But of course hybrids do well in cities and in stop and go traffic. A plug in hybrid driver may not need to use his gas engine at all during his daily commute.
This is not the case on long trips and a gas engine is needed. So yes, not perfect, but getting there.
I still think current technology would take us a long way if manufacturers worked on the aerodynamics way more, made structures lighter and cars and engines smaller.
If everyone drove cars that were aerodynamic, weighed less than a ton and had 3 cylinder 1.0 liter engines, perhaps THEN it would be a good idea to consider switching to EV's for zero emissions. Right now MASSIVE emissions could be changed to very small emissions with normal (for Europeans) existing technology.
There is really no reason why even a less racy looking EV could not be as fast as a Ferrari or Porche, even more pedestrian EV's are quite peppy.
The problem is range and battery performance. A range of 100 miles is mentioned, but this does not mention driving style or ari temperature (sure to be nice and hot, since it is a permanent convertable).
The problem is, his range becomes very limited, especially in the winter he can only do 25 miles. Another problem is the 16h equalization charge he has to do every month. These could of course be because of the specific battery technology used in his particular model of car, but I'm sure similar problems exist with other EV's.
I guess these are the reasons that EV's never really caught on.
I see this problem ALL the time. I talked about it in the thread about hotel check-in software too.
There is a general lack of good quality easy to use software out there and most of that runs over windows, which means you not only have to teach your staff how to use windows in addition to the software, you have to BUY windows and then deal with all the problems that windows brings with it.
My friend worked at a warehouse that had some horrible antiquated made for them text based system, where each keystroke was sent a couple of countries away to Denmark (of all places) and back. It was incredibly slow. The only improvement over the years was to transfer things from a museum piece green screen client to running in a window in windows NT (after that, not only did the software suck, so did winNT).
What the software did was relatively simple and could have been implemented as say a browser based database or some such, but that would have required actually spending money and time one it.
This system could have been run on top of Linux (no weekly re-boot) and would have saved them that money too.
But seriously guys, I've worked at hotels (work at one right now actually) as a cook, and I can tell you, that there is a real shortage of ANY KIND of software.
Be it inventory control, booking, checking in, personell management -you name it. Not only that, but most run over Windows, so you get the addittional problem of purchasing windows, running it and having the associated problems.
Now the way I figure it, anyone building a system based on linux, where interaction with the actual operating system on the part of the end user is minimal (think KnoppMyth) that STILL manages to do alot of math (count customers, inventories and extrapolate from that information ie. predict the future) without the end user having to worry about learning a whole lot of stuff (remember, we are talking about cooks who generally can't tell the difference between a computer and an ice machine, except for me of course), you would really make a $hitload of money.
AOL is like this weird blob or amoeba that takes over everything on the internet and then clones it. Yet every clone it produces is somehow inferrior to the original.
Strangely enough, this does not dissuade millions of people of going with the clones instead of the real deal.
It seems Australia could be used as a testbed for invasive smart card and biometric technologies, seeing as how the populace on the whole embraces the anti-terrorism-means-restricting-our-rights -mantra.
I am sure that the Australian experience will be looked at in the US, once the final decision has been made to implement a universal biometric ID system.
There are many things, such as the PASS-card as well as requireing biometrics on your passport, that can be seen as groundlaying work for such a system.
Things like these, after all, don't come all of a sudden, instead they are slowly implemented, one step at a time. In the end, you will find it strangely convinient, and not really all that bad, to have to carry your biometrically enhanced universal RFID card along with you.
"For deleting stuff, I really never had a problem.... I don't really see when that is an issue, but you can always give me an example. Perhaps I have a workaround."
Say I install a program with RunAs and it creates a shortcut on the desktop. I can't delete that shortcut in limited user. I can start, say notepad with RunAs and delete it through there, or switch to admin, or switch to admin and (apparently) start (file)explorer.
But all of the above is a helluva lot of trouble just to delete a shortcut off my desktop.
Oh well, ain't nothing anyone here can do about XP sucking at this, so I guess I'll just wait for Vista and shell out $100 and deal with the problems mentioned in TFA.
Hey I know! Lets bash China again. Slashdot is just soooo much fun when we get to take it out on China like it was some sort of virtual nation-pinjata thingy!
(Of course we should all forget that we don't actually know a damn thing about China)
I guess I should have been slightly more spesific with my wording. RunAs is what drives me nuts, though it only helps when I actually want to run something as an admin, deleting stuff for instance won't work, also it bugs the hell out of me when something simply says "You can't do that". And sometimes it won't even say that.
Also, there appears to be no way to start an admin only program automatically at log on.
Yes yes, I know, that's what I mean is really annoying, why not just ask for an admin password straight up?
Of course if there is a program that requires admin rights, it will just tell you (and sometimes it WON'T even tell you) that you don't have the rights to do this or that.
Also deleting stuff that has been say, placed on the desktop with admin privliges is a bother and the list goes on. Everything would be fine if it would simply ask me every time there is a problem for the admin password.
I wish they would work a bit on account control on WinXP, it is a total disaster. I WANT to use my computer as a limited user, but when I need to do something in Administrator, I shouldn't be bothered to switch users. Why oh why can't they just make it so that is asks for the admin password like with every other goddamned OS!?!
Vista is nice and all that, but how about fixing XP first!!!!
What annoyed me was the fact that Anakin became Darth Vader so quickly. I mean, it was like a quick extreme makeover.
When I saw the first three films, I was under the impression that Vader took like ten or twenty years to s-l-o-w-l-y become eviller and eviller and in the process of evilzing lost a few limbs here and there and eventually had to get the breathign apparatus, perhaps going through several stages too.
If only they could now release episodes one through three with remastered versions that don't feature lousy acting, shallow characters and crappy plots.
"Until I got mononucleosis. It felt like someone turned up the dial on gravity for months, and I've never been the same since. Here I am a few years later, and I can barely lift five pounds without breaking a sweat."
I'm real sorry for you. I had mononucleosis too, about, maybe five years ago, it wasn't too much fun, but it only lasted a week and I was up and running quite soon afterwards. I used to smoke in those days too.
Well, I am sure it has something to do with diets. You see, I haven't been sick for years (except once for a day or two in China). I stopped smoking, I eat a varied healthy diet and I exercise. But I'm not a health freak. I drink, I eat hamburgers etc. every now and then and I don't exercise THAT much.
However, my brother smokes, eats lots of junkfood and never exercises more than going for a walk. He gets a flu or some other bug maybe five or more times a year!
A simple change in lifestyle will make you much healthier.
It is quite simple compare business case number 1:
1) Buy generic mp3 player innards off general market for next to nothing 2) Wrap iPod shuffle lookalike plastic 3) Sell as iPod 4) Profit
Compare with business case number 2:
1) Buy generic mp3 player innards off general market for next to nothing 2) Pay designer to design a cool funky faux iPodesque white plastic exterior 3) Pay huge international marketing firm to make worldwide humongously expensive marketing campaign 4) Rummage through garbage for scraps of food, use cardboard for shelter
Chinese counterfits are excellent
on
Faking a Company
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Everytime I go to China I always buy a ton of counterfit goods. The stuff is quite often of excellent quality, sometimes even better than the original. I am talking about things like shoes, bags, clothing etc.
I am not so sure about electronics and counterfit media, except for movies, that are usually DVD rips. DVD rips actually work better than commercial DVD's as they don't have encoding on them -so no complaints there either.
I heard from a reliable source, that many western companies have been forced to enter the Chinese market by counterfitters presenting them with products identical to their own at trade fairs.
They have the choice of getting into a joint venture, or competing with a counterfitter at unequal terms. Or rather, not much choice at all.
Slashdot Mirror
100+ miles per gallon is way better than 35mpg.
But of course hybrids do well in cities and in stop and go traffic. A plug in hybrid driver may not need to use his gas engine at all during his daily commute.
This is not the case on long trips and a gas engine is needed. So yes, not perfect, but getting there.
I still think current technology would take us a long way if manufacturers worked on the aerodynamics way more, made structures lighter and cars and engines smaller.
If everyone drove cars that were aerodynamic, weighed less than a ton and had 3 cylinder 1.0 liter engines, perhaps THEN it would be a good idea to consider switching to EV's for zero emissions. Right now MASSIVE emissions could be changed to very small emissions with normal (for Europeans) existing technology.
"What we need is a hybrid car where the electric engine is the primary one and gas (or hydrogen) is the backup, rather than the other way around"
Someone's beat you to it. Namely, by modifying a Toyota Prius with extra batteries and plugging it in at night.
Actually a very good idea and it seems to work fine.
You are correct, nothing new.
There is really no reason why even a less racy looking EV could not be as fast as a Ferrari or Porche, even more pedestrian EV's are quite peppy.
The problem is range and battery performance. A range of 100 miles is mentioned, but this does not mention driving style or ari temperature (sure to be nice and hot, since it is a permanent convertable).
Here is an interesting video blog by a guy who owns a small EV and drives it around London." He gets free parking down town and pays no congestion charge. Other good things mentioned is the durability of the car and the fact that is very cheap to own and operate.
The problem is, his range becomes very limited, especially in the winter he can only do 25 miles. Another problem is the 16h equalization charge he has to do every month. These could of course be because of the specific battery technology used in his particular model of car, but I'm sure similar problems exist with other EV's.
I guess these are the reasons that EV's never really caught on.
Mommy, I'm confused O.o
I wonder if there is actual research to back up this claim?
I for one would recommend OSX for people who are not so computer savvy and who don't have alot of experience with any operating system.
Windows on the other hand is more suitable for people who have used Windows for years and don't want to relearn things.
I see this problem ALL the time. I talked about it in the thread about hotel check-in software too.
There is a general lack of good quality easy to use software out there and most of that runs over windows, which means you not only have to teach your staff how to use windows in addition to the software, you have to BUY windows and then deal with all the problems that windows brings with it.
My friend worked at a warehouse that had some horrible antiquated made for them text based system, where each keystroke was sent a couple of countries away to Denmark (of all places) and back. It was incredibly slow. The only improvement over the years was to transfer things from a museum piece green screen client to running in a window in windows NT (after that, not only did the software suck, so did winNT).
What the software did was relatively simple and could have been implemented as say a browser based database or some such, but that would have required actually spending money and time one it.
This system could have been run on top of Linux (no weekly re-boot) and would have saved them that money too.
What this world needs is more smart people.
But seriously guys, I've worked at hotels (work at one right now actually) as a cook, and I can tell you, that there is a real shortage of ANY KIND of software.
Be it inventory control, booking, checking in, personell management -you name it. Not only that, but most run over Windows, so you get the addittional problem of purchasing windows, running it and having the associated problems.
Now the way I figure it, anyone building a system based on linux, where interaction with the actual operating system on the part of the end user is minimal (think KnoppMyth) that STILL manages to do alot of math (count customers, inventories and extrapolate from that information ie. predict the future) without the end user having to worry about learning a whole lot of stuff (remember, we are talking about cooks who generally can't tell the difference between a computer and an ice machine, except for me of course), you would really make a $hitload of money.
Just my opinion based on my experience.
AOL is like this weird blob or amoeba that takes over everything on the internet and then clones it. Yet every clone it produces is somehow inferrior to the original.
Strangely enough, this does not dissuade millions of people of going with the clones instead of the real deal.
Human WMD?
Is that what the dirty bomber is?
It seems Australia could be used as a testbed for invasive smart card and biometric technologies, seeing as how the populace on the whole embraces the anti-terrorism-means-restricting-our-rights -mantra.
I am sure that the Australian experience will be looked at in the US, once the final decision has been made to implement a universal biometric ID system.
There are many things, such as the PASS-card as well as requireing biometrics on your passport, that can be seen as groundlaying work for such a system.
Things like these, after all, don't come all of a sudden, instead they are slowly implemented, one step at a time. In the end, you will find it strangely convinient, and not really all that bad, to have to carry your biometrically enhanced universal RFID card along with you.
"For deleting stuff, I really never had a problem.... I don't really see when that is an issue, but you can always give me an example. Perhaps I have a workaround."
Say I install a program with RunAs and it creates a shortcut on the desktop. I can't delete that shortcut in limited user. I can start, say notepad with RunAs and delete it through there, or switch to admin, or switch to admin and (apparently) start (file)explorer.
But all of the above is a helluva lot of trouble just to delete a shortcut off my desktop.
Oh well, ain't nothing anyone here can do about XP sucking at this, so I guess I'll just wait for Vista and shell out $100 and deal with the problems mentioned in TFA.
Hey I know! Lets bash China again. Slashdot is just soooo much fun when we get to take it out on China like it was some sort of virtual nation-pinjata thingy!
(Of course we should all forget that we don't actually know a damn thing about China)
I guess I should have been slightly more spesific with my wording. RunAs is what drives me nuts, though it only helps when I actually want to run something as an admin, deleting stuff for instance won't work, also it bugs the hell out of me when something simply says "You can't do that". And sometimes it won't even say that.
Also, there appears to be no way to start an admin only program automatically at log on.
Yes yes, I know, that's what I mean is really annoying, why not just ask for an admin password straight up?
Of course if there is a program that requires admin rights, it will just tell you (and sometimes it WON'T even tell you) that you don't have the rights to do this or that.
Also deleting stuff that has been say, placed on the desktop with admin privliges is a bother and the list goes on. Everything would be fine if it would simply ask me every time there is a problem for the admin password.
I wish they would work a bit on account control on WinXP, it is a total disaster. I WANT to use my computer as a limited user, but when I need to do something in Administrator, I shouldn't be bothered to switch users. Why oh why can't they just make it so that is asks for the admin password like with every other goddamned OS!?!
Vista is nice and all that, but how about fixing XP first!!!!
What annoyed me was the fact that Anakin became Darth Vader so quickly. I mean, it was like a quick extreme makeover.
When I saw the first three films, I was under the impression that Vader took like ten or twenty years to s-l-o-w-l-y become eviller and eviller and in the process of evilzing lost a few limbs here and there and eventually had to get the breathign apparatus, perhaps going through several stages too.
If only they could now release episodes one through three with remastered versions that don't feature lousy acting, shallow characters and crappy plots.
"Until I got mononucleosis. It felt like someone turned up the dial on gravity for months, and I've never been the same since. Here I am a few years later, and I can barely lift five pounds without breaking a sweat."
I'm real sorry for you. I had mononucleosis too, about, maybe five years ago, it wasn't too much fun, but it only lasted a week and I was up and running quite soon afterwards. I used to smoke in those days too.
As onyone who has worked in Japan will tell you, even though work days are long, they don't actually work very much.
However, in The States they really make people work hard, especially managers. And there are always PLENTY of managers in the work place.
I guess it is because managers can legally be made to work crazy hours with no compensation.
Well, I am sure it has something to do with diets. You see, I haven't been sick for years (except once for a day or two in China). I stopped smoking, I eat a varied healthy diet and I exercise. But I'm not a health freak. I drink, I eat hamburgers etc. every now and then and I don't exercise THAT much.
However, my brother smokes, eats lots of junkfood and never exercises more than going for a walk. He gets a flu or some other bug maybe five or more times a year!
A simple change in lifestyle will make you much healthier.
As in Illinois?
Correct romanization is "Kim Jong Il".
It is quite simple compare business case number 1:
1) Buy generic mp3 player innards off general market for next to nothing
2) Wrap iPod shuffle lookalike plastic
3) Sell as iPod
4) Profit
Compare with business case number 2:
1) Buy generic mp3 player innards off general market for next to nothing
2) Pay designer to design a cool funky faux iPodesque white plastic exterior
3) Pay huge international marketing firm to make worldwide humongously expensive marketing campaign
4) Rummage through garbage for scraps of food, use cardboard for shelter
Everytime I go to China I always buy a ton of counterfit goods. The stuff is quite often of excellent quality, sometimes even better than the original. I am talking about things like shoes, bags, clothing etc.
I am not so sure about electronics and counterfit media, except for movies, that are usually DVD rips. DVD rips actually work better than commercial DVD's as they don't have encoding on them -so no complaints there either.
I heard from a reliable source, that many western companies have been forced to enter the Chinese market by counterfitters presenting them with products identical to their own at trade fairs.
They have the choice of getting into a joint venture, or competing with a counterfitter at unequal terms. Or rather, not much choice at all.
All I can say is, wow, that is incredibly cool! What moxy! What an idea!
These guys should get a criminal Nobel or something!