This is complete bullshit, sorry. There is no convergence in the pipeline.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? I completely disagree and think there is STRONG evidence for device convergence. Apple, Microsoft and Google ALL are working on putting laptop features into tablets and tablet features into laptops. I already see numerous companies (sales droids, office workers) using tablets as laptops with an attached keyboard. Microsoft has made it VERY clear that this is where they think things are heading. Apple and Google are a little more sanguine about it but they're working on the same problem in various ways. Laptops are going to merge with tablets in a way that is very similar to how smartphones merged with point-and-shoot cameras. Neither will go away entirely but you'll end up with one device that serves the purpose of both for most people.
Why should they get even more similar that they currently are?
Lots of reasons. It makes it easier for users since they only have to learn one system and only have to buy software for one system. It lowers development costs since you are not maintaining two separate code bases. It makes development of apps easier since there are fewer differences between platforms. It requires less training and makes support easier. And frankly most people would rather carry one device rather than two if they have a reasonable option to do so. Standalone tablets I think have about as much future as standalone PDAs did 15 years ago. They make sense now but I doubt it will last.
Apple doesn't chase Microsoft, it's the other way around.
I don't think either of them is chasing the other. I think they both are working towards the same goal because they both think it is logical. And it is.
Apple logically would be the first company to get the most out of a converged operating system, yet they haven't done it. Maybe they understand something you don't?
They haven't done it because the problem is frickin' hard. Just ask Microsoft. It's not at all clear how best to merge tablets and laptops much less more portable devices like smartphones. But a tablet is really just a blown up smartphone and a laptop is really just a table that uses a mouse/keyboard instead of a touchscreen. The differences between them are market segmentation more than they are immutable laws of nature.
Yet Apple continues to add arbitrary restrictions to the environments that ship on its tablets.
If such arbitrary restrictions become a competitive disadvantage then they will go away.
An iPad docked to a large monitor and keyboard can't host its own development environment because that would interfere with Apple's revenue stream for Xcode
What you will see is NOT development on an iPad. What you will see is a laptop that incorporates the features of an iPad. Think how smartphones have largely absorbed the market for point-and-shoot cameras. No point in carrying two devices if one can do the job adequately. Same thing is almost certain to happen with laptops and tablets to a significant degree. The devices are too similar and the economics make sense for both the manufacturer and the customer.
The "all maximized all the time" window management policy enforced by iOS and Android means that an iPad or Nexus 10 can't even run a floating calculator application when the Mac could do that with 128K of RAM back in 1984
It's not that it isn't possible. The question is whether it is a good idea. Using floating windows has advantages and drawbacks. Just because it makes sense for a mouse/keyboard setup doesn't mean it is the most logical way to multitask with touch. Arguing that you could do a window 30 years ago is largely irrelevant unless that actually happens to be the best way to utilize a touchscreen interface (it doesn't seem to be). That's part of what makes converging the two challenging. I don't think anyone has cracked that nut yet. Microsoft is trying really hard and Apple seems to be experimenting. Even Google is trying to figure out how to make Android work as both a laptop and a tablet.
Apple is not Microsoft. They don't think you have to have "one OS to rule them all."
Apple IS moving in the direction of convergence but I think they are taking a more gentle path than Microsoft. Apple *generally* doesn't try to force things to work until they are actually ready whereas Microsoft has a long history of trying to work out the kinks after they ship the product. Apple has been experimenting in places and working towards integration but they aren't rushing things like MS is. It's not a trivial problem but I think it will get solved as mobile hardware and batteries get sufficiently robust. The whole argument about "PCs are for creations and tablets are for consumption" is a fallacy based mostly on the engineering compromises stemming from limitations of today's hardware. Many of those limitations will go away over time.
Tablets and laptops are going to converge over time and the software will be developed to present the most suitable interface depending on how the device is being used. The real world hardware limitations of mobile devices (especially power) generally make it difficult to have a single OS today but the advantages of doing so are HUGE. It means less redundant development effort and easier support and simplified supply chains and easier management. No company wants to manage two product lines when they can manage just one. Apple hasn't done it yet simply because their desktop operating system is too heavy for current phones and tablets but there is no reason at all why iOS and OS X could not or should not merge at least their underpinnings somewhere down the line. I strongly believe that eventually iOS and OS X will just be different front end interfaces for the same underlying back end software.
Apple knows that what's good for a touchscreen device is not as good for a traditional laptop or desktop.
The hardware isn't really fundamentally different - you just need different front end software depending on whether you are using a touchpad or a keyboard/mouse. The software underneath the interface does not need to be any different. File storage, ethernet, USB, display graphics, wifi, etc aren't really any different whether you use a keyboard or a touch screen. This is also true for application software. The calculations a spreadsheet does have no relation to how that data is entered. The underlying number crunching bits don't care it the interface is optimized for touch screens or keyboard/mouse.
You need to differentiate between those who cannot pay more and those who will not pay more due to the greed of the owners. Many companies such as mine are in price sensitive industries and paying significantly higher wages results in the company's products becoming uncompetitive. My company manufactures wire harness products and our competition is often in places like China or Mexico with much lower wages or are much larger companies who are able to automate to save money. We simply cannot pay more than we do and remain in business.
Wal-Mart increasing their wages to $12/hr. would increase their average item price by 1.1%
Let's presume for a moment that your numbers are accurate. What you are forgetting is the the loss of sales from that 1.1% increase in item price. Walmart has built their entire business on being the low price leader but their lead is not very big. Walmart's net profit margin is about 3.5% so there isn't a huge amount of room to increase costs. They only keep their price leadership by a ruthless focus on keeping costs low. An increase in prices of 1.1% would result in a significant loss of sales. How big? A little hard to say without some pretty serious analysis but it could *easily* be more than 1.1%.
I don't actually have a disagreement that Walmart should pay their employees better if they are able to do so but it is not nearly as simple as you make it sound. There are more stakeholders in the company than just the employees and there are serious consequences to across the board pay increases.
Gartner says new technologies are decreasing jobs.
If this were actually true we would have seen a steady increase in the number of unemployed people over time during the past 20 years. Instead we had near record low unemployment until around 2008 when we had a banking (not technology) related financial crisis. Since then unemployment has been slowly but steadily falling back towards what passes for steady state norms. While it is true that people are not employed at the same companies they used to be, technology takes away some jobs and adds others. It also makes people more effective at the jobs they do.
But the "digital industrial revolution" is not following the same path. "What we're seeing is a decline in the overall number of people required to do a job,"
That's the entire point. It means you can get more done with the same number of people. It's called increasing productivity. Rather than having a room full of accountants entering journal entries by hand on a paper ledger we have one accountant keeping the books in some software and everyone else does something more productive. Instead of using switchboard operators we use computers to route calls. There is ZERO evidence that digital technology is eliminating jobs without replacing them with others. The number of jobs hasn't fallen due to technology but the skillsets required to fill them has changed.
Plummer points to a company like Kodak, which once employed 130,000, versus Instagram's 13.
I'm not sure they could come up with a more ridiculous example. Instagram is an add on feature to already existing social networks for sharing pictures. Kodak actually made critical parts of picture taking equipment. If you want to compare Kodak to something modern, compare them with CCD sensor manufacturers and camera makers which I assure you employ far more than 13 people.
LOTs of passenger cars here use CNG. Typically taxis.
Nowhere in north america do CNG powered vehicles account for more than a tiny fraction of 1% of the vehicles on the road. Over 90% of the few that are in use are fleet vehicles of various sorts (trucks, busses, cars for the gas company, a few taxis, etc).
Where a domestic supply is laid on, all you need is a suitable compressor.
Great. What do I do when I'm traveling away from home? At least with an electric vehicle I can plug into any outlet even if it takes a long time. CNG compressors aren't exactly a commonplace item. I don't personally know anyone who owns one.
Even if you include fleet sales the number of CNG cars is miniscule by comparison to the overall market. Less than 0.1% of vehicle sales even including fleet sales. Honda has sold something like 13,000 total of their Civic GX model since 1998. (Compared with 12-16 million vehicles sold per year total) CNG vehicles make a lot of sense for certain niche uses but frankly I just don't see them really taking off. They have most of the drawbacks of gasoline/diesel powered vehicles (fossil fuel emissions) along with the drawbacks of electric vehicles (limited refueling options, range anxiety, high up front cost) and they by and large aren't especially fun to drive. Performance figures on CNG vehicles available today are yawn inducing. I think electric vehicles and gas/electric hybrids are a much more likely bet for most people if the infrastructure trends and technology continue on their current trajectory.
Is it really a felony to lie to the police in the US?
It's usually a misdemeanor though not always. Being allowed to lie to police (sometimes greatly) increases the chance of a miscarriage of justice and constitutes obstruction of justice in many cases. You ALWAYS have the legal right to not talk to the police without council present. This is to avoid self incrimination under the 5th amendment aside from some simple exceptions like identifying yourself if asked. There are a lot of nuances but basically it is reasonable to require truthful answers in the course of an appropriate criminal investigation. If you lie while under oath that is considered perjury which is often a felony.
That stinks, and even worse if they truly prosecute otherwise innocent people for it.
Actually it works rather well in practice most of the time. It just means that you need to take any discussions you have with police seriously as you should.
I don't know anyone who owns a Veyron either, do you doubt they exist?
Nobody doubts passenger cars running CNG exist but they are about as rare as a Veyron - albeit for a very different reason. The simple reason there are hardly any CNG power passenger cars is that there is very limited refuelling infrastructure in place. Sure I can buy one in theory but since I can't refuel it most places it would be rather stupid to do so. Even electric vehicles have a more readily available infrastructure than CNG powered cars though they suffer from a similar problem. Most CNG powered cars are basically proof of concept vehicles rather than anything else
So the original post was correct if you aren't overly pedantic about things in that for all practical purposes there are no passenger cars that run on CNG. Strictly speaking there are some out there but hardly anyone actually has one because the circumstances required to make one practical apply to virtually no one.
Both of which require a much higher threshold than what is considered worthy of action in Russia or China.
Way to set the bar low. So because they are engaged in completely reprehensible conduct that means it is somehow ok for the US to engage is conduct that is just mostly reprehensible? Sorry but I expect MUCH more from our leaders than to be just a little bit better than a repressive dictatorship.
In the US, you actually have to be a threat to human life - instead of a journalist, a politician, or an ordinary citizen that said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
No you do not have to be an actual threat to anyone. You just have to be perceived as a threat by one of the various homeland security agencies regardless of the validity of that perception. There are countless examples of people being jailed for jokes, harmless tweets, and the like. Journalists have been jailed for reporting on government malfeasance. Hell, in the 1940s we wrongly imprisoned thousands of completely innocent US citizens of japanese descent because of the mere fact that they were of Japanese descent. Furthermore tell that to the hundreds of innocent people who ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Over 600 people have been released from there without any charge and never should have been there in the first place. Most who remain are there admittedly because there is insufficient admissible evidence to convict them of any crime. That is NOT how a country that follows rule of law should behave.
A lot of shit fucking matters, but that doesn't make it reasonable to discuss on Slashdot. People come to Slashdot for selectivity.
People come to slashdot for the (relatively high) quality discussion and the takes on whatever topic is at hand. By keeping it mostly technology focused it makes the discussions on those topics a little deeper and generally better quality but there is nothing wrong with discussing important non-tech topics here and there. In fact mixing it up a little (emphasis on little) makes it a bit more interesting that it would be otherwise. If you don't like them then filter them out. There are 15 topics on the front page right now and maybe 2-3 of them don't have a strong tech angle and that ratio seems about right to me.
You must be new here.;-) Seriously, slashdot is very much a political water cooler and has been for the better than a decade I've been reading the site. It's just that the topics here tend to be a little more focused on technology issues than other places most of the time. But not always and I can find plenty of examples in the last 10 years of topics that are political and not technology focused. Hell I count three on the front page as I type this. I don't mind a few world event type articles as long as they remain a relatively small percentage of the overall. A big part of the reason I still read this site is that there usually (even today) are some unusually insightful takes on whatever topic is being discussed and if that happens to be on something geopolitical here and there I'm ok with that.
1) surveillance being subject to judicial and legislative oversight
You mean the secret surveillance conducted by a secret agency under secret orders with secret legal justification, "overseen" by a secret rubber stamp court with secret findings? Exactly how do you propose oversight works when there is no accountability to the electorate whatsoever?
2) not being anywhere near as far-reaching as SORM or the Chinese systems,
Got proof to back that up? I didn't think so.
3) anybody being hauled away in the dead of night for offending the sensibilities of anybody in power.
I suggest that some people need to grow up, and realise that the West is the absolute paragon of virtue compared to what Russia, China and Muslim countries are doing.
Not it the last 10 years, particularly in the US. The US has engaged in kidnapping, torture, secret and illegal surveillance, political assassinations, gag orders without any warrant or due process, and started two unjustified wars which are still going on over a decade later, and you want to claim that we are a "paragon of virtue"? Maybe we are better but it certainly isn't by much these days. Hell we had a president who was awarded the Nobel peace prize and used the opportunity to argue why war is sometimes necessary. Talk about hypocritical.
Jesus Christ, what the fuck does this have to do with tech news? Newsfornerds??? You gotta be kidding!
Slashdot has NEVER been just about tech news. Last time I checked military strikes affect nerds too and it certainly falls under the heading of "Stuff That Matters".
Forgetting the Stuff That Matters are we? Last time I checked geopolitics and military strikes affect nerds as much as they affect anyone else. Plus are you seriously going to claim that nerds have no interest in special operations warfare?
I wonder how hard it is to clean that stuff up afterwards?
Trashes the car. Not a huge deal in a stripped out racing car presuming the fire doesn't do any major damage. In a carpeted passenger vehicle you'll basically ruin the interior and quite possibly parts of the engine depending on the system. While it is possible to clean it it would cost a bleeding fortune to do so.
Seems to me that Elon Musk may have some egg on his face since he so boldly offered to help out Boeing redesign their battery system on the 787 not to long ago
There is a huge difference between catching fire due to (apparently) catastrophic damage from flying debris and catching fire due under expected use conditions. So the answer is no, he does not have any egg on his face.
It seems that Tesla's Li-ion batteries are just as likely to catch on fire!
Any Li-ion battery can become flammable under the right conditions.
c) perhaps evaluate whether a small extinguishing system could be incorporated into the design. (BONUS POINTS)
Have to be careful with things like that. It would be VERY easy for competitors to spin that as "Tesla's are so dangerous they need a fire extinguishing system". Stupid argument under the light of day but stupid people and lawmakers (but I repeat myself) are influenced by stupid arguments.
Not necessarily. Sometimes it is cheaper to just insure a problem than to improve security. Sometimes the security costs more than the loss that would be incurred by not worrying about it. Sometimes you are correct and adjusting or adding security measures is economically sensible. Not all security problems are created equal and not all of them can be economically mitigated by adding more/better security.
Research has proven that you can actually more than get back the cost of spending money on good security and turn a profit by having less bugs and flaws in your systems.
Sometimes true. Sometime not true. It depends on the risks you face and the cost of mitigating them. It is not as simple as more security = better ROI in all cases.
Security is hard. Security is expensive. Security does not improve profits
You forgot that the cost of extra security can easily be higher than the benefit provided. Should I add security for a risk for which I am adequately insured even if the cost of the security would be higher than the cost of the insurance? Security is almost always a tradeoff against operational efficiency and cost. Are you SURE you know where the optimal balance between the two is and have done the math to prove it? (If you say yes I'm going to call you a liar) I don't think I've ever seen an IT manager do a proper cost/benefit (including but not limited to financial) of adding additional security.
Too often security gets foolishly overlooked and underfunded. Other times security can be overkill for the value of what is being guarded. The difficult bit is knowing where the difference between the two lies. If you want to get more funding for security then make a business case for it. It's not as hard as you think.
Most employers now routinely expect that employees will be paying attention to and responding within the hour to work email at almost all times of all days.
Citation needed. (the article you cited does not support this claim)
Americans work about 10% overtime, completely unpaid, doing this.
Overtime is never (legally) unpaid. If you are salaried there effectively is no such thing as a 40 hour work week and thus there is no such thing as overtime. If you are paid hourly it is required by law that you be paid for any time worked and not doing so can result in some serious consequences.
Its really simple, REAL security costs good money, takes real time and effort and doesn't show immediate results on the bottom line so most companies? Just don't give a fuck.
While you are correct about the costs and effort, the cold hard calculus is whether the costs outweigh the benefits. Just because better security can be done it doesn't always follow that it should be done. For companies that deal with sensitive customer information or sensitive trade secrets there is no question the costs *should* be made to be quite high for bad security if they aren't already. (unfortunately too often they are not) Security is highly similar to insurance. You want enough to ensure that you or your customers aren't bankrupted if there is a problem but there is no point in paying for more than you actually need. There are two questions you have to answer. First, what level of risk are you willing to live with? Second, what constitutes "adequate" security for your needs? The first question is probably easier to answer than the second.
I'll use my company as an example. Almost nothing we do requires substantially better security than you would use to secure your personal bank account and computer files. We have adequate insurance to guard against the risks we are most likely to face (theft, fraud, property damage, liability, etc) and the customer data we deal in generally is not particularly sensitive. When it is sensitive we have measures in place to deal with that to a reasonable degree. We could spend a lot more money on security but quite frankly it really would provide little/no measurable benefits to us or to our customers. Could a diligent individual penetrate our security measures? Sure. Could they benefit from doing so? Not much. Would our customers be hurt? Very unlikely. Would the severity of security breach cost us or our customers more than the cost of the extra security? Not that we can tell. So I ask you should we put a lot of money and effort into extra security despite knowing that there is unlikely to be any tangible benefit in doing so?
Slashdot Mirror
This is complete bullshit, sorry. There is no convergence in the pipeline.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? I completely disagree and think there is STRONG evidence for device convergence. Apple, Microsoft and Google ALL are working on putting laptop features into tablets and tablet features into laptops. I already see numerous companies (sales droids, office workers) using tablets as laptops with an attached keyboard. Microsoft has made it VERY clear that this is where they think things are heading. Apple and Google are a little more sanguine about it but they're working on the same problem in various ways. Laptops are going to merge with tablets in a way that is very similar to how smartphones merged with point-and-shoot cameras. Neither will go away entirely but you'll end up with one device that serves the purpose of both for most people.
Why should they get even more similar that they currently are?
Lots of reasons. It makes it easier for users since they only have to learn one system and only have to buy software for one system. It lowers development costs since you are not maintaining two separate code bases. It makes development of apps easier since there are fewer differences between platforms. It requires less training and makes support easier. And frankly most people would rather carry one device rather than two if they have a reasonable option to do so. Standalone tablets I think have about as much future as standalone PDAs did 15 years ago. They make sense now but I doubt it will last.
Apple doesn't chase Microsoft, it's the other way around.
I don't think either of them is chasing the other. I think they both are working towards the same goal because they both think it is logical. And it is.
Apple logically would be the first company to get the most out of a converged operating system, yet they haven't done it. Maybe they understand something you don't?
They haven't done it because the problem is frickin' hard. Just ask Microsoft. It's not at all clear how best to merge tablets and laptops much less more portable devices like smartphones. But a tablet is really just a blown up smartphone and a laptop is really just a table that uses a mouse/keyboard instead of a touchscreen. The differences between them are market segmentation more than they are immutable laws of nature.
Yet Apple continues to add arbitrary restrictions to the environments that ship on its tablets.
If such arbitrary restrictions become a competitive disadvantage then they will go away.
An iPad docked to a large monitor and keyboard can't host its own development environment because that would interfere with Apple's revenue stream for Xcode
What you will see is NOT development on an iPad. What you will see is a laptop that incorporates the features of an iPad. Think how smartphones have largely absorbed the market for point-and-shoot cameras. No point in carrying two devices if one can do the job adequately. Same thing is almost certain to happen with laptops and tablets to a significant degree. The devices are too similar and the economics make sense for both the manufacturer and the customer.
The "all maximized all the time" window management policy enforced by iOS and Android means that an iPad or Nexus 10 can't even run a floating calculator application when the Mac could do that with 128K of RAM back in 1984
It's not that it isn't possible. The question is whether it is a good idea. Using floating windows has advantages and drawbacks. Just because it makes sense for a mouse/keyboard setup doesn't mean it is the most logical way to multitask with touch. Arguing that you could do a window 30 years ago is largely irrelevant unless that actually happens to be the best way to utilize a touchscreen interface (it doesn't seem to be). That's part of what makes converging the two challenging. I don't think anyone has cracked that nut yet. Microsoft is trying really hard and Apple seems to be experimenting. Even Google is trying to figure out how to make Android work as both a laptop and a tablet.
Apple is not Microsoft. They don't think you have to have "one OS to rule them all."
Apple IS moving in the direction of convergence but I think they are taking a more gentle path than Microsoft. Apple *generally* doesn't try to force things to work until they are actually ready whereas Microsoft has a long history of trying to work out the kinks after they ship the product. Apple has been experimenting in places and working towards integration but they aren't rushing things like MS is. It's not a trivial problem but I think it will get solved as mobile hardware and batteries get sufficiently robust. The whole argument about "PCs are for creations and tablets are for consumption" is a fallacy based mostly on the engineering compromises stemming from limitations of today's hardware. Many of those limitations will go away over time.
Tablets and laptops are going to converge over time and the software will be developed to present the most suitable interface depending on how the device is being used. The real world hardware limitations of mobile devices (especially power) generally make it difficult to have a single OS today but the advantages of doing so are HUGE. It means less redundant development effort and easier support and simplified supply chains and easier management. No company wants to manage two product lines when they can manage just one. Apple hasn't done it yet simply because their desktop operating system is too heavy for current phones and tablets but there is no reason at all why iOS and OS X could not or should not merge at least their underpinnings somewhere down the line. I strongly believe that eventually iOS and OS X will just be different front end interfaces for the same underlying back end software.
Apple knows that what's good for a touchscreen device is not as good for a traditional laptop or desktop.
The hardware isn't really fundamentally different - you just need different front end software depending on whether you are using a touchpad or a keyboard/mouse. The software underneath the interface does not need to be any different. File storage, ethernet, USB, display graphics, wifi, etc aren't really any different whether you use a keyboard or a touch screen. This is also true for application software. The calculations a spreadsheet does have no relation to how that data is entered. The underlying number crunching bits don't care it the interface is optimized for touch screens or keyboard/mouse.
Why can't companies pay better wages?
You need to differentiate between those who cannot pay more and those who will not pay more due to the greed of the owners. Many companies such as mine are in price sensitive industries and paying significantly higher wages results in the company's products becoming uncompetitive. My company manufactures wire harness products and our competition is often in places like China or Mexico with much lower wages or are much larger companies who are able to automate to save money. We simply cannot pay more than we do and remain in business.
Wal-Mart increasing their wages to $12/hr. would increase their average item price by 1.1%
Let's presume for a moment that your numbers are accurate. What you are forgetting is the the loss of sales from that 1.1% increase in item price. Walmart has built their entire business on being the low price leader but their lead is not very big. Walmart's net profit margin is about 3.5% so there isn't a huge amount of room to increase costs. They only keep their price leadership by a ruthless focus on keeping costs low. An increase in prices of 1.1% would result in a significant loss of sales. How big? A little hard to say without some pretty serious analysis but it could *easily* be more than 1.1%.
I don't actually have a disagreement that Walmart should pay their employees better if they are able to do so but it is not nearly as simple as you make it sound. There are more stakeholders in the company than just the employees and there are serious consequences to across the board pay increases.
Gartner says new technologies are decreasing jobs.
If this were actually true we would have seen a steady increase in the number of unemployed people over time during the past 20 years. Instead we had near record low unemployment until around 2008 when we had a banking (not technology) related financial crisis. Since then unemployment has been slowly but steadily falling back towards what passes for steady state norms. While it is true that people are not employed at the same companies they used to be, technology takes away some jobs and adds others. It also makes people more effective at the jobs they do.
But the "digital industrial revolution" is not following the same path. "What we're seeing is a decline in the overall number of people required to do a job,"
That's the entire point. It means you can get more done with the same number of people. It's called increasing productivity. Rather than having a room full of accountants entering journal entries by hand on a paper ledger we have one accountant keeping the books in some software and everyone else does something more productive. Instead of using switchboard operators we use computers to route calls. There is ZERO evidence that digital technology is eliminating jobs without replacing them with others. The number of jobs hasn't fallen due to technology but the skillsets required to fill them has changed.
Plummer points to a company like Kodak, which once employed 130,000, versus Instagram's 13.
I'm not sure they could come up with a more ridiculous example. Instagram is an add on feature to already existing social networks for sharing pictures. Kodak actually made critical parts of picture taking equipment. If you want to compare Kodak to something modern, compare them with CCD sensor manufacturers and camera makers which I assure you employ far more than 13 people.
LOTs of passenger cars here use CNG. Typically taxis.
Nowhere in north america do CNG powered vehicles account for more than a tiny fraction of 1% of the vehicles on the road. Over 90% of the few that are in use are fleet vehicles of various sorts (trucks, busses, cars for the gas company, a few taxis, etc).
Where a domestic supply is laid on, all you need is a suitable compressor.
Great. What do I do when I'm traveling away from home? At least with an electric vehicle I can plug into any outlet even if it takes a long time. CNG compressors aren't exactly a commonplace item. I don't personally know anyone who owns one.
Only if you ignore fleet sales.
Even if you include fleet sales the number of CNG cars is miniscule by comparison to the overall market. Less than 0.1% of vehicle sales even including fleet sales. Honda has sold something like 13,000 total of their Civic GX model since 1998. (Compared with 12-16 million vehicles sold per year total) CNG vehicles make a lot of sense for certain niche uses but frankly I just don't see them really taking off. They have most of the drawbacks of gasoline/diesel powered vehicles (fossil fuel emissions) along with the drawbacks of electric vehicles (limited refueling options, range anxiety, high up front cost) and they by and large aren't especially fun to drive. Performance figures on CNG vehicles available today are yawn inducing. I think electric vehicles and gas/electric hybrids are a much more likely bet for most people if the infrastructure trends and technology continue on their current trajectory.
Is it really a felony to lie to the police in the US?
It's usually a misdemeanor though not always. Being allowed to lie to police (sometimes greatly) increases the chance of a miscarriage of justice and constitutes obstruction of justice in many cases. You ALWAYS have the legal right to not talk to the police without council present. This is to avoid self incrimination under the 5th amendment aside from some simple exceptions like identifying yourself if asked. There are a lot of nuances but basically it is reasonable to require truthful answers in the course of an appropriate criminal investigation. If you lie while under oath that is considered perjury which is often a felony.
That stinks, and even worse if they truly prosecute otherwise innocent people for it.
Actually it works rather well in practice most of the time. It just means that you need to take any discussions you have with police seriously as you should.
I don't know anyone who owns a Veyron either, do you doubt they exist?
Nobody doubts passenger cars running CNG exist but they are about as rare as a Veyron - albeit for a very different reason. The simple reason there are hardly any CNG power passenger cars is that there is very limited refuelling infrastructure in place. Sure I can buy one in theory but since I can't refuel it most places it would be rather stupid to do so. Even electric vehicles have a more readily available infrastructure than CNG powered cars though they suffer from a similar problem. Most CNG powered cars are basically proof of concept vehicles rather than anything else
So the original post was correct if you aren't overly pedantic about things in that for all practical purposes there are no passenger cars that run on CNG. Strictly speaking there are some out there but hardly anyone actually has one because the circumstances required to make one practical apply to virtually no one.
You have been able to buy CNG civics for a long time.
And how many people do you personally know that own one?
[/crickets]
That's what I thought.
Both of which require a much higher threshold than what is considered worthy of action in Russia or China.
Way to set the bar low. So because they are engaged in completely reprehensible conduct that means it is somehow ok for the US to engage is conduct that is just mostly reprehensible? Sorry but I expect MUCH more from our leaders than to be just a little bit better than a repressive dictatorship.
In the US, you actually have to be a threat to human life - instead of a journalist, a politician, or an ordinary citizen that said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
No you do not have to be an actual threat to anyone. You just have to be perceived as a threat by one of the various homeland security agencies regardless of the validity of that perception. There are countless examples of people being jailed for jokes, harmless tweets, and the like. Journalists have been jailed for reporting on government malfeasance. Hell, in the 1940s we wrongly imprisoned thousands of completely innocent US citizens of japanese descent because of the mere fact that they were of Japanese descent. Furthermore tell that to the hundreds of innocent people who ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Over 600 people have been released from there without any charge and never should have been there in the first place. Most who remain are there admittedly because there is insufficient admissible evidence to convict them of any crime. That is NOT how a country that follows rule of law should behave.
A lot of shit fucking matters, but that doesn't make it reasonable to discuss on Slashdot. People come to Slashdot for selectivity.
People come to slashdot for the (relatively high) quality discussion and the takes on whatever topic is at hand. By keeping it mostly technology focused it makes the discussions on those topics a little deeper and generally better quality but there is nothing wrong with discussing important non-tech topics here and there. In fact mixing it up a little (emphasis on little) makes it a bit more interesting that it would be otherwise. If you don't like them then filter them out. There are 15 topics on the front page right now and maybe 2-3 of them don't have a strong tech angle and that ratio seems about right to me.
Slashdot was never the political water cooler.
You must be new here. ;-) Seriously, slashdot is very much a political water cooler and has been for the better than a decade I've been reading the site. It's just that the topics here tend to be a little more focused on technology issues than other places most of the time. But not always and I can find plenty of examples in the last 10 years of topics that are political and not technology focused. Hell I count three on the front page as I type this. I don't mind a few world event type articles as long as they remain a relatively small percentage of the overall. A big part of the reason I still read this site is that there usually (even today) are some unusually insightful takes on whatever topic is being discussed and if that happens to be on something geopolitical here and there I'm ok with that.
1) surveillance being subject to judicial and legislative oversight
You mean the secret surveillance conducted by a secret agency under secret orders with secret legal justification, "overseen" by a secret rubber stamp court with secret findings? Exactly how do you propose oversight works when there is no accountability to the electorate whatsoever?
2) not being anywhere near as far-reaching as SORM or the Chinese systems,
Got proof to back that up? I didn't think so.
3) anybody being hauled away in the dead of night for offending the sensibilities of anybody in power.
So you are claiming the US government has never engaged in extraordinary rendition and does not operate a prison camp without any due process?
I suggest that some people need to grow up, and realise that the West is the absolute paragon of virtue compared to what Russia, China and Muslim countries are doing.
Not it the last 10 years, particularly in the US. The US has engaged in kidnapping, torture, secret and illegal surveillance, political assassinations, gag orders without any warrant or due process, and started two unjustified wars which are still going on over a decade later, and you want to claim that we are a "paragon of virtue"? Maybe we are better but it certainly isn't by much these days. Hell we had a president who was awarded the Nobel peace prize and used the opportunity to argue why war is sometimes necessary. Talk about hypocritical.
Jesus Christ, what the fuck does this have to do with tech news? Newsfornerds??? You gotta be kidding!
Slashdot has NEVER been just about tech news. Last time I checked military strikes affect nerds too and it certainly falls under the heading of "Stuff That Matters".
News for Nerds? Really?
Forgetting the Stuff That Matters are we? Last time I checked geopolitics and military strikes affect nerds as much as they affect anyone else. Plus are you seriously going to claim that nerds have no interest in special operations warfare?
I wonder how hard it is to clean that stuff up afterwards?
Trashes the car. Not a huge deal in a stripped out racing car presuming the fire doesn't do any major damage. In a carpeted passenger vehicle you'll basically ruin the interior and quite possibly parts of the engine depending on the system. While it is possible to clean it it would cost a bleeding fortune to do so.
Seems to me that Elon Musk may have some egg on his face since he so boldly offered to help out Boeing redesign their battery system on the 787 not to long ago
There is a huge difference between catching fire due to (apparently) catastrophic damage from flying debris and catching fire due under expected use conditions. So the answer is no, he does not have any egg on his face.
It seems that Tesla's Li-ion batteries are just as likely to catch on fire!
Any Li-ion battery can become flammable under the right conditions.
c) perhaps evaluate whether a small extinguishing system could be incorporated into the design. (BONUS POINTS)
Have to be careful with things like that. It would be VERY easy for competitors to spin that as "Tesla's are so dangerous they need a fire extinguishing system". Stupid argument under the light of day but stupid people and lawmakers (but I repeat myself) are influenced by stupid arguments.
The US depends on it's software industry; we shipped all our labor jobs overseas to trade them for office work (programming).
Really? Then how do you explain the fact that the US has a multi-Trillion manufacturing sector which employs around 12 million people?
Bear in mind that the size of the global market for software is around $300 Billion and the number of US software developers is around 900,000.
Security done right improves profit.
Not necessarily. Sometimes it is cheaper to just insure a problem than to improve security. Sometimes the security costs more than the loss that would be incurred by not worrying about it. Sometimes you are correct and adjusting or adding security measures is economically sensible. Not all security problems are created equal and not all of them can be economically mitigated by adding more/better security.
Research has proven that you can actually more than get back the cost of spending money on good security and turn a profit by having less bugs and flaws in your systems.
Sometimes true. Sometime not true. It depends on the risks you face and the cost of mitigating them. It is not as simple as more security = better ROI in all cases.
Security is hard. Security is expensive. Security does not improve profits
You forgot that the cost of extra security can easily be higher than the benefit provided. Should I add security for a risk for which I am adequately insured even if the cost of the security would be higher than the cost of the insurance? Security is almost always a tradeoff against operational efficiency and cost. Are you SURE you know where the optimal balance between the two is and have done the math to prove it? (If you say yes I'm going to call you a liar) I don't think I've ever seen an IT manager do a proper cost/benefit (including but not limited to financial) of adding additional security.
Too often security gets foolishly overlooked and underfunded. Other times security can be overkill for the value of what is being guarded. The difficult bit is knowing where the difference between the two lies. If you want to get more funding for security then make a business case for it. It's not as hard as you think.
Most employers now routinely expect that employees will be paying attention to and responding within the hour to work email at almost all times of all days.
Citation needed. (the article you cited does not support this claim)
Americans work about 10% overtime, completely unpaid, doing this.
Overtime is never (legally) unpaid. If you are salaried there effectively is no such thing as a 40 hour work week and thus there is no such thing as overtime. If you are paid hourly it is required by law that you be paid for any time worked and not doing so can result in some serious consequences.
Its really simple, REAL security costs good money, takes real time and effort and doesn't show immediate results on the bottom line so most companies? Just don't give a fuck.
While you are correct about the costs and effort, the cold hard calculus is whether the costs outweigh the benefits. Just because better security can be done it doesn't always follow that it should be done. For companies that deal with sensitive customer information or sensitive trade secrets there is no question the costs *should* be made to be quite high for bad security if they aren't already. (unfortunately too often they are not) Security is highly similar to insurance. You want enough to ensure that you or your customers aren't bankrupted if there is a problem but there is no point in paying for more than you actually need. There are two questions you have to answer. First, what level of risk are you willing to live with? Second, what constitutes "adequate" security for your needs? The first question is probably easier to answer than the second.
I'll use my company as an example. Almost nothing we do requires substantially better security than you would use to secure your personal bank account and computer files. We have adequate insurance to guard against the risks we are most likely to face (theft, fraud, property damage, liability, etc) and the customer data we deal in generally is not particularly sensitive. When it is sensitive we have measures in place to deal with that to a reasonable degree. We could spend a lot more money on security but quite frankly it really would provide little/no measurable benefits to us or to our customers. Could a diligent individual penetrate our security measures? Sure. Could they benefit from doing so? Not much. Would our customers be hurt? Very unlikely. Would the severity of security breach cost us or our customers more than the cost of the extra security? Not that we can tell. So I ask you should we put a lot of money and effort into extra security despite knowing that there is unlikely to be any tangible benefit in doing so?
5% is not a minority share holder.
Anyone with less than 50% of the voting rights is a minority shareholder by definition. Minority shareholder != Minor shareholder.