Ford - one good idea - the production line, which he did not invent - The original car itself was terrible, hard to drive, but cheap and so it sold in the millions
Jobs - quite a lot of ideas, some worked some did not, most were small advances over existing ideas, with a design flair, the products themselves were mostly more expensive the the competition, but easier to use
The UK's Nuclear power stations are three types, experimental/Military grade, which the costs of decommissioning were never considered at all, PWR (Sizewell B) - American design, and our own design AGR's which are most of the ones operating today in the UK
The majority of these have less than 10 years operational life left, and the decommissioning costs where largely unknown when the sell off was done and the commercial investors ran scared...
France generates 78% or it's electricity with nuclear, and exports 18% of it's capacity... it's only issue seems to be that it has too many nuclear plants, and not enough export capability, and so they run at less than maximum capacity, otherwise they make money....
..and then realise that it is unsupported on a major platform...
Java is used because of it's near universal support JavaScript is used because of it's near universal support C/C++ is used because of it's near universal support Python is used because of it's near universal support
There are far better languages, in all categories, but using them is pointless if the platform you are targeting does not have support for it; or the library, or program you want to use cannot interact with it...
iPod - was not the first mp3 player - Poor battery life, fiddly, breaks easily - My Creative touch has an equally simple interface and has outlasted many friends iPods
iPhone - was not the first smartphone, or touchscreen smartphone, or multitouch smartphone, Is fragile, and a "walled garden"
iPad - Was not the first Tablet PC - Never wanted one, have no use for one - A gadget looking for a purpose, all the faults or a laptop, combined with all the faults of a smartphone...
Apple are good at marketing, they are not the innovators that many think they are, they are good at spotting a market, buying the technical skills needed and building their own version of an existing device, and marketing it to the right people to start a trend
Woz and Raskin (amongst others) made the 1st generation Apple products what they were, Jobs was just the marketing man and driver (when he was finally persuaded to do it)
But : Raskin working on WIMP in 1977-79 - First Demo of the mouse, windows, Icons, etc etc etc... was in 1968 by the team who made NLS - most of whom left to work at Xerox PARC
PARC did not invent and then discard WIMP, they borrowed it from NLS who invented and then discarded it...
Apple's Multitouch was invented by a company that Apple bought... the original inventor who founded the company credits and acknowledges Bill Buxton in his Doctoral Thesis on Multi Touch...
What did Apple "Invent" - Touchscreen - No Multi Touch - No Smartphone - No Mouse -No GUI - No MP3 Player - No MP3 Player Interface - No (Paid Creative to use theirs).... what did Andoid steal... nothing that was not already stolen by Apple...
Startup time, until login screen, or desktop, or usable system, or fully usable system....?
The four are different and most people assume you mean the last, when most are measured to the first.......and unless you have a laptop why are you turning the machine on and off enough to worry about boot times (in the real world the difference between 20s and 1 minutes is a vast gulf, the difference between 1 minute and 5 minutes is irrelevant)
Oversimplistic perhaps, but inflation is inflation and the price of bread (along with other usual commodities) is used by governments to work out what the inflation rate is
Prices on the stock exchange vary and can be quite volatile, but in most cases these are around a fairly stable average or slow trend in one direction
Pensions and similar are normally an aggregate of many shares/bonds etc simply to make them more stable than the individual parts, and tend to be mostly made up of the slow growth, low risk types...
The riskiest funds are the most volatile where you can make money easily but also lose it just as easily, most currencies are not in this group, because they are backed by a government, or tied to a more stable currency
Note the Stock market crash of 2009 - "By March 6, 2009 the DJIA had dropped 54% to 6469 (before beginning to recover) from its peak of 14164 on October 9, 2007, a span of 17 months" - BitCoin lost half it's value in a day and is still plummeting...
Come to the UK, where two 17 year olds can have sex with each other legally, but if one takes a picture of the other naked on the first one's phone, then they have both committed a crime - Producing and storing indecent images of minors....
No it does not... $1.60 buys me a loaf of bread today, and will tomorrow (give or take a cent)
Most currencies are fairly stable (with a few notable exceptions)... if not there would be huge inflation/deflation, and their isn't
The stockmarket trades currencies against each other and their exchange rates change more rapidly (but not as rapidly as you suggest), simply because they have different inflation rates, and because of currency speculation...
The current amount of gold in the world is fairly stable, and it's price tends to drift rather than change rapidly...that's why it was used as a backing
Most currencies today are fiat currencies- not gold based, but based on the fact that the government will always and only use it for transactions (taxes, payments), so it has a fairly stable intrinsic worth
Both are a guarantee that the value will not change rapidly, BitCoin does not have this so rapid changes in value will happen
Any currency is only what people think it is worth...
Most currencies are either backed by hard commodities (Gold Silver etc) or by a Government who regulates it enough to make it fairly stable
Bitcoin had neither and so it worth whatever the market thinks it is worth, and the market has finally woken up to the fact that it's true worth is zero...
The problem with NASA is not that it is "Communist", it is a strange economic model where they are woefully underfunded, expected to perform anyway, and have no failure conditions, e.g. they can develop a new system with no specific goal in mind and at the last step abandon it for no really good reason...
The Soviet system had clear goals, definite aims, targets and punishment if they were not achieved.... a system that works anywhere
Slashdot Mirror
Ford - one good idea - the production line, which he did not invent - The original car itself was terrible, hard to drive, but cheap and so it sold in the millions
Jobs - quite a lot of ideas, some worked some did not, most were small advances over existing ideas, with a design flair, the products themselves were mostly more expensive the the competition, but easier to use
Not very similar at all ....?
...haXe... is not used because no-one has every heard of it ....having good advertising also helps ...
The UK's Nuclear power stations are three types, experimental/Military grade, which the costs of decommissioning were never considered at all, PWR (Sizewell B) - American design, and our own design AGR's which are most of the ones operating today in the UK
The majority of these have less than 10 years operational life left, and the decommissioning costs where largely unknown when the sell off was done and the commercial investors ran scared ...
France generates 78% or it's electricity with nuclear, and exports 18% of it's capacity ... it's only issue seems to be that it has too many nuclear plants, and not enough export capability, and so they run at less than maximum capacity, otherwise they make money ....
..the real trap is: Don't run a nuclear power plant beyond it's design life, and don't continue running it when it has failed several inspections
The reason the sea wall was not higher : It cost too much
The reason the plant was not upgraded : It cost too much
The reason the plant was not replaced : It cost too much
..and then realise that it is unsupported on a major platform ...
Java is used because of it's near universal support
JavaScript is used because of it's near universal support
C/C++ is used because of it's near universal support
Python is used because of it's near universal support
There are far better languages, in all categories, but using them is pointless if the platform you are targeting does not have support for it; or the library, or program you want to use cannot interact with it ...
iPod - was not the first mp3 player - Poor battery life, fiddly, breaks easily - My Creative touch has an equally simple interface and has outlasted many friends iPods
iPhone - was not the first smartphone, or touchscreen smartphone, or multitouch smartphone, Is fragile, and a "walled garden"
iPad - Was not the first Tablet PC - Never wanted one, have no use for one - A gadget looking for a purpose, all the faults or a laptop, combined with all the faults of a smartphone ...
Apple are good at marketing, they are not the innovators that many think they are, they are good at spotting a market, buying the technical skills needed and building their own version of an existing device, and marketing it to the right people to start a trend
NLS did not know what they had and wasn't going to do anything with it ... so most of team went to Xerox and the cycle repeated ...
Job's intuition, took 4 long years of lobbying by Jeff Raskin to kick in ... the same Raskin who mostly designed the Lisa and Mac ...
Job's is great at stealing ideas and credit ...
Woz and Raskin (amongst others) made the 1st generation Apple products what they were, Jobs was just the marketing man and driver (when he was finally persuaded to do it)
But : Raskin working on WIMP in 1977-79 - First Demo of the mouse, windows, Icons, etc etc etc ... was in 1968 by the team who made NLS - most of whom left to work at Xerox PARC
PARC did not invent and then discard WIMP, they borrowed it from NLS who invented and then discarded it ...
Apple's Multitouch was invented by a company that Apple bought ... the original inventor who founded the company credits and acknowledges Bill Buxton in his Doctoral Thesis on Multi Touch ...
What did Apple "Invent" - .... what did Andoid steal ... nothing that was not already stolen by Apple ...
Touchscreen - No
Multi Touch - No
Smartphone - No
Mouse -No
GUI - No
MP3 Player - No
MP3 Player Interface - No (Paid Creative to use theirs)
Startup time, until login screen, or desktop, or usable system, or fully usable system ....?
The four are different and most people assume you mean the last, when most are measured to the first .... ...and unless you have a laptop why are you turning the machine on and off enough to worry about boot times (in the real world the difference between 20s and 1 minutes is a vast gulf, the difference between 1 minute and 5 minutes is irrelevant)
...and Password hacking sites - Which are used to break into copyright material that the law they are trying to push is designed to stop
So not ad hominem, but Tu quoque
Switzerland is not a member of the EU ...
It is 27 countries, that's more than have signed it ... ...and has a combined population larger than the USA ...
Oversimplistic perhaps, but inflation is inflation and the price of bread (along with other usual commodities) is used by governments to work out what the inflation rate is
Prices on the stock exchange vary and can be quite volatile, but in most cases these are around a fairly stable average or slow trend in one direction
Pensions and similar are normally an aggregate of many shares/bonds etc simply to make them more stable than the individual parts, and tend to be mostly made up of the slow growth, low risk types ...
The riskiest funds are the most volatile where you can make money easily but also lose it just as easily, most currencies are not in this group, because they are backed by a government, or tied to a more stable currency
Note the Stock market crash of 2009 - "By March 6, 2009 the DJIA had dropped 54% to 6469 (before beginning to recover) from its peak of 14164 on October 9, 2007, a span of 17 months" - BitCoin lost half it's value in a day and is still plummeting ...
...He was elected, he sits in Parliament, he can say what he wants and propose what he wants ... no-one has to pay any attention to him.
There are three possible reasons :
1) He is an idiot
2) He has a hidden agenda
3) He wants some publicity
I bet number 3 ....
Come to the UK, where two 17 year olds can have sex with each other legally, but if one takes a picture of the other naked on the first one's phone, then they have both committed a crime - Producing and storing indecent images of minors ....
UK economy lost 3.4 billion - Soros gained 1 Billion ...
UK GDP in 1992 $1,098 trillion
So even this was a drop in the ocean compared with Bitcoin's losses ...
No it does not ... $1.60 buys me a loaf of bread today, and will tomorrow (give or take a cent)
Most currencies are fairly stable (with a few notable exceptions) ... if not there would be huge inflation/deflation, and their isn't
The stockmarket trades currencies against each other and their exchange rates change more rapidly (but not as rapidly as you suggest), simply because they have different inflation rates, and because of currency speculation ...
The current amount of gold in the world is fairly stable, and it's price tends to drift rather than change rapidly ...that's why it was used as a backing
Most currencies today are fiat currencies- not gold based, but based on the fact that the government will always and only use it for transactions (taxes, payments), so it has a fairly stable intrinsic worth
Both are a guarantee that the value will not change rapidly, BitCoin does not have this so rapid changes in value will happen
Bitcoin is worth what people think it's worth - people currently think it's worth a lot less than before
the value is unlikely to go up in the near future...and very likely to go down further
If it stabilises at a usable value then BitCoin will survive ... if not then it will be abandoned ...
Any currency is only what people think it is worth...
Most currencies are either backed by hard commodities (Gold Silver etc) or by a Government who regulates it enough to make it fairly stable
Bitcoin had neither and so it worth whatever the market thinks it is worth, and the market has finally woken up to the fact that it's true worth is zero ...
..or just use Commonwealth English spelling instead of US American English Spelling ...
The problem with NASA is not that it is "Communist", it is a strange economic model where they are woefully underfunded, expected to perform anyway, and have no failure conditions, e.g. they can develop a new system with no specific goal in mind and at the last step abandon it for no really good reason ...
The Soviet system had clear goals, definite aims, targets and punishment if they were not achieved .... a system that works anywhere