Have you ever looked inside a kitchen cabinet? If you fill it with the normal, round plates and glasses, the corners are almost NEVER used.
I assure you I can fit more round glasses into a square cabinet with X length/width than I can a round cabinet of X diameter.
But that isn't why it's oval. The reason why the external shape is oval is because such a shape is far more storm resistant Wind and rain does not have a single surface to push against.
Unless you are planning to live in a hurricane, that's demonstrably not a meaningful problem. Most houses are square and you know what? They deal with the wind and rain just fine. Unless you are trying to make the habitat as light as possible (like for spaceflight) it is a far more sensible decision to simply built it adequately strong than to use fancy and hugely impractical round designs.
The only advantage from square architecture is that it maximizes volume
Wrong! It is easier and cheaper to build. It is simpler to repair. It is easier to modify. It can store more things with less problems. (easy to store round things in a square box but harder to store square things in a round box)
Finally the door. It is true that the gull wing shape makes it easier to remove in a storm - if it is open. But closed, it makes for a tighter fit.
"Tighter fit"? The tightness of the fit has nothing to do with where you locate the hinges. If anything it means you need stronger hinges AND a device to keep the door propped open in the up position.
You are correct that the standard rectangular shape is cheaper.
It's not only cheaper. It is easier to build, easier to repair, more practical in utility and easier to modify.
This shape was chosen because while more expensive, it is FAR MORE PRACTICAL.
It is far LESS practical. More expensive to built, harder to maintain, less flexible to use and update, and impractical to use. It requires single sourcing of custom furnishings. It's a fail on almost every level.
It stands up to a storm better, collects the rain better, conserves heat/cold better, and also is a far more efficient use of space - as long as it is filled with custom designed furnishings (which it comes with).
Tell you what. I'll use a converted shipping container and you use your stupid little people pod. I assure you that I'll withstand the storm better, I can insulate it better, I can collect rain better and more of it, and I can use whatever furnishings I want. Furthermore it will be more durable, entirely recyclable and easier to modify and fix.
Custom designed furnishings in a weird space basically means you can't change anything and if anything breaks you can't replace it easily or cheaply. Anyone who has actually owned a residence will tell you that the one thing you can be sure of is that things WILL break and wear out. This egg thing is stupid on so many levels it's hard to know where to start.
Not so much, once you cut holes in a shipping container it's very hard to move it.
Not unless those holes are so large they affect structural integrity. It is almost trivial to put some windows or extra doors into a shipping container without affecting structural integrity. The entire thing is made of steel so you can weld whatever reinforcements you need permanently or temporarily and steel is pretty much 100% recyclable.
If you plan to move your shipping container home, you'll also need to budget for a trailer to move it on.
This pretty much falls into the "duh" category. You don't have to own said trailer however.
About the cheapest I've seen a container trailer is five grand, and I didn't go look at it so I don't know what kind of condition it was in.
Or you can just hire one for a relatively modest fee unless you plan to move it around constantly. One of the beautiful things about using standardized containers is that there is enormous existing infrastructure for hire to move them about. You can put them on a truck, a train, or a boat easily and economically take them almost anywhere you want. You can even have them lifted by helicopter or crane with no modifications or special equipment.
If you're going to have a home built into it, you're talking about some real weight there.
Real things have real weight. Unlike this stupid pod however it would actually be functional for something more than glamping.
All this wandering isn't all that eco, it takes energy to drag a house around.
Sure it does but if you are wandering there presumably is a reason you are doing it. A standardized container is FAR more economical and eco-friendly than this stupid egg pod thing.
Ah, there's the problem. My dad was a high-end remodeler for many years. He never got a set of plans from an architect that was actually buildable as received. Generally he could sketch something on a note pad that would be far more practical and functional.
That's not a phenomena unique to architects. I run a contract manufacturing company which means we build stuff that other people design. I can count on my fingers the number of drawings I've received that could be made without clarification or revision in the last 5 years. There invariable is some combination of missing specifications, incompatible parts, inaccurate dimensions, inappropriate materials, missing part numbers, (useless) customer internal part numbers, unrealistic tolerances, design flaws, obsolete/unobtainable parts, confusing instructions, overpriced vendors specified, etc. Most engineers I've run into are somewhere between moderately and reall bad at doing good quality engineering documentation. (read - they are bad at the most important part of their job) They have poor attention to detail and are terrible at writing documents that someone else has to read and interpret. I almost always have to spend a substantial amount of time fixing their product and/or documentation so it can be built. Basically the same problem your dad ran into.
You mean except for the idiotic layout, the lack of wheels or towing equipment, the impractical shape, the lack of substantial water or battery space, the inflexible interior design, the ugly appearance and the expensive round shape?
The picture on the website shows it can be put on a transport platform and drawn around by a car.
Or I could just buy a camper that is already "on a transport platform" and get a more practical design while I'm at it. Seriously, this is the sort of stupid concept "designers" are getting WAY too much money to come up with. The clearly started with the external appearance and a checklist of features and worked from there rather than actually spending time considering any functional considerations.
How do you propose to get this thing "on a transport platform"? It's clearly not meant to be dragged. There is no obvious hookup for a hoist. It apparently fits in a shipping container but that raises the question of why not just convert the shipping container to living space? It's more practical, modular, goes right on a truck and almost certainly is cheaper to make and convert. Plus probably more durable and recyclable. The transportation infrastructure is already available and it's not exactly a challenge to put solar cells and a wind turbine on the roof.
Wow, an ugly impractical solution to a problem no one has by someone with no concept of the reality of living in a small space. This looks like an art school project from a fan of the Jetsons.
The article actually says "The architects also recommend it as an urban dwelling for singles in high-rent areas such as Silicon Valley or NYC" which is clear proof that they haven't even a vague clue what life is like in the real world.
Except that this would open up a can of worms like sexism, etc.. Why should an average guy pay more for a plane flight with the same weight of luggage as an average woman? Like it or not, men tend to be heavier, even if they are at their ideal weight.
He should pay more because he requires more fuel to move around. Simple physics. He very literally costs more to fly from point A to point B. The only arguments against him paying more for the indisputable fact that he requires more fuel to be burned are social ones. Economically he is using more resources so logically he should pay more for that.
Plus I don't know about the women you know but in my experience women tend to pack a lot more crap when they travel so it probably evens out somewhat.
The only exception I might make would be some allowance for medical devices like wheelchairs.
Of course, they could go with some sort of standard for height, weigh, sex, etc. and you only pay for the amount that you are over your ideal weight. But this, again, gets into privacy concerns because it would be recorded somewhere.
Not necessary and too judgmental. The ONLY truly fair way to do it is to weigh the person plus their luggage and charge a fee for whatever that total weight is. If you are naturally a bit larger that's just the way it goes. You pay for what you use. The reason why you use more is irrelevant.
No it wouldn't. Most of the infrastructure is there already. They'd basically have to add a few scales and some computer code and a little extra procedure. It would replace the baggage fees which we already deal with.
For example, do you include clothing weight? If so, expect passengers to start stripping when they are on the borderline of a cheaper weight bracket. Like boxers do.
Of course. EVERYTHING you take on the plane including yourself gets weighed. You + your luggage. You can take something off if you want but you are going to get charged for it anyway because they would weigh your luggage too. Give it to someone else? Then they get charged and I doubt they'll appreciate that.
What about disabled passengers? Most countries require airlines to carry their equipment, like wheelchairs and crutches, for free. Some people are overweight due to health problems which can be classed as disabilities in a legal sense. You can bet a lot of them will argue that angle, genuinely or otherwise.
What about them? You can make some reasonable allowances for disability assistance. Nobody is suggesting we have to be inhuman ogres about the whole thing. But more weight = more fuel used. That is an indisputable fact. If you bring more weight on the plane then you should have to pay a greater share of the fuel cost. Whether that extra weight is you or your luggage is irrelevant to the physics and economics of the situation.
How would you take payment? The passenger buys a ticket online, but isn't weighed until they arrive at the airport.
Same way we take payments now. It would be trivial to tie the boarding pass to a credit card so when you get in line for being weighed the fee gets assessed automatically. If you pay cash or something else unusual you get sent to a line to settle up any charges. They already have the basic infrastructure to handle this since they charge for all the checked bags now. This is basically the same thing just with one extra scale.
Estimates will never be very good because even if people don't lie domestic scales are often not very accurate.
Using estimates would be pointless and stupid. You just weigh them and you don't need to make a big production of it.
Because it would be an enormous headache. I don't know if you've flown recently, but most people don't go to the ticket counter to buy their tickets anymore. They buy tickets online, and if this policy was in place you would have to make the passenger input their weight and their luggage weight into the system when they buy the ticket, potentially months in advance.
Not a big deal. They already have infrastructure in place to deal with fees for checking bags. It would not be a huge challenge to add some scales to the system. They weigh the bags already and they can put a scale either in the security line or next to the gate. Attach the boarding pass to a credit card and they don't have to do anything special at the airport aside from stepping on a scale with their belongings.
Although most instances of obesity is inability to control one's shoveling food into one's mouth (like my fatty of an ex) there are instances where obesity is caused by hormonal or glandular (thyroid, pituitary, adrenal) problems, so that isn't fair. What IS fair is charging someone for two seats if they're oozing into the next seat.
Obesity is always caused by shoveling more food into your mouth than you can digest. Hormones don't have calories so it still is them stuffing their face. I recognize that staying slim can be quite challenging (especially in the face of hormonal problems) and I do sympathize but the simple fact is that there is no way to get fat without overeating. Period.
In any case, life isn't fair. People who are simply bigger naturally (even if very fit) will get charged a bit more but the physics of the situation doesn't care. They ARE going to cause the plane to burn more fuel than someone smaller and that's just a fact. I prefer not to have to subsidize their share of the fuel costs for the flight. I'll pay for what I use and they can pay for what they use and I think that is quite fair at the end of the day.
I've always hated voice mail because of peoples tendencies to leave crap messages. So not only do I need to go through the extra steps going through voice prompts and entering passcodes...
That's not a problem with voicemails, it's a problem with the interface of voicemail systems. Traditional voicemail systems have had TERRIBLE interfaces. More recent ones like Google Voice are much, much better. I now get a transcription (crude but usually effective) and a wav file if I need to actually listen to it.
Also just as bad as "call me back" without giving me a reason WHY you need to talk to me, if you don't give me a reason to treat you more urgently than others then you're going to the bottom of the list.
Sometimes there are very good reasons to not indicate precisely what you want to talk about in a voicemail. For example a doctor's office isn't going to leave sensitive information for you in a voicemail or explain exactly why they are calling. Messages might be sensitive or embarrassing. If it is a friend they probably just want to talk to you just because so no specific reason should be necessary. You should probably have a pretty good feel for the relationship and urgency. If it is time sensitive then they should know to indicate that.
As a millenial, phonecalls never made sense to me.
Really? You never talk to anyone using your voice? Were you one of those kids who text messages the person sitting right next to you? I hate talking on the phone myself but there are plenty of times it is the most effective means of communication. It is far faster than email for many data dumps and it communicates emotion and nuance light years better. I type fast but I talk much faster. If I need to give you a core dump about an issue and deal with it quickly I'm probably going to call when typing would take too long.
Unless I actively want to hear your voice (my parents for example) then i have an infinite and vastly superior cadre of resources with which to communicate.
That depends very much on exactly what you are trying to communicate. Talking on the phone can be VASTLY faster and more effective than email, IM, twitter, facebook and other forms of communication in a lot of circumstances. Some things are difficult to communicate adequately via email. Asynchronous forms of communication are generally very impersonal, slow, and frankly I deal with enough email as it is. The last thing I want to do is spend more time emailing.
Another supreme irritation is when I email a person, but they call me back. maintain parity and answer the email.
Not everyone types very well. I work with several people who can't type quickly for various reasons. Sometimes calling is a faster way to address the problem. You might prefer email but your preferences are not the only ones that matter. I don't care for talking on the phone either but if it gets the job done, so what? I care that the problem gets handled, not the medium it gets handled through.
Accosting me for details just means im going to keep pointing you to the email.
At which point the other person will declare you to be an uncooperative jerk. I absolutely loathe talking on the phone but if I've bothered to pick up the phone and call you there is a damn good reason for it. Answer the call, be courteous and helpful. If you point me back to email when I've bothered to call you I'm probably going to get pissed off at you. If it is a telemarketer, hang up and block the number.
But phones? no. Voicemail hell no.
Voicemail has its place. I use google voice which records and transcribes the voicemails I get. The problem with voicemail isn't the actual message, it's the shitty interface that has been put on it traditionally. Now that I can quickly read my voicemails I rarely actually have to listen to them and voicemail has become fairly useful. Sometimes someone needs to reach you and email isn't the right format or maybe all they have is a phone number. Voice mail allows them to communicate with you when you can't take the call which is genuinely useful.
Well, in fairness, you have a contract with your customers and don't have one with random Bad Guys in the internet. You can sue your customers, but good luck suing the bad guys.
I realize I didn't write the sarcasm tag explicitly but I would have thought that one would be obvious. Bad guys obviously don't have a contract and suing your customers is almost always a bad idea. If anyone points out a flaw in your product you say thank you and get to fixing it without further fuss. Any other response is simply unacceptable particularly if the person pointing out the flaw is a paying customer.
New Yorkers are just assholes. They complain about weather that's not even half as bad as ours. Sorry, next.
Well, you must know that New York City is the center of the universe and "The Greatest City in the World". Just ask any New Yorker and they'll be happy to tell you how wonderful New York City is and how crappy wherever you live is.
Though at least they aren't as big of weather weenies as the crowd in Southern California...
Another genius. Minnesota has traditionally had among the highest employment-population ratios in the country from before these latest statistics.
Nice insult. Would be better if your understanding of math improved. Has nothing to do with their employment ratios and everything to do with basic math. If the workforce in State A is 1000 tech workers and you add 8% you now have 1080 workers. If your workforce in State B is 10,000 tech workers and you add 5% you now have 10,500 workers. So State A is "faster growing" percent-wise even though State B actually added almost 7X as many jobs. When you get to big numbers you can add a huge number of jobs without it looking impressive statistically.
Any time you hear someone say something is "fastest growing" it almost always doesn't mean much if they didn't start with a big number. For example Apple has revenue of $182B for the last 12 months. EBay has revenue over the same period of around $17B. Red Hat has revenue around $1.8B. For Apple to grow by 10% next year they will have to create a new business the size of eBay in ONE year. For eBay to grow by 10% they have to create a company the size of Red Hat out of thin air. With no disrespect to Red Hat, it is a lot easier to create a company Red Hat's size than one eBay's size. Apple could literally grow 1/10th as fast and still match eBay's revenue growth just because of their size. So who is really growing faster? The small guy with the big percentage or the big guy with the bigger absolute number?
Minnesota has some great companies headquartered there but relatively few of them are tech companies. They are like eBay in the above example while California is like Apple. MUCH harder to grow the bigger number by the same rate.
I bet this is all about fuel costs and nothing to do with safety.
It's mostly about fuel costs though there is a safety component to it. You have to know the weight of the plane with reasonable accuracy to put in the right amount of fuel. There also are issues on smaller planes regarding proper distribution of weight. If you've flown in puddle jumpers you very likely have been asked to move seats to even out the weight distribution. I've had to do it a number of times and it is entirely about safety.
If they can more accurately weigh the plane, they can put just enough fuel in to reach the destination, and save millions in jet fuel over the course of a year.
Quite true but there is also the issue that travelers currently aren't charged accurately for the weight they bring on the plane. They sort of do it by guessing the average weight of a passenger and then charging extra fees for luggage. But it would be much more sensible to actually charge each customer a fuel surcharge based on weight (themselves + their luggage). Bring more on and you pay a bit more. Travel light and you save a bit. Since weight is the biggest variable in fuel use it makes perfect sense to charge customers based on weight. Plus it would create an incentive to pack light AND it would reduce the number of people trying to cram an elephant in their carry-on to avoid baggage fees.
Technically possible but logistically complicated and unnecessary since they know the dry weight of the plane already with pretty fair accuracy. The only variable is the contents (you, luggage, fuel, food, etc) and to allocate costs truly fairly it makes sense to charge by weight. A lot of people will be offended but weight directly affects fuel consumption so if you bring more weight on the plane you probably should be paying for a bigger percentage of the fuel costs. Not really fair to me to pay to haul you and your stuff if I'm traveling light.
I've always thought it would make the most logical sense to weigh a passenger and all their luggage and add a fuel surcharge instead of silly baggage fees. Travel heavy and you pay more. Travel light and you save a bit. It also stops people from trying to cram everything into carry-on because you get charged either way. Of course obese and larger people will be unhappy (understandably) but they ARE responsible for more fuel being consumed so it's really only fair that they pay more for it.
Whether something is the fastest growing has a lot to do with where it started. It's a lot easier to double a small number than it is to double a big one. I wouldn't expect traditional tech hubs like California or Massachusetts to grow fast because they are already large. It's not even a little surprising that some place not normally considered a hotspot for tech jobs would grow the fastest.
But a cup of feathers is lighter than a cup of iron.
Whoosh! You missed the joke.
You should learn the difference between kw and kwh and why kwh is used to compare actual electfical production.
You should learn to laugh a little at a joke. Lighten up. A watt is a watt - hence the joke. I'm quite well aware of the difference between a watt and a joule so your response cracks me up.
But since you wanted to be pedantic, saying a "watt of solar" is a meaningless statement unless you clarify it further. Solar is a process that can mean many different things ranging from photovoltaics to photosynthesis. Coal is group of hydrocarbon chemicals with well defined properties but is essentially stored chemical energy viewed abstractly. Ironically coal really is just sunlight turned into hydrocarbons. If you want to talk about electrical power generated from burning coal versus power generated from photovoltaic cells then say so. Clarify what you are comparing or just stand back and laugh at the joke.
If you want to talk about efficiency (the amount of sunlight energy converted into electrical energy vs coal) then you have a discussion but coal does not have a 5X advantage there. If you want to compare energy densities then you probably aren't really comparing sunlight to coal because you are comparing storage mediums. You are probably comparing chemical batteries to coal which is quite different.
Any crime that does not involve anybody else is bullshit. Drunk driving is stupid but should not be a crime until you damage something that is not yours or somehow impact another.
That's like saying wearing a seat belt is a dumb idea because you haven't crashed yet. You pretty much missed the entire point.
The problem with your logic is that by the time the drunken person's behavior does damage someone else it is too late. Driving drunk is A) unnecessary and B) substantially and demonstrably more likely to result in tangible harm to other people or property. So it makes sense to prohibit behavior with no societal value that causes significant burdens on society. You want to get drunk and do something stupid on your own property where no one else it at risk? Knock yourself out. But if you want to be a part of civilized society in public there are going to be some rules you'll have to live with.
How cute that they think they can prevent people from finding flaws in their product with a licensing agreement. Why didn't I think of securing out network via legal agreements? The Bad Guys would never dream of doing something I told them not to do.
But it has 100 percent everything to do with someone whining about 10,000 people getting killed by drunk driving.
You're going on and on with a bunch of strawman baloney about more common and largely unrelated causes of death. Let me make this very simple for you since you can't seem to wrap your brain around it.
Just because something else is a more common cause of death IN NO WAY makes these deaths from drunk driving less of a tragedy or less worthy of efforts to prevent those deaths.
Clear enough? If you cannot understand that then I pity you. You are acting like we cannot do anything further about drunk driving and that any further investments in prevention of it are a waste of money. I could not disagree more. That is a false dilemma and I reject your premise outright.
But anyone who isn't looking at it in emotion only mode has to know that you could throw all the money in the world at it, and it will not reduuce the number of DUI deaths to zero.
Who said anything about reducing it to zero? Of course that unrealistic. But how about reducing it to 5000 a year? 1000? 500? The notion that because we can't achieve perfection we shouldn't do anything is absurd reductionism and stupid public policy.
But it isn't about a lack of humanity and/or compassion. It's about unealistic expectations - the idea that if we can only get tougher on it, we can eliminate it. We can't.
Grow up. It has nothing to do with unrealistic expectations. By your logic we shouldn't waste any money or effort on anything but the biggest problems. Got a rare disease? Fuck off and die according to you because you have "unrealistic expectations".
10,000 deaths a year from drunk driving is a tragedy by any measure. If you cannot see that then you are blind.
Sense of humanity. PLEASE GET ONE. 10,000 people dying in accidents is a tragedy. If you can't see that then I weep for you.
Just because people die from other reasons too doesn't in any way make this less of a tragedy. Just because people die from heart disease doesn't make cancer research unimportant. Just because people die from gunshots doesn't make preventing drunk driving unimportant. By your logic we shouldn't spend any time worrying about anything but the most common cause of death because anything else "lacks perspective".
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Have you ever looked inside a kitchen cabinet? If you fill it with the normal, round plates and glasses, the corners are almost NEVER used.
I assure you I can fit more round glasses into a square cabinet with X length/width than I can a round cabinet of X diameter.
But that isn't why it's oval. The reason why the external shape is oval is because such a shape is far more storm resistant Wind and rain does not have a single surface to push against.
Unless you are planning to live in a hurricane, that's demonstrably not a meaningful problem. Most houses are square and you know what? They deal with the wind and rain just fine. Unless you are trying to make the habitat as light as possible (like for spaceflight) it is a far more sensible decision to simply built it adequately strong than to use fancy and hugely impractical round designs.
The only advantage from square architecture is that it maximizes volume
Wrong! It is easier and cheaper to build. It is simpler to repair. It is easier to modify. It can store more things with less problems. (easy to store round things in a square box but harder to store square things in a round box)
Finally the door. It is true that the gull wing shape makes it easier to remove in a storm - if it is open. But closed, it makes for a tighter fit.
"Tighter fit"? The tightness of the fit has nothing to do with where you locate the hinges. If anything it means you need stronger hinges AND a device to keep the door propped open in the up position.
You are correct that the standard rectangular shape is cheaper.
It's not only cheaper. It is easier to build, easier to repair, more practical in utility and easier to modify.
This shape was chosen because while more expensive, it is FAR MORE PRACTICAL.
It is far LESS practical. More expensive to built, harder to maintain, less flexible to use and update, and impractical to use. It requires single sourcing of custom furnishings. It's a fail on almost every level.
It stands up to a storm better, collects the rain better, conserves heat/cold better, and also is a far more efficient use of space - as long as it is filled with custom designed furnishings (which it comes with).
Tell you what. I'll use a converted shipping container and you use your stupid little people pod. I assure you that I'll withstand the storm better, I can insulate it better, I can collect rain better and more of it, and I can use whatever furnishings I want. Furthermore it will be more durable, entirely recyclable and easier to modify and fix.
Custom designed furnishings in a weird space basically means you can't change anything and if anything breaks you can't replace it easily or cheaply. Anyone who has actually owned a residence will tell you that the one thing you can be sure of is that things WILL break and wear out. This egg thing is stupid on so many levels it's hard to know where to start.
What about someone who has a 60kg special needs wheelchair, but weighs a normal amount?
If you will note I specifically said we should make an exception for medical assistance devices. We don't have to get stupid or inhumane about it.
Not so much, once you cut holes in a shipping container it's very hard to move it.
Not unless those holes are so large they affect structural integrity. It is almost trivial to put some windows or extra doors into a shipping container without affecting structural integrity. The entire thing is made of steel so you can weld whatever reinforcements you need permanently or temporarily and steel is pretty much 100% recyclable.
If you plan to move your shipping container home, you'll also need to budget for a trailer to move it on.
This pretty much falls into the "duh" category. You don't have to own said trailer however.
About the cheapest I've seen a container trailer is five grand, and I didn't go look at it so I don't know what kind of condition it was in.
Or you can just hire one for a relatively modest fee unless you plan to move it around constantly. One of the beautiful things about using standardized containers is that there is enormous existing infrastructure for hire to move them about. You can put them on a truck, a train, or a boat easily and economically take them almost anywhere you want. You can even have them lifted by helicopter or crane with no modifications or special equipment.
If you're going to have a home built into it, you're talking about some real weight there.
Real things have real weight. Unlike this stupid pod however it would actually be functional for something more than glamping.
All this wandering isn't all that eco, it takes energy to drag a house around.
Sure it does but if you are wandering there presumably is a reason you are doing it. A standardized container is FAR more economical and eco-friendly than this stupid egg pod thing.
Ah, there's the problem. My dad was a high-end remodeler for many years. He never got a set of plans from an architect that was actually buildable as received. Generally he could sketch something on a note pad that would be far more practical and functional.
That's not a phenomena unique to architects. I run a contract manufacturing company which means we build stuff that other people design. I can count on my fingers the number of drawings I've received that could be made without clarification or revision in the last 5 years. There invariable is some combination of missing specifications, incompatible parts, inaccurate dimensions, inappropriate materials, missing part numbers, (useless) customer internal part numbers, unrealistic tolerances, design flaws, obsolete/unobtainable parts, confusing instructions, overpriced vendors specified, etc. Most engineers I've run into are somewhere between moderately and reall bad at doing good quality engineering documentation. (read - they are bad at the most important part of their job) They have poor attention to detail and are terrible at writing documents that someone else has to read and interpret. I almost always have to spend a substantial amount of time fixing their product and/or documentation so it can be built. Basically the same problem your dad ran into.
This would make an awesome camper.
You mean except for the idiotic layout, the lack of wheels or towing equipment, the impractical shape, the lack of substantial water or battery space, the inflexible interior design, the ugly appearance and the expensive round shape?
Yeah other than that it's great...
The picture on the website shows it can be put on a transport platform and drawn around by a car.
Or I could just buy a camper that is already "on a transport platform" and get a more practical design while I'm at it. Seriously, this is the sort of stupid concept "designers" are getting WAY too much money to come up with. The clearly started with the external appearance and a checklist of features and worked from there rather than actually spending time considering any functional considerations.
How do you propose to get this thing "on a transport platform"? It's clearly not meant to be dragged. There is no obvious hookup for a hoist. It apparently fits in a shipping container but that raises the question of why not just convert the shipping container to living space? It's more practical, modular, goes right on a truck and almost certainly is cheaper to make and convert. Plus probably more durable and recyclable. The transportation infrastructure is already available and it's not exactly a challenge to put solar cells and a wind turbine on the roof.
Wow, an ugly impractical solution to a problem no one has by someone with no concept of the reality of living in a small space. This looks like an art school project from a fan of the Jetsons.
The article actually says "The architects also recommend it as an urban dwelling for singles in high-rent areas such as Silicon Valley or NYC" which is clear proof that they haven't even a vague clue what life is like in the real world.
Except that this would open up a can of worms like sexism, etc.. Why should an average guy pay more for a plane flight with the same weight of luggage as an average woman? Like it or not, men tend to be heavier, even if they are at their ideal weight.
He should pay more because he requires more fuel to move around. Simple physics. He very literally costs more to fly from point A to point B. The only arguments against him paying more for the indisputable fact that he requires more fuel to be burned are social ones. Economically he is using more resources so logically he should pay more for that.
Plus I don't know about the women you know but in my experience women tend to pack a lot more crap when they travel so it probably evens out somewhat.
The only exception I might make would be some allowance for medical devices like wheelchairs.
Of course, they could go with some sort of standard for height, weigh, sex, etc. and you only pay for the amount that you are over your ideal weight. But this, again, gets into privacy concerns because it would be recorded somewhere.
Not necessary and too judgmental. The ONLY truly fair way to do it is to weigh the person plus their luggage and charge a fee for whatever that total weight is. If you are naturally a bit larger that's just the way it goes. You pay for what you use. The reason why you use more is irrelevant.
It would be an administrative/legal nightmare.
No it wouldn't. Most of the infrastructure is there already. They'd basically have to add a few scales and some computer code and a little extra procedure. It would replace the baggage fees which we already deal with.
For example, do you include clothing weight? If so, expect passengers to start stripping when they are on the borderline of a cheaper weight bracket. Like boxers do.
Of course. EVERYTHING you take on the plane including yourself gets weighed. You + your luggage. You can take something off if you want but you are going to get charged for it anyway because they would weigh your luggage too. Give it to someone else? Then they get charged and I doubt they'll appreciate that.
What about disabled passengers? Most countries require airlines to carry their equipment, like wheelchairs and crutches, for free. Some people are overweight due to health problems which can be classed as disabilities in a legal sense. You can bet a lot of them will argue that angle, genuinely or otherwise.
What about them? You can make some reasonable allowances for disability assistance. Nobody is suggesting we have to be inhuman ogres about the whole thing. But more weight = more fuel used. That is an indisputable fact. If you bring more weight on the plane then you should have to pay a greater share of the fuel cost. Whether that extra weight is you or your luggage is irrelevant to the physics and economics of the situation.
How would you take payment? The passenger buys a ticket online, but isn't weighed until they arrive at the airport.
Same way we take payments now. It would be trivial to tie the boarding pass to a credit card so when you get in line for being weighed the fee gets assessed automatically. If you pay cash or something else unusual you get sent to a line to settle up any charges. They already have the basic infrastructure to handle this since they charge for all the checked bags now. This is basically the same thing just with one extra scale.
Estimates will never be very good because even if people don't lie domestic scales are often not very accurate.
Using estimates would be pointless and stupid. You just weigh them and you don't need to make a big production of it.
Because it would be an enormous headache. I don't know if you've flown recently, but most people don't go to the ticket counter to buy their tickets anymore. They buy tickets online, and if this policy was in place you would have to make the passenger input their weight and their luggage weight into the system when they buy the ticket, potentially months in advance.
Not a big deal. They already have infrastructure in place to deal with fees for checking bags. It would not be a huge challenge to add some scales to the system. They weigh the bags already and they can put a scale either in the security line or next to the gate. Attach the boarding pass to a credit card and they don't have to do anything special at the airport aside from stepping on a scale with their belongings.
Although most instances of obesity is inability to control one's shoveling food into one's mouth (like my fatty of an ex) there are instances where obesity is caused by hormonal or glandular (thyroid, pituitary, adrenal) problems, so that isn't fair. What IS fair is charging someone for two seats if they're oozing into the next seat.
Obesity is always caused by shoveling more food into your mouth than you can digest. Hormones don't have calories so it still is them stuffing their face. I recognize that staying slim can be quite challenging (especially in the face of hormonal problems) and I do sympathize but the simple fact is that there is no way to get fat without overeating. Period.
In any case, life isn't fair. People who are simply bigger naturally (even if very fit) will get charged a bit more but the physics of the situation doesn't care. They ARE going to cause the plane to burn more fuel than someone smaller and that's just a fact. I prefer not to have to subsidize their share of the fuel costs for the flight. I'll pay for what I use and they can pay for what they use and I think that is quite fair at the end of the day.
I've always hated voice mail because of peoples tendencies to leave crap messages. So not only do I need to go through the extra steps going through voice prompts and entering passcodes...
That's not a problem with voicemails, it's a problem with the interface of voicemail systems. Traditional voicemail systems have had TERRIBLE interfaces. More recent ones like Google Voice are much, much better. I now get a transcription (crude but usually effective) and a wav file if I need to actually listen to it.
Also just as bad as "call me back" without giving me a reason WHY you need to talk to me, if you don't give me a reason to treat you more urgently than others then you're going to the bottom of the list.
Sometimes there are very good reasons to not indicate precisely what you want to talk about in a voicemail. For example a doctor's office isn't going to leave sensitive information for you in a voicemail or explain exactly why they are calling. Messages might be sensitive or embarrassing. If it is a friend they probably just want to talk to you just because so no specific reason should be necessary. You should probably have a pretty good feel for the relationship and urgency. If it is time sensitive then they should know to indicate that.
As a millenial, phonecalls never made sense to me.
Really? You never talk to anyone using your voice? Were you one of those kids who text messages the person sitting right next to you? I hate talking on the phone myself but there are plenty of times it is the most effective means of communication. It is far faster than email for many data dumps and it communicates emotion and nuance light years better. I type fast but I talk much faster. If I need to give you a core dump about an issue and deal with it quickly I'm probably going to call when typing would take too long.
Unless I actively want to hear your voice (my parents for example) then i have an infinite and vastly superior cadre of resources with which to communicate.
That depends very much on exactly what you are trying to communicate. Talking on the phone can be VASTLY faster and more effective than email, IM, twitter, facebook and other forms of communication in a lot of circumstances. Some things are difficult to communicate adequately via email. Asynchronous forms of communication are generally very impersonal, slow, and frankly I deal with enough email as it is. The last thing I want to do is spend more time emailing.
Another supreme irritation is when I email a person, but they call me back. maintain parity and answer the email.
Not everyone types very well. I work with several people who can't type quickly for various reasons. Sometimes calling is a faster way to address the problem. You might prefer email but your preferences are not the only ones that matter. I don't care for talking on the phone either but if it gets the job done, so what? I care that the problem gets handled, not the medium it gets handled through.
Accosting me for details just means im going to keep pointing you to the email.
At which point the other person will declare you to be an uncooperative jerk. I absolutely loathe talking on the phone but if I've bothered to pick up the phone and call you there is a damn good reason for it. Answer the call, be courteous and helpful. If you point me back to email when I've bothered to call you I'm probably going to get pissed off at you. If it is a telemarketer, hang up and block the number.
But phones? no. Voicemail hell no.
Voicemail has its place. I use google voice which records and transcribes the voicemails I get. The problem with voicemail isn't the actual message, it's the shitty interface that has been put on it traditionally. Now that I can quickly read my voicemails I rarely actually have to listen to them and voicemail has become fairly useful. Sometimes someone needs to reach you and email isn't the right format or maybe all they have is a phone number. Voice mail allows them to communicate with you when you can't take the call which is genuinely useful.
Well, in fairness, you have a contract with your customers and don't have one with random Bad Guys in the internet. You can sue your customers, but good luck suing the bad guys.
I realize I didn't write the sarcasm tag explicitly but I would have thought that one would be obvious. Bad guys obviously don't have a contract and suing your customers is almost always a bad idea. If anyone points out a flaw in your product you say thank you and get to fixing it without further fuss. Any other response is simply unacceptable particularly if the person pointing out the flaw is a paying customer.
New Yorkers are just assholes. They complain about weather that's not even half as bad as ours. Sorry, next.
Well, you must know that New York City is the center of the universe and "The Greatest City in the World". Just ask any New Yorker and they'll be happy to tell you how wonderful New York City is and how crappy wherever you live is.
Though at least they aren't as big of weather weenies as the crowd in Southern California...
Another genius. Minnesota has traditionally had among the highest employment-population ratios in the country from before these latest statistics.
Nice insult. Would be better if your understanding of math improved. Has nothing to do with their employment ratios and everything to do with basic math. If the workforce in State A is 1000 tech workers and you add 8% you now have 1080 workers. If your workforce in State B is 10,000 tech workers and you add 5% you now have 10,500 workers. So State A is "faster growing" percent-wise even though State B actually added almost 7X as many jobs. When you get to big numbers you can add a huge number of jobs without it looking impressive statistically.
Any time you hear someone say something is "fastest growing" it almost always doesn't mean much if they didn't start with a big number. For example Apple has revenue of $182B for the last 12 months. EBay has revenue over the same period of around $17B. Red Hat has revenue around $1.8B. For Apple to grow by 10% next year they will have to create a new business the size of eBay in ONE year. For eBay to grow by 10% they have to create a company the size of Red Hat out of thin air. With no disrespect to Red Hat, it is a lot easier to create a company Red Hat's size than one eBay's size. Apple could literally grow 1/10th as fast and still match eBay's revenue growth just because of their size. So who is really growing faster? The small guy with the big percentage or the big guy with the bigger absolute number?
Minnesota has some great companies headquartered there but relatively few of them are tech companies. They are like eBay in the above example while California is like Apple. MUCH harder to grow the bigger number by the same rate.
I bet this is all about fuel costs and nothing to do with safety.
It's mostly about fuel costs though there is a safety component to it. You have to know the weight of the plane with reasonable accuracy to put in the right amount of fuel. There also are issues on smaller planes regarding proper distribution of weight. If you've flown in puddle jumpers you very likely have been asked to move seats to even out the weight distribution. I've had to do it a number of times and it is entirely about safety.
If they can more accurately weigh the plane, they can put just enough fuel in to reach the destination, and save millions in jet fuel over the course of a year.
Quite true but there is also the issue that travelers currently aren't charged accurately for the weight they bring on the plane. They sort of do it by guessing the average weight of a passenger and then charging extra fees for luggage. But it would be much more sensible to actually charge each customer a fuel surcharge based on weight (themselves + their luggage). Bring more on and you pay a bit more. Travel light and you save a bit. Since weight is the biggest variable in fuel use it makes perfect sense to charge customers based on weight. Plus it would create an incentive to pack light AND it would reduce the number of people trying to cram an elephant in their carry-on to avoid baggage fees.
Technically possible but logistically complicated and unnecessary since they know the dry weight of the plane already with pretty fair accuracy. The only variable is the contents (you, luggage, fuel, food, etc) and to allocate costs truly fairly it makes sense to charge by weight. A lot of people will be offended but weight directly affects fuel consumption so if you bring more weight on the plane you probably should be paying for a bigger percentage of the fuel costs. Not really fair to me to pay to haul you and your stuff if I'm traveling light.
I've always thought it would make the most logical sense to weigh a passenger and all their luggage and add a fuel surcharge instead of silly baggage fees. Travel heavy and you pay more. Travel light and you save a bit. It also stops people from trying to cram everything into carry-on because you get charged either way. Of course obese and larger people will be unhappy (understandably) but they ARE responsible for more fuel being consumed so it's really only fair that they pay more for it.
Whether something is the fastest growing has a lot to do with where it started. It's a lot easier to double a small number than it is to double a big one. I wouldn't expect traditional tech hubs like California or Massachusetts to grow fast because they are already large. It's not even a little surprising that some place not normally considered a hotspot for tech jobs would grow the fastest.
But a cup of feathers is lighter than a cup of iron.
Whoosh! You missed the joke.
You should learn the difference between kw and kwh and why kwh is used to compare actual electfical production.
You should learn to laugh a little at a joke. Lighten up. A watt is a watt - hence the joke. I'm quite well aware of the difference between a watt and a joule so your response cracks me up.
But since you wanted to be pedantic, saying a "watt of solar" is a meaningless statement unless you clarify it further. Solar is a process that can mean many different things ranging from photovoltaics to photosynthesis. Coal is group of hydrocarbon chemicals with well defined properties but is essentially stored chemical energy viewed abstractly. Ironically coal really is just sunlight turned into hydrocarbons. If you want to talk about electrical power generated from burning coal versus power generated from photovoltaic cells then say so. Clarify what you are comparing or just stand back and laugh at the joke.
If you want to talk about efficiency (the amount of sunlight energy converted into electrical energy vs coal) then you have a discussion but coal does not have a 5X advantage there. If you want to compare energy densities then you probably aren't really comparing sunlight to coal because you are comparing storage mediums. You are probably comparing chemical batteries to coal which is quite different.
1 kw coal generates 5 times the electricity in a year that 1 kw solar does.
Is a pound of feathers lighter than a pound of iron too?
Any crime that does not involve anybody else is bullshit. Drunk driving is stupid but should not be a crime until you damage something that is not yours or somehow impact another.
That's like saying wearing a seat belt is a dumb idea because you haven't crashed yet. You pretty much missed the entire point.
The problem with your logic is that by the time the drunken person's behavior does damage someone else it is too late. Driving drunk is A) unnecessary and B) substantially and demonstrably more likely to result in tangible harm to other people or property. So it makes sense to prohibit behavior with no societal value that causes significant burdens on society. You want to get drunk and do something stupid on your own property where no one else it at risk? Knock yourself out. But if you want to be a part of civilized society in public there are going to be some rules you'll have to live with.
How cute that they think they can prevent people from finding flaws in their product with a licensing agreement. Why didn't I think of securing out network via legal agreements? The Bad Guys would never dream of doing something I told them not to do.
But it has 100 percent everything to do with someone whining about 10,000 people getting killed by drunk driving.
You're going on and on with a bunch of strawman baloney about more common and largely unrelated causes of death. Let me make this very simple for you since you can't seem to wrap your brain around it.
Just because something else is a more common cause of death IN NO WAY makes these deaths from drunk driving less of a tragedy or less worthy of efforts to prevent those deaths.
Clear enough? If you cannot understand that then I pity you. You are acting like we cannot do anything further about drunk driving and that any further investments in prevention of it are a waste of money. I could not disagree more. That is a false dilemma and I reject your premise outright.
But anyone who isn't looking at it in emotion only mode has to know that you could throw all the money in the world at it, and it will not reduuce the number of DUI deaths to zero.
Who said anything about reducing it to zero? Of course that unrealistic. But how about reducing it to 5000 a year? 1000? 500? The notion that because we can't achieve perfection we shouldn't do anything is absurd reductionism and stupid public policy.
But it isn't about a lack of humanity and/or compassion. It's about unealistic expectations - the idea that if we can only get tougher on it, we can eliminate it. We can't.
Grow up. It has nothing to do with unrealistic expectations. By your logic we shouldn't waste any money or effort on anything but the biggest problems. Got a rare disease? Fuck off and die according to you because you have "unrealistic expectations".
10,000 deaths a year from drunk driving is a tragedy by any measure. If you cannot see that then you are blind.
Sense of perspective. PLEASE GET ONE.
Sense of humanity. PLEASE GET ONE. 10,000 people dying in accidents is a tragedy. If you can't see that then I weep for you.
Just because people die from other reasons too doesn't in any way make this less of a tragedy. Just because people die from heart disease doesn't make cancer research unimportant. Just because people die from gunshots doesn't make preventing drunk driving unimportant. By your logic we shouldn't spend any time worrying about anything but the most common cause of death because anything else "lacks perspective".