As great as that story is, you should realize that it is largly a myth. While he did pre-announce, it was the Kaypro company that ate their lunch. See the bit in Wikipedia.
Yep. Intel really has it right and proves Negroponte is an idiot.
The classmate runs for about 2.5 hours on battery! The OLPC's low power modes letting it run 10 is just wasteful of precious electricity
The classmate was easy for a kid used to Windows to use! That's perfect for the kids in small villages who've never seen an electric light-bulb. They'll pick it up like that.
You can draw on the tab.... no... that's the OLPC.
You can hand charge it when it runs ou.... no, that's the OLPC
It has a Wireless, so you can surf the web when you're near a hotspot! The OLPC can only do that and make mesh networks across a small village so you don't have to be so close
It's rugged against suburban 8 year olds who are used to being careful with a computer. Who needs to worry about dust storms and torrential rains and such. Oh, right, the OLPC does that.
Well at least it costs le.... no, OLPC is cheaper.
It can run Windows, which the kids are familia.... no, many won't have ever touched a computer.
Like I said in a comment above, I can see how this might be a better option for more developed countries (US, large cities, etc) where things like power aren't as big a problem. But like I said the other day, the more I see of this, the more it looks like a status-quo laptop that was made 20% (or whatever) smaller.
Not only is the OLPC hardware superior for a large class of people, I think it's design (including software) is fantastic, especially its emphasis on learning as opposed to "this is a computer, here, enjoy" that the classmate seems to have.
I'm a little more worried about the battery life comment. A little over two hours? The OLPC is designed to be able to run for 10 or so if you use it to look at static stuff (like ebook mode). It's designed to run for ~10 minutes for ever minute of effort you put into it's charger (when you're not charging it with that new-fangled electrical outlet thing).
2 hours?
Yeah, the classmate is a revolution. Amazing. I bet you can't even see the screen outside very well!
This little "review" does nothing but sour my already dim views of the Classmate. It seems more proof that the classmate is nothing but a normal laptop that was miniaturized. The OLPC was basically designed from the ground up for this task. To be cheap, energy efficient, to be visible outdoors, to provide connectivity, etc.
The classmate may work for people here in the US, or in relatively developed areas. But these things sound like they won't do very well if you put them in rural areas without great infrastructure, which is one of the main areas the OLPC is targeting.
UK: It's not history if it's offensive
US: It's not history unless it is offensive, then we must teach it to death
Weird. They don't want to offend Muslims (look, sorry, but it happened and is a VERY important part of world history). But here in the US this kind of things gets taught. This kind of thing gets EMPHASIZED. Slavery? We have to talk about how terribly the white man treated Africans (and we should). We have a whole month to teach kids this. Native americans? It's important to talk about how terribly the white man treated them, and stole their land, gave them smallpox, how they lived in harmony with mother nature, how nice they were (like helping the pilgrims), etc.
Wait, some tribes were warlike and would attack everyone including other tribes and us? We don't teach that. It would make them look bad.
That's how Godzilla came about. The film was originally more of a warning/etc, but was re-cut with an american in a few scenes and turned into a monster movie. I know there are others like you were talking about (I think the ants in the movie THEM was influenced by radiation).
Back on an earlier topic, I've seen documentaries about soviet programs to distriube train loads of grain and have it mixed togehter in hopes of getting new seeds with better yeilds. The project would have be interesting. The breakup and the depression of the USSR turned tons of those little stations which contained radioactivity for use on seeds, how to use them and what they cntained}. It's surprising those aren't more common are not at loose
PS: please excuse the quality of what i"m wiring. I'm trying to do well. I'm dead on my feet and about to collapse into bead when I click "submit"
I've got a PowerBook G4. I can tell you that I expect it has millions of colors on the screen (it was advertized as such). If I upgraded and spent $2-$3k on new MacBook Pro and found it could only display 262k colors, I would be REALLY mad. I'd jump on this suit. I really like Apple, but this really surprises me if it's true. I'd be surprised if it was Dell or Lenovo or Gateway, but I'd never guess Apple would do this.
I hope they get cleared, or get whats comming to them for this.
No. Intel and Microsoft are interested in replacing the OLPC (small, light, huge battery life, open, safe) with little shrunken down normal laptops. With the OLPC you get the great battery life, all the programs (and programming languages) designed to encourage learning. With the Classmate you get... Windows. And Windows software.
As I see it, the OLPC is about learning about computers and getting kids interested in learning. There is a ton to like about it. The Classmate is about getting kids used to Wintel computers, and locked into the status quo. Sure, they are both "computers", but they are targeted very differently.
But OLPC is not for profit but Intel can dump classmate PCs cheaper than they can be made. They can call this "philanthropy". They can kill a better (in many ways, but not hardware speed wise) computer and get more people who come up on their system and used to that. But they are cheaper (or could be)! They are more powerful! They run Windows (read: it's a "real" computer).
The OLPC is a revolution in many ways. If Intel really wanted to just help people, they would donate free CPUs or memory to the OLPC project, or at least sell them undercutting AMD. Instead of doing that and helping, they shrunk a normal laptop, made a few little changes, and have decided their way is better.
Negroponte came off a little paranoid in the 60 minutes interview, but I agree with him. They are scared. If Intel subsidized the OLPC maybe they would be willing to put the little Intel stickers on every one.
I'd gladly buy an OLPC today if I could. I find the little computer fascinating (both hardware, software, and principal). The other groups (MS and Intel, mostly) just seem to be trying to make a low cost laptop that is otherwise what everyone else uses, with the same problems.
They said on 60 minutes that OLPC expects to sell to US education in the future an eventually to US individuals if you pay double (like the old rumors).
Made it easier to construct refineries to avoid the problems right after Katrina
Allow drilling in ANOIR
Allow drilling off the continental shelf in the gulf
Set federal gasoline standards so gas could be used anywhere, instead of each state requiring different blends and ruining some of the economy of scale we could have
Raise CAFE standards more than once ever 20 years, and then only by like 3 gallons. Every car should be getting 30+ at this point, every truck/SUV 20. We can do it.
Use Iraqi oil for reconstruction and running our equipment. In a rush to avoid looking like the war (which I support) was for oil (which everyone thought anyway) we've wasted tons of money and oil that could be shipped to the US, the savings put towards gas tax reductions or rebates, etc.
Working to make diesel more common here now that we have relatively clean and efficient diesels. Europe has them. We should too.
What, exactly HAS congress done to lower gas prices? Ethanol subsidies? Hydrogen research? Those haven't done much, have they? I remember 7 years ago when I saw a station out of town with gas for 99 cents a gallon. I'd be very surprised to find a station right now in my area at triple that. Ok, I know, they passed tax rebates when you buy a hybrid. But they passed them when hybrids were very hard to get and the expire this year as hybrids are getting easier to get. Oops.
I think it makes a ton of sense. As the scale of production increases, the cost difference will drop. Depending on what happens this may be practically required at some point to meet emissions requirements while having good power. Still Toyota current has one big problem with hybrids: they can't make them fast enough. The Prius is selling faster than they can produce them, I don't know about the Camary and Highlander. On top of those, the Lexus SUV uses the Toyota system and I think Ford might on their hybrid SUV.
It's a neat technology. It's got better fuel efficiency, you can use a smaller engine for the same horsepower (since people only generally care about acceleration and don't need the extra power staying at speed), they can get energy back from brakes, etc. And since Toyota has said that they will release plug-in hybrids in the next few years (model year '09 I think) that will improve things more.
Plus a hybrid is a hybrid. They didn't say gasoline hybrids, they could be half-hydrogen or something else.
It always worries me when people have no idea what is going on. I really dislike the idea of people learning computers like they were microwaves and having next to no idea how the work. Actually, most people have received a LITTLE instruction on how microwaves (and cars and other things) work (it heats the water in food, pistons harness combustion, etc) but discussion about how computers do things is usually "they use binary". That doesn't mean anything to most people.
This is a great idea. Not only does it teach programming (good, maybe they'll pickup an interest), but it teaches logic. I can't tell you how many kids I run across that seem to have next to no training in logic and being able to make steps to get to a task (or simply aren't good at it due to lack of practice). The current education system (memorize facts, here is a problem and here is how to solve it, memorize how to solve it) don't help. This kind of education (figure out how you can do things by chaining other things) is important and very valuable.
ADB was Apple's standard, NuBus was tied directly to the processor so it wouldn't have worked on x86. FireWire is doing quite well. ADC was... probably a mistake. PCI-X was available on PCs and probably would have won had PCIe not come around.
But USB had been around for YEARS when Apple put it on the iMac. But because they were willing to take a chance on it, they made it big. Before the iMac it was tough to find USB peripherals. Within a year they were everywhere. PCs would have held on to the PS2 ports and serial ports (which I kinda miss) for ever (see: floppy drive).
But many companies have these kind of things. Remember IBM's attempts to lock people back in with their other bus (can't remember off the top of my head) around the XT timeframe? Remember EISA? How about Vesa Local Bus? The PC industry has seen it's share of weird little standards that got some traction but were never huge.
As for the grandparent, I can see he point. I have my little Mac next to my development workstation all day and I listen to music and do little bits of surfing on it. To be able to reach over and tap a big control on screen to pause iTunes or go to another song or change volume would be nice. As it is, I just tap the space bar, use a key combo, or use the little volume keys on my laptop. I can also see using it to easily open files (tap an icon in finder, etc) when I just want to show someone a picture or do something like that real quick. It won't replace the mouse for web browsing or working in Excel, but I can see it being useful in lots of little situations all over the place.
How many things we use now were gimmicks or never worth the expense? Who needs a "sound card"? What's wrong with just using the keyboard? Why would ANYONE ever need a pen/tablet?
The older I get, the more I agree, and the more I think campaign finance along the lines of what other countries have is the solution.
Parties apply, and get $x million per candidate (or however it's decided). This money comes out of the treasury, paid by taxes. No private donation. When the Republicans (me), the Democrats (others), and the Greens and such have to play on a level field, we'll get some real competition.
Of course, as you can guess, neither party is going to vote for this. We'd need to make this a referendum or some such.
So this idea goes with Steve Forbes' tax plan and many others that are great ideas that congress won't vote for because they have such a vested interest in the status quo.
A power plant costs roughly the same amount whether it's 9:00 AM or 9:00 PM. You probably have to pay people on night shift more, but that's negligible in the end.
This is just supply and demand. They can get more more, and encourage less demand by doing this. Because the difference between peak and lows is so large, they may have to bring an additional power plant online (running 3 plants is more expensive than 2) or buy the electricity from another provider (more expensive than making it yourself). Plus in low demand you could turn off part of a plant (for example some of the turbines/coal furnaces, thus saving fuel and labor).
There is a good reason for it to happen. The actual variance in rates may be bigger than necessary, but it makes sense.
Java Script isn't so bad! Sure I had to patch browsers and write a different version for each one. I made my own library and blah blah blah.
Sounds bad to me. Javascript is very annoying, mostly due to the incompatibility between browsers, but for other factors as well. I welcome this. And how do you know JavaFX will be so bad when they have only announced it and haven't previewed it? Worst case scenario, it feels like using the Google Web Toolkit but doesn't produce large.js files that you have to include. It isn't going to run the full Java VM and load up support for all the little libraries (OpenGL, sound, etc). It's designed for this, I'm betting it will be rather speedy. It will certainly be up there with Flash.
This sounds like it is targeting more than just "fetch this list box dynamically" by trying to be a way to make web pages that are currently only realistically implementable by making the entire thing in Flash.
Also, Javascript may have gained abilities over the years (like OOP), but Java has had it from the start. Java has the ability to do static typing. OOP isn't bolted on. It wasn't an afterthought.
Note: after reading your post once or twice, I'm having a hard time telling if the whole thing was sarcasm or not
We are moving from using an open language (Javascript) that can be a real pain (thanks to all the different browsers ways of interpreting and using things) to an open language (JavaFX will be open sourced according to the FAQ) that will have a good reference implementation and should alleviate many of these annoying little things about JS, without having to use something as heavy or overkill as Flash.
On OS X, it's very fast even on my little G4. I believe that OS X pre-loads Java. On Windows, I know it can seem that way, but if parts were pre-loaded (or the whole thing kept in memory and just paged out when not in use) startup would be fast. If this became big (and lets hope, JS is terrible) then the browser would have a VERY good incentive to pre-load java and be ready to go. It wouldn't load up and unload all of Java each time you navigate pages.
Why? That would only be hypocritical if the guy didn't have a problem with sending out the greenhorn to walk through the mine field to try to stumble across as many mines as he could while making a path. I seriously doubt he'd think that was humane either.
Let's see... Mario Sunshine, Mario Strikers: Charged (w/online play), Metroid 3, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, and Super Paper Mario is already out (I'm almost finished, great game). The Wii is looking better and better. Combine that with as the Wii ages 3rd parties will get better and better at utilizing the controls (for something other than a mini-game fest). I can't wait until we start getting good sports games with Wii controls (like Wii play but fleshed out controls and game play). Tennis especially. If they can get reading the racket right it should be great. How will they handle the next Madden? The last one got good reviews, now that they have a game or two under their belt let's see what it's like!
Meanwhile, the 360 and PS3 have games here and there that look interesting, but neither seems to have nearly as many games that I'm looking forward to. And most of those (God of War III, Bioshock, etc) are not exactly breaking new ground in controls, they are just refinement of some of the games we have had for a long time (beat-'em ups, FPSes).
The DS also produced some really quirky and fun games (like Yoshi's Touch and Go, for example). I can't wait to see more of that kind of stuff on the Wii. How about porting the new Sam & Max games or other adventure games? How about a Phoenix Wright title?
The Wii continues to be a very interesting system, and as it hits its stride better (remember the first year or two of the PS2?) things will only get better.
Is there a good reason why 4096 was chosen? Is that just an artifact of this being designed in 2000? At this point very few files on the average system would be smaller than this. It seems to me they could have quite safely chosen something like 16k which would have improved things more, future proofed them more, yet still have been small enough as to not waste a tremendous amount of space (like if they chose 512k).
Why not make it variable, in that each drive can have it's own value (limited to a power of 2, between 512 and say 512k)? That way one drives today could be 4k, with drives in a few years being more without requiring another 7 years for a new standard?
Finding security holes in our expensive software: -1 point
Fixing security holes in our expensive software: -1 point
Giving the program and information to a professor: +1 point
Giving the program and information to other students: -3 points
Mentioning this online: -2 points
Planning to tell Cisco: +1 point
Not telling Cisco immediately: -2 points
Using the software for months: -2 points
Total? -9 points. Not good. The university had no choice. For reference, here is the scale:
+10 or better: Scholarship
+5 or better: Award
+1 or better: Acknowledgment
0: "We'll ignore this"
-1 to -3: Chiding
-4 to -6: Write in your file
-7 and -8: "You're in serious trouble"
-9 or worse: Suspension
Too bad the guy may lose his scholarship. He presented it wrong, especially giving it out and not telling Cisco immediately, along with running it himself. But it doens't deserve a full suspension for a semester.
This is how I feel. It seems like so many people are stuck in the Pong/Super Mario Brothers age. Shadow of the colossus was great. There were points in the game there were these huge, docile beasts, and you had to go kill them. At a point in the game you really start to realize that.
There are games like Final Fantasy VII where even if you don't think it's the greatest game in the world you want to know what happens to the characters. The Final Fantasy games are rather linear, but that's because they are telling a specific story and they tend to be rather good at it.
I just finished God of War II and it (just like the original) did a fantastic job of making you identify with Kratos. I got mad at the gods messing with him. I remember the feeling in the first game when we found out he was the one who killed his wife and family. There was one part of GoWII where you had to fight like 7 waves of enemies in a row, and it took me a few days of playing (a little in the evenings) to get through. It was VERY frustrating. If I didn't know that payoff of more story was coming I would have given up (as I have with other games where I just don't care enough after playing the same bit 30 times in a row).
The Mario and Luigi games on GBA/DS (the RPGs) have been hilarious. Psychonauts did a great job with it's humor, as well as presenting a fantastic view of it's weird and warped world.
All the old graphic adventures from Lucas Arts could do this to various degrees. Sam and Max wasn't as serious (by any stretch) as The Dig or Grim Fandango, but all three are very memorable. GF is great Noir. The Dig was very interesting. Sam and Max was just hilarious.
Games can get you into them. Most don't, a few do. They tend to get remembered as great games.
Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick will give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world.
That's the status quo. Google may be that company, they may not be. But there must be one company which knows more than any other at this moment.
Moreover, Google will operate with virtually no legal obligation to ensure the privacy, security, and accuracy of the personal data that it collects.
That, too, is status quo. Again, nothing is different.
I realize that big companies are evil, mergers are evil, and having all that data in one company's hands might make it more likely to be abused than in the hands of two competitors... but this seems like hand-wringing over nothing. Google just placed themselves in a position to used as a bad guy in this fight. Of course, if companies can get your data wrong and not be liable, wouldn't you rather have 5 companies have it wrong than 6?
Poor Google made themselves a target in an old fight, but I don't really see this as all that bad. This just seems overblown to me.
I read this earlier today through the firehose. It was interesting, but the graphs are what struck me. It seems to me all the graphs should have been XY plots instead of pairs of histograms. That way you could easily see the relationship between compression ratio and time taken. Their "metric" for showing this, basically multiplying the two numbers, is pretty bogus and isn't nearly as easy to compare. With the XY plot the four corners are all very meaningful. One is slow with no compression, one each good compression/time, and the sweet spot of good compression and good time. It's easy to tell those on two opposing corners apart (good compression vs good time), where as with the article's metric they could look very similar.
Still, interesting to see. The popular formats are VERY well established at this point (ZIP in Windows and Mac (stuffit seems to be fading fast), and GZIP and BZIP2 on Linux). They are so common (especially with ZIP support built into Windows since XP and also built into OS X) I don't think we'll see them replaced any time soon. Of course, with CPU power getting cheaper and cheaper we are seeing formats that are more and compressed (MP3, H264, Divx, JPEG, etc) so these utilities are becoming less and less necessary. I no longer need to stuff files on floppies (I've got the net, DVD-Rs, and flash drives). Heck, if you look at some of the formats they "compressed" (at like 4% max) you almost might as well use TAR.
No. The idiots will all demand it and it will be like smoke free airlines in the 70/early 80s. Sure they COULD exist, but most airlines will want the talkers and my guess is every major carrier would allow it. I would be surprised if they didn't. So the only "talk-free" airlines would be little regional or such and wouldn't serve me or my destinations probably.
Slashdot Mirror
As great as that story is, you should realize that it is largly a myth. While he did pre-announce, it was the Kaypro company that ate their lunch. See the bit in Wikipedia.
Yep. Intel really has it right and proves Negroponte is an idiot.
Like I said in a comment above, I can see how this might be a better option for more developed countries (US, large cities, etc) where things like power aren't as big a problem. But like I said the other day, the more I see of this, the more it looks like a status-quo laptop that was made 20% (or whatever) smaller.
Not only is the OLPC hardware superior for a large class of people, I think it's design (including software) is fantastic, especially its emphasis on learning as opposed to "this is a computer, here, enjoy" that the classmate seems to have.
I'm a little more worried about the battery life comment. A little over two hours? The OLPC is designed to be able to run for 10 or so if you use it to look at static stuff (like ebook mode). It's designed to run for ~10 minutes for ever minute of effort you put into it's charger (when you're not charging it with that new-fangled electrical outlet thing).
2 hours?
Yeah, the classmate is a revolution. Amazing. I bet you can't even see the screen outside very well!
This little "review" does nothing but sour my already dim views of the Classmate. It seems more proof that the classmate is nothing but a normal laptop that was miniaturized. The OLPC was basically designed from the ground up for this task. To be cheap, energy efficient, to be visible outdoors, to provide connectivity, etc.
The classmate may work for people here in the US, or in relatively developed areas. But these things sound like they won't do very well if you put them in rural areas without great infrastructure, which is one of the main areas the OLPC is targeting.
UK: It's not history if it's offensive
US: It's not history unless it is offensive, then we must teach it to death
Weird. They don't want to offend Muslims (look, sorry, but it happened and is a VERY important part of world history). But here in the US this kind of things gets taught. This kind of thing gets EMPHASIZED. Slavery? We have to talk about how terribly the white man treated Africans (and we should). We have a whole month to teach kids this. Native americans? It's important to talk about how terribly the white man treated them, and stole their land, gave them smallpox, how they lived in harmony with mother nature, how nice they were (like helping the pilgrims), etc.
Wait, some tribes were warlike and would attack everyone including other tribes and us? We don't teach that. It would make them look bad.
Isn't PC fun?
That's how Godzilla came about. The film was originally more of a warning/etc, but was re-cut with an american in a few scenes and turned into a monster movie. I know there are others like you were talking about (I think the ants in the movie THEM was influenced by radiation).
Back on an earlier topic, I've seen documentaries about soviet programs to distriube train loads of grain and have it mixed togehter in hopes of getting new seeds with better yeilds. The project would have be interesting. The breakup and the depression of the USSR turned tons of those little stations which contained radioactivity for use on seeds, how to use them and what they cntained}. It's surprising those aren't more common are not at loose
PS: please excuse the quality of what i"m wiring. I'm trying to do well. I'm dead on my feet and about to collapse into bead when I click "submit"
I've got a PowerBook G4. I can tell you that I expect it has millions of colors on the screen (it was advertized as such). If I upgraded and spent $2-$3k on new MacBook Pro and found it could only display 262k colors, I would be REALLY mad. I'd jump on this suit. I really like Apple, but this really surprises me if it's true. I'd be surprised if it was Dell or Lenovo or Gateway, but I'd never guess Apple would do this.
I hope they get cleared, or get whats comming to them for this.
No. Intel and Microsoft are interested in replacing the OLPC (small, light, huge battery life, open, safe) with little shrunken down normal laptops. With the OLPC you get the great battery life, all the programs (and programming languages) designed to encourage learning. With the Classmate you get... Windows. And Windows software.
As I see it, the OLPC is about learning about computers and getting kids interested in learning. There is a ton to like about it. The Classmate is about getting kids used to Wintel computers, and locked into the status quo. Sure, they are both "computers", but they are targeted very differently.
But OLPC is not for profit but Intel can dump classmate PCs cheaper than they can be made. They can call this "philanthropy". They can kill a better (in many ways, but not hardware speed wise) computer and get more people who come up on their system and used to that. But they are cheaper (or could be)! They are more powerful! They run Windows (read: it's a "real" computer).
The OLPC is a revolution in many ways. If Intel really wanted to just help people, they would donate free CPUs or memory to the OLPC project, or at least sell them undercutting AMD. Instead of doing that and helping, they shrunk a normal laptop, made a few little changes, and have decided their way is better.
Negroponte came off a little paranoid in the 60 minutes interview, but I agree with him. They are scared. If Intel subsidized the OLPC maybe they would be willing to put the little Intel stickers on every one.
I'd gladly buy an OLPC today if I could. I find the little computer fascinating (both hardware, software, and principal). The other groups (MS and Intel, mostly) just seem to be trying to make a low cost laptop that is otherwise what everyone else uses, with the same problems.
They said on 60 minutes that OLPC expects to sell to US education in the future an eventually to US individuals if you pay double (like the old rumors).
Congress!
Let's see what congress HASN'T done...
What, exactly HAS congress done to lower gas prices? Ethanol subsidies? Hydrogen research? Those haven't done much, have they? I remember 7 years ago when I saw a station out of town with gas for 99 cents a gallon. I'd be very surprised to find a station right now in my area at triple that. Ok, I know, they passed tax rebates when you buy a hybrid. But they passed them when hybrids were very hard to get and the expire this year as hybrids are getting easier to get. Oops.
I think it makes a ton of sense. As the scale of production increases, the cost difference will drop. Depending on what happens this may be practically required at some point to meet emissions requirements while having good power. Still Toyota current has one big problem with hybrids: they can't make them fast enough. The Prius is selling faster than they can produce them, I don't know about the Camary and Highlander. On top of those, the Lexus SUV uses the Toyota system and I think Ford might on their hybrid SUV.
It's a neat technology. It's got better fuel efficiency, you can use a smaller engine for the same horsepower (since people only generally care about acceleration and don't need the extra power staying at speed), they can get energy back from brakes, etc. And since Toyota has said that they will release plug-in hybrids in the next few years (model year '09 I think) that will improve things more.
Plus a hybrid is a hybrid. They didn't say gasoline hybrids, they could be half-hydrogen or something else.
It always worries me when people have no idea what is going on. I really dislike the idea of people learning computers like they were microwaves and having next to no idea how the work. Actually, most people have received a LITTLE instruction on how microwaves (and cars and other things) work (it heats the water in food, pistons harness combustion, etc) but discussion about how computers do things is usually "they use binary". That doesn't mean anything to most people.
This is a great idea. Not only does it teach programming (good, maybe they'll pickup an interest), but it teaches logic. I can't tell you how many kids I run across that seem to have next to no training in logic and being able to make steps to get to a task (or simply aren't good at it due to lack of practice). The current education system (memorize facts, here is a problem and here is how to solve it, memorize how to solve it) don't help. This kind of education (figure out how you can do things by chaining other things) is important and very valuable.
ADB was Apple's standard, NuBus was tied directly to the processor so it wouldn't have worked on x86. FireWire is doing quite well. ADC was... probably a mistake. PCI-X was available on PCs and probably would have won had PCIe not come around.
But USB had been around for YEARS when Apple put it on the iMac. But because they were willing to take a chance on it, they made it big. Before the iMac it was tough to find USB peripherals. Within a year they were everywhere. PCs would have held on to the PS2 ports and serial ports (which I kinda miss) for ever (see: floppy drive).
But many companies have these kind of things. Remember IBM's attempts to lock people back in with their other bus (can't remember off the top of my head) around the XT timeframe? Remember EISA? How about Vesa Local Bus? The PC industry has seen it's share of weird little standards that got some traction but were never huge.
As for the grandparent, I can see he point. I have my little Mac next to my development workstation all day and I listen to music and do little bits of surfing on it. To be able to reach over and tap a big control on screen to pause iTunes or go to another song or change volume would be nice. As it is, I just tap the space bar, use a key combo, or use the little volume keys on my laptop. I can also see using it to easily open files (tap an icon in finder, etc) when I just want to show someone a picture or do something like that real quick. It won't replace the mouse for web browsing or working in Excel, but I can see it being useful in lots of little situations all over the place.
How many things we use now were gimmicks or never worth the expense? Who needs a "sound card"? What's wrong with just using the keyboard? Why would ANYONE ever need a pen/tablet?
The older I get, the more I agree, and the more I think campaign finance along the lines of what other countries have is the solution.
Parties apply, and get $x million per candidate (or however it's decided). This money comes out of the treasury, paid by taxes. No private donation. When the Republicans (me), the Democrats (others), and the Greens and such have to play on a level field, we'll get some real competition.
Of course, as you can guess, neither party is going to vote for this. We'd need to make this a referendum or some such.
So this idea goes with Steve Forbes' tax plan and many others that are great ideas that congress won't vote for because they have such a vested interest in the status quo.
A power plant costs roughly the same amount whether it's 9:00 AM or 9:00 PM. You probably have to pay people on night shift more, but that's negligible in the end.
This is just supply and demand. They can get more more, and encourage less demand by doing this. Because the difference between peak and lows is so large, they may have to bring an additional power plant online (running 3 plants is more expensive than 2) or buy the electricity from another provider (more expensive than making it yourself). Plus in low demand you could turn off part of a plant (for example some of the turbines/coal furnaces, thus saving fuel and labor).
There is a good reason for it to happen. The actual variance in rates may be bigger than necessary, but it makes sense.
Java Script isn't so bad! Sure I had to patch browsers and write a different version for each one. I made my own library and blah blah blah.
Sounds bad to me. Javascript is very annoying, mostly due to the incompatibility between browsers, but for other factors as well. I welcome this. And how do you know JavaFX will be so bad when they have only announced it and haven't previewed it? Worst case scenario, it feels like using the Google Web Toolkit but doesn't produce large .js files that you have to include. It isn't going to run the full Java VM and load up support for all the little libraries (OpenGL, sound, etc). It's designed for this, I'm betting it will be rather speedy. It will certainly be up there with Flash.
This sounds like it is targeting more than just "fetch this list box dynamically" by trying to be a way to make web pages that are currently only realistically implementable by making the entire thing in Flash.
Also, Javascript may have gained abilities over the years (like OOP), but Java has had it from the start. Java has the ability to do static typing. OOP isn't bolted on. It wasn't an afterthought.
Note: after reading your post once or twice, I'm having a hard time telling if the whole thing was sarcasm or not
We are moving from using an open language (Javascript) that can be a real pain (thanks to all the different browsers ways of interpreting and using things) to an open language (JavaFX will be open sourced according to the FAQ) that will have a good reference implementation and should alleviate many of these annoying little things about JS, without having to use something as heavy or overkill as Flash.
On OS X, it's very fast even on my little G4. I believe that OS X pre-loads Java. On Windows, I know it can seem that way, but if parts were pre-loaded (or the whole thing kept in memory and just paged out when not in use) startup would be fast. If this became big (and lets hope, JS is terrible) then the browser would have a VERY good incentive to pre-load java and be ready to go. It wouldn't load up and unload all of Java each time you navigate pages.
Why? That would only be hypocritical if the guy didn't have a problem with sending out the greenhorn to walk through the mine field to try to stumble across as many mines as he could while making a path. I seriously doubt he'd think that was humane either.
Let's see... Mario Sunshine, Mario Strikers: Charged (w/online play), Metroid 3, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, and Super Paper Mario is already out (I'm almost finished, great game). The Wii is looking better and better. Combine that with as the Wii ages 3rd parties will get better and better at utilizing the controls (for something other than a mini-game fest). I can't wait until we start getting good sports games with Wii controls (like Wii play but fleshed out controls and game play). Tennis especially. If they can get reading the racket right it should be great. How will they handle the next Madden? The last one got good reviews, now that they have a game or two under their belt let's see what it's like!
Meanwhile, the 360 and PS3 have games here and there that look interesting, but neither seems to have nearly as many games that I'm looking forward to. And most of those (God of War III, Bioshock, etc) are not exactly breaking new ground in controls, they are just refinement of some of the games we have had for a long time (beat-'em ups, FPSes).
The DS also produced some really quirky and fun games (like Yoshi's Touch and Go, for example). I can't wait to see more of that kind of stuff on the Wii. How about porting the new Sam & Max games or other adventure games? How about a Phoenix Wright title?
The Wii continues to be a very interesting system, and as it hits its stride better (remember the first year or two of the PS2?) things will only get better.
Is there a good reason why 4096 was chosen? Is that just an artifact of this being designed in 2000? At this point very few files on the average system would be smaller than this. It seems to me they could have quite safely chosen something like 16k which would have improved things more, future proofed them more, yet still have been small enough as to not waste a tremendous amount of space (like if they chose 512k).
Why not make it variable, in that each drive can have it's own value (limited to a power of 2, between 512 and say 512k)? That way one drives today could be 4k, with drives in a few years being more without requiring another 7 years for a new standard?
Total? -9 points. Not good. The university had no choice. For reference, here is the scale:
Too bad the guy may lose his scholarship. He presented it wrong, especially giving it out and not telling Cisco immediately, along with running it himself. But it doens't deserve a full suspension for a semester.
This is how I feel. It seems like so many people are stuck in the Pong/Super Mario Brothers age. Shadow of the colossus was great. There were points in the game there were these huge, docile beasts, and you had to go kill them. At a point in the game you really start to realize that.
There are games like Final Fantasy VII where even if you don't think it's the greatest game in the world you want to know what happens to the characters. The Final Fantasy games are rather linear, but that's because they are telling a specific story and they tend to be rather good at it.
I just finished God of War II and it (just like the original) did a fantastic job of making you identify with Kratos. I got mad at the gods messing with him. I remember the feeling in the first game when we found out he was the one who killed his wife and family. There was one part of GoWII where you had to fight like 7 waves of enemies in a row, and it took me a few days of playing (a little in the evenings) to get through. It was VERY frustrating. If I didn't know that payoff of more story was coming I would have given up (as I have with other games where I just don't care enough after playing the same bit 30 times in a row).
The Mario and Luigi games on GBA/DS (the RPGs) have been hilarious. Psychonauts did a great job with it's humor, as well as presenting a fantastic view of it's weird and warped world.
All the old graphic adventures from Lucas Arts could do this to various degrees. Sam and Max wasn't as serious (by any stretch) as The Dig or Grim Fandango, but all three are very memorable. GF is great Noir. The Dig was very interesting. Sam and Max was just hilarious.
Games can get you into them. Most don't, a few do. They tend to get remembered as great games.
That's the status quo. Google may be that company, they may not be. But there must be one company which knows more than any other at this moment.
That, too, is status quo. Again, nothing is different.
I realize that big companies are evil, mergers are evil, and having all that data in one company's hands might make it more likely to be abused than in the hands of two competitors... but this seems like hand-wringing over nothing. Google just placed themselves in a position to used as a bad guy in this fight. Of course, if companies can get your data wrong and not be liable, wouldn't you rather have 5 companies have it wrong than 6?
Poor Google made themselves a target in an old fight, but I don't really see this as all that bad. This just seems overblown to me.
I read this earlier today through the firehose. It was interesting, but the graphs are what struck me. It seems to me all the graphs should have been XY plots instead of pairs of histograms. That way you could easily see the relationship between compression ratio and time taken. Their "metric" for showing this, basically multiplying the two numbers, is pretty bogus and isn't nearly as easy to compare. With the XY plot the four corners are all very meaningful. One is slow with no compression, one each good compression/time, and the sweet spot of good compression and good time. It's easy to tell those on two opposing corners apart (good compression vs good time), where as with the article's metric they could look very similar.
Still, interesting to see. The popular formats are VERY well established at this point (ZIP in Windows and Mac (stuffit seems to be fading fast), and GZIP and BZIP2 on Linux). They are so common (especially with ZIP support built into Windows since XP and also built into OS X) I don't think we'll see them replaced any time soon. Of course, with CPU power getting cheaper and cheaper we are seeing formats that are more and compressed (MP3, H264, Divx, JPEG, etc) so these utilities are becoming less and less necessary. I no longer need to stuff files on floppies (I've got the net, DVD-Rs, and flash drives). Heck, if you look at some of the formats they "compressed" (at like 4% max) you almost might as well use TAR.
No. The idiots will all demand it and it will be like smoke free airlines in the 70/early 80s. Sure they COULD exist, but most airlines will want the talkers and my guess is every major carrier would allow it. I would be surprised if they didn't. So the only "talk-free" airlines would be little regional or such and wouldn't serve me or my destinations probably.