Really pulled from your ass. Even in an inner city, assuming you have to pay for parking at one end and work pays at the other, a car won't cost more than 250 a month in maintenance, parking, and fuel. Less if you own the parking spot. Busing will still cost about 100 a month. And that may be overestimating- it really depends on fuel costs, I get to and from on 1 gallon/day and own my spot, so the difference is about 50 bucks. Yup, I have no problem paying that- it'd be worth it at 10 times that.
You're kidding right? Have you done the numbers yourself, or are you also pulling figures from the same place I did? (Well, not the _same_ place, since I'll assume you pulled them from your ass, and I pulled from mine:) )
If you live in the inner city, look at: $100/mo for insurance (+/-) $100-200/mo for parking (more if you're in Manhattan). Inner city is a bad example for fuel, but a good guestimate would be $25/mo for a very short commute. Average commute probably ranges from 10-30 miles each way, so 200-600 miles per month @ (very generously) 30 mi/gal == 6-20 gal or roughly $25-$80/mo. Actual figures are probably more like $50-$200.mo. Car payment (lease) say $300/mo. Car payment (purchased) say $150/mo factoring in life of vehicle. Maintenance say $50/mo over life of car (again, on the low side).
So, realistically, you're looking at $600 per month.
Now look at mass transit. I was paying $320/mo for railpass and subway card. Add in $150/mo for car rental for weekend trips, and it's still better than owning a car. Never mind the fact that parking would have cost me $500 for both sides, plus tolls.
OK, so NY is an extreme. But you are severely underestimating the cost of owning and operating a car.
- How would "refilling stations" store the massive number of batteries needed to support such rapid changeout procedures?
The same way they store liquid fuel -- in a storage container designed for the purpose.
How would these stations charge the batteries quickly enough for a fast turnaround?
That's a question of inventory on hand. See my answer to your first objection.
Batteries -- especially Li-Ion ones -- begin to degrade as soon as they're manufactured, usually losing 40% or more of their charge capacity in 18-24 months. How is a station going to deal with customers dropping off old battery packs and picking up new ones?
By factoring in the replacement cost into their pricing, either on a blanket basis, or by assessing a surcharge based upon battery age.
How is the station going to physically handle the battery packs? Lead-acid cells are cheap and sturdy but heavy as...well, lead. Not to mention the environmental concerns.
Pneumatic lifts? Hydraulic lifts? There is plenty of mechanical assistance available for lifting heavy objects. As for environmental concerns, how do garages cope with the same wrt engine coolant, petrol, motor oil, transmission fluid, etc?
It may, in fact, actually harm the environment if we (meaning the U.S.) turn to our most abundant power-producing resource (coal) to provide the needed power.
Who says we need to use coal? Maybe as a stop-gap, but nuclear and renewables are good options in the future. Especially if we reduce our wasteful need for so many vehicles. I know you mention the nuke-blockers, but most of the hard-core anti-nuke reactionaries are getting old, and I firmly believe that a massive information campaign could be successful in swaying the enough people.
In short, every problem has a solution, and while the economics need to be worked out, it sure seems to me that you're an obstructionist and would rather look at the problems and say, "Why bother?" than look at the problems and say "How can that be solved?".
I personally believe that electric cars are part of the solution in the long run, but in the short-to-medium term, we've got to work on alternative fuels that can make use of the existing infrastructure (with modifications).
'It's the collection of individuals' information, usually without their knowledge, always without their consent, creation of profiles and the complete inability of people to make choices about that.'
Hey, guess what... if a partner in a two-way correspondence chooses to share details of that correspondence, that's their choice (i.e., don't give private info to someone you don't trust). If you choose not to make safe your correspondence from third parties via encryption, that's your problem.
I'm willing to risk some troll or flamebait mods here to make a point:
No correspondence should ever be considered absolutley private. The same tools that allow data aggregation by companies like Google and ISPs give us better access to information and (arguably) a better quality of life. You have to take the bad with the good.
Creation of profiles allow vendors to serve us better. They allow better targeting of ads so we're not bombarded with ads for things we have no interest in (ok, in theory. In practice, this needs further work). They allow people and businesses to target our needs better, so it's easier for me to find what I'm looking for.
As long as we have the ability to anonymize and encrypt our traffic (which isn't a given), I have no problem with profiling. Those who want to opt out can do so easily... and if there is enough demand for it, there will be off-the-shelf tools for joe sixpack to do so.
So my point is this: Allow us to anonymize our traffic. Allow us to encrypt our traffic. Then you can go ahead and profile all you want.
Then you're riding the wrong bus. I've had plenty of fun bus and train rides. It's liberating to not have to drive on your commute -- you can get some work done, read, play a game, or nap. Hell, I've met girls on the bus... real live ones! And gone out on dates with them!
The problem here is that other than the 'freedom' issue, your main complaint about mass transit seems to be the other riders. If mass transit is widely adopted, that problem goes away, since almost all riders will be 'normal' people.
The best option, from my perspective, is a massive mass-transit system, and when you want to get away or say 'fuck it' and go on a road trip, you rent a car. Works great for dozens of people I know in the NYC area.
Yes, this only works for urban for densely suburban areas. But you'd be really surprised how liberating it is to *not* depend on a car for transportation. But if you really want to, you can keep on believing that it's worth it to keep spending 5-10% of your monthly income on a car, fuel, insurance, maintenance, etc. (number pulled out of my ass, of course YMMV).
I've seen it proposed many times, here's the solution:
You pull into a gas station and they swap out your battery for a completely charged one.
You drive away and they recharge the battery.
Problem solved.
Of course, there are a few issues to be worked out, like standardization of batteries (or being dependent on a single chain for swaps), liability for defective/damaged batteries, etc.
Then it will be up to economics (with a "graceful" nudge from subsidies and taxes) to determine what consumers put in their tanks... the point is that petrofuels will not be required.
Seriously, I fail to see what the problem is... what exactly would you want Mercedes to do instead? Make power trains that will get all borked up if someone tries to use petrol? That's a great way to make sure no one buys their product.
I think that fuel flexibility is one of the answers. When the cars support multiple fuel streams, it allows for a gradual infrastructure and production change to biofuels (or eletric-only vehicles, etc). One of the big issues with changing to alternate fuel- and power supplies is that it requires wholesale change of the delivery infrastructure and production capabilities. Cars that run on petro-fuels and bio-fuls help bridge the gap.
What is currently happening is that we have a crapload of unused dark fiber, so our tubes are constipated. You can't drive a truck down a constipated tube.
What we need to do is use more of the dark fiber. This will enable us to flush the tubes regularly, thereby freeing up the capacity for more youtube video downloads, AKA shit.
What part of "idle.slashdot.org" is giving you problems? You should trust the editors when they say you should nev er go there...posted to idle... then firehosed up... why don't you frequent the firehose and give a thumbs-down to articles like this so they are less likely to get posted to the frontpage?
How many times do we have to see this tripe modded informative?
A US corporation does NOT have to put shareholder interest #1 by law. A US corporation is free to act against shareholder interest as established in the corporate charter. Plenty of "green" corporations have clauses about environmental responsibility in their charter that are detrimental to the profit interests of thre shareholders, yet this is not illegal.
Futhermore, it is not illegal to act against the interests of the shareholders. It can result in a civil liability to be decided in a tort case, but it is not against the law.
Lots of things matter but customers, employees, partners, etc all play...
What do you think a partner is? It's an owner. It's obvious to me that you have *NO* idea wat you're talking about.
As for customers, employees, etc being second or third fiddle to owners, most ownership knows that investing the right amount into customer and employee relationships literally pays dividends (for dividend-paying stocks:)). Serving the shareholder (owner) means serving the customers and employees, within reason. Note that sharholder == owner.
There are lots of problems with how joint-stock corporations operate, and I agree that things would be much nicer if they changed... but when owners demand crap, their companies produce crap. The problem is not really with the corporations' structure, the problem is with the owners (shareholders) of the corporations.
Rant as you will against corporations, it's people who make the decisions, the same as with any business.
As the genetic blueprint of all life forms, DNA uses the same set of four basic building blocks, known as bases, to code for a variety of proteins used in cell functioning and development.
This isn't quite true. DNA is the genetic blueprint for all cellular lifeforms. There are RNA viruses, there are prions... neither of which use DNA as their genetic blueprints.
And to get really nitpick-y, it's incorrect to say that DNA uses the same set of four building blocks. It would be "more" correct to say that DNA uses a set of four building blocks. I mean, it'd be rather ridiculous if every lifeform on the planet had to share just four molecules.
But, it's not as if we should expect an article geared towards an ignorant public to be completely accurate... the gist was captured.
Anyway, I think I just managed to pedantically get "the Mondays" out of my system... sorry for the rant.
I see your point, but I think there are a couple things that might make you question the logic.
One is that IP is not standalone; that is, you can't look only at the gains and losses re: IP wrt international trade. If a country violates a trade treaty with another country, pretty much all trade treaties with the respective country are void (to the extent of the damage caused by the first violation). See Antigua vs US, WTO decision made in 2007. Unfair trade practices re: gambling by the US means that Antigua can seek redress by violating their trade treaties with the US (such as their IP recognition treaty).
Second is that individual organisations (businesses, etc) can easily be negatively affected by decisions that seem to make sense for the economy. It is hard to say whether France, for instance, would take action re: IP that would effectively kill certain industries, in exchange for free access to US IP. This is especially important because if France-US IP relations deteriorate, anyone wanting French IP will simply buy it from US companies for much cheaper.
The idea is to increase the size of the pie -- make sure IP is honored everywhere, so everyone can partake (hopefully profitably).
As for import/export being zero-sum, that is false. If it were zero-sum, we wouldn't have nearly so much currency fluctuation. Valuation of currency is not fixed. E.G. the importer of a product may value the product at $x USD, while the exporter may value it at $y USD... and in their native currencies, the amounts may be different once again.
No trade is zero-sum; this includes import-export balances.
There is plenty of IP coming from non-US countries. And given the smaller size of those countries' domestic markets, they need piracy protection in order to have anywhere near the volume US companies can capture in their domestic market.
For your example of France, you can't just look at France-US trade, you need to look at the global market for French IP. France needs the US's help (just as the US needs France's help) in ensuring that the IP of their companies is respected worldwide. If you take away the global market for French IP, it becomes an ugly picture for companies whose IP are their major source of revenue.
IOW, this is not about countries within the G8 (or even G13) supporting IP within their ranks -- this is about the G8 enforcing its view of IP on the entire world, and making sure the most economically powerful countries are all on board.
There are plenty of other ways to run phone line than across the floor, any decent home improvement book can give suggestions. In a dorm, you're kind of screwed because of the floors... but in a home you can run in the floor subspace, you can run under the floor trim, you can run inside the wall, you can run above the ceiling...
Hence the growing influence of the G8+5 (or G13), and the proposal to add U5 (a rotating group of 5 underdeveloped countries). There has been a lot of discussion about decreasing the time the G8 meets in order to increase the time the G13 meets.
For a long time my (80-something) parents were quite happy with dial-up. And they basically didn't use the Net. To access the Internet they had to run a phone extension lead across the room
The other alternative would have been to split the line and give them two jacks...
Slashdot Mirror
And why should you care, if your traffic is anonymized and your personal information, when needed, encrypted?
You're kidding right? Have you done the numbers yourself, or are you also pulling figures from the same place I did? (Well, not the _same_ place, since I'll assume you pulled them from your ass, and I pulled from mine :) )
If you live in the inner city, look at:
$100/mo for insurance (+/-)
$100-200/mo for parking (more if you're in Manhattan).
Inner city is a bad example for fuel, but a good guestimate would be $25/mo for a very short commute. Average commute probably ranges from 10-30 miles each way, so 200-600 miles per month @ (very generously) 30 mi/gal == 6-20 gal or roughly $25-$80/mo. Actual figures are probably more like $50-$200.mo.
Car payment (lease) say $300/mo. Car payment (purchased) say $150/mo factoring in life of vehicle. Maintenance say $50/mo over life of car (again, on the low side).
So, realistically, you're looking at $600 per month.
Now look at mass transit. I was paying $320/mo for railpass and subway card. Add in $150/mo for car rental for weekend trips, and it's still better than owning a car. Never mind the fact that parking would have cost me $500 for both sides, plus tolls.
OK, so NY is an extreme. But you are severely underestimating the cost of owning and operating a car.
The same way they store liquid fuel -- in a storage container designed for the purpose.
That's a question of inventory on hand. See my answer to your first objection.
By factoring in the replacement cost into their pricing, either on a blanket basis, or by assessing a surcharge based upon battery age.
Pneumatic lifts? Hydraulic lifts? There is plenty of mechanical assistance available for lifting heavy objects. As for environmental concerns, how do garages cope with the same wrt engine coolant, petrol, motor oil, transmission fluid, etc?
Who says we need to use coal? Maybe as a stop-gap, but nuclear and renewables are good options in the future. Especially if we reduce our wasteful need for so many vehicles. I know you mention the nuke-blockers, but most of the hard-core anti-nuke reactionaries are getting old, and I firmly believe that a massive information campaign could be successful in swaying the enough people.
In short, every problem has a solution, and while the economics need to be worked out, it sure seems to me that you're an obstructionist and would rather look at the problems and say, "Why bother?" than look at the problems and say "How can that be solved?".
I personally believe that electric cars are part of the solution in the long run, but in the short-to-medium term, we've got to work on alternative fuels that can make use of the existing infrastructure (with modifications).
Hey, guess what... if a partner in a two-way correspondence chooses to share details of that correspondence, that's their choice (i.e., don't give private info to someone you don't trust). If you choose not to make safe your correspondence from third parties via encryption, that's your problem.
I'm willing to risk some troll or flamebait mods here to make a point:
No correspondence should ever be considered absolutley private. The same tools that allow data aggregation by companies like Google and ISPs give us better access to information and (arguably) a better quality of life. You have to take the bad with the good.
Creation of profiles allow vendors to serve us better. They allow better targeting of ads so we're not bombarded with ads for things we have no interest in (ok, in theory. In practice, this needs further work). They allow people and businesses to target our needs better, so it's easier for me to find what I'm looking for.
As long as we have the ability to anonymize and encrypt our traffic (which isn't a given), I have no problem with profiling. Those who want to opt out can do so easily... and if there is enough demand for it, there will be off-the-shelf tools for joe sixpack to do so.
So my point is this: Allow us to anonymize our traffic. Allow us to encrypt our traffic. Then you can go ahead and profile all you want.
Then you're riding the wrong bus. I've had plenty of fun bus and train rides. It's liberating to not have to drive on your commute -- you can get some work done, read, play a game, or nap. Hell, I've met girls on the bus... real live ones! And gone out on dates with them!
The problem here is that other than the 'freedom' issue, your main complaint about mass transit seems to be the other riders. If mass transit is widely adopted, that problem goes away, since almost all riders will be 'normal' people.
The best option, from my perspective, is a massive mass-transit system, and when you want to get away or say 'fuck it' and go on a road trip, you rent a car. Works great for dozens of people I know in the NYC area.
Yes, this only works for urban for densely suburban areas. But you'd be really surprised how liberating it is to *not* depend on a car for transportation. But if you really want to, you can keep on believing that it's worth it to keep spending 5-10% of your monthly income on a car, fuel, insurance, maintenance, etc. (number pulled out of my ass, of course YMMV).
I've seen it proposed many times, here's the solution:
You pull into a gas station and they swap out your battery for a completely charged one.
You drive away and they recharge the battery.
Problem solved.
Of course, there are a few issues to be worked out, like standardization of batteries (or being dependent on a single chain for swaps), liability for defective/damaged batteries, etc.
And what is the problem with that?
Then it will be up to economics (with a "graceful" nudge from subsidies and taxes) to determine what consumers put in their tanks... the point is that petrofuels will not be required.
Seriously, I fail to see what the problem is... what exactly would you want Mercedes to do instead? Make power trains that will get all borked up if someone tries to use petrol? That's a great way to make sure no one buys their product.
I think that fuel flexibility is one of the answers. When the cars support multiple fuel streams, it allows for a gradual infrastructure and production change to biofuels (or eletric-only vehicles, etc). One of the big issues with changing to alternate fuel- and power supplies is that it requires wholesale change of the delivery infrastructure and production capabilities. Cars that run on petro-fuels and bio-fuls help bridge the gap.
Kind of.
In terms of absolute potential for growth, Africa and the Caribbean have more potential (per capita) since they are starting at a much lower base.
They are poised to hit their existant 'cap' on volume much sooner than the US or the EU, where there is more ark fiber that can be tapped.
Look at the freakin' section. idle.slashdot.org. Just like the article about the 400GB optical disc is hardware.slashdot.org.
If you're logged in, you can set your preferences to not display articles from idle on the frontpage.
Sure. Same as blu-ray write-to-capacity time, x25.
Unless of course you think there will be hardware to burn layers in parallel.
That's horsemanure.
Dark fiber (AKA RTB*) is what keeps you regular.
*RTB is roots, twigs, and berries
What is currently happening is that we have a crapload of unused dark fiber, so our tubes are constipated. You can't drive a truck down a constipated tube.
What we need to do is use more of the dark fiber. This will enable us to flush the tubes regularly, thereby freeing up the capacity for more youtube video downloads, AKA shit.
HTH.
What part of "idle.slashdot.org" is giving you problems? You should trust the editors when they say you should nev er go there...posted to idle... then firehosed up... why don't you frequent the firehose and give a thumbs-down to articles like this so they are less likely to get posted to the frontpage?
That's setting the bar rather high, isn't it?
Almost anything is easier than finding a good wife.
This is slashdot. You didn't need something like this to beat the Pentium dead horse... or for that matter, any dead horse.
In other words,
In Soviet Russia, floating-point arithmetic messes up Pentium
Netcraft confirms, Pentium is undead. Brainssss!
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.
Et cetera, ad infinitum.
Believe me, I agree.
But it's pretty much every week that I see someone write that corporations are legally required to think about shareholders first.
As with so many of the problems in the US today, I assign the blame to the stupidity of the mob. A person can be smart; people are stupid.
And unfortunately, I can't think of any way human nature can be fixed.
I'd surmised the same, but haven't seen any research on this... could you steer me to some good reading on the topic?
Thanks.
A US corporation does NOT have to put shareholder interest #1 by law. A US corporation is free to act against shareholder interest as established in the corporate charter. Plenty of "green" corporations have clauses about environmental responsibility in their charter that are detrimental to the profit interests of thre shareholders, yet this is not illegal.
Futhermore, it is not illegal to act against the interests of the shareholders. It can result in a civil liability to be decided in a tort case, but it is not against the law.
What do you think a partner is? It's an owner. It's obvious to me that you have *NO* idea wat you're talking about.
:)). Serving the shareholder (owner) means serving the customers and employees, within reason. Note that sharholder == owner.
As for customers, employees, etc being second or third fiddle to owners, most ownership knows that investing the right amount into customer and employee relationships literally pays dividends (for dividend-paying stocks
There are lots of problems with how joint-stock corporations operate, and I agree that things would be much nicer if they changed... but when owners demand crap, their companies produce crap. The problem is not really with the corporations' structure, the problem is with the owners (shareholders) of the corporations.
Rant as you will against corporations, it's people who make the decisions, the same as with any business.
That's still a topic of debate, wrt viruses especially.
This isn't quite true. DNA is the genetic blueprint for all cellular lifeforms. There are RNA viruses, there are prions... neither of which use DNA as their genetic blueprints.
And to get really nitpick-y, it's incorrect to say that DNA uses the same set of four building blocks. It would be "more" correct to say that DNA uses a set of four building blocks. I mean, it'd be rather ridiculous if every lifeform on the planet had to share just four molecules.
But, it's not as if we should expect an article geared towards an ignorant public to be completely accurate... the gist was captured.
Anyway, I think I just managed to pedantically get "the Mondays" out of my system... sorry for the rant.
I see your point, but I think there are a couple things that might make you question the logic.
One is that IP is not standalone; that is, you can't look only at the gains and losses re: IP wrt international trade. If a country violates a trade treaty with another country, pretty much all trade treaties with the respective country are void (to the extent of the damage caused by the first violation). See Antigua vs US, WTO decision made in 2007. Unfair trade practices re: gambling by the US means that Antigua can seek redress by violating their trade treaties with the US (such as their IP recognition treaty).
Second is that individual organisations (businesses, etc) can easily be negatively affected by decisions that seem to make sense for the economy. It is hard to say whether France, for instance, would take action re: IP that would effectively kill certain industries, in exchange for free access to US IP. This is especially important because if France-US IP relations deteriorate, anyone wanting French IP will simply buy it from US companies for much cheaper.
The idea is to increase the size of the pie -- make sure IP is honored everywhere, so everyone can partake (hopefully profitably).
As for import/export being zero-sum, that is false. If it were zero-sum, we wouldn't have nearly so much currency fluctuation. Valuation of currency is not fixed. E.G. the importer of a product may value the product at $x USD, while the exporter may value it at $y USD... and in their native currencies, the amounts may be different once again.
No trade is zero-sum; this includes import-export balances.
There is plenty of IP coming from non-US countries. And given the smaller size of those countries' domestic markets, they need piracy protection in order to have anywhere near the volume US companies can capture in their domestic market.
For your example of France, you can't just look at France-US trade, you need to look at the global market for French IP. France needs the US's help (just as the US needs France's help) in ensuring that the IP of their companies is respected worldwide. If you take away the global market for French IP, it becomes an ugly picture for companies whose IP are their major source of revenue.
IOW, this is not about countries within the G8 (or even G13) supporting IP within their ranks -- this is about the G8 enforcing its view of IP on the entire world, and making sure the most economically powerful countries are all on board.
There are plenty of other ways to run phone line than across the floor, any decent home improvement book can give suggestions. In a dorm, you're kind of screwed because of the floors... but in a home you can run in the floor subspace, you can run under the floor trim, you can run inside the wall, you can run above the ceiling...
It's a project of a few hours, but not hard.
Hence the growing influence of the G8+5 (or G13), and the proposal to add U5 (a rotating group of 5 underdeveloped countries). There has been a lot of discussion about decreasing the time the G8 meets in order to increase the time the G13 meets.
The other alternative would have been to split the line and give them two jacks...
That's silly. Sure, you need to walk a mile to turn the page, but then you're already there and the rest of the experience is the same.
Dial-up -vs- high-speed is like reading a book with only one word printed on each page -vs- reading a porno mag with embedded videos on each page.