People go to new places fairly regularly. Not everyone has every road and destination for a hundred miles around memorized. In this case it is an Airport, and quite a few people who are going to fly (or pick someone up, or just arrived) are not going to go to the place frequently enough to memorize the roads around it. I think I go to my local one maybe once every 5 years or so, plenty of time to not remember the roads around it.
You don't think the 737 sitting in front of you with engines roaring might tip you off that you are in the wrong place? Or maybe all of those "Do Not Enter" signs? Being confused at an airport and winding up at the wrong terminal or parking garage is one thing. Ending up on the runway is totally different.
Luckily, this story is just humorous and has a relatively happy ending. In many parts of the world, even attempting to get on to the runway or crossing barricades would get you shot.
Maybe the drivers in these cases should lose their license. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense, so saying that my iPhone told me to drive across a runway should make no difference. If somebody is stupid enough to do that, they are too stupid to be allowed to drive. Maybe Apple should re-think their "Think Different" campaign and just tell people to "Think!"
People forget that the reason these laws exist is that when cars were "new" there were many manufactures that were here today and gone tomorrow. Cars were considered equipment and machinery. Having to buy from a local dealer meant that there was somebody local to service it and to hold accountable if there were problems with it. In addition, at a time when most cars were made in Michigan, there were many disputes in the courts that had to be settled in Michigan, because that is where the sale officially took place. Back in the 1900s, it was not practical for somebody to travel 1000 miles to go to Detroit to file a claim against the auto company. Dealership laws changed all of that as the sales were now local sales.
Using Tesla as an example, if you were in Texas, where there are no dealers and you purchased direct, and had a problem, how would you get the problem resolved and under the laws of which state? Dealership laws were created to protect the purchaser, not the company.
The OP is factoring in the $10,000 to replace the battery pack after 100,000 miles, which would add another $125/month to the cost if you drive 15,000 miles per year.
Hey, that's great! I just think it's a tad unfair to call battery "wear-and-tear" part of "fuel costs."
If I developed an engine that could convert air to energy and you needed to purchase a $50,000 catalyst in the form of a pellet every 100,000 miles, would you say the fuel was free because it ran on air or the fuel was $0.50/mile because without the catalyst the car won't run? Likewise, with an all electric. If the battery pack must be replaced every 100,000 miles and costs $X to replace it, then that cost is part of the fuel cost.
While true if you factor in the cost of the wear on the battery per km driven then cost of an electric car's fuel is actually far higher than a petrol car.
Interesting point - but wouldn't that mean that petrol car dealers should be adding the costs of, "carburetor wear and tear; carburetor cleaning; air filter replacement; gas tank wear and tear; etc." to their fuel costs; all those costs that electric cars don't incur.
No. Besides that modern cars are fuel injected. Having the injectors cleaned at either 60,000 or 100,000 miles is already a scheduled maintenance item, but it isn't a fuel cost. OTOH, the electricity in the battery is the fuel for the Tesla and if it isn't able to provide it, then the car doesn't go. But even if you include the cost of cleaning the injectors, a $3.50 bottle of injector cleaner once a year vs a $10,000 battery pack every five years are the costs you are talking about.
Also, speaking of fuel costs, one should also include in the cost of the Tesla the cost to provide the additional wiring in one's home for a 70amp 220V circuit to charge the car. Most homes don't have that capability.
In reality, all this talk is meaningless. Whether fully electric, hybrid or combustion, the only valid cost numbers people should look at is TCO. And TCO over 100,000 miles shows there is an advantage to an all electric, in theory, but not practice (because the purchase price is so high to start with). TCO for combustion engines over 100,000 miles shows a TDI diesel is more economical than a hybrid or gas combustion and that it is a tossup between the gas combustion and the hybrid.
Unless you are comparing TCO, any comparison is meaningless. Now, if they could make an all electric, with a decent range for under $30,000, that would send the TCO numbers off the chart. But, as of yet, nobody has been able or willing to do it.
As for the battery, from my research the cells should be good for at least 3000 full charge discharge cycles. If I'm extremely conservative in estimating 200 miles of range per charge (I get significantly more) that works out to 600,000 miles.
Tesla claims a battery pack should last 1,200 cycles, so that would bring you to a max of 240,000 miles. Now, it is unlikely that you will be fully draining the batteries and recharging them, so you will further reduce the overall range. Most experts estimate that the battery packs will need to be replaced around 100,000 miles. Depending on one's driving habits (trip lengths) that could vary anywhere from 90,000 to 120,000 miles.
As long as replacing the battery pack (parts and labor) is less than $13,000, you come out better than a gasoline engine that gets around 30mpg city and highway (assuming gas is $4/gallon). Many people will probably sell their car before that point, trying to save the replacement cost, but in reality, it is built into the trade in value, so they still pay it one way or another.
As for other maintenance costs, you won't need an oil change every year, but your suspension, steering, brakes, a/c and electrical systems will need just as much maintenance as any other vehicle.
Quite simply, a Tesla (or any all electric car) has significantly less moving parts. Faults will occur, but susbstantially less often than with an ICE. Some of those faults though will require very specialist knowledge to fix though.
The Wankel rotary engine also had significantly fewer moving parts than a standard internal combustion engine, but a Mazda RX-7 was just as costly to maintain as any other car. Why? Because, it's not the moving parts in the engine that cause most of the maintenance costs, it's all the rest of them, like suspension, steering, brakes, air compressors, and the like.
So, you will need to get your oil changed less often, like not at all versus once a year, so you save $19.95 at the dealer, but all the other regular maintenance stuff is still there and then some since the Tesla is a specialized vehicle, one can expect it's parts and labor to be more costly. And unlike a regular automobile, you have to also maintain the charging/battery system, the dynamic braking, and a several other components that only an electric car will have.
Arguing that an electric car will save because of maintenance is probably not a valid argument. Arguing on fuel costs, possibly. But in reality, the argument should be on the total cost of ownership over say, 100,000 or 200,000 miles. The reason you don't see TCO figures for electric cars in those ranges is that the battery packs need to be replaced before then and when you figure in that cost, the savings disappear.
So, if you have an electric car and plan on keeping it, all the money you save on fuel, you should set aside to replace the battery pack when that time comes. Of course, you could just trade it in before then, but if the battery pack is shot, well, so will be the trade in value.
Bingo. You've hit the nail on the head. Dealerships make most their money in repairs, not in selling cars. Over the life of a car, the 5-20% profit they make on the sale is a small fraction of what they can make on repairs and maintenance.
If Telsa has the audacity to create a product that requires significantly less repairs, it puts dealerships at a competitive disadvantage, which is exactly where they should be in a truly free and open market.
Many in the fossil fuels business like to downplay the savings gained from small fuel costs for battery technology, but they don't want to address the larger costs associated with maintenance issues inherent in internal combustion technology because they know it makes electric car technology even more attractive financially.
Are you claiming a Tesla or other electric car is maintenance free? Even my heat pump at home, which is all electric needs to be maintained. Add to that all the other mechanical wear and tear on a vehicle it would seem that there still is a lot of maintenance to be done. True, the dealer will lose out on that $19.95 oil change ever 5,000 miles, so $60/yr, but for most dealers, that's a loss leader anyway.
Then there is a huge deferred maintenance charge that nobody thinks about with electric cars and that is when the battery pack needs replaced. Hopefully, you save up as you go for that, or you unload the car before that point, but it is a major expense.
Maybe they should change their name? After all Popular Science implies "pop" culture and the pop culture seems to not care about real science any more as evidenced by the comments they are talking about. Maybe they should rename themselves to Real Science and leave the pop stuff out.
People forget that not everybody lives in the US or Western Europe. There are millions, if not billions of people on this planet without computers and probably when they do get access to them, they won't be able to afford Macs and Windows PCs. Ubuntu (or maybe some other linux distro) is in a position to tap those markets when they open up.
Face it, their desktop, tablet, phone offerings, aren't going to make a dent in the West. They don't have to. It's in the 2nd and 3rd world countries, that future growth is going to occur and there, things could be very well be different.
While I am not an Ubuntu fanboy, exactly in what arena is the "decline" occurring? Is Ubuntu more well known today than before? Yes. Is Ubuntu available preinstalled on more hardware today than before? Yes. Is the Ubuntu brand branching into more markets than before? Yes. The only metric, if it is even is one, is that Ubuntu has upset die hard linux users, many of which weren't Ubuntu users anyway.
Case point 1. Ubuntu didn't like the direction Gnome 3 was going so they came out with their own Unity desktop. Well, evidently most Linux users agreed they didn't like where Gnome 3 was going. Whether they like Unity or not is a moot point as every other desktop is still available under Ubuntu.
Case point 2. Ubuntu, having problems with x.org, along with everybody else, needed a new display server. They could have gone with Wayland, but they chose to go their own way (much like Redhat and OpenSuse have done with various core technologies). Can people still use/install x.org or Wayland, yes. Should Ubuntu be faulted for wanted to streamline the display server to work on various platforms? Evidently many people think so, but why?
Case point 3. Ubuntu has announced several products that never caught on or never made it past the technology preview stage. Does that mean they've lost their focus or are they just like all other "real" technology companies exploring new technologies that ultimately don't make it to market?
Case point 4. Desktop computing, while not dead, is not what it was just a few years ago. Does Ubuntu's trying to compete in mobile markets, while still maintaining desktop support mean that they are lost or that they are trying to stay current?
Now, I can also argue many points where Ubuntu blew it. But I can do the same for Apple, Microsoft, Google, Redhat, Suse and most every other tech company. The reality is that for every tech idea that succeeds, there a many good ones that never make it to market. That's the nature of the game. Ubuntu isn't declining, they are in the game, albeit as a small player compared to Apple and Microsoft and Google. However, unlike the big three, with Ubuntu, you still get freedom.
So, if the question is "Has Ubuntu as a desktop Linux only offering declined?" Then the answer is yes. But has Ubuntu as a brand and a technology company (really Canonical) declined? Well, that answer is not at all.
The way to do it is not to coerce it, but incentivize it. Just make the USA the best, cheapest place to do software. Yeah, its easy - the big $$$ is paying either the income taxes, all of them, or paying enough lawyers to find enough deductions so's you DON'T pay the income taxes, the lawyer salaries being almost as expensive as the taxes anyway. Get rid of income taxes, and you have companies outsourcing _TO_ the USA.
Please name one country without an income tax that doesn't have an oil or tourism based economy that is thriving? Funny thing is that income taxes pay for infrastructure and infrastructure allows businesses to thrive.
You keep posting elsewhare to replace income tax with sales taxes, won't those same companies have to pay those sales taxes or are you going to exempt them? If they have to pay the sales taxes, which will go up significantly, just ask Britain about their VAT, then why would any company move their business here? If anything, not only would existing businesses continue to outsource, they'd offshore the whole company to get away from the VAT.
Besides, the US has the lowest effective corporate tax rate of western countries. Most major corporations in the US pay exactly 0% in corporate income taxes, or at least very close to it. No, the reason companies outsource has little to do with taxes and everything to do with lower wages in those countries.
So, if your goal is to lower the wage base in the US, then fine, do it, of course, then that will effect the supply and demand curves of all goods and services in this country and businesses will make less money. So, if the company is going to take a major cut in profit anyway, then why bother with the outsourcing it all leads to the same result. Unless, your goal is to make the US a former economic power.
I can understand people being upset over the whole outsourcing thing. However, that aside, if they are actually employing a bunch of people who are willing to do something malicious over threat of losing their job then they should get rid of them anyway. and anyone caught doing or planning had better be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as they are just as if not more dangerous than the outsourcing.
My concern would not be the threat of existing employees doing something bad just before they were outsourced, but how easy would it be for others to infiltrate the companies the IT was outsourced to and cause all sorts of attacks against the power grid from within the very systems of the utility companies?
Really, the silver bullet for this nonsense is to get rid of the income taxes. All of them.
Outsourcing to India or anywhere-but-here gets the operations out from under a 35% corporate income tax, a 15.3% payroll tax for their help, etc. That's a lotta $$$, and the gov't is incentivizing it all with the tax system. Abolish the income taxes, pass the Fair Tax, and run the country on a sales tax instead. Prosperity will be ours.
The corporate tax rate might be 35% but, very few corporations, if any pay anywhere close to that rate. In addition, utilities are regulated by the government because they are essentially legal monopolies. As for running the country on a sales tax, one of the most regressive taxes there is, ask Britain how well their VAT works?
The reason the wealthy always push for sales taxes instead of incomes taxes is because the wealthy tend to only spend 25% of their income thus leaving 75% untaxed, while the poor spend 100% of their income, thus taxing it all (with the middle class being in between). So in some warped sense, it could be deemed as fair to make the poor pay tax on every dollar but not anybody else, but, then, the definition of fair would probably not be what most people think it means.
Here is a much more equitable system. Tax all income above 150% of the poverty rate with no deductions, regardless of the source (doesn't matter whether wages, investment, etc.). If the rate is 19% and you make $100,000 about the 150% of the poverty rate, you will pay $19,000 in taxes. If you make $1M over it, then your taxes are $190,000. Of course, without loopholes/deductions, the tax rate could be as low a 7% to bring in the same amount of tax revenue as what currently is collected (in which case those examples would be $7,000 and $70,000 respectively).
Utilities are regulated. If outsourcing is permitted, it probably won't be after this. On the otherhand, if outsourcing saves the utility a lot of money, then what's to stop the regulators from either decreasing the rates or at least not allowing rate increases for the forseable future?
All in all, if you are a regulated industry it doesn't seem to make sense to upset those that actually regulate you.
Assuming you are correct and the droid buyers largely don't care that it's a droid, then most likely cost will be a motivating factor and many droid tablets can be purchased well below the Microsoft tablet offerings. For those that do care that it is a droid, cost may be less of a factor, but then there are most likely going to be droid features that appeal to that market segment. Either way, to the ignorant and informed droid purchaser, droid still wins.
That leaves the premium market. In this market, MS has to compete directly with Apple and one would have to specifically want an MS product to not purchase the iPad.
So, in all three markets, uninformed, informed and premium, it would appear that the only reason somebody is going to choose an MS tablet, is because they really want an MS tablet and not because of the features, price, compatability or just about anything else. That would mean they should sell well with MS fanboys, but that isn't a really good marketing strategy for long term success.
Yes, I would seriously dispute that. Science, by definition deals with the natural universe. God, by definition, is outside of nature. Science is not equipped to explain matters of faith and using it to do so is a misapplication of science and the scientific method. If science and religion were ton be diagrammed in a Venn diagram, the circles would never intersect.
If God did create us, how bad an engineer do you have to be to put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational area?
From an engineering perspective, it is very efficient. So whether God did it or evolution, the current design evidently provided the most advantage and survived.
I would challenge you to prove that statement. There is nothing inherent in scientific knowledge that would cause a belief in god or faith to shrink. The catholic church is the largest private funder of the sciences, it seems that they wouldn't be doing that if it was going to ultimately cause their demise.
Things like unemployment, climate change, etc., aren't about concrete objective things, but instead are really various facets of one's ideology.
The identification and study of climate change is just one result from some 120+ years of climate research. In fact, if you go back to the origins of greenhouse theory it's closer to 200 years of climate research.
Perhaps you have a different definition of "concrete and objective".
If you asks leading scientists in the 70s the planet was cooling. But that isn't the point. It doesn't matter whether it is heating up or cooling (well it does), but in terms of the discussion, people hold on to their position based on ideological points of view, not scientific ones. As such, if you want to change people's views, you need to approach it from changing an ideology, not from just presenting facts (as we have found out). For those that hold on to the notion that climate change is bogus (again ideology speaking), all the facts in the world won't change their mind until the ice caps melt and the oceans rise and the coastal areas flood (and even then, they will blame it on something else).
That is the problem with arguing about ideology. Since they aren't usually predicated on facts, facts do little to sway those that hold to them.
test subjects must be faulty if they don't immediately believe the academic's interpretation of some data presented to them.
Probably the actual discovery in this experiment: There were a lot of faulty test subjects.
Actually the similar studies have been repeated numerous times with the same result, so it is unlikely to be a fault of the subjects or the methodology. What the tests do show is that information that we hold to be technical types of information we are readily willing to concede that we could be wrong. Information that we hold as a belief or ideological position, we hold on to vehemently. Technical issues responds to logic. Ideological ones are usually emotionally based and processed in a different part of the brain. Most social views including politics and religion fall into the ideological camp and is why it is very difficult to get people to change their position using logic. It's also why, things like prejudice and bigotry are so hard to eradicate, because they, too are ideological positions.
The old adage used to be to not discuss politics or religion when having company. The tests just confirm what we already knew.
From the description of the study, it seems to me that people who have formed an opinion won't change it just because they see a single piece of potentially falsified or misleading evidence. For example (looking at one of the experiments), if someone has an opinion on joblessness in the US - which might bring in factors of job stability, hours worked or attainment of a living wage - seeing a single graph on number of employed people in recent years does not allow us to conclude that joblessness has been reduced under Obama, unless you have a very primitive interpretation of "joblessness".
The only damning conclusion is that some academics are so arrogant that they assume test subjects must be faulty if they don't immediately believe the academic's interpretation of some data presented to them.
Learning math, and being shown that an equation is incorrect, one readily accepts that. Things like unemployment, climate change, etc., aren't about concrete objective things, but instead are really various facets of one's ideology. Ideology, like religion is hard to change and pretty much for the same reason. It is not based on knowledge, but instead on belief.
That can be good or bad, depending on how it is used, but most often, it turns out to be bad. Ideologies often force us to characterize others by stereotypes, not individuals. What is happening in the US Congress and many parts of the world politically, is all based on people holding on to their ideologies and not not listening to the other side. Holding to ideologies instead of the underlying principles leads to the notion of if you aren't with me you are against me and that ultimately leads to disaster for a society by concentrating the power in the hands of a few at the expense of many.
One thing is for certain, you don't change people's ideology with facts. Facts appeal to the rational, logical part of our psyche. Ideology, on the other hand is an emotional response and like love is often anything but logical.
I think you misunderstand. I am not saying your grandfather was wrong. I am simply saying that free speech takes all sorts of forms other than just speaking words. Actions are very much a form of expression and therefore protected speech (the courts have even said so). So, yes, Germany may have declared war on the US, but from their leader's perspective, they probably felt justified in doing so. That would be their opinion, which again is protected under free speech.
As for child porn, etc., by our western morals, yes there is a victim. In parts of the world where it is normal to be married at the age of 13, they would probably see that differently. Again, many would argue that pornography, child or otherwise, is merely an expression of an idea and is protected.
The right we call freedom of speech is the right to express an opinion or an idea, it does not give one the right to express it in whatever way they want. Hitler's freedom of speech led to WWII. Obviously, he had the right to his opinions and ideas, but the US and allies felt the method of expressing them was not acceptable. There is no strawman here. Saying that hate speech is acceptable is like saying that Hitler's approach was acceptable. Society begs to differ and has said so. Society has also said the same thing about child porn, bullying and even yelling fire in a crowded theater. Freedom of speech means you have the right to express your opinion and ideas, no more, no less. It does not mean you have the right to do so any way you please. Society gets to dictate what is acceptable or not.
Slashdot Mirror
People go to new places fairly regularly. Not everyone has every road and destination for a hundred miles around memorized. In this case it is an Airport, and quite a few people who are going to fly (or pick someone up, or just arrived) are not going to go to the place frequently enough to memorize the roads around it. I think I go to my local one maybe once every 5 years or so, plenty of time to not remember the roads around it.
You don't think the 737 sitting in front of you with engines roaring might tip you off that you are in the wrong place? Or maybe all of those "Do Not Enter" signs? Being confused at an airport and winding up at the wrong terminal or parking garage is one thing. Ending up on the runway is totally different.
Luckily, this story is just humorous and has a relatively happy ending. In many parts of the world, even attempting to get on to the runway or crossing barricades would get you shot.
Cool. Apple is now providing taxiing directions for pilots!
Well, there was that story about pilots with iPads in the cockpit, so that would be a natural extension.
Maybe the drivers in these cases should lose their license. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense, so saying that my iPhone told me to drive across a runway should make no difference. If somebody is stupid enough to do that, they are too stupid to be allowed to drive. Maybe Apple should re-think their "Think Different" campaign and just tell people to "Think!"
People forget that the reason these laws exist is that when cars were "new" there were many manufactures that were here today and gone tomorrow. Cars were considered equipment and machinery. Having to buy from a local dealer meant that there was somebody local to service it and to hold accountable if there were problems with it. In addition, at a time when most cars were made in Michigan, there were many disputes in the courts that had to be settled in Michigan, because that is where the sale officially took place. Back in the 1900s, it was not practical for somebody to travel 1000 miles to go to Detroit to file a claim against the auto company. Dealership laws changed all of that as the sales were now local sales.
Using Tesla as an example, if you were in Texas, where there are no dealers and you purchased direct, and had a problem, how would you get the problem resolved and under the laws of which state? Dealership laws were created to protect the purchaser, not the company.
The OP is factoring in the $10,000 to replace the battery pack after 100,000 miles, which would add another $125/month to the cost if you drive 15,000 miles per year.
Hey, that's great!
I just think it's a tad unfair to call battery "wear-and-tear" part of "fuel costs."
If I developed an engine that could convert air to energy and you needed to purchase a $50,000 catalyst in the form of a pellet every 100,000 miles, would you say the fuel was free because it ran on air or the fuel was $0.50/mile because without the catalyst the car won't run? Likewise, with an all electric. If the battery pack must be replaced every 100,000 miles and costs $X to replace it, then that cost is part of the fuel cost.
While true if you factor in the cost of the wear on the battery per km driven then cost of an electric car's fuel is actually far higher than a petrol car.
Interesting point - but wouldn't that mean that petrol car dealers should be adding the costs of, "carburetor wear and tear; carburetor cleaning; air filter replacement; gas tank wear and tear; etc." to their fuel costs; all those costs that electric cars don't incur.
No. Besides that modern cars are fuel injected. Having the injectors cleaned at either 60,000 or 100,000 miles is already a scheduled maintenance item, but it isn't a fuel cost. OTOH, the electricity in the battery is the fuel for the Tesla and if it isn't able to provide it, then the car doesn't go. But even if you include the cost of cleaning the injectors, a $3.50 bottle of injector cleaner once a year vs a $10,000 battery pack every five years are the costs you are talking about.
Also, speaking of fuel costs, one should also include in the cost of the Tesla the cost to provide the additional wiring in one's home for a 70amp 220V circuit to charge the car. Most homes don't have that capability.
In reality, all this talk is meaningless. Whether fully electric, hybrid or combustion, the only valid cost numbers people should look at is TCO. And TCO over 100,000 miles shows there is an advantage to an all electric, in theory, but not practice (because the purchase price is so high to start with). TCO for combustion engines over 100,000 miles shows a TDI diesel is more economical than a hybrid or gas combustion and that it is a tossup between the gas combustion and the hybrid.
Unless you are comparing TCO, any comparison is meaningless. Now, if they could make an all electric, with a decent range for under $30,000, that would send the TCO numbers off the chart. But, as of yet, nobody has been able or willing to do it.
As for the battery, from my research the cells should be good for at least 3000 full charge discharge cycles. If I'm extremely conservative in estimating 200 miles of range per charge (I get significantly more) that works out to 600,000 miles.
Tesla claims a battery pack should last 1,200 cycles, so that would bring you to a max of 240,000 miles. Now, it is unlikely that you will be fully draining the batteries and recharging them, so you will further reduce the overall range. Most experts estimate that the battery packs will need to be replaced around 100,000 miles. Depending on one's driving habits (trip lengths) that could vary anywhere from 90,000 to 120,000 miles.
As long as replacing the battery pack (parts and labor) is less than $13,000, you come out better than a gasoline engine that gets around 30mpg city and highway (assuming gas is $4/gallon). Many people will probably sell their car before that point, trying to save the replacement cost, but in reality, it is built into the trade in value, so they still pay it one way or another.
As for other maintenance costs, you won't need an oil change every year, but your suspension, steering, brakes, a/c and electrical systems will need just as much maintenance as any other vehicle.
Quite simply, a Tesla (or any all electric car) has significantly less moving parts. Faults will occur, but susbstantially less often than with an ICE. Some of those faults though will require very specialist knowledge to fix though.
The Wankel rotary engine also had significantly fewer moving parts than a standard internal combustion engine, but a Mazda RX-7 was just as costly to maintain as any other car. Why? Because, it's not the moving parts in the engine that cause most of the maintenance costs, it's all the rest of them, like suspension, steering, brakes, air compressors, and the like.
So, you will need to get your oil changed less often, like not at all versus once a year, so you save $19.95 at the dealer, but all the other regular maintenance stuff is still there and then some since the Tesla is a specialized vehicle, one can expect it's parts and labor to be more costly. And unlike a regular automobile, you have to also maintain the charging/battery system, the dynamic braking, and a several other components that only an electric car will have.
Arguing that an electric car will save because of maintenance is probably not a valid argument. Arguing on fuel costs, possibly. But in reality, the argument should be on the total cost of ownership over say, 100,000 or 200,000 miles. The reason you don't see TCO figures for electric cars in those ranges is that the battery packs need to be replaced before then and when you figure in that cost, the savings disappear.
So, if you have an electric car and plan on keeping it, all the money you save on fuel, you should set aside to replace the battery pack when that time comes. Of course, you could just trade it in before then, but if the battery pack is shot, well, so will be the trade in value.
Bingo. You've hit the nail on the head. Dealerships make most their money in repairs, not in selling cars. Over the life of a car, the 5-20% profit they make on the sale is a small fraction of what they can make on repairs and maintenance.
If Telsa has the audacity to create a product that requires significantly less repairs, it puts dealerships at a competitive disadvantage, which is exactly where they should be in a truly free and open market.
Many in the fossil fuels business like to downplay the savings gained from small fuel costs for battery technology, but they don't want to address the larger costs associated with maintenance issues inherent in internal combustion technology because they know it makes electric car technology even more attractive financially.
Are you claiming a Tesla or other electric car is maintenance free? Even my heat pump at home, which is all electric needs to be maintained. Add to that all the other mechanical wear and tear on a vehicle it would seem that there still is a lot of maintenance to be done. True, the dealer will lose out on that $19.95 oil change ever 5,000 miles, so $60/yr, but for most dealers, that's a loss leader anyway.
Then there is a huge deferred maintenance charge that nobody thinks about with electric cars and that is when the battery pack needs replaced. Hopefully, you save up as you go for that, or you unload the car before that point, but it is a major expense.
Maybe they should change their name? After all Popular Science implies "pop" culture and the pop culture seems to not care about real science any more as evidenced by the comments they are talking about. Maybe they should rename themselves to Real Science and leave the pop stuff out.
People forget that not everybody lives in the US or Western Europe. There are millions, if not billions of people on this planet without computers and probably when they do get access to them, they won't be able to afford Macs and Windows PCs. Ubuntu (or maybe some other linux distro) is in a position to tap those markets when they open up.
Face it, their desktop, tablet, phone offerings, aren't going to make a dent in the West. They don't have to. It's in the 2nd and 3rd world countries, that future growth is going to occur and there, things could be very well be different.
While I am not an Ubuntu fanboy, exactly in what arena is the "decline" occurring? Is Ubuntu more well known today than before? Yes. Is Ubuntu available preinstalled on more hardware today than before? Yes. Is the Ubuntu brand branching into more markets than before? Yes. The only metric, if it is even is one, is that Ubuntu has upset die hard linux users, many of which weren't Ubuntu users anyway.
Case point 1. Ubuntu didn't like the direction Gnome 3 was going so they came out with their own Unity desktop. Well, evidently most Linux users agreed they didn't like where Gnome 3 was going. Whether they like Unity or not is a moot point as every other desktop is still available under Ubuntu.
Case point 2. Ubuntu, having problems with x.org, along with everybody else, needed a new display server. They could have gone with Wayland, but they chose to go their own way (much like Redhat and OpenSuse have done with various core technologies). Can people still use/install x.org or Wayland, yes. Should Ubuntu be faulted for wanted to streamline the display server to work on various platforms? Evidently many people think so, but why?
Case point 3. Ubuntu has announced several products that never caught on or never made it past the technology preview stage. Does that mean they've lost their focus or are they just like all other "real" technology companies exploring new technologies that ultimately don't make it to market?
Case point 4. Desktop computing, while not dead, is not what it was just a few years ago. Does Ubuntu's trying to compete in mobile markets, while still maintaining desktop support mean that they are lost or that they are trying to stay current?
Now, I can also argue many points where Ubuntu blew it. But I can do the same for Apple, Microsoft, Google, Redhat, Suse and most every other tech company. The reality is that for every tech idea that succeeds, there a many good ones that never make it to market. That's the nature of the game. Ubuntu isn't declining, they are in the game, albeit as a small player compared to Apple and Microsoft and Google. However, unlike the big three, with Ubuntu, you still get freedom.
So, if the question is "Has Ubuntu as a desktop Linux only offering declined?" Then the answer is yes. But has Ubuntu as a brand and a technology company (really Canonical) declined? Well, that answer is not at all.
The way to do it is not to coerce it, but incentivize it. Just make the USA the best, cheapest place to do software. Yeah, its easy - the big $$$ is paying either the income taxes, all of them, or paying enough lawyers to find enough deductions so's you DON'T pay the income taxes, the lawyer salaries being almost as expensive as the taxes anyway. Get rid of income taxes, and you have companies outsourcing _TO_ the USA.
Please name one country without an income tax that doesn't have an oil or tourism based economy that is thriving? Funny thing is that income taxes pay for infrastructure and infrastructure allows businesses to thrive.
You keep posting elsewhare to replace income tax with sales taxes, won't those same companies have to pay those sales taxes or are you going to exempt them? If they have to pay the sales taxes, which will go up significantly, just ask Britain about their VAT, then why would any company move their business here? If anything, not only would existing businesses continue to outsource, they'd offshore the whole company to get away from the VAT.
Besides, the US has the lowest effective corporate tax rate of western countries. Most major corporations in the US pay exactly 0% in corporate income taxes, or at least very close to it. No, the reason companies outsource has little to do with taxes and everything to do with lower wages in those countries.
So, if your goal is to lower the wage base in the US, then fine, do it, of course, then that will effect the supply and demand curves of all goods and services in this country and businesses will make less money. So, if the company is going to take a major cut in profit anyway, then why bother with the outsourcing it all leads to the same result. Unless, your goal is to make the US a former economic power.
I can understand people being upset over the whole outsourcing thing. However, that aside, if they are actually employing a bunch of people who are willing to do something malicious over threat of losing their job then they should get rid of them anyway. and anyone caught doing or planning had better be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as they are just as if not more dangerous than the outsourcing.
My concern would not be the threat of existing employees doing something bad just before they were outsourced, but how easy would it be for others to infiltrate the companies the IT was outsourced to and cause all sorts of attacks against the power grid from within the very systems of the utility companies?
Really, the silver bullet for this nonsense is to get rid of the income taxes. All of them.
Outsourcing to India or anywhere-but-here gets the operations out from under a 35% corporate income tax, a 15.3% payroll tax for their help, etc. That's a lotta $$$, and the gov't is incentivizing it all with the tax system. Abolish the income taxes, pass the Fair Tax, and run the country on a sales tax instead. Prosperity will be ours.
The corporate tax rate might be 35% but, very few corporations, if any pay anywhere close to that rate. In addition, utilities are regulated by the government because they are essentially legal monopolies. As for running the country on a sales tax, one of the most regressive taxes there is, ask Britain how well their VAT works?
The reason the wealthy always push for sales taxes instead of incomes taxes is because the wealthy tend to only spend 25% of their income thus leaving 75% untaxed, while the poor spend 100% of their income, thus taxing it all (with the middle class being in between). So in some warped sense, it could be deemed as fair to make the poor pay tax on every dollar but not anybody else, but, then, the definition of fair would probably not be what most people think it means.
Here is a much more equitable system. Tax all income above 150% of the poverty rate with no deductions, regardless of the source (doesn't matter whether wages, investment, etc.). If the rate is 19% and you make $100,000 about the 150% of the poverty rate, you will pay $19,000 in taxes. If you make $1M over it, then your taxes are $190,000. Of course, without loopholes/deductions, the tax rate could be as low a 7% to bring in the same amount of tax revenue as what currently is collected (in which case those examples would be $7,000 and $70,000 respectively).
Utilities are regulated. If outsourcing is permitted, it probably won't be after this. On the otherhand, if outsourcing saves the utility a lot of money, then what's to stop the regulators from either decreasing the rates or at least not allowing rate increases for the forseable future?
All in all, if you are a regulated industry it doesn't seem to make sense to upset those that actually regulate you.
Assuming you are correct and the droid buyers largely don't care that it's a droid, then most likely cost will be a motivating factor and many droid tablets can be purchased well below the Microsoft tablet offerings. For those that do care that it is a droid, cost may be less of a factor, but then there are most likely going to be droid features that appeal to that market segment. Either way, to the ignorant and informed droid purchaser, droid still wins.
That leaves the premium market. In this market, MS has to compete directly with Apple and one would have to specifically want an MS product to not purchase the iPad.
So, in all three markets, uninformed, informed and premium, it would appear that the only reason somebody is going to choose an MS tablet, is because they really want an MS tablet and not because of the features, price, compatability or just about anything else. That would mean they should sell well with MS fanboys, but that isn't a really good marketing strategy for long term success.
Yes, I would seriously dispute that. Science, by definition deals with the natural universe. God, by definition, is outside of nature. Science is not equipped to explain matters of faith and using it to do so is a misapplication of science and the scientific method. If science and religion were ton be diagrammed in a Venn diagram, the circles would never intersect.
As such, your original premise is flawed.
If God did create us, how bad an engineer do you have to be to put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational area?
From an engineering perspective, it is very efficient. So whether God did it or evolution, the current design evidently provided the most advantage and survived.
As scientific knowledge advances, god shrinks.
I would challenge you to prove that statement. There is nothing inherent in scientific knowledge that would cause a belief in god or faith to shrink. The catholic church is the largest private funder of the sciences, it seems that they wouldn't be doing that if it was going to ultimately cause their demise.
Things like unemployment, climate change, etc., aren't about concrete objective things, but instead are really various facets of one's ideology.
The identification and study of climate change is just one result from some 120+ years of climate research. In fact, if you go back to the origins of greenhouse theory it's closer to 200 years of climate research.
Perhaps you have a different definition of "concrete and objective".
If you asks leading scientists in the 70s the planet was cooling. But that isn't the point. It doesn't matter whether it is heating up or cooling (well it does), but in terms of the discussion, people hold on to their position based on ideological points of view, not scientific ones. As such, if you want to change people's views, you need to approach it from changing an ideology, not from just presenting facts (as we have found out). For those that hold on to the notion that climate change is bogus (again ideology speaking), all the facts in the world won't change their mind until the ice caps melt and the oceans rise and the coastal areas flood (and even then, they will blame it on something else).
That is the problem with arguing about ideology. Since they aren't usually predicated on facts, facts do little to sway those that hold to them.
test subjects must be faulty if they don't immediately believe the academic's interpretation of some data presented to them.
Probably the actual discovery in this experiment: There were a lot of faulty test subjects.
Actually the similar studies have been repeated numerous times with the same result, so it is unlikely to be a fault of the subjects or the methodology. What the tests do show is that information that we hold to be technical types of information we are readily willing to concede that we could be wrong. Information that we hold as a belief or ideological position, we hold on to vehemently. Technical issues responds to logic. Ideological ones are usually emotionally based and processed in a different part of the brain. Most social views including politics and religion fall into the ideological camp and is why it is very difficult to get people to change their position using logic. It's also why, things like prejudice and bigotry are so hard to eradicate, because they, too are ideological positions.
The old adage used to be to not discuss politics or religion when having company. The tests just confirm what we already knew.
From the description of the study, it seems to me that people who have formed an opinion won't change it just because they see a single piece of potentially falsified or misleading evidence. For example (looking at one of the experiments), if someone has an opinion on joblessness in the US - which might bring in factors of job stability, hours worked or attainment of a living wage - seeing a single graph on number of employed people in recent years does not allow us to conclude that joblessness has been reduced under Obama, unless you have a very primitive interpretation of "joblessness".
The only damning conclusion is that some academics are so arrogant that they assume test subjects must be faulty if they don't immediately believe the academic's interpretation of some data presented to them.
Learning math, and being shown that an equation is incorrect, one readily accepts that. Things like unemployment, climate change, etc., aren't about concrete objective things, but instead are really various facets of one's ideology. Ideology, like religion is hard to change and pretty much for the same reason. It is not based on knowledge, but instead on belief.
That can be good or bad, depending on how it is used, but most often, it turns out to be bad. Ideologies often force us to characterize others by stereotypes, not individuals. What is happening in the US Congress and many parts of the world politically, is all based on people holding on to their ideologies and not not listening to the other side. Holding to ideologies instead of the underlying principles leads to the notion of if you aren't with me you are against me and that ultimately leads to disaster for a society by concentrating the power in the hands of a few at the expense of many.
One thing is for certain, you don't change people's ideology with facts. Facts appeal to the rational, logical part of our psyche. Ideology, on the other hand is an emotional response and like love is often anything but logical.
I think you misunderstand. I am not saying your grandfather was wrong. I am simply saying that free speech takes all sorts of forms other than just speaking words. Actions are very much a form of expression and therefore protected speech (the courts have even said so). So, yes, Germany may have declared war on the US, but from their leader's perspective, they probably felt justified in doing so. That would be their opinion, which again is protected under free speech.
As for child porn, etc., by our western morals, yes there is a victim. In parts of the world where it is normal to be married at the age of 13, they would probably see that differently. Again, many would argue that pornography, child or otherwise, is merely an expression of an idea and is protected.
The right we call freedom of speech is the right to express an opinion or an idea, it does not give one the right to express it in whatever way they want. Hitler's freedom of speech led to WWII. Obviously, he had the right to his opinions and ideas, but the US and allies felt the method of expressing them was not acceptable. There is no strawman here. Saying that hate speech is acceptable is like saying that Hitler's approach was acceptable. Society begs to differ and has said so. Society has also said the same thing about child porn, bullying and even yelling fire in a crowded theater. Freedom of speech means you have the right to express your opinion and ideas, no more, no less. It does not mean you have the right to do so any way you please. Society gets to dictate what is acceptable or not.