Not suitable at all - see the many comments on the high current / power electric infrastructure you'll need to put in place for fast charging. Not going to happen except for dedicated charging stations (aka gas stations...).
Sure, you can charge some EVs from a "normal" power socket - OVERNIGHT. When was the last time you went to shopping/movie/restaurant overnight ?
Now I also don't have exact numbers for modern gasoline/diesel cars, but 40% of the heat from fuel turned into movement power? Maybe modern cars are that good, but I doubt it. If anyone has some more numbers on that: please fill us in.
For petrol, you are right - down around 30% - but for diesels (which most modern cars are in high fuel cost places like Europe) you are wrong.
Modern fuel diesel ICEs are 40-50% brake thermal efficiency.
Diesel engines have maximum energy efficiency of 45% and Petrol engines of 30%
To go closer to real references (rather than just Wikipedia), figure 4 in this http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/237490.p df paper shows thermal efficiency hitting 40% for a 1990s VW TDI engine (newer PD & common rail diesels are even better).
50.2% Peak Thermal Efficiency at a Single operating Condition
EPA 2010 Emissions Regulations over Steady-state and Transient Operation
Now, that's for larger vehicles first but the tech will likely work it's way down to car-sized engines (maybe sooner in the US where everyone drives truck-sized cars...).
So, maybe electric isn't the clear cut winner you thought.
Er, yeah, except that at least according to comments further up, the OpenGL games are some of the worst affected by the problems on Vista. Wouldn't be suprising - if the HW vendors are having problems getting the drivers out, what are they going to fix first DX (now used by the OS desktop) or OGL ?
I would expect DX to work first and OGL to get fixed sometime later, maybe, if they can be bothered.
So, yes, DX likely will "provide or perform more/better than OGL". And, yes, that sucks.
Going away for the weekend isn't too much of a problem. Renting a car for 1 weekend a month costs less than most people's insurance.
You must have awfully cheap rental or awfully expensive insurance (at least compared to here).
I just got the insurance renewal for our family car (an MPV, which does low mileage, used maybe once a week during the week and once in every two or three weekends, plus maybe 3 week-long holidays/yr). About 350 (GBP). Renting the same car (well, similar size but lower spec) over a weekend would cost me close to 200 just for one weekend. Even for only 12 weekends a year you'd need a weekend rental at 10 per day - that would cover just the insurance excess-reduction on the rental.
Overall, excluding fuel (but including depreciation etc.) the car probably costs 4k / yr. Sounds expensive for something we don't use that often, but it's still cheaper than renting anything close to the same vehicle for the same usage.
When performing a law enforcement mission, your not going to be cut off from your base and getting blown up
Um, newsflash, the Iraq deployment _is_ a law enforcement mission. The open warfare bit ended long ago (remember "mission accomplished" ?).
Getting cut off and blown up on law enforcement missions is what happens in Iraq, and it's not exactly a new thing (happened for decades in Northern Ireland, for one example).
want my kids to learn how to play without the computer, and they are doing a good job so far, but one day the instant digital companion is just going to win.
That day is some way off (and if it ever comes we'll be rapidly extinct).
The internet is full of instant digital companions - yet you still got kids somehow. Did you get them from internet porn ? - nope.
You figured out the instant digital companions didn't cut it - and your kids will too. Kids are suprisingly good at figuring things out, often quicker than we expect.
will be known in the future as "The Great Fork" which will set Open Source back 5 years.
More likely the opposite.
A few people sem to be forgetting that large parts of the toolchain (compiler, libc, emacs) were previously forked away from the FSF. What happened then was the forks away form the FSF did much better. Eventually things merged back in (except in emacs / xemacs case).
We'll see what will happen this time, but I wouldn't bet against the non-FSF forks being successful.
Free Software Idealists vs. Open Source pragmatists. Wonder who will produce more code...
Microsoft learned this from Unix and other large systems - years ago (back in DOS days) I can remember having to call vendor for keys to (re)install software on Unix boxes.
I can't remember anyone questioning "why" - that was simply the requirements for that software (probably still is today).
In fact it was arguably worse than MS activation - _every_ install required phone call as online activiation didn't exist. These days online activation almost certainly handles the vast majority of the cases on Windows with phone calls only required for the exceptions.
Errr, sounds like you need to update your building code too over there
UK building regs are up to date thank you.
UK housing stock, however, is mostly not, because:
a) we build (well, built) stuff properly out of brick/stone to last hundreds of years. Wheras from my trips out there, some Americans seem to think you must be a millionaire to live in a brick house.
b) planning regulations are strict - you can't just flatten houses and build what you want
c) once a house (or area) has any historical architectural value the regulations become very strict on what you can do with it - not just to the extent of not being allowed to flatten it and build a modern house, but to the extent of stopping you changing the windows or even the colour of the paintwork.
The most modern house I've lived in in the last 30 years was probably 1950s and most have been victorian or older.
There is this thing called summer when lots of people need to COOL their homes
Poster stated he lived in England. Summer here is a brief period of a couple of days where you can safely open all the windows. I don't know _anyone_ who _cools_ their home here (office buildings full of computers, cars, yes - homes, no).
And before IFrames you could, and we did, do it with hidden frames.
The big problem (as I recall) was not really the data transport but the lack of stable (let alone standard) support for modifying the displayed pages. Sooner or later you just gave up and refreshed the whole page (at modem speed...) because the dynamic route became more trouble than it was worth.
I call bullshit: in the UK you don't have to be registered for VAT at all below the threshold turnover, so you can trade perfectly legally without a VAT number / registration, so you cannot be obliged to display one.
The best way to avoid this, is to incorporate yourself, like with an "S" corp as I suggested in the GP.
Like the GP said, that might work in the US but has problems in the UK - IR35 was specifically designed to trap people who incorporate like this.
Basically, even if you incorporate (which lots of people did) you can now be treated as employee of your customer(s). Your small corporation is also then very restricted in what you can do - you have to pay out 95% as taxable salary, can't claim any business expenses above 5% of turnover, can't employ your wife as a secretary, buy yourself a car through the business etc. (all of which would typically be over the 5%). Basically all the things you could / would do as a business to save on tax. So you get all the risk now and none of the tax benefit.
We'd have 5 billion people in the world, "mostly" not well-educated and due-to the evolutionary feedback up till now a "big" percentage would not be intelligent enough to be well-educated. What should become of these people? What would they do all day if they're all unemployed?
They are consumers. They buy stuff. This appears to now be of fundamental importance to the economy (no one cares what you produce as long as you buy...).
Note that the current American president has degrees from two of Americas top universities, so the theory could still stand.
You could argue that perhaps it needs to be clarified slightly eg. "the more intelligent, or well-educated" to account for places where education is purchased rather than provided by the state on merit.
Robots are distinctly non-perfect for that. Consider the diaglogue:
90mins of "beep... beep.... beep...." followed by "bang".
Except you don't even get to hear that because the robot ship doesn't need any air in which to make a sound...
I suppose you could focus on the ground action - 90mins of some guy pacing backwards and fowards muttering "metric, imperial, metric, imperial, fuck which was it?...".
Bearing in mind that it is a government agency doing the "intrusion" and that they had to get authorisation first - they probably simply weren't flagged as "hostile".
The "hacking" may well turn out to be connecting or logging on using an admin password legally obtained.
I'm sure Number 10 has an IT admin (damn sure Tony doesn't do it himself) and fairly sure that said admin isn't exempted from RIPA compliance. If they went in under RIPA then (s)he's not necessarily allowed to even tell their superiors of the warrant. Calling a solicitor for advice about compliance with the warrant may be allowed - but probably not if you claim your solicitor is Cherie Blair...
On a ship shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mindboggingly beautiful... (if you can stand the manic ship's computer and the terminally depressed robot).
Slashdot Mirror
Not suitable at all - see the many comments on the high current / power electric infrastructure you'll need to put in place for fast charging. Not going to happen except for dedicated charging stations (aka gas stations...).
Sure, you can charge some EVs from a "normal" power socket - OVERNIGHT. When was the last time you went to shopping/movie/restaurant overnight ?
For petrol, you are right - down around 30% - but for diesels (which most modern cars are in high fuel cost places like Europe) you are wrong.
Modern fuel diesel ICEs are 40-50% brake thermal efficiency.
Quote from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_auto
To go closer to real references (rather than just Wikipedia), figure 4 in this http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/237490.
Looking to near future, people are pushing ICEs (diesel of course) that can hit 50%+ and meet 2010 emissions targets, eg. from http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs
Now, that's for larger vehicles first but the tech will likely work it's way down to car-sized engines (maybe sooner in the US where everyone drives truck-sized cars...).
So, maybe electric isn't the clear cut winner you thought.
Er, yeah, except that at least according to comments further up, the OpenGL games are some of the worst affected by the problems on Vista. Wouldn't be suprising - if the HW vendors are having problems getting the drivers out, what are they going to fix first DX (now used by the OS desktop) or OGL ?
I would expect DX to work first and OGL to get fixed sometime later, maybe, if they can be bothered.
So, yes, DX likely will "provide or perform more/better than OGL". And, yes, that sucks.
Going away for the weekend isn't too much of a problem. Renting a car for 1 weekend a month costs less than most people's insurance.
/yr). About 350 (GBP). Renting the same car (well, similar size but lower spec) over a weekend would cost me close to 200 just for one weekend. Even for only 12 weekends a year you'd need a weekend rental at 10 per day - that would cover just the insurance excess-reduction on the rental.
You must have awfully cheap rental or awfully expensive insurance (at least compared to here).
I just got the insurance renewal for our family car (an MPV, which does low mileage, used maybe once a week during the week and once in every two or three weekends, plus maybe 3 week-long holidays
Overall, excluding fuel (but including depreciation etc.) the car probably costs 4k / yr. Sounds expensive for something we don't use that often, but it's still cheaper than renting anything close to the same vehicle for the same usage.
What also beats me, that a default install of Solaris 10 seems to have it open
And this is suprising why ?
This is the OS that used to ship with "+" in hosts.equiv in the default install - and allegedly that was _by design_, not an oversight.
When performing a law enforcement mission, your not going to be cut off from your base and getting blown up
Um, newsflash, the Iraq deployment _is_ a law enforcement mission. The open warfare bit ended long ago (remember "mission accomplished" ?).
Getting cut off and blown up on law enforcement missions is what happens in Iraq, and it's not exactly a new thing (happened for decades in Northern Ireland, for one example).
want my kids to learn how to play without the computer, and they are doing a good job so far, but one day the instant digital companion is just going to win.
That day is some way off (and if it ever comes we'll be rapidly extinct).
The internet is full of instant digital companions - yet you still got kids somehow. Did you get them from internet porn ? - nope.
You figured out the instant digital companions didn't cut it - and your kids will too. Kids are suprisingly good at figuring things out, often quicker than we expect.
will be known in the future as "The Great Fork" which will set Open Source back 5 years.
More likely the opposite.
A few people sem to be forgetting that large parts of the toolchain (compiler, libc, emacs) were previously forked away from the FSF. What happened then was the forks away form the FSF did much better. Eventually things merged back in (except in emacs / xemacs case).
We'll see what will happen this time, but I wouldn't bet against the non-FSF forks being successful.
Free Software Idealists vs. Open Source pragmatists. Wonder who will produce more code...
Microsoft learned this from Unix and other large systems - years ago (back in DOS days) I can remember having to call vendor for keys to (re)install software on Unix boxes.
I can't remember anyone questioning "why" - that was simply the requirements for that software (probably still is today).
In fact it was arguably worse than MS activation - _every_ install required phone call as online activiation didn't exist. These days online activation almost certainly handles the vast majority of the cases on Windows with phone calls only required for the exceptions.
Errr, sounds like you need to update your building code too over there
UK building regs are up to date thank you.
UK housing stock, however, is mostly not, because:
a) we build (well, built) stuff properly out of brick/stone to last hundreds of years. Wheras from my trips out there, some Americans seem to think you must be a millionaire to live in a brick house.
b) planning regulations are strict - you can't just flatten houses and build what you want
c) once a house (or area) has any historical architectural value the regulations become very strict on what you can do with it - not just to the extent of not being allowed to flatten it and build a modern house, but to the extent of stopping you changing the windows or even the colour of the paintwork.
The most modern house I've lived in in the last 30 years was probably 1950s and most have been victorian or older.
There is this thing called summer when lots of people need to COOL their homes
Poster stated he lived in England.
Summer here is a brief period of a couple of days where you can safely open all the windows.
I don't know _anyone_ who _cools_ their home here (office buildings full of computers, cars, yes - homes, no).
What's the betting that cost of this gets passed onto artists as deductions from royalties ?
Artist monthly statement:
Sales: $$$
Gross royalties (tiny%): $
Deductions:
[ blah blah blah ] $$
DRM legal costs $$
[new this month]
Net Royalties: -$$$
[NB: you won't have to pay us because we're nice like that, we'll just carry it forward]
And before IFrames you could, and we did, do it with hidden frames.
The big problem (as I recall) was not really the data transport but the lack of stable (let alone standard) support for modifying the displayed pages. Sooner or later you just gave up and refreshed the whole page (at modem speed...) because the dynamic route became more trouble than it was worth.
I call bullshit: in the UK you don't have to be registered for VAT at all below the threshold turnover, so you can trade perfectly legally without a VAT number / registration, so you cannot be obliged to display one.
The best way to avoid this, is to incorporate yourself, like with an "S" corp as I suggested in the GP.
Like the GP said, that might work in the US but has problems in the UK - IR35 was specifically designed to trap people who incorporate like this.
Basically, even if you incorporate (which lots of people did) you can now be treated as employee of your customer(s). Your small corporation is also then very restricted in what you can do - you have to pay out 95% as taxable salary, can't claim any business expenses above 5% of turnover, can't employ your wife as a secretary, buy yourself a car through the business etc. (all of which would typically be over the 5%). Basically all the things you could / would do as a business to save on tax. So you get all the risk now and none of the tax benefit.
We'd have 5 billion people in the world, "mostly" not well-educated and due-to the evolutionary feedback up till now a "big" percentage would not be intelligent enough to be well-educated. What should become of these people? What would they do all day if they're all unemployed?
They are consumers. They buy stuff. This appears to now be of fundamental importance to the economy (no one cares what you produce as long as you buy...).
Note that the current American president has degrees from two of Americas top universities, so the theory could still stand.
You could argue that perhaps it needs to be clarified slightly eg. "the more intelligent, or well-educated" to account for places where education is purchased rather than provided by the state on merit.
Shell can't afford it.
[...]
GM might buy it.
ROFL
GM is practically bankrupt, has massive pension liabilities and is burning cash at several $B per year.
Shell is making over $1B per month, net.
With all the exploding we do all by ourselves on this planet I'd be suprised if we noticed.
On the other hand... Tunguska...
I think you missed the bit about it being a film.
Robots are distinctly non-perfect for that. Consider the diaglogue:
90mins of "beep... beep.... beep...." followed by "bang".
Except you don't even get to hear that because the robot ship doesn't need any air in which to make a sound...
I suppose you could focus on the ground action - 90mins of some guy pacing backwards and fowards muttering "metric, imperial, metric, imperial, fuck which was it?...".
Or could it be that politicians are representative of the people, and thus can be both honest and dishonest?
Or maybe they start that way, but once politicians they have power. Power corrupts... etc.
Bearing in mind that it is a government agency doing the "intrusion" and that they had to get authorisation first - they probably simply weren't flagged as "hostile".
The "hacking" may well turn out to be connecting or logging on using an admin password legally obtained.
I'm sure Number 10 has an IT admin (damn sure Tony doesn't do it himself) and fairly sure that said admin isn't exempted from RIPA compliance. If they went in under RIPA then (s)he's not necessarily allowed to even tell their superiors of the warrant. Calling a solicitor for advice about compliance with the warrant may be allowed - but probably not if you claim your solicitor is Cherie Blair...
well seeing how big and successful they've become _without_ him/her, I'd really rather they never found them...
What ever happened to good ol' flares, chaff, and evasive manuvers?
Missiles got smarter, and big birds aren't so good at evasive manuvers - waggle an airbus rudder hard a few times and the f***ing tail falls off.
You missed out:
On a ship shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and
mindboggingly beautiful... (if you can stand the manic ship's computer and the terminally depressed robot).