Nokia: it must be solid as a rock, work for 10,000 years, and the interface must exist. If it is convenient, that is a bonus, but not important.
Maybe you are talking about their hardware from WAY back when. Nokia's software absolutely sucks. It's not solid, barely interfaces with anything, it is not well designed and certainly isn't convenient to use. I used Nokia phones for about 10 years before finally getting fed up. The hardware was ok, not great (and not rock solid) but acceptable at the time. Their software was horrendous.
1)Microsoft would almost without question fight any buyout offer for Nokia by Apple tooth and nail and Microsoft has a war chest big enough to buy Nokia themselves. There is no way Apple would be able to buy the company for a reasonable price. Microsoft needs Nokia worse than Apple does right now.
2)Nokia has committed to the Microsoft platform and changing direction at this point would be tremendously costly. In fact it would probably kill the Nokia to try at this point.
3)Nokia does a lot of business with low margin products that are definitely not in Apple's wheelhouse. Apple already makes most of the profit in the cell phone industry. They would have to take on a lot of products in markets that they don't know well that make essentially no profit if they bought Nokia.
4)There would be huge company culture issues. Apple has a very unique company culture and a big acquisition would bring a lot of problems.
5) If Nokia goes under, Apple can probably buy assets it needs without the extra baggage of the rest of a troubled company
6)Apple's problems with their Maps is a fixable problem without involving Nokia. Yeah, they dropped the ball but they have the resources to make it work so long as they don't screw a lot of other things up at the same time.
Otherwise, you would not be able to afford that "all American made" vehicle.
There is no such animal. Some vehicles are majority sourced in the US but no vehicle is sourced exclusively from one country.
That's right. The simple fact is that it costs more to build a car in the U.S. than it does to build, and deliver, a car made in Japan or Korea.
That is not true at all. A lot of cars are made in the US precisely because it is too expensive to build them overseas. Cost of labor is not much cheaper in Japan than it is in the US. Korea isn't especially cheap when it comes to labor either. Much auto assembly can be automated with sufficient volume so the labor differential is further reduced. You also have to account for where the parts for the vehicle are made - the number of auto parts made in the US is huge and shipping them elsewhere would be expensive. Furthermore you have to account for exchange rates. The Yen is quite strong at the moment which makes exporting from Japan expensive. Honda and Toyota build a LOT of cars in the US precisely because it is cheaper to build them in the US.
I've had several Apple connectors fail over the years, never had a mini-USB connector break
The old Apple connector is FAR more complicated than the mini and micro USB as well as lightning. Tons of pins, lots of wires, tight spacing. Hardly a wonder that they break. Lighting should be a big improvement. I'm not sure it was really necessary since micro-usb could have done the job just fine but it is nice mechanically.
Then don't buy it. However I run a company that builds the things. I'm not talking about 10 of them or personal experience, I'm talking about my experience with thousands of them. The socket end of the connection is usually the more problematic end in my experience. The ones we deal with require significant potting or other packaging to be robust. Insertions are typically a bit on the finicky side and we've seen more than a few snapped plug ends. It isn't a horrible connector but it could have been a lot more robustly designed. From a pure mechanical standpoint the design of the lightning connector looks to me to be more robust. Time will tell but I've got a warehouse of connectors to compare with. It's certainly easier to insert. I don't really know why USB was designed as a keyed connection (cost most likely) but I think that was a stupid choice that forced some mechanical compromises. USB was designed to be cheap and it is and it shows.
Believe it or not I do get it. What I'm pointing out is that this facility can at most do basic research. Important stuff that and I'm a big proponent. But it isn't going to lead to a workable fusion power plant. That isn't what it is designed to study. I get that we still haven't generated a controlled sustained reaction. What I also get is that the NIF isn't going to get us one. It is designed with other goals in mind.
You can't generate electricity unless the energy coming out of the fusion reaction is greater than that used to generate the reaction.
No one is going to generate a SUSTAINABLE supply of power with the design of the the experiment at the NIF. The NIF is designed to research topics other than power generation. That is not a bad thing. It just means that if we learn something useful for power generation it will be incidental to the purpose of the facility. I genuinely hope that we do learn something useful for power generation but I'm not holding my breath.
Is there any real reason besides vendor lock in that the Apple connector does differently then Micro-USB?/quote.
Only two reasons I can think of. One is that MicroUSB is kind of a crappy design mechanically. Electrically it is fine and it is cheap and ubiquitous, but mechanically it has numerous failings. Lightning is a better design mechanically. The other reason is that having more pins allows the cable to do more functions than a serial cable. There is *some* advantage to the user with the lightning connector but for many there are probably more drawbacks including cost, lock-in, availability and did I mention cost?
Oddly enough, Micro-USB was specifically designed with the exact complaint you have in mind. While it is smaller than the Mini-USB it replaced, that was secondary to its main purpose, which was to improve durability
If that is true, they failed in my opinion. I'm looking at a broken female surface mount Micro-usb connector as I type this. Thin gauge metal, poor strain relief, finicky to insert and basically requires significant structural reinforcement for real world use. I say this as someone who manufactures electrical harnesses for a living. Furthermore I very much dislike the fact that it has a keyed insertion. They easily could have made it key-less with a few more terminals. It was designed to be cheap to manufacture rather than easy to use.
I'm $ure there'$ a perfectly good rea$on for them not to u$e a $tandard U$B connector format, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it i$. Anybody?
The real advantages to mini and micro-USB is that they are pretty much ubiquitous and relatively cheap - which are some big advantages. However the various USB connectors are kind of a crappy connectors from a mechanical standpoint. It is keyed in such a way that it isn't immediately obvious which way is the correct way to insert it without looking carefully or by trial and error. Also the mini and micro USB connectors themselves tend to be rather poorly made and need lots of external structural support. I've broken several and I'm not hard on my gear. My company manufactures some products that use them and IMO they aren't well designed mechanically. I don't love the lightning connector but from a pure mechanical design standpoint the lightning connector is better. Electrically and financially and socially I see no advantage to the new connector to most of us.
Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance."
That is pretty much what each side is supposed to do in the US legal system. Each side presents the evidence in the way they think best favors their case and then the judge/jury decides between them. Samsung has access (or is supposed to have access) to the same information and can present it if they think Apple is leaving out important details. Neither side has any obligation to present the opposition's case in a favorable light. If Samsung's lawyers didn't do their job well then it isn't surprising that they lost. I have no idea if this is a fair verdict or not but I don't see anything unusual in the process here.
- National security (stockpile stewardship [llnl.gov] - Basic fusion science [llnl.gov] - Understanding the origins of the basic building blocks of the universe [llnl.gov]
I hate to break it you you, but much of what we do in basic science research is dual-use. It can be used for military applications, or purely scientific applications.
So despite your condescending tone to someone you know nothing about, you acknowledge that the first purpose of this facility is weapons research. It also is useful for some basic research which is vitally important. We're on the same page.
Doing stockpile stewardship without nuclear tests is not "getting around" nuclear test ban treaties. It's maintaining the integrity of our increasingly smaller nuclear stockpile as a credible deterrent.
That's pretty much a fancy way to say it is a way to test nuclear fusion without setting off any actual bombs. Amaze me with how you think that is not a way to get around the test ban treaties. While I didn't bring it up, I don't think anyone is particularly worried that the US does not have a "credible deterrent" when it comes to nuclear weapons. We have more nukes than we will ever need and everyone knows it.
Oh and the rest of your reply appears to be an off topic defense of maintaining mutually assured destruction. I wasn't addressing that nor did I make any comments about whether fusion weapons research was good or bad. I merely observed that the first purpose of this facility appears to be for researching fusion based weaponry.
Their goal isn't to generate power. Their goal is to prove that it's possible to generate power.
The only way to truly prove that it is possible to generate power IS to generate power. There is no mechanism in this experiment by which a sustained fusion reaction will occur nor is there any effort I can discern by which they are attempting to actually generate electricity. It is a research experiment for nuclear weapons from which we might learn something useful down the road for fusion power.
Since you "asked", my first real job was as a research assistant in a laser and plasma physics lab working on an experiment to study hypersonic shock waves for fusion research. I also have an engineering degree with a minor in applied physics. But thanks for assuming I'm ignorant without actually knowing anything about me.
It's an experiment, not a finalized design.
I'm well aware that it is an experiment. However it also is an experiment that almost certainly cannot be translated into a working power plant. It is designed to study weapons and if we happen to learn something useful for fusion power along the way that is terrific. Don't get me wrong, I support research endeavors like the NIF. I think there will be some terrific engineering and scientific spin offs. I just don't think the sort of research they are doing is likely to lead to fusion as a power source. I'd be delighted to be wrong but I doubt I am.
If your design can be done by someone with the education levels or mental faculties of a welder, it can be done by outsourced talent more cheaply anyways.
Apparently you have never tried welding if you think welders are dumb. (hint, it's really quite difficult to do well and requires a LOT of training)
That said, there is a lot of coding that is not practical to outsource. I am not a programmer professionally but I do some coding here and there as a part of my job. I'm not about to write a linux kernel or anything like that, but some simple coding to do my job more effectively is useful. Should I have to go get a CS degree before writing a few macros or a batch file or a shell script? Are you seriously arguing that I should outsource my macros to India? Some programming simply isn't very hard and can be done effectively by someone who isn't a highly trained specialist.
There is a place for highly trained CS experts and that is working on the large scale and challenging problems. It really is a waste of everyone's time to have them working on simple programs that can be adequately by people with far less training.
Actually scratch that, I guess parts of pennies can somehow exist. Never mind that they can't be paid.
Not only can they be paid, they often are. Remember that most currency is not actually coins and bills. Most of it is just numbers in ledger somewhere. Stock transactions are often to as many as 5-6 decimal places. My company quotes parts with prices containing 4 decimal places. When you are dealing with many thousands of parts those fractions of a penny can add up to real money pretty quickly.
Huh? Floats is the standard representation of numbers almost everywhere.
Not in financial transactions. While there are ways to do financial transactions with floating point numbers, they have an alarming tendency to introduce rounding errors. When you are dealing in money, rounding errors are an extremely bad thing because then the books don't balance anymore. One common way to deal with the problem of rounding floats is to treat the stuff to left of the decimal as an integer and the stuff to the right as another integer since there are no rounding issues with integers. While not as fast as floats, the extra accuracy is worth it in this instance. There are other ways to solve this problem but you'll find conventional floating point is used with great caution in the financial world.
There's a reason floats are implemented in hardware.
Which has nothing to do with why floating point numbers are often not used for financial transactions.
While it has the side-benefit of allowing us to investigate inertial confined fusion, I thought the whole point of places like that was as a way to test nuclear weapons without actually setting them off?
I've wondered this myself. The design of it seems to make little sense (to me anyway) for use as a sustainable source of power. You blast the target and hopefully get a fusion reaction but then what? There's no turbine or continuous generation of power and the design of it pretty much seems to preclude such use. It makes sense a way to study fusion reactions (and related weapons) but not so much for power generation. Maybe there is hope for some spin-off technology if it was successful but really it seems like a pricey attempt to get around nuclear test ban treaties.
To put that number into perspective that is about 2 days of deficit spending (not total spending for those 2 days just the deficit) for the US government.
...for a project that few people really understand during tough economic times. While I'm very much in support of science projects like this, it should surprise no one that stuff like this is going to be first on the chopping block come budget time. Voters don't turn out because their favorite science project got the budgetary ax but they do turn out when medicare is threatened. Big budget science comes with big political risks. If it works, great but if it doesn't it is an easy target and it hurts the prospects of future science projects.
I agree thought that we really could use a few less bombers and a few more fusion research projects. The world would be a better place for it.
Why would we want more un/under educated programmers?
Because there is a lot of work that needs to be done that doesn't require a degree in computer science and people with those degrees tend to be expensive. You don't want under educated people but there is a cost to having over-educated people as well.
Programming is applied Math and very few high school students are going to be equipped to do it well.
Computer science is math whereas programming can be a bit more abstract than that. Programs are a set of instructions to a machine and sufficiently abstracted it really doesn't require deep knowledge of math for someone to do useful work. While ultimately any computer program can be reduced to mathematical equations, the actual programming often really isn't math from a practical standpoint. To use the simplest possible example, I don't need to know any mathematics to write "hello world". Up to a certain level, being able to instruct a machine requires little/no specialized training. Think of it a bit like saying that an electrician putting some wires in your house should require a bachelors degree in electrical engineering - the extra training would be pointless almost all the time. Lots of useful work can be done by those with less formal training.
In fact it's to our benefit to write tools to make simpler problems solvable by more people and free up those who are more highly trained working on more difficult problems. That said, there does come a level of sophistication where you need someone with more understanding of the underlying concepts. Just like a nurse can help you to a point but once the problem gets sufficiently complicated you need a doctor who has a deeper understanding of what is going on.
Apple II was limited to the semi-rich and rich, and to markets like schools where the political elite, answerable to the semi-rich and rich, made the decisions.
Poor people didn't own any computers in those days. Middle class ("semi-rich" must be a British phrase) families owned the same computers as wealthier people if they were interested in a computer. The Apple II cost $1700 when introduced which was well within reach of a middle class family in the US. Not cheap but Apple products never have been.
Covering just one of the two markets I was discussing (the Sinclair Spectrum was dominant, and a stronger seller, than the Commodore 64, in the UK.) So, no, I'm not wrong in mentioning the Sinclair brand and Sir Clive's contribution.
Fair enough, Sinclair products largely much didn't exist on this side of the pond. Honest oversight - though realistically I don't think it matters much. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum wasn't released until 5 YEARS after the Apple II and the ZX80 wasn't released until 1980. Same with the C64. Both were introduced a LONG time after the Apple II had already had a huge influence in the market and serious market share. Plus part of the reason you didn't notice many Apples is that Apple didn't sell much product prior to the Mac outside the US.
Covering total computer sales, when the Apple II was a strong seller in businesses...
Despite some early success and influence with Visicalc, Apple has never sold its products in vast numbers in businesses. The Apple II never sold large numbers to businesses. They have a brief period of success with Visicalc until the IBM PC came out and then the IBM PC was pretty much the dominant force in business computing from then on. Apple has always had much better success in the home, education and hobbyist markets.
Avoiding quoting figures for computers that sold better than the Apple II.
Only a handful of computers sold better than the Apple II. I didn't avoid quoting them. There simply aren't many.
Many of the things you take for granted these days were really made mainstream by Apple.
OK. Like what?
It was the first popular computer to be sold as a finished product instead of a kit. Prior to the Apple II you really couldn't buy a pre-assembled personal computer. The Apple II popularized floppy disks for storage. Probably the most important was Visicalc which wasn't developed by Apple but it was first released on the Apple II. Hugely important. There also of course is the mouse, the desktop laser printer, the GUI, SCSI, etc.
They post-date the revolution...
You are seriously claiming the personal computer revolution was over in 1984? The TOTAL market for personal computers in 1984 hadn't topped 10 million units/year yet. The revolution was just getting started. Personal computers were not remotely mainstream in the early 1980s. And the machine most responsible for popularizing computers was and remains the IBM PC. The C64 only sold more units than the IBM PC (and clones) for about 2 years and that was almost entirely due to its price point. The IBM PC took the market share lead for units sold (it already had it in $) in 1985 and hasn't relinquished it since.
Was Apple influential? Of course, but not until 1984.
Apple was extremely influential in the PC market well before the Macintosh ever hit the market and had ~15% market share (close to as high as they've ever been) as early as 1981. If you think that sort of market share doesn't matter or isn't influential then I don't really know what to say.
They produced a computer that, had it come out two months later, would have been considered a "Me too"
Huh? The Apple II was introduced when it was introduced. Hypothetical timelines are meaningless. Why don't we magically transplant the origin of the IBM PC forward 4 years in time while we are at it?
I'm sorry, but that's just OCD. Two seconds is not "fussing".
Have you actually ever met anyone with OCD? I'm guessing that the answer is a big fat no. OCD people obsess over often trivial things to a degree that their lives are worsened - to the degree they often cannot function. That couldn't be farther from making a few default choices in advance about things that you don't really care about all that much. I get the same very short haircut because I don't care to spend a lot of time worrying about my hair and my wife approves of the way it looks. I usually order the same beverage in restaurants. Spending time on things that don't actually matter to you is kind of stupid. If your clothes do matter to you then by all means, spend whatever time you feel is appropriate dealing with them.
And what is so unproductive about picking clothes to wear.
If you find the act of picking your clothes to be enjoyable then it probably isn't a waste of your time. We all have different interests. Personally I can think of few things less interesting than picking out my clothes for the day. I recognize its importance and give it as much time as I have to but I'm not about to give it a moment more time than absolutely necessary. I assure you that at the end of my life I'm not going to look back and wish I had spent more time picking out my clothes.
Even in the US, the Apple II seemed to have occupied the same niche as Britain's BBC Micro - a "respectable" computer for the slightly-to-very wealthy, and agencies like schools answerable to the political elite.
Nope. Apple II computers were in pretty much every school you cared to walk into during the 1980s at least in the US. In fact we still had Apple II computers in schools well into the 1990s. As a result Apple was often the first choice (budget permitting) of computer for people at home along for middle class (and up) families along with the cheaper C64. The IBM PC and clones were the dominant force from about 1984-5 onward along with the Mac to a much lesser extent. By 1988 the Apple II and C64 were in low single digit market share.
The computers that built the revolution were the Commodore 64, Atari X[LE], the Sinclair Spectrum, et al. Those were the machines you'd find if you skydived into a random neighborhood and broke into the first house you saw. Those were the computers we used.
Aside from the C64 the market share numbers say otherwise. The Sinclair, and Atari computers barely made a dent and never got above 5% market share combined. The Apple II got up to between 10-15% market share and stayed there until about 1985 when the Mac was introduced.
I'm not dissing Jobs here but I think Apple's contribution to the revolution is severely overrated.
No, it probably isn't. Many of the things you take for granted these days were really made mainstream by Apple. (note I didn't say invented, just made mainstream) That's not to diminish the contributions of others, Apple certainly didn't do it all themselves by any means. But Apple played a key role in the way things actually played out. I'd say that the contributions of others might be underrated but I can't really say that Apple's contributions are overrated.
But it's also obvious that without Apple, the revolution would have happened anyway.
Yes it would have. And it would have been different. But that does not diminish the role that Apple played in what actually did happen.
Its too bad you have to be horrible person to bring out the best in people.
You don't have to be a horrible person though you probably have to be a demanding one. Steve Jobs had a particular style that apparently was effective but it's not hard to find examples of people who have great success without the rough edges. Ghandi is a pretty good example of a guy who by most accounts was a pretty decent person and seemed to get the best of out of people. Being a leader requires you to ask things of people that they may not always want to do. You can persuade, cajole, order, demean, bully, ask, etc. There are many ways to get people to act and usually you need some combination of all of them. You can do things without being a jerk though one has to admit that sometimes being a jerk can be a useful tactic - Steve Jobs being a prime example.
He was great at directing design as well as being a CEO. Even if he was copying a lot of the time, he's still the one that put this stuff into the mainstream, and ensured that everything was done to a pretty good standard.
Running a successful business isn't always about being genuinely unique. Most of it is execution which is something successful companies are really good at. For an example look at Coca-Cola. Nothing particularly unique these days about a cola soft drink, and Coke was by no means the first fizzy sugary drink, but they execute the details of their business brilliantly. In some ways Apple is the same. They rarely are first with any single component of their products but when Apple has been successful they have executed the entire product better than pretty much anyone else. The whole becomes something more than the parts. The iDevices weren't the first of their kind but each of them was the the first to get the whole package (for lack of a better term) "correct" in a way that the public found appealing. The iPhone redefined the smartphone market in much the same way that Tolkien redefined the fantasy novel genre. Every successful smartphone since clearly has cribbed some of its DNA from the design of the iPhone. Whether you like Apple or not, one has to admit that Apple has executed their business model extremely well and with great discipline for the last decade or so and they have the financial results to show for their efforts.
I'll just never understand why anyone would care about what covers their feet as long as they are comfortable.
Because they care about the image they present to others. You may not care much (and that is probably ok) but many people and especially many women do care very much. Shoes are a part of the way they present themselves and some people find significant entertainment in worrying about that. Also the social pressures on women are quiet different than those on men. The fact that many women spend so much time on their wardrobe is to a significant degree a reflection of this. You probably can wear black loafers with your pants and no one will think twice about it but if your GF were to wear the same shoes two days in a row there is a good chance other women will probably notice in a negative way.
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Nokia: it must be solid as a rock, work for 10,000 years, and the interface must exist. If it is convenient, that is a bonus, but not important.
Maybe you are talking about their hardware from WAY back when. Nokia's software absolutely sucks. It's not solid, barely interfaces with anything, it is not well designed and certainly isn't convenient to use. I used Nokia phones for about 10 years before finally getting fed up. The hardware was ok, not great (and not rock solid) but acceptable at the time. Their software was horrendous.
1)Microsoft would almost without question fight any buyout offer for Nokia by Apple tooth and nail and Microsoft has a war chest big enough to buy Nokia themselves. There is no way Apple would be able to buy the company for a reasonable price. Microsoft needs Nokia worse than Apple does right now.
2)Nokia has committed to the Microsoft platform and changing direction at this point would be tremendously costly. In fact it would probably kill the Nokia to try at this point.
3)Nokia does a lot of business with low margin products that are definitely not in Apple's wheelhouse. Apple already makes most of the profit in the cell phone industry. They would have to take on a lot of products in markets that they don't know well that make essentially no profit if they bought Nokia.
4)There would be huge company culture issues. Apple has a very unique company culture and a big acquisition would bring a lot of problems.
5) If Nokia goes under, Apple can probably buy assets it needs without the extra baggage of the rest of a troubled company
6)Apple's problems with their Maps is a fixable problem without involving Nokia. Yeah, they dropped the ball but they have the resources to make it work so long as they don't screw a lot of other things up at the same time.
Otherwise, you would not be able to afford that "all American made" vehicle.
There is no such animal. Some vehicles are majority sourced in the US but no vehicle is sourced exclusively from one country.
That's right. The simple fact is that it costs more to build a car in the U.S. than it does to build, and deliver, a car made in Japan or Korea.
That is not true at all. A lot of cars are made in the US precisely because it is too expensive to build them overseas. Cost of labor is not much cheaper in Japan than it is in the US. Korea isn't especially cheap when it comes to labor either. Much auto assembly can be automated with sufficient volume so the labor differential is further reduced. You also have to account for where the parts for the vehicle are made - the number of auto parts made in the US is huge and shipping them elsewhere would be expensive. Furthermore you have to account for exchange rates. The Yen is quite strong at the moment which makes exporting from Japan expensive. Honda and Toyota build a LOT of cars in the US precisely because it is cheaper to build them in the US.
I've had several Apple connectors fail over the years, never had a mini-USB connector break
The old Apple connector is FAR more complicated than the mini and micro USB as well as lightning. Tons of pins, lots of wires, tight spacing. Hardly a wonder that they break. Lighting should be a big improvement. I'm not sure it was really necessary since micro-usb could have done the job just fine but it is nice mechanically.
I don't buy that Micro-USB is flimsy.
Then don't buy it. However I run a company that builds the things. I'm not talking about 10 of them or personal experience, I'm talking about my experience with thousands of them. The socket end of the connection is usually the more problematic end in my experience. The ones we deal with require significant potting or other packaging to be robust. Insertions are typically a bit on the finicky side and we've seen more than a few snapped plug ends. It isn't a horrible connector but it could have been a lot more robustly designed. From a pure mechanical standpoint the design of the lightning connector looks to me to be more robust. Time will tell but I've got a warehouse of connectors to compare with. It's certainly easier to insert. I don't really know why USB was designed as a keyed connection (cost most likely) but I think that was a stupid choice that forced some mechanical compromises. USB was designed to be cheap and it is and it shows.
You really don't get it, do you?
Believe it or not I do get it. What I'm pointing out is that this facility can at most do basic research. Important stuff that and I'm a big proponent. But it isn't going to lead to a workable fusion power plant. That isn't what it is designed to study. I get that we still haven't generated a controlled sustained reaction. What I also get is that the NIF isn't going to get us one. It is designed with other goals in mind.
You can't generate electricity unless the energy coming out of the fusion reaction is greater than that used to generate the reaction.
No one is going to generate a SUSTAINABLE supply of power with the design of the the experiment at the NIF. The NIF is designed to research topics other than power generation. That is not a bad thing. It just means that if we learn something useful for power generation it will be incidental to the purpose of the facility. I genuinely hope that we do learn something useful for power generation but I'm not holding my breath.
Is there any real reason besides vendor lock in that the Apple connector does differently then Micro-USB?/quote.
Only two reasons I can think of. One is that MicroUSB is kind of a crappy design mechanically. Electrically it is fine and it is cheap and ubiquitous, but mechanically it has numerous failings. Lightning is a better design mechanically. The other reason is that having more pins allows the cable to do more functions than a serial cable. There is *some* advantage to the user with the lightning connector but for many there are probably more drawbacks including cost, lock-in, availability and did I mention cost?
Oddly enough, Micro-USB was specifically designed with the exact complaint you have in mind. While it is smaller than the Mini-USB it replaced, that was secondary to its main purpose, which was to improve durability
If that is true, they failed in my opinion. I'm looking at a broken female surface mount Micro-usb connector as I type this. Thin gauge metal, poor strain relief, finicky to insert and basically requires significant structural reinforcement for real world use. I say this as someone who manufactures electrical harnesses for a living. Furthermore I very much dislike the fact that it has a keyed insertion. They easily could have made it key-less with a few more terminals. It was designed to be cheap to manufacture rather than easy to use.
I'm $ure there'$ a perfectly good rea$on for them not to u$e a $tandard U$B connector format, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it i$. Anybody?
The real advantages to mini and micro-USB is that they are pretty much ubiquitous and relatively cheap - which are some big advantages. However the various USB connectors are kind of a crappy connectors from a mechanical standpoint. It is keyed in such a way that it isn't immediately obvious which way is the correct way to insert it without looking carefully or by trial and error. Also the mini and micro USB connectors themselves tend to be rather poorly made and need lots of external structural support. I've broken several and I'm not hard on my gear. My company manufactures some products that use them and IMO they aren't well designed mechanically. I don't love the lightning connector but from a pure mechanical design standpoint the lightning connector is better. Electrically and financially and socially I see no advantage to the new connector to most of us.
Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance."
That is pretty much what each side is supposed to do in the US legal system. Each side presents the evidence in the way they think best favors their case and then the judge/jury decides between them. Samsung has access (or is supposed to have access) to the same information and can present it if they think Apple is leaving out important details. Neither side has any obligation to present the opposition's case in a favorable light. If Samsung's lawyers didn't do their job well then it isn't surprising that they lost. I have no idea if this is a fair verdict or not but I don't see anything unusual in the process here.
NIF has three missions:
- National security (stockpile stewardship [llnl.gov]
- Basic fusion science [llnl.gov]
- Understanding the origins of the basic building blocks of the universe [llnl.gov]
I hate to break it you you, but much of what we do in basic science research is dual-use. It can be used for military applications, or purely scientific applications.
So despite your condescending tone to someone you know nothing about, you acknowledge that the first purpose of this facility is weapons research. It also is useful for some basic research which is vitally important. We're on the same page.
Doing stockpile stewardship without nuclear tests is not "getting around" nuclear test ban treaties. It's maintaining the integrity of our increasingly smaller nuclear stockpile as a credible deterrent.
That's pretty much a fancy way to say it is a way to test nuclear fusion without setting off any actual bombs. Amaze me with how you think that is not a way to get around the test ban treaties. While I didn't bring it up, I don't think anyone is particularly worried that the US does not have a "credible deterrent" when it comes to nuclear weapons. We have more nukes than we will ever need and everyone knows it.
Oh and the rest of your reply appears to be an off topic defense of maintaining mutually assured destruction. I wasn't addressing that nor did I make any comments about whether fusion weapons research was good or bad. I merely observed that the first purpose of this facility appears to be for researching fusion based weaponry.
Their goal isn't to generate power. Their goal is to prove that it's possible to generate power.
The only way to truly prove that it is possible to generate power IS to generate power. There is no mechanism in this experiment by which a sustained fusion reaction will occur nor is there any effort I can discern by which they are attempting to actually generate electricity. It is a research experiment for nuclear weapons from which we might learn something useful down the road for fusion power.
Don't do many science experiments, do you?
Since you "asked", my first real job was as a research assistant in a laser and plasma physics lab working on an experiment to study hypersonic shock waves for fusion research. I also have an engineering degree with a minor in applied physics. But thanks for assuming I'm ignorant without actually knowing anything about me.
It's an experiment, not a finalized design.
I'm well aware that it is an experiment. However it also is an experiment that almost certainly cannot be translated into a working power plant. It is designed to study weapons and if we happen to learn something useful for fusion power along the way that is terrific. Don't get me wrong, I support research endeavors like the NIF. I think there will be some terrific engineering and scientific spin offs. I just don't think the sort of research they are doing is likely to lead to fusion as a power source. I'd be delighted to be wrong but I doubt I am.
If your design can be done by someone with the education levels or mental faculties of a welder, it can be done by outsourced talent more cheaply anyways.
Apparently you have never tried welding if you think welders are dumb. (hint, it's really quite difficult to do well and requires a LOT of training)
That said, there is a lot of coding that is not practical to outsource. I am not a programmer professionally but I do some coding here and there as a part of my job. I'm not about to write a linux kernel or anything like that, but some simple coding to do my job more effectively is useful. Should I have to go get a CS degree before writing a few macros or a batch file or a shell script? Are you seriously arguing that I should outsource my macros to India? Some programming simply isn't very hard and can be done effectively by someone who isn't a highly trained specialist.
There is a place for highly trained CS experts and that is working on the large scale and challenging problems. It really is a waste of everyone's time to have them working on simple programs that can be adequately by people with far less training.
Actually scratch that, I guess parts of pennies can somehow exist. Never mind that they can't be paid.
Not only can they be paid, they often are. Remember that most currency is not actually coins and bills. Most of it is just numbers in ledger somewhere. Stock transactions are often to as many as 5-6 decimal places. My company quotes parts with prices containing 4 decimal places. When you are dealing with many thousands of parts those fractions of a penny can add up to real money pretty quickly.
Huh? Floats is the standard representation of numbers almost everywhere.
Not in financial transactions. While there are ways to do financial transactions with floating point numbers, they have an alarming tendency to introduce rounding errors. When you are dealing in money, rounding errors are an extremely bad thing because then the books don't balance anymore. One common way to deal with the problem of rounding floats is to treat the stuff to left of the decimal as an integer and the stuff to the right as another integer since there are no rounding issues with integers. While not as fast as floats, the extra accuracy is worth it in this instance. There are other ways to solve this problem but you'll find conventional floating point is used with great caution in the financial world.
There's a reason floats are implemented in hardware.
Which has nothing to do with why floating point numbers are often not used for financial transactions.
While it has the side-benefit of allowing us to investigate inertial confined fusion, I thought the whole point of places like that was as a way to test nuclear weapons without actually setting them off?
I've wondered this myself. The design of it seems to make little sense (to me anyway) for use as a sustainable source of power. You blast the target and hopefully get a fusion reaction but then what? There's no turbine or continuous generation of power and the design of it pretty much seems to preclude such use. It makes sense a way to study fusion reactions (and related weapons) but not so much for power generation. Maybe there is hope for some spin-off technology if it was successful but really it seems like a pricey attempt to get around nuclear test ban treaties.
To put that number into perspective that is about 2 days of deficit spending (not total spending for those 2 days just the deficit) for the US government.
...for a project that few people really understand during tough economic times. While I'm very much in support of science projects like this, it should surprise no one that stuff like this is going to be first on the chopping block come budget time. Voters don't turn out because their favorite science project got the budgetary ax but they do turn out when medicare is threatened. Big budget science comes with big political risks. If it works, great but if it doesn't it is an easy target and it hurts the prospects of future science projects.
I agree thought that we really could use a few less bombers and a few more fusion research projects. The world would be a better place for it.
Why would we want more un/under educated programmers?
Because there is a lot of work that needs to be done that doesn't require a degree in computer science and people with those degrees tend to be expensive. You don't want under educated people but there is a cost to having over-educated people as well.
Programming is applied Math and very few high school students are going to be equipped to do it well.
Computer science is math whereas programming can be a bit more abstract than that. Programs are a set of instructions to a machine and sufficiently abstracted it really doesn't require deep knowledge of math for someone to do useful work. While ultimately any computer program can be reduced to mathematical equations, the actual programming often really isn't math from a practical standpoint. To use the simplest possible example, I don't need to know any mathematics to write "hello world". Up to a certain level, being able to instruct a machine requires little/no specialized training. Think of it a bit like saying that an electrician putting some wires in your house should require a bachelors degree in electrical engineering - the extra training would be pointless almost all the time. Lots of useful work can be done by those with less formal training.
In fact it's to our benefit to write tools to make simpler problems solvable by more people and free up those who are more highly trained working on more difficult problems. That said, there does come a level of sophistication where you need someone with more understanding of the underlying concepts. Just like a nurse can help you to a point but once the problem gets sufficiently complicated you need a doctor who has a deeper understanding of what is going on.
Apple II was limited to the semi-rich and rich, and to markets like schools where the political elite, answerable to the semi-rich and rich, made the decisions.
Poor people didn't own any computers in those days. Middle class ("semi-rich" must be a British phrase) families owned the same computers as wealthier people if they were interested in a computer. The Apple II cost $1700 when introduced which was well within reach of a middle class family in the US. Not cheap but Apple products never have been.
Covering just one of the two markets I was discussing (the Sinclair Spectrum was dominant, and a stronger seller, than the Commodore 64, in the UK.) So, no, I'm not wrong in mentioning the Sinclair brand and Sir Clive's contribution.
Fair enough, Sinclair products largely much didn't exist on this side of the pond. Honest oversight - though realistically I don't think it matters much. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum wasn't released until 5 YEARS after the Apple II and the ZX80 wasn't released until 1980. Same with the C64. Both were introduced a LONG time after the Apple II had already had a huge influence in the market and serious market share. Plus part of the reason you didn't notice many Apples is that Apple didn't sell much product prior to the Mac outside the US.
Covering total computer sales, when the Apple II was a strong seller in businesses ...
Despite some early success and influence with Visicalc, Apple has never sold its products in vast numbers in businesses. The Apple II never sold large numbers to businesses. They have a brief period of success with Visicalc until the IBM PC came out and then the IBM PC was pretty much the dominant force in business computing from then on. Apple has always had much better success in the home, education and hobbyist markets.
Avoiding quoting figures for computers that sold better than the Apple II.
Only a handful of computers sold better than the Apple II. I didn't avoid quoting them. There simply aren't many.
Many of the things you take for granted these days were really made mainstream by Apple.
OK. Like what?
It was the first popular computer to be sold as a finished product instead of a kit. Prior to the Apple II you really couldn't buy a pre-assembled personal computer. The Apple II popularized floppy disks for storage. Probably the most important was Visicalc which wasn't developed by Apple but it was first released on the Apple II. Hugely important. There also of course is the mouse, the desktop laser printer, the GUI, SCSI, etc.
They post-date the revolution...
You are seriously claiming the personal computer revolution was over in 1984? The TOTAL market for personal computers in 1984 hadn't topped 10 million units/year yet. The revolution was just getting started. Personal computers were not remotely mainstream in the early 1980s. And the machine most responsible for popularizing computers was and remains the IBM PC. The C64 only sold more units than the IBM PC (and clones) for about 2 years and that was almost entirely due to its price point. The IBM PC took the market share lead for units sold (it already had it in $) in 1985 and hasn't relinquished it since.
Was Apple influential? Of course, but not until 1984.
Apple was extremely influential in the PC market well before the Macintosh ever hit the market and had ~15% market share (close to as high as they've ever been) as early as 1981. If you think that sort of market share doesn't matter or isn't influential then I don't really know what to say.
They produced a computer that, had it come out two months later, would have been considered a "Me too"
Huh? The Apple II was introduced when it was introduced. Hypothetical timelines are meaningless. Why don't we magically transplant the origin of the IBM PC forward 4 years in time while we are at it?
I'm sorry, but that's just OCD. Two seconds is not "fussing".
Have you actually ever met anyone with OCD? I'm guessing that the answer is a big fat no. OCD people obsess over often trivial things to a degree that their lives are worsened - to the degree they often cannot function. That couldn't be farther from making a few default choices in advance about things that you don't really care about all that much. I get the same very short haircut because I don't care to spend a lot of time worrying about my hair and my wife approves of the way it looks. I usually order the same beverage in restaurants. Spending time on things that don't actually matter to you is kind of stupid. If your clothes do matter to you then by all means, spend whatever time you feel is appropriate dealing with them.
And what is so unproductive about picking clothes to wear.
If you find the act of picking your clothes to be enjoyable then it probably isn't a waste of your time. We all have different interests. Personally I can think of few things less interesting than picking out my clothes for the day. I recognize its importance and give it as much time as I have to but I'm not about to give it a moment more time than absolutely necessary. I assure you that at the end of my life I'm not going to look back and wish I had spent more time picking out my clothes.
Even in the US, the Apple II seemed to have occupied the same niche as Britain's BBC Micro - a "respectable" computer for the slightly-to-very wealthy, and agencies like schools answerable to the political elite.
Nope. Apple II computers were in pretty much every school you cared to walk into during the 1980s at least in the US. In fact we still had Apple II computers in schools well into the 1990s. As a result Apple was often the first choice (budget permitting) of computer for people at home along for middle class (and up) families along with the cheaper C64. The IBM PC and clones were the dominant force from about 1984-5 onward along with the Mac to a much lesser extent. By 1988 the Apple II and C64 were in low single digit market share.
The computers that built the revolution were the Commodore 64, Atari X[LE], the Sinclair Spectrum, et al. Those were the machines you'd find if you skydived into a random neighborhood and broke into the first house you saw. Those were the computers we used.
Aside from the C64 the market share numbers say otherwise. The Sinclair, and Atari computers barely made a dent and never got above 5% market share combined. The Apple II got up to between 10-15% market share and stayed there until about 1985 when the Mac was introduced.
I'm not dissing Jobs here but I think Apple's contribution to the revolution is severely overrated.
No, it probably isn't. Many of the things you take for granted these days were really made mainstream by Apple. (note I didn't say invented, just made mainstream) That's not to diminish the contributions of others, Apple certainly didn't do it all themselves by any means. But Apple played a key role in the way things actually played out. I'd say that the contributions of others might be underrated but I can't really say that Apple's contributions are overrated.
But it's also obvious that without Apple, the revolution would have happened anyway.
Yes it would have. And it would have been different. But that does not diminish the role that Apple played in what actually did happen.
Its too bad you have to be horrible person to bring out the best in people.
You don't have to be a horrible person though you probably have to be a demanding one. Steve Jobs had a particular style that apparently was effective but it's not hard to find examples of people who have great success without the rough edges. Ghandi is a pretty good example of a guy who by most accounts was a pretty decent person and seemed to get the best of out of people. Being a leader requires you to ask things of people that they may not always want to do. You can persuade, cajole, order, demean, bully, ask, etc. There are many ways to get people to act and usually you need some combination of all of them. You can do things without being a jerk though one has to admit that sometimes being a jerk can be a useful tactic - Steve Jobs being a prime example.
He was great at directing design as well as being a CEO. Even if he was copying a lot of the time, he's still the one that put this stuff into the mainstream, and ensured that everything was done to a pretty good standard.
Running a successful business isn't always about being genuinely unique. Most of it is execution which is something successful companies are really good at. For an example look at Coca-Cola. Nothing particularly unique these days about a cola soft drink, and Coke was by no means the first fizzy sugary drink, but they execute the details of their business brilliantly. In some ways Apple is the same. They rarely are first with any single component of their products but when Apple has been successful they have executed the entire product better than pretty much anyone else. The whole becomes something more than the parts. The iDevices weren't the first of their kind but each of them was the the first to get the whole package (for lack of a better term) "correct" in a way that the public found appealing. The iPhone redefined the smartphone market in much the same way that Tolkien redefined the fantasy novel genre. Every successful smartphone since clearly has cribbed some of its DNA from the design of the iPhone. Whether you like Apple or not, one has to admit that Apple has executed their business model extremely well and with great discipline for the last decade or so and they have the financial results to show for their efforts.
I'll just never understand why anyone would care about what covers their feet as long as they are comfortable.
Because they care about the image they present to others. You may not care much (and that is probably ok) but many people and especially many women do care very much. Shoes are a part of the way they present themselves and some people find significant entertainment in worrying about that. Also the social pressures on women are quiet different than those on men. The fact that many women spend so much time on their wardrobe is to a significant degree a reflection of this. You probably can wear black loafers with your pants and no one will think twice about it but if your GF were to wear the same shoes two days in a row there is a good chance other women will probably notice in a negative way.