If they can get the range up a bit? What's wrong with 300 miles (260 miles by EPA estimates)? That's better range per "tank" than my current car. Granted, I can also fill up my car at any gas station, but I rarely drive more than 300 miles in a day (like... almost never). If I take a hankering to drive to Chicago then either (a) I can take a plane, (b) take a train or (c) rent a car. Keeps the miles off my own car anyway.
The Tesla requires a change in thinking... you don't recharge your car when the range gets low; you plug it in at night when it's in your garage and you're not using it. Like a smartphone. Even if your battery's not dead, you plug it in anyway... the batteries in the Model S are designed to deal with the frequent recharge cycles like this.
Yeah it requires a change in the way one thinks and operates... but hell why not? We need to change... the world is changing with or without us.
As an aside; pretty soon I will be able to drive a Model S from St. Louis (where I live) to Chicago with a 1 hour stop in Bloomington to charge; Tesla recently got permission to build a "Supercharger" station there... so even then the 300 mile range becomes even less of an issue. Sure, I won't be able to drive to Memphis and back... but I am drawing a blank why I'd want to:)
Well... I have to say it's not news to me, but maybe I've just been lucky. My son was diagnosed as bipolar (which didn't exactly come as a surprise to me considering his mother is schizophrenic) last year. Combined with his behavioural issues as well, this was actually a bit of a relief. As far as treatment I have not encountered the "turf war" between psychologists and psychiatrists at all. In fact, my son has sessions with both a psychiatrist (monthly) and a psychologist (weekly) and the two of them talk once or twice a week about his case and work together to try to figure out an holistic solution to his issues.
The psychiatrist has also been really clear from the outset that the medications aren't to treat the problems, rather to make the problems and perceptions of the problems more manageable so that behavioural modification can be developed to combat the issues long term. She has been fantastic in helping us deal with his issues.
Maybe I've just been really fortunate with the group I have been working with here. While his medication is still a bit "hit or miss" there is no doubt in my mind that it has made it a lot easier for him to cope with his issues and put focus into working on his problems that would otherwise be focused elsewhere. While it's still incredibly difficult, it's definitely made things better.
While I agree with the article in that psychiatric drugs do not fix any problems, I think it's a little inflammatory in the way it approaches the statement. Then again, it's "newsworthy" when it's inflammatory I suppose.
Why anyone would go and buy a Wii knowing full well the Wii U was just getting released and then EXPECT long term support is beyond me. It really is outdated in every sense of the word.
Because not everyone knew full well a new Wii U was coming out. You are by definition of this site a technical person, therefore you tend to keep up with trends in the tech market. You knew a Wii U was coming, but the average Joe who picked up a steal of a Wii on sale back at Christmas for his kids because he couldn't afford it earlier in his job as a laborer is not going to be thrilled about this.
I tend to agree with others here; this is expected and normal behaviour... but only a few months after the release of the new console is actually pretty crappy of Nintendo.
This one will probably get buried because of the sheer weight of comments in this thread... but here goes.
I had the same quandary about four years ago; mail going back a decade at that point which I wanted to keep around. It was in various clients, as in your case. What I did was build a POSTFIX / IMAP server using (at the time) Gentoo. I then attached those clients and simply copied all the archived email up, one client at a time. I then went about building a SquirrelMail front end which did great for a while.
The problem as you can probably ascertain was search. It was tough to trawl through all those emails... but last year I converted my entire email system to Zimbra and simply did an IMAP import of all the data from my old IMAP server to the Zimbra database. While Zimbra still stores everything in MBX format (I think), it also uses MYSQL to store index data. It also happens that Zimbra has a really nice web front end, and everything's really nicely integrated. Now I have email going back 15 years or thereabouts, all searchable in pretty swift order. I added the Zimbra Desktop app to my laptops and I even have a local cache. As for backups, I have a Linode running a custom kernel and the ZFS filesystem, and nightly I have a script on my server that backs up the entire Zimbra store using "zfs send / zfs recv". Since my entire email store is around 9GB it isn't terribly expensive... and I use the same Linode for hosting a hub for my OpenVPN network... which means all my computers can communicate privately from anywhere in the world across a constantly up VPN tunnel.
And for those who think you don't need to keep all that email... bully for you. I have had to refer to decade old emails before in order to provide better service to my customers. My email archive also came in very handy during the divorce from my ex wife for reasons you can probably imagine but I'd rather not get into. That's also handy stuff to keep around... just in case.
You've obviously never driven a DCT or a modern automatic. They have these things called "buttons", or more often referred to as "paddles". These allow you to command a downshift in much simpler fashion than operating a clutch and a manual. Your manual transmission can't see the road ahead, either and relies upon the driver for the input... that's what my DCT does, as do many automatic transmissions. And no, I don't have to wait for the engine to slow-down... the DCT does a great job of rev-matching on every downshift... better than I do.
I track my cars 3 or 4 times a year at least... I do that to teach myself skills that come in handy for getting myself out of trouble more often than I care to admit.
I both with all the "extra tacked-on stuff" because quite frankly it's a lot simpler for me; the driver.
Really, I wonder if I'm missing the point of this outcry. I think putting a chip on the dongle to offload the decoding of video streams to HDMI to be a really elegant and scalable solution; possibly even scalable to the point of doing 4K video with a more powerful ARM chip.
The bandwidth of the Lightning connector itself is easily in the same range as USB 3 (10Gbbps) and the limiting factor is the hardware in the iPad/iPhone which is limited to USB 2.0 spec type speeds across that connector. There's no technical reason that future devices won't up that to USB 3 speeds, but the chipsets just aren't there yet. Once upped into that range, there's no reason that uncompressed 1080p video can't be pushed through that interface (approximately 3Gbps at max throughput, FYI). Again, the limit isn't the Lightning connector but rather the chipsets in the current range of devices. I don't have all the specs off-hand, but it's quite likely that the Lightning connector is actually capable of faster speeds, but the standards for that don't exist yet.
Besides, this is where I think I'm missing the point: Why the hoopla? This is a consumer-grade device (iPad/iPhone) and we have some guy who's got his ass chapped by the fact that it can't output uncompressed 1080p video through it's current connector? Uhm... OK. The 30-pin adapter got around this by having discrete video output on its own pins... the Lightning connector is purely a data connection. Yes, this change to only being able to get compressed video out at USB 2 speeds does seem to be a bit of a step backward, but again this is a consumer-grade device and should be treated as such. If you're using it for playback of video that must be 1080p in all it's uncompressed and perfect glory then you're really missing the point and probably need... Oh I don't know... a laptop with HDMI out? Or Thunderbolt if you're really an Apple fan?
I'm not an Apple apologist; I am typing this on an Alienware laptop running Ubuntu and my phone is a Galaxy Nexus... yes I have a Macbook Pro as well and it's a great laptop, but I in no way a fanboy. I just realize that this is a pretty elegant solution that's really scalable and interesting... but you have to remember this is for a consumer-grade device, not professional. This is for displaying your holiday pictures on a big screen, or playing back your holiday videos to the great chagrin of your friends... this isn't for reviewing takes between shots of the latest movie blockbuster... Apple sells better hardware for that. So do many other manufacturers.
All that being said; there's no technical reason that future generations of the iPad/iPhone won't be able to output 1080p uncompressed through Lightning... the limit is not the new connector but rather what the device itself can output. This dongle design is actually a really good idea... faster ARM CPU in there and you've got massive scalability.
Yeah, the Dodge Dart has a DCT in the Rallye version. But don't bother; it's attached to the worst engine I have ever had the misfortune to drive behind and the stupidest programming of the DCT I've ever encountered.
Now, if they put the DCT behind the new 2.4L engine they're planning for later this year, and fire their current DCT programmers we might actually be talking.
But the most common shift on the track is from top gear down to third. In my DCT that's 4 gears (from 7th to third)... that's a shift from 7th to 3rd in 400ms which means I've still gained 100ms on one corner on your theoretical manual driver. On a very technical track that 100ms per corner can equate to several seconds at the checkered flag... I've just completely slaughtered your manual driver assuming all else is equal.
Of course, that's if everything else is perfect and in the real world the DCT would never shift in exactly 100ms every time... but neither would any but the absolute best manual drivers shift in that perfect 500ms either.
If only they could add some way for the operator to manually shift the transmission. It could be a movement of the stick, or maybe some switches behind the steering wheel. We could call them "paddles".
While I agree with you in theory, the truth is a modern automatic like a dual clutch or even some of the more modern autos are bloody good and can be just as good or better than a human with a clutch. I didn't believe it myself until I got my BMW 135i with a dual-clutch (I purchased it in part because I had knee surgery on my left knee and could no longer operate a clutch until it healed completely). I have now had the car 18 months and honestly although my knee is better and I can drive a clutch again, I find myself wondering if I really need to. My transmission has a fully manual mode that will hold the gear I tell it all day long unless I tell it to change. I can preempt a corner and be in the perfect gear every time when on a technical track, and the shift times mean that as I come out of the corner I am able to keep the power in without letting up even as I upshift.
Is it perfect? No... no system is... but it's more consistent and faster with those shifts than I ever could be with a clutch. While there are times I miss it, in truth most of the time I really don't. Technology moves on, and the days of the manual are severely numbered by the fact that drivetrains are becoming far more complex. Look at a hybrid; can you imaging managing the power of both drivetrains with the traditional clutch and shifter?
Dual Clutch Transmission in a BMW 135i here. Long time manual driver prior to getting this car, and in fact my last car before it (BMW 545i) I went all the way to North Carolina to buy because it had a stick instead of an auto.
My car is really a truly clutchless manual that happens to have an automatic mode. When I start my car in the morning and shift it to "drive", the first thing I do is click the shifter into the gate to the left and then click up once. That puts the transmission in a pure manual mode that will hold a gear until you shift it. I could drive to work in first gear if I so desired and the transmission wouldn't upshift. Of course, I wouldn't be doing much good for my gas mileage either, but the point is that I could. There are paddles on the steering wheel, but I tend to use the shifter because it's natural for me to reach down there for gear changes anyway; I flip the shifter away from me to downshift, toward me to upshift. It's incredibly natural.
As for performance driving, I can anticipate the curves and downshift appropriately every time, far faster than I ever could with a stick and clutch. Sure, it's sequential in the same sense that my motorbike is; I can't go from 6th gear to 3rd, I have to click through all the intervening gears. However, the incredibly fast shifts mean that I can get from 7th (my top gear) all the way to 3rd in about the same amount of time as it would've taken me with a stick. I lose nothing.
And for those that say that shift times make no difference; I have dragged (on a track, thank you) two identical cars; one with the DCT and the other with a stick. We did two runs in our own cars and two in each others... the result was always that the DCT equipped car was a good 3/10 quicker consistently in the quarter. Part of that is final drive (the DCT has a different final drive that gets better acceleration at the cost of slightly worse gas mileage) but even calculating that in we figured the shift times were gaining 1/10 on the quarter. Not much, but still faster.
Having said all this, have you driven the most recent 8 speed autos coming out? I have driven a BMW 535i with the 8 speed and was incredibly impressed by that thing. Yes, it's a torque-converter automatic but the technology has come a long way. Modern automatics really don't lose anything to a stick unless you happen to be a professional race driver. Of course, that would have to have been a professional race driver before 1992 because almost all race cars today use sequential manuals or dual clutch transmissoins... the days of rowing your own gears on the racetrack have been over for decades.
Here's my solution (though mine is all IPv4 instead of IPv6 simply because my carrier hasn't yet entered the 21st century).
I have a Linode... cheap one. It has a static IPv4 address. I put OpenVPN at each end and set up the Linode as my server, and my home server as a client. Then any services I want to present, I just proxy using the Linode (mostly web-based stuff... use Apache proxying). Works like a champ, doesn't require me to set the default gateway to my VPN (that would be a pain) and means that my address is completely static even if my own home address changes.
For bonus points, I use the dazzle script / sparkleshare combo as my own "dropbox" using this, and the repo is stored on my home server while my gateway to the repo is my Linode.
If you want more details, I am reachable by the same user name at Y... yeah I still have one of THOSE addresses, and while it's mostly a spam-sink I do check it.
Ironically, I think this is exactly what Apple lacks since Steve Jobs passed away. Say what you will about the guy; he was a showman extraordinaire. Though I didn't know him, I can imply from the stories I've read and heard that he also had that ability to recognize weakness and almost certainly never truly believed in private that Apple was untouchable and was the best. He drove Apple to create the best because he was absolutely convinced they weren't there yet.
Since Jobs passed away that has been lacking at the top of Apple. Unfortunately the RDF has outlasted Jobs himself and is still endemic to the company and everyone who worked for him (I DO know a few Apple engineers, and they agree with my assessment). They really do believe they are the best at everything and unfortunately it's going to take quite a force of will to convince them to excel as they did under Jobs. Tim Cook is a good guy and a great CEO... but he's not really the man to break that philosophical trough that Apple has fallen into.
But that's the point isn't it? I cannot see a way in which my current work environment benefits from touch. I also cannot fathom how my work environment could be improved to work with touch and still get my work done in a convenient fashion.
It also goes beyond touch. Metro is basically one full screen application... so basically WordPerfect 5.1 or Lotus 1-2-3. These were superseded for a reason; there were better way to do things. Basically the "two full-screen apps and switching between them" was done in DOS days, and it made sense at the time because that's what computers were capable of at the time. These days it makes almost zero sense on a desktop. It works on a tablet, but only because of the small screen and relatively limited screen real-estate.
On the two 24" monitors I have at work I often have 4 or 5 windows visible at once at a minimum, sometimes with another poking out of a side of another window so I can monitor a copy job or somesuch. You can't do this with Metro... at all. No, the "pinned apps" don't count because their display is utterly retarded, fixing you to a particular size and format which is convenient for... well... a list of emails perhaps.
Never mind that Metro doesn't work well or at all with multiple monitors... and using it as a start button is ridiculous because of the jarring and annoying transitions between two completely isolated environments. Yes, that's because most of my apps are desktop apps, but even where metro apps are available I still prefer to use the desktop apps because of the aformentioned flexibility in placing the windows where I want to and moving/resizing them according to my workflow.
I do agree that touch has its place, and agree that in my particular work environment it doesn't work while in others it might... but primiarly touch is only usable or useful when you have something actually cradled in your hands or arms... like a tablet. Even on my laptop it would be inconvenient and a pain in the environment where I use it (on a table/desk) as I mentioned before but you conveniently overlooked. The whole article and comments basically say the same thing; touch works fine on tablets but why foist it on the desktop/laptop where it does not work or belong? Optional, yes... that makes sense... but default?
I think the problem here is that Microsoft thinks it's Apple and can tell the customers exactly what they want and they'll just take it. Here's a hint; there's a reason Apple's market share is small and it's not necessarily because they're expensive (a strawman argument that really went away about 6 or 7 years ago). It's because Apple targets a very specific subset of the customer base. I love OSX as much as the next man, but use Linux or Windows to get most of my work done. My Macbook Pro primarily gets wheeled out when I have a specific need but otherwise stays mostly unused because there are things that OSX won't or won't do easily because Apple says it shouldn't... not any technical limitations. Microsoft wants to do the same thing but is failing to realize that Windows 8 is less of the right tool than Windows 7 was. If they continue with this trajectory then people who want to get stuff done will go elsewhere.
I use a laptop most of my time on a computer. I have a home laptop, and a work laptop... and in neither case would I want them to be touch screens. And for the record, I have used MANY touch screens in my career including the Surface, iPad, phones etc.
While I use my laptops as portable computing devices, more often than not (I'd say 90% of the time in fact) they are sitting in docking stations or attached in such a way that my 24" monitors (at work) are some 3 feet from my head. I don't have arms like an orang-utan, so in order to use these effectively as touch screens I would either have to move WAY closer (which then would require an awful lot of head motion with monitors that size) or indeed get smaller monitors. But then there's the eyestrain factor. I sit that far from my monitors because I have found it comfortable on my eyes. If I were to use the Metro start screen as my start menu, then every time I launched a new program I would have to sit up, lean forward, operate the menu and then lean back to my comfortable position with my hands on my keyboard to type. How is this better than the mouse that is FAR closer than my screen (being right next to my keyboard)?
To take this even further, when working on my laptop as I am this exact second, I sit about 2 feet from my 14" screen with my hands resting comfortably on the keyboard. If I want to use the mouse it is about 6" to the right of my right hand... lovely. Or I can just reach my thumbs down to my trackpad (which I actually do quite a bit when I'm on a roll). Using the Metro interface for app switching and launching, I would be reaching to my screen... and quite apart from the fact that I would end up with fingerprints on my screen (which annoys the hell out of me) I have just tried reaching out to the screen itself and found it intensely uncomfortable. I have to rotate my shoulders forward in order to reach it at all, my arms are extended at an uncomfortable angle. I would have to lean forward in order to use this comfortably and then my arms are no longer in the optimal position to type. This results in a lot of movement rocking back and forth, which while it may help me with my core abdominal strength a little does little for my back and is rather annoying. I have a good quality chair so I can sit at a decent angle for some time while working, without having to constantly shift around.
Sorry... I have used a Surface and it only works better than a laptop as a tablet... which the iPad also does just as well. I also run Windows 8 on this exact laptop I'm typing on, but after trying to live with Metro for two weeks I finally downloaded Classic Shell and find the entire OS transformed into exactly what Windows 8 should have been in the first place. There are a lot of other things I don't like, and Metro is the easiest one to fix... but yes it is the most visible problem with Windows 8. Of course, if Windows 8 had looked like my current desktop then Microsoft could never have sold it; it's far too much like Windows 7.
I run Ubuntu 12.04 with Gnome-Shell as my front end... I tend to agree with you that OP needs to really review what he's doing with his Ubuntu installations. Mine was a simple install followed by a few sudo apt-get commands and I was much happier.
Gnome-shell isn't perfect, but it's more compatible with the way I work. Throw Compiz at it and it's really nice desktop. Oh, and I do NFS transfers to my server all the time that are really large with no issues.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with ARM for the target device here. "Just another ARM knockoff" is quite insulting to the amount of work that has gone into this... the value of this isn't necessarily in the CPU anyway but in everything else that's on that board. The FPGA, headers and just generally the incredibly geeky ideas that are realized here are fundamentally cool... and yes, I'll gladly put my money where my mouth is. I would love one of these!
So much freaking negativity on here about this. I for one think this is a really cool project... and oddly enough actually fits the tagline of "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".
I have read several pages of comments and so far there have been only a very small handful of positive comments, while I think this is one of the coolest and most exciting things I've seen in a while. If this goes to a Kickstarter campaign then I for one am all over it. The very idea of building a laptop with everything I want and nothing I don't (including R-Pi headers and some really freaking cool ports on the board for getting down-and-dirty with the hardware) just excites me. I want one, and I will not be dissuaded from that opinion. Come on; an integrated FPGA that you can turn to any task you like? How many laptops have that? The PWM headers mean that you can take one of these motherboards and make it the brain of your own robot... an incredibly powerful one compared to most of the hobbyist kit that's out there.
I would ask what happened to the Slashdot that I used to love, but I think I already have a pretty good idea.
Bingo. I'd probably buy half a dozen of these to build out as really powerful and small firewall boxes (no screen, headless and so on) for some of my customers.
until the Kindle Paperwhite, I could not stand reading eInk screens because of the low contrast.
I keep seeing people say this, and it makes me wonder if Kindles have really crappy contrast, in general? Even without a backlight, my Kobo Touch has better contrast than most paperbacks I own.
My experience is; not really. The contrast on my Kindle Keyboard (about two years old) is actually no worse to my eyes than a printed hardback book. Really; I can barely see much difference between them. I find the contrast perfectly acceptable for reading, and definitely less straining than trying to read on a backlit colour LCD. I honestly think Amazon made a very conscious decision to make the contrast and screen "colour" to match a printed paper book as close as possible. Most people liked it, but some like GP did not and preferred to have a screen with greater contrast. While the "paperwhite" is definitely better, it's not an upgrade I'm going to sink money into at the moment because I just don't care. My Kindle is definitely good enough, and I'll maybe upgrade when I either break or lose my current Kindle.
I think the people who complain about the contrast are those who think the paper in the average hardback or paperback is actually white... it isn't!:)
Slashdot Mirror
If they can get the range up a bit? What's wrong with 300 miles (260 miles by EPA estimates)? That's better range per "tank" than my current car. Granted, I can also fill up my car at any gas station, but I rarely drive more than 300 miles in a day (like... almost never). If I take a hankering to drive to Chicago then either (a) I can take a plane, (b) take a train or (c) rent a car. Keeps the miles off my own car anyway.
The Tesla requires a change in thinking... you don't recharge your car when the range gets low; you plug it in at night when it's in your garage and you're not using it. Like a smartphone. Even if your battery's not dead, you plug it in anyway... the batteries in the Model S are designed to deal with the frequent recharge cycles like this.
Yeah it requires a change in the way one thinks and operates... but hell why not? We need to change... the world is changing with or without us.
As an aside; pretty soon I will be able to drive a Model S from St. Louis (where I live) to Chicago with a 1 hour stop in Bloomington to charge; Tesla recently got permission to build a "Supercharger" station there... so even then the 300 mile range becomes even less of an issue. Sure, I won't be able to drive to Memphis and back... but I am drawing a blank why I'd want to :)
Well... I have to say it's not news to me, but maybe I've just been lucky. My son was diagnosed as bipolar (which didn't exactly come as a surprise to me considering his mother is schizophrenic) last year. Combined with his behavioural issues as well, this was actually a bit of a relief. As far as treatment I have not encountered the "turf war" between psychologists and psychiatrists at all. In fact, my son has sessions with both a psychiatrist (monthly) and a psychologist (weekly) and the two of them talk once or twice a week about his case and work together to try to figure out an holistic solution to his issues.
The psychiatrist has also been really clear from the outset that the medications aren't to treat the problems, rather to make the problems and perceptions of the problems more manageable so that behavioural modification can be developed to combat the issues long term. She has been fantastic in helping us deal with his issues.
Maybe I've just been really fortunate with the group I have been working with here. While his medication is still a bit "hit or miss" there is no doubt in my mind that it has made it a lot easier for him to cope with his issues and put focus into working on his problems that would otherwise be focused elsewhere. While it's still incredibly difficult, it's definitely made things better.
While I agree with the article in that psychiatric drugs do not fix any problems, I think it's a little inflammatory in the way it approaches the statement. Then again, it's "newsworthy" when it's inflammatory I suppose.
Why anyone would go and buy a Wii knowing full well the Wii U was just getting released and then EXPECT long term support is beyond me. It really is outdated in every sense of the word.
Because not everyone knew full well a new Wii U was coming out. You are by definition of this site a technical person, therefore you tend to keep up with trends in the tech market. You knew a Wii U was coming, but the average Joe who picked up a steal of a Wii on sale back at Christmas for his kids because he couldn't afford it earlier in his job as a laborer is not going to be thrilled about this.
I tend to agree with others here; this is expected and normal behaviour... but only a few months after the release of the new console is actually pretty crappy of Nintendo.
This one will probably get buried because of the sheer weight of comments in this thread... but here goes.
I had the same quandary about four years ago; mail going back a decade at that point which I wanted to keep around. It was in various clients, as in your case. What I did was build a POSTFIX / IMAP server using (at the time) Gentoo. I then attached those clients and simply copied all the archived email up, one client at a time. I then went about building a SquirrelMail front end which did great for a while.
The problem as you can probably ascertain was search. It was tough to trawl through all those emails... but last year I converted my entire email system to Zimbra and simply did an IMAP import of all the data from my old IMAP server to the Zimbra database. While Zimbra still stores everything in MBX format (I think), it also uses MYSQL to store index data. It also happens that Zimbra has a really nice web front end, and everything's really nicely integrated. Now I have email going back 15 years or thereabouts, all searchable in pretty swift order. I added the Zimbra Desktop app to my laptops and I even have a local cache. As for backups, I have a Linode running a custom kernel and the ZFS filesystem, and nightly I have a script on my server that backs up the entire Zimbra store using "zfs send / zfs recv". Since my entire email store is around 9GB it isn't terribly expensive... and I use the same Linode for hosting a hub for my OpenVPN network... which means all my computers can communicate privately from anywhere in the world across a constantly up VPN tunnel.
And for those who think you don't need to keep all that email... bully for you. I have had to refer to decade old emails before in order to provide better service to my customers. My email archive also came in very handy during the divorce from my ex wife for reasons you can probably imagine but I'd rather not get into. That's also handy stuff to keep around... just in case.
You've obviously never driven a DCT or a modern automatic. They have these things called "buttons", or more often referred to as "paddles". These allow you to command a downshift in much simpler fashion than operating a clutch and a manual. Your manual transmission can't see the road ahead, either and relies upon the driver for the input... that's what my DCT does, as do many automatic transmissions. And no, I don't have to wait for the engine to slow-down... the DCT does a great job of rev-matching on every downshift... better than I do.
I track my cars 3 or 4 times a year at least... I do that to teach myself skills that come in handy for getting myself out of trouble more often than I care to admit.
I both with all the "extra tacked-on stuff" because quite frankly it's a lot simpler for me; the driver.
Really, I wonder if I'm missing the point of this outcry. I think putting a chip on the dongle to offload the decoding of video streams to HDMI to be a really elegant and scalable solution; possibly even scalable to the point of doing 4K video with a more powerful ARM chip.
The bandwidth of the Lightning connector itself is easily in the same range as USB 3 (10Gbbps) and the limiting factor is the hardware in the iPad/iPhone which is limited to USB 2.0 spec type speeds across that connector. There's no technical reason that future devices won't up that to USB 3 speeds, but the chipsets just aren't there yet. Once upped into that range, there's no reason that uncompressed 1080p video can't be pushed through that interface (approximately 3Gbps at max throughput, FYI). Again, the limit isn't the Lightning connector but rather the chipsets in the current range of devices. I don't have all the specs off-hand, but it's quite likely that the Lightning connector is actually capable of faster speeds, but the standards for that don't exist yet.
Besides, this is where I think I'm missing the point: Why the hoopla? This is a consumer-grade device (iPad/iPhone) and we have some guy who's got his ass chapped by the fact that it can't output uncompressed 1080p video through it's current connector? Uhm... OK. The 30-pin adapter got around this by having discrete video output on its own pins... the Lightning connector is purely a data connection. Yes, this change to only being able to get compressed video out at USB 2 speeds does seem to be a bit of a step backward, but again this is a consumer-grade device and should be treated as such. If you're using it for playback of video that must be 1080p in all it's uncompressed and perfect glory then you're really missing the point and probably need... Oh I don't know... a laptop with HDMI out? Or Thunderbolt if you're really an Apple fan?
I'm not an Apple apologist; I am typing this on an Alienware laptop running Ubuntu and my phone is a Galaxy Nexus... yes I have a Macbook Pro as well and it's a great laptop, but I in no way a fanboy. I just realize that this is a pretty elegant solution that's really scalable and interesting... but you have to remember this is for a consumer-grade device, not professional. This is for displaying your holiday pictures on a big screen, or playing back your holiday videos to the great chagrin of your friends... this isn't for reviewing takes between shots of the latest movie blockbuster... Apple sells better hardware for that. So do many other manufacturers.
All that being said; there's no technical reason that future generations of the iPad/iPhone won't be able to output 1080p uncompressed through Lightning... the limit is not the new connector but rather what the device itself can output. This dongle design is actually a really good idea... faster ARM CPU in there and you've got massive scalability.
Yeah, the Dodge Dart has a DCT in the Rallye version. But don't bother; it's attached to the worst engine I have ever had the misfortune to drive behind and the stupidest programming of the DCT I've ever encountered.
Now, if they put the DCT behind the new 2.4L engine they're planning for later this year, and fire their current DCT programmers we might actually be talking.
But the most common shift on the track is from top gear down to third. In my DCT that's 4 gears (from 7th to third)... that's a shift from 7th to 3rd in 400ms which means I've still gained 100ms on one corner on your theoretical manual driver. On a very technical track that 100ms per corner can equate to several seconds at the checkered flag... I've just completely slaughtered your manual driver assuming all else is equal.
Of course, that's if everything else is perfect and in the real world the DCT would never shift in exactly 100ms every time... but neither would any but the absolute best manual drivers shift in that perfect 500ms either.
If only they could add some way for the operator to manually shift the transmission. It could be a movement of the stick, or maybe some switches behind the steering wheel. We could call them "paddles".
While I agree with you in theory, the truth is a modern automatic like a dual clutch or even some of the more modern autos are bloody good and can be just as good or better than a human with a clutch. I didn't believe it myself until I got my BMW 135i with a dual-clutch (I purchased it in part because I had knee surgery on my left knee and could no longer operate a clutch until it healed completely). I have now had the car 18 months and honestly although my knee is better and I can drive a clutch again, I find myself wondering if I really need to. My transmission has a fully manual mode that will hold the gear I tell it all day long unless I tell it to change. I can preempt a corner and be in the perfect gear every time when on a technical track, and the shift times mean that as I come out of the corner I am able to keep the power in without letting up even as I upshift.
Is it perfect? No... no system is... but it's more consistent and faster with those shifts than I ever could be with a clutch. While there are times I miss it, in truth most of the time I really don't. Technology moves on, and the days of the manual are severely numbered by the fact that drivetrains are becoming far more complex. Look at a hybrid; can you imaging managing the power of both drivetrains with the traditional clutch and shifter?
Use the stick to shift when performance driving. Only use the paddles when you're driving reasonably straight; it's what I do in my DCT-equipped car.
Dual Clutch Transmission in a BMW 135i here. Long time manual driver prior to getting this car, and in fact my last car before it (BMW 545i) I went all the way to North Carolina to buy because it had a stick instead of an auto.
My car is really a truly clutchless manual that happens to have an automatic mode. When I start my car in the morning and shift it to "drive", the first thing I do is click the shifter into the gate to the left and then click up once. That puts the transmission in a pure manual mode that will hold a gear until you shift it. I could drive to work in first gear if I so desired and the transmission wouldn't upshift. Of course, I wouldn't be doing much good for my gas mileage either, but the point is that I could. There are paddles on the steering wheel, but I tend to use the shifter because it's natural for me to reach down there for gear changes anyway; I flip the shifter away from me to downshift, toward me to upshift. It's incredibly natural.
As for performance driving, I can anticipate the curves and downshift appropriately every time, far faster than I ever could with a stick and clutch. Sure, it's sequential in the same sense that my motorbike is; I can't go from 6th gear to 3rd, I have to click through all the intervening gears. However, the incredibly fast shifts mean that I can get from 7th (my top gear) all the way to 3rd in about the same amount of time as it would've taken me with a stick. I lose nothing.
And for those that say that shift times make no difference; I have dragged (on a track, thank you) two identical cars; one with the DCT and the other with a stick. We did two runs in our own cars and two in each others... the result was always that the DCT equipped car was a good 3/10 quicker consistently in the quarter. Part of that is final drive (the DCT has a different final drive that gets better acceleration at the cost of slightly worse gas mileage) but even calculating that in we figured the shift times were gaining 1/10 on the quarter. Not much, but still faster.
Having said all this, have you driven the most recent 8 speed autos coming out? I have driven a BMW 535i with the 8 speed and was incredibly impressed by that thing. Yes, it's a torque-converter automatic but the technology has come a long way. Modern automatics really don't lose anything to a stick unless you happen to be a professional race driver. Of course, that would have to have been a professional race driver before 1992 because almost all race cars today use sequential manuals or dual clutch transmissoins... the days of rowing your own gears on the racetrack have been over for decades.
Here's my solution (though mine is all IPv4 instead of IPv6 simply because my carrier hasn't yet entered the 21st century).
I have a Linode... cheap one. It has a static IPv4 address. I put OpenVPN at each end and set up the Linode as my server, and my home server as a client. Then any services I want to present, I just proxy using the Linode (mostly web-based stuff... use Apache proxying). Works like a champ, doesn't require me to set the default gateway to my VPN (that would be a pain) and means that my address is completely static even if my own home address changes.
For bonus points, I use the dazzle script / sparkleshare combo as my own "dropbox" using this, and the repo is stored on my home server while my gateway to the repo is my Linode.
If you want more details, I am reachable by the same user name at Y... yeah I still have one of THOSE addresses, and while it's mostly a spam-sink I do check it.
Loved Silent Running... could've done without the overly loud and horrible song at the end...
Trust me, those with kids do pay more, already. They just don't pay more taxes.
Ironically, I think this is exactly what Apple lacks since Steve Jobs passed away. Say what you will about the guy; he was a showman extraordinaire. Though I didn't know him, I can imply from the stories I've read and heard that he also had that ability to recognize weakness and almost certainly never truly believed in private that Apple was untouchable and was the best. He drove Apple to create the best because he was absolutely convinced they weren't there yet.
Since Jobs passed away that has been lacking at the top of Apple. Unfortunately the RDF has outlasted Jobs himself and is still endemic to the company and everyone who worked for him (I DO know a few Apple engineers, and they agree with my assessment). They really do believe they are the best at everything and unfortunately it's going to take quite a force of will to convince them to excel as they did under Jobs. Tim Cook is a good guy and a great CEO... but he's not really the man to break that philosophical trough that Apple has fallen into.
Ah, so you worked at Citigroup, too?
Funniest truism I have ever seen. Bravo :)
But that's the point isn't it? I cannot see a way in which my current work environment benefits from touch. I also cannot fathom how my work environment could be improved to work with touch and still get my work done in a convenient fashion.
It also goes beyond touch. Metro is basically one full screen application... so basically WordPerfect 5.1 or Lotus 1-2-3. These were superseded for a reason; there were better way to do things. Basically the "two full-screen apps and switching between them" was done in DOS days, and it made sense at the time because that's what computers were capable of at the time. These days it makes almost zero sense on a desktop. It works on a tablet, but only because of the small screen and relatively limited screen real-estate.
On the two 24" monitors I have at work I often have 4 or 5 windows visible at once at a minimum, sometimes with another poking out of a side of another window so I can monitor a copy job or somesuch. You can't do this with Metro... at all. No, the "pinned apps" don't count because their display is utterly retarded, fixing you to a particular size and format which is convenient for... well... a list of emails perhaps.
Never mind that Metro doesn't work well or at all with multiple monitors... and using it as a start button is ridiculous because of the jarring and annoying transitions between two completely isolated environments. Yes, that's because most of my apps are desktop apps, but even where metro apps are available I still prefer to use the desktop apps because of the aformentioned flexibility in placing the windows where I want to and moving/resizing them according to my workflow.
I do agree that touch has its place, and agree that in my particular work environment it doesn't work while in others it might... but primiarly touch is only usable or useful when you have something actually cradled in your hands or arms... like a tablet. Even on my laptop it would be inconvenient and a pain in the environment where I use it (on a table/desk) as I mentioned before but you conveniently overlooked. The whole article and comments basically say the same thing; touch works fine on tablets but why foist it on the desktop/laptop where it does not work or belong? Optional, yes... that makes sense... but default?
I think the problem here is that Microsoft thinks it's Apple and can tell the customers exactly what they want and they'll just take it. Here's a hint; there's a reason Apple's market share is small and it's not necessarily because they're expensive (a strawman argument that really went away about 6 or 7 years ago). It's because Apple targets a very specific subset of the customer base. I love OSX as much as the next man, but use Linux or Windows to get most of my work done. My Macbook Pro primarily gets wheeled out when I have a specific need but otherwise stays mostly unused because there are things that OSX won't or won't do easily because Apple says it shouldn't... not any technical limitations. Microsoft wants to do the same thing but is failing to realize that Windows 8 is less of the right tool than Windows 7 was. If they continue with this trajectory then people who want to get stuff done will go elsewhere.
I use a laptop most of my time on a computer. I have a home laptop, and a work laptop... and in neither case would I want them to be touch screens. And for the record, I have used MANY touch screens in my career including the Surface, iPad, phones etc.
While I use my laptops as portable computing devices, more often than not (I'd say 90% of the time in fact) they are sitting in docking stations or attached in such a way that my 24" monitors (at work) are some 3 feet from my head. I don't have arms like an orang-utan, so in order to use these effectively as touch screens I would either have to move WAY closer (which then would require an awful lot of head motion with monitors that size) or indeed get smaller monitors. But then there's the eyestrain factor. I sit that far from my monitors because I have found it comfortable on my eyes. If I were to use the Metro start screen as my start menu, then every time I launched a new program I would have to sit up, lean forward, operate the menu and then lean back to my comfortable position with my hands on my keyboard to type. How is this better than the mouse that is FAR closer than my screen (being right next to my keyboard)?
To take this even further, when working on my laptop as I am this exact second, I sit about 2 feet from my 14" screen with my hands resting comfortably on the keyboard. If I want to use the mouse it is about 6" to the right of my right hand... lovely. Or I can just reach my thumbs down to my trackpad (which I actually do quite a bit when I'm on a roll). Using the Metro interface for app switching and launching, I would be reaching to my screen... and quite apart from the fact that I would end up with fingerprints on my screen (which annoys the hell out of me) I have just tried reaching out to the screen itself and found it intensely uncomfortable. I have to rotate my shoulders forward in order to reach it at all, my arms are extended at an uncomfortable angle. I would have to lean forward in order to use this comfortably and then my arms are no longer in the optimal position to type. This results in a lot of movement rocking back and forth, which while it may help me with my core abdominal strength a little does little for my back and is rather annoying. I have a good quality chair so I can sit at a decent angle for some time while working, without having to constantly shift around.
Sorry... I have used a Surface and it only works better than a laptop as a tablet... which the iPad also does just as well. I also run Windows 8 on this exact laptop I'm typing on, but after trying to live with Metro for two weeks I finally downloaded Classic Shell and find the entire OS transformed into exactly what Windows 8 should have been in the first place. There are a lot of other things I don't like, and Metro is the easiest one to fix... but yes it is the most visible problem with Windows 8. Of course, if Windows 8 had looked like my current desktop then Microsoft could never have sold it; it's far too much like Windows 7.
I run Ubuntu 12.04 with Gnome-Shell as my front end... I tend to agree with you that OP needs to really review what he's doing with his Ubuntu installations. Mine was a simple install followed by a few sudo apt-get commands and I was much happier.
Gnome-shell isn't perfect, but it's more compatible with the way I work. Throw Compiz at it and it's really nice desktop. Oh, and I do NFS transfers to my server all the time that are really large with no issues.
You mean... sort of like the Atrix that I rooted almost two years ago and put Ubuntu onto the WebTop environment while moving it to SD card?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with ARM for the target device here. "Just another ARM knockoff" is quite insulting to the amount of work that has gone into this... the value of this isn't necessarily in the CPU anyway but in everything else that's on that board. The FPGA, headers and just generally the incredibly geeky ideas that are realized here are fundamentally cool... and yes, I'll gladly put my money where my mouth is. I would love one of these!
So much freaking negativity on here about this. I for one think this is a really cool project... and oddly enough actually fits the tagline of "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".
I have read several pages of comments and so far there have been only a very small handful of positive comments, while I think this is one of the coolest and most exciting things I've seen in a while. If this goes to a Kickstarter campaign then I for one am all over it. The very idea of building a laptop with everything I want and nothing I don't (including R-Pi headers and some really freaking cool ports on the board for getting down-and-dirty with the hardware) just excites me. I want one, and I will not be dissuaded from that opinion. Come on; an integrated FPGA that you can turn to any task you like? How many laptops have that? The PWM headers mean that you can take one of these motherboards and make it the brain of your own robot... an incredibly powerful one compared to most of the hobbyist kit that's out there.
I would ask what happened to the Slashdot that I used to love, but I think I already have a pretty good idea.
Bingo. I'd probably buy half a dozen of these to build out as really powerful and small firewall boxes (no screen, headless and so on) for some of my customers.
I keep seeing people say this, and it makes me wonder if Kindles have really crappy contrast, in general? Even without a backlight, my Kobo Touch has better contrast than most paperbacks I own.
My experience is; not really. The contrast on my Kindle Keyboard (about two years old) is actually no worse to my eyes than a printed hardback book. Really; I can barely see much difference between them. I find the contrast perfectly acceptable for reading, and definitely less straining than trying to read on a backlit colour LCD. I honestly think Amazon made a very conscious decision to make the contrast and screen "colour" to match a printed paper book as close as possible. Most people liked it, but some like GP did not and preferred to have a screen with greater contrast. While the "paperwhite" is definitely better, it's not an upgrade I'm going to sink money into at the moment because I just don't care. My Kindle is definitely good enough, and I'll maybe upgrade when I either break or lose my current Kindle.
:)
I think the people who complain about the contrast are those who think the paper in the average hardback or paperback is actually white... it isn't!