Actually, we came very close to replacing the C-130 back in the 1970's.
We had a competition between the Boeing YC-14 and McDonnell-Douglas YC-15 to replace the C-130, but budgetary considerations and the US Army's need for larger transports kiboshed that idea. That was the reason why there was a later competition to build a larger transport plane, and the result is the C-17A Globemaster III transport. The USAF has taken deliveries of around 80 planes (out of the original 120 plane order) and is planning for another follow-on order for possibly another 100 planes by 2010.
Anyway, the C-130 has been upgraded to the current C-130J version with a very advanced cockpit and much more fuel-efficient engines.
The Tu-95 is definitely a Russian original, mostly because the fuselage design and the use of four gigantic turboprop engines owe nothing to any previous Russian design.
It's a pretty fuel-efficient plane, especially considering the state of Russian engine design. That's why it had the range (with one refuelling) to bomb targets in the continental USA), hence the reason why the Tu-95 stayed in service continuously even though many Soviet military officials thought it would be a better investment to procure more missiles.
What's interesting is that the best-known versions of the Tu-95 are the electronic intelligence versions that frequently flew close to the USA or its allied countries or often shadowed US carrier task forces. These Tu-95 ELINT/SIGNIT planes are still operational, especially flying near Alaskan air space.
What's interesting is that the Russians have a bomber that is still in service with their Air Force thanks to continual equipment upgrades and new weapon systems: the Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bomber.
First flown a few years after the B-52's first flight, the Tu-95 has proven to be a very reliable platform with several different variants that can drop gravity bombs, various types of large cruise missiles, carry electronic warfare equipment and specially-made to carry the AS-15 Kent cruise missile. And the Russian Air Force today still has a good number of them in service.
Actually, Western navies have been developing low-observable ships since the late 1980's.
For example, the current destroyers and the new DD-21 class destroyers for the US Navy sport a lot of features that were pioneered by Lockheed's Sea Shadow project, which was designed to drastically reduce the radar signature of surface ships. And the British are introducing new destroyers based on this research, too.
Note that these new ships' superstructures look like a bunch of pyramids. This drastically reduces the radar cross-section of the ship, and the addition of IR shielding on the engine exhaust stack reduces the observability of these new ships even further.
Anyway, if the case is relatively open inside, all you need is a power supply with really decent venting (like the Enermax 300W unit with its double fans I'm using right now), a decent CPU cooler and a expansion slot fan to vent the hot air out of the lower portion of the system case. I've never had any heat-related failures.
Yes, but very noisy systems tend to get very distracting after a few hours.
Ever listen to a 10,000 rpm or faster SCSI or Fibre Channel interface drive? Those things sound like jet engines ready to take off. It's small wonder why most higher-end ATA-100/133 hard drives out there are still running 7,200 rpm.
Anyway, today's fan designs are way quieter than the past, thanks to quieter bearing design and careful design of the fan blades to reduce noise.
I think the reason why the supporters of the competing Liberty Alliance project for Internet authentication are flat-out scared of Mono is that they know that if Mono succeeds, it would essentially validate Microsoft's.NET initiative for Internet authentication, since.NET and Mono operate on more or less the same concepts.
Can you imagine Windows users and most Linux users using.NET/Mono for Internet authentication? That's where we're headed, more or less.
Actually, I think in many ways Microsoft is giving tacit approval to Ximian's Mono project.
Why? Because Mono would essentially validate everything that Microsoft's.NET initiative stands for, and that means the Number 1 desktop platform (Windows) and the fastest-growing OS platform (Linux) will use more or less the same standard for Internet-wide authentication..NET plus Mono, IMHO, scares the daylights out of the supporters of the Liberty Alliance project because of this very prospect.
I can tell very few people here have actually researched the music offerings.
Anyway who's bothered to read the XM Radio website notes that their music selection is nothing short of amazing. XM Radio has music formats that (alas) has been market-reserached out of existance even in large metropolitan markets for terrestrial broadcasters.
Remember the old days when radio stations played oldies, Big Band music, classical music, lots of ethnic music, Easy Listening music, and so on? Today, music on radio is dominated by Adult Contemporary, Heavy Metal, Hip-Hop and Country and Western, with pretty much room for nothing else.
I'm glad XM Radio has arrived. Maybe today's young music listeners will finally discover that massive treasure trove of rock and roll music from the 1960's to middle 1980's that no station wants to play nowadays.
If I remember reading correctly, some months ago someone actually compared the sound quality of MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Windows Media Audio formats. And WMA won going away, with most reviewers saying it was the closest to the original in sound quality.
It'll be interesting to see if Ogg Vorbis comes up with a better codec to compete against the WMA 8 format.
Actually, nowadays a fast way to improve your system performance is simple: get as much RAM as you can afford and install a faster hard drive.
ATX-motherboard systems that use the Intel 440LX or newer chipsets immediately benefit by going to 256 MB of RAM and using the latest UDMA-100/133 hard drives. It's possible to get performance increases of 100% or more because 1) you dramatically reduce the need to use swap space on your hard drive, and 2) data is read and written to the hard drive much faster.
You can also increase performance with a newer graphics card, but that affects games for the most past.
While everyone cheers the increased used of Linux by governments, I think you're all missed the fact that BSD variants of UNIX (OpenBSD/FreeBSD) have been heavily used by many governmental agencies long before Linux became the latest hip OS to have.
After all, BSD variants can handle very high volume transaction loads and has generally pretty good security, something that government agencies really want.
The reason why Audi isn't bringing over the RS4 is the fact heavy demand in Germany for that car makes it impossible for Audi to ship it overseas. Anyway, I do expect Audi have a new version of the S4 based on the new version of the A4 with around 300 bhp coming by next fall to the US market--that will one very seriously fast car.:-)
As for the Lotus Elise, the problem with that car was it was never designed to comply with NHTSA safety standards--no bumper protection, for starters. The grey-market Elise cars being brought over by Sun International uses a modified version of the Acura Integra Type R engine--which actually makes this car faster than the Lotus original. I've heard rumors that Sun International wants to put in the new 2.0-liter engine from the Acura RSX Type-S into the Elise pretty soon.
By the way, according to auto magazines Subaru is in the process of smog-certifying to EPA/CARB standards the 285 bhp engine from the Japanese-market Impreza WRX STi; we may see it as a 2003 model next fall. Can you say 0-60 in 5 seconds? (Yikes!)
As for the Nissan Skyline, not to worry. Nissan recently showed a design study for the next-generation GT-R model that has left-hand drive, which indicates that Nissan wants to sell the car in the USA. It's likely the US version will have a variant of the engine used on the current Infiniti Q45, which means you're talking almost at least 360-375 bhp for the US-market Skyline GT-R.
By the way, the Brabaus M-B is certified to sell in the USA because they did spend the US$500,000 to get the CARB/EPA certification for engine.
In a way, I'm glad that Windows 95 is no longer being supported.
The reason is simple: its poor stability makes Windows 98/98 SE look way more stable in comparison. A major problem with Windows 95 is the fact it doesn't support the bus-mastering South Bridge chips at all or very poorly, which can cause all kinds of very unpleasant side effects (like sudden loss of access to the secondary IDE port).
Because Windows 98 does properly support bus mastering (at least up to Intel 82371EB chipset that is paired with the Intel 440BX chipset), not to mention native Plug and Play support for the USB port, this means you do get less hassles in terms of motherboard hardware support.
In my opinion, of the Windows 9X variants, Windows 98 and 98 SE are the best; Windows ME would probably qualify but the fairly steep hardware requirements conspire against it (you really want at least 128 MB of RAM and a 4.3 GB hard drive minimum for Windows ME to work correctly).
I think the issue of getting aftermarket-modified cars to meet CARB regulations is not as big an issue as it once was.
The reason is simple: auto emission standards in Europe and Japan are getting as strict as the ones found in California. The Japanese Stage III and European Euro 2005 standard are essentially the same as California's Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle standard that has been around for a few years.
Because aftermarket tuners in Germany have to make their engines comply with the Euro 2005 standard, that means a lot of those increased-performance BMW and M-B vehicles are now legal to sell in California. That's why cars you'll never see in the past in the USA, such as the Brabaus modified Mercedes-Benz models with the hopped-up 6.0-liter V-12 engine, are legal to sell in California today.
Further, modern cars (with the appropriate computer hacks) still respond quite nicely to the old-school tricks: headers, camshafts, intakes, strokers, blowers, etc. It's like having the best of both worlds - the reliability and economy of computer control, and the performance and "hackability" of old-school tricks.
Indeed, that is exactly how companies in Germany like Alpina, Brabaus, Lorinser, and a few others have produced some amazing engineering feats in turning already-fast BMW and Mercedes-Benz automobiles into something you can scare Ferrari drivers easily.:-) I've seen Brabaus-modified M-B E320's with 6.0-liter V-12's that can top 320 km/h (198 mph) easily.
When I read your comments, I think you're forgetting that there are some companies that have done very well hacking with engine computers with considerable success.
In Germany, there are companies called tuners that can wring amazing feats out of stock BMW and Mercedes-Benz engines with masterfully-crafted modifications to the intake system, exhaust system, valve train and engine computers. A good example is Brabaus: they modified the stock Mercedes-Benz 6.0-liter V-12 engine to the point that a Brabaus-modified S600 luxury sedan is capable of top-end performance you normally associate with a Ferrari sports car, yet it does it so seamlessly that it drives like a regular car when driven at lower speeds.
The only thing nowadays is that you do need much more skill in modifying a modern car to achieve greater performance, but then, today's after-market car tuners have gotten very good at their work, too.
Actually, if you're running Outlook Express 6.0 from Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2 and 6.0, you can set up in Options the ability for the program to NOT allow the execution of any file attachment. In that case, the virus is useless other than hogging local disk space as the virus file is downloaded.
Because the Nancy compression codec is a commercially-developed product, we have to ask this question: will they license the codec technology to Real Networks and Microsoft?
Or to be more specific, will we see the upcoming RealOne program and (current and future versions) Windows Media Player capable of playing Nancy-compressed files through a new version of the streaming media player or through an add-on? (You can forget about Apple supporting Nancy given it will cut into QuickTime support.)
If RealOne or Windows Media Player gets Nancy support, this new format could really explode in popularity.:-)
I'm surprised you haven't been modded way down as a Troll for what you just said.:-)
I personally think that for server environments, Linux has become a major force because with the release of the 2.4.x kernel, it now enjoys both stability and the ability to handle high-volume transactions, something very necessary for servers that handle an entire company.
Anyway, contrary to what some people think here, Windows XP Professional users can be easily integrated into a Linux server environment, thanks to TCP/IP, IMAP and LDAP support (it's not necessary to sign up for a Microsoft Passport account--Passport is to access certain functions on Microsoft's own sites at least for now).
I think many IT managers are going to find much to their chargrin that the so-called free Linux isn't as cheap as they thought.
Especially if you're converting from a Windows-based environment--the retraining costs alone will send the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) soaring into the stratosphere when you have to retrain the vast majority of the people in the company organization to use Linux.
Now, if the company had started with Linux in the first place, that would be a VERY different story indeed. I believe that's how both Google and TiVo got started, more or less.
Re:It's a damn scooter
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2
However, the problem with scooters is that being gasoline powered, they still spew out air pollution--and scooter engines aren't as tightly-regulated as automobiles in terms of exhaust emissions.
The biggest selling point about Segway is its ZERO effective turning radius. That makes it at once useful for built-up urban areas.
Anyway, with more and more cities being designed to be bicycle-friendly, Segway--especially with the improvements I mentioned over time--could become a very viable short-range personal transport vehicle, especially if you can fold it down to the same space as a folding bicycle so you can carry it through subways and commuter trains.
Re:If you aren't lazy, A BICYCLE IS FASTER.
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2
However, a bicycle does have these issues:
1. You have to learn how to ride one without falling over.
2. The turning radius of a bicycle is many times that of Segway, which has an effective turning radius of zero.
3. You have to learn how to change gears depending on the grade of the terrain, unless you have one of the small number of bikes with automatic shifting.
In short, for personal transport of 4 miles or more in one direction, the bicycle is more viable than Segway. But for short-distance urban travel, Segway's effective zero turning radius is very useful indeed.
Re:Its been done before - and failed before.
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
However, compared to the Sinclair C5, the Segway does have quite a few advantages:
1. The footprint of Segway is probably less than 20% of a C5 on the road.
2. Unlike the C5, the Segway has an effective turning radius of ZERO. That makes the scooter far easier to manuever in very tight spaces.
3. The Segway--as technology improves--could be designed so the whole thing folds down to probably less space taken than most folding bicycles. That means it can be schlepped through public transit systems without the major hassles you get of trying to get a regular bicycle through public transit systems (you can't carry them on buses unless the bus has bike racks, you have prohibition of carrying bikes on subway and commuter trains at certain hours and stations, etc.).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, we came very close to replacing the C-130 back in the 1970's.
We had a competition between the Boeing YC-14 and McDonnell-Douglas YC-15 to replace the C-130, but budgetary considerations and the US Army's need for larger transports kiboshed that idea. That was the reason why there was a later competition to build a larger transport plane, and the result is the C-17A Globemaster III transport. The USAF has taken deliveries of around 80 planes (out of the original 120 plane order) and is planning for another follow-on order for possibly another 100 planes by 2010.
Anyway, the C-130 has been upgraded to the current C-130J version with a very advanced cockpit and much more fuel-efficient engines.
The Tu-95 is definitely a Russian original, mostly because the fuselage design and the use of four gigantic turboprop engines owe nothing to any previous Russian design.
It's a pretty fuel-efficient plane, especially considering the state of Russian engine design. That's why it had the range (with one refuelling) to bomb targets in the continental USA), hence the reason why the Tu-95 stayed in service continuously even though many Soviet military officials thought it would be a better investment to procure more missiles.
What's interesting is that the best-known versions of the Tu-95 are the electronic intelligence versions that frequently flew close to the USA or its allied countries or often shadowed US carrier task forces. These Tu-95 ELINT/SIGNIT planes are still operational, especially flying near Alaskan air space.
What's interesting is that the Russians have a bomber that is still in service with their Air Force thanks to continual equipment upgrades and new weapon systems: the Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bomber.
First flown a few years after the B-52's first flight, the Tu-95 has proven to be a very reliable platform with several different variants that can drop gravity bombs, various types of large cruise missiles, carry electronic warfare equipment and specially-made to carry the AS-15 Kent cruise missile. And the Russian Air Force today still has a good number of them in service.
Rick,
Actually, Western navies have been developing low-observable ships since the late 1980's.
For example, the current destroyers and the new DD-21 class destroyers for the US Navy sport a lot of features that were pioneered by Lockheed's Sea Shadow project, which was designed to drastically reduce the radar signature of surface ships. And the British are introducing new destroyers based on this research, too.
Note that these new ships' superstructures look like a bunch of pyramids. This drastically reduces the radar cross-section of the ship, and the addition of IR shielding on the engine exhaust stack reduces the observability of these new ships even further.
I really agree with your assessments.
Anyway, if the case is relatively open inside, all you need is a power supply with really decent venting (like the Enermax 300W unit with its double fans I'm using right now), a decent CPU cooler and a expansion slot fan to vent the hot air out of the lower portion of the system case. I've never had any heat-related failures.
Yes, but very noisy systems tend to get very distracting after a few hours.
Ever listen to a 10,000 rpm or faster SCSI or Fibre Channel interface drive? Those things sound like jet engines ready to take off. It's small wonder why most higher-end ATA-100/133 hard drives out there are still running 7,200 rpm.
Anyway, today's fan designs are way quieter than the past, thanks to quieter bearing design and careful design of the fan blades to reduce noise.
I think the reason why the supporters of the competing Liberty Alliance project for Internet authentication are flat-out scared of Mono is that they know that if Mono succeeds, it would essentially validate Microsoft's .NET initiative for Internet authentication, since .NET and Mono operate on more or less the same concepts.
.NET/Mono for Internet authentication? That's where we're headed, more or less.
Can you imagine Windows users and most Linux users using
Actually, I think in many ways Microsoft is giving tacit approval to Ximian's Mono project.
.NET initiative stands for, and that means the Number 1 desktop platform (Windows) and the fastest-growing OS platform (Linux) will use more or less the same standard for Internet-wide authentication. .NET plus Mono, IMHO, scares the daylights out of the supporters of the Liberty Alliance project because of this very prospect.
Why? Because Mono would essentially validate everything that Microsoft's
I can tell very few people here have actually researched the music offerings.
Anyway who's bothered to read the XM Radio website notes that their music selection is nothing short of amazing. XM Radio has music formats that (alas) has been market-reserached out of existance even in large metropolitan markets for terrestrial broadcasters.
Remember the old days when radio stations played oldies, Big Band music, classical music, lots of ethnic music, Easy Listening music, and so on? Today, music on radio is dominated by Adult Contemporary, Heavy Metal, Hip-Hop and Country and Western, with pretty much room for nothing else.
I'm glad XM Radio has arrived. Maybe today's young music listeners will finally discover that massive treasure trove of rock and roll music from the 1960's to middle 1980's that no station wants to play nowadays.
If I remember reading correctly, some months ago someone actually compared the sound quality of MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Windows Media Audio formats. And WMA won going away, with most reviewers saying it was the closest to the original in sound quality.
It'll be interesting to see if Ogg Vorbis comes up with a better codec to compete against the WMA 8 format.
Actually, nowadays a fast way to improve your system performance is simple: get as much RAM as you can afford and install a faster hard drive.
ATX-motherboard systems that use the Intel 440LX or newer chipsets immediately benefit by going to 256 MB of RAM and using the latest UDMA-100/133 hard drives. It's possible to get performance increases of 100% or more because 1) you dramatically reduce the need to use swap space on your hard drive, and 2) data is read and written to the hard drive much faster.
You can also increase performance with a newer graphics card, but that affects games for the most past.
While everyone cheers the increased used of Linux by governments, I think you're all missed the fact that BSD variants of UNIX (OpenBSD/FreeBSD) have been heavily used by many governmental agencies long before Linux became the latest hip OS to have.
After all, BSD variants can handle very high volume transaction loads and has generally pretty good security, something that government agencies really want.
Actually, there's a lot of ribbing between people of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Still is to day this, I believe. :-)
The reason why Audi isn't bringing over the RS4 is the fact heavy demand in Germany for that car makes it impossible for Audi to ship it overseas. Anyway, I do expect Audi have a new version of the S4 based on the new version of the A4 with around 300 bhp coming by next fall to the US market--that will one very seriously fast car. :-)
As for the Lotus Elise, the problem with that car was it was never designed to comply with NHTSA safety standards--no bumper protection, for starters. The grey-market Elise cars being brought over by Sun International uses a modified version of the Acura Integra Type R engine--which actually makes this car faster than the Lotus original. I've heard rumors that Sun International wants to put in the new 2.0-liter engine from the Acura RSX Type-S into the Elise pretty soon.
By the way, according to auto magazines Subaru is in the process of smog-certifying to EPA/CARB standards the 285 bhp engine from the Japanese-market Impreza WRX STi; we may see it as a 2003 model next fall. Can you say 0-60 in 5 seconds? (Yikes!)
As for the Nissan Skyline, not to worry. Nissan recently showed a design study for the next-generation GT-R model that has left-hand drive, which indicates that Nissan wants to sell the car in the USA. It's likely the US version will have a variant of the engine used on the current Infiniti Q45, which means you're talking almost at least 360-375 bhp for the US-market Skyline GT-R.
By the way, the Brabaus M-B is certified to sell in the USA because they did spend the US$500,000 to get the CARB/EPA certification for engine.
In a way, I'm glad that Windows 95 is no longer being supported.
The reason is simple: its poor stability makes Windows 98/98 SE look way more stable in comparison. A major problem with Windows 95 is the fact it doesn't support the bus-mastering South Bridge chips at all or very poorly, which can cause all kinds of very unpleasant side effects (like sudden loss of access to the secondary IDE port).
Because Windows 98 does properly support bus mastering (at least up to Intel 82371EB chipset that is paired with the Intel 440BX chipset), not to mention native Plug and Play support for the USB port, this means you do get less hassles in terms of motherboard hardware support.
In my opinion, of the Windows 9X variants, Windows 98 and 98 SE are the best; Windows ME would probably qualify but the fairly steep hardware requirements conspire against it (you really want at least 128 MB of RAM and a 4.3 GB hard drive minimum for Windows ME to work correctly).
I think the issue of getting aftermarket-modified cars to meet CARB regulations is not as big an issue as it once was.
The reason is simple: auto emission standards in Europe and Japan are getting as strict as the ones found in California. The Japanese Stage III and European Euro 2005 standard are essentially the same as California's Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle standard that has been around for a few years.
Because aftermarket tuners in Germany have to make their engines comply with the Euro 2005 standard, that means a lot of those increased-performance BMW and M-B vehicles are now legal to sell in California. That's why cars you'll never see in the past in the USA, such as the Brabaus modified Mercedes-Benz models with the hopped-up 6.0-liter V-12 engine, are legal to sell in California today.
Further, modern cars (with the appropriate computer hacks) still respond quite nicely to the old-school tricks: headers, camshafts, intakes, strokers, blowers, etc. It's like having the best of both worlds - the reliability and economy of computer control, and the performance and "hackability" of old-school tricks.
:-) I've seen Brabaus-modified M-B E320's with 6.0-liter V-12's that can top 320 km/h (198 mph) easily.
Indeed, that is exactly how companies in Germany like Alpina, Brabaus, Lorinser, and a few others have produced some amazing engineering feats in turning already-fast BMW and Mercedes-Benz automobiles into something you can scare Ferrari drivers easily.
When I read your comments, I think you're forgetting that there are some companies that have done very well hacking with engine computers with considerable success.
In Germany, there are companies called tuners that can wring amazing feats out of stock BMW and Mercedes-Benz engines with masterfully-crafted modifications to the intake system, exhaust system, valve train and engine computers. A good example is Brabaus: they modified the stock Mercedes-Benz 6.0-liter V-12 engine to the point that a Brabaus-modified S600 luxury sedan is capable of top-end performance you normally associate with a Ferrari sports car, yet it does it so seamlessly that it drives like a regular car when driven at lower speeds.
The only thing nowadays is that you do need much more skill in modifying a modern car to achieve greater performance, but then, today's after-market car tuners have gotten very good at their work, too.
Actually, if you're running Outlook Express 6.0 from Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2 and 6.0, you can set up in Options the ability for the program to NOT allow the execution of any file attachment. In that case, the virus is useless other than hogging local disk space as the virus file is downloaded.
Because the Nancy compression codec is a commercially-developed product, we have to ask this question: will they license the codec technology to Real Networks and Microsoft?
:-)
Or to be more specific, will we see the upcoming RealOne program and (current and future versions) Windows Media Player capable of playing Nancy-compressed files through a new version of the streaming media player or through an add-on? (You can forget about Apple supporting Nancy given it will cut into QuickTime support.)
If RealOne or Windows Media Player gets Nancy support, this new format could really explode in popularity.
PyroMash,
:-)
I'm surprised you haven't been modded way down as a Troll for what you just said.
I personally think that for server environments, Linux has become a major force because with the release of the 2.4.x kernel, it now enjoys both stability and the ability to handle high-volume transactions, something very necessary for servers that handle an entire company.
Anyway, contrary to what some people think here, Windows XP Professional users can be easily integrated into a Linux server environment, thanks to TCP/IP, IMAP and LDAP support (it's not necessary to sign up for a Microsoft Passport account--Passport is to access certain functions on Microsoft's own sites at least for now).
I think many IT managers are going to find much to their chargrin that the so-called free Linux isn't as cheap as they thought.
Especially if you're converting from a Windows-based environment--the retraining costs alone will send the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) soaring into the stratosphere when you have to retrain the vast majority of the people in the company organization to use Linux.
Now, if the company had started with Linux in the first place, that would be a VERY different story indeed. I believe that's how both Google and TiVo got started, more or less.
However, the problem with scooters is that being gasoline powered, they still spew out air pollution--and scooter engines aren't as tightly-regulated as automobiles in terms of exhaust emissions.
The biggest selling point about Segway is its ZERO effective turning radius. That makes it at once useful for built-up urban areas.
Anyway, with more and more cities being designed to be bicycle-friendly, Segway--especially with the improvements I mentioned over time--could become a very viable short-range personal transport vehicle, especially if you can fold it down to the same space as a folding bicycle so you can carry it through subways and commuter trains.
However, a bicycle does have these issues:
1. You have to learn how to ride one without falling over.
2. The turning radius of a bicycle is many times that of Segway, which has an effective turning radius of zero.
3. You have to learn how to change gears depending on the grade of the terrain, unless you have one of the small number of bikes with automatic shifting.
In short, for personal transport of 4 miles or more in one direction, the bicycle is more viable than Segway. But for short-distance urban travel, Segway's effective zero turning radius is very useful indeed.
However, compared to the Sinclair C5, the Segway does have quite a few advantages:
1. The footprint of Segway is probably less than 20% of a C5 on the road.
2. Unlike the C5, the Segway has an effective turning radius of ZERO. That makes the scooter far easier to manuever in very tight spaces.
3. The Segway--as technology improves--could be designed so the whole thing folds down to probably less space taken than most folding bicycles. That means it can be schlepped through public transit systems without the major hassles you get of trying to get a regular bicycle through public transit systems (you can't carry them on buses unless the bus has bike racks, you have prohibition of carrying bikes on subway and commuter trains at certain hours and stations, etc.).