You said that estimating car stopping distance can be considered unreasonable for the average driver. I say that it should be 2nd nature to every driver.
I'm sorry, I was technical in some respects and vague in others. Please allow me to clarify. Presume a speed limit of 35 mph and knowledge that this particular light provides precisely two seconds of yellow, and that you happen to notice and begin to react to the changed light such that you'll have begun depressing the brake in the normal 3/4 second assumed by a typical judge. If you're less than 101 feet away from the light when you begin to react then you will not be able to stop without entering the intersection, and therefore continue through. If you're greater than 102 feet away from the light then you must stop or you'll enter the intersection after the light turns red, an illegal condition. I assert that even trained professionals would have a hard time determining their exact range, to the precise foot, at speed in a moving vehicle while also assessing other traffic conditions.
I agree that every driver should be able to estimate their range to a particular obstacle, such as a stop light or sign, but I think being expected to determine one's range within one foot is excessive, and beyond the capacity of most drivers.
As an archery buff, one of the things I'm learning is techniques for determine the range of a target, in yards, so that I can successfully shoot at a target set an unspecified distance away. An estimate within a couple of yards is sufficient, and I'm quite certain I'd be unable to estimate the range, while standing and concentrating on the target, to within the nearest foot.
So I think the region's motor vehicle authority should keep in mind the stopping time of the typical vehicle with the least stopping capacity (a truck) and add.5 seconds to account for the 'decision zone' when assigning yellow light times. I also think that, really, such times should be consistent across regions, so that drivers always know how much space to allot for stopping when they see a light turn yellow.
If it's green when you see it, assume it will turn yellow at any time: prepare to stop.
That's good advice, but if you're watching the light and traffic, it can still take anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 seconds to observe that the light has changed and depress the brake pedal. At 35mph, you're traveling at 51 feet per second and will need 101 feet to safely stop, or 130 feet if you're a truck. That means that if the yellow light is less than two seconds and you're 100 feet away, you can't safely stop without entering the intersection, and you can't enter the intersection before the light is red. Hopefully, the cameras will at least let you go if you enter the intersection on the yellow and leave on the red, otherwise you need to add the full length of the intersection to the calculation, and that can easily be 50 feet, or another full second.
Therefore, if you come back and record the light's transitions and discover that the light provides less than two seconds of stopping time you have an affirmative defense in that it is physically impossible with standard automotive equipment for a vehicle to stop in the time allotted. You might reasonably argue for 3 seconds, since stopping distance is increased in foul weather to about 150 feet and setting the time less than that is unsafe (though if weather is that foul, the driver should be reducing their speed so that they can stop in 100 feet anyways). Also, a setting of 2 seconds requires that the driver be able to identify their range to the intersection as greater or less than 101-102 feet, which is an unreasonably small target to estimate on the fly. A setting of 3 seconds in fair weather allows the driver to estimate their distance as greater or less than a 101-153 foot space, which is reasonably manageable.
I'm somewhat curious just what the device is intended to do. It strikes me that their needs should be something that could be handled by a java application written for any java-enabled cellphone handset, severing the requirements from the handset itself and allowing separate bids by cellphone manufacturers and network providers for the cellphone and communications portions of the program.
In general, any tri or quad band cellphone with any (even very slow) data access and a real, simulated (touchscreen), or bluetooth keyboard or keyboard like device should be able to be used to fill out the form on the spot and then transmit the form back to a central server. Then, at the end of the day, the census taker reviews the forms they submitted and verifies their accuracy and the forms go into the system. (This step is to prevent fraud by someone attempting to hack the cellphone side of things.)
The whole system is modular, and after specifying the the data interchange format between phone and server, could be bid out separately and cheaply. There's really no need to design a durable device capable of harsh use with data input capabilities, that function is already available in commodity devices!
The system could even track times and gps locations of the data as it was entered, for cross-referencing to verify map locations.
At the time, hijacking a passenger aircraft with the intent of ramming it into a building had never been done. I was under the impression that many of the hijackers, and indeed all of the passengers, believed that the aircraft and its passengers would be held hostage for a period of time and eventually ransomed. Some checking today shows that it is uncertain, but doubtful, that any of the hijackers were unaware of the ultimate goal of the attack.
What I had in my head was early information that was never contradicted. Probably because the contradiction wasn't sensational enough to make it mainstream.
Memory, mainly, but looking it up I find that the conclusion was reached early on by the FBI. Some review of more recent data shows that there's some debate on this, and it is most likely that they all knew they were on a suicide mission but did not know final details until the actual start of the operation.
However, the point is still valid. The people transporting the device might very well either not know or not, themselves, be on a suicide mission. They could simply be transporting an item to a staging area for deployment.
Why should suicide bombers care if the bomb they are carrying is making them sterile?
Because a) The ones who made the device probably aren't going to be sent to their deaths, they're probably going to be assigned to make more. And you can't make more if the radiation from the first one killed you, so you use proper shielding. And b) not all of these people know they're going to be suicide bombers. Something like 14 of the 19 September 11th hijackers had no idea theirs was a suicide mission.
Baby steps. Given that they achieved 100GPa at 17K, it might just be possible to combine them into something that's usable and maintainable. With the structure of a buckeytube, I doubt it would behave much worse than a buckeyball, and would allow for tiny 'wires'. If they can tweak the substance to achieve 100GPa at 300K, then its still incredibly high pressure but the two things can be combined to work together.
I don't see anywhere in the article where they mention how many gigapascals that is, but I see varying references that depending on how deep you mean, they could mean anywhere from 140 to 300 GPa. At that pressure, this might make a suitable container for the room temperature superconducting silicon mentioned earlier this week on slashdot. So, we have a compound that can compress to a room temperature superconductor. We have a container to keep it compressed in. Now we just need to figure out how to stuff it all in there!
The other ones have serifs that are mangled but present. It looks like the printer mangles large chunks of horizontal stripes at a time. On all other ones I see some hint of either a top or bottom serif, and in most cases both. In this case there's too much missing for me to think its a one. I think its an error code of some sort. At the very least, I think that by its appearance we shouldn't presume its a one and therefore deduce that the sum of 60 is wrong, but should rather ask Sequoia to explain what that character is supposed to be and if not a one, what does it mean and why is it there? There should certainly not be error codes showing up in the final election results. And if there are, they should be big, bold, and at the top of the tape!
The republican tally is not off by 1, there's an exclamation point in the Giuliani column, as you can see by looking closely at the tiff. Don't know why this would occur though, and that should definitely be addressed. The democratic tally, added up by hand, is short 1 vote from the overall tally. Does this thing handle people who abstain? If so, how? Would their abstention show up in Personal Choice or not show up at all? If it handles abstentions without showing a line for them, then I think this tape is ok. Though they should, in the future, add a line for abstentions. Also, I really want to see a tape where the individual lines add up to MORE than the people who were supposed to have voted. (And there isn't an exclamation point being mistaken for a one.)
Its big. Its in a few pieces. Once in space, they'll insert tab A into slot B and get a robot out of the deal. The box says Some Assembly Required. I just wonder if they included a few extra pieces like that last tractor attachment I got.
If you've only played online RPG's then you haven't really been around the block with RPG's. A tabletop RPG allows interaction between players at a level not found in a computer game, and nothing short of going and playing with a good GM for a few sessions will explain it to you.
That list was written by a hack journo with no intent to reflect anyone's real world attitudes and every intent of boosting ad impressions by getting it posted to Slashdot and Reddit.
Unfortunately, he miscalculated. Page views from Slashdot readers will more likely than not come with some sort of ad blocker, so page view bandwidth goes up, but ad impressions don't.
The problem wasn't whether your little 8hp compressor could move enough air, the question is whether it could achieve the required pressures.
I'm sure you could design a compressor that could achieve 4000 psi on 8hp if that was your goal, though after reaching about 500 psi you'd probably need to change over to a narrower piston compressing fewer cubic inches at a time, and that might increase the amount of time required for the compression. Using a cylinder with.03 square inches cross section would mean applying a force of only about 120 psi at a time. What you trade off for is time.
That's actually one of the few things you *can* do. Say you want to draw on average 20 horsepower out of the compressed air tank for 300 miles at 60 miles per hour. (Really, a well designed aerodynamic car being carefully driven can do most of its crusing on about that, the Tata Nano only has a 33hp engine and the max end of that is only useful for acceleration, and they're augmenting this with a small internal combustion engine.) That means driving for roughly 5 hours. At home, you can easily fit an 8hp compressor on a 240V, 30A circuit, like the one my dryer is hooked up to. (You can hook up a 2hp compressor to a typical 120V, 15A circuit.) It should take about 2.5 times as long to fill the tank as empty it, so about 12.5 hours to fill the tank hooked up at home. If you had a bigger tie-in to the grid (such as the 200-300A hookups that are common on newer homes) you could probably cut that in half.
no, it's not easy to outfit a gas station to do it
Well, lets consider. You want your car to be filled up in less than 5 minutes, say. From empty. If they ran a compressor specifically for this purpose, it would have to be 1,200hp, or 240V, 5000A. However, if they were to have a huge, reinforced underground tank to average out the refills and they only needed to fill one car on average every 20 minutes, then they could get by with 300hp, or 240V, 1250A. Still a lot, but I think that's manageable. A busy station might find it a worthwhile investment to purchase a large efficient gasoline or diesel powered compressor and run it 24x7, augmented by grid power for when the load is higher than average.
I should point out, I don't know how much pressure the in-car tank would need to hold to draw 20hp for 300 miles at 60 mph. I think that's the real crux of the matter here. Odds are, rather than asking you to fill up at home, they're probably using the air tank just like a battery in a hybrid car, and the engine actually charges the tank at idle or when the car isn't running at full capacity. So this whole discussion would be moot.
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You'd like to think so, wouldn't you... (sorry, I just couldn't resist)
I'm sorry, I was technical in some respects and vague in others. Please allow me to clarify. Presume a speed limit of 35 mph and knowledge that this particular light provides precisely two seconds of yellow, and that you happen to notice and begin to react to the changed light such that you'll have begun depressing the brake in the normal 3/4 second assumed by a typical judge. If you're less than 101 feet away from the light when you begin to react then you will not be able to stop without entering the intersection, and therefore continue through. If you're greater than 102 feet away from the light then you must stop or you'll enter the intersection after the light turns red, an illegal condition. I assert that even trained professionals would have a hard time determining their exact range, to the precise foot, at speed in a moving vehicle while also assessing other traffic conditions.
I agree that every driver should be able to estimate their range to a particular obstacle, such as a stop light or sign, but I think being expected to determine one's range within one foot is excessive, and beyond the capacity of most drivers.
As an archery buff, one of the things I'm learning is techniques for determine the range of a target, in yards, so that I can successfully shoot at a target set an unspecified distance away. An estimate within a couple of yards is sufficient, and I'm quite certain I'd be unable to estimate the range, while standing and concentrating on the target, to within the nearest foot.
So I think the region's motor vehicle authority should keep in mind the stopping time of the typical vehicle with the least stopping capacity (a truck) and add .5 seconds to account for the 'decision zone' when assigning yellow light times. I also think that, really, such times should be consistent across regions, so that drivers always know how much space to allot for stopping when they see a light turn yellow.
That's good advice, but if you're watching the light and traffic, it can still take anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 seconds to observe that the light has changed and depress the brake pedal. At 35mph, you're traveling at 51 feet per second and will need 101 feet to safely stop, or 130 feet if you're a truck. That means that if the yellow light is less than two seconds and you're 100 feet away, you can't safely stop without entering the intersection, and you can't enter the intersection before the light is red. Hopefully, the cameras will at least let you go if you enter the intersection on the yellow and leave on the red, otherwise you need to add the full length of the intersection to the calculation, and that can easily be 50 feet, or another full second.
Therefore, if you come back and record the light's transitions and discover that the light provides less than two seconds of stopping time you have an affirmative defense in that it is physically impossible with standard automotive equipment for a vehicle to stop in the time allotted. You might reasonably argue for 3 seconds, since stopping distance is increased in foul weather to about 150 feet and setting the time less than that is unsafe (though if weather is that foul, the driver should be reducing their speed so that they can stop in 100 feet anyways). Also, a setting of 2 seconds requires that the driver be able to identify their range to the intersection as greater or less than 101-102 feet, which is an unreasonably small target to estimate on the fly. A setting of 3 seconds in fair weather allows the driver to estimate their distance as greater or less than a 101-153 foot space, which is reasonably manageable.
In general, any tri or quad band cellphone with any (even very slow) data access and a real, simulated (touchscreen), or bluetooth keyboard or keyboard like device should be able to be used to fill out the form on the spot and then transmit the form back to a central server. Then, at the end of the day, the census taker reviews the forms they submitted and verifies their accuracy and the forms go into the system. (This step is to prevent fraud by someone attempting to hack the cellphone side of things.)
The whole system is modular, and after specifying the the data interchange format between phone and server, could be bid out separately and cheaply. There's really no need to design a durable device capable of harsh use with data input capabilities, that function is already available in commodity devices!
The system could even track times and gps locations of the data as it was entered, for cross-referencing to verify map locations.
What I had in my head was early information that was never contradicted. Probably because the contradiction wasn't sensational enough to make it mainstream.
Their evidence at the time seemed reasonable, so it was a convincing early argument.
However, the point is still valid. The people transporting the device might very well either not know or not, themselves, be on a suicide mission. They could simply be transporting an item to a staging area for deployment.
Baby steps. Given that they achieved 100GPa at 17K, it might just be possible to combine them into something that's usable and maintainable. With the structure of a buckeytube, I doubt it would behave much worse than a buckeyball, and would allow for tiny 'wires'. If they can tweak the substance to achieve 100GPa at 300K, then its still incredibly high pressure but the two things can be combined to work together.
I don't see anywhere in the article where they mention how many gigapascals that is, but I see varying references that depending on how deep you mean, they could mean anywhere from 140 to 300 GPa. At that pressure, this might make a suitable container for the room temperature superconducting silicon mentioned earlier this week on slashdot. So, we have a compound that can compress to a room temperature superconductor. We have a container to keep it compressed in. Now we just need to figure out how to stuff it all in there!
The other ones have serifs that are mangled but present. It looks like the printer mangles large chunks of horizontal stripes at a time. On all other ones I see some hint of either a top or bottom serif, and in most cases both. In this case there's too much missing for me to think its a one. I think its an error code of some sort. At the very least, I think that by its appearance we shouldn't presume its a one and therefore deduce that the sum of 60 is wrong, but should rather ask Sequoia to explain what that character is supposed to be and if not a one, what does it mean and why is it there? There should certainly not be error codes showing up in the final election results. And if there are, they should be big, bold, and at the top of the tape!
I bet the board is too cheap to buy new cards, and hasn't bought new ones for 80 years. When they bought them they were blue and red. :)
Incidentally, while the article is slashdotted, the tiff is still up.
The republican tally is not off by 1, there's an exclamation point in the Giuliani column, as you can see by looking closely at the tiff. Don't know why this would occur though, and that should definitely be addressed. The democratic tally, added up by hand, is short 1 vote from the overall tally. Does this thing handle people who abstain? If so, how? Would their abstention show up in Personal Choice or not show up at all? If it handles abstentions without showing a line for them, then I think this tape is ok. Though they should, in the future, add a line for abstentions. Also, I really want to see a tape where the individual lines add up to MORE than the people who were supposed to have voted. (And there isn't an exclamation point being mistaken for a one.)
Honestly that's actually a rather brilliant solution. Perhaps you should contact the county and mention it.
Though its somewhat of a technicality, because he was moved to Texas at age 2 and spent most of his formative years there.
Its big. Its in a few pieces. Once in space, they'll insert tab A into slot B and get a robot out of the deal. The box says Some Assembly Required. I just wonder if they included a few extra pieces like that last tractor attachment I got.
Also, they block incoming ports 25 and 80 unless you pay a premium for a 'Business' connection.
If you've only played online RPG's then you haven't really been around the block with RPG's. A tabletop RPG allows interaction between players at a level not found in a computer game, and nothing short of going and playing with a good GM for a few sessions will explain it to you.
Unfortunately, I think his death qualifies as Death From Old Age and Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection specifically exclude that.
Goodbye, Gary, your work brightened many an evening spent with friends.
I'm sure you could design a compressor that could achieve 4000 psi on 8hp if that was your goal, though after reaching about 500 psi you'd probably need to change over to a narrower piston compressing fewer cubic inches at a time, and that might increase the amount of time required for the compression. Using a cylinder with .03 square inches cross section would mean applying a force of only about 120 psi at a time. What you trade off for is time.
That's actually one of the few things you *can* do. Say you want to draw on average 20 horsepower out of the compressed air tank for 300 miles at 60 miles per hour. (Really, a well designed aerodynamic car being carefully driven can do most of its crusing on about that, the Tata Nano only has a 33hp engine and the max end of that is only useful for acceleration, and they're augmenting this with a small internal combustion engine.) That means driving for roughly 5 hours. At home, you can easily fit an 8hp compressor on a 240V, 30A circuit, like the one my dryer is hooked up to. (You can hook up a 2hp compressor to a typical 120V, 15A circuit.) It should take about 2.5 times as long to fill the tank as empty it, so about 12.5 hours to fill the tank hooked up at home. If you had a bigger tie-in to the grid (such as the 200-300A hookups that are common on newer homes) you could probably cut that in half.
Well, lets consider. You want your car to be filled up in less than 5 minutes, say. From empty. If they ran a compressor specifically for this purpose, it would have to be 1,200hp, or 240V, 5000A. However, if they were to have a huge, reinforced underground tank to average out the refills and they only needed to fill one car on average every 20 minutes, then they could get by with 300hp, or 240V, 1250A. Still a lot, but I think that's manageable. A busy station might find it a worthwhile investment to purchase a large efficient gasoline or diesel powered compressor and run it 24x7, augmented by grid power for when the load is higher than average.
I should point out, I don't know how much pressure the in-car tank would need to hold to draw 20hp for 300 miles at 60 mph. I think that's the real crux of the matter here. Odds are, rather than asking you to fill up at home, they're probably using the air tank just like a battery in a hybrid car, and the engine actually charges the tank at idle or when the car isn't running at full capacity. So this whole discussion would be moot.