Not at all like an iGo. An iGo can only charge one device at a time. Its selling point is that it can be configured to charge various devices with various voltages and polarities. If all devices were magically changed to use 12v inputs, iGo would be out of business.
No, he misses the Convergent Technologies NGen. This was a pretty powerful x86 platform that also used external power supplies. The nicest thing about it was that it was quiet: the power supplies (yes, plural; the number you need varied according to your internal hardware) used passive cooling, so only internal heat sources needed to be cooled.
This was 1983, which was when IBM introduced the PC-AT, the machine which defines "compatibility" to this very day. And the AT used a big, noisy internal power supply. Technologically a big step backwards, but one that everybody was forced to imitate, including Convergent.
So here it is 20 years later, and we're just now beginning to talk about quiet and efficient power supplies again. Kind of sad, really.
You make a good point about wall warts, except you don't go far enough. If all portable devices accepted 12V power, somebody would come out with a single brick with multiple 12V plugs, which would be a godsend to travellers who currently schlep one wall wart for each device.
Google manufacturered those 450,000 servers themselves. That gives them some expertise. If they had given that many people medical care, I'd listen to their medical advice too.
The rate at which the Google computing system has grown is as remarkable as its size. In March 2001, when the company was serving about 70 million Web pages daily, it had 8,000 computers, according to a Microsoft researcher granted anonymity to talk about a detailed tour he was given at one of Google's Silicon Valley computing centers. By 2003 the number had grown to 100,000.
I've done my share of Google-bashing (mainly due to their inability to move their newer products beyond "beta"), but here's an accomplishment I have to admire: 100,000 servers designed and installed, pretty much glitch-free, in just 2 years! By contrast, my old web presence provider, a reputable and successful outfit, botched a simple expansion involving just a few computers, forcing a lot of customers (including me) to eat their contracts and move on.
Did you not read TFA, or are you just full of the usual "everybody's exactly like me" crap? The author went to great pains to explain that there's more to the problem than not having enough time. Games are written for game fanatics who spend so much time gaming that they go into a mental zone where they solve problems the rest of us can't ever hope to tackle.
It's a minor win for Linux. Despite the headline, this is not a PC, it's a "thin client". (In the original sense of the word, where the client did actual client-side work, as opposed to the graphic terminals that masquerade as "thin clients.) So this is just one of many systems that use Linux as an embedded OS. Nothing to sneer at, but not a major win either.
What would be a major win is if this were a "real" PC, with a word processor, spreadsheet, etc., all running under Linux. Not going to happen any time soon.
To answer the question in your subject line: about as stupid as most companies nowadays. Selling your customer list to your competitors is bad for long-term growth, but good for beefing up your short term numbers. And it's the numbers dweebs that own 21st century capitalism, so that's all they care about.
I used to buy a lot of stuff from Lands End. Then I got poor for a while, and switched to cheaper sources. Now I'm rich again, and I returned to my khaki addiction. During the interim, Lands End was bought out by Sears. So soon as I started buying from them, I started getting clothing catlogues from everybody under the sun — some of them, companies I never heard of.
Consider the sheer stupidity of this situation. Would Sears put an ad for Target in one of their stores? And yet they directly facilitate the marketing efforts of their competitors in the clothing catalog business. Of course, they made some money doing this...
Very true. However, Walmart is a special case because of their unprecedented ability to influence the marketplace — and their extreme lack of social ethics.
Please. A bet can have a good expected value and still be a gamble. Suppose the lottery jackpot is $2 million, and each $1 lottery ticket has a million-to-one chance of winning. Then the expected value of each ticket is very good indeed. But that doesn't mean you should cash out your $100K 401K to buy lottery tickets: the expected value of your lottery tickets may be $200K, but you still only have a 1 in 10 chance of scoring the $2 million jackpot. A good bet, but not one you should make unless you can afford to lose. That's gambling by any measure.
I usually skip Global Warming stories on Slashdot, because ensuing discussion is almost always the same. Al Gore says. Junkscience.com says. The evidence is unavoidable. No it's not. Yes it is. It's a trend. It's a glitch. It's CO2. It's sunspots. Greedy corporations! Tree-hugging hippies!
But this time I tuned in, because I thought something big like this would give us some new insights. But no, just jokes and discussion of the feasilibity of trade routes. The big missing ingredient is our friendly GW skeptics. They're just totally absent from this discussion! Come on people, are you going to let a little objective, unambiguous evidence scare you away?
Gag! When I was in college, all the schoolyard Marxists insisted that the Soviets had no pollution issues, because there was no separate private sector to corrupt the environmental regulators. In fact, the state-run economy was a nasty polluter. The problem with a command economy is that if the commanders deem pollution to be a non-issue, than that's the end of the discussion.
So you want to buy a crippled device (you can't get that much power from a USB port) just so you can have a standard power connector? Yeah, that makes sense.
First off, people who care that much about what others think about their taste in music (or food, clothes, whatever) are in need of serious psychological help.
Oh please. Our economy and culture are built on the assumption that people care about what others think. There are a zillion words for it: fashion, trends, branding, making a statement, memes, peer pressure...
Not that I'm endorsing all the cultural trends that strike me as pointless and lemminglike. But I'm not arrogant enough about my own lifestyle to label those who don't follow it as "in need of serious psychological help". Nor do I suffer the illusion, as you apparently do, that I'm totally indifferent to how I appear to others. Nobody who belongs to a social species can make that claim.
You're quite right. And the same goes for most of the other silly little USB toys out there. USB is a data interface. Yes, it supplies power too, but is it the best place to get it? Unless you're using the same connection for data, and want to eliminate a little clutter, the answer is no. If the USB port is in a desktop machine or a server, that means wall power is available, and that's cheaper and easier to access. If the USB port is in a portable machine, adding all kinds of useless gizmos to your system just drains a battery that already doesn't last long enough.
Dude, stop looking at the trees — you're in the wrong forest. This device not only lacks an internal hard disk, its resolution choices are way below what you'd need to capture HD streams. Component outputs would be like tailfins on a Honda.
Judging from their web site, Neuros is mainly interested in creating devices that use portable devices for playback. Hence the emphasis on flash memory for storage. When this product goes GA, I'll certainly consider buying one to use with my TV — but my TV is not only analog, it has maybe a 10-inch screen. This DVR is aimed at people like me, with shallow pockets and modest requirements, not high-end video lovers like you.
The ammount of stigma now attached to IE has really damaged the product.
Damaged how? They still own (pun intended) 90% of the marketplace, with no sign that this is going to change. Firefox zealots continue to kvell about every 0.1% gain in market share, but I see no sign of a significant move away from IE by corporate decisionmakers.
I would scrap the entire codebase of IE and start with an entireley new one...
Except that this exploit isn't in the IE codebase, it's in the VML codebase. Microsoft's security fuckups are not localized to IE by any means — they pervade their OS, their libraries, and their applications. IE only gets the blame because it's the application that serves as the main conduit to the web, where most of the malicious software lives. If Microsoft takes the "scrap the codebase and start over" approach, they're basically going to have to throw out every piece of code written in the last 10 years. Yeah, I know what you're saying, "That sounds like a good idea." But not economically feasible.
Well, I did RTFA, and I wish I been lazy for once. The dude takes 3 or 4 long paragraphs to say what you said in a single sentence. I am so tired of Slashdot stories where TFA is a half-witted rant by some blogger who flunked Freshman English.
You're obviously of the "we can fix it, we just need to find the right technology" school. Not all intelligent people agree. We're of the "if you're greedy, shortsighted, and willfully blind, it doesn't matter how good your technology is" school.
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You'd lose your bet.
Not at all like an iGo. An iGo can only charge one device at a time. Its selling point is that it can be configured to charge various devices with various voltages and polarities. If all devices were magically changed to use 12v inputs, iGo would be out of business.
No, he misses the Convergent Technologies NGen. This was a pretty powerful x86 platform that also used external power supplies. The nicest thing about it was that it was quiet: the power supplies (yes, plural; the number you need varied according to your internal hardware) used passive cooling, so only internal heat sources needed to be cooled.
This was 1983, which was when IBM introduced the PC-AT, the machine which defines "compatibility" to this very day. And the AT used a big, noisy internal power supply. Technologically a big step backwards, but one that everybody was forced to imitate, including Convergent.
So here it is 20 years later, and we're just now beginning to talk about quiet and efficient power supplies again. Kind of sad, really.
**big sigh**
Google manufacturered those 450,000 servers themselves. That gives them some expertise. If they had given that many people medical care, I'd listen to their medical advice too.
I've done my share of Google-bashing (mainly due to their inability to move their newer products beyond "beta"), but here's an accomplishment I have to admire: 100,000 servers designed and installed, pretty much glitch-free, in just 2 years! By contrast, my old web presence provider, a reputable and successful outfit, botched a simple expansion involving just a few computers, forcing a lot of customers (including me) to eat their contracts and move on.
Did you not read TFA, or are you just full of the usual "everybody's exactly like me" crap? The author went to great pains to explain that there's more to the problem than not having enough time. Games are written for game fanatics who spend so much time gaming that they go into a mental zone where they solve problems the rest of us can't ever hope to tackle.
It's a minor win for Linux. Despite the headline, this is not a PC, it's a "thin client". (In the original sense of the word, where the client did actual client-side work, as opposed to the graphic terminals that masquerade as "thin clients.) So this is just one of many systems that use Linux as an embedded OS. Nothing to sneer at, but not a major win either.
What would be a major win is if this were a "real" PC, with a word processor, spreadsheet, etc., all running under Linux. Not going to happen any time soon.
I used to buy a lot of stuff from Lands End. Then I got poor for a while, and switched to cheaper sources. Now I'm rich again, and I returned to my khaki addiction. During the interim, Lands End was bought out by Sears. So soon as I started buying from them, I started getting clothing catlogues from everybody under the sun — some of them, companies I never heard of.
Consider the sheer stupidity of this situation. Would Sears put an ad for Target in one of their stores? And yet they directly facilitate the marketing efforts of their competitors in the clothing catalog business. Of course, they made some money doing this...
Walmart's crusade against cusswords has nothing to do with moralism. It's a business decision, like everything they do.
Very true. However, Walmart is a special case because of their unprecedented ability to influence the marketplace — and their extreme lack of social ethics.
If the New Scientist accelerated after it went off the rails, there must be something to this new-fangled motor!
Please. A bet can have a good expected value and still be a gamble. Suppose the lottery jackpot is $2 million, and each $1 lottery ticket has a million-to-one chance of winning. Then the expected value of each ticket is very good indeed. But that doesn't mean you should cash out your $100K 401K to buy lottery tickets: the expected value of your lottery tickets may be $200K, but you still only have a 1 in 10 chance of scoring the $2 million jackpot. A good bet, but not one you should make unless you can afford to lose. That's gambling by any measure.
That's the spirit! Well, almost. You posted as an AC, so you still look intimidated.
I usually skip Global Warming stories on Slashdot, because ensuing discussion is almost always the same. Al Gore says. Junkscience.com says. The evidence is unavoidable. No it's not. Yes it is. It's a trend. It's a glitch. It's CO2. It's sunspots. Greedy corporations! Tree-hugging hippies!
But this time I tuned in, because I thought something big like this would give us some new insights. But no, just jokes and discussion of the feasilibity of trade routes. The big missing ingredient is our friendly GW skeptics. They're just totally absent from this discussion! Come on people, are you going to let a little objective, unambiguous evidence scare you away?
Gag! When I was in college, all the schoolyard Marxists insisted that the Soviets had no pollution issues, because there was no separate private sector to corrupt the environmental regulators. In fact, the state-run economy was a nasty polluter. The problem with a command economy is that if the commanders deem pollution to be a non-issue, than that's the end of the discussion.
If you know how to build a serious PVR for $250, please share your shopping list!
So you want to buy a crippled device (you can't get that much power from a USB port) just so you can have a standard power connector? Yeah, that makes sense.
Oh please. Our economy and culture are built on the assumption that people care about what others think. There are a zillion words for it: fashion, trends, branding, making a statement, memes, peer pressure...
Not that I'm endorsing all the cultural trends that strike me as pointless and lemminglike. But I'm not arrogant enough about my own lifestyle to label those who don't follow it as "in need of serious psychological help". Nor do I suffer the illusion, as you apparently do, that I'm totally indifferent to how I appear to others. Nobody who belongs to a social species can make that claim.
You're quite right. And the same goes for most of the other silly little USB toys out there. USB is a data interface. Yes, it supplies power too, but is it the best place to get it? Unless you're using the same connection for data, and want to eliminate a little clutter, the answer is no. If the USB port is in a desktop machine or a server, that means wall power is available, and that's cheaper and easier to access. If the USB port is in a portable machine, adding all kinds of useless gizmos to your system just drains a battery that already doesn't last long enough.
Dude, stop looking at the trees — you're in the wrong forest. This device not only lacks an internal hard disk, its resolution choices are way below what you'd need to capture HD streams. Component outputs would be like tailfins on a Honda.
Judging from their web site, Neuros is mainly interested in creating devices that use portable devices for playback. Hence the emphasis on flash memory for storage. When this product goes GA, I'll certainly consider buying one to use with my TV — but my TV is not only analog, it has maybe a 10-inch screen. This DVR is aimed at people like me, with shallow pockets and modest requirements, not high-end video lovers like you.
... I feel I am the worst wiring technician on the planet. All I have to do is look at a cable to get it tangled!
Well, I did RTFA, and I wish I been lazy for once. The dude takes 3 or 4 long paragraphs to say what you said in a single sentence. I am so tired of Slashdot stories where TFA is a half-witted rant by some blogger who flunked Freshman English.
You're obviously of the "we can fix it, we just need to find the right technology" school. Not all intelligent people agree. We're of the "if you're greedy, shortsighted, and willfully blind, it doesn't matter how good your technology is" school.