.
I understand the math. I accept that over multiple trials the probabilities indicate that you are better off switching.
However as a sometime game show contestant I know you have to take into account one fact that is left out of the classical form of this problem.
WHEN YOU ARE ON A GAME SHOW, YOU ONLY GET ONE ATTEMPT!
I did the online game in the latter link. I switched doors.. and ended up with a goat.
Monty Hall said "Thank you for playing...Good Night!" and I left with my prize.
All the probability theory in the world doesn't make me feel better about not winning the car. (Which, of course I had actually correctly selected with my first guess).
The analogy of the "Pick the Ace of Hearts" in the deck of playing cards is a better illustration, but as the number of doors (or cards) gets smaller it becomes a lot less clear cut that you should switch, especially if your iteration set size is 1.
I believe that World War II had a significant effect on the technological advances made between 1928 and 1968. During wartime various governments were able to ramrod through all sorts of stuff under emergency powers. These days... not so much...
As you can tell from my question, I'm no expert on orbital mechanics...
I've always wondered if it was possible to throw a wrench back to Earth from the shuttle/ISS? If you throw it "at the Earth" won't it just keep going until it hits enough atmosphere to slow down and fall the rest of the way? (or burn up if enough air pressure builds up). In the vacuum of space, what stops the wrench from just keeping going towards Earth?
It might take a while, but unless something stops the wrench from moving on its thrown "towards Earth" vector, wouldn't the orbital velocity need to increase to maintain orbit as the altitude decreased? Therefore I thought, eventually, the wrench would drop below the critical altitude for its original velocity and fall towards Earth.
Can some Rocket Scientist give me the good oil on what would really happen?
Most light airplanes still use magnetos. Some (including a fair number of homebuilts) have electronic ignition. I've seen a few "one-of-each" installations in homebuilts. A lot of aircraft engines have two sparkplugs per cylinder. One set gets connected to the electronic system and the other set gets connected to the magneto. The electronic ignition gives your your easy start and better fuel economy. The magneto gives you "limp-home" capability if your electrical system gives up the ghost.
The reliability of modern electronics is such that going fully e-ignition probably wouldn't pose a huge safety risk, but changing any technology in aviation can be a heartbreaking business. "Never be the first to do anything" is a refrain I hear a lot in general aviation circles. (Home builders have a bit more leeway to experiment. The liability issues for commercial manufacturers can be the decider.)
There will be spin-off technologies that can be re-used in non-military products. Look at all the advances in technology that have started from military R&D (Jet Aircraft, Microwave Ovens etc....) They may make the jump to the commercial world at better prices because the military contracts have paid for the development.
This may lead to better hybrids available to the public. Let's see what happens.
A four wheel drive would literally drive right through it without slowing at a guess. That is why the companion legislation to the introduction of these cars will need to tax 4wd/SUV vehicles off the roads. Declare minimum fuel/emission standards and tax the bejeezus out of any vehicle that does not comply. Force people to adopt the new technology through economic blackmail.
You may not like it, but it is coming to a legislature near you, real soon.
Other highlights.
Any vehicle with more than two seats gets taxed with a "mostly unused transport capacity levy" to make up for the time when it travels with a single occupant.
A change in the definition of "truck" so that pick-ups no longer qualify for commercial vehicle tax breaks.
Any vehicle with only two seats and IC engine over a certain capacity/power limit gets hit with an "excessive conspicuous consumption" tax.
I'm pulling all of this out of my ass^H^H^H^H^H^H thin air, but we'll see who is laughing five years from now.
There are stories dating back to World War II when New Zealand aircraft mechanics would trawl the junk piles at American air bases in the Pacific to salvage parts that were judged "unrepairable" by US forces. With a bit of time and effort, the part would be made servicable again and deployed on a NZ aircraft.
I guess with the relative rate of pay and armed forces budgets, it made economic sense for the Kiwi servicemen to spend time repairing, whereas it did not to the Americans.
On the radio this morning someone made a very good point about people in their neighbourhood driving their children the short distance to school for fear of abduction, even though the number of abductions in that area in the last ten years is zero. The lack of abductions just reinforces the parent's behaviour. "See, it is working. By driving our kids 200yards to school we have successfully prevented all abductions."
I live in New Zealand. I have made it a practice to hang elephant scaring devices in my back yard to prevent my family being trampled by runaway pachyderms. My kids are safe and no-one has ever reported seeing an elephant in my neighbourhood. Those elephant scarers I made are really effective....
P.S. Would you like to buy one? Only US$5000. Guaranteed to prevent elephant attacks (Guarantee void in Africa, Asia and within 10 kilometres of any zoo, circus or safari park)
Bizarrely, there was a recent report from South African television saying that the administrators of a large national wildlife park were having to cull elephants because of a large increase in the herd population.
Not only is Colbert funny, but he appears to be prescient....
Actually this is large scale variation on rather an old trick. Pilots training for WWII were given instrument flying training in device called a "Link" trainer. It looked like a mini airplane set up on a gimbal which turned and tilted in response to control inputs. They had a recording device called "the bug" which left an ink trail over a glass plate recording the turns and tracks for later assessment of the flight progress. Pilots would try and spell out rude words using the appropriate manoeuvers to make the bug form letters. I remember reading in a book by James Herriot ("It Shouldn't Happen To a Vet" etc...) about his attempts to spell out a word in a Link trainer. He didn't expressly state which word it was but he did talk about "...making rate 3 turns to form the top of the L's.." which makes me assume the word was "bollocks" (which was a reasonably rude word back in 1940's Britain)
It doesn't matter how strong their password is if they are still giving it to whoever asks for it. I assume that the supposedly popular password choice of fuckyou is a sign that a lot of people being phished actually realised they were being targeted and told the phishers what they thought of them.
Just remember, unless the sexy new design can be stamped out in a factory in taiwan for the same cost as a biege box, it will be consigned to a niche of "interesting" designs and ignored as an oddity. Why do you think off-white is such a popular interior paint colour? Because its cheap and it doesn't clash with any other colour.
There are already cool, sexy pc case designs out there, but the biege box still rules. I suppose that Intel are trying to force this design into being a "success" due to their company-marketing-mass. Good luck. They are doomeed, dooooomed I tell you.
The biege box will just be tinted a shade or two, squished in shape a bit and then touted as a "breakthrough" in PC design. Leave the innovation to niche manufacturers like Apple.
Virus or no, the truth remains that if you eat less than your daily caloric requirement, you will lose weight.
Absolutely correct.
Maybe the individual variation over the Daily Calorific Requirement (DCR) becomes the issue. Perhaps the pathological explanation is more about alteration of the DCR such that the individual is unaware that they are consuming more than they need (until the belt gets tight and the scales seem to develop an "error")
I would never voluntarily buy a car that had those restrictive devices placed on it. If it were made mandatory by government order, I would vote for any political party that promised to remove those restrictions.
I take responsibility for the task of driving, thank you. It's all those other nutcases out there that need to be regulated.(irony intended)
In that one situation (the high way traffic jam), automated driving is probably a viable option. In most other cases CAR = FREEDOM, and forcing automatic operation on people makes CAR = JUST ANOTHER F**KING BOSS TELLING ME WHAT TO DO.
I think western car manufacturers are still unconvinced that sufficient numbers of people would be willing to give up their autonomy while paying extra for the "privilege", so no serious R&D funding will be made available. Any democratic government that mandated the adoption of "autodrive" might find themselves out on their butts at the next election due to "limiting freedoms of the people", so there will be no leadership from government.
Let's face it, if this technology is to be viable, I believe it has to come up through China. They have a large, increasingly upward-mobile poulation, a booming vehicle manufacturing industry, and a central government still able to just "tell people what to do".
I suppose what you could do is develop a special high-speed-and-close-proximity highway system that only permits vehicles equipped with autodrive to enter. That would encourage people to buy autodrive cars if they want to be part of the high-speed traffic stream (carrot instead of stick). The technical challenges of preventing drivers from hacking/switching off the auto-drive to prove that they "can drive as well as any freaking machine" would be enormous. It would also involve massive co-operation between road-builders and car manufacturers to establish standards for the technology.
TV Advertising is invisible to me until they start showing scantily clad attractive young women. Then my otherwise excellent ad-filter goes a bit haywire.
Fixing PCs these days is now the equivalent of mowing lawns when I was a kid. Earning money doing something that the adults didn't want to be bothered with.
So if we went to three-factor authentication (Semen, Urine, Faeces), all you would have to do each morning is rub your underwear on the keyboard to authenticate yourself.
I will never, ever, ever go to an internet cafe again.....
There are certain uses for petroleum that we can't reproduce via other means -- powering our cars and homes isn't one of them.
I agree. I have yet to see a viable technology that will allow us to replicate the current level of service we get from jet airliners for air travel. I think they will be burning kero for a while yet.
While there is always the option of returning to sailing ships (and solar electric powered airships for the optimistic) I think that air travel will be the last mode of transport to give up on petroleum based hydrocarbons.
The current record for number of people killed in a single airline accident is 583 in the collision of two 747s at Tenerife airport in 1977. (You could argue 9/11 killed more people, but they were deliberate acts rather than unintentional accidents)
When the first fully loaded A380-800 crashes it will most likely exceed that number by some distance.
Notice I say *when*, rather than if. The list of major airliner types that have perfect safety records was always very short and (correct me if I'm wrong) with the Concorde crash in Paris has become even shorter (Airbus A340, Boeing 777,... any others?).
It may take twenty years to happen because technology has made airliners very, very safe. However you can't get past the fact that you have a 500 tonne object travelling at 1000 km/h while 8km from the ground. If things go wrong that is one big mother of an impact.
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It didn't involve any "Monty Hall" problems though.
Just good general knowledge and fast reflexes on the buzzer.
I understand the math. I accept that over multiple trials the probabilities indicate that you are better off switching.
However as a sometime game show contestant I know you have to take into account one fact that is left out of the classical form of this problem.
WHEN YOU ARE ON A GAME SHOW, YOU ONLY GET ONE ATTEMPT!
I did the online game in the latter link. I switched doors.. and ended up with a goat.
Monty Hall said "Thank you for playing...Good Night!" and I left with my prize.
All the probability theory in the world doesn't make me feel better about not winning the car. (Which, of course I had actually correctly selected with my first guess).
The analogy of the "Pick the Ace of Hearts" in the deck of playing cards is a better illustration, but as the number of doors (or cards) gets smaller it becomes a lot less clear cut that you should switch, especially if your iteration set size is 1.
In New Zealand we have a few American models available.
Less of the "everyday" sedan types and more of the sporting/muscle models, utility vehicles and SUVs . Dodge Nitro and Jeep Cherokee are in showrooms.
Hummer gets a very small market here. Ford F series "utes" (pickups) can be purchased new.
The Chrysler 300 is on sale here, but I think it has a more of a European ancestry than US despite the name(?)
Some Ford Mustangs and even a few Corvettes.
In short, yes, some countries do import American cars (but all new ones have to be right-hand-drive).
I believe that World War II had a significant effect on the technological advances made between 1928 and 1968. During wartime various governments were able to ramrod through all sorts of stuff under emergency powers. These days... not so much...
Hmmmm... Maybe I'm getting this all skewed, but I'm pretty sure that 1hp roughly equals .75kW
Therefore the Honda Element has a ~125kW engine.
10% of peak power = 12.5kW
12.5/1.188 = ~10.5 minutes of insolation for one minute of driving.
Is that any better? Probably not enough to make it workable.
As you can tell from my question, I'm no expert on orbital mechanics...
I've always wondered if it was possible to throw a wrench back to Earth from the shuttle/ISS? If you throw it "at the Earth" won't it just keep going until it hits enough atmosphere to slow down and fall the rest of the way? (or burn up if enough air pressure builds up). In the vacuum of space, what stops the wrench from just keeping going towards Earth?
It might take a while, but unless something stops the wrench from moving on its thrown "towards Earth" vector, wouldn't the orbital velocity need to increase to maintain orbit as the altitude decreased? Therefore I thought, eventually, the wrench would drop below the critical altitude for its original velocity and fall towards Earth.
Can some Rocket Scientist give me the good oil on what would really happen?
Thanks.
The reliability of modern electronics is such that going fully e-ignition probably wouldn't pose a huge safety risk, but changing any technology in aviation can be a heartbreaking business. "Never be the first to do anything" is a refrain I hear a lot in general aviation circles. (Home builders have a bit more leeway to experiment. The liability issues for commercial manufacturers can be the decider.)
There is another advantage I can see.
There will be spin-off technologies that can be re-used in non-military products. Look at all the advances in technology that have started from military R&D (Jet Aircraft, Microwave Ovens etc....) They may make the jump to the commercial world at better prices because the military contracts have paid for the development.
This may lead to better hybrids available to the public.
Let's see what happens.
Declare minimum fuel/emission standards and tax the bejeezus out of any vehicle that does not comply.
Force people to adopt the new technology through economic blackmail.
You may not like it, but it is coming to a legislature near you, real soon.
Other highlights.
Any vehicle with more than two seats gets taxed with a "mostly unused transport capacity levy" to make up for the time when it travels with a single occupant.
A change in the definition of "truck" so that pick-ups no longer qualify for commercial vehicle tax breaks.
Any vehicle with only two seats and IC engine over a certain capacity/power limit gets hit with an "excessive conspicuous consumption" tax.
I'm pulling all of this out of my ass^H^H^H^H^H^H thin air, but we'll see who is laughing five years from now.
There are stories dating back to World War II when New Zealand aircraft mechanics would trawl the junk piles at American air bases in the Pacific to salvage parts that were judged "unrepairable" by US forces. With a bit of time and effort, the part would be made servicable again and deployed on a NZ aircraft.
I guess with the relative rate of pay and armed forces budgets, it made economic sense for the Kiwi servicemen to spend time repairing, whereas it did not to the Americans.
These guys were the original dumpster divers...
Machine talk machine
No need to know where in world
Bring me lots of porn
I live in New Zealand. I have made it a practice to hang elephant scaring devices in my back yard to prevent my family being trampled by runaway pachyderms. My kids are safe and no-one has ever reported seeing an elephant in my neighbourhood. Those elephant scarers I made are really effective....
P.S. Would you like to buy one? Only US$5000. Guaranteed to prevent elephant attacks (Guarantee void in Africa, Asia and within 10 kilometres of any zoo, circus or safari park)
Bizarrely, there was a recent report from South African television saying that the administrators of a large national wildlife park were having to cull elephants because of a large increase in the herd population.
Not only is Colbert funny, but he appears to be prescient....
Actually this is large scale variation on rather an old trick. Pilots training for WWII were given instrument flying training in device called a "Link" trainer. It looked like a mini airplane set up on a gimbal which turned and tilted in response to control inputs. They had a recording device called "the bug" which left an ink trail over a glass plate recording the turns and tracks for later assessment of the flight progress. Pilots would try and spell out rude words using the appropriate manoeuvers to make the bug form letters. I remember reading in a book by James Herriot ("It Shouldn't Happen To a Vet" etc...) about his attempts to spell out a word in a Link trainer. He didn't expressly state which word it was but he did talk about "...making rate 3 turns to form the top of the L's.." which makes me assume the word was "bollocks" (which was a reasonably rude word back in 1940's Britain)
Skateboarding.
Not only has it stayed popular but has grown into a huge industry and alternative lifestyle choice.
Just remember, unless the sexy new design can be stamped out in a factory in taiwan for the same cost as a biege box, it will be consigned to a niche of "interesting" designs and ignored as an oddity. Why do you think off-white is such a popular interior paint colour? Because its cheap and it doesn't clash with any other colour.
There are already cool, sexy pc case designs out there, but the biege box still rules. I suppose that Intel are trying to force this design into being a "success" due to their company-marketing-mass. Good luck. They are doomeed, dooooomed I tell you.
The biege box will just be tinted a shade or two, squished in shape a bit and then touted as a "breakthrough" in PC design. Leave the innovation to niche manufacturers like Apple.
Virus or no, the truth remains that if you eat less than your daily caloric requirement, you will lose weight.
Absolutely correct.
Maybe the individual variation over the Daily Calorific Requirement (DCR) becomes the issue. Perhaps the pathological explanation is more about alteration of the DCR such that the individual is unaware that they are consuming more than they need (until the belt gets tight and the scales seem to develop an "error")
I would never voluntarily buy a car that had those restrictive devices placed on it. If it were made mandatory by government order, I would vote for any political party that promised to remove those restrictions.
I take responsibility for the task of driving, thank you.
It's all those other nutcases out there that need to be regulated.(irony intended)
In that one situation (the high way traffic jam), automated driving is probably a viable option. In most other cases CAR = FREEDOM, and forcing automatic operation on people makes CAR = JUST ANOTHER F**KING BOSS TELLING ME WHAT TO DO.
I think western car manufacturers are still unconvinced that sufficient numbers of people would be willing to give up their autonomy while paying extra for the "privilege", so no serious R&D funding will be made available. Any democratic government that mandated the adoption of "autodrive" might find themselves out on their butts at the next election due to "limiting freedoms of the people", so there will be no leadership from government.
Let's face it, if this technology is to be viable, I believe it has to come up through China.
They have a large, increasingly upward-mobile poulation, a booming vehicle manufacturing industry, and a central government still able to just "tell people what to do".
I suppose what you could do is develop a special high-speed-and-close-proximity highway system that only permits vehicles equipped with autodrive to enter. That would encourage people to buy autodrive cars if they want to be part of the high-speed traffic stream (carrot instead of stick). The technical challenges of preventing drivers from hacking/switching off the auto-drive to prove that they "can drive as well as any freaking machine" would be enormous. It would also involve massive co-operation between road-builders and car manufacturers to establish standards for the technology.
TV Advertising is invisible to me until they start showing scantily clad attractive young women. Then my otherwise excellent ad-filter goes a bit haywire.
Fixing PCs these days is now the equivalent of mowing lawns when I was a kid. Earning money doing something that the adults didn't want to be bothered with.
So if we went to three-factor authentication (Semen, Urine, Faeces), all you would have to do each morning is rub your underwear on the keyboard to authenticate yourself.
I will never, ever, ever go to an internet cafe again.....
There are certain uses for petroleum that we can't reproduce via other means -- powering our cars and homes isn't one of them.
I agree. I have yet to see a viable technology that will allow us to replicate the current level of service we get from jet airliners for air travel. I think they will be burning kero for a while yet. While there is always the option of returning to sailing ships (and solar electric powered airships for the optimistic) I think that air travel will be the last mode of transport to give up on petroleum based hydrocarbons.
The current record for number of people killed in a single airline accident is 583 in the collision of two 747s at Tenerife airport in 1977.
... any others?).
(You could argue 9/11 killed more people, but they were deliberate acts rather than unintentional accidents)
When the first fully loaded A380-800 crashes it will most likely exceed that number by some distance.
Notice I say *when*, rather than if. The list of major airliner types that have perfect safety records was always very short and (correct me if I'm wrong) with the Concorde crash in Paris has become even shorter (Airbus A340, Boeing 777,
It may take twenty years to happen because technology has made airliners very, very safe. However you can't get past the fact that you have a 500 tonne object travelling at 1000 km/h while 8km from the ground. If things go wrong that is one big mother of an impact.