So it's a new laptop with some pretty unremarkable new features. This article is different from the 100 other "latest new product" offers that arrive in my junk email box, how?...apart from the fact it's on Slashdot and not in my junk email folder of course.
What has the location of the train stations got to do with anything? Making it safe and quiet are part of the engineering challenge, doesn't change the fact that achieving a high average speed rather than absolute speed is clearly the more appropriate design objective. It's the opposite that would be used purely for purposes of prestige.
Yet compared to other forms of transportation, train travel is by far the safest.
It actually annoys me somewhat that rail (and air) safety is always considered so important, they could have horrific accidents every year and it would still only be a fraction of the death rate we consider "acceptable" for cars, cycling and walking.
It's a perfect example of our human inability to comprehend risk. Just like a girl who sits inside her whole life to avoid a 1 in a million homicide risk, completely ignoring the 1 in 3 general cancer risk her inactivity is rapidly increasing.
That makes no sense, the average speed is what matters, it's what makes the journey shorter. It's exactly the speed statistic they should concentrate on.
If they had gone for the higher momentary speed record then it would have been them trying "just to win a pissing contest".
Still far cheaper in the long run than a domestic airline and automobile network like we have here in the USA.
In fifty years time, the debts will be almost all gone and they will have a cheap, safe and highly efficient transportation network. Here in the USA on the other hand, we will still be spending hundreds of billions every year on ever increasing oil and domestic flight costs (in addition to billions also spent building infrastructure).
Then there's the pesky nagging problem of the oil becoming extremely expensive as it inevitably will do. China's trains will be running on cheap coal and nuclear power plants so they'll be fine, our planes not so and will face oil costs making even today's prices look insanely cheap.
A joke which provides a humorous insight into our modern egocentric consumerist society, aptly aimed at one of the many companies who go to great efforts to encourage the "you're not cool unless you have the latest version" attitude without regard to the psychological or ecological impact.
In the US we are left with immigration as the only population growth factor there is and I suspect Western Europe is pretty much the same way. This portends some very drastic changes in the coming decades as the population shifts away from educated European-extracted peoples and towards Latin American folks that have been subsistance farming for generations and no goals higher than survival. In most inner cities today the idea of the straight-A student is a subject of ridicule, as is the idea of going to college - what, do you want to be seen as trying to prove yourself better than your peers?
This could have been written at any point in the last 300+ years and would hold equally true, just replace "Latin American" with the predominate ethnicity of immigrants of the day. Strangely enough, society hasn't collapsed and college demand is higher than ever.
This isn't true at all. Many vegetarian and especially vegan diets for example are amongst both the healthiest and cheapest possible. Beans, vegetables and cereals are extremely inexpensive.
It's "trendy" health food (like organic food) which doubles your grocery bill.
Maybe you do die every time you go to sleep and every morning a new consciousness awakens for the first time in you mind, but you don't realize because you can remember all of the previous consciousness's thoughts. The old you actually died, but the new you can't tell that it isn't the old you.
How can we ever prove this isn't the case?
Personally, I avoid the use of teleportation devices for the same reason.
Patents are awarded for the design of light bulbs and their components, not for light bulb types themselves. There's sure to be many patents covering specific designs of all types of light bulb, regardless of their energy efficiency. Certainly there are many types of fluorescent bulbs for which the patents have obviously long since expired along with energy efficient generic designs avoiding patent restrictions.
It's true some energy-efficient light bulbs are overpriced, just like anything, but you can also pick them up for well under a dollar, although (also like anything) I bet the cheap ones don't last nearly as long (just like with incandescent bulbs where the cheap ones of the past decade didn't last half the time of the expensive ones from the 80's and before).
Not saying I agree with the taxes, but you could always live closer to work.
Also, you write as if automobile commuting would be the perfect driving experience if only it weren't for those "darn taxes". Obviously this isn't case, urban commuting is without doubt the worst kind of driving experience, and lowering driving costs inevitably means longer traffic jams (as I found out living in CA). Roads can be widened and infrastructure improved, but it's an expensive game of diminishing returns (i.e. adding more lanes to a highway generates progressively less capacity increase whilst often exponentially increasing the build cost per lane in built-up areas).
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
Why do the power plants need to be polluting? This proposal does come from the continent that leads the way on alternative energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear power.
A kid's movie? Never heard Star Wars been called that before. Kids movies aren't usually PG-13 rated and don't usually feature killings, maiming, executions, genocide and regular battle scenes.
RTFA. They won't let him download the game because their download system and forum are linked, access to the game means access to the forum, hence the analogy.
I think a more relevant analogy would be buying a Ford, you hurling abuse on the forecourt of the only Ford dealer in town and then that Ford dealer not allowing you on their property to pickup the car when it's ready.
You aren't banned from the car, rather banned from the only available means of getting hold of the car.
In both the real and analogous cases, the common sense solution would be for either a workaround or a refund. But no-one likes common sense in the land of media and blogosphere hyperbole.
I would say this story takes the biscuit for most misleading summary ever, but then again there are just so many misleading summaries on Slashdot these days.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize now that this particular "latest new product" is actually a desktop, not a laptop.
Difference made = 0
So it's a new laptop with some pretty unremarkable new features. This article is different from the 100 other "latest new product" offers that arrive in my junk email box, how? ...apart from the fact it's on Slashdot and not in my junk email folder of course.
What has the location of the train stations got to do with anything? Making it safe and quiet are part of the engineering challenge, doesn't change the fact that achieving a high average speed rather than absolute speed is clearly the more appropriate design objective. It's the opposite that would be used purely for purposes of prestige.
Yet compared to other forms of transportation, train travel is by far the safest.
It actually annoys me somewhat that rail (and air) safety is always considered so important, they could have horrific accidents every year and it would still only be a fraction of the death rate we consider "acceptable" for cars, cycling and walking.
It's a perfect example of our human inability to comprehend risk. Just like a girl who sits inside her whole life to avoid a 1 in a million homicide risk, completely ignoring the 1 in 3 general cancer risk her inactivity is rapidly increasing.
Just think, every person born in a communist country before 1850 is now dead, shows what their true intention are!
That makes no sense, the average speed is what matters, it's what makes the journey shorter. It's exactly the speed statistic they should concentrate on.
If they had gone for the higher momentary speed record then it would have been them trying "just to win a pissing contest".
Still far cheaper in the long run than a domestic airline and automobile network like we have here in the USA.
In fifty years time, the debts will be almost all gone and they will have a cheap, safe and highly efficient transportation network. Here in the USA on the other hand, we will still be spending hundreds of billions every year on ever increasing oil and domestic flight costs (in addition to billions also spent building infrastructure).
Then there's the pesky nagging problem of the oil becoming extremely expensive as it inevitably will do. China's trains will be running on cheap coal and nuclear power plants so they'll be fine, our planes not so and will face oil costs making even today's prices look insanely cheap.
Actually it seems the rate was a lot higher than half, till the automated till broke and people had no method of making payment.
If you have a better idea for determining the structure of the universe then please let us hear it.
Actually my bad, I thought the GP was a different post.
Still, even this GP is clearly a joke, not a troll. You're right though the moderation was the wrong, maybe the mods were trolling?
It's called a joke, not a troll.
A joke which provides a humorous insight into our modern egocentric consumerist society, aptly aimed at one of the many companies who go to great efforts to encourage the "you're not cool unless you have the latest version" attitude without regard to the psychological or ecological impact.
In the US we are left with immigration as the only population growth factor there is and I suspect Western Europe is pretty much the same way. This portends some very drastic changes in the coming decades as the population shifts away from educated European-extracted peoples and towards Latin American folks that have been subsistance farming for generations and no goals higher than survival. In most inner cities today the idea of the straight-A student is a subject of ridicule, as is the idea of going to college - what, do you want to be seen as trying to prove yourself better than your peers?
This could have been written at any point in the last 300+ years and would hold equally true, just replace "Latin American" with the predominate ethnicity of immigrants of the day. Strangely enough, society hasn't collapsed and college demand is higher than ever.
This isn't true at all. Many vegetarian and especially vegan diets for example are amongst both the healthiest and cheapest possible. Beans, vegetables and cereals are extremely inexpensive.
It's "trendy" health food (like organic food) which doubles your grocery bill.
Maybe you do die every time you go to sleep and every morning a new consciousness awakens for the first time in you mind, but you don't realize because you can remember all of the previous consciousness's thoughts. The old you actually died, but the new you can't tell that it isn't the old you.
How can we ever prove this isn't the case?
Personally, I avoid the use of teleportation devices for the same reason.
No! NOOOOO! But possibly, yes.
Patents are awarded for the design of light bulbs and their components, not for light bulb types themselves. There's sure to be many patents covering specific designs of all types of light bulb, regardless of their energy efficiency. Certainly there are many types of fluorescent bulbs for which the patents have obviously long since expired along with energy efficient generic designs avoiding patent restrictions.
It's true some energy-efficient light bulbs are overpriced, just like anything, but you can also pick them up for well under a dollar, although (also like anything) I bet the cheap ones don't last nearly as long (just like with incandescent bulbs where the cheap ones of the past decade didn't last half the time of the expensive ones from the 80's and before).
Not saying I agree with the taxes, but you could always live closer to work.
Also, you write as if automobile commuting would be the perfect driving experience if only it weren't for those "darn taxes". Obviously this isn't case, urban commuting is without doubt the worst kind of driving experience, and lowering driving costs inevitably means longer traffic jams (as I found out living in CA). Roads can be widened and infrastructure improved, but it's an expensive game of diminishing returns (i.e. adding more lanes to a highway generates progressively less capacity increase whilst often exponentially increasing the build cost per lane in built-up areas).
Where do all these electric cars get their power from? It's okay to pollute wherever the power plants are built, just as long as it's not in the city limits, eh?
Why do the power plants need to be polluting? This proposal does come from the continent that leads the way on alternative energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear power.
A kid's movie? Never heard Star Wars been called that before. Kids movies aren't usually PG-13 rated and don't usually feature killings, maiming, executions, genocide and regular battle scenes.
If you don't like it, how about simply not enabling the feature?
RTFA. They won't let him download the game because their download system and forum are linked, access to the game means access to the forum, hence the analogy.
Breach of contract maybe (or probably), but not theft.
I think a more relevant analogy would be buying a Ford, you hurling abuse on the forecourt of the only Ford dealer in town and then that Ford dealer not allowing you on their property to pickup the car when it's ready.
You aren't banned from the car, rather banned from the only available means of getting hold of the car.
In both the real and analogous cases, the common sense solution would be for either a workaround or a refund. But no-one likes common sense in the land of media and blogosphere hyperbole.
I would say this story takes the biscuit for most misleading summary ever, but then again there are just so many misleading summaries on Slashdot these days.
Yes, you are correct. I meant to say that non-cursive letters are the easier to understand.