I'd start with http://www.kenrockwell.com/ where a guy who is a true independent provides reviews and advice on all kinds of cameras. He has great advice on the current best cameras, both point-and-shoot as well as DSLR. Oh, and if you decide to buy one, use the links he has because he gets sponsorship from vendors. His site is worth it and has become one of my goto places when buying a camera.
Now, for my part I will say that for a long time I had a Nikon D40 and a Kodak Z612. Both in the 6MP range they were fantastic cameras. The Kodak was my "carry most of the time point-and-shoot" while the D40 was my "take when I KNOW I'll be taking pictures" DSLR. Hell, if you can pick up this same pair of cameras cheap and used then they're one of the best combos you can get at the moment. I picked the Kodak specifically because it had a good lens; megapixels are nothing, storage is irrelevant... battery life was also excellent on the Kodak though used camera batteries instead of "gas station batteries". This meant that I had to have a few rechargeables lying around that I had charged.
I still have the Kodak, but the D40 is lost and lamented (broken beyond effective repair). I'll be buying again in the new year and am looking very seriously at the D3100, and as a point and shoot I'll probably go with Ken Rockwell's recommendation of the Canon S95 IS.
I'd say if you just want one camera, then again Ken Rockwell's suggestion is the Canon S100 IS. It's pricey but I've seen some of the captures and they're incredibly impressive. The S95 IS is cheaper and the quality is almost exactly as good (though a bit less flexible). Honestly though the key is not the sensors really... megapixels as I said are irrelevant. The key is a good lens... and for that you need to do some homework.
You laugh... but last year my girlfriend was caught up in a detailed customs search on returning to the USA from Ireland because she had quite a large number of books in her backpack. They seriously couldn't understand why she had so many large books with her at once in her carry-on. I can't even remember what the books were off the top of my head, but I think the most subversive thing she was carrying was probably the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
This year for our trip to Germany, she got a Kindle.:)
The difference being that when Star Trek was released, the Trek franchise was pretty much dead in the water, whereas Doctor Who is currently pretty damn successful; it's either going to have to be canon (and thus a commercial failure) or non-canon and thus not really Doctor Who.
Not really sure I agree with that. It's quite possible to create a canon Doctor Who that would be commercially successful. To my mind, the only piece of Doctor Who that could be turned into a movie though would be the beginning. That is; the point at which The Doctor stole the Tardis... or when the Tardis stole him depending on your POV of course:) There's no reason at all he couldn't do so as a young man and through the course of even a metric ton of movies grow into a crotchety old man who will eventually end up in England in the 1960's. There's no telling how much travel he did prior to the beginning of the TV series... could be a long time. That would be canon, has the potential to be a good movie (or more), doesn't restrict itself to Earth in any particular time period (how long did it take before The Dr. discovered his soft spot for Humans?) and doesn't need to get into that annoyingly complicated regeneration thing.
There's certainly a lot of potential there for an intelligent but less wise Doctor, learning how to fly the Tardis for the first time and perhaps dealing with the consequences of having stolen it.
And for the record, I DO agree that Star Trek was moribund due to mismanagement... but even as a fan of TOS, TNG and DS9 (and have a soft spot for Enterprise even though it was not great) I actually rather enjoyed the movie because I went in with no preconceived notions. I for one look forward to a sequel.
I will say that I run a Motorola Atrix, and yes I have the laptop dock. Yes, mine is overclocked to 1.3Ghz rather than the stock 1.0Ghz, but I will say as a desktop machine it's pretty damned awesome. It runs the basics I need on a daily basis, and with some hacks in place I have terminal sessions and apt-get that I can use to install arbitrary software. I'm also running the "WebTop" environment from my SD card so I have more space.
I can do about 90% of everything I ever need to do in that environment. I can SSH to servers, I can RDP to Windows boxes, I can fire up Firefox and/or Thunderbird for my basic Internet needs. Hell, I can even VPN if I need to when I'm remote. It adds a whole layer of flexibility that I love. Now, I can't play games on it except stuff like Solitaire, but I generally play games on XBox anyway. I also can't do much in the way of photo manipulation because yes it is a tad slower than I'm used to with my laptop.
I personally don't think the WebTop environment is all that well optimized for the slow CPU... seems pretty much like an Ubuntu installation to me. I will say though that I am taking a trip to South Carolina at the end of the month and have no intention to take my full laptop with me. Instead I intend to take my Lapdock and my phone and call it good.
Useful for what? Why does a child need their own telephone?
Because my ex wife and son's mother is a diagnosed sociopath with a felony record who has a absolute belief that only she can care for our child despite the fact that the state has told her otherwise. I would like my son to be able to call 911 and/or me if he even sees a hint that her car's waiting for him in the parking lot of the school. Again.
... and while I think I was reasonably entertained for two hours, I left the theater feeling pretty hollow. I just didn't feel like this was a terribly satisfying movie.
The style, the direction, even the acting were all phenomenal. Much better than you usually expect from Hollywood pulp... but from the guy who directed "The Rocketeer" which is one of THE best period hero movies I've ever seen, you would truly expect nothing less. And that was part of my problem; all the ingredients were there... hell, even the writing was pretty damned good through most of it. For some reason though, it never really gelled together in the same way that the aforementioned Rocketeer did. There was no sense of wonder, no sense that incredible things were happening. Captain America didn't seem to be so much shaping events as just present when they took place. The ancillary characters like "Dum Dum" Dugan just seemed thrown in to appease the geek crowd who wanted to see it... he really had no role beyond existing through the entire movie.
It really played as a by-the-numbers superhero origin movie, but without any real soul. The original Chris Reeves Superman managed to create an origin story with heart and soul... why the hell have few done that since? I digress though. I agree with Taco that I also viewed Captain America as a second-tier hero... one whom I was unfamiliar with his backstory, and really only became familiar with him through references in other comics I read as a kid. Part of this was maybe growing up in Europe... just the titular character name would've probably made me roll my eyes even as a kid... I honestly don't remember. However, despite much reading of Fantastic Four, Batman, Spiderman et all, I almost never remember even SEEING a Captain America comic. Still, I had no desire to go see it at all until I heard positive rumblings, and then found out Joe Johnston was at the helm. Then I was suddenly interested... so since I had a few hours to kill I figured I'd go see it.
I should also say that I found the ending rather disappointing as well. It was like they built up and built up and then the ending was more of a whimper than a bang. And there is a problem with the ending in that it's impossible to understand what just happened unless you are familiar with the backstory. I only really "got" the ending after the fact when I read a few Wikipedia articles before heading to bed. Yeah... I suspected that's what happened, but I have a long history of reading comic books and understanding most of their conceits. But to the average viewer who maybe is only a casual comic book fan? I don't think they'd get it... or they'd be thinking... well... the wrong things to be honest. It just didn't make sense within or without the narrative as displayed on screen... even in subtext. That's just sloppy fanboyish writing. Oh, and the mid-section "Hydra Hunt" was skimmed over in a very sloppy fashion... I understand they wanted to finish this one movie so they could move over to Avengers, but I really would've liked to have seen a solo Captain America movie with a sequel to cover all of the hunting down of Hydra... THEN finish it up with a grand finale. Hell, there could've been enough there to fill a couple of movies, but here it feels constrained by the rush to get to next summer.
Now, I may sound negative but I still came away entertained. It was a good movie, but in my opinion not great. There were some great little references to movies that have almost nothing to do with the Avengers universe... I even spotted what I think was an oblique reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark (although the timing is off since Raiders was set some 5 or 6 years earlier). Those kinds of things made me smile a little, and I really did enjoy Hugo Weaving in his role as Schmidt. After a decade I think I'm finally able to watch him without ending every sentence of his with "Mr. Anderson". Chris Evans was actually great, but I knew he could act because I thought he was great in Sunshine as well. The rest of the case were pretty bland th
The Hurd is radically different platform for application and OS development. Linux is no more than another POSIX implementation and the concepts are well known to all so it is easier to get contributions from the mainstream community.
But isn't that itself part of the problem? If you're going to introduce something that's a paradigm shift, you either need to get a lot of people to shift with you or relegate yourself to "also-ran" status while a small group continue to work on it. Linux gained traction because in its day there was just nothing like it out there. Operating systems were closed, limited or just plain useless to most and Linux filled a niche that could just as easily have been filled with HURD. But HURD is a day late and a dollar short; that ship has sailed.
Because it's a radically different platform for application and OS development, you're going to find a lot of resistance to developing on it simply because it's too different. Linux had the advantage of building on what had come before, and for all its warts has become hugely successful as a result. These days, for most of what people wish to accomplish, Linux is a known, well documented and stable platform for which to write. It's also "good enough" in most instances that the extra work involved in developing to a new paradigm just isn't worth it.
Like it or not, because of this commercial support for developing for HURD is going to be a long time coming if it comes at all. At least for the immediate to mid-term future, HURD developers are going to be in low demand but also low supply... which means salaries are often going to be higher for a HURD developer. A manager looking to build his empire isn't going to use HURD unless he's got some agenda beyond just making money; he's going to use Linux and hire a half dozen entry level Linux hackers for the price of one HURD developer. And that's assuming HURD even gains any traction at all in the corporate space, which let's face it is one of the things that really pushed Linux to the success it has met today.
I may be wrong, but HURD is a solution to a problem that was already solved twenty years ago. The world has moved on, and now we're looking for solutions for other problems. Maybe HURD will be the answer to one of them, I don't know... but until Linux is no longer "good enough" to make work I just don't see it.
They're 200W today... by next year they'll be 180W... by the year after 160W... etc.
Solar panels degrade over time, and you have to keep them clean to maximize efficiency (not easy on a roof actually). Plus, as time progresses I think you'll find your energy consumption tends to rise rather than fall; new devices, new toys, air conditioning compressor that gets older and less efficient every year etc.
Still, probably not going to stop me from installing some PV shingles in the future:)
Have you seen what goes on with most roof repairs on 50 year old houses? Most of the time they are fixed to 50 year old standards, too. I've seen it too often; either the contractor fixing the roof is skimming some money off the top by cheaping out on materials, or the homeowner is. Few houses actually get upgraded to modern standards.
Bingo... got it in one. While I run Ubuntu natively with a Windows VM for iTunes (for syncing my iPhone and managing my photos) on one of my laptops (my home one), on my work computer I do it the other way around. The simple reason for this is; it's easier. My work laptop is an Alienware M11xR2, which uses the Nvidia Optimus which is currently unsupported under Linux. The only operating system supported on the machine is Windows 7 (as far as I know), and that's fine with me because I can leverage the strengths of both OS's pretty evenly. Everything works, and if it doesn't I get to call Dell.
For my Ubuntu VM I actually run Xming, which allows me to have nicely seamless windows that are pretty well integrated with the desktop, though granted I'd probably have better integration with VMware Workstation... but I happen to like Virtualbox just because I'm more familiar with it on the desktop. Either way, I get to leverage both, and still fire up games on my nice 21" monitors and have full 3D acceleration when I feel like it. Ironic since it's my work computer, but my "home stuff" computer doesn't have the horsepower to play modern games anyway... and I'd rather play games on my XBox if it comes to that.
And herein lies the irony in the "green" movement. The greenies are crying out to use renewable energy sources, yet as soon as something like this is suggested they're the first ones to kick up a fuss about the damage to the environment. Yes, the desert has a very complex and fragile ecosystem that would be disrupted or even destroyed by those solar farms in the desert. Then there's the cost of actually getting that power back to civilization, which for wind or water power out at sea is significantly greater than across land... but even that brings up maintenance nightmares.
My opinion is that the greenest energy source we have when all is taken into account is nuclear at short range to the large population centers. However, there's far too much FUD about the safety of nuclear to make it viable, and so much red tape (and palms to be greased) to get a plant built at all that it becomes almost pointless. Until we come up with a more practical power source we have kind of screwed ourselves.
So while nuclear is more efficient space wise that isn't the only or even the most important metric.
Have you been to Europe? It's crowded to an extent you can't understand even if you happen to live on the East coast. The cost of land across Europe is significantly higher than in the USA, to the extent that space is in fact a VERY important metric when planning a powerplant. One of the reasons fuel is so costly (other than just taxes which are another matter entirely) is the cost of the land on which the refinery sits; an incredibly large amount of space relatively speaking.
I toured Europe for a few years, as well as having grown up in the UK. I am still amazed at the amount of open space in the US as well as the land prices.
The car in the video doesn't appear to have room for rear seats.
Actually, one of the wonderful things about the electric car is the compactness of the whole thing. The Model S is a hatchback, so has a large and open trunk already. For storage, you have space under the hood. The batteries are under the floor of the car and the motors are about the size of a large melon. Compared to an internal combustion engine, electric has the potential to allow much more efficient packaging of the vehicle and the Model S is taking advantage of that since it's designed from the ground up to be electric.
The Roadster didn't really benefit from it as much because it was really a retrofitted ICE car (the Elise) and thus the batteries had to be crammed in where the engine used to live. The S has no such problems.
The engineering's fascinating actually... there's loads of good reading on the net and forums.
Heh... my experience is that Mercedes drivers typically drive LESS than someone who owns a Honda Civic. Mostly because they can afford to live closer to the office. I know our CEO at work drives an S550 that he drives the 3 miles from his house every day and back again.
Because people who buy such cars are so totally worried about gas mileage. And never drive more than a hundred miles or so without stopping for several hours to refuel.
I just sold my BMW 545i and am driving my 15 year old Subaru (owned both at the same time). At around $60K you might have to chain me down to STOP me buying a Tesla model S because I think they're freaking cool. I love the engineering, I love the look (like a Maserati Quattroporte), I love the technology and I love the fact that they're really looking like they're going to deliver precisely what they promised at around the price point they promised. Something many auto manufacturers fail on.
The model S is a perfect fit for my lifestyle and driving during my daily commute. It would also be awesome for taking clients to lunch, where many of the people I take out are IT directors or CTO's who would appreciate the tech in the car.
Sorry, I'll have to agree with the general consensus here that you're either misinformed or an idiot. The fact that people have provided plenty of citations and examples of why your summary is blatantly wrong (not least of which within the article itself you linked) but you still insist that you're right just leads me to the latter conclusion.
Let me spell this out for you so you can research at your leisure (Google is your friend):
The Tesla Roadster was ALWAYS intended to be a limited production run car. Tesla sold MORE than they intended to build originally by about 40% The Roadster was never intended to sell alongside the Model S Tesla has a rather limited production facility and would rather use that space to build a more mass-market car. The Model S does not compete with ANYTHING around $20K-$30K. It's a direct competitor to the BMW 7 series and Mercedes S Class. Both of these cars sell at the same price as the Model S or higher once you option them out. The Model S will be extremely competitive with these and their current competitors. In fact, if you look at the standard options in the Model S then you're actually looking at a 5-series or E-Class price range, so it's actually cheaper. Tesla doesn't use government subsidies to function. You're thinking of GM and Chrysler. The roadster was a proof-of-concept that was for sale to the public. The concept was proved, the technologies improved and the S was engineered from those things that were learned.
There's far more I could write that's wrong with your arguments, but I really don't see the point unless you're actually going to research. However I don't see any evidence that you will. Yes, we get it; electric cars are not for you for whatever reason, and you have some axe to grind against Elon Musk. Get over it. I have looked at my driving over the last 18 months and I could easily buy a Model S for daily commuting duties. I rarely drive more than 60-80 miles in a day, and plugging it in at night would take me all of about 30 seconds when I pull into my garage. It's a different way of thinking about things, but if you're averse to that what the hell are you doing on a geek site? People who are so afraid of change as you seem to be are generally referred to as a curmudgeon. Yes, you can look that up on Google, too.
For me, I will continue to drive my 15 year old Subaru until the Model S is released. If it still matches with my lifestyle (quite likely) then I for one will gladly pay for the pleasure of owning one. While the car's bigger than I'd like, there's no doubt in my mind that owning such a wonderful piece of engineering (and quite frankly I believe a piece of history) will be awesome in ways few other vehicles can compete with. And yes, $60K or thereabouts is well within my price range. Last year I came within a whisker of buying a new BMW M3 loaded to the hilt for around $75K... I just didn't for personal reasons.
My 15 year old SVX is currently at 147K miles, and despite the front wheel bearings going bad (which I'll replace next weekend) the car's still going strong. Never a lick of engine trouble, and I only put a Forester transmission in it because the first one had a reversing problem and I wanted the faster takeoff from a 4.44 rear end.
All cars have their problems. Subarus are actually dead easy to work on and I've owned a couple of them as well as my SVX. They've also been among the most reliable I've ever owned. Try a BMW some time... while I loved the 330i I had for a while, it got expensive to keep running.
Oh and there's a reason they have high used value; because they're good cars that generally have better reliability than a Honda. Quite frankly the reason the Chevy Equinox has a low resale value is because it's crap.
The only part of your comment I'll disagree on is the part about the Nexus One. It was never designed as an iPhone competitor GooglePhone; it was a reference implementation and they sold it only because people "in the know" wanted it. The same is true of the Nexus S and the more recent Android releases.
Google seems to have little desire to compete toe-to-toe with Apple in the mobile market. They would rather produce the operating system and let the OEMs lead the hardware charge.
Seriously, is anyone really surprised by this? I use DropBox, and not once have I considered that my data in DropBox is completely private. Sure, I use it for transferring some documents that are potentially sensitive (a lot of documentation on a lawsuit I'm involved in for example) but where there's sensitive data I always encrypt the documents myself with TrueCrypt.
This is precisely why I think the "cloud" is a bad idea for corporations. Until there are guarantees and safeguards against data theft or loss there is no way that I would entrust my company's critical data to a third party provider. Yes, the costs of managing that data myself are higher but the risk of that data getting out of our control and management is greatly mitigated.
And what about a data breach? Loss of data due to crackers? Seriously... all it's going to take is for one of these cloud providers to become big enough that the majority of corporations using their services are completely without options when a breach occurs. The big provider can simply turn around and say "Well, crap happens but who else are you going to turn to?" and there's nothing the average corporation can do about it. There may be financial guarantees in place, but simply put the cat is already out of the bag at that point.
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I'd start with http://www.kenrockwell.com/ where a guy who is a true independent provides reviews and advice on all kinds of cameras. He has great advice on the current best cameras, both point-and-shoot as well as DSLR. Oh, and if you decide to buy one, use the links he has because he gets sponsorship from vendors. His site is worth it and has become one of my goto places when buying a camera.
Now, for my part I will say that for a long time I had a Nikon D40 and a Kodak Z612. Both in the 6MP range they were fantastic cameras. The Kodak was my "carry most of the time point-and-shoot" while the D40 was my "take when I KNOW I'll be taking pictures" DSLR. Hell, if you can pick up this same pair of cameras cheap and used then they're one of the best combos you can get at the moment. I picked the Kodak specifically because it had a good lens; megapixels are nothing, storage is irrelevant... battery life was also excellent on the Kodak though used camera batteries instead of "gas station batteries". This meant that I had to have a few rechargeables lying around that I had charged.
I still have the Kodak, but the D40 is lost and lamented (broken beyond effective repair). I'll be buying again in the new year and am looking very seriously at the D3100, and as a point and shoot I'll probably go with Ken Rockwell's recommendation of the Canon S95 IS.
I'd say if you just want one camera, then again Ken Rockwell's suggestion is the Canon S100 IS. It's pricey but I've seen some of the captures and they're incredibly impressive. The S95 IS is cheaper and the quality is almost exactly as good (though a bit less flexible). Honestly though the key is not the sensors really... megapixels as I said are irrelevant. The key is a good lens... and for that you need to do some homework.
Hope this helps.
You laugh... but last year my girlfriend was caught up in a detailed customs search on returning to the USA from Ireland because she had quite a large number of books in her backpack. They seriously couldn't understand why she had so many large books with her at once in her carry-on. I can't even remember what the books were off the top of my head, but I think the most subversive thing she was carrying was probably the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
This year for our trip to Germany, she got a Kindle. :)
I think I saw that movie. They called it "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" I think. It was horrible... I didn't finish.
The difference being that when Star Trek was released, the Trek franchise was pretty much dead in the water, whereas Doctor Who is currently pretty damn successful; it's either going to have to be canon (and thus a commercial failure) or non-canon and thus not really Doctor Who.
Not really sure I agree with that. It's quite possible to create a canon Doctor Who that would be commercially successful. To my mind, the only piece of Doctor Who that could be turned into a movie though would be the beginning. That is; the point at which The Doctor stole the Tardis... or when the Tardis stole him depending on your POV of course :) There's no reason at all he couldn't do so as a young man and through the course of even a metric ton of movies grow into a crotchety old man who will eventually end up in England in the 1960's. There's no telling how much travel he did prior to the beginning of the TV series... could be a long time. That would be canon, has the potential to be a good movie (or more), doesn't restrict itself to Earth in any particular time period (how long did it take before The Dr. discovered his soft spot for Humans?) and doesn't need to get into that annoyingly complicated regeneration thing.
There's certainly a lot of potential there for an intelligent but less wise Doctor, learning how to fly the Tardis for the first time and perhaps dealing with the consequences of having stolen it.
And for the record, I DO agree that Star Trek was moribund due to mismanagement... but even as a fan of TOS, TNG and DS9 (and have a soft spot for Enterprise even though it was not great) I actually rather enjoyed the movie because I went in with no preconceived notions. I for one look forward to a sequel.
I will say that I run a Motorola Atrix, and yes I have the laptop dock. Yes, mine is overclocked to 1.3Ghz rather than the stock 1.0Ghz, but I will say as a desktop machine it's pretty damned awesome. It runs the basics I need on a daily basis, and with some hacks in place I have terminal sessions and apt-get that I can use to install arbitrary software. I'm also running the "WebTop" environment from my SD card so I have more space.
I can do about 90% of everything I ever need to do in that environment. I can SSH to servers, I can RDP to Windows boxes, I can fire up Firefox and/or Thunderbird for my basic Internet needs. Hell, I can even VPN if I need to when I'm remote. It adds a whole layer of flexibility that I love. Now, I can't play games on it except stuff like Solitaire, but I generally play games on XBox anyway. I also can't do much in the way of photo manipulation because yes it is a tad slower than I'm used to with my laptop.
I personally don't think the WebTop environment is all that well optimized for the slow CPU... seems pretty much like an Ubuntu installation to me. I will say though that I am taking a trip to South Carolina at the end of the month and have no intention to take my full laptop with me. Instead I intend to take my Lapdock and my phone and call it good.
I remember seeing one on TV (so it must be true!@#!1!!!) where the victim was in a bathroom stall. But maybe someone came and flicked a cig on them :p
Because we all know that no-one smokes in the bathroom stalls. :)
Useful for what? Why does a child need their own telephone?
Because my ex wife and son's mother is a diagnosed sociopath with a felony record who has a absolute belief that only she can care for our child despite the fact that the state has told her otherwise. I would like my son to be able to call 911 and/or me if he even sees a hint that her car's waiting for him in the parking lot of the school. Again.
Coming soon from EA; the FPS of Populous.
... and while I think I was reasonably entertained for two hours, I left the theater feeling pretty hollow. I just didn't feel like this was a terribly satisfying movie.
The style, the direction, even the acting were all phenomenal. Much better than you usually expect from Hollywood pulp... but from the guy who directed "The Rocketeer" which is one of THE best period hero movies I've ever seen, you would truly expect nothing less. And that was part of my problem; all the ingredients were there... hell, even the writing was pretty damned good through most of it. For some reason though, it never really gelled together in the same way that the aforementioned Rocketeer did. There was no sense of wonder, no sense that incredible things were happening. Captain America didn't seem to be so much shaping events as just present when they took place. The ancillary characters like "Dum Dum" Dugan just seemed thrown in to appease the geek crowd who wanted to see it... he really had no role beyond existing through the entire movie.
It really played as a by-the-numbers superhero origin movie, but without any real soul. The original Chris Reeves Superman managed to create an origin story with heart and soul... why the hell have few done that since? I digress though. I agree with Taco that I also viewed Captain America as a second-tier hero... one whom I was unfamiliar with his backstory, and really only became familiar with him through references in other comics I read as a kid. Part of this was maybe growing up in Europe... just the titular character name would've probably made me roll my eyes even as a kid... I honestly don't remember. However, despite much reading of Fantastic Four, Batman, Spiderman et all, I almost never remember even SEEING a Captain America comic. Still, I had no desire to go see it at all until I heard positive rumblings, and then found out Joe Johnston was at the helm. Then I was suddenly interested... so since I had a few hours to kill I figured I'd go see it.
I should also say that I found the ending rather disappointing as well. It was like they built up and built up and then the ending was more of a whimper than a bang. And there is a problem with the ending in that it's impossible to understand what just happened unless you are familiar with the backstory. I only really "got" the ending after the fact when I read a few Wikipedia articles before heading to bed. Yeah... I suspected that's what happened, but I have a long history of reading comic books and understanding most of their conceits. But to the average viewer who maybe is only a casual comic book fan? I don't think they'd get it... or they'd be thinking... well... the wrong things to be honest. It just didn't make sense within or without the narrative as displayed on screen... even in subtext. That's just sloppy fanboyish writing. Oh, and the mid-section "Hydra Hunt" was skimmed over in a very sloppy fashion... I understand they wanted to finish this one movie so they could move over to Avengers, but I really would've liked to have seen a solo Captain America movie with a sequel to cover all of the hunting down of Hydra... THEN finish it up with a grand finale. Hell, there could've been enough there to fill a couple of movies, but here it feels constrained by the rush to get to next summer.
Now, I may sound negative but I still came away entertained. It was a good movie, but in my opinion not great. There were some great little references to movies that have almost nothing to do with the Avengers universe... I even spotted what I think was an oblique reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark (although the timing is off since Raiders was set some 5 or 6 years earlier). Those kinds of things made me smile a little, and I really did enjoy Hugo Weaving in his role as Schmidt. After a decade I think I'm finally able to watch him without ending every sentence of his with "Mr. Anderson". Chris Evans was actually great, but I knew he could act because I thought he was great in Sunshine as well. The rest of the case were pretty bland th
The Hurd is radically different platform for application and OS development. Linux is no more than another POSIX implementation and the concepts are well known to all so it is easier to get contributions from the mainstream community.
But isn't that itself part of the problem? If you're going to introduce something that's a paradigm shift, you either need to get a lot of people to shift with you or relegate yourself to "also-ran" status while a small group continue to work on it. Linux gained traction because in its day there was just nothing like it out there. Operating systems were closed, limited or just plain useless to most and Linux filled a niche that could just as easily have been filled with HURD. But HURD is a day late and a dollar short; that ship has sailed.
Because it's a radically different platform for application and OS development, you're going to find a lot of resistance to developing on it simply because it's too different. Linux had the advantage of building on what had come before, and for all its warts has become hugely successful as a result. These days, for most of what people wish to accomplish, Linux is a known, well documented and stable platform for which to write. It's also "good enough" in most instances that the extra work involved in developing to a new paradigm just isn't worth it.
Like it or not, because of this commercial support for developing for HURD is going to be a long time coming if it comes at all. At least for the immediate to mid-term future, HURD developers are going to be in low demand but also low supply... which means salaries are often going to be higher for a HURD developer. A manager looking to build his empire isn't going to use HURD unless he's got some agenda beyond just making money; he's going to use Linux and hire a half dozen entry level Linux hackers for the price of one HURD developer. And that's assuming HURD even gains any traction at all in the corporate space, which let's face it is one of the things that really pushed Linux to the success it has met today.
I may be wrong, but HURD is a solution to a problem that was already solved twenty years ago. The world has moved on, and now we're looking for solutions for other problems. Maybe HURD will be the answer to one of them, I don't know... but until Linux is no longer "good enough" to make work I just don't see it.
They're 200W today... by next year they'll be 180W... by the year after 160W... etc.
Solar panels degrade over time, and you have to keep them clean to maximize efficiency (not easy on a roof actually). Plus, as time progresses I think you'll find your energy consumption tends to rise rather than fall; new devices, new toys, air conditioning compressor that gets older and less efficient every year etc.
Still, probably not going to stop me from installing some PV shingles in the future :)
Have you seen what goes on with most roof repairs on 50 year old houses? Most of the time they are fixed to 50 year old standards, too. I've seen it too often; either the contractor fixing the roof is skimming some money off the top by cheaping out on materials, or the homeowner is. Few houses actually get upgraded to modern standards.
Bingo... got it in one. While I run Ubuntu natively with a Windows VM for iTunes (for syncing my iPhone and managing my photos) on one of my laptops (my home one), on my work computer I do it the other way around. The simple reason for this is; it's easier. My work laptop is an Alienware M11xR2, which uses the Nvidia Optimus which is currently unsupported under Linux. The only operating system supported on the machine is Windows 7 (as far as I know), and that's fine with me because I can leverage the strengths of both OS's pretty evenly. Everything works, and if it doesn't I get to call Dell.
For my Ubuntu VM I actually run Xming, which allows me to have nicely seamless windows that are pretty well integrated with the desktop, though granted I'd probably have better integration with VMware Workstation... but I happen to like Virtualbox just because I'm more familiar with it on the desktop. Either way, I get to leverage both, and still fire up games on my nice 21" monitors and have full 3D acceleration when I feel like it. Ironic since it's my work computer, but my "home stuff" computer doesn't have the horsepower to play modern games anyway... and I'd rather play games on my XBox if it comes to that.
On a less flippant note: It took France 15 years to build it's entire fleet of 56 power plants.
On a more flippant note, it would take the US 15 years to build one. Unfortunately, I'm not really kidding.
And herein lies the irony in the "green" movement. The greenies are crying out to use renewable energy sources, yet as soon as something like this is suggested they're the first ones to kick up a fuss about the damage to the environment. Yes, the desert has a very complex and fragile ecosystem that would be disrupted or even destroyed by those solar farms in the desert. Then there's the cost of actually getting that power back to civilization, which for wind or water power out at sea is significantly greater than across land... but even that brings up maintenance nightmares.
My opinion is that the greenest energy source we have when all is taken into account is nuclear at short range to the large population centers. However, there's far too much FUD about the safety of nuclear to make it viable, and so much red tape (and palms to be greased) to get a plant built at all that it becomes almost pointless. Until we come up with a more practical power source we have kind of screwed ourselves.
So while nuclear is more efficient space wise that isn't the only or even the most important metric.
Have you been to Europe? It's crowded to an extent you can't understand even if you happen to live on the East coast. The cost of land across Europe is significantly higher than in the USA, to the extent that space is in fact a VERY important metric when planning a powerplant. One of the reasons fuel is so costly (other than just taxes which are another matter entirely) is the cost of the land on which the refinery sits; an incredibly large amount of space relatively speaking.
I toured Europe for a few years, as well as having grown up in the UK. I am still amazed at the amount of open space in the US as well as the land prices.
The car in the video doesn't appear to have room for rear seats.
Actually, one of the wonderful things about the electric car is the compactness of the whole thing. The Model S is a hatchback, so has a large and open trunk already. For storage, you have space under the hood. The batteries are under the floor of the car and the motors are about the size of a large melon. Compared to an internal combustion engine, electric has the potential to allow much more efficient packaging of the vehicle and the Model S is taking advantage of that since it's designed from the ground up to be electric.
The Roadster didn't really benefit from it as much because it was really a retrofitted ICE car (the Elise) and thus the batteries had to be crammed in where the engine used to live. The S has no such problems.
The engineering's fascinating actually... there's loads of good reading on the net and forums.
Heh... my experience is that Mercedes drivers typically drive LESS than someone who owns a Honda Civic. Mostly because they can afford to live closer to the office. I know our CEO at work drives an S550 that he drives the 3 miles from his house every day and back again.
Because people who buy such cars are so totally worried about gas mileage. And never drive more than a hundred miles or so without stopping for several hours to refuel.
I just sold my BMW 545i and am driving my 15 year old Subaru (owned both at the same time). At around $60K you might have to chain me down to STOP me buying a Tesla model S because I think they're freaking cool. I love the engineering, I love the look (like a Maserati Quattroporte), I love the technology and I love the fact that they're really looking like they're going to deliver precisely what they promised at around the price point they promised. Something many auto manufacturers fail on.
The model S is a perfect fit for my lifestyle and driving during my daily commute. It would also be awesome for taking clients to lunch, where many of the people I take out are IT directors or CTO's who would appreciate the tech in the car.
Sorry, I'll have to agree with the general consensus here that you're either misinformed or an idiot. The fact that people have provided plenty of citations and examples of why your summary is blatantly wrong (not least of which within the article itself you linked) but you still insist that you're right just leads me to the latter conclusion.
Let me spell this out for you so you can research at your leisure (Google is your friend):
The Tesla Roadster was ALWAYS intended to be a limited production run car. Tesla sold MORE than they intended to build originally by about 40%
The Roadster was never intended to sell alongside the Model S
Tesla has a rather limited production facility and would rather use that space to build a more mass-market car.
The Model S does not compete with ANYTHING around $20K-$30K. It's a direct competitor to the BMW 7 series and Mercedes S Class. Both of these cars sell at the same price as the Model S or higher once you option them out. The Model S will be extremely competitive with these and their current competitors. In fact, if you look at the standard options in the Model S then you're actually looking at a 5-series or E-Class price range, so it's actually cheaper.
Tesla doesn't use government subsidies to function. You're thinking of GM and Chrysler.
The roadster was a proof-of-concept that was for sale to the public. The concept was proved, the technologies improved and the S was engineered from those things that were learned.
There's far more I could write that's wrong with your arguments, but I really don't see the point unless you're actually going to research. However I don't see any evidence that you will. Yes, we get it; electric cars are not for you for whatever reason, and you have some axe to grind against Elon Musk. Get over it. I have looked at my driving over the last 18 months and I could easily buy a Model S for daily commuting duties. I rarely drive more than 60-80 miles in a day, and plugging it in at night would take me all of about 30 seconds when I pull into my garage. It's a different way of thinking about things, but if you're averse to that what the hell are you doing on a geek site? People who are so afraid of change as you seem to be are generally referred to as a curmudgeon. Yes, you can look that up on Google, too.
For me, I will continue to drive my 15 year old Subaru until the Model S is released. If it still matches with my lifestyle (quite likely) then I for one will gladly pay for the pleasure of owning one. While the car's bigger than I'd like, there's no doubt in my mind that owning such a wonderful piece of engineering (and quite frankly I believe a piece of history) will be awesome in ways few other vehicles can compete with. And yes, $60K or thereabouts is well within my price range. Last year I came within a whisker of buying a new BMW M3 loaded to the hilt for around $75K... I just didn't for personal reasons.
I just have to post this;
My 15 year old SVX is currently at 147K miles, and despite the front wheel bearings going bad (which I'll replace next weekend) the car's still going strong. Never a lick of engine trouble, and I only put a Forester transmission in it because the first one had a reversing problem and I wanted the faster takeoff from a 4.44 rear end.
All cars have their problems. Subarus are actually dead easy to work on and I've owned a couple of them as well as my SVX. They've also been among the most reliable I've ever owned. Try a BMW some time... while I loved the 330i I had for a while, it got expensive to keep running.
Oh and there's a reason they have high used value; because they're good cars that generally have better reliability than a Honda. Quite frankly the reason the Chevy Equinox has a low resale value is because it's crap.
He's a politician. I don't think he's wired to give a straight answer.
The only part of your comment I'll disagree on is the part about the Nexus One. It was never designed as an iPhone competitor GooglePhone; it was a reference implementation and they sold it only because people "in the know" wanted it. The same is true of the Nexus S and the more recent Android releases.
Google seems to have little desire to compete toe-to-toe with Apple in the mobile market. They would rather produce the operating system and let the OEMs lead the hardware charge.
Seriously, is anyone really surprised by this? I use DropBox, and not once have I considered that my data in DropBox is completely private. Sure, I use it for transferring some documents that are potentially sensitive (a lot of documentation on a lawsuit I'm involved in for example) but where there's sensitive data I always encrypt the documents myself with TrueCrypt.
This is precisely why I think the "cloud" is a bad idea for corporations. Until there are guarantees and safeguards against data theft or loss there is no way that I would entrust my company's critical data to a third party provider. Yes, the costs of managing that data myself are higher but the risk of that data getting out of our control and management is greatly mitigated.
And what about a data breach? Loss of data due to crackers? Seriously... all it's going to take is for one of these cloud providers to become big enough that the majority of corporations using their services are completely without options when a breach occurs. The big provider can simply turn around and say "Well, crap happens but who else are you going to turn to?" and there's nothing the average corporation can do about it. There may be financial guarantees in place, but simply put the cat is already out of the bag at that point.
Did I say I thought it was a bad movie? I for one loved it :)