Actually they showed some demonstrations and the way the wheeels and balance were designed they ran over people's toes without any harm at all.
Re:Why can't anyone see the implications of this?
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
Ya know I really can't see why they''re are so many nay-sayers for the idea of a segway. I mean it may not be the internal combustion engine, but no one is saying it is. Everyone harping on the point that it's $3000. Well i remeber when i bought my first computer it was $2100 by the time I got done with all the addons, but my last system was like $1000. Look how dvd players have gone from $1000 machines to $150 ones. If this catches on it could easily drop in price. So it's expensive at first every technology is like that. The point to me is that at least Kamen is trying to think a little out of the box here. Hey we all love our cars, enjoy our suburbs and malls, but is it really so bad to propose the idea that we can have other paradigm other than the car driven society. PArt of the reason sommutes are so long and car fit in so wellwith our society is that cities and suburbs were designed that way. Their isn't anything particularly natural about driving a car 50 miles a day. Now hey I don't necesarily have a problem with that, btu I think it's pretty clear that in a llot of areas it's going to be near imposible to solve the congestion problems cars cause with more roads or better traffic management. In many places in the US their are just to many cars. I don't see why the idea of having people living closer to thier job and using a Segway in concert with mass transportation is so bad. Right now it's not convenient I'll admit, but that's because so many cities are designed for cars. If we design cities looking forward more for pedestrians, bicycles, scooters and devices like the Segway, the Segway could play an impotant part in re-engineering our cities and suburbs to a more sustainable environment.
What you're not taking into account their is
the amount of elextricity it takes to power
the average car versus what they're estimating
their machine at. Especially if you're driving
alone in the vehicle versus driving a low powered
"Gingercycle", unless you have a very small car,
very fuel efficient car it's unlikely you're being
more efficient from a power consmtion viewpoint
or an environmental one. The avg car would probably use something on the order of 10 times the power, even given efficiency concerns it sounds like from what they're saying a segway would come out ahead.
Seems like kind of a neat gimick, buut I don't know how useful it is in real life. I mean combining a burner with your cd player doesn't seem all that important. Now I do like the size of mini cds, but you can buy a minicd player that doesn't burn for under $200 . Check out the philips for example.
http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/individual/3730.h tml
THen you have normal burners being more an more ubiquitous and going for around $100. Unless you really need to burn on the go I don't see much of a need for this. Even if you need something of comparable size and portability where you can record on the go I'd rather buy something like one of the 384 ibm microdrive players which hover around the same price. You get the same size and recordign ability although you would lose the removing ability of mini cd's I'll admit. On summation it sounds like a cool device, but of limited use.
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Actually they showed some demonstrations and the way the wheeels and balance were designed they ran over people's toes without any harm at all.
Ya know I really can't see why they''re are so many nay-sayers for the idea of a segway. I mean it may not be the internal combustion engine, but no one is saying it is. Everyone harping on the point that it's $3000. Well i remeber when i bought my first computer it was $2100 by the time I got done with all the addons, but my last system was like $1000. Look how dvd players have gone from $1000 machines to $150 ones. If this catches on it could easily drop in price. So it's expensive at first every technology is like that. The point to me is that at least Kamen is trying to think a little out of the box here. Hey we all love our cars, enjoy our suburbs and malls, but is it really so bad to propose the idea that we can have other paradigm other than the car driven society. PArt of the reason sommutes are so long and car fit in so wellwith our society is that cities and suburbs were designed that way. Their isn't anything particularly natural about driving a car 50 miles a day. Now hey I don't necesarily have a problem with that, btu I think it's pretty clear that in a llot of areas it's going to be near imposible to solve the congestion problems cars cause with more roads or better traffic management. In many places in the US their are just to many cars. I don't see why the idea of having people living closer to thier job and using a Segway in concert with mass transportation is so bad. Right now it's not convenient I'll admit, but that's because so many cities are designed for cars. If we design cities looking forward more for pedestrians, bicycles, scooters and devices like the Segway, the Segway could play an impotant part in re-engineering our cities and suburbs to a more sustainable environment.
What you're not taking into account their is the amount of elextricity it takes to power the average car versus what they're estimating their machine at. Especially if you're driving alone in the vehicle versus driving a low powered "Gingercycle", unless you have a very small car, very fuel efficient car it's unlikely you're being more efficient from a power consmtion viewpoint or an environmental one. The avg car would probably use something on the order of 10 times the power, even given efficiency concerns it sounds like from what they're saying a segway would come out ahead.
Seems like kind of a neat gimick, buut I don't know how useful it is in real life. I mean combining a burner with your cd player doesn't seem all that important. Now I do like the size of mini cds, but you can buy a minicd player that doesn't burn for under $200 . Check out the philips for example. http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/individual/3730.h tml
THen you have normal burners being more an more ubiquitous and going for around $100. Unless you really need to burn on the go I don't see much of a need for this. Even if you need something of comparable size and portability where you can record on the go I'd rather buy something like one of the 384 ibm microdrive players which hover around the same price. You get the same size and recordign ability although you would lose the removing ability of mini cd's I'll admit. On summation it sounds like a cool device, but of limited use.