Gold has great intrinsic value in its usefulness as a currency: It is rare enough without being too rare. It is malleable and user divisible. It doesn't corrode. It's pretty so people will be proud to own it. Silver shares many of these qualities, but to a lesser degree (it's a little too common, it does corrode, and in part as a consequence of this it is not quite as pretty).
And you really shouldn't dismiss the usefulness of having a good material for currency, trade via a currency is leaps and bounds more efficient than trade via barter. (And sometimes sea shells just don't do the job.)
"So, Governor, now that you've tried the car. Yeah I see you have the Tesla grin already. So, now that you've tried it. Two years down the road, when voters start to realize what a great American car it is that you have prevented them from buying.... What exactly are your plans for reelection?"
To believe in science (and to disbelieve in religion),
Science isn't something you believe in, it's something you use. If I use a hammer to nail a picture up on the wall, does this mean I believe in hammer or does it just mean I used a hammer to achieve some desired result?
A scientific result is something you may choose to believe or not believe, depending on the level of confidence you have in the team behind it and the rigour of their methods. To believe in a scientific result on the other hand sounds to me more of a fanatical position than a rational one.
So, given that it was bad under Bush, and is now worse under Obama, it is readily apparent that regardless of whichever political party you choose to vote for, all roads lead to the same end.
Once the massive surveillance cat is out of the bag, there really isn't any getting it back in again. Any agency that has been given wide dragnet powers just once will have amassed such a wealth of dirt on all the politicians of the land there is no way those politicians will dare curtail the agency. And the agency won't be afraid of using this power, because they know in their heart that they are a force for Good and that giving them limitless domestic spying power can therefore only lead to Good. (Well, unless they're outright corrupt of course which leads to the same destination just by a different path.) Politicians who try to limit their powers are therefore Evil and using blackmail to stop them is only right and proper.
Pretty much the only thing that will topple such an agency is a scandal that is big enough it cannot be covered up, and serious enough that the politicians dare not overlook it.
Of course, I am sure there must be a hundred books about J. Edgar Hoover, the STASI and other more or less well-meaning domestic spying ops that describe this way better than I can.:-)
superchargers are widely used on locomotives, ships, generators, the term will be around for many decades
But now you're talking highly technical terms, which will very often tend to overload other more popular meanings and which the general public will always not know of or care about.
The supercharger as a cool thing to have on your car to make it go faster, is a meaning that will die out in general use. Other more narrowly technical areas will keep their superchargers of course.
A link to Tesla superchargers is already the #3 link when I search for "supercharger" on Google (and it's not because Google knows who I am); after Wikipedia's (traditional) supercharger article and supercharger pictures.
Regarding automobiles, the word supercharger already has a specific meaning, Find another word.
This is just a transitory problem. 20 years down the line the old meaning of the word will have been forgotten outside of niche historically interested subcultures, but of course the word itself will live on with its new modern meaning.
Elon Musk recently made a mysterious comment on twitter about how it would be possible to recharge your car in less time than it takes to fill a tank of gas. The actual announcement he was alluding to is still pending, having been pushed back by such details as Tesla raising a billion dollars in fresh capital etc.
Quite possibly though he is referring to battery swapping, something which the Model S has been designed and built for but which hasn't seen much actual use yet.
That is something I'm not understanding either. Are those Superchargers Tesla only? If the answer is yes, it really doesn't make any sense to me for two reasons:
If you are a typical engineer or software developer then the current state of EV charging is going to make absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is a total mess of competing standards, confusing connectors and proprietary solutions. If someone actually designed EV charging from the bottom up it would look nothing at all like the clusterfuck we are saddled with at the moment.
Tesla did try to participate in a joint effort between several EV makers to work on a common standard at one point, but as I understand it no one but Tesla could understand the need for e.g. 120kW charging and so it was impossible for them to work within that group. So they went their own way.
Tesla needs to demonstrate not only to the market but also to their competitors that EVs must have long range (actually a big battery but it's mostly the same thing) to be very useful, and if they have long range they need to have very powerful charging solutions. They do this with their superchargers, and the superchargers don't include any other EV manufacturers because none of the other manufacturers see the point of them at all.
2)By the time Tesla has a sub 30k model, I guarantee most all major auto makers will have their vehicles as well(as some of them already have).
They don't really. The main reason Tesla is being successful is that they decided to actually take electric cars seriously. None of the other manufacturers do: they think of them as funny little toy cars to get around town with, a replacement for your bicycle more than a replacement for an actual car.
Chances are established car manufacturers will keep putting out dinky little 100 mile range EVs for the foreseeable future, and Tesla will run away with the market.
It's kinda sad to have to spell it out loud... but here it goes: your tax money is used to benefit society; when you don't pay your taxes you are not contributing to society, yet you still benefit from those who contribute - that is immoral.
As far as has been revealed though, Apple do pay their taxes. It is not Apple's role to determine how much tax each corporation needs to pay to make the country's finances balance, it's the role of the lawmakers to do that; and Apple is doing as the lawmakers have required.
You could envision an alternative anarchy-based tax system in which each taxable entity pays however much they think is necessary to help run the country, but the US is not quite there at this point.
The current tax debacle in the US has all the looks of US lawmakers showcasing how completely inept they themselves have been in shaping national and international tax rules. It's very hard to see how Apple can be to blame for that, absent an upcoming lobbying scandal.
You see, before computers, companies used to have room full of people manually calculating and processing stuff. It wasn't until the computer came that they could fire all those people and save a ton of money on their collective salaries. Now, my question is: what happened to that money they saved?
The invisible hand stole it.
The money saved from firing newly redundant staff was funneled into undercutting the rivals' prices and those rivals that survived this did so because they did the exact same thing. This money can only be recovered by raising your prices back to the old level and if you do that no one will buy your product anymore and you will go out of business.
I've often wondered if people of the modern age would be as affected by an encounter with these creatures as the people of grandfather's time.
The underlying theme in the Lovecraft universe is that the Elder Gods not only seem incomprehensible but that they actually are incomprehensible. The more you study them and their nature, the more your own internal ordering of the universe will break down and in the end your understanding of the universe is so different from the observed universe the rest of us experience we will recognize you as insane.
You cannot escape this simply by being used to weird things: The Elders Gods aren't just weird, they are completely wrong and yet they exist. Trying to reconcile this with the observed universe leads to madness because the two cannot be reconciled.
Yes. When the claim is "worst case" you take the worst case. Amazing!
Chernobyl isn't the worst case in the scenario presented because noone would be permitted to build a new plant like that anyway. The worst case, if it is to be a realistic one, must include a modern nuke plant of the type one can actually get permission to build. Alternatively, if the worst case need not be realistic then the worst case is the butterfly effect causes our sun to go nova and everyone dies. The beauty of this particular worst case scenario of course is that it can be tied to any activity, not just nuke plants.
I still don't understand how an entire Nordic country would so willingly become lackeys of not only the US government, but the fucking US entertainment industry too?
They used to call it realpolitik, and it was all the rage.
Not to mention, they are usually extremely biased against American cars.
Heh, ironic then that the Tesla Roadster was built in the UK at the Lotus factory. They could have spun it as "stupid 'mericans had to come to good old blighty to build a proper car" except of course TG hates electric cars so that was never going to happen.
According to the Tesla data, Broder's charge percentages after leaving a charging station were 90%, 72%, and 28%. While 90% may be reasonable, and 3/4 of a tank a bit dicey, who in their right mind only fills up to just over 1/4 of a tank? If he were refueling a gasoline powered car in this manner, he'd be deemed a fool.
It's not quite analogous though since the difference between 1/4 and 4/4 full on a gas car is a minute or so extra at the pump, while on a Model S you're talking maybe half an hour more at the charging station. It's easy to see how someone might decide they'd rather not spend that half hour filling up charge they don't think they'll actually need (since they'll just plug it in anyway when they get to their destination).
That said, when you're driving a Model S you really do owe it to yourself to fill it up with enough juice so that you can drive it in style, wherever you're going.
There are definitely differences: different best practices and different failure modes certainly.
For your average person I could understand getting into an EV and ending up confused about how to manage it. It takes a bit of getting used to. But this was a journalist, it is his profession to inform himself about new unfamiliar topics so that he can then inform the public. In this case he would appear to have made the deliberate decision to remain ignorant and that is a degree of unprofessional behaviour we should not accept in the press. This is the crux of the criticism I would level against him, if the reports I am seeing are correct.
Of course, I have no idea what kind of publication the NY Times is and whether this is just their usual standards.
Well yes, if you're crossing the Antarctic or perhaps just going for a month-long trip across the great Australian outback, then you'll go with a gas guzzler every time.
In the US though, with Tesla now aggressively building out their supercharger infrastructure it won't be long before you can take a Tesla basically anywhere in the contiguous states and never need to worry about having a superfast chargeup within a reasonable distance. And for overnight charging of course, any old outlet will do.
Unfortunately I'm stuck in backwards Norway with little in the way of quick charging infrastructure yet, so I have to make do with what I can find.:-)
It's impossible to explain to an electric car owner the beauty that exists in the world outside of their commute to work and urban/suburban living.
Heh. You must have not read up on the range of Tesla's cars. I regularly make several hundred km trips in mine, and that is at a time when there is not yet any infrastructure built out specifically to support them. When I need to charge I currently do so from outlets that exist for other reasons entirely - once we start seeing EV-specific quick chargers where they're actually needed a wonderful world is set to become even greater still.:-)
Top Gear is essentially a scripted comedy show using cars for props. When they praise a car, it's because the script said to praise it long before they had one delivered. When they slam a car, it's because the script said to slam it also long before they actually laid eyes on one.
Slashdot Mirror
Gold has great intrinsic value in its usefulness as a currency: It is rare enough without being too rare. It is malleable and user divisible. It doesn't corrode. It's pretty so people will be proud to own it. Silver shares many of these qualities, but to a lesser degree (it's a little too common, it does corrode, and in part as a consequence of this it is not quite as pretty).
And you really shouldn't dismiss the usefulness of having a good material for currency, trade via a currency is leaps and bounds more efficient than trade via barter. (And sometimes sea shells just don't do the job.)
Beware the fearmongers, for they shall paralyze you with their visions of Doom!
(todo: wood engraving decrying the luddite sentiment)
"So, Governor, now that you've tried the car. Yeah I see you have the Tesla grin already. So, now that you've tried it. Two years down the road, when voters start to realize what a great American car it is that you have prevented them from buying. ... What exactly are your plans for reelection?"
How the hell would he know if it didn't? Can we get testimonials of his friends? Otherwise, I'm claiming placebo effect.
"he strapped on the electrodes of a device made by his Edmonton company"
I claim greed effect. (Emphasis mine)
To believe in science (and to disbelieve in religion),
Science isn't something you believe in, it's something you use. If I use a hammer to nail a picture up on the wall, does this mean I believe in hammer or does it just mean I used a hammer to achieve some desired result?
A scientific result is something you may choose to believe or not believe, depending on the level of confidence you have in the team behind it and the rigour of their methods. To believe in a scientific result on the other hand sounds to me more of a fanatical position than a rational one.
So, given that it was bad under Bush, and is now worse under Obama, it is readily apparent that regardless of whichever political party you choose to vote for, all roads lead to the same end.
Once the massive surveillance cat is out of the bag, there really isn't any getting it back in again. Any agency that has been given wide dragnet powers just once will have amassed such a wealth of dirt on all the politicians of the land there is no way those politicians will dare curtail the agency. And the agency won't be afraid of using this power, because they know in their heart that they are a force for Good and that giving them limitless domestic spying power can therefore only lead to Good. (Well, unless they're outright corrupt of course which leads to the same destination just by a different path.) Politicians who try to limit their powers are therefore Evil and using blackmail to stop them is only right and proper.
Pretty much the only thing that will topple such an agency is a scandal that is big enough it cannot be covered up, and serious enough that the politicians dare not overlook it.
Of course, I am sure there must be a hundred books about J. Edgar Hoover, the STASI and other more or less well-meaning domestic spying ops that describe this way better than I can. :-)
Question: What is the payback period on a Tesla Roadster?
3.9 seconds. :D
superchargers are widely used on locomotives, ships, generators, the term will be around for many decades
But now you're talking highly technical terms, which will very often tend to overload other more popular meanings and which the general public will always not know of or care about.
The supercharger as a cool thing to have on your car to make it go faster, is a meaning that will die out in general use. Other more narrowly technical areas will keep their superchargers of course.
A link to Tesla superchargers is already the #3 link when I search for "supercharger" on Google (and it's not because Google knows who I am); after Wikipedia's (traditional) supercharger article and supercharger pictures.
Regarding automobiles, the word supercharger already has a specific meaning, Find another word.
This is just a transitory problem. 20 years down the line the old meaning of the word will have been forgotten outside of niche historically interested subcultures, but of course the word itself will live on with its new modern meaning.
Elon Musk recently made a mysterious comment on twitter about how it would be possible to recharge your car in less time than it takes to fill a tank of gas. The actual announcement he was alluding to is still pending, having been pushed back by such details as Tesla raising a billion dollars in fresh capital etc.
Quite possibly though he is referring to battery swapping, something which the Model S has been designed and built for but which hasn't seen much actual use yet.
That is something I'm not understanding either. Are those Superchargers Tesla only?
If the answer is yes, it really doesn't make any sense to me for two reasons:
If you are a typical engineer or software developer then the current state of EV charging is going to make absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is a total mess of competing standards, confusing connectors and proprietary solutions. If someone actually designed EV charging from the bottom up it would look nothing at all like the clusterfuck we are saddled with at the moment.
Tesla did try to participate in a joint effort between several EV makers to work on a common standard at one point, but as I understand it no one but Tesla could understand the need for e.g. 120kW charging and so it was impossible for them to work within that group. So they went their own way.
Tesla needs to demonstrate not only to the market but also to their competitors that EVs must have long range (actually a big battery but it's mostly the same thing) to be very useful, and if they have long range they need to have very powerful charging solutions. They do this with their superchargers, and the superchargers don't include any other EV manufacturers because none of the other manufacturers see the point of them at all.
2)By the time Tesla has a sub 30k model, I guarantee most all major auto makers will have their vehicles as well(as some of them already have).
They don't really. The main reason Tesla is being successful is that they decided to actually take electric cars seriously. None of the other manufacturers do: they think of them as funny little toy cars to get around town with, a replacement for your bicycle more than a replacement for an actual car.
Chances are established car manufacturers will keep putting out dinky little 100 mile range EVs for the foreseeable future, and Tesla will run away with the market.
and the charging station is probably being powered by a 40 year old coal powered power station
Tesla's superchargers are powered by solar cell farms operated by SolarCity.
It's kinda sad to have to spell it out loud... but here it goes: your tax money is used to benefit society; when you don't pay your taxes you are not contributing to society, yet you still benefit from those who contribute - that is immoral.
As far as has been revealed though, Apple do pay their taxes. It is not Apple's role to determine how much tax each corporation needs to pay to make the country's finances balance, it's the role of the lawmakers to do that; and Apple is doing as the lawmakers have required.
You could envision an alternative anarchy-based tax system in which each taxable entity pays however much they think is necessary to help run the country, but the US is not quite there at this point.
The current tax debacle in the US has all the looks of US lawmakers showcasing how completely inept they themselves have been in shaping national and international tax rules. It's very hard to see how Apple can be to blame for that, absent an upcoming lobbying scandal.
Millions are spent every year in studies and consulting services, and the idea comes from a James Bond movie??!!! What's wrong with you people!!!!
Oh now you're just being silly: millions are spent every year making James Bond movies too!
You see, before computers, companies used to have room full of people manually calculating and processing stuff. It wasn't until the computer came that they could fire all those people and save a ton of money on their collective salaries. Now, my question is: what happened to that money they saved?
The invisible hand stole it.
The money saved from firing newly redundant staff was funneled into undercutting the rivals' prices and those rivals that survived this did so because they did the exact same thing. This money can only be recovered by raising your prices back to the old level and if you do that no one will buy your product anymore and you will go out of business.
I've often wondered if people of the modern age would be as affected by an encounter with these creatures as the people of grandfather's time.
The underlying theme in the Lovecraft universe is that the Elder Gods not only seem incomprehensible but that they actually are incomprehensible. The more you study them and their nature, the more your own internal ordering of the universe will break down and in the end your understanding of the universe is so different from the observed universe the rest of us experience we will recognize you as insane.
You cannot escape this simply by being used to weird things: The Elders Gods aren't just weird, they are completely wrong and yet they exist. Trying to reconcile this with the observed universe leads to madness because the two cannot be reconciled.
Yes. When the claim is "worst case" you take the worst case. Amazing!
Chernobyl isn't the worst case in the scenario presented because noone would be permitted to build a new plant like that anyway. The worst case, if it is to be a realistic one, must include a modern nuke plant of the type one can actually get permission to build. Alternatively, if the worst case need not be realistic then the worst case is the butterfly effect causes our sun to go nova and everyone dies. The beauty of this particular worst case scenario of course is that it can be tied to any activity, not just nuke plants.
Advanced Persistent Threat
Damn, that puts a whole new perspective on apt-get ...
I still don't understand how an entire Nordic country would so willingly become lackeys of not only the US government, but the fucking US entertainment industry too?
They used to call it realpolitik, and it was all the rage.
Not to mention, they are usually extremely biased against American cars.
Heh, ironic then that the Tesla Roadster was built in the UK at the Lotus factory. They could have spun it as "stupid 'mericans had to come to good old blighty to build a proper car" except of course TG hates electric cars so that was never going to happen.
According to the Tesla data, Broder's charge percentages after leaving a charging station were 90%, 72%, and 28%. While 90% may be reasonable, and 3/4 of a tank a bit dicey, who in their right mind only fills up to just over 1/4 of a tank? If he were refueling a gasoline powered car in this manner, he'd be deemed a fool.
It's not quite analogous though since the difference between 1/4 and 4/4 full on a gas car is a minute or so extra at the pump, while on a Model S you're talking maybe half an hour more at the charging station. It's easy to see how someone might decide they'd rather not spend that half hour filling up charge they don't think they'll actually need (since they'll just plug it in anyway when they get to their destination).
That said, when you're driving a Model S you really do owe it to yourself to fill it up with enough juice so that you can drive it in style, wherever you're going.
There are definitely differences: different best practices and different failure modes certainly.
For your average person I could understand getting into an EV and ending up confused about how to manage it. It takes a bit of getting used to. But this was a journalist, it is his profession to inform himself about new unfamiliar topics so that he can then inform the public. In this case he would appear to have made the deliberate decision to remain ignorant and that is a degree of unprofessional behaviour we should not accept in the press. This is the crux of the criticism I would level against him, if the reports I am seeing are correct.
Of course, I have no idea what kind of publication the NY Times is and whether this is just their usual standards.
Well yes, if you're crossing the Antarctic or perhaps just going for a month-long trip across the great Australian outback, then you'll go with a gas guzzler every time.
In the US though, with Tesla now aggressively building out their supercharger infrastructure it won't be long before you can take a Tesla basically anywhere in the contiguous states and never need to worry about having a superfast chargeup within a reasonable distance. And for overnight charging of course, any old outlet will do.
Unfortunately I'm stuck in backwards Norway with little in the way of quick charging infrastructure yet, so I have to make do with what I can find. :-)
It's impossible to explain to an electric car owner the beauty that exists in the world outside of their commute to work and urban/suburban living.
Heh. You must have not read up on the range of Tesla's cars. I regularly make several hundred km trips in mine, and that is at a time when there is not yet any infrastructure built out specifically to support them. When I need to charge I currently do so from outlets that exist for other reasons entirely - once we start seeing EV-specific quick chargers where they're actually needed a wonderful world is set to become even greater still. :-)
Top Gear is essentially a scripted comedy show using cars for props. When they praise a car, it's because the script said to praise it long before they had one delivered. When they slam a car, it's because the script said to slam it also long before they actually laid eyes on one.