3) Preventing the hot chips from forming a vapor barrier, which insulates the chips from the coolant. The Leidenfrost effect is an example of this, but you can lose efficiency long before you reach the droplets-skittering-around level, especially if there are lots of nooks and crannies where bubbles can get stuck. Presumably the designers have handled this as well.
I don't know if they took additional steps but in their schematic they show the chips being vertical, thus minimizing the horizontal surfaces needed for the Leidenfrost effect and making it easier for the vapor to move up.
The corporation-hired folks are paid to write a paper (called a deliverable) with arguments supporting the theory of their sponsors while government scientists are paid to do research regardless of the result
False. Both are hired to do research. If the results do not indicate a need for more work, both lose their jobs.
Forget about further research. I'm not convinced these lobbying groups would actually pay if the study does not come to the right conclusion. Regular researchers don't have that problem at least.
So on one side we have plenty of proof that a few dozens of scientists are being paid to deny or minimize AGW
No, we don't have a proof, we have suspicions. [...then about government researchers...] Except proving an actual lie is not necessary. It is enough to show, a conflict of interest exists.
Clear proof of your dual-standards.
So Lindzen is your best example
I don't know, if he is the best, but the article I linked to certainly contains enough vitriol to exemplify, what any "denier" will face for going against the groupthink.
Except it has nothing to do about groupthink and all about massive conflict of interest. And the fact you're so willing to brush it off while emphasizing the slightest imagined conflict of interest for the other side shows you're not objective.
The topic is, his opponents do — an obvious fact, which you deny with a religious zeal.
That a dozen individuals out of a thousand lie is plausible. In any group. That over 99% of a thousand-strong group all lie or arrive at the same incorrect scientific result is however simply not plausible. I'm sorry that you're unable to understand that.
Well, first of all, you would have us believe the same about the scientists funded by ExxonMobil. Koch brothers, et cætera. Why is suspicion more believable about the corporation-funded folks, than about the government-funded ones?
The corporation-hired folks are paid to write a paper (called a deliverable) with arguments supporting the theory of their sponsors, while government scientists are paid to do research regardless of the result, much to the annoyance of variouspoliticians.
But the way the system is set up, the would-be "rebels" get screened-out long before making a name for themselves — if you argue in your papers, that AGW is insignificant and a misplaced concern, what are the chances of making it into a grad-school today?
As good as any one else's, unless their denying AGW is an indicator of their prowess in science.
Most people would go into sincere denial.
So you think thousands of scientists can produce bogus results without ever having an inkling that their results are wrong. So they all read their instruments incorrectly, get their math wrong, and still they all get the same results, and still none of them notices anyone else's errors despite the reviews. You call that believable?
But the way the system is set up, the would-be "rebels" get screened-out long before making a name for themselves
So on one side we have plenty of proof that a few dozens of scientists are being paid to deny or minimize AGW; and on the other we have thousands of scientists producing lies supporting AGW but we have not a single shred of evidence that anyone is pushing them to lie. And according to you that's because the selection and formatting process is so efficient that out of thousands of scientists none of them got depressed to the point where he would publicize their frustration with the system. And none of them rebelled either? And the exact same phenomenon worked across 120 countries with different cultures and opposing interests. And you really claim with a straight face that your conspiracy theory is the more plausible one? Just, wow!
A seasoned and established tenure-professor might be able to get away with it, but not scratch-free.
The $1.5 bln would buy a lot of scientists — especially those, who already think AGW is a real concern and whose conscience would thus be a lot cheaper.
So you would have us believe that the thousands of scientists who contributed to the IPCC report are all corrupt and not one of them spilled the beans. Not only that but since the report is reviewed by the governments of over 120 countries with competing interests you would also have us believe that they are all in on the conspiracy and that none saw fit to expose it to discredit their adversaries! And all these scientists would be producing bogus results without anyone in the organizations and countries financing them noticing something fishy?
Well, as they say, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof and all you have are unsubstantiated accusations.
I do not doubt, that you share the concerns over the fabled "Military-Industrial Complex" influencing the government towards "perpetual war" so it can forever sell the armaments.
Wow! Aren't you a bit quick putting people you disagree with into neat little boxes! What will you accuse me of next?
Sure, some money would've been spent on climate-studies, but nowhere near the amounts being spent today. You know it, I know it. The conflict of interest exists — no doubt about that.
Even if a climate scientist proves there's no warming interest in the subject will not vanish overnight. So right now climate scientists can make just as much money proving there's no warming. Doing so is even their only chance of really making a name for themselves in that field. So there's really no conflict of interest.
There is no benefit in electing the guy whose wife just died because you feel bad for them. And those voters would be more likely to be duped by politicians trying to sway them with plea to emotion rhetoric.
You're confusing being emotional with being capable of empathy. The two are quite independent.
emotional: 2. dominated by or prone to emotion <an emotional person>
empathy: 2. the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this
Like making people afraid of terrorists so they will agree to give up freedoms
Being capable of empathy would lead one to realize that committing a terrorist act comes at a great cost, most of the time the terrorist's life, and thus requires a strong motivation. Then one would wonder what could have given them such strong motivation and/or destroyed their will to live, and try to figure out what can be changed so it does not happen.
But if the person is emotional, their fear could totally prevent them from trying to understand the source of their fear. So far from being the same thing, empathy and being emotional can be in conflict.
Honestly, I don't think it need be that complex. To understand issues, a voter must be able to grasp main points--many simple tests exist for this--and have a lower-elementary school math mastery:
establish whether the potential voter grasps larger versus smaller, has the ability to read "big" numbers, can derive general truths/proportions from from a simple pie chart, and can demonstrate an understanding of at least decimal values such as.10,.20,.25,.33,.50,.75.
Why do you want to test for math when it is such a minor aspect of picking a candidate? Do you need math to know that you don't want to vote for a candidate who said people with your sexual orientations should be sent to reeducation camps? Does elementary math help you decide whether you agree with a candidate's stance on legalizing pot (answer: no, even if you were to read the scientific papers on the subject, elementary math would fall far short for verifying them). Where does math help you when candidates just cherry-pick the statistics that support their point? It does not.
What you really need is fact cross-checking skills and critical thinking. It would also be best if everyone kept the common good in mind when deciding whom to vote for, and had a modicum of empathy (so they ask themselves what a given proposal will do to the people it targets). But good luck testing for that.
IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote.
Testing for intelligence would be really stupid. You can be really smart and the worst kind of racist, intolerant bigot, or simply a total self-centered jerk who will not care that his decisions disfranchise everyone as long as he benefits. So if you want to introduce some sort of test it would be much better to test for empathy: someone who cannot put himself in other people's shoes should not be trusted to make decisions for others.
It only makes sense for heavy vehicles to have more powerful engines. You need that power to tow trailers and other large cargo... things a little car is NEVER going to do, however polluting the engine might be.
You make it sound like normal cars cannot tow anything. Well you're wrong. Practical caravan has pretty positive reviews regarding the towing capability of Golfs, Passats, but also Ford Mondeos.
Why don't you go complain that those 16-wheel semi-trucks are allowed to pollute more than small cars, too? It doesn't make sense.
The parent only mentioned 'light trucks'. So yes, bringing 16-wheelers into the discussion really would be a show of bad faith.
Paris even banned pre-2011 diesel vehicles to deal with the problem.
Re-read the article. They have not banned pre-2011 diesel cars, they will do it by the end of the decade. It's not quite the same now, is it?
It puts the lie to the claims of their advantages, that most people were doubting without evidence, even while their other unremarked problems have been made undeniably obvious.
Oh. So it's enough for one manufacturer to cheat for you to conclude that any diesel cars of any brand is bad has none of the claimed advantages like lower fuel consumption, higher torque, etc? Biased much?
No question in hindsight that Europe made the wrong decision promoting diesel over gasoline, and now it looks like they're bound to continue declining in popularity there, too.
May I remind you that there is no such thing as a unified Europe government? Any policy promoting the use of diesel has been at the initiative of individual countries, not of Europe. In France it was not even a real decision to promote diesel cars like the Bloomberg claims. Rather whenever the government tried to raise the taxes on diesel the truckers (yes, 16-wheeler kind) and taxis just blocked all traffic and the government caved in every time. Since diesel is cheaper, and that diesel cars get higher miles per gallon and have seen their price drop to little above gasoline cars, it only made economic sense to buy these cars which many have done.
I'd expect a lot of them to start and end their day at the contractor's 'office', if only to pick up and bring back the tools and stuff to be installed. So not as foggy as you on contractors. But again, that would not the case for the cleaning lady doing your apartment (though those are often independent), the person helping your gradma get out of bed and clean up in the morning (definitely not independents), etc. And those companies definitely cross wires a lot.
If a more distant company can't remain competitive when charging more to cover commuting costs, why do you think that closer-by employers would be able to attract those more distant employees? If distance is the issue, it impacts all parts of the equation unless someone is willing to move.
Most of the time you have people in town A working in town B while people in town B are doing the same job in town A, or are unemployed because the job is already taken by someone in town A. If this forces some rationalization it will be a good thing.
Like all other worker rights, it will just mean slightly lower pay rises over the next few years as the employers recover the costs.
You're assuming every business will be affected equally. In reality most businesses will be totally unaffected while the few businesses that were abusing this (house cleaning companies for instance, maybe not the example you were expecting) will finally have to compensate their employees correctly, and probably won't be able to compensate just by freezing the salaries for a few years (e.g. because of minimum wage laws).
So these bullets are going EVEN SLOWER than normal ones, and it's supposed to "knock down" a person?
Independently of whether a bullet can knock over a person or not, you should realize the slower bullet is only slower because it is much heavier, and that it has the exact same momentum as the faster one: that's the conservation of momentum principle. So as far as knocking over people nothing it makes no difference.
Agreed. I can't move my wife to Linux simply because she's an accountant and needs access to Quicken/QuickBooks and others tools (MS Excel) that are pretty much industry standard for her. It would be great to have those all ported to Linux, but you'll have to convince a lot of corporate oriented software development houses (f.e Intuit) to do so. It's a big chicken-vs-egg issue - corporates won't move over unless there's software and the software devs won't make the software without the corporates.
Note that recent versions of Quicken should be quite usable on CrossOver and maybe Wine too. Same thing for Excel 2010 or older. Unfortunately it's not the case of QuickBooks:-(
Just something to keep in mind: SolidWorks 2014 seems to work in Wine and/or CrossOver. Whenever OpenGL is involved this can depend a lot on your graphics card and driver. Word 2010 or older should definitely work just fine.
The article claims that users can "drop [the cars] off anywhere that public parking is allowed within the city". Given that I very much doubt every single public parking spot in the city has a a charger, and assuming they are not stupid and did not lie, that means they plan on having a bunch of employees running around moving the cars to the nearest charger(*). That could partly explain why the price is over twice as much per hour as the similar Autolib' service in Paris.
(*) Note that no matter what it's necessary to have employees moving the cars around if only so they don't all accumulate in one spot (Autolib' in Paris does that too). But letting users park anywhere would likely seriously increase the workload.
Depends on how much you use the car. Drive a brand new car off the lot to the used car dealer across the street, and you'll find the car is now worth about half what you paid for it.
That's incorrect. Car employees can typically buy two brand new cars with a 20% discount every year. So most of them are on a cycle where they buy a brand new car every 6 months and resell it for the same price 6 months later. This way they keep a brand new car at no cost forever.
At $30/hr it sure doesn't sound like a big market.
It is cheaper than a taxi, and cheaper than Uber, and way less hassle than a conventional rental car. Those are all multi-billion dollar markets.
But then in Copenhagen you could also rent a car for the full day for about the same price. Sure it won't be a BMW but if the brand is the only reason for the higher price, that again justifies putting this offering squarely in the (narrow) luxury market. Even more so as they could have picked cheaper Renault Zoe or Bluecars for their fleet if price was the issue. Note also that Autolib', an equivalent service in Paris, rents their electric Bluecars for well under $15 per hour, so being cheaper is totally possible.
Why would it take more SAVs than cabs to move a given number of people?
I said nothing of the sort. I'm saying it takes fewer autonomous vehicles (or cabs but that's off-topic) than privately owned and operated cars to move a given number of people, and thus that this can reduce parking congestion (in addition to traffic).
They will only give another person a ride during peak hours, say morning rush hours and evening hours. Mid-day traffic will be lighter, and middle of the night traffic will be downright dead. At those time these Johny Cabs still have to go somewhere.
Except that moving three people into town in the morning takes roughly 3 cars (the average number of passengers per car is 1.1), whereas a cab will be able to make multiple round-trips during the same time, thus carrying all three (roughly). So this will reduce the number of vehicles that need to park during low traffic periods. So either they remain marginal and make no difference (i.e don't make things worse), or they become popular and make it easier for everyone to park.
When I went to France I noticed a lot of people use resistive heating because the electricity is cheap.
Electric (resistive) heating is generally considered more expensive than other methods of heating in France. Of course that depends on the price of natural gas and oil so it ma change. Really the advantage of electric (resistive) heating is that the equipment is really cheap. So it's favored by landlords but also by people who cannot afford better. Finally there's another reason it's popular in France which is that it has been pushed forward to ensure nuclear reactors have some place to send their electricity to at night as they cannot simply be turned on and off.
Trains don't use electricity from a power company, they generate their own electricity
That may be true in the US but a self-respecting train network is electrified and the article is about the UK and even there this is true for 60% of the journeys. Also if the power outlets where fed from the train's generator they could not be used for cleaning the train when it is at the depot with the engines stopped. The article would also not have said: “If something was directly plugged into it (for example a standard computer, or a laptop without a battery in) the equipment would probably be damaged at any section gaps where the power supply changes from one substation to another!”.
So the "cost" of someone using a tiny amount of electricity is zero, because the generator is always running, etc.
This is totally wrong: you're putting a load on the generator which causes the engine to work harder to keep the set speed, thus using extra fuel. I'll grant you however that the consumption increase caused by charging one iPhone is totally marginal and probably not measurable at the generator.
Slashdot Mirror
3) Preventing the hot chips from forming a vapor barrier, which insulates the chips from the coolant. The Leidenfrost effect is an example of this, but you can lose efficiency long before you reach the droplets-skittering-around level, especially if there are lots of nooks and crannies where bubbles can get stuck. Presumably the designers have handled this as well.
I don't know if they took additional steps but in their schematic they show the chips being vertical, thus minimizing the horizontal surfaces needed for the Leidenfrost effect and making it easier for the vapor to move up.
False. Both are hired to do research. If the results do not indicate a need for more work, both lose their jobs.
Forget about further research. I'm not convinced these lobbying groups would actually pay if the study does not come to the right conclusion. Regular researchers don't have that problem at least.
No, we don't have a proof, we have suspicions. [...then about government researchers...] Except proving an actual lie is not necessary. It is enough to show, a conflict of interest exists.
Clear proof of your dual-standards.
I don't know, if he is the best, but the article I linked to certainly contains enough vitriol to exemplify, what any "denier" will face for going against the groupthink.
Except it has nothing to do about groupthink and all about massive conflict of interest. And the fact you're so willing to brush it off while emphasizing the slightest imagined conflict of interest for the other side shows you're not objective.
The topic is, his opponents do — an obvious fact, which you deny with a religious zeal.
That a dozen individuals out of a thousand lie is plausible. In any group. That over 99% of a thousand-strong group all lie or arrive at the same incorrect scientific result is however simply not plausible. I'm sorry that you're unable to understand that.
Well, first of all, you would have us believe the same about the scientists funded by ExxonMobil. Koch brothers, et cætera. Why is suspicion more believable about the corporation-funded folks, than about the government-funded ones?
The corporation-hired folks are paid to write a paper (called a deliverable) with arguments supporting the theory of their sponsors, while government scientists are paid to do research regardless of the result, much to the annoyance of various politicians.
But the way the system is set up, the would-be "rebels" get screened-out long before making a name for themselves — if you argue in your papers, that AGW is insignificant and a misplaced concern, what are the chances of making it into a grad-school today?
As good as any one else's, unless their denying AGW is an indicator of their prowess in science.
Most people would go into sincere denial.
So you think thousands of scientists can produce bogus results without ever having an inkling that their results are wrong. So they all read their instruments incorrectly, get their math wrong, and still they all get the same results, and still none of them notices anyone else's errors despite the reviews. You call that believable?
But the way the system is set up, the would-be "rebels" get screened-out long before making a name for themselves
So on one side we have plenty of proof that a few dozens of scientists are being paid to deny or minimize AGW; and on the other we have thousands of scientists producing lies supporting AGW but we have not a single shred of evidence that anyone is pushing them to lie. And according to you that's because the selection and formatting process is so efficient that out of thousands of scientists none of them got depressed to the point where he would publicize their frustration with the system. And none of them rebelled either? And the exact same phenomenon worked across 120 countries with different cultures and opposing interests. And you really claim with a straight face that your conspiracy theory is the more plausible one? Just, wow!
A seasoned and established tenure-professor might be able to get away with it, but not scratch-free.
So Lindzen is your best example of a scientist being unfairly persecuted by the AGW crowd? The Lindzen who, from your own article, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC. And you were the one who talking about conflicts of interests was asking people to recuse themselves! And instead of asking for Lindzen to recuse himself you try to pass him off as a martyr?
Well, either you respect the law or you face the consequences...
But any sceptic today is immediately suspected of being on Big Oil's payroll anyway.
Not doing so would be failing to take into account the existence of all the groups funded by ExxonMobil, the Koch foundations and others: American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Americans for Prosperity, Beacon Hill Institute, Cato Institute, DonorsTrust, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Institute for Energy Research, , National Center for Policy Analysis, and hundreds more.
So you would have us believe that the thousands of scientists who contributed to the IPCC report are all corrupt and not one of them spilled the beans. Not only that but since the report is reviewed by the governments of over 120 countries with competing interests you would also have us believe that they are all in on the conspiracy and that none saw fit to expose it to discredit their adversaries! And all these scientists would be producing bogus results without anyone in the organizations and countries financing them noticing something fishy?
Well, as they say, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof and all you have are unsubstantiated accusations.
I do not doubt, that you share the concerns over the fabled "Military-Industrial Complex" influencing the government towards "perpetual war" so it can forever sell the armaments.
Wow! Aren't you a bit quick putting people you disagree with into neat little boxes! What will you accuse me of next?
Sure, some money would've been spent on climate-studies, but nowhere near the amounts being spent today. You know it, I know it. The conflict of interest exists — no doubt about that.
Even if a climate scientist proves there's no warming interest in the subject will not vanish overnight. So right now climate scientists can make just as much money proving there's no warming. Doing so is even their only chance of really making a name for themselves in that field. So there's really no conflict of interest.
There is no benefit in electing the guy whose wife just died because you feel bad for them. And those voters would be more likely to be duped by politicians trying to sway them with plea to emotion rhetoric.
You're confusing being emotional with being capable of empathy. The two are quite independent.
emotional: 2. dominated by or prone to emotion <an emotional person>
empathy: 2. the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this
Like making people afraid of terrorists so they will agree to give up freedoms
Being capable of empathy would lead one to realize that committing a terrorist act comes at a great cost, most of the time the terrorist's life, and thus requires a strong motivation. Then one would wonder what could have given them such strong motivation and/or destroyed their will to live, and try to figure out what can be changed so it does not happen.
But if the person is emotional, their fear could totally prevent them from trying to understand the source of their fear. So far from being the same thing, empathy and being emotional can be in conflict.
Honestly, I don't think it need be that complex. To understand issues, a voter must be able to grasp main points--many simple tests exist for this--and have a lower-elementary school math mastery: establish whether the potential voter grasps larger versus smaller, has the ability to read "big" numbers, can derive general truths/proportions from from a simple pie chart, and can demonstrate an understanding of at least decimal values such as .10, .20, .25, .33, .50, .75.
Why do you want to test for math when it is such a minor aspect of picking a candidate? Do you need math to know that you don't want to vote for a candidate who said people with your sexual orientations should be sent to reeducation camps? Does elementary math help you decide whether you agree with a candidate's stance on legalizing pot (answer: no, even if you were to read the scientific papers on the subject, elementary math would fall far short for verifying them). Where does math help you when candidates just cherry-pick the statistics that support their point? It does not.
What you really need is fact cross-checking skills and critical thinking. It would also be best if everyone kept the common good in mind when deciding whom to vote for, and had a modicum of empathy (so they ask themselves what a given proposal will do to the people it targets). But good luck testing for that.
IQ is certainly not a perfect metric but if we use it only in a simple way it could be used. Less than 100 IQ, can't vote.
Testing for intelligence would be really stupid. You can be really smart and the worst kind of racist, intolerant bigot, or simply a total self-centered jerk who will not care that his decisions disfranchise everyone as long as he benefits. So if you want to introduce some sort of test it would be much better to test for empathy: someone who cannot put himself in other people's shoes should not be trusted to make decisions for others.
Oh, by the way, you failed the empathy test!
It only makes sense for heavy vehicles to have more powerful engines. You need that power to tow trailers and other large cargo... things a little car is NEVER going to do, however polluting the engine might be.
You make it sound like normal cars cannot tow anything. Well you're wrong. Practical caravan has pretty positive reviews regarding the towing capability of Golfs, Passats, but also Ford Mondeos.
Why don't you go complain that those 16-wheel semi-trucks are allowed to pollute more than small cars, too? It doesn't make sense.
The parent only mentioned 'light trucks'. So yes, bringing 16-wheelers into the discussion really would be a show of bad faith.
Paris even banned pre-2011 diesel vehicles to deal with the problem.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Re-read the article. They have not banned pre-2011 diesel cars, they will do it by the end of the decade. It's not quite the same now, is it?
It puts the lie to the claims of their advantages, that most people were doubting without evidence, even while their other unremarked problems have been made undeniably obvious.
Oh. So it's enough for one manufacturer to cheat for you to conclude that any diesel cars of any brand is bad has none of the claimed advantages like lower fuel consumption, higher torque, etc? Biased much?
No question in hindsight that Europe made the wrong decision promoting diesel over gasoline, and now it looks like they're bound to continue declining in popularity there, too.
May I remind you that there is no such thing as a unified Europe government? Any policy promoting the use of diesel has been at the initiative of individual countries, not of Europe. In France it was not even a real decision to promote diesel cars like the Bloomberg claims. Rather whenever the government tried to raise the taxes on diesel the truckers (yes, 16-wheeler kind) and taxis just blocked all traffic and the government caved in every time. Since diesel is cheaper, and that diesel cars get higher miles per gallon and have seen their price drop to little above gasoline cars, it only made economic sense to buy these cars which many have done.
I'd expect a lot of them to start and end their day at the contractor's 'office', if only to pick up and bring back the tools and stuff to be installed. So not as foggy as you on contractors. But again, that would not the case for the cleaning lady doing your apartment (though those are often independent), the person helping your gradma get out of bed and clean up in the morning (definitely not independents), etc. And those companies definitely cross wires a lot.
It won't. This is about contractors who wander from gig to gig, likely many of them different every single week. Think about, say, plumbers.
Contractors already include the cost of travel to/from the client in their business contract. This is about employees, not contractors:
contractor: person hired to do a job on a business contract, as opposed to a permanent employee.
If a more distant company can't remain competitive when charging more to cover commuting costs, why do you think that closer-by employers would be able to attract those more distant employees? If distance is the issue, it impacts all parts of the equation unless someone is willing to move.
Most of the time you have people in town A working in town B while people in town B are doing the same job in town A, or are unemployed because the job is already taken by someone in town A. If this forces some rationalization it will be a good thing.
Like all other worker rights, it will just mean slightly lower pay rises over the next few years as the employers recover the costs.
You're assuming every business will be affected equally. In reality most businesses will be totally unaffected while the few businesses that were abusing this (house cleaning companies for instance, maybe not the example you were expecting) will finally have to compensate their employees correctly, and probably won't be able to compensate just by freezing the salaries for a few years (e.g. because of minimum wage laws).
So these bullets are going EVEN SLOWER than normal ones, and it's supposed to "knock down" a person?
Independently of whether a bullet can knock over a person or not, you should realize the slower bullet is only slower because it is much heavier, and that it has the exact same momentum as the faster one: that's the conservation of momentum principle. So as far as knocking over people nothing it makes no difference.
Agreed. I can't move my wife to Linux simply because she's an accountant and needs access to Quicken/QuickBooks and others tools (MS Excel) that are pretty much industry standard for her. It would be great to have those all ported to Linux, but you'll have to convince a lot of corporate oriented software development houses (f.e Intuit) to do so. It's a big chicken-vs-egg issue - corporates won't move over unless there's software and the software devs won't make the software without the corporates.
Note that recent versions of Quicken should be quite usable on CrossOver and maybe Wine too. Same thing for Excel 2010 or older. Unfortunately it's not the case of QuickBooks :-(
Just something to keep in mind: SolidWorks 2014 seems to work in Wine and/or CrossOver. Whenever OpenGL is involved this can depend a lot on your graphics card and driver. Word 2010 or older should definitely work just fine.
Yup. Or as hosts entries in your router, assuming it serves DNS up.
Right. And as soon as you use your laptop away from home all the queued up reports will go through!
The article claims that users can "drop [the cars] off anywhere that public parking is allowed within the city". Given that I very much doubt every single public parking spot in the city has a a charger, and assuming they are not stupid and did not lie, that means they plan on having a bunch of employees running around moving the cars to the nearest charger(*). That could partly explain why the price is over twice as much per hour as the similar Autolib' service in Paris.
(*) Note that no matter what it's necessary to have employees moving the cars around if only so they don't all accumulate in one spot (Autolib' in Paris does that too). But letting users park anywhere would likely seriously increase the workload.
Depends on how much you use the car. Drive a brand new car off the lot to the used car dealer across the street, and you'll find the car is now worth about half what you paid for it.
That's incorrect. Car employees can typically buy two brand new cars with a 20% discount every year. So most of them are on a cycle where they buy a brand new car every 6 months and resell it for the same price 6 months later. This way they keep a brand new car at no cost forever.
At $30/hr it sure doesn't sound like a big market.
It is cheaper than a taxi, and cheaper than Uber, and way less hassle than a conventional rental car. Those are all multi-billion dollar markets.
But then in Copenhagen you could also rent a car for the full day for about the same price. Sure it won't be a BMW but if the brand is the only reason for the higher price, that again justifies putting this offering squarely in the (narrow) luxury market. Even more so as they could have picked cheaper Renault Zoe or Bluecars for their fleet if price was the issue. Note also that Autolib', an equivalent service in Paris, rents their electric Bluecars for well under $15 per hour, so being cheaper is totally possible.
Why would it take more SAVs than cabs to move a given number of people?
I said nothing of the sort. I'm saying it takes fewer autonomous vehicles (or cabs but that's off-topic) than privately owned and operated cars to move a given number of people, and thus that this can reduce parking congestion (in addition to traffic).
They will only give another person a ride during peak hours, say morning rush hours and evening hours. Mid-day traffic will be lighter, and middle of the night traffic will be downright dead. At those time these Johny Cabs still have to go somewhere.
Except that moving three people into town in the morning takes roughly 3 cars (the average number of passengers per car is 1.1), whereas a cab will be able to make multiple round-trips during the same time, thus carrying all three (roughly). So this will reduce the number of vehicles that need to park during low traffic periods. So either they remain marginal and make no difference (i.e don't make things worse), or they become popular and make it easier for everyone to park.
When I went to France I noticed a lot of people use resistive heating because the electricity is cheap.
Electric (resistive) heating is generally considered more expensive than other methods of heating in France. Of course that depends on the price of natural gas and oil so it ma change. Really the advantage of electric (resistive) heating is that the equipment is really cheap. So it's favored by landlords but also by people who cannot afford better. Finally there's another reason it's popular in France which is that it has been pushed forward to ensure nuclear reactors have some place to send their electricity to at night as they cannot simply be turned on and off.
Trains don't use electricity from a power company, they generate their own electricity
That may be true in the US but a self-respecting train network is electrified and the article is about the UK and even there this is true for 60% of the journeys. Also if the power outlets where fed from the train's generator they could not be used for cleaning the train when it is at the depot with the engines stopped. The article would also not have said: “If something was directly plugged into it (for example a standard computer, or a laptop without a battery in) the equipment would probably be damaged at any section gaps where the power supply changes from one substation to another!”.
So the "cost" of someone using a tiny amount of electricity is zero, because the generator is always running, etc.
This is totally wrong: you're putting a load on the generator which causes the engine to work harder to keep the set speed, thus using extra fuel. I'll grant you however that the consumption increase caused by charging one iPhone is totally marginal and probably not measurable at the generator.