Our driver training isn't the problem, the problem is we're not enforcing the laws already on the books. How many states do NOT have a distracted driver law? I doubt there's even one.

The problem is that enforcing traffic laws other than speeding and red lights is difficult and expensive and police have transitioned from community service to revenue generation (and not entirely by their own choice). Since their primary activity is bringing in revenue for the local government they concentrate on the easiest ways to do that and ignore what is less profitable.

In addition a politician won't be seen as "doing something" if he says the police need to enforce existing laws. He'll be seen as uncaring. To be re-elected and continue to gain power and influence a politician needs to continue creating new legislation, therefore we get reams of laws that could be replaced with: "enforce what is already on the books"

Exactly. When you follow too closely you are saying that your time is more important than the other person's property, health and even life. If your vehicle is significantly larger than the one you are following, it's the same has holding a loaded and cocked weapon to their head.* This is what the bus drivers were doing by following too closely. On top of that they weren't paying attention.

*A theory I came up with after years of motorcycle commuting in the Silicon Valley.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to measure output per capita rather than per country? From a rough estimate that puts the US and Canada neck and neck at about 2.5x the per capita output of China.

Yes you can, it's called packet radio and at higher frequencies you can get decent bandwidth. However, FCC requirements are that all data be sent in the clear, you can't do encrypted traffic.

Another cost is wastage. As trace and space get toward the manufacturer's minimum recommended numbers their yield goes down and therefore their price goes up.

And asking for answers from Broadcom if you're not buying millions of their chips is likely to get you shot for treason.

Generally if the small caps are close to the package and tied to planes (I'm assuming there are planes) with short thick ties to reduce inductance you can get by with it just fine. The bulk caps can be quite a ways away as long as they are also tied directly to the planes. We're running some very high speed stuff this way without problems. Xilinx has some good info on bypass caps and how they can be placed in their Spartan 6 docs.

If there's no planes then you have to have the relatively thick tracks already for current carrying capability, but the inherent inductance could possible give you an edge in filtering as long as you're not yanking the individual pin levels out of tolerance.

Actually looks pretty slack with lots of space. However to make it inexpensive requires much more care in the design rules and routing. Placing and routing a board with tight component clearances and tight trace and space is easy and expensive. Taking the same components on a small board from 0.1/0.1mm trace and space to 0.15/0.15mm trace and space takes a lot of work, but can significantly reduce the cost to manufacture.

From an initial view, the biggest cost adder I see is components on the solder side. There don't seem to be too many on the bottom side and with a bit more work it could probably be made into a single sided board. I'm working on a cost sensitive board right now, and one of the big things we've done to cut cost is make sure all components are on the top side. (Low cost is relative, this BOM is many many times the projected price of the R-Pi.)

Many Steam games will run on Mac.

SecureFX looks interesting, but I like Expandrive for both Mac and Windows.

You mean CSI lied to me?!

Oddly enough the worst flight I've ever been on was a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Seattle. It was booked as a United or some other US carrier, but provided by Lufthansa. Service was horrible, the beer was American swill, only a few of the bathrooms worked.

Probably my favourite carrier would be KLM, but it's been 20+ years and I don't know how they are now. The best recent carrier I've been on was Air China, the plane was a bit older, but the service was outstanding.

2 Chronicles 4:2