What if you forgot to take the groceries out of the back before you 'shut it'?
Firethorn replied:-
You open it back up, or since it's likely the cargo space that folds, some sensor stops it.
The problem is still there, even if you remember the groceries. If I bought those groceries on the way to work, I do not want to have to take them all into the office with me when I get there.
If people started buying these, I would expect businesses... to reserve some extra-small spaces for these cars -- most likely desirably-located spaces, in order to encourage people to use them.
In the UK there are already quite a few Smart cars, like there were Minis before that, and Bubble cars before that, and it has never happened.
And what do you mean by a "desirable" parking place? In my work car park I tend to park as far as possible from the turnstile, and ditto from supermarket doors; less likely to get dinged that way, and I can go out to my car at lunch time and get some peace and quiet. Just illustrates that different people have different lifestyles, different preferences, and like different cars. There will never be a day when we all drive one of these 4-wheel scooters.
All these "concept cars" assume that you never need to carry anything more than a briefcase, or leave anything inside. I wonder about the lifestyle of these designers.
I'd hate to see the aftermath of folding this car up if you forgot that you had left a couple of six-packs in the back.
In five years PCs will be rare, because 99% of people who would use a PC in 2010 use their phone instead.
Fantasy. Among many factors why this will not be true, just consider the fact that the IT-using population is ageing, and anyone over the age of about 45 has deteriorating eysight. In 5 years that is anyone over 40 today. You seriously expect those people to look at web pages (or anything else) the size of a large postage stamp?
The British version of this joke is about an American seeing the play, and complaining afterwards that the writer had merely strung a load of quotations together.
And what does a new roof cost someone who makes $2 per day?
There is something seriously wrong with you - sociopathic, I guess. These bottles are commonly used in slumhouses
Calm down. I interpret Icebike's comment as referring to the fact that if installing these bottles f#@k up the roof, such as it leaks like a sieve afterwards, which is quite likely IMHO, it is going to cost the owner the work of many, many days work to buy a new roof afterwards. It is irrelevant what the bottles cost.
I don't understand. Reading Shakespeare is enjoyable.
Shakespeare's plays are not meant to be read, they are meant to be watched. And you don't need Gates' vapourware to watch one - there are many recorded perfomances of any one that you choose, and (at least where I live) there is always a live performance of one somewhere within an hour's drive. Even the most amateurish of the lot will be a million times better than the disjointed farce that this scheme is likely to concoct The actors are going to sound like Stephen Hawking and the Evil Computer in Portal, and I hate to think what it will look like.
The guy in TFA says he seals the bottles with resin and gets no leaks.
He would say that, wouldn't he? Get back to me in 6 months and tell me if there have been no leaks by then. I am struggling right now with leaks in my roof and that's without riddling it with holes for cheap plastic bottles, heavy with water, exposed to temperature extremes, and just glued in place.
The religious idiots had an advantage : they could slaughter the inhabitants and just seize already cultivated land
The Pilgrim fathers were idiots, but were idealists, and I don't think you can accuse them of that behaviour. That was by later waves of settlers who only came when they heard exagerated stories of free land and gold. It was always so with vested interests trying to encourage migration (that is why Greenland was called "Green" land or even "Vine" land - as if it were warm enough to grow vines). We see similar today, with immigrants wanting to get to the UK and USA in the mistaken belief that the streets are paved with gold, the only difference being that the paving belief is now a figurative one.
In fact the Pilgrim Fathers nearly starved to death and the native Indians took pity and gave them food, so some survived. I would not have blamed the Indians if they had left the Pilgrim Fathers to rot, as many other early American colonists did, but are less well known because they did not live to tell the tale.
What planet are you from? General human nature makes us all selfish self centered pricks. Here, on earth, you put two people within 100 yards of each other and you're going to get some form of confrontation.
Funny you should say that. I live in a backwood area (remote by UK standards) and my nearest neighbour is 1/4 mile away, four times your distance, separated by forest, and not even in sight. He is a guy with a tractor for hire. I never met him until four months after moving here, when he dumped a truckload of building gravel in a forest entrance near my house, incidentally blocking one of my two rights of way to my house. Basically, he started using the area as a storage yard. So we had a bit of a confrontation.
There will always be issues between people. The number of people simply determine the scale of it.
And it wouldn't surprise me if someone said something similar about the humans who first moved out of Africa.
No doubt they did, but walking from Africa only meant going through a progressively changing environment in which you could turn back at any point, and which you could do in small stages over generations. Even those who sailed away in ships (a closer analogy) had no thought that it might be impossible to breathe air or find water at the destination (they were OK as it happened), or have to be confined to a small enclosure. They assumed (rightly as it happened) that it would be the same as home with perhaps some funny new plants and animals.
A trip to Mars however is far worse than those old migrations because we know that the place has no plants or animals, and is not survivable except in a very confined space and with some very specialised kit of finite reliability.
Do these people have plans for recycling systems and habitats that can survive...
As well as have medical staff to deal with people possibly being injured and/or dying?
Don't worry, maybe they will folow the example of the Pilgrim Fathers, who went to America equipped only with several hundred copies of the Bible (but not a single book on agriculture) to help them. The only qualification to go was that they shared some religious issues which today seem not of the slightest importance, and the hope that by resettling in the middle of nowhere their children could not be "drawn away by evil examples into extravagance and dangerous courses".
Presumably these volunteers are the present day equivalent nutters.
So I hope they considered the risks for people walking on the street; anyway, innovative solutions to pollution problems are always welcome.
Don't worry, I expect pedestrians, cyclists, and even conventional cars will be banned from these roads. If they keep improving this system they will eventually re-invent railways.
I sincerely hope that by the time I might get to that state that the idiots who oppose euthanasia have been recognised as the nutjobs that they are and that I can be put out of my misery. If you kept a dog in that state (in the UK at least) you would be prosecuted for cruelty.
FTFA - "Glacier-free areas of the Alps erode at a similar rate but where the mountains are protected by ice, the peaks wear away at one tenth that rate."
"Protected by ice" != "glacier"
Former glacial valleys, like in the UK looking down the A5 from Llyn Ogwen north-west towards Bethesda, are clearly far more eroded than the adjacent ridges. The valley is a huge U-shaped gouge, straight through the surrounding mountains,.
Plastic body panels are not OMG new technology, we've had them in a number of production vehicles since the 1980's.
Make that 1956 (at least) in the UK:- Reliant Regal Mk3
Apart from the Regal, and its successor the Reliant Robin, there were quite a few GRP small-run production cars in the UK in the 1970's, mostly sports cars. I always fancied a Reliant Scimitar (you would not believe it was made by the same company as the Robin). The type was generally discontinued when crash standards were introduced because the bodies split rather than crumpled when crashed.
There is/was a guy in Horfield (suburb of Bristol, UK) who seemed to collect Reliant Robins and Regals. The front garden (and probably the back) had a row of them stood up on their tailgates, like surfboards.
Maybe if they did a little tracking of their customers, they would stock something in the sizes or styles this customer actually wants.
Last week I was trying to buy medium size trousers (US =pants) in the Bristol Cribbs Causeway BHS store. I need a medium size. I liked one style, but all they had was exra small and extra large. In other words their statistical distribution was the inverse of the expected population distribution.
They should not need tracking to realise how dumb this is; they need to grow a brain cell instead. I guess they stock up with a level distribution of sizes and then the medium sells out first.
Anyway, how would tracking help? They might conclude I did not buy because I did not like the colour, so next time they will all be extra large and pink as well. Or are they going to photograph me to measure my anatomy?
OTOH, if I want directions to the shoe department at some big box store, being able to follow an arrow
on my phone is probably more useful than asking some snooty clerk.
IKEA have that sorted for you already. Their stores are laid out like a linear FPS, where you must walk past every item in the place between entering and leaving. A sales guy in the Bristol (UK) IKEA told me it was nearly a mile walk through there. So keep walking, you will find your shit eventually.
" which transmits a unique signal that the camera in your phone can read."
Assuming everyone has a smartphone...
Don't worry, it is only aimed at those iPhone fanbois who wave their phone around to show they've got one. Anyone sensible keeps their phone in their pocket, for all sorts of reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
For a "city car" that sees more time sitting idle at a light, it really doesn't need much in the way of acceleration.
Don't know where you live, but in the UK the longer drivers have to wait at lights, the more furiously they accelerate when the lights clear.
1. .. The "door" is just a wide bar. Try using this in the rain or cold. It would be little better than a motorcycle.
...
3. Missing specification. What is the acceleration?
Didn't you watch the video? Looks like the acceleration is 0-5 in 10 seconds, and it is meant for indoor use.
What if you forgot to take the groceries out of the back before you 'shut it'?
Firethorn replied :-
You open it back up, or since it's likely the cargo space that folds, some sensor stops it.
The problem is still there, even if you remember the groceries. If I bought those groceries on the way to work, I do not want to have to take them all into the office with me when I get there.
If people started buying these, I would expect businesses ... to reserve some extra-small spaces for these cars -- most likely desirably-located spaces, in order to encourage people to use them.
In the UK there are already quite a few Smart cars, like there were Minis before that, and Bubble cars before that, and it has never happened.
And what do you mean by a "desirable" parking place? In my work car park I tend to park as far as possible from the turnstile, and ditto from supermarket doors; less likely to get dinged that way, and I can go out to my car at lunch time and get some peace and quiet. Just illustrates that different people have different lifestyles, different preferences, and like different cars. There will never be a day when we all drive one of these 4-wheel scooters.
it would be handy, cheap to drive as well as being really fucking cool! ... I don't remember seeing any folding cars in anything I've read...
Been done before, and forgotten thank goodness, as this Armadillo soon will be.
You have a strange idea of cool. You are going to look like a dork in one of those.
All these "concept cars" assume that you never need to carry anything more than a briefcase, or leave anything inside. I wonder about the lifestyle of these designers.
I'd hate to see the aftermath of folding this car up if you forgot that you had left a couple of six-packs in the back.
In five years PCs will be rare, because 99% of people who would use a PC in 2010 use their phone instead.
Fantasy. Among many factors why this will not be true, just consider the fact that the IT-using population is ageing, and anyone over the age of about 45 has deteriorating eysight. In 5 years that is anyone over 40 today. You seriously expect those people to look at web pages (or anything else) the size of a large postage stamp?
The article title is poorly worded. A datacenter did not give the internet to 70% of the Navajo Nation.
That is just how I read it. My knee-jerk thought was to wonder how they would run my own ISP.
Made me read TFA anyway.
The British version of this joke is about an American seeing the play, and complaining afterwards that the writer had merely strung a load of quotations together.
Oops, this is an American web site.
And what does a new roof cost someone who makes $2 per day?
There is something seriously wrong with you - sociopathic, I guess. These bottles are commonly used in slumhouses
Calm down. I interpret Icebike's comment as referring to the fact that if installing these bottles f#@k up the roof, such as it leaks like a sieve afterwards, which is quite likely IMHO, it is going to cost the owner the work of many, many days work to buy a new roof afterwards. It is irrelevant what the bottles cost.
I don't understand. Reading Shakespeare is enjoyable.
Shakespeare's plays are not meant to be read, they are meant to be watched. And you don't need Gates' vapourware to watch one - there are many recorded perfomances of any one that you choose, and (at least where I live) there is always a live performance of one somewhere within an hour's drive. Even the most amateurish of the lot will be a million times better than the disjointed farce that this scheme is likely to concoct The actors are going to sound like Stephen Hawking and the Evil Computer in Portal, and I hate to think what it will look like.
The guy in TFA says he seals the bottles with resin and gets no leaks.
He would say that, wouldn't he? Get back to me in 6 months and tell me if there have been no leaks by then. I am struggling right now with leaks in my roof and that's without riddling it with holes for cheap plastic bottles, heavy with water, exposed to temperature extremes, and just glued in place.
The religious idiots had an advantage : they could slaughter the inhabitants and just seize already cultivated land
The Pilgrim fathers were idiots, but were idealists, and I don't think you can accuse them of that behaviour. That was by later waves of settlers who only came when they heard exagerated stories of free land and gold. It was always so with vested interests trying to encourage migration (that is why Greenland was called "Green" land or even "Vine" land - as if it were warm enough to grow vines). We see similar today, with immigrants wanting to get to the UK and USA in the mistaken belief that the streets are paved with gold, the only difference being that the paving belief is now a figurative one.
In fact the Pilgrim Fathers nearly starved to death and the native Indians took pity and gave them food, so some survived. I would not have blamed the Indians if they had left the Pilgrim Fathers to rot, as many other early American colonists did, but are less well known because they did not live to tell the tale.
Virtually no crime
What planet are you from? General human nature makes us all selfish self centered pricks. Here, on earth, you put two people within 100 yards of each other and you're going to get some form of confrontation.
Funny you should say that. I live in a backwood area (remote by UK standards) and my nearest neighbour is 1/4 mile away, four times your distance, separated by forest, and not even in sight. He is a guy with a tractor for hire. I never met him until four months after moving here, when he dumped a truckload of building gravel in a forest entrance near my house, incidentally blocking one of my two rights of way to my house. Basically, he started using the area as a storage yard. So we had a bit of a confrontation.
There will always be issues between people. The number of people simply determine the scale of it.
And it wouldn't surprise me if someone said something similar about the humans who first moved out of Africa.
No doubt they did, but walking from Africa only meant going through a progressively changing environment in which you could turn back at any point, and which you could do in small stages over generations. Even those who sailed away in ships (a closer analogy) had no thought that it might be impossible to breathe air or find water at the destination (they were OK as it happened), or have to be confined to a small enclosure. They assumed (rightly as it happened) that it would be the same as home with perhaps some funny new plants and animals.
A trip to Mars however is far worse than those old migrations because we know that the place has no plants or animals, and is not survivable except in a very confined space and with some very specialised kit of finite reliability.
Do these people have plans for recycling systems and habitats that can survive ...
As well as have medical staff to deal with people possibly being injured and/or dying?
Don't worry, maybe they will folow the example of the Pilgrim Fathers, who went to America equipped only with several hundred copies of the Bible (but not a single book on agriculture) to help them. The only qualification to go was that they shared some religious issues which today seem not of the slightest importance, and the hope that by resettling in the middle of nowhere their children could not be "drawn away by evil examples into extravagance and dangerous courses". Presumably these volunteers are the present day equivalent nutters.
So I hope they considered the risks for people walking on the street; anyway, innovative solutions to pollution problems are always welcome.
Don't worry, I expect pedestrians, cyclists, and even conventional cars will be banned from these roads. If they keep improving this system they will eventually re-invent railways.
I sincerely hope that by the time I might get to that state that the idiots who oppose euthanasia have been recognised as the nutjobs that they are and that I can be put out of my misery. If you kept a dog in that state (in the UK at least) you would be prosecuted for cruelty.
FTFA - "Glacier-free areas of the Alps erode at a similar rate but where the mountains are protected by ice, the peaks wear away at one tenth that rate."
"Protected by ice" != "glacier"
Former glacial valleys, like in the UK looking down the A5 from Llyn Ogwen north-west towards Bethesda, are clearly far more eroded than the adjacent ridges. The valley is a huge U-shaped gouge, straight through the surrounding mountains,.
My meme is "You can have it green, safe, or handy. Pick one."
Plastic body panels are not OMG new technology, we've had them in a number of production vehicles since the 1980's.
Make that 1956 (at least) in the UK :- Reliant Regal Mk3
Apart from the Regal, and its successor the Reliant Robin, there were quite a few GRP small-run production cars in the UK in the 1970's, mostly sports cars. I always fancied a Reliant Scimitar (you would not believe it was made by the same company as the Robin). The type was generally discontinued when crash standards were introduced because the bodies split rather than crumpled when crashed.
There is/was a guy in Horfield (suburb of Bristol, UK) who seemed to collect Reliant Robins and Regals. The front garden (and probably the back) had a row of them stood up on their tailgates, like surfboards.
Why couldn't they have converted a 1 or 3 series to full electric .. ?
Because, as someone once posted here before, there are three rules about electric cars :-
1) They must be tiny
2) They must be ugly
3) They must be quirky
Admittedly, these rules are not always followed, but seem to have been in this case.
Maybe if they did a little tracking of their customers, they would stock something in the sizes or styles this customer actually wants.
Last week I was trying to buy medium size trousers (US =pants) in the Bristol Cribbs Causeway BHS store. I need a medium size. I liked one style, but all they had was exra small and extra large. In other words their statistical distribution was the inverse of the expected population distribution.
They should not need tracking to realise how dumb this is; they need to grow a brain cell instead. I guess they stock up with a level distribution of sizes and then the medium sells out first.
Anyway, how would tracking help? They might conclude I did not buy because I did not like the colour, so next time they will all be extra large and pink as well. Or are they going to photograph me to measure my anatomy?
OTOH, if I want directions to the shoe department at some big box store, being able to follow an arrow on my phone is probably more useful than asking some snooty clerk.
IKEA have that sorted for you already. Their stores are laid out like a linear FPS, where you must walk past every item in the place between entering and leaving. A sales guy in the Bristol (UK) IKEA told me it was nearly a mile walk through there. So keep walking, you will find your shit eventually.
" which transmits a unique signal that the camera in your phone can read."
Assuming everyone has a smartphone...
Don't worry, it is only aimed at those iPhone fanbois who wave their phone around to show they've got one. Anyone sensible keeps their phone in their pocket, for all sorts of reasons.