It could be argued that the forward viewscreen and top-deck bridge are pointless anachronisms in TNG and later eras, too.
They have cheap non-physical desktop holographics (Data's hologif of Tasha Yar, the holographic display built into the Captain's ready room desk), and the screen is just that, a screen that generates an image based on FTL sensor data synching visual light images to real time. They could just as easily build the bridge in the middle of the saucer section so one lucky shot wouldn't kill the command group, and have a central holographic display that gives the big picture. Tactical and Navigation don't use visual information for their activities, and they could just project a holographic "screen" at the front for communication or on the rare case they need to manually pilot the ship.
The WiFi on the slim isn't integrated. It's a tiny USB adapter plugged into a hidden port on the motherboard. So from an "upgrade" standpoint it's a worse setup than the external model with two full-size antennas.
As long as the really high-end fabs are US-based (Intel, TI, etc.) there will be high-tech clean room work that can't really be built elsewhere. Even Global Foundries is moving INTO the US for chip production.
Who else remembers the short-lived iteration of the iPod Shuffle with only the on-off on the device and the goofy control built into the earbuds?
It was an experiment in eliminating buttons just like this that failed because of multiple reasons. #1 was that it was no longer compatible with any other headphones, since Apple didn't simultaneously release a controller to plug them into. #2 was that the controller itself was built around a "count the taps" system you had to memorize.
The reality is that Apple might release this "no home button" concept in real life, but sales will drop so hard they'll be forced to scramble to release a new version so everyone will forget the fuckup.
Cryptography is a long series of people reinventing schemes because A: they didn't know about them (the secrecy of the existence was maintained), and B: it was effective. A great example is the Jefferson disk (1795) and Bazeries Cylinder (US-Army M-94, 1923-1942), which were functionally identical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_disk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-94
VMWare could handle that. It dynamically assigns resources of the hardware to the the VMs so they are running at maximum efficiency. Unlike with traditional physical servers where the hardware is mostly at idle while the processes take maybe 10% of operating ability, or run up when overtasked and lock up when maxed out.
I don't know about you, but except for a C++ class in my sophmore year every single computer in my school district was an Apple system. And I'm sure quite a large majority of districts use Macs as well.
It was only once I actually had to do things that mattered that I really got into using Windows.
If you want to get technical, Apple-, MS-, and Linux-centric hardware are all PCs. Especially now that Apple runs on x86 and the hardware itself doesn't matter.
Mac/PC ad freezes, nerdy looking guy walks in front.
"And hi!, I'm linux. I'm free, unlike these guys. And I've been configured to run on just about any hardware!
"As long as you don't care about using all the software these guys use, and are willing to deal with no real customer service, I'm a great alternative! I admit that unlike with these guys I don't easily work with the hardware you already have...
"Ummm...I'm really best in a server...en..vironment..." (trails off)
The key problem with this view is that even if the paper is accurate, based on observation and experimentation, and is reproducable, if it's outside the current dogmatic system it will be rejected.
Look up Halton Arp, Peter Duesberg, and Immanuel Velikovsky. The latter, for using all available evidence to construct a wildly different view of the solar system that matches history, was ignored, criticized without the critic having read his work as unscientific or being biblically based, when in fact all his references to such texts are verified by other sources.
So be careful about the idea that just because it's generally accepted it's right.
You should check out James P. Hogan's Kicking The Sacred Cow. It presents a variety of alternate, observationally/experimentally proven alternatives to the mainstream view that have been ignored or flat out rejected by the dogmatic mainstream science.
Such as that an electromagnetically formed plasma universe concept actually explains everything.
Or that "Dark Matter" is really just molecular hydrogen (H2), which isn't detected easily, but is far more prevalent than atomic hydrogen.
As well as a variety of other subjects.
There's no reason whatsoever to give billers access to my money when I can just pay them online. It's not as if it's that hard to remember who I have to pay the 1st and 15th of every month.
At my last unit we had about ~800 users in our net with one GSA civ and one contractor, along with 6 25B's (Information Technology specialist MOS[military job]) for support. So it was about 100:1 on a Cisco/MS 2K3 server/XP Pro environment and it ran smoothly with little problems with overload or red tape.
The question is also: Does the original studio benefit from the dirivative work? Rooster Teeth (obviously the biggest example) made a killing and a phenomenon with Red Vs Blue that Bungie (and Microsoft by extension) saw as essentially free advertising for the games, and even actively promoted. Which gave the group license to do alternate projects for other games as well as a means of advertising, much like how a select few webcomics creators are commisioned to do special mini-books for promotional purposes.
But, at the same time, your average user who doesn't like iTunes won't figure this out.
And the Mighty Mouse is a joke. It has no real definition to where the buttons actually are, and the little tiny ball they put in liue of a real scroll wheel with tilt is a pain in the ass to use.
Actually, all you need to do with the iPod (I think) is to figure out the database format (yes I know it's been "encrypted" recently) but other than that it's possible.
Yet another way to say hacking it.
Run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware? Wake up, it's just that Apple is one of the few SYSTEMS vendor left, of course their software will be tied to their hardware.
I'm very aware of that fact, but the sole reason OS X is "stable" and not as virus-prone is that it only runs on Apple's hardware.
Real keyboard and mouse with right click? The new Mighty Mouse has four "buttons" plus a scrollball (scroll in four directions, not only two).
Yes, I know the concept. Except Microsoft rolled it out in far better form a few years earlier with the tiltwheel concept, which works much better and is far more ergonomic. And when Apple has a mouse that matches the comfort and real button presence of either my Logitech MX1000 or G5, I'll look into it.
Mac OS X has had support for multi-buttons mouses for quite a number of years (probably even 10.0, not sure). I've been using my Logitech M-BA47 with my Mac mini for over two years, no problems whatsoever (except WoW which kept remapping my buttons for some reason).
Support, but not a real mouse that works that way.
As for the new keyboard, yes it's weird at first, but believe me once you're used to it, it's faster than an old-style keyboard. Heck, when I try to use a non-flat keyboard (doesn't matter if it's my previous Apple keyboard, my old IBM keyboard or even my Tandy 1000 keyboard) they all feel "squishy". A weird description, I know, but it's hard to describe.
Sorry, but I'll stick with the solid, definite press of my G15 instead of the glorified laptop keyboard with a 1mm press depth.
"obsessive control" is Apple standard operating procedure for all of their machines, not just the iPhone. Want to use something other than iTunes for the iPod (I don't, but beside the point), you have to hack it. Run Mac OS on non-Mac hardware? Never happen. Include a real keyboard and a mouse with right click in the box? Same answer.
(I've gotten a chance to play with the new iMac keyboard, it sucks ass.)
Retail. Nothing teaches you how to explain all the various choices better than working the electronics section in a retail store, because the lowest common denominator will come in with no information and expect you to teach them everything they need to know. But there are some basics to it that you can use:
1: Use the full terminology, then expand it in a simplified manner until they understand it. Don't be afraid to repeat yourself several times. Your goal is educating them on their best option, and using comparisons to other options help as well. You said that they repeat it wrong amongst themselves. This means you did not provide an accurate enough description in terms they understand.
2: Explain exactly why choice X would be better than choice Y in that instance. Emphasize the problems that would arise from using Y.
3: Most importantly, remain calm, level-headed, and patient. Unlike most Slashdotters, most personnel in a company see the computer world from a "I want to do this, but I don't know how" perspective, rather than a "I'm going to hunt around until I figure out how to do this" mentality. It would often take me 15 minutes to describe the differences between the PS2, XBOX, and Gamecube in a way that the average consumer needed to know in order to make their decision. But they left the store happy that they made the right choice and likely to return and ask me about something else they'd like. And those skills have carried over to where I am now, the #1 technician at a battalion-size element's G6 office.
Not just that, but Wireless is also slower and less reliable than cat5e. Plus, you can't put your computer with default equipment 100 meters away from a standard wireless router and expect the same signal quality (or even a connection). Whereas with cat5e the signal is just as good whether the cable is 1 foot or 100 meters.
I'm 22 as well, and I live in barracks, so all my stuff is in the same room. But even in a full house I'd put in the effort to run ethernet ports everywhere.
The biggest thing I have a problem with is the usefullness of WiFi on stationary devices (game consoles, desktops, etc) unless they are remotely located. And to make the Wii wifi only was a bad choice IMHO. Because how often are people taking their huge tvs and game systems out in the backyard to play?
Sony has had 6 month exclusivity on all of the GTA games. (And true exclusivity on 1&2) And in this case, as opposed to the last gen, Sony has the more powerful console with more consistent hardware. And with the six-month lead the PS3 has, they need to optimize first for the PS3, then adjust it for the 360. And I highly doubt they're going to gimp the game on PS3 because they have to adjust for a later port on a system with 1/5 the storage per disc layer and unknown presence of a hard drive.
Does anyone else remember when Halo PC came out? A game that had been out two years on console could barely run on high-end systems because it was originally built to take advantage of all the little tricks that can only be done on known, one-configuration hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
It could be argued that the forward viewscreen and top-deck bridge are pointless anachronisms in TNG and later eras, too.
They have cheap non-physical desktop holographics (Data's hologif of Tasha Yar, the holographic display built into the Captain's ready room desk), and the screen is just that, a screen that generates an image based on FTL sensor data synching visual light images to real time. They could just as easily build the bridge in the middle of the saucer section so one lucky shot wouldn't kill the command group, and have a central holographic display that gives the big picture. Tactical and Navigation don't use visual information for their activities, and they could just project a holographic "screen" at the front for communication or on the rare case they need to manually pilot the ship.
The WiFi on the slim isn't integrated. It's a tiny USB adapter plugged into a hidden port on the motherboard. So from an "upgrade" standpoint it's a worse setup than the external model with two full-size antennas.
http://www.10stripe.com/featured/map/semiconductor-fabs.php
I'd say the fabs are pretty evenly distributed between the US, Europe, and Asia.
As long as the really high-end fabs are US-based (Intel, TI, etc.) there will be high-tech clean room work that can't really be built elsewhere. Even Global Foundries is moving INTO the US for chip production.
"Favoring" in procurement just means it gets weighted more than the closed source project. It doesn't automatically mean they'll pick it instead.
I've made dozens of RG-58 wearable antennas while I was active duty army. Very easy and cheap narrowband design.
Or if you want to go expensive: http://wearableantenna.com/tactical_vest_antenna_system/
Who else remembers the short-lived iteration of the iPod Shuffle with only the on-off on the device and the goofy control built into the earbuds?
It was an experiment in eliminating buttons just like this that failed because of multiple reasons.
#1 was that it was no longer compatible with any other headphones, since Apple didn't simultaneously release a controller to plug them into.
#2 was that the controller itself was built around a "count the taps" system you had to memorize.
The reality is that Apple might release this "no home button" concept in real life, but sales will drop so hard they'll be forced to scramble to release a new version so everyone will forget the fuckup.
Cryptography is a long series of people reinventing schemes because A: they didn't know about them (the secrecy of the existence was maintained), and B: it was effective. A great example is the Jefferson disk (1795) and Bazeries Cylinder (US-Army M-94, 1923-1942), which were functionally identical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_disk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-94
VMWare could handle that. It dynamically assigns resources of the hardware to the the VMs so they are running at maximum efficiency. Unlike with traditional physical servers where the hardware is mostly at idle while the processes take maybe 10% of operating ability, or run up when overtasked and lock up when maxed out.
Wow. Just think how many servers you could run in VMWare on that. A hundred would be a decent functional number.
I don't know about you, but except for a C++ class in my sophmore year every single computer in my school district was an Apple system. And I'm sure quite a large majority of districts use Macs as well.
It was only once I actually had to do things that mattered that I really got into using Windows.
I'm not an average user, have some odd peripherals, and like to play games. Thus, Windows and decent hardware.
And considering you can get a decent PC for 600 or so now WITH Windows...
As to OSX that's because they refuse to sell the entire OS standalone and support the open-hardware environment.
Ubuntu does not do enough to make me happy.
If you want to get technical, Apple-, MS-, and Linux-centric hardware are all PCs. Especially now that Apple runs on x86 and the hardware itself doesn't matter.
Mac/PC ad freezes, nerdy looking guy walks in front.
"And hi!, I'm linux. I'm free, unlike these guys. And I've been configured to run on just about any hardware!
"As long as you don't care about using all the software these guys use, and are willing to deal with no real customer service, I'm a great alternative! I admit that unlike with these guys I don't easily work with the hardware you already have...
"Ummm...I'm really best in a server...en..vironment..." (trails off)
Walks off with head down.
The key problem with this view is that even if the paper is accurate, based on observation and experimentation, and is reproducable, if it's outside the current dogmatic system it will be rejected.
Look up Halton Arp, Peter Duesberg, and Immanuel Velikovsky. The latter, for using all available evidence to construct a wildly different view of the solar system that matches history, was ignored, criticized without the critic having read his work as unscientific or being biblically based, when in fact all his references to such texts are verified by other sources.
So be careful about the idea that just because it's generally accepted it's right.
You should check out James P. Hogan's Kicking The Sacred Cow. It presents a variety of alternate, observationally/experimentally proven alternatives to the mainstream view that have been ignored or flat out rejected by the dogmatic mainstream science. Such as that an electromagnetically formed plasma universe concept actually explains everything. Or that "Dark Matter" is really just molecular hydrogen (H2), which isn't detected easily, but is far more prevalent than atomic hydrogen. As well as a variety of other subjects.
There's no reason whatsoever to give billers access to my money when I can just pay them online. It's not as if it's that hard to remember who I have to pay the 1st and 15th of every month.
At my last unit we had about ~800 users in our net with one GSA civ and one contractor, along with 6 25B's (Information Technology specialist MOS[military job]) for support. So it was about 100:1 on a Cisco/MS 2K3 server/XP Pro environment and it ran smoothly with little problems with overload or red tape.
The question is also: Does the original studio benefit from the dirivative work? Rooster Teeth (obviously the biggest example) made a killing and a phenomenon with Red Vs Blue that Bungie (and Microsoft by extension) saw as essentially free advertising for the games, and even actively promoted. Which gave the group license to do alternate projects for other games as well as a means of advertising, much like how a select few webcomics creators are commisioned to do special mini-books for promotional purposes.
But, at the same time, your average user who doesn't like iTunes won't figure this out.
And the Mighty Mouse is a joke. It has no real definition to where the buttons actually are, and the little tiny ball they put in liue of a real scroll wheel with tilt is a pain in the ass to use.
Actually, all you need to do with the iPod (I think) is to figure out the database format (yes I know it's been "encrypted" recently) but other than that it's possible.
Yet another way to say hacking it.
Run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware? Wake up, it's just that Apple is one of the few SYSTEMS vendor left, of course their software will be tied to their hardware.
I'm very aware of that fact, but the sole reason OS X is "stable" and not as virus-prone is that it only runs on Apple's hardware.
Real keyboard and mouse with right click? The new Mighty Mouse has four "buttons" plus a scrollball (scroll in four directions, not only two).
Yes, I know the concept. Except Microsoft rolled it out in far better form a few years earlier with the tiltwheel concept, which works much better and is far more ergonomic. And when Apple has a mouse that matches the comfort and real button presence of either my Logitech MX1000 or G5, I'll look into it.
Mac OS X has had support for multi-buttons mouses for quite a number of years (probably even 10.0, not sure). I've been using my Logitech M-BA47 with my Mac mini for over two years, no problems whatsoever (except WoW which kept remapping my buttons for some reason).
Support, but not a real mouse that works that way.
As for the new keyboard, yes it's weird at first, but believe me once you're used to it, it's faster than an old-style keyboard. Heck, when I try to use a non-flat keyboard (doesn't matter if it's my previous Apple keyboard, my old IBM keyboard or even my Tandy 1000 keyboard) they all feel "squishy". A weird description, I know, but it's hard to describe.
Sorry, but I'll stick with the solid, definite press of my G15 instead of the glorified laptop keyboard with a 1mm press depth.
"obsessive control" is Apple standard operating procedure for all of their machines, not just the iPhone. Want to use something other than iTunes for the iPod (I don't, but beside the point), you have to hack it. Run Mac OS on non-Mac hardware? Never happen. Include a real keyboard and a mouse with right click in the box? Same answer.
(I've gotten a chance to play with the new iMac keyboard, it sucks ass.)
Retail. Nothing teaches you how to explain all the various choices better than working the electronics section in a retail store, because the lowest common denominator will come in with no information and expect you to teach them everything they need to know. But there are some basics to it that you can use:
1: Use the full terminology, then expand it in a simplified manner until they understand it. Don't be afraid to repeat yourself several times. Your goal is educating them on their best option, and using comparisons to other options help as well. You said that they repeat it wrong amongst themselves. This means you did not provide an accurate enough description in terms they understand.
2: Explain exactly why choice X would be better than choice Y in that instance. Emphasize the problems that would arise from using Y.
3: Most importantly, remain calm, level-headed, and patient. Unlike most Slashdotters, most personnel in a company see the computer world from a "I want to do this, but I don't know how" perspective, rather than a "I'm going to hunt around until I figure out how to do this" mentality. It would often take me 15 minutes to describe the differences between the PS2, XBOX, and Gamecube in a way that the average consumer needed to know in order to make their decision. But they left the store happy that they made the right choice and likely to return and ask me about something else they'd like. And those skills have carried over to where I am now, the #1 technician at a battalion-size element's G6 office.
Not just that, but Wireless is also slower and less reliable than cat5e. Plus, you can't put your computer with default equipment 100 meters away from a standard wireless router and expect the same signal quality (or even a connection). Whereas with cat5e the signal is just as good whether the cable is 1 foot or 100 meters.
I'm 22 as well, and I live in barracks, so all my stuff is in the same room. But even in a full house I'd put in the effort to run ethernet ports everywhere.
The biggest thing I have a problem with is the usefullness of WiFi on stationary devices (game consoles, desktops, etc) unless they are remotely located. And to make the Wii wifi only was a bad choice IMHO. Because how often are people taking their huge tvs and game systems out in the backyard to play?
Sony has had 6 month exclusivity on all of the GTA games. (And true exclusivity on 1&2) And in this case, as opposed to the last gen, Sony has the more powerful console with more consistent hardware. And with the six-month lead the PS3 has, they need to optimize first for the PS3, then adjust it for the 360. And I highly doubt they're going to gimp the game on PS3 because they have to adjust for a later port on a system with 1/5 the storage per disc layer and unknown presence of a hard drive.
Does anyone else remember when Halo PC came out? A game that had been out two years on console could barely run on high-end systems because it was originally built to take advantage of all the little tricks that can only be done on known, one-configuration hardware.