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Comment Re:Humanity is lost (Score 1) 290

While there are a few examples of wristwatch design prior (especially for the military), in 1904 Dumont asked Cartier to design a watch he could wear and still keep both hands free for flying. Jaeger designed a wristwatch for Cartier called the "Dumont", after the famous aviator, in 1911 for commercial sale and the "trendy set" rushed to buy them. Sounds like a pretty familiar story to me... even a bit sheeplish, don't you think? I believe that some things never really change, but of course, that's just my opinion.

That might explain the initial rush, but it utterly fails to explain why wristwatches became the de-facto standard for the next 90-odd years.

Comment Re:Who wears a watch these days (Score 1) 290

When you have to do frequent hand washing (in the last 35 years I have been employed in the meat industry, food industry, childcare and elder care

Good point. Clearly, this device isn't suitable for anyone in any of those professions, so it should probably not be allowed to exist.

Wait, so you put your clean hand in your dirty pocket and then touch meat with that now-filthy hand? Or do you touch meat and then put your filthy hand in your pocket? Either way, ewwww.

Comment I know! (Score 4, Insightful) 185

I couldn't resist answering this:

Why are manhole covers round?

Because if they were square, they could be turned sideways, rotated 45 degrees, and dropped through the hole. As it turns out, this holds true for any shape with an even number of sides, until the length of each side drops below a threshold that's related to the lip of the hole.

Comment Re: The authors found that batteries appear on tra (Score 1) 330

After all, Apple continues to sell Macs, they get a lot of press, people love talking about their Macbook Air and such, but the reality is the Mac has about 6% of the overall PC market. That percentage hasn't moved up or down much in a long time.

There is a market for the Mac, but it isn't ever going to be larger than 5-7% of the PC market unless they change their prices and make them easier to modify.

I stopped reading at the highlighted text. I think you've amply demonstrated that you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. All the other PC makers joined into that race to the bottom, and look where it got them.

Comment Re:seem like? No, are. (Score 1) 330

Sure there are people driving them. They just happen to represent the vast minority, and there are reasons for that.

I'd like to see electric cars succeed, but they won't as they are now.

Have you ever notice that adoption of any new technology happens on a curve? Only the lunatics at first, and then a trickle of brave folks, and then all of a sudden ordinary people start adopting the technology? Yeah. Phase III has already started. You probably didn't notice it, or maybe it hasn't happened in your region before.

But it's definitely Phase III.

Comment Re: The authors found that batteries appear on tra (Score 1) 330

a) The timing belt was a good number of years ago
b) Automatic transmissions take a dump sometimes. It's not uncommon, even on decent cars that seemingly have plenty of life left in them. I was certainly not driving junkers.
c) I'm now driving an electric car, so your triangulation is shit.

Comment Re:How do you charge them? (Score 1) 330

And this is the kind of free charging that I expect will be going away as the number of electric cars increases.

The chargers are generally not free, the major exception being chargers provided by employers. Chargepoint (among other companies) has built out extensive infrastructure, deploying chargers that take contactless credit cards as well as the companies own smart cards. You get an account, you pull up, wave your card, plug in, and charge. Costs vary by installation (the property owner sets rates) but it's usually based on kW/h, sometimes with a flat parking charge. It's still quite reasonable, and works well.

Or, more to the point: the infrastructure already exists, and it is being extensively used.

And charging your car at home depends on having a garage, or at least a special carport. But I believe that more than half of the cars are parked on the street. (For that matter, in San Francisco there are already more cars than places to park them most of the time. So it only works at all because there's always some cars prowling for a parking place.)

When I was growing up in Sunnyvale most of the cars were parked beside the houses. When I went back recently, in the same neighborhood with minimal new construction more than half of the cars appeared to be parked on the streed. And Sunnyvale counts as a suburb. (Well, I *think* it still counts as a suburb.)

So you're saying that until everyone on the planet has a garage, electric cars will not catch on? Because I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Nobody is saying electric cars will work for everyone. But they will work for a *lot* of people, and a statistically significant number of people have already reached that conclusion and are now happily driving electric cars.

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