You would bet wrong, it is a small cheap car with a huge price tag...
Bought mine for about $25k after incentives, which is a pretty common price for a new car, especially one as loaded with features as mine.
You still overpaid, you can get a gas car with similar features and slightly more interior space for almost $10K less. The Ford Fusion comes to mind, they are often sold for around $16K after incentives and those are nicely equipped models. $20K gets you a fully loaded one.
You also are taking government money into account, well sure, it could be great for everyone if they were handed out for free to all comers, but the only reason that government money exists is because almost no one is buying them.
Also, I have a degree in math, and have made detailed calculations of my total cost of ownership.
Yea, I'm sure you have, but you likely fudged them to justify your purchase. Thinking a gas car needs anything more than an annual oil change for the first five years for example (they don't need anything else these days).
Very low maintenance.
So is everything these days, or have you not bought a new car in 10+ years?
As evidenced by that EVs sell better when gas prices are high.
No they don't, they don't sell well at all...
They are a rounding error, a really, really small one...
For all the press they get, you'd think worldwide production of EVs was approaching 10% or something. It doesn't even touch 1%.
In 2015 17.39 million cards and light trucks were sold in the USA
Of those, 115,000 were plug in electrics
That is just over half of 1 percent...
There seems to be this expectation that EV sales MUST rise and MUST replace gas cars. There is no assurance that it will ever happen. It might, but a number of things would have to change for that to happen.
Price is the first issue, range is the second, and places to charge everywhere is the third.
So you're part of the 10% who aren't ready for EVs. That's fine.
What isn't fine is that you don't understand human beings...
All your fancy math doesn't mean anything, it really doesn't...
People buy emotionally, not rationally... at least the vast majority do.
Even if you somehow got everyone over the range issue, you then have the price issue, and if you think EVs are similar in price to gas cars, you suck at math, because they aren't.
However you feel about that drama, you can still appreciate the idea of a site which demonstrates (yet another example of) the hard reality that "you can't stop the signal". At best, you can stop a repeater.
Don't be silly, of course you can... The government just doesn't care about this all that much...
When is the last time the people running TPB were shot?
Do that a few times and you may find fewer takers for the job...
If they have physical access to the device, physical access to you, and you're not important enough to end up in the news, then they have all the power...
I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm telling you how the world works...
At least we agree here. Most people don't care until lawyers come after them. Remember DeCSS?
Yes, and it still exists, and didn't affect normal people one bit...
What is the RIAA and MPAA going to do, sue everyone on Earth? They tried that once and it started to backfire on them...
EULAs don't mean crap to normal people. Normal people get that randomly sharing copies with millions of people is a problem. Normal people think that if you paid money for it, you should be able to listen to/watch it anywhere anytime that you want.
The laws need to be updated to reflect that if you paid for a digital copy, you OWN that digital copy and can do whatever you want with it, including reselling it, watch it anywhere you want, etc... You just can't give away "copies" of it, which is reasonable...
Sigh. I know how electronics work. When the speaker/headphone that accepts digital input only is sealed by the manufacturer, opening it up to connect to the analog input is not allowed - you are bypassing DRM, which is not legal under today's law. That's the point.
Yea, but what you don't know is that no one but lawyers give a shit if that is legal or not...
DMCA's rules about DRM are stupid and most normal people don't care...
You utterly fail at the reading comprehension thing, don't you?
That's ok, you failed at the reality comprehension thing...
What is the court going to do about it? Go to war with the UK? The 5th largest economy and military in the world?
Why do you think Japan still hunts whales? Because no one can actually do anything about it to stop them... Because they are Japan... If it was New Zealand doing it, then they could be stopped...
Not really... The UK is a sovereign nation, if they feel that this is needed for national security, nothing a court says in another land is going to change anything...
The existing B-52 airframes will probably fly until they are 100 years old, amazingly enough...
But I wasn't suggesting that, I was suggesting tooling up and building brand new ones...
What you need is a large flying truck, and nothing quite delivers like a B-52...
If you'd prefer something off the shelf, you could probably convert a Boeing 777 to do the same job, with a similar load...
Keep in mind with guided weapons, there is no need to be down low, or even at 10,000 feet, you can be up at 40,000 feet and do the job, and only a few nations have weapons that can shoot down a plane at 40,000 feet, and we aren't likely to bomb any of them any time soon, unless WWIII starts.
The problem with the Long Range Strike Bomber is this:
The Air Force plans to purchase 80â"100 LRS-B aircraft at a cost of $550 million each (2010 dollars).
Yea, yea, the same was promised with the B-2 and they stopped building those at 20... Another 20 of this new fancy bomber isn't going to be enough...
Look at the Germans in WWII, the Panther tank and the ME-262 jet fighter were indeed wonder weapons that in greater numbers could have turned the tide and won the war, had they come 2 years sooner and in 10 times the numbers.
As it was, the fanciest weapons in the world don't help when you have 20 of them. In a real war, you can't afford to lose any of them, and war doesn't allow that...
The sad thing is that I think the Air Force should just buy another hundred B-52s...
The B-2 Spirit can handle the long range nuclear delivery options, but most of the people we bomb aren't shooting back all that much, not against a 40,000 foot flying bomber anyway...
The value we have received from our B-52s is incredible, why fix what isn't broken?
As for the Air Force's new bomber, they likely won't buy enough of them to matter... Another 20 or 30 super bombers creates the problem of not being willing to lose one.
Don't underestimate the importance of lots of ordinance from a bomber...
We have been trending in this direction for awhile and it is going to bite us. I'm a huge student of history and if I learned anything from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, it is that you don't want airplanes that just can't carry enough...
The A-10 is a great example of an airplane that is cheap, has a long loiter time, and carries a crap ton of stuff...
The F-35 is a great example of a weapon designed by someone who doesn't expect to have to use it... It is shiny and high-tech and pretty, but it lacks legs, it lacks internal load, it lacks speed, etc.
Sure, it has internally many of the sensors the F-16 currently has to carry as pods, but the F-16 does the job, it is cheap, and we already have them.
What does the F-35 bring to the table? Stealth? Sure, if you don't carry external load, but then you're limited to a very limited internal load. We had the F-117 for that.
Yes, the ROI was massive and made the moon landings one of th cheapest events in human history based on return on investment.
They would have been a bargain at twice the price and we have a nation full of morons such as yourself who don't understand this, which is why we stopped going.
We should have a base there by now, with large ships going to Mars, if it was not for idiots such as yourself.
For the price, we shouldn't have to pick X... Since price was the X.
Look at the F-15, it was so far ahead of its day that it is still effective today. That is because we were afraid of the Mig-25 and didn't know it wasn't a Mach 3 super fighter, so we built our own Mach 2.5 super fighter.
The design goal was to build the best fighter in the world, no compromises, and we did that, quite well. They were and are expensive, but if you have the budget, you can avoid most compromises.
Now you might say, but it isn't a bomber, and I'd reply F15E Strike Eagle, it took them awhile, but it turns out to be a damm good fighter bomber as well.
The f-35 is missing an engine and about 25% of its size, it needs three times the internal bay space and more speed. A second engine and 25% more size fixes most of its problems, except perhaps turn rate, but that is limited by the pilot and stores anyway.
One-on-one, perhaps... Except a drone can turn a lot faster than a human pilot can, and you can afford a dozen good drones for the price of one manned fighter.
Can the human outthink all 12 of them?
Even if the human shoots down 9 of the 12 drones, if number 10 gets him it is a victory for the drones. They are manufactured and a new batch of 12 can roll off the production line in a few weeks, the human pilot takes years to replace.
Tell that to Turkey, who got tired of the Russians overflying their airspace, complained endlessly and got ignored, so they placed a phone call with an AIM-120 AMRAAM missle and finally got Russia's attention.
Russia bitched and moaned, but that was about it. Unlike Ukrane, Turkey is a member of NATO and we would respond in force to anything done against it.
I turned 40 last year, I'm married, but I also get hit on by girls more than I used to.
The wedding ring doesn't seem to send them away either...
Frankly, even if I could have a 20 year old girl tomorrow, she would bore me quickly. She lacks life experience and I'd just be getting a child to raise.
She would be fun to have sex with, maybe, if she knows herself, but beyond that, what's the interest?
I like conversations with my wife, she is 43 and has world experience, she actually knows stuff and is fun to talk with.
I live in Texas, in the areas covered in your link.
It is spot on, prices here ar nuts, my house is worth 50% more than I paid for it in 2006, when homes go on the market, they sell in days, often with multiple cash offers.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to bet you've never driven a Volt.
You would bet wrong, it is a small cheap car with a huge price tag...
Bought mine for about $25k after incentives, which is a pretty common price for a new car, especially one as loaded with features as mine.
You still overpaid, you can get a gas car with similar features and slightly more interior space for almost $10K less. The Ford Fusion comes to mind, they are often sold for around $16K after incentives and those are nicely equipped models. $20K gets you a fully loaded one.
You also are taking government money into account, well sure, it could be great for everyone if they were handed out for free to all comers, but the only reason that government money exists is because almost no one is buying them.
Also, I have a degree in math, and have made detailed calculations of my total cost of ownership.
Yea, I'm sure you have, but you likely fudged them to justify your purchase. Thinking a gas car needs anything more than an annual oil change for the first five years for example (they don't need anything else these days).
Very low maintenance.
So is everything these days, or have you not bought a new car in 10+ years?
As evidenced by that EVs sell better when gas prices are high.
No they don't, they don't sell well at all...
They are a rounding error, a really, really small one...
For all the press they get, you'd think worldwide production of EVs was approaching 10% or something. It doesn't even touch 1%.
In 2015 17.39 million cards and light trucks were sold in the USA
Of those, 115,000 were plug in electrics
That is just over half of 1 percent...
There seems to be this expectation that EV sales MUST rise and MUST replace gas cars. There is no assurance that it will ever happen. It might, but a number of things would have to change for that to happen.
Price is the first issue, range is the second, and places to charge everywhere is the third.
People are already using electric cars.
Not very many, the number is a rounding error...
People also own their own airplanes and helicopters, yet that doesn't mean those are going to take off as everyone's means of travel either...
EVs have a long way to go...
So you're part of the 10% who aren't ready for EVs. That's fine.
What isn't fine is that you don't understand human beings...
All your fancy math doesn't mean anything, it really doesn't...
People buy emotionally, not rationally... at least the vast majority do.
Even if you somehow got everyone over the range issue, you then have the price issue, and if you think EVs are similar in price to gas cars, you suck at math, because they aren't.
That is why the Volt, a plug in hybrid is the right way to go.
Extra benefit the Volt is a nice looking car.
The Volt is an overpriced pile of crap that isn't worth the money they are charging.
If you knew how to do math, you'd understand that, but since so many people suck at math, I'm sure you've convinced yourself it is a good deal.
It isn't...
However you feel about that drama, you can still appreciate the idea of a site which demonstrates (yet another example of) the hard reality that "you can't stop the signal". At best, you can stop a repeater.
Don't be silly, of course you can... The government just doesn't care about this all that much...
When is the last time the people running TPB were shot?
Do that a few times and you may find fewer takers for the job...
Someone should introduce you to a $5 wrench... :)
If they have physical access to the device, physical access to you, and you're not important enough to end up in the news, then they have all the power...
I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm telling you how the world works...
At least we agree here. Most people don't care until lawyers come after them. Remember DeCSS?
Yes, and it still exists, and didn't affect normal people one bit...
What is the RIAA and MPAA going to do, sue everyone on Earth? They tried that once and it started to backfire on them...
EULAs don't mean crap to normal people. Normal people get that randomly sharing copies with millions of people is a problem. Normal people think that if you paid money for it, you should be able to listen to/watch it anywhere anytime that you want.
The laws need to be updated to reflect that if you paid for a digital copy, you OWN that digital copy and can do whatever you want with it, including reselling it, watch it anywhere you want, etc... You just can't give away "copies" of it, which is reasonable...
Sigh. I know how electronics work. When the speaker/headphone that accepts digital input only is sealed by the manufacturer, opening it up to connect to the analog input is not allowed - you are bypassing DRM, which is not legal under today's law. That's the point.
Yea, but what you don't know is that no one but lawyers give a shit if that is legal or not...
DMCA's rules about DRM are stupid and most normal people don't care...
Yea, you're a moron, go back to your weed and stay out of adult conversations...
Every single comment I've seen from you has been completely stupid, you are an idiot, you probably come from a whole family of idiots.
You frankly have nothing useful to say.
You utterly fail at the reading comprehension thing, don't you?
That's ok, you failed at the reality comprehension thing...
What is the court going to do about it? Go to war with the UK? The 5th largest economy and military in the world?
Why do you think Japan still hunts whales? Because no one can actually do anything about it to stop them... Because they are Japan... If it was New Zealand doing it, then they could be stopped...
Does the EU court have any say?
Not really... The UK is a sovereign nation, if they feel that this is needed for national security, nothing a court says in another land is going to change anything...
The existing B-52 airframes will probably fly until they are 100 years old, amazingly enough...
But I wasn't suggesting that, I was suggesting tooling up and building brand new ones...
What you need is a large flying truck, and nothing quite delivers like a B-52...
If you'd prefer something off the shelf, you could probably convert a Boeing 777 to do the same job, with a similar load...
Keep in mind with guided weapons, there is no need to be down low, or even at 10,000 feet, you can be up at 40,000 feet and do the job, and only a few nations have weapons that can shoot down a plane at 40,000 feet, and we aren't likely to bomb any of them any time soon, unless WWIII starts.
The problem with the Long Range Strike Bomber is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Air Force plans to purchase 80â"100 LRS-B aircraft at a cost of $550 million each (2010 dollars).
Yea, yea, the same was promised with the B-2 and they stopped building those at 20... Another 20 of this new fancy bomber isn't going to be enough...
Look at the Germans in WWII, the Panther tank and the ME-262 jet fighter were indeed wonder weapons that in greater numbers could have turned the tide and won the war, had they come 2 years sooner and in 10 times the numbers.
As it was, the fanciest weapons in the world don't help when you have 20 of them. In a real war, you can't afford to lose any of them, and war doesn't allow that...
The sad thing is that I think the Air Force should just buy another hundred B-52s...
The B-2 Spirit can handle the long range nuclear delivery options, but most of the people we bomb aren't shooting back all that much, not against a 40,000 foot flying bomber anyway...
The value we have received from our B-52s is incredible, why fix what isn't broken?
As for the Air Force's new bomber, they likely won't buy enough of them to matter... Another 20 or 30 super bombers creates the problem of not being willing to lose one.
Don't underestimate the importance of lots of ordinance from a bomber...
We have been trending in this direction for awhile and it is going to bite us. I'm a huge student of history and if I learned anything from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, it is that you don't want airplanes that just can't carry enough...
The A-10 is a great example of an airplane that is cheap, has a long loiter time, and carries a crap ton of stuff...
The F-35 is a great example of a weapon designed by someone who doesn't expect to have to use it... It is shiny and high-tech and pretty, but it lacks legs, it lacks internal load, it lacks speed, etc.
Sure, it has internally many of the sensors the F-16 currently has to carry as pods, but the F-16 does the job, it is cheap, and we already have them.
What does the F-35 bring to the table? Stealth? Sure, if you don't carry external load, but then you're limited to a very limited internal load. We had the F-117 for that.
Not internally it can't, and if they aren't internal, then it doesn't matter because the external load destroys the stealth...
And without the stealth, you might as well be in an F-15, which costs a LOT less...
It is too small to be an effective bomber, it doesn't carry enough payload.
It is, in effect, shitty at everything it tries to do, largely because it is too small.
The F15E Strike Eagle is about as small as you can go for a fighter bomber.
Yes, the ROI was massive and made the moon landings one of th cheapest events in human history based on return on investment.
They would have been a bargain at twice the price and we have a nation full of morons such as yourself who don't understand this, which is why we stopped going.
We should have a base there by now, with large ships going to Mars, if it was not for idiots such as yourself.
For the price, we shouldn't have to pick X... Since price was the X.
Look at the F-15, it was so far ahead of its day that it is still effective today. That is because we were afraid of the Mig-25 and didn't know it wasn't a Mach 3 super fighter, so we built our own Mach 2.5 super fighter.
The design goal was to build the best fighter in the world, no compromises, and we did that, quite well. They were and are expensive, but if you have the budget, you can avoid most compromises.
Now you might say, but it isn't a bomber, and I'd reply F15E Strike Eagle, it took them awhile, but it turns out to be a damm good fighter bomber as well.
The f-35 is missing an engine and about 25% of its size, it needs three times the internal bay space and more speed.
A second engine and 25% more size fixes most of its problems, except perhaps turn rate, but that is limited by the pilot and stores anyway.
One-on-one, perhaps... Except a drone can turn a lot faster than a human pilot can, and you can afford a dozen good drones for the price of one manned fighter.
Can the human outthink all 12 of them?
Even if the human shoots down 9 of the 12 drones, if number 10 gets him it is a victory for the drones. They are manufactured and a new batch of 12 can roll off the production line in a few weeks, the human pilot takes years to replace.
Tell that to Turkey, who got tired of the Russians overflying their airspace, complained endlessly and got ignored, so they placed a phone call with an AIM-120 AMRAAM missle and finally got Russia's attention.
Russia bitched and moaned, but that was about it. Unlike Ukrane, Turkey is a member of NATO and we would respond in force to anything done against it.
I turned 40 last year, I'm married, but I also get hit on by girls more than I used to.
The wedding ring doesn't seem to send them away either...
Frankly, even if I could have a 20 year old girl tomorrow, she would bore me quickly. She lacks life experience and I'd just be getting a child to raise.
She would be fun to have sex with, maybe, if she knows herself, but beyond that, what's the interest?
I like conversations with my wife, she is 43 and has world experience, she actually knows stuff and is fun to talk with.
I use credit cards for everything, from food to gas to the electric bill...
Between work and home, I charge about $15,000 a month to various cards, only the water bill, car payments, and mortgage aren't charged.
I get back about 1.5% of that in cash back, and the cards are auto paid in full every month.
I do have loans on my truck and car, at 0.9%, so I would be crazy to pay cash. My house is at 3.5%, again crazy to pay it off.
You should write a book, or start a YouTube channel...
And I'm serious, I think what you do personally is what most people should do, but don't.
I live in Texas, in the areas covered in your link.
It is spot on, prices here ar nuts, my house is worth 50% more than I paid for it in 2006, when homes go on the market, they sell in days, often with multiple cash offers.