What does it mean when she says she will continue to provide OLPC "at cost?" Does she (or her new company) do the actual manufacturing? If that's the case, it's very honourable. Or does she mean "a reasonable break even patent licensing cost," in which case it's a little "evil."
Was she hired by OLPC? Yet she retains all the patents for her work?
The incremental cost for any patent licensing is effectively "0". (Note, I said "incremental" cost. Yes, there's development effort put into it, which may or may not have been on OLPC's dime, not her's. But whether they make 100,000 or one billion OLPC's, any incremental cost for patent usage should be zero.)
I'm all for a profitable commercial version; I'd love to have a lower powered (and physically powered) laptop, for so many different purposes (web browsing, thin client, and so on). I love the idea, but I wouldn't want it to be at the expense of the original purpose of the project.
I often find that most local libraries don't have anything timely enough for my (generally technical) interests.
However, it is an incredible resource for younger children. Even in the day of video games, I found my kid under the age of 8 or so just *love* the library, and the generally well-stocked children's section. And where I find books a bit pricey, and worry about kids temporary interest in a given one, the library is perfect for letting them pick out something they like, and check it out. If they take to a specific book, I buy a copy.
And another neat aspect to it: I'm sure the manufacturing cost of the unit was lower than others, due to fewer buttons and simpler design. (It likely had a bit more logic inside to handle the functionality, but overall it was likely cheaper to produce than other models.) Initial design can make such a difference to all aspects of a product's delivery.
There's one example of user interface elegance that has stuck with me for decades, and I use it to remind myself of what's possible, and avoiding making things more complicated than necessary:
I've had telephone answering machines before; they typically had many buttons on them (rewind, stop, play, fast forward, erase, record) and tapes for incoming and outgoing, etc.. Quite complex, for the simple task of playing and recording a message.
But I bought one, which wasn't terribly inexpensive, that was clean and elegant looking, with *one* big visible button on the outside and one LED. On the side was a volume knob. And the amazing thing is that it was as functional as my prior more complicated machines.
When there was a message, the link blinked. Intuitive. You'd press the big button to hear the messages. Simple. To back up while playing a message, you simply held the big button down (not completely intuitive, but easy to learn/figure out or read in the manual). After playing the messages, the LED would blink quickly for a few seconds; you could then tap the big button to keep your messages, or do nothing to have it turf the messages. (Again, not necessarily intuitive, but trivial to learn/understand and use.) You could also record memos of your own by pressing and holding the button at any time. A lot of functionality built into one button, and not hard to use at all. Very clever.
You could stop it from answering by turning the volume knob all the way down until it clicks; fairly intuitive.
It had one microcassette; the answering message was recorded at the start, and it would record messages after that (fast forwarding as necessary for additional messages before recording). This microcassette was under an opague door on the top of the unit. Opening the door also revealed another smaller button. The single button inside paralleled the use of the outside button to a large degree, but for handling your answering message. Press and hold it to record your message (similar to the memo record of the outside big button). Tap it once to play/check your answering message, pressing/holding it to rewind during the message. Very elegant, yet quite functional.
The thing was a masterpiece of simplicity, elegance, understatement, functionality, and design.
Yes, answering machines are ancient technology now, but the thought that went into that "user interface" design continues to inspire me when I create web interfaces.
I'm a recent admitted Fanboi of Apple. Held off for years, but the unix-based OS X with its stability, semi-open-sourcedness, slick and friendly GUI, and nice hardware, finally won me over. I used to develop-on-linux/deploy-on-linux. Now I develop-on-OSX/deploy-on-linux. Works well.
Anyhow, I like Apple's stuff, in general.
And I recently played with the iPhone. A nice piece of design, a nice piece of hardware. And possibly they are honouring their deal with AT&T by thwarting unlocks with each point release. But continuing to do so, and *especially* nuking 3rd party apps, is really going to alienate themselves from the market in the long run. I think the stat is that more than half of the iPhones are sold without getting activated on AT&T, meaning people are either unlocking them for other carriers, or using them as overpriced iPod Touch's. Apple is going to shoot themselves in the foot if they keep pounding so hard on the 3rd party carriers and 3rd party apps. (And where I live, I couldn't get AT&T if I wanted to. If I could unlock the latest gen of iPhones, I'd buy one. But I can't, so I won't. And the nuking of 3rd party apps is scaring me away completely.)
Apple has time to change their course on this a bit, but I think they'll end up with another Newton on their hands if they don't lighten up.
Hopefully TFA is incorrect or incomplete in some way.
The Wiki article on it makes it sound more like a progressive brain disorder, with insomnia being one of the stages. That is, it sounds like the death is due to the progression of the disease, not *due* to the insomnia which occurs in one of the stages...
People have correctly pointed out that this is about the dynamic range and not to do with data compression. And I agree.
I think one of the problems is that more and more, people tend to listen to music as a less focused pass time than it used to be. No more putting on the headphones to listen to a Pink Floyd concept album start to finish, appreciating the highs and lows (both tone and volume-wise) in detail, as a work of art. (Or as Homer would say, "I stayed up listening to Queen... When I was seventeen..."
Now with the one-hit mass-produced crap, everything is aimed at blasting on the dance floor, or background noise in public or via headphones to drone out the world. Not for listening, but for distraction, out in public, in noisy, over stimulated environments. So yes, for those enviornments, cranking everything to a flat maximum loundess serves the purpose, sadly. In a noisy bar, quiet passages would just be perceived as silence, without range compression.
There are times when the dynamic range limiting is good; when I'm in the car, driving, there is background noise. And my Montana's stereo thankfully does some dynamic adjustment based upon speed; when I go fast and there's more road noise, it cranks it; when I slow down, it reduces volume. That's constructive dynamic range fiddling, unlike the production techniques talked about here.
I used to listen to whole albums that were amazing, getting chills down my spine at the beauty of the crafted work (in my case it's typically 60's and 70's stuff, but for others the same is true for classic, and other genres). I can't remember the last time an album came out like that (probably Fish's Vigil in Wildernes of Mirrors in '89 (highly recommended:). Wow, that was a long time ago. Without the quieter passages and the more dramatic louder parts, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive.
This seems sneaky to me. Remove controvesial stuff from the standard, but put it in an Annex, that MS will implement and people will rely upon left and right, so it will become a de-facto microsoft embrace-and-extend standard.
I really try to fight the kneejerk anti-microsoft sentiment around here, but lordy, all of their moves seem so calculated and evil. It's not just single actions, it's a pattern of actions. Humans are great at recognizing patterns. And even with good moves and bad moves, one can generally see a positive attitude behind Google, for example (some may disagree, but I think the general consensus is that they're not dastardly.) But with MS, every move seems like a piece of a puzzle showing a nasty, calculated, aggressive, anti-competitive entity. Everything seems consistent with that. The way the US rolled over on everything for political reasons is shameful. Hopefully the EU will right some of those wrongs, at least in part of the world.
I guess to try and find the bright side, one could say "at least it's documented" (without an exorbitant fee and crazy restrictions, like SMB et al.)
Dishwashers (washing machines, dryers, etc) are something not yet on the "total control" aspect of such products... but I dont even see a need for that other than the "because I can" factor... why load a dishwasher and then wait to get to work/a friend's to go online to tell it to turn on (again, other than the "because I can" factor)?
And there's more to it than that. I've seen more than one appliance meltdown in my day, and I've been glad I've been there to unplug them and take care of the problem. My girlfriend suffered a house fire from an electric dryer, and damn near had another one from an electric drill charger. I'm not a safety freak by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm generally of the opinion that pretty much house all household appliances should be *off* when you're not at home.
The only exceptions in my mind is a home security system, home monitoring (heat, water, etc.). The only thing I really think I'd like to control from elsewhere might be the heat (or A/C for your southern folk); if I'm unexpectedly away for a bit, it'd be nice to save on HVAC; similarly, if I'm coming home early, it'd be nice to have the heat (or A/C) kick in early for me. Other than that, spare the complexity; it's not worth it, and the added wiring/devices would only add to the already increased risk of fire from faulty devices running unattended.
Anyone else shocked to hear that Heathkit was still in business? I just thought they would have faded away with all the goodness like "Creative Computing" and other neato cool stuff of that generation.
Efston Science was another classic company, that still exists, but in my opinion only as a shadow of its former self. It's kits used to be *seriously* cool. The three stage water rocket was a classic. My favorite, though, was an optics kit, that let you build things from telescopes, up to an actual working SLR camera! Incredible. I would buy that kit again for my kids in a heartbeat if anyone offered it. No demand in the Nintendo generation, I guess.
My favorite Heathkit product was my first dot matrix printer, pre-Epson days. It was heavy, slow, screechingly loud, ugly print, and would automatically suspend now and then when it got dangerously hot (a normal part of its work cycle). But it worked, and worked, and worked... I remember when Epson came along and revolutionized things with lower cost, lightweight, quiet printers, with the supposed feature of "disposable print heads." (They were lightweight and removable, but I've never heard of anyone replacing one.)
"Fewer and fewer people believing infringing is wrong" is not the same as "not believing in IP." I believe in the concepts of intellectual property, very strongly. However, the MPIA, RIAA, etc., have made fair use and reasonable pricing and distribution of profits to artists into such an absurdity, people can easily rationalize copying.
I think most people would believe that artists and their associated support network should retain their rights to their music or other works. And if things were available at reasonable prices, with reasonable ability to archive and move to new media, then people would pay, respecting the rights of the owners.
But $20 for a CD with one formulatic pop song that's a bit catchy, and a bunch of filler, makes rationalizing copying a lot easier than it should be.
Isaac Asimov wrote about a power source like this in "I, Robot." There were stations in space that absorbed solar energy and transmitted it back to Earth. If the ray became out of align, or if a magnetic storm intercepted the ray on its way toward the receptacle on the ground, it would distort the energy causing severe damage to huge portions of the planet.
I'm sure this type of problem is addressd in the core design of the system. As a simple parallel: I had two way satellite internet, which involves Joe Schmoe like me being able to transmit from my roof to a satellite in space. Whoohoo, the damage I could do there!
Not. The transmitter is very fussy about when it can transmit; it has to be very precisely locked onto the satellite's carrier, with a strong signal, and minimal measured cross-polarization. If I were to point this at another satellite for some fun (or even move it slightly off exact alignment with the right satellite), it simply wouldn't transmit. I'm sure the megawatt energy transmitter in space would have a cutoff in milliseconds if it were detected it weren't perfectly aligned with the receiver. The receiver could simply send out a very narrow carrier (laser or radio) that the energy transmitter locks on; if that carrier isn't in its sights (sending a wonderfully specific encrypted validation/identification stream that can be verified, and not spoofed), then it simply doesn't transmit.
(Note, this isn't subject to the long ping times for stuff in space; the ground based carrier is transmitting constantly, and the space based energy thingy can stop its beam the instant it doesn't get that carrier. Also, its mentioned this system uses "bursts," which can provide further safety/validation/testing of the alignment before any energy is sent.)
One wonders what atmospheric conditions would do to the beam, although I guess it could poke a hole through clouds (and birds and planes:P) pretty easily.
These "optical telegraphs" really are just a (far) more primitive form of laser relays. Both modulate light (moving of flags, pulsing of a laser) to be received at the other end (by human eyeballs, or an electronic laser receiver). I once worked for a company with two offices in a town, and used a high speed laser link to connect the two lans. It worked surprirsingly well (except on very foggy days:().
Not necessarily stupidity. if I can see past the driver in front of me, I can make a better decision. I can see that he is simply adjusting speed to allow for a more reasonable space between him and the car in front. If I am stuck behind an SUV in my car, then I am not sure if his tap on the brake is about to turn into a full fledged stomp of the brakes, and I have to adjust, and possible harder that I need to. This becomes a cascading event.
Yes, it is stupidity (well, dangerous behaviour). If there's not enough room between you and the car in front of you, for you to stop when they slam on the brakes hard, then you're tailgating, plain and simple. There's a reason that the driver who rear-ends someone is in the wrong, period, no matter how quickly the person in front slammed on the brakes.
Give yourself enough room for the guy in front of you to do a hard stop, and you'll always be able to smoothly manage that standing wave "buffer" without constant stopping and acceleration.
I founded a large photo sharing site during the.COM boom. We didn't actively scan the photos for illegal content, otherwise we'd be responsible for the whole let (we were a provider, safe harbour and all that stuff).
However, whenever there was truly bad stuff on our site, it was reported to us, and we followed up on it, forwarding the info to the authorities as appropriate.
The best thing to happen about the whole multimillion dollar.com boom and bust thing with the tens of millions and hundred employees, was that a couple of years later (after the shutdown), I was contacted by the FBI to follow up on some info we reported long ago. I was flown to Kentucky to testify. This creep was in jail for fifteen years, state prison, for molesting children. Largely because of my detailed testimony, and the fact it was a federal wire crime, this guy was put away for life in a federal prison, no chance of parole.
All of the grief and ups and downs of the.COM rollercoaster are pretty much nothing as compared to the fact that we helped put away someone who harmed children, for life. (And I'm told, it probably won't be a very long life, in federal prison on those charges...)
Related to the story: I do agree privacy is important. Not yanking your hard drive before sending it in for service, in my opinion, pretty much voids your rights to privacy. It's not unreasonable to expect that the techs might end up looking at what your bringing in, at varying levels of details, on purpose, or by accident. If you're doing something highly illegal with any tool, don't take the tool in for service. Don't bring your unmodified fully automatic machine gun in for service, if it's illegal in your country. Duuuuhhhhh. But it's also been my experience through the photo sharing site, that the creeps who are into child porn, aren't the brightest folks in the world...
Oh yeah, and the three phase lines and the ground line are uninsulated, which is what allows this device to sneak power. They don't touch, so they don't short out. Birds (or workers) can touch on any of them, because there's no complete circuit. But if they touched two phases at the same time, or one of the phases and ground, then it's a 11 kilovolt zap. When you see downed power lines sparking on the ground, it's one of the top three phase lines touching the ground, and partially shorting out to it. In any case, stay clear of any of the wires:)
How much time does this thing require to spend on charging? The exposed powerlines it could latch onto are typicaly 11 kilovolts and up. It wouldn't require a lot of time to charge on those, so doesn it really need to diguise itself? Even if it looked like a pair of sneakers, the fact it flies in and out, might raise more suspicion than the look while charging. Also, the transformers required to take 11kv down to 220v for the house, aren't exactly dainty; how could this device step down the power with lightweight gear? (The power between the transformer and the home are in shielded cables, unlike the 11kv lines.)
FYI: In a typical power pole situation, you have three wires on top (in sort of a triangle config), and one part way down the pole. The top three are three different phases of the AC power, and the one part way down the pole is ground (you can see the occasional tap where the line is grounded to a stake in the ground). The step-down transformers for the home circuits tap into the ground, and one of the three phases, to give you 220v for several homes. (Factories and such will use all three phases for serious equipment.) Often on branch lines, only one of the three phases (and the ground) will be tapped off from the main line, to service some houses (with skinnier looking pole arrangements with only two wires). The fatter, insulated wires on the poles are cable and phone lines.
How did they manage to shrink a nuclear reactor to only two dimensions?
They're just keeping their design and deployment options flexible; they could actually make it 20x6x20000, bigger than a current reactor, while still meeting their promises to investors:)
Seriously, though, did anyone else expect something called "micro" to be a lot smaller than that? What will they call it when they can fit a reactor in a box the size of a cup of coffee? Oh well, still interesting.
The article refers to 40mb/sec, which is faster than the 5 to 10mb/sec the linked product will do. Other than speed, is there any advantage to the Intel offering?
Funny story: the only time I've *ever* seen anyone using an eBook (well, other than myself reading on my pda:), was on a plane from San Francisco. The fellow next to me was reading one; I asked about it. Turns out, he was president of the company that manufactured that brand of eBook. So I wouldn't say they're catching on like wildfire.
If I was Microsoft, I would design a new OS from the ground up, and commission VMWare or someone to include functionality for running "legacy/XP" programs in a VM. That is more or less the leap that Apple took in moving to OS/X. A completely new and better OS architecture, with existing apps running in a compatibility box. And they pulled it off again, successfully, I would argue, with the switch to x86. (PPC versions of Office, Adobe CS2, etc., run surprisingly well in Rosetta.) I agree, it would be a great way for MS to go, in moving forward.
Sadly, one thing that will likely stop them, is the one area where they have advantages due to a bit more low level native/high speed support: gaming. The only reason I use Windows at all these days is for gaming. And the raw power needed, and relatively lean access to the hardware, isn't well suited to emulation.
And it continues to be a weakness of the Mac, but one I can live without. Why does Unreal Tournament, for example, run soooo much faster when I boot my Macbook to windows, than running the native OS/X version. I wish Apple would make some strides on this front, and remove that one lingering weakness.
Well, one example was for my storage array, I had to pop down, do a bunch of mdadm, lvchange, etc., commands to get it up and mounted. Then I had to edit fstab to mount it, and have it automounted at boot. There might be some gui that would have done all that for me, but I couldn't find it. It was no big deal, and it was an advanced use that Joe Consumer wouldn't need, for sure. But on OS X, Disk Manager does this type of thing, the Disk Manager gui does all this stuff for you, much more easily.
Getting flash to work was problematic, too. The install just didn't sem to take for Opera. So I ended up manually copying the flash.so into the plugins directory. Ask Joe Consumer to put something in his browser's plugin directory, and you'll get a blank stare. (And then it still didn't work, some Opera/Gusty problem, as mentioned previously.)
I think it's that with OS X, the system was designed from the start so that everything could be done via the GUI. With Linux, it's more of a conversion job, where people are plugging holes, filling in things that need GUI's. There are going to be holes, and it's going to be a bit of an inconsistent patchwork of GUI's, designed by different groups. Thankfully, these holes are far fewer than before, and for a common user desktop, it's possibly "good enough." But with the number of times I've dropped to the command line because I couldn't find a GUI to do it, I have some concerns.
There may have been GUI's to do some of these things, but I couldn't find them, which is just as bad. And if I were to add software, I would have to use "Synaptic Package Manager" (which would probably scare away Joe user, "what's a synaptic?"; why not just call it "Add Software", keeping it obvious), possibly adding repositories by URL.
I'm not knocking Gutsy for the average desktop; I do think it's aweswome. And the average user who just browses the web and uses email, might be just fine. But comparing it to OS X, OS X still wins for completeness and friendliness, in my opinion.
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What does it mean when she says she will continue to provide OLPC "at cost?" Does she (or her new company) do the actual manufacturing? If that's the case, it's very honourable. Or does she mean "a reasonable break even patent licensing cost," in which case it's a little "evil."
Was she hired by OLPC? Yet she retains all the patents for her work?
The incremental cost for any patent licensing is effectively "0". (Note, I said "incremental" cost. Yes, there's development effort put into it, which may or may not have been on OLPC's dime, not her's. But whether they make 100,000 or one billion OLPC's, any incremental cost for patent usage should be zero.)
I'm all for a profitable commercial version; I'd love to have a lower powered (and physically powered) laptop, for so many different purposes (web browsing, thin client, and so on). I love the idea, but I wouldn't want it to be at the expense of the original purpose of the project.
I often find that most local libraries don't have anything timely enough for my (generally technical) interests.
However, it is an incredible resource for younger children. Even in the day of video games, I found my kid under the age of 8 or so just *love* the library, and the generally well-stocked children's section. And where I find books a bit pricey, and worry about kids temporary interest in a given one, the library is perfect for letting them pick out something they like, and check it out. If they take to a specific book, I buy a copy.
And another neat aspect to it: I'm sure the manufacturing cost of the unit was lower than others, due to fewer buttons and simpler design. (It likely had a bit more logic inside to handle the functionality, but overall it was likely cheaper to produce than other models.) Initial design can make such a difference to all aspects of a product's delivery.
There's one example of user interface elegance that has stuck with me for decades, and I use it to remind myself of what's possible, and avoiding making things more complicated than necessary:
I've had telephone answering machines before; they typically had many buttons on them (rewind, stop, play, fast forward, erase, record) and tapes for incoming and outgoing, etc.. Quite complex, for the simple task of playing and recording a message.
But I bought one, which wasn't terribly inexpensive, that was clean and elegant looking, with *one* big visible button on the outside and one LED. On the side was a volume knob. And the amazing thing is that it was as functional as my prior more complicated machines.
When there was a message, the link blinked. Intuitive. You'd press the big button to hear the messages. Simple. To back up while playing a message, you simply held the big button down (not completely intuitive, but easy to learn/figure out or read in the manual). After playing the messages, the LED would blink quickly for a few seconds; you could then tap the big button to keep your messages, or do nothing to have it turf the messages. (Again, not necessarily intuitive, but trivial to learn/understand and use.) You could also record memos of your own by pressing and holding the button at any time. A lot of functionality built into one button, and not hard to use at all. Very clever.
You could stop it from answering by turning the volume knob all the way down until it clicks; fairly intuitive.
It had one microcassette; the answering message was recorded at the start, and it would record messages after that (fast forwarding as necessary for additional messages before recording). This microcassette was under an opague door on the top of the unit. Opening the door also revealed another smaller button. The single button inside paralleled the use of the outside button to a large degree, but for handling your answering message. Press and hold it to record your message (similar to the memo record of the outside big button). Tap it once to play/check your answering message, pressing/holding it to rewind during the message. Very elegant, yet quite functional.
The thing was a masterpiece of simplicity, elegance, understatement, functionality, and design.
Yes, answering machines are ancient technology now, but the thought that went into that "user interface" design continues to inspire me when I create web interfaces.
I'm a recent admitted Fanboi of Apple. Held off for years, but the unix-based OS X with its stability, semi-open-sourcedness, slick and friendly GUI, and nice hardware, finally won me over. I used to develop-on-linux/deploy-on-linux. Now I develop-on-OSX/deploy-on-linux. Works well.
Anyhow, I like Apple's stuff, in general.
And I recently played with the iPhone. A nice piece of design, a nice piece of hardware. And possibly they are honouring their deal with AT&T by thwarting unlocks with each point release. But continuing to do so, and *especially* nuking 3rd party apps, is really going to alienate themselves from the market in the long run. I think the stat is that more than half of the iPhones are sold without getting activated on AT&T, meaning people are either unlocking them for other carriers, or using them as overpriced iPod Touch's. Apple is going to shoot themselves in the foot if they keep pounding so hard on the 3rd party carriers and 3rd party apps. (And where I live, I couldn't get AT&T if I wanted to. If I could unlock the latest gen of iPhones, I'd buy one. But I can't, so I won't. And the nuking of 3rd party apps is scaring me away completely.)
Apple has time to change their course on this a bit, but I think they'll end up with another Newton on their hands if they don't lighten up.
Hopefully TFA is incorrect or incomplete in some way.
The Wiki article on it makes it sound more like a progressive brain disorder, with insomnia being one of the stages. That is, it sounds like the death is due to the progression of the disease, not *due* to the insomnia which occurs in one of the stages...
People have correctly pointed out that this is about the dynamic range and not to do with data compression. And I agree.
:). Wow, that was a long time ago. Without the quieter passages and the more dramatic louder parts, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive.
I think one of the problems is that more and more, people tend to listen to music as a less focused pass time than it used to be. No more putting on the headphones to listen to a Pink Floyd concept album start to finish, appreciating the highs and lows (both tone and volume-wise) in detail, as a work of art. (Or as Homer would say, "I stayed up listening to Queen... When I was seventeen..."
Now with the one-hit mass-produced crap, everything is aimed at blasting on the dance floor, or background noise in public or via headphones to drone out the world. Not for listening, but for distraction, out in public, in noisy, over stimulated environments. So yes, for those enviornments, cranking everything to a flat maximum loundess serves the purpose, sadly. In a noisy bar, quiet passages would just be perceived as silence, without range compression.
There are times when the dynamic range limiting is good; when I'm in the car, driving, there is background noise. And my Montana's stereo thankfully does some dynamic adjustment based upon speed; when I go fast and there's more road noise, it cranks it; when I slow down, it reduces volume. That's constructive dynamic range fiddling, unlike the production techniques talked about here.
I used to listen to whole albums that were amazing, getting chills down my spine at the beauty of the crafted work (in my case it's typically 60's and 70's stuff, but for others the same is true for classic, and other genres). I can't remember the last time an album came out like that (probably Fish's Vigil in Wildernes of Mirrors in '89 (highly recommended
Sigh.
This seems sneaky to me. Remove controvesial stuff from the standard, but put it in an Annex, that MS will implement and people will rely upon left and right, so it will become a de-facto microsoft embrace-and-extend standard.
I really try to fight the kneejerk anti-microsoft sentiment around here, but lordy, all of their moves seem so calculated and evil. It's not just single actions, it's a pattern of actions. Humans are great at recognizing patterns. And even with good moves and bad moves, one can generally see a positive attitude behind Google, for example (some may disagree, but I think the general consensus is that they're not dastardly.) But with MS, every move seems like a piece of a puzzle showing a nasty, calculated, aggressive, anti-competitive entity. Everything seems consistent with that. The way the US rolled over on everything for political reasons is shameful. Hopefully the EU will right some of those wrongs, at least in part of the world.
I guess to try and find the bright side, one could say "at least it's documented" (without an exorbitant fee and crazy restrictions, like SMB et al.)
For far less cost than a home automation system, you can get a silent dishwasher :)
And there's more to it than that. I've seen more than one appliance meltdown in my day, and I've been glad I've been there to unplug them and take care of the problem. My girlfriend suffered a house fire from an electric dryer, and damn near had another one from an electric drill charger. I'm not a safety freak by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm generally of the opinion that pretty much house all household appliances should be *off* when you're not at home.
The only exceptions in my mind is a home security system, home monitoring (heat, water, etc.). The only thing I really think I'd like to control from elsewhere might be the heat (or A/C for your southern folk); if I'm unexpectedly away for a bit, it'd be nice to save on HVAC; similarly, if I'm coming home early, it'd be nice to have the heat (or A/C) kick in early for me. Other than that, spare the complexity; it's not worth it, and the added wiring/devices would only add to the already increased risk of fire from faulty devices running unattended.
WillItGrind.com... Anyone got a spare iPhone to donate?
Anyone else shocked to hear that Heathkit was still in business? I just thought they would have faded away with all the goodness like "Creative Computing" and other neato cool stuff of that generation.
:)
Efston Science was another classic company, that still exists, but in my opinion only as a shadow of its former self. It's kits used to be *seriously* cool. The three stage water rocket was a classic. My favorite, though, was an optics kit, that let you build things from telescopes, up to an actual working SLR camera! Incredible. I would buy that kit again for my kids in a heartbeat if anyone offered it. No demand in the Nintendo generation, I guess.
My favorite Heathkit product was my first dot matrix printer, pre-Epson days. It was heavy, slow, screechingly loud, ugly print, and would automatically suspend now and then when it got dangerously hot (a normal part of its work cycle). But it worked, and worked, and worked... I remember when Epson came along and revolutionized things with lower cost, lightweight, quiet printers, with the supposed feature of "disposable print heads." (They were lightweight and removable, but I've never heard of anyone replacing one.)
Ahhh, the good old days.
"Fewer and fewer people believing infringing is wrong" is not the same as "not believing in IP." I believe in the concepts of intellectual property, very strongly. However, the MPIA, RIAA, etc., have made fair use and reasonable pricing and distribution of profits to artists into such an absurdity, people can easily rationalize copying.
I think most people would believe that artists and their associated support network should retain their rights to their music or other works. And if things were available at reasonable prices, with reasonable ability to archive and move to new media, then people would pay, respecting the rights of the owners.
But $20 for a CD with one formulatic pop song that's a bit catchy, and a bunch of filler, makes rationalizing copying a lot easier than it should be.
I'm sure this type of problem is addressd in the core design of the system. As a simple parallel: I had two way satellite internet, which involves Joe Schmoe like me being able to transmit from my roof to a satellite in space. Whoohoo, the damage I could do there!
Not. The transmitter is very fussy about when it can transmit; it has to be very precisely locked onto the satellite's carrier, with a strong signal, and minimal measured cross-polarization. If I were to point this at another satellite for some fun (or even move it slightly off exact alignment with the right satellite), it simply wouldn't transmit. I'm sure the megawatt energy transmitter in space would have a cutoff in milliseconds if it were detected it weren't perfectly aligned with the receiver. The receiver could simply send out a very narrow carrier (laser or radio) that the energy transmitter locks on; if that carrier isn't in its sights (sending a wonderfully specific encrypted validation/identification stream that can be verified, and not spoofed), then it simply doesn't transmit.
(Note, this isn't subject to the long ping times for stuff in space; the ground based carrier is transmitting constantly, and the space based energy thingy can stop its beam the instant it doesn't get that carrier. Also, its mentioned this system uses "bursts," which can provide further safety/validation/testing of the alignment before any energy is sent.)
One wonders what atmospheric conditions would do to the beam, although I guess it could poke a hole through clouds (and birds and planes
These "optical telegraphs" really are just a (far) more primitive form of laser relays. Both modulate light (moving of flags, pulsing of a laser) to be received at the other end (by human eyeballs, or an electronic laser receiver). I once worked for a company with two offices in a town, and used a high speed laser link to connect the two lans. It worked surprirsingly well (except on very foggy days :().
Yes, it is stupidity (well, dangerous behaviour). If there's not enough room between you and the car in front of you, for you to stop when they slam on the brakes hard, then you're tailgating, plain and simple. There's a reason that the driver who rear-ends someone is in the wrong, period, no matter how quickly the person in front slammed on the brakes.
Give yourself enough room for the guy in front of you to do a hard stop, and you'll always be able to smoothly manage that standing wave "buffer" without constant stopping and acceleration.
I founded a large photo sharing site during the .COM boom. We didn't actively scan the photos for illegal content, otherwise we'd be responsible for the whole let (we were a provider, safe harbour and all that stuff).
.com boom and bust thing with the tens of millions and hundred employees, was that a couple of years later (after the shutdown), I was contacted by the FBI to follow up on some info we reported long ago. I was flown to Kentucky to testify. This creep was in jail for fifteen years, state prison, for molesting children. Largely because of my detailed testimony, and the fact it was a federal wire crime, this guy was put away for life in a federal prison, no chance of parole.
.COM rollercoaster are pretty much nothing as compared to the fact that we helped put away someone who harmed children, for life. (And I'm told, it probably won't be a very long life, in federal prison on those charges...)
However, whenever there was truly bad stuff on our site, it was reported to us, and we followed up on it, forwarding the info to the authorities as appropriate.
The best thing to happen about the whole multimillion dollar
All of the grief and ups and downs of the
Related to the story: I do agree privacy is important. Not yanking your hard drive before sending it in for service, in my opinion, pretty much voids your rights to privacy. It's not unreasonable to expect that the techs might end up looking at what your bringing in, at varying levels of details, on purpose, or by accident. If you're doing something highly illegal with any tool, don't take the tool in for service. Don't bring your unmodified fully automatic machine gun in for service, if it's illegal in your country. Duuuuhhhhh. But it's also been my experience through the photo sharing site, that the creeps who are into child porn, aren't the brightest folks in the world...
Oh yeah, and the three phase lines and the ground line are uninsulated, which is what allows this device to sneak power. They don't touch, so they don't short out. Birds (or workers) can touch on any of them, because there's no complete circuit. But if they touched two phases at the same time, or one of the phases and ground, then it's a 11 kilovolt zap. When you see downed power lines sparking on the ground, it's one of the top three phase lines touching the ground, and partially shorting out to it. In any case, stay clear of any of the wires :)
How much time does this thing require to spend on charging? The exposed powerlines it could latch onto are typicaly 11 kilovolts and up. It wouldn't require a lot of time to charge on those, so doesn it really need to diguise itself? Even if it looked like a pair of sneakers, the fact it flies in and out, might raise more suspicion than the look while charging. Also, the transformers required to take 11kv down to 220v for the house, aren't exactly dainty; how could this device step down the power with lightweight gear? (The power between the transformer and the home are in shielded cables, unlike the 11kv lines.)
FYI: In a typical power pole situation, you have three wires on top (in sort of a triangle config), and one part way down the pole. The top three are three different phases of the AC power, and the one part way down the pole is ground (you can see the occasional tap where the line is grounded to a stake in the ground). The step-down transformers for the home circuits tap into the ground, and one of the three phases, to give you 220v for several homes. (Factories and such will use all three phases for serious equipment.) Often on branch lines, only one of the three phases (and the ground) will be tapped off from the main line, to service some houses (with skinnier looking pole arrangements with only two wires). The fatter, insulated wires on the poles are cable and phone lines.
They're just keeping their design and deployment options flexible; they could actually make it 20x6x20000, bigger than a current reactor, while still meeting their promises to investors :)
Seriously, though, did anyone else expect something called "micro" to be a lot smaller than that? What will they call it when they can fit a reactor in a box the size of a cup of coffee? Oh well, still interesting.
I find your ideas intruiging, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
:)
Honestly, I do
6GB for $100, a lot smaller than a penny:
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/ProductInfo.aspx?ID=2447
The article refers to 40mb/sec, which is faster than the 5 to 10mb/sec the linked product will do. Other than speed, is there any advantage to the Intel offering?
Funny story: the only time I've *ever* seen anyone using an eBook (well, other than myself reading on my pda :), was on a plane from San Francisco. The fellow next to me was reading one; I asked about it. Turns out, he was president of the company that manufactured that brand of eBook. So I wouldn't say they're catching on like wildfire.
If I was Microsoft, I would design a new OS from the ground up, and commission VMWare or someone to include functionality for running "legacy/XP" programs in a VM.
That is more or less the leap that Apple took in moving to OS/X. A completely new and better OS architecture, with existing apps running in a compatibility box. And they pulled it off again, successfully, I would argue, with the switch to x86. (PPC versions of Office, Adobe CS2, etc., run surprisingly well in Rosetta.) I agree, it would be a great way for MS to go, in moving forward.
Sadly, one thing that will likely stop them, is the one area where they have advantages due to a bit more low level native/high speed support: gaming. The only reason I use Windows at all these days is for gaming. And the raw power needed, and relatively lean access to the hardware, isn't well suited to emulation.
And it continues to be a weakness of the Mac, but one I can live without. Why does Unreal Tournament, for example, run soooo much faster when I boot my Macbook to windows, than running the native OS/X version. I wish Apple would make some strides on this front, and remove that one lingering weakness.
Well, one example was for my storage array, I had to pop down, do a bunch of mdadm, lvchange, etc., commands to get it up and mounted. Then I had to edit fstab to mount it, and have it automounted at boot. There might be some gui that would have done all that for me, but I couldn't find it. It was no big deal, and it was an advanced use that Joe Consumer wouldn't need, for sure. But on OS X, Disk Manager does this type of thing, the Disk Manager gui does all this stuff for you, much more easily.
.so into the plugins directory. Ask Joe Consumer to put something in his browser's plugin directory, and you'll get a blank stare. (And then it still didn't work, some Opera/Gusty problem, as mentioned previously.)
Getting flash to work was problematic, too. The install just didn't sem to take for Opera. So I ended up manually copying the flash
I think it's that with OS X, the system was designed from the start so that everything could be done via the GUI. With Linux, it's more of a conversion job, where people are plugging holes, filling in things that need GUI's. There are going to be holes, and it's going to be a bit of an inconsistent patchwork of GUI's, designed by different groups. Thankfully, these holes are far fewer than before, and for a common user desktop, it's possibly "good enough." But with the number of times I've dropped to the command line because I couldn't find a GUI to do it, I have some concerns.
There may have been GUI's to do some of these things, but I couldn't find them, which is just as bad. And if I were to add software, I would have to use "Synaptic Package Manager" (which would probably scare away Joe user, "what's a synaptic?"; why not just call it "Add Software", keeping it obvious), possibly adding repositories by URL.
I'm not knocking Gutsy for the average desktop; I do think it's aweswome. And the average user who just browses the web and uses email, might be just fine. But comparing it to OS X, OS X still wins for completeness and friendliness, in my opinion.