Of course it's a better interface. Usenet was shit. Complete anonymity, no accountability, no images, no formatting, no decent threading, no subforums or categories, nothing but spam and endless flamewars lasting literally years. Having to download a huge list of newsgroups, then 'subscribe', then sit there and wait for every message to download, only to see 4000 posts arguing the same shit over and over again, with posts quoted 50 deep so you have to scroll down five pages just to get to the actual post.
Most buses I get are every 10 or 15 minutes, we even have funky LED screens in the stops telling us how long it will be 'till the next bus. So not exactly but pretty close..
If I want a bus I often have to wait for an hour, or even all day. Assuming the route hasn't been stealthily cancelled since the last time I had to use a bus.
Just how much luggage do you need? I can easily carry all my university books and a weeks clothing...
How do you transport a suitcase, a computer, and a week's shopping on the bus? And where do you leave it when you need to go somewhere?
Trains are much faster than cars, it takes 25 minutes to travel from Inverurie (my parents town) to Aberdeen (where I live) by train but 40 by car.
For most journeys it would take longer to get to the train station, then wait for the train, than the entire journey by car. 40 minutes? In the UK you're lucky if the train isn't 40 minutes late. I looked up that journey on the map, you should be able to make it in 20 minutes or less driving. Less than the time it would take to get to the train station, then find out the train has been delayed due to leaves on the line.
And thanks to bus lanes and tracking devices in the buses that cause traffic lights to change for them buses are just as fast as cars, faster in traffic.
I travel to work at an average of 60mph. Busses generally average 10mph, if you're lucky. Stopping every ten yards to pick up another dolescum waster, and accelerating slower than a milk float generally makes busses a very slow form of transporation.
In fact, my journey home from work whilst 10 minutes by car takes over an hour by bus, mainly due to having to walk 2 miles to the bus stop, then having to wait half an hour for the hourly bus to turn up.
You never need to worry about parking.
Spending a few minutes finding a parking spot is better than walking several miles to and from the bus stop.
You can't drive while drunk.
Busses are finished by the time the pubs close, of course sometimes there might be a nightbus, but who is stupid enough to risk their own lives on one of them?
You don't get stuck in traffic.
I beg to differ, I remember once a bus taking well over an hour to transport me five miles due to heavy traffic. I rarely get stuck in traffic in my car.
Your saving the planet!
Yes, a double-decker bus with a couple of pensioners on the way to the post office is far less polluting than a small car...
Also, cars have the advantage of not going on strike every time Bob Crow needs his ego stroked. And you can travel to destinations other than the ones that the bus companies have deemed economical. And you can store things in them, rather than carrying huge handfuls of bags everywhere. And there's no chewing gum on the seats, or feral children at the back swearing and smoking. And no fiddling for change and dealing with miserable bus drivers. Or waiting for an hour in the rain at a bus stop.
If you already have a car/automobile then there is a good chance that a given journey will be cheaper than public transport - especially if more than one person is making the journey. However, my experience in the UK suggests that if you book plane/train far enough in advance you can often get prices cheaper than a car journey
Except you still need a car to get to the train station or airport in the first place. And this is the UK, where you're lucky if the trains run at all, and you need to remortgage your house to buy a ticket unless you book before you even know where you're going. And you need a car when you get to the destination airport/train station. Unless you want to rely on the brilliant British busses that get you to about 5% of the places you need to go, and never at the time you want to go there. And assuming you're not stabbed whilst waiting at the bus stop.
Furthermore, go find an old person and ask them to explain to you what life was like in the 50s. I think you'll be surprised to learn that most Americans had indoor plumbing, and enjoyed a 40 hour work week, or something in the neighborhood.
Yeah, because the majority of people from back then who had all the shitty lives are already dead due to working 80 hours a week down the mine. The only ones left are the ones from well-off backgrounds who spent their working lives sat in an office.
And improving the standard of living of the average citizen! And... the list goes on.
Yeah, the standard of living today is so terrible. I wish I lived in the fifties, with an outside toilet, one bath a week shared by the whole family, and 80 hour weeks down the coal mine. Damn this free-market globalisation with its 40 hour weeks and indoor plumbing!
That would be a particularly poor idea, considering that the US has dramatic naval and air superiority compared with China.
What use is that when it's stuck in the gulf? Naval superiority is overrated anyway, it only takes one cheap sub to sink the most expensive, sophisticated carrier. If Saddam had torpedos, he'd still be in power.
Or that he died broke and alone because people like Edison stole his ideas and robbed him blind. Tesla was a genius and could have done so much more for the world if only things weren't controlled by rich people with no vision further than how much money they can make, right away, off an idea. Tesla's failure is a perfect example of capitalism at work.
Under capitalism, Tesla had the chance to become rich and successful from his inventions, he just blew it. That's not the fault of capitalism, just Tesla's failure to understand it. Under communism, the government would have stolen his idea instead, and no-one would have become rich from it.
Tesla dying broke and alone was entirely his own fault, nothing to do with Edison or capitalism or anything. At least capitalism gave him the chance to become successful, under communism he would probably have ended up down a salt mine.
With what has been spent on the Iraq war, the US could have funded a national health service.
Are you sure about that? Considering that the British NHS costs about $200 million a year, and America having five times the population, it would cost at least a trillion dollars a year, over twice the budget of the entire US military.
But then surely from driving to pick people up, it would spend more time and distance on the road than if people just owned their own cars? Nice idea, but I can't see it catching on.
Stacking shelves isn't supposed to be a career, it's not something you're supposed to do for the rest of your life to sustain a family. It's something for part-time workers, the retired, and schoolkids. If you want a decent living wage, then study at school so you don't have to do a job that could be done by a trained monkey.
Unless Government is mommy and daddy they have no business doing anything out side of protecting our basic rights.
I'd consider being able to live in a non-polluted environment a 'basic right', and it is the government's job to stop you wrecking the world's climate for other people.
Luck has nothing to do with it. That's the same sort of naive thinking that comes up with ideas like this. As long as the power company can recoup most/all of the added expense from the customer, they won't have any impetus to switch anything at all.
You mean other than being able to offer cheaper prices than competitors?
Actually I think the main benefit of this is that if the costs are passed on, consumers might stop wasting so much electricity. Maybe they'll think twice about leaving the 48" TV on 24/7.
In Russia, they're already at the bottom of the slope, with the police, courts and goverment completely crooked. Whilst there, they may as well give the spammers a fucking.
You do realize that if the government hadn't demanded one, than Wal-Mart and other "morally obligated" retailers would have demanded the same thing, and then we're back to the same exact outcome (which is what we have here in the US). The fact is, one way or another, a society that condones the enforcing of values on other individuals
A private shop refusing to sell an item is not enforcing anything, no more than if McDonald's declined to include hard-core gay porn as prizes in Happy Meals.
I'm all for iPod Killarz and iPhone Killarz! Build me a better iPhone! I'll want it!
In order to be able to kill the iPhone it has to be a success in the first place. Considering it hasn't even been released into an already saturated market full of mature, cost-effective products, I don't think anyone needs to kill it just yet.
Why is it that nobody but Apple seems to understand that too many features actually BREAK a product and reduce it to a tiny minority appeal (yes, looking at the slashdot crowd here)?
I can assure you that the mobile phone market is full of phones of many different levels of features. In fact the iPhone is full of gimmicky features that no-one really wants. You could accuse Apple of reducing their phone to a tiny minority appeal (Apple fanboys). I'm not sure that the 99% of phone-users who send countless text messages a day want to be fucking about with a touch-screen.
Why is it that almost no competitors appear to have the slightest concept of "style" and "taste"?
What exactly is so stylish and tasteful about the iPhone, compared to its competitors? For someone who doesn't sup from the Steve Jobs kool-aid barrel, I think it looks pretty ugly compared to most phones. Too wide, too rounded, not very slick or dynamic. Looks more like a TV remote, or a children's toy.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course it's a better interface. Usenet was shit. Complete anonymity, no accountability, no images, no formatting, no decent threading, no subforums or categories, nothing but spam and endless flamewars lasting literally years. Having to download a huge list of newsgroups, then 'subscribe', then sit there and wait for every message to download, only to see 4000 posts arguing the same shit over and over again, with posts quoted 50 deep so you have to scroll down five pages just to get to the actual post.
Face it, newsgroups were a fucking wasteground.
In fact, my journey home from work whilst 10 minutes by car takes over an hour by bus, mainly due to having to walk 2 miles to the bus stop, then having to wait half an hour for the hourly bus to turn up.Spending a few minutes finding a parking spot is better than walking several miles to and from the bus stop.Busses are finished by the time the pubs close, of course sometimes there might be a nightbus, but who is stupid enough to risk their own lives on one of them?I beg to differ, I remember once a bus taking well over an hour to transport me five miles due to heavy traffic. I rarely get stuck in traffic in my car.Yes, a double-decker bus with a couple of pensioners on the way to the post office is far less polluting than a small car...
Also, cars have the advantage of not going on strike every time Bob Crow needs his ego stroked. And you can travel to destinations other than the ones that the bus companies have deemed economical. And you can store things in them, rather than carrying huge handfuls of bags everywhere. And there's no chewing gum on the seats, or feral children at the back swearing and smoking. And no fiddling for change and dealing with miserable bus drivers. Or waiting for an hour in the rain at a bus stop.
I don't see why a video player crashing should crash a browser. And I'm using Linux.
Well if that's the case, then as a fair comparison you'd also have to include the money spent in the UK on private healthcare.
Tesla dying broke and alone was entirely his own fault, nothing to do with Edison or capitalism or anything. At least capitalism gave him the chance to become successful, under communism he would probably have ended up down a salt mine.
But then surely from driving to pick people up, it would spend more time and distance on the road than if people just owned their own cars? Nice idea, but I can't see it catching on.
Except Flash has a tendency to crash Linux Firefox.
Actually I think the main benefit of this is that if the costs are passed on, consumers might stop wasting so much electricity. Maybe they'll think twice about leaving the 48" TV on 24/7.
I think he was referring to the real Paris, not the ones made by unimaginative Americans who couldn't think up their own name.
Considering the small percentage of car crashes that involve police chases, I can't see this lowering insurance much.