several years ago, you would have seen first hand what I'm talking about. The Air Force tested the what is now known as the F-117 "Stealth" Fighter out there at that time, along with the corresponding bomber.
No, you wouldn't have seen it. They flew at night. Only at night.
Interesting. That makes their capacity/speed/range claims even more outlandish. If a dedicated, similar size light aircraft can't carry that much payload, how do these guys expect to get more from their (not yet built) prototype, when also carrying all the road-necessary crap? They can't.
An airplane makes a shitty car. A car makes a shitty airplane. Mix the two, and you double the crap.
If you have the money to buy one of these semi-roadable light aircraft, you'd have the money to buy a dedicated aircraft, and have a limo pick you up at the ski area airport.
What I want to see is a helicopter built into a normal automobile.
Helicopters are harder to fly than fixed wing.
As a non-pilot, as far as I'm concerned, if my flying car can't take off right in the middle of Highway 17 and land atop the parking garage in downtown Santa Cruz, I'm not interested.:-)
To land on the parking garage, you need VERY close traffic control (stacking up for landing at 8:00 am), and automated 10" precision in 30mph crosswinds. Not doable with any conventional aircraft.
Picture your current office parking lot. But as everyone comes in at 8 AM, they take minimum 5 minutes to make that 4 second turn off the street into the parking lot. Long line, right? Drop the last 500 feet, fold the wings/rotors into stow config, reconfigure the drivetrain into road confog, move out of the landing area...easily 5 minutes. There are only so many 'landing spots'. oh, and where are you going to land when you get home? How big is your yard?
You have any idea how rough a landing some of those little struts can take ? Not so good on side loading but doable.
Yes they can take a good hit, but with a serious lack of car-level comfort. The ride on the ground in a light aircraft is endurable for the few minutes it takes to get off the ground. That same ride quality in a car trip of any length would be unacceptable.
Yes, but I try not to. A 'flying car' is not a car, but rather an airplane that happens to be (marginally) able to be driven on the public roads. For flight, it would require lots of the same stuff as a standard light aircraft. You can't just take an eye test, get your license, hop in and buzz around the block.
Of course, it depends on how many kazillion such a thing would cost,
Lots and lots.
operating cost
Lots and lots. Certified aircraft require licensed mechanics ($$$) doing required routine inspections. Lots more than your car.
safety and reliability
Possibly good
government regulation and requirements (e.g. a full flight certificate would pretty much make it out of the question)
It would require such.
but to me it certainly seems like a viable way to travel.
From the looks of this thing, it would appear to be only useful on the ground when going to and from the airport. NOT useful as a 'car'.
It would be cheaper/easier to own/rent a Cessna, and simply drive your regular car to the local little airstrip.
As for passengers and cargo, as a personal conveyance device 80lbs really isn't bad.
Bring 2 backpacks of 20lb each (camera equip, lunch, and a couple changes of clothes), and now you're flirting dangerously close to the absolute limit. Don't run into any bad weather.
This is not a 'flying car'. Yes, it may go on the road, and may actually fly. But it does neither well. Very impractical for actual driving with those blind spots, and if you're flying, why are you hauling a heavy roadable drivetrain around?
550lb total payload. -120lb gas, -200lb pilot + 150lb passenger = 80lb left. What...you were eplanning on bringing a little luggage?
Now, taking this several steps farther, Interpol had to do it on pics grabbed from the web, of unknown compression, originally done with an unknown application, possible 3rd party twirl filter, and saved/compressed unknown number of times at unknown quality level.
Still, the (alleged) perp is still a huge dumbass.
The problem with "conspiracy to commit" is that the PTB can draw the line anywhere they want; indeed, that has been a problem in some parts of the world in the past.
Right. But the line has to be drawn somewhere. If some dude is standing on a crowded bus, with a vest full of C-4, his finger on the trigger...do we have to wait before they are all a pink mist before arresting him? Is he still in the 'planning' phase, because he hasn't actually done it yet? Millions wonder why the 9/11 terrorists weren't stopped before. Well...up until the moment they actually took over the cockpit, it was merely "conspiracy to commit". Should they have been arrested before?
"Conspiracy to commit" has been a crime for a very long time, both in the US and the UK. Planning, AND collecting the materials, AND (possibly) working with someone else is a little more than teenage angst scribbled out in their diary.
As I said, hopefully they get a rational judge, and the right verdict comes out, no matter which way it falls.
Did he build a bomb? Did he threaten to use it? Did he do anything resembling a crime besides wanting to know something?
Did he? No. But apparently the 'book' is not the sole reason for the arrest.
From the Yorkshire Post:
"A court in
London was told two weeks ago that the schoolboy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is alleged to have had chemicals used for making bombs under his bed. He is accused of plotting to make bombs following a trip to Pakistan"
"During an anti-terror raid on his home about 500g of potassium nitrate was allegedly found under his bed in the room he shared with his younger brother. Potassium nitrate is a critical oxidising component of gunpowder."
Now...possessing potassium nitrate is not a crime (and 500g might get you a good firecracker), and owning that book is not a crime. Take the two together, along with the arrest of another kid in the same neighborhood, and the case may be that, yeah, maybe these two were planning something. Maybe the first kid coughed up the second kids name as a compatriot. I would not hazard a guess either way.
Hopefully, they will get a reasonable judge and whichever way it goes, they will get the right verdict.
Obviously, strenuously, completely...knowledge should never, ever be illegal. But as usual, TFA is short of the full details. And/. goes bonkers over what was said, instead of finding out more about the situation.
Seriously. WTF do you want? Payment for each and every set of ears that might be in close proximity to a set of speakers that is playing stuff you've already been paid for.
whereas 3.9 million have it "available" from Verizon
If the fiber pipe comes to their house, and they don't subscribe...who, precisely, is to blame for us being 'behind'? For those 8 million Japanese, what was their alternative before the fiber came in? I'm not sure, just asking the question.
What I'm saying is...rightly or wrongly, the current alternatives in the US are often seen as acceptable to many users. If it was dialup OR fiber, no contest. Bring me the glass. But if it's dialup OR cable/DSL OR fiber...the last two will split the customer base, even though the fiber is demonstrably faster.
I should have specified, but I really meant cheap/good POTS in relation to local service. Which is what everyone used/uses for dialup internet service. Until very recently, a lot of countries local POTS service was per minute, not just long distance.
OH NOES!!! The US lags behind Japan! This may be true. However...
1. Telcoms. Yes, the telcoms screwed the pooch. They were supposed to have this a lot farther along than it is. But they're getting to it. Currently, Verizon has ~4 million households wired for fiber. But they are they only company rolling out fiber? And I'm glad it's only one. I really don't want ALL of them digging up my yard every few months.
2. States vs countries. The US is not a monolithic block. Rather, it is a collection of 50 states, each with their own rules, etc.
3. Size. All you clowns saying size/density doesn't matter are FOC. It is significantly easier to wire 50 million houses than 105 million. And when you consider the physical distance between houses, it's even more expensive. Wiring up 20 houses per mile is harder/slower/more costly than 50 houses per mile. US houses generally have more land between. Which leads us to...
4. But why aren't the cities wired? Equal density to Tokyo. Well...Tokyo doesn't have a 150 year old infrastructure. NYC infrastructure, for instance, is horrendous. Chicago the same. Pulling yet another new set of lines through there would be a nightmare. Tokyo and a host of other cities in Japan were leveled in WWII. Some almost totally. With a large influx of worldwide money, they started over in the 50's.
Verizon seems to be concentrating on the smaller midsize cities and suburbs first, rather than trying to tackle the hardest nuts first.
5. Customer inertia. Most of the US has had cable/DSL available for a while. Even with it available, a lot of people don't see a personal need for it. Now comes in fiber. Convince me to change. What type of connectivity did the average house in Japan have? Did they go through a long period of 'better than dialup'? I have fiber available, but am satisfied with my current cable connection. I haven't seen a need (yet) to restructure my house connections and billing again.
Are we behind? Maybe, maybe not. But there are a variety of reasons why this may be true, other than just "The Japanese are so much better than the US."
Your argument would hold if within the cities of highest density you would get 100mbps or 25 mbps on premise without a problem and without selling your first born. That does not seem to be the case, ergo your argument is groundless and AT BEST only explain why there is no high bandwidth available in sparsely rural area.
hmmm....not in the rural areas, not in the urban areas. So where IS FIOS available? In the somewhat less congested areas...suburban towns and cities. Why? Maybe easier deployment. Rewiring NYC or Chicago (yet again) would be a nightmare. Maybe more affluent/more receptive customers. Currently, Verizon supposedly has it available at ~4 million households.
Why start with the hard ones first? Oh, and they started doing this in 2004.
And that is an interesting stat. One which does highlight the (some call fallacious) size disparity. The 2005 census in Japan had them at 49 million households. The 2000 US census shows 105 million. Wiring up 18 million households would represent a far greater percentage of Japan's population than that of the US.
Are we really that far behind? Maybe not.
I have Verizon FIOS available, but like you, still on cable.
Because again if you weren't a dumb american you would know that the US has a fiber network, this story is about the last mile.
Similarly, you might realize that last mile fiber is being rolled out in the US. I don't currently subscribe to it, because I'm satisfied with my current cable connection.
Another reason for a large percentage (not most, mind you) of the US still being on copper? Because our POTS system is/was so good (and cheap), a lot of people see no need to upgrade. I have neighbors like this. Cable/DSL/fiber available, but for their uses, they don't see any need to change.
either way it's hardly the retarded nonsense that people here try to make it out to be.
I was not ridiculing it. I was in school during those years, and I fully realize what (and what not) Duck and Cover was supposed to protect against. I posted it in response to the OPs request for an addition to his timeline of Things We're Supposed to be Scared Of(tm).
Global cooling gave way to overpopulation, which gave way to the hole in the ozone, which now passed on to global warming. If I was old enough, I'm sure I'd recognize what came before those too...help me out, fill in the timeline:)
Why not (if we must do it fully electronic) on flash cards or other removable media, that the election board keeps. Send the bare machine back to Diebold.
Of course, some sort of paper ballot would be better, but election boards seem to be following the "Oooh shiny!" train of thought.
Slashdot Mirror
several years ago, you would have seen first hand what I'm talking about. The Air Force tested the what is now known as the F-117 "Stealth" Fighter out there at that time, along with the corresponding bomber.
No, you wouldn't have seen it. They flew at night. Only at night.
Interesting. That makes their capacity/speed/range claims even more outlandish. If a dedicated, similar size light aircraft can't carry that much payload, how do these guys expect to get more from their (not yet built) prototype, when also carrying all the road-necessary crap?
They can't.
An airplane makes a shitty car. A car makes a shitty airplane. Mix the two, and you double the crap.
If you have the money to buy one of these semi-roadable light aircraft, you'd have the money to buy a dedicated aircraft, and have a limo pick you up at the ski area airport.
What I want to see is a helicopter built into a normal automobile.
:-)
Helicopters are harder to fly than fixed wing.
As a non-pilot, as far as I'm concerned, if my flying car can't take off right in the middle of Highway 17 and land atop the parking garage in downtown Santa Cruz, I'm not interested.
To land on the parking garage, you need VERY close traffic control (stacking up for landing at 8:00 am), and automated 10" precision in 30mph crosswinds. Not doable with any conventional aircraft.
Picture your current office parking lot. But as everyone comes in at 8 AM, they take minimum 5 minutes to make that 4 second turn off the street into the parking lot. Long line, right? Drop the last 500 feet, fold the wings/rotors into stow config, reconfigure the drivetrain into road confog, move out of the landing area...easily 5 minutes. There are only so many 'landing spots'.
oh, and where are you going to land when you get home? How big is your yard?
You have any idea how rough a landing some of those little struts can take ? Not so good on side loading but doable.
Yes they can take a good hit, but with a serious lack of car-level comfort. The ride on the ground in a light aircraft is endurable for the few minutes it takes to get off the ground. That same ride quality in a car trip of any length would be unacceptable.
have you tried taking short flights?
Yes, but I try not to.
A 'flying car' is not a car, but rather an airplane that happens to be (marginally) able to be driven on the public roads. For flight, it would require lots of the same stuff as a standard light aircraft. You can't just take an eye test, get your license, hop in and buzz around the block.
Of course, it depends on how many kazillion such a thing would cost,
Lots and lots.
operating cost
Lots and lots. Certified aircraft require licensed mechanics ($$$) doing required routine inspections. Lots more than your car.
safety and reliability
Possibly good
government regulation and requirements (e.g. a full flight certificate would pretty much make it out of the question)
It would require such.
but to me it certainly seems like a viable way to travel.
From the looks of this thing, it would appear to be only useful on the ground when going to and from the airport. NOT useful as a 'car'. It would be cheaper/easier to own/rent a Cessna, and simply drive your regular car to the local little airstrip.
As for passengers and cargo, as a personal conveyance device 80lbs really isn't bad.
Bring 2 backpacks of 20lb each (camera equip, lunch, and a couple changes of clothes), and now you're flirting dangerously close to the absolute limit. Don't run into any bad weather.
This is not a 'flying car'. Yes, it may go on the road, and may actually fly. But it does neither well. Very impractical for actual driving with those blind spots, and if you're flying, why are you hauling a heavy roadable drivetrain around?
550lb total payload. -120lb gas, -200lb pilot + 150lb passenger = 80lb left. What...you were eplanning on bringing a little luggage?
Now, taking this several steps farther, Interpol had to do it on pics grabbed from the web, of unknown compression, originally done with an unknown application, possible 3rd party twirl filter, and saved/compressed unknown number of times at unknown quality level.
Still, the (alleged) perp is still a huge dumbass.
The problem with "conspiracy to commit" is that the PTB can draw the line anywhere they want; indeed, that has been a problem in some parts of the world in the past.
Right. But the line has to be drawn somewhere. If some dude is standing on a crowded bus, with a vest full of C-4, his finger on the trigger...do we have to wait before they are all a pink mist before arresting him? Is he still in the 'planning' phase, because he hasn't actually done it yet?
Millions wonder why the 9/11 terrorists weren't stopped before. Well...up until the moment they actually took over the cockpit, it was merely "conspiracy to commit". Should they have been arrested before?
But if you're arrested for PLANNING something...
"Conspiracy to commit" has been a crime for a very long time, both in the US and the UK. Planning, AND collecting the materials, AND (possibly) working with someone else is a little more than teenage angst scribbled out in their diary.
As I said, hopefully they get a rational judge, and the right verdict comes out, no matter which way it falls.
Did he build a bomb? Did he threaten to use it? Did he do anything resembling a crime besides wanting to know something?
/. goes bonkers over what was said, instead of finding out more about the situation.
Did he? No. But apparently the 'book' is not the sole reason for the arrest.
From the Yorkshire Post:
"A court in London was told two weeks ago that the schoolboy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is alleged to have had chemicals used for making bombs under his bed. He is accused of plotting to make bombs following a trip to Pakistan"
"During an anti-terror raid on his home about 500g of potassium nitrate was allegedly found under his bed in the room he shared with his younger brother. Potassium nitrate is a critical oxidising component of gunpowder."
Now...possessing potassium nitrate is not a crime (and 500g might get you a good firecracker), and owning that book is not a crime. Take the two together, along with the arrest of another kid in the same neighborhood, and the case may be that, yeah, maybe these two were planning something. Maybe the first kid coughed up the second kids name as a compatriot. I would not hazard a guess either way.
Hopefully, they will get a reasonable judge and whichever way it goes, they will get the right verdict.
Obviously, strenuously, completely...knowledge should never, ever be illegal. But as usual, TFA is short of the full details. And
Kiss
My
Ass
Seriously. WTF do you want? Payment for each and every set of ears that might be in close proximity to a set of speakers that is playing stuff you've already been paid for.
Let me reiterate...
Kiss. My. Ass.
Thank you for the voice of relevant experience.
whereas 3.9 million have it "available" from Verizon
If the fiber pipe comes to their house, and they don't subscribe...who, precisely, is to blame for us being 'behind'?
For those 8 million Japanese, what was their alternative before the fiber came in? I'm not sure, just asking the question.
What I'm saying is...rightly or wrongly, the current alternatives in the US are often seen as acceptable to many users. If it was dialup OR fiber, no contest. Bring me the glass. But if it's dialup OR cable/DSL OR fiber...the last two will split the customer base, even though the fiber is demonstrably faster.
I don't know about that POTS system being cheap
I should have specified, but I really meant cheap/good POTS in relation to local service. Which is what everyone used/uses for dialup internet service. Until very recently, a lot of countries local POTS service was per minute, not just long distance.
But you're fooling yourself if you believe this is the only reason.
And you're fooling yourself if you think this isn't a reason. Certainly not the whole, but a significant factor.
See above. You just don't know any better.
Thanks for the condescending tone. It really helps your argument.
It lets me completely change the way I think about and use Internet connectivity.
So convince me. What can I not do today with a consistent, always on 5mb cable/DSL connection, that I could do with faster fiber at my house?
OH NOES!!! The US lags behind Japan! This may be true. However...
...
1. Telcoms. Yes, the telcoms screwed the pooch. They were supposed to have this a lot farther along than it is. But they're getting to it. Currently, Verizon has ~4 million households wired for fiber. But they are they only company rolling out fiber? And I'm glad it's only one. I really don't want ALL of them digging up my yard every few months.
2. States vs countries. The US is not a monolithic block. Rather, it is a collection of 50 states, each with their own rules, etc.
3. Size. All you clowns saying size/density doesn't matter are FOC. It is significantly easier to wire 50 million houses than 105 million. And when you consider the physical distance between houses, it's even more expensive. Wiring up 20 houses per mile is harder/slower/more costly than 50 houses per mile. US houses generally have more land between. Which leads us to
4. But why aren't the cities wired? Equal density to Tokyo. Well...Tokyo doesn't have a 150 year old infrastructure. NYC infrastructure, for instance, is horrendous. Chicago the same. Pulling yet another new set of lines through there would be a nightmare. Tokyo and a host of other cities in Japan were leveled in WWII. Some almost totally. With a large influx of worldwide money, they started over in the 50's.
Verizon seems to be concentrating on the smaller midsize cities and suburbs first, rather than trying to tackle the hardest nuts first.
5. Customer inertia. Most of the US has had cable/DSL available for a while. Even with it available, a lot of people don't see a personal need for it. Now comes in fiber. Convince me to change. What type of connectivity did the average house in Japan have? Did they go through a long period of 'better than dialup'? I have fiber available, but am satisfied with my current cable connection. I haven't seen a need (yet) to restructure my house connections and billing again.
Are we behind? Maybe, maybe not. But there are a variety of reasons why this may be true, other than just "The Japanese are so much better than the US."
Your argument would hold if within the cities of highest density you would get 100mbps or 25 mbps on premise without a problem and without selling your first born. That does not seem to be the case, ergo your argument is groundless and AT BEST only explain why there is no high bandwidth available in sparsely rural area.
hmmm....not in the rural areas, not in the urban areas. So where IS FIOS available? In the somewhat less congested areas...suburban towns and cities. Why? Maybe easier deployment. Rewiring NYC or Chicago (yet again) would be a nightmare. Maybe more affluent/more receptive customers. Currently, Verizon supposedly has it available at ~4 million households.
Why start with the hard ones first? Oh, and they started doing this in 2004.
and are aiming for 18 million by 2010
And that is an interesting stat. One which does highlight the (some call fallacious) size disparity.
The 2005 census in Japan had them at 49 million households. The 2000 US census shows 105 million. Wiring up 18 million households would represent a far greater percentage of Japan's population than that of the US.
Are we really that far behind? Maybe not.
I have Verizon FIOS available, but like you, still on cable.
Because again if you weren't a dumb american you would know that the US has a fiber network, this story is about the last mile.
Similarly, you might realize that last mile fiber is being rolled out in the US. I don't currently subscribe to it, because I'm satisfied with my current cable connection.
Another reason for a large percentage (not most, mind you) of the US still being on copper? Because our POTS system is/was so good (and cheap), a lot of people see no need to upgrade. I have neighbors like this. Cable/DSL/fiber available, but for their uses, they don't see any need to change.
either way it's hardly the retarded nonsense that people here try to make it out to be.
I was not ridiculing it. I was in school during those years, and I fully realize what (and what not) Duck and Cover was supposed to protect against. I posted it in response to the OPs request for an addition to his timeline of Things We're Supposed to be Scared Of(tm).
Global cooling gave way to overpopulation, which gave way to the hole in the ozone, which now passed on to global warming. If I was old enough, I'm sure I'd recognize what came before those too...help me out, fill in the timeline :)
Duck and Cover
Why not (if we must do it fully electronic) on flash cards or other removable media, that the election board keeps. Send the bare machine back to Diebold.
Of course, some sort of paper ballot would be better, but election boards seem to be following the "Oooh shiny!" train of thought.