It's a commonly known fact inside the industry that smartphones will take over a large faction of what people used to use desktops for, because they will be powerful enough to do so.
Not for me and for many others. This whole discussion is missing a very important element. When I buy a non-phone computer, I buy the computer. That's it. But when (if) I buy a smartphone, I have to keep shelling out $30 to $50 a month forever because they won't sell them without signing up for a data package.
Sure I have to pay $30/mo. for my DSL line for "regular" computer(s), but that is for one line, and I can attach as many computers, media devices, whatever to it as I want.
Until the phone companies go back to offering a pay-per-megabyte option (even if it is rediculously expensive; who cares - I'll just use wifi), no smartphone for me.
If I recall correctly (too lazy to look it up right now), the guy at whom the feds through the book for guessing Sarah Palin's e-mail password was thrown in jail for destroying evidence because he reformatted his hard drive or similiar file desctruction after he found out they were interested in him. Not for guessing the password and accessing her e-mails.
So "leaving the criminal alone with his equipment" doesn't mean all that much. It could actually get the criminal in worse shape.
from ebay and put it on your verizon account. Because it is grandfathered in, you don't have to buy a data plan. You can turn the data plan on and off if you know you are going to need it for a week or so (need to go to a VZW store to do this, though).
Has wifi, so you can use all the kind-of-smartphone feature wherever you have a wifi signal and don't have to pay by the kB. And there are some WM apps, like google maps, and some decent browsers. Nothing like iOS and android, though, of course.
If you increase the tax on just transportation hydrocarbon fuels, the price of oil will go down (because of reduced demand) so those folks heating with oil get a price break, yet we still get the benefits of economic incentives for high mileage cars, with the myraid benefits that provides everyone.
To cover the cases where oil does go up for other reasons (e.g. geopolitical), do it this way: set a price floor of $4/gal gas. Tax goes up when oil prices go down, and vice versa. Meanwhile, car companies can reliable plan on what consumer demand would be mileage-wise.
Additionally, you'd probably actually cut energy usage by more than a third, because electric vehicles are a lot more energy efficient than internal combustion ones (most of your energy is lost as heat).
True, but generating electicity from fossil fuels also loses more than half the energy as heat. You can lose it at the power plant, or lose it in and internal combustion engine, same difference. Of course if the source is renewable, there is a difference, but it will be struggle to even get close to 50% renewable anytime in the foreseeable future.
Start a rehab clinic for others like you... that way at least you can stay addicted... Or just say no to digital drugs...
Exactly. Verizon offered a product and you chose to buy it. You don't have to pay $400 a month. I have a family of 5 and it's under $200 a month for 5 phones (with texting) and DSL, all through Verizon. You don't need cable/satellite TV these days unless you are into sports.
Especially if you are Google. Google makes its money from advertising. If I am metered on my downloads, I sure as hell will not be downloading ads. There's lots of ways to do this. I don't now because I don't really care. When I start paying to download those ads, then I start really caring.
Well, I had RTFA, but I hadn't CTFL (clicked all the friendly links) on the friendly article page. Clicking this link gives a leaked screen shot saying:
"New $15/150MB Data Package for Feature Phone and 3G Smartphones"
So maybe I can go back to shopping for an upgrade after all!
I have been sticking to an old winmobile kinda-smart phone grandfathered in for no data plan. I just can't see spending $30/mo. for a data plan when I can get most of what I need from wifi. But it's old and clunky, and I can never upgrade without agreeing to a data plan.
But when I heard the rumor that VZW was going to tiered plans, I started browsing upgrades, figuring I'd break down and pay, say, $15 for a 200 MB plan or whatever and continue to use mostly wifi for data.
Well, I guess I can stop doing that. The lowest price tier is the same as the current highest-price tier.
If VZW wasn't the only carrier I can get when I am out in the woods, I would drop them like a lead balloon.
That is the thing about engineering. The facts and figures are black and white. Either they support the need for a traffic signal or they do not.
Yes and no. Any engineering study is going to have some assumptions in it. Especially something like this that isn't built yet - they have to make assumptions in order to project future traffic growth. Sure there are standard ways to do this, but still there are assumptions.
Favorite saying: Engineers are never wrong -- only their assumptions are.
Exactly. My folks (about 80 years old) have the fastest internet connection of anybody in the family (Fios) even though they can barely use the computer. Their e-mail is still the same AOL account I set up for them years and years ago, but they haven't paid anything for years. They even still run the AOL app instead of using the web interface (have tried to tell them they don't need to use the app, but old habits die hard).
The point is, AOL went completely free as in beer several years ago. All you had to do is call them up and they stopped billing you. The only thing that changed is that you couldn't dial in.
There were stories out there where there were external buttons on certain phones that when pressed sent the phone directly to the web. So when you shoved your phone in your pocket the wrong way (as Steve Jobs would put it), sometimes you started accruing data charges. Inadvertent? Yes. Decision to make an extenal button (that is easily pressed by mistake) start the per-kilobyte billing? Your call on that. I know what I think.
What intrigued me is the no-contract $20 data plan. I got a spot in the boonies that has no DSL or cable access, but can get VZW (but no other carriers). I don't want to spend $60/month for a MiFi device with a 2-yr commitment. If I read the reports right, this comes with a $20 data plan, and no committments, so perhaps one can turn it on an off as needed. Hoepfully I read that right.
Yeah, Yeah, I know - 1 GB/mo. But that's 1 GB/mo. more than what I got now.
So I'm saying I would buy it for the MiFi and the plan, not for the iPad. Of course the money I save would be eaten up by the iPad cost, but I could sell that on e-bay.
Or did I read one of them there internet articles wrong?
It's 100% efficient at the home, but the power plants that generate are limited by the laws of thermodynamics to converting only around 30% - 40% of the energy into electricity.
What are Google and Boxee except that, plus advertising put back in?
Maybe the fact that they provide content legally as opposed to illegally from torrents/usenet? Debate all you want whether US Copyright laws make sense, but downloading from torrents/usenet is still illegal. Boxee provides a great way to watch TV on my own schedule, and at least currently with much much fewer commercials.
Yeah, I had an AOL account back in the early/mid 90's. I remember Steve Case e-mailing all the AOL members that they have heard the many requests from members for access to this "world wide web" thing and that perhaps someday they would actually allow access to it through AOL.
Replying to my own post, I know, bad form but I love this stuff.
One more thought: If you go with the camera-above-the-map approach, the distortion you add in beyond whatever inaccuracies were already there is the fact that the distance from the lens to the center of the map is less than the distance to the edges of the map.
But this problem has already been solved, as that is how USGS and others make orthophoto maps. They have the same error introduced by the camera and differing distances to center and edges, plus the error that distances change due to elevation.
You could use the same tools they use to correct for that. The rolling hills part is normally corrected by using the digital elevation model (DEM) data in the algorithm. For this application, you would just say everything is at sea level (flat), and the distance above the ground the photo is taken at would be in scale units (i.e. if your camera is 10 meters above the map, and the map scale is 1:10,000, the "elevation of the photo" is 1,000 meters.
I've done orthorectification before using the GRASS module i.ortho.photo (http://grass.itc.it/grass64/manuals/html64_user/i.ortho.photo.html) Nothing in GRASS is easy, but it all works.
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Cupertino, Palo Alto, whatever. It's all the same if you've ever been there.
It's a commonly known fact inside the industry that smartphones will take over a large faction of what people used to use desktops for, because they will be powerful enough to do so.
Not for me and for many others. This whole discussion is missing a very important element. When I buy a non-phone computer, I buy the computer. That's it. But when (if) I buy a smartphone, I have to keep shelling out $30 to $50 a month forever because they won't sell them without signing up for a data package.
Sure I have to pay $30/mo. for my DSL line for "regular" computer(s), but that is for one line, and I can attach as many computers, media devices, whatever to it as I want.
Until the phone companies go back to offering a pay-per-megabyte option (even if it is rediculously expensive; who cares - I'll just use wifi), no smartphone for me.
If you were using a GUI, you probably wouldn't have unzipped the files into the wrong directory in the first place.
If I recall correctly (too lazy to look it up right now), the guy at whom the feds through the book for guessing Sarah Palin's e-mail password was thrown in jail for destroying evidence because he reformatted his hard drive or similiar file desctruction after he found out they were interested in him. Not for guessing the password and accessing her e-mails.
So "leaving the criminal alone with his equipment" doesn't mean all that much. It could actually get the criminal in worse shape.
Well, now that the 5-digiters are chiming in, I'll do my part.
Rob: Thanks and good luck!
Do what I did: buy one of these
http://pocketpccentral.net/samsung_i760.htm
from ebay and put it on your verizon account. Because it is grandfathered in, you don't have to buy a data plan. You can turn the data plan on and off if you know you are going to need it for a week or so (need to go to a VZW store to do this, though).
Has wifi, so you can use all the kind-of-smartphone feature wherever you have a wifi signal and don't have to pay by the kB. And there are some WM apps, like google maps, and some decent browsers. Nothing like iOS and android, though, of course.
If you increase the tax on just transportation hydrocarbon fuels, the price of oil will go down (because of reduced demand) so those folks heating with oil get a price break, yet we still get the benefits of economic incentives for high mileage cars, with the myraid benefits that provides everyone.
To cover the cases where oil does go up for other reasons (e.g. geopolitical), do it this way: set a price floor of $4/gal gas. Tax goes up when oil prices go down, and vice versa. Meanwhile, car companies can reliable plan on what consumer demand would be mileage-wise.
Not that anyone ever asks me how to fix things!
Additionally, you'd probably actually cut energy usage by more than a third, because electric vehicles are a lot more energy efficient than internal combustion ones (most of your energy is lost as heat).
True, but generating electicity from fossil fuels also loses more than half the energy as heat. You can lose it at the power plant, or lose it in and internal combustion engine, same difference. Of course if the source is renewable, there is a difference, but it will be struggle to even get close to 50% renewable anytime in the foreseeable future.
Start a rehab clinic for others like you... that way at least you can stay addicted... Or just say no to digital drugs...
Exactly. Verizon offered a product and you chose to buy it. You don't have to pay $400 a month. I have a family of 5 and it's under $200 a month for 5 phones (with texting) and DSL, all through Verizon. You don't need cable/satellite TV these days unless you are into sports.
Especially if you are Google. Google makes its money from advertising. If I am metered on my downloads, I sure as hell will not be downloading ads. There's lots of ways to do this. I don't now because I don't really care. When I start paying to download those ads, then I start really caring.
Well, I had RTFA, but I hadn't CTFL (clicked all the friendly links) on the friendly article page. Clicking this link gives a leaked screen shot saying:
"New $15/150MB Data Package for Feature Phone and 3G Smartphones"
So maybe I can go back to shopping for an upgrade after all!
If people really don't like it, they will ..., or resort to only connecting via Wi-Fi or tethering.
Except that you can't. You can't buy a phone from them without the dataplan. If you could I would.
I have been sticking to an old winmobile kinda-smart phone grandfathered in for no data plan. I just can't see spending $30/mo. for a data plan when I can get most of what I need from wifi. But it's old and clunky, and I can never upgrade without agreeing to a data plan.
But when I heard the rumor that VZW was going to tiered plans, I started browsing upgrades, figuring I'd break down and pay, say, $15 for a 200 MB plan or whatever and continue to use mostly wifi for data.
Well, I guess I can stop doing that. The lowest price tier is the same as the current highest-price tier.
If VZW wasn't the only carrier I can get when I am out in the woods, I would drop them like a lead balloon.
And according to MS what we need is a "hybrid cloud" model. Just keep nodding.
That is the thing about engineering. The facts and figures are black and white. Either they support the need for a traffic signal or they do not.
Yes and no. Any engineering study is going to have some assumptions in it. Especially something like this that isn't built yet - they have to make assumptions in order to project future traffic growth. Sure there are standard ways to do this, but still there are assumptions. Favorite saying: Engineers are never wrong -- only their assumptions are.
I have a box full of 5 inch floppies, but no disk drive in any of my machines can read theses. Does that mean they are unreadable?
Probably. You ever try to read a very old floppy even if you had the right drive?
Exactly. My folks (about 80 years old) have the fastest internet connection of anybody in the family (Fios) even though they can barely use the computer. Their e-mail is still the same AOL account I set up for them years and years ago, but they haven't paid anything for years. They even still run the AOL app instead of using the web interface (have tried to tell them they don't need to use the app, but old habits die hard).
The point is, AOL went completely free as in beer several years ago. All you had to do is call them up and they stopped billing you. The only thing that changed is that you couldn't dial in.
More detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#DSKY_interface
So what's with the downturn in the last 10 -20 years here?
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=physics%2Cchemistry%2Cbiology%2Cmathematics&year_start=1700&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=6
Inadvertent?
There were stories out there where there were external buttons on certain phones that when pressed sent the phone directly to the web. So when you shoved your phone in your pocket the wrong way (as Steve Jobs would put it), sometimes you started accruing data charges. Inadvertent? Yes. Decision to make an extenal button (that is easily pressed by mistake) start the per-kilobyte billing? Your call on that. I know what I think.
What intrigued me is the no-contract $20 data plan. I got a spot in the boonies that has no DSL or cable access, but can get VZW (but no other carriers). I don't want to spend $60/month for a MiFi device with a 2-yr commitment. If I read the reports right, this comes with a $20 data plan, and no committments, so perhaps one can turn it on an off as needed. Hoepfully I read that right.
Yeah, Yeah, I know - 1 GB/mo. But that's 1 GB/mo. more than what I got now.
So I'm saying I would buy it for the MiFi and the plan, not for the iPad. Of course the money I save would be eaten up by the iPad cost, but I could sell that on e-bay.
Or did I read one of them there internet articles wrong?
It's 100% efficient at the home, but the power plants that generate are limited by the laws of thermodynamics to converting only around 30% - 40% of the energy into electricity.
Obligatory wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_Engine#Efficiency
What are Google and Boxee except that, plus advertising put back in?
Maybe the fact that they provide content legally as opposed to illegally from torrents/usenet? Debate all you want whether US Copyright laws make sense, but downloading from torrents/usenet is still illegal. Boxee provides a great way to watch TV on my own schedule, and at least currently with much much fewer commercials.
Yeah, I had an AOL account back in the early/mid 90's. I remember Steve Case e-mailing all the AOL members that they have heard the many requests from members for access to this "world wide web" thing and that perhaps someday they would actually allow access to it through AOL.
Strange days indeed.
Replying to my own post, I know, bad form but I love this stuff.
One more thought: If you go with the camera-above-the-map approach, the distortion you add in beyond whatever inaccuracies were already there is the fact that the distance from the lens to the center of the map is less than the distance to the edges of the map.
But this problem has already been solved, as that is how USGS and others make orthophoto maps. They have the same error introduced by the camera and differing distances to center and edges, plus the error that distances change due to elevation.
You could use the same tools they use to correct for that. The rolling hills part is normally corrected by using the digital elevation model (DEM) data in the algorithm. For this application, you would just say everything is at sea level (flat), and the distance above the ground the photo is taken at would be in scale units (i.e. if your camera is 10 meters above the map, and the map scale is 1:10,000, the "elevation of the photo" is 1,000 meters.
I've done orthorectification before using the GRASS module i.ortho.photo (http://grass.itc.it/grass64/manuals/html64_user/i.ortho.photo.html) Nothing in GRASS is easy, but it all works.