On the other hand, consider Lotus. . . They produced Esprits at a rate of hundreds per year, and they make Elises at maybe 2000 per year. The numbers are piddling, and the Elise costs more than twice as much as a Miata. However, a lot of their technology makes it into mass-produced cars. Something like half the cars on the road have been designed with input from Lotus Engineering, in the suspension or power train. That's why you can't simply blow off the Tesla Roadster (or other electrics coming onto the market) as irrelevant toys for a handful of rich guys. The technology they are pioneering will come to mass-market cars, but this is where it has to start.
Martin Eberhard has noted more than once, a reason why many electric cars failed in the past was because their makers tried to save the world with their first car. They tried to produce inexpensive, mass-market cars, and they failed -- it's not practical to introduce a radical new technology that way. You have to introduce it the way early cars were introduced, or home air conditioning was introduced, or TV was introduced, or mobile phones were introduced: as high-priced toys for the wealthy. Once you figure out how to make 1000 per year, then you can move to the next step and figure out how to make 10,000 per year, and then 100,000 per year. You can't start at 100,000, you have to work up to it.
So, from where I sit it's just boneheaded to ridicule these new electrics and say "nobody" will buy them, or they're "irrelevant to the industry", etc. They just might be the wave of the future. If they are, this is where and how it has to begin.
If the "nobodies" buying an exotic sports car are enough to support a viable business, if there are enough "nobodies" to finance the production of more mass-produced and affordable cars, if there are enough "nobodies" to keep the technology developing. . . then how, I ask, is that "irrelevant to the industry"?
When the OP said "nobody" was going to buy the cars, the only way I could read that is: the product is going to fail and the company will have to stop making them, and they're foolish to even try putting this on the market. There's no other reasonable way to interpret his comment. And that's what I objected to, because I think he's wrong.
You have heard wrong. Your typical gasoline engine is about 20% efficient at turning chemical energy into motion. Your electric motor is around 90% efficient. That means, if you work through all the maths from start to finish, that the electric car always produces less pollution per mile driven as compared with the gasoline car.
If all your electrical power comes from coal-fired plants, that's the dirtiest source of electricity we have, and the electric car still comes out slightly ahead on pollution. When you bring in other sources of any energy -- any other sources -- the numbers get better. You can burn natural gas, or run nuclear plants, you can do wind, solar, geothermal, hydro power, and your cars don't have to change.
And here's another fun fact. . . Many electrical power plants in the USA produce excess energy at night, when demand is low. It's not practical to shut the plants down and "cold start" them again the next morning, so they sit idling and producing power that is wasted. If we charged electric cars at night during that time, we could power tens of millions of them without having to build a single new generating plant.
Did you even read my post? I never said anything about reducing carbon emissions, and neither did the poster who I was replying to, and neither did the original article as far as I noticed. I personally think global warming is a big scam, it doesn't even interest me.
So. . . He says nobody will buy them. That's demonstrably untrue, since over 350 people have already put down deposits to reserve Tesla Roadsters. In the world where I live, nobody means nobody, it doesn't mean 350 people. I don't know what Laborghini's market share is, I'm sure it's quite small in the total global car marketplace. I'm also sure it's not zero. Common sense would tell you, you can't have a car company that doesn't sell any cars -- not for long, anyhow.
Let the free market decide whether these things are viable or not! It's way too early to declare failure.
By your line of reasoning, Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini should have gone out of business decades ago, since "nobody" can afford those cars, and they clearly require "much more development before anyone will be interested".
Yet, somehow those companies manage to stay in business. I wonder how that is possible?
It makes no sense. You just can't collect enough solar energy on the tiny panels that can easily fit on a car. Your example module produces 54 watts . . . The Tesla's battery pack (for example) stores about 50,000 watt-hours of energy. So, it would take about 925 hours of full sunlight to charge. A good sunny day might get you a mile and a half down the road. Meanwhile, you have to leave your car outside exposed to the elements all the time. So the weather is taking its toll on your paint, it's taking a toll on your interior.
You'd be far better off keeping your car sheltered in a garage or at least under a carport, and put large solar panels on the roof of the building, tied into your regular charging station.
Re:Speaking of Prius: All-Electric Versions...
on
Japanese Mileage Maniacs
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Some people have converted the Prius to a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) and there's at least one company doing the conversions commercially. It does not become 100% electric, but it does allow you to plug into a wall socket and charge up the battery, then drive some distance (maybe 40 miles) on the battery power before the gasoline engine ever fires up. If you don't drive more than 40 miles in a day -- which would cover most days for me -- then you don't use gasoline. Yet, if you need to take a long trip, you can do that too.
Toyota have announced they want to build a PHEV, but they haven't said when or shown any more information about it. General Motors have shown the Chevy Volt "concept car" which is a PHEV, and they want to put it into production by about 2010-2012 depending on how batteries develop.
The winners in fuel efficiency are always the pure battery-electric vehicles like the Tesla Roadster; it's rated 135 MPG equivalent efficiency on the EPA highway cycle, no funky "hypermiling" techniques required. First deliveries to customers scheduled for late this year.:)
I have heard people say this too, that 256k delivers more quality than most people need or care about, while still failing to satisify the hard-core audiophiles.
I disagree. The honest audiophiles should admit that 256k AAC is indistinguishable from CD audio, they don't need lossless. (And if they really truly must have lossless, why aren't they buying CDs? Or better, DVD-A?) At the same time, with bandwidth and storage being what they are today, the bulk of 256k files is not a big burden on most people. My first iPod was 5GB, it was the only size they made. The biggest today is 80GB and costs less.
Furtheremore, I don't see any problem trans-coding from 256k to lower bitrates. You only do that when pristine audiophile quality isn't your priority anyhow, right? So. . . 256k AAC is a compromise, but it seems to me like a pretty darn good compromise on all sides.
The real significance here is that Apple have killed any possiblity of Microsoft locking the music industry into a format they control. The whole point of PlaysForSure was to try and create something similar to the PC industry -- where anybody could produce software or hardware to a compatible standard, but Microsoft controls the keys to that standard (Windows or WMA). PlaysForSure didn't work out to well, so the Zune was a second stab at the same goal.
It simply can't happen now. Maybe AAC will displace MP3, I wouldn't mind seeing that happen. . . My intuition is that MP3 and AAC will both be with us for a long time -- but either way, the future belongs to a format that Microsoft doesn't own. Microsoft has been put in an intolerable (from their viewpoint) situation -- one where they are "just another competitor" in the marketplace. That's all the Zune can be now, merely another competitor among several. They can't be The Emperor, which is the only thing they ever want to be.
That depends on your definition of "very easily". Burning music CDs and then re-ripping them to MP3, and redoing all the track info is a pain in the neck, not to mention the negative effects of transcoding. Now all that will be bypassed, which to me is a huge advance.
I had good reasons to bring up Usenet. I'm peeved by all the people who sanctimoniously and unconditionally condemn all file-sharing. I wanted to make clear that I have no religious convictions on either side of the issue. I'm not a radical crying that all information must be free, copyright is evil, etc. At the same time, I expect the legitimate providers to offer me a better experience if they expect me to pay for it. As far as I'm concerned, these are simply competing services.
I think this news spells the beginning of the end for WMA.
As for AAC or MP3. . . I still think MP3 is pretty good, with the encoders we have now (meaning LAME). I didn't see any urgent, pressing need to replace MP3 with something better. However, AAC does have a reputation of sounding better at any given bit-rate, and AAC at 256k should be effectively indistinguishable from CD audio. If the world goes over to AAC then I don't see any reason why I should complain about it.
Audio CDs are not "premium quality". They are mid-1980s technology digital audio. Premium quality would be DVD-A or SACD formats. . . It's just too bad those are loaded with so much DRM that they are basically useless for most things people want and expect to do with their music these days. I wonder if the backers of DVD-A or SACD would ever see the light and switch to a non-DRM version? I don't think they are going to make any real headway in the marketplace otherwise.
I love nearly everything about ITMS except the DRM -- but that kept me away until now. I've used ITMS for research and listening to music samples, then went and got the music from Amazon (CDs) or Usenet (MP3s). I've really been looking upon ITMS enviously. I just didn't want DRM-laden tracks infesting, or contaminating, my music collection. I can't even play DRMed tracks on my Roku Soundbridge, and I love my Soundbridge!
Yes, I am going to start buying music from ITMS -- and not merely to make a political point, but more importantly because this is the service I've been wanting all along. This is why I tend to stand by Apple, even though they aren't perfect and sometimes do things I disagree with. They bring out products or services every once in a while that I really like and that other companies, for whatever reason, couldn't or wouldn't come through with.
The other thing I see is finally moving from MP3 to AAC. I've pondered that before, but I always stuck with MP3 because it works with practically all devices, and because I was generally happy with the output from LAME. However. . . I expect the popularity and acceptance of AAC format to increase drastically. Now it will no longer be seen simply as a vehicle for foisting a DRM scheme, which is how I tended to view it in the past (fairly or not). It can compete more freely with MP3 as a non-DRM format: an apples-to-apples comparison, if you will. We'll really know AAC has arrived if people start trading them on Usenet.:)
And no, I don't feel guilty about Usenet. It's great for discovering new music that I had no idea existed. It's lousy for getting a particular thing I'm looking for. I see it being very complimentary and synergistic with ITMS. The real loser here is going to be Amazon. Now I'll finally have a source of digital music that is (to me at least) competitive with audio CDs in quality and price, and more than competitive in convenience.
If they were really serious about this philosophy, they'd go after Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft for selling game consoles that prevent any non-licensed content from playing. If I'm not mistaken, they are using copyright laws as part of the control mechanism. (I.E. the console requires a code before the game will run, and the code is not secret but is copyrighted.) That's really an abuse of copyright law, it wasn't meant to be used that way at all.
It's not DRM, it's not supposed to prevent copying. It's just supposed to prevent competition.
If you wanted to be an early adopter of HDTV, you are several years too late. I got my first HD set a few years ago -- when there really wasn't much to watch on it. In retrospect I should have kept my NTSC gear a while longer. But now HD sets have improved, there is more HD broadcast over the air, and I have a DBS-DVR combo that handles hi-def and works great. It was slow to get off the ground, but HD is rapidly going mainstream now.
It would have happened faster if there had been a HD videodisc format earlier. It was the last important missing element.
The Chevy Volt can't be produced and sold with today's li-ion battery technology. The batteries would be too expensive (I'm guesstimating around $16,000) and their service life would be too short (about 20,000 miles). GM are hoping better batteries will be available in a few years. I'm cautiously optimistic that they might be right -- but I don't really know and they don't really know.
Re:Why Amiga? Why not Zeta?
on
AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 1
For me the fatal flaw of BeOS was that it could only be programmed using C++, a language that I despise.
The Amiga was tough to program (at the application level), but at least it was all done in straightforward C, and it was easy to adapt other languages to its API, so you had a lot of freedom. . . You could code for it with languages ranging from C++ to JForth to Amiga E (my favorite) to Pascal or Modula-2 and more.
I'm currently on Mac OS X, and it really is best programmed using Objective-C. But. . . It differs from BeOS in that Obj-C doesn't suck. Mac OS X and Cocoa is also much easier to work with than the Amiga, because the SDK is fantastic and is free.
I think AppleScript can perform a similar role to ARexx, aside from the unfortunate fact that AppleScript is brain-damaged as a programming language.
Worth noting. . . The ARexx port is well documented and can be addressed by other languages, so it is possible to control applications with other languages as long as the apps have an ARexx interface. At one time I used PowerLOGO to control applications that way. I have been told the same is also true of AppleScript ports on the Macintosh, but I don't know about any examples of it.
I've often wondered why Python, Ruby, and other popular scripting languages can't be used the same way. Coming from an Amiga background, it seems to me like the most obvious thing that you would *want* any scripting language to do. (But then, I also wonder why applications -- other than games -- cant' have their own screen displays on a Mac or PC.)
It has indeed been stated many times over that a plug-in car just offsets the pollution to our power generators -- and always so stated by people who are too lazy to do even the smallest bit of research into the subject before they spout off their uninformed opinions.
A little research would reveal that all-electric cars are much more energy efficient than gasoline-powered cars. A little research would show that grid electricity produces much less CO2 emissions per mile traveled than gasoline (on average, as it does depend on factors like the source of the electricity). A little research would show that hardly any electricity in the USA is generated from burning petroleum, so these cars could help us get away from dependence on foreign oil. A little research would also reveal that our "already overloaded" electrical grid has enough spare capacity during off-peak hours (at night) to recharge tens of millions of electrical cars without any need to expand its capacity.
But instead of doing a little research, we get people offering goofy schemes like something from junior high school science projects -- solar panels or little wind turbines on top of your car! Such gadgets are unlikely to even offset the energy cost of hauling them around.
It doesn't need fresh water, you can grow algae in sea water -- something our world still has no shortage of. So. . . Do we know any countries with warm and sunny deserts adjacent to the coast? I can think of a few. Hmm. . . Saudi Arabia just might end up becoming the Saudi Arabia of biofuels!
It might also be possible to put your facilities onto floating platforms offshore. There's lots of possibilities.
Not enough is made of the sheer obfuscatory nature of C++. C was already somewhat cryptic, but at least it was small. C++ is cryptic and large, and that's really a bad combination. At one point in the interview Stroustrup recounts that half the programmers he polled who said they disliked C++ then admitted they had never programmed an application using C++. He calls that prejudice. I call it perfectly normal human behavior; if you begin to study a language and quickly discover it to be a load of tailings, then you will be disinclined to program applications using it.
That was my experience anyhow. I began studying C++, and at some point I stopped and asked myself, "Why must I endure this? Surely there must be better options." And I was right.
I really have to grit my teeth when Stroustrup talks about C++ "winning" against competing languages. C++ is successful for the same reason that COBOL and Microsoft Windows have been successful: because they happened to appear in the right place at the right time, and were promoted by the right people, to become entrenched. Once entrenched, the world was saddled with them for decades to come. It has nothing to do with their inherent qualities or advantages, it's little more than random chance.
1080p is not "a lot better than 1080i and 720p that xbox plays." 1080p is only 30 FPS, so it's really just 1080i without the jitter, and I doubt you can see any difference. For videogames 720p at 60 FPS clearly makes the most sense. (Although again I'd say, it'll be uncommon for anybody to notice a visible difference between these formats anyhow.)
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, consider Lotus. . . They produced Esprits at a rate of hundreds per year, and they make Elises at maybe 2000 per year. The numbers are piddling, and the Elise costs more than twice as much as a Miata. However, a lot of their technology makes it into mass-produced cars. Something like half the cars on the road have been designed with input from Lotus Engineering, in the suspension or power train. That's why you can't simply blow off the Tesla Roadster (or other electrics coming onto the market) as irrelevant toys for a handful of rich guys. The technology they are pioneering will come to mass-market cars, but this is where it has to start.
Martin Eberhard has noted more than once, a reason why many electric cars failed in the past was because their makers tried to save the world with their first car. They tried to produce inexpensive, mass-market cars, and they failed -- it's not practical to introduce a radical new technology that way. You have to introduce it the way early cars were introduced, or home air conditioning was introduced, or TV was introduced, or mobile phones were introduced: as high-priced toys for the wealthy. Once you figure out how to make 1000 per year, then you can move to the next step and figure out how to make 10,000 per year, and then 100,000 per year. You can't start at 100,000, you have to work up to it.
So, from where I sit it's just boneheaded to ridicule these new electrics and say "nobody" will buy them, or they're "irrelevant to the industry", etc. They just might be the wave of the future. If they are, this is where and how it has to begin.
But that doesn't even make sense either!
If the "nobodies" buying an exotic sports car are enough to support a viable business, if there are enough "nobodies" to finance the production of more mass-produced and affordable cars, if there are enough "nobodies" to keep the technology developing. . . then how, I ask, is that "irrelevant to the industry"?
When the OP said "nobody" was going to buy the cars, the only way I could read that is: the product is going to fail and the company will have to stop making them, and they're foolish to even try putting this on the market. There's no other reasonable way to interpret his comment. And that's what I objected to, because I think he's wrong.
I dunno about the electric Mullen GT, but PCMAG.COM recently reported that the Tesla Roadster does, in fact, run Linux. Check it:
s p
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2109194,00.a
You have heard wrong. Your typical gasoline engine is about 20% efficient at turning chemical energy into motion. Your electric motor is around 90% efficient. That means, if you work through all the maths from start to finish, that the electric car always produces less pollution per mile driven as compared with the gasoline car.
If all your electrical power comes from coal-fired plants, that's the dirtiest source of electricity we have, and the electric car still comes out slightly ahead on pollution. When you bring in other sources of any energy -- any other sources -- the numbers get better. You can burn natural gas, or run nuclear plants, you can do wind, solar, geothermal, hydro power, and your cars don't have to change.
And here's another fun fact. . . Many electrical power plants in the USA produce excess energy at night, when demand is low. It's not practical to shut the plants down and "cold start" them again the next morning, so they sit idling and producing power that is wasted. If we charged electric cars at night during that time, we could power tens of millions of them without having to build a single new generating plant.
Did you even read my post? I never said anything about reducing carbon emissions, and neither did the poster who I was replying to, and neither did the original article as far as I noticed. I personally think global warming is a big scam, it doesn't even interest me.
So. . . He says nobody will buy them. That's demonstrably untrue, since over 350 people have already put down deposits to reserve Tesla Roadsters. In the world where I live, nobody means nobody, it doesn't mean 350 people. I don't know what Laborghini's market share is, I'm sure it's quite small in the total global car marketplace. I'm also sure it's not zero. Common sense would tell you, you can't have a car company that doesn't sell any cars -- not for long, anyhow.
Let the free market decide whether these things are viable or not! It's way too early to declare failure.
Many of these are more-or-less performance oriented vehicles. . .
m l
Tesla Roadster: http://www.teslamotors.com/
Tango: http://www.commutercars.com/
UEV Spyder: http://www.universalelectricvehicle.com/spyder.ht
Wrightspeed X1: http://www.wrightspeed.com/x1.html
ZAP-X: http://www.zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=4560
Silence: http://www.silenceinc.ca/accueilEN.htm
VentureOne: http://www.venturevehicles.com/
Phoenix SUT & SUV: http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/
By your line of reasoning, Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini should have gone out of business decades ago, since "nobody" can afford those cars, and they clearly require "much more development before anyone will be interested".
Yet, somehow those companies manage to stay in business. I wonder how that is possible?
It makes no sense. You just can't collect enough solar energy on the tiny panels that can easily fit on a car. Your example module produces 54 watts . . . The Tesla's battery pack (for example) stores about 50,000 watt-hours of energy. So, it would take about 925 hours of full sunlight to charge. A good sunny day might get you a mile and a half down the road. Meanwhile, you have to leave your car outside exposed to the elements all the time. So the weather is taking its toll on your paint, it's taking a toll on your interior.
You'd be far better off keeping your car sheltered in a garage or at least under a carport, and put large solar panels on the roof of the building, tied into your regular charging station.
Some people have converted the Prius to a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) and there's at least one company doing the conversions commercially. It does not become 100% electric, but it does allow you to plug into a wall socket and charge up the battery, then drive some distance (maybe 40 miles) on the battery power before the gasoline engine ever fires up. If you don't drive more than 40 miles in a day -- which would cover most days for me -- then you don't use gasoline. Yet, if you need to take a long trip, you can do that too.
:)
Toyota have announced they want to build a PHEV, but they haven't said when or shown any more information about it. General Motors have shown the Chevy Volt "concept car" which is a PHEV, and they want to put it into production by about 2010-2012 depending on how batteries develop.
The winners in fuel efficiency are always the pure battery-electric vehicles like the Tesla Roadster; it's rated 135 MPG equivalent efficiency on the EPA highway cycle, no funky "hypermiling" techniques required. First deliveries to customers scheduled for late this year.
I have heard people say this too, that 256k delivers more quality than most people need or care about, while still failing to satisify the hard-core audiophiles.
I disagree. The honest audiophiles should admit that 256k AAC is indistinguishable from CD audio, they don't need lossless. (And if they really truly must have lossless, why aren't they buying CDs? Or better, DVD-A?) At the same time, with bandwidth and storage being what they are today, the bulk of 256k files is not a big burden on most people. My first iPod was 5GB, it was the only size they made. The biggest today is 80GB and costs less.
Furtheremore, I don't see any problem trans-coding from 256k to lower bitrates. You only do that when pristine audiophile quality isn't your priority anyhow, right? So. . . 256k AAC is a compromise, but it seems to me like a pretty darn good compromise on all sides.
The real significance here is that Apple have killed any possiblity of Microsoft locking the music industry into a format they control. The whole point of PlaysForSure was to try and create something similar to the PC industry -- where anybody could produce software or hardware to a compatible standard, but Microsoft controls the keys to that standard (Windows or WMA). PlaysForSure didn't work out to well, so the Zune was a second stab at the same goal.
It simply can't happen now. Maybe AAC will displace MP3, I wouldn't mind seeing that happen. . . My intuition is that MP3 and AAC will both be with us for a long time -- but either way, the future belongs to a format that Microsoft doesn't own. Microsoft has been put in an intolerable (from their viewpoint) situation -- one where they are "just another competitor" in the marketplace. That's all the Zune can be now, merely another competitor among several. They can't be The Emperor, which is the only thing they ever want to be.
That depends on your definition of "very easily". Burning music CDs and then re-ripping them to MP3, and redoing all the track info is a pain in the neck, not to mention the negative effects of transcoding. Now all that will be bypassed, which to me is a huge advance.
I had good reasons to bring up Usenet. I'm peeved by all the people who sanctimoniously and unconditionally condemn all file-sharing. I wanted to make clear that I have no religious convictions on either side of the issue. I'm not a radical crying that all information must be free, copyright is evil, etc. At the same time, I expect the legitimate providers to offer me a better experience if they expect me to pay for it. As far as I'm concerned, these are simply competing services.
I think this news spells the beginning of the end for WMA.
As for AAC or MP3. . . I still think MP3 is pretty good, with the encoders we have now (meaning LAME). I didn't see any urgent, pressing need to replace MP3 with something better. However, AAC does have a reputation of sounding better at any given bit-rate, and AAC at 256k should be effectively indistinguishable from CD audio. If the world goes over to AAC then I don't see any reason why I should complain about it.
Audio CDs are not "premium quality". They are mid-1980s technology digital audio. Premium quality would be DVD-A or SACD formats. . . It's just too bad those are loaded with so much DRM that they are basically useless for most things people want and expect to do with their music these days. I wonder if the backers of DVD-A or SACD would ever see the light and switch to a non-DRM version? I don't think they are going to make any real headway in the marketplace otherwise.
I love nearly everything about ITMS except the DRM -- but that kept me away until now. I've used ITMS for research and listening to music samples, then went and got the music from Amazon (CDs) or Usenet (MP3s). I've really been looking upon ITMS enviously. I just didn't want DRM-laden tracks infesting, or contaminating, my music collection. I can't even play DRMed tracks on my Roku Soundbridge, and I love my Soundbridge!
:)
Yes, I am going to start buying music from ITMS -- and not merely to make a political point, but more importantly because this is the service I've been wanting all along. This is why I tend to stand by Apple, even though they aren't perfect and sometimes do things I disagree with. They bring out products or services every once in a while that I really like and that other companies, for whatever reason, couldn't or wouldn't come through with.
The other thing I see is finally moving from MP3 to AAC. I've pondered that before, but I always stuck with MP3 because it works with practically all devices, and because I was generally happy with the output from LAME. However. . . I expect the popularity and acceptance of AAC format to increase drastically. Now it will no longer be seen simply as a vehicle for foisting a DRM scheme, which is how I tended to view it in the past (fairly or not). It can compete more freely with MP3 as a non-DRM format: an apples-to-apples comparison, if you will. We'll really know AAC has arrived if people start trading them on Usenet.
And no, I don't feel guilty about Usenet. It's great for discovering new music that I had no idea existed. It's lousy for getting a particular thing I'm looking for. I see it being very complimentary and synergistic with ITMS. The real loser here is going to be Amazon. Now I'll finally have a source of digital music that is (to me at least) competitive with audio CDs in quality and price, and more than competitive in convenience.
Time to finally replace my 1st gen (5 GB) iPod, I reckon.
I'll miss the scroll wheel that actually turns, though.
If they were really serious about this philosophy, they'd go after Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft for selling game consoles that prevent any non-licensed content from playing. If I'm not mistaken, they are using copyright laws as part of the control mechanism. (I.E. the console requires a code before the game will run, and the code is not secret but is copyrighted.) That's really an abuse of copyright law, it wasn't meant to be used that way at all.
It's not DRM, it's not supposed to prevent copying. It's just supposed to prevent competition.
If you wanted to be an early adopter of HDTV, you are several years too late. I got my first HD set a few years ago -- when there really wasn't much to watch on it. In retrospect I should have kept my NTSC gear a while longer. But now HD sets have improved, there is more HD broadcast over the air, and I have a DBS-DVR combo that handles hi-def and works great. It was slow to get off the ground, but HD is rapidly going mainstream now.
It would have happened faster if there had been a HD videodisc format earlier. It was the last important missing element.
The Chevy Volt can't be produced and sold with today's li-ion battery technology. The batteries would be too expensive (I'm guesstimating around $16,000) and their service life would be too short (about 20,000 miles). GM are hoping better batteries will be available in a few years. I'm cautiously optimistic that they might be right -- but I don't really know and they don't really know.
For me the fatal flaw of BeOS was that it could only be programmed using C++, a language that I despise.
The Amiga was tough to program (at the application level), but at least it was all done in straightforward C, and it was easy to adapt other languages to its API, so you had a lot of freedom. . . You could code for it with languages ranging from C++ to JForth to Amiga E (my favorite) to Pascal or Modula-2 and more.
I'm currently on Mac OS X, and it really is best programmed using Objective-C. But. . . It differs from BeOS in that Obj-C doesn't suck. Mac OS X and Cocoa is also much easier to work with than the Amiga, because the SDK is fantastic and is free.
I think AppleScript can perform a similar role to ARexx, aside from the unfortunate fact that AppleScript is brain-damaged as a programming language.
Worth noting. . . The ARexx port is well documented and can be addressed by other languages, so it is possible to control applications with other languages as long as the apps have an ARexx interface. At one time I used PowerLOGO to control applications that way. I have been told the same is also true of AppleScript ports on the Macintosh, but I don't know about any examples of it.
I've often wondered why Python, Ruby, and other popular scripting languages can't be used the same way. Coming from an Amiga background, it seems to me like the most obvious thing that you would *want* any scripting language to do. (But then, I also wonder why applications -- other than games -- cant' have their own screen displays on a Mac or PC.)
It has indeed been stated many times over that a plug-in car just offsets the pollution to our power generators -- and always so stated by people who are too lazy to do even the smallest bit of research into the subject before they spout off their uninformed opinions.
A little research would reveal that all-electric cars are much more energy efficient than gasoline-powered cars. A little research would show that grid electricity produces much less CO2 emissions per mile traveled than gasoline (on average, as it does depend on factors like the source of the electricity). A little research would show that hardly any electricity in the USA is generated from burning petroleum, so these cars could help us get away from dependence on foreign oil. A little research would also reveal that our "already overloaded" electrical grid has enough spare capacity during off-peak hours (at night) to recharge tens of millions of electrical cars without any need to expand its capacity.
But instead of doing a little research, we get people offering goofy schemes like something from junior high school science projects -- solar panels or little wind turbines on top of your car! Such gadgets are unlikely to even offset the energy cost of hauling them around.
It doesn't need fresh water, you can grow algae in sea water -- something our world still has no shortage of. So. . . Do we know any countries with warm and sunny deserts adjacent to the coast? I can think of a few. Hmm. . . Saudi Arabia just might end up becoming the Saudi Arabia of biofuels!
It might also be possible to put your facilities onto floating platforms offshore. There's lots of possibilities.
Not enough is made of the sheer obfuscatory nature of C++. C was already somewhat cryptic, but at least it was small. C++ is cryptic and large, and that's really a bad combination. At one point in the interview Stroustrup recounts that half the programmers he polled who said they disliked C++ then admitted they had never programmed an application using C++. He calls that prejudice. I call it perfectly normal human behavior; if you begin to study a language and quickly discover it to be a load of tailings, then you will be disinclined to program applications using it.
That was my experience anyhow. I began studying C++, and at some point I stopped and asked myself, "Why must I endure this? Surely there must be better options." And I was right.
I really have to grit my teeth when Stroustrup talks about C++ "winning" against competing languages. C++ is successful for the same reason that COBOL and Microsoft Windows have been successful: because they happened to appear in the right place at the right time, and were promoted by the right people, to become entrenched. Once entrenched, the world was saddled with them for decades to come. It has nothing to do with their inherent qualities or advantages, it's little more than random chance.
1080p is not "a lot better than 1080i and 720p that xbox plays." 1080p is only 30 FPS, so it's really just 1080i without the jitter, and I doubt you can see any difference. For videogames 720p at 60 FPS clearly makes the most sense. (Although again I'd say, it'll be uncommon for anybody to notice a visible difference between these formats anyhow.)