Note also that even for gasoline engines you have reduced performance in cold weather... for many of the same reasons.
False. Gasoline engines are more powerful in cold weather because cold air is more dense than hot air. Cold/dense air means that more air makes it into the cylinder. As every gearhead knows, more air = more power. About the only time this wouldn't be the case is right upon startup, before the motor temps start climbing. Fluids will be cold and harder to move throughout the engine. After 30-45 seconds, this becomes a non-issue.
Of course, more power doesn't necessarily translate to better fuel economy.
That dense air also works against you on the road:
Finally, a vehicles aerodynamic drag is proportional to air density. On a 70-degree-F day, the density of the air is 16 percent lower than on a day with temperatures around 0 degrees F. Although this makes little difference in urban driving, it could account for a highway mileage per gallon reduction of 7 percent on the colder day (including a 1.5 percent allowance for improvement in fuel efficiency at the higher engine load).
Those of us who started doing this before electronic navigation aid was available managed to survive long enough to spawn the next generation....
Sure, and people have managed to get around with paper maps for decades, but that doesn't mean that GPS's aren't a better solution. I remember vacation car trips with mom and dad, and mom was a lot less patient than a GPS while "recalculating" after dad missed a turn. Now I can drive across the country without looking at a map and when I get hungry or sleepy along the way, my GPS will tell me what hotels and restaurants to expect at the next few exits and will even give me their phone numbers so I can call to see if they are still open at 10pm. Looking through the AAA Tripbook was much less convenient.
No one is arguing that every bike should be equipped with a Hammerhead GPS, but it sounds useful for cyclists that often bike in areas that they aren't familiar with and want a GPS that gives easy to see visual cues that doesn't involve staring at a map display, or wearing an earpiece so they can get audio directions.
You know you can only turn at intersections right? The perfect place to check a map.
Yeah, if you don't mind getting rear ended by a car while you're looking at your map. Intersections are by far the most dangerous place to stop - if I have to stop on the road, I prefer to stop mid-block, preferably in front of a parked car.
Its illegal not to stop on the road at those red orthogonal signs that have the word stop written on them. Idiots like you deserve to get creamed, but its unfair that someone will have to live with the fact that they ran over your stupid ass because you refuse to follow the rules of the road due to your arrogance and self entitlement bullshit.
You deserve to get ran over for making such an ignorant response to his.
You're pulling off the road not to 'avoid using an electronic navigation aid'... you're pulling off the road so you don't get turned into road smear because your dumb ass was staring at the GPS rather than the world around you, you ran into traffic and a garbage truck turned you into a very thin smear of blood and guts on the road.
I don't know if you'd bothered to read the article about this topic (the link is at the top of this page, go ahead and click on it, it won't hurt you), but the entire point of the Hammerhead GPS is that you don't need to stare at it to use it -- the flashing lights are visible in your peripheral vision, or at worse with a quick glance. No need to stare at the blinky lights to know that when all of the lights on the right side are flashing then you should be making a right turn. Even better, when you see the left lights flashing 100 feet from your turn, you have plenty of time to gently merge into traffic to make your left turn instead of stopping at the stop sign, pulling out your map and then trying to make a left turn from the right side of the road.
I understand that you don't like bikes, but at least learn something about the product before you make an argument that tries to shoot down the very problem that the device is designed to solve (i.e. the need to stare at the GPS).
You might try pausing at those octagonal red signs you might have seen. They have white letters on them.
Not that any other bicyclist does...
AC
You're not a cyclist are you? Stopping on the road (even at a stop sign) to bury your head in a map or phone GPS is a good way to get rear ended by a car and you'll never see him coming since you're looking at your map. You could pull off the road onto the unpaved shoulder, but that seems like a lot of work to avoid using an electronic navigation aid.
Please, explain why people need all this navigation. I simply don't understand it. I can start any place in the continental United States, refer to Rand McNally, and maybe write a few notes on a scrap of paper. I can drive ANYWHERE in ConUS or mainland Canada, without any further guidance.
Now, I may be pretty smart (like most people I like to think that I really am smart) but it doesn't tax my mind to remember a series of route numbers and directions. I don't need a cell phone, or a GPS to hold my hand, and tell me whether to turn left or right, or how many yards to travel before turning.
Cycling is somewhat different than driving on the highway - but FFS, everything comes at you slower, there are fewer things to remember, and landmarks should be more "intimate".
I just counted, and my commute to work takes me on 18 different streets - it winds through several neighborhoods and on some bike-only paths. When I drive my car, I drive on 5 different streets, most of it on a freeway. Why do you think there are fewer things to remember on a bike? When I drive my car I stick to larger streets that have clear signs for major destinations, when I ride my bike I stick to smaller streets and I check a map first to help me stick to bike friendly streets... my community doesn't yet have comprehensive bike route signs, so I have to remember the street names myself. Now that I'm familliar with the route I don't need a GPS, but the first few times I had to write down each turn, and still had to consult my phone GPS after I missed a turn.
I'm sorry, but I see all this navigation software as just a tool to help dumb down America. Better to learn to read a map, then actually read the damned thing, then do your own thinking. Hey, I'll admit that software such as Rand McNally produces are beneficial. I can't know the current construction status of every mile of roadway in America. If you update McNally regularly, the software will warn you that US 1 and 9 are under construction in Smelly Swamp, North Carolina. That's a great feature - I can decide to take I-95 to avoid the construction.
So what do you do when Rand McNally tells you that the freeway to your destination is closed for construction and you have to go through some smaller towns?
The discussion is about cycling. Let me think - ride down my home street to Oak Street, make a right, ride to the library and make a left, go across the bridge then take the third left, go to the crest of the hill and cut down the alley next to the yellow house, wave at the old dude sitting on his back porch, turn right at the HUGE magnolia tree, watch on my right for the hot chick who often waters her flowers, at the church make a left, and I'm at work. Do I REALLY need navigation? Getting across town isn't exactly rocket surgery . ..
Not everyone rides on familiar roads every day - some of us like to go someplace new.
where do you stop on a road with a small shoulder?
You stop at the next intersection. I have been biking about 100 miles/week for 30 years. During that time, I have never, not once, needed to check a map while pedaling. If you are in such a hurry that you can't pull over for 30 seconds, then maybe you should have taken the car.
It's nice that you always bike in familiar areas, but I like to explore new places on my bike, and often map out my course in advance so I can stay on bike-friendly streets. While I could print out a paper map and keep it in my back pocket, or stop every few turns to consult my phone to see if I'm on course, I can appreciate why someone might want a GPS to help them. Why should I pull over for 30 seconds to consult a map when I could have an unobtrusive GPS aid on my handlbars to tell me which way I should be turning at the next corner?
Why do you think that a GPS is any less useful for a cyclist than for a car driver?
Because no-one can agree where the pogo pins should go, and it would be impossible to create a universal dock that fits any phone and guides it into place.
Wireless charging fixes all that. Any shape device will work.
I think a universal charger would be trivial to design as long as the contacts themselves are a standard width apart. Just need an adjustable guide on the sides of the charger to keep the phone lined up on the pins when you drop it in place.
I have a universal LiIon battery charger that works with all of my small LiIon batteries from cameras, cell phones, etc. It has an adjustable spring loaded guide along with movable pins that make contact with the battery. I use that when traveling so I don't have to carry along a separate charger for each device. Seems like the same concept could be adapted to a universal Pogo Pin charger if the phones were common.
The Dock itself could be a dumb plastic dock that is molded to be a custom fit for each phone, with a smart charger that plugs in the back making the dock super cheap to create.
In my opinion, the micro USB port was not designed with smartphones in mind.
The Micro-USB connector was designed for 10,000 connect cycles. Perhaps weak support of the connector inside the phone is to blame for so many failed phone USB ports because the connector itself should stand up to years of use. For comparison, Mini-USB is rated for 5,000 cycles, and the standard USB connector is rated for 1500 cycles.
I had a touchstone for my palm pre. It worked. BUT I never use it. It's just an extra thing to carry around with your phone if you go somewhere. And this one added utility to the phone; propped it up and displayed things. These new ones are just the same problem. Unless someone like Amazon put them all over the place, I don't see how it's more convenient than carrying cables.
Why wouldn't you just leave the charger at your home or office where you do most of your charging?
I carry a separate USB charger in my backpack for use on the go, I never bring my home charger with me. Is it common to have only a single charger that you use at home and carry around with you when you go out?
I've checked a few places and it seems as though you can expect a 70% power efficiency with this type of inductive charger. Some of the higher end models reach as much as 85%.
It strikes me as odd that in a time where we want as much energy efficiency as possible, we'd push towards something much less efficient with the potential to be so widespread.
A phone battery is so small that it's not really that much power -- throwing away 30% of a 3.7V 2300mAh battery's capacity is 2.5 watt-hours, or just under a killowatt-hour in a year's time if you charge your battery daily - less than 15 cents for most people.
Seems like a small price to pay for the convenience. if it saves just 1 second/day in a year's time, it will have saved around 6 minutes/year, or $1 worth of labor for someone that earns $10/hour.
If you want to make up for it, walk or bike instead of driving - gasoline contains around 35KWh of energy per gallon, so if you bike or walk for 1 mile instead of driving, you'll have saved an entire year's worth of wasted power from a wireless charger.
In most usage scenarios, pizza restaurants excepted, I doubt "worn out charging port" is going to be the reason you ultimately stop using the phone. I don't think I've ever had a device fail due to the charging port. For most people, wireless charging is a nice luxury rather than a genuinely useful feature.
I think that people that don't find wireless charging to be useful and convenient are people that don't use wireless chargers.
It's nice to keep a wireless charger on my desk at work, I can drop my phone on it, then grab it when I go to a meeting without fear of forgetting to unplug it and dragging the power strip it's plugged into across my desk.
Likewise, a charger on the bedroom dresser means that I can just put the phone on there when I go to bed to keep it charged - no need to fumble with cables in the dark to plug it in.
I don't really need wireless charging, I'd be happy to drop my phone into a dock with pogo port pins to allow easy charging without connecting a cable (and without wiggling the phone to get it to seat on a microUSB connector in the bottom of a dock). Seems like a cheaper and easier solution than wireless charging.
Why didn't more phones use that simple technology? I never did find a compatible dock for my CDMA Galaxy Nexus.
I bought a Nokia Qi charger cheap (~$20) a few months ago, but it didn't work well with my Nexus 4 - it charged it a few times, but mostly it would cycle between charge/no charge every few seconds. However, the Nokia charger works perfectly with my Nexus 5, I've been using it nightly for the past few weeks.
Original musket style guns had a problem with exploding too, yet metallurgy and gun designs have improved since then.
3D printing is still in is infancy, so the 3D guns will get better as designers learn about the weaknesses of the materials and design around them.
I wouldn't see a 3D gun as any more than a novelty today, but within a few years they will be much improved -- efforts to legislate them will just drive the designs and designers underground, it's not like the war on drugs has made it impossible, or even difficult to find drugs.
When you call tech support, you get to talk to a real support engineer, not a low paid customer service rep that only knows how to follow a script. When you tell him that you've already rebooted your border gateway and still see high latency and packet loss, he knows what you mean
Yeah, but for how long?
They've only been in business since 1994, so not even 20 years yet. That pales in comparison to AT&T/Bell's 100+ year history, but I think as long as their CEO and founder is in charge, they'll continue to provide great service. Of course, they are the little guy so they have to work harder. It remains to be see what happens if they become a dominant player, and while I'd like to see what happpens, I think there's little chance of them unseating the established telco and cable companies. Google has a better chance of that due to nearly unlimited funding.
Because you, and your overpriced set of AD admins, will be spending all your time every day tweaking and overriding those settings. Most developers and systems people I know will revolt, actively or passively, against the necessary web of policies necessary to lock down Windows servers in large environments. They can, and will circulate, workarounds to get past IT's top down policies in such environments.
So if you can't use AD to lock down your computers, how do you do it? If you start terminating people for intentionally violating security policy, the compliance rate goes way up. If your policies aren't important enough to require people to follow them, maybe they aren't necessary after all. Many corporations have regulatory or industry requirements that mandate a good security policy, and a violation (think HIPAA, SOX, PCI) that results in unapproved information disclosure can result in fines or even criminal liability. Yes, security can get in the way of doing work, but so can a $2M fine for not protecting patient data.
Desktops sitting around locally do provide large control over VLAN based security, firewalls, proxies, and the AD account management itself. Similar resistance happens when any new email system, network storage, backup, or authentication system is brought into play.
A VLAN locks down a computer? I thought that was network security, like Amazon's Security Policies.
Firewalls? Proxies? Use your VPC to route your traffic through your firewall, Amazon doesn't care how you want to route your traffic. If it's a software based firewall you can run it in their cloud, if hardware based, host it at your office and use your VPN or Amazon Direct Connect connection to route the traffic through your facility.
I still don't see how a local desktop is any easier to secure than a remote desktop. Except that the virtual desktop has better physical security from your end users.
It's not hyped that way. At least I don't think so. It is the isolated IT/IS people that only see what they do and say no way, it's stupid, it doesn't run Linux, I need a 8 core processor and 24GB RAM, super fast raid 10 on SSD and I do 3D rendering and upload 1TB files to process, this is the fail, it can never work!
We guess what...Outside of the developer/programmer/system administration world there is a whole different thing happening with businesses and people that sit down in front of a computer to work. The other 99% of people using a computer in a business atmosphere do NOT need what you do and a standard load Windows 7/8 desktop with 4GB-6GB ram does perfectly fine for them as long as they have their apps that they use to do the work they need to do.
Aren't those the same people for whom VDI works so well for? They don't need to know, or even care where their desktop is.
Few corporate IT/IS people care of their hardware runs linux - they care if it runs Windows Server. Linux is for the geeks in Silicon Valley, not for mature corporations.
> You ought to talk to your ISP about the high latencies
Very funny. I mentioned Seattle so that should clue you in that because this is a liberal shithole, there are no choices and no competition. CenturyLink is the only company that offers access faster than dial-up on my block. Their second level support doesn't even know what the words latency or traceroute mean. There are several other ISPs trying to service my block, but the anti-business mayor is fighting them with everything he has. The mayor elect is pro-Comcast monopoly so he is going to be even worse. He has already publicly stated that he doesn't think the city should enforce service level or coverage minimums so expect Comcast to, as hard as it is to believe, get even worse. They'll probably drop even more unprofitable blocks in the city and further reduce their bandwidth.
In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.
Sounds like you and your other downtrodden citizens didn't spend enough time and money supporting your internet-friendly candidates - the election was just a few weeks ago, what did you do to promote and support your interests? Perhaps good internet just isn't that important to your fellow citizens, maybe it's time to move to someplace more aligned with your values. Or maybe it's just not that important to you and you just want to whine on Slashdot about it.
> But don't blame Amazon for poor network latency to their datacenters
No one ever said it was. Go take your irrational hatred of Amazon elsewhere. They are a good company and the best cloud company in the world. Trying to build a strawman of your hatred of them to knock down is pitiful.
> when it's the fault of the local ISP.
And several posters were bitching about Qwest, CenturyLink, and Comcast. How in your world of stupid is that blaming Amazon? Just because you hate them doesn't mean that every single negative statement is about them. Most people here do not agree with your position.
You should feel bad for your pitiful attempt at Amazon trolling. You have so much trouble with reality that you should seek professional help.
Umm...I thought I was being an Amazon fanboi by pointing out that poor network latency is the fault of the user's ISP, not Amazon. Was I accidentally hating on them instead?
The GP mentioned they were in Seattle. When I lived there, the city granted a monopoly to Comcast, but Comcast doesn't offer Internet access to much of the city. I was stuck with 1.5 Mbps DSL from Qwest. Using SSH over Qwest with the 250 ms ping to Level 3 was so annoying that I often went back to dial-up for the lower latency. To be fair, the consistency and reliability with Qwest was amazing. In four years, it only went down once , and I was able to get the full 1.5 Mbps from just about everywhere. I currently have Comcast, and while I love the higher speed, I miss having a reliable connection. I've had to give-up on online gaming because the connection goes down so many times per day.
So complain to your city representatives - tell them that you're tired of them granting a franchise license to a provider that provides substandard service. And tell them to encourage projects like Gigabit Seattle to bring better internet service to the area.
But don't blame Amazon for poor network latency to their datacenters, when it's the fault of the local ISP.
You ought to talk to your ISP about the high latencies
So, firstly you'll be asked to reboot Windows, then your router. Then you'll be directed to the ISP's test website. Once it appears you are connected and get web pages, they'll try to hang up. If you persist past that stage, they'll probably disconnect the call at some point forcing you to restart from scratch.
Sounds like you have the wrong ISP -- this is a good time to plug my favorite ISP -- Sonic.net. When you call tech support, you get to talk to a real support engineer, not a low paid customer service rep that only knows how to follow a script. When you tell him that you've already rebooted your border gateway and still see high latency and packet loss, he knows what you mean and doesn't have to page through his script to find out how to reply to a customer when he says "packet loss" and when you read the IP addresses from a traceroute, he recognizes all of their router IP's. Oh, and they aren't confused or surprised when you say you're running Linux and tell you that they only support Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Note also that even for gasoline engines you have reduced performance in cold weather... for many of the same reasons.
False.
Gasoline engines are more powerful in cold weather because cold air is more dense than hot air. Cold/dense air means that more air makes it into the cylinder. As every gearhead knows, more air = more power.
About the only time this wouldn't be the case is right upon startup, before the motor temps start climbing. Fluids will be cold and harder to move throughout the engine. After 30-45 seconds, this becomes a non-issue.
Of course, more power doesn't necessarily translate to better fuel economy.
That dense air also works against you on the road:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-is-the-fuel-economy-o
Finally, a vehicles aerodynamic drag is proportional to air density. On a 70-degree-F day, the density of the air is 16 percent lower than on a day with temperatures around 0 degrees F. Although this makes little difference in urban driving, it could account for a highway mileage per gallon reduction of 7 percent on the colder day (including a 1.5 percent allowance for improvement in fuel efficiency at the higher engine load).
Those of us who started doing this before electronic navigation aid was available managed to survive long enough to spawn the next generation....
Sure, and people have managed to get around with paper maps for decades, but that doesn't mean that GPS's aren't a better solution. I remember vacation car trips with mom and dad, and mom was a lot less patient than a GPS while "recalculating" after dad missed a turn. Now I can drive across the country without looking at a map and when I get hungry or sleepy along the way, my GPS will tell me what hotels and restaurants to expect at the next few exits and will even give me their phone numbers so I can call to see if they are still open at 10pm. Looking through the AAA Tripbook was much less convenient.
No one is arguing that every bike should be equipped with a Hammerhead GPS, but it sounds useful for cyclists that often bike in areas that they aren't familiar with and want a GPS that gives easy to see visual cues that doesn't involve staring at a map display, or wearing an earpiece so they can get audio directions.
Insightful? Really??
You know you can only turn at intersections right? The perfect place to check a map.
Yeah, if you don't mind getting rear ended by a car while you're looking at your map. Intersections are by far the most dangerous place to stop - if I have to stop on the road, I prefer to stop mid-block, preferably in front of a parked car.
You're not a cyclist are you?
Its illegal not to stop on the road at those red orthogonal signs that have the word stop written on them. Idiots like you deserve to get creamed, but its unfair that someone will have to live with the fact that they ran over your stupid ass because you refuse to follow the rules of the road due to your arrogance and self entitlement bullshit.
You deserve to get ran over for making such an ignorant response to his.
You're pulling off the road not to 'avoid using an electronic navigation aid' ... you're pulling off the road so you don't get turned into road smear because your dumb ass was staring at the GPS rather than the world around you, you ran into traffic and a garbage truck turned you into a very thin smear of blood and guts on the road.
I don't know if you'd bothered to read the article about this topic (the link is at the top of this page, go ahead and click on it, it won't hurt you), but the entire point of the Hammerhead GPS is that you don't need to stare at it to use it -- the flashing lights are visible in your peripheral vision, or at worse with a quick glance. No need to stare at the blinky lights to know that when all of the lights on the right side are flashing then you should be making a right turn. Even better, when you see the left lights flashing 100 feet from your turn, you have plenty of time to gently merge into traffic to make your left turn instead of stopping at the stop sign, pulling out your map and then trying to make a left turn from the right side of the road.
I understand that you don't like bikes, but at least learn something about the product before you make an argument that tries to shoot down the very problem that the device is designed to solve (i.e. the need to stare at the GPS).
You might try pausing at those octagonal red signs you might have seen. They have white letters on them.
Not that any other bicyclist does...
AC
You're not a cyclist are you? Stopping on the road (even at a stop sign) to bury your head in a map or phone GPS is a good way to get rear ended by a car and you'll never see him coming since you're looking at your map. You could pull off the road onto the unpaved shoulder, but that seems like a lot of work to avoid using an electronic navigation aid.
Please, explain why people need all this navigation. I simply don't understand it. I can start any place in the continental United States, refer to Rand McNally, and maybe write a few notes on a scrap of paper. I can drive ANYWHERE in ConUS or mainland Canada, without any further guidance.
Now, I may be pretty smart (like most people I like to think that I really am smart) but it doesn't tax my mind to remember a series of route numbers and directions. I don't need a cell phone, or a GPS to hold my hand, and tell me whether to turn left or right, or how many yards to travel before turning.
Cycling is somewhat different than driving on the highway - but FFS, everything comes at you slower, there are fewer things to remember, and landmarks should be more "intimate".
I just counted, and my commute to work takes me on 18 different streets - it winds through several neighborhoods and on some bike-only paths. When I drive my car, I drive on 5 different streets, most of it on a freeway. Why do you think there are fewer things to remember on a bike? When I drive my car I stick to larger streets that have clear signs for major destinations, when I ride my bike I stick to smaller streets and I check a map first to help me stick to bike friendly streets... my community doesn't yet have comprehensive bike route signs, so I have to remember the street names myself. Now that I'm familliar with the route I don't need a GPS, but the first few times I had to write down each turn, and still had to consult my phone GPS after I missed a turn.
I'm sorry, but I see all this navigation software as just a tool to help dumb down America. Better to learn to read a map, then actually read the damned thing, then do your own thinking. Hey, I'll admit that software such as Rand McNally produces are beneficial. I can't know the current construction status of every mile of roadway in America. If you update McNally regularly, the software will warn you that US 1 and 9 are under construction in Smelly Swamp, North Carolina. That's a great feature - I can decide to take I-95 to avoid the construction.
So what do you do when Rand McNally tells you that the freeway to your destination is closed for construction and you have to go through some smaller towns?
The discussion is about cycling. Let me think - ride down my home street to Oak Street, make a right, ride to the library and make a left, go across the bridge then take the third left, go to the crest of the hill and cut down the alley next to the yellow house, wave at the old dude sitting on his back porch, turn right at the HUGE magnolia tree, watch on my right for the hot chick who often waters her flowers, at the church make a left, and I'm at work. Do I REALLY need navigation? Getting across town isn't exactly rocket surgery . . .
Not everyone rides on familiar roads every day - some of us like to go someplace new.
where do you stop on a road with a small shoulder?
You stop at the next intersection. I have been biking about 100 miles/week for 30 years. During that time, I have never, not once, needed to check a map while pedaling. If you are in such a hurry that you can't pull over for 30 seconds, then maybe you should have taken the car.
It's nice that you always bike in familiar areas, but I like to explore new places on my bike, and often map out my course in advance so I can stay on bike-friendly streets. While I could print out a paper map and keep it in my back pocket, or stop every few turns to consult my phone to see if I'm on course, I can appreciate why someone might want a GPS to help them. Why should I pull over for 30 seconds to consult a map when I could have an unobtrusive GPS aid on my handlbars to tell me which way I should be turning at the next corner?
Why do you think that a GPS is any less useful for a cyclist than for a car driver?
Because no-one can agree where the pogo pins should go, and it would be impossible to create a universal dock that fits any phone and guides it into place.
Wireless charging fixes all that. Any shape device will work.
I think a universal charger would be trivial to design as long as the contacts themselves are a standard width apart. Just need an adjustable guide on the sides of the charger to keep the phone lined up on the pins when you drop it in place.
I have a universal LiIon battery charger that works with all of my small LiIon batteries from cameras, cell phones, etc. It has an adjustable spring loaded guide along with movable pins that make contact with the battery. I use that when traveling so I don't have to carry along a separate charger for each device. Seems like the same concept could be adapted to a universal Pogo Pin charger if the phones were common.
The Dock itself could be a dumb plastic dock that is molded to be a custom fit for each phone, with a smart charger that plugs in the back making the dock super cheap to create.
In my opinion, the micro USB port was not designed with smartphones in mind.
The Micro-USB connector was designed for 10,000 connect cycles. Perhaps weak support of the connector inside the phone is to blame for so many failed phone USB ports because the connector itself should stand up to years of use. For comparison, Mini-USB is rated for 5,000 cycles, and the standard USB connector is rated for 1500 cycles.
I had a touchstone for my palm pre. It worked. BUT I never use it. It's just an extra thing to carry around with your phone if you go somewhere. And this one added utility to the phone; propped it up and displayed things. These new ones are just the same problem. Unless someone like Amazon put them all over the place, I don't see how it's more convenient than carrying cables.
Why wouldn't you just leave the charger at your home or office where you do most of your charging?
I carry a separate USB charger in my backpack for use on the go, I never bring my home charger with me. Is it common to have only a single charger that you use at home and carry around with you when you go out?
I've checked a few places and it seems as though you can expect a 70% power efficiency with this type of inductive charger. Some of the higher end models reach as much as 85%.
It strikes me as odd that in a time where we want as much energy efficiency as possible, we'd push towards something much less efficient with the potential to be so widespread.
Sources:
http://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/technology/total-energy-consumption.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging
A phone battery is so small that it's not really that much power -- throwing away 30% of a 3.7V 2300mAh battery's capacity is 2.5 watt-hours, or just under a killowatt-hour in a year's time if you charge your battery daily - less than 15 cents for most people.
Seems like a small price to pay for the convenience. if it saves just 1 second/day in a year's time, it will have saved around 6 minutes/year, or $1 worth of labor for someone that earns $10/hour.
If you want to make up for it, walk or bike instead of driving - gasoline contains around 35KWh of energy per gallon, so if you bike or walk for 1 mile instead of driving, you'll have saved an entire year's worth of wasted power from a wireless charger.
In most usage scenarios, pizza restaurants excepted, I doubt "worn out charging port" is going to be the reason you ultimately stop using the phone. I don't think I've ever had a device fail due to the charging port. For most people, wireless charging is a nice luxury rather than a genuinely useful feature.
I think that people that don't find wireless charging to be useful and convenient are people that don't use wireless chargers.
It's nice to keep a wireless charger on my desk at work, I can drop my phone on it, then grab it when I go to a meeting without fear of forgetting to unplug it and dragging the power strip it's plugged into across my desk.
Likewise, a charger on the bedroom dresser means that I can just put the phone on there when I go to bed to keep it charged - no need to fumble with cables in the dark to plug it in.
I don't really need wireless charging, I'd be happy to drop my phone into a dock with pogo port pins to allow easy charging without connecting a cable (and without wiggling the phone to get it to seat on a microUSB connector in the bottom of a dock). Seems like a cheaper and easier solution than wireless charging.
Why didn't more phones use that simple technology? I never did find a compatible dock for my CDMA Galaxy Nexus.
A replaceable port would solve this problem.
Until the contacts of the replaceable port wear out.
But then I guess a replaceable replaceable port would take care of that.
Or just use a wireless charger.
I bought a Nokia Qi charger cheap (~$20) a few months ago, but it didn't work well with my Nexus 4 - it charged it a few times, but mostly it would cycle between charge/no charge every few seconds. However, the Nokia charger works perfectly with my Nexus 5, I've been using it nightly for the past few weeks.
Original musket style guns had a problem with exploding too, yet metallurgy and gun designs have improved since then.
3D printing is still in is infancy, so the 3D guns will get better as designers learn about the weaknesses of the materials and design around them.
I wouldn't see a 3D gun as any more than a novelty today, but within a few years they will be much improved -- efforts to legislate them will just drive the designs and designers underground, it's not like the war on drugs has made it impossible, or even difficult to find drugs.
If you don't want complaints then make the DevShare program opt-in instead of opt-out.
You may argue that few people would choose to opt-in, but that's the point, isn't it?
When you call tech support, you get to talk to a real support engineer, not a low paid customer service rep that only knows how to follow a script. When you tell him that you've already rebooted your border gateway and still see high latency and packet loss, he knows what you mean
Yeah, but for how long?
They've only been in business since 1994, so not even 20 years yet. That pales in comparison to AT&T/Bell's 100+ year history, but I think as long as their CEO and founder is in charge, they'll continue to provide great service. Of course, they are the little guy so they have to work harder. It remains to be see what happens if they become a dominant player, and while I'd like to see what happpens, I think there's little chance of them unseating the established telco and cable companies. Google has a better chance of that due to nearly unlimited funding.
Because you, and your overpriced set of AD admins, will be spending all your time every day tweaking and overriding those settings. Most developers and systems people I know will revolt, actively or passively, against the necessary web of policies necessary to lock down Windows servers in large environments. They can, and will circulate, workarounds to get past IT's top down policies in such environments.
So if you can't use AD to lock down your computers, how do you do it? If you start terminating people for intentionally violating security policy, the compliance rate goes way up. If your policies aren't important enough to require people to follow them, maybe they aren't necessary after all. Many corporations have regulatory or industry requirements that mandate a good security policy, and a violation (think HIPAA, SOX, PCI) that results in unapproved information disclosure can result in fines or even criminal liability. Yes, security can get in the way of doing work, but so can a $2M fine for not protecting patient data.
Desktops sitting around locally do provide large control over VLAN based security, firewalls, proxies, and the AD account management itself. Similar resistance happens when any new email system, network storage, backup, or authentication system is brought into play.
A VLAN locks down a computer? I thought that was network security, like Amazon's Security Policies.
Firewalls? Proxies? Use your VPC to route your traffic through your firewall, Amazon doesn't care how you want to route your traffic. If it's a software based firewall you can run it in their cloud, if hardware based, host it at your office and use your VPN or Amazon Direct Connect connection to route the traffic through your facility.
I still don't see how a local desktop is any easier to secure than a remote desktop. Except that the virtual desktop has better physical security from your end users.
It's not hyped that way. At least I don't think so. It is the isolated IT/IS people that only see what they do and say no way, it's stupid, it doesn't run Linux, I need a 8 core processor and 24GB RAM, super fast raid 10 on SSD and I do 3D rendering and upload 1TB files to process, this is the fail, it can never work!
We guess what...Outside of the developer/programmer/system administration world there is a whole different thing happening with businesses and people that sit down in front of a computer to work. The other 99% of people using a computer in a business atmosphere do NOT need what you do and a standard load Windows 7/8 desktop with 4GB-6GB ram does perfectly fine for them as long as they have their apps that they use to do the work they need to do.
Aren't those the same people for whom VDI works so well for? They don't need to know, or even care where their desktop is.
Few corporate IT/IS people care of their hardware runs linux - they care if it runs Windows Server. Linux is for the geeks in Silicon Valley, not for mature corporations.
> You ought to talk to your ISP about the high latencies
Very funny. I mentioned Seattle so that should clue you in that because this is a liberal shithole, there are no choices and no competition. CenturyLink is the only company that offers access faster than dial-up on my block. Their second level support doesn't even know what the words latency or traceroute mean. There are several other ISPs trying to service my block, but the anti-business mayor is fighting them with everything he has. The mayor elect is pro-Comcast monopoly so he is going to be even worse. He has already publicly stated that he doesn't think the city should enforce service level or coverage minimums so expect Comcast to, as hard as it is to believe, get even worse. They'll probably drop even more unprofitable blocks in the city and further reduce their bandwidth.
In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.
Sounds like you and your other downtrodden citizens didn't spend enough time and money supporting your internet-friendly candidates - the election was just a few weeks ago, what did you do to promote and support your interests? Perhaps good internet just isn't that important to your fellow citizens, maybe it's time to move to someplace more aligned with your values. Or maybe it's just not that important to you and you just want to whine on Slashdot about it.
> But don't blame Amazon for poor network latency to their datacenters
No one ever said it was. Go take your irrational hatred of Amazon elsewhere. They are a good company and the best cloud company in the world. Trying to build a strawman of your hatred of them to knock down is pitiful.
> when it's the fault of the local ISP.
And several posters were bitching about Qwest, CenturyLink, and Comcast. How in your world of stupid is that blaming Amazon? Just because you hate them doesn't mean that every single negative statement is about them. Most people here do not agree with your position.
You should feel bad for your pitiful attempt at Amazon trolling. You have so much trouble with reality that you should seek professional help.
Umm...I thought I was being an Amazon fanboi by pointing out that poor network latency is the fault of the user's ISP, not Amazon. Was I accidentally hating on them instead?
> to plug my favorite ISP -- Sonic.net
They only offer service in a tiny portion of California. Why recommend a little company like that to an international audience?
They cover nearly all of California's 40 million customers. There are probably one or two people in Sonic.net's service area that read Slashdot.
http://www.sonic.net/sales/maps/broadband/dsl-map.gif
The GP mentioned they were in Seattle. When I lived there, the city granted a monopoly to Comcast, but Comcast doesn't offer Internet access to much of the city. I was stuck with 1.5 Mbps DSL from Qwest. Using SSH over Qwest with the 250 ms ping to Level 3 was so annoying that I often went back to dial-up for the lower latency. To be fair, the consistency and reliability with Qwest was amazing. In four years, it only went down once , and I was able to get the full 1.5 Mbps from just about everywhere. I currently have Comcast, and while I love the higher speed, I miss having a reliable connection. I've had to give-up on online gaming because the connection goes down so many times per day.
So complain to your city representatives - tell them that you're tired of them granting a franchise license to a provider that provides substandard service. And tell them to encourage projects like Gigabit Seattle to bring better internet service to the area.
But don't blame Amazon for poor network latency to their datacenters, when it's the fault of the local ISP.
You ought to talk to your ISP about the high latencies
So, firstly you'll be asked to reboot Windows, then your router. Then you'll be directed to the ISP's test website. Once it appears you are connected and get web pages, they'll try to hang up. If you persist past that stage, they'll probably disconnect the call at some point forcing you to restart from scratch.
Sounds like you have the wrong ISP -- this is a good time to plug my favorite ISP -- Sonic.net. When you call tech support, you get to talk to a real support engineer, not a low paid customer service rep that only knows how to follow a script. When you tell him that you've already rebooted your border gateway and still see high latency and packet loss, he knows what you mean and doesn't have to page through his script to find out how to reply to a customer when he says "packet loss" and when you read the IP addresses from a traceroute, he recognizes all of their router IP's. Oh, and they aren't confused or surprised when you say you're running Linux and tell you that they only support Windows.
Honestly, who gives a shit. They were designed to be lost.
At $17M each, you'd think they'd be designed to *not* be lost. How many $17M "designed to be lost" drones can we afford to send on one-way missions?