By Roblimo from
Slashdot's a-car-that-will-never-get-a-rod-knock department:
It took
Dr. Adam Blankespoor two years and $14,000 to convert his 1996 Honda Civic into an all-electric plug-in vehicle. He's an automotive engineer and researcher, but if he can do it, you can probably follow in his footsteps and create your own electric vehicle if you are so inclined. He talks about a 45 mile range, with 30 miles as a practical limit. That's not competitive with the
Tesla S, but there's also a massive price difference to consider. This is another person Slashdot met at the Ann Arbor Maker Faire. If you want to see what kinds of electric vehicles other have made, possibly for inspiration, the
Electric Vehicle Photo Album is a good place to start. And if you want information on how to build your own electric car, using "
electric car conversion" as your Google search term will put you on the track of more electric car information than you can shake a Tesla Coil at.
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By Unknown Lamer from
Slashdot's which-one-of-you-hit-him-with-the-cluebat? department:
Ars Technica reports on
Judge Posner's weblog, and in particular a recent post on the
excessive strength of U.S. copyright and patent law:
"The problem of excessive patent protection is at present best illustrated by the software industry. This is a progressive, dynamic industry rife with invention. But the
conditions that make patent protection essential in the pharmaceutical industry
are absent. Nowadays most software innovation is incremental, created by teams
of software engineers at modest cost, and also ephemeral—most software
inventions are quickly superseded. ... The most serious problem with copyright law is the length of copyright protection, which for most works is now from the creation of the work to 70 years after the author’s death. Apart from the fact that the present value of income received so far in the future is negligible, obtaining copyright licenses on very old works is
difficult because not only is the author in all likelihood dead, but his heirs
or other owners of the copyright may be difficult or even impossible to
identify or find. The copyright term should be shorter."Reader
jedirock pointed to a related article
on how the patent situation got so out of hand in the first place.
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By Unknown Lamer from
Slashdot's so-hot-you-can-fry-brains-on-the-pavement department:
Hugh Pickens writes in about the detrimental effects of mandatory helmet laws (at least as applied to adults):
"Elisabeth Rosenthal writes that in the United States the notion that bike helmets promote health and safety by preventing head injuries is taken as pretty near God's truth but many European health experts have taken a very different view. 'Yes, there are studies that show that if you fall off a bicycle at a certain speed and hit your head, a helmet can reduce your risk of serious head injury,' writes Rosenthal. 'But such falls off bikes are rare — exceedingly so in mature urban cycling systems.' On the other hand, many researchers say, if you force people to wear helmets, you discourage them from riding bicycles causing more health problems like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Bicycling advocates say that the problem with pushing helmets isn't practicality but that helmets make a basically safe activity seem really dangerous, which makes it harder to develop a safe bicycling network like the one in New York City, where a bike-sharing program is to open next year. The safest biking cities are places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where middle-aged commuters are mainstay riders and the fraction of adults in helmets is minuscule. 'Pushing helmets really kills cycling and bike-sharing in particular because it promotes a sense of danger that just isn't justified — in fact, cycling has many health benefits,' says Piet de Jong. 'Statistically, if we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities.'"Read Replies (0)
Nokia Bets Big On Mapping
Posted by News Fetcher on October 01 '12 at 11:30 PM
By Unknown Lamer from
Slashdot's elop-versus-page department:
angry tapir writes
"Nokia and Oracle have joined forces on mapping, with details of the deal to be announced at the Oracle OpenWorld conference. To differentiate its smartphones from the competition, Nokia is betting big on location as well as imaging technology. Oracle is expected to add Nokia's mapping technology to its applications. Part of Nokia's location strategy is signing deals for the use of its Navteq mapping technology with as many companies as possible. Besides the deal with Oracle, Nokia has recently announced contracts with car makers BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Korean Hyundai, which will all use Navteq map data in some of their vehicles. Garmin will also start using Nokia data on transit services and walking routes to power a new Urban Guidance feature, which will be available as part of its Navigon app for Android and iOS. Nokia's most important partner on navigation, though, is Microsoft. All smartphones based on Windows Phone 8 will have Nokia's Drive application as standard, while Microsoft's Bing Maps geographical search engine uses Nokia data."Read Replies (0)
By samzenpus from
Slashdot's no-code-on-the-block department:
mikejuk writes
"Everyone seems to have a replacement for JavaScript — Google even has two. Now Microsoft has revealed that Anders Hejlsberg, the father of C# among other languages, has been working on a replacement and it has released a preview of TypeScript. The good news is that it is compatible with JavaScript — you can simply load JavaScript code and run it. JavaScript programs are TypeScript programs.To improve on JavaScript, TypeScript lets you include annotations that allow the compiler to understand what objects and functions support. The annotations are removed by the compiler, making it a zero overhead facility. It also adds a full class construct to make it more like traditional object oriented languages. Not every JavaScript programmer will be pleased about the shift in emphasis, but the way it compiles to a JavaScript constructor is fairly transparent. At this early stage it is difficult to see the development as good. It isn't particularly good for JavaScript developers who already have alternatives, and it isn't good for C# developers who now have confirmation that Ander Hejlsberg is looking elsewhere for his future."Update: 10/01 20:34 GMT by
U L : It's also freely
available under under the Apache 2.0 license, and there's a
language specification available. It looks pretty interesting: it even has ML-style type inference (including e.g. deducing the types of higher order functions).
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