At what point did I say that I would somehow become grand master of the universe and dictate the way people will live?
I just said that I hope gas prices go up so that Americans will be forced to change their lifestyles for what will inevitably be the better.
It's going to happen, and I am going to enjoy watching it unfold. I have no sympathy for selfish fatasses or the stupid choices they make that will inevitably bite them in the long run. You can call that elitist, which I am sure you will, but I don't really care.
I do believe that crap. I also believe that there is a middle ground between rampant consumerism and abject poverty that is better than both. So you can keep your false dilemma logical fallacies to yourself - thanks!
No, they'll just have to ride their bicycles to work every other day and the other days drive a more fuel-efficient car. In the process they'll lose weight and live longer.
In the mean time, I hope the gas prices go higher. I laugh with delight when I hear people complaining about gas prices, and each time the prices go up I just wish for more. The higher they go, the more punishment is inflicted on losers who buy gas guzzling vehicles. And more importantly, the more incentive there is to move away from fossil fuels. I see no downside to higher gas prices, except that people will have a harder time affording cheap sh** at Walmart. In other words, the American "standard of living" will go down. Which really means it will go up as people get forced out of the rampant consumerism lifestyle.
"The most exciting feature is that a simple enhancement simultaneously provides significantly enhanced usability and security."
I fail to see how this idea could even *remotely* be construed as providing "significantly enhanced useability". The security aspect is at least arguable (and I actually don't buy that either), but in no way shape or form could such an idea *ever* be called "more useable." Consider:
* It takes me about a second to type a password. How long would it take me to move my mouse pointer to the appropriate spot on the screen to start my "picture" and then draw it? Wouldn't a more secure "password" require more strokes? An extra character or two in your password takes a fraction of a second to type. A couple of extra strokes in a picture would necessarily take *much* longer to complete.
* What happens if I make a stroke in the picture wrong? I can't just delete it. *Maybe* I could if I was provided some kind of eraser, and the stroke that I messed up on didn't intersect any other strokes. I've erased pen strokes with the Gimp and other such tools; it's no fun. You have to zoom way in and carefully and slowly erase all of the pixels you touched without disturbing any others. What a pain. Or maybe the password-picture input system would have a stroke-by-stroke undo kind of like the Gimp has? My god, what a complex piece of software one's password input route has just become!
* Just about every human-computer interface ever invented has the ability to take text input from the user. So typed passwords are *always* an option. Not every interface allows you do draw pictures however. How am I going to enter my SSH password (or its picture equivalent) from a VT100 terminal?
I could go on and on. This is basically a really, really stupid idea, which I think is obvious to just about everyone. This will absolutely never catch on, and never make it past this guy's thesis or whatever academic setting it came from.
True story: went on a date and had hot wings. They were good and hot, just how I like them. Didn't think anything more of it until later in the evening we were... getting to know each other better. Alot better.
Let me just say that residual capsaicin transferred to the sensitive mucous membranes of a female don't feel too good. She was out of commission with an intense burning 'down there' for about half an hour. I felt really really badly... it really killed the mood.
So my advice is: don't eat spicy food when out on a date if you think you have any chance of getting lucky...
I can personally attest to the effects of the sichuan pepper, having eaten dishes made with this pepper in the Hubei region of China. I have enjoyed hot peppers of a variety of types in many of the foods I have eaten over time and consider myself to be a real lover of hot foods. The sichuan peppers really threw me for a loop though because they are the only peppers that have ever had a numbing effect on my mouth. Sure they are hot, but not noticeably hotter than alot of other peppers; but they have a slightly peculiar secondary flavor, and a strong numbing effect.
The food in the Hubei province is really, really, REALLY good. Having travelled throughout many parts of China and enjoyed the diverse food in all the places I went, Hubei food was definitely at the top of my list. The sichuan peppers weren't the reason for that; they were OK but nothing special. It was the type of food, the zestiness of it, the really unique ingredients (beans in Chinese food? How weird!). There is a chain of Hubei food restaurants in Beijing called Jiu Tou Niau (not sure about the spelling there), which means "nine headed bird", and they are just awesome.
I ate a whole habanero once, before I knew what a habanero was, when I was in high school. My sister got it at a country club function that she was working at; they were using the very colorful habaneros for decoration. Someone told her 'don't let the guests eat these peppers, they are very hot.' Knowing how much I like spicy food, she brought one home and gave it to me. I remember it was bright orange or maybe orangish-pink. I popped it in my mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed.
The pain that followed exceeded all my expectations of how much pain one can feel in one's mouth and throat. I came very close to asking that someone take me to a hospital. However, my mom and sister were in another room so I just stood in front of the sink, involuntarily hiccupping, tears streaming down my face, and waited it out. I think I drank one or two 2 liter bottles of 7 up, but they didn't help. Eventually I recovered.
That was definitely the hottest thing I have ever eaten; and I am a real lover of spicy food, but that was too much.
I feel that the benefit of spicy food is not just the heat; it's the tendency of such food to also have alot of tang and flavor that together with a good amount of heat makes it really, really enjoyable. I think that habaneros have a really bad flavor; they don't really have a tangy and tasty flavor, they taste funky and vegetable-y, and not good. I think there is a reason that habaneros have only recently started being used in hot sauces that advertise their heat over their flavor (usually with stupid names like 'atomic bomb sauce' or 'hell's demon fire' or whatever). People who traditionally ate hot foods understood the importance of the balance of flavor and heat, whereas the gimmicky habanero sauce makers have no clue. I really don't like it when I sit down at a restaurant and the only hot sauces they have to offer are habanero sauces. I feel that it indicates a lack of understanding of hot sauces.
But if they have Tapatio on the table, or even Chalula, then I know I'm in for a good meal...
Can you elaborate on your dismissive, insulting comment please?
I personally WOULD buy OSX for my PC if they would only offer it. I am less interested in buying Apple hardware, but I might do that someday nonetheless. However, if OSX were offered for PCs now, I would certainly buy it, and triple-boot it with Linux and WinXP. Now I readily admit that people like me, who want to triple-boot Mac OS X with other operating systems, are such a small minority that it wouldn't be worth Apple's time to make Mac OS X available just to satisfy us alone. However, I would venture a guess that there are *many* people who have heard the buzz about how good Mac OS X is, especially when compared to Windows operating systems, and would be very interested in trying it out if it were only a couple-hundred-dollar piece of software, instead of a thousand-dollar-plus investment in new hardware.
So what exactly about my desire to run OSX but not buy Apple hardware makes my judgement so poor as to prohibit me from running a major corporate (as if running a major corporation in this day and age takes good judgement! - but that's beside the point)?
Please try to answer without calling me 'son' or 'kid' or any other demeaning language. Thanks!
It was the single most comprehensive, interesting, thorough, thoughtful, and worthwhile review of *any* product I have ever read, *ever*.
I personally don't care about your accusations of fanboy-ism. You are irrelevent. You did not produce an absolutely awesome review, with about as much balance and fairness as is humanly possible. The author at Ars Technica *did*, and your unfounded accusations and complaints are just not even worth reading. Which is why I only skimmed your post.
I did read your last sentence though, and honestly, do you think anyone *cares* if you shudder when you read reviews that don't match your personal preferences? Or that you are going stick to running two operating systems?
Seriously man. This was an incredibly good review. It did not deserve your accusations of fanboy-ism. I don't even own a Mac, and my total time using Mac OS X amounts to probably less than 5 minutes. And yet, even I could recognize the quality of this review. You say that the review didn't "slam" OS X for its user interface inconsistencies???? Did you even read the review? It *did* slam OS X for the new UI inconsistencies; maybe it didn't do it using obscenity and OMFG THIS SH** IS THE SUCKS language, so you didn't understand what was being written. Regardless, it definitely slammed OS X pretty hard for these problems. But it also recognized that these are relatively minor faults that most people probably won't even know or care about. Which is undeniably true.
I think there is something so insidious about the kinds of complaints that people like you make about reviews. You express this sort of unprovable accusation that "if you were reviewing product X instead of product Y, you would have a completely different bias". But they aren't reviewing product X, they are reviewing product Y. How is what they would do when reviewing product X even relevent? It's mud-slinging that you engage in when you accuse the author like you have, and I think it's pretty lame, especially when considering how clearly well thought out, detailed, and just all around *excellent* that review was.
If you'll read the wikipedia article you linked to, you'll find tons of reasons that these aren't used.
Some disadvantages which it seems no amount of modern tech could get around are (from the article):
* Weight, a bus which can carry 20 persons and has radius of 20 km, must carry a flywheel which weighs 3 t.
* The flywheel, which turns at 3000 revolutions per minute, requires special attachment and security--because the external speed of the disk is 900 km/h.
* Driving a gyrobus has the added complexity that the flywheel acts as a gyroscope and so always has the same attitude, even when the bus goes around curves or corners.
Also the article mentions in several places that the amount of energy that could be realistically stored in a flywheel was prohibitive for longer or more complex bus routes (having to stop the bus for 30 seconds to 3 minutes every couple of miles seems like a show stopper).
And what happens if for some reason that bus has to stop for a while, like a flat tire, and the flywheel loses its momentum? How do you get the bus moving again?
I think that the pressurized air system mechanism of storing energy would be even better than this flywheel idea, and even that has too many disadvantages to see practical use.
If its battery is anything like lithium ion batteries used in laptops, then after a year it'll only go 5 km on a charge instead of 15. Also it will do weird things like indicate that it has enough charge to go another 5 km but just suddenly use up its last 20% in under a minute.
I am not a big fan of lithium ion tech. It seems very gimmicky to me; allowing manufacturers to claim that their laptop batteries last N hours when in fact that will only be true for less than 6 months, as the charge capacity of lithium ion batteries always rapidly deteriorate.
My Panasonic Y2 battery started at 6+ hours per charge, and is now, after not even three years, down to about 2.5 hours per charge.
So if the streetcar in question uses similar tech, then I would expect its range to diminish rapidly with recharges. Since it will be recharged much more frequently than any laptop would, can we even expect its battery to last a whole year before becoming basically worthless?
> Aren't you contradicting yourself? She's only seen that advertisement, not used Vista - so surely > she's forming her opinion on the former and not the latter?
I haven't even seen the ad in question (they don't run the Apple ads in NZ, unfortunately), but it was described as showing an anthropomorphized PC constantly being interrupted by security questions, while the Mac continued to operate unhindered. I think that this depiction of Vista as having poor security useability (in the form of incessant pop-up dialogs) is what viewers of the commercial will come away with.
So I agree with you, and that was the point I was trying to make; she formed her opinion based on the ad.
You missed his point completely. He's just pointing out how his wife has formed her opinion on what more secure alternatives there are to Windows based on the Apple advertising she has seen. Whether the advertising is accurate or not, or Apple's motivations in making it, are not even up for debate here. The point is that his wife perceives that Microsoft Vista has difficulty of use due to its security band-aids (all those dialogs) and that the Mac is much simpler. The implication is that for many non-techies, there is a perception that Vista is not as good as Mac OSX, which will have serious implications for Microsoft.
You make very good points, and I can certainly see that I misjudged you. It was your comment in the context of all of the other posts in response to this story, that made me assume that you were of a similar mind set to others who attacked Greenpeace in this forum.
I suppose it was the word 'disdain' that was at the heart of it. Why would you have disdain for people who are trying to make a positive difference, even if you don't agree with their methods? I am completely a-religious but when Jehova's Witnesses knock on my door to try to spread the word about their religion, I don't treat them with disdain. I realize that they may be misguided, but they have good intentions; they only want to try to help me in a way that they think I need helping. And they're polite, as I expect the Greenpeace volunteers that you have been talking about are as well.
Anyway, I got to your post probably when I was just completely fed up with the crap that closeminded individuals were posting in response to this story. I get so tired of reading the opinions of people who have formed their ideas principally on whatever is most convenient for them, rather than what is most justified when considering the larger scope of the world as a whole. I apologize if I categorized you incorrectly.
I have been playing video games since I was six years old in 1978. In my opinion, games are no worse or better now than they have ever been (that being said, I haven't played any video games since my daughter was born a year ago; although I vowed that I wouldn't let a baby change my playing habits, unfortunately the cold hard reality is, I just don't have time for such things at the moment).
I have found great games to play every single year since 1978. They are out there if you look. Maybe the rise in popularity of gaming has meant that there is a bit more chaff to wade through to find the good ones, but every year there are amazing games.
I don't count the Halo series in this group, by the way. Halo 1 was kind of fun, Halo 2 was the same stuff just reheated, and not any better at all (in fact all of the 'dark' levels (dark in the sense of not being able to see anything) in Halo 2 were just stupid, a very shallow and small-minded way of trying to add depth to a game). I'm not in the least bit interested in Halo 3.
You are stupid. Wildfires put CO2 back into the air that the trees took out. Over the lifetime of the trees, which isn't long at all, it's a net 0 C02 source.
Squeezing your fat American ass into an SUV or "muscle car" (what a joke) and driving said piece of shit burns carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere millions of years ago. This adds carbon to the atmosphere that hasn't been there for millions of years.
There is a difference, a big one, even if your puny brain can't understand it.
I just read on your web site that you do have a charity project that you work on (or worked on; given how little you seem to update your web site, it's probably old news).
So is it just that only projects that *you* work on are worthwhile, but things that other people believe in enough to take action on are worthy of your disdain? You were involved in a "faculty-wide fundraiser" according to your site. It's ironic that the submitter of this Greenpeace story used the word 'hypocritical' (even though it actually isn't justified in Greenpeace's case), because I can't think of anything more hypocritical than your post, given what you have on your web site.
You'll probably never hand out anything in your life. Because you'll probably never believe in any cause enough to get out and do anything about it. Instead you'll just sit there selfishly sucking down all the resources you can, and complaining about people who take action to try to better their world. And you'll manage to maintain an unjustified feeling of superiority about the whole thing. Enjoy your small mind.
If Greenpeace were grabbing headlines by complaining that Apple is grabbing headlines, that would be hypocritical.
If Greenpeace were complaining that Apple is using dangerous chemicals in their manufacturing, while Greenpeace itself was manufacturing goods using dangerous chemicals, that would be hypocritical.
Greenpeace admitting that it targets high-profile companies in order to most efficiently convey their message, is NOT hypocritical.
I think the word you are looking for is 'disingenuous', which I actually don't even agree with. But it matches your slanderous intentions better than the word 'hypocritical' in this situation.
First off, I'm not going to even try explaining to you how impossible it is to escape the use of fossil fuels in western society. So to "protest fossil fuels" (this statement itself is pretty vague but I'll use your phrase) while using fossil fuels is not hypocritical; it's called doing your best given the situation that you are in. Also, without any citation for your claim that Greenpeace takes money not to protest, I'm calling that pretty clear FUD.
Second, I have only had direct contact with Greenpeace twice: once about 10 years ago a guy came door-to-door soliciting for donations to help Greenpeace educate people about preservation efforts in the Sierra Nevadas (I was living in CA at the time), and once I was stopped by a guy here in New Zealand soliciting for donations to fund a boat that was going out to try protest the Japanese whaling ships that hunt in south pacific waters. In both cases I agreed with the issue so I gave some money.
These are people who are spending their own time and money to try to improve the world around them. What exactly are YOU doing besides making baseless accusations, citing no established literature to support your position, on Slashdot? Why should I give a rat's ass about your opinion when I weight it against the opinion of people who actually back up their beliefs with action?
Slashdot Mirror
At what point did I say that I would somehow become grand master of the universe and dictate the way people will live?
I just said that I hope gas prices go up so that Americans will be forced to change their lifestyles for what will inevitably be the better.
It's going to happen, and I am going to enjoy watching it unfold. I have no sympathy for selfish fatasses or the stupid choices they make that will inevitably bite them in the long run. You can call that elitist, which I am sure you will, but I don't really care.
I do believe that crap. I also believe that there is a middle ground between rampant consumerism and abject poverty that is better than both. So you can keep your false dilemma logical fallacies to yourself - thanks!
No, they'll just have to ride their bicycles to work every other day and the other days drive a more fuel-efficient car. In the process they'll lose weight and live longer.
In the mean time, I hope the gas prices go higher. I laugh with delight when I hear people complaining about gas prices, and each time the prices go up I just wish for more. The higher they go, the more punishment is inflicted on losers who buy gas guzzling vehicles. And more importantly, the more incentive there is to move away from fossil fuels. I see no downside to higher gas prices, except that people will have a harder time affording cheap sh** at Walmart. In other words, the American "standard of living" will go down. Which really means it will go up as people get forced out of the rampant consumerism lifestyle.
That's implied in what he said.
"The most exciting feature is that a simple enhancement simultaneously provides significantly enhanced usability and security."
I fail to see how this idea could even *remotely* be construed as providing "significantly enhanced useability". The security aspect is at least arguable (and I actually don't buy that either), but in no way shape or form could such an idea *ever* be called "more useable." Consider:
* It takes me about a second to type a password. How long would it take me to move my mouse pointer to the appropriate spot on the screen to start my "picture" and then draw it? Wouldn't a more secure "password" require more strokes? An extra character or two in your password takes a fraction of a second to type. A couple of extra strokes in a picture would necessarily take *much* longer to complete.
* What happens if I make a stroke in the picture wrong? I can't just delete it. *Maybe* I could if I was provided some kind of eraser, and the stroke that I messed up on didn't intersect any other strokes. I've erased pen strokes with the Gimp and other such tools; it's no fun. You have to zoom way in and carefully and slowly erase all of the pixels you touched without disturbing any others. What a pain. Or maybe the password-picture input system would have a stroke-by-stroke undo kind of like the Gimp has? My god, what a complex piece of software one's password input route has just become!
* Just about every human-computer interface ever invented has the ability to take text input from the user. So typed passwords are *always* an option. Not every interface allows you do draw pictures however. How am I going to enter my SSH password (or its picture equivalent) from a VT100 terminal?
I could go on and on. This is basically a really, really stupid idea, which I think is obvious to just about everyone. This will absolutely never catch on, and never make it past this guy's thesis or whatever academic setting it came from.
True story: went on a date and had hot wings. They were good and hot, just how I like them. Didn't think anything more of it until later in the evening we were ... getting to know each other better. Alot better.
... it really killed the mood.
...
Let me just say that residual capsaicin transferred to the sensitive mucous membranes of a female don't feel too good. She was out of commission with an intense burning 'down there' for about half an hour. I felt really really badly
So my advice is: don't eat spicy food when out on a date if you think you have any chance of getting lucky
I can personally attest to the effects of the sichuan pepper, having eaten dishes made with this pepper in the Hubei region of China. I have enjoyed hot peppers of a variety of types in many of the foods I have eaten over time and consider myself to be a real lover of hot foods. The sichuan peppers really threw me for a loop though because they are the only peppers that have ever had a numbing effect on my mouth. Sure they are hot, but not noticeably hotter than alot of other peppers; but they have a slightly peculiar secondary flavor, and a strong numbing effect.
The food in the Hubei province is really, really, REALLY good. Having travelled throughout many parts of China and enjoyed the diverse food in all the places I went, Hubei food was definitely at the top of my list. The sichuan peppers weren't the reason for that; they were OK but nothing special. It was the type of food, the zestiness of it, the really unique ingredients (beans in Chinese food? How weird!). There is a chain of Hubei food restaurants in Beijing called Jiu Tou Niau (not sure about the spelling there), which means "nine headed bird", and they are just awesome.
I ate a whole habanero once, before I knew what a habanero was, when I was in high school. My sister got it at a country club function that she was working at; they were using the very colorful habaneros for decoration. Someone told her 'don't let the guests eat these peppers, they are very hot.' Knowing how much I like spicy food, she brought one home and gave it to me. I remember it was bright orange or maybe orangish-pink. I popped it in my mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed.
...
The pain that followed exceeded all my expectations of how much pain one can feel in one's mouth and throat. I came very close to asking that someone take me to a hospital. However, my mom and sister were in another room so I just stood in front of the sink, involuntarily hiccupping, tears streaming down my face, and waited it out. I think I drank one or two 2 liter bottles of 7 up, but they didn't help. Eventually I recovered.
That was definitely the hottest thing I have ever eaten; and I am a real lover of spicy food, but that was too much.
I feel that the benefit of spicy food is not just the heat; it's the tendency of such food to also have alot of tang and flavor that together with a good amount of heat makes it really, really enjoyable. I think that habaneros have a really bad flavor; they don't really have a tangy and tasty flavor, they taste funky and vegetable-y, and not good. I think there is a reason that habaneros have only recently started being used in hot sauces that advertise their heat over their flavor (usually with stupid names like 'atomic bomb sauce' or 'hell's demon fire' or whatever). People who traditionally ate hot foods understood the importance of the balance of flavor and heat, whereas the gimmicky habanero sauce makers have no clue. I really don't like it when I sit down at a restaurant and the only hot sauces they have to offer are habanero sauces. I feel that it indicates a lack of understanding of hot sauces.
But if they have Tapatio on the table, or even Chalula, then I know I'm in for a good meal
Can you elaborate on your dismissive, insulting comment please?
I personally WOULD buy OSX for my PC if they would only offer it. I am less interested in buying Apple hardware, but I might do that someday nonetheless. However, if OSX were offered for PCs now, I would certainly buy it, and triple-boot it with Linux and WinXP. Now I readily admit that people like me, who want to triple-boot Mac OS X with other operating systems, are such a small minority that it wouldn't be worth Apple's time to make Mac OS X available just to satisfy us alone. However, I would venture a guess that there are *many* people who have heard the buzz about how good Mac OS X is, especially when compared to Windows operating systems, and would be very interested in trying it out if it were only a couple-hundred-dollar piece of software, instead of a thousand-dollar-plus investment in new hardware.
So what exactly about my desire to run OSX but not buy Apple hardware makes my judgement so poor as to prohibit me from running a major corporate (as if running a major corporation in this day and age takes good judgement! - but that's beside the point)?
Please try to answer without calling me 'son' or 'kid' or any other demeaning language. Thanks!
It was the single most comprehensive, interesting, thorough, thoughtful, and worthwhile review of *any* product I have ever read, *ever*.
I personally don't care about your accusations of fanboy-ism. You are irrelevent. You did not produce an absolutely awesome review, with about as much balance and fairness as is humanly possible. The author at Ars Technica *did*, and your unfounded accusations and complaints are just not even worth reading. Which is why I only skimmed your post.
I did read your last sentence though, and honestly, do you think anyone *cares* if you shudder when you read reviews that don't match your personal preferences? Or that you are going stick to running two operating systems?
Seriously man. This was an incredibly good review. It did not deserve your accusations of fanboy-ism. I don't even own a Mac, and my total time using Mac OS X amounts to probably less than 5 minutes. And yet, even I could recognize the quality of this review. You say that the review didn't "slam" OS X for its user interface inconsistencies???? Did you even read the review? It *did* slam OS X for the new UI inconsistencies; maybe it didn't do it using obscenity and OMFG THIS SH** IS THE SUCKS language, so you didn't understand what was being written. Regardless, it definitely slammed OS X pretty hard for these problems. But it also recognized that these are relatively minor faults that most people probably won't even know or care about. Which is undeniably true.
I think there is something so insidious about the kinds of complaints that people like you make about reviews. You express this sort of unprovable accusation that "if you were reviewing product X instead of product Y, you would have a completely different bias". But they aren't reviewing product X, they are reviewing product Y. How is what they would do when reviewing product X even relevent? It's mud-slinging that you engage in when you accuse the author like you have, and I think it's pretty lame, especially when considering how clearly well thought out, detailed, and just all around *excellent* that review was.
While you're at it, you might want to convert all your paper tape reels and punch cards too.
If you'll read the wikipedia article you linked to, you'll find tons of reasons that these aren't used.
Some disadvantages which it seems no amount of modern tech could get around are (from the article):
* Weight, a bus which can carry 20 persons and has radius of 20 km, must carry a flywheel which weighs 3 t.
* The flywheel, which turns at 3000 revolutions per minute, requires special attachment and security--because the external speed of the disk is 900 km/h.
* Driving a gyrobus has the added complexity that the flywheel acts as a gyroscope and so always has the same attitude, even when the bus goes around curves or corners.
Also the article mentions in several places that the amount of energy that could be realistically stored in a flywheel was prohibitive for longer or more complex bus routes (having to stop the bus for 30 seconds to 3 minutes every couple of miles seems like a show stopper).
And what happens if for some reason that bus has to stop for a while, like a flat tire, and the flywheel loses its momentum? How do you get the bus moving again?
I think that the pressurized air system mechanism of storing energy would be even better than this flywheel idea, and even that has too many disadvantages to see practical use.
If its battery is anything like lithium ion batteries used in laptops, then after a year it'll only go 5 km on a charge instead of 15. Also it will do weird things like indicate that it has enough charge to go another 5 km but just suddenly use up its last 20% in under a minute.
I am not a big fan of lithium ion tech. It seems very gimmicky to me; allowing manufacturers to claim that their laptop batteries last N hours when in fact that will only be true for less than 6 months, as the charge capacity of lithium ion batteries always rapidly deteriorate.
My Panasonic Y2 battery started at 6+ hours per charge, and is now, after not even three years, down to about 2.5 hours per charge.
So if the streetcar in question uses similar tech, then I would expect its range to diminish rapidly with recharges. Since it will be recharged much more frequently than any laptop would, can we even expect its battery to last a whole year before becoming basically worthless?
> Aren't you contradicting yourself? She's only seen that advertisement, not used Vista - so surely
> she's forming her opinion on the former and not the latter?
I haven't even seen the ad in question (they don't run the Apple ads in NZ, unfortunately), but it was described as showing an anthropomorphized PC constantly being interrupted by security questions, while the Mac continued to operate unhindered. I think that this depiction of Vista as having poor security useability (in the form of incessant pop-up dialogs) is what viewers of the commercial will come away with.
So I agree with you, and that was the point I was trying to make; she formed her opinion based on the ad.
> Come to think of it, Vista is probably the best thing that's ever happened to Apple.
I think Apple's share price agrees with you.
You missed his point completely. He's just pointing out how his wife has formed her opinion on what more secure alternatives there are to Windows based on the Apple advertising she has seen. Whether the advertising is accurate or not, or Apple's motivations in making it, are not even up for debate here. The point is that his wife perceives that Microsoft Vista has difficulty of use due to its security band-aids (all those dialogs) and that the Mac is much simpler. The implication is that for many non-techies, there is a perception that Vista is not as good as Mac OSX, which will have serious implications for Microsoft.
You make very good points, and I can certainly see that I misjudged you. It was your comment in the context of all of the other posts in response to this story, that made me assume that you were of a similar mind set to others who attacked Greenpeace in this forum.
I suppose it was the word 'disdain' that was at the heart of it. Why would you have disdain for people who are trying to make a positive difference, even if you don't agree with their methods? I am completely a-religious but when Jehova's Witnesses knock on my door to try to spread the word about their religion, I don't treat them with disdain. I realize that they may be misguided, but they have good intentions; they only want to try to help me in a way that they think I need helping. And they're polite, as I expect the Greenpeace volunteers that you have been talking about are as well.
Anyway, I got to your post probably when I was just completely fed up with the crap that closeminded individuals were posting in response to this story. I get so tired of reading the opinions of people who have formed their ideas principally on whatever is most convenient for them, rather than what is most justified when considering the larger scope of the world as a whole. I apologize if I categorized you incorrectly.
I have been playing video games since I was six years old in 1978. In my opinion, games are no worse or better now than they have ever been (that being said, I haven't played any video games since my daughter was born a year ago; although I vowed that I wouldn't let a baby change my playing habits, unfortunately the cold hard reality is, I just don't have time for such things at the moment).
I have found great games to play every single year since 1978. They are out there if you look. Maybe the rise in popularity of gaming has meant that there is a bit more chaff to wade through to find the good ones, but every year there are amazing games.
I don't count the Halo series in this group, by the way. Halo 1 was kind of fun, Halo 2 was the same stuff just reheated, and not any better at all (in fact all of the 'dark' levels (dark in the sense of not being able to see anything) in Halo 2 were just stupid, a very shallow and small-minded way of trying to add depth to a game). I'm not in the least bit interested in Halo 3.
You are stupid. Wildfires put CO2 back into the air that the trees took out. Over the lifetime of the trees, which isn't long at all, it's a net 0 C02 source.
Squeezing your fat American ass into an SUV or "muscle car" (what a joke) and driving said piece of shit burns carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere millions of years ago. This adds carbon to the atmosphere that hasn't been there for millions of years.
There is a difference, a big one, even if your puny brain can't understand it.
Yeah, sure, if you say so. Whatever.
I just read on your web site that you do have a charity project that you work on (or worked on; given how little you seem to update your web site, it's probably old news).
So is it just that only projects that *you* work on are worthwhile, but things that other people believe in enough to take action on are worthy of your disdain? You were involved in a "faculty-wide fundraiser" according to your site. It's ironic that the submitter of this Greenpeace story used the word 'hypocritical' (even though it actually isn't justified in Greenpeace's case), because I can't think of anything more hypocritical than your post, given what you have on your web site.
You'll probably never hand out anything in your life. Because you'll probably never believe in any cause enough to get out and do anything about it. Instead you'll just sit there selfishly sucking down all the resources you can, and complaining about people who take action to try to better their world. And you'll manage to maintain an unjustified feeling of superiority about the whole thing. Enjoy your small mind.
If Greenpeace were grabbing headlines by complaining that Apple is grabbing headlines, that would be hypocritical.
If Greenpeace were complaining that Apple is using dangerous chemicals in their manufacturing, while Greenpeace itself was manufacturing goods using dangerous chemicals, that would be hypocritical.
Greenpeace admitting that it targets high-profile companies in order to most efficiently convey their message, is NOT hypocritical.
I think the word you are looking for is 'disingenuous', which I actually don't even agree with. But it matches your slanderous intentions better than the word 'hypocritical' in this situation.
Your post is ludicrous.
First off, I'm not going to even try explaining to you how impossible it is to escape the use of fossil fuels in western society. So to "protest fossil fuels" (this statement itself is pretty vague but I'll use your phrase) while using fossil fuels is not hypocritical; it's called doing your best given the situation that you are in. Also, without any citation for your claim that Greenpeace takes money not to protest, I'm calling that pretty clear FUD.
Second, I have only had direct contact with Greenpeace twice: once about 10 years ago a guy came door-to-door soliciting for donations to help Greenpeace educate people about preservation efforts in the Sierra Nevadas (I was living in CA at the time), and once I was stopped by a guy here in New Zealand soliciting for donations to fund a boat that was going out to try protest the Japanese whaling ships that hunt in south pacific waters. In both cases I agreed with the issue so I gave some money.
These are people who are spending their own time and money to try to improve the world around them. What exactly are YOU doing besides making baseless accusations, citing no established literature to support your position, on Slashdot? Why should I give a rat's ass about your opinion when I weight it against the opinion of people who actually back up their beliefs with action?