Also, $99 for this Moby Tablet? Yeah, right. Maybe the bill of materials is $99, but I doubt even that. This thing stinks badly of being vaporware.
You clearly have no idea how much profit is made on this stuff.
In China, some companies sell full ATX motherboards retail for 199-299 yuan. That's about $35 USD. That includes assembly and parts costs, plus profit for the manufacturer and store/outlet.
The most expensive parts of this tablet would be the screen and shipping costs.
It's doable. Their profit won't be huge, but if they wanted to flood the market, they could. Marvell seems to have stuck to their word for the Sheevaplug, so maybe they'll manage it this time, too. They certainly have the capacity to do so. Often you can find Sheevaplug based plugs on sale for $59-$69 - or $99, but with way more features, like Wifi/eSata.
Marvell said they'd release the Sheevaplug for $99, and they did. Occasionally one even comes on sale for $59.99/$69.99. With the capacity they can pump out, I suspect they'll reach their goal.
spend a fraction of the military budget on protecting our airliners and ports
You know, if they axed all the new plane security, and just relied on fighters that actually shoot planes down, you'd save billions and billions of dollars. (How much did all this new security cost, anyway?) Certainly enough to cover the lawsuits from the occasional plane that gets vaporized - and you'd have the benefit that millions of people wouldn't be inconvenienced.
But like all good ideas, fear and the media won't allow that.
Do you remember how the red cross got criticized for having such a huge donation buffer, so that they always had enough for the next disaster? Politicians and the media sure took care of that. I'm sure Chile thanks them!
It still borks them unless you clear your cookies and change your IP.
Go ahead. Try it. Post, then refresh the page - your mods will be gone. If it's a really popular post, someone else may have modded it above +5, but for some score 2 post that only you bumped up, your mod will disappear.
You seem to be mixing up your tenses. I'm pretty sure IE9 isn't available now. Firefox 3.7 alpha is, though. You can go download it if you want to check it out.
So IE9 may catch up to Firefox, but for now Firefox beats IE's javascript performance.
You're thinking of IE6. PNG images with alpha channels got mucked up slightly. It was never a problem for me, because I reduced my PNG images to 8bit colour and set one colour to be transparent. (aka, the same way GIF works)
Hey, I take hours building my home PCs - and I enjoy every moment of it. Nothing wrong with that.
It does take an annoyingly long time to get that default thermal gunk off the heatsink, and replace it with your own. Looks like they skipped over that entirely.
Without trying, I'd probably do the same stuff this guy did in ~5 minutes. From scratch assembly in 10 mins would be more impressive to me, but I'd probably still do it in 1 or 2 hours, just so I can drool over each and every part as I assemble my new beast.:)
I'd like to see them assemble a gaming PC instead - but weight quality as well as speed.
Aftermarket heatsink - clean that default gunk!
Aftermarket GPU heatsinks - use isopropyl or eraser first or they may fall off!
Proper cable management - it keeps a lot of dust from settling!
Heh, seems like only indy game companies get it right. About a year back I bought Defense Grid (TD) on Steam. Played through it - definitely worth the $5 I paid. A few days ago I fired it up again, and what do I find? More levels, and more game modes. The company just keeps on giving!
I guess what it comes down to is, indy game companies want to do a good job and provide a fun game, while building up their name. Big game studios want your money, and want to figure out ways to get your money. Both sorts of companies seem to be reaching their goals.
Where does this idea of the peaceful alien come from? There has never been mutual cooperation between civilizations or species competing for the same resources. Among civilizations, it has always resulted in destruction or subjugation of the less technologically advanced civilization. We need to be keeping our ears open and our mouths shut.
Right. On Earth.
We base all our assumptions on what we know about 1) Humans and 2) Earth.
As soon as you go into space, that all changes. Or maybe it doesn't. But assuming it doesn't is a flawed way of going about it.
Elephants have demonstrated accurate long term memory, though. I wonder if there's some great intelligence there that's remaining untapped - perhaps limited by their lack of handy appendages.
So, assuming that Flash video is H.264 AVC, we are trading the huge pain in the ass of Flash players for 75% less 'buffering' time that could be spent looking at another tab? Neat!
Some ISPs have bandwidth caps. In many countries - like Australia - bandwidth is precious. We aren't all living in Canada or the US. If I could get decent quality video in 512kbit, I'd go for that.
Personally, I would prefer software that downloaded the film clip, checked it was all there and then let me play it backwards, forwards and pause as I please without hanging the browser or rebuffering the whole thing again. But this is probably just crazy talk.
It's not as critical at high bitrates. But under a certain amount of bits, H.264 preserves quality far better than its competition. If you encoded 480p video at 512kbit, you'd see a massive difference.
Yeah let's unload everything to the graphics card and have that slow down to a crawl instead of having a decent and light implementation.
Graphics cards won't slow down. Even a crummy IGP like the GF9400 or HD4200 can accelerate 1080p video. Any dedicated card will be magnitudes faster.
Next thing you'll know there are virus scanners (those Windows proprietary commercial crap apps) 'designed for' 4 teraflop/s systems. Give me a fscking break...
Some vaccines don't seem to work, though. I've been vaccinated for a lot, but I skipped the H1N1 vaccine. Personal observation says I made the right call in this case.
I don't believe they're deliberately nefarious. Just that the companies making them think they know more than they really do, and fail to account for how things combine or affect other things.
Doctors and drug companies like to examine things sequentially rather than in parallel. High blood pressure -> X drug. X drug causes kidney or liver failure over time, due to sapping important minerals from your body. But rather than provide strengthening supplements, your doctor waits 3 years, and then treats the failing liver with another drug, which causes bone density loss.
It's not nefarious. It's just lack of knowledge. There's too much info for people to know it all. I look forward to the day our doctors are replaced by computer databases, which never forget things, and can be kept up to date with new research.
50? Really, 50? That can't be good for anyone of them. Market fragmentation leads to incompatible devices, applications, etc.
50 isn't much. Last year several thousand models of laptop/netbook came out. More choice doesn't seem to have hurt anybody there.
I mean hell, Acer had almost 20 different models of Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbooks - that I know of. Small SSD, bigger SSD, 512MB/1024MB RAM, 80GB/120GB/160GB HDD, big/small battery, etc. etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone reading this page should be able to bypass DRM on an ebook rather easily.
What eBook? Amazon deleted it off your Kindle while you were asleep. License terminated. DRM servers shutdown. End of story.
Also, $99 for this Moby Tablet? Yeah, right. Maybe the bill of materials is $99, but I doubt even that. This thing stinks badly of being vaporware.
You clearly have no idea how much profit is made on this stuff.
In China, some companies sell full ATX motherboards retail for 199-299 yuan. That's about $35 USD. That includes assembly and parts costs, plus profit for the manufacturer and store/outlet.
The most expensive parts of this tablet would be the screen and shipping costs.
It's doable. Their profit won't be huge, but if they wanted to flood the market, they could. Marvell seems to have stuck to their word for the Sheevaplug, so maybe they'll manage it this time, too. They certainly have the capacity to do so. Often you can find Sheevaplug based plugs on sale for $59-$69 - or $99, but with way more features, like Wifi/eSata.
Oh, here's one: http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-32-guruplug-server-plus.aspx
Gigabit ethernet. It could act as a router. ;)
Marvell said they'd release the Sheevaplug for $99, and they did. Occasionally one even comes on sale for $59.99/$69.99. With the capacity they can pump out, I suspect they'll reach their goal.
spend a fraction of the military budget on protecting our airliners and ports
You know, if they axed all the new plane security, and just relied on fighters that actually shoot planes down, you'd save billions and billions of dollars. (How much did all this new security cost, anyway?) Certainly enough to cover the lawsuits from the occasional plane that gets vaporized - and you'd have the benefit that millions of people wouldn't be inconvenienced.
But like all good ideas, fear and the media won't allow that.
Do you remember how the red cross got criticized for having such a huge donation buffer, so that they always had enough for the next disaster? Politicians and the media sure took care of that. I'm sure Chile thanks them!
It still borks them unless you clear your cookies and change your IP.
Go ahead. Try it. Post, then refresh the page - your mods will be gone. If it's a really popular post, someone else may have modded it above +5, but for some score 2 post that only you bumped up, your mod will disappear.
Yes, and crows use cars to crack open nuts. Lots of animals use tools - but do they build them?
Without the ability to build them, your options for manipulating your environment are rather limited.
Oblivion had terrible voice acting.
Not because it was bad. Just because every second character you meet has the same voice.
And the best voice actor (Jean Luc Picard!?) was only used briefly for the King that dies 5 minutes in.
You seem to be mixing up your tenses. I'm pretty sure IE9 isn't available now. Firefox 3.7 alpha is, though. You can go download it if you want to check it out.
So IE9 may catch up to Firefox, but for now Firefox beats IE's javascript performance.
Firefox's market share will plummet without an h.264 solution.
Now that's just fear mongering. After all, we still have flash - which is installed on ~97% of desktops, right? ;)
You're thinking of IE6. PNG images with alpha channels got mucked up slightly. It was never a problem for me, because I reduced my PNG images to 8bit colour and set one colour to be transparent. (aka, the same way GIF works)
I thought the pun made it clear. And the plural form.
If you can demonstrate an elephant using its trunk to create fire or build a tool of some sort, I'll concede to your point.
Until then...
Yep, TF2 is definitely the best $10 game I ever bought. I've gotten a lot of fun out of that game!
If you take an hour like I do, static discharge doesn't seem to matter. ;)
But if you take an hour, I doubt you're fumbling anything. That's plenty of time to be careful, and complete the job without any hand cuts to boot.
Hey, I take hours building my home PCs - and I enjoy every moment of it. Nothing wrong with that.
It does take an annoyingly long time to get that default thermal gunk off the heatsink, and replace it with your own. Looks like they skipped over that entirely.
Without trying, I'd probably do the same stuff this guy did in ~5 minutes. From scratch assembly in 10 mins would be more impressive to me, but I'd probably still do it in 1 or 2 hours, just so I can drool over each and every part as I assemble my new beast. :)
I'd like to see them assemble a gaming PC instead - but weight quality as well as speed.
Heh, seems like only indy game companies get it right. About a year back I bought Defense Grid (TD) on Steam. Played through it - definitely worth the $5 I paid. A few days ago I fired it up again, and what do I find? More levels, and more game modes. The company just keeps on giving!
I guess what it comes down to is, indy game companies want to do a good job and provide a fun game, while building up their name. Big game studios want your money, and want to figure out ways to get your money. Both sorts of companies seem to be reaching their goals.
Unfortunately, your post has a pitfall also covered in your post:
At first the idea of slaves but robots can do the job cheaper and faster.
Sufficiently advanced robots would make better soldiers than us.
Where does this idea of the peaceful alien come from? There has never been mutual cooperation between civilizations or species competing for the same resources. Among civilizations, it has always resulted in destruction or subjugation of the less technologically advanced civilization. We need to be keeping our ears open and our mouths shut.
Right. On Earth.
We base all our assumptions on what we know about 1) Humans and 2) Earth.
As soon as you go into space, that all changes. Or maybe it doesn't. But assuming it doesn't is a flawed way of going about it.
Elephants have demonstrated accurate long term memory, though. I wonder if there's some great intelligence there that's remaining untapped - perhaps limited by their lack of handy appendages.
So, assuming that Flash video is H.264 AVC, we are trading the huge pain in the ass of Flash players for 75% less 'buffering' time that could be spent looking at another tab?
Neat!
Some ISPs have bandwidth caps. In many countries - like Australia - bandwidth is precious. We aren't all living in Canada or the US. If I could get decent quality video in 512kbit, I'd go for that.
Personally, I would prefer software that downloaded the film clip, checked it was all there and then let me play it backwards, forwards and pause as I please without hanging the browser or rebuffering the whole thing again. But this is probably just crazy talk.
Me too.
I tried it too. It plays great in Chrome.
But Firefox is another story. It plays great until I maximize it - then it stutters like crazy, on my 3.5ghz Phenom II X4.
720p? Why is it in a dinky little box, then?
That said, I love the UI. Very professional looking.
Also, I figured I'd toss this link out for comparison/interest: http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody
It's not as critical at high bitrates. But under a certain amount of bits, H.264 preserves quality far better than its competition. If you encoded 480p video at 512kbit, you'd see a massive difference.
Yeah let's unload everything to the graphics card and have that slow down to a crawl instead of having a decent and light implementation.
Graphics cards won't slow down. Even a crummy IGP like the GF9400 or HD4200 can accelerate 1080p video. Any dedicated card will be magnitudes faster.
Next thing you'll know there are virus scanners (those Windows proprietary commercial crap apps) 'designed for' 4 teraflop/s systems. Give me a fscking break...
This will happen regardless. :P
Some vaccines don't seem to work, though. I've been vaccinated for a lot, but I skipped the H1N1 vaccine. Personal observation says I made the right call in this case.
I don't believe they're deliberately nefarious. Just that the companies making them think they know more than they really do, and fail to account for how things combine or affect other things.
Doctors and drug companies like to examine things sequentially rather than in parallel. High blood pressure -> X drug. X drug causes kidney or liver failure over time, due to sapping important minerals from your body. But rather than provide strengthening supplements, your doctor waits 3 years, and then treats the failing liver with another drug, which causes bone density loss.
It's not nefarious. It's just lack of knowledge. There's too much info for people to know it all. I look forward to the day our doctors are replaced by computer databases, which never forget things, and can be kept up to date with new research.
50? Really, 50? That can't be good for anyone of them. Market fragmentation leads to incompatible devices, applications, etc.
50 isn't much. Last year several thousand models of laptop/netbook came out. More choice doesn't seem to have hurt anybody there.
I mean hell, Acer had almost 20 different models of Acer Aspire One 8.9" netbooks - that I know of. Small SSD, bigger SSD, 512MB/1024MB RAM, 80GB/120GB/160GB HDD, big/small battery, etc. etc.
I'm Canadian. I pay for 3mbit/640kbit ADSL. I get 2.6mbit/460kbit. Not too bad, considering where I live.
I would participate in something like this if it came to Canada. I know out east a lot of people were paying Bell for 25mbit and getting ~1.5mbit.