Yeah, it would be nice if green energy sources were available to power those cars, but they aren't so why not start on that problem first?
That problem is already at least partially solved, if not completely. Ethanol supposedly combusts into clean products, unlike gasoline. I suspect in real-world applications it would be less perfect, but still cleaner, anyway, and renewable. (I disagree with a previous poster about farming capacity for ethanol, but so be it)
The reason ethanol isn't "here" yet is similar to this:
Toyota (no slouch in the efficient production arena) cannot even produce a hybrid vehicle at a profit
In this area you are at least partially mistaken. Toyota can produce their hybrids at a profit, and they do think they could make a long-term profit if they produced them at a profit now. However, they want fast adoption of hybrids, and they think that they will make more profits off them in the long run if they get fast early adoption. So they sell them at a loss to get the adoption they need so that the demand will go up and the economies of scale will kick in and bring production costs down so their margin will resemble their existing margin on other models. *phew that was a mouthful*
The problems with electric cars, some of which you outlined so well, are exactly in power. For electric cars to become practical, they must carry the source of power generation within them. The hybrid technology Toyota's working on may ultimately result in electric cars carrying their generators with them, I don't really know. But as you've pointed out, battery technology won't handle it. (You left out charging time on that issue, I noticed) I don't think fuel cells will be the answer either, but I could be wrong about that.;)
Toyota (and Honda, I might add) reached a compromise with their hybrid cars. I suspect they could build a car with a small generator running off propane or ethanol or something that used an electric motor for torque. The problem is that the oil companies would kill it. So the hybrid car is a compromise, and once Toyota can demonstrate enough demand and gain consumer confidence in the technology, the oil companies won't be able to kill a car that doesn't use oil ripped out of the ground. I'd be curious to see if Toyota and/or Honda are invested in any of the oil companies and if they've been pulling out of them at all over the last few years. It seems like a they'd invest in oil the same way HP would invest in ink.
AC Propulsion just took a trip from LA to Vegas in a lithium-battery car. That's all the range we need for a practical car.
Range isn't the problem, it's charging time. When it takes > 8 hours to charge, it's unreasonable for daily driving, and completely useless for cross-country driving. Consider a car now, charging time is time at the pump and you're fully charged. I could throw an electric motor in my truck now, sacrifice half the bed-space for batteries, and commute every day with it. But that's all it would be, then, a commuter. (Cross-country driving does require my truck stop for gas pretty much on the hour) Range isn't the problem and hasn't been for some time.:)
What's really needed isn't batteries, unless they can be charged in 10 minutes. What's needed is a fuel-powered generator where you can refill the fuel in 10 minutes and generate enough electricity to get range at least comparable to gas-hog cars. And the fuel needs to be renewable and not fossil, of course.
I've ridden bikes with all sorts of mechanical problems, and believe me, I'd rather be on a bike during a mechanical failure than in a car or on a motorcycle (I did crash a motorcycle once and some of the injuries I received were a result of mechanical failure on the bike, and it's arguable, but I think the crash was a result of a mechanical failure, but I haven't managed to single out what. My memory of the crash is dim).
I get so sick of hearing "I did this once and then *something really bad happened*, so I just chickened out and never did it again. I'm a coward." It's cowardice that's responsible for 90% of our problems in this country. (Courage accounts for the other 10%) People cowering instead of fighting, or cowering instead of growing, or cowering instead of doing whatever the 'right' thing happens to be.
Oh yeah, and if you lose brakes on a pedal-powered bike, the way to deal with it is to always lay it down. If you're going fast, you might get some scrapes, but you must lay it down and walk it until you can fix it.
I get the feeling that most people are waiting to see how durable they are before they buy one.
Well, first off, I consider it a half-assed step.:) They could've done better, I think. In any case, my opinion is irrelevant.
Second, there's one thing I'm waiting to see, and it might take ten years for me to see if it'll happen. It's quite common for a well-maintained car, through regular wear and tear, to take a couple of extra seconds to start. Over a long period, those extra seconds multiply (although for a healthy car they don't usually go past 4-5 seconds, regardless of age, even my truck usually starts in I also want to see how driveable they are when the starter fails, and how easy it is to get it where you're going. Mind you, if the starter fails it's no longer a "can't start but can drive if I push-start" problem, it's now "Can't go anymroe".
And other things, like how gracefully it can handle losing an alternator, and so forth. So, yeah, many of us are waiting to see how durable they are, and some of us are trying to anticipate where the trouble spots will be.:)
Heh. You would end up in Austin with his strategy.:) (I lived in Austin for three years without a car, and while I liked having a car, not having it wasn't the disadvantage I thought it would be, and I saw a lot more of the city than I otherwise would have seen)
You do an excellent job of pointing out problems that need to be solved in a car-less city. Here goes:
- Purchasing large objects: In a carless city, I don't know how I would buy large things, such as furniture. I get that stuff delivered nowadays but if there were no roads how would it get to my door?
Delivery works when it's not significantly expensive. I save money by driving my truck to pick up furniture rather than have it delivered. Obviously, there needs to be a way for stuff to be delivered, whether it's by helicopter or what. As pointed out farther down in this thread, the car-less city would still have roads. We still need shipping, and we still need large distribution after a good comes into town, so car-less doesn't mean no cars, it only means cars won't be used as the main mode of transportation.
- Groceries: Walking back to my apartment carrying a bunch of grocery bags is no fun.
This is pure lazy on your part.:) For sale there are many wheeled baskets that fold up specifically for this purpose. So the solution to this problem is here, now.
- Weather: Walking in general is not fun in the snow. Getting takeout food is a pain in this situation, and I don't really have much option since I didn't buy groceries (see above).
I imagine the car-less city in places that actually have weather would have overhangs or something on major arteries, but sadly I don't think people would build those.:( This problem is solvable, but that doesn't mean it would be solved.
We are destroying the earth. Oil will run out. I think whoever started this thread is an idiot.
We will never run out of oil. Wanna know why?
It's about production growth and demand growth. Economics here, are required. Production growth means that you can produce more of your good for distribution. Demand growth means more of your good is demanded by the populace. Easy, right?
Now, there's a magical point where any finite resource will peak in production. After the peak, there will be no further production growth. Ideally, demand would shrink at the same rate production shrinks. However, if we don't do something about it, demand for oil will continue to grow after production of oil peaks, which will cause prices to skyrocket.
Any oil-based economy, after oil peaks, will go bankrupt long before oil reserves actually run dry. When that happens, oil production will either slow to a crawl or halt completely, and any alternative that can be brought to production quickly and adopted en masse quickly will do so, and will cause any remaining oil production to halt completely.
My money's on ethanol over biodiesel, but I wouldn't be surprised if our choices at the gas pumps in 10 years will be ethanol and biodiesel.
I live in Dallas, and I have lived in Austin. Fortunately, my commute did not include the utter disaster that is the Austin highway system. And don't get me started on the buses...almost cost me my prom date! : )
Heh, you live in Dallas but you call the Austin highway system a disaster?:) If we assume there are good, fast, workarounds for the corridor of death known as I35, the Austin highway system is actually pretty good. All things considered, of course. The only real problem with the Austin highway system (besides the corridor of death that is virtually impossible to rebuild at this point) is that it hasn't grown fast enough to accomodate the level of growth the city saw in the 90s. 183 needed that extra limited access portion long before they built it, and Mopac needed to be extended before they extended it. Excluding those areas, the system itself is really quite nice.
Now, I didn't fully appreciate how good the Austin system was until I saw the Seattle system. Talk about a pain in the ass. Seattle itself has only two real freeways in it, and one of them isn't limited access for its entire length (99, also known by a road name, but i forget what it is). Both of these freeways run north and south, and we've got jack and shit for east-west freeways, unless you count 90 and 520, but those are only really useful for those of us that live in the Eastside. 405 is also fairly useful, but it only runs in the Eastside as well. Seattle itself is very congested, and the roads are so poorly maintained that you can't drive a block anywhere in Seattle without hitting a pothole.
D/FW on the other hand (admittedly, most of my driving in that area was in Fort Worth), is a big disaster. Construction in most places, high congestion all over. Hmm, maybe it's a population density problem. But it's not population density that makes SEattle's freeways suck ass, because the Seattle area is about the same size in population as the Austin area, and Austin's freeways serve the area well (except for a few hotspots on the bridges, but you expect the most heavily trafficked areas to have hotspots).
I too don't know enough to really debate light rail, but it doesn't take much of a brain to look at Austin and figure out they need something better than what they've got. Too many environmentalists to let the place grow into a smog hazard other cities are, but too many gas-lovers to put money into public transportation. But it also doesn't take much of a brain to look at central texas and figure out that it's merging into one huge metropolitan area and to look at the problem as a much larger problem.
Not to turn into a kook, but I think that flying cars would fix the problem.:) I'm really hoping someone comes up with a cheap and reliable powerplant that will make flying cars without lift surfaces a reality, because flying cars with lift surfaces will always fail. And, of course, that fancy powerplant needs to be portable. I'm open to suggestions.:) (My wife wants me to spend this winter in garage inventor mode, and if we do well enough this summer I'm all over it;) )
I hope (in my pretty little fantasy world head) that rail travel catches on in Texas. The light rail system connecting the suburbs to downtown is just starrting to get big enough to be useful, and people are getting in the habit of using it (which is awesome.) It might happen, but I'll wager we get to Mars first.
Well, I don't know which part of Texas you live in, but when I lived in Austin the light rail issue was enough that if a politician took a stand on either side, it ruined his political career. We had a few spots on the city council that became revolving doors over that issue alone. People in Austin are very split on whether they want light rail or better roads, and really I wish they'd quit whining about better roads. If they got to see the Washington state work ethic at work on the roads in the Seattle area, they'd start counting their blessings. MoPac gets a new cover every year, but when I drive through downtown Bellevue I hit the same set of ridges for 3 miles that have been there for 3 years.
But I don't think light rail is good enough anymore anyway. It would kick the ass out of the bus system in Austin, but if built it would be too little too late. They need something bigger, faster, and more comprehensive. That little college town grew a little bit too fast, methinks.
Of course, now that I'm in the Seattle area I'm wanting a decent rail system out here.:) It would really be nice if we had high speed trains down into the Olympia area and over to the island in the Puget Sound. Not to mention better connecting the Eastside to Seattle proper, which would be particularly nice.
Yeah.:) Ethanol is a near drop-in replacement for gasoline (requiring only timing and mixture adjustments in most cars, and in newer cars that means replacing the computer).
Just to make a small point, though, running out of fossil fuels isn't going to make them more expensive. Peaking worldwide is what's going to make them more expensive, because after oil drilling peaks, there won't be any growth in oil production, but the growth in demand will continue to rise. So prices will skyrocket, and our oil-based economies will go bankrupt long before we run out of fossil fuels.
So why not convert to ethanol? It would benefit farmers, certainly. Can be produced locally, etc. I could go into economic benefits and ecological benefits and so forth, but it all come down to one thing: oil companies are huge, corrupt, and monopolistic. Think Microsoft as an oil company, and that's what we have. That's why we haven't managed to convert to ethanol, and every regulation that tries to achieve a compromise that would allow people to switch has been literally a fight and struggle to get passed.
Heh, are these the same legislators that think that Texas Gold will make a big comeback and haven't admitted even to themselves that Texas oil reserves really did peak in the 70s?;)
I've started to understand something about corporations. You can show a corporation how much ROI they'll have on a given venture that is similar to their core business (in the airlines case, you have to call their core busines "transportation" rather than "Air transportation"), but if it's different enough, they'll fight it instead of adopting it. The thing is, any ROI you might calculate for building a high speed rail system says "You'll get this ROI, we think, and it'll take 30 years (or whatever) to recoup your investment completely". That spells "risk" to a corporation, where it spells "investment" to a government. ANd if someone else develops the same system, it would affect their core business, and they'd be at even more risk than if they charged in themselves. So they have to fight it. Sucks, but that's how corporations work, and there's not a whole lot we can do to change that without coming up with a better system entirely.
Public funding + airline funding, with some sort of deal to sweeten the pot for airline funding might work, though, and as far as I know hasn't even been tried. If you could get the airlines to foot a big chunk of the bill under the understanding that they would then operate on these tracks, with a deal where if they operated profitably they would be contractually required to buy the tracks back from the state or something, then you might get them to go along. You will have reduced their risk quite a lot.
The reason this scheme won't work is because the people won't get behind it, though. IN Texas they'd say "If it's a private enterprise, the government should keep it's hands out of it."
Texas politics annoy me.:( I love Texas, though.;)
One of the main reasons we have given up on rail transportation like we did (not totaly but lessend the value)was because durring ww2 we noticed that when we took out the rail lines we halted the axis production. The interstae highway system was supposed to be a redundent network of roadway that if one was taken out it would allow another to be used easily. Not only did this look good for stategic defense but it made sence for taking products to market.
That's interesting. Really.
Eisenhower made the observation when he was in Europe fighting the Nazis that the Nazi highway system was very efficient for moving troops and it was hard to fight against. The home troops can blow up bridges and stuff along the way during a retreat to ensure that foreign invaders don't get the home court advantage.
This is why, when he was president in the 60s, he created the Eisenhower Interstate highways, and some of the interstate highways here still bear his name here and there.
Perhaps you should point out to him all the potential economic benefits. Austin has many people that commute to D/FW for work, believe it or not, and vice versa (believe it or not!). A high-speed train that would cut their travel time from 6 hours roundtrip to 2 hours roundtrip without costing a fortune would make a killing.
Everything from D/FW down to San Antonio needs to be stuck on some sort of high speed rail system. It's rapidly becoming one metropolitan area, and it makes perfect sense to combine them in public transport, but public transport for that whole area does require high speeds to be useful.
And if the airlines could see a decent ROI on getting regular commuters at a regular commuting price rather than weekend travelers at airline prices, I'd bet they'd jump on it. SW has had trouble in the past flying around Texas itself...
But they do REALLY push you send them a check. Here's the link:
Yeah, sucks that a for-profit company would actually try to get you to pay for your free download. We've got to put a stop to this shit.
Or you could go back to Windows, where you have stupid nag-screens, ads popping up when you're not even browsing the web, shareware (need I elaborate on that?), product activation requiring a phone call, boy the list really goes on.
Compared to Mandrake, which gives you all the same benefits of windows without all the crazy drawbacks, and you have to click through *one* extra page asking you for money. (And again in the First-Time wizard, which you can skip if you want) Mandrake, which doesn't just shut itself off after 30 days if you don't pay them any money.
I'm thinking that the antagonism between France and the US is mostly made up, or exists solely in the government. I have not met a single American who really thought France was evil, they just disagreed with you guys' politics. Nor have I met anyone that really acts/feels antagonistic towards the French.
For the most part, we've all agreed to disagree, because that's what it takes to keep our own disparate cultures in the US from killing each other (and it doesn't always stop that anyway).
Besides, when you're the country that gets to dictate who has nukes and who doesn't by virtue of the fact that you're also the country with the biggest nukes, well, you know how that goes. And it's probably about time for us to field our own Napolean.
Eh, anyone who prefers the simplified "Use the Web" is unlikely to give a rats ass about the GPL. Not everyone takes it as holy writ.
Eh? Not so. Just because you don't want to have to make a decision over which browser you're going to use every time you go surf the web does *not* mean you're unlikely to give a rats ass about the GPL. Lots of people want their computer to "just work", and don't want some evil monopolistic company to dictate what they can and can't do with their computers.
I desire simplicity in maintaining my computer, and I prefer not to even think about certain things from time to time (like which browser I'm using when the stupid web developer is telling me I need to use one of their "approved" browsers). But I still want source code for the browser I'm using, and everything else. I'm unlikely to ever even look at 99.999999999999% of the source code I have for the programs I use.
But since I have the source code, no evil monopolistic company will dictate to me what I can and can't do with my computer.
And a lot of people want that. A *lot*. I haven't yet met one single person (with the exception of my idiot father) who thought that open source was bad or unnecessary. Quite the contrary, everyone I talk to likes the idea and wants to help, they were just unaware of the choice available to them.
Random Geeks (like us) will always progress to the Next Big Distro, and in the case of Mandrake, it won't be that.
Actually, at this point I don't anticipate ever getting off Mandrake. It's too easy.;) Just because I *can* spend my time wondering around config files and crap and making my system do exactly what I want doesn't mean that I *want* to spend my time doing that. Mandrake gets it 90% of the way there, and the remaining 10% I think hard about how badly I want it, or if I can just settle with what Mandrake gave me.
More and more, I'm settling with what Mandrake gave me, because more and more it's closer to what I want, and the differences become negligible.
I'm not saying Mandrake is the be-all end-all Linux distribution, but it suits my needs perfectly, when you get right down to it. I sat my daughter down and gave her a brief rundown on how to use KDE so she could play Frozen Bubble and LBreakout. When she can finally read fairly consistently, I'll give her a username & password for the machine. When I finally get her her own computer, I'm going to burn off some Mandrake CDs and tell her to build it.:) There's not another distribution I feel confident enough to just give to my 5-year-old like that, and I sure in the fuck wouldn't try Windows on her like that. (Of course, she'll probably be 6, close to 7, before I do that)
It's a machine my wife can administer, if it's really needed from time to time. So I don't have to answer the call "Daddy come fix this computer!". I can just say "Fix it yourself". If it's not my computer, I'll give them the root password and let them trash it. And that's fine, 'cause they have to rebuild it if necessary. In the meantime, Mandrake has made it very simple for me to mount up everybody's home directory from a central machine, and parts of/usr as well, so I can make sure the stuff everybody *needs* is installed properly and working, and when they do thrash their systems, they won't have any loss of *important* functionality.
We do not inherit the world from our parents; we borrow it from our children
well, in that case, since my parents always taught me that if I screw up something I borrow from a friend, I must replace, I think we should demand a new world from our parents.
And if they don't give it to us, mmmm, vivisection?
You must be pretty young.:) Every century, so far, has someone rising up to power in his country and trying to take over the world. Every century also has many many wars going on. I wonder if there has ever been more than five minutes in which a war wasn't being fought *somewhere* on this fucking planet.
Not to mention that we have absolutely no idea whether or not we'll ever encounter intelligent life, arguably besides our own, and therefore we have absolutely no way of predicting whether or not they will be violent towards us. So we must, unfortunately, preserve warfare for the sake of self-preservation.
Mind you, I'm not preaching we should go off to war at any point in time, and I was the *only* person in my particular circle that opposed going to Afghanistan. Peace and love and so forth, but don't let the bastards get you.
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Yeah, it would be nice if green energy sources were available to power those cars, but they aren't so why not start on that problem first?
That problem is already at least partially solved, if not completely. Ethanol supposedly combusts into clean products, unlike gasoline. I suspect in real-world applications it would be less perfect, but still cleaner, anyway, and renewable. (I disagree with a previous poster about farming capacity for ethanol, but so be it)
The reason ethanol isn't "here" yet is similar to this:
Toyota (no slouch in the efficient production arena) cannot even produce a hybrid vehicle at a profit
In this area you are at least partially mistaken. Toyota can produce their hybrids at a profit, and they do think they could make a long-term profit if they produced them at a profit now. However, they want fast adoption of hybrids, and they think that they will make more profits off them in the long run if they get fast early adoption. So they sell them at a loss to get the adoption they need so that the demand will go up and the economies of scale will kick in and bring production costs down so their margin will resemble their existing margin on other models. *phew that was a mouthful*
The problems with electric cars, some of which you outlined so well, are exactly in power. For electric cars to become practical, they must carry the source of power generation within them. The hybrid technology Toyota's working on may ultimately result in electric cars carrying their generators with them, I don't really know. But as you've pointed out, battery technology won't handle it. (You left out charging time on that issue, I noticed) I don't think fuel cells will be the answer either, but I could be wrong about that. ;)
Toyota (and Honda, I might add) reached a compromise with their hybrid cars. I suspect they could build a car with a small generator running off propane or ethanol or something that used an electric motor for torque. The problem is that the oil companies would kill it. So the hybrid car is a compromise, and once Toyota can demonstrate enough demand and gain consumer confidence in the technology, the oil companies won't be able to kill a car that doesn't use oil ripped out of the ground. I'd be curious to see if Toyota and/or Honda are invested in any of the oil companies and if they've been pulling out of them at all over the last few years. It seems like a they'd invest in oil the same way HP would invest in ink.
AC Propulsion just took a trip from LA to Vegas in a lithium-battery car. That's all the range we need for a practical car.
Range isn't the problem, it's charging time. When it takes > 8 hours to charge, it's unreasonable for daily driving, and completely useless for cross-country driving. Consider a car now, charging time is time at the pump and you're fully charged. I could throw an electric motor in my truck now, sacrifice half the bed-space for batteries, and commute every day with it. But that's all it would be, then, a commuter. (Cross-country driving does require my truck stop for gas pretty much on the hour) Range isn't the problem and hasn't been for some time. :)
What's really needed isn't batteries, unless they can be charged in 10 minutes. What's needed is a fuel-powered generator where you can refill the fuel in 10 minutes and generate enough electricity to get range at least comparable to gas-hog cars. And the fuel needs to be renewable and not fossil, of course.
We could bake cars
Have you got a recipe...or a cold?
So you crashed once and gave up. Pussy.
I've ridden bikes with all sorts of mechanical problems, and believe me, I'd rather be on a bike during a mechanical failure than in a car or on a motorcycle (I did crash a motorcycle once and some of the injuries I received were a result of mechanical failure on the bike, and it's arguable, but I think the crash was a result of a mechanical failure, but I haven't managed to single out what. My memory of the crash is dim).
I get so sick of hearing "I did this once and then *something really bad happened*, so I just chickened out and never did it again. I'm a coward." It's cowardice that's responsible for 90% of our problems in this country. (Courage accounts for the other 10%) People cowering instead of fighting, or cowering instead of growing, or cowering instead of doing whatever the 'right' thing happens to be.
Oh yeah, and if you lose brakes on a pedal-powered bike, the way to deal with it is to always lay it down. If you're going fast, you might get some scrapes, but you must lay it down and walk it until you can fix it.
I get the feeling that most people are waiting to see how durable they are before they buy one.
Well, first off, I consider it a half-assed step. :) They could've done better, I think. In any case, my opinion is irrelevant.
Second, there's one thing I'm waiting to see, and it might take ten years for me to see if it'll happen. It's quite common for a well-maintained car, through regular wear and tear, to take a couple of extra seconds to start. Over a long period, those extra seconds multiply (although for a healthy car they don't usually go past 4-5 seconds, regardless of age, even my truck usually starts in I also want to see how driveable they are when the starter fails, and how easy it is to get it where you're going. Mind you, if the starter fails it's no longer a "can't start but can drive if I push-start" problem, it's now "Can't go anymroe".
And other things, like how gracefully it can handle losing an alternator, and so forth. So, yeah, many of us are waiting to see how durable they are, and some of us are trying to anticipate where the trouble spots will be. :)
Heh. You would end up in Austin with his strategy. :) (I lived in Austin for three years without a car, and while I liked having a car, not having it wasn't the disadvantage I thought it would be, and I saw a lot more of the city than I otherwise would have seen)
You do an excellent job of pointing out problems that need to be solved in a car-less city. Here goes:
- Purchasing large objects: In a carless city, I don't know how I would buy large things, such as furniture. I get that stuff delivered nowadays but if there were no roads how would it get to my door?
Delivery works when it's not significantly expensive. I save money by driving my truck to pick up furniture rather than have it delivered. Obviously, there needs to be a way for stuff to be delivered, whether it's by helicopter or what. As pointed out farther down in this thread, the car-less city would still have roads. We still need shipping, and we still need large distribution after a good comes into town, so car-less doesn't mean no cars, it only means cars won't be used as the main mode of transportation.
- Groceries: Walking back to my apartment carrying a bunch of grocery bags is no fun.
This is pure lazy on your part. :) For sale there are many wheeled baskets that fold up specifically for this purpose. So the solution to this problem is here, now.
- Weather: Walking in general is not fun in the snow. Getting takeout food is a pain in this situation, and I don't really have much option since I didn't buy groceries (see above).
I imagine the car-less city in places that actually have weather would have overhangs or something on major arteries, but sadly I don't think people would build those. :( This problem is solvable, but that doesn't mean it would be solved.
We are destroying the earth. Oil will run out. I think whoever started this thread is an idiot.
We will never run out of oil. Wanna know why?
It's about production growth and demand growth. Economics here, are required. Production growth means that you can produce more of your good for distribution. Demand growth means more of your good is demanded by the populace. Easy, right?
Now, there's a magical point where any finite resource will peak in production. After the peak, there will be no further production growth. Ideally, demand would shrink at the same rate production shrinks. However, if we don't do something about it, demand for oil will continue to grow after production of oil peaks, which will cause prices to skyrocket.
Any oil-based economy, after oil peaks, will go bankrupt long before oil reserves actually run dry. When that happens, oil production will either slow to a crawl or halt completely, and any alternative that can be brought to production quickly and adopted en masse quickly will do so, and will cause any remaining oil production to halt completely.
My money's on ethanol over biodiesel, but I wouldn't be surprised if our choices at the gas pumps in 10 years will be ethanol and biodiesel.
I live in Dallas, and I have lived in Austin. Fortunately, my commute did not include the utter disaster that is the Austin highway system. And don't get me started on the buses...almost cost me my prom date! : )
Heh, you live in Dallas but you call the Austin highway system a disaster? :) If we assume there are good, fast, workarounds for the corridor of death known as I35, the Austin highway system is actually pretty good. All things considered, of course. The only real problem with the Austin highway system (besides the corridor of death that is virtually impossible to rebuild at this point) is that it hasn't grown fast enough to accomodate the level of growth the city saw in the 90s. 183 needed that extra limited access portion long before they built it, and Mopac needed to be extended before they extended it. Excluding those areas, the system itself is really quite nice.
Now, I didn't fully appreciate how good the Austin system was until I saw the Seattle system. Talk about a pain in the ass. Seattle itself has only two real freeways in it, and one of them isn't limited access for its entire length (99, also known by a road name, but i forget what it is). Both of these freeways run north and south, and we've got jack and shit for east-west freeways, unless you count 90 and 520, but those are only really useful for those of us that live in the Eastside. 405 is also fairly useful, but it only runs in the Eastside as well. Seattle itself is very congested, and the roads are so poorly maintained that you can't drive a block anywhere in Seattle without hitting a pothole.
D/FW on the other hand (admittedly, most of my driving in that area was in Fort Worth), is a big disaster. Construction in most places, high congestion all over. Hmm, maybe it's a population density problem. But it's not population density that makes SEattle's freeways suck ass, because the Seattle area is about the same size in population as the Austin area, and Austin's freeways serve the area well (except for a few hotspots on the bridges, but you expect the most heavily trafficked areas to have hotspots).
I too don't know enough to really debate light rail, but it doesn't take much of a brain to look at Austin and figure out they need something better than what they've got. Too many environmentalists to let the place grow into a smog hazard other cities are, but too many gas-lovers to put money into public transportation. But it also doesn't take much of a brain to look at central texas and figure out that it's merging into one huge metropolitan area and to look at the problem as a much larger problem.
Not to turn into a kook, but I think that flying cars would fix the problem. :) I'm really hoping someone comes up with a cheap and reliable powerplant that will make flying cars without lift surfaces a reality, because flying cars with lift surfaces will always fail. And, of course, that fancy powerplant needs to be portable. I'm open to suggestions. :) (My wife wants me to spend this winter in garage inventor mode, and if we do well enough this summer I'm all over it ;) )
I hope (in my pretty little fantasy world head) that rail travel catches on in Texas. The light rail system connecting the suburbs to downtown is just starrting to get big enough to be useful, and people are getting in the habit of using it (which is awesome.) It might happen, but I'll wager we get to Mars first.
Well, I don't know which part of Texas you live in, but when I lived in Austin the light rail issue was enough that if a politician took a stand on either side, it ruined his political career. We had a few spots on the city council that became revolving doors over that issue alone. People in Austin are very split on whether they want light rail or better roads, and really I wish they'd quit whining about better roads. If they got to see the Washington state work ethic at work on the roads in the Seattle area, they'd start counting their blessings. MoPac gets a new cover every year, but when I drive through downtown Bellevue I hit the same set of ridges for 3 miles that have been there for 3 years.
But I don't think light rail is good enough anymore anyway. It would kick the ass out of the bus system in Austin, but if built it would be too little too late. They need something bigger, faster, and more comprehensive. That little college town grew a little bit too fast, methinks.
Of course, now that I'm in the Seattle area I'm wanting a decent rail system out here. :) It would really be nice if we had high speed trains down into the Olympia area and over to the island in the Puget Sound. Not to mention better connecting the Eastside to Seattle proper, which would be particularly nice.
any more than your car "has to have" gasoline.
Yeah. :) Ethanol is a near drop-in replacement for gasoline (requiring only timing and mixture adjustments in most cars, and in newer cars that means replacing the computer).
Just to make a small point, though, running out of fossil fuels isn't going to make them more expensive. Peaking worldwide is what's going to make them more expensive, because after oil drilling peaks, there won't be any growth in oil production, but the growth in demand will continue to rise. So prices will skyrocket, and our oil-based economies will go bankrupt long before we run out of fossil fuels.
So why not convert to ethanol? It would benefit farmers, certainly. Can be produced locally, etc. I could go into economic benefits and ecological benefits and so forth, but it all come down to one thing: oil companies are huge, corrupt, and monopolistic. Think Microsoft as an oil company, and that's what we have. That's why we haven't managed to convert to ethanol, and every regulation that tries to achieve a compromise that would allow people to switch has been literally a fight and struggle to get passed.
Heh, are these the same legislators that think that Texas Gold will make a big comeback and haven't admitted even to themselves that Texas oil reserves really did peak in the 70s? ;)
I've started to understand something about corporations. You can show a corporation how much ROI they'll have on a given venture that is similar to their core business (in the airlines case, you have to call their core busines "transportation" rather than "Air transportation"), but if it's different enough, they'll fight it instead of adopting it. The thing is, any ROI you might calculate for building a high speed rail system says "You'll get this ROI, we think, and it'll take 30 years (or whatever) to recoup your investment completely". That spells "risk" to a corporation, where it spells "investment" to a government. ANd if someone else develops the same system, it would affect their core business, and they'd be at even more risk than if they charged in themselves. So they have to fight it. Sucks, but that's how corporations work, and there's not a whole lot we can do to change that without coming up with a better system entirely.
Public funding + airline funding, with some sort of deal to sweeten the pot for airline funding might work, though, and as far as I know hasn't even been tried. If you could get the airlines to foot a big chunk of the bill under the understanding that they would then operate on these tracks, with a deal where if they operated profitably they would be contractually required to buy the tracks back from the state or something, then you might get them to go along. You will have reduced their risk quite a lot.
The reason this scheme won't work is because the people won't get behind it, though. IN Texas they'd say "If it's a private enterprise, the government should keep it's hands out of it."
Texas politics annoy me. :( I love Texas, though. ;)
One of the main reasons we have given up on rail transportation like we did (not totaly but lessend the value)was because durring ww2 we noticed that when we took out the rail lines we halted the axis production. The interstae highway system was supposed to be a redundent network of roadway that if one was taken out it would allow another to be used easily. Not only did this look good for stategic defense but it made sence for taking products to market.
That's interesting. Really.
Eisenhower made the observation when he was in Europe fighting the Nazis that the Nazi highway system was very efficient for moving troops and it was hard to fight against. The home troops can blow up bridges and stuff along the way during a retreat to ensure that foreign invaders don't get the home court advantage.
This is why, when he was president in the 60s, he created the Eisenhower Interstate highways, and some of the interstate highways here still bear his name here and there.
Perhaps you should point out to him all the potential economic benefits. Austin has many people that commute to D/FW for work, believe it or not, and vice versa (believe it or not!). A high-speed train that would cut their travel time from 6 hours roundtrip to 2 hours roundtrip without costing a fortune would make a killing.
Everything from D/FW down to San Antonio needs to be stuck on some sort of high speed rail system. It's rapidly becoming one metropolitan area, and it makes perfect sense to combine them in public transport, but public transport for that whole area does require high speeds to be useful.
And if the airlines could see a decent ROI on getting regular commuters at a regular commuting price rather than weekend travelers at airline prices, I'd bet they'd jump on it. SW has had trouble in the past flying around Texas itself...
How quickly you forget that without French help you would have lost your precious war of independence.
Consider that debt paid in full upon the closing of the second world war.
But of course, do not let history get in the way of your big ego.
But of course.
But they do REALLY push you send them a check. Here's the link:
Yeah, sucks that a for-profit company would actually try to get you to pay for your free download. We've got to put a stop to this shit.
Or you could go back to Windows, where you have stupid nag-screens, ads popping up when you're not even browsing the web, shareware (need I elaborate on that?), product activation requiring a phone call, boy the list really goes on.
Compared to Mandrake, which gives you all the same benefits of windows without all the crazy drawbacks, and you have to click through *one* extra page asking you for money. (And again in the First-Time wizard, which you can skip if you want) Mandrake, which doesn't just shut itself off after 30 days if you don't pay them any money.
*sniff* I love Mandrake! ;)
Personnaly, I'm french
Is that why you have that crazy accent? ;)
I'm thinking that the antagonism between France and the US is mostly made up, or exists solely in the government. I have not met a single American who really thought France was evil, they just disagreed with you guys' politics. Nor have I met anyone that really acts/feels antagonistic towards the French.
For the most part, we've all agreed to disagree, because that's what it takes to keep our own disparate cultures in the US from killing each other (and it doesn't always stop that anyway).
Besides, when you're the country that gets to dictate who has nukes and who doesn't by virtue of the fact that you're also the country with the biggest nukes, well, you know how that goes. And it's probably about time for us to field our own Napolean.
Eh, anyone who prefers the simplified "Use the Web" is unlikely to give a rats ass about the GPL. Not everyone takes it as holy writ.
Eh? Not so. Just because you don't want to have to make a decision over which browser you're going to use every time you go surf the web does *not* mean you're unlikely to give a rats ass about the GPL. Lots of people want their computer to "just work", and don't want some evil monopolistic company to dictate what they can and can't do with their computers.
I desire simplicity in maintaining my computer, and I prefer not to even think about certain things from time to time (like which browser I'm using when the stupid web developer is telling me I need to use one of their "approved" browsers). But I still want source code for the browser I'm using, and everything else. I'm unlikely to ever even look at 99.999999999999% of the source code I have for the programs I use.
But since I have the source code, no evil monopolistic company will dictate to me what I can and can't do with my computer.
And a lot of people want that. A *lot*. I haven't yet met one single person (with the exception of my idiot father) who thought that open source was bad or unnecessary. Quite the contrary, everyone I talk to likes the idea and wants to help, they were just unaware of the choice available to them.
Random Geeks (like us) will always progress to the Next Big Distro, and in the case of Mandrake, it won't be that.
Actually, at this point I don't anticipate ever getting off Mandrake. It's too easy. ;) Just because I *can* spend my time wondering around config files and crap and making my system do exactly what I want doesn't mean that I *want* to spend my time doing that. Mandrake gets it 90% of the way there, and the remaining 10% I think hard about how badly I want it, or if I can just settle with what Mandrake gave me.
More and more, I'm settling with what Mandrake gave me, because more and more it's closer to what I want, and the differences become negligible.
I'm not saying Mandrake is the be-all end-all Linux distribution, but it suits my needs perfectly, when you get right down to it. I sat my daughter down and gave her a brief rundown on how to use KDE so she could play Frozen Bubble and LBreakout. When she can finally read fairly consistently, I'll give her a username & password for the machine. When I finally get her her own computer, I'm going to burn off some Mandrake CDs and tell her to build it. :) There's not another distribution I feel confident enough to just give to my 5-year-old like that, and I sure in the fuck wouldn't try Windows on her like that. (Of course, she'll probably be 6, close to 7, before I do that)
It's a machine my wife can administer, if it's really needed from time to time. So I don't have to answer the call "Daddy come fix this computer!". I can just say "Fix it yourself". If it's not my computer, I'll give them the root password and let them trash it. And that's fine, 'cause they have to rebuild it if necessary. In the meantime, Mandrake has made it very simple for me to mount up everybody's home directory from a central machine, and parts of /usr as well, so I can make sure the stuff everybody *needs* is installed properly and working, and when they do thrash their systems, they won't have any loss of *important* functionality.
Naturally, I'm happy about this news. ;)
If there wasn't so many people falling under the societal spell that "corporations = evil", without actually thinking it through,
Um, isn't '=' an assignment operator?
Actually, they learned their lesson from the Clinton White House. Where they burned the email backup tapes.
But not the dress! Ba dum pa pa.
Day night snooping of earth's oceans is completely believable. After all, be nice to spot those subs wouldn't it.
You are, of course, referring to those nuclear subs carrying nuclear missiles, right?
Pavel: "Can you tell me where the nuclear wessels are?"
Communist Soviet Guy: "Yes."
We do not inherit the world from our parents; we borrow it from our children
well, in that case, since my parents always taught me that if I screw up something I borrow from a friend, I must replace, I think we should demand a new world from our parents.
And if they don't give it to us, mmmm, vivisection?
What the hell.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, radioactive satellites launch YOU!
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, nuclear winter glows YOU!
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, radioactive satellites leak YOU!
Hmmm, maybe you should try leading us by example with this one.
Ain't the universe big enough for all of us?
You must be pretty young. :) Every century, so far, has someone rising up to power in his country and trying to take over the world. Every century also has many many wars going on. I wonder if there has ever been more than five minutes in which a war wasn't being fought *somewhere* on this fucking planet.
Not to mention that we have absolutely no idea whether or not we'll ever encounter intelligent life, arguably besides our own, and therefore we have absolutely no way of predicting whether or not they will be violent towards us. So we must, unfortunately, preserve warfare for the sake of self-preservation.
Mind you, I'm not preaching we should go off to war at any point in time, and I was the *only* person in my particular circle that opposed going to Afghanistan. Peace and love and so forth, but don't let the bastards get you.