Um. Many, many species of large mammals have gone extinct during the history of life on this planet. It's natural selection. Who's the moron now? Hint: you.
Because the change you speak of happens on a very short period, and the cycle has been consistently observed for a long time. Neither of those things are true about "global warming". Smart ass.
The dogmatic way these people insult those who challenge their beliefs is reminiscent, frankly, of the religious fundamentalists that they despise so much.
Imagine my confusion when I saw that your post was modded as something other than "Funny", because I'm pretty certain that this was intended as a joke. Just in case it wasn't, I guess I should mention that what religious fundamentalists say is ridiculed because it is completely unsupported. Religious "theories" are designed such that they cannot be falsified. In science, theories that cannot be falsified are completely worthless, mainly because there is an infinite number of them.
Do not compare the validity of science to the validity of religion. The validity of religion rests at precisely zero, and always will.
The gov't handing out vouchers is a separate problem. I agree that people should just pick up the cost themselves. But I conjecture that NTSC is so horrifically bad that we should consider it "broken".
What about the fact that a horrible outdated "technology" (if you can even call it that) will finally disappear forever in the name of progress? I'm pretty damn happy about that.
You're using a very different definition of the adverb "religiously" in that case. In your usage, it means "with extreme conscientiousness", and has nothing to do with religion itself.
Almost everyone seems to think they somehow managed to spot faults in the concept that nobody at BMW could possibly have imagined.
Anything you say after that sentence is worthless unless BMW actually goes to market with this idea. If they don't bring it to market, then someone at BMW did imagine these faults, and the "slashdot engineers" that you mock will have been right.
This does not mean that adding a turbo to any given engine will improve efficiency. The compression ratio in your engine was simply too low from the start, which made your suffer from the same efficiency problem as a turbocharged engine that's off-boost. (My Audi S4 runs 9.3:1 compression, and it's turbocharged from the factory.)
Consider going to Bejing, Shanghai or Hong Kong. You might feel differently about US domination. Having been there, I could only conclude that the US was a third world country in the making and that Asia cities represent the ultra modern future we all aspire toward. If you go to Shanghai you should try the sooper high speed mag-lev train.
I don't think you understand what "Third World" means, or that a person could easily buy a working car for less than the cost of a ticket on a high-speed mag-lev train, drive to the same place the train would have brought them, and still have a working car. High-speed trains and other such things are merely expensive, shiny gimmicks, and not at all indicative of the level a civilization has attained.
That will happen in around 10 - 20 years just when the US needs money to fund SS payments to baby-boomers.
And why does the US need to do that? Social Security should just disappear anyway, since its taxes punish everyone because of those few who don't have the foresight to save for retirement. It's a garbage idea.
You neglected to mention that the Nazi party also dragged a country out of economic ruin and to a world superpower. In the 1930s, German hyperinflation was so bad that 100-billion-Mark notes were being printed. Many people in the country at the time welcomed the change.
No evidence of this? Jeremy Clarkson, who has probably driven more different cars over the past 30 years than anyone else alive today, has this to say about the Prius:
"... Because the Prius has two engines, prices start at a whopping seventeen-and-a-half thousand pounds. And don't think that you're getting much in the way of quality for that, either. I mean, I'll give you one example -- to stop this armrest thing rattling, they've used sort-of-adhesive foam rubber tabs. To sum up, then: it's a very expensive, very complex, not terribly green, slow, cheaply made, and pointless way of moving around."
Newsflash: People need a government. No matter how individual and sophisticated you think you are (yes, reader, this means you too), the average person needs to be told what to do. It is naive and unrealistic to think otherwise.
Weight isn't really the biggest issue; the problem is that regenerative braking systems, batteries, etc. cost more money, and this extra cost must be offset by cheapening the rest of the car so as to keep the price attractive.
Yaa, it's not like Toyota makes a Lexus Hybrid or anything... Oh wait, they do.
Too bad that Lexus gets 30mpg, and a diesel Audi A8 with a twin-turbo V8 can get 40mpg, with even more luxury. Hybrids are an excellent thing to sell to people who are easily duped.
The Toyota Prius has some of the best maintenance records among any cars on the road today, as documented by Consumer Reports. The Honda hybrids are comparable to their non-hybrid cousins (e.g., Hybrid Accord vs. regular Accord) and also have good maintenance records.
Reliability isn't exactly the same as build quality. Forget about luxurious wood/leather interiors and solid-feeling components on a hybrid car. (Such things add weight, and more weight means the engine must make more power than a hybrid engine reasonably can.)
Hmmm... battery recycling costs versus the amount of pollutants added to the atmosphere by standard cars.
Modern internal combustion engines are very clean. We've become quite good at burning gasoline efficiently, but we're not particularly good at reclaiming/recycling things like selenium and cadmium on a large scale.
In fifty years, which do you think will be cheaper and more abundant: materials for batteries or oil? I think the former. Yes, it requires effort and energy, but it doesn't require oil.
And I think the latter. It's possible to get a burnable liquid fuel from coal, and the coal on this planet won't be running out anytime soon. The stuff in chemical batteries, however, is neither common nor user-friendly. This is part of the reason that high-capacity batteries cost a fortune.
But I can see your point: why use an alternative when the alternative isn't absolutely perfect. *insert sarcasm drip*
I think because the alternative is much worse in a number of important ways. Performance is pretty abyssmal, complexity is high, and build quality has to be mediocre to keep costs down. Many people want high-performance cars, and hybrid/electric cars don't meet that requirement.
You seem to be forgetting that Toyota wants you to buy a new car sooner rather than later. Whether they sell to you or to someone else, every new hybrid sold comes with yet another chemical battery that something must happen with eventually.
And the oil companies and the auto makers who get to wring some more life out of their outdated internal combustion technology.
Internal combustion provides the best power-to-weight of any small engine type, and they are by far the cheapest option. The emissions from a modern, efficient engine are incredibly low.
Wikipedia's article on battery operated vehicles is pretty damn interesting. Why was that technology abandoned?
Because it's very expensive and awful. Batteries are made from costly, uncommon, toxic materials, can't be recharged quickly, are ridiculously heavy for the power they can store, and drastically change in their performance with temperature. Furthermore, how are you going to heat a car that only has an electric power source? Just dump current through a coil? Bad idea.
It means you don't think science can answer the question of wether God exists or not. That's fine.
Of course science can't answer that question -- the conjecture of "a god exists" has carefully evolved such that, by definition, it cannot be proven wrong. You might wonder how we can be so sure that the existence of a god cannot be falsified, and the answer is: the notion of gods has been completely fabricated by humans.
Slashdot Mirror
Um. Many, many species of large mammals have gone extinct during the history of life on this planet. It's natural selection. Who's the moron now? Hint: you.
Because the change you speak of happens on a very short period, and the cycle has been consistently observed for a long time. Neither of those things are true about "global warming". Smart ass.
The dogmatic way these people insult those who challenge their beliefs is reminiscent, frankly, of the religious fundamentalists that they despise so much.
Imagine my confusion when I saw that your post was modded as something other than "Funny", because I'm pretty certain that this was intended as a joke. Just in case it wasn't, I guess I should mention that what religious fundamentalists say is ridiculed because it is completely unsupported. Religious "theories" are designed such that they cannot be falsified. In science, theories that cannot be falsified are completely worthless, mainly because there is an infinite number of them.
Do not compare the validity of science to the validity of religion. The validity of religion rests at precisely zero, and always will.
The gov't handing out vouchers is a separate problem. I agree that people should just pick up the cost themselves. But I conjecture that NTSC is so horrifically bad that we should consider it "broken".
What about the fact that a horrible outdated "technology" (if you can even call it that) will finally disappear forever in the name of progress? I'm pretty damn happy about that.
You're using a very different definition of the adverb "religiously" in that case. In your usage, it means "with extreme conscientiousness", and has nothing to do with religion itself.
Almost everyone seems to think they somehow managed to spot faults in the concept that nobody at BMW could possibly have imagined.
Anything you say after that sentence is worthless unless BMW actually goes to market with this idea. If they don't bring it to market, then someone at BMW did imagine these faults, and the "slashdot engineers" that you mock will have been right.
the same could be said for a regular gas/electric hybrid...
The same has been said. By me. No one seems to listen...
This does not mean that adding a turbo to any given engine will improve efficiency. The compression ratio in your engine was simply too low from the start, which made your suffer from the same efficiency problem as a turbocharged engine that's off-boost. (My Audi S4 runs 9.3:1 compression, and it's turbocharged from the factory.)
Consider going to Bejing, Shanghai or Hong Kong. You might feel differently about US domination. Having been there, I could only conclude that the US was a third world country in the making and that Asia cities represent the ultra modern future we all aspire toward. If you go to Shanghai you should try the sooper high speed mag-lev train.
I don't think you understand what "Third World" means, or that a person could easily buy a working car for less than the cost of a ticket on a high-speed mag-lev train, drive to the same place the train would have brought them, and still have a working car. High-speed trains and other such things are merely expensive, shiny gimmicks, and not at all indicative of the level a civilization has attained.
That will happen in around 10 - 20 years just when the US needs money to fund SS payments to baby-boomers.
And why does the US need to do that? Social Security should just disappear anyway, since its taxes punish everyone because of those few who don't have the foresight to save for retirement. It's a garbage idea.
Remove the word "dogmatic" from number two. There's nothing dogmatic about scientific truth.
Um, yeah. I read it before I posted.
What makes you think creditors will pass ANY of this "savings" on to their other customers?
Because the customers are now aware that this measure has been put in place. Why would people put up with it if there was no possible benefit?
Try this: pay cash for a car. Then you don't have to worry about this issue at all.
You neglected to mention that the Nazi party also dragged a country out of economic ruin and to a world superpower. In the 1930s, German hyperinflation was so bad that 100-billion-Mark notes were being printed. Many people in the country at the time welcomed the change.
Why is that a "load of crap"? Seems to be entirely correct, actually.
Um... if this ignition lock-out works to reduce the incidence of deadbeats, then your payment should already be lower.
No evidence of this? Jeremy Clarkson, who has probably driven more different cars over the past 30 years than anyone else alive today, has this to say about the Prius:
"... Because the Prius has two engines, prices start at a whopping seventeen-and-a-half thousand pounds. And don't think that you're getting much in the way of quality for that, either. I mean, I'll give you one example -- to stop this armrest thing rattling, they've used sort-of-adhesive foam rubber tabs. To sum up, then: it's a very expensive, very complex, not terribly green, slow, cheaply made, and pointless way of moving around."
Newsflash: People need a government. No matter how individual and sophisticated you think you are (yes, reader, this means you too), the average person needs to be told what to do. It is naive and unrealistic to think otherwise.
Weight isn't really the biggest issue; the problem is that regenerative braking systems, batteries, etc. cost more money, and this extra cost must be offset by cheapening the rest of the car so as to keep the price attractive.
Yaa, it's not like Toyota makes a Lexus Hybrid or anything... Oh wait, they do.
Too bad that Lexus gets 30mpg, and a diesel Audi A8 with a twin-turbo V8 can get 40mpg, with even more luxury. Hybrids are an excellent thing to sell to people who are easily duped.
The Toyota Prius has some of the best maintenance records among any cars on the road today, as documented by Consumer Reports. The Honda hybrids are comparable to their non-hybrid cousins (e.g., Hybrid Accord vs. regular Accord) and also have good maintenance records.
Reliability isn't exactly the same as build quality. Forget about luxurious wood/leather interiors and solid-feeling components on a hybrid car. (Such things add weight, and more weight means the engine must make more power than a hybrid engine reasonably can.)
Hmmm... battery recycling costs versus the amount of pollutants added to the atmosphere by standard cars.
Modern internal combustion engines are very clean. We've become quite good at burning gasoline efficiently, but we're not particularly good at reclaiming/recycling things like selenium and cadmium on a large scale.
In fifty years, which do you think will be cheaper and more abundant: materials for batteries or oil? I think the former. Yes, it requires effort and energy, but it doesn't require oil.
And I think the latter. It's possible to get a burnable liquid fuel from coal, and the coal on this planet won't be running out anytime soon. The stuff in chemical batteries, however, is neither common nor user-friendly. This is part of the reason that high-capacity batteries cost a fortune.
But I can see your point: why use an alternative when the alternative isn't absolutely perfect. *insert sarcasm drip*
I think because the alternative is much worse in a number of important ways. Performance is pretty abyssmal, complexity is high, and build quality has to be mediocre to keep costs down. Many people want high-performance cars, and hybrid/electric cars don't meet that requirement.
You seem to be forgetting that Toyota wants you to buy a new car sooner rather than later. Whether they sell to you or to someone else, every new hybrid sold comes with yet another chemical battery that something must happen with eventually.
And the oil companies and the auto makers who get to wring some more life out of their outdated internal combustion technology.
Internal combustion provides the best power-to-weight of any small engine type, and they are by far the cheapest option. The emissions from a modern, efficient engine are incredibly low.
Wikipedia's article on battery operated vehicles is pretty damn interesting. Why was that technology abandoned?
Because it's very expensive and awful. Batteries are made from costly, uncommon, toxic materials, can't be recharged quickly, are ridiculously heavy for the power they can store, and drastically change in their performance with temperature. Furthermore, how are you going to heat a car that only has an electric power source? Just dump current through a coil? Bad idea.
It means you don't think science can answer the question of wether God exists or not. That's fine.
Of course science can't answer that question -- the conjecture of "a god exists" has carefully evolved such that, by definition, it cannot be proven wrong. You might wonder how we can be so sure that the existence of a god cannot be falsified, and the answer is: the notion of gods has been completely fabricated by humans.