Next, the hybrid car allows the auto manufacturers to develop the technology needed to replace the gas powered ICE (internal combustion engine) while still remaining profitable.
No, not at all.
Hybrids don't have electric motors that can be used at highway speeds. They don't have batteries that can hold a significant charge, etc. And some hybrids can't even move an INCH without the gas engine also running.
I'd say most of the technology going into hybrids won't help either ICE or electric cars... What Toyota calls the "synergy drive" is the bulk of the system, and completely useless for anything BUT a hybrid car.
If they wanted to work on all-electric/hydrogen cars, all they'd have to do (before hydrogen/high-capacity batteries are available) is to throw a $400 electric generator in the trunk, that runs on unleaded or diesel. Tada, fully electric car that can be switched over to hydrogen or batteries with tiny additional cost.
Besides that, the big car manufacturers have already done ALL the R&D necessary to build an electric car. GM had the EV1, Ford had the Th!nk, Chrysler had an electric car and now builds GEMs, etc. They all already developed practical electric cars. If hybrid makers wanted to transition off of oil, they would have added a few dollars more electronics, and added a plug to their hybrids. Instead, their hybrids are COMPLETELY dependant on oil.
In other words, you're whole argument is baseless, and completely ignorant of the actual facts.
There are courts in the US which consider digital photographs not to be valid evidence due to the ease of photographic manipulation through photoshop.
That makes no sense. Provide some sources to prove it. I have a hard time believing any court could be so stupid.
Just as easily as I can modify digital photos, so too can I transfer those digital images to 35mm film, and simply say I took those pictures with a 35mm camera.
The firm already has manufacturing bottlenecks; its production fabs are cramped as is. There are also problems with inventory.
What bullshit. Provide some sources for this info, or shut up. AMD is opening a new fab, and has a contract with a 3rd party to produce cores if AMD can't keep up... They're doing fine producing Opeterons.
Incidentally, I can provide real, actual sources that show Intel is the one who is having problems producing enough chips to meet demand.
I want to advance a theory about totaletarian regimes: they are non-sustainable if the populace is becoming wealthy.
Your theory is nonsense. Quite the opposite is the case, in fact.
If a totalitarian regime can maintain wealth for it's citizens, they are more likely to continue to tolerate it. It's when there is insufficent money, food, shelter, etc. that revolutions happen. Please list a few examples where the people got more wealthy, and forced the government to become less totalitarian.
As for counter-examples, someone already listed Saudi Arabia, which is a good example. And I'm sure there are plenty of others that can be found easily.
A company offers you FREE content in exchange for including ads in it. The FIRST thing you want to do is edit out the ads.
The content isn't free. I assume most people are PAYING for their internet access, and this program requires you to allow others to use your limited upload bandwidth so they can download the show from you, rather than AOL having to pay for the bandwidth it would require.
Want it without ads? Buy it.
I don't know about you, but I have yet to find any place I can buy any TV shows without ads. VHS tapes and DVDs always have trailers, and some of which FORCE YOU TO WATCH, even though you've bought it.
Most of this content, though, is completely unavailble for purchase. Just try to find sets of just about any of these shows for sale ANYWHERE (other than ebay, where somebody recorded them off of TV and edited out the commercials:-) ).
Content costs money to create,
This content cost money to create... decades ago. If they haven't made a profit by now, they aren't going to.
If you want the content you like to be delivered to you in the format you want, you have to provide some kind of economic benefit back to those that produce it.
TV broadcasters are constantly using the same argument... But that doesn't change the fact that you are under no obligation to sit there and watch the commercials they want you to.
They will still get plenty of people seeing these ads. Even those who edit them out will see them a handful of times before they remove them. I don't know about you, but I don't consider myself an well of money-making-options for companies to suck dry. Advertisers pay for the option of getting something through, with the chance I'll watch it and buy their products, but I'm not obligated to do so, and I'm not going to waste my resources to archive their commercials along with the content I actually want to save.
Perhaps that's the logical conclusion of your argument. People should be required to BUY from advertisers, rather than just giving them the chance to convince people to do so. After all, they PAID for the content you are interested in, so you should PAY them back, right?
It's got a 40 GB drive, lets you record audio and video from numerous sources, tonnes of features.
All good... I just have one question.
With DVDs almost entirely widescreen, HDTV on the horizon being widescreen, and even some current TV programs being widescreen... Who in their right mind is making these portable players with a 4:3 non-widescreen? It's absolutely moronic. Most things people will watch will be wasting 1/2 the screen space for black bars, and the screen is so small to begin with, you can't really afford to lose half the screen.
If you're in the market for an MP3 player, do yourself a favor, bend over and get an iPod.
Could say the same thing for operating systems and Windows, couldn't you?
What it lacks in barely-missed features is made up by style,
Style is pretty close to worthless to me. I'd much rather have something that works well.
capacity
You're just simply wrong there. Lots of other players have greater capacity than anything Apple makes.
and a whole ecosystem of third party accessoires and software.
I don't want to be forced to buy accessories. I want a player to already have a radio built-in... I don't want to have to buy software either, I want to drop all my files on the player, and use something like rsync to keep it up-to-date with no hassle, and no Windows/Mac requirement.
And don't forget, iPods have a decent second hand value.
Only until the fad wears off... Then you'll hardly be able to give them away.
AM requires a bulky ferrite antenna that isn't size friendly for this small players.
Nonsense. Open up any CD player with AM radio. You'll find a ferrite antenna about an inch and a half long, and about as skinny as a couple toothpicks. Still gets very good AM reception.
the contracts and marketing materials on VZW's wireless data plans specifically prohibit you from using any VoIP services.
I find that hard to believe. Companies providing internet access desperately want to retain the benefits of common-carrier status. Restricting what protocols and services you can use over their connection would put them at great risk.
Well that's just completely untrue. Glass fiber optics can't stand to be bent at all, but plastic-based fiber optic cables can be bent as much as copper without any damaged.
I have joined 2 copper ethernet cables to get a longer one with a set of pliers before. If it were fiber, I'd be in big trouble
It's rather stupid to destroy two eithernet cables, rather than buying a $5 coupler. You can certainly expect to find the same kind of fiber optic couplers for a bit more once fiber gets a fraction as popular as ethernet.
Incidentally, it isn't as hard as people make it out to be to work with fiber optic. With some extremely fine sandpaper, the right glue, and a metal collar that will fit tight around the fiber, you can connect two fiber cables. It's DIFFERENT than copper, which bothers people, but it's really not much harder to work with.
Once your phone is on fibre, you can no longer switch local service providers (unless they allow that for some reason).
I don't have any other choice for local service providers NOW.
I do have the option of VOIP over my Verizon DSL, which I can't possibly see them taking away with FIOS. I also have the options of cell phones. And you can bet, in short order, that Cable TV companies are going to be providing local phone service of their own.
Copper phones usually have their own power and continue to work when the main power goes out.
Upgrading the power infrastructure can only be a good thing. It's about time that more buildings got generators, so people don't get trapped in elevators for hours, so phones radios and TVs continue to work, etc.
Battery backup can't possibly be as reliable as powered copper, but it certainly can be good enough for emergencies. Use up to 80% of the battery for normal calling, then when there's only 20% of a charge left, stop accepting incomming calls, stop reading the signals from the fiber, etc., and only use that last 20% if someone needs to make an outgoing emergency call. That last 20% charge could keep 911 services working for months without alternative power.
If it's "complete malarky" then nobody has anything to worry about, but if the guy were to actually make something out of this then doesn't he deserve the patent?
And what if SOMEONE ELSE comes up with an actual device, and gets sued to hell for infringing on this guy's bullshit patent?
Besides, this same bullshit patent tactic can be used for software, internet protocols, etc. So how fucked-up the patent office is, very much matters to YOUR RIGHTS ONLINE.
they also can automatically park themselves in the air when you decide to get out.
Yeah, that sounds like a computerized car to me... Tint the windows so the people can't see out, then stop 30 feet in the air, and tell them they can get out now.
CO2 is considered a forcing because you can affect the climate by adding to or removing it from the environment -- the levels of CO2 in the environment are not affected much by climate processes.
CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas.
As you can see from this Reuters story, the warming of the earth is causing soil to release "huge ammounts of carbon" as greenhouse gases. In fact "about 300 times the amount released each year by burning fossil fuels."
It seems entirely likely that a small (natural) rise in the earth's tempurature is simply having exponential consequences. Adding water vapor to the mix only makes the current sensationalist ("we're all DOOMED...") global warming theory look even less accurate.
I guess people got tired of being scared shitless about how earth-killing asteroids were "overdue", and global warming (as well as H5N1) is the new boogeyman.
What if we had a wireless internet infrastructure fee that was charged to businesses operating over the internet and then applied toward building a national wireless network?
An interesting idea, but the devil is in the details.
Who counts as a business? If you start selling junk on ebay, do you have to pay this internet tax? If not, at what level of sales do you become classified as an internet business?
What about those companies that aren't as general as amazon.com? How would you even know about some company hiding in a tiny corner of the internet? Encrypted links and all that.
And what's to stop companies from locating all their servers right outside the US to avoid this additional cost? You can't honestly expect every country in the world is going to institute a similar internet tax. How will people in Europe feel about paying an internet tax on every purchase they make from a US company, when they also still have to pay for their personal internet access?
And besides, that's only ONE of the issues I listed!
We don't pay a service charge for broadcast radio and television.
You don't because the broadcasting company has paid, instead of making you pay... With something like satellite TV/Radio, you DO pay a service charge.
There's an argument that Wi-Fi should be more like HAM radio -- you buy your equipment and your're online.
Ham radio works because the very low-bandwidth signals can be transmitted across the globe without any infrastructure.
For the internet, someone will have to pay. That mean's everyone's tax dollars. You'll still be paying for the internet, and people who don't use the internet will also be paying for it. Everyone gets the same crappy level of service, and those who max out their connection constantly still only pay as much as those who never use it at all.
Inexpensive wireless technologies promise to make internet access faster and much, much cheaper... but not free.
We complain about how this industry has been around for so long, and how computers still aren't that stable? It's because there are N! possible combinations of hardware and software to try and get working together nicely, which is a lofty goal at best.
Complete bullshit.
That is Microsoft's excuse as to why Windows is so unstable, but it's not true at all. Run an OS like FreeBSD on any PC, and it will be very, very stable. The instability comes not from different hardware, but from a crappy driver model. If one piece of hardware sends even a single errant signal, Windows crashes. Even if you had a single system to support, you'll still have to deal with bugs due to failing hardware, brownouts, surges, etc. It's complete bullshit to say that a single platform will solve any problems at all.
Given that scenario, is there any doubt who's gonna win, never mind the facts?
Yes, dammit.
The US legal system isn't perfectly fair by any stretch of the imagination, but there have been plenty of cases of some nobody with no money to spend on the case, with some mediocre lawyer, getting millions of dollars from giant corporations, who spent millions on the best defense money can buy.
A room full of lawyers doesn't help if you are clearly in the wrong, and the other side is hell-bent on seeing the trial go through. However, the threat alone is good enough to stop most people from even trying, which is sad.
Slashdot Mirror
No, not at all.
Hybrids don't have electric motors that can be used at highway speeds. They don't have batteries that can hold a significant charge, etc. And some hybrids can't even move an INCH without the gas engine also running.
I'd say most of the technology going into hybrids won't help either ICE or electric cars... What Toyota calls the "synergy drive" is the bulk of the system, and completely useless for anything BUT a hybrid car.
If they wanted to work on all-electric/hydrogen cars, all they'd have to do (before hydrogen/high-capacity batteries are available) is to throw a $400 electric generator in the trunk, that runs on unleaded or diesel. Tada, fully electric car that can be switched over to hydrogen or batteries with tiny additional cost.
Besides that, the big car manufacturers have already done ALL the R&D necessary to build an electric car. GM had the EV1, Ford had the Th!nk, Chrysler had an electric car and now builds GEMs, etc. They all already developed practical electric cars. If hybrid makers wanted to transition off of oil, they would have added a few dollars more electronics, and added a plug to their hybrids. Instead, their hybrids are COMPLETELY dependant on oil.
In other words, you're whole argument is baseless, and completely ignorant of the actual facts.
That makes no sense. Provide some sources to prove it. I have a hard time believing any court could be so stupid.
Just as easily as I can modify digital photos, so too can I transfer those digital images to 35mm film, and simply say I took those pictures with a 35mm camera.
What bullshit. Provide some sources for this info, or shut up. AMD is opening a new fab, and has a contract with a 3rd party to produce cores if AMD can't keep up... They're doing fine producing Opeterons.
Incidentally, I can provide real, actual sources that show Intel is the one who is having problems producing enough chips to meet demand.
Your theory is nonsense. Quite the opposite is the case, in fact.
If a totalitarian regime can maintain wealth for it's citizens, they are more likely to continue to tolerate it. It's when there is insufficent money, food, shelter, etc. that revolutions happen. Please list a few examples where the people got more wealthy, and forced the government to become less totalitarian.
As for counter-examples, someone already listed Saudi Arabia, which is a good example. And I'm sure there are plenty of others that can be found easily.
The content isn't free. I assume most people are PAYING for their internet access, and this program requires you to allow others to use your limited upload bandwidth so they can download the show from you, rather than AOL having to pay for the bandwidth it would require.
I don't know about you, but I have yet to find any place I can buy any TV shows without ads. VHS tapes and DVDs always have trailers, and some of which FORCE YOU TO WATCH, even though you've bought it.
Most of this content, though, is completely unavailble for purchase. Just try to find sets of just about any of these shows for sale ANYWHERE (other than ebay, where somebody recorded them off of TV and edited out the commercials
This content cost money to create... decades ago. If they haven't made a profit by now, they aren't going to.
TV broadcasters are constantly using the same argument... But that doesn't change the fact that you are under no obligation to sit there and watch the commercials they want you to.
They will still get plenty of people seeing these ads. Even those who edit them out will see them a handful of times before they remove them. I don't know about you, but I don't consider myself an well of money-making-options for companies to suck dry. Advertisers pay for the option of getting something through, with the chance I'll watch it and buy their products, but I'm not obligated to do so, and I'm not going to waste my resources to archive their commercials along with the content I actually want to save.
Perhaps that's the logical conclusion of your argument. People should be required to BUY from advertisers, rather than just giving them the chance to convince people to do so. After all, they PAID for the content you are interested in, so you should PAY them back, right?
All good... I just have one question.
With DVDs almost entirely widescreen, HDTV on the horizon being widescreen, and even some current TV programs being widescreen... Who in their right mind is making these portable players with a 4:3 non-widescreen? It's absolutely moronic. Most things people will watch will be wasting 1/2 the screen space for black bars, and the screen is so small to begin with, you can't really afford to lose half the screen.
Could say the same thing for operating systems and Windows, couldn't you?
Style is pretty close to worthless to me. I'd much rather have something that works well.
You're just simply wrong there. Lots of other players have greater capacity than anything Apple makes.
I don't want to be forced to buy accessories. I want a player to already have a radio built-in... I don't want to have to buy software either, I want to drop all my files on the player, and use something like rsync to keep it up-to-date with no hassle, and no Windows/Mac requirement.
Only until the fad wears off... Then you'll hardly be able to give them away.
Nonsense. Open up any CD player with AM radio. You'll find a ferrite antenna about an inch and a half long, and about as skinny as a couple toothpicks. Still gets very good AM reception.
Like any government-run services, I think it would be more accurate to say that it would FAIL to work anywhere in the world...
I find that hard to believe. Companies providing internet access desperately want to retain the benefits of common-carrier status. Restricting what protocols and services you can use over their connection would put them at great risk.
I've got an iPod killer for you...
/.
MP3 player, that runs Linux, plays back Vorbis, Flac, Speex, and of course Vinyl...
Add in a 3D 16:9 ELED screen for playing back Divx, Theora and Tarkin videos.
For navigate, throw-in a "buckling spring" scroll-wheel.
That'll be an iPod killer... at least on
Well that's just completely untrue. Glass fiber optics can't stand to be bent at all, but plastic-based fiber optic cables can be bent as much as copper without any damaged.
It's rather stupid to destroy two eithernet cables, rather than buying a $5 coupler. You can certainly expect to find the same kind of fiber optic couplers for a bit more once fiber gets a fraction as popular as ethernet.
Incidentally, it isn't as hard as people make it out to be to work with fiber optic. With some extremely fine sandpaper, the right glue, and a metal collar that will fit tight around the fiber, you can connect two fiber cables. It's DIFFERENT than copper, which bothers people, but it's really not much harder to work with.
I don't have any other choice for local service providers NOW.
I do have the option of VOIP over my Verizon DSL, which I can't possibly see them taking away with FIOS. I also have the options of cell phones. And you can bet, in short order, that Cable TV companies are going to be providing local phone service of their own.
Upgrading the power infrastructure can only be a good thing. It's about time that more buildings got generators, so people don't get trapped in elevators for hours, so phones radios and TVs continue to work, etc.
Battery backup can't possibly be as reliable as powered copper, but it certainly can be good enough for emergencies. Use up to 80% of the battery for normal calling, then when there's only 20% of a charge left, stop accepting incomming calls, stop reading the signals from the fiber, etc., and only use that last 20% if someone needs to make an outgoing emergency call. That last 20% charge could keep 911 services working for months without alternative power.
No arguing with that.
And what if SOMEONE ELSE comes up with an actual device, and gets sued to hell for infringing on this guy's bullshit patent?
Besides, this same bullshit patent tactic can be used for software, internet protocols, etc. So how fucked-up the patent office is, very much matters to YOUR RIGHTS ONLINE.
Yeah, that sounds like a computerized car to me... Tint the windows so the people can't see out, then stop 30 feet in the air, and tell them they can get out now.
Damn computerized cars! Get off my lawn!
CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas.
As you can see from this Reuters story, the warming of the earth is causing soil to release "huge ammounts of carbon" as greenhouse gases. In fact "about 300 times the amount released each year by burning fossil fuels."
It seems entirely likely that a small (natural) rise in the earth's tempurature is simply having exponential consequences. Adding water vapor to the mix only makes the current sensationalist ("we're all DOOMED...") global warming theory look even less accurate.
I guess people got tired of being scared shitless about how earth-killing asteroids were "overdue", and global warming (as well as H5N1) is the new boogeyman.
An interesting idea, but the devil is in the details.
Who counts as a business? If you start selling junk on ebay, do you have to pay this internet tax? If not, at what level of sales do you become classified as an internet business?
What about those companies that aren't as general as amazon.com? How would you even know about some company hiding in a tiny corner of the internet? Encrypted links and all that.
And what's to stop companies from locating all their servers right outside the US to avoid this additional cost? You can't honestly expect every country in the world is going to institute a similar internet tax. How will people in Europe feel about paying an internet tax on every purchase they make from a US company, when they also still have to pay for their personal internet access?
And besides, that's only ONE of the issues I listed!
Which is why Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel are still the dominant monopolies in their fields.
You don't because the broadcasting company has paid, instead of making you pay... With something like satellite TV/Radio, you DO pay a service charge.
Ham radio works because the very low-bandwidth signals can be transmitted across the globe without any infrastructure.
For the internet, someone will have to pay. That mean's everyone's tax dollars. You'll still be paying for the internet, and people who don't use the internet will also be paying for it. Everyone gets the same crappy level of service, and those who max out their connection constantly still only pay as much as those who never use it at all.
Inexpensive wireless technologies promise to make internet access faster and much, much cheaper... but not free.
The answer is well-covered in the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_voltage_direct_c urrent
Which is why AC is used over braided wire, rather than solid conductor wire, making your point moot.
Complete bullshit.
That is Microsoft's excuse as to why Windows is so unstable, but it's not true at all. Run an OS like FreeBSD on any PC, and it will be very, very stable. The instability comes not from different hardware, but from a crappy driver model. If one piece of hardware sends even a single errant signal, Windows crashes. Even if you had a single system to support, you'll still have to deal with bugs due to failing hardware, brownouts, surges, etc. It's complete bullshit to say that a single platform will solve any problems at all.
Yeah, Electric Chairs used AC power because it's LESS DANGEROUS, right?
Yes, dammit.
The US legal system isn't perfectly fair by any stretch of the imagination, but there have been plenty of cases of some nobody with no money to spend on the case, with some mediocre lawyer, getting millions of dollars from giant corporations, who spent millions on the best defense money can buy.
A room full of lawyers doesn't help if you are clearly in the wrong, and the other side is hell-bent on seeing the trial go through. However, the threat alone is good enough to stop most people from even trying, which is sad.