Then get a Hyunday or Kia, they can be had for under $9K, it's unlikely cars will ever get any cheaper than that. Not that I'd buy one, but you wanted cheap.
> The "on-board hydrogen storage system" (that fits in a six > inch frame, no less!) is currently total fantasy.
Actually, not at all. This is exactly how DaimlerChrysler's latest NECAR is designed. The entire drivetrain is under the floor board, and it even uses regular fossil fuels, not compressed hydrogen. What's not there yet is the commercial feasability of mass producing and selling this at competitive prices. That is, mainly the fuel cells, which are still too expensive to install profitably in a $20K vehicle.
It's always nice to imagine upgradeable hardware, kind of like the promise of DSP-based electronics that could be field upgraded with new capabilities in the future. There's just one problem with that scenario: lost future revenues. The manufacturer can't expect to earn much on those software upgrades, so once they sold you the hardware they have little incentive to follow up with software. Instead the "future" upgreadability ends up being just another selling point for hardware, without actually delivering it. There are plenty of ways of weaseling out of it.
This holds especially true of automobiles. The main investment with new automobile development is in the platform or chassis. While the body and interior are the most visible things and what define the car to the customer, they're really just eye candy and quite interchangeable. What differentiates the automobile and its driving and performance characteristics is its chassis: the rigidity of the frame, the suspension, and the engine and transmission. Car manufacturers guard their chassis as closely as aircraft manufacturers their wings.
I just finished reading a book on the take-over of Chrysler by Daimler, and one of the driving forces of the deal was the promise of platform synergies, saving a lot of money between the two companies by sharing platforms. But when it actually came down to doing it, the Mercedes folks were going to share car platforms between say an E-class and a Dodge Stratus only over their dead bodies. To them what makes a Mercedes a Mercedes is the platform--the rest are mostly components from third-party parts bins which anyone else could buy. If a customer could get the same chassis in a Stratus, why on earth would they fork out for an E-class? Incidentally, speaking of DaimlerChrysler, they're way ahead of GM in the fuel cell game, regardless of what the article might imply. In fact, the article seems to be an expanded advertising section by GM.
This all is not to mean that I don't think that GM's shared platform idea is a great idea, I just don't think that it will actually happen for competitive reasons.
Re:Wireless expensive? Give me a break!
on
Portable Hubs?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
> Or maybe they have a family and are more interested in > doing things for them instead of wasting money on luxuries.
Oh, but they do have laptops?! Hey, just because I own a Porsche doesn't mean I can afford to gas it up, right? I'm sorry, but that's screwy logic no matter how you look at it, especially considering the $30 price point.
Wireless expensive? Give me a break!
on
Portable Hubs?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You can pick up a basic 802.11b card for $30, so price is a flimsy excuse. If they can't afford $30, maybe your friends should play battleships on paper instead? Or maybe they can't afford that fancy paper either?
It's simply centralized data storage, a sort of global clipboard that allows users to share data. It seems they're simply buzzword huckstering. A real P2P phone system wouldn't be cell-based at all, but would transmit data directly phone to phone. There are projects like that out there, but there are serious issues of bandwidth and battery power, particularly with mobile phones.
> I must admit having ditched cable, I'm half way to turning > into that smug git The Onion recently lampooned.
I didn't read the article, but from the context I assume it talked about the trend of giving up TV becoming a status symbol or sign of superiority. Well, to each his own. I grew up completely without TV and yes, I read an awful lot as a kid. But I also was a clueless git during conversations about the previous night's shows, and at school that is a VERY popular and social chic topic. Being out of the loop in that respect can be socially quite detrimental. Now I do have a TV and TiVo, which I find extremely helpful in pruning the offerings. I believe there is a happy medium somewhere between Homer Simpson and the hermit on the tree, and any discerning adult shouldn't have any problems finding that sweet spot.
> the post was actually *on* topic. Kelso mentioned DRM and made > a pretty insightful suggestion about one possible result of DRM.
Suggesting giving up technology as a solution to DRM on a technology forum qualifies as sarcasm at best, I'm afraid, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant that way. So, in addition to lamentation-of-the-transience-of-dead-wood forums, might I also suggest frequenting those for luddites and bohemians?
They should be much more reliable than your website to gain a feeling for what kind of peope are online. Check out http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html and look at the Languages Used stats. Keep in mind that a significant percentage of English queries do not come from the US but countries like the UK, Australia, Holland, India etc.
> GSM is not some amazing technology: > It hardly offers any benefits over CDMA
This is a fine example of spin, since it implies that GSM succeeded CDMA without improving on it. In reality, CDMA is much newer than GSM, and of course it better offer some technical improvements. The fact is that while CDMA2000 does indeed offer better call density, its implementation by US carriers (Sprint and who else?) still is missing critical features long offered by GSM, in particular in the area of call management (accounting, roaming etc). Yes, GSM is older technology, but it's not standing still and has shown the ability for incremental growth, such as the development of GPRS. Where can I get packet switched connectivity with CDMA? Besides, all the current advances of CDMA2000 will be subsumed into UMTS when it finally replaces GSM.
> Anyway, no one hardly talks about this stuff > here -- reading deadwood books
Well, what do you expect? This is a technology forum. There are plenty of appropriate dead wood fan forums where one can commiserate about the waning popularity of books. Which is not to say that people here don't read books, they're just simply not the focus here.
> And yes, Visual Studio is a product [microsoft.com].
VS is Microsoft's collective moniker for several different languages and IDEs (VC, VB and possibly InterDev). You cannot load a Visual Studio IDE per se, because there isn't such a thing. Ok, under VS.NET there is one consolidated IDE, but prior to that there wasn't.
> But back when I was using M$ for web development, that wasn't the case.
The Delphi IDE has had source control hooks since before InterDev.
> I liked how [...] Visual Studio and Visual Basic and SQL Server integrated
How so? How exactly do Visual Studio (which is really a non-product, I assume you mean VC++) and Visual Basic integrate? They have nothing to do with each other. Oh, they both can integrate VSS support into their menus, but then again, so can many other IDEs. The Delphi IDE has source control hooks that allow you to integrate third party products quite seamlessly.
> Barcode scanners work on the exact same principles as optical mice
No they don't, unless you mean 2D barcodes. Several posters have already pointed out how modern optical mice work: they compare successive pictures of the mousepad surface, taken many hundreds of times per second. Then they compute motion vectors and transmit those over the wire. You simply have to do the math to see that sending the raw pictures over the wire would overload the bandwidth of the PS/2 connector (PS/2 and USB optical mice send exactly the same type of data over the wire). So no, you couldn't just write a fancier mouse driver, unless you also included your own fancier optical mouse that worked differently.
You burn more calories per hour than in most other sports. Play each day for an hour if you have the time and inclination, or at least two or three times a week. No expensive equipment required, only a court, a racquet and another person. In some cities it might be tough to find courts--many sports clubs have them, including the Y, but that (usually) requires (often expensive) membership. Alternatively, check with your local university. Most unis have courts, and if you're an alum they often let you play for free. My university does, and the courts are very decent quality. Plus there's an ample supply of young people with great game skills and stamina to keep you going and humiliate you. Not to mention the ample supply of babes to impress with your new good looks.
> They are hardly "THE" contractor for military aircraft in the USA.
I didn't say that, I said they're THE aircraft company in general (not WRT military contracts), since there are no more (large) civil manufacturers left beside them. Besides, fighter planes are hardly the only aircraft expenditure of the military, and Boeing is only standing to gain from future transport orders.
> not only am i offended as a Jew but > I'm offended as common, decent, person.
By this troll? Surely not--you'd have to take him seriously for that. If there is someone devoid of any original thought, it's this guy. He's regurgitating rhetoric that's been around for as long as bigotry, while probably under the impression of being on the cutting edge of social awareness.
Well, it's very typical of French attitudes, I'm afraid. The French do A LOT of large scale projects purely for prestige, often duplicating existing efforts elsewhere in Europe, just so they can crow about it. They have a serious case of USA envy.
The bandwidth is nowhere near broadband, more like GPRS, which I believe is still considered 2.5G. And GPRS has been around for quite a while, especially overseas.
Since we're talking figures, I did some quick digging to compare to NASA. NASA's FY2000 budget was $13,578.4 million, which was about 2 times the ESA EUR7,066M budget for the same year. After some quick math, France and Germany contributed EUR1,862.5M and EUR1,726.3M (26.4% and 24.4%) respectively of the total ESA budget. This makes their total space spending about 14% and 13% respectively of US spending. These calculations were made without first converting the FY2000 EUR7,066M ESA budget to dollars (or vice versa), assuming a very rough 1:1 equivalence, so actual figures will be off a bit.
> France alone is responsible for roughly half the ESA budget.
Ok, let's kill this particular French wet dream in the bud. It might make for a great sheep-counting alternative at night, but is far from based on reality.
CNES figures on a horrible chart: http://www.cnes.fr/cnes/moyens/en/budget_e sa.htm
ESA figures: http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/annuals/annua l00/C1Fina n.pdf
> Er, because when you take into account the many billions of taxpayers > money Airbus has had for free, Boings work out as much cheaper?
This is such a tired argument, it should have been buried long, long, long ago. Boeing would be nowhere today without the juicy government contracts of WWII. The 747 (in 1969) was the first major new development at Boeing, most previous airliners being based on variations of the B-17 and B-29. Let's not even talk about their new military contracts since they've become THE aircraft company of the USA, or their NASA contracts. You want an aircraft manufacturer that tax money built? Boeing has Airbus beat anyday.
> Remember to visit pricegrabber or pricewatch next time
Of course, I use those all the time, and I used justdeals knowing full well that the shipping was a racket, but some items are so cheap (especially discontinued products) that you still come out on top.
You want to use the best method of communication regardless of context or direction of information flow. Saying that a CLI or speaking is better for requesting information is simplistic. My classic example is file selection: for selecting files by pattern, a CLI will always be much quicker than any other method (short of telepathy I guess), while selecting a distinct set of files that don't conform to any naming or date pattern will always be much quicker visually and by pointing at them. In the real world, requirements are usually combinations of both, so the ideal solution would be a combination of both input methods.
Slashdot Mirror
Then get a Hyunday or Kia, they can be had for under $9K, it's unlikely cars will ever get any cheaper than that. Not that I'd buy one, but you wanted cheap.
> The "on-board hydrogen storage system" (that fits in a six
> inch frame, no less!) is currently total fantasy.
Actually, not at all. This is exactly how DaimlerChrysler's latest NECAR is designed. The entire drivetrain is under the floor board, and it even uses regular fossil fuels, not compressed hydrogen. What's not there yet is the commercial feasability of mass producing and selling this at competitive prices. That is, mainly the fuel cells, which are still too expensive to install profitably in a $20K vehicle.
It's always nice to imagine upgradeable hardware, kind of like the promise of DSP-based electronics that could be field upgraded with new capabilities in the future. There's just one problem with that scenario: lost future revenues. The manufacturer can't expect to earn much on those software upgrades, so once they sold you the hardware they have little incentive to follow up with software. Instead the "future" upgreadability ends up being just another selling point for hardware, without actually delivering it. There are plenty of ways of weaseling out of it.
This holds especially true of automobiles. The main investment with new automobile development is in the platform or chassis. While the body and interior are the most visible things and what define the car to the customer, they're really just eye candy and quite interchangeable. What differentiates the automobile and its driving and performance characteristics is its chassis: the rigidity of the frame, the suspension, and the engine and transmission. Car manufacturers guard their chassis as closely as aircraft manufacturers their wings.
I just finished reading a book on the take-over of Chrysler by Daimler, and one of the driving forces of the deal was the promise of platform synergies, saving a lot of money between the two companies by sharing platforms. But when it actually came down to doing it, the Mercedes folks were going to share car platforms between say an E-class and a Dodge Stratus only over their dead bodies. To them what makes a Mercedes a Mercedes is the platform--the rest are mostly components from third-party parts bins which anyone else could buy. If a customer could get the same chassis in a Stratus, why on earth would they fork out for an E-class? Incidentally, speaking of DaimlerChrysler, they're way ahead of GM in the fuel cell game, regardless of what the article might imply. In fact, the article seems to be an expanded advertising section by GM.
This all is not to mean that I don't think that GM's shared platform idea is a great idea, I just don't think that it will actually happen for competitive reasons.
> Or maybe they have a family and are more interested in
> doing things for them instead of wasting money on luxuries.
Oh, but they do have laptops?! Hey, just because I own a Porsche doesn't mean I can afford to gas it up, right? I'm sorry, but that's screwy logic no matter how you look at it, especially considering the $30 price point.
You can pick up a basic 802.11b card for $30, so price is a flimsy excuse. If they can't afford $30, maybe your friends should play battleships on paper instead? Or maybe they can't afford that fancy paper either?
It's simply centralized data storage, a sort of global clipboard that allows users to share data. It seems they're simply buzzword huckstering. A real P2P phone system wouldn't be cell-based at all, but would transmit data directly phone to phone. There are projects like that out there, but there are serious issues of bandwidth and battery power, particularly with mobile phones.
> I must admit having ditched cable, I'm half way to turning
> into that smug git The Onion recently lampooned.
I didn't read the article, but from the context I assume it talked about the trend of giving up TV becoming a status symbol or sign of superiority. Well, to each his own. I grew up completely without TV and yes, I read an awful lot as a kid. But I also was a clueless git during conversations about the previous night's shows, and at school that is a VERY popular and social chic topic. Being out of the loop in that respect can be socially quite detrimental. Now I do have a TV and TiVo, which I find extremely helpful in pruning the offerings. I believe there is a happy medium somewhere between Homer Simpson and the hermit on the tree, and any discerning adult shouldn't have any problems finding that sweet spot.
> the post was actually *on* topic. Kelso mentioned DRM and made
> a pretty insightful suggestion about one possible result of DRM.
Suggesting giving up technology as a solution to DRM on a technology forum qualifies as sarcasm at best, I'm afraid, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant that way. So, in addition to lamentation-of-the-transience-of-dead-wood forums, might I also suggest frequenting those for luddites and bohemians?
> Um,
No amount of Um will change the fact that it was an OT rant.
They should be much more reliable than your website to gain a feeling for what kind of peope are online. Check out http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html and look at the Languages Used stats. Keep in mind that a significant percentage of English queries do not come from the US but countries like the UK, Australia, Holland, India etc.
> GSM is not some amazing technology:
> It hardly offers any benefits over CDMA
This is a fine example of spin, since it implies that GSM succeeded CDMA without improving on it. In reality, CDMA is much newer than GSM, and of course it better offer some technical improvements. The fact is that while CDMA2000 does indeed offer better call density, its implementation by US carriers (Sprint and who else?) still is missing critical features long offered by GSM, in particular in the area of call management (accounting, roaming etc). Yes, GSM is older technology, but it's not standing still and has shown the ability for incremental growth, such as the development of GPRS. Where can I get packet switched connectivity with CDMA? Besides, all the current advances of CDMA2000 will be subsumed into UMTS when it finally replaces GSM.
> Anyway, no one hardly talks about this stuff
> here -- reading deadwood books
Well, what do you expect? This is a technology forum. There are plenty of appropriate dead wood fan forums where one can commiserate about the waning popularity of books. Which is not to say that people here don't read books, they're just simply not the focus here.
> And yes, Visual Studio is a product [microsoft.com].
VS is Microsoft's collective moniker for several different languages and IDEs (VC, VB and possibly InterDev). You cannot load a Visual Studio IDE per se, because there isn't such a thing. Ok, under VS.NET there is one consolidated IDE, but prior to that there wasn't.
> But back when I was using M$ for web development, that wasn't the case.
The Delphi IDE has had source control hooks since before InterDev.
> I liked how [...] Visual Studio and Visual Basic and SQL Server integrated
How so? How exactly do Visual Studio (which is really a non-product, I assume you mean VC++) and Visual Basic integrate? They have nothing to do with each other. Oh, they both can integrate VSS support into their menus, but then again, so can many other IDEs. The Delphi IDE has source control hooks that allow you to integrate third party products quite seamlessly.
> Barcode scanners work on the exact same principles as optical mice
No they don't, unless you mean 2D barcodes. Several posters have already pointed out how modern optical mice work: they compare successive pictures of the mousepad surface, taken many hundreds of times per second. Then they compute motion vectors and transmit those over the wire. You simply have to do the math to see that sending the raw pictures over the wire would overload the bandwidth of the PS/2 connector (PS/2 and USB optical mice send exactly the same type of data over the wire). So no, you couldn't just write a fancier mouse driver, unless you also included your own fancier optical mouse that worked differently.
You burn more calories per hour than in most other sports. Play each day for an hour if you have the time and inclination, or at least two or three times a week. No expensive equipment required, only a court, a racquet and another person. In some cities it might be tough to find courts--many sports clubs have them, including the Y, but that (usually) requires (often expensive) membership. Alternatively, check with your local university. Most unis have courts, and if you're an alum they often let you play for free. My university does, and the courts are very decent quality. Plus there's an ample supply of young people with great game skills and stamina to keep you going and humiliate you. Not to mention the ample supply of babes to impress with your new good looks.
> They are hardly "THE" contractor for military aircraft in the USA.
I didn't say that, I said they're THE aircraft company in general (not WRT military contracts), since there are no more (large) civil manufacturers left beside them. Besides, fighter planes are hardly the only aircraft expenditure of the military, and Boeing is only standing to gain from future transport orders.
> not only am i offended as a Jew but
> I'm offended as common, decent, person.
By this troll? Surely not--you'd have to take him seriously for that. If there is someone devoid of any original thought, it's this guy. He's regurgitating rhetoric that's been around for as long as bigotry, while probably under the impression of being on the cutting edge of social awareness.
Well, it's very typical of French attitudes, I'm afraid. The French do A LOT of large scale projects purely for prestige, often duplicating existing efforts elsewhere in Europe, just so they can crow about it. They have a serious case of USA envy.
The bandwidth is nowhere near broadband, more like GPRS, which I believe is still considered 2.5G. And GPRS has been around for quite a while, especially overseas.
Since we're talking figures, I did some quick digging to compare to NASA. NASA's FY2000 budget was $13,578.4 million, which was about 2 times the ESA EUR7,066M budget for the same year. After some quick math, France and Germany contributed EUR1,862.5M and EUR1,726.3M (26.4% and 24.4%) respectively of the total ESA budget. This makes their total space spending about 14% and 13% respectively of US spending. These calculations were made without first converting the FY2000 EUR7,066M ESA budget to dollars (or vice versa), assuming a very rough 1:1 equivalence, so actual figures will be off a bit.
> France alone is responsible for roughly half the ESA budget.
e sa.htm
a l00/C1Fina n.pdf
Ok, let's kill this particular French wet dream in the bud. It might make for a great sheep-counting alternative at night, but is far from based on reality.
CNES figures on a horrible chart:
http://www.cnes.fr/cnes/moyens/en/budget_
ESA figures:
http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/annuals/annu
Roughly half? Hmm...
> Er, because when you take into account the many billions of taxpayers
> money Airbus has had for free, Boings work out as much cheaper?
This is such a tired argument, it should have been buried long, long, long ago. Boeing would be nowhere today without the juicy government contracts of WWII. The 747 (in 1969) was the first major new development at Boeing, most previous airliners being based on variations of the B-17 and B-29. Let's not even talk about their new military contracts since they've become THE aircraft company of the USA, or their NASA contracts. You want an aircraft manufacturer that tax money built? Boeing has Airbus beat anyday.
> Remember to visit pricegrabber or pricewatch next time
Of course, I use those all the time, and I used justdeals knowing full well that the shipping was a racket, but some items are so cheap (especially discontinued products) that you still come out on top.
You want to use the best method of communication regardless of context or direction of information flow. Saying that a CLI or speaking is better for requesting information is simplistic. My classic example is file selection: for selecting files by pattern, a CLI will always be much quicker than any other method (short of telepathy I guess), while selecting a distinct set of files that don't conform to any naming or date pattern will always be much quicker visually and by pointing at them. In the real world, requirements are usually combinations of both, so the ideal solution would be a combination of both input methods.