Actually, you are misunderstanding me. I would argue that the sex sells philosophy is less functional in the technology context. Gadgets have not traditionally be considered all that cool and have more a market of being nerdy and inaccessible. The marketing of the devices as a calm voice over with artsy music give a cultured feel while being calming and giving a sense of connection. It also appeals greatly to the artsy sub-culture which is considered much more a cool sub-culture. You capture their interest and it will spread more easily. Don't look at the surface of the videos but rather the results and how the adds try to get that result. I've been following Apple since the days of the early Mac and their entire design and marketing philosophy has never truly changed. Establish a niche market in the high end, increase the perceived coolness of the devices based on the users in that niche and try to get it to spread from there out to the broader audience that want to emulate the actual groups using the devices rather than the coolness of the device itself. You make an in crowd and get people to want to be part of the crowd regardless of the device. When is the last time you saw a Dell fan boy or a Motorola fan boy. Ask yourself what makes Apple have such a polarizing impact? The answer to that question is the genius of their marketing as a whole entity and effort.
I can see what you're saying. Would it make you happier if I said people don't prefer iOS? I see it as a whole package deal where price of the device (and thus the platform) is a factor and people prefer the whole package Android provides for the reasons you mentioned. But it could simply be said that iOS does not give a preference.
I'm talking about consumers, you are talking about developers. That is apples and oranges, though personally, from my experience with Android, I personally disagree. I would ask, have you designed any apps in Android and then tried to port them to iOS? The design pattern for Android and iOS is inherently incompatible so I would expect a port in either direction to be complicated and take longer than the original effort since you are trying to replicate functionality that is not done the same way. I will admit that I have not been working with iOS as long as you, but I find it extremely obtuse to develop on as it requires a completely different way of thinking about things. (Also, I hate xcode with a burning passion, but that's beside the point.)
I would hazard that a lot of people's experiences impact how they perceive starting development in mobile too. I came from a MSVC++, MSVC# background with lots of.Net and started mobile development on Windows Mobile. I found Android a far simpler transition to make where as I found the documentation for iOS completely unhelpful and the bastardized visual approach to some of the development that couldn't easily be replicated in code to be convoluted and confusing in xcode (not to mention major stability problems. It was crashing on me daily until I switched to Monotouch to avoid using it any more than necessary.
It doesn't matter if people know their phone runs Android or not. The fact is that people are buying more Android, therefore they prefer it. If they actually preferred iOS, they would specifically look for iOS devices. Most people don't simply go online and buy a phone blindly. They go in to a store, mess around with the phones and buy one they like. In the majority of cases, the phone is running Android rather than iOS.
Also, as to why you should care if your carrier had to pay a higher subsidy. Where do you think the funds to pay for that come from? At the end of the day, an expense for the carrier is an expense for the customer. If the device is actually worth more, then it would be a smart buy to get the better and let other people subsidize your purchase through the carrier, but if it isn't then you are just jacking up your phone bill and everyone else's.
Popular opinion has already shown that people don't prefer iOS to Android
Cite?
See above commenter that said that Android (platform) has more instances out there than iOS at least in relation to smartphones. Given the perceived value and cost of each, the majority buy Android smartphones rather than iOS.
I get what you are saying here. Seamless integration is definitely something all people, both technical and non-technical, want. I wouldn't necessarily say that Apple is the most successful at doing so though, at least as far as pushing forward the state of the art. This is where the goals of technical and non-technical diverge. Apple's design philosophy has always been to develop walled garden, monolithic, uniform systems with no room for departure from a very specific and well defined usage pattern. As such, they are able to make some of the most easily integrating systems, but the technical challenges are basically non-existent in this case as the developer controls all variables. Microsoft is truely far better at ease of use than Apple ever dreamed of being. While it has it's own issues, the fact is that you can sit down to just about any x86 or x64 system in the world and manage to install a version of Windows on it and get passable results. The same can not remotely be said for OSX or even Linux (though Linux is continuously making progress in that department.) Android and iOS fall in to a similar boat, though Android still being fairly young does not deal with platform changes as smoothly as Windows does, but given time I suspect it will.
Even in Apple's walled garden, they still have some major interoperability fails as well. I have an AppleTV and had it decide to dump 3/4 of my video library when it sync'd with my computer causing me to lose a vast amount of video. Luckily I was able to get Apple to let me redownload it, but I have not used my AppleTV since as it isn't worth risking losing my entire library of media over. (And now I can use the (in my view) far superior Amazon marketplace and stream directly to my TV or any computer.)
Obviously the end game goal is a system that provides Apple's walled garden like usability on an open and diverse platform giving an ideal combination of usability and adaptability to meet the needs of the individual, but we aren't there yet so we have two different camps. One is pursuing the goal while the other is happy to sit stagnant and collect a big pay check. Largely the benefit off the efforts of others, cherry picking the best trends in technology and incorporating them in to their products, but very few ideas are truly unique to Apple. Where Apple is of benefit to the industry is in marketing and increasing interest in technology. Apple always has been and probably always will be the true king of marketing for the tech sector. The risk becomes when they are so successful that it risks blotting out companies that make actual progress towards the ideal end goal, and instead resulting in a tightly controlled industry driven around profit rather than technical advancement in all directions. (Yes some progress would still be made in what ever direction Apple deemed to be the "correct" (read as most profitable) way.)
Having been a long time user of PDAs and smartphones, I really can't say that the bar has been raised by the iPhone in terms of quality (speaking purely technically). My Dell Axim v50 was an awesome PDA and worked beautifully. It was a solid build quality and powerful device. In comparison, the original iPhone was an incremental upgrade though it did update the form factor to be smaller in size, but this had always been a direction the designs were moving in. They were the first to an app store on mobile, but not the first to an app store in general, so that is a borrowed idea that was simply transposed in (again, not saying they don't deserve credit for being the first, but it wasn't purely their innovation.) Ease of use has similarly been a goal for every company, just about every company other than Apple is also looking to balance ease of use with pushing the technical envelope and lacks the vertical integration to do it all even if they wanted to do the same walled garden approach.
I also develop for Android, iOS and I developed for WinMo 6.5 back in the day. I have to disagree on your assessment. XCode is a joke, the platform may be ok if you really get in to it, but it requires an entirely different way of thinking from any other development platforms I've worked with and the iOS market is borderline thievery for the majority of developers working on paid apps. Windows Mobile 6.5 was actually the easiest of the platforms to develop on from my experience thanks to the abstracted support for.Net and Android is more in line with conventional development patterns. The iPhone doesn't have better sales (unless your particular app requires customization to each individual screen size, in which case I could see a justification for breaking the market down by handset rather than platform) compared to Android. Yes clients ask for things in iOS, but that is due to Apple's brilliant marketing to make iPhone a cultural buzz word.
As you pointed out, people want a phone that plays angry birds. The entire argument about wether iPhone is better or not is irrelevant since multiple available hardware platforms would perfectly fit people's needs and in effectivly the same way. The only difference is marketing and the public image marketing creates. That is what I meant by the "Apple Phenomenon." It is the fact they managed to get people to buy on "cool" rather than buy on need or usefulness. In effect, this means people spend more than they need to in order to get ahead of the joneses and that results in a) more profit for Apple, b)less money in middle class hands and c) in many cases, as a whole pattern throughout society (and the fact that Apple isn't the only one using it, they are just the best at it) over spending and debt.
Also, before someone jumps on me for saying that Apple's devices are not "functional devices" all I meant is that the mass market does not choose an item based on their needs but rather based on what is "cool". They are not purchased for their functional capability (which are solid), but rather simply because it is the "in" thing.
Perhaps I should have expanded on what I meant by "Apple Phenomena" better. What I am referring to is the mass market, keeping up with the joneses, easily manipulated social consumer mentality that has pervaded first world culture. The entire notion of marketing a device in such a way as to make it a status symbol rather than a functional device leads to people overspending because of how our culture has been programmed to respond to marketing and spend. Apple is one of the most successful companies at capitalizing on this culture. So I did not intend it to be something specific to Apple, but certainly it can be observed the most directly in the way Apple does business and they are certainly the most successful at it.
No where did I say they didn't make good systems. They make excellent systems, but other people make excellent systems for less money. I do hate Apple because of their end goal to manipulate people in to allowing them to control the tech and content industries so they can introduce an "Apple Tax" on everything, but my evaluation of their hardware is purely on technical merits. The iPhone is a solid hardware platform, but it is no better than many other platforms that are produced more cheaply. I also find fault with the software that drives it purely for the mentality that pervades Apple's design (read as business) philosophy. As can be seen by the changing direction of the market, even the majority of the consumer base is coming around to that realization.
Actually, now that I think about it more, since there is no convection, you might be able to just use a halon extinguisher. Using a dense gas to push out the oxygen in the immediate area should be sufficient without requiring a full flush of the atmosphere. The clean up might be a little tricky after and breathing apparatus would still be a very good idea, but it could save energy which is at a premium in space.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder if a quick flush would in fact cause the bends if re-compression was prompt. People can operate at pretty low PSI (space suits are 4.3, atmospheric at sea level is 14.7). Would momentary decompression be a large risk if it was brief enough (my personal knowledge of DCS is only in regards to SCUBA which is obviously on the much higher pressure side of things). My understanding was that DCS normally takes a small period of time to develop that might give a window, though I would guess there would be other problems with high speed decompression. A better bet would probably be to do a halon flush with temporary breathing tanks though as it would avoid the whole issue of pressure change.
If you are any sane human being who understands the value of money and the fact that Apple clearly isn't giving it, then you should burst in to tears. They are losing market share because people don't prefer their products and they charge substantially more than the devices cost to build and develop, so they are laughing their way to the bank. Luckily, the majority of people appear to still understand the value of money, but the "Apple phenomenon" takes away any doubt as to why the modern world is in such financial trouble.
The irony is that while more people prefer android to iOS in the phone market now, people continue to point to Apple winning because they still have more profits as if that is a good thing. It really means they are giving you less for your money that isn't any better and thus they make more money. Popular opinion has already shown that people don't prefer iOS to Android, just that Apple has better marketing at getting people to overspend. Good for shareholders, not for consumers and fanboyz.
Re:I propose we Occupy "Occupy"
on
Occupy Flash?
·
· Score: 1
If it is getting so many arms does it make it an Occupus?
"The same is true for crossbows" Did you really just say that? Really? Intentionally? Actually thinking you had an argument or a point? Crossbows at the time were the same thing and they were used until such a time as they were replaced by a more powerful, more deadly deterrent force. Guns are the replacement to the cross bow and they are the standard arms of every army in the world now. Your argument proves the point you are arguing against.
But that ignores the idea of efficiency. The US consumes drastically more resources than the rest of the planet because we are better off than most of the planet. The thing is that what we do use, we use much more efficiently. I would guess that the US uses FAR more than 25% of the world's energy. There is only so much that can be done to make energy use more efficient, and we've done many of those things. If we simply stopped using the energy, it would make the problem worse as it would open the door for others who are less frugal to use more energy and more resources and do so in a way that is not as efficient and more harmful.
As afabbro indicated, the majority of the problem has to be solved by ending inefficient and wasteful practices rather than altering lifestyles. The solution is fully attainable without moving back to the 18th century and moving the US back to the 18th century would do more harm than good.
The platinum requirement is what makes them expensive (and there is work going on in developing a platinum free fuel cell), but the main safety concern is storage of the hydrogen in a safe manner. Even storing it in the center of the car is not a sure fire method of protection as stresses in a crash could cause a rupture and subsequent explosion. There are however designs being worked on that would render it safe by limiting the rate at which hydrogen could escape from the storage tank, even if it was structurally compromised. Electric cars that run on batteries are simply not viable for long distance travel and there will have to be a long distance travel option for people in the future. A stop gap possibility would be electric vehicles for commuting with car rental places carrying the more expensive fuel cell vehicles that would allow for personal long distance transit.
As for the comment about where the power comes from, I wasn't making any claim that they don't require lots of power, simply making the claim that they (or something like them) will be a viable solution to avoid the loss of technological availability that MaskedSlacker seemed to be indicating he thought would be necessary. My point was that technologies already exist that could continue the same convenience we have now if we developed good sources of clean power production.
Your lack of faith in technology is somewhat disturbing. Fuel cells are incredibly capable sources of power generation that can be run from renewable resources. The main problem is safely sequestering the hydrogen in the event of a crash. Materials have been made that can do this and still provide the needed energy density, but currently the costs are too expensive to produce for general use and we lack the distribution network for hydrogen. As the cost of oil continues to rise and materials science continues to advance though, these obstacles will be overcome. Fuel cell (or some other technology) will come up and be commercially viable that will replace the oil producing car at some point based on rising costs and people will still be able to make that long trip in their personal vehicle. We have no immediate lack of options to produce power, we simply lack the desire as a people to spend more than we believe we need to. The fact is that "green" options require risks and investments that lack support. Nuclear specifically could provide all our power needs for quite some time until something better came along and faced with the prospect of losing what we have today, people would insist that it be used if no alternative was available.
I like to say that a republic is the absolutely least effective form of government ever invented. Unfortunately it is also the best we've ever seen. Similarly capitalism is the most wasteful economy ever conceived, but again, it is the best available. In the end, you have to try to strike a balance between powers to prevent abuse, because by nature people are abusive. Unfortunately, this constant battle between two sides (not talking about political parties btw, but rather people and the government or consumers and companies) of as equal power as possible tends to make it very hard to get anything done, but the alternative is to have a system that much more rapidly can devolve in to tyranny.
Encrypted password list using static password. The lack of use of the static password off of your local machine make it pretty secure. (Alternately, a system that supports access through 2 different passwords, one for updating and one for access could be used.) File away the password in escrow and tie it to the will. The family has access to the file but not the password, the escrow has access to the password but not the file. When the two are combined after your death, full access will be available. Simple.
Actually, that isn't true either. If you took 3 different directional transmitters and sent the signal to the 3 different receivers with proper delays you could make it think your signal was originating anywhere you wanted to.
But that isn't entirely true. Yes, as the system becomes more advanced, bugs slip in which make things eventually require rebooting to deal with, but many phones and video players run on firmware and/or software that does not require rebooting. Many DVD and Bluray players run on software but can run without restarting for as long as one would care to leave it on. The same can be said for many feature phones, particularly the ones that run BREW. As complexity increases, the likelihood of a need to reboot does increase unless testing also increases, but comparing a complex, general purpose system to a simple, single or limited purpose system is really apples to oranges as the majority of the development and issues goes in to dealing with edge cases and a general purpose device has exponentially more edge cases.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you are misunderstanding me. I would argue that the sex sells philosophy is less functional in the technology context. Gadgets have not traditionally be considered all that cool and have more a market of being nerdy and inaccessible. The marketing of the devices as a calm voice over with artsy music give a cultured feel while being calming and giving a sense of connection. It also appeals greatly to the artsy sub-culture which is considered much more a cool sub-culture. You capture their interest and it will spread more easily. Don't look at the surface of the videos but rather the results and how the adds try to get that result. I've been following Apple since the days of the early Mac and their entire design and marketing philosophy has never truly changed. Establish a niche market in the high end, increase the perceived coolness of the devices based on the users in that niche and try to get it to spread from there out to the broader audience that want to emulate the actual groups using the devices rather than the coolness of the device itself. You make an in crowd and get people to want to be part of the crowd regardless of the device. When is the last time you saw a Dell fan boy or a Motorola fan boy. Ask yourself what makes Apple have such a polarizing impact? The answer to that question is the genius of their marketing as a whole entity and effort.
I can see what you're saying. Would it make you happier if I said people don't prefer iOS? I see it as a whole package deal where price of the device (and thus the platform) is a factor and people prefer the whole package Android provides for the reasons you mentioned. But it could simply be said that iOS does not give a preference.
But how will you fit all the tubes?
I'm talking about consumers, you are talking about developers. That is apples and oranges, though personally, from my experience with Android, I personally disagree. I would ask, have you designed any apps in Android and then tried to port them to iOS? The design pattern for Android and iOS is inherently incompatible so I would expect a port in either direction to be complicated and take longer than the original effort since you are trying to replicate functionality that is not done the same way. I will admit that I have not been working with iOS as long as you, but I find it extremely obtuse to develop on as it requires a completely different way of thinking about things. (Also, I hate xcode with a burning passion, but that's beside the point.)
I would hazard that a lot of people's experiences impact how they perceive starting development in mobile too. I came from a MSVC++, MSVC# background with lots of .Net and started mobile development on Windows Mobile. I found Android a far simpler transition to make where as I found the documentation for iOS completely unhelpful and the bastardized visual approach to some of the development that couldn't easily be replicated in code to be convoluted and confusing in xcode (not to mention major stability problems. It was crashing on me daily until I switched to Monotouch to avoid using it any more than necessary.
It doesn't matter if people know their phone runs Android or not. The fact is that people are buying more Android, therefore they prefer it. If they actually preferred iOS, they would specifically look for iOS devices. Most people don't simply go online and buy a phone blindly. They go in to a store, mess around with the phones and buy one they like. In the majority of cases, the phone is running Android rather than iOS.
Also, as to why you should care if your carrier had to pay a higher subsidy. Where do you think the funds to pay for that come from? At the end of the day, an expense for the carrier is an expense for the customer. If the device is actually worth more, then it would be a smart buy to get the better and let other people subsidize your purchase through the carrier, but if it isn't then you are just jacking up your phone bill and everyone else's.
Popular opinion has already shown that people don't prefer iOS to Android
Cite?
See above commenter that said that Android (platform) has more instances out there than iOS at least in relation to smartphones. Given the perceived value and cost of each, the majority buy Android smartphones rather than iOS.
I get what you are saying here. Seamless integration is definitely something all people, both technical and non-technical, want. I wouldn't necessarily say that Apple is the most successful at doing so though, at least as far as pushing forward the state of the art. This is where the goals of technical and non-technical diverge. Apple's design philosophy has always been to develop walled garden, monolithic, uniform systems with no room for departure from a very specific and well defined usage pattern. As such, they are able to make some of the most easily integrating systems, but the technical challenges are basically non-existent in this case as the developer controls all variables. Microsoft is truely far better at ease of use than Apple ever dreamed of being. While it has it's own issues, the fact is that you can sit down to just about any x86 or x64 system in the world and manage to install a version of Windows on it and get passable results. The same can not remotely be said for OSX or even Linux (though Linux is continuously making progress in that department.) Android and iOS fall in to a similar boat, though Android still being fairly young does not deal with platform changes as smoothly as Windows does, but given time I suspect it will.
Even in Apple's walled garden, they still have some major interoperability fails as well. I have an AppleTV and had it decide to dump 3/4 of my video library when it sync'd with my computer causing me to lose a vast amount of video. Luckily I was able to get Apple to let me redownload it, but I have not used my AppleTV since as it isn't worth risking losing my entire library of media over. (And now I can use the (in my view) far superior Amazon marketplace and stream directly to my TV or any computer.)
Obviously the end game goal is a system that provides Apple's walled garden like usability on an open and diverse platform giving an ideal combination of usability and adaptability to meet the needs of the individual, but we aren't there yet so we have two different camps. One is pursuing the goal while the other is happy to sit stagnant and collect a big pay check. Largely the benefit off the efforts of others, cherry picking the best trends in technology and incorporating them in to their products, but very few ideas are truly unique to Apple. Where Apple is of benefit to the industry is in marketing and increasing interest in technology. Apple always has been and probably always will be the true king of marketing for the tech sector. The risk becomes when they are so successful that it risks blotting out companies that make actual progress towards the ideal end goal, and instead resulting in a tightly controlled industry driven around profit rather than technical advancement in all directions. (Yes some progress would still be made in what ever direction Apple deemed to be the "correct" (read as most profitable) way.)
Having been a long time user of PDAs and smartphones, I really can't say that the bar has been raised by the iPhone in terms of quality (speaking purely technically). My Dell Axim v50 was an awesome PDA and worked beautifully. It was a solid build quality and powerful device. In comparison, the original iPhone was an incremental upgrade though it did update the form factor to be smaller in size, but this had always been a direction the designs were moving in. They were the first to an app store on mobile, but not the first to an app store in general, so that is a borrowed idea that was simply transposed in (again, not saying they don't deserve credit for being the first, but it wasn't purely their innovation.) Ease of use has similarly been a goal for every company, just about every company other than Apple is also looking to balance ease of use with pushing the technical envelope and lacks the vertical integration to do it all even if they wanted to do the same walled garden approach.
I also develop for Android, iOS and I developed for WinMo 6.5 back in the day. I have to disagree on your assessment. XCode is a joke, the platform may be ok if you really get in to it, but it requires an entirely different way of thinking from any other development platforms I've worked with and the iOS market is borderline thievery for the majority of developers working on paid apps. Windows Mobile 6.5 was actually the easiest of the platforms to develop on from my experience thanks to the abstracted support for .Net and Android is more in line with conventional development patterns. The iPhone doesn't have better sales (unless your particular app requires customization to each individual screen size, in which case I could see a justification for breaking the market down by handset rather than platform) compared to Android. Yes clients ask for things in iOS, but that is due to Apple's brilliant marketing to make iPhone a cultural buzz word.
As you pointed out, people want a phone that plays angry birds. The entire argument about wether iPhone is better or not is irrelevant since multiple available hardware platforms would perfectly fit people's needs and in effectivly the same way. The only difference is marketing and the public image marketing creates. That is what I meant by the "Apple Phenomenon." It is the fact they managed to get people to buy on "cool" rather than buy on need or usefulness. In effect, this means people spend more than they need to in order to get ahead of the joneses and that results in a) more profit for Apple, b)less money in middle class hands and c) in many cases, as a whole pattern throughout society (and the fact that Apple isn't the only one using it, they are just the best at it) over spending and debt.
Also, before someone jumps on me for saying that Apple's devices are not "functional devices" all I meant is that the mass market does not choose an item based on their needs but rather based on what is "cool". They are not purchased for their functional capability (which are solid), but rather simply because it is the "in" thing.
Perhaps I should have expanded on what I meant by "Apple Phenomena" better. What I am referring to is the mass market, keeping up with the joneses, easily manipulated social consumer mentality that has pervaded first world culture. The entire notion of marketing a device in such a way as to make it a status symbol rather than a functional device leads to people overspending because of how our culture has been programmed to respond to marketing and spend. Apple is one of the most successful companies at capitalizing on this culture. So I did not intend it to be something specific to Apple, but certainly it can be observed the most directly in the way Apple does business and they are certainly the most successful at it.
No where did I say they didn't make good systems. They make excellent systems, but other people make excellent systems for less money. I do hate Apple because of their end goal to manipulate people in to allowing them to control the tech and content industries so they can introduce an "Apple Tax" on everything, but my evaluation of their hardware is purely on technical merits. The iPhone is a solid hardware platform, but it is no better than many other platforms that are produced more cheaply. I also find fault with the software that drives it purely for the mentality that pervades Apple's design (read as business) philosophy. As can be seen by the changing direction of the market, even the majority of the consumer base is coming around to that realization.
Actually, now that I think about it more, since there is no convection, you might be able to just use a halon extinguisher. Using a dense gas to push out the oxygen in the immediate area should be sufficient without requiring a full flush of the atmosphere. The clean up might be a little tricky after and breathing apparatus would still be a very good idea, but it could save energy which is at a premium in space.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder if a quick flush would in fact cause the bends if re-compression was prompt. People can operate at pretty low PSI (space suits are 4.3, atmospheric at sea level is 14.7). Would momentary decompression be a large risk if it was brief enough (my personal knowledge of DCS is only in regards to SCUBA which is obviously on the much higher pressure side of things). My understanding was that DCS normally takes a small period of time to develop that might give a window, though I would guess there would be other problems with high speed decompression. A better bet would probably be to do a halon flush with temporary breathing tanks though as it would avoid the whole issue of pressure change.
If you are any sane human being who understands the value of money and the fact that Apple clearly isn't giving it, then you should burst in to tears. They are losing market share because people don't prefer their products and they charge substantially more than the devices cost to build and develop, so they are laughing their way to the bank. Luckily, the majority of people appear to still understand the value of money, but the "Apple phenomenon" takes away any doubt as to why the modern world is in such financial trouble.
The irony is that while more people prefer android to iOS in the phone market now, people continue to point to Apple winning because they still have more profits as if that is a good thing. It really means they are giving you less for your money that isn't any better and thus they make more money. Popular opinion has already shown that people don't prefer iOS to Android, just that Apple has better marketing at getting people to overspend. Good for shareholders, not for consumers and fanboyz.
If it is getting so many arms does it make it an Occupus?
"The same is true for crossbows" Did you really just say that? Really? Intentionally? Actually thinking you had an argument or a point? Crossbows at the time were the same thing and they were used until such a time as they were replaced by a more powerful, more deadly deterrent force. Guns are the replacement to the cross bow and they are the standard arms of every army in the world now. Your argument proves the point you are arguing against.
But that ignores the idea of efficiency. The US consumes drastically more resources than the rest of the planet because we are better off than most of the planet. The thing is that what we do use, we use much more efficiently. I would guess that the US uses FAR more than 25% of the world's energy. There is only so much that can be done to make energy use more efficient, and we've done many of those things. If we simply stopped using the energy, it would make the problem worse as it would open the door for others who are less frugal to use more energy and more resources and do so in a way that is not as efficient and more harmful.
As afabbro indicated, the majority of the problem has to be solved by ending inefficient and wasteful practices rather than altering lifestyles. The solution is fully attainable without moving back to the 18th century and moving the US back to the 18th century would do more harm than good.
The platinum requirement is what makes them expensive (and there is work going on in developing a platinum free fuel cell), but the main safety concern is storage of the hydrogen in a safe manner. Even storing it in the center of the car is not a sure fire method of protection as stresses in a crash could cause a rupture and subsequent explosion. There are however designs being worked on that would render it safe by limiting the rate at which hydrogen could escape from the storage tank, even if it was structurally compromised. Electric cars that run on batteries are simply not viable for long distance travel and there will have to be a long distance travel option for people in the future. A stop gap possibility would be electric vehicles for commuting with car rental places carrying the more expensive fuel cell vehicles that would allow for personal long distance transit.
As for the comment about where the power comes from, I wasn't making any claim that they don't require lots of power, simply making the claim that they (or something like them) will be a viable solution to avoid the loss of technological availability that MaskedSlacker seemed to be indicating he thought would be necessary. My point was that technologies already exist that could continue the same convenience we have now if we developed good sources of clean power production.
Your lack of faith in technology is somewhat disturbing. Fuel cells are incredibly capable sources of power generation that can be run from renewable resources. The main problem is safely sequestering the hydrogen in the event of a crash. Materials have been made that can do this and still provide the needed energy density, but currently the costs are too expensive to produce for general use and we lack the distribution network for hydrogen. As the cost of oil continues to rise and materials science continues to advance though, these obstacles will be overcome. Fuel cell (or some other technology) will come up and be commercially viable that will replace the oil producing car at some point based on rising costs and people will still be able to make that long trip in their personal vehicle. We have no immediate lack of options to produce power, we simply lack the desire as a people to spend more than we believe we need to. The fact is that "green" options require risks and investments that lack support. Nuclear specifically could provide all our power needs for quite some time until something better came along and faced with the prospect of losing what we have today, people would insist that it be used if no alternative was available.
I like to say that a republic is the absolutely least effective form of government ever invented. Unfortunately it is also the best we've ever seen. Similarly capitalism is the most wasteful economy ever conceived, but again, it is the best available. In the end, you have to try to strike a balance between powers to prevent abuse, because by nature people are abusive. Unfortunately, this constant battle between two sides (not talking about political parties btw, but rather people and the government or consumers and companies) of as equal power as possible tends to make it very hard to get anything done, but the alternative is to have a system that much more rapidly can devolve in to tyranny.
Encrypted password list using static password. The lack of use of the static password off of your local machine make it pretty secure. (Alternately, a system that supports access through 2 different passwords, one for updating and one for access could be used.) File away the password in escrow and tie it to the will. The family has access to the file but not the password, the escrow has access to the password but not the file. When the two are combined after your death, full access will be available. Simple.
Actually, that isn't true either. If you took 3 different directional transmitters and sent the signal to the 3 different receivers with proper delays you could make it think your signal was originating anywhere you wanted to.
But that isn't entirely true. Yes, as the system becomes more advanced, bugs slip in which make things eventually require rebooting to deal with, but many phones and video players run on firmware and/or software that does not require rebooting. Many DVD and Bluray players run on software but can run without restarting for as long as one would care to leave it on. The same can be said for many feature phones, particularly the ones that run BREW. As complexity increases, the likelihood of a need to reboot does increase unless testing also increases, but comparing a complex, general purpose system to a simple, single or limited purpose system is really apples to oranges as the majority of the development and issues goes in to dealing with edge cases and a general purpose device has exponentially more edge cases.