Yes, but the problem with efficiency is homogenization - there are no surprises. Instead of being sometimes awful and sometimes legendary, everything is just like it always is.
I know this is an unpopular view here, but I don't have any problem with it, as long as your whearabouts once your vehicle crosses a private property line is inadmissible.
One good test of this is whether the police would have any issue with the public doing the same to them in return - in this case hiding GPS trackers on cop cars to make sure they don't engage in waste/fraud/abuse of public resources by hanging out a little too long at the donut shop, or putting personal miles on squad cars, or speeding when they aren't actually responding to a call.
It looks to me like you could build a 1-piece house with nothing but a fresnel lens good enough to sinter sand. Most of the complexity here is the computerized moving table to enable computer-aided design, and the sun tracker - which are very cool, but limit the size of the item constructed, and require solar cells and a computer. With nothing but the lens, you could still melt yourself a nice crude house, or a basin to hold or collect water, or an adobe oven. In practice I suppose you'd at least want a jig to hold the lens to keep the arms from getting too tired:)
For better or worse, coal won't run out any time soon, in fact we have a huge amount right here in the US. It will be setting a very low, if destructive, baseline for the price of renewable energy sources for a long, long time.
The Prius was a big development effort and risk for Toyota at one time, but it entered the market 14 years ago (1997) and has sold over 2 million copies since. I don't know when their break-even point was, probably nobody outside the respective companies does, but it seems to have been paid off and positioned them well for the future. I only hope Chevy ever reaches that point with the Volt. They about a decade late to the party.
The interesting new thing about the Prius in 2012 is the Plugin model - you can recharge it from the wall (instead of the gas engine) and drive for about 13 miles on battery alone. Since my commute is only 10 miles each way, and since (believe it or not) certain parking spots where I work have electrical outlets, I might be able to go for a very, very long time without buying any gas.
Though as a commuter car, a Leaf might be better, since hauling a gas engine around is a lot of dead weight unless you need it. I really wish the battery-only cars had modular packs so you could take just as much battery as you need - say, 30 miles for me, round-trip, with a generous safety margin.
Where I would really like a more efficient vehicle, though, is to replace the minivan my wife drives around town. Unfortunately I don't see any good options there.
Had it been 30 grand, even though that's well above what I'd have wanted to spend on a car, I'd probably have bought 2 by now.
30 grand is how much it costs to by just the gasoline for a car that goes 150,000 miles at 20 mpg on $4 gas.
I keep seeing this over, and over, and over again - people complain about the purchase price of a hybrid or battery car without making any allowance at all for the reduced operating cost. Now, am I assuming electricity or replacement batteries are free? No. Maybe a battery car doesn't meet your needs, or isn't affordable even after including gas vs battery costs. But don't just look at the purchase price, it's pointless.
It's rumored that Toyota and Honda have been selling their hybrids at a loss, mainly to keep their CAFE average in conformance as they were selling more SUVs
According to the Japanese newspaper Nikkei (via Green Car Congress), each hybrid that Honda and Toyota sell earns the respective company about $3,100 in profit.
In fact Toyota has been meeting this persistent rumor with the same answer - they are turning a profit on the Prius - since 2002.
It seems to me this might eventually be cheaper than a conventional focus, because it doesn't require any moving parts. Obviously it's not cheaper yet, but usually solid state electronics end up being cheaper than complex mechanical assemblies (pop open an old tape walkman sometime and check out the choreography of moving parts as you push "play").
Assuming the microarray isn't part of the lens, you could seemingly reduce the cost and complexity of big telephoto lenses by a lot, which are the most expensive part of any good setup.
My impression was iPhone users are more likely to pay (if only $1 or $2) for apps, whereas android users are less so - is there any truth to that? People making more money developing their apps surely work harder on them.
But let's say your spouse goes to Mexico for business and gets kidnapped. Do you pay? Remember, the kidnappers have to maintain their brand image. i.e. they probably will either kill or return your spouse, your choice. And if you pay, you can stay relatively safe by never crossing the border again.
Clearly it would be better for potential victims as a whole if you don't pay. But clearly it would be better for you to pay.
Breaking news. You are more likely to get sick and die as you get older. More at 11.
And yet, that is precisely the problem that is not fixed with a voluntary insurance system. By the time you're old enough to need health care, you're not productive enough to pay for it any more. Thus the need for an insurance mandate or tax. It really is that simple.
As I stated, "...without any further knowledge..."
Sure, any additional information will restrict the problem and change that probability. If you knew everything, it would be foolish to talk about probabilities at all; either the person dies, or they do not. So technically it is wrong to say, "in this case there's a X% probability he would have lived with a seatbelt" without specifying exactly what previous accidents you consider to be "this case." If you could re-create the *exact* conditions of this crash 100 times (down to the precise physical
condition of the victim, emergency response, etc.), the number of survivors would be either 0 or 100.
According to the CDC, seatbelts reduce the risk of death by about 50%. So, without any further knowledge, I guess there's 50/50 chance the seatbelt would have saved him.
No, mergers also generate efficiencies, and efficiencies are good for everyone.
Surely you mean they can generate efficiencies, under some circumstances? One of the tenets of communism was that the competitive destruction inherent to capitalism would make it inefficient.
Mergers and divestitures explore the continuum of collectivism (one big company) and competition (every individual an independent contractor). Neither of those two extremes has ever worked well.
But there is just as much negativity surrounding government.
My view is that when the economy sucks, there is a lot of blame to go around and people are mad at everything.
(Likewise, when the economy is good, a lot of excess and other problems don't get much scrutiny).
Sheesh, did you write a screed like this about "The Web" in 1994 also? "Listen, people, it's not actually a spider web! It's actually just a simple SGML-based markup language underneath!" Calm down. I've never heard anybody advocate the so-called cloud with that much fervor.
If your children are only visiting you because they're afraid you might be dead, you need better children.
Easy to say. In reality, people often live thousands of miles from their parents, the decline of old age takes decades, and the "kids" are middle-aged and dealing with divorces, troubled teens, illness, unemployment - all the usual junk that derails up the life we envisioned.
Give me alternative energy...Just don't put it where I can see it. I hate these kind of people.
Of course, everybody is jumping immediately to the conclusion they're wrong in this case, and that nobody should ever object to any site for windmills, or else all environmentalists are hypocrites. That's not logical. Being in favor of wind power doesn't mean you have to be in favor of putting them everywhere, there are still better and worse places, and aesthetics are one perfectly valid consideration. Just as opposing drilling in ANWR doesn't mean somebody wants to halt all oil extraction tomorrow, or be a hypocrite. There is nothing wrong with arguing over specific sites so long as we still identify enough places for whatever wind investment capital is available.
Did you know there is a version of the America's Army Game for the XBox? It's no secret. I've heard it criticized as devious, but not ineffective. So, almost anything can be a useful tool in the right application.
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Yes, but the problem with efficiency is homogenization - there are no surprises. Instead of being sometimes awful and sometimes legendary, everything is just like it always is.
One good test of this is whether the police would have any issue with the public doing the same to them in return - in this case hiding GPS trackers on cop cars to make sure they don't engage in waste/fraud/abuse of public resources by hanging out a little too long at the donut shop, or putting personal miles on squad cars, or speeding when they aren't actually responding to a call.
Anybody want to try it?
It looks to me like you could build a 1-piece house with nothing but a fresnel lens good enough to sinter sand. Most of the complexity here is the computerized moving table to enable computer-aided design, and the sun tracker - which are very cool, but limit the size of the item constructed, and require solar cells and a computer. With nothing but the lens, you could still melt yourself a nice crude house, or a basin to hold or collect water, or an adobe oven. In practice I suppose you'd at least want a jig to hold the lens to keep the arms from getting too tired :)
For better or worse, coal won't run out any time soon, in fact we have a huge amount right here in the US. It will be setting a very low, if destructive, baseline for the price of renewable energy sources for a long, long time.
The Prius was a big development effort and risk for Toyota at one time, but it entered the market 14 years ago (1997) and has sold over 2 million copies since. I don't know when their break-even point was, probably nobody outside the respective companies does, but it seems to have been paid off and positioned them well for the future. I only hope Chevy ever reaches that point with the Volt. They about a decade late to the party.
Though as a commuter car, a Leaf might be better, since hauling a gas engine around is a lot of dead weight unless you need it. I really wish the battery-only cars had modular packs so you could take just as much battery as you need - say, 30 miles for me, round-trip, with a generous safety margin.
Where I would really like a more efficient vehicle, though, is to replace the minivan my wife drives around town. Unfortunately I don't see any good options there.
Even if true, conspicuous conservation is still a lot better than conspicuous consumption.
30 grand is how much it costs to by just the gasoline for a car that goes 150,000 miles at 20 mpg on $4 gas.
I keep seeing this over, and over, and over again - people complain about the purchase price of a hybrid or battery car without making any allowance at all for the reduced operating cost. Now, am I assuming electricity or replacement batteries are free? No. Maybe a battery car doesn't meet your needs, or isn't affordable even after including gas vs battery costs. But don't just look at the purchase price, it's pointless.
I will see your a rumor and raise you a cite:
In fact Toyota has been meeting this persistent rumor with the same answer - they are turning a profit on the Prius - since 2002.
Latency may not matter much, since UAV-on-UAV combat will be handled at long ranges, by smaller single-use UAVs called missiles :)
Assuming the microarray isn't part of the lens, you could seemingly reduce the cost and complexity of big telephoto lenses by a lot, which are the most expensive part of any good setup.
My impression was iPhone users are more likely to pay (if only $1 or $2) for apps, whereas android users are less so - is there any truth to that? People making more money developing their apps surely work harder on them.
Clearly it would be better for potential victims as a whole if you don't pay. But clearly it would be better for you to pay.
And yet, that is precisely the problem that is not fixed with a voluntary insurance system. By the time you're old enough to need health care, you're not productive enough to pay for it any more. Thus the need for an insurance mandate or tax. It really is that simple.
Sure, any additional information will restrict the problem and change that probability. If you knew everything, it would be foolish to talk about probabilities at all; either the person dies, or they do not. So technically it is wrong to say, "in this case there's a X% probability he would have lived with a seatbelt" without specifying exactly what previous accidents you consider to be "this case." If you could re-create the *exact* conditions of this crash 100 times (down to the precise physical condition of the victim, emergency response, etc.), the number of survivors would be either 0 or 100.
The heaping myriad of security tools and controls is already beyond what anybody can properly utilize, by a huge margin.
According to the CDC, seatbelts reduce the risk of death by about 50%. So, without any further knowledge, I guess there's 50/50 chance the seatbelt would have saved him.
Fair enough, but I bit this marine wasn't storming a beach when the enemy hit him in Afghanistan. It's land-locked.
Surely you mean they can generate efficiencies, under some circumstances? One of the tenets of communism was that the competitive destruction inherent to capitalism would make it inefficient.
Mergers and divestitures explore the continuum of collectivism (one big company) and competition (every individual an independent contractor). Neither of those two extremes has ever worked well.
My view is that when the economy sucks, there is a lot of blame to go around and people are mad at everything. (Likewise, when the economy is good, a lot of excess and other problems don't get much scrutiny).
Sheesh, did you write a screed like this about "The Web" in 1994 also? "Listen, people, it's not actually a spider web! It's actually just a simple SGML-based markup language underneath!" Calm down. I've never heard anybody advocate the so-called cloud with that much fervor.
Easy to say. In reality, people often live thousands of miles from their parents, the decline of old age takes decades, and the "kids" are middle-aged and dealing with divorces, troubled teens, illness, unemployment - all the usual junk that derails up the life we envisioned.
I guess that would be Facebook. Seniors have special physical needs, but I don't think their social needs are much different than anybody else.
Of course, everybody is jumping immediately to the conclusion they're wrong in this case, and that nobody should ever object to any site for windmills, or else all environmentalists are hypocrites. That's not logical. Being in favor of wind power doesn't mean you have to be in favor of putting them everywhere, there are still better and worse places, and aesthetics are one perfectly valid consideration. Just as opposing drilling in ANWR doesn't mean somebody wants to halt all oil extraction tomorrow, or be a hypocrite. There is nothing wrong with arguing over specific sites so long as we still identify enough places for whatever wind investment capital is available.
Did you know there is a version of the America's Army Game for the XBox? It's no secret. I've heard it criticized as devious, but not ineffective. So, almost anything can be a useful tool in the right application.