Do you just happily skip over any film that others have recommended to you that is available somewhere else but not on Netflix?
I know I do -- I have 100 movies in my disk rental queue and 50 in my instant watch queue (which I use much more often, maybe a 5:1 or 10:1 ratio of instant views to disk). If a particular movie is not available on Netflix, I have plenty of others to watch.
If someone recommends a new release, I just add it to my queue and eventually it will become available. There are a few obscure movies that people have recommended that were in the Netflix database but not currently available for rental - I've just kept them in the queue and hope that they will someday become available when Netflix senses that there's enough demand to make it worth buying a few copies. And those hard-to-find movies do seem to eventually make it to Netflix, it's happened a couple times already where I added some obscure movie to my queue and it eventually moved from the "Saved Queue" to my active queue.
For new releases, I don't care of Netflix has to wait a year before they are available -- if a movie looks really good, I'll go to the theater to see it. If I like it a lot, I might even buy it. But if it's not worth going to see in the theater, I'm happy waiting until it becomes available on Netflix.
You realize it's dirt easy to just connect your laptop to your TV with just one cable?
You're overestimating the technical knowledge of at least 80% of consumers -- I'd never be able to talk Dad through hooking up a VGA cable between his TV and laptop and then get him to use the computer to watch video. And of course, a single cable only gets him video since his laptop doesn't support HDMI out, he'll have to find a 3.5mm to RCA cable to get audio. And he'll want a remote control, so that's one more item he has to buy and set up.
I sent him a Roku and he was up and running in an hour.
Youtube will need the same hardware device support as Netflix if they want to become a real Netflix competitor. I suspect they are already on their way there - my Bluray player has both Netflix *and* Youtube support. I've watched a few Youtube clips, but the quality was way subpar - though that is probably due to the source material, I'm sure movies would be better quality.
That's why I like Amazon EC2 - my "cloud" servers are Linux instances running in their cloud, and I can easily mirror the data to my own servers. While I use their cloud API to start/stop/provision servers, I'm not dependent on of their API's to host my application. If Amazon went away, I could have my servers up and running at another provider overnight. (I do take full advantage of Amazon's multi-region instances, so I wasn't affected by their East Coast problems.)
Fortunately, I don't have terabytes of data locked aways in S3 - my database is a few GB so it's easy and cheap to mirror it to my own servers.
I'd never host an app on Google's App Engine API - I'd never be able to migrate to another provide if Google changed their service offering to something I didn't like.
I really wanted to get DSL, but because of my distance from the CO, AT&T (and other providers that run over their infrastructure) could only promise "up to" 1.5mbit, not enough for HD streaming.
You'd think I must live in some rural area, but I live in a fairly large city in the San Francisco Bay Area. AT&T wants to bring U-Verse here, but people are complaining about the neighborhood DSLAM cabinets that they'd have to install.
All in all Comcast has been pretty good. Only one outage in almost 2 years that I know of. I reported it at 8pm and they had a technician here at 8am the next day to fix it. I haven't run into any bandwidth caps despite heavy Netflix streaming (often several hours every night).
I have no cable service and watch Netflix almost exclusively (plus some over the air channels), but Comcast still gets 4 times more money from me than Netflix because they provide my high speed internet.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that Comcast earns more profit from me as a internet-only subscriber than they would if I were a cable subscriber.
Reed Hastings is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Netflix. He also sits on the Microsoft Board of Directors. This may - or may not - have anything to do with why you can't get an Android Netflix viewer client. But those below who would complain should be aware of this.
Ahh, that explains why I can't get an iPhone or iPad viewer... oh wait....
Isn't anything having to do with IPv4 a stopgap? The demand for IP's is outstripping the supply.
By supporting an IPv4 trade, companies are rewarded by hoarding addresses they didn't really need, and it just puts less pressure on the internet at large to make the inevitable jump to IPv6.
Why does everything have to be monetized? Why can't ARIN just reclaim blocks that are not well utilized and reissue them? Does HP really need two/8 blocks?
You should be supporting your neighborhood grocer... People like you that shop at mega-chain grocery stores are putting butchers and bakers out of business!
My neighborhood grocer? A place to buy meat and bread that's not part of a mega-chain?
I'm not sure where you live, but it's simply not possible to do what you suggest for most of us who don't own time machines.
Then you shouldn't lament the loss of jobs by people being replaced my machines if your lifestyle is contributing to the loss of jobs in the grocery service industry. You needn't go back in time, just use care when choosing where to live.
Within 4 blocks of my house, I have several neighborhood grocery stores, 2 produce markets, a butcher and a baker. And I do actually use those shops (I walk or past several of them on my way home from work), but once every couple of weeks I go to the big grocery store to pick up staples are aren't available at the smaller stores.
And yet, your conclusion is correct anyway. What's fucked up about self-checkout is that it isn't technological progress, because it doesn't replace a person with a machine; it just replaces a person with another person. And the new person (the customer) is less well practiced/skilled at the activity than the old person (checkout clerk).
In my store, they have 6 self-checkouts with a single line. So if there are 5 people in the regular checkout line, and 10 people in the self-check line, I can still get through faster by using the self checkout since I only have to wait (on average) for 2 people to complete their self-checkout purchase instead of waiting for 5 people to complete their clerk-assisted checkout.
I'm happy to scan my own groceries if it means I get out of the store faster. There are many more things I'd rather do than wait in line for checkout, I'm not doing anything useful while I'm standing in line, so I'm fine with having to expend a little work to scan my own groceries to get out of the store faster.
What is to skeptical about when it comes to SETI? I mean, do you doubt the existence of ET intelligence? The current programs ability to find them? Or do you question the current desire of some to find them?
I'm skeptical that radio searches are the way to find them. I believe that due to the shear number of galaxies and stars out there, that the one in a trillion chance of life must have been repeated many times so it's very likely that ET intelligent life exists.
However, we're already seeing why leaking radio waves are not going to find any ET's - in the hundred years since radio was invented, we are well on our way with replacing high powered analog transmitters with much lowered powered digital and spread spectrum transmissions -- transmissions that sound much like random static if you don't know what you're listening to.
There's a very small likelihood that an intelligent society that may have developed a millions of years ago is still in their 100 year "analog radio" timeframe so we can intercept their communications.
It's possible that some alien society is sending out radio beacons to announce their presence (and maybe even transmitting the plans to a time/space travel device that we can build to reach them), but I'm a little skeptical that this would be the case, again because whatever window of time that they'd feel like announcing their presence wouldn't match up with when we are listening since our societies may be millions or billions of years apart in development.
I never use the self check line. Never. The reason is that it is a small contribution of me keeping people at work and not have them replaced by machines.
I gladly pay with the few minutes it costs me.
Then why are you going to a grocery store large enough to have automated checkout stands? You should be supporting your neighborhood grocer, getting your produce from a local produce market or farmer's market, getting your meat from the local butcher, and your bread from the local baker. People like you that shop at mega-chain grocery stores are putting butchers and bakers out of business!
I, on the other hand, am happy to support efficient businesses - I purchase a *lot* of stuff from Amazon - even some grocery staples. If Amazon can 2-day ship something for less money than a local store sells it for, why should I have to pay a local markup for a product I don't need to see before I purchase?
Some things are better seen or tried-on in person - like shoes, and sometimes clothes, though I can generally buy a shirt in the mail and it fits me just fine.
Oh, and I do pay use-tax on Amazon purchases so I'm not using Amazon just to save (nearly 10%!) on sales tax. I have a small business and want to keep my financials clean, so I do pay my use-tax on all of my non-taxed online purchases.
Ahh, you must be in Europe -- my first encounter with weigh-produce-first was in an Irish supermarket when the bemused clerk had to send me back to weigh my produce. I've never seen a store in the USA that does that.
It definitely makes a lot of sense to do it that way -- it speeds the checkout line even for non-self-service lines.
The "My Bag" button sounds perfect, though requiring that someone verify the bag makes it less useful. In my store where the self-service attendant appears to always be busy, it's probably faster for me to continue my practice of just putting my goods on the checkout shelf, then bagging them into my bag on the floor when I'm done.
(If we have one of the self checkout software developers here: PLEASE let me continue scanning and require the ID before I pay, instead of halting the entire process.)
I agree, that's one of the most annoying parts of the checkout scanner -- I generally want to scan alcohol first so I can put it in the bottom of the bag, but when I do that, I sit and wait helplessly for the single clerk that is manning 6 self-checkouts. Though the *most* annoying problem is when the scanner tells me I have to bag my item before continuing and I've already bagged it!
2 other pet peeves:
First, use image recognition to help identify fruits/vegetables (or at least narrow down the list) for those that don't have the little plastic tags - it takes forever to scroll through the list looking for my potato.... why can't they take a picture of it and make a best-guess of the top 5 or 10 items it could be and let me pick one of those items, instead of making me scroll through a huge list of items. Color alone would let them eliminate green leafy vegetables from the list when I scan a potato. Or, at the very least, they should put the produce codes on the shelf so I can write it down or remember it at the checkout. The non-self service clerks have a handy paper flip-book that they can use (though they seem to remember almost all of them without looking them up).
Secondly, when I put my backpack on the bagging shelf before I start scanning anything, zero the bagging scale at that point and let me load my scanned items directly into my backpack. The way it works now, I'm told to remove the unauthorized item from the bagging shelf and I have to put my backpack on the floor, then scan items and stack them on the shelf, then after I'm done paying I have to load the items from the shelf to my backpack, while the person behind me waits to checkout.
How does Starbucks and other venues that provide free Wifi shield themselves from liability?
This incident alone makes me want to offer up free Wifi from my own home access point (yes, I know I may be violating my ISP's ToS, but I don't see that as a huge threat, especially with some rate-limiting to make it unattractive for large-scale downloads and port-25 blocking to make it unattractive for sending spam).
Does putting up that ubiquitous clickthrough screen that makes people promise not do anything bad give any legal protection?
What if I log MAC addresses from the DHCP server?
I'm not too worried about what the feds could find on my computer if they seized it - I'd even give them the decryption key to the hard drives if they ask nicely. If they break down my door and seize my equipment, my hope is that I can gain support from the EFF or ACLU (both of whom I've supported for many years) to lawyer up.
With EC2, they can scale automatically and programatically and can spread the virtual servers across multiple regions for additional redundancy. All with a single API.
That sure as fuck didn't seem to be the case these past few days.
Sure it was - that's why Netflix had no problems, they had instances across more than one region.
Obviously a fast switch of batteries is a better idea. I don't want to wait 15 minutes or even 5 to recharge. Then they can have fast chargers dedicated and efficient to re supply the batteries. I know batteries are expensive so the biggest obstacle is just figuring out a credit/ID system so that people can be trusted to trade $1000 batteries quickly.
I don't think the cost of the battery pack is a factor, nor is verifying credit/ID a difficult problem...I can rent a $25,000 car from a car rental agency in a few minutes -- if I'm in the right car rental membership program, my reserved car is waiting for me in the lot so I just hop in and drive to the gate, then show my driver's license to leave the lot.
I think a bigger obstacle is that people would have to agree to battery leasing programs instead of ownership. If you own the battery, you're not going to want to swap out your brand new battery with some old worn out battery that happened to be on the shelf at the service station.
Coupled with the fact that it's even harder to standardize on battery design/voltage than on charging connector/voltage. Physical dimensions of battery packs can vary widely depending on the design of the car.
There's no reason why an EV refueling station can't support multiple charge standards (as long as there are only a handful versus dozens).
One of the biggest expenses in setting up a charging station is in getting the high-power high-voltage power feed from the power company. Supporting a different connector or voltage adds a relatively small incremental cost to the charging station.
After all, gas stations already support diesel and 3 grades of gasoline (ok, technically it's just 2 grades and they blend them at the pump).
Do they even have the capability to spread someone out across different regions?
Yes you have full control over what region your instance runs in - some regions cost more than others, the East region is cheaper than the West region.
I'll stick to my setup of a dedicated server and virtual private servers across the globe rather than putting all my eggs in one basket with Amazon and "cloud computing"! It may be a little bit more in terms of operating costs, but it has true failover in the event of an outage!
Then your app doesn't really need a dynamic cloud.
Some companies have applications that run on a dozen servers during normal times, and need to scale to over a hundred servers during peak peak periods (i.e. a new product launch). With EC2, they can scale automatically and programatically and can spread the virtual servers across multiple regions for additional redundancy. All with a single API.
I always feel better when anything that is mission critical is in-house. Cloud based (and regular internet based) services can become inaccessible for your business if you simply lose your internet connection - it doesn't require all of Amazon to bite the dust.
But if having your application available to the outside world is mission-critical to the outside world, you're almost always better off colocating it with providers in multiple physical locations.
Even for internal apps that are necessary for your business, you may be better off outsourcing, since if your building catches on fire, you can send employees home to let them continue working. Few companies have the resources to build a truly redundant hosting infrastructure across multiple regions.
Because for most companies, a cloud provider can provide better uptime than they can manage by themselves.
All my websites are fine, which is what my high profile clients expect.
I can't imagine why someone would outsource or cloudsource stuff that is this mission critical.
The same company that relies on a single resource zone at EC2 is the same kind of company that will host all of their servers at a single coloc, or worse, host them on-site with a single internet connection and have no backup generator.
Anyone that uses Amazon EC2 to host servers and doesn't have backup servers in a difference availability zone (and region) get what they paid for -- a single point of failure. Any datacenter or coloc is subject to failure no matter how much redundancy is built in to the design - tornadoes, flooding, fire, equipment failure, accidents and other forces can take down an entire datacenter.
That's because we use Microsoft Windows Servers and Sql Databases. Amazon can't take us down.
It's not clear why your choice of a MS platform ensures uptime. Why does having Microsoft Windows Servers and Sql Databases keep Amazon from taking you down? You could host those Windows servers on an Amazon EC2 instance. Or does MS SQL/Server have some anti-amazon-takedown feature that keeps it running even if it's on Amazon's infrastructure and that infrastructure goes down?
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Do you just happily skip over any film that others have recommended to you that is available somewhere else but not on Netflix?
I know I do -- I have 100 movies in my disk rental queue and 50 in my instant watch queue (which I use much more often, maybe a 5:1 or 10:1 ratio of instant views to disk). If a particular movie is not available on Netflix, I have plenty of others to watch.
If someone recommends a new release, I just add it to my queue and eventually it will become available. There are a few obscure movies that people have recommended that were in the Netflix database but not currently available for rental - I've just kept them in the queue and hope that they will someday become available when Netflix senses that there's enough demand to make it worth buying a few copies. And those hard-to-find movies do seem to eventually make it to Netflix, it's happened a couple times already where I added some obscure movie to my queue and it eventually moved from the "Saved Queue" to my active queue.
For new releases, I don't care of Netflix has to wait a year before they are available -- if a movie looks really good, I'll go to the theater to see it. If I like it a lot, I might even buy it. But if it's not worth going to see in the theater, I'm happy waiting until it becomes available on Netflix.
You realize it's dirt easy to just connect your laptop to your TV with just one cable?
You're overestimating the technical knowledge of at least 80% of consumers -- I'd never be able to talk Dad through hooking up a VGA cable between his TV and laptop and then get him to use the computer to watch video. And of course, a single cable only gets him video since his laptop doesn't support HDMI out, he'll have to find a 3.5mm to RCA cable to get audio. And he'll want a remote control, so that's one more item he has to buy and set up.
I sent him a Roku and he was up and running in an hour.
Youtube will need the same hardware device support as Netflix if they want to become a real Netflix competitor. I suspect they are already on their way there - my Bluray player has both Netflix *and* Youtube support. I've watched a few Youtube clips, but the quality was way subpar - though that is probably due to the source material, I'm sure movies would be better quality.
That's why I like Amazon EC2 - my "cloud" servers are Linux instances running in their cloud, and I can easily mirror the data to my own servers. While I use their cloud API to start/stop/provision servers, I'm not dependent on of their API's to host my application. If Amazon went away, I could have my servers up and running at another provider overnight. (I do take full advantage of Amazon's multi-region instances, so I wasn't affected by their East Coast problems.)
Fortunately, I don't have terabytes of data locked aways in S3 - my database is a few GB so it's easy and cheap to mirror it to my own servers.
I'd never host an app on Google's App Engine API - I'd never be able to migrate to another provide if Google changed their service offering to something I didn't like.
I really wanted to get DSL, but because of my distance from the CO, AT&T (and other providers that run over their infrastructure) could only promise "up to" 1.5mbit, not enough for HD streaming.
You'd think I must live in some rural area, but I live in a fairly large city in the San Francisco Bay Area. AT&T wants to bring U-Verse here, but people are complaining about the neighborhood DSLAM cabinets that they'd have to install.
All in all Comcast has been pretty good. Only one outage in almost 2 years that I know of. I reported it at 8pm and they had a technician here at 8am the next day to fix it. I haven't run into any bandwidth caps despite heavy Netflix streaming (often several hours every night).
I described any sizable city in the USA - NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, even Austin and Denver.
Walkable neighborhoods are not that hard to find, but walkability usually comes with density, which often means a city.
I have no cable service and watch Netflix almost exclusively (plus some over the air channels), but Comcast still gets 4 times more money from me than Netflix because they provide my high speed internet.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that Comcast earns more profit from me as a internet-only subscriber than they would if I were a cable subscriber.
Reed Hastings is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Netflix. He also sits on the Microsoft Board of Directors. This may - or may not - have anything to do with why you can't get an Android Netflix viewer client. But those below who would complain should be aware of this.
Ahh, that explains why I can't get an iPhone or iPad viewer... oh wait....
Isn't anything having to do with IPv4 a stopgap? The demand for IP's is outstripping the supply.
By supporting an IPv4 trade, companies are rewarded by hoarding addresses they didn't really need, and it just puts less pressure on the internet at large to make the inevitable jump to IPv6.
Why does everything have to be monetized? Why can't ARIN just reclaim blocks that are not well utilized and reissue them? Does HP really need two /8 blocks?
You should be supporting your neighborhood grocer... People like you that shop at mega-chain grocery stores are putting butchers and bakers out of business!
My neighborhood grocer? A place to buy meat and bread that's not part of a mega-chain?
I'm not sure where you live, but it's simply not possible to do what you suggest for most of us who don't own time machines.
Then you shouldn't lament the loss of jobs by people being replaced my machines if your lifestyle is contributing to the loss of jobs in the grocery service industry. You needn't go back in time, just use care when choosing where to live.
Within 4 blocks of my house, I have several neighborhood grocery stores, 2 produce markets, a butcher and a baker. And I do actually use those shops (I walk or past several of them on my way home from work), but once every couple of weeks I go to the big grocery store to pick up staples are aren't available at the smaller stores.
And yet, your conclusion is correct anyway. What's fucked up about self-checkout is that it isn't technological progress, because it doesn't replace a person with a machine; it just replaces a person with another person. And the new person (the customer) is less well practiced/skilled at the activity than the old person (checkout clerk).
In my store, they have 6 self-checkouts with a single line. So if there are 5 people in the regular checkout line, and 10 people in the self-check line, I can still get through faster by using the self checkout since I only have to wait (on average) for 2 people to complete their self-checkout purchase instead of waiting for 5 people to complete their clerk-assisted checkout.
I'm happy to scan my own groceries if it means I get out of the store faster. There are many more things I'd rather do than wait in line for checkout, I'm not doing anything useful while I'm standing in line, so I'm fine with having to expend a little work to scan my own groceries to get out of the store faster.
What is to skeptical about when it comes to SETI? I mean, do you doubt the existence of ET intelligence? The current programs ability to find them? Or do you question the current desire of some to find them?
I'm skeptical that radio searches are the way to find them. I believe that due to the shear number of galaxies and stars out there, that the one in a trillion chance of life must have been repeated many times so it's very likely that ET intelligent life exists.
However, we're already seeing why leaking radio waves are not going to find any ET's - in the hundred years since radio was invented, we are well on our way with replacing high powered analog transmitters with much lowered powered digital and spread spectrum transmissions -- transmissions that sound much like random static if you don't know what you're listening to.
There's a very small likelihood that an intelligent society that may have developed a millions of years ago is still in their 100 year "analog radio" timeframe so we can intercept their communications.
It's possible that some alien society is sending out radio beacons to announce their presence (and maybe even transmitting the plans to a time/space travel device that we can build to reach them), but I'm a little skeptical that this would be the case, again because whatever window of time that they'd feel like announcing their presence wouldn't match up with when we are listening since our societies may be millions or billions of years apart in development.
I never use the self check line. Never. The reason is that it is a small contribution of me keeping people at work and not have them replaced by machines.
I gladly pay with the few minutes it costs me.
Then why are you going to a grocery store large enough to have automated checkout stands? You should be supporting your neighborhood grocer, getting your produce from a local produce market or farmer's market, getting your meat from the local butcher, and your bread from the local baker. People like you that shop at mega-chain grocery stores are putting butchers and bakers out of business!
I, on the other hand, am happy to support efficient businesses - I purchase a *lot* of stuff from Amazon - even some grocery staples. If Amazon can 2-day ship something for less money than a local store sells it for, why should I have to pay a local markup for a product I don't need to see before I purchase?
Some things are better seen or tried-on in person - like shoes, and sometimes clothes, though I can generally buy a shirt in the mail and it fits me just fine.
Oh, and I do pay use-tax on Amazon purchases so I'm not using Amazon just to save (nearly 10%!) on sales tax. I have a small business and want to keep my financials clean, so I do pay my use-tax on all of my non-taxed online purchases.
Ahh, you must be in Europe -- my first encounter with weigh-produce-first was in an Irish supermarket when the bemused clerk had to send me back to weigh my produce. I've never seen a store in the USA that does that.
It definitely makes a lot of sense to do it that way -- it speeds the checkout line even for non-self-service lines.
The "My Bag" button sounds perfect, though requiring that someone verify the bag makes it less useful. In my store where the self-service attendant appears to always be busy, it's probably faster for me to continue my practice of just putting my goods on the checkout shelf, then bagging them into my bag on the floor when I'm done.
(If we have one of the self checkout software developers here: PLEASE let me continue scanning and require the ID before I pay, instead of halting the entire process.)
I agree, that's one of the most annoying parts of the checkout scanner -- I generally want to scan alcohol first so I can put it in the bottom of the bag, but when I do that, I sit and wait helplessly for the single clerk that is manning 6 self-checkouts. Though the *most* annoying problem is when the scanner tells me I have to bag my item before continuing and I've already bagged it!
2 other pet peeves:
First, use image recognition to help identify fruits/vegetables (or at least narrow down the list) for those that don't have the little plastic tags - it takes forever to scroll through the list looking for my potato.... why can't they take a picture of it and make a best-guess of the top 5 or 10 items it could be and let me pick one of those items, instead of making me scroll through a huge list of items. Color alone would let them eliminate green leafy vegetables from the list when I scan a potato. Or, at the very least, they should put the produce codes on the shelf so I can write it down or remember it at the checkout. The non-self service clerks have a handy paper flip-book that they can use (though they seem to remember almost all of them without looking them up).
Secondly, when I put my backpack on the bagging shelf before I start scanning anything, zero the bagging scale at that point and let me load my scanned items directly into my backpack. The way it works now, I'm told to remove the unauthorized item from the bagging shelf and I have to put my backpack on the floor, then scan items and stack them on the shelf, then after I'm done paying I have to load the items from the shelf to my backpack, while the person behind me waits to checkout.
How does Starbucks and other venues that provide free Wifi shield themselves from liability?
This incident alone makes me want to offer up free Wifi from my own home access point (yes, I know I may be violating my ISP's ToS, but I don't see that as a huge threat, especially with some rate-limiting to make it unattractive for large-scale downloads and port-25 blocking to make it unattractive for sending spam).
Does putting up that ubiquitous clickthrough screen that makes people promise not do anything bad give any legal protection?
What if I log MAC addresses from the DHCP server?
I'm not too worried about what the feds could find on my computer if they seized it - I'd even give them the decryption key to the hard drives if they ask nicely. If they break down my door and seize my equipment, my hope is that I can gain support from the EFF or ACLU (both of whom I've supported for many years) to lawyer up.
With EC2, they can scale automatically and programatically and can spread the virtual servers across multiple regions for additional redundancy. All with a single API.
That sure as fuck didn't seem to be the case these past few days.
Sure it was - that's why Netflix had no problems, they had instances across more than one region.
Which are built in the U.S.?
Well, I think assembled is more accurate - most cars are assembled from pieces built all over the world.
Obviously a fast switch of batteries is a better idea. I don't want to wait 15 minutes or even 5 to recharge. Then they can have fast chargers dedicated and efficient to re supply the batteries. I know batteries are expensive so the biggest obstacle is just figuring out a credit/ID system so that people can be trusted to trade $1000 batteries quickly.
I don't think the cost of the battery pack is a factor, nor is verifying credit/ID a difficult problem...I can rent a $25,000 car from a car rental agency in a few minutes -- if I'm in the right car rental membership program, my reserved car is waiting for me in the lot so I just hop in and drive to the gate, then show my driver's license to leave the lot.
I think a bigger obstacle is that people would have to agree to battery leasing programs instead of ownership. If you own the battery, you're not going to want to swap out your brand new battery with some old worn out battery that happened to be on the shelf at the service station.
Coupled with the fact that it's even harder to standardize on battery design/voltage than on charging connector/voltage. Physical dimensions of battery packs can vary widely depending on the design of the car.
Why don't you just shove the Japanese plug up your arse and turn it on full current. Why would we want foreign plugs?
Because they work well with our foreign cars?
There's no reason why an EV refueling station can't support multiple charge standards (as long as there are only a handful versus dozens).
One of the biggest expenses in setting up a charging station is in getting the high-power high-voltage power feed from the power company. Supporting a different connector or voltage adds a relatively small incremental cost to the charging station.
After all, gas stations already support diesel and 3 grades of gasoline (ok, technically it's just 2 grades and they blend them at the pump).
Do they even have the capability to spread someone out across different regions?
Yes you have full control over what region your instance runs in - some regions cost more than others, the East region is cheaper than the West region.
I'll stick to my setup of a dedicated server and virtual private servers across the globe rather than putting all my eggs in one basket with Amazon and "cloud computing"! It may be a little bit more in terms of operating costs, but it has true failover in the event of an outage!
Then your app doesn't really need a dynamic cloud.
Some companies have applications that run on a dozen servers during normal times, and need to scale to over a hundred servers during peak peak periods (i.e. a new product launch). With EC2, they can scale automatically and programatically and can spread the virtual servers across multiple regions for additional redundancy. All with a single API.
I always feel better when anything that is mission critical is in-house. Cloud based (and regular internet based) services can become inaccessible for your business if you simply lose your internet connection - it doesn't require all of Amazon to bite the dust.
But if having your application available to the outside world is mission-critical to the outside world, you're almost always better off colocating it with providers in multiple physical locations.
Even for internal apps that are necessary for your business, you may be better off outsourcing, since if your building catches on fire, you can send employees home to let them continue working. Few companies have the resources to build a truly redundant hosting infrastructure across multiple regions.
Because for most companies, a cloud provider can provide better uptime than they can manage by themselves.
All my websites are fine, which is what my high profile clients expect.
I can't imagine why someone would outsource or cloudsource stuff that is this mission critical.
The same company that relies on a single resource zone at EC2 is the same kind of company that will host all of their servers at a single coloc, or worse, host them on-site with a single internet connection and have no backup generator.
Anyone that uses Amazon EC2 to host servers and doesn't have backup servers in a difference availability zone (and region) get what they paid for -- a single point of failure. Any datacenter or coloc is subject to failure no matter how much redundancy is built in to the design - tornadoes, flooding, fire, equipment failure, accidents and other forces can take down an entire datacenter.
That's because we use Microsoft Windows Servers and Sql Databases. Amazon can't take us down.
It's not clear why your choice of a MS platform ensures uptime. Why does having Microsoft Windows Servers and Sql Databases keep Amazon from taking you down? You could host those Windows servers on an Amazon EC2 instance. Or does MS SQL/Server have some anti-amazon-takedown feature that keeps it running even if it's on Amazon's infrastructure and that infrastructure goes down?