Huge thanks to NASA/JPL for pulling this thing off, and letting everyone be a part of it.
I was watching a live simulation of the thing full-screen on one monitor (eyes.nasa.gov), and watching/hearing commentary on Nasa TV on another. It was very thrilling.
As a geek, foremost I find myself going WOW> HOLY !!! WE JUST LANDED A WINNEBEGO [ok, it's a bit smaller than the average Winny] ON MARS!!!
But I also find myself impressed that the Ustream link I posted (above) had something like 230k viewers at peak, and despite the load it never missed a beat for me. The simulation appeared to be happening in with very low-latency, and provided spectacular imagery.
Politically, if these methods of passive involvement were more widely publicized, funding the space program would be a no-brainer for any American -- just for the excitement involved, if nothing else, of accomplishing such a difficult task.
Wish I could link to the first photos (there seem to be two of them), but they don't seem to be officially posted just yet....
It's sort of like the Apple MP3 player thing. When the iPod launched it was far from the first MP3 player. But it was the first MP3 player that wasn't 100% crap to use.
Counterpoint: I hate the way iTunes makes me manage my music collection. I loathe the way that it focuses on playlists, while I want albums. Even though I can hack it to support my (non-Apple) devices, I am loathe to do so.
From my first MP3 player (a CD-based Riovolt SP-250) to my latest (a Motorola Droid 4), I can just put stuff that I want to hear into a directory tree and it works: It works on my phone, it works on my $4.95 dollar store solid-state player, it works in my cars, it works on the TVs and audio gear I have with USB ports, and it works when streaming away from home or from many random devices (including the PS3 and Xbox) on my local network, and it also works with any other random gear via an analog output (which, too often, Apple gear seems to fall back on).
With Apple products and the iTunes environment, not so much: I can plug my Droid into my TV and play music (with remote control!) over my stereo using a $1 cable, but it's impossible with an iPhone.
The situation is a little bit better on the cars that I have which actually do support Apple's proprietarity protocols, but even then it is no improvement over any of the generic devices that I have on-hand.
So what were you going on about, again? (Oh, right. The new shiny that doesn't do anything useful unless you subside within the walls of the Apple oligarchy, whereas everything else just tends to be able to work. Got it.)
OS/2 was lovely. OS/2 ran OS/2 apps with grandiose flair, with UI improvements that have not yet been matched. It even ran Windows apps, with all of the pitfalls that Windows had at that time, it ran DOS apps with an emulator that is only matched in modern times by a complete hardware emulator, and it was lean and efficient and accurate. (OS/2 with native Netscape and random Windows and DOS apps on a box with 8 or 16 megabytes of RAM? All at once? With months/years of uptime? You betcha.)
IMHO, OS/2 failed because it was designed for a time that never existed: It was supposed to be a joint-venture between Microsoft and IBM, was destined to replace Windows. Indeed, even some versions of NT can run OS/2 programs. But MSFT bailed just as soon as OS/2 became competitive with NT, bad words were exchanged, and things ended up how they are now.
At the time, though: OS/2 Warp had the best graphics abilities, with the best APIs. It included video codecs that made desktop video (then novel) easy and smooth. It was the best PC OS at multitasking (very) random programs. And it was the most stable thing a person could put on a commodity PC with useful of support for hardware peripherals (sound, video, and SCSI cards, as it were, were often difficult to get going under Windows but not-so-bad under OS/2).
What killed OS/2 was not that it ran Windows apps, but that Microsoft decided to kill their relationship with IBM (who, incidentally, was the creator of the hardware that made the modern MSFT possible), with API changes and monopolistic abuse. Such as it is.
When I started with Linux, it seemed the choices were few: Slackware, or Yggdrasil (Red Hat, Suse, and Debian were a few years hence). Matt Welsh's fabulous book "Running Linux" focused on Slackware, and so did the rest of the Linux Documentation Project (is the LDP even still alive?). a.out was still a viable, and used, executable binary format.
Package management was shit: You installed a new package on your existing system with (at best) a "./configure&&make&&make install" as root (WTF is sudo?), ran ldconfig, fixed whatever it broke, and moved on.
Today, there are a myriad of safe (and unsafe) choices. And while the capitalist in me says that choice is good, the pragmatist in me says that it's really a burden.
The reasons for the crop of shit that we've grown are obvious: There is an incongruity between the folks who want to pay for an OS (Red Hat), the folks who want a free (libre) OS (Debian), folks who want an efficient OS (Gentoo FTW), and folks who want an OS that Just Works (Ubuntu).
So I'll be the first to say it: Yes, the community can stand to have a distribution wherein games Just Work. Because in having games Just Work, it's likely that proper low-latency audio will also Just Work. And from there, it's easy to have video Just Work. And at that point, it starts to sound a whole lot like what BeOS was...except it's still *nix, and it works on modern hardware.
Does it route packets? Does it run VMs with seamless precision? Can I do backups on an ancient Travan drive using ftape? Does it speak Arcnet or Token Ring? Who cares! Seriously. (I write this as a geek who has done all of these things, with a love for computing history, who has a thermal teletype, a box of paper, and a dedicated spot in the living room with suitable wire already installed, just waiting for a modernly-useful application that would benefit from such placement, as opposed to the dual-core 1.2GHz Linux box that I carry in my pocket.)
What the world could use right now, in my humble opinion, is a free(ish) OS that can do useful things with games media with great expediency and reliability.
Why?
Traditional user applications have run so fast ("faster than instantaneous" as a someone once told me is a bit of an exaggeration, but does fit with the current user experience) on any new hardware for nearly a decade that it's silly to even consider them as a goal. For all we complain, both Firefox and Open Office work fine even on rather ancient hardware (for instance).
Scientific applications increasingly rely on GPU calculations which rely on drivers for video cards which are primarily written for gamers. And as a scientist, one shouldn't need to care of the OS is totally free (libre), but whether or not the math is good and fast.
And server apps, well...gosh, Linux has done that very well since nearly day 1. The market needs no relative improvement in this area. It's nailed.
So a focus on low latency, for both video and audio, is a boon for gamers. A focus on making modern graphics, sound, and input hardware work well (through driver and API improvements) is a boon for both gamers and the scientific community. Give these goals a profitable shot in the butt by making games snappier than on other systems, and the rest of the demanding applications that common consumers actually use (AV production, graphic arts, fucking Youtube/Facebook/et al.) will happen naturally -- while also benefiting the rest of the users in the scientific community, and maybe (but not likely) in the sever realm.
(The above is just a dream from me, a random dude, who has used x86 computers for a couple of decades.)
So, I buy some coal for electricity. I also buy some natural gas for heat. Both of these are abundant, but you got me on that one. (And if I had my choice in the matter, I'd be buying the output of a breeder reactor instead -- but I don't have that choice.)
Cars? Feh. The only new cars I'm interested from "domestic" brands are built in Australia or Europe, and the car I currently drive was made almost entirely in Germany from parts which were produced in either Germany or greater Europe (I have identified only one US-made part on the entire vehicle, having done a complete disassembly of one just like it). I'm also not interested in a US-built Toyota, Honda, or Hyundai -- not so much because of the country-of-origin, but because they don't offer anything that strikes my fancy.
I bought my house, which was built from native timber harvested from the land upon which it sits. It's from a time long, long ago, when things were very different. I'm not sure it applies.
Asphalt? I don't buy roads. I have no control of roads. I pay my taxes, and some of those taxes buy roads, but nobody ever asks me which roads my money should apply to, or how those roads should be constructed. And asphalt is made from oil and (in my neck of the woods) limestone. Limestone is locally abundant, but where does the oil come from?
Sheetrock? Made from Chinese gypsum. The fasteners that hold it on? Generally Chinese. The wiring devices (outlets, switches, breakers)? All made in China. Lightbulbs? China, again. New lumber for home improvement? Usually Canadian: It seems we mostly just grow paper here in the US, these days.
Much of the fresh produce I buy comes from Mexico, unless I buy it in-season, and at a local market which is only open between 4:30PM and 6 on a Thursday. (Farmers around here mostly grow field corn and soybeans, neither of which I consume directly.)
While I do sit at a lovely antique steel desk that was made by Americans (and probably from Pittsburgh steel), my leather office chair is Chinese. The farm-raised catfish fillets in my freezer are Chinese. The radishes in my fridge are Mexican. The air conditioner providing me with a cool breeze is Chinese. My desktop computer was assembled in Florida but consists entirely of parts made in China and Thailand. My laptops generally seem to come from Malaysia. My phone is Chinese. The UPS in my closet is Chinese.
My HP laser printer is American, but it's due for replacement after almost two decades of good service. The new one will almost certainly be made in China.
It seems to me that most of what I buy that is actually tangible is imported, from the wrench set I bought today (India) to the garlic in my kitchen (China). FFS, even the beer in my glass was made in Ireland, and the glass itself is Turkish.
I've been reading your banter for years, and while I generally perceive that you're trying to be helpful, this is the first time that you've helped me.
Thank you for re-introducing me to WSUS Offline (the last time I saw that concept was many years ago and somewhat broken and/or German), and Comodo Time Machine (which I'd not yet found).
These things will make my life, and the lives of my customers, immeasurably easier.
I doubt that's true after you factor the fact that virtually everything has to be shipped in. So, they may make more money nominally, but I doubt it goes as far as you expect.
Almost everything I buy in the continental US is shipped/flown in, as well, from sardines to salmon, mandarins to garlic, as well as small appliances and almost everything electronic (including wire), and of course cars.
It seems to me that the only thing I routinely spend my money on that is produced domestically is gasoline (which may or may not be made from domestic crude), warm-blooded meat, and [some] vegetables.
Everything else comes over on a boat or a plane.
Hawaii may not be as relatively bad off as you implicitly suggest.
I can't speak for India, but when most my my state (here in the US) was without power for a few days or a week recently, AT&T had (in additional to the giant diesel genset at the CO) trailer-mounted generators scattered around town keeping the phone network alive.
I don't think India would be all that much different; if their power is as generally unreliable as folks say it is, the telcos will have their own generation equipment.
Sure it's censorship. Why wouldn't it be? That is, plainly, what the word means. It's not necessarily a bad word -- it just means what it means, like any other word.
And guess what? If I owned a book store or a publishing house or a cloud full of disparate Ebooks, I'd be free to censor them, as well (I am a free person). So would you, presumably (as I presume that you are also free).
A hypothetical Black Heritage Publishing Co., which might be the finest purveyor of related Ebooks, should be free to censor KKK propaganda. Or anything else they don't feel like carrying, for that matter....for any reason, or none at all.
That said, Apple is a huge public corporation. I feel that they should not censor things, but whether they can or cannot is a matter between them and their shareholders.
As a free person, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Of course it works backwards, if you get the maths right.;) 3dB is half-power, not 1/8th power.
But I submit that a 3dB difference is indeed very audible. It is exactly the same difference as using an amplifier that is twice (or half) as powerful.
I work with audio and routinely tweak things on the order of 0.5-.25dB, and routinely do blind (not double-blind) comparisons in the course of my work. I find that these small adjustments are identifiable, though it involves careful listening (which is something I've trained my brain to be able to do over a couple of decades). A 1dB change, on the other hand, is garish in its obviousness (to me).
That all said: Of course lowering the volume by 3dB is going to decrease the amount of hearing damage you receive: The more you use your ears, the worse they get. Lowering it by 10dB will help even more. Living in a world with your ears stuffed with earplugs will help reduce hearing damage from environmental sounds dramatically.
It's somewhat of a slippery slope.
Balancing hearing damage with enjoyment is really not a mathematical problem, but more something spiritual: You only live once, and death is inevitable. IMHO: If it's fun to turn it up occasionally, do so. When it stops being fun, stop doing so. If you're concerned about having the most perfect hearing that is practical and want memories of always being astutely careful on your deathbed, then don't turn it up. Ever.
If you'd rather have fond memories of social events and fun times that involve loud music when you die, then give the knob a clockwise twist when it's fun, and enjoy. And then turn it back down when the fun stops, which might be minutes or hours later, so you've got some left for the next time it seems fun.
IANAL, but: Neither Apple nor Google are monopolies in any related market, so they have no monopoly power to abuse. They're both a long way from the long arm of anti-trust laws, at least with mapping...
See all those bits about food hygiene? If you're a plumber, a whole plumber and nothing but a plumber (so help you God) you can just ignore those.
See all that about sterilizing hair clippers and razors? Not really relevant to realtors.
I cook food (often for other people), own an old house with indoor plumbing (which gets used by other people), groom my own hair (and sometimes others' hair), and have on occasion sold my own real estate.
Being a free person is inherently implicit in these post-slavery times. Being calm is obvious to an observer, as it is simply the opposite of being not calm. Being rational is plain in simple conversation, as it is simply the opposite of being irrational.
And so what if a nutjob can pretend to be a calm and rational person? Do you want your liberties taken just because some people are nutjobs?
And back in context: In this largely post-asylum society, I don't believe that being a nutjob disqualifies a person from taking pictures in a subway.
Logically, having a printout of the law should be useless. If the officer doesn't know about the law already, he would be foolish to believe that a law is whatever some random person with a computer printout tells him it is--you can print anything on a computer printout.
Logically, a thinking man will spent a moment investigating whether a computer printout when it is presented by a calm and rational free person, and attempt to discern is indeed a valid representation of an actual law or if it is a forged document. And then act accordingly.
Even if not armed with an arsenal of devices which can readily Google the law, chapter-and-verse, the officer still has a radio with which he can communicate with someone who can make a determination as to the validity of the computer printout.
(To counter any arguments from the peanut gallery in advance: Yes, there is a potential flaw in my logic wherein I assume that cops are capable of independent thought. Also: Yes, this process takes away from an officer's time that could be better spent catching Bad Guys, but spending a few moments (as often as necessary) to avoid falsely arresting or harassing a free person is well worth my tax dollars.)
I used to turn unattended cars' headlights off, as well. I'd even roll up the windows if I happened to walk by and it had just started raining, back when manual windows were more common.
These days, not so much. Dunno why -- haven't really thought about it.
They stopped making the Crown Vic, that means 3 child families must use SUVs and Vans.
But they started making the Chevy Caprice again. It's quite big inside, and even perhaps a little bit nicer than the Crown Vic (both are pretty spartan). (You can order one from at a Chevy dealer near you.)
Modern cars are often rather small, making them worthless for big trips with young children (try to fit two decent strollers in the trunk of something that isn't a Crown Vic, I dare you).
Try using a stroller that is geared more toward ambulating children and less toward having extra cup holders. It's not the car's fault that strollers have turned monstrous.
The towing capacity of the average modern car is about 1000 lbs (many actually explicitly state NO towing WHATSOEVER). This means that families owning a house, where every couple of months you want to haul a large item home will need to oftentimes rent another vehicle for that purpose. Why not just buy a more versatile vehicle to start with?
My "little" BMW 3-series can tow 2,000 pounds, and I've oft considered buying a trailer and hitch for it. But I haven't done so because I don't need to: As the owner of a house that is well over 100 years old and in a constant state of remodel, I've found that renting a truck from Home Depot for $20 as-needed is cheaper than either buying a beater truck or some towing gear for the car for moving construction materials.
I've also found that everything else that is big and heavy can be delivered for free by the merchant selling the item.
Modern cars have small engines. This is great around the town, but on the highway, mileage suffers horribly. SUVs get much better highway mileage (not better than cars, but not all that far away) because they often put an appropriately sized engine in them.
Wow. Physics fail.
If you like to do your own repair work, modern cars are hell on earth due to their cramped engine compartments, unibody construction, and independent suspension (of course, most SUVs have that nowadays too, but not *all* are terrible to work on the way it generally is with cars).
Obviously you're in love with pulling out the fender liner to change spark plugs on the big V engines on trucks and vans. Myself, I prefer to remove them from the top of an inline-4, 5, or 6 on a car in just a few minutes (total). Working on the rest of the engine is about the same, too, except I don't need a bloody stepladder to reach it.
In terms of suspension work, it's all about the same once the vehicle is in the air. Suspensions are funny that way -- they tend to make room for you.
They quit making station wagons (give or take) so those customers bought SUVs (which are now being downsized to CUVs, which I guess is the modern day station wagon).
Naaw. Folks just stopped buying station wagons (mostly for minivans), so the market did what it had to do.
It sucks ass getting a flat in a car on a long trip, since most modern cars have a toy tire, or worse, tire goop and an inflator ("clown shoes" as I like to call it). Many SUVs offer a full size spare--extremely handy!
My BMW 3-series included a full-size spare, which stows away completely under the floor of the trunk. I don't even have to get under the car and cuss to get it out, unlike many SUVs, and the spare wheel is shiny and clean by default.
Stop using gasoline, use LPG or CNG and all of a sudden driving a V8 doesn't matter anymore (for your pocketbook or the environment). Once you go V8 with propane, you will not go back--the savings over a 4-banger gasoline car along with the actual enjoyment of driving will say to you "What have I been missing?!?!"
I'm still flogging a Dell Inspiron 9000d laptop. It's been through one display, one power supply, and one hard drive, all of which Dell shipped to me "free" under the terms of the only super-duper extended warranty I've ever bought (which did pay for itself). I also fed it a new battery a couple of years ago (the old one lasted forever, and didn't owe me anything).
It's 8 or 9 years old, by this point. Runs Windows 7 along with whatever else I throw at it with ease. I see no need to replace it.
It's been dropped, frozen, run frozen, run covered in condensation, lived in a work truck in Ohio (think -15 to +110 outside temps), baked in direct sunlight, and has always been absurdly reliable. It just doesn't seem to want to die, so I just keep using it. (Perhaps simply having a motherboard made with lead-based solder is a large part of its reliability. RoHS has killed so much gear that it's probably counterproductive.)
And I'm still in love with the 15.4" 1920x1200 display.
The only thing inherently wrong with the machine is that the hinges for the display have self-loosening fasteners by default. I re-tightened them periodically for years until I realized that slightly longer screws would fix the problem altogether. (Later, superficially-similar models have a somewhat improved design in this area.)
(I got the screws from an HP DV9000 that had succumbed to the equivalent of the Red Ring of Death at less than half the age of my cheap-shit Dell.)
With fly-by-wire steering and throttle, we've pretty much already there for a few years now. And brakes have had parallel computer control since the advent of traction control and/or ABS. (Mercedes, for instance, has had vehicles which can predict a panic stop and preemptively apply full-on ABS braking for well over a decade, using nothing more than some fancy software, some potentiometers, and perhaps a more-substantial-than-usual ABS pump.)
Thus, the scary-in-event-of-failure parts are already in-place.
How well do they work? Dunno. Don't really care. For the foreseeable future I'll be extremely resistant to buying a vehicle with total fly-by-wire anything, so I haven't kept track of their safety record at all. (Except for the widely-publicized Toyota recall from a couple of years ago, which involved both a software and a mechanical fix for what would've been a very controllable failure-mode if the drivers involved knew how to apply the brakes properly.)
And the only reason I allow the ABS and traction control circuits to survive on my vehicles is because they're largely parallel systems, which a hydraulic failsafe.
Whatever the case: The parts are already there, tooling down the highway, along with any assumption of liability for mechanical or physical electrical failure that a manufacturer might care about.
Irrespective of whether or not that's a good thing, it is just a matter of adding software and awareness to add autonomy.
But having fun on twisty backroads is probably the exact same sort of activity that something like this is likely to interdict: It must be conservative in its approach, or it won't perform properly during the normal circumstances for which it was designed.
I'm not sure that it's possible to properly have fun in a car with a robotic safety committee watching your every move.
And never successfully navigate in snow or mud: The system would go into "ZOMG!" mode, decide that what you are otherwise-successfully doing is impossible, and slow down until the car stops...probably while encouraging you to call AAA for a towtruck, when all you really want to do is get up the fucking hill.
In my version of the world, LED-backlit LCD TVs take the backlight-modulation game to a whole new level by illuminating specific portions of the screen to various degrees, as well as the entire screen (for a particularly dark or bright scene). And of course this is measurable, according to Ohm and Einstein.
Perhaps in your world things aren't so sufficiently advanced. Or perhaps your choices of program material are very bland.
But according to my observations, and those of the rest of the folks who live in my world, you're wrong on this point -- twice. Please either give up, or stay in your own parallel dimension.
Slashdot Mirror
Huge thanks to NASA/JPL for pulling this thing off, and letting everyone be a part of it.
I was watching a live simulation of the thing full-screen on one monitor (eyes.nasa.gov), and watching/hearing commentary on Nasa TV on another. It was very thrilling.
As a geek, foremost I find myself going WOW> HOLY !!! WE JUST LANDED A WINNEBEGO [ok, it's a bit smaller than the average Winny] ON MARS!!!
But I also find myself impressed that the Ustream link I posted (above) had something like 230k viewers at peak, and despite the load it never missed a beat for me. The simulation appeared to be happening in with very low-latency, and provided spectacular imagery.
Politically, if these methods of passive involvement were more widely publicized, funding the space program would be a no-brainer for any American -- just for the excitement involved, if nothing else, of accomplishing such a difficult task.
Wish I could link to the first photos (there seem to be two of them), but they don't seem to be officially posted just yet....
The best-quality streaming video of the event from JPL that I've found is over at Ustream.
FYI, FWIW, HTH.
Counterpoint: I hate the way iTunes makes me manage my music collection. I loathe the way that it focuses on playlists, while I want albums. Even though I can hack it to support my (non-Apple) devices, I am loathe to do so.
From my first MP3 player (a CD-based Riovolt SP-250) to my latest (a Motorola Droid 4), I can just put stuff that I want to hear into a directory tree and it works: It works on my phone, it works on my $4.95 dollar store solid-state player, it works in my cars, it works on the TVs and audio gear I have with USB ports, and it works when streaming away from home or from many random devices (including the PS3 and Xbox) on my local network, and it also works with any other random gear via an analog output (which, too often, Apple gear seems to fall back on).
With Apple products and the iTunes environment, not so much: I can plug my Droid into my TV and play music (with remote control!) over my stereo using a $1 cable, but it's impossible with an iPhone.
The situation is a little bit better on the cars that I have which actually do support Apple's proprietarity protocols, but even then it is no improvement over any of the generic devices that I have on-hand.
So what were you going on about, again? (Oh, right. The new shiny that doesn't do anything useful unless you subside within the walls of the Apple oligarchy, whereas everything else just tends to be able to work. Got it.)
OS/2 was lovely. OS/2 ran OS/2 apps with grandiose flair, with UI improvements that have not yet been matched. It even ran Windows apps, with all of the pitfalls that Windows had at that time, it ran DOS apps with an emulator that is only matched in modern times by a complete hardware emulator, and it was lean and efficient and accurate. (OS/2 with native Netscape and random Windows and DOS apps on a box with 8 or 16 megabytes of RAM? All at once? With months/years of uptime? You betcha.)
IMHO, OS/2 failed because it was designed for a time that never existed: It was supposed to be a joint-venture between Microsoft and IBM, was destined to replace Windows. Indeed, even some versions of NT can run OS/2 programs. But MSFT bailed just as soon as OS/2 became competitive with NT, bad words were exchanged, and things ended up how they are now.
At the time, though: OS/2 Warp had the best graphics abilities, with the best APIs. It included video codecs that made desktop video (then novel) easy and smooth. It was the best PC OS at multitasking (very) random programs. And it was the most stable thing a person could put on a commodity PC with useful of support for hardware peripherals (sound, video, and SCSI cards, as it were, were often difficult to get going under Windows but not-so-bad under OS/2).
What killed OS/2 was not that it ran Windows apps, but that Microsoft decided to kill their relationship with IBM (who, incidentally, was the creator of the hardware that made the modern MSFT possible), with API changes and monopolistic abuse. Such as it is.
Indeed.
When I started with Linux, it seemed the choices were few: Slackware, or Yggdrasil (Red Hat, Suse, and Debian were a few years hence). Matt Welsh's fabulous book "Running Linux" focused on Slackware, and so did the rest of the Linux Documentation Project (is the LDP even still alive?). a.out was still a viable, and used, executable binary format.
Package management was shit: You installed a new package on your existing system with (at best) a "./configure&&make&&make install" as root (WTF is sudo?), ran ldconfig, fixed whatever it broke, and moved on.
Today, there are a myriad of safe (and unsafe) choices. And while the capitalist in me says that choice is good, the pragmatist in me says that it's really a burden.
The reasons for the crop of shit that we've grown are obvious: There is an incongruity between the folks who want to pay for an OS (Red Hat), the folks who want a free (libre) OS (Debian), folks who want an efficient OS (Gentoo FTW), and folks who want an OS that Just Works (Ubuntu).
So I'll be the first to say it: Yes, the community can stand to have a distribution wherein games Just Work. Because in having games Just Work, it's likely that proper low-latency audio will also Just Work. And from there, it's easy to have video Just Work. And at that point, it starts to sound a whole lot like what BeOS was...except it's still *nix, and it works on modern hardware.
Does it route packets? Does it run VMs with seamless precision? Can I do backups on an ancient Travan drive using ftape? Does it speak Arcnet or Token Ring? Who cares! Seriously. (I write this as a geek who has done all of these things, with a love for computing history, who has a thermal teletype, a box of paper, and a dedicated spot in the living room with suitable wire already installed, just waiting for a modernly-useful application that would benefit from such placement, as opposed to the dual-core 1.2GHz Linux box that I carry in my pocket.)
What the world could use right now, in my humble opinion, is a free(ish) OS that can do useful things with games media with great expediency and reliability.
Why?
Traditional user applications have run so fast ("faster than instantaneous" as a someone once told me is a bit of an exaggeration, but does fit with the current user experience) on any new hardware for nearly a decade that it's silly to even consider them as a goal. For all we complain, both Firefox and Open Office work fine even on rather ancient hardware (for instance).
Scientific applications increasingly rely on GPU calculations which rely on drivers for video cards which are primarily written for gamers. And as a scientist, one shouldn't need to care of the OS is totally free (libre), but whether or not the math is good and fast.
And server apps, well...gosh, Linux has done that very well since nearly day 1. The market needs no relative improvement in this area. It's nailed.
So a focus on low latency, for both video and audio, is a boon for gamers. A focus on making modern graphics, sound, and input hardware work well (through driver and API improvements) is a boon for both gamers and the scientific community. Give these goals a profitable shot in the butt by making games snappier than on other systems, and the rest of the demanding applications that common consumers actually use (AV production, graphic arts, fucking Youtube/Facebook/et al.) will happen naturally -- while also benefiting the rest of the users in the scientific community, and maybe (but not likely) in the sever realm.
(The above is just a dream from me, a random dude, who has used x86 computers for a couple of decades.)
Ok.
So, I buy some coal for electricity. I also buy some natural gas for heat. Both of these are abundant, but you got me on that one. (And if I had my choice in the matter, I'd be buying the output of a breeder reactor instead -- but I don't have that choice.)
Cars? Feh. The only new cars I'm interested from "domestic" brands are built in Australia or Europe, and the car I currently drive was made almost entirely in Germany from parts which were produced in either Germany or greater Europe (I have identified only one US-made part on the entire vehicle, having done a complete disassembly of one just like it). I'm also not interested in a US-built Toyota, Honda, or Hyundai -- not so much because of the country-of-origin, but because they don't offer anything that strikes my fancy.
I bought my house, which was built from native timber harvested from the land upon which it sits. It's from a time long, long ago, when things were very different. I'm not sure it applies.
Asphalt? I don't buy roads. I have no control of roads. I pay my taxes, and some of those taxes buy roads, but nobody ever asks me which roads my money should apply to, or how those roads should be constructed. And asphalt is made from oil and (in my neck of the woods) limestone. Limestone is locally abundant, but where does the oil come from?
Sheetrock? Made from Chinese gypsum. The fasteners that hold it on? Generally Chinese. The wiring devices (outlets, switches, breakers)? All made in China. Lightbulbs? China, again. New lumber for home improvement? Usually Canadian: It seems we mostly just grow paper here in the US, these days.
Much of the fresh produce I buy comes from Mexico, unless I buy it in-season, and at a local market which is only open between 4:30PM and 6 on a Thursday. (Farmers around here mostly grow field corn and soybeans, neither of which I consume directly.)
While I do sit at a lovely antique steel desk that was made by Americans (and probably from Pittsburgh steel), my leather office chair is Chinese. The farm-raised catfish fillets in my freezer are Chinese. The radishes in my fridge are Mexican. The air conditioner providing me with a cool breeze is Chinese. My desktop computer was assembled in Florida but consists entirely of parts made in China and Thailand. My laptops generally seem to come from Malaysia. My phone is Chinese. The UPS in my closet is Chinese.
My HP laser printer is American, but it's due for replacement after almost two decades of good service. The new one will almost certainly be made in China.
It seems to me that most of what I buy that is actually tangible is imported, from the wrench set I bought today (India) to the garlic in my kitchen (China). FFS, even the beer in my glass was made in Ireland, and the glass itself is Turkish.
Hairyfeet,
I've been reading your banter for years, and while I generally perceive that you're trying to be helpful, this is the first time that you've helped me.
Thank you for re-introducing me to WSUS Offline (the last time I saw that concept was many years ago and somewhat broken and/or German), and Comodo Time Machine (which I'd not yet found).
These things will make my life, and the lives of my customers, immeasurably easier.
Best regards,
adolf
Almost everything I buy in the continental US is shipped/flown in, as well, from sardines to salmon, mandarins to garlic, as well as small appliances and almost everything electronic (including wire), and of course cars.
It seems to me that the only thing I routinely spend my money on that is produced domestically is gasoline (which may or may not be made from domestic crude), warm-blooded meat, and [some] vegetables.
Everything else comes over on a boat or a plane.
Hawaii may not be as relatively bad off as you implicitly suggest.
A giant sucking sound.
I can't speak for India, but when most my my state (here in the US) was without power for a few days or a week recently, AT&T had (in additional to the giant diesel genset at the CO) trailer-mounted generators scattered around town keeping the phone network alive.
I don't think India would be all that much different; if their power is as generally unreliable as folks say it is, the telcos will have their own generation equipment.
It is only a ridiculous concept if you assume that censorship is inherently evil, a word reserved for the work of fascists or somesuch thing.
I do not make such an assumption.
It's just a word.
Sure it's censorship. Why wouldn't it be? That is, plainly, what the word means. It's not necessarily a bad word -- it just means what it means, like any other word.
And guess what? If I owned a book store or a publishing house or a cloud full of disparate Ebooks, I'd be free to censor them, as well (I am a free person). So would you, presumably (as I presume that you are also free).
A hypothetical Black Heritage Publishing Co., which might be the finest purveyor of related Ebooks, should be free to censor KKK propaganda. Or anything else they don't feel like carrying, for that matter....for any reason, or none at all.
That said, Apple is a huge public corporation. I feel that they should not censor things, but whether they can or cannot is a matter between them and their shareholders.
As a free person, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Of course it works backwards, if you get the maths right. ;) 3dB is half-power, not 1/8th power.
But I submit that a 3dB difference is indeed very audible. It is exactly the same difference as using an amplifier that is twice (or half) as powerful.
I work with audio and routinely tweak things on the order of 0.5-.25dB, and routinely do blind (not double-blind) comparisons in the course of my work. I find that these small adjustments are identifiable, though it involves careful listening (which is something I've trained my brain to be able to do over a couple of decades). A 1dB change, on the other hand, is garish in its obviousness (to me).
That all said: Of course lowering the volume by 3dB is going to decrease the amount of hearing damage you receive: The more you use your ears, the worse they get. Lowering it by 10dB will help even more. Living in a world with your ears stuffed with earplugs will help reduce hearing damage from environmental sounds dramatically.
It's somewhat of a slippery slope.
Balancing hearing damage with enjoyment is really not a mathematical problem, but more something spiritual: You only live once, and death is inevitable. IMHO: If it's fun to turn it up occasionally, do so. When it stops being fun, stop doing so. If you're concerned about having the most perfect hearing that is practical and want memories of always being astutely careful on your deathbed, then don't turn it up. Ever.
If you'd rather have fond memories of social events and fun times that involve loud music when you die, then give the knob a clockwise twist when it's fun, and enjoy. And then turn it back down when the fun stops, which might be minutes or hours later, so you've got some left for the next time it seems fun.
IANAL, but: Neither Apple nor Google are monopolies in any related market, so they have no monopoly power to abuse. They're both a long way from the long arm of anti-trust laws, at least with mapping...
I cook food (often for other people), own an old house with indoor plumbing (which gets used by other people), groom my own hair (and sometimes others' hair), and have on occasion sold my own real estate.
Everything you mention means something to me.
Easy.
Being a free person is inherently implicit in these post-slavery times. Being calm is obvious to an observer, as it is simply the opposite of being not calm. Being rational is plain in simple conversation, as it is simply the opposite of being irrational.
And so what if a nutjob can pretend to be a calm and rational person? Do you want your liberties taken just because some people are nutjobs?
And back in context: In this largely post-asylum society, I don't believe that being a nutjob disqualifies a person from taking pictures in a subway.
Logically, a thinking man will spent a moment investigating whether a computer printout when it is presented by a calm and rational free person, and attempt to discern is indeed a valid representation of an actual law or if it is a forged document. And then act accordingly.
Even if not armed with an arsenal of devices which can readily Google the law, chapter-and-verse, the officer still has a radio with which he can communicate with someone who can make a determination as to the validity of the computer printout.
(To counter any arguments from the peanut gallery in advance: Yes, there is a potential flaw in my logic wherein I assume that cops are capable of independent thought. Also: Yes, this process takes away from an officer's time that could be better spent catching Bad Guys, but spending a few moments (as often as necessary) to avoid falsely arresting or harassing a free person is well worth my tax dollars.)
I used to turn unattended cars' headlights off, as well. I'd even roll up the windows if I happened to walk by and it had just started raining, back when manual windows were more common.
These days, not so much. Dunno why -- haven't really thought about it.
Can I try, too?
But they started making the Chevy Caprice again. It's quite big inside, and even perhaps a little bit nicer than the Crown Vic (both are pretty spartan). (You can order one from at a Chevy dealer near you.)
Try using a stroller that is geared more toward ambulating children and less toward having extra cup holders. It's not the car's fault that strollers have turned monstrous.
My "little" BMW 3-series can tow 2,000 pounds, and I've oft considered buying a trailer and hitch for it. But I haven't done so because I don't need to: As the owner of a house that is well over 100 years old and in a constant state of remodel, I've found that renting a truck from Home Depot for $20 as-needed is cheaper than either buying a beater truck or some towing gear for the car for moving construction materials.
I've also found that everything else that is big and heavy can be delivered for free by the merchant selling the item.
I'm still flogging a Dell Inspiron 9000d laptop. It's been through one display, one power supply, and one hard drive, all of which Dell shipped to me "free" under the terms of the only super-duper extended warranty I've ever bought (which did pay for itself). I also fed it a new battery a couple of years ago (the old one lasted forever, and didn't owe me anything).
It's 8 or 9 years old, by this point. Runs Windows 7 along with whatever else I throw at it with ease. I see no need to replace it.
It's been dropped, frozen, run frozen, run covered in condensation, lived in a work truck in Ohio (think -15 to +110 outside temps), baked in direct sunlight, and has always been absurdly reliable. It just doesn't seem to want to die, so I just keep using it. (Perhaps simply having a motherboard made with lead-based solder is a large part of its reliability. RoHS has killed so much gear that it's probably counterproductive.)
And I'm still in love with the 15.4" 1920x1200 display.
The only thing inherently wrong with the machine is that the hinges for the display have self-loosening fasteners by default. I re-tightened them periodically for years until I realized that slightly longer screws would fix the problem altogether. (Later, superficially-similar models have a somewhat improved design in this area.)
(I got the screws from an HP DV9000 that had succumbed to the equivalent of the Red Ring of Death at less than half the age of my cheap-shit Dell.)
With fly-by-wire steering and throttle, we've pretty much already there for a few years now. And brakes have had parallel computer control since the advent of traction control and/or ABS. (Mercedes, for instance, has had vehicles which can predict a panic stop and preemptively apply full-on ABS braking for well over a decade, using nothing more than some fancy software, some potentiometers, and perhaps a more-substantial-than-usual ABS pump.)
Thus, the scary-in-event-of-failure parts are already in-place.
How well do they work? Dunno. Don't really care. For the foreseeable future I'll be extremely resistant to buying a vehicle with total fly-by-wire anything, so I haven't kept track of their safety record at all. (Except for the widely-publicized Toyota recall from a couple of years ago, which involved both a software and a mechanical fix for what would've been a very controllable failure-mode if the drivers involved knew how to apply the brakes properly.)
And the only reason I allow the ABS and traction control circuits to survive on my vehicles is because they're largely parallel systems, which a hydraulic failsafe.
Whatever the case: The parts are already there, tooling down the highway, along with any assumption of liability for mechanical or physical electrical failure that a manufacturer might care about.
Irrespective of whether or not that's a good thing, it is just a matter of adding software and awareness to add autonomy.
But having fun on twisty backroads is probably the exact same sort of activity that something like this is likely to interdict: It must be conservative in its approach, or it won't perform properly during the normal circumstances for which it was designed.
I'm not sure that it's possible to properly have fun in a car with a robotic safety committee watching your every move.
And never successfully navigate in snow or mud: The system would go into "ZOMG!" mode, decide that what you are otherwise-successfully doing is impossible, and slow down until the car stops...probably while encouraging you to call AAA for a towtruck, when all you really want to do is get up the fucking hill.
How about something ending in fbi.gov? I mean.........
Whatever you say.
In my version of the world, LED-backlit LCD TVs take the backlight-modulation game to a whole new level by illuminating specific portions of the screen to various degrees, as well as the entire screen (for a particularly dark or bright scene). And of course this is measurable, according to Ohm and Einstein.
Perhaps in your world things aren't so sufficiently advanced. Or perhaps your choices of program material are very bland.
But according to my observations, and those of the rest of the folks who live in my world, you're wrong on this point -- twice. Please either give up, or stay in your own parallel dimension.
Thanks!
Not while playing a full-screen on my right-most monitor.