You raise interesting points about insurance. The question, though, is whether insurance is intended to protect us from our own bad behavior. I would say it is not.
First off, insurance is all about the process of risk splitting, taking a large population and dividing it into sub-populations based on riskiness, then pricing accordingly. If you smoke, you'll pay more for life insurance because the likelihood of your behavior causing an earlier death is high. If you sky dive, same deal.
Habitual speeding is an indicator of higher likelihood to file accident claims, therefore speeding tickets have always led to higher insurance premiums. Accidents themselves are a predictor of further accidents, so that too will raise your rates.
The group benefit of insurance, to the extent there is one, should be for alleviating risks which are not of our own making. Catastrophic health crises, for example, that a normal person would be unable to pay for, can be pooled amongst a large enough group that each of us pays only a small fraction. I realize that in health insurance we each also subsidize bad behaviors (I pay more because people in my company smoke or skydive) but it's not why I buy medical insurance. I buy medical insurance so that if I or one of my family members has a medical catastrophe we can afford to address it.
As a driver with a very clean record, I'd prefer to buy insurance from a company that risk splits. There's no incentive for me to want to pay twice as much just to subsidize the risky behavior of a habitual speeder who can't learn to use their cell phone headset.
That speeder, in turn, has an incentive to clean up his act because doing so will earn him lower insurance rates.
The more insurance companies charge people directly for their controllable risk behaviors, the cheaper insurance will be as a whole. It might be more $$ for the few risky people, but over time paying for that risk will cause enough of them to reduce their risky behaviors that in the end the entire amount spent on insurance will decline.
As one of Yaya's idiots who opted, afer careful shopping, for the Honda built-in NAV I can tell you it was well worth the added cost.
I'm certain that there's someone out there who will be more than happy to correct me if I'm wrong ;-) but I believe the Honda NAV is integrated into the vehicles own computers in such a way that it knows your direction and speed. This might not sound like much, but if you drive among the tunnels and skyscrapers of Boston and New York as I often do, the difference between your standalone unit (no signal) and a vehicle integrated one is the difference between taking the correct underground exit from the Callahan Tunnel or ending up back at Logan airport again.
As for travel, for $100 I added a USB GPS unit to my laptop and usually opt for the Hertz NeverLost. But 98% of our use of GPS is in our own vehicle, so choosing lower functionality, less convenience and poorer integration just for the sake of having portability would have been a much less attractive option for us.
Plus, on the Honda Odyssey you press a switch on the dash and the NAV screen folds down all James-Bond-like to reveal your CD changer. Tell me that alone isn't worth the cost of the upgrade! ;-)
Cool! and thanks for the link, Hal. GV's site is amazing.
So was anyone else surprised by the one factoid missing from the announcement of "the world's largest Etch-A-Sketch"? Namely, how large? No mention of size in the Engadget piece, the Gizmag piece, or the original press release at the Siggraph site. Maybe they just found someone really tiny to emcee the event, and they put him 200 feet away, so the etch-a-sketch is only 14 inches by 10 inches. :-)
I'm assuming you mean prEy, the Michael Crichton book, which was excellent. Unless you mean "Pray" the book Zorak is writing about proper methods of worship of our new robomaple overlords (mostly lots of syrup rituals as I understand it).
Prey, like most Crichton novels, seems very thoroughly researched and is definitely filled with warnings that one hopes the developers of nanotechnology are paying attention to.
I'm gonna disagree with grable, though. I don't think this is some sort of NSA plot. Come on, people, they're MAPLE leaves. Clearly this is some sort of nefarious advance guard for a Canadian invasion of the US homeland!
The ?: For those who might use this, how does it compare with the newer hard-drive based DV cameras? Do those offer interchangeable drives or only 1 built-in that needs to be downloaded before more can be recorded? Is this device mainly a way of preserving one's investment in a MiniDV based camera while still capturing the obvious benefits of storing on a hard drive?
The comment: As to the pre- thing, I just bought a Casio EX-Z850 digital camera, and it's video function offers a similar feature, past movie mode I think it's called. While in that mode, pressing record begins your video with the 5 seconds before you pressed record. I compare this to the videos I used to take, where I might spend 45 seconds recording while trying to coax my 2-year old into showing off her new halloween costume. That makes for a pretty long video to watch later. With this, you point the camera and start coaxing, when the desired result comes, you start recording. Later the in-laws watch it and think you must just be the most influential Dad in the world, cause it only ever takes you 3 or 4 seconds of video till the kiddo is smiling and spinning 'round.
Had the same general queasiness for the arminess of the photo. It took me a minute but then I saw he's not standing behind a counter full of these, he's sitting on the floor "mingling" with them, and the really big, hairy, mismatched arm is actually just a big, hairy leg . . . still queasy, though.
"Yes, I realize we're on a date at a nice restaurant and that you'd been enjoying that delicious breast of duck. But [your entree selection] HAS ETHICAL AND MORAL IMPLICATIONS WHICH ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO ITS PURPOSE AND EXISTENCE. I think this previously romantic evening is as good a place as any to blather on about my self-important views of the world because I have absolutely no sense of decorum or self-control."
Go get 'em Mike, 'cause seriously people haven't yet formed their own opinions and the Engadget comments forums are exactly the place you're going to turn the tide of debate in this country!!
To the numb-skulls posting #10, #14 and #16. It's called enGADGET, not enTERTAIN_US_WITH_YOUR_MOONBAT_POLITICAL_RANTINGS. Are there really not enough other sites out there for you to spew your politics into that you need to rant here? "It's a clever vest, nice gadget. Cool, when can I buy one." See, that's how you post on a GADGET blog. --Jason
Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I am looking for a 12- or 13-inch ultraportable that can also play modern games at a reasonable level, for less than $1,000. I know the brainiacs out there can help me out. Love the site, thanks!"
The most commented posts on Engadget over the past 24 hours.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
You raise interesting points about insurance. The question, though, is whether insurance is intended to protect us from our own bad behavior. I would say it is not.
First off, insurance is all about the process of risk splitting, taking a large population and dividing it into sub-populations based on riskiness, then pricing accordingly. If you smoke, you'll pay more for life insurance because the likelihood of your behavior causing an earlier death is high. If you sky dive, same deal.
Habitual speeding is an indicator of higher likelihood to file accident claims, therefore speeding tickets have always led to higher insurance premiums. Accidents themselves are a predictor of further accidents, so that too will raise your rates.
The group benefit of insurance, to the extent there is one, should be for alleviating risks which are not of our own making. Catastrophic health crises, for example, that a normal person would be unable to pay for, can be pooled amongst a large enough group that each of us pays only a small fraction. I realize that in health insurance we each also subsidize bad behaviors (I pay more because people in my company smoke or skydive) but it's not why I buy medical insurance. I buy medical insurance so that if I or one of my family members has a medical catastrophe we can afford to address it.
As a driver with a very clean record, I'd prefer to buy insurance from a company that risk splits. There's no incentive for me to want to pay twice as much just to subsidize the risky behavior of a habitual speeder who can't learn to use their cell phone headset.
That speeder, in turn, has an incentive to clean up his act because doing so will earn him lower insurance rates.
The more insurance companies charge people directly for their controllable risk behaviors, the cheaper insurance will be as a whole. It might be more $$ for the few risky people, but over time paying for that risk will cause enough of them to reduce their risky behaviors that in the end the entire amount spent on insurance will decline.
--Jason