I worked for a cellular location company a decade ago, and the system was mostly used by US cell phone companies to meet the e911 US government requirements.
The (entirely reasonable, at least at the time) most telling requirement was 95% of calls needed to be located within X meters (50 IIRC) of the real location.
The other 5%? They could be on the moon.
Perhaps things have tightened up, but physics prevents it from being 100% (never mind all the system changes always occurring - new towers, new equipment, new staff, ...).
End result for those in the know: Use a land line, if you have a choice. If you don't, using a cell phone is still better than shouting in the woods.
Another interesting point: most calls were from car wrecks, and these were usually reported multiple times (like ~40 911 calls per wreck from different people - average from metropolitan area).
So playing the odds, its a safe system. But there will always be unlucky 911 callers - especially out in the boonies.
Interesting article - especially the idea of a continued oral tradition in pure mathematics when it comes to the why and what good is it as opposed to the rigorous styles used in the formal papers.
This type of system would seem to be necessary but not sufficient to achieve a technological singularity.
I'd love it more if there were a "kinda figure out the normal pace of output and change color when it varies by %" mode.
This would make it a time derivative color changer, perhaps.
Use case: are we in the lunch rush yet, or just poking along at our usual lazy morning pace.
It could also mark out delays in expected periodic output that sometimes misses a beat (showing a bug in real time software that isn't, quite)
So each year ~5M new cars hit the streets,
at an extra $140 each,
so the cost is ~$700M/yr.
There are 210 deaths/yr by backing over,
assume these prevent all 210 (they won't, certainly not until most of the old cars are off the road),
this means each life is worth $3.3M, minimum.
Cool.
But is there a way to invest $700M/yr that will save more than 210 lives/year?
I agree - if some tiny % of Apple's 80k employees are poking Samsung in the eye via lawyers, no way the other ~80k employees are somehow useless or starved for attention or money. Especially since the $160B cash hoard implies each employee could have ~$2M at their disposal - without using any credit.
Seriously, even small companies can do more than one thing at a time - why can't a big company.
So lets disrupt a bit:
1. Identify companies with liquidity, significant exposure to earthquake damage (down to the liquification zone offices)
2. short their stock
3. Wait for the 99.7% chance of earthquake by 2038 (more math to follow)
4. profit!
Warren Buffet might be interested, since he's taken up betting against idiots. YC application, here I come!
So I'm typing this on a name brand Windows Machine, certainly "over the hill" in both hardware and software.
Its sound worked when it was new, then stopped working. Booting Linux (Suse of a certain older vintage), and sound just works. I'm sure I could spend more time futzing about about with it and it would work, but I've given up after about a day.
Pleas, please, please I am begging the Windows community as a whole and the HP community in particular; get your act together. Really, this is embarrassing.
Even if title quote is true, what percentage of the population needs to know this (to live better, work better, act in some different fashion)? 5%? 1%? less?
In other words, it is knowledge of trivia for most people. Perfectly fine, if you go in for that sort of thing (and I do),
but why look down your nose at those who don't?
Of course, knowing the scientific method can change how you act, but so can understanding lots of things. Finite time and attention. Or be a hater.
<sarcasm>Please, lets all discourse in a monotone, with strict rules and public shaming for non-adherence.</sarcasm>
(trying to get my karma below -25)