In the grand scheme of things, who is responsible for passenger safety? Is it the GAO? Is it the FAA? Is it aircraft manufacturers who design inflight entertainment systems? Is it the airlines that purchase said systems?
This is about the FAA and the regulations they enforce when certifying aircraft are safe to fly, not about
Um, no.
As is the case libertarians make, regulations should be a measure of last resort, when corporations have proven to be too incompetent to address a problem themselves, and require the gentle guiding hand of government to urge them to get their shit together.
If anything, regulations set a standard of a bare minimum, which isn't exactly what you want in this age of TSA gropings, omnibus metadata collection, and meddling government at 40,000 feet in the air.
If libertarian arguments are to be believed, the invisible hand of airlines and aircraft manufacturers would have come up with safety measures through competition and allowing armed passengers to shoot anyone they believed to hacking into flight controls, and yet here we have the GAO, perhaps the least partisan government office, urging the FAA to even further meddle in the affairs of business. It's not like the passengers couldn't have sued after they crashed.
I think studies of prison inmates in isolation would probably be useful.
Not really. Solitary confinement is more a study in sensory deprivation. Child molesters are pretty much cut off from most social interaction, lest they get beat to death, but while away their time reading books, doing crafts and like, and most importantly, have a definite release date, so they get by okay with limited social interaction.
A man can endure most anything as long as he knows it will end eventually, and he has something to occupy himself.
And even then, I'm not certain the emphasis on socialness is all that it seems to be. There is a persistent myth that all humans require social interaction, but they never differentiate it from sensory deprivation, so it is hard to say what exactly they are measuring. More than social interaction, people require novelty and new things to occupy their time. Several people are perfectly at ease with never seeing another face for years at a time. What is going to be hard is seeing the same face, especially locked up in a tin can hurtling through space.
Antarctic research stations usually sign on for 6 month stints. Several usually sign on again and again, so it's clear that the right tight-knit group is able to go long periods without much outside interaction. The data is already there. You just have to be smart enough to look for it.
Which, again, is libertarians unable to differentiate between bad regulation and no regulation, and engaging in FUD.
So please, enlighten me: how will Title II regulation lead to DMCA, SOPA, or hate speech codes? If anything, Title II ensures those things won't happen because, get this, the internet is already regulated (now) under some of the loosest standards under law. Any new regulations coming down the pike will affect much much more than the internet, since it will have to cover all of Title II, and will be a bigger fight.
In fact, I'm rather interested in how Title II will affect mass surveillance, as the laws concerning are much more stringent.
As with most anything, it's a question of tradeoffs. As libertarian utopia isn't coming any time soon, it might behoove libertarians to consider which ones they are willing to make, instead of this thinly veiled corporate pandering of a very narrow reading of libertarian philosophy.
This is one of the areas Reason (and quite a few libertarians to boot) have shot themselves in the foot.
They don't cite specific instances of where Title II will bring about the doomsday scenarios they paint, and instead engage in FUD over any regulation (which, contrary to popular claim, libertarians should be for as long as they are sensible and fair and needed).
Instead of railing against the corporate welfare telecos have gotten or that they have gotten immunity for illegal wiretapping, they planted their flag here, which apparently works for this illiterate brand of libertarianism, and have completely omitted the question that brought this about in the first place: customers not receiving their advertized bandwith.
I mean, they open with a quote from Hayek. Except Hayek was also a proponent of basic income and land value taxes.
Imagine Reason discussing that other aspect of libertarian thought.
You could couch the discussion more broadly as influence, as in even privacy wouldn't matter much except for the broad range of powers government has to act upon it. Someone wealthy enough to have servants has a great deal less privacy, but their underlings don't have (mostly) the power to do anything with that knowledge.
In which case the distinction between left and right is less about privacy per se, but sphere of control- the right has areas where they deem government interference/oversight necessary (which requires government intrusion) and so does the left: the teleco amnesty bill was passed when democrats controlled both houses of congress, and was supported by the prominent members of congress (including one Barack Obama) along with overwhelming support from the republican minority.
Republicans especially should know better that these powers get misused, but when the cause is 'Merica , freedom, and fighting terrorist, principle goes out the window (as it does with both parties), and it is a question of expediency.
Problem is, it isn't expedient anymore, and both parties are suffering from memory loss in how they contributed to the problem.
You can talk about open labor markets, but the labor from the US (for example) isn't free to move to India, accept a lower wage and lower cost of living). It is unidirectional, and that too distorts the playing field.
I mean if you want to argue for uniform standards like the EU, where any person is free to settle in a member state, that's different I haven't heard about Europe having a shortage of tech works to a point of having to lobby for special visas, so I have to wonder what makes the US a special case, and especially big corporations that have a worldwide presence and should be able to recruit locally seem to only be having this problem.
It's the same issue with taxes, where the wealthy seem to be champions of tax cuts, but only for them. And then they have the gall to demand schools tailored to their needs, forcing the bill on everyone else. That's not competition, that's corruption, and those chickens too are coming home to roost.
As with much comedy today, it is a sad commentary that comedy is more informed and can better deconstruct the issues. Hell, there was more actual journalism in the comedy bit than has been in most media accounts of Snowden.
That irreverence was the tone is to be expected. It's comedy. But that itself implicates most media as being near worthless when something done for laughs has more weight than the 24/7 news cycle, who have constitutional protections I might add, and whose job it is to cover this in the first place.
The telling bit is you are perfectly at ease with labeling others young earth creationists and viewing them as all zealots, and yet demand nuance for SJWs.
You know, some of us have gone down this road several times, and perhaps unjustly, but when the arguments start trotting out the same tired cliches, you understand that there isn't a dialogue, but talking points. The debate was never shot down. There was never any debate to begin with. You know what it's like having a debate with a young earth creationist about evolution? Not so much different having a debate with a SJW about their pet peeve. And in both cases, you have a zealot that no amount of counter evidence will, maybe not change their mind, but at least cause a degree of doubt. They are True Believers.
And especially when a certain narrative seems to come up again and again, in the least applicable of circumstances, you get a sense that maybe the circumstance isn't the issue, but the narrative. Including creationism in science textbooks isn't so much about uncertainties in science or even the possibility that there is a god, but as a means of injecting religion into discussions to a point where it is impossible to discuss anything but religion. That, my friend, is shutting down the conversation.
I myself deeply appreciate people who have extremely divergent viewpoints to myself when they give me novel ways to think about a subject. That isn't what is happening with the SJW crowd. It is browbeating detractors into submission until they turn away with contempt.
Because I know how to read specifications, and have some idea of what extreme temperatures do to batteries?
From the blog you list-
"The car was very cold and had only 210 miles of range in the battery. We knew the actual range would be much less due to cold weather and starting out with a cold interior and battery. I did not know how much range this would cost, as we have always pre-conditioned the car before leaving. In this case, our first leg of the day to the next supercharger was only 128.6 miles per the navigation system, so I decided to push off with the 210 miles of theoretical range. However, there was a huge hill just before the exit for the next charging stop at Macedonia, Ohio, and our range dropped precipitously despite reducing our speed to half the 70-mph speed limit. We did make it to the charger, but it was our closest range near-miss event of the trip - rated miles showed 0.0, with 2.5 miles left to travel, and we nervously watched the range indicator saying "Charge Now" until pulling into the welcome charging spot. While enroute, I called Tesla customer support and was told that the Tesla servers that handle app-to-car functions were down, and had been inoperable for hours. I blew some steam at the representative and posted a forum topic about Tesla's fail - it is inexcusable for servers to go down at this stage of dual-backup redundant technology in my opinion. In this case, it occurred just when we most needed the app function. In reality the range issue was also my fault - we could have stayed at Maumee for a half hour and topped up and warmed the battery. On the other hand, we had a long upcoming run to the day's destination in Hershey, PA, so needed to get underway."
Maybe people in Norway are less busy, but I really don't have a half hour to spare to warm and top off a battery just because the temperature drops lower than forecasted. Not to mention a near 50% drop in range due to temperature is a bit disconcerting to say the least. It's one thing if I am stranded at the side of the road due to not minding the gas gauge. It's quite another just because a cold snap comes my way.
And while we are on it, to get up to operation in an IC just requires a gas can and a trip. How about for the Tesla?
Although cheaper helps, there are still numerous disadvantages to electrics (range anxiety, ability to recharge cross-country, cold weather conditions, etc.) that aren't up to parity with ICs.
Even if Teslas were $10,000, they'd still be unsuitable for a large portion of drivers. Until infrastructure problems get addressed, or manufacturers get a clue and start incorporating range extenders (I so long for a series hybrid), electrics will be on the fringes of the market.
If I change timing an a vehicle through software or through larger injectors is irrelevant. I'm changing an operating parameter, but since software is more akin to magic to you, it's nothing that should be trusted to mere mortals.
And beyond your doomsday scenarios, even with complete modification being available now, that hasn't transpired; it's possible, and so should be outlawed. Do you work for DHS by chance?
And the ONLY thing that would change is increasing the cost, as again, you were too dense to catch it, complete EMS systems are available now. Complete motor management systems are available now. By your estimation we should have death tolls, and yet nothing.
There are even critical systems running linux now. No explosions that I'm aware of.
What do you have against empirical evidence anyway?
Further, arguing for safety concerns through the auspices DMCA is disingenuous in the extreme. You are arguing for no modifications, which, allow me to laugh even further. Putting in an aftermarket stereo could overload the electrical systems of a car, sending kittens and babies to a fiery death. Oh dear god.
Which definition of equivalent are you unaware of?
The bit that you are too dense to grasp is that all of your fears are happening NOW. Every single car you see on the road has the possibility of some modification to the mechanicals or EMS. I upgraded to larger brakes. The horror!
The main difference is being able look over the entire code so it is obvious that maximum current is linked to regenerative braking or having to kluge together some code and finding out after the accidents start coming in.
And especially here, arguing for security through obscurity is just delicious.
All the more reason to keep something like brakes mechanical. It's not like electronics don't ever fail, and you usually have clear indicators for when something mechanical is on its last legs.
You are stating as such that even homebrewed reprogramming doesn't take a bunch of specialized equipment and knowledge still. It's not like opening a program, moving every value to 11 and closing. Someone who had no clue would be lucky to get the car to start, much less move move than 20 feet.
Nope, what is at issue here is more non-factory authorized tuners and repair shops. Your basic idiot can purchase an engine management system now and go to town, or hold the engine in with chicken wire, so it's not like you have safeguards regardless.
And especially as electric cars come into the fold, being able to modify parameters is the equivalent to putting on a larger exhaust. I'd rather have more options than what the factory allows, especially when the factory is charging twice the garage rate of my local shop.
It's not a question of afford as much as a question of value. I mean I can even see the case made for uber expensive watches, but those will actually stick around for a few lifetimes, and will probably increase in value.
If electric cars were sold with non-replaceable batteries, and had to be junked as the only way to improve performance, people would laugh at the folly. Yet for consumer electronics, we accept this as the norm, and even ritualized the process There is a huge disconnect here.
$300 and $400 dollar items "disposable"? Really? I get anxious when I have to spend more than a few hundred, and expect it to last.
It is easy enough to design something with upgradeability in mind, not to mention having 3 times the processing power or memory really doesn't increase the usability of a phone. You're not doing ray tracing on it.
I'd lean more on planned obsolescence and basic consumerism. I can't see where gadgets have really improved quality of life that much, but it is certainly easier to sell you next year's model with the promise that the incremental increase will change everything.
And if that much money is indeed disposable, it does much to explain wealth disparity.
Pikes Peak has had a long history with aviation testing. Prior to accurate modeling, the only way to know if an engine would work at altitude was to risk failure at 10,000 feet, or drag the engine to the top of a mountain for testing. One of the first roads in the US to go that high was the Pikes Peak Highway, and the race and aviation tests followed soon after. The two go hand in hand. Indeed, there is a monument to Sanford Moss at the summit, as he midwifed turbos into aviation use.
While interesting to see what electric cars will accomplish, it is out of context with the history of the race. Saying altitude should not matter to a car neglects that the same electrics couldn't compete if the race were held in the dead of winter. Or that ALL of them will be towed to the race by IC engines.
One of the good things about Pikes Peak is that they didn't try to even the field with millions of rules, but instead just created new classes to make it more accommodating for everyone. One of the best parts was watching the big rigs scramble up the mountain even if they were only competitive against themselves. Seeing a semi tear up the road at you in a great cloud of dust was awe-inspiring.
As power increases past insane into truly insane, AWD starts to make more sense as the only practical way to get that much power down. It's just that instead of having the AWD tuned to contend with everything from sleet, gravel, tarmac, and controlled drifts, it's another variable in weight/power, which, again, I think misses the whole point of the race.
After the Sierra Club litigated to get the entire course paved, it's no longer the last holdout of Group B racing, and especially an electric misses the point of dealing with the altitude changes. An overall lap record at Nürburgring would be more impressive.
It would be more fitting to do a hard rest of all records from 2011 onward, as the elements that made it truly unique are about gone, and now it is just another technical road course instead of a nightmare of changes packed into 13 miles.
Often the web is used to supplement thing you already know, or perhaps have forgotten a step in the process. Being able to reference how to remove a set of brakes doesn't make you qualified to work in an autoshop, and as anyone who has suffered through a Chilton manual knows, the example given never matches your own circumstance. Ever.
Further, this gets into the philosophical questions about knowledge, and what does Epistemology really mean. Reading a book about WWII isn't the same as storming the beaches of Normandy, so the nature of this knowledge is heavily abstracted. Consider this the answer to the dolts that bleat out "he plural of anecdote is not data". My personal experience means more than your abstraction.
Previously you had science majors complaining about taking humanities courses (and vice versa) since it wasn't necessary to their field, and with the exponential increase in the cost of education, there was some justification that having a broad classical humanities education as a basis for further studies was not cost effective. Welcome to the birth of diploma mills and the loss of normalization that EVERY college graduate should be competent in both science and the humanities.
Further, the standards for education plummeted, and recent graduates are less capable in nearly every measure, and worse, they are too dumb to know what they do not know. This leads to arrogance and an over-inflated sense of worth.
That should give everyone a moment of pause. It's not just STEM, it across the board that capability is falling behind.
And especially as Millennials are the most educated (and most in debit) generation ever, it's clear that education policy is failing, there is bloat across the board in education, and worst of all, kids don't even have recess anymore. That's fucked up.
Focusing on STEM won't decrease the cost of education (where curiously, online courses generally cost more than traditional instruction. Where's the cost savings that technology was suppose to bring?), won't making education more rigorous, nor is it the only area where the US is hurting: the skilled trades are also lacking qualified applicants.
It is damnable that in this Age of the Internet, where information is more available than it has ever been before, people are getting stupider, and education resembles indoctrination more than having the framework to be autodidactic after college.
>Williams FW15C was going to render the skill of the driver almost redundant
Completely disagree, as the same argument has been made about any deviation from the front engine RWD layout in racing would diminish driver skill as a factor. Nope, it just means a different set of skills are also in play, and how well a car corresponds to the driver (as it has always been) is more varied.
Especially with electronic nannies, it may elevate the capabilities of mediocre drivers, but at the extremes, it is difficult to qualify. Are you really going to argue that your average driver with electronic assist is quicker than a racing driver without?
It's just another technological advancement banished from racing for nothing more than "reasons".
All sound and fury, and signifying squat, as the reason ground effects were banned was because Ferrari couldn't figure out how to make them work and lobbied to make it so. Nothing like being completely dominated by less money for "safety concerns" to become a trope.
Not to mention other racing series, like the apparently technologically superior IndyCar, use them without having mass carnage on the tarmac, and in fact requiring flat bottoms like F1 leads crashes that killed a spectator recently at Nürburgring.
Slashdot Mirror
A bit slow on the uptake, ain't 'cha?
In the grand scheme of things, who is responsible for passenger safety? Is it the GAO? Is it the FAA? Is it aircraft manufacturers who design inflight entertainment systems? Is it the airlines that purchase said systems?
Yes.
This is about the FAA and the regulations they enforce when certifying aircraft are safe to fly, not about
Um, no.
As is the case libertarians make, regulations should be a measure of last resort, when corporations have proven to be too incompetent to address a problem themselves, and require the gentle guiding hand of government to urge them to get their shit together.
If anything, regulations set a standard of a bare minimum, which isn't exactly what you want in this age of TSA gropings, omnibus metadata collection, and meddling government at 40,000 feet in the air.
If libertarian arguments are to be believed, the invisible hand of airlines and aircraft manufacturers would have come up with safety measures through competition and allowing armed passengers to shoot anyone they believed to hacking into flight controls, and yet here we have the GAO, perhaps the least partisan government office, urging the FAA to even further meddle in the affairs of business. It's not like the passengers couldn't have sued after they crashed.
I think studies of prison inmates in isolation would probably be useful.
Not really. Solitary confinement is more a study in sensory deprivation. Child molesters are pretty much cut off from most social interaction, lest they get beat to death, but while away their time reading books, doing crafts and like, and most importantly, have a definite release date, so they get by okay with limited social interaction.
A man can endure most anything as long as he knows it will end eventually, and he has something to occupy himself.
And even then, I'm not certain the emphasis on socialness is all that it seems to be. There is a persistent myth that all humans require social interaction, but they never differentiate it from sensory deprivation, so it is hard to say what exactly they are measuring. More than social interaction, people require novelty and new things to occupy their time. Several people are perfectly at ease with never seeing another face for years at a time. What is going to be hard is seeing the same face, especially locked up in a tin can hurtling through space.
Antarctic research stations usually sign on for 6 month stints. Several usually sign on again and again, so it's clear that the right tight-knit group is able to go long periods without much outside interaction. The data is already there. You just have to be smart enough to look for it.
Which, again, is libertarians unable to differentiate between bad regulation and no regulation, and engaging in FUD.
So please, enlighten me: how will Title II regulation lead to DMCA, SOPA, or hate speech codes? If anything, Title II ensures those things won't happen because, get this, the internet is already regulated (now) under some of the loosest standards under law. Any new regulations coming down the pike will affect much much more than the internet, since it will have to cover all of Title II, and will be a bigger fight.
In fact, I'm rather interested in how Title II will affect mass surveillance, as the laws concerning are much more stringent.
As with most anything, it's a question of tradeoffs. As libertarian utopia isn't coming any time soon, it might behoove libertarians to consider which ones they are willing to make, instead of this thinly veiled corporate pandering of a very narrow reading of libertarian philosophy.
This is one of the areas Reason (and quite a few libertarians to boot) have shot themselves in the foot.
They don't cite specific instances of where Title II will bring about the doomsday scenarios they paint, and instead engage in FUD over any regulation (which, contrary to popular claim, libertarians should be for as long as they are sensible and fair and needed).
Instead of railing against the corporate welfare telecos have gotten or that they have gotten immunity for illegal wiretapping, they planted their flag here, which apparently works for this illiterate brand of libertarianism, and have completely omitted the question that brought this about in the first place: customers not receiving their advertized bandwith.
I mean, they open with a quote from Hayek. Except Hayek was also a proponent of basic income and land value taxes.
Imagine Reason discussing that other aspect of libertarian thought.
Not bloody likely.
Ehh...
You could couch the discussion more broadly as influence, as in even privacy wouldn't matter much except for the broad range of powers government has to act upon it. Someone wealthy enough to have servants has a great deal less privacy, but their underlings don't have (mostly) the power to do anything with that knowledge.
In which case the distinction between left and right is less about privacy per se, but sphere of control- the right has areas where they deem government interference/oversight necessary (which requires government intrusion) and so does the left: the teleco amnesty bill was passed when democrats controlled both houses of congress, and was supported by the prominent members of congress (including one Barack Obama) along with overwhelming support from the republican minority.
Republicans especially should know better that these powers get misused, but when the cause is 'Merica , freedom, and fighting terrorist, principle goes out the window (as it does with both parties), and it is a question of expediency.
Problem is, it isn't expedient anymore, and both parties are suffering from memory loss in how they contributed to the problem.
It's give and take.
You can talk about open labor markets, but the labor from the US (for example) isn't free to move to India, accept a lower wage and lower cost of living). It is unidirectional, and that too distorts the playing field.
I mean if you want to argue for uniform standards like the EU, where any person is free to settle in a member state, that's different I haven't heard about Europe having a shortage of tech works to a point of having to lobby for special visas, so I have to wonder what makes the US a special case, and especially big corporations that have a worldwide presence and should be able to recruit locally seem to only be having this problem.
It's the same issue with taxes, where the wealthy seem to be champions of tax cuts, but only for them. And then they have the gall to demand schools tailored to their needs, forcing the bill on everyone else. That's not competition, that's corruption, and those chickens too are coming home to roost.
Adding-
As with much comedy today, it is a sad commentary that comedy is more informed and can better deconstruct the issues. Hell, there was more actual journalism in the comedy bit than has been in most media accounts of Snowden.
That irreverence was the tone is to be expected. It's comedy. But that itself implicates most media as being near worthless when something done for laughs has more weight than the 24/7 news cycle, who have constitutional protections I might add, and whose job it is to cover this in the first place.
The telling bit is you are perfectly at ease with labeling others young earth creationists and viewing them as all zealots, and yet demand nuance for SJWs.
Again, been down this road numerous times.
You know, some of us have gone down this road several times, and perhaps unjustly, but when the arguments start trotting out the same tired cliches, you understand that there isn't a dialogue, but talking points. The debate was never shot down. There was never any debate to begin with. You know what it's like having a debate with a young earth creationist about evolution? Not so much different having a debate with a SJW about their pet peeve. And in both cases, you have a zealot that no amount of counter evidence will, maybe not change their mind, but at least cause a degree of doubt. They are True Believers.
And especially when a certain narrative seems to come up again and again, in the least applicable of circumstances, you get a sense that maybe the circumstance isn't the issue, but the narrative. Including creationism in science textbooks isn't so much about uncertainties in science or even the possibility that there is a god, but as a means of injecting religion into discussions to a point where it is impossible to discuss anything but religion. That, my friend, is shutting down the conversation.
I myself deeply appreciate people who have extremely divergent viewpoints to myself when they give me novel ways to think about a subject. That isn't what is happening with the SJW crowd. It is browbeating detractors into submission until they turn away with contempt.
And some have had just about enough.
Because I know how to read specifications, and have some idea of what extreme temperatures do to batteries?
From the blog you list-
"The car was very cold and had only 210 miles of range in the battery. We knew the actual range would be much less due to cold weather and starting out with a cold interior and battery. I did not know how much range this would cost, as we have always pre-conditioned the car before leaving. In this case, our first leg of the day to the next supercharger was only 128.6 miles per the navigation system, so I decided to push off with the 210 miles of theoretical range. However, there was a huge hill just before the exit for the next charging stop at Macedonia, Ohio, and our range dropped precipitously despite reducing our speed to half the 70-mph speed limit. We did make it to the charger, but it was our closest range near-miss event of the trip - rated miles showed 0.0, with 2.5 miles left to travel, and we nervously watched the range indicator saying "Charge Now" until pulling into the welcome charging spot. While enroute, I called Tesla customer support and was told that the Tesla servers that handle app-to-car functions were down, and had been inoperable for hours. I blew some steam at the representative and posted a forum topic about Tesla's fail - it is inexcusable for servers to go down at this stage of dual-backup redundant technology in my opinion. In this case, it occurred just when we most needed the app function. In reality the range issue was also my fault - we could have stayed at Maumee for a half hour and topped up and warmed the battery. On the other hand, we had a long upcoming run to the day's destination in Hershey, PA, so needed to get underway."
Maybe people in Norway are less busy, but I really don't have a half hour to spare to warm and top off a battery just because the temperature drops lower than forecasted. Not to mention a near 50% drop in range due to temperature is a bit disconcerting to say the least. It's one thing if I am stranded at the side of the road due to not minding the gas gauge. It's quite another just because a cold snap comes my way.
And while we are on it, to get up to operation in an IC just requires a gas can and a trip. How about for the Tesla?
Speaking of deceptive...
Although cheaper helps, there are still numerous disadvantages to electrics (range anxiety, ability to recharge cross-country, cold weather conditions, etc.) that aren't up to parity with ICs.
Even if Teslas were $10,000, they'd still be unsuitable for a large portion of drivers. Until infrastructure problems get addressed, or manufacturers get a clue and start incorporating range extenders (I so long for a series hybrid), electrics will be on the fringes of the market.
Although when these guys:
http://wrightspeed.com/
start to retrofit autos, that could mark the critical mass to finally push electrics mainstream.
Oh for fucks sake...
If I change timing an a vehicle through software or through larger injectors is irrelevant. I'm changing an operating parameter, but since software is more akin to magic to you, it's nothing that should be trusted to mere mortals.
And beyond your doomsday scenarios, even with complete modification being available now, that hasn't transpired; it's possible, and so should be outlawed. Do you work for DHS by chance?
And the ONLY thing that would change is increasing the cost, as again, you were too dense to catch it, complete EMS systems are available now. Complete motor management systems are available now. By your estimation we should have death tolls, and yet nothing.
There are even critical systems running linux now. No explosions that I'm aware of.
What do you have against empirical evidence anyway?
Further, arguing for safety concerns through the auspices DMCA is disingenuous in the extreme. You are arguing for no modifications, which, allow me to laugh even further. Putting in an aftermarket stereo could overload the electrical systems of a car, sending kittens and babies to a fiery death. Oh dear god.
The only thing patently insulting is your idiocy.
Which definition of equivalent are you unaware of?
The bit that you are too dense to grasp is that all of your fears are happening NOW. Every single car you see on the road has the possibility of some modification to the mechanicals or EMS. I upgraded to larger brakes. The horror!
The main difference is being able look over the entire code so it is obvious that maximum current is linked to regenerative braking or having to kluge together some code and finding out after the accidents start coming in.
And especially here, arguing for security through obscurity is just delicious.
All the more reason to keep something like brakes mechanical. It's not like electronics don't ever fail, and you usually have clear indicators for when something mechanical is on its last legs.
You are stating as such that even homebrewed reprogramming doesn't take a bunch of specialized equipment and knowledge still. It's not like opening a program, moving every value to 11 and closing. Someone who had no clue would be lucky to get the car to start, much less move move than 20 feet.
Nope, what is at issue here is more non-factory authorized tuners and repair shops. Your basic idiot can purchase an engine management system now and go to town, or hold the engine in with chicken wire, so it's not like you have safeguards regardless.
And especially as electric cars come into the fold, being able to modify parameters is the equivalent to putting on a larger exhaust. I'd rather have more options than what the factory allows, especially when the factory is charging twice the garage rate of my local shop.
It's not a question of afford as much as a question of value. I mean I can even see the case made for uber expensive watches, but those will actually stick around for a few lifetimes, and will probably increase in value.
If electric cars were sold with non-replaceable batteries, and had to be junked as the only way to improve performance, people would laugh at the folly. Yet for consumer electronics, we accept this as the norm, and even ritualized the process There is a huge disconnect here.
$300 and $400 dollar items "disposable"? Really? I get anxious when I have to spend more than a few hundred, and expect it to last.
It is easy enough to design something with upgradeability in mind, not to mention having 3 times the processing power or memory really doesn't increase the usability of a phone. You're not doing ray tracing on it.
I'd lean more on planned obsolescence and basic consumerism. I can't see where gadgets have really improved quality of life that much, but it is certainly easier to sell you next year's model with the promise that the incremental increase will change everything.
And if that much money is indeed disposable, it does much to explain wealth disparity.
Pikes Peak has had a long history with aviation testing. Prior to accurate modeling, the only way to know if an engine would work at altitude was to risk failure at 10,000 feet, or drag the engine to the top of a mountain for testing. One of the first roads in the US to go that high was the Pikes Peak Highway, and the race and aviation tests followed soon after. The two go hand in hand. Indeed, there is a monument to Sanford Moss at the summit, as he midwifed turbos into aviation use.
While interesting to see what electric cars will accomplish, it is out of context with the history of the race. Saying altitude should not matter to a car neglects that the same electrics couldn't compete if the race were held in the dead of winter. Or that ALL of them will be towed to the race by IC engines.
One of the good things about Pikes Peak is that they didn't try to even the field with millions of rules, but instead just created new classes to make it more accommodating for everyone. One of the best parts was watching the big rigs scramble up the mountain even if they were only competitive against themselves. Seeing a semi tear up the road at you in a great cloud of dust was awe-inspiring.
As power increases past insane into truly insane, AWD starts to make more sense as the only practical way to get that much power down. It's just that instead of having the AWD tuned to contend with everything from sleet, gravel, tarmac, and controlled drifts, it's another variable in weight/power, which, again, I think misses the whole point of the race.
After the Sierra Club litigated to get the entire course paved, it's no longer the last holdout of Group B racing, and especially an electric misses the point of dealing with the altitude changes. An overall lap record at Nürburgring would be more impressive.
It would be more fitting to do a hard rest of all records from 2011 onward, as the elements that made it truly unique are about gone, and now it is just another technical road course instead of a nightmare of changes packed into 13 miles.
Any subsequent victory is just less impressive.
Adding-
Often the web is used to supplement thing you already know, or perhaps have forgotten a step in the process. Being able to reference how to remove a set of brakes doesn't make you qualified to work in an autoshop, and as anyone who has suffered through a Chilton manual knows, the example given never matches your own circumstance. Ever.
Further, this gets into the philosophical questions about knowledge, and what does Epistemology really mean. Reading a book about WWII isn't the same as storming the beaches of Normandy, so the nature of this knowledge is heavily abstracted. Consider this the answer to the dolts that bleat out "he plural of anecdote is not data". My personal experience means more than your abstraction.
It's deeper than that though.
Previously you had science majors complaining about taking humanities courses (and vice versa) since it wasn't necessary to their field, and with the exponential increase in the cost of education, there was some justification that having a broad classical humanities education as a basis for further studies was not cost effective. Welcome to the birth of diploma mills and the loss of normalization that EVERY college graduate should be competent in both science and the humanities.
Further, the standards for education plummeted, and recent graduates are less capable in nearly every measure, and worse, they are too dumb to know what they do not know. This leads to arrogance and an over-inflated sense of worth.
http://fortune.com/2015/03/10/...
That should give everyone a moment of pause. It's not just STEM, it across the board that capability is falling behind.
And especially as Millennials are the most educated (and most in debit) generation ever, it's clear that education policy is failing, there is bloat across the board in education, and worst of all, kids don't even have recess anymore. That's fucked up.
Focusing on STEM won't decrease the cost of education (where curiously, online courses generally cost more than traditional instruction. Where's the cost savings that technology was suppose to bring?), won't making education more rigorous, nor is it the only area where the US is hurting: the skilled trades are also lacking qualified applicants.
It is damnable that in this Age of the Internet, where information is more available than it has ever been before, people are getting stupider, and education resembles indoctrination more than having the framework to be autodidactic after college.
Yup, there has been absolutely no advancement in tires since 1979.
Also- 79 Lotus 480hp
2014 Mercedes 750hp
So yes, a turboed Mercedes with current tires and over 30% more horsepower can run a whole 15 seconds faster than a NA Lotus on bias ply tires.
Any other mysteries of the universe I can illuminate for you?
>Williams FW15C was going to render the skill of the driver almost redundant
Completely disagree, as the same argument has been made about any deviation from the front engine RWD layout in racing would diminish driver skill as a factor. Nope, it just means a different set of skills are also in play, and how well a car corresponds to the driver (as it has always been) is more varied.
Especially with electronic nannies, it may elevate the capabilities of mediocre drivers, but at the extremes, it is difficult to qualify. Are you really going to argue that your average driver with electronic assist is quicker than a racing driver without?
It's just another technological advancement banished from racing for nothing more than "reasons".
All sound and fury, and signifying squat, as the reason ground effects were banned was because Ferrari couldn't figure out how to make them work and lobbied to make it so. Nothing like being completely dominated by less money for "safety concerns" to become a trope.
Not to mention other racing series, like the apparently technologically superior IndyCar, use them without having mass carnage on the tarmac, and in fact requiring flat bottoms like F1 leads crashes that killed a spectator recently at Nürburgring.