It seems to me that you are not actually asking a question, but merely stating your opinion (or perhaps just venting), but anyway:
It sounds like you didn't read the original paper. It answers some of your questions so read it instead of speculating. The tubes were not supposed to be transparent, but made of run of the mill steel. The concrete pylons are there to enable the project to be erected in connection with existing infrastructure, to save on land cost.
As for the upsides: the hyperloop design was intended to enable much higher speeds than maglev. And this is why it got all the hype - basically the designers took an existing idea, maglev in an underground vacuum tunnel (I remember reading an article about this in a pop sci magazine from the 80'ies or early 90'ies, and modified it to (perhaps) be economically feasible (not vacuum, just low pressure and run of the mill steel tubes on over-ground pylons), but still enabling a significant speed boost and environmental improvement (powered by electricity) over other means of transportation.
And it was presented by a person who has a history of succesfully launching ventures that people usually think have a low chance of success.
Now, will it ever happen? Is it really feasible? Does it make sense with a high-speed line with so few stops? Can't answer that, but IMHO it was stated in an honest engineering spirit.
I read that Wikipedia page, and I think you should be careful with using the term "legally binding" as it seems to have a very specific meaning. As I understand it the treaty/agreement is in fact binding - the question is probably who it binds.
True, but if you set aside Tesla for a moment, as we've debated here before, the negative press is probably going to be a big problem in the future, to the point that even a ten times safer driver assist/autonomous vehicle may be fighting against a generally negative perception.
Everyone knows the mass media is just waiting for an accident to happen so they can write their zOMG! IT'S A DEATHTRAP! story.
With great power comes great responsibility. My old grand mother was afraid to go out in the evenings because the local news paper was always full of stories of people being robbed, despite her neighborhood being safer than it ever had been. Easy stories to write. Depressing.
Children have more history to learn, more science, more technoloy, and they have to be better thinker/problem solvers/etc.
I don't think you're right. The answer to vastly increased human total knowledge isn't to spend more time studying. That would be like trying to empty the ocean with a single glass. It is simply not possible. Progress would halt immediately if people tried doing that.
I recall I think it was Donald Knuth recollecting that when he started it was possible for him to follow all computer science publications available to him. Well, that era ended some decades ago.
Instead we spend more time specializing. Self-determination, learning how to navigate through the ocean of information yourself and being inventive are what's important. That's not the kind of things you can learn by sitting on your bottom listening to a teacher. It requires playing with things yourself.
I have two happy kids in a Waldorf kindergarten here in Denmark, and here's a biased opinion: basically you leave the kids alone and let them play with whatever they want to play with for most of the day, preferably outdoors in a calm setting.
Kindergarten is not really for intellectual stuff. Your wife should forget the curriculum and let the school handle it - the fact she's called a teacher is part of the problem. She should see herself as someone providing inspiration and someone whose behavior is worthy of replicating, not as someone who instructs.
In my kids' kindergarten, the adults study fairy tales so they can retell them to the children (recounting them orally, never reading directly from a book) to provide fodder for their imagination. They also cook and do other household chores each day, again setting examples for the children to participate in and replicate in their play.
For a small child, there's a lot to be learned about self-motivation, inventing things, experimenting, self-confidence and important topics such as friendships and life. Counting and reading is easy, in comparison, for a determined, self-confident child. So better wait with that.
In a nutshell, as far as I'm aware, you don't end up being a better reader by learning to read one year earlier. But you might end up being more self-confident and self-motivated by having entertained yourself through play for that year.
Could you please back this up with some citations?
For instance, I find it odd that you claim that "the US is already spending considerably more per capita than any other country on social welfare (as well as education and healthcare)" given that most of the stuff that you get for free in my country is something you have to pay for in your country. I could perhaps accept that the US would be near the top - but considerably more than any other country... That can't be right unless you cherry pick the right misleading numbers.
(I get it you're a happy American. Good for you. Happy European here.)
In Denmark, university education is free for all Danes. You also get a small allowance each month, just enough to rent a room or small apartment and buy (cheap) food. So that part of it is not that radical outside the US.
A better example is the electric grid. Or the highway network.
Yes, it's true that for many years, there has been an common explanation for why "the Internet" should be capitalized, but I think what people here need to realize that one logical deduction does not make language. These things are much weirder.
I can see why you're annoyed. In Danish, the same decision was made years ago. I think for people don't give a damn about networks the capital "I" just looks plain weird.
I think the correct solution to this specific problem probably is to report your monitor details somewhere (the kernel?) and get it fixed there once and for all, so the layers higher up in the stack have good data to work with.
Then other people can also steer clear of hardware vendors who release buggy crap.
Also, as for moving to Linux, the next question becomes... why? This is the single biggest problem Linux fans have in trying to get people to move, there really is no compelling reason to go.
Exactly. It has to be pre-installed. Despite the fan club for Mac OS X, how many run it on non-Apple hardware? Not many. Same thing.
Now, if Linux was pre-installed, there would in theory be a compelling reason: the price of the license.
But Windows computers are apparently generally so full of paid-for pre-installed crapware that the price difference doesn't come into place either.
I do think there's another compelling reason, the whole virus boondoogle. But it probably doesn't occur to your wife that the solution to that is another OS.
I have a relatively recent Intel motherboard with IGP (built into the CPU). This has worked flawlessly for at least a year of more than 12 hours usage per day. Of course it's not powerful enough to play the latest games.
Same CPU on a slightly older ASUS motherboard freezes from time to time. That's not a Linux-specific problem though. I specifically bought and paid a premium for the Intel motherboard to avoid this problem.
I think that perhaps what you have not yet understood is that this kindness is part of what makes Western societies work so well.
The optimal solution is not more harshness, but to fix these people so they start contributing positively to society. I'm not a crime researcher, but I believe there's plenty of evidence that helping people fix their problems works much better long term than harsher punishments. I.e. it's cheaper, and it prevents more crimes.
And yes, people can change, and yes, we still need to have punishments. Kindness does not mean there are no consequences.
You can either customize Emacs by writing a bit of Lisp and dumping it in your.emacs (or init.el), but you can also use the built-in customize interface that many packages support.
If you've ever used M-x customize, it's like a... a toolkit built with text elements. It's... weird. I actually tried starting it again now, and I think it's less weird than it used to be, but it's still some way from any configuration window you'd ever see in a regular GUI editor.
So presumably some of that gap can now be bridged.
Since you picked GNOME, with all the research you've been doing, you must also know that Olav Vitters @ GNOME has repeatedly said that the official line is that if it's possible to support other things, they don't mind doing it. But nobody showed up to do the work.
I think at this point it's down to other software needing to support the DBUS interfaces GNOME is relying on. But it's not my impression this is a real problem, if just people would show up to do the work.
Lennart knew that by saying no to porting systemd to other kernels, he'd receive a fair amount of flak so he's been actively working on the API and pointing people to that instead ("reimplement the API"). It's even in the thread you link to.
So popular, and yet they still haven't fixed the hugely annoying core issue of emulating magic quotes, even years after PHP itself completely threw out the feature.
Well, if you think about it, probably there's no contradiction here - in fact, there may be correlation.
There's probably tonnes of weird Wordpress PHP out there made by people who aren't expert programmers.
also, what the hell is he showing it to his english teacher for? and during the middle of class? if he wants his teachers' approval, after class so as to be non-disruptive. Also... he's trying to impress his teachers with a clock he took apart?
Look, it's a school kid. If you look him up on Wikipedia, previous teachers are cited for explaining that he likes to hack electronics and bring them along to show.
According to Wikipedia, the English teacher didn't freak out, but thought that it looked like a bomb, so the school decided to crack down on him for making a "hoax bomb" which is apparently a legal term in Texas.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that you are not actually asking a question, but merely stating your opinion (or perhaps just venting), but anyway:
It sounds like you didn't read the original paper. It answers some of your questions so read it instead of speculating. The tubes were not supposed to be transparent, but made of run of the mill steel. The concrete pylons are there to enable the project to be erected in connection with existing infrastructure, to save on land cost.
As for the upsides: the hyperloop design was intended to enable much higher speeds than maglev. And this is why it got all the hype - basically the designers took an existing idea, maglev in an underground vacuum tunnel (I remember reading an article about this in a pop sci magazine from the 80'ies or early 90'ies, and modified it to (perhaps) be economically feasible (not vacuum, just low pressure and run of the mill steel tubes on over-ground pylons), but still enabling a significant speed boost and environmental improvement (powered by electricity) over other means of transportation.
And it was presented by a person who has a history of succesfully launching ventures that people usually think have a low chance of success.
Now, will it ever happen? Is it really feasible? Does it make sense with a high-speed line with so few stops? Can't answer that, but IMHO it was stated in an honest engineering spirit.
I read that Wikipedia page, and I think you should be careful with using the term "legally binding" as it seems to have a very specific meaning. As I understand it the treaty/agreement is in fact binding - the question is probably who it binds.
True, but if you set aside Tesla for a moment, as we've debated here before, the negative press is probably going to be a big problem in the future, to the point that even a ten times safer driver assist/autonomous vehicle may be fighting against a generally negative perception.
Everyone knows the mass media is just waiting for an accident to happen so they can write their zOMG! IT'S A DEATHTRAP! story.
With great power comes great responsibility. My old grand mother was afraid to go out in the evenings because the local news paper was always full of stories of people being robbed, despite her neighborhood being safer than it ever had been. Easy stories to write. Depressing.
Children have more history to learn, more science, more technoloy, and they have to be better thinker/problem solvers/etc.
I don't think you're right. The answer to vastly increased human total knowledge isn't to spend more time studying. That would be like trying to empty the ocean with a single glass. It is simply not possible. Progress would halt immediately if people tried doing that.
I recall I think it was Donald Knuth recollecting that when he started it was possible for him to follow all computer science publications available to him. Well, that era ended some decades ago.
Instead we spend more time specializing. Self-determination, learning how to navigate through the ocean of information yourself and being inventive are what's important. That's not the kind of things you can learn by sitting on your bottom listening to a teacher. It requires playing with things yourself.
I have two happy kids in a Waldorf kindergarten here in Denmark, and here's a biased opinion: basically you leave the kids alone and let them play with whatever they want to play with for most of the day, preferably outdoors in a calm setting.
Kindergarten is not really for intellectual stuff. Your wife should forget the curriculum and let the school handle it - the fact she's called a teacher is part of the problem. She should see herself as someone providing inspiration and someone whose behavior is worthy of replicating, not as someone who instructs.
In my kids' kindergarten, the adults study fairy tales so they can retell them to the children (recounting them orally, never reading directly from a book) to provide fodder for their imagination. They also cook and do other household chores each day, again setting examples for the children to participate in and replicate in their play.
For a small child, there's a lot to be learned about self-motivation, inventing things, experimenting, self-confidence and important topics such as friendships and life. Counting and reading is easy, in comparison, for a determined, self-confident child. So better wait with that.
In a nutshell, as far as I'm aware, you don't end up being a better reader by learning to read one year earlier. But you might end up being more self-confident and self-motivated by having entertained yourself through play for that year.
Figs, perhaps?
Google Finance is also using Flash-based charts.
Could you please back this up with some citations?
For instance, I find it odd that you claim that "the US is already spending considerably more per capita than any other country on social welfare (as well as education and healthcare)" given that most of the stuff that you get for free in my country is something you have to pay for in your country. I could perhaps accept that the US would be near the top - but considerably more than any other country... That can't be right unless you cherry pick the right misleading numbers.
(I get it you're a happy American. Good for you. Happy European here.)
In Denmark, university education is free for all Danes. You also get a small allowance each month, just enough to rent a room or small apartment and buy (cheap) food. So that part of it is not that radical outside the US.
I don't drive a Tesla either.
According to this review, they are far better than the competition.
As far as I understand, you cannot miss the warning. It's not like an EULA with walls and walls of text.
In Britain the standard is set by the Oxford University Press, which has a rather longer and more illustrious history than the AP Stylebook.
Has the Oxford University Press even discovered the internet yet?
A better example is the electric grid. Or the highway network.
Yes, it's true that for many years, there has been an common explanation for why "the Internet" should be capitalized, but I think what people here need to realize that one logical deduction does not make language. These things are much weirder.
I can see why you're annoyed. In Danish, the same decision was made years ago. I think for people don't give a damn about networks the capital "I" just looks plain weird.
I think the correct solution to this specific problem probably is to report your monitor details somewhere (the kernel?) and get it fixed there once and for all, so the layers higher up in the stack have good data to work with.
Then other people can also steer clear of hardware vendors who release buggy crap.
Also, as for moving to Linux, the next question becomes... why? This is the single biggest problem Linux fans have in trying to get people to move, there really is no compelling reason to go.
Exactly. It has to be pre-installed. Despite the fan club for Mac OS X, how many run it on non-Apple hardware? Not many. Same thing.
Now, if Linux was pre-installed, there would in theory be a compelling reason: the price of the license.
But Windows computers are apparently generally so full of paid-for pre-installed crapware that the price difference doesn't come into place either.
I do think there's another compelling reason, the whole virus boondoogle. But it probably doesn't occur to your wife that the solution to that is another OS.
I have a relatively recent Intel motherboard with IGP (built into the CPU). This has worked flawlessly for at least a year of more than 12 hours usage per day. Of course it's not powerful enough to play the latest games.
Same CPU on a slightly older ASUS motherboard freezes from time to time. That's not a Linux-specific problem though. I specifically bought and paid a premium for the Intel motherboard to avoid this problem.
That, and I don't expect more than half of the deposits to turn into orders.
Don't be too sure. There are a lot of people out there who want a cheaper version of Model S.
Hauling a couch? Is that your solution for extra seats?
But yes, it does have an all-wheel drive option. I think it's going to take many years before you can buy even a used one for 15k, though.
I think that perhaps what you have not yet understood is that this kindness is part of what makes Western societies work so well.
The optimal solution is not more harshness, but to fix these people so they start contributing positively to society. I'm not a crime researcher, but I believe there's plenty of evidence that helping people fix their problems works much better long term than harsher punishments. I.e. it's cheaper, and it prevents more crimes.
And yes, people can change, and yes, we still need to have punishments. Kindness does not mean there are no consequences.
I don't know, but let me come with an example.
You can either customize Emacs by writing a bit of Lisp and dumping it in your .emacs (or init.el), but you can also use the built-in customize interface that many packages support.
If you've ever used M-x customize, it's like a... a toolkit built with text elements. It's... weird. I actually tried starting it again now, and I think it's less weird than it used to be, but it's still some way from any configuration window you'd ever see in a regular GUI editor.
So presumably some of that gap can now be bridged.
My Emacs with a ton of buffers opened with a bunch of fancy modes is using 66 MB resident, according to top. It's been open for 6 hours now.
A fresh instance with no stuff in it (emacs -Q) is 39 MB.
In fact, the prototype they have actually built is "5kW average and 40kW peak": http://www.kitegen.com/en/prod...
Yes, indeed. But we liked it, didn't we? :)
Since you picked GNOME, with all the research you've been doing, you must also know that Olav Vitters @ GNOME has repeatedly said that the official line is that if it's possible to support other things, they don't mind doing it. But nobody showed up to do the work.
I think at this point it's down to other software needing to support the DBUS interfaces GNOME is relying on. But it's not my impression this is a real problem, if just people would show up to do the work.
Lennart knew that by saying no to porting systemd to other kernels, he'd receive a fair amount of flak so he's been actively working on the API and pointing people to that instead ("reimplement the API"). It's even in the thread you link to.
So popular, and yet they still haven't fixed the hugely annoying core issue of emulating magic quotes, even years after PHP itself completely threw out the feature.
Well, if you think about it, probably there's no contradiction here - in fact, there may be correlation.
There's probably tonnes of weird Wordpress PHP out there made by people who aren't expert programmers.
also, what the hell is he showing it to his english teacher for? and during the middle of class? if he wants his teachers' approval, after class so as to be non-disruptive. Also... he's trying to impress his teachers with a clock he took apart?
Look, it's a school kid. If you look him up on Wikipedia, previous teachers are cited for explaining that he likes to hack electronics and bring them along to show.
According to Wikipedia, the English teacher didn't freak out, but thought that it looked like a bomb, so the school decided to crack down on him for making a "hoax bomb" which is apparently a legal term in Texas.