Electric is half the answer. What is the question?
I guess electric is not the solution to the presumed problem (of weaning ourselves of gasoline), if you must be a pedant. Otherwise, if there's no problem here, then we are just talking about a really expensive hobby in electric cars.
Then, ideally during peak hours you can sell energy back to the grid at a profit.
If that becomes a reality, then yes, that is a good point. It will take a huge cultural shift (and probably massive infrastructure changes as well, but IANAEE).
No, high electric bills (in my brand new, green home, btw) DO make electric cars more expensive, because the electric company charges MORE money, the more energy we use (kwh rates shoot up in the summer, coincidentally?). Unfortunately in Austin, TX, there's no escaping high electric bills in the summer months.
As far as never spending money on gas again, from what I've read, the current battery technology would allow for 40 miles per charge, which is 10 miles short of my round-trip commute. Am I to hope my employer will let us charge our cars while at work?
The increase in your electric bill is only a bad thing if it increases more than your gas bill decreases.
So yes, it will be a bad thing then. Saving 40 miles in gas by using the electric part saves 2 gallons ($4). Charging that battery all night on the grid will cost more than $4.
And if you really think electricity produced by your car engine is cheaper, then why aren't you powering your home with it?
I didn't say anything of the sort. I assume you are saying electricity is cheaper than gasoline, which is fine and dandy. But until you figure out a way for my car to be connected solely to an electrical grid I stand by my assertion that electric/gas cars are not a viable option.
Apparently there are quite a few of GM's product lines that don't make any sense.
That's because you aren't 70 years old with blue hair, a hip-hop artist, a professional athlete, or a trophy wife. Otherwise their products make perfect sense.
Electric is not the answer, because it only shifts fuel costs to your electric bill. Since my electric bill goes well over $300 a month in the summer (AC usage), I can't even begin to guess how expensive it would be to charge my car every night.
I'm not a fan of Hybrids (yet), but at least that system doesn't accrue the additional cost of an electric bill to go with your gasoline bill.
The original beige G3 desktop and the tower (not sure about the iMac, because it came alone a couple years later) had a G3 chip with a heat sink on it, no fan on the heatsink, unlike all the pentiums of the same time. So no, the beige G3s didn't use "monitor" convection, (whatever that is) like the claim was in the first post. Of COURSE there was some sort of convection, because the power supply has a fan and the case was not in a vacuum.
So getting back to my point, the G3 chip begs to differ when it was said that Apple needed to find a way to run their computers at cool temperatures, when history (not revisionist history) shows us that the engineering in the 233, 300, 400mhz G3 chips was far cooler than any pentium offering of the same time, as evidenced by the pentiums using a cpu cartridge that ran the length of the motherboard, and in many cases, had TWO or more fans in addition to very large heat sinks.
An even shorter response is the entire line of Apple computers since the PowerPC chip cannot be stereotyped by the heat dissipation issues of closed systems like the iMac, or by the terribly hot G5 chip.
Oh, I get irritated too when stuff doesn't render correctly, especially when it was written to standard but the browser decides to ignore that. My problem is that testing something for HTML4 (or whatever) compliance doesn't ensure something will display correctly or not--it just lets geeks say "HTML4 Compliant(or whatever)". I've got plenty of favorite sites that don't stand a chance passing compliance tests, but they render well enough to not suffer usability issues.
My list is far more succint: Firefox crashes too frequently, and thus I don't use it anymore. With so many other options, I have little time for a browser if it can't NOT crash (Windows or OSX) every session I use it on every computer I own or use at work. Firefox could shit little gold coins, and I still wouldn't use it until they shore up the stability problems.
Cue the "but it doesn't crash on MY computer replies in....3....2....1".
Taking the discussion back about 10 years, end users don't give a rip about html-compliance (Acid3 for modern day, I suppose?). I love how they used to (still do) run those compliance tests on websites, and some of my favorite, daily sites end up as the biggest non-compliers. Uh oh, not HTML4 compliant, I better stop coming to this great website!
Microsoft has a long and demonstrable history of engineering non-compliant standards, leveraging their superior market share to create their own standards and drive out the competitors. Whether that's fair or not is not really our call, because courts have already ruled on it. Internet Explorer spent years developing this business model, but then MS got slapped on the pee-pee for it.
There's a huge difference between "rendering fast enough" and "feeling snappy to the user". It's like saying Windows and OSX boot up in 30 seconds, but with Windows you can't really do anything for another 45 seconds while the system tray stuff and services start up. Whereas I can boot up my Macbook, log in, get my email, and shutdown all before I have a usable Windows desktop...but they both take 30 seconds to boot up.
a person who steals another person's property, esp. by stealth and without using force or violence.
Doesn't sound like downloading's theft to me.
Sounds EXACTLY like P2P to me. (OSX Spotlight Dictionary)
Now do you understand why it's called "intellectual property"? Hint: so that when you copy it without the owner's consent, it can be classified as theft, because it is something the artist OWNS...property. Notice in this definition, it doesn't say "take" because the word take infers the owner no longer has it when you take it. So "steal" is indeed the proper term here, because you can steal from somebody even without taking any physical property from them.
Like I've said, I use P2P, as most of you do, but stop fooling yourselves with your utopian defenses. What you are railing against is the perceived over-zealous prosecution of the RIAA which pisses us all off, since they are rich and we aren't. Rally against that all you want, but don't try to fool anybody that you are only moving ones and zeros around and information wants to be free.
I don't feel bad about using the toner and paper in the copier, either, because the owner of the copier put up a sign reading "Free copies, these files only."
Yes, but when the owner puts a sign up that says "these copies aren't free" (DRM), you complain about that too. You can't have it both ways. I think I have the solution. Make it a criminal case and not a civil one. Since you've convinced me you haven't harmed the artists in any way, since all you've done is taken a copy, we need to punish you on a criminal charge. Society has laws to punish behavior we think is unacceptable, and getting something for nothing when most everyone else around you has to pay for it is one of those unacceptable behaviors. Yeah, of course I'm exaggerating, but it makes my point clear.
And BTW, what in the world are you talking about, the owner putting up some sort of sign? In your analogy, the only thing I can come up with is the P2P site is saying use my copy machine all you want. But in that analogy, the P2P site is NOT the owner of the content, thus shooting a giant hole in your logic. When I was in college (pre-Internet) we weren't allowed to photocopy books from the library due to copyright laws (some fair-use exemptions). That really kills your analogy. Just like the owner of the copier when I was at college, wasn't the owner of the books that I wanted to copy, so they had no right to let me copy them for free.
I had a beige desktop G3, not an iMac. I don't remember the details either, but I'm pretty sure the chipsets where identical. There was no convection on the the G3 desktops, because the chip ran so ridiculously cool compared to Pentiums of the same era.
Citation? I had a 333mhz beige G3 chip overclocked to 400 and it didn't even have a fan. I ran that thing for about 5 years with no problems. My G4 tower is on 9 years now, and all it has is a heat sink (again, no fan needed). Perhaps the "convection" issue you mentioned had something to do with a CRT monitor being encased in a bowling ball size piece of plastic and maybe nothing at all to do with processor heat.
Good thing I said "no current Mac models come in white plastic". Last I checked the Cinema Display, Airport products, Time Capsule and AC adapters are not Macs. Granted, the bottom line Macbook is still white, and indeed I forgot they still offer it. Congratulations, genius.
The mini is silver, when it used to be white and shiny. Whoopdy-friggin-do...the top is white...as are a few wires inside I suppose. If you must be so damned pedantic, you forgot the white remote control and iPod earbuds.
No disagreement here. I see plenty of music and movies for sale in boxes still, so I'm not sure why people would predict the death of boxed video games too.
Very pedantic of you. Perhaps I meant "get something for free that somebody produced and is charging for". Notice I used the analogy of taking, and didn't specifically state it was taking anything. I download stuff. I don't hide behind nutjob defenses. It's wrong, but at least I admit it.
Does that really work? I've never been able to just move an already-installed Windows application from one PC to another, like you can easily with a Mac (Photoshop on a network/firewire disk for the whole office, woohoo!). I'm assuming once it's moved, STEAM will still have to update a bunch of dlls and libraries and the sort, no?
True. That's why it is technically called "copyright infringement" and not "shoplifting". It's also why I used the analogy of walking into a store and taking a cd. Because it's not the same thing as stealing, I had to create an analogy.
The problem with what you're saying is that people compare the *possibility* of getting a cheap PC with the cheapest model that Apple offers.
Well, I'm as big of an Apple fan as it gets, but I disagree. You can get a similar spec'd, albeit drab, PC in a smallish tower, like a Dell 530 or so that has nearly the same specs as an iMac, for $500. Same C2Duo processor, same RAM, hard drive, video card, etc. etc. When the Intel iMacs came out, the Intel C2Duo chips were more expensive than they are now, and the PC-Mac comparo was pretty close. But now that Dell, Acer, HP, et. al. have about 9 billion models with differing C2duo speeds, their prices have dropped by half (in the $400-$600 range, usually with cheapie generic 17-20" monitors).
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Electric is half the answer. What is the question?
I guess electric is not the solution to the presumed problem (of weaning ourselves of gasoline), if you must be a pedant. Otherwise, if there's no problem here, then we are just talking about a really expensive hobby in electric cars.
Then, ideally during peak hours you can sell energy back to the grid at a profit.
If that becomes a reality, then yes, that is a good point. It will take a huge cultural shift (and probably massive infrastructure changes as well, but IANAEE).
No, high electric bills (in my brand new, green home, btw) DO make electric cars more expensive, because the electric company charges MORE money, the more energy we use (kwh rates shoot up in the summer, coincidentally?). Unfortunately in Austin, TX, there's no escaping high electric bills in the summer months.
As far as never spending money on gas again, from what I've read, the current battery technology would allow for 40 miles per charge, which is 10 miles short of my round-trip commute. Am I to hope my employer will let us charge our cars while at work?
The increase in your electric bill is only a bad thing if it increases more than your gas bill decreases.
So yes, it will be a bad thing then. Saving 40 miles in gas by using the electric part saves 2 gallons ($4). Charging that battery all night on the grid will cost more than $4.
And if you really think electricity produced by your car engine is cheaper, then why aren't you powering your home with it?
I didn't say anything of the sort. I assume you are saying electricity is cheaper than gasoline, which is fine and dandy. But until you figure out a way for my car to be connected solely to an electrical grid I stand by my assertion that electric/gas cars are not a viable option.
The money doesn't come out of thin air.
Neither does electricity--that's why electric cars will never become a reality.
Apparently there are quite a few of GM's product lines that don't make any sense.
That's because you aren't 70 years old with blue hair, a hip-hop artist, a professional athlete, or a trophy wife. Otherwise their products make perfect sense.
Electric is not the answer, because it only shifts fuel costs to your electric bill. Since my electric bill goes well over $300 a month in the summer (AC usage), I can't even begin to guess how expensive it would be to charge my car every night.
I'm not a fan of Hybrids (yet), but at least that system doesn't accrue the additional cost of an electric bill to go with your gasoline bill.
The original beige G3 desktop and the tower (not sure about the iMac, because it came alone a couple years later) had a G3 chip with a heat sink on it, no fan on the heatsink, unlike all the pentiums of the same time. So no, the beige G3s didn't use "monitor" convection, (whatever that is) like the claim was in the first post. Of COURSE there was some sort of convection, because the power supply has a fan and the case was not in a vacuum.
So getting back to my point, the G3 chip begs to differ when it was said that Apple needed to find a way to run their computers at cool temperatures, when history (not revisionist history) shows us that the engineering in the 233, 300, 400mhz G3 chips was far cooler than any pentium offering of the same time, as evidenced by the pentiums using a cpu cartridge that ran the length of the motherboard, and in many cases, had TWO or more fans in addition to very large heat sinks.
An even shorter response is the entire line of Apple computers since the PowerPC chip cannot be stereotyped by the heat dissipation issues of closed systems like the iMac, or by the terribly hot G5 chip.
Oh, I get irritated too when stuff doesn't render correctly, especially when it was written to standard but the browser decides to ignore that. My problem is that testing something for HTML4 (or whatever) compliance doesn't ensure something will display correctly or not--it just lets geeks say "HTML4 Compliant(or whatever)". I've got plenty of favorite sites that don't stand a chance passing compliance tests, but they render well enough to not suffer usability issues.
My list is far more succint: Firefox crashes too frequently, and thus I don't use it anymore. With so many other options, I have little time for a browser if it can't NOT crash (Windows or OSX) every session I use it on every computer I own or use at work. Firefox could shit little gold coins, and I still wouldn't use it until they shore up the stability problems.
Cue the "but it doesn't crash on MY computer replies in....3....2....1".
Taking the discussion back about 10 years, end users don't give a rip about html-compliance (Acid3 for modern day, I suppose?). I love how they used to (still do) run those compliance tests on websites, and some of my favorite, daily sites end up as the biggest non-compliers. Uh oh, not HTML4 compliant, I better stop coming to this great website!
Microsoft has a long and demonstrable history of engineering non-compliant standards, leveraging their superior market share to create their own standards and drive out the competitors. Whether that's fair or not is not really our call, because courts have already ruled on it. Internet Explorer spent years developing this business model, but then MS got slapped on the pee-pee for it.
There's a huge difference between "rendering fast enough" and "feeling snappy to the user". It's like saying Windows and OSX boot up in 30 seconds, but with Windows you can't really do anything for another 45 seconds while the system tray stuff and services start up. Whereas I can boot up my Macbook, log in, get my email, and shutdown all before I have a usable Windows desktop...but they both take 30 seconds to boot up.
there can be no question in anyones mind.
The fact you are still arguing about it 18 years later disqualifies your statement.
"Thief"
noun ( pl. thieves |ÎÄ"vz|)
a person who steals another person's property, esp. by stealth and without using force or violence.
Doesn't sound like downloading's theft to me.
Sounds EXACTLY like P2P to me. (OSX Spotlight Dictionary)
Now do you understand why it's called "intellectual property"? Hint: so that when you copy it without the owner's consent, it can be classified as theft, because it is something the artist OWNS...property. Notice in this definition, it doesn't say "take" because the word take infers the owner no longer has it when you take it. So "steal" is indeed the proper term here, because you can steal from somebody even without taking any physical property from them.
Like I've said, I use P2P, as most of you do, but stop fooling yourselves with your utopian defenses. What you are railing against is the perceived over-zealous prosecution of the RIAA which pisses us all off, since they are rich and we aren't. Rally against that all you want, but don't try to fool anybody that you are only moving ones and zeros around and information wants to be free.
I don't feel bad about using the toner and paper in the copier, either, because the owner of the copier put up a sign reading "Free copies, these files only."
Yes, but when the owner puts a sign up that says "these copies aren't free" (DRM), you complain about that too. You can't have it both ways. I think I have the solution. Make it a criminal case and not a civil one. Since you've convinced me you haven't harmed the artists in any way, since all you've done is taken a copy, we need to punish you on a criminal charge. Society has laws to punish behavior we think is unacceptable, and getting something for nothing when most everyone else around you has to pay for it is one of those unacceptable behaviors. Yeah, of course I'm exaggerating, but it makes my point clear.
And BTW, what in the world are you talking about, the owner putting up some sort of sign? In your analogy, the only thing I can come up with is the P2P site is saying use my copy machine all you want. But in that analogy, the P2P site is NOT the owner of the content, thus shooting a giant hole in your logic. When I was in college (pre-Internet) we weren't allowed to photocopy books from the library due to copyright laws (some fair-use exemptions). That really kills your analogy. Just like the owner of the copier when I was at college, wasn't the owner of the books that I wanted to copy, so they had no right to let me copy them for free.
I had a beige desktop G3, not an iMac. I don't remember the details either, but I'm pretty sure the chipsets where identical. There was no convection on the the G3 desktops, because the chip ran so ridiculously cool compared to Pentiums of the same era.
Citation? I had a 333mhz beige G3 chip overclocked to 400 and it didn't even have a fan. I ran that thing for about 5 years with no problems. My G4 tower is on 9 years now, and all it has is a heat sink (again, no fan needed). Perhaps the "convection" issue you mentioned had something to do with a CRT monitor being encased in a bowling ball size piece of plastic and maybe nothing at all to do with processor heat.
Good thing I said "no current Mac models come in white plastic". Last I checked the Cinema Display, Airport products, Time Capsule and AC adapters are not Macs. Granted, the bottom line Macbook is still white, and indeed I forgot they still offer it. Congratulations, genius.
The mini is silver, when it used to be white and shiny. Whoopdy-friggin-do...the top is white...as are a few wires inside I suppose. If you must be so damned pedantic, you forgot the white remote control and iPod earbuds.
Games in boxes are here for the long haul.
No disagreement here. I see plenty of music and movies for sale in boxes still, so I'm not sure why people would predict the death of boxed video games too.
Very pedantic of you. Perhaps I meant "get something for free that somebody produced and is charging for". Notice I used the analogy of taking, and didn't specifically state it was taking anything. I download stuff. I don't hide behind nutjob defenses. It's wrong, but at least I admit it.
Does that really work? I've never been able to just move an already-installed Windows application from one PC to another, like you can easily with a Mac (Photoshop on a network/firewire disk for the whole office, woohoo!). I'm assuming once it's moved, STEAM will still have to update a bunch of dlls and libraries and the sort, no?
True. That's why it is technically called "copyright infringement" and not "shoplifting". It's also why I used the analogy of walking into a store and taking a cd. Because it's not the same thing as stealing, I had to create an analogy.
...and I'm not a fan of white plastic
Good thing no current Mac models come in white plastic.
The problem with what you're saying is that people compare the *possibility* of getting a cheap PC with the cheapest model that Apple offers.
Well, I'm as big of an Apple fan as it gets, but I disagree. You can get a similar spec'd, albeit drab, PC in a smallish tower, like a Dell 530 or so that has nearly the same specs as an iMac, for $500. Same C2Duo processor, same RAM, hard drive, video card, etc. etc. When the Intel iMacs came out, the Intel C2Duo chips were more expensive than they are now, and the PC-Mac comparo was pretty close. But now that Dell, Acer, HP, et. al. have about 9 billion models with differing C2duo speeds, their prices have dropped by half (in the $400-$600 range, usually with cheapie generic 17-20" monitors).