How many units per year would be required to see the price curve deflect downward?
It would require that most of the stuff that goes into the hearing aid becomes off-the-shelf hardware which is also used in a variety of different devices.
As long as a company that makes these things has to design everything from the ground up (battery, signal processing ASIC with its own programming language, signal processing software, biocompatible case, etc), pricing will stay "special".
Doing anything as low-power as a hearing aid needs is bloody complex and expensive. Your $400 netbook probably would't run more than a few seconds on the kind of power reserves that a hearing aid has. And your '70s amplifier, well, give me a break. Didn't you need half a power plant to power that thing? It wouldn't even turn on on a hearing aid battery.
These things contain mostly custom chips designed for a single purpose - that is delivering the computing power necessary for a hearing aid with the least power consumption possible. We're talking microwatts here. Designing such a thing costs a lot, and they're not selling in numbers as huge as netbook hardware, because, well, everyone wants a netbook, but most people sure as hell don't need or want a hearing aid if they still hear just fine.
If there's enough of that stuff to power China for 90 years, I don't think tons of methane will do. Millions of even billions of tons of methane would be more like it.
Examples are thermostat programs that control the temperature of a room.
Yes, if your time scale is "minutes to hours", then you can write a nice linear program that doesn't use any interrupts, etc. Now, get that down to milli- or microseconds, and things get interesting.
And you don't just need to prove the software itself error-free. You'll also need the compiler to be error-free (or write everything in assembly), and of course the hardware needs to be error-free (or all known and unknown hardware errors need to be taken into consideration in the program).
Use several sets of them, from different manufacturers (to exclude the possibility of nasty firmware bugs or manufacturing problems killing your data).
Do not use any kind of RAID just for storing the data. That's an invitation for problems, and hard drives are _cheap_. The main purpose of RAID isn't extra safety, it's to shorten or eliminate the downtime if one disk fails. Since you're merely storing the data and therefore don't need to hot-swap, you don't need that.
It's actually an interesting point - so why not just have clutch (or rather, pedal with a similar effect) on cars with automatic transmission as well, precisely for cases like this?
Because that would be adding another point of failure to the vehicle in order to work around a problem instead of understanding and fixing it?
This is a bunch of nonsense, there is no need for any electronics in vehicles,
Ok, driving an underperforming, pollution-belching gas-guzzler might be fun for a while, but... no thanks. I'll stick with modern engine control and emissions control systems.
a simple disconnect switch on the +12V wire going to the fuel pump mounted within reach of the driver would be cheap and 100% effective.
Just until you get sued into oblivion for unintended deceleration, because some joker/kid/pet thought it would be funny to hit that switch while the car is going 80 mph on the highway. Or people just complain about the killswitch activating mysteriously just before they "happened" to have an accident.
they are talking about brakes strong enough to hold the car in place if you have your feet planted on both the accelerator AND the brake at the same time.
Yes. And I'm saying that any car that can't do this is not roadworthy and needs to see a mechanic immediately. Brake systems of basically any modern car are strong enough to do that if properly maintained. Sure, it'll possibly kill the engine and the transmission, but the car won't move.
Rather than putting oxygen in my alcohol supply, they should be working on putting alcohol in my oxygen supply
Just put the stuff in the humidifier of your CPAP machine. Problem solved! (Warning: Do not smoke or otherwise create sources of ignition in the same building).
"... including requiring brakes to be strong enough to stop the car even when the accelerator is floored."
Yikes. Isn't that always the case, or are they really selling cars in the US with brakes that aren't able to do this? Just for the record, lack of this ability would basically mean that the car can accelerate faster than it can decelerate, and most cars accelerate pretty darn slow.
If your brakes can't do this, get them the fsck fixed. They're broken.
Now that you mention it... that must be part of the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. One false move with the glass in your hand, and your remains will be scattered all over the galaxy.
I think we can rule out the last one, as the checks would be done by legal professionals in the ministries,
Many of those politicians are legal professionals themselves. If they ever claim ineptitude in this matter, I want to see their degrees in Law revoked and their diplomas recycled into toilet paper.
I do believe you just Godwin'ed yourself into irrelevance.
Then you probably also believe the sky is yellow?
Face it, you don't know shit about modern Germany.
I wasn't talking about modern Germany. What part of "seventy years ago" do I need to explain to you? Or do you need a quick lecture about modern Germany? I've lived there since I was born, stupid.
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Date rape drugs. Ever heard of them?
... "Streisandeffect". Please.
It would require that most of the stuff that goes into the hearing aid becomes off-the-shelf hardware which is also used in a variety of different devices.
As long as a company that makes these things has to design everything from the ground up (battery, signal processing ASIC with its own programming language, signal processing software, biocompatible case, etc), pricing will stay "special".
Doing anything as low-power as a hearing aid needs is bloody complex and expensive. Your $400 netbook probably would't run more than a few seconds on the kind of power reserves that a hearing aid has. And your '70s amplifier, well, give me a break. Didn't you need half a power plant to power that thing? It wouldn't even turn on on a hearing aid battery.
These things contain mostly custom chips designed for a single purpose - that is delivering the computing power necessary for a hearing aid with the least power consumption possible. We're talking microwatts here. Designing such a thing costs a lot, and they're not selling in numbers as huge as netbook hardware, because, well, everyone wants a netbook, but most people sure as hell don't need or want a hearing aid if they still hear just fine.
Testing only confirms the absence of known bugs. Never forget that.
If there's enough of that stuff to power China for 90 years, I don't think tons of methane will do. Millions of even billions of tons of methane would be more like it.
Yes, if your time scale is "minutes to hours", then you can write a nice linear program that doesn't use any interrupts, etc. Now, get that down to milli- or microseconds, and things get interesting.
And you don't just need to prove the software itself error-free. You'll also need the compiler to be error-free (or write everything in assembly), and of course the hardware needs to be error-free (or all known and unknown hardware errors need to be taken into consideration in the program).
Seriously, one of the best posts (analogies) ever.
It's one of the worst false dichotomies ever, if anything.
Do we want a "right" to a CRT or an opportunity to buy a light weight, flat, crisp $700 HDTV-1020i 42" 120hz (last week - : ) - for me).
You can also have both, you know.
Well, there is brute-force - just run the program start to finish for every possible combination of branch conditions.
Ohh. Have fun doing that in a real-time system, where a branch (to an ISR/SWI/whatever) can happen almost any time while the program is running. ;)
Use several sets of them, from different manufacturers (to exclude the possibility of nasty firmware bugs or manufacturing problems killing your data).
Do not use any kind of RAID just for storing the data. That's an invitation for problems, and hard drives are _cheap_. The main purpose of RAID isn't extra safety, it's to shorten or eliminate the downtime if one disk fails. Since you're merely storing the data and therefore don't need to hot-swap, you don't need that.
My $0.02.
Because that would be adding another point of failure to the vehicle in order to work around a problem instead of understanding and fixing it?
Ok, driving an underperforming, pollution-belching gas-guzzler might be fun for a while, but ... no thanks. I'll stick with modern engine control and emissions control systems.
a simple disconnect switch on the +12V wire going to the fuel pump mounted within reach of the driver would be cheap and 100% effective.
Just until you get sued into oblivion for unintended deceleration, because some joker/kid/pet thought it would be funny to hit that switch while the car is going 80 mph on the highway. Or people just complain about the killswitch activating mysteriously just before they "happened" to have an accident.
Yes. And I'm saying that any car that can't do this is not roadworthy and needs to see a mechanic immediately. Brake systems of basically any modern car are strong enough to do that if properly maintained. Sure, it'll possibly kill the engine and the transmission, but the car won't move.
Just put the stuff in the humidifier of your CPAP machine. Problem solved! (Warning: Do not smoke or otherwise create sources of ignition in the same building).
"... including requiring brakes to be strong enough to stop the car even when the accelerator is floored."
Yikes. Isn't that always the case, or are they really selling cars in the US with brakes that aren't able to do this? Just for the record, lack of this ability would basically mean that the car can accelerate faster than it can decelerate, and most cars accelerate pretty darn slow.
If your brakes can't do this, get them the fsck fixed. They're broken.
Now that you mention it ... that must be part of the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. One false move with the glass in your hand, and your remains will be scattered all over the galaxy.
... that putting oxygen in alcohol is a good idea? It sounds like a recipe for rocket fuel to me.
Ewww... I'm afraid that toilet paper'd give you a rash...
Rashes are temporary, but justice is forever.
They tried, but the wheelchair outran them.
How many Olympic swimming pools is that?
Many of those politicians are legal professionals themselves. If they ever claim ineptitude in this matter, I want to see their degrees in Law revoked and their diplomas recycled into toilet paper.
Just recursify the problem: Ask an expert.
I do believe you just Godwin'ed yourself into irrelevance.
Then you probably also believe the sky is yellow?
Face it, you don't know shit about modern Germany.
I wasn't talking about modern Germany. What part of "seventy years ago" do I need to explain to you? Or do you need a quick lecture about modern Germany? I've lived there since I was born, stupid.
Yep. And in Germany, privacy laws apply to you even if you're not the government.