Kindles, and Nooks, and iPhones, iPods, iPads, MacBooks, and MacBook Airs, Lenovo ThinkPads, etc., etc., etc.
The summer before college (1978) I worked for an audio electronics manufacturer. I'd guess that most of the assembly line workers made little more than minimum wage.
I suspect that today, even if they wanted to, most companies here in the U.S. couldn't find enough workers willing to do that work for minimum wage, and even if they could, Foxconn, at let's say $1 an hour, is 1/10th the cost.
Now Foxconn is going to automate, presumably to further reduce their labor costs. Which then begs the question: Why can't Apple and Amazon build those same automated factories here? Then at least the 100 jobs to run the automated factory would be here, rather than in Taiwan or Shanghai.
But the answer is probably that even with automation, the cost of salary and benefits, including health care for those 100 people here would still dwarf the costs of doing in offshore.
What occurs to me is that 15-20 years ago, when Sun iron dominated Wall Street, is that all the Sparcstations came IIRC with 10baseT on the motherboard, and I don't recall there being faster NICs available. And even if there were, in a lot of cases all the machines slots were populated with graphics cards.
Then three things all sort of happened around the same time: Linux (kernel and user land) reached a level of maturity and stability, inexpensive 100baseT and later 1000baseT NICs became available, and Intel closed the CISC/RISC performance gap. I don't know when Sun started shipping faster networking, but if the only way to get it was to buy a whole new machine, as opposed to plugging in a $30 NIC, it isn't hard to imagine which way the purchasing decision would go, even for money-is-no-object Wall Street.
No surprise then that Linux whupped Solaris' butt. Sun didn't help things by dawdling on fixing known Solaris performance problems. By the time Sun fixed them it was too late; Linux had already gained a foothold.
Is that SJ and Tillerson duking it out, mano a mano?
Are they launching missiles at each other's corporate HQs?
No, I didn't think so. They're just minding their businesses and the stock market is setting a price on their shares. Hardly what I'd call battling it out. Strange metaphor.
Oh sure, and in three years when I move to the next job then I can perhaps move back where I started. Or somewhere else.
In the mean time I will have torn my children out of their school and away from their friends, made my wife's commute to her job longer, and I'll have sunk thousands of dollars in commissions to the realtor who sells my house, hopefully not at a loss, all for what?
So I can have a reasonable length bike ride to work nine months out of the year?
If that's what the pundits are suggesting, then they're even bigger fools than I already thought they were.
There are no buses, subways, or trains that go anywhere near my office. The most direct route is 17 miles on freeways and what I consider to be bike unfriendly roads. Getting there on a bike on friendlier roads is probably more like 20 miles, and is probably at least a two hour trip each way -- not really how I want to spend 25% of my waking hours each day. Not to mention the prospect of riding 20 miles in a blizzard leaves leaves me cold, even if that's only a potential problem two months out of the year.
I never shut my laptop off. I close the lid and it goes to sleep for the duration of my commute to and from work. If I don't close the lid it'll go to sleep after 30 minutes.
I only reboot after an update or upgrade that requires it. And then I only do it when I don't mind the wait, usually because I'll go off and do something else.
Let's see, walking is not zero carbon because of the food energy.
After the carbon cost of making the bike, biking's not zero carbon either, for the same reason.
But I only ride my bike for exercise, thus I don't save anything vis-a-vis my commute to work, and I have the food energy cost. Therefore my bike riding definitely has a carbon footprint.
Oh noes. Guess I better stop riding and turn into an obese blob for the sake of the environment.
And forgive me for possibly stating the obvious---
If LG were to sue Apple directly, Apple might throw a hissy and stop buying LG's panels.
So to prevent that, LG creates a shell/shill to bring the suit, on the presumption that Apple won't see right through it and continue to buy panels as if nothing was wrong.
If we can have drone aircraft, why not drone humvees?
A convoy of remote control humvees, followed by a couple of humvees full of troops to keep the locals from planting bombs, cutting the cargo off, etc.
With the added benefit of any IEDs in the road probably explode when the first or second humvee goes past, and the wetware in the back is relatively safe.
If I learned anything from my teacher wife*, it's that there are dozens of ways that children (and adults) learn, and you have to tailor the learning experience for each of them.
Some children may do very well with things like the Khan Academy. Others will not.
Anyone who tries to shoehorn all children into the same learning solution is likely to leave a large percentage of them behind.
* and my own experience in contrast to my brother, and my own two childrens' very different learning experiences in public schools.
Off the top of my head? Hulu Plus. On my Sony TV and blurrydisk player there's Qriocity and three or four others.
I have no idea what the selection is like on Qriocity or the others. I don't really watch that much TV to begin with and I'm just not curious enough about it to (pay money) to find out.
Er, well, okay. But the original topic was about predictions made in the 60s.
A lot had changed by the 80s. And still nobody like Clarke was predicting tech solutions to the impending problems, including the one you describe. And here it is 30 years later and most of us still only have the non-tech, oops, my electric bill is going through the roof, I'm going to turn down/off the A/C solution.
No doubt lots of other scifi/futurefi 'predicted' power shortfalls and other unhappy stuff. That wasn't really my point. My point was more about lookee here, see this newfangled intarwebs, it'll do all sorts o' kewl things AND turn off your AC when voltage on the grid drops kinds of predictions by the likes of Clarke and Kurzweil, or rather the lack of thoughtful predictions about unhappy kinds of things.
And more to the point, you yourself say in Make Room, Make Room, they don't have smart meters and remote power off, so other than predicting power shortages, Harrison didn't predict the gadgetry at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Kindles, and Nooks, and iPhones, iPods, iPads, MacBooks, and MacBook Airs, Lenovo ThinkPads, etc., etc., etc.
The summer before college (1978) I worked for an audio electronics manufacturer. I'd guess that most of the assembly line workers made little more than minimum wage.
I suspect that today, even if they wanted to, most companies here in the U.S. couldn't find enough workers willing to do that work for minimum wage, and even if they could, Foxconn, at let's say $1 an hour, is 1/10th the cost.
Now Foxconn is going to automate, presumably to further reduce their labor costs. Which then begs the question: Why can't Apple and Amazon build those same automated factories here? Then at least the 100 jobs to run the automated factory would be here, rather than in Taiwan or Shanghai.
But the answer is probably that even with automation, the cost of salary and benefits, including health care for those 100 people here would still dwarf the costs of doing in offshore.
You mis-spelled FAUX News.
If it gets out of control, we just need the equivalent of either a laser pointer or catnip to bring it to its knees.
What occurs to me is that 15-20 years ago, when Sun iron dominated Wall Street, is that all the Sparcstations came IIRC with 10baseT on the motherboard, and I don't recall there being faster NICs available. And even if there were, in a lot of cases all the machines slots were populated with graphics cards.
Then three things all sort of happened around the same time: Linux (kernel and user land) reached a level of maturity and stability, inexpensive 100baseT and later 1000baseT NICs became available, and Intel closed the CISC/RISC performance gap. I don't know when Sun started shipping faster networking, but if the only way to get it was to buy a whole new machine, as opposed to plugging in a $30 NIC, it isn't hard to imagine which way the purchasing decision would go, even for money-is-no-object Wall Street.
No surprise then that Linux whupped Solaris' butt. Sun didn't help things by dawdling on fixing known Solaris performance problems. By the time Sun fixed them it was too late; Linux had already gained a foothold.
Thanks. I put plenty of gusto into my exercise rides. Daily.
You did read what I wrote, didn't you? Because, yeah, mountain bikes don't pedal themselves up hills.
irregardless of the outcome
From TFA: Parachute, followed by retro-rockets, then lowered by a tether.
Yes, it's new. How do they measure how risky it is?
Translation: Apple's won't be at the top forever, any more than Microsoft's was.
Everyone wants to know what happens when SJ leaves. I suspect a lot of people will be shorting AAPL big time when he does.
And I don't wish for it, but there's no denying that SJ's health issues are in the forefront of everyone's thoughts.
Is that SJ and Tillerson duking it out, mano a mano?
Are they launching missiles at each other's corporate HQs?
No, I didn't think so. They're just minding their businesses and the stock market is setting a price on their shares. Hardly what I'd call battling it out. Strange metaphor.
Oh sure, and in three years when I move to the next job then I can perhaps move back where I started. Or somewhere else.
In the mean time I will have torn my children out of their school and away from their friends, made my wife's commute to her job longer, and I'll have sunk thousands of dollars in commissions to the realtor who sells my house, hopefully not at a loss, all for what?
So I can have a reasonable length bike ride to work nine months out of the year?
If that's what the pundits are suggesting, then they're even bigger fools than I already thought they were.
Not all computers are laptops? Really? I'll alert the media.
My desktop at work is configured to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. It doesn't have a lid either.
Clearly you're still young and haven't reached the phase of life where your metabolism slows down.
If I don't get at least an hour of strenuous, i.e. aerobic, exercise every day I gain weight.
And it's not like I eat a lot, or eat junk. If you'd told me 25 years ago how little I'd be eating today, I'd have laughed in your face.
There are no buses, subways, or trains that go anywhere near my office. The most direct route is 17 miles on freeways and what I consider to be bike unfriendly roads. Getting there on a bike on friendlier roads is probably more like 20 miles, and is probably at least a two hour trip each way -- not really how I want to spend 25% of my waking hours each day. Not to mention the prospect of riding 20 miles in a blizzard leaves leaves me cold, even if that's only a potential problem two months out of the year.
But thanks for playing.
I never shut my laptop off. I close the lid and it goes to sleep for the duration of my commute to and from work. If I don't close the lid it'll go to sleep after 30 minutes.
I only reboot after an update or upgrade that requires it. And then I only do it when I don't mind the wait, usually because I'll go off and do something else.
Boot-up time? Not an issue.
Let's see, walking is not zero carbon because of the food energy.
After the carbon cost of making the bike, biking's not zero carbon either, for the same reason.
But I only ride my bike for exercise, thus I don't save anything vis-a-vis my commute to work, and I have the food energy cost. Therefore my bike riding definitely has a carbon footprint.
Oh noes. Guess I better stop riding and turn into an obese blob for the sake of the environment.
And forgive me for possibly stating the obvious---
If LG were to sue Apple directly, Apple might throw a hissy and stop buying LG's panels.
So to prevent that, LG creates a shell/shill to bring the suit, on the presumption that Apple won't see right through it and continue to buy panels as if nothing was wrong.
Anybody else buying that?
Just hop on a camel for a day to get to Petra.
So soon there'll be two reasons to go to Jordan.
Where one is it sorta sucks, and five is it really sucks.
If we can have drone aircraft, why not drone humvees?
A convoy of remote control humvees, followed by a couple of humvees full of troops to keep the locals from planting bombs, cutting the cargo off, etc.
With the added benefit of any IEDs in the road probably explode when the first or second humvee goes past, and the wetware in the back is relatively safe.
(No, I didn't read the article.)
Mine was:
two figs
some dates
half a dozen eggs
breakfast sausage
cottage cheese
If I learned anything from my teacher wife*, it's that there are dozens of ways that children (and adults) learn, and you have to tailor the learning experience for each of them.
Some children may do very well with things like the Khan Academy. Others will not.
Anyone who tries to shoehorn all children into the same learning solution is likely to leave a large percentage of them behind.
* and my own experience in contrast to my brother, and my own two childrens' very different learning experiences in public schools.
Off the top of my head? Hulu Plus. On my Sony TV and blurrydisk player there's Qriocity and three or four others.
I have no idea what the selection is like on Qriocity or the others. I don't really watch that much TV to begin with and I'm just not curious enough about it to (pay money) to find out.
If you're referring to the spelling of (Arthur C.) Clarke, Clarke with an 'e' is the correct spelling.
And two, with a 'w' too. Connect two TVs together. The irony of your sig is, well, ironic.
Er, well, okay. But the original topic was about predictions made in the 60s.
A lot had changed by the 80s. And still nobody like Clarke was predicting tech solutions to the impending problems, including the one you describe. And here it is 30 years later and most of us still only have the non-tech, oops, my electric bill is going through the roof, I'm going to turn down/off the A/C solution.
No doubt lots of other scifi/futurefi 'predicted' power shortfalls and other unhappy stuff. That wasn't really my point. My point was more about lookee here, see this newfangled intarwebs, it'll do all sorts o' kewl things AND turn off your AC when voltage on the grid drops kinds of predictions by the likes of Clarke and Kurzweil, or rather the lack of thoughtful predictions about unhappy kinds of things.
And more to the point, you yourself say in Make Room, Make Room, they don't have smart meters and remote power off, so other than predicting power shortages, Harrison didn't predict the gadgetry at all.