Should have addressed this one in the post above.... oh well
> Shouldn't they be working on the budget instead of killing time with small-fry legislation that goes nowhere?
Why? The House has already passed HR1 to do what the Democrats couldn't, pass a budget. Since that went nowhere in the Senate they have passed an increasingly more serious series of CRs with cuts. The House is already moving on to the 2012 budget in a timely manner and will almost certainly pass one in plenty of time for the retards in the Senate to do nothing for months and months.
The House Republicans have already kept their campaign promise and repealed ObamaCare. It died in the Senate.
> It's a good thing, then, that a House Resolution, by itself, also has "no force or effect".
By itself no, but if the Senate signs on it is over for Network Neutrality by virtue of Congress having the power to nullify regulations. Because the Executive Branch can't make laws. And they already tried to get Congress to pass Network Neutrality and they shot it down. Then the FCC tried to do it anyway and the courts shot them down on the grounds they lacked authority without a law from Congress. So Omaba's thugs just ignored all that and did it yet again. So now Congress will yet again say NO. Eventually one side will have to back down but apparently barring Congress defunding the whole FCC they will eventually get their way.
Forget the pros and cons of network neutrality, everyone should be coming together to support the Rule of Law. If you want the laws changed bug your Congresscritter.
> It literally would have been trivial to have a generator, or a series of generators delivered within the first twelve hours.
Or for that matter just airdrop complete self powered pumps and hook those up. Before the area became a radioactive hell on earth just how hard could it have been to drop in a pump, hook it up to the inlet and let it rip. Hell, in the DAYS that elapsed with no water in those reactors we could have flown a single pump from New Orleans that could have put enough water into those things to blow the fracking tops off the steel containment vessels and created geysers a thousand feet high over all four of those damned reactors. And it is a veritable certainly that somewhere in Japan existed an equally powerful pump or three. The investigations and recriminations over this pooch screw is going to go on for decades.
> Sometimes you only can get people to listen to you by disagreeing "arrogantly".
That might help, but what would really help is if more of the people who DO know the basics of the science behind this problem would stop stirring the panic. Stay calm, tell anyone who asks the truth and lead by example. But no, people who know better are out spreading FUD for the most base of political motives. Federation of Concerned (troll) Scientists anyone? They certainly know better but can't keep their goddamned faces off the boob tube spreading DOOM! The risk to North America from pretty much anything that happens in Japan is so close to zero it isn't worth discussing. The risk to HI is almost as low. Wouldn't know that from watching CNN.
> The politicians should definately tell them to STFU, nothing gets in the way of a good democracy like voters always yappin'
Yes it is time to tell a small but noisy bunch of socialists (scratch a green, find a red. Not every time but often enough, and the odds grow the higher ranking the green is) to STFU until they come up with a solution instead of mindlessly objecting to every single energy source. And until they are willing to lead by example, other than the admirable way they have at least given up on procreating more of their stupid kind. Give up the cars, planes, mansions and such. And no, driving a hybrid doesn't make it all right, ain't one yet that is net positive. Same for putting up solar panels subsidized by the taxes of people poorer than the sanctimionious pricks installing them.
Pick an energy source that actually works and doesn't cause side effects. Now promise you won't start bitchin as soon as it actually starts providing a non-trivial percentage of the national energy supply.
Oil? Oh the horror.... unless we are paying Petrobras to drill so we can import from them, then it must be ok.
Natural gas? Nope. Coal? Ick, dirty... except this mythical 'clean coal' that will never be viable.
Hydroelectric? Nope, harms fish.
Geothermal? Causes earthquakes.
Solar? Not even in the desert is it ok to deploy on a commercial scale. Great for preening greens to put on their roofs though, just as long as it isn't economically viable it is ok. And we won't worry about the ecological problems from producing photovoltaic cells until it goes into commercial production.
Biofuels? Hello, converting commercially significant amounts of farmland is causing food shortages already and we aren't even getting much of our fuel from it yet. The Four Horsemen will ride long before we got off dead dinosaurs.
Nukes? Please, you guys have been hatin on that since forever, mostly with FUD.
Wind? Not anywhere greens can actually see the windmills... which happen to be where the energy tends to be needed, so until we can get better transport of electricity it is a problem, and the cost/benefit still blows. (ok, that was horrible)
Tidal energy will almost certainly kill some rare fish in 100% of proposed locations.
> This is all just a minor accident that could have been avoided if it weren't for the hippies who won't let us > build completely safe reactors to replace the existing completely safe reactors. Right? RIGHT?
Pretty much. The failed reactors in Japan are 1st generation productsthat were stressed far beyond their design limits. But note that while the poo is still flying around in the ventilition system, to date nobody has died from the reactors vs the thousands who the earthquake and floods snuffed out before their time.
Look around at other 1st generation products compared to more refined designs. The whole design process is about the safe generation of electric power, don't you think modern designs are safer and more efficient in much the same way damned near everything is faster, cheaper, safer, better, etc? Except we still have 1st generation reactors in service forty f*cking years after commissioning because the greens are standing in their high chairs banging their spoons and throwing their cereal around the room. And more importantly because politicians lack the balls to tell you morons to STFU.
So tell me, if we shut down our reactors over here where do we replace 20% of our generation capacity? Looked at the safety of coal lately? Just the radiation from coal kills more people annually than have died from nuke plants to date. Natural gas is pretty good and we would be able to get enough if you f*cking idiots would permit drilling, but it still kills more people than nukes. So stop bitching and say something constructive for a change; what is your solution?
> Live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone for 20 years...
Except of course nobody lives in the exclusion zone. Which is why there are no pile of dead bodies. Yes the worst case scenario (to date) rendered quite a few square miles uninhabitable for generations but we hopefully learned something from that incident. In Japan they had a lot more go wrong than human stupidity and there still aren't any bodies. It isn't over yet though and things still keep going wrong for em so it is a bit early to say there won't be any.
There just aren't any methods of obtaining large amounts of useful energy that don't involve risk of some sort, almost all of which have proven themselves more dangerous than a modern fission reactor. And the Green solution of giving up on Western Civilization as too dangerous to the Earth isn't a solution either unless we want to murder 90% of the current human population first because low energy means famine with our current population and since sane people won't just walk into the gas chambers war will come before famine and there are damned sure going to be environmental consequences from that.
> it's a no brainer to write an app using.Net/C#/MVC. I've done it at work many times.
> It works great assuming you can manage all the crap that comes along with Windows.
You don't see the contradiction between these two sentences. This is why you fail.
You have enough clue to know Windows is a failed technology but lack the longterm thinking that would stop you from dumping new business functions onto it. So how will your company ever be rid of it? If not the desktops, at least on the server end? You represent the sort of uninspired staffing decision that separates middle of the pack companies from the winners who will eventually buy your company out. And probably rightsize you.
Sorry if that sounds harsh, but we are heading from a rough economy into an impending disaster and only the clever monkeys are going to survive the next decade. Put yer thinking cap on now and start trying to prepare.
> Dont DISS.Net people, PHP or even anything can be as bad. Its just that linux stuff is so > obscure only smart geeks use it at home at the age of 12.
Which is kinda the point now isn't it? The really smart geeks know Linux not because they were taught it in school, but because they taught themselves beforehand..NET people tend to learn it in school or from some goddamned "learn [foo] in 24 hours" book right before they try to pass themselves off as competent to get a job. In a startup environment it is pretty obvious which person you want to hire. Which was precisely the point the article was making.
> Personally, I thought it was obvious that manufacturers did not understand the netbook > market when they started selling "netbooks" for more than $300.
They understand. They fear it. It means consumer electronics margins vs computer margins. So they welcomed Microsoft's offer of XP really cheap. That made them small low end notenooks instead of netbooks (netbook = small inexpensive net centric device). As PCs they lost the flash drives for the ubiquitious 160GB hard drive (XP netbook license limit) and now 250GB (Win7 netbook license limit). Since Windows XP sucked on 8.9" displays 10" became the norm with almost full size keyboards.
I'd love to see someone, hell ANYONE, reintroduce a real netbook. Return to flash and a reduced form factor, under one KG, at least eight hours of battery life (50% brightness, light CPU and WiFi) and this time ship Ubuntu on ARM for $250. If any volume at all could be generated there should even be fairly thick margins at $250.
> A device with a touch screen, SSD, longer battery life, and less weight costs more than > one with a standard LCD, hard drive, and more weight/less battery life? I'm shocked, shocked!
Compare and contrast.
Netbook vs tablet differences in bill of materials:
Compare a 10" netbook. It has a basic LCD about the same size as most popular tablets but the good tablets have a capacitive touchscreen. The good tablets also have LCDs which are viewable in both portrait and landscape mode, usually meaning an IPS panel. So the netbook has the cost advantage here, no doubt.
A Netbook has an expensive Intel or AMD processor, chipset, GPU and Wifi chipsets. Most tablets are an ARM SoC solution. Hint, if you are paying as much for an ARM as Intel charges you are doing it wrong. The big selling points of ARM are low cost, high integration and low power. Big cost advantage to the tablets.
Battery. Netbooks have big ass Li-ion batteries to drive the hungry x86 processor. Tablets use cheaper li-po batteries with lower Watt/Hour ratings. Cost advantage tablet.
Netbooks have a keyboard and pointer in a hinged clamshell case. Tablets are just a slab. Cost advantage tablet.
Netbooks have hard drives these days. Tablets have fairly small flash based storage. At current prices it is probably a wash. But it does give a power advantage to the tablets which can show as as longer run time or savings in battery capacity.
Netbooks pay the Microsoft Tax. Tablets use Android for next to no expense unless the vendor invests in a (usually crappy) custom interface. Advantage tablet. (Forgetting the Apple case here, no way to estimate the cost of the software apart from the hardware.)
Good tablets get motion, tilt and light sensors which add cost. Advantage netbook.
Current tablets have better cameras than netbooks. Advantage netbook.
Current low end but name brand netbooks retail price at $275-$350. Name brand tablets start at $399 and go to $799. Point to any of the bill of materials differences above that explain such a price gap. They are charging those prices because they are selling what they are making at those prices. But it won't last.
An illuminated keyboard is one way to deal with the probem. Thinkpads have the ThinkLight. It works nicely, shining down on a black keyboard and case about all you see are the keycaps.
Here is a hint. The cable company doesn't give you porno tv by default, why? Because a) they can upsell on it and b) fundies wouldn't subscribe if porn was basic cable. Explain why both of those arguments won't apply when the same cable company sells Internet. Longstanding tradition will make upselling access to porn hard for awhile but a few fundie groups will make the quite reasonable argument that since a blocked by default on.xxx doesn't involve the company paying huge fees for a filtering solution that it should be ON by default and it will happen. And then turning it off will quickly become a fee bearing service change.
Should have put all this energy into arguing for a.kids domain. More legit benefits if the goal is keeping kids out of the filth and less downside to everyone else.
You have not been paying attention..xxx isn't the beginning. A dozen existing but mostly ignored tlds are intended as classification domains. doesn't matter long term though. Just wait, sooner or later the morons win and they get what the marketing drones have wanted and this problem goes away. Because they have a dream... they want their AOL keywords back. Sooner or later, everything in the root domain.
Be careful what you wish for. I have been warning in every/. thread on this subject and will say it one last time now that it is a done deal. Watch how fast.xxx is blocked by default by ISPs and must be 'opted in' by the customer. Then watch how fast every other domain becomes a Disney Hell because anyone posting objectionable content there gets sued for 'endangering the children' since.xxx exists. Refer again to that first prediction. Anything that isn't Disney safe is behind an opt-in wall and there won't be an option to opt-in most places. No cyber-cafes, no hotels, no McDonalds. Few workplaces, no government sites including schools. Libraries already have opt-in because we had to deal with CIPA and the maze of regulations and funding tangled in with it so won't be affected.
> Didn't we do this in the eighties with X-Terminals?
Always wondered why nobody just did an X Server as a browser plugin. Stick to the old 2D X drawing primitives and it is actually fairly fast vs posting bitmaps for everything like modern Qt and GTK does. It is a well known and documented interface and would allow pretty advanced apps.
> It all makes perfect sense now. Thank you for opening my eyes.
It should, you just witnessed a 'green' letting the mask slip. It isn't at all about saving the earth, it is about controlling human behaviour. And from that point of view, and only from that point of view, Dachannien's post makes perfect sense. So long as oil is cheap we won't do what Dachannien & friends wants us to do and anything that gets in the way of that control is seen as bad.
No, those lifetime numbers are probably correct. Hybrids come with long warranties on the hybrid drive because that is part of the subsidy. Price out a battery swap and you will understand. If a hybrid's warranty is expired you won't replace the battery, you will buy a new hybrid and get a new subsidized price. Meanwhile you can routinely run a modern gas engine several hundred thousand miles these days and worst case even drop a new/rebuilt engine under the hood of the Hummer. The Hummer is a well constructed vehicle so it isn't unreasonable to think that barring a crash or other unfortunate event it will be running for a long time.
> Hell, these bottles are going to use an order of magnitude more energy and other resources to produce than the old fashioned kind, so...yay?
Exactly. But Pepsi (and Coke) sell flavored sugar water at around double the price of the store brands so have vast sums for marketing and obscene profits. They can afford to pay more for the bottles if it sells even a little better to the hipsters who already tend to be Pepsi drinkers. I'd bet they even write off the additional expense AS a marketing cost on their tax returns if they can possibly get away with it.
> Yeah, it means job security in the face of shitty pay and very uneven budget situations.
For certain values of shitty. Teachers in Madison WI (focus of the current fight) are pulling down $100K in wages and benefits. Teachers here in my state would kill their mother for that pay and these spoiled children are bitchin' and moaning about having to actually kick in something from their paycheck to their retirement account? Considering the lifetime promise of employement after three years I'd bet over half the slashdot crowd reading this would at least off a hobo or two to get get in on such a sweet deal. And if even FDR says collective bargaining for government workers is a stupid idea why are we even having the argument over getting rid of a bad idea that the unions got rammed through in better times when we could afford to be stupid?
> Due to changes in insurance, teachers make less today than they have in at least 30 years.
They aren't chained to those desks. If they can make more in the private sector they should consider changing jobs. Just like everyone else reevaluates their career path from time to time. But considering an education track at most colleges leaves one barely qualified to be a school teacher they might need to get some real course credits first.
> and if you think gutting the educational system is going to do anything but destroy America's future,
No, I think gutting the current education system is the only hope of saving the next generation. It is broken and probably can't be fixed so drastic measures are called for. Vouchers as a path toward total privatization.
> who has no understanding whatsoever of Keynesian economics.
I understand Keynesian economics. But I think it is wrong at best and wicked at worst.
> The point of tenure is to prevent those who control the purse strings from having control over what the schools teach.
All government employees employment conditions are controlled by the various Civil Service laws which prevent politically motivated hiring and firing. Justify the case where K-12 teachers require additional protection over and beyond those existing protections.
The current reality is that between Civil Service, Tenture and Unions teachers have become a protected class that can't be fired unless convicted of a major felony that imposes jail time such that that simply can't show up for work any more.
What does that matter? They can write whatever they want and the schools will merrily continue doing the same incompetent job they are doing now. And until we end tenure in the K12 system nothing is going to change.
Seriously, since this article has already devolved into 90% offtopic religion and mormon bashing anyway...... Define the word Tenture and then can somebody (anybody?) explain what the hell it has to do with a K-12 teacher? How did the practice ever get established? But with teachers pretty much given lifetime employment there is zero chance of improving the government schools. And with guys like Bill Ayers running the education departments at the influential institutions designing the curriculum tachers are taught the notion of socialism in the schools isn't a worry about the future, it is now. And the all have tenure.
> and indeed most of the oppressive governments in general, were elected democratically.
Yup, One Man, One Vote, One Time. And you are making our point without apparently realizing it. Those oppressive governments were DEMOCRATICALLY elected. Democracy was the problem, the notion that one straight majority vote by a people in dire circumstances could grant Hitler/Lenin/etc the power to totally remake their government. Again, if you believe in DEMOCRACY, what those tyrants did was perfectly legit. Would you like to like in a society like that? Or would you rather live in one where a major change requires a supermajority who are so dead set on making a change that they will jump through the roadblocks set in the way?
> Put it this way: If the USA isn't a democracy, then there is no democracy in the world.
Exactly. Democracies are a stupid form of government that hasn't been tried again since Athens. The US Founders understood that, which is why if you were to have called one of them a Democrat they would have probably called you out to dual over the grave insult. Of course by 1828 we had the Democratic Party so that obviously didn't last long.
Democracy is the idea that if you have 100 people on an island who decide Democracy is the way to go, 51 one can vote to piss in the corn flakes of the remaining 49 and if everyone actually believes in Democracy the losers can challenge the balloting but after the recount they have to chug the piss. If they believe in Democracy they have to accept that as fair and just. We don't have anything like that in the US, we have a Constitution that enshrines inalienable Rights and a Rule of Law that even the majority can't easily infringe. A large enough supermajority can, after the intentional delays and roadblocks built into the system, can of course change the Constitution but the idea is that no momentary madness will last long enough for that to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Should have addressed this one in the post above.... oh well
> Shouldn't they be working on the budget instead of killing time with small-fry legislation that goes nowhere?
Why? The House has already passed HR1 to do what the Democrats couldn't, pass a budget. Since that went nowhere in the Senate they have passed an increasingly more serious series of CRs with cuts. The House is already moving on to the 2012 budget in a timely manner and will almost certainly pass one in plenty of time for the retards in the Senate to do nothing for months and months.
The House Republicans have already kept their campaign promise and repealed ObamaCare. It died in the Senate.
> It's a good thing, then, that a House Resolution, by itself, also has "no force or effect".
By itself no, but if the Senate signs on it is over for Network Neutrality by virtue of Congress having the power to nullify regulations. Because the Executive Branch can't make laws. And they already tried to get Congress to pass Network Neutrality and they shot it down. Then the FCC tried to do it anyway and the courts shot them down on the grounds they lacked authority without a law from Congress. So Omaba's thugs just ignored all that and did it yet again. So now Congress will yet again say NO. Eventually one side will have to back down but apparently barring Congress defunding the whole FCC they will eventually get their way.
Forget the pros and cons of network neutrality, everyone should be coming together to support the Rule of Law. If you want the laws changed bug your Congresscritter.
> It literally would have been trivial to have a generator, or a series of generators delivered within the first twelve hours.
Or for that matter just airdrop complete self powered pumps and hook those up. Before the area became a radioactive hell on earth just how hard could it have been to drop in a pump, hook it up to the inlet and let it rip. Hell, in the DAYS that elapsed with no water in those reactors we could have flown a single pump from New Orleans that could have put enough water into those things to blow the fracking tops off the steel containment vessels and created geysers a thousand feet high over all four of those damned reactors. And it is a veritable certainly that somewhere in Japan existed an equally powerful pump or three. The investigations and recriminations over this pooch screw is going to go on for decades.
> Sometimes you only can get people to listen to you by disagreeing "arrogantly".
That might help, but what would really help is if more of the people who DO know the basics of the science behind this problem would stop stirring the panic. Stay calm, tell anyone who asks the truth and lead by example. But no, people who know better are out spreading FUD for the most base of political motives. Federation of Concerned (troll) Scientists anyone? They certainly know better but can't keep their goddamned faces off the boob tube spreading DOOM! The risk to North America from pretty much anything that happens in Japan is so close to zero it isn't worth discussing. The risk to HI is almost as low. Wouldn't know that from watching CNN.
> The politicians should definately tell them to STFU, nothing gets in the way of a good democracy like voters always yappin'
Yes it is time to tell a small but noisy bunch of socialists (scratch a green, find a red. Not every time but often enough, and the odds grow the higher ranking the green is) to STFU until they come up with a solution instead of mindlessly objecting to every single energy source. And until they are willing to lead by example, other than the admirable way they have at least given up on procreating more of their stupid kind. Give up the cars, planes, mansions and such. And no, driving a hybrid doesn't make it all right, ain't one yet that is net positive. Same for putting up solar panels subsidized by the taxes of people poorer than the sanctimionious pricks installing them.
Pick an energy source that actually works and doesn't cause side effects. Now promise you won't start bitchin as soon as it actually starts providing a non-trivial percentage of the national energy supply.
Oil? Oh the horror.... unless we are paying Petrobras to drill so we can import from them, then it must be ok.
Natural gas? Nope. Coal? Ick, dirty... except this mythical 'clean coal' that will never be viable.
Hydroelectric? Nope, harms fish.
Geothermal? Causes earthquakes.
Solar? Not even in the desert is it ok to deploy on a commercial scale. Great for preening greens to put on their roofs though, just as long as it isn't economically viable it is ok. And we won't worry about the ecological problems from producing photovoltaic cells until it goes into commercial production.
Biofuels? Hello, converting commercially significant amounts of farmland is causing food shortages already and we aren't even getting much of our fuel from it yet. The Four Horsemen will ride long before we got off dead dinosaurs.
Nukes? Please, you guys have been hatin on that since forever, mostly with FUD.
Wind? Not anywhere greens can actually see the windmills... which happen to be where the energy tends to be needed, so until we can get better transport of electricity it is a problem, and the cost/benefit still blows. (ok, that was horrible)
Tidal energy will almost certainly kill some rare fish in 100% of proposed locations.
> This is all just a minor accident that could have been avoided if it weren't for the hippies who won't let us
> build completely safe reactors to replace the existing completely safe reactors. Right? RIGHT?
Pretty much. The failed reactors in Japan are 1st generation productsthat were stressed far beyond their design limits. But note that while the poo is still flying around in the ventilition system, to date nobody has died from the reactors vs the thousands who the earthquake and floods snuffed out before their time.
Look around at other 1st generation products compared to more refined designs. The whole design process is about the safe generation of electric power, don't you think modern designs are safer and more efficient in much the same way damned near everything is faster, cheaper, safer, better, etc? Except we still have 1st generation reactors in service forty f*cking years after commissioning because the greens are standing in their high chairs banging their spoons and throwing their cereal around the room. And more importantly because politicians lack the balls to tell you morons to STFU.
So tell me, if we shut down our reactors over here where do we replace 20% of our generation capacity? Looked at the safety of coal lately? Just the radiation from coal kills more people annually than have died from nuke plants to date. Natural gas is pretty good and we would be able to get enough if you f*cking idiots would permit drilling, but it still kills more people than nukes. So stop bitching and say something constructive for a change; what is your solution?
> Live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone for 20 years...
Except of course nobody lives in the exclusion zone. Which is why there are no pile of dead bodies. Yes the worst case scenario (to date) rendered quite a few square miles uninhabitable for generations but we hopefully learned something from that incident. In Japan they had a lot more go wrong than human stupidity and there still aren't any bodies. It isn't over yet though and things still keep going wrong for em so it is a bit early to say there won't be any.
There just aren't any methods of obtaining large amounts of useful energy that don't involve risk of some sort, almost all of which have proven themselves more dangerous than a modern fission reactor. And the Green solution of giving up on Western Civilization as too dangerous to the Earth isn't a solution either unless we want to murder 90% of the current human population first because low energy means famine with our current population and since sane people won't just walk into the gas chambers war will come before famine and there are damned sure going to be environmental consequences from that.
> it's a no brainer to write an app using .Net/C#/MVC. I've done it at work many times.
> It works great assuming you can manage all the crap that comes along with Windows.
You don't see the contradiction between these two sentences. This is why you fail.
You have enough clue to know Windows is a failed technology but lack the longterm thinking that would stop you from dumping new business functions onto it. So how will your company ever be rid of it? If not the desktops, at least on the server end? You represent the sort of uninspired staffing decision that separates middle of the pack companies from the winners who will eventually buy your company out. And probably rightsize you.
Sorry if that sounds harsh, but we are heading from a rough economy into an impending disaster and only the clever monkeys are going to survive the next decade. Put yer thinking cap on now and start trying to prepare.
> Dont DISS .Net people, PHP or even anything can be as bad. Its just that linux stuff is so
> obscure only smart geeks use it at home at the age of 12.
Which is kinda the point now isn't it? The really smart geeks know Linux not because they were taught it in school, but because they taught themselves beforehand. .NET people tend to learn it in school or from some goddamned "learn [foo] in 24 hours" book right before they try to pass themselves off as competent to get a job. In a startup environment it is pretty obvious which person you want to hire. Which was precisely the point the article was making.
> Personally, I thought it was obvious that manufacturers did not understand the netbook
> market when they started selling "netbooks" for more than $300.
They understand. They fear it. It means consumer electronics margins vs computer margins. So they welcomed Microsoft's offer of XP really cheap. That made them small low end notenooks instead of netbooks (netbook = small inexpensive net centric device). As PCs they lost the flash drives for the ubiquitious 160GB hard drive (XP netbook license limit) and now 250GB (Win7 netbook license limit). Since Windows XP sucked on 8.9" displays 10" became the norm with almost full size keyboards.
I'd love to see someone, hell ANYONE, reintroduce a real netbook. Return to flash and a reduced form factor, under one KG, at least eight hours of battery life (50% brightness, light CPU and WiFi) and this time ship Ubuntu on ARM for $250. If any volume at all could be generated there should even be fairly thick margins at $250.
> A device with a touch screen, SSD, longer battery life, and less weight costs more than
> one with a standard LCD, hard drive, and more weight/less battery life? I'm shocked, shocked!
Compare and contrast.
Netbook vs tablet differences in bill of materials:
Compare a 10" netbook. It has a basic LCD about the same size as most popular tablets but the good tablets have a capacitive touchscreen. The good tablets also have LCDs which are viewable in both portrait and landscape mode, usually meaning an IPS panel. So the netbook has the cost advantage here, no doubt.
A Netbook has an expensive Intel or AMD processor, chipset, GPU and Wifi chipsets. Most tablets are an ARM SoC solution. Hint, if you are paying as much for an ARM as Intel charges you are doing it wrong. The big selling points of ARM are low cost, high integration and low power. Big cost advantage to the tablets.
Battery. Netbooks have big ass Li-ion batteries to drive the hungry x86 processor. Tablets use cheaper li-po batteries with lower Watt/Hour ratings. Cost advantage tablet.
Netbooks have a keyboard and pointer in a hinged clamshell case. Tablets are just a slab. Cost advantage tablet.
Netbooks have hard drives these days. Tablets have fairly small flash based storage. At current prices it is probably a wash. But it does give a power advantage to the tablets which can show as as longer run time or savings in battery capacity.
Netbooks pay the Microsoft Tax. Tablets use Android for next to no expense unless the vendor invests in a (usually crappy) custom interface. Advantage tablet. (Forgetting the Apple case here, no way to estimate the cost of the software apart from the hardware.)
Good tablets get motion, tilt and light sensors which add cost. Advantage netbook.
Current tablets have better cameras than netbooks. Advantage netbook.
Current low end but name brand netbooks retail price at $275-$350. Name brand tablets start at $399 and go to $799. Point to any of the bill of materials differences above that explain such a price gap. They are charging those prices because they are selling what they are making at those prices. But it won't last.
An illuminated keyboard is one way to deal with the probem. Thinkpads have the ThinkLight. It works nicely, shining down on a black keyboard and case about all you see are the keycaps.
Screw the racism, be bold enough to identify the common thread. Lifetime welfare clients. i.e. the Democratic Party's real base.
Here is a hint. The cable company doesn't give you porno tv by default, why? Because a) they can upsell on it and b) fundies wouldn't subscribe if porn was basic cable. Explain why both of those arguments won't apply when the same cable company sells Internet. Longstanding tradition will make upselling access to porn hard for awhile but a few fundie groups will make the quite reasonable argument that since a blocked by default on .xxx doesn't involve the company paying huge fees for a filtering solution that it should be ON by default and it will happen. And then turning it off will quickly become a fee bearing service change.
Should have put all this energy into arguing for a .kids domain. More legit benefits if the goal is keeping kids out of the filth and less downside to everyone else.
You have not been paying attention. .xxx isn't the beginning. A dozen existing but mostly ignored tlds are intended as classification domains. doesn't matter long term though. Just wait, sooner or later the morons win and they get what the marketing drones have wanted and this problem goes away. Because they have a dream... they want their AOL keywords back. Sooner or later, everything in the root domain.
Be careful what you wish for. I have been warning in every /. thread on this subject and will say it one last time now that it is a done deal. Watch how fast .xxx is blocked by default by ISPs and must be 'opted in' by the customer. Then watch how fast every other domain becomes a Disney Hell because anyone posting objectionable content there gets sued for 'endangering the children' since .xxx exists. Refer again to that first prediction. Anything that isn't Disney safe is behind an opt-in wall and there won't be an option to opt-in most places. No cyber-cafes, no hotels, no McDonalds. Few workplaces, no government sites including schools. Libraries already have opt-in because we had to deal with CIPA and the maze of regulations and funding tangled in with it so won't be affected.
> Didn't we do this in the eighties with X-Terminals?
Always wondered why nobody just did an X Server as a browser plugin. Stick to the old 2D X drawing primitives and it is actually fairly fast vs posting bitmaps for everything like modern Qt and GTK does. It is a well known and documented interface and would allow pretty advanced apps.
> It all makes perfect sense now. Thank you for opening my eyes.
It should, you just witnessed a 'green' letting the mask slip. It isn't at all about saving the earth, it is about controlling human behaviour. And from that point of view, and only from that point of view, Dachannien's post makes perfect sense. So long as oil is cheap we won't do what Dachannien & friends wants us to do and anything that gets in the way of that control is seen as bad.
No, those lifetime numbers are probably correct. Hybrids come with long warranties on the hybrid drive because that is part of the subsidy. Price out a battery swap and you will understand. If a hybrid's warranty is expired you won't replace the battery, you will buy a new hybrid and get a new subsidized price. Meanwhile you can routinely run a modern gas engine several hundred thousand miles these days and worst case even drop a new/rebuilt engine under the hood of the Hummer. The Hummer is a well constructed vehicle so it isn't unreasonable to think that barring a crash or other unfortunate event it will be running for a long time.
> Hell, these bottles are going to use an order of magnitude more energy and other resources to produce than the old fashioned kind, so...yay?
Exactly. But Pepsi (and Coke) sell flavored sugar water at around double the price of the store brands so have vast sums for marketing and obscene profits. They can afford to pay more for the bottles if it sells even a little better to the hipsters who already tend to be Pepsi drinkers. I'd bet they even write off the additional expense AS a marketing cost on their tax returns if they can possibly get away with it.
> Yeah, it means job security in the face of shitty pay and very uneven budget situations.
For certain values of shitty. Teachers in Madison WI (focus of the current fight) are pulling down $100K in wages and benefits. Teachers here in my state would kill their mother for that pay and these spoiled children are bitchin' and moaning about having to actually kick in something from their paycheck to their retirement account? Considering the lifetime promise of employement after three years I'd bet over half the slashdot crowd reading this would at least off a hobo or two to get get in on such a sweet deal. And if even FDR says collective bargaining for government workers is a stupid idea why are we even having the argument over getting rid of a bad idea that the unions got rammed through in better times when we could afford to be stupid?
> Due to changes in insurance, teachers make less today than they have in at least 30 years.
They aren't chained to those desks. If they can make more in the private sector they should consider changing jobs. Just like everyone else reevaluates their career path from time to time. But considering an education track at most colleges leaves one barely qualified to be a school teacher they might need to get some real course credits first.
> and if you think gutting the educational system is going to do anything but destroy America's future,
No, I think gutting the current education system is the only hope of saving the next generation. It is broken and probably can't be fixed so drastic measures are called for. Vouchers as a path toward total privatization.
> who has no understanding whatsoever of Keynesian economics.
I understand Keynesian economics. But I think it is wrong at best and wicked at worst.
> The point of tenure is to prevent those who control the purse strings from having control over what the schools teach.
All government employees employment conditions are controlled by the various Civil Service laws which prevent politically motivated hiring and firing. Justify the case where K-12 teachers require additional protection over and beyond those existing protections.
The current reality is that between Civil Service, Tenture and Unions teachers have become a protected class that can't be fired unless convicted of a major felony that imposes jail time such that that simply can't show up for work any more.
> Oh, and the grandparent didn't RTFA:
What does that matter? They can write whatever they want and the schools will merrily continue doing the same incompetent job they are doing now. And until we end tenure in the K12 system nothing is going to change.
Seriously, since this article has already devolved into 90% offtopic religion and mormon bashing anyway...... Define the word Tenture and then can somebody (anybody?) explain what the hell it has to do with a K-12 teacher? How did the practice ever get established? But with teachers pretty much given lifetime employment there is zero chance of improving the government schools. And with guys like Bill Ayers running the education departments at the influential institutions designing the curriculum tachers are taught the notion of socialism in the schools isn't a worry about the future, it is now. And the all have tenure.
> and indeed most of the oppressive governments in general, were elected democratically.
Yup, One Man, One Vote, One Time. And you are making our point without apparently realizing it. Those oppressive governments were DEMOCRATICALLY elected. Democracy was the problem, the notion that one straight majority vote by a people in dire circumstances could grant Hitler/Lenin/etc the power to totally remake their government. Again, if you believe in DEMOCRACY, what those tyrants did was perfectly legit. Would you like to like in a society like that? Or would you rather live in one where a major change requires a supermajority who are so dead set on making a change that they will jump through the roadblocks set in the way?
> Put it this way: If the USA isn't a democracy, then there is no democracy in the world.
Exactly. Democracies are a stupid form of government that hasn't been tried again since Athens. The US Founders understood that, which is why if you were to have called one of them a Democrat they would have probably called you out to dual over the grave insult. Of course by 1828 we had the Democratic Party so that obviously didn't last long.
Democracy is the idea that if you have 100 people on an island who decide Democracy is the way to go, 51 one can vote to piss in the corn flakes of the remaining 49 and if everyone actually believes in Democracy the losers can challenge the balloting but after the recount they have to chug the piss. If they believe in Democracy they have to accept that as fair and just. We don't have anything like that in the US, we have a Constitution that enshrines inalienable Rights and a Rule of Law that even the majority can't easily infringe. A large enough supermajority can, after the intentional delays and roadblocks built into the system, can of course change the Constitution but the idea is that no momentary madness will last long enough for that to happen.