In my first year at college, I pushed a friend (by accident) through a plate glass window. The college authorities fined me £50 and asked me to be more careful. [friend] was taken to hospital, lost a small slice of an ear IIRC but was otherwise ok.

We were sitting in the college bar, pretty drunk, and there were these thick radiators that ran along the windows which people sat on. [friend] had slid down between the radiator and the plate glass (10' x 10') window, and I thought it'd be a fine idea to get him stuck down there, so pushed him down as hard as I could...

Plate glass windows make a lot of noise when they break...

I do remember grabbing hold of him and pulling him back as soon as it happened, which may be why he still talks to me :) It may also be why he didn't get a sheet of glass through his neck, Exorcist-style.

The dean in charge of my hall-of-residence was particularly scathing when he found out I was studying physics at the time, various comments about the fragility of glass were made, but his (and the college's) attitude was "shit happens around students". The fine was their way of saying "don't be a dick, again".

Of course, this was the UK, not the US. I also wrote a networked virus without ending up in jail...

Not by common usage, at least where I come from.

The figures quoted for mileage range don't include the emergency range on any petrol car I'm aware of, and they try to fudge them as much as they can (eg: constant 55mph on a theoretically clear road). I'm assuming there's some sort of law about it, but I may be wrong.

Simon.

Fairy nuff. Since the conversation has descended this far. Fuck off and die you arrogant cunt, you're what the leprous weeping scab far up inside the arsehole of humanity dreams of ascending to. You could seriously do with at least some gorms and your problem (at least as far as this discussion goes) is that you're fucking wrong. Deal with it. The margin of error in what TG claim is way way less than that claimed by Shuckster^W Tesla - to within a very good approximation, the maths works out. TG were entirely justified in their claim, and your pathetic attempt to try and discredit it as extrapolation is belied by the fact that they were right.

Pulling random figures out of the air is, of course, exactly what you're accusing the presenters of doing, but apparently it's ok if you do it. Apparently you don't read what you write, either. Calling someone a prick is an accusation, idiot (and I mean idiot in the technical sense, for what it's worth).

Now the conversation has descended this low, I'll be marking you as "to be ignored". See ya.

Because that's what the chemistry dictates (we do chemistry in school, too). The power-release curve of the modern Lithium-ion cells used by Tesla are pretty much linear until the charge is *very* near depleted, at which point it *very* rapidly falls off. Once you're out of the linear phase of the curve, you're SOL.

The "gage" (sic) wasn't broken; the car didn't have 75% left, Tesla made no such claim (and boy would they have, if they could have).

As for being condescending, it seems like an appropriate response to a blatantly false accusation of dishonesty. Note that at least I didn't descend to calling someone a "prick" because I didn't like what they said...

Simon.

Would that be in the same way as a car's petrol gauge doesn't run out when it reads 'empty', and there's still a little in reserve ? And yet we don't say a petrol-fuelled car has a range of X(+Y) miles do we ? Why should that change for electric cars ?

At least you're posting under your own name in this thread. I can't quite believe how many anonymous cowards are writing long detailed argument posts. Seems very atypical of the site...

Simon.

In UK schools we teach this thing called "mathematics". We learn "algebra", and can form and solve simple equations before the minimum school-leaving age. It is therefore understood that everyone has the most basic grounding in mathematics that allows them to appreciate simple derivatives. Or even more simply...

charge at time (t=0) = X
charge at time (t=30 mins) = Y
charge at time (t=50 mins) = Z
plot the graph of charge vs time. It's a straight line. Read off the time value on the charge-axis intercept. That's how long it will last.

Simon. Sheesh.

You keep on harping on about the SCRIPTING IN ADVANCE part of filming a TV show, as if this is in any way not normal... I happen to have worked in the film industry. It's *completely* normal to have a script of what you're doing and when, as well as a rough outline of what you expect to happen. The producers wouldn't be doing their job if they *didn't* have such a script.

With that in mind, here's the show's producers comments on the scripting thing:

a) The truth is, Top Gear had already driven the car prior to filming, to enable us to form a view on it in advance

b) Our primary reasoning behind the verdict had nothing to do with how the Tesla performed; our conclusion was based mainly on the fact that it costs three times more than the petrol sports car upon which it’s based. It takes a long time to recharge, so you can’t use it as easily for the carefree motoring journeys that are a prerequisite of sports car driving. You can actually reach that conclusion without driving the car. As it happens, when it did come to the subjective area of how the car drove on the track, we were full of praise for its performance and handling.

c) Just so you understand there’s nothing devious going on, you need to know how this filming business works. When you film a car review, the reviewer is only the tip of the iceberg. Behind the lens is a film crew, and only a day’s worth of light to shoot the eight minute film. This means we have to prepare in advance a treatment – a rough draft of a script so that the director and film crew can get to work right away, knowing what shots they will need to capture. It will contain the facts about a car, and what we think of its looks and so on, but how well the car actually drives is added on the day. If we’ve driven it ahead of filming, as we do with most cars, we will also have an idea how it feels to drive. But, and this is crucial, as we uncover fresh information about a car whilst filming it, it is entirely normal for the treatment to be modified as the day unfolds. Jeremy is always tweaking the scripts to reflect what his driving experience has actually been on the day.

In terms of the what Clarkson actually said during the driving, he loved the car. It's the fundamental design faults that caused problems, and the fact that Tesla were marketing it as 'The Supercar. Redefined' led to TG testing it as a supercar (you know, on a racetrack). If you've seen any of their other supercar reviews, they're equally scathing about those cars deficiencies.

Tesla didn't get any worse or better treatment than any other manufacturer. They just went in there expecting to get a fawning love-fest type of review, perhaps they'd never actually watched the show...

Anyway, I'm out. I don't really care enough about this to argue it to completion.

So it was broken, then. Right. Gotcha.

If you're driving a car and it has power-assisted breaking you are naturally expecting the car to behave in a given way. If you get into a situation where the brakes do not react as strongly as you expect, that is potentially lethal - not just to you but to the poor pedestrian you didn't see.

No excuses. No "semantics" here. It was broken. End of.

What I'm reading from your post is that Top Gear identified a crucial weakness in the Tesla braking system, and Tesla has since fixed it. Good for Tesla, but to claim the original fault was specious is plain wrong.

- Here is a bottle of ethanol and here is an ethanol burner.
  - Burn 1/50th of the contents of the bottle and notice that it takes 4 hours to burn through.
  - Now you have two choices:
        1) Burn the rest of the ethanol and sit there avidly timing it to see how long it takes
        2) Multiply 50 x 4 => 200 in your head, taking less than a second, and go watch the game.

Top Gear chose option (2). You would appear to have chosen option (1). Personally I'm with TG on this one, I have better things to do with my time.

That's not too far off the mark, though, is it ?

Actually the last TGUK show I saw that had US cars in it gave them pretty good reviews. Standard TG procedure, they each chose a muscle-car and drove it across the country a bit. A few gimmicks along the way (police trap in the middle of nowhere, etc.) but IIRC they gave all the cars the thumbs-up at the end of the program.

No, he's right.

A "general purpose" tool is something that can be used for multiple purposes. There's no implication that the user has to be able to program it, let alone that the user should be able to program the machine using the machine itself. A single-purpose computer is something like the Bombe or the enigma machine. There are also analogue computers dedicated to specific tasks - it's the ability to *be* generally programmed that makes something general purpose, not the ability for the end-user to be able to program it; the distinction is small but significant.

My parents use a PC (it's a Mac, but hey) and all they ever use it for is email and the web. They could easily do that on a tablet as well. I'd humbly suggest there's a lot more people like my parents using "PC's" than there are people coding their own stuff on the very machine they bought. By sheer weight of numbers, the argument is carried in favour of the iPad (and other tablets) being PC's.

Apple's position is somewhere between a rock and a hard place on this one. As stated by Tim Cook, their goal has become to produce a seismic shift in the way things work - since Apple is the poster-child for child-labour in Chinese sweatshops, they've decided to turn this around into an advantage (for the workers) rather than just let it be a whipping post for Apple when lazy editors need to fill some column inches.

They're making *all* the reports available, even when it reflects badly on Apple. Then they fix the bad bits. Lather, rinse, repeat. Their goal is to try and drag the industry kicking and screaming along with them; to have the questions become "why do *you* not provide this level of transparency?" to the Dells, the Samsungs, the (insert any techie brand you care to mention here)... In the short term, sure, there'll be families worse off because they need the kids income. In the medium-to-long term, by making this an open, public conversation, other suppliers will start to have to do these audits, and the working environment within China will benefit as a result.

No matter whereabouts on Apple's 'ooh shiny (smirk)' -> 'gotta have this' scale you happen to be, I think you have to support that as a laudable goal. I also think it has a good chance (possibly one of the very few) of working and thereby reducing the painful period when a country starts to apply minimum wages and look after its citizens better. I think that's a good thing too.

Simon

As opposed to the entire populace of the USA which want to be gate-raped by the TSA, want to be locked up indefinitely without trial in Gitmo, and consider it the lesser evil that innocent children should die rather than american men with small penises give up their gun-toys.

Or perhaps there's a *populace* that is outraged by all these things, but a *government* that implements them. On both sides of the pond.

Simon.

I'd have thought that was clear from the last paragraph. I'm from the UK. I've lived here for almost a decade now, long enough to gain an informed view, I think.

Simon.

Let me be clear here. I'm very much against guns being as prolific as they are. The bullshit defeatist "if guns are illegal, only criminals will have them" argument is so abundantly wrong-headed it defies belief, IMHO. Just look at the gun statistics in England compared to the the US and you have a compelling argument.

However.

When you're looking for reasons why one society in particular has a record of atrocities like this, the first place to look is what makes that society unique. The famous NRA quote "It's not guns that kill people, people kill people" was an attempt to deflect criticism of the penis-extensions^W^W guns generally available (to which my and Eddie's retort is "sure, but the gun helps!"), but like all good propaganda it contains a kernel of truth. The real question then is "why are these people killing each other ?"

The real reason people are using guns to kill themselves and others is the society that they live in. The cold hard truth is that guns are available worldwide, and yet it's a peculiarly American thing (with some outliers) to go crazy and kill a bunch of children/people using your personal arsenal. What's wrong is deeper, I believe.

IMHO American society is in a slow but inevitable death spiral...

• The prevailing cry when social healthcare was proposed goes along the lines of "why should my tax dollars pay for your healthcare"
• The attitude that it's "every (wo)man for themselves", and you get ahead by screwing others. Sit up at the back there, Wall St.
• The violence inherent in the main sport - American football is more about the crunching tackles than any skill.
• The "jocks" vs nerds attitude embodies the whole "might is right" credo. This is a society-wide meme and science is losing the popular vote.
• That corporations attempt to squeeze every last drop of blood out of the stone, leading to a significant erosion of the medium skill tiers, with more low-paid, low-satisfaction jobs to support the higher-ups without providing any competition to them
• An ever more militaristic police system. Tasering, SWAT teams, armed police everywhere. It's just bad.
• The highest incarceration rate in the world (743 from every 100,000). Worse than China. About 80% of those are "Christian"...

It's hard to reconcile that Americans give generously to charities with the first two points above, unless it's just Democrats doing the giving; which is unlikely :). I'd have to posit a discontinuity between the act of giving, and the way of living. It's as if people are ok with being nice to others if they choose to, but refuse to have the general good of society imposed upon them. That's a very odd form of independence, and smacks of biting off your nose to spite your face, but since I don't understand the motivation, I may have it completely wrong there. What's clear is that charitable donation is important to Americans, but charitable society is not.

Religion also plays its part. The society is highly religious, relative to the developed world but religion here in the US is a business like any other. The prime goal is not to try and guide society in the right direction, it's to funnel cash to the higher-ups in the religious power structure. People are told they're doing the right thing as long as the cash is flowing upwards,and the "church"'s goal is simply to continue to make sure that is the case. Upon examination, it's a good metaphor for what's wrong in the more-general society.

It adds up to an uncaring society, and I can see how anyone stuck on the lower rungs with seemingly no prospect of getting higher up could reject it, and similarly reject the rest of the social rules we all expect to be obeyed. There's no golden solution here, no panacea, you're not guaranteed anything will ever be perfect, but if the society had more general welfare built in, it's my personal belief there'd be less atrocities.

A society is by definition a group of people collectively living by a set of rules. Ask any evolutionary theorist what's important, and (s)he'll tell you it's the rules of the game and the boundary conditions imposed by the environment. The environment in the USA needs a lot of attention IMHO. It's forcing the society down some unwholesomely bad paths.

Just IMHO, as an outsider looking in. Unlike most, I'm not stuck here. I've made no secret of the fact that I doubt I'll be staying here much longer. The above is why.

Simon.