In the past it was mostly hate-anything-Apple-trolls, but today many of the 'Apple has lost it's way',"Apple is crap', ' Apple is way overpriced' complaints are now coming from past Apple customers
I came to hate-anything-Apple because I was a past Apple customer. As in, since the Apple 2 days. My second computer was a ][+. (My first was a C= 16.) They lost their way the first time in the Centris/Performa era, and they've lost it again now.
They have lost their momentum. They used to make great products that just worked. Perfectly.
When was that? I was a Mac user almost from the beginning, so I know that has literally never been true. (I skipped straight from Apple// to the Mac Plus.)
TFS makes it clear that this is a design patent. TFA makes it even clearer, when it says the "Fabric" patent is a claim on an "ornamental design for a fabric,". This is not a patent on technology, it's a patent on a design. Nobody else can make smart fabric that looks like Apple's. So what? Change the weave, add a pattern, change the color even, and now the patent doesn't apply.
We're still early enough in the technology curve for EVs so they cost a premium price to purchase, and have more "hidden costs" that are less often talked about.
Yes, we need you early adopters to pay for figuring that stuff out. Thanks!
Maybe. Yes, they got Tesla going, but the goal of the tax credits was to incentivize Americans to shift to EVs. By that measure, the job is far from finished
Maybe. Or maybe we're past the tipping point. Maybe enough people already want them that they'll get cheap and ubiquitous enough that they'll run down to their price floor sooner than later.
It never made sense to me that the credit phased out on a per-automaker basis. It seems to me that if it makes sense to use tax credits for this purpose, the credits should continue until a certain percentage of all new car sales are EVs.
Or at least until a certain number of cars are sold, based on the budget available for the program. Whoever sells them first "gets" the credit.
HFS (Apple, 1985) had resource forks, which let you have a directory inside a file.
No, it didn't. It let you have structured data inside a file. That's not a directory, which is a filesystem element. And further, Apple only did this because they didn't put enough RAM into their computer, and they had to load things in tiny bits. Not just data, but the actual code had to be broken up into tiny pieces. (Their filesystem also stunk on ice, Macs always had poor filesystem performance all the way up until OSX.) Apple built a graphical computer with no graphics acceleration, nor enough room in memory for graphics, and hilarity ensued.
Also, it's worth noting that this was an idea left over from the mainframe days, with special structured files and API calls written to manage the structure. But the flat file mentality of Unix was a massive strength. It meant not needing to use special calls or functions whose functionality might change later to access data. Apple failed to understand Unix, so they invented files with special structure that caused everyone else in the world to rip their hair out when dealing with them for years and years.
Linux was never going to be a better Apple than Apple,
It was. It totally was. With Emerald, Compiz, avant-window-navigator, and GNOME 2, Linux was a better Apple than Apple. I had literally every bit of mac lovers' beloved UI functionality, but it was also completely configurable in a way that MacOS will never be. You can't actually build Emerald any more, nor AWN. Well, you kind of can, but neither one works correctly. The versions of libraries they depend upon won't build any more, and they won't build correctly against the new versions because those libraries have broken backwards compatibility. Linux UI has regressed horribly over the years. Sad, really.
Unfuck the Dock. The Dock was always an annoying use of screen real estate when it was at the side of a 4:3 ratio display. You really wanted it at the bottom. But then we moved to 16:9 ratio displays, where there's plenty of room at the side of the display, so what does Apple do? MOVE IT TO THE BOTTOM. Not just that, but when the Dock was pinned to the upper-right, it was in a predictable location. But now that it's in the center-bottom, it grows in both directions, so everything on it moves every time any new element is added. It eliminates the benefits of muscle memory, making using your computer slower. On Windows you can throw the mouse into the appropriate corner and whack the mouse button to pop up the menu that you use to do everything. On MacOS, that only pops up the menu that you use to do some things. Apple is known for being the masters of UI, but they're actually worse at it than even Microsoft.
but even early PCs had a real-time clock and battery backed boot settings RAM.
Not my early PC. My first PC was an IBM 5150 (aka "PC-1") and I had to have a RTC on an expansion card because it didn't have one onboard. That expansion card also had 384kB of RAM. Installed in an XT, it would get you up to 1MB. In a PC, it would get you to 448kB. And you had to run a special command to get/set the RTC, naturally.
Well, the CPU wasn't emulated so it was pretty fast, in fact I seem to recall the fastest Mac available back then was an Amiga.
Macs were 100% graphic computers with no graphics acceleration. Every pixel had to be laboriously milled by the CPU, and pounded into place with a wooden mallet. The Amiga had hardware to accelerate all common graphics operations (and then some) which is most of what made it faster. The first accelerated graphics option for the Macintosh was the 8â24 GC, which actually had more processing power onboard than the host CPU given that it was designed for the Macintosh II series. Further, I can't find a MSRP on the 8â24 GC right now, but IIRC you could literally build a PC with a 2MB ISA VGA card with graphics acceleration for less money. To be fair, Amigas had pretty low-res graphics until RTG options came along. This mattered a lot to professionals, and very little to anyone else.
As long as the parts are cheap enough, cutting power usage in a large datacenter by 2% could be huge.
They aren't. These suckers are always too expensive to be of any practical use in power generation outside of niche applications where nothing else will work. For example, the wood stove fans that are basically two heat sinks, a motor, a fan, and a peltier junction between the heat sinks. One sink sits on the stove, and the other radiates the heat taken from the other side of the junction. That is advantageous because you don't have to bring in a wire, so it solves a real problem.
So one possible application for this technology that might actually make sense would be a bicycle headlight that's powered by the heat from your hands, or your ass on the saddle. That heat is actually going to waste, the junction could be smaller than the battery it replaces, and adding a generator to a bicycle always sucks somehow unless it's an e-Bike.
The car uses about 20 HP to maintain cruising speed. Is it wasting three times that amount as heat? Probably not. Let's say it's wasting 5 HP as tailpipe heat.
Automotive ICEs are 25% efficient or less, and it takes about 20-25HP to cruise on the freeway. I'm shit at math and even I know you're off by miles.
Now go look in your tailpipe. See the soot? Notice all the rust and everything on the bottom of the car after a few years of driving? That'll probably cut efficiency in had again
System efficiency is one thing, powertrain efficiency is another thing, powerplant efficiency is still another thing. You've got them all con-fused.
However, this whole debate is stupid, because the alternator is about to go away. It will be replaced with a mild hybrid motor-generator. It needs to be there anyway, because it's going to be used to start the car, as well as to provide initial motive force to get it moving (and in some cases, even provide all-electric propulsion up to low speeds, such as used when crawling ahead in traffic.) This will provide regen, the power from which will be stored in the higher-capacity battery needed anyway — to operate the heated catalyst that's going to be necessary to meet future emissions regulations. By the time you could design a complete system for capturing waste heat (which would focus on the exhaust manifold, not the exhaust system, since that's where the greatest temperature differential exists) you wouldn't need it any more.
Another reason this entire discussion is stupid because packaging has never been the problem. The reason these technologies aren't used everywhere is cost. An alternator is a lot cheaper per watt-hour generated, even when failures and belt replacements are taken into account.
I've heard of precisely one practical automotive application for solid state heat pumps, which a company is actually implementing now. I don't think any Tier 1 automakers are implementing it yet, but you're supposed to be able to get seat cushions for UTVs already which use a TEG to heat or cool the occupant. The TEG is located in the small of the back, and a cross of graphene is used to distribute the heat (or cooling effect) across the back (in an "X" shape). Because it works through contact, it is far more efficient than trying to control the temperature of the occupant by blowing air on them. Using them as a heat pump makes sense in this context (if in no others, due to lack of efficiency) but using them to generate power here on earth makes no sense at all.
I've been using Pale Moon for quite some time now with noscript, but now they are suggesting people not use noscript because it causes problems with Pale Moon. I'm still using it anyway, of course. What's sad is that the Pale Moon site suggests using uMatrix with Pale Moon... which you can't do without patching it, or running a seriously old version.
What's keeping me on classic Firefox is Scrapbook Plus. I want captured pages in my sidebar. ScrapbookQ flat out doesn't work, I've tried it on both Windows 7 and on Ubuntu and the installation instructions produce a non-working install on both platforms. And sadly, the install fails in different ways on each, and oh by the way it requires trusting an external binary.
Making it impossible for extensions to access files directly under any circumstances was a garbage move. The right way to do it is to only allow them to write to certain locations. That's hard, so the Moz foundation threw up their hands and said "fuck it". Well, they need people who can solve problems, not just give up on them.
Running a bunch of good and essential Firefox extensions. They told us the sky would fall when the old leaky extension APIs were removed, and it did not.
Now show me the replacement for Scrapbook Plus. ScrapbookQ doesn't work, period (I've tried it on both windows 7 and Linux and the documented install process produces a working solution on neither) and all the others don't actually do what Scrapbook+ did. They do something else, like save a page to a file that nothing can open without dragging and dropping it back into the browser. When I can has Scrapbook Plus for Firefox, I'll try it again. Until then, I'm sticking with Pale Moon.
And this picture shows that they are illegal immigrants? Perhaps you're making assumptions. Also, you might be a racist.
Nah. If they weren't illegals, why would they need my identity? My credit was already bad, and it worked for their scam because clearly the dealer was part of it. They could have used their own bad credit if they had any identity of their own.
(Even if you don't harvest trees to burn them, in mature forests they'll release their CO2 as they rot, so that doesn't significantly change the overall picture.)
Yes, it absolutely does. When they decompose in aerobic conditions, which is generally the case outside of rainforests, the decomposition of trees leads to carbon sequestration in soil. Not all of the carbon is released, unlike when you burn them.
With all due respect, buying a Smart TV is a dumb move. I realize it's hard to find a dumb TV any more, but it's worth some effort and expense. The "industrial" models for signage and such tend to be the best-made anyway, and they have none of that junk in there. Plus, they often have additional, interesting interfaces which can be used to control them. The best argument, though, is that Smart TVs are just more prone to failure. Even if you trust in your ability to prevent them from spying on you, or being compromised remotely and used as part of a botnet, most of them won't work at all if the "smart" bit fails.
Your browser is one of the most complex pieces of software on your computer.
Scope creep. It didn't have to be complex.
I take a middle view, which I typically believe to be more correct than your extremes. The browser had to become complex. However, Firefox has become needlessly so, while at the same time losing functionality which mattered to users (particularly in the extension department.) Besides the much-maligned (by me) Pocket nonsense, there's lots of other stuff in Firefox which should really be in an extension. The new home screen and the developer tools both leap immediately to mind. The whole point of Firefox was to have a light, fast browser. Now it's going back towards being a suite. The lessons of history, reinvent UNIX poorly, etc etc.
Most nations don't have an immense portion of their populace in the public sector, and should probably focus on providing infrastructure, and letting the market work out the rest. But I [for one] am generally in favor of your plan, so long as the resulting charging infrastructure is open to the public, and not hidden away in public works yards and such.
Slashdot Mirror
They represent best-case speed, rather than typical speed, because no ISP would be stupid enough to throttle connections to a speed test server.
Unless it's fast.com, because it hits the same servers as netflix video. That at least tells you if they're throttling netflix (mine does.)
In the past it was mostly hate-anything-Apple-trolls, but today many of the 'Apple has lost it's way',"Apple is crap', ' Apple is way overpriced' complaints are now coming from past Apple customers
I came to hate-anything-Apple because I was a past Apple customer. As in, since the Apple 2 days. My second computer was a ][+. (My first was a C= 16.) They lost their way the first time in the Centris/Performa era, and they've lost it again now.
They have lost their momentum. They used to make great products that just worked. Perfectly.
When was that? I was a Mac user almost from the beginning, so I know that has literally never been true. (I skipped straight from Apple // to the Mac Plus.)
TFS makes it clear that this is a design patent. TFA makes it even clearer, when it says the "Fabric" patent is a claim on an "ornamental design for a fabric,". This is not a patent on technology, it's a patent on a design. Nobody else can make smart fabric that looks like Apple's. So what? Change the weave, add a pattern, change the color even, and now the patent doesn't apply.
Do not look at phone with remaining eye.
We're still early enough in the technology curve for EVs so they cost a premium price to purchase, and have more "hidden costs" that are less often talked about.
Yes, we need you early adopters to pay for figuring that stuff out. Thanks!
Maybe. Yes, they got Tesla going, but the goal of the tax credits was to incentivize Americans to shift to EVs. By that measure, the job is far from finished
Maybe. Or maybe we're past the tipping point. Maybe enough people already want them that they'll get cheap and ubiquitous enough that they'll run down to their price floor sooner than later.
It never made sense to me that the credit phased out on a per-automaker basis. It seems to me that if it makes sense to use tax credits for this purpose, the credits should continue until a certain percentage of all new car sales are EVs.
Or at least until a certain number of cars are sold, based on the budget available for the program. Whoever sells them first "gets" the credit.
Um, unless they killed-off the option, you can pick where the Dock is located (bottom or either side).
But can you put it in the corner? And even if you could, would the furthest pixel in that corner be an activation location for the first dock item?
HFS (Apple, 1985) had resource forks, which let you have a directory inside a file.
No, it didn't. It let you have structured data inside a file. That's not a directory, which is a filesystem element. And further, Apple only did this because they didn't put enough RAM into their computer, and they had to load things in tiny bits. Not just data, but the actual code had to be broken up into tiny pieces. (Their filesystem also stunk on ice, Macs always had poor filesystem performance all the way up until OSX.) Apple built a graphical computer with no graphics acceleration, nor enough room in memory for graphics, and hilarity ensued.
Also, it's worth noting that this was an idea left over from the mainframe days, with special structured files and API calls written to manage the structure. But the flat file mentality of Unix was a massive strength. It meant not needing to use special calls or functions whose functionality might change later to access data. Apple failed to understand Unix, so they invented files with special structure that caused everyone else in the world to rip their hair out when dealing with them for years and years.
Linux was never going to be a better Apple than Apple,
It was. It totally was. With Emerald, Compiz, avant-window-navigator, and GNOME 2, Linux was a better Apple than Apple. I had literally every bit of mac lovers' beloved UI functionality, but it was also completely configurable in a way that MacOS will never be. You can't actually build Emerald any more, nor AWN. Well, you kind of can, but neither one works correctly. The versions of libraries they depend upon won't build any more, and they won't build correctly against the new versions because those libraries have broken backwards compatibility. Linux UI has regressed horribly over the years. Sad, really.
What's your wish list for the new NeXTCube?
Unfuck the Dock. The Dock was always an annoying use of screen real estate when it was at the side of a 4:3 ratio display. You really wanted it at the bottom. But then we moved to 16:9 ratio displays, where there's plenty of room at the side of the display, so what does Apple do? MOVE IT TO THE BOTTOM. Not just that, but when the Dock was pinned to the upper-right, it was in a predictable location. But now that it's in the center-bottom, it grows in both directions, so everything on it moves every time any new element is added. It eliminates the benefits of muscle memory, making using your computer slower. On Windows you can throw the mouse into the appropriate corner and whack the mouse button to pop up the menu that you use to do everything. On MacOS, that only pops up the menu that you use to do some things. Apple is known for being the masters of UI, but they're actually worse at it than even Microsoft.
but even early PCs had a real-time clock and battery backed boot settings RAM.
Not my early PC. My first PC was an IBM 5150 (aka "PC-1") and I had to have a RTC on an expansion card because it didn't have one onboard. That expansion card also had 384kB of RAM. Installed in an XT, it would get you up to 1MB. In a PC, it would get you to 448kB. And you had to run a special command to get/set the RTC, naturally.
Well, the CPU wasn't emulated so it was pretty fast, in fact I seem to recall the fastest Mac available back then was an Amiga.
Macs were 100% graphic computers with no graphics acceleration. Every pixel had to be laboriously milled by the CPU, and pounded into place with a wooden mallet. The Amiga had hardware to accelerate all common graphics operations (and then some) which is most of what made it faster. The first accelerated graphics option for the Macintosh was the 8â24 GC, which actually had more processing power onboard than the host CPU given that it was designed for the Macintosh II series. Further, I can't find a MSRP on the 8â24 GC right now, but IIRC you could literally build a PC with a 2MB ISA VGA card with graphics acceleration for less money. To be fair, Amigas had pretty low-res graphics until RTG options came along. This mattered a lot to professionals, and very little to anyone else.
As long as the parts are cheap enough, cutting power usage in a large datacenter by 2% could be huge.
They aren't. These suckers are always too expensive to be of any practical use in power generation outside of niche applications where nothing else will work. For example, the wood stove fans that are basically two heat sinks, a motor, a fan, and a peltier junction between the heat sinks. One sink sits on the stove, and the other radiates the heat taken from the other side of the junction. That is advantageous because you don't have to bring in a wire, so it solves a real problem.
So one possible application for this technology that might actually make sense would be a bicycle headlight that's powered by the heat from your hands, or your ass on the saddle. That heat is actually going to waste, the junction could be smaller than the battery it replaces, and adding a generator to a bicycle always sucks somehow unless it's an e-Bike.
The car uses about 20 HP to maintain cruising speed. Is it wasting three times that amount as heat? Probably not. Let's say it's wasting 5 HP as tailpipe heat.
Automotive ICEs are 25% efficient or less, and it takes about 20-25HP to cruise on the freeway. I'm shit at math and even I know you're off by miles.
Now go look in your tailpipe. See the soot? Notice all the rust and everything on the bottom of the car after a few years of driving? That'll probably cut efficiency in had again
System efficiency is one thing, powertrain efficiency is another thing, powerplant efficiency is still another thing. You've got them all con-fused.
However, this whole debate is stupid, because the alternator is about to go away. It will be replaced with a mild hybrid motor-generator. It needs to be there anyway, because it's going to be used to start the car, as well as to provide initial motive force to get it moving (and in some cases, even provide all-electric propulsion up to low speeds, such as used when crawling ahead in traffic.) This will provide regen, the power from which will be stored in the higher-capacity battery needed anyway — to operate the heated catalyst that's going to be necessary to meet future emissions regulations. By the time you could design a complete system for capturing waste heat (which would focus on the exhaust manifold, not the exhaust system, since that's where the greatest temperature differential exists) you wouldn't need it any more.
Another reason this entire discussion is stupid because packaging has never been the problem. The reason these technologies aren't used everywhere is cost. An alternator is a lot cheaper per watt-hour generated, even when failures and belt replacements are taken into account.
I've heard of precisely one practical automotive application for solid state heat pumps, which a company is actually implementing now. I don't think any Tier 1 automakers are implementing it yet, but you're supposed to be able to get seat cushions for UTVs already which use a TEG to heat or cool the occupant. The TEG is located in the small of the back, and a cross of graphene is used to distribute the heat (or cooling effect) across the back (in an "X" shape). Because it works through contact, it is far more efficient than trying to control the temperature of the occupant by blowing air on them. Using them as a heat pump makes sense in this context (if in no others, due to lack of efficiency) but using them to generate power here on earth makes no sense at all.
I think that is because of a lack of planned development; not because developers design them that way.
It's both. Developers want to maximize profit, so they are motivated to spread out looking for cheap lots.
Every honest climate scientist recognizes that nuclear energy will play a crucial part of any plausible decarbonization pathway
[citation needed]
and yet traditional "environmentalists" are the ones working to kill the tool proven most effective in our efforts.
Which one do you mean, wind, solar, or battery backup?
I've been using Pale Moon for quite some time now with noscript, but now they are suggesting people not use noscript because it causes problems with Pale Moon. I'm still using it anyway, of course. What's sad is that the Pale Moon site suggests using uMatrix with Pale Moon... which you can't do without patching it, or running a seriously old version.
What's keeping me on classic Firefox is Scrapbook Plus. I want captured pages in my sidebar. ScrapbookQ flat out doesn't work, I've tried it on both Windows 7 and on Ubuntu and the installation instructions produce a non-working install on both platforms. And sadly, the install fails in different ways on each, and oh by the way it requires trusting an external binary.
Making it impossible for extensions to access files directly under any circumstances was a garbage move. The right way to do it is to only allow them to write to certain locations. That's hard, so the Moz foundation threw up their hands and said "fuck it". Well, they need people who can solve problems, not just give up on them.
Running a bunch of good and essential Firefox extensions. They told us the sky would fall when the old leaky extension APIs were removed, and it did not.
Now show me the replacement for Scrapbook Plus. ScrapbookQ doesn't work, period (I've tried it on both windows 7 and Linux and the documented install process produces a working solution on neither) and all the others don't actually do what Scrapbook+ did. They do something else, like save a page to a file that nothing can open without dragging and dropping it back into the browser. When I can has Scrapbook Plus for Firefox, I'll try it again. Until then, I'm sticking with Pale Moon.
And this picture shows that they are illegal immigrants? Perhaps you're making assumptions. Also, you might be a racist.
Nah. If they weren't illegals, why would they need my identity? My credit was already bad, and it worked for their scam because clearly the dealer was part of it. They could have used their own bad credit if they had any identity of their own.
(Even if you don't harvest trees to burn them, in mature forests they'll release their CO2 as they rot, so that doesn't significantly change the overall picture.)
Yes, it absolutely does. When they decompose in aerobic conditions, which is generally the case outside of rainforests, the decomposition of trees leads to carbon sequestration in soil. Not all of the carbon is released, unlike when you burn them.
With all due respect, buying a Smart TV is a dumb move. I realize it's hard to find a dumb TV any more, but it's worth some effort and expense. The "industrial" models for signage and such tend to be the best-made anyway, and they have none of that junk in there. Plus, they often have additional, interesting interfaces which can be used to control them. The best argument, though, is that Smart TVs are just more prone to failure. Even if you trust in your ability to prevent them from spying on you, or being compromised remotely and used as part of a botnet, most of them won't work at all if the "smart" bit fails.
Your browser is one of the most complex pieces of software on your computer.
Scope creep. It didn't have to be complex.
I take a middle view, which I typically believe to be more correct than your extremes. The browser had to become complex. However, Firefox has become needlessly so, while at the same time losing functionality which mattered to users (particularly in the extension department.) Besides the much-maligned (by me) Pocket nonsense, there's lots of other stuff in Firefox which should really be in an extension. The new home screen and the developer tools both leap immediately to mind. The whole point of Firefox was to have a light, fast browser. Now it's going back towards being a suite. The lessons of history, reinvent UNIX poorly, etc etc.
Faith is taking something as true in the absence of evidence (and in some dictionary, cannot be based on evidence).
That's a bullshit definition, and you know it. And what dictionary is that? What religious person wrote it, and why should we care?
Science function on a similar system of TRUST, TRUST is not FAITH
That's correct. Faith is a feeling, trust is a behavior.
Most nations don't have an immense portion of their populace in the public sector, and should probably focus on providing infrastructure, and letting the market work out the rest. But I [for one] am generally in favor of your plan, so long as the resulting charging infrastructure is open to the public, and not hidden away in public works yards and such.