Chevy Volt does 40 miles per charge, so figure 2 charges a day (to work/from work) and 20 working days per month == 1600 miles which is 600 kilowatthours for a typical EV. Multiply by 15 cents per KWh == about $87 per month for electricity.
>>>Stopping and recharging the battery is cheating in my book
Precisely. You understand. The "only 25 gallons" bragging point means nothing when you can grab "free energy" from an electrical outlet. It skews the results.
>>>If [battery and motor] were just useless weight, a Prius would get mileage similar to a typical gas car.
Bzzzz. You don't need they hybrid components to get decent mileage. The 45 highway MPG a Prius gets is not really any better than a 44MPG Honda Civic HX, which is not a hybrid. And even though they are no longer made, the old Suzuki Swifts were rated around 60MPG. And in the EU they make gasoline cars (Polos, Focuses) that also get around 60MPG.
[edit] [Why was this post rated "troll"? Jeez. Everything I state here is factual.]
If you think a 2500 mile 3-day crosscountry trip in your gasoline car is long, try doing it in an electric car sometime. You can only travel 200 miles tops, and then you have to stop at a hotel room so you can recharge overnight (8 hours minimum). It's a 13 day trip instead of 3.
Even if you skip sleeping and drive at night, it will still take 7 days in your EV, due to the frequent need to stop and recharge.
>>>gas/diesel engine to an entirely electrically driven car is a very solid move forward.
P.S.
I agree, but that still doesn't excuse deceptive advertising that deliberately fails to reveal your Electric bill will increase ~$50 each month. Customers need to be told this info, even if it's something like "Gets 60 MPG and uses 300 watthours per mile"
BTW my Honda Insight which has 70hp power comparable to the Volt gets around 80 MPG and would cost just $37/month of gasoline to operate in your scenario.
I meant the electricity is "free" in the sense that it's not included in the "25 gallons of gasoline" bragging point. In theory they could brag they went cross-country with only 1 gallon, if they kept stopping every 40 miles and recharging the Prius' battery with "free" energy. Understood?
>>>Yes and no. If a Chevy Volt costs 60 mpg + $50/mo to travel 1200 mi/mo, that's $100 at $2.50/gal.... >>>
Yes and another hybrid like the Prius (approximately same size/shape) will only cost $66 each month. So even though the Prius appears to be a less-efficient 45MPG car versus the Chevy Volt's advertised 60MPG, in reality the Prius will be cheaper to operate for the customer.
Heck even a non-hybrid 38MPG Civic is cheaper to operate ($78). This is why I think this Chevy Volt false-advertising needs to be stopped. It's misleading to the consumer to say "it gets 60MPG" while never mentioning the additional impact on their electricity bills.
Besides starting out with a fully-charged battery every morning (which is like 40 miles of "free" energy when the gas engine will be turned-off), the overall fuel economy is only ~100 miles per gallon. That really isn't impressive.
>>>programming the bits that make Windows easy to use and acceptable to a large user base are the very bits that nobody likes to write. They are, in fact, a pain in the ass to write and there is no real sense of accomplishment. That is why GUIs in Linux are horrible. >>>
I like writing those bits. I enjoy making things easy for people to use, as long as I get some feedback (like "thanks for your work").
Blocking ads means you are driving up the Host's bills, but blocking him from offsetting those costs. It's roughly equivalent to using your neighbors' phone to make long-distance calls, driving-up his bill, and not covering the cost.
>>>If Noscript was proprietary, people would have been stuck with the author's shady practices until some guy comes up with a (bad) free software replacement.
Author's shady practices??? Ooookay. And you're not shady too? I find it funny you justify "freedom" with an argument about using NoScript to steal people's bandwidth. Reminds me of Libertarian Party members* who refuse to pay taxes, but then they go to the library to get free books and videos. Parasites.
Anyway..... I don't think you have a right to drive-up somebody's web-hosting bills by several hundred dollars, and then refuse to "pay" those bills by blocking the banners. That's equivalent to going to the Soup Kitchen, eating the food, and then refusing to listen to the speaker who provided the food. The food is not free; neither is the website. Listening to/viewing the speaker/ads is the price.
Even here on slashdot I was offered a chance to stop ads but I figured as long as I am using slashdot, I am driving up their webhosting costs, so I'll keep viewing the ads. That only seems fair.
>>>"Internet connection not working"? You mean WIRELESS INTERNET not working
Wow.
There are assumptions, and then there are ASSumptions. You really missed the mark there. Wireless?!?!? I was talking about a 56k dialup connection that didn't work properly. Although I could establish a connection, the software would crash and not pass my username/password to the ISP. And the ISP's web accelerator software refused to work at all. I messed with it for several hours (what else is there to do in a hotel room?), and then gave up.
Once I got back home the XP restore CD was used to put the laptop back to its "as bought" configuration.
>>Some game programmer dropped the ball so now Linux sucks?
No the bug was in Ubuntu because the Screen Properties dialogue does not fit inside a 640x480 screen, therefore you can't access the "okay" button to go back to a normal size screen. (rolls eyes). Jeez. Some of you act as if I just insulted your girlfriend. It's just an operating system. Just an appliance.
>>>So basically you found a bug (in the application, not the OS), didn't actually Google to find out you can move buttons with the "Alt" button >>>
Ubuntu's not part of the Linux OS? Interesting. I thought it was, but still this "bug" is pretty inexcusable. What kind of shitty testing does Ubuntu have if a user can resize a window to 640x480 and not be able to undo the mistake without digging through a 1000-page manual? What is this? 1985??? Even videogames go through minimal testing to make sure users don't get stuck in inescapable situations (i.e. characters trapped against walls).
Furthermore even if that resizing problem did not exist, I still couldn't get Netscape ISP Web Accelerator software to connect on Linux. Even with Wine it wouldn't run properly because it was not designed for alternative OSes like Linux or Mac. It only likes Windows. .
>>>started complaining about it Slashdot? >>>Gotcha. I totally get the +5 Insightful here.
Nice sarcasm. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings by criticizing your love, but I really don't care. A PC is an appliance, not a girlfriend, and if it doesn't work properly with Linux Ubuntu, than I'll choose something else that DOES work. (i.e. The original XP it came with.) Yes I'm being deliberately harsh, because I get tired of dealing with geeks who treat users as if they are worms. If your OS is not user-friendly, take the criticism and FIX IT, don't whine about the stupid user or throw a juvenile temper tantrums.
Yes there are some stupid users, but there are also some stupid programmers as well. It goes both ways.
>>>On Windows, you have to hack the registry in order to fix this kind of problem.
No you don't. If I resize the screen to 640x480 on Windoze or Mac, even though the "okay" button is off the screen, I can still access it by using the Enter key, and thereby get back to the larger 1280x1024 size.
>>>Hold down the "alt" key and you can scroll to the button.
A better solution would be to enable the "Enter" key to default to the okay button, that way it doesn't matter if the button is off-screen, as if the case in both Windoze and MacOS. (An even-smarter solution would be windows that always have scrollbars, and therefore don't require a keyboard to operate.)
>>>That's because with Windows/Mac, programmers write programs for the user. With Linux, programmers write programs for other programmers.
That's about right. I suppose if I handed my Linux laptop to a programmer he could have fixed the 640x480 problem with a little coding, but for average users that's beyond their ability. (And the Netscape ISP Web Accelerator problem was probably unfixable without rewriting Wine.)
BTW I noticed some people marked me "troll".
That's okay. My opinion is MY opinion and is not going to change just because of a few junior high insults.
>>>female police informants will show up everywhere in the target's path dressed wildly inappropriately to get the target to look. The neighborhood watch member observing this will conclude there's something to the accusations. >>>
Stop reading Tom Clancy and/or watching 24. It's just fiction. In the real world the police are imbeciles and wouldn't hatch such elaborate plots. Just look at how they mangled the Michael Jackson suspected-murder case, which will probably be thrown-out now to do police incompetence.
>>>>>The only time my printer being tagged will be useful is if I do something wrong.
>>And if your "wrongdoing" is printing something that is perfectly legal, but that the government (or someone else who figures out how to trace those patterns) dislikes? >>
Yeah like those guys who printed-out the Joker Obama posters. I've heard some of them disappeared. Okay not really because Obama's a decent guy, but if we had someone else in power, like Nero or Napoleon or Nixon, I could easily-imagine them making the people who printed those posters disappear.
>>>The yellow star has the issue of marking someone for discrimination. The only time my printer being tagged will be useful is if I do something wrong. >>>
Or if your Jewish. If the government can tag you with a yellow jewish star on your sleeve, don't you think they could also tag your printer with microprint jewish symbols on your printout?
>>> vouchers [wikipedia.org], which are similar to what you describe
I'm not talking about vouchers, which are government dollars. I'm talking about a School tax exemption, which means letting the parent keep the money he earned. There's a HUGE difference philosophically. If it's government money, then the government can attach strings like "don't spend the voucher on catholic school".
But if it's your money then there are no strings. It's YOUR money and you can spend it on any school you desire (even another government school if you want).
Non-relevant. My proposal was intended to help black and hispanic children who are stuck in shitty inner-city schools that are falling apart. That is a situation just as unfair as the segregated schools that once existed in this country (whites had shiny schools; blacks had crumbling schools). Segregation was ruled a violation of rights, and likewise forcing innercity kids to stay in crumbling schools is a violation of rights (imho).
By making these students School tax-exempt they will have an extra ~$2000 per year to redirect to a private school, or a suburban government school, or any other school they choose. Also my proposal alleviates the burden of parents having to pay TWO tuitions (government school AND private school) by saying that if you already paid one (private school) than you don't need to pay the other tuition for that year. That sounds reasonable to me.
It also promotes competition which promotes innovation. I think we all agree a monopoly (think Comcast or Microsoft) harms the consumers by creating stagnation. Neither should we have a monopoly in education.
Slashdot Mirror
Chevy Volt does 40 miles per charge, so figure 2 charges a day (to work/from work) and 20 working days per month == 1600 miles which is 600 kilowatthours for a typical EV. Multiply by 15 cents per KWh == about $87 per month for electricity.
>>>Stopping and recharging the battery is cheating in my book
Precisely.
You understand.
The "only 25 gallons" bragging point means nothing when you can grab "free energy" from an electrical outlet. It skews the results.
>>>If [battery and motor] were just useless weight, a Prius would get mileage similar to a typical gas car.
Bzzzz. You don't need they hybrid components to get decent mileage. The 45 highway MPG a Prius gets is not really any better than a 44MPG Honda Civic HX, which is not a hybrid. And even though they are no longer made, the old Suzuki Swifts were rated around 60MPG. And in the EU they make gasoline cars (Polos, Focuses) that also get around 60MPG.
[edit] [Why was this post rated "troll"? Jeez. Everything I state here is factual.]
If you think a 2500 mile 3-day crosscountry trip in your gasoline car is long, try doing it in an electric car sometime. You can only travel 200 miles tops, and then you have to stop at a hotel room so you can recharge overnight (8 hours minimum). It's a 13 day trip instead of 3.
Even if you skip sleeping and drive at night, it will still take 7 days in your EV, due to the frequent need to stop and recharge.
>>>gas/diesel engine to an entirely electrically driven car is a very solid move forward.
P.S.
I agree, but that still doesn't excuse deceptive advertising that deliberately fails to reveal your Electric bill will increase ~$50 each month. Customers need to be told this info, even if it's something like "Gets 60 MPG and uses 300 watthours per mile"
BTW my Honda Insight which has 70hp power comparable to the Volt gets around 80 MPG and would cost just $37/month of gasoline to operate in your scenario.
>>>Except it's not "free"
I meant the electricity is "free" in the sense that it's not included in the "25 gallons of gasoline" bragging point. In theory they could brag they went cross-country with only 1 gallon, if they kept stopping every 40 miles and recharging the Prius' battery with "free" energy. Understood?
>>>Yes and no. If a Chevy Volt costs 60 mpg + $50/mo to travel 1200 mi/mo, that's $100 at $2.50/gal....
>>>
Yes and another hybrid like the Prius (approximately same size/shape) will only cost $66 each month. So even though the Prius appears to be a less-efficient 45MPG car versus the Chevy Volt's advertised 60MPG, in reality the Prius will be cheaper to operate for the customer.
Heck even a non-hybrid 38MPG Civic is cheaper to operate ($78). This is why I think this Chevy Volt false-advertising needs to be stopped. It's misleading to the consumer to say "it gets 60MPG" while never mentioning the additional impact on their electricity bills.
Yes.
Besides starting out with a fully-charged battery every morning (which is like 40 miles of "free" energy when the gas engine will be turned-off), the overall fuel economy is only ~100 miles per gallon. That really isn't impressive.
>>>programming the bits that make Windows easy to use and acceptable to a large user base are the very bits that nobody likes to write. They are, in fact, a pain in the ass to write and there is no real sense of accomplishment. That is why GUIs in Linux are horrible.
>>>
I like writing those bits.
I enjoy making things easy for people to use,
as long as I get some feedback (like "thanks for your work").
>>> And how does Noscript "steal bandwidth"?
Blocking ads means you are driving up the Host's bills, but blocking him from offsetting those costs. It's roughly equivalent to using your neighbors' phone to make long-distance calls, driving-up his bill, and not covering the cost.
>>>If Noscript was proprietary, people would have been stuck with the author's shady practices until some guy comes up with a (bad) free software replacement.
Author's shady practices??? Ooookay. And you're not shady too? I find it funny you justify "freedom" with an argument about using NoScript to steal people's bandwidth. Reminds me of Libertarian Party members* who refuse to pay taxes, but then they go to the library to get free books and videos. Parasites.
Anyway..... I don't think you have a right to drive-up somebody's web-hosting bills by several hundred dollars, and then refuse to "pay" those bills by blocking the banners. That's equivalent to going to the Soup Kitchen, eating the food, and then refusing to listen to the speaker who provided the food. The food is not free; neither is the website. Listening to/viewing the speaker/ads is the price.
Even here on slashdot I was offered a chance to stop ads but I figured as long as I am using slashdot, I am driving up their webhosting costs, so I'll keep viewing the ads. That only seems fair.
>>>"Internet connection not working"? You mean WIRELESS INTERNET not working
Wow.
There are assumptions, and then there are ASSumptions. You really missed the mark there. Wireless?!?!? I was talking about a 56k dialup connection that didn't work properly. Although I could establish a connection, the software would crash and not pass my username/password to the ISP. And the ISP's web accelerator software refused to work at all. I messed with it for several hours (what else is there to do in a hotel room?), and then gave up.
Once I got back home the XP restore CD was used to put the laptop back to its "as bought" configuration.
>>Some game programmer dropped the ball so now Linux sucks?
No the bug was in Ubuntu because the Screen Properties dialogue does not fit inside a 640x480 screen, therefore you can't access the "okay" button to go back to a normal size screen. (rolls eyes). Jeez. Some of you act as if I just insulted your girlfriend. It's just an operating system. Just an appliance.
>>>So basically you found a bug (in the application, not the OS), didn't actually Google to find out you can move buttons with the "Alt" button
>>>
Ubuntu's not part of the Linux OS? Interesting. I thought it was, but still this "bug" is pretty inexcusable. What kind of shitty testing does Ubuntu have if a user can resize a window to 640x480 and not be able to undo the mistake without digging through a 1000-page manual? What is this? 1985??? Even videogames go through minimal testing to make sure users don't get stuck in inescapable situations (i.e. characters trapped against walls).
Furthermore even if that resizing problem did not exist, I still couldn't get Netscape ISP Web Accelerator software to connect on Linux. Even with Wine it wouldn't run properly because it was not designed for alternative OSes like Linux or Mac. It only likes Windows.
.
>>>started complaining about it Slashdot?
>>>Gotcha. I totally get the +5 Insightful here.
Nice sarcasm. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings by criticizing your love, but I really don't care. A PC is an appliance, not a girlfriend, and if it doesn't work properly with Linux Ubuntu, than I'll choose something else that DOES work. (i.e. The original XP it came with.) Yes I'm being deliberately harsh, because I get tired of dealing with geeks who treat users as if they are worms. If your OS is not user-friendly, take the criticism and FIX IT, don't whine about the stupid user or throw a juvenile temper tantrums.
Yes there are some stupid users, but there are also some stupid programmers as well. It goes both ways.
>>>On Windows, you have to hack the registry in order to fix this kind of problem.
No you don't. If I resize the screen to 640x480 on Windoze or Mac, even though the "okay" button is off the screen, I can still access it by using the Enter key, and thereby get back to the larger 1280x1024 size.
>>>Hold down the "alt" key and you can scroll to the button.
A better solution would be to enable the "Enter" key to default to the okay button, that way it doesn't matter if the button is off-screen, as if the case in both Windoze and MacOS. (An even-smarter solution would be windows that always have scrollbars, and therefore don't require a keyboard to operate.)
>>>That's because with Windows/Mac, programmers write programs for the user. With Linux, programmers write programs for other programmers.
That's about right. I suppose if I handed my Linux laptop to a programmer he could have fixed the 640x480 problem with a little coding, but for average users that's beyond their ability. (And the Netscape ISP Web Accelerator problem was probably unfixable without rewriting Wine.)
BTW I noticed some people marked me "troll".
That's okay. My opinion is MY opinion and is not going to change just because of a few junior high insults.
"hahahaha! Just words on a page." - President Bush
"That's right George. Constitutional law means nothing to us. Heck there's not even any punishment for violating it!" - President Obama
"Heh heh heh. Boy you guys are a laugh riot." - President Clinton
>>>female police informants will show up everywhere in the target's path dressed wildly inappropriately to get the target to look. The neighborhood watch member observing this will conclude there's something to the accusations.
>>>
Stop reading Tom Clancy and/or watching 24. It's just fiction. In the real world the police are imbeciles and wouldn't hatch such elaborate plots. Just look at how they mangled the Michael Jackson suspected-murder case, which will probably be thrown-out now to do police incompetence.
>>>I have personal experience with what's really going on, but I can't talk about it, especially on this site full of technically sophisticated users
Your nose is growing long Pinocchio.
Stop making-up stories.
In the UK they don't need to beat you.
In the UK you don't have a right to remain silent and MUST reveal your encryption key, or else spend years in jail. Silence is a crime in the state.
>>>>>The only time my printer being tagged will be useful is if I do something wrong.
>>And if your "wrongdoing" is printing something that is perfectly legal, but that the government (or someone else who figures out how to trace those patterns) dislikes?
>>
Yeah like those guys who printed-out the Joker Obama posters. I've heard some of them disappeared. Okay not really because Obama's a decent guy, but if we had someone else in power, like Nero or Napoleon or Nixon, I could easily-imagine them making the people who printed those posters disappear.
>>>The yellow star has the issue of marking someone for discrimination. The only time my printer being tagged will be useful is if I do something wrong.
>>>
Or if your Jewish. If the government can tag you with a yellow jewish star on your sleeve, don't you think they could also tag your printer with microprint jewish symbols on your printout?
>>> vouchers [wikipedia.org], which are similar to what you describe
I'm not talking about vouchers, which are government dollars. I'm talking about a School tax exemption, which means letting the parent keep the money he earned. There's a HUGE difference philosophically. If it's government money, then the government can attach strings like "don't spend the voucher on catholic school".
But if it's your money then there are no strings. It's YOUR money and you can spend it on any school you desire (even another government school if you want).
>>>(Snip strawman arguments)
Non-relevant. My proposal was intended to help black and hispanic children who are stuck in shitty inner-city schools that are falling apart. That is a situation just as unfair as the segregated schools that once existed in this country (whites had shiny schools; blacks had crumbling schools). Segregation was ruled a violation of rights, and likewise forcing innercity kids to stay in crumbling schools is a violation of rights (imho).
By making these students School tax-exempt they will have an extra ~$2000 per year to redirect to a private school, or a suburban government school, or any other school they choose. Also my proposal alleviates the burden of parents having to pay TWO tuitions (government school AND private school) by saying that if you already paid one (private school) than you don't need to pay the other tuition for that year. That sounds reasonable to me.
It also promotes competition which promotes innovation. I think we all agree a monopoly (think Comcast or Microsoft) harms the consumers by creating stagnation. Neither should we have a monopoly in education.
CHOICE is preferable to no choice.