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Comment Re:Reality is setting in (Score 1) 203

A jerrycan over here is 5 gallons of gas (and there are lots of other 5 gallon options). The car that was most common during the early days of automobiles was the Model T Ford which had a 10 gallon gas tank - so 2 cans is going to get you full.

6 cans of gas = 3 fill-ups. That's not that many to keep around.

Comment Re:3dfx (Score 1) 65

Not really. 3DFX lost to Nvidia in Riva TNT era,

More like the Riva TNT2 era - the Riva TNT was still a little slower than the Voodoo2 it was competition against, but it did cement Nvidia as a good card that could actually compete (compared to everything else which was basically a toy compared to 3dfx's cards).

That was in 1998 though, 2 years after 3dfx released the original Voodoo which basically was wiping the floor against anything else at the time. Back then you could still choose if you wanted 3d acceleration or the software rendering engine and it was like night and day popping in a Voodoo card.

Granted, a 2-3 year lead doesn't seem like much at the time now almost 30 years later, but still being almost the only player in town for that much time to being completely defunct in a year or two more was still pretty surprising.

I do think the slowness to release a complete card (versus the addon style) cards hurt them too. I didn't end up staying with 3dfx past the Voodo2 line myself.

Comment Re:Reality is setting in (Score 1) 203

Gas is energy dense. Before those gas stations got built up you could take a few cans of fuel home with you and have several fillups available before you needed to go back to the gas station. When there were sufficient cars out there in the boonies then the gas stations followed, but there are still issues there (eg my parents live 14 miles from the nearest gas station).

Now, the same will eventually happen with EV's. People in the city will adopt them, they'll have charging infrastructure. That will slowly spread further out, eventually some of the rural folks will find it acceptable, and they'll switch over.

You have to let that occur naturally though, at its own pace. Setting enforced deadlines ignores the reality on the ground. I'd say that we'll probably see full conversion to electric vehicles naturally without forcing anyone . . . but probably by closer to 2070 not 2030.

Comment Re:I'm good with an X replacement. (Score 3, Insightful) 52

The analogy doesn't hold - hitting someone with a fist is an active, physical act. Despite what the chronically online may be pushing these days, words are not violence, and they cannot hurt.

You don't want the government or another entity determining what information is "harmful". I can promise that had we gone down that route they would have deemed most of the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War protests "harmful misinformation". Every piece of knowledge in our future to be gained is "misinformation" until proven otherwise, but if there is no room to push new information, that proof will never come and we basically freeze our society into its current form.

Comment Re:But when it does break... (Score 2) 199

There are modern workarounds for some stuff though. For example if you don't want to use actual floppy disks on a Commodore 64 you can emulate the disk drive using a Raspberry Pi and flash storage. Kinda weird using a computer with hundreds of times more power than the C64 to emulate its disk drive, but it works (and it draws less power than the original drive did).

Just fix what breaks.

Comment Re:Sure replace it (Score 4, Insightful) 199

Yeah a lot of old software is happy to keep chugging along. If it worked back then it will continue to work in perpetuity.

That said, old HARDWARE I don't trust. Magnetic media ages, moving parts in drives wear out, and capacitors inevitably go bad.

I'd trust it more running on updated hardware using something like FreeDOS (assuming you can find a BIOS based modern mobo) than using truly vintage hardware.

Comment Re:Of course (Score 1) 362

There is no documented "threshhold" - its up to the cops discretion. In general though its more flat rate than percentages. If you're more than 15mph over the limit you're typically going to get pulled over. Between 10-14mph its possible but unlikely. Between 5 and 10mph is very, very unlikely that you get pulled over (I usually drive 7mph over the limit).

If you're pulled over for less than 5mph over the limit the cop likely suspected you of something else and needed an excuse to pull you over.

Certain exceptions will naturally apply (ie they might be harsher in school zones and such).

Comment Re:Of course (Score 1) 362

You assume its only a matter of going faster. If I'm transitioning from a 35mph zone to a 65mph zone and the camera misses it I'm now legally OK but stuck at 45 MPH until I pass another speed limit sign.

Nah, you can't have it both ways. I'm I'm bearing the responsibility I have to be able to make a decision.

Comment Re:What a shocker (Score 1, Insightful) 16

Yeah - realistically businesses love to suckle the money teat. You're not going to get them off of a revenue source without forcing them off.

China as a market may be very lucrative. Hell the slave trade was very financially lucrative for the Confederacy - that doesn't mean that you get to keep it.

China seemed to be on the path to eventual redemption for a while, but the last 15 years that train has reversed in a major way and either they need to get back on the right path or we need to sever ties.

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