The Roman Catholic Church and the Roman Empire are not synonymous anymore. The Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist in 1802 or over 100 years before Hitler rose to power. Most scholars recognize the difference between the governing power of the Holy Roman Empire and the religious side of the Roman Catholic Church. Also, even in catholicism, there are many different branches or rites and then there are the orthodox and then the protestants so lumping them all under the governmental entity of the Holy Roman Empire really dismisses most of what the reality was.
Yes, the papacy evolved into a monarchy like most of the other monarchies at the time. That is how most of the world was and is not surprising as it is an efficient form of governing. Again, that monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire it governed ceased to exist in 1802 and the Roman Catholic Church returned to a non-secular body.
I would challenge your assertion of all Abrahamic Religions have fought to repress counter culture. It would seem most cultural groups at some point fight to maintain their culture at the expense of others. That doesn't seem to be anything specifically tied to a religious group, Abrahamic or otherwise. It very often seems that it was the religious societies and those that practiced the religion were the ones being repressed because by its very nature Judea-Christian philosophies are counter-cultural. However, if you have a citation to show that repression of counter culture was something unique to religious bodies, particularly Abrahamic ones, I would be interested in seeing that. I would imagine, though that you won't find it as that tendency is inherent to all cultures, religious or otherwise.
One does not have to be religious to see and appreciate the positive things that have come out of organized religion. Likewise, one does not have to be anti-religious to see the negative things, too. But, to discuss these things, both positive and negative, one needs to be able to do so rationally. And from the tone of your post, it sounds like you don't really want to discus, but like many, just want to vent. That is your choice, but I'm afraid that even Einstein would not have shared your disdain and he was no supporter of religion (but was of intelligent discussion).
I don't have the link handy, but they also had another story back in September about how Unity was slower than Gnome and KDE. As for stability, I'm not sure what version of KDE shipped with Fedora 15 and 16, but 4.8.2 was pretty darn stable on the *buntus. I'm just now evaluating the 4.9 series and so far, it seems faster yet.
Is it your assumption that I am against religion, simply because I am posting on slashdot?
I suppose that WOULD be true for the majority of users.
No,it is my assumption that you are against religion because you stated "What would you think of the moral character of someone who believed you were going to hell unless you did something, but they couldnt be bothered to warn you of that fact?" which seems to be a disparaging remark against religion.
As for the majority of slashdot users being against religion, unless they are not representative of the population as a whole, then it is likely that most of them do believe in a deity or practice some sort of religion. However, that doesn't not mean they are the frequent posters to topics like this. Anyway, I do not have any empirical evidence one way or the other, just unsubstantiated projections based on generally available statistics regarding world populations and religion.
I don't know if the Tata is the right way to go, but I do think there is a market for commuter car that's small and safe enough for surface roads, may be prohibited on highways (like a moped) but is enclosed and heated. I think there are plenty of in-town commuters who would opt for such a high mileage vehicle if it were done well enough and still stay cheap.
You could be right. Then again, a moped is less than $1,000. These things will be $10,000+ by the time they get here. It will be difficult to say they can't be on highways, if they are required to meet highway safety standards.
So for $4,000 you have two choices. A brand new tiny car like this that is cheap but 0 miles? Or a car with $100k+ miles on it that is higher quality but needs a new timing belt, battery, shocks, etc and the usual stuff immediately done or in the next year or two.
For a computer analogy it is like bashing the IPAD as it is not good as powerMac Xenon workstation.:-0
My son's fiance just purchased a 2006 Elantra with 100,000 miles and it was $6,800. While I understand what you are trying to get at, it is likely that both the final price and the used car in your comparison will cost significantly more.
The reason it's cheap is because it's shit. Not just performance wise, this thing is made of incredibly thin sheets of metal that buckle when you apply slight pressure to them with your hand. It is basically a very slightly less unsafe scooter, or possible more unsafe because at least scooter riders realize how vulnerable they are and sometimes wear a helmet.
Probably safer than a scooter, because if you are in an accident and flip, you won't get road rash. It also depends on what crush zones are in the car. A scooter has none. The thickness of the outer skin is not what makes the car safe. NASCAR has extremely thin skins. For passenger cars, it is the crush zones that determine how safe it is. Something has to absorb the g forces and if it is not the vehicle, it is the occupants.
<<Smart cars are small because that's what the technology required for electric cars at the time.>> Complete nonsense -- Smart started out as a petrol car. (By 'petrol' I mean the gas that is a liquid -- for those in the US)
You are correct. The reason they are small, is because in europe most cars are small.
Power Steering is only needed on cars that are Front Wheel Drive, because they are so nose-heavy. Even then the Geo-series of Suzuki-made el-cheapo cars came without power steering and handled well, and they were front wheel drive.
The Tata Nano on the other hand, really doesn't need power steering because the car itself is very light and the engine is in the rear, making the nose of the car very light and easy to turn the wheel.
That would seem logical, but that is false. Power steering is only needed on rear wheel drive cars that must push an engine mounted over the steering wheels. As the steering wheels are powered in a frontwheel drive vehicle and you can turn the wheel easily once the wheels start to move, it is not needed. Most front wheel drive vehicles have power steering because it was a feature that people wanted when they had rear wheel drive vehicles. The early front wheel drive vehicles did not have power steering as standard equipment. It only became really popular in the mid 90s.
With rear wheel drive, you have to get upto 5 to 10mph before you can easily turn the wheels. Unfortunately, in slow traffic and parking lots, you don't have enough space to obtain that speed. With front wheel drive, you can turn the wheel as soon as the tire itself starts to move. That said, front wheel drive with power steering means you can sit at a complete stop and turn your wheels back and forth. It doesn't get you anywhere, but you can do it.
Bullshit. I'll bet you 1K that you can't stop on an icy road within 10% of the distance ABS can with 95% confidence. A human being is just not capable of making that judegement fast enough, and it doesn't have the sensors to tell the small differences the car can in traction. The very fact you think you can means that you're completely fucking incompetent as a driver.
The reason race cars don't have it is that races are canceled if the conditions out are going to be unsafe. They don't have races in sub-optimal conditions, so special safety equipment for it is unneccessary. In the real world, we can't stop going to work because of ice or rain.
If you are truly on an ice covered road, ABS won't help you either. ABS does help on wet pavement but on ice, the coefficient of adhesion versus the mass and momentum just doesn't allow one to stop quickly. To slow down requires friction and ice doesn't provide it (which is why you see all of those 4 wheel drive vehicles in the ditch along with two wheel drive vehicles).
What ABS does do is account for the panic slam on the brakes that most drivers would do when they are faced with a crisis situation. In that scenario, they are very effective as without them the driver would most likely lose control of the vehicle. But on ice, they won't help (snow is a different story).
People with families don't like smaller cars in part because they're less safe in an accident. A tiny Euro Smart Car gets great MPG but it's nearly unsurvivable in a serious collision.
When you're single you throw things in the back seat. When you have kids suddenly the trunk space matters.
If you're going on a road trip and the kids have a back seat the size of a postage stamp it's going to suck.
I can spell American just fine. Why can't you?
That's not quite true. The damage to the occupants in a car usually comes from the sudden deceleration they sustain. Crush zones and airbags help reduce this danger. Obviously, if there is a head on collision between a heavy vehicle and a light vehicle, the light vehicle will suffer more damage, after all it is basic physics at work. But, that kind of risk can be mitigated with proper restraints, crush zones, air bags, etc. In the US, though, with trucks and SUVs being predominate, the standard safety devices offer little added safety as they almost always require a bumper to bumper impact to be effective and the truck and SUV bumpers tend to be higher than passenger automobiles, regardless of size.
Therefore, if your Toyota Camry, to use a larger vehicle, is hit head on at highway speeds by my SUV and I go over your bumper, it won't matter whether you are in the Camry or sub compact. Likewise, if I t-bone you, it won't make much difference as a 3.5" door thickness or a 4.5" thickness will be immaterial at speeds over 35mph.
There are also several NHTSA studies that show that smaller vehicles are less likely to be in head on collisions because they are a) more maneuverable and b) by taking up less space on the road, they are more likely to be avoided. Again, this is for head on collisions. The avoidance is more likely to lead to a glancing collision, which is where the seatbelts and crush zones are important.
At speeds below 35mph, the size and weight of the vehicle play less of a role in the survivability. That doesn't mean one cannot still be killed in such an accident, only that the likelihood is not much different regarding the size of the vehicle.
Most of the cars with top safety ratings are actually smaller cars. In autoracing, while the cars are not "small", they are extremely light and drivers often hit the wall at high speed and survive. Why? Because the rapid deceleration that causes the damage to the body is controlled through crush zones and safety harnesses. Control the rapid deceleration and the cars are safer. It doesn't matter whether it is a large car or a small one.
Personally, I try and avoid accidents int he first place.
Power steering is not actually a safety feature. It was added because american vehicles were so heavy that you couldn't easily turn the wheel. I guess it can be considered safer to drive a heavy car if it has power steering, but that wasn't the design purpose. Front-wheel drive vehicles really don't need power steering, although most still have it, because it has become something we expect. Even on rear wheel drive, the power steering is only needed at standstill and slow speeds. Given how the wheels on front wheel drive are pulling, that need is further reduced, except for at a stand still.
However, one advantage of power steering, whether front wheel drive or rear wheel drive, is that it allows for a smaller steering wheel. Given how americans are getting ever larger (obese), it makes it easier to fit between the seat and the wheel. Again, that was not the original intention of power steering, but has become an important consideration for many people.
You can get a loan. For $4,250 you get a brand new car and in a 5 year loan it is not too bad. Sure it probably wont last as long as your jeep but it does have great gas milliage. I have been burned by used cars before. This would be great for highschoolers and college kids too. Just something simple.
Assuming you kind find somebody to loan you 100% of the purchase price while only earning $17,000, you would have a car payment of $82.16 at 6%. You will also need to maintain full coverage on the vehicle, so that will be another $83.33/month. Between the two, you will be spending $1,985.92 before fuel, oil and maintenance. That is just under 12% of your gross income. Plus,if you are in an accident, given the cost to repair versus the purchase price, your call will most likely be totaled and you receive a depreciated value for it which will most definitely be less than your loan value.
With regards to high schoolers and college kids, the other consideration is how safe would an underpowered vehicle truly be for an inexperienced driver? If it were a good idea, we'd see a lot of classic VWs running around in that age group as they are inexpensive to purchase and maintain. I personally drive one almost every day, but trying to pull out into traffic or merge on a highway is not in anyway fun and at times scary -- and a classic VW has 150% more horsepower than this thing.
This "car" may be fine where most people ride on scooters, but it is not cost effective for the poor or safe when put on the road with full size cars in the US.
This still wouldn't fill their needs. People making $17k a year in the US won't be able to buy a new vehicle. You can find good used vehicles, even ones that are well under $5k but you will end up sacrificing looks. I paid $2k for my jeep and all I have done to that in the past year of ownership was change all the fluids, filters, spark plugs, plug wires, cap, and rotor (cost about $120 and an afternoon of work) and I did all that the day after I bought it.
I agree with you, but for different reasons. Even at $3,000/car, which it will certainly be higher. Somebody making $17K is not in the position to either a) save the money to purchase the car or b) qualify for a loan to purchase the car. Savings imply excess funds over immediate needs. Loans require excess funds to pay back the loan. Either way, it is unlikely to work out financially, regardless of the looks and esthetics of the vehicle.
Poor people could use a new car. Too many who are making $17,000 a year working 2 jobs end up with cars that cost 50% of their paycheck just in maintaince and have to go hungry half the time if something goes wrong.
There are many walmart workers where this would be perfect and are not fortunate like the poor in Europe or other first world countries.
There used to be this option known as "buying a used car," but the Lords here in the USA have ensured there is no supply of used cars in reach of their serfs^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpoor people's spending power.
The Lords' program was called "Cash for Clunkers," and it took ~700,000 used cars off the market by literally destroying the engines intentionally (by pouring some powder directly into the engine and running it until died).
Your unsupportable political opinion aside, there are still more than enough used cars out there. The problem is not a lack of used cars, the problem is a consumption-driven culture that goes out of its way to teach people who most need to be responsible with their money to be irresponsible with their money.
Yes, there are, but their price did rise dramatically after the cash for clunkers program. Simple supply and demand. Reduce the supply of late model used cars and the price of those cars goes up. As the price difference between a used car and a new car shrinks, people start to buy more new cars (which is how cash for clunkers planned it). However, their trade in does not go back into the pool of used cars, so used cars stay pricey. Since used cars are pricey, the price of new cars can drift higher, too, which has occurred also. This again was planned as part of cash for clunkers -- better profit margins means more jobs, etc.
Without making a comment on the politics involved with cash for clunkers, it accomplished what it set out to do. On the other hand, if one was not able to take advantage of the program, it has definitely driven up the cost of used cars. It is simple supply and demand at work.
It's not just the buying, it's the fuel/insurance/repairs. Trying to keep a ten-year-old all-American auto on the road is a money pit.
For the same price as a second hand car they could have something they can actually afford to run.
My car is 10 years old. It runs well but costs ~$300 a year to keep running, which is far cheaper than the annual cost of buying or leasing a new car. Not to mention cheaper insurance compared to a new vehicle. It gets ~24 MPG which isn't stellar but keeps me far below the tradeoff point where a car payment for something more efficient is cheaper than fuel costs.
Waiving your arms and claiming new is better is no substitute for a reasonable total cost of ownership analysis.
I agree with this. The problem is that the auto industry wants to sell you new cars. They don't want you to actually look at TCO.
For instance, I have a 1996 Mazda B4000 pickup that gets horrible mileage (around 17mpg). It has around 210,000 miles on it. However, other than fuel, regular maintenance and insurance, there are no other regular payments. Granted, one day, it will need a major repair that will be cost prohibitive and it will get replaced. But, to replace it now, for the sake of better mileage is crazy. Currently, I user about 1,000 gallons of fuel, say at $4/gal or $4,000/yr. Say I could get 25.5 mpg (a 50% increase in fuel economy). I would only need 667 gallons of fuel or $2,668/yr at $4/gal. I would "save" $1,332. But then again, I would have to pay $3,600/yr in car payments, so I would actually pay out $2,268/yr more than keeping my existing vehicle (at least for the first five years). And that is assuming I could get a replacement truck that would actually average 25.5mpg in real life.
Why would I or anybody else choose to do that? And don't give me for environmental reasons, unless you are willing to calculate the impact to the environment on producing that new vehicle from raw material to delivery at the dealership.
A new car should easily go 200,000 miles if one maintains it. If a car built in 2002 is a money pit today, it's because of lack of proper maintenance in the past. Cars are expensive, no doubt. As such, they need to be treated and maintained as such.
... Since the average PC user now measures their RAM in gigabytes this isn't a concern for some people. But if you want your DE to have a smaller memory footprint then KDE is the worst choice.
That's not true anymore. KDE is currently the more resource friendly than Gnome or Unity, at least according to Phoronix. On the otherhand, the KDE developers, dismiss such comparisons as they can vary widely from one release/update to the next.
Looks like we need another fork. It's ridiculous how much everyone seems to be into the whole tablet hype. Fuck, as much as I hate Apple, at least iOS and OSX are kept separate.
Why another fork? The KDE developers already have a desktop version and a touch screen version of Plasma. They are named Plasma Desktop and Plasma Active. There is no need to fork, unlike Gnome and Unity, KDE did not force a new paradigm on their users. The user can decide which interface they want based on the device (Desktop, netbook and now Active). You can even run the various interfaces on devices they were not designed for if you want (but I'm not sure why you would want to do that). Whether Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook or Plasma Active, all are running the same KDE below the surface.
I like KDE myself but I can see why some people think it's too top heavy.
I prefer the term 'bloated pig'.
I tried KDE again recently because Canonical are about to obsolete the version of Ubuntu I'm running (the last with Gnome 2) and I took about a minute just to log in on an i5 system. A lot of that is probably loading the fancy graphics from disk rather than waiting for the CPU to do something, but I can live without fancy graphics.
You can turn off the 3d rendering of KWIN in the settings. However, unless it was your first boot where it is creating a bunch of configuration files for the user, etc. It sounds like there is something else wrong. You might check your logs as that is definitely not the norm.
A lot of the blame KDE gets comes from the many services that the various distros run at startup/login that are not part of KDE. However, on the same system, KDE is less resource intensive than Gnome 3 with Gnome Shell and loads faster. On Ubuntu systems, the same can be said for KDE vs Unity.
However, if you are loading a lot of background applications when you log in, the speed and resource improvements will be less noticeable as other factors come into play.
A 1ghz atom processor with 512KB ram is quite responsive. If one is going to spend a lot of time in something like LibreOffice, then 1GB ram might be a better choice, simply because the additional resource required for LO.
Of course that would be the case for XFCE and LXDE and others, too. We get so hung up on the resource of the base desktop, when it is the choice of applications being run that determine the real resource need (ie LXDE will run happily on 256KB ram, just don't try to open firefox or libreoffice).
Until you, yourself go up into outer space and orbit the planet, you, yourself are relying on others. As for gravity, you rely on Newton for your knowledge and on those who followed him. Gravity is no more "knowable" by just observing the proverbial apple falling from the tree than observing the rising and setting of the sun and coming to the conclusion that the sun revolves around the earth.
We have all sorts of scientific theories of the atom that we consider foolish today, but we wouldn't have our current understanding of the atom or quantum physics without these earlier models. What you or I know of the atom is based upon what those before us surmised and handed down.
As for you verifying physics, particularly quantum physics, please do so. Stephen Hawkings would be thrilled to have his theories become provable fact. Even if you are actually a physicist. All you can prove is that some mathematical model better describes what happens than some other model. But no physicist would claim to have proven something, only to have found what the model predicts. Of course, that model was based on somebody elses model, etc., etc. so in fact the knowledge was handed down.
Don't believe me? Go into the Amazon and ask the people you find about gravity, or particle physics or anything like that. They haven't had the knowledge handed down so they don't know about it.
People could breath air long before they new about oxygen and nitrogen. The fact that you can experience something does not necessarily impart knowledge. Likewise, anything you know today, is because you were taught it by somebody before you. The whole scientific method is based on that. To be accepted, it has to be observable and repeatable. Assuming something is observable, the act of repeating it not only validates the original, but passes it on to the next person, either directly (by conducting the experiment themself) or indirectly through the education process.
Long before Copernicus, the earth revolved around the sun. Even when Copernicus said otherwise, most people did not believe him. It wasn't until many people said otherwise, when his knowledge was passed on to many, that it became accepted. It is so accepted today, that we don't even think about it. Just like most things we take for granted. That doesn't change the fact that the knowledge we have today, whether taken for granted or otherwise, was imparted to us by others and accepted by us because of the others.
If you learned in school that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, it is not hard to accept that. Once accepted, though, it takes a leap to accept that it is not always the case (thus non-Euclidean geometry). It is highly unlikely that you would have stumbled on non-Euclidean geometry by yourself and that if you were even exposed to it, you relied on the authority of who was imparting the knowledge to garner your acceptance of it.
A human baby is helpless. We are not imparted with special insticts on how to care for ourselves. We are not born with some special store of knowledge. Almost everything we learn has been passed down to us by others and we accept it without actually experiencing it. If personal experience were the only way to learn, it would be pretty damn difficult to learn which mushrooms were edible and which would kill you.
Everything you know, is because you learned it from somebody else and accepted their teaching. It doesn't matter what the subject matter. You have relied on others before you. Even your acceptance of some teachings of religion being perfectly fine is based on what others have told or demonstrated to you (directly or indirectly). Otherwise, how could you have a frame of reference.
I am not a theist, but again, believing in a deity seems to be no less rational than the square root of negative one or that there are x numbers of dimensions or even that the cat is both dead or alive until you look. All of these other things are not rational but people accept them, because they work for what the task is at hand. I have no problem accepting that people's faith, likewise, helps them with the task at hand.
The real question is who has a lesser grasp on reality -- somebody who believes there is a god or somebody who is willing to pay $3,000,000 for this letter of Einstein's.
All religion is insanity. Classification of the specific type of insanity is really beyond the scope of any single person. Its easier to lump all religion into the one box marked CRAZY. Leave classification to those studying the insane.
Muslim, christian, jew, whatever. you've ALL killed people in the past for not believing in your specific brand of invisible sky wizard insanity. you're all just as bad AND just as crazy as each other. None of you have any high ground to denounce any other religion anymore. ALL OF YOU need to stfu. keep your religious beliefs between you and god and shut the fuck up. Stop making the world a worse place already! you're not helping!
And stop trying to drag atheists every fucking argument about religion. Thats just a strawman and you know it. Really i don't expect much logic and common sense from you crazies tho. But still. Stop making the world a worse place.
Dragging atheists into every argument about religion is a strawman. But then again so is saying how many people were killed in the past in religious wars, every time a religious topic is presented.
Which is why combining church and government is such an incredibly scary thing, yet there are so many naive idiots on the authoritarian side of politics that want to do exactly that. A fascist state run by televangalists would be just as nasty as a communist state where the church is outlawed. Tell those Godless "Christians" that go to Church for just the political power to look at their Bible for the bit about Caesar.
A fascist state doesn't need to be run by televangelists to be just as nasty as a community state, or any other totalitarian state. There is also a fast difference between having laws that also have a founding in religious teachings (thou shalt not kill) and having a church run state. Religion influences morality and laws reflect that morality. That is different than a church run state where the laws do not necessarily reflect the morality of the people but the moral precepts of the religion.
It doesn't take religion to corrupt government. Man can do that quite well. It just takes the accumulation of power in the hands of the few instead of the many.
Spock said it best - "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or the one." Of course, that was almost a direct quote, according to Leonard Nimoy from his Jewish teachings as a child.
Religion has the power to influence. However, it is individual people who use that power for their own ends that is the problem. Because of that, should we get rid of religion? I hope not. We wouldn't have things like the Peace Corps, the International Red Cross, the YMCA, most hospitals and universities, etc. if it weren't for religion. Religion is not the problem. Those who use it to push their own agenda, that is the problem.
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The Roman Catholic Church and the Roman Empire are not synonymous anymore. The Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist in 1802 or over 100 years before Hitler rose to power. Most scholars recognize the difference between the governing power of the Holy Roman Empire and the religious side of the Roman Catholic Church. Also, even in catholicism, there are many different branches or rites and then there are the orthodox and then the protestants so lumping them all under the governmental entity of the Holy Roman Empire really dismisses most of what the reality was.
Yes, the papacy evolved into a monarchy like most of the other monarchies at the time. That is how most of the world was and is not surprising as it is an efficient form of governing. Again, that monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire it governed ceased to exist in 1802 and the Roman Catholic Church returned to a non-secular body.
I would challenge your assertion of all Abrahamic Religions have fought to repress counter culture. It would seem most cultural groups at some point fight to maintain their culture at the expense of others. That doesn't seem to be anything specifically tied to a religious group, Abrahamic or otherwise. It very often seems that it was the religious societies and those that practiced the religion were the ones being repressed because by its very nature Judea-Christian philosophies are counter-cultural. However, if you have a citation to show that repression of counter culture was something unique to religious bodies, particularly Abrahamic ones, I would be interested in seeing that. I would imagine, though that you won't find it as that tendency is inherent to all cultures, religious or otherwise.
One does not have to be religious to see and appreciate the positive things that have come out of organized religion. Likewise, one does not have to be anti-religious to see the negative things, too. But, to discuss these things, both positive and negative, one needs to be able to do so rationally. And from the tone of your post, it sounds like you don't really want to discus, but like many, just want to vent. That is your choice, but I'm afraid that even Einstein would not have shared your disdain and he was no supporter of religion (but was of intelligent discussion).
I don't have the link handy, but they also had another story back in September about how Unity was slower than Gnome and KDE. As for stability, I'm not sure what version of KDE shipped with Fedora 15 and 16, but 4.8.2 was pretty darn stable on the *buntus. I'm just now evaluating the 4.9 series and so far, it seems faster yet.
Is it your assumption that I am against religion, simply because I am posting on slashdot?
I suppose that WOULD be true for the majority of users.
No,it is my assumption that you are against religion because you stated "What would you think of the moral character of someone who believed you were going to hell unless you did something, but they couldnt be bothered to warn you of that fact?" which seems to be a disparaging remark against religion.
As for the majority of slashdot users being against religion, unless they are not representative of the population as a whole, then it is likely that most of them do believe in a deity or practice some sort of religion. However, that doesn't not mean they are the frequent posters to topics like this. Anyway, I do not have any empirical evidence one way or the other, just unsubstantiated projections based on generally available statistics regarding world populations and religion.
I don't know if the Tata is the right way to go, but I do think there is a market for commuter car that's small and safe enough for surface roads, may be prohibited on highways (like a moped) but is enclosed and heated. I think there are plenty of in-town commuters who would opt for such a high mileage vehicle if it were done well enough and still stay cheap.
You could be right. Then again, a moped is less than $1,000. These things will be $10,000+ by the time they get here. It will be difficult to say they can't be on highways, if they are required to meet highway safety standards.
That is a total bull shit comparison. The iPad, useless as I find it, will not kill you if you drop it.
It might if you are standing next to the Empire State building and he drops it from the top!
Look at the price?
So for $4,000 you have two choices. A brand new tiny car like this that is cheap but 0 miles? Or a car with $100k+ miles on it that is higher quality but needs a new timing belt, battery, shocks, etc and the usual stuff immediately done or in the next year or two.
For a computer analogy it is like bashing the IPAD as it is not good as powerMac Xenon workstation. :-0
My son's fiance just purchased a 2006 Elantra with 100,000 miles and it was $6,800. While I understand what you are trying to get at, it is likely that both the final price and the used car in your comparison will cost significantly more.
The reason it's cheap is because it's shit. Not just performance wise, this thing is made of incredibly thin sheets of metal that buckle when you apply slight pressure to them with your hand. It is basically a very slightly less unsafe scooter, or possible more unsafe because at least scooter riders realize how vulnerable they are and sometimes wear a helmet.
Probably safer than a scooter, because if you are in an accident and flip, you won't get road rash. It also depends on what crush zones are in the car. A scooter has none. The thickness of the outer skin is not what makes the car safe. NASCAR has extremely thin skins. For passenger cars, it is the crush zones that determine how safe it is. Something has to absorb the g forces and if it is not the vehicle, it is the occupants.
<<Smart cars are small because that's what the technology required for electric cars at the time.>> Complete nonsense -- Smart started out as a petrol car. (By 'petrol' I mean the gas that is a liquid -- for those in the US)
You are correct. The reason they are small, is because in europe most cars are small.
Power Steering is only needed on cars that are Front Wheel Drive, because they are so nose-heavy. Even then the Geo-series of Suzuki-made el-cheapo cars came without power steering and handled well, and they were front wheel drive.
The Tata Nano on the other hand, really doesn't need power steering because the car itself is very light and the engine is in the rear, making the nose of the car very light and easy to turn the wheel.
That would seem logical, but that is false. Power steering is only needed on rear wheel drive cars that must push an engine mounted over the steering wheels. As the steering wheels are powered in a frontwheel drive vehicle and you can turn the wheel easily once the wheels start to move, it is not needed. Most front wheel drive vehicles have power steering because it was a feature that people wanted when they had rear wheel drive vehicles. The early front wheel drive vehicles did not have power steering as standard equipment. It only became really popular in the mid 90s.
With rear wheel drive, you have to get upto 5 to 10mph before you can easily turn the wheels. Unfortunately, in slow traffic and parking lots, you don't have enough space to obtain that speed. With front wheel drive, you can turn the wheel as soon as the tire itself starts to move. That said, front wheel drive with power steering means you can sit at a complete stop and turn your wheels back and forth. It doesn't get you anywhere, but you can do it.
Bullshit. I'll bet you 1K that you can't stop on an icy road within 10% of the distance ABS can with 95% confidence. A human being is just not capable of making that judegement fast enough, and it doesn't have the sensors to tell the small differences the car can in traction. The very fact you think you can means that you're completely fucking incompetent as a driver.
The reason race cars don't have it is that races are canceled if the conditions out are going to be unsafe. They don't have races in sub-optimal conditions, so special safety equipment for it is unneccessary. In the real world, we can't stop going to work because of ice or rain.
If you are truly on an ice covered road, ABS won't help you either. ABS does help on wet pavement but on ice, the coefficient of adhesion versus the mass and momentum just doesn't allow one to stop quickly. To slow down requires friction and ice doesn't provide it (which is why you see all of those 4 wheel drive vehicles in the ditch along with two wheel drive vehicles).
What ABS does do is account for the panic slam on the brakes that most drivers would do when they are faced with a crisis situation. In that scenario, they are very effective as without them the driver would most likely lose control of the vehicle. But on ice, they won't help (snow is a different story).
People with families don't like smaller cars in part because they're less safe in an accident. A tiny Euro Smart Car gets great MPG but it's nearly unsurvivable in a serious collision.
When you're single you throw things in the back seat. When you have kids suddenly the trunk space matters.
If you're going on a road trip and the kids have a back seat the size of a postage stamp it's going to suck.
I can spell American just fine. Why can't you?
That's not quite true. The damage to the occupants in a car usually comes from the sudden deceleration they sustain. Crush zones and airbags help reduce this danger. Obviously, if there is a head on collision between a heavy vehicle and a light vehicle, the light vehicle will suffer more damage, after all it is basic physics at work. But, that kind of risk can be mitigated with proper restraints, crush zones, air bags, etc. In the US, though, with trucks and SUVs being predominate, the standard safety devices offer little added safety as they almost always require a bumper to bumper impact to be effective and the truck and SUV bumpers tend to be higher than passenger automobiles, regardless of size.
Therefore, if your Toyota Camry, to use a larger vehicle, is hit head on at highway speeds by my SUV and I go over your bumper, it won't matter whether you are in the Camry or sub compact. Likewise, if I t-bone you, it won't make much difference as a 3.5" door thickness or a 4.5" thickness will be immaterial at speeds over 35mph.
There are also several NHTSA studies that show that smaller vehicles are less likely to be in head on collisions because they are a) more maneuverable and b) by taking up less space on the road, they are more likely to be avoided. Again, this is for head on collisions. The avoidance is more likely to lead to a glancing collision, which is where the seatbelts and crush zones are important.
At speeds below 35mph, the size and weight of the vehicle play less of a role in the survivability. That doesn't mean one cannot still be killed in such an accident, only that the likelihood is not much different regarding the size of the vehicle.
Most of the cars with top safety ratings are actually smaller cars. In autoracing, while the cars are not "small", they are extremely light and drivers often hit the wall at high speed and survive. Why? Because the rapid deceleration that causes the damage to the body is controlled through crush zones and safety harnesses. Control the rapid deceleration and the cars are safer. It doesn't matter whether it is a large car or a small one.
Personally, I try and avoid accidents int he first place.
Power steering is not actually a safety feature. It was added because american vehicles were so heavy that you couldn't easily turn the wheel. I guess it can be considered safer to drive a heavy car if it has power steering, but that wasn't the design purpose. Front-wheel drive vehicles really don't need power steering, although most still have it, because it has become something we expect. Even on rear wheel drive, the power steering is only needed at standstill and slow speeds. Given how the wheels on front wheel drive are pulling, that need is further reduced, except for at a stand still.
However, one advantage of power steering, whether front wheel drive or rear wheel drive, is that it allows for a smaller steering wheel. Given how americans are getting ever larger (obese), it makes it easier to fit between the seat and the wheel. Again, that was not the original intention of power steering, but has become an important consideration for many people.
You can get a loan. For $4,250 you get a brand new car and in a 5 year loan it is not too bad. Sure it probably wont last as long as your jeep but it does have great gas milliage. I have been burned by used cars before. This would be great for highschoolers and college kids too. Just something simple.
Assuming you kind find somebody to loan you 100% of the purchase price while only earning $17,000, you would have a car payment of $82.16 at 6%. You will also need to maintain full coverage on the vehicle, so that will be another $83.33/month. Between the two, you will be spending $1,985.92 before fuel, oil and maintenance. That is just under 12% of your gross income. Plus,if you are in an accident, given the cost to repair versus the purchase price, your call will most likely be totaled and you receive a depreciated value for it which will most definitely be less than your loan value.
With regards to high schoolers and college kids, the other consideration is how safe would an underpowered vehicle truly be for an inexperienced driver? If it were a good idea, we'd see a lot of classic VWs running around in that age group as they are inexpensive to purchase and maintain. I personally drive one almost every day, but trying to pull out into traffic or merge on a highway is not in anyway fun and at times scary -- and a classic VW has 150% more horsepower than this thing.
This "car" may be fine where most people ride on scooters, but it is not cost effective for the poor or safe when put on the road with full size cars in the US.
This still wouldn't fill their needs. People making $17k a year in the US won't be able to buy a new vehicle. You can find good used vehicles, even ones that are well under $5k but you will end up sacrificing looks. I paid $2k for my jeep and all I have done to that in the past year of ownership was change all the fluids, filters, spark plugs, plug wires, cap, and rotor (cost about $120 and an afternoon of work) and I did all that the day after I bought it.
I agree with you, but for different reasons. Even at $3,000/car, which it will certainly be higher. Somebody making $17K is not in the position to either a) save the money to purchase the car or b) qualify for a loan to purchase the car. Savings imply excess funds over immediate needs. Loans require excess funds to pay back the loan. Either way, it is unlikely to work out financially, regardless of the looks and esthetics of the vehicle.
Poor people could use a new car. Too many who are making $17,000 a year working 2 jobs end up with cars that cost 50% of their paycheck just in maintaince and have to go hungry half the time if something goes wrong.
There are many walmart workers where this would be perfect and are not fortunate like the poor in Europe or other first world countries.
There used to be this option known as "buying a used car," but the Lords here in the USA have ensured there is no supply of used cars in reach of their serfs^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpoor people's spending power.
The Lords' program was called "Cash for Clunkers," and it took ~700,000 used cars off the market by literally destroying the engines intentionally (by pouring some powder directly into the engine and running it until died).
Your unsupportable political opinion aside, there are still more than enough used cars out there. The problem is not a lack of used cars, the problem is a consumption-driven culture that goes out of its way to teach people who most need to be responsible with their money to be irresponsible with their money.
Yes, there are, but their price did rise dramatically after the cash for clunkers program. Simple supply and demand. Reduce the supply of late model used cars and the price of those cars goes up. As the price difference between a used car and a new car shrinks, people start to buy more new cars (which is how cash for clunkers planned it). However, their trade in does not go back into the pool of used cars, so used cars stay pricey. Since used cars are pricey, the price of new cars can drift higher, too, which has occurred also. This again was planned as part of cash for clunkers -- better profit margins means more jobs, etc.
Without making a comment on the politics involved with cash for clunkers, it accomplished what it set out to do. On the other hand, if one was not able to take advantage of the program, it has definitely driven up the cost of used cars. It is simple supply and demand at work.
It's not just the buying, it's the fuel/insurance/repairs. Trying to keep a ten-year-old all-American auto on the road is a money pit.
For the same price as a second hand car they could have something they can actually afford to run.
My car is 10 years old. It runs well but costs ~$300 a year to keep running, which is far cheaper than the annual cost of buying or leasing a new car. Not to mention cheaper insurance compared to a new vehicle. It gets ~24 MPG which isn't stellar but keeps me far below the tradeoff point where a car payment for something more efficient is cheaper than fuel costs.
Waiving your arms and claiming new is better is no substitute for a reasonable total cost of ownership analysis.
I agree with this. The problem is that the auto industry wants to sell you new cars. They don't want you to actually look at TCO.
For instance, I have a 1996 Mazda B4000 pickup that gets horrible mileage (around 17mpg). It has around 210,000 miles on it. However, other than fuel, regular maintenance and insurance, there are no other regular payments. Granted, one day, it will need a major repair that will be cost prohibitive and it will get replaced. But, to replace it now, for the sake of better mileage is crazy. Currently, I user about 1,000 gallons of fuel, say at $4/gal or $4,000/yr. Say I could get 25.5 mpg (a 50% increase in fuel economy). I would only need 667 gallons of fuel or $2,668/yr at $4/gal. I would "save" $1,332. But then again, I would have to pay $3,600/yr in car payments, so I would actually pay out $2,268/yr more than keeping my existing vehicle (at least for the first five years). And that is assuming I could get a replacement truck that would actually average 25.5mpg in real life.
Why would I or anybody else choose to do that? And don't give me for environmental reasons, unless you are willing to calculate the impact to the environment on producing that new vehicle from raw material to delivery at the dealership.
A new car should easily go 200,000 miles if one maintains it. If a car built in 2002 is a money pit today, it's because of lack of proper maintenance in the past. Cars are expensive, no doubt. As such, they need to be treated and maintained as such.
touche :)
... Since the average PC user now measures their RAM in gigabytes this isn't a concern for some people. But if you want your DE to have a smaller memory footprint then KDE is the worst choice.
That's not true anymore. KDE is currently the more resource friendly than Gnome or Unity, at least according to Phoronix. On the otherhand, the KDE developers, dismiss such comparisons as they can vary widely from one release/update to the next.
Looks like we need another fork. It's ridiculous how much everyone seems to be into the whole tablet hype. Fuck, as much as I hate Apple, at least iOS and OSX are kept separate.
Why another fork? The KDE developers already have a desktop version and a touch screen version of Plasma. They are named Plasma Desktop and Plasma Active. There is no need to fork, unlike Gnome and Unity, KDE did not force a new paradigm on their users. The user can decide which interface they want based on the device (Desktop, netbook and now Active). You can even run the various interfaces on devices they were not designed for if you want (but I'm not sure why you would want to do that). Whether Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook or Plasma Active, all are running the same KDE below the surface.
So, no forks needed.
I like KDE myself but I can see why some people think it's too top heavy.
I prefer the term 'bloated pig'.
I tried KDE again recently because Canonical are about to obsolete the version of Ubuntu I'm running (the last with Gnome 2) and I took about a minute just to log in on an i5 system. A lot of that is probably loading the fancy graphics from disk rather than waiting for the CPU to do something, but I can live without fancy graphics.
You can turn off the 3d rendering of KWIN in the settings. However, unless it was your first boot where it is creating a bunch of configuration files for the user, etc. It sounds like there is something else wrong. You might check your logs as that is definitely not the norm.
A lot of the blame KDE gets comes from the many services that the various distros run at startup/login that are not part of KDE. However, on the same system, KDE is less resource intensive than Gnome 3 with Gnome Shell and loads faster. On Ubuntu systems, the same can be said for KDE vs Unity.
However, if you are loading a lot of background applications when you log in, the speed and resource improvements will be less noticeable as other factors come into play.
A 1ghz atom processor with 512KB ram is quite responsive. If one is going to spend a lot of time in something like LibreOffice, then 1GB ram might be a better choice, simply because the additional resource required for LO.
Of course that would be the case for XFCE and LXDE and others, too. We get so hung up on the resource of the base desktop, when it is the choice of applications being run that determine the real resource need (ie LXDE will run happily on 256KB ram, just don't try to open firefox or libreoffice).
Until you, yourself go up into outer space and orbit the planet, you, yourself are relying on others. As for gravity, you rely on Newton for your knowledge and on those who followed him. Gravity is no more "knowable" by just observing the proverbial apple falling from the tree than observing the rising and setting of the sun and coming to the conclusion that the sun revolves around the earth.
We have all sorts of scientific theories of the atom that we consider foolish today, but we wouldn't have our current understanding of the atom or quantum physics without these earlier models. What you or I know of the atom is based upon what those before us surmised and handed down.
As for you verifying physics, particularly quantum physics, please do so. Stephen Hawkings would be thrilled to have his theories become provable fact. Even if you are actually a physicist. All you can prove is that some mathematical model better describes what happens than some other model. But no physicist would claim to have proven something, only to have found what the model predicts. Of course, that model was based on somebody elses model, etc., etc. so in fact the knowledge was handed down.
Don't believe me? Go into the Amazon and ask the people you find about gravity, or particle physics or anything like that. They haven't had the knowledge handed down so they don't know about it.
People could breath air long before they new about oxygen and nitrogen. The fact that you can experience something does not necessarily impart knowledge. Likewise, anything you know today, is because you were taught it by somebody before you. The whole scientific method is based on that. To be accepted, it has to be observable and repeatable. Assuming something is observable, the act of repeating it not only validates the original, but passes it on to the next person, either directly (by conducting the experiment themself) or indirectly through the education process.
Long before Copernicus, the earth revolved around the sun. Even when Copernicus said otherwise, most people did not believe him. It wasn't until many people said otherwise, when his knowledge was passed on to many, that it became accepted. It is so accepted today, that we don't even think about it. Just like most things we take for granted. That doesn't change the fact that the knowledge we have today, whether taken for granted or otherwise, was imparted to us by others and accepted by us because of the others.
If you learned in school that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, it is not hard to accept that. Once accepted, though, it takes a leap to accept that it is not always the case (thus non-Euclidean geometry). It is highly unlikely that you would have stumbled on non-Euclidean geometry by yourself and that if you were even exposed to it, you relied on the authority of who was imparting the knowledge to garner your acceptance of it.
A human baby is helpless. We are not imparted with special insticts on how to care for ourselves. We are not born with some special store of knowledge. Almost everything we learn has been passed down to us by others and we accept it without actually experiencing it. If personal experience were the only way to learn, it would be pretty damn difficult to learn which mushrooms were edible and which would kill you.
Everything you know, is because you learned it from somebody else and accepted their teaching. It doesn't matter what the subject matter. You have relied on others before you. Even your acceptance of some teachings of religion being perfectly fine is based on what others have told or demonstrated to you (directly or indirectly). Otherwise, how could you have a frame of reference.
I am not a theist, but again, believing in a deity seems to be no less rational than the square root of negative one or that there are x numbers of dimensions or even that the cat is both dead or alive until you look. All of these other things are not rational but people accept them, because they work for what the task is at hand. I have no problem accepting that people's faith, likewise, helps them with the task at hand.
The real question is who has a lesser grasp on reality -- somebody who believes there is a god or somebody who is willing to pay $3,000,000 for this letter of Einstein's.
All religion is insanity. Classification of the specific type of insanity is really beyond the scope of any single person.
Its easier to lump all religion into the one box marked CRAZY. Leave classification to those studying the insane.
Muslim, christian, jew, whatever. you've ALL killed people in the past for not believing in your specific brand of invisible sky wizard insanity. you're all just as bad AND just as crazy as each other. None of you have any high ground to denounce any other religion anymore. ALL OF YOU need to stfu. keep your religious beliefs between you and god and shut the fuck up. Stop making the world a worse place already! you're not helping!
And stop trying to drag atheists every fucking argument about religion. Thats just a strawman and you know it.
Really i don't expect much logic and common sense from you crazies tho.
But still. Stop making the world a worse place.
Dragging atheists into every argument about religion is a strawman. But then again so is saying how many people were killed in the past in religious wars, every time a religious topic is presented.
Which is why combining church and government is such an incredibly scary thing, yet there are so many naive idiots on the authoritarian side of politics that want to do exactly that.
A fascist state run by televangalists would be just as nasty as a communist state where the church is outlawed.
Tell those Godless "Christians" that go to Church for just the political power to look at their Bible for the bit about Caesar.
A fascist state doesn't need to be run by televangelists to be just as nasty as a community state, or any other totalitarian state. There is also a fast difference between having laws that also have a founding in religious teachings (thou shalt not kill) and having a church run state. Religion influences morality and laws reflect that morality. That is different than a church run state where the laws do not necessarily reflect the morality of the people but the moral precepts of the religion.
It doesn't take religion to corrupt government. Man can do that quite well. It just takes the accumulation of power in the hands of the few instead of the many.
Spock said it best - "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or the one." Of course, that was almost a direct quote, according to Leonard Nimoy from his Jewish teachings as a child.
Religion has the power to influence. However, it is individual people who use that power for their own ends that is the problem. Because of that, should we get rid of religion? I hope not. We wouldn't have things like the Peace Corps, the International Red Cross, the YMCA, most hospitals and universities, etc. if it weren't for religion. Religion is not the problem. Those who use it to push their own agenda, that is the problem.