Isn't this practice pretty much de facto "tying", which is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Act? I mean, if the company blocks non-Apple cables, isn't that awfully close to the "mandatory purchase" scenario that those two laws prohibit? Any lawyers care to opine?
aren't a good thing, IMHO. It's commonly a sign of a chronically under-resourced effort and/or poor management. Occasional emergencies happen, sometimes it takes more to push a product out than you'd planned, but if it's happening all the time, it's not good for you or the company or the customers.
Self driving car could be better than humans on bad roads. System could easily note environmental data (temp, RH) as well as differences between its control inputs and what the car actually does (slipping due to snow, rain, ice), and modify its control laws. Unlike humans, it won't get tired, impatient, worried, sleepy, drunk, etc.
Vehicle response vs. control input systems are in use on several modern combat aircraft - battle damage alters the aircraft flight characteristics, the flight system modifies its control laws to compensate. Can allow a human pilot to continue flight under conditions that would otherwise be impossible. Don't see why a similar capability couldn't be in self driving cars.
people with prolonged lifespans would probably concern themselves with decisions that currently would have no consequence within their lifetimes. Don't care about (fill in your thing here) because it won't hurt anybody for 150 years? You might think differently if the average lifespan were 450 years. A longer perspective wouldn't hurt us at all.
Probably within the realm of affordable engineering. Fragile, easily wrecked with lots of knock-on economic damage like 9/11. Doubt there's enough adventurous investment capital to get it going within the next couple of decades.
In part, perhaps because 30 years ago the advantages of/needs for large scale efficiency and coordination weren't so great as today? Isolated systems may have higher operations costs and may not efficiently integrate into big systems, but they tend to have few or no remote attack vulnerabilities. Bottom line: economics favor connected systems, and anything on the net can be pwned.
The NSA's activities are not reviewed by publicly accountable parties who do not share the NSA's incentives. There's no review the public can trust.
To pick another important accountability issue, would you deposit your savings in a bank that wasn't independently audited? Would you take that bank's management's word that everything was ok with your money?
Can't see any persuasive argument for trusting the NSA's unaudited self-report.
It isn't that he sees "no harm whatsoever", it's that he sees a worthwhile benefit for the price paid.
For example, our American predecessors decided that the benefit of requiring the state to prove guilt outweighed the detriment of actual criminals' escaping punishment. Doubtless if we reversed the burden of proof and put it on the defendant to prove innocence, we'd jail more criminals. I'm willing to pay the price of doing as we do. Our nation is better for it. Ditto regarding teh terr'ists and panopticon surveillance.
Wake me when somebody develops a rechargeable battery with an energy density within spitting distance of gasoline and that's cheap, which I think will not include using lithium, for which we would have to strip-mine Bolivia to serve a fraction of the potential demand for EVs. That will have to be a battery that uses the oxygen in air as half of its electrochemistry.
Basically, we're spoiled by fossil fuels like gasoline, which have the singular advantage that the oxidizer is available everywhere, for free. If my 2006 Rav4 had to carry the oxygen (in non-cryo form) to burn its ~12 gallons of gasoline, I'd probably have payload space for me alone.
A calcium-air battery that could survive a few thousand deep discharge cycles could fill the bill. Maybe another common metal like magnesium, but I'm too lazy to consult the electromotive series right now. Very tough materials science challenge.
Until somebody develops such a battery, I expect electric vehicles to retain their bimodal distribution - either they have a uselessly low range, or they're lifestyle playthings.
I have not read TFA yet, will do so later, so my apology if I'm in error, but....
Why the hell are engineers designing, or being allowed to design, a life-critical system like brakes on a car so that the system lacks a direct, non interruptible physical connection between the driver and the brakes? Any mechanism can fail. Putting electronics between the driver and the brakes increases the number of failure modes as well as the probability of failure. State monitoring, fine. Computed intervention that applies the brakes when the car's AI thinks it's necessary, OK. But selling a car that cannot be stopped when the driver mashes the brake pedal? NFW.
This is simply incompetent engineering. Product liability will attach, as it should.
Meanwhile, I know what to investigate and what not to buy for my next car.
I agree. If all those who have received National Security Letters had published them and sought legal counsel to respond, it's likely that those letters would have been ruled unconstitutional by now. And maybe that's just my wishful thinking, but it's certain that continued lack of disclosure about these lunatic procedures will foster their wider use.
like the kind that is used sometimes for detecting leaks in glass vacuum systems. Handheld, 50+KV, nice fat 1" air spark discharges to those low voltage chips with their atoms-thick insulating gates. Poof!
Maybe not hard if one is educated, with a measure of economic security, perhaps belonging to the ethnic group that holds local community power, or simply among those who are good at keeping their heads in stressful situations. Maybe more difficult if one is poorly uneducated, perhaps somebody who both respects and fears authority, who doesn't have much economic cushion that might embolden them to assert their rights because they actually *could* call a lawyer, who has skin color different from the interrogating officers, or is just plain scared of police for whatever reason at the time.
The law has to work even for (and especially for) those who don't know their rights, or who can't for whatever reason of circumstance assert them. Regardless of whether you're scared, intimidated, stupid, ignorant, or disenfranchised, you've got rights under the law. It's better for all of us when that's how our justice system operates.
I concur with your caution that peoples' brains differ, so we might expect that YMMV regarding the results of TCDS. I disagree that "When actual scientists do this they do multiple high resolution MRIs...". That's the exception, not the rule.
In my collection of 108 papers on TCDS, use of advanced imaging methods as a study enrollment screener happened in 7 of them. The technology seems (so far, anyway) pretty benign. For example, in one study of 815 TCDS sessions in 100 migraine patients, there were no observed adverse events ("Safety of the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): evaluation of 815 tDCS sessions in 100 chronic- pain patients"). Not to say that it's free of risk, nor that longer-term adverse effects won't crop up, but for those who stay within the generally used current density limits, etc., there probably isn't a lot to worry about.
I'm much more concerned about people deciding that a 9v battery is just so inconvenient, they'll run it off that 9v wall wart. The one with the failed ground isolation. The really cheap one that fails in a way that puts line voltage on the scalp electrodes just when the user happens to touch a grounded thing. etc. Some think that because they can buy a case and motherboard at Fry's and boot Windows, they're a biomedical EE. These folks may get selected out, or become somewhat dimmer bulbs.
I thought that US government activities have been exempt from state taxation for quite a long time, starting with McCulloch v. Maryland way back in 1819 and affirmed and expanded down to the present day. I can see so many bases on which the NSA, for Jebus' sake, could argue that they live above mere state taxation laws. Any genuine attorneys want to comment?
I had started to babysit a wonderful dog for a friend. The dog liked to sit under my desk when I was working. One day, my Mini wouldn't boot. Dog toothmarks were evident on the low voltage (thank heavens) side of the power block, making it pretty easy to troubleshoot. As he got used to his new surroundings, no further wire chewing, but it could have been a disaster for all concerned. My animal house friends tell me rabbits are the worst, like frustrated EEs with buck teeth...
Anyway, think about animals, little kids, etc. when you're electrifying your furniture.
Thanks, your comment is interesting. True, the spacecraft rotational inertia is put on the momentum wheel bearings when they're used to reorient the spacecraft. The force exerted on the bearings should be proportional to the slew rate - faster slew, more force. You'd think a mission like Kepler would have mainly very small slew rates (high pointing accuracy = low angular excursion rates). Vacuum effects on lubricants, for sure. Does anybody use magnetic bearings on spacecraft momentum wheels? Particularly for high pointing accuracies on celestial 'fixed' targets that don't need high slew rates, these would seem to be the ticket. No wear because no physical contact.
These seem to be a relatively common source of woe for spacecraft that use them. I understand it's moving parts and all that, but surely in 0-G there can't be *that* much wear on bearings. Anyway, there seems to be plenty of work on magnetic bearings for momentum wheels, which would eliminate mechanical wear. Or is it not the bearings that fail? Can any/. readers shed some light on why these things seem to pack it in so frequently?
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Isn't this practice pretty much de facto "tying", which is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Act? I mean, if the company blocks non-Apple cables, isn't that awfully close to the "mandatory purchase" scenario that those two laws prohibit? Any lawyers care to opine?
aren't a good thing, IMHO. It's commonly a sign of a chronically under-resourced effort and/or poor management. Occasional emergencies happen, sometimes it takes more to push a product out than you'd planned, but if it's happening all the time, it's not good for you or the company or the customers.
Self driving car could be better than humans on bad roads. System could easily note environmental data (temp, RH) as well as differences between its control inputs and what the car actually does (slipping due to snow, rain, ice), and modify its control laws. Unlike humans, it won't get tired, impatient, worried, sleepy, drunk, etc.
Vehicle response vs. control input systems are in use on several modern combat aircraft - battle damage alters the aircraft flight characteristics, the flight system modifies its control laws to compensate. Can allow a human pilot to continue flight under conditions that would otherwise be impossible. Don't see why a similar capability couldn't be in self driving cars.
The first one failed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II
"...but the censors crack down heavily on any move to get people physically mobilized to act on such criticism."
"Oderint, dum metuant."
or:
"Let them hate, so long as they fear."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Accius
You may say what you will, but you may never actually do anything about it.
people with prolonged lifespans would probably concern themselves with decisions that currently would have no consequence within their lifetimes. Don't care about (fill in your thing here) because it won't hurt anybody for 150 years? You might think differently if the average lifespan were 450 years. A longer perspective wouldn't hurt us at all.
Probably within the realm of affordable engineering. Fragile, easily wrecked with lots of knock-on economic damage like 9/11. Doubt there's enough adventurous investment capital to get it going within the next couple of decades.
In part, perhaps because 30 years ago the advantages of/needs for large scale efficiency and coordination weren't so great as today? Isolated systems may have higher operations costs and may not efficiently integrate into big systems, but they tend to have few or no remote attack vulnerabilities. Bottom line: economics favor connected systems, and anything on the net can be pwned.
This.
The NSA's activities are not reviewed by publicly accountable parties who do not share the NSA's incentives. There's no review the public can trust.
To pick another important accountability issue, would you deposit your savings in a bank that wasn't independently audited? Would you take that bank's management's word that everything was ok with your money?
Can't see any persuasive argument for trusting the NSA's unaudited self-report.
It isn't that he sees "no harm whatsoever", it's that he sees a worthwhile benefit for the price paid.
For example, our American predecessors decided that the benefit of requiring the state to prove guilt outweighed the detriment of actual criminals' escaping punishment. Doubtless if we reversed the burden of proof and put it on the defendant to prove innocence, we'd jail more criminals. I'm willing to pay the price of doing as we do. Our nation is better for it. Ditto regarding teh terr'ists and panopticon surveillance.
Quite right. Wish I had mod points for you. This is another instance of "follow the money".
Wake me when somebody develops a rechargeable battery with an energy density within spitting distance of gasoline and that's cheap, which I think will not include using lithium, for which we would have to strip-mine Bolivia to serve a fraction of the potential demand for EVs. That will have to be a battery that uses the oxygen in air as half of its electrochemistry.
Basically, we're spoiled by fossil fuels like gasoline, which have the singular advantage that the oxidizer is available everywhere, for free. If my 2006 Rav4 had to carry the oxygen (in non-cryo form) to burn its ~12 gallons of gasoline, I'd probably have payload space for me alone.
A calcium-air battery that could survive a few thousand deep discharge cycles could fill the bill. Maybe another common metal like magnesium, but I'm too lazy to consult the electromotive series right now. Very tough materials science challenge.
Until somebody develops such a battery, I expect electric vehicles to retain their bimodal distribution - either they have a uselessly low range, or they're lifestyle playthings.
Wish I had mod points. Thanks for posting this. Useful.
I have not read TFA yet, will do so later, so my apology if I'm in error, but....
Why the hell are engineers designing, or being allowed to design, a life-critical system like brakes on a car so that the system lacks a direct, non interruptible physical connection between the driver and the brakes? Any mechanism can fail. Putting electronics between the driver and the brakes increases the number of failure modes as well as the probability of failure. State monitoring, fine. Computed intervention that applies the brakes when the car's AI thinks it's necessary, OK. But selling a car that cannot be stopped when the driver mashes the brake pedal? NFW.
This is simply incompetent engineering. Product liability will attach, as it should.
Meanwhile, I know what to investigate and what not to buy for my next car.
General Ripper, is that you?
I agree. If all those who have received National Security Letters had published them and sought legal counsel to respond, it's likely that those letters would have been ruled unconstitutional by now. And maybe that's just my wishful thinking, but it's certain that continued lack of disclosure about these lunatic procedures will foster their wider use.
like the kind that is used sometimes for detecting leaks in glass vacuum systems. Handheld, 50+KV, nice fat 1" air spark discharges to those low voltage chips with their atoms-thick insulating gates. Poof!
Sorry...that should have been "...poorly educated...".
Maybe not hard if one is educated, with a measure of economic security, perhaps belonging to the ethnic group that holds local community power, or simply among those who are good at keeping their heads in stressful situations. Maybe more difficult if one is poorly uneducated, perhaps somebody who both respects and fears authority, who doesn't have much economic cushion that might embolden them to assert their rights because they actually *could* call a lawyer, who has skin color different from the interrogating officers, or is just plain scared of police for whatever reason at the time.
The law has to work even for (and especially for) those who don't know their rights, or who can't for whatever reason of circumstance assert them. Regardless of whether you're scared, intimidated, stupid, ignorant, or disenfranchised, you've got rights under the law. It's better for all of us when that's how our justice system operates.
If authorities can make it sufficiently complicated to assert your rights effectively, then effectively you don't have them.
I concur with your caution that peoples' brains differ, so we might expect that YMMV regarding the results of TCDS. I disagree that "When actual scientists do this they do multiple high resolution MRIs...". That's the exception, not the rule.
In my collection of 108 papers on TCDS, use of advanced imaging methods as a study enrollment screener happened in 7 of them. The technology seems (so far, anyway) pretty benign. For example, in one study of 815 TCDS sessions in 100 migraine patients, there were no observed adverse events ("Safety of the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): evaluation of 815 tDCS sessions in 100 chronic- pain patients"). Not to say that it's free of risk, nor that longer-term adverse effects won't crop up, but for those who stay within the generally used current density limits, etc., there probably isn't a lot to worry about.
I'm much more concerned about people deciding that a 9v battery is just so inconvenient, they'll run it off that 9v wall wart. The one with the failed ground isolation. The really cheap one that fails in a way that puts line voltage on the scalp electrodes just when the user happens to touch a grounded thing. etc. Some think that because they can buy a case and motherboard at Fry's and boot Windows, they're a biomedical EE. These folks may get selected out, or become somewhat dimmer bulbs.
I thought that US government activities have been exempt from state taxation for quite a long time, starting with McCulloch v. Maryland way back in 1819 and affirmed and expanded down to the present day. I can see so many bases on which the NSA, for Jebus' sake, could argue that they live above mere state taxation laws. Any genuine attorneys want to comment?
I had started to babysit a wonderful dog for a friend. The dog liked to sit under my desk when I was working. One day, my Mini wouldn't boot. Dog toothmarks were evident on the low voltage (thank heavens) side of the power block, making it pretty easy to troubleshoot. As he got used to his new surroundings, no further wire chewing, but it could have been a disaster for all concerned. My animal house friends tell me rabbits are the worst, like frustrated EEs with buck teeth...
Anyway, think about animals, little kids, etc. when you're electrifying your furniture.
Thanks, your comment is interesting. True, the spacecraft rotational inertia is put on the momentum wheel bearings when they're used to reorient the spacecraft. The force exerted on the bearings should be proportional to the slew rate - faster slew, more force. You'd think a mission like Kepler would have mainly very small slew rates (high pointing accuracy = low angular excursion rates). Vacuum effects on lubricants, for sure. Does anybody use magnetic bearings on spacecraft momentum wheels? Particularly for high pointing accuracies on celestial 'fixed' targets that don't need high slew rates, these would seem to be the ticket. No wear because no physical contact.
These seem to be a relatively common source of woe for spacecraft that use them. I understand it's moving parts and all that, but surely in 0-G there can't be *that* much wear on bearings. Anyway, there seems to be plenty of work on magnetic bearings for momentum wheels, which would eliminate mechanical wear. Or is it not the bearings that fail? Can any /. readers shed some light on why these things seem to pack it in so frequently?