Comment Quiz: Is the NSA Watching You? (Score 5, Insightful) 267
- Do you use electronics to communicate?
- Do you live on Earth?
If you answered "yes" to either of these questions, then you can assume that yes, the NSA is monitoring you.
- Do you use electronics to communicate?
- Do you live on Earth?
If you answered "yes" to either of these questions, then you can assume that yes, the NSA is monitoring you.
Wouldn't know about that: when I was a kid, we had all of one TV, and didn't even have a Nintendo until the mid-90's.
My favorite theory is the one with the German saboteur.
Bit more romantic than "big fucking balloon randomly bursts into flames," don'tcha think?
He's got a massive ego, there's no denying it, but your rebuttal is quite terrible. The whole fiasco surrounding Top Gear was bad, but the Top Gear guys have their fair share of the blame: they did do this so that the car would end up behaving as they wanted it to behave (ie. badly), not as it actually did. It may be comedy, but it's still misrepresentation, and we are all fully aware that electric cars (or basically anything but a fuel car) is going to have to fight an uphill battle for adoption, so why make it harder for no good reason beyond your own obstinate vision of a car being noisy, gas guzzling machines?
Malarkey - I've actually seen the episode, and not only do they not put the car through anything more rigorous than other cars tested, Jeremy Clarkson (you know, the guy who would rather have his testicles eaten by a million angry bees than compliment an electric car) actually praised both the car and the company at the end of the show.
Not to mention, a wheel really did lock up at speed and almost kill the Stig, which Tesla readily admits did happen.
Likewise, I don't recall him making excuses for the car's performance, either the Roadster or the S. There's been a lot of talk about both models and sometimes expectations went a bit overboard.
So, he did but didn't overspeak the features of the vehicle then renege? Not really 100% what you're trying to say here.
Lastly but most importantly, his wrestling with car sales rules in many states is undeniably good.
In reference to the Texas fiasco, no - it would be undeniably good if he was trying to get the law changed because it's wrong, but that's not the case - he was trying to get a special exception made for his company, and fuck everyone else.
Just like one would expect from a self-serving capitalist.
If there's no release date and price what is the purpose.
The purpose is science, so we know how things work and what we can do. Technology you can personally leverage comes later. ALWAYS. You think the transistors on the ICs, and the ICs themselves, sprung into being in the first microprocessor systems? No, they were lab critters and no more than that, well prior to the 4004 and successors. Crude, hacky looking things of no direct use to anyone. But now look at them.
I agree it's tantalizing to see and hear about such tech and not be able to use it, but this is the process, and there is no alternative that's obvious to me, nor apparently, anyone else.
Call me when a supercap has anything like the energy density - by any measure of cubic or weight - as a battery. Till then, they have only niche uses.
The thing is, there are many applications where space and weight aren't an issue, but lifetime and power sourcing are. For instance, I have lots of room -- going ten X on the space involved isn't a problem for me in any way, but it'd be awesome to have a reliable, high-power capable storage system to replace the batteries I'm using now, which (a) aren't going to last very long and (b) are severely limited by comparison in terms of the maximum current that can be drawn from them.
The real problem is just an engineering one: we need some standard systems to give us usable energy in standard ranges (12vdc and/or 120/240vac) from ultracap stacks. There's nothing hard about that, it's a market and demand issue, no more. Given the demand, designing the hardware is a doddle.
And of course it's worth noting that UC size is going down while power is going up. Most likely, at some point they will cross the battery line, and that's the time to buy stock in whatever UC company pulls it off.
Plus, instead of poisoning the environment with a dead battery, you can will your UCs to your kids.
So... basically what you're saying is, the people our government puts in charge of the most deadly, destructive arsenal ever known are, essentially, the worst of the worst and laziest of laziest?
I wish I hadn't found that out.
So what exactly would you suggest they put on the box to explain all of this information?
How about instead of using the word "buy" they instead use the more accurate "rent" or "lease?" Perhaps state this little factoid clearly, somewhere that the consumer will definitely see it, instead of burying the info somewhere inside a 250 page EULA?
Personally, I don't buy the whole "morality is hard" concept; being honest and up-front about things pretty damn easy in my experience.
Hydrogen fires are some of the safest to be around
Agreed. The worst thing I've ever seen hydrogen do was pop a lead acid battery. Which was kinda neat, until I noticed that the acid was eating through my clothing...
Slashdot comments occasionally take time to emerge.
So you are saying that the hippies are in favor of having a 6000 lb SUV paying the same rate as they do for their Prius?
6,000 pounds is pretty heavy even for an SUV. Unless you are going to count tanks like the H1, which hardly anybody drives. Most SUVs that are actually on the road today are in the 4,000-5,000 pound range. The Prius is hardly even a lightweight by comparison. Although about 1/4 of the overall cubic dimensions of an average SUV, they way about 2/3 of what an average SUV weighs.
Ford Expedition curb weight: 5,801 lb (2,631 kg) (standard) 6,071 lb (2,754 kg) (EL)
Cadillac Escalade: Curb weight 5,800 lbs
Chevy Suburban: Curb weight 5820 lbs
All are fairly common large SUV's, so it hardly seems like an exaggeration to refer to "6000 pound SUV's"
Oh, and for comparison, the Toyota Prius weighs 3042 lbs.
Well it sure as hell ain't a ferret!
He may well be a douch,
Oh, he is.
but he's not the only one out there,
No, but the fact there are other douche-bags on the planet is no excuse for being one.
and he is doing something that will push us in the right direction.
According to you. Me, I fail to see the merit in the concept of having everyone drive around in what is, essentially, a big-ass pile of heavily polluting blood minerals that won't get you to your destination without taking a minimum hour break every couple hundred miles.
Not to mention, even if electric cars are "the right direction," Elon Musk doesn't give half a fuck about that - he's a capitalist, therefore he's in it for the money. If altruistic progress was his goal he'd be selling Teslas at a loss just to get them in the hands of the people who would benefit the most.
Also, it takes considerable effort to get hydrogen gas from dihydrogen monoxide. Perhaps he knows this already?
Uh, that was a dig, not a comparison or question of science. I figured it was obvious.
Work without a vision is slavery, Vision without work is a pipe dream, But vision with work is the hope of the world.
