coominya

CB HI

Maybe you should move to their alien planet so you will not be so technology deprived.

B. Carfree

I want to assume you are being facetious, but I suspect you're on the level. Does MA really not have a statutorily-mandated way of turning right when a bike lane is present?

I get the crosswalk thing, assuming you just mean varied striping standards; we've got that too. If you mean differing definitions of what is an actual crosswalk in terms of unmarked ones, then I'm a bit surprised.

genec

Well it IS a "unique perspective."

coominya

I have no problem with technology, I employ the latest in all my pursuits. But I have a clear understanding of what is practical in the future and what is not. You are arguing for the case of self driven cars, parroting all the gibberish contained in the prospectus a company trying to garner funds for their pet invention, but you haven't given a single thought to what the world will actually be like in 20 or 30 years time when these cars are supposed to be ubiquitous.

You are a classic example of the techno disciple, someone that believes technology will solve all our problems and that to deny that basic premise is Heresy against your religion. As you can see though from the comments on this thread, many of us are no longer convinced you God is all powerful and can solve the world's mounting problems.

There are clear limits to what technology can achieve and it cannot achieve a cheap practical self driving car, nor any cheap electric car for that matter. The reasons for this is related to the concept of EROEI, energy returned on energy invested, but since all you can digest are soundbites from the high priest of Tesla you are incapable of understanding. That is why I post science fiction pictures, because that is unquestionably what you believe in.

CB HI

So you claim to see the future.

Please quote where I did that. You have it completely upside down, I have been the one noting the current problems of the cars with significant push back from others here.

You are just making false claims about me.

All because I like Star Trek, you make such claims. Seems you confuse my entertainment with your religious beliefs.

coominya

We all like star trek, I have the whole origonal series and lots of other series and watch them regularly. Do you realise your efforts to "debunk" what I have said on this thread began with a percieved attack on your beloved star trek? That's what got you angry, the defence of a tv program.

This discussion is going nowhere, have a merry xmass.

genec

Consider this tech verses the smart phone... at one point we were shown "videophones," but who ever envisioned portable hand held computers that can also be videophones.

Self driving cars at this point are at the same level that the horseless carriage once was... over time I suspect we will depend on self driving cars much as we now use smartphones.

I-Like-To-Bike

That is the same place where all those waiting for self driving cars are going for at least the next several decades.
Also is the same place for the money of those who blindly throw it at futuristic money burning "investments" hyped as the next iPhone-type marketing breakthrough.

coominya

You would suspect that, sure, if you just looked at the past and considered the future would be much of the same, progress wise. The fact is if we go back 150 years we see amazing discoveries in technology achieved with a mere pittance of today's capital expenditures. The discovery of Electricity, the light bulb, optical systems, the diesel engine, telegraphy, the list is endless. But today it takes millions just to make a simple improvement of these systems. All of these new systems depend heavily on oil and coal as feedstock and for manufacture, which if anyone hasn't noticed, is depleting at a rapid rate.

Some will argue we can switch seamlessly to solar panel power and bio-fuels etc, I see serious flaws in this belief based mainly on the energy used to create them, but those concerns aside I ask the simple question. How do you replace the massive sealed road system across the nation without oil? You can't use concrete either because a simple investigation of the manufacture of cement and steel shows how energy intensive that is. So at the end of the day in the decades ahead we will be driving on a lot of dirt roads and what will a hitech driverless car mean for the average consumer then?

You don't need a crystal ball to see the future. You have 50 million people on food stamps and the figure is growing, do the math.


Converting Paved Roads to Unpaved
Converting Paved Roads to Unpaved | Blurbs | Publications


If these roads are difficult and expensive to maintain with today's technological advancements, how the hell did they build them all from scratch 40, 50, and 60 years ago? Cheap oil built them, that's how.

I-Like-To-Bike

"Over time" anything "might" happen, even flying cars in every garage. Or self driving cars, but don't hold your breath waiting for a ride anywhere but on a closed road/test track.

coominya

Elon Musk was just at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico promoting his Mars colonization rocket project. All his other projects are failing so it's off to mars where we know there no debt

So what's he really up to?
"What I really want to achieve here is make Mars seem possible," he says.

He doesn't want to send colonists to mars, the world's governments have walked away from that dream, what he wants to do is "make it seem possible" So it's all about managing hope and expectations, presumably to increase his image as an innovator and lure more investors. He's a smart guy, a great salesman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo7...A#action=share

As good as any modern SIFI flick

B. Carfree

Oil isn't much more expensive in real terms today than it was fifty years ago. The reason we cannot maintain the infrastructure we built in the '50s, '60s and '70s is that we have dramatically lowered our taxes in that time. Under Ike, the top marginal tax rate exceeded 80% and capital gains did not receive the level of preferential tax treatment that they currently do. Corporate taxes are also way down, mostly at the state level. While there were energy shocks in the '70s, it was the tax revolt that began at the end of that decade that has had the more dramatic impact on infrastructure.

Resource depletion is not yet an explanation for what is going on. Go back and look at where the depaving is really getting going. It's in places like Texas and Kansas, failed experiments in ultra-low tax rates for the wealthy. At the other end, California is ramping up infrastructure expansion projects at a rapid rate as it embraces higher taxes (and a higher economic growth rate).

CB HI

You specifically linked your attack of posters here to Star Trek. Now you want to call it a perceived attack.

CB HI

It is also a time when the tax money that was/is collected is wasted on really stupid stuff, which likely had a bigger impact. Shovel ready wasted a bunch of money that could have been used on bridges and roads.

coominya

What a crybaby you are, wharrr wharrr, he's picking on startrek he's picking on startrek.
You need a teaspoon of cement, let me guess, you voted for Hillary right?

genec

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, 1949

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

"But what...is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

No doubt ILTB is as knowledgeable about the future as were these fine predictors.

FBinNY 

Actually we know much more about the future than one may think.

We can be fairly sure that self driving cars will be a reality, though we don't know when, and the extent they replace human drivers. Certainly we'll see some degree of penetration in commercial applications sooner rather than later. Public acceptance for personal cars, however, remains an open question, and will be a slower process.


And one thing we know for sure is that whatever happens will happen regardless of whatever we say here on BF.

Rollfast

A lot of human-guided cars do as well.

CB HI

You are still completely wrong. Your the one whining about things cost too much, technology not here soon enough or ever.

For someone that whines "this discussion is going nowhere", you keep slamming your face into it.

CB HI

And unlike in Star Trek, people will never be able to talk to a computer and get a voice answer back. Just way too futuristic.

That would really have coominya beating his head against a wall.

Rollfast

'


This is A&S, don't let General Cycling Discussion beat us.

coominya

So you think having Siri tell you the distance to the moon is the pinnacle of technological progress? That's so sad. You are mesmerized by cheap computer technology, but that doesn't move humanity forward I am afraid, it just creates million of parasitic jobs and funnels billions of dollars down ratholes.

An amazing new leap in cheap energy production, or a quantum leap out of internal combustion cars would be useful technologies but they are beyond the collective abilities of all the world's experts to provide outside of little pet projects that fall flat on their face. Keep bragging about your Iphone and it's voice recognition technology by all means, like that will help civilization going forward.

coominya

Good point. I'll let the grumpy old man have the last say, I'm gone.

CB HI

You really are bitter. Advances are being made, but that is not good enough for you.