Disagree. Apple had no problem doing pixel doubling when the 1 gen iPad came out. And when the retina displays came out for the newer iPhones. It's true, back in the early Mac days, Apple used to be religiously ppi-consistent. When you got a larger monitor, you had more pixels, end of story. They stopped enforcing that years ago.
My feeling is that Apple "won't do" 7 inch. Until one day, they do, and all these reasons that explain why they didn't do it before will be shown to be rationalizations that carry little ultimate meaning. People will then turn on a dime and talk about how wonderful the 7pad is. I don't really care about fan-inconsistency though. I just want the smaller pad to hurry and get here so I can comfortably whip it out in crowds. Otherwise, I will be getting a Fire, Nook Tab, or 7.7 (if it ever comes out), that's for sure. Despite preferring the overall feel of iOS.
I'm baffled by that assertion. Exactly what apps did you have in mind that run on the 10" model but would not run properly on a 7" model with the same pixel count?
I know nothing about patent law, but it seems to me in the first instance that this is less about Evil Micro$haft, per se, as it is about the inherent problems in the patent system. Any large scale producer can and will do the same thing, using patents as a way to maintain the cross-licensing cartel that exists among the big guys, making the barrier of entry prohibitively expensive to anyone else.
Secondly, there ought to be (or maybe there is?) a method by which one can get a declaratory judgment against a particular patent holder, which would work as follows: You present your product to them, show them the feature set. You allow them to examine it for a period of 60 or 90 days or whatever. Then they have to tell you ALL of their patents which they hold that you are violating, including patents pending. If they do not present their patents at that time, you can receive a court order stating that you are not liable to them. Any patent they fail to present can't be brought up later in a fishing expedition, unless it turns out that you concealed a feature set of your product. A future revision of your product remains generally protected and would only be at risk to the extent that it effects a material change in its operation that would newly infringe upon the previously declared patents, or upon patents issued subsequent to the judgment but that predate the revision.
Perhaps this is unworkable in practice, shifting too much work from the manufacturer to the patent holder. (E.g., imagine you're a private inventor and you patent a truly unique and novel software method. And Samsung gets a "declaratory judgment" by burying you in 10 million lines of source code so that you can't even tell if your patent is in there or not, effectively hiding their violation in plain sight. The 90 days pass and bewildered, you fail to present any counterclaim. They wind up stealing your invention and not paying you a dime.) Still there ought to be a middle ground that better minds than mine can devise. Eliminating software patents, sure maybe, but this is an issue that could arise in a hardware context as well.
For one, you still have to resolve the issue of "what counts as income." Stock options? Employer provided medical coverage? Free use of the company car? Paid travel/hotel/meals on business trips? Free use of the employee parking lot? Employee discounts? Spouse-provided babysitting/homeschooling services? To the extent that anything does not count as income but can be valued as "compensation," tax accountants will attempt to use it as a shelter.
I hate, I mean absolutely loath M$. I came up through Pet -> vic20 -> c64 -> amiga -> linux. I've never, ever, ever had M$ as a main OS on any desktop. I hate them, their products.
FYI, Commodore Basic was actually Microsoft Basic in disguise.
Ever? I've read entire novels just on my 4" phone's Kindle app, as well as an Nook color. I do own an e-ink Kindle but haven't used it in almost a year.
The article is being disingenuous here. Clearly Sinofsky is saying that the OS should scale, not that all of those devices require a touch interface. MS has stated elsewhere that Metro is NOT a "touch-centric" interface.
Except that we don't have the energy to power cars for everyone now. There are around 800 million cars and light trucks in the world, average family size worldwide is 3. If total population is 7 billion than it works out to about 1 car for every 3 families. So we could give every family a car, but we'd need 3 times the amount of energy devoted to automobiles as well. Well, let's say, with more efficient cars, twice the amount. Right now, automobiles use about 50% of world oil consumption. Twice as many would use 100% of world oil consumption, which is deceptively low because the 50% currently used is basically 100% of the amount suitable for motor vehicle use. In other words, we'd either have to double our oil production or find alternative energy sources suitable for motor vehicle usage which equal the current amount of oil production. So we're not even close to having enough portable energy now for everyone to have a first world standard of living, and we're falling further behind every day.
On the other hand if "we" restrict our concerns to just those of us in the first world being able to maintain our quality of life, more or less, then I'd guess Simon was probably right, at least for our lifetimes.
If there is one type of company where having a "union" for workers is most appropriate, it's a monopoly, isn't it? After all, if the bosses don't have to compete, why should the workers? That was the original rationale for government unions in the first place, which are not the same animal as private unions, where the anti-competitive behavior is in theory only on the part of the worker cartel, and where the government sets its own rules of engagement in the first place. The "problem" with the union, to the extent that there is a real problem here, is not one created by an overly strong group of workers who were able to extort a lopsided contract (a la, allegedly, the UAW), but by poor Congressional oversight which has mandated every action that the USPS management can take, even with respect to its own staff, and now has found itself unsatisfied with the results. This whole situation is ridiculous. Does NASA have to turn a profit? Does the Air Force? Does Congress itself? So why should the USPS, in its performance of a necessary Constitutionally-mandated function? Plus, despite the fact that there is a no-layoff clause in the current contract, the USPS has still managed to downsize by hundreds of thousands of employees. It would gladly put its remaining employees to more productive work except it is barred from doing so.
Also, you accuse your grandparent of an "ad hominem" attack, and then...your last paragraph, what is that? "Lefty fit?"
I guess it's true that to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But no, in a socialist economy, the USPS would have no competition and so it would still be flourishing. Plus, the notion of failure would itself be an absurdity, since it would not be required to be "self-sufficient" to begin with. To the extent that that there is a problem with the USPS today, it's not one of socialism but of representative democracy -- due to which it is required to maintain levels of inefficiency that a neither a private company nor a thoroughly socialized institution would. It finds itself in the worst of all possible worlds.
The problem is that they are selling the exact same chip for two different prices. This isnt like they are testing a chip and finding out that it doesnt work up to spec but it still can function at a lower requirement. This is taking a perfectly good chip, then adding additional cost by adding an artificial limiter.
It's not the "same exact chip." As you say yourself, it has a limiter. But they're not ADDING additional cost, they're removing it. The limiter allows for market differentiation. I think the objection that most people have here is visceral and not necessarily based upon reason. Consider the following thought experiment.
Xintel sells the XXX1 chip for $200. It runs at 2.5 GHz and has a 4MB cache. They sell the XXX2 chip for $250. It runs at 3.2 GHz, has an 8MB cache, and overall runs 25% faster than the XXX1 They also run a program whereby they will sell you a chip upgrade, by having you ship your PC to Xintel, they uninstall the XXX1 and replace it with an XXX2. It takes about 2 weeks, and the total upgrade costs $100, more if you want insurance.
Yintel sells the YYY1 chip for $200 which also runs at 2.5 GHz and has a 4MB cache. However, they can upgrade their chip via software to a YYY2 which has the higher speed and cache of the XXX2 The total upgrade is $80, is completed in 10 minutes, and don't have to worry about your machine coming back damaged from the factory. Despite the slightly lower cost to the consumer, Yintel also makes more money on the deal because by producing one chip instead of two, they have less packaging, retooling, don't have to pay a technician, etc. Yet the argument seems to be that the Yintel is somehow a rip-off because their chip is "artificially" limited?
In that case, consider a third chip manufacturer.
Zintel will also upgrade their $200 ZZZ1 chip (functionally equivalent to the XXX1) to the $250 ZZZ2 chip, also for a $100 upgrade fee, just like the Xintel deal. And just like Xintel, you ship it to the factory, and wait two weeks for it to come back. Except, totally unbeknown to you, at the factory they don't actually uninstall the chip, they just run their little software program and unlock the hidden capabilities of the chip that you did not know about. From your perspective, it looks exactly as if they physically replaced the chip, and you are none the wiser. So now, is ignorance bliss?
"You're missing the point," you might say. "Instead of selling me a gimped chip, they should just sell it to me unlocked to begin with." The answer is, they do. For $250. But if you only want to pay $200, you're going to get a less functional model. Hardware or software limited, makes no difference, is my argument.
Now, regarding your car analogy, how is that a bad thing? Obviously it wouldn't be a literal brick, but imagine if they sold the same exact vehicle with a 120 mph max speed, or with an 85 mph max speed artificially limited, and the second retailed for $1000.00 cheaper. Can't you imagine that there would be a market for buying the same make vehicle that was a little bit slower? And then later, the buyer gets a letter saying that GM will unlock the speed limiter remotely for $1250.00, no need to even take it into the shop. You're arguing that the buyer would be ripped off here because GM is giving them a post-sale option that they otherwise would not have?
I could seriously see this catching hold elsewhere. You buy a 60 Mhz TV for $500. Upgrade it online to 240Mhz for $100 or unlock 3D for another $400. Why would someone go for a deal like this? There are a lot of people who simply can't afford a $1000 TV *right now* but think they might be able to do so in the future. Or maybe they think if they buy the $500 TV, the price will eventually come down on the upgrade -- if they wait a couple of years, they'll be able to get it for $300 more. Meanwhile, they've enjoyed their TV as is until the upgrade becomes affordable.
I think I'm going to pick up their new Bulldozer when it comes out. Intel makes great processors but these shenanigans have got to stop.
What shenanigans?
Except for the CPUs at the very top of their respective product lines, ALL processors are crippled. Compared to the i7, the i3 is just a permanently gimped chip. But its wasteful, both from a manufacturing perspective and from a user perspective, to make physically different chips. It's more efficient to make the low end chip upgradable through software. Fewer physical chip lines result in lower manufacturing costs which can then be passed on to the consumer or shareholder. It also results in lower upgrade costs for the end user, who doesn't have to actually pay for the shipping, delivery, and installation of a new chip. So this is a win-win. Except for people who think all software should be free and therefore feel ripped off at having to pay for additional functionality. I mean, any piece of software, even say Photoshop or Crysis2, is just "unlocking" the capability that your computer already in principle possesses. Why should you have to pay for that, amirite?
First of all, we already have automatic braking systems, cruise control, electronic stability control and other computer assisted driving methods. And they can fail. The argument you are making would lead us to conclude that a couple of ABS failures would lead to banning the technology, but that hasn't happened. The computer is taking over the automobile in stages, and people will have time to become accustomed to each incremental step.
Second, people become accustomed to automated transport quicker than you might think. I don't know if they even exist anymore but remember those human-operated elevators where the operator had to manually gauge where the floor landing was before opening the gates? How many people prefer those these days? How many people would prefer to get into a 747 that they knew had no automated guidance systems? How many people bat an eye at getting into one of those fully automated airport monorails? If you're visualizing the transport alternatives while reading this, I hope you'd agree that generally the computer assisted versions have a smoother, safer *feel* to them. People will gradually come to associate the safer *feel* with actual safety, and conversely, will associate the manual acceleration feel with recklessness. Plus computer control will save on fuel costs, which is bound to be more important over time, because it will allow for more precisely timed acceleration, better aerodynamics in vehicle shape, efficiency through slipstreaming, etc.
Third, let's say we eventually get to a point where vehicle collisions break down as follows: 90% human-human, 9% human-computer 1% computer-computer. Plus, since there will be fewer autonomous cars on the road, the h-c and c-c collisions will be even rarer. Basically, almost every accident will involve dumb human error. So, what happens when you manually drive your neighbor's kid home from school and get into an accident? He will sue the pants off you because you deliberately put his kid in a situation which is documented to be unsafe. Eventually (think of the children) it will be illegal to put kids in a manually driven car.
Fourth, insurance on manually driven vehicles will creep up and up until it will simply be unaffordable to anyone who doesn't have a trust fund.
Fifth, and most important, autonomous vehicles will allow people to drink in their cars again. Game over.
Even bad movies have standards, and degrees of badness, whether it be corny dialog, cheesy effects, poor camerawork, or just a boring story. Remember how awesome "Snakes on a Plane" was gonna be?? And what we wound up with? So yes, even a movie with a title like "Cowboys & Aliens" deserves a proper critical review, otherwise you could just as easily end up with oblivion.
You have to transfer files on an iPad as well. But there is no convenient way to acess those files once on the tablet. For example, assume you have a large video on your iPad in your Videos app. Later on, someone releases subtitles for it. You can't just load the external subs, because they don't play in Videos. You'd like to just play the same video in another app that displays subs, but you can't. You have to retransfer the entire video into another app that will display subtitles. And if it turns out the video doesn't play well in that app, you then have to load the whole thing again, or send a copy of the file to another app. You wind up with two or three copies of the same file. IOW, of course there is a filesystem, but it is severely gimped in userland. Apple, to its credit, has a history of sometimes giving in on pointless restrictions. It belatedly acknowledged that people did want folders and multitasking after all. So, perhaps in a year, accelerating the trend away from the iPad needing a host computer, there will be a universal default "open with" method of accessing files from multiple apps, as opposed to the current kludges and ad hoc methods.
Also, in general, "I can't see why X...", as an argument, only betrays a failure of imagination or empathy in the speaker. Better to explain why X is not a good idea, or why not-X is a good idea.
A meteoroid with enough impact power to equal the largest nuclear bomb we have ever made impacts the earth roughly every thousand years or so. So, any brown dwarf that could be ignited by a bomb would be ignited already by stray impactors.
I suppose one could set up a scenario where a bd had, over the eons, been heating up little by little due to external forces and was now only one bomb away from ignition. But again, if it were that close to going stellar, then any ol' starquake, or maybe even tidal forces from a revolving moon, would probably set it off. And even in that instance, my totally wild-ass-guess is that it would be a localized explosion; that it would be essentially impossible to set things up such that a brown dwarf could go completely nuclear from a human level event.
Refueling wouldn't incur slowing the ship down...it would involve sending an automated factory out to the brown dwarf in advance, which would gather matter and launch it at high speed into the flight path of the refueling vessel. If necessary, rockets on the payload could be used to match the exact velocity.
Sorry, I disagree. Yes, the cop was totally out of line about the cellphone. But if, in fact, the woman was screaming and making a spectacle, then my opinion is that she should be subject to arrest in an environment like an airport. Even in a supermarket or a coffeehouse, people don't have the right to yell and scream and act in a broadly disruptive manner that interferes with conducting normal business, and similarly in an airport one cannot interfere with or interrupt the normal duties of the TSA officers. See e.g. Colton v. Kentucky 407 U.S. 104.
Also in this particular instance I would say the whole "civil disobedience" rule should hold sway: If the aim of this woman was to protest the TSA procedure as unjust, she should've been prepared to go all the way. Facing possible arrest is part of that -- otherwise, she's just going to carve out a one-time exception for herself in that one situation, instead of inciting public opinion and getting the entire law thrown out.
IOW, nothing to see here, move along. No seriously, MOVE ALONG.
Generally, a sex offender's registry is for people who commit sexual offenses. It's not necessary for the victim to be a minor, nor it is necessary to prove "attraction." Additionally, mere possession of child porn is a sexual offense, and is prima facie considered dangerous to children in the eyes of the law. Therefore, there's no mystery as to why this person is on the registry, regardless of what allegedly happened with the boy.
A secure wipe is not a good idea. Because you will also be prosecuted for the attempted destruction of evidence. I say "attempted" because, unless your laptop has never left your custody, you have to assume they've already made a raw copy of the drive.
The problem with umbrella brands is that one weak spoke can bring down the whole brand. If Google Blogs has a problem, it will give all of Google a black eye, not just the Blogger brand. And if "Google" stops being cool, then even if they could somehow spin off the lines into their own brands again, those old labels would've lost their previous cachet. After all, the history of internet branding has taught us that the public is drastically less faithful to digital properties than they are to real world brands where the consistency of the quality can be reinforced by taste or touch.
I guess I'm wondering what's Google's game plan. Did they learn nothing from the failures of msn.com, lycos, and others? Or even their own failure to make Google Video catch on as a worthy competitor to YouTube?
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Disagree. Apple had no problem doing pixel doubling when the 1 gen iPad came out. And when the retina displays came out for the newer iPhones. It's true, back in the early Mac days, Apple used to be religiously ppi-consistent. When you got a larger monitor, you had more pixels, end of story. They stopped enforcing that years ago.
My feeling is that Apple "won't do" 7 inch. Until one day, they do, and all these reasons that explain why they didn't do it before will be shown to be rationalizations that carry little ultimate meaning. People will then turn on a dime and talk about how wonderful the 7pad is. I don't really care about fan-inconsistency though. I just want the smaller pad to hurry and get here so I can comfortably whip it out in crowds. Otherwise, I will be getting a Fire, Nook Tab, or 7.7 (if it ever comes out), that's for sure. Despite preferring the overall feel of iOS.
I'm baffled by that assertion. Exactly what apps did you have in mind that run on the 10" model but would not run properly on a 7" model with the same pixel count?
I know nothing about patent law, but it seems to me in the first instance that this is less about Evil Micro$haft, per se, as it is about the inherent problems in the patent system. Any large scale producer can and will do the same thing, using patents as a way to maintain the cross-licensing cartel that exists among the big guys, making the barrier of entry prohibitively expensive to anyone else.
Secondly, there ought to be (or maybe there is?) a method by which one can get a declaratory judgment against a particular patent holder, which would work as follows: You present your product to them, show them the feature set. You allow them to examine it for a period of 60 or 90 days or whatever. Then they have to tell you ALL of their patents which they hold that you are violating, including patents pending. If they do not present their patents at that time, you can receive a court order stating that you are not liable to them. Any patent they fail to present can't be brought up later in a fishing expedition, unless it turns out that you concealed a feature set of your product. A future revision of your product remains generally protected and would only be at risk to the extent that it effects a material change in its operation that would newly infringe upon the previously declared patents, or upon patents issued subsequent to the judgment but that predate the revision.
Perhaps this is unworkable in practice, shifting too much work from the manufacturer to the patent holder. (E.g., imagine you're a private inventor and you patent a truly unique and novel software method. And Samsung gets a "declaratory judgment" by burying you in 10 million lines of source code so that you can't even tell if your patent is in there or not, effectively hiding their violation in plain sight. The 90 days pass and bewildered, you fail to present any counterclaim. They wind up stealing your invention and not paying you a dime.) Still there ought to be a middle ground that better minds than mine can devise. Eliminating software patents, sure maybe, but this is an issue that could arise in a hardware context as well.
For one, you still have to resolve the issue of "what counts as income." Stock options? Employer provided medical coverage? Free use of the company car? Paid travel/hotel/meals on business trips? Free use of the employee parking lot? Employee discounts? Spouse-provided babysitting/homeschooling services? To the extent that anything does not count as income but can be valued as "compensation," tax accountants will attempt to use it as a shelter.
FYI, Commodore Basic was actually Microsoft Basic in disguise.
Nice press release. People would have more respect for these kinds of postings if you would include a disclaimer that you're writing on behalf of B&N.
Ever? I've read entire novels just on my 4" phone's Kindle app, as well as an Nook color. I do own an e-ink Kindle but haven't used it in almost a year.
The article is being disingenuous here. Clearly Sinofsky is saying that the OS should scale, not that all of those devices require a touch interface. MS has stated elsewhere that Metro is NOT a "touch-centric" interface.
Government can already dictate what people can do at their own property, to the extent where there really isn't any longer a slope to slip down.
Albedo first one to admit I thought that was funny, at first blush.
Except that we don't have the energy to power cars for everyone now. There are around 800 million cars and light trucks in the world, average family size worldwide is 3. If total population is 7 billion than it works out to about 1 car for every 3 families. So we could give every family a car, but we'd need 3 times the amount of energy devoted to automobiles as well. Well, let's say, with more efficient cars, twice the amount. Right now, automobiles use about 50% of world oil consumption. Twice as many would use 100% of world oil consumption, which is deceptively low because the 50% currently used is basically 100% of the amount suitable for motor vehicle use. In other words, we'd either have to double our oil production or find alternative energy sources suitable for motor vehicle usage which equal the current amount of oil production. So we're not even close to having enough portable energy now for everyone to have a first world standard of living, and we're falling further behind every day.
On the other hand if "we" restrict our concerns to just those of us in the first world being able to maintain our quality of life, more or less, then I'd guess Simon was probably right, at least for our lifetimes.
If there is one type of company where having a "union" for workers is most appropriate, it's a monopoly, isn't it? After all, if the bosses don't have to compete, why should the workers? That was the original rationale for government unions in the first place, which are not the same animal as private unions, where the anti-competitive behavior is in theory only on the part of the worker cartel, and where the government sets its own rules of engagement in the first place. The "problem" with the union, to the extent that there is a real problem here, is not one created by an overly strong group of workers who were able to extort a lopsided contract (a la, allegedly, the UAW), but by poor Congressional oversight which has mandated every action that the USPS management can take, even with respect to its own staff, and now has found itself unsatisfied with the results. This whole situation is ridiculous. Does NASA have to turn a profit? Does the Air Force? Does Congress itself? So why should the USPS, in its performance of a necessary Constitutionally-mandated function? Plus, despite the fact that there is a no-layoff clause in the current contract, the USPS has still managed to downsize by hundreds of thousands of employees. It would gladly put its remaining employees to more productive work except it is barred from doing so.
Also, you accuse your grandparent of an "ad hominem" attack, and then...your last paragraph, what is that? "Lefty fit?"
I guess it's true that to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But no, in a socialist economy, the USPS would have no competition and so it would still be flourishing. Plus, the notion of failure would itself be an absurdity, since it would not be required to be "self-sufficient" to begin with. To the extent that that there is a problem with the USPS today, it's not one of socialism but of representative democracy -- due to which it is required to maintain levels of inefficiency that a neither a private company nor a thoroughly socialized institution would. It finds itself in the worst of all possible worlds.
It's not the "same exact chip." As you say yourself, it has a limiter. But they're not ADDING additional cost, they're removing it. The limiter allows for market differentiation. I think the objection that most people have here is visceral and not necessarily based upon reason. Consider the following thought experiment.
Xintel sells the XXX1 chip for $200. It runs at 2.5 GHz and has a 4MB cache.
They sell the XXX2 chip for $250. It runs at 3.2 GHz, has an 8MB cache, and overall runs 25% faster than the XXX1
They also run a program whereby they will sell you a chip upgrade, by having you ship your PC to Xintel, they uninstall the XXX1 and replace it with an XXX2. It takes about 2 weeks, and the total upgrade costs $100, more if you want insurance.
Yintel sells the YYY1 chip for $200 which also runs at 2.5 GHz and has a 4MB cache.
However, they can upgrade their chip via software to a YYY2 which has the higher speed and cache of the XXX2 The total upgrade is $80, is completed in 10 minutes, and don't have to worry about your machine coming back damaged from the factory. Despite the slightly lower cost to the consumer, Yintel also makes more money on the deal because by producing one chip instead of two, they have less packaging, retooling, don't have to pay a technician, etc. Yet the argument seems to be that the Yintel is somehow a rip-off because their chip is "artificially" limited?
In that case, consider a third chip manufacturer.
Zintel will also upgrade their $200 ZZZ1 chip (functionally equivalent to the XXX1) to the $250 ZZZ2 chip, also for a $100 upgrade fee, just like the Xintel deal. And just like Xintel, you ship it to the factory, and wait two weeks for it to come back. Except, totally unbeknown to you, at the factory they don't actually uninstall the chip, they just run their little software program and unlock the hidden capabilities of the chip that you did not know about. From your perspective, it looks exactly as if they physically replaced the chip, and you are none the wiser. So now, is ignorance bliss?
"You're missing the point," you might say. "Instead of selling me a gimped chip, they should just sell it to me unlocked to begin with." The answer is, they do. For $250. But if you only want to pay $200, you're going to get a less functional model. Hardware or software limited, makes no difference, is my argument.
Now, regarding your car analogy, how is that a bad thing? Obviously it wouldn't be a literal brick, but imagine if they sold the same exact vehicle with a 120 mph max speed, or with an 85 mph max speed artificially limited, and the second retailed for $1000.00 cheaper. Can't you imagine that there would be a market for buying the same make vehicle that was a little bit slower? And then later, the buyer gets a letter saying that GM will unlock the speed limiter remotely for $1250.00, no need to even take it into the shop. You're arguing that the buyer would be ripped off here because GM is giving them a post-sale option that they otherwise would not have?
I could seriously see this catching hold elsewhere. You buy a 60 Mhz TV for $500. Upgrade it online to 240Mhz for $100 or unlock 3D for another $400. Why would someone go for a deal like this? There are a lot of people who simply can't afford a $1000 TV *right now* but think they might be able to do so in the future. Or maybe they think if they buy the $500 TV, the price will eventually come down on the upgrade -- if they wait a couple of years, they'll be able to get it for $300 more. Meanwhile, they've enjoyed their TV as is until the upgrade becomes affordable.
I think I'm going to pick up their new Bulldozer when it comes out. Intel makes great processors but these shenanigans have got to stop.
What shenanigans?
Except for the CPUs at the very top of their respective product lines, ALL processors are crippled. Compared to the i7, the i3 is just a permanently gimped chip. But its wasteful, both from a manufacturing perspective and from a user perspective, to make physically different chips. It's more efficient to make the low end chip upgradable through software. Fewer physical chip lines result in lower manufacturing costs which can then be passed on to the consumer or shareholder. It also results in lower upgrade costs for the end user, who doesn't have to actually pay for the shipping, delivery, and installation of a new chip. So this is a win-win. Except for people who think all software should be free and therefore feel ripped off at having to pay for additional functionality. I mean, any piece of software, even say Photoshop or Crysis2, is just "unlocking" the capability that your computer already in principle possesses. Why should you have to pay for that, amirite?
Strongly disagree.
First of all, we already have automatic braking systems, cruise control, electronic stability control and other computer assisted driving methods. And they can fail. The argument you are making would lead us to conclude that a couple of ABS failures would lead to banning the technology, but that hasn't happened. The computer is taking over the automobile in stages, and people will have time to become accustomed to each incremental step.
Second, people become accustomed to automated transport quicker than you might think. I don't know if they even exist anymore but remember those human-operated elevators where the operator had to manually gauge where the floor landing was before opening the gates? How many people prefer those these days? How many people would prefer to get into a 747 that they knew had no automated guidance systems? How many people bat an eye at getting into one of those fully automated airport monorails? If you're visualizing the transport alternatives while reading this, I hope you'd agree that generally the computer assisted versions have a smoother, safer *feel* to them. People will gradually come to associate the safer *feel* with actual safety, and conversely, will associate the manual acceleration feel with recklessness. Plus computer control will save on fuel costs, which is bound to be more important over time, because it will allow for more precisely timed acceleration, better aerodynamics in vehicle shape, efficiency through slipstreaming, etc.
Third, let's say we eventually get to a point where vehicle collisions break down as follows: 90% human-human, 9% human-computer 1% computer-computer. Plus, since there will be fewer autonomous cars on the road, the h-c and c-c collisions will be even rarer. Basically, almost every accident will involve dumb human error. So, what happens when you manually drive your neighbor's kid home from school and get into an accident? He will sue the pants off you because you deliberately put his kid in a situation which is documented to be unsafe. Eventually (think of the children) it will be illegal to put kids in a manually driven car.
Fourth, insurance on manually driven vehicles will creep up and up until it will simply be unaffordable to anyone who doesn't have a trust fund.
Fifth, and most important, autonomous vehicles will allow people to drink in their cars again. Game over.
Even bad movies have standards, and degrees of badness, whether it be corny dialog, cheesy effects, poor camerawork, or just a boring story. Remember how awesome "Snakes on a Plane" was gonna be?? And what we wound up with? So yes, even a movie with a title like "Cowboys & Aliens" deserves a proper critical review, otherwise you could just as easily end up with oblivion.
You have to transfer files on an iPad as well. But there is no convenient way to acess those files once on the tablet. For example, assume you have a large video on your iPad in your Videos app. Later on, someone releases subtitles for it. You can't just load the external subs, because they don't play in Videos. You'd like to just play the same video in another app that displays subs, but you can't. You have to retransfer the entire video into another app that will display subtitles. And if it turns out the video doesn't play well in that app, you then have to load the whole thing again, or send a copy of the file to another app. You wind up with two or three copies of the same file. IOW, of course there is a filesystem, but it is severely gimped in userland. Apple, to its credit, has a history of sometimes giving in on pointless restrictions. It belatedly acknowledged that people did want folders and multitasking after all. So, perhaps in a year, accelerating the trend away from the iPad needing a host computer, there will be a universal default "open with" method of accessing files from multiple apps, as opposed to the current kludges and ad hoc methods.
Also, in general, "I can't see why X...", as an argument, only betrays a failure of imagination or empathy in the speaker. Better to explain why X is not a good idea, or why not-X is a good idea.
OK, in what way is teaching about evolution as part of a science curriculum "damaging to the education of our children" ?
A meteoroid with enough impact power to equal the largest nuclear bomb we have ever made impacts the earth roughly every thousand years or so. So, any brown dwarf that could be ignited by a bomb would be ignited already by stray impactors.
I suppose one could set up a scenario where a bd had, over the eons, been heating up little by little due to external forces and was now only one bomb away from ignition. But again, if it were that close to going stellar, then any ol' starquake, or maybe even tidal forces from a revolving moon, would probably set it off. And even in that instance, my totally wild-ass-guess is that it would be a localized explosion; that it would be essentially impossible to set things up such that a brown dwarf could go completely nuclear from a human level event.
Refueling wouldn't incur slowing the ship down...it would involve sending an automated factory out to the brown dwarf in advance, which would gather matter and launch it at high speed into the flight path of the refueling vessel. If necessary, rockets on the payload could be used to match the exact velocity.
Sorry, I disagree. Yes, the cop was totally out of line about the cellphone. But if, in fact, the woman was screaming and making a spectacle, then my opinion is that she should be subject to arrest in an environment like an airport. Even in a supermarket or a coffeehouse, people don't have the right to yell and scream and act in a broadly disruptive manner that interferes with conducting normal business, and similarly in an airport one cannot interfere with or interrupt the normal duties of the TSA officers. See e.g. Colton v. Kentucky 407 U.S. 104.
Also in this particular instance I would say the whole "civil disobedience" rule should hold sway: If the aim of this woman was to protest the TSA procedure as unjust, she should've been prepared to go all the way. Facing possible arrest is part of that -- otherwise, she's just going to carve out a one-time exception for herself in that one situation, instead of inciting public opinion and getting the entire law thrown out.
IOW, nothing to see here, move along. No seriously, MOVE ALONG.
Generally, a sex offender's registry is for people who commit sexual offenses. It's not necessary for the victim to be a minor, nor it is necessary to prove "attraction." Additionally, mere possession of child porn is a sexual offense, and is prima facie considered dangerous to children in the eyes of the law. Therefore, there's no mystery as to why this person is on the registry, regardless of what allegedly happened with the boy.
A secure wipe is not a good idea. Because you will also be prosecuted for the attempted destruction of evidence. I say "attempted" because, unless your laptop has never left your custody, you have to assume they've already made a raw copy of the drive.
The problem with umbrella brands is that one weak spoke can bring down the whole brand. If Google Blogs has a problem, it will give all of Google a black eye, not just the Blogger brand. And if "Google" stops being cool, then even if they could somehow spin off the lines into their own brands again, those old labels would've lost their previous cachet. After all, the history of internet branding has taught us that the public is drastically less faithful to digital properties than they are to real world brands where the consistency of the quality can be reinforced by taste or touch.
I guess I'm wondering what's Google's game plan. Did they learn nothing from the failures of msn.com, lycos, and others? Or even their own failure to make Google Video catch on as a worthy competitor to YouTube?