What quirks? There's nothing quirky about servicing brakes, or anything else on that list. It's bog-standard stuff. You change brake pads when they're worn out and squealing (which on the Tesla wouldn't be often, since you usually use regenerative braking). You change brake fluid after 5-10 years. You recharge your refrigerant when your A/C isn't working well, which probably won't happen for 10 years or more.
What specialized training would you need? Independent mechanics don't have "specialized training" for all the cars they work on.
Only a complete moron would go to a dealership for new tires. Tire shops are everywhere these days. Any tire shop could replace the tires on a Tesla.
The other things in Teslas aren't really special either; the brakes are standard Brembo calipers IIRC, so any independent mechanic could change those easily. The brake system is a standard off-the-shelf ABS system, so anyone change the fluid easily, just like any other modern car. The A/C system is just like any other car's, and R-134a fittings are all standardized by federal law, so any automotive A/C service shop could handle refrigerant recharches. The shocks on normal models aren't anything special (the air struts are, but only some have those, but even so they're nothing a decent mechanic couldn't deal with). The wheel bearings and ball joints are just like any other car. The only thing that's really different and odd is the electric motor itself, and that's not likely to need any kind of service over its lifetime since it's a brushless induction motor.
The fact that there have been numerous abuses of the monopoly power of the manufacturer.
Car manufacturers were never a monopoly. There have always been lots of different manufacturers, in fact moreso in the past than now. I'm pretty sure there were dozens of brands in the first half of the 20th century.
Per iure, the car dealerships were independent, but de facto, they had to agree to exclusive contracts, thus they were dependent on a single supplier and had to follow each of their whims without much recourse.
Too bad, so sad. That's the deal when you become a franchisee. If you don't like it, don't open a franchise. Franchises are generally very stupid investments anyway (when there aren't protectionist laws in place). Just look at the terms and conditions and costs to open a McDonald's franchise.
Incorrect. Look at the very definition of the word: Wikipedia: "Nerd is a derogatory term for a person who is intellectually knowledgeable or bright, but socially inept." I way say "intellectually knowledgable" equates to "intellectual". From Wiktionary: "(slang, sometimes derogatory) A person who is intellectual but generally introverted." Again, intellectual.
If you don't think of yourself as an intellectual, then it is quite impossible to think of yourself as a "nerd", by the very definition of the word. This is a site for "nerds". It's right there at the top of the main page.
Another liberal apologist for Obama. Obama increased, greatly, the number of troops in overseas wars. He didn't even want to pull out of Iraq, and was forced to by Iraqi leadership (they refused to renew the law that gave US troops immunity). He also invaded Libya. His administration went along with the bailout, and the Democrats were in total control of Congress when the bailout happened.
I want us to be as successful at controlling corruption as Canada and the Nordic countries.
Think, for a second, about someone in Zimbabwe uttering this line. Does that not sound utterly ridiculous? Same goes here. You seem to have some wacky idea that the US could somehow be like Nordic countries. It simply can't, just like countries like Zimbabwe and Mexico can't. When corruption is ingrained in your society's very culture, you can't somehow magically change your culture to be like a culture where corruption isn't ingrained. You have to change the culture first, and that just doesn't happen.
You can do what the smart people in Germany did around 1935. Remember, there were some people who tried to change things there; it didn't go well for them (I seem to remember guillotines being used for dissenters).
Hey, if you want to live in fantasy land, don't let me stop you. I like to watch Star Trek TNG and fantasize about living in a world where everyone is hyper-competent and there's no greedy sociopaths running things, but I'm under no illusions that such a thing is actually possible, since it's never been achieved before in 8,000 years of human civilization.
will be a bunch of cynical comments about this being just the way it is
It IS the way it is. Better get used to it.
but there are countries like canada and the nordic countries that, while not perfect, do a much better job of keeping money out of politics than the usa
The USA is not a Scandinavian country. Saying "we should be more like Norway" makes as much sense here as it would to go to Somalia, Afghanistan, Mexico, or Zimbabwe, and tell them "you just need to be like Norway!".
cynicism is common, but i don't like it because people use it to think they have to lie down and accept this sort of legalized corruption
What are you going to do about it, huh? Vote for someone else? You could try the loud protest route, but look how that worked out for the OWS demonstrators. The cops in this country are violent and brutal, and are more than happy to do the dirty work of their corporate masters.
we don't have to accept it and we start by changing the lame cynical attitudes out there
I'll bet some Romans said this too. Look how things turned out for them.
that might mean speaking up
In case you haven't noticed, people have been speaking up. It hasn't made much difference. The systemic problems in this country are much too far gone to fix things at this point, just like things were too far gone in Rome by the 400s.
I have no idea if the Lumina was mechanically sound or crashworthy, and for all I know, it was. I didn't matter, because it's also butt-ugly (though not nearly as bad as the Aztek).
Being butt-ugly is sufficient for a car to be considered "bad". No one wants an ugly car (at least, not enough to make the car profitable to sell). The Aztek's lesson is clear: make a car ugly enough, and you can kiss your company good-bye.
That's because you're trying to reuse a library that has a proprietary license. What did you expect? I don't see how a BSD-licensed project could include a proprietary-licensed library either.
If you are lost, then go up and ask them for directions if they seem to be standing around doing nothing.
I did that once; the cop was extremely rude and acted like I was wasting his time. After seeing how cops treat people who annoy them on YouTube, I'm not going to try that again.
It appears this way, but it's not by design. It's a necessary by-product of the way NASA is funded and run. Anything that NASA does has to be doable within just a few years, which is why it's done such great work with various rovers and probes; it's not that hard to build a small probe in a few years. Any project which is much larger in scope, budget, and time requirements is basically impossible, because things are going to change in 4 or 8 years when a new President is elected and a new Administration established, plus with Congress holding the purse-strings, and changing substantially every 2 years, their funding for any big project will be threatened before long.
There's nothing that can be done to change this as long as the government is set up the way it currently is. Space exploration needs to be left to countries which have governments with much longer-term visions, and that basically rules out democratic governments.
This is a good point. The only way they could have screwed up worse would have been to name it "Pinto", "Gremlin", or "Aztek". (The latter has been said to have been the worst car in all of history, responsible for the downfall of Pontiac.)
Even postdocs struggle in this environment, and people consider this economy "recovered" now.
That's the liberals. They all say the economy is doing great because the stock market is doing great, and they're all big fans of Wall Street, which is why they were so much in favor of giving no-strings bailouts to Wall Street execs so they could give themselves bonuses. The liberals have to believe that the economy is doing great, because to admit to themselves otherwise would mean Democrats would lose re-election campaigns and a Republican will win the White House, because everyone knows that people usually vote for the non-incumbent party when the economy sucks.
I'm entirely serious: liberals will insist, as they have to me, that the economy is booming because corporate profits are so high now, and they completely dismiss the average income of Americans, and also the growing gap between rich and poor, and the hollowing-out of the middle class. They don't care about these things; they only care that their ultra-rich idols are doing great.
Yes, it is. Russia doesn't have to pay all its administrators $250k per year in salaries, while we do. That doesn't leave much money left over for teachers, supplies, building maintenance, etc.
Not a bad idea. However, I'm not sure I'd call them "third world" either. They were never technically 3rd-world, they were 2nd-world before the fall of the Iron Curtain, and they've been advancing fast with integration with the rest of Europe. There's no way they're anywhere near as bad as some backwards Islamic country like Morocco.
Not really. A fork isn't a completely different product; the two forks share a codebase, which is why the word "fork" is used instead of "rewrite". How much of a monoculture there is depends on how divergent the forks are. Iceweasel and Firefox, for instance, barely diverge at all, whereas X.org and XFree86 are very different at this point (but still not completely different, the core X code is still mostly the same I'm sure).
Slashdot Mirror
What quirks? There's nothing quirky about servicing brakes, or anything else on that list. It's bog-standard stuff. You change brake pads when they're worn out and squealing (which on the Tesla wouldn't be often, since you usually use regenerative braking). You change brake fluid after 5-10 years. You recharge your refrigerant when your A/C isn't working well, which probably won't happen for 10 years or more.
What specialized training would you need? Independent mechanics don't have "specialized training" for all the cars they work on.
What a horribly ignorant comment.
Only a complete moron would go to a dealership for new tires. Tire shops are everywhere these days. Any tire shop could replace the tires on a Tesla.
The other things in Teslas aren't really special either; the brakes are standard Brembo calipers IIRC, so any independent mechanic could change those easily. The brake system is a standard off-the-shelf ABS system, so anyone change the fluid easily, just like any other modern car. The A/C system is just like any other car's, and R-134a fittings are all standardized by federal law, so any automotive A/C service shop could handle refrigerant recharches. The shocks on normal models aren't anything special (the air struts are, but only some have those, but even so they're nothing a decent mechanic couldn't deal with). The wheel bearings and ball joints are just like any other car. The only thing that's really different and odd is the electric motor itself, and that's not likely to need any kind of service over its lifetime since it's a brushless induction motor.
The fact that there have been numerous abuses of the monopoly power of the manufacturer.
Car manufacturers were never a monopoly. There have always been lots of different manufacturers, in fact moreso in the past than now. I'm pretty sure there were dozens of brands in the first half of the 20th century.
Per iure, the car dealerships were independent, but de facto, they had to agree to exclusive contracts, thus they were dependent on a single supplier and had to follow each of their whims without much recourse.
Too bad, so sad. That's the deal when you become a franchisee. If you don't like it, don't open a franchise. Franchises are generally very stupid investments anyway (when there aren't protectionist laws in place). Just look at the terms and conditions and costs to open a McDonald's franchise.
Incorrect. Look at the very definition of the word: Wikipedia: "Nerd is a derogatory term for a person who is intellectually knowledgeable or bright, but socially inept." I way say "intellectually knowledgable" equates to "intellectual". From Wiktionary: "(slang, sometimes derogatory) A person who is intellectual but generally introverted." Again, intellectual.
If you don't think of yourself as an intellectual, then it is quite impossible to think of yourself as a "nerd", by the very definition of the word. This is a site for "nerds". It's right there at the top of the main page.
It's rather pathetic that you can only stoop to childish name-calling rather than make any kind of sound argument.
The rest of you are a big problem too, because you're not doing enough to insulate yourselves from us.
Another liberal apologist for Obama. Obama increased, greatly, the number of troops in overseas wars. He didn't even want to pull out of Iraq, and was forced to by Iraqi leadership (they refused to renew the law that gave US troops immunity). He also invaded Libya. His administration went along with the bailout, and the Democrats were in total control of Congress when the bailout happened.
I want us to be as successful at controlling corruption as Canada and the Nordic countries.
Think, for a second, about someone in Zimbabwe uttering this line. Does that not sound utterly ridiculous? Same goes here. You seem to have some wacky idea that the US could somehow be like Nordic countries. It simply can't, just like countries like Zimbabwe and Mexico can't. When corruption is ingrained in your society's very culture, you can't somehow magically change your culture to be like a culture where corruption isn't ingrained. You have to change the culture first, and that just doesn't happen.
You can do what the smart people in Germany did around 1935. Remember, there were some people who tried to change things there; it didn't go well for them (I seem to remember guillotines being used for dissenters).
Hey, if you want to live in fantasy land, don't let me stop you. I like to watch Star Trek TNG and fantasize about living in a world where everyone is hyper-competent and there's no greedy sociopaths running things, but I'm under no illusions that such a thing is actually possible, since it's never been achieved before in 8,000 years of human civilization.
will be a bunch of cynical comments about this being just the way it is
It IS the way it is. Better get used to it.
but there are countries like canada and the nordic countries that, while not perfect, do a much better job of keeping money out of politics than the usa
The USA is not a Scandinavian country. Saying "we should be more like Norway" makes as much sense here as it would to go to Somalia, Afghanistan, Mexico, or Zimbabwe, and tell them "you just need to be like Norway!".
cynicism is common, but i don't like it because people use it to think they have to lie down and accept this sort of legalized corruption
What are you going to do about it, huh? Vote for someone else? You could try the loud protest route, but look how that worked out for the OWS demonstrators. The cops in this country are violent and brutal, and are more than happy to do the dirty work of their corporate masters.
we don't have to accept it
and we start by changing the lame cynical attitudes out there
I'll bet some Romans said this too. Look how things turned out for them.
that might mean speaking up
In case you haven't noticed, people have been speaking up. It hasn't made much difference. The systemic problems in this country are much too far gone to fix things at this point, just like things were too far gone in Rome by the 400s.
Everyone has the government they deserve. This is apparently the government that New Jersey residents deserve.
I wonder if there were any civilizations in these galaxies which merged, which were sucked into the black holes.
I have no idea if the Lumina was mechanically sound or crashworthy, and for all I know, it was. I didn't matter, because it's also butt-ugly (though not nearly as bad as the Aztek).
Being butt-ugly is sufficient for a car to be considered "bad". No one wants an ugly car (at least, not enough to make the car profitable to sell). The Aztek's lesson is clear: make a car ugly enough, and you can kiss your company good-bye.
That's because you're trying to reuse a library that has a proprietary license. What did you expect? I don't see how a BSD-licensed project could include a proprietary-licensed library either.
In Tucson a big chunk of the police *are* Hispanic; it's a city that is far more tolerant.
Hispanic doesn't mean "tolerant of illegal immigrants". Lots of Border Patrol agents are hispanic.
What's with all the pro-government retards bashing Snowden?
It's no coincidence that the pro-government retard above is posting anonymously.
If you are lost, then go up and ask them for directions if they seem to be standing around doing nothing.
I did that once; the cop was extremely rude and acted like I was wasting his time. After seeing how cops treat people who annoy them on YouTube, I'm not going to try that again.
It appears this way, but it's not by design. It's a necessary by-product of the way NASA is funded and run. Anything that NASA does has to be doable within just a few years, which is why it's done such great work with various rovers and probes; it's not that hard to build a small probe in a few years. Any project which is much larger in scope, budget, and time requirements is basically impossible, because things are going to change in 4 or 8 years when a new President is elected and a new Administration established, plus with Congress holding the purse-strings, and changing substantially every 2 years, their funding for any big project will be threatened before long.
There's nothing that can be done to change this as long as the government is set up the way it currently is. Space exploration needs to be left to countries which have governments with much longer-term visions, and that basically rules out democratic governments.
This is a good point. The only way they could have screwed up worse would have been to name it "Pinto", "Gremlin", or "Aztek". (The latter has been said to have been the worst car in all of history, responsible for the downfall of Pontiac.)
Even postdocs struggle in this environment, and people consider this economy "recovered" now.
That's the liberals. They all say the economy is doing great because the stock market is doing great, and they're all big fans of Wall Street, which is why they were so much in favor of giving no-strings bailouts to Wall Street execs so they could give themselves bonuses. The liberals have to believe that the economy is doing great, because to admit to themselves otherwise would mean Democrats would lose re-election campaigns and a Republican will win the White House, because everyone knows that people usually vote for the non-incumbent party when the economy sucks.
I'm entirely serious: liberals will insist, as they have to me, that the economy is booming because corporate profits are so high now, and they completely dismiss the average income of Americans, and also the growing gap between rich and poor, and the hollowing-out of the middle class. They don't care about these things; they only care that their ultra-rich idols are doing great.
Yes, it is. Russia doesn't have to pay all its administrators $250k per year in salaries, while we do. That doesn't leave much money left over for teachers, supplies, building maintenance, etc.
Not a bad idea. However, I'm not sure I'd call them "third world" either. They were never technically 3rd-world, they were 2nd-world before the fall of the Iron Curtain, and they've been advancing fast with integration with the rest of Europe. There's no way they're anywhere near as bad as some backwards Islamic country like Morocco.
Not really. A fork isn't a completely different product; the two forks share a codebase, which is why the word "fork" is used instead of "rewrite". How much of a monoculture there is depends on how divergent the forks are. Iceweasel and Firefox, for instance, barely diverge at all, whereas X.org and XFree86 are very different at this point (but still not completely different, the core X code is still mostly the same I'm sure).
If you think lifelong employment with the same company is normal for tech workers today, then you really don't know what you're talking about.