Others have mentioned it, but the fuel is very cold when loaded. Loading the fuel and then waiting a few hours to load the people will probably cause the fuel to warm and to expand which will change the pressure inside the fuel tanks which might things more dangerous.
Loading the people, loading the fuel, and hitting the launch button might be safer than loading the fuel, loading the people while the fuel warms and expands, and then hitting the go button. Especially if the people are inside a fireproof container with it's own durable escape system.
Keep in mind that the people in question are sitting in a fairly fireproof container with escape rockets. I mean, yeah, there's probably more risk sitting in the rocket while it's fueling than there is sitting in the rocket when the fuel has been sealed up. But as long as I can get away if something goes wrong, I'm sort of okay with it.
Hell, I wish they had free cokes. Nowadays, it's free juice and organic responsibly grown coffee. I have to buy my own cokes because they aren't healthy. "Ooh, all that caffeine and sugar isn't good for you!"
Balance is the key here. Privacy is important, but so is the efficient use of taxpayer money.
It's a good point, I'm not sure I would agree with that balance, though.
Imagine I'm cheating on my wife. I happen to be with my lover when there is a murder in the area. A couple of days later, there's a message on my phone saying, "We know you were in the area and any assistance you could give us would be helpful."
I might have a hard time explaining that it must be a police mistake because I was working late that night on the other side of town...really!
I get it that some people do need the extra ports.
Yes. They're called "Pros."
But truthfully most people don't and can work fine without it.
Most people aren't "Pros." For those people, there are options like the MacBook and MacBook Air.
If Apple wants to sell to "Pros," they need to have a MacBook that does what a Pro wants to do. That means performance--I'm fine with an extra pound of weight if it's 50% faster at rendering images, compiles, etc. I need to be able to charge it while attaching a camera and a USB dongle or external hard drive. That's the sort of thing a "Pro" might do.
I agree that my Mom isn't going to be doing something like that and there are a lot more people like my Mom than there are people like me. But taking a laptop designed for my Mom and sticking the word "Pro" at the end doesn't suddenly make it a Pro laptop.
Look, if the "Pro" market isn't big enough for Apple anymore, that's fine. Go out with your head held high and make computers for my Mom. I'm sure she'll love them.
True. With them being autonomous, I'm not too worried about them running into each other up there. Don't necessarily need ATC...
But they have to land somewhere. Unless you're figuring that the pretty girl in the tight dress and heels or the guy in a nice suit and oxfords is going to rappel out?
LA used to have a rule about having to have a helicopter pad on the roof of tall buildings so that, in the event of a fire, people could be evacuated from the roof. Of course, it (a) didn't really work too well when they tried to use it in a fire and (b) promoted the creation of lots of ugly square buildings.
It becomes a chicken-or-egg thing. Why create landing spaces when these things don't exist and why build these things if there's no place to land them?
1) Safety -- If a car breaks down / runs out of fuel while in use, it rolls to a stop. If a flying object breaks down / runs out of fuel in use, it crashes.
Uh, runs out of fuel? I don't know how they'll fuel these things, but that's quite easily dealt with for a taxi service. Also, since we're talking about an "autonomous vehicle", it'll go get gas when it needs to. It's not like I have to remember to pull into the local Exxon station...
Also, we have helicopters flying around. While they do crash on occasion, it's not what I would call a common occurrence. And you can make the same complaint with airplanes--yet lots of people still prefer flying over driving.
2) Price -- To reduce risk associated with problem #1, you can't cut corners or make things cheaply.
While I don't entirely disagree, I do agree that you have to make things durable. Again, think "taxi." Ideally, these things are going to spending most of their time running around picking people up.
For example, I'm going to buy one of these "flying cars" to get me to work. When I get to work, I'll assign it as a taxi and have it help pay for itself running around and picking up people. A little before I finish with work, I'll tell the car to come get me after it's done with whatever passengers it's carrying. It'll come back, pick me up, and take me home. I may hold onto it for the rest of the evening or I may tell it to go be a taxi until morning.
I lost a bag on a JetBlue flight to Oakland because I checked the bag but ended up missing my flight. I caught the next flight and when I arrived in Oakland, my bag was nowhere to be found.
I thought they instituted a rule that your bags had to be on the same flight as you. The concept being that you couldn't check your bag full of explosives and then wander away from the airport. You had to be dedicated enough to die for your cause...
I have used linux for twenty years. Slackware on 24 floppies, hours to install and then I had to add a floating point coprocessor, more RAM and a cache module. Cool. Worked like a dream after that. Satisfies just about all my computer needs.
Unfortunately, it won't keep those damn kids off your lawn!
Jobs quit. He was not fired. However, after trying to have Scully fired, the board basically made him Senior Chief Executive Director In Charge of Nothing (i.e., a nice title but no real power or control over anything.) So after spending a few months getting his ducks in a row, he quit and started NeXT, taking various Apple employees with him and entering "the workstation market."
Q1 2017 (Oct-Dec 2016 for reasons only known to accountants)
A couple of reasons I can imagine:
End-of-fiscal-year means lots of work--more so than end-of-quarter. Not doing this during the holiday season isn't a bad thing for your accounting department.
Apple makes most of it's money during the holiday season--people buying computers, phones, watches, gizmos, gadgets, etc. So if a good chunk of your annual revenue comes in one quarter, it can be best to lead off with that quarter in the fiscal year because it will probably give you a better feel for what sort of revenue you can expect for the rest of the year.
When everyone was making mix-CDs, Apple created iMovie and desktop video was going to be the next big thing. Unfortunately, it didn't work out all that well. That's when Apple jumped into music.
Esc has always been the equivalent of Cancel on MacOS [...]
I'm not so sure about that. Command-Period was the equivalent of cancel on MacOS. Heck, Macintosh and Macintosh Plus didn't have escape keys. It wasn't until the ADB keyboards came along that Macs had a keyboard with an escape key.
Slashdot Mirror
Others have mentioned it, but the fuel is very cold when loaded. Loading the fuel and then waiting a few hours to load the people will probably cause the fuel to warm and to expand which will change the pressure inside the fuel tanks which might things more dangerous.
Loading the people, loading the fuel, and hitting the launch button might be safer than loading the fuel, loading the people while the fuel warms and expands, and then hitting the go button. Especially if the people are inside a fireproof container with it's own durable escape system.
Keep in mind that the people in question are sitting in a fairly fireproof container with escape rockets. I mean, yeah, there's probably more risk sitting in the rocket while it's fueling than there is sitting in the rocket when the fuel has been sealed up. But as long as I can get away if something goes wrong, I'm sort of okay with it.
And they'll build Version 2. And you'll break it.
And they'll build Version 3. And you'll break it.
And ...
If Monty Python is truly our guide, version 4 will be the winner.
"free cokes".
Hell, I wish they had free cokes. Nowadays, it's free juice and organic responsibly grown coffee. I have to buy my own cokes because they aren't healthy. "Ooh, all that caffeine and sugar isn't good for you!"
Balance is the key here. Privacy is important, but so is the efficient use of taxpayer money.
It's a good point, I'm not sure I would agree with that balance, though.
Imagine I'm cheating on my wife. I happen to be with my lover when there is a murder in the area. A couple of days later, there's a message on my phone saying, "We know you were in the area and any assistance you could give us would be helpful."
I might have a hard time explaining that it must be a police mistake because I was working late that night on the other side of town...really!
Look, who wants 26% atmospheric oxygen? More air to breathe? Who wants that?
I dunno. You also get worse wildfires. Add that to the drought and there could be even bigger trouble.
I get it that some people do need the extra ports.
Yes. They're called "Pros."
But truthfully most people don't and can work fine without it.
Most people aren't "Pros." For those people, there are options like the MacBook and MacBook Air.
If Apple wants to sell to "Pros," they need to have a MacBook that does what a Pro wants to do. That means performance--I'm fine with an extra pound of weight if it's 50% faster at rendering images, compiles, etc. I need to be able to charge it while attaching a camera and a USB dongle or external hard drive. That's the sort of thing a "Pro" might do.
I agree that my Mom isn't going to be doing something like that and there are a lot more people like my Mom than there are people like me. But taking a laptop designed for my Mom and sticking the word "Pro" at the end doesn't suddenly make it a Pro laptop.
Look, if the "Pro" market isn't big enough for Apple anymore, that's fine. Go out with your head held high and make computers for my Mom. I'm sure she'll love them.
3) The whole sky is the infrastructure
True. With them being autonomous, I'm not too worried about them running into each other up there. Don't necessarily need ATC...
But they have to land somewhere. Unless you're figuring that the pretty girl in the tight dress and heels or the guy in a nice suit and oxfords is going to rappel out?
LA used to have a rule about having to have a helicopter pad on the roof of tall buildings so that, in the event of a fire, people could be evacuated from the roof. Of course, it (a) didn't really work too well when they tried to use it in a fire and (b) promoted the creation of lots of ugly square buildings.
It becomes a chicken-or-egg thing. Why create landing spaces when these things don't exist and why build these things if there's no place to land them?
1) Safety -- If a car breaks down / runs out of fuel while in use, it rolls to a stop. If a flying object breaks down / runs out of fuel in use, it crashes.
Uh, runs out of fuel? I don't know how they'll fuel these things, but that's quite easily dealt with for a taxi service. Also, since we're talking about an "autonomous vehicle", it'll go get gas when it needs to. It's not like I have to remember to pull into the local Exxon station...
Also, we have helicopters flying around. While they do crash on occasion, it's not what I would call a common occurrence. And you can make the same complaint with airplanes--yet lots of people still prefer flying over driving.
2) Price -- To reduce risk associated with problem #1, you can't cut corners or make things cheaply.
While I don't entirely disagree, I do agree that you have to make things durable. Again, think "taxi." Ideally, these things are going to spending most of their time running around picking people up.
For example, I'm going to buy one of these "flying cars" to get me to work. When I get to work, I'll assign it as a taxi and have it help pay for itself running around and picking up people. A little before I finish with work, I'll tell the car to come get me after it's done with whatever passengers it's carrying. It'll come back, pick me up, and take me home. I may hold onto it for the rest of the evening or I may tell it to go be a taxi until morning.
Actually, I've wondered about this...
I lost a bag on a JetBlue flight to Oakland because I checked the bag but ended up missing my flight. I caught the next flight and when I arrived in Oakland, my bag was nowhere to be found.
I thought they instituted a rule that your bags had to be on the same flight as you. The concept being that you couldn't check your bag full of explosives and then wander away from the airport. You had to be dedicated enough to die for your cause...
Whatever happened to that?
The U.S. were once pioneers of wind power(4) in size not only in space [...]
I would think that wind turbines wouldn't work very well in space...
Thanks for the footnote explaining it.
Remember that reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Reaching the 35 yard line has no value in itself [...]
Unless you have a decent field goal kicker.
But, from the look of last weekend's games, that seems to be becoming a rarity.
I have used linux for twenty years. Slackware on 24 floppies, hours to install and then I had to add a floating point coprocessor, more RAM and a cache module. Cool. Worked like a dream after that. Satisfies just about all my computer needs.
Unfortunately, it won't keep those damn kids off your lawn!
Well, that's sort of true.
Jobs quit. He was not fired. However, after trying to have Scully fired, the board basically made him Senior Chief Executive Director In Charge of Nothing (i.e., a nice title but no real power or control over anything.) So after spending a few months getting his ducks in a row, he quit and started NeXT, taking various Apple employees with him and entering "the workstation market."
Q1 2017 (Oct-Dec 2016 for reasons only known to accountants)
A couple of reasons I can imagine:
Actually, I'll add another one: iMac DV.
When everyone was making mix-CDs, Apple created iMovie and desktop video was going to be the next big thing. Unfortunately, it didn't work out all that well. That's when Apple jumped into music.
Esc has always been the equivalent of Cancel on MacOS [...]
I'm not so sure about that. Command-Period was the equivalent of cancel on MacOS. Heck, Macintosh and Macintosh Plus didn't have escape keys. It wasn't until the ADB keyboards came along that Macs had a keyboard with an escape key.
Actually, maybe we should just start extracting water from people...
I did that years ago...
Actually, I think we've been pretty successful in landing.
Successes:
Failures:
Too soon.
No they do not.
Have they landed on Mars? No they have not.
See a connection?
I was thinking that it was, like, 17 seconds of "Wheeeeeeeee!" followed by two seconds of "OH SHIT!"
I came here to facetiously post this as well.
"And the one time we used metric and imperial units? Massive failure.
It's that damn metric system, I tell ya! It makes people think that math is easy!"