"It doesn't make it dangerous, it makes it less safe."
Dangerous (adj) Involving possible risk, loss, or injury.
So increasing the possibility of smashing your 2-ton vehicle (and you and your friends) into someone (or something) at 70 MPH isn't dangerous?
"There are those that are aware of the risks and take steps to minimize the impact."
Please tell the mother of the child you just ran over that you were "aware of the risks"... and decided that texting your friend about tonight's party was worth it. I'm sure that will minimize the impact for both of you.
Fact check. Around 41,000 people lost their lives due to automobile-related accidents last year. FORTY-ONE-THOUSAND. Last YEAR. Car Accidents are the leading cause of death for people between ages 6 and 27. There were over 6 MILLION police-reported crashes. Driving is one of the MOST dangerous things you can do. And anyone who deliberately chooses to increase the risks involved is an idiot. And criminally negligent to boot.
If it were just you I'd say go for it, and let Darwin settle things out. Unfortunately, it's also just as likely to be that aforementioned child, or the mother whose car you just t-boned in the middle of the intersection.
I know, it can't happen to you. Just like I'm pretty sure that 41,000 people thought it couldn't happen to them, either.
If you've seen the event then you may have seen the part where Ives mentioned that the thin aluminum shell in the old MBP is largely cosmetic, with most of the structure and stability coming from an internal frame.
The new MBP, OTOH, gets its strength from an external one-piece "uni-body" frame that's machined from a single slab of aluminum. I suspect that it will take a lot more abuse than its predecessor.
That said, I still prefer the fit and finish of aluminum over most of the plastic crap everyone else makes. You may have put a dent or two in yours, but a friend just had a plastic POS Sony snapped in half when someone leaned against her backpack.
As mentioned above, you're assuming that your power source is hydrocarbon based. Wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro: all can supply the aforementioned 20 units of power needed to make 10 units of PORTABLE power. And in all of those cases the extra power is coming in from from a non-hydrocarbon-based source outside the system.
Essentially the same argument regarding producing and using hydrogen in a vehicle (fuel cell or otherwise). It's easier and faster to pour fuel into a tank (using today's technologies) than spend five hours sitting at a "gas" station recharging a battery.
"As other have mentioned, the laws of physics say you can never get more hydrocarbon fuel out of this process than you put in to run the power plant running the process."
Solar cells and wind farms burn hydrocarbon fuel? I never knew that...
False assumption number 1: Your power plant is hydrocarbon based.
"The dock has been part of the Macintosh OS and user interface since its introduction in 1984."
Uh. No. The 1984 Mac (which I owned and for which I also wrote software) most certainly did NOT have a dock. It had menus and windows and desktop icons... but no dock.
Well, Xerox could not have patented their work as the USPTO didn't begin granting software patents until after the 1981 USSC case of Diamond v. Diehr. But in most cases you don't have to imagine, as many of the things you mentioned (the mouse, mouse cursors, scroll bars, desktop icons, overlaping windows, etc.) HAVE been patented.
Perhaps instead of adjusting the top speed more effort should be spend adjusting the power/performance curves.
In a modern car they're all computer controlled anyway. Increase the 0-60 times, preclude jackrabbit starts, and in general keep the driver from behaving like he's auditioning for The Fast and the Furious 4: Dead Meat Walking.
If it's a real problem, however, I think some of the other solutions like speed/g-force monitoring would tend to be safer. Leave the performance envelope alone, and instead notify parents if the car is frequently undergoing high accelerations, hard braking, sharp turns, and sudden steering corrections (concentrating on talking or texting instead of the road).
Much like there's no single reason we invaded Iraq, the current situation is a "perfect storm" of a variety of contributing factors. Subprime mortages, reduced (or no) loan standards, mortgage and security packaging, deregulation, mega-mergers and acquisitions, NO regulation of derivative and hedge fund trading, massive leveraging by investment banks in securities trading, and on, and on...
Which is also why so many people are pointing fingers at, say, CRAs. No one wants the blame, and so they're busy playing the CYA game and attempting to redirect attention elsewhere.
"The Prius' electric motor is half, not 1/3rd of the power."
A 30 kW (40 hp) electric motor vs. a 111 kW (150 hp) motor? Actually, you're right that my math is off. It's closer to one quarter the horsepower.
"Transmission, drive axle, alternator, radiator, fan, etc. All kinds of things you can completely eliminate, and many more you can vastly downsize, when you aren't directly powering the wheels with a conventional engine."
You can do it that way, but until I can recharge a battery or supercap in under five minutes, hybrids will continue to offer a mix of extended range and flexibility that a pure electric vehicle isn't going to be able to match.
BTW, the Volt also uses a transmission, drive axle, and so on, and isn't "directly powering" the wheels. Partly because it's easier to turn the larger motor into a regenerative system to recharge the battery while braking. Heck, even the Tesla, which IS an all-electric vehicle, is using a semi-conventional drivetrain and not direct drive.
"A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 70% percent of the U.S. light-duty vehicle (LDV) fleet, if they were plug-in hybrid electrics. (Note: an earlier version of this release referenced 84% capacity based on LDV fleet classification that excluded vans)."
Looks like they went and changed one of the numbers on me. Oh well, 70% is still a respectable number.
"For every one of your Caddies, there was about 3-4 of these models making MUCH better milage."
Yeah, and there were probably 100 of those models to every SUZUKI Geo Metro. Talk about cherry picking...
BTW, first you say "from the "80's", then expand it to "80's and 90's" so you can pull in a Metro (1989-1994). But we started this out talking about the size of the engines, didn't we? So....
Escort introduced with a 1.6 L 4C, Accord, 1.6/1.8L I4, Camry, 2.0L, Sunfire 2.2/2.4L I4. And the Taurus (1986), one of your most "popular" cars, was 19-29MPG. Good, for a 2.5 (that's 2.5) liter engine. In your economy car.
Then, of course, there's the 5L engine in the Camero... With that in mind, 1.4L still sounds relatively small in comparison. (grin)
How many emission control systems, catalytic converters, airbags, reinforced side panels, crumple zones, and other additional environmental and safety features were those vehicles carting around?
I might also question your use of the word "many", as I seem to remember "many" Cadilacs, Lincolns, Buicks, Olsmobiles, Mustangs, Cameros, 'Vettes, station wagons and decked-out vans that we lucky to get a third of the mileage of a Prius. If that. Care to go up to fueleconomy.gov and do some research?
Even a 1985 Honda Civic topped out at 38, and that was pretty much best-in-class at the time. (Which was 1.3L, BTW.)
"Plug-in hybrid and full-electric will require some changes in the national electricity grid...."
Fewer than you might think. A recent DOE study indicated that we could swap out 84% of the vehicles currently on the road and replace them with PHEVs using the existing infrastructure.
"Now that some people hafe felt the sting of a battery replacement..."
Ummm.... got facts to back that up? As far as I know they've not had to replace any out-of-warrenty. Nor have I seen any indication that the increased "complexity" has resulted in higher-than-normal repair bills, or a corresponding increase in consumer dissatisfaction.
"The problem with this method is that its carrying TWO BIG ENGINES so more weight means you have to be that much more efficient."
Think you'll not have to prove your point if you write BIG often enough, and CAPITALIZED, no less? Ah, well... Wiki says:
The Prius uses a 1.5 liter 4-cylinder "1NZ-FXE internal combustion engine (ICE) using the more efficient Atkinson cycle instead of the more powerful Otto cycle. Because of the availability of extra power from the electric motors for rapid acceleration the engine is sized SMALLER [all caps just for you] than usual for increased fuel efficiency and lowered emissions with acceptable acceleration."
Now, the Volt does what you propose, and uses the gasoline engine simply to recharge the batteries. As such, it should be much SMALLER. Let's see, it's... oh my, a 1.4 L 4-cylinder engine. Tenth of a liter difference? Doesn't sound that much smaller, now does it?
Huh. Well, also according to your theory the Prius is going to need a huge electric motor in addtion to the gas engine in order to cart around all of that extra weight. So... the Prius has a 30 kW (40 hp) electric motor, while the Volt, a pure series hybrid, has... a 111 kW (150 hp) electric motor.
Double huh.
See, the flaw in your reasoning lies in the fact that it takes X amount of power to propel a 2,000 lb vehicle at Y speed for Z distance. Once the battery gets low, the extra power in a PHEV has to come from somewhere. And it does, in the form of an engine powerful enough to recharge the battery while ALSO providing enough juice to keep things in motion.
Bottom line? A tensy, tiny 2-cycle lawnmower engine isn't going to cut it.
And the Volt needs an electric motor 3X larger because it's the only thing moving the car. The gasoline engine is just so much dead weight in that regard, UNLIKE in a Prius, where the engine can also kick in to help out when needed in a much more symbiotic relationship.
"... only makes the car more complex, harder to service..."
Must be why hybrids like the Prius require less maintainence and Toyota recommends longer periods between checkups than is needed for traditional gasoline-only vehicles.
"Hybrids are pushed onto the consumer..."
Funny, I always thought that the desire for more flexible, extended-range vehicles was driving consumer demand. Though you're entirely correct that a lot more R&D is needed before pure electric-powered automobiles are suitable for the majority of the US market.
Actually, it precipitated it. Allowing banks to get into the investment business meant that they were suddenly a lot more interested in packaging up mortgages into securities for resale to other banks and investment firms. Which became a very profitable portion of their business.
So profitable, in fact, that they continually lowered their standards on loans in order to generate sufficient "inventory" to repackage into securities. At one point in time several banks were not even verifying income, much less checking credit scores.
Add in derivatives and credit swaps and other "can't lose" insurance schemes designed to copper their bets, and the banks couldn't lose... until they did.
The Kindle's 80% gray text on a 20% gray background needs a LOT of light. Hard to read under ANYTHING but optimum conditions. And it's geeky enough to be reading a Kindle on a train or in a restaurant WITHOUT sticking a LED booklight on the stupid thing.
"My eyes would hurt after awhile."
The iPhone has subpixel antialiased text on a high-resolution 163 ppi LED backlit screen. No flicker. No eyestrain. It's actually a joy to read.
1) The batteries last quite a long time (I think one day I read 4-5 hours and still had a half-charge left.)
2) The iPhone/Touch screen may be small, but it's bright, has high-contrast, and subpixel rendered text on its dense high-resolution screen is VERY easy to read. MUCH better than the Kindle's non-backlit low-contrast 80% gray text on a 20% gray screen.
3) I use Stanza in tap-screen-to-turn-page mode, and it's tap-flip, tap-flip in terms of flipping screens/pages. It's fast. Much quicker, in fact, than trying to snag and turn a page in a physical book or paperback.
4) It's easy to read and turn pages one-handed. A plus if you're one of those types who likes to read while eating. And you're not forever trying to keep the book from closing, the pages flat, remembering where you left off, and other nuisances inherent in trying to read a paperback in the same situation.
I read about 1,200 words per minute in "novel" mode, and Stanza on my iPhone keeps up just fine.
I too once read ebooks on a PDA, but stopped a while back when I found that was the ONLY thing I used it for, and got tired of carrying it and a phone, camera, etc.. I now read 'em on my iPhone using Stanza. Battery life is better than that of my HP 5500, beats playing games or watching video, and the phone always goes on the nightstand charger anyway.
I think one rainy day I read maybe 5 hours on and off, and still had a half charge. After all, a book reader isn't very processor intensive.
About half my books, however, come from Audible. I can listen to audiobooks while on the go, working out, or pretty doing anything. Much more flexible.
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"It doesn't make it dangerous, it makes it less safe."
Dangerous (adj) Involving possible risk, loss, or injury.
So increasing the possibility of smashing your 2-ton vehicle (and you and your friends) into someone (or something) at 70 MPH isn't dangerous?
"There are those that are aware of the risks and take steps to minimize the impact."
Please tell the mother of the child you just ran over that you were "aware of the risks"... and decided that texting your friend about tonight's party was worth it. I'm sure that will minimize the impact for both of you.
Fact check. Around 41,000 people lost their lives due to automobile-related accidents last year. FORTY-ONE-THOUSAND. Last YEAR. Car Accidents are the leading cause of death for people between ages 6 and 27. There were over 6 MILLION police-reported crashes. Driving is one of the MOST dangerous things you can do. And anyone who deliberately chooses to increase the risks involved is an idiot. And criminally negligent to boot.
If it were just you I'd say go for it, and let Darwin settle things out. Unfortunately, it's also just as likely to be that aforementioned child, or the mother whose car you just t-boned in the middle of the intersection.
I know, it can't happen to you. Just like I'm pretty sure that 41,000 people thought it couldn't happen to them, either.
Cue Adam Sutler, stage left...
"Some people can actually drive and talk on a phone at the same time...."
And some people (the same set, actually) only think they can.
Or the result of a new manufacturing process that wasn't commercially available or viable when the original was designed.
If you've seen the event then you may have seen the part where Ives mentioned that the thin aluminum shell in the old MBP is largely cosmetic, with most of the structure and stability coming from an internal frame.
The new MBP, OTOH, gets its strength from an external one-piece "uni-body" frame that's machined from a single slab of aluminum. I suspect that it will take a lot more abuse than its predecessor.
That said, I still prefer the fit and finish of aluminum over most of the plastic crap everyone else makes. You may have put a dent or two in yours, but a friend just had a plastic POS Sony snapped in half when someone leaned against her backpack.
If you need the level of quality offered by a Serious LCD monitor, then NO notebook screen is going to match up, glossy, matte, or otherwise.
As mentioned above, you're assuming that your power source is hydrocarbon based. Wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro: all can supply the aforementioned 20 units of power needed to make 10 units of PORTABLE power. And in all of those cases the extra power is coming in from from a non-hydrocarbon-based source outside the system.
Essentially the same argument regarding producing and using hydrogen in a vehicle (fuel cell or otherwise). It's easier and faster to pour fuel into a tank (using today's technologies) than spend five hours sitting at a "gas" station recharging a battery.
"As other have mentioned, the laws of physics say you can never get more hydrocarbon fuel out of this process than you put in to run the power plant running the process."
Solar cells and wind farms burn hydrocarbon fuel? I never knew that...
False assumption number 1: Your power plant is hydrocarbon based.
"The dock has been part of the Macintosh OS and user interface since its introduction in 1984."
Uh. No. The 1984 Mac (which I owned and for which I also wrote software) most certainly did NOT have a dock. It had menus and windows and desktop icons... but no dock.
".... imagine if every generic UI feature..."
Well, Xerox could not have patented their work as the USPTO didn't begin granting software patents until after the 1981 USSC case of Diamond v. Diehr. But in most cases you don't have to imagine, as many of the things you mentioned (the mouse, mouse cursors, scroll bars, desktop icons, overlaping windows, etc.) HAVE been patented.
Perhaps instead of adjusting the top speed more effort should be spend adjusting the power/performance curves.
In a modern car they're all computer controlled anyway. Increase the 0-60 times, preclude jackrabbit starts, and in general keep the driver from behaving like he's auditioning for The Fast and the Furious 4: Dead Meat Walking.
If it's a real problem, however, I think some of the other solutions like speed/g-force monitoring would tend to be safer. Leave the performance envelope alone, and instead notify parents if the car is frequently undergoing high accelerations, hard braking, sharp turns, and sudden steering corrections (concentrating on talking or texting instead of the road).
"At the time of this post, no other vehicle lineup is known to feature Flux Capacitors."
Patent issues?
The cause? No. A precipitating event? Yes.
Much like there's no single reason we invaded Iraq, the current situation is a "perfect storm" of a variety of contributing factors. Subprime mortages, reduced (or no) loan standards, mortgage and security packaging, deregulation, mega-mergers and acquisitions, NO regulation of derivative and hedge fund trading, massive leveraging by investment banks in securities trading, and on, and on...
Which is also why so many people are pointing fingers at, say, CRAs. No one wants the blame, and so they're busy playing the CYA game and attempting to redirect attention elsewhere.
"The Prius' electric motor is half, not 1/3rd of the power."
A 30 kW (40 hp) electric motor vs. a 111 kW (150 hp) motor? Actually, you're right that my math is off. It's closer to one quarter the horsepower.
"Transmission, drive axle, alternator, radiator, fan, etc. All kinds of things you can completely eliminate, and many more you can vastly downsize, when you aren't directly powering the wheels with a conventional engine."
You can do it that way, but until I can recharge a battery or supercap in under five minutes, hybrids will continue to offer a mix of extended range and flexibility that a pure electric vehicle isn't going to be able to match.
BTW, the Volt also uses a transmission, drive axle, and so on, and isn't "directly powering" the wheels. Partly because it's easier to turn the larger motor into a regenerative system to recharge the battery while braking. Heck, even the Tesla, which IS an all-electric vehicle, is using a semi-conventional drivetrain and not direct drive.
"A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 70% percent of the U.S. light-duty vehicle (LDV) fleet, if they were plug-in hybrid electrics. (Note: an earlier version of this release referenced 84% capacity based on LDV fleet classification that excluded vans)."
Looks like they went and changed one of the numbers on me. Oh well, 70% is still a respectable number.
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=204
"For every one of your Caddies, there was about 3-4 of these models making MUCH better milage."
Yeah, and there were probably 100 of those models to every SUZUKI Geo Metro. Talk about cherry picking...
BTW, first you say "from the "80's", then expand it to "80's and 90's" so you can pull in a Metro (1989-1994). But we started this out talking about the size of the engines, didn't we? So....
Escort introduced with a 1.6 L 4C, Accord, 1.6/1.8L I4, Camry, 2.0L, Sunfire 2.2/2.4L I4. And the Taurus (1986), one of your most "popular" cars, was 19-29MPG. Good, for a 2.5 (that's 2.5) liter engine. In your economy car.
Then, of course, there's the 5L engine in the Camero... With that in mind, 1.4L still sounds relatively small in comparison. (grin)
How many emission control systems, catalytic converters, airbags, reinforced side panels, crumple zones, and other additional environmental and safety features were those vehicles carting around?
I might also question your use of the word "many", as I seem to remember "many" Cadilacs, Lincolns, Buicks, Olsmobiles, Mustangs, Cameros, 'Vettes, station wagons and decked-out vans that we lucky to get a third of the mileage of a Prius. If that. Care to go up to fueleconomy.gov and do some research?
Even a 1985 Honda Civic topped out at 38, and that was pretty much best-in-class at the time. (Which was 1.3L, BTW.)
"Plug-in hybrid and full-electric will require some changes in the national electricity grid...."
Fewer than you might think. A recent DOE study indicated that we could swap out 84% of the vehicles currently on the road and replace them with PHEVs using the existing infrastructure.
"Now that some people hafe felt the sting of a battery replacement..."
Ummm.... got facts to back that up? As far as I know they've not had to replace any out-of-warrenty. Nor have I seen any indication that the increased "complexity" has resulted in higher-than-normal repair bills, or a corresponding increase in consumer dissatisfaction.
"The problem with this method is that its carrying TWO BIG ENGINES so more weight means you have to be that much more efficient."
Think you'll not have to prove your point if you write BIG often enough, and CAPITALIZED, no less? Ah, well... Wiki says:
The Prius uses a 1.5 liter 4-cylinder "1NZ-FXE internal combustion engine (ICE) using the more efficient Atkinson cycle instead of the more powerful Otto cycle. Because of the availability of extra power from the electric motors for rapid acceleration the engine is sized SMALLER [all caps just for you] than usual for increased fuel efficiency and lowered emissions with acceptable acceleration."
Now, the Volt does what you propose, and uses the gasoline engine simply to recharge the batteries. As such, it should be much SMALLER. Let's see, it's... oh my, a 1.4 L 4-cylinder engine. Tenth of a liter difference? Doesn't sound that much smaller, now does it?
Huh. Well, also according to your theory the Prius is going to need a huge electric motor in addtion to the gas engine in order to cart around all of that extra weight. So... the Prius has a 30 kW (40 hp) electric motor, while the Volt, a pure series hybrid, has... a 111 kW (150 hp) electric motor.
Double huh.
See, the flaw in your reasoning lies in the fact that it takes X amount of power to propel a 2,000 lb vehicle at Y speed for Z distance. Once the battery gets low, the extra power in a PHEV has to come from somewhere. And it does, in the form of an engine powerful enough to recharge the battery while ALSO providing enough juice to keep things in motion.
Bottom line? A tensy, tiny 2-cycle lawnmower engine isn't going to cut it.
And the Volt needs an electric motor 3X larger because it's the only thing moving the car. The gasoline engine is just so much dead weight in that regard, UNLIKE in a Prius, where the engine can also kick in to help out when needed in a much more symbiotic relationship.
"... only makes the car more complex, harder to service..."
Must be why hybrids like the Prius require less maintainence and Toyota recommends longer periods between checkups than is needed for traditional gasoline-only vehicles.
"Hybrids are pushed onto the consumer..."
Funny, I always thought that the desire for more flexible, extended-range vehicles was driving consumer demand. Though you're entirely correct that a lot more R&D is needed before pure electric-powered automobiles are suitable for the majority of the US market.
Actually, it precipitated it. Allowing banks to get into the investment business meant that they were suddenly a lot more interested in packaging up mortgages into securities for resale to other banks and investment firms. Which became a very profitable portion of their business.
So profitable, in fact, that they continually lowered their standards on loans in order to generate sufficient "inventory" to repackage into securities. At one point in time several banks were not even verifying income, much less checking credit scores.
Add in derivatives and credit swaps and other "can't lose" insurance schemes designed to copper their bets, and the banks couldn't lose... until they did.
"Buy an LED booklight."
The Kindle's 80% gray text on a 20% gray background needs a LOT of light. Hard to read under ANYTHING but optimum conditions. And it's geeky enough to be reading a Kindle on a train or in a restaurant WITHOUT sticking a LED booklight on the stupid thing.
"My eyes would hurt after awhile."
The iPhone has subpixel antialiased text on a high-resolution 163 ppi LED backlit screen. No flicker. No eyestrain. It's actually a joy to read.
You're trying to be funny, but...
1) The batteries last quite a long time (I think one day I read 4-5 hours and still had a half-charge left.)
2) The iPhone/Touch screen may be small, but it's bright, has high-contrast, and subpixel rendered text on its dense high-resolution screen is VERY easy to read. MUCH better than the Kindle's non-backlit low-contrast 80% gray text on a 20% gray screen.
3) I use Stanza in tap-screen-to-turn-page mode, and it's tap-flip, tap-flip in terms of flipping screens/pages. It's fast. Much quicker, in fact, than trying to snag and turn a page in a physical book or paperback.
4) It's easy to read and turn pages one-handed. A plus if you're one of those types who likes to read while eating. And you're not forever trying to keep the book from closing, the pages flat, remembering where you left off, and other nuisances inherent in trying to read a paperback in the same situation.
I read about 1,200 words per minute in "novel" mode, and Stanza on my iPhone keeps up just fine.
I too once read ebooks on a PDA, but stopped a while back when I found that was the ONLY thing I used it for, and got tired of carrying it and a phone, camera, etc.. I now read 'em on my iPhone using Stanza. Battery life is better than that of my HP 5500, beats playing games or watching video, and the phone always goes on the nightstand charger anyway.
I think one rainy day I read maybe 5 hours on and off, and still had a half charge. After all, a book reader isn't very processor intensive.
About half my books, however, come from Audible. I can listen to audiobooks while on the go, working out, or pretty doing anything. Much more flexible.