Instead of laptops they should be building kiosks. The costs would be lower (no high-tech batteries or space constraints), and they could design them such that you could pour 800lbs of concrete into the base when you got them to their final destination.
is that there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource, without leaving toxic byproducts
If you're being pedantic about it, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that we are currently aware of to generate electricity from ANY SOURCE without leaving toxic byproducts. Yes, I'm including solar and wind in that.
Who cares if it creates toxic byproducts? As long as we're not pumping them into the atmosphere, I'm okay with that.
Is it an RPG? Is it an action game? Is it an adventure? BioShock looks like it has a little of everything:
I actually thought the game looked compelling, but now that I've read that... Sounds like a little something to annoy everybody. Is there a genre you can't stand? Well, perhaps they packed it in there.
Frankly, I think the issues with plasma screens are way overblown.
Though it may surprise you after all my bitching, I agree. I just hate that they call it 'half-life', when it's not, and every manufacturer's sets have a different curve. They should have a graph in the literature.
CRTs have the same problem, and nobody worries about it.
They'd be fine if you could demonstrate true exponential decay, but in reality there is typically a steep initial drop before the curve begins appear exponential. Does it matter if it took 60,000 hours for your set to be at half brightness if it took 1500 hours to be at 60% brightness? Clearly all sets aren't that bad, but the 'half-life' statistic can be seriously misleading.
I don't think you're right. The problem is that you take it to mean they think that committed to CVS is the same as fixed. They mean actually mean: "I've taken care of it as much as I plan to for the moment. I heard you, so stop bothering me."
Users are the lifeblood of an open source project, and bug reports are the white blood cells. Even when there are dupes, they're a good thing.
Users are *not* necessarily the life blood of an Open Source project. Most of these projects are developed to scratch an itch of the person who wrote the software. Users typically are the people who came along for the ride thanks to the developer's good will.
When somebody doesn't like an article this guy writes, are all the duplicate e-mails bitching about it a 'good thing', or do they just drastically reduce the usability of his e-mail account while giving him more work to do when he could have been writing?
You think the 'CVS cop-out' is bad? It's the incessant demands of users that are the reason I don't even put my name on code I release as Open Source anymore. I'll fix the bug or add the feature when the lack of fix/addition is getting in my way. Until then, the code is open; add the change if you care that much about it. And if nobody uses it because I'm not bending over backwards for them, well, I could care less because I'm not out to win a popularity contest. What more do you want from a guy beyond a BSD license anyway?
The problem isn't the 'CVS cop-out', it's the 'Take Over the World Myth'. Users of Open software are under some crazy impression that most of it is written in order to take over as much market share as possible. People who write about open source are using a different definition of 'win' than people who write most open source software.
And if you're losing near $400-500 per unit already, what's another $50?
How many consoles do you think they'll sell between launch and when they start turning a profit on every unit? 10 million? 15 million? Whatever the answer, the number will be higher if you add $50 to the BOM.
Now... 15,000,000 * $50 = $750,000,000. So. another $50 is three quarters of a billion dollars.
Perhaps it's not doing me physical harm, but since I am pretty much trapped, being I have a long commute on crowded trains, is it it too much to ask for people to be courteous, keep the conversation short and quiet, and give others a chance at some peace?
If the person next to you is doing one of those things, perhaps you should try asking, politely of course, for them to keep it down a bit? The fact that city dwellers treat each other as mindless zombies you shouldn't make any contact with, vocal, visual, or otherwise is probably part of the reason people have retreated to the comfort of their electronic devices in the first place.
Then why do you read Slashdot? Actually I'm sick of other people bitching about my bitching. Free country, what?
And the parent poster is not some lone malcontent..
You're not alone in making that comment. I wasn't aware that feelings being shared by a group larger than one person suddenly made them all right.
You're telling me the following coming from the person sitting next to you on an airplane/trian/bus wouldn't be annoying?
Sure, it would be annoying. I'm just not under any delusion that my right not to be annoyed extends beyond my ability to walk away from the annoying person.
It would be cool if there were 'fill stations'. I'd pay $0.25 to have my phone fully charged instantly; especially if that charge lasted a week.
As for carrying around methanol, well, people carry cologne/perfume/breath spray/hip flasks/etc.. around with them with no problems already. Many of those things are concentrated enough to be flamable, but the concentration of methanol used in fuel cells isn't. Even if the concentration *was* high enough, the ignition temperature is high enough that you wouldn't want it to be that hot in your pocket/car even if you didn't have a flamable liquid in there. You don't see car's gas tanks bursting into flame in the afternoon sun, do you?
Good. Do the world a favor. Or at least go live in a cave somewhere, since it's clear that you hate other people.
I'm sick of people bitching about things other people do that cause no harm to others whatsoever. If somebody talking on a cell phone bothers you more than somebody talking to the person across the isle from you on a train (which is damned noisy to begin with, so it's not like they're making it much worse), you have serious issues.
And I say that as somebody that doesn't yak on his cell phone in public.
it doesn't really matter if people in the press didn't notice it; players will
Will any of them miss it?
I know I don't miss it in my WaveBirds, and I've never heard anybody else complain about it being missing from them either. "Rumble" was a neat gimmic back in 1998. Now, who cares? It rarely adds anything to the experience, and the novelty has worn off. Personally, I'd rather have more controller battery life.
Sony has a very similar machine (13.3", Core Duo, Camera, etc) that's a full pound and a half lighter.
I bet it gets a full hour less battery life too.
The heaviest component in these things is the battery. Generally, the lighter the laptop the more often you have to find a plug. (Enormous "Portable Workstations" and "Desktop Replacements" excepted).
I'm not being elitist - I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.
They just don't prioritize them the same way you do.
HDTV isn't a priority for most people with perfectly functional SD sets already in their living room. The problem is worse for gamers, because a signifigant percentage of consoles are likely connected to hand-me-down sets that used to be a family's main set.
The industry needed to go HD at some point, but HD gaming will be irrelevant this generation other than as laying the groundwork for when a signifigant percentage of TVs are HD... perhaps 6 years from now?
Please, tell me which console had an easier mod? (Disc swapping doesn't count.) The only one I can think of is Dreamcast. This hack is fairly simple compared to some I've seen (14 wire mod chips for the PS2, for example).
And many of those who do successfully implement the hack are likely to be banned from the not so optional anymore online services associated with the console
Great. So the minority of users who actually sign up for the online service won't be able to. Oh well.
Not that bad... If the statistics are right, most of those big-screen TV/expensive car buyers are purchasing with borrowed funds. Dropping currency values and inflation are the friends of those who are really deep in the hole.
As soon as there is no longer easy access to credit (the well will run out eventually), things will start correcting themselves.
We have a better cure for malaria. It's a combination of education, and pennicillin. The trouble is, it's not a simple fix. It requires a generation to transition to that solution, because people won't be educated enough to use antibiotics in a way that isn't harmful quickly enough. DDT use should be combined with economic progress and education.
In simpler terms, wealth cures malaria, and malaria prevents wealth. DDT breaks the chicken and egg cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why this project it so moronic.
Instead of laptops they should be building kiosks. The costs would be lower (no high-tech batteries or space constraints), and they could design them such that you could pour 800lbs of concrete into the base when you got them to their final destination.
is that there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource, without leaving toxic byproducts
If you're being pedantic about it, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that we are currently aware of to generate electricity from ANY SOURCE without leaving toxic byproducts. Yes, I'm including solar and wind in that.
Who cares if it creates toxic byproducts? As long as we're not pumping them into the atmosphere, I'm okay with that.
Is it an RPG? Is it an action game? Is it an adventure? BioShock looks like it has a little of everything:
I actually thought the game looked compelling, but now that I've read that... Sounds like a little something to annoy everybody. Is there a genre you can't stand? Well, perhaps they packed it in there.
reading them aloud, alerting anyone around that the Mac's been stolen
Sounds like a guaranteed way to get your stolen mac smashed into unuseable pieces.
Frankly, I think the issues with plasma screens are way overblown.
Though it may surprise you after all my bitching, I agree. I just hate that they call it 'half-life', when it's not, and every manufacturer's sets have a different curve. They should have a graph in the literature.
CRTs have the same problem, and nobody worries about it.
Oh how I hate 'half-life' numbers.
They'd be fine if you could demonstrate true exponential decay, but in reality there is typically a steep initial drop before the curve begins appear exponential. Does it matter if it took 60,000 hours for your set to be at half brightness if it took 1500 hours to be at 60% brightness? Clearly all sets aren't that bad, but the 'half-life' statistic can be seriously misleading.
While you were busy being pedantic, the point sailed right on by...
I don't think you're right. The problem is that you take it to mean they think that committed to CVS is the same as fixed. They mean actually mean: "I've taken care of it as much as I plan to for the moment. I heard you, so stop bothering me."
Users are the lifeblood of an open source project, and bug reports are the white blood cells. Even when there are dupes, they're a good thing.
Users are *not* necessarily the life blood of an Open Source project. Most of these projects are developed to scratch an itch of the person who wrote the software. Users typically are the people who came along for the ride thanks to the developer's good will.
When somebody doesn't like an article this guy writes, are all the duplicate e-mails bitching about it a 'good thing', or do they just drastically reduce the usability of his e-mail account while giving him more work to do when he could have been writing?
You think the 'CVS cop-out' is bad? It's the incessant demands of users that are the reason I don't even put my name on code I release as Open Source anymore. I'll fix the bug or add the feature when the lack of fix/addition is getting in my way. Until then, the code is open; add the change if you care that much about it. And if nobody uses it because I'm not bending over backwards for them, well, I could care less because I'm not out to win a popularity contest. What more do you want from a guy beyond a BSD license anyway?
The problem isn't the 'CVS cop-out', it's the 'Take Over the World Myth'. Users of Open software are under some crazy impression that most of it is written in order to take over as much market share as possible. People who write about open source are using a different definition of 'win' than people who write most open source software.
And if you're losing near $400-500 per unit already, what's another $50?
How many consoles do you think they'll sell between launch and when they start turning a profit on every unit? 10 million? 15 million? Whatever the answer, the number will be higher if you add $50 to the BOM.
Now... 15,000,000 * $50 = $750,000,000. So. another $50 is three quarters of a billion dollars.
Next question!
Perhaps it's not doing me physical harm, but since I am pretty much trapped, being I have a long commute on crowded trains, is it it too much to ask for people to be courteous, keep the conversation short and quiet, and give others a chance at some peace?
:) Where better to do it?
If the person next to you is doing one of those things, perhaps you should try asking, politely of course, for them to keep it down a bit? The fact that city dwellers treat each other as mindless zombies you shouldn't make any contact with, vocal, visual, or otherwise is probably part of the reason people have retreated to the comfort of their electronic devices in the first place.
Then why do you read Slashdot? Actually I'm sick of other people bitching about my bitching. Free country, what?
I like bitching.
And the parent poster is not some lone malcontent..
You're not alone in making that comment. I wasn't aware that feelings being shared by a group larger than one person suddenly made them all right.
You're telling me the following coming from the person sitting next to you on an airplane/trian/bus wouldn't be annoying?
Sure, it would be annoying. I'm just not under any delusion that my right not to be annoyed extends beyond my ability to walk away from the annoying person.
It would be cool if there were 'fill stations'. I'd pay $0.25 to have my phone fully charged instantly; especially if that charge lasted a week.
As for carrying around methanol, well, people carry cologne/perfume/breath spray/hip flasks/etc.. around with them with no problems already. Many of those things are concentrated enough to be flamable, but the concentration of methanol used in fuel cells isn't. Even if the concentration *was* high enough, the ignition temperature is high enough that you wouldn't want it to be that hot in your pocket/car even if you didn't have a flamable liquid in there. You don't see car's gas tanks bursting into flame in the afternoon sun, do you?
I'll just nip off and shoot meself...
Good. Do the world a favor. Or at least go live in a cave somewhere, since it's clear that you hate other people.
I'm sick of people bitching about things other people do that cause no harm to others whatsoever. If somebody talking on a cell phone bothers you more than somebody talking to the person across the isle from you on a train (which is damned noisy to begin with, so it's not like they're making it much worse), you have serious issues.
And I say that as somebody that doesn't yak on his cell phone in public.
I usually turn it off in driving games, because most driving games over-use it. Some use it well though.
I'm all for Sony sticking it to immersion, but I'd bet it has more to do with the lack of cord than with the bogus patent.
it doesn't really matter if people in the press didn't notice it; players will
Will any of them miss it?
I know I don't miss it in my WaveBirds, and I've never heard anybody else complain about it being missing from them either. "Rumble" was a neat gimmic back in 1998. Now, who cares? It rarely adds anything to the experience, and the novelty has worn off. Personally, I'd rather have more controller battery life.
Are you saying your powerbook has a 13" screen and a core duo?
Next you'll be telling me that when you say "my powerbook", you're talking about a Powerbook Duo 2300c.
Sony has a very similar machine (13.3", Core Duo, Camera, etc) that's a full pound and a half lighter.
I bet it gets a full hour less battery life too.
The heaviest component in these things is the battery. Generally, the lighter the laptop the more often you have to find a plug. (Enormous "Portable Workstations" and "Desktop Replacements" excepted).
I'm not being elitist - I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.
They just don't prioritize them the same way you do.
HDTV isn't a priority for most people with perfectly functional SD sets already in their living room. The problem is worse for gamers, because a signifigant percentage of consoles are likely connected to hand-me-down sets that used to be a family's main set.
The industry needed to go HD at some point, but HD gaming will be irrelevant this generation other than as laying the groundwork for when a signifigant percentage of TVs are HD... perhaps 6 years from now?
More and more complex?
Please, tell me which console had an easier mod? (Disc swapping doesn't count.) The only one I can think of is Dreamcast. This hack is fairly simple compared to some I've seen (14 wire mod chips for the PS2, for example).
And many of those who do successfully implement the hack are likely to be banned from the not so optional anymore online services associated with the console
Great. So the minority of users who actually sign up for the online service won't be able to. Oh well.
Not that bad... If the statistics are right, most of those big-screen TV/expensive car buyers are purchasing with borrowed funds. Dropping currency values and inflation are the friends of those who are really deep in the hole.
As soon as there is no longer easy access to credit (the well will run out eventually), things will start correcting themselves.
Clearly I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. Please move along.
You're missing the point somewhat though.
We have a better cure for malaria. It's a combination of education, and pennicillin. The trouble is, it's not a simple fix. It requires a generation to transition to that solution, because people won't be educated enough to use antibiotics in a way that isn't harmful quickly enough. DDT use should be combined with economic progress and education.
In simpler terms, wealth cures malaria, and malaria prevents wealth. DDT breaks the chicken and egg cycle.
Well then, you're either the exception that proves the rule, or more likely, a Nintendo fanboy being a smartass.
Sometimes my previously abandoned house makes me wish I lived in my mom's basement.
I know. I killed the joke. Sorry.