Airplanes can be highway drivable cars also. But the limitations of such a vehicle seem pretty numerous. You need a runway and a pilot's license, etc,etc,etc. The likelihood is that they will be mediocre aircraft and worse automobiles. There are probably a few situations where there is a reasonable use case. But for the most part, they aren't likely to be flying cars in the Jetsons, Futurama, Fifth Element sense.
Helicopters might come closer, maybe... But there might be some huge safety issues. It's not for nothing that they are called "choppers".
JP Morgan is an investment bank, not a commercial/retail bank. They don't take deposits from individuals and don't make car loans. I don't recall (if I ever knew) what, if any, constraints there are on their activities, but I wouldn't be surprised that they can do pretty much whatever they damn well please as long as they don't mislead their investors.
"Who wants to use a programming language where deleting a space at the beginning of the line will prevent the code from running?"
Why on earth would one want to arbitrarily delete leading spaces? That's an activity that makes no more sense than arbitrarily changing the spelling of the first variable or operator on the line (and nowhere else).
What Python does is observe that people use indentation for readability anyway, and uses that practice to eliminate some levels of bracketing. Of course if you love parentheses, Python is not likely to be your favorite language although it still uses a lot of them as well as square and squiggely brackets...
You mean something like "1.0 if X else 3.1416" -- which is legal Python and does what you'd expect.
OK, I have to admit. I haven't seen a FORTRAN program since about 1988. And I have no idea what part of the language a FORTRAN arithmetical IF statement might be. But I have to say that I don't especially miss FORTRAN although I do think it's a hell of a lot more readable than C, C++ or Perl.-- all of which tend to look like a terrier has been banging enthusiastically on the keyboard.
The fastest China Clippers had limited cargo capacity and could average a bit better than 15 knots if the winds stayed favorable. Modern container ships mostly travel at 18-24 knots without needing luck with the wind. And they can operate on something resembling a schedule.
OTOH, with a robot crew, maybe it doesn't matter all that much if your (non-perishable) cargo takes a long time to wend its way from Shanghai to London.
Sure. Why use Stack Overflow when you can get poorly thought out answers at Slashdot? Should Stack Overflow be a programmer's only tool? Of course not. But it's a part of many perfectly competent programmer's toolkits. It's great for quickly finding forgotten syntax, showing alternative solutions, possibly identifying problems with "obvious" solutions and for identifying the vocabulary needed to dig deeper.
You don't have to use a Ford Fusion as your delivery vehicle. A golf cart or motorcycle with an oven sidecar would work fine. And conceptually it could cook the pizza while traveling. On a college campus, I'd worry more about the customers finding ways to bypass the payment step.
The big problem is probably going to be that the technology to navigate a target rich environment without hitting anything/anybody doesn't exist and is probably going to be way harder to develop than most folks think.
I recall that in Tokyo in the 1980s and likely today as well, take out food deliveries were made by bicycle or motorscooter.
"The person the owns the Truck isn't the necessarily the same person the owns the trailer."
A valid point, I'm sure. But won't most initial sales likely be made as fleet sales to companies like COSTCO and Walmart? After all, they are (I think) the only class of operators in a position to make sure there's a suitable charger at the destination store/warehouse.
Maybe after most everyone decides electric is the way to go, there are some standards and Tesla or Peterbilt or Mack tractors all have the same charging interface and trailers will work with any of them?... or not.
Let me guess. You make your living as a Web site designer and are baffled why anyone would not appreciate your product, use an ad blocker or think Javascript is a really bad idea? Right?
And presumably without the "smart" klunkiness. Really guys. There is no reason in this day and age that it should take 10 or 20 seconds for a solid state device to turn on and present one with an image.
Yes and no? For serious business dispatching, you maybe need worst case -- cold weather (i.e. -20C= -4F), elderly battery pack. max load, long load and unload times at a location near, but not at, a charger.
"As for "range figures" - not only could things like solar trailers significantly improve range (as you note, that's a lot of surface area), but there's a more fundamental aspect "
Solar? I thought we were talking Seattle to Portland? Nifty places. But not noted for beach weather. The sun does come out occasionally in that part of the world. But not very reliably. Aside from which what business schedules deliveries that can only be made on sunny days?
"The truck would charge while being loaded/unloaded."
I would imagine so. But it sounds like you are likely going to need a whacking great custom installed charger at every destination, not just a 20 amp wall plug -- unless your plan includes your tractor sitting recharging in Portland for a week or two after every delivery
"One company's 4000 Kelvin is not like the others..."
You can use a CD as a diffraction grating to look at the spectrum from the "bulb". Over the years, we've ended up with "Daylight" CFLs from a number of different manufacturers in our living room. Looking at their spectra with a CD, it's easy to see that they use different phosphors to achieve similar visual effects. My guess is that you'll find different spectra from different manufacturer's 4K LEDs
Close enough I guess. Sometimes you really want print to be a function rather than a language element so you can, for example, print using a list comprehension. To do that in Python 2, you actually have to define a function (e.g. "def prnt(x): print x", then print using a call to prnt("I wish I'd never heard of Javascript"). But you're right. It's not a big deal.
Food. At least in the US, is also cheap and abundant. Doesn't mean that you need to eat 5600 calories a day and try a different candy covered breakfast cereal every morning.
I also started off in the days of FORTRAN and punched cards. Actually, the first computers I programmed used vacuum tubes and were programmed in assembler. I didn't encounter FORTRAN for a number of years.
Up until 2000 or 2005 I agree, I saw immense progress on many fronts. But I have to say that what I've seen for the past decade or so (except for cell phones) looks about as structured, directed, and organized as the Trump presidency..
"PROGRESS" implies a destination. Where on Earth are you folks going? You do have a destination, and hopefully a road map, right? Care to share any information on where this train is going and when it might get there?
I don't know about you, but my electric toothbrush consists of a motor, some plastic gears, a switch, and a couple of AA batteries. I can't imagine how a processor, much less JS, could provide anything other than aggravation.
"JavaScript has greatly improved the internet..... We should consider replacing much of the C code in existence with JavaScript to improve security and reliability."
Then our entire digital infrastructure will run like the Internet. And the end days will be upon us. And the deserving shall enter the kingdom of heaven While the sinners shall be condemned to an eternity of trying to get a constantly updating Windows to load an improperly signed printer driver that has to be downloaded over a Comcast internet connection.
During the Kosovo War, the Serbs shot an F117 stealth fighter down. Turns out that F117s are visible to ancient long wavelength radar. Especially in wet weather. The unit that shot the aircraft down has regular reunions on March 27 that feature an F117 shaped cake..
Slashdot Mirror
"Aeroplanes are not cars."
Airplanes can be highway drivable cars also. But the limitations of such a vehicle seem pretty numerous. You need a runway and a pilot's license, etc,etc,etc. The likelihood is that they will be mediocre aircraft and worse automobiles. There are probably a few situations where there is a reasonable use case. But for the most part, they aren't likely to be flying cars in the Jetsons, Futurama, Fifth Element sense.
Helicopters might come closer, maybe ... But there might be some huge safety issues. It's not for nothing that they are called "choppers".
JP Morgan is an investment bank, not a commercial/retail bank. They don't take deposits from individuals and don't make car loans. I don't recall (if I ever knew) what, if any, constraints there are on their activities, but I wouldn't be surprised that they can do pretty much whatever they damn well please as long as they don't mislead their investors.
A "currencies" with no physical embodiment and are "supported" entirely by people thinking happy thoughts? What could possibly go wrong?
So, you think Bitcoin is like tulips?
Wrong!!!
You can put tulips in a vase. (for a few days, anyway).
"Who wants to use a programming language where deleting a space at the beginning of the line will prevent the code from running?"
Why on earth would one want to arbitrarily delete leading spaces? That's an activity that makes no more sense than arbitrarily changing the spelling of the first variable or operator on the line (and nowhere else).
What Python does is observe that people use indentation for readability anyway, and uses that practice to eliminate some levels of bracketing. Of course if you love parentheses, Python is not likely to be your favorite language although it still uses a lot of them as well as square and squiggely brackets. ..
You might prefer, say, Lisp.
Lot's of us feel differently.
You mean something like "1.0 if X else 3.1416" -- which is legal Python and does what you'd expect.
OK, I have to admit. I haven't seen a FORTRAN program since about 1988. And I have no idea what part of the language a FORTRAN arithmetical IF statement might be. But I have to say that I don't especially miss FORTRAN although I do think it's a hell of a lot more readable than C, C++ or Perl.-- all of which tend to look like a terrier has been banging enthusiastically on the keyboard.
(My ((God) Man). (You (left ((out)) all) the) parentheses!!!)
The fastest China Clippers had limited cargo capacity and could average a bit better than 15 knots if the winds stayed favorable. Modern container ships mostly travel at 18-24 knots without needing luck with the wind. And they can operate on something resembling a schedule.
OTOH, with a robot crew, maybe it doesn't matter all that much if your (non-perishable) cargo takes a long time to wend its way from Shanghai to London.
Sure. Why use Stack Overflow when you can get poorly thought out answers at Slashdot? Should Stack Overflow be a programmer's only tool? Of course not. But it's a part of many perfectly competent programmer's toolkits. It's great for quickly finding forgotten syntax, showing alternative solutions, possibly identifying problems with "obvious" solutions and for identifying the vocabulary needed to dig deeper.
They're hungry. If they weren't, they wouldn't have ordered a pizza. Odds are that they'll walk out to the curb to get it.
You don't have to use a Ford Fusion as your delivery vehicle. A golf cart or motorcycle with an oven sidecar would work fine. And conceptually it could cook the pizza while traveling. On a college campus, I'd worry more about the customers finding ways to bypass the payment step.
The big problem is probably going to be that the technology to navigate a target rich environment without hitting anything/anybody doesn't exist and is probably going to be way harder to develop than most folks think.
I recall that in Tokyo in the 1980s and likely today as well, take out food deliveries were made by bicycle or motorscooter.
"The person the owns the Truck isn't the necessarily the same person the owns the trailer."
A valid point, I'm sure. But won't most initial sales likely be made as fleet sales to companies like COSTCO and Walmart? After all, they are (I think) the only class of operators in a position to make sure there's a suitable charger at the destination store/warehouse.
Maybe after most everyone decides electric is the way to go, there are some standards and Tesla or Peterbilt or Mack tractors all have the same charging interface and trailers will work with any of them? ... or not.
And if this generation of smart TVs doesn't do that, the next generation will. Your TV knows what's good for you, even if you are a bit confused.
"... maybe the problem is you."
Let me guess. You make your living as a Web site designer and are baffled why anyone would not appreciate your product, use an ad blocker or think Javascript is a really bad idea? Right?
"without the "smart" features."
And presumably without the "smart" klunkiness. Really guys. There is no reason in this day and age that it should take 10 or 20 seconds for a solid state device to turn on and present one with an image.
"So 170 miles."
Yes and no? For serious business dispatching, you maybe need worst case -- cold weather (i.e. -20C= -4F), elderly battery pack. max load, long load and unload times at a location near, but not at, a charger.
Still 170 miles?.
"As for "range figures" - not only could things like solar trailers significantly improve range (as you note, that's a lot of surface area), but there's a more fundamental aspect "
Solar? I thought we were talking Seattle to Portland? Nifty places. But not noted for beach weather. The sun does come out occasionally in that part of the world. But not very reliably. Aside from which what business schedules deliveries that can only be made on sunny days?
"The truck would charge while being loaded/unloaded."
I would imagine so. But it sounds like you are likely going to need a whacking great custom installed charger at every destination, not just a 20 amp wall plug -- unless your plan includes your tractor sitting recharging in Portland for a week or two after every delivery
"One company's 4000 Kelvin is not like the others..."
You can use a CD as a diffraction grating to look at the spectrum from the "bulb". Over the years, we've ended up with "Daylight" CFLs from a number of different manufacturers in our living room. Looking at their spectra with a CD, it's easy to see that they use different phosphors to achieve similar visual effects. My guess is that you'll find different spectra from different manufacturer's 4K LEDs
Close enough I guess. Sometimes you really want print to be a function rather than a language element so you can, for example, print using a list comprehension. To do that in Python 2, you actually have to define a function (e.g. "def prnt(x): print x", then print using a call to prnt("I wish I'd never heard of Javascript"). But you're right. It's not a big deal.
Food. At least in the US, is also cheap and abundant. Doesn't mean that you need to eat 5600 calories a day and try a different candy covered breakfast cereal every morning.
I also started off in the days of FORTRAN and punched cards. Actually, the first computers I programmed used vacuum tubes and were programmed in assembler. I didn't encounter FORTRAN for a number of years.
Up until 2000 or 2005 I agree, I saw immense progress on many fronts. But I have to say that what I've seen for the past decade or so (except for cell phones) looks about as structured, directed, and organized as the Trump presidency..
"PROGRESS" implies a destination. Where on Earth are you folks going? You do have a destination, and hopefully a road map, right? Care to share any information on where this train is going and when it might get there?
I don't know about you, but my electric toothbrush consists of a motor, some plastic gears, a switch, and a couple of AA batteries. I can't imagine how a processor, much less JS, could provide anything other than aggravation.
"Our management tells us that "Agile Development" means that anyone can develop anything. Why would we need expensive chief architects anymore?"
Indeed, why do you need programmers? Management can do the code (agiley of course) in the time they used to spend managing development.
(If it will make you any happier, next year's question is why do you need managers?)
"JavaScript has greatly improved the internet. .... We should consider replacing much of the C code in existence with JavaScript to improve security and reliability."
Then our entire digital infrastructure will run like the Internet. And the end days will be upon us. And the deserving shall enter the kingdom of heaven While the sinners shall be condemned to an eternity of trying to get a constantly updating Windows to load an improperly signed printer driver that has to be downloaded over a Comcast internet connection.
During the Kosovo War, the Serbs shot an F117 stealth fighter down. Turns out that F117s are visible to ancient long wavelength radar. Especially in wet weather. The unit that shot the aircraft down has regular reunions on March 27 that feature an F117 shaped cake..