No. That requires pretty special steel, glimmer, chemical treatments, welding and that is not even taking the heater into account that turns a valve into an electronics device. Without the heater being turned on a valve is not an electronic component.
Well, I figured that you might be able to print the heater too, but yeah, I was afraid there was more to the guts of it than a simple metal structure.
I don't know about you, but when someone with a brand-new account kicks off the discussion with a first post that praises Microsoft and denounces the competition, and that is their only comment, that looks rather odd to me.
When you remember that there have been a lot of new accounts doing exactly that over the course of this year - the Visual Studio ones being some of the most blatant - well, writing that off as normal user behaviour starts to look like burying your head in the sand.
There's no technical reason Android need only run on a Linux kernel. All Android needs is a dalvik implementation and a supporting layer (which happens to be provided by linux and a libc).
You might have fun with games and other things which use the NDK. If they have an x86 version of the.so then you might be able to use something like WINE to get Windows to load it in and run it, but if there's only an ARM version you'll have to emulate that CPU and it will not be fast.
This is about right. MLC flash normally is rated for between 1k and 10k cycles. Newer flash is generally less as transistor sizes are shrunk to fit in more gbytes in the same die area.
Data retention figures would be interesting too. Last I heard, the strategy for dealing with that at smaller feature sizes was to make the disk periodically rewrite all the data, which of course will eat into your write cycles.
[checks articles]....ugh. Is that seriously it?Three months?
Microsoft is in the tablet market since many years. If I'm not mistaken since shortly after the launch of Windows XP with these UMPC things. Nobody ever wanted tablets with Windows.
It goes back further than that. I remember the Casio PA2400, which ran CE 2.0 or somesuch. It was released in 1999.
One of the things I'm worried about is that Windows has traditionally had better backwards compatibility, from the point of view that you may well want to fire them up again in a decade or so. For instance, Rune (Lokisoft) and RTCW (Id/Raven) from 10 years ago are a pain to make work and in the case of Rune do very odd things like the trees being bent over or upside-down.
On the other hand, I had a far easier time making Morrowind, SS2 and even Thief 2 run inside WINE than I did in Windows.
Except I'm pretty sure the pro version will run metro style apps.
And maybe one day that will be important. Right now, it's win32 applications that people need to run. And not being able to run those applications was the reason given for the Linux Netbook market shrivelling up.
For games - well, yes, I suppose you could control everything inside the EXE like they used to do 22 years ago, but of course that means your map designers have to be C++ programmers and they have to be able to recompile the game. IMHO that puts us back in the dark ages.
A game doesn't need filesystem access but something like Photoshop or any DAW software would.
And on that note, half the adverts I see on Slashdots are for VST plugins. Personally I do everything in hardware to avoid being tied to one OS that Microsoft may replace with RT, but they are freaking popular. It's a whole thriving market which simply cannot exist on RT. Yeah, you could make a standalone synth program or effect, but without being able to communicate with the sequencer or DAW by IPC, there is basically no point.
"...And in the same vein of blowing past peoples' expectations, virtually no app could not be written as a WinRT app. Many are imagining very simple, HTML-like apps, and while I'm sure there will be plenty of those, you need to reset your expectations up. WinRT is amazingly full-featured and not constrained to goofy utilities and simple games. The next "Call of Duty" could be a WinRT app, complete with support for Edge UIs and Charms..."
It is the x86 tablets that are the stop-gap
With games rated over 15 banned from the app store, sandboxing that prevents simple things like IPC and restrictions against plugins or scripting... good luck getting a CoD type game, mate.
1) Windows RT devices are few and far between to begin with, most customers will be getting traditional x86 devices when they upgrade.
If it weren't for the hype about the Surface devices, I'd agree. I wonder how many will be returned because they can't run Borderlands 2 or whatever.
2) Most people don't use a lot of their Windows applications outside of Office and the browser, and the rest will be filled in with the Metro apps, so consumers will likely not be pissed off...yes, get this, most people aren't power users.
Depends entirely on the category of user. At home? Windows is big in the games market and the Surface can't run any of them. At work? It has no Outlook, no Active Directory support and ships with a version of Office you're prohibited from using in the office without buying upgrade licenses first.
In fact, what I predict is that Microsoft will have the opposite problem: convincing people that Windows 8 on desktops will run desktop applications. You see that confusion here on Slashdot all the time.
Exactly. RT launches first as 'the new windows'. People buy it, find it doesn't run their software - Windows 8 gets the same reputation, in much the same way as Vista's image was left tattered even after they had fixed most of the initial problems with it.
At work - in the UK - we get lots of recorded messages peddling financial services (getting compensation for mis-sold mortgages) seems to be the current favourite.
They only seem to call businesses, but they only ever offer services that an individual would require, it's rather odd. It typically starts with "This is an important message..." or "Barclays, Natwest, HSBC..." at which point we usually hang up.
One of my co-workers will sometimes hold or press whatever to get to the operator, and then lead them on or something similar. On one occasion he repeated the word 'Penrith', over and over again until they hung up.
Well, the intel-based one was even more expensive when it came out, IIRC it was approaching £500. This - the cheaper ARM version - is what they should have done in the first place, though arguably the price is still a bit too high for a dumb terminal that can't be used on an aircraft.
If Office RT supplies 1- the features 2- the stability like the others, and adds 3- perfect import/export, then most professionals on Office will gladly pay the same or a bit more than for any other tablet.
Consumers not hooked on Office probably won't though, and probably shouldn't. Android has most everything needed for content consumption, at half the price.
Interestingly, the version of office shipping on this thing is for home use only and must not be used in a commercial setting. (Why the F is it called 'office' if you can't use it there...?)
Office Home & Student 2013 RT Preview and the final version are not for use in commercial, nonprofit, or revenue generating activities. Commercial license options available (sold separately).
Windows needs to make "future" applications unable to get out of their install directory, and unable to write to a global registry. Viruses can't do a whole lot if they can't get to system files, can't modify anything but themselves.
As described, that also wipes out basically everything that makes a computer useful - for starters you can't edit a document in more than one program. You can't back things up because the backup program can't get at files outside its install directory.
You can't record a WAV file in one program then use another to clean it up. Hell, you can't listen to the file afterwards because the media player can't get at it. You can't compile programs because the compiler suite consists of an entire toolchain, you can't have photoshop plugins and even if you could you wouldn't be able to upload the edited image because only photoshop can access it. Something like Dropbox becomes impossible.
this last one is killer. it lets you use this as a servicable desktop or laptop replacement. jack in a real screen, KB, and usb disk and you have a desktop computer that is probably better than the 4 year old peice of dell junk your older relative is using now.
and 2.5 it lets you use your old applications.
No, it will only run Metro apps ('Windows Store apps' or whatever they're called now) and a tweaked version of Office. If you want to run Windows software, you'll need the 'Pro' models which look to cost about twice as much.
On my Kingston, half the filesystem turned to crap. I managed to copy off some of the more important bits which I foolishly hadn't backed up (scripts and stuff - it was the OS drive).
A bad block check revealed that about half the drive that was in use was dead - the blank areas were fine and dandy. I tried to image it the following day (to avoid a reinstall if I could) and at that point the drive ceased to be recognised by the BIOS.
I should probably add that it failed just two days before the warranty expired. However they had discontinued them (I wonder why...?) so I got a refund and went back to a spinning rust drive for the OS for a couple of years. I dp have another one now as they were on sale - hopefully it will last longer this time.
Slashdot Mirror
And for those unhappy with typing on a screen, get rid of all your iPhones and Androids.
Mine has a rather nice keyboard.
No. That requires pretty special steel, glimmer, chemical treatments, welding and that is not even taking the heater into account that turns a valve into an electronics device. Without the heater being turned on a valve is not an electronic component.
Well, I figured that you might be able to print the heater too, but yeah, I was afraid there was more to the guts of it than a simple metal structure.
Wires and switches still only qualify as "electric" but not electronics. There is not much they can be used for by themselves.
Could you print the core of an ECC83 or something?
The last comment at the bottom of the article is a post by one of the project team, linking to a FAQ written in response to the comments.
http://hydroice.wordpress.com/
Not at all, if you're willing to back it up.
I don't know about you, but when someone with a brand-new account kicks off the discussion with a first post that praises Microsoft and denounces the competition, and that is their only comment, that looks rather odd to me.
When you remember that there have been a lot of new accounts doing exactly that over the course of this year - the Visual Studio ones being some of the most blatant - well, writing that off as normal user behaviour starts to look like burying your head in the sand.
There's no technical reason Android need only run on a Linux kernel. All Android needs is a dalvik implementation and a supporting layer (which happens to be provided by linux and a libc).
You might have fun with games and other things which use the NDK. If they have an x86 version of the .so then you might be able to use something like WINE to get Windows to load it in and run it, but if there's only an ARM version you'll have to emulate that CPU and it will not be fast.
Balls, that was supposed to be a 'funny' mod.
This is about right. MLC flash normally is rated for between 1k and 10k cycles. Newer flash is generally less as transistor sizes are shrunk to fit in more gbytes in the same die area.
Data retention figures would be interesting too. Last I heard, the strategy for dealing with that at smaller feature sizes was to make the disk periodically rewrite all the data, which of course will eat into your write cycles.
[checks articles] ....ugh. Is that seriously it?Three months?
Man, why do you people keep referring to companies as multiple individuals?
Because that's what they're made of. IIRC it's one of those annoying subtle differences between British and American English.
Microsoft is in the tablet market since many years. If I'm not mistaken since shortly after the launch of Windows XP with these UMPC things. Nobody ever wanted tablets with Windows.
It goes back further than that. I remember the Casio PA2400, which ran CE 2.0 or somesuch. It was released in 1999.
One of the things I'm worried about is that Windows has traditionally had better backwards compatibility, from the point of view that you may well want to fire them up again in a decade or so. For instance, Rune (Lokisoft) and RTCW (Id/Raven) from 10 years ago are a pain to make work and in the case of Rune do very odd things like the trees being bent over or upside-down.
On the other hand, I had a far easier time making Morrowind, SS2 and even Thief 2 run inside WINE than I did in Windows.
Except I'm pretty sure the pro version will run metro style apps.
And maybe one day that will be important. Right now, it's win32 applications that people need to run. And not being able to run those applications was the reason given for the Linux Netbook market shrivelling up.
For games - well, yes, I suppose you could control everything inside the EXE like they used to do 22 years ago, but of course that means your map designers have to be C++ programmers and they have to be able to recompile the game. IMHO that puts us back in the dark ages.
A game doesn't need filesystem access but something like Photoshop or any DAW software would.
And on that note, half the adverts I see on Slashdots are for VST plugins. Personally I do everything in hardware to avoid being tied to one OS that Microsoft may replace with RT, but they are freaking popular. It's a whole thriving market which simply cannot exist on RT. Yeah, you could make a standalone synth program or effect, but without being able to communicate with the sequencer or DAW by IPC, there is basically no point.
RT is a powerful framework:
From http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows8/winrt-replacing-win32-140605
"...And in the same vein of blowing past peoples' expectations, virtually no app could not be written as a WinRT app. Many are imagining very simple, HTML-like apps, and while I'm sure there will be plenty of those, you need to reset your expectations up. WinRT is amazingly full-featured and not constrained to goofy utilities and simple games. The next "Call of Duty" could be a WinRT app, complete with support for Edge UIs and Charms..."
It is the x86 tablets that are the stop-gap
With games rated over 15 banned from the app store, sandboxing that prevents simple things like IPC and restrictions against plugins or scripting... good luck getting a CoD type game, mate.
Now just two versions of Windows is too confusing for consumers?!
Two incompatible versions.
1) Windows RT devices are few and far between to begin with, most customers will be getting traditional x86 devices when they upgrade.
If it weren't for the hype about the Surface devices, I'd agree. I wonder how many will be returned because they can't run Borderlands 2 or whatever.
2) Most people don't use a lot of their Windows applications outside of Office and the browser, and the rest will be filled in with the Metro apps, so consumers will likely not be pissed off...yes, get this, most people aren't power users.
Depends entirely on the category of user. At home? Windows is big in the games market and the Surface can't run any of them. At work? It has no Outlook, no Active Directory support and ships with a version of Office you're prohibited from using in the office without buying upgrade licenses first.
In fact, what I predict is that Microsoft will have the opposite problem: convincing people that Windows 8 on desktops will run desktop applications. You see that confusion here on Slashdot all the time.
Exactly. RT launches first as 'the new windows'. People buy it, find it doesn't run their software - Windows 8 gets the same reputation, in much the same way as Vista's image was left tattered even after they had fixed most of the initial problems with it.
From an energetic point of view, this is utterly pointless.
Yes, but it would be nice to be able to make plastics and lubricants without oil.
At work - in the UK - we get lots of recorded messages peddling financial services (getting compensation for mis-sold mortgages) seems to be the current favourite.
They only seem to call businesses, but they only ever offer services that an individual would require, it's rather odd. It typically starts with "This is an important message..." or "Barclays, Natwest, HSBC..." at which point we usually hang up.
One of my co-workers will sometimes hold or press whatever to get to the operator, and then lead them on or something similar. On one occasion he repeated the word 'Penrith', over and over again until they hung up.
Well, the intel-based one was even more expensive when it came out, IIRC it was approaching £500. This - the cheaper ARM version - is what they should have done in the first place, though arguably the price is still a bit too high for a dumb terminal that can't be used on an aircraft.
If Office RT supplies 1- the features 2- the stability like the others, and adds 3- perfect import/export, then most professionals on Office will gladly pay the same or a bit more than for any other tablet.
Consumers not hooked on Office probably won't though, and probably shouldn't. Android has most everything needed for content consumption, at half the price.
Interestingly, the version of office shipping on this thing is for home use only and must not be used in a commercial setting. (Why the F is it called 'office' if you can't use it there...?)
Office Home & Student 2013 RT Preview and the final version are not for use in commercial, nonprofit, or revenue generating activities. Commercial license options available (sold separately).
See also: http://surface.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/Content/pbpage.Surface - see item 2 in the small print at the bottom. It seems to require a Business or Pro version of Office, pushing the TCO way past the iPad.
Windows needs to make "future" applications unable to get out of their install directory, and unable to write to a global registry.
Viruses can't do a whole lot if they can't get to system files, can't modify anything but themselves.
As described, that also wipes out basically everything that makes a computer useful - for starters you can't edit a document in more than one program. You can't back things up because the backup program can't get at files outside its install directory.
You can't record a WAV file in one program then use another to clean it up. Hell, you can't listen to the file afterwards because the media player can't get at it. You can't compile programs because the compiler suite consists of an entire toolchain, you can't have photoshop plugins and even if you could you wouldn't be able to upload the edited image because only photoshop can access it. Something like Dropbox becomes impossible.
this last one is killer. it lets you use this as a servicable desktop or laptop replacement. jack in a real screen, KB, and usb disk and you have a desktop computer that is probably better than the 4 year old peice of dell junk your older relative is using now.
and 2.5 it lets you use your old applications.
No, it will only run Metro apps ('Windows Store apps' or whatever they're called now) and a tweaked version of Office. If you want to run Windows software, you'll need the 'Pro' models which look to cost about twice as much.
Read the specs. The Touch cover has no travel, it has no keyswitches that move to activate.
It is a flat piece of plastic with touchscreen like capacitive sensors, similar to a smartphone/tablet screen.
So they've made something even worse than the Sinclair ZX80 keyboard...?
On my Kingston, half the filesystem turned to crap. I managed to copy off some of the more important bits which I foolishly hadn't backed up (scripts and stuff - it was the OS drive).
A bad block check revealed that about half the drive that was in use was dead - the blank areas were fine and dandy. I tried to image it the following day (to avoid a reinstall if I could) and at that point the drive ceased to be recognised by the BIOS.
I should probably add that it failed just two days before the warranty expired. However they had discontinued them (I wonder why...?) so I got a refund and went back to a spinning rust drive for the OS for a couple of years. I dp have another one now as they were on sale - hopefully it will last longer this time.