You simply do not understand the concept of morale. It's something that cost US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan among other things.
If bureaucrats of the country (otherwise known as government) feel respected by citizens, their morale is high and they are very hard to corrupt. Cost of corruption becomes prohibitively expensive.
If bureaucrats of the country are not respected, and even derided by most citizens, as has happened in US after concentrated PR assault in the 80s and 90s, their morale collapses and they become easily corruptible. I.e. "why would I care about doing my job if most people don't respect what I do anyway, I may as well get rich and get a cushy job out of it that people will respect".
No, you are proving his point. It's people like you that are the reason for government being weakened so much that these corporations are allowed to influence it to such a great degree.
Back when patriotism was a thing just a few decades ago, companies didn't wield even a fraction of political power they have today.
So let me see if I get what you're trying to say. Russia, the single largest country in the world, that has exactly one problem with oil and other resources - it lacks people and investment to actually get those resources out of the ground will care about Canadian resources enough to go and grab them? The Russia that sold Alaska to US because it simply could not use its resources and needed investment just to put what it has on the Eurasian continent to some use?
I'm not sure how many hits to the head it takes to be that stupid, but it must be quite a lot.
Why would they want Northern Canada? They have enough problems trying to keep China out of their South-East. Their country is biggest on the planet and has a very low population density already.
Jets are mainly needed for patrol and "believable defense deterrent" - i.e. showing any other regional power that may want to attack that you have enough defenses to make it exceedingly difficult or impossible to do so. Of course, with US as your land neighbour, that makes for a one tall order...
Planes can land on instruments only. It's a much more complex and difficult operation, but it's becoming more and more common during the evenings because of the green lasers pointing at cockpits.
So while you have massively increased risk, it hasn't materialized into a crash yet as far as we know because safety precautions in aviation are massive. But poking those precautions "because they haven't crashed yet!" is about as good of an idea as jumping in front of cars because "it hasn't hit me yet". Eventually someone will not hit brakes on time.
Good for you. I've had more than my share of games that worked atrociously on release date when I was still playing on 4870 and driver settings that just plain refused to work.
I'm not alone in that experience either unfortunately. It's not like it has scared me off AMD, as I said I still use it. Just not for performance stuff where I need reliability and stability more than a few extra FPS.
I don't use nvidia experience as I prefer to have manual control over most of the card's features. That said, I've had the update problems as well, and most of them were firewall-related.
Yes, but not in a way you mean it. AMD execs would likely kill to get their hands on information how nvidia optimizes their drivers. It's a well known reality that ATI had severe problems with driver quality from early stages, and these problems persist today long after AMD bought the company.
So yes, it makes perfect sense not to give software part of technology stack away to the competitor that has emphasized hardware at expense of driver quality. Hardware-wise AMD currently has better bang for a euro than nvidia, but nvidia offers far better drivers and some extra features like physx.
I chose my last gaming PC to be nvidia based after sitting on 4870 for several years. That card was excellent and performed well above the price category it was sold for when everything worked well in my opinion, but drivers and driver-related issues made me want to punch a kitten at times.
Hilariously my laptop with integrated graphics is AMD for the exact same reason - I only play some rather old games on that machine, so I need performance per euro (it's a cheap laptop) rather than great support for latest games and driver stability and features.
So it's absolutely understandable that nvidia chooses not to open the driver code. That is one of their key competitive advantages and something that AMD really wants to have.
Hilariously, that is likely correct. After all, 8 was designed for touch input. So if you hold the monitor and poke at it, it will probably work quite well.
But if you're holding a mouse, well, you're holding it wrong.
It's not. It's just the new "8 is great, you just don't understand it and you need to get win 8 and use it for a while to understand"-style advertisement that MS shills copy/paste nowadays after their previous one didn't bring any significant results.
They already tried it. 8 was basically free with new machines for a while. 7 would cost you 100EUR license on top of price of the machine.
And people were paying for 7 license in overwhelming numbers.
People already voted with their money on that topic. I suspect that even if microsoft paid people to use something like 8, most people would pass the offer.
That's a pretty liberal estimate. In reality, most of costs the asphalt road laying is in the clearing up and laying the proper foundation. The surface is very cheap to repair and you do it every twenty to thirty years iirc as long as you do maintenance regime on parts that are under most stress.
In comparison, the solar panel's last price quote that I saw was 70.000 USD per panel, and that was the hopeful one. There were some claims that they would get the price down to 10.000, with no explanation on how they would go about it, and I'm finding this unlikely. Consider that they need to not only provide the solar element, but also make special fiberglass coating that actually needs to both provide grip (they do this through making a special pattern on surface, which means that road would be wearing out like tyres, rather than like asphalt, requiring full replacement rather than simple resurfacing). At the same time, this pattern needs to survive heavy traffic on it for years. Then they need to run a complex electrical system under the whole thing, which would need to be built and maintained.
The glass element alone is going to have astronomical costs. In fact, I've asked a few guys in university I used to study in who specialize in construction materials and they looked at me like I was insane when I laid out the requirements. According to them, you can have a hard but brittle glass element (trucks for example, generate a significant amount of vibration which would quickly destroy any brittle elements), or one that is softer and less brittle (which would wear out quickly due to softness). You're going to need some very amazing material there, and that doesn't come cheap.
As a result, like most such projects, the price per tile is likely to go up significantly, rather than go down in the end. But even if we look at it very hopefully, the costs are simply astronomical, even if materials needed already existed. That is why the project in Netherlands specialized in making roads for bike trails and such. Paving material is extremely expensive and very hard to make.
That + the currently ongoing university research project in Netherlands that these people are apparently aping. Unlike "give us one million" guys, those people have actual bike and pedestrian roads already laid somewhere in North Holland. The costs are astronomical even without the "modular" and "fiberglass pattern than can carry trucks and yet provide decent grip" which are the main differential between these two projects as far as I can tell.
I think that we don't need to spend million USD to find out that this project is hilariously too expensive to ever become viable. There are far better projects to put one's money into if you want to do good.
That is my main problem with projects like this. They suck up money from people who want to do good by promising something that sounds good to someone who has no understanding of the subject. This money could have been donated to many projects that actually have a chance of success.
They put up price per tile. You don't even have to do the installation costs. The price per tile times approximate surface of the road generates jaw-dropping numbers.
Asphalt. In some cases, concrete. In some cases, gravel.
All several orders of magnitude cheaper.
When you say "several hundred millions a year" you simply do not understand how much roads there are in US alone. Or the fact that the asking price in this project would dwarf GDP of the entire planet to replace just US roads. This not even talking about maintenance, which is bound to be monstrous in its own right, as their idea for getting decent traction is to (hold on to your seat) make patterned glass.
Which means that when pattern wears out, you have to replace the whole thing. While fiberglass is more durable than tyres in general, it's not going to last longer than a few years in road use if it's patterned. So replace the whole thing every few years, maybe every decade if we're generous.
You were afraid of hundreds of millions to maintain the current road network. Wait until you see the price tag on THIS maintenance.
Another contract which was contracted out to a large corporate entity has not delivered, way over budget, and fully into the blame part of the project.
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You simply do not understand the concept of morale. It's something that cost US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan among other things.
If bureaucrats of the country (otherwise known as government) feel respected by citizens, their morale is high and they are very hard to corrupt. Cost of corruption becomes prohibitively expensive.
If bureaucrats of the country are not respected, and even derided by most citizens, as has happened in US after concentrated PR assault in the 80s and 90s, their morale collapses and they become easily corruptible. I.e. "why would I care about doing my job if most people don't respect what I do anyway, I may as well get rich and get a cushy job out of it that people will respect".
It takes a genuinely insane person to make such a claim.
I present to you Somalia, the country without effective government. It lacks all those things.
Strange correlation if this isn't causation, wouldn't you think?
No, you are proving his point. It's people like you that are the reason for government being weakened so much that these corporations are allowed to influence it to such a great degree.
Back when patriotism was a thing just a few decades ago, companies didn't wield even a fraction of political power they have today.
So let me see if I get what you're trying to say. Russia, the single largest country in the world, that has exactly one problem with oil and other resources - it lacks people and investment to actually get those resources out of the ground will care about Canadian resources enough to go and grab them? The Russia that sold Alaska to US because it simply could not use its resources and needed investment just to put what it has on the Eurasian continent to some use?
I'm not sure how many hits to the head it takes to be that stupid, but it must be quite a lot.
Why would they want Northern Canada? They have enough problems trying to keep China out of their South-East. Their country is biggest on the planet and has a very low population density already.
Jets are mainly needed for patrol and "believable defense deterrent" - i.e. showing any other regional power that may want to attack that you have enough defenses to make it exceedingly difficult or impossible to do so. Of course, with US as your land neighbour, that makes for a one tall order...
Planes can land on instruments only. It's a much more complex and difficult operation, but it's becoming more and more common during the evenings because of the green lasers pointing at cockpits.
So while you have massively increased risk, it hasn't materialized into a crash yet as far as we know because safety precautions in aviation are massive. But poking those precautions "because they haven't crashed yet!" is about as good of an idea as jumping in front of cars because "it hasn't hit me yet". Eventually someone will not hit brakes on time.
Good for you. I've had more than my share of games that worked atrociously on release date when I was still playing on 4870 and driver settings that just plain refused to work.
I'm not alone in that experience either unfortunately. It's not like it has scared me off AMD, as I said I still use it. Just not for performance stuff where I need reliability and stability more than a few extra FPS.
I don't use nvidia experience as I prefer to have manual control over most of the card's features. That said, I've had the update problems as well, and most of them were firewall-related.
Yes, but not in a way you mean it. AMD execs would likely kill to get their hands on information how nvidia optimizes their drivers. It's a well known reality that ATI had severe problems with driver quality from early stages, and these problems persist today long after AMD bought the company.
So yes, it makes perfect sense not to give software part of technology stack away to the competitor that has emphasized hardware at expense of driver quality. Hardware-wise AMD currently has better bang for a euro than nvidia, but nvidia offers far better drivers and some extra features like physx.
I chose my last gaming PC to be nvidia based after sitting on 4870 for several years. That card was excellent and performed well above the price category it was sold for when everything worked well in my opinion, but drivers and driver-related issues made me want to punch a kitten at times.
Hilariously my laptop with integrated graphics is AMD for the exact same reason - I only play some rather old games on that machine, so I need performance per euro (it's a cheap laptop) rather than great support for latest games and driver stability and features.
So it's absolutely understandable that nvidia chooses not to open the driver code. That is one of their key competitive advantages and something that AMD really wants to have.
Which mythical country are you referring to that has electricity prices high and at the same time petrol/diesel prices low?
Hilariously, that is likely correct. After all, 8 was designed for touch input. So if you hold the monitor and poke at it, it will probably work quite well.
But if you're holding a mouse, well, you're holding it wrong.
It's not. It's just the new "8 is great, you just don't understand it and you need to get win 8 and use it for a while to understand"-style advertisement that MS shills copy/paste nowadays after their previous one didn't bring any significant results.
They already tried it. 8 was basically free with new machines for a while. 7 would cost you 100EUR license on top of price of the machine.
And people were paying for 7 license in overwhelming numbers.
People already voted with their money on that topic. I suspect that even if microsoft paid people to use something like 8, most people would pass the offer.
A comparison is that how US culture views free speech, most European cultures view privacy and vice versa.
What you view as a "ruined right to freely exchange information", we view as a "ruined right to privacy".
That's a pretty liberal estimate. In reality, most of costs the asphalt road laying is in the clearing up and laying the proper foundation. The surface is very cheap to repair and you do it every twenty to thirty years iirc as long as you do maintenance regime on parts that are under most stress.
In comparison, the solar panel's last price quote that I saw was 70.000 USD per panel, and that was the hopeful one. There were some claims that they would get the price down to 10.000, with no explanation on how they would go about it, and I'm finding this unlikely. Consider that they need to not only provide the solar element, but also make special fiberglass coating that actually needs to both provide grip (they do this through making a special pattern on surface, which means that road would be wearing out like tyres, rather than like asphalt, requiring full replacement rather than simple resurfacing). At the same time, this pattern needs to survive heavy traffic on it for years. Then they need to run a complex electrical system under the whole thing, which would need to be built and maintained.
The glass element alone is going to have astronomical costs. In fact, I've asked a few guys in university I used to study in who specialize in construction materials and they looked at me like I was insane when I laid out the requirements. According to them, you can have a hard but brittle glass element (trucks for example, generate a significant amount of vibration which would quickly destroy any brittle elements), or one that is softer and less brittle (which would wear out quickly due to softness). You're going to need some very amazing material there, and that doesn't come cheap.
As a result, like most such projects, the price per tile is likely to go up significantly, rather than go down in the end. But even if we look at it very hopefully, the costs are simply astronomical, even if materials needed already existed. That is why the project in Netherlands specialized in making roads for bike trails and such. Paving material is extremely expensive and very hard to make.
That + the currently ongoing university research project in Netherlands that these people are apparently aping. Unlike "give us one million" guys, those people have actual bike and pedestrian roads already laid somewhere in North Holland. The costs are astronomical even without the "modular" and "fiberglass pattern than can carry trucks and yet provide decent grip" which are the main differential between these two projects as far as I can tell.
Here's the video of the Dutch project with english subtitles: http://vimeo.com/91641192
Very simple. Take the cost of their "tile". Do the math now much it takes per kilometer of road.
Then look up how many kilometers of roads there are in US in total. Multiply one by another, than compare to world GDP. It will come short.
I think that we don't need to spend million USD to find out that this project is hilariously too expensive to ever become viable. There are far better projects to put one's money into if you want to do good.
That is my main problem with projects like this. They suck up money from people who want to do good by promising something that sounds good to someone who has no understanding of the subject. This money could have been donated to many projects that actually have a chance of success.
They put up price per tile. You don't even have to do the installation costs. The price per tile times approximate surface of the road generates jaw-dropping numbers.
Asphalt. In some cases, concrete. In some cases, gravel.
All several orders of magnitude cheaper.
When you say "several hundred millions a year" you simply do not understand how much roads there are in US alone. Or the fact that the asking price in this project would dwarf GDP of the entire planet to replace just US roads. This not even talking about maintenance, which is bound to be monstrous in its own right, as their idea for getting decent traction is to (hold on to your seat) make patterned glass.
Which means that when pattern wears out, you have to replace the whole thing. While fiberglass is more durable than tyres in general, it's not going to last longer than a few years in road use if it's patterned. So replace the whole thing every few years, maybe every decade if we're generous.
You were afraid of hundreds of millions to maintain the current road network. Wait until you see the price tag on THIS maintenance.
That already exists. Their specific innovation is that their "tiles" are apparently tough enough to survive road use.
Wouldn't be enough even with that. We're looking at costs of replacement that dwarf GDP of the entire planet.
Yes, it's that silly.
Really. Because for price of one single long road of theirs, you'd have to dump half our current road network. Mathematics are brutal in this regard.
Or:
Another contract which was contracted out to a large corporate entity has not delivered, way over budget, and fully into the blame part of the project.