If the argument is that hybrids really aren't saving anything over conventional cars, then my argument stands.
Please point out where I said that. My argument was that hybrids don't offer financial savings to consumers. I believe you're the one who extended that into the realm of "save anything".
To carry your argument to its logical conclusion: Just look at all the barrels of oil your hybrid consumes -- if we all used bicycles, how many millions of barrels would THAT add up to? Think of all the resources we would save, the good for the environment, and all of the other benefits. Even better, let's cut off electricity.
What's that? You're still going to drive your hybrid? Maybe use electricity in your house? That's kind of what I figured.
I'm not saying I won't use a hybrid - I'm saying I won't use one as long as it's not economical for me to do so. I don't argue that there's a need -- but the need is being met in several ways (including better efficiency of gas engines). Ultimately, until the need is being in a way that makes fiscal sense, sales will be limited to the gullible and the feel-good green types who turn a blind eye to the fact that they're still causing massive amounts of pollution every year.
How about until you're willing to give up the hypocrisy in your statements, you stick to making yourself feel better by saving your 2 barrels of oil each year and keep your dogma to yourself.
Fair enough; my comment was mostly an off-the-cuff remark. But a major part of any work of art or creation is what the audience brings to it; that includes the way in which it's enjoyed. While there might be a way in which the creator *intended* for it to be played, there's nothing that says it *should* be played that way. (Even though frankly, I don't understand why you'd want to play it differently... but to each his own. Which is ultimately my point...)
Ugh. "two" different issues... (though I guess technically "too different issues" is almost valid, if I'd included a hyphen... (here, let me me use more ellipses... (maybe it's time to go to sleep...)) )
Guess what? It's almost ALWAYS cheaper to keep an old car that's serviceable. Gas is too cheap and cars are too expensive. That applies to hybrids and non-hybrids alike.
Fair point. These really are too different issues.
Price compared to hybrid: you're mostly right, the price range as 14,360 -$23,350; I misread. So it was 9k instead of 10k; that doesn't fundamentally change anything.
When you make up your numbers, compare cars that aren't comparable, ignore the used hybrid market, or compare a used vehicle to a new hybrid, it's very easy to make hybrids look much more expensive than they are. It's also misleading and dishonest.
You raise a valid point in that the comparisons weren't apples-to-apples. So let's look at some hard numbers by comparing two comparable models of 2006 Honda Civic, bought at Kelly Blue Book values and using current gas prices.
For our base number, we'll assume 12000 miles a yaer. Your used Civic hybrid is rated at 50mpg, while your used Civic non-hybrid is rated at 30/40 for an average of 35 mpg. Some simple math tells us the hybrid uses 240 gallons a year, while the non-hybrid uses 343 gallons.
Hybrid: $672/year
Non: $960/year
Annual Gas Savings: 288 (960-672)
I assume we can agree on these base figures? So now let's look at used car prices.
Hybrid: ~14,800
LX Sedan AT (most directly comparable by feature): $12,650
So that's $2150 more for the used hybrid over the used base model. The annual savings in gas is 288; 2150/288 = 7.5 years to recoup the extra money you spent on the hybrid.
It's more drastic in the case of a new car. Let's look at the 2010 civic very briefly (calcs were quick and dirty, but I think no major mistakes that significantly affect the outcome. Numbers taken from Honda web site; mpg is averaged.) : 23800 for civic hybrid- 45 mpg - $788/yr gas; 15655 for civic lx - 30mpg - $1120/yr gas. Annual gas savings of hybrid: $332. It would take you 24 years to make up that price difference in gas savings, or for the frequent driver a mere 288,000 miles.
Which brings me back to my original point: hybrids aren't worth the extra money you spend on them, as you'll rarely recoup that cost. And in the case of buying comparable new cars, you likely will *never* recoup the cost.
Now I need to bookmark this comment so I don't have to do the math a third time when the subject next comes up;)
Bit of a joke? What exactly would that be?
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/environment/2008-05-11-hybrids-gas-prices_N.htm
I've owned a 2006 Civic Hybrid for the past four years and calculate the savings based on my driving habits and the cost of gas every year. It recouped its cost over a year ago and has currently saved me well over $1000. It also pollutes less. So...why is this a joke?
Except if you're calculating the savings based on cost of gas and driving habits alone, you're missing a major part of the equation. Did you include the $23000 it cost you to buy a new car, as opposed to continuing to maintain/repair and feed gas into your old one? Or if this was your very first car, did you do the calculations for getting a cheap used car vs new car, and take the price difference into account?
If you absolutely had to get a new car, did you look a the 2006 Civic -- 10-12k cheaper than the Hybrid, with gas mileage that's not appreciably worse? Did you take into account that 10-12k price difference in your calculations?
When you look at the miles you drive without taking into account the base cost, you're only seeing part of the picture needed to determine if you recouped your cost. And unless you drive a 40-50k miles a year, your costs have not been recouped. (I did a breakdown of the math in a comment some time back, and showed that it would take gas in the range of $8-9/gallon to recoup costs over a five year period at 12k a year; or $5-6/gallon to recoup them if you assumed you had to buy a new car and calculated based on price difference.)
This is the most glaring non sequitur I've seen on Slashdot in month.... And in the future, could you lay off the M$ thing? That was an eyeroller a decade ago.
That was the point. M$ came about because OP gave eldavo a hard time for "crApple" (which I agree with) ergo he must clearly be a Microsoft fanatic. [Obviously this is not correct - again this was why I posted it in the first place...]
Sigh. Skip it. It's just not as much fun when I have to explain it... I amused myself and at least one other person, and that's what counts.
It's simply that commenting in such a manner (using absolute, hateful, denigrating terms) on the internet is not productive. Not At All. Used in this way it's not even sport. It's not even a taunt, it's just blindness.
I aim to point it out where possible.
I was joking-- hopefully obviously, but written word's a funny thing. Anyway, I agree -- I tend to stop reading when I see that kind of post. When I see someone claiming to "hate" a person they've never met and can't possibly know it's usually a good sign that there's not much content of worth. Phrasing that includes "M$", "crApple", "Winblows", "Linsux" and the various other flavors just come across as juvenile; if you have to resort to name-calling, it's pretty hard to take anything you say seriously.
I see what you did there. You made an unlikely assumption about how this patent would be used and then you turned it into an advertisement for open source. Well done. I hate Apple and Steve Jobs (smug bastard) vehemently but even I recognized that to be a highly contrived scenario and illogical statement.
You lost me on "hate" and "smug bastard" and later on in your post "crApple"... this kind of talk is nonsense and whatever else you said sounded like the other end of a phone call in a Charlie Brown cartoon.
Eventually the suckers, I mean, users will come around.
However, some have registered: Dan Sabbagh, formerly the media correspondent for the Times, suggests that about 150,000 users registered for access to the Times and Sunday Times while they were free, with 15,000 apparently agreeing to pay money.
This is very sad to see. It will only encourage others.
This is very good to see, as it will encourage others to build business models that aren't based on third-party brokering my attention and viewing habits.
Yes - people seem to be missing this point. The Times isn't doing this to win a popularity contest - it's doing it to increase revenue. And by most estimates, the revenue from subscriptions to this content will be more than ad revenue -- likely they still have ads in place as well? If not, they should - that would let them give two tiers of subscription. Basic and "ad-free". As long as they integrate the ads into the actual content (and don't use third party services) they're not trivial to block.
Anyway - I really hope to see more services go this route. People tend to think that the problem with ads is that they're intrusive/annoying etc; and overlook the fact that the reason there's so much money in ads is because ad middlemen are not buying just that brief span of attention you give them -- they're also buying all of your surfing habits, as aggregated across any site using their advertising services.
The business of selling my viewing habits to the highest bidder is growing old, and I will happily pay some small amount of money every week or month to not have to worry about it.* Because when you take out advertising as a means of revenue generation, you have to sell something. And I'm not going to be convinced that choosing to selling your service is a bad thing... because if you're good at providing it, people will pay for it. You won't have the numbers you saw when it was "free"; but you don't need those numbers to make a profit.
(* Except slashdot, who graciously gives me an ad-free experience - and thus surely does not mind that I block the tracking too;)
You mean until the novelty wears off and people realize that they're getting screwed. The print customers with free access which is presumably the majority aren't actually paying anything for the privilege, so most likely it isn't going to fly. Especially when people start to figure out that they've been had.
Except they're paying for the print subscription...
As opposed to the source of "news" being thousands of leech-sites and blogs which simply regurgitate information posted by the relatively small number of people doing research and writing news?
Let's not kid ourselves. The blogger who writes a rant based on the half an article he read on slashdot - which was in turn based on a blog paraphrasing of some Times article - is not a journalist; nor is he reporting news. Sure, there *are* some bloggers who do the research and digging -- but those are few and far between. Their voices are often lost among the noise, distorted by those who do nothing but echo that original content; or turned into "talking points" parroted without meaning.
Me, I have another spin on this. TFA conflates things by egregious mixing of stats, but the key info is this: between 20,000 and 300,000 people are paying for content who were not paying before. We don't have any real numbers (since the Times isn't giving them out), but even withint he speculative range above that's a lot of people. I suggest that they did not intend to capture much more than 10% -- that perhaps 10% even exceeds what they set as their target.
Those who don't want to pay call it a failure when they look at others who don't want to pay. Those running the business call it a success when they look at the revenue increase.
True. There is some difference if I grip it tightly - about 10db, which isn't enough to change "bars". As you said, the nature of the problem is different. In the case of the BB (and other presumably) it's a matter of blocking the signal. For iPhone, it's (as far as I've learned) essentially shorting the antenna with your hand.
I'm not sure it's as bad as that -- outside of the geek community (that is, most of iPhone's target market) this is barely a blip if they've even heard of it at all. It's kind of like DRM issues -- the people who are most vocal and passionate about it are usually the smallest minority; for the rest, they're usually not aware of the issue at all unless they're directly inconvenienced by it. (And even then they'll usually buy the manufacturer's line.)
I don't think it's really relevant - the antennas on the other phones (including bold) aren't exposed directly to skin oils/sweat, as they're behind a shell. The iPhone antenna is in the case itself; and so touching that part of the case means you're touching the antenna directly.
Slashdot Mirror
If the argument is that hybrids really aren't saving anything over conventional cars, then my argument stands.
Please point out where I said that. My argument was that hybrids don't offer financial savings to consumers. I believe you're the one who extended that into the realm of "save anything".
What's that? You're still going to drive your hybrid? Maybe use electricity in your house? That's kind of what I figured.
I'm not saying I won't use a hybrid - I'm saying I won't use one as long as it's not economical for me to do so. I don't argue that there's a need -- but the need is being met in several ways (including better efficiency of gas engines). Ultimately, until the need is being in a way that makes fiscal sense, sales will be limited to the gullible and the feel-good green types who turn a blind eye to the fact that they're still causing massive amounts of pollution every year.
How about until you're willing to give up the hypocrisy in your statements, you stick to making yourself feel better by saving your 2 barrels of oil each year and keep your dogma to yourself.
Fair enough; my comment was mostly an off-the-cuff remark. But a major part of any work of art or creation is what the audience brings to it; that includes the way in which it's enjoyed. While there might be a way in which the creator *intended* for it to be played, there's nothing that says it *should* be played that way. (Even though frankly, I don't understand why you'd want to play it differently... but to each his own. Which is ultimately my point...)
Or it could be played.... you know, the way it was designed to be played
Yep. Also, music should be listened to on the CD, and not format-shifted to something the publisher did not intend.
Ugh. "two" different issues... (though I guess technically "too different issues" is almost valid, if I'd included a hyphen... (here, let me me use more ellipses... (maybe it's time to go to sleep...)) )
Yes, good point -- see my reply here to a similar comment: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1729128&cid=32999746
Guess what? It's almost ALWAYS cheaper to keep an old car that's serviceable. Gas is too cheap and cars are too expensive. That applies to hybrids and non-hybrids alike.
Fair point. These really are too different issues.
Price compared to hybrid: you're mostly right, the price range as 14,360 -$23,350; I misread. So it was 9k instead of 10k; that doesn't fundamentally change anything.
When you make up your numbers, compare cars that aren't comparable, ignore the used hybrid market, or compare a used vehicle to a new hybrid, it's very easy to make hybrids look much more expensive than they are. It's also misleading and dishonest.
You raise a valid point in that the comparisons weren't apples-to-apples. So let's look at some hard numbers by comparing two comparable models of 2006 Honda Civic, bought at Kelly Blue Book values and using current gas prices.
For our base number, we'll assume 12000 miles a yaer. Your used Civic hybrid is rated at 50mpg, while your used Civic non-hybrid is rated at 30/40 for an average of 35 mpg. Some simple math tells us the hybrid uses 240 gallons a year, while the non-hybrid uses 343 gallons.
We'll eyeball the current average price per gallon at 2.80 from the following link, to arrive at the annual gas cost below: http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/gas_prices/
Hybrid: $672/year
Non: $960/year
Annual Gas Savings:
288 (960-672)
I assume we can agree on these base figures? So now let's look at used car prices.
Hybrid: ~14,800 LX Sedan AT (most directly comparable by feature): $12,650
So that's $2150 more for the used hybrid over the used base model. The annual savings in gas is 288; 2150/288 = 7.5 years to recoup the extra money you spent on the hybrid.
It's more drastic in the case of a new car. Let's look at the 2010 civic very briefly (calcs were quick and dirty, but I think no major mistakes that significantly affect the outcome. Numbers taken from Honda web site; mpg is averaged.) : 23800 for civic hybrid- 45 mpg - $788/yr gas; 15655 for civic lx - 30mpg - $1120/yr gas. Annual gas savings of hybrid: $332. It would take you 24 years to make up that price difference in gas savings, or for the frequent driver a mere 288,000 miles.
Which brings me back to my original point: hybrids aren't worth the extra money you spend on them, as you'll rarely recoup that cost. And in the case of buying comparable new cars, you likely will *never* recoup the cost.
Now I need to bookmark this comment so I don't have to do the math a third time when the subject next comes up ;)
Bit of a joke? What exactly would that be? http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/environment/2008-05-11-hybrids-gas-prices_N.htm I've owned a 2006 Civic Hybrid for the past four years and calculate the savings based on my driving habits and the cost of gas every year. It recouped its cost over a year ago and has currently saved me well over $1000. It also pollutes less. So...why is this a joke?
Except if you're calculating the savings based on cost of gas and driving habits alone, you're missing a major part of the equation. Did you include the $23000 it cost you to buy a new car, as opposed to continuing to maintain/repair and feed gas into your old one? Or if this was your very first car, did you do the calculations for getting a cheap used car vs new car, and take the price difference into account?
If you absolutely had to get a new car, did you look a the 2006 Civic -- 10-12k cheaper than the Hybrid, with gas mileage that's not appreciably worse? Did you take into account that 10-12k price difference in your calculations?
When you look at the miles you drive without taking into account the base cost, you're only seeing part of the picture needed to determine if you recouped your cost. And unless you drive a 40-50k miles a year, your costs have not been recouped. (I did a breakdown of the math in a comment some time back, and showed that it would take gas in the range of $8-9/gallon to recoup costs over a five year period at 12k a year; or $5-6/gallon to recoup them if you assumed you had to buy a new car and calculated based on price difference.)
*poetic license #3122202
This is the most glaring non sequitur I've seen on Slashdot in month.... And in the future, could you lay off the M$ thing? That was an eyeroller a decade ago.
That was the point. M$ came about because OP gave eldavo a hard time for "crApple" (which I agree with) ergo he must clearly be a Microsoft fanatic. [Obviously this is not correct - again this was why I posted it in the first place...]
Sigh. Skip it. It's just not as much fun when I have to explain it... I amused myself and at least one other person, and that's what counts.
Please, sir or madam, allow me to be the first to say "whoosh".
Coincidentally, this will give a marvelous boost to their initial sales figures.
Yeah whatever.
It's simply that commenting in such a manner (using absolute, hateful, denigrating terms) on the internet is not productive. Not At All. Used in this way it's not even sport. It's not even a taunt, it's just blindness.
I aim to point it out where possible.
I was joking-- hopefully obviously, but written word's a funny thing. Anyway, I agree -- I tend to stop reading when I see that kind of post. When I see someone claiming to "hate" a person they've never met and can't possibly know it's usually a good sign that there's not much content of worth. Phrasing that includes "M$", "crApple", "Winblows", "Linsux" and the various other flavors just come across as juvenile; if you have to resort to name-calling, it's pretty hard to take anything you say seriously.
I see what you did there. You made an unlikely assumption about how this patent would be used and then you turned it into an advertisement for open source. Well done. I hate Apple and Steve Jobs (smug bastard) vehemently but even I recognized that to be a highly contrived scenario and illogical statement.
You lost me on "hate" and "smug bastard" and later on in your post "crApple" ... this kind of talk is nonsense and whatever else you said sounded like the other end of a phone call in a Charlie Brown cartoon.
You're clearly an M$ shill ...
Perhaps they had other goals, instead?
For a moment I thought that said "other goats, instead" -- to which I would have said something incredibly witty.
But you didn't, so I just wasted my time.
Eventually the suckers, I mean, users will come around.
However, some have registered: Dan Sabbagh, formerly the media correspondent for the Times, suggests that about 150,000 users registered for access to the Times and Sunday Times while they were free, with 15,000 apparently agreeing to pay money.
This is very sad to see. It will only encourage others.
This is very good to see, as it will encourage others to build business models that aren't based on third-party brokering my attention and viewing habits.
Anyway - I really hope to see more services go this route. People tend to think that the problem with ads is that they're intrusive/annoying etc; and overlook the fact that the reason there's so much money in ads is because ad middlemen are not buying just that brief span of attention you give them -- they're also buying all of your surfing habits, as aggregated across any site using their advertising services.
The business of selling my viewing habits to the highest bidder is growing old, and I will happily pay some small amount of money every week or month to not have to worry about it.* Because when you take out advertising as a means of revenue generation, you have to sell something. And I'm not going to be convinced that choosing to selling your service is a bad thing... because if you're good at providing it, people will pay for it. You won't have the numbers you saw when it was "free"; but you don't need those numbers to make a profit.
(* Except slashdot, who graciously gives me an ad-free experience - and thus surely does not mind that I block the tracking too ;)
You mean until the novelty wears off and people realize that they're getting screwed. The print customers with free access which is presumably the majority aren't actually paying anything for the privilege, so most likely it isn't going to fly. Especially when people start to figure out that they've been had.
Except they're paying for the print subscription...
Let's not kid ourselves. The blogger who writes a rant based on the half an article he read on slashdot - which was in turn based on a blog paraphrasing of some Times article - is not a journalist; nor is he reporting news. Sure, there *are* some bloggers who do the research and digging -- but those are few and far between. Their voices are often lost among the noise, distorted by those who do nothing but echo that original content; or turned into "talking points" parroted without meaning.
Me, I have another spin on this. TFA conflates things by egregious mixing of stats, but the key info is this: between 20,000 and 300,000 people are paying for content who were not paying before. We don't have any real numbers (since the Times isn't giving them out), but even withint he speculative range above that's a lot of people. I suggest that they did not intend to capture much more than 10% -- that perhaps 10% even exceeds what they set as their target.
Those who don't want to pay call it a failure when they look at others who don't want to pay. Those running the business call it a success when they look at the revenue increase.
Just graduated after 9 years as a software dev. It's a cinch as a Dev, it is interesting, and tremendously useful.
How's the job search going? It seems lawyers are harder hit than many others in white-collar jobs by the Depression.
True. There is some difference if I grip it tightly - about 10db, which isn't enough to change "bars". As you said, the nature of the problem is different. In the case of the BB (and other presumably) it's a matter of blocking the signal. For iPhone, it's (as far as I've learned) essentially shorting the antenna with your hand.
Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson
Kevin Costner also reached that level of actorness
Oh no you dih-unt.
I'm not sure it's as bad as that -- outside of the geek community (that is, most of iPhone's target market) this is barely a blip if they've even heard of it at all. It's kind of like DRM issues -- the people who are most vocal and passionate about it are usually the smallest minority; for the rest, they're usually not aware of the issue at all unless they're directly inconvenienced by it. (And even then they'll usually buy the manufacturer's line.)
I don't think it's really relevant - the antennas on the other phones (including bold) aren't exposed directly to skin oils/sweat, as they're behind a shell. The iPhone antenna is in the case itself; and so touching that part of the case means you're touching the antenna directly.
I'm thinking it's unobtanium.