I, for one, am very glad I don't live in Virginia.
Well apparently, according to another poster here, blue-state Massachusetts is much worse, with it being a felony punishable by 4 years in prison!
Gotta love those blue states. New Jersey, another blue state, has counties (most notably Bergen Co.) with blue laws where businesses aren't allowed to be open on Sunday (except restaurants for some odd reason, and probably things like gas stations). And the "liberals" there love these moralistic laws! "They give workers time off!" Yeah, I'm sure underpaid minimum-wage workers just *love* being forced to take unpaid time off.
I think we should come up with some new terms besides "liberal" and "conservative": the "liberalism" practiced in northeast states does not even remotely resemble the "liberalism" seen in west-coast cities like SanFran, Portland, or Seattle. You would never, ever see blue laws on the west coast, and certainly not criminalization of adultery.
The result of this is that the only software able to survive was FOSS. It couldn't be bought by MS, it couldn't have its distribution channel killed.
Not exactly: you're forgetting about Oracle, and some other big-iron databases like DB2. Oracle competes directly against SQL Server, but MS never managed to hurt them too badly.
I think you're also forgetting about Blackberry. It isn't doing so hot now, but that's not Microsoft's fault, it's because of Apple and Google.
You'll have to explain the bit about men interested in sleeping with middle-aged housewives. Facebook isn't a dating site, so the only way I can see that working out is if the man is already "friends" with these housewives and talks them into an affair. That's not much different than people sleeping around with their neighbors or people they work with or go to church with: people they already know. Maybe I'm missing something, but if you're looking for someone to have an affair with, FB seems like the last place to go.
The other thing I see FB being popular for (besides people posting pics of their grandkids) is for right-wingers to repost their crazy shit they found on right-wing websites about FEMA concentration camps and the like.
As for its survival, unfortunately I don't see how even the complete loss of under-25 people would hurt them much. All those middle-age right-wing nuts (who comprise 25-50% of the US population) aren't going to give up on it for at least a few decades, and are also prime fodder for advertisers.
And then you go into a rant about the quality drop of Linux on the desktop which is kind of bullshit to be honest. I don't know if you remember how bad things were 10-15 years ago but it was definitely much worse than it is now.
In some ways, not in others.
You're right, the infrastructure stuff Is mostly better. Installing Linux is much easier than it was 15 years ago for instance; most hardware is supported well and installers have gotten really good. Sound support seems to work well these days (except for the people who still complain about PA, but I've never had any trouble with it). Dealing with Nvidia drivers isn't such a PITA any more. You can plug in external monitors and have them auto-configure; that wasn't possible before.
However, the GUIs have gotten worse, much worse. Gnome3 is a POS. KDE (4 at least, haven't tried 5 yet) has gotten pretty good, but no one uses it, they all use Gnome3 and Unity. This echoes GUIs everywhere: they've all gotten universally much worse. Just look at the horror show that is Windows 8+, or Apple's stupid anti-skeumorphism trend with text buttons with no indicators that they're buttons.
The problem is that for the most part, there isn't going to be a "next generation". The next generation can't do anything like that stuff, and their tech talents involve writing crap like Gnome3.
Oh,and if it's something that could kill me if defective, forget it . . . like a jack stand.
That's funny, I just bought some wheel ramps from Harbor Freight to do some work on my car because the jacking point is so far behind the front bumper that my normal jack won't reach it. The wheel ramps are made in the USA! Unfortunately, they didn't work; they're too steep and the front of my car is too low to the ground.
Have you actually tried any Harbor Freight tools recently? They're actually pretty good, for the non-power tools at least. They're just as good as the older Craftsman stuff I've used. I'd probably shy away from buying power tools there, but the hand tools aren't bad at all these days.
Are you talking about converting existing cars to CNG or LNG? There's some problems with that one, namely range. They did that about 15 years ago in Phoenix because of some tax credits or something and it was a disaster.
The main problem is that you need a big-ass and heavy tank to hold the stuff, and because it's gaseous (for CNG), you end up not having much fuel even with a giant tank taking up the car's entire trunk, or for pickups, about 1/3 of the truck's bed. So you wind up with a vehicle with limited range and compromised cargo space. (Now of course, these were dual-fuel conversions which retained the gasoline tanks, but still the gasoline tanks were much smaller in volume so it's not like you'd be able to move the CNG tank there; you'd wind up with 20 miles of range.) The other option, LNG, is even worse because there's no LNG infrastructure (the CNG users just use their home's natural gas supply), and it's even more pressurized so you need an even heavier tank though you get more fuel in it.
Either way, a tank full of highly compressed gas seems like a bad idea in a motor vehicle that's somewhat likely to be involved in an accident at some point.
Batteries don't need energy density that high. The conversion efficiency of H2 to torque isn't nearly as high as it is for battery-stored electricity in an induction motor.
Teslas can get 170 miles worth of charge in 30 minutes at their Superchargers. For people who take normal rest stops for meals and bathroom breaks, that's not a big problem. And with the huge range they have when fully charged, they have more than enough range for anyone who isn't doing a long road trip, meaning anyone who's a commuter or other normal car user can use them right now without worrying about range (then rent a gas car for road trips).
Yep. On top of that, you're using energy to create the hydrogen in the first place, then when you burn the hydrogen in a piston engine, you're limited to the Carnot efficiency, and again are wasting most of the energy as heat. So your overall system efficiency is going to be crap, even worse in fact than with gasoline.
At least with electric cars, the biggest source of inefficiency is the power plant itself, but there you have flexibility as you can use any power source, whether it's shitty, nasty coal, nuclear, or totally renewable wind or solar. And power plants of any type have better efficiency, due to scale, than small car engines. The next biggest source of inefficiency is the transmission-line losses, but installing more solar power locally would improve that a lot. The battery losses aren't much, and the losses in the locomotion (the electric motor) and tiny.
What's wrong with these automakers? Haven't they figured out by now that hydrogen is a total waste of time and effort? They tried this silliness back in the 90s and it went nowhere. It's a terrible fuel. It doesn't occur in nature like oil, so you have to use electricity to generate it (like by hydrolysis of water), and it's horrible for storage and handling because it's such a lightweight gas, unlike gasoline and diesel which are relatively easily-handled liquids; you have to have a highly pressurized tank to hold it, and leakage is a problem because hydrogen molecules are so small, so you're not going to get great range, and you've got a highly pressurized tank of highly combustible gas in your vehicle, which is a really bad thing if you have a crash.
The future is electric cars, not hydrogen, and the intermediate step is hybrids. Tesla has already proven EVs work great, and only need cheaper batteries to be practical for the commuting masses, and the Chevy Volt and Toyota Prius have proven that hybrids are practical now.
I completely disagree. He was criticizing me personally because I was criticizing ISIS and calling their propaganda incitement to violence. You can think that's a fallacy if you want, I don't care.
I'm touchy because I never voiced any support for my country's actions, so I resent that somehow I'm assumed to.
So, NO, the criticism is not valid at all. It's no different than criticizing gangsta rap to some random black person. Or worse, saying "your country sucks because its cops shoot unarmed black people" to a black American who got shot or beaten by the cops.'
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I, for one, am very glad I don't live in Virginia.
Well apparently, according to another poster here, blue-state Massachusetts is much worse, with it being a felony punishable by 4 years in prison!
Gotta love those blue states. New Jersey, another blue state, has counties (most notably Bergen Co.) with blue laws where businesses aren't allowed to be open on Sunday (except restaurants for some odd reason, and probably things like gas stations). And the "liberals" there love these moralistic laws! "They give workers time off!" Yeah, I'm sure underpaid minimum-wage workers just *love* being forced to take unpaid time off.
I think we should come up with some new terms besides "liberal" and "conservative": the "liberalism" practiced in northeast states does not even remotely resemble the "liberalism" seen in west-coast cities like SanFran, Portland, or Seattle. You would never, ever see blue laws on the west coast, and certainly not criminalization of adultery.
[In] Massachusetts adultery is a felony and you could serve up to four years in prison.
Good ol' Blue States....
And here we have a prime example of a member of the American Taliban.
I guess you really like the ISIS guys and how they enforce social norms too, right?
No, I actively avoid it. What groups are you talking about?
The result of this is that the only software able to survive was FOSS. It couldn't be bought by MS, it couldn't have its distribution channel killed.
Not exactly: you're forgetting about Oracle, and some other big-iron databases like DB2. Oracle competes directly against SQL Server, but MS never managed to hurt them too badly.
I think you're also forgetting about Blackberry. It isn't doing so hot now, but that's not Microsoft's fault, it's because of Apple and Google.
You'll have to explain the bit about men interested in sleeping with middle-aged housewives. Facebook isn't a dating site, so the only way I can see that working out is if the man is already "friends" with these housewives and talks them into an affair. That's not much different than people sleeping around with their neighbors or people they work with or go to church with: people they already know. Maybe I'm missing something, but if you're looking for someone to have an affair with, FB seems like the last place to go.
The other thing I see FB being popular for (besides people posting pics of their grandkids) is for right-wingers to repost their crazy shit they found on right-wing websites about FEMA concentration camps and the like.
As for its survival, unfortunately I don't see how even the complete loss of under-25 people would hurt them much. All those middle-age right-wing nuts (who comprise 25-50% of the US population) aren't going to give up on it for at least a few decades, and are also prime fodder for advertisers.
And then you go into a rant about the quality drop of Linux on the desktop which is kind of bullshit to be honest. I don't know if you remember how bad things were 10-15 years ago but it was definitely much worse than it is now.
In some ways, not in others.
You're right, the infrastructure stuff Is mostly better. Installing Linux is much easier than it was 15 years ago for instance; most hardware is supported well and installers have gotten really good. Sound support seems to work well these days (except for the people who still complain about PA, but I've never had any trouble with it). Dealing with Nvidia drivers isn't such a PITA any more. You can plug in external monitors and have them auto-configure; that wasn't possible before.
However, the GUIs have gotten worse, much worse. Gnome3 is a POS. KDE (4 at least, haven't tried 5 yet) has gotten pretty good, but no one uses it, they all use Gnome3 and Unity. This echoes GUIs everywhere: they've all gotten universally much worse. Just look at the horror show that is Windows 8+, or Apple's stupid anti-skeumorphism trend with text buttons with no indicators that they're buttons.
The problem is that for the most part, there isn't going to be a "next generation". The next generation can't do anything like that stuff, and their tech talents involve writing crap like Gnome3.
The people of Panama disagree with you.
About half of the GOP voters in this country (which is roughly 25% of the total population) think this makes sense.
c) Refueling can be done pretty quickly. With EVs, even with fast chargers, it will still take about an hour to get enough charge to go for 100 miles.
Tesla Superchargers can charge 170 miles' worth in 30 minutes.
I completely disagree. Their sockets and socket wrenches are great, better than the Craftsman stuff I got back in the 90s.
Oh,and if it's something that could kill me if defective, forget it . . . like a jack stand.
That's funny, I just bought some wheel ramps from Harbor Freight to do some work on my car because the jacking point is so far behind the front bumper that my normal jack won't reach it. The wheel ramps are made in the USA! Unfortunately, they didn't work; they're too steep and the front of my car is too low to the ground.
Have you actually tried any Harbor Freight tools recently? They're actually pretty good, for the non-power tools at least. They're just as good as the older Craftsman stuff I've used. I'd probably shy away from buying power tools there, but the hand tools aren't bad at all these days.
Are you talking about converting existing cars to CNG or LNG? There's some problems with that one, namely range. They did that about 15 years ago in Phoenix because of some tax credits or something and it was a disaster.
The main problem is that you need a big-ass and heavy tank to hold the stuff, and because it's gaseous (for CNG), you end up not having much fuel even with a giant tank taking up the car's entire trunk, or for pickups, about 1/3 of the truck's bed. So you wind up with a vehicle with limited range and compromised cargo space. (Now of course, these were dual-fuel conversions which retained the gasoline tanks, but still the gasoline tanks were much smaller in volume so it's not like you'd be able to move the CNG tank there; you'd wind up with 20 miles of range.) The other option, LNG, is even worse because there's no LNG infrastructure (the CNG users just use their home's natural gas supply), and it's even more pressurized so you need an even heavier tank though you get more fuel in it.
Either way, a tank full of highly compressed gas seems like a bad idea in a motor vehicle that's somewhat likely to be involved in an accident at some point.
The things you cite weren't limited by basic physics. Hydrogen-based power is.
Those things also didn't already have alternatives which were clearly better.
Batteries don't need energy density that high. The conversion efficiency of H2 to torque isn't nearly as high as it is for battery-stored electricity in an induction motor.
Teslas can get 170 miles worth of charge in 30 minutes at their Superchargers. For people who take normal rest stops for meals and bathroom breaks, that's not a big problem. And with the huge range they have when fully charged, they have more than enough range for anyone who isn't doing a long road trip, meaning anyone who's a commuter or other normal car user can use them right now without worrying about range (then rent a gas car for road trips).
Yep. On top of that, you're using energy to create the hydrogen in the first place, then when you burn the hydrogen in a piston engine, you're limited to the Carnot efficiency, and again are wasting most of the energy as heat. So your overall system efficiency is going to be crap, even worse in fact than with gasoline.
At least with electric cars, the biggest source of inefficiency is the power plant itself, but there you have flexibility as you can use any power source, whether it's shitty, nasty coal, nuclear, or totally renewable wind or solar. And power plants of any type have better efficiency, due to scale, than small car engines. The next biggest source of inefficiency is the transmission-line losses, but installing more solar power locally would improve that a lot. The battery losses aren't much, and the losses in the locomotion (the electric motor) and tiny.
You're going to be dragging around a 1000 lb. tank to get any useful range out of a hydrogen car if you want it to be remotely survivable in a crash.
What's wrong with these automakers? Haven't they figured out by now that hydrogen is a total waste of time and effort? They tried this silliness back in the 90s and it went nowhere. It's a terrible fuel. It doesn't occur in nature like oil, so you have to use electricity to generate it (like by hydrolysis of water), and it's horrible for storage and handling because it's such a lightweight gas, unlike gasoline and diesel which are relatively easily-handled liquids; you have to have a highly pressurized tank to hold it, and leakage is a problem because hydrogen molecules are so small, so you're not going to get great range, and you've got a highly pressurized tank of highly combustible gas in your vehicle, which is a really bad thing if you have a crash.
The future is electric cars, not hydrogen, and the intermediate step is hybrids. Tesla has already proven EVs work great, and only need cheaper batteries to be practical for the commuting masses, and the Chevy Volt and Toyota Prius have proven that hybrids are practical now.
Ah yes, you're the morons who couldn't even win a war against some birds.
And the country that treated Aborigines worse than dirt.
You're pathetic.
I completely disagree. He was criticizing me personally because I was criticizing ISIS and calling their propaganda incitement to violence. You can think that's a fallacy if you want, I don't care.
I'm touchy because I never voiced any support for my country's actions, so I resent that somehow I'm assumed to.
So, NO, the criticism is not valid at all. It's no different than criticizing gangsta rap to some random black person. Or worse, saying "your country sucks because its cops shoot unarmed black people" to a black American who got shot or beaten by the cops.'
Hitler was the product of US involvement in WWI, and actually the US Civil War. Does that mean we're responsible for the Holocaust?