On 07/24/2015 03:20 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
Indeed. So why do we have that range of models from Ford, Chrysler, GM, Toyota? Why do we have the two seater cars and stretch limos? Walk into a Staples and look at the range of calculators they have ... then at the HP calculators that use RPN. Bad analogy.
Models of cars = distros and their various products (I've lost count how many variations of even official Fedoras there are including spins... a lot)
Four wheels, brakes, gasoline/battery, headlights, taillights, etc = standardized partitioning scheme.
Not for long and possibly not at all. The diversity in Europe is wider than in the US. Six wheeled cars are common enough; in China and Indo-china two wheeled cars are commonplace. Right now we are seeing many shifts. it used to be that headlights were standardized - those "sealed beam" units. Now the size and shape and nature of headlamps is all over the place and you have the option of LEDS. Or better still, you can even go for after market replacement of your xenon tube headlight with leds. We are already seeing the shift away from fossil fuels. There is an analogy here with cell phones. When the first came out they resembled regular phones. You carried what amounted to a satchel that had all the doings and opened it up and there was a hand set on a cord that was just like a regular land line sets hand set. Well OK, even when we had digital dialling they still had rotary dials because they were familiar. As people get used to new ways of doing things we can move on. The modern cell phone ... well its evolved into a small tablet crossed with an iPod. The hand set has gone. The idea of holding it up to the side of your face as you did with the old handsets is going away too. A lot of what you see as a "car" is more a result of (a) it has stopped looking like EXACTLY like a horseless carriage like the early ones, but its still enough like one that you could, in the absence of suitable hydrocarbons, fasten a horse to it. Another analogy is planes. The traditional cross shaped plane just HAS to fly, but some of the military ones are just lifting bodies with powerplants; they can fly at any angle. Think of the old WW2 movies with the planes doing strafing runs. They had a limited scope in the dive and pull-out when there guns were pointing low enough. Some modern warcraft can - almost- fly nose-down for extended stretches. they can fly with one wing blown off. Normal ideas of "aerodynamics" no longer apply. What cars will evolve into when we great away from the current model -- who knows.
A car is a car - I can drive any model competently with minor adjustment.
People like Felix and myself can. We've discussed things like vehicles with non sycromesh gears, high turn ratio non powered steering (power steering was invented so women could drive heavy American cars; women always could drive lighter, smaller European cars). Some towed vehicles, some things like harvesters and logging machines have strange steering properties. Towing, especial reversing with a long load, is, well, different. BTDT. But I've met many people who thought that because they could drive an American car on an American highway could cope elsewhere. I've met many counterexamples. To my mind this tells me you can't just go around saying "a car is a car". -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org