Its pretty awesome from what I've gathered in the past 2 minutes of reading their site. Its a tiny ARM based Linux PC designed to teach programming. Its only $25! Think of it as an unofficial spinoff of OLPC, instead its OPCPN (one personal computer per nerd). Although, it would have been helpful to put a link to their site or at least a 5 word description of what it is in the summary instead of a link to a known scamming site in Russia.
On the other side, the update to iOS 4 for the 3G phones is what convinced 2 of my friends to buy the iphone 4. That is, because the update made their phones unusable. Good news for apple though.
The thing is, by the time the device is able to browse the web and run decent apps, it'll be able to do 90% of the other stuff people buy tablets for. So before you start selling it, make sure your software will cripple it and lock it down.
show that they can do it safely and repeatedly with a human being.
Thats exactly what they are doing step by step. You gotta walk before you can run. They've had several successful launches and are working toward their goal very successfully, especially given the difficulty of the task. Haven't you ever produced a schedule for work? Or do you just keep your boss out of the loop for 6 months and just show up one day with the final product?
About the content providers...People are bitching now about a $6 price bump but whats really gonna suck is when wall street freaks out and decides to bankrupt Netflix. Then people will long for the good old days when they didn't have to pay $7 for Disney stuff, $6 for NBC, $8 for FOX $11 for Starz, $30 for showtime, $35 for HBO, etc, etc.
I was told at one point in the company's history, our biggest source of income were tax credits from the Government of Canada.
Was that time the first year or so? Many tech companies go the first couple years on government grants alone. What private investor with reasonable funds would risk their money on something that's not guaranteed to return 11% in Q3? I actually think its one of the best things the government does. Sure there is favoritism and corruption but we should try (however impossible it may sound) to fix that, not cut R&D spending.
It's shameful that the media coverage is merely a flashback back to 9/11, and I here nothing about the subsequent fear, paranoia, and loss of freedoms that have engulfed the country.
That's because THE 9/11 happened ten years ago TODAY. Of course that's what the major networks are going to focus on. Plus there are huge events full of various dignitaries which need coverage in the election cycle. If you desire, you can find additional objectivity on several NPR pieces that have been running the past few weeks. Watch fox or cnn to see exactly what you'd expect or check out the NPR story on the CTU in the Mall of America (yes, counter terrorism in Minneapolis) if you want to see how everything's gone down the shitter.
I've found the REAL reason costs are going down. Say your camera, ipod, psp, cellphone, smartphone, etc all take about 2 watts to run. So if you combine them you go from 8 watts to 2. Great! but if before you used each device 1 hour a day, you now use your replacement (smartphone) 4 hours a day so you still end up with 8 watt hours. To put that in perspective, I used 900 kWh last month. Phone charging would account for 0.02% of that. Probably 70% of that was the A/C because..... my girlfriend just moved in. Last year it was 500 kWh. By far the largest difference is more efficient heating/cooling. So if you extend my anecdote across the general population, that means that the higher divorce rate is allowing for less use of heating/cooling in guy's houses. Cause the girls always move back to apartments where economies of scale make it easier. Or maybe HVAC/appliances/TVs are just getting more efficient and people have no space to put a 5th 42" LCD.
And most of me is thinking that this is a massive lawyer bandwagon that's the new in thing to make easy billable hours. Tons of discovery for companies with deep pockets and everyone settles out of court so you never actually have to convince anyone of anything...except the chance you could wipe your opponent off the map. This one (like most of the US) is for the lawyers.
How are you NOT impressed? 6 years of google maps and you automatically assume we have video access to the entire universe down to 1 meter? This is about equivalent to the best public satellite imagery you can get today...but its on the MOON! And they did it for about $500mil. To put it in perspective with a fun comparison, $500M would buy you about 0.0014% of Apple's stock. And no they aren't looking 40 years into the past, they are looking 4 BILLION years into the past. This is all about figuring out why were here and who else might be out there. Why do the naysayers always get modded up?
Well its about fucking time the "vocal minority" is shouting for something I think is worthwhile. Just give me free access to my gadget and then the "VM" can go back to forcing schools to teach creationism.
I think I'll survive without having access to 1000 fart apps or 1000 sudoku apps or 1000 poorly done versions of the 20 best ideas which this thing probably has already. Most everything you'd really need can be done in a browser (which this has). If its netflix or streaming media integration or home automation you want, then you have to pay for that value. That will be at least $400 (if I'm not mistaken) for a decent android tablet. But if you just want an e-reader or web/email browser, $99 is a smoking deal any way you slice it. (This coming from an android fanboy)
Android fanboy here...If you read the story you'll find its an android tablet without touch screen support. CM also said they intend to take their time once they get the necessary hardware (which they don't have yet). Then you have to load android without bricking it. However, the touchpad is also a WebOS tablet with touch, web, email, etc... which is a good enough reason to buy it for $99. Who cares if it doesn't have 5000 fart apps and 10000 justin bieber wallpapers in the app store? As for future support/upgrades, there will be something new out in 2 years that you'll get anyway. This is a plenty great value even without android.
Its already a superb value for the money. There is a quite competent OS preloaded and it costs less than most monster cables, let alone any other tablet!
I work for a large publicly traded corporation. The priority list goes like this: Shareholders, Customers, Employees. So if they increase the perceived value of the company, they are doing their jobs in looking out for the #1 priority so they do give a shit, just not about anything else. In HP's case I'm guessing someone "ran the numbers" and got x% greater profit margin in corporate software over corporate hardware so the board jumped on it like a college basketball player jumping into his team mates during the home game introductions. Then because they were so smart everyone gave themselves raises and high fives like a college basket ball player high five-ing his team mates during the home game introductions. In summary who cares about HP, how long till midnight madness?
Dude if you don't want a pen pal don't write back. If you think you'll never see them then who cares? If they WERE interested they'd write YOU back asking why you didn't write and thats when you say lets get together for "a spot of tea" or whatever you do with your "pounds" (sorry couldn't resist). If you want to meet someone then tell them. If they don't want to meet you, forget about them and move on cause it wasn't going to work anyway. In other news, welcome to 99% of the conversations you'll ever have with the opposite sex. The good news is, it only has to work out once so over a lifetime your odds are pretty good.
Hate to break it to you but "what works" will be different for each person. You're just going to have to figure it out from scratch every single time. But that's where the fun is right? Good luck!
Its not about changing who you are. Its about displaying basic human competence to get past the first few filters to actually meet someone to finally get a chance to show them who you are. If "who you are" can be adequately described in an email that says "whuzz up" you should find a hobby. Even that won't change who you cause you'll hopefully like the hobby and maybe even have something to talk about. Which actually lets you be MORE of who you are. Unless, at your core, you as a person above all else are a lame email writer...don't write lame emails. (and yes, those described in the article are lame emails)
Maybe some google engineer on their 20% time will finally figure out how to shut off the freakin hard drives when nothing is scheduled and I push the off button.
So now that Google has all of Motorola's patents on 2G,3G,4G, (the hardware side) and apple has all those patents on user interface (software side), are we going to be seeing an epic east Texas showdown that results in every new smartphone requiring TWO huge additional licensing fees getting passed on to the consumer?
At least they actually manufacture SOMETHING (albeit in China). I'd prefer someone actually doing something tangible being worth a lot of money over someone who knows how to move decimal places and bend regulations (ala goldman sachs, etc).
With the new pricing coming out from t-mobile, I would absolutely switch to them from Verizon...if only I knew they weren't going to be bought by AT&T in 6 months.
Welp, speaking of the devil, advance circuits has great rates for all of their capabilities. For 2 layers without soldermask you can get a run for under $50. If that's still too much but you can wait a month or so, Sparkfun runs something called batchpcb.com. If you only want one board, they will collect other user's boards into one big file and do a run for dirt cheap.
Most US fab shops don't even look at your boards before building them.
That's because they have computers to check your boards. Most major board houses have online submission and DRC checks. 4pcb (aka advance circuits) usually gets you the files back within 30 minutes complete with.pdf printouts of each layer along with a quote for every conceivable quantity and delivery schedule. And in case anyone needs some anecdotal evidence, every board house I've used (big and small) has called me at least once to clear up some issues with my boards.
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Its pretty awesome from what I've gathered in the past 2 minutes of reading their site. Its a tiny ARM based Linux PC designed to teach programming. Its only $25! Think of it as an unofficial spinoff of OLPC, instead its OPCPN (one personal computer per nerd). Although, it would have been helpful to put a link to their site or at least a 5 word description of what it is in the summary instead of a link to a known scamming site in Russia.
On the other side, the update to iOS 4 for the 3G phones is what convinced 2 of my friends to buy the iphone 4. That is, because the update made their phones unusable. Good news for apple though.
The thing is, by the time the device is able to browse the web and run decent apps, it'll be able to do 90% of the other stuff people buy tablets for. So before you start selling it, make sure your software will cripple it and lock it down.
show that they can do it safely and repeatedly with a human being.
Thats exactly what they are doing step by step. You gotta walk before you can run. They've had several successful launches and are working toward their goal very successfully, especially given the difficulty of the task. Haven't you ever produced a schedule for work? Or do you just keep your boss out of the loop for 6 months and just show up one day with the final product?
About the content providers...People are bitching now about a $6 price bump but whats really gonna suck is when wall street freaks out and decides to bankrupt Netflix. Then people will long for the good old days when they didn't have to pay $7 for Disney stuff, $6 for NBC, $8 for FOX $11 for Starz, $30 for showtime, $35 for HBO, etc, etc.
I was told at one point in the company's history, our biggest source of income were tax credits from the Government of Canada.
Was that time the first year or so? Many tech companies go the first couple years on government grants alone. What private investor with reasonable funds would risk their money on something that's not guaranteed to return 11% in Q3? I actually think its one of the best things the government does. Sure there is favoritism and corruption but we should try (however impossible it may sound) to fix that, not cut R&D spending.
It's shameful that the media coverage is merely a flashback back to 9/11, and I here nothing about the subsequent fear, paranoia, and loss of freedoms that have engulfed the country.
That's because THE 9/11 happened ten years ago TODAY. Of course that's what the major networks are going to focus on. Plus there are huge events full of various dignitaries which need coverage in the election cycle. If you desire, you can find additional objectivity on several NPR pieces that have been running the past few weeks. Watch fox or cnn to see exactly what you'd expect or check out the NPR story on the CTU in the Mall of America (yes, counter terrorism in Minneapolis) if you want to see how everything's gone down the shitter.
I've found the REAL reason costs are going down. Say your camera, ipod, psp, cellphone, smartphone, etc all take about 2 watts to run. So if you combine them you go from 8 watts to 2. Great! but if before you used each device 1 hour a day, you now use your replacement (smartphone) 4 hours a day so you still end up with 8 watt hours. To put that in perspective, I used 900 kWh last month. Phone charging would account for 0.02% of that. Probably 70% of that was the A/C because..... my girlfriend just moved in. Last year it was 500 kWh. By far the largest difference is more efficient heating/cooling. So if you extend my anecdote across the general population, that means that the higher divorce rate is allowing for less use of heating/cooling in guy's houses. Cause the girls always move back to apartments where economies of scale make it easier. Or maybe HVAC/appliances/TVs are just getting more efficient and people have no space to put a 5th 42" LCD.
And most of me is thinking that this is a massive lawyer bandwagon that's the new in thing to make easy billable hours. Tons of discovery for companies with deep pockets and everyone settles out of court so you never actually have to convince anyone of anything...except the chance you could wipe your opponent off the map. This one (like most of the US) is for the lawyers.
whoops, 0.14%. Maybe they get modded up because their math is correct. But my point still stands!
How are you NOT impressed? 6 years of google maps and you automatically assume we have video access to the entire universe down to 1 meter? This is about equivalent to the best public satellite imagery you can get today...but its on the MOON! And they did it for about $500mil. To put it in perspective with a fun comparison, $500M would buy you about 0.0014% of Apple's stock. And no they aren't looking 40 years into the past, they are looking 4 BILLION years into the past. This is all about figuring out why were here and who else might be out there. Why do the naysayers always get modded up?
Well its about fucking time the "vocal minority" is shouting for something I think is worthwhile. Just give me free access to my gadget and then the "VM" can go back to forcing schools to teach creationism.
I think I'll survive without having access to 1000 fart apps or 1000 sudoku apps or 1000 poorly done versions of the 20 best ideas which this thing probably has already. Most everything you'd really need can be done in a browser (which this has). If its netflix or streaming media integration or home automation you want, then you have to pay for that value. That will be at least $400 (if I'm not mistaken) for a decent android tablet. But if you just want an e-reader or web/email browser, $99 is a smoking deal any way you slice it. (This coming from an android fanboy)
Android fanboy here...If you read the story you'll find its an android tablet without touch screen support. CM also said they intend to take their time once they get the necessary hardware (which they don't have yet). Then you have to load android without bricking it. However, the touchpad is also a WebOS tablet with touch, web, email, etc... which is a good enough reason to buy it for $99. Who cares if it doesn't have 5000 fart apps and 10000 justin bieber wallpapers in the app store? As for future support/upgrades, there will be something new out in 2 years that you'll get anyway. This is a plenty great value even without android.
Its already a superb value for the money. There is a quite competent OS preloaded and it costs less than most monster cables, let alone any other tablet!
I work for a large publicly traded corporation. The priority list goes like this: Shareholders, Customers, Employees. So if they increase the perceived value of the company, they are doing their jobs in looking out for the #1 priority so they do give a shit, just not about anything else. In HP's case I'm guessing someone "ran the numbers" and got x% greater profit margin in corporate software over corporate hardware so the board jumped on it like a college basketball player jumping into his team mates during the home game introductions. Then because they were so smart everyone gave themselves raises and high fives like a college basket ball player high five-ing his team mates during the home game introductions. In summary who cares about HP, how long till midnight madness?
Dude if you don't want a pen pal don't write back. If you think you'll never see them then who cares? If they WERE interested they'd write YOU back asking why you didn't write and thats when you say lets get together for "a spot of tea" or whatever you do with your "pounds" (sorry couldn't resist). If you want to meet someone then tell them. If they don't want to meet you, forget about them and move on cause it wasn't going to work anyway. In other news, welcome to 99% of the conversations you'll ever have with the opposite sex. The good news is, it only has to work out once so over a lifetime your odds are pretty good.
Hate to break it to you but "what works" will be different for each person. You're just going to have to figure it out from scratch every single time. But that's where the fun is right? Good luck!
Its not about changing who you are. Its about displaying basic human competence to get past the first few filters to actually meet someone to finally get a chance to show them who you are. If "who you are" can be adequately described in an email that says "whuzz up" you should find a hobby. Even that won't change who you cause you'll hopefully like the hobby and maybe even have something to talk about. Which actually lets you be MORE of who you are. Unless, at your core, you as a person above all else are a lame email writer...don't write lame emails. (and yes, those described in the article are lame emails)
Maybe some google engineer on their 20% time will finally figure out how to shut off the freakin hard drives when nothing is scheduled and I push the off button.
So now that Google has all of Motorola's patents on 2G,3G,4G, (the hardware side) and apple has all those patents on user interface (software side), are we going to be seeing an epic east Texas showdown that results in every new smartphone requiring TWO huge additional licensing fees getting passed on to the consumer?
At least they actually manufacture SOMETHING (albeit in China). I'd prefer someone actually doing something tangible being worth a lot of money over someone who knows how to move decimal places and bend regulations (ala goldman sachs, etc).
With the new pricing coming out from t-mobile, I would absolutely switch to them from Verizon...if only I knew they weren't going to be bought by AT&T in 6 months.
Welp, speaking of the devil, advance circuits has great rates for all of their capabilities. For 2 layers without soldermask you can get a run for under $50. If that's still too much but you can wait a month or so, Sparkfun runs something called batchpcb.com. If you only want one board, they will collect other user's boards into one big file and do a run for dirt cheap.
Most US fab shops don't even look at your boards before building them.
That's because they have computers to check your boards. Most major board houses have online submission and DRC checks. 4pcb (aka advance circuits) usually gets you the files back within 30 minutes complete with .pdf printouts of each layer along with a quote for every conceivable quantity and delivery schedule. And in case anyone needs some anecdotal evidence, every board house I've used (big and small) has called me at least once to clear up some issues with my boards.