Partial zero emission vehicle means that during some portion of time while the vehicle is operating, it does not produce any emissions. Example: The Toyota Prius is a PZEV because when the engine is off and it is operating on its electric motors, it is operating and not producing any emissions. Note that not all hybrids are PZEVs because with some the engine runs constantly.
PZEV is becoming one of those buzzwords that journalists like to latch onto. It's meant to simplify what is being talked about, but taking a literal interpretation without knowing the background makes it rather confusing and a little misleading, in my opinion.
Speaking of buzzwords, I still giggle a little every time I am behind one of those Honda CRV's with the little decal that says "Real-time 4WD". As if someone wants a 4WD vehicle in which they would have to wait 30 minutes for the front axle to start pulling. "Automatic" would be a more appropriate word, but it doesn't have the buzzword effect that "real-time" does.
But their benevolent action of capping it is to keep you from flooding the market and devaluing it...and thus crashing this new market and making your bandwidth worthless. You see, economics 101.
You're probably correct on this, though I wouldn't be surprised to see someone argue it in court.
Here's a workable Slashdot analogy for this: Just as one shouldn't link an IP address to a person (as the RIAA has tried to do), one shouldn't necessarily link what comes out of a household's sewage pipe to the person that lives there, either.
My point being, just as someone can leech off an unsecured Wi-Fi in a home, someone from outside the household (i.e. visiting friend, relative) could conceivably use the bathroom.
Then again, deployment of this type of surveilance would be kept plenty busy hunting down gross point sources like drug labs that they'd likely not bother to deal with individual drug use.
I guess it also partially depends on which signals you're using. The P-code (military only) is still a better positioning reference over the S-code (civilian use), even with the selective availability turned off (which it has been for about ten years). That's why you have corrections transmitted to augment the GPS satellites (differential GPS transmitters, WAAS, etc.). Yet, even P-code users sometimes use corrections as well.
GPS signals are useable out in space, provided that you have a receiver that will recognize that it's not on Earth (a three point GPS fix generates two possible locations, one on/near the surface of the earth and one 24,000 miles in space, four or more fixes would solve this to some extent). While you can get a fix in space, the quality of that fix will continually degrade the further you get outside the orbits of the satellites. First of all, the satellite geometry starts to become poorer because all the satellites are generally concentrated in one direction, rather than spread out over the "sky". When triangulating with acute angles, the fix tends to be poorer. Compound this with the fact that the GPS satellite antennas are aimed at the Earth's surface. So, satellites that, from the perspective of a spacecraft, that are in front of the Earth will likely have their antennas turned away from the spacecraft. This means that there will be weak or an unusable signal level from them. Satellites that would have their antennas aimed at the spacecraft will be, for the most part, behind Earth, so their signals will be blocked by Earth. Needless to say, GPS would as you alluded to, become pretty useless away from Earth, or at least once you crossed outside of the orbits of the satellites.
Maybe someone should remind him that GPS stands for Global Positioning system, not Galactic Positioning System. <grin>
John goes on about the use of GPS in the control for acceleration for a bit. Understanding that where you have no nearby reference points, such as in space, this may be a good solution. At the same time, you usually don't have anything nearby to worry about crashing into (such as the ground). Although GPS can be very accurate, it often takes more datapoints that can be obtained in a very short timeframe to get that accuracy.
I wonder if there's a reason why they aren't using some means of LASER or RADAR rangefinding when in close proximity to landing for obtaining positioning (altitude) and velocity/acceleration information. The update rate could easily be several orders of magnitude faster than GPS could ever provide...especially since you need two position reports from GPS to find velocity and three to determine acceleration.
Well, I suppose if you like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. But then again, we haven't identified all of the causes and their extents a this point, so perhaps the best we can do is largely treat problems symptomatically for now.
While no doubt what you suggest as "conservation corps" project would certainly do good in Africa, its effect on climate change would probably be relative to pissing in Lake Superior to raise the water temperature.
Oh, yeah. What is the energy source for these desalinization units? Solar? Unless the lake is really deep, the output might very well evaporate faster than you can make it. Then again, one ginormous pool solar blanket might be the solution. Using a carbon-based fuel would be rather self-defeating of the purpose for doing it in the first place.
Interesting article, though they are using tidal currents and not oceanic currents that are normally induced by thermal convections. Nonetheless, the mechanism for harnessing energy is largely the same.
Wonder if any article similar to this was ever submitted to Slashdot?
Because proper tech journalism is about using buzzwords to sound techy!
If you're an incompetent, technologically ignorant journalist, then you go out and look for some terms that sound appropriate and cool, then include them in your story. Heck, as a journalist, your job is to describe and explain something to the uninformed. Since the uninformed are largely a technologically challenged audience,they'll accept your cool usage of terms, usually considered passé by the real tech crowd, as an insightful look into the sophisticated technical world.
So, if you want to be a cool tech writer, just liberally toss in a couple terms like, nano, blog, cyber, online, real-time, data mining, and Google (the last one especially used as a verb).
Mod me troll if you like, but if Adobe's latest releases of Acrobat reader are any indication of how this conceptual suite will be released, I'd rather take my chances with MS, or even better, open office.
Using Acrobat Reader 8 as a benchmark: Acrobat Reader 8 takes too long to launch, pesters you with some update that usually just adds to the program's bloat of unnecessary features, and to top it off, 8 sometimes "page tears" when you scroll -- a bug that keeps reappearing that prevents things from being displayed properly on several of my machines. Switching tasks or minimize/restore is the only fix I've found so far.
Aside from this any full-blown software from them just seems to be way overpriced to begin with.
TFA doesn't have the specifics, but I am willing to guess that the problem was that the accused was copying the text of articles from site and redistributing that, not passing on the link to the story.
Why the important difference? Copying and redistributing would deny the news publisher of whatever ad revenue they would receive when the reader went directly to their site (and subsequently were served the ads). Something similar could be said about a newspaper/magazine clipping.
Something like this is, of course, all about money, so my speculation is that the causation is the loss of ad revenue.
It has been known for quite some time that it's the mechanical action that does an important part of the work for disinfecting your hands. The water and soap just help the process by carrying dirt and bacteria away. This is part of the reason that you don't see hand sanitizers allowed as a replacement for proper hand washing at restaurants and other commercial food prep areas.
When I saw those ugly yellow frames along with the yellow shirt and plastered comb-over, the first thought that crossed my mind was he's gunning for a role in one of those Vytorin commercials (you know, where they compare a person with a goofy wardrobe with some entree). The question is, what dish would they match him up with? A banana split?
So what happens a year from now when hypothetically they can show statistics that they've reduced crime by 5 - 15% while not increasing the use of department resources (i.e. patrol manpower, overtime, detectives)? Wouldn't that be rather solid evidence that it's working? If this data mining really is just fluff to make the public feel safer, then the numbers of actual committed crimes should show whether or not it's working (and if it isn't, then abandon it and try something else).
As for revealing what they found, I'd have to agree with several other comments that the police haven't tipped their entire hand as to what they've uncovered. Besides, you need to remember that the results are dynamic and that by implementing a strategy (which they've also not fully revealed) that strategy may change how criminal activities might shake out during the next operational period (i.e week, month). In essense, what they tell you this week is likely to be somewhat obsolete by next week. Also keep in mind that most of the crime they are trying to prevent are ones of simple opportunity, not necessarily ones of careful planning (like a jewelery/art heist).
To me, this is a prime example of a government entity making an attempt at trying to work smarter rather than harder. Rather than go and ask for another tax levy to fund more officers, squad cars and related equipment, why not try to make what the police already have as resources more effective and efficient? Save the taxpayer a little money and potentially give them a greater return on their tax money.
I think you'd better go back and check on that advice.
Refusal to take the a test is equivalent to a fail result or considered a default admission of guilt in many states. Therefore you will be charged with DWI and you will be found guilty (by default). If this were not the case, you'd have a large majority of people refusing to take the tests in hopes of getting off the hook for DWI.
I believe what your lawyer friend's advice might have been in regard to was the sentencing you would receive. If you were obscenely drunk, and the police could prove this to the court, the court might choose to impose stricter sentence. If all that could be offered was that you were arrested for DWI by default in which they had little/no evidence to the extent of intoxication, you might stand a chance of getting a more lenient sentence than if they could prove you were stumbling, piss-in-your-pants drunk. Either case, you're almost certainly going to get convicted on DWI.
In my opinion, the core group of MADD has a lot in common with the Women's Christian Temperance Union. They're not opposed to DUI, they're opposed to drinking.
Perhaps. I think what you're really seeing is a group of mothers who are taking a fanatical charge on the issue because they've lost a loved one to drunk driving. Drinking is the root evil of drunk driving, at least to them. The apparent inclusion of just drinking probably stems from underage drinking. Drunk drivers aren't just old men, they're also high school kids who engage in underage drinking and then subsequently kill themselves and their friends riding in the car with them.
I understand where their fervor comes from. Losing a child (even an adult one) produces some very intense emotions that need to get focused somewhere. Are some of MADD's assertions lower limits and stiffer penalties a bit draconian? Sure they are, but that's to be expected with that much emotional energy behind their campaign. The stronger the feelings, the more absolutist the demands become.
The biggest problem of all is that there is no true metric of impairment. BAC is about the closest one can get, which we all know results in widely different levels of impairment in different people with similar BAC levels. Compounding the problem is that on one side of the limit are you safe to drive and the other side unsafe. It's not a hard line, but a curve like everything else in the world. So, in order to get the most effective results, one would try to include as much of that curve into their cause as possible, which would favor absolute sobriety behind the wheel.
I have sort of wondered what MADD would do if they theoretically were successful in achieving their end goal (zero drunk drinking). Would they disband, or would their mission change? Mothers Against Distracted Driving?
Just be careful not to get into a fender bender, them heat shield tiles are awfully damned expensive to replace. And don't forget to park at the far end of the lot at the mall. Those door dings are murder on them, too.
From reading the synopsis it seems that it would require the participation/consent of the mobile phone user to allow tracking
FWIW, this tracking is enabled by default in virtually every phone that has the capabiliity of being commercially tracked. The phone user has to recognize that it is enabled and then go through the menus to turn it off. Not a hard thing to do, but like most things, something that is largely overlooked by the masses.
I have exceptionally high cholesterol, too. My last total, untreated, was 406, very high cholesterol runs in my family(<180 is where the docs want you to be, FYI). I also do high impact exercise regularly, and I'm not obese. I too, don't like the idea of being charged more for risk factors that I can't control, at least naturally. However, if there is a generally accepted way to treat such a condition, and they would be willing to drop the premium surcharge if you were able to successfully control whatever was considered unhealthy, I could probably live with that. In some way it might seem counter-intuitive for an insurance company to pay out more money on maintenance drugs and reduce that person's premium because the mitigated that health risk factor, but you need to view it more from the standpoint of being preventative maintenance. One heart attack/stroke and the associated treatment/follow-up costs, if you survive, will certainly cost them lot more than a lifetime supply of Lipitor.
I'm for something like this if a lower premium works as an incentive to choose a healthier lifestyle. If it's something unhealthy, and there's nothing you can do about it, then it would be quite unfair to levy a higher premium. In such a case, the premium no longer work as an incentive.
Of course with my luck, the co-pay for the drugs will be more than what I'd save from a reduced premium.
Slashdot Mirror
Partial zero emission vehicle means that during some portion of time while the vehicle is operating, it does not produce any emissions. Example: The Toyota Prius is a PZEV because when the engine is off and it is operating on its electric motors, it is operating and not producing any emissions. Note that not all hybrids are PZEVs because with some the engine runs constantly.
PZEV is becoming one of those buzzwords that journalists like to latch onto. It's meant to simplify what is being talked about, but taking a literal interpretation without knowing the background makes it rather confusing and a little misleading, in my opinion.
Speaking of buzzwords, I still giggle a little every time I am behind one of those Honda CRV's with the little decal that says "Real-time 4WD". As if someone wants a 4WD vehicle in which they would have to wait 30 minutes for the front axle to start pulling. "Automatic" would be a more appropriate word, but it doesn't have the buzzword effect that "real-time" does.
Yes, I did read my link. Why don't you as well. Go hover your cursor over the top of each of the images.
But I was the FIRST to write that incorrect phrase AND state that imperative. :-D. Nice try, though.
If you're going to use a clichéd expression, at least try to use the correct tense.
cut and dry - wrong
---cut and dried - correct
Please bitchslap the next person you encounter that writes the phrase "for all intensive purposes," thank you.
But their benevolent action of capping it is to keep you from flooding the market and devaluing it...and thus crashing this new market and making your bandwidth worthless. You see, economics 101.
<grin>
I recognized my spelling error after I submitted. Thanks.
So why do we need to electrify and accelerate pairs of sandals? Do they make you shockingly fast at running with them on?
(Yes, I know: TeV = Terra electron Volt)
Start your groaning about a lame joke now...
You're probably correct on this, though I wouldn't be surprised to see someone argue it in court.
Here's a workable Slashdot analogy for this: Just as one shouldn't link an IP address to a person (as the RIAA has tried to do), one shouldn't necessarily link what comes out of a household's sewage pipe to the person that lives there, either.
My point being, just as someone can leech off an unsecured Wi-Fi in a home, someone from outside the household (i.e. visiting friend, relative) could conceivably use the bathroom.
Then again, deployment of this type of surveilance would be kept plenty busy hunting down gross point sources like drug labs that they'd likely not bother to deal with individual drug use.
I guess it also partially depends on which signals you're using. The P-code (military only) is still a better positioning reference over the S-code (civilian use), even with the selective availability turned off (which it has been for about ten years). That's why you have corrections transmitted to augment the GPS satellites (differential GPS transmitters, WAAS, etc.). Yet, even P-code users sometimes use corrections as well.
GPS signals are useable out in space, provided that you have a receiver that will recognize that it's not on Earth (a three point GPS fix generates two possible locations, one on/near the surface of the earth and one 24,000 miles in space, four or more fixes would solve this to some extent). While you can get a fix in space, the quality of that fix will continually degrade the further you get outside the orbits of the satellites. First of all, the satellite geometry starts to become poorer because all the satellites are generally concentrated in one direction, rather than spread out over the "sky". When triangulating with acute angles, the fix tends to be poorer. Compound this with the fact that the GPS satellite antennas are aimed at the Earth's surface. So, satellites that, from the perspective of a spacecraft, that are in front of the Earth will likely have their antennas turned away from the spacecraft. This means that there will be weak or an unusable signal level from them. Satellites that would have their antennas aimed at the spacecraft will be, for the most part, behind Earth, so their signals will be blocked by Earth. Needless to say, GPS would as you alluded to, become pretty useless away from Earth, or at least once you crossed outside of the orbits of the satellites.
Maybe someone should remind him that GPS stands for Global Positioning system, not Galactic Positioning System. <grin>
John goes on about the use of GPS in the control for acceleration for a bit. Understanding that where you have no nearby reference points, such as in space, this may be a good solution. At the same time, you usually don't have anything nearby to worry about crashing into (such as the ground). Although GPS can be very accurate, it often takes more datapoints that can be obtained in a very short timeframe to get that accuracy.
I wonder if there's a reason why they aren't using some means of LASER or RADAR rangefinding when in close proximity to landing for obtaining positioning (altitude) and velocity/acceleration information. The update rate could easily be several orders of magnitude faster than GPS could ever provide...especially since you need two position reports from GPS to find velocity and three to determine acceleration.
Perhaps that yellow liquid was from the technician who pissed his pants when he realized what just happened.
Well, I suppose if you like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. But then again, we haven't identified all of the causes and their extents a this point, so perhaps the best we can do is largely treat problems symptomatically for now.
While no doubt what you suggest as "conservation corps" project would certainly do good in Africa, its effect on climate change would probably be relative to pissing in Lake Superior to raise the water temperature.
Oh, yeah. What is the energy source for these desalinization units? Solar? Unless the lake is really deep, the output might very well evaporate faster than you can make it. Then again, one ginormous pool solar blanket might be the solution. Using a carbon-based fuel would be rather self-defeating of the purpose for doing it in the first place.
Interesting article, though they are using tidal currents and not oceanic currents that are normally induced by thermal convections. Nonetheless, the mechanism for harnessing energy is largely the same.
Wonder if any article similar to this was ever submitted to Slashdot?
Like this...
Mod this down!
Because proper tech journalism is about using buzzwords to sound techy!
If you're an incompetent, technologically ignorant journalist, then you go out and look for some terms that sound appropriate and cool, then include them in your story. Heck, as a journalist, your job is to describe and explain something to the uninformed. Since the uninformed are largely a technologically challenged audience,they'll accept your cool usage of terms, usually considered passé by the real tech crowd, as an insightful look into the sophisticated technical world.
So, if you want to be a cool tech writer, just liberally toss in a couple terms like, nano, blog, cyber, online, real-time, data mining, and Google (the last one especially used as a verb).
<rant>
And each suite license will cost $3,000
Mod me troll if you like, but if Adobe's latest releases of Acrobat reader are any indication of how this conceptual suite will be released, I'd rather take my chances with MS, or even better, open office.
Using Acrobat Reader 8 as a benchmark: Acrobat Reader 8 takes too long to launch, pesters you with some update that usually just adds to the program's bloat of unnecessary features, and to top it off, 8 sometimes "page tears" when you scroll -- a bug that keeps reappearing that prevents things from being displayed properly on several of my machines. Switching tasks or minimize/restore is the only fix I've found so far.
Aside from this any full-blown software from them just seems to be way overpriced to begin with.
No thanks, Adobe
</rant>
TFA doesn't have the specifics, but I am willing to guess that the problem was that the accused was copying the text of articles from site and redistributing that, not passing on the link to the story.
Why the important difference? Copying and redistributing would deny the news publisher of whatever ad revenue they would receive when the reader went directly to their site (and subsequently were served the ads). Something similar could be said about a newspaper/magazine clipping.
Something like this is, of course, all about money, so my speculation is that the causation is the loss of ad revenue.
From: Mayo Clinic Article 05 Dec 2005
It has been known for quite some time that it's the mechanical action that does an important part of the work for disinfecting your hands. The water and soap just help the process by carrying dirt and bacteria away. This is part of the reason that you don't see hand sanitizers allowed as a replacement for proper hand washing at restaurants and other commercial food prep areas.
When I saw those ugly yellow frames along with the yellow shirt and plastered comb-over, the first thought that crossed my mind was he's gunning for a role in one of those Vytorin commercials (you know, where they compare a person with a goofy wardrobe with some entree). The question is, what dish would they match him up with? A banana split?
So what happens a year from now when hypothetically they can show statistics that they've reduced crime by 5 - 15% while not increasing the use of department resources (i.e. patrol manpower, overtime, detectives)? Wouldn't that be rather solid evidence that it's working? If this data mining really is just fluff to make the public feel safer, then the numbers of actual committed crimes should show whether or not it's working (and if it isn't, then abandon it and try something else).
As for revealing what they found, I'd have to agree with several other comments that the police haven't tipped their entire hand as to what they've uncovered. Besides, you need to remember that the results are dynamic and that by implementing a strategy (which they've also not fully revealed) that strategy may change how criminal activities might shake out during the next operational period (i.e week, month). In essense, what they tell you this week is likely to be somewhat obsolete by next week. Also keep in mind that most of the crime they are trying to prevent are ones of simple opportunity, not necessarily ones of careful planning (like a jewelery/art heist).
To me, this is a prime example of a government entity making an attempt at trying to work smarter rather than harder. Rather than go and ask for another tax levy to fund more officers, squad cars and related equipment, why not try to make what the police already have as resources more effective and efficient? Save the taxpayer a little money and potentially give them a greater return on their tax money.
I think you'd better go back and check on that advice.
Refusal to take the a test is equivalent to a fail result or considered a default admission of guilt in many states. Therefore you will be charged with DWI and you will be found guilty (by default). If this were not the case, you'd have a large majority of people refusing to take the tests in hopes of getting off the hook for DWI.
I believe what your lawyer friend's advice might have been in regard to was the sentencing you would receive. If you were obscenely drunk, and the police could prove this to the court, the court might choose to impose stricter sentence. If all that could be offered was that you were arrested for DWI by default in which they had little/no evidence to the extent of intoxication, you might stand a chance of getting a more lenient sentence than if they could prove you were stumbling, piss-in-your-pants drunk. Either case, you're almost certainly going to get convicted on DWI.
Perhaps. I think what you're really seeing is a group of mothers who are taking a fanatical charge on the issue because they've lost a loved one to drunk driving. Drinking is the root evil of drunk driving, at least to them. The apparent inclusion of just drinking probably stems from underage drinking. Drunk drivers aren't just old men, they're also high school kids who engage in underage drinking and then subsequently kill themselves and their friends riding in the car with them.
I understand where their fervor comes from. Losing a child (even an adult one) produces some very intense emotions that need to get focused somewhere. Are some of MADD's assertions lower limits and stiffer penalties a bit draconian? Sure they are, but that's to be expected with that much emotional energy behind their campaign. The stronger the feelings, the more absolutist the demands become.
The biggest problem of all is that there is no true metric of impairment. BAC is about the closest one can get, which we all know results in widely different levels of impairment in different people with similar BAC levels. Compounding the problem is that on one side of the limit are you safe to drive and the other side unsafe. It's not a hard line, but a curve like everything else in the world. So, in order to get the most effective results, one would try to include as much of that curve into their cause as possible, which would favor absolute sobriety behind the wheel.
I have sort of wondered what MADD would do if they theoretically were successful in achieving their end goal (zero drunk drinking). Would they disband, or would their mission change? Mothers Against Distracted Driving?
Just be careful not to get into a fender bender, them heat shield tiles are awfully damned expensive to replace. And don't forget to park at the far end of the lot at the mall. Those door dings are murder on them, too.
FWIW, this tracking is enabled by default in virtually every phone that has the capabiliity of being commercially tracked. The phone user has to recognize that it is enabled and then go through the menus to turn it off. Not a hard thing to do, but like most things, something that is largely overlooked by the masses.
I have exceptionally high cholesterol, too. My last total, untreated, was 406, very high cholesterol runs in my family(<180 is where the docs want you to be, FYI). I also do high impact exercise regularly, and I'm not obese. I too, don't like the idea of being charged more for risk factors that I can't control, at least naturally. However, if there is a generally accepted way to treat such a condition, and they would be willing to drop the premium surcharge if you were able to successfully control whatever was considered unhealthy, I could probably live with that. In some way it might seem counter-intuitive for an insurance company to pay out more money on maintenance drugs and reduce that person's premium because the mitigated that health risk factor, but you need to view it more from the standpoint of being preventative maintenance. One heart attack/stroke and the associated treatment/follow-up costs, if you survive, will certainly cost them lot more than a lifetime supply of Lipitor.
I'm for something like this if a lower premium works as an incentive to choose a healthier lifestyle. If it's something unhealthy, and there's nothing you can do about it, then it would be quite unfair to levy a higher premium. In such a case, the premium no longer work as an incentive.
Of course with my luck, the co-pay for the drugs will be more than what I'd save from a reduced premium.