Poor, poor Morsi, what'cha gonna do? al-Sisi's haunting you, hey, what'cha gonna do?

Low cost? Have you seen the prices for atomic refill cartridges for this thing? And you thought ink jet ink was overpriced!

Energy is energy. The difference between an explosive detonation and compressed air being released from a ruptured container is the amount of time it takes for it to escape. An atomic warhead lets it all out within milliseconds (the historic Trinity test showed a 300 meter fireball at 25 milliseconds, and that was estimated to be 84 terajoules.) A ruptured pressurized tank would let the energy out much more slowly than a detonation, but still very fast. And we're talking about petajoules of energy.

Let's say there was a crack that led to the surface, and the air started escaping. It would quickly erode the walls of the crack, opening a progressively larger hole. At some point the surrounding earth would be weakened and give way, releasing the bulk of the air in a very short amount of time. I'm guessing that once the hole is big enough, it would likely take less than a second for the bulk of the air to escape.

It might not be nearly as powerful as the shockwave generated by a hydrogen bomb, but it might be close to the destructive power of an atomic bomb.

207 megawatt-hours times 24 hours/day times 40 days represents the storage of over 7 petajoules of energy. By comparison, a one megaton hydrogen bomb releases about 4 petajoules. That means this chamber will be continuously containing the equivalent energy of a city-leveling nuclear blast. It better be really big, because it's going to be really stressed. It's not like salt is nature's pre-made engineered compressed gas cylinder.

And what happens if the salt chamber ruptures and the air finds its way to the surface? This would go off like a compressed air volcano. I would be afraid to live or work within 10 miles of this thing.

Ah, I think I understand what you're getting at. The core concept I think you're missing is that there is no "car computer". There isn't a single central computer running everything, with just wires to remote sensors and actuators. Instead, the car is built from of dozens of distributed systems, all interconnected via the CAN bus. The engine has its own computer, and its tasks include firing spark plugs, monitoring engine sensors, etc. The ABS has its own computer, and all it does is to monitor and modulate the brakes. The dashboard is its own computer, and simply displays data coming from the various other systems. And the infotainment system is its own computer, and is hideously complex, and does no end of crap. I believe my car has over 140 individual systems on the bus.

Each device on the bus has an independent processor that does whatever the device is supposed to do, a CAN controller, and a transceiver that isolates the device from the bus (thus preventing a wonky stereo from shutting down the engine.) Some devices transmit data constantly, such as the engine controller continuously sending RPM and exhaust gas temperature. Some devices only transmit data when they do something "interesting", like the seat belt detectors or the tire pressure sensors. Others don't normally transmit much data, but instead read from other sources of data and do something with it. The remote control mirrors are an example of a device that doesn't send much of anything, but constantly listens for other information.

Each system works independently, talking to and from the bus as required. The bus protocol arbitrates amongst itself to figure out who is sending the highest priority message, so things like airbag deployment can take precedence over changing the radio station. The CAN bus is that standard interface you were asking about.

The "infotainment" system has expanded beyond sound and is becoming the center of control for things like climate and navigation. When you tap the "A/C" icon on the screen to turn on the air conditioning, it'll send an "calling for cabin A/C" message over the bus. But it's not in charge of your car. Your car will continue to work even if someone pries it out of the dashboard, (as long as they didn't steal the security system, too.) You maybe won't be able to adjust the climate, you won't have a satnav system, but your car will still work. And you could replace that panel with a different panel. The horrible "MyTouch" control panel is an option in Ford cars (unfortunately standard on their higher end packages), but you can get simpler option packages that don't include it, and instead have a panel with actual tactile controls. Both panels use the same CAN bus and interface to talk to the rest of the car's systems.

Yeah, this guy couldn't make it past the third sentence without tagging himself as technologically illiterate. I can't believe he tried to cite GPS as a benefit of the internet.

I fundamentally agree with you ten-million percent.... but to be fair critical systems connected to the internet is not a an easily solved technological problem.... and that's because it's not a technological problem at all. It's a people problem. If you can figure out a fix for people problems then there's about a half-dozen Nobel Prizes soon to arrive at your doorstep.

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isn't the way insurance works by spreading cost?

What you describe sounds like a good first step (pull people at lower risk into the insurance pool).

The prices are not set because that's what they need to be to keep service, they prices are currently set to as high as possible. You only need to look at the profitability of the industry to see that. A large part of the reason it works (keeping prices to high) is that there are not enough practitioners in the US (look at doctors per capita for developed countries). It's a market, but it's a strongly manipulated market, as those that benefit from the lack of doctors are the ones that set the numbers.

Agreed, there's a lot of greedy doctors working to artificially limit the supply of doctors (look at how many they (the doctors) allow per capita in the US vs other countries). We pretend that the US healthcare system is a market, but it's clearly not, it's regulated (both self and by the government) to be specifically expensive.

Technology is making an individual mandate a requirement for a functional system going forward.

As more things become testable, less people will be incentivised to be in a group at all, this will drive up the cost for those at risk for various diseases. Insurance works best if everyone participates, medical tests will reduce participation.

If the $8k/year/citizen number is correct, it still seems likely that the UK is less expensive per a taxpayer.

Additionally, for the 16% uncovered in the US system, I'd assume the UK is definitely better. Also, having had a few different insurance plans in the US, I'd point out that the UK system was better than 2 out of the 3 plans I've had. It is true that for a small portion of the population the US system is dramatically better, and many it's slightly better though. This is also why the US system is making moves more towards a system like the French, or the Swiss, where the coverage is 100%, the cost (per citizen, which should proportionally be about per tax payer) is $5k, vs the $8k in the US (and as good as low end insurance is here in the US at a minimum).

In my car, the stereo system connects to the phone via Bluetooth. There is no other independent wireless communication system available to the car. At startup, after connecting to my phone, the display announces "911 Assist enabled". My stereo needs to know when the airbags have been deployed so it can call 911 on my behalf. Thus they need to be connected.

In your car, there may be a more subtle reason. Perhaps a phone interface is an option it didn't come with, but it is pre-wired to support it. Maybe the gas gauge is tied to the nav system to highlight gas stations when you have less than 1/8 tank of fuel remaining. Maybe the nav system feeds the vehicle data recorder. Maybe your car has warning sounds that play through the audio system. Or maybe the volume control is tied to the speedometer to keep the music level appropriate for the road noise.

I don't know what your particular car does or is capable of. But there could be a dozen obscure reasons the car could want to talk to the satnav or audio systems.

Tape? Why not buy a mounting kit? http://www.ipadandiphonestuff.com/colby-ipad-steering-wheel-mount-p-188.html

Yep. A touch screen has no place in a car. They can be installed very nicely, even by an amateur, but they will always be a stupid idea because drivers are humans that have two eyeballs, both facing forward.

Because they're all integrated. Your car's radar can detect that the vehicle in front of you has suddenly hit the brakes, it can sound an alarm and blink a light on the windshield warning you of a road hazard immediately ahead, the engine telemetry can talk to your ABS braking systems telling them that the car is still moving even though the brakes have locked up, your crash sensors can detect an accident, your seat belt pre-tensioners and airbag deployment systems help protect the cabin occupants in case of an accident, your entertainment system can tell your cell phone to call a number, and your telemetry system records the events. Tying them all together permits your car to help you avoid accidents, protect you in case of an impact, call an emergency services number in the event of a crash, and can even help prove to a court that you were traveling only 5 MPH and had applied the brakes two seconds before you were struck.

There are safety designs in place. The different systems tie to the CAN bus through a fairly simple and robust chip that implements the protocols, which helps insulate and isolate a faulty device from overrunning the bus. There are often multiple CAN buses in a car, with engine management and safety being isolated from cabin entertainment systems. The CAN bus protocol has a priority mechanism, where lower numbered devices take priority over higher number devices - safety systems, such as ABS, crash detection and airbag deployment, are the lowest numbers, security systems like door locks have higher numbers, and the whiz-bang gadgetry of your stereo has the highest numbers.

Furthermore, your ABS system is an active driver assistance system, but it's not your means of braking. If it fails, the hydraulics still connect your brake pedals to your wheels, and you can still maintain control of the car. The airbags are just one component of an overall safety package, so if they fail, the seat belt pre-tensioners might still work. Even if the pre-tensioners also fail, the seat belts themselves still offer protection. The steering wheel is designed to collapse in the event you hit it with your body. The body is designed with crumple zones to absorb impacts.

What they've done is to combine these pieces that have known failure rates of one per tens or hundreds of millions of miles driven, and used them to protect you in the case of a serious accident, which they know happens once per hundred thousand miles driven. The chances of the systems working together to keep you safer are much higher than the chances that they'll all fail at the moment you need them the most.