You need to envision what a commute is like in transit-intensive Japan. You go everywhere on trains, but there's a "last kilometer" problem in needing to walk between your home and a station, and then from the station to your office. In Tokyo, where the next guy on the train is pressed against you holding a newspaper folded to the size of a handkerchief over your head, there's no room for a folding bike. People carry nothing larger than a briefcase or a laptop. A folding bike is no more portable in this context than a steamer trunk.
If you live out in the country, you can take a bike to the station. Not a folding bike, a regular one, because you leave it at the station during the day. You see thousands of them at rural stops like Ozaku or Kawagoe, all unlocked.
But in the city, the cheapest apartments and small businesses are packed into a dense cube around each transit station. If you live in a good neighborhood, your high-rise condo ("manshon" will be a couple of kilometers away from the station, by a spidery network of streets that in some cases are narrow enough that an American can stretch out his arms and touch the walls on each side. Your WalkCar would come in really handy on this part of your commute, and you can carry it to the office. If you work in a neighborhood where the streets are not too crowded, you can ride it at that end also.
Mr. Blart has a different use case. He gets on a Segway at the beginning of his shift, and never has occasion to step off except to pause at the food court for more cheese and nachos. Having him use the Segway for these activities protects the mall customers from unsightly waddling.
At the same time, I have seen precisely one Segway in use in the wild, other than for tours, since the day it was introduced. It was about five years ago on the Las Vegas Strip. The Japanese invention strikes me as being a lot more useful.
This is much more useful than a Segway because when you step off, you can easily carry it, say up a flight of stairs and through the chikatetsu system (This is Japan we're talking about) carrying it in a little bag like a laptop. Later, it can be used to zip past that long boring stretch of roadside. Then you pick it up and duck into a Lawson's to do some shopping.
Stateside, you can step out of your Escalade at the mall, zip through that drab parking lot, while holding it up to deflect bullets if the need arises. Just try any of those things, in either country, with a Segway.
"First thing that comes to mind is indebted college kids using this."
The zeroth thing that comes to mind is using this as an advanced form of "swatting." Imagine how much paperwork you can cause for your victim as he tries to convince everyone that he has come back to life.
"Unfortunately, treatment will still cost more than ever due to lawsuits and drug costs. The answer? Don't be sick."
No, the answer is to run your AI in a place not subject to those demented US laws on lawsuits and drug costs. Medical tourism, already a significant factor in some countries, will go into overdrive.
The earth-Moon system is not binary by strict definition, because the center of mass around which they orbit is still about 1,000 miles inside the Earth. But that's enough for the Earth to wobble noticeably as it orbits the Sun.
As a prosperous city in a free country. Had the war gone differently, it might have ended up in a regime that would have looked like North Korea, or been a battleground on which a much larger number of civilians would have died in combat.
I have actually used the handbrake as a backup brake after a total brake failure (Volkswagen Rabbit, the Segway of cars). Yes, it's an emergency brake.
" I guess I've met non-arrogant rich people who are super lovely and moral people."
A know a billionaire couple who are the nicest people you would ever want to meet. They own a closely held company whose name most of us in here would know. Fortunately my town doesn't play by "The Rules" I mentioned above.
Let the politically frantic stew in their own treasured assumptions.
It's the rules. Every rich person who is not arrogant has to be guilt-ridden.
OR...maybe he's a nerd who, having more money than most of the other nerds, can indulge his geekly interests in a more world-changing way than installing the newest release of Debian and vainly looking for something useful to run on it.
Photo print services are now a far cheaper-for-given-quality model for the average person, whether you want ordinary 4x6's of your vacation for that one relative who isn't on Facebook or a framed giclée wedding print.
Slashdot Mirror
You need to envision what a commute is like in transit-intensive Japan. You go everywhere on trains, but there's a "last kilometer" problem in needing to walk between your home and a station, and then from the station to your office. In Tokyo, where the next guy on the train is pressed against you holding a newspaper folded to the size of a handkerchief over your head, there's no room for a folding bike. People carry nothing larger than a briefcase or a laptop. A folding bike is no more portable in this context than a steamer trunk.
If you live out in the country, you can take a bike to the station. Not a folding bike, a regular one, because you leave it at the station during the day. You see thousands of them at rural stops like Ozaku or Kawagoe, all unlocked.
But in the city, the cheapest apartments and small businesses are packed into a dense cube around each transit station. If you live in a good neighborhood, your high-rise condo ("manshon" will be a couple of kilometers away from the station, by a spidery network of streets that in some cases are narrow enough that an American can stretch out his arms and touch the walls on each side. Your WalkCar would come in really handy on this part of your commute, and you can carry it to the office. If you work in a neighborhood where the streets are not too crowded, you can ride it at that end also.
*COUGH*Slate.com*COUGH*
Mr. Blart has a different use case. He gets on a Segway at the beginning of his shift, and never has occasion to step off except to pause at the food court for more cheese and nachos. Having him use the Segway for these activities protects the mall customers from unsightly waddling.
At the same time, I have seen precisely one Segway in use in the wild, other than for tours, since the day it was introduced. It was about five years ago on the Las Vegas Strip. The Japanese invention strikes me as being a lot more useful.
This is much more useful than a Segway because when you step off, you can easily carry it, say up a flight of stairs and through the chikatetsu system (This is Japan we're talking about) carrying it in a little bag like a laptop. Later, it can be used to zip past that long boring stretch of roadside. Then you pick it up and duck into a Lawson's to do some shopping.
Stateside, you can step out of your Escalade at the mall, zip through that drab parking lot, while holding it up to deflect bullets if the need arises. Just try any of those things, in either country, with a Segway.
But if it had more range, it would make sense for the places where people walk, meaning not on the Interstate.
" I mean their souls are dead already so it'd only be fitting"
This is a little-known requirement for presidential candidates to get large donors.
"First thing that comes to mind is indebted college kids using this."
The zeroth thing that comes to mind is using this as an advanced form of "swatting." Imagine how much paperwork you can cause for your victim as he tries to convince everyone that he has come back to life.
"Unfortunately, treatment will still cost more than ever due to lawsuits and drug costs. The answer? Don't be sick."
No, the answer is to run your AI in a place not subject to those demented US laws on lawsuits and drug costs. Medical tourism, already a significant factor in some countries, will go into overdrive.
Hence the dissolving bathtub scene. Probably the French can't get their hands on hydrofluoric acid.
The earth-Moon system is not binary by strict definition, because the center of mass around which they orbit is still about 1,000 miles inside the Earth. But that's enough for the Earth to wobble noticeably as it orbits the Sun.
As a prosperous city in a free country. Had the war gone differently, it might have ended up in a regime that would have looked like North Korea, or been a battleground on which a much larger number of civilians would have died in combat.
Will it still require a PhD to turn the lights on and off, as issued by the Escher School of Hotel Design?
I have actually used the handbrake as a backup brake after a total brake failure (Volkswagen Rabbit, the Segway of cars). Yes, it's an emergency brake.
Any of you old timers remember the Chemical Rubber Handbook? It's a site now also:
http://www.hbcpnetbase.com/
And had we not spent the money, the same people would still be literally starving to death.
Pustulate n: An asserted proposition that stinks.
Would that mean that skating time in this park would cost comparably to time in an MRI machine? Not even Lexus drivers will be able to afford this.
This vehicle is going to be Detroit's answer to the deferred highway maintenance problem.
"It's also already fixed in the latest 10.10.5 beta."
Good. Now can we work in the iOS bug that allows malicious ads to yank you into the App Store involuntarily?
" I guess I've met non-arrogant rich people who are super lovely and moral people."
A know a billionaire couple who are the nicest people you would ever want to meet. They own a closely held company whose name most of us in here would know. Fortunately my town doesn't play by "The Rules" I mentioned above.
Let the politically frantic stew in their own treasured assumptions.
They're testing this set of censorship techniques in case they are one day required to use them in the US and Europe.
"Does anyone remember when Bill Gates was evil?"
It's the rules. Every rich person who is not arrogant has to be guilt-ridden.
OR...maybe he's a nerd who, having more money than most of the other nerds, can indulge his geekly interests in a more world-changing way than installing the newest release of Debian and vainly looking for something useful to run on it.
Photo print services are now a far cheaper-for-given-quality model for the average person, whether you want ordinary 4x6's of your vacation for that one relative who isn't on Facebook or a framed giclée wedding print.
A common misconception, but Australia doesn't have vegans. Vegemite is brewers' yeast that gets its unique flavor from workers who fall into the vats.
"BUT, if you run the numbers, you will see that we NEED nukes. In particular, we need gen IV nukes since they can not meltdown."
Did Obama mention the N-word at all in his manifesto? If not, it wasn't a real climate platform.