"I travel a huge amount for work, and I am required to select the cheapest available option (within a window)."
OK -- that might be the cheapest available option, but not every plane has windows of the right kind, and besides that's no fun for the guy in the actual window *seat.*
Yep -- 500 miles / 1 hour recharge would be a pretty magical combination; that would drastically change my view of electric cars. I'm in Austin (Texas, not Minnesota) and generally take a few long road trips each year, and lots of smaller ones. The donut hole effect (low population density in most of this giant state, despite several monstrous cities) means I could drive an all electric car happily *most* of the time, but on the whole it doesn't yet balance out to be worth it considering the other times. (Drive to the beach / drive to the mountains / drive to Florida...)
I'm really glad to see the future plans for more fast-charge stations, though -- they'll get even more valuable as the battery tech itself improves.
It will be interesting to see what cultural normals emerge around charging, too. If you drive to an acquaintance's house, is it polite to plug in and start fast-charging your car without expicit permission? (I've seen this once at a party, where a guy showed up with a short-range electric motorcycle. Less of a power draw, less of an issue.) Electric charge is currently far cheaper than gas, but maybe people will soon take many more countermeasures to the 2010s' equivalent of gas siphoning.
"Hey you kids! Getcher newfangled transporters away from my solar panel's output or I'll tan yer hides good, with this biotech gun that will in fact tan your hides!"
Yes, it's pricey -- $2500 gets a workable used car off the local Craigslist. However, it's crazy cheap, if you use the time machine in your brain to think about what the equivalent display would have cost (if it existed) one, five, or 20 years ago...
In fact, $2500 is just about what Silicon Graphics' 1600SW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_1600SW) cost when it came out. And that was in 1998 dollars:) (According to this online calculator http://www.usinflationcalculat..., flawed as it is to compare tech items over time by clumsy measures of inflation, that would make it more than $3600 worth of monitor, then.) That is, $3654 *now* has about the purchasing power that $2500 did *then*...
It is a good example of how that kind of "value of dollar" calculation is a poor measure for technology under rapid developement, though: the backwards calculation is nothing like equivalent. That is, a 17" LCD panel (ignoring things like that today you'd probably want HDMI or other modern input) with 1600x1200 resolution would *not* cost the "dollar equivalent of $2500," which works out to be about $1710 1998 dollars. More like... what, $100-150? Seems fair; random Amazon hit does even better: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VE2...
Not to say that "anything in the now is cheap if the equivalent would have cost more at some point in the past when you were facing a different set of constraints"... things are complicated. But calling this pricey is only true in relation to *other* things that have meanwhile hugely improved. For instance, it might not seem worth the price of 5 of these: http://www.amazon.com/PB278Q-2...... unless 5K makes sense because it helps you resolve details on an X-ray or some other special purpose.
Have you had many of your own jokes / comic ideas worked into the dialogue, too? (Another way to ask this: is it too late by the time you're asked to give some credence to the writers' portrayal of science to re-write some of it more thoroughly?)
- Model M keyboard (I bought several when they were $5 at the Goodwill, including some with US Government stickers or NASA badges; if I knew then what I know now, I'd have loaded up a storage unit with them...)
- Nano (sure, it's not as old or as rabidly backed as Certain Other Text Editors, but it's so very nice to use...)
- Logitech Trackball. Unfortunately, the new ones are junk -- they seem to die in a few months. The old ones lasted me several years apiece.
You don't actually need a board game or someone's pre-made list of cards with choices, either, but the Pictionary folks have done a pretty good job at providing some ideas, sorting them into categories, etc.
Bananagrams is the most age-independent word game I know; Scrabble can be pretty frustrating when playing with people of vastly different ages (and thus, often, vastly different vocabularies), but nearly any age can play with Bananagrams, and older players can adjust their style as they deem best suits the players as a group.
Well... only about 1 percent of the site's lifespan so far, by back-of-envelope figures;)
But you're right -- we've been playing with it a while. Nifty new graphic (if you see the beta version of it), too. More changes and section-specific stuff eventually, too, but it's much readier to explore, now that we've added in a lot of the older stories that make sense in this section.
Oh, I'm a cheapskate most of the time, but occasionally I'll see how the other half lives. I find the divide is more complicated, though -- I've stayed in some total dives (boy, have I!) and a very few 4- or 5-star places, and for the most part I'd rather be somewhere in the middle. For the most part, I'm not offended by small rooms or lousy views, would rather allocate money on interesting food;) This can go too far, though: once I made the mistake of camping at a KOA (note: quite good Wi-Fi, though mysteriously not on this list) in New Orleans, in August, and that was a lousy idea on several fronts.
I've definitely found some of the worst Wi-Fi in some of the more expensive places, though, and it rankles to pay $10-20 in some places for the privilege of hooking to the in-room network, a trend that's at least on the wane I think. In places like Las Vegas, at least the trade-off is there in gambling-subsidized rooms;)
Which airline? I've been curious how they would handle it, but on recent flights with United, American, and Delta -- I think 12 or 14 actual flights, on 4 or 5 trips -- they've announced that phones etc. must be in airplane mode but that new regulations mean everyone can keep using them. (I'm about to fly Southwest, will see what they do...)
Really? I don't fly as much as many people, but have flown more in the last year than typically, and have noticed in recent months (post-ban) quite a few people using their phones / tablets --mostly playing games, watching movie, reading books -- including at takeoff and landing time. Maybe my experience is just anomalous, but it's been consistent on a dozen or more flights. (And many more people, too, reading with Kindles or other e-readers. That's what I'm typically doing, having given up on the last 3 clues of the crossword puzzle, and usually unwilling to burn my phone's battery to watch a movie or something...)
By contrast, I saw a few people sneaking in furtive texts from the runway, etc (I suspect along the lines of "I think Delta lost my luggage again, and we're 10th in line to take off, so don't rush to the airport."), but certainly not many, while the ban was in effect. Saw a lot of "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to please turn that off," too.
Phong's comment here https://build.slashdot.org/com... mentions Dive; I saw at Google I/O that the Project Tango folks had some Dive headgear fitted out with the new Project Tango 7" tablets. Looked very, very cool, but I didn't have time to try them on myself.
... I suspect too narrow, though, for non-iPhone devices. For the Cardboard, the Google folks were demonstrating an "adapter" for iPhones which served to elevate the iPhone a bit. The adapter is a Ticonderoga #2 pencil...
Good question, but not answered during the keynote at least; not sure if the number was tongue in cheek or serious -- he just said that's what "the team" tells him.
Yes, cardboard. But also a Google smartwatch, tomorrow (LG or Samsung), and another one in the summer (Motorola), when it's available.
It's getting to be slightly funny, hard to parody, how many Android / Chrome devices one could ("normally" -- that is, without doubling up, exactly) carry around, without seeming too crazy (note: I use a few of these, but have never tried one of the watches, have only tried the Glass on at least year's IO):
- watch - Glass - phone - tablet - Chromebook
I bet a fair number of the attendees here do have all 5 of these at once; I've certainly seen some instances of 4, and they may have had the 5th in their bags;)
Nah -- Samzenpus is one of the handful of Slashdot editors. Any one of us could have / would have posted this call for questions (and our politics, to the degree we have politics) are pretty divergent. Lessig is interesting and smart, whether you agree with him in small part, in large part, or not at all. Slashdot's a tech site, but of a particular bent that happens to include politics (and the occasional current event); our politics section (http://politics.slashdot.org/) has been around for a long time.
And as the creator!:) As someone said above, No, he's not in sales, except enough to demo the camera.
Had a really ineresting talk with him afterward, too, over sandwiches, about optics, refresh rates, human eye / brain interactions, etc. I also think that "Matter" is a pretty cool last name to have at a conference called "Solid."
"The title Esquire is not allocated by the law of any state to any profession, class, or station in society. Because it is commonly employed by lawyers, however, use by an unlicensed person may be evidence of the unauthorized practice of law, which can subject a person to sanctions by a state bar association and is a crime in all fifty states. The concern is that by appending "Esq." to his or her name, a person may create a false perception of acting in the capacity of a lawyer, which might induce a layman to consider the person to be an attorney and to create an attorney-client relationship."
So, I shouldn't use Esq -- no bar exam, am nobody's attorney. But since it's a Juris Doctor, I guess could say Dr, if you want, and throw in the Mr, too, for fun... Sure, why not?
My German's not good enough to try for Doktor Doktor, though.
The highest-speed (shootgun firing) is the lowest resoluton, because that's the trade-off. I am a sucker balloons-hit-sharp-objects videos, though, so I like the cactus one best.
Agreed -- there's a lot of IMO obnoxious, self-righteous naysaying of the naysayers, when it comes to range anxiety; I suspect that lots of the people pooh-poohing other people's need for range don't live in a place like Texas or Oklahoma. Open range anxiety is more like it. If you must reach a distant destination (and return from it!) without waiting overnight to slow charge, edge of the envelope distance is hard to take seriously. I don't want to be in the red when I take a wrong turn on a Texas highway (whether it's gas or electricity powering the motor); AAA, though, can deliver me some gas.
Google directions from Texas could have a checkbox for Tesla. Certain parts of your route would include things like "At Texarkana, meet up with flatbed truck. Continue to Atlanta. Debark from flatbed and charge up."
On the other hand, I must admit (dragging that slider to the right) things look very promising for 2015... a long road trip I'm planning right now would be impossible right now by means of superchargers (Austin to Western Massachusetts, via Houston, Penscola, Baltimore, and other places), but if that map turns out to be accurate looks like it would work in 18 months, especially since there's regular charging, too, for the days with fewer miles. Since I don't have a Tesla or a spare 100,000 to go pick one up in a state that Tesla to do business, that's OK: I can get gasoline all over the place.
I'd like an electric car (and a pony), and specifically I'd like to be able to reach El Paso in approximately the same time it would take me to get there with a gas-driven car. Much farther than that, and even my range anxiety fades, because it's rare that I drive a greater distance without an overnight stop, which would mean at least enough *time* to charge up. The 2015 projections definitely make that look possible, in a car that has the range of the current Teslas and can use their superchargers. (Which, for now, as far as I know, means only Tesla's own cars.)
Outside of dedicated charging points, things may get sticky for the *place* to charge up, though, as more and more people get the cars -- witness http://yro-beta.slashdot.org/s...
Slashdot Mirror
"I travel a huge amount for work, and I am required to select the cheapest available option (within a window)."
OK -- that might be the cheapest available option, but not every plane has windows of the right kind, and besides that's no fun for the guy in the actual window *seat.*
This sounds like a case for OSHA indeed.
Errr, that's "cultural norms." Cultural normals sounds kind of cool, though, I think I'll keep that one around ...
Yep -- 500 miles / 1 hour recharge would be a pretty magical combination; that would drastically change my view of electric cars. I'm in Austin (Texas, not Minnesota) and generally take a few long road trips each year, and lots of smaller ones. The donut hole effect (low population density in most of this giant state, despite several monstrous cities) means I could drive an all electric car happily *most* of the time, but on the whole it doesn't yet balance out to be worth it considering the other times. (Drive to the beach / drive to the mountains / drive to Florida ...)
I'm really glad to see the future plans for more fast-charge stations, though -- they'll get even more valuable as the battery tech itself improves.
It will be interesting to see what cultural normals emerge around charging, too. If you drive to an acquaintance's house, is it polite to plug in and start fast-charging your car without expicit permission? (I've seen this once at a party, where a guy showed up with a short-range electric motorcycle. Less of a power draw, less of an issue.) Electric charge is currently far cheaper than gas, but maybe people will soon take many more countermeasures to the 2010s' equivalent of gas siphoning.
"Hey you kids! Getcher newfangled transporters away from my solar panel's output or I'll tan yer hides good, with this biotech gun that will in fact tan your hides!"
Yes, it's pricey -- $2500 gets a workable used car off the local Craigslist. However, it's crazy cheap, if you use the time machine in your brain to think about what the equivalent display would have cost (if it existed) one, five, or 20 years ago ...
In fact, $2500 is just about what Silicon Graphics' 1600SW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_1600SW) cost when it came out. And that was in 1998 dollars :) (According to this online calculator http://www.usinflationcalculat..., flawed as it is to compare tech items over time by clumsy measures of inflation, that would make it more than $3600 worth of monitor, then.) That is, $3654 *now* has about the purchasing power that $2500 did *then* ...
It is a good example of how that kind of "value of dollar" calculation is a poor measure for technology under rapid developement, though: the backwards calculation is nothing like equivalent. That is, a 17" LCD panel (ignoring things like that today you'd probably want HDMI or other modern input) with 1600x1200 resolution would *not* cost the "dollar equivalent of $2500," which works out to be about $1710 1998 dollars. More like ... what, $100-150? Seems fair; random Amazon hit does even better: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VE2...
Not to say that "anything in the now is cheap if the equivalent would have cost more at some point in the past when you were facing a different set of constraints" ... things are complicated. But calling this pricey is only true in relation to *other* things that have meanwhile hugely improved. For instance, it might not seem worth the price of 5 of these: http://www.amazon.com/PB278Q-2... ... unless 5K makes sense because it helps you resolve details on an X-ray or some other special purpose.
Have you had many of your own jokes / comic ideas worked into the dialogue, too? (Another way to ask this: is it too late by the time you're asked to give some credence to the writers' portrayal of science to re-write some of it more thoroughly?)
- Model M keyboard (I bought several when they were $5 at the Goodwill, including some with US Government stickers or NASA badges; if I knew then what I know now, I'd have loaded up a storage unit with them ...)
- Nano (sure, it's not as old or as rabidly backed as Certain Other Text Editors, but it's so very nice to use ...)
- Logitech Trackball. Unfortunately, the new ones are junk -- they seem to die in a few months. The old ones lasted me several years apiece.
It's a groping *or* a rapey scan, usually. You make it sound like there's something unseemly!
You don't actually need a board game or someone's pre-made list of cards with choices, either, but the Pictionary folks have done a pretty good job at providing some ideas, sorting them into categories, etc.
Bananagrams is the most age-independent word game I know; Scrabble can be pretty frustrating when playing with people of vastly different ages (and thus, often, vastly different vocabularies), but nearly any age can play with Bananagrams, and older players can adjust their style as they deem best suits the players as a group.
Set: as above.
Well ... not the *first* time.
Well ... only about 1 percent of the site's lifespan so far, by back-of-envelope figures ;)
But you're right -- we've been playing with it a while. Nifty new graphic (if you see the beta version of it), too. More changes and section-specific stuff eventually, too, but it's much readier to explore, now that we've added in a lot of the older stories that make sense in this section.
Oh, I'm a cheapskate most of the time, but occasionally I'll see how the other half lives. I find the divide is more complicated, though -- I've stayed in some total dives (boy, have I!) and a very few 4- or 5-star places, and for the most part I'd rather be somewhere in the middle. For the most part, I'm not offended by small rooms or lousy views, would rather allocate money on interesting food ;) This can go too far, though: once I made the mistake of camping at a KOA (note: quite good Wi-Fi, though mysteriously not on this list) in New Orleans, in August, and that was a lousy idea on several fronts.
I've definitely found some of the worst Wi-Fi in some of the more expensive places, though, and it rankles to pay $10-20 in some places for the privilege of hooking to the in-room network, a trend that's at least on the wane I think. In places like Las Vegas, at least the trade-off is there in gambling-subsidized rooms ;)
That's just what Mr. Humbert said ;)
Which airline? I've been curious how they would handle it, but on recent flights with United, American, and Delta -- I think 12 or 14 actual flights, on 4 or 5 trips -- they've announced that phones etc. must be in airplane mode but that new regulations mean everyone can keep using them. (I'm about to fly Southwest, will see what they do ...)
Really? I don't fly as much as many people, but have flown more in the last year than typically, and have noticed in recent months (post-ban) quite a few people using their phones / tablets --mostly playing games, watching movie, reading books -- including at takeoff and landing time. Maybe my experience is just anomalous, but it's been consistent on a dozen or more flights. (And many more people, too, reading with Kindles or other e-readers. That's what I'm typically doing, having given up on the last 3 clues of the crossword puzzle, and usually unwilling to burn my phone's battery to watch a movie or something ...)
By contrast, I saw a few people sneaking in furtive texts from the runway, etc (I suspect along the lines of "I think Delta lost my luggage again, and we're 10th in line to take off, so don't rush to the airport."), but certainly not many, while the ban was in effect. Saw a lot of "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to please turn that off," too.
Phong's comment here https://build.slashdot.org/com... mentions Dive; I saw at Google I/O that the Project Tango folks had some Dive headgear fitted out with the new Project Tango 7" tablets. Looked very, very cool, but I didn't have time to try them on myself.
... I suspect too narrow, though, for non-iPhone devices. For the Cardboard, the Google folks were demonstrating an "adapter" for iPhones which served to elevate the iPhone a bit. The adapter is a Ticonderoga #2 pencil ...
Good question, but not answered during the keynote at least; not sure if the number was tongue in cheek or serious -- he just said that's what "the team" tells him.
Yes, cardboard. But also a Google smartwatch, tomorrow (LG or Samsung), and another one in the summer (Motorola), when it's available.
It's getting to be slightly funny, hard to parody, how many Android / Chrome devices one could ("normally" -- that is, without doubling up, exactly) carry around, without seeming too crazy (note: I use a few of these, but have never tried one of the watches, have only tried the Glass on at least year's IO):
- watch
- Glass
- phone
- tablet
- Chromebook
I bet a fair number of the attendees here do have all 5 of these at once; I've certainly seen some instances of 4, and they may have had the 5th in their bags ;)
Nah -- Samzenpus is one of the handful of Slashdot editors. Any one of us could have / would have posted this call for questions (and our politics, to the degree we have politics) are pretty divergent. Lessig is interesting and smart, whether you agree with him in small part, in large part, or not at all. Slashdot's a tech site, but of a particular bent that happens to include politics (and the occasional current event); our politics section (http://politics.slashdot.org/) has been around for a long time.
And as the creator! :) As someone said above, No, he's not in sales, except enough to demo the camera.
Had a really ineresting talk with him afterward, too, over sandwiches, about optics, refresh rates, human eye / brain interactions, etc. I also think that "Matter" is a pretty cool last name to have at a conference called "Solid."
Says Wikipedia:
"The title Esquire is not allocated by the law of any state to any profession, class, or station in society. Because it is commonly employed by lawyers, however, use by an unlicensed person may be evidence of the unauthorized practice of law, which can subject a person to sanctions by a state bar association and is a crime in all fifty states. The concern is that by appending "Esq." to his or her name, a person may create a false perception of acting in the capacity of a lawyer, which might induce a layman to consider the person to be an attorney and to create an attorney-client relationship."
So, I shouldn't use Esq -- no bar exam, am nobody's attorney. But since it's a Juris Doctor, I guess could say Dr, if you want, and throw in the Mr, too, for fun ... Sure, why not?
My German's not good enough to try for Doktor Doktor, though.
But it took 27 hours to play back ;)
However, you can see a few examples of what it can shoot here:
http://edgertronic.com/videos/
The highest-speed (shootgun firing) is the lowest resoluton, because that's the trade-off. I am a sucker balloons-hit-sharp-objects videos, though, so I like the cactus one best.
Tim
"One would assume he would have advised the relavent space agencies on how to select the best coffee to send up there."
She :)
Agreed -- there's a lot of IMO obnoxious, self-righteous naysaying of the naysayers, when it comes to range anxiety; I suspect that lots of the people pooh-poohing other people's need for range don't live in a place like Texas or Oklahoma. Open range anxiety is more like it. If you must reach a distant destination (and return from it!) without waiting overnight to slow charge, edge of the envelope distance is hard to take seriously. I don't want to be in the red when I take a wrong turn on a Texas highway (whether it's gas or electricity powering the motor); AAA, though, can deliver me some gas.
Google directions from Texas could have a checkbox for Tesla. Certain parts of your route would include things like "At Texarkana, meet up with flatbed truck. Continue to Atlanta. Debark from flatbed and charge up."
On the other hand, I must admit (dragging that slider to the right) things look very promising for 2015 ... a long road trip I'm planning right now would be impossible right now by means of superchargers (Austin to Western Massachusetts, via Houston, Penscola, Baltimore, and other places), but if that map turns out to be accurate looks like it would work in 18 months, especially since there's regular charging, too, for the days with fewer miles. Since I don't have a Tesla or a spare 100,000 to go pick one up in a state that Tesla to do business, that's OK: I can get gasoline all over the place.
I'd like an electric car (and a pony), and specifically I'd like to be able to reach El Paso in approximately the same time it would take me to get there with a gas-driven car. Much farther than that, and even my range anxiety fades, because it's rare that I drive a greater distance without an overnight stop, which would mean at least enough *time* to charge up. The 2015 projections definitely make that look possible, in a car that has the range of the current Teslas and can use their superchargers. (Which, for now, as far as I know, means only Tesla's own cars.)
Outside of dedicated charging points, things may get sticky for the *place* to charge up, though, as more and more people get the cars -- witness http://yro-beta.slashdot.org/s...