Considering the subject of who is to be held liable for when an autonomous car causes a crash is an oft recurring subject here on Slashdot and partly autonomous cars are already in use today, I'd say that it's not premature at all.
Everybody is kneejerking about the 'persons' and 'rights and obligations' part, but from what I can find the term 'person' refers to the concept of a 'legal person' or 'legal entity'. Considering nobody is losing their shit about companies being regarded as 'legal entities' and having rights and obligations, I'd urge everybody to put their anti-EU and anti-regulation crap back up where it came from.
Don't most phones ship with a pair of headphones, including the iPhone?
And almost all of the shipped headphones are mediocre at best. I used to buy adapters from Ext-USB to 3.5mm just to be able to get away from the crappy kit headphones and be able to use the fantastic sounding, non-painful pair I'm able to use on pretty much every audio device anywhere.
Don't get me wrong: I have no love for the 3.5mm jack specifically, but if we're going to move away from it I'd like it to be replaced with an international standard instead of Apple pushing its proprietary bullshit once again.
Yeah, the pricing on the Priv is ridiculous. It's a testament of either a lack of humility or of a lack of business acumen. I know a lot of people who are ready for 'something new' and really want to give the Priv a chance, just not at its current ultra high-end price.
The curvature of bananas was part of a long list of quality demands in which I can imagine it to have been thought innocuous at the time: "The main provisions of the regulation were that bananas sold as unripened, green bananas should be green and unripened, firm and intact, fit for human consumption, not "affected by rotting", clean, free of pests and damage from pests, free from deformation or abnormal curvature, free from bruising, free of any foreign smell or taste."
The demands concerning size and shape are set to be dropped: "On 29 July 2008, the European Commission held a preliminary vote concerning the repeal of certain regulations related to the quality of specific fruit and vegetables that included provisions related to size and shape."
I never said the EU was perfect. I did say this: "almost all of the crazy or stupid stuff dies in the process" and this: "in general it has the most rational and thought-through policies on this planet"
Note by the way that (spoilt) consumers have long tended to disregard 'ugly' vegetables and fruit; they'd rather buy something else that does meet their aesthetic expectations. In response, retailers in the developed countries have been imposing restrictions on the appearance of the stuff they buy, because they'd rather not be the ones throwing the ugly stuff away at the end of the day. I could see how this would lead the EC to justify an EU-wide standard for banana-quality as a way to prevent waste early on in the process, pushing the 'ugly' food to countries with less spoilt customers, and to prevent member states from making life harder for banana producers by each having their own banana standard. Let me emphasize that I don't believe this specific bit of EU-wide standardization is one of the high points of EU legislation, but if this is the worst bit of legislation it has produced then that is actually proof that legislation in the EU in general is in pretty good fucking shape.
The EU is known for its (to some excessive amount of) deliberation and almost all of the crazy or stupid stuff dies in the process (TTIP potentially being a problematic counterexample and the misguided neoliberal approach to fiscal policies another).
People love shitting all over the EU, but in general it has the most rational and thought-through policies on this planet, due to the amount of deliberation and processes involved and in spite of chauvinism and selfish behaviour from (some of) its member states.
The Desire HD was released together with the Desire Z and had 256MB more RAM (which made a huge difference at that time) and a better SoC: http://www.gsmarena.com/compar...
People far and wide are embracing their stupidity and incompetence. Everything should 'just work' without having to think about it. If they don't get it, it's the app's/device's fault. Not theirs. Never theirs.
Shitty typing has always been around, but virtual keyboards have shifted the responsibility of outputting accurately spelled words to autocorrection mechanisms. Physical keyboards represent a threat to people who are incapable of typing something without 'autocorrect' looking over their shoulder and being present to conveniently blame for any errors. Communicating using emoji is even better for these people, as it is impossible to misspell an image.
If I sound bitter, that's because I am. I've loved phones with physical keyboards ever since I got my hands on one and there has never been a high-end Android landscape slider with a good physical keyboard. Never. The apparently poor showing of the Blackberry Priv (which I own and love despite the fact that it is a portrait slider with a limited set of keys) is probably the final nail in the coffin of physical keyboards on mobile phones. Instead, we'll have to deal with interaction mechanisms catered to cretins who revel in their newfound ability to write text in italics in Whatsapp.
While on the topic of hardware, Intel unveiled its Broadwell-E family, which consists of an "Extreme Edition" Core i7 chipset that has 10 cores and 20 threads.
Thank you. Trolling is supposed to be a(n) art, not just being an asshole.
But I fear this is a lost battle. The common folk have appropriated the word and now their definition of it is inevitably going to be the primary one. We're just going to have to come up with a new word for intentional artful tongue-in-cheek inflammatory speech.
I've noticed the same. I'm pretty sure it's not mind reading, though.
I do think the prediction system of Chrome takes into account what is topical. The scary part in those instances is probably more how unoriginal and how topically driven your thoughts are than that an algorithm is able to 'predict' them.
Are you a cellphone vendor? No? Then it is fully irrelevant.
But if you bother to check
Where? How? I honestly have no idea.
Users buy more Android phones than other type and demonstrably do not care since they continue to buy them in the face of a lack of updates by most Android device makers.
That is fallacious (there could be many other reasons why people buy more Android phones. Hating Apple with a vengeance is just one. Price is two). Also, you need to feel burned by not getting updates for a long time before it becomes a big enough factor that you accept buying a Nexus device over the device you actually wanted, hardware-wise.
There are some Android device makers that do update their devices and thus far they have realized little to no competitive advantage as a result. Go ahead and find me any example of an Android handset maker that has realized any competitive advantage from software updates. I'll wait.
The first you cannot prove and the second is a stupid thing to demand (as it is nigh unprovable, considering the number of factors in play). The 'regular updating' thing is something of the last 5 months (and people are really liking it, by the way). Aside newcomer Blackberry, there have been no handset makers to my knowledge that have consistently made easily and quickly updated devices (generally we're talking two years of updates max and even then lagging behind the curve significantly). The Nexus line is the only thing that comes close to it, but it is not vendor-specific.
You don't have to believe me to figure out that I'm right.
I could say the same to you. Stop pretending to know and provide some evidence.
A lot of the reason Nokia did well 10+ years ago was because they were actually one of the lowest cost manufacturers and a good brand
No. They were fashionable and they had Snake. Everybody wanted a Nokia back then, not because they were cheap (they really weren't), but because they were simple, sturdy, hip and pretty. Billions and billions of Nokia (3210 and 3310) covers still purchasable to this day prove me right.
Bizarrely enough. Nokia may still be able to ride its legend train in the Android space for a bit, but they sure as hell need to make sure the first few kilometers count or they will be buried alive by the meme mobs on the internet. Personally, I think they should release at least one supersturdy Android phone, alongside a Lumia with Android, just to tap into and revitalize that 'unbreakable Nokia'-vibe. Given how everybody seems to walk around with a cracked screen nowadays, it might even be a very opportune time to go that way (even if the sturdy phone itself is not going to be all that profitable).
what unique value do they provide that people will actually preferentially pay for?"
"The thing that Nokia should have done more than a decade ago." "I'm hoping it won't prove to be waaaay to late, but it probably will." If we're talking about Nokia's future chances, you are preaching to the choir.
I think you misunderstand the economics at work here. The software costs on these are comparatively minor.
I don't believe you.
Android device makers (mostly) don't care much about updates anyway so it's a non-cost to them.
Users care. Users buy. Advantage.
The cost of developing a skin and a few proprietary bits is tiny compared with the cost of developing, making, distributing and selling the hardware.
I still don't believe you.
And if they do go stock Android, what prevents another company from copying whatever hardware innovations they might come up with?
It's not about hardware innovations. It's about style, consistent quality, and fashion. Nokia has always had a good position in those. They just fucked up royally on the software-front. Which is the only point I was trying to make.
The Lumia phones are still great devices from a design and hardware point of view. Unique even. I'd have bought one if it'd ran Android.
The software and cost advantage could come from "Just run stock Android and focus on the fucking hardware" (tm) instead of blowing tons of cash on custom skins nobody really wants and which hugely complicate software updates.
Practically, yes, since I had to share the space with others. My own space was reduced to a bad and a desk.
So it really didn't come close to any reasonable person's definition of apartment. Gotcha.
Not much water but there are plenty of compact water heaters for camper vans.
So very little hot water to shower with. Gotcha.
Like I said, the car goes and refills (and empties) things while you are at work.
That either means a fairly advanced robot capable of doing the actual refilling and emptying, or infrastructure / services that support that. The first takes up space and money and if we're going for the second, than we should also be comparing to apartments of the future.
Not very familiar with modern RV equipment, are you.
Oh, now we're talking about RVs? You may have missed this line: "I mean, we're not even talking about an RV here and even those are severely limited compared to cramped first apartments." Let's summarize: your self-driving minivan has a toilet, a shower, a water heater, a cooking area, a bed, a refrigerator, a refilling/emptying robot and a desk in it. I'm guessing it also contains a TV, a washing machine, computer, cutlery and crockery, and a closet for your clothes. That gets you to about half the shit people in apartments have around (no, your shitty dorm room still doesn't count) and needs to fit in about a quarter the space.
As for how it's MUCH better - no neighbors behind thin walls. Any view you like.
So two things make it MUCH better: one easily resolved with earplugs and the other simply untrue, unless your minivan fits in an elevator and is allowed to park everywhere. It is more flexible than a static place to live, I'll give you that.
Are you aware that of course we are talking about an electric vehicle? DUH.
Irrelevant. I was merely proving that killing somebody in a car with (a) gas is easy and relatively fast, not that it necessarily be done with the exhaust from the car itself. I expected you to be less obtuse and narrowminded.
A) If you are driving 50km / hour you are Doing It Wrong.
Are you advocating that these guys drive 20km/h on all roads at night? The owners of other vehicles on the road will fucking love that.
B) So what? Compared to the expense of rent and property taxes maintaining a car to drive an extra 37k miles / year is meaningless.
Either your conversions skills are severely lacking, or you are assuming the minivan will go an average of 20km/h at night. Even then it halves the life of your vehicle. If it's a diesel, it would set you back 300EUR/month in fuel costs alone. If it's electric, then recharging is going to take some serious consideration as you're obviously not going to do that while driving at night. Also, for both situations, your monthly expenses may vary wildly compared to the cost of renting an apartment, due to volatility on the energy market (although that could also mean costs going down).
I'm sorry but I'll not respond any further, you have zero ability to understand the future or imagine anything different and enhanced over what you know.
Oh boohoo. Somebody disagrees with me using reasoning, so I'll just call him names.
If you can't even understand how a van is practical or more desirable than many cheap apartments people live in today, you just simply lack experience enough to comprehend what I am talking about.
If you can't understand that inviting somebody (or two of those) back to your place and then pointing to your tiny fucking minivan where you shit in a bucket and can shower for a good 20 seconds is and will be undesirable for many people, then you do not understand how the human mind works.
Very few people would classify a dorm room as a 'real apartment'.
A minivan can have that plus a small cooking area.
Are you saying that you couldn't have had that in aforementioned dorm room? Was it really smaller than the inside of a minivan?
how many would really care?
I sure don't, because it is irrelevant here. You were calling first apartments cramped, which is obviously ridiculous when the alternative is a minivan.
the living conditions would be a LOT nicer than many apartments
How? Cramped, no or very little hot water to shower with. Tiny cooking area. No normally flushing toilet (or even a toilet at all) means taking out your poop in a bucket several times a week or predominantly using public toilets. I mean, we're not even talking about an RV here and even those are severely limited compared to cramped first apartments.
The only thing I can think of is getting away from noise, for which I advise the fantastic invention of earplugs.
Not really, because it can be as secure as you want it to be.
No. No, it can't. There is no limit to how secure I can want something to be and a functioning affordable minivan is obviously not going to accommodate for that.
A minivan in motion is a LOT harder to break into than a static apartment
Agreed. But a static minivan is a LOT easier to break into than a static apartment.
Your idea that someone is going to "pump a lot of gas into a van" is stupid so I'll not even dignify that with a response.
Are you aware of the fairly common method of committing suicide by looping back the exhaust of your car into it? http://lostallhope.com/suicide... I only suggested it to preempt silly remarks like "I'll have a shotgun in the van and if anyone smashes in a window, that'll be the last thing he does".
Walmart lets you park in a lot overnight
"While free overnight stays at Walmart may be something that may seem attractive, always check with the store to see if they allow camping. In addition, in some cities/states, it is illegal." Also, you can bet your bottom the policy will evaporate if thousands of people start doing it. At the very least it will become problematic due to a lack of space.
You could simply have it drive all night.
I forgot you were an American. Driving 50km/h for 8h totals 400km each night. Assuming 20km/liter, we're talking 20l, so roughly 20EUR if you're buying diesel. Each night. Just in fuel costs.
It also entails 400km*365d / year (=146.000km) in extra wear and tear on your vehicle. Now I know that modern vehicles will need less maintenance, but 146.000km a year on top of what you drive during the other 16h of the day is going to have a significant impact. If you're lucky, you'll only have to buy a brand new minivan every three years.
Was your first apartment a cardboard box? Minivans are ridiculously small compared to 'most cramped first apartments'.
Also, it's not exactly legal to 'go wherever to sleep for the night [in your car]'. Many places have regulations that prohibit doing this, especially urban areas.
And then there is the matter of safety. A minivan in 'wherever' is a much softer target than an apartment in a populated building. Added bonuses for the thief: - Finding out how many residents (potential threats) there are and where they are in the minivan is trivial. Hell, he could just pump a bunch of gas into your minivan and kill or knock out everybody in it. - After that, he doesn't even have to search the premises for valuable stuff. He just blindfolds and ties you up, drives away with your minivan and everything and everybody in it. You could (if you're lucky) wake up in the middle of the fucking desert and have no idea what happened to you.
I'd like to add to this that not just the concept of commercials becomes foreign to you, but even more so the actual content of them.
Once you're not used to commercials anymore, their absurdity becomes very readily apparent: Three people in big plastic balls rolling into a pool and subsequently drinking ice tea(tm). What the actual fuck?
We all understand that the main thing about commercials is standing out and getting brand recognition, but that changes nothing about how weird it is to behold them.
Watch the video again. Almost all sample applications worked by swiping, etc. The only time they show a cursor when not hovering is in the beginning, when explaining the technology.
I'm not saying a cursor is required for all modes of interaction, but unless the gestures are broad and simple, including a cursor is a good idea. Not requiring the user to hover whilst positioning is also a good idea.
Also, I think you forgot to say: "Hey man, thanks for the link explaining what cursors are. My understanding of the word was clearly lacking and in hindsight my slight snarkiness in response to your comment was unwarranted, for which I apologize. I'll try to do a basic web search before I comment, the next time."
Slashdot Mirror
Apart from the price, you're describing the Priv exactly.
So maybe premature, rather than completely daft.
Considering the subject of who is to be held liable for when an autonomous car causes a crash is an oft recurring subject here on Slashdot and partly autonomous cars are already in use today, I'd say that it's not premature at all.
Everybody is kneejerking about the 'persons' and 'rights and obligations' part, but from what I can find the term 'person' refers to the concept of a 'legal person' or 'legal entity'. Considering nobody is losing their shit about companies being regarded as 'legal entities' and having rights and obligations, I'd urge everybody to put their anti-EU and anti-regulation crap back up where it came from.
Don't most phones ship with a pair of headphones, including the iPhone?
And almost all of the shipped headphones are mediocre at best. I used to buy adapters from Ext-USB to 3.5mm just to be able to get away from the crappy kit headphones and be able to use the fantastic sounding, non-painful pair I'm able to use on pretty much every audio device anywhere.
Don't get me wrong: I have no love for the 3.5mm jack specifically, but if we're going to move away from it I'd like it to be replaced with an international standard instead of Apple pushing its proprietary bullshit once again.
Yeah, the pricing on the Priv is ridiculous. It's a testament of either a lack of humility or of a lack of business acumen.
I know a lot of people who are ready for 'something new' and really want to give the Priv a chance, just not at its current ultra high-end price.
The curvature of bananas was part of a long list of quality demands in which I can imagine it to have been thought innocuous at the time:
"The main provisions of the regulation were that bananas sold as unripened, green bananas should be green and unripened, firm and intact, fit for human consumption, not "affected by rotting", clean, free of pests and damage from pests, free from deformation or abnormal curvature, free from bruising, free of any foreign smell or taste."
The demands concerning size and shape are set to be dropped:
"On 29 July 2008, the European Commission held a preliminary vote concerning the repeal of certain regulations related to the quality of specific fruit and vegetables that included provisions related to size and shape."
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
I never said the EU was perfect. I did say this:
"almost all of the crazy or stupid stuff dies in the process"
and this:
"in general it has the most rational and thought-through policies on this planet"
Note by the way that (spoilt) consumers have long tended to disregard 'ugly' vegetables and fruit; they'd rather buy something else that does meet their aesthetic expectations. In response, retailers in the developed countries have been imposing restrictions on the appearance of the stuff they buy, because they'd rather not be the ones throwing the ugly stuff away at the end of the day. I could see how this would lead the EC to justify an EU-wide standard for banana-quality as a way to prevent waste early on in the process, pushing the 'ugly' food to countries with less spoilt customers, and to prevent member states from making life harder for banana producers by each having their own banana standard. Let me emphasize that I don't believe this specific bit of EU-wide standardization is one of the high points of EU legislation, but if this is the worst bit of legislation it has produced then that is actually proof that legislation in the EU in general is in pretty good fucking shape.
You are mistaken and spreading FUD.
The EU is known for its (to some excessive amount of) deliberation and almost all of the crazy or stupid stuff dies in the process (TTIP potentially being a problematic counterexample and the misguided neoliberal approach to fiscal policies another).
People love shitting all over the EU, but in general it has the most rational and thought-through policies on this planet, due to the amount of deliberation and processes involved and in spite of chauvinism and selfish behaviour from (some of) its member states.
Decent: yes. High-end: no.
The Desire HD was released together with the Desire Z and had 256MB more RAM (which made a huge difference at that time) and a better SoC:
http://www.gsmarena.com/compar...
People far and wide are embracing their stupidity and incompetence. Everything should 'just work' without having to think about it. If they don't get it, it's the app's/device's fault. Not theirs. Never theirs.
Shitty typing has always been around, but virtual keyboards have shifted the responsibility of outputting accurately spelled words to autocorrection mechanisms. Physical keyboards represent a threat to people who are incapable of typing something without 'autocorrect' looking over their shoulder and being present to conveniently blame for any errors. Communicating using emoji is even better for these people, as it is impossible to misspell an image.
If I sound bitter, that's because I am. I've loved phones with physical keyboards ever since I got my hands on one and there has never been a high-end Android landscape slider with a good physical keyboard. Never. The apparently poor showing of the Blackberry Priv (which I own and love despite the fact that it is a portrait slider with a limited set of keys) is probably the final nail in the coffin of physical keyboards on mobile phones. Instead, we'll have to deal with interaction mechanisms catered to cretins who revel in their newfound ability to write text in italics in Whatsapp.
Progress.
While on the topic of hardware, Intel unveiled its Broadwell-E family, which consists of an "Extreme Edition" Core i7 chipset that has 10 cores and 20 threads.
Stop. This. Stupid. Shit. Now.
I see opportunities.
Only the best baiting will be named masterbaiting.
Variations in the form of probaiting, rebaiting and debaiting are all allowed.
In other semi-related news, users can now remove the 260-character path length limit in the Windows 10 build 14352."
How the fuck is that even remotely related?
Thank you.
Trolling is supposed to be a(n) art, not just being an asshole.
But I fear this is a lost battle. The common folk have appropriated the word and now their definition of it is inevitably going to be the primary one. We're just going to have to come up with a new word for intentional artful tongue-in-cheek inflammatory speech.
I've noticed the same. I'm pretty sure it's not mind reading, though.
I do think the prediction system of Chrome takes into account what is topical. The scary part in those instances is probably more how unoriginal and how topically driven your thoughts are than that an algorithm is able to 'predict' them.
nes't pa?
*n'est-ce pas.
I run a manufacturing company
Are you a cellphone vendor? No? Then it is fully irrelevant.
But if you bother to check
Where? How? I honestly have no idea.
Users buy more Android phones than other type and demonstrably do not care since they continue to buy them in the face of a lack of updates by most Android device makers.
That is fallacious (there could be many other reasons why people buy more Android phones. Hating Apple with a vengeance is just one. Price is two).
Also, you need to feel burned by not getting updates for a long time before it becomes a big enough factor that you accept buying a Nexus device over the device you actually wanted, hardware-wise.
There are some Android device makers that do update their devices and thus far they have realized little to no competitive advantage as a result. Go ahead and find me any example of an Android handset maker that has realized any competitive advantage from software updates. I'll wait.
The first you cannot prove and the second is a stupid thing to demand (as it is nigh unprovable, considering the number of factors in play). The 'regular updating' thing is something of the last 5 months (and people are really liking it, by the way). Aside newcomer Blackberry, there have been no handset makers to my knowledge that have consistently made easily and quickly updated devices (generally we're talking two years of updates max and even then lagging behind the curve significantly). The Nexus line is the only thing that comes close to it, but it is not vendor-specific.
You don't have to believe me to figure out that I'm right.
I could say the same to you. Stop pretending to know and provide some evidence.
A lot of the reason Nokia did well 10+ years ago was because they were actually one of the lowest cost manufacturers and a good brand
No. They were fashionable and they had Snake. Everybody wanted a Nokia back then, not because they were cheap (they really weren't), but because they were simple, sturdy, hip and pretty. Billions and billions of Nokia (3210 and 3310) covers still purchasable to this day prove me right.
Bizarrely enough. Nokia may still be able to ride its legend train in the Android space for a bit, but they sure as hell need to make sure the first few kilometers count or they will be buried alive by the meme mobs on the internet. Personally, I think they should release at least one supersturdy Android phone, alongside a Lumia with Android, just to tap into and revitalize that 'unbreakable Nokia'-vibe. Given how everybody seems to walk around with a cracked screen nowadays, it might even be a very opportune time to go that way (even if the sturdy phone itself is not going to be all that profitable).
what unique value do they provide that people will actually preferentially pay for?"
"The thing that Nokia should have done more than a decade ago."
"I'm hoping it won't prove to be waaaay to late, but it probably will."
If we're talking about Nokia's future chances, you are preaching to the choir.
I think you misunderstand the economics at work here. The software costs on these are comparatively minor.
I don't believe you.
Android device makers (mostly) don't care much about updates anyway so it's a non-cost to them.
Users care. Users buy. Advantage.
The cost of developing a skin and a few proprietary bits is tiny compared with the cost of developing, making, distributing and selling the hardware.
I still don't believe you.
And if they do go stock Android, what prevents another company from copying whatever hardware innovations they might come up with?
It's not about hardware innovations. It's about style, consistent quality, and fashion. Nokia has always had a good position in those. They just fucked up royally on the software-front. Which is the only point I was trying to make.
The Lumia phones are still great devices from a design and hardware point of view. Unique even.
I'd have bought one if it'd ran Android.
The software and cost advantage could come from "Just run stock Android and focus on the fucking hardware" (tm) instead of blowing tons of cash on custom skins nobody really wants and which hugely complicate software updates.
The thing that Nokia should have done more than a decade ago. Build their great hardware and run Android on it.
I'm hoping it won't prove to be waaaay to late, but it probably will.
Practically, yes, since I had to share the space with others. My own space was reduced to a bad and a desk.
So it really didn't come close to any reasonable person's definition of apartment. Gotcha.
Not much water but there are plenty of compact water heaters for camper vans.
So very little hot water to shower with. Gotcha.
Like I said, the car goes and refills (and empties) things while you are at work.
That either means a fairly advanced robot capable of doing the actual refilling and emptying, or infrastructure / services that support that. The first takes up space and money and if we're going for the second, than we should also be comparing to apartments of the future.
Not very familiar with modern RV equipment, are you.
Oh, now we're talking about RVs? You may have missed this line: "I mean, we're not even talking about an RV here and even those are severely limited compared to cramped first apartments."
Let's summarize: your self-driving minivan has a toilet, a shower, a water heater, a cooking area, a bed, a refrigerator, a refilling/emptying robot and a desk in it. I'm guessing it also contains a TV, a washing machine, computer, cutlery and crockery, and a closet for your clothes. That gets you to about half the shit people in apartments have around (no, your shitty dorm room still doesn't count) and needs to fit in about a quarter the space.
As for how it's MUCH better - no neighbors behind thin walls. Any view you like.
So two things make it MUCH better: one easily resolved with earplugs and the other simply untrue, unless your minivan fits in an elevator and is allowed to park everywhere. It is more flexible than a static place to live, I'll give you that.
Are you aware that of course we are talking about an electric vehicle? DUH.
Irrelevant. I was merely proving that killing somebody in a car with (a) gas is easy and relatively fast, not that it necessarily be done with the exhaust from the car itself. I expected you to be less obtuse and narrowminded.
A) If you are driving 50km / hour you are Doing It Wrong.
Are you advocating that these guys drive 20km/h on all roads at night? The owners of other vehicles on the road will fucking love that.
B) So what? Compared to the expense of rent and property taxes maintaining a car to drive an extra 37k miles / year is meaningless.
Either your conversions skills are severely lacking, or you are assuming the minivan will go an average of 20km/h at night. Even then it halves the life of your vehicle. If it's a diesel, it would set you back 300EUR/month in fuel costs alone. If it's electric, then recharging is going to take some serious consideration as you're obviously not going to do that while driving at night. Also, for both situations, your monthly expenses may vary wildly compared to the cost of renting an apartment, due to volatility on the energy market (although that could also mean costs going down).
I'm sorry but I'll not respond any further, you have zero ability to understand the future or imagine anything different and enhanced over what you know.
Oh boohoo. Somebody disagrees with me using reasoning, so I'll just call him names.
If you can't even understand how a van is practical or more desirable than many cheap apartments people live in today, you just simply lack experience enough to comprehend what I am talking about.
If you can't understand that inviting somebody (or two of those) back to your place and then pointing to your tiny fucking minivan where you shit in a bucket and can shower for a good 20 seconds is and will be undesirable for many people, then you do not understand how the human mind works.
My first real apartment was really a dorm room
Very few people would classify a dorm room as a 'real apartment'.
A minivan can have that plus a small cooking area.
Are you saying that you couldn't have had that in aforementioned dorm room? Was it really smaller than the inside of a minivan?
how many would really care?
I sure don't, because it is irrelevant here. You were calling first apartments cramped, which is obviously ridiculous when the alternative is a minivan.
the living conditions would be a LOT nicer than many apartments
How? Cramped, no or very little hot water to shower with. Tiny cooking area. No normally flushing toilet (or even a toilet at all) means taking out your poop in a bucket several times a week or predominantly using public toilets.
I mean, we're not even talking about an RV here and even those are severely limited compared to cramped first apartments.
The only thing I can think of is getting away from noise, for which I advise the fantastic invention of earplugs.
Not really, because it can be as secure as you want it to be.
No. No, it can't. There is no limit to how secure I can want something to be and a functioning affordable minivan is obviously not going to accommodate for that.
A minivan in motion is a LOT harder to break into than a static apartment
Agreed. But a static minivan is a LOT easier to break into than a static apartment.
Your idea that someone is going to "pump a lot of gas into a van" is stupid so I'll not even dignify that with a response.
Are you aware of the fairly common method of committing suicide by looping back the exhaust of your car into it?
http://lostallhope.com/suicide...
I only suggested it to preempt silly remarks like "I'll have a shotgun in the van and if anyone smashes in a window, that'll be the last thing he does".
Walmart lets you park in a lot overnight
"While free overnight stays at Walmart may be something that may seem attractive, always check with the store to see if they allow camping. In addition, in some cities/states, it is illegal."
Also, you can bet your bottom the policy will evaporate if thousands of people start doing it. At the very least it will become problematic due to a lack of space.
You could simply have it drive all night.
I forgot you were an American. Driving 50km/h for 8h totals 400km each night. Assuming 20km/liter, we're talking 20l, so roughly 20EUR if you're buying diesel. Each night. Just in fuel costs.
It also entails 400km*365d / year (=146.000km) in extra wear and tear on your vehicle. Now I know that modern vehicles will need less maintenance, but 146.000km a year on top of what you drive during the other 16h of the day is going to have a significant impact. If you're lucky, you'll only have to buy a brand new minivan every three years.
Silly Belgians. It's IDDQD on a normal keyboard :P
Here's an out-of-the-box thought: Put the monitors somewhere else.
http://www.cnet.com/news/bmw-d...
Was your first apartment a cardboard box?
Minivans are ridiculously small compared to 'most cramped first apartments'.
Also, it's not exactly legal to 'go wherever to sleep for the night [in your car]'. Many places have regulations that prohibit doing this, especially urban areas.
And then there is the matter of safety. A minivan in 'wherever' is a much softer target than an apartment in a populated building.
Added bonuses for the thief:
- Finding out how many residents (potential threats) there are and where they are in the minivan is trivial. Hell, he could just pump a bunch of gas into your minivan and kill or knock out everybody in it.
- After that, he doesn't even have to search the premises for valuable stuff. He just blindfolds and ties you up, drives away with your minivan and everything and everybody in it. You could (if you're lucky) wake up in the middle of the fucking desert and have no idea what happened to you.
I'd like to add to this that not just the concept of commercials becomes foreign to you, but even more so the actual content of them.
Once you're not used to commercials anymore, their absurdity becomes very readily apparent: Three people in big plastic balls rolling into a pool and subsequently drinking ice tea(tm). What the actual fuck?
We all understand that the main thing about commercials is standing out and getting brand recognition, but that changes nothing about how weird it is to behold them.
Watch the video again. Almost all sample applications worked by swiping, etc. The only time they show a cursor when not hovering is in the beginning, when explaining the technology.
I'm not saying a cursor is required for all modes of interaction, but unless the gestures are broad and simple, including a cursor is a good idea. Not requiring the user to hover whilst positioning is also a good idea.
Also, I think you forgot to say: "Hey man, thanks for the link explaining what cursors are. My understanding of the word was clearly lacking and in hindsight my slight snarkiness in response to your comment was unwarranted, for which I apologize. I'll try to do a basic web search before I comment, the next time."