Because, dear troll, the vehicle I chose for comparison, has an attribute in common with the yike -- lack of physical activity. To worry that a yike has, say, double the crash risk of a bicycle, is a distraction -- it's the lack of exercise that matters, and it is (previously computed with respect to that irrelevant other vehicle, the car) ten or twenty times larger.
And, as someone who bikes, and shares congested roads with people in cars, correcting this misperception (that the danger is the crash, not the lack of exercise) matters to me.
Despite being the GGP curmudgeon, I must point out that I ride a bike pretty much exactly as you describe, and in the summertime, on the east coast of the US, a change of clothes is mandatory at the end of the ride. The humidity (which is lower than it is around the Gulf Coast) cuts into the effectiveness of the gentle breeze. Anyplace dry, yes. All the advice about "oh, just wear wool, or a wicking fiber", is crap, once the humidity gets high enough. (Wool, in the winter, is a wonder fiber, but it helps if they set the thermostat at work low enough.)
But, on the other hand, showers. Even a "Cuban bath" (wet washrag above the waist) does the job. This assumes you start clean before the ride.
And of course this takes time, but the whole point, especially once you pass a certain age, is that the exercise is (rationally speaking, if you value your health) mandatory. You must spend time at it sooner or later; you might as well overlap it with transit.
With a six mile range (3 miles round trip? charge at work?) the potential for sweat is somewhat reduced. Sure, if you ride 10 miles in 90-degree weather, you'll be a puddle at the end, but 10 miles is not even an option with this gadget. Anyone who could use this thing reliably for a commute, has a short commute.
And I am saying that he is missing the point. The real risk, is that you sit on your dead ass (10x the risk of riding a bike), not that you could face plant.
The crash risk is not the large one. The lack of physical fitness risk is estimated to be ten or twenty times higher than the bicycle crash risk, measured in expected lost years of life. If your set of bad outcomes to be avoided includes heart attacks, strokes, and similar deadly diseases of the unfit, then the safest vehicle on the road, is a human-powered bicycle (probably, a cargo bicycle -- slower, even harder to flip, even more exercise). E-drive gets you nothing, e-assist, you trade off reduced effort and increased speed against increased use.
I know you're joking, but honestly, lots of people bike at slow-ish speeds, and they get along fine. The big path near here, is filled with peds chatting in pairs, families biking together, dogs, roller bladers, and every once in a while a crowd of lacrosse players (those sticks are a menace). Segways are fat (I've passed one on the road), this thing is at least as skinny as a bicycle. There's a great diversity of widths, lane discipline, and speeds.
And in tight auto traffic, 13mph is within the range of acceptable speeds; I've checked my speed rolling through traffic jams, and though 17mph is fun (neener-neener, take that, stopped cars!), my stuff-could-happen sensor is triggering loud and clear. 12-15 is common, given gradient, heat, and how I happen to be feeling on a given day. The real problem with this puppy, is the cost.
The folding bikes already weigh about 25lbs, pre-Bionx. The weight matters, a lot. I bought a cheap used folder once as an experiment, it was great to have it on a business trip, but it was Too Damn Heavy.
However, if I were spending that sort of money, I would save a little, and get a plain old folder, with no assist -- faster, longer range, "lifetime" warranty on the motor.
The guys are chasing the "biking's-too-hard-for-me" market -- which, to be fair, is pretty good sized here in the US. It's mind-boggling, here in fat-land, to see all the people who drive to the gym (and all those who just drive, but not even to the gym).
Seems like this business strategy might also including punting articles to Slashdot from "anonymous readers", promoting a thin-on-content article that claims a brain-drain from Sun. I mean, that's what I would do if I were them.
Problem is, the payoff in your rethinking-investment scales better if you are Google-sized and own Google-sized infrastructure.
Over time, the cost of rethinking will go down as more people try things the map-reduce way, but the future comes on its own schedule.
I read this, and think, yet another reason to ride a bike. Takes longer, but I need the exercise anyway, and I can always find "parking". And to an engineering approximation, if you live in the US, you're not getting enough exercise, even if you're not (yet) a fat ass. I do understand your problem, that the delay is not under your control, but that's life in a car. If there's a traffic jam, what's your plan then?
Most people learn to ride bikes just fine as children, and master a variety of stunts long before their parents are ready for them. We have video evidence (our previous president) of how Segways can be difficult to use (and if it was the battery running low, how exactly do you propose to guarantee that won't happen for 99.9% of the population? Seems unlikely).
Except for the physically handicapped, except for people (like mall cops) who must spend about as much time stopped as going, Segways are not that useful. They're not as fast as bicycles; they're not as good with bad roads as bicycles, they cannot be easily carried if disabled, they don't go anywhere when they run out of power (how do they behave if you run them through a foot of water?), they're wider than bicycles, they don't give you any exercise.
Since this is the second remark along these irrelevant lines, I'll clarify. The reason I cannot touch the ground easily is that the bottom bracket is high, plus a combination of slightly larger tires (+.35") and slightly shorter crank-arms (165mm) put me about 1/2 inch higher than spec. The saddle is at the highest sensible setting; best for power, best for my knees. I've been putting it about this height for the last 35 years, on various bicycles. The frame is appropriately sized, the standover works just fine.
Assuming that the frame is not so large that the saddle is smashed down to the top tube (it's not, of course), frame size is irrelevant to the distance between my butt on the saddle and my toes to the ground. The two relevant numbers are seat tube angle, and bottom bracket height. Frame size Does Not Matter. Think about it.
If you limited your bicycle speed to 12mph, that might be safer too. I say "might", because safety statistics are damn counterintuitive. To travel a given distance, the stats consistently show that cycling is safer than walking. Doesn't agree with my intuition, either.
The other "risk" of using a Segway, that is well-addressed by both cycling and walking, is the risk of becoming a out-of-shape lard-ass. That's a huge risk; based on expected-years-of-life lost, somewhere in the range of 5 to 20 times more dangerous than the crash risks of riding a bicycle (Mayer Hillman derived 10-20x, I think it was an Australian study that arrived at 5x -- one problem is that the denominator, the cycling crash risk rate, varies quite a lot from nation to nation).
I don't think a Segway stops any faster than a bicycle. An regular bicycle can stop at about.5G using the front brake, about.25G using the rear brake. The limits are imposed by physics; either going over the handlebars, or losing traction as weight is transferred forward (can real cyclists stop that fast? Yes, I have done it myself). A Segway rider is pretty much over the wheels (i.e., the CG is well forward of where it is on a bicycle). It's possible that a Segway could stop that fast, if it tilted backward by about 27 degrees (atan 0.5) -- can it do that?
A bicycle also gives you a few extra inches, depending on the bike. I cannot easily touch the ground, even stretching and shifting, from the seat of the bike I usually ride. Standing on tippy-toes on the pedals gives me at least an extra foot over my standing height.
I can still see it working better for a mall cop, most cases, but two out of your three claims aren't wins -- the Segway scores worse, or no better.
What the other replier (Sobrique) said, plus, the strain of malaria chosen was known-treatable.
The more surprising disease is cholera -- a world-wide killer, yet (as I understand it) if you have a sufficient supply of electrolyte (Gatorade, more or less), you can survive it. Not fancy drugs -- gatorade.
A friend of mine once remarked that there's a fair number of hospitals and clinics in Africa that cannot afford bleach for sterilizing equipment, and obviously, this leads to infection and deaths.
It's not a matter of personal sacrifice, it's a matter of getting it past human subjects review. My wife's run ordinary social-science studies in the past, you have to jump through ridiculous hoops just to ask people questions.
And yes, the volunteers are heroes, even if all we get out of this is knowledge. (If you read the NEJM article, the process is a bit involved -- it takes weeks, you need a strain of malaria known to be well-treatable with existing drugs, it requires a little stable of infected mosquitos.)
All subjects provided written informed consent. The trial was approved by the institutional review board at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre. The study sponsor, the Dioraphte Foundation, was not involved in the design of the study, in the gathering or analysis of the data, or in the writing of the manuscript.
how in holy hell did they get that past the human subjects review board? Athlete's foot and common cold is one thing, intentionally infecting your control group with malaria is something else altogether.
BCPL used counted strings. That's what my memory says, and I can check The Book in a flash.
(flash)
"By convention, byte 0 contains the numbers of characters in the string, which are stored consecutively from byte 1." (p. 50, BCPL - tlaic)
You know, Java has counted strings, and they use 32 whole bits for the length. Not fully general, but large enough for most domain names. In Java proper (not its native libraries, sigh), there's also no issues with buffer overrun.
Slashdot Mirror
Because, dear troll, the vehicle I chose for comparison, has an attribute in common with the yike -- lack of physical activity. To worry that a yike has, say, double the crash risk of a bicycle, is a distraction -- it's the lack of exercise that matters, and it is (previously computed with respect to that irrelevant other vehicle, the car) ten or twenty times larger.
And, as someone who bikes, and shares congested roads with people in cars, correcting this misperception (that the danger is the crash, not the lack of exercise) matters to me.
Despite being the GGP curmudgeon, I must point out that I ride a bike pretty much exactly as you describe, and in the summertime, on the east coast of the US, a change of clothes is mandatory at the end of the ride. The humidity (which is lower than it is around the Gulf Coast) cuts into the effectiveness of the gentle breeze. Anyplace dry, yes. All the advice about "oh, just wear wool, or a wicking fiber", is crap, once the humidity gets high enough. (Wool, in the winter, is a wonder fiber, but it helps if they set the thermostat at work low enough.)
But, on the other hand, showers. Even a "Cuban bath" (wet washrag above the waist) does the job. This assumes you start clean before the ride. And of course this takes time, but the whole point, especially once you pass a certain age, is that the exercise is (rationally speaking, if you value your health) mandatory. You must spend time at it sooner or later; you might as well overlap it with transit.
With a six mile range (3 miles round trip? charge at work?) the potential for sweat is somewhat reduced. Sure, if you ride 10 miles in 90-degree weather, you'll be a puddle at the end, but 10 miles is not even an option with this gadget. Anyone who could use this thing reliably for a commute, has a short commute.
And I am saying that he is missing the point. The real risk, is that you sit on your dead ass (10x the risk of riding a bike), not that you could face plant.
Actual golf carts, if his life in the South is anything like the years I spent there.
The crash risk is not the large one. The lack of physical fitness risk is estimated to be ten or twenty times higher than the bicycle crash risk, measured in expected lost years of life. If your set of bad outcomes to be avoided includes heart attacks, strokes, and similar deadly diseases of the unfit, then the safest vehicle on the road, is a human-powered bicycle (probably, a cargo bicycle -- slower, even harder to flip, even more exercise). E-drive gets you nothing, e-assist, you trade off reduced effort and increased speed against increased use.
is a bigger bike.
then you don't need that clunky car for shopping.
(I just weighed my Big Dummy. Oy.)
I know you're joking, but honestly, lots of people bike at slow-ish speeds, and they get along fine. The big path near here, is filled with peds chatting in pairs, families biking together, dogs, roller bladers, and every once in a while a crowd of lacrosse players (those sticks are a menace). Segways are fat (I've passed one on the road), this thing is at least as skinny as a bicycle. There's a great diversity of widths, lane discipline, and speeds.
And in tight auto traffic, 13mph is within the range of acceptable speeds; I've checked my speed rolling through traffic jams, and though 17mph is fun (neener-neener, take that, stopped cars!), my stuff-could-happen sensor is triggering loud and clear. 12-15 is common, given gradient, heat, and how I happen to be feeling on a given day. The real problem with this puppy, is the cost.
The folding bikes already weigh about 25lbs, pre-Bionx. The weight matters, a lot. I bought a cheap used folder once as an experiment, it was great to have it on a business trip, but it was Too Damn Heavy.
However, if I were spending that sort of money, I would save a little, and get a plain old folder, with no assist -- faster, longer range, "lifetime" warranty on the motor.
The guys are chasing the "biking's-too-hard-for-me" market -- which, to be fair, is pretty good sized here in the US. It's mind-boggling, here in fat-land, to see all the people who drive to the gym (and all those who just drive, but not even to the gym).
Seems like this business strategy might also including punting articles to Slashdot from "anonymous readers", promoting a thin-on-content article that claims a brain-drain from Sun. I mean, that's what I would do if I were them.
Problem is, the payoff in your rethinking-investment scales better if you are Google-sized and own Google-sized infrastructure. Over time, the cost of rethinking will go down as more people try things the map-reduce way, but the future comes on its own schedule.
I read this, and think, yet another reason to ride a bike. Takes longer, but I need the exercise anyway, and I can always find "parking". And to an engineering approximation, if you live in the US, you're not getting enough exercise, even if you're not (yet) a fat ass. I do understand your problem, that the delay is not under your control, but that's life in a car. If there's a traffic jam, what's your plan then?
MIT continued to allow students to keep their SSN secret, and in recent years that became the default. So, yay MIT.
My money's on PEBKAC. But it's a great video, isn't it?
Most people learn to ride bikes just fine as children, and master a variety of stunts long before their parents are ready for them. We have video evidence (our previous president) of how Segways can be difficult to use (and if it was the battery running low, how exactly do you propose to guarantee that won't happen for 99.9% of the population? Seems unlikely).
Except for the physically handicapped, except for people (like mall cops) who must spend about as much time stopped as going, Segways are not that useful. They're not as fast as bicycles; they're not as good with bad roads as bicycles, they cannot be easily carried if disabled, they don't go anywhere when they run out of power (how do they behave if you run them through a foot of water?), they're wider than bicycles, they don't give you any exercise.
Since this is the second remark along these irrelevant lines, I'll clarify. The reason I cannot touch the ground easily is that the bottom bracket is high, plus a combination of slightly larger tires (+ .35") and slightly shorter crank-arms (165mm) put me about 1/2 inch higher than spec. The saddle is at the highest sensible setting; best for power, best for my knees. I've been putting it about this height for the last 35 years, on various bicycles. The frame is appropriately sized, the standover works just fine.
Assuming that the frame is not so large that the saddle is smashed down to the top tube (it's not, of course), frame size is irrelevant to the distance between my butt on the saddle and my toes to the ground. The two relevant numbers are seat tube angle, and bottom bracket height. Frame size Does Not Matter. Think about it.
UK "pavement" = US "sidewalk"
If you limited your bicycle speed to 12mph, that might be safer too. I say "might", because safety statistics are damn counterintuitive. To travel a given distance, the stats consistently show that cycling is safer than walking. Doesn't agree with my intuition, either.
The other "risk" of using a Segway, that is well-addressed by both cycling and walking, is the risk of becoming a out-of-shape lard-ass. That's a huge risk; based on expected-years-of-life lost, somewhere in the range of 5 to 20 times more dangerous than the crash risks of riding a bicycle (Mayer Hillman derived 10-20x, I think it was an Australian study that arrived at 5x -- one problem is that the denominator, the cycling crash risk rate, varies quite a lot from nation to nation).
I don't think a Segway stops any faster than a bicycle. An regular bicycle can stop at about .5G using the front brake, about .25G using the rear brake. The limits are imposed by physics; either going over the handlebars, or losing traction as weight is transferred forward (can real cyclists stop that fast? Yes, I have done it myself). A Segway rider is pretty much over the wheels (i.e., the CG is well forward of where it is on a bicycle). It's possible that a Segway could stop that fast, if it tilted backward by about 27 degrees (atan 0.5) -- can it do that?
:-)
A bicycle also gives you a few extra inches, depending on the bike. I cannot easily touch the ground, even stretching and shifting, from the seat of the bike I usually ride. Standing on tippy-toes on the pedals gives me at least an extra foot over my standing height.
I can still see it working better for a mall cop, most cases, but two out of your three claims aren't wins -- the Segway scores worse, or no better.
Speaking of maneuverability, can a Segway do http://www.vimeo.com/groups/14976/videos/4207784?
What the other replier (Sobrique) said, plus, the strain of malaria chosen was known-treatable.
The more surprising disease is cholera -- a world-wide killer, yet (as I understand it) if you have a sufficient supply of electrolyte (Gatorade, more or less), you can survive it. Not fancy drugs -- gatorade.
A friend of mine once remarked that there's a fair number of hospitals and clinics in Africa that cannot afford bleach for sterilizing equipment, and obviously, this leads to infection and deaths.
How about, "I am completely boggled that it got through"? This is not man bites dog, this is man bites shark with frikkin lasers.
It's not a matter of personal sacrifice, it's a matter of getting it past human subjects review. My wife's run ordinary social-science studies in the past, you have to jump through ridiculous hoops just to ask people questions.
And yes, the volunteers are heroes, even if all we get out of this is knowledge. (If you read the NEJM article, the process is a bit involved -- it takes weeks, you need a strain of malaria known to be well-treatable with existing drugs, it requires a little stable of infected mosquitos.)
Damn. Informed consent to malaria infection.
how in holy hell did they get that past the human subjects review board? Athlete's foot and common cold is one thing, intentionally infecting your control group with malaria is something else altogether.
BCPL used counted strings. That's what my memory says, and I can check The Book in a flash.
(flash)
"By convention, byte 0 contains the numbers of characters in the string, which are stored consecutively from byte 1." (p. 50, BCPL - tlaic)
You know, Java has counted strings, and they use 32 whole bits for the length. Not fully general, but large enough for most domain names. In Java proper (not its native libraries, sigh), there's also no issues with buffer overrun.