Exactly. When they plug in an accuracy that makes more sense, all of a sudden they are 117 orders of magnitude off. In other words, they could have gotten any result they wanted by just picking some arbitrary value for the accuracy. "How much do we need the result to be? OK, then let's pick... 10 cubic kilometers. Because the universe really cares about round units based on the circumference of some arbitrary planet in some arbitrary milky way. See, only three orders of magnitude off, our theory is now better than quantum physics!"
Next month, they'l publish a new paper in which they have refined their theory by taking an accuracy of 0.71 cubic km. There, our refined theory now exactly predicts the correct density of the universe, from first principles! Throw away quantum mechanics, information theory is clearly superior!
Anybody could use all of their patents in good faith (e.g. if they wanted to sue Tesla over their own patents, Tesla could revoke their right to use the Tesla patents). At least that's how I understood it.
I get much more than 590 miles on mine. Diesel, of course. But the biggest difference is I can refill from empty to full in a few minutes rather than an hour.
That being said, how often do you drive more than 200 miles in a single day? Well, I frequently do, but I'm an exception. For the vast majority of people during 360 days of the year, it's more than enough. Those few days of the year where you need more range, your trip will take a few hours longer because of supercharging along the way, or you can swap cars with your neighbour who would be more than happy to drive a Model S for a few weeks.
To be fair, torque in the Model S does decrease at higher rpm. Power = torque x rpm, and the inverter can only deliver so many kW. It does deliver full torque from standstill.
Then you would be wondering how far Gutierrez would have come if his last name had been Musk.
Seriously, you think "Elon Musk" is a great name and a recipe for success? How much would you have bet on that before he became famous?
By the same logic, I suppose Walt Disney had it easy with his last name, and Obama was born to be president with such a last name. Really, why am I even responding to such bollocks?
He just talks people into buying the stocks that his (real) bosses are trying to get rid of, and selling the stocks they want to get into. I once made a list of stocks he recommended and looked at that list a couple of months later. Not a pretty picture. Maybe he just had a bad day then, but I doubt it.
Also, the way he talks doesn't exactly inspire confidence. He talks like he's in a bar telling his friends how great he is and how much he knows. You can tell what kind of people he is aiming for as his audience. Fools and their money... But hey, I guess that's precisely what makes him so popular in the US.
They could. But it's kind of hard to issue dividends while doubling capacity in one year, developing new models and constructing a battery plant that will double world production of lithium batteries, all at the same time. It's amazing that they're so close to break even at all.
They are "losing" money because they are pooring all their profits into R&D and expansion. Next year, they plan to produce twice as many cars as this year. Kind of hard to grow that quickly while paying dividends. If they decided to just keep selling Teslas at the current rate without doing any new development, they would be very profitable.
What makes you think they are giving away tens of thousands of dollars on each cars? The way I understood it, they could actually be profitable if they weren't pooring all their profit into R&D and increasing capacity at an insane rate.
Thank you for writing "FACT" in capital letters, it's a dead giveaway for people making bogus claims.
I know there are still some backward parts of the world (the US, for example) where the vast majority of electricity is coming from CO2-producing plants. In Europe, a significant and growing percentage of electricity is coming from renewable energy, and there's a lot of nuclear power too. If I charge an electric car in my garage, it produces no CO2 at all since I live near a nuclear plant (that's where the electrons are actually coming from) and my electricity contract is with a provider that only uses renewables (which is where my money is going). The percentage of electricity produced by burning fossil fuels is shrinking, and the added demand from electric cars will only speed up the construction of new, clean plants.
Also, CO2 is not the only problem. When I take my children to school on a foggy morning (walking), I get sick of the stench of all the cars dropping children off. I can't wait for the day that all those cars are electric so that I can smell some clean air instead. I know, some old electricity production is still blowing out smoke, but at least they are rarely in the middle of cities.
Exactly. If you need your smartphone to be able to dim the lights, you're doing it wrong.
Smart homes should still have switches and dimmers in the usual places where people expect them (not actual switches, but transmitters obviously) and then, on top of that, allow extra functionality like one button mood lighting, switch of all lights, switch on all lights (if you suspect a burglary), remote control, etcetera. If you get rid of the simple old-fashioned concepts, you're just making things harder instead of easier.
It's one thing to say "the light switch is next to the door, but never mind, I'll just do it for you with my smartphone" (which is way cool) but quite another to say "oh, you want light in the toilet? No, there's no switch, but let me get my phone, just as soon as I can find it, hang on..."
Well, at first sight it looks like it's not as big a scam as the others, but they're not doing charity work either. They simply take a small amount of money from every transaction, just for the convenience of automatically buying bitcoins every month. You're better off simply buying the bitcoins yourself, but then you'll have to actually do that every month.
The bitcoins go to a wallet under your control, they only have the public address, so they don't hold your bitcoin and can't suddenly take it away. The worst they could do is stop operating and keep all the incoming money while no longer sending any bitcoins, until people figure it out and it makes the news. So basically every user risks one monthly payment. Once the bitcoins reach your wallet, they are safe.
Slashdot Mirror
You wouldn't steal a car, would you?
Who said anything about Top Gear?
Not that I read the article of course, but this seems an odd thing to do
Most slashdotters seem to agree with you, for pretty much any article :-)
Exactly. When they plug in an accuracy that makes more sense, all of a sudden they are 117 orders of magnitude off. In other words, they could have gotten any result they wanted by just picking some arbitrary value for the accuracy. "How much do we need the result to be? OK, then let's pick... 10 cubic kilometers. Because the universe really cares about round units based on the circumference of some arbitrary planet in some arbitrary milky way. See, only three orders of magnitude off, our theory is now better than quantum physics!"
Next month, they'l publish a new paper in which they have refined their theory by taking an accuracy of 0.71 cubic km. There, our refined theory now exactly predicts the correct density of the universe, from first principles! Throw away quantum mechanics, information theory is clearly superior!
I imagine you still need to enter a contract with them which will spell out exactly what they mean by good faith.
Anybody could use all of their patents in good faith (e.g. if they wanted to sue Tesla over their own patents, Tesla could revoke their right to use the Tesla patents). At least that's how I understood it.
The press release did say "all our patents are belong to you" didn't it? Did they keep some for themselves after all?
They may have a fair bit of know-how which they've kept secret instead f patenting, of course. But all their patents should be freely available.
Which they've opened up for free.
No you won't. Weight does have an impact, but it's not even nearly proportional. Wind drag doesn't care about weight.
I get much more than 590 miles on mine. Diesel, of course. But the biggest difference is I can refill from empty to full in a few minutes rather than an hour.
That being said, how often do you drive more than 200 miles in a single day? Well, I frequently do, but I'm an exception. For the vast majority of people during 360 days of the year, it's more than enough. Those few days of the year where you need more range, your trip will take a few hours longer because of supercharging along the way, or you can swap cars with your neighbour who would be more than happy to drive a Model S for a few weeks.
To be fair, torque in the Model S does decrease at higher rpm. Power = torque x rpm, and the inverter can only deliver so many kW. It does deliver full torque from standstill.
Then you would be wondering how far Gutierrez would have come if his last name had been Musk.
Seriously, you think "Elon Musk" is a great name and a recipe for success? How much would you have bet on that before he became famous?
By the same logic, I suppose Walt Disney had it easy with his last name, and Obama was born to be president with such a last name. Really, why am I even responding to such bollocks?
He just talks people into buying the stocks that his (real) bosses are trying to get rid of, and selling the stocks they want to get into. I once made a list of stocks he recommended and looked at that list a couple of months later. Not a pretty picture. Maybe he just had a bad day then, but I doubt it.
Also, the way he talks doesn't exactly inspire confidence. He talks like he's in a bar telling his friends how great he is and how much he knows. You can tell what kind of people he is aiming for as his audience. Fools and their money... But hey, I guess that's precisely what makes him so popular in the US.
They could. But it's kind of hard to issue dividends while doubling capacity in one year, developing new models and constructing a battery plant that will double world production of lithium batteries, all at the same time. It's amazing that they're so close to break even at all.
They've already opened up all their patents for free.
Waiting time for the model S is around 4 months if I'm not mistaken. Definitely not more than a year.
The model X is a different matter of course. No way you're getting one in 2015 if you order today.
That money is going into R&D. At Tesla.
They are "losing" money because they are pooring all their profits into R&D and expansion. Next year, they plan to produce twice as many cars as this year. Kind of hard to grow that quickly while paying dividends. If they decided to just keep selling Teslas at the current rate without doing any new development, they would be very profitable.
What makes you think they are giving away tens of thousands of dollars on each cars? The way I understood it, they could actually be profitable if they weren't pooring all their profit into R&D and increasing capacity at an insane rate.
Thank you for writing "FACT" in capital letters, it's a dead giveaway for people making bogus claims.
I know there are still some backward parts of the world (the US, for example) where the vast majority of electricity is coming from CO2-producing plants. In Europe, a significant and growing percentage of electricity is coming from renewable energy, and there's a lot of nuclear power too. If I charge an electric car in my garage, it produces no CO2 at all since I live near a nuclear plant (that's where the electrons are actually coming from) and my electricity contract is with a provider that only uses renewables (which is where my money is going). The percentage of electricity produced by burning fossil fuels is shrinking, and the added demand from electric cars will only speed up the construction of new, clean plants.
Also, CO2 is not the only problem. When I take my children to school on a foggy morning (walking), I get sick of the stench of all the cars dropping children off. I can't wait for the day that all those cars are electric so that I can smell some clean air instead. I know, some old electricity production is still blowing out smoke, but at least they are rarely in the middle of cities.
Now if you could just solve the energy problem caused by all those phones and tablets being charged all the time...
Exactly. If you need your smartphone to be able to dim the lights, you're doing it wrong.
Smart homes should still have switches and dimmers in the usual places where people expect them (not actual switches, but transmitters obviously) and then, on top of that, allow extra functionality like one button mood lighting, switch of all lights, switch on all lights (if you suspect a burglary), remote control, etcetera. If you get rid of the simple old-fashioned concepts, you're just making things harder instead of easier.
It's one thing to say "the light switch is next to the door, but never mind, I'll just do it for you with my smartphone" (which is way cool) but quite another to say "oh, you want light in the toilet? No, there's no switch, but let me get my phone, just as soon as I can find it, hang on..."
Imagine thieves not just demanding your phone, but your iCloud password as well...
Well, at first sight it looks like it's not as big a scam as the others, but they're not doing charity work either. They simply take a small amount of money from every transaction, just for the convenience of automatically buying bitcoins every month. You're better off simply buying the bitcoins yourself, but then you'll have to actually do that every month.
The bitcoins go to a wallet under your control, they only have the public address, so they don't hold your bitcoin and can't suddenly take it away. The worst they could do is stop operating and keep all the incoming money while no longer sending any bitcoins, until people figure it out and it makes the news. So basically every user risks one monthly payment. Once the bitcoins reach your wallet, they are safe.
The doppler effect doesn't need relativity, but relativity does enhance the effect (adding time dilation to the classical doppler effect).