The world can change pretty quickly, as Pearl Harbour or 9/11 show.
The world DID NOT CHANGE after 9/11 because of 9/11. It changed because of people claiming it changed, and said people "protecting" us from boogeymen. First it was communists- now it is terrorists.
3,000 people died in the WTC attacks; twice as many Americans die from heart attacks in a month, and preventing their deaths doesn't require stripping people's civil liberties.
If that is the same "unified" website I visited 6 months ago- they go through no end of complexity to "hand off" your session to each credit agency; I lost track of how many times my browser was redirected and bounced off various URLs. I wasn't able to retrieve 2 out of the 3 credit reports because I couldn't supply correct login information, but I had cut+paste the username and password into a text document to save them, and pasted them back into the login pages.
The ECU won't allow the engine to start unless the dash is "coded" to it or vise-versa, I forget which. One of the advantages of owning a 16 year old car is that you don't need to worry about this kind of bull:-)
Actually, I should clarify- the system is on a lot of Audis made in the last 5-6+ years; no idea about the VW side, but I assume a similar system is in use, possibly implemented after Audi used it.
From the article, this just sounds like the "customize it" button on Dell's web site, not the PC Club style, "here's your parts, go fo it."
Correct, although this is several degrees simpler than Dell, which lets you configure the most inane aspect of a system. The exact quote:
Wal-Mart currently offers only prepackaged bundles of personal computers and accessories in most of its stores. With the build-your-own-computer counters, shoppers can choose between several different components. Such components include central processing units -- the brain of the computer that powers its basic functions -- as well as monitors, keyboards and mice that customers can combine to create customized packages they can load in a shopping cart and take home right away.
Perhaps the reporter is dumbing things down as they usually do. However, if it really is that simple and we have to worry about "horror stories about attempted computer assembly" from people deciding they want a 2GHZ processor instead of a 2.1GHZ processor or a blue logitech keyboard instead of a Microsoft keyboard...I fear for our future.
It is much easier to find news sources on the Internet that overlook the things you want overlooked. I.e., if you have the opnion that the war in Iraq is going great and there are no problems, you can find a news source that will give you only information that supports that view.
I have never liked this line of reasoning; it simplifies an entire segment of society that people spend their entire lives trying to study/understand. If you are close-minded and believe that one information source is enough, or can't distinguish between news commentary and reporting, nothing will "save" you from being "mislead", including internet news.
You've asserted that the internet makes viewpoint-shopping easier and that the public "shops" for news sources based on viewpoint. It has increased the public's news-gathering ability (or "mobility"), given the public greater access to more potentially diverse viewpoints, and news now transcends local, state, and national borders...and hence all but draconian government controls. I can bring up the BBC's website and see the UK perspective, for example. If I don't want to read what some washington press core reporter says happened at a white house briefing- I can damn well go to the Whitehouse website and download the transcript myself.
The Internet has also given non-populist viewpoints much easier access to the news marketplace; coupled with the ease at which one can compare news sources. Hence the explosion of "web loggers" engaging in news commentary and the increased onus on major media outlets to get their facts straight.
The point is that unless you have the proper equipment to unlock, the car can lock itself to the point where it can not be driven.
And I can implement a system that locks out ssh from any IP address that tries more than 3 wrong passwords. That won't stop someone from exploiting a vulnerability in Apache or PHP, and rooting the box. It also won't stop someone from trying passwords from the console, if I didn't set that up as well...
If you had bothered to read the article- the whole point is that theives are exploiting weaknesses in the systems and doing so successfully. Some early systems were hilariously bad; GM's first attempt involved a resistor at the base of the key, and the ECU would simply check if the resistance was correct.
You remind me of the Iraqi Ambassador, with buildings getting shelled behind him, declaring that the Americans are being repelled and have not entered Baghdad. Cars are being stolen right now, despite all the lockouts and "rules" car manufacturers have imposed.
See, modern cars have variable valve timing, coil-on-plug ignition, and a whole bunch of other stuff that simply will not work without the cooperation of the computer.
Variable Valve timing and coil-on-plug ignition do not make a car harder to steal; you still need fuel and a spark, and if the ECU won't allow the car to start, it won't allow the car to start; a 2007 A6 with direct-injection, Variable Valve Timing, Variable Intake Geometry, Coil-on-Plug ignition, etc is no harder to "force" to start than my '91 Audi with none of the above; both ECUs will simply not allow fuel or spark. Plus all of these components are 'stupid'; they're just valves and whatnot. It is not cost-effective to make each coil-pack module demand authentication from the ECU. The manufacturer's job is to make it difficult to steal a car; the rest is society's job (ie low motivation to steal, public awareness ie people notice someone doing something they shouldn't, and last but not least, government- ie police, courts, jail, legislation.)
Futhermore, dealerships use computerized scan tools to communicate with the various modules in the cars. When the owner uses the wrong key 6 times in a row to try and unlock his shiny new Mercedes- they don't package the car up, slap a UPS label on it, and send it back to Germany...nor do they do that with any of the computer modules like you implied; it honestly sounds like you had no idea what you were talking about and confusing RADIO lockouts (where MANY radios WOULD permanently lock themselves if too many incorrect keycodes were entered, and had to be sent to "repair" centers.) The dealer tech plugs in a computer, possibly calls a hotline and validates himself to get a code based off the vehicle VIN number or a code the ECU spits out, aka challenge/response - and then unlocks the security system. VW uses a particular system that is almost completely emulated by software packages like VAG-COM and ProDiag, and both can be used to re-associate a dashboard and ECU without any dealer involvement.
Anti-theft is about theft deterrent; as we network people say, "you can't stop a big enough hammer." There are now towing/recovery companies using tow-trucks that have crane, reach over the car, the tow truck operator slips arms under each wheel, and then the crane picks the car directly up and plops it on the back of the tow truck. You can do almost the same thing with a regular flatbed tow truck and a set of wheel dollies (designed for moving cars that can't be started, have been crashed, etc.)
The underlying connotation of shinobi (, pronounced nin in Sino-Japanese compounds) is "to do quietly" or "to do so as not to be perceived by others" and--by extension--"to forebear," hence its association with stealth and invisibility.
Huh. So...this guy is basking in the limelight. Wow, really staying true to the values there.
So you really believe that no NSA, no CIA, no DIA, no secret government research at the national labs is better for the country?
I believe that I'm unable as a citizen to decide if such programs are "better for the country", or that my elected representatives are able to on my behalf- if even their existence is a total secret.
The USA spends more on military/defense than almost any other nation in the world, both in total, per capita, and percentage-wise (of total budget.) I believe in some regards we're higher than China, North Korea, etc. I do fully believe that money would be much better spent on infrastructure and social causes.
Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania threatens to cut funding to NSA's spying program if President Bush's administration does not come clean on how it works.
Too bad we can't cut funding for all "black" projects in the Department of Defense while we're at it.
Both Toyota and Honda were and are exquisitely well-aware of accident procedures involving their cars; that's why the high-voltage lines in the Prius are armored International Orange cables isolated from the ground of the chassis, surrounded by identified conduit, and centered under the car floor, where the jaws of life and other EMT tools are least likely to be used. The battery itself is placed in the statistically safest place in the car (just over the rear axle), and protects first responders by an accelerometer-based circuit breaker, a Ground Fault Interrupter, and interlocks. Criminy, what do you want?
The car is very safe, but firefighters and EMTs were asking Toyota and Honda for the information and both companies took a while to get the information back to them. In the vacuum of any information about the cars and any official statements, EMTs and FFs were advised to use extreme caution. First responder procedures were clearly an afterthought- or one Toyota and Honda intentionally tried to avoid for liability reasons (ie they recommend a procedure, a FF uses it and is killed, family sues, blah blah.)
Yes, Aperture has had mixed reviews, but many people already love it and are basing their entire workflows on it. It's not like it's the incapable piece of utter shit Think Secret makes it out to be.
Actually, it is pretty bad.
Like every other "Pro" application, Apple seems to throw the entire Mac UI out the window. All the UI elements get tiny, and start behaving strangely. Dialog boxes you can't escape out of look like Windoids- and in one case, I hit "delete" while a text field wasn't selected in the Windoid, and Aperture trapped the delete in the main window instead, and deleted a photo! What the?
The backup system sucks- you can't archive anything conveniently (you have to export projects by hand, remember where you put them, etc). That flies in the face of how almost every pro photographer works. Aperture instead only allows you to basically rsync the Aperture folder (oops, I mean, Library) to another disk, aka "Vault", and if you delete a "master", on the next sync, it deletes it from the "Vault" as well. There is no way to reconcile specific differences from Vaults; it's an all-or-nothing system to make it as fast+easy to implement as possible.
Aperture can wedge the system so badly during an import that clicking on a menu in the Finder (nothing else open), the system takes 10+ seconds to respond. On a Macbook with 1GB of ram.
You create a project. You have 700 photos. You've already sorted them, or they are different days, etc. Anyway- you want to logically seperate them out and only have ONE master in ONE folder. Nope, sorry, can't do that- masters reside in the Project all together. If you import a folder with 6 subfolders, the main folder is created as a folder, and the subfolders are created as "albums". The wonderful joy with albums is that a "version" can be in multiple albums.
You can't use != in any of the smart folder/album/whatevers. Let's say I want to find all images in my project that I haven't tagged with "adjusted" (more on why this is necessary below); I can't.
Aperture lets you assign plenty of metadata, but can't make smart folders based on steps in a workflow. I import an image, rank it, then adjust it, fix rotation, crop, etc. I want to be able to set up smart folders based on those steps to show me only what is left to do in any particular category. Nope! I have to create custom metadata buttons/tags to do it.
Stack multiple adjustments, and Aperture turns into a total pig loading the photo. Some adjustments are clearly not "accelerated". My personal favorite is the rotate mechanism; it takes a half second to a second to update as you tweak it.
A lot of tools are less than elegant, if not downright annoying. For example, in Capture One, you can draw a line along what should be vertical in the photo, and Capture One rotates the image to make it vertical. Aperture forces you to grab a corner of the photo and rotate the whole thing until it sorta kinda looks like it is right. Stupid.
Aperture is almost completely undocumented on a functional level. Photoshop's manual will tell you what each and every slider does, its implications, and advises on its use. Aperture? "There are tint controls available in the Exposure adjustment." So- why would I want to use that over white balance adjustment tools, or Levels? No idea...
Certain JPEG exports are massively oversharpened (example- "size within 900x600" produces this result.) That said, a full-resoluton export looks pretty gorgeous; I think the RAW converter has improved substantially, though I don't think it is as good as Capture One yet.
That's just a small smatterng of the problems I've found with 1.1...
The iSight video camera was distinctive back when it was introduced for two reasons (versus most other web cams commonly used at that time). First, it connected via FireWire. Second, it came with mounting brackets (included, for free in the iSight box) to attach the camera securely to the top center of Apple's LCD monitors and laptop screens. The result of this second "innovation"? iSight video confernces looked significantly more natural and more natural than web conferences hosted using Logitech and other web cams that (typically) sat to the bottom right or left of the computer monitor (or awkwardly on top) and, hence, gave participants really skewed views of each others' faces.
Number one, iSight cameras aren't even remotely as popular as all the PC USB-based webcams; they're EVERYWHERE, and ISPs for years have been giving them away as freebies. Number two, the iSight wasn't distinctive because of its interface; webcams have been available for years with USB2. I strongly suspect it was firewire because most people NEED their USB ports for keyboards and mice, but don't really use their firewire port except for occasional camcorder use, if at all.
The iSight was distinctive because:
Physical appearance A bit of cheap cast aluminum looked a hell of a lot better than a few cents of plastic.
Autofocus
A relatively large CCD size for lower noise (a larger CCD also makes optics easier/less critical)
built-in microphone specifically designed for the purpose
A somewhat decent lens
Privacy shutter
The mounting devices just make it slightly more convenient to attach the camera, particularly if you had an Apple LCD. It's a problem solved with a little bit of tape, by the way.
Another "by the way"- the iSight cameras in the Macbook and iMac absolutely SUCK. They're basically cellphone cameras; microscopic lens and CCD, no autofocus. No privacy shutter. The picture is very noisy and low resolution, the colors are funky...
Well, by all accounts- much less. Electricity doesn't have the insane levels of taxes gasolene and diesel do (this is the primary reason it costs a fortune to fill up at the pump.) Even home heating oil (which is basically diesel) isn't taxed, and they dye diesel so anyone can inspect what's in the tank (or a piece of clear tubing installed just for this purpose- I kid you not, it's on ever VW TDI) and see if you're using home heating oil and avoiding taxes.
What is this going to do to the power grid which has been known to collapse, famously with the northeast blackout and the rolling blackouts in California?
Rolling blackouts in California were not caused by lack of generation capacity. They were caused by Enron calling up plant operators and saying "Hey. Shut down for maintenance. Find an excuse. Any excuse." Watch "Enron, The Smartest Guys In The Room"...they have tape recordings of the traders calling up grids and plant.
Also, right now, we've got gas shortages throughout the country because the EPA mandates MTBE (a known carcinogen, by the way) be in summer fuel, so all the refineries supposedly have to essentially "re-tool" for summer fuel. They happen to also go down for maintenance in "preparation" for the summer driving "season."
So in short- gasolene isn't without its problems as well.
How about the transmission line waste?
Probably compares to the waste in transporting gasolene or diesel.
What if I let my car sit for a week or two?
Lithium batteries don't self-discharge as badly as other battery technologies (mainly lead acid.)
Aren't these the batteries that tend to explode if you look at them funny?
Sort of. "Normal" lithium ion cells catch fire or explode if overcharged, discharged too quickly, charged too quickly, punctured, and so on. They vary greatly in what their discharge rating is (ie 5C,= 5 x capacity in Amp-Hours). There's a company in Japan that seems to have solved most of these problems with stability; I forget how. There's a Massachusetts startup that designed the packs in one of the tool manufacturer's new lithium ion construction tools; they claim insane recharge rates, and more safety as well (and using more common raw materials.)
As to your other questions, no idea. But I will tell you that for a few years, EMTs and firefighters were pissed as hell that Toyota and Honda didn't have a clue as to accident procedures involving hybrids with high voltage packs...ie what was safe to cut with a buzz-saw or jaws of life (ie roof pillars and such), where the cables were, how the battery pack contactors worked, and so on. For a while, departments had a "don't approach the vehicle if..." policies in place.
Just lovely- there goes any hope of getting Expresscard/54, which actually would have been useful. Right now, pretty much the only thing you can get in the/34 form factor is ESATA. You can also get a couple of cards that duplicate existing Macbook ports (ethernet, firewire, etc.)
Expresscard/34 isn't wide enough for Compactflash. It's not big enough overall for a video adapter (the real reason I think Apple isn't including Expresscard/54).
Both/34 and/54 combined don't have nearly as many cards available for them as there are for PCMCIA and Cardbus.
SGT Coughanour, David A (HHC 1-110th Infantry US Army) speech on NOTACON 3: "Right now I am currently serving in Iraq where I run IT operations for a small chunk of the Sunni triangle. One of the major projects that we have accomplished here is setting up an ISP that supports 350 subscribers.
"Major projects"?
So the general Iraqi population doesn't have security, hospitals, reliable power or water....
...but thanks to the Army, 350 people have internet access?
Since when did journals get turned into stories, much less put on the front page? And isn't this one giant slashvertisement for a service which is indistinguishable from about half a dozen websites that already do much of the same?
I've seen no end of moronic arguments about this stuff. Some of the "better examples":
"It'll hurt the birds". Right. Birds are too stupid to avoid a large group of spinning windmills...
"There will be a lot of diesel fuel stored on the platform, it could spill and be a disaster!" The diesel is for equipment used for maintenance and repair- and isn't all that big compared to an oil tank used in residential setups
"The vibrations will confuse whales!"
"They'll be hideous to look at." Uh, sure- if you sail right up to them. From the beach in most places, you'd barely be able to see them.
"They'll be a navigation hazard." Right, because they won't have giagantic radar signatures for commercial boats with Radar, they won't be marked on charts, they won't have marker lights...
"We don't need them." Funny. Is that why Cape Cod electric rates are astronomical?
I hate this crap. They're terrified of their property values dropping, so they are desperately trying to fight it any way they can, digging up any idea they can come up with for why this is stupid. Wind power works great in a lot of european countries, without any nasty "ecological impacts".
Maybe they'd like a nuclear power plant on Nantucket instead? How about a coal-fired electric plant? Maybe they'd like their electric bill to quadruple to pay for solar panels that won't last more than 15 years?
Massachusetts may be liberal, but it's also money. That goes triple for Cape Cod.
Actually, no. Most of Cape Cod's residents are pretty poor, relatively speaking. Living costs are insane. Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard both have huge problems with drug and alcohol abuse because there's nothing to do on the islands, and life is pretty rough. Outside of the tourist seaason, practically nobody is around.
The Cape isn't dominated by million dollar homes; to a large extent it's "middle class" people who have a small summer place.
These issues are largely being driven (read: funded) by a very small minority that doesn't even live there.
A first reading of the ToS suggests that it is just journal *owners* who are banned from using styles etc to hide the ads from everyone. There's nothing to say that people *reading* the journal can't be running ad-blocking.
Duh. One alienates the "eyeballs"; the other alienates something there is sadly no shortage of- bloggers.
Thank god this wasn't under "your rights online"; honestly, who gives a damn? Next at Eleven, media conglomerate institutes another policy change on its privately owned website...
I'll be interested to see how much the oil companies pay for his patent so they can bury it for the next fifty years.
Or how much the university demands in licensing fees.
Far too much good technology goes unused for years until patents expire because their creators overestimate how much they're worth (or simply get greedy.)
Dolby had it right. He licensed Dolby technology at a price so cheap (a few cents per tape player) that manufacturers were happy to pay it. So- every tape player ended up with Dolby licensed technology, and he made millions.
Also, if you bothered to read the article in my original post, you'd see that we have 50,000 tons of waste right NOW, and Yucca would only have 77,000 tons of capacity. Yucca, IF it opens, will open at the earliest in 2014. It will only process at BEST 3,000 tons of waste a year. The industry currently generates 2,000 tons a year.
That means by 2014, there will be 66,000 tons of waste, and it'd take 66 years for Yucca to catch up- but five years after Yucca was completed, we'd again have more nuclear waste than storage capacity (it would not be full until 2039, by which point, we would have generated another 50,000 tons of waste, assuming we keep the same level of nuclear power, which is unlikely given petroleum will be completely gone in 20-30 years.)
Slashdot Mirror
The world DID NOT CHANGE after 9/11 because of 9/11. It changed because of people claiming it changed, and said people "protecting" us from boogeymen. First it was communists- now it is terrorists.
3,000 people died in the WTC attacks; twice as many Americans die from heart attacks in a month, and preventing their deaths doesn't require stripping people's civil liberties.
If that is the same "unified" website I visited 6 months ago- they go through no end of complexity to "hand off" your session to each credit agency; I lost track of how many times my browser was redirected and bounced off various URLs. I wasn't able to retrieve 2 out of the 3 credit reports because I couldn't supply correct login information, but I had cut+paste the username and password into a text document to save them, and pasted them back into the login pages.
Aren't they glass-encapsulated? The medical community has a pretty good idea what works inside the human body and what doesn't.
I'd be a little more worried about the chip capsule getting broken...probably not very life-threatening, but potentially really painful and expensive.
Take all the colors, mix them together, and you get a wonderful, muddied brown. Who can argue with that?
The parents who find the lumpy, lint-covered brown thing a couple years after its birth :-)
The ECU won't allow the engine to start unless the dash is "coded" to it or vise-versa, I forget which. One of the advantages of owning a 16 year old car is that you don't need to worry about this kind of bull :-)
Actually, I should clarify- the system is on a lot of Audis made in the last 5-6+ years; no idea about the VW side, but I assume a similar system is in use, possibly implemented after Audi used it.
Correct, although this is several degrees simpler than Dell, which lets you configure the most inane aspect of a system. The exact quote:
Wal-Mart currently offers only prepackaged bundles of personal computers and accessories in most of its stores. With the build-your-own-computer counters, shoppers can choose between several different components. Such components include central processing units -- the brain of the computer that powers its basic functions -- as well as monitors, keyboards and mice that customers can combine to create customized packages they can load in a shopping cart and take home right away.
Perhaps the reporter is dumbing things down as they usually do. However, if it really is that simple and we have to worry about "horror stories about attempted computer assembly" from people deciding they want a 2GHZ processor instead of a 2.1GHZ processor or a blue logitech keyboard instead of a Microsoft keyboard...I fear for our future.
I have never liked this line of reasoning; it simplifies an entire segment of society that people spend their entire lives trying to study/understand. If you are close-minded and believe that one information source is enough, or can't distinguish between news commentary and reporting, nothing will "save" you from being "mislead", including internet news.
You've asserted that the internet makes viewpoint-shopping easier and that the public "shops" for news sources based on viewpoint. It has increased the public's news-gathering ability (or "mobility"), given the public greater access to more potentially diverse viewpoints, and news now transcends local, state, and national borders...and hence all but draconian government controls. I can bring up the BBC's website and see the UK perspective, for example. If I don't want to read what some washington press core reporter says happened at a white house briefing- I can damn well go to the Whitehouse website and download the transcript myself.
The Internet has also given non-populist viewpoints much easier access to the news marketplace; coupled with the ease at which one can compare news sources. Hence the explosion of "web loggers" engaging in news commentary and the increased onus on major media outlets to get their facts straight.
And I can implement a system that locks out ssh from any IP address that tries more than 3 wrong passwords. That won't stop someone from exploiting a vulnerability in Apache or PHP, and rooting the box. It also won't stop someone from trying passwords from the console, if I didn't set that up as well...
If you had bothered to read the article- the whole point is that theives are exploiting weaknesses in the systems and doing so successfully. Some early systems were hilariously bad; GM's first attempt involved a resistor at the base of the key, and the ECU would simply check if the resistance was correct.
You remind me of the Iraqi Ambassador, with buildings getting shelled behind him, declaring that the Americans are being repelled and have not entered Baghdad. Cars are being stolen right now, despite all the lockouts and "rules" car manufacturers have imposed.
See, modern cars have variable valve timing, coil-on-plug ignition, and a whole bunch of other stuff that simply will not work without the cooperation of the computer.
Variable Valve timing and coil-on-plug ignition do not make a car harder to steal; you still need fuel and a spark, and if the ECU won't allow the car to start, it won't allow the car to start; a 2007 A6 with direct-injection, Variable Valve Timing, Variable Intake Geometry, Coil-on-Plug ignition, etc is no harder to "force" to start than my '91 Audi with none of the above; both ECUs will simply not allow fuel or spark. Plus all of these components are 'stupid'; they're just valves and whatnot. It is not cost-effective to make each coil-pack module demand authentication from the ECU. The manufacturer's job is to make it difficult to steal a car; the rest is society's job (ie low motivation to steal, public awareness ie people notice someone doing something they shouldn't, and last but not least, government- ie police, courts, jail, legislation.)
Futhermore, dealerships use computerized scan tools to communicate with the various modules in the cars. When the owner uses the wrong key 6 times in a row to try and unlock his shiny new Mercedes- they don't package the car up, slap a UPS label on it, and send it back to Germany...nor do they do that with any of the computer modules like you implied; it honestly sounds like you had no idea what you were talking about and confusing RADIO lockouts (where MANY radios WOULD permanently lock themselves if too many incorrect keycodes were entered, and had to be sent to "repair" centers.) The dealer tech plugs in a computer, possibly calls a hotline and validates himself to get a code based off the vehicle VIN number or a code the ECU spits out, aka challenge/response - and then unlocks the security system. VW uses a particular system that is almost completely emulated by software packages like VAG-COM and ProDiag, and both can be used to re-associate a dashboard and ECU without any dealer involvement.
Anti-theft is about theft deterrent; as we network people say, "you can't stop a big enough hammer." There are now towing/recovery companies using tow-trucks that have crane, reach over the car, the tow truck operator slips arms under each wheel, and then the crane picks the car directly up and plops it on the back of the tow truck. You can do almost the same thing with a regular flatbed tow truck and a set of wheel dollies (designed for moving cars that can't be started, have been crashed, etc.)
The underlying connotation of shinobi (, pronounced nin in Sino-Japanese compounds) is "to do quietly" or "to do so as not to be perceived by others" and--by extension--"to forebear," hence its association with stealth and invisibility.
Huh. So...this guy is basking in the limelight. Wow, really staying true to the values there.
Slow news day? I know I tagged this one "stupid".
I believe that I'm unable as a citizen to decide if such programs are "better for the country", or that my elected representatives are able to on my behalf- if even their existence is a total secret.
The USA spends more on military/defense than almost any other nation in the world, both in total, per capita, and percentage-wise (of total budget.) I believe in some regards we're higher than China, North Korea, etc. I do fully believe that money would be much better spent on infrastructure and social causes.
Too bad we can't cut funding for all "black" projects in the Department of Defense while we're at it.
The car is very safe, but firefighters and EMTs were asking Toyota and Honda for the information and both companies took a while to get the information back to them. In the vacuum of any information about the cars and any official statements, EMTs and FFs were advised to use extreme caution. First responder procedures were clearly an afterthought- or one Toyota and Honda intentionally tried to avoid for liability reasons (ie they recommend a procedure, a FF uses it and is killed, family sues, blah blah.)
Actually, it is pretty bad.
That's just a small smatterng of the problems I've found with 1.1...
Number one, iSight cameras aren't even remotely as popular as all the PC USB-based webcams; they're EVERYWHERE, and ISPs for years have been giving them away as freebies. Number two, the iSight wasn't distinctive because of its interface; webcams have been available for years with USB2. I strongly suspect it was firewire because most people NEED their USB ports for keyboards and mice, but don't really use their firewire port except for occasional camcorder use, if at all.
The iSight was distinctive because:
The mounting devices just make it slightly more convenient to attach the camera, particularly if you had an Apple LCD. It's a problem solved with a little bit of tape, by the way.
Another "by the way"- the iSight cameras in the Macbook and iMac absolutely SUCK. They're basically cellphone cameras; microscopic lens and CCD, no autofocus. No privacy shutter. The picture is very noisy and low resolution, the colors are funky...
Well, by all accounts- much less. Electricity doesn't have the insane levels of taxes gasolene and diesel do (this is the primary reason it costs a fortune to fill up at the pump.) Even home heating oil (which is basically diesel) isn't taxed, and they dye diesel so anyone can inspect what's in the tank (or a piece of clear tubing installed just for this purpose- I kid you not, it's on ever VW TDI) and see if you're using home heating oil and avoiding taxes.
What is this going to do to the power grid which has been known to collapse, famously with the northeast blackout and the rolling blackouts in California?
Rolling blackouts in California were not caused by lack of generation capacity. They were caused by Enron calling up plant operators and saying "Hey. Shut down for maintenance. Find an excuse. Any excuse." Watch "Enron, The Smartest Guys In The Room"...they have tape recordings of the traders calling up grids and plant.
Also, right now, we've got gas shortages throughout the country because the EPA mandates MTBE (a known carcinogen, by the way) be in summer fuel, so all the refineries supposedly have to essentially "re-tool" for summer fuel. They happen to also go down for maintenance in "preparation" for the summer driving "season."
So in short- gasolene isn't without its problems as well.
How about the transmission line waste?
Probably compares to the waste in transporting gasolene or diesel.
What if I let my car sit for a week or two?
Lithium batteries don't self-discharge as badly as other battery technologies (mainly lead acid.)
Aren't these the batteries that tend to explode if you look at them funny?
Sort of. "Normal" lithium ion cells catch fire or explode if overcharged, discharged too quickly, charged too quickly, punctured, and so on. They vary greatly in what their discharge rating is (ie 5C,= 5 x capacity in Amp-Hours). There's a company in Japan that seems to have solved most of these problems with stability; I forget how. There's a Massachusetts startup that designed the packs in one of the tool manufacturer's new lithium ion construction tools; they claim insane recharge rates, and more safety as well (and using more common raw materials.)
As to your other questions, no idea. But I will tell you that for a few years, EMTs and firefighters were pissed as hell that Toyota and Honda didn't have a clue as to accident procedures involving hybrids with high voltage packs...ie what was safe to cut with a buzz-saw or jaws of life (ie roof pillars and such), where the cables were, how the battery pack contactors worked, and so on. For a while, departments had a "don't approach the vehicle if..." policies in place.
No- it's not. There have been products with Expresscard slots for over two years now.
It's a dead duck.
Just lovely- there goes any hope of getting Expresscard/54, which actually would have been useful. Right now, pretty much the only thing you can get in the /34 form factor is ESATA. You can also get a couple of cards that duplicate existing Macbook ports (ethernet, firewire, etc.)
Expresscard/34 isn't wide enough for Compactflash. It's not big enough overall for a video adapter (the real reason I think Apple isn't including Expresscard/54).
Both /34 and /54 combined don't have nearly as many cards available for them as there are for PCMCIA and Cardbus.
"Major projects"?
So the general Iraqi population doesn't have security, hospitals, reliable power or water....
...but thanks to the Army, 350 people have internet access?
Since when did journals get turned into stories, much less put on the front page? And isn't this one giant slashvertisement for a service which is indistinguishable from about half a dozen websites that already do much of the same?
I've seen no end of moronic arguments about this stuff. Some of the "better examples":
I hate this crap. They're terrified of their property values dropping, so they are desperately trying to fight it any way they can, digging up any idea they can come up with for why this is stupid. Wind power works great in a lot of european countries, without any nasty "ecological impacts".
Maybe they'd like a nuclear power plant on Nantucket instead? How about a coal-fired electric plant? Maybe they'd like their electric bill to quadruple to pay for solar panels that won't last more than 15 years?
Actually, no. Most of Cape Cod's residents are pretty poor, relatively speaking. Living costs are insane. Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard both have huge problems with drug and alcohol abuse because there's nothing to do on the islands, and life is pretty rough. Outside of the tourist seaason, practically nobody is around.
The Cape isn't dominated by million dollar homes; to a large extent it's "middle class" people who have a small summer place.
These issues are largely being driven (read: funded) by a very small minority that doesn't even live there.
Duh. One alienates the "eyeballs"; the other alienates something there is sadly no shortage of- bloggers.
Thank god this wasn't under "your rights online"; honestly, who gives a damn? Next at Eleven, media conglomerate institutes another policy change on its privately owned website...
Or how much the university demands in licensing fees.
Far too much good technology goes unused for years until patents expire because their creators overestimate how much they're worth (or simply get greedy.)
Dolby had it right. He licensed Dolby technology at a price so cheap (a few cents per tape player) that manufacturers were happy to pay it. So- every tape player ended up with Dolby licensed technology, and he made millions.
The IRS Hits Symantec with a $1 Billion Tax Bill
Okay, I could understand "Product X costs almost $100" if the price is $90; that'a discrepancy of $10, and you qualified it with "almost".
This, however, is a one hundred million dollar round-up, with no qualifier. It's not even "almost." But "billion" sounds cooler, eh?
Uh, no. Radioactive waste is made of many different isotopes. Some have a half-life of 290 years, and some of it has a half-life of 29,000 years.
Half-life does NOT mean "it's safe after" or "it disappears and is harmless after". It means HALF of it decays into something else.
Please see The Bane of Nuclear Energy
Also, if you bothered to read the article in my original post, you'd see that we have 50,000 tons of waste right NOW, and Yucca would only have 77,000 tons of capacity. Yucca, IF it opens, will open at the earliest in 2014. It will only process at BEST 3,000 tons of waste a year. The industry currently generates 2,000 tons a year.
That means by 2014, there will be 66,000 tons of waste, and it'd take 66 years for Yucca to catch up- but five years after Yucca was completed, we'd again have more nuclear waste than storage capacity (it would not be full until 2039, by which point, we would have generated another 50,000 tons of waste, assuming we keep the same level of nuclear power, which is unlikely given petroleum will be completely gone in 20-30 years.)