With ChromeOS you can just use the "default" account - the option of logging in just means they can give you all of your settings and options and have them migrate from device to device.
I'd compare it to a moped - sure, it gets you from A to B, it is small and doesn't use much fuel. Who needs a full sized car - most of the time its all empty! If you need to carry something why not just have it delivered?... etc etc...
Except that Google Wave was never really a product - it was shown at a developers conference and given a limited release as something for developers to play with and expand upon. That people assumed it was an actual product is what doomed the project as a whole.
But I do agree - I use Google Apps and despite all the good there is, there are so many features which are blindingly obvious but non-existent (Google Docs has terrible sharing options), or features and products which haven't been given a second look since they were introduced years ago, leaving us to suffer (Google Talk client does not automatically show all Google Apps users on first use - you need to add them one by one). They produce something with promise and somehow let it die by never giving it the polish it deserves.
Thin clients mean more than job security and control of users. It means simplicity of maintenance and support. It means standardisation of hardware and software. In the right situations you get a better performance to price ratio, and lower overheads for hardware.
I love the ChromeOS concept, but I don't think people understand it so well. When you start asking for local storage and better hardware you shouldn't be using ChromeOS any more. I waited a long time for a Chromebook, but when they were finally released I took one look at the price and never went back.
And I don't think it is a valid feature request - you need a computer to put a file on a samba share - there is no reason you cannot upload it to docs instead. A file share is only useful while you have access, be it locally on the same network or via a VPN externally. Once its on GDocs it is available from anywhere.
You are close. Japanese postal codes are made up of 7 numbers (000-0000) which allows for lots of variation. From this number alone you can lookup the prefecture and city/town name without fail. In most areas also the district name and street block number is also available, and there are even cases where large buildings have their own postal code.
It is fairly trivial to lookup addresses and populate fields based on the post code, since they are very specific. It would be of limited use in my home country of Australia, as only the state and suburb fields would be populated, and even then maybe not correctly.
I'm getting pretty sick of people talking about how the technology failed, or the earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. It certainly didn't help, but the situation could have conceivably been put under control if TEPCO had even the slightest disaster planning prepared.
TEPCO did not have manuals for basic emergency procedures in the plants control room
TEPCO did not have safety equipment (protective suits, personal dosimeters, etc) stored on site
TEPCO did not have the equipment required to carry out emergency operations on site (eg. an air compressor to manually open a pneumatic valve)
TEPCO did not have any clear plans in place for severe emergencies
TEPCO had not run drills or training for disaster response
TEPCO didn't even have a clear crisis management, response and responsibility plan
Any single one of these points is horrific. All together, to me, it is just mind numbing that this isn't just happening at Fukushima Daiichi, but at 17 plants and many more nuclear material handling companies.
What is absolutely sickening about the whole situation is that a few documents and some very basic equipment, and the application of basic disaster planning essentials could have taken Fukushima from being what it is today to simply being a messy close-call. Had they been able to manually open the valves and provide even a small amount of power within a reasonable timeframe it would have been dramatically different.
Risk management isn't about throwing technology at a problem until you feel invulnerable, but nor is it about making excuses why you shouldn't have to bother. This failure was a simple results of a failure of policy and planning.
Anyone wanting solid sources for any of the above, feel free to ask, I'll get them. I just don't want to look them all up now:S
The most important lesson here is one that goes out to all the nuclear fear-mongers: Absolutely everything could possibly go wrong did, and yet no one died.
Plenty of people have died while working to control the situation at Fukushima. Nice of you to forget them so flippantly.
The failure was from a total lack of foresight and planning - they had never had a safety drill, didn't have any plans in place for even basic "emergencies" like a loss of grid power, and their emergency management facility was an empty building - built to appease the public, but left empty as it was assumed it would never actually be needed.
It has been shown that TEPCO alone has consistently falsified data, consistently covering up damage, failing to do maintenance and replacements of key equipment as required by law and by the original reactor designers, and covered up accidents and problems which they are required to report as it would result in costly downtime.
Fukushima wasn't a freak accident which overwhelmed any and all disaster plans that could have been conceived - it was the inevitable result of decades of corrupt and inept management of a nations nuclear industry.
You do realize that if you wanted to blow up a plane, but not actually be there when it happened, leaving something behind is exactly how you do it? Take a look at some of the more famous plane bombings and that is how it was done.
Arresting them after finding out the truth of the matter is stupid, but taking precautions such as shutting down the airport and having it checked is just common procedure.
No, that is exactly how it works. If I'm using Windows, and the Microsoft IME, in Hiragana mode (means "Japanese input mode"), and type tanaka - before I've done anything else (like change it to kanji, or press enter) the auto-complete box drops down and gives me a list of suggestions like or
The numeric URLs are meant to sound like the name of the company or some sort of slogan. Very often companies will try hard to get a phone number that is easy to remember because the numbers sound like something else when read out loud.
I'm not surprised there was lies - I was highly suspicious when this came out because there is no way a company like Foxconn could employ underage employees. I've done enough work in China to know there are ways you can screw your employees, and there are things you just can't get away with - more so if you are someone like Foxconn.
The hexane thing was also suspicious, but from the start the entire thing stinks. The people working at Foxconn or even just those who are ambitious know that if they make up a good story and it gets into the western press they can get a fat pay day out of it somehow, and the bullshit just gets thicker and thicker the more people go on about it.
The government obviously didn't report any problems
I don't think the government performs any inspections - they rely on the power companies to organise it and they tell the government how it goes.
TEPCO has been publicly caught creating fraudulent reports since the 1980's on numerous occasions - why they were allowed to go on so long until this happened is disgusting.
"Cost" tends to include all of the research and development that went into building it. I'd be surprised if its more than $5mil each for the actual construction of a single drone.
Mini-ITX cases are not much bigger than a large router, and use a comparable amount of electricity as a router.
You would get something that is much more powerful than a router, far more flexible, and the option to do more like be an FTP server, torrent box, NAS, media center, etc.
The fact is, when there are a billion people waiting in line for a job, wages will be low.
The fact is, you can't just throw people at problems. You still need people with training, education and experience to be able to do things, and those people will be able to demand higher wages.
I've said it so many time before - its not how much $/hr, its how much buying power you have.
I worked this out just the other day with colleagues from HK, Singapore, Hangzhou and myself (Tokyo). For the ever-present bottle of CocaCola the price worked out to roughly 6minutes of pay for someone who is in their early-20's, working part-time in McDonalds - in all 4 countries. It would probably work even in Australia off the top of my head (~$20/hr pay, 500/600ml bottle of coke was around $2 when I was back home last).
You get interesting results when talking about things like rent, general food prices and transport however. But in any case no matter how you look at it the wages at Foxconn are rather crap - the new 21yr-old hire who will be an assistant/secretary/customer service rep in our China office will get 4000 RMB (~US$600) after tax/insurance as well as subsidised housing (up to about 1500 RMB - US$230). While she was still studying she used to work like a dog 7 days a week doing all sorts of odd jobs like translation, tour guide, legal documentation checks, general paperwork stuff for 3000~4000/mth.
I felt like crap when I realised I made more in 3 days that she does in a month:(
Either I get the clueless HR guy who takes my lack of a degree or certification as a bad thing (at least I can namedrop some big companies instead), or the IT manager who seems to thing that knowing the exact PC boot sequence or being able to memorise how to do specific tasks is important - in my mind if I can google it as a top result its not worth remembering.
Best interview has to be the more open ended theory based questions - how would you explain TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP? How does accessing a website work? How would you troubleshoot a problem, or .
Is that a joke? We are at least a decade off being able to get robots even close to "room cleaning" levels of ability. We might have a 'bed making' robot in 5 years if we work at it;)
Slashdot Mirror
With ChromeOS you can just use the "default" account - the option of logging in just means they can give you all of your settings and options and have them migrate from device to device.
I'd compare it to a moped - sure, it gets you from A to B, it is small and doesn't use much fuel. Who needs a full sized car - most of the time its all empty! If you need to carry something why not just have it delivered?... etc etc...
Except that Google Wave was never really a product - it was shown at a developers conference and given a limited release as something for developers to play with and expand upon. That people assumed it was an actual product is what doomed the project as a whole.
But I do agree - I use Google Apps and despite all the good there is, there are so many features which are blindingly obvious but non-existent (Google Docs has terrible sharing options), or features and products which haven't been given a second look since they were introduced years ago, leaving us to suffer (Google Talk client does not automatically show all Google Apps users on first use - you need to add them one by one). They produce something with promise and somehow let it die by never giving it the polish it deserves.
Thin clients mean more than job security and control of users. It means simplicity of maintenance and support. It means standardisation of hardware and software. In the right situations you get a better performance to price ratio, and lower overheads for hardware.
I love the ChromeOS concept, but I don't think people understand it so well. When you start asking for local storage and better hardware you shouldn't be using ChromeOS any more. I waited a long time for a Chromebook, but when they were finally released I took one look at the price and never went back.
Its 2mb now!
And I don't think it is a valid feature request - you need a computer to put a file on a samba share - there is no reason you cannot upload it to docs instead. A file share is only useful while you have access, be it locally on the same network or via a VPN externally. Once its on GDocs it is available from anywhere.
Not easy in Australia either - http://www.fairwork.gov.au/termination/pages/default.aspx
You are close. Japanese postal codes are made up of 7 numbers (000-0000) which allows for lots of variation. From this number alone you can lookup the prefecture and city/town name without fail. In most areas also the district name and street block number is also available, and there are even cases where large buildings have their own postal code.
It is fairly trivial to lookup addresses and populate fields based on the post code, since they are very specific. It would be of limited use in my home country of Australia, as only the state and suburb fields would be populated, and even then maybe not correctly.
I'm getting pretty sick of people talking about how the technology failed, or the earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. It certainly didn't help, but the situation could have conceivably been put under control if TEPCO had even the slightest disaster planning prepared.
TEPCO did not have manuals for basic emergency procedures in the plants control room
TEPCO did not have safety equipment (protective suits, personal dosimeters, etc) stored on site
TEPCO did not have the equipment required to carry out emergency operations on site (eg. an air compressor to manually open a pneumatic valve)
TEPCO did not have any clear plans in place for severe emergencies
TEPCO had not run drills or training for disaster response
TEPCO didn't even have a clear crisis management, response and responsibility plan
Any single one of these points is horrific. All together, to me, it is just mind numbing that this isn't just happening at Fukushima Daiichi, but at 17 plants and many more nuclear material handling companies.
What is absolutely sickening about the whole situation is that a few documents and some very basic equipment, and the application of basic disaster planning essentials could have taken Fukushima from being what it is today to simply being a messy close-call. Had they been able to manually open the valves and provide even a small amount of power within a reasonable timeframe it would have been dramatically different.
Risk management isn't about throwing technology at a problem until you feel invulnerable, but nor is it about making excuses why you shouldn't have to bother. This failure was a simple results of a failure of policy and planning.
Anyone wanting solid sources for any of the above, feel free to ask, I'll get them. I just don't want to look them all up now :S
Here is a good start if you want to know more, again, I'm happy to source any claim in here too: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Jeff-Kingston/3724
The most important lesson here is one that goes out to all the nuclear fear-mongers: Absolutely everything could possibly go wrong did, and yet no one died.
Plenty of people have died while working to control the situation at Fukushima. Nice of you to forget them so flippantly.
Actually, that is wrong. TEPCO had been given approval to continue using Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 on Feb 7th 2011 for another 10 years by NISA.
Here is the Japanese press release, feel free to Google to find English sources: http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/f1-np/press_f1/2010/pdfdata/bi1201-j.pdf
The failure was from a total lack of foresight and planning - they had never had a safety drill, didn't have any plans in place for even basic "emergencies" like a loss of grid power, and their emergency management facility was an empty building - built to appease the public, but left empty as it was assumed it would never actually be needed.
It has been shown that TEPCO alone has consistently falsified data, consistently covering up damage, failing to do maintenance and replacements of key equipment as required by law and by the original reactor designers, and covered up accidents and problems which they are required to report as it would result in costly downtime.
Fukushima wasn't a freak accident which overwhelmed any and all disaster plans that could have been conceived - it was the inevitable result of decades of corrupt and inept management of a nations nuclear industry.
You do realize that if you wanted to blow up a plane, but not actually be there when it happened, leaving something behind is exactly how you do it? Take a look at some of the more famous plane bombings and that is how it was done.
Arresting them after finding out the truth of the matter is stupid, but taking precautions such as shutting down the airport and having it checked is just common procedure.
No, that is exactly how it works. If I'm using Windows, and the Microsoft IME, in Hiragana mode (means "Japanese input mode"), and type tanaka - before I've done anything else (like change it to kanji, or press enter) the auto-complete box drops down and gives me a list of suggestions like or
The numeric URLs are meant to sound like the name of the company or some sort of slogan. Very often companies will try hard to get a phone number that is easy to remember because the numbers sound like something else when read out loud.
And the US has how many carriers? And how many are within 3 days sailing distance of Iran?
Would keep me up at night too....
I'm not surprised there was lies - I was highly suspicious when this came out because there is no way a company like Foxconn could employ underage employees. I've done enough work in China to know there are ways you can screw your employees, and there are things you just can't get away with - more so if you are someone like Foxconn.
The hexane thing was also suspicious, but from the start the entire thing stinks. The people working at Foxconn or even just those who are ambitious know that if they make up a good story and it gets into the western press they can get a fat pay day out of it somehow, and the bullshit just gets thicker and thicker the more people go on about it.
The government obviously didn't report any problems
I don't think the government performs any inspections - they rely on the power companies to organise it and they tell the government how it goes.
TEPCO has been publicly caught creating fraudulent reports since the 1980's on numerous occasions - why they were allowed to go on so long until this happened is disgusting.
Not quite. The issue was that the video feeds from the drones were unencrypted - the control feeds have always been heavily encrypted and very secure.
More than likely the engine failed or it has a massive malfunction and it glided happily along its last flight path.
"Cost" tends to include all of the research and development that went into building it. I'd be surprised if its more than $5mil each for the actual construction of a single drone.
Mini-ITX cases are not much bigger than a large router, and use a comparable amount of electricity as a router.
You would get something that is much more powerful than a router, far more flexible, and the option to do more like be an FTP server, torrent box, NAS, media center, etc.
Actually, the one child policy has already been changed - couples who are themselves both without siblings can have two children.
The fact is, when there are a billion people waiting in line for a job, wages will be low.
The fact is, you can't just throw people at problems. You still need people with training, education and experience to be able to do things, and those people will be able to demand higher wages.
I've said it so many time before - its not how much $/hr, its how much buying power you have.
I worked this out just the other day with colleagues from HK, Singapore, Hangzhou and myself (Tokyo). For the ever-present bottle of CocaCola the price worked out to roughly 6minutes of pay for someone who is in their early-20's, working part-time in McDonalds - in all 4 countries. It would probably work even in Australia off the top of my head (~$20/hr pay, 500/600ml bottle of coke was around $2 when I was back home last).
You get interesting results when talking about things like rent, general food prices and transport however. But in any case no matter how you look at it the wages at Foxconn are rather crap - the new 21yr-old hire who will be an assistant/secretary/customer service rep in our China office will get 4000 RMB (~US$600) after tax/insurance as well as subsidised housing (up to about 1500 RMB - US$230). While she was still studying she used to work like a dog 7 days a week doing all sorts of odd jobs like translation, tour guide, legal documentation checks, general paperwork stuff for 3000~4000/mth.
I felt like crap when I realised I made more in 3 days that she does in a month :(
Either I get the clueless HR guy who takes my lack of a degree or certification as a bad thing (at least I can namedrop some big companies instead), or the IT manager who seems to thing that knowing the exact PC boot sequence or being able to memorise how to do specific tasks is important - in my mind if I can google it as a top result its not worth remembering.
Best interview has to be the more open ended theory based questions - how would you explain TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP? How does accessing a website work? How would you troubleshoot a problem, or .
Is that a joke? We are at least a decade off being able to get robots even close to "room cleaning" levels of ability. We might have a 'bed making' robot in 5 years if we work at it ;)