For a datacenter, I imagine they'll be using grid and solar together. What the solar can't supply, the grid does instead. That way you get the solar plant running continually at capacity, but aren't held back by the irregularity of weather.
There will be curriculum issues too. If it's anything like the UK curriculum, all the texts are written just assuming Windows and Office - every instruction to 'click here,' every screenshot of a dialog box. It'll need extensive rewriting.
Mythbusters tried the mud trick. It works... for about a minute if you use enough mud. As soon as the mud warms to skin temperature, it's quite useless. Still makes effective visual camo though. The only material they found effective against thermal infrared was glass, and it's not very practical to carry a glass box with you.
The US? Oh, yes. There are some economies so powerful that if they failed, the effect on international trade could drag the whole world down. The US is one.
The question was over the possibility of the government being *unable* to pay it's debts, as opposed to merely being unwilling and defaulting. Deliberate hyperinflation is a stupid option, yes - but it is still an option, which means the government is always able to pay. It's possible at the time the appropriate politicians will be people willing to admit that defaulting may be an unappealing option, but it's still better than hyperinflation.
Although if the US government did default, I imagine that would cause the value of the dollar to fall a fair bit too.
In the absence of a government and it's police force, might makes right. I'd expect to see first survivalist camps sometimes fighting each other, then forming alliances for mutual defence each led by a warlord.
There can never come a day when the US government cannot pay it's debts, because no matter how bad things get they always have the Option of Last Resort: Print as much money as they need. The resulting inflation would be so severe it'd erode trust in the currency and initiate the hyperinflation death spiral and lead to the most serious global economic crisis of all time... which is why it hasn't even been considered as a serious option. But it's there. Should the situation ever become so desperate that economic suicide is the only way out.
Like a head-mount screen compact enough to wear and high-res enough to be useful? That could have real applications in the fields of porn-viewing-in-public and support team rapid response.
Cancer occurs with greatest probability in regions of very high cell division. Stomach lining, gonads, skin. Cancer in regions without lots of dividing cells is comparatively rare, with the odd exception of brain cancer (About 7/100,000). There isn't a whole lot of dividing going on in the wrists, just the baseline level that keeps the muscles healthy and the epidermis replaced.
You can't really fault Apple on the build quality of their computers. You can fault them for the computers being hard to upgrade, overpriced, for getting screwed if you try to buy upgrade from Apple. But actually building the computers out of quality parts, well assembled and running very reliably? They do that well. And when you're paying twice as much as you would for an equivilent spec PC, I should hope so too.
Look into the Asus Transformer. It's specs and price (if you get the dock) are about the same as the iPad2. Runs Android. I've been happily using it as a e-reader since I got it, handles thousand-page PDFs no problem. Nice big screen, yet light enough to hold comfortably. Also good for watching Friendship is Magic on the train and getting strange looks from other passengers. I even put it in a watertight plastic bag to read in the bath. It's about as good as you're going to get right now for a high-end tablet as an e-reader.
You can get almost there with some of the Android tablets. They can run unsigned applications without registering or paying a fee... but you don't get root access, and need to use some form of exploit to gain it, a practice that Google seems to be willing to turn a blind eye to. You do need to beware of the manufacturer's own tricks, as they sometimes use things like putting the OS image in read-only flash to prevent the user from uninstalling the bundled crap they get paid to install.
The current business situation just isn't conducive to a PC-like, do-as-you-wish tablet.
No, but not making enough on the first production run, deliberatly running out and then ramping up production *is* a good way. It builds hype. People are natural followers - if they see a product is so hugely popular it's out of stock, they want it all the more. Then it's just a matter of working out the optimal time to feed this pent-up demand. Wait too long, and they'll go to your competitor.
I was refering to your suggestion that OEMs could have agreements with, say, RedHat. To get status quo would be a simple matter of a switch to disable signing, and that is what all the fuss is about: There is no requirement this switch be included. It's a move away from the current situation where a user may install whatever OS they wish and towards a situation where OEMs may generously choose to grant this privilege if they decide it's in their best interests.
So all the OEM need to do is achieve an agreement with every single non-microsoft OS vendor around, including the teams developing all the obscure ones like Plan 9 and specialised linux distros, and we'll finally be back to where we are today.
Seamless visual experience I would guess means an Apple-style boot: You press the button, the screen goes white, Windows logo appears, desktop loads. Clean, tidy, reassuring for the non-technical user without a screen of intimidating text they can't interpret. But often a real headache for the techies, who need to see those pages of white-on-black the BIOS shows to diagnose startup issues. I can only speculate, but that does seem to be the way MS is heading, with their revamped less-informative BSOD in Windows 8.
I've seen some people speculate that MS doesn't actually want the Skype service at all, but wants it's technology and patents to improve their XBox voice chat and to design new features for future Windows Phone versions.
There is Freenet, but a project on Freenet will be inaccessible to anyone but other Freenet users. It's the hangout of the extreme paranoids. A few 'Government is coming to silence me' conspiracy theorists, quite a lot of pirates, some religious people worried the Antichrist will come after them when he takes power, some crypto-anarchists who just want to support the network (It's far less risky than running a TOR exit node) and probably a few pedophiles lurking in the shadows. It is just about untraceable though - it's take a major government operation monitoring nodes all over the world to track someone down on it. Easier to just trick them into opening a trap link.
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For a datacenter, I imagine they'll be using grid and solar together. What the solar can't supply, the grid does instead. That way you get the solar plant running continually at capacity, but aren't held back by the irregularity of weather.
Still, not even close to the two usually considered ultimate stupidity warnings.
On a bottle of disinfectant: "Avoid contact with brain."
On a chainsaw: "Do not stop chain with hands or genitals."
There will be curriculum issues too. If it's anything like the UK curriculum, all the texts are written just assuming Windows and Office - every instruction to 'click here,' every screenshot of a dialog box. It'll need extensive rewriting.
I like the Superman cape toy warning: "WARNING: Cape does not enable user to fly."
Bragging rights.
Mythbusters tried the mud trick. It works... for about a minute if you use enough mud. As soon as the mud warms to skin temperature, it's quite useless. Still makes effective visual camo though. The only material they found effective against thermal infrared was glass, and it's not very practical to carry a glass box with you.
If those actually did block all IR emission, you'd toast. Proper thermal camo can't be done without a cooling system.
The US? Oh, yes. There are some economies so powerful that if they failed, the effect on international trade could drag the whole world down. The US is one.
The question was over the possibility of the government being *unable* to pay it's debts, as opposed to merely being unwilling and defaulting. Deliberate hyperinflation is a stupid option, yes - but it is still an option, which means the government is always able to pay. It's possible at the time the appropriate politicians will be people willing to admit that defaulting may be an unappealing option, but it's still better than hyperinflation.
Although if the US government did default, I imagine that would cause the value of the dollar to fall a fair bit too.
In the absence of a government and it's police force, might makes right. I'd expect to see first survivalist camps sometimes fighting each other, then forming alliances for mutual defence each led by a warlord.
Third time. Global population growth has gone negative twice before - once during the last ice age, once when the Black Death hit Europe.
War is very expensive.
There can never come a day when the US government cannot pay it's debts, because no matter how bad things get they always have the Option of Last Resort: Print as much money as they need. The resulting inflation would be so severe it'd erode trust in the currency and initiate the hyperinflation death spiral and lead to the most serious global economic crisis of all time... which is why it hasn't even been considered as a serious option. But it's there. Should the situation ever become so desperate that economic suicide is the only way out.
Like a head-mount screen compact enough to wear and high-res enough to be useful? That could have real applications in the fields of porn-viewing-in-public and support team rapid response.
Cancer occurs with greatest probability in regions of very high cell division. Stomach lining, gonads, skin. Cancer in regions without lots of dividing cells is comparatively rare, with the odd exception of brain cancer (About 7/100,000). There isn't a whole lot of dividing going on in the wrists, just the baseline level that keeps the muscles healthy and the epidermis replaced.
You can't really fault Apple on the build quality of their computers. You can fault them for the computers being hard to upgrade, overpriced, for getting screwed if you try to buy upgrade from Apple. But actually building the computers out of quality parts, well assembled and running very reliably? They do that well. And when you're paying twice as much as you would for an equivilent spec PC, I should hope so too.
Look into the Asus Transformer. It's specs and price (if you get the dock) are about the same as the iPad2. Runs Android. I've been happily using it as a e-reader since I got it, handles thousand-page PDFs no problem. Nice big screen, yet light enough to hold comfortably. Also good for watching Friendship is Magic on the train and getting strange looks from other passengers. I even put it in a watertight plastic bag to read in the bath. It's about as good as you're going to get right now for a high-end tablet as an e-reader.
You can get almost there with some of the Android tablets. They can run unsigned applications without registering or paying a fee... but you don't get root access, and need to use some form of exploit to gain it, a practice that Google seems to be willing to turn a blind eye to. You do need to beware of the manufacturer's own tricks, as they sometimes use things like putting the OS image in read-only flash to prevent the user from uninstalling the bundled crap they get paid to install.
The current business situation just isn't conducive to a PC-like, do-as-you-wish tablet.
I think the Classic was more fun.
No, but not making enough on the first production run, deliberatly running out and then ramping up production *is* a good way. It builds hype. People are natural followers - if they see a product is so hugely popular it's out of stock, they want it all the more. Then it's just a matter of working out the optimal time to feed this pent-up demand. Wait too long, and they'll go to your competitor.
I was refering to your suggestion that OEMs could have agreements with, say, RedHat. To get status quo would be a simple matter of a switch to disable signing, and that is what all the fuss is about: There is no requirement this switch be included. It's a move away from the current situation where a user may install whatever OS they wish and towards a situation where OEMs may generously choose to grant this privilege if they decide it's in their best interests.
So all the OEM need to do is achieve an agreement with every single non-microsoft OS vendor around, including the teams developing all the obscure ones like Plan 9 and specialised linux distros, and we'll finally be back to where we are today.
Seamless visual experience I would guess means an Apple-style boot: You press the button, the screen goes white, Windows logo appears, desktop loads. Clean, tidy, reassuring for the non-technical user without a screen of intimidating text they can't interpret. But often a real headache for the techies, who need to see those pages of white-on-black the BIOS shows to diagnose startup issues. I can only speculate, but that does seem to be the way MS is heading, with their revamped less-informative BSOD in Windows 8.
I've seen some people speculate that MS doesn't actually want the Skype service at all, but wants it's technology and patents to improve their XBox voice chat and to design new features for future Windows Phone versions.
There is Freenet, but a project on Freenet will be inaccessible to anyone but other Freenet users. It's the hangout of the extreme paranoids. A few 'Government is coming to silence me' conspiracy theorists, quite a lot of pirates, some religious people worried the Antichrist will come after them when he takes power, some crypto-anarchists who just want to support the network (It's far less risky than running a TOR exit node) and probably a few pedophiles lurking in the shadows. It is just about untraceable though - it's take a major government operation monitoring nodes all over the world to track someone down on it. Easier to just trick them into opening a trap link.