Actually, it's a rather common practice. Assumption is that with the exception of rare cases (i.e. Chechens), KGB (a.k.a. FSB) does not talk to FBI. So they are played against each other: Don't want NSA reading your stuff - tunnel to mail.ru (or such), don't want FSB - tunnel to gmail. Don't like both reading the same message - try Asians (and btw, you have some serious problems my friend.) I would not go with Europeans though - there were some nasty scandals in the past (even with Swiss of all nations)

Do those who defend these programs understand that they're crippling the country's immune system? The tools they deploy are extremely efficient at subverting, nipping in the bud 'undesirable' popular movements (indispensable tool for keeping US democratic). Given well documented (COINTELPRO) things FBI tried to pull against civil rights and untiwar movements, argument that they are not doing it now does not wash - they did it before and they WILL do it again.

BMW says that panels designed for quick replacement. Like snap on/ snap off. And considering that those are not carbon fiber but cf reinforced plastic, they shouldn't be that expensive (relative to labor costs of traditional body work.)

Just a reminder - Boeing 787 is a very advanced aircraft not only because of that carbon fiber thingy, but also because they've swapped almost all actuators from hydraulic to electrical ones - that's new (first?) for civilian aircraft. Electric generators are sitting right on engines shafts (so no bleeding == more fuel efficient design).

As a result Boeing is still chasing all the electrical (and tightly tied to them computer) bugs. Not very surprising that is.

I think Elon does not tell the whole story here. I suspect they simply explore different possibilities for business expansion (just like Google does).

I speculate they will introduce a battery lease program: you buy the car (for, like, 30% less) and you lease battery(ies). In such case they do not need to track batteries - just keeping the log of discharges customer's car performed is enough.

So, on the balance we have individual privacy (with huge implications) and FBI's investigating ability (let's face it – that's very important for our society too).

What about this scheme: NSA collects everything they can put their paws on, but people's records get encrypted right away (separate public key for each individual); keys for decryption go to escrow of some kind. So when FBI wants the data on a particular individual, they present the case to a judge who unseals the data if he sees it fit.

So, no fishing expeditions, no witch hunts (everything court related is on the record), and safe against leaks.

Do those morons at NSA realize how much damage they inflict on the country just by collecting and storing all that shit?

First, parts of that stuff can be leaked (the same way those ppt files got out - in practice it's impossible to guarantee absence of covert channels)

Second, do they even realize that they have Russian/French/Israeli/WhatHaveYou moles, who are hell bent on getting (and most probably already there) access to that thing (at very least to find known targets connections; blackmail targets; influence targets etc.)?

STUPIDITY!

And you haven't bothered to reread what YOU wrote. Second line: "energy density", last line: "power density". These are different things you know... Man up and apologize.

Even if this is a real breakthrough (not one of those "breakthroughs" in battery technology we hear about every other week), there is the problem: power density.They don't mention what it is, but given that the voltage is half of lithium - we can deduce that it sucks.

So at very least, that creates complications for electric car's design (like a need for a super-capacitor or such), plus charging time would suck too.

May be that they still use discrete FETs, it's just control circuitry is on die now. (I'm speculating)

It amuses me that in this day and age there are people who don't understand the value of information.

Look, data does not exist in it's own universe. There are practically always ways to crosscheck, merge with data from other sources, do all kinds of clever shit.

For this case, from the top of my head: check peoples movements, check for activity correlation between different companies (indication of an upcoming big deal), assess company's health, etc, etc.

I did try deadline. Subjectively it was worse. But there are too many things conflated - number (and kind) of disk operations depends on the filesystem and its parameters, flash drives are often (more as a rule) funky, usage profiles are different and god knows what else...

System would start to stutter when a lot of I/O is happening. Larger "transaction sizes" are needed to mitigate that. Usually an indication of a high latency environment.

But I think in my case that's mostly due to USB and not btrfs.

Installed Xubuntu 12.10 last October(ish) on USB2 stick (jetflash 32G) with Btrfs (only /boot had EXT2 partition, no swap)

Reason: 24/7 machine. It's a notebook - always spinning harddrive is a drag: spins up cooling fun; so I went solid state for primary OS drive.Needed filesystem that spreads wear and does checksums - hence Btrfs.

Usage - downloading stuff (to the stick itself, not the harddrive) plus some NASing. Data volume: wrapped around those 32gigs few times already.

Observations so far: no problems at all.

Other details: Had to play with I/O scheduler (I think settled on CFQ. Interestingly, NOOP sucked). Had to install hdidle (I think) otherwise couldn't force sda to go to sleep (bug (?)).