Talk to me about heavy being efficient when your heavy car takes 3 times the stopping distance in the rain/snow/whatever in similar conditions. I used to drive a landrover defender (company car) around, and even though it's about the most basic 4x4 (meaning 4x4 jeep/SUV type vehicles rather than cars, I like 4WD cars fine) you can get and it still was pathetic in poor weather. Perhaps with different tyres it would have been better, but the greater mass was definitely a problem for handling in bad weather. You can get around much faster with the same amount of safety (for others) in a lighter vehicle.
I didn't say anything about 2 seat commuters, even I probably wouldn't drive one of them. My car is a small-ish 5 seater hatchback and is good enough for say a 2-3 hour journey with 5 people, or an infinite journey with 4 people. The tyres on it are pretty big (about the same width as a BMW 3 series maybe) as it's a diesel and has to deal with a lot of torque, especially when I'm driving:) I've not had any issues with it in bad weather - it's definitely better in the snow than my long-ass (and heavier) Civic estate car anyway. Weight doesn't matter (unless you're trying not to break the surface of the snow), it's the ratio of weight to tyre contact area that's important.
Interesting. Even I wouldn't buy a fortwo I don't think, I'd probably just go with a motorbike:p I almost got a Mitsubishi Colt CZT which I think is based on the forfour. If everyone were driving cars that small then a fortwo probably would look like a safe enough option.. (they do look quite fun to drive since even a small engine ends up being quite powerful in one of them, I've seen a few as pizza delivery vehicles)
I can actually think of a couple of places where there are sidewalks in 40mph limits here, though the majority of those sections have barriers up or cobble-type sections to make sure that pedestrians keep away from the road
We drove from Aberdeen to France, around France and then back to Aberdeen fine with 5 people in my mum's Vauxhaull Asta.. it was fine *shrug* We'd also done long journeys in an accord before that. Try doing it yourself THEN come back and tell me you need your oversized boat. I dare you:p
And if you think it's a couple of hours from France to the north-east of Scotland, think again - I was driving for 13 hours from Dover (south of England) to Aberdeen, and not exactly at the speed limit either. I at first forgot about the lower speed limits in the UK and went through a speed camera at around 90-100mph when the speed limit is 70mph (about 85mph in France), luckily I never got a ticket through..
Why exactly are you doing driving "in excess of 35 miles per hour" when there are pedestrians around anyway? The limit is 30mph here in the UK, and 20mph around schools at opening and closing times. Of course with the weight that most of our cars are they wouldn't have much momentum compared to an SUV and so would be easier to control in a blowout.
Diesel is actually 10-20p per litre more expensive here in the UK, it's just that you get better mileage from it. In that regards, diesel is probably 'cheaper' per mile in the US as well?
Diesel engines are heavier of course, but I'm assuming that american cars are heavy not just because of their iron/steel/whatever V8 engines but because of their massive steel chassis' too!:p
Well, the main reasoning behind getting rid of SUVs is because they are incredibly inefficient.
The fact is that the lighter a vehicle is, the more efficient it will be with its fuel - motorbikes are the most efficient form of single person motorised transportation, cars work well for families, and SUVs.. well a lot of Americans just seem to drive them because they can. There will be some people who actually 'need' the space all the time, but not many - how come we in the Europe can get by with our medium sized cars with no hassles? If we need more storage space, we put the back seat down or hire a trailer or a van (which has the added benefit of locked doors so that people can't just run up and grab stuff out of the back).
Having an SUV for everyday commuting use is like running all the applications on your computer all the time, just in case you need to use one at some point (heh, funny that a computer analogy came naturally on an article about cars). Not that we in the UK are innocent - a lot of idiots (especially "soccer mom" types) use massive 4x4s or minivans as their primary means of transport.
I carpool to work every day, in my tiny 93 accord Heh.. only an American (okay, there's also Canadian, Mexican or Australian) could make such a statement:)
In the UK Accords are 'family' sized cars towards the large end of the spectrum. I know the 93 version is a little smaller than a modern Accord, but it's still pretty big by our standards. If you want a proper example of tiny, consider the original Mini, or more modern "super minis" - which are actualy still larger than the original Mini. I'd hate to see one of them get into a fight with an SUV..
Overcoming mindshare is probably the biggest problem, after all. Most people don't think there is any alternative to the PC (where PC == Windows, *only*) besides the Mac. Heck, I've still encountered the occasional person who thinks the only alternative to MSIE is "Netscape". Most definitely. And if you tell them of free alternatives to Office for example they look at you like you're crazy (especially those who would just get a pirate version of office). 'Free' products are generally inferior in the real world, because you have to spend money on good materials to make good products, so it's difficult for people to accept that free (as in beer) software could be any good.
I myself still tend to expect anything but the most basic open source software projects to be only 50% developed (or even abandoned completely) or to have a poor feature set compared to commercial alternatives, but over time as more and more open source libraries are created and shared and improved upon, then it gets exponentially easier for developers to finish projects in a shorter space of time and still have decent features. For OSS projects that are trying to duplicate commercial software then they'll never catch up really, but for projects that are trying to be original and implement their own good ideas then it should be possible to overtake commercial software in terms of functionality. Doing that needs some well organised management and coders though, rather than just someone contributing the odd bug fix.
It's not so clean cut as that, we still use steam in fossil fuel and nuclear power stations. Sometimes stuff isn't 'killed' but simply modified to fit a new system.
I still find commercial development software useful. I do use notepad++ sometimes to edit perl scripts, though it simply formats markup rather than having any advanced error checking that I'm aware of, though maybe you could maybe get plugins to do that. A lot of the time I just edit my scripts in wordpad..
There's nothing to say that commercial developer tools will die off completely, but open source stuff will obviously improve over time, and in a lot of cases it will be acceptable to use them rather than commercial tools. For RAD Windows development I really like Delphi though and think it's well worth the money.. of course I wouldn't leave my job if my employer asked that I use some other system, without at least trying that system first. Thankfully I get to use any language I want as long as I get the job done.
Lunchtime doubly so. Myself, I think time is when stuff is moving. If something is changing states at all (an electron orbiting a proton for example) then time is passing.
To me it seems appealing that the multiverse is in some steady state even if the universe isn't because that avoids the Big Bang being some sort of unique, magic Act of Creation. That's fine, but then you have to explain the multiverse in terms that are appealing (and by appealing I assume you mean some way that will not require any power, intelligence or authority greater than your own..). I don't have a problem with the Universe having been created, I think it's just as plausible that something created this Universe - though I don't know how whatever created it managed to come into existence, or always was in existence. It would be nice to think that there is another plane that we will still exist on when we die, but then again, it seems quite reasonable that there won't be..:( and if there is some communal afterlife, it will still be full of jerks.
When I said Axel I meant Axel Rose, who must be a tenor too (if not an alto to soprano at times xD ). I do like the guy from Zepellin's voice, I don't know what it is about the Iron Maiden guy's voice that ticks me off. Maybe I'll get used to it one day.
Ya I was talkin about Aint Talkin Bout Love, but the first place that I actually heard that riff was in an Apollo 440 dub remix called Aint Talkin Bout Dub, it's pretty good.
Funny you should mention jazz, I often don't like that either;) But I do like some solos if they sound good as well as just being technically impressive - I like the song 'Eruption' which is just pure Van Halen soloing all the way:) I enjoy classical guitar, and can play stuff like that intro from Classical Gas, a bit of Angie by Davy Graham, some Eric Clapton Unplugged stuff (Tears in Heaven is great). I also started learning a guitar arrangement of The Entertainer, I should go back and re-learn/finish it (I used to be a bit jealous of my sis being able to play it on the piano, even though I'm not that into pianos:p ).
Yeah I've never really been into pure rhythm playing, so when I was playing guitar hero co-op at the weekend my friend's left hand was getting sore while it was my right that was getting knackered (though apparently I move my whole arm for the strumming and he just uses his wrist, so I'm bound to use more energy there). He's not a guitarist though, and also I'm left handed so that probably means I've got more left hand strength and dexterity. I do a bit of drumming here and there so my rhythm should be okay too but he was pwning me on The Fire and the Flames rhythm parts as I kinda just play the first rhythm part as fast as I can because it sounds mental, but obviously I was going too fast. I pulled it back at the crazy solos because I've been practicing a Living Colour song that has lots of crazy soloing, but then when it came to rhythm again at the end he just scraped a win - nice to have some worthy competition at least! The funny thing was that he kept saying before we started that he wouldn't make it through the song and was just going to give up, presumably to lull me into a false sense of security so that he could kick my ass:)
Gesture recognition is hardly amazing, have you never played with an eyeToy or software that comes with your webcam? I remember about 8 years ago our webcam had software where you could pop bubbles. The guy trying to manipulate the object did look like an idiot and kept moving wrong so the thing was working as intended, but wasn't doing what *he* wanted it to do as he kept trying to moving his hands into position before trying to move the cube, but then in the process of moving into position the thing recognised his movements anyway.. meh. I've never seen any 3D stuff like this before and I think it's the true achievement here. Recognising movement and collision detection is regarded as quite trivial these days. I don't care what TFA says, it's very light on technical details, and if they think that recognising similar movements or detecting velocities is more complex than designing a holographic display, they're idiots.
My bank's questions were so irrelevant to me that I couldn't remember what I answered. Like "what is your favourite TV show" at a time when I spent most of my time either playing computer games or watching DVDs, and "what is your favourite place", when I don't particularly have one.
When it comes to that, sure. It still doesn't get away from the fact that copying music when the copyright belongs to someone else is unethical.. thought the fact that the labels screw the artists over is also unethical, it's a dilemma. Personally I would prefer if all artists pulled a Radiohead and put their stuff up online or setup their own label, then you know that most of the money is going to the artist (and the rest pays the hosting bills/CD pressing). For lesser known/funded bands that kind of involvement could be impractical so they could start out somewhere like iTunes.
Again, have you even looked at how this thing is working? It's not 'done before', and is a step in the right direction. It's not always going to be practical to have a 3D plasma holo-projector, sometimes you'll just want to have a fake window or 3D picture frame without having to use a headset, and this is a way to accomplish that, and is probably a lot closer to being marketable than any other 3D tech, since it simply uses current projector technology, but in a novel form.
It's a novel method of using current tech though, which amounts to the same kind of thing. It's like a breakthrough in software instead of hardware, someone has discovered an awesome way to do things. Search this page for.pdf and you'll find a document that discusses their method. Just because it uses projectors and mirrors doesn't automatically mean it isn't impressive, it makes it more exciting that we could be seeing more of this type of thing very soon.
just cause something is illegal doesn't mean it's wrong That is perfectly true, but just because you want something to be legal doesn't make it right. Do you think that authors shouldn't be able to try to enforce the copyright on their books, or artists shouldn't be able to enforce copyright on their digital photos? Suddenly just because you can copy something with trivial effort, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Don't get me wrong, I've done it too, but if I like a band then I will buy their album because they deserve recognition and support. All too many tight arse bastards would just copy their music and leave it at that.
His method also only works for one viewer. It is of course much more practical and useful until we have computers that can render complex scenes from all angles at once though. The display in TFA is much more like a real 'holodeck' because it works for multiple viewers, but in the meantime all we need to make better games/simulations is head tracking.
TFA should have linked to this to stop people whining about the lack of description of how this works. Most people are accusing it of vapourware just because they can't understand how something like that would even work! I had thought that it was to do with pixels that shone out different colours at different angles, but it's a bit more complicated than that.. I still don't understand it exactly but it's pretty clever, if highly expensive! Would have to cost at least $30-40000 to build something like this?
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Talk to me about heavy being efficient when your heavy car takes 3 times the stopping distance in the rain/snow/whatever in similar conditions. I used to drive a landrover defender (company car) around, and even though it's about the most basic 4x4 (meaning 4x4 jeep/SUV type vehicles rather than cars, I like 4WD cars fine) you can get and it still was pathetic in poor weather. Perhaps with different tyres it would have been better, but the greater mass was definitely a problem for handling in bad weather. You can get around much faster with the same amount of safety (for others) in a lighter vehicle.
:) I've not had any issues with it in bad weather - it's definitely better in the snow than my long-ass (and heavier) Civic estate car anyway. Weight doesn't matter (unless you're trying not to break the surface of the snow), it's the ratio of weight to tyre contact area that's important.
I didn't say anything about 2 seat commuters, even I probably wouldn't drive one of them. My car is a small-ish 5 seater hatchback and is good enough for say a 2-3 hour journey with 5 people, or an infinite journey with 4 people. The tyres on it are pretty big (about the same width as a BMW 3 series maybe) as it's a diesel and has to deal with a lot of torque, especially when I'm driving
Interesting. Even I wouldn't buy a fortwo I don't think, I'd probably just go with a motorbike :p I almost got a Mitsubishi Colt CZT which I think is based on the forfour. If everyone were driving cars that small then a fortwo probably would look like a safe enough option.. (they do look quite fun to drive since even a small engine ends up being quite powerful in one of them, I've seen a few as pizza delivery vehicles)
I can actually think of a couple of places where there are sidewalks in 40mph limits here, though the majority of those sections have barriers up or cobble-type sections to make sure that pedestrians keep away from the road
We drove from Aberdeen to France, around France and then back to Aberdeen fine with 5 people in my mum's Vauxhaull Asta.. it was fine *shrug* We'd also done long journeys in an accord before that. Try doing it yourself THEN come back and tell me you need your oversized boat. I dare you :p
And if you think it's a couple of hours from France to the north-east of Scotland, think again - I was driving for 13 hours from Dover (south of England) to Aberdeen, and not exactly at the speed limit either. I at first forgot about the lower speed limits in the UK and went through a speed camera at around 90-100mph when the speed limit is 70mph (about 85mph in France), luckily I never got a ticket through..
Why exactly are you doing driving "in excess of 35 miles per hour" when there are pedestrians around anyway? The limit is 30mph here in the UK, and 20mph around schools at opening and closing times. Of course with the weight that most of our cars are they wouldn't have much momentum compared to an SUV and so would be easier to control in a blowout.
Diesel is actually 10-20p per litre more expensive here in the UK, it's just that you get better mileage from it. In that regards, diesel is probably 'cheaper' per mile in the US as well?
:p
Diesel engines are heavier of course, but I'm assuming that american cars are heavy not just because of their iron/steel/whatever V8 engines but because of their massive steel chassis' too!
Well, the main reasoning behind getting rid of SUVs is because they are incredibly inefficient.
The fact is that the lighter a vehicle is, the more efficient it will be with its fuel - motorbikes are the most efficient form of single person motorised transportation, cars work well for families, and SUVs.. well a lot of Americans just seem to drive them because they can. There will be some people who actually 'need' the space all the time, but not many - how come we in the Europe can get by with our medium sized cars with no hassles? If we need more storage space, we put the back seat down or hire a trailer or a van (which has the added benefit of locked doors so that people can't just run up and grab stuff out of the back).
Having an SUV for everyday commuting use is like running all the applications on your computer all the time, just in case you need to use one at some point (heh, funny that a computer analogy came naturally on an article about cars). Not that we in the UK are innocent - a lot of idiots (especially "soccer mom" types) use massive 4x4s or minivans as their primary means of transport.
In the UK Accords are 'family' sized cars towards the large end of the spectrum. I know the 93 version is a little smaller than a modern Accord, but it's still pretty big by our standards. If you want a proper example of tiny, consider the original Mini, or more modern "super minis" - which are actualy still larger than the original Mini. I'd hate to see one of them get into a fight with an SUV..
I'm assuming you mean bits per channel rather than pixels per channel? Why would you want to miss out some colours altogether for certain pixels?
Pretty clever.. thanks!
I myself still tend to expect anything but the most basic open source software projects to be only 50% developed (or even abandoned completely) or to have a poor feature set compared to commercial alternatives, but over time as more and more open source libraries are created and shared and improved upon, then it gets exponentially easier for developers to finish projects in a shorter space of time and still have decent features. For OSS projects that are trying to duplicate commercial software then they'll never catch up really, but for projects that are trying to be original and implement their own good ideas then it should be possible to overtake commercial software in terms of functionality. Doing that needs some well organised management and coders though, rather than just someone contributing the odd bug fix.
It's not so clean cut as that, we still use steam in fossil fuel and nuclear power stations. Sometimes stuff isn't 'killed' but simply modified to fit a new system.
I still find commercial development software useful. I do use notepad++ sometimes to edit perl scripts, though it simply formats markup rather than having any advanced error checking that I'm aware of, though maybe you could maybe get plugins to do that. A lot of the time I just edit my scripts in wordpad..
There's nothing to say that commercial developer tools will die off completely, but open source stuff will obviously improve over time, and in a lot of cases it will be acceptable to use them rather than commercial tools. For RAD Windows development I really like Delphi though and think it's well worth the money.. of course I wouldn't leave my job if my employer asked that I use some other system, without at least trying that system first. Thankfully I get to use any language I want as long as I get the job done.
LEELA: Bender, quit destroying the universe!
Lunchtime doubly so. Myself, I think time is when stuff is moving. If something is changing states at all (an electron orbiting a proton for example) then time is passing.
When I said Axel I meant Axel Rose, who must be a tenor too (if not an alto to soprano at times xD ). I do like the guy from Zepellin's voice, I don't know what it is about the Iron Maiden guy's voice that ticks me off. Maybe I'll get used to it one day.
;) But I do like some solos if they sound good as well as just being technically impressive - I like the song 'Eruption' which is just pure Van Halen soloing all the way :) I enjoy classical guitar, and can play stuff like that intro from Classical Gas, a bit of Angie by Davy Graham, some Eric Clapton Unplugged stuff (Tears in Heaven is great). I also started learning a guitar arrangement of The Entertainer, I should go back and re-learn/finish it (I used to be a bit jealous of my sis being able to play it on the piano, even though I'm not that into pianos :p ).
:)
Ya I was talkin about Aint Talkin Bout Love, but the first place that I actually heard that riff was in an Apollo 440 dub remix called Aint Talkin Bout Dub, it's pretty good.
Funny you should mention jazz, I often don't like that either
Yeah I've never really been into pure rhythm playing, so when I was playing guitar hero co-op at the weekend my friend's left hand was getting sore while it was my right that was getting knackered (though apparently I move my whole arm for the strumming and he just uses his wrist, so I'm bound to use more energy there). He's not a guitarist though, and also I'm left handed so that probably means I've got more left hand strength and dexterity. I do a bit of drumming here and there so my rhythm should be okay too but he was pwning me on The Fire and the Flames rhythm parts as I kinda just play the first rhythm part as fast as I can because it sounds mental, but obviously I was going too fast. I pulled it back at the crazy solos because I've been practicing a Living Colour song that has lots of crazy soloing, but then when it came to rhythm again at the end he just scraped a win - nice to have some worthy competition at least! The funny thing was that he kept saying before we started that he wouldn't make it through the song and was just going to give up, presumably to lull me into a false sense of security so that he could kick my ass
Gesture recognition is hardly amazing, have you never played with an eyeToy or software that comes with your webcam? I remember about 8 years ago our webcam had software where you could pop bubbles. The guy trying to manipulate the object did look like an idiot and kept moving wrong so the thing was working as intended, but wasn't doing what *he* wanted it to do as he kept trying to moving his hands into position before trying to move the cube, but then in the process of moving into position the thing recognised his movements anyway.. meh. I've never seen any 3D stuff like this before and I think it's the true achievement here. Recognising movement and collision detection is regarded as quite trivial these days. I don't care what TFA says, it's very light on technical details, and if they think that recognising similar movements or detecting velocities is more complex than designing a holographic display, they're idiots.
My bank's questions were so irrelevant to me that I couldn't remember what I answered. Like "what is your favourite TV show" at a time when I spent most of my time either playing computer games or watching DVDs, and "what is your favourite place", when I don't particularly have one.
Not if they come back from the future!
When it comes to that, sure. It still doesn't get away from the fact that copying music when the copyright belongs to someone else is unethical.. thought the fact that the labels screw the artists over is also unethical, it's a dilemma. Personally I would prefer if all artists pulled a Radiohead and put their stuff up online or setup their own label, then you know that most of the money is going to the artist (and the rest pays the hosting bills/CD pressing). For lesser known/funded bands that kind of involvement could be impractical so they could start out somewhere like iTunes.
Do you have a link to the plasma thing?
Again, have you even looked at how this thing is working? It's not 'done before', and is a step in the right direction. It's not always going to be practical to have a 3D plasma holo-projector, sometimes you'll just want to have a fake window or 3D picture frame without having to use a headset, and this is a way to accomplish that, and is probably a lot closer to being marketable than any other 3D tech, since it simply uses current projector technology, but in a novel form.
It's a novel method of using current tech though, which amounts to the same kind of thing. It's like a breakthrough in software instead of hardware, someone has discovered an awesome way to do things. Search this page for .pdf and you'll find a document that discusses their method. Just because it uses projectors and mirrors doesn't automatically mean it isn't impressive, it makes it more exciting that we could be seeing more of this type of thing very soon.
His method also only works for one viewer. It is of course much more practical and useful until we have computers that can render complex scenes from all angles at once though. The display in TFA is much more like a real 'holodeck' because it works for multiple viewers, but in the meantime all we need to make better games/simulations is head tracking.
TFA should have linked to this to stop people whining about the lack of description of how this works. Most people are accusing it of vapourware just because they can't understand how something like that would even work! I had thought that it was to do with pixels that shone out different colours at different angles, but it's a bit more complicated than that.. I still don't understand it exactly but it's pretty clever, if highly expensive! Would have to cost at least $30-40000 to build something like this?