Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Knee-Jerk reaction. (Score 1) 63

Cars occasionally run onto the sidewalk and hurt someone. More often than planes cause injury around airports I expect. Putting sidewalks right beside roads seems like a terrible idea. Why not have at least a buffer zone? Say, a football field (choose your type) of buffer?

Same for airports. Airports do have buffers around them, especially at the ends of runways. Very, very occasionally it isn't enough.

Comment Re: how did it take us THIS long? (Score 1) 75

I'm not really sure what your point is. You are correct that racers frequently sail through all sorts of weather without damage. They do sometimes take damage though, the vast majority of which is due to trying to sail through weather as fast as possible.

A cargo ship would presumably sail through storms as fast as it could without risking damage.

Comment Re: All I can say is duh! (Score 1) 75

My, we are an aggressively stupid dipshit today.

You do seem to be yes. Maybe time to take a break?

Ships scale up pretty predictably. No, they didn't build THE BIGGEST CARGO SHIP EVAH for their prototype. That would be pretty dumb.

This thread is talking about the ship speed. And the speed of a displacement hull is intimately linked to the length. As is the capacity, incidentally.

Comment Boats are always slow (Score 1, Insightful) 75

It already is much cheaper and slower than flying; so what if they go slower if it ends up cheaper... If it costs the same and is slower then we really should do something to make polluting boats pay more for the harm they cause.

FYI: The top 12 mega cargo ships pollute more than ALL the cars combined; I forget the exact number but it's around a dozen! If I was presi-dictator, I'd sink every mega ship and offer non-profit nuclear powered ships managed by the navy (since they are the only ones who competently and securely handle nuclear power.) Given the scope of the global problem is a bigger threat than any war and this cost would be trivial. Furthermore, if it's ok to blow up fishing boats in the name of drugs it's certainly more justified to sink a dozen mega cargo ships.

What I'd like to see is an electric boat with solar and wind; obviously with generators picking up the slack. Yes, solar wouldn't generate hardly anything close to what is needed; however, it's the cheapest electricity and would quickly pay for itself. Generators can easily be swapped out at anytime while giant ICE engines can not... I know there are electric boats running from generators already; I don't know how widespread that has become. I'd also have solar covers over the shipping containers; wouldn't take much time to attach/detach those given how automation is taking over loading/unloading... I bet the extra human labor time is still worth it. Not that we should be shipping things cheaply around the world like we do. It's absolutely insane that something like US organic chicken gets shipped to china to be processed then shipped around... or how dozens of cows of beef from all over get ground into burgers etc. Those are some really cheap shipping costs...

Comment Re:Nuclear Power Industry won't be happy (Score 1) 120

not ideal. batteries are ideal. hydro is ideal. Simply using distance grid transport is great too. They are still not great to flip on and off constantly. For short spikes, flywheels are probably better.

Still, base load power for the grid is a myth; it's not going to be cost effective, it probably isn't already - not too many run those turbines very long.

Comment Re:Fire Marshal (Score 1) 183

It has to open in a fire. I can't imagine otherwise; however, I can imagine a slim chance it stops working when the power goes out... but unlikely. Cut the power or light a fire and you are out. Or simply ask an employee. If they won't let you out, call the police which likely they would be doing since you probably are stealing if they won't let you out... or you're robbing them and they don't want you to beat/shoot them to get out... I bet a gun gets you out pretty fast.

What I'd like to know is if they set off an alarm, does that make it impossible to get out? So now out of panic the perp has to be convinced the employee can't do anything after the alarm was triggered and also not get angry and shoot... not like they are all sane enough to consider the consequences of murder and a certain capture; one would like to think they'd be mindful enough to try breaking out before getting revenge on the employee.

Not that we don't have bigger problems with a lack of public restrooms and businesses denying access to theirs!

Comment Re:lmao (Score 1) 92

Even as someone who votes left more than any other way, I'd be entirely okay with killing the AMT. It is a huge pain to deal with.

The real problem, IMO, is that Congress needs to get off its a** and pass laws requiring brokerages and retirement plans to provide all of the tax data in a fully computed form so that you can fill in the boxes on your tax worksheet and be done, rather than having to look through every single line and figure out which ones were short-term, which were long-term, which had foreign tax, etc. Even with TurboTax, even with basically everything coming from Edward Jones, it *still* takes me two or three hours every year to fill in the information correctly for my taxes. I can't imagine trying to do that by hand on paper.

Comment Re:An opinion - not terrible (Score 2) 43

I love to hate on macs but this isn't terrible at all. The old and new icons are both quite clear and their purpose is most always understandable 'except for the two window icons replaced by an right-pointing arrow, I have no clear idea what either that could be doing), supported by shape and colours (though a more intense contrast could be desirable). These are icons I would enjoy using instead of the current "flat design" trend that exists elsewhere, for example the Breeze style in KDE which is what I would call terrible.

The real problem with requiring icons to be a specific shape is that it makes apps harder to recognize. Just look at how much confusion Google's icon rebranding has been, with every icon looking a lot like a multicolored square, and you'll understand what I mean. Now imagine every app icon on an entire operating system being a rounded square.

Comment Re:EV sales in *USA* plummet (Score 1) 303

most cars are more efficient at 55 to 60 MPH than at 40 MPH

I think the studies show 50 mph is the sweet spot for the same distance on highways. But you are right it varies by both vehicle and driving style. But the difference between 50 and the current 70-80 mph people drive on freeways is substantial for any vehicle.

Certainly true for highways, yes. There's also next to no good alternative to individual cars for highway driving, though. Amtrak is very, very limited, Greyhound is slow *and* very limited, airplanes are grossly fuel inefficient and are generally limited to relatively long distances, and that's about it.

The other part of the equation is how many miles someone drives. Lower speeds mean people drive fewer miles because the real cost of a trip is the time it takes. If you drive 8 hours at average 50 mph you only go 400 miles. You drive at average 60 miles per hour you go 480. If you use 5 gallons to go 100 miles then you use an extra gallon of gas.

Not sure why you think people would drive fewer miles. Most people in cars are trying to get to a specific place, not driving just to drive. Would people plan shorter trips? Maybe for some small percentage of leisure driving, but leisure driving is already a small percentage of driving, so that's a small reduction in fuel use for a small percentage of a small percentage of trips. That's hardly worth the negative impact on everything else.

Comment Re:Musk gets 50 billion dollars (Score 1) 173

It is basically impossible for Tesla to ever be a profitable company now. It is madness to be investing in it. But so many people have put so much money in it and they are so afraid of losing out that we all just have to pretend.

That's not how stock grants work. That trillion dollars doesn't come from Tesla. It comes from the stock market through share dilution. The company can absolutely still be profitable no matter how much equity it chooses to give out.

Comment Re:what happens (Score 1) 137

For example the city I'm in, if you make your house two stories (the maximum, by the way) the required setbacks triple in size so your house won't be any bigger.

Yeah, your definition of "mega-mansion" definitely is a starter house. My parents' home was two stories plus a basement. I can think of plenty of three-story houses that aren't even remotely mansions (e.g. row houses in San Francisco).

Penalizing people for using space efficiently by building up just leads to more suburban sprawl and lower housing density. It's the opposite of what any sane urban planner would recommend.

Slashdot Top Deals

egrep patterns are full regular expressions; it uses a fast deterministic algorithm that sometimes needs exponential space. -- unix manuals

Working...