TMI had lots of backup systems to give it a nearly impossible risk of meltdown, otherwise it never would have been brought online.
The PBR designs do seem much safer, as do PWR designs where the reactor is inverted (high heat causes metals with a low melting point drop the fuel rods out). There are some things that are scary about them. What if the heat causes the beads to expand to the point where they can no longer be circulated? What if the graphite catches on fire causing the fissile material to pool together at the bottom and reach critical mass?
Keep in mind that even today after many years of use there are a lot of things we don't understand about pressurized water reactors. We're still discovering new failure modes for critical systems.
As dangerous as nuclear power is though, it's less dangerous to us long term than most current sources, so I think we should go ahead with licensing some PBR designs. Just keep them far away from people for a long time.
I've been using linux for 14 years now and for most of that time it just has not been quite ready for the masses. The Ubuntu team has made gigantic leaps in making the OS easily configurable and consistent, while the OpenOffice people have provided software which makes it compatible with formats which are necessary for business use. Sure there are still some quirks here and there, but in my opinion they are no harder to deal with than any of the commercial operating systems.
The economic downturn might have something to do with it, but it's only one reason why we're seeing it adopted more.
The WIFI/GPS is enabled by default. If the phone is incapable of operating with an expected battery life with these enabled, why would be enabled by default? Other smartphones (Blackberry, iPhone, etc) seem to be capable of having these features enabled or toggled on as needed without killing the battery.
Everyone I know with a G1 carries a charger with them.
My problems with the touch interface have to do with more than just the lack of multi-touch. The touch interface simply isn't polished. Have you ever used the date selector when creating an appointment? You can't see the number when you're tapping the up arrow, it's covered by your finger. Event PalmOS had this figured out years ago. The entire calendar is a little clunky as well.
The geek in me really wanted to like this phone, but the platform just isn't quite there yet.
The G1 has received little fanfare because it's not a good product. It's about as good as other smartphones from 5 years ago.
It's not revolutionary as far as a typical user is concerned. The GUI isn't well polished, the touch interface is similar to last generation palms. The trackball is not great. The included sd card is not big enough to hold a music collection and if you want to use headphones you need to use an adapter.
The biggest deal breaker is the 7 hour standby battery life, which I'm betting is related to its OS.
Thankfully, since it's open source, all of the software issues can be fixed and the OS can be placed on better hardware.
If the gas taxes don't cover all of the taxes of increased vehicle usage, then you're actually subsidizing driving, which tends to encourage people to do it more.
I would suspect this is the case, as that $0.36+8% would cost you about $0.015/mile, while your typical self sustaining toll road, which cannot receive federal funding, seems to cost 5-10x that amount. The rest of the money must then come from general taxes, and is therefore encouraging driving via government handout.
In Europe, Nuclear power is heavily subsidized to keep the air clean, so excessive power usage is actually costing the rest of the taxpayers money.
The invisible hand only works when the cost of goods is the actual cost to the public.
Over 80% of accidents are caused by human error. There's only so much else the engineers can do to make them safer while a human is in total control. One thing I've noticed is that the people who think they're the best drivers typically exceed the speed limit the most and tend to cause more accidents.
A higher quality sensor with less noisy gain will allow for better pictures with less light or smaller lens (or faster shutter speed with current lenses and lighting).
Most existing "waterproof" and "breathable" fabrics supposedly have holes too small for liquid water to enter, but water vapor can pass freely. I have a rain jacket made of this material, and it is quite great.
This will be great for those of us who are stuck trying to blindly diagnose network issues since most everyone drops ping packets.
Currently the best I can do to tell if users of my web app are experiencing network issues is to log the timing between SYN and the first ACK packet on incoming connections, which gives me a passive variant of a ping time.
Apparently turbines are a maintenance nightmare and the 2,000F degree exhaust can cause problems. Perhaps these would work much better in a hybrid setup, and I'm guessing some of the other problems could be worked around with newer materials or technology.
Why mess around with solar cells when you can use that technology to turn lead into gold. We'll have so much gold that everyone on this planet will be so rich that they won't have a need for cheap solar power.
The software for scanning UPC codes isn't all that difficult, the problem is focal length. Most cell phones can't focus on close objects, such as UPC/EAN codes because they have a fixed focal range from about 1 foot to infinity. If you position the bar code far away from the phone, you don't have nearly enough pixels of resolution to get a good reading. One workaround on older phones has been to attach a macro lens, such as the one available for the Nokia 3650.
The Android phone must have one of the newer auto-focus lenses not available on earlier phones. It's also possible that its software can analyze multiple video frames and combine them to increase resolution, but this seems to take quite a bit of processing power which would have only recently become available.
This is not a new idea at all and numerous companies have patents on quite a range of techniques and applications for reading UPC codes on cel phones.
That's why I said "doing less." Surely there is some difference between purchasing hundreds to thousands of dollars per year of oil from "axis of evil" countries and a tens of dollars required for parts and the manufacturing supply chain.
Probable cause is easy to fake. A police officer can pull you over, claim they smell marijuana, detain you temporarily, and call up the K9 unit. Once the K9 unit arrives, they can signal the dog to bark, providing "probable cause" for a search.
If you don't want your rights violated, try riding a bicycle. By driving a motor vehicle, you are giving up many of your rights, most of which have been whittled away with arguments of protecting public safety. You also have the added benefit of doing less to fund terrorism through the purchase of gasoline.
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TMI had lots of backup systems to give it a nearly impossible risk of meltdown, otherwise it never would have been brought online.
The PBR designs do seem much safer, as do PWR designs where the reactor is inverted (high heat causes metals with a low melting point drop the fuel rods out). There are some things that are scary about them. What if the heat causes the beads to expand to the point where they can no longer be circulated? What if the graphite catches on fire causing the fissile material to pool together at the bottom and reach critical mass?
Keep in mind that even today after many years of use there are a lot of things we don't understand about pressurized water reactors. We're still discovering new failure modes for critical systems.
As dangerous as nuclear power is though, it's less dangerous to us long term than most current sources, so I think we should go ahead with licensing some PBR designs. Just keep them far away from people for a long time.
I've been using linux for 14 years now and for most of that time it just has not been quite ready for the masses. The Ubuntu team has made gigantic leaps in making the OS easily configurable and consistent, while the OpenOffice people have provided software which makes it compatible with formats which are necessary for business use. Sure there are still some quirks here and there, but in my opinion they are no harder to deal with than any of the commercial operating systems.
The economic downturn might have something to do with it, but it's only one reason why we're seeing it adopted more.
The WIFI/GPS is enabled by default. If the phone is incapable of operating with an expected battery life with these enabled, why would be enabled by default? Other smartphones (Blackberry, iPhone, etc) seem to be capable of having these features enabled or toggled on as needed without killing the battery.
Everyone I know with a G1 carries a charger with them.
My problems with the touch interface have to do with more than just the lack of multi-touch. The touch interface simply isn't polished. Have you ever used the date selector when creating an appointment? You can't see the number when you're tapping the up arrow, it's covered by your finger. Event PalmOS had this figured out years ago. The entire calendar is a little clunky as well.
The geek in me really wanted to like this phone, but the platform just isn't quite there yet.
The G1 has received little fanfare because it's not a good product. It's about as good as other smartphones from 5 years ago.
It's not revolutionary as far as a typical user is concerned. The GUI isn't well polished, the touch interface is similar to last generation palms. The trackball is not great. The included sd card is not big enough to hold a music collection and if you want to use headphones you need to use an adapter.
The biggest deal breaker is the 7 hour standby battery life, which I'm betting is related to its OS.
Thankfully, since it's open source, all of the software issues can be fixed and the OS can be placed on better hardware.
The funding, which was supposed to come from sales of the spectrum, ran out a long time ago. Now they must be paid for at full price.
If you were taking over my job, I'd gladly give you the passwords to my work computer.
If the gas taxes don't cover all of the taxes of increased vehicle usage, then you're actually subsidizing driving, which tends to encourage people to do it more.
I would suspect this is the case, as that $0.36+8% would cost you about $0.015/mile, while your typical self sustaining toll road, which cannot receive federal funding, seems to cost 5-10x that amount. The rest of the money must then come from general taxes, and is therefore encouraging driving via government handout.
In Europe, Nuclear power is heavily subsidized to keep the air clean, so excessive power usage is actually costing the rest of the taxpayers money.
The invisible hand only works when the cost of goods is the actual cost to the public.
Only criminals require privacy. The Obama team has as much clearance as Bush did and should have access to everything.
Over 80% of accidents are caused by human error. There's only so much else the engineers can do to make them safer while a human is in total control. One thing I've noticed is that the people who think they're the best drivers typically exceed the speed limit the most and tend to cause more accidents.
Wouldn't a diffraction grating produce a bunch of rainbow patterns?
Those kisses will also cause caries aka cavities
A higher quality sensor with less noisy gain will allow for better pictures with less light or smaller lens (or faster shutter speed with current lenses and lighting).
It wouldn't be the first time that GM had interfered:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Most existing "waterproof" and "breathable" fabrics supposedly have holes too small for liquid water to enter, but water vapor can pass freely. I have a rain jacket made of this material, and it is quite great.
This will be great for those of us who are stuck trying to blindly diagnose network issues since most everyone drops ping packets.
Currently the best I can do to tell if users of my web app are experiencing network issues is to log the timing between SYN and the first ACK packet on incoming connections, which gives me a passive variant of a ping time.
When censorship is expensive, companies will be less likely to implement it.
Most mac owners I know would never be caught dead in a place as corporate as Starbucks.
It has been tried before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car
Apparently turbines are a maintenance nightmare and the 2,000F degree exhaust can cause problems. Perhaps these would work much better in a hybrid setup, and I'm guessing some of the other problems could be worked around with newer materials or technology.
Why mess around with solar cells when you can use that technology to turn lead into gold. We'll have so much gold that everyone on this planet will be so rich that they won't have a need for cheap solar power.
The Nokia CC-49 macro lens for their 3650 model does exactly this and makes it possible to decode UPC/EAN codes from software.
The software for scanning UPC codes isn't all that difficult, the problem is focal length. Most cell phones can't focus on close objects, such as UPC/EAN codes because they have a fixed focal range from about 1 foot to infinity. If you position the bar code far away from the phone, you don't have nearly enough pixels of resolution to get a good reading. One workaround on older phones has been to attach a macro lens, such as the one available for the Nokia 3650.
The Android phone must have one of the newer auto-focus lenses not available on earlier phones. It's also possible that its software can analyze multiple video frames and combine them to increase resolution, but this seems to take quite a bit of processing power which would have only recently become available.
This is not a new idea at all and numerous companies have patents on quite a range of techniques and applications for reading UPC codes on cel phones.
That's why I said "doing less." Surely there is some difference between purchasing hundreds to thousands of dollars per year of oil from "axis of evil" countries and a tens of dollars required for parts and the manufacturing supply chain.
Probable cause is easy to fake. A police officer can pull you over, claim they smell marijuana, detain you temporarily, and call up the K9 unit. Once the K9 unit arrives, they can signal the dog to bark, providing "probable cause" for a search.
If you don't want your rights violated, try riding a bicycle. By driving a motor vehicle, you are giving up many of your rights, most of which have been whittled away with arguments of protecting public safety. You also have the added benefit of doing less to fund terrorism through the purchase of gasoline.
If you look at a lab supply catalog these days, there is quite a bit of plasticware.