I found that the recharge time (Solio Hybrid, but presumably same for other small solar chargers) is so long as to be typically impractical. How often are you really willing to leave a ~$100 device lying around _outdoors_ for hours on end? Inside your car windshield isn't good enough: the device overheats and stops operating at in-car in-sun temperatures, and glass filters out wavelengths apparently preferred by the solar panel.
Advantage of the Solio Hybrid is secondary charging from USB: fill it up at your computer, then use the solar panel to top it off when hiking.
Got mine particularly for emergency/survival situations: at least it is _a_ source of off-grid renewable power sufficient to keep a cell phone going occasionally.
As well they should! If YOU can pay YOUR bill, then why should I be compelled to pay it? I'm willing to help those who TRULY cannot pay for basic emergency care, but if you can pay SOMETHING then quit whining and do what you can to care for yourself. As for non-emergency care, you can plan for it; there are few who, budgeting accordingly, cannot pay for their own routine medical care; a minor impact on your chosen standard of living is not my problem.
As many note, and are roundly ignored: if you can't pay your own medical bills but you have a big mortgage, an HDTV, $100/mo cable bills, etc. then you CAN pay your own medical bills - get your priorities straight and your hand out of my wallet!
I had valve replacement surgery two months ago. While everything went extremely well (thank you Emory hospital), my wife would have appreciated not hearing the words "it's going well, they're stopping his heart now...".
A bank "going under" does not take all the depositors' money with it. If bankrupt, the bank is given time to reorganize and recover intact. If sold or taken over, assets, which include bank accounts, investments, and deposits, are sold to another company which will maintain the customers. There is also FDIC and other regulations in place to ensure you'll get your money back unless you did something stupid.
The days of "sorry, no money, we're closed" are gone (unless we suffer a vast & total meltdown of our economy, which is still far off).
That's why so few books port well to games, and why so few games port well to movies. When we are being told a story, it usually is interesting because the protagonist screws up and has to cope with the consequences; we are interested in how the screwup comes to be and how s/he copes with it (or doesn't). With a game, it's largely a continuous stream of "gotta get it exactly right", with screwups either being almost immediately terminal, or forced on you deus ex machina.
"Romeo and Juliet: The Game" would suck, despite being definitive great literature. Watching/reading the story, we are engaged by how others destroy themselves in their pursuit of an ideal. Thrusting ourselves into the game, we do not enjoy experiencing the same story arc first-person.
With Netflix, you can't watch anymore after you stop paying the monthly fee.
With Netflix, you know you're RENTING the movie, and have to give back (i.e.: lose access to, returning DVDs and stopping any streaming media) any material they've loaned you after you stop paying the monthly fee. While you _are_ paying your fee, you can hang onto the material (keep the DVD, play streaming media) and watch it on ANY platform you like.
This in contrast with Sony SELLING the movie, but you can only download it to a single device which you will most likely need to erase long before the product's 10-year lifespan is up. Also in contrast with buying the same content on physical media, which you keep indefinitely beyond Sony's control, and can watch on any player anywhere anytime.
While it's fine for a small-physical-format solid-state distribution medium, it's just too costly compared to (piracy aside) a DVD copy at $5-10. If the device's price were reduced for such content, fine... but since a common 2GB thumbdrive is about $10, by what sanity is paying a >$20 premium to have just one movie thereon (and occupying significant space) reasonable?
Thing is, you get a thumbdrive to haul data around in... and do you really want to be constantly hauling the same single movie around with a bunch of other data? No. We're not talking an iPod which has your whole CD or DVD collection handily available, we're talking a device which you'll keep handy yet is significantly devoted to one content which you won't watch much.
Imagine carrying around the Ghostbusters DVD all the time. Preposterous, no? This may be marginally more convenient, but still goofy.
Not astonishing? A single company, offering a proprietary product*, is outdoing nearly all of several hundred companies combined who build to a given standard! Astonishing indeed!
* - including hardware, OS, and a broad range of application software
Redbox is a vending-machine movie rental system. I walk into the Wal-Mart a mile from my house, and there's this big, well, red box sitting there. It operates on the opposite of the "long tail": it only has a couple dozen of the very latest movies, has many (but not infinite) copies of each, costs $1 per night (just swipe your credit card), keep 'em as long as you want (after a month, just keep it - for $29 you've already paid for it), rental & return is rediculously simple with none of the "video store" hassle.
Instead of having everything anyone might be looking for (the "long tail" model), it has a few things that most people will probably want (say, the "dirt cheap blockbuster" model). Turnover of content is very high, so there is most likely something sufficiently interesting (for a buck a night, that's a lot) there at any time. Content range is very narrow, so customers can browse very quickly; covers of most movies available are shown on the front of the vending machine, so one can review what's available in just a few seconds (a thourough list is available by touchscreen) even while someone else is actually using the machine. And with rentals being just a buck a night, getting something or keeping something a few days is trivially cheap.
It complements Netflix/Amazon thus: instead of getting exactly what I want in a few days, I get something satisfactory right now. My "long tail" providers can find anything I specifically want within a few days, but if I simply want a couple hours' entertainment now I can get something suitable, dirt cheap, in a few minutes. And when I take a rental back, it's just too easy to pick up another. It also fills the gap between "long tail" services and TV's "you'll watch what we want when we want" model.
That the box is located at the entrance to a store which thousands of people frequent with great regularity, rather than being a special trip, completes the winning business model.
it takes about five seconds to drag and drop a movie in the queue
That's if you've got your Netflix queue up. Which is if you've gone to the Netflix page. Which is if you've interrupted whatever else you were doing on-line. Which is if you've got the computer turned on and browser started. Which is if you've stopped doing something else to do all the above. Which is if you've realized you just sent something back and need to adjust what comes next when Netflix receives it. Which is if you've realized that the other queue-user either won't like what's up next or has already done the above to trump your choice. Which is if you've got the inclination to coordinate the delivery of several hundred queue contents. Which is if you've decided to even keep the Netflix account after the wonderful tool, that saved you from even having to think about any of the above, was abruptly canceled and now you have to go from "no effort" to "daily fiddling & aggrivation".
Profiles is good. It works. Leave it alone; I've got a lot of other "5-second" tasks to fill not enough time.
Netflix Profiles "just works". I have my queue of 150+ movies, and without further effort the movies I want show up in the order I want, one at a time; ditto for my wife, who being home more than I am gets two a at a time. NO EFFORT.
Now you, and Netflix, pull the "quit whining, it's EASY to get the same thing, just go reshuffle the mutual queue..." without realizing that now that we've _made_ our lists (over 300 movies total), now we have to go _update_ that list every day. That doesn't "just work", that takes constant fiddling when we've got plenty of other things to do.
On top of that, our wildly different tastes (sappy chick flix vs. sci-fi noir & grusome action) means that the "suggestions" tool is useless. One of us gets on to review suggestions, and half the stuff suggested will be undesirable (never mind any bizzare half-breed "because you liked '27 Dresses' and 'Akira'...").
Profiles worked. It's extremely useful to some customers. Fix the code; don't wreck the customer experience.
I think profiles are causing a real PITA for the site programmers to maintain code and scrapping it all together will allow faster and more flexible programming models.
My boss' response to that kind of reasoning? backed up by the marketing department, CEO, and customers? "Cope."
Massively degrading the user's experience is not excused by programmer's convenience.
What a brilliant marketing meme: with just one borderline-ludicrous sentence, he managed to get many thousands of people talking, got his name in the news, launched a website, and promoted the website creation company, all at practically no cost, backed up (should someone ever achieve the borderline-ludicrous challenge) by a home-equity loan. The publicity-to-signal ratio is huge, at miniscule cost.
Show me a Data Center built with ceramic and powered by the sun or geo-electric sources and I'll recant.
Google is well under way toward making their data centers completely solar-powered. Silicon - forming the essence of their data centers - is little more than refined sand. While metal is used for much of the building out of convenience, most of that could be replaced with ceramics. Much of the remaining metal is used for wiring and hard drives, both of which could be largely replaced with flash (silicon) drives and radio/optical interconnects....and each data center largely houses the sum of human knowledge by mirroring nearly the entire Internet.
Maybe not all ceramic-and-solar now, but that's more a matter of current convenience instead of lack of technology.
Word is there exists the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is the accumulation of seaborne trash into a blob somewhere on par with Texas in size. Now work with me here... That's a whole lotta floating stuff already in a relatively stable position (occupying a major ocean current vortex); surely an inventive aspiring frontiersman could turn that mass of materials into an inhabitable floating island. Material acquisition & relocation is already mostly taken care of, as there's a Texas-sized mass of it already there. Much of it is plastic, which should be easily (for the "news for nerds" crowd) reformed on-site into more suitable structures. It's already in a stable vortex, so it's not going to be unmanagably mobile, and remains well outside any nation's claimable waters. There may already be sufficiently compacted sections to stand on & start work from.
Slashdot Mirror
Galt's Gulch: those who know, know. Discuss.
I found that the recharge time (Solio Hybrid, but presumably same for other small solar chargers) is so long as to be typically impractical. How often are you really willing to leave a ~$100 device lying around _outdoors_ for hours on end? Inside your car windshield isn't good enough: the device overheats and stops operating at in-car in-sun temperatures, and glass filters out wavelengths apparently preferred by the solar panel.
Advantage of the Solio Hybrid is secondary charging from USB: fill it up at your computer, then use the solar panel to top it off when hiking.
Got mine particularly for emergency/survival situations: at least it is _a_ source of off-grid renewable power sufficient to keep a cell phone going occasionally.
They will present you with a bill.
As well they should!
If YOU can pay YOUR bill, then why should I be compelled to pay it?
I'm willing to help those who TRULY cannot pay for basic emergency care, but if you can pay SOMETHING then quit whining and do what you can to care for yourself.
As for non-emergency care, you can plan for it; there are few who, budgeting accordingly, cannot pay for their own routine medical care; a minor impact on your chosen standard of living is not my problem.
As many note, and are roundly ignored: if you can't pay your own medical bills but you have a big mortgage, an HDTV, $100/mo cable bills, etc. then you CAN pay your own medical bills - get your priorities straight and your hand out of my wallet!
Walk into any Emergency Room lobby and you'll see a sign saying "you will be treated regardless of your ability to pay" or some such.
He does have an option, and he exercised it: pull the plug. Not a tax if you can choose to not pay it.
Worked for me, saved $80+ a month and lots of time & brain cells.
I had valve replacement surgery two months ago. While everything went extremely well (thank you Emory hospital), my wife would have appreciated not hearing the words "it's going well, they're stopping his heart now...".
I didn't know that the iPod or iPhone was limited to one OS. That's so very odd...
What, Linux is now a viable OS for the iPod? you can run Windows on your iPhone? there's a Touch-enabled QNX port coming?
I'm sure some of those lucky kids are really looking forward to running Ubutntu Mousy Mastiff on their shiny new toy.
Here's hoping we'll see a developer's app that runs entirely on an iPhone / iPod Touch.
A bank "going under" does not take all the depositors' money with it. If bankrupt, the bank is given time to reorganize and recover intact. If sold or taken over, assets, which include bank accounts, investments, and deposits, are sold to another company which will maintain the customers. There is also FDIC and other regulations in place to ensure you'll get your money back unless you did something stupid.
The days of "sorry, no money, we're closed" are gone (unless we suffer a vast & total meltdown of our economy, which is still far off).
That's why so few books port well to games, and why so few games port well to movies. When we are being told a story, it usually is interesting because the protagonist screws up and has to cope with the consequences; we are interested in how the screwup comes to be and how s/he copes with it (or doesn't). With a game, it's largely a continuous stream of "gotta get it exactly right", with screwups either being almost immediately terminal, or forced on you deus ex machina.
"Romeo and Juliet: The Game" would suck, despite being definitive great literature. Watching/reading the story, we are engaged by how others destroy themselves in their pursuit of an ideal. Thrusting ourselves into the game, we do not enjoy experiencing the same story arc first-person.
With Netflix, you can't watch anymore after you stop paying the monthly fee.
With Netflix, you know you're RENTING the movie, and have to give back (i.e.: lose access to, returning DVDs and stopping any streaming media) any material they've loaned you after you stop paying the monthly fee. While you _are_ paying your fee, you can hang onto the material (keep the DVD, play streaming media) and watch it on ANY platform you like.
This in contrast with Sony SELLING the movie, but you can only download it to a single device which you will most likely need to erase long before the product's 10-year lifespan is up. Also in contrast with buying the same content on physical media, which you keep indefinitely beyond Sony's control, and can watch on any player anywhere anytime.
Do we really have to spell this out?
While it's fine for a small-physical-format solid-state distribution medium, it's just too costly compared to (piracy aside) a DVD copy at $5-10. If the device's price were reduced for such content, fine ... but since a common 2GB thumbdrive is about $10, by what sanity is paying a >$20 premium to have just one movie thereon (and occupying significant space) reasonable?
Thing is, you get a thumbdrive to haul data around in ... and do you really want to be constantly hauling the same single movie around with a bunch of other data? No. We're not talking an iPod which has your whole CD or DVD collection handily available, we're talking a device which you'll keep handy yet is significantly devoted to one content which you won't watch much.
Imagine carrying around the Ghostbusters DVD all the time. Preposterous, no? This may be marginally more convenient, but still goofy.
While those numbers are not astonishing
Not astonishing? A single company, offering a proprietary product*, is outdoing nearly all of several hundred companies combined who build to a given standard! Astonishing indeed!
* - including hardware, OS, and a broad range of application software
we are too good to be true.
Ok. Next?
Redbox is a vending-machine movie rental system. I walk into the Wal-Mart a mile from my house, and there's this big, well, red box sitting there. It operates on the opposite of the "long tail": it only has a couple dozen of the very latest movies, has many (but not infinite) copies of each, costs $1 per night (just swipe your credit card), keep 'em as long as you want (after a month, just keep it - for $29 you've already paid for it), rental & return is rediculously simple with none of the "video store" hassle.
Instead of having everything anyone might be looking for (the "long tail" model), it has a few things that most people will probably want (say, the "dirt cheap blockbuster" model). Turnover of content is very high, so there is most likely something sufficiently interesting (for a buck a night, that's a lot) there at any time. Content range is very narrow, so customers can browse very quickly; covers of most movies available are shown on the front of the vending machine, so one can review what's available in just a few seconds (a thourough list is available by touchscreen) even while someone else is actually using the machine. And with rentals being just a buck a night, getting something or keeping something a few days is trivially cheap.
It complements Netflix/Amazon thus: instead of getting exactly what I want in a few days, I get something satisfactory right now. My "long tail" providers can find anything I specifically want within a few days, but if I simply want a couple hours' entertainment now I can get something suitable, dirt cheap, in a few minutes. And when I take a rental back, it's just too easy to pick up another. It also fills the gap between "long tail" services and TV's "you'll watch what we want when we want" model.
That the box is located at the entrance to a store which thousands of people frequent with great regularity, rather than being a special trip, completes the winning business model.
Of course the suggestion system doesn't work for you: trying to generate suggestions from a hodgepodge of two different peoples' tastes doesn't work.
it takes about five seconds to drag and drop a movie in the queue
That's if you've got your Netflix queue up.
Which is if you've gone to the Netflix page.
Which is if you've interrupted whatever else you were doing on-line.
Which is if you've got the computer turned on and browser started.
Which is if you've stopped doing something else to do all the above.
Which is if you've realized you just sent something back and need to adjust what comes next when Netflix receives it.
Which is if you've realized that the other queue-user either won't like what's up next or has already done the above to trump your choice.
Which is if you've got the inclination to coordinate the delivery of several hundred queue contents.
Which is if you've decided to even keep the Netflix account after the wonderful tool, that saved you from even having to think about any of the above, was abruptly canceled and now you have to go from "no effort" to "daily fiddling & aggrivation".
Profiles is good. It works. Leave it alone; I've got a lot of other "5-second" tasks to fill not enough time.
Why is the iPod successful? It just works.
Netflix Profiles "just works". I have my queue of 150+ movies, and without further effort the movies I want show up in the order I want, one at a time; ditto for my wife, who being home more than I am gets two a at a time. NO EFFORT.
Now you, and Netflix, pull the "quit whining, it's EASY to get the same thing, just go reshuffle the mutual queue..." without realizing that now that we've _made_ our lists (over 300 movies total), now we have to go _update_ that list every day. That doesn't "just work", that takes constant fiddling when we've got plenty of other things to do.
On top of that, our wildly different tastes (sappy chick flix vs. sci-fi noir & grusome action) means that the "suggestions" tool is useless. One of us gets on to review suggestions, and half the stuff suggested will be undesirable (never mind any bizzare half-breed "because you liked '27 Dresses' and 'Akira'...").
Profiles worked. It's extremely useful to some customers. Fix the code; don't wreck the customer experience.
I think profiles are causing a real PITA for the site programmers to maintain code and scrapping it all together will allow faster and more flexible programming models.
My boss' response to that kind of reasoning? backed up by the marketing department, CEO, and customers? "Cope."
Massively degrading the user's experience is not excused by programmer's convenience.
What design/architecture qualities are shared by all good software?
Honesty, clarity, thoroughness.
Do what needs to be done.
Bad software cuts corners on those, and suffers accordingly.
Sounds stupidly simple, but that's really all it is.
What a brilliant marketing meme: with just one borderline-ludicrous sentence, he managed to get many thousands of people talking, got his name in the news, launched a website, and promoted the website creation company, all at practically no cost, backed up (should someone ever achieve the borderline-ludicrous challenge) by a home-equity loan. The publicity-to-signal ratio is huge, at miniscule cost.
Show me a Data Center built with ceramic and powered by the sun or geo-electric sources and I'll recant.
...and each data center largely houses the sum of human knowledge by mirroring nearly the entire Internet.
Google is well under way toward making their data centers completely solar-powered.
Silicon - forming the essence of their data centers - is little more than refined sand.
While metal is used for much of the building out of convenience, most of that could be replaced with ceramics.
Much of the remaining metal is used for wiring and hard drives, both of which could be largely replaced with flash (silicon) drives and radio/optical interconnects.
Maybe not all ceramic-and-solar now, but that's more a matter of current convenience instead of lack of technology.
If there were _not_ a "War on Drugs", would we see far less spam?
Bioshock 3: The Search for Bioshock 2
Here's a crazy idea...
...
Word is there exists the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is the accumulation of seaborne trash into a blob somewhere on par with Texas in size.
Now work with me here
That's a whole lotta floating stuff already in a relatively stable position (occupying a major ocean current vortex); surely an inventive aspiring frontiersman could turn that mass of materials into an inhabitable floating island. Material acquisition & relocation is already mostly taken care of, as there's a Texas-sized mass of it already there. Much of it is plastic, which should be easily (for the "news for nerds" crowd) reformed on-site into more suitable structures. It's already in a stable vortex, so it's not going to be unmanagably mobile, and remains well outside any nation's claimable waters. There may already be sufficiently compacted sections to stand on & start work from.
Thoughts?