I think the ultimate solution is not to bike everywhere, but to develop smaller and more economic vehicles.
Smaller and more economical vehicles exist, but there is plenty of room for more of them.
More importantly, we need to convince the population to use them. The majority of people in this world don't need big vehicles. If you need something large for getting up into the woods, go rent it. Buy something small and efficient for your daily trips around town. I see no good reason for wasting money on a car that has more than what you need, or use.
I see no good reason buying crap that you'll never use. I try to limit my purchases to stuff that I know I'm going to use, not stuff that's just going to sit around collecting dust. I wish more people would try to do the same.
After watching Minory Report I had a bad feeling about the future. Sure, some of the gadgets were fun to watch, and the cars looked great, but the advertising really got to me. I mean, how would you opt-out of advertising like that? No matter what you do, you're identifiable, regardless of whether your eyelids are open or closed. That scares me.
As a kid, seeing the Burger King, Texaco, and Pizza Hut ad placement in Back to the Future really made me say wow! It'd be sweet to have a Mattel hoverboard! But now, it's just disturbing, seeing the way Minority Report uses it. And it's more scary to think that it could really happen. The technology and the nutty advertisers are there. It just takes a little more loss of personal freedoms before we'll accept this sort of invasive advertising.
I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind last night, and that movie, too, has plenty of advertising and product placement. I don't object to that product placement at all (well, maybe I do, but only in some of the newer Bond films) because it allows me to identify with the people in the ads.
I'm not going to spoil the movie, but your complaints are addressed in the movie. I think you might reconsider what you wrote here after seeing the movie.
I originally posted this story with the tagline "First Maglev installation in the US is almost up and running," but it looks like it's been horribly, horribly chopped.
Also, I put this in Slashback, because I didn't think it was worth posting as a general story. I guess Hemos didn't agree, but he could have cut down the headline a little better.
What I meant by my statement there was that Apple's not insulting the intelligence of PC users with this campaign, by saying "Get a Mac, you ignorant PeeCee user." Look at older Apple campaigns. You'll see what I'm talking about.
Off the top of my head I can remember an older (early 90s) campaign that pitted Apple employees against the evil IBM (I believe this was a training video). Or, a 1995 spot that showed a Windows guy on a stage giving a presentation. When his Windows PC crashed, people were giving suggestions (Edit system.ini, edit autoexec.bat), and then finally a guy in the back just yelled, "Get a Mac!" Sure, that was funny, but it just made the Mac guy look like a zealot.
Zealots don't serve the Apple cause very well. It puts off Window users. I've successfully recommended Macs to coworkers twice, after they saw how easy it was for me to use one, and after the demos I gave them. When you show a user what the computer can do, rather than berating them for choosing something you think is inferior, you stand a far better chance of getting him or her to see things your way.
I like these Apple ads. It's a good step towards showing people that the switch to the Mac is going to be as easy as computer itself.
Apple has a unique opportunity with these people. If they can make the switch successfully, then they can tell Apple what it needs to do to make it easier for the NASCAR-lovin', Walmart-patronizin' Joe Shmoes out there. Then, you'll see even more ease of conversion.
My biggest gripe right now, for those people trying to convert from PCs, deals with getting files from Windows computers. Connecting to Windows fileservers is completely unintuitive. Apple really needs to fix this, and quick. Connecting to Windows shares should be as easy as connecting to Appleshare shares. I hope 10.2 is out in July or August, and not September, and that it addresses this.
With M$ holding so much of the market right now, any competition they can get is good for their image, and for their antitrust lawsuit defense. For that reason, I doubt anybody at M$ really sees Apple as a big threat, or is worried by these commercials.
Now, if Apple somehow managed to get up to 20% marketshare, then there might be a problem.
Myself, I switched back in March of 2000, and I haven't looked back since.
These ads are great. If it gets a few extra percent of the market, then they did their job.
My favorite part of the ads? The fact that they're trying to win over PC users without using direct insults.
Look, it's the fact that VW's doing it. I'm more confident that VW would release something in Europe than they would here, sadly, because Americans aren't willing to give up their gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks for more economical, and frankly, practical cars.
Why won't the automakers in this godforsaken country make a hybrid SUV? I don't know, but I will tell you that if they did, you'd finally see an SUV that could get 30+ mpg on the highway, instead of 15. Throw in a TDI engine charging up batteries for an electric motor, and you've got a very nice powerplant, as well.
There are some nice technologies already available that could make it possible to get better fuel economy in larger vehicles, such as TDI and constantly variable transmission.
There's this misconception that all alternative-fuel vehicles have to be purple little bubble cars from Germany rather than real, usable machines. This is simply not true.
Some of these technologies aren't cheap, but the more people adopt them, the lower the prices will get.
I'm currently driving a '95 Jetta. Once it hits 150k miles, that car's going bye-bye, if I make it that far. My next car will be a TDI, unless something better is available by then. We shall see.
This is what Western Washington University's Vehicle Research Institute did with one of their cars at competition recently. A buddy of mine is graduating this year and showed me the car last night. Pretty interesting concept and they use 100% bio-diesel rather than a mixture.
Ya know, I wouldn't have believed it was possible, but I got a 300 MHz iBook to reliably play one of Apple's MPEG-4 example movies in full screen. I was quite impressed with that. This update is rocking my world, so far.
FWIW, VideoLAN does support MPEG-2 files (I've had no problems playing movies from archive.org/movies) and has played some of my non-doctored DivX movies pretty well. CPU usage is good and framerate's good as well.
I just don't understand why Quicktime still doesn't have MPEG-2 support. I do understand the limitations with respect to AVI audio, however. That's just a fact of life.
I had an original Newton, and now I have a MessagePad 120, and although they're big and heavy, they're built like tanks. I've never had a problem with either one.
Looks good here in Seattle. I ssh'd into my Mac at home and scp'd a file up to another host. 28K/sec. I bet it would have been faster had I turned off the scp progress meter.
Slashdot Mirror
Those people usually put their laptops to sleep and shut them down when they know they're going to be away from AC for a while.
I am one of those people. I hardly ever reboot.
...until I found an App called NewTen, which allows me to load software onto my MP120. Not bad.
I'd really like something that would allow me to backup the internal memory and flash card to my Mac, but oh well.
This Newton was almost free, I traded a MP100 for it. Way better software than 1.3.
Argh, not a "night tour," just a "tour."
(And now I will continue to wake up, considering it's 5:15am here in Seattle, and I'm here at work.)
Well, I would have gone, but I was getting a night tour of the underside of the Seattle monorail. Good stuff, but I'll be there next time...
I think the ultimate solution is not to bike everywhere, but to develop smaller and more economic vehicles.
Smaller and more economical vehicles exist, but there is plenty of room for more of them.
More importantly, we need to convince the population to use them. The majority of people in this world don't need big vehicles. If you need something large for getting up into the woods, go rent it. Buy something small and efficient for your daily trips around town. I see no good reason for wasting money on a car that has more than what you need, or use.
I see no good reason buying crap that you'll never use. I try to limit my purchases to stuff that I know I'm going to use, not stuff that's just going to sit around collecting dust. I wish more people would try to do the same.
After watching Minory Report I had a bad feeling about the future. Sure, some of the gadgets were fun to watch, and the cars looked great, but the advertising really got to me. I mean, how would you opt-out of advertising like that? No matter what you do, you're identifiable, regardless of whether your eyelids are open or closed. That scares me.
As a kid, seeing the Burger King, Texaco, and Pizza Hut ad placement in Back to the Future really made me say wow! It'd be sweet to have a Mattel hoverboard! But now, it's just disturbing, seeing the way Minority Report uses it. And it's more scary to think that it could really happen. The technology and the nutty advertisers are there. It just takes a little more loss of personal freedoms before we'll accept this sort of invasive advertising.
I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind last night, and that movie, too, has plenty of advertising and product placement. I don't object to that product placement at all (well, maybe I do, but only in some of the newer Bond films) because it allows me to identify with the people in the ads.
It should be out right now, looking at this release schedule.
Australian money pics here.
The colored bills were a big help when I was in Oz on vacation.
I'm not going to spoil the movie, but your complaints are addressed in the movie. I think you might reconsider what you wrote here after seeing the movie.
I originally posted this story with the tagline "First Maglev installation in the US is almost up and running," but it looks like it's been horribly, horribly chopped.
Also, I put this in Slashback, because I didn't think it was worth posting as a general story. I guess Hemos didn't agree, but he could have cut down the headline a little better.
What I meant by my statement there was that Apple's not insulting the intelligence of PC users with this campaign, by saying "Get a Mac, you ignorant PeeCee user." Look at older Apple campaigns. You'll see what I'm talking about.
Off the top of my head I can remember an older (early 90s) campaign that pitted Apple employees against the evil IBM (I believe this was a training video). Or, a 1995 spot that showed a Windows guy on a stage giving a presentation. When his Windows PC crashed, people were giving suggestions (Edit system.ini, edit autoexec.bat), and then finally a guy in the back just yelled, "Get a Mac!" Sure, that was funny, but it just made the Mac guy look like a zealot.
Zealots don't serve the Apple cause very well. It puts off Window users. I've successfully recommended Macs to coworkers twice, after they saw how easy it was for me to use one, and after the demos I gave them. When you show a user what the computer can do, rather than berating them for choosing something you think is inferior, you stand a far better chance of getting him or her to see things your way.
I like these Apple ads. It's a good step towards showing people that the switch to the Mac is going to be as easy as computer itself.
Apple has a unique opportunity with these people. If they can make the switch successfully, then they can tell Apple what it needs to do to make it easier for the NASCAR-lovin', Walmart-patronizin' Joe Shmoes out there. Then, you'll see even more ease of conversion.
My biggest gripe right now, for those people trying to convert from PCs, deals with getting files from Windows computers. Connecting to Windows fileservers is completely unintuitive. Apple really needs to fix this, and quick. Connecting to Windows shares should be as easy as connecting to Appleshare shares. I hope 10.2 is out in July or August, and not September, and that it addresses this.
With M$ holding so much of the market right now, any competition they can get is good for their image, and for their antitrust lawsuit defense. For that reason, I doubt anybody at M$ really sees Apple as a big threat, or is worried by these commercials.
Now, if Apple somehow managed to get up to 20% marketshare, then there might be a problem.
Myself, I switched back in March of 2000, and I haven't looked back since.
These ads are great. If it gets a few extra percent of the market, then they did their job.
My favorite part of the ads? The fact that they're trying to win over PC users without using direct insults.
It's great there's competition from indie Internet dealers, but for those trying to run a brick and mortar shop, business is much more difficult.
http://www.hybridford.com/index.asp
I spoke too soon. It's a start, but I'd really like to see a Suburban, or Excursion with a hybrid powerplant.
Look, it's the fact that VW's doing it. I'm more confident that VW would release something in Europe than they would here, sadly, because Americans aren't willing to give up their gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks for more economical, and frankly, practical cars.
Why won't the automakers in this godforsaken country make a hybrid SUV? I don't know, but I will tell you that if they did, you'd finally see an SUV that could get 30+ mpg on the highway, instead of 15. Throw in a TDI engine charging up batteries for an electric motor, and you've got a very nice powerplant, as well.
There are some nice technologies already available that could make it possible to get better fuel economy in larger vehicles, such as TDI and constantly variable transmission.
There's this misconception that all alternative-fuel vehicles have to be purple little bubble cars from Germany rather than real, usable machines. This is simply not true.
Some of these technologies aren't cheap, but the more people adopt them, the lower the prices will get.
I'm currently driving a '95 Jetta. Once it hits 150k miles, that car's going bye-bye, if I make it that far. My next car will be a TDI, unless something better is available by then. We shall see.
Well, this might not be exactly what you were talking about, but this is a VW concept that's designed to use only 1L of diesel per 100km.
In other, American, words - 239mpg. And it's 4-wheeled two-seater.
This is what Western Washington University's Vehicle Research Institute did with one of their cars at competition recently. A buddy of mine is graduating this year and showed me the car last night. Pretty interesting concept and they use 100% bio-diesel rather than a mixture.
Nope, the finder's still at 10.1.2 - last updated 19 December 2001. No noticeable finder updates in this one.
Ya know, I wouldn't have believed it was possible, but I got a 300 MHz iBook to reliably play one of Apple's MPEG-4 example movies in full screen. I was quite impressed with that. This update is rocking my world, so far.
FWIW, VideoLAN does support MPEG-2 files (I've had no problems playing movies from archive.org/movies) and has played some of my non-doctored DivX movies pretty well. CPU usage is good and framerate's good as well.
I just don't understand why Quicktime still doesn't have MPEG-2 support. I do understand the limitations with respect to AVI audio, however. That's just a fact of life.
Oh, how long will I have to wait for MPEG-2 video support from Quicktime? Please tell me it'll be there come "late summer."
I had an original Newton, and now I have a MessagePad 120, and although they're big and heavy, they're built like tanks. I've never had a problem with either one.
Looks good here in Seattle. I ssh'd into my Mac at home and scp'd a file up to another host. 28K/sec. I bet it would have been faster had I turned off the scp progress meter.
Not bad, in any case. Better than it used to be.
Yeah, pretty much.