Expensive? The Jetta and Golf are both available for under $20,000 in the US. That's not quite low end but it's not an expensive car, and certainly not limited only to hipsters.
Here is a list of the cheapest options from various brands. (Prices are the base list price from the company web sites; they don't include delivery charges or the California emissions package that 25% of the US population has to buy.) Most of these are smaller cars than the Jetta; VW would compare even more favorably if we looked at comparable models. VW doesn't import the Polo, which would probably be an under $15,000 car if it were sold in the US.
Depends on where you drive it. Diesels do well on the highway and can offer fuel mileage that is nearly as high as hybrids there. Hybrids win big for stop and go city driving. That is one reason that some cities have tried to mandate the use of hybrid taxis. (Market forces won't work because of the way the medallion system works: the people who spend extra money on the taxis mostly aren't the ones who save money on fuel.)
Compare VW's own diesel and hybrid models. The clean diesel Jetta gets 42mpg highway and 30 city. The hybrid Jetta gets 48mpg highway and 42mpg city. The hybrid has a much bigger mileage advantage in the city. Or compare a hybrid Camry with a standard one: the non-hybrid gets 35/25mpg and the hybrid gets 39/43. (That's not a typo; the mpg rating is HIGHER for city driving.)
The only way they could make money by dumping the current RT tablet would be if it pumps up the RT market enough that they could make money on the next model and/or on the commission on app sales. Microsoft has historically been more patient than many companies (they stayed with Windows through versions 1 and 2, for example, to get to the first decent one) so it's not an inconceivable strategy for them to take.
The estimate of 6 million tablets probably overstates the number by a large margin. Their writeoff probably also included some of the development costs.
They might have had 90% of connected devices. Back then embedded devices weren't yet being connected in significant quantities, and mobile connected devices were still in the future.
Actually it did. When Tesla first started building the Roadster the batteries cost that much. The prices have since come down as the industry ramps up production.
The free version has ads and limits your listening hours. You can buy a subscription for $5/month that gets you unlimited ad-free listening, or pay $10 and also get mobile download support.
Why is Yorke upset about the low royalties from Spotify, but not about the ZERO royalties paid by terrestrial radio? (I'm talking about performance royalties; both pay songwriter royalties.) We should have a level playing field where all media pay the same rate.
Support for larger files is also significant. Flash comes in sizes much bigger than 4GB now; video files routinely exceed that size, though some standards such as DVD avoid the problem by breaking the content into smaller files, and even live recording of high resolution audio can require files bigger than 4GB.
Microsoft is a blue chip stock that pays dividends, so it can't be judged by stock price alone. Their most recent declared quarterly dividend is 23 cents per share and Microsoft stock currently sells for about $35 per share. That is a dividend rate of 2.6% annually; not a huge return but competitive in the current marketplace. For example, compare it to ExxonMobil's dividend return; their most recent dividend is 63 cents per share and the share price is $93, giving a yield of 2.7% annually. Or to look at a competitor in the computer business we can look at Apple (which I believe also has to be viewed as a dividend paying blue chip stock now); their most recent dividend is $3.05 and the stock sells for $426 for a yield of 2.85%. And Apple stock has fallen substantially in the recent past; if you bought Apple at its $700 peak last ffall you would be even less happy with your return. Microsoft stock is near its peak for the past 12 months.
Side note: although the selling price of Apple stock is much higher than Microsoft stock, their total market capitalization (that is, the total value of all their stock) is much closer as there are more Microsoft shares in existence. Apple's current market capitalization is $400.96 billion; Microsoft's is $297.88 billion.
No service can block the ability to record what you hear. It is always possible to run the analog output to an input and record it; if they somehow had some way to detect a recording process and crash it, you could use a standalone recording device or run the recorder software in a separate VM or on another computer. You can also record the "speakers" input that many sound cards have (that is, an input that gives you everything the sound card plays).
Here in Boston, the digital broadcasts from WGBH and WGBX are just as strong as the commercial digital broadcasts (and broadcast from the same tower; nearly all Boston TV is transmitted from a tower in Needham MA). WGBH was one of the first stations in Boston to offer digital, and the first to offer high definition broadcasts. Before PBS content was available in HD, one of their two subchannels ran HD demonstration content.
You don't need a better time source. You just need to know the distance to Fort Collins. That can be easily calculated, and there are web sites that will do it for you. Terrain might cause slight variations in propagation but that is a very small effect; few users are likely to need a degree of precision high enough to require measurement of the exact path delay.
There are plenty of taxi situations where the driver will tell you "no, I don't go there."
Not here in Boston there aren't; not if the destination is inside the city limits. Refusing to take a fare where they want to go is cause for losing your license.
Sometimes the drivers do it anyway. There was a notable case a few years back where a driver refused a fare to Roxbury, a predominantly black neighborhood. Unfortunately for the driver, the person he turned down was a Boston city councilor. Oops...
One of the good things about WWVB is that propagation delays on LF (60 KHz) are much more predictable than propagation delays on the HF frequencies used by WWV. Once you correct for the speed-of-light delay for the distance between you and Fort Collins, WWVB results are highly accurate and repeatable. WWV timing is much more variable, as the signal can get to you by a variety of paths involving one or more bounces off the ionosphere, and the height of the ionosphere layer also changes.
Teachers would love to have a work week that is merely 40 hours. The time spent in the classroom is far from the entire story; you have to add in the meetings and the time spent on lesson plans and grading to get the full story.
On the other hand, they get two months off in the summer (albeit unpaid) and an above-average number of paid holidays. Not quite as many holidays as the students get - there are often "professional development days" or some such on some days when the students are out - but still more than most employees.
The single process model does have the advantage of lowering the memory footprint of Firefox. Firefox with lots of tabs loaded uses significantly less memory than either Chrome or IE. IE has the edge with a single tab because it cheats; a lot of the code is already present as part of the OS.
For most people, the performance and security advantages of the process-per-tab model outweigh the memory cost. But it's nice that somebody offers an alternative.
Modifying the HT to be able to transmit on rescue frequencies is not illegal in the US. Nor is owning such a modified radio. (These things are illegal in some other jurisdictions, although those restrictions are generally not enforced against visiting US hams.) Using the modified HT to transmit outside the ham bands is illegal, and can expose the user to severe fines and penalties. Reselling modified equipment on a commercial basis is also illegal unless the customer has proof of license for some frequency outside the ham bands such as MARS or CAP.
In general, US amateur radio law takes a position of trusting the license holder to operate within the restrictions of the license. Sale of equipment that can operate on prohibited frequencies and/or at prohibited power levels is legal. The notable exception was the law that prohibited the sale of RF amplifiers that could operate between 25 and 30 MHz, or that could operate below 50 MHz with power input levels lower than 50W. (Those were both meant to keep amplifiers out of the hands of CB operators.) A few years ago the law was changed a bit; it now requires no gain between 26 and 28 MHz, which can be implemented by an input frequency counter that shuts down the amplifier when necessary (this change makes 10 meter amplifiers possible), and amplifiers that work with low input power levels are now allowed.
You are quite right that coded messages could be passed within normal-sounding conversation. But to outlaw that would make the existence of amateur radio impossible.
No, encryption is not about being able to discern static. Error correction can be done with open codes, as it is in packet radio. Packet radio is digitally encoded, but the encoding methods are publicly available. It is legal to send data that is further encoded (ZIP files, for example) so long as the method of decoding the data is public.
Most of Europe bans the transmission of third party messages, perhaps because telecommunications was historically a government monopoly there. (The UK is a notable exception; third party messages are allowed.) Many European countries have now privatized telecom but the rules remain. Most countries in the Americas, and some in Africa and Asia, allow third party messages.
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the major amateur radio organization in the US, has a page that lists the countries that have third party message agreements with the US. http://www.arrl.org/third-party-operating-agreements
The Technician license in the US is currently the entry level license. (At one time there was a lesser license, Novice; it is no longer issued but hams who already have them can continue to hold and renew them.) The "full license for everything" is Amateur Extra.
If the engineering majors were blowing the curve for the psych majors, it says something dreadful about the quality of the psych majors. People who actually plan to devote themselves to a field ought to be at least as good at it as people who plan to be engineers.
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Expensive? The Jetta and Golf are both available for under $20,000 in the US. That's not quite low end but it's not an expensive car, and certainly not limited only to hipsters.
Here is a list of the cheapest options from various brands. (Prices are the base list price from the company web sites; they don't include delivery charges or the California emissions package that 25% of the US population has to buy.) Most of these are smaller cars than the Jetta; VW would compare even more favorably if we looked at comparable models. VW doesn't import the Polo, which would probably be an under $15,000 car if it were sold in the US.
Nissan: Versa, $11,990
Chevrolet: Spark, $12,170
Smart: Pure Coupe, $12,490
Kia: Rio, $13,600
Ford: Fiesta, $14,000
Toyota: Yaris, $14,430
Hyundai: Accent, $14,545
Mazda: 2, $14,720
Honda: Fit, $15,425
Fiat: 500, $16,000
VW: Jetta, $16,720
Subaru: Impreza, $17,895
Mini: Cooper, $19,700
Depends on where you drive it. Diesels do well on the highway and can offer fuel mileage that is nearly as high as hybrids there. Hybrids win big for stop and go city driving. That is one reason that some cities have tried to mandate the use of hybrid taxis. (Market forces won't work because of the way the medallion system works: the people who spend extra money on the taxis mostly aren't the ones who save money on fuel.)
Compare VW's own diesel and hybrid models. The clean diesel Jetta gets 42mpg highway and 30 city. The hybrid Jetta gets 48mpg highway and 42mpg city. The hybrid has a much bigger mileage advantage in the city. Or compare a hybrid Camry with a standard one: the non-hybrid gets 35/25mpg and the hybrid gets 39/43. (That's not a typo; the mpg rating is HIGHER for city driving.)
They get a 30% cut on app store sales, just like Apple. Whether that will ever come to a big enough number for Microsoft is another question.
The only way they could make money by dumping the current RT tablet would be if it pumps up the RT market enough that they could make money on the next model and/or on the commission on app sales. Microsoft has historically been more patient than many companies (they stayed with Windows through versions 1 and 2, for example, to get to the first decent one) so it's not an inconceivable strategy for them to take.
The estimate of 6 million tablets probably overstates the number by a large margin. Their writeoff probably also included some of the development costs.
They might have had 90% of connected devices. Back then embedded devices weren't yet being connected in significant quantities, and mobile connected devices were still in the future.
Actually it did. When Tesla first started building the Roadster the batteries cost that much. The prices have since come down as the industry ramps up production.
The free version has ads and limits your listening hours. You can buy a subscription for $5/month that gets you unlimited ad-free listening, or pay $10 and also get mobile download support.
Why is Yorke upset about the low royalties from Spotify, but not about the ZERO royalties paid by terrestrial radio? (I'm talking about performance royalties; both pay songwriter royalties.) We should have a level playing field where all media pay the same rate.
Support for larger files is also significant. Flash comes in sizes much bigger than 4GB now; video files routinely exceed that size, though some standards such as DVD avoid the problem by breaking the content into smaller files, and even live recording of high resolution audio can require files bigger than 4GB.
Anything that doesn't have a 1080p display and a quad-core (or more) CPU doesn't qualify as a superphone in the current market.
Microsoft is a blue chip stock that pays dividends, so it can't be judged by stock price alone. Their most recent declared quarterly dividend is 23 cents per share and Microsoft stock currently sells for about $35 per share. That is a dividend rate of 2.6% annually; not a huge return but competitive in the current marketplace. For example, compare it to ExxonMobil's dividend return; their most recent dividend is 63 cents per share and the share price is $93, giving a yield of 2.7% annually. Or to look at a competitor in the computer business we can look at Apple (which I believe also has to be viewed as a dividend paying blue chip stock now); their most recent dividend is $3.05 and the stock sells for $426 for a yield of 2.85%. And Apple stock has fallen substantially in the recent past; if you bought Apple at its $700 peak last ffall you would be even less happy with your return. Microsoft stock is near its peak for the past 12 months.
Side note: although the selling price of Apple stock is much higher than Microsoft stock, their total market capitalization (that is, the total value of all their stock) is much closer as there are more Microsoft shares in existence. Apple's current market capitalization is $400.96 billion; Microsoft's is $297.88 billion.
No service can block the ability to record what you hear. It is always possible to run the analog output to an input and record it; if they somehow had some way to detect a recording process and crash it, you could use a standalone recording device or run the recorder software in a separate VM or on another computer. You can also record the "speakers" input that many sound cards have (that is, an input that gives you everything the sound card plays).
Here in Boston, the digital broadcasts from WGBH and WGBX are just as strong as the commercial digital broadcasts (and broadcast from the same tower; nearly all Boston TV is transmitted from a tower in Needham MA). WGBH was one of the first stations in Boston to offer digital, and the first to offer high definition broadcasts. Before PBS content was available in HD, one of their two subchannels ran HD demonstration content.
You don't need a better time source. You just need to know the distance to Fort Collins. That can be easily calculated, and there are web sites that will do it for you. Terrain might cause slight variations in propagation but that is a very small effect; few users are likely to need a degree of precision high enough to require measurement of the exact path delay.
There are plenty of taxi situations where the driver will tell you "no, I don't go there."
Not here in Boston there aren't; not if the destination is inside the city limits. Refusing to take a fare where they want to go is cause for losing your license.
Sometimes the drivers do it anyway. There was a notable case a few years back where a driver refused a fare to Roxbury, a predominantly black neighborhood. Unfortunately for the driver, the person he turned down was a Boston city councilor. Oops...
One of the good things about WWVB is that propagation delays on LF (60 KHz) are much more predictable than propagation delays on the HF frequencies used by WWV. Once you correct for the speed-of-light delay for the distance between you and Fort Collins, WWVB results are highly accurate and repeatable. WWV timing is much more variable, as the signal can get to you by a variety of paths involving one or more bounces off the ionosphere, and the height of the ionosphere layer also changes.
Teachers would love to have a work week that is merely 40 hours. The time spent in the classroom is far from the entire story; you have to add in the meetings and the time spent on lesson plans and grading to get the full story.
On the other hand, they get two months off in the summer (albeit unpaid) and an above-average number of paid holidays. Not quite as many holidays as the students get - there are often "professional development days" or some such on some days when the students are out - but still more than most employees.
New Zealand has a 15% GST that accounts for some of the difference. Not all of it, however.
I tried the Bing challenge. Google won.
Two of the searches I tried were "Bing sucks" and "Google sucks". Figured I had to do both to be fair.
The single process model does have the advantage of lowering the memory footprint of Firefox. Firefox with lots of tabs loaded uses significantly less memory than either Chrome or IE. IE has the edge with a single tab because it cheats; a lot of the code is already present as part of the OS.
For most people, the performance and security advantages of the process-per-tab model outweigh the memory cost. But it's nice that somebody offers an alternative.
Modifying the HT to be able to transmit on rescue frequencies is not illegal in the US. Nor is owning such a modified radio. (These things are illegal in some other jurisdictions, although those restrictions are generally not enforced against visiting US hams.) Using the modified HT to transmit outside the ham bands is illegal, and can expose the user to severe fines and penalties. Reselling modified equipment on a commercial basis is also illegal unless the customer has proof of license for some frequency outside the ham bands such as MARS or CAP.
In general, US amateur radio law takes a position of trusting the license holder to operate within the restrictions of the license. Sale of equipment that can operate on prohibited frequencies and/or at prohibited power levels is legal. The notable exception was the law that prohibited the sale of RF amplifiers that could operate between 25 and 30 MHz, or that could operate below 50 MHz with power input levels lower than 50W. (Those were both meant to keep amplifiers out of the hands of CB operators.) A few years ago the law was changed a bit; it now requires no gain between 26 and 28 MHz, which can be implemented by an input frequency counter that shuts down the amplifier when necessary (this change makes 10 meter amplifiers possible), and amplifiers that work with low input power levels are now allowed.
You are quite right that coded messages could be passed within normal-sounding conversation. But to outlaw that would make the existence of amateur radio impossible.
No, encryption is not about being able to discern static. Error correction can be done with open codes, as it is in packet radio. Packet radio is digitally encoded, but the encoding methods are publicly available. It is legal to send data that is further encoded (ZIP files, for example) so long as the method of decoding the data is public.
Most of Europe bans the transmission of third party messages, perhaps because telecommunications was historically a government monopoly there. (The UK is a notable exception; third party messages are allowed.) Many European countries have now privatized telecom but the rules remain. Most countries in the Americas, and some in Africa and Asia, allow third party messages.
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the major amateur radio organization in the US, has a page that lists the countries that have third party message agreements with the US. http://www.arrl.org/third-party-operating-agreements
The Technician license in the US is currently the entry level license. (At one time there was a lesser license, Novice; it is no longer issued but hams who already have them can continue to hold and renew them.) The "full license for everything" is Amateur Extra.
If the engineering majors were blowing the curve for the psych majors, it says something dreadful about the quality of the psych majors. People who actually plan to devote themselves to a field ought to be at least as good at it as people who plan to be engineers.