First, they'll need a high-speed charging network that will allow for long-distance road trips.
That is not going to make or break this vehicle. The current market for it will be as a commuter car or runabout, mostly in urban areas. Basically the same sort of customer who would consider a Nissan Leaf but it will appeal to more people due to the extended range. 90 miles is too short to be confidence inspiring. There simply won't be a viable high speed charging network available anytime soon. Even Tesla's network is realistically several years away from widespread viability in most places. There is precisely one Supercharger station in my state at the moment and it's on the other side of the state from me. Wouldn't stop me from buying a Model S if I had the means though...
Which is completely irrelevant. You think dictators get to rule because they were "most fit to lead"?
If candidate X is having his thugs harass people for not voting for him, it would get out pretty quickly.
You are naively assuming that it would matter. Voter intimidation happens around the world and often with impunity. You think people in years past didn't know about the thugs trying to coerce votes. Just because you know about it doesn't mean anything will get done about it.
This world is full of corruption and bullshit because most people are now too afraid to speak up, stand up, be open and loving.
That's really easy to say when you are posting quasi-anonymously on the internet. Let's see how brave you are when an armed thug is threatening you or a loved one directly, face to face. Maybe you really do have the courage of your convictions but I doubt it...
Why do we need all of this secrecy anyway? Because someone might retaliate if you don't vote for them?
That is exactly why we have secret ballots. Intimidation used to be a routine occurrence in the US voting process prior to the secret ballot being introduced.
There are many more problems with corruption and secret voting systems.
I assure you that open ballots have worse problems in most cases when it comes to elections.
If you truly support someone, then why not just say it out loud?
Because some people will beat you or even try to kill you if you do not support their candidate. It's trivial to find examples. No one should have to fear for their safety due to a ballot.
Only loosely, though. Gasoline prices have fallen by nearly half, but diesel prices have only dropped by ten to twenty percent. At least, around here.
Gasoline prices where I live have fallen from roughly $3/gallon to $2/gallon. Diesel has dropped from $4/gallon to $3/gallon. The amount of the drop is basically the same but the percentage for diesel is less because it started higher. Of course for the same horsepower diesel is about 15-20% more efficient per gallon so the real difference in price per HP is less dramatic. Right now diesel would be at price/HP parity at about $2.40/gallon where I live so gasoline is more economical right now. Often it is the reverse.
Once they force all those plains state oil operations into bankruptcy, they'll move prices back up.
Such a tactic wouldn't work. Even if they somehow did force the existing shale oil operations into bankruptcy the assets don't go away. They'll just be bought up by some other oil company for pennies on the dollar and when the price of oil goes back up they'll start pumping again. There really would be no long term point in such a strategy. The oil is still there and eventually it will become economical to pump it out of the ground.
Diesels are extremely cheap to maintain and last an extremely long time. Getting 200-300k miles on a diesel engine with no maintenance is common.
"No maintentance"? Please point me a single internal combustion engine anywhere that can go 200K miles without so much as an oil change. Or are you forgetting oil changes, coolant changes, transmission fluid, fuel filters, air filters, urea injection fluid, etc. Not to mention fuel which is anything but cheap and WAY more expensive than electricity. Yes diesels can be very reliable but let's not pretend they are maintenance free shall we?
You'd replace a electrics batteries several times at a huge cost in that frame...
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Batteries in EVs have been shown in real world use to last well past 100-150K miles with little degradation in performance.
Wow, only $30,000 for a car with less than half the range of my $27,000 Volkswagen TDI? Where do I not sign up?
Wow a fossil fuel powered, noisy and polluting car with expensive fuel. Where do I not sign up?
Seriously, I even like diesel cars (I've owned several) but your argument is nonsense. Just because it doesn't fit what you need/want doesn't mean it isn't a great solution for other people. This would make a terrific commuting car for lots of people, myself included. I could refuel it MUCH cheaper than any diesel car on the market. Furthermore it has fewer moving parts and as such has a good chance of being quite reliable. If I really need to drive more than 200 miles in one go (rarely), I have a vehicle that can do that or I can easily rent one. Maybe you need something different and that's cool but 200 miles of range is pretty good.
Seriously though, it would be nice if Chevy tried to one-up the competition for once, rather than catch-up to them.
Please point out any auto maker that has an equivalent product on the market for a similar price. Nissan Leaf? Half the range. Tesla? 2-3X the price. Prius? Hybrid. Seriously, Chevy IS one-upping the competition here.
Is this to presume that they'll discontinue the Volt? The names are so similar I could see confusion here...
No they are not discontinuing the Volt as they just updated it to have a longer electric-only range (50 miles), 5 seats instead of 4, and improved acceleration and styling.
Of course the next GM electric vehicle will be the Chevy Jolt probably...
The US's ICBMs are from the 1960s and the US still uses tankers and strategic bombers from the 1950s.
B52s have been rebuild and upgraded and refurbished so many times they may as well be the Ship of Theseus. Furthermore the munitions they carry aren't really the same either these days in most cases.
I am always amazed how buildings constructed thousands, or even hundreds, of years ago are still standing although often in a state of disrepair due to neglect.
Then you are a victim of selection bias. Those buildings that are still standing after hundreds of years are the best built ones. The ones that weren't built so well aren't around anymore. So you think that they used to build them better back in the day when in fact they mostly built them worse if anything (they didn't exactly have building codes back then) and the old crappy buildings simply aren't around to compare with anymore. Saying "they don't build 'em like they used to" is true but not in the way it is usually intended. Building something to be more durable than it needs to be is wasteful - just in a different way.
Many people are shocked that computers/systems for 20 years still run,
Only people who don't know much. It's not shocking that such a thing would happen or that hardware can be made that robust. What IS shocking is that people put systems in place without any thought whatsoever to what people might want to do 20 years later. Seriously do you REALLY think it will be efficient or practical without problems for you to use the PC you are reading this on today in 20 years? Why would it be any different for a business or government?
If it ain't broke, why fix it?
Because it probably IS broken in a multitude of ways. Just because it can get a specific job done doesn't mean it does so efficiently or without problems. I've driven a lot of beater automobiles over the years and while they usually got me from point A to point B they were unquestionably broken if a number of ways. I have PCs that are 10-15 years old here in my company doing specific jobs and they definitely have problems. Yes we still get some productive work out of them but that doesn't mean I shouldn't think about replacing them when I can.
They sent man to the moon on less CPU horsepower than my Nexus 6.
Because that is all they had at the time. Nobody would even dream of doing that way today because we have better options now. Why limit yourself to yesterday's technology if you have a choice?
Voyager has been running for more than 35 years in the harshness of space.
Which is relevant how? You're comparing a spacecraft that human eyes will never see again with a earthbound computer system that we can modify or replace any time we want.
Or perhaps a giant corporation with lots of money and a huge R&D department might be a bit more aware of what the future roadmap for hydrogen production looks like than you?
Perhaps but if so they are being rather coy about how hydrogen somehow makes more sense than electric+battery. I'm an engineer who works in automotive and it's not like I wouldn't understand a good argument why hydrogen would make sense. I don't have anything against hydrogen as a fuel source. In theory it has a lot of potential advantages. But the reality is that those potential advantages face some very serious real world obstacles. I have yet to see anyone point out a roadmap for hydrogen powered vehicles that I think has even a remote chance of actually occurring. The biggest obstacle (though hardly the only one) is the lack of fueling infrastructure. Solve that without introducing a pollution problem in the process and I'll listen.
Do you really think cities can hold 15 times the number of gas stations we have currently?
Why would they need to? I think you are presuming electric fueling infrastructure will strongly resemble gasoline fueling infrastructure. It will not. Electric charging stations can be put in every parking lot, home, business etc. Heck my little downtown has a half dozen electric car charging stations right now in our shopping district. One of my customers has battery charging stations in front of their office. We have gas stations because they are handling a toxic, flammable and bulky chemical which is impractical and dangerous for most people to get at home in large quantities. We would need LESS fueling stations than we currently have if anything. You really only would need a fueling station for longer trips and it's not exactly tough to find a large patch of surplus farmland next to a highway.
There is some reduction from people who can charge at home, but not really much because of the number of people in apartments or just traveling long distances.
People in apartments have parking places for their cars too. No reason we couldn't wire many of those for charging purposes. Wouldn't happen overnight but we aren't going to switch to electric cars overnight either.
What none of you seem to be thinking of is what happens when ALL CARS AND TRUCKS are electric, which I consider inevitable.
I don't consider it inevitable at all unless there are some pretty significant breakthroughs in battery tech to allow faster charging and lower cost. Electric cars are a promising niche right now. I think you'll see a LOT of hybrids before you see any sort of wholesale change to pure electrics. In some locations (remote and cold especially) I don't see internal combustion going away anytime soon.
If a tipping point were reached and most people were driving electric cars, you'd be waiting about a day or so for a spot to open at a Supercharger station.
Only if you make the rather dim assumption that Supercharger stations cannot be enlarged or more of them added. Furthermore electric cars can be and would be charged at home so the need for refueling stations as we currently use them would be significantly reduced.
In the end what probably makes the most sense is a REAL hybrid, that is to say a combo of hydrogen/electric. The electric could charge for a 50 mile range, the hydrogen could kick in for extended trips.
Umm, where are you going to get the hydrogen? Gasoline/electric hybrids make sense because we have existing infrastructure built to support them. We have essentially zero hydrogen fuel infrastructure and no reasonable prospect of that changing anytime soon. Not that it couldn't be built but the advantages of hydrogen do not appear to justify the expense even if the technology works well. Maybe for some fleet vehicles but we certainly aren't going to move to hydrogen cars in the next 10 years. I see no reasonable scenario where hydrogen cards make any real dent in the market in the next 20 years baring some miracle technology breakthrough.
Because when you are in a public place you have no right to the expectation of privacy
Cellphone signals do not stop conveniently at the walls of your dwelling. How do you propose they sort out which signals are only coming from a public location? (Hint: they cannot)
Whether a communication goes over a physical wire or via the airwaves should have zero legal bearing regarding whether a warrant is needed. The police still need a warrant to tap my phone calls from work. Why should wireless be subject to different rules merely because it isn't tied to a specific physical location?
If you are walking and talking down the sidewalk in town other people are able to hear your side of the conversation.
And the police are welcome to listen in to what I say out loud in public. That doesn't mean they are automatically granted the right to hear both sides of the conversation. For that they need a warrant. The party on the other end of the conversation has rights too.
But the 2nd Amendment is different as it is the only one that should be exercised responsibly, since it is the only one that can actually kill or injure.
Umm, bullshit. Words can kill and injure. Not just figuratively either. Words can cause all sorts of harm.
I am then arguing that the perosn you know for a fact is armed is less of a potential threat than someone who MIGHT be armed.
That is 100% circumstance dependent. A threat you know about can easily be more dangerous than a threat you do not know about. It does not follow in all circumstances that just because you know about a threat that you can avoid or mitigate it. Sometimes a visible threat is more serious than any reasonably likely potential but as yet unseen threat. If I'm trapped in an alley with someone I know is carrying a gun then they are almost certainly the greatest threat to me.
The greatest threat is always the threat you can't identify.
So if someone has a gun pointed directly at me I should be more worried about some threat I haven't yet identified? Curious logic you have there. Risk is circumstance dependent. Sometimes the visible threat is the one you should worry about most. Other times you should worry more about the one you haven't seen yet. A blanket statement that "the greatest threat is the one you can't identify" simply doesn't fit in all circumstances.
The nature of God is such that it cannot be proven. Otherwise, we lose the choice to believe.
Incorrect. The existence of a god could (in theory) be proven. A god could simply choose to reveal itself if it were real. What cannot be proven conclusively is the NON-existence of a god.
That said, science has yet to prove what the universe is, so how could we expect it to prove something outside of it?
If we don't know what the universe is then we cannot presume that any deity is "outside of it", whatever that means.
Could you give an example? When you talk about "actual facts" and "what actually occurred", you sound like you're talking about past events.
Sure. Did a the flood that Noah allegedly built an ark for actually occur? A huge global flood would leave geologic evidence that would be observable even today. How old is the shroud of turin really? Etc. Religious claims often overlap with historical events and as such it is often possible to subject such claims to scientific scrutiny. Religions tend to be rather good at conflating historical events with claims of the supernatural. Since such claims can be hard to test (particularly claims about stuff that happened along time ago) they tend to be useful in getting people to believe some claims that they probably should be rather skeptical about.
Are historical claims a domain of science?
Not every historical claim can be tested by science but a great many can. Stuff like what someone actually said 1000 years ago amounts to hearsay in most cases as usually no falsifiable record remains. The figurative fart in the wind. But if there is a building or a claim of a geologic phenomena or an artifact then those sorts of claims absolutely can often be tested with appropriate scientific rigor. We just found the skeleton of Richard III buried under a parking lot. This has allowed us to scientifically examine a great many things about his life and death that were previously unclear from the historical record. The same process works with claims of historical events made in the bible or other religious texts.
A null hypothesis is generally the commonly held view or answer compared to the alternate hypothesis.
That is not what a null hypothesis is at all. A null hypothesis must be falsifiable. The position that there is no god because there is no evidence is falsifiable by finding evidence. The position that there is a god in spite of the lack of any evidence is not falsifiable and thus cannot be a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis is NOT merely the more commonly held view.
You could simply say that "I don't know, but I'm sure it wasn't a deity," but that's about as scientific as the missionary's position, and a lot less well developed.
Nobody says that. They simply say that there is no evidence to support the assertion that it was a deity and therefore my current hypothesis that there is no god remains intact. It would also be perfectly reasonable to say "I doubt it was a deity".
Point being, for most people, a creation based on a deity or first mover is the null hypothesis.
It is not and cannot be a null hypothesis because it is not falsifiable. There is no way to ever test or show that the null hypothesis is false for a theist. It is only a hypothesis if you can actually test it. Otherwise it is merely a fantasy.
Yes, sizeable market. The market for smartphones only got to 50% of the total handset market in 2013. Low end phones (feature phones) market share is falling but still accounts for somewhere around 30-40% of handset sales - something like 800,000,000 units sold in 2013. That is definitely a sizable market and Nokia was the leader in that market for a long time.
I suppose this is why Nokia *didn't* go practically bankrupt, and have to sell itself to Microsoft. Oh wait, it did.
Nokia's handset business ran into problems because of idiotic management decisions, a lack of focus and poor software development. They tied their handset business to Microsoft and before they had a Windows based product on the market they announced that they were killing off their old platform. Shockingly demand for Meego and Symbian dropped like a rock. Not to mention the problem that Microsoft by that point was losing badly to Google and Apple and even arguably Blackberry. At the time the iPhone launched, Nokia had over 60% market share in smartphones. Even by late 2010 Nokia still had over 30% market share. In 2011 they announced they were moving to Windows and lost 14% market share basically overnight. At the beginning of 2011 they were #1 in smartphone sales and by 2013 they were #10.
Nokia was badly unfocused too. Nokia had numerous and mostly incompatible phone operating systems. Their phones had features like email but often it was just check-the-box features which didn't actually work very well. I had a Nokia smartphone (an E70) for a few years. While technically it could email and browse the web, the features were basically unusable in the real world. Nokia thought their customer was AT&T and Verizon and Vodaphone, etc and acted accordingly. Instead they should have been paying attention to what people like you and me wanted. Apple and Google did and very suddenly nobody wanted Nokia smartphones anymore.
The average monthly wage in that "sizable market" won't allow the purchase of the device in numbers to make it sufficiently profitable, or Nokia would not have found itself in trouble in the first place.
Even today hundreds of millions of feature phones are sold each year. Nokia found themselves in trouble because they didn't focus and made dumb business decisions, not because they couldn't make money off feature phones.
There are prejudicial, holier than thou, Atheists in the scientific communities who like to continually bash and make fun of everyone different then them.
So we shouldn't point out the crazy irrational people in our midst. If I stood in the middle of Times Square and demanded that we all worship hippos you would rightly treat me as a crazy person. But I'm supposed to respect the beliefs of someone who claims that we were all created by some mythical invisible being who is unknowable and for which there is no actual objective evidence of their existence? Sorry no. They get the crazy person treatment too. I'll be courteous and civil (as long as they are) but I'm not going to respect some I think is stone cold nuts.
Who like to take science, and pretend that it disproves God and that is says that every religious person is ethically and intellectually inferior to themselves.
No reasonable scientist is claiming the science disproves god. It's an unfalsifiable claim so there would be no point in even trying. However scientists can, do and should examine specific claims about the nature and "actions" of this alleged god. And there are innumerable claims that can and have been tested and not surprisingly have mostly been shown to be complete nonsense.
That is indeed true. However atheism is essentially a null hypothesis. It makes FAR more sense, in the absence of credible evidence, to believe that there is no "god(s)" than to by default in a theist position. Believing in a deity as a default position because you can't prove one doesn't exist is completely irrational. By comparison the only irrational position an atheist can take is to say they are unwilling to be convinced by credible evidence that a god of some description exists. But since no such credible objective evidence actually has ever been presented it's only irrational in principle since their conclusion (the null hypothesis) remains the same.
Since scientists tend to be rational thinkers they would logically start with the null hypothesis that there is no god unless evidence shows otherwise. Most would be willing to be convinced that god exists (call that agnosticism if you want) but can find no sane basis to do so without some amount of credible evidence. So they maintain the null hypothesis that there is no god as there is no evidence to move them from the null hypothesis.
God cannot, however, be DISproven. It's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. So, you're right, science cannot ever say, definitively, that god doesn't exist.
True but science CAN definitively disprove specific claims about the nature of god. There are innumerable and fairly specific claims made in religious texts detailing the nature and actions of god(s). Many of these are of such a nature that they are falsifiable and thus can be subjected to scientific inquiry. Unsurprisingly most of these claims regarding god turn out to be made up nonsense when looked at objectively or have been so twisted from the actual facts as to be effectively unrecognizable from what actually occurred.
So if someone wants to make a completely vague assertion that there is a god and make no specific claims regarding the nature of said deity then no, science cannot disprove that. (though it doesn't mean we should believe said claim either) But it's hard to make a believable story about god without adding some details to the story and that is usually where the wheels come off. Claims about the physical world we live in can (frequently) be tested and dismissed as the made up poppycock that they so often are.
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First, they'll need a high-speed charging network that will allow for long-distance road trips.
That is not going to make or break this vehicle. The current market for it will be as a commuter car or runabout, mostly in urban areas. Basically the same sort of customer who would consider a Nissan Leaf but it will appeal to more people due to the extended range. 90 miles is too short to be confidence inspiring. There simply won't be a viable high speed charging network available anytime soon. Even Tesla's network is realistically several years away from widespread viability in most places. There is precisely one Supercharger station in my state at the moment and it's on the other side of the state from me. Wouldn't stop me from buying a Model S if I had the means though...
Then they obviously aren't fit to lead.
Which is completely irrelevant. You think dictators get to rule because they were "most fit to lead"?
If candidate X is having his thugs harass people for not voting for him, it would get out pretty quickly.
You are naively assuming that it would matter. Voter intimidation happens around the world and often with impunity. You think people in years past didn't know about the thugs trying to coerce votes. Just because you know about it doesn't mean anything will get done about it.
This world is full of corruption and bullshit because most people are now too afraid to speak up, stand up, be open and loving.
That's really easy to say when you are posting quasi-anonymously on the internet. Let's see how brave you are when an armed thug is threatening you or a loved one directly, face to face. Maybe you really do have the courage of your convictions but I doubt it...
Why do we need all of this secrecy anyway? Because someone might retaliate if you don't vote for them?
That is exactly why we have secret ballots. Intimidation used to be a routine occurrence in the US voting process prior to the secret ballot being introduced.
There are many more problems with corruption and secret voting systems.
I assure you that open ballots have worse problems in most cases when it comes to elections.
If you truly support someone, then why not just say it out loud?
Because some people will beat you or even try to kill you if you do not support their candidate. It's trivial to find examples. No one should have to fear for their safety due to a ballot.
Only loosely, though. Gasoline prices have fallen by nearly half, but diesel prices have only dropped by ten to twenty percent. At least, around here.
Gasoline prices where I live have fallen from roughly $3/gallon to $2/gallon. Diesel has dropped from $4/gallon to $3/gallon. The amount of the drop is basically the same but the percentage for diesel is less because it started higher. Of course for the same horsepower diesel is about 15-20% more efficient per gallon so the real difference in price per HP is less dramatic. Right now diesel would be at price/HP parity at about $2.40/gallon where I live so gasoline is more economical right now. Often it is the reverse.
Once they force all those plains state oil operations into bankruptcy, they'll move prices back up.
Such a tactic wouldn't work. Even if they somehow did force the existing shale oil operations into bankruptcy the assets don't go away. They'll just be bought up by some other oil company for pennies on the dollar and when the price of oil goes back up they'll start pumping again. There really would be no long term point in such a strategy. The oil is still there and eventually it will become economical to pump it out of the ground.
Diesels are extremely cheap to maintain and last an extremely long time. Getting 200-300k miles on a diesel engine with no maintenance is common.
"No maintentance"? Please point me a single internal combustion engine anywhere that can go 200K miles without so much as an oil change. Or are you forgetting oil changes, coolant changes, transmission fluid, fuel filters, air filters, urea injection fluid, etc. Not to mention fuel which is anything but cheap and WAY more expensive than electricity. Yes diesels can be very reliable but let's not pretend they are maintenance free shall we?
You'd replace a electrics batteries several times at a huge cost in that frame...
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Batteries in EVs have been shown in real world use to last well past 100-150K miles with little degradation in performance.
Wow, only $30,000 for a car with less than half the range of my $27,000 Volkswagen TDI? Where do I not sign up?
Wow a fossil fuel powered, noisy and polluting car with expensive fuel. Where do I not sign up?
Seriously, I even like diesel cars (I've owned several) but your argument is nonsense. Just because it doesn't fit what you need/want doesn't mean it isn't a great solution for other people. This would make a terrific commuting car for lots of people, myself included. I could refuel it MUCH cheaper than any diesel car on the market. Furthermore it has fewer moving parts and as such has a good chance of being quite reliable. If I really need to drive more than 200 miles in one go (rarely), I have a vehicle that can do that or I can easily rent one. Maybe you need something different and that's cool but 200 miles of range is pretty good.
Seriously though, it would be nice if Chevy tried to one-up the competition for once, rather than catch-up to them.
Please point out any auto maker that has an equivalent product on the market for a similar price. Nissan Leaf? Half the range. Tesla? 2-3X the price. Prius? Hybrid. Seriously, Chevy IS one-upping the competition here.
Is this to presume that they'll discontinue the Volt? The names are so similar I could see confusion here...
No they are not discontinuing the Volt as they just updated it to have a longer electric-only range (50 miles), 5 seats instead of 4, and improved acceleration and styling.
Of course the next GM electric vehicle will be the Chevy Jolt probably...
The US's ICBMs are from the 1960s and the US still uses tankers and strategic bombers from the 1950s.
B52s have been rebuild and upgraded and refurbished so many times they may as well be the Ship of Theseus. Furthermore the munitions they carry aren't really the same either these days in most cases.
I am always amazed how buildings constructed thousands, or even hundreds, of years ago are still standing although often in a state of disrepair due to neglect.
Then you are a victim of selection bias. Those buildings that are still standing after hundreds of years are the best built ones. The ones that weren't built so well aren't around anymore. So you think that they used to build them better back in the day when in fact they mostly built them worse if anything (they didn't exactly have building codes back then) and the old crappy buildings simply aren't around to compare with anymore. Saying "they don't build 'em like they used to" is true but not in the way it is usually intended. Building something to be more durable than it needs to be is wasteful - just in a different way.
Many people are shocked that computers/systems for 20 years still run,
Only people who don't know much. It's not shocking that such a thing would happen or that hardware can be made that robust. What IS shocking is that people put systems in place without any thought whatsoever to what people might want to do 20 years later. Seriously do you REALLY think it will be efficient or practical without problems for you to use the PC you are reading this on today in 20 years? Why would it be any different for a business or government?
If it ain't broke, why fix it?
Because it probably IS broken in a multitude of ways. Just because it can get a specific job done doesn't mean it does so efficiently or without problems. I've driven a lot of beater automobiles over the years and while they usually got me from point A to point B they were unquestionably broken if a number of ways. I have PCs that are 10-15 years old here in my company doing specific jobs and they definitely have problems. Yes we still get some productive work out of them but that doesn't mean I shouldn't think about replacing them when I can.
They sent man to the moon on less CPU horsepower than my Nexus 6.
Because that is all they had at the time. Nobody would even dream of doing that way today because we have better options now. Why limit yourself to yesterday's technology if you have a choice?
Voyager has been running for more than 35 years in the harshness of space.
Which is relevant how? You're comparing a spacecraft that human eyes will never see again with a earthbound computer system that we can modify or replace any time we want.
With apologies to Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) this is a perfect example of people being "...so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. "
I'm all for geeky, harmless, just-because-I-can projects for entertainment but... wow.
Or perhaps a giant corporation with lots of money and a huge R&D department might be a bit more aware of what the future roadmap for hydrogen production looks like than you?
Perhaps but if so they are being rather coy about how hydrogen somehow makes more sense than electric+battery. I'm an engineer who works in automotive and it's not like I wouldn't understand a good argument why hydrogen would make sense. I don't have anything against hydrogen as a fuel source. In theory it has a lot of potential advantages. But the reality is that those potential advantages face some very serious real world obstacles. I have yet to see anyone point out a roadmap for hydrogen powered vehicles that I think has even a remote chance of actually occurring. The biggest obstacle (though hardly the only one) is the lack of fueling infrastructure. Solve that without introducing a pollution problem in the process and I'll listen.
Do you really think cities can hold 15 times the number of gas stations we have currently?
Why would they need to? I think you are presuming electric fueling infrastructure will strongly resemble gasoline fueling infrastructure. It will not. Electric charging stations can be put in every parking lot, home, business etc. Heck my little downtown has a half dozen electric car charging stations right now in our shopping district. One of my customers has battery charging stations in front of their office. We have gas stations because they are handling a toxic, flammable and bulky chemical which is impractical and dangerous for most people to get at home in large quantities. We would need LESS fueling stations than we currently have if anything. You really only would need a fueling station for longer trips and it's not exactly tough to find a large patch of surplus farmland next to a highway.
There is some reduction from people who can charge at home, but not really much because of the number of people in apartments or just traveling long distances.
People in apartments have parking places for their cars too. No reason we couldn't wire many of those for charging purposes. Wouldn't happen overnight but we aren't going to switch to electric cars overnight either.
What none of you seem to be thinking of is what happens when ALL CARS AND TRUCKS are electric, which I consider inevitable.
I don't consider it inevitable at all unless there are some pretty significant breakthroughs in battery tech to allow faster charging and lower cost. Electric cars are a promising niche right now. I think you'll see a LOT of hybrids before you see any sort of wholesale change to pure electrics. In some locations (remote and cold especially) I don't see internal combustion going away anytime soon.
If a tipping point were reached and most people were driving electric cars, you'd be waiting about a day or so for a spot to open at a Supercharger station.
Only if you make the rather dim assumption that Supercharger stations cannot be enlarged or more of them added. Furthermore electric cars can be and would be charged at home so the need for refueling stations as we currently use them would be significantly reduced.
In the end what probably makes the most sense is a REAL hybrid, that is to say a combo of hydrogen/electric. The electric could charge for a 50 mile range, the hydrogen could kick in for extended trips.
Umm, where are you going to get the hydrogen? Gasoline/electric hybrids make sense because we have existing infrastructure built to support them. We have essentially zero hydrogen fuel infrastructure and no reasonable prospect of that changing anytime soon. Not that it couldn't be built but the advantages of hydrogen do not appear to justify the expense even if the technology works well. Maybe for some fleet vehicles but we certainly aren't going to move to hydrogen cars in the next 10 years. I see no reasonable scenario where hydrogen cards make any real dent in the market in the next 20 years baring some miracle technology breakthrough.
Because when you are in a public place you have no right to the expectation of privacy
Cellphone signals do not stop conveniently at the walls of your dwelling. How do you propose they sort out which signals are only coming from a public location? (Hint: they cannot)
Whether a communication goes over a physical wire or via the airwaves should have zero legal bearing regarding whether a warrant is needed. The police still need a warrant to tap my phone calls from work. Why should wireless be subject to different rules merely because it isn't tied to a specific physical location?
If you are walking and talking down the sidewalk in town other people are able to hear your side of the conversation.
And the police are welcome to listen in to what I say out loud in public. That doesn't mean they are automatically granted the right to hear both sides of the conversation. For that they need a warrant. The party on the other end of the conversation has rights too.
But the 2nd Amendment is different as it is the only one that should be exercised responsibly, since it is the only one that can actually kill or injure.
Umm, bullshit. Words can kill and injure. Not just figuratively either. Words can cause all sorts of harm.
I am then arguing that the perosn you know for a fact is armed is less of a potential threat than someone who MIGHT be armed.
That is 100% circumstance dependent. A threat you know about can easily be more dangerous than a threat you do not know about. It does not follow in all circumstances that just because you know about a threat that you can avoid or mitigate it. Sometimes a visible threat is more serious than any reasonably likely potential but as yet unseen threat. If I'm trapped in an alley with someone I know is carrying a gun then they are almost certainly the greatest threat to me.
The greatest threat is always the threat you can't identify.
So if someone has a gun pointed directly at me I should be more worried about some threat I haven't yet identified? Curious logic you have there. Risk is circumstance dependent. Sometimes the visible threat is the one you should worry about most. Other times you should worry more about the one you haven't seen yet. A blanket statement that "the greatest threat is the one you can't identify" simply doesn't fit in all circumstances.
The nature of God is such that it cannot be proven. Otherwise, we lose the choice to believe.
Incorrect. The existence of a god could (in theory) be proven. A god could simply choose to reveal itself if it were real. What cannot be proven conclusively is the NON-existence of a god.
That said, science has yet to prove what the universe is, so how could we expect it to prove something outside of it?
If we don't know what the universe is then we cannot presume that any deity is "outside of it", whatever that means.
Could you give an example? When you talk about "actual facts" and "what actually occurred", you sound like you're talking about past events.
Sure. Did a the flood that Noah allegedly built an ark for actually occur? A huge global flood would leave geologic evidence that would be observable even today. How old is the shroud of turin really? Etc. Religious claims often overlap with historical events and as such it is often possible to subject such claims to scientific scrutiny. Religions tend to be rather good at conflating historical events with claims of the supernatural. Since such claims can be hard to test (particularly claims about stuff that happened along time ago) they tend to be useful in getting people to believe some claims that they probably should be rather skeptical about.
Are historical claims a domain of science?
Not every historical claim can be tested by science but a great many can. Stuff like what someone actually said 1000 years ago amounts to hearsay in most cases as usually no falsifiable record remains. The figurative fart in the wind. But if there is a building or a claim of a geologic phenomena or an artifact then those sorts of claims absolutely can often be tested with appropriate scientific rigor. We just found the skeleton of Richard III buried under a parking lot. This has allowed us to scientifically examine a great many things about his life and death that were previously unclear from the historical record. The same process works with claims of historical events made in the bible or other religious texts.
A null hypothesis is generally the commonly held view or answer compared to the alternate hypothesis.
That is not what a null hypothesis is at all. A null hypothesis must be falsifiable. The position that there is no god because there is no evidence is falsifiable by finding evidence. The position that there is a god in spite of the lack of any evidence is not falsifiable and thus cannot be a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis is NOT merely the more commonly held view.
You could simply say that "I don't know, but I'm sure it wasn't a deity," but that's about as scientific as the missionary's position, and a lot less well developed.
Nobody says that. They simply say that there is no evidence to support the assertion that it was a deity and therefore my current hypothesis that there is no god remains intact. It would also be perfectly reasonable to say "I doubt it was a deity".
Point being, for most people, a creation based on a deity or first mover is the null hypothesis.
It is not and cannot be a null hypothesis because it is not falsifiable. There is no way to ever test or show that the null hypothesis is false for a theist. It is only a hypothesis if you can actually test it. Otherwise it is merely a fantasy.
Sizable market?
Yes, sizeable market. The market for smartphones only got to 50% of the total handset market in 2013. Low end phones (feature phones) market share is falling but still accounts for somewhere around 30-40% of handset sales - something like 800,000,000 units sold in 2013. That is definitely a sizable market and Nokia was the leader in that market for a long time.
I suppose this is why Nokia *didn't* go practically bankrupt, and have to sell itself to Microsoft. Oh wait, it did.
Nokia's handset business ran into problems because of idiotic management decisions, a lack of focus and poor software development. They tied their handset business to Microsoft and before they had a Windows based product on the market they announced that they were killing off their old platform. Shockingly demand for Meego and Symbian dropped like a rock. Not to mention the problem that Microsoft by that point was losing badly to Google and Apple and even arguably Blackberry. At the time the iPhone launched, Nokia had over 60% market share in smartphones. Even by late 2010 Nokia still had over 30% market share. In 2011 they announced they were moving to Windows and lost 14% market share basically overnight. At the beginning of 2011 they were #1 in smartphone sales and by 2013 they were #10.
Nokia was badly unfocused too. Nokia had numerous and mostly incompatible phone operating systems. Their phones had features like email but often it was just check-the-box features which didn't actually work very well. I had a Nokia smartphone (an E70) for a few years. While technically it could email and browse the web, the features were basically unusable in the real world. Nokia thought their customer was AT&T and Verizon and Vodaphone, etc and acted accordingly. Instead they should have been paying attention to what people like you and me wanted. Apple and Google did and very suddenly nobody wanted Nokia smartphones anymore.
The average monthly wage in that "sizable market" won't allow the purchase of the device in numbers to make it sufficiently profitable, or Nokia would not have found itself in trouble in the first place.
Even today hundreds of millions of feature phones are sold each year. Nokia found themselves in trouble because they didn't focus and made dumb business decisions, not because they couldn't make money off feature phones.
There are prejudicial, holier than thou, Atheists in the scientific communities who like to continually bash and make fun of everyone different then them.
So we shouldn't point out the crazy irrational people in our midst. If I stood in the middle of Times Square and demanded that we all worship hippos you would rightly treat me as a crazy person. But I'm supposed to respect the beliefs of someone who claims that we were all created by some mythical invisible being who is unknowable and for which there is no actual objective evidence of their existence? Sorry no. They get the crazy person treatment too. I'll be courteous and civil (as long as they are) but I'm not going to respect some I think is stone cold nuts.
Who like to take science, and pretend that it disproves God and that is says that every religious person is ethically and intellectually inferior to themselves.
No reasonable scientist is claiming the science disproves god. It's an unfalsifiable claim so there would be no point in even trying. However scientists can, do and should examine specific claims about the nature and "actions" of this alleged god. And there are innumerable claims that can and have been tested and not surprisingly have mostly been shown to be complete nonsense.
Athiesm is philosophy, not science.
That is indeed true. However atheism is essentially a null hypothesis. It makes FAR more sense, in the absence of credible evidence, to believe that there is no "god(s)" than to by default in a theist position. Believing in a deity as a default position because you can't prove one doesn't exist is completely irrational. By comparison the only irrational position an atheist can take is to say they are unwilling to be convinced by credible evidence that a god of some description exists. But since no such credible objective evidence actually has ever been presented it's only irrational in principle since their conclusion (the null hypothesis) remains the same.
Since scientists tend to be rational thinkers they would logically start with the null hypothesis that there is no god unless evidence shows otherwise. Most would be willing to be convinced that god exists (call that agnosticism if you want) but can find no sane basis to do so without some amount of credible evidence. So they maintain the null hypothesis that there is no god as there is no evidence to move them from the null hypothesis.
God cannot, however, be DISproven. It's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. So, you're right, science cannot ever say, definitively, that god doesn't exist.
True but science CAN definitively disprove specific claims about the nature of god. There are innumerable and fairly specific claims made in religious texts detailing the nature and actions of god(s). Many of these are of such a nature that they are falsifiable and thus can be subjected to scientific inquiry. Unsurprisingly most of these claims regarding god turn out to be made up nonsense when looked at objectively or have been so twisted from the actual facts as to be effectively unrecognizable from what actually occurred.
So if someone wants to make a completely vague assertion that there is a god and make no specific claims regarding the nature of said deity then no, science cannot disprove that. (though it doesn't mean we should believe said claim either) But it's hard to make a believable story about god without adding some details to the story and that is usually where the wheels come off. Claims about the physical world we live in can (frequently) be tested and dismissed as the made up poppycock that they so often are.