Iraq wasn't an ideal choice, but it was the only available one. The article I linked notes this; Iraq was the only nation that was actively hostile towards us (as opposed to the covert hostility of other nations who support terrorist groups), and geographically it's an excellent location to exert influence on others.
Not only was it not an ideal choice, it was a counterproductive one. In 2002 those of us who gave this any serious thought predicted that invading that country would be destabilizing. And instability makes a perfect breeding ground for fundamentalism. An analogy to your statement would be a doctor saying "Tequila isn't the ideal medicine for your hangover, but it's the only available one".
On the other hand, the elections are evidence that it is working, as are events in Libya and Lebanon. It's still too early to tell.
Democracy != Elections. Democracy means fair access to government. Iraq is a long way from that. Democracy *could* help make fundamentalism of all kinds less viable (though there's no guarantee of that), but elections by themselves have nothing to do with that.
Fundamentalist Christianity *has* been eliminated as a viable worldview.
It has merely been relabeled as "intelligent design" and "culture of life". True, it isn't viable in the sense of "logically defensible", but that hasn't stopped many Americans from calling for certain theocratic views to be imposed on public policy.
It's not and never was about either. It's about reforming the Middle East by eliminating fundamentalist Islam as a viable worldview
1. If that is in fact the goal then it wouldn't follow that overthrowing a secular government and a non-fundamentalist leader would be a step towards the goal.
2. The rise in militancy is good evidence that the strategy for meeting this alleged goal is not working and in fact moving things in the wrong direction.
3. If there really are people who hold this view, then I hope they also want to reform the West by eliminating fundamentalist Christicanity as a viable worldview, because if they don't, then they are hypocrites. No, wait, seeing how successful thier current "reform" has been, I don't want them to try the same to us here. But I can't accept their viewpoint if it is inconsistent.
Y'all stop it, I was born and bred in Birmingham AL and it ain't all that bad. In fact, some folks are adamant that it's the greatest city in the whole darn state. Y'all head over to Bessemer or Fairfield if y'all want some really shitty industrial towns. We used to be the Pittsburgh of the South, you know. Now we're apparently just "Alabama's new shoppin' capital". Weak.
Toyota already admitted there was a problem and has a fix
Not quite:
"He couldn't say how many Prius owners got the upgrade and whether the latest problems involve buyers who never got the upgrade or if an altogether different glitch is shutting the car down."
Personally I believe it is the same problem (see my other comment with subject "Old news!"), but it isn't proven.
This happened to me just over a year ago, when my Prius was 5 months old. I wasn't going at freeway speeds, I was driving on an empty secondary road at about 35 MPH and suddenly lost nearly all power. I drove very slowly to a nearby parking lot, called the Prius roadside assistance number, and got (free) towing to the nearest dealer.
After two days they informed me that two of the ECUs had failed (there are something like a dozen embedded computers in the car). They were also getting diagnostic codes that made no sense. I had to wait a couple of weeks for replacements, then my car was back on the road again.
A month or two later there was a recall for a software problem in which, IIRC, an ECU would report garbage error codes which would trick the car into shutting down even though everything was fine. I never found out if that was what had happened in my case, but it sounded suspiciously familiar. If so, the ECU replacement would not have been necessary in the first place. After getting the software upgraded my car has been trouble-free.
The article mentioned that it hadn't been determined whether the drivers reporting this problem had received the upgrade. If they hadn't, then it is likely that this is not a new problem.
Correction: Wine is not an instruction-set emulator. It does, however, emulate Windows system calls. That's why it's also called Windows Emulator.
The Wine developers and fanbase have downplayed the use of "Windows Emulator" in favor of what is now the more common acronym expansion, to avoid confusion by those who think the use of the word "emulator" is confined to CPU emulators. It isn't true, however.
Yes, I recognized my mistake a few hours after posting that: fuel consumption based on power is per time unit, fuel consumption based on force is per distance unit. Nevertheless it's a bit sobering to think that a 50% increase in speed more than triples the rate at which the engine burns gasoline, and more than halves your fuel economy -- although of course these number must be tempered by the fact that the engine is probably running more efficiently at the higher power output.
low coefficient of friction should read "low drag coefficient". Drag is not friction. It is caused by the difference in air pressure acting on the front and the rear of a moving object.
And, I wouldn't call a factor of 2.25 "almost a tripling". But drag does increase with the square of speed. Also, since power at a constant speed is equal to force times speed, power increases with the cube of speed. So your fuel consumption at 90 MPH is about 3.375 times what it is at 60 MPH (other factors being equal, which they usually aren't -- such as efficiency of the drive train at different speeds).
Either multicellular creatures have ancestors, and those ancestors at some point were of different species than today's generation, or it is possible for a multicellular species to appear without a parent generation. Let's call these the evolutionary and sudden appearance hypotheses, respectively. Of course, one of these (the evolutionary hypothesis) is supported by observation so at least some version of it qualifies as a theory. There has never been an observed instance of sudden appearance.
The intelligent design hypothesis must be tied to one of the above hypotheses; it could never stand on its own. Combine it with the sudden appearance hypothesis and you get traditional creationism. Tie it to the evolutionary hypothesis and you get a weird hybrid (guided evolution).
In order for guided evolution to work, we would require that one of the following is possible: (a) intelligent life evolves under the guidance of a lesser intelligence than the greatest intelligence that can be produced through that evolution, or (b) intelligent life evolves under the guidance of an intelligence greater than or equal to the greatest intelligence that can be produced by that evolution. (b) is flawed because there is no explanation of the origin of the greater intelligence (it can't be the product of guided evolution without creating an infinite regress, and if it came about unprecedentedly then you are back to sudden appearance). (a) is more believable but it is no better than traditional evolution in addressing the purported concerns of intelligent design proponents (i.e., how can advanced features evolve from less advanced features?), and has the added burden of externalizing the intelligence.
If nobody has seen the license how can anybody confirm that it is open source? All we have (so far) is one MSNBC article claiming that is open source. Grandparent's question is justified.
I was thinking mostly of energy conservation and environmental considerations rather than financial ones. Even so, if you are at home charging your car then you are also more likely to be using appliances, your computer, your TV, your stereo. If you are a net *consumer* during periods when you are at home, you won't be selling that solar energy back, so if you want to charge your car at the same time, you do have to buy from the power company, at their rates.
Taking your last suggestion one step further, maybe the hybrid battery packs could be made to be easily swappable, so that you could have one battery at home charging up while you are commuting to work on the other. Problem solved (at some initial expense). If you are in a carpool, you don't have that problem, except on weekends.
I don't think the sell-back rate is 1/10s of pennies per kW-h (not kw/h, BTW), at least not in California. I don't have any hard data, however, I'm just going by vague recollection. I think there is some pending legislation in the state on solar energy to encourage more use, and if so, I hope that discrepancy (whatever it is today) will be lessened.
I don't have solar yet. It would be nice, someday.
That would be true if comparison is to a typical car. The Prius is already a SULEV-class vehicle (and PZEV in California). So unless your power company's energy sources are very clean I don't think there would be a net improvement from an environmental perspective.
Lightly touch the brakes in a Prius, and the drive motor spins backwards as a generator, putting drag on the wheels and transferring the energy to the battery.
Somebody else already pointed out the motor doesn't spin backwards, it keeps spinning the same direction. But because electrical energy is no longer being sent to the motor, the back EMF does cause a reverse current flow into the batteries.
The other problem with the quoted statement is that it feeds the misconception that regenerative braking only begins when you press on the brake pedal. Not true. If you are simply coasting without applying the brakes, you will get regenerative braking. I see this everyday when I coast down a hill (or just coast while approaching a stop sign or freeway exit) in my Prius. The energy display screen shows schematically that energy is flowing from the motor to the battery.
As soon as you touch the brakes (lightly, or "stomping"), you are engaging the mechanical brakes, meaning that some of your kinetic energy is now converted to heat through old-fashioned friction, and is no longer available to the batteries.
Mechanical brakes are needed to come to a full stop (the Prius will keep going a very low speed if you don't have your foot on either the gas or brake pedal, unless you are facing uphill), and they are needed whenever you must decelerate more rapidly than regenerative braking can achieve.
Wouldn't the solar energy you use to charge the car mean less surplus energy that you can sell back to the grid (assuming you are a net producer of energy)?
In other words, the savings you would get from this arrangement comes from having solar energy in the first place, not from having a pluggable hybrid.
Given the efficiency of the batteries in the car I suspect you would be making less efficient use of the solar energy, in fact.
I was independent for years, voting for John Anderson in '80, and the Libertarian candidate in '84 (without joining the "L" party).
What changed my mind is the realization that the power of my vote, tiny as it was, was cut in half by my inability to vote in primaries. That's why I joined the Democrats and remain there to this day, despite my disappointments with the party leadership (Republicans are still much worse).
1 billion, eleventy-one million, eleventy-one thousand, eleventy-one seconds is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
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Not only was it not an ideal choice, it was a counterproductive one. In 2002 those of us who gave this any serious thought predicted that invading that country would be destabilizing. And instability makes a perfect breeding ground for fundamentalism. An analogy to your statement would be a doctor saying "Tequila isn't the ideal medicine for your hangover, but it's the only available one".
As far as being "actively hostile", what were they doing? Planning an invasion of the U.S.? As Colin Powell said in February of 2001, "frankly they [sanctions] have worked. He [Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." This explains why "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" instead of the other way around.
On the other hand, the elections are evidence that it is working, as are events in Libya and Lebanon. It's still too early to tell.
Democracy != Elections. Democracy means fair access to government. Iraq is a long way from that. Democracy *could* help make fundamentalism of all kinds less viable (though there's no guarantee of that), but elections by themselves have nothing to do with that.
Fundamentalist Christianity *has* been eliminated as a viable worldview.
It has merely been relabeled as "intelligent design" and "culture of life". True, it isn't viable in the sense of "logically defensible", but that hasn't stopped many Americans from calling for certain theocratic views to be imposed on public policy.
It's not and never was about either. It's about reforming the Middle East by eliminating fundamentalist Islam as a viable worldview
1. If that is in fact the goal then it wouldn't follow that overthrowing a secular government and a non-fundamentalist leader would be a step towards the goal.
2. The rise in militancy is good evidence that the strategy for meeting this alleged goal is not working and in fact moving things in the wrong direction.
3. If there really are people who hold this view, then I hope they also want to reform the West by eliminating fundamentalist Christicanity as a viable worldview, because if they don't, then they are hypocrites. No, wait, seeing how successful thier current "reform" has been, I don't want them to try the same to us here. But I can't accept their viewpoint if it is inconsistent.
Y'all stop it, I was born and bred in Birmingham AL and it ain't all that bad. In fact, some folks are adamant that it's the greatest city in the whole darn state. Y'all head over to Bessemer or Fairfield if y'all want some really shitty industrial towns. We used to be the Pittsburgh of the South, you know. Now we're apparently just "Alabama's new shoppin' capital". Weak.
Wrong. There is no such legal standard as "way too circumstantial". IANAL but I'm quite sure of this one.
Not quite:
"He couldn't say how many Prius owners got the upgrade and whether the latest problems involve buyers who never got the upgrade or if an altogether different glitch is shutting the car down."
Personally I believe it is the same problem (see my other comment with subject "Old news!"), but it isn't proven.
After two days they informed me that two of the ECUs had failed (there are something like a dozen embedded computers in the car). They were also getting diagnostic codes that made no sense. I had to wait a couple of weeks for replacements, then my car was back on the road again.
A month or two later there was a recall for a software problem in which, IIRC, an ECU would report garbage error codes which would trick the car into shutting down even though everything was fine. I never found out if that was what had happened in my case, but it sounded suspiciously familiar. If so, the ECU replacement would not have been necessary in the first place. After getting the software upgraded my car has been trouble-free.
The article mentioned that it hadn't been determined whether the drivers reporting this problem had received the upgrade. If they hadn't, then it is likely that this is not a new problem.
I believe this is a copy of the recall notice.
The Wine developers and fanbase have downplayed the use of "Windows Emulator" in favor of what is now the more common acronym expansion, to avoid confusion by those who think the use of the word "emulator" is confined to CPU emulators. It isn't true, however.
Yes, I recognized my mistake a few hours after posting that: fuel consumption based on power is per time unit, fuel consumption based on force is per distance unit. Nevertheless it's a bit sobering to think that a 50% increase in speed more than triples the rate at which the engine burns gasoline, and more than halves your fuel economy -- although of course these number must be tempered by the fact that the engine is probably running more efficiently at the higher power output.
And, I wouldn't call a factor of 2.25 "almost a tripling". But drag does increase with the square of speed. Also, since power at a constant speed is equal to force times speed, power increases with the cube of speed. So your fuel consumption at 90 MPH is about 3.375 times what it is at 60 MPH (other factors being equal, which they usually aren't -- such as efficiency of the drive train at different speeds).
Being John Malkovich may or may not be sci-fi (I don't think of it as such), but it would have been right at home in Dangerous Visions.
Neither. "Evil" describes actions, not people.
Or was it, LSD went into Berkeley, and BSD came out?
Either multicellular creatures have ancestors, and those ancestors at some point were of different species than today's generation, or it is possible for a multicellular species to appear without a parent generation. Let's call these the evolutionary and sudden appearance hypotheses, respectively. Of course, one of these (the evolutionary hypothesis) is supported by observation so at least some version of it qualifies as a theory. There has never been an observed instance of sudden appearance.
The intelligent design hypothesis must be tied to one of the above hypotheses; it could never stand on its own. Combine it with the sudden appearance hypothesis and you get traditional creationism. Tie it to the evolutionary hypothesis and you get a weird hybrid (guided evolution).
In order for guided evolution to work, we would require that one of the following is possible: (a) intelligent life evolves under the guidance of a lesser intelligence than the greatest intelligence that can be produced through that evolution, or (b) intelligent life evolves under the guidance of an intelligence greater than or equal to the greatest intelligence that can be produced by that evolution. (b) is flawed because there is no explanation of the origin of the greater intelligence (it can't be the product of guided evolution without creating an infinite regress, and if it came about unprecedentedly then you are back to sudden appearance). (a) is more believable but it is no better than traditional evolution in addressing the purported concerns of intelligent design proponents (i.e., how can advanced features evolve from less advanced features?), and has the added burden of externalizing the intelligence.
Can someone give a short explanation of this conjecture -- small enough to fit in the margin of a book, say?
And how will my getting up an hour earlier cause my employer to let me leave at 4 PM?
If nobody has seen the license how can anybody confirm that it is open source? All we have (so far) is one MSNBC article claiming that is open source. Grandparent's question is justified.
I was thinking mostly of energy conservation and environmental considerations rather than financial ones. Even so, if you are at home charging your car then you are also more likely to be using appliances, your computer, your TV, your stereo. If you are a net *consumer* during periods when you are at home, you won't be selling that solar energy back, so if you want to charge your car at the same time, you do have to buy from the power company, at their rates.
Taking your last suggestion one step further, maybe the hybrid battery packs could be made to be easily swappable, so that you could have one battery at home charging up while you are commuting to work on the other. Problem solved (at some initial expense). If you are in a carpool, you don't have that problem, except on weekends.
I don't think the sell-back rate is 1/10s of pennies per kW-h (not kw/h, BTW), at least not in California. I don't have any hard data, however, I'm just going by vague recollection. I think there is some pending legislation in the state on solar energy to encourage more use, and if so, I hope that discrepancy (whatever it is today) will be lessened.
I don't have solar yet. It would be nice, someday.
That would be true if comparison is to a typical car. The Prius is already a SULEV-class vehicle (and PZEV in California). So unless your power company's energy sources are very clean I don't think there would be a net improvement from an environmental perspective.
Somebody else already pointed out the motor doesn't spin backwards, it keeps spinning the same direction. But because electrical energy is no longer being sent to the motor, the back EMF does cause a reverse current flow into the batteries.
The other problem with the quoted statement is that it feeds the misconception that regenerative braking only begins when you press on the brake pedal. Not true. If you are simply coasting without applying the brakes, you will get regenerative braking. I see this everyday when I coast down a hill (or just coast while approaching a stop sign or freeway exit) in my Prius. The energy display screen shows schematically that energy is flowing from the motor to the battery.
As soon as you touch the brakes (lightly, or "stomping"), you are engaging the mechanical brakes, meaning that some of your kinetic energy is now converted to heat through old-fashioned friction, and is no longer available to the batteries.
Mechanical brakes are needed to come to a full stop (the Prius will keep going a very low speed if you don't have your foot on either the gas or brake pedal, unless you are facing uphill), and they are needed whenever you must decelerate more rapidly than regenerative braking can achieve.
In other words, the savings you would get from this arrangement comes from having solar energy in the first place, not from having a pluggable hybrid.
Given the efficiency of the batteries in the car I suspect you would be making less efficient use of the solar energy, in fact.
...welcome our new blankety-blank overlords.
I was independent for years, voting for John Anderson in '80, and the Libertarian candidate in '84 (without joining the "L" party).
What changed my mind is the realization that the power of my vote, tiny as it was, was cut in half by my inability to vote in primaries. That's why I joined the Democrats and remain there to this day, despite my disappointments with the party leadership (Republicans are still much worse).
Laurie Duncan actually read the ToS and checked
It would appear that Laurie Duncan is new to the Internet.
1 billion, eleventy-one million, eleventy-one thousand, eleventy-one seconds is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
Help at last for Mary Anne?