All of the responses to this are reasonable, but they rely upon one huge premise: "As long as you don't ever need to drive more than X miles without stopping for Y hours to recharge..."
That's a pretty big hangup for someone who wants an "all-purpose" vehicle, which is what gas-powered cars are. They're an increasingly unappreciated modern wonder - moving people around at an unlimited range at a high rate of speed without any time restriction for resting the power plant (horses, batteries, etc.) - that we've taken for granted for over a century now.
As flawed as it is, hybrid tech has that ability. All-electric (as of 2015) does not.
Maybe as people have become increasingly hooked into urban society and become less geographically mobile in everyday life, they've forgotten how important it is to have an unlimited range sometimes? I mean, which is easier to haul when stuck outside of civilization and out of "fuel" - hauling a gas can, or a two ton dead battery with four wheels? Are we all counting on our cellphones and some stranger with a tow truck to bail us all out in a pinch (or worse)?
Why does everyone have wood for all-electric cars now? The Chevy Volt model, if refined to a Porsche/Tesla level of quality and not wrapped in a nerdmobile shell is the best of both worlds. At least as a bridge to some future model (all hydrogen?)
Until then, gas's "recharge" time (less than 5 minutes) + 10,000s of locations to fill up trumps all-electric every day of the week as of today.
This comparison, interesting as it is, is exactly why myself and about 99% of other drivers out there would never willingly choose to rely solely upon all-electric for long trips, given the choice between gas and electric. A couple of DAYS between SF and the Oregon border? No, thank you... I'll take option C (gas-powered).
Somehow get 1) battery charge completion (95-100%) down to 10 minutes or less and 2) a national network of chargers at least half as populous as the current number of gas stations and we'll talk again.
There actually was an adaption of Dragons of Autumn Twilight done in 2008, and when I discovered it was really excited - right up until I'd watched about 5 minutes of it. It was so bad - a cross of underbaked CGI, 1980s "G.I. Joe" like animation, and bad voice acting (even Kiefer Sutherland couldn't save it) - that I almost regret mentioning it here. It doesn't even deserve to be in a Wal-Mart bin full of "Please Buy Me for $0.99!" movies (which is probably why hardly anyone knows about it).
I hope they do the six book series (Chronicles + Legends) someday, however - the right way.
That didn't take a little longer because the spill itself disappeared so much more quickly from the Gulf than people expected (or that's the story the media told us?) And since I never visit the gulf or visibly rely on what it produces, it faded quickly.
The disaster I describe has to be more permanent and affect the everyday life of all humans. Like an entire species of dogs or cats dying off due to some mystery "colony collapse disorder" later revealed to be man-made (see the 3rd original Planet Of The Apes movie), the honeybees die off completely and all food becomes much more limited and scarce, the ozone layer really does disappear and this time over populated areas of the Earth, etc.
You need an environmental 9/11, "Sandy Hook", Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, "Remember the Maine", "Remember the Alamo", etc. moment to move people's cheese. Until then, we have too many other crises to think about. I mean, didn't you hear about Miley Cyrus accidentally showing a nipple during the VMAs? Think of the children!...
Heck - If some educated official in a position of power tried to actually do something about it (good or bad), they'd be shot to pieces by lobbyists and special interests that would outright lie to keep the money flowing. (See the tobacco and leaded gasoline industries - and who's to say who's next? Cellphone companies and cancer?)
This is a reasonable response to my first gut instinct of, "WTF?", and it sounds like something that in a year this mountain of a "controversy" will be a mole hill. And it doesn't sound anything like the "liberal bias" behind then Arizona governor Janel Napalitano's push to rename "Squaw Peak" (the name every local knew it as) in the Phoenix metro area to "Piestewa Peak" (which few people were happy with).
I have to say, though, that it would've been a little easier to deal with if "Mt. McKinley" was the answer to a fairly common trivia question. And it seems like there are more important things for the federal government to be dealing with than fixing mountain names.
Hopefully all of that progress on how the human brain thinks will be paralleled with breakthroughs on helping that AI understand how humans feel about those thoughts. Otherwise, a key part of humanity - agency (and the chaos of life) - will be lost in a pile of algorithms.
100% agree. If the six murder case isn't ever solved, that would be sad - but freedom has a price tag, and this is a typical payment.
Side thought: In the past, a more religious society that believed in some deity could take a little solace in the belief that said deity would punish the "sinners" in the next life (i.e. "Let God sort it out").
As our societies moves towards a more secular view, however, that spiritual catharsis is lost. Only lingering feelings of bitterness, anger and injustice - no ultimate closure. Those feelings are based in FUD, which in this case leads to legal opinions that erode individual freedoms so "people" can get "closure" in everything in life. (Yes, that's impossible - but that's not going to stop people from trying.)
In other words, freedom from religion ultimately (and ironically) leads to less freedom overall.
Instead of being happy with consistent profitability in their business, modern capitalism says that these companies have to increase profitability every quarter - all in the name of increasing shareholder value. They couldn't increase profits as quickly the old fashioned ways as they could by cutting production costs and raising cable rates, so we got the latter.
I made the cut about 2 years ago, and aside from having to find pirated streams of occasional sporting events I haven't missed it at all. (I'd rather watch the "good enough", pixelated, pirated streams of sporting events than pay ridiculous amounts for HD broadcasts.)
Besides - it's not like these companies don't get enough from me already in other ways ($170/mo. for a cell phone PMT, 20/5MB internet, a landline phone, and Netflix streaming). Who's getting the money has simply shifted some...
This kind of potentially critical situation (the gov't being able to filter the internet at the behest of corporate interests) shouldn't require us all rising up and complaining. We elect people that should have our fiduciary interests at heart, and dome of our Congressmen do still care (the "boy scouts"). I know my rep personally and have spoken with him at length about various issues, and he does his best. Too many of them, however, are powerless at the feet of their own political parties and the money that elected them.
I find myself hoping and praying that somehow, some way, the right decision(s) will get made - but I find myself expecting being more and more cynical about the whole thing. The fundamentals of the system are broken to the point that the Supreme Court is the only truly effective governing body... To channel Jack Nicolson's Joker, "This government needs an enema."
Lexmark === Total Garbage. You'd pick one up and know just by how it felt in your hands that it was the cheapest, waiting-to-break POS printer you could buy. I had a couple of those printers offered to me by family/friends for free and I would turn them down - and they'd end up in the dumpster. It wouldn't surprise me if Lexmark's products were so epically bad to users that they actually played a role in cutting printer usage overall...
I know that Chrome is the 45% usage king, but it's not like Firefox (~15%) is dead by any stretch.
No it's not perfect, but Firefox is good enough for me - Sync, AdBlock Plus, Firebug, etc. And I'm not interested in giving Google every piece of info about my browsing habits.
Let's not get into any more long-term debt for it (with creative accounting, more national debt, etc.), but I'm sure there's some way to get these panels out there with a long-term support plan.
No more Solyndra-type money into black holes, please.
"falling of burnt/broken pieces of instruments into the patient (14.7%), electrical arcing of instruments (10.5%), unintended operation of instruments (8.6%)"
I know this sounds juvenile, but if it's related to urology/gynecology I'm pretty sure that us Slashdot folk would like to see a zero percent failure rate. Dr. after 'falling of burnt pieces into patient" failure: "We've reamed your prostate for you and all of the cancerous mass has been removed. Your continence will return in a few months, but don't worry - there are discreet diaper services... Oh yeah, uh, sorry about that gear-shaped burn scar in your ass. At least no one can see it, right? Am I right?"
Banning the production of new plastic (with "critical national defense" as the limited exception, of course). That would probably mean that superfluous usage of plastic for worthless crap like Happy Meal toys would stop altogether. Other more "important" items like shopping bags, trash bags, baby bottles, Solo party cups, etc. would go up in cost, reflecting the true life cycle cost of a product.
That will never happen, however, until a crisis that affects the everyday Joes happens. "What do you mean there are no more Solo cups for the party tonight??"
Unless these road pieces are chemically altered in some way, traction on plastic roads would be awful. And shards of the roads that break off under wear and tear are going to be blown out into nature, poisoning the environments they land in over time.
I'm all for cleaning out the oceans, but this seems like moving toxic, nature-insoluble trash from one environment to another. Permanently ridding ourselves of the plastic is the right path.
besides, streaming services have BETTER sound quality than RADIO and his music is played on radio all the time.
Saying that doesn't mean anything because the quality of radio has dropped significantly. Radio quality today is nothing compared to just 25 years ago - some radio stations today just broadcast an internet stream of music (to cut costs in a stressed market).
It's all about good enough at the cheapest cost (vs. quality or pride in the product to increase the value).
Nobody gets any data. Nobody - no car manufacturer, no Apple/Google, no insurance companies, no NSA/FBI. I, the consumer, don't need it or want it. Why does a car have to collect any data in the first place?
Is that even going to be an option in any future new cars?
Slashdot Mirror
If you think you're attractive, create an image-reading algorithm that picks girls that looks like yourself (facial features, shape, etc.)
Done.
Look at successful, power couples in the entertainment business sometime (especially athletes) and see if you can spot the narcissistic pattern...
If you don't think you're attractive, I guess you can put a NOT in front of the algorithm...
All of the responses to this are reasonable, but they rely upon one huge premise: "As long as you don't ever need to drive more than X miles without stopping for Y hours to recharge..."
That's a pretty big hangup for someone who wants an "all-purpose" vehicle, which is what gas-powered cars are. They're an increasingly unappreciated modern wonder - moving people around at an unlimited range at a high rate of speed without any time restriction for resting the power plant (horses, batteries, etc.) - that we've taken for granted for over a century now.
As flawed as it is, hybrid tech has that ability. All-electric (as of 2015) does not.
Maybe as people have become increasingly hooked into urban society and become less geographically mobile in everyday life, they've forgotten how important it is to have an unlimited range sometimes? I mean, which is easier to haul when stuck outside of civilization and out of "fuel" - hauling a gas can, or a two ton dead battery with four wheels? Are we all counting on our cellphones and some stranger with a tow truck to bail us all out in a pinch (or worse)?
Why does everyone have wood for all-electric cars now? The Chevy Volt model, if refined to a Porsche/Tesla level of quality and not wrapped in a nerdmobile shell is the best of both worlds. At least as a bridge to some future model (all hydrogen?)
Until then, gas's "recharge" time (less than 5 minutes) + 10,000s of locations to fill up trumps all-electric every day of the week as of today.
This comparison, interesting as it is, is exactly why myself and about 99% of other drivers out there would never willingly choose to rely solely upon all-electric for long trips, given the choice between gas and electric. A couple of DAYS between SF and the Oregon border? No, thank you... I'll take option C (gas-powered).
Somehow get 1) battery charge completion (95-100%) down to 10 minutes or less and 2) a national network of chargers at least half as populous as the current number of gas stations and we'll talk again.
Let me fix that for you...
Especially since HBO's Game of Thrones has demonstrated strongly that gritty low-magic, T&A-filled fantasy has a large audience
There actually was an adaption of Dragons of Autumn Twilight done in 2008, and when I discovered it was really excited - right up until I'd watched about 5 minutes of it. It was so bad - a cross of underbaked CGI, 1980s "G.I. Joe" like animation, and bad voice acting (even Kiefer Sutherland couldn't save it) - that I almost regret mentioning it here. It doesn't even deserve to be in a Wal-Mart bin full of "Please Buy Me for $0.99!" movies (which is probably why hardly anyone knows about it).
I hope they do the six book series (Chronicles + Legends) someday, however - the right way.
Why waste 21 minutes on it? Try this 4 1/2 minute Honest Trailer instead. It tells you all you need to know.
That didn't take a little longer because the spill itself disappeared so much more quickly from the Gulf than people expected (or that's the story the media told us?) And since I never visit the gulf or visibly rely on what it produces, it faded quickly.
The disaster I describe has to be more permanent and affect the everyday life of all humans. Like an entire species of dogs or cats dying off due to some mystery "colony collapse disorder" later revealed to be man-made (see the 3rd original Planet Of The Apes movie), the honeybees die off completely and all food becomes much more limited and scarce, the ozone layer really does disappear and this time over populated areas of the Earth, etc.
You need an environmental 9/11, "Sandy Hook", Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, "Remember the Maine", "Remember the Alamo", etc. moment to move people's cheese. Until then, we have too many other crises to think about. I mean, didn't you hear about Miley Cyrus accidentally showing a nipple during the VMAs? Think of the children!...
Heck - If some educated official in a position of power tried to actually do something about it (good or bad), they'd be shot to pieces by lobbyists and special interests that would outright lie to keep the money flowing. (See the tobacco and leaded gasoline industries - and who's to say who's next? Cellphone companies and cancer?)
This is a reasonable response to my first gut instinct of, "WTF?", and it sounds like something that in a year this mountain of a "controversy" will be a mole hill. And it doesn't sound anything like the "liberal bias" behind then Arizona governor Janel Napalitano's push to rename "Squaw Peak" (the name every local knew it as) in the Phoenix metro area to "Piestewa Peak" (which few people were happy with).
I have to say, though, that it would've been a little easier to deal with if "Mt. McKinley" was the answer to a fairly common trivia question. And it seems like there are more important things for the federal government to be dealing with than fixing mountain names.
I'd like to see in Firefox by default...
Are you a Mozilla Firefox dev, by chance?
The plug-in to do this has been around for years... there's no need.
As a Republican, his views on encryption and the Patriot Act are not reconciliable with mine. I can scratch him off the ridiculously long list.
What that said, it's pretty hard to get any politician not named Donald to truly speak his mind. Thanks, Gov...
Hopefully all of that progress on how the human brain thinks will be paralleled with breakthroughs on helping that AI understand how humans feel about those thoughts. Otherwise, a key part of humanity - agency (and the chaos of life) - will be lost in a pile of algorithms.
I wonder if that's because of the stronger smells from the spices in that kind of food (olfactory senses don't work as well at higher altitudes).
100% agree. If the six murder case isn't ever solved, that would be sad - but freedom has a price tag, and this is a typical payment.
Side thought: In the past, a more religious society that believed in some deity could take a little solace in the belief that said deity would punish the "sinners" in the next life (i.e. "Let God sort it out").
As our societies moves towards a more secular view, however, that spiritual catharsis is lost. Only lingering feelings of bitterness, anger and injustice - no ultimate closure. Those feelings are based in FUD, which in this case leads to legal opinions that erode individual freedoms so "people" can get "closure" in everything in life. (Yes, that's impossible - but that's not going to stop people from trying.)
In other words, freedom from religion ultimately (and ironically) leads to less freedom overall.
Instead of being happy with consistent profitability in their business, modern capitalism says that these companies have to increase profitability every quarter - all in the name of increasing shareholder value. They couldn't increase profits as quickly the old fashioned ways as they could by cutting production costs and raising cable rates, so we got the latter.
I made the cut about 2 years ago, and aside from having to find pirated streams of occasional sporting events I haven't missed it at all. (I'd rather watch the "good enough", pixelated, pirated streams of sporting events than pay ridiculous amounts for HD broadcasts.)
Besides - it's not like these companies don't get enough from me already in other ways ($170/mo. for a cell phone PMT, 20/5MB internet, a landline phone, and Netflix streaming). Who's getting the money has simply shifted some...
This kind of potentially critical situation (the gov't being able to filter the internet at the behest of corporate interests) shouldn't require us all rising up and complaining. We elect people that should have our fiduciary interests at heart, and dome of our Congressmen do still care (the "boy scouts"). I know my rep personally and have spoken with him at length about various issues, and he does his best. Too many of them, however, are powerless at the feet of their own political parties and the money that elected them.
I find myself hoping and praying that somehow, some way, the right decision(s) will get made - but I find myself expecting being more and more cynical about the whole thing. The fundamentals of the system are broken to the point that the Supreme Court is the only truly effective governing body... To channel Jack Nicolson's Joker, "This government needs an enema."
Lexmark === Total Garbage. You'd pick one up and know just by how it felt in your hands that it was the cheapest, waiting-to-break POS printer you could buy. I had a couple of those printers offered to me by family/friends for free and I would turn them down - and they'd end up in the dumpster. It wouldn't surprise me if Lexmark's products were so epically bad to users that they actually played a role in cutting printer usage overall...
I know that Chrome is the 45% usage king, but it's not like Firefox (~15%) is dead by any stretch.
No it's not perfect, but Firefox is good enough for me - Sync, AdBlock Plus, Firebug, etc. And I'm not interested in giving Google every piece of info about my browsing habits.
Let's not get into any more long-term debt for it (with creative accounting, more national debt, etc.), but I'm sure there's some way to get these panels out there with a long-term support plan.
No more Solyndra-type money into black holes, please.
"falling of burnt/broken pieces of instruments into the patient (14.7%), electrical arcing of instruments (10.5%), unintended operation of instruments (8.6%)"
I know this sounds juvenile, but if it's related to urology/gynecology I'm pretty sure that us Slashdot folk would like to see a zero percent failure rate. Dr. after 'falling of burnt pieces into patient" failure: "We've reamed your prostate for you and all of the cancerous mass has been removed. Your continence will return in a few months, but don't worry - there are discreet diaper services... Oh yeah, uh, sorry about that gear-shaped burn scar in your ass. At least no one can see it, right? Am I right?"
ZERO
PERCENT
Please...
Banning the production of new plastic (with "critical national defense" as the limited exception, of course). That would probably mean that superfluous usage of plastic for worthless crap like Happy Meal toys would stop altogether. Other more "important" items like shopping bags, trash bags, baby bottles, Solo party cups, etc. would go up in cost, reflecting the true life cycle cost of a product.
That will never happen, however, until a crisis that affects the everyday Joes happens. "What do you mean there are no more Solo cups for the party tonight??"
Unless these road pieces are chemically altered in some way, traction on plastic roads would be awful. And shards of the roads that break off under wear and tear are going to be blown out into nature, poisoning the environments they land in over time.
I'm all for cleaning out the oceans, but this seems like moving toxic, nature-insoluble trash from one environment to another. Permanently ridding ourselves of the plastic is the right path.
besides, streaming services have BETTER sound quality than RADIO and his music is played on radio all the time.
Saying that doesn't mean anything because the quality of radio has dropped significantly. Radio quality today is nothing compared to just 25 years ago - some radio stations today just broadcast an internet stream of music (to cut costs in a stressed market).
It's all about good enough at the cheapest cost (vs. quality or pride in the product to increase the value).
Nobody gets any data. Nobody - no car manufacturer, no Apple/Google, no insurance companies, no NSA/FBI. I, the consumer, don't need it or want it. Why does a car have to collect any data in the first place?
Is that even going to be an option in any future new cars?