I expect this to be as effective as D.A.R.E. AKA, Drugs Are Really Exciting/Entertaining.
They tell kids: "Yeah, there's a bunch of free games, movies and music online but don't download it, that's a copyright violation!" All they hear is: "There's a bunch of free games, movies and music online, blah blah blah!"
In some states there aren't even vehicle inspections. Here in Florida, you can drive your jalopy around until a cop pulls you over (and writes you a $5 ticket to fix whatever issue is blatantly unroadworthy enough for a cop to notice) or it bursts into flames. You're comparing an awful lot of old, poorly maintained vehicles to brand spankin' new Teslas. For a $70,000 car, it should be a whole lot less likely than the average beater to go up in smoke after hitting some debris in the road.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this... but am I the only one here who actually likes having a small phone? I guess it's a trade-off. I'm willing to give up the convenience of having the extra screen real estate for having a small phone...
That's pretty much the dead give away that this rumor is full of shit. A 4.7" display is clearly in the realm of "difficult to use with one hand" and 5.5" is a phablet. Apple may release something with a larger screen, but I seriously doubt they'll abandon their 4" display. Many people still do prefer a more compact phone. Getting an Android phone with a 4" display generally means buying one with severely downgraded internal specs, leaving Apple to pretty much own the high-end compact smartphone market segment. I just can't see Apple willingly giving that up.
Because, obviously if you can afford a 3.4 million dollar car, you can clearly afford the gas for it. Although, for that kind of money, you could probably buy a Tesla and still have plenty left over to hire someone to follow you with a generator, for the entire time you own your car.
Way back in the 70's (early 80s?) I recall a guy who wrapped his whole house in copper wire making large coils to tap the energy from the overhead power cables. He powered his whole house off this which was a mistake. The authorities charged him with theft.
Mythbusters tried this and basically got nothing from their rig. Florescent tubes do prove there is a strong static charge produced by high tension lines, but the magnetic field (which is required for induction) is rather weak.
I'm f***ing sick of Google and their integration of Google+ into Youtube (and obviously their other, and 3rd party services).
Google has slowly turned really fucking evil. They automatically keep you logged in so they can keep track of anything you search for, then return links that are redirected through them so they know exactly what you clicked on (and there's even a bit of nasty Javascript that makes the mouseover url display hide Google's trickery). They got rid of the ability to disable "SafeSearch" completely for images.
If you own an Android phone, they know everywhere you go. Their push for NFC technology is mainly motivated by the fact that they want to know everything you're buying, too.
Honestly, the NSA doesn't have to do shit. Google has basically handed them everything they could ever want, on a silver platter.
68% of the electrical power in the USA is provided by fossil fuels. While it's true the oil industry might be afraid of their product being devalued by a large uptake in electric vehicles (petroleum represents a paltry 1% in fuel for electrical generation), coal and natural gas (frack, baby, frack) will pick up the slack. Unlike petroleum, which can fluctuate in price based on demand, an increase in peak demands for electricity (as in, some point in the future when everyone gets home from rush hour and plugs in their damn car) means more plants will need to be built and they have to be paid for, regardless of how much the load on the grid fluctuates. Hell, here in Florida, Duke energy is jacking up their rates just because they feel like it.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people here have raging hard-ons for Tesla, as if each one was personally assembled by Captain Planet himself. The sad fact is, our addiction to fossil fuels doesn't stop at the pump. The fact that lithium ion cells are an overall shitty way of storing electricity and they sometimes go up in flames, is just the icing on the cake (and the cake is a lie).
...and how he's not a modern day Prometheus. All this time I thought he was just selling an expensive, mostly-coal-powered, toy for the rich (for whom the cost of gasoline is little concern). But wouldn't you know it, he really is trying to bring fire to the people!
Save money on my car insurance and have an electronic chauffeur? Shut up and take my money!
I can't wait for the day when driving "manually" will be viewed as archaic as doing your laundry in a basin or washing your dishes by hand. I'm more than happy to turn over menial tasks to a machine and I can hardly think of anything quite as tedious and boring as the daily commute and trips to and from the supermarket.
That's not peak usage. Industrial and office usage overshadows residential use by a lot. I own an electric car, so I got on my power company's "pay less if you use your power during off-peak hours and more if you use power during on-peak hours" plan, and the time you're referring to, when everybody gets home? That's when off-peak begins.
It's not peak usage today, because an extremely small percentage of people own electric cars. But take a look at any major city's rush hour and then imagine all those cars going home to plug in and you can see the potential for a huge problem.
I should also note that I, personally, don't care that much. I bought a LEAF not because I was anxious to save the planet, but because it's cheaper to own and operate than a gasoline-powered car, at least for my driving patterns.
That's because you're not paying any road taxes on the electricity and electric cars presently represent a very insignificant load on the electrical grid. If there were no road taxes on gasoline and demand for it was low, it would be dirt cheap too.
"Yeah, 68% of the electricity in the US comes from fossil fuels but big plants burn it more efficiently than your car's IC engine."
So, we've established it's okay to burn fossil fuels if the process is efficient enough? Okay, screw these damn batteries and let's develop better ways of turning fossil fuels into forward motion. Or, perhaps, accept the fact that maybe burning fuels that have the potential to be carbon neutral (like biodiesel and ethanol) may actually be more green than a car that essentially runs on 68% dead dinos.
"There's all this unused grid capacity during the night."
There's also a lot of unused road capacity during the middle of the night, too. Just like roads, the electrical grid needs to be designed with the capacity to handle peak usage, like around 6pm when everyone gets home, plugs in their car, cranks up their air conditioning and starts cooking dinner.
"Electric car technology will come down in price, just like cell phones."
Electric cars have actually been around since 1888. Electric cars are expensive not because the technology is new, but because the batteries are resource intensive to build.
"The price of electricity won't be affected."
Used cooking oil was essentially worthless until demand started for using it as feedstock for biodiesel. Corn jumped up quite a bit in price when the government increased the amount of ethanol required to be blended into gasoline. Adding more demand to the electrical grid will cause electrical prices to increase, it's a simple matter of supply and demand.
"Electric cars will help lower demand for gasoline."
Yes. But gasoline isn't really used for much else other than as a motor vehicle fuel, so your electric car purchase is actually helping make my gasoline slightly cheaper. Thanks.
68% of the power in the USA is generated by fossil fuels. source It's why you can half jokingly refer to electric cars as "coal cars", since they're essentially filling up with 37% coal-derived electrons. The lithium ion batteries come with their own environmental costs during their creation, as well. The primary function of today's electric cars is to perform an "out of sight, out of mind" on your carbon footprint. Tesla's cars are toys for rich people who as kids, cleaned their room by shoving everything under their bed.
Reading through the comments, it seems most people are questioning the wisdom of giving a 4-year-old a smartphone, rather than just answering the damn question. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've already made up your mind about giving the kid a phone and truly are at a loss for which phone to choose.
Sorry to say, but you're really just overthinking this. The best smartphone for a 4-year-old is one that is compatible with the carrier you intend to use it on, has decently protective cases available and isn't so expensive that the world will end if the kid drops/breaks it. Since you neglected to mention carriers, I'll just pick a few phones that are along the lines of what you might want.
T-Mobile / AT&T: Unlocked Samsung Rugby Smart SGH-I847 It's $150 on Newegg and is a tough, water resistant phone smartphone.
Verizon: For durability's sake, a Kyocera Hydro Elite would be ideal, but Verizon wants $350 for it. If Verizon is your carrier, you're probably best off shopping for a second hand phone.
Sprint: Kyocera Hydro It's $220 from Sprint without re-upping a contract and Boost Mobile (Sprint's prepaid division) has it for $160.
There are plenty of parental control apps in the Google Play store and it's not like you generally have to worry about a 4-year-old hacking their way around them. If iOS is your platform of choice, you're pretty much looking at a minimum of an iPhone 4 in a LifeProof case. As things typically go, Android is the less expensive option.
The actual usability improvements in iOS 7 are mostly good. The task switcher copied from Palm is nice and the quick settings copied from Android is also a welcome change. But man, I just can't get past the way the whole thing looks. It looks like someone took iOS, Windows Phone 8 and Tandy's Deskmate (an old DOS GUI RadioShack's brand of PCs shipped with) and threw them into a blender.
Right, just like I can't play old Amiga MOD songs on my fucking cell phone. (that's sarcasm, in case anyone misses it) In the future 3D printing may progress to a point where you can simply replicate a reel-to-reel machine even after they've gone extinct. I doubt that would ever be necessary, though. Even if the specifications of a digital recording format were somehow completely lost, emulation has a pretty good track record for virtually bringing obsolete computer hardware back from the grave.
Now sure, in some post-apocalyptic (zombie invasion, goa'uld attack, natural disaster, etc.) scenario it might be easier to afro engineer a reel-to-reel player, but in that situation there'd be far bigger problems than losing the master recordings of few pop songs. In short, this guy just may be getting OLD.
Elon is a successful businessman specifically because he's selling the idea that if you buy his $70k car, you're doing your part to help move humanity towards a more sustainable future. It's exactly the same reason some people with extra money to burn buy organic foods. The reason he doesn't get attacked more often on Slashdot, is because people here really want to believe the line of shit about his company producing an affordable car at some indeterminate point in the future, when economy of scale makes it feasible.
Not reproductions of robots from famous works of fiction. Not models of actual robots used in real life. Not functional in any way.
This looks like something a young kid would build with some super glue and a box full of electrical fittings and cabinet hardware from Home Depot. What's next, bleach bottle pigs?
Slashdot Mirror
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/09/18/1338249/riaas-elementary-school-copyright-curriculum
I expect this to be as effective as D.A.R.E. AKA, Drugs Are Really Exciting/Entertaining.
They tell kids: "Yeah, there's a bunch of free games, movies and music online but don't download it, that's a copyright violation!"
All they hear is: "There's a bunch of free games, movies and music online, blah blah blah!"
In some states there aren't even vehicle inspections. Here in Florida, you can drive your jalopy around until a cop pulls you over (and writes you a $5 ticket to fix whatever issue is blatantly unroadworthy enough for a cop to notice) or it bursts into flames. You're comparing an awful lot of old, poorly maintained vehicles to brand spankin' new Teslas. For a $70,000 car, it should be a whole lot less likely than the average beater to go up in smoke after hitting some debris in the road.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this... but am I the only one here who actually likes having a small phone? I guess it's a trade-off. I'm willing to give up the convenience of having the extra screen real estate for having a small phone...
That's pretty much the dead give away that this rumor is full of shit. A 4.7" display is clearly in the realm of "difficult to use with one hand" and 5.5" is a phablet.
Apple may release something with a larger screen, but I seriously doubt they'll abandon their 4" display. Many people still do prefer a more compact phone. Getting an Android phone with a 4" display generally means buying one with severely downgraded internal specs, leaving Apple to pretty much own the high-end compact smartphone market segment. I just can't see Apple willingly giving that up.
Because, obviously if you can afford a 3.4 million dollar car, you can clearly afford the gas for it. Although, for that kind of money, you could probably buy a Tesla and still have plenty left over to hire someone to follow you with a generator, for the entire time you own your car.
Way back in the 70's (early 80s?) I recall a guy who wrapped his whole house in copper wire making large coils to tap the energy from the overhead power cables. He powered his whole house off this which was a mistake. The authorities charged him with theft.
Mythbusters tried this and basically got nothing from their rig. Florescent tubes do prove there is a strong static charge produced by high tension lines, but the magnetic field (which is required for induction) is rather weak.
I'm f***ing sick of Google and their integration of Google+ into Youtube (and obviously their other, and 3rd party services).
Google has slowly turned really fucking evil. They automatically keep you logged in so they can keep track of anything you search for, then return links that are redirected through them so they know exactly what you clicked on (and there's even a bit of nasty Javascript that makes the mouseover url display hide Google's trickery). They got rid of the ability to disable "SafeSearch" completely for images.
If you own an Android phone, they know everywhere you go. Their push for NFC technology is mainly motivated by the fact that they want to know everything you're buying, too.
Honestly, the NSA doesn't have to do shit. Google has basically handed them everything they could ever want, on a silver platter.
Roughly 21,500 Model S cars have been sold. Apple has sold over 500 million iOS devices.
If Apple's iOS devices were as likely to catch fire as Tesla's car, there would have been roughly 69,767 fires since Apple released the iPhone.
68% of the electrical power in the USA is provided by fossil fuels. While it's true the oil industry might be afraid of their product being devalued by a large uptake in electric vehicles (petroleum represents a paltry 1% in fuel for electrical generation), coal and natural gas (frack, baby, frack) will pick up the slack. Unlike petroleum, which can fluctuate in price based on demand, an increase in peak demands for electricity (as in, some point in the future when everyone gets home from rush hour and plugs in their damn car) means more plants will need to be built and they have to be paid for, regardless of how much the load on the grid fluctuates. Hell, here in Florida, Duke energy is jacking up their rates just because they feel like it.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people here have raging hard-ons for Tesla, as if each one was personally assembled by Captain Planet himself. The sad fact is, our addiction to fossil fuels doesn't stop at the pump. The fact that lithium ion cells are an overall shitty way of storing electricity and they sometimes go up in flames, is just the icing on the cake (and the cake is a lie).
...and how he's not a modern day Prometheus. All this time I thought he was just selling an expensive, mostly-coal-powered, toy for the rich (for whom the cost of gasoline is little concern). But wouldn't you know it, he really is trying to bring fire to the people!
Save money on my car insurance and have an electronic chauffeur? Shut up and take my money!
I can't wait for the day when driving "manually" will be viewed as archaic as doing your laundry in a basin or washing your dishes by hand. I'm more than happy to turn over menial tasks to a machine and I can hardly think of anything quite as tedious and boring as the daily commute and trips to and from the supermarket.
I don't speak Gaelic dialects, you see, so I don't see a reason in English to stick a seemingly-random apostrophe in the middle of the word.
Teal'c is not amused.
That's not peak usage. Industrial and office usage overshadows residential use by a lot. I own an electric car, so I got on my power company's "pay less if you use your power during off-peak hours and more if you use power during on-peak hours" plan, and the time you're referring to, when everybody gets home? That's when off-peak begins.
It's not peak usage today, because an extremely small percentage of people own electric cars. But take a look at any major city's rush hour and then imagine all those cars going home to plug in and you can see the potential for a huge problem.
I should also note that I, personally, don't care that much. I bought a LEAF not because I was anxious to save the planet, but because it's cheaper to own and operate than a gasoline-powered car, at least for my driving patterns.
That's because you're not paying any road taxes on the electricity and electric cars presently represent a very insignificant load on the electrical grid. If there were no road taxes on gasoline and demand for it was low, it would be dirt cheap too.
Because electric cars presently are bullshit.
"Yeah, 68% of the electricity in the US comes from fossil fuels but big plants burn it more efficiently than your car's IC engine."
So, we've established it's okay to burn fossil fuels if the process is efficient enough? Okay, screw these damn batteries and let's develop better ways of turning fossil fuels into forward motion. Or, perhaps, accept the fact that maybe burning fuels that have the potential to be carbon neutral (like biodiesel and ethanol) may actually be more green than a car that essentially runs on 68% dead dinos.
"There's all this unused grid capacity during the night."
There's also a lot of unused road capacity during the middle of the night, too. Just like roads, the electrical grid needs to be designed with the capacity to handle peak usage, like around 6pm when everyone gets home, plugs in their car, cranks up their air conditioning and starts cooking dinner.
"Electric car technology will come down in price, just like cell phones."
Electric cars have actually been around since 1888. Electric cars are expensive not because the technology is new, but because the batteries are resource intensive to build.
"The price of electricity won't be affected."
Used cooking oil was essentially worthless until demand started for using it as feedstock for biodiesel. Corn jumped up quite a bit in price when the government increased the amount of ethanol required to be blended into gasoline. Adding more demand to the electrical grid will cause electrical prices to increase, it's a simple matter of supply and demand.
"Electric cars will help lower demand for gasoline."
Yes. But gasoline isn't really used for much else other than as a motor vehicle fuel, so your electric car purchase is actually helping make my gasoline slightly cheaper. Thanks.
68% of the power in the USA is generated by fossil fuels. source It's why you can half jokingly refer to electric cars as "coal cars", since they're essentially filling up with 37% coal-derived electrons. The lithium ion batteries come with their own environmental costs during their creation, as well. The primary function of today's electric cars is to perform an "out of sight, out of mind" on your carbon footprint. Tesla's cars are toys for rich people who as kids, cleaned their room by shoving everything under their bed.
Now they have the technology to make Teal'c look good without making all the white people look like ghosts.
Reading through the comments, it seems most people are questioning the wisdom of giving a 4-year-old a smartphone, rather than just answering the damn question. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've already made up your mind about giving the kid a phone and truly are at a loss for which phone to choose.
Sorry to say, but you're really just overthinking this. The best smartphone for a 4-year-old is one that is compatible with the carrier you intend to use it on, has decently protective cases available and isn't so expensive that the world will end if the kid drops/breaks it. Since you neglected to mention carriers, I'll just pick a few phones that are along the lines of what you might want.
T-Mobile / AT&T: Unlocked Samsung Rugby Smart SGH-I847
It's $150 on Newegg and is a tough, water resistant phone smartphone.
Verizon:
For durability's sake, a Kyocera Hydro Elite would be ideal, but Verizon wants $350 for it. If Verizon is your carrier, you're probably best off shopping for a second hand phone.
Sprint:
Kyocera Hydro
It's $220 from Sprint without re-upping a contract and Boost Mobile (Sprint's prepaid division) has it for $160.
There are plenty of parental control apps in the Google Play store and it's not like you generally have to worry about a 4-year-old hacking their way around them. If iOS is your platform of choice, you're pretty much looking at a minimum of an iPhone 4 in a LifeProof case. As things typically go, Android is the less expensive option.
The actual usability improvements in iOS 7 are mostly good. The task switcher copied from Palm is nice and the quick settings copied from Android is also a welcome change. But man, I just can't get past the way the whole thing looks. It looks like someone took iOS, Windows Phone 8 and Tandy's Deskmate (an old DOS GUI RadioShack's brand of PCs shipped with) and threw them into a blender.
The ghost of Steve Jobs gives you and four other people a tour of Foxconn? I wonder if they have a scary tunnel.
Meanwhile, the people who just download the series through torrents have no such problem.
Right, just like I can't play old Amiga MOD songs on my fucking cell phone. (that's sarcasm, in case anyone misses it) In the future 3D printing may progress to a point where you can simply replicate a reel-to-reel machine even after they've gone extinct. I doubt that would ever be necessary, though. Even if the specifications of a digital recording format were somehow completely lost, emulation has a pretty good track record for virtually bringing obsolete computer hardware back from the grave.
Now sure, in some post-apocalyptic (zombie invasion, goa'uld attack, natural disaster, etc.) scenario it might be easier to afro engineer a reel-to-reel player, but in that situation there'd be far bigger problems than losing the master recordings of few pop songs. In short, this guy just may be getting OLD.
Elon is a successful businessman specifically because he's selling the idea that if you buy his $70k car, you're doing your part to help move humanity towards a more sustainable future. It's exactly the same reason some people with extra money to burn buy organic foods. The reason he doesn't get attacked more often on Slashdot, is because people here really want to believe the line of shit about his company producing an affordable car at some indeterminate point in the future, when economy of scale makes it feasible.
The worldwide supply of oil is being sucked up by people who can't afford a $70k electric car.
Not reproductions of robots from famous works of fiction.
Not models of actual robots used in real life.
Not functional in any way.
This looks like something a young kid would build with some super glue and a box full of electrical fittings and cabinet hardware from Home Depot. What's next, bleach bottle pigs?
Mr. Musk builds toys for the rich and Slashdot repeatedly gives him mostly praise.
Walmart brings the necessities of life to countless working families at prices they can afford and is frequently lambasted for their trouble.
I'm sure I had more to add to this, but I don't want to miss the latest episode of "Ow my balls!".