The United States is a Represenative Republic, a type of Democracy. Just because whinny foreigners (and sniveling spineless appeasing domestic liberals) do not like what the US is doing does not suddenly make it into a fascist state. There were protests HERE as well you know. What kind of a fascist state allows citizens to speak out against it again...??
You are seriously mentally deficient if you think students own ANYTHING that the University owns. Tuitions don't even cover the total costs of getting an education, and haven't for decades. Ever hear of Endowment funds? If anything, the alumni own the universities along with corporate donors, the government, and philanthropic individuals.
And no there won't be riots. Not as many students think stealing someone else's intellectual property is as important as being able to get your class mate drunk enough to date rape her.
The safest thing to do if you should tape such a thing is to send copies to as many media organizations, foreign and domestic as you can think of. Send a copy to NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, The BBC, some news companies in France, Germany, Austraila, Canada, Japan......etc.
I don't know how you can be more angry at Conservatives and not at Liberals considering the kind of society we live in where the first response to any incident is "sue". There is no longer a concept of personal responsibility. Its always "the other guy's" fault.
You fat? Sue McDonalds. You fail your classes? Sue your teachers. You offended by something someone has said? Sue the author. You want to maintain your manufacturing job that is an overpriced labor cost to your company? Sue to prevent outsourcing.....etc.
How useful is something people can only use in most of the country for a few days a year? No matter where you live in the US at some point its going to rain. In other places it will snow. THen there's hot and cold. How long do you think people will want to ride these things while they are freezing or sweating their asses off?
Your making the assumption that everyone who is flashy is also unwise with their money to the point of insolvency. Someone might have 10 Porches for example, but be a millionaire in the double digits so its of no major consequence to their retirement.
I actually have read that and its a great book. I am not some flashy pretentious tacky person. I just want to know why some people hate those folks who ARE like that. I don't have a problem with them myself.
There is an upper limit to productivity. People need slack time in their lives. I've actually read articles which stated that folks looked forward to their time stuck in traffic as a period in which they could unwind and relax and think about things that otherwise don't have time to do so during the workday.
I'm 22. In 50 years I'll be 72. I'll still be here to feel the affects. I AM taking responsibility.
Not everyone needs their own deeded parking spot. I live in Boston, one of the worst cities for parking in the country and you can still park your car most of the time without any problems. I will admit I left out car insurance. My mistake. Still, you take a cheapo $1000 car off of ebay, pay $800 a year in insurance and add your gas bill which will vary due to your particular usage. How is this suppossed to be costly again?
Noise, more noise comes from idiots blasting their car stereo's than from the cars themselves. Unless your house is right next to a freeway then you really don't have much to complain about.
NYC is a city of 8 million people. Out of that 1640 die from car accidents during a six year period. That means every year only 273 people are killed due to our use of automobiles. I find that to be a more than an acceptable level of death. If you are talking about the entire state of NY then its even a more acceptable level of death.
Now lets factor in the pollution issue. Due to our increasingly tough emissions laws the US puts out less and less pollution each year. The hole in the ozone layer is already shrinking. Why does 50 years seem like such a bad thing? You cannot change the world overnight.
Face it, until transporters are invented the car is here to stay.
I never said it was everything, but it is something. I haven't been in high school for quite some time now. So I ask you again, what is wrong with status?
Uh no. Its not jealousy or envy. This damn thing sucks and all the hype it got was annoying thats why people are glad the company that made it is in trouble now.
Here is a link to a list of reasons why this thing sucks and none of them have anything to do with envy: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=54394&c id=5334 952
Fatalities suck, but death is something we'll never eliminate. We'll put up with a certain amount to have our precious cars.
Pollution is being handled with hybrids and fuel-cell developments. The cars 50 years from now won't be polluters at all.
Noise? You get used to it. Deal.
Cost? Cost of what? Bottled water costs more than gas and you can get cheap ass used cars off of ebay. What cost?
Traffic? Yeah it sucks. It can be managed though. Besides that gives you more time to sit in your wonderful car and read, listen to the radio, surf the web...etc (I'm talking during gridlock conditions here not just when your waiting for a neighborhood streetlight to turn green). Besides, take a look at my hometown's Big Dig project in Boston. We put our entire central artery undergrown. Despite the MASSIVE and OBSCENE budget and time overruns, hundreds of cities around the country are interested in doing the same thing.
The space they take up? Do you know how large the US is in terms of space? We're the 4th largest country on the planet. We're not running out of room anytime soon. That being said, if cities are to be redesigned for any reason it surely won't be to accomdate Segways but to accomdate Hummers instead.
Despite the hate, SUV sales contine to grow, grow grow, grow!
So in conclusion, the Great American Love Affair with the Car is one of those very few immortal relationships. It would be best to try to make our most beloved form of travel better than to resort to undignifying and demeaning forms of travel such as tiny useless ultra-expensive scooters.
...this is the best story Slashdot has posted in a long time. You don't know how happy it makes me to hear that this company is in financial trouble. This was a moronic idea from the start. A friggin $4k+ SCOOTER?
This scooter (and I love calling it that since Dean thinks it shouldn't be called such a demoralizing name) had several problems from the start.
1. Can it keep you warm in the winter? NO 2. Can it keep you cool in the summer? NO 3. Will you be able to take girls out on a date on such a thing? Possibly but no girl will agree to such an arraingement so effectively the answer is NO 4. Will you look cool on such a contraption? Yes for 5 minutes. For the rest of all eternity, NO (and yes this one matters you anti-conformist geeks. Normal people care if they look like geeks and try to avoid doing so.) 5. Is it as cheap as most other scooters? NO 6. Will it get stolen as soon as you park it next to your local trendy cafe? YES 7. Is it awkward? YES. 8. Was it overhyped? YES. 9. Will it in the words of Steven Peter Jobs, CEO and Founder of Apple and CEO of Pixar "change the way cities are built?" NO. Don't listen to Jobs. He knows Macs. He knows animation. He knows nothing else. 10. And top ten on the NDP's list of why the Segway sucks, "FAT MAN ON A LITLE SCOOTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
If you read this Wired story that was linked from the orignal Slashdot story you'll see why this failed: http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382 ,51353,00.html
This is a dot.com era attitude. The development of the internet is NOT being held back. If you want to be a content provider then sign up for a higher bandwidth business connection and quit yer bitchin.
Slashdot Mirror
.... that all Open Source developers are against the war?
Sarcasm is invincible.
Everyone in this country is paid what the market will bear. EVERYONE.
I've never ever heard of this site and I consider myself pretty geek literate. How many others have never heard of it?
The United States is a Represenative Republic, a type of Democracy. Just because whinny foreigners (and sniveling spineless appeasing domestic liberals) do not like what the US is doing does not suddenly make it into a fascist state. There were protests HERE as well you know. What kind of a fascist state allows citizens to speak out against it again...??
You are seriously mentally deficient if you think students own ANYTHING that the University owns. Tuitions don't even cover the total costs of getting an education, and haven't for decades. Ever hear of Endowment funds? If anything, the alumni own the universities along with corporate donors, the government, and philanthropic individuals.
And no there won't be riots. Not as many students think stealing someone else's intellectual property is as important as being able to get your class mate drunk enough to date rape her.
The safest thing to do if you should tape such a thing is to send copies to as many media organizations, foreign and domestic as you can think of. Send a copy to NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, The BBC, some news companies in France, Germany, Austraila, Canada, Japan......etc.
The space shuttle still belongs to NASA. They need it to analyze what went wrong so less people die in the future.
I don't know how you can be more angry at Conservatives and not at Liberals considering the kind of society we live in where the first response to any incident is "sue". There is no longer a concept of personal responsibility. Its always "the other guy's" fault.
You fat? Sue McDonalds.
You fail your classes? Sue your teachers.
You offended by something someone has said? Sue the author.
You want to maintain your manufacturing job that is an overpriced labor cost to your company? Sue to prevent outsourcing.....etc.
How useful is something people can only use in most of the country for a few days a year? No matter where you live in the US at some point its going to rain. In other places it will snow. THen there's hot and cold. How long do you think people will want to ride these things while they are freezing or sweating their asses off?
Your making the assumption that everyone who is flashy is also unwise with their money to the point of insolvency. Someone might have 10 Porches for example, but be a millionaire in the double digits so its of no major consequence to their retirement.
Its Arabian descent
I actually have read that and its a great book. I am not some flashy pretentious tacky person. I just want to know why some people hate those folks who ARE like that. I don't have a problem with them myself.
There is an upper limit to productivity. People need slack time in their lives. I've actually read articles which stated that folks looked forward to their time stuck in traffic as a period in which they could unwind and relax and think about things that otherwise don't have time to do so during the workday.
I'm 22. In 50 years I'll be 72. I'll still be here to feel the affects. I AM taking responsibility.
Not everyone needs their own deeded parking spot. I live in Boston, one of the worst cities for parking in the country and you can still park your car most of the time without any problems. I will admit I left out car insurance. My mistake. Still, you take a cheapo $1000 car off of ebay, pay $800 a year in insurance and add your gas bill which will vary due to your particular usage. How is this suppossed to be costly again?
Noise, more noise comes from idiots blasting their car stereo's than from the cars themselves. Unless your house is right next to a freeway then you really don't have much to complain about.
NYC is a city of 8 million people. Out of that 1640 die from car accidents during a six year period. That means every year only 273 people are killed due to our use of automobiles. I find that to be a more than an acceptable level of death. If you are talking about the entire state of NY then its even a more acceptable level of death.
Now lets factor in the pollution issue. Due to our increasingly tough emissions laws the US puts out less and less pollution each year. The hole in the ozone layer is already shrinking. Why does 50 years seem like such a bad thing? You cannot change the world overnight.
Face it, until transporters are invented the car is here to stay.
I never said it was everything, but it is something. I haven't been in high school for quite some time now. So I ask you again, what is wrong with status?
Uh no. Its not jealousy or envy. This damn thing sucks and all the hype it got was annoying thats why people are glad the company that made it is in trouble now.
c id=5334 952
Here is a link to a list of reasons why this thing sucks and none of them have anything to do with envy:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=54394&
Fatalities suck, but death is something we'll never eliminate. We'll put up with a certain amount to have our precious cars.
Pollution is being handled with hybrids and fuel-cell developments. The cars 50 years from now won't be polluters at all.
Noise? You get used to it. Deal.
Cost? Cost of what? Bottled water costs more than gas and you can get cheap ass used cars off of ebay. What cost?
Traffic? Yeah it sucks. It can be managed though. Besides that gives you more time to sit in your wonderful car and read, listen to the radio, surf the web...etc (I'm talking during gridlock conditions here not just when your waiting for a neighborhood streetlight to turn green). Besides, take a look at my hometown's Big Dig project in Boston. We put our entire central artery undergrown. Despite the MASSIVE and OBSCENE budget and time overruns, hundreds of cities around the country are interested in doing the same thing.
The space they take up? Do you know how large the US is in terms of space? We're the 4th largest country on the planet. We're not running out of room anytime soon. That being said, if cities are to be redesigned for any reason it surely won't be to accomdate Segways but to accomdate Hummers instead.
Despite the hate, SUV sales contine to grow, grow grow, grow!
So in conclusion, the Great American Love Affair with the Car is one of those very few immortal relationships. It would be best to try to make our most beloved form of travel better than to resort to undignifying and demeaning forms of travel such as tiny useless ultra-expensive scooters.
Whats wrong with a status symbol?
Without them how else do you display your status?
...this is the best story Slashdot has posted in a long time. You don't know how happy it makes me to hear that this company is in financial trouble. This was a moronic idea from the start. A friggin $4k+ SCOOTER?
This scooter (and I love calling it that since Dean thinks it shouldn't be called such a demoralizing name) had several problems from the start.
1. Can it keep you warm in the winter? NO
2. Can it keep you cool in the summer? NO
3. Will you be able to take girls out on a date on such a thing? Possibly but no girl will agree to such an arraingement so effectively the answer is NO
4. Will you look cool on such a contraption? Yes for 5 minutes. For the rest of all eternity, NO (and yes this one matters you anti-conformist geeks. Normal people care if they look like geeks and try to avoid doing so.)
5. Is it as cheap as most other scooters? NO
6. Will it get stolen as soon as you park it next to your local trendy cafe? YES
7. Is it awkward? YES.
8. Was it overhyped? YES.
9. Will it in the words of Steven Peter Jobs, CEO and Founder of Apple and CEO of Pixar "change the way cities are built?" NO. Don't listen to Jobs. He knows Macs. He knows animation. He knows nothing else.
10. And top ten on the NDP's list of why the Segway sucks, "FAT MAN ON A LITLE SCOOTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
People want to know what they want to know, not what YOU want them to know.
That is not a hatred of all knowledge. There is a difference.
Unfortunately? You mean fortunately. Otherwise no programming work would ever actually get done.
4-6 of these things all up against a wall would make for an awesome gaming system.
Consumers usually think they are right. Companies usually show them that they aren't.
If you read this Wired story that was linked from the orignal Slashdot story you'll see why this failed:2 ,51353,00 .html
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,138
This is a dot.com era attitude. The development of the internet is NOT being held back. If you want to be a content provider then sign up for a higher bandwidth business connection and quit yer bitchin.