Back then something like that would have been pretty cool, and 25MPH was about top speed on the roads of that day anyhow.
The electric car was perceived as a luxury town car for women:
The electric's failure has also to do with the nature of the car's customers and manufacturers. Because of the users that it attracted, the electric's very virtues became part of its undoing. Its reliability, silence, cleanliness, and ease of operation endeared it particularly to women drivers, who were also less likely than men to be put off by its limitations. A 1915 magazine article extolled the electric's appeal to a woman: "She knows that it fulfills all of the demands of her daily routine of calling, shopping, and pleasure seeking. She knows that she likes to run it because there is a certain charm in its simplicity of operation and control--a sort of mild fascination. She knows, too, that she can step into its beautifully cushioned and brocaded interior, enjoy every minute of her ride and arrive at her destination as fresh and spotless as when she started."
As long as women were the primary clientele for electric cars, men weren't likely to buy many... "The fact that anything, from a car to a color, is the delight of the ladies is enough to change his interest to mere amused tolerance.... Having imagined effeminacy into the electric, he dismisses it from his mind and buys a gas car without a struggle." One manufacturer, hoping to win male buyers, introduced in 1915 a low-slung, fast-looking electric roadster. It changed few minds.
Electric cars suffered from their image as a luxury for the wealthy. They were usually cheaper to operate and maintain than gasoline cars, but they were extremely expensive to buy. In 1913 the average electric cost twenty-eight hundred dollars--the equivalent of roughly thirty-five thousand dollars today--while a Model T could be had for a little more than six hundred dollars. And the price of electrics was actually rising while that of gasoline cars fell.
The rising price tag resulted partly from the adoption of better batteries, but the main reason was the attitudes of the manufacturers. They saw their electric cars..."as a thing to be marketed in small quantities to a leisure class." One analyst complained that "we advertise...luxurious appointments, upholstery to match gowns and liveries, coach work and finish beyond compare.... Why create the impression one must be a millionaire to own an electric?"
Catering to a small and stable market, the makers of electric cars were little inclined to pursue lower prices, while Ford showed the world the profitability of mass production, one electric-auto factory boasted that "there is little place for the uneducated laborer in the plant." One analyst complained that "the high price of electrics is caused mostly by extravagant methods which require a large margin to provide for the waste." Why Internal Combustion?
That's why people making commercial software, games, media, movies, don't aim them at the slashdot / digg generation any more. Who wants to entertain people who are whining, thieving pains in the ass?
i hope this costs microsoft a freight train full of money, so much that it hurts microsoft and weakens them to the point that they can not buy anything else for a long long time...
Microsoft's second quarter profits were $4.71 billion dollars. The company is debt free with $20 billion in liquid reserves. A freight train full of money? "Take a ride on the Reading." Microsoft owns the railroad.
Copyright specifically says your work of art belongs to the public to further the arts and sciences.
"Furthering" the arts and sciences implies that a copyright or a patent is an incentive to others with significant talent and the ambition to create something new and something better.
It has nothing whatever to do with your "right" to download a free screener of a movie not in theatrical release.
Until that short time is up, we will keep hold of what is owed to us
The creator owes you nothing. He is not obliged to publish. He is not obliged to patent. He can protect his work - profit from his work - through any legal means he chooses. It never has to enter the public domain.
Ah, you mean a mostly artificially manufactured boogie-man, the mere mention of which instantly trumps any reasoned debate? Then yes, it probably is that.
Will Wikileaks always know what is harmless and what is not?
A mistake could - quite literally - blow up in their face or mine.
It worries me that the Geek so easily trusts and defends an arbitrary power wielded in secret by one of his own.
Writing a new Godwin's law, are you? See some information you don't like then equate it to child porn and get it banned?
The pornographer records the rape of a child for the sexual entertainment of an adult. It is not a victimless crime. It is not behavior that society is obliged to encourage or permit.
Many things are forbidden in this world for perfectly intelligible reasons.
What will happen when all IP infringers are hunted down and eliminated? It seems to me that open source, and all things that distribute IP for free would be the next target.
The infringer is a target because he is downloading - and redistributing - files that aren't being offered for free. Perhaps because the master file cost $100 million dollars and the labor of 400 people to produce.
You can often tell more about a man in the way he spends his money than in the way he makes it. Case in point: Eliot Spitzer.
Hardball capitalism is an international sport more compelling than soccer. The geek thinks of the entrepreneur in terms of good and evil, the larger audience only of the game and the score.
The President who died as the Erie Canal and the Industrial Revolution was putting an end to the agrarian Republic - the limited government - of his dreams?
you'll never find George W. Bush's face for the "unsharp filter" icon (Cinelerra) in a closed source program. That would indicate that the programmers were having fun, and that obviously makes the program of lower quality.
The problem is that the joke wears thin and never goes away.
This isn't so much play as adolescent self-indulgence. Rather like clinging to the Borg icon for Bill Gates on Slashdot. The Borg made their first appearance on ST:TNG in 1989.
Bill - less actively engaged in Microsoft - has other interests these days:
The Gates Foundation has quickly become a major influence upon global health; the approximately US$800 million that the foundation gives every year for global health approaches the annual budget of the United Nations' World Health Organization (192 nations) and is comparable to the funds given to fight infectious disease by the United States Agency for International Development. The Foundation currently provides 17% (US$86 million in 2006) of the world budget for the attempted eradication of poliomyelitis (polio).Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Most non-US citizens seem to have a hard time telling our two parties apart.
1 There is no party discipline as a Brit would understand it.
2 There is no national party organization as a Brit would understand it. You can reach the top in American politics even as the party regulars determinedly drag their feet.
3 Ideological conflicts are compromised internally.
4 The American voter is comfortable with winner-take-all. He doesn't like the "bed sheet ballot." He doesn't like it when his school board lurches wildly left or right to accommodate the faction that has gained the swing vote.
5 The American voter is almost by definition center-right and always has been.
The common carrier is an organization or enterprise that provides messaging services to the general public.
It is not about the tech.
It is not a defense against trade in pornography that you can claim by right.
You are a common carrier if - and only if - you meet the statutory definition and requirements and your conduct remains within the law.
The geek is far, far, too enamored with the idea that technical competence - technical innovation - puts him out of the reach of the law.
The rule has its origins in Western Union's nineteenth century policy of censoring telegrams it felt were against its own interests.
I for one can't sort out the truth of it - and I admit to being heavily biased over the movie about Tucker.
The first postwar cars were production runs of cars designed for the prewar market.
There was the expensive of reconversion, shortages of labor and material. I am not sure Tucker ever really solved the problem of finding - and fitting - the right engine and transmission.
The helicopter engine used in the Smithsonian's Torpedo can't have been a mass market solution in 1948.
we could just focus on improving the efficiency of solar and wind power generation. And lowering the power consumption of the everyday devices we use. Oh but I forgot, reducing the amount of power we use doesn't make anyone money.
The nuclear battery can be set up anywhere on Earth and is more or less maintenance free.
Hydro. Wind. Solar. Geothermal...
The "natural" alternatives are inherently local and not always where you need them to be. There are costs in land, money, material, and manpower.
The American South and Southwest was an essentially agrarian economy before the invention of air conditioning. This not a problem that can be solved as simply as replacing a light bulb.
In 1948 there was a huge pent-up demand for a genuine post-war American automobile.
But only 50 Tuckers were produced. There were engineering problems. There were serious questions asked about Tucker's fund raising schemes. Tucker Automobiles
What everyone is missing is that this election seats him only until the next election this fall
The 14th district cuts across a broad swath of northern Illinois [as can be seen in the map in the Wikipedia] in the time-honored fashion that would make it a generally safe seat for the conservative Republican.
You can expect the new congressman from the 14th District to vote the interests of the 14th District.
The first term congressman does not make policy. He will be two years learning the job and lucky to get a committee assignment that is remotely relevant to anything more significant than the coastal defense of Wyoming.
Surely early adopter rates are just as interesting as late adopter rates and surely obscure browsers are what this story is interested in. Why aren't you asking Lynx users why they stick with a text interface?
By undercutting the competition in production, replication and hardware costs, it thinks it can find a market among consumers with less disposable income.
The buyer with "less disposable income" who can still afford the HDTV set needed to view HD content?
Slashdot Mirror
The electric car was perceived as a luxury town car for women:
The electric's failure has also to do with the nature of the car's customers and manufacturers. Because of the users that it attracted, the electric's very virtues became part of its undoing. Its reliability, silence, cleanliness, and ease of operation endeared it particularly to women drivers, who were also less likely than men to be put off by its limitations. A 1915 magazine article extolled the electric's appeal to a woman: "She knows that it fulfills all of the demands of her daily routine of calling, shopping, and pleasure seeking. She knows that she likes to run it because there is a certain charm in its simplicity of operation and control--a sort of mild fascination. She knows, too, that she can step into its beautifully cushioned and brocaded interior, enjoy every minute of her ride and arrive at her destination as fresh and spotless as when she started."
As long as women were the primary clientele for electric cars, men weren't likely to buy many... "The fact that anything, from a car to a color, is the delight of the ladies is enough to change his interest to mere amused tolerance.... Having imagined effeminacy into the electric, he dismisses it from his mind and buys a gas car without a struggle." One manufacturer, hoping to win male buyers, introduced in 1915 a low-slung, fast-looking electric roadster. It changed few minds.
Electric cars suffered from their image as a luxury for the wealthy. They were usually cheaper to operate and maintain than gasoline cars, but they were extremely expensive to buy. In 1913 the average electric cost twenty-eight hundred dollars--the equivalent of roughly thirty-five thousand dollars today--while a Model T could be had for a little more than six hundred dollars. And the price of electrics was actually rising while that of gasoline cars fell.
The rising price tag resulted partly from the adoption of better batteries, but the main reason was the attitudes of the manufacturers. They saw their electric cars..."as a thing to be marketed in small quantities to a leisure class." One analyst complained that "we advertise...luxurious appointments, upholstery to match gowns and liveries, coach work and finish beyond compare. ... Why create the impression one must be a millionaire to own an electric?"
Catering to a small and stable market, the makers of electric cars were little inclined to pursue lower prices, while Ford showed the world the profitability of mass production, one electric-auto factory boasted that "there is little place for the uneducated laborer in the plant." One analyst complained that "the high price of electrics is caused mostly by extravagant methods which require a large margin to provide for the waste." Why Internal Combustion?
[Invention & Technology Fall 1990]
High School Musical cost Disney $4.2 million to produce.
HSM took off like a rocket with a young audience that bought the DVD. Tickets to the arena stage show. The home-town theater production...
there is nothing more pathetic on this earth than the geek's misunderstanding of his significance in the mass consumer market.
Microsoft's second quarter profits were $4.71 billion dollars. The company is debt free with $20 billion in liquid reserves. A freight train full of money? "Take a ride on the Reading." Microsoft owns the railroad.
"Furthering" the arts and sciences implies that a copyright or a patent is an incentive to others with significant talent and the ambition to create something new and something better.
It has nothing whatever to do with your "right" to download a free screener of a movie not in theatrical release.
Until that short time is up, we will keep hold of what is owed to us
The creator owes you nothing. He is not obliged to publish. He is not obliged to patent. He can protect his work - profit from his work - through any legal means he chooses. It never has to enter the public domain.
Will Wikileaks always know what is harmless and what is not?
A mistake could - quite literally - blow up in their face or mine.
It worries me that the Geek so easily trusts and defends an arbitrary power wielded in secret by one of his own.
The pornographer records the rape of a child for the sexual entertainment of an adult. It is not a victimless crime. It is not behavior that society is obliged to encourage or permit.
Many things are forbidden in this world for perfectly intelligible reasons.
It is a lesson the geek might usefully learn.
The infringer is a target because he is downloading - and redistributing - files that aren't being offered for free. Perhaps because the master file cost $100 million dollars and the labor of 400 people to produce.
You don't have to edit the registry in Office 2007. You only have to create a trusted files folder, which can done from within Office 2007 itself. Create, remove or change a trusted location for your files
You can often tell more about a man in the way he spends his money than in the way he makes it. Case in point: Eliot Spitzer.
Hardball capitalism is an international sport more compelling than soccer. The geek thinks of the entrepreneur in terms of good and evil, the larger audience only of the game and the score.
and what advice would that be?
That of the President who launched convert operations against the Barbary pirates?
The President who doubled the size of the U.S. in the Louisiana Purchase? The U.S. would become a continental empire in less than fifty years.
The President who waged economic war against Britain and France? Thomas Jefferson: Foreign Affairs
The President who died as the Erie Canal and the Industrial Revolution was putting an end to the agrarian Republic - the limited government - of his dreams?
but only when the software is in your distro's "click and run" library.
5. No DRM! You own the hardware, you own the software, you own the data.
No iTunes. No Rhapsody. No Netflix.
No games with production values to rival Pixar. Unless iD is in a charitable mood.
DRM simply enforces a license. The GPL is a license enforced by other means. You don't own a GPL'd app any more than you own Bioshock.
But an ideological insistence on free and open source can keep the manufacturer and the user on Windows and OSX.
The problem is that the joke wears thin and never goes away.
This isn't so much play as adolescent self-indulgence. Rather like clinging to the Borg icon for Bill Gates on Slashdot. The Borg made their first appearance on ST:TNG in 1989.
Bill - less actively engaged in Microsoft - has other interests these days:
The Gates Foundation has quickly become a major influence upon global health; the approximately US$800 million that the foundation gives every year for global health approaches the annual budget of the United Nations' World Health Organization (192 nations) and is comparable to the funds given to fight infectious disease by the United States Agency for International Development. The Foundation currently provides 17% (US$86 million in 2006) of the world budget for the attempted eradication of poliomyelitis (polio). Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
1 There is no party discipline as a Brit would understand it.
2 There is no national party organization as a Brit would understand it. You can reach the top in American politics even as the party regulars determinedly drag their feet.
3 Ideological conflicts are compromised internally.
4 The American voter is comfortable with winner-take-all. He doesn't like the "bed sheet ballot." He doesn't like it when his school board lurches wildly left or right to accommodate the faction that has gained the swing vote.
5 The American voter is almost by definition center-right and always has been.
Home users running web servers?
How many home users are paying for the static IP and business grade account that makes a server practical and not a violation of their TOS?
What decline in sales?
How Much Money Can Your XBox 360 Live Arcade Game Make? [no date]
The common carrier is an organization or enterprise that provides messaging services to the general public.
It is not about the tech.
It is not a defense against trade in pornography that you can claim by right.
You are a common carrier if - and only if - you meet the statutory definition and requirements and your conduct remains within the law.
The geek is far, far, too enamored with the idea that technical competence - technical innovation - puts him out of the reach of the law. The rule has its origins in Western Union's nineteenth century policy of censoring telegrams it felt were against its own interests.
The first postwar cars were production runs of cars designed for the prewar market.
There was the expensive of reconversion, shortages of labor and material. I am not sure Tucker ever really solved the problem of finding - and fitting - the right engine and transmission.
The helicopter engine used in the Smithsonian's Torpedo can't have been a mass market solution in 1948.
The nuclear battery can be set up anywhere on Earth and is more or less maintenance free.
Hydro. Wind. Solar. Geothermal...
The "natural" alternatives are inherently local and not always where you need them to be. There are costs in land, money, material, and manpower.
The American South and Southwest was an essentially agrarian economy before the invention of air conditioning. This not a problem that can be solved as simply as replacing a light bulb.
In 1948 there was a huge pent-up demand for a genuine post-war American automobile.
But only 50 Tuckers were produced. There were engineering problems. There were serious questions asked about Tucker's fund raising schemes. Tucker Automobiles
The 14th district cuts across a broad swath of northern Illinois [as can be seen in the map in the Wikipedia] in the time-honored fashion that would make it a generally safe seat for the conservative Republican.
You can expect the new congressman from the 14th District to vote the interests of the 14th District.
The first term congressman does not make policy. He will be two years learning the job and lucky to get a committee assignment that is remotely relevant to anything more significant than the coastal defense of Wyoming.
There are other sources for browser stats: Browser Market Share for February, 2008 The source Net Applications.
The story isn't about obscure tech. It's about familiar tech that survives because users see no compelling reason to abandon it.
The buyer with "less disposable income" who can still afford the HDTV set needed to view HD content?