One of the things the judge mentioned in the ruling is that this complaint appeared to be unique. In other words, nobody else bothered to complain about the same issue.
That should speak volumes about people who try to stand up for principles, as usually if there is a complaint like this there are hundreds of others who have experienced a similar problem. If it had been a recurring problem with Verizon, the judge stated that the penalty would have been much higher.
That is something which I would like to encourage others to do, to simply let folks know when you are being wronged. Sometimes it is futile and falls on deaf ears, but not always. Had somebody, anybody else bothered to lodge a similar kind of complaint it could have been millions of dollars or at least a couple thousand. But nobody bothered, so the judge had to apply the principles of the law in this particular situation.
All this said, if somebody else complains about this same issue, the judge might not be so "nice" the next time. The fine could have been up to $4000 and stayed within the scope of potential penalties under the discretion of this judge. Multiply that by a couple hundred or a thousand complaints like this one, and it certainly could have been a million dollars. Verizon also knows that any future complaints could use this ruling as precedence too, so there is a huge incentive on the part of this company to clean up its act to avoid such a huge penalty in the future.
The sad part was the ruling by the judge that the $40 "setup fee" for the itemized billing was reasonable. The citizens of PA should try to push to get that tariff rule revoked, but that takes somebody who is paying attention to the games happening with regulated utility commissions.
The good old USA is one of those jurisdictions where enforcement later is much harder than sooner. You have a clock of just a few years to enforce copyright before the content essentially goes into the public domain. I happen to know of a couple of people who have deliberately hosted copyrighted material on their websites essentially waiting for somebody to assert a DMCA notice (which they gladly comply with, even if done informally without a lawyer), but then the content which has passed the sunset requirements they use freely and openly.
That still doesn't give anybody else the "right" to copy those items and use them freely, but it does provide a "safe harbor" to keep somebody from going after you years later if you thought the issue was put to rest a long time ago.
It is not a commonly talked about issue, and because it happens on the order of years instead of months the time needed to enforce copyright is usually longer than most web pages are usually up on the internet anyway. Still, it is important to assert and enforce copyright violations if you see one, and it is up to the copyright owner to seek that enforcement. Some countries (including America) also have attribution requirements, so it may still be illegal for you to claim somebody else's work as your own, but there is a limit to how long somebody can wait to enforce copyright. If you somehow are aware of the copyright infringement and still do nothing to enforce it, that makes the situation even worse from a legal perspective.
I'm guessing that the technical reason was that they couldn't find an IT guy who had half a clue to know about the "robots.txt" file and how to configure it. That wouldn't be the first time.
There is nothing stopping you from creating a search engine of your own and implementing policies which would be more to your liking. I've had webpage crawling assignments as a undergraduate CS assignment. It isn't all that complicated.
The trick is to get something which can handle the billions of hits per day like Google and to be able to set up the logic so you don't have people gaming whatever system you are doing. They've built a better mousetrap and lots of people are using it. I used many other web search portals before Google, and for me they aren't anything all that special. Google just does what it is that they do better, and the search results are more relevant.
If you want to patronize another search engine, use Lycos instead, or perhaps something else. If you live somewhere other than America, you might want to consider creating a community-based project (open source is something I'd recommend) that is based in your own country, thus giving you that "domestic, public, fully accountable organization" you are hoping for. Let me know when you get that search engine going!
And yes I'm being serious. This is the internet and there is no single solution for anything. You aren't even required to use TCP for sending data if you don't care to.
Sadly, arguing with an AC is the ultimate in futility, but I'll keep trying as you obviously are reading my posts!
Get an education and find out what the freaking thing actually is, like go to the website and read up on the motor. You claimed it was just like the motors in most modern consumer appliances. I'm claiming it isn't. I do admit that I'm being overly simplistic in my explanation here as I'm trying to give a short, pithy reply. I am claiming, however, that there is much more to this motor.
That is, of course, why I'm bothering to reply, as it sort of is "clarifying" what I intended to say. You've done wonders to bring this up to anybody who has been able to get to this point to bother reading up on it. A much better description for the technically inclined can look at the basics here:
It also goes into how the Tesla motors are different from other EV manufactuers. I don't know if this information is still accurate as the article is from a couple of years ago, but the information is still relevant in terms of the Roadster.
The chassis was not designed by Lotus nor was it "based upon" the Elise. It merely used the same manufacturing facility and many of the tools used in the production of the Elise. The design of the chassis was completely Tesla's.
There was a double whammy of the DOT pulling the production certificate of the Roadster because of some issues with the air bags, which were the same airbags that the Elise was using (and Lotus had similar problems with the DOT on that same issue). On top of that Lotus was completely retooling that factory to a new product line, which would require some significant engineering effort to adapt the Roadster chassis design into the new tooling layout for that new production model.
Still, your general assessment is correct that Tesla didn't want to spend more engineering resources on an existing product line. Moreover, Elon Musk is a much bigger fan of vertically integrated manufacturing than Martin Eberhard, and I am pretty sure Tesla wanted to get out of the contract with Lotus. Having the switch-over made it real convenient to get out of the production contract, and it gave Lotus a whole lot more freedom in terms of trying to start up their new production line as well.
I certainly don't think Tesla is out of the high-price sports car market, but if they are going to need to put engineering effort into essentially a whole new product, why not do it right for a "Roadster 3.0"? They will likely put the production into the NUMMI plant after the Model S gets going or even have a dual-tool production facility like Lotus was using to make the chassis for the Roadster.
Sadly, you are wrong. It is a variable speed AC induction motor that changes the cycle frequency and does some really interesting things that is well beyond the more ordinary electric motors like you would find in a drill or washing machine. It isn't just an ordinary golf cart motor that is super-charged and in fact is one of the reasons why the Roadster is able to get the performance characteristics that it can do.
I think I know who the clueless one is here. At least study up on the device a bit with some understanding of the technology before you look even more like a fool.
Yeah, of course it "has a transmission". My question is what they've done to let it last for more than a couple thousand miles?
I realize that the single gear-set transmission (aka "single speed") is what was put in there too. What I didn't hear was what happened after that, and if they might still be having problems even with this version or what else may have been happening along that line.
There were many reasons why Tesla stopped making the Roadster, most important among them is that they were forced by the U.S. Department of Transportation to essentially redesign the whole car from scratch due to some current passenger safety requirements and issues the DOT had with the airbags supplied by Lotus for the Roadster. That Lotus also was going through a change-over with their Elise model and revamping the factory where the Roadsters chassis were built at was the icing on the cake. It gave a good excuse for Tesla to gracefully and amicably break the contract with Lotus as essentially it was Lotus who broke the contract with Tesla.
I have no doubt that Tesla will get back into the high-end sports car business with perhaps a new "Roadster II" model, but they are going to be much more vertically integrated with the production when that happens, much like SpaceX already is doing with the Falcon rockets. It is much easier to control costs when you own the whole supply chain, and Tesla will soon have the money to be able to afford such capital outlays. At the moment, they are just concentrated on the Model S.
This is a rather bold charge. I would refute more of the "charges" here except I think an anonymous troll isn't worth the effort other than to say that nearly everything in this post is 100% wrong. I guess he got the name "Elon Musk" correct and that Mr. Musk is somehow tied to automotive manufacturing.
P.S. look at what actual degrees the guy has, then tell me that it is meaningless. Being admitted to a doctoral program at Stanford in Physics is being a clown that doesn't know anything about science or engineering? Besides, he knows a thing or two about the internet.
I'd love to see how Tesla finally was able to fix the transmission problems in the Roadster. Electric motors are a bitch for transmissions as the torque as well as the RPM levels are far beyond what you would ever find in an internal combustion engine. Yes, the Roadster has a transmission, which is one of the things that held up the production of the Roadster and nearly caused the company to go into bankruptcy.
If the Tesla drive train includes their custom transmission used in production Roadsters, the RAV4 will certainly be sprouting some very bleeding edge technology here. Interestingly, the actual motor being used by Tesla Motors was invented by none other than Nikola Tesla himself. The patent has certainly expired decades ago (in terms of Nikola's actual design), but Tesla Motors has put another one of the mad Serbian's inventions to practical use. It is just sad that it took nearly a century for the idea to actually be implemented.
The Falcon 9 is hardly "60 year-old technology". Interestingly, SpaceX is one of the first companies who is using Ethernet and packet switches for internal communications within the spacecraft, as there is a high-speed data bus running the full length of the rocket. Most other previous rockets usually used something like RS-232 or RS-422 and even analog control lines for internal sensors. It also saves a huge amount of weight for that "improvement" alone as it is a simple fiber optic line instead of a fat bundle of copper wire such as exists with even the current Delta IV and Atlas V. Or are you trying to tell me that high speed fiber communications technology is 60 years old too? I think it is also safe to presume that guidance computers have come a long way in 60 years as well.
There have been other advances in metallurgy as well as refinements in the propulsion technology, and perhaps the most innovative thing that SpaceX is doing is to use modern manufacturing techniques for the construction of its vehicles. Most rockets (like the Space Shuttle) are essentially hand-crafted vehicles which have more in common with the Rolls Royce automobiles. A modern assembly line using robotics and a steady production line can improve the quality several times as well as substantially reduce cost. SpaceX plans on building at least one Merlin engine per week, sometimes as many as two or three. Repeating and refining your skills as you make things can have a huge benefit as opposed to only building one or two a year.
That is just scratching the surface as there are many other "improvements" which have happened to this vehicle and I'm really not all that familiar with the "guts" of that rocket. While the superficial design is roughly the same as a V-2 rocket, there is a whole lot more going on where it certainly isn't the same technology.
What about Armadillo Aerospace and Blue Origin? I think they are going to drop the costs of spaceflight yet another order of magnitude in terms of going into space. I could give you so others, but on the whole I'd agree those are some interesting companies.
BTW, the most "out there" concept of a company that is at least on par with SpaceX is Bigelow Aerospace. Robert Bigelow certainly knows his stuff and is working on the details of what to do once you get back up into space and want to actually go somewhere else. I've applied for work at his company, but he is being particularly picky on who he is hiring right now. When the time is right, however, his company is going to be larger than the two companies you mentioned combined and could earn him or his heirs a trillion dollars by the time all is said and done.
Obviously not all of that money is going to be coming from the U.S. government.
It took decades for the telephone companies to switch to PSTN in the first place. Remember before that network was put into place, they used full-time operators that made each telephone connection by hand with a manual telephone switch board. If I'm not mistaken, the last of those exchanges to get connected to PSTN with a direct-dial capability happened in the mid to late 1980's, at least in America.
Why it should take any less time to perform the switch-over this time around?
How long ago did the last manual switchboard operator finally get retired from the phone network? I'm talking the equipment which has the physical wires that are used for connecting telephone customers to each other and to the larger long-distance network and required an "operator" to be working to make every connection.
This happened relatively recently (I think the last one was finally phased out in the 1980s) and took place over the course of decades to completely phase out. As has been said here in terms of complaints about alternative systems to PSTN, it was the rural areas that took the longest to make the switch to even get onto the PSTN in the first place.
I also don't see the pressing need to make the whole switch-over to the new network types all at once. It can happen one system at a time as more profitable ways of getting things to happen can occur.
The magic word here is bandwidth. If you have lots of bandwidth, you can have high quality of service. It also depends largely on the quality of the network connections out to the location you are at.
PSTN and POTS are well established networks which have that quality established. Perhaps once these networks are discontinued you might get your local communications company to put the investment into higher quality protocols and connections through other means like fiber. That takes time and money, something that I don't think will really happen very well, particularly for more rural/suburban areas. If you live in an outlying area, you have usually just the choice of one provider, two if you are very lucky.
There have been times when I've been to major events that I can't even get a connection to the network at all. I'm not talking just being able to place a call but to even get my cell phone to be recognized at all as being on the network. How is it possible to place even an emergency phone call when that happens?
There may be a ranking system for emergency calls, but it isn't foolproof and can be a bit of a bind when the cell is overloaded with too many customers. At least with POTS you knew which phones would actually work, even if you had to wait in line in order to get access to them.
America is the name of the country, and the continent. I would have thought that somebody from Australia would have understood that concept.
I sort of hate how some bigotry gets into the languages south of the border, Spanish and Portuguese in particular where in Portuguese those who live in the USA are called "North Americans" (Norte Americanos).... a term I usually fought against on a semi-polite fashion when I lived in Brazil. The term is not accurate at all and neither is "estadounidense". The proper term in Spanish (and Portuguese) would be "Americanos", in reference to the name of the country, America.
That there might be other countries on that continent, perhaps, but that is the name of my country. If it were a communist country, it would be "The People's Republic of America" or the "American Soviet Socialist Republic".
That it might reflect a sort of "manifest destiny" on the part of those who started the country, perhaps, but that is the name of my country. Those who use the term "USian" simply don't have a clue about the language they are using (English) or what this country's name actually is.
Yeah, I knew I was stirring up a fight by mentioning that, but it still ticks me off every time I see somebody using that term. Then again, the use of the term "USian" also shows the bigotry and hatred of my country that the writer has, and thus an automatic contempt already towards anything I might add to the conversation. I suppose it is a good marker for who is a troll, and sometimes I like to slay trolls for fun.
I think this is a valid point. Quite often the PSTN is the one utility that I can count on functioning even when other utilities (particularly the electrical grid) is shut down. This isn't to say that the telephone network has no interruptions, but the "uptime" is usually of such quality that it sets the standard in my opinion for what ought to be expected from utilities in general. Even cable television service has more outages. That isn't accidental too.
Then again, I still have a landline which I still use on a fairly regular basis. My family also helped to install that network, at least in America, where both my father and by grandfather were former employees of the old Bell System companies. I'm having a hard time imaging what life would be like without it.
First of all, we are AMERICANS over here, but that aside...
We are also talking an infrastructure that had at one point a 99% penetration into the homes in America for a population that is about 15x the size of the country your are talking about too. Some of this infrastructure goes back to before World War I and is still in use. The sheer magnitude of what you are suggesting here is akin to rebuilding the entire interstate highway system.
Yeah, a concentrated and coordinated rebuilding effort could happen, but the price of copper on the world market alone would substantially suffer from such an overhaul of the communications system.
The proof that NASA has been unable to really get its act together, that R&D efforts are essentially futile except for the "pure research" aspects, is that program after program keep getting started and have been cancelled over the years, starting with the "Big G" Gemini II program to the Constellation program, and a whole bunch of other train wrecks in between. Some like the "Big G" program was more of an insurance policy in case stuff didn't work out with Apollo, but there certainly have been some very promising programs where I might argue that political considerations alone were the reasons why they were cancelled, not technical issues. Others like Constellation simply were doomed from the beginning to be a colossal failure.
Good examples of a program that really was promising but then was dumped include the "Trans-Hab" module that has been refined by Robert Bigelow. The DC-X project has been picked up by Jeff Bezos (yes, that Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com). That such projects have been picked up by private individuals is only more of a testament of the string of failures NASA has had to endure and the insane amount of wealth squandered for what were mainly political considerations. Those considerations were usually to grease some congressman to re-election so he could say "look at all of the pretty NASA projects in my district.". Bringing the bacon home is no excuse for the paltry results that have come from such actions. Billions are being squandered right now on the SLS program, and there isn't really a geo-political benefit that is going to come from that program in particular.
If anything, the Chinese are still scratching their head trying to figure out how some rich dude in California was able to pull off beating them by an order of magnitude in terms of production costs for building launchers to orbit, in spite of the labor costs of southern California. That company is doing more to impact the geo-political balance of power than anything NASA is currently doing.
In all seriousness, do you really believe that mankind should never even try to reach out and attempt to go into space at all, or are you merely against spending your hard-earned tax dollars towards that goal?
I can understand an objection to having me force you at gunpoint to support my dreams for such nonsense if you don't like the idea, but I do have problems with people who are telling me that I can't dream and stretch my imagination to attempt such an endeavor on my own dime. I do think that mankind can and should get at least off of this planet to expand our horizons.
As far as the habitability of places off of the Earth, I can think of some rather inhospitable places where in the past entire cities died out to the last person due to being ill prepared to cope with the environment at that location. Surprisingly, cities like Los Angeles have millions of people now living in such a place that earlier generations couldn't make support even a village of just a couple hundred people.
In terms of planetary-scale disasters, about the worst is a massive meteor impact. We know such events happened in the past and that mass extinctions took place as a result of those events. Super volcanoes like having Yellowstone erupt certainly can cause planetary-scale disasters too that can certainly cause millions or even billions of people to die and make life very miserable for any survivor. Having the Sun go supernova is not the only significant disaster to worry about. If you are worried about the supernova thing, I'd be more worried about a start like Sirius going hypernova (a much more realistic event) or even Betelgeuse going super nova. If Sirius went hypernova, life in the solar system and even anything near most nearby stars would simply cease to exist so even interstellar spaceflight might not be sufficient to cope with the consequence. If a cluster of stars the size of Sirius fell into the galactic black hole, it could be a galactic event that would kill you no matter where you went at least within the Milky Way. For the paranoid, there is far worse that could happen that you couldn't really outrun, but then again we can conjecture that such events are quite rare as we still exist.
As for FTL travel, the one physical science theory that might permit such travel is the Alcubierre drive that at least offers the potential for such a spacecraft. There are some hard limits to its use and causality may still be an issue to cope with along with other problems that result from such a device. Still, it at least offers a glimmer of hope that perhaps something could be devised to get past the luminal speed limit.
One thing that was painfully obvious when NASA started to look at alternative architectures to the capsule on an ICBM was that spaceflight simply had to get cheaper. The Apollo program was bleeding America dry and was really not sustainable in terms of cheaply and efficiently sending people to space. The Space Shuttle was sold to Congress and to the American people as something which would eventually bring the price of spaceflight down to the level that ordinary people might be able to go into space. That is one of the reasons for the "Teacher in Space" program, where NASA also wanted to send up poets, songwriters, and even managed to send a couple of senators into space on junkets.
Sadly, if that ever really could have been said was a design goal for the Shuttle program, it failed miserably on that point. The technology to be able to get into space for far less cost has been available for some time. It should be noted that the cost of the catering services to the press corps alone for this upcoming Shuttle launch is going to be more than the price of the fuel needed to send the Space Shuttle into orbit. It isn't the issue of fuel efficiency, but of simply throwing away most of the spacecraft each time it flies and the huge standing army that is needed to keep it going for just another flight.
In this sense I strongly disagree with your notion that the problem was strictly getting beyond LEO, but rather that nobody can afford to "get up there" in the first place. Once in LEO, you are literally half-way to the rest of the solar system (to paraphrase Robert Heinlein). The trick is to get up there with a spacecraft that has enough fuel and that the spacecraft can be built & refueled cheap enough so that you can afford a trip to Mars, Jupiter, or wherever else you care to go.
Once people get into space in significant numbers (even if just in LEO), I assert that it will take deliberate action on the part of the world's governments to keep humanity from spreading out and even engaging in permanent settlements throughout the solar system and beyond. By deliberate action, I'm talking governments using weapons and killing people in space if they stray from the "authorized" routes. There certainly will be a role for government employees to be leading major voyages of exploration, but the real key is to make it cheap and reliable in terms of getting into space in any form at all. Once that happens, the rest will happen on its own.
Sadly, making spaceflight affordable is not a current goal for NASA, where the next generation of spacecraft are going to be even more expensive than the Shuttle program, as awful as that has been in terms of cutting costs.
If governments were small, localized, and you were free to trade one government for another, I might buy your argument.
Oh wait, there is this crazy idea of "federalism" where that is exactly what was supposed to happen. Where a "federation" of "states" would allow citizens of one state to freely move to another "state", but still enjoy the rights of citizenship among all of the members of that federation. That experiment was called the "United States of America".
Sadly, when the United States stopped being a union of states and instead because a country with highly centralized planning and a single oppressive government, it no longer became possible to simply leave a place with high taxes (California) or a government-run health care system (Massachusetts) in exchange for a place that allows you substantial freedom with firearms (Texas).
You can choose between big box retailers like K-Mart or Wal-Mart, or perhaps even be able to choose between different soft drink brands or other kinds of choices. If the government gets into the business, you have one choice or you must exchange your whole lifestyle, language, culture, and often even religion if you want to have another way of doing things.... assuming that the government will even let you leave without a bullet going through your skull. That is also assuming too that the country you want to leave to will even accept you.
THAT is the problem with government solutions, as once a government monopoly has been established you have no option or choice other than to live with the government solution or die. That governments are also by definition not really required to accept competition, there is also no incentive to improve efficiencies either, but that is more of a side effect than the real problem.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the things the judge mentioned in the ruling is that this complaint appeared to be unique. In other words, nobody else bothered to complain about the same issue.
That should speak volumes about people who try to stand up for principles, as usually if there is a complaint like this there are hundreds of others who have experienced a similar problem. If it had been a recurring problem with Verizon, the judge stated that the penalty would have been much higher.
That is something which I would like to encourage others to do, to simply let folks know when you are being wronged. Sometimes it is futile and falls on deaf ears, but not always. Had somebody, anybody else bothered to lodge a similar kind of complaint it could have been millions of dollars or at least a couple thousand. But nobody bothered, so the judge had to apply the principles of the law in this particular situation.
All this said, if somebody else complains about this same issue, the judge might not be so "nice" the next time. The fine could have been up to $4000 and stayed within the scope of potential penalties under the discretion of this judge. Multiply that by a couple hundred or a thousand complaints like this one, and it certainly could have been a million dollars. Verizon also knows that any future complaints could use this ruling as precedence too, so there is a huge incentive on the part of this company to clean up its act to avoid such a huge penalty in the future.
The sad part was the ruling by the judge that the $40 "setup fee" for the itemized billing was reasonable. The citizens of PA should try to push to get that tariff rule revoked, but that takes somebody who is paying attention to the games happening with regulated utility commissions.
The good old USA is one of those jurisdictions where enforcement later is much harder than sooner. You have a clock of just a few years to enforce copyright before the content essentially goes into the public domain. I happen to know of a couple of people who have deliberately hosted copyrighted material on their websites essentially waiting for somebody to assert a DMCA notice (which they gladly comply with, even if done informally without a lawyer), but then the content which has passed the sunset requirements they use freely and openly.
That still doesn't give anybody else the "right" to copy those items and use them freely, but it does provide a "safe harbor" to keep somebody from going after you years later if you thought the issue was put to rest a long time ago.
It is not a commonly talked about issue, and because it happens on the order of years instead of months the time needed to enforce copyright is usually longer than most web pages are usually up on the internet anyway. Still, it is important to assert and enforce copyright violations if you see one, and it is up to the copyright owner to seek that enforcement. Some countries (including America) also have attribution requirements, so it may still be illegal for you to claim somebody else's work as your own, but there is a limit to how long somebody can wait to enforce copyright. If you somehow are aware of the copyright infringement and still do nothing to enforce it, that makes the situation even worse from a legal perspective.
I'm guessing that the technical reason was that they couldn't find an IT guy who had half a clue to know about the "robots.txt" file and how to configure it. That wouldn't be the first time.
There is nothing stopping you from creating a search engine of your own and implementing policies which would be more to your liking. I've had webpage crawling assignments as a undergraduate CS assignment. It isn't all that complicated.
The trick is to get something which can handle the billions of hits per day like Google and to be able to set up the logic so you don't have people gaming whatever system you are doing. They've built a better mousetrap and lots of people are using it. I used many other web search portals before Google, and for me they aren't anything all that special. Google just does what it is that they do better, and the search results are more relevant.
If you want to patronize another search engine, use Lycos instead, or perhaps something else. If you live somewhere other than America, you might want to consider creating a community-based project (open source is something I'd recommend) that is based in your own country, thus giving you that "domestic, public, fully accountable organization" you are hoping for. Let me know when you get that search engine going!
And yes I'm being serious. This is the internet and there is no single solution for anything. You aren't even required to use TCP for sending data if you don't care to.
Sadly, arguing with an AC is the ultimate in futility, but I'll keep trying as you obviously are reading my posts!
Get an education and find out what the freaking thing actually is, like go to the website and read up on the motor. You claimed it was just like the motors in most modern consumer appliances. I'm claiming it isn't. I do admit that I'm being overly simplistic in my explanation here as I'm trying to give a short, pithy reply. I am claiming, however, that there is much more to this motor.
That is, of course, why I'm bothering to reply, as it sort of is "clarifying" what I intended to say. You've done wonders to bring this up to anybody who has been able to get to this point to bother reading up on it. A much better description for the technically inclined can look at the basics here:
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless-motors
It also goes into how the Tesla motors are different from other EV manufactuers. I don't know if this information is still accurate as the article is from a couple of years ago, but the information is still relevant in terms of the Roadster.
The chassis was not designed by Lotus nor was it "based upon" the Elise. It merely used the same manufacturing facility and many of the tools used in the production of the Elise. The design of the chassis was completely Tesla's.
There was a double whammy of the DOT pulling the production certificate of the Roadster because of some issues with the air bags, which were the same airbags that the Elise was using (and Lotus had similar problems with the DOT on that same issue). On top of that Lotus was completely retooling that factory to a new product line, which would require some significant engineering effort to adapt the Roadster chassis design into the new tooling layout for that new production model.
Still, your general assessment is correct that Tesla didn't want to spend more engineering resources on an existing product line. Moreover, Elon Musk is a much bigger fan of vertically integrated manufacturing than Martin Eberhard, and I am pretty sure Tesla wanted to get out of the contract with Lotus. Having the switch-over made it real convenient to get out of the production contract, and it gave Lotus a whole lot more freedom in terms of trying to start up their new production line as well.
I certainly don't think Tesla is out of the high-price sports car market, but if they are going to need to put engineering effort into essentially a whole new product, why not do it right for a "Roadster 3.0"? They will likely put the production into the NUMMI plant after the Model S gets going or even have a dual-tool production facility like Lotus was using to make the chassis for the Roadster.
Sadly, you are wrong. It is a variable speed AC induction motor that changes the cycle frequency and does some really interesting things that is well beyond the more ordinary electric motors like you would find in a drill or washing machine. It isn't just an ordinary golf cart motor that is super-charged and in fact is one of the reasons why the Roadster is able to get the performance characteristics that it can do.
I think I know who the clueless one is here. At least study up on the device a bit with some understanding of the technology before you look even more like a fool.
Yeah, of course it "has a transmission". My question is what they've done to let it last for more than a couple thousand miles?
I realize that the single gear-set transmission (aka "single speed") is what was put in there too. What I didn't hear was what happened after that, and if they might still be having problems even with this version or what else may have been happening along that line.
There were many reasons why Tesla stopped making the Roadster, most important among them is that they were forced by the U.S. Department of Transportation to essentially redesign the whole car from scratch due to some current passenger safety requirements and issues the DOT had with the airbags supplied by Lotus for the Roadster. That Lotus also was going through a change-over with their Elise model and revamping the factory where the Roadsters chassis were built at was the icing on the cake. It gave a good excuse for Tesla to gracefully and amicably break the contract with Lotus as essentially it was Lotus who broke the contract with Tesla.
I have no doubt that Tesla will get back into the high-end sports car business with perhaps a new "Roadster II" model, but they are going to be much more vertically integrated with the production when that happens, much like SpaceX already is doing with the Falcon rockets. It is much easier to control costs when you own the whole supply chain, and Tesla will soon have the money to be able to afford such capital outlays. At the moment, they are just concentrated on the Model S.
This is a rather bold charge. I would refute more of the "charges" here except I think an anonymous troll isn't worth the effort other than to say that nearly everything in this post is 100% wrong. I guess he got the name "Elon Musk" correct and that Mr. Musk is somehow tied to automotive manufacturing.
P.S. look at what actual degrees the guy has, then tell me that it is meaningless. Being admitted to a doctoral program at Stanford in Physics is being a clown that doesn't know anything about science or engineering? Besides, he knows a thing or two about the internet.
I'd love to see how Tesla finally was able to fix the transmission problems in the Roadster. Electric motors are a bitch for transmissions as the torque as well as the RPM levels are far beyond what you would ever find in an internal combustion engine. Yes, the Roadster has a transmission, which is one of the things that held up the production of the Roadster and nearly caused the company to go into bankruptcy.
If the Tesla drive train includes their custom transmission used in production Roadsters, the RAV4 will certainly be sprouting some very bleeding edge technology here. Interestingly, the actual motor being used by Tesla Motors was invented by none other than Nikola Tesla himself. The patent has certainly expired decades ago (in terms of Nikola's actual design), but Tesla Motors has put another one of the mad Serbian's inventions to practical use. It is just sad that it took nearly a century for the idea to actually be implemented.
The Falcon 9 is hardly "60 year-old technology". Interestingly, SpaceX is one of the first companies who is using Ethernet and packet switches for internal communications within the spacecraft, as there is a high-speed data bus running the full length of the rocket. Most other previous rockets usually used something like RS-232 or RS-422 and even analog control lines for internal sensors. It also saves a huge amount of weight for that "improvement" alone as it is a simple fiber optic line instead of a fat bundle of copper wire such as exists with even the current Delta IV and Atlas V. Or are you trying to tell me that high speed fiber communications technology is 60 years old too? I think it is also safe to presume that guidance computers have come a long way in 60 years as well.
There have been other advances in metallurgy as well as refinements in the propulsion technology, and perhaps the most innovative thing that SpaceX is doing is to use modern manufacturing techniques for the construction of its vehicles. Most rockets (like the Space Shuttle) are essentially hand-crafted vehicles which have more in common with the Rolls Royce automobiles. A modern assembly line using robotics and a steady production line can improve the quality several times as well as substantially reduce cost. SpaceX plans on building at least one Merlin engine per week, sometimes as many as two or three. Repeating and refining your skills as you make things can have a huge benefit as opposed to only building one or two a year.
That is just scratching the surface as there are many other "improvements" which have happened to this vehicle and I'm really not all that familiar with the "guts" of that rocket. While the superficial design is roughly the same as a V-2 rocket, there is a whole lot more going on where it certainly isn't the same technology.
What about Armadillo Aerospace and Blue Origin? I think they are going to drop the costs of spaceflight yet another order of magnitude in terms of going into space. I could give you so others, but on the whole I'd agree those are some interesting companies.
BTW, the most "out there" concept of a company that is at least on par with SpaceX is Bigelow Aerospace. Robert Bigelow certainly knows his stuff and is working on the details of what to do once you get back up into space and want to actually go somewhere else. I've applied for work at his company, but he is being particularly picky on who he is hiring right now. When the time is right, however, his company is going to be larger than the two companies you mentioned combined and could earn him or his heirs a trillion dollars by the time all is said and done.
Obviously not all of that money is going to be coming from the U.S. government.
And the folks who call us that are "spics" or "wetbacks". What is your point?
It took decades for the telephone companies to switch to PSTN in the first place. Remember before that network was put into place, they used full-time operators that made each telephone connection by hand with a manual telephone switch board. If I'm not mistaken, the last of those exchanges to get connected to PSTN with a direct-dial capability happened in the mid to late 1980's, at least in America.
Why it should take any less time to perform the switch-over this time around?
How long ago did the last manual switchboard operator finally get retired from the phone network? I'm talking the equipment which has the physical wires that are used for connecting telephone customers to each other and to the larger long-distance network and required an "operator" to be working to make every connection.
This happened relatively recently (I think the last one was finally phased out in the 1980s) and took place over the course of decades to completely phase out. As has been said here in terms of complaints about alternative systems to PSTN, it was the rural areas that took the longest to make the switch to even get onto the PSTN in the first place.
I also don't see the pressing need to make the whole switch-over to the new network types all at once. It can happen one system at a time as more profitable ways of getting things to happen can occur.
The magic word here is bandwidth. If you have lots of bandwidth, you can have high quality of service. It also depends largely on the quality of the network connections out to the location you are at.
PSTN and POTS are well established networks which have that quality established. Perhaps once these networks are discontinued you might get your local communications company to put the investment into higher quality protocols and connections through other means like fiber. That takes time and money, something that I don't think will really happen very well, particularly for more rural/suburban areas. If you live in an outlying area, you have usually just the choice of one provider, two if you are very lucky.
There have been times when I've been to major events that I can't even get a connection to the network at all. I'm not talking just being able to place a call but to even get my cell phone to be recognized at all as being on the network. How is it possible to place even an emergency phone call when that happens?
There may be a ranking system for emergency calls, but it isn't foolproof and can be a bit of a bind when the cell is overloaded with too many customers. At least with POTS you knew which phones would actually work, even if you had to wait in line in order to get access to them.
America is the name of the country, and the continent. I would have thought that somebody from Australia would have understood that concept.
I sort of hate how some bigotry gets into the languages south of the border, Spanish and Portuguese in particular where in Portuguese those who live in the USA are called "North Americans" (Norte Americanos).... a term I usually fought against on a semi-polite fashion when I lived in Brazil. The term is not accurate at all and neither is "estadounidense". The proper term in Spanish (and Portuguese) would be "Americanos", in reference to the name of the country, America.
That there might be other countries on that continent, perhaps, but that is the name of my country. If it were a communist country, it would be "The People's Republic of America" or the "American Soviet Socialist Republic".
That it might reflect a sort of "manifest destiny" on the part of those who started the country, perhaps, but that is the name of my country. Those who use the term "USian" simply don't have a clue about the language they are using (English) or what this country's name actually is.
Yeah, I knew I was stirring up a fight by mentioning that, but it still ticks me off every time I see somebody using that term. Then again, the use of the term "USian" also shows the bigotry and hatred of my country that the writer has, and thus an automatic contempt already towards anything I might add to the conversation. I suppose it is a good marker for who is a troll, and sometimes I like to slay trolls for fun.
I think this is a valid point. Quite often the PSTN is the one utility that I can count on functioning even when other utilities (particularly the electrical grid) is shut down. This isn't to say that the telephone network has no interruptions, but the "uptime" is usually of such quality that it sets the standard in my opinion for what ought to be expected from utilities in general. Even cable television service has more outages. That isn't accidental too.
Then again, I still have a landline which I still use on a fairly regular basis. My family also helped to install that network, at least in America, where both my father and by grandfather were former employees of the old Bell System companies. I'm having a hard time imaging what life would be like without it.
First of all, we are AMERICANS over here, but that aside...
We are also talking an infrastructure that had at one point a 99% penetration into the homes in America for a population that is about 15x the size of the country your are talking about too. Some of this infrastructure goes back to before World War I and is still in use. The sheer magnitude of what you are suggesting here is akin to rebuilding the entire interstate highway system.
Yeah, a concentrated and coordinated rebuilding effort could happen, but the price of copper on the world market alone would substantially suffer from such an overhaul of the communications system.
The proof that NASA has been unable to really get its act together, that R&D efforts are essentially futile except for the "pure research" aspects, is that program after program keep getting started and have been cancelled over the years, starting with the "Big G" Gemini II program to the Constellation program, and a whole bunch of other train wrecks in between. Some like the "Big G" program was more of an insurance policy in case stuff didn't work out with Apollo, but there certainly have been some very promising programs where I might argue that political considerations alone were the reasons why they were cancelled, not technical issues. Others like Constellation simply were doomed from the beginning to be a colossal failure.
Good examples of a program that really was promising but then was dumped include the "Trans-Hab" module that has been refined by Robert Bigelow. The DC-X project has been picked up by Jeff Bezos (yes, that Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com). That such projects have been picked up by private individuals is only more of a testament of the string of failures NASA has had to endure and the insane amount of wealth squandered for what were mainly political considerations. Those considerations were usually to grease some congressman to re-election so he could say "look at all of the pretty NASA projects in my district.". Bringing the bacon home is no excuse for the paltry results that have come from such actions. Billions are being squandered right now on the SLS program, and there isn't really a geo-political benefit that is going to come from that program in particular.
If anything, the Chinese are still scratching their head trying to figure out how some rich dude in California was able to pull off beating them by an order of magnitude in terms of production costs for building launchers to orbit, in spite of the labor costs of southern California. That company is doing more to impact the geo-political balance of power than anything NASA is currently doing.
In all seriousness, do you really believe that mankind should never even try to reach out and attempt to go into space at all, or are you merely against spending your hard-earned tax dollars towards that goal?
I can understand an objection to having me force you at gunpoint to support my dreams for such nonsense if you don't like the idea, but I do have problems with people who are telling me that I can't dream and stretch my imagination to attempt such an endeavor on my own dime. I do think that mankind can and should get at least off of this planet to expand our horizons.
As far as the habitability of places off of the Earth, I can think of some rather inhospitable places where in the past entire cities died out to the last person due to being ill prepared to cope with the environment at that location. Surprisingly, cities like Los Angeles have millions of people now living in such a place that earlier generations couldn't make support even a village of just a couple hundred people.
In terms of planetary-scale disasters, about the worst is a massive meteor impact. We know such events happened in the past and that mass extinctions took place as a result of those events. Super volcanoes like having Yellowstone erupt certainly can cause planetary-scale disasters too that can certainly cause millions or even billions of people to die and make life very miserable for any survivor. Having the Sun go supernova is not the only significant disaster to worry about. If you are worried about the supernova thing, I'd be more worried about a start like Sirius going hypernova (a much more realistic event) or even Betelgeuse going super nova. If Sirius went hypernova, life in the solar system and even anything near most nearby stars would simply cease to exist so even interstellar spaceflight might not be sufficient to cope with the consequence. If a cluster of stars the size of Sirius fell into the galactic black hole, it could be a galactic event that would kill you no matter where you went at least within the Milky Way. For the paranoid, there is far worse that could happen that you couldn't really outrun, but then again we can conjecture that such events are quite rare as we still exist.
As for FTL travel, the one physical science theory that might permit such travel is the Alcubierre drive that at least offers the potential for such a spacecraft. There are some hard limits to its use and causality may still be an issue to cope with along with other problems that result from such a device. Still, it at least offers a glimmer of hope that perhaps something could be devised to get past the luminal speed limit.
One thing that was painfully obvious when NASA started to look at alternative architectures to the capsule on an ICBM was that spaceflight simply had to get cheaper. The Apollo program was bleeding America dry and was really not sustainable in terms of cheaply and efficiently sending people to space. The Space Shuttle was sold to Congress and to the American people as something which would eventually bring the price of spaceflight down to the level that ordinary people might be able to go into space. That is one of the reasons for the "Teacher in Space" program, where NASA also wanted to send up poets, songwriters, and even managed to send a couple of senators into space on junkets.
Sadly, if that ever really could have been said was a design goal for the Shuttle program, it failed miserably on that point. The technology to be able to get into space for far less cost has been available for some time. It should be noted that the cost of the catering services to the press corps alone for this upcoming Shuttle launch is going to be more than the price of the fuel needed to send the Space Shuttle into orbit. It isn't the issue of fuel efficiency, but of simply throwing away most of the spacecraft each time it flies and the huge standing army that is needed to keep it going for just another flight.
In this sense I strongly disagree with your notion that the problem was strictly getting beyond LEO, but rather that nobody can afford to "get up there" in the first place. Once in LEO, you are literally half-way to the rest of the solar system (to paraphrase Robert Heinlein). The trick is to get up there with a spacecraft that has enough fuel and that the spacecraft can be built & refueled cheap enough so that you can afford a trip to Mars, Jupiter, or wherever else you care to go.
Once people get into space in significant numbers (even if just in LEO), I assert that it will take deliberate action on the part of the world's governments to keep humanity from spreading out and even engaging in permanent settlements throughout the solar system and beyond. By deliberate action, I'm talking governments using weapons and killing people in space if they stray from the "authorized" routes. There certainly will be a role for government employees to be leading major voyages of exploration, but the real key is to make it cheap and reliable in terms of getting into space in any form at all. Once that happens, the rest will happen on its own.
Sadly, making spaceflight affordable is not a current goal for NASA, where the next generation of spacecraft are going to be even more expensive than the Shuttle program, as awful as that has been in terms of cutting costs.
If governments were small, localized, and you were free to trade one government for another, I might buy your argument.
Oh wait, there is this crazy idea of "federalism" where that is exactly what was supposed to happen. Where a "federation" of "states" would allow citizens of one state to freely move to another "state", but still enjoy the rights of citizenship among all of the members of that federation. That experiment was called the "United States of America".
Sadly, when the United States stopped being a union of states and instead because a country with highly centralized planning and a single oppressive government, it no longer became possible to simply leave a place with high taxes (California) or a government-run health care system (Massachusetts) in exchange for a place that allows you substantial freedom with firearms (Texas).
You can choose between big box retailers like K-Mart or Wal-Mart, or perhaps even be able to choose between different soft drink brands or other kinds of choices. If the government gets into the business, you have one choice or you must exchange your whole lifestyle, language, culture, and often even religion if you want to have another way of doing things.... assuming that the government will even let you leave without a bullet going through your skull. That is also assuming too that the country you want to leave to will even accept you.
THAT is the problem with government solutions, as once a government monopoly has been established you have no option or choice other than to live with the government solution or die. That governments are also by definition not really required to accept competition, there is also no incentive to improve efficiencies either, but that is more of a side effect than the real problem.