I must have been half asleep when I posted this. This was a comment on Elop, meant for a different Slashdot article... I'm not sure how I clicked "Post" in the wrong article. Sorry for the mixup.
We've already discussed this. Elop is the trope-namer for the "Peter Pinnacle", which means: 'to get promoted so high and to be so unqualified for your job that the company tells you that you can name your price just to go away.'
If Apple doesn't cannibalize some of their own phone sales, lower-end Android smartphones will eat those sales. Apple is not as able to command a premium price as formerly.
Apple products are well-made, work well, work well in the Apple ecosystem, and are premium priced. In the early days of the iPhone, Apple successfully sold premium devices to customers who normally don't buy premium, because those customers couldn't get a non-sucky smartphone anywhere else. And buying an Apple smartphone, even at a premium price, still only means a few hundred dollars of extra expense.
But as the premium Android smartphones of yesterday move down and become the budget Android smartphones of today, there is less need to pay a premium to get a nice smartphone. Apple needs to compete on price.
With the 5C, Apple is trying to walk a fine line. They are trying to lower the entry-level price of an iPhone enough to keep sales that would have gone to Android phones, while at the same time they are trying not to take too many sales away from their top-of-the-line iPhone. (IMHO the plastic case is an inspired bit of product segmentation. Whether it's significantly cheaper or not, it serves as a nice differentiator between the bargain iPhone and the premium iPhone.)
I think in the USA, the 5C will serve its purpose pretty well, because most people get subsidized phones and the $100 subsidized price looks attractive. But worldwide, the entry-level phone customers will all be buying Android devices. I don't think there is anything Apple really can do about this. Their choice is either to accept lower profit margins on phones, or else watch as Android solidifies its hold on developing markets. The conservative thing for Apple to do is to keep charging premium margins; if they ever slash their prices it will be very hard ever to change their mind and go back to premium pricing.
which should cause folks in Redmond to smart a bit
For those of you who are new here, "Redmond" is a reference to the Microsoft (headquarters in Redmond, Washington). "Microsoft" is a company that used to be terribly important to most users of computers, but is becoming less so over time.
I wonder how long people will care enough about Microsoft to know what "Redmond" means. It's been years since I read an article that used "Armonk" to refer to IBM.
I suspect that this usage is just to avoid saying the same company name over and over. When the day comes that Microsoft isn't mentioned in the news that much, nobody will bother to call them anything but "Microsoft".
I just found a cool solution to the problem: the Raspberry Pi has a hardware random number generator as part of the system-on-a-chip, and Linux supports it. So/dev/hwrng works on a Raspberry Pi and should be able to provide a lot of random data.
I don't think Linux will grab entropy from/dev/hwrng and use it for/dev/random, but you can install rngd (random number generator daemon) from rng-tools; this will pump entropy from/dev/hwrng into the Linux kernel for/dev/random to use.
So, you could do the "entropy server" idea, but co-located with your other servers, with the server costing about $35 and electricity costs of pennies per year.
Or, you could just set up server hardware that has a supported hardware RNG on the chip. "Ivy Bridge" i5 and i7 chips have this. (I only use AMD chips, and this feature isn't enough to make me switch.)
Follow-up. I took a look at the LavaRng page, and it hasn't really been updated since 2004. In particular, the list of supported webcams is a list of three no-longer-made models from a decade ago. Also, I tried building the software, and it won't build with a current GCC. (The errors I saw were really warnings, so disabling "treat warnings as errors" might make the build work again.)
I did some Google searches. I found this nice discussion:
It's an unreasonable idea. First, it requires a reliable Internet connection. Second, the NSA could monitor the traffic, plant back doors in the server, or otherwise compromise an in-the-cloud solution.
Much better would be a hardware source of randomness, connected to your server, and under your direct control.
Why not get a cheap webcam and set up your own LavaRnd? There, true random data available to your computer even at boot time.
currently I have several devices with hardware support to decode h.264... With this new codec they'll need to decode in software
Maybe not.
The hardware support for H.264 is probably in the form of general-purpose DSP (Digital Signal Processing) combined with some code. Basically, your devices have some sort of DSP capability, and someone wrote DSP code to offload much of the decoding work from the general-purpose CPU to the DSP core(s).
So, it is probably possible to write additional code for H.265 and offer it as an update. This additional code will offload decoding work to the DSP, just as with H.264, and problem solved.
Likewise, it should be possible to offload Theora and WebM to a DSP. The question there is whether anyone will bother. I would expect that Google would DSP-accelerate WebM and ship that standard for at least Nexus devices, but I haven't heard anything about it.
For that matter, I would expect that Google should make a general-purpose DSP library that abstracts the details of the DSP hardware, so that it would be easier to accelerate applications. I know that almost all Android devices run on ARM cores, but how standardized are the various DSP coprocessor cores? As far as I know, right now if you want to write DSP code for Android, you need to write it for a specific processor.
Anyway, I think H.265 will be much like H.264 and much of the DSP code can be reused. It would be much harder to write the DSP support for a codec that uses a completely different technology such as wavelets.
IMHO, if you are trying to make a standard for media encoding, it just makes sense for the reference code to be BSD-licensed. The point of GPL is to make sure that people can't lock users in to a proprietary code base, with no way to make changes; with a media format, the users can always grab their own copy of the reference code. (And a proprietary version that is incompatible with the reference code will be incompatible with the media standard. Users will shun it.)
Uh, wasn't OLPC created to serve third-party countries, not first world countries?
Why can't they do both?
One of the big criticisms of the original plans with the XO-1 was that they didn't mass-produce the thing and get the costs as low as possible. Instead of stacks of XO-1 laptops on the shelves at Wal-Mart, they only let you buy one if you paid double the price for it in the "Give One Get One" program. I don't think they ever really had a prayer of getting the cost under $100 with the original device, but massive mass production would have helped a bit with the costs.
Now, they can get a complete tablet (I'm guessing they didn't even design it, that whatever Chinese company manufactures it had a reference design ready to go) and just have a custom case for it, and put a customized set of apps on it, for less money than designing and building their own custom hardware platform. What's bad about that? The tablet is already low-power, already reasonably durable, and now the OLPC project can just focus on their core competency: software.
The article says that part of the $150 will go to supporting the OLPC project, so this doesn't seem to me like it is abandoning their core mission. They have just found a different way to go about it, and I think it makes more sense.
Studying metrics on how often people edit Wikipedia is interesting, but cannot possibly tell the whole story. Some movies come out of nowhere and succeed.
For example, the quirky film Napoleon Dynamite became a critical success and made a great deal of money, but you really need to watch it to get it. It has no famous actors, it isn't based on any previous brand, and there would be no reason for anyone to pay attention to it on Wikipedia before it was released.
I'm pretty sure that the Wikipedia metrics would have predicted that Napoleon Dynamite would be a total flop.
I remain hopeful that technology will reduce costs so that more really unique movies can be made. The more a studio is spending on a movie, the more the studio wants the movie to be "a sure thing" and thus like every other movie.
If the movie studios start using Wikipedia metrics to try to predict which movies will succeed, I sure hope they will only do that on big-ticket movies, so there is at least a chance for really new stuff to get made. Otherwise, the really new stuff will have to come from outside of the studios.
I think there is an opportunity for someone to make an Android tablet with an 8" screen and a 4:3 aspect ratio.
The Nexus 7 is, IMHO, a better tablet in most ways than an iPad Mini: higher resolution screen, less expensive, more powerful hardware. The 2013 refresh makes the above even more true, but I would rather have even a 2012 Nexus 7 than an iPad Mini.
But the Nexus tablets are all widescreen; a Nexus 7 has a 16:10 aspect ratio with a 7" screen. This means that a Nexus 7 gives about 9.4 cm of width on the screen, compared with about 11.9 cm for iPad mini (calculated from official specs, as I don't have one to measure). Thus, the iPad Mini is only slightly larger than the Nexus 7, yet it has about 2.5cm of extra usable screen width!
I have used my 2012 Nexus 7 to read O'Reilly books. In many cases, the screen width isn't enough for code samples; if I make the font size large enough that my eyes can comfortably read the text, the code samples don't fit. Thus, I usually read with the screen in landscape, which means the width is fine but I scroll more to read the text.
I'm not sure if the extra 2.5cm of screen width would be enough to read code samples in portrait, but it could only help. I'd like a chance to try it.
O'Reilly books and other textbooks are one use case for the wider screen. Another one: magazines. Magazines should fit better in the wider screen.
So I see an opportunity for someone to make a 4:3 Android tablet, with better resolution than an iPad mini. I'd buy one, and use it to read O'Reilly books.
As soon as anyone, anywhere in the world, has written a useful textbook with a free license, the whole world gains that textbook.
I hope we will start seeing graduate students writing undergrad textbooks as projects, and releasing them with open licenses. Or seeing "publish or perish" professors satisfying the "publish" requirement by writing free textbooks.
Even if the world only got one useful textbook per year for any given discipline, it wouldn't take many years before students could get a degree using nothing but free textbooks.
Also, for subjects like math, once a textbook is done, it shouldn't take much to keep it current. Even for subjects like computer science where the state of the art is evolving, it would be relatively easy to keep the books up to date, and the basics don't change that much.
Free and available textbooks would be nice to have for people living in wealthy countries, but would be a very big deal for people trying to get an education in really poor places. Etexts are the reason I got excited about the OLPC project when it was announced.
There are plenty of people and companies who like the current system, but there are also plenty of people who have no stake in the current system and could release free books.
If most or all of the books are completely free, then using a tablet is a complete win over dead trees textbooks.
One of the problems facing astronauts: long periods of microgravity cause bone and muscle loss. I've read science fiction stories where people had to take pills to maintain their bones and muscles; they called them "gravity pills".
If this drug really works, I'm wondering if the astronauts in the space station, future Mars missions, etc. might wind up taking it drug routinely.
Probably a Mars mission will need to have some sort of rotating crew module to produce a gravity-like acceleration, as it will likely require at least seven months for the trip.
part of the problem is that some of those plants are so old that they either should have been or soon should be replaced. So "keep" would actually mean investing into building new ones, which politically but probably also due to cost reasons isn't really going to happen.
Well, IMHO what they should do is build 4th-generation nuclear to replace coal... but Germany doesn't care one bit what I think, and I am sure you are correct that new nuclear plants just aren't going to happen in Germany anytime soon. I also agree with you that running nuke plants past their design lifetime isn't the cleverest thing to do.
If the solar and wind power works out, the economy in Germany may benefit from cheap electricity (no fuel costs). But right now, are the high costs of energy slowing the economy?
Would Germany have been better off choosing some other technology than solar and wind? Given that fracking is causing natural gas to be plentiful and cheap, maybe what Germany really should be doing is building natural gas.
Really I'd rather see just about anything other than coal, but Wikipedia says Germany has been burning more coal as they decommission nuclear plants.
So winter really is bad for solar in Germany, but other months it isn't bad. Interestingly, wind does better in Winter... chart on page 10, "Monthly Production Wind", same deal as above (mostly eyeball estimates with two exact numbers):
It doesn't look like renewables will be able to produce 100% of power needs any time soon in Germany, but they are producing about 1/5 of all energy. More than I expected.
Critics claim that Germany is paying six times as much for power, to finance all the renewables. (Per that article, 18 billion Euros paid on power that has a market value of 3 billion Euros) See also the Wikipedia article on Renewable energy in Germany.
Presumably though this is an investment and the renewables will keep providing power once their costs have been paid fully. I'm wondering if, over the operational lifetime of the solar and wind power equipment, they will wind up producing enough power that they will have actually been a good investment?
IMHO it would make more sense for them to keep the nuclear power plants and try to shut down coal plants, but that's not their plan.
To "evade" taxes is illegal. But to "avoid" taxes is legal.
Even a "tax shelter" that avoids paying 100% of tax might be legal, depending on circumstances.
There is wide agreement that taxes discourage people from certain behaviors, and tax breaks encourage people to do whatever gives the tax break. So, for example, J. Random Person could invest in solar panels on the roof of his home, and potentially get enough of a tax credit to offset his tax liability.
Should we be angry that someone paid no taxes? The tax break on solar panels was there to encourage people to invest in solar panels, and J. Random Person did that. This is the system working as intended. Society wanted to encourage more solar panels, and more solar panels were in fact installed.
Now, consider Amazon. The current weird tax system is the law of the land. (I think a "flat tax" with no exceptions would have many good features, but it's just a fantasy at this point. We are so far from a flat tax that it's really not worth discussing.) If Amazon can do some weird thing like banning interstate use of rented books, and the tax system is currently set up to reward that, then I don't blame Amazon for doing it.
If you don't like it, maybe you should tell your elected representatives that you would like to see changes in the way sales tax works.
P.S. I am not claiming that the current sales tax system was intentionally set up to encourage Amazon to take these steps. The tax code is so convoluted now that weird corner-cases must be expected. But whether this was intended or not, if that's what the law encourages Amazon to do, and we don't change the law, we shouldn't be surprised if Amazon does this.
I have personally replaced the print head separately on an HP inkjet.
I did a Google search and found this:
HP offers two general inkjet print head designs: integrated into the ink cartridge (Integrated Print Head: IPH), and a long-life print head integrated into a printer which has Individual Ink Cartridges (IIC).
I figure the IIC printers are all "workgroup" printers, designed for higher volumes. They might have somewhat lower per-page costs, but probably were not designed for low power or for use in dusty environments.
Here's a thorough examination of how the IPH cartridge technology works:
P.S. HP has a portable model: the "HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer - L411a" This has its own battery so it can operate if its power supply fails, and the specs say it takes a maximum of 40 Watts maximum 15 Watts typical, while operating.
Per the HP web site, this takes a "94" cartridge, an IPH cartridge. I was wondering if that cartridge is chipped. Per these refilling instructions, it does not appear to be chipped; these instructions just say to refill the thing, no talk of resetting a chip counter.
HP also has another "mobile" printer model rated for more pages per month: "HP Officejet 150 Mobile All-in-One Printer - L511a" This too has a battery, and per HP needs max 65 Watts, typical 22 Watts. It uses the same cartridges as the HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer.
So there's a possible system: standardize on the HP 94 cartridge, invest in refilling kits, and buy HP mobile printers that contain their own battery backup for printing when power is down.
I was assuming that your power budget wouldn't allow dot-matrix printers, so you would want some sort of inkjet. The discussion of dot-matrix printers is persuasive... those things really are durable, and cheap to operate.
If the power budget just won't allow dot-matrix, we are back to inkjet. I did some Google searches, and found this interesting discussion:
So, with a non-chipped inkjet cartridge and some refill kits, your consumables costs will be quite low, and your power needs should be lower than other kinds of printers.
The recommended printer from that link, the Canon MP280, is a multifunction device that also works as a scanner. If those things can hold up in your environment, they might be useful as more than just output devices.
A comment about inkjet printers. Some inkjet printers have the print head as actually part of the cartridge, so replacing the cartridge replaces the print head.
HP has always done this; an HP inkjet cartridge is basically a sponge full of ink, inside a plastic shell, with a printhead on one side. The printhead is a silicon chip that includes little heaters, which boil the ink to make a puff of steam that throws one droplet of ink out the print head. I love the simplicity, and I love that replacing the cartridge gives a fresh clean print head. But HP has been a pioneer in shrinking cartridge sizes to give you less ink, and I'll bet every current HP model has a page-counting chip. So perhaps the perfect printer for your needs would be an old HP inkjet printer, using one of the old cartridges (no chip and higher capacity), but I would prefer a recommendation for something you can buy new.
I am wondering if, by any chance, you could partially solve your problem with e-ink tablets.
I have a Nook Simple Touch, and it goes a long time between charges. A rooted e-ink device loaded with a copy of the medical records would allow looking up information with extremely low power needs. Nurses could carry these around and have all patient records at their fingertips.
You clearly need actual printers as well. I think some sort of inkjet printer will be your best bet.
Good luck, and sorry I couldn't give more useful advice.
If their first offering wasn't called a Surface (a meaningless name) but instead the Xbox Tablet, the response would have likely been quite different
Here's my take on why they named the tablets "Surface":
Microsoft wanted the announcement of the Surface to be a surprise. Using any new name (such as "Xbox Tablet") would have required filing paperwork for trademarks, reserving domain names, etc. and would have tipped their hand early. Luckily, they had a brand name, "Surface", on a product that wasn't doing much, so they could lift the brand name and use it on the new product, with nobody able to see it coming ahead of time.
The OEM partners were not happy when Microsoft announced it would be making and selling its own computing devices. The secrecy helped Microsoft keep the OEMs from finding out as long as possible.
As support for my theory, note that Microsoft filed for the trademark on Zune on August 16, 2006 and then announced the Zune officially on November 14, 2006. Thus there was about a three-month window where people knew Microsoft was preparing something named "Zune". A name like "Xbox Tablet" would have basically announced what Microsoft was up to, three months early.
P.S. SemiAccurate published an article claiming that Microsoft was being crafty, looking at the coming Windows tablet devices as they planned their own tablets. If this is true, the need for the secrecy to continue until the last possible minute is clear.
From a components standpoint, a 7-inch Surface RT tablet with a Qualcomm chip shouldn't cost much more to produce than the Nexus 7. If Google can afford to price the Nexus 7 at $199, then Microsoft can certainly aim for similar build quality at a similar price.
This assumes that Microsoft is willing to give away Windows to hit the price point. This in turn means buying in on the "sell cheap razors, make money selling razor blades" idea, which Microsoft did actually try with the XBox, but would represent a change in strategy with respect to mobile.
Can Microsoft make that decision quickly? I can imagine endless bickering among the multiple layers of middle management about whether that's a good idea or not.
Also, Windows needs a more powerful device to run compared to Android, which drives up device costs.
By producing multiple Surface RT models, Microsoft can reassure its partners that Windows RT is worth supporting.
This is just fantasy. The OEMs are not happy about any aspect of the Surface situation (Microsoft making its own hardware in direct competition with the OEMs, lousy sales, etc.) and this sort of abstract reassurance is worthless.
3. Microsoft needs device fanfare to accompany Windows 8.1, and to coincide with enterprise hardware upgrades.
Again, just fantasy. Microsoft has completely failed to gin up any excitement around the current crop of Surface products and it's silly to just assume they can do better with a new product.
Also, TFA suggests that "excitement over Windows 8.1" would help sell Surface tablets, and I don't think there will be enough excitement there to help anything.
A larger Windows RT tablet might be attractive to a mobile salesperson, for instance, whereas a 7-inch model that syncs perfectly with a Surface Pro could be a nice secondary device for a traveling executive.
Wow. Just, wow. Traveling executives who likely already have a Macbook Air and an iPad are going to get rid of them in favor of a Surface Pro and a baby Surface RT?
Oh wait, I forgot, the new tablets will have Outlook so it's totally plausible! Yeah, no.
Here's an interesting page with a few nuggets of info. In the discussion section, some people claim that the game used to crash with space battles as small as 100 ships. Clearly the game has been improved since then. http://highscalability.com/eve-online-architecture
If you are really interested, here's a talk from PyCon 2009 that goes into some detail on what they do with Stackless. They had some problems that only showed up on the crazy load of a real system, so they had to go live with some code to test it! http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/stackless-python-in-eve-pt-2-1959372
Now, I just went and saw Pacific Rim last night. (I enjoyed it and I recommend it; if you read Slashdot there is a good chance you will like it. It's not perfect of course, but it's fun.)
So, let's consider how Pacific Rim plays out against that sidebar. This is not possible without SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. I'm keeping them light and hand-wavy so they aren't too horrible as SPOILERS but you have been warned.
Do not read past this point unless you want SPOILERS for Pacific Rim.
Opening Image, Theme is Stated, Set Up (first ten pages): montage showing back story, including protagonist and his brother.
Catalyst: Tragic event ends protagonist's career as a giant robot pilot.
Debate: Commanding officer and protagonist argue about protagonist returning as a pilot.
Break Into Act II: protagonist goes to Hong Kong and sees the new base and meets everyone.
B-story: We meet the two eccentric science guys.
Fun and Games: Protagonist and Japanese chick first fail and then succeed. Just as predicted in the "beats" chart, lots of trailer-friendly moments from this section and ends with a big victory.
Midpoint: "A and B stories cross" The two eccentric science guys undergo a risky procedure and successfully gain critical information, as the remaining giant robots embark on a desperate plan. "New information is revealed that raises the stakes"... um, yeah, we find out that the situation is as high-stakes as it could possibly be. Arguably the dialog "the plan won't work" might count as a "false defeat" in this beats structure.
Bad Guys Close In: the remaining giant robots are losing the fight against the kaiju creatures.
All Is Lost: This one is a bit of a weaker match, because the movie doesn't really milk the "how are we ever going to solve this". But there is a major sacrifice involving death of important characters.
Dark Night of the Soul: Another weak match, as the movie doesn't milk the sacrifice. But, the section of the movie just after "Fun and Games" really had a Dark Night of the Soul quality to it: somber dialog, father/son emotion-choked moments, "you'll die if you get into that" and the father/daughter emotion-choked moments. So, I think there was a Dark Night of the Soul, but they didn't stick it in the canonical spot from the outline.
Break into Act III: the quirky scientists tell how to successfully get past the major obstacle.
Finale: The protagonist successfully saves the day. Again an approximate match to the beats of the book, as this section is much shorter in Pacific Rim than the page counts would suggest.
Final image: We see the protagonist and the Japanese chick hugging. We see the "attack" clocks being stopped and set to zero. As the credits roll we see some sort of statue of giant robots fighting kaiju creatures.
So, review that and decide for yourself whether the Save the Cat book was involved in the scriptwriting for Pacific Rim. I suspect it was... the most compelling part for me was, when I was watching, I said "oh wow, right on schedule here's the B story" and then "oh wow, right on schedule, the A and B stories just intersected". The three-act structure is clear and matched up quite well.
I suspect that this Save the Cat book provides a common language in Hollywood the way the Gang of Four "Software Patterns" provide a common language among software developers. Maybe not all scriptwriters adhere strictly to the suggested page numbers from the beats breakdown (I sure hope they don't) but I think they probably discuss things in terms like "Okay, here we have the Dark Night of the Soul."
Why would she need dozens of tabs currently active rather than use an extension like TooManyTabs?
Thank you for telling me about TooManyTabs. It didn't occur to me to search for extensions that would kill all but the MRU tabs, so I guess it's my fault she didn't use that extension.
So, in summary, she wasn't using that because neither of us had ever heard of it. I'll look into it.
frankly, I'm a lot happier with my stuff this way than I was back when I casually bought replacements
Well, good for you. But I'm not sure "casually" is really the right word for a new computer after five years.
We can afford the computer, the extra RAM also helps VirtualBox run Windows 7 better (she mainly uses Windows for Netflix), the new larger hard drive means she is no longer running out of disk space, the extra speed sure doesn't hurt, and I'm going to repurpose her old computer (not just throw it away or something). And, I succeeded in making her new computer quieter than her old one, always a plus.
Also, I prefer to set up a new computer and then keep the old one unchanged for awhile to make sure the new one is working out, rather than trying to upgrade a computer in-place; the latter is much more stressful if the upgrade goes sideways, which would have left her without a computer had it happened.
So, my reasons for building a new computer for her seem pretty adequate to me. And, please pardon me for saying so, but your lecturing tone really rubbed me the wrong way.
I was planning to use her computer as my new computer (my old one is an Athlon XP, and I think it's over a decade old), but now I want one just like her new one. I might actually want to recompile Android from source, and 16 GB is the minimum recommended RAM for doing that. Wow, I remember when 16 GB would have been large for a hard disk, let alone system RAM.
Slashdot Mirror
I must have been half asleep when I posted this. This was a comment on Elop, meant for a different Slashdot article... I'm not sure how I clicked "Post" in the wrong article. Sorry for the mixup.
We've already discussed this. Elop is the trope-namer for the "Peter Pinnacle", which means: 'to get promoted so high and to be so unqualified for your job that the company tells you that you can name your price just to go away.'
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/08/25/1741200/inspired-by-the-peter-principle-the-peter-pinnacle
P.S. Tomi Ahonen makes a pretty convincing case that Elop turned gold into lead.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/the-do-it-yourself-elop-analysis.html
If Apple doesn't cannibalize some of their own phone sales, lower-end Android smartphones will eat those sales. Apple is not as able to command a premium price as formerly.
Apple products are well-made, work well, work well in the Apple ecosystem, and are premium priced. In the early days of the iPhone, Apple successfully sold premium devices to customers who normally don't buy premium, because those customers couldn't get a non-sucky smartphone anywhere else. And buying an Apple smartphone, even at a premium price, still only means a few hundred dollars of extra expense.
But as the premium Android smartphones of yesterday move down and become the budget Android smartphones of today, there is less need to pay a premium to get a nice smartphone. Apple needs to compete on price.
With the 5C, Apple is trying to walk a fine line. They are trying to lower the entry-level price of an iPhone enough to keep sales that would have gone to Android phones, while at the same time they are trying not to take too many sales away from their top-of-the-line iPhone. (IMHO the plastic case is an inspired bit of product segmentation. Whether it's significantly cheaper or not, it serves as a nice differentiator between the bargain iPhone and the premium iPhone.)
I think in the USA, the 5C will serve its purpose pretty well, because most people get subsidized phones and the $100 subsidized price looks attractive. But worldwide, the entry-level phone customers will all be buying Android devices. I don't think there is anything Apple really can do about this. Their choice is either to accept lower profit margins on phones, or else watch as Android solidifies its hold on developing markets. The conservative thing for Apple to do is to keep charging premium margins; if they ever slash their prices it will be very hard ever to change their mind and go back to premium pricing.
which should cause folks in Redmond to smart a bit
For those of you who are new here, "Redmond" is a reference to the Microsoft (headquarters in Redmond, Washington). "Microsoft" is a company that used to be terribly important to most users of computers, but is becoming less so over time.
I wonder how long people will care enough about Microsoft to know what "Redmond" means. It's been years since I read an article that used "Armonk" to refer to IBM.
I suspect that this usage is just to avoid saying the same company name over and over. When the day comes that Microsoft isn't mentioned in the news that much, nobody will bother to call them anything but "Microsoft".
I just found a cool solution to the problem: the Raspberry Pi has a hardware random number generator as part of the system-on-a-chip, and Linux supports it. So /dev/hwrng works on a Raspberry Pi and should be able to provide a lot of random data.
I don't think Linux will grab entropy from /dev/hwrng and use it for /dev/random, but you can install rngd (random number generator daemon) from rng-tools; this will pump entropy from /dev/hwrng into the Linux kernel for /dev/random to use.
So, you could do the "entropy server" idea, but co-located with your other servers, with the server costing about $35 and electricity costs of pennies per year.
http://scruss.com/blog/2013/06/07/well-that-was-unexpected-the-raspberry-pis-hardware-random-number-generator/
Or, you could just set up server hardware that has a supported hardware RNG on the chip. "Ivy Bridge" i5 and i7 chips have this. (I only use AMD chips, and this feature isn't enough to make me switch.)
http://wiki.openssl.org/index.php/Random_Numbers#Hardware
Follow-up. I took a look at the LavaRng page, and it hasn't really been updated since 2004. In particular, the list of supported webcams is a list of three no-longer-made models from a decade ago. Also, I tried building the software, and it won't build with a current GCC. (The errors I saw were really warnings, so disabling "treat warnings as errors" might make the build work again.)
I did some Google searches. I found this nice discussion:
http://hightechsorcery.com/2010/05/getting-more-entropy-for-virtual-servers/
For my own mail server, I plan to install "randomsound" to harvest entropy from the sound hardware on my mail server's motherboard.
It's an unreasonable idea. First, it requires a reliable Internet connection. Second, the NSA could monitor the traffic, plant back doors in the server, or otherwise compromise an in-the-cloud solution.
Much better would be a hardware source of randomness, connected to your server, and under your direct control.
Why not get a cheap webcam and set up your own LavaRnd? There, true random data available to your computer even at boot time.
http://www.lavarnd.org/what/how-good.html
LavaRnd has Linux kernel drivers, and it will drop right in and Just Work.
I'll donate $1000 towards costs if the idea is viable.
You could buy a lot of cheap webcams for $1000.
currently I have several devices with hardware support to decode h.264... With this new codec they'll need to decode in software
Maybe not.
The hardware support for H.264 is probably in the form of general-purpose DSP (Digital Signal Processing) combined with some code. Basically, your devices have some sort of DSP capability, and someone wrote DSP code to offload much of the decoding work from the general-purpose CPU to the DSP core(s).
So, it is probably possible to write additional code for H.265 and offer it as an update. This additional code will offload decoding work to the DSP, just as with H.264, and problem solved.
Likewise, it should be possible to offload Theora and WebM to a DSP. The question there is whether anyone will bother. I would expect that Google would DSP-accelerate WebM and ship that standard for at least Nexus devices, but I haven't heard anything about it.
For that matter, I would expect that Google should make a general-purpose DSP library that abstracts the details of the DSP hardware, so that it would be easier to accelerate applications. I know that almost all Android devices run on ARM cores, but how standardized are the various DSP coprocessor cores? As far as I know, right now if you want to write DSP code for Android, you need to write it for a specific processor.
Anyway, I think H.265 will be much like H.264 and much of the DSP code can be reused. It would be much harder to write the DSP support for a codec that uses a completely different technology such as wavelets.
Theora uses a BSD-style license.
http://www.theora.org/faq/#14
WebM also uses a BSD-style license.
http://www.webmproject.org/about/faq/#licensing
IMHO, if you are trying to make a standard for media encoding, it just makes sense for the reference code to be BSD-licensed. The point of GPL is to make sure that people can't lock users in to a proprietary code base, with no way to make changes; with a media format, the users can always grab their own copy of the reference code. (And a proprietary version that is incompatible with the reference code will be incompatible with the media standard. Users will shun it.)
Uh, wasn't OLPC created to serve third-party countries, not first world countries?
Why can't they do both?
One of the big criticisms of the original plans with the XO-1 was that they didn't mass-produce the thing and get the costs as low as possible. Instead of stacks of XO-1 laptops on the shelves at Wal-Mart, they only let you buy one if you paid double the price for it in the "Give One Get One" program. I don't think they ever really had a prayer of getting the cost under $100 with the original device, but massive mass production would have helped a bit with the costs.
Now, they can get a complete tablet (I'm guessing they didn't even design it, that whatever Chinese company manufactures it had a reference design ready to go) and just have a custom case for it, and put a customized set of apps on it, for less money than designing and building their own custom hardware platform. What's bad about that? The tablet is already low-power, already reasonably durable, and now the OLPC project can just focus on their core competency: software.
The article says that part of the $150 will go to supporting the OLPC project, so this doesn't seem to me like it is abandoning their core mission. They have just found a different way to go about it, and I think it makes more sense.
Studying metrics on how often people edit Wikipedia is interesting, but cannot possibly tell the whole story. Some movies come out of nowhere and succeed.
For example, the quirky film Napoleon Dynamite became a critical success and made a great deal of money, but you really need to watch it to get it. It has no famous actors, it isn't based on any previous brand, and there would be no reason for anyone to pay attention to it on Wikipedia before it was released.
I'm pretty sure that the Wikipedia metrics would have predicted that Napoleon Dynamite would be a total flop.
I remain hopeful that technology will reduce costs so that more really unique movies can be made. The more a studio is spending on a movie, the more the studio wants the movie to be "a sure thing" and thus like every other movie.
If the movie studios start using Wikipedia metrics to try to predict which movies will succeed, I sure hope they will only do that on big-ticket movies, so there is at least a chance for really new stuff to get made. Otherwise, the really new stuff will have to come from outside of the studios.
I think there is an opportunity for someone to make an Android tablet with an 8" screen and a 4:3 aspect ratio.
The Nexus 7 is, IMHO, a better tablet in most ways than an iPad Mini: higher resolution screen, less expensive, more powerful hardware. The 2013 refresh makes the above even more true, but I would rather have even a 2012 Nexus 7 than an iPad Mini.
But the Nexus tablets are all widescreen; a Nexus 7 has a 16:10 aspect ratio with a 7" screen. This means that a Nexus 7 gives about 9.4 cm of width on the screen, compared with about 11.9 cm for iPad mini (calculated from official specs, as I don't have one to measure). Thus, the iPad Mini is only slightly larger than the Nexus 7, yet it has about 2.5cm of extra usable screen width!
I have used my 2012 Nexus 7 to read O'Reilly books. In many cases, the screen width isn't enough for code samples; if I make the font size large enough that my eyes can comfortably read the text, the code samples don't fit. Thus, I usually read with the screen in landscape, which means the width is fine but I scroll more to read the text.
I'm not sure if the extra 2.5cm of screen width would be enough to read code samples in portrait, but it could only help. I'd like a chance to try it.
O'Reilly books and other textbooks are one use case for the wider screen. Another one: magazines. Magazines should fit better in the wider screen.
So I see an opportunity for someone to make a 4:3 Android tablet, with better resolution than an iPad mini. I'd buy one, and use it to read O'Reilly books.
As soon as anyone, anywhere in the world, has written a useful textbook with a free license, the whole world gains that textbook.
I hope we will start seeing graduate students writing undergrad textbooks as projects, and releasing them with open licenses. Or seeing "publish or perish" professors satisfying the "publish" requirement by writing free textbooks.
Even if the world only got one useful textbook per year for any given discipline, it wouldn't take many years before students could get a degree using nothing but free textbooks.
Also, for subjects like math, once a textbook is done, it shouldn't take much to keep it current. Even for subjects like computer science where the state of the art is evolving, it would be relatively easy to keep the books up to date, and the basics don't change that much.
Free and available textbooks would be nice to have for people living in wealthy countries, but would be a very big deal for people trying to get an education in really poor places. Etexts are the reason I got excited about the OLPC project when it was announced.
There are plenty of people and companies who like the current system, but there are also plenty of people who have no stake in the current system and could release free books.
If most or all of the books are completely free, then using a tablet is a complete win over dead trees textbooks.
One of the problems facing astronauts: long periods of microgravity cause bone and muscle loss. I've read science fiction stories where people had to take pills to maintain their bones and muscles; they called them "gravity pills".
If this drug really works, I'm wondering if the astronauts in the space station, future Mars missions, etc. might wind up taking it drug routinely.
Probably a Mars mission will need to have some sort of rotating crew module to produce a gravity-like acceleration, as it will likely require at least seven months for the trip.
part of the problem is that some of those plants are so old that they either should have been or soon should be replaced. So "keep" would actually mean investing into building new ones, which politically but probably also due to cost reasons isn't really going to happen.
Well, IMHO what they should do is build 4th-generation nuclear to replace coal... but Germany doesn't care one bit what I think, and I am sure you are correct that new nuclear plants just aren't going to happen in Germany anytime soon. I also agree with you that running nuke plants past their design lifetime isn't the cleverest thing to do.
If the solar and wind power works out, the economy in Germany may benefit from cheap electricity (no fuel costs). But right now, are the high costs of energy slowing the economy?
Would Germany have been better off choosing some other technology than solar and wind?
Given that fracking is causing natural gas to be plentiful and cheap, maybe what Germany really should be doing is building natural gas.
Really I'd rather see just about anything other than coal, but Wikipedia says Germany has been burning more coal as they decommission nuclear plants.
Here are the numbers from the chart on page 4:
Electricity production: first seven months 2013
Uranium -- 52.1 TWh
Brown Coal -- 85.1 TWh
Hard Coal -- 65.5 TWh
Gas -- 23.8 TWh
Wind -- 24.2 TWh
Solar -- 19.4 TWh
Run of River -- 10.5 TWh
Total energy production was about 280.6 TWh, renewable was 54.1 TWh (or about 19.3% of all energy production).
Also interesting is the chart on page 9, "Monthly Production Solar". It is a bar graph, so these numbers are mostly my eyeball estimates:
January: 0.35 TWh (exact number)
February: 0.6 TWh (my estimate)
March: 2.3 TWh (my estimate)
April: 3.1 TWh (my estimate)
May: 3.3 TWh (my estimate)
June: 4.3 TWh (my estimate)
July: 5.1 TWh (exact number)
So winter really is bad for solar in Germany, but other months it isn't bad. Interestingly, wind does better in Winter... chart on page 10, "Monthly Production Wind", same deal as above (mostly eyeball estimates with two exact numbers):
January: 5.0 TWh (exact number)
February: 3.2 TWh (my estimate)
March: 4.7 TWh (my estimate)
April: 3.3 TWh (my estimate)
May: 2.8 TWh (my estimate)
June: 3.3 TWh (my estimate)
July: 1.7 TWh (exact number)
It doesn't look like renewables will be able to produce 100% of power needs any time soon in Germany, but they are producing about 1/5 of all energy. More than I expected.
Critics claim that Germany is paying six times as much for power, to finance all the renewables. (Per that article, 18 billion Euros paid on power that has a market value of 3 billion Euros) See also the Wikipedia article on Renewable energy in Germany.
Presumably though this is an investment and the renewables will keep providing power once their costs have been paid fully. I'm wondering if, over the operational lifetime of the solar and wind power equipment, they will wind up producing enough power that they will have actually been a good investment?
IMHO it would make more sense for them to keep the nuclear power plants and try to shut down coal plants, but that's not their plan.
To "evade" taxes is illegal. But to "avoid" taxes is legal.
Even a "tax shelter" that avoids paying 100% of tax might be legal, depending on circumstances.
There is wide agreement that taxes discourage people from certain behaviors, and tax breaks encourage people to do whatever gives the tax break. So, for example, J. Random Person could invest in solar panels on the roof of his home, and potentially get enough of a tax credit to offset his tax liability.
Should we be angry that someone paid no taxes? The tax break on solar panels was there to encourage people to invest in solar panels, and J. Random Person did that. This is the system working as intended. Society wanted to encourage more solar panels, and more solar panels were in fact installed.
Now, consider Amazon. The current weird tax system is the law of the land. (I think a "flat tax" with no exceptions would have many good features, but it's just a fantasy at this point. We are so far from a flat tax that it's really not worth discussing.) If Amazon can do some weird thing like banning interstate use of rented books, and the tax system is currently set up to reward that, then I don't blame Amazon for doing it.
If you don't like it, maybe you should tell your elected representatives that you would like to see changes in the way sales tax works.
P.S. I am not claiming that the current sales tax system was intentionally set up to encourage Amazon to take these steps. The tax code is so convoluted now that weird corner-cases must be expected. But whether this was intended or not, if that's what the law encourages Amazon to do, and we don't change the law, we shouldn't be surprised if Amazon does this.
I have personally replaced the print head separately on an HP inkjet.
I did a Google search and found this:
http://h10060.www1.hp.com/pageyield/articles/us/en/InkUseage.html
I figure the IIC printers are all "workgroup" printers, designed for higher volumes. They might have somewhat lower per-page costs, but probably were not designed for low power or for use in dusty environments.
Here's a thorough examination of how the IPH cartridge technology works:
http://wandel.ca/hp45_anatomy/
P.S. HP has a portable model: the "HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer - L411a" This has its own battery so it can operate if its power supply fails, and the specs say it takes a maximum of 40 Watts maximum 15 Watts typical, while operating.
Per the HP web site, this takes a "94" cartridge, an IPH cartridge. I was wondering if that cartridge is chipped. Per these refilling instructions, it does not appear to be chipped; these instructions just say to refill the thing, no talk of resetting a chip counter.
http://www.printerfillingstation.com/Refill-Instructions/HP/H22.htm
HP also has another "mobile" printer model rated for more pages per month: "HP Officejet 150 Mobile All-in-One Printer - L511a" This too has a battery, and per HP needs max 65 Watts, typical 22 Watts. It uses the same cartridges as the HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer.
So there's a possible system: standardize on the HP 94 cartridge, invest in refilling kits, and buy HP mobile printers that contain their own battery backup for printing when power is down.
I was assuming that your power budget wouldn't allow dot-matrix printers, so you would want some sort of inkjet. The discussion of dot-matrix printers is persuasive... those things really are durable, and cheap to operate.
If the power budget just won't allow dot-matrix, we are back to inkjet. I did some Google searches, and found this interesting discussion:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/2139-69-which-printer-cheapest#10472794
So, with a non-chipped inkjet cartridge and some refill kits, your consumables costs will be quite low, and your power needs should be lower than other kinds of printers.
The recommended printer from that link, the Canon MP280, is a multifunction device that also works as a scanner. If those things can hold up in your environment, they might be useful as more than just output devices.
A comment about inkjet printers. Some inkjet printers have the print head as actually part of the cartridge, so replacing the cartridge replaces the print head.
HP has always done this; an HP inkjet cartridge is basically a sponge full of ink, inside a plastic shell, with a printhead on one side. The printhead is a silicon chip that includes little heaters, which boil the ink to make a puff of steam that throws one droplet of ink out the print head. I love the simplicity, and I love that replacing the cartridge gives a fresh clean print head. But HP has been a pioneer in shrinking cartridge sizes to give you less ink, and I'll bet every current HP model has a page-counting chip. So perhaps the perfect printer for your needs would be an old HP inkjet printer, using one of the old cartridges (no chip and higher capacity), but I would prefer a recommendation for something you can buy new.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkjet#Head_design
I did some more Google searching, and there are ways to reset the counters on inkjet cartridges, so maybe you can do that.
I am wondering if, by any chance, you could partially solve your problem with e-ink tablets.
I have a Nook Simple Touch, and it goes a long time between charges. A rooted e-ink device loaded with a copy of the medical records would allow looking up information with extremely low power needs. Nurses could carry these around and have all patient records at their fingertips.
You clearly need actual printers as well. I think some sort of inkjet printer will be your best bet.
Good luck, and sorry I couldn't give more useful advice.
If their first offering wasn't called a Surface (a meaningless name) but instead the Xbox Tablet, the response would have likely been quite different
Here's my take on why they named the tablets "Surface":
Microsoft wanted the announcement of the Surface to be a surprise. Using any new name (such as "Xbox Tablet") would have required filing paperwork for trademarks, reserving domain names, etc. and would have tipped their hand early. Luckily, they had a brand name, "Surface", on a product that wasn't doing much, so they could lift the brand name and use it on the new product, with nobody able to see it coming ahead of time.
The OEM partners were not happy when Microsoft announced it would be making and selling its own computing devices. The secrecy helped Microsoft keep the OEMs from finding out as long as possible.
As support for my theory, note that Microsoft filed for the trademark on Zune on August 16, 2006 and then announced the Zune officially on November 14, 2006. Thus there was about a three-month window where people knew Microsoft was preparing something named "Zune". A name like "Xbox Tablet" would have basically announced what Microsoft was up to, three months early.
P.S. SemiAccurate published an article claiming that Microsoft was being crafty, looking at the coming Windows tablet devices as they planned their own tablets. If this is true, the need for the secrecy to continue until the last possible minute is clear.
From TFA:
This assumes that Microsoft is willing to give away Windows to hit the price point. This in turn means buying in on the "sell cheap razors, make money selling razor blades" idea, which Microsoft did actually try with the XBox, but would represent a change in strategy with respect to mobile.
Can Microsoft make that decision quickly? I can imagine endless bickering among the multiple layers of middle management about whether that's a good idea or not.
Also, Windows needs a more powerful device to run compared to Android, which drives up device costs.
This is just fantasy. The OEMs are not happy about any aspect of the Surface situation (Microsoft making its own hardware in direct competition with the OEMs, lousy sales, etc.) and this sort of abstract reassurance is worthless.
Again, just fantasy. Microsoft has completely failed to gin up any excitement around the current crop of Surface products and it's silly to just assume they can do better with a new product.
Also, TFA suggests that "excitement over Windows 8.1" would help sell Surface tablets, and I don't think there will be enough excitement there to help anything.
Wow. Just, wow. Traveling executives who likely already have a Macbook Air and an iPad are going to get rid of them in favor of a Surface Pro and a baby Surface RT?
Oh wait, I forgot, the new tablets will have Outlook so it's totally plausible! Yeah, no.
http://www.stackless.com/
They are using Python 2.7:
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/stackless-python-2.7/
Great discussion of pros and cons of Stackless:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/588958/what-are-the-drawbacks-of-stackless-python
Here's an interesting page with a few nuggets of info. In the discussion section, some people claim that the game used to crash with space battles as small as 100 ships. Clearly the game has been improved since then.
http://highscalability.com/eve-online-architecture
If you are really interested, here's a talk from PyCon 2009 that goes into some detail on what they do with Stackless. They had some problems that only showed up on the crazy load of a real system, so they had to go live with some code to test it!
http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/stackless-python-in-eve-pt-2-1959372
P.S. A couple of good trailers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrrVDV_NsNo
This one bored me at first but then got much better as the music got going.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euMjOHgb9A8
I haven't read the book, but TFA had a sidebar that showed the bones of the book. Link:
http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save_the_cat_beat_sheet.html
Now, I just went and saw Pacific Rim last night. (I enjoyed it and I recommend it; if you read Slashdot there is a good chance you will like it. It's not perfect of course, but it's fun.)
So, let's consider how Pacific Rim plays out against that sidebar. This is not possible without SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. I'm keeping them light and hand-wavy so they aren't too horrible as SPOILERS but you have been warned.
Do not read past this point unless you want SPOILERS for Pacific Rim.
Opening Image, Theme is Stated, Set Up (first ten pages): montage showing back story, including protagonist and his brother.
Catalyst: Tragic event ends protagonist's career as a giant robot pilot.
Debate: Commanding officer and protagonist argue about protagonist returning as a pilot.
Break Into Act II: protagonist goes to Hong Kong and sees the new base and meets everyone.
B-story: We meet the two eccentric science guys.
Fun and Games: Protagonist and Japanese chick first fail and then succeed. Just as predicted in the "beats" chart, lots of trailer-friendly moments from this section and ends with a big victory.
Midpoint: "A and B stories cross" The two eccentric science guys undergo a risky procedure and successfully gain critical information, as the remaining giant robots embark on a desperate plan. "New information is revealed that raises the stakes"... um, yeah, we find out that the situation is as high-stakes as it could possibly be. Arguably the dialog "the plan won't work" might count as a "false defeat" in this beats structure.
Bad Guys Close In: the remaining giant robots are losing the fight against the kaiju creatures.
All Is Lost: This one is a bit of a weaker match, because the movie doesn't really milk the "how are we ever going to solve this". But there is a major sacrifice involving death of important characters.
Dark Night of the Soul: Another weak match, as the movie doesn't milk the sacrifice. But, the section of the movie just after "Fun and Games" really had a Dark Night of the Soul quality to it: somber dialog, father/son emotion-choked moments, "you'll die if you get into that" and the father/daughter emotion-choked moments. So, I think there was a Dark Night of the Soul, but they didn't stick it in the canonical spot from the outline.
Break into Act III: the quirky scientists tell how to successfully get past the major obstacle.
Finale: The protagonist successfully saves the day. Again an approximate match to the beats of the book, as this section is much shorter in Pacific Rim than the page counts would suggest.
Final image: We see the protagonist and the Japanese chick hugging. We see the "attack" clocks being stopped and set to zero. As the credits roll we see some sort of statue of giant robots fighting kaiju creatures.
So, review that and decide for yourself whether the Save the Cat book was involved in the scriptwriting for Pacific Rim. I suspect it was... the most compelling part for me was, when I was watching, I said "oh wow, right on schedule here's the B story" and then "oh wow, right on schedule, the A and B stories just intersected". The three-act structure is clear and matched up quite well.
I suspect that this Save the Cat book provides a common language in Hollywood the way the Gang of Four "Software Patterns" provide a common language among software developers. Maybe not all scriptwriters adhere strictly to the suggested page numbers from the beats breakdown (I sure hope they don't) but I think they probably discuss things in terms like "Okay, here we have the Dark Night of the Soul."
Why would she need dozens of tabs currently active rather than use an extension like TooManyTabs?
Thank you for telling me about TooManyTabs. It didn't occur to me to search for extensions that would kill all but the MRU tabs, so I guess it's my fault she didn't use that extension.
So, in summary, she wasn't using that because neither of us had ever heard of it. I'll look into it.
frankly, I'm a lot happier with my stuff this way than I was back when I casually bought replacements
Well, good for you. But I'm not sure "casually" is really the right word for a new computer after five years.
We can afford the computer, the extra RAM also helps VirtualBox run Windows 7 better (she mainly uses Windows for Netflix), the new larger hard drive means she is no longer running out of disk space, the extra speed sure doesn't hurt, and I'm going to repurpose her old computer (not just throw it away or something). And, I succeeded in making her new computer quieter than her old one, always a plus.
Also, I prefer to set up a new computer and then keep the old one unchanged for awhile to make sure the new one is working out, rather than trying to upgrade a computer in-place; the latter is much more stressful if the upgrade goes sideways, which would have left her without a computer had it happened.
So, my reasons for building a new computer for her seem pretty adequate to me. And, please pardon me for saying so, but your lecturing tone really rubbed me the wrong way.
I was planning to use her computer as my new computer (my old one is an Athlon XP, and I think it's over a decade old), but now I want one just like her new one. I might actually want to recompile Android from source, and 16 GB is the minimum recommended RAM for doing that. Wow, I remember when 16 GB would have been large for a hard disk, let alone system RAM.