A reduced-price version of XP is a good move for Microsoft in that it stemmed the tide of Linux adoption, but it has signaled lower margins for Microsoft.
It's not a big expenditure on Microsoft's part, though. It couldn't have been too hard to trim fat off of XP (the TinyXP guys did it without even having access to the source code, after all). Their price-per-unit might be lower compared to Vista, but they certainly recouped the additional development costs quickly and were able to get a foothold in an emerging market.
Of course Linux is hurting them. Any signficant competition hurts them. The summary was bad because it implies that Linux is the main cause of a 6,000 person layoff at Microsoft. This completely ignores Apple, Vista being a big turd, and (most of all) general economic tightening.
Would Microsoft have a big layoff without Linux? Very likely, yes. It might be 4,000 people instead of 6,000, but it would have happened.
As early as last quarter, Microsoft admitted that Linux and netbooks were eating into its fat profits. Recently, it came home, with the software giant announcing its first-ever layoffs.
Yeah, it couldn't be because there is a massive economic crisis going on. It's all Linux.
Part of it is the way the question is asked in the survey. If you look at the actual report, it asks straight out why people don't use the Internet, or why they don't have broadband.
Ask people about things a good broadband infrastructure would provide (like on-demand TV and movies), and you'll see very different responses.
Apples to Oranges. Chuck is a broadcast show, BSG is a cable show. From what I've seen of it, Chuck is mostly a "stupid fun" type of show (which is fine, I like those sometimes, too), and thus more accessible to a broad audiance.
In so far as "TV will never be the same", the summary was too far into hyperbole. But I also don't choose what I watch based on viewership numbers.
User education isn't going to work. People have been waving that flag for at least 20 years, and it still hasn't happened. Instead, computers are going to have to be more secure by default, while also having IT security departments more receptive to users' needs.
You don't want an antivirus monoculture, which is what you'd inevitably get with a decent Microsoft-built antivirus. It becomes too easy for virus writers to work around a single antivirus and still infect the majority of computers.
In fact, even with the current situation of having about 3 big antivirus companies, it's still too easy to work around all 3.
The only real solution on Microsoft's end is to move to a deny-by-default approach to application security. Which they somewhat did with UAC, but in a shoddy, poorly implemented way.
Also, I seem to remember that Win2k notepad could handle Unix line endings, but the feature disappeared in WinXP. Did they forget to merge in the right code and never got around to fixing it again?
It's a local tech college. They're pretty good as local tech colleges go, but they're as Microsoft-centric as anywhere else.
Long ago, I served time on the help desk at the library there. Mac OSX was still relatively new, and the library had gotten some shiny new Macs in with OSX preinstalled (of course, PCs outnumbered Macs about 10:1). For some reason, all of them were reinstalled with OS 9 a few days after they came in. One of our regular Mac users was very irate at us, but of course us help desk folks had nothing to do with it.
Realistically, I can't see a standard DC voltage happening. Many of those voltages aren't just pulled out because it's a nice number. A certain size battery needs to be charged at a certain optimal voltage; a cell phone battery needs around 5V, while a Tesla Roadster is best off around 240V (maybe more). Anything carrying digital signals over short distances needs to have its voltages fairly low (to keep rise and fall times acceptable), and anything doing the same over longer runs will need higher voltages (to keep line loss and other interference down, while figuring out how to deal with rise/fall times, probably with more expensive electronics).
So even if we could make all this legacy stuff disappear, we'd still have good reason for a range of voltages.
Doesn't look like they have a breakdown on lcd and plasmas, but rear projection TVs are listed as 6 W when off. Non-DVR set-top boxes for satellites are about 15.5W, and DVR types are almost 30W when not even recording anything.
The highest drawing stuff in the home often works better on AC. The motors that run the compressor on refridgerators and air con are more efficient that way. Any electric heaters (potentially stoves, water heaters, and furnance, depending on the setup) are more efficient on AC (I think--it'll be about equal at worst). Incandecent bulbs don't care, and flurecents can use either one (though the ballast has to be setup specifically for AC or DC). LED lights would care, but those are really expensive, anyway.
That leaves computers and home entertainment equipment. However, they use a multitude of different voltages, so there's going to be some DC-DC conversion involved. The difference between AC-DC and DC-DC conversion efficiency isn't that big. Certainly not big enough to justify putting in extra DC-dedicated wiring.
You're better off buying high efficiency power supplies on your computer and fully shutting off entertainment stuff (which you can often only do by unplugging it).
I think Tesla would be just fine with DC power if he saw what we're using it for today. Back then, there wasn't much stuff that cared which way the current flowed. Lights and electric heaters work fine either way, and motors are more efficient on AC, as is any power source that depends on spinning a generator (almost everything besides solar cells). But once you start throwing diode junctions and electrolytic capacitors into the mix, things change.
. . . when one combines all relevant empirical studies using meta-analytic techniques, five separate effects emerge with considerable consistency. Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior.
. . .
The overly simplistic mantra, "Correlation is not causation," is useful when teaching introductory students the risks in too-readily drawing causal conclusions from a simple empirical correlation between two measured variables. However, correlational studies are routinely used in modern science to test theories that are inherently causal. Whole scientific fields are based on correlational data (e.g., astronomy). Well conducted correlational studies provide opportunities for theory falsification. They allow examination of serious acts of aggression that would be unethical to study in experimental contexts. They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations.
But also note:
Media violence is only one of many factors that contribute to societal violence and is certainly not the most important one. Media violence researchers have repeatedly noted this.
In other words, video games are a source of violent tendencies across a large segment of the population, but their effect is relatively small. If your goal is to reduce violence in society as a whole, video games, TV, and movies are not the first place you should look.
In addition, there are a number of people who don't spend all of their money, but rather just hold onto a bunch of it. Having a better infrastructure can result in a wider variety of companies, services, and product offerings, which increases the chance that maybe something will catch their interest, so that's more money for the average person and a little less in their bank account.
Having money in a bank account isn't (usually) the same as hoarding money the way stuffing cash into a mattress is. It's money that the bank will invest on your behalf as long as you have it there (giving you a small cut in the form of interest), so it's still circulating usefully to the economy.
One major problem right now is that banks aren't investing that money (usually in the form of loans), so having a savings account isn't necessarily better than burying it in a jar.
Probably RTGs, which the USSR put in a lot of lighthouses and other remote places that needed power (with poor documentation, so nobody knows where all these things are anymore). They take a radioactive source (preferably a pure-alpha emitter, since they're easy to sheild, but theoretically any radiation will work) then use the Seeback effect to generate electricity.
What it sounds like they're doing in this article is having an actual nuclear reactor with fissionable material, rather than just generating power off of radiation. They seal it up, bury it, and don't expect to have to do any maintenance for 10 years or so. The fuel source is unsuitable for weapons (it could, of course, make a dirty bomb, but those are more about fear mongering than an actual threat), and has the same self-regulating properties as a pebble bed, where fission simply stops if it gets too hot. At $30 million each, I could easily see these getting bought by medium-sized municipalities to cover their energy needs, though it's a bit much for the totally decentralized grid that the article talks about.
What I found odd in this story is that the DoD's space budget is $22B. NASA requested a $17.6B budget for FY2009. WTF? Does the DoD even do anything past LEO/polar orbits?
I'd kill just to see better indy development for the PS3. All the best ones are going to the 360.
Lackluster online play for the PS3 is made up for by the fact that it appeals less to the teenage crowd who love the scream obscenities over the microphone because mom isn't listening at the moment. Not that the PS3 is completely devoid of teen angst, just has less of it.
Slashdot Mirror
That'd be how I'd do it. It should be easy to program an AI to act like a 13 year old who's mom isn't in the room at the moment.
A reduced-price version of XP is a good move for Microsoft in that it stemmed the tide of Linux adoption, but it has signaled lower margins for Microsoft.
It's not a big expenditure on Microsoft's part, though. It couldn't have been too hard to trim fat off of XP (the TinyXP guys did it without even having access to the source code, after all). Their price-per-unit might be lower compared to Vista, but they certainly recouped the additional development costs quickly and were able to get a foothold in an emerging market.
Of course Linux is hurting them. Any signficant competition hurts them. The summary was bad because it implies that Linux is the main cause of a 6,000 person layoff at Microsoft. This completely ignores Apple, Vista being a big turd, and (most of all) general economic tightening.
Would Microsoft have a big layoff without Linux? Very likely, yes. It might be 4,000 people instead of 6,000, but it would have happened.
I'm saying don't jump to conclusions based on casual links.
I think they're talking about a modified OS to fit a very specific purpose, e.g. TVs. The Sony Bravia runs Linux, for instance.
As early as last quarter, Microsoft admitted that Linux and netbooks were eating into its fat profits. Recently, it came home, with the software giant announcing its first-ever layoffs.
Yeah, it couldn't be because there is a massive economic crisis going on. It's all Linux.
Part of it is the way the question is asked in the survey. If you look at the actual report, it asks straight out why people don't use the Internet, or why they don't have broadband.
Ask people about things a good broadband infrastructure would provide (like on-demand TV and movies), and you'll see very different responses.
Apples to Oranges. Chuck is a broadcast show, BSG is a cable show. From what I've seen of it, Chuck is mostly a "stupid fun" type of show (which is fine, I like those sometimes, too), and thus more accessible to a broad audiance.
In so far as "TV will never be the same", the summary was too far into hyperbole. But I also don't choose what I watch based on viewership numbers.
I was thinking more like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMenB9Ywh2Q
User education isn't going to work. People have been waving that flag for at least 20 years, and it still hasn't happened. Instead, computers are going to have to be more secure by default, while also having IT security departments more receptive to users' needs.
You don't want an antivirus monoculture, which is what you'd inevitably get with a decent Microsoft-built antivirus. It becomes too easy for virus writers to work around a single antivirus and still infect the majority of computers.
In fact, even with the current situation of having about 3 big antivirus companies, it's still too easy to work around all 3.
The only real solution on Microsoft's end is to move to a deny-by-default approach to application security. Which they somewhat did with UAC, but in a shoddy, poorly implemented way.
Did they fix it so I can type '3 2 2 * +'?
Also, I seem to remember that Win2k notepad could handle Unix line endings, but the feature disappeared in WinXP. Did they forget to merge in the right code and never got around to fixing it again?
It's a local tech college. They're pretty good as local tech colleges go, but they're as Microsoft-centric as anywhere else.
Long ago, I served time on the help desk at the library there. Mac OSX was still relatively new, and the library had gotten some shiny new Macs in with OSX preinstalled (of course, PCs outnumbered Macs about 10:1). For some reason, all of them were reinstalled with OS 9 a few days after they came in. One of our regular Mac users was very irate at us, but of course us help desk folks had nothing to do with it.
Realistically, I can't see a standard DC voltage happening. Many of those voltages aren't just pulled out because it's a nice number. A certain size battery needs to be charged at a certain optimal voltage; a cell phone battery needs around 5V, while a Tesla Roadster is best off around 240V (maybe more). Anything carrying digital signals over short distances needs to have its voltages fairly low (to keep rise and fall times acceptable), and anything doing the same over longer runs will need higher voltages (to keep line loss and other interference down, while figuring out how to deal with rise/fall times, probably with more expensive electronics).
So even if we could make all this legacy stuff disappear, we'd still have good reason for a range of voltages.
Here's a table:
http://standby.lbl.gov/summary-table.html
Doesn't look like they have a breakdown on lcd and plasmas, but rear projection TVs are listed as 6 W when off. Non-DVR set-top boxes for satellites are about 15.5W, and DVR types are almost 30W when not even recording anything.
The highest drawing stuff in the home often works better on AC. The motors that run the compressor on refridgerators and air con are more efficient that way. Any electric heaters (potentially stoves, water heaters, and furnance, depending on the setup) are more efficient on AC (I think--it'll be about equal at worst). Incandecent bulbs don't care, and flurecents can use either one (though the ballast has to be setup specifically for AC or DC). LED lights would care, but those are really expensive, anyway.
That leaves computers and home entertainment equipment. However, they use a multitude of different voltages, so there's going to be some DC-DC conversion involved. The difference between AC-DC and DC-DC conversion efficiency isn't that big. Certainly not big enough to justify putting in extra DC-dedicated wiring.
You're better off buying high efficiency power supplies on your computer and fully shutting off entertainment stuff (which you can often only do by unplugging it).
I think Tesla would be just fine with DC power if he saw what we're using it for today. Back then, there wasn't much stuff that cared which way the current flowed. Lights and electric heaters work fine either way, and motors are more efficient on AC, as is any power source that depends on spinning a generator (almost everything besides solar cells). But once you start throwing diode junctions and electrolytic capacitors into the mix, things change.
I'll post what posted over on the xkcd forums a while back.
http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html
. . . when one combines all relevant empirical studies using meta-analytic techniques, five separate effects emerge with considerable consistency. Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior.
. . .
The overly simplistic mantra, "Correlation is not causation," is useful when teaching introductory students the risks in too-readily drawing causal conclusions from a simple empirical correlation between two measured variables. However, correlational studies are routinely used in modern science to test theories that are inherently causal. Whole scientific fields are based on correlational data (e.g., astronomy). Well conducted correlational studies provide opportunities for theory falsification. They allow examination of serious acts of aggression that would be unethical to study in experimental contexts. They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations.
But also note:
Media violence is only one of many factors that contribute to societal violence and is certainly not the most important one. Media violence researchers have repeatedly noted this.
In other words, video games are a source of violent tendencies across a large segment of the population, but their effect is relatively small. If your goal is to reduce violence in society as a whole, video games, TV, and movies are not the first place you should look.
In addition, there are a number of people who don't spend all of their money, but rather just hold onto a bunch of it. Having a better infrastructure can result in a wider variety of companies, services, and product offerings, which increases the chance that maybe something will catch their interest, so that's more money for the average person and a little less in their bank account.
Having money in a bank account isn't (usually) the same as hoarding money the way stuffing cash into a mattress is. It's money that the bank will invest on your behalf as long as you have it there (giving you a small cut in the form of interest), so it's still circulating usefully to the economy.
One major problem right now is that banks aren't investing that money (usually in the form of loans), so having a savings account isn't necessarily better than burying it in a jar.
Probably RTGs, which the USSR put in a lot of lighthouses and other remote places that needed power (with poor documentation, so nobody knows where all these things are anymore). They take a radioactive source (preferably a pure-alpha emitter, since they're easy to sheild, but theoretically any radiation will work) then use the Seeback effect to generate electricity.
What it sounds like they're doing in this article is having an actual nuclear reactor with fissionable material, rather than just generating power off of radiation. They seal it up, bury it, and don't expect to have to do any maintenance for 10 years or so. The fuel source is unsuitable for weapons (it could, of course, make a dirty bomb, but those are more about fear mongering than an actual threat), and has the same self-regulating properties as a pebble bed, where fission simply stops if it gets too hot. At $30 million each, I could easily see these getting bought by medium-sized municipalities to cover their energy needs, though it's a bit much for the totally decentralized grid that the article talks about.
What I found odd in this story is that the DoD's space budget is $22B. NASA requested a $17.6B budget for FY2009. WTF? Does the DoD even do anything past LEO/polar orbits?
Putting the opposite charge through a diode junction tends to make them explode. Or as some like to say, "any diode can be light emitting once".
And GPS drops out from time to time. What's the state going to do to people who "accidentily" build a faraday cage around the antenna?
I'd kill just to see better indy development for the PS3. All the best ones are going to the 360.
Lackluster online play for the PS3 is made up for by the fact that it appeals less to the teenage crowd who love the scream obscenities over the microphone because mom isn't listening at the moment. Not that the PS3 is completely devoid of teen angst, just has less of it.
Just cite Snow Crash as prior art. Or even Neuromancer.