There is an article in the nyt on the AppleTV. It is interesting that they do a bit of revisionist history, claiming that the iPod was a superior device. In fact it had many of the limitation people complain of the iPad. I did not allow wireless connection for data. It did not have a memory slot. It was firewire only.
It was not superior, but it was effective for a Mac owner. There was enough memory to hold many songs. The firewire interface was necessary because mostly computers still ran USB 1.1. The problem with my nomad, for instance, was that transferring songs was dead slow. It was also rugged, unlike the nomad.
What we will likely see on other devices is feature bloat. They will be able to do some whiz bang thing, but the overall machine will have never been thought out from the user point of view. It is like the android commercials. In the commercials, the human become a slave to the machine, the body turning into the machine to serve it. This to me is unacceptable industrial design.
I remember the first time I played Duke Nukem and Prince of Persia. There were amazing games. The graphics of PoP, the immersion of DN, they were great. I am sure that some said it was just a fad and we would be back to Pac Man and Trade Wars, but fortunately we never did.
The things about games is because there are never mission critical is that they do not have be designed conservatively. They can push the hardware, the interfaces, to the point that other applications would never attempt. Any game worth it salt will do this. Of couse game companies complain, because they want customers to give them money for doing nothing. Fortunately there are always a few companies that are will to earn customers money by delivering interesting goods, rather than just demanding renewal fees for the same crap they were delivering ten years ago. Again, conservative companies that simply take customers money want the same crap as ten years ago, but such things are not innovative and do not drive the economy forward.
I see TV, outside of niche market like the obsessive sport fan, TVs serve two purposes. One is to be large central, almost alter like presence in the central room. If one is judged on size, and not performance, anything that reducing the diagonal inches/dollar is certainly not going to sell. The other purpose is increasing to replace the radio as background noise.
Yes there are crowds other than than sports fanatics that are actually to spend time glued to the tv for hours on end wearing these glasses. But I think the time when this is status quo, at least in the US, is long past.
Many would say that the going to movies is in decline because TV is catching up to major budget movie quality and because the experience is not what it used to be. I would say the reason for this is that people are less willing to sit idly for an hour or so and passively consume entertainment. The 3D tv is part of that passive consumption, and if we won't do it theaters, why would we do it at home, where are not prohibited for texting on our phones or loading up a video game on our portable player, simply because so relic for the 20th century thinks it is rude.
Exactly, if you don't want a sticker, buy an Apple(but not the fruit since they all have stickers now). So it stands to reason that the sticker is not really an issue given that most people believe a Windows based laptop is a better value.
The fact that AMD is saying this is funny since they are the worst culprit on any Windows machine I have every used.
As far as the car analogy, car manufacturers have often put ornaments on cars, and the fancier the car the fancier the ornament. Some people like plain cars, so they buy cars with minimal ornamentation. What we are talking abou here is the reseller, such as CarMax, adding ornaments that indicate one bought a cut rate car.
It is likely that most of the social networking stuff with apple will be tied to me.com or iTunes. Both of these are fee based services. Facebook, and myspace, succeed because they are free. They can only be bothered by other free services that figure out a way monetize the user without pissing the user off, something that neither of these services have done.
So Apple will may have a competing service, and many may be happy because their data is more private, but free is more important than private. Look at home many people let google read their emails rather than paying Apple $100 a year.
Apple looks like it is going to use it's iTunes database to monetize users in an effort to offer otherwise free services to users. However, this is no different from the other free services, so that should provide no competitive advantage to either company, except for the fact that people expect to act better than facebook, even though most people whine when they have to pay to be treated better. Everyone wants a free lunch.
I would say that people who don't drink are also worries. Did I close the door. Have I done all my homework. Are people going to like these shoes. How can I hide that I sleep around from my church. That sort of thing. People who drink may also spend less time worrying about the little details, and therefore have happier longer lives. Probably not, but maybe.
It is more likely that the article is a plant for manufacturers that want to force the government to pay for upgrades that, in the end, will make it serve the purpose of the CEOs who need a new jet, not the passenger who must fly commercial. What are talking about is multiple nines reliability. When I want reliable connection I do not set up a wireless connection, I plug a machines directly into another machine. In the example in the article, the airplane was not in communications. Every flight system has period where there is no communication, and incidents often involve power failures. Likewise, tape is still used for backup. Why? because it is resilient and small damage does not mean total loss of data.
We can have additional systems the provides telemetry to a central location, but the benefits of such a system must be balanced with cost and security and safety. For instance, are we going to install dedicated power to transmitters, and during incidents prioritize antennas over the lives? IHMO, the one credible improvement is technology to make sure we can find the black box, but I would rather focus on technology that will minimize lives lost than technology that would guarantee that every air crash can be analyzed.
What people still have not realized after hundreds of year is just because an authority figure forces other to say something is true doesn't mean it is true. The church torturing Galileo did not make the earth the center of the universe. The church torturing and burning Servetus did not change the function of the heart from pumping blood to regulating it's tides. If the indiana Pi bill had passed, the value would sill be 3.14...
No matter how many people are killed, no matter how much legislation is enacted, no matter how many judges say thing like 'separate but equal', reality is still reality. I think this is why some of us are much more willing to let the chips fall where they may. Instead of imposing our will on others, in effect playing god, we are willing to let the objectives observation take us where the universe wants us to go.
Another issues is that a game console ages, the actual number of active users is likely to decrease. This, along with the hike in price, means that number of subscribers will decrease. However, single there is like a significant marginal costs to XBox live(if there was not there would no incentive to increase the price-yes the argument is a little circular), one could have a significant drop in subscribers and still have an increase in profits.
There are couple ways to deal with this. Most browsers have an 'accept cookies only for site I visit'. Since cookies are theoretically only available to the site that sets them, this tends to minimize the general advert cookies that are embedded in the page.
I also have it set so that I have to approve every cookie that is set. This is annoying at first, but over time the number of approvals require are only a few a day. One exception to this is ebay which seems not to run their backend server through a load balancing framework, so every backend machine requires verification.
One reason google provides all these tools, like mail and docs, is so the user has an incentive to accept Google cookies, something that does not exist for 2o7 or bing. As a consequence Google has the ability to track more users, and thereby dominate the industry. This is fair as google provides a service in exchange for the personal data. This does not mean I do not set google cookies to expire at the end of a session, but at least i allow Google cookies on my machine, which I do not with the other 2.
I going to do this next time I am asking for venture capital. Take a picture of an iphone, an ipad, and lg watch phone, black out the details, and say I have new cool devices that will take over the market.
In the US there is not technical issue with going digital and applying twent first technology to the census. The use applied twentieth century technology in 1890 for the census. The issue is constitutional. We are supposed to enumerate. Of course constitutionality does not count for other things. For instance Orin Hatch wanted to amend the constitution to allow members of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, our enemy in WWI,and presumably random citizens of Kenya, to be president. Currently many want to deny citizenship to children based on their parent heritage. I wonder why.
I would like to see a constitutional amendment based on sound conservative fiscal policy. Set the budget of the census office to 2000 levels. Require they give up an enumberation for modern scientific and statistics based estimation. Publicly identify the enumerators as enemies of the US, after all they just want to increase the taxes on the average person by continuing ineffecient big and intrusive government. Why does government need to know all these details about us. Google can count users without any identifiable information, so why can't the government. The senators who want enumeration simply want to know where their enemies live so when the Tea Party revolution in in full force, then can send FEMA to kill us.
Young kids who use the computer seem to have a grasp of how to use it for games and social media, but don't really seem to understand it is as a tool. There is no abstractions. They associate a program with a purpose, and that is that. There was a time when the internet was AOL, then IE, then Facebook. To fight this we much teach concepts.
For instance, any word processor can be used to teach to write a paper. The only reason people get fixated on a specific word processor is because we teach how to change fonts and use pretty colors instead of how to write. For english and social studies one hopes the kids will be graded on writing, not the fonts or colors they use. The literacy comes in when they solve problems using these tools, like why can't I print or email a document, how do I convert between formats.
For programming I would use python and C. Python fulfills their need for immediate results, while C forces them to slow down and think. In both languages variable develop the abstract thought they need for math and science. If the kids are still using pre algebra, a web program can be written that allows the kids to guess and check. For science a collaborative effort to build a periodic table with all the facts. If algorithms are to be taught, that is best done in C. The swap function, the sort function, etc. Kids at that age need to learn process, need to learn how that things have steps, and to follow those steps. C enforces the rules because the programs will not run if the rules are not followed. Use of an IDE is optional. If an IDE is used, the teaching of the IDE is separate from the teaching to code.
If we are to teach literacy, the license of the software cannot be first concern. For instance, while there is free and open source geometry software and calculator software, there is no open source mechanical design software. OTOH, sketchup, autodesk, and solidworks have no cost licensees for students. If we are talking about building skills and literacy, such software is a must have for the future.
What you are talking about is called a library. A place where people can go and learn all sorts of things. Most developed countries have one in various locations to be accessible to the populous.
One may say the tech innovation is the video aspect, but people have been making educational videos for years, often selling that at very low prices or giving them away for free. I have a friend who does this and sells them in the villages of developing country where is from. They don't have internet access or reliable electricity, but they have laptops with DVD players. In terms of getting information to the children who need it, and not just the kids who already have all the advantages, this method works.
So what is the innovation here. That he is recording lectures? That he is streaming lectures for those few that good internet access? Maybe I am down on this because what I don't think lecture is 100% of an education. Much of what I leared I learned from reading books or working the problem. This would be a good supplement to a home school education, but there is no relevance in these lectures.
On assumption of the Bill Gates Foundation and High School that works is that the world is full of mostly bad teachers doing a mostly bad job and it would be better to have mostly good teachers creating content and delivering content to the kids. The reason kids are out of control is that they are no engaged. But kids are not robots and often must be redirected to things they don't like like doing math in math class and formalized exercise in gym.A teacher is there to asses and try to teach to each student, at least some of the time. It it was simple as making a video and having the students watch the video, there educational problem would already be solved. There is no silver bullet for complex problems.
C# may be an open standard, but that does not mean they will fork it. After all, why did they create C#: so they could fragment the developer market and force developers who wished to stay with MS to use a proprietary product. This is they exact same thing they did with HTML and tried to do with Java. MS will do anything to keep the desktop monopoly. And without MS backing,C# will quickly become a depreciated language.
Java has been stable for 10 years. Java has a number of freely available IDE with freely available documentation. C# and.net has a few IDEs, but one is pretty much stuck with MS IDE and paying huge sums to stay in the documentation loop.
Now, if Google wants to play the 'if I can't control the technology i don't want to use it' game, then let it. We have already seen how well that has worked out for them on the Nexus One, and even for the other Android phones. Building market share by throwing out random phones that a few people buy then throw away is not a long term plan. Google is still quite a closed company, and much of the time any openness is a myth in the same way that lack of vendor-lock in is myth with MS products.
This is what you get for hiring a military contractor to do a civilian persons job. All 2.5 billion gets you in the military is a manger and toilet seat. You don't start getting functional hardware until the budget reaches 100 billion.
Star Wars and Star Trek are two different narrative styles. Star Wars is the Fable, a Heroes Quest, which is the preferred narrative of many Geeks and the general public, re the Lord of the Rings. Star Trek is more the laid back traveling novel, where there is no particular goal, just a need to get the hell out of dodge and explore. This is like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The aimlessness, and the sometimes contrived finale to tie us back to the beginning of the trip, sometimes put people off. This is a popular narrative for tv, however, as it allows unlimited stories. I think one issue with Battlestar Galactica, for instance, was that we are just so patience for the Quest to be completed.
In both the tech is irrelevant. Luke might as well have been sailing around the Aegean Sea fighting cyclops, and Kirk might as well be floating down the Mississippi screwing the local bar girls. The 'science' with particles is as meaningful as Cronus eating all his kids until the one that got away comes back and rescues them. Both are told in using language appropriate for the time. Neither is to be taken literarily.
OTOH, the big problem with Star Wars is the damn thrusters were always on, and the ships were not accelerating. What was, was the aether long long ago more viscous so we had to fight against it with thruster? And where did all the fuel come from? Those X-Wings were really small. In Star Trek the Nacelles could at least argued to hav to stay on to keep the ship in hyperspace, and their energy source was 100% efficient conversion of mass to energy, an extremely expensive form of energy, but compact. And in TNG, the thrusters were not always thrusting.
Of course the only realistic space show is Babylon 5.
Clearly the problem with the number of lawsuits the medical industry has to deal with is not hysterical patients, but incompetent design. Can anyone imagine,say, in an industrial setting where the water and vacuum connectors were the same. In my experience if they are they same, they are at least color coded so your eyes catches the mismatch.
Of course there is huge a cost if tubes for different purposes are incompatible with each other, not only at the vendor level, but also at the local level for acquisition and storage. And of course health care professionals will have to be trained to the point of automaticy to use the proper tubes for each purpose.
It may be that the solution is to simply hire more nurses and the like and to cut down on the overtime that lead to the mistake. Again, it will cost more on the front end for labor, but at least the lawsuits will decrease.
I don't really like HP printers either. I buy HP printers for certain purposes because they are cheap. The drivers that try to take over your computer and the chips in cartridges are not ideal, but on the Mac one does not need to install drivers. I do like Xerox, especially the solid ink, no cartridge waste.
It is the expectations of kids versus the expectations of adults. Kids, being still developing adult humans, have a hard time seeing beyond themselves. They want to do what they want to do and don't expect consequences. Like when that 19 year old drove off the bridge today. He was probably going too fast and maybe could not take the curve. We cannot sue the engineer because the kid did not expect consequences. Suing a school or an engineer is not going to change behavior.
The expectation of any teacher in the school environment is lack of privacy. Someone could always be listening, so the issue is not that the girls were bugging the teachers lounge. The issue is that in the real world such an action can get you in real trouble, loss of job, loss of license, etc, so if we are to encourage proper behavior, then consequences need to exist. Not because of harm done, but to encourage children to move away from actions that could be fatal or near fatal alter on.
I would think that Mac OS would continue in some form for the high end desktops and laptops. I would think for the lower end machines, which must come down in price to compete, might move to iOS.
I would also think that as iOS is moved to higher power machines, xcode or something like would also be made available to code on these machines. Running the emulator for iOS is necessary for the moment. At some point the devices will be powerful enough to allow software development in situ. The iPad almost could run a graphics based IDE with a set of fixed routines.
It is also worth remembering that the Mac is 25 years old and is what I consider to be the third major revision of the OS. To me we have the initial System, which evolved from 1984-1990. Then we had the Mac OS which started with System 7 in 1991 and ran to the turn of the century. We are now in the Mac OS X era, which really started big around late 2002. We may be in an overlap time. Versions of the Apple ][ persisted to 1990, even though the Lisa was introduced ten years prior and most people were buying Macs. I don't like the idea of iOS for general pupose computers, it is too closed, but maybe Apple is planning on leaving the GPC business.
Just watched it this past weekend when I saw it on netflix. Those guys were crazy.
Ob on topic
Hemp is one of the best examples when we let fear rule out lives. The lost innovation and efficiency, IMHO, is staggering. I don't know what was going on in the 30's that made hemp so evil. I don't suppose it could be any worse than the Meth problems we have now. The funny thing is that hemp cannot be grown, while the constituents of meth are still be sold over the counter. I suspect it just that some people are so afraid of nature all they can do is destroy it.
This seems like PHB logic. PHB hears of a hot product, reads a few articles on it, then demands a similar product from a team that has no experience in it.
I also can believe there are people out there that know how to build this stuff. The trick is to let the experts help meet your needs, not spec the finish product in the design brief. This is another PHB mistake.
For example, roof gardens are not huge deal. One I have seen is to use a shed roof with a low grade, possibly with a partially finished flat roof underneath. There is some erosion of the roof garden, and it needs to be redone occasionally, but it is effective as it will convert the heat into growth rather than transmit.
Also windows are not the enemy. In fact they can be used to make a house more green. Properly place windows can mean that lights need not be used during the day. Roof overhangs can prevent sun from entering in the hottest time, while allowing the sun to warm the house in cooler months. Deciduous Trees can also be shard in the summer, while allowing sun in the winter. In addition, in the winter elements in the house can be allowed to heat during the day and radiate at night.
What I see is that many people want everything to stay the same and be magically green at the same time. We want to use the clothes dryer, even though we have been given a perfectly good sun. We want to have our manicured monoculture lawn, even though common sense tells us that makes not sense. We want use the solutions that in front of our noses because then people would not know how rich we were.
The bottom line is no one is going to impair the usability of the iOS just to get it to read the book for them. It is a mutistep process to get the book read instead of automagic think on the Kindle. On the Apple it is clearly an integrated accessibility issue, not a way to kill the audio book.
On the Kindle the Author guild can frame their argument as one of licensing since the voice over feature was promoted as a standalone feature for general use, which could of some use to those who had impaired vision. In iOS, it is promoted as accessibility for those with poor vision, which might be useful those that wanted to listen to a book without a license. Attacking that is like attacking ramps on building because they encourage laziness in otherwise healthy people.
I am not a big game player, but I stopped buying PC games because of DRM. I have had portable game players over the years, this was not ideal due the need to keep all the games around. I thought about a Wii, but that would require a TV, and in the internet age a TV is not a priority.
In any case I am not the target audience, but I found myself playing game on the iPad. As said, the issue is not DRM, just DRM that is not intrusive. The games on the iPad are not costly, and provide suitable distraction. I do not have to worry about game media, or losing keys, or the machine crashing. The games an on the PC and can be synched to any device I register. To play I just tap the icon. For the casual gamer it is quite a nice setup. Much better than the philosophy of the game industry at large which demands a large payment, then proof that payment every time the game is used.
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It was not superior, but it was effective for a Mac owner. There was enough memory to hold many songs. The firewire interface was necessary because mostly computers still ran USB 1.1. The problem with my nomad, for instance, was that transferring songs was dead slow. It was also rugged, unlike the nomad.
What we will likely see on other devices is feature bloat. They will be able to do some whiz bang thing, but the overall machine will have never been thought out from the user point of view. It is like the android commercials. In the commercials, the human become a slave to the machine, the body turning into the machine to serve it. This to me is unacceptable industrial design.
The things about games is because there are never mission critical is that they do not have be designed conservatively. They can push the hardware, the interfaces, to the point that other applications would never attempt. Any game worth it salt will do this. Of couse game companies complain, because they want customers to give them money for doing nothing. Fortunately there are always a few companies that are will to earn customers money by delivering interesting goods, rather than just demanding renewal fees for the same crap they were delivering ten years ago. Again, conservative companies that simply take customers money want the same crap as ten years ago, but such things are not innovative and do not drive the economy forward.
Yes there are crowds other than than sports fanatics that are actually to spend time glued to the tv for hours on end wearing these glasses. But I think the time when this is status quo, at least in the US, is long past.
Many would say that the going to movies is in decline because TV is catching up to major budget movie quality and because the experience is not what it used to be. I would say the reason for this is that people are less willing to sit idly for an hour or so and passively consume entertainment. The 3D tv is part of that passive consumption, and if we won't do it theaters, why would we do it at home, where are not prohibited for texting on our phones or loading up a video game on our portable player, simply because so relic for the 20th century thinks it is rude.
The fact that AMD is saying this is funny since they are the worst culprit on any Windows machine I have every used.
As far as the car analogy, car manufacturers have often put ornaments on cars, and the fancier the car the fancier the ornament. Some people like plain cars, so they buy cars with minimal ornamentation. What we are talking abou here is the reseller, such as CarMax, adding ornaments that indicate one bought a cut rate car.
So Apple will may have a competing service, and many may be happy because their data is more private, but free is more important than private. Look at home many people let google read their emails rather than paying Apple $100 a year.
Apple looks like it is going to use it's iTunes database to monetize users in an effort to offer otherwise free services to users. However, this is no different from the other free services, so that should provide no competitive advantage to either company, except for the fact that people expect to act better than facebook, even though most people whine when they have to pay to be treated better. Everyone wants a free lunch.
I would say that people who don't drink are also worries. Did I close the door. Have I done all my homework. Are people going to like these shoes. How can I hide that I sleep around from my church. That sort of thing. People who drink may also spend less time worrying about the little details, and therefore have happier longer lives. Probably not, but maybe.
We can have additional systems the provides telemetry to a central location, but the benefits of such a system must be balanced with cost and security and safety. For instance, are we going to install dedicated power to transmitters, and during incidents prioritize antennas over the lives? IHMO, the one credible improvement is technology to make sure we can find the black box, but I would rather focus on technology that will minimize lives lost than technology that would guarantee that every air crash can be analyzed.
No matter how many people are killed, no matter how much legislation is enacted, no matter how many judges say thing like 'separate but equal', reality is still reality. I think this is why some of us are much more willing to let the chips fall where they may. Instead of imposing our will on others, in effect playing god, we are willing to let the objectives observation take us where the universe wants us to go.
Another issues is that a game console ages, the actual number of active users is likely to decrease. This, along with the hike in price, means that number of subscribers will decrease. However, single there is like a significant marginal costs to XBox live(if there was not there would no incentive to increase the price-yes the argument is a little circular), one could have a significant drop in subscribers and still have an increase in profits.
I also have it set so that I have to approve every cookie that is set. This is annoying at first, but over time the number of approvals require are only a few a day. One exception to this is ebay which seems not to run their backend server through a load balancing framework, so every backend machine requires verification.
One reason google provides all these tools, like mail and docs, is so the user has an incentive to accept Google cookies, something that does not exist for 2o7 or bing. As a consequence Google has the ability to track more users, and thereby dominate the industry. This is fair as google provides a service in exchange for the personal data. This does not mean I do not set google cookies to expire at the end of a session, but at least i allow Google cookies on my machine, which I do not with the other 2.
I going to do this next time I am asking for venture capital. Take a picture of an iphone, an ipad, and lg watch phone, black out the details, and say I have new cool devices that will take over the market.
I would like to see a constitutional amendment based on sound conservative fiscal policy. Set the budget of the census office to 2000 levels. Require they give up an enumberation for modern scientific and statistics based estimation. Publicly identify the enumerators as enemies of the US, after all they just want to increase the taxes on the average person by continuing ineffecient big and intrusive government. Why does government need to know all these details about us. Google can count users without any identifiable information, so why can't the government. The senators who want enumeration simply want to know where their enemies live so when the Tea Party revolution in in full force, then can send FEMA to kill us.
For instance, any word processor can be used to teach to write a paper. The only reason people get fixated on a specific word processor is because we teach how to change fonts and use pretty colors instead of how to write. For english and social studies one hopes the kids will be graded on writing, not the fonts or colors they use. The literacy comes in when they solve problems using these tools, like why can't I print or email a document, how do I convert between formats.
For programming I would use python and C. Python fulfills their need for immediate results, while C forces them to slow down and think. In both languages variable develop the abstract thought they need for math and science. If the kids are still using pre algebra, a web program can be written that allows the kids to guess and check. For science a collaborative effort to build a periodic table with all the facts. If algorithms are to be taught, that is best done in C. The swap function, the sort function, etc. Kids at that age need to learn process, need to learn how that things have steps, and to follow those steps. C enforces the rules because the programs will not run if the rules are not followed. Use of an IDE is optional. If an IDE is used, the teaching of the IDE is separate from the teaching to code.
If we are to teach literacy, the license of the software cannot be first concern. For instance, while there is free and open source geometry software and calculator software, there is no open source mechanical design software. OTOH, sketchup, autodesk, and solidworks have no cost licensees for students. If we are talking about building skills and literacy, such software is a must have for the future.
One may say the tech innovation is the video aspect, but people have been making educational videos for years, often selling that at very low prices or giving them away for free. I have a friend who does this and sells them in the villages of developing country where is from. They don't have internet access or reliable electricity, but they have laptops with DVD players. In terms of getting information to the children who need it, and not just the kids who already have all the advantages, this method works.
So what is the innovation here. That he is recording lectures? That he is streaming lectures for those few that good internet access? Maybe I am down on this because what I don't think lecture is 100% of an education. Much of what I leared I learned from reading books or working the problem. This would be a good supplement to a home school education, but there is no relevance in these lectures.
On assumption of the Bill Gates Foundation and High School that works is that the world is full of mostly bad teachers doing a mostly bad job and it would be better to have mostly good teachers creating content and delivering content to the kids. The reason kids are out of control is that they are no engaged. But kids are not robots and often must be redirected to things they don't like like doing math in math class and formalized exercise in gym.A teacher is there to asses and try to teach to each student, at least some of the time. It it was simple as making a video and having the students watch the video, there educational problem would already be solved. There is no silver bullet for complex problems.
Java has been stable for 10 years. Java has a number of freely available IDE with freely available documentation. C# and .net has a few IDEs, but one is pretty much stuck with MS IDE and paying huge sums to stay in the documentation loop.
Now, if Google wants to play the 'if I can't control the technology i don't want to use it' game, then let it. We have already seen how well that has worked out for them on the Nexus One, and even for the other Android phones. Building market share by throwing out random phones that a few people buy then throw away is not a long term plan. Google is still quite a closed company, and much of the time any openness is a myth in the same way that lack of vendor-lock in is myth with MS products.
This is what you get for hiring a military contractor to do a civilian persons job. All 2.5 billion gets you in the military is a manger and toilet seat. You don't start getting functional hardware until the budget reaches 100 billion.
In both the tech is irrelevant. Luke might as well have been sailing around the Aegean Sea fighting cyclops, and Kirk might as well be floating down the Mississippi screwing the local bar girls. The 'science' with particles is as meaningful as Cronus eating all his kids until the one that got away comes back and rescues them. Both are told in using language appropriate for the time. Neither is to be taken literarily.
OTOH, the big problem with Star Wars is the damn thrusters were always on, and the ships were not accelerating. What was, was the aether long long ago more viscous so we had to fight against it with thruster? And where did all the fuel come from? Those X-Wings were really small. In Star Trek the Nacelles could at least argued to hav to stay on to keep the ship in hyperspace, and their energy source was 100% efficient conversion of mass to energy, an extremely expensive form of energy, but compact. And in TNG, the thrusters were not always thrusting.
Of course the only realistic space show is Babylon 5.
Of course there is huge a cost if tubes for different purposes are incompatible with each other, not only at the vendor level, but also at the local level for acquisition and storage. And of course health care professionals will have to be trained to the point of automaticy to use the proper tubes for each purpose.
It may be that the solution is to simply hire more nurses and the like and to cut down on the overtime that lead to the mistake. Again, it will cost more on the front end for labor, but at least the lawsuits will decrease.
I don't really like HP printers either. I buy HP printers for certain purposes because they are cheap. The drivers that try to take over your computer and the chips in cartridges are not ideal, but on the Mac one does not need to install drivers. I do like Xerox, especially the solid ink, no cartridge waste.
The expectation of any teacher in the school environment is lack of privacy. Someone could always be listening, so the issue is not that the girls were bugging the teachers lounge. The issue is that in the real world such an action can get you in real trouble, loss of job, loss of license, etc, so if we are to encourage proper behavior, then consequences need to exist. Not because of harm done, but to encourage children to move away from actions that could be fatal or near fatal alter on.
I would also think that as iOS is moved to higher power machines, xcode or something like would also be made available to code on these machines. Running the emulator for iOS is necessary for the moment. At some point the devices will be powerful enough to allow software development in situ. The iPad almost could run a graphics based IDE with a set of fixed routines.
It is also worth remembering that the Mac is 25 years old and is what I consider to be the third major revision of the OS. To me we have the initial System, which evolved from 1984-1990. Then we had the Mac OS which started with System 7 in 1991 and ran to the turn of the century. We are now in the Mac OS X era, which really started big around late 2002. We may be in an overlap time. Versions of the Apple ][ persisted to 1990, even though the Lisa was introduced ten years prior and most people were buying Macs. I don't like the idea of iOS for general pupose computers, it is too closed, but maybe Apple is planning on leaving the GPC business.
Ob on topic
Hemp is one of the best examples when we let fear rule out lives. The lost innovation and efficiency, IMHO, is staggering. I don't know what was going on in the 30's that made hemp so evil. I don't suppose it could be any worse than the Meth problems we have now. The funny thing is that hemp cannot be grown, while the constituents of meth are still be sold over the counter. I suspect it just that some people are so afraid of nature all they can do is destroy it.
I also can believe there are people out there that know how to build this stuff. The trick is to let the experts help meet your needs, not spec the finish product in the design brief. This is another PHB mistake.
For example, roof gardens are not huge deal. One I have seen is to use a shed roof with a low grade, possibly with a partially finished flat roof underneath. There is some erosion of the roof garden, and it needs to be redone occasionally, but it is effective as it will convert the heat into growth rather than transmit.
Also windows are not the enemy. In fact they can be used to make a house more green. Properly place windows can mean that lights need not be used during the day. Roof overhangs can prevent sun from entering in the hottest time, while allowing the sun to warm the house in cooler months. Deciduous Trees can also be shard in the summer, while allowing sun in the winter. In addition, in the winter elements in the house can be allowed to heat during the day and radiate at night.
What I see is that many people want everything to stay the same and be magically green at the same time. We want to use the clothes dryer, even though we have been given a perfectly good sun. We want to have our manicured monoculture lawn, even though common sense tells us that makes not sense. We want use the solutions that in front of our noses because then people would not know how rich we were.
On the Kindle the Author guild can frame their argument as one of licensing since the voice over feature was promoted as a standalone feature for general use, which could of some use to those who had impaired vision. In iOS, it is promoted as accessibility for those with poor vision, which might be useful those that wanted to listen to a book without a license. Attacking that is like attacking ramps on building because they encourage laziness in otherwise healthy people.
In any case I am not the target audience, but I found myself playing game on the iPad. As said, the issue is not DRM, just DRM that is not intrusive. The games on the iPad are not costly, and provide suitable distraction. I do not have to worry about game media, or losing keys, or the machine crashing. The games an on the PC and can be synched to any device I register. To play I just tap the icon. For the casual gamer it is quite a nice setup. Much better than the philosophy of the game industry at large which demands a large payment, then proof that payment every time the game is used.