You own the Google Voice number, and it is a number that can be called to reach you. It's your number, not someone else's. Therefore, using it as a return number is not entering "false" information.
From the actual law as passed:
SECTION 2. As used in this act: [...] (d) "False information" means data that misrepresents the identity of the caller to the recipient of a call or to the network itself; however, when a person making an authorized call on behalf of another person inserts the name, telephone number or name and telephone number of the person on whose behalf the call is being made, such information shall not be deemed false information.
Google could easily be considered an "authorized agent" and they are putting in the telephone number they have issued to you. Plus your Google Voice number does not misrepresent your identity. So there are two outs in that provision that make Google Voice calls legit.
SECTION 4. This act does not apply to: [...] (d) A telecommunications, broadband or voice-over-Internet service provider that is acting solely as an intermediary for the transmission of telephone service between the caller and the recipient.
This probably covers things like calling cards, where your call comes from some bizarr-o phone number your recipient has never heard of. But it could easily apply to Google Voice. Even if they used a random phone number from a list of numbers they own, they would not be in violation, as long as they didn't put someone else's name or a phone number actually belonging to someone else in there. If you got a call from "UNKNOWN" at "1-800-GOOGLE1" and it was forwarded by Google, that's valid. If you got a call from "INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE" "1-800-TAX-U-ASS" then that would be fraudulent.
Also, from a technical perspective, you are not calling the recipient from your cell phone. The Google Voice app sends a signal to Google saying "the next call from this number should be forwarded to phone number (the number you asked it to dial) for account (you)". Then it initiates a call to one of its access numbers, which uses your caller ID to figure out which Google Voice number to use on the outbound caller ID and who to call. Technically, you are calling Google from your phone, and they are calling the recipient per your request, and presenting valid information about you to the recipient of the call.
I think it's a perspective problem. And it's going to vary from person to person.
The objects are not originally recorded in 3D, and therefore the 2D image is mapped onto a 3D plane. Try doing this with Google Earth sometime - turn on "terrain" and then zoom in close to some natural feature, set your angle so you are not looking straight down, and rotate around. A hill just looks different from the top than it does from the sides, and trying to reconstruct a parallax view of it needs two distinct and different images to work. Obviously the studios are doing something slightly more sophisticated than Google Earth, but the base problem remains - you can't accurately express information that does not exist - you have to create it.
With 2D, you see someone's nose straight on and your mind is filling in the fact that it's three-dimensional based on your knowledge that noses stick out. Both eyes see the same image, and there's no depth, but your mind is quite capable of setting that "unreality" aside and filling in stuff.
With "proper" 3D, there are actually two images of the nose from slightly different angles being projected, similar to how you'd see it in real life. The glasses act to send one image to your right eye and one to your left, and it works. It's mimicking exactly how your real eyes work, and expressing that information to them in the format you are used to. Tip your head, or even bend the glasses wrong or have them too far from or too close to your eyes, and it throws off the image separation, but keep it level and at the right depth-of-field and it works fine.
With interpolated 3D, you see someone's nose straight on, but two images of it that have been distorted in different ways to give you the impression that you are seeing it in 3D. It's close enough to reality that our minds want to process it as reality, but it's not close enough that we really can. At least some people.
This is somewhat like the cartoon-ishy/real-ishy version of Beowulf that came out a few years ago. Slashdotters will remember it as the "Liquid Metal Naked Angelina Jolie Movie, Grendel's Mom Was Hot". Well-executed story, technically brilliant graphics, but the characters were in the "distorted reality zone" for me - not quite real enough to accept as real, but a tad too real to accept as fully unreal. Every time they did a close-up of a face in that movie, it threw me out of the story for a second. My visual cortex kept trying to process them as people, then cartoons, then people, and eventually curled up in a scared little ball in the corner of my head and started sobbing uncontrollably. Even though I thought their telling of a backstory to the whole Beowulf/Grendel relationship was quite good, I actually ended up pausing the movie a few times to monkey-brain could get over the whole "what IS that, a person or a cartoon?" bit, and the dichotomy occasionally had me feeling a bit queasy after a while. I have little interest in repeating the experience.
I imagine if you watch a few interpolated 3D movies you'll adjust to them. Or maybe not. I have yet to see one, hell I have yet to see a "real" 3D movie. I don't know if I could handle the perspective shift well, and I'm pretty happy with 2D movies frankly.
The "distorted reality zone" (my term, there may be an official term for it) is different for each person. My wife found Beowulf merely annoying in terms of the animation. Some people I know really loved it. I found it vaguely disturbing.
Other than that, we've been running CFLs exclusively for well over two years now (other than a handful of rarely-used fixtures), and I have had exactly one bulb burn out.
I'm even running a handful of the really old "big plastic enclosure" CFLs with the straight fluorescent bulbs enclosed in the huge plastic-y dome. They take a while to fire up after a couple of decades of use, but they are useful in areas where bulbs are really hard to change because they JUST WON'T DIE.
We got a bunch of nVision "globes" for a bathroom light fixture that took 6 bulbs (the old 40W bulbs meant we were drawing 240W on that single fixture, which means 4 hours of running it was costing me 16 cents).
The globes cost $5 each, and I figured they'd pay for themselves in about 8 months or less. But the first one burned out in three months.
Fortunately, nVision was really good about mailing out certificates for replacement bulbs, but I went through three complete sets in the two years I've been running the bulbs, and applying for the refunds is just a pain.
I spent $40 on a new fixture that has nice glass bits that cover the bulbs and diffuse the light, and reduces my bulbs to three. I got three 60W equivalents spiral bulbs at $1.50 each that have been going for about 5 months now with no issues so far.
I think the globe just allowed too much heat to build up, and the bulbs would fry out. Props to nVision for their good warranty support, but the bulbs suck.
No, you want it bright enough to blind them before you take the risk of getting in close enough to bash their skulls. If you can generate enough candlepower to set fire to their clothing from 75 feet, all the better.
CFL are a lot cheaper, and are easily cost justified.
LEDs are extremely efficient, and can be built extremely durable, and lack the mercury vapor issues of a CFL, but until recently a single 60W-equivalent lightbulb might set you back $75 or more compared to $2-3 for a CFL or a less than a buck for an incandescent.
So, from a cost perspective, CFLs are clearly cheaper over their lifespan than an incandescent. They cost an 4-5 times what an incandescent does, but they last a lot longer and they draw something in the vicinity of 10% of the incandescent's power. Even the cheapest of cheapskates can justify a CFL conversion for frequently-used fixtures, because they pay for themselves in a big hurry. I kept all my old incandescent bulbs and I install them in fixtures I rarely use (makes more sense than throwing them out, and since the fixtures are rarely used I wouldn't be saving much power anyway).
LEDs have come down, but a 60-watt equivalent can still cost $50-60, over ten times what even a CFL does, and only reduce the power draw by about half compared to CFL. Most LED bulbs I've seen have been in the 25-30W equivalent range and still cost over ten bucks.
Between the garage, the basement, etc, I have about 20 light fixtures in my house. If I did a complete CFL conversion, I would expect to pay about $50-75 and probably save about $5 a month on my electric bill, so overall they'd pay for themselves in about a year, give or take. CFLs last about 5 years, so I get 4 years of pure savings. Assuming I had to replace each bulb about once every 5 years, in 20 years I'd have an average of 16 years of savings. That was easy for me to justify (though I didn't do a complete conversion - as I said before rarely used bulbs are still incandescent because it made no sense to convert them, plus I have a few dimming fixtures that need incandescent).
If I did a complete LED conversion, I could expect to pay somewhere in the vicinity of $1000-1200 and are marginally more efficient than CFLs so I'd probably save about $7 a month on my electric bill over incandescent. That means it would take almost 12 years for the LEDs to pay for themselves in energy savings. LEDs last about 20 years, supposedly, so I'd enjoy 8 years of savings. Even if I only converted the most-used bulbs I'd still be looking at an outlay in the $700 range and it would take 8 years to pay that back in energy savings.
LED is far, far better than incandescent in terms of long-term costs. However, CFL beats them quite handily and requires a lot less of a cash outlay today.
When 60-100W equivalent LEDs get down to $10 a bulb, they'll be worth the premium over CFL. Not at $60, or really even $20.
My wife had a Verizon RAZR, and we discovered the same thing. The CDMA variant of the RAZR actually uses a nonstandard USB charger - it needs more power than the 2.5W (5V @.5A) the USB standard can provide.
So, technically, the phone uses a USB shaped plug, and even the recommended USB voltage, but it is not strictly USB compatible.
Their chargers work wonderfully with other devices, though, since they are capable of putting out a lot more than.5A of juice. Her old RAZR car charger is in my car and does a great job charging my Blackberry.
They're analyzing whatever they can find so they can make up a headline "Facebook attracting more visitors than google.com" so you'll actually read it and discover it's complete tripe, but only after having seen a few ads that they get paid for.
I know when I search on Google, I go to Google.com, enter my search criteria, and then start poring through the results. When I've found what I wanted, I move to the sites that have what I want. So Google gets maybe 10 "hits", 100 if you count each page element my browser requests as a "hit".
When I go on Facebook, I'll read updates, sometimes post replies, etc. Facebook also has a much more complex page with a lot more elements. So depending on their measurement of "visits", just going to Facebook might be anywhere between 20-30 hits per brief visit to thousands of them if you count each request.
But you looked at their ads, didn't you? Their statistics served their purpose.
No, they use a proprietary connector. That doesn't make an iPhone an inappropriate solution for the poster above who complained about nonstandard chargers - he's just have to buy iPhones (and ONLY iPhones) and all of his adapters would be the same.
You could buy the $15 aftermarket Apple-compatible car charger for each car, and at home you could share a single charger.
I don't like having to have a proprietary cable specific to my phone, personally, but the GGGP's telephone charging woes would be significantly mitigated by choosing Apple, all Apple, and only Apple for his phones. At least he'd only have one cable type to deal with, and it probably won't change anytime soon. Plus, there are some car stereos that have the Apple Connector built in.
But there are a lot more places that have a USB port, and I can get a USB-mini pigtail connector for 5/$1 in bulk, replacement wall warts for $4 and car chargers for $5.
Man, you've got a lot to learn about the benefits of a zombie army. Didn't your starter kit come with an instruction manual? RTFM, man!
Send your zombies to collect more bodies. They don't tire out.
Plus, they don't set off heat-sensitive security gear like the living do, and if there are any security guards they can just be added to your army once the zombies take 'em out.
The iPhone can use USB as a power source, but (unless they've added it) it lacks one of the standard USB connectors on the PHONE side.
In other words, I have a charging cable I bought for $5 in my car. One side has a "cigarette lighter" plug, the other has a USB-mini plug that plugs into my phone.
I fully realize it's possible to charge an iPhone over a USB connector, and it's the same connection that provides power (my wife has an iPod Touch). But that requires a special cable - the PHONE side is not USB standard.
I guess you're stupid, ignorant or a bigot.
It is possible to disagree with someone, or attempt to point out some information you think that person might not have, without dropping to the level of insult.
I mean, my wallet, shoes, belt and watch band are made from animals that were killed expressly for that purpose. I don't see it as "icky" to have my leather watch belt against my skin most of the day. I don't understand why it would be somehow more disgusting to have bits from another dead animal on my person, frankly. In fact, if the animal died anyway, I guess it would be somewhat less morally objectionable in some ways. Kind of a recycling thing.
I don't know why any rational creature would consider this "yuck".
And, yet, it somehow is.
Humans. We're some real pieces of work, aren't we?
Interesting possibility. Of course, the inductive charging system would weigh half what the batteries would, so your effective range is dropped, but as long as you have a valid recharge station within range of where you are going that day, you're good.
An expansion on that idea would be inductive charging on the highway. Solves the range problem right there. If you are going any distance, your car is charged along the way, so "100 miles per charge" would only count if you wanted to drive that 100 miles off-highway. You could drive from Maine to California on a single "charge". More rural areas could have inductive or direct-hookup charging systems at stations.
First, have you SEEN the line at fuel stations? How many batteries do you need to stock to "refuel" all of the cars in a given day? Even if you have a one-hour charging system, you'll need a lot of batteries just to get through rush hour. Miles-per-charge is lower than miles-per-fuel-tank, so you'll need to change batteries more often, so those lines will be longer (hence the need for more batteries). Battery swaps are going to take at least 10 minutes, as opposed to a 5-minute fillup like we have today.
Second, a removable battery needs to be accessed, but protected, meaning the overall weight of the car increases. With a built-in battery, you can install it right in the middle of the car, down low, where it keeps your center of gravity nice and low and is protected against most impacts. The car frame can hold it in place. With a removable, you need to move it to the edge somewhere, and you need the battery in a frame designed for easy slide-out.
Third, batteries lose capacity over time. So you buy your brand-new car with a battery that can handle 150 miles, then end up with a battery that can handle 75, then one that can do 85, then 120, then 40 - you'd never know how long a battery would take you. And who decommissions the old batteries? Who pays for all that?
Finally, different vehicles will require different battery standards. An SUV is going to differ from a 4-seat sedan which will differ from a 1-seat commuter car. Even if all the companies got together and decided on 4-5 standards for batteries (similar to the AAA/AA/C/D standards we have today), that's still a lot of batteries for a fuel station to store.
I'm not saying these are insurmountable, but they are the reason why you won't see a plethora of battery swap stations for electric cars in the next decade, at least.
Many newer phones use a USB-mini or USB-micro port for charging. Not all of them, of course, but you could shop for phones that have it, and vote with your dollars.
My Blackberry uses a USB-mini, which means I can charge it off my laptop, and car chargers are just a few bucks. USB charging capability was also one of the major criteria when we shopped for a new phone for my wife (one of the disqualifying points for an iPhone). Her phone also uses USB-mini. My bluetooth headset uses USB-micro, so I keep an adapter near the charging shelf so I can charge that when I need to off the same adapter. The only oddball device is my wife's iPod Touch.
As a bonus, the USB-mini port allows us to:
- Connect the phone to computers at the same time the phone is charging, on the same cable. This is both for Internet access (tethering) and for copying music, pictures, etc to and from the phones (USB mass media support on the SD chips we put into the phones).
- Plug the phone into her car stereo (which has a standard USB port) and, since both phones support mass media (like a USB thumb drive), listen to music from our phones. Also while the phone is charging.
Overall, I'd say next time you shop for a phone, make sure it has a standard connector that can be used for simultaneous power and data. USB's about the only game in that particular town right now, though if you want to go all-Apple the "Apple Connector" might be your chosen standard.
Just a word of advice. Handling snakes in the nude is a bad idea, unless of course you are female and you are combining your nudist and snakehandling religions, at which point your ideas intrigue me and I would like an application.:)
Slashdot Mirror
You own the Google Voice number, and it is a number that can be called to reach you. It's your number, not someone else's. Therefore, using it as a return number is not entering "false" information.
From the actual law as passed:
SECTION 2. As used in this act:
[...]
(d) "False information" means data that misrepresents the identity of the caller to the recipient of a call or to the network itself; however, when a person making an authorized call on behalf of another person inserts the name, telephone number or name and telephone number of the person on whose behalf the call is being made, such information shall not be deemed false information.
Google could easily be considered an "authorized agent" and they are putting in the telephone number they have issued to you. Plus your Google Voice number does not misrepresent your identity. So there are two outs in that provision that make Google Voice calls legit.
SECTION 4. This act does not apply to:
[...]
(d) A telecommunications, broadband or voice-over-Internet service provider that is acting solely as an intermediary for the transmission of telephone service between the caller and the recipient.
This probably covers things like calling cards, where your call comes from some bizarr-o phone number your recipient has never heard of. But it could easily apply to Google Voice. Even if they used a random phone number from a list of numbers they own, they would not be in violation, as long as they didn't put someone else's name or a phone number actually belonging to someone else in there. If you got a call from "UNKNOWN" at "1-800-GOOGLE1" and it was forwarded by Google, that's valid. If you got a call from "INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE" "1-800-TAX-U-ASS" then that would be fraudulent.
Also, from a technical perspective, you are not calling the recipient from your cell phone. The Google Voice app sends a signal to Google saying "the next call from this number should be forwarded to phone number (the number you asked it to dial) for account (you)". Then it initiates a call to one of its access numbers, which uses your caller ID to figure out which Google Voice number to use on the outbound caller ID and who to call. Technically, you are calling Google from your phone, and they are calling the recipient per your request, and presenting valid information about you to the recipient of the call.
I think it's a perspective problem. And it's going to vary from person to person.
The objects are not originally recorded in 3D, and therefore the 2D image is mapped onto a 3D plane. Try doing this with Google Earth sometime - turn on "terrain" and then zoom in close to some natural feature, set your angle so you are not looking straight down, and rotate around. A hill just looks different from the top than it does from the sides, and trying to reconstruct a parallax view of it needs two distinct and different images to work. Obviously the studios are doing something slightly more sophisticated than Google Earth, but the base problem remains - you can't accurately express information that does not exist - you have to create it.
With 2D, you see someone's nose straight on and your mind is filling in the fact that it's three-dimensional based on your knowledge that noses stick out. Both eyes see the same image, and there's no depth, but your mind is quite capable of setting that "unreality" aside and filling in stuff.
With "proper" 3D, there are actually two images of the nose from slightly different angles being projected, similar to how you'd see it in real life. The glasses act to send one image to your right eye and one to your left, and it works. It's mimicking exactly how your real eyes work, and expressing that information to them in the format you are used to. Tip your head, or even bend the glasses wrong or have them too far from or too close to your eyes, and it throws off the image separation, but keep it level and at the right depth-of-field and it works fine.
With interpolated 3D, you see someone's nose straight on, but two images of it that have been distorted in different ways to give you the impression that you are seeing it in 3D. It's close enough to reality that our minds want to process it as reality, but it's not close enough that we really can. At least some people.
This is somewhat like the cartoon-ishy/real-ishy version of Beowulf that came out a few years ago. Slashdotters will remember it as the "Liquid Metal Naked Angelina Jolie Movie, Grendel's Mom Was Hot". Well-executed story, technically brilliant graphics, but the characters were in the "distorted reality zone" for me - not quite real enough to accept as real, but a tad too real to accept as fully unreal. Every time they did a close-up of a face in that movie, it threw me out of the story for a second. My visual cortex kept trying to process them as people, then cartoons, then people, and eventually curled up in a scared little ball in the corner of my head and started sobbing uncontrollably. Even though I thought their telling of a backstory to the whole Beowulf/Grendel relationship was quite good, I actually ended up pausing the movie a few times to monkey-brain could get over the whole "what IS that, a person or a cartoon?" bit, and the dichotomy occasionally had me feeling a bit queasy after a while. I have little interest in repeating the experience.
I imagine if you watch a few interpolated 3D movies you'll adjust to them. Or maybe not. I have yet to see one, hell I have yet to see a "real" 3D movie. I don't know if I could handle the perspective shift well, and I'm pretty happy with 2D movies frankly.
The "distorted reality zone" (my term, there may be an official term for it) is different for each person. My wife found Beowulf merely annoying in terms of the animation. Some people I know really loved it. I found it vaguely disturbing.
Google StreetView LIVE!
Just remember, there's room for all of God's creatures... right there, next to the mashed potatoes.
I heard you were looking for some, so I went back in time and destroyed them all on this planet.
Lovingly yours,
- The Master
I meant to amend that with...
Other than that, we've been running CFLs exclusively for well over two years now (other than a handful of rarely-used fixtures), and I have had exactly one bulb burn out.
I'm even running a handful of the really old "big plastic enclosure" CFLs with the straight fluorescent bulbs enclosed in the huge plastic-y dome. They take a while to fire up after a couple of decades of use, but they are useful in areas where bulbs are really hard to change because they JUST WON'T DIE.
We got a bunch of nVision "globes" for a bathroom light fixture that took 6 bulbs (the old 40W bulbs meant we were drawing 240W on that single fixture, which means 4 hours of running it was costing me 16 cents).
The globes cost $5 each, and I figured they'd pay for themselves in about 8 months or less. But the first one burned out in three months.
Fortunately, nVision was really good about mailing out certificates for replacement bulbs, but I went through three complete sets in the two years I've been running the bulbs, and applying for the refunds is just a pain.
I spent $40 on a new fixture that has nice glass bits that cover the bulbs and diffuse the light, and reduces my bulbs to three. I got three 60W equivalents spiral bulbs at $1.50 each that have been going for about 5 months now with no issues so far.
I think the globe just allowed too much heat to build up, and the bulbs would fry out. Props to nVision for their good warranty support, but the bulbs suck.
No, you want it bright enough to blind them before you take the risk of getting in close enough to bash their skulls. If you can generate enough candlepower to set fire to their clothing from 75 feet, all the better.
More as in...
"(user) has lost a baby bee in Buzz! Awwwww. Looka da cute widdwe bee! And it's lost and alone! CLICK HERE to help find it!"
"(user) has sent you some HONEY from BUZZ! CLICK HERE to collect it and start farming your own!"
"(user) just got a NEW QUEEN and is starting a new hive in Buzz! CLICK HERE to get your FREE QUEEN and start your own hives!"
"(user) just burrito-farted and killed off 45 WORKER BEES in Buzz! CLICK HERE to send (user) some VIRTUAL BEANO and a VIRTUAL SYMPATHY CARD!"
CFL are a lot cheaper, and are easily cost justified.
LEDs are extremely efficient, and can be built extremely durable, and lack the mercury vapor issues of a CFL, but until recently a single 60W-equivalent lightbulb might set you back $75 or more compared to $2-3 for a CFL or a less than a buck for an incandescent.
So, from a cost perspective, CFLs are clearly cheaper over their lifespan than an incandescent. They cost an 4-5 times what an incandescent does, but they last a lot longer and they draw something in the vicinity of 10% of the incandescent's power. Even the cheapest of cheapskates can justify a CFL conversion for frequently-used fixtures, because they pay for themselves in a big hurry. I kept all my old incandescent bulbs and I install them in fixtures I rarely use (makes more sense than throwing them out, and since the fixtures are rarely used I wouldn't be saving much power anyway).
LEDs have come down, but a 60-watt equivalent can still cost $50-60, over ten times what even a CFL does, and only reduce the power draw by about half compared to CFL. Most LED bulbs I've seen have been in the 25-30W equivalent range and still cost over ten bucks.
Between the garage, the basement, etc, I have about 20 light fixtures in my house. If I did a complete CFL conversion, I would expect to pay about $50-75 and probably save about $5 a month on my electric bill, so overall they'd pay for themselves in about a year, give or take. CFLs last about 5 years, so I get 4 years of pure savings. Assuming I had to replace each bulb about once every 5 years, in 20 years I'd have an average of 16 years of savings. That was easy for me to justify (though I didn't do a complete conversion - as I said before rarely used bulbs are still incandescent because it made no sense to convert them, plus I have a few dimming fixtures that need incandescent).
If I did a complete LED conversion, I could expect to pay somewhere in the vicinity of $1000-1200 and are marginally more efficient than CFLs so I'd probably save about $7 a month on my electric bill over incandescent. That means it would take almost 12 years for the LEDs to pay for themselves in energy savings. LEDs last about 20 years, supposedly, so I'd enjoy 8 years of savings. Even if I only converted the most-used bulbs I'd still be looking at an outlay in the $700 range and it would take 8 years to pay that back in energy savings.
LED is far, far better than incandescent in terms of long-term costs. However, CFL beats them quite handily and requires a lot less of a cash outlay today.
When 60-100W equivalent LEDs get down to $10 a bulb, they'll be worth the premium over CFL. Not at $60, or really even $20.
Verizon (or at least a CDMA carrier) right?
My wife had a Verizon RAZR, and we discovered the same thing. The CDMA variant of the RAZR actually uses a nonstandard USB charger - it needs more power than the 2.5W (5V @ .5A) the USB standard can provide.
So, technically, the phone uses a USB shaped plug, and even the recommended USB voltage, but it is not strictly USB compatible.
Their chargers work wonderfully with other devices, though, since they are capable of putting out a lot more than .5A of juice. Her old RAZR car charger is in my car and does a great job charging my Blackberry.
They're analyzing whatever they can find so they can make up a headline "Facebook attracting more visitors than google.com" so you'll actually read it and discover it's complete tripe, but only after having seen a few ads that they get paid for.
I know when I search on Google, I go to Google.com, enter my search criteria, and then start poring through the results. When I've found what I wanted, I move to the sites that have what I want. So Google gets maybe 10 "hits", 100 if you count each page element my browser requests as a "hit".
When I go on Facebook, I'll read updates, sometimes post replies, etc. Facebook also has a much more complex page with a lot more elements. So depending on their measurement of "visits", just going to Facebook might be anywhere between 20-30 hits per brief visit to thousands of them if you count each request.
But you looked at their ads, didn't you? Their statistics served their purpose.
Yeah, I almost expected "Buzz" to be an app where you raised bees. Is that a sign that I need to spend less time on Facebook?
Darn Edison and his wiring. We shoulda gone with Tesla.
Wireless power!
Plus, the real possibility of cancer and electrocutions.
What's not to love? :)
No, they use a proprietary connector. That doesn't make an iPhone an inappropriate solution for the poster above who complained about nonstandard chargers - he's just have to buy iPhones (and ONLY iPhones) and all of his adapters would be the same.
You could buy the $15 aftermarket Apple-compatible car charger for each car, and at home you could share a single charger.
I don't like having to have a proprietary cable specific to my phone, personally, but the GGGP's telephone charging woes would be significantly mitigated by choosing Apple, all Apple, and only Apple for his phones. At least he'd only have one cable type to deal with, and it probably won't change anytime soon. Plus, there are some car stereos that have the Apple Connector built in.
But there are a lot more places that have a USB port, and I can get a USB-mini pigtail connector for 5/$1 in bulk, replacement wall warts for $4 and car chargers for $5.
Oh, and I can carry a $10 spare battery. ;)
Man, you've got a lot to learn about the benefits of a zombie army. Didn't your starter kit come with an instruction manual? RTFM, man!
Send your zombies to collect more bodies. They don't tire out.
Plus, they don't set off heat-sensitive security gear like the living do, and if there are any security guards they can just be added to your army once the zombies take 'em out.
Yes, and no.
The iPhone can use USB as a power source, but (unless they've added it) it lacks one of the standard USB connectors on the PHONE side.
In other words, I have a charging cable I bought for $5 in my car. One side has a "cigarette lighter" plug, the other has a USB-mini plug that plugs into my phone.
I fully realize it's possible to charge an iPhone over a USB connector, and it's the same connection that provides power (my wife has an iPod Touch). But that requires a special cable - the PHONE side is not USB standard.
I guess you're stupid, ignorant or a bigot.
It is possible to disagree with someone, or attempt to point out some information you think that person might not have, without dropping to the level of insult.
I agree, but I can't really say why.
I mean, my wallet, shoes, belt and watch band are made from animals that were killed expressly for that purpose. I don't see it as "icky" to have my leather watch belt against my skin most of the day. I don't understand why it would be somehow more disgusting to have bits from another dead animal on my person, frankly. In fact, if the animal died anyway, I guess it would be somewhat less morally objectionable in some ways. Kind of a recycling thing.
I don't know why any rational creature would consider this "yuck".
And, yet, it somehow is.
Humans. We're some real pieces of work, aren't we?
Interesting possibility. Of course, the inductive charging system would weigh half what the batteries would, so your effective range is dropped, but as long as you have a valid recharge station within range of where you are going that day, you're good.
An expansion on that idea would be inductive charging on the highway. Solves the range problem right there. If you are going any distance, your car is charged along the way, so "100 miles per charge" would only count if you wanted to drive that 100 miles off-highway. You could drive from Maine to California on a single "charge". More rural areas could have inductive or direct-hookup charging systems at stations.
Yes, and there are a number of problems with it.
First, have you SEEN the line at fuel stations? How many batteries do you need to stock to "refuel" all of the cars in a given day? Even if you have a one-hour charging system, you'll need a lot of batteries just to get through rush hour. Miles-per-charge is lower than miles-per-fuel-tank, so you'll need to change batteries more often, so those lines will be longer (hence the need for more batteries). Battery swaps are going to take at least 10 minutes, as opposed to a 5-minute fillup like we have today.
Second, a removable battery needs to be accessed, but protected, meaning the overall weight of the car increases. With a built-in battery, you can install it right in the middle of the car, down low, where it keeps your center of gravity nice and low and is protected against most impacts. The car frame can hold it in place. With a removable, you need to move it to the edge somewhere, and you need the battery in a frame designed for easy slide-out.
Third, batteries lose capacity over time. So you buy your brand-new car with a battery that can handle 150 miles, then end up with a battery that can handle 75, then one that can do 85, then 120, then 40 - you'd never know how long a battery would take you. And who decommissions the old batteries? Who pays for all that?
Finally, different vehicles will require different battery standards. An SUV is going to differ from a 4-seat sedan which will differ from a 1-seat commuter car. Even if all the companies got together and decided on 4-5 standards for batteries (similar to the AAA/AA/C/D standards we have today), that's still a lot of batteries for a fuel station to store.
I'm not saying these are insurmountable, but they are the reason why you won't see a plethora of battery swap stations for electric cars in the next decade, at least.
Not at all. We hook up a generator and use the motion of Galileo and Liebniz spinning in their graves for power.
I went through this for a long time. I'm done.
Many newer phones use a USB-mini or USB-micro port for charging. Not all of them, of course, but you could shop for phones that have it, and vote with your dollars.
My Blackberry uses a USB-mini, which means I can charge it off my laptop, and car chargers are just a few bucks. USB charging capability was also one of the major criteria when we shopped for a new phone for my wife (one of the disqualifying points for an iPhone). Her phone also uses USB-mini. My bluetooth headset uses USB-micro, so I keep an adapter near the charging shelf so I can charge that when I need to off the same adapter. The only oddball device is my wife's iPod Touch.
As a bonus, the USB-mini port allows us to:
- Connect the phone to computers at the same time the phone is charging, on the same cable. This is both for Internet access (tethering) and for copying music, pictures, etc to and from the phones (USB mass media support on the SD chips we put into the phones).
- Plug the phone into her car stereo (which has a standard USB port) and, since both phones support mass media (like a USB thumb drive), listen to music from our phones. Also while the phone is charging.
Overall, I'd say next time you shop for a phone, make sure it has a standard connector that can be used for simultaneous power and data. USB's about the only game in that particular town right now, though if you want to go all-Apple the "Apple Connector" might be your chosen standard.
So I can charge my car from my laptop, then? Brilliant!
Just a word of advice. Handling snakes in the nude is a bad idea, unless of course you are female and you are combining your nudist and snakehandling religions, at which point your ideas intrigue me and I would like an application. :)
Funny, he doesn't look Jediish.
(with apologies to Mel Brooks)