Bit rot needs to be fought on multiple levels. I have wound up (just because it is easier than using multiple programs) using WinRAR with its recovery record feature for long term storage. If there is bit rot, it can be detected and recovered, especially with the 128 bit CRCs that WinRAR 5.x uses.
Drive-wise, it would be nice if someone could come up with a special archive filesystem, preferably with WORM capabilities.
Take UDF. Expand it to the PB realm, not the existing 2TB. Add some ZFS features like ditto blocks, 64-128 bit CRCs, cryptographically signed writes with public keys, standard encryption, standard compression, ability to duplicate the filesystem as an image (so rsync utilities are usable to preserve hierarchy), snapshot directories a la OneFS/WAFL,
Add features like the ability to export a read-only optimized image similar to CramFS, with focus on image integrity, as opposed to read/write performance.
It is about killing multiple birds with one stone. Windows need film on them anyway for color, so might as well plaster the south side with a film that generates a few kilowatts of electricity. This also gives some positive PR, even if the only thing the electricity did was feed a rack of UPS batteries so less mains power was needed.
You are correct... it won't get near as much electricity as a panel mounted horizontally, and each square inch gets far less energy than a PV panel... but it does something, due to the sheer amount of area available, and it can be used to help polish a company's "green" image.
The TFA was light on details, but where phones are sold makes a big difference.
In Asia and South America, there are a lot of small shops selling phones, and oftentimes, they add "value added" stuff like pirated apps and other items. Usually the lesser known makers wind up here.
In the US, the phones go either directly from the maker to the phone provider to be sold, or from the manufacturer to a store like Best Buy or S-Mart.
I would be surprised if malware (other than the usual vendor bloatware) was an issue in the US or Europe.
There are also features like dual-SIM capability which seem to be more common on lower-end models.
Storage-wise, Android phones have languished, and iPhones slow to increase. One's best bet is just to get a low end phone that can handle SDXC and a 128 GB card for $85 or so. Plus, another advantage of a MicroSD card is that backups are easy to do. Fire up Titanium Backup or nandroid, dump/system,/data, and other volumes, pop the card and stash it away.
It is a different mentality than US companies. If you have a company that is near the bottom of the charts... but you are making some type of profit... that is just fine.
There is always the fact that the big names can topple over. Sony used to be #1 when it came to MP3 players, but after the iPod, the market pretty much got split up between Apple and a number of no-name WMA players.
The US market has this issue about "growth". A company that has been turning a steady profit for 20 years is valued less than a company losing money, but "making it up in volume" by expanding to lose money in many market segments.
The ironic thing is that the US used to have this mentality about a decade ago.
There was a time in the 80s/90s where there were hundreds to thousands of no-name PC companies, and Computer Shopper had many, many ads. Today, people are used to just 1-2 companies (Lowe's/Home Depot) in a market, but there is nothing wrong with a segment having a lot of competitors in it. At the minimum, it means more choices, at the higher end, it means finding a device that better fits one wants/needs.
Depends... There have been preloaded malware incidents, but the bootloaders of these devices tend to be either not locked, or easily unlocked. After that, it isn't tough to flash a third party ROM, or good ol' CM.
Flashing a good ROM can go a long way into making a low end device quite useful, and for a flagship phone, making it worth the price premium.
Depending on the backend, it could just be a filesystem, like WAFL/OnTap or OneFS. The videos get stashed per owner ID, and a database on a different box keeps the meta data in sync, deleting videos that expire.
Coupled with something like Isilon's SmartLock (which, in compliance mode, keeps stuff from being deleted unless one logs on as console root), it would provide decent protection against changes/deletions, barring physical compromise.
There are a lot of ways (some good, many brain-dead) to store video. A NAS can be used, or some type of cluster with EMC VNX LUNs and another machine doing an object database manage things.
I learned this as well. Best long term storage because it is readable by any mail program is by using Thunderbird. Outlook can do integrity checks on a mailbox, but only it can use its own format.
Then there is finding a compressing/archiving format. WinRAR or tar/xz/par are good options for this. This way, the mail spool with 100-200 gigs of spam gets reduced by an order of magnitude at the minimum.
As for storage? Different media. One copy on DVD, one on an external HDD, and perhaps one stashed on Amazon Glacier (although retrieving it can be costly.)
Even for college classes which bar use of Wikipedia directly, going through the citations and downloading/buying the works that were mentioned to read is a solid way to write a paper.
Wikipedia is one of the few places on the web that I can get meaningful info without having to deal with paywalls, full page ads, demands to create a user account or link to FB (so they can post freely as your ID), or other crap.
Of course, it isn't perfect. It is hard to get past the stage where any meaningful/relevant/on topic additions to an article don't just get blindly reverted by another person because one is a new user and doesn't have any reputation.
The real solution is something like xPrivacy (or on iOS, PMP), where the app thinks it has all the permissions it ever will want, but it gets fed bogus data. Contacts? Gets garbage. Location? Fake. Advertising ID? Sure, pick one. ESN/IMEI? Whatever the RNG says, its all yours.
It is surprising what apps ask for, permission-wise. If one uses a firewall program (Firewall IP on iOS, others on Android), you will find that a lot of apps communicate with tens to hundreds of sites that are pretty much irrelevant to anything you are doing, but usually are related to ad-based stuff, be it analytics, behavioral tracking, or other stuff that has no benefit to the end user, but a windfall for a snoop.
I've found the only real solution is to either move to a more user-respecting ROM like CM or whatever the talent in XDA has built, which almost always works better than what came from the factory.
Problem is that we will see this problem "fixed" by things similar to Samsung's KNOX, where if someone tries to manually install their own ROM or unlock the bootloader, the device blows an e-Fuse, rendering it either incapable of using a factory ROM, or showing it has been tampered with on boot.
That is the classic problem we have had since the early 1990s and PGP.
PGP 2.x and its descendants solved a lot of issues. It is transport independent [1], supported a good web of trust, did well for backing up keys, had a decent provision for revoking keys that were lost (assuming you made a revocation cert), and many other things. However, it took some active knowledge to use, and that is what made it unpopular.
Bitcoin is similar. MtGox presented a point and drool user interface to a protocol, pretending to be a bank. Of course, because the coins were in MtGox's wallet, they were really not belonging to accountholders, so when they went out of business, possession is normally 9/10 of the law, but in this case, possession is the law.
A lot of the exchanges just capitalized on people new to the protocol, and were expecting the currency to behave like dollars with a PayPal account.
Like the above -- this is an education issue, not a BitCoin issue. However people seem to rather deal with a lack of security than have to pack their own parachute. S/MIME versus PGP comes to mind for E-mail.
[1]: E-mail, SMS, MMS, NNTP, I've even used Paperbak (now spelled PaperBack) by Michael Mohr to pull larger from printed codes.
LILO has been a fundamental piece of the OS for many years, and has worked quite well. GRUB has eclipsed it for most uses, but for applications where every byte of storage is at a premium, it still has a place.
It is something that is well maintained, and can probably be retired, but still be useful, mainly since BIOS booting won't have the security changed and enhancements that UEFI comes with, so there isn't much that may change with the old BIOS based process in the future.
I'm grateful that it has been well maintained for so long. It is a piece of software taken for granted... but yet essential to the function of a machine.
NeXTStep had a lot of nice nifty features. Anyone remember FastECC... an E-mail encryption program so secure that it got pulled out of the OS. Even the "demo" program that used a password as a private key, and a hex string as a public key was nice, but never lasted long.
OS X is a completely different thing than System 1-7 or OS 8 and 9.
The main thing OS X offered that many a Mac person just hated Apple for not having... was true, preemptive multitasking. Before that, if an application or a desktop accessory didn't use WaitNextEvent(), the entire system ground to a halt, requiring a hardware reset. In fact, because OS 9 and earlier behaved like a chain of primitive Christmas tree lights (one bulb goes out, the entire chain does too), one wound up having to reboot every so often, just for safety. Some applications crashes could be recovered from... others, it was full down. To boot, there wasn't any real multi-user capability, other than what was grafted on via AppleShare servers or security programs like FileGuard or others.
Is OS X perfect? Nope. It desperately needs a new primary filesystem as HFS Plus is getting long in the tooth (it really is at best, competition for ext3) [1]. However, as an OS, it does its job well.
[1]: With all the cash Apple is sitting on, they could either license ZFS from Oracle, or if they don't want to deal with the licensing issues, hit up Symantec, license Veritas for VxFS, and extend that. One can use OSXFuse, but having a native filesystem on par with ZFS or btrfs would be nice.
It can be debated if Ada is obscure or not, but it has an important place in computing: Programs made from it can be made provably secure. Very few languages can do this.
Of course, with most dev houses, being able to have a build tree that can compile an executable for packaging on ship date is the most important thing out there, but if someone actually cared to write code where security or life safety is an issue, there is a language, that isn't too unpopular, that can be used for this.
Exactly. Advertising has morphed from showing a static picture of a product or a few lines of text to trying to be as intrusive as possible. If an advertiser could scan your HDD, encrypt your documents and sell you "protection", they would.
Realistically, why do advertisers need to fingerprint your browser, add "supercookies", demand a per device/computer identifier, constantly track your location, go through your contacts, pictures, music, and whatever is asked for? All they need to know is that their ad was seen, and perhaps clicked on/responded to. The other stuff is just invasion of privacy. To show a car ad, why the unnecessary trespass on people's machines?
I want a phone that backs off the bleeding edge somewhat when it comes to thinness, and allows for better battery capacity. Similar with having 8 cores of 64 bit ARM processors.
The classic example of a simple, yet functioning design would be the Palm V. PalmOS wasn't the fastest kid on the block... but it worked, was extremely usable, and for what it did, it did well. Plus, the design still looks good today.
I want a decent smartphone. I don't want a tracker device to give every advertiser every single piece of data the phone gets. I don't want a media device slinging ads, loaded with bloatware.
I want true innovation:
1: Make a thin, but usable OS on a partition, like the Atrix and Atrix 2. This way, I can bring a "dumb" dock and have computer functionality, but if it gets stolen, who cares... the data is on the phone.
2: VMs. That way, I can have a multiple sim phone that completely separates my personal stuff from work stuff, and both are kept away from client stuff. To boot, this makes backups/restores easy. Deduplicating filesystems are common, so having multiple VMs wouldn't be a burden on storage or CPU, especially if the fs did offline duplication as opposed to active.
3: Timeless design. Not silver painted plastic. The Palm V is 15+ years old, and it still looks decent even compared to modern units.
When the masses decided on gaming, we went from games like Origin's with new IP every few months, to games that cost ten times as much (if you factor the DLC required) and are the same IP as last year. They decided that waiting a little bit more for a relatively bug-free version of a game isn't worth it, making the game industry with its, "it compiles, ship it!" mantra the de facto standard of today.
When the masses decided on smartphones, they went from units that had a week of battery life and had a nice slider keyboard (which was quite useful when doing SSH tasks) to error-prone tapping on a touchscreen, and battery life that doesn't last a workday. Yes, newer smartphones are so thin, they only have one side, but so much was sacrificed so that the devices can be thin, as well as run the latest version of real time rendered Chainsaw Crush at 60 FPS. It would be nice to not have as powerful a CPU in return for a phone that can easily fit in a standard pocket.
When the masses decided on what the Internet looks like, out went newsgroups, mailing lists, Web forums, and IRC. In return, we have Facebook, and Twitter.
"I just bought a fridge, and they demand $25 a month to allow the door to be opened after 9:00 PM, and the ice maker to work 24 hours. I am just tired of watching the same ads for 5 minutes before it allows the door to be opened."
"My doorbell won't stop playing ad jungles unless I pay $10 a month for the ad free experience."
"Time to reboot all the light switches. Some botnet got installed and is using them for NarfCoin mining."
"Just had my health insurance premium double when I tossed the remnants of that pizza in the nuker, and the microwave alerted my ins co to my overquota of sodium this year."
"Just got fired from my job when my phone relayed to my employer that I was at a friend's house who posted a scathing review on one of their products."
Or a Scangauge 2, which also plugs into the OBD II port, can be placed anywhere where its contents can be useful.
Of course, a generic Bluetooth OBD tool for $10 from Amazon + Torque is another solution.
As the above, none of the above require a constant connection, no cellular device, no monthly fees, and you can place it where you want.
Companies wanting to attach stuff to your ODB2 port for data mining is getting old. From insurance dongles which will ding you if you stomp hard on the brakes or have a long commute, to governments that want the data for real time odometer readings for "taxes".
Risk is something to be managed. Playing Russian Roulette with one chamber loaded may be worth the reward on one hand... but if one isn't careful, they could be playing Russian Roulette with a semi auto.
IMHO, I think the US government did the right thing. It got the ball rolling, and even though foreign markets embraced panels, in the long run, cheap solar is a lot better for everyone [1]. Long term, it was places like Solyndra that might have been short term flops... but it got the big players in the business, and dedicated fabs for solar silicon.
[1]: Even Big Oil, ironically, since they don't have to push discovering or fracking as hard.
I am curious about one thing: Direct sun, the best thing to have is a plane perpendicular with the rays.
However, what about overcast skies where the sunlight is diffuse and can be coming from any direction. In these cases, would the half cylinders do the job better? For regions like the PNW, having PV panels optimized for shade or rainy weather might be useful.
These days, the point may be moot, especially with how silicon formulations are advancing. On the solar trailer I'm building when I go RV-ing, I'm using two monocrystalline panels (arranged in parallel to a MPPT controller) which will bring in most of the electricity, but for shady/overcast temperatures, a "hybrid" mono/poly panel is going to be present (with its own charge controller.) This way, all bases are covered.
Solar cells are a major piece of the puzzle, and arguably the biggest piece.
There are other things falling into place as well.
Relatively inexpensive MPPT controllers. Yes, these require an inductor coil to get the voltage from the panels (100+ volts) to a usable voltage/amperage combination for the battery bank. To boot, most MPPT CCs are multi-stage, so batteries are not boiled when near 100% SoC.
PWM controllers are cheaper, and because solar panel technology is so relatively cheap, it might be cheaper to throw more panels on as opposed to using a smarter charge controller. In fact, I bought a decent 60 amp, 12 volt, multistage CC with a voltmeter and ammeter for $8.
Inverters are not standing still. One can have a choice between charging solar batteries for off-grid use, using inverters to feed the grid, or anywhere in between.
The component that sucks the most is still batteries. They don't hold much energy relatively, and need to be replaced every 5-10 years. Even here, there is progress. For "drop in" batteries, there is a "Smart Battery" brand that goes where flooded lead-acid batteries are used. A battery charger that works with LiFePO4 is required, but since the special discharging circuitry is on the battery, this not just provides a longer usable life, but lead-acid batteries get damaged if drawn below 50% SoC, while lithium batteries can be drawn down a lot further (3-10%) before suffering ill effects.
What is happening with solar is a combination of the above factors, which gives energy independence, which builds momentum behind it. It used to be that solar power was for hippies, but both the far right and far left have embraced the concept, and it is more of a mainstream, "why not?" as opposed to "why" concept, especially with RVs, camping, and boating.
The one thing Amazon could have done which would remedy the current issues with the Dash button is have a color e-Ink display on it, and have it show a picture/logo of what product it is associated with. This way, there is more selection available and opportunities for niche products.
For example, I have a few Dash buttons myself, all of which will make their home in my RV. That way, instead of writing something to buy on a list, I just hit the buttons, and since they are connected to a Wi-Fi router, they will go out regardless.
However, the Smart Water is limited to one offering, and other choices are still limited. If Amazon made Dash buttons that had a display on them, they would be a lot more relevent. Otherwise, as Dash buttons stand now, they are pretty much a novelty at best.
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Bit rot needs to be fought on multiple levels. I have wound up (just because it is easier than using multiple programs) using WinRAR with its recovery record feature for long term storage. If there is bit rot, it can be detected and recovered, especially with the 128 bit CRCs that WinRAR 5.x uses.
Drive-wise, it would be nice if someone could come up with a special archive filesystem, preferably with WORM capabilities.
Take UDF. Expand it to the PB realm, not the existing 2TB. Add some ZFS features like ditto blocks, 64-128 bit CRCs, cryptographically signed writes with public keys, standard encryption, standard compression, ability to duplicate the filesystem as an image (so rsync utilities are usable to preserve hierarchy), snapshot directories a la OneFS/WAFL,
Add features like the ability to export a read-only optimized image similar to CramFS, with focus on image integrity, as opposed to read/write performance.
It is about killing multiple birds with one stone. Windows need film on them anyway for color, so might as well plaster the south side with a film that generates a few kilowatts of electricity. This also gives some positive PR, even if the only thing the electricity did was feed a rack of UPS batteries so less mains power was needed.
You are correct... it won't get near as much electricity as a panel mounted horizontally, and each square inch gets far less energy than a PV panel... but it does something, due to the sheer amount of area available, and it can be used to help polish a company's "green" image.
The TFA was light on details, but where phones are sold makes a big difference.
In Asia and South America, there are a lot of small shops selling phones, and oftentimes, they add "value added" stuff like pirated apps and other items. Usually the lesser known makers wind up here.
In the US, the phones go either directly from the maker to the phone provider to be sold, or from the manufacturer to a store like Best Buy or S-Mart.
I would be surprised if malware (other than the usual vendor bloatware) was an issue in the US or Europe.
There are also features like dual-SIM capability which seem to be more common on lower-end models.
Storage-wise, Android phones have languished, and iPhones slow to increase. One's best bet is just to get a low end phone that can handle SDXC and a 128 GB card for $85 or so. Plus, another advantage of a MicroSD card is that backups are easy to do. Fire up Titanium Backup or nandroid, dump /system, /data, and other volumes, pop the card and stash it away.
It is a different mentality than US companies. If you have a company that is near the bottom of the charts... but you are making some type of profit... that is just fine.
There is always the fact that the big names can topple over. Sony used to be #1 when it came to MP3 players, but after the iPod, the market pretty much got split up between Apple and a number of no-name WMA players.
The US market has this issue about "growth". A company that has been turning a steady profit for 20 years is valued less than a company losing money, but "making it up in volume" by expanding to lose money in many market segments.
The ironic thing is that the US used to have this mentality about a decade ago.
There was a time in the 80s/90s where there were hundreds to thousands of no-name PC companies, and Computer Shopper had many, many ads. Today, people are used to just 1-2 companies (Lowe's/Home Depot) in a market, but there is nothing wrong with a segment having a lot of competitors in it. At the minimum, it means more choices, at the higher end, it means finding a device that better fits one wants/needs.
Depends... There have been preloaded malware incidents, but the bootloaders of these devices tend to be either not locked, or easily unlocked. After that, it isn't tough to flash a third party ROM, or good ol' CM.
Flashing a good ROM can go a long way into making a low end device quite useful, and for a flagship phone, making it worth the price premium.
Depending on the backend, it could just be a filesystem, like WAFL/OnTap or OneFS. The videos get stashed per owner ID, and a database on a different box keeps the meta data in sync, deleting videos that expire.
Coupled with something like Isilon's SmartLock (which, in compliance mode, keeps stuff from being deleted unless one logs on as console root), it would provide decent protection against changes/deletions, barring physical compromise.
There are a lot of ways (some good, many brain-dead) to store video. A NAS can be used, or some type of cluster with EMC VNX LUNs and another machine doing an object database manage things.
I learned this as well. Best long term storage because it is readable by any mail program is by using Thunderbird. Outlook can do integrity checks on a mailbox, but only it can use its own format.
Then there is finding a compressing/archiving format. WinRAR or tar/xz/par are good options for this. This way, the mail spool with 100-200 gigs of spam gets reduced by an order of magnitude at the minimum.
As for storage? Different media. One copy on DVD, one on an external HDD, and perhaps one stashed on Amazon Glacier (although retrieving it can be costly.)
Even for college classes which bar use of Wikipedia directly, going through the citations and downloading/buying the works that were mentioned to read is a solid way to write a paper.
Wikipedia is one of the few places on the web that I can get meaningful info without having to deal with paywalls, full page ads, demands to create a user account or link to FB (so they can post freely as your ID), or other crap.
Of course, it isn't perfect. It is hard to get past the stage where any meaningful/relevant/on topic additions to an article don't just get blindly reverted by another person because one is a new user and doesn't have any reputation.
The real solution is something like xPrivacy (or on iOS, PMP), where the app thinks it has all the permissions it ever will want, but it gets fed bogus data. Contacts? Gets garbage. Location? Fake. Advertising ID? Sure, pick one. ESN/IMEI? Whatever the RNG says, its all yours.
It is surprising what apps ask for, permission-wise. If one uses a firewall program (Firewall IP on iOS, others on Android), you will find that a lot of apps communicate with tens to hundreds of sites that are pretty much irrelevant to anything you are doing, but usually are related to ad-based stuff, be it analytics, behavioral tracking, or other stuff that has no benefit to the end user, but a windfall for a snoop.
I've found the only real solution is to either move to a more user-respecting ROM like CM or whatever the talent in XDA has built, which almost always works better than what came from the factory.
Problem is that we will see this problem "fixed" by things similar to Samsung's KNOX, where if someone tries to manually install their own ROM or unlock the bootloader, the device blows an e-Fuse, rendering it either incapable of using a factory ROM, or showing it has been tampered with on boot.
That is the classic problem we have had since the early 1990s and PGP.
PGP 2.x and its descendants solved a lot of issues. It is transport independent [1], supported a good web of trust, did well for backing up keys, had a decent provision for revoking keys that were lost (assuming you made a revocation cert), and many other things. However, it took some active knowledge to use, and that is what made it unpopular.
Bitcoin is similar. MtGox presented a point and drool user interface to a protocol, pretending to be a bank. Of course, because the coins were in MtGox's wallet, they were really not belonging to accountholders, so when they went out of business, possession is normally 9/10 of the law, but in this case, possession is the law.
A lot of the exchanges just capitalized on people new to the protocol, and were expecting the currency to behave like dollars with a PayPal account.
Like the above -- this is an education issue, not a BitCoin issue. However people seem to rather deal with a lack of security than have to pack their own parachute. S/MIME versus PGP comes to mind for E-mail.
[1]: E-mail, SMS, MMS, NNTP, I've even used Paperbak (now spelled PaperBack) by Michael Mohr to pull larger from printed codes.
LILO has been a fundamental piece of the OS for many years, and has worked quite well. GRUB has eclipsed it for most uses, but for applications where every byte of storage is at a premium, it still has a place.
It is something that is well maintained, and can probably be retired, but still be useful, mainly since BIOS booting won't have the security changed and enhancements that UEFI comes with, so there isn't much that may change with the old BIOS based process in the future.
I'm grateful that it has been well maintained for so long. It is a piece of software taken for granted... but yet essential to the function of a machine.
NeXTStep had a lot of nice nifty features. Anyone remember FastECC... an E-mail encryption program so secure that it got pulled out of the OS. Even the "demo" program that used a password as a private key, and a hex string as a public key was nice, but never lasted long.
OS X is a completely different thing than System 1-7 or OS 8 and 9.
The main thing OS X offered that many a Mac person just hated Apple for not having... was true, preemptive multitasking. Before that, if an application or a desktop accessory didn't use WaitNextEvent(), the entire system ground to a halt, requiring a hardware reset. In fact, because OS 9 and earlier behaved like a chain of primitive Christmas tree lights (one bulb goes out, the entire chain does too), one wound up having to reboot every so often, just for safety. Some applications crashes could be recovered from... others, it was full down. To boot, there wasn't any real multi-user capability, other than what was grafted on via AppleShare servers or security programs like FileGuard or others.
Is OS X perfect? Nope. It desperately needs a new primary filesystem as HFS Plus is getting long in the tooth (it really is at best, competition for ext3) [1]. However, as an OS, it does its job well.
[1]: With all the cash Apple is sitting on, they could either license ZFS from Oracle, or if they don't want to deal with the licensing issues, hit up Symantec, license Veritas for VxFS, and extend that. One can use OSXFuse, but having a native filesystem on par with ZFS or btrfs would be nice.
It can be debated if Ada is obscure or not, but it has an important place in computing: Programs made from it can be made provably secure. Very few languages can do this.
Of course, with most dev houses, being able to have a build tree that can compile an executable for packaging on ship date is the most important thing out there, but if someone actually cared to write code where security or life safety is an issue, there is a language, that isn't too unpopular, that can be used for this.
Exactly. Advertising has morphed from showing a static picture of a product or a few lines of text to trying to be as intrusive as possible. If an advertiser could scan your HDD, encrypt your documents and sell you "protection", they would.
Realistically, why do advertisers need to fingerprint your browser, add "supercookies", demand a per device/computer identifier, constantly track your location, go through your contacts, pictures, music, and whatever is asked for? All they need to know is that their ad was seen, and perhaps clicked on/responded to. The other stuff is just invasion of privacy. To show a car ad, why the unnecessary trespass on people's machines?
I want a phone that backs off the bleeding edge somewhat when it comes to thinness, and allows for better battery capacity. Similar with having 8 cores of 64 bit ARM processors.
The classic example of a simple, yet functioning design would be the Palm V. PalmOS wasn't the fastest kid on the block... but it worked, was extremely usable, and for what it did, it did well. Plus, the design still looks good today.
I want a decent smartphone. I don't want a tracker device to give every advertiser every single piece of data the phone gets. I don't want a media device slinging ads, loaded with bloatware.
I want true innovation:
1: Make a thin, but usable OS on a partition, like the Atrix and Atrix 2. This way, I can bring a "dumb" dock and have computer functionality, but if it gets stolen, who cares... the data is on the phone.
2: VMs. That way, I can have a multiple sim phone that completely separates my personal stuff from work stuff, and both are kept away from client stuff. To boot, this makes backups/restores easy. Deduplicating filesystems are common, so having multiple VMs wouldn't be a burden on storage or CPU, especially if the fs did offline duplication as opposed to active.
3: Timeless design. Not silver painted plastic. The Palm V is 15+ years old, and it still looks decent even compared to modern units.
When the masses decided on gaming, we went from games like Origin's with new IP every few months, to games that cost ten times as much (if you factor the DLC required) and are the same IP as last year. They decided that waiting a little bit more for a relatively bug-free version of a game isn't worth it, making the game industry with its, "it compiles, ship it!" mantra the de facto standard of today.
When the masses decided on smartphones, they went from units that had a week of battery life and had a nice slider keyboard (which was quite useful when doing SSH tasks) to error-prone tapping on a touchscreen, and battery life that doesn't last a workday. Yes, newer smartphones are so thin, they only have one side, but so much was sacrificed so that the devices can be thin, as well as run the latest version of real time rendered Chainsaw Crush at 60 FPS. It would be nice to not have as powerful a CPU in return for a phone that can easily fit in a standard pocket.
When the masses decided on what the Internet looks like, out went newsgroups, mailing lists, Web forums, and IRC. In return, we have Facebook, and Twitter.
I can see the future /. complaints as well:
"I just bought a fridge, and they demand $25 a month to allow the door to be opened after 9:00 PM, and the ice maker to work 24 hours. I am just tired of watching the same ads for 5 minutes before it allows the door to be opened."
"My doorbell won't stop playing ad jungles unless I pay $10 a month for the ad free experience."
"Time to reboot all the light switches. Some botnet got installed and is using them for NarfCoin mining."
"Just had my health insurance premium double when I tossed the remnants of that pizza in the nuker, and the microwave alerted my ins co to my overquota of sodium this year."
"Just got fired from my job when my phone relayed to my employer that I was at a friend's house who posted a scathing review on one of their products."
Or a Scangauge 2, which also plugs into the OBD II port, can be placed anywhere where its contents can be useful.
Of course, a generic Bluetooth OBD tool for $10 from Amazon + Torque is another solution.
As the above, none of the above require a constant connection, no cellular device, no monthly fees, and you can place it where you want.
Companies wanting to attach stuff to your ODB2 port for data mining is getting old. From insurance dongles which will ding you if you stomp hard on the brakes or have a long commute, to governments that want the data for real time odometer readings for "taxes".
Risk is something to be managed. Playing Russian Roulette with one chamber loaded may be worth the reward on one hand... but if one isn't careful, they could be playing Russian Roulette with a semi auto.
IMHO, I think the US government did the right thing. It got the ball rolling, and even though foreign markets embraced panels, in the long run, cheap solar is a lot better for everyone [1]. Long term, it was places like Solyndra that might have been short term flops... but it got the big players in the business, and dedicated fabs for solar silicon.
[1]: Even Big Oil, ironically, since they don't have to push discovering or fracking as hard.
I am curious about one thing: Direct sun, the best thing to have is a plane perpendicular with the rays.
However, what about overcast skies where the sunlight is diffuse and can be coming from any direction. In these cases, would the half cylinders do the job better? For regions like the PNW, having PV panels optimized for shade or rainy weather might be useful.
These days, the point may be moot, especially with how silicon formulations are advancing. On the solar trailer I'm building when I go RV-ing, I'm using two monocrystalline panels (arranged in parallel to a MPPT controller) which will bring in most of the electricity, but for shady/overcast temperatures, a "hybrid" mono/poly panel is going to be present (with its own charge controller.) This way, all bases are covered.
Solar cells are a major piece of the puzzle, and arguably the biggest piece.
There are other things falling into place as well.
Relatively inexpensive MPPT controllers. Yes, these require an inductor coil to get the voltage from the panels (100+ volts) to a usable voltage/amperage combination for the battery bank. To boot, most MPPT CCs are multi-stage, so batteries are not boiled when near 100% SoC.
PWM controllers are cheaper, and because solar panel technology is so relatively cheap, it might be cheaper to throw more panels on as opposed to using a smarter charge controller. In fact, I bought a decent 60 amp, 12 volt, multistage CC with a voltmeter and ammeter for $8.
Inverters are not standing still. One can have a choice between charging solar batteries for off-grid use, using inverters to feed the grid, or anywhere in between.
The component that sucks the most is still batteries. They don't hold much energy relatively, and need to be replaced every 5-10 years. Even here, there is progress. For "drop in" batteries, there is a "Smart Battery" brand that goes where flooded lead-acid batteries are used. A battery charger that works with LiFePO4 is required, but since the special discharging circuitry is on the battery, this not just provides a longer usable life, but lead-acid batteries get damaged if drawn below 50% SoC, while lithium batteries can be drawn down a lot further (3-10%) before suffering ill effects.
What is happening with solar is a combination of the above factors, which gives energy independence, which builds momentum behind it. It used to be that solar power was for hippies, but both the far right and far left have embraced the concept, and it is more of a mainstream, "why not?" as opposed to "why" concept, especially with RVs, camping, and boating.
The one thing Amazon could have done which would remedy the current issues with the Dash button is have a color e-Ink display on it, and have it show a picture/logo of what product it is associated with. This way, there is more selection available and opportunities for niche products.
For example, I have a few Dash buttons myself, all of which will make their home in my RV. That way, instead of writing something to buy on a list, I just hit the buttons, and since they are connected to a Wi-Fi router, they will go out regardless.
However, the Smart Water is limited to one offering, and other choices are still limited. If Amazon made Dash buttons that had a display on them, they would be a lot more relevent. Otherwise, as Dash buttons stand now, they are pretty much a novelty at best.