What I'm expecting is for auto mfgs to push more and more towards not having AM/FM radio, of if not allowed to remove it to make less and less usable/accessible. And more and more integrated electronics because they can't have you just replacing the radio with something you prefer. Because.... you can't monetize radio (at least not so easily). Even if they aren't making money off of whatever streaming/online/etc. service you're using they can make money off of OnStar or whatever connection or subscriptions to the media player or mapping or other features. Clever people are sitting in conference rooms right now scheming different ways to coerce us into subscribing to different services they're trying to come up with the most appealing possible names for.

Even if it's only a few cents at a time they want to latch onto you any way they can.

("They"... 'cause we all know "they" be bad. Tinfoil hat optional, 'cause just cause I'm being paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after me!)

Clearly you don't drive an EV now.... you really want to be charging at home, daily, a simple routine with minimal hassle. Every day you pull out with a "full tank" and no worries. Huge battery capacities with long ranges require longer charge times, something you don't want happening at random during your driving.

More importantly, charging at home is the most affordable option- public charging is at higher rates (gotta make a profit ya know!). Ideally you go a bit further and get a time-of-use billing structure and charge at night at the lowest per-kWh rate.

I can't get time-of-use where I am, I'm waiting for that to change. As it is, if you calculate it out the electricity I use is like buying gas at $1.25/gallon.... when the time comes that I can use cheaper electricity at night I'll end up down in the $0.50-0.75 range. Whoohoo! :)

I've been driving a Chevy Volt for the last 5 years, I just don't see what all the fuss is about, this problem was already solved.

For nearly all of my day-to-day driving I'm electric- occasionally (like maybe twice a month) I'll have a day where the gas engine needs to kick in. Also once or twice a month I have to make some long drives for family- 5-600miles over a weekend. The math works out a bit different than people might expect- although 90%+ of my drives are electric, those weekend trips end up being about half my mileage. Overall I'm very happy with how things have worked out- If I were doing it again though I think I might get a BMW i3 instead, move a bit towards the "sporty" end of the bell curve.

I'd love to have a Model Y or a Bolt- I have a strong preference for hatchbacks. BUT my long weekend drives are typically into rural areas with limited EV infrastructure, so for now the heavy-hybrid approach seems best. The infrastructure issue is improving though, and eventually normal-EV is where I'll end up.

My other vehicle is an extended E350- about as anti-EV as a person could get. But can't be beat for picking up a ton of material/supplies, taking it to a job site, and keeping it secure and dry while it's be being used. The right tool for the job in that case. :)

I'm so tired of this "just learn to code!" meme. We only need so many coders, just like we only need so many optometrists, baristas, and bud-tenders. It's a BS "solves all lost-my-job-to-China" answer that just isn't true. The suspicious part of me thinks its goal is to create a glut of coders so the big tech companies don't have to pay them anything.

And- to me Java is a recurring PITA. One old piece of Cisco gear requires an old version of Java, another piece of gear requires a different version... if I don't have the right version then nothing works. Yeah, yeah, real men telnet in and do it all at the command prompt, but I'm maybe not fully grown yet or something. Generally my experience is any piece of equipment utilizing Java eventually becomes a PITA.

So I have to keep notes on which version of Java goes with which piece of legacy equipment, and then it's unload, reload, maybe a reboot or two, then maybe it works. Oh, and since Chrome and Java don't play together anymore I'm using Firefox or IE6, which is fine, but on at least one old piece of gear that means "unload Java and Firefox, reboot, sacrifice a chicken, load a specific old version of Firefox, then an old version of Java, another reboot, then login and it works." Old equipment that doesn't use Java? Generally a non issue. And figuring out which particular legacy version of Java actually works properly is often an hours-burning adventure all by itself (because most vendors I call respond with "Gee, I don't know, that's an old piece of equipment... you should buy our new cloud-based-subscription-required masterpiece!")

I know this is comically inept in a number of ways, but it's what I have to deal with to keep old equipment going with an organization that's just not throwing money at IT.... if something breaks it's no problem getting the $ to replace it but otherwise we keep riding it. (The president of the firm drives a 60's Triumph that he rebuilt/restored in his garage... the man's not stupid, he's skilled, but a bit different mindset.)

I just don't like Java, I avoid loading it on anything unless I explicitly have to... at the very least I don't have the near daily 'New version of JAVA!' notifications.

(I'm guessing now I'll get called a Luddite or worse!)

It seems to me we've got an infrastructure and business model looking for a product- can't have people conveniently charging at home, they need to go "buy" it somewhere! And "refueled in less than 5 minutes!", I fear, is a bit optimistic... good sales pitch but.... a more realistic 10-15 min, vs 20 min on a fast charger... I don't see the big win they're claiming there.

My initial gut reaction (for years) has been "hydrogen is stupid!"- that whole "hydrogen economy" that Bush was pitching was steaming BS. A combination of bad math, groveling to petroleum concerns, and wishful thinking. Simply put, hydrogen is a very inefficient way to store energy.

BUT- it is energy dense. I don't believe battery technology is anywhere near being able to provide the energy density needed for airliners, for example. It's marginal for things like trucking. It might be the sucks-least option is "green" hydrogen powering large aircraft, cargo ships, etc. With marginal improvements in hydrogen production, using green solar and wind power to make fuel could make more sense than pumping crap out of the ground.

(so far as energy density is concerned- it might be even smarter to use that green hydrogen to create denser, less difficult to handle and store fuels like ammonia, methane, maybe some alcohols... that complicates the fuel cell use but even if hydrogen was free it's still a pita.)

Cheap renewable (or at least carbon neutral) energy is the key. When we find that we can generate electricity cheaply enough to make hydrogen cheaper than other petroleum fuel sources, that would seem to be a win to me.

Fusion, as nifty as it is, is still decades off, and practically isn't really better than the better fission options. Solar and wind- there's always this concern about cloudy/windless days meaning we have a shortfall. But it is proving to be cheap, so cheap it's even driving electricity prices "negative" at times. We're at the point where we can generate electricity cheaply and it's getting cheaper still.

Regardless of how, when we can generate electricity cheaply enough- overbuild the grid so that even in slack times we've got sufficient energy available, plan to always have a surplus, and tap off all that surplus for hydrogen production. "Viola!", you could almost think of it as free hydrogen. (Ain't nothing free but you get the drift :) )

Think of the penguins.
 

Might not have anything to do at all with your IT duties, but very often generates an interesting conversation. Most people assume you're a bit more competent/mature/serious (whether that's the case or not).

I'd say we team with Satan himself if we could just build a Stanford Torus. Or *anything* that spins. I want to look up and see this with my telescope before I die!

Sure there's difficulty and complexity there, but so many of the problems we have (both biological and station operation wise) are fixed or at least minimized with a little artificial gravity. ANY "permanent" outpost needs artificial gravity. Many industrial processes we'd like to do might benefit from some weight/acceleration too. (and of course some stuff works better weightless- with some spin it's easy to have the best of both :) ) We've GOT to do this, let's stop stalling!

And many of the human issues of long duration flights to Mars or asteroid missions are minimized/eliminated with some spin. People bungie-corded to a tread mill is not a clever solution, it's an embarrassing duct-tape patch. People should be coming back from space ready to walk away and live normally.

Unless some clever physics/math/etc. geek comes up with a magical artificial gravity field, our only choice is to spin.

No where near SciFi or Fantasy, which seems to be the bread and butter of most /. folks, but... I think he's an amazing writer. His writing is dense and rich with old terms and phrases that have disappeared. His characters are coarse, gritty and flawed, and they speak and act like real people and not people in books (albeit exceptional people). The stories are sometimes just plain painful (but good).

"Blood Meridian" gives you characters that are just despicable and evil, but fascinating. "The Road" is post-apocalypse, which ought to suit a lot of /. folks. If you liked the movie version of "No Country for Old Men" as is usually the case the book is better. I'm afraid his "Border Trilogy" has made me never want to visit Mexico.

The book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Richard Rhodes) has a lot of interesting information, and different perspectives, on the atomic bombings. There's the traditional "we would have so many causalities" argument that's always made. But there were some other possible motivations that are very interesting, and the cynic in me tends to give them a lot of credence.

(Oh, and the book is fascinating, I think, a very good "geek" read. Things like the Nagasaki bomb having never been tested- there was so little Plutonium available they didn't want to waste any on a test, and they were *that* confident in the design they didn't feel a test was necessary. They just did the math.)

First, the development of "The Bomb" had been horrendously expensive, and mostly a "black" project. It was all going to come to light after the war. People involved in it needed a win- you couldn't have spent all that money for no reason and not expect to be crucified when it became known. So- "Bomb something, do it quick, we have to use it to justify having developed it!" Political CYA.

Also, there was a huge amount of concern about the Soviets. They had developed this huge army, and we didn't like how they thought- they were becoming the enemy. We needed to demonstrate that we had the ultimate big-stick so there wouldn't be any mistaking who the toughest kid on the block really was. Chest-thumping on a massive scale.

And also, there was concern about having to share the control of Japan after they surrendered. Things weren't going so well in Germany and we simply didn't want to have to include the Soviets in the process. If the war went on the Soviets involvement would necessitate including them... if we ended it quickly though, before they were really involved, we could leave them out. Like not sharing these subs :)

Personally I suspect all of these issues (and more) played into it. I think the "too many american lives would be lost" argument isn't really sufficient on it's own. But second-guessing secrets from 60-some years ago... who knows?

Absolutely agree- I've read Zen' 4-5 times, and given copies to several friends.

I had a really hard time understanding some people, how they just didn't see what was important... it was so obvious to me, how could they not? Zen' helped me to understand these other people, how they were wired so differently :)

I think a lot of us on /. are way to the "Classic" side of the bell curve, and have to function in a world full of people who literally don't see what we do (and vice-verse).

I enjoyed the story of their trip too, although I was stunned to learn a while back that his son Chris had died. And it's very insightful in regards to education.

I don't think it's really been a good day if someone hasn't seized my gun.

Better still firmly seized it several times.

I prefer to leave other guys guns be though. I ain't wired that way.

Ok, maybe they have to be internal bays, but surely there's a way we can mount guns/etc. on it!

THEN it's pure AirForce! :)

If only you'd gotten IR vision instead of UV. Then you'd be able to see through womens clothing!

Sounds like you got the wrong end of the spectrum :(

I know most folks are going to run up the "holy crap it's Big Brother!" flag... but I don't know if I really care or not.

It's sort of like data retention, in a way- one firm I worked with was very concerned that every scrap of "evidence" from their work be discarded- they tended to do sloppy work and get sued a lot, and were working under the assumption that our own records would generally show how f@#Ked up we were.

The company I'm working for now almost has a totally opposite mindset- they find that their records typically support their assertion that they've done good work, and so keeping records is a good thing.

Big Brother knowing where I've been, assorted points on a map... well, how does that really harm me? Now if I'm out doin' crimes, then obviously I'm bothered, but otherwise.... I just don't see a reason that I would care.

I can see it being part of a "slippery slope" issue, but this is public- there is no assumption of privacy. If you *are* expecting privacy in public, well, that went away as soon as everyone started carrying cameras.

(And, if I'm doin' some crimes, I'll game the system and use it to my advantage!)

Uhhh... that makes me HARD ! :)