I overheard a conversation between a dad and his teenage daughter at the mall where he was telling her that he got her an iPod for Xmas (they clearly passed the point that surprise gifts were welcome) but that it was an HP iPod (Costco carries them).
As she was ramping up for the tantrum I intervened, apologized for overhearing and explained to her that it was exactly the same as the Apple branded one, and that it was in fact the 'Apple iPod from HP'.
Yeah, she didn't care about the features, just the Apple logo on the side.
for now, iPod is doing well; but sooner or later some competitors will catch up.
Maybe, but this is harder to do than with the phones.
The iPod is so dominant not only because of the iPod but also iTunes and iTMS. Not many companies out there have the talent to pull off hardware/software/service solutions so elegantly. Even MS, who should be able to easily take care of the last two is having trouble - the vast majority of online music sales are AAC, not WMA.
I think that Apple's interest in a phone is not only to deliver some kind of music service, but I'd look for some kind of iChat hooks as well - either simple texting or building to some kind of eventual videophone functionality. Quicktime in the phone is overkill for just music - there are bigger goals here.
Codewarrior 7 ran on OS X. Codewarrior was bought by Motorola, but whereas Codewarrior saved Apples bacon back during the the 68k to PPC transition, they were late to the game for OS X and simply couldn't keep pace with the excellent tools that came over with NeXT.
Codewarrior positioned itself for cross-platform development instead, which is what interested Motorola, but wasn't compatible with Apple's focus on superior APIs.
Apple didn't kill Codewarrior as much as Codewarrior chased different markets.
Mots influence on the G4 problem was refusing to allow IBM to fab G4s or to improve their processes, which really left Apple in a bind. After all, G4s still run on a 167MHz bus, which is a disaster for a modern desktop CPU.
My 12" PB shows 2 hrs 2 min remaining from a full charge under 10.3.7. I know for a fact that even playing Battlefield 1942 with the screen at full bright I can get far better than 3 hrs. Give no credence to the menu bar estimate...
because that means you have to haul less gas to the battlefield
Gas isn't always readily available where you're going either. Multi-fuel systems are also being considered where you could use any one of a number of available hydrocarbon fuels to run the vehicle.
Well, bad news for Disney is that my kids (3 and 6) leap for joy and hollar when they see the Pixar/Luxo intro, but don't know Disney other than the Mickey sillhouette.
For those that grew up with Toy Story being their first Disney film, the Disney brand recognition is pretty worthless in films.
Being a 30-something, it goes beyond words the comfort I feel now by not having a clue what Journey song you are referring to. Clearly I have purged them sufficiently from my memory.
Have you never heard of CHILDREN!? You know, those little people recently derived from grown people after they have sex? There are lots of them in Florida. When you have kids, you don't ride out hurricanes - you drive to Arkansas. On the way to Arkansas, you feed the kids anything that consoles them - and I can personally attest to the consoling value of strawberry poptarts on an anxious child. I'd buy a minimum of 3 boxes per child for the drive - easily 7x our normal consumption. You never know where you'll get stuck and what you'll have access to later. $10 of pop-tarts is cheap insurance.
I've ridden a Segway, and it requires subtle balance and reflexes, which is what the elderly tend to not have. The Segway eliminates gross motor skills - so you don't need to be strong - but you do need to make very subtle adjustments frequently, and having poor balance would be disastrous.
Anyone tried a Segway after a few (good) beers - that should be a decent test, actually.
Technically, PPC is commoditized - it's an open platform. Anyone can build PPC hardware. There just isn't a reason yet for anyone else to build PPC chips. They can't build G4 or G5 chips as they are specific designs owned by Freescale and IBM, but Intel could go in and build a PPC chip compatible with the G4 or G5.
I don't know if the guy should have been fired or not (I suspect he should have been.) but if the Director of the state Job and Family Services has that kind of disrespect for employees, I can only imagine how the other employers of Ohio must treat it's people. What a horrible example to set from a state official.
He works mostly in BioMEMS, so he's thinking about the same kinds of things that you are.
He cofounded a company to market implantable smart drug delivery devices - think Norplant, but with sensors and a microcontroller for difficult to mange diabetes, seizure management, stuff like that. It likely wouldn't need to be rechargeable given that it has a fixed drug reservoir.
That/.ers can reference generic sounding apps like GraphicConverter and Preview without mention of the operating system?
Apple really has come a long way around here, eh?
Re:Seems extremely difficult with chemical rockets
on
After the X Prize
·
· Score: 1
But aren't there several factors working in favor of this being realistic?
1) There is no specific requirement for ground launch. It seems that most of the X-Prize contestants have taken good advantage of this.
2) The cargo weight of this competition is relatively low. 7 adults isn't peanuts, but we're not trying to haul Hubble up there as well.
3) There is no requirement for extended mission duration. So minimal life-support weight. This is a taxi, not a flying laboratory.
4) There continue to be fairly substantial progress in materials development.
So, the X-33 demonstrated that reusable ground to orbit for a crew was feasible on paper (given a minimum $1B budget) and that this is an incredibly challenging task. But a decade of additional research, removing NASAs overhead and over-engineering, and a much more flexible set of design constraints, and I think you'll see some decent goes at it.
Remember, the X-Prize won't cover the development for anyone - it's a subsidy. Scaled Composites is really after the licensing deal that happened with Virgin, it should be far more lucrative. Scaled is also looking at an orbital craft, so they might be the leader on this next challenge as well. Consider the licensing deal that could go along with this.
Not to mention that DoD has incredible audit trails for all parts. If a gasket on a plane fails, they want to trace all other gaskets of the same design, from the same lot, touched by the same person, etc. They are expensive to maintain, but can be invaluable when things really start to go wrong.
Those audit trails applied to hammers as well, apparently.
I spent half a day with a contractor for nuclear sub and carrier parts and he relayed the cost of the audit trail for a bearing that they built. It was astounding.
I'm drawing less than 35 watts with one of those. The harddrive takes most of the power. You won't get less than that, and 35 watts is basically less than a normal lightbulb.
Geez, Intel has really screwed everyone's perspective on power. I get 4 hours minimum on my iBook with a 40 watt-hour battery, so yes, you will get much lower than that. Turn the screen off, wireless off, and cycle the processor and minimize drive spin up/down and you should be able to get a G3 iBook down into the 4-6 watt range on average for something like what the poster describes.
Personally, I wouldn't keep a 35 watt bulb on 24/7. That's 840 watt-hours which is the equivalent of the entire lighting usage of my house in the summer - family of 4, mind you.
They aren't exceptionally cheap, but a used dual USB iBook can be had for a few hundred bucks - monitor, keyboard, and UPS included. Runs BSD, linux, or OS X. Includes firewire and usb in case you want to hang anything off of that server like a printer.
Slashdot Mirror
So, have you done it again?
Yours truly,
Undercover FBI Dude
My Xserve has 4 drives each on an independent IDE channel. Does that suffice?
I overheard a conversation between a dad and his teenage daughter at the mall where he was telling her that he got her an iPod for Xmas (they clearly passed the point that surprise gifts were welcome) but that it was an HP iPod (Costco carries them).
As she was ramping up for the tantrum I intervened, apologized for overhearing and explained to her that it was exactly the same as the Apple branded one, and that it was in fact the 'Apple iPod from HP'.
Yeah, she didn't care about the features, just the Apple logo on the side.
So they turn off the ads after you register?
No, but $10 says that your browser does. Can't expect to have it both ways.
"Imagine a Slashdot Effect on a physical location like a single store."
Clearly you've never been to an Apple store grand opening...
for now, iPod is doing well; but sooner or later some competitors will catch up.
Maybe, but this is harder to do than with the phones.
The iPod is so dominant not only because of the iPod but also iTunes and iTMS. Not many companies out there have the talent to pull off hardware/software/service solutions so elegantly. Even MS, who should be able to easily take care of the last two is having trouble - the vast majority of online music sales are AAC, not WMA.
I think that Apple's interest in a phone is not only to deliver some kind of music service, but I'd look for some kind of iChat hooks as well - either simple texting or building to some kind of eventual videophone functionality. Quicktime in the phone is overkill for just music - there are bigger goals here.
Codewarrior 7 ran on OS X. Codewarrior was bought by Motorola, but whereas Codewarrior saved Apples bacon back during the the 68k to PPC transition, they were late to the game for OS X and simply couldn't keep pace with the excellent tools that came over with NeXT.
Codewarrior positioned itself for cross-platform development instead, which is what interested Motorola, but wasn't compatible with Apple's focus on superior APIs.
Apple didn't kill Codewarrior as much as Codewarrior chased different markets.
Mots influence on the G4 problem was refusing to allow IBM to fab G4s or to improve their processes, which really left Apple in a bind. After all, G4s still run on a 167MHz bus, which is a disaster for a modern desktop CPU.
My 12" PB shows 2 hrs 2 min remaining from a full charge under 10.3.7. I know for a fact that even playing Battlefield 1942 with the screen at full bright I can get far better than 3 hrs. Give no credence to the menu bar estimate...
... that's 'teh snappier', to be technical.
because that means you have to haul less gas to the battlefield
Gas isn't always readily available where you're going either. Multi-fuel systems are also being considered where you could use any one of a number of available hydrocarbon fuels to run the vehicle.
(sorry I know this debate is a classic but miles say nothing to me and I guess that many international slashdoters feel the same)
See, but we're Americans, so we don't give a shit about you - you're all 3rd world socialist pansies. Did you learn nothing from our election?
Well, bad news for Disney is that my kids (3 and 6) leap for joy and hollar when they see the Pixar/Luxo intro, but don't know Disney other than the Mickey sillhouette.
For those that grew up with Toy Story being their first Disney film, the Disney brand recognition is pretty worthless in films.
Hmm,
MacGeeks heaven-on-earth would certainly have this whole rig driven by a couple of Xserves backed by an Xserve RAID.
Being a 30-something, it goes beyond words the comfort I feel now by not having a clue what Journey song you are referring to. Clearly I have purged them sufficiently from my memory.
Thank you for that daily reaffirmation.
Computer geeks like myself, like poptarts
Jesus, people.
Have you never heard of CHILDREN!? You know, those little people recently derived from grown people after they have sex? There are lots of them in Florida. When you have kids, you don't ride out hurricanes - you drive to Arkansas. On the way to Arkansas, you feed the kids anything that consoles them - and I can personally attest to the consoling value of strawberry poptarts on an anxious child. I'd buy a minimum of 3 boxes per child for the drive - easily 7x our normal consumption. You never know where you'll get stuck and what you'll have access to later. $10 of pop-tarts is cheap insurance.
A lot more recently than the last time an ICBM has hit North America.
Let's stop arguing over which absurd project is more absurd than the other. This is an asinine 'because we can' project.
Yes, it requires balance.
I've ridden a Segway, and it requires subtle balance and reflexes, which is what the elderly tend to not have. The Segway eliminates gross motor skills - so you don't need to be strong - but you do need to make very subtle adjustments frequently, and having poor balance would be disastrous.
Anyone tried a Segway after a few (good) beers - that should be a decent test, actually.
Technically, PPC is commoditized - it's an open platform. Anyone can build PPC hardware. There just isn't a reason yet for anyone else to build PPC chips. They can't build G4 or G5 chips as they are specific designs owned by Freescale and IBM, but Intel could go in and build a PPC chip compatible with the G4 or G5.
Well, defribulators are mentioned as an application.
There are many applications for high-discharge devices - particularly in medicine - which is the general area in which he works - not cellphones.
Well, I wrote a letter to the governor instead.
I don't know if the guy should have been fired or not (I suspect he should have been.) but if the Director of the state Job and Family Services has that kind of disrespect for employees, I can only imagine how the other employers of Ohio must treat it's people. What a horrible example to set from a state official.
Hayes should be terminated for that statement.
He works mostly in BioMEMS, so he's thinking about the same kinds of things that you are.
He cofounded a company to market implantable smart drug delivery devices - think Norplant, but with sensors and a microcontroller for difficult to mange diabetes, seizure management, stuff like that. It likely wouldn't need to be rechargeable given that it has a fixed drug reservoir.
That /.ers can reference generic sounding apps like GraphicConverter and Preview without mention of the operating system?
Apple really has come a long way around here, eh?
But aren't there several factors working in favor of this being realistic?
1) There is no specific requirement for ground launch. It seems that most of the X-Prize contestants have taken good advantage of this.
2) The cargo weight of this competition is relatively low. 7 adults isn't peanuts, but we're not trying to haul Hubble up there as well.
3) There is no requirement for extended mission duration. So minimal life-support weight. This is a taxi, not a flying laboratory.
4) There continue to be fairly substantial progress in materials development.
So, the X-33 demonstrated that reusable ground to orbit for a crew was feasible on paper (given a minimum $1B budget) and that this is an incredibly challenging task. But a decade of additional research, removing NASAs overhead and over-engineering, and a much more flexible set of design constraints, and I think you'll see some decent goes at it.
Remember, the X-Prize won't cover the development for anyone - it's a subsidy. Scaled Composites is really after the licensing deal that happened with Virgin, it should be far more lucrative. Scaled is also looking at an orbital craft, so they might be the leader on this next challenge as well. Consider the licensing deal that could go along with this.
Not to mention that DoD has incredible audit trails for all parts. If a gasket on a plane fails, they want to trace all other gaskets of the same design, from the same lot, touched by the same person, etc. They are expensive to maintain, but can be invaluable when things really start to go wrong.
Those audit trails applied to hammers as well, apparently.
I spent half a day with a contractor for nuclear sub and carrier parts and he relayed the cost of the audit trail for a bearing that they built. It was astounding.
I'm drawing less than 35 watts with one of those. The harddrive takes most of the power. You won't get less than that, and 35 watts is basically less than a normal lightbulb.
Geez, Intel has really screwed everyone's perspective on power. I get 4 hours minimum on my iBook with a 40 watt-hour battery, so yes, you will get much lower than that. Turn the screen off, wireless off, and cycle the processor and minimize drive spin up/down and you should be able to get a G3 iBook down into the 4-6 watt range on average for something like what the poster describes.
Personally, I wouldn't keep a 35 watt bulb on 24/7. That's 840 watt-hours which is the equivalent of the entire lighting usage of my house in the summer - family of 4, mind you.
They aren't exceptionally cheap, but a used dual USB iBook can be had for a few hundred bucks - monitor, keyboard, and UPS included. Runs BSD, linux, or OS X. Includes firewire and usb in case you want to hang anything off of that server like a printer.