Changing the nature of our environment to suit our needs has been something humans have been doing almost since we have been recognizable as humans (or perhaps this effect on nature is what makes humans identifiable as humans). Agriculture was one of the first of these changes - it allowed us to develop new ways of living that would have been impossible without it.
But it's funny to think about how counter-intuitive these changes are to the good of the plants/animals/beings that we're changing. While changing the color of an apple is trivial, the apple's red color is something that came about because it best fit the purpose and function of the apple to be red. If we turned apples blue, this could adversely affect tree reproduction - or it might lead to the starvation of certain animals that use apples as a primary food source. We have done a number on grain. Hard-coded dependencies in nature would likely crumble. Pigs, which never would have existed, at least not in their domestic forms, would certainly be an early casualty.
Survival of the fittest has turned into survival of whatever humans like. It's certainly the current paradigm of generational mutation. And it's interesting to think about how scientists of a future species would try to explain the strange characteristics of the various lifeforms on Earth if humans were wiped off the planet without a trace except the changes in the planet's biology we've effected...
How many of our adaptations would survive without our care?
Find a blossoming open source project that could be helpful in a business setting
Start a Nevada company with a name that suggests you can handle even the most troublesome of a client's problems with ease. Suggestions: WeSolvium Technologies, Integrated Business Mechanics
Invest the $10,000 in said company
Spend $5,000 on creating marketing materials to convince businesses that your company is a friend they can trust who will save them lots of money
Spend $5,000 to hire the open source project's developer to do tech support for your clients for two months
???
Get kicked out of the investment club, lose all credibility at your school, move in with mom and pops, and don't invest your allowance in open source!
actually it should never have been without a paper trail.
You obviously misunderstand one of the new and enticing features of electronic voting systems. Paper trails would only make wide-scale fraud more difficult!
I personally welcome our new DOS-stealing philanthopist overlord.
But on a serious note, it might be nice to have a president who has become more philanthropist than tycoon and who is notable because of his business and humanitarian accomplishments, not because of a life of playing to political interests. He already has extensive experience with large organizations. Might be more interested in following his own vision than listening to what the people want, though, although that seems to be the case with most great leaders...
When OSX point upgrades are 5 years apart, get back to us.
Is it so hard to understand that I'm not bashing or praising operating systems here? I never suggested that Vista has as many new features as it should considering the time spent on it. I never mentioned time at all, or release schedules. I was responding to a post that suggested that Vista offers nothing knew whatsoever but that each point upgrade to OS X offers lots of new features, which clearly isn't the case.
Not surprising considering the rest of the computer industry has advanced 6 years since XP.
True - but the point is that the reason Vista is not exciting is not for lack of new features. It's not exciting because it's built on the same "OS paradigm" as XP. Given the same standards of comparison, nothing Apple has released since the first version of OS X has been exciting...
Each version of OS X has shipped with a number of things that were productivity boosters - Spotlight and Dashboard in Tiger, and with Leopard you are going to see things like Time Machine which brings version control to the masses!
While Vista isn't very exciting, you apparently don't know much about it. I would contend that more features useful have been added than in any single point upgrade to OS X. Probably even two of them. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista.
The problem with Vista is that it doesn't even offer anything as compelling as a new Linux distro would have
It would be much more apt to compare the release of Vista to a new version of an existing Linux distro. A new Linux distro is expected to bring something new and worthwhile to the table...
Dvorak's take on public interest in the Vista release seems about right, but I don't understand why he thinks this is a problem. Does he look forward to OS releases because he enjoys the buzz, talk, and excitement? He seems to be of the opinion that every major OS launch needs the marketing and fanfare of Windows 95.
There have been some major Windows revolutions - new versions that significantly added value since previous versions. Windows 95 was one. Windows 2000 was another, although the excitement of that was split between Windows 2000 and XP - XP wouldn't have been big at all if 2000 had been meant for home users. Windows 98 was not exciting. Windows ME was not exciting.
Perhaps the Vista launch would have been a big deal if the team had accomplished more of their original goals. But as it stands, even though a good deal of it was rewritten, Vista is not that much of a jump from XP. I guess Dvorak is sad that there's no revolution and fanfare. Boo hoo. Every release can't be a major step forward and a huge party.
Sooo... when Intel had the hotter, more energy wasting, slower processor... it was "omg look how much Intel sux0rz" but now when AMD is in that boat its... "this is just a stopgap, you just wait!"
Intel spent years in that boat with no indication that they had an intention to 1) aim for low power consumption (they were happily gloating about the forthcoming Pentium 4 5GHz) or 2) do what it took to gain the performance crown. It was not clear (in recent history) that they had an eye on the super-performance desktop market until the announcement of the Extreme Edition and little indication of concern about power usage on the desktop until they announced that their new desktop processors would be based on the Pentium M.
On the other hand, we already know AMD's plans for next year, and we have statements of what they hope to achieve. I'm not saying just to wait and that it will be awesome. I'm posting on a Core 2 Duo system built using the remnants of my last Athlon XP system. My previous post indicated my expectations for what AMD is doing from a business perspective, not my feelings about the company or their product.
I think the community of folks who follow processor awesomeness generally equate high TDP with system heat (and therefore ability to function as a space heater, cook eggs, burn the fingers of curious children, etc.) It's sort of sensationalist, in both senses of the term - "Man I bet you can feel the heat from that thing on the other side of the house!" Making fun of power draw just doesn't have as much good material.
While performance may be disappointing, it's pretty clear that AMD is just releasing this as a stopgap solution to "stay in the game" for the performance sector until their new developments are ready next year. The name is a good choice and reflects that intention - they combine their performance branding, FX, with "Quad", the term Intel is using, to indicate that it fills the same niche as a quad-core processor. I think it does what it is meant to do - give the impression of a comparable offering until AMD has the real competition ready.
I think the important point here is that the kid is 15 years old and is doing some decent work in making a site using semi-recent ideas in web development.
In many ways, the site seems to be a grotesque travesty of web 2.0 memes. For example, one of the points the article mentions:
5. "Shift to Programming: Separation of Structure and Style"
The site uses tables for layout - this certainly isn't characteristic of Web 2.0 or seperating structure from style. 90% of web 2.0 sites do it better, with CSS.
But that's not the point - or at least it shouldn't be. What we have here is a case of the next generation of web developers starting with some of the newer ideas in design as their base. And it's still pretty impressive if a 15-year-old put it together in a month.
If that's the build-a-robot, that's pretty impressive for a little over $1000. It's no QRIO, but also not the price of a luxury car, which is what Sony said they'd sell the QRIO at if they had positioned it for the home (before ceasing development).
This product could possibly provide years of invaluable fun and experience to a child of the correct age. I wish I'd had one as a kid! I'd still like one now.
But Nintendo, as stated, will make a profit on each unit
This is a misconception. Just because the console isn't sold at a loss doesn't mean that Nintendo will "make a profit" on each unit.
Sure, each unit sold makes a positive contribution to the financials of the Wii project, but in order to determine whether Nintendo makes a profit on the console, you must factor in R&D, marketing, and a number of other support expenses. The amount of money that Nintendo brings in on each console (and accessories and licenses, etc.) must offset a certain fixed cost of overhead in order for the operation to be profitable. You can calculate this as an additional cost added to each console that scales with the number of consoles sold.
Consider this situation: Nintendo sells a total of 10 Wiis. Assuming the unit costs $249 and the unit costs $189 to manufacture (I just made that number up), they bring in $60. $60 x 10 = $600. But R&D + other costs were somewhere in the millions. If R&D, etc. total $10 million (again, just making numbers up), and only 10 are sold, the true cost of each unit is $1,000,189. Nintendo would make profit on no consoles, even though they weren't selling them at a loss.
Of course, it's a lot easier to cover those initial expenses and start making a profit when you're actually bringing in money with each sale...
Parent post brings up a good issue: conscience. But the reason the business will bother you will not likely result from your inability to fix the client's computer...
Quite often, you'll be asked to fixed a computer that has less value than the starting price you're asking to fix it. A large portion of the time, you will have to solve one of a number of software issues that prevents Windows from booting. When it starts up, you will have to tell your client that no, you're not done - there are still viruses and adware - and she really should have at least installed the service packs. You start this process, but these things take time, because XP is never really happy with 128MB of RAM. The customer will offer you a drink as you sit there without much else to do while waiting. You will endure this waiting for no less than twenty minutes to three hours, and the customer will become less and less pleased with having to pay you for your work as the time passes. When the removal and patching is finished, you will have identified a few other arcane problems that would be difficult to fix without a reformat. It probably would have been a better choice, you will think to yourself. Or, better yet, your client could have gone out and bought a cheap new computer and have been much better off. You will feel bad as you sit and wait for the scans and upgrades to complete.
You will find it difficult to ask for the proper amount after sitting there and doing nothing for so much of the time. Even though your skills and the services you provided were worth the rate, you will feel horrible for taking his money.
Do you think Geek Squad rips people off? If so, be warned that you will rip people off. The fact is that fixing somebody's computer is a skilled service similar to being a mechanic - if someone wants to use your skills to fix their computer, labor's going to cost a similar amount. But a car costs tens of thousands of dollars - a desktop PC starts at $149. If a new car were $500, would you go the mechanic when it started to look a little shabby, needed a new air filter, had a burn on the seat and a non-functional rear-window defroster, or would you get a new one? Home computer repair really should be a hard sell - at least in many of the cases people will call you in for. It's not, though - people think it's the better option, even though you know better. You know many would be better off with a new computer. You will even feel like offering discount rates to make it seem to yourself that your service was an investment that was almost as good as getting a new computer. It often isn't. But don't.
Home computer repair is a perplexing enterprise - you will not enjoy your work, you will not feel good about how much you charge, your clients will often feel a bit ripped off, but you will have deserved every penny of it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had mod points for you.
Changing the nature of our environment to suit our needs has been something humans have been doing almost since we have been recognizable as humans (or perhaps this effect on nature is what makes humans identifiable as humans). Agriculture was one of the first of these changes - it allowed us to develop new ways of living that would have been impossible without it.
But it's funny to think about how counter-intuitive these changes are to the good of the plants/animals/beings that we're changing. While changing the color of an apple is trivial, the apple's red color is something that came about because it best fit the purpose and function of the apple to be red. If we turned apples blue, this could adversely affect tree reproduction - or it might lead to the starvation of certain animals that use apples as a primary food source. We have done a number on grain. Hard-coded dependencies in nature would likely crumble. Pigs, which never would have existed, at least not in their domestic forms, would certainly be an early casualty.
Survival of the fittest has turned into survival of whatever humans like. It's certainly the current paradigm of generational mutation. And it's interesting to think about how scientists of a future species would try to explain the strange characteristics of the various lifeforms on Earth if humans were wiped off the planet without a trace except the changes in the planet's biology we've effected...
How many of our adaptations would survive without our care?
Here's the plan:
You obviously misunderstand one of the new and enticing features of electronic voting systems. Paper trails would only make wide-scale fraud more difficult!
I personally welcome our new DOS-stealing philanthopist overlord.
But on a serious note, it might be nice to have a president who has become more philanthropist than tycoon and who is notable because of his business and humanitarian accomplishments, not because of a life of playing to political interests. He already has extensive experience with large organizations. Might be more interested in following his own vision than listening to what the people want, though, although that seems to be the case with most great leaders...
Is it so hard to understand that I'm not bashing or praising operating systems here? I never suggested that Vista has as many new features as it should considering the time spent on it. I never mentioned time at all, or release schedules. I was responding to a post that suggested that Vista offers nothing knew whatsoever but that each point upgrade to OS X offers lots of new features, which clearly isn't the case.
True - but the point is that the reason Vista is not exciting is not for lack of new features. It's not exciting because it's built on the same "OS paradigm" as XP. Given the same standards of comparison, nothing Apple has released since the first version of OS X has been exciting...
While Vista isn't very exciting, you apparently don't know much about it. I would contend that more features useful have been added than in any single point upgrade to OS X. Probably even two of them. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista .
The problem with Vista is that it doesn't even offer anything as compelling as a new Linux distro would haveIt would be much more apt to compare the release of Vista to a new version of an existing Linux distro. A new Linux distro is expected to bring something new and worthwhile to the table...
Dvorak's take on public interest in the Vista release seems about right, but I don't understand why he thinks this is a problem. Does he look forward to OS releases because he enjoys the buzz, talk, and excitement? He seems to be of the opinion that every major OS launch needs the marketing and fanfare of Windows 95.
There have been some major Windows revolutions - new versions that significantly added value since previous versions. Windows 95 was one. Windows 2000 was another, although the excitement of that was split between Windows 2000 and XP - XP wouldn't have been big at all if 2000 had been meant for home users. Windows 98 was not exciting. Windows ME was not exciting.
Perhaps the Vista launch would have been a big deal if the team had accomplished more of their original goals. But as it stands, even though a good deal of it was rewritten, Vista is not that much of a jump from XP. I guess Dvorak is sad that there's no revolution and fanfare. Boo hoo. Every release can't be a major step forward and a huge party.
Intel spent years in that boat with no indication that they had an intention to 1) aim for low power consumption (they were happily gloating about the forthcoming Pentium 4 5GHz) or 2) do what it took to gain the performance crown. It was not clear (in recent history) that they had an eye on the super-performance desktop market until the announcement of the Extreme Edition and little indication of concern about power usage on the desktop until they announced that their new desktop processors would be based on the Pentium M.
On the other hand, we already know AMD's plans for next year, and we have statements of what they hope to achieve. I'm not saying just to wait and that it will be awesome. I'm posting on a Core 2 Duo system built using the remnants of my last Athlon XP system. My previous post indicated my expectations for what AMD is doing from a business perspective, not my feelings about the company or their product.
I think the community of folks who follow processor awesomeness generally equate high TDP with system heat (and therefore ability to function as a space heater, cook eggs, burn the fingers of curious children, etc.) It's sort of sensationalist, in both senses of the term - "Man I bet you can feel the heat from that thing on the other side of the house!" Making fun of power draw just doesn't have as much good material.
While performance may be disappointing, it's pretty clear that AMD is just releasing this as a stopgap solution to "stay in the game" for the performance sector until their new developments are ready next year. The name is a good choice and reflects that intention - they combine their performance branding, FX, with "Quad", the term Intel is using, to indicate that it fills the same niche as a quad-core processor. I think it does what it is meant to do - give the impression of a comparable offering until AMD has the real competition ready.
Better start saving up for some Sony lungs to breath their proprietary oxygen...
I think the important point here is that the kid is 15 years old and is doing some decent work in making a site using semi-recent ideas in web development.
In many ways, the site seems to be a grotesque travesty of web 2.0 memes. For example, one of the points the article mentions:
5. "Shift to Programming: Separation of Structure and Style"
The site uses tables for layout - this certainly isn't characteristic of Web 2.0 or seperating structure from style. 90% of web 2.0 sites do it better, with CSS.
But that's not the point - or at least it shouldn't be. What we have here is a case of the next generation of web developers starting with some of the newer ideas in design as their base. And it's still pretty impressive if a 15-year-old put it together in a month.
If that's the build-a-robot, that's pretty impressive for a little over $1000. It's no QRIO, but also not the price of a luxury car, which is what Sony said they'd sell the QRIO at if they had positioned it for the home (before ceasing development).
This product could possibly provide years of invaluable fun and experience to a child of the correct age. I wish I'd had one as a kid! I'd still like one now.
But Nintendo, as stated, will make a profit on each unit
This is a misconception. Just because the console isn't sold at a loss doesn't mean that Nintendo will "make a profit" on each unit.
Sure, each unit sold makes a positive contribution to the financials of the Wii project, but in order to determine whether Nintendo makes a profit on the console, you must factor in R&D, marketing, and a number of other support expenses. The amount of money that Nintendo brings in on each console (and accessories and licenses, etc.) must offset a certain fixed cost of overhead in order for the operation to be profitable. You can calculate this as an additional cost added to each console that scales with the number of consoles sold.
Consider this situation: Nintendo sells a total of 10 Wiis. Assuming the unit costs $249 and the unit costs $189 to manufacture (I just made that number up), they bring in $60. $60 x 10 = $600. But R&D + other costs were somewhere in the millions. If R&D, etc. total $10 million (again, just making numbers up), and only 10 are sold, the true cost of each unit is $1,000,189. Nintendo would make profit on no consoles, even though they weren't selling them at a loss.
Of course, it's a lot easier to cover those initial expenses and start making a profit when you're actually bringing in money with each sale...
Parent post brings up a good issue: conscience. But the reason the business will bother you will not likely result from your inability to fix the client's computer...
Quite often, you'll be asked to fixed a computer that has less value than the starting price you're asking to fix it. A large portion of the time, you will have to solve one of a number of software issues that prevents Windows from booting. When it starts up, you will have to tell your client that no, you're not done - there are still viruses and adware - and she really should have at least installed the service packs. You start this process, but these things take time, because XP is never really happy with 128MB of RAM. The customer will offer you a drink as you sit there without much else to do while waiting. You will endure this waiting for no less than twenty minutes to three hours, and the customer will become less and less pleased with having to pay you for your work as the time passes. When the removal and patching is finished, you will have identified a few other arcane problems that would be difficult to fix without a reformat. It probably would have been a better choice, you will think to yourself. Or, better yet, your client could have gone out and bought a cheap new computer and have been much better off. You will feel bad as you sit and wait for the scans and upgrades to complete.
You will find it difficult to ask for the proper amount after sitting there and doing nothing for so much of the time. Even though your skills and the services you provided were worth the rate, you will feel horrible for taking his money.
Do you think Geek Squad rips people off? If so, be warned that you will rip people off. The fact is that fixing somebody's computer is a skilled service similar to being a mechanic - if someone wants to use your skills to fix their computer, labor's going to cost a similar amount. But a car costs tens of thousands of dollars - a desktop PC starts at $149. If a new car were $500, would you go the mechanic when it started to look a little shabby, needed a new air filter, had a burn on the seat and a non-functional rear-window defroster, or would you get a new one? Home computer repair really should be a hard sell - at least in many of the cases people will call you in for. It's not, though - people think it's the better option, even though you know better. You know many would be better off with a new computer. You will even feel like offering discount rates to make it seem to yourself that your service was an investment that was almost as good as getting a new computer. It often isn't. But don't.
Home computer repair is a perplexing enterprise - you will not enjoy your work, you will not feel good about how much you charge, your clients will often feel a bit ripped off, but you will have deserved every penny of it.
Best adjective to describe it: Unrewarding.