"follow the money" has gotten trite, but I have to wonder if the German federal government's decision not to pursue this is in any way tied to the large amount of German gold we are holding for them. As I recall, they asked for it back a couple years ago and the US declined to ship it.
I'm glad it worked out for you. Keep in mind they're cheaper for a reason. As a computer repair person, I dread having to touch a PC with the HP logo on it. I tell customers it's better to just dump it and buy a new one. Which is how HP wants it, apparently.
Ya know, they're either autonomous or they're not. If they're truly autonomous, I should be able to train my dog to get inside and hit the "home" button and it should be just as legal and appropriate as if it were an elevator. If they still need an adult behind the wheel, they're not what I would call autonomous.
...is that people try to eat microwaved food right out of the microwave. The food hasn't finished cooking at that time. Leave it another minute for the internal temperatures to equalize.
I thought every college student knew that.
Mind you, Hot Pockets are nasty. Lean pockets are slightly less nasty.
Regardless of what the contract says, when things go TU locally, everyone scrambles because we are personally invested in keeping the company afloat (at least, to the extent that we want to keep our jobs). To a cloud provider you're just another customer, and they really don't care if you live or die.
A local IT group tends to concentrate on getting the job done. A cloud provider tends to concentrate on plausible deniability. Support will run you through "install the latest video drivers and see if the problem persists" while sales managers build up a case that they followed the process and did everything you paid for. And you'll find that what you paid for was process, not, you know, actual resources you could use.
A cloud salesman recently told me with a straight face that they just signed a deal with some former eastern bloc country to provide helpdesk and first level support. He seemed to think this was a reason to use his service. I couldn't help thinking of this.
On top of that, you then require a much fatter pipe to the internet, as opposed to keeping your file servers and such in-house, where you can run 100BaseT or 1000BaseT and get high speed connection to your servers.
Nah, my experience has been management decides not to get a bigger pipe to the internet, because that cuts into the cost savings, and the company just learns to live with sluggish response. And the money lost from this is not counted against the gains, because it comes out of a different account.
> Certainly there's SLAs that almost every cloud provider touts, but just try to get a typical provider to honor one (that is, without having to sic a lawyer onto 'em first.)
Actual quote: "Go ahead and sue. We have more lawyers than you have employees."
*practical* electric charging stations are not. Tesla advertises a 3 hour charge time at 90 amps. A standard house circuit delivers 15 amps. Let's assume the charging circuit can use all of it (for the sake of argument). That's 18 hours. 250 miles, 18 hours. 250 miles, 18 hours. It'll work for some people, but it won't be widespread with that charge time. Sorry.
You see what I'm getting at. Firstly, I believe Tesla is giving away electricity because it helps promote their cars, which is laudable, smart at this stage of the game, and probably can't continue forever. Secondly, it would be a bad business model for Tesla to give away power for every plug-in hybrid, so there must be some differentiation method. (Connector, DRM,whatever.) Thirdly, you can see where I'm going with this... it does make owning a Tesla practical, if you can afford one. It doesn't exactly make owning an electric car practical. Something would have to change, and the solution is probably not for each manufacturer to have their own proprietary charging stations.
Ok, will assume that for the sake of argument, and -- I admit to being ignorant about this - "you don't have to pay for the refuels"... Tesla superchargers provide energy for free?
Especially since hydrogen FCEV use electricity as the motive force anyway. With the cell feeding the battery and the battery feeding the motor, it wouldn't be much different than current plug-in hybrids. Except without the emissions.
The problem is (and has always been, IIRC,) the practicality of creating and transporting large amounts of hydrogen. Especially since hydrogen doesn't have the energy density of gasoline, so transporting it from hydrogen-making plants would be necessarily less efficient. (And home hydrogen generation is not something Fred and Ethyl Consumer will be able to deal with, not to mention the inefficiency of coal -> electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity again -> motive force.)
Many years ago, I thought the answer might be hydrogen fusion plants, which have enough efficiency to overwhelm the relatively low energy density of commercial hydrogen. The plant would separate the water, keep the deuterium to continue the reaction, and produce electricity, fresh water, hydrogen for consumer fuel, and free oxygen. But every forty years, practical fusion is just forty years away... I'm wondering if we'll be talking about practical quick-charge battery technology the same way in forty years.
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"follow the money" has gotten trite, but I have to wonder if the German federal government's decision not to pursue this is in any way tied to the large amount of German gold we are holding for them. As I recall, they asked for it back a couple years ago and the US declined to ship it.
I'm glad it worked out for you. Keep in mind they're cheaper for a reason. As a computer repair person, I dread having to touch a PC with the HP logo on it. I tell customers it's better to just dump it and buy a new one. Which is how HP wants it, apparently.
Ya know, they're either autonomous or they're not. If they're truly autonomous, I should be able to train my dog to get inside and hit the "home" button and it should be just as legal and appropriate as if it were an elevator. If they still need an adult behind the wheel, they're not what I would call autonomous.
Good point.
> I was wondering when a big brand was going to start slapping their name on them.
I read: "HP blah de blah de blah" not interested.
Had they reversed the order I would have read: "A big name 7 inch tablet for $100 from HP blah de blah de blah" not interested.
Seriously, why would anyone buy anything from HP these days who, like, didn't have to?
Ah. Abuse. I ignored that part, because I figured it was hyperbole, as, if you had verifiable examples, you would have provided same.
I thought every college student knew that.
Mind you, Hot Pockets are nasty. Lean pockets are slightly less nasty.
Regardless of what the contract says, when things go TU locally, everyone scrambles because we are personally invested in keeping the company afloat (at least, to the extent that we want to keep our jobs). To a cloud provider you're just another customer, and they really don't care if you live or die.
A local IT group tends to concentrate on getting the job done. A cloud provider tends to concentrate on plausible deniability. Support will run you through "install the latest video drivers and see if the problem persists" while sales managers build up a case that they followed the process and did everything you paid for. And you'll find that what you paid for was process, not, you know, actual resources you could use.
A cloud salesman recently told me with a straight face that they just signed a deal with some former eastern bloc country to provide helpdesk and first level support. He seemed to think this was a reason to use his service. I couldn't help thinking of this.
On top of that, you then require a much fatter pipe to the internet, as opposed to keeping your file servers and such in-house, where you can run 100BaseT or 1000BaseT and get high speed connection to your servers.
Nah, my experience has been management decides not to get a bigger pipe to the internet, because that cuts into the cost savings, and the company just learns to live with sluggish response. And the money lost from this is not counted against the gains, because it comes out of a different account.
> Certainly there's SLAs that almost every cloud provider touts, but just try to get a typical provider to honor one (that is, without having to sic a lawyer onto 'em first.)
Actual quote: "Go ahead and sue. We have more lawyers than you have employees."
1. The Tesla model S runs around $70K. Fine for rock stars and drug dealers.
Again, fine for the rich.
Obviously, I should have added, for the pedantic: In a reasonable amount of time.
> HIGH-SPEED electric charging stations are not.
*practical* electric charging stations are not. Tesla advertises a 3 hour charge time at 90 amps. A standard house circuit delivers 15 amps. Let's assume the charging circuit can use all of it (for the sake of argument). That's 18 hours. 250 miles, 18 hours. 250 miles, 18 hours. It'll work for some people, but it won't be widespread with that charge time. Sorry.
The beginnings of an infrastructure are already in place. Hydrogen cars is a fairly old concept.
You see what I'm getting at. Firstly, I believe Tesla is giving away electricity because it helps promote their cars, which is laudable, smart at this stage of the game, and probably can't continue forever. Secondly, it would be a bad business model for Tesla to give away power for every plug-in hybrid, so there must be some differentiation method. (Connector, DRM,whatever.) Thirdly, you can see where I'm going with this... it does make owning a Tesla practical, if you can afford one. It doesn't exactly make owning an electric car practical. Something would have to change, and the solution is probably not for each manufacturer to have their own proprietary charging stations.
"The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman."
- Alan Perlis, "Epigrams on Programming", ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17 (9), September 1982, pp. 7–13
So... what does Tesla do to prevent competing plug-in cars from using their chargers for free? Or don't they care?
Ok, will assume that for the sake of argument, and -- I admit to being ignorant about this - "you don't have to pay for the refuels"... Tesla superchargers provide energy for free?
He (gasp) uses an OLD version of Windows because it (gasp) DOES the JOB? He must be some kind of criminal!
Especially since hydrogen FCEV use electricity as the motive force anyway. With the cell feeding the battery and the battery feeding the motor, it wouldn't be much different than current plug-in hybrids. Except without the emissions.
The problem is (and has always been, IIRC,) the practicality of creating and transporting large amounts of hydrogen. Especially since hydrogen doesn't have the energy density of gasoline, so transporting it from hydrogen-making plants would be necessarily less efficient. (And home hydrogen generation is not something Fred and Ethyl Consumer will be able to deal with, not to mention the inefficiency of coal -> electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity again -> motive force.)
Many years ago, I thought the answer might be hydrogen fusion plants, which have enough efficiency to overwhelm the relatively low energy density of commercial hydrogen. The plant would separate the water, keep the deuterium to continue the reaction, and produce electricity, fresh water, hydrogen for consumer fuel, and free oxygen. But every forty years, practical fusion is just forty years away... I'm wondering if we'll be talking about practical quick-charge battery technology the same way in forty years.
But electric charging stations for cars are not, at least at this time. It's like saying hydrogen? There's water all around us.