Nuclear power plant explodes

What's the deal, Rich? Are you a corporate shill for Popular Science? Promises were made, promises were broken. I intend to hold them (or is it you?) to account.

You ought to try being a bitter old man driving in the neighborhood of the Empire State Building. THAT will really put a frown on you :-)

hovercraft:

Not exactly a "jet" pack... more like a "ducted fan" pack; but still pretty cool:

There's this, slowly becoming available 15 years after I prototyped it:

integrates your GPS position with those of everyone around you and gives you the God's Eye View of the airspace, and the computer can warn you of another aircraft on a potentially intersecting course from any angle. It accepts and displays other data such as weather, terrain obstacles and NOTAMS from multiple sources. At least that was the intended plan. I only built the radios and them moved on to TCAS is the current system: Here is an autonomous ground vehicle project I worked on: There was an NTSB project that uses the SCA (elevator music) subcarrier on car FM radios for a simpler version of centralized automatic vehicle control. I built the decoders but the project didn't get far for some reason. I think it could have limited speed to even out perturbances in heavy traffic, IIRC it set the speed on your cruise control which doesn't override driver input but makes not following orders annoying. I'm not sure what the effect would be if it involuntarily sped up passive-aggressive drivers doing 40 in the fast lane.

jsw

Have you seen the new WiFi based systems, Jim? They are really something but as a recent test with actual vehicles for sale showed, hackable! Even remotely, which was the test.

It wasn't hard to brainstorm a dozen ways to make them go wrong. Driver situational awareness is terrible now WITHOUT auto pilots. Notice how many people are driving into trucks, bridges, rivers etc on straight dry roads?

jsw

I just thought it was funny that a core system was taken over by a guy quite a distance away with a lap top computer. They got into the ECM module and could have programmed the vehicles being tested to do just about anything.

Eventually, vehicles will all be "talking" to each other and using that data for a useful purpose. Why wouldn't you do that? I can't wait to hear all the guys my age crabbing about it though. LOL

, clean power,

Tom, I take great exception to that statement. THIS liberal does not exist to exploit anyone. If all social problems were to go away - and by that, for example, I mean that the hungry are fed, not killed - I would be happy to stop fighting the fight to feed them.

I suppose that you also think that doctors have secret plans to keep everyone sick because, according to your logic, doctors don't make money if everyone is healthy - they exist to exploit sick people.

What I see is a fatal multicar crash there was no way the controller could avoid, a Kobayashi Maru scenario, being hashed out in court in front of the dumbest jurors the lawyers could select.

Such accidents aren't that uncommon here if a truck jacknifes while dodging a car spinning on an icy spot at rush hour. The snowbanks prevent following cars from evading off the pavement.

I also worked as test engineer on a government antilock brake project for semis that was abandoned when no company could make it work well enough.

jsw

Sperry? I worked on a sensor for this years back.

Mainly the GM suppliers. The wheel sensors were fine, it was more of a specification and systems engineering issue. That was before digital ABS.

jsw

Yeah, that was the stuff I worked on. Borg-Warner was building the entire system - I think. That was a long time ago. A lifetime really.

It didn't help a bit that the only electronic device in a car up to that point was the radio; the new engineers they hired lacked practical experience in a messy and difficult operating environment. ( I came from maintaining Army field communications gear.). Remember the Packard Connector with an operating life of 5 disconnects?

The thermal chamber we built to stress-test HEI modules essentially duplicated lighting off a fighter jet and climbing to the stratosphere, or starting a plow truck in Alaska and ramming it full- throttle into a snowbank.

jsw

eap, clean power,

George, to all of that, I say, "It's about time." But that's not what I object to in Tom's post. What I object to, specifically, is this phrase: "... and liberals exist to exploit victimhood " That is nonsense.

Perhaps if it were to rephrased as "...The leaders on the extreme right say that liberals..." Otherwise, I stand by every word I wrote.

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FWIW, there have been several incarnations of Tom over the years. One thing that hangs on throughout is his delight at provoking liberals.

Do not expect an honest word to come out of his keyboard. You never know what he actually believes. Take that for what it's worth, and you'll save yourself some grief.

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I remember the FMVSS 121 effort well. It was about a year into the project that I discovered that the whole thing was doomed. Basically I went to the big SAE convention in Detroit, and had conversations with several of the engineers in other companies that were also working on FMVSS 121. Even company including the one I worked for was planning on about 50% market share, for a quick total [I didn't talk to engineers of every company] of about 300% of market share.

IIRC this was an effort spearheaded by NHTSA Administrator Joan Claybrook and not based on much if any scientific/engineering input.

-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

I don't write heavy-duty software, only get involved for debugging and testing. Then usually the safeguards are off because they interfere with monitoring. For example one system let me look at the current value of every system variable. That's a lot of extra data to process and transmit.

A processor like the PIC has security or fuse bits that block outside access to the code when blown, but you need to be able to read and write it during development. If someone can download their own code they can take control, at least until the techs hunt them down like an animal. We only pretend to be polite and civilized.

jsw

hovercraft:

>

So, it's a personal vendetta? I've just told you that every promise that you're whining about has been fulfilled - are you just waiting for somebody else to buy the stuff _for_ you?

Thanks, Rich