It runs a high level OS for running complex programs. I can for example use the Pi as a computer to monitor the state of a car. A microcontroller would need too much programming to achieve it. A Pi would be easier. At the same time you don't need the Pi to be consuming 3W of power 24x7. While the Pi was intended as a low cost PC replacement, most of the usage is actually on the embedded front. And for that we need as low power as possible. This is one reason I have not upgraded to PI 3 - it uses more power than the older version.
Why is tactile interface using buttons and levers bad? - is it just because a touch screen is so fashionable currently? Touchscreens serve for some use cases - Emulating buttons in a screen instead of real buttons is like a human living his life (outside the screen) with only one finger . We have so many degrees of control and feedback available in our hands, legs and we should use them effectively to interact with devices. An example is that of a car. This hand-eye-leg combined interface is what creates the feeling of 'oneness' with the machine - like how many of us feel that the car has become our extension - we are in full control. Touchscreen as the sole interface is a short term aberration and I think soon the industry start bringing back tactile (and not just limited to pressing buttons - but also to levers & knobs).
I have been using MS Word from the DOS days and have worked iwth almost all of its versions. The first time I cam across Ribbon, I too felt upset with the old Menu mechanism gone. But just 1 week of using the Ribbon has made me a total convert. It is far more productive than the old menu scheme. Plus the shortcuts that we can add to the Qucikbar is a great feature. Ribbon became so natural and logical that I began frustated when using non-Ribbon applications (Visio) until now when many MS products are with Ribbon. I am a programmer and also a heavy user (relatively advanced) of Word, Excel, Access and ppt.
I have set my Win 7 to show Win98/Win2000 style UI - No more toy UI for me. No rounded buttons, no rounded windows. No additional software installation needed to get this done.
a) set Win 7 Theme to Windows Classic
b) Click on the desktop | CTRL+ Scroll mouse wheel down to reduce the desktop icons to desired size
c) In Control Panel | Performance Information & Tools | Adjust Visual Effects, select Custom and uncheck the following:
Animate controls and elements inside windows. This removes the undesirable sliding selection box in excel. It will now jump like it does in XP
NOTE - 'Use visual styles on windows and buttons MUST be checked OFF for XP theme to be retained, as otherwise even though we have chosen Classic theme, the visual effects setting will bring the Win7 stlye windows and Taskbar!
You are viewpoint is only from the US market where phones appear to be free because of bundling by telecom operators. In the rest of the world, consumers use their choice to buy phones and most would laugh at a phone that does not allow changing of batteries.
1.Total Commander. Have been using since 20 years. Plus plug-ins such as DirList, Complex CD/DVD Burner 2. PasswordSafe 3. Notepad++ 4. MS Office 5.IrfanView 6. jdk 7. WinDirStat
As you said, the 4.5 hours is on some standard load test. Typical business use for a tablet may not be such a high load. For example I bought an LG Optmius L9 mobile last month. GSMarena gave it a 43 hour endurance duration. But on my usage it lasts 5 days (reading, phone calls, SMS, passwordsafe), because I do not play video. These days power points are available in trains and planes as well. So really unless you are constantly walking, power is not a big issue. After all you can still plug it in for the duration you will not be working (eating and others). If someone wants to still watch/browse while they are eating, they need to get their minds checked.
That's crazy. In my country, the per unit rate increases (4-5 slab rates) as you consume more units which is what one wants to keep consumption under control. This is not a business where consumers must be given carrots to consume more!
You are not getting my perspective. Just as people who use printers at home are doing it for convenience and not cost effectiveness, there will be many reasons why you want to print out a physical object at home than buy it (most common use case - it is not available for purchase). I have a good audio system from 15 years back but its tape recorder wheel spoke is broken and I cannot find any replacement. The tape recorder is now fully useless. If only I had a 3D printer (or a neighbourhood shop had one)!
Think of a home laser/inkjet printer.
Did people say that printers are useless and will cost more to print than printing presses and therefore a home printer is useless?
It may be slow, but is totally noise-free. When a machine is used to dig up and move soil, it makes such a humongous sound. If urgency is not the need, I would prefer manual labour for this reason.
Totally agree with you. I have few times touched live 230V AC in the house and you can feel your hand/fingers vibrating (at 50Hz). Everytime we are cycling through 0V, it is easy to pull back your hand from the wire. With DC, your hand will get stuck. In my opinion this itself should be the determining point for choosing AC.
After all, as we progress, power consumption of devices will keep falling.
This is exactly the idea I have been having for the past few years.
The problem is not so much of tax clauses and exceptions that boggle the mind. The true problem is that the tax laws are extremely difficult to read and understand. There will be so many modifications, exceptions scattered that the whole thing appears immensely complex. So if the authorities codify the laws using programmatic style such as IF THEN statements, it can then be readily converted into a authoritative program that every one can use. The amount of tax litigations will reduce dramatically - at least in my country, where the language used is old English such as "whereas, thereof, said... and paragraphs commonly run longer than a page!".
The problem with the current laws are even if you write a reliable program, the govt will not accept it as reliable - it will always say that the tax book is the final word. Whereas if we codify in a programmatic style (with sufficient grammar rules) - it could be compiled directly into a program that the govt itself can notify as a "standard".
Conventional (wheel on rail) Trains have far more advantages than a individual car for most journeys:
1. Very low energy consumption because of metal to metal rolling friction. Car tyres bend to become a plane of rubber in contact with sticky tar causing very high friction. Yes, the packet switching analogy is nice and best for computers but not for people. Because people will use the car more and more. See the bad points below.
2. A thousand cars driven by thousand individuals has a far bigger probability of accident simply because 1000 minds are involved without any central oversight. Who knows what these minds are doing on the road. A train is centrally controlled with professional crew.
3. When you have a car and the road is free and there is parking space, you will use it to go the next street to buy milk. In effect we will use a hammer all the time for all the jobs because the hammer is easy to hold and use. The moment public transport has to be used, you will make a trade-off analysis and use it only when required. Saves the planet, saves your limbs from degeneration.
4. Trains uses far lesser space. Compare a 8 lane highway with a two-lane railway track. Not only do cars need lot of space while moving, they lot of space at both origin and destination. Since destination can be anywhere, you need lot of space everywhere. What a sheer waste of resources.
5. You can be a zombie in a car or enjoy relaxing and eating and sleeping and reading and listening in a train.
This Uniqugauge project in India is more than a decade old. Majority of the metre guage (exactly 1 metre wide) have now been converted to borad-guage (5 feet 6 inches). This has tremendously improved connectivity to both passengers and frieght across the country. There are no bogie changing or wheelset adjusting mechanisms in use anywhere here. The broadguage trains run much smoother and faster than the metre guage ones. The narrow guage tracks are mostly in use on the mountains. Only a handful narrow guage tracks on the plains are being converted to broadguage. Typically it takes 3-5 years for the convertsion to complete and for that duration no trains will run on that section. Quiet absurd really, blocking travel for years.
Thank you Ohga-san for the wonderful magic of letting me listen to pure music and sounds. I still go with my CDs and have no time for mp3s (other than work related recordings which are in mp3). Watching a CD reflecting brillant colours as I tilt it and then gently lay it into the CD tray gives me a feeling of holding the music that I am going to hear. What's a black box of a million mp3s? - it has no soul no body. It certainly does not create any such joy. Prior to CDs the only recorded media I had was cassette tapes - which frequently got entagled into the driver rollers then getting twisted and damaged, or the heads would become so smudgy it sounded as if all frequencies above 2KHz where non-existent on the media.
Another aspect of CDs that most of us do not pay attention to is its abilitiy to be stored as an archiving (for personal use) medium. I still listen to CDs I first encountered in my life in 1992 (and that I purchased even before having any devide to play it). They are just as shiny, crystal clear and a joy to hold and play. Whenever the regular fungus (its hot and humid in my area) grows on the CD, I clean it with a hand soap and water, wipe with a soft cloth and then just let it dry for a minute. Not a trace of fungus or dirt! Whereas SDCards have abruptly been corrupted, hard-disks have suddenly developed disk errors. Give me CD anyday for preserving data.
I am an Indian living in India, am a rail fan and I can say that there are unfortunately no more steam locomotives in India except in 3-4 places (historic routes like Darjeeling mountain or Nilgiri mountain railways). I see more opportunities in Europe and USA to sight and travel in steam trains as there are many enthusiast supported lines there. None of the tracks here use water troughs. I have travelled in steam trains in India several years ago - but none of them used troughs.
Here in India, most cars have reversing horns. The moment you go into reverse gear, a musical bell starts (it has a far lower volume than a normal horn). Extremely effective. Especially if there are children behind the car that you cannot see in your rear view mirror.
I use PasswordSafe - open source - and have a copy on my Win mobile smartphone. So no more password rememebring issues. Just one passphrase to remember.
Slashdot Mirror
It runs a high level OS for running complex programs. I can for example use the Pi as a computer to monitor the state of a car. A microcontroller would need too much programming to achieve it. A Pi would be easier. At the same time you don't need the Pi to be consuming 3W of power 24x7. While the Pi was intended as a low cost PC replacement, most of the usage is actually on the embedded front. And for that we need as low power as possible. This is one reason I have not upgraded to PI 3 - it uses more power than the older version.
Why is tactile interface using buttons and levers bad? - is it just because a touch screen is so fashionable currently? Touchscreens serve for some use cases - Emulating buttons in a screen instead of real buttons is like a human living his life (outside the screen) with only one finger . We have so many degrees of control and feedback available in our hands, legs and we should use them effectively to interact with devices. An example is that of a car. This hand-eye-leg combined interface is what creates the feeling of 'oneness' with the machine - like how many of us feel that the car has become our extension - we are in full control.
Touchscreen as the sole interface is a short term aberration and I think soon the industry start bringing back tactile (and not just limited to pressing buttons - but also to levers & knobs).
I have been using MS Word from the DOS days and have worked iwth almost all of its versions. The first time I cam across Ribbon, I too felt upset with the old Menu mechanism gone. But just 1 week of using the Ribbon has made me a total convert. It is far more productive than the old menu scheme. Plus the shortcuts that we can add to the Qucikbar is a great feature. Ribbon became so natural and logical that I began frustated when using non-Ribbon applications (Visio) until now when many MS products are with Ribbon. I am a programmer and also a heavy user (relatively advanced) of Word, Excel, Access and ppt.
I have set my Win 7 to show Win98/Win2000 style UI - No more toy UI for me. No rounded buttons, no rounded windows. No additional software installation needed to get this done.
a) set Win 7 Theme to Windows Classic
b) Click on the desktop | CTRL+ Scroll mouse wheel down to reduce the desktop icons to desired size
c) In Control Panel | Performance Information & Tools | Adjust Visual Effects, select Custom and uncheck the following:
Animate controls and elements inside windows. This removes the undesirable sliding selection box in excel. It will now jump like it does in XP
NOTE - 'Use visual styles on windows and buttons MUST be checked OFF for XP theme to be retained, as otherwise even though we have chosen Classic theme, the visual effects setting will bring the Win7 stlye windows and Taskbar!
You are viewpoint is only from the US market where phones appear to be free because of bundling by telecom operators. In the rest of the world, consumers use their choice to buy phones and most would laugh at a phone that does not allow changing of batteries.
1.Total Commander. Have been using since 20 years. Plus plug-ins such as DirList, Complex CD/DVD Burner
2. PasswordSafe
3. Notepad++
4. MS Office
5.IrfanView
6. jdk
7. WinDirStat
As you said, the 4.5 hours is on some standard load test. Typical business use for a tablet may not be such a high load. For example I bought an LG Optmius L9 mobile last month. GSMarena gave it a 43 hour endurance duration. But on my usage it lasts 5 days (reading, phone calls, SMS, passwordsafe), because I do not play video. These days power points are available in trains and planes as well. So really unless you are constantly walking, power is not a big issue. After all you can still plug it in for the duration you will not be working (eating and others). If someone wants to still watch/browse while they are eating, they need to get their minds checked.
That's crazy. In my country, the per unit rate increases (4-5 slab rates) as you consume more units which is what one wants to keep consumption under control. This is not a business where consumers must be given carrots to consume more!
You are not getting my perspective. Just as people who use printers at home are doing it for convenience and not cost effectiveness, there will be many reasons why you want to print out a physical object at home than buy it (most common use case - it is not available for purchase). I have a good audio system from 15 years back but its tape recorder wheel spoke is broken and I cannot find any replacement. The tape recorder is now fully useless. If only I had a 3D printer (or a neighbourhood shop had one)!
Think of a home laser/inkjet printer. Did people say that printers are useless and will cost more to print than printing presses and therefore a home printer is useless?
It may be slow, but is totally noise-free. When a machine is used to dig up and move soil, it makes such a humongous sound. If urgency is not the need, I would prefer manual labour for this reason.
Totally agree with you. I have few times touched live 230V AC in the house and you can feel your hand/fingers vibrating (at 50Hz). Everytime we are cycling through 0V, it is easy to pull back your hand from the wire. With DC, your hand will get stuck. In my opinion this itself should be the determining point for choosing AC. After all, as we progress, power consumption of devices will keep falling.
The problem is not so much of tax clauses and exceptions that boggle the mind. The true problem is that the tax laws are extremely difficult to read and understand. There will be so many modifications, exceptions scattered that the whole thing appears immensely complex. So if the authorities codify the laws using programmatic style such as IF THEN statements, it can then be readily converted into a authoritative program that every one can use. The amount of tax litigations will reduce dramatically - at least in my country, where the language used is old English such as "whereas, thereof, said... and paragraphs commonly run longer than a page!".
The problem with the current laws are even if you write a reliable program, the govt will not accept it as reliable - it will always say that the tax book is the final word. Whereas if we codify in a programmatic style (with sufficient grammar rules) - it could be compiled directly into a program that the govt itself can notify as a "standard".
1. Very low energy consumption because of metal to metal rolling friction. Car tyres bend to become a plane of rubber in contact with sticky tar causing very high friction. Yes, the packet switching analogy is nice and best for computers but not for people. Because people will use the car more and more. See the bad points below.
2. A thousand cars driven by thousand individuals has a far bigger probability of accident simply because 1000 minds are involved without any central oversight. Who knows what these minds are doing on the road. A train is centrally controlled with professional crew.
3. When you have a car and the road is free and there is parking space, you will use it to go the next street to buy milk. In effect we will use a hammer all the time for all the jobs because the hammer is easy to hold and use. The moment public transport has to be used, you will make a trade-off analysis and use it only when required. Saves the planet, saves your limbs from degeneration.
4. Trains uses far lesser space. Compare a 8 lane highway with a two-lane railway track. Not only do cars need lot of space while moving, they lot of space at both origin and destination. Since destination can be anywhere, you need lot of space everywhere. What a sheer waste of resources.
5. You can be a zombie in a car or enjoy relaxing and eating and sleeping and reading and listening in a train.
This Uniqugauge project in India is more than a decade old. Majority of the metre guage (exactly 1 metre wide) have now been converted to borad-guage (5 feet 6 inches). This has tremendously improved connectivity to both passengers and frieght across the country. There are no bogie changing or wheelset adjusting mechanisms in use anywhere here. The broadguage trains run much smoother and faster than the metre guage ones. The narrow guage tracks are mostly in use on the mountains. Only a handful narrow guage tracks on the plains are being converted to broadguage. Typically it takes 3-5 years for the convertsion to complete and for that duration no trains will run on that section. Quiet absurd really, blocking travel for years.
Thank you Ohga-san for the wonderful magic of letting me listen to pure music and sounds. I still go with my CDs and have no time for mp3s (other than work related recordings which are in mp3). Watching a CD reflecting brillant colours as I tilt it and then gently lay it into the CD tray gives me a feeling of holding the music that I am going to hear. What's a black box of a million mp3s? - it has no soul no body. It certainly does not create any such joy. Prior to CDs the only recorded media I had was cassette tapes - which frequently got entagled into the driver rollers then getting twisted and damaged, or the heads would become so smudgy it sounded as if all frequencies above 2KHz where non-existent on the media. Another aspect of CDs that most of us do not pay attention to is its abilitiy to be stored as an archiving (for personal use) medium. I still listen to CDs I first encountered in my life in 1992 (and that I purchased even before having any devide to play it). They are just as shiny, crystal clear and a joy to hold and play. Whenever the regular fungus (its hot and humid in my area) grows on the CD, I clean it with a hand soap and water, wipe with a soft cloth and then just let it dry for a minute. Not a trace of fungus or dirt! Whereas SDCards have abruptly been corrupted, hard-disks have suddenly developed disk errors. Give me CD anyday for preserving data.
I am an Indian living in India, am a rail fan and I can say that there are unfortunately no more steam locomotives in India except in 3-4 places (historic routes like Darjeeling mountain or Nilgiri mountain railways). I see more opportunities in Europe and USA to sight and travel in steam trains as there are many enthusiast supported lines there. None of the tracks here use water troughs. I have travelled in steam trains in India several years ago - but none of them used troughs.
Here in India, most cars have reversing horns. The moment you go into reverse gear, a musical bell starts (it has a far lower volume than a normal horn). Extremely effective. Especially if there are children behind the car that you cannot see in your rear view mirror.
I use PasswordSafe - open source - and have a copy on my Win mobile smartphone. So no more password rememebring issues. Just one passphrase to remember.
This is just another entrance test to sort out candidates. It is not an "IQ" test unless we us the term "IQ" as a general test.