The SUV is bad, but not nearly as bad as the 7 miles to the grocery store! People look too much towards cars as the culprit, and less at their real estate. Buy a home in a walkable community. These don't have to be big cities! The most walkable communities of all are small towns that fit under Wal Mart's radar. Urban cores are a distant second, because the traffic is more dangerous for kids. Suburban Sprawl is by far the worst. People who choose to live in the sprawl are shooting the environment, and their own health, in the foot.
I'm confused. I thought that for the first year or so after launch, consoles generally out-performed $2000 gaming rigs, because of the simpler optimization environment of a non-moving target. After a year or so, it seems like Moore's Law kicks in and yesterday's console can't beat tomorrow's $2000 pc.
That PS3 isn't mopping the floor with PeeCee right now is suprising, especially given that its halfway between the cost of a normal console and a new gaming rig (logarithmically speaking). What's more suprising is that the article submitter doesn't agree with my assumption.
Right now we have three determined and compotent console makers battling it out. That's rare in the console world, and good for the consumer. That's why the product lifecycles are so short now - nothing drives technology like a good knock-down, drag-out war.
Moore's law being what it is, if PS3 actually shows signs of life in two years (and that's unlikely, since the market folds in on a leader pretty fast), then a technologically superior console can be cranked out. Nintendo has even learned that they don't have to completely replace the console every generation. Witness that most Wii controllers are actually repurposed GC controllers, and that the Wii chip is basically an upclocked GC.
He says that Nintendo will 'appear' to win in 2007 because of its low price and innovative control scheme, but that Sony will be the winner in the long run.
Here in the console market we have a word for consoles that "will win in the long run": Losers.
If you think that 2009 will be the year of the PS3, then you're delusional, the Xbox 720 and the Wiiii will be right around the corner by then.
Well, it's chemistry, not physics. Look up "standard electrode potentials" sometime.
Huh! I always assumed that if you chopped a 1.5 v battery in half (and cleaned up the acid properly), you'd find two 0.75 volt batteries end-to-end. Guess not. Thanks!
I have consistently mixed and matched for years without problems. But I actually would be interested in reading more about this requirement, to understand any potential downside (likelyhood of an event, and severity).
Read the instructions on your charger. For the ones you can buy at Wallgreens, they say not to charge batteries from different batches. Also, I've heard from about a million different sources that the weakest link in a battery pack ends up having to do all the heavy lifting, and so wears out first. I think the best way to keep all cells balanced is as I described. Or shell the $70 for a very fancy charger...
I bike. A lot. I depend on LED Bike lights to keep me alive every night. Alkaline AAs are 1.5 volts. I would like to use NiMH AAs and AAAs, but at 1.2 volts they're just not bright enough.:(
There's no law of physics that says NiMH has to be 1.2v. As we all know from high-school physics, putting two batteries in || effectively gives you one battery with double the voltage. NiMHs have made such huge strides in power storage, but have made no effort to come into voltage conformance with the AA and AAA standards? Why the heck is that?!
I'm annoyed at the wide range of consumer products coming out with built-in propritary batteries. Ever run out of juice in your bike light and cannibalized batteries from your camera to make yourself visible on the way home? I have done things like that several times. Others buy a seperate propritary battery for everything, and then wonder why they have too many AC adapters in their lives, and often replace entire devices because its cheaper than replacing their wierd-o batteries.
AA: 1970s technology kicking the bass of 2006 corporate schlock.
The real key to being happy with rechargeables is, first to buy them for all your items, and then (most important), buy those few extra batteries to fill up your battery charger. Then, when your toy/remote/whatever runs out of batteries, all you do is swap the new ones in the charger for the depleted ones in your device. Having a constant supply of charged up battiers is the key to being happy with rechargables. Very little education required for others in your household. ("If you take some batteries out of here, put your old ones back in here.")
There's a problem with this. First, you're not supposed to mix-n-match batteries once they've been used in seperate devices. We have a 3-AA remote controlled car, several 2-AA mice, and several 4-AA bike lights. We have to partition those and keep them seperate. You have to train house members NOT to mix-n-match.
I've taken to writing names on each group of batteries (Amanda, Betty, Cathy...), and also ids (1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4). Use the Amanda-4s all together and all in the same device. I also buy lots of different brands, because they appear different. Amandas are Energizer, Betties are Ray-o-vac, etc.
I have a cardboard box with 3 pockets. In the left is the "goods", where house members pick up new batteries. On the right are the "bads", where I store empty batteries. In the middle is the "hmmms", where we stick batteries we don't know about. In my copious free time I test and rebin those.
Okay, I lied, I have that box split in to two sub-boxes (2x3), so that the top row is for Alkalaine and the bottom row is for rechargables.
These may be a good option for me. I've been looking at the Ray-o-vac hybrids, but frankly couldn't find anyone, anywhere that knew anything about them (aside from teh Ray-o-vac website, which claims they're great - big shock).
Both Energizer and Ray-o-vac have 15 minute chargers, but it requries you have the special batteries to go with it. In the Ray-o-vac model, there's built in electronics on each 15-minute battery that govern how it behaves during recharge. I'm not sure if the Energizer works the same way. I'm interested in other Slashdotter's experience with them.
I've been eying this technology myself, but basically decided to avoid it, since I'm OC enough to always keep a set charged and ready anyway. As a photographer, you don't get pictures - no big deal, as a bicyclist I get run-over and DIE. Hence the OC behavior.
What in the heck are you talking about? The UI has been multi-threaded since Netscape 1.0 in 1995. Wasn't that the big improvement over Mosaic? That you could use the scrollbar while a page was loading in the background?
First you say the SUV driver should think and react in a sophisticated, omniscient way.
Then you make a long rant about how drivers should be traffic cows, going with the herd.
Which is it? Do you want smart drivers or dumb drivers?
I think about this often, because as a bicyclist, I'm constantly herding traffic through lane positioning. The answer is: you have to assume bovine-level intelligence of all other drivers, or prepare to die. If that means you have to drive 50mph on a 70mph flow in order to keep adequate following distance, well, I'd recommend that. Look at the bright side: you become rolling traffic calming - that flow won't be 70mph for long.
The two-second gap is typically recommended for 70 MPH speeds. It is dramatically smaller for lower speeds. It is also completely unrealistic at any speed. A two-second gap at 70 MPH is about 315 feet, or about 24 car lengths.
* The big motors are there because we have a lot of hills (in some parts of the US) and a *lot* of stoplights.
Performance out of stoplights can only matter if you're first in the queue, and only then if you've got open road ahead. That's not the case too often. I also wonder if its better to accellerate hard to cruising speed, or ramp up (almost typed "gramp up") slowly. My guess is "slowly", which econo-cars should do fine at. No actual proof, though.
On average, I think the US is much less hilly than, say, Italy, or any of a number of European countries, and the "mini" is an average sized car there. I also reject the notion that the US has worse weather on average than other countries. I think the Canadians will too.
How many here have been holding off on getting a DVD player, waiting for it to come bundled with just the right game console? That's right, nobody. Everyone already has a DVD player if they want it.
If the launch rate reached 3000 launches per year, they calculate that would drop to $189 per kilogram. Today, it costs more than 100 times that to send payloads into space.
However, Epstein says he cannot imagine a demand for that many launches in the foreseeable future.
Gee, how about, y'know, sending up stuff to build space ships and whatnot? What if a common university robotics project were "design your own martian probe"? Hm, can Mindstroms withstand 2000g?
So for most of its life, the Tomcat was basically a flying weapons platform for the AIM-54 Phoenix long-ass-range missile. The idea was at first to shoot down enemy planes, and after a while the idea became to shoot down enemy cruise missiles. The Phoenix was unique in that its range was ~100 miles, while I think the second best was AMRAAM, at ~30 miles, and didn't come out for a decade or two afterwards.
So there's not really a replacement for the Phoenix in the modern inventory, unless somebody knows better?
Though why you'd want Phoenix when you've got Aegis cruisers defending the fleet remains an open question. So unless you want to shoot down enemy targets somewhere not over your fleet, Phoenix doesn't seem that neat anymore....
rechargeable batteries rock
on
USB Batteries
·
· Score: 1
I own about 16 Rayovac rechargable AAs. I've never had one go bad on me. At this point I'm sort of hoping they do, because their 1600mAh is starting to look a little anemic compared to the new crop of 2500mAh'ers.
I use them in my 4AA bike lights, and in my digital camera. They've saved me hundreds of dollars.
Rayovac is a rockin' brand. They don't advertise, period. So they cost less than Duh-a-Cell or Enervizer, and in my experience they perform very well indeed.
NiCad rechargables sucked. Those haven't been around for decades though.
> As for sharing the road, I'll gladly share it. Just make damn sure you're not taking up two lanes with your pack of riders when you could easily go single file in one lane.
Yeah, these bicyclist convoys drive me nuts too. First of all, they're clearly not really _going anywhere_, they're just out to burn calories on their bikes for fun. So what's the diff if they packetize to allow faster vehicles to pass them? They won't draft as efficiently, but isn't pedaling the whole point? I don't get it, and in my personal, current opinion, they should have diminished rights to the road. (I think that too for admobiles and car drivers "scooping the loop", by the way... the roads are there for TRANSPORTATION first, and recreation and other uses as capacity permits)
As a clarification, in the left turn analogy, I was imagining that oncoming traffic was blocking the left turn for quite some time, as happens often. Both cases cause blocked traffic. I think you just have more empathy for the car, because you're in a car, and you understand that riding in a car, sometimes left turns are necessary. Well, sometimes, driving a bike, lane-blocking is necessary.
> Surely he could have let me gone by at the light, no? There was plenty of room for him to move over to the side and let me by while waiting for the light to turn green.
You're changing your story. Was there plenty of room, or not enough room? If there's enough room to pass in the lane, then I think he should have let you pass. But if the lane is narrow, I'm not mashing right while cars are stopped, and giving those cars the impression its okay to sleaze past me, because then the first car will sleaze past with 1 foot margin and 2mph speed difference... then the second at 1 foot margin and 8mph...then the third at 1 foot margin and 15mph, then you have a dangerous situation! For all the cyclist's consideration, the cars drivers won't let the bike back in 2/3rds of the time, believe me, I've tried. They play chicken to co-opt the right of way. And in games of chicken between bikes and cars, the cars always win.
Even if you, personally, are reasonable and would only pass when its safe to do so, believe me, there are many out there who give in to tempatation, and pass within the margin of error if the cyclist gives them the option. Cyclists have to prepare for the lowest common denominator. The price for failure is death.
As to there being lots of side-streets, maybe the cyclist didn't know the area well enough to realize that. If the side-streets were really so great, and your delay so interminable, maybe you could have used them to jink ahead of him? A car can cover 25m in no time, flat.
The synchronized lights were probably aggrivating the cyclist more than you. You were losing time. The cyclist was losing time too, plus effort to restore his speed. FWIW in some places they're re-syncing them to make the effects on bike traffic (and all traffic stuck behind the bikes) less onerous.
I admit to the "holier than thou" attitude. You also had such an attitude. I don't understand your feelings. However, I feel mine is well-justified: Car drivers pollute, take tons of space to park, and kill more Americans than 9/11 every month. What you call "BS", I call facts that sane people should weigh carefully. So even if you don't agree, you can at least understand where my opinion is coming from.
-
If I were going in a straight line, for, say, a mile, and there were ten cars piled up behind me with no safe place to pass, I would indeed cheerfully pull over to let them pass.
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I think you're right, the "green light vegetable" situation is a good use for the horn.
> "As a fellow cyclist I feel sick to the stomach to think the biggest danger to me is something I can't do anything about - getting hit from behind. And it makes me more sick to know there are a lot of drivers out there who would hit and run. If you read lilos blog you can see one of the reasons he was riding was because he was eminently aware of the ecological crisis cars are causing. So it's another soldier dead today in my view."
Good news chum! For trained cyclists riding in the proper lane position, overtaking collisions are reduced to only 0.3 percent of all bike-car collisions. (see _Effective Cycling_, John Forrester). The trick is proper lane positioning and (at night) lighting. If you're in the USA I strongly recommend taking one of the League of American Bicyclists' "Road I" classes, they cover this in detail. To find courses in your area, access the course finder at http://www.bikeleague.org/cogs/resources/findit/in dex.php , and check only the "BikeEd Courses" box.
When I took the class I already had perhaps 10,000 urban miles under my belt. I was skeptical whether there was anything there to learn. I learned a lot. The experience of 10^10 miles of collective cyclist experience goes into those clasess.
Slashdot Mirror
They guy's opinion is just plain 180 degree opposite mine. No AI can be as varied or original as a human opponent.
The SUV is bad, but not nearly as bad as the 7 miles to the grocery store! People look too much towards cars as the culprit, and less at their real estate. Buy a home in a walkable community. These don't have to be big cities! The most walkable communities of all are small towns that fit under Wal Mart's radar. Urban cores are a distant second, because the traffic is more dangerous for kids. Suburban Sprawl is by far the worst. People who choose to live in the sprawl are shooting the environment, and their own health, in the foot.
6 year old children have the right stuff. They'll be there and back before puberty.
I'm confused. I thought that for the first year or so after launch, consoles generally out-performed $2000 gaming rigs, because of the simpler optimization environment of a non-moving target. After a year or so, it seems like Moore's Law kicks in and yesterday's console can't beat tomorrow's $2000 pc.
That PS3 isn't mopping the floor with PeeCee right now is suprising, especially given that its halfway between the cost of a normal console and a new gaming rig (logarithmically speaking). What's more suprising is that the article submitter doesn't agree with my assumption.
Right now we have three determined and compotent console makers battling it out. That's rare in the console world, and good for the consumer. That's why the product lifecycles are so short now - nothing drives technology like a good knock-down, drag-out war.
Moore's law being what it is, if PS3 actually shows signs of life in two years (and that's unlikely, since the market folds in on a leader pretty fast), then a technologically superior console can be cranked out. Nintendo has even learned that they don't have to completely replace the console every generation. Witness that most Wii controllers are actually repurposed GC controllers, and that the Wii chip is basically an upclocked GC.
Losers.
If you think that 2009 will be the year of the PS3, then you're delusional, the Xbox 720 and the Wiiii will be right around the corner by then.
I bike. A lot. I depend on LED Bike lights to keep me alive every night. Alkaline AAs are 1.5 volts. I would like to use NiMH AAs and AAAs, but at 1.2 volts they're just not bright enough. :(
There's no law of physics that says NiMH has to be 1.2v. As we all know from high-school physics, putting two batteries in || effectively gives you one battery with double the voltage. NiMHs have made such huge strides in power storage, but have made no effort to come into voltage conformance with the AA and AAA standards? Why the heck is that?!
Good job!
I'm annoyed at the wide range of consumer products coming out with built-in propritary batteries. Ever run out of juice in your bike light and cannibalized batteries from your camera to make yourself visible on the way home? I have done things like that several times. Others buy a seperate propritary battery for everything, and then wonder why they have too many AC adapters in their lives, and often replace entire devices because its cheaper than replacing their wierd-o batteries.
AA: 1970s technology kicking the bass of 2006 corporate schlock.
There's a problem with this. First, you're not supposed to mix-n-match batteries once they've been used in seperate devices. We have a 3-AA remote controlled car, several 2-AA mice, and several 4-AA bike lights. We have to partition those and keep them seperate. You have to train house members NOT to mix-n-match.
I've taken to writing names on each group of batteries (Amanda, Betty, Cathy...), and also ids (1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4). Use the Amanda-4s all together and all in the same device. I also buy lots of different brands, because they appear different. Amandas are Energizer, Betties are Ray-o-vac, etc.
I have a cardboard box with 3 pockets. In the left is the "goods", where house members pick up new batteries. On the right are the "bads", where I store empty batteries. In the middle is the "hmmms", where we stick batteries we don't know about. In my copious free time I test and rebin those.
Okay, I lied, I have that box split in to two sub-boxes (2x3), so that the top row is for Alkalaine and the bottom row is for rechargables.
These may be a good option for me. I've been looking at the Ray-o-vac hybrids, but frankly couldn't find anyone, anywhere that knew anything about them (aside from teh Ray-o-vac website, which claims they're great - big shock).
Thanks for posting.
Both Energizer and Ray-o-vac have 15 minute chargers, but it requries you have the special batteries to go with it. In the Ray-o-vac model, there's built in electronics on each 15-minute battery that govern how it behaves during recharge. I'm not sure if the Energizer works the same way. I'm interested in other Slashdotter's experience with them.
I've been eying this technology myself, but basically decided to avoid it, since I'm OC enough to always keep a set charged and ready anyway. As a photographer, you don't get pictures - no big deal, as a bicyclist I get run-over and DIE. Hence the OC behavior.
What in the heck are you talking about? The UI has been multi-threaded since Netscape 1.0 in 1995. Wasn't that the big improvement over Mosaic? That you could use the scrollbar while a page was loading in the background?
First you say the SUV driver should think and react in a sophisticated, omniscient way.
Then you make a long rant about how drivers should be traffic cows, going with the herd.
Which is it? Do you want smart drivers or dumb drivers?
I think about this often, because as a bicyclist, I'm constantly herding traffic through lane positioning. The answer is: you have to assume bovine-level intelligence of all other drivers, or prepare to die. If that means you have to drive 50mph on a 70mph flow in order to keep adequate following distance, well, I'd recommend that. Look at the bright side: you become rolling traffic calming - that flow won't be 70mph for long.
ooops:
70miles/hour * [1/(60minutes/hour) * (60seconds/minute)] * (5280 ft/mile) = 102 feet/second.
so 204 feet for two seconds travel.
Are you sure? I get 98 feet.
70miles/hour * (60minutes/hour) * (60seconds/minute) * (5280 ft/mile) = 48 feet/second.
double it for 2 seconds of space ==> 98 feet.
On average, I think the US is much less hilly than, say, Italy, or any of a number of European countries, and the "mini" is an average sized car there. I also reject the notion that the US has worse weather on average than other countries. I think the Canadians will too.
How many here have been holding off on getting a DVD player, waiting for it to come bundled with just the right game console? That's right, nobody. Everyone already has a DVD player if they want it.
Gee, how about, y'know, sending up stuff to build space ships and whatnot? What if a common university robotics project were "design your own martian probe"? Hm, can Mindstroms withstand 2000g?
So for most of its life, the Tomcat was basically a flying weapons platform for the AIM-54 Phoenix long-ass-range missile. The idea was at first to shoot down enemy planes, and after a while the idea became to shoot down enemy cruise missiles. The Phoenix was unique in that its range was ~100 miles, while I think the second best was AMRAAM, at ~30 miles, and didn't come out for a decade or two afterwards.
So there's not really a replacement for the Phoenix in the modern inventory, unless somebody knows better?
Though why you'd want Phoenix when you've got Aegis cruisers defending the fleet remains an open question. So unless you want to shoot down enemy targets somewhere not over your fleet, Phoenix doesn't seem that neat anymore....
I own about 16 Rayovac rechargable AAs. I've never had one go bad on me. At this point I'm sort of hoping they do, because their 1600mAh is starting to look a little anemic compared to the new crop of 2500mAh'ers.
I use them in my 4AA bike lights, and in my digital camera. They've saved me hundreds of dollars.
Rayovac is a rockin' brand. They don't advertise, period. So they cost less than Duh-a-Cell or Enervizer, and in my experience they perform very well indeed.
NiCad rechargables sucked. Those haven't been around for decades though.
Thanks for your reply.
... the roads are there for TRANSPORTATION first, and recreation and other uses as capacity permits)
> As for sharing the road, I'll gladly share it. Just make damn sure you're not taking up two lanes with your pack of riders when you could easily go single file in one lane.
Yeah, these bicyclist convoys drive me nuts too. First of all, they're clearly not really _going anywhere_, they're just out to burn calories on their bikes for fun. So what's the diff if they packetize to allow faster vehicles to pass them? They won't draft as efficiently, but isn't pedaling the whole point? I don't get it, and in my personal, current opinion, they should have diminished rights to the road. (I think that too for admobiles and car drivers "scooping the loop", by the way
As a clarification, in the left turn analogy, I was imagining that oncoming traffic was blocking the left turn for quite some time, as happens often. Both cases cause blocked traffic. I think you just have more empathy for the car, because you're in a car, and you understand that riding in a car, sometimes left turns are necessary. Well, sometimes, driving a bike, lane-blocking is necessary.
> Surely he could have let me gone by at the light, no? There was plenty of room for him to move over to the side and let me by while waiting for the light to turn green.
You're changing your story. Was there plenty of room, or not enough room? If there's enough room to pass in the lane, then I think he should have let you pass. But if the lane is narrow, I'm not mashing right while cars are stopped, and giving those cars the impression its okay to sleaze past me, because then the first car will sleaze past with 1 foot margin and 2mph speed difference... then the second at 1 foot margin and 8mph...then the third at 1 foot margin and 15mph, then you have a dangerous situation! For all the cyclist's consideration, the cars drivers won't let the bike back in 2/3rds of the time, believe me, I've tried. They play chicken to co-opt the right of way. And in games of chicken between bikes and cars, the cars always win.
Even if you, personally, are reasonable and would only pass when its safe to do so, believe me, there are many out there who give in to tempatation, and pass within the margin of error if the cyclist gives them the option. Cyclists have to prepare for the lowest common denominator. The price for failure is death.
As to there being lots of side-streets, maybe the cyclist didn't know the area well enough to realize that. If the side-streets were really so great, and your delay so interminable, maybe you could have used them to jink ahead of him? A car can cover 25m in no time, flat.
The synchronized lights were probably aggrivating the cyclist more than you. You were losing time. The cyclist was losing time too, plus effort to restore his speed. FWIW in some places they're re-syncing them to make the effects on bike traffic (and all traffic stuck behind the bikes) less onerous.
I admit to the "holier than thou" attitude. You also had such an attitude. I don't understand your feelings. However, I feel mine is well-justified: Car drivers pollute, take tons of space to park, and kill more Americans than 9/11 every month. What you call "BS", I call facts that sane people should weigh carefully. So even if you don't agree, you can at least understand where my opinion is coming from.
-
If I were going in a straight line, for, say, a mile, and there were ten cars piled up behind me with no safe place to pass, I would indeed cheerfully pull over to let them pass.
-
I think you're right, the "green light vegetable" situation is a good use for the horn.
> "As a fellow cyclist I feel sick to the stomach to think the biggest danger to me is something I can't do anything about - getting hit from behind. And it makes me more sick to know there are a lot of drivers out there who would hit and run. If you read lilos blog you can see one of the reasons he was riding was because he was eminently aware of the ecological crisis cars are causing. So it's another soldier dead today in my view."
n dex.php , and check only the "BikeEd Courses" box.
Good news chum! For trained cyclists riding in the proper lane position, overtaking collisions are reduced to only 0.3 percent of all bike-car collisions. (see _Effective Cycling_, John Forrester). The trick is proper lane positioning and (at night) lighting. If you're in the USA I strongly recommend taking one of the League of American Bicyclists' "Road I" classes, they cover this in detail. To find courses in your area, access the course finder at http://www.bikeleague.org/cogs/resources/findit/i
When I took the class I already had perhaps 10,000 urban miles under my belt. I was skeptical whether there was anything there to learn. I learned a lot. The experience of 10^10 miles of collective cyclist experience goes into those clasess.