Diesel-electric hybrids (like how a locomotive works) are actually just starting to show up in heavy equipment like articulated wheel loaders. There are some huge advantages. The electric motors are quieter which means the operators can work closer to existing population and work more hours of the day. The combustion engine only ever runs at peak efficiency to generate electricity. Fuel savings is around 30% compared to mechanical drive. Packaging is much easier due to flexibility of routing cables instead of moving shafts.

An all electric beast is probably a ways off, but a diesel electric hybrid with even a trivial all-electric low speed cruising range before firing up the diesel is probably an interesting possibility.

That's exactly what's happening now.

It is by definition the fault of other people that I get down-modded. My university degree and the 22 books I've written are conclusive proof that I can express myself just fine.

I'm simply commenting on the hypocrisy of Slashdot bleating about others being silenced online while they maintain this complex mechanism which effectively silences commenters.

If you weren't pulling muscles trying to be a gigantic dick, you would realize you're replying to comments that nobody made.

And I think I speak for a number of people when I say we really don't want to know about your "special handshake."

Tell the truth. You're forming a little intellectual enclave of like-minded people so you can all congratulate each other in a hermetically sealed echo chamber.

You're not interested in discussing ideas. You're interested in strengthening your dogmas. You are anti-intellectual fundamentalists, no different than those you claim to oppose.

And the longer it festers, the more sour and bitter and reactionary you all get. Slashdot is scarcely a shadow of what it once was. If this continues, it will be a ghost town in a year, just like Boingboing is, and just like Reddit will eventually become.

Always funny how Slashdot uses the "silenced person" icon.

Meanwhile, they have a site where the "anonymous coward" can log in to a duplicate account and mod posts down against a commenter they don't agree with until that commenter is literally slienced beyond one or two pre-modded -1 comments a day.

The downvotes are fairly predictable: anyone who doesn't toe the scientism line or who doesn't agree with the fundamentalist atheist dogma is usually first to be mass downvoted. Often a simple declarative sentence is all it takes to rile up some greasy neckbeard asshole, who will dump all five mod points into retaliating because greasy neckbeard assholes take declarative statements as a personal insult.

If you reply, that just gives their duplicate account another three-point shot at your "karma," which is simply a measure of how well you agree with the Slashdot party line. All the greasy neckbeard asshole wants is grist for his logic mill so he can "disprove" everything you say by downvoting it and labeling it.

So essentially, Slashdot is simply a machine to enforce groupthink. Nobody is allowed to color outside the lines without being chased away by the downvotes. It's very much like Boingboing, which is a site devoted to enforcing Cory Doctorow's personal prejudices and cowardly bigotry through his proxy mods.

I propose this be fixed before you spend any more time on your big beta project.

tl;dr Slashdot's moderation system does nothing but force commenters to say the "right thing(tm)"

You mean: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. - Hanlon's Razor

Driving? I much rather play sports on Mars! Jump higher (almost 3x), leap longer...

I'm sorry* you misspell three-letter words.

*Nah, I'm not really sorry.

If words were people, the word "debunked" would be shoved into a barrel of nitro-glycerin and thrown off a cliff before breakfast.

The word "creepy" would be found in an artillery impact crater nearby.

You see kids, the internal combustion engine is the absolute pinnacle of automobile power technology.

So put away your chemistry sets and your CAD applications. There's nowhere to go from here.

Some Important Person(tm) will emerge and recite a plausible explanation. A group of thundering assholes will then encircle the explanation on sites like this one and declare it "the way it is."

At that point all discussion will be over, and anyone who continues to study the incident, come to any other conclusion, offer any contradictory evidence or otherwise belabor the issue will be labeled a wacko and derided, harassed, shouted down and made fun of forever and ever amen.

You see, in America, critical thinking is prized right up to the point where an important person(tm) speaks. All subsequent critical thinking is conspiracy nut batshit tinfoil hat wearing wacko pluck-your-banjo-with-your-single-tooth teabagger loony.

The funny part is that in every single criminal prosecution in this country, every single prosecutor begins by forming what the thundering assholes would call a "conspiracy theory."

The number that makes your example add up in your favor.

Hi, thanks for the info. I actually learned something. :D

(Not a Comcast customer, tho... where I live, if you mention cable, they laugh and point.)

Hmm. I use Google's DNS, and eztv.it resolves for me as of two seconds ago (and has the couple of times I've been to eztv.it in the past month, too).

What DNS did you add?