Huh? Cable "on-demand" is a digital service, and it's here now, and millions of people use it every day.
"technical savy is not spread very fast"
How hard is it to click "buy" in iTunes? Apparently millions of people have managed to figure it out, and if they can click "buy" for a track and get it to their iPod I think they can figure out how to do the same for a movie and their Apple TV.
Backups are one thing, but Amazon and Audible both know what you've purchased and will let you download it again if you need it. To me, that should be one of the advantages of buying digital.
Too bad Apple doesn't let you do the same with iTunes.
That said, there's ALSO a need for support outside of your seller. Take a look at the people who purchased digital movies from Wal-Mart. Those people are now out of luck, as their content is only as good as the system on which it was downloaded.
"The sun did not come up this morning, huge cracks have appeared in the earth's surface, and big rocks are falling out of the sky. Details 25 minutes from now on Action Central News."
I thought this same exact case was discussed earlier this week, and that it was the copies in the Kaaza sharing folder that were unauthorized:
"In Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA claims that "[once] Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs."
Defensive? Maybe. But as I pointed out on iSights when discussing the same patent, does anyone really think that Starbucks is busy rolling out an advanced wireless communication system nationwide... just so they can sell a few extra tunes?
An iTunes track sells for a buck, of which the label gets 70-cents. So Apple and Starbucks get to split the rest, with Apple probably taking the lions share as they still have deliver the content. This leaves roughly 5-to-10 cents for a given Starbucks store to drop into their tip jar.
Sell fifty or so tracks a week, and they could afford--maybe--to buy a cup of their own coffee.
With this technology, however, Starbucks can cut the time we spend waiting in line, improve service, lock in a few more customers, and perhaps even reduce staffing levels to boot.
And the people who pirate Photoshop also don't support GIMP, donate to GIMP, or use GIMP, nor do they buy Elements or PhotoPaint or any of a dozen commercial, shareware, or donation-ware alternatives. They may not be not paying for Photoshop, but they're not paying for anything else either.
All of which pretty much ensures that no alternative will be developed.
"...for you to state that the probability of this happening is akin to getting struck by lightning is absurd and a BLIND DISMISSAL of the POTENTIAL for this to happen."
Actually, I gave you a rather large opening there. Guess you don't know that about 100 people are struck and killed by lightning in the US each year. But 100 by 300 million is 0.0000003, or a third of the percentage I gave.
"Frankly, if such a user were to do this at a common terminal at work..."
I have my own computer at work, but again, that's just me.
"To bash MS for every little issue they have and turn around and excuse Apple for ANY issue they have is hypocritical and tiring."
There you go, making assumptions again. Care to look though my posting history and see how much Microsoft bashing I've done.
"Some of us on/. get sick of seeing the double-standard and occasionally speak up about it."
And I'm glad that all of those people on/. have you to speak up for them. But IF Microsoft had such a paid service for Vista and IF you were a member and IF you used it and IF you checked your mDisk from a public browser and IF they had the same flaw...
I'd say that the odds, given Vista's market penetration, are about three times that of getting stuck by lightning. Worse than Apple's, still remote. No double-standard.
"...a logical and coherent argument never penetrates."
"...a stock will completely implode when it looks like the management has no idea whats going on."
Still not following, as the CEO is still leaving with or without the money. And they're still looking for a replacement, again, with or without the money. And investors may be skittish... or happy that the idiot is leaving.
And not to be dense, but couldn't said board simply fire said CEO and have him escorted off the premises? Giving an extra $200 bonus to the security guard? And saving $160,999,800 in the process?
As an anecdotal fact, I've paid for the service for three years now and never done it. People get it for different reasons, like hosted pages or user account syncing or to have a non-ISP-linked email address. So I'm pretty sure that not every.Mac member will automatically follow your "logical" progression.
But go back and reread the final clause, "someone could potentially [sic] access those file". So to follow your series of events, he then has to have a malicious individual immediately follow him on one out of a few million public terminals he might use on the one day he decides he needs a file and who then does the dirty deed.
At which point he walks out the door and gets struck by lightning.
It's not "blind dismissal", it's just a realistic probability matrix of such an event actually occurring. And like I said, it should be fixed.
But is it worth hundreds of/. perfect-macs-aren't-perfect rants? Especially when they were never claimed to be perfect in the first place?
Neither liberal nor communist nor socialist nor republican nor democrat. In any one platform I tend to disagree with too many other issues. As such my political biases tend to be more of a smorgasbord. So your "proof" is anything but.
As is your telling rebuttal.
But the point at hand is that you and I and others live all together in a society. And sometimes in societies personal "preferences" can't be given free reign, because those preferences impact too many other people.
I might, as an example, own a factory and "prefer" to save money by dumping dioxins and other wastes into the river. But can I do so? No. Because those choices have an impact on people other than myself. You (again as an example) may "prefer" to drive a Chevy Subdivision to and from work and on that dangerous excursion to the corner market.
But again, that "preference" has a significant environmental and economic impact, and you're not the only one that pays the price for it. Now, if it were JUST you, then that impact would be miniscule. In aggregate and in sufficient numbers, however, we, as a society, have a problem.
As you yourself pointed out, 35MPG sets the bar too low. So the bill in essence has no effect, impacts no one, and as such does nothing to reduce USA dependency on gulf oil.
Geroge is perfectly safe in signing it, as all of his constituencies are protected.
I'm not saying we should boycott American manufacturers. But I am saying that once again they were caught flat-footed, just like they were during the 70's oil crisis. What WILL happen is that people with vote with their dollars. If gas hits $4 or so next summer (likely) then that impacts the average family's budget to the tune of $300-400 a month.
And if Detroit isn't making fuel-efficient vehicles, then people will buy them from the company or country that is making them. It's that simple.
I'd love to buy a Volt from GM. Can I do so now? No. Next year? No. Year after? Probably not.
But the reason that I'm critical of fuel-efficiency guidelines is that we entirely too dependent on foriegn oil. Let a major war break out in the Middle East, or let another hurricane take out gulf oil platforms and refineries, and we WILL have a problem. A serious one.
And one that will hit the poor in places like Michigan like a sledgehammer.
But I'll leave you with two final thoughts. First, any mandated increases have to be met by everyone--US and foriegn alike. So it's not like we're placing the US at an overwhelming disadvantage. Honda had to install catalytic converters too.
Second, why is this not an opportunity? Truck and SUV sales are sprialing, and US manufacturers now have the opportunity to resell every American a new well-made fuel-efficient vehicle that could well pay for itself in fuel savings.
First, E85 has about a third less energy per gallon than gasoline. So you need a lot more of it to go the same distance. In fact, you can see the difference by just looking at the price relative to gasoline.
Secondly, by the time you've grown, harvested, shipped, and refined it, ethanol only gives you about 15% more energy than it took to produce it. Third, shifting crops towards corn-based ethanol raises prices for feedstock and prices for corn-based food products. All in all, ethanol (as currently produced in the US) is little more than a agribusiness subsidy program.
"... instead of the cars and trucks we prefer."
Telling statement, that. But as they say, your rights end the second your fist hits my nose. When your "preferences" means that your vehicle burns enough fuel for three or four other high-efficiency cars, and your "preferences" drive up fuel consumption and prices correspondingly, then, quite frankly, I could care LESS about your "preferences".
So the sequence is IF you use a Mac and IF you're a.Mac member and IF you use iDisk and IF you check your iDisk from a public browser THEN someone could potentially access those files.
Sorry, but the aggregate of all of those conditions is probably 0.000001%. Is it a problem? Yes? A major flaw? No. Worth discussing? Hardly. Check 100,000 public terminals and will you find one instance of the problem? Doubtful. In fact, I'd say that the fact that we're just now discovering the issue five years after.Mac and iDisk premired illustrates more than anything else as to just how "significant" it may be.
Should it be fixed? Sure.
As to your commments, I'm pretty sure I've ever seen anyone at anytime claim that Apple or Mac or OS X or the iPod or the iPhone is "PERFECT". Better, perhaps, but perfect? Nope. One has only to look at the tech notes and Software Updates to realize that. As such your entire anti-fanboi rant is pretty much just a strawman setup so you can knock him down, and pat yourself on the back in the process.
A better issue would have been followed from "A quick review of any public terminal's browser history could bring up all kinds of interesting things." Like failing to log out of Gmail or an Amazon account. But no. We have to do yet another Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Linux flamewar. Guess it's another slow Sunday at/..
Finally, the summary says, "feedback at apple.com/feedback has gone unanswered"... which is ALWAYS the case. It's a feedback site. It says feedback will be unanswered. To quote, "We read all feedback carefully, but please note that we cannot respond to the comments you submit." But again no, we have to make sure it looks like Apple is ignoring the "problem".
A truck is one thing, but SUVs are not currently "niche" products, but mainstream ones. I think it's telling that many automakers are now extolling the virtues of smaller "cross-over" vehicles that should easily be able to hit the 35MPG mark. ( A RAV-4 already does 30, I think.) Reduce the size and mass and things get quite a bit easier, don't they?
I personally would have liked to have seen 50MPG by 2020 for cars, and 30MPG for trucks (and an SUV is NOT a truck).
Or are you saying that given 12 years of R&D those numbers are impossible to hit?
35MPG on a fleet-wide scale by 2020? That puts the bar too low to be a meaningful target.
Hey Moron! Lookup the issues surrounding the rights to new oil blocks and the attempts to restructure Iraq's Production Sharing Contracts to benefit US-based corporations. And who is positioning to do the development and production and, as such, obtain the lion's share of the profits. Google is your friend, you know.
These are world-stage events. Everyone is watching. You don't just move in and say "I've got dibs", and you don't just back up a supertanker into the dock and start filling it up.
Secondly, check out the wage structure in Iraq in order to determine what prices may be. It also helps your costs if you're not shipping your raw product halfway around the world first. And while you're at it, take a peek at the record quarters continually being announced by Exxon-Mobil and congressional investigations into profiteering and price-gouging.
And to quote Alan Greenspan, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Because if there are no WMDs and no ties to Al Qaeda and if after the first Gulf War Saddam lost his ability to project power in the region... then what, in your considered opinion, IS the war about? And as I pointed out, if it's just because Saddam is "bad" then why are we in Iraq and not Africa, where even worse atrocities are occurring?
Finally, just to be clear: I don't hate America. King George and his oil-buddies, however...
"... you'd need a lot of people driving electric cars before there is sufficient demand for Wendy's or Starbucks to put up a metered electrical outlet."
Not sure I'm buying that. All you need is someone at one of those places to realize there might be a marketing opportunity in looking green and in being the first to provide those types of services. It could also lend to more of those customer coming to you instead of going elsewhere, and it could also give you a brand new revenue stream, siphoning money away from "gas" stations.
"People won't want to buy the cars unless they know they can take them on most trips..."
If you only have one car, then as you say a hybrid makes a lot of sense. But lot's of families have second and even third cars. And if gas does the $4/gallon dance next summer, I think quite a few of them might look pretty hard at a vehicle that could save the family budget a couple of hundred dollars or more a month.
Unfortunately, in the last decade or so of the American idea of "innovation" has been to build ever-larger SUVs and trucks. And built by-and-large in the same factories, on the same lines, and using the same parts as their predecessors.
Radically changing engines or drive trains or anything else would mean expensive retooling and redesign and research, all things that tend to impact next quarter's profits. The Japanese, on the other hand, seem to actually have been paying attention to events outside of the NY Stock Exchange, and spent considerable time and effort on technologies like the hybrid and in making their existing models even more efficient.
The result? Once again the Japanese are making small fuel-efficient vehicles while the US was making big heavy gas guzzlers. And again they're eating Detroit's lunch.
So true. Remember how they cried wolf when the Clean Air act passed and mandatory air efficiency guidelines were set into effect? That too was going to cost the consumer "thousands" of dollars and also be the end of the American auto industry. Didn't happen.
Unfortunately, while 35MPG sounds good the bill is little more than a whitewash, with a loophole large enough to drive an SUV through. Apparently once again the 35MPG is a "fleet" standard, so not every vehicle has to meet it as long as the fleet as a whole does.
Worse, vehicles get a 50% milage "credit" if they're ethanol-friendly. Add $50 or so worth of corrosion-resistant fittings and seals to that Chevy Subdivision so it can burn E85, and bingo: that 20MPG land bruiser now gets 30MPG in the eyes of the bill, raising fleet averages considerably.
And which in passing gives yet another sop to the corn/ethanol industry.
Did you honestly think they'd pass a bill that managed to do something positive?
"You then go to the counter to check if the charge is complete and pay for the electricity you used."
As long as you're setting things up from scratch, why not go a step further and put some sort of RFID system/sensor into the car/charger. Just stop anywhere, plug in your car, and electricity is automatically billed to your account.
If you can recharge in a short enough period of time, just skip the hybrid and go straight to all-electric. How about a Wendy's or Starbucks with charging stations? Stop for a bite or a cup of coffee, come back out and get into your fully charged vehicle.
He simply attempted to reframe the debate in terms of cost per minute. I pointed out that the costs drop the more you use it.
In fact, one often determines the value of an object based on usage. Would the average person spend $30,000 for a car they could drive only once? Of course not. But $30,000 for a car you can use for ten years? Now we're talking.
Any price structure takes into account the costs of creation, production, distribution, marketing, administration, and, of course, profits. Those drive prices up. Competition and consumer cost/benefit calculations drive them down. As such, your spoon analogy is flawed because spoons don't cost that much to make, so other companies lower prices in competition.
The natural progression is to find the number that covers your costs and gives you the most profit, which usually means that one prices it so a large number of people can afford it. Price too low, and usually the increase in sales doesn't merit the increase in costs. Hence spoons cost enough to pay for their production AND provide a reasonable amount of profit. Get too greedy, and someone else will undercut your price and sales will fall.
Bottom line, is that companies usually want to get the most bang for their buck, just like you tend to want to find a job that gives the best salary and benefits for your time and effort.
Slashdot Mirror
"Perhaps in 10-15 years..."
Huh? Cable "on-demand" is a digital service, and it's here now, and millions of people use it every day.
"technical savy is not spread very fast"
How hard is it to click "buy" in iTunes? Apparently millions of people have managed to figure it out, and if they can click "buy" for a track and get it to their iPod I think they can figure out how to do the same for a movie and their Apple TV.
Backups are one thing, but Amazon and Audible both know what you've purchased and will let you download it again if you need it. To me, that should be one of the advantages of buying digital.
Too bad Apple doesn't let you do the same with iTunes.
That said, there's ALSO a need for support outside of your seller. Take a look at the people who purchased digital movies from Wal-Mart. Those people are now out of luck, as their content is only as good as the system on which it was downloaded.
When that dies. Poof.
"He says he's played for eight years. I say that he's played the same year eight times." ~ Vic Braden
"The sun did not come up this morning, huge cracks have appeared in the earth's surface, and big rocks are falling out of the sky. Details 25 minutes from now on Action Central News."
This from Carlin in the 70s. Nothing new here.
Or perhaps bought them to give as Christmas presents, in which case you wouldn't see the activations until right about... now.
I thought this same exact case was discussed earlier this week, and that it was the copies in the Kaaza sharing folder that were unauthorized:
.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs."
"In Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA claims that "[once] Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=953494
Odd how both the summary and the Washington Post article skip that particular fact.
Defensive? Maybe. But as I pointed out on iSights when discussing the same patent, does anyone really think that Starbucks is busy rolling out an advanced wireless communication system nationwide... just so they can sell a few extra tunes?
An iTunes track sells for a buck, of which the label gets 70-cents. So Apple and Starbucks get to split the rest, with Apple probably taking the lions share as they still have deliver the content. This leaves roughly 5-to-10 cents for a given Starbucks store to drop into their tip jar.
Sell fifty or so tracks a week, and they could afford--maybe--to buy a cup of their own coffee.
With this technology, however, Starbucks can cut the time we spend waiting in line, improve service, lock in a few more customers, and perhaps even reduce staffing levels to boot.
And Apple gets to skim some milk off the top.
And the people who pirate Photoshop also don't support GIMP, donate to GIMP, or use GIMP, nor do they buy Elements or PhotoPaint or any of a dozen commercial, shareware, or donation-ware alternatives. They may not be not paying for Photoshop, but they're not paying for anything else either.
All of which pretty much ensures that no alternative will be developed.
"...for you to state that the probability of this happening is akin to getting struck by lightning is absurd and a BLIND DISMISSAL of the POTENTIAL for this to happen."
/. get sick of seeing the double-standard and occasionally speak up about it."
/. have you to speak up for them. But IF Microsoft had such a paid service for Vista and IF you were a member and IF you used it and IF you checked your mDisk from a public browser and IF they had the same flaw...
Actually, I gave you a rather large opening there. Guess you don't know that about 100 people are struck and killed by lightning in the US each year. But 100 by 300 million is 0.0000003, or a third of the percentage I gave.
"Frankly, if such a user were to do this at a common terminal at work..."
I have my own computer at work, but again, that's just me.
"To bash MS for every little issue they have and turn around and excuse Apple for ANY issue they have is hypocritical and tiring."
There you go, making assumptions again. Care to look though my posting history and see how much Microsoft bashing I've done.
"Some of us on
And I'm glad that all of those people on
I'd say that the odds, given Vista's market penetration, are about three times that of getting stuck by lightning. Worse than Apple's, still remote. No double-standard.
"...a logical and coherent argument never penetrates."
Let me know when you find one, okay?
"...a stock will completely implode when it looks like the management has no idea whats going on."
Still not following, as the CEO is still leaving with or without the money. And they're still looking for a replacement, again, with or without the money. And investors may be skittish... or happy that the idiot is leaving.
"... he obviously resists getting the boot."
And not to be dense, but couldn't said board simply fire said CEO and have him escorted off the premises? Giving an extra $200 bonus to the security guard? And saving $160,999,800 in the process?
As an anecdotal fact, I've paid for the service for three years now and never done it. People get it for different reasons, like hosted pages or user account syncing or to have a non-ISP-linked email address. So I'm pretty sure that not every .Mac member will automatically follow your "logical" progression.
/. perfect-macs-aren't-perfect rants? Especially when they were never claimed to be perfect in the first place?
But go back and reread the final clause, "someone could potentially [sic] access those file". So to follow your series of events, he then has to have a malicious individual immediately follow him on one out of a few million public terminals he might use on the one day he decides he needs a file and who then does the dirty deed.
At which point he walks out the door and gets struck by lightning.
It's not "blind dismissal", it's just a realistic probability matrix of such an event actually occurring. And like I said, it should be fixed.
But is it worth hundreds of
Sorry, but no.
Like I said, it's got to be a slow Sunday.
Neither liberal nor communist nor socialist nor republican nor democrat. In any one platform I tend to disagree with too many other issues. As such my political biases tend to be more of a smorgasbord. So your "proof" is anything but.
As is your telling rebuttal.
But the point at hand is that you and I and others live all together in a society. And sometimes in societies personal "preferences" can't be given free reign, because those preferences impact too many other people.
I might, as an example, own a factory and "prefer" to save money by dumping dioxins and other wastes into the river. But can I do so? No. Because those choices have an impact on people other than myself. You (again as an example) may "prefer" to drive a Chevy Subdivision to and from work and on that dangerous excursion to the corner market.
But again, that "preference" has a significant environmental and economic impact, and you're not the only one that pays the price for it. Now, if it were JUST you, then that impact would be miniscule. In aggregate and in sufficient numbers, however, we, as a society, have a problem.
As you yourself pointed out, 35MPG sets the bar too low. So the bill in essence has no effect, impacts no one, and as such does nothing to reduce USA dependency on gulf oil.
Geroge is perfectly safe in signing it, as all of his constituencies are protected.
I'm not saying we should boycott American manufacturers. But I am saying that once again they were caught flat-footed, just like they were during the 70's oil crisis. What WILL happen is that people with vote with their dollars. If gas hits $4 or so next summer (likely) then that impacts the average family's budget to the tune of $300-400 a month.
And if Detroit isn't making fuel-efficient vehicles, then people will buy them from the company or country that is making them. It's that simple.
I'd love to buy a Volt from GM. Can I do so now? No. Next year? No. Year after? Probably not.
But the reason that I'm critical of fuel-efficiency guidelines is that we entirely too dependent on foriegn oil. Let a major war break out in the Middle East, or let another hurricane take out gulf oil platforms and refineries, and we WILL have a problem. A serious one.
And one that will hit the poor in places like Michigan like a sledgehammer.
But I'll leave you with two final thoughts. First, any mandated increases have to be met by everyone--US and foriegn alike. So it's not like we're placing the US at an overwhelming disadvantage. Honda had to install catalytic converters too.
Second, why is this not an opportunity? Truck and SUV sales are sprialing, and US manufacturers now have the opportunity to resell every American a new well-made fuel-efficient vehicle that could well pay for itself in fuel savings.
Why are they not doing so?
First, E85 has about a third less energy per gallon than gasoline. So you need a lot more of it to go the same distance. In fact, you can see the difference by just looking at the price relative to gasoline.
Secondly, by the time you've grown, harvested, shipped, and refined it, ethanol only gives you about 15% more energy than it took to produce it. Third, shifting crops towards corn-based ethanol raises prices for feedstock and prices for corn-based food products. All in all, ethanol (as currently produced in the US) is little more than a agribusiness subsidy program.
"... instead of the cars and trucks we prefer."
Telling statement, that. But as they say, your rights end the second your fist hits my nose. When your "preferences" means that your vehicle burns enough fuel for three or four other high-efficiency cars, and your "preferences" drive up fuel consumption and prices correspondingly, then, quite frankly, I could care LESS about your "preferences".
So the sequence is IF you use a Mac and IF you're a .Mac member and IF you use iDisk and IF you check your iDisk from a public browser THEN someone could potentially access those files.
.Mac and iDisk premired illustrates more than anything else as to just how "significant" it may be.
/..
Sorry, but the aggregate of all of those conditions is probably 0.000001%. Is it a problem? Yes? A major flaw? No. Worth discussing? Hardly. Check 100,000 public terminals and will you find one instance of the problem? Doubtful. In fact, I'd say that the fact that we're just now discovering the issue five years after
Should it be fixed? Sure.
As to your commments, I'm pretty sure I've ever seen anyone at anytime claim that Apple or Mac or OS X or the iPod or the iPhone is "PERFECT". Better, perhaps, but perfect? Nope. One has only to look at the tech notes and Software Updates to realize that. As such your entire anti-fanboi rant is pretty much just a strawman setup so you can knock him down, and pat yourself on the back in the process.
A better issue would have been followed from "A quick review of any public terminal's browser history could bring up all kinds of interesting things." Like failing to log out of Gmail or an Amazon account. But no. We have to do yet another Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Linux flamewar. Guess it's another slow Sunday at
Finally, the summary says, "feedback at apple.com/feedback has gone unanswered"... which is ALWAYS the case. It's a feedback site. It says feedback will be unanswered. To quote, "We read all feedback carefully, but please note that we cannot respond to the comments you submit." But again no, we have to make sure it looks like Apple is ignoring the "problem".
A truck is one thing, but SUVs are not currently "niche" products, but mainstream ones. I think it's telling that many automakers are now extolling the virtues of smaller "cross-over" vehicles that should easily be able to hit the 35MPG mark. ( A RAV-4 already does 30, I think.) Reduce the size and mass and things get quite a bit easier, don't they?
I personally would have liked to have seen 50MPG by 2020 for cars, and 30MPG for trucks (and an SUV is NOT a truck).
Or are you saying that given 12 years of R&D those numbers are impossible to hit?
35MPG on a fleet-wide scale by 2020? That puts the bar too low to be a meaningful target.
Hey Moron! Lookup the issues surrounding the rights to new oil blocks and the attempts to restructure Iraq's Production Sharing Contracts to benefit US-based corporations. And who is positioning to do the development and production and, as such, obtain the lion's share of the profits. Google is your friend, you know.
These are world-stage events. Everyone is watching. You don't just move in and say "I've got dibs", and you don't just back up a supertanker into the dock and start filling it up.
Secondly, check out the wage structure in Iraq in order to determine what prices may be. It also helps your costs if you're not shipping your raw product halfway around the world first. And while you're at it, take a peek at the record quarters continually being announced by Exxon-Mobil and congressional investigations into profiteering and price-gouging.
And to quote Alan Greenspan, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Because if there are no WMDs and no ties to Al Qaeda and if after the first Gulf War Saddam lost his ability to project power in the region... then what, in your considered opinion, IS the war about? And as I pointed out, if it's just because Saddam is "bad" then why are we in Iraq and not Africa, where even worse atrocities are occurring?
Finally, just to be clear: I don't hate America. King George and his oil-buddies, however...
"... you'd need a lot of people driving electric cars before there is sufficient demand for Wendy's or Starbucks to put up a metered electrical outlet."
Not sure I'm buying that. All you need is someone at one of those places to realize there might be a marketing opportunity in looking green and in being the first to provide those types of services. It could also lend to more of those customer coming to you instead of going elsewhere, and it could also give you a brand new revenue stream, siphoning money away from "gas" stations.
"People won't want to buy the cars unless they know they can take them on most trips..."
If you only have one car, then as you say a hybrid makes a lot of sense. But lot's of families have second and even third cars. And if gas does the $4/gallon dance next summer, I think quite a few of them might look pretty hard at a vehicle that could save the family budget a couple of hundred dollars or more a month.
Unfortunately, in the last decade or so of the American idea of "innovation" has been to build ever-larger SUVs and trucks. And built by-and-large in the same factories, on the same lines, and using the same parts as their predecessors.
Radically changing engines or drive trains or anything else would mean expensive retooling and redesign and research, all things that tend to impact next quarter's profits. The Japanese, on the other hand, seem to actually have been paying attention to events outside of the NY Stock Exchange, and spent considerable time and effort on technologies like the hybrid and in making their existing models even more efficient.
The result? Once again the Japanese are making small fuel-efficient vehicles while the US was making big heavy gas guzzlers. And again they're eating Detroit's lunch.
And deservedly so.
So true. Remember how they cried wolf when the Clean Air act passed and mandatory air efficiency guidelines were set into effect? That too was going to cost the consumer "thousands" of dollars and also be the end of the American auto industry. Didn't happen.
Unfortunately, while 35MPG sounds good the bill is little more than a whitewash, with a loophole large enough to drive an SUV through. Apparently once again the 35MPG is a "fleet" standard, so not every vehicle has to meet it as long as the fleet as a whole does.
Worse, vehicles get a 50% milage "credit" if they're ethanol-friendly. Add $50 or so worth of corrosion-resistant fittings and seals to that Chevy Subdivision so it can burn E85, and bingo: that 20MPG land bruiser now gets 30MPG in the eyes of the bill, raising fleet averages considerably.
And which in passing gives yet another sop to the corn/ethanol industry.
Did you honestly think they'd pass a bill that managed to do something positive?
"You then go to the counter to check if the charge is complete and pay for the electricity you used."
As long as you're setting things up from scratch, why not go a step further and put some sort of RFID system/sensor into the car/charger. Just stop anywhere, plug in your car, and electricity is automatically billed to your account.
If you can recharge in a short enough period of time, just skip the hybrid and go straight to all-electric. How about a Wendy's or Starbucks with charging stations? Stop for a bite or a cup of coffee, come back out and get into your fully charged vehicle.
He simply attempted to reframe the debate in terms of cost per minute. I pointed out that the costs drop the more you use it.
In fact, one often determines the value of an object based on usage. Would the average person spend $30,000 for a car they could drive only once? Of course not. But $30,000 for a car you can use for ten years? Now we're talking.
Any price structure takes into account the costs of creation, production, distribution, marketing, administration, and, of course, profits. Those drive prices up. Competition and consumer cost/benefit calculations drive them down. As such, your spoon analogy is flawed because spoons don't cost that much to make, so other companies lower prices in competition.
The natural progression is to find the number that covers your costs and gives you the most profit, which usually means that one prices it so a large number of people can afford it. Price too low, and usually the increase in sales doesn't merit the increase in costs. Hence spoons cost enough to pay for their production AND provide a reasonable amount of profit. Get too greedy, and someone else will undercut your price and sales will fall.
Bottom line, is that companies usually want to get the most bang for their buck, just like you tend to want to find a job that gives the best salary and benefits for your time and effort.