Agassi said he isn't going out of his way to protect the model, because he doesn't care about wealth. He just wants to end dependence on oil. He was outright asked about other people running with his idea, and he endorses it. I'm not sure he is going to make the battery or charger so proprietary that a competitor couldn't support it.
You may doubt the sincerity of such sentiments, but he turned down massive personal wealth at SAP to pursue this dream.
Yes. Existing business models still don't work even with better batteries. Most require you to charge your car at home. You're still limited to the distance from your home, and if you run out unexpectedly, then it takes hours to charge. Not to mention your home electric bill goes through the roof.
A combination if improved battery technology plus Better Place's business model makes this feasible on the whole.
That is why this is being deployed first in places where the population is dense and people don't drive that far. Infrastructure is much easier to build there. Eventually you expand such infrastructure to more remote places.
And the actual parent article is talking about how advances in battery technology mitigate this problem. Pretty soon a smaller battery will actually take you farther.
Gas is relatively cheaper in the United States than England. The last time I traveled to England, gas was something like $3/gallon in the United States and the equivalent (pounds and litre conversion) to $7/gallon in England.
Filling up a sedan with a 14 gallon tank for $50 isn't unreasonable in the United States. That being said, it isn't fair to say that a fill up costs $5000.
The battery on hand might cost that, but the fueling station isn't paying $5000 each time they swap a battery. And keeping several of these batteries on hand is a one-time fixed cost. A gas/petrol station pays daily to have their fuel tanks filled. I actually managed a gas/petrol station while in between IT jobs. Giant tanker trunks have to drive the fuel to each station, which is horribly inefficient and costly.
I haven't seen the Better Place design, but they could use underground conveyors. The batteries aren't just sitting around where they can be stolen. The conveyor moves the battery underground to the robotic arm that swaps it at your car. It wouldn't be vastly different from how gas/petrol stations store all their gas underground.
Except I do believe the stations have been designed, and are currently being built. The first charging locations were installed in 2008, and last I heard they are supposed to roll out cars and finished battery swapping stations next year.
That can't be true because Quake 3 wasn't published by Zenimax and I know Urban Terror HD is now an officially licensee of the Quake 3 engine.
I think you've flipped it around. Zenimax will license the old engines, but won't license the current engine as they consider it a competitive advantage.
However, official licenses have nothing to do with open sourcing the old engines. And I saw multiple news stories that Bethesda/Zenimax would not allow iD to continue giving engines away for free.
Last time I checked, this company was rolling out in select places like Denmark, Israel and Hawaii. It is easier to roll out initially in places with dense populations, and harder to roll out when the population is spread out. Once the model is proven to work, I expect it to spread.
This is a must read article on the subject. Electric cars fail because batteries are too expensive, and because they required infrastructure of charging stations. This company however solves both these problems. You make an electric car without the battery, which is cheaper than a standard car and more reliable to boot. Then this company leases you a battery, which costs less per month than gas. And they handle the infrastructure, which includes stations that swap your battery out for a fully charged one. You never wait to charge your battery, and they can swap it out since you don't own it.
Part of this model is the assumption that battery technology still moves along rapidly. So the company can phase in newer, better batteries and you aren't tied to a battery you purchased when you bought your car.
Yes, do they have the right, legally and morally. Their creation is their creation. They may give it out freely in the public domain, or under creative commons. Or they may pursue revenue from their creation.
The RIAA and MPAA are a bunch of douchebags, but that doesn't mean that content creators don't have the right to monetize their creation if they choose.
Since you brought up entitlement, people who think they are entitled to content for free are equally douchebags.
That economic model wouldn't work today. Most new artists wouldn't be able to make much money from one public showing. And as evil as the record industry is, they do pay for the expensive/elaborate tours.
I think you can make the argument to shorten copyright, but I think instead of setting a hard/fast length of years, a simpler solution would be an abandonware system.
5 years from the date of the last retail sale, the content enters the public domain. So long as people are still buying the item (such as the Beatles catalog) the market has determined the item has financial value. If no one has purchased a Rick Astley song for 5 years, then it should enter the public domain.
Content owners do have a right to make money from their content.
But the argument for DRM is a poor one. It punishes paying customers while not stopping piracy. Even worse, content owners/providers have to pay money to license DRM technology. It is a lose-lose scenario.
The CEO of Warner Brothers at the time predicted iTunes would fail, because no one would willingly pay for digital content. He compared it to Coca Cola coming out of the faucet for free, so why would someone willingly pay for a Coke?
As it turns out, people do like supporting things they enjoy, and iTunes is the largest retailer of music on the planet. Frankly, I think Apple has enough clout that they could make a difference here. They successfully sell DRM-free music. They need to publicly make the argument for why DRM is a broken concept so that the big players finally listen.
The MPAA/RIAA won't listen to Google because they think Google is the devil.
For what it is worth, iOS devices aren't always fast and snappy. I wait on my iPhone to respond all the time.
Tablets aren't carried around in pockets in most cases. A tenth of an inch in thickness shouldn't even mean anything to anyone.
I wipe my iPhone several times a day to remove fingerprints. Supposedly it is finger print resistant but I just don't see it. If the feature worked as advertised, I'd consider it a plus.
Amazon created a tablet that is primarily there to digest media. You can listen to music, watch movies, read books and surf the web. I think that covers most use cases for most people. The iPad2 does have more features, but is a camera worth an extra $300 when you have a camera in your phone?
I have a web server hosted in location X. My ISP is company Y. I transport data to people hitting the site all using different ISPs. That data is carried by several different companies. They are very much covered under the definition of common carriers.
Telephone companies were considered common carriers. ISPs have fought back against being branded common carriers, but they aren't any different in principle to phone companies. The FCC hasn't gone out of their way to rule definitively on the matter, only vaguely determining that telecommunication companies can be considered common carriers.
The net neutrality debate could be made considerably simpler if the FCC would outright call all American ISPs common carriers.
I don't think that has as much to do with the Linux kernel so much as that Android is based on Java. And large chunks of Android (along with 99% of the apps) don't use hardware acceleration. Google wouldn't allow it initially due to differences in hardware.
Now most everyone is using one of two types of GPU in all Android devices, and hopefully the software stack starts to take advantage.
The iPhone 4S takes full advantage of offloading all UI rendering to the GPU, which makes it seem snappy and responsive.
Amazon wrote a fairly customized version of Android here, so it is their own fault if they didn't take advantage of the GPU.
Linux distros distribute over BitTorrent, along with some legal movie services, and some game updates. If I'm not mistaken, WoW distributes their large patches with BT.
It is probably fair to say the majority of BT traffic is used for piracy, but not all is. And either way, a common carrier is supposed to treat all traffic as equal. Admitting to policing the data on their network is actually bad, because it then opens them up to liability for anything illegal they don't police.
They're supposed to treat all traffic as equal, and yet they don't. ISPs have been caught lying to the government and to consumers about specifically throttling traffic from BitTorrent, Netflix and online games.
Telcos like to cry about heavy users, but at the same time they brag about the capabilities of their service. Just don't try to use the service as they've advertised it.
Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all advertise that you can watch streaming video over their data networks, but then cap data and cry foul because people want to stream video. AT&T ran an ad campaign about the original iPad launch and how you could watch video over their network on the iPad, and then two weeks after the iPad launch they ended unlimited data because they didn't realize people would stream video over the network.
ISPs brag how fast their network is, and talk about downloading large files, streaming video and playing games. But God forbid you want to do any of those things with the service you're paying for.
These companies are subsidized by my tax dollars to build infrastructure. They charge more for less service than their counterparts around the globe. They advertise a service and then complain when people buy and want to use the service.
And while people would scream foul if Google got into the ISP business (despite allowing a Comcast/NBC/Universal merger) frankly I would welcome some competition.
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Agassi said he isn't going out of his way to protect the model, because he doesn't care about wealth. He just wants to end dependence on oil. He was outright asked about other people running with his idea, and he endorses it. I'm not sure he is going to make the battery or charger so proprietary that a competitor couldn't support it.
You may doubt the sincerity of such sentiments, but he turned down massive personal wealth at SAP to pursue this dream.
Yes. Existing business models still don't work even with better batteries. Most require you to charge your car at home. You're still limited to the distance from your home, and if you run out unexpectedly, then it takes hours to charge. Not to mention your home electric bill goes through the roof.
A combination if improved battery technology plus Better Place's business model makes this feasible on the whole.
That is why this is being deployed first in places where the population is dense and people don't drive that far. Infrastructure is much easier to build there. Eventually you expand such infrastructure to more remote places.
And the actual parent article is talking about how advances in battery technology mitigate this problem. Pretty soon a smaller battery will actually take you farther.
Gas is relatively cheaper in the United States than England. The last time I traveled to England, gas was something like $3/gallon in the United States and the equivalent (pounds and litre conversion) to $7/gallon in England.
Filling up a sedan with a 14 gallon tank for $50 isn't unreasonable in the United States. That being said, it isn't fair to say that a fill up costs $5000.
The battery on hand might cost that, but the fueling station isn't paying $5000 each time they swap a battery. And keeping several of these batteries on hand is a one-time fixed cost. A gas/petrol station pays daily to have their fuel tanks filled. I actually managed a gas/petrol station while in between IT jobs. Giant tanker trunks have to drive the fuel to each station, which is horribly inefficient and costly.
I haven't seen the Better Place design, but they could use underground conveyors. The batteries aren't just sitting around where they can be stolen. The conveyor moves the battery underground to the robotic arm that swaps it at your car. It wouldn't be vastly different from how gas/petrol stations store all their gas underground.
It might be 15-20 years before we see this everywhere, but the key point is that this model can work and it is already being deployed in places.
The first battery swapping station in Israel opened in March of 2011. It is already there.
Except I do believe the stations have been designed, and are currently being built. The first charging locations were installed in 2008, and last I heard they are supposed to roll out cars and finished battery swapping stations next year.
That can't be true because Quake 3 wasn't published by Zenimax and I know Urban Terror HD is now an officially licensee of the Quake 3 engine.
I think you've flipped it around. Zenimax will license the old engines, but won't license the current engine as they consider it a competitive advantage.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29886/id_Tech_5_Rage_Engine_No_Longer_Up_For_External_Licensing.php
However, official licenses have nothing to do with open sourcing the old engines. And I saw multiple news stories that Bethesda/Zenimax would not allow iD to continue giving engines away for free.
Last time I checked, this company was rolling out in select places like Denmark, Israel and Hawaii. It is easier to roll out initially in places with dense populations, and harder to roll out when the population is spread out. Once the model is proven to work, I expect it to spread.
This is a must read article on the subject. Electric cars fail because batteries are too expensive, and because they required infrastructure of charging stations. This company however solves both these problems. You make an electric car without the battery, which is cheaper than a standard car and more reliable to boot. Then this company leases you a battery, which costs less per month than gas. And they handle the infrastructure, which includes stations that swap your battery out for a fully charged one. You never wait to charge your battery, and they can swap it out since you don't own it.
http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi?currentPage=all
Part of this model is the assumption that battery technology still moves along rapidly. So the company can phase in newer, better batteries and you aren't tied to a battery you purchased when you bought your car.
Not to mention that I thought when Bethesda/Zenimax bought out iD, they said iD would never again release an engine as open source.
I suspect that Carmack has had to fight considerably to make this happen.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/entries/icons/original/000/005/848/ancient-aliens.jpg?1315110108
Yes, do they have the right, legally and morally. Their creation is their creation. They may give it out freely in the public domain, or under creative commons. Or they may pursue revenue from their creation.
The RIAA and MPAA are a bunch of douchebags, but that doesn't mean that content creators don't have the right to monetize their creation if they choose.
Since you brought up entitlement, people who think they are entitled to content for free are equally douchebags.
If only one person is buying a copy, then retailers won't keep it in stock.
That economic model wouldn't work today. Most new artists wouldn't be able to make much money from one public showing. And as evil as the record industry is, they do pay for the expensive/elaborate tours.
I think you can make the argument to shorten copyright, but I think instead of setting a hard/fast length of years, a simpler solution would be an abandonware system.
5 years from the date of the last retail sale, the content enters the public domain. So long as people are still buying the item (such as the Beatles catalog) the market has determined the item has financial value. If no one has purchased a Rick Astley song for 5 years, then it should enter the public domain.
Content owners do have a right to make money from their content.
But the argument for DRM is a poor one. It punishes paying customers while not stopping piracy. Even worse, content owners/providers have to pay money to license DRM technology. It is a lose-lose scenario.
The CEO of Warner Brothers at the time predicted iTunes would fail, because no one would willingly pay for digital content. He compared it to Coca Cola coming out of the faucet for free, so why would someone willingly pay for a Coke?
As it turns out, people do like supporting things they enjoy, and iTunes is the largest retailer of music on the planet. Frankly, I think Apple has enough clout that they could make a difference here. They successfully sell DRM-free music. They need to publicly make the argument for why DRM is a broken concept so that the big players finally listen.
The MPAA/RIAA won't listen to Google because they think Google is the devil.
I don't believe any court has ruled on the matter. And as the law is written, they would be easily covered by the definition.
Please show me where the FCC or any major court has ruled definitively that they are not.
For what it is worth, iOS devices aren't always fast and snappy. I wait on my iPhone to respond all the time.
Tablets aren't carried around in pockets in most cases. A tenth of an inch in thickness shouldn't even mean anything to anyone.
I wipe my iPhone several times a day to remove fingerprints. Supposedly it is finger print resistant but I just don't see it. If the feature worked as advertised, I'd consider it a plus.
Amazon created a tablet that is primarily there to digest media. You can listen to music, watch movies, read books and surf the web. I think that covers most use cases for most people. The iPad2 does have more features, but is a camera worth an extra $300 when you have a camera in your phone?
I have a web server hosted in location X. My ISP is company Y. I transport data to people hitting the site all using different ISPs. That data is carried by several different companies. They are very much covered under the definition of common carriers.
Telephone companies were considered common carriers. ISPs have fought back against being branded common carriers, but they aren't any different in principle to phone companies. The FCC hasn't gone out of their way to rule definitively on the matter, only vaguely determining that telecommunication companies can be considered common carriers.
The net neutrality debate could be made considerably simpler if the FCC would outright call all American ISPs common carriers.
I don't think that has as much to do with the Linux kernel so much as that Android is based on Java. And large chunks of Android (along with 99% of the apps) don't use hardware acceleration. Google wouldn't allow it initially due to differences in hardware.
Now most everyone is using one of two types of GPU in all Android devices, and hopefully the software stack starts to take advantage.
The iPhone 4S takes full advantage of offloading all UI rendering to the GPU, which makes it seem snappy and responsive.
Amazon wrote a fairly customized version of Android here, so it is their own fault if they didn't take advantage of the GPU.
Are they suggesting a $500 item might be better than a $200 item? I'm shocked!
The fact that a $200 item is competitive feature wise with a $500 item should make it the better value, no?
Linux distros distribute over BitTorrent, along with some legal movie services, and some game updates. If I'm not mistaken, WoW distributes their large patches with BT.
It is probably fair to say the majority of BT traffic is used for piracy, but not all is. And either way, a common carrier is supposed to treat all traffic as equal. Admitting to policing the data on their network is actually bad, because it then opens them up to liability for anything illegal they don't police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
They're supposed to treat all traffic as equal, and yet they don't. ISPs have been caught lying to the government and to consumers about specifically throttling traffic from BitTorrent, Netflix and online games.
Telcos like to cry about heavy users, but at the same time they brag about the capabilities of their service. Just don't try to use the service as they've advertised it.
Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all advertise that you can watch streaming video over their data networks, but then cap data and cry foul because people want to stream video. AT&T ran an ad campaign about the original iPad launch and how you could watch video over their network on the iPad, and then two weeks after the iPad launch they ended unlimited data because they didn't realize people would stream video over the network.
ISPs brag how fast their network is, and talk about downloading large files, streaming video and playing games. But God forbid you want to do any of those things with the service you're paying for.
These companies are subsidized by my tax dollars to build infrastructure. They charge more for less service than their counterparts around the globe. They advertise a service and then complain when people buy and want to use the service.
And while people would scream foul if Google got into the ISP business (despite allowing a Comcast/NBC/Universal merger) frankly I would welcome some competition.
My evidence isn't anecdotal.
There are hundreds and thousands of documented bugs in the final, patched versions of their past 4 games.
Arena and Daggerfall were also legendary for their bugs. I posted links above.