Yeah, I think http://www.betterplace.com/ has the better idea. Swapping out a battery in just a few minutes is far superior to waiting 30 minutes for a charge.
Assuming you can trust the new battery you receive. It wouldn't take too many incidents of "I swapped out batteries in Fresno, and 20 minutes later my car stopped working and I had to wait for a tow truck" to lose the public on that idea.
Not saying it can't work, only that they'd better be very scrupulous in their battery QA.
Phones and tablets are consumption devices, period. You need to be productive? get a computer.
Of course today's smart phones have more RAM, CPU, storage, etc, than even the most high-end productivity computers of years past, and people got plenty of work done with those computers. So there is little reason -- in principle -- why a phone/tablet couldn't be useful as a productivity machine -- you'd just need to connect a keyboard, mouse, and (typically) a monitor to it, and presto -- it's a reasonably powerful desktop PC that you can also take with you when you go places.
The only thing that prevents people from actually doing that is mindset -- both the customers' ("write documents using my iPhone? That's silly!") and the manufacturers' ("SVGA and USB connectors for a cell phone? Why would anyone want that?")
I think for the most part the cases are like undercoating or paint sealing on a new car. Overpriced and unnecessary.
Perhaps even counterproductive. I kept my (original) iPhone in a case for the duration, and by the end the iPhone's back-side finish was all scratched up anyway, from rubbing against the case (or more likely, some dirt/dust/something that got between the phone and the case).
Why is everybody dropping their phones? How does this happen?
Partly because people are careless and/or clumsy, but it's mainly because people are constantly pulling out their phones and messing with them.
Back in the day, when cell phones were actually used solely as phones, a person might receive (or make) a call on his cell phone a few times a day. Now that cell phones are essentially portable computers that also happen to make calls, people (myself included) will reflexively pull them out (to check email, Facebook, browse web pages, play games, etc) whenever 30 seconds of otherwise-idle time occurs. That means that people are pulling out (and putting away) their cell phones dozens or even hundreds of times per day. Given so many opportunities to slip up and fumble your phone, eventually the law of statistics will catch up with you. (It hasn't happened to me yet, but that's mostly due to dumb luck, I think)
I [...] started to learn PERL but past basic things [...] but to me it all looked like the streaming code on the Matrix movie, gibberish,
That's Perl all right. If you ever have the time and the inclination, take a look at Python instead; it has the advantage of being readable by human beings.:^)
You buy a phone once a year vs a PC once every 3 years. I would expect 3x more smartphone shipments than PCs.
Around here, a lot of phones come with two-year contracts. Terminating the contract early would be very expensive, so I doubt a lot of those people are buying new phone more than once every two years (unless they are replacing their existing phone because they broke/lost it)
Packet based networks were built on the assumption that losing data was a-ok. Packet drops are how problems are signaled.
This is where AVB comes in. With AVB the data-sender is required to pre-reserve the necessary bandwidth across all switches from one end of the data path to the other, and the switches then make sure that the bandwidth you reserved is available for your packets to use (by holding off non-real-time traffic if necessary). By this method it is guaranteed that (short of hardware failure) no packets from your real-time video feed will be dropped. And if it's hardware failure you're worried about, you can set up a redundant network topography.
AVB does require that all switches along the data path be upgraded to be AVB-aware, of course.
Ideally you'd understand the program's purpose well enough to tell whether the code or the comment is wrong, and/or you'd be able to contact the author of the code (and/or comment) and go over it with them.
Of course that's the ideal case and not always possible in real life, in which case there is no alternative but to grovel over the code until you understand what it does, and if you then decide to make any changes, you have to test the code (both pre-change and post-change versions) to make sure that the behavior has improved and no bugs were introduced.
"The gender gap in presidential preferences has not changed over the last four months, with men preferring Romney over Obama by eight points, while women prefer Obama by an identical margin."
It's curable -- all it takes is making sure that any time the code is changed, the associated comments are updated to match.
Of course, making sure that programmers actually do that is easier said than done, but the way to maximize the likelihood of that happening is to make sure the comments are as close to the code as possible -- preferably on the same line, or right above/below it. Comments that are off-screen (or worse, in a different file) when the code is modified are very unlikely to be updated in a timely manner.
This is one of the problems with robotic missions... these weird, out of the ordinary events. If this had been a robotic mission it would have been Galileo all over again.
Of course, for any location farther away than Earth orbit, the enormous cost of keeping humans alive (and returning them to Earth afterwards) means that robotic missions are orders of magnitude cheaper. Given that, we can finesse the above-described sort of fiasco easily enough by sending multiple robots, so that even if some of them fail, the others can complete the mission.
Regulation isn't there to protect anyone. It's only purpose is to serve as a punitive measure once your found out as having done wrong in accordance with the regulation.
The knowledge that people who break the regulations will be punished is meant to serve as a deterrent to breaking the regulations. In most cases, it does (outside of BitCoin, anyway).
It doesn't matter how much regulation gets put in place, idiots will still be idiots and end up parted from their money.
Less often than they would if there were no regulation, though.
There have always been idiots, there will always be idiots. and as long as there are idiots, you will have crooks that take their money this way.
The above quote is perfectly true, but what it doesn't capture is that the easier it is to scam someone, the more often scams will occur. Crooks, like everyone else, will tend to concentrate their efforts on projects that are more likely to succeed, and avoid projects that are unlikely to succeed.
So the fact that there will always be idiots and crooks doesn't mean it's pointless to try to keep people honest.
Throw in some pixie dust, good intentions, and some first order approximations where the math might work nicely, and magic should be a piece of cake.
Even if all else fails, car makers can always just up their average fleet mileage by selling more electric vehicles. By 2025 I expect batteries will be good and/or cheap enough that they'll be doing that anyway.
Why do people assume that any car that requires power to run must also cause emissions? We already have many counterexamples: fission, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, biomass...
(granted, India may be unlikely to adopt those power sources anytime soon, but that's hardly the car's fault)
Do e-cats exist? After that one (alleged) demonstration, the news has been rather silent on the subject. I thought Mr. Rossi would have rolled out units to many large customers by now, if not to the Home Depot....
Hmm, if the pseudo-neo-Mayans aren't convinced after seeing the sun rise on December 22nd, 2012, I don't think that January 1st, 2013 is going to convince them either.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I think http://www.betterplace.com/ has the better idea. Swapping out a battery in just a few minutes is far superior to waiting 30 minutes for a charge.
Assuming you can trust the new battery you receive. It wouldn't take too many incidents of "I swapped out batteries in Fresno, and 20 minutes later my car stopped working and I had to wait for a tow truck" to lose the public on that idea.
Not saying it can't work, only that they'd better be very scrupulous in their battery QA.
You DO realise that ARC imposes a runtime cost which some other garbage collectors do not? no? thought not.
Can you give some details about ARC's runtime cost? I'm curious about that.
Phones and tablets are consumption devices, period. You need to be productive? get a computer.
Of course today's smart phones have more RAM, CPU, storage, etc, than even the most high-end productivity computers of years past, and people got plenty of work done with those computers. So there is little reason -- in principle -- why a phone/tablet couldn't be useful as a productivity machine -- you'd just need to connect a keyboard, mouse, and (typically) a monitor to it, and presto -- it's a reasonably powerful desktop PC that you can also take with you when you go places.
The only thing that prevents people from actually doing that is mindset -- both the customers' ("write documents using my iPhone? That's silly!") and the manufacturers' ("SVGA and USB connectors for a cell phone? Why would anyone want that?")
I think for the most part the cases are like undercoating or paint sealing on a new car. Overpriced and unnecessary.
Perhaps even counterproductive. I kept my (original) iPhone in a case for the duration, and by the end the iPhone's back-side finish was all scratched up anyway, from rubbing against the case (or more likely, some dirt/dust/something that got between the phone and the case).
Why is everybody dropping their phones? How does this happen?
Partly because people are careless and/or clumsy, but it's mainly because people are constantly pulling out their phones and messing with them.
Back in the day, when cell phones were actually used solely as phones, a person might receive (or make) a call on his cell phone a few times a day. Now that cell phones are essentially portable computers that also happen to make calls, people (myself included) will reflexively pull them out (to check email, Facebook, browse web pages, play games, etc) whenever 30 seconds of otherwise-idle time occurs. That means that people are pulling out (and putting away) their cell phones dozens or even hundreds of times per day. Given so many opportunities to slip up and fumble your phone, eventually the law of statistics will catch up with you. (It hasn't happened to me yet, but that's mostly due to dumb luck, I think)
That's why "the answer" was 42, or didn't you get that?
Sorry, no. 42 was just a throwaway gag, with no hidden deeper meaning intended.
I [...] started to learn PERL but past basic things [...] but to me it all looked like the streaming code on the Matrix movie, gibberish,
That's Perl all right. If you ever have the time and the inclination, take a look at Python instead; it has the advantage of being readable by human beings. :^)
You buy a phone once a year vs a PC once every 3 years. I would expect 3x more smartphone shipments than PCs.
Around here, a lot of phones come with two-year contracts. Terminating the contract early would be very expensive, so I doubt a lot of those people are buying new phone more than once every two years (unless they are replacing their existing phone because they broke/lost it)
The real solution are LFTR reactors.
Unless, of course, they get scooped by LENR reactors.
(Hey, a guy can dream)
You got the last apple of earth on your hand with no means to cultivate... What you do?
Reformat it and install Debian.
What if you run everything in a virtual machine and take a screenshot of the VM window?
Hell, what if you hold your cell phone up to your monitor and snap a photo of the screen, then email the photo to your computer?
The US isn't #1 in *anything* right now except military spending and wealth concentration.
Also obesity.
You Ess Aye! You Ess Aye! You Ess Aye!
So when can I start using my iPad during "all phases of the flight"?
Pretty soon.
Packet based networks were built on the assumption that losing data was a-ok. Packet drops are how problems are signaled.
This is where AVB comes in. With AVB the data-sender is required to pre-reserve the necessary bandwidth across all switches from one end of the data path to the other, and the switches then make sure that the bandwidth you reserved is available for your packets to use (by holding off non-real-time traffic if necessary). By this method it is guaranteed that (short of hardware failure) no packets from your real-time video feed will be dropped. And if it's hardware failure you're worried about, you can set up a redundant network topography.
AVB does require that all switches along the data path be upgraded to be AVB-aware, of course.
Ideally you'd understand the program's purpose well enough to tell whether the code or the comment is wrong, and/or you'd be able to contact the author of the code (and/or comment) and go over it with them.
Of course that's the ideal case and not always possible in real life, in which case there is no alternative but to grovel over the code until you understand what it does, and if you then decide to make any changes, you have to test the code (both pre-change and post-change versions) to make sure that the behavior has improved and no bugs were introduced.
Anything less than that is risky behavior.
Romney has been skyrocketing in terms of female popularity lately...
Not according to Gallup:
"The gender gap in presidential preferences has not changed over the last four months, with men preferring Romney over Obama by eight points, while women prefer Obama by an identical margin."
Ron Paul is a better Republican candidate. They're saving him for 2016, when he'll defeat Biden in a landslide.
Nah. 2016 will be Hillary v. Condoleeza. Good times!
Comments suffer from incurable bitrot.
It's curable -- all it takes is making sure that any time the code is changed, the associated comments are updated to match.
Of course, making sure that programmers actually do that is easier said than done, but the way to maximize the likelihood of that happening is to make sure the comments are as close to the code as possible -- preferably on the same line, or right above/below it. Comments that are off-screen (or worse, in a different file) when the code is modified are very unlikely to be updated in a timely manner.
This is one of the problems with robotic missions... these weird, out of the ordinary events. If this had been a robotic mission it would have been Galileo all over again.
Of course, for any location farther away than Earth orbit, the enormous cost of keeping humans alive (and returning them to Earth afterwards) means that robotic missions are orders of magnitude cheaper. Given that, we can finesse the above-described sort of fiasco easily enough by sending multiple robots, so that even if some of them fail, the others can complete the mission.
Regulation isn't there to protect anyone. It's only purpose is to serve as a punitive measure once your found out as having done wrong in accordance with the regulation.
The knowledge that people who break the regulations will be punished is meant to serve as a deterrent to breaking the regulations. In most cases, it does (outside of BitCoin, anyway).
It doesn't matter how much regulation gets put in place, idiots will still be idiots and end up parted from their money.
Less often than they would if there were no regulation, though.
There have always been idiots, there will always be idiots. and as long as there are idiots, you will have crooks that take their money this way.
The above quote is perfectly true, but what it doesn't capture is that the easier it is to scam someone, the more often scams will occur. Crooks, like everyone else, will tend to concentrate their efforts on projects that are more likely to succeed, and avoid projects that are unlikely to succeed.
So the fact that there will always be idiots and crooks doesn't mean it's pointless to try to keep people honest.
Throw in some pixie dust, good intentions, and some first order approximations where the math might work nicely, and magic should be a piece of cake.
Even if all else fails, car makers can always just up their average fleet mileage by selling more electric vehicles. By 2025 I expect batteries will be good and/or cheap enough that they'll be doing that anyway.
Why do people assume that any car that requires power to run must also cause emissions? We already have many counterexamples: fission, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, biomass...
(granted, India may be unlikely to adopt those power sources anytime soon, but that's hardly the car's fault)
Do e-cats exist? After that one (alleged) demonstration, the news has been rather silent on the subject. I thought Mr. Rossi would have rolled out units to many large customers by now, if not to the Home Depot....
Hmm, if the pseudo-neo-Mayans aren't convinced after seeing the sun rise on December 22nd, 2012, I don't think that January 1st, 2013 is going to convince them either.