there's plenty of environments where internet connectivity is a given.
And there's plenty of shit that "happens": from small stuff like a broken router or cable modem or check that got lost in the mail, to big stuff like a back hoe accidentally cutting a cable.
It's 2010. You fall back on mobile broadband until your main service gets fixed.
Or to look at it from another direction - I'm on Windows. In theory it works offline, but if the office network connection goes down, I still give up and go home.
Because most people aren't old enough to remember terminal clients, which is what ChromeOS essentially is.
... and if you were to show those "most people" an old terminal app alongside a rich web app, they'd have no idea why you consider them to be "essentially" the same.... and if you were to show those "most people" a native app alongside a rich web app, they'd be hard pushed to know which was which.
By "rich web app" I mean something like Google Docs.
It's all very well to shout "IT'S NO DIFFERENT TO A MAINFRAME" every time cloud computing is mentioned -- but in terms of user experience it's a world of difference from using a VT220 (every keystroke is sent to the server) or a 3270 (Your UI is EBCDIC panels or nothing).
To address the original question; why is ChromeOS "cutting edge" -- I don't think it's entirely justifiable to say it is, or that iOS is not. However ChromeOS has some strong innovation in the areas of fast booting, and cached offline access to Web apps.
I honestly can't think of anything more useless than an OS that will not work if you don't have an internet connection.
Then you lack imagination.
Seriously, there's plenty of environments where internet connectivity is a given. For example, if I had a tablet (iPad, Android, ChromeOS, whatever) it would probably seldom leave the house. I'd use for web stuff on the sofa and in bed. It would never leave my WiFi router's range.
If you pay for it, you can get effectively uncapped mobile broadband that works close enough to "everywhere" for most people -- in well populated areas at least.
There are plenty of iPhone/Android apps that are useless without an internet connection; people seem to get on OK with them.
My reasonably new Toshiba TV has a VGA in, alright -- but I can't persuade my Dell laptop to give it a signal that'll fill the screen with no overscan and no aspect ratio distortion.
So the component video from the Xbox is far preferable.
Yeah if I put Linux on I could mess about with X modelines, but life's too short, and the Xbox just works.
Yeah, a new PC would have HDMI, but it wouldn't be cheaper than a Xbox, would it? (Talking an Xbox here, not a 360)
Does it bother anyone else that Apple products are so quickly hacked? I don't mean from a security standpoint, I mean because people feel the need to hack them so they can do what they want.
Doesn't that mean they should just buy something that isn't so limited in the first place? Or is this one of those "we buy a locked device because we want to hack it" sort of things...
Two angles on this. I had a colleague a while ago who chipped Playstations, and had hundreds of pirated games on CDR. He never played any of them: he just got satisfaction from getting one over on The Man, I suppose.
The other angle is that sometimes -- maybe not in the case of Apple TV -- but sometimes, the closed platform is cheaper to buy than the equivalent open system. I use a chipped Xbox as a video player, because it would cost me much more (either money or time/effort) to buy/build something similar with TV out. Or it would have done at the time I set it up.
That is, you can in a sense get more than 100% efficiency by increasing the temperature difference between the exterior and interior of your house, rather than just increasing the temperature of the interior.
Two things about this: 1) I don't particularly care about the temperature difference between the exterior and interior of my house. What I care about is the temperature difference between the interior and exterior of my body 2) If I did care about the temperature outside, in circumstances where heating the house was necessary, I would prefer the exterior temperature to go up, not down.
Just checked; I have two Phillips bulbs and three GE ones, they're all too dim to read by, for long enough that it's irritating. I timed the GE ones and they were approaching comfortable brightness after a minute.
They count as energy saving and are allowed. I actually have one for a room where we have a dimmer switch, it is a halogen bulb inside an normal one!
And the reason you know, is because it's a clear bulb so you can see inside. They are category C for energy efficiency.
In the UK, at least, clear bulbs must be category E or higher, being phased to category C by 2012. Frosted/Opal/etc bulbs must be Category A already, so you won't find a frosted halogen like this.
You flip the switch and go from zero watts of illumination to 40......to 50......to 60 in less than a minute.
So, GP wanted to pop into his basement for 30 seconds to find something. At the end of the 30 seconds, he's still got nowhere near the brightness he'd have got from a traditional bulb. Maybe you're young or have unusually good vision in dim light. Some of us need all the light a bulb can give, in order to see comfortably.
Yeah, this seems a bit whingey -- what's the matter with waiting 30 seconds? But 30 seconds is a long interruption when you're on-task and you're used to being able to just dash into your basement, grab something, then leave.
Halogen bulbs mounted in traditional incandescent form factor seem to be becoming more common.
They're not quite as energy efficient as flourescents, but they have none of the disadvantages as far as I can tell: you get a bright, steady light, instantly, at about 30% less power than the equivalent incandescent.
Summary: - All frosted/opal/opaque/whatever bulbs are banned unless they're category A efficiency - All clear bulbs must be category C or better by Sept 2012, with a phased introduction of this rule
So, the incandescents you've found will be clear bulbs.
FWIW, for certain rooms I'd pay more for incandescent bulbs, simply because of the "bootup time" issue. I have a wardrobe with a light in it; it usually gets switched on and off within 30 seconds, by which time any CFL I've tried has scarcely got going.
Other than the inaccuracy that you pointed out, was the GP really being a crybaby, by pointing out (albeit, redundantly) the ways in which CFLs are inferior to incandescent lights?
I think it's a flaw in the marketing. The marketing basically denies the flaws -- claiming that the warmup time is negligible, that the light quality is equivalent. I would be much happier if the pitch was "It's worth tolerating these defects, when you offset it against the long term savings in electricity bills, and the warm fuzzy feeling of reducing your carbon footprint".
To me, the warm fuzzy eco feelings are appealing, but are all a bit abstract when I'm straining my eyes to read the first page of a book while the light warms up. The monetary savings are a negligible fraction of my day to day spend. The irritation of having something as simple as a lightbulb that doesn't quite work as well as a tried and tested alternative that I can easily afford, is concrete.
I'm sure you're right that incandescent bulbs dim over time, but I've not noticed it being a problem myself -- they usually fail completely before then.
But a new incandescent bulb always works, and always reaches full brightness instantly. I'm told that there are CFLs that are just as good -- but we're still no closer to learning how to identify those good CFL bulbs at the point of sale. I've always been unlucky -- and it's worth repeating that I have *not* been buying the cheapest own-brand / no-brand bulbs in the shop.
I spend less than 30 seconds in a room often enough for CFLs to get irritating.
Examples:
- pop into the kitchen to pour a drink
- grab a book from the bookshelf in the spare room
- etc.
I suppose you could put incandescents in the rooms that typically get short visits, and CFLs in rooms that you typically spend longer in -- but I think most rooms see both patterns of use.
If you're bitching about a 1-sec delay once a day, you're just whining - what the hell is so urgent in your life that 1 second is a deal breaker?
Try 30 seconds to a minute -- for CFLs I bought within the last 2 years, from a reputable shop; albeit without a great deal of research.
There are use cases where you're used to switching a light on, doing whatever you needed light for, then switching off, in less than 30 seconds. e.g. "I'll just grab my keys, I think they're in the kitchen somewhere".
It's long enough that I find myself drumming my fingers waiting for the room to get bright enough that I can start reading a book.
I'm interested in knowing what brand Tesco does for 30p each, that come on instantly. I've never found a CFL that does.
On the other hand, the fact that you've put 60W-equivalent bulbs throughout your house suggests to me that you find dim light acceptable. Wherever I can, I use 100W bulbs, and it irritates me that 100W-equivalent CFLs are often missing from the shelves, too large for my fittings, or perceptibly dimmer than a 100W traditional bulb,
This comes up every time CFLs are mentioned on Slashdot. I don't believe that the people who claim CFLs reach full brightness instantly are lying, but their experience is very different to mine.
I bought mine within the last 1-2 years from a mainstream housewares shop, and they're a reputable brand (Panasonic, or something like that). If I switch them on, pick up a book, sit down and find my page, I find that it is not bright enough to read by, and I have to wait 30 seconds to a minute before I can start reading.
I want to know what I can look for on the packaging, to tell me that the lightbulb I'm buying has an acceptable warm-up time (5 seconds would be OK, I suppose)
Come to think of it, your room (with the curtains closed) is effectively a lightproof shade, so you can take advantage of the light for a while, until it gets absorbed by something and converted into heat.
We didn't have video rental when I was a kid you, insensitive clod. If it wasn't in the cinema or on television you couldn't watch it. Although some of my friends did have cable TV. And you couldn't rent computer games. You had to either buy one or give a 5 1/4" floppy to a friend and ask him to make you a copy from a game that he bought. Now get off my lawn!
Your timeline is all wrong. I'm pretty sure video rentals predate widespread home use of floppies.
Games, you either bought on cassette, or copied by making a tape-to-tape copy of a friend's cassette. Or, put 10 pence in a cabinet in the arcade on the pier.
I recognize how convenient and better services like Netflix and Gamefly are, but there's just something about going into a dusty old video store and browsing the shelves that convenience will never replace.
If we're going on a nostalgia trip, I want to mention the properly dusty video rental shops that came before the glossy multinational chains stepped in. Thinking of those places gives me a Proustian rush into the 80s almost as much as retro arcade cabinets.
I can smoke in my car, I cannot do that on a train. That is just one reason there is zero chance I would pick a train over a car.
So you should drive, leaving a pleasant smoke-free environment for people who choose to take the train.
It seems to me, the proposal is to build a nice rail system that people would want to use. People with particular needs that the train can't address, should continue to drive, accepting the extra cost etc. that entails.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not turn your iPod Touch into a web server?
I've been known to turn my Android phone into a web server. There's an app that lets you compose SMS messages in your desktop web browser.
I'm sure there's lots of other reasons you might want to contact your phone over HTTP.
there's plenty of environments where internet connectivity is a given.
And there's plenty of shit that "happens": from small stuff like a broken router or cable modem or check that got lost in the mail, to big stuff like a back hoe accidentally cutting a cable.
It's 2010. You fall back on mobile broadband until your main service gets fixed.
Or to look at it from another direction - I'm on Windows. In theory it works offline, but if the office network connection goes down, I still give up and go home.
Because most people aren't old enough to remember terminal clients, which is what ChromeOS essentially is.
... and if you were to show those "most people" an old terminal app alongside a rich web app, they'd have no idea why you consider them to be "essentially" the same. ... and if you were to show those "most people" a native app alongside a rich web app, they'd be hard pushed to know which was which.
By "rich web app" I mean something like Google Docs.
It's all very well to shout "IT'S NO DIFFERENT TO A MAINFRAME" every time cloud computing is mentioned -- but in terms of user experience it's a world of difference from using a VT220 (every keystroke is sent to the server) or a 3270 (Your UI is EBCDIC panels or nothing).
To address the original question; why is ChromeOS "cutting edge" -- I don't think it's entirely justifiable to say it is, or that iOS is not. However ChromeOS has some strong innovation in the areas of fast booting, and cached offline access to Web apps.
I honestly can't think of anything more useless than an OS that will not work if you don't have an internet connection.
Then you lack imagination.
Seriously, there's plenty of environments where internet connectivity is a given. For example, if I had a tablet (iPad, Android, ChromeOS, whatever) it would probably seldom leave the house. I'd use for web stuff on the sofa and in bed. It would never leave my WiFi router's range.
If you pay for it, you can get effectively uncapped mobile broadband that works close enough to "everywhere" for most people -- in well populated areas at least.
There are plenty of iPhone/Android apps that are useless without an internet connection; people seem to get on OK with them.
My reasonably new Toshiba TV has a VGA in, alright -- but I can't persuade my Dell laptop to give it a signal that'll fill the screen with no overscan and no aspect ratio distortion.
So the component video from the Xbox is far preferable.
Yeah if I put Linux on I could mess about with X modelines, but life's too short, and the Xbox just works.
Yeah, a new PC would have HDMI, but it wouldn't be cheaper than a Xbox, would it? (Talking an Xbox here, not a 360)
Pretty close, but more along the lines of we buy a locked device because it is a challenge
That explains the hackers who crack the system in the first place.
It doesn't explain the hordes who go "now it's been hacked, I'll buy one".
Does it bother anyone else that Apple products are so quickly hacked? I don't mean from a security standpoint, I mean because people feel the need to hack them so they can do what they want.
Doesn't that mean they should just buy something that isn't so limited in the first place? Or is this one of those "we buy a locked device because we want to hack it" sort of things...
Two angles on this. I had a colleague a while ago who chipped Playstations, and had hundreds of pirated games on CDR. He never played any of them: he just got satisfaction from getting one over on The Man, I suppose.
The other angle is that sometimes -- maybe not in the case of Apple TV -- but sometimes, the closed platform is cheaper to buy than the equivalent open system. I use a chipped Xbox as a video player, because it would cost me much more (either money or time/effort) to buy/build something similar with TV out. Or it would have done at the time I set it up.
That is, you can in a sense get more than 100% efficiency by increasing the temperature difference between the exterior and interior of your house, rather than just increasing the temperature of the interior.
Two things about this:
1) I don't particularly care about the temperature difference between the exterior and interior of my house. What I care about is the temperature difference between the interior and exterior of my body
2) If I did care about the temperature outside, in circumstances where heating the house was necessary, I would prefer the exterior temperature to go up, not down.
Just checked; I have two Phillips bulbs and three GE ones, they're all too dim to read by, for long enough that it's irritating. I timed the GE ones and they were approaching comfortable brightness after a minute.
GE model FL12GLS/T2/827
They count as energy saving and are allowed. I actually have one for a room where we have a dimmer switch, it is a halogen bulb inside an normal one!
And the reason you know, is because it's a clear bulb so you can see inside. They are category C for energy efficiency.
In the UK, at least, clear bulbs must be category E or higher, being phased to category C by 2012.
Frosted/Opal/etc bulbs must be Category A already, so you won't find a frosted halogen like this.
You flip the switch and go from zero watts of illumination to 40......to 50......to 60 in less than a minute.
So, GP wanted to pop into his basement for 30 seconds to find something. At the end of the 30 seconds, he's still got nowhere near the brightness he'd have got from a traditional bulb. Maybe you're young or have unusually good vision in dim light. Some of us need all the light a bulb can give, in order to see comfortably.
Yeah, this seems a bit whingey -- what's the matter with waiting 30 seconds? But 30 seconds is a long interruption when you're on-task and you're used to being able to just dash into your basement, grab something, then leave.
Halogen bulbs mounted in traditional incandescent form factor seem to be becoming more common.
They're not quite as energy efficient as flourescents, but they have none of the disadvantages as far as I can tell: you get a bright, steady light, instantly, at about 30% less power than the equivalent incandescent.
See here for UK regs: http://www.lightbulbs-direct.com/info/incandescent/
Summary:
- All frosted/opal/opaque/whatever bulbs are banned unless they're category A efficiency
- All clear bulbs must be category C or better by Sept 2012, with a phased introduction of this rule
So, the incandescents you've found will be clear bulbs.
FWIW, for certain rooms I'd pay more for incandescent bulbs, simply because of the "bootup time" issue. I have a wardrobe with a light in it; it usually gets switched on and off within 30 seconds, by which time any CFL I've tried has scarcely got going.
You may now go back to being a crybaby.
Other than the inaccuracy that you pointed out, was the GP really being a crybaby, by pointing out (albeit, redundantly) the ways in which CFLs are inferior to incandescent lights?
I think it's a flaw in the marketing. The marketing basically denies the flaws -- claiming that the warmup time is negligible, that the light quality is equivalent. I would be much happier if the pitch was "It's worth tolerating these defects, when you offset it against the long term savings in electricity bills, and the warm fuzzy feeling of reducing your carbon footprint".
To me, the warm fuzzy eco feelings are appealing, but are all a bit abstract when I'm straining my eyes to read the first page of a book while the light warms up. The monetary savings are a negligible fraction of my day to day spend. The irritation of having something as simple as a lightbulb that doesn't quite work as well as a tried and tested alternative that I can easily afford, is concrete.
I'm sure you're right that incandescent bulbs dim over time, but I've not noticed it being a problem myself -- they usually fail completely before then.
But a new incandescent bulb always works, and always reaches full brightness instantly. I'm told that there are CFLs that are just as good -- but we're still no closer to learning how to identify those good CFL bulbs at the point of sale. I've always been unlucky -- and it's worth repeating that I have *not* been buying the cheapest own-brand / no-brand bulbs in the shop.
WTF, how long do you people stay in a room?
I spend less than 30 seconds in a room often enough for CFLs to get irritating.
Examples:
- pop into the kitchen to pour a drink
- grab a book from the bookshelf in the spare room
- etc.
I suppose you could put incandescents in the rooms that typically get short visits, and CFLs in rooms that you typically spend longer in -- but I think most rooms see both patterns of use.
If you're bitching about a 1-sec delay once a day, you're just whining - what the hell is so urgent in your life that 1 second is a deal breaker?
Try 30 seconds to a minute -- for CFLs I bought within the last 2 years, from a reputable shop; albeit without a great deal of research.
There are use cases where you're used to switching a light on, doing whatever you needed light for, then switching off, in less than 30 seconds. e.g. "I'll just grab my keys, I think they're in the kitchen somewhere".
It's long enough that I find myself drumming my fingers waiting for the room to get bright enough that I can start reading a book.
I'm interested in knowing what brand Tesco does for 30p each, that come on instantly. I've never found a CFL that does.
On the other hand, the fact that you've put 60W-equivalent bulbs throughout your house suggests to me that you find dim light acceptable. Wherever I can, I use 100W bulbs, and it irritates me that 100W-equivalent CFLs are often missing from the shelves, too large for my fittings, or perceptibly dimmer than a 100W traditional bulb,
This comes up every time CFLs are mentioned on Slashdot. I don't believe that the people who claim CFLs reach full brightness instantly are lying, but their experience is very different to mine.
I bought mine within the last 1-2 years from a mainstream housewares shop, and they're a reputable brand (Panasonic, or something like that). If I switch them on, pick up a book, sit down and find my page, I find that it is not bright enough to read by, and I have to wait 30 seconds to a minute before I can start reading.
I want to know what I can look for on the packaging, to tell me that the lightbulb I'm buying has an acceptable warm-up time (5 seconds would be OK, I suppose)
Come to think of it, your room (with the curtains closed) is effectively a lightproof shade, so you can take advantage of the light for a while, until it gets absorbed by something and converted into heat.
Fair point, although you could fix that by putting the lightbulb into a lightproof shade.
Electric radiant heat is terribly inefficient
Er, where does the wasted energy go?
We didn't have video rental when I was a kid you, insensitive clod. If it wasn't in the cinema or on television you couldn't watch it. Although some of my friends did have cable TV. And you couldn't rent computer games. You had to either buy one or give a 5 1/4" floppy to a friend and ask him to make you a copy from a game that he bought. Now get off my lawn!
Your timeline is all wrong. I'm pretty sure video rentals predate widespread home use of floppies.
Games, you either bought on cassette, or copied by making a tape-to-tape copy of a friend's cassette. Or, put 10 pence in a cabinet in the arcade on the pier.
I recognize how convenient and better services like Netflix and Gamefly are, but there's just something about going into a dusty old video store and browsing the shelves that convenience will never replace.
If we're going on a nostalgia trip, I want to mention the properly dusty video rental shops that came before the glossy multinational chains stepped in. Thinking of those places gives me a Proustian rush into the 80s almost as much as retro arcade cabinets.
I can smoke in my car, I cannot do that on a train. That is just one reason there is zero chance I would pick a train over a car.
So you should drive, leaving a pleasant smoke-free environment for people who choose to take the train.
It seems to me, the proposal is to build a nice rail system that people would want to use. People with particular needs that the train can't address, should continue to drive, accepting the extra cost etc. that entails.