I prefer God's one true screw: The Robertson.

Where L/100km makes an infinite amount of sense is when comparing the fuel efficiency of different vehicles. What is better, upgrading a 35mpg car to 42mpg, or upgrading a 15mpg SUV to one that gets 20mpg? If we look at this in L/100km, it becomes pretty damned easy. The 35mpg car gets 6.72L/100km. Upgrading it to a car that gets 42mpg will mean you're now burning 5.6L/100km, saving approximately 1.1L for every 100km you travel. Conversely, the 15mpg SUV gets 15.68L/100km, while its 20mpg replacement burns 11.76L/100km, a savings of 3.92L for every 100km. So even in the first case, despite increasing your mileage by 7mpg, you're only saving 1.1L, while in the second case you're only increasing your milage by 5mpg, but saving 3.92L.

The fundamental reality here is that for most people, the only time they ever look at the fuel efficiency figures is when they're shopping for a new vehicle. Specifying the fuel usage in L/100km (or hell, Gallons/100mi) provides a much more accurate and useful comparison. The easy solution to your problem is to just publish a number for range. I know that my Jetta gets 725km per tank in city driving, and ~1000 or so in highway driving.

They do this so they can have long term communications. If they were doing pure space to ground, you'd need a massive network of ground stations to pickup the station as it goes by. Because the altitude is so low, the patch of ground that the station can see at any one time is actually pretty small (I've bound signals off the ISS's APRS system and hit Saskatchewan from BC, but that's pushing it). This is hard enough on land, but never mind the fact that much of the earth it flies over is made out of water. :)

Instead, they go up to the TDRSS satellites (also used by the shuttle when it was flying, Hubble, and various other low orbit satellites). This means that the station only needs to hand off 3 or 4 times an orbit, rather than every 10 minutes, and means that you only need 3 ground stations to support it (Any given Geosynchronous satellite can see approximately 120 degrees of the earth).

There are gaps in coverage, but not actually due to the TDRSS constellation per se, rather it's because of where the antenna onboard the station is located. In certain parts of the orbit, the antenna's view of the satellite is blocked by variou sstructures onboard the ISS (They can't shoot through the solar wings, heat exchangers, etc...)

When all you have is a hammer...

The main reason for using Thunderbolt over 10Gb Ethernet is that one has a fairly significant protocol overhead (Ethernet) while the other is primarily a bus protocol, and operates at a much lower level than Ethernet does. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, each has their application.

Actually, the Martian atmosphere is a huge hinderance, and one of the reasons why so many missions have failed. The fundamental problem is that Mars has just enough atmosphere that you need to deal with it (heat shields, atmospheric entry, etc...) but not enough to actually be useful for anything. This is how you end up with rube-goldbergesque landing systems like what MSL used.

Landing on a planetary body without an atmosphere is actually much simpler, as you can just do a pure rocket descent. May not be as efficient, but it is certainly easier, hell they landed the NEAR Shoemaker probe on the asteroid it was orbiting, and it wasn't even designed to land (of course, the gravity on an asteroid is weak enough that you could throw a baseball on an escape trajectory, but that's another matter). The most obvious example, of course, is the Moon landings. The moon has effectively no atmosphere of any kind, yet the incredibly lightweight and delicate LEM was able to land on the surface and return to orbit with aplomb.

As I mentioned above, the real point of the wifi link is NOT for sharing the photos. It's to remote control the camera so that you can either control it without touching it (say when doing astro-photography, where simply touching the camera will throw your whole system out of whack), doing tasks that you can't do hands on (Focus micro-adjustments, highly useful when doing product photography), or controlling the camera when it is placed in an otherwise inaccessible location.

The other main use for the wireless dump capability is in the studio... Mom and dad are getting pictures taken of the kids & dog, and this capability allows the photog to dump the photos in real-time to a neighbouring computer, so they can see exactly what's coming out. In either case, the camera itself isn't typically "on the internet"

The (wrong) assumption by Canon is that the camera will only be used on private networks, since in professional situations, that's normally what you would have anyhow.

Yes, and optically, the 10-22 is much easier to make, and requires less precision than the 16-35. You're also comparing a consumer grade lens (the 10-22) with L glass. They're two completely different classes of lenses, with completely different performance metrics. It's not just the focal length, but the resolution, flare control (especially at these focal lengths), build quality, and materials.

Sure, but you also fail to realize the point of the wifi/networking for the Canon DSLRs. It isn't just about dumping your photos off the camera in real-time, it also provides full remote control of the camera. For the average consumer, this doesn't mean much, but in certain parts of the professional world, this is a huge deal. Take, for example, an architectural photographer taking a picture of a tight space (say the inside of a bathroom). Remote contorl over the camera lets them stuff the camera into a corner, or some inconspicuous spot, and then set the exposure, focus, etc... from outside the room, thus keeping them out of the picture.

Same thing goes for product photography, though more due to the fine control over the focus you get. Using the remote capture application, you can micro-nudge the focus and see the results live on the display. It's an incredible advance over film, and even earlier digital cameras. Admittedly, most of this can be done over USB, but Wifi/network is the natural progression of this.

In BC, at least, there's no pump and store capability at any of the hydro-electric plants, mainly because there's a) no need, and b) no source of water to pump. The dams are all on rivers, and when the water flows out of them, it does what water always does, and goes down the river. The flip side to this is that the catchment area for the reservoir is so huge that it's not that big of a deal.

Nuclear power can't stand alone, at least with current reactor designs, because their output can't be ramped up or down very quickly. Many areas of North America (California is an example I know best) exhibit extreme daytime load peaks, followed by deep night-time lulls, due to the air conditioning load.

Years ago, during the California power crisis, BC Hydro made a killing due to this effect. During the daytime, they would run their hydro-electric plants flat out, at completely unsustainable levels, and sell the power to California utilities at almost usurious rates. At night, they would shut the hydro plants down, allow the water to pool up again behind the dam, and buy dirt cheap nuclear power from California.

The real point is that while Nuclear can work for the baseline load on the grid, current designs simply aren't nimble enough to meet the peaks and valleys they would face in normal day to day operation. They need to be complimented with some other power source that is more nimble.

And what if you need to split a quart 100 ways? then you're pooched worse than if you were using metric.

In my apartment, there is a recycling bin right underneath the mail boxes. I check my mail about once a week, in a typical week, 90% goes straight into recycling, 8% is immediately shredded, and the last 2% is actually useful.

Bzzt.. Wrong. In the Canadian system, at least, the therapeutic decision rests purely between the Doctor and the patient. The only thing the federal government does is dictate to the provinces that "thou shalt have a public healthcare system" and provide national regulatory tasks, similar to the FDA and so forth in the US. Hospitals themselves are operated by local health authorities, and Doctors are typically private businesses.

In effect, our system is a single payer insurance system. Doctors do not work for the government, rather as an organization they negotiate a fee schedule with the province, and are paid on a per fee basis. The government can't force doctors to work anywhere (witness the problem with attacting doctors to rural areas in the country), nor can they dictate what course of treatment the doctor must use.

Eh... we flew around Baghdad with the doors open... Acute airborne lead poisoning is pretty dangerous too... ;)

This is also why I carry two phones, but by my own choice. I could use my corporate phone for everything, but I'd rather keep my personal life and my work life as separate as possible. Two separate phone numbers, two separate email accounts/clients, etc etc etc... Also, the mental separation is huge. When I go on vacation, I leave my corporate phone on my desk.